Thirsty

by M. T. Anderson

  The Thing steps over a tree trunk.

  I feel the ripple as my heart beats once.

  The Thing raises its hand. It looks for a moment at its blunt, dusty fingers. And then the monster’s cold flesh wraps around my wrist.

  Suddenly, time is real again.

  I scream at the top of my lungs.

  It looms its face in mine, like a bird studying its prey. Its mouth is frowning, and it does not breathe.

  It whispers in the voice of a hundred hissing, “You are foolish for running. You will be heard, and things will be harder for you.”

  It stares at me, its dead face full of glazed anger.

  “Now,” it grunts.

  It raises its hand, as if to strike. I cower.

  “Back off from the boy,” says Chet, who has walked into the clearing.

  The Thing with the One-Piece Hair swivels its head to look at him.

  “He is mine,” Chet the Celestial Being explains, his voice hard. “Get away from him. Get away. Step away.”

  The Thing releases me. Chet nods slowly.

  The moon shines down into the clearing. The trees are old and elegant. For a moment, the three of us stand there and regard one another.

  Then Chet the Celestial Being slams his hands together and a bolt of blue fire shoots out and blasts the Thing.

  There are just the two of us then.

  Chet’s bolt has left behind not so much as a smoldering toupee.

  “Come on,” says Chet. “It will take him twenty minutes or so to rematerialize. By that time we want to be in my car, where he can’t track you.”

  “You have a car?” I ask.

  “Special issue,” Chet explains, gesturing down the hill. We start to walk. “For the transfer of mortals. It’s time we moved along to the next stage of the plan. I’ve spent the last few weeks retrieving the Arm of Moriator from where it was stored. We’re going to the convocation of vampires. The heart of things. Now. No time to lose.”

  We run down across through the woods. We climb over a stone wall. The moon picks out each tanning lichen on the stone.

  “What was that?” I ask. “That Thing?”

  “What did it look like?” says Chet.

  “A servant of Tch’muchgar?” I guess. “You know, some demon?”

  “Exactly.”

  “It’s been watching me for days.”

  “Tch’muchgar probably wanted to see what you were up to.”

  “Then doesn’t he know that I’m not on his —”

  “Look, we don’t have time to discuss this now,” Chet chides, stopping in his tracks. “Do you want me to put a sign of protection on you?”

  “What?”

  “I can place my sign on you, my sigil, which will mark you and protect you so that the Thing you saw back there and others like it can never harm you. I can place the sigil on you now, which can never be removed. Would you like that?”

  I am feeling a little nervous about all this. “Well,” I say.

  “I can do it right now.” Chet lifts up my right arm. “I’ll place the sign here.” He turns over my wrist and touches a spot just below my watchband. “All right?”

  I look up at his face. I feel nervous, like the blood is running out of my fingers and arms. I nod.

  He closes his eyes and mutters to himself. When I look down, there is a red mark there, a red sunburst like a tiny tattoo.

  He releases my arm, which swings down to my side. “There,” he says. “You’re protected. Marked. That beast we just saw can’t touch you. No being like it can touch you. Satisfied?”

  Once again, I look up at his face. My fingers are cold. I nod.

  “Hurry up then. We have no time to lose.” And he plunges off into the forest.

  We come out on one of the roads. Chet has an infallible sense of direction. His car is right there, a black Cadillac, sitting dark on the shoulder of the road. I have heard of the black Cadillacs that travel about the country on strange errands.

  “This is it,” he says, his brogues clicking across the pavement.

  I say, “I’m glad to see the Forces of Light drive American.”

  “It’s a piece of junk,” says Chet. “Late eighties. It doesn’t even have antilock brakes. Is that your friends?”

  It is. They’re running out onto the road.

  “Hey, Chris,” bellows Jerk. “You okay?” He rubs his hand through his mossy hair.

  They’re walking over to us.

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  I look nervously at Chet the Celestial Being, but he is keeping his celestial cool. He extends his hand and says, “Hi. I’m Chet, a friend of Christopher’s parents. Nice to meet you.”

