Through the Moon Gate and Other Tales of Vampirism

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  David looked at the diagonal length of the room, then at the Scroll. “It’ll never fit.”

  “Well, let’s see if enough of it will. Maybe it’s like a plane runway. If he can get going, he’ll take off before reaching the end.”

  They created an open strip of carpet from corner to corner of the room, carefully picking up bits of detritus, children’s toys, and what-not to make a clean strip for the Torah. The Vampire’s waning strength was apparent in his every move. He was in a hurry to get this done, knowing his strength wouldn’t hold out against the forces in this building.

  Bozez strove to keep his dazzling light down to levels Malory could stand, but as each page of the Torah Scroll was revealed, he got brighter and brighter. Finally, they had most of the Scroll exposed, laid out diagonally across the room. At last, Malory said, “OK, try it now.”

  Reverent, enraptured, and humbled, the Angel stepped out over the first words of the Torah Scroll, wings unfurling to fill the room again. Here we have all these elaborate rituals for reverently handling a Scroll thought David, and he goes and walks on it!

  Bozez took a step, and then all David saw was a gossamer rainbow streak flashing along the length of the Scroll, and then his eyes just gave out from the brilliance.

  When it was gone, the fluorescent lighting in the room seemed like total darkness.

  He blinked his way back to Reality and yelled, “We did it! MArnaud, we did it!”

  There was no answer.

  “Mal?” He looked around. The Vampire wasn’t in the room. He looked behind the stacks of chairs they’d made, behind the lecterns, and then saw the door was slightly ajar.

  He found Malory in the hallway, fallen face down, as if he’d been fleeing the room when he passed out. Kneeling beside the Vampire, David found him as dead as his daytime coma ever made him. He hadn’t turned to ash, which was a good sign. But it was still a long time until morning. He shouldn’t be in his coma yet.

  David wasted several minutes poking and prodding, pleading with Malory to wake up. He even tried opening the door inside his mind to let Malory talk to him mentally, as he had sometimes done during the day. Nothing.

  Without Malory to control what the men were seeing, how could he get them out of the building? They’d walked down the street from the house, but David knew he’d never be able to carry the Vampire home, even if the street was wholly deserted which it wasn’t.

  He thought about going to get his car, but where could he hide the Vampire while he was gone? And there was the mess they’d made of this room. If people found it like that, they’d have the police here looking for a vandal.

  And it would be daylight soon. He couldn’t take Malory out in the sunlight.

  He dragged the limp body back into the room and set about rolling up the Torah Scroll—normally a two-man job. He knew he’d never get it set to the correct page—he couldn’t read a word of it—and he didn’t even try to get it rolled up snug and tight enough. It was a big struggle to get the binding wrapped around it and fastened, and then with nobody to hold it upright, it was hard to get the covering in place because the spokes weren’t close enough together and the Crown and Pointer wouldn’t fit right either.

  He’d just have to leave it that way, hoping they’d think some children had messed with it.

  Rearranging the furniture by himself took more than three times as long as it had taken the three of them to move everything.

  He could barely budge the lectern by himself, and the rows of chairs had to be set up straight.

  All that while, Malory lay dead, not breathing, heart not beating. David worked against the clock, but still by the time the room was presentable, it was close to dawn. He couldn’t get Malory out of the building now before people began arriving.

  And he had to get Malory out of sight and store him where no sunlight—or children, would get at him until nightfall. Soon the building would be full of bored children and even more bored babysitting teens.

  Usually, when badly hurt, the Vampire would recover with sunset. Maybe not this time, though. Then what will I do?

  He opened the door to the hallway and peered out. Voices rose from the lobby—the small group of men who had learned all night discussing going home to freshen up before the day’s services. “No, we shouldn’t lock up. Tully will be here in a few minutes.” A toilet flushed. A door opened, and the voices faded. The door closed, echoing through the empty building.

  A few minutes. How long is that?

