Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel

by Edward M. Erdelac

  The Rider stared. What was this man’s story? He had to be in league with Lilith, but he seemed so ordinary. And his children…there was some darkness to the boy, but nothing more than the usual adolescent anger and frustration. The girl was an innocent. This man, her father, if he was a play actor, he was a good one. His hands were hard and his skin toughened from real work. He carried no gun, not even a knife. He didn’t strike the Rider as a cruel man by any means, and yet Nehema, a succubus of hell, feared and obeyed him. Play along for now until he tipped his hand? Could it be that he had some alter-ego even he wasn’t aware of? The Rider couldn’t fathom.

  “Not like you think. She did me a favor once, that’s all. I’d heard she’d gotten married. She never seemed like the marrying kind. I’m only here to see that she’s alright.”

  “She is loved, Mister Rider,” said Haddox. “Whether or not she reciprocates, I don’t know, but I assure you I take good care of her. Do you mean to steal her away from me?”

  The Rider was so surprised by the question, he couldn’t help but answer truthfully.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Well,” he said. “I’ll always share my table with an honest man, even an enemy. But you should know if your intent is to take her from me, I will fight you for her.”

  “How did you come to marry her?”

  “She came to town about a year ago. I found her down by the river one night. I was comin’ back from the wreck of my boat with a load of scrap wood. I’ll tell you true, she was a ragged sight. Looked to have been whipped and beat. She told me she’d walked out of the desert, but wouldn’t say where she’d come from. After I took her home and she was well again, she made it plain she had an interest in me. I was skeptical at first. What woman wants a one-legged ex-riverboat captain with two motherless children, much less a woman like that? I thought she was on the run from something, and needed a man’s protection. It got though, so as I didn’t care what the reason was, for I’d come to love her myself. I never thought after my dear Alice died I would find another woman, but I asked her to marry me, and she accepted, though I felt like maybe I had done her wrong in the asking somehow.”

  “What do you mean?” the Rider asked.

  “I don’t know. She accepted readily, like I said, but she acted like she was pained to do so. When I slipped a ring on her finger, she almost flinched away, like from a hot stove. But she was a dutiful bride and has been a fair enough wife. Not exactly loving, but she tends to the chores and cooks, and she’s an even hand with the children.

  Anyway, I told folks in town she was a mail order bride, though they all talk behind their hands that she used to be a whore. I guess I know that too, but she is a beauteous and cruel thing, and I am a fool for her. Fool enough even to fight a killer like you if I have to. My life was lonesome before she came, Rider, and I won’t go back to that lonesomeness if I can help it.”

  The Rider stared. Was this true? Had she fled the ire of her mother and succubus sisters to the arms of this man? But Lucifer had specifically told him she was being punished. Being, in the present tense, and he had directed him to the Lady Pleasant, this man’s boat.

  “She’s here all the time?”

  “In my house? Yes, unless she is with me in town. Why do you ask?”

  “No one comes to see her?”

  “You are her first visitor. My children would’ve told me if there had been others.”

  “Even at night?”

  “She lies beside me,” said Haddox. “What are you on about?”

  “I don’t know,” said the Rider, reaching into his coat pocket. “You seem like an even-tempered man, Haddox.”

  “Age and a lack of industry have calmed me some. Ten years ago I was a hell of a man. Life moves slower along a river with no boats.”

  The Rider took out his spectacle case, and slid the lenses over his nose. Through the blue glass, Haddox stood just the same as he was without them.

  He shrugged and put the glasses away. Haddox watched all this without a word, but his face showed confusion.

  “I can’t tell you my intent yet,” said the Rider. “I don’t know it myself. I believe what you’ve told me. But if I’m wrong, if you’re keeping her against her will, I’ll kill you at your supper table.”

  “Well,” said Haddox, turning toward the house. “Come on into to the house. I believe we’re having chicken.”

  Haddox was right about the chicken. He was right about everything.

