This thought depressed him somewhat.
“I’m hoping I can convince you to come around and see us sometime,” Father Paul said. “I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t encourage you a little.”
“Uh.”
“I know how busy you students are, but it’s often just these busy times when students need to take a break from the frenzy of the semester and refocus on something spiritual and calming. We have a surprisingly large congregation.”
“Oh.”
“I’d like you to have something.”
Father Paul pushed something into Allen’s hand. He looked down into his open palm and saw a velvet jewelry box. He opened it and saw a silver crucifix.
“That’s a little welcome gift we present to all of our Catholic students,” the priest told him. “We want people to know we’re here and that we care.”
Allen took the crucifix from the box. It wasn’t small; it was heavy, maybe solid silver. Allen had a hard time believing they gave out one of these to every Catholic on campus. He started to hand it back to the priest. “I think this might be too much. I don’t feel right.”
“No, no, please don’t worry,” Father Paul said. “We pay for them out of the orphan fund.”
Allen blinked.
“That’s a joke, Allen.”
Allen smiled weakly. “Sorry.”
“There’s no obligation,” Father Paul said. “Why don’t you wear it?”
“Well, I don’t generally-”
“Wear it, Allen.” The priest put a firm hand on Allen’s shoulder, and an abrupt gravity descended upon the conversation. “You’d be surprised how such a simple gesture can bring… comfort.”
Father Paul’s firm gaze held him a second, and Allen’s mouth fell open, speechless. What the hell’s going on here?
Allen was about to firmly insist he didn’t want the crucifix when a piercing scream split the night.
“Penny!” Allen dropped his wine and ran for the line of trees. He plunged into the woods along the narrow hiking path. “Penny!”
Thin branches slapped his face in the darkness. Allen winced but kept running. He turned a corner and smacked into somebody coming fast from the other direction. They both tumbled, went into the bushes. Allen stood, reached for the person with whom he’d collided, and pulled her to her feet.
Blanche threw herself on Allen. “Oh, my God, oh, my God.” Hysterical. Gulping for breath.
Allen shook her by the shoulders. “Where’s Penny?”
“My God, it’s awful. He’s dead. He’s-he’s been-it’s-” She shook her head frantically, the sobbing coming back double.
He’s dead, she’d said. Not Penny. Allen shook her again by the shoulders, thought about slapping her like he’d seen people do in the movies. “Who’s dead, Blanche?”
Blanche made a new, even shriller, panicked sound, pushed away from Allen, and ran back in the direction of the party.
Allen followed the path in the other direction, but he didn’t run now. His feet felt leaden. Fear sweat broke out on his forehead, and silver moonlight filtered through the thin canopy of leaves overhead. With Blanche’s hysterical keening fading into the background, an eerie silence blanketed the woods. The bird chirps, the rustle of leaves, and the scurrying of squirrels had all been swallowed by the pall of dread that had suddenly sunk its claws into the landscape.
Allen stopped walking, his breathing coming shallow. He looked back over his shoulder.
No. Keep going. Penny is still out here someplace.
He made himself jog forward, his footfalls crunching leaves so loudly that the sound seemed obscene. A smallish clearing opened before him, and he immediately saw the body lying on the ground, looking waxlike and unreal in the moonlight. Allen took three quick steps toward the body and froze.
The head was missing.
Allen approached more slowly, fighting down a wave of nausea. A bit of spine stuck out from the ragged neck hole, as if the head had been twisted off savagely and suddenly. Blood still oozed like raspberry syrup. A thick, wet coppery smell permeated the air. Allen didn’t need the man’s face to identify the body. The bomber jacket told the story.
Kurt Ramis, Blanche’s loudmouthed boyfriend.
Allen briefly fantasized about Blanche flying into a rage at Kurt’s infidelity, wrapping her arms around his neck, and wrenching Kurt’s head free of his body.
Unlikely.
Who the hell could do such a thing?
Allen heard a rustling in the bushes to his left. His head jerked around to see, and his body froze. He heard it before he saw it, a breathing and snorting, and then the low growl. Something in Allen’s bowels went watery.
