MudMan (The Golem Chronicles Book 1)

by James Hunter

  Instead of a single voice, however, it droned on with a multitude of separate voices—male and female, old and young—a chorus, blending into one.

  “It hurts. Oh God, it hurts,” the creature moaned, its grotesque arms waving about. “Kill us. Please God, kill us. End the pain.”

  The Mudman watched as the creature moved forward.

  Something had gone wrong here, Levi could see. That shaman was indeed experimenting, but this Frankenstein monster was no success. Oddly, the monstrous creature had a clean aura. Whatever it was, a killer it was not.

  At least not yet.

  The creature’s eye locked on Levi. “Kill us, please kill us,” it said again, its many voices sounding like the sigh of the wind through fall leaves.

  In all of Levi’s long years, he’d never murdered an innocent. Not even in self-defense.

  Better to flee than take the life of one without blood on their hands. The Mudman was a simple creature with a singular nature: remember and uphold the sacred decree. The thing before him, whatever it was, had not violated the divine mandate; therefore, Levi was bound to inaction.

  “Please,” it begged again, its suffering evident.

  Levi didn’t know what to do. The AA meetings hadn’t prepared him for this. His mind seemed to revolt at the idea of doing anything at all. He scoured his brain as the creature crept closer, diligently searching for some sermon, Scripture passage, or word of wisdom that might tell him what to do. Might guide him in this task. Levi was learning to think for himself, but at his heart he coveted instruction and direction.

  A snippet from the book of Romans ran through his head, the words ringing out in Pastor Steve’s voice. “Do not repay anyone evil for evil … Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay.’” There was no doubt an evil thing had been done here—even a cursory glance at the twisted creature confirmed this—but to kill it, an innocent being, was surely evil, too. Another snatch of Scripture bubbled up, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

  What was the merciful thing to do here? Levi didn’t know.

  He had no answers.

  The terribly deformed beast dropped to misshapen knees, its doughy arms held out in supplication. “Kill us, please,” it mewled. This time, the boil-like faces decorating its body mouthed the words as well.

  Finally, Levi nodded.

  Such a kill would surely violate the letter of the law, but perhaps mercy would uphold the spirit of the law and assuage Levi’s conscience. His spear-hand became a meat cleaver with a three-foot blade. The Mudman tentatively stalked up to the creature, waiting for the abomination to attack, to prove this was some bizarre strategy to worm inside Levi’s guard. But, as the Mudman drew near, the creature began to sob, great tears leaking out from a hundred different orifices. Then it lowered its deformed head to the floor, offering its neck to the executioner’s block.

  “Thank you,” the chorus of voices said.

  Levi felt more uneasy than before.

  “I desire mercy, not sacrifice,” he reminded himself.

  He planted his feet and raised the meat cleaver high above his head, but halted, his conviction wavering. This was right … wait, no, this was murder. Right … Murder … Right … Murder. His dual nature bickered back and forth while he stood with the weapon upheld—

  The creature twitched, and Levi moved on instinct, slamming the blade down and deciding the moral quandary in an instant. The cleaver, sharp as any headman’s axe, passed through the doughy flesh with ease, decapitating the beast in one savage chop. The deformed head rolled across the jagged slabs of broken floor. The corpses heaved a collective sigh of relief, then fell silent as the colossal body went limp.

  The Mudman stared down at his work, feeling something brand-new: revulsion. Not merely the self-loathing he was accustomed to, but genuine sorrow and sickness over the kill, leaving behind a deep and abiding uncertainty. He was a creature of black and white, and this deed didn’t fit neatly anywhere into the picture. What had he done? What did this mean? After a long beat, he decided now was not the time for such thoughts. Not here in the Deep Downs, surrounded by the profane, with an injured victim to look after and Kobocks waiting around every bend.

  He could examine these thoughts later. He turned and headed for the girl strapped to the stone table—she was the priority, now.

