Joe Golem and the Drowning City: An Illustrated Novel Read online

  Felix frowned deeply, his lips drooping into sadness for a moment before the muscles in his face twitched into a wince, as though he had inhaled the scent of something that filled him with revulsion. His breathing changed, coming in short sips, almost as if he were sobbing.

  Mrs. Mendehlson sensed the disturbance at last, and her expression grew troubled, yet she had such trust in Felix that she kept her eyes firmly shut, the crinkles at their edges telling a long tale of grief and woe.

  “What is it, Mr. Orlov?” she asked. “Is something wrong with David?”

  Molly wanted to put a stop to it right then. Felix had not made contact with David’s spirit, at least not yet.

  Though Felix always assured her that there was nothing to fear, every time she watched him conduct a séance, Molly found herself worrying for him. And just as he predicted, every time he made contact with the spirit world he emerged without any worrisome aftereffects, save the lingering sadness that so often accompanied his conversations with the weary dead.

  Now, though, she studied his troubled expression and a quiet alarm began to sound inside of her. Felix had seemed uneasy when he dropped into his trance, and Molly had imagined—as she always did—Felix searching a dark room with only his hands to guide his way, listening for the whispers of those who waited there. Today it had been almost as if he were surprised by the contours of that room, like the whole experience was unfamiliar.

  “Felix?” she ventured softly, because he hadn’t replied to Mrs. Mendehlson, and surely even in his trance, unsettled as he was, he must be able to hear her.

  Molly felt a trickle of ice go down her back, the fingers of something that should not be there. She had just broken two of her employer’s cardinal rules—not only was she not to interrupt a séance, but she was absolutely never to call Felix by his first name in front of the clients. He ought to have at least shown his irritation, but wherever Felix Orlov was in that moment, he could not hear her.

  “Yes, something’s wrong with David,” Mr. Mendehlson said, his beaklike nose wrinkling in distaste. “He’s dead.”

  Stung, Mrs. Mendehlson flinched and opened her eyes, shooting a stricken, heartbroken look at her husband.

  “Alan, you bastard,” she hissed. “I know he’s dead. But that doesn’t mean he’s gone. It doesn’t mean I can’t still love my son!”

  Molly barely listened. In the golden light filtering through the room, dust motes swirling, she blinked and tried to focus on Felix. Something had gone wrong, yes, but whatever it was it had not finished. Though the focus of the séance had been shattered, Felix remained closed off from the world, still holding tightly to the Mendehlsons’ hands. The old conjuror’s face had gone dreadfully pale and sweat beaded on his forehead and cheeks.

  Had he touched something besides a departed spirit in that other realm? Had he made contact with something … evil?

  “Felix?” Molly asked. “Please open your eyes.”

  The table jerked, legs scraping the floor. Mrs. Mendehlson yelped and her husband uttered curses. Molly took a step forward, wanting to go to Felix but not wanting to break his rules … his trust.

  It had occurred to her more than once that when he opened himself to the spirits, something else might find its way into him, and as she watched him begin to shake, that fear returned. Had he been invaded? Possessed? If he opened his eyes right now, would it be Felix Orlov looking out at her from inside the shell of his body, or something else?

  Her heart fluttered like the wings of a captured bird, and she held her breath as she took two steps nearer and bent to look under the table. It jerked again and the edge struck her forehead. She grunted with pain and blinked to clear her vision. Beneath the table, Molly could see Felix’s legs jerking spasmodically again.

  “What is it?” Mrs. Mendehlson asked fearfully.

  “Not a damn ghost, that’s for sure,” her husband sneered. “It’s all an act. The man’s a charlatan.”

  “Shut up, you stupid man!” Molly screamed, turning on him, tears beginning to burn the corners of her eyes. “Can’t you see he needs help?”

  Felix began to choke, a wet, glottal sound that turned into words, but they weren’t words in any language that Molly had ever heard before. He seemed to cough them up two and three at a time in a harsh, grinding tone that became a chilling chant.

