by Joe Lansdale
“I didn’t need to know that.”
“Just messing with you. I drank too much Scotch. I couldn’t get it up if I had a swimsuit model tugging on my dick.”
“Goodnight,” Bernard said.
“Hey,” Wilson said, pausing as he started away. “That stuff Kettle told us. I mean about that guy we got out there. About him not eating or shitting and such. Do you believe that?”
“No. He said it was a rumor, and Toggle is right. Kettle likes to hear himself talk; he said so himself.”
“So you think he was yarning us?”
“Mostly, yeah. I mean, it did take several jolts of the juice to kill him. If in fact he was in the chair when they threw it all those times. It might have been maintenance the first time or two, and then the last two were the real deal. No doubt though: whoever he was and whatever he did, it was bad. But the rest of it, I think you can let that flow under the bridge, so to speak.”
“Yeah. Sure. What I was thinking.”
“Good story, though,” Bernard said.
“Yeah. It was a good one.”
Wilson hitched up his pants and started along the dog run. His room was just off of it. He wobbled slightly, but arrived at his door and went inside.
Bernard, when he was sure Wilson had made it, climbed the squeaking stairs up to his room, and for the first time in years, he locked the door. He thought about the big metal door that was open to the outside. It being open bothered him. He hoped when Toggle pulled the loader in he would close and lock it.
§
Bernard couldn’t sleep. He had felt tired, and then all of a sudden he was awake. The wind was whistling in hard through the open window, flapping the curtains and blowing in rain. Bernard got up to close the window.
Before he did, he stuck his head out into the storm and looked toward the cemetery, the orchard of bones. He could faintly see the tree near the dock and the front-end loader was still parked there. Toggle was supposed to smoke or chew and bring it up, but it was in the same spot. Nothing really that could be hurt by the wind and rain, and it was enclosed with a kind of wheelhouse surrounded with glass, but still, Bernard felt it should be parked and put away. Toggle might have had a flask with him, or one in the loader, and was inside the machine enjoying a nip. Maybe he had come home, abandoning the loader, and was in his room drunk. It had happened before.
Bernard decided to be less of a worrywart. He closed the window and walked to his bookshelf. Something was bothering him, but he wasn’t sure what. He ran his fingers over the titles, over the old encyclopedias with their loose covers and yellowed pages. And then it hit him. The description of the executed man, the mark on his forehead; the tattoo, Kettle had called it.
He reached for volume G, and his hand trembled slightly as he removed it. He opened it up to Golem.
Yes, that was exactly what Kettle’s story had brought to mind. But that was ridiculous. A golem was from Jewish tradition. It was made to be used for protection, or to perform certain tasks, and then it was put back to rest. Stories sometimes referred to one golem, an eternal being made of mud or clay, while other stories said there could be many golems, that it could be made by any number of people with the skill and the magic.
Magic? Jesus, what was he thinking? A chill slipped over Bernard’s body. According to the story Kettle had heard, the unnamed thing had been found inside a wall, a synagogue wall, and it had been stolen by a rabbi and a helper. They had been killed, and the thing went missing. Could it have been an actual golem, maybe brought over from the old country, or built in modern times, and then put away until it was needed? Could knowledge of its existence been passed down from rabbi to rabbi? Could it have been brought to life to perform a task, perhaps to wreck vengeance on someone, as it was often used in the legends?
If so, why had it not performed? Perhaps the knowledge the thieves had of the golem was flawed, and something in the process of bringing it to life went wrong. Bernard studied the encyclopedia more carefully. It was said that the golem could be brought to life by writing a certain word on its forehead. Emet. Which the old text said was the ancient word for truth. The word it showed in the dictionary, the way it was printed out, it looked very much like the word Kettle had drawn crudely on the paper downstairs. The way he had drawn it, the letters looked more like symbols, but now that Bernard could examine the word, he recognized it as essentially the same.
The article also stated that to rid yourself of the golem, you had to remove the word on its forehead.