  Not a girl, he saw on closer inspection, but a woman. Late twenties or early thirties and pretty, though with hard lines worked into her face. Lots of tattoos covered her body—bright skulls and artful roses—though one in particular caught his eye. Running across her chest, just below her collarbones, was a name: Punk Rock Sally, it said.

  He pressed fingers against her throat, feeling out her pulse: present but reedy and slow.

  Next he examined the crudely stitched slice running vertically from breastbone to belly button. The cut was clean and precise, done by someone who knew more or less what they were about. Still, the white skin around the incision was swollen, red, and hot to the touch—potentially deadly infection. Not surprising, considering the environment.

  The meat cleaver at the end of his wrist twisted and shifted, reverting back to normal. He picked up the scalpel from the metal gurney—the tool looked like a kid’s toy in his oversized mitt—and carefully sliced a line down the inside of his opposite wrist. Ichor welled to the surface, shimmering softly in the firelight. He tossed the surgical knife to the floor, its purpose fulfilled, then jammed his fingers into the cut, golden blood smearing across his fingertips. He traced his blood-streaked digits over the scar, liberally coating the wound with his blood.

  Though Levi wasn’t magic, his blood was powerful. Dangerously so.

  Once the wound was thoroughly treated, he pried opened her mouth and forced some of the liquid down her throat, massaging her jaws so she would swallow.

  She fidgeted and mumbled a weak protest.

  “Gah. No more. Shit, no more.” She gagged, but kept it down.

  “Hush now,” Levi said with a voice like a cement mixer. “Hush, it’ll be alright.”

  He loosened her from her restraints, but left her in place so he could get a last look at the gruesome and oddly familiar altar.

  The wyrm with a thousand legs seemed to be staring at him with its ruby eyes. The altar was stone, Levi knew, but in the dancing illumination of the fire, it looked alive. The thought that the altar was only a thing of stone was no real comfort to Levi—after all, he was not much more than a thing of stone himself. He drew closer, curiosity getting the better of him. The Kobock Nation was well known for their vile rituals, but the scene he’d stumbled upon went far beyond anything Levi had ever heard of.

  What had they been doing down here?

  With an effort of will, Levi forced open a small cavity in his side—an internal storage locker, of sorts—and pulled out a cell phone, neatly wrapped in a plastic bag. Pockets were notoriously unreliable, especially since he shifted form so often, so stowing items inside his body was the safest way. He took a moment to snap a couple of pictures of the bas-relief and a few more of the grotesque flesh golem, then resealed the phone in plastic and slid it back into the divot in his side. Gray skin quickly swelled over the phone, leaving behind a smooth, unmarked belly.

  A single missive—handwritten on a piece of heavy stock paper—sat folded on the altar ledge. Levi snatched it up, read it over once, then shoved the letter into his side with the cell phone. He’d examine it in detail later; right now he had greater concerns. The girl. Even with his ichor working through her system, she needed a hospital. Humans were beautiful things, wonderfully and fearfully made, but frail and fleeting. She could still die. Probably would if he didn’t get moving. Gently, gently, he lifted her into his mammoth arms, cradling her like a newborn.

  She stirred again, whimpering against his chest.

  Her eyes fluttered briefly. “No more. Please, no more,” she offered again. T
hen her lids fell shut and she slept.

  “Hush now,” he said. “It’s alright. You’re safe.”

  FIVE:

  Sunday Service

  Light shone through the stained-glass window, bright shafts falling over the far row of pews, while the gentle warble of a piano hymn capered in the air. New Eden Mennonite Church, nestled right in the sunny suburbs of Aurora, Colorado. Not an Amish church, nor even filled with the plain-dressed folk, but rather a modern congregation populated with a myriad of folk, some good, others not. Admittedly, there were a few older congregants who spoke Pennsylvania Dutch—the low German of the old Mennonites—but mostly, they were simple, hardworking people who believed in following Jesus.

  The little congregation was a strange fit for Levi, but in some ways a natural one. Years back, when the Mudman had first decided a change was in order, he’d tried attending temple, which seemed intuitive given his past. Each time, though, he’d been driven from the synagogue by the memories, which were far too loud there. Overpowering. The rabbi would pull the Torah from the Ark and unfurl it across the bimah—a dark wood table used for the reading of the Scriptures—and suddenly Levi would be the rabbi. A flashback to some other life, before the war and the camps.