  “Horatio,” says Tom, shaking Chet’s hand.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Horatio,” says Chet.

  “I’m Michael,” says Jerk. “But my friends call me Jerk.”

  “They . . . ? I see.” Chet strides to the side of the car. “Well, it was very nice to meet you both. I was just about to drive Christopher home.”

  “Oh,” says Jerk, delighted. “If it wouldn’t be a real problem, could you, like, drop me back at home? Me and my dog?”

  “No dogs allowed,” says Chet. “This isn’t my car.”

  “Okay,” says Jerk; but Tom intervenes.

  Tom says, “We’ll be right on the way. There won’t be time for the dog to shed.”

  “No, sorry,” says Chet. “Nothing that creepeth upon four feet. That counts out the dog.”

  “And you, Jerk,” Tom adds.

  “Ha ha ha,” says Jerk.

  I say uneasily, “If it would be possible . . . Chet . . . maybe we should take them home. I’m just worried about that strange . . . man we saw? That he might still be around?”

  Chet frowns for an instant. “I don’t think these two need to worry about him.”

  I say quietly, “It would make me feel better.”

  “All right,” says Chet.

  “Which man?” Tom asks.

  That’s how we all end up in Chet’s car. Tom, Jerk, and Bongo are in the back seat. I’m in the passenger seat. I can tell Chet is mad. He starts the car, gives me a look that shows he is irritated but getting over it, and heads down the road.

  We wind through the forest for a few minutes. It doesn’t help that Tom is trying to embarrass me in front of my parents’ supposed friend by lying as boldly as possible. “So my mother says to me, ‘Horatio, I don’t want you walking around at night, Horatio. Is that understood, Horatio?’”, etc. etc.

  “Horatio,” says Chet, “I wonder if you could be quiet for just a quick moment while I think.”

  So Tom grins at Jerk in the back seat and winks. Jerk is embarrassed. After a few minutes, Tom gets bored; so he starts to play with the electric windows.

  “Window race!” he calls, and he and Jerk each try to be the first one to put his window down.

  “Would you cut that out?” says Chet.

  “Window race!” Tom calls again.

  “Would you —?”

  “Mine won’t go up anymore,” says Jerk.

  “You broke it!” says Chet. “You broke my electric window!”

  “Jerk!” says Tom. “You really are a problem child.”

  Things are not going well. Tom and Jerk should really not have broken the electric window on the Forces of Light’s car. “I really don’t believe this,” Chet says. “You two just sit tight back there, would you?”

  We drive along. I look over to see if Chet is mad.

  But now Chet is smiling some secret smile.

  Jerk is sitting back there, miserable.

  The trees are black against the sky. We drive by what seems like mile after mile of etched branch and silent hill. We are not headed toward town. We’ve headed west.

  Chet is humming one note. He doesn’t ever stop to take in a breath. He hums his one note, and it rings in my ears.

  Tom and Jerk have fallen sort of quiet.

  Chet looks into the rear-view mirror.
He says in a deep soft voice, “How are you two doing? Are you two feeling very sleepy?” No answer.

  I look back. They are asleep.

  Chet is looking at his watch. “We’ll wake them up later. I shall erase their memories of me. Is the dog asleep?”

  I twist my head and lean over the sticky leatherette. “It looks like it,” I say.

  “That gives us something to be thankful for,” says Chet. “Now I’ll explain what you need to do.” He steers with one hand and reaches in his pocket with the other. He pulls out a blue velvet bag. “This I just traveled halfway across the universe for. It’s the Arm of Moriator. Take it.”

  I take the bag from him. It’s cold to the touch. When I pull open the drawstring, I see a glint of reflected light from inside.

  “Look at it,” Chet orders.

  I empty the bag into my palm. The Arm of Moriator does not look like an unusual object. It is a blue glass disk about three inches in diameter. There are four spidery characters spaced evenly around the edge of it. When we go over bumps, it rings lightly with the sound of someone rubbing a wet finger around the edge of the galaxy.