  He had one chance, and he knew Malory would never thank him for saving his life this way. But the one dark place the children would not go was the cabinet behind the Aron Kodesh where they stored the books that were so damaged they couldn’t be used anymore. The psychic “noise” that so disturbed the Vampire would be greatest there. He’d have daymares from it. It wouldn’t actually harm him, but it would make him helpless.

  He’s just stunned from Bozez’s light. He’ll recover, and everything will be fine. If we can get away with this, he...and I…won’t have to move again.

  The Vampire was much taller than David. In one corner of the room, there was a dolly used to move the folding chairs. How he’d get it down the stairs, David had no idea.

  How had they gotten it up here? Where were the chairs normally stored?

  He unloaded the rest of the chairs from the dolly, pulled and heaved the limp body onto it, and jockeyed it out the doors. The dolly about filled the hallway, and it was too wide for the stairs. He raced up and down the hall, past school rooms, and finally found an elevator in a corner.

  As he reached for the button to summon it, the doors opened. He propped them open with his tush as he sidled the dolly into it. He ended up on the wrong side from the control buttons, and as he was maneuvering over the dolly to reach them, the doors closed and the elevator descended to the only other floor in the building. Then he remembered. The Orthodox wouldn’t push elevator buttons on the Sabbath or Holidays, so they had the elevator rigged to run automatically all day.

  It opened at the back of the caterer’s kitchen right across from a huge closet full of folding chairs and what looked like a collapsed party-tent. He was tempted to store the body there. But the doors were open. Someone might want more chairs, and then what?

  Maybe rolled in the tent? But it was trussed up neatly, and no doubt was huge and heavy. And he didn’t have much time.

  He made for the Sanctuary, battering the swinging doors open with the bumper on the front of the dolly because he couldn’t stop it in time. The dolly wouldn’t go more than a yard into the room, there were so many chairs in the way.

  Racing the clock, he ran up to the Aron, pulled the curtain, opened the doors—lofted a hearty prayer of thanks that the doors were unlocked,—carefully and reverently moved the central Torah Scroll, pushed open the broken door in the back, ran back to heave and drag the comatose Vampire up onto the stage, pushed the flopping body through into the dark cubby, where it fell in an awkward pile, replaced everything, closed up, and ran back to the dolly which was propping the door open.

  “Oh, you didn’t have to do that! It is my job, after all.”

  Aware of beads of sweat rolling down face and body, David looked up to see a wiry old man in black with fringes hanging out from under his jacket and a very large white yarmulka on his head smiling at him.

  The shock paralyzed David.

  “Here, let’s get this back upstairs,” offered the old man, pulling the dolly out of the doorway.

  David went with it. “Uh, um, well, I didn’t finish in there yet. I thought I’d be done before you got here.”

  “That’s very nice of you—uh—I don’t recall your name.”

  “David Silberman. I own Silberman’s Drycleaning. I’m not a member here, but....”

  “You wanted to do a special mitzvah for us. Our gratitude will be with you.”

  The old man insisted on helping replace the dolly, then pulled David into continuing his routine of picking up and str
aightening the covers on the lecterns, checking and arranging, returning books to their proper places, sorting the chairs according to the names on them by the chart on the wall, all the while reciting the rules about what they could and could not do on Yom Kippur to make the shul ready for the crowd. He wouldn’t even knock down a cobweb.

  All David could think of was the Vampire behind the Aron Kodesh. Malory’s subliminal pain leaked through the portal in David’s mind and he was beginning to regret this decision. There were nearly fourteen hours of this to endure. Even if he went home, he’d still feel Malory’s anguish.

  But he couldn’t go home. He had to watch. He couldn’t leave Malory alone here, rendered helpless by daylight and the excruciating psychic noise. But, if that rear door fell open, what could he do to prevent anyone from discovering the Vampire?

  I should have hidden him in the shrubs and gone to get my car.

  No, I’d never have made it.

