by Brian Keene
The chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin.
“What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man, Jesus of Nazareth, performing many miraculous signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. But now comes news of a massacre at Bethany. Surely, this Jesus has loosed a demon upon us, as punishment for speaking against him.”
Caiaphas, the high priest, spoke up. “The Romans shall do nothing. I have a plan. It is better that one man should die for the people than that the whole nation perish. We shall slay this Rabbi, and we shall slay this demon he has summoned forth. We shall also slay this man, Lazarus, whom has returned from the dead. That way, there shall be no loose ends.”
So, from that day on, they plotted to take the life of Jesus, and Lazarus’s life as well, although they did not know he was possessed by a demon.
When word of this reached Jesus, he called his disciples together. “We can no longer move about publicly among the Jews. Instead, we will withdraw to a region near the desert, in a village called Ephraim.”
And so they did. Mary and Martha wondered what had become of their brother. When Jesus and his disciples disappeared, they assumed Lazarus had gone with them.
Meanwhile, Ob roamed the sands and mountains of Judea, raiding and feasting in the night and hiding during the day, plotting to unleash the Siqqusim.
• • •
When it was almost time for Passover, many came to Jerusalem for their ceremonial cleansing. The crowds kept looking for Jesus, and as they stood in the temple, they asked one another, “What do you think? Isn’t he coming to the Feast at all?”
The chief priests and Pharisees had given orders that if anyone found out where Jesus was, they should report it so that he could be arrested.
Eventually, Jesus returned to Bethany. His spirits seemed low, and he did not teach. The sisters gave a dinner in his honor. Much to Mary and Martha’s delight, Lazarus arrived as well, and reclined at the table with Jesus. They could not understand why the disciples met his arrival with dread and shrank away from him. They assumed it was because of his cleanliness. Lazarus’s flesh, while not marred, was sallow and ripe. Mary put a few drops of pure nard, an expensive perfume, on her brother’s head. Then she poured some on Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance.
Judas objected. “Why was this perfume not sold, and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.”
“Leave her alone,” Jesus said. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor, Judas, but you will not always have me.”
Ob laughed, loud and boisterous. The dinner guests were shocked, but Jesus ignored him.
“The hour has come,” Jesus continued, “for the Son of Man to be glorified. Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”
“And one day,” Ob interrupted, “all will die, and the seeds of my kind’s revenge shall be sown.”
Jesus’s demeanor changed. He whirled on Lazarus.
“Silence your tongue!”
Ob leaned close and whispered, “Caution, Nazarene. I am forbidden to harm the sisters, but your Father said nothing of your precious disciples. I can eat their bodies in remembrance of you.”
Ignoring him, Jesus turned back to his listeners. “The man who loves life will lose it, while the man who hates life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor those who serve me.”
There came a loud, insistent knock at the door. All of the assembled jumped, startled. The knock came again. Mary opened the door. A priest and four soldiers pushed into the home.
“Where is Jesus of Nazareth?”
“I am he.”
“And where is Lazarus of Bethany?”
Ob rose. “I am he.”
The priest appraised them both. “And you, Jesus, claim you brought this man, Lazarus, back from the dead.”
“I did, by the Glory of God.”
“Then you blaspheme.”
“If you have eyes,” Jesus said, “let them see. Follow me.”
He strode past the armed men, and they did not molest him. The priest followed him outside, along with the disciples, the sisters, and the other guests. Ob remained inside.
Jesus turned back to the house. “Lazarus, come forth.”
Ob’s host body’s legs moved without him willing them. He glanced down in panicked confusion.
“What is this?”
His arms and hands defied him and opened the door. Against his will, he strode out into the streets and cursed Jesus’ name.
“What trickery is this?”
“No trickery,” Jesus said. “I cannot command thee, but it suddenly occurs to me that I can command the flesh you inhabit.”
Many among the crowd were confused by the exchange between the two men, but did not intercede.
Jesus turned to the priest. “I brought this man back from the dead. Is he not now marked for death because of it?”
The priest nodded.
“And if I did it again,” Jesus asked, “would you not then believe?”
“What are you saying, Rabbi?”
“Carry out your sentence. Slay him. Then I shall bring him back and you shall see.”
“Wait,” Ob shouted. “You cannot—”
The priest nodded at the soldiers. “Make it so.”
Mary and Martha averted their eyes, but were not afraid, because they had faith in the Lord.
A soldier stepped forward, armor clanking, and thrust a spear into Lazarus’s chest. Ob grasped the shaft and grunted. The crowd gasped.
“He lives,” they murmured. “He does not fall.”
“His head,” the priest commanded. “He cannot survive that.”
Ob’s eyes grew wide. “No. Strike not my head. Do not—”
A second soldier drew his short sword and ran it through the back of Lazarus’ head. He pushed hard, pierced the skull, and slid it the rest of the way in. Lazarus dropped, and Ob was dispatched. He screamed with rage, but none save Jesus could hear him.