  “What is it?” I ask, feeling confused and a little stupid.

  “It is used as a lock to keep vast evil beings like Tch’muchgar chained in other worlds. Once it is activated, no evil being can touch it or shut it off. Let me explain.” While Chet talks, I turn over the Arm of Moriator and hold it up so it catches oncoming headlights. When the light glints on it, it does nothing unusual. In the blue depths of it, I see nothing I wouldn’t expect. Chet is saying, “When the vampires interrupt your town’s spells of binding with their own spells, Tch’muchgar will try to leap from his world into yours. The Arm of Moriator will stop him. It will displace his world ever so slightly, which is like stopping an elevator between floors. He can step out, but there will be nothing there to step into. If he tries to leave his world, he’ll walk into nothing. He will fall between realities. In other words, he will cease to exist.”

  I look at Chet carefully. “I thought that the Forces of Light didn’t destroy anything. I thought that was against your rules.”

  “It is. This will merely act as a deterrent. Once he knows this is activated and in place, Tch’muchgar will never dare to leap out of his world. He knows that if he tries, he will annihilate himself.”

  We pull onto the highway.

  I fumble with the shoulder strap to put the Arm in my pocket. “So how do I activate it?”

  “Activation is easy and can be learned in a jiffy. Once you go into Tch’muchgar’s world, all you have to do is touch each one of those four symbols around the edge in turn and say, ‘Light, I invoke you.’ Do you have that?”

  “‘Light, I invoke you’?”

  “Yes. You’ve got it. You say that four times, touching one rune symbol each time. Then you can just drop the Arm. Is that clear?”

  “But how do I know how to get into Tch’muchgar’s world?”

  “Ah!” says Chet, holding up a finger. “Ah! Here I have been particularly resourceful. I have approached the vampires, shown them that I am a being of great power, and convinced them that I am a demon in the service of one of Tch’muchgar’s old friends, sent to help them.”

  “So you’ll be with me?”

  “Christopher, I’ll be with you all the way,” he reassures me warmly. “You don’t have a thing to worry about. I’ll introduce you to some of the vampires. They know me as Chet, too. We’ll talk. Then we’ll ask them to take us to the portal into Tch’muchgar’s world. Then I’ll stand by while you go into that world and activate the Arm. I’ll be right there for you the whole time.”

  “But you aren’t going in with me?”

  “No. Tch’muchgar would recognize me immediately. I’ll be waiting just outside. I’ll use that sign on your arm to track you. After about two minutes, I’ll pull you back out into this world.”

  We are spinning along the highway, passing the glowering taillights of trucks.

  I urge nervously, “You’ll be protecting me in there? I mean, all the time?”

  Chet looks over at me, obviously concerned. “Hey, hey, of course, Christopher.” He puts his hand on my wrist and gives it a firm squeeze. “I don’t want you to worry about anything. You’ll be perfect for this. I’ve told you. I’ll protect you.”

  There is a certain feeling of adventure in the air. Chet tells me that I will not encounter much resistance, because he has thought it all out so cleverly. Being a vampire, I will just walk in through the assembly of vampires.

  And now we are driving on the moonlit road toward the meeting place of vampires, and I am stunned that here I am and that a celestial being is at the wheel, glancing in the side mirrors to see what objects might be closer than they appear.

  We are driving, and the great cliffs that were blasted out of quiet hills to make a way in the wilderness loom around us, striped with the smooth tracks of dynamite core. We drive, and I am sorry that my friends are asleep in the back and can’t help, but at the same time, I am proud to be saving the world alone, with a sigil on my arm to ward off evil and a magic disk in my palm — and I look out the window and drink in the pines perched on a cliff edge, and the swoop of the hills, and the moon sailing over like the wise eye of the carp.

  And we are turning off the highway and onto rambling back roads. And Chet sounds drunk with excitement, but quietly, as he says, “You should brace yourself for what you see. The first time I went, the vampires had bodies under tarpaulins. I fear they enjoy grotesqueries in that general vein.”

