Golem

by Todd Maternowski

threatened --deep in the old heart of his peaceful city of magic and wonder, here was a potentially dangerous group of English thugs that was eager to get into a fight. I pretended to look down as they passed, they who so easily could overpower me, me in my dark red silk shirt and boots, an easy target for the fists of an angry thug.

  After thirty or so of the brutes stumbled by I thought I saw a man standing in the shadows of the bushes on the other side of the outer wall, either watching me or the mob of English drunks. The man was dressed in all black with a wide-brimmed black hat shadowing his face, like the Hasidic Jews I'd seen in Skokie back when I would visit Rick in his dorm. I squinted for a better view, but a small breeze moved the bush and –it was difficult to see behind the mass of drunkards between me and the wall-- the man in black disappeared. It seemed I had only seen the outline of a man. An optical illusion, my adrenaline and nervous imagination playing tricks on me. Thank god I didn't have to worry about someone else trying the same thing I was on the one night I could pull it off. The mob passed without incident, their shouts and soccer songs fading away to the south.

  Ten minutes later I made my move. Beyond the pathetically useless outer wall was a small outcropping, possibly a chimney or other utility, with a gas meter snaking up to a tiny patch of steeply-sloped shingled roof that just happened to be roughly the same height as the bottom rungs of the metal ladder. I hopped over the wall and hid behind the thin bush. This was the last time I would have cover of any sort from the traffic on the street, so I took a minute to look both ways before I tested the strength of the meter to see if it could hold my weight.

  It looked strong enough. Even if it wasn't, in the worst case scenario I would fall no more than six or seven feet, dust myself off and head for a pub. I grabbed onto the meter, wedged my right boot against a tiny ridge in a pipe and lifted myself up.

  Solid. I scampered up the meter quickly and got to the shingled roof. It was far more concealed from the street than I had expected, but not quite at the same height as the bottom rungs of the metal ladder, and a solid eight-foot jump around a tricky corner to boot. A fall here would be ten or twelve feet, a sprained ankle and a long and agonizing walk on cobbled stone streets back to the hotel. Back to the hotel with a pathetic half-story to tell. Still, a better half-story than Roger, who's only contact with Prague was in the bathroom. After a quick glance both ways down the street, I braced myself for the jump.

  With my left boot on a roofing shingle --praying it would hold-- I swung my right leg around the corner of the outcropping, holding my back to the wall as tightly as I could. Then I pushed off on my right over ten feet of air, aiming for the third rung from the top, my hands open like I was catching a football.

  My right hand bounced off the third rung with a loud clang, but my boot momentarily caught my momentum below the ladder. I slipped off the second to last rung but caught hold of the final rung with my left with a painful jerk. My heart was exploding out of my chest, pounding against the ribcage like a bloodied prisoner raging in his cell. I pulled myself up to the third rung, then scampered up the upper rungs like I was fleeing for my life.

  When I reached the attic door I suddenly realized that in my panic I had made enough noise to wake the dead. I froze at the top rung and looked for a security guard running toward me.

  Silence.

  Down the street perhaps thirty yards away, a figure of a man --again, dressed in all black with a wide-brimmed Hasidic hat-- was walking away in the direction of the cemetary. Did he not hear the noise my boots made against the metal rungs? He glided slowly away and turned the corner, seemingly oblivious to my intrusion. If he was going to get help, he was certainly taking his sweet time about it. I was lucky this time. I couldn't afford to be so careless again.

  I turned back to the door. The Star of David was engraved on the center, a small handle the only other feature. Was it locked? I pulled the handle. Nothing, not a budge. I pushed. Slight movement. I pushed some more, and a breath later I stepped off the topmost rung and into another world.

  The dust of centuries invaded my nostrils, throat and eyes as I fumbled for the small flashlight on my keyring. I closed the door behind me and was enveloped by pitch-black darkness.

