Thirsty Read online

  I look into the Dixie cups sitting on the table near me. They’re filled with red punch. It looks like wild strawberry flavor.

  I sniff it. It really is wild strawberry flavor. I don’t understand why these vampires are eating human food. I make a mental note to ask Chet about it when we’re alone.

  “Ready?” says Chet, standing over me. Beside him is a man who looks like he is in his thirties, wearing a saggy European suit and a shirt with no collar. His hair goes down to his shoulders.

  “Hi, Chistopher,” he says with a fake-o smile. “I’m Dr. Chasuble. You may have received a letter from my daughter?”

  “Yes,” I say. “It’s nice to meet you. She has a way with colored pens.”

  He laughs, and I shake his hand, but suddenly I realize that I am sitting down and should be standing up to be polite. I stand up, but he’s already stopped shaking my hand. Now the teenagers are staring at me. I can feel their interest and disdain.

  “Shall we go in?” asks Chet.

  “After you,” says Dr. Chasuble, gesturing toward some double doors at the other end of the parish hall.

  We walk down the length of the room, and I can tell people are staring at me. Some of them stop talking and lay their plastic forks down beside their plates. I am sweating, and I feel like I am very confused. The smell of the casseroles clogs my nostrils.

  I say politely, “Mmm! Chicken casserole.”

  Chet’s eyes are secretly dark, but he puts his arm around me and says brightly, “Christopher, that isn’t chicken.”

  I look back at the room full of them eating it. I think of the father, bending low — “May I have some more?” — and I think of the cheesy flesh sliding down the child’s gullet. I stop and stare; Chet pushes me on. We have arrived at the double doors. Dr. Chasuble opens them. We pass through a hall where the windows are broken, with webs of torn plastic strung over them to keep out the rain; a rotting corkboard is stuck full of messages held on with voodoo pins. We come to the far end of the hall, and Dr. Chasuble opens another door. Then we are in the sanctuary of the church of Tch’muchgar.

  The church is tall and full of wine dark shadows.

  The pews are empty. There are no hymnals or prayer books.

  At the far end, up near the altar, three men are standing, their arms outstretched.

  Among them floats an eye of red.

  We walk up the aisle, our shoes clattering on the bare floor. I can hear the thick breath going in and out of Dr. Chasuble’s nostrils.

  I’m electric with vertigo, even though I’m on the ground, vertigo like I felt once when I stood on the edge of a high cliff in Arizona and looked straight down. I keep swallowing, but my throat is dry.

  We approach the eye, a burned hole in the air. There are crates opened, filled with paper sacks of powders and chalks. Books lie open on the floor. Standing around the dais limply, like ungainly storks in a mire, are twelve abandoned music stands. On several of them there are yellow Schirmer & Co. music scores, which say in blue writing Maruczek: Eight Atonal Chants for Unhallowed Liturgies, Winds and Mixed Chorus.

  The eye glows red among the three men. Their sleeves are drawn back, and they have scratched bleeding symbols in their forearms.

  There is a hum, as of energy.

  “I’ll take over from here,” says Chet. “The Melancholy One wishes to meet this child.”

  I am feeling sick. I cannot tell what is happening to me.

  “All right. Please,” says Dr. Chasuble to the three men.

  Chet has moved to the center, by the eye, and he is spinning it between his hands like one of those tops on a string, spinning it so it burns more redly, and lights his polka-dot tie, and grows, and spits sparks.

  The three men lower their hands and move away.

  “Come on,” says Dr. Chasuble, gesturing to the men.

  “Five minutes,” says Chet. “He should be indoctrinated by then.”

  And suddenly, I am afraid of him.

  The others are shuffling back along the aisle. Chet still stands, his eyes closed, massaging the eye, and I suspect it is the gateway to Tch’muchgar’s world.

  The pool of light is growing larger and larger, and now I can hear it moaning with energy, and I am wondering whether to make a break for it.

  I do not know what to do. Suddenly I am unsure of it all, and I realize that if Chet is not what he seems, I am lost. If he is not from the Forces of Light, then I am tiny in the jaws of an evil god, and I don’t know what to do with the disk that I have now clutched in my hand, a disk that might not do what Chet says at all. I look at his grimacing, twitching mouth and his spinning fingers.

