Her expression fell slightly, and she stared at him.
“So wait, what are you saying here?”
“Do you trust me?”
She looked at him sideways, smiling nervously, placating.
“Do I trust you? We don’t even know each other’s real names.”
“Does Johnny?”
It was a terrible thing to say, and he had said it almost without thinking. Why? She put the amulet down on the bar.
There was a commotion by the door as four sweaty, parched looking men tromped in and stood at the end of the bar.
“Sadie, I’m sorry…,” The Rider began.
“My name’s not Sadie,” she said. “And I’ve got customers.”
He watched her for a while, as if he were down in a dark and lowly place and she were elevated. She smiled, and the men seemed to reflect her smile as best they could with their missing and rotten teeth. They drank. They drank to her. They drank with her. They slapped her on the behind when she turned around and she laughed when they laughed. It was as if he were a ghost. She never looked back at him.
He finished the other two amulets quietly, gathered up his tools and his pistol and coat, and slipped out unnoticed, brushing shoulders with more dirty men coming in as he went out into the street.
Had he been able to convince Sadie of his belief, it might have saved him trouble. That would have been a task in and of itself. Now he had to find a way to convince these three women in town, two of them married Christians and the third a prostitute, to accept and put these Hebrew charms about their infants’ necks. The amulets would protect them, and the employment of these bodyguards against Lilith would cause the demon mother to show herself, to try and stop his interference.
He thought back to the vivid dream he had had the previous night. It was possible she was already aware of him. There was more to Lilith’s story he had not told Sadie. Lilith had had a daughter by Samael, the angel of death. She was called Nehema, the first of the lilin, the night spirits, or succubi. Nehema had then born her father three more daughters. These were the Queens of Hell, the so-called angels of prostitution. They were demonesses possessed of human form, capable of traversing the earth, the Yenne Velt, and the lower world. They visited mortal men in their dreams, weaving erotic, vivid tapestries so sensuous and real as to stimulate the physical body in repose. The seed of man contained the proto-essence of human souls, and its scattering in the physical realm outside of a woman’s body allowed a succubus to gather this primordial matter into her own demonic womb, and in this way beget more evil spirits, or ruhin.
The Rider had suspected the presence of Lilith herself long before that dream; he had guessed it at the sight of Rica Gersten’s aborted fetus.
Rab Judah had written of the prophet Samuel saying that an aborted infant, unclean by reason of its birth, could bear the likeness of Lilith.
Rica Gersten had aborted a child conceived out of wedlock in the presence of Lilith, resulting in her imprint on the unformed child.
There could be no doubt. Lilith, and perhaps her daughters, were in Tip Top. The dead infants attested to it, and the deformed aspect of the aborted child confirmed it.
He wondered if the other men in town had experienced the same vivid dreams. Maybe it was the reason he had been drawn to Tip Top in the first place. Maybe it wasn’t his own weakness that had brought him here. Perhaps it had been Providence, some perception of the infernal too subtle for him to notice outright. Perhaps Tip Top was a crucible to test his baser instincts, to make him face his most basic temptations.
More probably, he was just fooling himself.
Sadie had said the colored girl at The Bird Nest may have already had her child, so her need was the most urgent.
Finding the place wasn’t difficult. The first man he stopped on the street gave him directions, smiling the whole time.
“Enjoy yourself, buster,” the man said with a wink. “Finest damned women I’ve seen since crossin’ the Picket Wire. Damn near any flavor you’d like, and they’ll do damn near anything you want. I’ll tell you, you ask for Aggie if you want somethin’ real special.”
The Rider took the man’s directions and wound up at a large stone single story house on the edge of town, well kept, with its own porch and timber awning. Red Chinese paper lanterns hung from the eaves, and there were fanciful rosettes carved into the wood shutters, and on the board sign above the door, which read ‘The Bird Nest’ and had a painting of one of the nightjars from the cemetery in flight on it.
As luck would have it, a black woman in a red striped dress and a blue kerchief tied about her head was sweeping the porch.
