The Watcher in the Shadows

by Chris Moriarty

  “Don’t belittle your gift,” she told him. “You may not know how to work magic yet—at least not what you think of now as magic. But when you see someone’s magic, you see his heart, because that is where all true magic comes from. For the rest of your life, no Mage will be able to work his craft in front of you without opening up the most secret book of his soul for you to read. And knowing who the people around you really are—for good or for bad—is a gift given only to a very few.”

  “But how does that help me stop the dybbuk?” he asked desperately.

  “It doesn’t,” Shen said. “I’m going to be honest with you, Sacha. I don’t know that you can stop it.”

  “Then you can’t help me?” Sacha whispered.

  “On the contrary. I can help you a great deal. But I don’t think raising false hopes is helpful, so I’m not going to do that.” She got up, brushing her hands on her pant legs. “Come on, let me walk you home.”

  When Sacha left Shen on the sidewalk outside his front stoop and climbed the stairs to his own apartment, Dopey Benny was standing in the kitchen again. Sacha was starting to wonder if Benny was going to grow roots there.

  “Meyer wants to see you right now,” Benny said. So Sacha sighed in exhaustion and trailed after him to the candy store.

  When he got there, Minsky was sitting at his desk in the golden pool of lamplight. And the Nebbish was hovering in the shadows behind him.

  But this wasn’t the same Nebbs Sacha had met the evening before. His back was bowed, the light had gone out of his eyes, and the skin of his face looked as dry and withered as a year-old apple. He looked as if something had sucked the marrow out of his bones and turned him into an old man overnight.

  “Tell him, Nebbs,” Meyer said in a voice that made Sacha want to turn around and run straight home and lock the door behind him. “Tell him what you told me. Don’t leave out a word of it.”

  Nebbs sat gathering his thoughts for a long time, as if just bringing his tale to mind were a deathly struggle. And then he began.

  “After you told us about the Schlosky kid, Meyer started wondering if it wouldn’t be a good idea for someone to go down to the Tombs and keep an eye on him. You know, to make sure he didn’t have an unfortunate accident while he was in the lockup. So I got myself run in for—well, never mind what for—let’s just say it’s easier to get into the Tombs than out of them.

  “Anyway, I get down there right before they bring dinner around, and there’s little Schlosky, just like you said, looking only slightly the worse for wear. Not that I got to see much of him, because the cops pulled him outta the tank right after dinner and took him upstairs for a little talk. Anyway, he comes back downstairs round about dark, looking a little more worse for wear than he did when he left. And that’s when things really start to get strange. ’Cause they don’t put him back in the fish tank with the rest of us. They take him down to the last cell on the row. And they give him the whole cell, all to himself. Or at least we thought he was alone at first. But then the whispering started.”

  Minsky moved slightly in his chair, and Sacha looked over and saw the gangster staring hard at him.

  “At first we thought it was the kid talking to hisself,” Nebbs went on. “But then he started talking too, and we could hear there was two people in the cell.”

  “Did—” Sacha had to stop and swallow. “Did you see the other one?”

  “Not then. Can’t even rightly say I heard him. Just a kind of slithering whispering sound. Hardly a voice at all. But whatever it was, you could tell it was talking to the kid, ’cause he started answering back. Telling it to stop. Saying he’d do anything. Begging it to leave him alone. It went on all night, and I tell you it was the worst thing I ever heard in my life. And in the morning—right there where there’d been nothing but air and shadows the night before? There were two boys in a cell that only started out with one. Sam, dead as a doornail. And the other one, looking like the goddamn cat who ate the canary.”

  “But there must have been two boys the night before,” Sacha protested. “You must have missed the other one.”

  “I know what I saw,” Nebbs said. “And I know what I didn’t see. And I’m telling you: there was one boy there at sunset and two at sunrise.”

