by Damien Love
His grandfather. He was at the center of it all. He knew all about this dark and wild hidden world. What else was he hiding? How to ask him? He strained to picture Harry’s photo again. He’d been trying to tell him something.
The only question that matters is: do you trust me? the old man had asked. Did he? Did he even know him?
The plane rocked. The cabin filled with gasps. They seemed to plummet, bouncing hard on the air. Alex grabbed unconsciously for his grandfather’s hand, felt the old man’s grip tighten around his wrist. For an instant, they clung to each other like that, looking into each other’s eyes, high above the earth.
His grandfather’s grip relaxed as the pilot’s voice droned placidly about turbulence over the intercom.
“I really don’t like planes,” he said, with a grin of relief.
Memories flashed in fragments. The shadowy figure leaping, weird machines slashing. Knives and blood. His grandfather falling.
Alex squeezed his arm. And how could he ever doubt him?
“We’ll be okay,” he said. He turned back to the thickening clouds.
* * *
• • •
RAIN HAMMERED AROUND them as they touched down in Prague in the early evening. Alex watched it whipping in black sheets across the runway as they taxied to a halt. His grandfather shook Harry awake, impatient to get off.
In the busy concourse they gathered around their meager luggage, agreeing on a hasty strategy. Harry would check them in to a hotel, then “’ave a sniff around, phone some people, see if there’s been any trace,” before rejoining them.
“’Ere, son,” he said, nudging Alex and pointing across the hall to a small kiosk. “Reckon you could run over and grab me a coffee before we go?” He dropped coins into Alex’s palm.
“Harry.” Alex’s grandfather sighed. “We are in a bit of a hurry—”
“I,” Harry said, with a meaningful look, “am parched.”
The old man frowned. “All right, Alex, off you go, quick as you can. Nothing for me, thank you.
“Coffee, Harry?” The old man sighed as Alex trotted off. “Now? Really? Airport coffee?”
“Lissen,” Harry cut him off urgently. “You know what ’e thinks, don’t you?”
“Eh?”
“Alex.” Harry jerked a thumb in the direction of the kiosk. “I think ’e thinks it’s ’is dad.”
“What? Not following you, old bean. Alex thinks what’s his dad?”
“’Im. Ol’ Springy Shoes. The lad thinks ’e’s ’is father.”
Alex’s grandfather stepped back as though he had been slapped. “His fa—” He stared off in silence before trying again.
“He can’t . . . I mean, why ever would he think that? He knows his fath—” He cleared his throat and blinked. “He knows his father is dead. Harry, what makes you say that? Are you sure?”
“Well, ’e ’asn’t come right out and said so. But, yeah. Things ’e asked me, things ’e said, or tried to say. The way ’e’s been starin’ at that photo of ’is mum and dad ’e carries around. I’m sure. ’Aven’t you noticed?”
“Well, no, I mean . . . I’ve never been much good at that kind of thing, Harry.”
“Yeah. Well. At the risk of teachin’ you ’ow to suck eggs, you should prolly consider that it’s just possible the lad’s mind is a little messed up by all this palaver. I’m speakin’ as one who knows. I still remember ’avin’ to fight my first ghosts and tin machines around the age of ten. I’m used to all this now, but ’e’s not. ’E’s all over the place. You’re goin’ to ’ave to say something. And maybe tellin’ the lad the truth wouldn’t be such a bad idea.”
“Hah. Never been much good at that, either.” The old man laughed bleakly and stared off to where Alex stood waiting to be served, looking small between the adults in the line.
“No,” he said decisively. He straightened his shoulders, shook his head, banishing the thought. “No. You just can’t be right, Harry. He’s always known about his dad. You must be picking this up all wrong. Alex knows his father is gone. He knows that. As for the rest . . . I never wanted him involved, but I’ve always planned on telling him something someday. About his dad, too. You know that. But later, not now.”
He turned back to Harry, voice unsteady, “He’s not ready. I’m not ready yet. I mean, Harry . . . he might think I’m some kind of . . . monster. He might think he’s some kind of monster.”
Harry sighed, patting his shoulder. “I can’t tell you what to do or when to do it. I know that by now. But I can tell you: whenever the time comes, whatever you do, you’ll do the right thing.”
“Hah,” the old man said, watching Alex hurrying back toward them. “Suppose we’ll see, eh?”
* * *
• • •
AN HOUR AFTER they’d parted ways with Harry, Alex found himself struggling to keep up with his grandfather as he went striding over the cobblestones of the Old Town Square.
A strange, tall building dominated the skyline. Spotlights lit it from below with hard white light that threw sharp black shadows over its huge facade. A pair of spiky twin towers rose on either side, weird gothic horns, like stone rocket ships from another age, straining for the heavens. It seemed an ominous portent. Dracula’s castle, Alex thought, then pushed the thought down.
The rain had stopped. Beneath a lowering black sky, the square bustled brightly with tourists, sellers, and street performers. A Christmas market had been set up. Dozens of small wooden huts were laid out, glowing red and green, selling hats and scarves, candles and wooden toys, sausages and candy, and mulled wine that scented the air with cinnamon.
