She Nailed a Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror

by ed. Tim W. Lieder

  I pull her to me, lips pressed again to hers, sucking in this time, pulling her strength, leaving just enough to let her get around the house but nothing more. She falls when I let her go and I do not help her up.

  "They will not stone us, old woman."

  I leave her and seek out Boaz's fields, keeping my head down, picking up the hatefully sharp gleaning, pieces of grain that would not have been good enough for my horses back in the house where Orpah and I grew up.

  I do not join in with the other girls; I go home to Naomi when it is time rather than sitting and laughing as they do. I do not talk to the young men. I understand that Boaz, who rides through the fields upon occasion, has told them to stay away from me.

  I make sure the townsfolk see me helping Naomi, bringing a chair for her and putting it outside the front door when the sun goes down and the dust settles. She is weak, and she hasn't the energy to glare at me, but her hatred pulses between us.

  "I will have him, hag. And then we will live in his fine house. And dine at his rich table. And I will suck the life from him just as I did your husband and sons." I lean in. "But not before he has given me a son."

  "A son who is an abomination," she murmurs.

  "Not until his lips fasten on my breast. His path is unclear until then." I lean back and stroke my belly as if life already grows in it. When my son nurses from me, I will feed him the pain of Lot's daughter, and he will grow strong in the memories. "Orpah has the sight, mother mine. She had a vision the day we left, told me that from my loins would come kings."

  "We have no king here."

  "Not yet." I grab her hand as I see Boaz approach. I can feel Naomi trying to muster energy to speak, and I suck hard on her essence until she grows too weak to talk.

  "Kinswoman, you prosper?" Boaz crouches at her feet, and I watch him through my hair as I keep my face turned down. "And you, Ruth?"

  "We are well fed, thanks to you."

  "It is very little that I give you."

  "It is more than we had." I lift my head, let him gaze on me. I know I am beautiful.

  "I must go." He does not look eager to go.

  I reach out, let my hand fall on his forearm, and read everything from the way his pulse races in the veins beneath my touch. He wants me. He will do anything for me. Except ask me outright. Except marry me. I am…

  I am beneath him?

  With a last smile, he walks away, calling out to those he passes.

  "Ruth," Naomi says, her voice shaking in anger as much as exhaustion.

  I grab her hand and give her back some of the energy I've stolen.

  "What, old woman?"

  "He was nothing when I left. My husband towered above him." Naomi's voice is brittle. "He gives us his leavings."

  "Yes." I stroke her hand. "And a moment of his time."

  I can feel a war inside her. It surprises me, but she's been burdened with me for so long as a second, hateful skin. Perhaps I am rubbing off on her?

  "You want me to have him?"

  She looks torn. Then she touches the faded robe she wears, and smiles wistfully. "I would like a glass of wine. Fine wine, like we had in Moab."

  "Wouldn't we all." But I give her back a little more energy. This is interesting. "Myself, I'm getting tired of picking up grain."

  "It is beneath you." Naomi meets my eyes with a look of hate, but one that seems devoid of its usual self righteousness. "But it is beneath me, too."

  "And we are one, Mother." She normally hates it when I call her that, but she seems not to even notice it this time. As I help her inside, I ask, "Surely, there is a way to get what we deserve?"

  "An old ritual. But one that cannot be denied."

  "Tell me."

  She does, her voice faltering as she details what I must do, so I fill her with energy again. "Hide among the grain," she says. "Wait until Boaz drinks with the men and falls asleep on the threshing floor, then lie at his feet and let him wake to find you there."

  It reeks of the stories Naomi's people tell of Lot's daughters. Get a man drunk, have your way with him. All to get an heir. A son. A life beyond this one.

  But to get a king, I will do it. Naomi looks at me as I bathe; she doesn't avert her eyes as she so often does.

  "What?" I ask.

  "You do not look evil." She leans in. "But you are. Your evil corrupts like rot on bread."

