Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name

by Edward M. Erdelac

  “It is said that at death, the kedoshim, the most righteous of the hidden saints, come here,” he said. “They may bring with them into Paradise all the souls they can carry.”

  The Rider looked at Kabede. There was an expression of extreme sorrow on his face. The Rider’s own soul blanched at the terror and the fury all around him. He wondered how God, or any creation of God could even conceive of such horror let alone bring it into being.

  “Let’s go,” he said, his voice cracking. It was almost a plea.

  Before them a granite bridge spanned the lake, and beyond that lay Pandæmonium, the grand palace of hell. It stood atop a mound of smoking magma in the center, a mockery of the suffering all around it and a testament to the hubris of its occupants. It was gargantuan and shining, gaudy as a wedding cake. It was similar in its basic design to the old depictions of Solomon’s Temple, yet it was defaced by the clashing opulence of a dozen different architectural styles. Belted by innumerable Roman columns of white marble, its foundation festooned with cheerful Parisian style lamps and Venetian arches, its outer stairs lined with sumptuous balustrades. Its walls were adorned with baroque pilasters, each framing a flattering Babylonian style bas-relief depicting one of the high marshals of hell—three-headed Asmodeus, dragon-winged Astaroth, Molech (whose countenance the Rider was all-too familiar with), the upright wolf Mammon in Estrucan dress, Thammuz cradling a cannon in his arms, Ornasis the father of vampires. The walls and their panels stretched on into the distance.

  Looking on it, but for the screaming, one would forget hell itself, except for the smoke constantly drifting across it, rendering its classical beauty forever sinister.

  As they drifted toward the bridge, a giant figure in a grey robe with vulture like wings drifted down. It was perfectly proportioned and handsome, approaching nine feet in height. Its very skin seemed to shine through its dull clothing. Its robe was belted with a chord of braided gold, and buckled with the seal of the Tetragrammaton, marking it as an angel of the Lord. Its hair was silver in color, but in texture like a mass of shivering quills.

  “Do you know me, O man?” the angel asked in a stentorian voice heard even above the howling of hell.

  “Pariel,” said Kabede, “called Kipod.”

  “And what is my duty here?” the angel demanded, turning his attention to the Rider.

  The Rider was glad Kabede knew this angel’s true name, or it would probably have cast them back up the torreón. The Rider had a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of angels and their duties from his years of study, but there were many he did not know by sight.

  “You are guardian of the third gate,” said Kabede. “The Sha’arei Tzalmavet. The Gate of the Shadow of Death.”

  The angel bobbed its chin.

  “Pass, then,” it said, and swooped back into the torrid sky, contemptuously batting aside some mewling, eyeless, tortoise thing with wasp wings and the flailing arms and legs of a man.

  “I’m glad he asked you,” the Rider mentioned to Kabede. “I didn’t know him by sight.”

  “Nor did I,” said Kabede. “Often Igzee’abihier makes each angel a riddle. Pariel’s name here is Kipod—hedgehog. That is why his hair appears like a hedgehog’s.”

  The Rider felt a twinge of delight at having learned a new trick, but the feeling swiftly dissipated in the face of the cacophonous misery.

  “It is strange though, that he did not ask you to name him,” said Kabede.

  The Rider had to admit this was odd. Although it seemed redundant, guardians both angelic and infernal usually let no one pass without they knew the correct seals and names. The company you kept did not usually assure passage, in his experience. In his youth he had seen stuttering pupils cast back into their bodies as their instructors went on alone.

  They moved on, down the length of the black bridge toward Pandæmonium.

  The thoroughfare was clotted with demons and angels coming to and fro. The Rider and Kabede attracted much attention. The Rider saw stately Sanegor, the heavenly advocate who regularly argued the case for humanity against Satan before God, and Temelechus, one of the ishim, body of snow and eyes of fire, the chief of the tartaruchi who it was said cruelly expressed their own regret at having turned against God in their exuberant torture of the souls of the damned.

  The Rider and Kabede kept their eyes upon their destination, and ignored the angry calls of demons in their braying animal tongue.

