Seeking Samiel

by Catherine Jordan

  The three pills I had pocketed the other night lay on the sheets next to me. I scooped them up and chewed the bitter tablets open-mouthed.

  After a final sigh, I shuffled over to the window, pulling the drape aside. The overcast outside could've been dawn or dusk.

  I thought about showering, and then changed my mind. Why bother; no soap could clean me.

  The lump on the wall had almost disappeared and the purple stain had faded to a yellowish-brown. I put my hand against the lump, and felt a warm beat underneath. I snatched my hand away and stuffed it inside my pocket. My knuckle bumped up against something and I pulled out the small, square tape. Shit. I had come here to have Eva listen to it. I had wanted her to tell me who those voices belonged to and why they had told her that I was disgusted by Caroline, that I hated her. How did the people on the tape find out that Eva was pregnant?

  A creak from overhead startled me. It moved across the ceiling and I followed it down the hall, stopping at a framed square where the ceiling sagged. "Well, that's new," I said. The main staircase was below me; the front door within view. The ceiling creaked again, followed by a rattle, like it was ready to come crashing down.

  "It's the attic," Eva said, from behind. I jumped, teetering on the top of the landing, steps directly under my heel. Both hands reached out and I caught the banister. "Careful," she said. A squirt of urine stained my trousers. "Fuck. I almost fell down those steps." If only my bladder wasn't so full all the time. If only I wasn't so thirsty. I moved away from the steps, out from under the sag in the ceiling.

  She wore that same white dress.

  The woman in white.

  It had been months since I had any reason to smile, and no one was going to get their laughs at my expense. So what if I had pissed myself. Not like she washed her laundry, always in that same dress.

  Always.

  Her bruise had faded to the same yellow-brown as the wall. Eva reached above, dress stretching tight against her bulge as she pried at the frame. "How far along are you?" I asked.

  "Four months," she said. Her flowy dresses had hid the pregnancy well.

  She pulled on a long rope I had never seen before, and with a yank, steps unfolded down to the floor. The humidity that had been trapped up inside the attic hit me in the face.

  Her bare feet skipped steps, each flimsy board squealing with pain. I didn't follow up into that black space until a soft light burst to life overhead.

  Reaching the top--damn it was hot, and my sweaty hands squeezed the handrails securely--I blinked at the illuminated walls. The light came from somewhere, and I searched overhead for the source. Eva had her back to me, gazing into a portrait, her body blocking my view.

  Various photos, portraits, and paintings crowded the walls. Some stood over thirty centimeters and I could only guess at their weight. They hung haphazardly, tilting on rusted nails. Because of the humidity, rusty water drippings ran in thin lines from the nail holes to the floor. I touched the wet drippings and smeared my fingers together.

  Despite the dampness in the attic, the paintings all appeared well preserved. Details came to life in each painting as I stepped closer, such as the stitching in the clothing, freckles and blemishes on the skin, veins and pores on the nose, and the flecks of gold in the green eyes.

  A thin brunette woman stood in a profile, her back arched. Below the matting within the frame gleamed a bronze plaque etched with two names: Lamia, Anna van der Hous.

  Next, a plumper, blonder portrait of the same woman but in a different pose with shrunken shoulders. And another set of names: Lamia, Gerta van der Hous. I looked again at the other portrait, my eyes going back and forth between the two.

  "Are they mother and daughter?" I asked.

  "Yes," she said. "Those are my ancestors."

  "Which one is your mother?" I asked. None of the portraits were dated. "Where is Ehvleen?"

  "There," Eva said, pointing to a portrait right behind me. She looked exactly like Eva. I tuned back to the other two portraits. Then I looked to the next, and the next. The eyes were all the same, but the weight and the hair colour varied; every woman was a slightly different twin.

  The portrait of an Egyptian pharaoh caught my attention. Female attributes--the makeup around the eyes, the full lips, the breasts--were familiar. Then I looked to the nameplate. King Hatshepsut. Hatshepsut, I remembered from my history, was an Egyptian queen who had named herself pharaoh.

