Joe Golem and the Copper Girl: A Short Story Read online

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  The October rain sliced down in razor sheets, billions of tiny needles striking the glass, stone, and concrete of the Drowning City, forcing Joe to turn up the collar of his jacket and keep his face averted from the heavens. He’d rather have been sprawled in a chair in Mr. Church’s library with a book and a whiskey tonight, or just about anywhere else than in his little cabin cruiser out on the canals of Lower Manhattan. A storm had churned up New York Harbor to the point where waves were rippling along the city’s sunken avenues and crashing against buildings that had withstood fifty years partially submerged but might not stand fifty minutes more.

  How much punishment could one city take?

  Joe wouldn’t even have come out tonight if there hadn’t been a little girl involved. If the choice had been between dashing the boat to splinters against the corner of some old Eighteenth Street hotel façade or waiting until the storm passed, and it had been only adults in danger, Joe would have stoked a fire in the hearth and poured himself another glass of whiskey. But Jillian Blum was only twelve years old, and if her mother had been telling even a fraction of the truth, the little girl had reason to be afraid.

  There had been those who’d accused Joe of being something of a monster—it was a hazard of the work, and the kind of people Joe and his friend Mr. Church encountered while pursuing that work—and he knew he looked the part. The Lord had not seen fit to make him handsome; Joe looked like a prizefighter who’d spent a career throwing punches a second slower than the other guy. But he was strong and he could take the punishment, and he flattered himself by thinking he was, if nothing else, smarter than he looked.

  If you were so smart, Joe thought to himself, you wouldn’t be out here tonight.

  A thin smile split his grim features and for a moment he didn’t mind the stinging rain. He guided the boat, shielding his eyes as he tried to make out the numbers on the buildings he passed. In the more than four decades since earthquakes and floods had turned Lower Manhattan into a drowning city, the people who’d had nowhere else to go, or who were too stubborn to leave, and the disenfranchised who’d come here to flee the burdens of their old society, had built a new civilization here. Some of the buildings were too unstable for anyone but the hopeless to take up residence inside. Others had been painstakingly repaired and adapted to the new paradigm—the lower floors closed off, filled with concrete, or otherwise repurposed. In between were those that seemed solid enough that families and old folks were content to make minimal efforts to block off the moldy, flooded lower levels and carry on as if nothing had changed…as if this part of the city really had become the new Venice.

  All of this meant that some buildings had numbers painted or engraved on them, and others had lost any sign of their former identity when the waters rose and the city sank. Rachael Blum had promised him that he couldn’t miss their place, and he hoped that would still be true in the midst of the storm. The city was crisscrossed with bridges now—stone and metal and wooden footbridges, some makeshift planking that shifted from month to month. Some of these structures could be hazardous, made of rotting wood, pulleys, and improvised stairs—but Joe knew this part of the Drowning City well enough. He just hadn’t wanted to make the complicated trek in the storm.

  Lightning seared the sky, followed by a rolling crack of thunder and a loud bang a few blocks distant. Joe wondered what the lightning had struck, and if it would burn. It was ironic that in the Drowning City, fire could be so devastating. There was plenty of water, but only a handful of volunteer firemen, who were often otherwise occupied helping the tiny police force organized by the self-proclaimed and apparently innocently sincere Mayor of the Drowning City, Melody Heath. Mrs. Heath could barely keep her officers alive—every scavenger, pirate, and thief in Lower Manhattan would rather turn to murder than be stuck in a jail cell where they’d be beaten, fed the guards’ leftovers, and held until someone reminded Mrs. Heath they were incarcerated to begin with. Joe and Mr. Church had handed criminals over to her in the past, and Joe was convinced she either didn’t know about the brutality of her jail guards or didn’t believe the rumors. Joe had never given anyone over to Mrs. Heath’s police unless he felt they deserved a beating or two, but he and Mr. Church always remembered to go and let the Mayor know when the prisoner had served the decreed amount of time in jail.

