Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name (37 page)

“What
is your punishment?” the Rider asked. “You rule this place.”

“Yes,”
smirked
Lucifer.
“This place.
I was the Light Bearer. When the Father said ‘let there be light,’ it was I who
brought it forth. Then God showed us man and said we must defer to you. I was
angry, and like a fool I let my anger be stoked by an insidious tongue and
surrounded myself with fools. I became the face of rebellion and as punishment
I was demoted to jailer and zookeeper of this madhouse.”

“Your
pride led you here,” Kabede intoned.

Lucifer
wrinkled his brow and opened his mouth to speak, but the Rider spoke first.

“What
‘insidious tongue’ counseled you to rebel?”

“Ah,
now at last we come to the point,” said Lucifer. “Though I knew him as a cherub
called Adam Belial, he was one of those Outer Gods you have recently made the
acquaintance of.
A deceiver of epic proportions.
He
had us all convinced he was one of our number.
Admirable, in
one respect.
Infuriating in another.
He
infiltrated us,
then
he drove Heaven to war to serve
the ends of his masters.”

“Outer
Gods...,” the Rider mused.
“The Great Old Ones.”

Lucifer
nodded.

“Who
is he? Who are his masters?” Kabede asked. “What are their ends? What is the
Hour of the Incursion?”

Lucifer
turned then, and went to one of the high shelves, running his finger along the
bound books.

“I
never learned his real name, though like some of the Fallen, he was worshiped
at times. In Egypt he was
Set,
and the Aztecs knew him
as Tezcatlipoca. When I discovered his true nature, he fled. He left this.”

Lucifer
slipped a thin black book from the shelf and returned. He set it on his desk
and opened it.

They
drifted closer to read the title, ‘Damnatus Damnateum.’

“It
is a book of the so-called Great Old Ones,” said Lucifer, “and details their
plans for this universe. The Hour of Incursion is a time of celestial
alignment, fast-approaching, I should think, by the upswing in their activity
as of late. The book doesn’t say exactly
when,
or how
it will come about. I assume only the adherents to their fool religion are
privy to that information. It does say what will come after.
The
Great Dying.
The Sixth Extinction.”

The Great Dying.
Sheardown mentioned that to the Rider.

Kabede
leaned forward. They could not interact with anything on this plane, being as
sealed within their merkabah magen as the rest of Gehenna was sealed out.
Lucifer seemed to know this, and he methodically turned the pages of the
infernal book for Kabede as he read, eyes widening in growing amazement.

“One
of Adon’s men mentioned that. He said those who aided in the Hour of Incursion
would become gods.”

“Gods,
yes,” Lucifer mused.
“Gods of a dead world.
The Great
Old Ones feed on apathy and chaos. They will remake this universe in their
image by unmaking the order in place. They have done it before.”

“Before?”
Kabede asked sharply.

“In other universes.
They pass through realities, like vast
weevils gnawing at the fringes of Creation, and they unravel the Maker’s skein
wherever they go, seeding madness and reaping chaos.”

“Adon’s
man said they would unleash hell,” the Rider added tentatively, watching
Lucifer’s face for a hint of expression, “and that That Which Strains
Against
Its Chains would be loosed.”

“An
unfortunate turn of phrase,” Lucifer shrugged.

“I
thought he might be referring to you.”

Lucifer
laughed.

“I
do not strain against anything. I have my place here.”

“So…you
aren’t a part of their plans?”

“No.”

“Lilith
said she wasn’t either. Then she tried to kill me.”

“That
cow brims with guile. She’s well-suited to Adam Belial’s company.”

“Why
would she help the Great Old Ones?”

“Adam
Belial, through your ben Abuyah, or Acher, or Adon—whatever he’s calling
himself these days—no doubt made her a promise which appealed to her.”

“Samael,”
said the Rider.

“Yes,”
Kabede agreed, looking up from the book. “The book says they will remake this
universe and break down all established order.”

“So
Samael would be freed from his duties,” the Rider speculated. “Free to be with
Lilith.”

“Oh
yes,” Lucifer smiled. “You are clever little men. That’s what he would lead her
to believe,” Lucifer said, “and she’s emotional enough to believe it. But Adam
Belial’s promises are only words.”

What
had these beings promised Adon, the Rider wondered.

“If
they did do it….if Samael was no longer the Angel of Death…”

“Then
man would cease to be mortal. From one narrow perspective, gods. But there are
plenty of things which are immortal and are far from being gods. You fools
equate everlasting life with power. What power is there in everlasting poverty?
Or ignorance?
Those mangled in war or by accident
would linger forever in freakish agony. The sick would waste away but never
pass on. The earth would clutter with infirm like a cattle pen full of
mutilated animals.” Lucifer smiled thinly.
“A neverending
food supply for The Great Old Ones.”

“But
what are they?” Kabede asked. “What can exist outside of Creation?”

“Are
you sure you want to know?” Lucifer smiled. “Isn’t such a line of questioning
forbidden by your dogma?”

“What
are they?” the Rider insisted. “Do you even know?”

“There
is little in this universe I don’t know, man,” Lucifer said stiffly, “and more
things outside of it than you would care to imagine. It’s said there were
things before the Light.
Things that floated in the black
waters of Chaos, and resisted the order that the Father bestowed.
They
were driven out or beaten down, unmade by the Word. Some were trapped by the
Foundation Stone—that piece of the Holy Throne which bears the Tetragrammaton.
Over the ages they have spoken to you men in dreams, for in that reality they
can still move with relative ease. Even your King David heard them once, and
they persuaded him to move the Foundation Stone into the Temple and nearly
destroyed the world. Sometimes they have escaped. The thing you faced, Rider,
the Dark Mother, Shub-Niggurath. She was loosed by men in Noah’s time.”

