The History of Soul 2065

by Barbara Krasnoff

  “You really are a baby, aren’t you?” she said. “Or is this just a clever disguise?”

  “I’m not a baby. I’ll be six in 11 weeks and three days,” said Ben, hurt.

  “I see.” The woman smiled widely, as though she were enjoying some private joke. She put one hand on her hip and another at the back of her head, and posed like the fashion models that Ben saw in his mama’s magazines.

  “Do you like the outfit?” the woman asked, as though she were continuing an everyday conversation. “It’s a Marlene Dietrich look, with a touch of Veronica Lake. Except for the hair color, of course. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know who they are,” said Ben, honestly. “But I think your clothes are pretty. How can you see if your hair is in your eyes?”

  “It is inconvenient,” said the woman. She put her hand in the air and pulled out a bright, silvery band, which she used to fasten her hair back in a ponytail.

  Ben sat down on his bed, his legs folded in front of him, and considered the situation. His mother had read to him from books in which ordinary children had magical adventures, books like Peter Pan, Half Magic, and Mary Poppins. Ben had secretly hoped—even expected—something of the sort would happen to him, so he was prepared. He knew, for example, that magical beings could be very tricky to deal with. You had to be polite.

  “How do you do?” Ben said. “Are you a fairy?”

  The woman finished fussing with her hair, stared at him for a moment, and then snorted disdainfully through her nose. “Not even close, baby doll.”

  She extended one leg and seemed to be examining one of the red shoes critically. It turned black.

  “My name is Ben,” he repeated, and waited for her to introduce herself. But the women didn’t reply; she just rotated her foot for a moment and then shook her head. The shoe turned red again.

  Ben wasn’t going to give up. “Are you hungry? Do you want some tea and cookies?” That was what his friend Marjorie always served her dolls, so he thought that might be safe.

  The woman sighed. “Either I’ve made a very bad mistake, or you are playing some kind of weird game with me. My name is Azazel. Do you know me?”

  Ben thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Is Azazel your whole name?”

  The woman grinned, rather nastily, Ben thought. “It’s enough for me. Is Ben your whole name?”

  “No,” he said, rather proudly. “I’ve got two names. My American name is Benjamin Solomon Weissbaum. My Hebrew name is Binyamin Sholem ben Ze’ev.”

  But the woman didn’t seem very interested. She raised her arms and stretched; and then put her hands in her pockets and just stood there, staring off at something in the distance. Ben turned around to see where she was looking, but all he could see was the night sky outside his window.

  “What are you looking at?” he finally asked.

  The woman smiled. “The ending of a civilization.”

  She turned slightly and looked at him. “Does that frighten you?” Ben didn’t know what to say, so he just continued to look at her.

  Azazel smiled slightly, reached into her pocket and brought out a cigarette and a lighter. She put the cigarette in a long silver holder, placed it in her mouth and lit it with the kind of knowing flair that Ben had seen and admired in old movies. “Ben, you seem like a nice boy,” she said, and blew out some smoke. “So I’ll tell you why I’m here. I was curious about your dream. Do you remember your dream?”

  He nodded. “It was awful.”

  “It was not really a dream,” Azazel said, balancing the cigarette holder between two fingers and watching the smoke curl toward the ceiling. “It was—let’s call it a window on a possible reality. I came here to find out why you opened that window. I thought I’d find an interfering old mage who was going to meddle with my plans. Not a small boy who hasn’t the least idea of what real power is.”

  “What plans?” Ben asked. He didn’t completely understand what she was saying, but he knew that it was important that he find out. This Azazel reminded him of Eliot, the boy down the block who always threatened to beat Ben up when nobody else was around, and Ben had already learned that it was better to find out what a bully was up to ahead of time so you could stay out of his way, if at all possible.

  “Well.” Azazel grinned at him and leaned against his dresser. “They’re not actually my plans. They are the plans of two of your leaders—human leaders—who are about to begin yet another war. A very short war, I might add.”

  She took another pull on the cigarette and blew two perfect smoke rings.

