The Merkabah Rider
The Mensch With No Name
Episodes 5 – 8
By
Edward M. Erdelac
Table of Contents:
Episode Five - The Infernal Napoleon
Episode Six - The Damned Dingus
Episode Seven - The Outlaw Gods
Episode Eight - The Pandæmonium Ride
Glossary
About the Author:
Episode Five - The Infernal Napoleon
It could hardly be called a town. Really, it was just a little over a dozen picket and stone pile shacks and wattle and daub jacals that had sprouted like desert shrubs around a great sandstone pit filled with water, which seeped up from underground. The pit gave the place part of its name, Varruga Tanks. It was a lonesome rest stop along a stony two-track trail, where freighters and cattle drivers stopped to water their animals and themselves. An enterprising Irishman had put up a dirt floor saloon called The Watering Hole and dished out inferior, watered down popskull and tasajo at exorbitant prices. He was probably the only permanent resident.
There were twelve men in Varruga Tanks that day and nearly all of them, including the Rider, were standing beneath a patched canvas tent watching a wiry little half breed in a colorful but faded coat cut and stitched from a lady’s quilt kick up dust and spit. The rawboned runt had greasy black, gray-streaked hair to his collar and a crushed felt hat with a floppy brim and a long quivering turkey feather in the torn band. He was gesticulating in an exaggerated manner, extolling with ever-increasing showmanship the Herculean abilities of a stocky, quiet young man behind him, whose face was obscured by long, tangled hair spilling over his broad, blanket wrapped shoulders from beneath a battered black derby.
“Let all the sons of man bear witness! Let all the sons of man bear witness!” the man in the quilt coat called to the dubious spectators shuffling in the dim tent light. “This here is The Child of Calamity! Raised by Comanches what murdered his kith and kin, he was suckled by a catamount ‘cause no squaw would let his double row of saw teeth near her teats. He run off from them savages at six years old after he broke a war chief over his knee, tore him asunder, and scattered his innards over a half mile. Now the moans of widows and orphans is music to his melancholy soul. He can hit like fourth-proof lightning. He can lick five times his weight in grizzly bears. He can swallow a Mexican whole without chokin’ if you butter his head and pin his ears back, and he uses up white men by the cord. Yessir! No livin’ man is his equal and Injuns are a’feared to say his name. The massacre of isolated communities…like this one,” the breed grinned, “is the pastime of his idle moments! The destruction of whole nationalities is his stock and trade! I once seen him pluck the eye out a man and eat it for a grape! He is a slayer and a slaughterer! The sweat of his exertions salts the earth and he cooks and eats his dead!”
The little man in the quilt coat went on in the same bombastic way and the Rider’s mind began to wander. He was exhausted. He had not slept a full night in weeks, jumping awake at the slightest gust of wind or creak of settling plank. Since Tip Top and the fight with Lilith and her minions, he had sprinkled ashes around his bedding every night, and every morning the ashes bore the splayed tracks of large chicken feet—the earthly signs of the ruahim demons hounding his every step. He could sense their ever-increasing negative influence. It was like walking along a line of telegraph poles and feeling as well as hearing that incessant buzz in his ears, driving him to nausea if he dwelt upon it. He heard the tiny whir of invisible insect wings close by when he tried to sleep, and he jerked awake several times a night. He couldn’t readily perceive his tormentors however, even with his mystically embossed Solomonic lenses (though he did notice now and then the shadows of birds roosting near him wherever he went—even here in the middle of nowhere). Nor could he do anything to fight them or drive them away. The spiteful Lilith knew his true name, and she had armed her children with it, rendering him powerless to detect or disperse them.
Powerless, except for the little carved rosette token her daughter, the succubus Nehema had inexplicably given him at The Bird Nest whorehouse where he’d encountered them. He kept it pressed between his thumb and finger every waking moment, and when he bedded down uselessly at night, he tied it to his forehead with a strip of linen. He could sense its inherent power just like he could feel the chilly presence of the demons, but he could no more understand its significance then he could ascertain the reason she had given it to him.
Had Nehema known Lilith would turn on him? But how could she? It had all been the result of a misunderstanding, the blundering interference of an outsider who had touched off gunplay and fire in Lilith’s house. She had been set to point him the way to Adon, his renegade teacher, the man he had been hunting diligently but fruitlessly for…nearly ten years now. Had it really been that long?
Yes, since he’d learned of Adon’s betrayal from the Council of Yahad at Ein Gedi. He had been five years out of the Army then. Where had the time gone since? It had flown in the interim of his dogged but nearly hopeless pursuit. He had crossed Europe and much of the East, following minor clues and rumors, visiting the hidden enclaves (whose locations he had learned while at Ein Gedi) of his order…and now he had learned that Adon had been but a step behind him the entire time. Every enclave the Rider had visited had been destroyed mere days after his departure. In the years of the hunt Adon had outfoxed him entirely, had toyed with him, had in fact used the Rider to lead him to the inner sanctums of The Sons of The Essenes. He had murdered all of them. Ages of tradition and wisdom from the time of Solomon were gone. Now there were only two left who could lay claim to their ancient mystic teachings.
Adon and the Rider.
