THE WINGS OF LILITH (1998)
If you were in the Big Apple in mid-October and had a newborn baby, you also had good reason to be horrified. Over a three-day period, there occurred a string of crimes occurred so bizarre and heinous, even the most jaded New Yorkers took notice.
Allow me to introduce myself. Name's Carl Kolchak. I'm a reporter with the Independent News Service in New York. I had worked out of Chicago until I learned too much about a series of killings at the well-connected Merrymount Archives. Lieutenant Irene Lamont of the Windy City P.D., along with a high-ranking representative of the U.S. Army, got in contact with my higher-ups. They were ready to fire me, but my bureau chief, Tony Vincenzo, intervened on my behalf. He somehow convinced the people with the hangman's noose to allow me to transfer out of Chicago.
I've been in Manhattan for a few years now, reporting the news and making a general pain in the ass of myself in the eyes of New York's ironically named “Finest.” During that time, I've seen what you would expect a reporter to see—mob trials, drive-bys, political corruption, you name it. But nothing quite like this.
Staten Island, October 16th, 4:00 a.m. Julie Ross' week-old son woke her up with his crying. She dragged herself out of bed and went to the kitchen to prepare his bottle. When his cries grew more severe and suddenly stopped, Julie, suspecting something was seriously wrong, ran to the baby's room. What the young mother saw put her in Bellevue for several months. What she could not have known was that similar incidents occurred all over her Staten Island neighborhood that morning.
Midtown West Manhattan, October 17th, 12:30 a.m. Terry Riley loved her job. She was a pediatric nurse at Roosevelt Hospital. Terry adored children and made up for having none of her own by giving her love and affection to the newborns at work. While making her rounds that night, she heard the piercing screams of several infants. Running into the room to see what was wrong, Terry burst out screaming herself.
I was driving home from a late night at the office when I heard the call on my police scanner. I high-tailed it to the hospital.
The maternity ward was a madhouse. New mothers screamed for their babies while the cops did their best to hold them back from the crime scene. As I entered the ward, I saw what all the pandemonium was about. Of the fifty-odd infants in the nursery, at least twenty were on the floor, mutilated and murdered. The surviving babies screamed in horror as the nurses attempted to calm them down. The cops, of course, were thrilled to see me.
“Oh, Christ,” an officer said. “Captain!”
Captain Dominic Sperranza's eyes narrowed when he saw me. “It's all right, Danvers. Let him in before he starts whining about freedom of the press.”
I approached Sperranza, my camera and hand-held cassette recorder at the ready. “Whining about freedom of the press. You have such a firm understanding of democracy, Captain!”
“Cool it, Thomas Payne. As you may have noticed, I've got a maternity ward full of dead bodies.”
I had noticed all right. In all my years as a reporter, I had never seen anything quite as stomach-turning as that room.
I asked, “Any idea who did it?”
“The night nurse got a look at the killer.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“No, you can't talk to her! She's giving her statement.”
I listened as Terry Riley gave her statement to Detective Heather Fontayne. Per Ms. Riley, when she entered the nursery, she saw a naked woman holding a baby boy by the ankle and taking a bite out of his throat. Numerous additional infants were already dead on the floor.
Terry described the woman as “six feet tall with red hair and….” She paused.
“And what?” said Detective Fontayne.
Terry shook her head. “You're not going to believe this.”
“Please, tell me.”
“She had wings.”
The detective did a double take. “Wings?”
“Yes, wings. Like an angel's, but black.”
A dutiful Fontayne jotted down the information. “And what happened next?”
“I screamed! That got her attention. She just looked at me and snarled. There was blood dripping out of her mouth and all down her chin and breasts. Then she….” Terry started to cry. Fontayne handed her a handkerchief. Terry dabbed her eyes and continued. “She dropped the baby like he was a towel or something! Then she disappeared.”
“She ran away?”
“No, she…. She muttered some word; it sounded like 'yeah, way.' Then….” She paused again.
“Please, ma'am, what happened next?”
“Oh, god! Now you're really going to think I'm crazy. She turned to mist and vanished into that mirror!” Terry pointed to a round ceiling-mounted mirror in the far corner of the room.
Detective Fontayne admirably kept a straight face.
