by Adiva Geffen
I stopped at the doorstep, dazzled by the brilliant light. Despite the early morning hour, the hall was full to the brim with people. Dozens were sitting, holding booklets, and singing quietly with their eyes closed and their bodies swaying. A humongous woman was standing on a wooden stage at the other end of the hall. I recognized Deborah from the Jasmine at the Carmel, where she had arrived to spin the web in which I was now trapped. Her enormous body was wrapped in white cloth. A huge diamond dangled from a gold chain around her neck. She stood there, erect, eyes closed, arms outspread, as if she were about to take flight. A giant banner hung above her: Consciousness is energy, energy is consciousness, and all consciousnesses are aspects of a single, infinite consciousness.
Deliveries yanked me after him and led me to a bench not far from the stage. A young woman with dark hair cleared some room for me and put a booklet in my hand.
“What’s this?”
“Read.”
I read. The most idiotic collection of drivel I have ever laid eyes on.
… and the Prophetess spoke and said: The war of Armageddon will precede the coming of the Savior. She and no other is the chosen one. She has been given the task of rescuing human consciousness from its material prison and allowing it to be expressed through a series of “slight” bodies that dictate its experience. Love all the children of light, and strike at the children of darkness…
And that was only the introduction to the “Lore of Deborah.” My neighbor held the booklet close to her forehead, as if willing all that so-called knowledge to seep into her brain by osmosis. Next, a group of teenage girls walked up on stage and stood in two rows, chanting unintelligibly. The singing continued for a few minutes, then there was dead silence. Everyone turned their eyes to Deborah, who continued to stand at the center of the stage, completely self-absorbed, removed from everything that was happening around her.
“What is she doing?” I asked.
“She is receiving her energy. Listen,” my neighbor explained in a whisper.
Among the crowd of men and women of various ages, I recognized a few of the young women I had met in the preschool or when visiting the Magidal’s home and the hotel — Amia, Moria, Vardia, and, of course, Tsofia. I didn’t see any other familiar faces.
The mighty blast of a shofar filled the room. At the sound of the horn everyone raised their hands.
I got up. Deliveries angrily moved in on me.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he snarled.
“Where’s Sammy?”
“We’ll get to that,” he said and placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Now sit down and listen.”
I sat down. Eve was up on the stage now. Like Deborah, she was wrapped in white cloth and looked like a snowy mountain. She stood next to Deborah, then kneeled before her until her face touched the floor, and her lips kissed Deborah’s bare feet.
Deborah leaned toward her and helped her up, then Eve kissed the giant diamond pendant. A murmur susurrated through the crowd.
“Brothers and sisters,” Eve called to the crowd, “daughters of Deborah, rise and listen to the words of The Great Mother, and all the people of this land shall know that we are the Chosen Ones.”
The crowd rose to its feet.
Deborah crossed her hands, opened her eyes, and stared into the air, as if floating in another world. Then she began to speak. She started in a whisper, but gradually her voice rose to fill the hall.
“Today I shall bring you some of the words the prophets dictated to us while we floated beyond the galaxy in a journey toward the great light.” She spoke with great pathos, as if she were one of the Borgia popes reborn. “We will talk about light and darkness, about the perpetual war between light and darkness, about the choice we had to make to become the sons and daughters of light. This world is built on suffering, death, absence, need, and emptiness. A human being’s life is a dance of fools. They live in a constant, painful effort to preserve a physical existence, which is useless in itself. They work to eat, they eat to work. They suffer!
“One must distinguish between the children of light and the children of darkness. The children of darkness are automatons — those who are happy here, those who are pleased with this world. Such consciousnesses are essentially empty, they can be programmed by external elements. They have no awareness of the divine reality. They have no longing for what we have all lost. As far as they are concerned, the foolish cycle of human existence is satisfying. They can see nothing above and beyond that. But the children of light — they have been chosen to bring the light, to bring redemption to a world about to be covered by darkness.
“This world is not the original creation of the God of truth, the God of light. This world is the creation of the god of darkness, the children of light are its captives. Only the chosen ones can liberate them by bringing about the annihilation of the world ruled by the forces of darkness — this world.
“The coming of the Messiah is the Apocalypse. It is ‘the end of days,’ as the prophet said: ‘It is a day of darkness, not a day of light’ to the children of darkness who will be annihilated. We are the chosen ones, the children of light who will remain on this earth when the war to end all wars will be upon us, the day of judgment — Armageddon.”
She raised up her hands and shouted, “Solar eclipse, solar eclipse,” and the members of the crowd began to beat their own bodies and echo her cry, “Solar eclipse, solar eclipse.”
The blast of the shofar sounded again. Bluish smoke began to drift through the room, and a sharp smell of incense filled my nose. Deborah continued with her prophecies.
“When I was taken to the split planet, I received the following secret instructions: ‘Because you have been chosen to lead the flock of saints… ao kiro mano manoi makoni tahory alvi manu bi…’” she began to chant in a strange language.
