They’re... I’m not sure what they are, but they’re certainly not alive. One is dressed in a tattered pair of trousers and a shirt that gapes at the neck, showing greyish skin stretched over protruding bones, while the other has a ratty nest of hair trailing over their shoulder and is wearing an equally tatty dress.
“Are they... dead?”
“They don’t look alive to me,” Jack replies, not bothering to keep his voice down.
As if to contradict him, their heads both snap toward us, and they peer at us with bare sockets in place of eyes.
Aster sniffs the air and shakes his head, tugging at my hand to try to stop me from getting any closer, but Jack is staring at the figures with intense focus.
“I think they might be golems,” Jack says. “They’re not alive, but it feels like they’re channeling someone’s magic.
“What do you think they’re for?”
“Dark magic fuckery,” Jack says. “I can feel it wafting off them.” He glances over at me. “You think it’s a coincidence they're on either side of that door?”
I cock my head to the side. “You think they’re guards?”
Aster slips on the spectacles once again and gives a slow nod.“It looks like Kit is this way. Do we think they’re going to attack us if we try to go between them?”
“Only one way to find out.”
Before I have the chance to argue that going any closer seems a really shortsighted way of testing things out, Jack’s charging onward. I’m expecting the golems to attack, or at least block the entry to the door, to do something to show they’re guarding the door like Jack suggested.
In unison, they both take a step forward and—
Suck in air through their noses. Sniffing.
Sniffing Jack.
They then jerkily bend at the waist, their movements stilted and unnatural as though they are marionettes on an invisible string.
“Are they... bowing?”
It’s disturbing, whatever they’re doing. My skin fizzles with unease, and I grip Aster’s hand tightly.
“I don’t like this,” he says.
“Me neither.”
But Jack’s continuing on through the door between the two creepy guards without a backward glance.
“Idiot,” I mutter.
Thump, thump.
Thump, thump.
Then again, Kit’shere. He might even be just through that door, so there’s no way we can stop now.
Something in my expression must tell Aster exactly what I’m thinking. He nods, giving me a bracing smile and clutching my hand even tighter. Together, we step in front of the guards. Again, they sniff the air and instead of bowing, gesture to the doorway, like they’re inviting us inside.
“Creepy fucking doll people,” I mutter once we’re safely past them and inside the old shop.
Inside, it’s dark, and there’s clutter piled all over the floor. Dismantled shelves hang off the walls, and there’s a glass counter against the back wall that’s clouded with age and disuse. But there’s no sign of Jack’s route through the building.
No sign of him at all.
“Jack?” I call.