As he fled, Ob’s spirit whispered in Jesus’ ear. “You know what fate your Father plans for thee. I shall be there, waiting. And after your spirit has fled, when your discarded flesh hangs from the cross, I will take it for my own. On the third day, when you rise from the dead, it shall be me inside your bag of skin and blood and bones. You may be the Life, but I am the Resurrection.”
The priest looked at the corpse lying in the street and said to Jesus, “Now, if you are who you say, bring him back.”
Jesus folded his arms. “I will not. For you have eyes, but do not see. I am the resurrection and the life, but your lack of faith blinds you.”
“This Rabbi is touched in the head,” the priest said. “Nothing more. He is not the Messiah. He is a simple madman.”
After the priest and soldiers had departed, and Mary and Martha wept for the second time over their brother’s fallen form, Jesus turned to the disciples.
“Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!”
Then a voice came from heaven, “I HAVE GLORIFIED IT, AND WILL AGAIN.”
Some in the crowd thought the voice was thunder. Others said it was an angel.
Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. But when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself. You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you all. For one day, it will. Darkness will descend upon this entire world, and shall not be lifted. That shall be the time
of the Rising, when the Siqqusim are unleashed upon the Earth. Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light, and not be left behind as the dead.”
When he had finished speaking, Jesus left Bethany and hid himself from them. In the desert, powerless to act against Ob, he turned to the ways of man. He performed a secret spell, passed down from Solomon, taken from one of the books from before man, and cast Ob’s disembodied spirit into the Void with the rest of his kind.
Judas, who was hiding behind a stone, saw Jesus work the forbidden rites and was appalled. He had believed his Rabbi to be the Son of God, and had believed that Jesus’s powers came from the Holy Spirit. But now, here he was working arcane magicks. At that moment, Judas’ heart was filled with resentment, and he vowed to turn Jesus over to the priests.
And in the Void, Ob wailed and raged and waited for the death of light and the time of the Rising.
STONE TEARS
Something splashed in the water hard enough to rock the small boat. Nelson LeHorn reached out and grabbed the sides of the craft. His knuckles turned white.
“Don’t let it spook you,” Hodgson said. “Probably just a channel cat.”
“I ain’t spooked. Just surprised me, is all.”
“They get big in here. Heard tell of ones on the bottom that are longer than a man. I’d love to catch me one of them. Bet they put up one hell of a fight.”
Nelson didn’t respond. He stared out over the dark river, watching the moonlight reflect off the waves. Behind them, the launch near Wrightsville faded into the gloom. The lights of Columbia and Marietta twinkled on the far side of the shore. For the most part, the Susquehanna flowed quietly. The silence was broken only by the swells lapping gently against Hodgson’s boat, and the droning hum of the small motor, as Hodgson guided them towards their destination.
A bat darted overhead, catching their attention. It was followed a moment later by the shadow of a hawk.
Nelson knew it was an omen.
He just didn’t know what it meant.
Nelson LeHorn had never been much of a water person. He’d taken his family to Ocean City, Maryland once, when the kids were young. Matty, Claudia and Gina had loved it. They’d have stayed in the ocean for the entire weekend, if he and Patricia had let them. But Nelson was wary of so much water. That wide, unbroken expanse made him uneasy for reasons he couldn’t explain. He much preferred the small fishing pond on his farm, and the thin stream that ran through his property.
It occurred to him that his dislike of water was funny, in a way, since water had been involved in his introduction to Hodgson, who now ferried him across the river.
Ten years before, when Richard Nixon was still in office and American troops were still in Vietnam, Hodgson and some other employees of the Gladstone Pulpwood Company had been clearing trees on Nelson’s property. Crops were bad that year, on account of too much rain. To make some extra money, Nelson sold off some timber. He had plenty. His farm was surrounded by acres of forest and deep, dark hollows.
Hodgson had been cutting through the trunk of an old, gnarled sycamore when the chainsaw hit the knot. Suddenly, it snapped back and caught him in the chest and shoulder, slicing through his shirt and deep into his flesh. Nelson, who had been working in the barn at the time, was alerted by the shouts of Hodgson’s co-workers. When he arrived on the scene, the man was lying on the forest floor, unconscious and in shock. Hodgson bled profusely, but the ground around him was nearly dry, as if the forest’s roots were sucking it up. Still, Nelson knew that if they didn’t stop the bleeding, Hodgson would never live long enough to make it to the hospital. He’d told the co-workers to apply pressure to the wound as best they could, and then dashed back to the house.
The Gladstone employees must have figured he was going to call 911, which he did, but they were surprised when Nelson returned a few minutes later with a piece of paper, a pen, and an old, brown book called The Long Lost Friend: A Collection of Mysterious and Invaluable Arts and Remedies For Man As Well As Animals by John George Hohman. Hohman had written the book in 1856. It was a curious mix of German and Hebrew mysticism, Dutch herbal recipes, and Egyptian lore collectively known in the Central Pennsylvanian region as powwow. Hohman was considered a powwow magician.
So was Nelson LeHorn, as his father was before him, and his grandfather and great-grandfather, as well.
