Chapter #11The Corpse-Golem by: Seuzz   You swing your fist at Joe; of course he easily dodges it. "You don't know what you're asking," you yell at him.
"I know exactly what I'm asking!"
"I mean, what you're asking of me!"
"Stop thinking of yourself, Prescott, and start thinking of this poor asshole!"
"I am! I'm not going to kill him!"
"Then he'll die."
You look down at the third of your party. It's dark out in the cornfield--cloudy and moonless and nearly midnight--so you can't make out his face, but you know it well enough. Fat and pimply and wreathed with long, greasy hair and a neck beard. You'd had to wear the face yourself for a few hours, much to your dismay and to Joe's sniggering delight. Paul Germond gurgles, and Joe presses his hands tighter over the terrible wound in the college student's neck.
"We call the paramedics," you say, and take out your phone. "We should have done that--"
"They'll never get here in time."
"Then you get him out there. Put him on your back and sprint."
"And who holds his neck closed?"
"There's got to be another--"
"Then get that blank outta my bag. You know, the one we didn't wind up using."
"Which we shouldn't have made in the first place," you snarl, "because we didn't need it!"
"We need it now!" Joe's voice is very firm.
You cuss him hard but scramble over to his bag. Putting the mask on Germond will stop the bleeding while the two of you argue further.
Joe pulls his hands away and you shove the mask onto the other fool. Only an idiot would have used an unfamiliar wand against pursuers in the dark, and it had blown up in his face and blown out a good chunk of his neck.
"That'll hold him for a minute," Joe says. "Now let's see if we can find his car." He grimaces as you hoist the would-be warlock onto his shoulders. "Watch me bust my back out carrying this junior-grade Blackwell," he groans.
Together you manage to hunt down Germond's old minivan; the hospital is nearly ten miles away, but with Joe behind the wheel you can get there forty-five minutes ago. (Leaving plenty of time to yell and argue before the "present" catches up to you again.) But when Joe jams the accelerator to the floor-- "Fuck, there's some kind of interference," he shouts. The wheels spin and the motor whines. "Shit! Check his pants, check the glove compartment, check--!"
"The fuck are you--?"
"It's like we're carrying a couple of neutron stars. I can't leverage mass like that up to speed!"
"What am I looking for?" you ask as you dig around the back.
"I don't know. Just toss everything!"
But nothing makes a difference. "Are you really trying, Joe?" you ask before you can stop yourself.
"Fuck you! Where's that wand? Maybe when it backfired-- Aw, shit! No time, here comes that mask. You'd think it woulda taken all night to copy out his blubber." He dives over and jams his hands back against Germond's neck. "We're down to it now, Will," Joe says in a very serious voice. "It's that spell, or he dies."
"We copied him while he was bleeding out," you counter. "He'd still be bleeding."
"Fake blood."
"A golem bled to death last year, Joe. You remember that."
"We don't even need the mask! Just sheathe him in that shell! We get him close to the hospital, call the paramedics, you get the shell off just before they arrive. You can do that, can't you? You did it to me."
"I used the Libra," you counter. "I'd have to use my hands. This is a spell I really don't want to unlock, Joe."
"You don't use it a first time, or you don't use it a second time. They're equally easy to not do, especially when your purposes are good."
"Our purposes were good when we made a golem of me, and look how that turned out," you retort. But you sense he's right. And now you avoid any kind of cussing as you prepare to transform Paul Germond into a golem.
* * * * *
Now there's no need for speed, and Joe drives carefully and parks a block from the hospital. On the way you meditate on the sigil you used to transform him; you know that, if reversed in the right way, it can undo the effects. You wait until you see the flashing lights of the ambulance before putting your hands onto his neck at the wound; you mutter the complex incantation while summoning up the sigil. Germond loses all his pallor, and blood pours over your hands and through your fingers.
The paramedics get it stanched and get Germond into the ambulance for the very short ride back to the hospital. One of the personnel takes you and Joe aside for a statement, but in the confusion Joe darts away, and you toss your cloak about and sneak after him. Frank picks you up a few hours later after he's dealt with Germond's friend. He's grim, for Nelson had set fire to himself rather than be taken alive.
* * * * *
"We partnered the wrong way on this one," Joe mutters darkly as the three of you--haggard and dirty and unshaven--slouch in the back booth of a pancake house as the sun peeks over the horizon. "Frank coulda stanched Germond's blood, and I coulda got the blaze rod away from Nelson."
"There wasn't any predicting, Joe," Frank says. "And you don't know that Germond didn't make it."
"I mean Will wouldn't have had to--" He flashes you a pained look. "You didn't want to use that spell."
"We tried everything else," you say. "You have any idea why you couldn't--?"
"I told you, it was like we were carrying a couple of stellar masses."
"That's very peculiar, Joe," Frank muses. He looks over at you. "You've still got Nelson's form on file?" he quietly asks.
"You want me to go in and talk to Germond?"
"He's our only lead now on that wand they stole."
"I've got Germond on file too, Frank. Neither of them knew anything."
"They didn't know anything when you copied them. They may have picked up something since then. Why would Germond have been out there, at that time of night?"
It's a good point. An empty cornfield may be just an empty cornfield, but anything at midnight automatically becomes ten percent more sinister.
* * * * *
The three of you return to the college, to resume your undercover roles as students, and renew contact with Germond's and Nelson's friends. When, through them, you learn that Germond will recover, you slip into the house they rent and snag a few of Nelson's clothes and an extra pair of his glasses. Then you make your way to the hospital, where you change in one of the bathrooms.
Germond glares at you when you peek around the door, and ostentatiously looks away as you sit on the edge of his bed. "I came as soon as I could," you mutter. He just frowns. "Well, fuck you too, man. It's no fun out there. I've been having to dodge those creeps."
He gives you a slit-eyed glare, and shrugs. You sit on the chair by his bed and lean close. "Where's the wand?" His lip curls, and he points to the bandage at his neck. "What are you talking about?"
He grabs at a pad and scrawls on it: "BLEW UP."
"Fucking hell. What are we going to do now?" He says nothing. You lean closer. "I've still got that other thing."
He snorts softly and scrawls again. "BFD."
"How come? We could still use it maybe."
"ON WHAT? ELEPHANTS?"
Elephants?
You wish Joe were here; he could improvise questions that might lead to answers. You've only one angle to play, though: "Did you get the rest of that inscription deciphered?"
He gives you a look; maybe Nelson knew the answer before he died. But though Germond won't trust Will Prescott, he doesn't know Nelson is dead and that Prescott is a shapeshifter. So with a shrug he writes out a short Latin phrase. You don't bother to study it, and after some small talk depart his room.
* * * * *
You can only smile ruefully at the brothers' double face palm. "Oh, fuck," Frank moans. "Well, I guess that answers where the blaze rod came from. Shows the inscription was on the level, too. But maybe it was lucky for Germond the wand blew up before he could get a portal open. I don't like to think of his or Nelson's chances against a dragon. And if there were elves on the other side as well--"
"I dunno, Frank," Joe says. "I'd rather meet an elf than accidentally materialize a pocket universe in my colon." He makes a face. "I suppose we better stick around a few days, just in case it comes out of him with a bowel movement."
As it happens, that's the end of it all, and Germond goes on to make a fairly full recovery; and when you check on him a year later find that he's even given up on the RPGs.
To wake from this reverie: "The Boy from Before Everything, Part 2"   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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