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

  Fingers hooked into claws, Molly lashed out at his eyes. But he was too fast for her, twisting away. He dropped the severed arm and spun her around, then shoved her to the ground. His gray eyes had gone from stormy to sad. Towering over her, he produced a small bottle from one pocket of his long coat and a dirty rag from the other.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Molly leaped to her feet and tried to escape him, but he caught her with one hand and clamped the rag over her face with the other. The putrid chemical stink of the rag filled her nostrils. She tried not to breathe it in, but it was too late. She felt her body begin to sag and saw dark shadows moving in at the edges of her vision. She thought of the gas-man and the way he had deflated and wondered if the seams of her skin had split, releasing her spirit in spurts of smoke.

  As consciousness left her, she called out to Felix inside her head. He had dreamed he was a ghost. She feared his dreams had come true, and that she might now be joining him.

  Then the shadows swallowed her up.

  It felt like drowning.

  Chapter Five

  Molly woke with a dull ache in her head, surprised to find herself swaddled in heavy cotton sheets. They were softer than anything she had ever touched, but as her eyes fluttered open, she frowned at the red cloth that hung above her, trying to recall where she was and how she had gotten there.

  A wave of memories washed over her and her pulse quickened with alarm. The gas-men. The Mendehlsons. Felix. She sat up abruptly, trying to shake the cobwebs of sleep from her mind. The huge man who had saved her—Joe—had put something over her face that had knocked her out. It had to have been him who’d brought her here, but if so, where was he now?

  She had to move, to get out of this unfamiliar place. Fear washed through her, yet somehow it forged a grim determination. Felix would never have let anything happen to her, but when the gas-men attacked, she had run away. Molly knew she had to go back to the theater and attempt to figure out what had happened to him, and where the gas-men might have taken him. She thought it was probably hopeless, but she would never forgive herself if she didn’t at least try.

  Molly dragged the sheet and blanket from the bed, wrapping them warmly around her. She glanced around the room, trying to make sense of her surroundings. She had never been abducted before, but she had known girls to whom that and worse had happened. Girls snatched off the street usually woke up chained to a bed in a cold, damp room that smelled of urine, not in a place like this.

  In her entire life, she had never slept in a bed so soft, beneath a blanket that smelled as fresh and clean. Curtains hung from posts at the corners of the bed, a heavy veil of deep red that would have kept her entirely in the dark if the curtains had not been tied back on one side with thick golden cords. Standing beside the huge bed, she stared down at the soft cotton nightgown she wore.

  She felt her face flush with anger and embarrassment. Had Joe undressed her while she had been unconscious? Her clothes had been wet, and the nightgown was clean and dry, which was certainly an improvement, but the idea made her skin crawl. Molly had lived in the half-sunken buildings along the canals of New York, survived on her own in squats and deep shadows. She had managed to avoid the worst things that could befall a child on her own in the Drowning City long enough for Felix to find her and take her in. But she had seen terrible things, and heard stories told by other children—boys and girls—of men and women whose behavior suggested that they had broken glass inside them where their conscience should have been.

  Calm down, she told herself. Be smart. Think it through.

  Joe had beaten the gas-man easily. He had monstrous strength. If he had sinister or deviant intentions toward her, Molly had no chance of stopping him. But she felt no ache or discomfort, nothing to indicate that some perversion had been perpetrated upon her while she slept. Though the intimacy of someone having changed her clothes was an intrusion all its own, it was possible that her captor had only kindness in mind. She supposed that she would find out soon enough.

  She moved lightly across the room. The door stood open an inch or two and she could hear the murmur of low voices beyond. She needed to get out of here, but she was in no rush to encounter Joe again, so she took a moment to survey her surroundings. The whole room had an antique air about it. A tall wardrobe stood against one wall, with a short bureau beside it. She discovered a bowl of fresh water atop the bureau, and it took her a few moments to understand that it was meant as a washbasin. There was a small bookcase against another wall.

