“Shouldn’t there be a man posted here to watch the baggage?” The Rider asked.
“The brakeman was here this morning. I explained to him about the shomer’s duty, and he let me pass all day. But this last time I came back here, he wasn’t here. No one was. I came in, and I found this.”
The Rider angled the light of the lantern into the coffin and grimaced at what he saw.
The elderly woman’s corpse inside had not only been disturbed, it had been positively defiled. Only the box itself held the body together. The white burial clothes were shredded and stained with blackish blood. The exposed flesh beneath had been torn open, even the ribcage partially forced open. The stomach cavity appeared to have been burrowed into and emptied or sucked dry of its organs. Blood had splashed all over the inside of the coffin, and there were two deep wounds just above the collarbone, with four matching ragged furrows on the back of each shoulder, as if a pair of long nailed hands had gripped the skinny old woman with such intensity they had broken through the withered skin. The attitude and condition of the wounds suggested someone had made the initial gash with their teeth; buried their face in her trunk and steadied themselves with outstretched hands on her shoulders. Blood stained her parted lips, and The Rider squinted and saw that her tongue had been bitten out.
“Who could have done this?” Noah blubbered over his shoulder, turning away from the sight. “There was a meshuggeneh preacher with a box of snakes in my car. He kept trying to get me to repent. Kept calling me Christ killer and all that. You think he came up here and did this?”
The Rider straightened and shook his head.
“I don’t think even a Protestant would eat a corpse just to spite a Jew.” He thought for a moment. “An atheist? Eh, maybe.”
The door clattered open just then, and a fat bellied, red faced conductor with a prodigious, drooping black moustache stepped in behind them.
“Hey you two!” he hollered. “What in hell you doing up here? You can’t be in here…” He stopped his bull rush when he saw the mess they were shining a light on.
“Great jumpin bald-headed Jesus palomino! What the hell happened here?”
“Where’s the man who’s supposed to be on watch in here?” The Rider demanded.
“Heywood. The brakeman. Don’t know. He was here earlier. You mean to say nobody’s in here?”
“Not for the last hour,” Noah said. “Maybe not since we stopped for water. And look what’s been done to my mother’s body!”
The fat conductor eased his pillbox cap back on his head and put the hairy back of his hand to his mouth, threatening to revisit his lunch.
The Rider moved the light away from the hideous scene.
“When we stopped for water earlier, why did it take so long?” he asked.
“It was Heywood’s fault actually,” the conductor answered. “We couldn’t find him. He stepped off the train to take a piss and disappeared for about fifteen minutes. We called all over for him.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. He came over like he hadn’t heard. Said a coyote bit him.”
“A coyote?”
“It was just a little nip in the wrist, bloodied up his sleeve some. I never heard of a coyote gettin’ close enough to bite somebody.”
“They don’t, generally. Nobody talked to him after that?”
“He came in here, as far as I know. We don’t have a caboose, so he sleeps in here,” he said, pointing to an empty cot against the wall. We get the new Westinghouse brakes fitted after this trip. Right now if we need to slow down, Heywood goes and turns the manual brakes at each car. If the engineer sent him back to brake the car, he could be anywhere on the train.”
“But you came from the rear the same as us. Did you see him?”
“No,” the conductor admitted. “Maybe he’s be up in the locomotive.”
“Why don’t you go and try to find him?” The Rider suggested.
“Look, I’m real sorry about what happened to your maw here. But you don’t really think Heywood done this?”
“Either he did, or whatever did do it got to him,” said The Rider.
“What do you mean?” asked Noah.
“I mean I’ve seen something like this happen before. In Arabia, a lot of years back.”
“Arabia? What are you talkin’ about?” the conductor pressed.
“Something else might’ve gotten on the train when we stopped for water,” he said.
“What?” the conductor repeated. “An animal?”
“Take a look for your man. We’ll wait here and see if he comes back.”
“Passengers ain’t allowed to stay in this car.”
“Fine, you hunt us up some nails and box up this mess and we’ll go look for him,” The Rider said, setting down the lantern.
