Muddy Waters (Otherwhere Book 1)

by Sara O. Thompson

  I didn’t have much experience wandering around Otherwhere. My mother, by all accounts, had been something of an explorer long before the Rift. She negotiated with Other empires, bought and sold, and, according to one story, occasionally vacationed in various bits of the Other realm. Largely, it’s because our coven is so old; she was just part of the ongoing legacy. I went in a few times, when I was very small, but I don’t remember much, just snippets. A forest of upside-down trees, carriages pulled by birds, a carousel with real animals. By the time I was old enough to ask, she said it was dangerous and relegated me to lectures rather than practical experience. Like an astronaut who knows a lot about Mars and has maybe been to the Moon but no farther.

  The creatures that come to Earth from Otherwhere are pretty low on the cosmic totem pole. The Red Queen is about as big and bad as you get around here and don’t tell her I said this, but Earth is really lucky she’s not driven to do more harm than she already does. She could really fuck some shit up if she put her mind to it.

  My point―and I do have one―is that it’s hard to get something really evil or good to come out of its cozy nest in Otherwhere. Not for long, anyway. It’s too difficult for them to sustain for any length of time. Back to my analogy from earlier: Humans can’t breathe pure oxygen. Evil things can’t stand too much good. Good things can’t stand too much evil. The Earth is like a scuba tank. It’s mixed up enough in here that only the beings in the sort of nebulous in-between can survive.

  WASHINGTON, D.C. March 23, 2001 (Reuters)―Groups calling themselves “Others” seek asylum in the U.S. and Canada, and could pursue international arbitration to gain it, their spokesperson said on Wednesday, a week after appearances around the world.

  A North American-European-PanAsian consortium said it had been blindsided by the appearance of the Others and has scrambled to enact treaties and laws meant to handle these immigrants from the so-called “Otherwhere.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  right and early the next morning, I got online to look for someone who could help with my golem problem. Turned out, there was a guru type person in Louisville. Fancy that.

  Professor Johan March, I learned, had once taught Jewish studies at American University and now wrote books from a condo by the river, not far from the Queen of Hearts. His website said he also enjoyed playing jazz trumpet and cycling. I called the contact number listed and sent an email, noting the urgency of my requests. About two hours later, he rang back to arrange a visit.

  Which brought me to my next stop―a modern glass high-rise glimmering weakly in the noontime sun. The unit was on the fourteenth floor. A scruffy man in house slippers answered.

  “Tessa?”

  “Hi, yeah.” We shook hands. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.”

  “Come in, come in.” He waved me into the condo and down the hall. “Sorry it’s such a mess in here.” He was cheerful and affable, and I was immediately at ease.

  His office was full of books and papers and framed art stacked against a wall. A behemoth of a desk almost entirely blocked the bottom of the enormous windows that overlooked the river. There was an armchair that had seen better days and a battered lamp. The Prof himself was a tall skinny man with a tangled graying beard and friendly brown eyes behind half-moon glasses. It was over these glasses he peered at me as he pushed a pile of books off a chair.

  “I’m uh… with the FBI,” I said. “But this is technically off the record.”

  He pulled out a book from the stack recently displaced from my chair. Thumbing through it, he studied me between page turns. “You’re not Jewish.”

  I grinned. “Nope. Not even a little.”

  He made a dismissive gesture. “Everyone is a little Jewish. What is it that I can help you with?”

  “Here. I need to know what this is.” He set his book aside and took the sheet.

  His face lit up as he studied it. “This is gorgeous. You know, people are very interested in spirituality these days. After the Rift, well, what do you expect? Bad things happen and people want answers; it’s human nature, right? Now, golems. That’s a fascinating subject.”

  “It is golems?”

  He gestured at the paper with a look of surprise, as though I should have known. “This? It’s basically a recipe for a golem. Like, it’s from a Kabbalah cookbook.” He peered closer. “Huh. Well, there are Gnostic symbols here.” He flipped the paper upside down. “Coptic, maybe? Anyway, definitely golem. Enchanted figures created to defend someone. You know this, yes? Legend tells of Jewish mystics who could animate the clay of the earth. In the sixteenth century, the rabbi of Prague created a golem to defend the Jews from the Catholic Pope. This paper describes a ritual for bringing a golem to life.” He gazed at the fine markings. “There’s some stuff on here I don’t recognize, but most of it, yes, it’s a golem. I’d bet my last doughnut on it.”