  I pressed the small button on my keychain flashlight, and was shocked. Whatever I had expected on all those hours crossing the Atlantic, or sitting up eating a hearty breakfast of ham, cheese and bread in the hotel room, or perusing little touristy books on the Golem in the Synagogue gift shop... nothing prepared me for what I saw.

  It was empty. Completely, uneventfully, empty. Nothing more than the inside of a barn.

  The attic was devoid of anything even remotely interesting. I swept my light across nothing of interest. The floor was covered in dust and pigeon droppings, with five or six rises in the floor that I eventually figured to be where the naves in the Synagogue below were located. Above me were your standard wooden beams and columns, one of which had the year "1883" carved into it.

  No treasure chests full of sacred Hebrew texts. No chandeliers of human bone. The thick chains that dropped from the beams to the floors below were not there to bound the man-made Frankenstein, but merely held up the light fixtures in the temple below. No secret tunnels with ancient Hebrew curses inscribed above their entryways. Nothing.

  And no Golem of Prague.

  I had pictured the Golem to look something like the metal monsters of those cheesy black-and-white serials of the 1930s; ugly, with a scary, unmoving face, powerful limbs, eight to ten feet tall, waiting patiently on some dusty slab for the next ambitious Rabbi to re-animate it in a time of great need once again. But there was nothing up here, not even an empty slab to designate the existence of a Golem that escaped its bonds and roams the attic freely.

  Desperate for anything, I climbed up to see if the tops of the columns were hollow. They were! My sense of excitement, of danger, returned. I dug with my bare hands through layers of dust from the thirteenth century, along with the dried fecal matter of tens of thousands of pigeons.

  After ten minutes or more of digging... nothing. I moved on to the next column. Again, nothing. And a third.

  Finally in the fourth column I felt something different laying buried in the dust. I shined my flashlight on it, and nearly squealed in orgiastic delight at the off-white ivory color of the object in my hand.

  Bone!

  I quickly uncovered the rest of it --but my hopes were crushed by a heavy, hollow emptiness. It was a pigeon carcass, years old. No human finger, no single relic of the Golem for the next great Rabbi to re-animate. No souvenier to hide in my carry-on on my way back through customs.

  My left shoulder went numb. I looked down and saw three spindly black fingers with no nails.

  I don't remember how I found my way through the darkness, how I opened the attic door, how I got down the ladder, or where these odd markings on my body came from. I do remember this: laying on my back on the ground, my foot braced against the wall, looking up at the where the door should be, thirty feet above. A man in all black with a wide-brimmed Hasidic hat, his face shadowed, sticking his head out the door and staring down at me from above.

  I bolted, slashing my expensive pants on the low outer wall, stumbling directly into an undercover Czech policeman. I screamed at him and pointed to the attic, but he just looked at me with a puzzled look and asked me questions I didn't know the answer to; my name, where I was born, which hotel I was staying at. I looked up at the attic --the door was closed. The man in black had disappeared.

  The policeman saw me looking at the attic, stopped asking questions and escorted me back to my hotel, where Rick, Quan and two anonymous brunnettes were waiting, worried. They said I looked like a walking ghost. I waved them off and crawled into bed with my clothes on but couldn't sleep, so I spent the night in the restroom with the lights turned on.

  I must have passed out at some point, because when I woke up I found that my wallet and keys were gone. No need to search the room – I
knew where they were. They would be discovered in time, by some adventurous Brazilian or Cantonese or Australian youth with more brains than wisdom, a hundred years from last night.

  About the Author: Born in Madison, Wisconsin, Todd studied Ancient Near Eastern religion and early Judeo-Christianity at the University of Chicago before heading into the real world. He has since worked as a ballroom dance instructor, bass player, mediator, credit specialist, art preparator, janitor, journalist, copy editor, armored car money counter, technical writer, mambo dancer, and satirist. He lives in Dallas, Texas with his hyper-creative wife and two energetic children.

  Connect with Me Online:

  Official website: https://towersofdawn.com/