In the winter cave, they met a golem.
It stood like a statue, brick-red with glowing eyes, beside Alan’s mother, hands at its sides. Golems didn’t venture to this side of his father very often, and almost never in daylight. Marci caught him in the flashlight’s beam as they entered the warm humidity of the cave, shivering in the gusting winds. She fumbled the flashlight and Alan caught it before it hit the ground.
“It’s okay,” he said. His chest was heaving from his tantrum, but the presence of the golem calmed him. You could say or do anything to a golem, and it couldn’t strike back, couldn’t answer back. The sons of the mountain that sheltered—and birthed?—the golems owed nothing to them.
He walked over to it and folded his arms.
“What is it?” he said.
The golem bent its head slightly and looked him in the eye. It was man-shaped, but baggier, muscles like frozen mud. An overhang of belly covered its smooth crotch like a kilt. Its chisel-shaped teeth clacked together as it limbered up its jaw.
“Your father is sad,” it said. Its voice was slow and grinding, like an avalanche. “Our side grows cold.”
“I don’t care,” Alan said. “Fuck my father,” he said. Behind him, perched atop their mother, Davey whittered a mean little laugh.
“You shouldn’t—”
Alan shoved the golem. It was like shoving a boulder. It didn’t give at all.