And the crowd echoed her again. “Manu bi, manu bi, manu bi.”
This gibberish chanting lasted for long minutes, until Deborah let loose a mighty scream, and her body began to twitch and writhe as if she were possessed by a demon. “Here I am,” she cried. “I take it upon myself to lead your sons and daughters to redemption.”
That moment, her body began to jerk violently, as if she were suffering a perfectly timed and orchestrated epileptic seizure. Then she collapsed on the stage like a drunk elephant. A deathly silence lay upon the hall, the only sounds were those of Deborah’s flailing limbs. Eve approached the thrashing body, kissed the hem of the huge robe and lay beside her.
My stomach was hurting from the effort of repressing the laughter threatening to escape and bring about my doom. I looked down at the floor, trying to ignore the comic scene unfolding on the stage, but I just couldn’t. Strange, I thought, why are they showing me this ceremony? Did they want to intimidate me? Make me respect them? Perhaps it was just their way of trying to have one more idiot join their cult? I didn’t think they were about to chop off my head. The Queen of Hearts, The Great Mother, was too smart to get directly involved with murder.
A few more minutes passed. The squirming and twitching ceased. Twelve young women went up on the stage, wearing light blue outfits, white cloth belts around their waists, and tall candles in their hands.
“The ceremony of the death of the soul,” a voice sounded from the back of the hall.
Without warning, the room went dark. Sounds of crying emerged everywhere, as if the people had been struck by a terrible fear. Dr. Barak Magidal went up on the stage. He was as handsome as the website photos. He was followed by two men who supported a young woman wearing a black garment. Her face was ashen, and her hair was smeared with mud.
“Cleanse the darkness from within us,” Barak whispered, and the group of women lifted their candles. Barak raised his hands, and a candle was thrown to the stage. He stepped on it and extinguished its flame. The young woman trembled as her lips moved in silent prayer. A sec
ond candle was thrown and extinguished under Barak’s sole, then a third and a fourth, until all the candles had been put out.
The young woman went limp in her captor’s arms, as if her life had been extinguished along with the light of the candles. Her heartrending bout of sobbing gradually turned to screams of terror. Then Barak pulled a larger candle that remained burning at the side of the stage and snuffed it out with his hands. The young woman howled sharply and collapsed on stage.
The lights in the hall came back on. No one spoke. Everyone stared at the young woman, who continued to lie on the stage. Only the slight twitching of her legs told me she hadn’t died.
Four men hurried to Deborah and helped her up.
She sat on an oversized chair at the center of the stage. Her eyes were closed, and she continued to mutter more gibberish words and phrases. The people rose to their feet and rushed to the stage. One by one they went up and kissed Deborah’s feet, while The Prophetess continued to sit and prattle, as if her soul were still roaming the surface of other planets. The girls wearing the light blue outfits collected the booklets from the people.
Two men went to the pale woman in black, who was helplessly sprawled on the stage and carried her away.
I knew who she was.
Galia. They had gotten to her before I could.
39
There was a booth next to the hall’s main door. There were stacks of books bearing Deborah’s name. The young woman wearing light blue who stood next to it handed me three. One had the title Black Sun — A World at War, another was Living in the Light, and the third, Let There Be Light — Thoughts About the War of the Children of Light.
I set the books back on the stand, and the young woman gave me a gracious smile. “Aren’t you going to buy them?”
“I have no money on me.”
“That’s all right,” she said, packed the three Deborah Magidal masterworks in a brown paper bag, and held it out to me. I did my best to ignore it.
“Are you coming to the gathering tonight?” She pointed at a whiteboard indicating that the next gathering would take place at 9:00 pm.
“What happens then?”
“The Great Mother told us that this is the Day of Liberation, nine o’clock sharp.”
“Of course I’ll be there,” I affirmed.
She slid another book from the pile into the bag and handed it to me. “Pay me later,” she said and turned to the next person in line.
A few minutes later, only Deliveries and I remained in the hall. The sickeningly sweet incense smoke still billowed in the air.
“You wanted to connect with Sammy,” Deliveries growled. “Let’s go.”
We climbed to the third floor together, stopping at the end of the corridor. “In the afternoon, after the daycare center closes, The Prophetess wants to meet you. And Dikla, let me remind you, no fooling around.”
“We have a deal. You keep your end of it, I’ll keep mine,” I said.
He gave me one of his hellish smiles and opened a door. It wasn’t Sammy sitting there, but the world-famous pseudoscience expert, Dr. Barak Magidal.
The room was bare of ornamentation. Other than some chairs, the only piece of furniture was a long, narrow cabinet whose shelves held vials full of white liquid, a pair of scales, and lots of books, a few of which I had already seen. A camera was installed in the corner of the room. Was it there to frighten people? To document their actions?
I remained standing, wondering what this was all about. I didn’t want to act too clever, so as not to lose the certain advantage I had over them. I still had a bargaining chip.
“Hello, Dikla,” the doctor said warmly. “Or perhaps you prefer to be called Lioness?”