Bernard gave himself a shake. He was being ridiculous; maybe touched by that little bit of Scotch he had tasted. The story Kettle had told them was ludicrous. Toggle had been right. The old man was yarning them, at least mostly, had to be. Probably he had read about the golem, and the big prisoner fit his idea of it, so what a fine way to combine truth and legend and tell a good story. He probably laughed the whole boat trip home, knowing even Toggle had been taken in by it, if only for a moment.
Bernard kicked off his shoes and climbed into bed with his clothes on. He began to read the article more closely, but he had only gotten started when he heard something odd on the wind. A kind of howl, like a wolf, maybe. But there were no wolves on the island. No real wildlife other than birds, a seal now and then, lizards, things of that nature.
Could it have been the wind? A growl of the tossing sea?
But another thought kept coming back to him.
“Oh, come on,” he said to himself. “Don’t be a nitwit.”
Maybe it was Toggle. Perhaps the drunk bastard had run the loader off into the sea by now. That would be about right. The loader was gone, and Toggle was swimming for it, calling out for help.
But it damn sure didn’t sound like Toggle—and for that matter, it didn’t sound human.
It was most likely nothing but the wind, and he was worrying for no reason at all, other than being a bit worked up over Kettle’s story. For the hell of it he got up and tried the phone that connected to the prison island. He had a sudden urge to want to be connected. They didn’t like surprises or simple phone visits, but he could claim he was worried about the storm, ask them for weather information. That just might fly.
Dead. No signal. That damn phone died easy, so that was no surprise. If the wind picked up or there was a strong rain, the line was affected. He had no idea how, but that was the long and the short of it. There wasn’t even a hum on the line. The phone was just flat dead as the original Christian. It was probably best. A phone call would have done nothing more than piss them off. What the hell was he thinking, calling for a weather report?
Bernard went back to the window and opened it up and looked out. The front-end loader was still partially visible down by the big tree. Toggle had not driven it off into the water. He closed the window, slipped on his shoes, pulled his rain slicker on, grabbed his flashlight, and headed out, down the squeaking stairs. He decided he’d get Wilson for backup. He might need him if Toggle was hurt.
He paused when he came to the bulldozer in the dog run. He put his hand on the dozer. Something about touching that cool metal connected him with reality. He was thinking some pretty crazy thoughts. The dozer was real. Made of metal and plastic, state-of-the-art, able to spin about and go in any direction without actually turning, though it could do that too. The treads flexed easily and were mounted. It had a wheelhouse encased in thick plastic that served as windshields. It was a tough machine. There probably wasn’t another dozer like this one anywhere else in the world. He patted it again. Yeah. It was real. A golem wasn’t real, and in that moment he felt stupid for thinking such a thing and almost turned around and climbed back up the stairs. But then he heard that howl again, and even with his hand on that firm metal he felt what prehistoric man had felt when he heard a sound in the dark, something that sounded strange and inexplicable. The hair on his neck stood up. He felt fear.
He shook it off. Toggle was out there. Toggle worked for him. It was his job to take care of him and Wilson. He h
ad to go check, like it or not. The door was still open wide, waiting for the loader, and the rain was coming down hard out there, but he had no choice as far as he saw it. He had to go out there and see if Toggle was all right. He could have fallen and broken a leg.
Bernard edged his way around the bulldozer, stopped at the boy’s door and knocked.
Wilson took a long time answering. He opened the door wearing only boxer shorts. He looked like death warmed over.
“Did you hear that howl?”
“Howl?”
“Kind of like a wolf?”
“We don’t have any wolves here.”
“No. We don’t.”
Wilson studied Bernard. “What’s the deal, man? I was about to hit the sack. I just finished a super shit and it kind of sobered me up. Can you imagine that, shit so hard it shits you sober?”
Wilson’s face changed as he studied Bernard. He wasn’t in the least interested in his bathroom event. “So, okay. What’s up?”
