The Crimson Z

by Robert Cloud, Lee Rush, Richard Savage

  "The look on my face must have been horrendous because my mother sat up and backed away from me. I felt like the dagger that Lilith had driven into her heart she had driven into mine as well. I could not have imagined feeling worse than I had at the loss of my wife and then suddenly I knew a pain that was far greater and it was not pain for me alone. I had seen my mother joyful, she had wanted a grandchild in the household and Lilith had torn that from her. I had seen my father laughing and full of pride and now his name would end with me. I had been cursed by marrying a monster that knew not what love was and who had no respect for life, not even the life she carried within her.

  "I have no idea how long I sat there in my stunned silence but when I looked up my mother had gained her feet and was looking down at me. She asked me if she needed for me to go get my father. I told her I was okay but that it would be best if she went on to the shop with my father.

  "My mother's face filled with worry. More tears began to run down her face as she coaxed from me a promise that I would not hurt myself. I told her that I knew suicide was a sin and I had already felt its bitter sting. It was not something I would ever put her and my father through. Thus assured she went to join my father. Once she was gone I went to the hearth and grabbed an iron used to stir the embers. I took a cloth and wrapped it around the iron and then placed the cloth into the fire until the flames had leapt from the embers onto the cloth. Then I went about the house and set the burning torch to everything that would burn. Before I left I held the mirror high and looked into it telling Lilith she had lied to me once too often then I placed it on the table and left it to burn with the rest of the house.

  "As I stepped through the door of the house I threw the torch back inside and walked about twenty yards away and watched the house burn. While I watched sparks from the house shoot up into the sky I remembered the omen. I remembered the night I had seen the two shooting stars, the larger one followed closely by a smaller and shorter lived one and I knew one had been for Lilith and her long life coming to an end, the other weaker one for the short life of the child in her belly.

  "I was furious. I wanted nothing to remind me of Lilith. She had purposefully failed to tell me of my child and had she told me of it my reactions would have been very different. She probably would not have committed suicide. Or so I thought.” Zachariah paused and held Melanie close for a moment, his head lying against hers.

  "My parents came running to my side and I told them I had done it on purpose. That I could build a new house, but I needed to erase Lilith. When the fire had died I went to search the ashes and to my amazement the mirror remained unharmed. Even now I do not know why I did not try another way to destroy it. Instead I took it to the shop and placed it near the table. It stayed there until I had built my new home and then I kept it in the bedroom of the house with me. I found that I could talk to Lilith and she to me in our thoughts."

  Again Zachariah gazed up at the clock and five more minutes had passed, his time was narrowing even more.

  "That very week an elders’ meeting was called. During that meeting I learned that Lilith had lied to me. She had not stopped at fifteen men like she had said. There had now been twenty two bodies that had been found. The last seven had been in villages further away than those where the previous deaths had occurred.

  "Lilith had lied to me and to everyone and this brought up another question. Suddenly it seemed that some of the things that the prophetess had said also did not make sense for she had said that Lilith would confess all, but Lilith had not. If the prophetess were a true seer she would have known Lilith would lie and that there was no chance that the good path she had mentioned could have happened.

  "I had to go see her again and ask her for myself how she could have made such a mistake. So I got the directions from my parents and went to the Mountain. When I entered the hut of the prophetess I was in for a shock for the woman sitting upon the pillows on the floor before me was not the woman that had come to my house. I asked her when the prophetess would return and she informed me she was the prophetess and that she had just returned from being away on a pilgrimage. She had been away for six months.

  "My knees grew weak and I fell to the floor. She told me many things about what had happened and that there were some things that were even hidden from her.

  "I asked her about the stone and what should I do with it? She told me that the stone was a neutral thing and that it was the person that used it that was good or evil. She said that my heart was good and that I would do a lot of good with it. She also warned me that there was evil connected with it but said that the good I would do would outweigh the evil and in the end either the good would win or the stone would be destroyed and neither would win.

  "So I did not destroy the stone. I found that if someone came to me that was ill or hurt I could use the stone to speed their recovery. I could even cure them of illnesses that others said they could not be cured of but the person had to be someone with a good and decent heart or it would not work."

  Zachariah sighed and lowered his head and said, “Yet there have been many times I have been tempted to destroy the stone too.

  "In the beginning when the first commission happened and Lilith returned in body something amazing happened to me too. My age was restored to the very age I was on the day that I first used the stone. The first time was a major shock. Then when Lilith appeared I felt something happen and it happened swiftly, almost instantly. I had been nearly seventy years old that first time. I had been hurt in an accident when I was fifty and my back had been damaged so I had a bowed back and needed two walking sticks to get around. Suddenly there was no pain in my back and I was standing straight. I looked into the mirror that normally held Lilith and I was looking at the young man that had looked at me the day Lilith had died. I was the exact same age as I was the first day I had used the stone and I was completely healed."