The Child of Calamity had shrugged off his blanket now, and stood bare-chested and barefoot. The Rider had expected the usual fat, hairy body masquerading as muscle, but the Child’s bullish physique was striated and impressive, like a classical statue come to life. His thick legs were sheathed in brown circus tights, his waist encircled in a yellow sash. He couldn’t be much more than eighteen or so and stood an inch under six feet, but because of his perfect proportions, he cut a tremendous figure. He cast off his hat and brushed aside the knotted curtain of his long dark hair to reveal a face that though chiseled and patchily bearded, hardly bore the expression of a killer and a maneater. The Rider had seen plenty of those. These were the eyes of a boy, probably not long away from whatever plow the breed had found him behind.
The Child began to perform the typical strongman feats. His handler passed him a deck of cards fresh from the box which he promptly tore in half. Next he was given a purported iron bar which he twisted around his massive, corded forearm. He lifted an anvil with one hand. He allowed himself to be chained and flexed the links apart with little apparent effort. The men in the dark clapped and exclaimed at intervals and the youth allowed a smug, appreciative smile.
The breed held up his hands.
“Now gentlemen, you seen the strength of The Child of Calamity,” he announced. “Is there any man out there willing to test it?”
He looked around the tent and smiled.
“Boys, I can see the trepidation on your faces. Not to worry.”
He drew a gigantic Walker Colt from his sagging waistband and hefted it impressively.
“I’ll have this at the ready should his innate bloodlust overtake his underdeveloped sense of mercy. It’s the only thing strong enough to punch a hole in his skull. It ought to distract him long enough for you all to get gone.”
Several of the men chuckled.
The breed smiled with them and drew a stack of paper money from his c
oat pocket and flapped it, hushing them once more.
“Now I got fifty American dollars says not a man here can last two minutes in a brawl against this killer of killers. What about it, boys? A buck gets you toe to toe with this beast. Who’s man enough to put their courage up against their money?”
The Rider knew where this was going. He doubted anybody would be collecting that fifty dollars, if it wasn’t Confederate to begin with.
As the men around him pressed forward, he backed away and ducked out of the tent.
A bull was snorting in the stone pen across the way, and a heavyset Mexican woman, probably The Watering Hole’s owner’s wife, was on her knees beating a pair of long johns on a flat rock down by the tanks, a half naked, bushy haired little boy waddling in and out of the brown water beside her.
The Rider looked out across the desert, eyes passing over a broken hogback rising in the distance, catching the movement of a big hare as it broke with the pale, alkali dusted land and went bounding away from some unknown terror. The Rider knew how it felt. He had been looking over his own shoulder constantly since Tip Top.
He went tiredly to the horse pen and fed and watered his pale onager, which was standing off by itself as usual. The stocky animal was the only constant companion he had. He scratched between its ears fondly, frowning as he imagined the butchering death that awaited it if Lilith or her children ever got to them. With all they had been through in their years of traveling, it was remarkable to think that the animal had even survived this long. It had navigated snowy mountain passes and bore the blowing sands of three deserts with little complaint. It was a good beast.
An African had sold him the animal in Jerusalem. At the price he had gotten him for, the Rider hadn’t expected the animal to last much more than a month, but it had proved a stalwart creature, more reliable than any he had ever known.
It seemed a shame such a fine and well mannered beast hadn’t sired a line, and he was struck once more with the notion of abandoning his bootless search for Adon.
“It would be a better life for both of us, wouldn’t it?” he whispered to the animal.
It nipped at him, pinching his thumb, though not hard enough to leave more than an angry red mark.
It was the first time the onager had ever done such a thing. He resisted an instinctive urge to cuff it across the muzzle. He had sometimes neglected the commandment to be kindly towards beasts, especially in his war years, but the animal had never given him much occasion to correct it before now.
It saddened him a little, as if a loved one had turned on him, and he backed away, rubbing his throbbing hand in confusion.
That was when he heard the music.
He had not ventured inside the saloon, not being overly inclined towards commiserating with the other transients and having taken an oath against imbibing liquor anyway. It seemed outlandish to him that such a tumbledown establishment in the middle of nowhere might have a piano, but he clearly heard the hammers falling on the strings in melodious succession, wringing out the haunting, sad tune that swirled like an eddy of dust down between the impermanent shacks and huts and crept up his spine with all the burden of its history and association.
Remember the song of the Order Of Nehemoth, Nehema had said. Remember the angels of prostitution.
It was that same tune, no doubt. He tried to remember the words.
Flow my tears, fall from your springs…
Uncontrollably, the image of Nehema bloomed in his mind. He had seen her true form, grotesque, wasted and terrible, but it was not that visage that his imagination conjured. It was the comely woman of dark and sloping Middle Eastern aspect, as she had appeared in his dream and in the doorway of the Tip Top brothel. His logic told him that woman did not exist, that she was just a mask the succubus had worn for him—a mask of his own devising, just a faded memory of a dark eyed girl half glimpsed in a crowded marketplace, twisted into the shape of a hairless temptress that had danced naked in his dreams. But there was the undeniable kindness she had done him. Whatever her motive, the rosette token had saved his life from a swarm of ravenous demons. It shouldered out his knowledge of her infernal truth in favor of the pleasing lie.