A giant Christmas tree towered over them, around eighty feet tall, wreathed in a blazing multitude of lights. A choir sang carols beneath it. People held out phones in gloved hands, taking pictures of themselves looking happy. Huge decorative lights flickered, vanishing and springing back to life in the skeletal shapes of leaping reindeer and shooting stars.
The whole place thrummed with excitement and good humor, like a Christmas card come to life. But his grandfather ignored it all, even the food, cutting a path through the crowds with brusquely muttered “Pardon”s and “’Scuse me”s. Beyond this, he was curiously quiet, saying little to Alex, lost in thought. In one hand he clutched his cane. In the other, a Gladstone retrieved from Harry’s house, much like the bag he had abandoned in Paris.
Soon they were on a long, tree-lined street leading away from the square, winding roughly north and west. The night was getting toward freezing. A fine, frosty mist clung to everything. Streetlamps floated feebly in bitter fog. People moved along like echoes of shadows.
Alex labored to keep pace. A sickly feeling crawled around his stomach. He felt like he had when he thought he had lost the robot before. Trying to remember what its presence felt like, he felt only its absence. The idea that it was gone resounded in his mind. That, and getting it back.
The crowds thinned. The Old Town seemed to grow older around them as they walked. Finally, Alex’s grandfather stopped in the frail light beneath a lamppost and raised his cane:
“Here we are.”
The building he pointed to wasn’t very big, but it loomed strikingly stark in the fading evening.
A bare construction of mushroomy gray stone, all crude angles, it looked like something that had grown out of the ground rather than been built, like something that had always been there. Backlit by lamps in the street behind, it seemed almost to emit a smoky glow.
A jumbled single-story outcrop clustered like a skirt around the main edifice: one large, brute rectangle, topped by a dark, high triangular roof, a jagged, barnlike structure of brick and tile that reached to a height of about five floors. A few small dark windows were the only decoration.
“That’s it?” Alex asked.
“That’s it. The Altneuschul. The Old New Synagog
ue.”
“I thought it would be . . . grander.”
“It is grand,” his grandfather said, “just in a different way.”
“And the golem. Its body. It’s really in there?”
“Up in the attic. That’s where Rabbi Loew stowed it all those years ago,” the old man said, adding, after a pause: “if you believe the story.”
“So what do we do?”
His grandfather glanced around. A few dim figures moved along the pavements. He looked at his wristwatch.
“Well, I think the thing to do now is a spot of lurking,” he said, his breath adding to the mist. “You stay here. I’m going to walk around the place, have a look-see, take up a position on the other side. Be careful. You see any sign of them, come get me. I’ll be around exactly this spot over on the other side, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good man. If there’s nothing doing, I’ll come and get you. Stamp your feet; it’ll keep you warm.”
Alex watched his grandfather hurry away into the shining murk. He sank back into the shadows. It began raining again, suddenly, enormously, like someone throwing the switch on a vast shower system in the heavens. Falling water hissed around him, sounding silver and black. He was soon soaked through. His trousers stuck coldly to the pain in his legs. Time went by. How long had his grandfather been gone?
Every now and then, footsteps. People would appear, shades hurrying in the downpour, and he would tense anxiously. But no one stopped.
The raw chill of the paving stones seeped into his aching feet. He stamped. It did nothing. Time ebbed by in a measureless lump. The rain thinned to a drizzle. It left him feeling even colder.
The voice made him jump:
“How we doing?”
His grandfather stood over him, water dripping from his hat. He held two steaming plastic cups, proffering one.
“Get yourself around this.”
Alex accepted it thankfully. Coffee. Hot. Sweet. His grandfather produced a small flask that glinted silver, splashed a healthy measure of something into his own cup.
“Just a nip. I’d offer you a little, Alex, but that wouldn’t be very responsible of me.”
They stood gulping their drinks, Alex loving the warm cup in his cold hands, the glowing sensation as hot coffee ran down his throat.
“I picked up a paper,” his grandfather said. He gestured vaguely at the dripping dark city. “There are flood warnings everywhere. Lots of rain and melting snow. Snows, then melts, then snows and melts and snows again. The river’s running very high, close to breaking its banks.”
He drained his cup with a satisfied sigh.
“So. That’s the weather report. I take it there’s been no sign?”
“Nothing.”
“Excellent. Well, street seems fairly empty now. I’d say we could advance from lurking to Stage Two of our plan. This way, please.”
He led around the old building, down shallow stairs into a smaller, grayer alleyway behind. Checking to make sure they were unobserved, he dropped his Gladstone, crouched, and began digging inside.
“Keep a look out.”
Alex glanced nervously around as his grandfather busied himself over his bag. The old man stood and turned to him again. Beneath his bowler hat, he now wore a thin black eye mask.
“What’s that supposed to be?” Alex asked. He felt dimly like laughing, but not much, and so he just blinked.
“What’s it look like? It’s my mask.” The old man held out his hand, offering Alex another exactly the same. “And this is yours.”
“I’m not wearing that.”
“Yes, you are. This is mask business.”
“It’s stupid.”