  Heaving a dead body out of the shrubbery in front of a shul at the crack of dawn on a weekday on a busy street—no. On Holidays, the police patrolled the synagogues with special attention, particularly at night. He knew he’d have been caught. Irrational as it was, he knew it.

  Eventually, the old man noticed him stopping to stare at the Aron Kodesh. “It is beautiful isn’t it? It was made by one of our members, an artist. The Sisterhood made the drape for us, every stitch by hand. Wouldn’t think anyone did hand embroidery these days, would you?”

  “Uh, not like that. It’s magnificent.” It really was, but that wasn’t the focus of David’s attention at the moment.

  “Young man like you...not married, are you? Ah, didn’t think so, well, I’ll talk to my wife about that after Yontef. People will be here in a few minutes. Let’s check upstairs.”

  OK so it’s not so different from a Reform Temple. The main business is always getting everyone married off.

  They climbed the stairs together, David aching in every joint, moving as slowly as the old man. He pushed into the upstairs auditorium ahead of David and stopped. “Did you do this?”

  “Uh, no,” lied David. “Is something wrong?”

  “No, it’s just that the chairs are all straight. Let’s get the table put away and check the Seforim.”

  They folded up and stored the table, stacked the extra chairs, and collected the stray books, putting them back in the shelves.

  While they worked, people began to sift into the room, the noise from downstairs growing every time the door swung open.

  As they went back down, the old man offered him another seat he knew would be vacant, but David explained he’d already been invited by Manny Rubenstein to share his son’s seat.

  “That’s just like Manny. Terrible thing about his grandson. If you need anything, just let me know. I’ll see you after Neela.”

  Neela?

  Then Manny arrived and collected David as if he belonged to his family, settling him with all the books he’d need. “Missed you for Ma’ariv last night. Glad to see you this morning. Yussel will be davening Musaf.”

  “That’s wonderful,” agreed David clueless.

  There ensued five hours of ever growing, frustrated bewilderment. He never stood, sat, bowed, pounded his chest, or sang out an Amen on cue. Every so often, Manny or his son who replaced him periodically, would peer at the prayer book David held and flip some of his pages backward or forward for him, then point to the Hebrew text. After a while, they gave up and just swapped books with him, giving him the correct page.

  The congregation sang four-part harmony as if they’d rehearsed for weeks, but most of the time only the men’s voices could be heard. There were long songs, responsive readings, and at odd moments, while the Reader was chanting, the congregation would burst into song for a sentence or two, then fall silent. And all of it in Hebrew. There was no way to follow it in English, but everything seemed to be repeated and repeated again.

  After an hour or so he gave up and just watched the clock, trying not to concentrate on the growing headache from Malory’s pain. And he prayed. Let Malory—Meshobab—recover! And let us get away with this. Just think how upset everyone here would be to discover a Vampire in the Aron Kodesh on Yom Kippur. We can’t have that, can we? And I’d really like to know why Bozez fell off The Ladder, and if he’s all right now. Ok, it’s idle curiosity. I don’t really need to know, but I’d like to. I took a liking to that Angel.

  And he kept arguing as best he could while the congregation prayed unintelligibly.

  At breakfast time, he got hungry but when his stomach realized it wasn’t going to get fed, it shut down until lunch.

  The Rabbi spoke for about half an hour and David almost understood his point. “The Hebrew word for “sin” is “Chet.” The prayer “Al Chet” is a comprehensive list of sins for which we ask Gd’s forgiveness. The word “Chet” also means to “miss.” When one misses a target, this too is “Chet.” Teshuva—repentance—is not only for sins which one may have committed, it also encompasses failure to fulfill whatever potential G-d gave us. That too is called “Chet” and requires amending our ways.”

  There was a lot of his potential he hadn’t lived up to. He’d been taking the coward’s way out for the last year, just because he was uncomfortable with having Malory in his mind, and Malory’s supernatural friends—and enemies—in his life.