  You know her. From your vision the night of Eva's party. It really happened.

  My heart quickened; this Hatshepsut was the same woman whose green eyes I had looked into whilst entranced. It was also the same woman in white, from my dream on the couch, who annihilated an entire army when she stepped into their midst. But I knew this woman, really knew her.

  The frame dropped a couple centimeters from its position. My heart almost jumped out of my chest. I ambled up behind Eva to view another portrait of a woman identical to the woman standing next to me.

  A docile, sleepy expression covered her beautiful face, blond hair wrapped in a severe chignon on top of her head. Green eyes stared back at me. I dropped my gaze to the nameplate underneath.

  Lamia, Eva van Hollinsworth.

  Eva stepped over to another picture, one on an easel draped in a black silky cloth, which dropped to the floor with a swish. Staring into the face of a nude, life-sized, tall woman, and I caught my breath--it was the redhead who had been expelled from the Garden.

  Lamia.

  The portrait featured a serene woman gazing up into the heavens, her arms spread above her head as if ready to catch whatever was falling. Overflowing red hair hung down to her hips and her toes grasped the smooth boulder upon which she stood. Wild flora grew from her fingers towards the illuminated sky.

  Nature's greens and browns surrounded her along with the more vibrant red, yellow, and orange hues of ancient animals I hadn't seen in any National Geographic. The creatures lay at her with their eyes following her gaze. The sky wasn't coloured by a painter's brush; it shined as if lit from behind. I raised my arm in front of the picture, and that light hit my hands. The light faded as a cloud floated into the scene. I was learning how to deal with such illusions--just stare at them and blink tightly. Then they'd be gone. If not after the first blink, then after the second. Sometimes it took a third.

  They are not illusions.

  "She's Lamia." Eva's voice was low and heavy. "First wife of Adam."

  The picture's light streamed down, spotlighting the floor at my feet. My eyes fixated on the slight movement from inside the frame. Could be real, could be pills working their magik.

  Real.

  Blink, blink. Blink. Scalp hairs pricked to life. A presence accompanied us and I scanned the floors, walls, and the sharp angled ceiling that followed the roofline. I had always had the sensation that I was never truly alone with Eva, like a constant companion lurked within our company, watching.

  I ducked when her arm swung out, throwing the black silky cloth. It fell from her hand like a parachute and clung to the frame, shrouding the painting in secrecy.

  Down the steps, hands trembling on the rails, I hopped to the floor. With a flick of her wrist, the steps flew up into the ceiling.

  I tried not to focus on my hands, the hands that I no longer controlled. They belonged to me, were attached to my arms, yet when I gave them orders to stop, they stubbornly refused to obey.

  The more I focused on the tremour, the more they shook. I opened my fists. Red stained my forefinger. The wet walls. Couldn't be blood. Had to be rust.

  It is blood. The wall bleeds from the nail holes.

  "What?" I asked.

  "I asked what's in your hand," Eva said.

  50--EVA

  Eva's blood was on his hand.

  Blood from her head. Those portraits were her memories and the attic was filled with them. He had put his finger to her blood dripping on the walls. The humidity kept the old drippings sticky and wet. Jeffrey did not know, nor woul
d he ever, the agonizing chore in hanging those frames. Eva cried, as did the house, over each pound of the hammer, over each nail puncture. Her beating heart sounded off from the corners of the walls as her hand raised the rubber mallet, driving the nail into her skull.

  She hung her paintings with care knowing the wounds would heal and the holes would eventually close, locking the nail into its puckered scar. "Pierced," she said as blood trickled down the walls and down her scalp, leaving a red trail to the floor.

  It nearly killed Eva that Jeffrey didn't recognize her. He only thought he did. She would know him anywhere. Jeffrey's genes weren't the only things she had searched the world for. She searched for him.

  Samiel's spirit roamed the world like a seed. It planted itself in various persons, trying to find its way back to her. Sometimes they found each other. The last time she had been with him was in Egypt, as Sennemut. Then, he recognized her, too. Thutmose's soldiers had ripped him from her arms in the middle of the night and she'd had no choice but to escape without him. Had she stayed they would have both been killed. By that time, she was already pregnant.