  “Why will there be a war?” Ben asked. “And if you know about it, why don’t you tell somebody who can stop it?”

  Azazel laughed. “You stupid boy,” she said, and somehow, even though she didn’t grow any taller, she seemed larger and not a little menacing. “Because I’m bored out of my mind. Because my lover and I were exiled to your miserable little planet centuries ago, and we’ve had enough of it. If you manage to kill yourselves all off—and the chances are very good right now, as good as they’ve ever been—then perhaps, if you’re all gone, we can leave this wretched place. At the very least, we’ll have it to ourselves.”

  Ben reached over to his pillow and picked up the stuffed panda that his mother had given him when he was little. He was getting a bit too old for stuffed animals, but right now, he felt in need of it. “That’s mean,” he murmured. Azazel grinned.

  “You’re barely out of the shell. How could you possibly understand? Humans have been killing themselves for thousands of years, and lately, they’ve gotten a lot better at it. Haven’t you learned anything from your mother’s experience?”

  “My mama?” Ben asked, puzzled.

  The woman laughed. “She hasn’t told you, has she? Probably thought it would warp your tender little brain. Well, ask her sometime about how she survived her adolescence. If you ever get old enough to understand.”

  He had been completely wrong. The woman in the tuxedo wasn’t a crotchety-but-wonderful magical person, like Mary Poppins. She was a bad person, like the witch in Sleeping Beauty. Ben glared at her. “Maybe you’re wrong!” he said. “Maybe there won’t be a war! The President will stop it and you’ll have to go away!”

  The woman didn’t seem at all fazed by his anger. “There are some very powerful humans who want this war,” she said calmly. “They think they can conquer their enemy with only an acceptable number—what an interesting phrase that is!—of casualties on their side. They don’t have the imagination to conceive of what they will start. All it will take will be a small push and your dream will be a reality.”

  She stretched her arms lazily over her head and smiled at him. It was a terrible smile. “It’s been interesting talking to you, Binyamin Sholem ben Ze’ev. You appear to be a rather bright little boy, after all. However, it’s time to nudge reality to where I want it. And you know,” the smiled broadened, “I’m going to start right here. And I’ll let you watch. Isn’t that nice of me?”

  She didn’t move, but Ben could see a grayness floating around her, like a dark impenetrable fog, that was slowly obscuring his rocking chair and his books. It curled and thickened, filling his room and moving upwards and outwards, toward his windows. It was the same black smoke that he had seen when Azazel had first appeared, but it looked nastier and more dangerous. And it wasn’t stopping. He looked around for a weapon, something that might halt its progress, something like a sword or a gun, but there was nothing there.

  Closer. Darker. Larger. Blocking out everything around it. Wisps of the darkness expanded toward him, and Ben backed away, his bed soft under his feet, clutching his panda. His back hit the wall, and there was no place else to go.

  And then Ben suddenly remembered that he did have a weapon.

  His mother’s magic number.

  He stared at the tendrils of darkness reaching for him and whispered, “A15384.”

  The darkness seemed to pause, just a little. He took a breath and said it a
gain, louder, more firmly, “A15384.”

  And then louder, in a wild shout, “A15384!”

  “Hello, Benjamin. How nice to see you.”

  The darkness had stopped, as though contained by invisible glass. Stranger still, the walls of his room were gone. Instead, all around him, there were people—men, women and children. Some were dressed up in suits and ties and fancy-looking dresses, others in badly-fitting old clothes, and a few in ugly striped suits and wooden shoes.

  The one who had spoken was a tall, elegant lady wearing a white blouse with long sleeves and frills at the neck that came right up to her chin, and a dark skirt that went right down to her ankles. She wore a funny-looking pair of glasses that didn’t have any earpieces; instead, they just sort of balanced on her nose. They had a small chain that led to a large brooch pinned to her blouse; Ben longed to see her take off the glasses so he could watch them dangle.

  Azazel looked surprised and rather annoyed. She tossed her head back and regarded the tall woman contemptuously. “How dare you interrupt?”

