The Golem of Hollywood (14 page)

N
orthbound traffic was bad, Sea World day-trippers returning to Orange County. Jacob burned most of a tank feathering the gas pedal. Behind and beside him, the boxes thumped and listed and threatened to topple, and every time he glanced in the rearview and confronted an expanse of tan cardboard, the magnitude of his new burden fell heavily on him.

Best of luck. Don't forget to write.

Thanks, Philly.

Three exits shy of LAX, a Sigalert put an accident ahead. Jacob killed the radio and settled in to wait, using the quiet to turn over his discussion with Ludwig.

The D's bias could stem from an honest belief that the family members were innocent. It could also be sensitivity to the suggestion that he had screwed up the first time around. Jacob sympathized. Anyone could benefit from a pair of fresh eyes. That didn't make looking through them any fun. He wondered how well he'd take it if a young punk with half his years and twice his energy showed up to interrogate him about his most outstanding failure.

Minus Ludwig's sales pitch, however, the Psychopath vs. Psychopath scenario held less appeal. Both versions—Jacob dubbed them Nerves and Remorse, respectively—had major shortcomings.

Remorse, because what defined a psychopath was lack thereof. It was far more common for a guy to get caught bragging than confessing.

Nerves suffered the same problem. Psychopaths didn't get anxious. Jacob knew of no calm so profound and chilling. It enabled them to engage in behaviors that would cause an ordinary person to pass out.

Also: a nervous man didn't waste time on symbolism.

Unless Ludwig was right, and the point was to juke the cops
.

Psychopath trying to look like an avenger.
Ha-ha: I control everything.

Maybe. But Jacob's instincts rebelled. He'd seen the severed head, seen the message. As gestures, they were at once too subtle and too theatrical not to be genuine.

These were telegraphs, direct from the heart.

A twisted heart, but one that felt, deeply.

A heart that longed to communicate.

Then his mind pretzled: double fake-out? Avenger trying to look like a psychopath trying to look like an avenger?

Vice versa?

How far up the theoretical beanstalk did he want to climb?

In a way, the process he was engaged in—inflating ideas to their extremes, then kicking them for soundness—drew on skills cultivated in Hebrew day school and yeshiva. Argument proceeded by putting forth a law, then presenting challenges and contradictions to it. Sometimes those challenges were resolved. Sometimes not. Sometimes the reasoning behind a law was roundly demolished but the law itself retained in practice.

It was an idiosyncratic method, a mash-up of pure logic and faith-based exegesis, insisting on the truth of many truths. You argued not to find an answer, but to argue well.

For that very reason, the method had its limitations when applied to the real world. He didn't think his superiors would be content with a series of penetrating questions.

Or would they?

Questions are good.

The basic refutation to the Psycho vs. Psycho theory was the woman on the 911 call. Ludwig had to agree that she couldn't be one of the original killers, not unless there was a third person never accounted for, and such an explanation flew in the face of parsimony. Two killers was already pushing it. Two plus a female was beyond farfetched.

Jacob laughed to himself with an unexpected memory: an old friend who kept a running list of English words that sounded like Yiddish.

Farfetched.

Far-flung.

Melts.

Inspiring Jacob to create his own list, English that sounded like Talmudic Aramaic.

Derisive.

Houdini.

Time to add a new one.

Beheaded.

The Prius in front of him stopped short, and he jammed on the brake, his brain popping and fizzing. He couldn't remember feeling this keyed up in years. He'd never get to sleep tonight without a drink.

The Venice Boulevard exit crept into view. He could be at 187 in fifteen minutes. He clicked on his turn signal.

It felt like you were stabbing me.

He clicked the signal off.

Remembered that it was the same exit for Divya Das's apartment. Clicked the signal back on.

Remembered the pull he'd felt toward her.

Off.

Remembered the news of the second offender. He'd need to call Divya on business, regardless. Good enough reason to drop by.

On.

Unannounced? At ten-fifteen on a Saturday night?

Off.

This was starting to feel like a passage of Talmud.

Tractate “Loneliness.”

On.

Chapter “He Who Bangs His Coworker.”

Off.

The driver behind him was probably reaching into his glove box for a handgun.