  Everything in the synagogue was like that. The Beth Midrash, a connected hall used for Scripture study, held its own ghosts. As did the Mikveh—the ritual bath. He couldn’t even glance at the Ner Tamid, the eternal flame, which burned ceaselessly above the Ark, without some image or another rearing up and flooding his brain. So, in the end, temple was too painful for Levi.

  He’d discovered the Mennonites through his AA meetings, which were held in the basement of the church he now called home. Named after its founder, Menno Simons, the Mennonite Church had roots steeped in Anabaptism, a tradition which harkened back to the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Though Martian Luther ushered in a theological revolution, it was the Anabaptists who took it furthest. The Radical Reformation, historians called it.

  The Anabaptists were the first to preach and practice adult baptism—the origin of the name Anabaptist, which meant “second baptizers”—a crime which warranted the death penalty in most of Europe. A crime for which scores of Anabaptist leaders and followers were drowned or burned at the stake. They believed that church should be voluntary and separate from the state—a crime which earned them exile as subversives to the state. Most important, at least for Levi, they took Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount at face value.

  “Love thy Enemy” was not a suggestion or rhetorical hyperbole, but a divine mandate. They were among the first conscientious objectors.

  Their radical notions came with a hefty price tag: thousands dead, murdered at the hands of Catholics and other Protestants. Yet, even while being hunted and butchered like animals, the Anabaptists refused to take up arms, refused to seek vengeance for their slain, instead leaving justice for the Lord, and even caring for their persecutors. Needless to say, Levi didn’t quite fit in.

  But he wanted to.

  Wanted to change almost as bad as he wanted to kill. A fine dance, constantly pulling at his soul. The words of Saint Paul bounced around in his thick skull. “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do … I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”

  If anyone could help him to learn to resist his inclinations toward vengeance and retribution, he reasoned it was the Mennonites.

  “Alright,” said Pastor Steve from the pulpit as the music faded, “let’s stand and greet one another in love.” The small congregation, maybe a hundred and fifty all present, gained their feet amidst the groan and squeak of polished wood. Levi stood with all the rest and turned to the congregant on his right: George, a tall beanpole of a man with a narrow face, a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, and a balding pate surrounded by a ring of wispy brown hair.

  “Mornin’, Levi.” He extended a hand, a cautious smile breaking across his angular face. George was a good man, solid, steady, but serious and not easy or loose with smiles. He wouldn’t have smiled at all had Levi been in his true skin. But George did smile, even if it was only a thin stretching of the lips, because Levi was in disguise.

  In this form, Levi stood at 5′5″, was slight of build, sported a pooching potbelly, and had bad posture. His head, like George’s, was nearly bald on top, and he too wore a pair of glasses, even though he could see like a hawk in the high mountain air. Levi found glasses were disarming to many people. A thin red mustache, thick denim pants, a plaid button up, and a Carhartt jacket completed the look.

  Levi grasped George’s bony hand and pumped vigorously. “Good to see you, George, good to see you. How’re Margie and the kids?” Levi asked with false enthusiasm. He wasn’t good with words or talking, but he’d seen this ritual preformed enough times to know how it was supposed to look.

  “Oh, doin’ alright I suppose,” George replied. “Margie’s not feeling well, stayed home today, but Noah and Angie are fine. Down with Pastor Dave for the young adult study. How ’bout you? Do anything interesting this past week?”

  George didn’t ask about Levi’s family, because Levi didn’t have a family. Never had—though George certainly didn’t know that last bit. No father or mother. No spouse or children or kin. Levi had never met another golem, discounting the strange flesh-golem from the Deep Downs, and was unsure if another of his kind existed anywhere. It was possible in theory, he supposed. According to what ancient lore he could find, mystic rabbis—adherents of Kabbalah—could, with practice and study, learn to create a creature from the earth. A Golem. A Mudman. An obedient robot of clay. A creature like Levi.

