Joe Golem and the Drowning City: An Illustrated Novel

by Mike Mignola Christopher Golden

  Joe marches forward, looking for witches.

  This is a part of the river he has never seen, which should be impossible. He thought he had explored every part of it, both along the banks and under the water. But the tracks beneath him are the work of hammer and forge, not of magic, of that he is certain. No witch would take the time to construct something so orderly.

  He peers through the dark water, eyes narrowed as he watches the fish swim by, and he wonders about the purpose of this tunnel. It must either lie beneath the main river, or be some sort of underground tributary. But the walls and ceiling were laid by masons, not eroded by time. Who would build such a thing? It confuses him, and he realizes that he cannot remember how far he has come from the village, or how he came to be in the rushing current of this subterranean river tunnel.

  His fingers flex and close into fists. In near complete darkness, he bends against the current and marches on. The wooden blocks that lay crossways beneath him are a path, and though he is not certain what he will find at its end, he knows that he is pointed in the right direction.

  Witches, he thinks. There are witches ahead. He can sense the dark power that radiates from them. His hands long to snap their bones. He will crush their evil hearts and make the people of the village safe, keep both day and night free of fear, as he has done since the day he awakened to this life. He has seen women sickened by curses and men murdered and flayed. He has hunted witches along the river and in the woods, only to discover the bloody bones of infants they have eaten, cracked open so they could get to the marrow. Killing witches is his duty, but it is also a pleasure.

  He decides that they have done something to cloud his mind. Perhaps they have found a way to reverse the ritual the villagers used to create him, and now the magic that binds him together will unravel, and the river current will pull him apart and what is left will sink into the silt. Perhaps. But for now, his hands will still make fists, and so he strides onward.

  The witches must be near now. He can feel their sinister presence ahead. There are tributaries off of this tunnel, the river rushing out to fill other passages and chambers, and for the first time, it occurs to him that this warren of tunnels is like some kind of underwater city. It makes no sense. There are no cities near the village. But his questions will wait for later. He will indulge them after the witches are dead. Once the girl is safe.

  He falters slightly, frowning. The river rushes against him but he fights the current even as he wonders where that thought came from. What girl? This must be part of the confusion the witches have inflicted upon him. A girl from the village, no doubt. They have taken a child again.

  He nods to himself. This must be right. Thoughts of the girl managed to slip through whatever walls they had erected in his mind. Now that he thinks of her, he can see a face in his mind, a wry smile and fierce eyes beneath a cascade of coppery red hair. He vows to himself that she will not die at the hands of witches.

  Never, he says, the sound a gentle rumble against his ears under the water. No more children.

  The tracks beneath his feet curve slightly leftward. He follows, but as he comes around the turn, he feels a disturbance in the water ahead, feels the pressure of something enormous rushing through the dark river toward him. No, two somethings, enormous children of a leviathan churning along the tunnel, monsters sent by the witches.

  In the dim glow from light set into the tunnel roof, he sees only darkness, save for the glint of a thousand fangs.

  Chapter Twenty

  When Molly came to, the lights were dim in the vast chamber of Dr. Cocteau’s home, but the ceiling was only the ceiling. Whatever the old man had done to her eyes, to her perception, it had passed. She lay on a smooth, hard surface, her head lolled to one side, and it was cold against her cheek. With a rush of fear, she bolted upright, her heart clenching when she realized where she was—on one of Cocteau’s surgical tables. She wrapped her arms around herself and tried to rub the cold away, grateful at least that he had not strapped her into the leather restraints.

  “You must listen closely now, if you want your answers,” Dr. Cocteau said.

  Molly spun around and saw that he had been standing in the shadows at the head of the table all along, just behind her, perhaps watching her while she lay unconscious. The skulker had climbed up into his arms and he held the creature like a child, his wet, sticky breathing more disgusting than ever. The image of the two of them together, like father and son, made her shudder.

  “You felt it,” Dr. Cocteau said.