The Rider walked up and cleared his throat, indicating the sign.
“That’s a nightjar on the sign isn’t it?”
She seemed to recoil slightly, hunching her shoulders at the sound of his voice, and wheeling on him.
He held up his hands and stopped where he was.
“Please, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Thas’ awright, sir,” she muttered, looking away. “They help you inside.”
“Actually, I’m looking for you. At least, I think I am. You just had a baby didn’t you?”
The woman looked at him sharply, all trace of fear gone.
“What you know about it?”
“Sadie told me. Over at the No. 2.”
“So what?” she snapped, and her voice was louder. “Mr. Junior!” she called over her shoulder at the house, not taking her wary eyes off The Rider.
It was going south fast. He wished Sadie was with him. He held up the amulet, the light catching its surface.
“Put this around your baby’s neck,” he urged. “It’s for protection.”
He tried to push it into her hands, but she knocked it away. It flew end over end and bounced onto the porch, stopping against the shiny high heeled boot of the dandy who had been at the funeral service earlier. He was standing in the open doorway now, his tooled gun belt loaded and strapped, shining brass encircling his narrow waist. He was fanning himself lightly with a laced handkerchief.
“What’s the trouble here, Hetta?” Junior called, in a high toned voice as silky as his billowing shirt. It had a hint of southern, but affected, not natural born. His bright blue eyes were on The Rider, looking him up and down. A thin lipped smile played across his face beneath his narrow moustache, as if he saw something he liked.
The Rider looked at the amulet lying at his feet, and Junior followed his look. He tucked his handkerchief in his vest pocket, stooped down, and came up with the little amulet between his fingers. It made the round of his knuckles a few times, then he held it up and arched one eyebrow.
“Is this yours?”
“No,” The Rider said, looking to Hetta. “It’s hers.”
“Hetta?” Junior said. “Why don’t you come in the house. Your little boy’s bawlin’ again, wants some suck. Momma says he’s disturbing the gentlemen.”
“Yessir, Mr. Junior,” she said, leaning the broom against the porch pole.
“Excuse me,” came a voice from inside. The Rider recognized its owner before Junior stepped aside and let him come out onto the porch.
It was Johnny Behan, tucking in his shirt front.
Behan saw him at the same time, and opened his mouth, but The Rider held up his hand and called to Junior as Hetta shouldered past him into the house.
“Just a minute,” he said.
Hetta looked back. Junior flipped the amulet and caught it and looked at him expectantly.
“Will you give that to her please?” The Rider asked.
Hetta stared at The Rider, then moved slowly to take the amulet from Junior, but the dandy closed his fist around it.
“That is mine, Mr. Junior,” she said quietly.
“Is it?” he held it up again, looking from it to her. “I’ve never seen you wear it before, Hetta.”
“It’s my boy’s,” she said carefully, looking at The Rider. “Can I have it?”
<
br /> “You know you’re not supposed to accept gifts from the gentlemen, Hetta. Don’t Momma and I take care of you?”
“Let her have it,” The Rider said. He didn’t like Junior, or the way he talked to this woman.
“Oh Mr. Behan,” Junior called.
Johnny had stood there stupidly the whole time, and had only begun to finally walk past. He stopped now and looked back.
“Would you be so kind as to and run and fetch Constable Wager for me? I believe this gentleman and I are on the cusp of an altercation.”
Behan tipped his hat to The Rider and smiled, hastening off down the street.
“There doesn’t have to be a problem,” The Rider said evenly.
“Oh but there does, if you mean to tell me how to regulate my affairs, sir,” Junior rattled out. “Do you mean to do that?”
The Rider slowly shook his head. He had no desire to shoot it out in the street with this overdressed pimp.
“Then Hetta, get in the house.”
“Mr. Junior, I swear, he didn’t give me…”
Junior’s lanky hand came up and cracked the woman sharply across the ear, so hard she cried out.
“You get your lyin’ black ass inside!”
“Don’t do that!” The Rider shouted, hunching his shoulders and slapping his hand on the butt of his pistol.
