Slowly the glowing layers of colored gossamer that almost resembled a person hitched to the side of the big bed and stood.
Once unfolded, the being appeared to have wings extending behind it, and the glowing nimbus around it seemed to concentrate over its head.
David finally realized what he was looking at. The prophet Isaiah had described the Seraphim, and David had memorized the passage from a recorded reading by Theodore Bikel. “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple.
“Above it stood the Seraphim: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.
“And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory.”
“You’re a Seraph!” accused David.
“Oh, no nothing so glorious.” Bozez fluttered nervously, but politely aware he was nearly filling the room, was careful not to knock the bedside lamp over. “I’m just a messenger.” He looked worried. “But why am I here?”
Malory described the streak David had seen in the almost-night sky.
“I don’t remember that.”
“What is the last thing you do remember?” asked David.
“I was on my way down Jacob’s Ladder.” The being paced, wrapping his wings tightly about himself again. He muttered in what sounded like several languages. Malory listened intently, and David watched Malory.
Finally, Bozez turned to Malory and said, “Either I slipped on something, or the Ladder broke under me just as the Gate opened. But I don’t see how that could be.
“Is this Enemy action? Is that why you’re here Meshobab?”
“I don’t see how my god could be involved,” answered Malory. “Even my god can’t break the Ladder. But… cause you to slip? The demon Xlrud could do that, I think…”
Bozez considered that. “No, probably not without the Lord’s help…” He whipped around to stare at David. “Where did you say you were at dusk?”
Mouth dry, David just stared. I am not responsible for an Angel falling to Earth! No! I didn’t do this!
Malory repeated what David had told him of the experience during Kol Nidre.
David objected, “But the Gates don’t keep Eastern Daylight Saving’s Time. It’s sundown at different moments in different parts of the world!”
Bozez heaved a sigh. There was no other way to describe the body-language message his not-quite body seemed to project. “I thought you had learned that from Xlrud. Time is a property of the Matter/Energy Interface. It doesn’t exist above the Material plane because—” He broke into a grin that spread from eyes and mouth to infuse his aura with a myriad bright, scintillating sparks until he was a blinding white.
Malory shaded his eyes and retreated toward the door. “I can’t take much of that, you know, Bozez!” To David he added, “See why he’s called Bozez?”
The Angel reined in his brilliance, folding in upon himself again.
“Sorry. But I remember!”
“Your mission?” asked David.
“No, just how Xlrud used you to try to get Meshobab away from The Lord and you foiled him beautifully.” Deflated, he added, “But I’ve no idea what I was supposed to do here.” The Angel sounded even more worried.
“My mother always said,” started David. They turned to look at him politely. “Um, well, when you forget something, you should retrace your steps and you’ll remember.”
“Worth a try,” allowed Malory. “Go on back up and see if you can find where you fell from. Maybe you’ll remember. In any event, you can find out why you fell.”
“I’m sure the Message had something to do with David and Time. You’re probably right. I’ll never remember as long as I’m embedded in Time. The Message may have something to do with why I fell. I’ll be right back.”
The gossamer wings of colored nothing unfolded and filled the room with shimmering blur. David was certain that the other two pair of wings also unfolded and whirred but he was too busy shuddering in awe to observe carefully. The whirring vibration produced by those wings apparently hit a note that resonated with the human nervous system.
Somewhere during this, he felt his body come apart into whirling sparkles, and coalesce again. And so did Bozez. Malory though, was no longer in the room.
“Did it work?” asked David.
“Would I be here if it did?”
“You said you’d be right back.”
“Not that right-back. Meshobab! You can come back now.” Bozez went to the door and opened it, moving out into the corridor.
“Meshobab? I didn’t mean to get so bright, really I’m sorry to distress you…”
They found the vampire in the living room seated in David’s reading chair, unsurprised at Bozez’s failure to climb The Ladder.
“Something is wrong. The Gate is open. The Ladder is still there.”
