The Only Human

by Rick Mofina

  Ty glanced at Ella. That’s when it hit him. He seized her phone.

  “No, Ella! That’s it! They’re tracking us through our phones. I saw it on a TV show! They can do it through our roaming signals!” Ty switched off Ella’s phone and removed the battery before doing the same with his. “We’ll call her from a landline, a public phone, if we can find one.”

  “What if they forced Mr. Sedgwick to tell them about her? They might be watching her.”

  “We have to take the risk. It’s the only way to remove the curse, the only way to stop this!”

  They ducked into an alley and tried to change their appearance, reaching into their backpacks for hoodies and T-shirts before continuing to Times Square. Ty continued wearing the goggles and a ball cap. When they came to a payphone, Ella called the number, letting it ring eight times.

  “No answer,” she said. “What if they got to her, Ty?”

  “We don’t know that. We have to keep trying.”

  For the next several hours they never stopped moving. Ty didn’t spot any gargoyles but he never removed the goggles. They were the only weapon he had. They went for block after block, stopping at payphones so Ella could try calling Lotta-Maria Olofsson. No one answered the line.

  They went to Rockefeller Center and exited a different way. At one point, Ella called her aunt Sophie to tell her that her cell phone battery wasn’t working but that she’d gone out to dinner with her friend’s family and was having fun. Ella was relieved when her aunt told her that her father had arrived in Chicago. Ty and Ella just kept going, walking, or taking buses or subway trains.

  As long as they were moving they were safe.

  It was just after 10:00 p.m. and dark when they found themselves at Columbus Circle near the southwest corner of Central Park. They didn’t know where they were going to spend the night. They couldn’t go to their homes, their cell phones were being tracked and vengeful gargoyles were hunting them. Ty and Ella were exhausted.

  They turned to the vast, dark greenery of the park.

  “Want to go in there and stay for the night?” Ty asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s so dark and they kick everybody out by midnight, or something. I think police patrol it.”

  “We’ve got nowhere else to go. Come on, it’s big. We’ll find a place to hide.”

  They went deep into the park following the serpentine pathways that were lit by lamplights and twisted through woods, across bridges, up and down hills. They watched out for each other when they stopped to use the public washrooms. As they continued they saw other people walking, or joggers trotting and cyclists whisking through the park. Every now and then they heard horses’ hooves on the pavement as carriages rolled by. But when it grew late, they saw fewer and fewer people, until it felt as if they were completely alone.

  “Up there, look.” Ty reached into his backpack for a small flashlight, a birthday gift from his dad. He pointed the small beam and led Ella off a path into a thicket where he’d spotted a discarded tarp. “We can use this.”

  They dragged it further into the bushes on a terraced hillside near a large grove of trees. The low-hanging branches offered a dense leafy canopy. The tarp was big enough to cover the ground and use as a blanket. It would get colder, so they put on all the extra clothing they had.

  “I’m hungry,” Ella said.

  Ty shined the light into his backpack. He’d used napkins to wrap extra sandwiches, cookies and a couple of juice boxes he’d taken from the food trays at the library.

  “I thought these would come in handy,” he said.

  After they ate, Ty switched off his flashlight. They settled in and gazed up at the night sky.

  The tree branches moaned as breezes hissed through the treetops, carrying the distant rumble of cars passing through the park. The faraway wail of sirens underscored their isolation while reminding them that danger was always near. Feeling small and vulnerable in the immense darkness, Tyler spoke his heart.

  “I’m scared, Ella.”

  “Me too.”

  “I can’t stop thinking that something horrible has happened to my parents and all the others who’ve vanished.”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t understand the evil stuff that’s been happening and why it’s up to me to stop it. It’s like the weight of all the universe is on my shoulders and I wish I could pass it to somebody else, somebody older, wiser and stronger.”

  Ella said nothing.

  “If only Spiderman and Superman were real, huh?” Ty said.

  “If only.”