Jacob swerved into the exit lane.

—

H
E
PHONED
FROM
THE
SIDEWALK
, apologizing in advance for the disturbance. Two stories up, her face popped into view. He couldn't tell if she was smiling.

She'd left her front door ajar, and he found her in the kitchen, filling a kettle. Chopsticks pinned a black snake of hair; a bulky red terry-cloth robe emphasized the delicacy of her throat and wrists.

“I woke you up,” he said.

She rolled her eyes and set out a plate of cookies. “You must consider me an absolutely enormous loser to think me asleep at this hour. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

He recounted his visit with Ludwig. Her reaction to news of the second killer was more subdued than he'd expected.

“Mm,” she said. She sat down behind the breakfast bar. “That does complicate things, rather.”

“That's it?”

“Well, I don't reckon it makes them
simpler
.”

He blew on his tea until she clucked her tongue at him.

“If it's Snapple you wanted, there's a Vons on the corner.”

But she was smiling, and she hadn't bothered to re-cinch her robe. Beneath it were pale orange surgical scrubs: more freebies scrounged from the Great Pathology Labs of the World.

“I was thinking you might be able to dig up that second profile for me,” he said.

“I'd be happy to. Be patient, though. You know as well as I do that it's much faster to work backward from a known sample.”

“Even if you call your friends in high places?”

“Unfortunately so. I'm not friends with everybody, and before we arrive at that point, we've got to track down where it's filed. Tell you what, I'll start first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Don't bother. It can wait till Monday.”

“I thought this was urgent,” she said.

He shrugged. “I feel bad eating up your whole weekend.”

“But we've already established that I'm an absolutely enormous loser.”

“You don't need to tell me about that,” he said. “I'm here, aren't I?”

“Yes,” she said. “So you are.”

The edge of the breakfast bar bit into his ribs, making him aware that he was leaning toward her.

Divya said, “I googled you.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Turnabout is fair play,” she said.

“And? Anything interesting?”

“I hadn't realized that you were a fellow Ivy Leaguer.”

“I'm not. Never graduated.”

“Ah. Well. I've gone and put my foot in it again, haven't I?”

“It's all right. It was a valuable year. Or so I tell myself, cause I'm still paying it off. Anyhow, it worked out. I ended up finishing at CSUN. Same shit, different packaging.”

“Why did you leave?”

“It was right after my mom died,” he said. “I didn't want my dad to be alone. He's not a hundred percent—he's got vision problems, and . . . I just thought it would be better.”

“That's kind of you,” she said.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“What's there to doubt? You did what a son ought to do.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Except, that's not really what happened.”

She said nothing.

He said, “It's true that I wanted to be around to help him out. But that makes it sound like I came to rescue him, which is bullshit, cause he can pretty much handle himself.” He paused. “I left for me. I was messed up and depressed and I couldn't hack it. I didn't turn in any work for half a semester and they took back my scholarship and threw me out. I mean, they were more polite about it. The way they phrased it was more along the lines of, ‘We're inviting you to take a leave of absence until you're ready.' Technically, I can still reenroll.” He laughed and shook his head. “What about you?”

Her eyes were wide with compassion, and she was biting her lip, as if to hold back platitudes. “Me?”

“Why'd you leave home?” He thought that true compassion, at that moment, would be to agree to change the subject. She seemed to come to the same conclusion, for she smiled and said, “Fleeing adulthood.”

“Ah.”

“My parents are very traditional. They had an arranged marriage. It worked for them. Naturally they can't understand why I wouldn't want one. Time's running out. Now they're petrified I'm never going to get married. The last time I went back, my mother sat me down and asked if I'm a lesbian.”

He smiled, sipped tea.

“For the record, I'm not.”

“Not my business one way or the other,” he said.

A silence.

Once again he was grateful for the breakfast bar, resentful for the breakfast bar.

He said, “Listen, I don't know what your deal is—”

But she was already looking down, shaking her head.

He grinned. “That has to be some kind of record. I didn't even finish my sentence.”

“I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong impression,” she said.

“It happens. I'm sorry, too.”

She knotted her hands. “You don't understand, though.”