  Framed photographs hung on the wall, nearly all of them faded and dulled by time. The people in the pictures wore the clothes of another era, and some of them stood in front of cars not seen in long decades. One shot, in particular, intrigued her. A slender, dapperly dressed man with high cheekbones and round, wireless glasses stood with a second man whose thick mustache might have been meant to add sophistication and cover his otherwise thuglike appearance but failed. His bumpy, slightly skewed nose looked as if it had been broken many times, and his hands were huge. Between these two men was a lovely woman wearing a small hat that must have been pinned to her head and clutching a miniature purse.

  Behind them, in the picture, the Flatiron Building was easily recognizable, even though Molly had never seen its lower floors. The photograph had been taken before the city had begun to sink, and showed the Flatiron towering above the south end of Madison Square. The image fascinated her and ignited a curiosity within her. Who still lived in the Drowning City who would care about such things?

  She glanced around and noticed other curious objects in the room, on the bookshelf and other, smaller shelves that had been mounted on the wall—figurines carved of dark wood, tiny ornate boxes, several things that might have been strange puzzles, and a blue-tinted crystal ball the size and rough shape of a large apple.

  Molly looked at the door again. Whatever her captors’ intentions toward her, she could not help Felix while she stood in this elegant room, too embarrassed and afraid to confront her captors. They had not locked her in, or even closed the door all the way—a seeming invitation to attempt escape. Molly had to oblige them.

  The hinges complained only a little as she opened the door. She stepped lightly into the corridor and held her breath against the strange chemical smell that assaulted her. To her right, on either side of the hall, there were doors that seemed to lead into other rooms, as well as an arched opening that must have led into some less private part of the residence. To the left was a set of stairs winding downward, and she started toward them.

  From behind her came the creak of hinges and the groan of a heavy footfall on the floorboards. Molly spun just as Joe emerged from a side room. She froze, staring at him, expecting to see something sinister in his eyes or his bearing. But in spite of his size, he only looked kind and slightly amused. The massive man wore a crisp white shirt and brown wool trousers held up by black suspenders. The cuffs of his sleeves were turned up and he had an unlit cigarette tucked behind one ear. His gray eyes were wide with surprise and humor.

  “You’re not going to get very far in that getup, kid,” he said.

  A tiny voice in the back of Molly’s mind screamed at her not to trust him. Her self-preservation had depended on her learning over the years not to trust anyone. Felix had been the one exception.

  “You mean this?” she said, halfway down the corridor and ready to bolt if he made a move toward her. She plucked at her nightgown for emphasis. “Who put this on me? Some kind of freak who gets his kicks changing little girls’ clothes?”

  Joe blinked, a hurt look crossing his face, so that she almost felt sorry for her accusation.

  “You got it wrong, kid. Woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I guess,” Joe said. “In the first place, you’re not such a little girl. But I prefer my ladies fully grown, and with a little less mouth on ’em.”

  Molly flinched, then made a fist. “I oughta—”

  Joe held up his hands, laughing. “Hang on.
I should know better than to poke the hornets’ nest. Look, we’ve got a housekeeper, a sweet old lady who’s half-blind. She’s the one who took you out of your wet things. They’ll be clean and dry by now. Probably folded and in the wardrobe back in your room. Why don’t you get dressed, then come in and see us. We don’t have a lot of time to waste if we’re going to help you get your boss back.”

  She had a dozen questions to ask, but Joe turned, went back into the side room, and shut the door behind him. For several seconds, Molly stared at the door. She glanced at the stairs, but the idea that her clothes might be clean and dry back in the bedroom was a powerful lure. If they were really there, and she still wanted to escape, she’d rather do so fully dressed.

  With a curious look toward the door Joe had just closed, Molly hurried back into the chamber where she’d awoken. When she opened the wardrobe, the first thing she noticed was her small boots, not only clean and dry, but with a small tear at the ankle mended. She found her clothes on the top shelf, neatly folded and smelling of soap and flowers. Pressing them to her face, she smiled as she inhaled deeply, then forced herself to remember that clean clothes were not currency enough to buy her trust.