  The Mendehlsons shrank away from the conjuror as though whatever had transformed him might be contagious. Spirits spoke through Felix from time to time, and she wondered if this was like that—something speaking through him. But if so, was it a human spirit or something other, something demonic?

  Again she cried his name, shaking him. She struck his face lightly, but received no response. His eyes had been closed, but now they opened and she saw that they were rolled upward, showing the red-tinged whites. Felix smiled thinly, but it wasn’t his smile. Whatever the conjuror had invited in—or whatever had forced its way inside him—uttered a wet, phlegmy laugh.

  Molly swung her hand back, ready to strike Felix again, much harder this time, but then he began to shake worse than before, his whole body juddering in the chair. As she watched, his skin began to hiss and wisps of white rose up from his flesh.

  Was this ectoplasm? She had heard of it, of course—the strange, gauzy substance said to be excreted from the skin and orifices of some mediums, in which invisible spirits might cloak themselves in order to manifest for the living. Felix had once seen it exude from the skin of another medium but told her it had never happened to him before.

  The white wisps grew darker, and Molly smelled something burning. She realized that this was not ectoplasm, but smoke, as if Felix’s blood were on fire.

  Mrs. Mendehlson screamed and leaped up, knocking her chair over.

  Her husband sat and stared. “What is this? What the hell is this?”

  Felix turned and looked at Molly—truly looked at her. She felt he knew her, that this was Felix, not some outside force—and she saw terror in his eyes. He began to shake his head, trying to tell her something. Staggering, he rose to his feet, crashing into the table and catching himself on its edge, barely able to stay upright. His skin had gone from pale to a soft, sickly green, and under his shirt, his torso seemed to shift.

  Shaking, Molly backed away from him and collided with a shelf of books and knickknacks she had hung on the wall. A ceramic sculpture of the Virgin Mary fell and shattered, sending shards across the wooden floorboards.

  Felix closed his eyes, and Molly watched as he surrendered to despair.

  The tiny echo of breaking crystal erupted into a loud shattering of glass, and Molly turned in time to see a second window explode, glass tearing the curtains. Metal canisters hit the floor and rolled in strange arcs, trailing clouds of hissing yellow gas that ballooned quickly, fogging the room.

  Molly tried to call out to Felix but she had begun to choke on the gas. Tears ran down her face, and when she tried to breathe she could only cough and cough. She glanced around, peering through the swirling gas, frantically searching for her friend.

  The Mendehlsons were shouting, stumbling away from the table, running for the door, which burst open to reveal a hulking figure silhouetted on the threshold. The multifaceted lenses of his black gas mask gleamed with reflected light, and for a moment Molly could hear him breathing through the air tubes, even over the hissing of the gas canisters.

  Two more men in buglike gas masks burst through the broken windows, landing on the floor with a wet squelching noise. Smaller than the first, more the size of an ordinary man, they wore long coats over gleaming black wetsuits that clung to their bodies, and she could smell the ocean on them. Others rushed through the door behind the gasping hulk, who grabbed Mrs. Mendehlson’s head with both hands and twisted. The snap of bone echoed off the walls and then she fell, lost in the yellow fog of gas.

  Mr. Mendehlson began to scream, but Molly didn’t see what happened to him. Felix collided with her, knocking her toward the door that led upstairs. Molly
hit the door, her hand snatching at the knob, and she threw it open. Accidently or not, he had reminded her of her only path to escape.

  Amidst all the gas, she didn’t think the men had noticed her yet, but she paused at the bottom of the stairs, glanced back, and saw two men dragging Felix toward a shattered window. She wanted to scream, to attack them, but Felix had shoved her toward safety, and if she had any hope of helping him, she had to remain free. Still, she only made it halfway up the flight of steps before she hesitated again, frozen by her fear for him. The mist began to creep up the stairs as she stood listening to the shattering of idols and the thump of footfalls below.

  There came a creak from the bottom step. Molly stiffened, holding her breath as she stared at the cloud of gas swirling, filling the stairwell. Another creak, and she could just make out the silhouette of the huge gas-man—the one who’d been first through the door—coming up after her. How had he seen her coming up the stairs in the midst of that cloud? She stared for a moment at the strange, clunky mask.

