The Golem of Hollywood (44 page)

I
t was the only word he would hear Richard Pernath speak. Pernath was wearing pressed jeans and a charcoal polo shirt. He was barefoot and holding a pump-action shotgun, which he kept fixed on Jacob while Claire Mason crawled away, coughing and gagging. Jacob slid himself back toward the wall, pressing up against the plaster, gripping his wounded arm. The barrel of the gun moved with him. His sinuses were choked with blood. He spat. Pernath's face twitched with revulsion but he didn't blink.

Claire Mason stood to retie her bathrobe. She wiped saliva on her sleeve and said, “I'm sorry,” a remark that prompted Pernath to shoot the same disgusted face at her. The shotgun never wavered.

“I was getting him out,” she said.

Pernath did not answer her, and she told Jacob to stand up and turn out his pockets. He set his badge and phone on the floor. He took the spare ammo from his back pocket and placed it beside them. She asked where his gun was.

“My car.”

She patted him down nonetheless. He stood with his arms raised and his legs spread while she ran trembling hands along his inseams. The gash in his forearm was deep and ragged and perilously proximate to major blood vessels. It did not clot but oozed steadily, running down his
biceps and dripping onto his shoulder and ear. Looking at it made him light-headed. His feet felt miles away.

They marched him out the front door. He could see the keys dangling in the ignition of the Honda. Pernath prodded him in the spine with the shotgun and he kept going.

They followed the network of brick paths lacing the property, heading around the swimming pool, in the direction of the orchard. Claire Mason led the way, ten feet in front of Jacob. He kept his wounded left arm aloft, over his head, clasping his left biceps with his right hand, trying to slow the bleeding. Runnels of blood pooled in the hollow of his collarbone. His temple bled, too. He left a trail of spatter on the brick. It would be easy to hose down. Same for the house's concrete floors.

Pernath brought up the rear, keeping well back of Jacob, but close enough not to miss. Some of the shot might pass through his body and hit Claire Mason. Pernath wouldn't care; he probably intended to kill her at some point. Jacob would simply be shortening the timeline.

He could appeal to her sense of self-preservation—tell her what became of all of Pernath's accomplices. Jacob doubted she'd believe him. Whatever depraved magic the architect had worked on Reggie Heap and Terrence Florack, he'd done the same to her. Jacob read it in the way she kept glancing back at Pernath, her face green and rippling in the light of the pool, her expression drawn and fearful. She was appealing to him. For approval. For forgiveness. And without looking back, Jacob could tell Pernath wasn't giving it to her.

Even if Jacob somehow got through to her, she couldn't help him: she was unarmed.

They started around the orchard. It was larger than it appeared from the front, perfectly choreographed rows of lemons and figs and plums stirring heavily in the breeze. Their perfume made Jacob teeter. He considered lunging for the gun anyway; better than dying helpless.

Wanting to know how far behind Pernath was, he said, “I spoke to Reggie's father.”

Silence.

“He wants that drawing back.”

Not even an errant breath.

Jacob kept walking.

—

T
HE
GREENHOUSE
OCCUPIED
the lawn beyond the orchard. It was vast and unlit, a glass hangar, its southern side reflecting the cityscape. Jacob wondered what they were growing, that they needed so much area. He wondered why they needed a greenhouse when it got so hot in the Hollywood Hills.

Claire Mason crouched down to fiddle with the numerical padlock on the door.

Jacob's left hand had gone numb, the fingers curling up like fruit rotting on the vine.

The padlock snicked open. Claire Mason opened the door and switched on the lights and lines of fluorescent tubes crackled to life and he saw what they were growing.

Nothing.

An empty grassy scroll, violently uniform in color; no pots or planters, no climbing vines, no irrigation system. Here and there the ground humped, and there was a disruption in the pattern of the grass. Jacob had counted six such patches before he felt the shotgun in his back again.

They walked him to a flat spot at the far end. It looked as good as any a place to die. Claire Mason tramped over to the corner and came back with a shovel. She tossed it down at Jacob's feet and told him to dig.