“I'm a big boy. I get it.”

“No,” she said. “You don't.”

A silence.

She said, “I'm not like you, Jacob.”

In her mouth, with her accent, his name sounded more like the Hebrew version, Yakov.

“Different can be good,” he said.

“Sometimes, yes.”

“But not in this case,” he said.

“It's not as though I'm particularly happy about it.”

“Then you're right. I don't understand.”

“Whether I'm happy or you're happy is not the real question.”

“I think it is,” he said. “I think that's the only question.”

“Do you? Really?”

“What else is there?”

She didn't answer.

He said, “People like you and me, we see suffering every day. We see death. I don't know what that's taught you. To me, it's the moment, this moment, that counts.”

She smiled wistfully. “If not now, when.”

He blinked. “Yes.”

She sighed, pulled her bathrobe tight, stood.

“I'll call you when I have something to report, Detective Lev.”

Back on the sidewalk, Jacob watched her window, waiting for the light to blink out. When it did, the sudden darkness yielded a sky full of cold
stars.

A
sham learned as a girl to mark the days by the cycle of the sun, but in a featureless land, a seasonless land, risings and settings mock her.

She stops counting. Then she forgets that a count ever existed.

She forgets where she is going. Forgets why she wanted to go there.

It isn't a question of failing resolve; she simply cannot recall what was done or who did it. She forgets there was something to forget.

Her own voice says
Go home.

She doesn't know what that means.

One day she is no longer looking for her brother or her home but for the tree-tall man Michael. She will fall at his feet and beg him to end her torment.

If he is as merciful as she remembers, he will do it gladly.

Perhaps she misremembers, though. Perhaps she imagined him.

The heat pummels her. The world flickers and glints.

She travels at twilight like the rodents whose eyes flash in the dusk. Snakes molting against the stones teach her to scrub her limbs with sand. She darts lizardlike after lizards, stomping their heads and sucking out their hot slick innards.

Seeing people, she runs toward them. Like the pools of cool water that appear when the sun is high, their faces evaporate as she draws near. Beckoning hands sprout spikes. In fury she slashes them open, licking at the astringent moisture inside.

Every day is the same.

Every day, the earth shakes.

The first time she felt it, she thought it was her own body trembling. A bone-splitting crack, followed by the appearance of a jagged cleft in
the otherwise uniform plain, showed her the truth. She was too confused, and it ended too quickly, for her to feel genuinely frightened.

The next time, however, her mind was primed. She felt the movement and heard the roar and began screaming and running in circles until it ended. There was no place to hide, no reason to think she could.

The wrath of the Lord was upon her.

When, after days without number, a new shape appears on the horizon, she initially takes it as another mirage.

Rather than shrink and dissolve, however, the shape grows larger and sharper as she approaches, casting a lengthy rectangular shadow.

It is a lone wall, fissured and wind-worn. Made not of lashed branches, like the walls of her family's hut (for a happy instant she remembers that; remembers them), but of dried clay—the same ocher clay she stands on, the same clay she has wandered forever.

Somehow it has been summoned up from the bed of the plain, commanded to take shape and to remain erect.

She studies the seams between the blocks; scrapes at the wall's surface, grit collecting under her fingernails.

More blocks demarcate the intended outline of the structure. The other walls have collapsed, if they ever stood. There is no roof. It appears as though the builder gave up midway through.

The symmetry, the ingenuity: she is looking at Cain's handiwork.

Why would he abandon his efforts?

She has her answer that afternoon.

Curled up in the shadow of the wall, she jolts awake with the angry earth. Luck saves her, for she has not managed to move before the wall buckles and heaves away from her, collapsing into rubble.

Eventually the shaking stops, and she uncovers her head and rises in a cloud of fine clay dust. The pile of broken blocks sighs as it settles, disappointed to have missed her.

Had she slept on the other side—or had the wall chosen to fall toward her—she would surely be dead.

The futility of building on such fickle ground is clear to her. Cain must have understood, too. He will keep going until he finds a more sensible place to camp.

She experiences a stab of kinship.

Kinship rekindles memory.

Memory rekindles hatred.

She waits till evening to strike out, the anger in her heart reborn.