  But they help, she thought, as she stepped out of the nightgown and quickly dressed. They definitely help.

  Joe had kidnapped her, but he didn’t seem inclined to hurt her, and he had saved her life, after all. If he had really wanted to hurt her, she would never have woken up at all, never mind in a warm, comfortable bed. Plus, he’d said he wanted to help her find Felix. The least she could do was hear him out. It wasn’t too late to run. She felt sure she could find a window to break, even if all the doors were locked, and jump down into the water. But if she did that, she wouldn’t know where to begin to look for Felix.

  She had some questions Joe needed to answer. But if he could really help, she owed it to Felix to stay.

  Nervously, she stepped out into the hall. She’d been in such a hurry before that details had escaped her, but now she noticed that the wallpaper had begun to yellow and curl at the edges. The candles in the sconces were melted almost to nothing. But what she noticed most was the strong chemical odor she had smelled before. It seemed to have settled into the very walls, and Molly breathed through her mouth, trying not to smell that stink. Instead, she tasted it, and that was almost worse.

  She paused outside the opposite door and knocked.

  Joe answered. She heard his heavy footfalls before he opened the door.

  “Much better,” he said. “Come in and meet Mr. Church.”

  Mister Church. When Joe had first mentioned the word Church, before he’d abducted her from the bridge, Molly had thought he meant an actual church, with stained-glass windows and an altar inside. But Church was apparently a man.

  As she stepped over the threshold, her eyes went wide. All around the high-ceilinged room were tables laden with strange tubes and other apparatuses, and at last she knew the origin of that chemical stink. Bunsen burners glowed with blue flames, above which beakers and vials of liquid glowed and bubbled and smoked, and metal pipes at the center of the room vented steam from a softly clanking generator. The steam rose to be collected by a mechanism with a fan inside, which seemed to cycle the heat and moisture back into pipes that ran along the ceiling.

  Yet amidst the trappings of what seemed to be scientific inquiry, there were other things as well, objects far more curious than those in the bedchamber across the hall. There were jars of peculiar liquids, bits of things she suspected had once been alive floating suspended within. On one table were pieces of splintered bone and a variety of multicolored powders. Yellowed parchments were piled high in a wooden box that stuck halfway out from beneath another table. Shelves overflowed with books both modern and antique.

  The room’s sole occupant was a shockingly old man, presumably Mr. Church. Thin and birdlike, his skin furrowed with lines and gray with age, he still retained a remarkable vigor. He wore charcoal gray trousers and a matching vest—two-thirds of a three-piece suit—with a pure white shirt and a red tie tucked into his vest. His glasses perched upon the bridge of his formidable nose as he bent over a gleaming steel table. Upon the table lay a piece of one of the rubbery suits worn by the gas-men. The fabric had been slit and spread on the table, but Mr. Church’s focus was clearly the strangely formed limb that Joe had torn off of one of Molly’s attackers.

  “What the hell is that?” Joe asked.

  Mr. Church arched an eyebrow, nodding to Molly in momentary greeting, then turned to Joe.

  “It started as a human arm—or something like human,” Mr. Church explained. “But over the last few moments it has undergone a metamorphosis.”

  Fascinated, Molly slipped into the room, moving a few steps toward the steel table. The limb was too small to be human, and oddly jointed. It had a waxy sheen and a rubbery texture that reminded her of the thing inside the hulking gas-man’s suit that had slipped away when Joe had defeated it.

  “What is it made of?” Joe asked.

  “That’s difficult to say,” Mr. Church said. “There are human cells in its composition, but also cells from a variety of animals, including feline and amphibian, as well as something else that eludes identification. Nature has never produced a creature whose limb would match this abomination.”

  Molly stared at the twisted limb, an icy chill climbing up the back of her neck. “This came off the man who tried to kill me?”

