Through the Moon Gate and Other Tales of Vampirism

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  “I was thinking more, say, New York? New Jersey? Connecticut?”

  “Sure. No problem. Any particular reason?”

  “Well, I saw this commercial about how to become a stock broker. I’d like to try that. If I could get registered and licensed and everything, it could save you a bundle in brokerage fees.”

  “Bit of a departure for you.” The man had been a tailor for years, loved it and wanted to open his own shop before Malory had ruined his life.

  “Yeah, I know it’s strange. But I think I can do it.”

  It would provide the human with a good independent living if, no when, they had to part company. It will happen. It will. Just maybe not too soon. “Considering how you’ve been handling my finances, I think you can, too. I’ll make you a gift of the course.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I know.” Malory moved to look at the television screen. “But I don’t know why you’re not leaving my employ and my presence.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you don’t like the company I keep among supernatural entities?”

  “Didn’t seem to me that one was your good-buddy.”

  “No. That one wasn’t.”

  Unspoken words hung in the air between them. You mean you’re friends with some? But the mortal wasn’t ready to frame that question aloud. “Come on, Mal, sit down and watch Forever Knight with me.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that.” The vampire settled on the torn sofa. The ripped upholstery reeked of demon, but the smell faded from his consciousness when the actor on the screen snarled and his eyes turned green. Green?

  VAMPIRE’S FRIEND

  David Silberman locked the door of his dry cleaning shop behind him. The sun was going down—not his favorite time of day anymore. But today, the eve of Yom Kippur, was the worst.

  He moved out to the edge of the strip mall’s parking lot and paused, staring down the side street toward the Orthodox shul and a way past that, his house.

  There were still many cars in the lot of the strip mall and the street was full of traffic. The goyim didn’t know there was anything special going on in the world of Magic.

  David had never been very religious, not even by Reform standards, until he’d seen a Vampire invoke a pagan god’s assistance—and get it.

  He’d had another object lesson when that same Vampire had saved his life from a demon’s attack by tearing down the doorpost of his bedroom and thrusting it into his arms, kosher Mezuzah against his heart.

  He’d often wondered if the Mezuzah would have saved him if it hadn’t been so perfectly kosher. But most of all, he wondered if he’d really been saved. In San Francisco, he’d participated in a revenge-murder, and now had a pagan serial killer for a friend. He’d gotten involved in idolatry, not just regular magic which would be bad enough. He’d never respected those who called themselves pious Jews but isolated themselves from other Jews and from everyone else. He’d just never had anything much to do with G-d. So why is my conscience bothering me tonight?

  He just didn’t want the supernatural in his life anymore. He wanted to forget the Vampire and just walk away from it all. But he couldn’t. The mental Link was permanent, maybe Eternal. So he’d spent the last few months surfing the ’net for information, and every time had ended up at the website of this local shul reading something the Rabbi there had written.

  As dusk gathered over the city, he felt the Vampire wakening in his mind, a growing buzz of not-quite awareness. The mental Link between them could only be closed, not vanquished. Lately, it made him feel…unfit.

  He started down the side-street toward his house, walking on the side opposite the shul, still not sure what he would do. Before he’d left he shop, he’d emptied his pockets and put on shoes that had no leather in them. He wore a hat. He could go into the shul, even though he hadn’t bought a ticket to the High Holy Day services. I could just stand in the back.

  It had been a year since he’d separated from Malory Avnel, or Arnaud Lemieux as he called himself in New Jersey. All year, the Vampire had scrupulously avoided stirring the mental link between them. He owned and operated a Motel 6 on I-80, leaving David to his Fairlawn dry cleaning shop, studying for his stock trading certification and his spiritual nail chewing.

  A morally upright, completely ethical, totally honorable Vampire who kills at least two humans a month calls me his friend.

  Worse yet, I call him friend—most of the time.

  He paused across from the shul. It had been a brick church, circa 1900 that had burned down. Only the foundation had been left when the Orthodox shul had bought the land.