  “Ella, be glad you haven’t seen those monsters through the goggles. They’re the most horribly frightening things in the world. I’m afraid because I don’t know if I can stop them, or their uprising. I don’t know what’s coming. I can’t stop asking: Why me? Why has this happened to me, you know?”

  Ella didn’t answer him.

  A moment passed and he heard her crying softly.

  “It’s funny,” she sniffled. “I used to ask the same thing when my mother died. I used to ask, why did this happen to me? My dad was broken to pieces. I felt so lost and alone and I wished I had a brother or sister. I never knew the answer, it just happened and I just kept going. That’s all you can do.”

  “I’m sorry, Ella.”

  Ty reached for her hand and she let him hold it.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Whatever happens, we’re in this together. It’s like the fortune teller said, you were chosen because it’s your destiny, Ty.”

  They looked up at the stars until they fell asleep.

  A few short hours later, Ty’s eyes flicked open to the morning light poking through the trees. He heard barking dogs, the pulse of joggers and traffic rushing through the park. Several seconds passed before he remembered where he was and why.

  He turned to see Ella smiling at him.

  “What’s for breakfast?”

  Ty yawned, stretched and rubbed his eyes.

  “A few cookies and one box of orange juice we can share.”

  They devoured the food then laughed at each other’s mussed hair laced with twigs. Grimy and in dire need of showers and fresh clothes, they went to the nearest restrooms and did their best to wash up at the sinks. It wasn’t the best, but it had to do.

  Twenty minutes later, they were somewhere on West 59th Street and Ella saw a payphone. Again, she called the number of the business card. After punching the number, Ella held up crossed fingers. After the fourth ring ended and the fifth started, her heart sank. By the seventh ring, she moved the handset from her ear to hang up when the line clicked and she pulled it back.

  “Hello?” An older woman’s voice said.

  “Hello, is this Lotta-Maria Olofsson?”

  “Yes.”

  Ella smiled and nodded at Ty. He pumped his fist into the air.

  “Uhm sorry,” Ella said. “We got your name from Mr. Sedgwick, Miles Sedgwick, at the library.”

  “Oh, yes I know Miles. And to whom am I speaking?”

  “My name is Ella Shaw. My friend Tyler Price and I are students and we’re studying part of the city’s history and …” Ella gave a summary explanation, careful to withhold anything that sounded too crazy, “… so basically we need you to help us translate and understand parts of an old book written in rune.”

  A long silence passed before the woman broke it.

  “I’m sorry, but I have been retired for years. I don’t translate anymore, especially for young people doing class assignments.”

  “Oh no, ma’am, it’s not school work! It’s very urgent and Mr. Sedgwick said you were the only person who could help us. Would you please help us?”

  The old woman sighed over the phone.

  “All right, as you are friends of Miles. Here is my address.”

  Ella signaled Ty who scrambled to get a pen from his backpack, then grabbed a used takeout bag from a nearby trash bin and wrote down what Ella repeated.

  19

  Lotta-Mari
a Olofsson’s apartment was at West 35th Street and 9th Avenue in the garment district.

  By 11 a.m., Ty and Ella were riding the elevator in her building. To get to her address they’d taken city buses. During the trip Ty scanned for non-humans through his goggles. He’d detected none but remained vigilant, even after Mrs. Olofsson buzzed them in and they arrived at her 11th-floor door.

  “So you are Ella Shaw and Tyler Price?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Welcome, please come in.”

  She was an old woman, no taller than Ty and Ella. She wore a white turtleneck under a dark blazer. Her white feathered hair was short. Lines creased her face, which was dotted with age spots. Her eyes disappeared into slits behind her frameless round glasses when she smiled.

  She was not bothered by Ty’s goggles. Living in the garment district she’d seen every fashion statement imaginable. He removed them after he was satisfied that she was indeed human.

  “Thank you for helping us, Mrs. Olofsson,” Ella said. “It’s kind of urgent.”