  As a human, she loved Samiel more than her life. As a demon, she fed on his powerful spiritual regeneration. They needed each other.

  The whole purpose of bringing Jeffrey to the attic was to awaken his memory. The same when she had brought him into her garden. But the fool was in denial. Perhaps the drugs were interfering. The man was stubborn, refusing to catch what she threw at him. Mr. Granger was no help, either. Granger's agenda had wandered from the path once before. It wanted to be like her. It wanted to be the one who brought humanity to its knees. But YHWH had already ordained her. Granger could want, but it wasn't going to get.

  There was no doubt in her mind that Jeffrey was her Samiel. Samiel had planted himself inside him and had brought him to her. She needed to clean out her DNA with his, to wipe the cancer gene from her body so she could live a life forever, to not have the inconvenience of starting over as a child. The demons didn't know what Jeffrey meant to her, and wouldn't understand. Like her, Samiel hadn't always been a demon. She had been a human and Samiel had been a serpent. Now she was a combination of both; both of them were condemned as devils.

  She would not let Jeffrey go. Nothing was going to get in her way. Not Caroline, not Lindsey, not even Granger.

  51--JEFFREY

  She wanted to know what was in my hand. I opened my palm again, displaying a micro cassette. I must have blacked out, because I was in the foyer. Fucking pills. If it wasn't for my damn jaw. My father. This was all his fault.

  Water. If someone would please get me a fucking drink of water. I licked my flaking lips and fumbled with the tape. My eyes lowered to my hands. The red stain should be washed. Instead, I licked it, tasting iron. A throb started in my chest, moved to my throat, and up inside my temples. It wasn't painful. In fact, it was a pleasurable sensation that flowed back down and settled like butterflies in my stomach.

  "I wanted you to listen to this," I said. "It was in Caroline's room. She said she was hearing voices, and I want you to tell me whose they are."

  "I don't have a cassette player," she said. "Who made the tape?" she asked, taking it.

  "Caroline. She was trying to prove to us that she wasn't crazy."

  "Us?" Eva asked.

  "Her mother, doctors." I coughed.

  "What are you doing here, Jeffrey? Do you really think I can help you and your girlfriend, or are you here for us--you and I?"

  The memory of Eva and me in bed together, Eva saying how much she needed me, that she could not go on without me. There had been more than just an exchange of words. She had pleaded, revealing more than desperation.

  Love. She has searched a long time for you. This baby is Lamia--she will be reborn as herself. You are fathering Eva. Ehvleen, Anna, Gerta . . .

  The voice in my head would not shut the fuck up. "What do you want from me?" I demanded. "What am I supposed to say? Do you want a family? Fine. This baby will have family."

  She doesn't want relatives.

  "This child," she spat, pounding her closed fist against her chest, "is a gift I'm offering you. Think about what I'm saying. This is a child, one whom you will name. You can move into my house. You can tap into social networks that you could never reach before."

  Her thoughts poked around in my head. A tickle of lust surfaced from my groin and my tongue itched to scream, "It's me. I'm him."

  You are him.

  Maybe I am this Samiel. Maybe I'm the devil. No, if I were, I wouldn't need her to fix my problems. I could snap my finger and my problems would be solved, including the one inside her belly. Including these damn headaches for which there is no medicine on the Goddamn forsaken continent that will make them go the fuck away. "I don't love you," I said.

  "The government has extradition orders for your father," she said, unshaken by what I had said. "They'll find him and bring him back here. They've searched your office and your flat. You'll be disbarred. Caroline will continue to waste away. Lindsey will hate you for abandoning her. So what will you have left?"

  She was right. Of course. I had a sudden, clear glimpse of my future--broken and decrepit, wandering through the Shanties. Another glimpse followed--wearing an expensive suit, smiling behind the wheel of my new 2000 Maybach. I was flying on Eva's magik carpet, higher than I'd ever been, and I looked down, wanting more.