  “Go on,” says Chet. He opens his eyes and looks at me. “Go on. Quickly. Where angels fear to tread.”

  I stand there. The roof of the church is dark and about me like vast moldy wings. I can hear, as if I were underwater, the distorted sounds of singing and talking from the other room.

  “Enter,” hisses Chet. “Enter, now.”

  “Should I —?”

  “Enter. Walk. Drop the Arm.”

  I am frightened.

  “Get going,” he says, almost baring his teeth. “This isn’t easy. Come on, you — good god, your world is . . . Would you go?”

  I balk — “Get in there,” Chet demands. “Now. Or we’ll never believe you want your vampirism cured, and the whole deal’s off.”

  “Chet —,” I say, backing away.

  “Your only hope. Our only hope.”

  “Please can I —”

  “Go!”

  There’s nothing else to do.

  So I step into the circle.

  And I drop through space without time, and I am in Tch’muchgar’s world.

  Darkness and wet.

  For a minute, I just hang there and wonder where I am.

  Like being under the reservoir in winter, I realize. Hanging far beneath the ice, while above it is a bleak day and the leaves are on the ground and the waters are dead and the trees are just streaks of brown scraped on the plain white sky.

  Down here, there is nothing to see; no motion anywhere. No light at all.

  But this, if it were a lake, and not a world, would be a lake with no bottom, and no surface, and there is no life within it. I can feel that. I can still feel the vertigo in my toes, as they hang in nothing, and I know that this murky world spreads out dark and dead into infinity.

  Though I am hanging in what feels like water, it must not be water. It feels thicker for one thing, as if I were dunked in embalming fluid. For another thing, I do not choke when I breathe it.

  This infinite lake is empty, has never known life, except that somewhere Tch’muchgar must be lying, waiting for his release. I can hear a distant noise, or perhaps it is in my head, the static from his thoughts, like the far-off hum of a highway when you’re snorkeling deep in the coldest part of the lake. A sound or sense like the thrumming, again and again, of military trucks in a convoy rumbling over a distant bridge.

  If I can hear him, I wonder if he can hear me.

  I have the Arm in my hand. I feel around the edge for the first rune. I touch it and whisper, “Light, I invoke you.”

  The second rune. “Light, I invoke you.”

  The third. “Light, I invoke you.”

  The fourth. “Light, I invoke you.”

  And with that, the disk starts to glow, and a voice faintly says all around me, “Activated.”

  As Chet has told me to do, I release the disk. Then I reach out and impulsively clutch it (the blue light picking my fingers out of the murk) — I may have made a mistake.

  Have I? I don’t know. What else, I wonder, can I do? Tentatively, I push it out into the void.

  It floats away, but I can’t tell how fast, or how far away it is from me. The light continues in the darkness, lighting nothing, drifting.

  I hang there for a minute. Chet will pull me out. This is what he has told me.

  And I start to realize that, though there could be no bre
eze here, and though there is no life to stir the water, the plasma all around me is starting to move and eddy.

  The sound is approaching me, too. Getting louder. I am in the midst of something. Everything is thickening.

  It is then that I realize that the movements themselves are the thoughts of great Tch’muchgar, all around me, vast, rebounding. I am in the midst of him. The Vampire Lord is thinking; and I can feel the currents of his thoughts slither and snake around me like a cluster of prying water moccasins.

  I start flailing my arms and shouting. My arms can hardly trawl through the thick slime; my legs kick against nothing; and still the curious currents crawl and prod me and slink up and down my face and legs, the thoughts and sardonic bemusements of the Vampire Lord.

  He is all around me, and I can hardly move for the density of him. His thoughts break against my head like waves. He does not care much that I am there; I am so tiny, and his thoughts spread out all around me for miles and depths beyond reckoning.

  I stop struggling. I hang there. I try not to move; not to breathe. Everything I breathe would be Tch’muchgar; everything I touch. And still the thoughts wash around me, the bored, bitter, mordent thoughts of the trapped Vampire Lord.