  As Nehema and Emory dished out the food, the Rider watched them all interact. They were a normal family, but for the presence of Nehema. She didn’t belong. She was a wild, exotic beauty among plain folk, a tiger among house cats.

  She was not affectionate with them, but she was courteous and attentive. She passed the salt when asked, poured buttermilk for Emory, even asked Robert if he wanted seconds. But she gave them nothing extra. She was cold, and the Rider could sense a certain resentment in her.

  The little girl paid her back in kind. Her only dark streak came out in exchanges with her foster mother. She was glib, and her eyes went from her father to Nemmy and back again, disapproving of every perceivable slight she visited upon the elder Haddox.

  Nehema wasn’t outwardly cruel to the man, but she didn’t love him, that was plain, and she seemed to only just tolerate him, pursing her lips whenever he called her dear, and stiffening if he happened to brush against her in passing the plates.

  The boy, Robert, was another story. His attention was solely on the Rider and Nehema, as if he watched for any indiscretion between them. It was painfully obvious the boy pined for her. The Rider caught him several times stealing a look. She was too attractive and alien a thing to be always around a raging young boy of Robert’s sort, with his sapling arm hairs and cracking voice. He was like a lustful young wolf in a pack where he was not the leader, and the Rider was another challenge to his inappropriate desire.

  They did not say grace, he noted, and when he bowed his head and said a short blessing before the meal, the little girl Emory took a deep interest.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, when he’d finished.

  “A prayer of thanks to the Lord, for the meal,” the Rider explained.

  She looked to her father, and Haddox shrugged.

  “We ain’t prayed much in this house since the river took Alice,” he explained.

  When they had mopped their plates clean with biscuits, and Emory gathered them in a wavering stack to wash, Haddox fell to mundane talk, asking the Rider about San Francisco.

  As they spoke, Nehema watched the Rider, and Robert watched her.

  “Are you really my uncle?” Emory asked then as she took his plate and fork.

  The Rider held Haddox’s, then looked to the girl.

  “Yes, I guess I am.”

  “I knew you didn’t come to buy the yard,” she said. “Robert thought you did, but I had a feeling about you.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Only thing dumber than somebody comin’ to buy this heap of firewood is us keepin’ it,” Robert said around a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

  “Robert,” Nehema scolded.

  “Business has been bad for you?” the Rider asked, though it was plain.

  “No business at all,” said Robert, handing his dish to Emory, who then carried the whole rattling stack outside.

  “The railroad bought out the Colorado Steam Company in ’78,” Haddox said. “That pretty much killed the river traffic. That bridge did the same for the crossing. We get a boat now and then, but a lot of ‘em have switched to coal.”

  “We still ran the Lady Pleasant for a couple years after that, though,” Robert grumbled.

  “Well, we Haddoxes got this thing about not givin’ somethin’ up till its long past time, I guess,” said Haddox, folding his hands under his chin.

  “Ma’d still be alive if we didn’t.”

  “Robert,” Haddox said finally. “Why don’t you help your sister clean the plates
?”

  “That ain’t my job.”

  “Your job is whatever job I give you,” Haddox said.

  “Why ain’t she doin’ it?” he said, gesturing to Nehema. “It’s woman’s work.”

  “It damn sure wasn’t woman’s work all the time you and I done it.”

  “There wasn’t no woman around then.”

  Haddox slammed his palm on the table, making Nehema jump. Did the man beat her? Was he a drunkard? Why on earth did she stay here?

  “Dammit, Robert! That’s enough. Don’t make me treat you like a boy. You’re too old for it.”

  Robert’s face reddened deeply and he pushed back from the table so fast the chair tipped and he had to face the added embarrassment of having to stoop and set it aright before storming out into the dark, his fists balled at his sides.

  Haddox shook his head.

  “I don’t know what’s come over him lately. There’s a devil in him, sure.”

  A quick smile appeared in the corner of Nehema’s ample lips, and she looked slyly sideways at the Rider, but Haddox didn’t notice.

  What did that mean?