  Melanie looked at him, “Papa Zach, if you could use the stone to heal others why did you not use it to heal yourself."

  "I had thought about that, but for some reason it seemed wrong to me. So I could not bring myself to do it. Then when the commission's magic healed me I felt that perhaps it was that magic that was supposed to heal and cure me and I thought I had done the right thing."

  She smiled at him, “Maybe you did the right thing then."

  "Maybe, I don't know.

  "I stood feeling whole again. It felt wonderful to be young and to not be wracked with the pain I had been in for so many years but as I turned there was Lilith. “The sudden surge of anger that boiled within me for all the deaths she had caused nearly overwhelmed me. With every fiber of my being I wanted to kill her for all she had done but one lone chord within me knew I could not.

  "Then a second thought hit me that was even worse. If I let her know how much I hated her and she left and went out into the night then she would probably kill someone else just to spite me. I despised what I had to do but I opened my arms and welcomed her into them. When I awoke in the morning she was gone and I spent the next hour beside a bucket emptying my stomach for the foulness I felt. Yet I knew I had saved someone's life."

  Zachariah paused and looked at Melanie. Upon her face was a look that he had felt within his heart the next morning when he had awoken. He had known he had done what had to be done but he was filled with self disgust nonetheless. The look in Melanie's eyes told him that she understood the self-loathing he had felt. Had she been in a similar situation?

  "I began to look around the shop and while I was doing so a customer came in. They asked if Zachariah was around and I almost answered that it was me until I remembered the massive change in my age. I told them I was a relative visiting and he was not yet awake that maybe I could help them.

  "After they had left I realized that with such a major change in my appearance I had no choice. I secreted everything away in the night and moved several villages away and started a new shop. I had plenty of gold so it was easy to start a new life, and b
ack then identification papers were not like they are today. They were not needed, so I just changed my name and started fresh."

  "Wait!” Melanie interrupted, “Papa Zach, if the commission's magic makes you young why are you not young now? You are still as old as the day you made the tiara and Lilith has not returned."

  He smiled at her. Melanie was a very smart girl and he truly loved that about her, “That is something I still do not fully understand even after all these centuries. There does not seem to be a rhyme or reason to how that works. Sometimes Lilith returns the very moment the piece of jewelry is complete and the glow is still fading from the stone. There are other times that it may be years later. It is different with each piece. Yet there seems to be some key moment in the piece's creation or existence when something happens and Lilith is called back and the magic is complete. There is even one piece out there in the cabinet right now that I do not even remember making for it has been there that long. The magic has never happened. I know that I only remember the story of the piece after the magic has happened so until it does that piece is a mystery to me.

  "In time if the magic of yours did not complete I would forget everything about yours too until it did complete but I have a strong suspicion I know when yours is going to happen."

  Melanie's eyes grew wide and he could see more than a touch of fear in them. “When Papa Zach?"

  He smiled at her then held her close to him like he was protecting her from the world before he said, “I am getting to that precious, and I know you are anxious to know but there are things I need to tell you in a precise order or you will not understand what is happening and what to do when the time comes."

  "First thing I need to tell you is that I realized when the woman who came to the house turned out not to be the prophetess that Lilith had never intended to become human. She wanted me to heal her so she could become what she had been. I do not think she wanted to kill me because she needed my love to be able to stay in the sun. I am quite certain she was going to use my ability to heal with the stone to keep her healed in her other forms without me knowing it. For every time I used the stone to heal her it would have healed all of her forms. An even greater magic would have occurred had she aided me during a commission for as that magic healed me completely it would possibly have restored her to being invulnerable.

  "Secondly, had she been alive the magic of the stone would have restored her to true humanity, for I do believe the magic is from God and it would have cured her of the curse. However, after she took her life the way the magic affected her changed.

  "Exactly how it affects her I am not certain, I do know some of the things that she said were true but she has told me so many lies I have no way of knowing what other parts are true and what are fabrications.

  "She said that when a piece was commissioned that she had only one day to be in her corporeal form. I suspect that that is true. She does get at least one day in her body when the magic is finally completed. Yet, I also suspect that there is more to it than she told me. I suspect that she has some other form that she can escape from the mirror in. That may have nothing to do with the stone or its magic at all. If it is not her that is escaping then there is someone that is following me, perhaps the false prophetess herself, that is committing atrocities that resemble the kinds of murders that Lilith was responsible for.

  "At first it was a vague suspicion and I only heard things upon rare occasion, but in this modern age of multimedia and fast news reporting I have become more certain with every report I hear. For the last several years I have been following every news article I can find and almost like clockwork every twenty-two days there is a pile of bones found somewhere within fifty miles of where I am living.

  "I think the twenty-two may actually have something to do with the number of people Lilith killed while she was with me. I am not certain. But I suspect if she had killed only one, then it would have been possible for her to be out constantly for it would have shown that she had repented and she and I could have been together even after her death.

