“I really don’t want to hold onto that thing,” you say unhappily, thinking of Blackwell and how easy it would be to end up like him. You hug yourself tightly.
Joe moves behind you and hugs you too, cradling his head in at your neck. “It wants to hold onto you though,” he explains. “I think you would be safer if we got the book to the Stellae archives, but that’s not what worries me.”
You break away and turn to face him. “It’s other people, isn’t it,” you ask in a small voice.
Joe’s expression is pained for a moment. “Yeah,” he admits. “Someone sent the book to your dad but Blackwell stole it. Somehow it managed to make its way out of his possession and into a bookshop for you to find. The book making its way to you, guys like Blackwell trying to take it for themselves and innocents caught in the middle. Not just you either,” he adds. You sigh heavily. “Do you know the girl he’s kidnapped, Lisa?”
“You could say that,” you reply with a touch of bitterness.
“Look at what’s happened to her, just because the book is linked to you somehow,” says Joe. “If we keep it for now, just long enough to study it and disentangle it from you, we can hand it over when it’s safe.”
“You promise,” you ask meekly, aware that you are channelling a little more of Melody’s personality than you feel comfortable with.
“I promise,” smiles Joe, making you feel weak at the knees, Melody’s influence again. He sweeps you up in another hug that banishes Melody’s lingering fears, even if it doesn’t quite diminish all of your own.
“So what now,” you ask after you break free from Joe.
“We move everything away from here, anyone could come down here and find it” he begins. His eyes linger on the book again. “If I’m right about the book, someone will find it.” He takes the second mask and places it on the golem made from the original Melody. In an instant the nude form of your cousin Umeko stands in its place. “Hey ladies,” he leers. An ugly stab of envy runs through you “Time to get moving.”
Neither golem moves. “Who’s this guy boss,” says the Umeko faced golem. “Is he going to help us fix the girl?”
You glance sideways at Joe. “Actually, that might be possible,” he says brightly. You feel the sharp stab of envy again from Melody’s feelings. She, you, thought Joe wanted you, not the original. “Right now we have to move you though.”
“Do you,” asks the Umeko faced golem. You nod your agreement. “If that’s what you want boss. Uh, you have clothes, right?”
You look around the basement, there is nothing remotely usable except for a couple of old rugs. “Uh…” you begin. “Look you can just wrap yourself in the rugs,” you reply to the golem, blushing. “Don’t you say a word,” you add, pointing an accusing finger at Joe.
“Wasn’t going to,” replies Joe holding his hands up and offering you an easy grin. You can’t help but narrow your eyes. He dives in for a quick kiss that the Melody part of you demands that you return with interest.
You close your eyes and try not to think about the expression on the golem with Umeko’s face and your mind.
*****
Joe pulls the truck to a halt in against the sidewalk a block short of Blackwell’s house. It’s still just the pair of you because you insisted that the two golems be placed in the trunk with the masks removed. You told Joe it was because you couldn’t have two naked women riding around in the back, but a little sliver of Melody didn’t want Joe distracted.
“We’re here then,” you say passively, staring out the window.
“Don’t be nervous,” says Joe. You realise that he’s holding your hand and you smile a little. “All you need to do is get the golem to tell you how to put the guardian to sleep.” He grins at you. “It’s like your entrance exam for the Stellae, except it’s going to be a cakewalk.”
After a few moments thought he adds in a mock serious tone: “Don’t mess it up.” You turn and glare at him, narrowing your eyes. “God I love it when you do that,” he quips. This time it is you that moves forward for the kiss, sinking deeply into Melody’s personality to enjoy it all the more.
Your hand lingers in his for a few moments after the kiss stops and then you get out of the truck. “Call me once you’ve done it,” mouth Joe through the window after you close the door behind you. You wave coyly and set off down the street.
Blackwell’s house looms in the late morning sunshine as you enter the grounds. An ill-proportioned jumble with no coherent architectural style, it squats in the shade of the tall trees that surround it. You suppress a shiver as you walk down the drive, the gravel crunching under your feet.
You knock on the door when you arrive, more for the form of it than anything else. Joe had you phone the golem before you left the boys’ house and it opens the door quickly.
“You’re here it,” it says sourly. “About time.”
“We had a stop to make on the way,” you explain as you slink past the golem and inside. It closes the heavy door behind you with a harrumph.
“And to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit,” it asks, its voice laden with contempt.
“Your original,” you explain. “Has he contacted you?”
“Lamentably not,” sighs the golem Blackwell. “Giving me no chance to not inform him of your clever little treachery.”
“Lucky for me I told you to be completely honest with me,” you smile.
“Indeed,” replies the golem.
“Not very helpful though,” you add.
“Oh I am being helpful,” replies the golem through gritted teeth. “I am being helpful by telling you and I am being helpful by telling you that I would still have tried to find some way to alert my original if the opportunity presented itself. I am still Aubrey Blackwell after all.”
You stop and think for a moment. It didn’t occur to you that the golem would still have motivations of its own, and it’s only luck that you haven’t been caught out. “Don’t help him,” you instruct the golem, any trace of playfulness gone from your voice. “He’s a monster,” you add with a shudder.
“Very well,” sighs the golem. “I assume you have other business to transact here?”
“Tell me about the guardian,” you ask.
“Where to begin,” muses the golem. “Come with me, it’s far simpler to show you.” The golem leads you up the stairs and into the library.
Even with daylight shining in through the great windows at the far end, the library is a deeply unsettling location. There’s something about the proportions of the room, or maybe it’s the angles. The two clocks maintain their strangely desynchronised ticking, the interval between them changing with maddening unpredictability.
“The library is the centre of the house, you realise,” explains the golem with theatrical relish. “Just listen for a moment,” it adds, falling silent.
“I’d rather not,” you reply quickly.
“Unsettling, is it not,” asks the golem. “There’s not pattern to it that I’ve ever discerned and the interval between each tick of the clock is never constant. One supposes it could drive a weaker mind mad given enough time, but that’s not what you asked me.”
“No it isn’t,” you glare.
“But it is related to the gwarcheidwad, you see. You might think the guardian is just its physical form,” explains the golem, gesturing towards the one eyed, hairless stuffed ape that perches in a nearby alcove. There is the slightest sensation of it watching you with its one glassy eye and you involuntarily shudder. “But the reality is that its spiritual presence stretches throughout the house and into the grounds.” Blackwell pauses his lecture to take a step back towards you. “And it’s all centred here,” he says with quiet certainty. “In the library.”
“Are you saying the gwarcheidwad makes the clocks tick that way,” you ask, the unpronounceable word rolls easily off Melody’s tongue thanks to her gift for languages.
“More that they tick that way because the guardian distends the world around it with its presence,” replies the golem somewhat portentously. You frown at the golem, but it ignores your expression and continues. “It is both exceptionally powerful and dangerous and it guards this house zealously.”
“Yes, but what is it,” you interrupt.
“Well it’s a spirit,” begins the Blackwell golem, trying to regain its composure. “A powerful spirit of darkness...”
“A spirit of darkness,” you parrot. “What does that mean? I mean it all sounds very impressive but you don’t really know do you,” you guess.
The golem wavers. “Ah… That is to say…” It sighs. “Curse you and this damnable compulsion for honesty. The truth is that the guardian was emplaced in the house when I purchased it. I have learned a very little of it, just enough to control its function.”
“Enough to send it to sleep,” you ask.
“Indeed, it was in such a state when I first acquired the house,” replies the golem. “I suppose that a previous occupant had the sense to realist that dead realtors make it somewhat harder to sell a house. Oh…” it says at it finally realises. “You want me to send it sleep now?”
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