It poked its head through the bushes. Eyes glowed like green fire; he saw a muzzle and pointed ears, red-brown fur standing out in spikes. A dog, an enormous dog of some kind, growling, drool dripping from gigantic fangs. No. Not a dog.
A wolf.
It was gigantic, dwarfed any wolf he’d ever seen at the zoo. It snarled, lips peeled back to display two rows of yellow teeth. It crouched low, and Allen could almost feel its muscles tense, the powerful creature poised to spring.
He remembered his grandfather saying never to run from a dog. They sense fear. Make eye contact. Back it down.
Allen very much doubted his grandfather’s advice applied in this situation.
It’s going to jump on me now. It’s going to eat me. Holy shit, I’ve got two seconds to live what the hell am I going to-
Voices from back down the path, several coming toward him. A group, many talking in frantic voices.
The wolf cocked its head toward the sound, listened a split second, then turned tail and vanished into the woods, departing with impressive speed.
A mob formed behind Allen. A girl screamed. Allen recognized Father Paul’s voice saying, “Dear God!”
A heavy hand on his shoulder. Dr. Evergreen. “Jesus, what the hell happened here?”
Allen’s head was spinning, his gaze still fixed on the patch of bushes where he’d seen the beast. “I have absolutely no idea.”
FIVE
Let us leave Gothic State University and its people and environs a moment, and let us travel across the country, across time zones, the Atlantic Ocean, to Europe, and a small cobblestone street in the Jewish Quarter of Prague in the Czech Republic.
A side note: An alarming number of people still refer to it as Czechoslovakia. It’s a republic now. I digress.
The Jewish Quarter, or Josefov. Full of old-world charm and souvenir stands. Tourists simply went apeshit for old-world charm and souvenir stands, and nothing said “old-world charm” like a plastic replica of the Old-New Synagogue perched atop a plastic base with little Czech flags around the edges and a hole on one side for sharpening pencils. The Old-New Synagogue on Maiselova Street was the oldest in Europe still actively used as a house of prayer. The spiritual zeal of the Quarter was probably best expressed by a T-shirt that read, “Prague Oy!” and was available in all sizes at a nearby kiosk. In a narrow house next to a jewelry store, mere steps from this temple of worship, lived the disgraced rabbi, Abraham Zabel.
Zabel was something of a wizard, and he sold his occult powers to the highest bidder.
There was good money in this.
Zabel is about to entertain an unhappy client.
Let’s watch.
Abraham Zabel sat at the old scratched desk in the small office of his Josefov house. It was going on evening, and the steady din from the street of hucksters roping in tourists had relented somewhat. He thought often of giving up the house for someplace quieter in the suburbs, but the Jewish Quarter was too perfect, too close to places he needed to visit, people he needed to stay in contact with for his business. The tourists would remain a minor annoyance.
He poured himself a glass of port and returned his attention to his journal, a combination diary and appointment book. On Thursday he had a demon banishing, but then he was free for the weekend. He relished the time off but was concerned that business had been slow. Well, no worry. It would eventually pick up again. It always did.
The dark arts were ever in demand.
He opened an intricately carved wooden desktop humidor and removed a thin cigar, lit it with a thin silver lighter. The humidor was carved with symbols from ancient Hebrew-various warding spells and protections. Zabel doubted the spells retained any potency, but the box looked nice, and it was convenient for the cigars.
A knock at his office door startled him. It meant someone had let themselves into his locked home. Zabel thought briefly of the small revolver in his bottom desk drawer but decided to leave it. He was well protected in the little office. Zabel was a cautious man.
He was about to tell his visitor to enter when the door swung open and a man entered. Zabel knew him: Pascal Worshamn, a client. He had bright blue eyes, alert and energetic, and a smooth pink face that made him look youngish, although the dusting of gray over his ears told his real age.
“Hello, Pascal.” Zabel motioned to the small chair on the other side of his desk. “A seat?”
Pascal didn’t sit. “We haven’t concluded our business, Zabel.”
Zabel spoke good Czech and passable German, but he’d been born in Brooklyn to Czech immigrants. Pascal was from some upper-crust place in London, so the conversation went on in English.
“I told you on the phone,” Zabel said. “You get what you pay for.”