  Melanie shivered in his arms and said, “You mean she gets out every twenty-two days to kill, just because she likes it, not because she has to?"

  Zachariah stroked her hair to try to ease her fears but he felt them himself and could feel them within her. “I am not positive but that is what I think. What makes me think that even more is that the last report was only two days ago in Lake George and there were two other murders in the opposite direction down in Albany that were very grisly. They were not the piles of bones, but the viciousness of the attack and the description of the bodies leads me to think it was Lilith and that she did it simply out of anger and a lust to kill.

  "Another thing that leads me to suspect it may have been her is that there is no evidence that there was a weapon at all. Steel leaves a trace when it cuts flesh, but there were no fragments of steel in the wounds and these bodies were cut into pieces with something sharper than any surgical steel blade that the coroner had ever seen."

  Melanie started quivering within his arms and he did all he could to hold her tight. He knew he had told her more in the description of the bodies than he would have liked but she also needed to know how dangerous Lilith was. Time was running out. She needed to know that Lilith was not the loving woman that he had thought she was when he was married to her. Instead she was a prideful manipulative monster that would stop at nothing to get what she wanted. He knew that included killing him to get to Melanie if she needed to.

  "The final reason I think it is Lilith is that I think she is taunting me to discover her secret. From time to time I have found boxes of women's clothing in the attic that I did not place there. Sometimes there have even been traces of blood upon them.” Suddenly he could feel Melanie tighten and she pulled away from him, her eyes searching his and he knew immediately what she wanted to know.

  "No, no sweetie. The dress you wore to your Homecoming Dance was given to me as partial payment on a piece of jewelry that a woman had commissioned. One of the rules of the commission is that I have to accept payment in whatever means they can pay. When she came to the store with the innocent's blood she looked at all the jewelry and said she so badly wanted to get a necklace for her granddaughter but she did not have any money. I told her to bring what she could to pay and she thanked me and brought the dress. It had belonged to her own grandmother and I felt really bad about taking it but I had no choice. Once she had offered it I had to accept.

  "Over the centuries many women offered to pay with their clothing.” Melanie looked at him with a tilt of her head and Zachariah could actually feel a small wave of jealousy emanating from her. He snickered for it was nice to know she saw him as hers even though these events happened long ago. “There is only one thing that I can refuse."

  Melanie's eyes widened and she rested her fists upon her hips as she glared at him. He smiled at her and added, “If they offer their bodies I can refuse and ask that they offer something else instead.” Then he leaned near to Melanie and kissed her forehead and said, “I have already told you sex to me is sacred, I have never accepted the offering of someone's body no matter how tempting it may have been."

  "Papa Zach!” Melanie huffed.

  "I am teasing sweetie. I have never even been tempted."

  "However during the ages men were far more likely to have the money to afford the jewelry than women were. Sometimes women would trade me pieces of jewelry that had been in their family for generations to get a special piece, sometimes they would be my maid for a period to pay for the jewelry, other times they would trade me their clothing. I have lots of women's clothing upstairs in closets and trunks because I am not allowed to get rid of it, and the magic keeps it from going old. It is almost as if it is waiting for someone to come and claim it.” He smiled at her and added, “In fact I had never thought of it until now, but almost every piece of clothing I have is your size."

  Melanie beamed brightly, “Maybe I was always meant to come into yo
ur life, Papa Zach?"

  "Perhaps that is true,” he said, “Lilith seemed to think so. She said you are ‘the One’ that she has waited for since her death."

  She buried her head against his shoulder and whispered, “That sounds so ominous. What did she mean?"

  He looked up at the clock and saw it was five minutes before midnight, time was almost gone. “I am getting to that part right now."

  "Remember how I said that the image of the carving was like a casting of the carving when I made the ring?"

  Melanie nodded and said, “Yes."

  "Well, I did not know why at the time but I think I do now.

  "Every time after that when a piece was made the image was like a drawing on a sheet of paper, flat and two dimensional until the image for your tiara. That image was even grander than the one for the ring. That image was like a real three dimensional tree had grown from the stone. One exactly like the image but with a full canopy of limbs and a full spread of roots, it was like nothing I had thought possible.

  "I had already learned from talking to you that you were the type that thought ill of no one. That you had a good heart and were a good person."

  Melanie blushed as she lowered her head to hide her red cheeks.

  "I also learned you were a virgin. You are special, a virgin with a pure heart. I think that's why the image was the way it was."

  "Oh Papa Zach,” Melanie blushed even brighter, “I am nothing special."

  "But indeed you are Melanie,” he said, “not just in my heart, but in all the realms of the arcane and the spiritual. A heart that thinks ill of no one, even those that do them harm is unique especially in today's world.

  "I met your mother, and for you to harbor no ill will towards her is amazing."

  "Why should I? It is not her fault that she did not know she would get pregnant when she and my father signed that contract. I can understand her loving her blood children more than one she had adopted from a woman that was going to abort it."