  If Rachael Blum’s story checked out, and someone truly was menacing her daughter, Joe would make sure the guy stayed away for good. If he couldn’t put enough fear into the creep himself, some time in Mrs. Heath’s jail would do it, he felt sure. All of Rachael Blum’s talk about the man being some kind of goblin or demon had made little impression on Joe. He’d seen all kinds of things in the years he’d been working with Mr. Church—ghosts and demons among them—but never a goblin. Just because some ugly, greasy-looking creep lurked outside your daughter’s bedroom window, that didn’t make him a demon.

  Rachael Blum’s fear hadn’t been imaginary, however. The woman had been skittish, looking over her shoulder even in the quiet safety of Mr. Church’s parlor. The memory of her haunted gaze had made Joe keep his promise to visit her home this evening instead of waiting until morning, when the storm would have passed.

  Now he spotted the building she had described, realizing that he had noticed it many times before. Each of the windows bowed outward from the stone façade, like the windows of the captain’s quarters in the aft of an old schooner. A beautiful home. In a city with a high population of thieves and scavengers, keeping such a home beautiful must have been quite a challenge. Mr. Blum had apparently managed to repel or keep out such water rats in the past, so why was this one creep so deeply frightening to his wife?

  Joe held the throttle back, the boat rolling on the waves that ripped along Nineteenth Street and the cross current from Seventh Avenue. He saw the dark opening of the building next to the Blums’ home that had been converted into the sort of boathouse unique to the Drowning City—a tall, reinforced opening in what had once been a third-story wall. Waiting for a lull, he gave the throttle a little tap and floated into the boathouse, carried along by the storm and a wave of curiosity.

  When Rachael Blum had arrived at Simon Church’s apartment early that morning, the sound of the doorbell chiming through the vast warren of rooms took Joe by surprise. Uninvited visitors were rare at Mr. Church’s residence. The postman—who paid only occasional visits—and various messengers and delivery men knew to deposit their burdens in the large drawer built beside the front door. Mr. Church never worried overmuch about thieves or assassins attempting to use the mail drawer as a method of intrusion or avenue of attack—even though there had been several such gambits, one involving a murderous capuchin monkey and another a small cluster of poisonous snakes. The madman Dr. Cocteau had even once attempted to use the mail drawer as an entry point for a trio of homicidal homunculi meant to end Mr. Church’s meddling in Cocteau’s affairs once and for all. But Mr. Church’s powers of deduction and analysis were not the only weapons in his armory. The same magic that he had used to keep himself alive since the Victorian age had been put to use creating powerful wards that warned of any intrusion, natural or supernatural.

  But if someone wanted to make their way to the front door and ring the bell, there was no ward that would prevent it.

  The chimes had sounded through the house. Feeling foolish in his stocking feet, Joe had taken the time to slip his boots on and then made his way quickly down the steps and through the large foyer, adjusting his suspenders and running a hand through his floppy, unkempt hair. He couldn’t make himself more hands
ome, but he hoped at least to be presentable, even as his curiosity ran ahead of him.

  Even arriving at Simon Church’s front door was no simple thing. Mr. Church owned all of the structures that still stood on his block of Lower Manhattan, as well as the old hat company building directly across the canal from his front door. All underwater ingress had been blocked and the lower, flooded floors closed off from the upper, except for the hollowed-out former law office that Joe and Church used as a boathouse. There were no docks attached to Mr. Church’s apartments and no bridges from any of the surrounding buildings, except for the wooden footbridge that led to the front door from the former hat company, which could be raised like a drawbridge. Thus, the only approach was to arrive at the hat company building by boat or bridge and then cross the drawbridge to Mr. Church’s front door.

  Nobody arrived there by accident.

  Joe opened the door to find a lovely, thin, pale woman standing on the platform. She wore a light sweater the color of jade, and her wide eyes reflected back the clouds that loomed overhead, warning of the impending storm. From the way the woman stood, it was clear she had been about to surrender and depart. Now she looked at Joe with a strange combination of gratitude and fear, as though now that someone had answered the door, she was frightened of the consequences of her arrival.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Are you…Simon Church?” she asked, though even as she spoke the words Joe could see her appraising him and realizing her error.

