Thirsty (14 page)

The Thing turns its left profile toward me and continues. “Seventeen days ago ‘Chet’ attempted to get in contact with you to give you the Arm. This time, I immediately sensed that he was a powerful negative being, and I approached you to question you about him. Before I could speak with you, he arrived and incapacitated me.”

The Thing shifts its head again to present its right profile. “Since then, I have continued to monitor your activities to establish to what extent you were in collusion with ‘Chet.’ In spite of your vampirism, I have reached the conclusion that you were most likely deceived as well and are not knowingly in the service of Darkness. For this reason, I approach you now in an attempt to establish the whereabouts of the Arm of Moriator and ‘Chet’s’ possible motives in stealing it.”

The Thing stands there and waits.

Finally, I admit, “Yes, he tricked me. He told me he was from the Forces of Light.”

“He is not from the Forces of Light.”

“I know. He just said that to —”

“We have evidence that he is working for the Forces of Darkness. Explain.”

“I was saying. He wanted me to activate the Arm of Moriator for him.”

“The Arm is dangerous to powerful spiritual beings of Darkness and its activation can result in their annihilation. Explain his application.”

“He wanted me to . . .” I hesitate. Then, in a shaky voice, I ask, “If I tell you all this, are you going to cure my vampirism?”

“That is of secondary importance.”

“Please,” I say. “I need to know that you’re going to help me.”

“I repeat that that is of secondary importance. Please continue.”

“Not until you’ve told me you can help me.”

“You are in no position to bargain. You may have compromised the security of your nation and our cause. In the event of noncompliance, you could be reported to the local human authorities. You will continue your explanation.”

“If you’re from the Forces of Light, you’re supposed to want to help me!” I protest angrily.

“We care deeply about the future of the human race. You are not currently of the human race. Your actions, in keeping with your vampirism, may well have compromised the security of your nation and our cause.”

I’m crouched there on my bed, fuming, sulking.

“You will continue your explanation.”

“Okay, I’ll tell you, but you better help!”

“We will do our utmost in the event that this situation can be resolved to our satisfaction. Our aim is to ensure that the imprisonment and torture of Tch’muchgar the Vampire Lord continue indefinitely. Any aid you provide in furthering that aim will be seen as evidence of good faith. You will continue your explanation.”

“Chet asked me —”

“One moment and I will record this statement.”

“What?”

There is a click from within the Thing. “Continue,” it says. “Recording.”

“I was saying, the being I call ‘Chet’ —”

There is a whisper of air. My mattress bobs slightly.

I swivel.

Chet himself is there, standing grimly on my bed, his arms crossed.

He stares down at the two of us. His shoes bite deeply into my blankets. He looks darkly at me, then turns to the Thing. “Deceiving the poor boy,” he chastens. “Is there nothing you wicked, wicked people won’t stoop to?”

I’m trapped between them. I don’t know which way to go.

Chet says, “Christopher, get away from it. It means you harm.”

“Identify yourself,” the Thing demands, backing up warily. “Identify.”

“Christopher, stand up and go over by that wall.”

I scramble to the edge of the bed and fall off the end. “Wait,” I say to Chet. “It’s accusing you —”

“I know what it’s saying. I know you don’t believe it. Stand back.”

“Destroying me will only delay investigation. There are more like me,” warns the Thing. And then says more pitiably, “Please do not destroy me.”

“Back, gross mephitic beast,” Chet says with a sense of dramatic relish. He raises his hands. “Here is an end to your monstrous and unhappy lies.”

“Don’t, Chet!” I yell, running and putting my arms out between them. “I want to know which of you is telling the truth. Stop! Just talk!”

“I am the one telling the truth, Christopher,” says the Thing, nodding its head erratically in my direction, trying still to keep an eye on Chet. “I am —”

“Come on, Christopher. Don’t be stupid,” says Chet. “There’s nothing that the Forces of Darkness could do with the Arm of Moriator. The Arm destroys negative beings. That’s why we activated it.” He asks the Thing, “Can you explain that little inconsistency in your story?”

The Thing pauses. “We have not yet determined what use the Arm might be to you.”