I felt a strong grip on my shoulder. It was Sperranza. “Didn't I tell you to leave my witness alone?”
“I didn't go near her!”
He grabbed my tape recorder and removed the cassette.
“Oh, come on!”
“There'll be a press release in the morning. It'll tell you all you need to know.”
“You mean, all you want us to know. Will it be as useless as this morning's press release on the Staten Island baby killings? And what'll it say about the winged redhead who disappears into mirrors?”
Instead of replying, Sperranza escorted me to the exit—with one hand on his gun.
Not two years after I moved to New York, Tony Vincenzo, my old bureau chief in Chicago, became a victim of corporate downsizing. Rather than letting him go, I.N.S. offered Tony a choice—early retirement or a transfer to New York. He took the latter, somehow forgetting that I was here too. I'll never forget Tony's words when he first saw me again: “Oh my god, no!”
Several hours after the maternity ward murders, I arrived at the I.N.S. building and made a beeline for Tony's office. His secretary, Liza, sat at the reception desk.
“Carl, you can't go in there. He's in a meeting with Corporate.”
“Corporate can pound sand!” I burst into the office.
“Kolchak,” Tony roared. “Don't you see I'm in a meeting?”
A mousy-looking man in a business suit sat across from Tony's desk.
I exclaimed, “Uptight? Is that you?”
Vincenzo said, “No, Carl, that's not Updyke. Ron is still in Chicago. This is Mr. Howard Kirschenbaum of the I.N.S. Corporate Office.”
“Oh! Sorry about that. You remind me of this guy we used to work with.”
Kinrschenbaum asked Tony, “Who, or what, is this?”
“That's Carl Kolchak—one of my best reporters, if you can believe that.”
“My god, Anthony. If he's one of your best, we're in a world of trouble.”
I said, “Is it safe to assume this meeting is about the disaster with the printing press?”
Kirschenbaum did a double take. “What disaster with the printing press?”
“You mean, you haven't heard?”
“Heard what?”
“My god, man! Your bosses will be furious you weren't down there, investigating the accident.” I placed a hand on his shoulder. “It's all right, Howie. They'll give you time to clean out your office. They're good that way.”
He shot to his feet. “Anthony, I have to postpone our meeting.”
Once Kirschenbaum was gone, Vincenzo stood up and looked at me as if his head would explode. “Why do I keep you on the payroll?”
“Oh, come on, Tony. What would your life be like without me?”
“Peaceful! Well, now that you've sabotaged my meeting, what the hell do you want?”
I filled him in on the maternity ward murders.
“Yes, I know all about that. What does it have to do with you?”
“Since I was there, I figured you might give me the story.”
“Well, you figured wrong. I gave it to Dickerson.”
“Dickerson? He never comes out of the bar long enough to cover a story!”
“You're not in it, Carl. Capische?”
I eyed him suspiciously. “You didn't get a call from Sperranza?”
“So what if I did?”
“Should I file my stories with Sperranza, too? He can check them for cop-friendliness.”
Tony handed me a press release. “This is what I'm putting you on.”
I read it. “An art exhibit? What do I know about art?”
“Just cover the opening, Carl. Maybe some of that culture will rub off on you.”
“Go suck an egg!”
“Or not.”
Since the art opening was not until that evening, I had time to conduct some research. I sat at my desk and logged on to the Internet.
I was new to cyberspace. I had resisted the whole “information superhighway” thing for a long time—so much so that I took a hammer to my last computer. I.N.S. gave me a week off without pay and deducted the cost from my next six months' paychecks. But I now understood that the Internet had its place.
I switched on my terminal and clicked to a search engine. But what to type in? I tried “winged redheads,” but came up with “0 matches.” Then I typed in “baby killers.” That produced a bunch of articles and websites on the abortion controversy. As I waded through all that, I found a news item from Israel about a rash of baby killings in Tel Aviv.
It was a recent piece that stated for the last several nights, babies had been dying in greater Tel Aviv and authorities were stumped. One hysterical mother was taken to a psychiatric hospital after insisting that her newborn had been murdered by a naked redhead with black wings. I printed the document and logged off the computer.
