Apex Book Company

The street lamps cast twisted shadows on the ancient flagstones. The Via Dolorosa - the way of the cross - was nearly empty at this time of night. Solitary figures - an old Chasid clad in black and hurrying home, an Arab trader who finished packing up his market stall late - passed by as if they, too, were mere shadows.

Of course, David Silverman knew Jerusalem well enough to know the streets were never fully deserted. Arab shabab planning mischief, Israeli army soldiers patrolling the old streets, young hippies sneaking a furtive joint under the stone walls… And then there were other things, too, that walked the streets of the old capital at night, things he would rather not think about.

He hurried his steps, until reaching the doorway of a church at a side street. Thin smoke was drifting from the arch, more grey than blue. ‘Silverman,’ a figure stepped out of the shadows, extended an arm. ‘Moshe,’ said David, shaking the proffered hand, “thanks for coming.”

Moshe was a tall, thin man of about forty. His clothes hung loose on his frame, and the cigarette was unsteady in his fingers. The two near his thumb were burnt yellow.

‘I nearly didn’t,’ he said bluntly, then let his hands drop to his sides in defeat, throwing the cigarette down. ‘But I guess I owe you.’

David nodded. ‘Let’s make this short. It’s not a good time to be walking around.’ He paused. ‘Did you bring it?’ The other man silently withdrew a small item from his coat and passed it over to David. The package was small and rectangular, wrapped in dim red cloth, the colour of dry blood. He sighed, lifted a crumpled cigarette tucked behind his ear and stuck it in his mouth. ‘Take it and good riddance,’ he said. Suddenly he smiled, and said ‘Venitrae beshabatot vechagim’ - we’ll meet on Shabbats and holidays. David smiled, recognising the quote from an old Israeli comedy, which Moshe used to repeat sardonically on their regular patrols in Lebanon. ‘Take care, Mosh,’ he said. The other man looked at him, briefly, and shook his head before disappearing in the shadows. ‘It’s too late now’ - his muffled voice came eerily, and his steps made no sound. It was Erev Rosh Ha’shana, the Jewish New Year.

Lebanon

The sound of the Hammer jeep receded into the distance. Moshe brushed his arm against a sweat-covered forehead and looked up. He squinted against the harsh sunlight and reached for a jerrycan of water. David was a few feet away, standing up to his chest in a trench, digging. Moshe lit a cigarette, inhaled, let out a cloud of smoke. He looked around him in satisfaction: once a field, the immediate area was now cordoned off and turned into an unassuming-looking archaeological dig. An army truck, a couple of large crates - and a large portion of recently moved earth. Cluttering the place were various tools, food tins and broken pottery. To one side was a heap of the things found and considered valuable - old coins, a miraculously intact wine jar dating to the Roman Period, glass fragments and a partially completed mosaic.

Their kita was stationed a few kilometres back, at the fortified Dayan Outpost. Taking advantage of a lull in the routine of patrols and ambushes, and a cease-fire relaxation of authority, they had started spending more time at the dig they’d discovered.

Moshe found the jerrycan, and carefully poured water into a small finjan before measuring three spoonfuls of dark, aromatic coffee into it. He looked around, picked up a tin holding crystallised sugar, and scraped half of its contents into the water. He lit a small Primus stove by the side of the truck and placed the finjan on it. ‘Found anything yet, David?’ he shouted at his friend.

‘Fuck no,’ came the answer. ‘When is that coffee going to be ready?’

Moshe smiled as he rolled his cigarette between brown fingers. ‘Real coffee takes time, Didi,’ he called. ‘You can’t hurry the coffee. As sweet as love, as black as night and as strong as death, as the cousins say.’ He grinned and stirred the pot with a long branch.

David grunted from the ditch and straightened his back. ‘Just as long as the cousins don’t start shooting again anytime soon.’ He pulled himself out and went to sit next to Moshe, his back to the truck.

The smell of the coffee mingled with the fresh scent of the olive groves. Moshe took a deep breath of fresh air rather than smoke, and kept stirring.