  The wheels began to click in my head. “So it’s possible to raise a golem?”

  He paused in his book-thumbing and looked over the glasses again. “Oh yes. Any idiot can raise a golem, but,” he raised a finger and smiled, “it takes a special kind of idiot to use it right.”

  I laughed. “So idiots make golems?”

  Professor March nodded vigorously and laughed too. “Actually, you didn’t used to be able to. I mean, you could then you couldn’t. The ancients dabbled in it. The ancient Jewish mystics, the Kabbalists, the Gnostics, and probably the Greeks and the Chinese, but then the power was taken away for a long time. But the magic now, after the Rift, it’s all over the place. It’s like a live wire, shooting charge everywhere.” He waved his long arms around in demonstration. “Even I wouldn’t try to raise a golem. And I’m pretty much an expert. That’s why you contacted me, right? A rabbi might be able to, easier than me. It’s very dangerous. You know this. Black magic. Very unstable on this plane.”

  He put down the page and picked up another book, talking as he leafed through. “To some, it seems like things are going off the rails.” He found a page. “Ah. Here we go. First, those doing the ritual will cleanse themselves, spirit and body. The soil they use should be undisturbed.” March looked up. “The ritualists used to go to the middle of deep forest, a little-deserted island, maybe, on a lake. To the outskirts of a town. Then there’s a ritual and a spell, and they make a statue. The key here,” he showed me the book, “is the shem. You write the names of God on the paper and put it in the golem’s mouth. Then another spell, and it lets you command the golem.”

  He stopped and a look of intense concentration clouded his face. “What do you need a golem for?”

  “Athena’s tits, no. No. Not me. But there was some clay; there were people. I’m putting it all together.”

  His eyes went wide, and he ran a hand through his white hair, which gave him the look of a very curious and intellectual dandelion.

  “People, eh? The stories say golems were made to defend the Jews against various forces―Christian popes, Nazis, etcetera. This paper―where did it come from?”

  “A colleague found this photocopy in a field. The original is a rare book, a Sefer Yetzirah? Sorry if I mispronounced it.”

  It was as though I’d told a kid he could have all the Baskin Robbins ice cream, right now. “A Book of Creation. Do you know what those are? Do you have it? Can I see it?”

  “I don’t have it, no. It’s… well, it’s complicated. But I know of them.”

  He seemed disappointed while trying to maintain what was left of his professional veneer. “Those were rumored to be manuals for early Kabbalists as they borrowed them from the Gnostics. If anything would, they would have such things as how to raise a golem. This is a miracle, if this page is from that book. But, if it got in the wrong hands?” He made a frightened sound. “I can’t imagine.” He tapped the page. “Dangerous stuff, this. The golem can grow uncontrollable. It can run rampant. Sentience isn’t out of the question.”

  I laughed uneasily. “I guess anything is possible.”

/>   A serious look settled on his face. “You don’t understand. That is what man is. God created Adam from the mud and blew the breath of life into him. And Adam got out of control.”

  Oh. Shit. Cara Courtland.

  My horror must have filtered through.

  “Are you all right? You look a little unwell.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I’m just… some stuff is now making sense.”

  March considered me closely for another moment then backed off. “As I have said, in my professional opinion, it is some kind of ritual to raise a golem. These symbols here are the Tetragrammatron, and that’s a protective sign.” He began to sort of mumble excitedly, as though he’d forgotten I was in the room. “But this isn’t like what I thought it would be. I think…this is saying you’ll call a Demon to possess the golem. An evil spirit of some sort. Not a protective one. How strange. Who would want that?” His face fluctuated between thrilled and terrified. “Oh, this is a find.”

  I blinked stupidly at him. I really hadn’t prepared for an existential theology debate, so I was glad there was a knock at the condo door.

