The Digger's Rest (42 page)

“
Kiskil-lilla!” the creature shrieked
at him, writhing in an ecstasy of pain and reached out, grabbing
him by the throat with one hand and between the legs with
another.

“
Do not break the circle!” the old man
shouted.

Simon panicked, driven to action by the pain
in his groin. He pulled the carved bird from his pocket and jammed
it in her eye. The thing let out a blood curdling, echoing scream,
exploding into a frenzy, forcing their hands apart with her many
arms and expanding wings, pushing her way out of the circle.

Enraged with pain, the creature turned back
to face them, one yellow eye seeming to give off blasts of heat,
the other weeping thick green bile, and began stomping back toward
them, pushing Gayle and the old man away with a force that sent
them flying into the corners of the room.

Simon took a step back, then another. On the
third try his brace caught on the leg of the overturned bed. He
went falling back, landing on his back on the floor. The creature
was instantly on him, straddling him, its many slimy hands holding
him down; first his left leg, then his right; two hands were on his
throat and another had his right wrist. Struggling to breathe and
with only one hand free, Simon grasped wildly in the dark for
anything within his reach to defend himself, tearing at the
creature with his free hand.

He saw the shadows rise behind her again and
heard the loud clap of hands and a flash of blinding white light.
The cry that followed made Simon think of what he’d heard in his
mind’s eye when he saw the panel of the slain demon. The next thing
he knew, he could move and breathe and the creature was flying out
through the window without breaking it. Then nothing—blackness.

***

The next morning when Simon woke, he
wasn’t sure if it was real. The room looked like it hadn’t been
disturbed, but when he got up, his groin ached, and when he looked
in the mirror he saw the dark bruises on his neck.
It was real,
he thought and put his
hands on the edge of the sink to keep his knees from
buckling.

When he went back out into his room he
saw the carved bird on a string that Gayle had given him, on the
floor by the window. He sat on the bed, trying to think of what to
do next, then it came to him
. What was
it?…What was the name? Kiskillilla?

He got up off the bed, felt his foot kick
something and picked it up. It was a bent tin ring covered with
white cloth. He turned it over and saw the words sewn there, ‘Snvi,
Snsvi, and Smnglof.’

He turned on his laptop, went to Google and
put in the name, spelling it phonetically. There it was, in
Wikipedia. He tapped on the link and saw the name. The force of
what he saw pushed him back in his chair, making him take his head
in his hands. Because when the page came up, the name that appeared
across the top of the screen shattered what was left of his
reality. His mind reeled out of control. “LILITH.”

He didn’t know how long he’d sat there before
he came back to himself. His next thought was, “And she wants him!”
At that moment, whatever was left of the boy vanished from inside
him, leaving only the man behind and he and realized that he would
never faint again.

“
Over my dead body!” he said out loud
to himself as he read the article, rapidly absorbing the
information as he had done all his life.
“Aye, lad!”
he heard the old man’s soundless
voice whisper in his ear.

BOOK FOUR

SHATTERED

Wearin' her perfume, Chanel No. 5 Got to be
the finest girl alive She walks real cool, catches everybody's eye
She's got such good lovin' that they can't say goodbye Not too
skinny, she's not too fat She's a real humdinger and I like it like
that She's the devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress,
Devil with the blue dress on Devil with the blue dress, blue dress,
blue dress, Devil with the blue dress on. Lord have mercy!

Devil with the Blue Dress on

…
..As performed by Mitch Ryder and the
Detroit Wheels

Chapter XX

WIKIPEDIA (What Simon Saw)

They give you fever When you kiss them Fever
if you live and learn Fever! 'till you sizzle But what a lovely way
to burn

Fever

………
As performed by Miss Peggy
Lee

But I know what I like I know I like dancin'
with you And I know what you like I know you like dancin' with me
Yeah, yeah Kiss me once Kiss me twice C'mon pretty baby, kiss me
deadly

Kiss Me Deadly

………
As performed by Lita
Ford

The article opened with a brief overall
description.