#

It was Aharon, their khulia comrade, who first discovered the dig. Bursting through their tent one evening, he collapsed on his sleeping bag and looked up at them with excitement. ‘You’ll never guess what I’ve found!’ he said, gesturing with his hands in the air.

Moshe, lying on his back with a cigarette drooping from his mouth, asked ‘Had a good patrol then?’ and David, who only came back from a patrol himself an hour before, just grunted.

‘What is it, Aharon? I’ve got to get up in three hours.’

Aharon, not paying them the slightest attention, kept talking. ‘We were passing by the old Druze village south of here, going through the olive grove, and I swear there’s an abandoned archaeological dig down there!’ He paused for breath. ‘There’s an old church there, hasn’t been used for years. And someone has been digging there - and not very long ago. We had to stop to make sure it wasn’t mined, but I reckon it was a professional dig. The area is marked, and there’s a pile of pottery shards besides it. The mefaked wouldn’t let us take anything, so we just reported it by radio and moved on. I’m telling you we should get down there before anyone else does. God knows what we can find there…’

Moshe snorted. ‘And you want to go play at being an archaeologist?’ What, you think you’re Moshe Dayan? Want to use army personnel and equipment to raid somebody’s grave? You’ll find yourself in Abu-Kabir quicker than you can say archaeology.’

Aharon turned to David with a helpless shrug. David smiled at his distressed face, made a ’sit down’ motion with his hand. ‘Look, Ari, you know this is insane. We’ve got alarms going off every five minutes, we’re constantly on patrol, I personally haven’t showered for a week -’

‘Don’t we know it,’ mumbled Moshe.

‘- but maybe we can go have a look when things calm down.’ David finished.

#

The sound of the jeep brought them instantly alert, reaching for their guns. Aharon, cropped red hair blazing in the sun, was grinning at them from behind the wheel as he pulled to a halt. They had fallen asleep, lulled by a rare peace - ‘You idiots!’ Aharon shouted gleefully. ‘If the mefaked caught you you’d be fucked.’

David smiled and spread his arms in a gesture of conciliation. ‘As long as no one tells him, I think we’d be okay.’

‘Besides,’ added Moshe, ‘it’s been quiet for two weeks. I’m beginning to think the Hizbollah decided to give up.’ He got up to his feet and went to rekindle the fire.

Aharon came to join them while Moshe began cooking a new finjan of coffee, and David lay back and lit a cigarette. For a few minutes nobody spoke.

Then, with coffee ready, poured and held in small terracotta cups Aharon broke the silence. ‘Guys, there’re rumours at the base that a big operation is coming. I have a feeling we haven’t got much more time left for the dig.’ He spun the cup in his hands. ‘For my money, it’s tonight or never.’

It was Moshe who found the tablet. They were working in the hole, the three of them, army shirts discarded for short-sleeved tops. They had been working for hours, knowing that tomorrow they could be fighting again, could be dead or wounded in a country that wasn’t theirs, and happy for a chance to be free in the open air.

It was a beautiful night, the stars bright in the sky, a warm breeze carrying the smells of spring, of open flowers and fresh grass and rattling the leaves of the olive trees. Moshe had stopped suddenly, throwing away his shovel against a tree and dropping to his knees. His hands were brushing dirt quickly away from the dark form that he spotted. David and Aharon, laying down their shovels, bent down to examine what he found. Using their hands, they began to clear the area around the object.

‘Ari, get a flashlight.’ Moshe said. In a moment, a circle of light covered the object. Aharon, his eyes round, pushed the flashlight into David’s hands and made to grab the object from Moshe. Bemused, Moshe gave in as Aharon began fervently to clear mud away with his fingers.

‘Didi, light please,’ he asked, totally absorbed in the thing in his hands. David dutifully shone the torchlight at the object. ‘Moshe, cloth.’

Moshe handed him a dirty cloth damp with water. After a couple of minutes of intense silence the object was cleaned enough for them to see strange letters carved on what appeared to be a clay tablet, worn out by years.

