Naamah - The Weaver’s Last Judgement Chapter 1

Since I died six months ago, I've been falling through space-time. I woke up in the hospital with tubes going in and out of me with no recollection of how I'd gotten there.

According to the nurse, I'd had a horrible hiking accident. I'd been found on the side of the Grand Canyon, impaled by a crooked branch. Vultures had picked at my innards, and I'd been on the verge of death the entire time.

I was spotted by passing tourists, Bill and Mary Frank, retirees from Chicago who were on an RV tour of Route 66. Mary had a telephoto lens on her camera that morning and she used it to zoom in on the movement of birds across the canyon.

She managed to click a single shot. When she realized what she'd captured, she screamed for Bill to call 911. Within an hour, rescue crews brought me down.

I was unconscious for two weeks in the hospital, and I'm told I had multiple surgeries and died on the operating table three times. When I finally woke up, my injuries were almost entirely healed. I maintain only the vaguest memories of being on the cliff, and I have no recollection of how I got there.

The hospital and local authorities were able to locate my family. They had filed a missing person's report almost as soon as they'd realized I was gone. When they came to pick me up in Arizona, I hardly recognized them. No one could understand why I was two thousand miles away from home.

My thirteen year old daughter Adelaide held my hand the entire six hour plane ride back to Missouri. When Atlas, my spouse, pulled into our driveway, I couldn't fully comprehend where I was.

Despite being back "home" for five and a half months, my connection to reality remained tenuous. My vague memories as Anastasia Morgan ping-ponged between a studio apartment in a hip college town, a log cabin in the snowy mountains, a suburban house in middle America.

My self, my children, my spouse, my career, faded and shifted in my memories. The faces stayed the same, but their expressions were always different. My home in this reality was a large old house on a tract of land in rural Missouri. Our road was only a few miles from Route 66. Atlas was a sheep farmer by day and a crystal miner on the weekends. Adelaide went to an all girls school in town. In this lifetime, I was an amateur painter with an attic full of work I'd never shone anyone.

I also worked with Atlas on the farm, tending sheep, caretaking the land, managing our home and business. Since I returned from the hospital, my body has been on autopilot. It cooked, washed, moved sheep between pastures, dripped paint on canvas, but I couldn't stay tethered to my life for very long.

In another reality, I was an award winning novelist. In a second, I was a rock star. In a third, I was a principle dancer for an international ballet. In yet another, I was an artistic genius. A supermodel, a yogi, a monarch, a priestess, a witch. Like a lead weight, I fell through timelines and shot into dimensions where I was the savior, the supreme leader, the creatrix of all life.

This culminated in an event that took place a week before Halloween. At 3:33 am, I woke from a profound and objectively terrifying dream. I'd ascended into the night sky on the skeins of a giant spider. The Weaver rapped me in her web. Light and dark aspects of She whirled around me, showing me my own reflections.

Like a dead woman at the last judgment, I saw myself throughout the history of time. The Weaver wove into me, awakening my supreme power and my extreme responsibility.

"Greetings Initiate. The Weaver welcomes you into Her service. To test your worthiness for the many gifts I have bestowed upon you, you will be visited by a series of 10 angels and 10 demons. They follow the codex of life, starting at the root of the tree and ending at the tallest branch."

Two diagrams emerged in the void as I lay paralyzed in my bed. Each diagram had three pillars. A series of spheres were situated along each pillar.

"One tree represents the light. The day side of the tree. The other represents it's shadow. The night side of the same tree." She pointed to the lowest sphere on the dark tree. "The first demon will arrive on Halloween night. You will be judged, and you will judge, as you have judged yourself. Don't disappoint me, Initiate," the Weaver said. The images faded into coiled strands as they disappeared into the mists of dream time.

This visitation shattered what was left of my personal ego, and it sent me spinning into the void of my own consciousness. The Weaver had made me the main character in the story of life and had simultaneously taken the last shreds of my personal identity. I couldn't comprehend why she had chosen me for this. I had been a woman without memories, groping for some sense of her own existence. Then I was a ghost, doling out the Weaver's last judgement.

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On Halloween morning, I looked out over the misty autumn fields as I sipped my coffee on the front porch of our Missouri farm house. Anticipation for what the Weaver wanted bloomed in my chest. Sometimes Her voice was a distant echo. Sometimes Her voice was a chorus of trumpets and Her arachnid form blazed in my mind's eye like the rays of the Sun. But I felt almost entirely disconnected from Her at that moment.

When Atlas emerged onto the porch, the tilt of his cheek caught the light of dawn, and I brushed his skin with the backs of my cold fingers.

Light and shadow passed behind his eyes. Love, lust, hatred, fear. I slipped into his arms, and he kissed my head. "I'm going out to move the sheep around," he told me.

