Joe Golem and the Drowning City: An Illustrated Novel Read Online Free Page A

of one of the crumbling, underwater buildings far Downtown, where fools and adrenaline junkies liked to dive inside the ruins of structures that were completely submerged.
    Once, Felix had also found the ghost of Sarah Mendehlson’s father, who had died of cancer in his East Twenty-fifth Street apartment after refusing to leave the Drowning City and go Uptown to a hospital. Not that they could have cured him, but they might have given him years more, or at least made him comfortable. Mrs. Mendehlson’s father had assured her, through Felix, that he was content with the decision he had made.
    Mr. Mendehlson did not share his wife’s faith in Felix. No matter how many times the conjuror had given the woman information only her dead loved ones could know, Mr. Mendehlson would never allow himself to be convinced.
    When she had first come to live and work here, Molly had also had her doubts. More than doubts, really. She had been certain that Felix was little more than an aging confidence man skilled at parting fools from their money. She had met plenty of scam artists during the years she’d spent on the street. Over time, however, she had found that she had no choice but to accept the truth of Felix’s gift, not only because of the things she had seen to convince her, but also because of her growing trust in and love for the man himself.
    Now that time had passed, and she had watched Felix at work so many times, Molly’s belief in him had become immutable. The truth of his work came in his utter surrender to the spirits who communicated through him. Perhaps Mr. Mendehlson could not accept it because Felix had once been a stage magician, and his work had been an artful deception. Or perhaps it was because it would hurt Mr. Mendehlson too much to acknowledge that his son’s ghost still lingered in the ether around the Drowning City, not quite ready to move on.
    At first, when Molly had accepted the truth—that Felix could speak to the spirits of the dead—it had unnerved her to think that ghosts might be all around her and she would never know. But in time she had realized that the spirits of the dead were not the things she ought to fear. If ghosts existed side by side with the living … if souls lingered after death … then she had to admit to herself the probability that other things existed as well. Dark things.
    The windows were open only a crack and a light breeze swirled through the room, disturbing the curtains. The painted eyes of dozens of statues and paintings of saints and virgins watched over the proceedings, the one element of Felix’s work that actually was a charade. When Molly had begun to understand what it was Felix did here, she had insisted that the religious imagery would give clients more faith in his abilities, and thus make them more open to the spirits they sought to contact. To Felix, his gift was entirely ordinary and a séance could be conducted anywhere, but Molly had persuaded him that others did not view contact with the spirits as so commonplace, and that clients needed assurance that what he did was extraordinary.
    Now, standing in the eastern corner of the room, Molly looked around and admired her handiwork in the séance room. Enough morning light seeped in to cast a pleasant, warm glow, but around the table the shadows seemed to shift and eddy like the breeze, or the currents in the street below.
    The entire theater creaked and moaned like the timbers of an old sailing ship, a result of the water flowing in and out of the lower floors, so that it felt as if the entire building breathed in and out around them. Normally Molly found it soothing, but today she had sensed something off from the moment the séance had begun.
    She might have spoken up, but Felix had always made it clear that hers was a supportive role, and that she was never to interrupt a séance in progress. Her presence there in the corner was meant as a reassurance to clients that Felix did not engage in any