Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (36 page)

A sign on a post read: ‘Haddox Yard,’
and a little girl of about six or seven years with straight orange hair sat on
a stack of uneven railroad ties swinging her skinny legs and reading a beat up
copy of
Rainbow’s Journey
by Jacob
Abbott.

She looked up from her book at the
sight of the Rider digging in his heels against the pull of the onager, and
regarded him curiously before she said,

“He don’t seem to like you, mister.”

The Rider peered at the girl through
his Solomonic seals. She was just a little girl, nothing more.

“He always did before,” the Rider
said cautiously.

“Well what’d you do to him to make
him change his mind?”

“Uh…do you live here?”

“Not in the woodpile,” she giggled,
showing two prominent adult teeth in a mouth of stubby milk teeth. “I ain’t a
raccoon! I live in that house back there,” she said, closing her book on her
finger. “You lookin’ for my daddy?”

“Is your daddy Captain Haddox?”

“Nobody much calls him captain
anymore since he lost his boat,” she said. “My mommy died.”

The Rider nodded. “I know. A man in
town told me. I’m sorry. I understand your daddy…has a new wife?”

The little girl wrinkled her nose.

“Nemmy. Yeah. I don’t like her much,
but Robert does. Sorta.”

“Who is Robert?”

“He’s my brother. He’s back by the
house, choppin’ wood. You wanna meet him?” she said, jumping down from the
pile. Without waiting for an answer she began to run toward the house, calling,
“Come on,” over her shoulder.

The Rider pulled the onager along,
wending through the tall stacks. Besides the planks obviously taken from the
derelict shipyard, there were also stacks of brush and logs, as well as
shipping pallets and pieces that could be identified as having once belonged to
riverboats; a sternwheel broken up into chipped, red-painted fragments here, a
bit of a texas deck rail, and a broken pilot’s wheel. The woodyard was
labyrinthine in its makeup, with a few narrow paths winding through it which
the little girl scampered down as sure as B’rer Rabbit through the tangled
Briar Patch.

What was going on here though? Who
was this child and what did she have to do with Nehema’s imprisonment? Surely ‘Nemmy’
was Nehema. The girl professed a dislike of her. The Rider’s mind conjured up
multiple heinous scenarios in which this Captain Haddox somehow enlisted his
children in Nehema’s torture. But she seemed like such a sweet, normal child…what
was her part in all this? For that matter what was Haddox’s? The man in town
had said they were recently married. The Rider had immediately assumed this was
some ploy to keep the inquisitive away so Haddox could do with her as he pleased.
Removed from town as he was, conveniently secluded as his house was by this
failing woodyard (it didn’t seem to be doing any business after all, otherwise,
why such an overabundance of wood? And why wood at all really, when most
steamboats ran on coal these days?), and with the excuse of being a newlywed,
nobody would think of asking what he was up to. Nehema must be here some place.

He emerged from the woodyard and saw
the little girl talking to a slim boy of about sixteen, bare-chested, his skin
blindingly white, the same orange hair as his sibling.

He came over with the axe balanced
on his narrow, sunburned, freckled shoulder, the little girl tagging behind.

“What d’you want?” the boy
challenged, more than asked.

The Rider opened his mouth, but he
wasn’t quite sure what he wanted here. That is, he knew he was here for Nehema,
but…what did these children know about it all? Did they know what she was? Were
they even aware of their father’s role as Nehema’s warden and punisher?

“If you’re here about buyin’ the
place,” the boy said, when the Rider took too long to answer, “my pa won’t
sell.”

The boy had taken him for a
speculator of some sort. Should he run with that?

“When will he be back?” the Rider
asked, noncommittally.

“Him and Nemmy went into town for
groceries,” the little girl offered. “They ought to be back any minute.”

The boy hushed her, and she clung to
his long leg.

“Well, you heard,” he said then.

“Mind if I wait around for them?”
the Rider asked.

“If you don’t expect company, you
can do what you want,” the boy said, turning around and going back to the stump
on which he’d been splitting logs when the little girl had run up.

His sister hugged his leg the whole
way, both feet planted on his, forcing him to hobble. She looked over her
shoulder at the Rider and allowed a smile, which he returned, a little
doubtfully.

What was the nature of these
children, he wondered, as he wiped the dust from his spectacles. They weren’t
shedim
, and they didn’t appear abnormal
in any other way. The red lamps Lilith had employed to counteract his Solomonic
lenses weren’t anywhere to be seen or felt. What if they were something he hadn’t
encountered yet? Some servants of the Old Ones in a pleasing guise he was
unable to penetrate, ready to erupt into some unguessed, inhuman horror as soon
as he let his guard down?

He did not, for his part. He kept
them in sight, kept his pistol loose in its scabbard. He led the onager down to
the water and let it drink. For all its recent intractability, it still took
food and water from him anyway. The animal had taken a disliking to him though,
ever since he’d left Kabede and Belden in Mexico. It was as if it too disagreed
with his current undertaking.

“What would you have me do then?” he
asked the animal in a low voice. “I can’t just leave her to be tortured,
knowing she helped me.”

The animal only shook its mane and
brayed, looking over its shoulder.

A buckboard was rumbling out of the
woodyard, a redheaded, bearded man at the reins, a dark haired woman at his side.

The Rider took off his spectacles,
folded them, and put them in their case. He left the onager tied and walked
back up to the house.

The little girl ran out to meet
them, bouncing along like a puppy as the buckboard drew to a stop in front of
the house.

The redhaired man struggled out of
the driver’s seat, the woman handing him down a crutch to supplement his
balance on what was probably a wooden leg.

The man stooped down and embraced
the little girl, who pointed excitedly to the Rider as he came.