  The woman ignored her. She walked through where the wall was supposed to be and sat on Ben’s bed. “Hello, Benjamin,” she repeated calmly. “I am your Grandmama Sophia—your papa’s mama.”

  She examined him through her funny glasses and smiled. “My, what a good-looking little boy you are! Every inch your grandfather. Except for your eyes—those must come from your mother’s side of the family.”

  Ben decided that he liked her, especially because she appeared to be on his side. He pointed shakily at Azazel. “She said she was going to make a war and kill everybody!” he said.

  The crowd murmured, and a thin man just behind Ben whispered something that made Azazel snarl. Ben’s Grandmama Sophia turned her head. “Motl Fedke, not in front of the child!” she said sharply. The man shrugged, but said nothing more.

  “Come sit by me, Benjamin,” she continued. Ben stepped across the bed and sat next to her; she put an arm around his shoulders, but so lightly that he didn’t feel it.

  “I didn’t know I had a Grandmama Sophia,” he said.

  “You have many relatives you don’t know about, child,” said the woman, rather sadly. “When you get a little older, ask your papa and mama about their families. Maybe by then, they’ll be able to tell you.”

  “If they are still alive,” Azazel sneered. The crowd murmured again, a little louder; a little girl wearing a funny long dress called, “You be quiet!” in a clear, high voice.

  Grandmama Sophia stared at Azazel with an intensity that reminded Ben a little like how the President looked on the TV: serious and sad at the same time.

  “You have no reason to push humanity into its own destruction,” said Grandmama Sophia quietly. “Millions of people have died in the first half of this century; millions will die in the second. That’s enough for the Angel of Death; why isn’t it enough for you? You and your partner Shemhazhai are already disgraced in the eyes of heaven; why make things worse?”

  Azazel raised her hands. “You know why. We are tired of exile; we want the world for ourselves.”

  “But why this boy?”

  Ben tugged on his Grandmama’s sleeve to get her attention; it was a strange sensation, as though he were pulling on woven ice. She bent her face down to him. “Yes, darling?” she asked.

  “It’s because of what happened in my dream,” he told her. “There were all these people, and I thought they were asleep, but they were dead.”

  “The boy dreamed,” Azazel said. “In that dream, he envisioned a possible future reality. There was power in that vision and I thought he could endanger our plans, were he strong enough and determined enough. But it turns out he is a mere human child.”

  Azazel laughed. Grandmama Sophia shook her head, took the glasses from her nose and let them drop; the thin chain they were attached to snapped into the brooch pinned to her blouse in a very satisfactory manner. She looked at Ben affectionately.

  “First, let me explain exactly who Azazel is,” she said. “She is nobody important, although she likes to believe she is. She is simply a minor angel who got into trouble a long time ago and has been making mischief ever since.”

  Ben stared at his Grandmama’s face. She wasn’t as pretty as Azazel—she was older, and her nose was a bit crooked, and there was a mole just above her left eyebrow. “And all these,” he asked, pointing at the people gathered behind her. “Are they angels, too?”

  “Definitely not,” said a man, who stepped out of the crowd. He had short gray hair and a short beard, and was wearing a blue suit and dark red tie. He came over and sat on the other side of Ben, a rather strange expression on his face.

  Ben looked at the man. “Are you also a relative?”

  “Well, yes and no,” said the man. “I’m just…” He paused and smiled, a bit sadly, Ben thought. “My name is Carlos. I’m a really good friend. From when—from when you’re grown up.”

  The idea of Ben being grown up was interesting, and Ben wanted to ask the man more, but there were important things that had to be dealt with first.

  “Azazel says my dream is going to come true,” he said. “She tried to make everything dark. Can she do that?”

  “I’m afraid she can,” Grandmama Sophia said.

  “Can’t you stop her?” he asked.

  She shook her head and exchanged glances with Carlos. “She knows there is little that I or the rest of us can do,” she said. “Because we are no longer of this world—or not yet of this time—we have no power to affect events.”

