We pulled up to the building, getting out and looking at it,
Dean said" When's the last time somebody was in this place?"
Sam said" 65, 70 years ago." We walked to the door and opened it with the key. They were looking around with flashlights, I glowed my eyes and looked around.
" Son of a bitch."
" Look at this. Ham radio, telegraph, switchboard. This was their nerve center."
" Henry did say that they ran dispatch on their own team of hunters. Halfway through their coffee and a game of chess- looks like whoever was manning the hub left quick."
" On the alarm call that ended the men of letters." Dean pushed a switch up, and lights came on, then he pushed the other one up." Son of a bitch." Dean and I walked downstairs to Sam, and looked at the library he was staring at.
" Sammy, Key, I think we found the bat cave."
——
Dean walked in... in a robe,
He said" Morning."
Sam said" Morning."
" The, uh, water pressure in the letters' shower room is marvelous."
" Yeah, I still can't figure out how we even have water... or electricity."
" Yep, well. I am putting that under the ain't broke column. Listen, little brothers, let's not go all geek on this stuff, okay?"
" Geek?"
" Yeah. Yeah, I mean, don't- don't let me wrong. This stuff is awesome, and it looks like they ran a real tight outfit here, but I'm just saying, you know, don't, uh, don't think that they knew some big secrets that we don't know." Dean started messing with a sword, I bit my lip,
" Dean." Dean stopped," They were a secret society."
" Which means that they made crap up and wore fezzes and sashes and swung around scimitars. They probably didn't even sharp-" And Dean nicked himself," That's very sharp."
" Dean, look. I think we might have something here. Something that could help us, help humanity. Henry certainly thought so. I mean, you know damn well we could use a break. What if we finally got one? Are you gonna take off the dead-guy robe?"
I said" He's Dean. That's a no."
——
I was nodding off, sitting sideways in a chair,
Dean said" Hey!"
Sam said" Hey! So... how's Kevin doing?"
" You know. He's okay, I guess. In his corner, hacking out his Da Vinci code. Nothing actionable yet. Garth says hi, by the way. Anything from Cas?"
" No. Not-Not a peep. Why? You?"
" No, he's, uh- he's not answering."
" Right. Well, uh, so I have been trying to chart out the letters' network of hunters, their allies, uh, affiliated groups they worked with, kept files on."
" Circa 1958?"
" Yeah, true. Most are dead or defunct, but others- I'm not so sure. And this one... you should definitely check out."
" The Judah Initiative?"
" European team- they were active during world war 2."
" Really? Hunters fighting in a war- that's cool."
" Not exactly hunters, n-n-not exactly fighting, but, uh..."
" Rabbis. Rabbis? Really?"
" The letters' file on them is sketchy, but, apparently, they were hard-core saboteurs. So, I can a search on the initiative's entire roster, and I got a hit- one rabbi Isaac Bass. He was 17 years old when he joined the initiative and 85 years old when he died... two weeks ago."
I said" In a college town back east, he was capped."
Dean said" Capped?"
" Yeah. He was there doing research, and according to eye witnesses, he spontaneously combusted."
" So... this is a case?" Sam and I nodded," I just got back."
——
We got to the campus, splitting up as usual, Sam went to the library because Dean or myself don't do libraries. Because we get bored way too easily. Dean's interviewing two of the eye witnesses, hot women, of course, because it's Dean. I also saw him being eyed by a dude, which is seriously hilarious.
Once we walked out, Dean was fumbled, I was laughing, his phone rang,
Dean said" Yeah. Huh. Well, uh, the two very hot co-captains of the women's volleyball team agreed that the Rabbi's death was very unnatural. I think we still got a case. You being followed? That's weird. I thought I was being followed earlier. Turned out to be a gay thing. Nothing. You need a hand? Visitor's parking. The boonies. I'll park in the back. 30 minutes." We got into the car, I looked at Dean, oh, this is gonna go fantastically....