The man straightened, frowning, then
turned to help his passenger down.

She had already leapt from the
buckboard at first sight of the Rider, and come running to him, her skirts
gathered up in her brown fists.

The Rider caught his breath at the
sight of her close. She was as alluring as he remembered. He knew that in her
true form she was far from beautiful, and he’d made a conscious decision not to
see her as she really was, forgoing his mystic lenses. Because coming to her
rescue was only part of the reason for coming at all. He had come because he
wanted to see her again. He knew her form as it was just an illusion culled
from his own memories, but beyond reason, he didn’t care.

He wanted to see her. He wanted her.
Long nights he had thought of her, and she had moved naked and sumptuous in his
secret dreams.

As she came across the distance to
him, her smooth face fissured into a bright smile. He had never seen her smile
like that. It was not the seductive mocking smile she had last given him. This
was genuine. Without her whore’s paints and costume, she seemed more real than
before. Her brown ankles flashed beneath the hiked hem of her skirt, and her
generous chest heaved beneath the cotton.

When she was within a foot of him,
she stopped, her smile faltering, then returning, her dusky, half lidded eyes
seeming to devour him, and to plead that he devour her in turn.

“Rider,” she said, out of breath,
one curling lock of black lustrous hair across her face.

Why hadn’t she embraced him as it
seemed she was going to? But of course, he remembered, she was a demon. The
talismans beneath his coat kept her at bay. She was lovely, and he could feel
her breath stirring his beard, igniting his body. He wanted to grip her
shoulders and draw her to him. As before, there was an animal heat that
radiated from her skin. He could feel it stirring him, blowing across him like
a sumptuous summer wind.

Robert the boy came over, the axe on
his shoulder again. He was scowling, but he said nothing.

“Hi Daddy,” squealed the little
girl, running up to hug her father.

“Say ‘hello’ to your mother too,
Emory,” Haddox said.

“Hello Nemmy,” the little girl
mumbled dutifully over her shoulder.

Nehema said nothing, only looked at
the Rider with unspoken hopefulness.

What was going on here?

Haddox came over, limping hard on
his left leg. Here was the boy Robert grown into a man, with a weather-beaten
face and bushy brow, white hairs curling among the rusty beard. Freckles faded
on his lined cheeks, and his small eyes shined like dimes in his face.

“He come lookin’ to buy the yard,
pa,” Robert announced.

“That isn’t so,” the Rider said.

“No, I’d say it ain’t,” said Haddox,
coming to stand beside Nehema. “You two know each other?”

“I’m the Rider,” said the Rider,
tearing his eyes from Nehema long enough to see the mistrust in Haddox’s
expression.

“He’s my brother,” said Nehema
quickly. “My step-brother. Come from San Francisco to visit. I wrote him awhile
ago.”

Haddox’s look lightened, but only a
little. Robert’s got angrier, as if he resented the relation.

“Well. Didn’t know I had no
brother-in-law. Didn’t know you ever went to the post office, come to think of
it.”

“You’re married,” the Rider said, to
Nehema as much as to Haddox.

“You didn’t know? How’d you come to
find her here otherwise?” Haddox said.

“I knew, that is, I didn’t know you
were Haddox,” the Rider said quickly. “She wrote me about Yuma, and about you
and the kids, of course. But she didn’t describe you to me.”

“I’m hurt,” Haddox said to Nehema,
breaking into a half-grin and slipping an arm over her shoulder.

Nehema seemed to go rigid at his
touch, but she forced a smile.
What was
he doing to her?
the Rider thought, incensed.

“You didn’t say nothing to me about
bein’ her half-brother,” Robert snapped at the Rider.

“Don’t talk to your uncle like that,
Robert,” said Haddox.

“He ain’t no uncle of mine,” Robert
shot back.

“Robert,” said Nehema sharply.

Robert lowered his eyes, but said
nothing. So she held some authority with him, if not the daughter. Had she seduced
him?

“You didn’t give me much of a
chance, Robert,” the Rider said, thinking as he spoke. “Besides, if I told you
or Emory who I was, you wouldn’t have believed me anyway.”

“Still don’t,” Robert sulked.

“Go wash up for dinner, son,” Haddox
commanded. “Now. Emory, will you help your ma with the groceries and get supper
going?”

“Yes, daddy,” Emory said, and went
to the load of sacks in the wagon.

Nehema was staring at the Rider
again, her deep brown eyes projecting a strong desire, but for what? Physical
contact, or rescue, or both?

“Hey,” Haddox said, jostling her
with his arm.

She looked at him, as if she’d
forgotten he was there for a moment.

“Supper?”

She bowed her head.

“Of course.”

He leaned in and pecked her lips,
and the Rider was momentarily overcome with jealousy, but derived a certain
satisfaction in that she did not return the gesture. She turned and went to
help the little girl with the paper wrapped packages.

Haddox put his hands on his hips and
looked the Rider over.

“You don’t look anything alike. You
really her brother?”

The Rider opened his mouth to
answer, but Haddox held up a hand.

“Before you answer, I’m well aware
of my wife’s former profession, just like I guess most of those assholes in
town are. My little girl ain’t though, and I’d spare her that knowledge. If you’re
one of her
friends
from the old days,
I got no quarrel nor hard feelings towards you as of right now. But you open up
my daughter to any undue ugliness and I’ll float you down the river to Menturn
Slough in pieces.”

“I’m not her brother,” the Rider
admitted. “But I’m not what you think I am either.”

“No,” said Haddox. “No, you don’t
strike me as that type. You look like a foreigner, but you talk like an
American. There’s a hardness about you. Not necessarily meanness, but hardness.
You two have a history?”

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.