Moshe let out a whistle. ‘What - the - fuck?’ he said softly. The wind caused goosebumps to appear on his arms.

‘Can you tell what it says?’ he asked Aharon. ‘You’re the expert here, after all.’

‘I think so - it looks like ancient Hebrew, which is fairly easy to read - we did that every summer at the camp in Jerusalem - but some of it looks different, like,’ he paused, thinking, ‘like Ugarit? I think. It was a Canaanite city-state round about 12 century BCE’ he said, ‘before King David’s time or the prophets. Before the first temple. But they were on the Syrian side, and it’s still quite a distance from here. A lot of their writing ended up in a different form in the bible. Older gods.’

He paused again, his eyes working over the faint letters.

‘The text is strange… I can read the Hebrew part. Let’s see - I know this phrase - Eat, o Gods, and drink, drink wine till you are sated… - hold on, it should read wine, but it’s got another word there… Then it says something about Leviathan. And this, I think, is from Joel in the bible: Lament like a virgin dressed in sackcloth for the husband of her youth - I can’t read the next line, but then it says The priests mourn, the ministers of the Lord. The fields are devastated, the ground mourns; for the grain is destroyed, the wine dries up, the oil fails.’

Moshe shifted the gun on his shoulder. ‘It gives me the creeps,’ he said.

Aharon ignored him. ‘The next line is blurred again, it almost looks like it was done on purpose… Then it says surely, joy withers away among the people. There’s a lot about Ashera and Baal in here, something about a ritual…’ His voice sank.

David, who kept quiet, said, ‘Didn’t they sacrifice people, the Ugarim? I remember reading something about them.’

Aharon nodded distractedly. ‘I think this bit is from Isaiah,’ he said. ‘Listen: Sheol beneath is stirred up to meet you when you come; it rouses the Rephaim to greet you, all who were leaders of the earth; it raises from their thrones all who were kings of the nations. All of them will speak and say to you: damn,’, he said, ‘the next line is blurred as well. It’s a wonderful find though. Something to do with the cult of the dead - Sheol is associated with hell, and Rephaim are wraiths, or ghosts.’

‘Well,’ said Moshe,’ it’s certainly gloomy.’ He shrugged. ‘How come it’s in Hebrew?’

Aharon shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Ugarit was pretty cosmopolitan in its heyday, they used to have a large community of foreigners living there, but… I don’t know. I mean, it looks like an invocation, you know? Like magic. Really dangerous stuff - if a Jew was caught with it he’d be stoned to death. The old prophets didn’t hold with this sort of thing at all. So maybe it was a renegade cult that still believed in the old gods.’

‘ - and were trying to do what, bring them back?’ Moshe couldn’t stop a snort of laughter.

Suddenly David extinguished the flashlight, clutching his Uzi as he scanned the trees. ‘I think there’s someone here,’ he mouthed the words.

Immediately alert, Moshe and Aharon crouched, holding their guns at the ready. An unnatural silence seemed to have suddenly fallen. The wind stopped, the trees were still - even the crickets could not be heard anymore.

‘There!’ Moshe whispered, pointing his Uzi at the ruined church. There was movement in the shadows, an ill-defined shape that seemed to look in their direction. ‘Put your hands up!’ Moshe shouted in Arabic. David and Aharon slowly spread away from him, blending into the trees while circling around the perimeter of the church. The figure turned, unperturbed, and moved into the moonlight.

She was intensely beautiful. Her dark eyes shone in an olive-complexioned face, adorned with a proud nose and sensuous, red lips. Her hair cascaded down her back like a dark waterfall.

She approached Moshe, who was standing like a pillar of salt, unmoving as she glided towards him and gently took the Uzi from his unresisting hands. She looked down at him, a warrior suddenly exposed as what he really was, a teenage boy, and softly kissed him on the lips.

