Joe Golem and the Drowning City: An Illustrated Novel (20 page)

But he wished they had not come, for it made what he had to do next all the harder.

You must leave Joe as he is,
Cranham’s ghost said.
Let his spirit rest. He’s earned that.

Church knew that he owed Hawthorne and the others his attention. For all of the times he had been so focused on some riddle or enigma, distracted by a case, that he had ignored the input they offered, he would not ignore them now. The pain crippled him. His breath came in thin, reedy sips, and his left hand had begun to tremble uncontrollably, but he listened to every word. He only wished he could comply.

“I’m sorry,” he said, hearing the slur in his voice. Not a single part of him worked properly anymore. “There is more to be done.”

Mr. Church caught a look of disappointment on the face of Hawthorne’s ghost. Despite the gossamer insubstantiality of the spirit, the way even the wan light in the room passed through, and the hollow void of his eyes, still the specter’s gaze held all the nuances of emotion. Flickering in and out, the ghost of Nigel Hawthorne loomed closer, vanishing and reappearing several times until they were near enough to each other to whisper secrets without the others hearing.

I don’t like seeing you in pain
,
Simon,
Hawthorne’s ghost said, his features more the hint of a face in coalescing smoke now.
I will ease your burden, if I can. But you must listen.

“I told you—” Mr. Church began.

You must,
Hawthorne’s ghost said, even more firmly.

The specter reached out a wispy, transparent hand and pressed it to Mr. Church’s chest. The pain seemed to abate, and Mr. Church exhaled. And yet he knew that this was no cure, only a brief respite. The spark of some strange vitality ignited inside him, and he understood that Hawthorne had given part of his own spirit, part of himself, to offer blessed relief.

“Thank you,” Mr. Church rasped.

But the ghost did not withdraw his hand from Mr. Church’s chest. Instead, he spoke a single word.
Remember.

Chapter Fourteen

It is another era, years past. Church sits at the desk in his study. A jazz record plays, its soft notes dancing through the room. The drapes are tied back and moonlight streams in, splashing across the faded, once-lovely carpet. Dust motes swirl, a languid storm of neglect floating in the pale yellow light. If not for Church’s presence, one might think the room had been abandoned for months or more. He remains so entirely still that he might as well be part of the furnishings.

Church takes a deep, hitching breath, disturbing some of the dust that floats around him. He stares at the peculiar mechanism on the desk before him, its once-gleaming metal now dingy with oil and imbued with magic. It looks like something he has taken from among the mechanical organs he has built for himself, but this apparatus of tiny iron pumps and sealed iron chambers is so much more than that.

Once the implantation is completed, and his useless, dying organ has been removed, this will be his heart.

It weighs very little, considering the metal involved, and yet his desk seems to sag under its burden. Mr. Church massages his temples, staring at the mechanism staining the desktop. In no mood for his pipe, he draws a Turkish cigarette from a mahogany box and lights it with a wooden match, which he blows out and drops into an ashtray. Thin wisps of smoke, the ghosts of the extinguished flame, rise from the dead match, and he watches then dissipate.

The record’s music fills the room, but Mr. Church cannot feel it within him. It does nothing to lift his spirits, seeming instead to speak to the part of him that longs for an end to all music. An end to blood and oil and cigarettes and the life he has spent accumulating the things in his study, the remnants of times past, the markers on his road. He smokes awhile, feeling the tightness in his chest. He can feel the gears moving in there, hear the workings of the other mechanisms he installed over time so that he could hold on to life. The mad contraption he has made, this new and impossible heart, will give him many years still, even decades, if he wants them.

But is that the purpose of a heart?
he wonders. Often in his long life he has thought that perhaps the purpose of the human heart is to break. He has found and lost love many times. He has embraced friends who were profoundly loyal and loved them almost as deeply. One by one they died, some violently or tragically, and others merely succumbing to the slow unraveling of age. Church has been alone often in his life, but he has never felt so alone as this.

He smokes and he spins the heart apparatus in idle circles on the desk. In time he lifts it and holds it in his palm, testing its weight, and he thinks of the crimes that he has solved and the lives he has saved. He remembers the ghosts he has banished and the curses he has broken. His work keeps people safe, and it has been his passion since boyhood, but all of the loss and loneliness wear on him now, and he thinks perhaps the time has come to stop putting himself back together when his body wants to give in to nature and fall apart.

Someday he will have to die. Why not today? The world will spin without him, until one day it doesn’t. How many people will really notice if he is gone?

Church gazes at the shaft of moonlight that touches the edge of his desktop. He takes a puff of his cigarette and blows it toward the light, watching the smoke mix with the motes of dust and then drift upward into the dark. His chest has ached for days, but he has lived long enough to construct a new heart and to perform the incantations that will make the impossible possible. Yet now that it is done, he no longer wants it. No longer needs it.

