CHAPTER 121

  The Golěm stared at his clay-caked face in the mirror, knowing it was a face he would never see again. The end was near, and thankfully it was exactly the end he had imagined.

  I am The Golěm. My time is almost done.

  Having ascended safely to Gessner’s lab, he was now one level beneath Crucifix Bastion, standing in the small laboratory bathroom.

  At the sink, he studied the three Hebrew letters crudely etched on his forehead. They were faded from perspiration and dust, but the powerful ancient word still resonated.

  אמת

  Truth.

  The Golěm had always known this moment was coming.

  Truth becomes Death.

  As Rabbi Judah Loew had done centuries ago to kill his earthen monster and release him from servitude, The Golěm now pressed his index finger against the thick dried clay—pushing down on the rightmost letter, aleph. Feeling a pang of loss and identity, he scraped his finger downward, chipping off the clay until the letter had vanished.

  As was the ancient protocol, his forehead now bore a different word entirely.

  מת

  The Hebrew word for dead.

  The Golěm felt no different outwardly, and yet he could feel that his inner self, his soul, his consciousness…was beginning to shift. He was preparing to detach from this borrowed body once and for all.

  The Golěm had died many times, and he knew his essence would linger, but he also knew that this time was different. This time, it was his choice.

  I came to this realm…so she could live.

  And soon I must depart…so she can live.

  Today had seen the death of many things.

  The death of Threshold.

  The death of Sasha’s tormenters.

  And soon, the death of The Golěm himself.

  Turning from the mirror, The Golěm began removing his remaining clothes. Once he was naked, he stepped into the lab’s emergency shower and turned it on.

  The lukewarm water felt restorative on his weary head and shoulders.

  Accepting his transformation, he lowered his eyes and watched the streaks of wet clay running down his pale flesh…long gray rivulets spiraling down the drain for the final time.

  CHAPTER 122

  Robert Langdon stepped warily into the luminescent flat, trying to make sense of the scene before him. The upstairs apartment appeared to be lit entirely by black lights, its desolate interior infused by a ghostly purple haze. The walls, floors, and ceilings were painted solid black. In the corner was a cheap chair and table on which sat a glass that appeared to be half-full of water.

  Does someone actually live here?

  Langdon needed only a moment to conclude that the mysterious occupant must be Dmitri Sysevich. The realization brought a host of unanswered questions, but Langdon was fairly certain, at least, that the man would not be returning.

  He is most likely buried under Threshold.

  Sasha probably had no idea her apartment shared a key with the abandoned space upstairs. Dmitri, however, almost certainly knew. Sasha’s self-proclaimed protector…had direct access to Sasha’s locked apartment. The thought made Langdon’s skin crawl.

  “Sasha?” he called out, moving deeper. “It’s Robert Langdon! Are you here?”

  Silence. The air tasted stale, and the floors creaked as he and Katherine moved.

  “Sasha?!” Katherine shouted.

  The layout of this flat was different from Sasha’s, although it was equally meager. Methodically, Langdon and Katherine searched the space. The kitchen was barren, the refrigerator empty except for two large bottles of Poděbradka mineral water. The small walk-in closet outside the bedroom contained only a rod with three empty hangers.

  Langdon was starting to think this flat was less of a residence than some kind of bizarre occasional refuge.

  “The bedroom has no lights,” Katherine said, flipping the switch up and down.

  Langdon joined her at the bedroom door. “Sasha?”

  Getting no reply, he moved past Katherine into the blackness, inching blindly across the room with outstretched arms, hoping to feel a window and perhaps a way to open the shutters. Halfway into the room, he felt himself step on something soft on the floor—a cushion or mat of some sort.

  The hiss of a sulfur match sizzled behind him, and Langdon turned to see Katherine crouching before a low table and lighting a series of candles. As the light grew brighter, Langdon could see the table was some kind of shrine that consisted of three candles and an arrangement of dried flowers. Above them on the wall hung a woman’s photo.