Her figure seemed to shimmer for a moment. She raised her hands, and David, hiding in the shadows, nearly pressed the trigger. More figures were moving towards them from the church yard. They were human figures, or so they appeared. A man, large and solid with the same dark features as the woman, moved beside her and took her hand. Behind, the others formed a semi-circle of shadow around them.

‘You must finish reading,’ the woman said, husky voice rising in the silent night. ‘It is very important that you do.’ Her eyes found Aharon’s and were holding them as if by some invisible force. ‘Read.’

Jerusalem

David Silverman woke up groaning to a blast of sunlight streaming through the window. The bedside clock said 07:22 in glowing green letters, and he could hear shouts and the sound of car engines coming from outside. For a moment he glared around with a dazzled look, then dragged himself upwards and waded to the small bathroom. A quarter of an hour later he was sitting in his living room-cum-kitchen, drinking a cup of black, sweet Turkish coffee. It was a bad night, he thought, taking small comfort from the steaming coffee.

He had come back from the old city late at night, the package held tightly under his arm as he navigated the narrow streets. While he could no longer see any people around, he couldn’t shake away the feeling that, somehow, he was being watched, being followed. Arriving at his small flat at last, he had locked the door with his Multi-Lock key and fell on the bed in his clothes. And then the nightmares started, he thought, and downed the rest of the coffee in one large gulp. Nightmares - tracer bullets flying like fireflies over the landscape of the Lebanese Theatre, nicknamed the fireworks display by the regular soldiers; and deep shadows moving unnaturally in the silvery moonlight, distorted sounds coming from footsteps nearby and armoured jeeps far away. In the maelstrom he could see Moshe, his face white and drained of blood, mouthing silent words at him. Then Moshe’s face changed, and it was Her, soothing, offering, caring, and next to her his daughter, her face beautiful and smiling in the moonlight. The way she was. He took a deep breath, held it in, then exhaled loudly. It was time to visit another old friend, he thought, and got up.

The nun at the entrance to the old hospital looked at him with slight disapproval. ‘You know visiting hours are only between one and two, Adoni.’

‘I know, sister, but I really have to see my friend, it’s important,’ David said. ‘Please. He knows I’m coming to see him.’ He looked at her pleadingly, and after a moment the woman nodded and waved for him to go in.

David’s footsteps echoed on the bare flagstones as he walked past the main doors, waving to the sleepy security guard, and passed into a long corridor. There were doors lined up all along the corridor, all shut, all bearing a small plaque with a number, and a name. He reached the second before last door and knocked. ‘Ari, it’s me…’ he called softly. ‘Can I come in?’

There was a loud crash from inside the room as something was smashed against a wall, followed by indistinct words. David carefully turned the handle and pushed his way into the room. His eyes met the occupant of the room, and his eyes widened.

No one who had known Aharon Suskin in his youth would have recognised him now. His frame was thin and gangly, with nothing on his head but loose strands of straw hair from which all the colour had gone.

He was, David thought, Auschwitz-thin, and he had to put the thought away with some effort. It was no Germans who did this to him. His voice shook with pity as he said ‘Ari, it’s me, David. I need to talk to you.’ His eyes travelled over his friend’s body, noticing new scars and gashes on his arms and shoulders, some only recently bandaged. Aharon looked at him now, his eyes opaque and unblinking.

He started murmuring, David barely catching the words. ‘Eat, o Gods, and drink, drink blood, Lament like a virgin dressed in sackcloth, wither away joy…’ He kept repeating the same words to himself, oblivious.

‘Ari…’ David tried again, ‘I have the tablet with me. I need your help.’ When no response came he quickly unpacked the tablet from its cloth.

Aharon cried and began to shake as he grabbed hold of David’s arm. ‘Didi! No!’ his voice had an unpleasant echo. ‘Get rid of it!’ He started shaking David, at the same time shrinking away from the object David was holding. David, his heart beating faster at the sight of his friend’s transformation, said ‘Ari, I need to know how to use it. I want the notes you made. In Lebanon. Ari…’ his voice shook. ‘Michal is dead.’