I arrived at the art gallery ay 6:00 p.m. and took a look around. I photographed the paintings and jotted down some notes, but my thoughts were not on the exhibit—until I saw one particular painting. It was a 72-by-36-inch likeness of a winged, naked redhead. She faced the viewer and crouched like a panther about to strike. The painting was titled LILITH THE STALKER.
I approached the curator. “Excuse me?”
“Yes?” she said. “May I help you?”
“I'm curious about LILITH THE STALKER.”
“Oh, yes! That's one of Alice's best works.”
“Who is Lilith?”
“A mythological figure. I don't really know the story.”
“Can I talk to the artist?”
“I'm afraid not. Alice is in Paris for a month.”
“Well, I need some information on this Lilith. Is there somebody I can talk to?”
“Peggy Quinn. She owns Lilith House, a bookstore in the Village. Big lesbian/feminist clientele.”
“Do you have her phone number?”
“No need for that, Mr…. I didn't get your name.”
“Oh, it's Carl. Carl, uh, Steinem.”
“Oh! Any relation to Gloria?”
“No, but I do subscribe to her magazine. Helps me stay in touch with my soft side.”
“Really? You don't strike me as the feminist type.”
“Oh, sure! I'm as feminist as they come. I picketed THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT and I love to watch M*A*S*H.”
“Uh-huh. Well, I'll tell you what Mr....Steinem. Peggy is here tonight. I'll introduce you.”
Peggy Quinn was a heavyset woman of thirty with short blonde hair. She wore a sky blue pantsuit and had a pair of gold-rimmed bifocals on a gold chain around her neck. She was surrounded by several men and women who bore the distinct, cultured look of the literati.
When the curator introduced us, Peggy said, “So, it's Mr. Steinem, is it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“What makes you so curious about Lilith?”
“I'm a reporter and I'm doing a piece on Lilith Fair.”
She laughed. “Bit late, aren't you? Lilith Fair played the City three months ago.”
“Well, I'm doing a follow-up piece on how the festival got its name.”
“Uh-huh. So, what do you want to know?”
“The whole story of Lilith.”
She sized me up and decided I was a harmless nut. “Tell you what. I'm very busy right now. Why don't you stop by the store tomorrow afternoon. Say, two o'clock?”
Peggy gave me the store's address. I thanked her and went back to covering the exhibit. Once the gallery closed, I drove to the office to file my story. Then I got back on the Internet to research Lilith—or at least I tried, but the server was down. I muttered a few choice word about AOL and went home.
October 18th, 1:40 a.m. Within a half-hour period, every newborn in a six-block radius of Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood was killed. Some died in ways that suggested Sudden Infant Death Syndrome while numerous others had definitely been murdered. The story hit just in time for the morning rush hour.
When I got to the office, Vincenzo was livid—but not with me for a change. This time, Dickerson was on Tony's shitlist. He didn't even scream at the poor bastard behind closed doors, but in front of the whole office.,
“Why weren't you out there, covering the story?”
“I didn't know about it! I was sound asleep. I had been out with my friends….”
“Obviously! I can smell it on your breath.” Tony noticed me across the office. “Carl! You still want the dead baby story?”
“Yeah!”
“You've got it. Now find out what the hell happened at Park Slope.”
I spent the morning making unreturned phone calls to the police and the morgue and chasing dead-end leads. My story was little more than a rewrite of the press release. Vincenzo wasn't happy, but that was nothing new. Besides, I had other things on my mind—like a certain Greenwich Village bookstore.
1724 East Houston (pronounced “How-stun”) Street was a freestanding cinder block affair with Peggy Quinn's business on the first floor and an apartment upstairs. A professionally painted sign over the front entrance read LILITH HOUSE. Accompanying it was an image of a red-haired woman with black wings. A smaller sign in the front window said LESBIAN/FEMINIST BOOKS AND COFFEEHOUSE. I arrived promptly at 2:00 p.m. and found Peggy standing at the register.
“Ah! Mr. Steinem.” She suppressed a laugh.
“Hello, Miss Quinn. And thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”
“Yeah, no problem.” She motioned to a small white circular table. “Have a seat and I'll be right with you. Care for a cappuccino?”
“No, thank you. I never touch caffeine. It makes me act strangely.”
After she rang up a customer's book purchase, Peggy sat across from me. “So, you want to know about Lilith.”