  "I think I'm a bit more subtle." I laugh as I wind the finest cloth we have around me. And then I kiss her, not draining her this time, for once feeling she is indeed my mother, and she lets me hold her, doesn't pull from my lips. "We will live better than this."

  Naomi shudders as I pull away, her hands clutching at me, as if she can keep me from Boaz.

  "He is a good man."

  I wait. I want to see her fall. I want to see her give in to our power. But she mutters to herself, an ancient prayer to her God. I feel a different power grow around her, a power that pushes me out of her a little.

  But only a little.

  "Wish me luck," I say as I go to find Boaz.

  The wait is boring, the sound of men laughing and drinking tedious. I send my spirit casting through the sky, into the far reaches of this land, seeking out any who are like me. Here and there I find them. The dark ones. The cursed ones. And those just awakening to their power.

  I come back to my body when I hear Boaz settling down in the grain. I crawl to his side and sit watching him. Then I put my fingers on his lips; let them trail down his chin, his neck, his chest, stopping when I reach his waist. I can feel his energy, such vitality. He will give me a strong son.

  With that thought in my heart, I lie at his feet and wait. He snores. He rolls. He talks in his sleep. The sun is nearly up and he has still not stirred. I grab a sharp blade of grain, poke it into his foot, and then let it fall as he finally wakes.

  "Who's there?" His heart is beating; I can feel his fear.

  I sit up as if confused from sleep. "I am Ruth, your handmaid." My hand steals to his calf, grips it lightly. "Claim me, for you are my family."

  He does not look happy. I drag lightly at his essence, pulling what I need into me. He is familiar, enough like Naomi that I can twine myself into him the same way I do her.

  "I am yours," I say.

  What I mean, of course, is that he is mine.

  Sweat beads on his forehead as he makes plans for our future. I feel his vitality flowing into me, and from far off, I can tell that Naomi is feeling it too.

  I leave him, secure in the knowledge that he will do as he must to have me. In time, ritual challenges are given and won. Naomi and I are moved into his fine house. I take him to bed, knowing Naomi can feel the edge of our passion.

  When I check on her in the morning, she looks sick.

  "Will it be like this always?"

  "He is your blood. We are all one."

  She holds a knife over a loaf of bread the servants have brought. Moving the blade away from the food, she dangles it over her wrist.

  "It would be such an easy thing."

  But she does not do it.

  "It would be such a holy thing."

  But she cannot do it.

  "I'm damned," she says as she throws the knife down and flees the room. I wonder if she realizes how easily she is moving. If she knows that the lifeforce that feeds me is also feeding her. Since moving into Boaz's house, she looks ten years younger. Our neighbors say it is due to the easier life. I know otherwise.

  She knows before I do that I am with child. She finds me throwing up and smoothes back my hair as if I was a child - her child.

  "It will pass," she says.

  "It better." But it does not. The child that I carry, that is my legacy to a world that would hate me if it understood me, drains my energy to such an extent I have to pull more life from Boaz. He begins to falter, his vitality fading as my belly grows.

  Boaz barely survives to see his son born. He takes him from the midwife, his smile triumphant, and then I grab the child away as
Boaz falls to the floor. The midwife rushes to him, and I try to look sad as she tells me that my husband is dead.

  My son stirs, seeking my breast, and I smile at the brush of his spirit waiting to be freed. But then I feel him being pulled from my arms.

  "What?"

  Naomi has her robes open, her once old breasts now glisten with milk.

  "Drink, child. Drink from me."

  I scream as I feel the spirit of my son rush away from me and into Naomi. I try to grab him from her but she carries him away, the sound of his suckling like the drag of a chair over a stone floor.

  "Hush, Ruth, your mother will take care of you now," the midwife says. She leans down, her hand gentle on my face. "We all know how kind you've been to her. How much you love her."

  There is something in her eyes, and I reach down and realize I am bleeding.