  “My first wife Alice, she helped run the Lady Pleasant back then. We’d ship freight mostly, sometimes passengers. Two years ago we got hung up in the rapids below Ogden Landing, and blew the boiler tryin’ to get clear. We lost her, and the boilerman. My leg too,” he added. “We keep the woodyard mostly for…I dunno, kindling now. Though at night the assholes from town come and steal what they want anyhow. I used to keep a dog, but he got bit by a snake and died. Alice and Emory loved that damned mangy mutt.”

  His voice and his look trailed off, then he shrugged.

  “Well, let’s get down to business, here,” Haddox said. “I’ll tell you, my dear,” and he put an arm on Nehema’s chair back. “I know Mister Rider here ain’t no kin to you.”

  The Rider straightened in his chair, expecting anything to happen. He was ready for Mazzamauriello to pop out of the stove, or Lilith’s snaky locks to come smashing through the windows.

  “He tells me you have a past together, though he says it was not the sort I feared. Will you tell me how it is you two know each other, straight up?”

  “I knew him in a mining town called Tip Top,” Nehema said quietly. “He visited a bordello I was working in, and he got into some trouble. I helped him out of it. That’s all.”

  “That’s the story he gave me, more or less,” said Haddox, rubbing his bearded chin.

  “And now,” the Rider said, “tell me. How did you meet and marry?”

  Nehema shrugged.

  “After you left, Rider, it wasn’t long before mother discovered I had helped you.”

  “Your mother?” Haddox interrupted.

  “Yes. But don’t take it on yourself to try and patch things up between us, Harry. You wouldn’t like her. She drove me out. Harry found me on the banks of the Gila River. He was…good to me. He cared for me. When he proposed, I had to say yes.”

  Why the emphasis on good, caring, and had? Was she even now trying to tell him something she didn’t dare say in front of Haddox? Had he told her what to say? How could he get her alone?

  “Then what I want to know is this,” said Haddox. “What do you want, Nemmy?”

  “What do you mean, Harry?” she asked flatly, staring at the table.

  “Only this. I been thinkin’ on it through supper. If you’re carryin’ a torch for this man, then you two can leave. No questions. I won’t have him comin’ betwixt us, alive or dead. You take her, Mister Rider, and you take good care of her.”

  At the last, his lips wrinkled and his voice cracked, as though he were the younger Haddox man suddenly. He quickly drained his coffee and cleared his throat. “But if you love me, you stay with me and the kids. Again, no questions.”

  The Rider blinked. Again, either the man was an accomplished liar or a saint. He looked to Nehema. Had Lucifer lied to him? It was to be expected of course. But to what end? What did the Adversary stand to gain by sending him here?

  They both looked expectantly at Nehema. She folded her hands on the table, the plain gold wedding band prominent on her finger. Her jaw worked behind her unblemished cheeks.

  “You’re my husband, Harry,” she said quietly, not looking at either of them. “My choice was made when I put on this ring.”

  Haddox smiled uncontrollably, pressed the smile behind his lips, failed to contain it, and grinned again. He leaned forward and took her head in his hands and kissed her.

  “Darling, you’ve made me a happy old boatman tonight.”

  Again, she reacted little, except to curl her lip once and go rigid. But Haddox was so happy he didn’t even notice. He turned to the Rider.

  “Well, that leaves you and me, Mister Rider,” he said. “We gonna have it out?”

  “No,” the Rider said, after a bit. “No, I guess not.”

  Haddox grinned even wider and put out his hand, like a big dumb bear.

  The Rider took it, and Haddox pumped it vigorously.

  “Alright,” he said. “Alright.”

  Emory and Robert returned from the river just then, and the boy being the tallest, went to the shelf and put the clean dishes up.

  “You look happy, daddy,” Emory observed, bouncing up to him and leaping into his lap.

  He kissed her ear.

  “I am happy, peanut. I am at that. Hey, let’s have us a sing. How about it?”

  “I know a song,” Emory squealed.

  He hoisted her onto the table.