  Minsky was still staring hard at Sacha, his fist clenched around his lucky nickel and his expression unreadable. “Tell him about the flies, Nebbs.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Nebbs said. “That’s the kicker. I never been in the Tombs when the place wasn’t crawling with flies. Even in the middle of winter, they’re never really gone. But last night, all that time that the whisperer was driving Sam Schlosky dead crazy? There wasn’t a single fly in sight.”

  “And what happened in the morning?” Sacha whispered.

  “The other boy just walked outta there, easy as you please. You woulda thought there wasn’t a locked door or a binding spell in the place.”

  “Did you—did you see his face?”

  “I thought you might want to know about that,” Minsky said in a soft and dangerous voice. “Go ahead and tell him, Nebbs.”

  The Nebbish stared at Sacha. Then he turned to Minsky and raised a trembling hand to point at Sacha before answering. “Just like I told you, boss. It was him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Sparks and Husks

  SACHA STARED at Minsky, but the gangster suddenly seemed as far away as the stars and the moon. Sacha felt the same sinking dread he’d felt when his dybbuk had stalked him through the streets last summer. He seemed to be looking up at the ordinary world from the bottom of a well, trapped so far below the living realm of warmth and laughter and sunlight that no one up there could possibly reach him.

  Minsky spoke, but Sacha barely heard the words. When he didn’t answer, the gangster leaned forward, grabbed Sacha’s shoulders, and shook him roughly.

  “I said, is this some kind of sick joke?”

  “No,” Sacha whispered.

  “Then how the hell do you plan to explain it to me?”

  “I can’t.”

  “That’s the best you got?” Minsky was furious. “Not good enough! Not even close to good enough!”

  “It wasn’t me!” Sacha cried. “It was a dybbuk! Someone set a dybbuk on me!”

  “Who?”

  “Morgaunt!”

  “Not possible! Only a Kabbalist can summon a dybbuk!”

  “He has a machine that can do it.”

  “There’s no machine can do that,” Minsky growled.

  “There is! Edison made it for him!”

  Minsky looked dumbfounded. “Wait a minute. Are you talking about the etherograph?”

  He let go suddenly, and Sacha sat rubbing his arms and trying to catch his breath. Meanwhile the gangster had risen to pace around the little room.

  “They got an etherograph in the Tombs that they’re hooking people up to, you know that?”

  Sacha nodded. “Wolf says they’re putting them in all the police stations.”

  “Well, he’s right. They are. And they’ve been dragging my boys in for months now, one after another, on nothing, no-count, nonsense charges, and hooking ’em up to those things. And not just my boys either. They’ve been going after every gang in New York. It’s like they’re trying to hook every wise guy in town up to those damn machines of theirs.”

  “Then they’ve got recordings of all them. Morgaunt has a cabinet in his library. He has hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.”

  “Does that mean he can make dybbuks of all of ’em?”

  “Maybe.” Sacha shuddered at the idea of a gangster army of dybbuks. “I don’t know.”

  “And how was the Klezmer King mixed up in all this?”

  Sacha hesitated, not sure how much of the case to reveal to Minsky.

  “You better not be holding out on me,” Minsky said in a silky, threatening murmur.

  “I’m not, I’m not! I just—we don’t really know all that much. We think Morgaunt gave Asher some etherograph recording
s. That’s where his new songs came from. And it seems like he must have agreed to make shirts for Morgaunt in return.”

  “Make shirts?” Minsky scoffed. “Morgaunt’s got an army of people to make shirts for him! Why would he want to hire Asher?”

  “Well, Asher seems to have been an unusually powerful magician. And Morgaunt wanted to stock up shirts in preparation for the Pentacle strike, so—”

  “Oh!” Minsky said as understanding dawned on him. “Asher was the scabbalist!”

  “Yes. Or we think so, anyway. But then he tried to go back on the deal, and that’s when Morgaunt killed him.”

  “And hired a new scabbalist to replace him. I get it. Okay, so that explains the Klezmer King. And I guess it explains Schlosky. But how are you mixed up in this?”