He'd seen that in movies, had deemed it silly. Why would a person consent to dig his own grave? The implied threat of torture, for one. But that was secondary, he realized, to the desire to prolong life. It was amazing, what the human spirit would accept: a few more minutes, even the wretchedest imaginable, were preferable to death.

He bent to pick up the shovel. It felt heavier than it should. His left
arm below the elbow had gone the same chalky hue as his hand. The gash once again began to ooze as he gripped the handle and put his foot on the blade and sank it into the earth and pried up a hunk. He dug slowly, thinking about his phone and wondering if Mallick was monitoring its location. He almost laughed, remembering his annoyance at the Commander's nannying. He hoped they didn't waste time searching the house. He hoped they noticed the trail of spatter.

“Hurry up,” Claire Mason said. She paced in a five-foot radius from Pernath, as though tethered to him, while the architect stood relaxed, hip cocked, the shotgun leveled at Jacob's midsection.

The shovel beat a funeral cadence. Its handle ran slick with blood. Jacob's vision effervesced. His head fuzzed with white noise. He was having trouble standing. With nothing to catch hold of, his heart beat fast and light. His back was clammy, his arm numb to the shoulder. Beneath the grass lay a vivid red clay, manic with worms and grubs, a sunken island in a green sea.

He dug six inches deep, seven, eight, nine, and counting.

The buzz in his head rose to a vengeful tide, loud enough to drown out the retch of splitting earth.

Stomping down hard on the shovel, he lost balance, steadied himself, paused, eyes closed, expecting retribution, a brief blast of noise before silence.

Instead, he heard Claire Mason's voice shrilling—
what is that
—and then all was lost to the churn of innumerable wings.

Jacob opened his eyes.

Richard Pernath was staring up at the greenhouse's glass ceiling with his head hatched back at a severe angle. The shotgun hung forgotten at his side.

Claire Mason, equally rapt, pointing upward, her throat open in a mute scream.

A black mass in the sky, widening, blotting out the stars as it swept
down toward them. The gray pallor of the greenhouse lights gleamed fleetingly in a hard underbelly for an instant and Jacob saw six hairy jointed legs and wings like sails and a beetle the size of a horse exploded through the roof, plunging them into darkness, knocking Jacob flat on his back.

The drone vanished, replaced by silence, then the guttural register of anguish.

Jacob clawed himself upright.

The iron frame of the greenhouse was frayed like thread, every panel ruptured except the ones directly above him. He sat in a patch of clean grass while the ground around him glittered.

Claire Mason ran in circles, batting at the air, howling, her skin riddled with shards of glass.

Richard Pernath was on his hands and knees, a large triangular shard jutting from his back like a silvery dorsal fin.

The beetle was gone. In its place stood a woman of perfect sculptural symmetry, lithe and naked in the moonlight. She began to advance on Claire Mason, who backed away, mewling and clutching at the bent frame of the greenhouse.

“No.
No.
”

The naked woman raised her arms and the muscles in her back danced, and then, before Jacob's eyes, she convulsed, and changed, swelling to monstrous proportions, to a thing blocky as a tower.

A gnarled appendage grew out of the claylike mass, lifting Claire Mason's body from the ground. Another tendril coiled around Mason's neck and there was a hiss and sizzle as her head separated and pipped to the ground and bounced, the severed neck sealed clean.

Mason's still-bleeding body collapsed in a pile.

With another convulsion, the tower of clay was gone and the naked woman turned to Jacob wearing Mai's smiling face.

Richard Pernath had managed to crawl to a hole in the greenhouse
wall and was worming his way through. Mai started after him, but changed course and came toward Jacob, striding heedlessly over broken glass.

Jacob tried to tell her to leave him, get Pernath. The sound that came out of him was weak and wet. Mai knelt before him and took his hands in hers and drew him close. The heat of her body made apparent the deathly cold of his own.

She kissed him.

The burnt strip of skin on his lips came alive and for one delicious instant her humid floral breath flowed into him; then it curdled and became mud, and he struggled against its bitterness until it turned sweet once more, rolling slickly across his tongue with the taste of sex, and he gave himself to her. The mud coursed through him, transfusing, replenishing. Reviving his limbs and streaming into the chambers of his heart, which began again to churn.