  Out.

  How long. Much longer? How long. How.

  God I hate it. God I hate.

  There is defeat so deep.

  I hate. Damn you. All.

  Once I stood with Paul in early spring and heard the reservoir’s ice crack, heard the reverberations tick and moan through the black wet branches of the trees. Those were like Tch’muchgar’s thoughts — vast voiced sounds that echoed on the hills, scolded the woods, called to the empty pines.

  A lifetime spent with nothing — he thinks.

  Circle and circle and circle. God when how long. How long? God when.

  Hate it. Hate it. Hate.

  Circle and circle.

  Oh, hello.

  I stiffen.

  Oh, hello, boy. Oh, hello.

  Who are you? Who are you? I am trapped. Will you release me?

  Will you?

  I am trapped. Will you?

  Do you know what it is like?

  I am desperate for Chet. I start to kick again. I start to kick and struggle in the darkness.

  You cannot struggle. That is what it is like. Cannot move. Here. Here.

  And the substance all around me thickens, and it is like I am locked in a glacier, a tiny thing locked in a glacier, and so far away from anyone. And somewhere life is going on with trees, but I am frozen, lost, miles deep and so far north it is a north that is never seen, howling storms, silence, and I will be there always —

  Like being buried alive — buried alive in a coffin so narrow I can’t even fold my arms; I can’t lift my hands without banging my wrists. I can’t shift my hips. I can’t move my head from side to side. I can’t move my toes, though they’re stubbed against the lid, some up, some down. And I can smell all around me, dark and immovable, thick dirt, crowding — but know I’ll never rise or sleep or die. Staring straight. Can’t budge. Itching. Feel the earth spread out, foot by foot, so many feet up to the surface, so many, foot after foot after foot, the grass — never hear — never —

  Stay boy —

  Ha! Stay!

  — never hear —

  Down!

  — trapped —

  Stay!

  And then Chet sends for me.

  I feel the sigil on my arm pulsing with light.

  I feel the red glow of the portal all around me.

  It seeps into my bones, the sweet air of earth, and warms my muscles, draws me out —

  — away from the dark —

  — across time and space I fly, shooting, wafting, away from the laughter of Tch’muchgar, the confinement, through ages I tumble —

  — and fall down on my knees

  — before the well-shined brogues of Chet the Celestial Being.

  “Ahhh . . . ,” he says, and smiles. He stops gesturing with his hands. He lets them drop to his sides, and the portal stops snapping and popping and dwindles. “How was the other world?” asks Chet.

  “Oh, god,” I gasp unresponsively. “Oh, god.”

  “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs,” says Chet.

  “Thank you for the cooking tip,” I say. “It was a nightmare.”

  I’m huddled on the floor. My clothes aren’t even wet, which is strange, and I am no longer feeling trapped in a glacier; and Chet pulled me out, so it looks like he really is a celestial being, and I’m so happy I could just sit down and write a show tune about it all. “How much time’s passed?” I ask.

  Chet looks at his watch and says, “About two minutes. Jet lag?”

  “God,” I say, shaking myself. I can’t get up. “It was awful. Really awful.”

  “When you’re ready, they’re waiting for us outside.”

  “Who?”

  Chet puts his hands in his pockets, so his jacket bunches above his wrists. “Dr. Chasuble and his vampiric sorcerers,” he explains. “They’re here preparing the spells of interruption to disrupt the spells of imprisonment your mayor and local clergy will be casting at the Sad Festival of Vampires. But now, thanks to you, Tch’muchgar can’t make a move. Even if the vampires do succeed in opening a dimensional gate large enough to get him through, he still has to stay put. If he tries to jump from that world to this, the Arm will displace his world and terminate him completely. He’ll exit that world and won’t enter another.”

  He lends me a hand to stand. I say, “So I’ve just saved the world?”

  Chet chuckles and knocks me on the shoulder. “Listen to you!” he says. “Yes, you could put it that way.”

  “Okay. Don’t knock me on the shoulder, please. I feel really, really sick.”

  Chet glances up toward the double doors leading out of the sanctuary. “Then let’s get out of here. Vampires have no sympathy for the expulsion of food. They’re very ingestion oriented.”