The conductor’s face screwed and he backed away, hand to his mouth again.
“I guess it’s alright if you stay here. I’ll go forward and see if I can find him, then check back with you.”
The Rider touched the brim of his hat as the conductor walked stiffly past them and the grisly coffin and lurched through the rocking doorway, letting the door clash shut behind him again.
“What did you mean you’d seen something like this before?” Noah asked.
The Rider reached into his coat pocket and produced a hard spectacle case, which he popped open, revealing a pair of thick, blue tinted lenses which he slid onto his face.
“The Bedouin called it a ghul. They’re desert demons, born in the light of the Rosh ha Satan star.”
“Demons? What are you talking about?” Noah chuckled nervously.
The Rider picked up the lantern again, and shined the light once more on the desecrated corpse, peering at it through the blue lenses.
Through the Solomonic seals mystically embossed on the glass, The Rider looked over the corpse once more, and saw, near the base of the coffin, the telltale hoofmarks scuffed in the blood. They were invisible to the naked eye, but the trace etheric residue of the infernal creature showed up sickly and luminous in the light of the mystic lenses.
The Rider nodded to himself.
“These things are ravenous.”
“I don’t believe you’re saying this. You’re saying a demon did this?” His voice threatened to reach a shrill tone, and The Rider decided it best to deflect further talk.
“Let’s replace the lid,” he said. “We’ll keep watch.”
A departed soul generally remained hanging confused about its corpse for three days after death. The ritual of shemira was meant to comfort the momentarily baffled soul, and ease it into death through prayer and comfort. Through the Solomonic lenses, The Rider could clearly see the translucent spirits of the old couple standing near their bodies in their funerary garb. The old woman was quite agitated to see her body in such a state, and the old man comforted her as best he could. She calmed some when the lid had been replaced and nailed down again, and more when The Rider produced his battered chumash and took turns reciting the Psalms.
Noah seemed to take comfort too. The Rider didn’t tell the man he could see his parents’ spirits. It would be too much of a distraction from the task at hand, no mere shemira over the departed, but a guard against the ghul he was sure was aboard the train somewhere and would return. The thing could devour a living man, but dead flesh was a delicacy to it. The older the better.
He could have slipped into the Yenne Velt and conversed with the two spirits, of course, but he suspected he wouldn’t learn anything from the two souls anyway. They were as baffled as Noah in regards to the creature, and leaving the bodies unguarded (or having to explain the whole process to the already skeptic Noah) didn’t appeal to him.
Fishing beneath his shirt, he produced a small golden square covered with Arabic type. He laid it on the mother’s coffin.
“What’s that?” Noah asked sharply when he saw it.
“It’s a protective talisman,” The Rider explained. “The Ayat al-Kursi.”
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Noah picked it off the coffin and peered at it.
“These aren’t Hebrew letters.”
“It’s Arabic.”
“A Muslim prayer?”
The Rider nodded, sensing what was coming next.
“Don’t put this on my mother’s coffin,” Noah said. “What kind of Jew are you?”
“Ghulan aren’t Hebrew,” The Rider said. “I don’t think Judaic wards will have any effect.”
Noah held the amulet out stoically.
The Rider sighed and put it back in his pocket.
“Just stick to the tehillim, will you?” Noah returned to his seat and shook his head. “Oi gevalt. What are you, some kinda minuth?”
His own teachers had called him the same thing when he’d begun using non-Hebrew talismans. It was part of the reason he’d left.
“No, I’m not a heretic. I’m a Jew. You know, you’re lucky to have me here.”
“Sure. You’re about as kosher as pig’s feet.”
The conductor returned.
“Well, Heywood ain’t in the locomotive and neither the engineer nor the fireman has seen him in the last two hours.” He put his hairy hands on the lapels of his frock coat. “Guess I’ll search the passenger coaches. Maybe he’s takin’ a nap somewhere.”
“Maybe,” said The Rider doubtfully.
