Chapter #39The Professor's House, and What Happened There-3 by: Seuzz   "What kind of problem?" you ask.
"At the very least, it explains why you found the golem 'recalcitrant'," Blackwell says. "To craft a golem, one must add essentia to it. The spell uses hair to encompass this necessity. The use of essentia puts the golem under the spell-caster's control. If there is no essentia--" He tugs at his beard. "I am surprised the thing was animate. But even animate, it would not have been under anyone's control. It would have been an independent agent." He looks between you and Justin. "How did it act?"
"Surly," says Justin. "Willful." Blackwell nods. "There were some weird blank spots in its memories."
"What kind of blank spots?"
Justin shrugs. "Random, like the record button didn't get pushed."
Blackwell frowns deeply. "Memory is a function of the masks, not of the golem." He snorts again. "It is extremely regrettable that the Libra should have fallen into the hands of amateurs."
"Look, you managed to get rid of it for us," Justin snarls, "so maybe that just solves the problem and we can--"
"But I'm far from convinced it does solve the problem," Blackwell says. "You are playing with deep forces, dangerous forces, and having cocked things up--" Again he snorts. "I should leave you to your fate, but I have a strong enough sense of responsibility--and no little sense of fear--"
Justin starts to reply, but you restrain him. "Let's see what the pointy-head here can figure out about it," you say. Justin gives you a sour look, but relents.
* * * * *
Blackwell leads you back into the library and returns to his books. You and Justin retreat to your corner, to quietly discuss the afternoon's odd events. "Think we should bring Roth and them out here?" you ask.
He shakes his head. "I called the golem because I didn't want them bringing over anything, and wanted him to look at the thing. Didn't expect he'd wind up dissecting it. But let's not let him out of our sight again. Ten to one he's just stringing us along."
So you keep a close watch on the professor, and when he takes a sheet of paper from a drawer, you stride over to look over his shoulder. It's a sigil. You ask him about it.
"It's a copy of the device that crafts a golem," he says. "Useless for creating one, but I kept copies of all the sigils. As I told you, I was engaged in research."
Probably involving the private parts of Lucy Vredenburg, you snort to yourself, remembering the thing waiting upstairs. "What do you mean it's 'useless'?" you ask.
"I mean one cannot use it to create a golem," he snaps. "Only the spells inside the book itself have the power to do that."
Another reason to keep the book itself away from him. You say nothing about the copies you had made, or the fact that you used them to make some more masks.
* * * * *
The sun has long since set, and you are stiff with boredom, when Blackwell sits up abruptly and sucks in his breath. He peers at the little pile of golem earth at his elbow, and then takes out a new sheet of paper and begins to sketch on it. He pulls down another book, and mutters to himself as he consults it while continuing to draw out a pattern. When you can't stand it anymore, you ask him what he's found.
"I don't know yet," he mutters sharply. "Pray do not interrupt. This is very delicate work." After drawing the rubber gloves on again, he puts a pinch of the earth into the new design. He bustles from the room. You and Justin hurry after, but only find him in the kitchen, looking through a cabinet. "Holy water, holy water," he says. "Never use the stuff, so there should still be some-- Ah!" With a grimace he pulls out a clear glass bottle, and you follow him back to the library. Carefully, he lets a single drop fall from the bottle onto the little pile of dirt. It hisses, and an acrid odor fills the room.
"You fools!" Blackwell wheels on you, his face turning purple. "You callow striplings! You--! You--!" He has to close his eyes and take a deep breath in order to master himself. "Well, I suppose it is alright. We did manage to destroy it."
"If you don't tell us what--" Justin starts again.
"I don't even know what to call it," Blackwell says. "The most learned masters won't have a name for it. 'Ghost', I suppose, however vulgar, will have to suffice."
"Ghost?" you hollowly echo. "What are you talking about?"
