Messenger's Dawn

by Lior Akerman

  The black figures took the stairs and left the building quickly. They turned west on 23rd Street towards the 8th Avenue junction. Their next stop was the office of Rabbi Yochanan Aharon Hacohen. The door to the synagogue was open and they looked inside. The synagogue was full of terrified worshippers who came to hide from the missiles and explosions and to hear from Rabbi Avraham about what was in store for them. The rabbi was standing on the other side of the hall, near the ark, praying. Samael and Charnbog looked at each other and Charnbog asked:

  “Now?”

  Samal answered him:

  “Not yet. First let’s find what we are looking for and then we will take care of them.”

  The crowd was in so much terror that they did not notice the two figures passing behind them, on the right side of the synagogue. They silently walked near the wall and entered the rabbi’s office. They were searching for a clue, something to help them overcome the only obstacle in their way. Samael found the copy of the fax that Rabbi Yaacov Hacohen sent on the table. He smiled and said:

  “I think we have what we need.”

  “Let’s finish off the job here,” Charnbog answered.

  They headed back to the entrance and put back the black head coverings, covering their faces. The door opened before they reached it. Rabbi Avraham was standing there, staring in amazement at the two figures. They had no intention of letting him stare at them for long. He was about to be burned by them when something unexpected happened. A man dressed in white ran into the office and grabbed the rabbi in his arms. He turned his back to Samael and Charnbog, who used all their powers trying to burn him, but they were unsuccessful. The door went up in flames and the doorpost was turned to dust, just as was the carpet beneath them. The white figure continued to stand there unharmed, leading the rabbi out of the office. The crowd of worshippers stopped praying and stared in amazement at what was happening. The white figure turned towards them and started to approach them. The black figures tried to set him on fire with all their power but he continued to shield himself with his hands, as he continued to get closer to them, unharmed.

  When they realized they were failing to hurt him, they quickly turned around. They ran straight through the large window behind the desk and jumped on to the street. They disappeared. He lowered his hands, stood firmly and looked around him. Dozens of people were staring at him in shock. He looked back at them and then suddenly came back to reality and disappeared. When he was back on the street, he took a deep breath and went up to the roof where he found Father Mathew and Rabbi Yochanan Aharon Hacohen waiting for him.

  Father Mathew came up to Mike, put his hand on his shoulder and said:

  “Moshe Yehoshua Messenger, you did not choose who to be. You did not choose the path. You do not have any influence on what happened until now and some of the things that what will happen from now. But you are the messenger. Millions of people depend on you and your actions., the world needs you. Only a man who believes in himself and his power can overcome evil. You have encountered evil and discovered you can face it. As long as you believe in yourself and your powers, nothing can beat you. You will discover that you can be anywhere and do anything you want and need to do, saving the world from the route it has taken. Your face and identity cannot be known to mankind. You need to keep the secret until the time comes. Good luck and goodbye. We will not meet again.”

  Father Mathew stepped back and Rabbi Yochanan approached, laid his hands on Mike’s head and gave him a silent blessing. When it was completed, he kissed Moshe on the head and whispered in his ear:

  “Go to the office in the synagogue”.

  The rabbi also turned to leave and they both disappeared in the dark. He never was to see them again.

  Mike remained on the roof for a while. The city below him was at war but it was silent around him. Eventually, he turned around, slowly left the roof and made his way down the stairs, until he was back on the street. Five minutes later, he was at the synagogue. It was empty, everyone had fled in panic after the incident. He did not see Rabbi Avraham and he decided to check out what Rabbi Yochanan Aharon Hacohen was referring to. He entered the office through the remains of the burnt door that was dripping of water. Fire extinguishing foam was left on the carpet and the air smelled of smoke. Mike stood in the middle of the room and looked around him. He did not see anything unusual. He walked up to the heavy wooden desk and sat down on the leather chair behind it. He opened the first drawer and did not find anything of interest, just a few pens and papers. He bent down and opened the door of the table to his right. Inside he found a light blue robe that was folded up. He picked it up and beneath it he found white pants and a shirt. At first, they appeared to be tights but Mike noticed that they were coated with some strong material he was not familiar with. In addition to these, he found a face and head covering, also white, and a blue belt in a shape Mike had never seen before. It was round on one side and resembled half a Star of David on the other. In the center of it there was a Greek Cross, “the messenger’s cross.”

  Later that night, when he was back at Alice’s house, he checked the meaning of the symbols on the internet. Mike read that this cross with arms of equal length, symbolizes the integration of the heavenly and earthly approaches and the combination of the four elements of the world. He found that the cross and the Star of David were not originally religious symbols. They were symbols of ancient cultures that believed in very different things. The Cross and the Star were symbols marking the connection between the forces that are controlled by man and those that are not. Once again, the universe was telling him that it all depended on people themselves - their strength, abilities, faith in themselves and their ability to live together in peace. When he raised the robe, a note fell out of it. He picked it up from the ground and saw that it was written in Rabbi Yochanan Aharon Hacohen’s handwriting. The note opened with a quote from Isaiah 42:

  Behold My servant, whom I uphold;

  Mine elect, in whom My soul delighteth;

  I have put My spirit upon him,

  He shall make the right to go forth to the nations.