‘
Lilith is a female
Mesopotamian night demon. The figure of Lilith first appeared in a
class of wind and storm demons or spirits, as Lilitu, in Babylonia,
circa 3000 B.C.E. Many scholars place the origin of the phonetic
name "Lilith" at somewhere around 700 B.C.E.’

Simon already knew the basics from work in
Ancient cultures in their biblical context, but the extent of his
knowledge ended there. He read on, holding his breath as he worked
the little black pad on his laptop frantically, his big blue eyes
scanning the pages like a high tech computer with curls. Reading
furiously, Simon stopped suddenly, staring at one particular
section, remembering what the old man had said about the demoness
in the tapestry, ‘She wants him.’

‘
Late medieval Jewish legend
portrays her as the first wife and equal of Adam. Considering Adam
inferior, Lilith left the Garden of Eden of her own free will
(Other stories claim Lilith refused to lie under Adam, as she
considered that this was too submissive). Adam then bade three
angels to find Lilith and bring her back. When Lilith refused, God
punished her by commanding that she slay 100 of her children,
called Lilin, each day.’

“
What do I do? What do I do?” Simon
kept repeating to himself aloud as he scrolled down, by this time,
large crystalline beads of sweat covered his forehead and were
beginning to run down in his eyes. He wiped his head with his
sleeve without his eyes ever leaving the screen.

‘
The key to this
identification lies in the bird talons and the owls. While the
relief may depict the demon Kisikil-lilla-ke of the Gilgamesh
passage or a goddess, identification with Lilitu is more tenuous
and likely influenced by the "screech owl" translation of the King
James Version.’

By the time he got to the section about
the Hebrews, he was soaked around his neck with sweat, always in
the back of his mind the singular thought,
She wants my Mitch.
He felt a stitch of pain in
the center of his back, like burning, and his body jerked. More
than that he began feeling it again, something he’d never been
really familiar with before, more anger. Like the way he felt when
she hurt Deck, but more intense. The pain in the center of his back
began to ripple outwards, making him hunch his shoulders as he
read.

‘
Another text discovered at
Qumran, conventionally associated with Book of Proverbs, credibly
also appropriates the Lilith tradition in its description of a
precarious, winsome woman – The Seductress (4Q184). The ancient
poem – dated to the first century BCE but plausibly much older –
describes a dangerous woman and consequently warns against
encounters with her. Customarily, the woman depicted in this text
is equated to the “strange woman” of Proverbs 2 and 5, and for good
reason; the parallels are instantly recognizable:’

‘
Her house sinks down to
death, And her course leads to the shades. All who go to her cannot
return and find again the paths of life.’ (Proverbs
2:18-19)

‘
Her gates are gates of
death, and from the entrance of the house she sets out towards
Sheol. None of those who enter there will ever return, and all who
possess her will descend to the Pit.’ (4Q184)”

‘
However, what this
association does not take into account are additional descriptions
of the “Seductress” from Qumran that cannot be found attributed to
the “strange woman” of Proverbs; namely, her horns and her wings:
“a multitude of sins is in her wings.” The woman illustrated in
Proverbs is without question a prostitute, or at the very least the
representation of one, and the sort of individual with whom that
text’s community would have been familiar. The “Seductress” of the
Qumran text, conversely, could not possibly have represented an
existent social threat given the constraints of this particular
ascetic community. Instead, the Qumran text utilizes the imagery of
Proverbs to explicate a much broader, supernatural threat – the
threat of the demoness Lilith.’

Simon’s body began to shake with it, the
anger at the dawning knowledge that his innocent mind would never
have conceived, then protectiveness, of Mitch, so strong.
“Anything. I’ll do anything,” he said out loud to himself, the pain
had vibrated down to his arms by then. His eyes were like a
calculator, absorbing the information, synthesizing it, analyzing
it as he read on, possessed himself by what? A feeling he couldn’t
describe, had no words for.