“Why can’t you climb it?” asked David.
“I don’t know. I can’t get a grip. It’s like there’s a piece missing.”
David said, “You’re probably still stunned from the...impact of landing.” He is not a fallen Angel! “It’ll be better in the morning.”
“I don’t think so,” said Malory. “That God of yours is up to something. Jacob’s Ladder can’t break. It is reality. His Messengers don’t lose their memories. Xlrud might be playing some game here, but it wouldn’t be working without Divine complicity. The Message is in this Situation somewhere. It’s up to us to figure it out. And I think we only have until sundown tomorrow when the Gate closes.”
That was the first sensible thing David had heard all evening. “I didn’t mention,” said David. They turned to him. “The old man—he said that missing the Service to care for the sick was a mitzvah. Do you think Bozez is sick?”
Malory considered the Angel. “No. He can’t die.”
“But he’s in distress...he’s lost, cut off.”
“Scared,” admitted Bozez with an air of shame. “Nothing like this has ever happened before, not that there is any such thing as before where I usually am.”
“So our job is to get him back where he belongs,” said David.
“And we have to do that before the Gate closes.”
“How?” asked Bozez. “You can’t climb.”
“We could summon Xlrud…,” started Malory.
“Oh, no!” objected David. “No way can we control that demon. Besides, summoning, trapping and forcing a demon to do our will doesn’t seem like a very Yom Kippur thing to do.”
“That’s it!” Malory shot to his feet and began to pace. “We’ve been handed a problem and it’s a test. We have to solve the problem within the rules.”
“A game?” asked David, offended. “This is the most solemn holiday of the year!”
“A challenge. A lesson. A test,” said Malory. “And it’s not my god who’s behind it this time. All this is beyond him. I can’t even guess what this is really about.”
David ran his fingers through his hair and shrugged. “Me, neither.” Other than what Malory had taught him, David knew nothing much about magic, and most of the fiction he imbibed wasn’t very educational.
Bozez said, “I think David is right. I think I have to go back up to find out what it’s about. And I can’t.”
“You need a boost,” said David. “We need some kind of magic that can catapult you over the broken rung in the Ladder.”
“The Ladder can’t be broken,” insisted Malory and Bozez in chorus.
“Well, the illusion of it being broken then. From our point of view, for us at this moment in Time, it is broken. Maybe everyone else out there praying up a storm is getting Messengers to bring them Enlightenment, but our Messenger has amnesia. It’s up to us to help the Messenger, not the Messenger to help us. So what kind of magic can boost an Angel into Heaven?”
They exchanged blank looks. Malory, Master of so many Magical Systems he couldn
’t even count them all, just shook his head.
David paced the three steps across the living room and back again. He’d never paid attention in Sunday School. He’d memorized his bar mitzvah portion by rote, and actually had no idea what the words of the Torah actually said. All he knew about Judaism, he’d learned on the ’net over the last few months.
And suddenly he was back in the shul with Yussel’s voice shaping the Silence into pure emotion, the image of the elaborately dressed Torah Scrolls floating in a haze of light, as if the inside of the Aron Kodesh was in another dimension. Over the Aron was inscribed the words sung in every Synagogue when the Torah was taken out to be read. Etz Haim, Hii.
“There’s another way into Heaven!” said David. “There’s Jacob’s Ladder. And there’s the Tree of Life. The Torah is the Tree of Life.”
Bozez blinked skeptically.
Malory said, “They’re really the same thing.”
“But not exactly the same. A real Torah Scroll—not a printed book, but the real hand-written on lambskin, actual Torah—the actual words given to Moses—they have the power, the kind of Magic needed for this.”
“I think he’s got something,” allowed Bozez cautiously. “It would be like climbing a different face of the Mountain. It’s the same Mountain, but the terrain is different. There could be a glacier on one side while the other is clear. But we don’t have a Torah Scroll. I can recite the whole thing from memory but memorized recitation doesn’t penetrate to the Material plane the way the written document would.”