  And then she ran.

  Molly bolted up the stairs and the hulking man pursued her, his sickly breathing making her wonder what was under that mask, and praying she would never have to see.

  Chapter Three

  Molly flew up the steps, the hulking gas-man chugging after her. A heat of panic rushed through her, and her skin prickled with terror, her heart drumming in her temples. She darted through Felix’s door and flung it shut behind her, throwing the bolt, forgoing the chain. The gas-man’s steps boomed on the stairs.

  She hurtled through the sitting room and into Felix’s immaculate bedroom. It took up the corner of the floor, windows facing the side and the rear of the building. At the foot of the back window was a rolled-up pile of metal links, a ladder meant to be some family’s fire escape. Felix was deathly afraid of fire and had no access to the building’s fire escape from this room.

  Out the side window Molly saw two gas-men on the fire escape outside the lower floor. Two others dragged a sickly Felix to the edge and held on to him as they leaped into the water of Twenty-ninth Street, dragging him down with them. She wanted to cry out but heard the hulking gas-man banging on the door to Felix’s apartment.

  She forced up the back window, wood shrieking in its frame, and then bent to lift the pile of metal, which was precisely as heavy as it looked. She managed to work it up to the opening, fixed the hooks to the frame, and dumped it out the window. The ladder made a terrible clanking as it unfolded.

  The apartment door burst inward as she climbed out the window. She descended swiftly, hand over hand, her breathing now ragged and desperate. If the gas-man didn’t notice the hooks immediately, she might have twenty or thirty seconds before he realized where she’d gone, and she had to use them. She clambered downward, forcing her limbs to ignore the frenzy of her heart, and then she reached the bottom of the ladder and looked down.

  It reached only halfway to the water. Twelve feet or more to go.

  She heard the gas-man above her, his breath rattling, snuffling like some kind of beast. Molly did not look up. The Crown Theater backed up to what had been the Sebastian Hotel a lifetime ago, before the flood. Three stories high, only the ruin’s rooftop sign jutted from the water at high tide. An alley separated the theater and hotel.

  Molly pushed out from the wall and let go of the ladder. She tucked her arms in, closed her eyes, and had a moment when she considered praying before she plunged into the water, tasting salt and fuel and filth but just grateful she hadn’t hit the roof of the Sebastian.

  Surfacing, she saw the hulking gas-man leap from the window and hurtle toward what he thought was the water below. But the tide had risen to only a couple of feet above the level of the old hotel’s roof and she heard a muffled scream from inside his mask as he landed.

  Molly took off swimming, climbed on top of the Sebastian Hotel, and stood, up to her knees in water. She expected to hear the roar of boat engines but did not. What now? she thought, and a moment later, she had the answer. If the gas-men were taking Felix, then she had to follow them.

  She glanced around for a place where she might hide, so she could observe Felix’s captors in secret. Out here in the open, they would surely see her, and what then? Would they pursue her? Did they want her, too, or would she end up dead like the Mendehlsons?

  As she considered this question, the hulking gas-man rose from shallow water on the rooftop, perhaps twenty yards away. Molly stared with her mouth agape as he rose slowly, seawater sluicing off of his rubbery clothing. His head was tilted at a strange angle, and he seemed to put most of his weight on one leg, but the gas mask had not been dislodged. Molly could only stare at the sunlight gleaming off of the mask’s black lenses.

  The hulking man was injured, but not nearly as badly as he ought to have been after such an impact. He should have been hurt much worse.

  No. He should have been dead. What the hell was this guy?

  Stop. It isn’t me you want, she thought. They had already taken Felix. Why were they still after her?

  Maybe they do want you. Maybe they want you both.

  He started lumbering after her, and Molly knew she would not be able to follow Felix’s abductors. Right now, she had to run.

