Joe Golem and the Drowning City: An Illustrated Novel (14 page)

What is this feeling in his chest? It might be anger, for he usually feels only hatred for the witches. Or perhaps it is pain, with which he is even less acquainted.

“Come,” he says, his voice like gravel. “Your mother is waiting.”

There is a young woman in the village, a dark beauty whose momentary gaze quiets his heart. She is kind to him, though her eyes are sad, and he feels a warm glow within when she favors him with a glance, or speaks to him, or gives him the gift of her melancholy smile. There is no fear in her eyes, only sorrow and bright wonder and gentle understanding. But now he thinks of her and a new fear struggles to be born within him. Will she one day look at him the way this girl-child does now? The question is a torment, and it has no answer.

He thinks of the old man—the furious, broken-hearted old man—who treats him like a son, and then other faces slip through his mind as if he is in the midst of some fevered dream.

“Come,” he says again, and he lifts the girl into his arms. He tells himself it is only the winter that makes her shake so.

Only the winter.

As he trudges back through the storm with the shivering girl in his arms, he listens to the screaming wind and in it he hears the shrieking of witches and other things that have eluded him but will not escape him forever. He knows there are others out there, cloaked in winter and hungering for delicious emotion and withering discontent. There will be other witches.

And he will kill them.

*   *   *

“Joe!”

He blinked, then went rigid in alarm as he saw the brownstone looming out of the rain in front of him. Joe cut the wheel starboard, and the cabin cruiser scraped along the brownstone’s topmost story, so close that he could see in through the windows. A pair of aging Water Rats sprang back from the grime-streaked glass and then crept forward. One of them stroked his beard in fascination as he watched the boat grind the stone and then pass by, his tiny black eyes not unlike those of his rodent counterparts.

“That was pretty close, don’t you think?” Molly demanded.

He turned to look at her. For a moment he saw the shivering girl from the edge of that frozen river, but then Molly’s face came into focus. Raindrops streaked her face. He could see her anger and fear.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You were heading right for it,” she said. “What the hell was that? You were in a trance or something. I tried snapping you out of it, but you were just gone.”

“It doesn’t happen very often,” he said.
But we were talking about it,
he thought.
And my mind started to go there, and with the rain and the river and the gloom …

“What doesn’t?” Molly asked.

“A dream.”

Molly stared at him. “Wait, you were
dreaming
just now?”

Joe tapped at his coat pockets, felt the outline of his cigarette case and his lighter, and almost pulled them out before he remembered the rain. Now wasn’t the time. Instead, he put both hands on the wheel and focused on guiding the cabin cruiser through the wreckage of Brooklyn Heights. He could see the cemetery ahead, for all intents and purposes a huge island covered by graves, and he pointed the bow toward it.

“Seriously,” Molly said. “What’s with you?”

Joe shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Then he shot her a look that brought her up short. Whatever she saw in his eyes, it prevented her from saying whatever words she had planned for next.

“Why don’t you get that rope ready,” he said, gesturing to a line tied to a cleat to the aft of the boat. “We’re here.”

Chapter Nine

Molly tied the rope to one of the above-water posts in the black wrought-iron fence that surrounded the cemetery. Most of the graveyard was hilltop, but the fence ran along the perimeter, so there were places where it was underwater and others where it jutted out. She made sure the knot was tight, afraid to end up here without any way to get back to Manhattan, but she kept glancing at Joe. As kind as he was, with his gentle eyes and his dry humor, a deep sadness clung to him. And when he had gone blank out there on the water and nearly wrecked them against a sunken building, she had nearly leaped over the side and into the river. He didn’t frighten her, but he did scare her. She worried about making the trip back across the river.

“All set?” he asked.

“I lived with a stage magician for the past two years,” she said, “you think I don’t know how to tie a knot?”

Only after the words were out did she realize how sharp they’d sounded. Until she’d snapped at him, she hadn’t realized how on edge she really was.

Joe climbed from the cabin cruiser, stepping onto the cracked path that led through the arched, wrought-iron gate. But as he straightened up, he stared at her.

“I didn’t say that,” he noted. “I just asked if you were set.”

Feeling guilty and embarrassed, Molly glanced away. “Sorry. Yeah, we’re fine. It’ll still be here when we come back, unless some Water Rats get ahold of it and decide it belongs to them.”

“Great,” Joe said. He nodded toward the entry gate. “Let’s go.”

Molly hesitated. She was happy to be on dry land—well, as dry as it could be in such a pounding rainstorm—but in the storm, so dark it felt like night, she wasn’t thrilled with the idea of wandering the cemetery, even with Joe as her escort.

“I guess this isn’t something you can do yourself?” she asked.

Joe gave her a reassuring smile. “I could find Orlov’s mother’s grave,” he said. “But the other one you talked about—with the tree growing out of it—that one I’ll need you to lead me to. Besides, you don’t want to stay here by yourself, do you?”