Nelson knelt beside the injured man and referred to the book. Then he wrote the name of the four principal waters of the whole world—Pison, Gihon, Hedekiel, and Pheat—on the sheet of paper. While the men watched in bewilderment, he placed the paper on the wound. He then whispered, “Blessed wound, blessed hour, blessed be the day on which Jesus Christ was born, in the name.”
And just like that, the bleeding stopped.
Hodgson’s co-workers were amazed. Many of them had, of course, heard of powwow magic, given its long-standing connection with the region’s folklore. But this was the first time any of them had actually seen its methods in action. Nelson modestly brushed aside their questions and comments, and urged them to get Hodgson up to the house before the ambulance arrived.
That was how they’d met. Hodgson got worker’s compensation and disability from the accident, and rather than going back to cutting trees, he bought a small place in Wrightsville along the river and spent his days fishing from his little bass boat.
And once a year, indebted to the man who had saved his life, he ferried Nelson out to the middle of the Susquehanna River, and landed on the shore of Walnut Island.
“Pretty out tonight,” Nelson said.
“Yeah,” Hodgson agreed. “It is. Wife’s probably pissed as shit at me right about now. Nice night, like tonight, and I’m out here, instead of back home. Especially with them saying who shot J.R. on Dallas tonight. You ever watch that show?”
“Can’t say that I have. I read, mostly. My family’s been bugging me for that cable television. Imagine—paying for TV. Dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of. What’s next?”
“I hear you. I wouldn’t have fooled with it at all, but the wife made me get it. Twenty bucks a month! But we get fifteen channels. She loves her shows. Likes me to rub her feet while we watch them, which is why she’ll be pissed that I’m out here.”
“I’m sorry about that. Like I’ve told you before, you shouldn’t feel obliged. What I done for you, I’d do for anybody. If these yearly trips make trouble for you at home, I won’t ask no more. It’s just that you’re the only fella’ I know with a boat—only one I trust, anyway.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. To be honest, I like to get away once in a while. And she’s used to it by now. Alls I got to do is show her my scar and remind her of what you did for me, and she gets over it quick. But she thinks it’s pretty odd that you go night fishing every year on this day. I don’t tell her what we really do out here, of course—I don’t tell no one, just like you asked.”
“I appreciate it. More than you know.”
“Least I can do. I’ve got to wonder though, if you don’t mind me asking—what’s your wife think about it?”
Nelson frowned. “Patricia? She’s fine with it. Why wouldn’t she be?”
“Don’t know. Figured maybe she wasn’t privy to all the powwow stuff.”
“She knows it well. Even helps me with it sometimes. Her Daddy practiced powwow, same as mine. And she knows what today’s date is, too, and why it’s so important to me.”
“Why is it so important?” Hodgson asked. “I mean, I know you can’t tell me what you get up to out there on Walnut Island, and I’m not sure that I even want to know. But I always wondered about the date? Is it one of them equinoxes or something?”
Nelson was quiet for a moment. He watched another bat dive down towards the water, snatch a lightning bug in mid-air, and then flit away towards shore. Another omen, and still, he couldn’t divine any meaning from it. When he looked back at Hodgson, Nelson sighed.
“I don’t reckon it will hurt to be straight
with you. You’ve done right by me over the years. Not to mention you’ve brought me out here each year, and never asked why.”
Hodgson nodded, encouraging his passenger to continue. His expression was eager.
Nelson pointed at Walnut Island, looming out of the darkness. “You ever hear of the petroglyphs out here?”
“No, can’t say that I have. What’s that—some kind of oil drilling place?”
Nelson laughed. “How in the world did you come up with that?”
“Petro. Ain’t that what the Brits call gasoline?”
Nelson, who had never been out of the tri-State area in his life, and whose knowledge of the United Kingdom’s modern culture was limited to Margaret Thatcher, the occasional British sitcom on PBS, and a band that his son, Matty, listened to (Deaf Leopards or something like that) had no idea, but he didn’t admit it to Hodgson.
“Petroglyphs,” he repeated. “They’re pictures and symbols carved into the rocks out here. Some of them were made by the Indians.”
“Which ones?”
“Take your pick. The Susquehannocks, of course. The Iroquois. The Algonkians. There’s a bunch that were carved by white men, too—sort of like Civil War-era graffiti. Some were made by prehistoric man, long before the Indians came. And a few are even older than that.”
“How can they be older than prehistoric man?”
Nelson ignored the question. “There used to be a lot more of them out here. But back in the Thirties, when they built the Holtwood and Safe Harbor dams, a lot of the petroglyphs ended up underwater. Some archeologist folks managed to save a few. Dug them out with a big pneumatic rock drill and put them on display at the Pennsylvania Historical Museum. But to see the rest, you’ve got to put on a diving suit and swim around down there with those big catfish you mentioned earlier.”
Hodgson shuddered.
“The only ones left above water,” Nelson continued, “are on Big Indian Rock, Little Indian Rock, and Walnut Island. And since the County Historical Society, the Museum Commission, and the State don’t like folks traipsing around on the islands, I have you bring me out here at night.”