  “I don’t know that, either.” Sacha shivered. “I just know that Morgaunt . . . he thinks I’m a Mage, or will be someday. And . . . and he wants me to work for him.”

  “And is that what you want?” Minsky asked, ever so softly.

  But all Sacha could do in answer was shake his head no, no, no, no, no.

  Minsky stared at Sacha for a long time after that, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes hooded and unreadable.

  “I don’t know if I believe you or not,” he said at last. “And I’ll tell you this, too: when I had Benny bring you in, I didn’t plan to let you walk out of here alive. But now . . . now I’ve got a bunch of guys I need to talk to all over town.” Minsky chuckled grimly. “I think it’s time to call a meeting of all the gangs. You kids got a magicworkers’ union? Well, maybe we need to take a leaf from your book and start a gangsters’ union before J. P. Morgaunt steamrolls right over us and gets a monopoly over all the black magic in town.”

  God help us all, Sacha thought. I think I’ve just set loose a magical gang war.

  Minsky strode to the door and yanked it open. “Go home, kid. And stay out of trouble. I’m not reeling you in yet, but I got my eye on you. And I’m feeling real nervous about the whole situation, in case you hadn’t noticed. So if I were you, I wouldn’t do anything to make me more nervous than I already am.”

  Instead of heading for home, Sacha ran toward Canal Street and his grandfather’s little storefront shul, searching instinctively for the only person he still believed could save him. He dashed inside, slammed the door shut behind him, and turned to peer out the window into the dark streets that suddenly seemed unfamiliar and full of unspeakable dangers.

  “It’s back, isn’t it?” said a quiet voice behind him.

  Sacha whirled around, heart hammering in his chest.

  But it was only Mo Lehrer, who was sweeping out the rabbi’s shul.

  “Where’s my grandfather?”

  Mo nodded toward the back room just as Rabbi Kessler shuffled out, waving an open book at Mo and grinning from ear to ear. “So listen to this, Mo! Here’s how Rabbi Halberstam answers your question. And what’s more, he quotes Rashi, Rabbi Akiva, and Ramban, all of whom he completely disagrees with. And you know what? I completely disagree with all of them—and him too!” Rabbi Kessler chuckled in gleeful anticipation. “So roll up your sleeves, Mo. We’ve got our work cut out for us!”

  Then he saw Sacha and stopped in his tracks.

  “It killed a boy,” Sacha said raggedly. “Moishe’s brother. He was barely older than I am.”

  “Oh, Sacha. I’m so sorry this has come upon you.”

  “Please, Grandpa! You have to help me stop this!”

  “I can’t.”

  “Because of some stupid rule—”

  “No. Not because of some stupid rule, Sacha. I can’t teach you how to stop it because I don’t know how.”

  Sacha wanted to weep. Some part of him had still believed, right up until this moment, that his grandfather would know how to save him from the dybbuk. But now he could see in his grandfather’s eyes that there was no hope of that.

  “Then what use is all this?” he asked bitterly, waving a hand at the dusty little storefront shul, which suddenly looked poorer and more dilapidated than ever to him. “How can you claim to teach people something you can’t even do yourself?”

  “Sacha,” Mo said gently, “people don’t come here to do magic. They come here to understand it. And that is of great use. What is the meaning of the most secret name of God, Sacha? I Am That I Am. There is nothing in all Creation that is more powerful—more truly powerful—than seeing what is.”

  “Great! And how is ‘seeing what is’ going to save my life?”

  Rabbi Kessler sighed. “I don’t know,” he said—and Sacha saw tears shining in his tired old eyes. “But it’s all I have to give you.”

  They stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity, Mo standing forgotten beside them. When Rabbi Kessler finally spoke again, all he said was, “Get me a glass of water.”

  Sacha stared at his grandfather in disbelief. But Rabbi Kessler just smiled—and when his grandfather smiled like that, Sacha knew better than to argue. So he took his grandfather’s ever-present water glass from the table and looked around until he saw the water bucket—kept in the corner with a cloth over the top, just as it was at home. And then he dipped the glass into the cold water and brought it up full again.