  “In the stars,” Molly whispered, drawing her knees up to her chin and wrapping her arms around them. She glanced at the new shadows that had gathered in the room now that the lights had been turned lower, at the gas-men lurking there.

  “No,” he said sharply. “Not in the stars. Between the stars. Behind anything your eyes can see.”

  Molly nodded. “Mr. Church called it ‘un-dimensioned space.’”

  “Yes!” Dr. Cocteau replied, excitement lighting his eyes. He hugged the skulker and nuzzled his nose against his gas mask. “That’s exactly right. But they did not always live in that space. These old gods roamed our world during its infancy, a first, hidden incarnation that science will never understand. The old ones found the solidifying world too confining, and they abandoned it, sliding into another reality, one infinitely more vast.”

  Deeply unnerved, Molly glanced toward the curtained area where the pool awaited, still wishing she could make a break for those air tanks. She also considered making a rush for the spiral staircase the gas-men had brought her up, but even if it went to the surface, she would never reach it without Cocteau or the gas-men getting to her first. An image flashed in her mind of the way Cocteau had leaped down from the dais, and she got a queasy feeling in her gut. Whatever dark energies he had dabbled with over the years, they had taken their toll on him.

  “Now, pay attention,” Dr. Cocteau said, hugging the skulker tightly before putting him down. He came and sat on the edge of the surgical table. She wanted to scream, kick him, and run. Felix still swam inside that bizarre tank, but she needed Mr. Church and Joe. Whatever was happening to him, she couldn’t help him on her own.

  “Help Felix,” she said.

  Dr. Cocteau frowned irritably. “Hush, girl, and I will.”

  She nodded for him to continue.

  “I am a seer,” Dr. Cocteau said. “A scrier, a prognosticator. I would even flatter myself by going so far as to say I am a prophet. I roll the bones, girl. I read the stars. I search for signs in the dregs of my teacup or the entrails of the rats we kill in the tunnels. The very existence of the old gods who live in this strange realm influences our world in ways one cannot possibly understand if one is not searching for such omens. Some have said that this century is cursed, that the plagues and the wars and the convulsions of the Earth are the result of that curse. They are fools.

  “For many years, all signs have pointed to an approaching cataclysm, an event so terrible that this world and the human race will never recover. Only recently have I begun to understand that all signs point to myself as the originator of this cataclysm.”

  Molly’s breath caught in her chest. “You want to destroy the world?”

  Dr. Cocteau looked shocked. “Not at all,” he said, hugging the skulker close to him. The sight made Molly shudder. “I love this world, despite its many flaws. If there was any way that I could fulfill my ambitions—dare I say, my destiny—and still avert this catastrophe, of course I would do so. But I am a traveler, my dear. I am an explorer, not some kind of scientific tourist. I am the one human being willing to leave this reality and take the next step, no matter what the cost. When there are lands to discover that are just out of reach, that human eyes have never seen, then I will find a way to cross that breach.”

  Molly stared at him, hugging her knees closer against her chest. She was afraid that she did see.

  “There were two elements I needed in order to make my journey,” Dr. Cocte
au said, his gaze no longer on her but peering into some distant shadow, some sideways world she could not see. “First, I had to find a way to part the curtain that separates our world from their realm. I presume you have, by now, learned the details of your friend Mr. Orlov’s strange birth.”

  When Molly nodded, he smiled, but his gaze remained distant.

  “Church was there when the grief-stricken Andrew Golnik attempted to offer Orlov’s mother—with him yet in her womb—as a sacrifice to some deity or other. Golnik thought Lector’s Pentajulum would force the Sumerian death god to pay attention to him, but he did not understand the Pentajulum. Not at all. He did get the attention of something ancient, but it had never been worshipped by human beings … never even shared this world with humanity. Using the Pentajulum gave it a window through which it could peer, and when it understood that Golnik intended his offering as some kind of invitation, it began to part the curtain … to slide through.