“I’m worried about Toggle, thought I’d go check on him. I was going to ask you to come, but frankly, you don’t look up to it. Hell, it’s probably just me being goofy, the storm and all.”
“I’m a bit stir-fried, all right, but hang on.”
Wilson stumbled back inside his room, and Bernard waited outside the door. After a few minutes Wilson appeared, dressed and wearing his rain slicker, carrying a flashlight. He did in fact look sober, just beat down by the liquor.
“I feel like hell,” he said.
“I said you could stay.”
“Naw, it’s all right.”
They went out and Bernard decided to close the metal door and lock it. They started along the walkway, past the garden, which was being whipped by the wind.
“Looks like tomorrow I’ll have some work to do,” Wilson said.
“I can help. I’m the boss, but I can help.”
“It’s all right,” Wilson said. “I like it better here when I have something to do. You’re thinking Toggle might be drunk, aren’t you?”
“Crossed my mind.”
“Well, I was kidding about being shit sober. I’m not stone drunk, but I got a few pebbles. So why wouldn’t he be drunk? That was some Scotch, and my guess is he’s got some more to suck on.”
“My thought. For Toggle to get seriously drunk, he needs a lot of alcohol. He can hold it pretty good. That’s why I’m worried. He either got into more of it, or something went wrong. He wouldn’t have any reason to stay out here in the storm if he wasn’t drunk.”
And it had become quite a storm, if not of hurricane proportions. Bernard found he had to shout so he could be heard; the wind grabbed his words and sucked them up and took them away.
As they continued, sweeping their lights before them, they could clearly see the tree by the dock had been knocked over. It had been standing not too long ago, when Bernard last looked out the window. This had just occurred.
The tree’s long roots writhed in the wind, shaking dirt from them and blowing it away. The loader sat silently behind the fallen tree, like some kind of dark-orange dinosaur.
“Damn,” Wilson said. “I loved that tree.”
“You and me both,” Bernard said.
“That was some wind,” Wilson said.
“It’s windy,” Bernard said. “But it’s not that windy. Not yet. It’s coming, but not yet.”
“Yeah, well it must have been a freak blow that come through, cause there’s the tree, lying on its side. It didn’t just fall over. Not that big guy.”
Bernard didn’t reply to that, because he was actually thinking the same thing. They made their way to the loader. It was a pretty good-sized machine and the wind hadn’t moved it. But then again, had the wind really pushed over that big-ass tree? Bernard took the two steps to the cab, slid the door open and looked inside. He danced his light around in there.
Nothing. Just a musty smell.
“Hey,” Wilson called out.
Bernard climbed out of the loader, closed the cab door and went down to join Wilson.
Wilson was holding Toggle’s tobacco pouch in his hand. “It’s full, and Toggle doesn’t litter. None of us do.”
Bernard looked about.
“He has to be here somewhere.”
“Yeah, but where?”
Wilson shook his head, turned around, glanced along the length of the fallen tree. He turned his head slightly, poked his light in the direction he was looking. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“That, in the branches of the tree. In the light.”
Bernard still didn’t see anything. Wilson started forward and Bernard followed.
“Looks like ropes,” Wilson said, and now Bernard saw it. Twists of ropes or vines in the broken boughs of the tree.
Wilson pushed through the broken limbs, the ones still attached to the tree, grabbed one. “That’s not rope.”
He pulled his hand back and put the flashlight on it.
“Oh goddamn Jesus on a ass-fucked pony.”
Bernard slid up and put his light on Wilson’s hand.
It was covered in blood and the rain was washing it away.
§
Bernard moved closer to the ropes, flashed light on them, bent forward for a closer look. They had a smell. The wind and rain was carrying some of it away, but the smell was of blood and … shit.
“It’s intestines,” Bernard said.
“What the hell?”
“The goddamn tree must have fallen on him.”
“Toggle?”
“No, Elvis Presley. Of course Toggle.”
“Shit, shit, shit.”
