The Sleepless

by Graham Masterton

  ‘But what about the white-white men?’ Thomas insisted.

  Matthew took a sip of espresso and then a sip of plain water. He leaned forward on the table and his face was serious. Michael thought that his face was almost like a landscape – broad and pitted, with veldts for cheeks and high sierras for cheekbones and caverns for nostrils – and above them all, a tableland that formed his forehead.

  ‘The white-white men go back to the days of Leviticus, which was the third book of Moses, and that was written sixteen hundred years ago. The book of Leviticus shows the way in which men could be separated from their sin, and its consequences, and do you know how?

  ‘The Lord ordered his high priest Aaron to “select a goat for Azazel” on the Jewish Day of Atonement. “Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the sons of Israel, and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins; and he shall lay them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who stands in readiness.” And when they talked about sins in those days, they meant every kind of sin ... from touching a menstruating woman, to uncovering the nakedness of your brother’s wife, to lying with a male as one lies with a female, which is an abomination, and you’d better believe it.

  ‘In other words, Aaron was supposed to choose a scapegoat, and invest it with everybody’s sins, and drag it out into the desert, and throw it off a cliff, and from then on, everybody was supposed to be pure, everybody was supposed to be lily-white. I mean, come on, man, all of their sins went over that cliff, along with the goat, now didn’t they?’

  ‘Scapegoat,’ Michael repeated, and couldn’t think why the word sounded so familiar. ‘Scapegoat.’

  Matthew said, ‘Leviticus is pretty detailed on what kind of goats you ought to use, and which bits you can eat and which bits you ought to burn. But what Leviticus doesn’t tell you is that Aaron didn’t use no real goat. If you look in the Egyptian testaments, if you read the Sumerian stories, Aaron used a man, not a goat. Aaron used a man who was supposed to be Azazel, the fallen angel, who walked the earth in those days, the same way that you and me can walk the earth, excepting of course that Azazel was seriously frightening.’

  ‘Excuse me, an angel?’ Victor asked.

  Matthew shrugged. ‘That’s what people called them, although who they really were, nobody knows. They had human shape, and they spoke human languages, although sometimes they could change their shape, and sometimes they could speak in tongues that nobody had ever heard of. They were easy to recognize, though, because they had tremendous personal auras, and there was usually something significantly different about them, like an extra nipple, or strangely-coloured hair. Azazel was called Goat because his eyes were slitted and he looked like a goat.’

  Victor sceptically shook his head, but Thomas looked up and said, ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well,’ said Matthew, ‘the people chose Azazel to atone for all of their sins because he was different and because they were frightened of him. Aaron laid his hands on top of Azazel’s head, and then a man dragged him out into the desert on the end of a rope and threw him over a cliff. Everybody danced and sang and shouted out the Hebrew equivalent of “terrific, that’s the end of it, that’s all of our sins atoned for.”

  ‘But, as it turned out, they weren’t. Because Azazel survived. Injured, broken, but still alive. And Azazel spent twenty years wandering the desert as a nomad, as a tramp, and all the time he had the combined sins of all of those people, the tribe of Israel, locked up inside of him. Through no fault of his own, Azazel was evil incarnate. He killed sheep and camels. He raped women, he raped little girls; he raped dogs, he raped boys; but you can’t blame him for it. Blame God, blame Aaron. Blame anybody who still believes in the Lord Thy God. Because Azazel had absolved the Tribe of Israel of everything, no matter what it was. Azazel had taken on all of their viciousness, all of their perversion, all of their guilt.

  ‘He was immortal, too, or at least he was unnaturally long-lived. You can raise your eyebrows at that, my friends, but the very plain fact of the matter is that angels are true. Not storybook angels, with wings and haloes and harps; but men who were present in the Days of Magic, when the Lord God still walked abroad, whatever He was, and miracles and magic were still openly performed.