She glanced out at the river. The ruined upper branches of trees were visible jutting out of the water nearby. The haunted wreckage of Brooklyn Heights seemed to skim the surface, some buildings entirely underwater and others looming, half-drowned.

“I guess I don’t,” Molly admitted.

Joe lumbered over to her. The rain had let up a little, and he pushed his fingers through his hair, slicking it back against his skull.

“Wish I’d brought an umbrella,” he said, smiling.

Molly laughed softly.

“What’s funny?” Joe asked.

“You just don’t seem the umbrella type.”

Joe shrugged. “Maybe not. But you could’ve used one. You look like a drowned rat.”

Molly had seen too many drowned rats to argue. She pulled her hair back and squeezed some of the rainwater out of it. Despite her yellow raincoat, the water had gotten down inside her jacket and she shivered at the cold dampness against her skin.

“This way,” she said, leading Joe beneath the arched iron entryway of the gate. He quickened his pace to follow.

“Don’t be like that, kid. I was just teasing,” Joe said as he caught up.

“I know,” Molly admitted. “I just didn’t want to argue. This isn’t how I planned for this day to go.”

“Me either,” Joe agreed.

They trudged up the cracked and broken pavement. Many of the headstones were equally cracked, and some had been knocked over by vandals. Molly didn’t like to look at the broken stones. They reminded her that the people buried here were not only dead, but forgotten. Either no one was left alive to mourn them, or no one was still alive who cared.

Vines crawled over the faces of stones and across the doors and roofs of family crypts. In some places, wretched old trees had fallen over, damp moss forming on the bark. The last time Molly had been to the cemetery, at the edge of this peculiar island of the dead, it had been low tide. The water had eroded so much of the soil that broken coffins jutted from the earth, flashing coy glimpses of bone. She was happy the tide was in for this visit.

“Talk to me,” she said, glancing around at the seemingly endless graves. “This place gives me the creeps.”

“What do you want to talk about?” Joe asked.

“I don’t know. Small talk.”

“I’ve never been real good with small talk,” he said, as if the fact troubled him.

Molly smiled. “Could’ve fooled me.” She moved nearer to him as they walked. “Tell me more about your dreams. I know Felix thought some of his were … what’s the word? Prescient. Like they could tell him the future.”

She felt Joe stiffen beside her. He kept walking, but he looked around as if he were doing his best to see everything other than Molly herself.

“Look, I just wanted to talk ’cause I’m nervous. I also whistle in the dark,” she said. “And I’m used to Felix talking out the things that bother him. I wasn’t trying to pry. If you don’t want to talk about it—”

“No, it’s okay,” Joe said, a little too quickly. He frowned, and she could see that the decision to speak was difficult for him. For a second, she thought he would change his mind, and then he forged ahead quickly, as if he wanted to talk before he lost his nerve.

“Mine definitely aren’t visions of the future,” he said. “Whatever I’m dreaming, it happened a long time ago.”

Molly listened in fascination as Joe described his dreams, a kind of story all their own, tracing the history of a man—a creature—sculpted out of the ground itself by the elders of a small village and set to the task of killing the witches who preyed on the town.

“But … a man made of dirt and rocks?” Molly asked.

Joe arched an eyebrow and gave her a sidelong glance. “The world is full of weird things. You’re a magician’s apprentice, kid. You know that better than most. Anyway, Church figures I’m tapping into some kind of ancestral memory. Maybe my lineage goes back to that little Croatian village in the fifteenth century, or whenever the hell it’s supposed to be.”

“Croatian?”

“Yeah. I know that much. In the dream, I know everything about the river and the village. The river is the Gacka. I’ve looked it up on modern maps. It’s in Croatia.…”

He trailed off. Molly shuddered a little and linked her arm with his. Joe glanced away from her but didn’t remove his arm. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but the sky was still cloaked in gray, and the cemetery was all but silent. There were no birds calling, no animals rustling … only the wind that shook the branches of the trees.

“Have you thought about going there?” she asked.

“To Croatia?” he said, practically scoffing. “Hell, kid, I’m a New Yorker. Besides, who’d look after Church?”

Molly thought about the smell of oil and the sound of gears coming from inside Mr. Church. She had the unsettling feeling that, despite his age and infirmity, he was more than capable of taking care of himself. But she didn’t want to upset Joe by saying so.

“Do you believe this ‘ancestral memory’ idea?” she asked.

Joe paused, extricating his arm from hers. He pondered the question as he pulled out his cigarette case. He offered her one, but she waved him away. With a shrug, he put a cigarette between his lips, vanished the case inside his sodden jacket, and produced a lighter that clicked as it flared to life.

“I don’t know what to believe,” Joe said.

He lit the cigarette and then the lighter vanished as well. Molly thought his talent for sleight of hand would have impressed Felix. For a man so huge, Joe continually defied her expectations.