  Right after the Rabbi’s talk, Yussel took the podium and once more, for David, the Gates opened.

  As the feeling of G-d’s attention on him intensified, the pain from Malory’s distress receded. He even forgot to be embarrassed when everyone around him dropped to their knees and put their foreheads on paper towels they had spread on the floor. They did it several times, and the final time he actually managed to go with them.

  While he was curled on the floor, with Yussel crying out a Blessing in tones of raw entreaty, David suddenly knew he was guilty, and G-d loved him anyway. Tears erupted from somewhere deep within and wracked him with sobs.

  As they stood up and rearranged their prayer shawls, people passed tissue boxes around and many noses needed blowing.

  It was after two p.m., right after the men of Cohen ancestry had trooped up onto the stage in front of the Aron to recite the Priestly blessing when Bozez appeared again.

  It was the first time all day that Malory’s hiding place was out of David’s sight behind a wall of bodies, and it made him nervous. If that broken door in the back wall of the Aron should fall open, the dormant body would be discovered and mistaken for dead. The sun was streaming into the windows, lighting the whole area. The vampire might combust.

  The Cohenim hitched their prayer shawls up over their heads while facing the Aron. The Reader called, “Cohenim!” and they turned to face the congregation, arms raised under their shawls, hands spread but invisible to the people. Most of the men around him had raised their prayer shawls or buried their eyes behind their books, or turned their backs. But David didn’t copy them. He couldn’t take his eyes off the Aron with so many people up there.

  As the Cohenim repeated the words the Reader sang, in slow, solemn, precise tones, drawing out each word with melodic chanting in between, David felt a strange warmth and saw light swirling and gathering around and above the group of men. In the midst of the brightness, the compact form of Bozez appeared, glowing in shades of white, and unfolding rainbow wings until David could see his face well enough to recognize him.

  The Angel’s voice rose out of the men’s chorus, blending the voices into a supernal harmony. The sound resonated in David’s bone marrow, turning his flesh to gossamer light.

  As the final word, Shalom, Peace, filled the room, Bozez swept his wings around himself, turned toward the Aron and held his hands up in the position of the Priestly Blessing. David knew it was for Malory. Then the overly bright Angel glowing even more intensely, flicked out of sight. A moment later, he was back. He looked David right in the eye, and formed words in his mind. “Oh, my Message before was that you should learn
to enjoy the humor of the Situation. It’ll make life around Meshobab much easier. Thanks for the lift!” A flash, and he was gone again.

  The Cohenim shuffled and rearranged themselves completely oblivious to the Messenger, then the congregation was singing again. A number of people were wiping their eyes with tissues, but nobody had noticed the Angel.

  They took a break then, many people going home for the interval, but the Rabbi gathering a group to learn more about the customs of Yom Kippur. David didn’t dare leave except for a few moments to go to the Men’s Room.

  And an hour or so later, everyone came back again for the afternoon service. It seemed to David that they did everything all over again.

  The next time they repeated “Al Chet” it turned him inside out.

  He could think of an instance where he’d committed each and every sin listed and somehow he understood what he had done wrong, and why it was wrong. He was truly horrified at his own stupidity, and he deeply regretted every instance. He couldn’t make amends if he lived a hundred lifetimes.

  Then he remembered what Bozez had said about Time, about Malory being immortal, about what it would be like to look at human life from an immortal perspective.

  We take our sins too seriously—that’s why we keep doing the same thing over and over. We don’t deal with the current Situation.

  We react to memories of similar Situations in the past and fail to live in the present—and we miss the point. It’s not that we take ourselves too seriously, it’s that by reacting to new Situations as if they were in fact the old Situations that they resemble, we fail to live up to our potential. My current Situation is that I have the Supernatural in my life. I can’t get rid of the Vampire without getting rid of G-d.

  While he was still dwelling on how stunned he was by this revelation, and how much simpler it would make his life if he could manage to remember that insight after all this was over, someone blew the shofar.