  Langdon recognized the blond woman instantly. “My God…that’s Sasha,” he said to Katherine, walking toward the eerie display, realizing that Dmitri’s affection for Sasha had bordered on…obsession. Her protector, he thought, still trying to put the pieces together.

  “Look,” Katherine said, pointing to a large mat on the center of the floor.

  “I guess he slept here sometimes.”

  “I don’t think so, Robert. That’s not for sleeping. There’s no pillow. No sheets. And…there’s a ball gag.”

  Sure enough, there on the mat, Langdon saw a buckled leather head strap affixed to a black plastic ball. The soft neoprene orb was perforated like a wiffle ball so the person being gagged could still breathe. “So, this is some kind of…sex room?” he said.

  “I don’t think that gag is for sex,” she said. “I think it’s for protecting the teeth and tongue during an epileptic seizure.”

  Surprised, Langdon pictured the PATI seizure mouth guard in his classroom’s first-aid kit. This perforated ball would serve the same purpose.

  “Dmitri must have used this room as a safe place to experience an epileptic event,” Katherine said. “Pillows pose a suffocation threat, and sheets can get tangled. This would be a safe environment. Especially if he was wearing a ball gag.”

  Langdon found it odd that someone who possessed Gessner’s epilepsy wand would not choose to thwart every seizure. Then again, some epileptics claimed seizures brought about a mental clarity and bliss that were well worth the physical trauma. Dmitri’s epilepsy wand, it seemed, offered the best of both worlds. He could choose where and when to receive his seizures…doing so in a safe, controlled environment.

  Regardless, all Langdon knew for certain was Sasha didn’t seem to be here. With only the bathroom left to check, Langdon headed down the hall while Katherine blew out the candles in the bedroom. Sure enough, he found the bathroom and tub empty; if Dmitri had hidden Sasha somewhere, it was not in this apartment.

  The bathroom’s light fixture, like the rest of those in the flat, was equipped with a black-light bulb, which caused the white sink and tub to luminesce. Strangely, the mirror over the sink had been removed, leaving only bare screw holes in the wall.

  Next to the sink, on a shelf, Langdon found a hand mirror, a palette knife, a mixing bowl, and a stack of white rubber skullcaps. He also found three canisters of theatrical makeup called UltraMud, whose label bore a frightening photo of an actor’s face encased in thick cracked mud. The effect was all too familiar.

  As Langdon scanned the rest of the room, his gaze caught on something luminescing in the wastebasket under the sink. It looked like a white washcloth had been wadded up and discarded. It also appeared to be covered in blood…a lot of blood.

  Alarmed, Langdon lifted the basket and dumped the washcloth into the sink, immediately seeing he had been mistaken. Lying in the basin was a white skullcap, crumpled up and smeared with mud.

  Not blood, he thought with relief. The purple light made it hard to discern color.

  As he eyed the skullcap, however, he noticed something glinting in the light—a tiny fiber stuck on the rubber cap. The strand was so small that had it not been luminescing, Langdon would never have noticed it.

  That can’t be what it looks like…

  He reached down and carefully plucked the item off the cap, holding it up to the light. There was no doubt what he was looking at, but what Langdon could not fathom was what it was doing here.

  This makes no sense at all.

  Then he felt an unexpected dread. Unless…

  Langdon’s classes on symbolism often included an adage: A shift in perspective will often reveal a hidden truth. This idea, in many ways, had defined Langdon’s career. His ability to view a puzzle from an unexpected angle had repeatedly enabled him to glimpse truths that others had missed.

  Now, as he studied the tiny item pinched between his fingertips, Langdon feared he might be experiencing one of those moments.

  Knocked off-balance by the sudden reorientation, Langdon put a hand on the sink to steady himself. In his mind’s eye, he could see all the puzzle pieces he had assembled today. They were suddenly shattering apart, tumbling through the air, the fragments recombining and falling back to earth. One by one, the image in Langdon’s head reassembled into a new picture.