He pointed his chair toward the rear door as the conductor left. As an afterthought, he dimmed the lantern to a soft, hooded glow.
“Why’d you do that?” Noah asked sharply.
“So as not to alert the culprit, if he returns,” The Rider said. “Let’s pray.”
“Sure,” said Noah warily. “In Hebrew, if you please.”
“You asked me for help,” The Rider reminded him. “I could go back to sleep.”
But I won’t, he thought tiredly. Not now.
“Do what you feel is right,” said Noah, flipping through his prayer book.
They returned to the Psalms.
Noah was lulled from his earlier panic and outrage into a half sleeping state by the pleasant drone of the Hebrew prayers and rhythmic motion of the car, and was soon resting his head on his hand and snoring in the watchman’s chair.
The Rider grew hoarse, quitting the prayers for a while. In the relative silence that ensued, he thought he heard a scratching sound on the roof, but couldn’t be sure it wasn’t sand sifting across from the surrounding desert.
He waited an hour in silence in the dark, but never heard the sound again, and found himself growing drowsy in the presence of such an accomplished sleeper as Noah. His hand went into his pocket, fingering the Moslem talisman. Where was the conductor? As his eyes grew heavy and flitted, he took the spectacles off and rubbed them, shifting in his seat, eliciting a groan from the wood across the floor.
He replaced the spectacles, and the luminous spirit of the old dead woman was suddenly right in front of him, gesticulating in a frantic pantomime, her expression drawn and bug eyed, filling his vision, making him nearly jump to his feet in surprise. She was pointing insistently behind him.
He turned in his seat and what he saw did induce him to abruptly stand, knocking over his chair with a clatter.
“What is it?” Noah exclaimed, blinking awake.
Standing in the doorway in a square of silver moonlight, in baggy overalls and a dirty sack coat whose long sleeves concealed her hands in its depths, was an old woman cradling something in the crook of her left arm. It was the same lined and sagging face The Rider had seen in the broken coffin, the same bug-eyes phantom that had warned him from the Yenne Velt. In the dimness the shadows filled the crevices of her face like oil, and her deep set eyes were invisible, glinting slightly in the dark like treasure or perhaps teeth glimpsed in the depths of a secret cave.
“Mama?” Noah stammered, starting to rush forward, still in a daze of half-sleep.
The Rider caught his arm.
“Look at her feet!” The Rider hissed, turning up the lantern.
As the woman threw up one arm and shrank back from the light, they saw, poking out from beneath the dragging cuffs of the striped trousers, a pair of black hooves, like those of an ass.
Then the sleeve fell away from the upraised arm, and they saw the gray skin, the too-long hand, with spindly, branch-like fingers that ended in yellow, hooked nails. The arm dropped, and they both recoiled at the visage that hissed at them from the doorway. It was still the old woman’s familiar face, but it was stretched across a ridiculously wide grin lined with black gums and stubby, triangular teeth. Its mouth was a mass of fresh blood. Revealed, the eyes bulged too far from the sockets.
Its disguise was failing. Ghulan retained the form of their most recent repast, but only so long as it took their bodies to digest and absorb the victim. Then they began to revert to their true appearance. It must have been living off of animals in the desert. It had attacked Heywood as a coyote, devoured him, and replaced him. That was why there’d been a delay at the water tank. It probably lurked there, feeding off of thirsty animals and hoping for human travelers. Hoping for this train. How it had come to be there in the first place, who knew?
A ghul then, or more properly, a guleh. And how did one stop a ghuleh?
The Rider instinctively flung back his rekel coat and slapped his hand on the gilded Volcanic pistol at his side, pulling it clear of the holster in his next motion.
The glittering pistol caught the lantern light, dancing fire across the myriad of etchings, the twenty two seals, the Aleph Lamed Dalet inscription against the evil eye, the Hand of Miriam ward, the protective shin, the Hay Zayin Yud key and the jeweled Sephiroth tree inset with banded gold into the handle. The weapon was designed for combat in the Yenne Velt, the spiritual realm, but it still served as a firearm.