  “No, ma’am. I’m his associate. You can call me Joe.”

  When he invited her in, she glanced over her shoulder as if fearful that she might be observed.

  “What can we do for you, Miss…?” Joe asked as he closed the door behind her.

  “Mrs.,” she corrected. “Rachael Blum.”

  “Are you in some kind of trouble, Mrs. Blum?”

  “Not me,” she said quickly, pausing to weigh the words as if she herself were uncertain of their veracity. “It’s my daughter. She was ill. Badly ill. The doctors told us she had only months to live.”

  Joe ran a rough hand over the bristly stubble on his chin. “But you said she was ill. She’s not sick anymore?”

  For just a moment, the dark cloud over Mrs. Blum’s features vanished and joy shone from her eyes. Then the grim weight of whatever haunted her returned.

  “Far from it. Jillian’s better. So much better.” Mrs. Blum paused, and Joe thought she looked almost sickened by her next words. “She’s almost too well. So healthy it seems, well, unnatural.”

  Intrigued as he was, Joe still didn’t see where he and Church came into it.

  “If you have any concerns—”

  “I know I should just be happy, but—”

  “—shouldn’t you talk to a doctor? It’s not the kind of thing Mr. Church and I normally handle.”

  Mrs. Blum shook her head. “It’s strange and a little frightening, but that’s not what brought me here. Jillian’s been having nightmares, horrible dreams about a withered, ugly little man who visits her in the night and tries to persuade her to run away with him, promises to carry her off if she hasn’t the courage to go willingly. ‘Courage,’ that’s how he puts it.”

  “Still—” Joe began.

  “It’s not a dream!” Mrs. Blum snapped, tears springing to her eyes. She waved her hands as if she had no idea what to do with them. “Last night I heard her whimpering in her bedroom and I went in. The thing was there, this little goblin, sitting on the windowsill. I screamed and grabbed a lamp, but when I went to hurl it at the thing, it looked at me with terrible eyes…and it called me by name.

  “It knew my name!” Rachael Blum repeated, the horror of this fact clearly still deeply unsettling her. “I threw the lamp, but it leaped out into the dark. Jillian screamed for her father, and he came running, and the three of us stayed up together the rest of the night.”

  Joe frowned. “Where are your husband and daughter now?”

  “Home. Asleep,” Mrs. Blum said. “Steven, my husband, intends to stand guard over Jillian this evening and to kill the creature if it returns, but I fear for them both. For us all. With her illness, and now this strange new vitality…I can’t help wondering if this thing is somehow responsible for all of that. Whatever the case, my husband would not approve of my seeking help, but I’ve heard stories about Simon Church and I knew if anyone could help…”

  She trailed off there.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Blum,” Joe said, frowning deeply. “Mr. Church is an old man. He relies on certain medicines and…equipment, and he rarely leaves the premises.”

  How could he have explained to her the strange mechanics the old detective had installed inside his own chest, the gears, metal chambers, and tubes that kept him alive? Magic had kept Simon Church from aging like an ordinary man, but it couldn’t make him immortal. He often said that entropy could be deceived but never defeated; thus the combination of magic and mechanical apparatus had staved off the reaper for many, many decades, but could not do so forever.

  “You could ask him,” Mrs. Blum said desperately. “Please?”

  After a moment, Joe nodded. “Tell you what. Let me come out there tonight. I’ll make sure no harm comes to your family. If this thing shows up, I’ll deal with it. And if I can’t, I’ll try to talk Mr. Church into coming out himself tomorrow.”

  In her relief, Rachael Blum was beautiful. Her beauty made Joe even more determined to help her, and he knew that was dangerous. He’d nearly been killed for beautiful women before, and it rarely ended well.