“Yes, please.” I pointed to my tape recorder, which I had placed on the tabletop. “Is it all right if I tape you?”
“Sure.” She took a deep breath as I hit the “record” button. “Lilith was Adam's first wife.”
“Adam who?”
“You know, Adam. Garden of Eden.”
“Oh! That Adam.”
“Right! Before Eve, there was Lilith.”
“Really?” I said. “I don't remember that from the Bible.”
“You wouldn't. There's only one brief passage about Lilith, to the effect that she lived in the desert.
“Unlike Eve, Lilith was created at the same time as Adam. So when Adam demanded subservience, Lilith told him to piss off: 'Why should I be subservient to you? We were both created from the dirt. That makes me your equal.' That didn't sit too well with our boy Adam, especially when Lilith wouldn't let him get on top during sex. Adam got mad and tried to force her into the missionary position, at which point Lilith uttered the Ineffable Name of Yahweh.”
“Yahweh?” I remembered what Nurse Riley had said about the killer muttering what sounded like “yeah, way.”
“Another name for God,” Peggy explained. “So when Lilith uttered Yahweh's name, she turned into a cloud of mist and flew from Adam's bed. She ended up at the Red Sea, where she began to have illicit sex with fallen angels. Pretty soon, Lilith was giving birth to whole flocks of demon babies.
“Meanwhile, Adam was bitching and moaning about not having a wife who would adhere to his every demand, so God sent three angels to the Red Sea to bring Lilith back to the Garden of Eden. When she refused, the angels threatened to kill 100 of her demon babies a day until she returned. But Lilith still refused. So God created Eve, who was far more subservient than her predecessor had been.”
“Not subservient enough, though, if I remember correctly.”
Peggy grinned. “Well put! Anyway, Lilith embraced the so-called 'Dark Side.' Grew black wings, the whole nine yards. She even had a fling with Satan, who gave her a special mirror that allowed Lilith to travel between his realm and ours. Ever since then, she's used mirrors to get around in this world. If Satan's mirror is destroyed when she's in his realm, Lilith can never leave there again. On the other hand, if it's destroyed while she's here, she'll lose her powers and die.
“Some cultures claim that Lilith was the first succubus, seducing men in their sleep and sucking all the blood out of them. Others believe she slays newborn babies to get back at God for having his angels kill her demon children.”
That got my attention.
Peggy asked, “Is something wrong? You just went pale.”
“No, no. I'm fine. Please continue.”
“As recently as the 18th century, some cultures wore an amulet that bore the names of the three angels at the Red Sea. If you wore it, Lilith couldn't harm you.”
“You wouldn't happen to have one of those amulets?”
“As a matter of fact,” said Peggy, “I used to sell them here. At least I tried, but no one bought them.”
“Why not?”
“My customers don't want to drive Lilith away. They see her as a positive symbol of women's independence.”
“But she kills babies!”
“Well, yeah, there's that. In all likelihood, though, that part was added to her story centuries after the fact—by men, of course. Tell you what, Mr. Steinem. I'll let you have an amulet for free.”
I shut off my tape recorder as Peggy went upstairs to her apartment. She returned a few minutes later with the promised amulet. It was pewter and had three names engraved on it: Sanvi, Sansanvi, and Semangalef—the angels who went after Lilith at the Red Sea. I placed it in my jacket pocket and thanked Peggy for the gift.
“Now, I'm going to show you something really special.” Peggy led me to the far end of the bookstore. She motioned to a six-foot-tall mirror in a lacquered wooden frame. “I still can't believe it's mine.”
“I'm not following you.”
“This, Mr. Steinem, is the mirror I told you about. I just bought it from an on-line auction. Wiped out my savings, but it's worth it.”
“Who sold it?”
“A private collector in Tel Aviv.”
“Tel Aviv? When did you get this mirror?”
“Couple of days ago.”
“Peggy, you've heard about the rash of infanticides the last few nights?”
“Oh god, yes! Who would do such a thing to little babies?”
“Ask your friend Lilith.”
Peggy gaped at me. “What?”
I reached into my back pocket and produced the news item I had printed off. “Here, read this.”
Peggy skimmed. “My god, even more baby killings. What kind of a world do we live in?”