  Some people were arriving, parking their cars in the lot behind the shul where the vehicles would sit until after dark tomorrow. The women were dressed in various colors, many of them wearing white, the married ones with their heads covered. The men wore business suits, white yarmulkes, and kittels,—the belted white smock they would be buried in. There were no black hats and curls hanging beside their ears, but some men wore their prayer shawls while some carried theirs. The prayer shawls were white wool with black stripes. There wasn’t a silk one; not a single blue striped one anywhere. Everyone wore sneakers and carried Machzorim—the prayer books that contained the day’s special prayers. I couldn’t possibly fit in among them. I wouldn’t know how to pray.

  “G’mar Chatima Tova. Come on, you’ll miss Kol Nidre if you stand out here!”

  David started, stifling a gasp. It was an older man with a fringe of white beard and a jolly paunch. A hand touched his elbow, urging him on across the street. “The Rabbi’s drasha you can afford to miss, but not Kol Nidre when Yussel’s davening.”

  “Yussel’s davening?” He couldn’t remember what davening meant.

  The man held open the door for David urging him inside. “He doesn’t just sing, he really prays, and the Gates of Heaven open.”

  Davening means praying.

  They came to the inner door to the sanctuary on the men’s side, a stream of men shuffling in before them. David hung back. “I don’t have a seat.”

  “No problem. My son is home with his week old son and his wife. They’re both sick, so you can have his seat. It’s a mitzvah to miss shul, even on Yom Kippur, to care for the sick. We’ll take turns staying home tomorrow, so you’ll still have a seat all day. Manny Rubenstein,” he announced, holding out his hand.

  “David Silberman” he said giving the alias the vampire had created for him in New Jersey. He shook the firm, dry hand.

  In a twinkling, the old man had procured a prayer shawl and machzor from a cabinet and installed David in the chair next to his own seat on the aisle near the door. While Manny exchanged greetings in Hebrew with the people around him, David arranged the shawl the same way everyone else had theirs. Then he looked at the black book in his hands.

  The printing had worn off the binding. Inside, it had English on one side and Hebrew on the other. Finding the English index in the back, and discovering page 1 was at the end of the book, he turned to Kol Nidre.

  So far his hands weren’t burning—G-d wasn’t rejecting him. He sat in a room full of ordinary people, facing three steps up to a stage with a beautiful cabinet, hung with a white drape. That, he had learned online, was the Aron Kodesh, no doubt full of Torah Scrolls.

  An electric Eternal Flame hung over a lectern on the floor level facing the cabinet. On the stage, in front of the cabinet, another lectern faced the audience. Behind him a raised dais held the reader’s lectern where men were gathering to begin the service. On the side wall a Memorial Plaque had a lamp lit beside every name inscribed on little gold plates. All pretty standard for a synagogue. But behind him, beyond a filigreed symbolic barrier sat the women and children, divided from the men. Everyone chatted as if this were just another ordinary day.

  Then, a man opened the Aron Kodesh exposing the ornately dressed Torah Scrolls to view and everyone stood up, silence falling.

  Davi
d stood. The silence became palpable. The silence tensed. The door in his mind beyond which the Vampire lurked slammed shut, leaking not a whisper of Malory Avnel’s presence. He’s uncomfortable with the Torah. The silence thickened. The silence thrummed.

  A baritone voice inserted itself without disturbing the blanket of silence and proclaimed melodiously, “Kol” paused, and enunciated, “Nidre”—drawing the word out until it echoed back from the ends of Time—“Ve-esarey”—parting the fabric of reality—“Vshvuei”—sculpting the silence—”Vaharamei”—reaching to the beginnings of Time—“Vekonamei”—the Torah Scrolls glowed, as if floating beyond the Gates of Reality.

  On the second of the three repetitions of the entire prayer, David lost track of the words, carried on the sound of the voice that dripped tears of dread sincerity and earnest entreaty. The man wasn’t singing. He was representing the whole of the people of Israel before the Throne, as would the High Priest of the Temple.

