October 19, 4 p.m. Year of the Curtain+5
New York, New York
The second time Alex Rooker slid into the coal chute was, somehow, more humiliating than the first time. The first time he had been running, trying to outpace the squad of middle school thugs Kevin Malcolm had assembled to do his bidding. Most of them were bruisers, to be sure, but stupid enough that Alex could usually escape them relatively unharmed.
The problem was that Kevin himself was a bruiser, but not a stupid one. Alex should have known better, when the school bell rang and he saw Adam Rodrigue, Brady Franks, and Brent Morris coming after him without their ringleader in on the hunt. Kevin would never miss the hunt. He was General Zaroff, and the others were his pack of dogs.
Like the last time, Alex managed to put a pretty safe distance between him and the bullies, weaving in and out of the pedestrian traffic as though he were in the thick of a moving forest. He pushed through them, thinking again of that story Mr. Hensel had them read in English class. Zaroff liked to hunt people, Alex recalled. If Rainsford, the main character, could survive three days of being hunted, he won the game and got to live. Alex’s time limit wasn’t as rigid, but it wasn’t as long either. He would go back to the antique shop basement and hide out until the goon squad got tired and went home.
Of course, Rainsford only had to win his game once. Alex was playing this game every afternoon of his life.
It wasn’t until Alex turned the corner into the alley that he realized the gravity of his mistake. He’d been concentrating so hard on Brady, Brent, and Adam, the fact that somebody else was providing their marching orders had slipped his mind. He understood his error too late, just as Kevin popped out behind him, spun him by his shoulders, and punched him in the gut.
Alex had given himself enough of a lead on the others that Kevin got in several shots before they could arrive and join the fray. The four of them put him on the ground quickly and three of them started to kick his ribs while the fourth (Alex couldn’t tell which one it was, and it really didn’t matter) grabbed his backpack and began to empty its contents into the trash-strewn corners of the alley. He heard his heavy English textbook clang into the side of a dumpster and he laughed at his own arrogance. He’d compared himself to Rainsford? Really? Rainsford would have seen that trap coming in plenty of time.
“How do you like it now, Denier?” Kevin said, planting a size seven foot into Alex’s neck. “Bet you wish a vampire would come out now and bite all of us! Bet you wish we was zombies so you could shoot us in the head! Bet you wish you was a werewolf so you could get all hairy and tear us apart! I’ll bet you wish that, don’t you? Don’t you?”
The last shout was accompanied by one last kick to the face, which rolled Alex onto his back. He immediately began to snort, blood clogging his nostrils and trickling down his throat. Brent – hit had been Brent, he realized – finished scattering Alex’s belonging into the garbage and threw the empty bag over his face. He heard the laughing and catcalls of the boys subside, and when he pulled the bag off his head, they were gone.
He lay in the trash for a few minutes, face covered in blood, snot, and the tears he’d been unable to contain. His breathing was labored, but he didn’t think they’d broken any ribs or other bones. Their purpose was to hurt and embarrass, not to maim. As if that were a mercy.
After a few torturous minutes, Alex sat up and blew his nose onto the pavement. There was plenty of blood there already, what harm would a little mucus do? He started to gather up his things, looking for one book in particular and hoping it hadn’t been damaged in the fray. He finally found it under a moldering carton with a beer logo on one side: Judaic Mysticism. He’d got it from the library and tucked it at the bottom of his mesh schoolbag, between two notebooks and the spine covered by his gym shorts. If his mother saw it, she would go ape on him the same way she did when he let it slip that he’d called the Spookseekers radio show.
Book in hand, he pulled open the door to the coal chute he’d slid down the last time he was in this alley. He wasn’t surprised no one had bothered to repair the lock he’d kicked away. It probably wouldn’t be discovered until the building got sold and refurbished, assuming it wasn’t simply torn down. He jumped in and remembered, too late, the rather painful landing that awaited him. It wasn’t even the floor this time; he smashed feet-first into the chair and boxes of old vinyl records he’d stacked up so he could climb out of the basement when he made his last escape. Bruised again, he took another few minutes after the crash to rest up and contemplate just where his life had gone so terribly wrong.
If the light coming in through the basement’s slender windows had been angled just a little to the left, he would have been lying in the shadow of the man of clay. The guy from Spookseekers had called it a “Golem,” and that’s what he looked up at the library. He’d been thrilled when he saw the picture in Judaic Mysticism that looked almost exactly like this creature. Jim Addison had told him the creature was supposed to have writing on its forehead, and the book confirmed it, but with the light shining behind the thing he couldn’t be sure if there were any marks there or not. He pushed another chair up to the thing and stood on it. He was closer, but still couldn’t be sure about the writing.
Alex drew his cell phone from his pocket and turned it on. His heart sank when he saw a long, ugly crack across the screen. Something else for Kevin to pay for. Fortunately, the screen at least still lit up. He turned the light on the Golem’s face and saw the characters carved there, right about its blank eyes and creepy-ass open mouth.
He opened up the book and took out the strip of paper he’d left there – an inch wide, three inches long. He read the two words he’d written on the paper one more time before he rolled it up and popped it into the Golem’s open mouth. His heart sank again when he realized he hadn’t recovered his pocketknife from the scene of the battle – one of the others had probably absconded with it. No matter. There was plenty of antique silverware in the basement, and he quickly found a butter knife that would serve his purpose just as well. Climbing back up to the creature’s eye level, he balanced his cracked phone on the open book and used the knife to scratch a symbol into the Golem’s forehead. If the book was right, adding this letter to the word carved there would change the meaning of the word from dead to truth, and it would bring the Golem to life with the single objective of obeying the command he’d just placed in its mouth.
He brushed away the dust from the thing’s forehead and stepped back, off the chair, unsure what would happen next. Would it blink? Talk? Rush out the door to hunt Kevin down? He didn’t know what to expect.
It was the most disappointing possibility of all, though, when nothing happened.
The beast didn’t go into a rampage, stretch its arms like it was awakening from a long sleep, or even yell “Happy Birthday!” like Frosty the Snowman. It just stood cold, impassive, and dead.
Mom is right, he thought. This Curtain stuff is a load of crap. He reassembled his tower beneath the coal chute and briefly tried to think of a way to arrange it so he wouldn’t crash into it when he came back, then decided that was pointless. He wasn’t coming back here ever again.
He pulled himself up the chute and was long gone when the sun set and the light faded, revealing a soft glow in the Golem’s mouth. It was Alex’s paper, glowing yellow everywhere except where the ink revealed the words of Alex’s sole command.
“Protect me.”