  “Well sing it,” he laughed.

  Emory stood primly, feet together, and interlocked her hands before her, as though performing for a grand audience. She began to sing, in an off-key voice:

  “’Will you grant me one sweet kiss, dear?’ says the Spider to the Fly,

  ‘If once our lips did meet, a wager I would lay,

  Of ten to one you would not after let them come away.’

  Tis vanity that ever makes repentance come to late,

  And you who into cobwebs run, right well deserve your fate!

  Now all young folks take warning, by this foolish little fly,

  The spider’s name is Pleasure, and to catch you he will try;

  For although you may feel my advice is quite a bore,

  You’ll be lost if you stand parleying outside of Pleasure’s door.

  Remember oh remember the foolish little fly.”

  When she had finished, Emory took hold of the ends of her little dress and did an exaggerated curtsey.

  Haddox clapped, and the Rider followed suit.

  “Ms. Altamont taught us that one,” she informed, as she leapt down off the table. “It’s an English song.” She turned to the Rider. “Ms. Altamont is an Englishwoman. From England. That’s where London Bridge is.”

  “I see,” said the Rider.

  “How about another?” Haddox said. “One more, then off to bed for everybody.”

  Emory groaned.

  “Now I mean it, you gotta get up for school. Hey Nemmy, why’nt you sing that song you always sing when we ride up to town?”

  Emory’s eyes lit up and she looked at Nehema as if for the first time.

  “You sing?”

  “You never heard her, honey? Well that settles it. You gotta now, for Emory.”

  Nehema barely smiled. She bowed her head for a minute, and when she had gathered herself, sang. The Rider knew the song before she even parted her lips.

  Flow, my tears, fall from your springs!

  Exiled for ever, let me mourn;

  Where night’s black bird her sad infamy sings,

  There let me live forlorn.

  Down vain lights, shine you no more!

  No nights are dark enough for those

  That in despair their lost fortunes deplore.

  Light doth but shame disclose.

  Never may my woes be relieved,

  Since pity is fled;

  And tears and sighs and groans my weary days


  Of all joys have deprived.

  From the highest spire of contentment

  My fortune is thrown;

  And fear and grief and pain for my deserts

  Are my hopes, since hope is gone.

  Hark! you shadows that in darkness dwell,

  Learn to condemn light

  Happy, happy they that in hell

  Feel not the world’s despite.

  The Rider heard the pain in the sad words, even through the operatic strains of Nehema’s wondrous voice. The sad ballad seemed to fill the room. It threatened to push the walls out to bursting. Emory laid her head in her father’s lap to listen, and the man stroked his daughter’s hair and stared with adoring eyes at his wife.

  Across the room, by the shelf, still holding a dinner plate in his hand, the scrawny boy stared too, with a bestial hunger in his eyes. He was furtive, and coiled, his knuckles stretched tight over the plate in his hand, so tight the dish cracked in two.

  No one saw but the Rider. Robert put the broken dish on the bottom of the stack. He turned to the window and would not look at her.

  Something was wrong here. How could a succubus deign to love, let alone marry Haddox? The Rider had come here to free Nehema, the object of his secret obsessions, from some unknown tormentors, but he had found her in the hands of what seemed to be a good man. A peaceful man, too. Not the sort Nehema would run to for protection. Why hadn’t she sought the Rider out? He felt a flare of jealousy deep in his chest again. What was she doing here with him? Was she a prisoner or not? How could he ever find out if these people were constantly around? There was no doubt in the Rider’s mind that Haddox had no clue as to his wife’s true nature. Why was she here?

  When the song was finished, the echo of it hovered painfully over the Rider, a call for help only he could hear.

  “Was that an English song?” Emory asked.

  “Yes,” said Nehema. “A very old English song.”

  “How come you don’t ever sing an Arabee song, Nemmy?” she asked. “Ain’t you from Arabee? Ain’t they got songs in Arabee?”

  “You wouldn’t understand the words,” Nehema said.

  “Bed,” Haddox announced.