“What about the part that mentions a redhead with black wings? And notice the place? Tel Aviv! Now you tell me you've only had the mirror for a couple of days? That means you got it right before the baby killings began!”
“Mr. Steinem, please! Get a hold of yourself. Lilith doesn't really exist; she's just a legend.”
“Then why did you buy this mirror?”
“Because of the mythology attached to it.”
“We've got to destroy that thing! If we don't, she'll come back tonight and kill more babies.”
Peggy placed her hands on her hips. “All right, this isn't funny anymore. I want you out of my store now. And don't even think about contacting me again.”
I left without protest. But instead of returning to my car, I walked up the alley next to Lilith House and checked the windows. I found one that led into the bathroom. It was about my width, did not appear to be alarmed, and looked like it would open without much encouragement. I got in the Yellow Submarine and drove back to I.N.S.
The Lilith House closed at 10:00 p.m. At a little before then, I parked my car down the block and waited for Peggy to lock up. Soon, the store was dark. Peggy went upstairs and flicked on the apartment lights. When the building was completely dark, I walked toward the alley.
I got through the bathroom window without a problem and touched my inside coat pocket for reassurance. In it was the hammer I had brought to smash Lilith's mirror. I reached into my pants pocket to make sure the amulet was still there. It was. My heart racing, I exited the bathroom and made my way to the mirror.
I stood in front of it and was just pulling out the hammer when a small dot appeared in the center of the glass. As it grew bigger, the dot morphed into a naked woman running toward me. I yelped and hit the floor, feeling a whoosh of air above me as Lilith exited the mirror. She landed on her feet and spun around to face me. Her gorgeous face was a mask of fury. As Lilith lunged at me, I pulled out the amulet. She froze in her tracks and snarled.
As we circled each other, my eyes desperately searched the floor for the hammer I had dropped. Then a light came on. It was Peggy Quinn, who had come downstairs in her bathrobe.
“What the hell?” When she saw Lilith, Peggy's eyes shot open and she screamed. Lilith lunged at her.
I shouted, “Peggy, catch!” and tossed her the amulet. It bounced off the wall and landed a couple of feet away from her. Peggy grabbed it and kept Lilith at bay.
I found the hammer and gave the mirror a good, hard whack. A spider-web-shaped crack appeared in the glass. Lilith shrieked and ran toward the mirror. I dropped the hammer again as she grabbed me by the throat. We tumbled to the floor. I felt faint as Lilith's thumbs closed off my windpipe.
Peggy found my hammer and went to work on the mirror. When each blow she struck, Lilith's grip on my throat weakened. Finally, she rolled off me and laid on her back, the black wings spread out beneath her.
Peggy whacked away at the mirror in a blind fury as I watched Lilith die. Her wings withered as the ebony feathers dropped from her body and crumbled into dirt. She aged quickly as her once-firm skin became a hideous mass of wrinkles and blue veins. Her cheeks sank and her breasts sagged. Her fiery red hair turned bluish-gray and fell out in clumps. Meanwhile, Peggy kept up her assault on the now-glass-free mirror.
Lilith began to undulate. Her spasms grew increasingly violent until it felt as if the whole bookstore was quaking. Lilith emitted one last bone-chilling scream as she crumbled into the same dirt from which she had been created.
Peggy was still hitting the mirror. She stopped when I grabbed her arm. Peggy dropped the hammer and collapsed into my arms, crying.
“She's only a legend,” Peggy sobbed. “She doesn't really exist.”
I looked at the mount of dirt. “You're right about the second part.”
When the police arrived, following a call from Peggy's neighbors, she told them that vandals had broken into the store and that if I hadn't happened along, they would have caused far more damage than they did. The cops, knowing who I was, took me in for questioning but let me go after an hour. With Peggy backing up my story, they had nothing on me and they knew it.
Last time I was in the Village, I stopped in at 1724 East Houston Street. It was now called PEGGY'S BOOKS AND COFFEEHOUSE. No references to Lilith remained on the property. Peggy's customers were unhappy with the change, but they hadn't seen what we saw.
Legend has it that thousands of Lilith's demon children still walk the earth. Peggy suggested we watch our our backs in case any of them seek revenge. So far, we've been lucky.