His friend’s eyes cleared, became locked on his face. Aharon’s voice was suddenly quiet as he said, incredulously, ‘Michal? What happened? Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Cancer.’ David’s voice trembled. ‘She was only twelve. Ari… She could bring her back.’

‘She will not help you. She won’t help anyone! Don’t be a fool.’

David, hating himself, said ‘Ari, that night in Lebanon, you let something come back. A shadow of a shadow, maybe, but they seem to congregate around Jerusalem. They walk the streets at night. And I see Her, and She talks to me, and She wants a bargain. With me. She can give me back Michal.’

Aharon seemed to shrink even more, looking old and pale and weak. ‘Didi, you’re making a mistake. Don’t do it.’

David didn’t answer, and Aharon was already dragging himself to his bed, lifting the mattress and reaching inside it, withdrawing a small, tattered military-issue notebook. ‘I owe you,’ he said simply. ‘Now go. Quickly.’ Aharon pushed David at the door with surprising speed, banging it shut after him.

#

He found refuge in a near-empty coffee house in the New City. Laying Aharon’s notes in his lap, David started reading through their narrative, trying to understand the nightmarish night they had spent in Lebanon all those years ago. It was all so bleary! He could never tell if it was real or a dream, afterwards, the way the night became silent, the strong, commanding features of the beautiful woman… He shuddered. Of Ashera, he thought, and she was no woman. He let his mind go back to the night, closing his eyes, becoming still. Back in Lebanon.

‘You must finish reading,’ the woman said, husky voice ringing in the silent night. ‘It’s important.’ Her eyes found Aharon’s and were holding them as if by some invisible force. ‘Read.’

David, crouching helplessly amidst the trees, watched as Aharon, all animation gone from his features, bent his head down and began moving his lips silently, his eyes going over the tablet. ‘Eat, o Gods, and drink, drink wine till you are sated,’ he intoned. The woman smiled. ‘Blood,’ she said, ‘the word is blood. Read.’

Aharon repeated the phrase, substituting blood for wine. There was a sense of suppressed anticipation from the silent figures around them. The woman bent slowly towards him and kissed him on the mouth for what seemed like forever. When she rose, his lips were crimson. His lips had been bitten and were bleeding.

‘Read the names, now,’ the woman ordered, and Aharon began to speak through his dripping mouth. His eyes lost all focus and were staring far away. He wasn’t reading from the tablet anymore.

‘Come, Mot, god of death, come, Yam and Leviathan, gods of the sea, come, Tirosh, god of wine, come Baal, come Ashera, you who make the fields grow and the people live, come, Shachar, who brings up the dawn, come, you and your cohorts, you and all your people!’

The shadowed figures moved closer, closing in on Aharon.

That was when David snapped. His lips forming the words ‘El maleh rachamim’ - God of mercy - he let his finger close on the trigger of the Uzi.

The loud burst tore through the night, hitting olive trees, throwing wounded bark in the air. It passed through the figures in the semi-circle, hit Moshe in the leg, slammed Aharon against the ground.

Then it stopped. For a minute, there was absolute silence.

As if they were never there, the hooded figures, moved back into the shadows and merged into them. The wind started blowing through the trees again, and David collapsed, letting the weapon fall from his fingers to the ground.

#

‘Adoni! Adoni! Are you okay?’ A concerned voice was speaking in his ear and he felt himself shaken awake. Opening his eyes, he saw the young waitress standing in front of him, looking worried.

‘I’m fine,’ David managed. ‘Just a little tired.’ He was sweating, and his tongue felt swollen, his mouth bitter. ‘I’m okay, thanks.’ He smiled with difficulty. ‘Honest.’ He grasped around, making sure the tablet and Aharon’s notebook were still there. ‘Could you perhaps get me more coffee?’

The waitress, looking at the pale man and the untouched cup of coffee in front of him, decided to comply and walked away. After all, a lot of people in Jerusalem were a little odd.