He thumbed back the hammer, levered the pistol, and fired.
The bullet caught Noah’s ‘mother’ dead center and her frail form rocked back with the impact, but she staggered and caught herself in the doorway with one arm.
Bullets didn’t work then, not even with a salt core, like the ones The Rider employed, and not from a pistol inscribed with Judaic wards. In Arabia The Rider had seen the work of a ghul, but never fought one. What had that old imam told him? He struggled to remember as the thing brought its burden to bear.
Then they saw why the conductor had not returned. He must have discovered the thing skulking somewhere in the rear cars. He had seen the old woman’s corpse, recognized her face probably. Likely he hadn’t had time to react before it twisted his head from his shoulders. Now the ghuleh held his head in one hand, long fingers gripping it through the empty eye sockets like a bowling ball, mouth hanging open beneath the brushy moustache, tongueless, like the old woman’s corpse had been.
“What is it? What is it?” Noah was screaming.
His yelling was cut short as the ghuleh pitched the conductor’s head at them with considerable accuracy. It struck Noah dead in the face and he fell back flailing and screaming hysterically. The Rider was knocked off balance, and then the ghuleh was among them, slashing and snarling.
The Rider heard its talons shred his sleeve and tried to bring his pistol up, if only to blast the thing away. He did get off another shot, but only seared the thing’s arm with the muzzle flash. The bullet smashed into the floor uselessly.
The rear door slammed open and a sturdy looking passenger filled the opening with broad shoulders and a prodigious range hat.
“What in hell’s….?” he began, but the ghuleh sprang at him, the weight carrying them both through the door and flipping the well-meaning man over the platform rail and grinding him almost instantly beneath the juggernaut wheels of the train without further comment.
The Rider was already running to the door. He jammed the toe of his shoe in as it slid shut, kicked it open and swung out into the rushing wind. His hand was on the Moslem talisman. He drew it out.
A long, clawed arm, trailing smoke from the muzzle burn, slashed at him from above, knocking the gol
den talisman back into the car. He’d never find out if it would’ve worked now. He crouched and fired upwards, caught a glimpse of it scrambling over the roof of the car.
Another passenger, a spectacled man in a derby and striped coat was poised in the doorway of the livestock car, looking aghast.
“Get back! Get back!” The Rider hollered, waving his pistol.
The man retreated into the car.
He shoved the pistol into his belt and gripped the iron rungs, pulling himself up the side.
The door opened below and Noah poked his head out. He was splattered with blood from the conductor’s head.
“Rider!”
He paused, looking down, his payot curls whipping in his eyes.
“What?”
“Forzikhtig!”
The Rider pursed his lips. Hard to be careful chasing a ghuleh atop a moving train.
“Keep the people back!” he hollered. He didn’t want any more dying.
Then he pulled himself onto the top of the car.
The wind nearly blew him back down the ladder. He fell to his belly and hugged the roof until he got his bearings.
The smoke from the engine was billowing back in his face. It was thick as an acrid fog here so near to the big balloon stack, which he could see poking out of the top of the black engine out front, belching spumes of glowing cinder like a beacon light.
Into that fog the spindly figure he pursued plunged, shrugging off the hindering sack coat and pants scampering lightly along the car roof, leaping down out of sight onto the tender.
It seemed to be headed for the engine. Why didn’t it just jump off the train?
For that matter, why hadn’t it eaten the conductor, taken his form? Why had it kept his head? Ghulan, the old imam had told him, looked upon living flesh the way men looked upon raw meat. Probably it had killed and eaten Heywood the brakeman solely to take his form and steal aboard the train. When it had discovered the bodies of Noah’s parents, it had broken open his mother’s coffin and masticated in a frenzy. Maybe it had killed the conductor and born part of him along to ‘ferment.’ It had returned to the baggage car to feast upon the other corpse there.
The conductor had said Heywood had explained away his bloody hand as a coyote bite. All this meant that it had a little more than a rudimentary intelligence. It could lie. It could plan.
Merkabah Rider: High Planes Drifter Page 27