  As I stand there in that dank and grave-chilled sanctuary, I feel almost drunk with a sudden realization: In an hour, I figure, we’ll be well away from here and Chet will have cured me of my curse forever. Good-bye, vampires. Good-bye, midnight hour. Good-bye, Tch’muchgar, the Melancholy One, Vampire Lord.

  We walk back down the aisle. Over in the side aisle, rolled up, lies a mildewed cloth banner with faceless felt figures in bright colors. A stack of songbooks leans up against a wall. Someone has poured a bucket of red paint all over them.

  In the hallway, one of the men with the bleeding arms leans up against the window frame, smoking.

  “Christopher has spoken with the Melancholy One,” Chet announces beatifically.

  Several men walk over. They all look at me. I nod.

  “Shit, great,” says the guy smoking the cigarette. “What . . . I mean, what did he say?”

  Chet looks at me, scratching the corner of his mouth with his pinkie.

  I squirm for a minute. Then I say, “He proclaims that he shall lead us all to Victory. With a capital V.”

  Dr. Chasuble looks at the others. “Great!” he says.

  “Yeah, great!”

  Dr. Chasuble, Chet, and I go back into the parish hall. Everyone looks up at us. Dr. Chasuble and Chet smile at them to reassure them. Some of them smile back, and on so many faces, I see fangs.

  What looks like a middle-aged lady dressed in cornflower blue rayon slacks is standing by the food table as we pass. “Go well?” she asks.

  “Yes, indeed,” says Chet.

  She gestures toward the two casseroles. “Would you like some of Jennifer or Dave?”

  “No, thanks,” says Chet.

  She looks at me and offers, “Jennifer Carreiras, fifteen, of Haverhill, or Dave Philips, fifty-three, of Springfield? Dave has a broccoli garnish, and Jenn has Doris Blum’s special cornflakes crust — lots of crunchy bits.”

  “No, thanks,” says Chet. “We have someone waiting for us out in the car.”

&n
bsp; “Oh! Bon appétit,” says the woman in cornflower blue.

  The teenagers are staring at me from their corner. The kid with the tattoo has tilted back in his chair and is looking at me enviously and with a little bit of hate. I want to get the hell out of there.

  Dr. Chasuble is talking quietly with Chet as we walk out. They talk about the technical aspects of spells and when spells are to be cast.

  We are outside. A chill wind is blown in rags and tatters through the trees. One lone frog is belching in the swamp.

  Suddenly, I say to Dr. Chasuble, “I thought you only sucked blood. Why are you eating flesh?”

  He looks at me curiously for a second. “We,” he says softly. “Not ‘you.’”

  I can tell Chet is angry about the slip.

  The bullfrog calls through the trees.

  Dr. Chasuble says, “Eating flesh is a disgusting habit. I agree. We do it mostly for the little ones, the kids, when they haven’t yet become vampiric. It’s important to accustom them to the idea of taking human life for food. Otherwise, they can prove very dangerous and difficult to the family when puberty hits.”

  Chet nods. “The family that preys together, stays together.”

  Dr. Chasuble laughs and puts his arm around my shoulder. “But look. Forget about eating. Drinking — that’s the thing. Exsanguination — draining blood — is a beautiful act, Christopher. At first, of course, it will be messy. Before you get the hang of it, you’ll gag, and lap, but after a while you’ll learn how to really use your fangs to your best advantage. When you’re a real pro, the pumping of the heart will send the blood squirting right into your mouth. Effortless. Sweet. Thick. Tart.

  “And then it’s a beautiful moment. Lying on top of someone, feeling the quivering of their heart and just slowly, smoothly, silently pulling their lifeblood out of them. It’s a very gentle-feeling death. Eventually, they just stop struggling.”

  He stands back from me. The frog is silent in his pond. “And remember,” he says. “Lolli is up for a date whenever you want to have your first experience. I imagine Chet can teach you a thing or two, but Lolli has a good head on her shoulders and can show you the ropes. If you don’t feed soon, your blood-lust is going to become overpowering, your fangs will come out, and people will start to notice things.”