  Even in the few moments since she had first looked at it, the thing seemed to have altered its shape and withered further.

  Mr. Church smiled at her, almost pityingly. “My dear Miss McHugh,” he said, gesturing toward the table. “I am afraid that the creature to whom this belonged is the very least of our concerns.”

  Molly glanced away, not wanting to see the awful limb again. Mr. Church bent over the table and took a closer look, perhaps curious to see if the arm still continued to change. Only when Joe cleared his throat did the withered old man turn his attention to her again.

  “The girl’s got a lot of questions, Mr. Church,” Joe said.

  Church knitted his brow, then nodded. “Yes, of course she does,” he said, his accent unmistakably British. He went to a sink and washed his hands. “I suppose it’s time you had some answers.”

  “I’d say,” Molly replied. “You can start by telling me who you are.”

  Mr. Church smiled, wrinkled face crinkling further. “Who I am is rather a long story, actually. Shall we go into my study?”

  Molly shrugged. “If you like.”

  “Come along, then,” he said, guiding her to a door at the far side of the room. He turned the brass knob and pushed it open. “It’s time to speak of impossible things.”

  “Impossible—” she began.

  “And yet you’ll need to believe them, if we’re to help your friend Mr. Orlov.”

  Molly took a deep breath, filled with trepidation, but when Mr. Church went through the door, she followed.

  Chapter Six

  “The first story was published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual,” Mr. Church announced, as he led Molly into his study.

  Joe followed but did not enter. Instead, he leaned against the door frame and watched Molly and Mr. Church, arms crossed and a bit of an impatient expression on his face.

  Mr. Church gestured for Molly to take a chair in front of the desk, and she did so, watching the old man in fascination. Mr. Church walked along the ornate, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, trailing his fingers along the gleaming wood. Halfway down, he paused and let his hand come to rest on a tall, thick volume, which he slid from the shelf.

  “Of course, the stories became far more popular after the turn of the century, when they began to appear in The Strand,” he said, caressing the faded leather of the book with a weary nostalgia.

  “I’m sorry,” Molly said. “Am I supposed to have any idea what you’re talking about?”

  Mr. Church returned and set the enormous book on his desk. As he passed
close to her, Molly heard a metallic clicking sound, along with a peculiar hiss, like air escaping a balloon. And there was another strange quality to being in his proximity. In the laboratory—for how else could she think of the room they had just departed?—the chemical odors had overpowered all others. But here in his study, with him so near, she realized that Mr. Church had a peculiar aroma all his own. He smelled faintly like the burnt oil from a water taxi.

  As he walked around the desk, he smiled at her.

  “Go on,” he said, choosing a long, smooth pipe from a rack behind the desk. “Have a look. Your answers are waiting.”

  Molly glanced over at Joe, sharing his impatience but also curious. She slid the heavy book off the desk and onto her lap. The cover was leather, featureless except for the stylized letters S.C. that had been imprinted there. As she opened it, she heard a whir and another wheezy hiss, and glanced up to see that the sound had come from Mr. Church as the old man took his seat. As he exhaled, thin plumes of what she at first took to be smoke came from his nose. But when he took a plug of tobacco from a pouch and began to pack it into his pipe, she realized that he had not yet begun to smoke.

  “Who are you?” she asked, though really she had wanted to ask him what he was.

  Mr. Church leaned forward and tapped the first page of the now open book. She glanced down at the page and saw that this was no ordinary book, not a religious tome or an antique novel of the sort that Felix had in his library. Inside the heavy leather cover had been bound many yellowed pages, artifacts of an era long forgotten. They were old magazines, bound together, and the top one was Beeton’s Christmas Annual. When she saw the date, she frowned deeply.

  “Twentieth December, eighteen ninety-six,” she read aloud, then glanced up at the old man. “What is this supposed to be?”

  Mr. Church puffed his pipe. “Turn to page seventeen, please.”