  My God…how could I have missed this?

  The idea before him was almost unimaginable, and yet instinctively he knew it had to be true. Like every pure truth, it answered every question…resolved every anomaly…and had been right in front of him all along.

  “Nonlocal consciousness…” he whispered. “Katherine was right.”

  “I missed it!” Langdon announced, rushing out of the bathroom and heading for the exit. “We need to go—I’ll explain later!”

  Missed what?! Katherine wondered as she hurried after him. Wait!

  When she reached the door, Robert was already thundering down the darkened staircase. When she caught up to him, he was in the foyer, kneeling on Sasha’s welcome mat outside her apartment. He seemed to be trying to feel for something under her door. What is he doing?! “Robert, we have a key if—”

  “It wasn’t even possible!” he exclaimed, jumping to his feet, digging into his pocket, and pulling out a slip of paper that Katherine recognized as the note he had received earlier beneath Sasha’s door.

  To Katherine’s bewilderment, Langdon tried repeatedly to slide the note under her door, failing each time to feed it beneath the tight doorjamb. The paper kept hitting the thick band of weather stripping that had been installed to keep out the cold.

  “It wasn’t even possible,” Langdon repeated, finally standing up. “I saw the weather stripping earlier, but it didn’t register. There’s no way to insert this note under the door from out here!”

  “I see that,” Katherine said, “but I don’t—”

  “Don’t you see, Katherine? The note wasn’t delivered from outside…The person who left it was inside the apartment the whole time!”

  A creeping chill overtook her. He was already hiding inside. “In the hall closet…” she whispered, picturing the dark-haired Russian waiting for a quiet moment…emerging from the closet…sliding the note partway under the door…knocking loudly on the inside of the door…. and immediately disappearing back into the closet. It was a brilliant trick. Both Sasha and Robert were completely fooled.

  “No,” Langdon said, his face now ashen. “Not in the closet.” He looked as disturbed as she could remember seeing him. “Nobody was in the closet. The hiding place was…far more ingenious.” His voice was tremulous now. “I can’t believe I never saw any of this…”

  “What didn’t you see? I don’t understand.”

  Langdon stood up. “You talked about it in your lecture last night,” Langdon said, locking eyes with Katherine. “You described it as evidence of nonlocal consciousness…proof that our brains work as receivers, and if they are damaged, the signals can get confused…”

  “You mean sudden savant syndrome?” she said. “Okay, but I don’t see—”

  “No! What you described right after that!”

  Katherine thought a moment, recalling the sequence of her speech, and suddenly it dawned on her what Langdon was referring to. She needed only an instant more to grasp what he was trying to tell her. “Oh…Robert…you can’t possibly think—”

  “I found this in the bathroom,” he said, holding up something tiny, pinched between his thumb and index finger. “It was stuck on the inside of his dirty skullcap.”

  Katherine saw what Langdon was holding.

  If he was correct, then everything they had believed about the golem figure was dead wrong.

  CHAPTER 123

  Steam filled the lab shower at Crucifix Bastion. The Golěm tipped his head back and savored the softness of the water on his face. Gently massaging his cheeks with his palms, he could feel the final remnants of dried clay releasing from his flesh…the last of The Golěm dissolving away.

  As he ran his hands over his head, he realized that in his exhaustion he’d forgotten to remove his skullcap. Finding the edge of the skintight cap with his fingertips, he pried it away from his forehead, wincing as it slid backward off his head, inevitably tearing several hairs from his scalp.

  The Golěm dropped the cap onto the floor and gently massaged his scalp, letting the water flow through his thick hair, rinsing away any remaining mud. Only after the water spiraling down the drain had become perfectly clear did he step from the shower.

  Wrapped in a towel, he stood at the sink, taking a rare moment to study himself in the mirror.