“This night of all nights, every Torah Scroll in existence will be in use,” said Malory. “The custom, as I recall—and I think it’s still practiced — is for the men to learn Torah all night.”
“I’ll bet in Reform Temples they don’t,” said David, not actually sure.
“It wouldn’t work unless the Scroll is perfect,” offered Bozez.
“Magically perfect.”
Malory said, “There’s that shul just down the street that David went to this evening.”
“There’ll surely be people there all night,” said David. The kind of people in that congregation would surely observe such ancient custom—at least some of them would.
“Good,” grinned Malory. “Then we won’t have to break in.”
David envisioned a Vampire, an Angel and a lapsed Jew breaking into an Orthodox shul in the depths of the night on Yom Kippur. Malory could pull it off. He could turn to mist and sift into any building, and he was an expert on alarms. This is insane. But David couldn’t help grinning at the image in his mind.
“I can get us in,” said Malory. “I can make anyone there think we’re members of the congregation. The cabinet where they keep the Torah Scrolls is probably a decorated fireproof bank vault the way it is in most shuls these days. Tonight it’ll be open so we don’t have to crack the safe.”
“I don’t know their customs,” warned David.
“I can blend in,” said Bozez, “at least when I remember not to blaze up too brightly.”
“If we blunder, I’ll be sure no one notices,” assured Malory.
“We’ll just drift in, find a perfect Scroll, and Bozez will be on his way.”
* * * * * * *
Five hours later, David was wondering how he could have thought it would be that simple.
The shul’s front door had been unlocked, and they had just walked in ahead of Malory. But from there on it had gotten complicated.
Malory had winced and trembled at passing the mezuzah on the door, lagging behind them.
David had whispered to Bozez, “He’s been telling me the truth, hasn’t he? That he has eternal life because The Lord God of Abraham, the Creator of the Universe, Blessed him to offset the curse of a pagan god?”
Bozez regarded David meditatively. Then he allowed, “That’s a good enough way to explain it. He’s not Evil; he’s just a victim. Don’t blame the victim for the crimes of the victimizer. In fact, it’s rarely a good idea to blame at all.”
Behind them, Malory mastered his aversion and slid through the portal, hugging the left-hand doorpost, away from the mezuzah.
Then, in the lobby, he stopped, staring intently at the sanctuary.
Over a year ago, during their encounter with Xlrud, Malory had explained that his aversion to Judeo-Christian power was caused by his own god’s curse clashing with the Blessing of the Eternal that he carried. The psychic noise did him no harm, but he suffered miserably—even debilitatingly. Now, he couldn’t keep the effect from leaking through to David’s mind.
“There are six men in the building,” Malory reported from his Vampire senses. “Four in there, and two upstairs. I think six—no seven Torah Scrolls. Four in there, and the rest are upstairs.”
One man emerged from the main Sanctuary on his way to the Men’s Room and greeted them casually. “Nachman is learning upstairs, and the Rabbi is down here. I’ll be right back.”
They decided to join the Rabbi in the Sanctuary. A space had been cleared among the chairs and a long table had been set up. The table was covered in large, leather bound books, gold lettering on the covers, some open, some stacked.
As they came in, the Rabbi and a group of men were on the stage next to the Aron Kodesh, which stood wide open. The Rabbi, a young, energetic, clean-shaven man in shirtsleeves, was holding forth. Every once in a while David recognized an English word.
All the Torah Scrolls in the Aron had been moved to one side, and the back wall of the Aron was open. The light in the Aron dimly illuminated a large space beyond the back wall, almost another room, lined with shelves, stacked with books. There was even a Torah Scroll.
“So,” concluded the Rabbi, “we’ll have to get that latch repaired after Yom Tov. Meanwhile, be very careful not to lean a Scroll against the back of the Aron, it shouldn’t fall open during davening.
“Chaim, remember not to let the time-lock engage after Ma’ariv tomorrow, and I’ll have Irv get at it before Shacharis.”