“Jesus Christ,” Bernard said, and then he and Wilson went back and forth cursing and swearing.
“What a fucked up piece of luck,” Wilson said.
“Where’s … the rest of him?”
They moved along the tree and shined their lights into its branches and found his head. It was on the ground, between two limbs. And nearby was a leg.
Bernard bent down close and put the light on Toggle’s head. The man’s eyes were wide and his mouth was thrown open and his tongue was swollen and fat and marked with a wound, as if, in the moments before he threw his mouth open, he had bitten his tongue. The mouth was filled with rain water and blood. Pieces of flesh and a fragment of spinal cord dangled from where the neck had been.
“His leg,” Wilson said. “When the tree fell, it must have jerked it out of its socket, jerked it right off of him.”
“The head too? What are the odds?”
“Pretty rare, I’d say.”
“Yeah,” Bernard said. “I don’t think it could happen like that.”
“But it did.”
Bernard moved the light away from the tree. He saw marks on the ground. “What’s this?”
Wilson put his light on it. It was a big mark. A big shoe mark.
“That is one big footprint,” Wilson said. “A boot.”
“Yeah. But that isn’t Toggle’s print. Those feet, they would have to belong to Bigfoot.”
“A mutant Bigfoot. Hell, Bernard. Those feet, they got to be eighteen inches. Who or what the fuck has eighteen-inch feet?”
“The golem,” Bernard said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Thinking out loud. Come on.”
“We got to get the body.”
“We will. Come on, and watch yourself.”
“Hey, man, you’re creeping me out.”
Bernard made his way to the grave they had prepared. Some of the dirt was gone; there was a gap in the ground where something had pushed its way through from inside. It was a large gap. They could also see the coffin, and they could see inside it, the part near where the head should be. The coffin was knocked open as if by a battering ram. There were bits of cloth from the bags used for burial, and there were bits of orange jumpsuit, the kind convicts wore. The chains were broken and lying loose in the grave. “Damn, man.” Wilson said. “I got to still be drunk, drun
ker than I thought.”
“Trust me, I’m not drunk and I’m seeing the same thing you are.”
“Just so I got it straight, what you’re thinking is what I’m thinking, and that’s that whoever … whatever … was inside the coffin has knocked its way loose, climbed through hundreds of pounds of dirt, come out of the ground and killed Toggle.”
“I think Toggle tried to get away from it. Climbed the tree. And this thing, it pushed the tree over and got Toggle.”
“That’s insane.”
“It is,” Bernard said. “But I’m still thinking it.”
Wilson flashed the light around, first one direction, then the other.
“That means it’s out here somewhere.”
“Yeah.”
“You said a word earlier, then said ‘forget it.’”
“Golem.”
“Yeah, what’s that? Is that this thing?”
“I don’t know; maybe.”
“What do we do, man? I mean, we can’t swim to the big island, and we got no boat, so what do we do? Something like this, I don’t want to deal with it. They couldn’t kill it with four jolts of electricity and a plastic bag over its head. It knocked its way loose of a coffin, busted some chains, dug its way out of six feet of dirt or thereabouts, pushed a fucking tree over, pulled Toggle’s guts out, and then this… golem, yanked off his leg and head. Motherfucker.”
“Keep calm.”
“Oh,” Wilson said. “Now there’s some good advice.”
“And maybe we should be quieter.”
Wilson swallowed heavily. “Yeah. Ten-four on that.”
“Best bet is to head back to Island Keep. It’s concrete. It has steel doors. It locks tight.”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. But shit, how can this be. That story Kettle was telling. I don’t get it. I mean, that can’t be. Can it?”
“I think it’s true,” Bernard said.
§
Bernard felt as if the walk back to the compound took about a month, and now and again he’d see what he thought was a shape in the shadows, but where he flashed the light there was nothing. Still, he thought he heard something big shuffling along with them, just out of sight, deep in shadow. But no matter when he flashed the light, nothing was there. He was starting to spook.