The Orient Express
Part 2
[This story was originally posted at silverwolf.substack.com]
“And where is this golem creature now?” asked Simon. He had made Mr. Riverwood repeat everything to him after Samantha had had him summoned from their compartment. “Is it rampaging through Prague? Have you left it in the care of your cleaning lady? Perhaps you’re sharing a compartment with it and it gave you the boot because of your incessant snoring?”
“Don’t be absurd. I’m not inept. I have been able to confine the creature, I just lack the ability to destroy it. I can’t get close enough. I don’t think it likes the look of me.”
“You haven’t answered my question, Mr. Riverwood. Where is it confined?”
“It’s in a large crate in the baggage car.”
“What?!,” exclaimed the Greels in unison.
“Why would you bring it here?” asked Samantha incredulously.
“Well, as you say, I couldn’t simply leave it laying around my lodgings. The cleaning lady could have stumbled upon it. I’m not careless. It cost a small fortune to stow it on board, by the way. It weighs several hundred pounds.”
Simon buried his face in his hands.
“You may have it contained for now,” said Samantha,” but you are meddling with dangerous forces. You have created life where none should exist, in defiance of the natural order. That comes at a great cost; possibly to you, but more likely to innocent strangers, like passengers on a train.”
Simon spoke up.
“That reminds me, Mr. Riverwood, why did you create the creature in the first place? What peril were you combatting?”
“Why, I did it in the spirit of academic inquiry, and to prove to my colleagues that the golem is not a figure of mere legend.”
“Alright Mr. Riverwood, walk us through the rest of your plan. You created a monster that you are unable to control, you managed to trap it and contain it in a crate which you brought to Constantinople where you acquired the means to summon another creature that you believe yourself able of controlling, despite recent evidence to the contrary, and then you boarded a train to return to Prague. Now what?”
“Honestly, you make me out to be an idiot. I’ll have you know that I received top marks from none other than Dr. Professor Ernst Klompfhopf, the renowned orientalist. He said I show great potential in the field of near eastern folklore.”
“My apologies. Now what is your plan?”
“It’s quite simple. I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss. I acquired… erm… borrowed this jinni,” he tapped on the box with his index finger, “from a prominent collector of antiquities, so I’m now on my way back to Prague where I will sequester myself to my rooms, make the necessary preparations for summoning and containing the jinni, and then command it to destroy the golem. And with my two remaining wishes, perhaps I set myself up with a comfortable income.”
The trio shift in their seats as the train entered a turn as it climbed further into the mountains. Simon looked out the window into the darkness. Samantha spoke.
“Your plan sounds terribly well thought out. Well done.” Samantha had come to find that it was often best to be ingratiating toward academics. Natural sycophants, yet they could be so slow to observe the same behavior directed toward them. She continued.
“But have you considered any of the several things that could go wrong? Perhaps that is an inauthentic artifact, or you encounter difficulty with the containment, to name a couple. Would it not be simpler to solicit the aid of someone with … more experience in such matters? A rabbi perhaps?”
The train jolted again as it made another turn. Simon looked out the window again.
“We’re over the pass now,” said Simon to no one in particular.
“I’m beginning to feel insulted. I need no assistance in this matter. I have things quite well in hand. No rabbi alive has even seen a golem, and I doubt whether any are as familiar with the wide body of lore as I am. It is the subject of my dissertation, after all.”
The car shook violently, sending some tableware crashing to the ground from several tables. Mr. Riverwood reached up and pulled the communication cord.
“I imagine the staff are well aware of the problem, sir,” said Simon. “It must have something to do with the train’s unsustainably rapid acceleration.”
Samantha looked out the window and saw that Simon was right. The moon illuminated the trees that rushed past much faster than she’d ever seen before. The train jolted again. She steadied herself on the table. Something urgent occurred to her.
“Mr. Riverwood, this golem creature you have stowed away in the luggage compartment, how were you able to immobilize it?”
“Why does it matter how?”
The train entered a particularly long curve and the trio leaned hard to stay upright. There was a distant crash from further back in the train. It was followed by screams. Panic welled up inside of Samantha, but she pushed it down. She knew fear would get them nowhere.
“Because you may have to do it again.”
More crashes, this time closer, and more screams.
“It was a simple process. I inscribed the inside of the crate with some binding incantations, then I lured the creature into the crate and shut it in, closing the circle, so to speak.”
“What did you use for bait?” asked Simon.
“A goat,” said Mr. Riverwood. “It’s quite a bloodthirsty creature.”
As if on cue another scream rang out.
“I think that putting it back in a box is out of the question at this point,” said Samantha.
Her instincts told her to run. But if she had learned anything from her previous encounters with the monsters that lurk at the edges of reality, it would take more than that to get out of this situation alive. She continued.
“Does this creature have any weaknesses?”
“None that I could find. I was planning to let the jinni sort that out.”
The carriage lurched suddenly. With their minds on the more pressing emergency, it caught the three unaware. Mr. Riverwood and Samantha both tumbled to the floor. The box that Mr. Riverwood believed contained the jinni slipped from his grasp and clattered to the far wall. The lid flew off the box and an earthy red object the size of a child’s shoe rolled out on to the floor.
Simon, Samantha, and Mr. Riverwood looked back and forth at each other, each trying to figure out what to do now faced with either a potential disaster or a potential solution, depending on the perspective. A scream, resounding like a starter’s pistol, sent them into action. Simon leapt from his chair as Samantha and Mr. Riverwood each lunged for the terracotta lamp. Mr. Riverwood got a hold of it first, clamping his hands around it, but Simon and Samantha quickly grabbed onto his hands before he could wrest the lamp away. The Greels held fast to Mr. Riverwood without any apparent concern about breaking the lamp, while Mr. Riverwood closed his eyes and began to mutter between grunts of effort.
Simon and Samantha realized in unison what was happening, but before they could even relax their holds on Mr. Riverwood, the room was consumed with blinding light.