He makes a face. "Yes, a ghost! What else do you find in graveyards?" He sits down heavily. "That's where the earth for a golem comes from, doesn't it? Well, all superstitions begin with a grain of truth, and the grain of truth about haunted graveyards is that they hold more than the decaying bodies of the deceased. They hold their decaying spirits as well. So one must purify the earth that goes into a golem. The use of essentia is a part of the purification process. Without the essentia those decayed spiritual things--the rotted, gibbering, insane remnants of the dead--can remain in the golem's flesh and take control of it." He fixes hard eyes on you. "You brought back a ghost and you gave it a body and then you gave it a mind and a set of memories when you put a mask on it. And then you let it loose."
You stare at him, and a shudder ripples through your body. It sounds crazy. But then, the idea of magical masks and golems would have sounded crazy until last week.
"Whose ghost?" Justin asks.
"Whose ghost?" Blackwell's laugh is a bark. "Drop a few thousand corpses into a blender, hit the puree button, and then scoop out a spoonful of the goop. Whose corpse is it? No one's. Everyone's. Death doesn't discriminate and comes to all alike. You think there is discrimination after death?
"Ah, but my gwarcheidwad," he says. "It knew. It smelled death on the thing, and it feasts on such as was animating it. It tore the rot from its unholy flesh, and left only dust behind. Bless me," he says with a shudder. "Bless us all."
"Well," Justin finally says. "All's well that ends well. Right?"
But Blackwell sits very still. "If we are lucky," he says at length. "But you said there were 'blank spots' in some of the masks' memories? I don't like that. It could be a problem with the masks, but-- Come. Let us see what is inside this mask the golem left behind."
* * * * *
Will Prescott stares, and then starts yelling and punching the air. Blackwell, though, is able to still him with a sharp word.
You had found Cindy upstairs in a bedroom, undressed, but laying underneath the sheets. She had merely smiled as Blackwell had pulled the mask off, revealing a lumpen thing like what you had made. He had then put the Prescott mask onto it.
"William," Blackwell says firmly. "You must do as I say." Your stomach twists at the thought of "yourself" under the control of this man. "Think back to this afternoon, after lunch. What did you do?"
Your double blinks and looks around. "I went to class. Goofed off. Went out to Maize Tsosie's after school when Justin Roth called." He looks at your friend. "So you're part of the new club now?"
"New club?" Justin asks slowly.
"Yeah," Prescott says with a cheerful calmness that makes every hair on your body stand on end. "You know, we grabbed you, knocked you out, then set you on fire."
Deathly silence settles. You have to leave it to Blackwell to carry out the subsequent interrogation.
So: Will Prescott had gone to Tsosie's, where he and Tsosie had grabbed the real Justin, used Victoria's mask to subdue him, and then laid him on the book. They had sprinkled powders and fuels and some of the cemetery dirt on him--after removing Victoria's mask--and then set him aflame. "He looks like a statue of himself now," Prescott says with an innocent smile. "Same with Perry. Then someone called me--whoever was pretending to be Justin--and told me to come out to some address. Well, me and the others needed to get the mask of Justin back and get the other two guys converted too. But when I got out there--"
Blackwell had ripped the mask off it at that point.
"What the fuck was it talking about," Justin demands in a trembling voice. "What the fuck was it talking about, setting people on fire, and converting them, and statues--"
You're back down in the library. You are gripping the edge of a table, and Blackwell himself is shaking all over. He had taken out another sheet of paper, and is studying it.
"It's the next spell in the book," he says in a quaver. "I hadn't executed it yet when I lost the book, but I did copy out the sigil for study."
"It uses a human body, I know that," you say.
"Yes," he says. "I had a candidate--" He abruptly shuts his mouth. "But this is worse. This is--"
"What did that thing up there do to our friends?" you demand.
"It turned them into golems," Blackwell says. "Soulless, masterless things like the thing we destroyed this afternoon. Golems shouldn't be able to do magic, but these can. And they are making more like themselves, and they used some of your friends to do it."
He takes a deep breath. "I think you boys had better spend the night with me," he says. "You don't know what you're going to find out there."  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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