Joe Golem and the Drowning City: An Illustrated Novel by Mike Mignola Christopher Golden Page A

trapped.
    “Maybe you’d better explain that,” Joe said.
    Molly shrugged. “You’d have to be with him all the time to notice, but Felix isn’t well.”
    “He’s an old man,” Mr. Church said, as if the irony were entirely lost on him.
    “It isn’t just that,” Molly said. “He goes through periods where he’s very weak and pale. When he’s at his worst, he goes out to Brooklyn Heights. He likes to walk the paths there. When he comes home, he’s healthy again. Still an old man, but stronger and not so pale. He laughs and tells jokes and tries to teach me card tricks.”
    As she said this last, her voice cracked with emotion. She bit her lower lip.
    “Interesting,” Mr. Church said, as though he hadn’t noticed her pain and worry. “Something there is replenishing his vitality.”
    “The Pentajulum?” Joe asked. “But we’ve searched.”
    “Near his mother’s grave,” Mr. Church replied. “The place goes on forever. It could be elsewhere in the cemetery.”
    “I followed him once,” Molly said. “He does visit his mother’s grave, but at least half his time is spent at this other spot, under a big old tree. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, and it’s growing right out of a grave.”
    Molly frowned and shook her head. “Look, obviously you want this Pentaju-whatever. But you said you would help me find Felix.”
    “And we will,” Mr. Church said. “We’re not the only ones trying to find Lector’s Pentajulum. There is another force at work in this city—a sinister presence—and I believe that he is the one who sent those creatures to abduct your friend this morning. He wants Felix Orlov because he believes Felix knows where to find the Pentajulum.”
    Steam pluming from his nostrils, Mr. Church reached a hand into the elevator.
    “Come with me.”
    Molly took Mr. Church’s hand and let him guide her. His skin felt rough and dry, but oddly warm, and his grip was gentle as he escorted her a dozen feet down a short corridor to a large wooden door banded with metal straps.
    They both stood aside as Joe hauled on the latch, then dragged the creaking door open. A fine, chilly mist billowed out and Molly was ushered through that light mist and into a small, circular stone chamber. She shivered at the sudden, precipitous drop in temperature, and had a moment to wonder how they kept the room so cold before she blinked away the mist and saw the room in its entirety.
    “What is this place?” she asked, eyes wide.
    Overhead, light shone through a many-paneled dome of darkly tinted glass that reminded Molly of drawings she had seen of a spider’s eye. On one side of the chamber pipes jutted up from the floor, then branched off to run in complicated patterns along the curvature of the wall. But her focus was drawn to the opposite wall, where a complex array of machinery sat untended. So many pipes led into and out of the row of bizarre instruments that they reminded Molly of some twisted church organ. Some of the pipes steamed with heat and others were frosted with an icy rime.
    Glass and metal gauges festooned the riot of machinery. In the center of the room, a pendulum swung slowly over a map of the city that had been painted on the floor. Pumps sighed and motors clanked. Some of the gauges showed needles pinned dangerously into red warning status, while others seemed to show no stress at all.
    Joe took the cigarette from behind his ear and lit it, the orange glow of its tip flaring to life at the touch of a match.
    “What is all of this?” Molly asked.
    “I spent decades creating these instruments,” Mr. Church said. The old detective shuffled to the nearest machine and tapped the glass of a gauge. It hissed steam from a vent, but the needle fell safely back into the green and a second plume jetted from its exhaust pipe. “With them, I monitor the supernatural climate of the city. I am able to track spikes in occult energy—any changes in the pattern—and often in advance of