  “Now hold it up to the window and tell me what you see in it.”

  “Water,” Sacha muttered.

  “And what else? Hold it up higher, so the light shines through it.”

  Sacha held the glass up at arm’s length so that the sunlight streamed through it. And he saw . . . dust. Thousands, maybe millions of tiny dust motes swirling in the sunlight. They looked dull and lifeless in the shadows, but they shone like fallen stars where the sunlight struck them.

  “Remember the story of creation, Sacha? God poured forth His infinite light into the cosmos, but the vessels made to receive that light were too weak to hold it. So they broke, and the sparks of creation fell to earth and were buried in the husks of our mortal bodies. That glass is your body, and the water is your soul. When you dip your little glass of water from the bucket, you’re born. And when you pour it back into the bucket, you die. And between those moments, the water in the glass doesn’t remember that it was once united with the water in the bucket. Just as the water in the bucket doesn’t know that it is of one essence with all the water of all the world’s oceans. But the sparks remember, Sacha. The sparks remember.”

  Sacha watched the sparks rise and fall in a swirling dance like the flight of dust motes in a shaft of sunlight.

  “We live in a broken world,” Rabbi Kessler murmured. “The breaking began at the very dawn of creation, and every wicked thing that people do makes the world more broken and the path of return longer and steeper. But still, even in the most broken soul, there are sparks of the divine that yearn to return to their source and be made whole again. They seek a vessel, a husk—a body through which to make that journey. That is what the divine sparks within your dybbuk seek in you, Sacha.” He saw Sacha’s look of surprise. “Yes, Sacha, even as all that is twisted and fallen in the dybbuk seeks to destroy you, there is still a spark of the divine within it, a remnant of a living soul that desperately yearns to return to its creator. And yet you would set out to destroy this soul-double of yours. You would have me teach you some spell that would banish your shadow to the outer darkness while letting you go free in the sunlight. That cannot be. You might as well ask me to shatter this glass and catch the water in my hands before it hits the floor.”

  “Then what hope is there for either of us?”

  “The same hope all souls have. Dybbuks aren’t golems. They aren’t creations of man, made from straw and river mud. They are a breath of God, just as we are. And every year, when God opens the Books of Life and Death, their souls hang in the balance just as ours do. As long as that is so, the path of return is still open to them. The climb out of the darkness may be long and hard, but it still begins with one step.”

  “You want me to make a dybbuk take teshuvah?” Sacha
asked incredulously, almost unable to force his mind around the idea. “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Rabbi Kessler said quietly. “But I do know this: there’s no spell that will do it for you.”

  Sacha was just drawing breath to ask another question when he heard a rush of voices and a roar of running feet in the street outside. He went to the door and saw a crowd surging down Canal Street.

  Sacha grabbed one of the runners and held him back long enough to ask what had happened.

  “The strike’s on!” the boy cried. “The workers at Pentacle are going to walk out tomorrow morning, and word is half the other factories in town may go on strike with them!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Strike!

  SACHA RAN BACK to his house first, thinking that the best place to find out what was really happening would be the IWW offices. When he got there, he found Bekah manning the translation desk: a rickety card table with a sign tacked onto it that read TRANSLATIONS in every language Sacha spoke and several that he didn’t. On either side of the translation table were identical tables, one labeled REGISTRATION and the other COMPLAINTS.

  “I just ran all the way from Greene,” panted a girl who couldn’t have been more than twelve. “We need help! The police are arresting people for illegal assembly!”

  “That’s nothing,” said a girl who was holding a bloody rag to her face. “We just got beat up by starkers right in front of a cop. He said, ‘I ain’t here to look out for you lot, I’m here to look out for Mr. Morgaunt!’”

  “Complaints to the left!” Bekah cried, waving them away as if she’d heard it all before. “If you don’t need translators, then get out of the way and let the girls who need ’em come through! Italian, anyone? We’ve got three Italian speakers ready to go here!”