  "Lie still," Naomi says, "or you will surely die."

  "As will you." I do not care that the midwife is hearing this. I do not care about anything.

  "As will he, your begetter of kings."

  I lie still. For I cannot lose him. Not now.

  Naomi hands my child to me, and as soon as his mouth fastens on my breast, I can feel the pain inside me cease, and I know I've stopped bleeding.

  The midwife looks at us as if we are both mad.

  "My daughter-in-law is not from here, all this talk of kings," Naomi says. "But then you know that. Everyone knows about Ruth, my devoted little outsider." Naomi leans down, kisses my son, and whispers, "Wherever you go, I will go."

  The curse does not work for her, not the same way it works for me. But my son stops suckling long enough to meet her eyes with his own. His are older than they should be; they see more clearly than a newborn's ought to.

  Then they fasten on me. And they are filled with something else. It looks a bit like hate.

  "His name is Obed," I say. It means servant. He will serve Naomi, not me. It fills me with pain to call him that, but it is a true name, and while I am evil, I am not blind to the truth. I touch his forehead and he starts to cry.

  Naomi takes him from me and kisses me on the cheek.

  "You'll always have a home with us, dear."

  She is clearly enjoying this. I have definitely rubbed off on her.

  The pain starts up again. I pull at Naomi's lifeforce, feel energy draining out of her, but the child is filling her with what he's draining from me.

  I hear her laugh with delight. The baby gurgles. My son.

  Her son.

  I reach out with everything in me; feel some part of him respond. Then nothing.

  Naomi lets the midwife leave, has the servants remove Boaz for burial. I lie in blood-soaked linens and wish so hard for oblivion that I can hear the dry wings of death approaching. But then I feel my son in my arms again and Naomi leaves him with me.

  She is still tied to me. And she does not want to die. It's not much.

  But it's enough for now.

  Babylon’s Burning

  by Daniel Kaysen

  “There’ll be girls, Daniel,” said my brother. “Loads of stunning girls.”

  What he meant was: whores. I’d heard about what happened at these company parties. Call girls were scattered about, and they were free-to-access, as it were.

  I shivered slightly.

  “You don’t like the idea of girls?”

  “I don’t like the idea of Bell, Chase & Herr!”

  In fact, they made my flesh crawl. They were big in International Security, which meant they were paid a vast amount of money, often by our government, to do unspeakable things at home and abroad.

  No one ever went to jail.

  My brother was just a headhunter there and he was a recent hire. So he didn’t have blood on his hands. But I had principles. I really didn’t want to go to their party.

  “You’re a writer,” he said. “You could call it research.”

  He always mixed me up with a novelist or something.

  “I translate poetry,” I said.

  Or I used to, when I was at University. Since graduating, I’d been working in a call center. It was hell, but I saw no way out.

  “Yeah, well, you don’t have to mention the poetry translation. Look, come for the girls. I mean, when did you last get laid?”

  I’d been going out with Sarah for three years. She was great, but she was saving herself for marriage.

  Of course, there’s lots of other exciting things a couple can do, if one of them is saving herself for marriage.

  We somehow didn’t really do those either.

  “I get laid plenty!” I said.

  “Please, just come. I could use you, bro.”

  Turning up alone would look terrible for my brother, but he wasn’t dating and he didn’t have many real friends outside work, so who could he bring to the party but me?

  For a headhunter, he wasn’t very popular.

  I was surprised to find I suddenly felt sorry for him. He was an unpopular headhunter at a horrible firm. And he was my brother, after all. Besides, he’d loaned me some money after University, which I still hadn’t paid back.

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay. I’ll come and prostitute myself for you.”

  “Great!” he said. “Thanks. But don’t be too huffy when you’re there. In fact, don’t be huffy at all.”

  “What, like asking whether your company still outsources its torture? Or has it been brought back in-house?”

  “Funny,” he said.

  Which we both knew didn’t actually answer my question.

