The Cottoncrest Curse: A Novel

Chapter 49

173 1893 Chapter 49 The frost crunched under his boots as Jake made his way through the marshy woods. The sky had cleared as the temperatures had dropped, and now, an hour or so before dawn, the moon cast a bright blue glow. Jake had slept the night only in fits and spurts. It wasn’t that he had been cold. The light October freeze was nothing like the hard winters in Russia. He was used to cold, and the uncured bearskin had kept him pleasantly warm, even if it was muddy, smelly, and itchy. It was dreams and concerns that disturbed his slumber, not fear. He could live with fear. There was nothing more fearful than escaping Russia under the skirts of women on the train, trying not to breathe when the Cossacks stalked through the cars or when the Czar’s militia clattered through in their sharply shined shoes, intimidating everyone. He could live with fear now. But the concerns were something else. Jake had been on the run so much with Marcus, moving so fast, that he hadn’t really had time to think. But once Marcus had gone and Jake had settled under the tree, hidden in the darkness, the impact of the day’s events finally struck him fully and caused his thoughts to turn again and again to the Colonel Judge and Rebecca. He would never see them again. He would never have another earnest discussion with the Colonel Judge. They would never talk again of religion. Of man’s ability to hate those he does not wish to understand and inability to love those he should hold the dearest. Of the things that make us most human and those that cause us to do the most inhumane things. And Jake would never have Rebecca’s beauty and warmth near him again. Two gone and two lost. That was why he had to speak to Jenny. That 174 was why he had to see her again. He had spent the night wondering if Marcus had found Jenny and Sally and, if he had, how the three of them would get to New Orleans with all the commotion that must be going on in Parteblanc. And when Jake did drift off, his dreams were disturbing. The girl in New York, with the red spreading across her blouse, had appeared. Before, whenever he had thought of her, it had been with a feeling of yearning. He had contemplated a thousand times her dark eyes and smooth skin, creating a face as perfect as Eve’s must have been in the Garden of Eden or as entrancing as Bathsheba’s must have been to King David. Although Jake had seen her only once at that party, in his mind was a perfect image of her, one he could recall at a moment’s notice— her blouse as white and pure as a Torah cover, her long skirt as blue as a new prayer book in the shul. But last night, the red spreading across her white blouse was not the wine he had spilled from her glass when he had accidentally bumped into her. In his dreams the red was blood. Endless streams of blood, staining her white blouse crimson, pouring over her dress and onto the floor, and spreading into thick pools that threatened to fill the room. Barrels of blood poured from her slit throat. And behind her, instead of her mother, there was a golem, a creature of mud and evil, shrieking with glee, “Verem essen toiterhait un deiges lebedikerhait.” Worms eat you up when dead, and worries eat you up alive. At Jake’s own elbow at the party was not his brother, Moshe, but another golem, who held a long knife in his wicked, oozing fingers. He thrust the blade into the girl’s breast, screaming with horrific delight, “Tsores tsezegen di hartz.” Troubles cut the heart. Again and again, the golem shoved the knife into her bosom as blood spurted in rivers. They were now swimming in blood. They were in a sea of blood, and it threatened to drown them, but the golem’s laughter only increased, echoing insanely over and over. Jake had awoken with a start, the cackling of the golem still resounding in his head. After that he tried to stay awake, for when he closed his eyes for even a minute, the dream returned, and he would again be treading in blood to the golem...