  On the third escalating repetition, David felt the Gates opening, felt the cold heat of Divine Attention, and somehow knew that attention was on him. A peculiar fear gripped him, a kind of painfully pleasant fear he’d never felt before during any of Malory’s brushes with the supernatural.

  Suddenly, he was standing in an ordinary room full of people, hiss of air conditioning dominating, lit with ordinary lighting. Then with an eruption of quiet shuffling and coughing everyone sat down, kids whining, and the sound of traffic passing outside with thumping stereos.

  I don’t belong here.

  As the Rabbi rose to take the lectern on the stage facing the congregation, David put the prayer shawl and machzor on his seat, thanked the old man, and bolted for the door.

  I am not going to try that again. I’ll find a Reform synagogue if I ever feel the urge again. But I really, really don’t want the supernatural in my life!

  Outside, the street still bustled with Monday evening traffic. Three kids were playing basketball in a driveway. An airplane droned overhead. The sky was darkening, but you still couldn’t quite see stars through the haze. No hint of the supernatural. No hint of time being visible, palpable, open to his senses from beginning to end.

  Hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, eyes on the sidewalk before him, he started toward home. He rounded a curve in the street, momentarily finding himself alone in the quiet residential neighborhood. Trees rustled, leaves crunched under his feet. A pigeon whirred to a stop, perching on a branch. It’s dropping spattered audibly on the concrete beside his foot, missing his shoe.

  Automatically, he looked up to Heaven, mouthing, “Thank You!”

  Something streaked across the indigo sky leaving a rainbow froth behind, pointing to the space between two houses across the street. The rainbow froth evaporated without a trace, but David knew just where the something had come to rest—next to his own house.

  No. It was a decision surfacing from somewhere below his belt and he knew he was going to investigate and get himself into the exact kind of trouble he wanted to avoid. No.

  He crossed the street diagonally, cut across his own small lawn, and took the stairs to the porch two at a time. No. He fetched the key from the potted Holly, opened the door, and put the key back.

  No. The neighborhood was unnaturally silent. The stars were visible. It was now truly Yom Kippur. And his shoes were clean of bird dropping.

  He went in his front door, touched his fingers to the mezuzah and kissed them, closed the door, locked it, and went through the living room to the kitchen. His fingers where he’d touched the mezuzah tingled pleasantly. That had never happened before. OK, You win.

  He went out the side door to look in the alley beside his house—the house Malory had paid for, in full, probably with money taken from the criminals he drank to death.

  Buried in the thick ivy between the garbage can and the air conditioner was a lozenge shaped zone of scintillating color. Force Fields. It’s an Alien from Star Trek.

  He stepped back inside, closed the door and leaned against it.

  The subliminal whisper in his mind that was the link to Malory was still silent. The Vampire wasn’t giving him this hallucination.

  Although a fan of science fiction, an avid viewer of all kinds of fantasy TV, David had considered he had a good grip on “reality” until he’d met Malory.

  Star Trek is not real. Whatever is out there—is real.

  He took a spare blanket from the linen closet and went back outside. In the full dark, the glowing bundle lit the alley. The people in the adjacent house were away at shul, though they’d left the lights on.

  He crept around the garbage can and waded into the ivy.

  Nerving himself up to it, he touched the glowing bundle. His hand jumped back of its own accord and the colors flashed and swirled where he’d touched. But nothing else happened.

  He threw the blanket over the colored light and rolled the limp, flexible thing into the blanket. It didn’t seem very heavy, and wasn’t even as long as he was tall. He heaved it into a fireman’s carry and made for the back door. When part of the blanket touched the mezuzah, the light filtering through the blanket flashed white, then subsided leaving David’s body tingling pleasantly, as his fingers had.

  Whatever this is, it’s not very evil.

  It was heavier than he’d thought. By the time he reached the guest room, his knees were sagging. He dropped the bundle onto the double bed and unrolled it.

  Seen against the dark blanket, the glowing oblong seemed to have some structure, three pairs of calyx-like segments folded up around it, meeting in a zigzag line down the center.