  She splashed her way across the hotel roof, lifting her knees as she ran. At the east end of the building stood an old stone structure that had contained offices when the city started sinking but had been converted to makeshift apartments in the decades since. The people there were poor but mostly decent folks who had held out against Water Rats and worse for many years. All the windows that could be reached from the hotel roof had been filled with stone or concrete or boarded over, but Molly didn’t need to go inside.

  She climbed. The carved stone arch around a window gave her enough purchase to scramble out of the water. Standing atop the arch, her soaked shoes slippery on the granite, she reached up and grabbed the ledge that ran around to the front of the building. Hoisting herself up to the wide ledge, she edged out along the side of the hotel and then, carefully, around the front. The fall to the water wouldn’t kill her, but if she went into the drink now, the gas-man would catch her for sure.

  From her new vantage point Molly had a view of the tangle of bridges that crisscrossed the city for blocks in both directions—some stone, some metal, some nothing more than boards banged together or hung from chains. Unless she wanted to swim for her life, escape meant racing through this multilevel labyrinth of a city. She needed to know every twist and turn by heart.

  A narrow metal bridge crossed Twenty-eighth Street from the old apartment house to another building on the other side, a shorter structure whose top two floors were now a shop where old women sold handmade dresses and old men sold cigars. Molly hurried along the ledge to the bridge. Its crosshatched welding and bolted struts made it a kind of cage, impossible to get into or out of except from inside the two buildings it joined. But she didn’t need to get inside.

  She climbed, using the struts as handholds. Someone shouted from inside the apartment building, a woman crossing the bridge, but Molly did not cry for help. What could they do for her from inside when she was outside?

  Hauling herself onto the top of the bridge, she glanced back and saw that the gas-man seemed to be moving faster now, almost as if whatever injuries he had sustained when he struck the roof of the Sebastian were healing already.

  Molly ran across the top of the footbridge, the wet soles of her shoes making her slip and nearly fall, which sent her lunging forward with her arms pinwheeling to keep her balance. Then she had reached the other side. Molly let her momentum rocket her toward the cigar and dress shop.

  The bridge connected to the building’s top floor, and Molly jumped as she reached the end of the metalwork, grabbed hold of a ledge, and dragged herself up. A moment later she rolled onto the roof, the smell of cigar smoke tainting the salt air. She had rolled in layers of gull and pigeon droppings, her wet clothes causing the guano to stick, and she
wrinkled her nose in disgust but could not stop to clean herself off.

  As Molly angled across the roof, her mind spun with fear and grief and wonderment. The Mendehlsons, parents wrapped up in the pain of their son’s death, were now dead themselves, horribly murdered and even now finding the answers they sought about their son’s ghost. Mr. Mendehlson would finally learn that Orlov the Conjuror was no charlatan. And what of Felix? The sweating and seizures, that guttural chanting, the smell of smoke from his skin … had all of that been some kind of attack from the spirit world, demonic possession, or had it been something to do with the gas-men attacking? Given the timing, she refused to believe the two things were unrelated.

  The huge gas-man appeared on the roof behind her, and Molly wondered if he could smell the cigar smoke from the shop through his mask. That was when she knew that her mind had become unhinged. Shock had already begun to work its frenetic madness into her head, and she could not allow that. She had to stay focused.

  A fist of ice clutched at her middle. Her sodden clothes clung to her, but she began to sprint. Molly knew these buildings, knew the Drowning City’s secret passages and hidden bridges, from years of having little to eat and nowhere to sleep and fending for herself, not to mention running from men who wanted more from a young girl than any man ever should.

  At the eastern edge of the cigar and dress shop’s roof was an eight-foot span of thick wooden planks. Surefooted now, Molly did not hesitate, but launched herself across the planks, which trembled but did not shift beneath her. The gas-man did not shout after her and his silence gnawed at her bones as she hurled herself through the perpetually open window at the end of the planks. A withered fisherman sat in the corner of the room with a needle in his arm. He nodded to her, but Molly ran out of the room.

  In the corridor was a spiral staircase. She grabbed the railing and swung onto the stairs, climbing fast, hurtling upward, legs pumping and feet clanging on the metal steps. Her chest burned with the effort, but she could not allow herself to slow down.