‘
She wanders about a night,
vexing the sons of men and causing them to defile
themselves.’

‘
For Evil Lilith, when she
saw the greatness of his corruption, became strong in her husks,
and came to Adam against his will, and became hot from him and bore
him many demons and spirits and Lilin. (Patai81:455f)’

‘
The demon Lilith, the evil
woman, is described as a beautiful woman, who transforms into a
black, monkey-like demon, and it is associated with the power of
seduction.’

‘
A medieval reference to
Lilith as the first wife of Adam is the anonymous The Alphabet of
Ben-Sira, written sometime between the 8th and 11th
centuries.’

‘
Genesis 2:18: After God
created Adam, who was alone, He said, 'It is not good for man to be
alone.' He then created a woman for Adam, from the earth, as He had
created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith
immediately began to fight. She said, 'I will not lie below,' and
he said, 'I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are
fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the
superior one.' Lilith responded,
'We are equal to each
other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.'
But they would not listen to one another. When
Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable
Name and flew away into the air. (In this act, Lilith becomes
unique in that she is not touched by Original Sin, having left the
garden before Eve came into existence. Lilith also reveals herself
to be powerful in her own right by knowing the name of
God).’

‘
Adam stood in prayer before
his Creator: 'Sovereign of the universe!' he said, 'the woman you
gave me has run away.' At once, the Holy One, blessed be He, sent
these three angels Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof, to bring her
back. Said the Holy One to Adam, 'If she agrees to come back, what
is made is good. If not, she must permit one hundred of her
children to die every day.' The angels left God and pursued Lilith,
whom they overtook in the midst of the sea, in the mighty waters
wherein the Egyptians were destined to drown. They told her God's
word, but she did not wish to return. The angels said, 'We shall
drown you in the sea.’

“
Leave me!’
she said. ‘I was created only to cause sickness to
infants. If the infant is male, I have dominion over him for eight
days after his birth, and if female, for twenty days.’ "When the
angels heard Lilith's words, they insisted she go back. But she
swore to them by the name of the living and eternal God: 'Whenever
I see you or your names or your forms in an amulet, I will have no
power over that infant.' She also agreed to have one hundred of her
children die every day. Accordingly, every day one hundred demons
perish, and for the same reason, we write the angels names on the
amulets of young children. When Lilith sees their names, she
remembers her oath, and the child recovers.’”

“
The Alphabet of Ben-Sira is
the earliest surviving source of the story, and the conception that
Lilith was Adam's first wife became only widely known with the 17th
century Lexicon Talmudicum of Johannes Buxtorf.”

By the time Simon had gotten to the end of
the article the pain had found its way to his fingertips, his hands
trembling out of all control as it overtook him in the chair. His
head swam as he slumped in the chair, but not like it used to, not
like he would faint, but like he was receiving something, become
something…more. He was himself, but heightened.

His heart started to beat wildly at the
imagery the article conjured in his innocent young mind, sex, sex,
sex.
MY Mitch and a…monster!
His eyes rolled up in his head, not fainted, a rapture, full,
aware, more aware than he’d ever felt before in his young life,
engulfed in emotions so strange and powerful, they overtook him. He
swooned in them and swam in them, like floating, his chest heaving
with new breath, new life.

Chapter XXI

WEST OF EDEN

I dream of rain, I dream of gardens in the
desert sand I wake in vain, I dream of love as time runs through my
hand I dream of fire, those dreams are tied to a horse that will
never tire And in the flames, her shadows play in the shape of a
man's desire This desert rose, each of her veils, a secret promise
This desert flower, no sweet perfume ever tortured me more than
this And as she turns, this way she moves in the logic of all my
dreams This fire burns, I realize that nothing's as it seems I
dream of rain, I dream of gardens in the desert sand I wake in
vain, I dream of love as time runs through my hand I dream of rain,
I lift my gaze to empty skies above I close my eyes, this rare
perfume is the sweet intoxication of her love I dream of rain