  And he says to me, to buck me up, “Hey. I just made a pun.”

  And I say, “Yeah. That was a great pun you made there, Chet.”

  And he says, “Christopher, I’m beholden to you for mentioning it.”

  And we’re driving on dark roads, past unknowing neighborhoods, and we’re pulling up in front of a rundown church, where cars line the road beneath the pines — dark cars with license plates from many states — and now Chet is putting the black Cadillac into neutral, and park, and turning it off.

  And I say to him, “Well, where to now?”

  And he grins wolfishly and answers, “To hell and back.”

  We get out of the black Cadillac. The trees cluster thickly about us by the side of the road. The pavement is crumbling, and grass pokes through it.

  Chet locks the doors, even though there is not much point (Jerk’s window is wide open).

  “Will the two of them be okay?” I ask.

  Chet nods. “The vampires will assume I’m saving them for sometime when I come home late and just want something quick.” He pockets his keys and rattles them.

  The church looks like it was built sometime in the early sixties, and it has a wild sloping roof that peaks in a thin metal cross. The stained glass windows look like they’re all just fragments of different colors, but I can’t see too well because there’s not much light coming from inside.

  We walk up the flagstone path to the church. There must be a pond nearby, because I can hear the woody burping of the bullfrogs through the thick, dank forest.

  The concrete of the church’s basement level is chipped and dislocated. The wood is faded, and damp black cracks meander through it.

  There are a few people lingering by the front door, at the top of some concrete steps. “Jill, I’m so happy to hear that,” says the man.

  “Isn’t it great?” she says.

  Chet walks up the steps and says, “Bob! Jill!” and holds out his hand.

  They say, “Hi, Chet!” and “Good to see you, Chet!” and shake his hand.

  I am looking at them strangely because there is something wrong with the way they are. It’s like a movement I can’t detect, or a strange double shadow fizzing at the edge of their outline.

  “This is Christopher,” says Chet. “He’s come to meet the whole gang.”

  They smile at me, and the Jill one says, “Great to have you — go right in,” and we walk in.

  Insi
de is a large parish hall with weighty curved beams arching across the roof. There’s a buffet with lots of casseroles at one end, and ten tables have been set up and covered with paper tablecloths. The hall is filled with people. Some are sitting and laughing, eating green beans or talking and poking at the air with their plastic forks. Others are standing, holding styrofoam plates and laughing to one another. Some little toddlers are running from one end of the hall to the other, until a woman in a purple skirt and pink running shoes goes over and grabs one of their arms and I guess tells them to be quiet.

  All of them have the double shadow, except some of the kids, and Chet. I squint to see if it goes away, but it doesn’t.

  Chet smiles and waves like a politician, and they look at him sort of respectfully. I see a few teenagers over in one corner, whispering among themselves. The oldest one is an imposing guy of about eighteen or nineteen, who is wearing a jean jacket with the arms taken off. He has a bat tattoo on his upper arm. There are some girls standing around him, and I wonder if one of them is Lolli Chasuble.

  “I’ll be right back,” says Chet to me. “Just sit down and try and be unobtrusive.”

  I am frightened, and I pull out a folding chair with a clattering that would be loud enough to wake the dead, if they weren’t already serving themselves macaroni and cheese at the other end of the room. I sit down. I do not want the teenagers to come over and talk to me. I do not like meeting new people and always say something dumb. I especially hate meeting new people with fangs.

  Chet has strolled across the room and is talking with some important-looking men.

  Near me, there is a little girl in sagging brown leggings who is scraping her styrofoam plate with the edge of her fork. She pushes aside a chunk of cartilage and says to her father, “I’m done. Can I have more? Can I have more?”

  He leans down close to the table and says precisely, “May I have more?”

  I have figured out by now about the double shadows. Vampires. I must be able to see who is a vampire now that I am becoming one. This must be how that woman with the blonde hair saw me right before she was lynched. Vampiro-scopic vision. She must have thought I was a traitor because I was not helping her out. Maybe I was a traitor.