  But Levi knew of no modern rabbi capable of the feat. As far as Levi knew, he was alone in the world.

  As for anything interesting … the note from the altar sat neatly folded in Levi’s pocket, heavy as a lead weight and strangely warm against his skin. He didn’t want to think about the note, not here in church, but his mind kept being drawn back to it like water circling a drain. The letter was interesting.

  If we’re going to do this, you ignorant cave dweller, we’re going to have to work faster. This has been countless years in the making, yet the equinox is less than a week away and still your incompetence threatens to ruin everything. I’ll get the chipper back, but you’d better keep that girl safe and secure or I swear to all the dark gods below I’ll make you suffer. She is the first viable subject we’ve had in thirty years, so don’t screw this up. Try my patience in this, shaman, and see what happens. That pea-sized brain of yours isn’t capable of imagining what terrible things I’m capable of.

  —Hogg

  He’d had to read the note five different times to decipher the script, so poor was the chicken scratch penmanship, but decipher it he had. He’d pored over it dozens of times since, committing the words to memory. Very interesting. A mystery which wouldn’t let his mind alone. And that altar … After staring at the picture on his phone for hours, he was positive it was twin to the one he’d seen outside of Birkemau in ’42, though the memory was a fuzzy and incomplete thing—he’d been young to Earth then, his mind largely unformed.

  “No,” Levi replied after a brief hesitation. “Took care of some housekeeping this weekend. Handled a bit of old business, cleaned up my workshop. That kind of thing.” He bobbed his head noncommittally.

  “Sounds like a nice slow weekend,” George said in turn, grinning again—an awkward flash of teeth. Nearly as socially awkward as Levi, George gave the Mudman hope. If he could have a family and be normal, then Levi could, too.

  “Yeah”—the Mudman thought about the Kobo cleaving open his thigh—“a nice slow weekend.” He hated lying. It was another one of those unfortunate tasks that felt like a railroad spike of guilt in his heart, but the truth wouldn’t do. Not here with these salt of the earth folk. His whole life was a lie, but a necessary on
e.

  “Coming out Tuesday?” George asked.

  On Tuesday Levi helped in the pantry: the church cooked a big meal for the homeless and offered care boxes of food and toiletries to needy families. Levi was a regular hand and liked the work.

  Well, that wasn’t true. He didn’t like the work—the only thing he really liked was killing—but it was good to do. Thou shalt care for the foreigner, widow, and orphan among you. Monday, prison ministry. Tuesday, the food pantry. Wednesday, small-group Bible study. Thursday, AA meetings. Friday, he taught a beginner’s pottery class at the Y. And Sunday was church. The way he saw it, busy hands had little time for killing.

  “Tuesday.” Levi tapped a finger against his lip in thought. “I’ll try to be there,” he said, and he would, “but it might not be possible this week.” He reached down and touched the note through the fabric of his jeans. His brand, hidden in this form, but always present, flared bright under his skin. “Might have a big project coming up.”

  “Oh? Someone commission you for a piece?” George asked. He meant Levi’s front. The convenient cover story Levi used so that when some respectable, decent person like George asked what he did for a living, he had an answer. In his off time, Levi sculpted—modeled was the technical term since he worked in clay.

  A legitimate business and easy for him; after all, he had a certain affinity for the medium. And, to a certain extent, he enjoyed the work. Not like killing, though feeling the clay squeeze between his fingers was almost like feeling blood run through his hands. There was also a certain measure of peace in the creation process. Once in a while, it was nice to bring something lovely into the world instead of simply removing something ugly from it.

  “Okay,” said Pastor Steve, his voice reverberating through the microphone, a slight squeal of feedback causing George to flinch. “Let’s head back to our seats and open our hearts to the Lord as we worship this morning. Let’s be present together. Let’s be here this morning with God and each other. Whatever cares or worries you’re carrying, whatever baggage you brought in with you—just let it go. Leave it at the door as we worship the Lord, the refresher of our souls.”