He could not breathe. He did not need to. Everything he needed, she gave him. He strained to open his mouth wider, greedy for whatever she desired.

He grabbed for her perfect body, certain she wanted him as much as he wanted her, past and present and forever.

But she broke away, and he surfaced, gasping and sucking newborn air.

She said, “I've missed you.”

Varying strains of color wove through her hair to create a troubling, unstable melange. Her eyes were green tonight, mirroring his own.

He said, “I've missed you, too.”

As he said it he realized how true it was. He felt her fingers stroking his forearm and he looked down at the wound—a hardened scab, rust brown.

Mai smiled. “I'm part of you, now.”

She raised his face and kissed him again, softly on the lips.

From behind her came the sound of a great rumbling, and they turned
to see three tall shapes looming at the collapsed entrance to the greenhouse.

Mike Mallick said, “We're here, Jacob Lev.”

Jacob felt Mai's hand tighten in his.

Mallick and his companions began to glide across the grass toward them, heralded by a frigid wind.

He said, “This is good. Stay right where you are. Do not let her go.”

There was trepidation, too, in the way they moved, although whether they were afraid of Jacob or Mai or the both of them together was not clear.

“We're almost there,” Mallick said.

He held up a calming hand, and Jacob could see that his other hand held something.

From far to Jacob's right came a very human groan: Richard Pernath was limping across the lawn, headed for the orchard.

“Don't worry about him,” Subach said.

“Stay right where you are,” Schott said.

Mallick drew close enough for Jacob to see the object in his hand.

It was a knife.

“You're doing the right thing, Jacob Lev,” Mallick said.

“The balance of justice demands it,” Schott said.

“It'll be quick,” Subach said.

“Merciful.”

“Necessary.”

“Correct.”

They kept coming closer, speaking in turn, mesmerizing him, and Jacob watched the glint of the knife, a brand-new blade fitted onto an old wooden handle. He knew how it would feel when they put it into his hands—how comfortable. He looked at Mai and at the tall men and over the lawn.

Pernath slipped into the trees.

“Jacob Lev,” Mallick said. “Look at me.”

Jacob released Mai's hands.

The tall men cried out, helpless.

Her smile was a sweet and sour mix of gratitude and disappointment, and she said, “Forever,” and sprang up into the air.

The three tall men howled their displeasure and rushed forth.

It was useless: she had already changed, a black buzzing dot that slipped through their large, clumsy fingers, spiraling up to freedom. Jacob watched her ascend.

Silence.

The three tall men turned on him, showing new and terrifying aspects, and Jacob was afraid, drawing his merits around him like a coat of armor to protect himself from their wrath.

Paul Schott rolled his boulder shoulders contemptuously. Mel Subach pursed his wet thick lips. Mike Mallick snorted gales and said, “You have done a great wrong.”

“We needed you,” Subach said.

“You failed us.”

“A
great
wrong.”

“He's like her,” Schott said. “He's just like her.”

They crowded him, drawing in on him, teeth gnashing, eyes burning like coals as they expanded to a furious chorus: three to forty-five to seventy-one, two hundred thirty-one, six hundred thirteen, eighteen thousand, a thousand by a thousand, swelling to twelve by thirty by thirty by thirty by thirty by thirty by thirty by three hundred sixty-five thousand myriads.

And Jacob seized the halves of his mind and forced them back together, rising up under his own strength.

The hordes shrank back, leaving a trio of middle-aged cops in bad suits and cheap ties.

Mallick's white hair in frizzy tufts. Subach's gut straining his shirt. Schott holding his hands up as though Jacob in his righteous indignation would annihilate all of them.

And Jacob spoke, and he said, “Please get the hell out of my way.”

He pushed through their ranks and ran to collect the abandoned shotgun.

“You don't know what you've done,” Mallick called. “You don't know.”

Jacob picked up the gun and pumped a shell. He said, “I know what I'm doing.”

—

I
N
THE
ORCHARD
it was windless, gloomy, and still. He could not see well, but his mind spread wide to welcome new sensations: the strivings of insects in the ground below, fearful prey taking refuge in the underbrush, the collective spirit of all living things.