  He shall not cry, nor lift up,

  Nor cause his voice to be heard in the street.

  A bruised reed shall he not break,

  And the dimly burning wick shall he not quench;

  He shall make the right to go forth according to the truth.

  He shall not fail nor be crushed,

  Till he have set the right in the earth;

  And the isles shall wait for his teaching.

  The rabbi added:

  “Send out your hand and touch the clothes that are now yours. You will no longer be seen by humans and they will not know your face, as you are the messenger. You will not be a messenger like others. Not a messenger of an unseen divine Messiah but a messenger of man. From man you emerged and to man you will return. You will no longer be harmed, no damage will be caused to you by man and earthly forces. Just believe in your powers. Bring blessing and life to the world.”

  Mike folded the note and put it in his pocket. He looked at the clothes in front of him for a while before touching them again. He felt a flow of energy through his fingers and he was shaking slightly but nothing else happened. He continued to sit there for a few more minutes, his mouth opened wide. Finally, he sat up in the chair, looked around him and bent over to fold the clothes and place them in a paper bag he found in the office. On his way out of the synagogue, he did not notice if there was anyone else there or not. He went out into the dark and a short while later found himself back at Alice’s apartment, without noticing how he had gotten there.

  When she woke up in the morning, Alice found him sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee, with his eyes on the computer screen.

  “It is very bad,” he said to her. “The world is under attack. Everyone was instructed to go to public shelters, and I think we should, too. Either t
hat or you should go to the countryside, to your parents, far from the danger.”

  “What about you?” she asked with concern.

  “I have a few things to finish here and I will take a few things I need with me. Then we will talk, Alice. Get dressed now and go to them. Don’t wait.”

  While Alice was packing and getting dressed, Mike gathered his clothes that she had washed for him and he waited for her. As they were waiting for the elevator, she looked at him with concern and love but he was troubled by other matters and his eyes were on the elevator door closing. When they reached her car in the parking lot, they looked at each other and Alice hugged him tightly, laying her head on his chest. Mike hugged her back. Before parting, she gave him a long kiss on his lips and got into her car. She opened the window and wrote down something on a piece of paper she had in the car.

  “Here, take this. This is where my parents live and where I will be, waiting for you.”

  Mike waited until she drove out of the parking lot, waiving to her. He folded the piece of paper without reading it and put it in his pocket. Now there were two notes there. He turned towards the stairs and, once again, an instinct in him knew exactly where he was heading.

  19.

  New York, Central Park, September 20th

  They sat on the rocks near the small lake in Central Park, lost in thought, looking at the city with smoke and dust rising over it.

  “This is not going according to the plan. We should have finished taking care of him by now. We only have two more days before we move on to the next stage,” Samael said in an icy voice.

  Charnbog looked up at him and thought about it.

  “Maybe if we can’t find him, we can make sure he finds us?”

  Samael looked at him with eyes full off fire and said quietly,

  “I know exactly how to find him.”

  This conversation between them came after weeks in which they were busy with many things. In addition to the terror they cast on the city, they had been busy with intense underground activity. No one saw them or felt their activity, carried out silently underground, tens of meters beneath the city’s financial center in south Manhattan. It was where they had laid the foundations for executing their judgment day prophecy in the coming months. They had a lot of work to do and they needed more time to complete it. They used their time well and worked day and night. They needed to keep the attention of the authorities and security forces away from them. The threat of war they cast on New York helped them to do so.

  A large percentage of the residents of the city had been evacuated and the security forces were busy guarding the buildings and closed stores. No one had the time to see what they had been doing all this time, far underground. So many people passed by them and over them but no one noticed. Their plan was clear and they acted strictly according to it.

  In the meantime, the media was full of reports that the suspected terrorist involved in the bombing of the buildings on 5th Avenue was Moshe (Mike) Messenger, a formerly religious, offbeat Israeli, who apparently had returned to religion. The press and the media could not get enough of the details regarding him. Their sources were said to be very reliable. His pictures were sent all through the country and the public were called to cooperate and turn him over to the authorities. All of his characteristics met the investigator’s criteria. He was a loner, without any family, his past was unclear, including service in the Israeli military. He did not have friends in N.Y. and had religious characteristics. A search in his apartment found it to have been trashed and the signs showed that it has been abandoned. All traces of him had been erased, which increased the FBI’s suspicions of Mike and the search for him widened.