  Up to the gilded gates of Pandæmonium they passed, where to their surprise, two lumbering, faceless, naked black giants stopped quarreling long enough to swing open the doors.

  Inside, the air was clear and the fury outside was diminished. A tall angel, its features amorphous, yet its two eyes glowing red through a long black veil that stretched down to the hem of its black robes, met them. The arms that protruded from beneath sleeves were pale and impossibly thin, wasted, the nails black and ingrown. It was about seven feet tall, and its wings were naked black bone. Hooves protruded from beneath the hem of its robe. The shape of its head beneath the veil suggested three horns.

  “Lucifuge Rofocale, Prime Minister of Hell,” said the Rider, taking a cue from Kabede. It was said this fallen angel’s order concealed God from man and hid the face of mercy, hence the veil. “Marshal of the Order of Sathariel…,” he went on.

  The veiled angel held up its long, spindly fingered hand, then turned it in an impatient gesture to follow. It went clacking off down the marble-floored corridor.

  They passed through a long, high ceilinged hall lined with black marble statues depicting the chiefs of the Fallen, apparently as they had been before their corruption. The Rider recognized none of them, though he did see the seal of Beelzebub upon the base of a figure of a four-winged cherub. There were other seals he knew as well: Jekon, Nisroch, Baal Berith, Ramjul…it was a roll call of infamy. Yet the statues were of surpassing beauty and grace, strange to find in the heart of hell.

  Lucifuge led them at last to a great inner door covered with a stylized sunburst of beaten gold, and ushered them beyond.

  They found themselves within an enormous gilded chamber lit by flickering light, commanded by two rich black velvet draperies that hung from ceiling to floor. The walls were adorned with tapestries and dimly discernible paintings from every era, each depicting some human artist’s conception of Satan. William Blake’s Lucifer was there, Alessandro Vellutello’s Lucifero, Gustave Doré’s Depiction of Satan, William Hogarth’s Satan, Sin, and Death, and strange works by Swanenburg, Martin, Breughel and Bosche. There were bizarre illuminations from books the Rider had never seen, made more sinister by the intermittent light.

  One of the paintings moved upon the wall.

  Its subject matter was tame compared to the rest of the works on display, being only two fully-clothed modestly-dressed women and two men in toppers and frock coats walking in a circle in a backyard garden on a sunny day. But the effect was dreadful to the Rider and to Kabede. There was no color at all, but blacks were deeply shadowed and the whites flaring and intense, like a poorly developed daguerreotype. The depiction was disturbingly lifelike, the motions almost natural, but decidedly off putting and jerky thanks in part to the strobe of the light, which shone full upon this painting.

  The figures in the painting converged in their circular perambulation, but in less than a second they froze in place, leapt back to their original locations, and performed the whole odd dance over again. It happened again and again before their eyes, grainy shadows and light skipping and leaping back and forth on the wall.

  The repeating image was accompanied by an incessant whirring sound, mechanical, as of a clockwork bee beating its wings in the air.

  The Rider moved in front of the terrible painting to regard it, and his shadow suddenly appeared huge on the wall, obscuring the image.

  “Roundhay Park, in England,” came a calm, unassuming voice from the surrounding darkness, startling the Rider and Kabede both.

  They turned toward the direction of th
e voice, and saw a flashing eye like the light on the nose of a steam engine coming down a tunnel.

  “That’s enough, Belphegor,” said the voice.

  The light winked out, the mechanical whirring stopped, and the golden chamber sconces (which appeared to be gas lit) flared, illuminating the entire room. They stood in a grand study, quite modernly adorned. Those walls not covered in paintings bore shelves of books that stretched from black floor to red, cathedral ceiling, just as the two immense curtains did. There was a massive pattern on the marble floor, but the Rider could not make out what it was.

  Where the eye of light had been, stood a carved cherry wood desk, and atop the desk a squat, boxy machine of some kind, with spools of black ribbon affixed to it.