Dean and I saw a guy watching Sam fumble the keys,
Dean said" Hey, pal." The guy stood up, and he was huge, like really, really huge... we're dead. I hissed, shifting, then we were lifted up and thrown. I hit a van, falling onto the ground, Dean next to me. I groaned, rolling around," Oh, my spleen."
Sam said" What... the hell... is that?"
The guy from the pub said" He's a golem... well, he's my golem."
" Right."
We walked into a house,
Aaron said" The Rabbi who was murdered, Isaac Bass, he was my grandfather. That's why we're here. When you guys started to follow up on his case, we started following you."
Dean said" So, wait- what you're saying is that you and me- we, uh, didn't have a moment?"
" No, man. I was tailing you."
" Told you I was being followed. He was my gay thing. That was really good. You really had me there. That's very smooth."
" Yeah, well, smooth's just about all I got. What? Yeah, that's right. Keep walking... you chia pet."
Sam said" So, that's a golem?"
" Yes. Shaped from cray and brought to life by rabbis to protect the jewish people in times of- I don't know- general crappiness."
" And he's yours?"
" Hardly. My grandfather left him to me. I'm the last surviving descendant of the members of this... thing, this... initiative."
" The Judah initiative?"
" Right, and he-"
The golem said" Who?!" I shifted as my brothers jumped," Who are they to know about the men of Judah?"
Dean said" It's okay. We are the good guys."
Sam said" We're hunters. Sam, Keir, and Dean Winchester. We know about the Judah initiatives because our grandfather was a man of letters."
It said" Yes. The rabbis knew the men of letters." Aaron handed us beer cans, I opened mine with my fang and took a gulp.
Aaron said" So... your grandfather was into all this supernatural stuff, too."
Dean said" Yeah, grandparents, mom, dad, truckload of cousins- the whole family was lousy for it. But we... never had a golem. We have a Keir, though." I hissed at him,
Sam said" Right. Yeah. We, um, we grew up in it, but you... didn't?"
Aaron said" My grandfather's adventures, the initiative, the golem, the war- they were the stories that he told me when I was a kid. I thought it was a make-believe. So did my parents- you know, fantasies to help him cope with all the horrible stuff he'd seen, but every once in a while, crazy old grandpa Bass, would come back by on one of his trips, hand me a $20 savings bond, and say, one day, you'll inherit the mantle. Sure enough, a few days after he died, this big box shows up at my apartment. He always said I'd know what to do, which was crap, because when I opened that box, this big, naked, potato-faced lunatic wakes up and goes crazy!"
It said" I didn't... go crazy."
" You trashed my entertainment center! And my water bed."
" This boy knows nothing. Observes none of the mitzvahs, labors on sabbath, dines on swine."
" Everybody loves bacon!"
" He's no rabbi. Yifalchunbee!"
" Don't start with that stuff again."
" Yifalchunbee."
" Enough! Please! Quiet time!"
Sam said" All right. What was that? What was he saying?"
" It's Hebrew for something like take charge, but I have no idea what he means. Look, I grew up in short hills. I cheated my way through Hebrew school. I never really listened to my grandfather, what he was saying."
Dean said" So, wait- he just sends you this- this golem and expects you to work it out?"
" He didn't get much chance to prepare me, I guess. My parents- they did everything they could to prevent him from screwing me up with all his crazy talk. See, after the war, my grandfather spent the rest of his life trying to track down something he called the Thule society."
Sam said" The Thule society. Right. They were nazis."
Dean said" Nazi necromancers."
Aaron said" N-Necro-who?"
I said" Uh, necromancer- uh, witches, sorcerers, dark magic, mostly with dead people."
" Okay. All I know about the Thule is that they were this twisted secret fraternity hell-bent on world domination, that sponsored the early days of the Nazi party. My grandfather said the Judah initiative was started to fight them."
It said" And the Thule murdered your grandfather, boy. Find them so I can do my work!" He smashed a table,
" Hey! Hey! We're renting here! Renting. Look... I think my golem's right. My grandfather- he left me this message on my machine the day he died, and he said that he had found something that the Thule were willing to kill him for. He said he was hiding it here in plain sight. He left me this weird- I don't know- equation. It's not a phone number or an address or coordinates... Q-L-6-7-3-W-3-8?" He handed the paper to Dean,
Dean said" Is that a combination?"