  The eyes staring back at him were bloodshot and weary…a face scarred by a violent past. He knew this was not a pretty face, and yet it was the face he had been given.

  I have learned to see beauty in it, he thought.

  Over time, The Golěm had come to love this face…the way the blond hair fell to the shoulders and framed the innocent blue eyes. Even the crooked nose had a charm to him now. He pictured the candlelit photo on the wall of his svatyně and smiled.

  “Sasha,” he whispered to his reflection. “I wish you could know me.”

  The blond woman in the mirror did not reply.

  Despite Sasha’s bodily presence in the room, she heard nothing. The Golěm had locked her away in a sleeplike void where she was blissfully unaware of all things, including even herself.

  Although they shared this physical form, The Golěm had established his dominance long ago, always in control, carefully filtering what Sasha witnessed, remembered, understood. He did this for her protection, to shelter her gentle soul. He was the vault to hold her pain, the army to fight her battles.

  You summoned me, Sasha…and I answered.

  The Golěm would never forget that horrifying moment in the Russian psychiatric hospital, when Sasha’s soul, unable to endure another moment of suffering, had called out to the universe in desperate need of help.

  The moment of my birth…

  Few recalled the instant they came to be, and yet The Golěm recalled his. He had flickered abruptly into consciousness, awaking to sheer horror, finding himself trapped in a body that was being mercilessly beaten. Overcome with pain and outrage, he instinctively rose up, summoning wells of strength this body had never accessed, and he strangled his attacker’s neck. Standing over the lifeless body of Sasha’s night nurse, The Golěm had heard his own hollow voice for the very first time.

  “I am your protector, Sasha. You are safe now.”

  In the foyer outside Sasha’s apartment, Katherine Solomon’s brain struggled to organize the cascade of disquieting thoughts brought on by Langdon’s words. He was correct that her lecture last night had included a description of sudden savant syndrome—a condition she believed was clear evidence of nonlocal consciousness—a damaged brain receiving multiple signals.

  He was also correct that she had then discussed a second remarkable phenomenon.

  “There exists another curious condition,” Katherine had told the audience, “that is related to sudden savant syndrome, as it also suggests the ability of the brain to receive multiple signals. The phenomenon goes by the clinical term ‘dissociative identity disorder’—although most of us know it more commonly as ‘split personality disorder’—a psychological phenomenon that presents as multiple distinct personalities inhabiting a single body.”

  This globally documented condition, Katherine had gone on to explain, was most common in women and often arose as a coping mechanism for repeated physical or sexual abuse. Most frequently, the second identity manifested for the purpose of absorbing the host’s pain by enduring the trauma in her place—a kind of proxy victim—sustaining the anguish, blocking all memory of it, and enabling the host to “disassociate” from her own suffering.

  The secondary personality was known as the alternate or “alter” and typically appeared in an abrupt schismatic break during acute trauma. Having manifested, the alter could then take up permanent residence in the host, lingering for years or a lifetime as a kind of guardian, even subsuming the subject’s darkest memories in a kind of selective amnesia—providing a clean slate with which to move forward. It was not uncommon for a protective alter to assume control of the body and become the dominant personality, deciding when and how the traumatized subject could safely “surface.”

  Dissociative identity disorder had first been diagnosed in the 1800s under the name “double consciousness”—a kind of waking sleepwalking in which an individual seemed to be taken over by another consciousness, who then carried out actions without the permission, knowledge, or recollection of the individual.

  Two of the most extraordinary cases in history were so meticulously documented that they became the basis for the bestsellers The Three Faces of Eve, Strangers in My Body, and Sybil. Of course, the most famous book of all time on the condition was Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

  Katherine knew that many instances of DID involved multiple alters—some with more than a dozen identities living in one host body. Incredibly, the alters all had different voices, accents, handwriting, skill sets, food preferences, and even gender identities. They walked differently, preferred different living spaces, suffered different physical ailments, and even had different IQs and eyesight.

  One radio receiving multiple distinct stations…