Free The Orphans (Orphans Trilogy Book 1) by Matthew Sullivan Page B

the man continued on his way.
    Shortly after the man and his dog disappeared, the service ended and the attendees started to spill out of the temple. As soon as the last person had exited, Charlie crawled out of the bushes and slipped inside the synagogue.
    Rabbi Samuel Klein, an older man with more gray hair than brown, was working on his next sermon when Charlie stepped through the office threshold. The rabbi looked up from his work. “Come in, my child,” he said, his voice still carrying hints of a faded New York accent.
    Charlie hesitated for a second. “Um. Just so you know, I’m not actually Jewish. If that matters.”
    “It does for some things, and not as much for others. But I assume you’re here for good reason. So come in, have a seat.” He motioned for Charlie to do just that.
    Charlie made his way into the office and took a seat in the chair across from the rabbi. “I don’t know if this is even something you can do, but I need your help translating this,” Charlie said as he retrieved the printed pdf from his pocket and handed it to the rabbi.
    “I’ll see what I can do,” Rabbi Klein said. He grabbed his reading glasses from the desk, adjusted them on his face, and then started to peruse the paper.
    Charlie watched anxiously. “I was told that it might be Hebrew, but none of the web translators recognized—” He stopped when he noted the troubled look on the rabbi’s face.
    Rabbi Klein skimmed a couple more lines before putting the paper down and removing his spectacles. “Where did you get this?”
    Charlie didn’t want to lie to the rabbi, but he also didn’t want to divulge any more information than he needed to. “I found it on someone’s computer.”
    “If I was you, I would steer clear of that person.”
    “So you can read it?”
    “Yes, I can,” Rabbi Klein said. “This is written in Hebrew, but not modern Hebrew. It is written in the original Hebrew script, which is not commonly used these days. It has not been used much over the last twenty-six hundred years, for that matter.”
    Charlie had no idea what to make of this information. There was no way the pdf was that old; it was a computer file, after all. Maybe someone used the dated language to make it harder to decipher. Charlie wasn’t sure, nor did he really care. In the end, he was less concerned with the age of the script or reasons for its use than he was with the actual content. “What does it say?”
    “What you have here … is a contract.”
    “Yeah, I know. That’s what the file was named,” Charlie said. He hadn’t intended on coming off as rude as he had, he just wasn’t sure why the rabbi had avoided answering his question. It was as if Rabbi Klein were stalling. “What does it say?” Charlie repeated.
    “It says a lot.” Rabbi Klein took a deep breath, clearly not comfortable with what he was about to reveal. “This is not just any old contract. It is a contract with the Devil.”
    Charlie’s body stiffened upon hearing the rabbi’s words. He had never really contemplated the existence of God, which meant that he had put even less consideration into the existence of the Devil. Until the rabbi mentioned it, the prospect of the contract being between anything other than two people had never crossed Charlie’s mind. Now that it had, Charlie’s thoughts scattered like a pack of cockroaches scurrying for cover when the lights flash on, until there was just one little pest left in the open. “What kind of contract with the Devil?” he asked.
    “I do not feel that it is appropriate to recite it word for word,” Rabbi Klein said, “but the general context is that the Devil agrees to grant the signee any assistance they require in their human life, as long as the signee pledges to serve the Devil, for eternity, in the afterlife.”
    “Why the hell would anyone agree to that?” Charlie said, catching his tongue after the fact. “Sorry about the language.”
    “It is nothing that I haven’t