R&D 5

They stood waiting. The first gulls met the day with their ragged crying over the tenement rooftops, the boards on the pier slick underfoot. Fog faded them, melted them into their own thoughts, thick and dark as smoke and the choppy Clyde waters.

Weiss shuffled forward. Stuck a hand out. Feeling his way. His fingertips brushing the damp edge of a war poster peeling from the stanchion under its own weight.

Abraham grabbed a chunk of his friend’s coat to anchor himself. Called out for his friend’s son as if it was his own. His throat hoarse and his voice sandy dissipating into the fog. ‘Jacob! Jacob!...Jacob…’

All the others had gone on the last ferries from Rothesay to the mainland.

Weiss had given up calling but not looking. The shape of the arcade loomed up before them. Its lights and jangling machines offering the easy familiarity of the modern. He shook his head.  ‘It isn’t possible. Here. Now. Tzel Tzayad - The Shadow Gatherer?’

Abraham stumbled as he stepped in front of him as if sniffing the air. ‘Moishe. Moishe. Moishe. There are unspoken things that we have forgotten to say when our feet were comfortably in front of the fire. We know.  Outside, shapeshifting, it breeds in silent places.’

He resumed his cry but choked on the words. ‘Jacob! Jacob! Jacob…’

Coloured lights from Madame Zia, turned on and off, on and off with a flash of red. Her painted eyes split and brighter than the surrounding light, spiderwebbed with fractures. Something turned inside  and twitched. Gears hitched in  a wet, hungry rattle. Louder than it had any right to be—even carried by the fog.

Madame Zia marked the end of the pier. Weiss strode towards it, before returning. ‘There’s nothing more to see. Jacob is not here.’

Abraham stepped in front of him, whispering. ‘Moishe, I can taste it. As it once tasted me.’ He clutched his friend’s hand as if he’d stepped off the end of the pier. ‘You can too.’

***

Wiess asks. ‘Can you smell her bread yet, from here, Abe?’

Veria, their village shetl, has been a constant, spilling over from their thoughts and into words, a quickened pace measured by each footstep through the forest that brought them closer to home.

Abraham bangs his chest with a resounding thump that can be heard even through his long coat. His backpack shakes into the longer stride between his feet. ‘Almost Moishe. Almost. I can taste Shoshana’s bread. Only in my heart, Moishe. Only in my heart.’

Something like an underfoot twig, cracks to the left and behind them. They glance at each other. Abraham asks, ‘Did you hear that?’

Abraham waves an arm and a scrawny white hand emerges from his greatcoat like a white hanky, dismissing it. But he almost bumps into his companion’s back as they edge to a standstill. ‘It’s nothing,’ he whispers. ‘Maybe just a bird? Or a stray dog?’ He jokes, ‘Maybe it’s a bear?’

They study the trees and the darkness that gathers in the branches as their pace drops and each footstep is put carefully down and the next step considered.

‘You feel it? The silence…No bird calls.’ Weiss hooks onto Abraham’s wrist to pull him into a glade. ‘It's watching us’.

 ‘I feel it. But Shoshana and my little bird, Miriam, are waiting.’ Abraham steps away from Weiss.  ‘We should hurry.’

Shadows shift between the trees. A figure in black robes, crucifix glinting, appears and disappears.

Abaham rubs his eyes.

Weiss stares at the last place they’d seen it. He puts down his back pack and opens it. Takes out the flint, striker, and a bag of salt. He sprinkles the salt in a circle around the trees under which they shelter. Rubs it into his hands and face. ‘We should build a fire. A big fire.’

Weiss holds out what remains of the salt. Abraham steps aside, ducks his head. Looks into the growing darkness of the forest.

‘We’re almost home. We should hurry. Moishe, your mother will be waiting for you.’

Weiss scrambles for materials. He kicks over a dead standing tree and peels off birch bark. Gathers pine needles and dried fern. Packs them between the shelter of a boulder, while daring to dart outside the circle he’s made and pulls in a few heavier branches.

‘My mother has waited six months or more. She can wait a bit longer.’

Back and forth Abraham glances. Before he steps outside the circle and breaks into a faltering run.

Shadows follow him.

Weiss calls to him and goes to follow him. But steps back. He picks up the flint and the metallic striker. A shower of sparks and the fire catches. He feeds it with spruce twigs. Pulls out garlic bulbs and crush them. Rubbing the oil into his neck and chest. Anointing his forehead. He checks the red strings around his wrist and ankles are secure.  He spits into the darkness with a phut, phut sound and feeds the fire.

Rocking back and forth, he cries. ‘Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad…’

 A listener steps from the trees. Weiss tries to avert his eyes. Not look at the Shadow Gatherer. The silhouette has taken the appearance of a priest with a silver cross swing from its soot-stained cassock.

Weiss breaks away from the creature’s gaze. He pleads, ‘Ribbono Shel Olam… guard me from harm’.

The Shadow Gatherer steps closer.

Weiss pulls out his siddur, prayer book, clutching it with shaking hands and white knuckles. ‘Yoshev b'seter Elyon… I will not fear the terror by night…’

The Shadow Gatherer circles around his back. Weiss spins around and stumbles. He lifts a mezuzah scroll he carries, pressing it to his lips and holds the words outwards, over the flames. ‘Blessed are You… who brings forth light from darkness.’

 The flames bend and almost go out as The Shadow Gatherer carves an opening and looms in front of Weiss with the stench of rotting flesh on his lips and mouth as it answers back.

‘Hell is naked before us. We stretcheth out over the empty places.’

The fire pops, sending sparks upward. The Shadow Gatherer steps backward.

Weiss rocks gently back and forth, tears smudging the ink of his siddur. ‘You cannot take me. My words are my light.’

The Shadow Gatherer hangs above him in the branches. ‘And the earth hangeth upon nothing. The pillars of heaven trembleth before us.’

Weiss watches at the shadows coalesce into a priest that bounds away-wolflike-on arms and legs in among the trees on the path his friend took.

He feeds the fire and calls out. ‘Tefilat HaDerech… May it be Your will to lead us in peace’.