Was she here now? Had she found him? Was she making her presence known?
He quickened his step towards the tumbledown saloon, telling himself it was for one reason, knowing deep down it was another.
The sensuous, melancholy sound of the piano filled his ears as he pushed aside the threadbare sheet of cheesecloth that served as a door and went into the saloon.
It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the light after the brightness of the desert sun, which was magnified by the glare of the salted ground. The place was nearly empty, most of the would-be patrons being in the tent watching the demonstration.
The bar was composed of stacks of shipping crates and had no stools or chairs to speak of. Some overturned crates served as seats around a pair of large wood cable spool tables, their centers encrusted with pools of cold candle wax like petrified moonmilk. One wall was entirely papered with water-stained shipping invoices and faded pages torn from a Sears wishbook that rattled and swelled when the occasional gust of dry breeze sifted unopposed through the inferior carpentry. It still amazed the Rider that a place so entirely culled together from practical elements could boast a working piano, but as he turned his head he saw it, a battered, dusty maple upright with yellowed keys pushed into a corner near the bar.
As he took off his mystic blue glass spectacles and rubbed his eyes to quicken their acclimation, he saw that it wasn’t Nehema on the stool (the only piece of actual furniture in the place) in front of the piano.
And the player wasn’t the only one in the bar.
Two men leaned with one elbow propped on either side of the piano, smoking and listening. The player himself was not seated. He was a dwarf, and he was necessarily standing on the stool as he played.
The Rider stood still for a moment, wrestling down his disappointment. He was about to turn away when the player began to sing;
“From the highest spire of contentment
My fortune is thrown;
And fear and grief and pain for my deserts
Are my hopes, since hope is gone.”
At the sound of the high, falsetto voice, angelic and child-like in its purity, The Rider stiffened. He had heard that singer before.
“Hark! You shadows that in darkness dwell,
Learn to condemn light
Happy, happy they that in hell
Feel not the world’s despite.”
The dwarf turned and peered at The Rider over his shoulder as he sang the last, and his dark face split into a bright, neat smile. The Rider experienced the same feeling of disorientation he had first felt when last he’d seen this dwarf and heard the dichotomy of his voice.
He had been at Lilith’s bordello, plucking a lute like some cherubic attendant at a Roman orgy.
The dwarf struck the last note with exaggerated aplomb, turned, and sat down on the stool, his legs dangling, his arms folded before him.
“Found you, Manasseh,” he said, in a pleased, almost sing-song tone. His voice was cultured, the accent British English. But The Rider knew his parentage without having to look through his glasses. If he had survived the bordello fire, if he had tracked him here, he was no ordinary human. No doubt he was a shed, one of the half-demon sons physically ‘born’ to a succubus from a human coupling. His grip tightened on the rosette token, but he dropped it into his coat pocket. It would do no good against these. Their powers were rooted entirely in the physical realm.
The dwarf was impeccably dressed and groomed, his stubby limbs covered in pinstripes and supple silk sleeves, his feet in custom boots and his fat chest encircled in a brocaded vest of red Oriental filigree. He sported a string tie with a silver rosette slide. A pair of .36 caliber pocket pistols hung underneath each of his arms, secured there by a richly tooled leather harness.
The Rider glanced at
the other two men flanking the piano. One was young, maybe twenty in appearance, though that meant nothing when dealing with shedim. The other had an Oriental cast, but was big and broad as a steer.
Their dress paled in comparison to the stylish dwarf. Their clothes were merely functional. They could have been drovers in their half coats and leather chigaderos, though both did sport similar rosette badges on their costumes, one on his hat band, the other on his belt buckle. It was some sign then, marking them as Lilith’s. Both were tied-down gunmen, and they flicked their cigarettes away and straightened as they noticed him.
The Rider noticed too that each bore a marked physical deformity. The younger of the two had an ugly harelip that split his mouth and showed his tobacco stained two front teeth and brown gums. The big Oriental bore a huge goiter on his eyebrow that almost closed his right eye.
“I’ve seen you before,” the Rider said to the dwarf.
“We saw each other,” the dwarf agreed. “Mazzamauriello’s my name.”
“And these?” the Rider said.
“My brothers. Johnny Shada and Ormzud.”
“Where are you going Johnny Shada?” The Rider said sharply.
The younger one had begun to nonchalantly stroll over to the box bar. The Rider’s tone didn’t make him pause.
“Gettin’ a drink,” he snarled, and went behind the stack of crates.
The Rider heard glasses clink.
“I don’t drink,” he said.
“I wasn’t offerin’.”
“The thing is, we’re not here for cordialities, Mr. Maizel,” Mazzamauriello said. “You killed a brother of ours, and you maimed our matriarch, all under a flag of truce.”
“It was a misunderstanding. Lilith knows that,” the Rider said. “I didn’t intend for things to go the way they did. We were about to make an arrangement when that fool rushed in with a shotgun. He started the fire. I only killed your brother when he tried to kill me.”
Mazzamauriello held up his hand for silence and rubbed his eyes.
Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name Page 1