Junior was grinning, showing all the teeth he could. His hand went to his own gun.
“Pull it!” he hissed, his eyes suddenly alight. “Go on, pull it out. Show it to me!”
The Rider eased slightly. He didn’t want this.
Just then one of the shutters creaked open and his eyes darted to the window.
In that instant Junior gasped. The Rider’s eyes went back to him in time to see the dandy’s fancy holster tilt upwards on his belt, the barrel suddenly pointing at him through the open bottom. It was a trick he had heard of, but never seen—a swivel rig.
Hetta screamed and sank to her knees, arms thrown up across her face. She pressed herself against the doorframe.
The Rider’s Volcanic cleared his holster as he turned on his heels, presenting his profile to Junior while the pimp blasted at him from the hip. He heard the bullet pop as it buzzed by, felt it whip past his belly like a tiny comet.
The Rider fired back once. Junior folded back into the dim doorway as a dark spot appeared in the middle of his pristine shirt. His eyes were wide open and he was giggling as he flew backwards into the shadows.
The Rider’s gaze went back to the window. A woman was framed there, a dark haired woman in a brazenly unbuttoned camisole. The sun shined on her small breasts, poking through the dark lustrous hair that hung wildly down. But The Rider did not look away. Her long nose, her dark eyes, that same gleeful, ecstatic expression; it was the woman from his dream. She was no amalgamation of Sadie and a half-remembered girl glimpsed in a Palestinian market. She was real. She was smiling that wide, wanton grin.
Then something hard struck the back of his head, and he fell heavily on his stomach in the dust. As his vision rippled and then retreated to the back of his screaming skull, he saw Hetta on her knees with the amulet he’d made in her hand. She was staring at him with wide, fearful eyes, running with tears.
* * * *
The Rider awoke in the Tip Top jail, to an all-encompassing ache in his head and the hissing of a lamp. The jail was rock walled and dirt floored, and had more of the feel of a little cave than any kind of manmade structure. The iron bars of the cage were set right into the stone, and but for a tin pot, the cell was empty. He was laying face down on the bare floor.
Beyond the bars were a stool and a chipped desk on which the lamp sat. In the light was Johnny Behan and Constable Wager, looking down on all The Rider’s weapons and accoutrements piled there. Constable Wager had the silver and gold Volcanic and the Derringer in his hands. He was peering at the Hebrew inscriptions and wards in the light.
They heard The Rider’s shoe stir on the stone floor and both of them looked in his direction.
“Whalp,” said Wager, “I ain’t seen a fancier rig in all my born days. Mister, you even got that sissy Junior beat for ostentatiousness.”
“He shot first,” The Rider moaned, pushing himself up and rolling back to sit against the wall.
“That ain’t how he tells it.”
“What do you mean how he tells it?” The Rider asked sharply.
“He says he cuffed that nigger gal and you voiced your objection by takin’ a shot at him.”
“He’s alive?”
“You blew out his collarbone,” Behan said. “That’s when I come in and put a stop to it.”
So it had been Behan who had cold cocked him.
“Don’t know why you didn’t make Yuvapai sheriff, Johnny,” Wager said, putting the pistols back down on the desk among the scattered talismans and bowie knife.
“You just vote for me next time I run, Hank,” Behan quipped, hooking his thumbs on his belt loops.
The Rider had seen his bullet cut Junior dead center in the chest. It was not possible he’d survived.
But of course, there was another type of mazzik. Shedim, who possessed physical bodies, and could eat and drink. A lili could choose to physically conceive a child with a mortal. The shedim were carried to term and reputedly ‘birthed’ out of the rectum. They were lesser in power than the lilin, and could not affect the ethereal world like pure ruhin, but they were more resilient than mortals, and could at least perceive the Yenne Velt. Half-demons, like the half-angelic Nephillim of old. The Rider had tools to combat them, but common bullets weren’t enough. If Junior lived among the lilin in The Bird Nest, he could very well be a shed.