Damn. “You can call me whatever you want.”
“Good. We believe that a person must choose a new name for herself, the name she should have had, not the one her first parents forced on her.” He flashed a winning smile and smoothed his graying mane. The man did have charisma. “Talk, Lioness, I hear you.”
“What exactly do you want me to talk about?”
“I understand we have a small matter that needs to be resolved. Then I’ll be able to answer all your questions.”
“The matter that matters?”
“The only matter that matters.” He smiled. “Could you please explain to me where the property Daria stole from us is hidden?”
I thought about Cooper’s last words before he disappeared. “In one of the preschool classes,” I said quickly.
“The preschool?” He chuckled. “Do you expect me to believe she ran away and just left everything behind? That’s not like Daria.”
I sat in front of him. “In the Magidal Preschool, right here in Yokneam. She knew you’d never look there. You can go there; all she wanted was to take off and leave an insurance policy behind.”
“In that case, why did she reach out to Ehud Gal, the journalist?”
“That’s what made you so nervous?” I said in a friendly, steady voice. “I wish I’d met you before, I could have eased your concerns. Ehud Gal is Avital’s brother, as you know.”
“Go on.”
“He is her brother, that’s it. There’s nothing to add. He just happens to be a journalist. Daria must have reached out to him because he was her best friend’s relative. Now you can go to the preschool and get what you want.” I rose and started to leave the room.
“Just a minute. Did she tell you where exactly in the preschool?”
“Search for yourself.”
“Where exactly?” he insisted. “Did she bury it somewhere?”
“Dr. Barak,” I said, “I did learn something from you. Our world has a lot of evil, and we have no choice but to defend and protect ourselves.”
“Certainly. But what does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything. I need guarantees that after you get what you want, you’ll let me walk away.”
“Of course. I’m a spiritual man, I keep my word.”
“So do I. You take me to the preschool, I give you what you want, then Sammy and I say goodbye, and catch a ride back home.”
He wrinkled his forehead, then asked me to wait, and left the room. I remained seated, aware of the camera recording my every movement.
He was back five minutes later. “All right. We’ll leave at five thirty, after the children leave the preschool complex.”
“Deal.” I rose to my feet and ceremoniously shook the doctor’s hand. Then the door opened and Deliveries stuck his head inside.
“Take her to see her friend,” the doctor instructed his limping errand boy. Suddenly they were being generous. Maybe they were hoping that seeing Sammy would make me confess to something else.
I went with Deliveries to another room down the corridor. Inside, in complete stoic tranquility, sat Sammy. She had a big smile on her face.
“Hi, sweetheart. I think you should stay clear of any mirrors just now.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because seeing yourself in that white robe would wipe that smile right off your face.”
“Very funny.” She chuckled oddly then turned to the nervous-looking Deliveries. “What happens next?”
“Your friend suddenly remembered where the stolen documents are. We take a little walk with her, she shows us where they are, then everyone’s happy.”
“Good,” said Sammy peacefully. “I told you the girl is sensible and would understand she shouldn’t try anything foolish with us.”
Had she just said “with us”?
“I have an agreement with Dr. Magidal,” I told her. “A few hours from now, everything will be over, and we’ll be able to go back home.”
“You go. I’ve found my new home right here.”
Deliveries gave me a stupid smile, delighted by Sammy’s announcement.
Did Sa
mmy have some sort of brilliant plan, or had she…? No, I calmed myself, not Sammy. Never.
“Sammy, tell me that you didn’t…?” I whispered to her.
“Now I need to rest,” Sammy said harshly.
“Whatever you want,” I said, still wondering if everyone, including Sammy, had lost their minds. Perhaps it was just me. All the pieces of the puzzle scattered around me out of reach. I had lost all my allies over the course of a single messed-up night. It was too much.
“I want to get out of here,” I told Deliveries.
He didn’t answer, he just opened the door and let a young woman wearing a light blue robe inside. “This is Naria. She will take you to your room. You should rest.”
I didn’t dare look at Sammy.
Naria smiled at me and went over to Sammy. “The Great Mother sends her regards,” she said. “She told me she will meet you soon.”
Sammy nodded dismissively.
When I was already at the door, Sammy called after me. “Your mother is feeling much better,” she said.
Those words were like fine Irish whiskey. That was what I’d been waiting for. My mother had passed away when I was eight. Sammy knew that very well. She hadn’t joined the circus.
“Thanks,” I told her. “What did they say to her?”
“That she doesn’t need the operation. They’re discharging her.”
“Do you know when?”
“Soon,” she said. “She asked me to tell you not to worry.”
“Thanks,” I said, “you know how anxious I was.”
Naria led me to a room at the other end of the corridor. It had a simple wooden bed, a sink, a small table with a brass bell on it, a credenza, and a braided rug. A poster adertizing one of the Jasmine at the Carmel conventions was hanging on the wall.
“I brought you some breakfast,” she said. “Fresh juice and vegetables. Eat.”
She moved about the room, checking, organizing, then asked if I needed anything else.