  “Call me Lotta.”

  She pointed to a sofa and chairs before a coffee table. Ella and Ty set everything on the table, the old Mythos book, Professor Blair’s notebook, the goggles and his satchel.

  Lotta sighed as she eased into a chair before taking interest in the books. A cat threaded its way through her legs. “Go away, Maja.” Lotta nudged it while leaning forward to examine the items.

  “I’m curious,” she began looking at random pages of the Professor’s notebook. “In your call you’d mentioned Bertram Blair. I’m familiar with his name and the tragic news. Miles had once suggested to me that Bertram was well-read but something of a crackpot. Yet, he was self-taught in rune. For that, he has my respect. Incidentally, I phoned Miles after you’d called me. Apparently he’s been called away on some matter. The library is unsure of his whereabouts.”

  “He was taken away. Arrested,” Ty said.

  “Arrested? For what reason?”

  “It’s related to Professor Blair’s discovery of a curse,” Ty said.

  “Arrested because of a curse? This can’t be true!”

  “It’s true, Lotta.” Ella said.

  Lotta collected Maja into her lap and gazed at the items on her coffee table with renewed regard.

  “Tell me all you know,” she said. “Leave nothing out.”

  As they told her everything, she stroked Maja.

  Afterward, Lotta’s face turned ashen and she set the cat down.

  “Let me read your material for its meaning. I will need some time.”

  Before Lotta gathered the items and started for her desk in a corner jammed with reference books, boxes of documents and file cabinets, she indicated a tray on a small table in the dining area.

  “Help yourselves to some lemonade and cake.”

  Ty and Ella were starving and eventually ate all of the lemon cream cake and drank the entire pitcher of lemonade. The ticking mantel clock marked time and the air conditioner hummed as they watched Lotta.

  Bent over her desk with Maja at her feet, she scrutinized Professor Blair’s notebook and the ancient text, Mythos of the Grotesques: Journal of a Master Carver by Nicholas Steger-Franz. At times she held them under the halo of a fluorescent magnifying lamp, while consulting her own books and making notes.

  The din of traffic outside prompted Ty to go to a window.

  “Look Ella, you can see Madison Square Garden. It’s right over there.”

  She joined him at the window.

  Charter buses, cars and police clogged the streets around the arena.

  “Looks like there’s a concert,” she said.

  “It’s the circus,” Lotta said from her desk. “Very busy and noisy. The circus always fills the garden. I’m finished.” Lotta checked the notes she’d made on a legal pad. “Come, I’ll show you. Here, in key passages of the old book; different forms of Futhark were blended with older runic systems which were often used for curses.”

  Ty and Ella looked at the characters Lotta had noted.

  “One curse used through the ages sought to bring life to that which is dead,” she said.

  “Like stone carvings of gargoyles,” Ty said.

  “Yes, as you’ve determined,” she tapped the old text, “this Gephardt Kron, the humiliated hunchback, led his cult of black magic carvers to invoke a powerful curse on humanity that would emerge after one hundred years.”

  “The awakening?” Ty said.

  “No,” Lotta held up one finger. “Bertram’s interpretation was incorrect. Kron had kept to the belief that gargoyles were the “trapped” spirits of angels banished to Hell where they’d become demons. In Hell, they plotted to resurface and rule over the mortal world. In this case their creed, as Kron put it, was,” Lotta read from her notes: “We will vanquish the mortals for condemning us to servitude on their churches and golden calves.”

  “What are golden calves?” Ella asked.

  “Other grand buildings that are worshipped as objects of wealth, such as the Chrysler, Woolworth, and scores of buildings in New York City that are adorned with gargoyles,” Lotta said. “Now where was I, yes, ‘We will vanquish the humans for condemning us to servitude on their churches and golden calves. We will seize our fated place as their overlords. Humans will bow to us, tremble with fear and serve us for eternity. And the earth shall know our revolt as, The Trembling’.”