  ‘They were even supposed to be able to fly – although the expression that you always find in all of the ancient writings is “walk in the air”.

  ‘Good God, I don’t pretend to know. But I do know that Azazel was real. He’s mentioned again and again in different writings from all kinds of different tribes and different cultures.

  ‘According to the stories, he made his way on a Greek merchant ship to the country that we now call Morocco, and started living in an isolated castle overlooking the Straits of Gibraltar. From there, he put out the word that he was gathering around him all those who were magical and disaffected – strange and unnatural outcasts from all over the known world.

  ‘Communications were slower in those days; but they were effective. What you whispered in the Cairo bazaar in September would be whispered into the ear of the Emperor of China the following May.

  ‘The white-white men came from all over Europe and Africa and parts of Asia Minor. Some of them came by sea; others came on trade caravans. Others walked for hundreds of miles.’

  ‘But who were they?’ asked Victor. ‘Where did they come from?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Matthew. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever know for sure. The Book of Enoch suggests that they were angels, scattered by the Flood, and in hiding ever since – persecuted because they were different. Hounded because they were magic.

  ‘Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s just a myth. Whatever they were, they were pretty damned strange, and that was for sure. First off, they never slept. Can you imagine that, they never slept! They stayed awake from one year’s end to the next, and because of that, their eyes grew totally bloodshot. In the Book of Enoch, they’re called the Watchers, because they’re always watching, never sleeping, never tired – or eternally tired, who’s to know?

  ‘In African dialect, in Nigeria and Sierra Leone and Senegal, and in Haiti and Martinique, too, they call them the white-white men. Eyes like rubies, skin like snow. In Europe, they’ve long-forgotten them mostly, but they still remember “two, two, the lily-white boys, dressed all in green o.”’

  Thomas said, with complete seriousness, ‘What you’re trying to tell us, Matthew, is that these white-white men are centuries old? That they never sleep? That they never die?’

  ‘Man, you know they never die!’ Matthew retorted, his jowls swaying. ‘They never die! They only die when Azazel says they die!’

  ‘Go on,’ said Michael. He didn’t feel like getting involved in a slanging match, particularly when he had very little idea of what he was talking about.

  ‘The white-white men did everything they could to serve Azazel. But it wasn’t easy, because Azazel didn’t eat any kind of food, being an angel. All the same, he was here on Earth, on the third stone from the sun, and he did need some kind of sustenance.

  ‘The sustenance he needed was human adrenaline. After all, he was carrying around inside of him all of those human evils, all of those human misdeeds, and they burned up inside him, they consumed him. He needed human energy to keep him alive.

  ‘Now – there’s been a gross misapprehension that the white-white men drink blood. This is mainly because of their eyes, being red and all. The white-white men gave rise to the myth of vampires, and the Dracula story. But they never happened – vampires never existed! You know what God says in Leviticus? “I will set My face against that person who eats blood, and will cut him off from among his people. No person among you may eat blood. For blood is the life of all flesh.”

  ‘Even the darkest of demons obeys that law. But they need adrenaline; they need it real bad. And that’s why they kidnap and torture young girls – to frighten them, to hurt them,
so that they produce huge amounts of extra adrenaline. The white-white men always carry those thin metal pipes, so that they can slide them into somebody’s back, and find their kidneys, and suck their adrenaline before they know.’

  ‘So, Matthew – how do you know all this?’ asked Victor.

  Matthew slowly turned to him, and held his gaze steady and true. ‘I know because I came from Olduvai, and because I’ve studied religion and anthropology for thirty years, and winnowed the real from the plain fantastic. I know because I believed when traditionalists and sceptics wouldn’t believe; and because I had some magic in me. You want me to cast the bones, and see what you’ve got coming in your life?’

  Victor gave him an angular smile. ‘It’s okay, Matthew ... I don’t think so.’

  ‘Tell me some more about this scapegoat character,’ said Thomas.