  “If Mr. Church hadn’t arrived when he did, and shot Golnik, there is no telling what would have happened. Cataclysm, possibly. Or perhaps some deathless entity from that un-dimensioned space would have worn Golnik or the woman like a suit of flesh and wandered our world. Perhaps that old god would have proven to be an explorer, like me. No matter, of course, because that isn’t what happened. Church shot Golnik and the Pentajulum was lost, but the presence of the old god had touched Mrs. Orlov and her unborn son. The woman died screaming in an asylum, but her son was born and survived, never quite able to adjust to his life. He sensed the other worlds around him, just out of reach, and he felt the way his body would change … wanted to change, to become the thing he was destined to be.”

  “His father’s son,” Molly whispered in horror.

  Dr. Cocteau grinned, turning to the skulker, whose wet, ragged breathing had grown quieter with his rapt attention. “Now she’s getting it.”

  The skulker turned to stare at her with his black lens eyes.

  “You’re as crazy as Mr. Church said,” Molly said.

  “You don’t believe that,” Dr. Cocteau replied. “You want all of this to be the babbling of a madman because you fear the alternative, just as Church always has. And, truthfully, if I were you, I would be just as frightened. At best, my journey beyond our dimension will draw the attention of beings to whom you and the rest of humanity are less than ants, and it may be to their amusement to destroy you. At worst, the cataclysm I have prophesied will occur, and the bleeding of their dimension into ours will destroy you. Destroy everything.”

  Molly felt a cold, numb hollow opening within her. Once again, Dr. Cocteau had read her perfectly.

  “Even if you get through and survive it, there may be no home for you to come back to.”

  Dr. Cocteau smiled the way adults often did at the naïve innocence of children. It made her want to hurt him.

  “I won’t be coming back,” he said. “And I may not survive very long. But, oh, the sights I’ll see. I will commune with the old gods in a way that no human ever has, and I will see the source of their power and be imbued with their majesty. I alone will represent man in the next step of human evolution, unlocking the possibility of elevation to godhood.”

  Molly blinked, staring at him. “Godhood? You can’t be serious.”

  Dr. Cocteau twitched, his lips pursing as if he’d tasted something sour. “You wanted answers, girl. If you’d rather we begin—”

  “I think I’ve got the basics,” Molly said sharply. “But I still don’t understand why you need Felix if the Pentajulum is enough to get their attention.”

  The madman pushed his fingers through his bushy white beard as if neatening it, but managed only to make it bristle. He was growing visibly more irritated, and Molly took half a step back from him, wondering if he would try to attack her himself, if she would have to run.

  “I said I needed two elements,” Dr. Cocteau huffed. “This is only one of them.”

  He reached into his jacket pocket—which seemed to have infinite space inside it, and might have been magic—and pulled out Lector’s Pentajulum. Its weird colors and shifting design seemed to absorb the light in the room and reflect it back with a dully colorful glow. Dr. Cocteau studied it, smiling as if he wanted to stroke it or lay his cheek against it the way a child might a favorite stuffed animal.

  “I have spent years gathering all of the extant writings on the subject of the Pentajulum. I am as close to an expert as this world has ever produced, and I believe it will protect me as I travel through the dimensional barrier and allow me to communicate with the old gods. They will perceive me as their equal.”

  He gestured at the glass sphere, its murk darker than ever.

  “When my research into the Pentajulum led to my discovering the story of Orlov’s birth, I felt certain I had the other element I needed. I knew that, in time, his true nature would reveal itself, that the passage of time and his repeated contact with the etheric plane would eventually trigger a transformation. Had I realized that exposure to the Pentajulum when he went to pray at his mother’s grave was delaying his maturity, I would have put a stop to it years ago.”

  “Wait,” Molly said. “You knew the Pentajulum was there?”

  Dr. Cocteau smirked. “I deduced its location years ago, but decided it would be safer where it was than in my possession, where an arrogant fool like Simon Church might have stolen it. As long as I knew where it was, I would always be able retrieve it when Felix reached his true maturity. When my servants reported that you and Joe were also headed to the cemetery, the timing seemed serendipitous.”