  "One phone call," she said. "I can have Edward's name put on your books as a silent partner, as if he worked there. He has a law degree. And," she said, cocking her eyebrows, "he has inviolability from search and seizure."

  "His citizenship."

  Eva nodded. "Comes in handy. Your father will also be safe. You can be reunited. He can walk back into this country tomorrow as if nothing happened, set up business, and start anew."

  "Must be some big people who owe you big favours," I said.

  "You could say that."

  Her offer came with too many unknowns. Such as Edward. He had declined in his later years from a socially respected man to a performing circus monkey. And he was missing.

  "You couldn't possibly begin to appreciate what is at stake here," Eva said, closing in on me. "There is a term I think you are familiar with as an attorney, when both sides are sure to lose and the outcome would be ruinous--Assured Mutual Destruction. Without me, you're ruined. Without you, my cancer continues. Why do you think that is, Jeffrey?" She took a deep breath. "Well, I'll tell you once again."

  Yes, again. She has told you all this before.

  "You see, only I have the power to stop what's happening to you. Only you have what I need running through your veins. Genetic perfection."

  Chest-to-nose with me, she said, "A long time ago, I married someone with a flaw. I didn't see it, couldn't smell it. I had relied too heavily on another to do my research."

  Granger.

  "And, well, that was a mistake. So, now, I have this flaw and you will help me get it out of my body. I should be perfect, not this monster. Look at me. Do you see perfection?"

  She was as beautiful to me as she was the first day I had met her. Her skin gleamed. Her eyes, though angry, twinkled, and her red lips were filled with seduction. But I didn't love her. "You're already pregnant," I said. "You don't need me anymore."

  "I'll need you again. Some stains need more than one washing. I'm making you uncomfortable, but it's necessary. Everything intentional and everything for a reason. We've known of your perfection and have been walking behind you since you were born."

  A cold revelation. I slinked towards the door. "I've heard enough. I need to go."

  "Go where?" Eva asked. "Choose me as I choose you. Don't shake your head. You have a choice. I never forced you. I may have coerced you a little, lied a little, told you things I knew you'd want to hear, but I didn't force you. I'll die without you. Jeffrey."

  52--EVA

  Eva stuck the cassette in her mouth and swallowed. It caught in her throat, and she swallowed again, her str
ong throat muscles pushing it along the path towards her stomach. Eva would let Jeffrey go, for now. She didn't want to see his emotions so powerfully on display, scared and confused as he was. No point, she told herself, since she couldn't empathize with him. His blubbering was simply a waste of his time.

  She had offered him a valid and honest solution. So, she wondered, why couldn't he take it and make life easier for himself? Was he really that worried about Caroline? Eva didn't think so, but couldn't be sure. He had a consuming fear of loneliness, of unfulfilled desires. Jeffrey couldn't put those words to his fears, but Eva had planted them in him a long time ago through his mother. No one with a suicide victim in their family wanted to believe in Hell. Or retribution, or unforgivable sins. If Jeffrey had reasoned to himself that YHWH existed then he believed that YHWH brought his mother to her heavenly reward, offering solace to a life lived in misery, and that her life on earth had been Hell enough.

  If only Eva could read his thoughts. She put thoughts in his head, responding to what she was almost sure he was thinking based on his expressions, but almost wasn't good enough. She'd been wrong in the past. "I'll die without you," she had said, believing that would ignite an unavoidable obligation to her and their child. But that wasn't exactly what she had meant. She was being more literal when she said that to Jeffrey. She would die, over and over again until this dominant gene was made recessive.

  She had little doubt that Jeffrey would come back to her. Eva understood her power, and most especially, the power of money. What it bought. What it attracted. Once accustomed to it, how sickening the thought was of not having enough. Over the past few months, he had a taste of what his life would be like without it. He was terrified.

  If needed, she could prolong the terror. Even increase it. Then, he'd be back, begging.

  Eva would wait, but not patiently. She had waited more than a lifetime for him already.