  The investigation of the federal agents showed that two weeks earlier, the man had acted very strangely at the synagogue and started a fire there, in a struggle with two dubious figures that were there. His surviving neighbors, as well as the maintenance man Jeffrey, spoke of his odd behavior and of strange noises and characters that came to his apartment. The investigation was closing in on him. They did not miss any detail. They checked all the places he could be, including Alice’s apartment, , where they found evidence of his presence there. The Sheriff’s team arrived at her parent’s home just as she did. They presented all of the suspicions to her and her parents and Alice could not believe it.

  “That is not possible. He was with me in the office when everything collapsed. He, too, was injured and he evacuated me from the building, taking me to my apartment. This man is a gentle soul, he has never harmed anyone. You are mistaken.”

  “Then where is he now and why isn’t he here with you?” Sheriff Richards asked her.

  She did not have a good answer to that. Why did he stay behind and not join her? What was he hiding from her?

  New York, Uptown, September 20th

  The attack was planned to take place in three waves and to continue for three separate days. and there was still one last stage to complete it. The black figures returned to their apartment on the building on the corner of West 140th Street where they planned to wait and to set out to get rid of the final obstacle in the way of implementing their big plan. Before entering the building, they took another look at the church around the corner. Charnbog turned, crossed the street and went inside. A few seconds later, there was a huge explosion and within minutes the church was in flames. Hundreds of worshippers were caught inside and very few managed to escape before it collapsed. Charnbog walked outside, with his hands in his pockets, calm and indifferent. He crossed the street and he and Samael entered the building they were staying in. They had a surprise waiting for them.

  When they arrived at their apartment, they found the door opened. They looked at each other and approached the door slowly. They walked inside and looked around cautiously, but they did not see anything. Nor did they see what was coming. It all happened in the blink of an eye. Samael and Charnbog turned and looked behind them. They saw a figure in white and blue, standing outside the door. The figure closed the door and a huge explosion occurred, the entire apartment was filled with burning flames, the apartment was completely destroyed. Everything inside it was turned to dust in seconds. The windows shattered and fell out onto the street. The sounds of damage and destruction filled the air once again. The neighbors came out to the corridor and were in shock seeing the damage and fire. They started to put out the fire when they saw the white figure heading towards the roof and disappearing in the dark. They also saw the two black figures jumping out of the window on the 3rd floor and disappearing into the alleyway, heading south.

  They had succeeded in their plan, he came to them as they wanted but this was not the way they meant for the encounter to end. They had just one more day to complete the first stage. It was supposed to be very simple but things were just getting more complicated. They had gone from being the attackers to being on the run. The obstacle in their path was more serious than they initially thought it was. They had to come up with a new and final way to get rid of him and they knew exactly how to do so. When the anonymous announcement they had made was broadcast half an hour later on all the media channels, they were beneath the huge building on the small island south of the city.

  New York, Liberty Island, September 21st

  The figure in white was back his regular appearance, walking down the street unnoticed. He had no intention of returning to the apartment. He had seen on television and read on the internet that he was wanted for questioning as a suspect involved in the bombing of the Trump Towers and the Rockefeller Center on 5th Avenue. The streets became his home, darkness his safety. He had to correct this injustice as soon as possible but first he had more pressing matters to take care of.

  In the last few hours in which he was alone in the darkness, he had discovered a few new things about himself. First of all, he found that he had knowledge of things that were about to happen and of where they were going to happen. He also
discovered that he had the ability to be anywhere he needs within seconds, without quite understanding how he did it. He also found that he no longer was afraid of anything. He discovered that the white suit not only hides his identity from the public, it also protects him from all danger. His awareness had sharpened and reached an amazing level. He felt things before they happened and he responded to them in unbelievable speed. He saw and heard everything and he knew he had to beat them in this dangerous race, to prevail in the difficult battle.

  He still had not seen or heard the reports that anonymous factors were about to blow up the Statue of Liberty within half-an-hour. Nor did he know that their goal was to awaken the residents of the world, liberate them from belief in God and the false prophets, and to create a new world, controlled by them. Even without knowing, he was already on his way there. He knew he had to get there and within seconds, he was. He also knew that they would be waiting for him there and he was hoping that he would be able to save the Statue of Liberty before he would have to face them.

  Once again, he managed to surprise Samael and Charnbog as they were not expecting him to come so quickly. They were hoping that this time, they would destroy the statue. Instead, they had to face him. When the figure in white emerged from the stone structure behind them, they were surprised but responded quickly. They did what they had done successfully so many times before. The entire area turned into flames and burning heat. The metal melted and the stones burned and shattered. The trees and grass became black dust with flames rising high into the sky. The two black figures were stunned to see the white figure standing there unharmed, approaching them. They looked up to the statue behind them but before they had a chance to do anything, he acted. He raised his arms and a huge sound of rolling rocks came from behind him. They watched in amazement. An enormous pile of rocks and stones rose up behind him and flew towards them with immense power. They were thrown far away and disappeared together with the huge pile of stones, into the black waters of the Hudson.