No more,
he thinks.

The cigarette has burned nearly to his fingers now, but Church takes another deep pull of its spicy sweet smoke into his lungs and leans back in the creaking leather chair, closing his eyes. He holds the smoke inside, letting it languish, and only when he must breathe—when the apparatus that replaced his lungs years ago demands air—does he breathe the smoke out.

His eyes remain closed. He can feel the edges of the cigarette begin to burn between his fingers.

Is this enough
? he asks without speaking, and without knowing precisely who it is that he is asking.

He hears a sound as if in answer, a kind of sifting, sprinkling noise. Church frowns, wondering if he has heard correctly, or if he has rats in his walls again and it is the scratch of their claws he’s heard. But after a moment there comes a louder noise from the same direction, just off to his right.

He opens his eyes and turns in search of the source of that sound. Nothing seems out of place. The books are on their shelves along with the artifacts of his career, both occult and mundane. A large globe rests on its stand. The most prominent thing in that corner of the room is the huge stone figure of the golem that watches him with a statue’s eyes.

Just at the edge of the moonlight’s reach, Church can see a half-crumbled piece of stone on the floor at the golem’s feet, surrounded by a sprinkle of clay. Curious, he puts down the heart apparatus and stubs out his cigarette, only then noticing how badly he’d allowed his fingers to burn. They sting, and he blows warm breath between his fingers, cooling the burns, as he rises from his chair and walks over to get a better look at the debris that seems to have fallen from the golem. He cocks his head, regarding the stone figure carefully.

Church had acquired the golem from a museum in Dubrovnik. In a town on a river in northern Dalmatia, the people believed that once the area had been overrun by witches who tormented, murdered, and enslaved people, who ate babies and defiled innocents. The people were afraid to go out at night, travel far from home, or be caught abroad after dark. According to the legend, the town elders had created a golem out of stone and river clay and brought it to life. The golem hunted and killed the witches for years, finally driving the last of them to the river’s mouth and into the sea. Its job completed, it was allowed to rest, becoming inert, nothing more than a statue.

A construction team had discovered the golem buried in the river-bank while preparing to build the foundation for a new bridge. It had been claimed by the museum, where most of the curators had treated it like nothing more than native sculpture, a curiosity for display. That had changed when a series of murders in Dubrovnik led investigators to the museum, and the golem. The mayor of Dubrovnik himself had contacted Church and requested his involvement, and in three days’ time, the entire twisted affair had come to light. A local woman descended from the witches that had plagued the river town had used the golem as a puppet to kill her enemies, thinking herself clever and her perversion of the golem deliciously ironic. Afterward, the museum curators had intended to destroy the golem, fearful of it being manipulated by witchcraft again, but Simon had learned a great deal of its sad and noble history, and it pained him to see it destroyed. After some argument and certain financial considerations, he persuaded the museum to let him crate the golem up and ship it home.

And here it has sat for many years since, a silent companion, observing all, or so he had imagined. Church drops to a crouch and runs his fingers over the fine grains of dry clay that have fallen to the floor. He rubs them between his fingers and finds them slightly damp, holds them to his nose and smells the river.

Impossible,
he thinks. But he has thought the same thing many times and been proven wrong.

Alarmed, he rises again, glancing about the room, studying every corner and the interplay of moonlight and shadow. Has it happened again? Has some witch managed to wrest control of the golem? His failing heart pains him and he holds one hand to his chest, glancing at his desk and the replacement he has forged for himself.

Turning back, Church steps closer to the stone figure, studying it carefully. Moon-shadows fall upon its craggy features, making it hard to tell, but he thinks perhaps its expression has changed. But something else is different. Church stares in fascination at the cracks in its chest. They have always been there, the fissures that open in dry clay, but they are different now.

They are bleeding.

Astonished, Church begins to pick at the edge of one fissure. He notices a spot to one side and lower where the sliver of rock on the floor had fallen off. Working his fingers at the edges of the crack, he feels it give way. There are pieces of stone surrounded by soft clay and loose dirt, and he begins to peel and brush it away.

He catches his breath when he sees human flesh beneath.

Staggering back, he can only stand and stare as the golem begins to shift and the stone and earth crumble and break away. Its gray eyes regard Church for a moment, a kind of elated panic gleaming in them. They are human eyes, and beneath the crumbling clay and stone is a human countenance. The golem staggers forward, more of its earthen shell flaking away, and Church can only stare in wonderment as clay and stone crack and fall to the wooden floorboards in shards and clumps and sifting grains.

The man takes another step toward Church and collapses into the pile of earth that has crumbled off of him. Huge and powerful, yet weak in his moment of rebirth, he falls to the floor in front of Church, unconscious but alive.