  After several long seconds, March looked up. “Probably UPS. I’m expecting a delivery of books. Please excuse me.” He put the page down, got up, and stepped out of the office. He had to navigate some tall stacks of boxes and with his long skinny limbs, he looked like a pale grasshopper.

  I took the paper he’d dropped and folded it up, tucking it into my bag. Then I picked up his reference hardback. As I flipped through, my phone vibrated in my pocket. It was a local number, but one I didn’t immediately recognize, so I let it go to voicemail.

  I’d heard a little of golems. Figures of clay animated by people’s prayers or something. But I had never heard of anyone trying to make one happen. Let alone Humans. Humans doing magic is rarely successful, to be blunt about it. You have to have a certain amount of innate talent and cultivate it to Hell and back. You don’t just get up and say, “Today I will do magic.” Or, more specifically, “Today I will do magic successfully.” It can happen, don’t get me wrong, sometimes because people get really lucky or some Other being is around to give them a hand. But your Average Joe and Mary Jane Smith typically do not pull off elaborate spells such as animating dirt to do their bidding. Of course, I could have been off base. But I didn’t think so.

  A strangled sound and a loud thump drew my attention. Then, more thumps and a muffled cry.

  “Professor March? Are you all right?” I got up and went down the hall.

  Just inside the front door, my host was struggling with another, bigger man. The fellow had an arm wrapped around March’s neck in a strange hug, choking him.

  “Hey!”

  The assailant dropped the professor onto the floor.

  “Holy shit!” I yelped, backing into a side table. The thing turned its crude face and lumbered after me over the creaking parquet. It took a nanosecond to realize I was being chased by a golem.

  I seek refuge with the Lord of the Dawn From the mischief of created things; From the mischief of Darkness as it overspreads; From the mischief of those who practice secret arts; And from the mischief of the envious one as he practices envy. (Quran 113:1-5)

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  sprinted down the hall to get my bag, thanking all the tiny gods that I’d long ago started keeping Elisha salt inside―salt consecrated by the holy men from all the major world religions. I slammed the office door behind me and locked it.

  Somehow that made sense, to lock the damn door. Right.

  Scrabbling at the zipper, I looked over my shoulder. The knob jiggled and something whumped against the wooden frame. The silence after that felt threatening. I yanked out the salt and began to pour when I realized something was coming into the room―from under the door.

  Fluid mud inched through the narrow gap between the hardwood and the door. I stood frozen, salt in hand, struck by horrified fascination. The pool grew yet contained itself in a neat circle. Finally, my brain kicked into gear, and I poured the salt in a thin arc around the quickly spreading edge. Where it touched the salt, the mud pulled back like it had been burned and hissed.

  Working fast, I finished pouring it in a half-circle in front of the doorway.

  “Tessa? Are you in there?” March rasped from the hall.

  “Get me some salt! As much as you can!”

  To my continued horror, the mud began to take shape, feet first. It was like watching a sculpture grow from its shoes up in fast-forward. The legs formed next. My hand shot out and unlocked then opened the door. There was just enough space to swing it past the growing mudman.

  Professor March rushed over, carrying a huge box of kosher salt, two smaller cylinders of iodized salt, and a little shaker shaped like a trumpet. His eyes were huge and fearful.

  In the study, the torso had formed and arms began to flow from the shoulders. A powerful reek filled my nose―newly-churned soil and rotted decay.

  Taking a breath, I leapt into the hall, narrowly missing the thing’s arm as it swung at me, and grabbed the box of salt from the professor. By the time I’d gotten half the box poured, including my Elisha salt, the golem’s head rotated to take us in.

  It stepped backward to the doorway, its head now facing the wrong way. Then its whole body sort of shivered around, righting itself. Huge, with no neck, and the barest suggestion of hands and face, other than baleful holes for eyes and gaping mouth.

  The last of the salt poured, I hastily called the circle and a column of energy sprang up, the faint trace of burnt ozone crackling in the air.