  ***

  Oh my God, the girls.

  Seriously.

  The girls.

  And they all seemed to be fresh from the Sorbonne or Harvard or somewhere.

  Like the girl who introduced herself as Evelyn and turned out to have a Masters in Medieval Literature from Oxford; an exceedingly rare chance for me to brag to someone who would understood what I did.

  “Actually,” I told her, “I published a modern verse translation of some of Chrétien de Troyes.”

  I said it as nonchalantly as I could.

  “I’m impressed,” she said, touching my arm. I know that whores aren’t that hard to impress, but still.

  “You okay, bro?” said my brother, suddenly at my side.

  “We were talking about my translation of Chrétien de Troyes,” I said.

  He blinked.

  “And you wonder why you never get laid,” he said.

  “I do get laid,” I said, hastily. “I get laid loads.”

  Evelyn smiled. I wondered if she sensed this wasn’t true.

  “I’m sure there are lots of lucky women,” she said. “In fact, I was hoping you might be free to be with me, tonight.”

  I nearly choked on my olive.

  “Am I so ugly?” she said

  “No, you’re just...” I tried to find the right word. But I couldn’t. “You’re pre-paid.”

  She laughed, loud enough that it turned a lot of heads.

  “Actually, I’m Evelyn Chase. Vice President, Forecasting.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Wait.”

  I caught her by the bar.

  “How can you work here, for this company?” I said. “Don’t you find all this monstrous? The ‘security’ business?”

  “You know, you’re very sweet to care about my soul, but it’s long since lost. How’s yours?”

  “Mine? I think I checked mine at the door,” I said.

  I looked around the crowd. There was an air of happy, edgy expectation. Maybe it was because so many men knew they were going to get laid - spectacularly.

  A waiter came by and offered me a glass of champagne ‘for the show’.

  “What show?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” said Evelyn.

  “Should be good,” a guy said. He was rough hewn with an on-guard look, ready for anything.

  “He a bouncer?” I whispered to Evelyn.

  “Exorcist,” she said. “We like to have them arou
nd in case things get interesting. Father Morton, this is Daniel.”

  We shook hands.

  He was carrying the chalice you drink communion from, when you go to church. It was filled with champagne. It had a cocktail umbrella.

  “Isn’t that sacrilege?” I said.

  “Oh, I’m sure his God can take a joke,” Evelyn said.

  “So who’s your God?” I asked her. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I knew that I didn’t want to know.

  “We worship Gods of gold and silver, bronze and iron, wood and stone,” she said. “They’re the go-to Gods, for people like us.”

  I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

  “Oh don’t look so shocked, we do good works as well. Or good works of a sort.” She laughed again.

  And then there was a murmur from the crowd, animal and deep.

  “The show,” Evelyn said, pointing. There, on a raised stage by a white wall, stood a calm-looking woman, maybe five years older than me. Next to her stood a man with a gun in one hand and a sword in the other.

  The crowd hushed.

  The man raised the gun, and put it to the woman’s head.

  A total pin-drop hush came over the room.

  He fired.

  She fell.

  The wall behind her was red.

  To be honest, I wasn’t very impressed.

  I mean, call that a magic trick? A little paint-bomb behind her head, detonated at the right moment, it wasn’t like it was difficult.

  “What’s the twist?” I whispered to Evelyn. This was Bell, Chase & Herr. Surely their cabaret should be top notch, not something a special effects man could cobble together in five minutes.

  “The next bit is the twist,” Evelyn said.

  The man raised the sword above his head and swung it down and…

  That wasn’t really any more convincing. Her hand appeared to have been severed. It wasn’t her hand of course. It was a plastic hand. Her hand, I knew, was hidden in her sleeve. Again, a special effects guy could have done it in five minutes.

  “I don’t get it,” I whispered to Evelyn.

  “Watch.”

  I watched.

  The severed hand rose into the air.