Sam said" Oh, it's a call number. Library of congress- their filing system. They use it in college libraries. Uh, Q-L-6-7-3... that's sciences. Uh... birds, I'm guessing. Let's go." He got up, Dean and I smiled then followed behind him.
We broke into the library,
Aaron said" What, do you three just break in wherever you go?"
Dean said" Yeah, well, our dad wanted us to have a solid career to fall back on just in case this hunter thing didn't pan out."
Sam said" Okay, so if I'm right, then I think your grandfather switched manuscripts FD113 out of the archives. I'll be right back." He ran up the stairs, Dean and I sat down on the set of stairs. My face shifted, I looked around, my eyes glowing, I snapped my fangs.
I heard Sam say" Help! Necromancer."
Dean said" Stay here!" We ran to Sam as he fell," Crap." Then Aaron was shot with a dart," Crap! Hey, big guy, they're both gonna die unless we get whoever cast the spell." The golem ran upstairs, I looked at Dean, then pulled the dart out of Aaron. We heard stuff being slammed around, then the golem walked down the stairs with the necromancer in tow.
The necromancer said" Long live... the Thule." The golem snapped his neck like a twig,
" Or not."
We dug up a hole, and threw the body of the necromancer in,
Dean said" That's like a bag of legos. The golem destroyed this guy."
Sam said" Yeah. So Thule society necromancers aside, what's our contingency plan on that?"
" You mean how do we oh, no! Mr. Bill over there?" We started pouring gas into the hole,
" I mean, I'd like to think we could if we had to. Unless you think Aaron can get a handle on him." Dean threw a matchbox into the hole and it caught fire.
——
Dean said" What'd you find out?"
Sam said" I think it's a log book from a Nazi compound in Belarus. It was run by the Thule." I grabbed the coffee handed to me,
Aaron said" This is the red ledger. It was lost in the fire that destroyed the compound. But my grandfather was convinced it had been found after the war."
" Well, it describes the horrible experiments performed on the camp's population... magical experiments."
The golem said" More horrible than words."
" You were there, weren't you? At the camp?"
" I was made in the ghetto of Vitsyebsk to tear that hell down. I broke its walls, its men. The commandant burnt the place to ash around me."
" Okay, um, w-what does it mean when-when you tell Aaron to take charge?"
" The boy would know... if he could consult the pages."
Dean said" Pages? W-What pages?"
Aaron said" When I was-When I was Bar Mitzvahed, my-my grandfather gave me this little old book. It was in Hebrew. It was like an owner's manual for a golem."
" Okay. Great. Get that, then."
" I-I can't... exactly. When I went to high school, I sort of... drifted. I started getting off the academic track, and, uh, I kind of... I kind of smoked it."
The golem said" The boy smoked the pages."
" They were these thin, vellum-y pages. I-I mean, it was perfect for rolling." He's telling the truth," Look, they were driving instructions for a clay man. Okay? It was nonsense. Right? I mean... I- Okay, all right. Look, I'm sorry, okay? Why can't you just tell me what I don't know?!"
" It's not my place to guide the rabbi, to teach the teacher! It's not my place! Yifalchunbee!" It walked away,
Dean said" That's not super-comforting, got to say."
Sam said" So as far as I can tell, these experiments- the Thule were murdering jews, Gypsies. Just about anybody and everybody- then trying to magically reanimate them. They were trying to figure out a way to bring their own dead back to life. Which I'm guessing they figured out because- this... this last page... is a roster of every dead Thule member who was reanimated."
Aaron said" This is why they killed my grandfather?"
Dean said" Anything in there on how to kill it?"
Sam said" Apparently they experimented with that, too. Um- headshot... but if you don't burn the body within 12 hours, it reanimates again."
" Nazi bastards."
Dean ended the call with Garth,
He said" All of Garth's contacts are stumped. Nobody on the circuit's ever even heard of The Thule Society. Whoever these people are, they've been flying beneath the hunter radar. Anything?"
