The Call Read Online Free PDF Page B

face?”
    â€œThere you go, that’s exactly right, dude; I want to see the real you.”
    The face, the mask—whatever it was—melted.
    â€œYaaaahhh!” Mack cried, and fumbled behind him for the door handle.
    The face that looked very much like his own had grown darker, lumpier, cruder. Dirty. In fact, more than dirty: it was dirt.

    Mack was staring at a thing made of mud. Like something a child would make playing in the dirt. Only full-size. And wearing his clothes.
    The dirt creature had a mouth but no eyes. No teeth in that mouth, just a horizontal slit.
    Mack’s fingers were numb on the doorknob. His whole body was tingling from the effect of hormones flooding his system with the urgent desire to get out .
    But he couldn’t turn away. He couldn’t stop staring at the mud face and the mud hands. There even seemed to be bits of gravel and small twigs in that mud face.
    When the thing opened its mouth, Mack swore he saw a piece of paper, maybe the size of a Post-it, but curled up in a tube.
    â€œOkay. Let’s try the other face again,” Mack whispered.
    Slowly the mud grew pink. The slit of a mouth formed lips. Eyes like mucous globules formed in the right places and slowly acquired semihuman characteristics. Hair sprouted, looking at first like an eruption of earthworms before it settled down and became hair.
    Mack whistled softly. There was no doubt in his mind that this, this, this… thing …was related to the ancient man with the ancient smell.
    â€œI’ve finally gone crazy, haven’t I?” Mack said. “I guess it was just a matter of time.”
    He had the absurd thought at that moment that he still had homework to do. It was right there on his desk.
    â€œDude. Or whatever you are…actually, what are you? Let’s start with that.”
    â€œI am a golem.”
    â€œGollum?”
    â€œGolem.”
    â€œOkay. How do you spell that?”
    The golem raised its eyebrows, which kind of stretched its eyelids upward, revealing more eyeball than was right. “G-O-L-E-M.”
    Mack sidled past the creature and slid into his desk chair. He opened his laptop and clicked on the browser icon.
    He typed the word golem into the Google search box. The first hit was Wikipedia.
    Mack scanned down the page.
    â€œYou’re Jewish?” he asked the golem.
    â€œI’m whatever you are,” the golem answered.
    â€œBut golems, they’re a Hebrew thing, originally. An incomplete being made of clay.”
    Mack was just beginning to get the idea that having a golem could be useful. He hadn’t quite worked out how, but he was sensing an opportunity there.
    â€œDo you have superpowers?”
    The golem shrugged. “I am made to be you.”
    Mack pushed back from the computer, swiveled his desk chair, and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.
    â€œWhy are you here?”
    â€œI am here to replace you.”
    That didn’t sound good. “Um…what?”
    â€œWhile you are away, I will take your place here.”
    â€œAm I going somewhere?”
    The golem smiled, revealing its creepy tooth thing and a hint of the little paper scroll. “You are going everywhere.”

Seven
    T he golem was supposed to spend the night on the floor beside Mack’s bed. Mack had sneaked an extra blanket and one sheet from the linen closet in the hallway. But when Mack woke up the next morning, he was looking at the golem.
    It took him a few seconds to become oriented. He swatted the sheets beside him to ensure that he was in fact lying on his back—that he was faceup, and that his eyes were pointed in that same direction.
    The golem was awake, too.
    â€œDude. Golem. Why are you on the ceiling?”
    The golem was apparently quite at ease on the ceiling. He was lying on his back, mirroring Mack. But not quite directly above because there was a ceiling fan in the way.
    â€œShould I come down?”
    â€œI kind