One of the Staffeln grinned, hefted a broken brick, and hurled it with deadly aim, smashing the center of the silversmith’s forehead. He collapsed, surely dead.
The men fired their rifles into the air, but I was sure they would choose other targets soon. When the rotund baker shook his fist and cursed them, the Staffelfuhrer turned in his seat in the staff car, raised his Luger, and shot the baker in the chest.
“Burn the synagogue,” Schein ordered. “That’s where they plot against us!” His men tossed kerosene lanterns against the synagogue door, smashed more windows.
Rachel ran into the street, crying, screaming in her little-girl voice for the Nazis to stop. The terrified rabbi grabbed her and pulled her back, but she’d already drawn the Nazis’ attention. They spotted, and recognized, the man they had beaten only days earlier.
“Please don’t hurt her!” Rabbi Schulmann cried, but the Nazis raised their guns.
I had seen mob hatred before, had faced it and barely survived. The Nazis were destructive and dangerous, more organized than unruly town peasants and capable of causing far more damage. I would have preferred to stay in my tailor shop and not get involved; that would have been the smart thing to do.
I may be large, I may look ungainly, my hands and limbs stitched together from mismatched parts, but Victor had done his work well, and I could move with predatory speed and power. I lunged forward to place myself in front of the rabbi and Rachel.
The Nazis opened fire.
I felt the impact of three rifle bullets and a much smaller caliber handgun bullet. My chest caught the deadly projectiles, preventing them from harming anyone else. The hot bullets damaged skin and muscles, but my body had already been dead once and would not so easily be brought back to death.
The Nazis had fired first. Now it was my turn.
Paying no heed to the spreading fires, the astonished crowd, or the arrogant sneer on the Nazi faces, I was upon the nearest SS man. I grabbed his rifle and yanked it free with such force that three of his fingers snapped; I heard a sickening pop as his shoulder dislocated.
I brought the butt of the rifle down so hard in the center of his face that it caved in his skull, just like the old silversmith’s. Then I swung the rifle sideways and shattered the spine of a second man.
I charged over to the two Staffeln who were now scrambling off their motorcycles. With one hand on each, I grabbed them by the lip of their helmets, yanked them up — I think one neck broke instantly. The other soldier flailed and thrashed, but I slammed them down to the street. Then I picked up one of the motorcycles, raised it high over my head, and brought it down onto them, crushing both. In moments, I had dispatched all the Staffeln, none of whom had a chance to fire another shot.
Last was Staffelfuhrer Schein. He stared at me with round eyes and gaping mouth. I think he had shot his Luger at me several times, but I hadn’t even felt the bullets. I grabbed the pistol and the hand that held it, and turned the weapon. I meant to bend Schein’s arm at the elbow, but bent the middle of his wrist instead. It didn’t matter. I jammed the Luger’s hot barrel up under his chin and crushed my fingers around the trigger, firing off another shot that went through the top of his head.
Only fifteen seconds had passed.
Though the fires continued to burn in the synagogue and chunks of broken glass fell out of the smashed windows, the silence around me seemed deafening. I turned. There were several bullet holes in my own garments, but they could be easily repaired with a few neat stitches.
What I could not fix, though, was the fear and horror with which Rabbi Schulmann and his people now regarded
“What have you done?” the rabbi asked softly.
“Saved you.” How else could I respond?
“Maybe … maybe not.” The rabbi shook his head, as if paralyzed by a nightmare. “What are you?”
Now my own hiding of the truth, my own erasure of my unnatural past, was laid bare before them. They saw my ugliness, saw the scars, and quickly classified me as “not one of us.” Even though I had helped them, stood against their enemies, saved them from the attack of these monsters, they regarded me with fear. Even Rachel.
“He’s the golem,” she said.
“You killed the Nazis,” said the rabbi. “Now they’ll come back for us and take their vengeance tenfold. They will retaliate, kill us all.”
I knew, though, that Ingolstadt had only a small Nazi garrison, a minimal presence, and I had killed all of them. It would take days, perhaps as much as a week, before the district leader began to wonder what had happened to Schein and his men. We would have time … if the people let me.
I glanced up at the murky dark sky. There was no moon tonight. I had to hope that the other citizens of Ingolstadt wouldn’t take it upon themselves to attack the Jewish quarter in retaliation for the news of the recent assassination.
“I have an idea,” I said. “We will need blankets to cover them.” As if they were no more significant than the doll I had repaired for Rachel, I picked up the dead Nazis and tossed them into the staff car, piling them like cordwood. “We can dispose of the bodies, get rid of the car and motorcycles. No one ever has to know.”
“We all know,” the rabbi said.
“And you’ll be alive to know it.” I looked down at Staffelfuhrer Schein, who lay atop the pile of bodies. He reminded me too much of how Victor had looked after I’d strangled him up in the frozen sea. I felt no satisfaction, no relief, barely even a sense of justice.
Frau Schulmann was sobbing, as were several others in the street. Finally, some went to fight the spreading fires and save the synagogue. Others went to tend to the bodies of those the Nazis had killed.
“This will get much worse for us,” the rabbi said, his voice hollow. “If you were a real golem, I could remove the bit of scripture that reanimated you, the spark of life.” He shook his head. “But I don’t have that power. I don’t know where you come from. I can only ask you to go away and leave us alone. We don’t want you here — you’re too dangerous.”
The Jews were afraid of me, but at least they didn’t have pitchforks and torches. I would do them one last favor, then I would be gone to find someplace up in the rugged mountains.
I looked once more at Rachel, but the little girl did not look back at me. Her rag doll had fallen onto the street.
I gathered every remnant of Staffelfuhrer Schein and his men, then drove away in the staff car, out of Ingolstadt and up the rutted dirt road that led to the abandoned, creaking mill, where winds whistled through broken windows. I piled the bodies inside the old mill, then set fire to the old structure. I do not like dangerous, unpredictable fire, but this brought more satisfaction than terror. As the windmill blazed into the dark sky, it seemed very appropriate to me — a different sort of ending. This time,
I set off in the staff car, driving away into the rugged mountains, far from Ingolstadt. I intended never to return — although I had said the same thing a century before.
Hours later, when the car was nearly out of gas, I found a pull-off by a steep cliffside, tossed the motorcycles off the cliff, and pushed the empty vehicle over, where it tumbled off into the darkness. Even if the wreckage was eventually found, no one would ever know the answers.
Still feeling no pain from where I’d been shot, no weariness despite the labors of the night, I trudged up into the empty high valleys and isolated crags. I didn’t care about the cold glaciers or windswept basins. I just needed to find a place where I would be alone … where I belonged.
RATTLER AND THE MOTHMAN
by Sharyn McCrumb
I’M NOT GOING TO SAY that he didn’t look dangerous, because he did.
Now, I don’t hold with talking to dead people, though it seems I have to do it often enough. And worse,