“No. I bet you haven’t,” says Chet. “You’re not the —”

The Thing has raised its arms in some kind of spell.

Chet whacks his hands together. A blaze of light fills the room. My ears pound.

I lie flat on the floor.

The Thing bucks in agony, a latticework of veins ablaze on its skin, capillaries burning — it gapes terrified at its roasting hand — the suit melts into a blue polyester slurry — and from head to toe its skin peels away, an empty dirty husk, leaving nothing but a silver cord writhing like a worm on a griddle, seared with white light.

I cover my eyes from the glare.

There is a silence after the roar. In the vacuum, Paul’s voice dribbles in informatively from the lawn. “This lumpy part is called the mantle. On either side of it, you can see two little holes as we pan in. These provide the breathing part of the slug, for the inhalation purposes of air and oxygen.”

No one, I realize, has even heard the blast, any more than they could see the Thing. Carefully, I lift up my head. The wall-to-wall carpeting has made impressions on my face and arms.

Chet is standing there, on the bed, smiling inscrutably. The Thing is gone. “Do not fear, Christopher,” Chet says. “I have defeated the foul fiend.”

I get up on my knees and point at him. “Look,” I say. “I don’t know what’s going on, but —”

“You could thank me for saving you. But it’s all in a day’s work. Well, time to go.”

“No, Chet, wait! Wait!”

“I really have to go. Pressing business away West.”

“Chet! If you want to prove yourself, cure me right now. Please. Then I’ll believe you.”

“Sorry, Christopher. No can do right now.”

“Chet, I need help. I believe you, Chet.”

“I’m glad you believe me, Christopher. That gives me a nice warm feeling deep down inside. I’ll be back in a few weeks. Promise.”

“Chet, damn it!”

“Hang tight ’til then.”

“Chet!”

But he walks toward the wall, dissolving, shedding a gray cloud of atomized suit coat and flesh.

“Chet, damn it!”

He splashes into the wall and is gone.

It is as if he and the Thing had never been there.

My room is quiet. A bobbing green light from the sun and a tree outside swings like a yo-yo against the wall. Out in the yard, the peepers are chirping irregularly.

I can hear my brother’s voice, muffled. “That dark stripe is the muscle, used for locomotion. Let’s close in with the zoom lens and see what . . . ,” he says. “Whoops. Eew. Eh! Ick! Shit! . . . Okay, end of take.”

One day, the late spring rain is falling like marshmallow. Warm, wet, and sticky. The sickly pale green grass of spring is swamped with it. The gutters clog and clot with dirt and red wood chips.

My head is upside down like a bat, hanging off the end of the sofa. People in general don’t like hanging upside down, but I can see why bats do it. It is not just the novelty of the way the blood in your head makes a sound like moths playing percussion. It is also great the way that you feel like you inhabit a different world. It’s like people can’t touch you, because they’re aligned with the floor.

I am listening to my parents, and they seem farther away because they are in the right-side-up world.

“Don’t tell me that!” my mother is yelling. “Do you know how long it’s been since you got a raise? Do you know?”

My father says something, but I can’t hear it.

“What are you saying? Just tell me what you’re saying,” screams my mother, “because I do everything I can to keep this family going, and I don’t want to hear —”

My father says something else, very softly, but slams the table while he says it.

My mother says, “Your older son spends his life watching TV, your younger son — God knows — is doing drugs or — I don’t even know what — and you’re going out to play golf. Play golf! Great father! Golf! Go ahead, in the rain — I hope you get a bogey!”

Then they tell each other to go to hell, and they start slamming doors.

Upside down, everything seems so light and strange. The white lamp has risen like a bubble and now bobs against a tabletop. The
TV Guide
has shot up onto the sheltering sofa. Everything is poised with infinite care.

I have almost gone to sleep when my father comes in.

He says, “Christ,” and walks out again. Then he looks in again. “What are you doing?” he demands. “Don’t you have anything better to do than lie around daydreaming? You’re not even right-side up. Get up. Do something.”

So I get up. I start to pace.

As I pass through the front hall, my father is leaving to cool down in the car.

I pace in circles from room to room.