  He wasn’t about to pry the segments apart. It was either an alien from another planet sans starship, or it was supernatural. It had taken a good fall, and it was hurt. He knew what he had to do, but he thought about it very hard first. He really didn’t want to.

  He waited. He raised one hand to the ceiling and waved it suggestively, “Nu?” No response. OK, you win.

  He picked up the phone, dialing from old habit—a habit unused for more than a year. The Vampire’s answering machine said, “Leave a message.”

  “Malory? Pick up would you? This is David, and I’ve got a problem.”

  “Arnaud here. I doubt it’s one I can help you with. I’ve been staying out of your way tonight.”

  The door in his mind trembled but stayed leak-proof. “Thank you. I do appreciate your effort. But I think you need to get over here. I’ve got something to show you—explaining just won’t work.”

  “You’re inviting me into your house?”

  David heard the eyebrow rise to the never-receding hairline.

  “Into my house, yes. Hurry.”

  The pause lengthened. “Half an hour. I’ll bring the car.”

  “Fine, but hurry. Oh, and Mal, just in case it matters, please forgive me for any wrong I’ve done you this year. I sincerely apologize, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make it up to you.”

  There was a long silence. “You are forgiven and you owe me nothing.”

  Forty minutes later, the Vampire rang the bell. Arnaud wore a dark silk suit with a conservative tie against a perfect burgundy shirt with a white collar. His shoes were polished to a fine gloss. He strode into the living room and headed straight for the guest bedroom without even glancing around. He had, after all, seen the place through David’s eyes for a year.

  The alien was still motionless on David’s guest bed, wrapped in glowing swirls of color.

  “Mal....”

  “Arnaud,” Malory corrected, absently as he circled the bed studying the oblong.

  David told him everything, starting with the bird dropping that missed his shoe, the streak of color and working back to the otherworldly experience in the Orthodox Shul. “I’m not Orthodox. I never will be. I don’t know why I went there.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered where you went. It would have happened to you anywhere. I told you, you can’t hide from the Potencies.” Malory reached out and touched
the alien.

  It flashed, and Malory’s hand sizzled and jerked away. Suddenly there was a vaguely human-shaped image sitting up on the bed, shrouded in gossamer color, but definitely there.

  Two amethyst eyes appeared in the head, though the features remained blurred as if by a veil, and two arms with proper joints and hands appeared. The zone of colored-shimmer unfolded and extended behind the being and the knees appeared, though the feet were shrouded in moving mists. The trunk of the body seemed androgynous, the skin a pearly white.

  The eyes swept the room. The suggestion of a wide mouth, high cheekbones, aquiline nose, all in a pale face gave the impression of alarm, perhaps bewilderment—confusion not fear.

  Rubbing his scorched fingers, Malory spoke. “I know you?”

  The being centered on Malory, assessed what he was, and scrambled back to plaster itself to the headboard. Before finishing the move, it relaxed, more of its face showing. “Oh, it’s you!”

  David blurted inanely, “You speak English! Ma…. Arnaud, does every demon in the universe know you?”

  “Of course I speak English, how else could I deliver messages? Where’s the demon, Meshobab?”

  “There’s a demon named Meshobab involved in this?” asked David, alarmed.

  Malory said, “Sometimes they call me Meshobab. David, this Messenger is often called Bozez—or that’s what some people call him because he shines so brightly. He’s not a demon; he’s one of the Messengers your God sends to Earth, usually with good news. Is your message for us?”

  Bozez seemed to take a breath to answer, then froze, inspected the room, peered at David, and frowned. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.” There was panic in Bozez’s voice.

  Malory was so stunned, he forgot to breathe.

  David filled the sudden silence with the most inane remark he had ever uttered. “Well, you took a nasty fall. You’ll remember soon.”

  Malory eyed David, and charitably ignored him as he deliberately took a breath to say, “Other than that, how do you feel?” He stood back, inviting the Messenger to stand.