  “That’s right,” Azazel grinned, fluffing her hair with one hand. “I don’t have to listen to you or this crowd of has-beens and never-bes that you’ve got behind you. Shemhazhai and I have decided we’ve had it with watching humanity bumble along, making trouble for themselves and for us.”

  She laughed again. “Let them destroy themselves,” she jeered. The darkness around began to swirl once again.

  “I want her to stop!” Ben said, his lip trembling.

  “Then make her stop,” said his Grandmama Sophia. She looked up at Azazel. “This boy does have power,” she said firmly. “Undisciplined and unconscious, but with a child’s complete belief. And I, and all those who lived before him and will live after him, and those who died before him and will die after him, we all stand with him.”

  Azazel stared at Ben. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “The power is there. But there is a price.”

  She walked over to Ben, wisps of black fog trailing behind her, and knelt so that her face was close to his. “Ben, darling,” she said in a falsely sweet tone that made Ben shrink back, “has your dear Grandmama Sophia told you that using power has a cost? That the more power you use, the more days of your life will be pulled away, bit by bit, year by year?”

  She turned her head and stared coldly at Carlos. “You know. Tell him!”

  The man bit his lip, and looked down at Ben.

  “Don’t pay attention to her,” said Ben’s Grandmama sharply. “She’s playing her usual games.” She reached over Ben’s head and touched Carlos’ cheek gently. “Think. If this is not done, if there is a war, will he live any longer? Will he live any happier? And you and he will lose your time together. Would that be better for Benjamin?”

  “Grandmama?” Ben asked uncertainly, not sure what they were talking about. Carlos nodded, put his hands on Ben’s shoulders, and turned the boy slightly so that they faced each other.

  “You are such a very good boy,” he said. “And you will be a good man. Yes, what she says is right—if you stop Azazel from doing this bad thing, you may need to pay for it someday. But that won’t be for a long time yet, not until you’re grown up. For now, you do what you think is right, and everything will be fine.”

  He smiled at Ben. It was a nice smile, much nicer than Azazel’s, and Ben smiled back. “Okay,” he said.

  Ben looked back at Azazel, who stood up and stared down at him. He climbed back to his feet, so that, standing on the bed,
he was almost eye-level with her. He reached down and took the hands of Carlos and his Grandmama Sophia. Their hands were cool but comforting.

  “You’re a bully,” he said to Azazel. “You want to hurt a lot of people just because you can.”

  “Remember your dream?” asked his Grandmama Sophia. “Remember all the people who were hurt and crying? This is what she wants. This is what will happen if she gets her way.”

  “My Daddy was hurt. I wanted him to pick me up, but he didn’t see me,” said Ben. His breath started to come faster; tears began to gather in his eyes.

  Azazel back away and opened her arms wide. The darkness began to grow again; the tendrils of fog twisting and turning and reaching. Azazel’s fingers worked, molding the oncoming darkness into something palpable and infinitely threatening.

  “Look at him,” she jeered. “Look at the great, powerful child. Sniveling and terrified.”

  “I’m not scared,” Ben told her, his voice rising. “I’m mad.”

  And he was. Something was happening in Ben’s head, something that was starting to hurt, but strangely enough, in a good way.

  He took great gulps of air, watching as Azazel began to laugh, her eyes closed, her arms out to the heavens. Clouds around her blotted out his toys, the pictures on his walls, and rolled to the ceiling, toward his windows and to the door of his room. Beyond that door, Ben knew, was his apartment, and his mama and papa.

  “Stop that!” Ben shouted furiously. He scrambled off the bed onto the floor. “You’re mean!” he yelled. “You want to hurt people! I hate you!” His whole body felt hot and cold at the same time. “I hate you!” he said again, pointing to the angel.

  Carlos and his Grandmama stood up as well. “Now you’ve gotten him angry,” Carlos said, a new note in his voice. “That was a mistake. He can be a real pain in the butt when he’s angry.”

  For a moment, Azazel was absolutely still. Something stirred in her eyes, and she flickered like the TV picture did when there was a storm. The woman in red shoes and wavy hair and shiny dress shifted and moved, becoming something large and bright and hard to look at.