One of the 13 stories in A Friday the 13th Story #9: Lammech Ra’ah by Steven E. Wedel
Fun Fact:
I’ve always been interested in psychic vampires. Unlike the bloodsucking kind, I think we all know someone who seems to drain our energy, and someone who seems to come alive in a crowd. There’s a certain individual who comes to a dog park I frequent and is one of the biggest narcissists I’ve ever met. One day, while listening to him explain how he knows everything about everything and is better than anyone at whatever he’s doing, my mind drifted to imagining being stuck on an airplane with him. Being who I am, it was a short step to the idea of how a psychic vampire would absolutely feast on this person. That’s how the story was born.
Find it here: https://books2read.com/u/4AqkpK
About Lammech Ra’ah:
At 30,000 feet above earth, something is feeding on the passengers of Flight 447 to New York. Meanwhile, an unlikely hunter stalks the entity responsible for destroying his family and a flight attendant prays they’ll land before everyone is dead.
Excerpt:
Adam Greenspan clutched the iron medallion so tightly that its rough edges cut into his palm, drawing blood. The metallic smell mingled with the recycled air of the airplane cabin, but it was the only thing keeping him anchored to consciousness as waves of supernatural drowsiness crashed over him like a tide.
The pressure in his mind had been building for the past hour, growing stronger as more passengers around him succumbed to whatever force was draining their lives away. It felt like invisible fingers made of ice water, probing at the edges of his thoughts, searching for cracks in his mental defenses. Each time the presence touched his mind, the iron medallion grew warm against his chest, pushing back the cold invasion.
All those years of preparation had led to this moment. Seven years of following the pattern of unexplained deaths that trailed in Lady Nyctofile’s wake, learning to recognize the signs of her feeding. The Seattle incident had been the opportunity he had been waiting for—her desperation made her careless, forcing her to hunt in situations where she could be trapped.
“Baruch Hashem,” he whispered in Hebrew, his voice barely audible above the airplane’s engine noise. “Blessed is the Name.”
The words seemed to strengthen the medallion’s protection, creating a small bubble of clarity in his mind. Through that clarity, he could see what the other passengers could not—the true nature of what was happening on this flight.
Adam’s mind drifted back to that terrible day in Jerusalem, seven years ago, when he had first learned about creatures like the one sitting just a few rows ahead of him. The old woman in the market had been ancient, her face mapped with wrinkles that spoke of decades spent studying forbidden knowledge. Her grandson was eager to sell him the silver medallion, but it was the grandmother who had truly understood what Adam needed.
“You hunt the lammech ra’ah,” she had said, the words spoken in the old dialect of Hebrew that his own grandmother had sometimes used. “The one who feeds on life itself.”
Adam had nodded, unable to speak past the grief that still choked him whenever he thought of Rivka and his daughters.
“Silver is prettier,” the old woman had continued, reaching into a wooden box beneath her table. “Gold is more valuable. But iron…” She had pulled out the crude medallion that now hung around his neck. “Iron remembers what it was before men shaped it. Iron knows how to resist things that should not exist.”
The medallion had been expensive for him—nearly a week’s salary at the grocery store where he worked. But as the old woman placed it in his hands, he had felt something shift in the air around him, as if the world itself had become slightly more solid, more real.
“It will not make you strong enough to kill her,” the woman had warned. “But it will keep her from taking you as easily as she took your family. When the time comes, you must be ready to act quickly. The lammech ra’ah are old, and they are cunning, but they are not invincible.”
About the Author:
Steven E. Wedel has been writing fiction for over 40 years and is the author of nearly 100 books under various names. After 19 years as an English teacher, he is about to open his own bookstore.
Author Alicia Dean 