“It’s no such thing. It’s rather dashing, if I do say so myself. ‘Everything profound loves a mask,’ or something like that.”
“But you just look exactly the same.”
“Ah, but you’re just saying that because you saw me putting it on,” his grandfather said, thrusting the strip of black cloth at him. “If you didn’t know this was me, you’d never recognize me in a million years. No, believe me, this is time-tested, the perfect disguise.”
“But—” Alex began, then stopped, giving it up as another lost cause. Sighing, he tied the mask around his head, then stood there, his feelings of uncertainty, anxiety, and fear shifting slightly, to allow room for the sense of looking ridiculous.
His grandfather bent to the bag again. This time he came up with a knotted rope, a nasty-looking three-headed hook at one end.
“Now,” the old man said, “over here.”
They slunk along the side of the building, past a dark doorway, until they reached an angle in the wall.
“See that window?”
Alex looked up. A dark, round hole loomed about thirteen feet above.
“Now, look just to the right.”
Alex followed his grandfather’s pointing finger. Beside the window, he could just make out a thin, rusted iron bar set roughly into the concrete. Above it, there was another, and then another and another, leading up the wall toward the shadowy roof, like rungs of a ladder.
“That’s the way up to the attic,” his grandfather said. “Story is those steps used to come all the way down to the ground, but they took the lower rungs away when they put the golem up there. Stop any nosey parkers climbing up to visit him.”
He unfurled his rope and, with a grunt, hurled the grappling hook upward. It caught on the first try, snagging the second rung above. He tugged the rope hard then stepped back, satisfied, slapping his hands together.
“Now. How are we at climbing ropes? This might be a two-person job, Alex, and Harry isn’t quite as nimble as he used to be.”
“Right,” Alex said. “Just so I know? The idea is we climb up there and break into the attic. Into the attic where the insane clay monster from God lives. That’s what we’re doing.”
“Well, not so much break in. I’m rather hoping not to have to break anything.” From a pocket, his grandfather fished out his pouch of lock-picks and waggled it. “But, essentially—yes.” He nodded, eyes glittering behind the mask.
“Just thought I’d check,” Alex muttered. “And then what?”
“Still working on that. Right. I’ll go first. Keep a look out.”
Taking hold of the rope, he jumped and put both feet against the wall, then began hauling his way easily up, an increasingly vague figure scaling the side of the building. Alex heard soft clangs as his grandfather’s feet found the iron rungs above.
His voice sailed down in a hissing stage whisper:
“Forgot to say, before you come up, could you tie the rope around the handles of my bag?”
Alex did that. He stood staring at the line of the rope hanging against the white wall. He looked around. Back along that misty street, people were buying Christmas presents and singing songs under twinkling lights, eating hot chestnuts and laughing, and never once thinking about clay monsters or how life can turn inside out without warning. He had never eaten a chestnut. He closed his eyes. He felt stupid and scared and lost and more than a little excited. He opened his eyes, gripped the rope, and climbed.
It was harder going than his grandfather had made it appear. His biceps were trembling by the time he made the first rung. Despite the cold, he felt sweat trickling down his back. He pulled himself up until his feet found the bottom step but couldn’t go much farther. The old man was perched only a few rungs above. Alex stood with his face to the back of his grandfather’s legs.
“Keep watching out. Pretty fiddly lock this. But I suspect not as tricky as that one was. See?”
Alex strained up. The old man was pointing out an old blackened gouge in the attic doorframe by his elbow. Embedded in the wood, the remains of a scratched metal plate shone coldly.
“Probably what’s left of Benjamin
Loewy’s original lock. The Nazis broke in during the war, y’see, trying to find the golem. I remember, those beasts, they—” He broke off and looked down at Alex through the crook of his arm. “Well, there was a story about all that, anyway. Oh, by the way: it goes without saying you should never really go around breaking into places of worship.”
He turned and grumbled over the lock a few seconds more. Then:
“Bingo.”
Alex watched his feet step up, saw his legs disappear into the building. He followed. The ladder ended at a small, arched doorway. As he was about to climb through, his grandfather’s head popped back out from inside.
“Cuckoo,” the old man said. “Now. Rope?”
“Huh?”
His grandfather nodded downward.
“Doesn’t really do to leave it hanging on the ladder, old bean. Bit of a giveaway.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
Alex clambered back down, bent to grab the hook and work it loose. As he started to pull the rope up, he almost fell, unprepared for the weight of the Gladstone tied to the end.
“Might find the bag’s a bit heavy,” his grandfather called.
Alex grunted in response, concentrating on hauling himself back up with his free hand, palm growing slick with sweat on the rungs. As he reached the top, his grandfather took him by the wrist, pulling him up into the attic.
He sat blinking at the darkness as his grandfather leaned out, briskly hauling in the rope and the bag. The attic smelled musty, like a mixture of paper, spice, and ancient damp. The faint street light reached in for a foot around him. Beyond that, solid black.
“What kind of knot is that? What are they teaching you these days, anyway?” the old man muttered as he untied the bag. Quickly winding the rope into a small loop, he stowed it away, then turned to Alex, holding out a flashlight.