  Matthew finished his coffee and wiped his mouth. ‘Well ... ever since Aaron first threw Azazel off of the cliff, and Azazel survived, Azazel promised himself that he would give us all of our sins back ... the same sins that Aaron laid on him, on the day of atonement. He would keep the world in a state of strife, killing off anybody who looked as if they might bring peace and understanding. His white-white men would breed with human women, so that the world’s blood-lines would be permanently contaminated. Like it says in the Bible, “he and his followers saw that the children of men had multiplied and that beautiful and comely daughters were born unto them. They mingled with the women and they began to defile themselves with them.”

  ‘The white-white men taught their wives all kinds of enchantments and charms, as well as the science of root-cutting and botany; and Azazel taught their sons the art of war, and the making of swords and shields. He also taught women how to use cosmetics, “the art of deception by ornamenting their bodies”, and he revealed the secrets of witchcraft.

  ‘Azazel has been causing chaos, war and social disruption for centuries, turning brother against brother, race against race. What do you think all this rioting on Seaver Street is all about? The white-white men, tearing our community apart. What do you think John O’Brien’s killing was all about? Every time that some human being has been favoured by God, every time some human being looks like he’s going to ease some major problem in the world’s condition, Azazel has him killed. Not by the white-white men, not often ... but by some kind of stooge, like Sirhan Sirhan, who shot Bobby Kennedy; or James Earl Ray, who shot Martin Luther King.

  ‘Azazel is the Great Goat, Azazel is all the sins of Israel, to the nth power, because we’re being paid back for the day of atonement with interest.’

  Thomas sat back and tapped his ballpen thoughtfully against his teeth. ‘You realize how wacky this sounds.’

  Matthew said, ‘Of course it sounds wacky. But that’s only because the white-white men have kept themselves so well-concealed for so long. I have to call them angels because that’s what people called them back in the days of Leviticus and I don’t know what else they could be. We used to think that schizophrenics were possessed by Satan, but just because we’ve learned better, that doesn’t stop them being crazy. Maybe these white-white men are nothing more than “differently abled” – maybe they’re suffering from some kind of genetic disorder that prevents them from sleeping, and gives them a thirst for extra adrenaline. Until we get a chance to study them, we’ll never know.’

  ‘You really think that Azazel is still alive? The same Azazel that Aaron took out into the desert?’

  ‘I don’t know. What do you think? Is it possible for any kind of earthbound creature to live for sixteen hundred years? I don’t really think that it matters. Even if Azazel himself isn’t alive, his name is alive, and his work is alive, and his rituals are still alive.

  ‘Whenever the white-white men assassinate anybody, they always take away a vital piece of that person’s body so that resurrection becomes impossible.’

  ‘I didn’t know resurrection was possible,’ put in Victor.

  Matthew turned to him, and he made no attempt to hide the scorn in his voice. ‘It’s obvious, my friend, that you never went to Haiti, nor studied the voodoo religion, because resurrection is not just possible, but common ... and not just in the Caribbean, either. There are dead men walking in Boston, my friend. There are dead men walking in Manhattan. You start looking out for them, you’ll see.’

  ‘So they do this with every assassination victim?’ Thomas interrupted, trying to get back to the subject.

  ‘That’s right, every single one. They took Abraham Lincoln’s heart; they took John F. Kennedy’s brain. They took the eyes from Martin Luther King and the lungs from Anwar Sadat. If they can’t take anything away at the scene of the assassination, they have plenty of doctors and morticians under their thumbs.’

  Michael had a vivid mental picture of Dr Moorpath, climbing precariously into the air. Maybe Matthew Monyatta was exaggerating. Maybe he was mixing up fact with mumbo-jumbo. But Michael had seen the power of the white-white men at first hand, the so-called lily-white boys, and he knew that it was frighteningly real.

  A power from Old Testament times. A power that had all of the magic and all of the mystery of the Bible itself.