  Molly glared at him. “Because you need my help.”

  “Indeed. The time has come. Felix could not hold off his metamorphosis forever. The stars aligned this morning and I rolled the bones to confirm my interpretation. I sent my servants to fetch your father because I knew that he would begin his ascendance today, and once again, my foresight has proven accurate.”

  Molly thought of the séance with the Mendehlsons. She thought something had gone wrong with Felix’s communication with the dead, but was it possible that his seizures and his illness and the way his face had begun to change had less to do with evil spirits and more to do with his own birthright? She wanted to think not, but the timing of the gas-men’s arrival was too accurate for it to be mere coincidence. Dr. Cocteau had known what was about to happen.

  She turned and stared at the glass sphere, wishing she could see Felix in that dark water … wishing he were still Felix. Cocteau had called him her father again, and this time she hadn’t argued. If Dr. Cocteau’s predictions had come true, did that mean the rest of his madness was also true?

  “Once Felix has transformed, he will look up at me and see an equal, a brother. He will be able to part the curtain between this dimension and the limbo space beside it and slip through. When Felix ascends through the veil of time-space to the realm of the ancient ones, we will be together as brothers.”

  Molly hugged herself, her throat growing dry. “You still haven’t said why you need me here.”

  Dr. Cocteau hesitated, and Molly felt a fresh surge of fear. She had wondered if he had been talking in circles simply because that was his nature, or if he had been purposely avoiding the central question. Now she knew for certain that he had been, and that the answer to it troubled him.

  “Felix’s transformation is happening faster than I anticipated,” he said. “I wanted you here because he loves you. You are a daughter to him. I believe that your presence will slow the metamorphosis, that seeing you will make him struggle to hold on to his humanity. It won’t work for long, but I only need a little time to work out how to activate the Pentajulum, so that when he awakens to his new, godlike power, I can communicate with him. Otherwise, this opportunity will be lost forever.”

  Molly stared at him openmouthed, filled with a horror unlike any she had felt thus far.

  “You don’t know how it works,” she said in a hushed voice. “You said you knew everything about the Penta
julum, but you’re just like everyone else who’s tried to use it.”

  “Nonsense!” Dr. Cocteau barked. “I know precisely how to wield it. I only need to activate its power.”

  Molly glanced at the water globe and shook her head in cold sorrow. “You’re going to get us all killed. You, me, Felix … probably a lot more. If half of what you’re saying is true, you’re going to roll the dice on the fate of the human race on an occult gadget you have no idea how to turn on.”

  Dr. Cocteau dropped the skulker—who landed in a crouch and then stood, staring—and strode toward her. He seemed as if he might strike her, his hand beginning to reach for her, but then he glanced at the water tank as if he thought perhaps that might not go over well with the being he hoped would be his cosmic brother.

  “It would be better if you understood,” he said. “It would be better if you believed. That is why I’ve taken the time to explain all of this to you. But in the end the only thing that truly matters is that you obey. And you will.”

  Dr. Cocteau bent over to glare at her, his considerable bulk looming ominously, seething with menace. The dim lamplight reflected on the lenses of his spectacles.

  Perfect.

  Molly punched him so hard she broke both his nose and his glasses. Pain shot through her knuckles as he staggered backward, clutching at his face, blood sluicing between his fingers.

  The gas-men were taken off guard. She’d counted on that. She had a few seconds at best before they really came after her, and she intended to use them. Bolting for the part in the curtains, she glanced once over her shoulder at the glass sphere and the figure in the murky water within. It might have been a trick of the light, but she thought the thing that had once been Felix Orlov looked even larger.

  Then she focused her full attention on escape. She grabbed the curtain and yanked, tearing it partway down, and threw it over a standing lantern nearby. The weight of the heavy velvet pulled the lamp over and it crashed to the ground, burning oil igniting the curtain and spreading in an instant with a hungry roar.