  The golem’s foot touched the salt ring, and it made a wet sizzle. The beast let out a noise that likely meant it was in pain. Or pissed off. It kept bouncing against the confinement of the circle like a remote control car stuck on forward, neatly trapped in a sodium chloride cage, and getting angrier by the moment.

  March stood, holding his trumpet saltshaker, panting, muttering.

  “How do I kill it?” I screamed.

  My voice prodded him out of his paralysis. “Get… get the shem,” he stammered. “It should be in its mouth.”

  “It’s mouth? I’m supposed to reach in its god-blessed mouth?”

  The mud figure was pounding on the walls of the circle cage. “Is it secure in there?” March pointed at the intruder.

  “Yeah, for now. But I can’t keep it locked up forever.” It was my stored magical energy and all that salt stopping the golem from drowning us in mud or tearing us to pieces or whatever it was going to do. The spell I cast was a solid one, drawing on the energy from the nearby river, but again, I couldn’t do it all day. “Can we slow it down? If I let it out, can we delay it long enough to get the shem out?”

  March nodded. “Water. Water will dissolve some of it. I think. I mean, theoretically, right? I’ve not tried this, of course. There’s some debate about the rationale―”

  “GET A BUCKET.”

  The golem pounded on the magical walls. It was tall, perhaps a shade over seven feet, and stocky. Whoever had sculpted it hadn’t bothered to make clothes, just the formation of limbs and a head. No nose. No neck. Legs and arms ended in squared-off feet and hands with no fingers or toes. Despite the rudimentary features, the thing was still scary as all get out.

  As I waited for the bucket and a chance to stick my hand in the monster’s maw, exhaustion began to creep over me. It was as though I had not slept my whole life. Since I was not prepared for this, my own energy drained quickly and my water-energy skills were rusty. It would have killed a more inexperienced practitioner already. But we do what we can on the fly. I would’ve been okay if I hadn’t nearly lost consciousness and my head hadn’t hit the wooden floor with a painful crack.

  “Tessa! Tessa, can you hear me?” With my now-blurry vision, I saw Professor March’s wool-slippered feet. He knelt beside me. “What should I do?”

  Before I could answer, he was knocked violently to the side, breath whuffing out of him as his body slid into the couch. The mud
monster had broken through the magical force field when my guard was down.

  Panting, I rolled onto my back and found the golem leering down at me, its ragged mouth hole gaping. “Hey,” I said weakly. “You got some dirt on your face.”

  It leaned over and picked me up by my shoulders, holding me at eye level as it opened its mouth to roar. I tried what girls are supposed to do in those situations and kicked it in the crotch with my trusty red cowboy boots. Instead of causing any real damage, the pointed tip of my right boot sunk right into the thing’s blank man-parts region.

  Spell time, even though I had barely enough energy to keep my eyelids open. “I am Papillion, winged brise and light, release me now, without le souci.” (From my high school years. French words are fun to say.)

  I slipped out of its grip and floated backward to the floor like a feather in a breeze, near-comically confusing the golem, even as March stirred from his crumpled ball state near the baseboards, moaning. The golem must’ve figured it out, bellowed, and came galumphing toward me.

  Damn. It.

  My whole body ached. Bones, muscles, even eyebrows throbbed with every heartbeat. I gathered the last of my fortitude and scooted sideways. The thing swung at me but missed, its fist pounding the floor and dissolving, before reforming almost instantly. I grabbed the professor’s big green plastic bucket of water and snagged the little saltshaker he dropped and the last of my Elisha salt. Skittering farther into the living room, I managed to toss all the salt in, hoping enough grains would seep into the water, and said a little charming spell, just to give it some fortitude. The golem did its “don’t turn around, just morph yourself the other way” trick and headed my way again.

  This time, I was ready.

  I heaved the water out of the bucket and at the mudman. Even though I didn’t throw with too much force, it was like a strong wave crashing into a sandcastle. The water hit it square in the torso, which melted like butter in the sun. Both arms fell to the floor with a satisfyingly wet plop before they, too, began to dissolve. The mouth flopped open as it moaned in surprise. Its head fell back with a goopy noise and sank into the writhing watery mess.