  A similarly shaped demon crouched behind the desk, short, hunchbacked, bug-eyed, and sparsely haired. It had prodigiously hairy, ape-like arms and overly large nostrils. Its yellow and black grin was much too wide, and seemed to stretch from ear to ear. Its once angelic nature survived only in a pair of stubby brown moth-like wings sagging like wet paper on his deformed shoulders. It was dressed in a shabby tweed suit, the shirt open at the collar, bursting with tufts of wiry orange hair. It resembled an orangutan.

  The too-tall figure seated in the high-backed chair beside which the orangutan stood contrasted the hunchback as sharply as a thoroughbred stallion does a drooping canner being led to the glue factory. The figure was princely in its comportment and oddly handsome, though not conventionally good looking or young. Its features were thin and smooth, its lips slightly pinched, its close-set eyes disapproving, eyebrows arched, short-cropped hair receding from the top of its head but neatly groomed and tasteful. Instead of startling beauty and youth, it gave off an air of refined, austere maturity. It was slightly pale, but it was angelic nonetheless. Its wings were full and brightly plumed, scintillating gold and purple and blue like a peacock’s, only slightly dulled from its original angelic sheen in that the Rider could actually perceive and quantify the colors. Its eyes were a startling gold, golden as the doors that had opened to admit them.

  It wore a black tunic of a strange cut, with black riding pants English cut and high shining boots. Over this, it wore a homespun Roman toga, red as a wine presser’s robe.

  “Did you like it?” Lucifer asked, meaning the moving painting, which had disappeared from the wall. Only a blank space existed where it had been.

  The Rider and Kabede said nothing.

  “It’s a moving picture, a painting of light and shadow. A similar apparatus to a photographer’s camera is used to capture it, only understandably more complex. I think the result is quite beautiful, Belphegor,” Lucifer said to the hunchbacked demon at his side, without looking at it.

  “Thank you, Lord,” said Belphegor, bobbing its head.

  “As a matter of fact, I think it’s your greatest invention yet. I plan to introduce it in a few years. I’m sure in no time at all men will be watching each other fornicating with animals, but for now it remains a thing of beauty. That will be all, Belphegor.”

  “Yes, Lord,” said the hunchback. He gathered up the clunky machine under one simian arm and limped through a side passage out of the chamber.

  “I know you are the Rider,” said Lucifer. “You beat that idiot Molech in the Sitra Achra years ago. In fact, I’ve followed your career through intermediaries for so long, I feel almost as if I know you.” He fixed his unimpressed stare on Kabede. “But I don’t know you.”

  He regarded him from head to toe, then rose from his chair and came around to sit on the edge of the desk. “I know the staff you bear all too well, however. You are in good company, Rider. Not many men can even lift that stick.”

  “We’ve come to demand two things of you,” Kabede said, ignoring his comments.

  “Demand?” Lucifer said, smirking and raising his eyebrows.

  “You will call off the servants of Lilith who pursue the Rider…,” Kabede began.

  “I have no power over Lilith or her bastards.”

  “You lie, Satan,” said Kabede.

  “Is your companion entirely without manners, Rider?” Lucifer said, ignoring Kabede.

  “If you’re not lying, then explain yourself,” said the Rider.

  Kabede turned to look at the Rider.

  “Surely you don’t expect to believe…”

  “It was your idea to come here,” the Rider said, cutting him off. “Let him speak.”

  Lucifer smiled thinly.

  “Thank you. Lilith is no demoness. She’s a witch from the dawn of your history. I’ve been obliged to employ her children as a favor to an old friend. As of late, what she and her kin do has been her own affair.”

  “What do you mean, ‘a favor to an old friend?’” asked the Rider.

  “Lilith’s lover was Samael, the Angel of Death. When they had their ill-advised tryst, the Almighty punished Samael and Lilith both. Samael was bound to his office, and Michael cut him so he could no longer father bastards upon her. She in turn was driven from him.”

  “Samael’s the friend you spoke of?”

  “Samael was the greatest of us. The strongest. He led every charge in the First War. He was our Michael. And yes, he was my friend, till that mud-born whore brought him down to the level of a filthy Grigori.”

  “But,” said the Rider, “if he was cast out alongside you, then how was he given the office of Angel of Death?”