“We
are to believe you do not ally yourself with them?” Kabede asked. “That
‘unleashing hell’ is just a turn of phrase? Hell is your domain.”

“Eighteen
years ago Adam Belial resurfaced at the head of an army of Grigori with several
of my lieutenants. They tried to take control of Gehenna.”

“Eighteen
years ago…that would be eighteen sixty two,” the Rider said.

“Yes.
The conflict you perceived, Rider. The one you left your Order for. It was The
Third Rebellion. Hell’s Civil War.”

“No,”
said the Rider. “I saw angels amassing.”

“My
allies,” Lucifer said.
“The Union of Heaven and Hell.
You’ve seen some of them here yourself. They turned the tide against Adam
Belial.”

The
Rider faltered. He thought he had been taking the side of the Lord on Earth
when he left the Sons of the Essenes to join the Union cause. He fought to end
slavery and southern oppression. He had been sure the entire Confederate agenda
was the Adversary’s own.

“But
then…slavery….”

“Oh
it was an issue Heaven wanted resolved, to be sure. It would have happened
eventually. Personally I didn’t care one way or the other. For me there were
greater things at stake than any issues in the mortal realm.”

“Who else joined Adam Belial?”

“
Molech,”
said Lucifer, “as you know.
Lilith
and her succubi, the shedim of course, Maschit the slayer of Egypt, Mastemah
the enemy of Moses, Adrammelech, a few others.
If they had Samael, they
might have won.”

“Why
did they try to seize control of hell?”

Lucifer
pursed his lips.

“Oh,
who wouldn’t want to run this place? It’s all so rewarding.”

The
Rider got the sense he was being deflected, but then Kabede, pursuing his own
line of thought, asked;

“But…if
they seek to destroy man, why do you oppose them?”

“Why
should I want to destroy the world? The world is already mine. I am its
custodian.”

“What?”
Kabede exclaimed, looking up again from the book.

“Creation
is the crucible of the soul, and I am the fire. That is my true calling. It’s
not my task to destroy humanity. I temper it. I make you worthy of God.”

“Oh,
so you have our best interests in mind,” the Rider quipped. “I could tell that
when we came in here.”

Lucifer
shrugged and began to stroll slowly to the great draperies.

“I
will admit, over the ages I have developed a jailer’s contempt for his charges.
That is why I am here and not in Heaven. That is my sin. But look at
yourselves. You were meant to be God’s greatest creation. Hah! Humanity is
capable of greater abominations than even I can fathom, and believe
me,
I have grown quite fluent in the unspeakable over the
eons. I have watched you. I have always watched you all. I have watched as you
prey upon your own children—as you grind the bones of the poor for your own
meal, for love of gain and comfort. What sort of shape do you think your souls
will be in to survive the rigors prepared for you this place? What comforts
will material wealth buy you here?”

He
jerked a scarlet chord then, and the rightmost of the great black draperies
slid open, granting a towering view of hell and its greatest horror. Another
ceaseless waterfall, which had been obscured from the outside by the structure
of Pandæmonium itself, now loomed in grisly glory like a madman’s scenic view
before them. It was a fall of bodies, the naked souls of the damned. Hundreds
of thousands of naked bodies tumbling like ragdolls from the mouth of hell far
above, plunging like squirming fish into the lake of fire and ice.

A
gauntlet of demons scourged them with flails of glowing chain as they fell, and
some were plucked randomly from the gush to be ravaged and torn and consumed by
lustful and savage beastmen and twisted things with erupting volcanoes for
heads. Others were swept away to greater tortures. The sight was made more
ghastly by the total lack of noise. Something in the makeup of the chamber shut
out the sound. The torrent of the damned fell and suffered as quietly as
Belphegor’s moving painting of light and shadow.

Lucifer
stood with his hands clasped behind his back looking out the window.

“The
worst drive the best to apathy and unbelief. You met my man above. The Order of
The Peacock Angel,” he scoffed. “They actually worship me. This is particularly
baffling because simply believing in me acknowledges the existence of the
Almighty Father, yet still they choose to worship me. Like you Israelites in
the desert…God split the sea for you and did you build him a Temple on the far
bank? No. You built a golden calf.”

He
shook his head, and there was real amusement on his face now as he went to the
second drapery and grasped the chord.

Kabede
was staring open mouthed, tears streaming down his face at the sight of the
Fall
of the Damned. The Rider did not want to see behind the
second curtain, but Lucifer was already drawing it open.

“Let
me show you the greatest folly of all,” he said. “Greater than the beinonim who
go their whole lives
neither wholly good nor wholly evil,
greater than the idolaters, greater even than the unrepentant
.”

The
curtain slid aside and they were treated to a murky blackness outside the
window. In it, ghostly, ethereal bodies cluttered close together like
jellyfish, yet passed through each other without resistance as they drifted
aimlessly in a cloud of starless night. They lay stiff in the attitude of
corpses, but the Rider saw their eyes working furiously in their heads, darting
all around. Though paralyzed, they were aware.
Aware that
something was wrong.
Several drifted against the window and bounced back
into the gloom, spinning slowly as they disappeared in the tangle of rigid
bodies.

“What
are they?” the Rider gasped.

“These
are the deniers.
The vehement unbelievers.
They lock
themselves in an eternal void upon death because they are unwilling to conceive
of anything beyond the grave, and so come unprepared. Look at them. They are
not even aware of each other. Self-centered imbeciles who did good or evil for
themselves and gave no thought to the next world.
A multitude
that increases every day, and each one alone.
Like fruit, grown by The
Great Old Ones, for The Great Old Ones. This is what Adam Belial would have of
all of humanity.”