The first time around the house, I think about how I played right into the vampires’ hands. I ask myself how Chet could possibly use the Arm for evil. I do not come up with an answer.

The second time around the house (as I pass through the kitchen, where my mother is adding soap powder in the dishwasher), I think about how Chet would have come back and really helped me by now if he cared. If he were good, he wouldn’t have abandoned me.

The third time around, I realize that I am all alone. I have probably played into the hands and claws of evil, and now I am all alone.

And my revolutions get quicker and quicker as I think:
Damn Chet, damn him because now I can’t speak to anyone, can’t tell anyone; and the thing I want to tell them most, the thing I need to say to them, is just that: that I can’t speak, and that I’m all alone; and how can you tell people you’re all alone when you’re all alone?

How?

Silence is there, stifling me like a dirty sock.

The afternoon rain drools down the gutters, and the birdseed washes around on the feeder dish. Rain muffles the house and drowns the yard.

My mother is sitting at the table, with her hands spread wide on the blond wood. The gray wet light of the rain has seeped into her hair and it is turning gray, too.

She looks up at me. She tilts her head to the side and moves it up so she is looking into my eyes. I stop my rotations. For a while, I stand there with my hand resting on the lintel of the kitchen door, looking into her eyes.

She looks very old and very human.

“Mom,” I say tentatively. “Do you have a second?”

“I’m sorry about the fight,” she says, blinking down, carefully slanting her fingers to match the grain of the wood. “Your father and I . . . can argue.”

The rain is soft against the grass. “Do you . . . ?” I ask and hesitate. It is a dumb question. “Do you believe in angels? Not faeries or anything, but, you know, celestial beings sent to guide us?”

She looks at me longer. Then she looks down at her hands, which have pulled away from the wood of the table and curled fondly around each other. Then she stands and half sits on the table, with one heel resting against the bottom rung of a chair. She says to me, “I do. I guess I do.” She frowns.

I move toward her. It is just about three steps. I am standing at the edge of the table nearest to her. Only a few inches away.

“In what way?” I say. “I mean, in that adult ‘Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus’ way?”

She curls her lower lip uneasily beneath her upper teeth and shakes her head. “No,” she says softly. “I think they are real.”

“And that they intervene in human life?”

She raises her head and looks at me warily. “What do you mean?” she asks.

I stand there, my shoulders sloping, my hands at my sides. “I don’t know,” I admit.

With one hand she strokes the tabletop three times, and then she says, “I saw one once. I had . . . When I had . . . You were saved by one once.” I wait for her to go on.

Finally, I say softly, so as not to disturb her, “How?”

The eaves are dripping. “When you were born,” she says, “you were choking to death. That was . . . You were a breech birth, and somehow you got tangled up in the umbilical cord. We thought that . . . so — that it was all over.”

The rain has let up a little. The dishwasher growls. I can hear Paul stomping upstairs. “Your face was blue. Really . . . I mean, blue. It . . .” She looks like she’s about to cry. “A nurse came. She said, ‘I’ll take him. Just for a minute.’ You were dead. You . . . She went into the next room.”

Paul’s radio goes on.

“Suddenly we heard this crying. It was you. She brought you in. She’d brought you back to life. It was . . . I mean, she was . . . It was a miracle. She brought you back.” She has moved closer to me. And softly, urgently, she says, “And you’re so wonderful, both you and Paul. We never could have imagined . . . I asked around, but no one knew who that nurse was. The room was full of people, but no one saw her come or go except your father and me.” Her eyes are wet. “So, yes, I believe in angels.

“Chris, you’re so special, and your father and I are so concerned about you. We might fight, but you don’t know how much we love you. Please, Chris,” she says, shaking her head and pronouncing my name again and again as if each time she were caressing my hair. “Chris, Chris, Chris . . .”

She is so close, and I can tell she wants to take me in her arms like that baby she saw saved. Her upper body leans toward mine, and her hands have lifted off the table by several inches. Her face is pleading.

And I am standing so near to her, thinking of that small smiling family when I was saved from death, years before, and how they couldn’t know what would happen, and how we all just want to be happy. I look at her, and I think we are both looking at each other and almost pleading for something with our eyes.