  “The Trembling.” Ty repeated. “That’s what’s happening now?”

  “According to Bertram,” Lotta said. “Over a century has passed, the stars and dates have aligned and the curse has been invoked without anyone’s knowledge. The Trembling, yes.”

  “But Professor Blair also discovered that the old book offered a way to remove the curse,” Ella said.

  “Yes, Bertram was convinced he’d discovered that Hugo Heinz-Steger and another carver, who’d also worked with Kron, had devised a formula to stop the plan to unleash, The Trembling.”

  “Did you find it in the book?” Ty asked.

  Lotta hesitated.

  “What is your date of birth, Tyler?”

  He told her and she wrote it down.

  “And your family name is Price, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hugo and his friend devised an incantation that would remove the curse. They wrote it with their own blood on a special parchment with their blood drops sealed in an accompanying amulet along with bits of the stone used to create most gargoyles in the city. It will only work if these objects are used by one individual.”

  “Who’s that?” Ty asked.

  “One of their direct descendants, a male.”

  “Was that Bertram?” Ella asked, “Was he a descendant of Hugo?”

  “No, Hugo’s journal states that he had no children, but his friend, Robert Price did.”

  “Robert Price?” Ty said.

  “Yes. See?” Lotta flipped to a passage in the Mythos book and then to a page in Professor Blair’s notes. “In working out Robert Price’s family tree, Bertram traced everything to you, Tyler. Robert Price is your great, great grandfather.”

  “What does this mean?”

  “Tyler, it means that you’re the only human who can remove the curse.”

  Ty’s mind reeled. He recalled Professor Blair’s words to him – ‘This is your destiny.’ He thought of the terrible images, the hellish fiends he’d seen through the goggles the professor had given him and then he thought of his mom and his dad, imagining what horrors they may be enduring right now.

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I’m just a kid. What can I do?”

  Lotta consulted her notes then held up the goggles.

  “As a result of his research, Bertram located a trunk in a factory containing abandoned quarry equipment. There he found two pairs of goggles he believed belonged to Hugo and Robert Price. They had fallen apart but Bertram used the surviving material from the old goggles to make these. According to the Hug
o-Price formula, the human chosen to undo the curse needed the goggles to see the truth of the Trembling, the coming to life of the beasts and their shape-shifting powers.”

  “That’s you, Ty,” Ella said.

  Lotta returned the goggles to Ty and he accepted them with the new understanding that his great-great grandfather had once used the components to battle evil.

  “The goggles will help you find the parchment and amulet,” Lotta said.

  “Where?”

  “The Goliath Building in lower Manhattan.”

  “I know it,” Ty said.

  “Go there, search for this runic word,” Lotta had made notes for him. “It is carved into one of the exterior stones at the base of the building at street level – here is the word: “.” It means “Avenge,” and it should be visible to you with the glasses.”

  “What if I can’t I find it? The Goliath Building is big.”

  Lotta examined her notes. “Bertram kept things cryptic because he feared discovery. Remember, in his odd way he directed you to all of the steps you’ve taken thus far, leading you to this point, Ty. Here it is: you must seek the “Keeper of Goliath.”

  “The keeper of the building?” Ty asked.

  “A maintenance supervisor, I would think,” Ella said.

  “I agree,” Lotta said. “According to Bertram’s interpretation you must ask for a man with the initial ‘W’ in his name, who is the keeper of the building. He will help you find the stone with the runic marking. It contains, or hides, the parchment and amulet.”

  “Then what?”

  “Put on the amulet and read the incantation on the parchment.”

  “That’s it?”

  “No, you must read it in rune.”

  “But I don’t understand it.”

  “I have spelled it out for you here in English, so you can understand it and underneath I have written it phonetically so you can say it in rune.”

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  “Wait, Tyler, there is more,” Lotta said. “The Goliath Building was built over a century ago and for a time it was the world’s tallest skyscraper.”