I let myself be held in his warmth a moment longer and then backed away. "Adelaide wants to go trick or treating tonight. I can't take her. I have...things to do."

"Sure. I like free candy."

I squeezed his arm and went back inside. The hot air from the fireplace pricked the tip of my chilled nose, and the smell of cedar wood smoke filled the air.

For most of the morning, I kept my hands busy. I painted in the attic, making the art the Weaver now demanded I share. Later, I descended the rickety old stairs to the kitchen. Adelaide sat at the table, staring at the massive pumpkins Atlas had brought in from the garden.

"Can we carve these now?” she asked.

"Let's see what we can do."

Together, we sliced into the thick orange skins, sawing and stabbing with our knives. The earthy sweet scent of pumpkin flesh filled my nose, and the sticky goo of it's innards covered my fingers. Adelaide and I then drew and cut out the shapes for the faces.

Later, her friends Cleo and Beatrix arrived dressed as a zebra and a tiger. Adelaide emerged from her bedroom dressed as a unicorn with a rainbow horn poking out of her forehead. All three had a pillow case for harvesting candy from strangers, and I was happy their plush bodysuits would keep them warm in the October chill. I hugged Adelaide and kissed Atlas goodbye.

Almost as soon as they left the house, the Weaver's blazing visage appeared inside my minds eye. Twilight enveloped the world outside my windows. A bracing wind whipped the bare limbs of the trees, and a shiver slid up my spine from a cold draft.

"Outside." Her voice boomed in my mind.

"It's so cold out there. Can't I just do this in front of the fireplace."

"No. Outside. Put on a coat and get a flashlight if you must."

I did as she asked and stepped out onto the front porch. The sheep had been bedded down for the night. The lights on the barns glowed orange in the faded haze of twilight.

My body moved by itself, pushing me like a marionette into the forest beyond our farm's lights. I stumbled down the rocky path toward the cave where Atlas dug for quartz.

He'd shown me a big vein he'd uncovered right before I went missing. But I didn't like the cave. It smelled of strange minerals and sulfur. I didn't know how he could stand being inside it. Every time I went there, I felt like I was drowning.

As the moon rose over the dogwood grove, the dripping red leaves turned a shade of deep purple. The entrance to the sandstone cave glowed white in the moonlight. I could already smell the scent of damp earth dripping wet inside. My body didn't want to go there. It refused to budge from the grove.

The laughter of three vicious women chittered around me. "Who are you? You're nothing," they demeaned. "You've never been anything. You'll never be anything. No one wants you. No one needs you. You don't even exist."

"What is this?" I muttered, turning around to find the source of the voices. There was no one around.

"Just go inside Lilith's cave." The Weaver's words boomed in my mind.

"Why must I do this?"

"There is nothing else for you to do, Anastasia. Tonight, you will meet Naamah, the demon of the first shell. She is said to be the mother of all demons. Her counterpart sphere on the day side of the Tree of Life is Malhuth. The Kingdom."

"It sounds like the Kingdom has already judged me as a loser," I said, pursing my lips. "What am I supposed to prove? Why do I care what she thinks of me?"

"Just go inside or you'll forget Me. Where would you be then?" The Weaver's voice commanded me as it swept past on the breeze.

"Fine." My flashlight beam bobbed along the ground as I approached the cave. "I never asked for any of this," I muttered as I passed through the entrance.

"Oh really?" The Weaver laughed.

The moment I stepped inside the cave, my feet were pulled out from under me. I was swept along on a river of time, deeper into the cavern. I woke on the rocky ground with my flashlight beaming directly into my eyes. My throat felt full of sand and my head ached like I'd been stoned to death a million times.

I lifted my upper body, grabbed the flashlight, and aimed it down the length of the tunnel. A shadow moved just beyond the beam.

"Hello?" I asked. My heart rate increased as I pulled myself to my feet.

I had no fear of death since I died. But the prospect of having a stranger in the cave with me was oddly disorienting. I walked down the tunnel and turned my beam onto the cavern. The large open space was empty except for a series of stalactites. "This is crazy," I muttered. "I don't even know what I'm looking for."

A blast of heat hit me like a tidal wave, and I was pushed back against the wall of the cave. I slid down to sitting as the lights and shadows in the cavern coalesced in front of me.

A young woman emerged from the chaos, dressed in white lace, like a bride on her wedding day. She held a bouquet of roses so red their colors bled from her hands, down her dress, and to her bare feet. She stepped closer. A sheer white vail covered her face, and my heart leapt into my chest.

"Naamah?"

"Is it you? My groom?" She asked, stepping closer. "I feel your eyes watching me. My darling. Always watching me. I'm here for you. Make me yours!"

"I'm not your groom, Naamah," I said.

"I'm here for you!" She screamed, charging toward me. The veil slipped away from her face, revealing the hideous decay underneath.