They carefully closed the back wall and rearranged the Scrolls so they rested against the side walls of the Aron. The one in the center was propped on a stand so it didn’t lean against the back wall, and they closed the Aron, pulling the curtain across the door.
Then the Rabbi turned, saw them and greeted them heartily, inviting them to sit with him at the table. Everyone made room for them. David had no idea what they saw, he just grinned and nodded affably and pretended he knew what he was doing. The Rabbi began lecturing again in a mixture of languages.
Malory said, in a normal tone, “They will see and hear only three members of the congregation sitting here and listening intently even if we move about. And I was right, they didn’t lock the Aron Kodesh, just closed it. Bozez, come see if you can find a Scroll that will work.”
“Wait—he’s missing the point…”
“Bozez, you’re not going to sit here and teach the Rabbi are you?” asked David, unsure why he was appalled at the idea.
“Well, but The Rambam…no, I guess that wouldn’t be a good idea until I find out what my mission is.” He rose to go with Malory.
“M-Arnaud, wouldn’t it have been easier to make us invisible?”
“Not in here with all this noise,” answered Malory. “It’s too hard to concentrate.” Scrolls and even the books produced a discordant, psychic shrieking David could feel despite Malory’s efforts to shield him.
“David, sit there and pretend we’re beside you to keep my illusion going. Give us time to see if there’s a Scroll here we can use.”
Malory and Bozez went to the Aron and opened it. No one noticed. The Angel reached out to touch the Scrolls, and the whole Aron burst into a superheated blaze of white that surrounded Malory and Bozez and started to billow out to fill the room. Nobody at the table noticed. They were involved in an argument ever louder and more intense. It was vehemence more than anger, but it was a real fight.
It had seemed like an eternity before the two closed the Aron and came back to
the table, defeated. Malory collapsed into his chair, and if David hadn’t known better, he’d have said the Vampire was sweating.
Bozez said, “They’re all very good, but none of them is perfect.”
“We’ll have to try upstairs, then. David, do you know where the stairs are?”
“I saw a broad, carpeted stairway in the lobby.”
“Good.” He paused, glaring hard at the men around the table.
“Now they won’t remember we were ever here. Let’s go.”
Following signs, they found the upstairs hall, a large room normally partitioned for children’s classes and opened for larger celebrations. For the High Holy Days, it was rigged out as a second shul with portable lecterns and a small, beautifully draped, Aron Kodesh on a small stage.
At the door, Malory stopped them. “It’s not so bad up here. I think I can get these men to join the ones downstairs. Just a moment.”
By the time he’d finished, and the two men had passed them on their way to join the Rabbi, the Vampire was shaking with the effort. This is worse for him than he’s letting on.
But now they had the large auditorium to themselves. And their luck held. The less ornate, plain wood Aron wasn’t locked. And one of the Scrolls was perfect—or perfect enough to suit Bozez. He blazed up so brilliantly that Malory complained again, retreating, and Bozez apologized profusely.
They took the jangling silver crown off the top spokes of the Torah’s roller bars, pulled the long cover up, unfastened and unwrapped the binding strap, and put the scroll on the Reader’s Desk to unroll it. “There, now see if you can use the words to Ascend,” said David, casting his gaze upward and sending a fervent entreaty to Heaven.
Bozez passed his hand over the words, glancing apologetically at Malory, and then unfurled all his wings and filled the room with light, motion and color. But after a few moments, he shrank and wrapped himself up again. “Almost, but I can’t get into it to climb—if that makes any sense.”
“I have an idea,” said Malory. “You’re going to need to traverse the entire Scroll, from the Beginning Word to the very End. It’s the whole thing—holistically—that is The Tree. The little excerpt you’re looking at now is only a twig—it won’t hold your weight.” He began to move chairs. “Here, let’s make a clear space to unroll the whole thing.”
Through the Moon Gate and Other Tales of Vampirism Page 8