#

Somehow, David got Moshe’s leg bandaged, and together they carried Aharon, now high in delirium, into the jeep. The ride back to base was a blur. They would have been in worse trouble, but as it turned out a Hizbollah surprise offensive was launched during the night, and in the confusion of the fight they were not the only wounded.

It was the end of their time together, however. Aharon was taken back to hospital in Israel, treated and discharged shortly after, with what was officially classified as battle-shock. Moshe’s leg healed, but by that time his compulsory service was over, he went back to Jerusalem and soon enrolled in the police force. David went back to his parents in Tel-Aviv, and after his service went to study in the States.

Time passed.

The notebook, as David knew it would, contained the translation of the tablet into modern Hebrew, and more importantly, a phonetic transcription of the text. He would be able to use that in order to read the tablet out loud. David sipped at his coffee, drawing out the time, waiting for the night to come.

‘Adoni?’ The voice of the young waitress called him back to reality. ‘I’m sorry, but can you please pay now? We’re closing in fifteen minutes.’

He got up, left some money on the table and disappeared into the night outside.

The cool air revived him, and he took in the sights of the city as he started walking back to the old city. He passed the tower of David and through the Armenian quarter, where the chants and smell of incense escaped through the high walls. He walked through the Jewish quarter, past Chasidim, all dressed in black, past children playing, past young mothers watching them contentedly. He ran down the stone steps and reached the entrance to the Western Wall, which sat deserted and quiet in the moonlight. There he stopped and took several deep breaths to calm himself, hands on his knees. Michal, he thought, I am doing this for you.

He stood up and entered the prayer area.

Calmly, he held before him the tablet and the notebook, the text clear in the moonlight. He turned to the ancient stones as if in apology, his head bare, for the first time in his life not wearing a yarmulke in the area of the Kotel. In a measured voice he began reading from the tablet, his eyes going between Aharon’s inscriptions to the less-familiar symbols of the ancient text. When he started reading the names, as Aharon did all those years ago, the feeling of anticipation returned, but he did not look around to see if any shadowed figures materialised. When he finished, he stood silent and waited.

#

There was no ominous strike of lightning, no thunder or wind, fire or earthquake. The square was silent, and the slow procession that appeared from the direction of the car park seemed to have been on their way for a long time. Ashera and Baal, El and Leviathan and Mot and Yam, their inhuman faces glowing in the moonlight, were approaching the Western Wall.

They carried between them the feebly resisting figure of an emaciated, aged man.

David shrank back as the procession passed him, paying him no attention.

It was Aharon, and his eyes met David’s with a look of both sadness and resignation.

He was carried onwards, and into the enclosure of the Wall, where the Gods were dancing in the men’s section as if welcoming the new era.

As the feeble, aged man was disrobed and made to kneel, and as Baal drew a long stone knife and prepared to plunge it into Aharon’s heart, David turned his eyes away and began, silently, uselessly, to pray: ‘Baruch Ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Haolam…’
END

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Lavie Tidhar is the author of the Apex Publications’ book HebrewPunk, a collection of dark fantasy stories centered around three mystical Jewish characters.

Lavie Tidhar grew up on a kibbutz in Israel, lived in Israel and South Africa, traveled widely in Africa and Asia, and lived in London for a number of years. Currently, he is living on the island nation of Vanuatu where he spends the days farming and the nights writing.

In 2003, Lavie won the Clarke-Bradbury Prize (awarded by the European Space Agency). He has edited the Michael Marshall Smith: The Annotated Bibliography (PS Publishing, 2004) and the anthology A Dick and Jane Primer for Adults (The British Fantasy Society, 2006), and is the author of the novella An Occupation of Angels (Pendragon Press, 2005). His stories have appeared in Apex Digest, Sci Fiction, Chizine, Clarkesworld, Postscripts, Nemonymous, Infinity Plus, Aeon, Book of Dark Wisdom, Fortean Bureau, and many others.

Lavie maintains a website at www.lavietidhar.co.uk.

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