I scrambled away seconds before the bride slammed into the wall where I'd been resting. Her skeletal body clattered against the sandstone. I ran down the nearest tunnel as she righted herself and growled behind me.

"Come back!" She demanded. "I can smell him on you."

I gasped as I ran, sweat breaking out on my brow. "What am I supposed to do about this?" I asked the Weaver. But she wasn't online.

I growled at myself and kept running down the random tunnel I'd chosen. My flashlight remained fixed in my hand. I had light, but it was also the only light in this place, making me like a glow fish in the deepest sea.

I ducked into a nook in the wall, turned off the light, and hunkered down, hoping she'd pass. She seemed ravenous for something, and she'd decided it me. I waited in the dark, listening for her footsteps.

"I can feel your eyes on me," she whispered at the end of the tunnel. "I'll find you. I've been waiting to be your bride for so long. Come to me!"

I gulped, clutching my flashlight. A male voice echoed in the cold void, a knowing laughter. "Do you want to take what's mine," he asked.

"Not interested. It sounds like the two of you have some unfinished business."

"Do you really think you can take my inheritance," his smooth voice licked at me.

"Show yourself," I hissed, ready to turn the flashlight back on.

A shadow formed in the darkness, the face of a hooded man, cloaked in black. "You'll never survive it, Sister," he chuckled. "Not if I couldn't."

"Who are you? Could you deal with your fiancé, please. My family is going to be back soon, and I'd prefer they don't have to worry about me."

"I am your adversary, princess."

He grabbed my wrist and yanked me from my nook. The flashlight cluttered to the ground and turned on. I broke his hold and pushed away from him, finally getting a good look at him. A face with sharp features and penetrating eyes looked back at me. He was dressed in dark robes like a priest.

"I'm here, darling. Come find me!" He yelled. "See you at the finish line, sweetie."

"Screw you," I yelled into the tunnel as he disappeared. "I'm at a distinct disadvantage having a body."

Naamah screeched from the cavern and her footsteps fell hard and fast in my direction. I growled and turned toward her, holding my ground.

She barreled into the tunnel, rushing toward me at inhuman speed. "I smell him. Where is he?" She growled at me as she approached. Her melted face and putrid wedding dress had become terrifying, but there was no escape. All I could do was stand there.

"I'm not him. I'm not even sure who he is."

"He is the One." Her voice was low and rough. "He is Everything."

"Sure. He seemed like a weak bitch to me," I said.

She jumped on me, grabbing my shoulders. She pushed me down to the ground. I lay on my back with the dead bride's spittle dripping on my chin.

"I smell him on you," she mewled, sniffing my earlobe.

"I don't know what you smell, honey, but it's not him." I pushed her off and sat beside her on the floor of the cave.

"I smell you?" she asked, a light dawning in her starless eyes.

She reached out to me, touching my shoulder in a tender expression of intimacy. I took her bony hand. "It might be me you smell."

"You're my groom?" She asked.

I slid my arm around her shoulder, and she rested her head against my chest. "I could be gay for you, Naamah. But I'm pretty sure I'm married to Atlas right now."

She sighed against me. "I understand," she said.

Her body returned to life. Her wedding dress faded, and she was just a regular girl dressed in jeans and a jacket, needing to feel unconditional love for the first time.

"We'll always be friends," I said as she faded into the shadows of the cave. When she withdrew, a chill ran up my spine. I was alone, huddled in the dusty darkness.

I grabbed the flashlight and hurried down the tunnel. When I came to the large cavern, I followed the markings on the walls to the entrance. I felt as if I was coming out of murky water when I emerged into the night forest. Gasping for breath, my lungs worked double time to adjust.

"Did I pass your test?" I asked the Weaver.

"We'll see," she said. "You've only just started, princess."

"Please don't call me that." I hurried down the rocky path through the forest.

"Did he intimidate you?" Her voice slid over my shoulders and up my neck.

"Who?" I stopped in the path and sniffed the night air. I smelled the scent of frankincense.

"The Bride's Watcher. Your adversary," she said.

"Him? No," I scoffed.

"Really..." she whispered, a chill blowing up the back of my jacket.

"I know that dude. He's an idiot with too much time on his hands." I started back down the path. The light of the farm glowed between the trees.

"Having a lot of time on your hands can be an asset," the Weaver spoke from the shadowy trees.

"What's that saying about idle hands?" I asked her.

I felt her laughter from the moon as it hung overhead in the dome of the sky. I looked up to see the Weaver's web spread out above me in lacing constellations of stars. I then stepped from the forest into the light of the farm yard.

"You should get some rest. Your family already misses you and you have to tell them to not eat too much candy. That painting in the attic won't finish itself. And you haven't even started with the angels yet. How do you expect to pass your trials with angels if you get this worn out from the very first demon?"