  “Do you think being the Angel of Death is an honor? To serve as psychopomp to a lot of pleading mortals? Samael exists in a prison without walls, without place. No angel or demon can perceive him, and he can speak to no one except the measly soul of whatever dying ape he comes to collect and only then in the time it takes him to deliver that soul to its judgment.”

  “And Lilith…,” mused the Rider.

  “….is immortal,” said Lucifer. “And thus undying, they can never meet. Some would call this a tragedy. I think it’s really the best thing for either of them. In all of Creation, he is the only being truly alone. In that, his punishment is greater than mine.”

  “What is your punishment?” the Rider asked. “You rule this place.”

  “Yes,” smirked Lucifer. “This place. I was the Light Bearer. When the Father said ‘let there be light,’ it was I who brought it forth. Then God showed us man and said we must defer to you. I was angry, and like a fool I let my anger be stoked by an insidious tongue and surrounded myself with fools. I became the face of rebellion and as punishment I was demoted to jailer and zookeeper of this madhouse.”

  “Your pride led you here,” Kabede intoned.

  Lucifer wrinkled his brow and opened his mouth to speak, but the Rider spoke first.

  “What ‘insidious tongue’ counseled you to rebel?”

  “Ah, now at last we come to the point,” said Lucifer. “Though I knew him as a cherub called Adam Belial, he was one of those Outer Gods you have recently made the acquaintance of. A deceiver of epic proportions. He had us all convinced he was one of our number. Admirable, in one respect. Infuriating in another. He infiltrated us, then he drove Heaven to war to serve the ends of his masters.”

  “Outer Gods...,” the Rider mused. “The Great Old Ones.”

  Lucifer nodded.

  “Who is he? Who are his masters?” Kabede asked. “What are their ends? What is the Hour of the Incursion?”

  Lucifer turned then, and went to one of the high shelves, running his finger along the bound books.

  “I never learned his real name, though like some of the Fallen, he was worshiped at times. In Egypt he was Set, and the Aztecs knew him as Tezcatlipoca. When I discovered his true nature, he fled. He left this.”

  Lucifer slipped a thin black book from the shelf and returned. He set it on his desk and opened it.

  They drifted closer to read the title, ‘Damnatus Damnateum.’

  “It is a book of the so-called Great Old Ones,” said Lucifer, “and details their plans for this universe. The Hour of Incursion is a time of
celestial alignment, fast-approaching, I should think, by the upswing in their activity as of late. The book doesn’t say exactly when, or how it will come about. I assume only the adherents to their fool religion are privy to that information. It does say what will come after. The Great Dying. The Sixth Extinction.”

  The Great Dying. Sheardown mentioned that to the Rider.

  Kabede leaned forward. They could not interact with anything on this plane, being as sealed within their merkabah magen as the rest of Gehenna was sealed out. Lucifer seemed to know this, and he methodically turned the pages of the infernal book for Kabede as he read, eyes widening in growing amazement.

  “One of Adon’s men mentioned that. He said those who aided in the Hour of Incursion would become gods.”

  “Gods, yes,” Lucifer mused. “Gods of a dead world. The Great Old Ones feed on apathy and chaos. They will remake this universe in their image by unmaking the order in place. They have done it before.”

  “Before?” Kabede asked sharply.

  “In other universes. They pass through realities, like vast weevils gnawing at the fringes of Creation, and they unravel the Maker’s skein wherever they go, seeding madness and reaping chaos.”

  “Adon’s man said they would unleash hell,” the Rider added tentatively, watching Lucifer’s face for a hint of expression, “and that That Which Strains Against Its Chains would be loosed.”

  “An unfortunate turn of phrase,” Lucifer shrugged.

  “I thought he might be referring to you.”

  Lucifer laughed.

  “I do not strain against anything. I have my place here.”

  “So…you aren’t a part of their plans?”

  “No.”

  “Lilith said she wasn’t either. Then she tried to kill me.”

  “That cow brims with guile. She’s well-suited to Adam Belial’s company.”

  “Why would she help the Great Old Ones?”

  “Adam Belial, through your ben Abuyah, or Acher, or Adon—whatever he’s calling himself these days—no doubt made her a promise which appealed to her.”