  That night, Joe stood in the rain on the front stoop of the Blum residence, his hair wet and slick against his skull. Beneath his heavy coat he carried a pistol in a shoulder holster, the gun adding bulk beneath his left arm. Joe didn’t like guns, but Mr. Church had long ago persuaded him that a gun was sometimes a necessary tool. There were dangers in the city that even the scavengers did not understand. Bullets weren’t always effective, but even in the rare cases when they were not, they could usually buy a few precious seconds for Joe to think of some other way to avoid being killed. And since he had no idea what, if anything, had been lurking in Jillian Blum’s dreams and outside her bedroom window, he figured he was better safe than sorry.

  Joe heard voices raised in argument beyond the heavy door and tensed, wondering if he ought to interfere. When his patience wore thin and the rain had nearly soaked through his jacket, he pounded on the door again. The wind whipped at him, waves crashing against the building just a few feet below the stoop.

  With a loud thunk, the lock was thrown back and the door hauled open, but it wasn’t Rachael Blum standing silhouetted in the warm, golden light of the foyer. Her husband was thin and olive-complexioned, with eyes so brown they were nearly black. He dressed in dark trousers and a crisp white shirt, the sort of business attire that was rare in the Drowning City and much more common in Upper Manhattan, where the water had never filled the streets and where business, architecture, and finance had raced ahead to the future, leaving the Drowning City to retreat into an earlier age and create a culture of its own. There were still some families in Lower Manhattan who had money, who owned businesses, and who cared enough to stay and try to help create that culture—or at least profit from it—but they were rare. Mr. Blum had Joe’s respect for that alone, but judging by the look on his face, he didn’t seem to want it.

  “My wife’s just told me about her visit to you today,” the man said angrily. “You’re not welcome here. You’re not wanted.”

  Joe studied Mr. Blum carefully, saw the fear in his eyes, and realized the man was just as haunted as his wife. Why wouldn’t he be? A man like Blum would be hesitant to turn to thuggish policemen or an unelected mayor with his troubles; he’d want to solve them himself.

  “I just want to help, Mr. Blum.” He thrust out a hand. “I’m Joe. And whatever it is that’s threatening your daughter, I promise you I’ve dealt with worse.”

  Blum hesitated, leaving Joe standing
in the rain, both of them buffeted by the storm. Then he seemed to deflate a little before he replied.

  “Define ‘dealt with,’” he said.

  Rachael Blum appeared in the foyer behind him. “Steven,” she said emphatically. “Let him in. This is what he does. If he can’t help us—”

  “What I mean is that I’ve seen things most people wouldn’t even believe existed,” Joe assured Mr. Blum. “Unnatural things. I’ve fought them. Sometimes I’ve caught them. And sometimes I’ve killed them.”

  “Whatever this thing is, I don’t want it caught,” Blum said, eyes alight with righteous fury. “It’s threatening my daughter, Joe. I want it dead.”

  Joe gave a single nod. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Steven Blum took a deep breath and let it out. Then he stepped back and let Joe in.

  Drowsy and stiff, Joe blinked and forced his eyes open wide. He yawned and stretched, knocking a knee against the girl’s bed, which caused her to stir. He froze, hoping he hadn’t woken her, but just as her breathing began to deepen again she snapped awake, lifted her head, and looked around fearfully.

  “Sorry,” Joe said. “I’ll be more careful.”

  Jillian Blum smiled sweetly, but her smile didn’t reach her eyes. He saw only sadness and worry there. Joe thought to himself that he had never before met an entire family that seemed so haunted. And yet he could have sworn they were haunted by disparate things. There seemed to be a different tension in each member of the Blum clan. Jillian seemed skittish, as if she were guilty of some deception. Joe hadn’t spent a lot of time around twelve-year-old children, but he knew that they were old enough to keep their own counsel and to not always trust their parents with the truth.

  “It’s all right,” the girl said.

  She glanced at her father, who sat slumbering in a high-backed chair in the far corner of the room. Steven Blum had made it clear he had no intention of letting Joe stay the night in his daughter’s room without him present, but he’d nodded off before midnight. Joe saw something in the girl’s glance that underlined his thoughts about Jillian keeping secrets. She seemed wary of her father.