“You know I didn’t shoot first, Behan,” said The Rider.
Behan licked his lips.
“I said what I saw, cousin.”
Well, Behan didn’t like him, and wanted him gone. The truth wasn’t going to get in the way of that, apparently.
“What I can’t figure out,” Wager said, scratching his chin and looking at The Rider’s possessions on his desk, “is just what all this bullshit is for. You got more jewelry here than the goddamned Queen of England, and them pistols got enough gold and silver on ‘em to buy this town twice over.” He turned back to The Rider. “Who the hell are you, mister?”
The Rider stood up slowly and came to the bars, closing his fingers around them.
“Do you dream about The Bird Nest women?”
He saw the immediate downward glance flicker in their eyes.
“Do you dream of chasing them in the desert? One of them in particular? Maybe it’s Aggie. Maybe it’s different for each of you. Maybe it’s different every night. But you dream of them every night. She’s naked when you see her, and hairless, and she leads you to the other. The woman you can’t see. The one with hair touching the ground. The one who dances.”
“My God,” Wager stammered, putting the desk between himself and the bars. “How do you know that?”
The Rider opened his hands.
“That’s who the hell I am.”
The men stared at him, each reliving his personal nocturnal encounters, no doubt. Every night these women came to the men of Tip Top, of that The Rider was now certain. Only his own knowledge and talismans had kept his dream from ‘consummating.’ In his dream, the long haired woman had attacked. Their dreams probably differed. Maybe they caught the woman they chased, or the long haired woman. On some deep, terrible level, he envied them that experience. But he pushed that aside. This place was Hell’s spawning ground. It was said that every day one hundred demons died. But here in Tip Top, with a mostly male population, every night, how many were born?
“He’s some kinda hypnotist,” Behan said dismissively. “That’s what all these trinkets are. A lotta Jew mesmerism and hoodoo.”
But Wager was staring at The Rider.
“They’re not women, Constable,” The Rider said to him, forgetting Behan for the moment.
“What do you mean?”
/>
“They’re the reason no child can survive in this town. They’re the reason Rica Gersten’s baby was the way it was, and why Eileen Arnold is going to lose her’s. The colored girl Hetta too, and in a couple months, Manuel Calles’ wife, if you don’t let me put a stop to it.”
Wager slid his hand across his forehead and set his hat back on his head.
“I don’t know about this…”
“What’s not to know?” Behan chuckled nervously. “You’re not buyin’ into this hogshit, are you, Hank?”
“I don’t know,” Wager admitted. “I don’t know. I got to think on it. Got to clear my head. It don’t seem real.”
“Come on! That’s ‘cause it ain’t,” Behan spat.
“The children started dying when they showed up in town, didn’t they?” The Rider pressed. What time was it? How long had he been here?
“My God, my God, I believe they did. That Chinese family…they lost two little boys the morning after Junior and Miss Lilly showed up.”
“Miss Lilly?”
“Junior’s blind momma. She runs the Bird Nest.”
“I remember,” said The Rider. “She was at the funeral.”
God, he had seen her and not recognized her for what she was. How was that possible? It seemed obvious now. She and her girls had stood out like Mormons among the other soiled doves. Was it because he was so enraptured with Sadie? He tried to think back…no, he had not had his Solomonic lenses on. He hadn’t put them on since he’d got to Tip Top last night. She’d driven his most rudimentary precautions out of mind.
There was a rap on the door that made Wager and Behan both jump. Pete Arnold, the German brewer stepped in, his hat in his hands, and a worrisome expression on his face.
“George?”
“Pete! God, you like to scared the pants off me,” Wager admitted.
“George, it’s time. My Anna…she ain’t gonna wait. Can you come?”
Wager leaned on the desk on his knuckles.
“Christ, this is all I need.”
“You’re the closest thing we got to a doctor,” Pete pleaded.
“Aw hell, Pete. I helped Barney Williams’ mare drop a foal, once. It ain’t the same thing. Get one of them laundry women.”
Merkabah Rider: High Planes Drifter Page 22