  ‘What did they take from John O’Brien?’ asked Matthew. ‘You didn’t mention on the news that he was mutilated in any way.’

  ‘How do you know that he was mutilated?’

  ‘Because it was the white-white men who did for him, and like I say, the white-white men always take something.’

  Thomas was silent for a while, still leaning back, still thoughtful. ‘All right,’ he said at length. ‘They took his head. They decapitated him with Holmatro cutters – the same tool the fire department uses to cut people out of automobile wrecks. There was blood everywhere, but no head. We could only suppose that the perpetrator had taken it away as a trophy.’

  ‘Well, that’s half right,’ Matthew nodded. ‘They took it partly as a trophy, and partly as a precaution.’

  Victor said, ‘Let me ask you something ... have any of the white-white men ever been known to die?’

  Matthew shook his head. ‘They keep their secrets well-protected – how they live, how they survive. They have a great many friends in high places, friends who are richly rewarded for helping them. They also have a great many enemies in high places, but almost all of their enemies are far too frightened to touch them. Better to look the other way, if you know what I mean.

  ‘There’s a story, though, that one old merchant in Morocco went to visit the white-white men because they had taken his favourite daughter so that they could defile her. He pleaded with the white-white man who had abducted her, but the white-white man refused to give her back.

  ‘But it is a rule of Arab courtesy that a visitor to one’s house must never be asked to leave. So the merchant stayed all day and all night at the white-white man’s house, pleading with him not to besmirch his daughter’s purity, and of course the white-white man had no choice but to sit there and listen to him. The merchant stayed another day and another night, and could hardly keep himself awake, but of course the white-white man never slept. It became obvious to the merchant that he would soon have to sleep, and then the white-white man would have the chance to leave him, and take his daughter. So he began to chant a song that his grandmother used to sing to him when he was a child, to send him to sleep, and he swung his pendant in front of the white-white man’s eyes, to and fro.

  ‘The white-white man fell asleep; and as he slept, his real age began to tell on him, and he began to dry up, and shrink, until there was nothing left but a –’

  ‘Small, curled-up, hairy thing like a swede,’ Thomas interrupted.

  Matthew stared at him. ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘Because I’ve seen one. Leastways, I’ve seen a photograph of one. It was hanging in the hallway of the house on Byron Street where we found Elaine Parker. There were all of these Victorian-looking people standing around a table, and one of these dried-up things was right ther
e on the table in front of them.’

  ‘Then you’re beginning to believe me?’ asked Matthew.

  Victor said, ‘I think I need some more coffee.’

  Thomas jotted down some more notes. Then he said to Matthew, ‘There’s something underlying all of this mythical stuff. I’m not sure that I believe that the white-white men were responsible for every major assassination ever. But I think enough of what you’ve been telling us squares with the facts to make it worth some further investigation.’

  ‘And what that merchant did, that was hypnosis,’ said Michael. ‘And the only times I’ve ever seen this “Mr Hillary” character, that was under hypnosis.’

  ‘What name did you say?’ asked Matthew. There was genuine anxiety in his voice.

  ‘ “Mr Hillary,” ‘ Michael repeated. ‘I’ve been undergoing hypnotherapy, and the past couple of times I’ve been hypnotized, I’ve seen this tall white-haired man called “Mr Hillary.” ‘

  Matthew touched his hand to his forehead, a gesture to ward off evil.

  ‘Saint Hilary was the only Pope who was known to consort with the white-white men. That was back in the fifth century. There are stories that he was seen with Azazel. There were stories that he was Azazel. He was supposed to have come from Sardinia, but some people believe that he came originally from Morocco.’

  ‘Coincidence?’ asked Thomas.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Michael. ‘There have been too many goddamned coincidences in this case, and all of the coincidences point to one particular party. “Mr Hillary”, of Goat’s Cape, Nahant.’

  ‘All right,’ said Thomas, stretching. ‘I think I could use some more coffee, too.’