—

S
EVERAL
MONTHS
LATER
, she finds the second hut.

All that time she has been walking in a straight line, away from the setting sun. She has done so because it's what Cain would do. She turns her thoughts to his, and signs of him begin to reappear, and the path glows anew.

She will not falter again.

Within days, the sameness of the plain gives way to isolated stands of trees. Grass appears, first furtively, then with confidence, and then overwhelmingly, swarming forth like so many locusts. Thorny grass; sticky grass; a grass that makes Asham's mouth feel cold and another that smells spicy and makes her itch for a week if she is so unwise as to brush against it.

Against this pale terrain, the black stains of campfires long abandoned stand out, and the glowing path leads her to the broken skeleton of a medium-sized beast, its bones finely scored by a stone blade.

The cut marks are efficient, the product of a practiced hand.

Deep in the grasslands, the earth no longer stinks or smokes or shakes. The weather turns mild enough to sustain streams and ponds. They return a horrifying reflection when she kneels to drink: flaking skin lies tight against her bones. Her scalp shows through where clumps of hair have fallen out.

The second hut, when she comes to it, is no surprise. She has been sensing it for some days. Nor is she surprised to observe Cain refining his
methods. Three thick walls, a mat of woven grass, a pile of unused clay blocks.

Animal bones abound, some of them fashioned into tools she cannot identify. She selects one the length of her arm, its point menacingly honed, before setting out again.

—

E
ACH
OF
THE
NEXT
two huts is larger and more elaborate than its predecessor. The fifth is more impressive still; it's more than a hut, really, consisting of several outer structures arrayed around a dominant central building.

Curiously, while the smaller buildings contain the by now familiar signs of habitation—seed husks, bone tools, ash—the largest building houses nothing but a towering clay pillar, painstakingly worked smooth.

Something important occurred here. It is not like the Cain she knows to build without a practical purpose in mind.

And having built, it is not like him to run.

He must know that she is behind.

That night, she sits before the fire with a handful of berries. Since entering the grasslands, she has returned to surviving on plants.

How disturbed she is, then, to find herself yearning for a taste of flesh.

And how convenient to turn and find a bloody hunk before her.

Without hesitation she buries her face in it. Quiveringly fresh, unimaginably delicious, and best of all, it never runs short: new flesh grows in to fill in the cavities where she tears at it with her teeth. Her stomach swells to bursting but she cannot stop eating, not until she hears her name called and looks up to see that the meat is not a detached slab but a living limb.

It is Cain's thigh, raggedly joined to his body at the socket.

He gazes at her kindly.
Satisfy yourself.

She awakes from the dream with her face and neck wet: saliva has pooled in the hollow of her throat and dried across her chin.

—

W
HILE
TRAVELING
ONE
EVENING
, she feels a wet sensation and glances down to see that she has cut her thigh. She didn't feel it happen, but as soon as she probes the wound and discovers its depth, it begins to throb. A long trail of red drops follows her. She tears a strip of soiled linen from her blanket, binds herself up, and presses on.

Within minutes, the fabric is saturated and dripping. She grimaces and hurries ahead to a small clearing, easing down to retie the linen. She jerks it tight, steadies herself to stand, pauses.

She is not alone.

Unseen bodies ripple the grass. She reaches for a stone and whips it into the grass with a shout. The movement stops.

A low growl follows. Another in reply.

Silence.

They're moving again.

She hurls another rock. The rippling of grass tips continues, undeterred. Her first shot missed. They know she cannot harm them.

She stands, clutching the bone spear in one hand, her injured leg with the other.

Waits.

Black snouts appear, twitching greedily.

Tongues swing from yellow spotted faces set in round skulls. Idiot grins.

She counts four, five, six, seven. They are bony, haloed by fleas. They stand as high as her waist. She would tower over them, if she weren't bent awkwardly, holding her bleeding leg.

The largest one raises its snout and begins to laugh.

It is a demon sound.

The rest of the pack joins in, a mad cackling chorus.

The first attack comes from behind and is meant to test her. She swings the spear, raking the ground but missing the animal by a wide margin. It sinks into the grass, laughing.

