The Inquisitor's Apprentice

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. Gone, All Gone

THE MINUTE SACHA stepped into his apartment, he knew something was terribly wrong.

Mrs. Lehrer was sitting in a chair with her head bowed to her knees. Mrs. Kessler was gently stroking her hair and whispering “shush, shush,” as if she were soothing a baby. Everyone else was hovering over the two of them as if Mrs. Lehrer were an unexploded bomb that no one could figure out how to defuse safely.

“Someone stole her coat,” Bekah whispered to Sacha.

“The coat? What about the money?”

“Gone, all gone.”

Sacha stared, horrified. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself wearing the money coat, dancing with Mrs. Lehrer in front of the lighted window. Anyone standing in the street looking up at them would have thought it was his coat. And someone had been standing in the street watching them. Or something.

Sacha felt sick. What had he done? How could he ever forgive himself for bringing this trouble on his family? He knew he had to do something … but every time he tried to think about it a dull fog of despair and confusion settled over his brain.

“Shush,” Mrs. Kessler murmured, still stroking Mrs. Lehrer’s hair. “Shush!”

But Mrs. Lehrer pushed her hand away and stood up. “It’s all right,” she said in a dull, hollow voice that sounded like it was coming from somewhere deep underground. “I never would have been able to spend that money anyway. I’ve known for years there was no one left to send it to.”

Then she walked across the room and sat down at her sewing machine and picked up the next shirtwaist from the towering pile of piecework that was always there waiting for her.

The rest of them stared at one another with stunned, frightened expressions on their faces. Sacha could almost see the unasked questions hanging in the air. What was the woman going to do now that someone had stolen the very purpose of her life? And should they try to make her talk about it? Or was this one of those things in life that just got worse from talking?

Mrs. Lehrer was still at the sewing machine when they all crept miserably off to bed.

Sacha didn’t know how long he slept, but he woke up with a terrible fear twisting the pit of his stomach. It was dark. Outside the windows, Hester Street lay so still and silent that he knew it must be three or four in the morning.

What a nightmare he’d had! He’d been lost in a bleak and terrible darkness that stretched out hopelessly for all eternity. What horror to be trapped in such a place, never to laugh or love or to feel the warmth of friends and family! The worst thing of all had been the knowledge — though he couldn’t say how he knew it — that he hadn’t lost his life. It had been stolen from him. And the thief was walking free in the sunlight, wearing Sacha’s clothes and body, tricking Sacha’s family into loving him.

But it was only a dream after all! Bekah lay sleeping beside him; he could hear her breathing and make out the shape of her cheek in the faint light from the street lamp. His mother and father lay just beyond her. On his other side Grandpa Kessler was snoring away like a kettle at the boil.

Sacha sighed with relief and nestled into the thick feather bed. He was already half asleep when he saw a flash of movement in the shadows and heard the unmistakable sound of a footfall.

It must be Mordechai coming home late again, he told himself.

But Mordechai was already home. Sacha could hear him snoring over on his mattress by the door, a sprightly tenor accompanying Grandpa Kessler’s thundering basso. Besides, this shadow was smaller than Mordechai. And it had come in not through the door, but through the open window from the fire escape.

Sacha watched, paralyzed by fear, as the figure padded around the room. It seemed to be looking for something. It searched among the hooks along the wall that held the family’s scant clothing. It seemed to search by smell, not sight; it snuffled among the hanging clothes like a dog hunting for a scent. It pulled something out. A shirt, maybe. Sacha couldn’t see clearly and was too terrified to raise his head. then it started back toward the window.

Halfway there it stopped and wavered in the middle of the room as if it couldn’t decide what to do next. Then it turned toward the bed.

It was staring straight at Sacha now. He closed his eyes and tried to slow his breathing so that it matched the rhythm of the rest of the family sleeping on either side of him.

Silence.

Then stealthy, halting footsteps that came toward the bed and paused as the dybbuk leaned over him.

Its breath was cold enough to stop clocks. But its touch was colder still, as cold and soft and heartbreaking as the first winter snow on a newborn’s grave. Gently, gently, it ran a finger along his cheek. It touched his hair. It touched the hand that lay outside the blanket.

Then it was gone.

Sacha lay awake, silent and terrified, until the dawn broke through the windows and his mother rose to stoke the cook-stove. He washed and dressed with fingers more clumsy from fear than cold. He watched tensely as the rest of his family got up and dressed and took their hats and coats and mufflers off the hook … until he was quite sure that the only missing piece of clothing was his own second-best shirt.