Sam said" Nothing solid. I mean, the lore is all over the place. Uh, according to one legend, um, it can be shut down if you erase one of the letters off its forehead."
" I didn't see any letters on clayface."
" Exactly. So, side-burn that."
I said" Another one- uh, some have a scroll in their mouth you're supposed to rip out."
Dean said" Wouldn't that give him some sort of a lisp or something?"
Sam said" Well, Classically, they're not even supposed to speak. We do know that he took on an entire camp full of heavily armed german soldiers and Thule necromancers and won."
" One badass Hummel figurine."
" That we have no idea how to put back in the box."
" Great."
Aaron said" So that's your plan? Taking out my golem?"
Sam said" It's not a plan."
Dean said" We would just feel a lot better if we knew how. That's all."
Aaron said" What makes you think you have any right to make that decision?"
" Believe me, if we need the right, we will take it."
" Look, he may be a pain in the ass, but he's my responsibility."
Sam said" Look, the golem was built to go to war. You're not trained for that. How are you gonna take that on?"
" I don't know." Then the door busted open, I grabbed the book and put it under a bag. I water-ported to one of the guys and pushed him away from Dean. I hissed, then the barrel of a gun was on my chin, Golem stomped in and grabbed the guy holding Aaron.
A guy said" Enough! There you are, you clay piece of work, after all these years."
Golem said" Eckhart." Then the golem stopped moving, oh, that's great! I was forced to my knees.
" I command you by the covenant of your makers- clay of adam, surrender your bond unto me. So, you are the Golem's rabbi? You woke him... but you didn't take possession of him. You write your name on the scroll, boy. That's how you... yifalchunbee."
Aaron said" I didn't know what he meant."
" Knowledge is power, isn't it?" He slapped Aaron," Now, which of you is going to tell me where I can find a certain Red Ledger?"
Sam said" How about you screw yourself, Nazi Bastard?"
" Can we... could we put the nazi thing aside for the moment and just talk about this like-"
Dean said" Nazi Necromancer Dicks? Pass."
Sam said" So I take it you're the commandant? The one that authorized all those experiments?"
He said" Invented. Those experiments. Thank you."
" So, what about you? I mean, you're not... Undead. You cast a forever-21 spell on yourself? Like your little friend at the library?"
" His name was Torvald. And you will suffer for that." A guy found the damn book,
Dean said" You know, I got to say spell or no spell, he broke easy, so..."
" I'm sorry. So... let me tell you what I see. A magic jew at my feet, not a master in sight, and, finally, our secrets secret once again. Which reminds me of a story. A jew, three gentiles, and a golem walk into a bar... and it doesn't end with them coming out." Aaron hit him over the head with a wooden beam, I made a water bullet, froze it then screeched, it shot into the head of the guy holding a gun on me, Sam and Dean got their guns and shot the other two. But one of them got away," Fools! You can kill me. But you will never kill all the Thule." They both shot him,
Dean said" Well, that's a start. You okay?"
Aaron said" Yeah. Yeah."
We got back to the house, we burned the bodies,
Deans aid" Well, now we know, paper beats golem, fire beats undead nazi zombie freaks."
Sam said" So... what do you say, Aaron? I mean, we got a place we can keep him."
Aaron said" No. I mean, Eckhart might be dead, but you heard him. The Thule are still out there... hidden, active. That's my grandfather. He left me something important. Something only I can do." He wrote his name on the scroll, then put it in the Golem's mouth." It looks like I'm the Judah initiative now."
Golem said" Yifalchunbee."
" B-But I thought I did."
" Yes."
——
I walked into the library, they were drinking whiskey,
I said" Seriously gonna drink that?"
Dean said" Get a glass."
" Death by whiskey... better way to die." I poured a little into a glass, and sat across from Dean, I drank it, scrunching up my face a bit.
" See? You're not dead."
" Yeah, I know. You're still here." He gave me the finger, I raised my eyebrow and returned the kind gesture.