The others laugh, as well.

They are enjoying themselves.

You go first
they seem to be saying.
No, please. I insist.

A charge for her flank: she swings, making contact with the side of the spear. The animal yelps and bolts, and in its wake come two more, one for her leg, the other leaping at her throat.

She screams and stabs and slices and moments later an animal lies whimpering, its belly leaking offal, one leg scrabbling as it tries to push itself to safety.

She limps to it and kneels and drives the spear through its throat, silencing it for good.

She yanks the spear free and stands, her arms running red.

The leader growls.

They've underestimated her.

They all come at once, from every direction, and soon she has been punctured and bitten and clawed insensate, no longer feeling pain but a numb disappointment that she should fail so ingloriously, to such inglorious adversaries. It's not like her to go without a fight.

She fights.

She takes another creature and a third but they are too numerous and too coordinated, she can smell their fetid breath as she falls and pulls into a ball and they try to snap her spine through her neck and she flexes in terror as they must have known she would and snouts burrow into her belly which tightens in anticipation and she waits to die and then there is a howl, deeper and stronger than the howls of the beasts devouring her.

Instantly the air clears; instantly it refills with movement. A white cloud hovers over her, leaps over her, circles her; it snarls and lunges at
her attackers, driving them back, laughing, into the grass, until the last of them is gone and she is alive.

Their cackles fade.

Quiet panting.

She uncurls.

Aside from the two she killed, a third beast lies savaged, its head nearly torn off.

Beyond it, a familiar shape stands watching her.

Abel's sheepdog, its mouth smeared with gore.

She reaches for it with a trembling hand.

It trots forward and licks her bloody palm clean. Stands back.

She struggles to her feet, steadies herself on the spear.

The dog crosses the clearing, pausing to make sure she follows.

—

T
HE
DISTANCE
THEY
TRAVEL
ought to take no more than half a day. In her current state, it takes two. Her thirst never seems to abate, and she stops frequently to rebind her wounds. The smallest have already scabbed. Others sting in the open air but are dry.

It's the gash on her leg that worries her. It continues to ooze blood as well as a greenish slime that reeks of rot. The pain roots into her flesh, knotting up close to the bone, an ache that expands and contracts in time with her heartbeat. Her skin burns, tender to the touch, and the swelling has climbed to swallow her knee, slowing her further.

Sensing that she is not well, the dog keeps its distance, walking far enough ahead to urge her on, close enough to ward off danger. It's limping, too; one of the beasts must have bitten it. She tries to show how sorry she is for having dragged it into a fight. She apologizes, aloud.

It never betrays impatience. It never seems to tire, patrolling as she sleeps.

On the second day, it leads her to the rim of a new valley, a smaller, drier version of the place she grew up.

What it cradles transfixes her.

A massive complex of clay buildings stretches on and on and on, a rough tan rash cut at regular intervals by open passages allowing free transit from one place to the next.

Transit for the hundreds of people therein.

The dog barks and begins its descent.

The slope is severe and rocky and Asham is light-headed. Her wounded leg can bear weight for only a moment before agony shoots up through her groin and into her torso. She balances with her hands, reaching the valley floor with palms scraped raw.

The dog knows where it's going. Otherwise, she would be instantly lost in the maze of buildings. Ranging from modest to grand, they reflect their inhabitants, who are young and old, fat and thin, diversely dressed, with skins milk-white or tar-black and every shade in between.

Their reactions to her are identical: they drop what they're doing to gawk. What a spectacle she must present, filthy and half dead. As she limps along, a crowd collects behind her, their whispers a gathering storm of mistrust.

A man steps out to bar her way.

“Who are you?”

She says, “My name is Asham.”

More men appear beside him, each armed with a bone spear, similar to hers but made longer by the addition of a wooden handle.

“What crime have you committed?” the man asks.

“None.”

“Then why have you come here?”

“I don't know where here is,” she says.

The people murmur.

“This is the city of Enoch,” the man says.

“What's a city?”

Laughter. Asham's leg pulses with pain. Her throat sticks to itself. She has not drunk in hours—a mistake.

“I was attacked by beasts,” she says. “The dog saved me and brought me here.”