They Thirst

Other Avon books by
Robert R. McCammon

Baal

Bethany's Sin 

The Night Boat

THEY THIRST is an original publication of Avon Books. This work has never before appeared in book form.

AVON BOOKS

A division of

The Hearst Corporation

959 Eighth Avenue

New York, New York 10019

Copyright © 1981 by Robert R. McCammon Published by arrangement with the author Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 80-69890 ISBN: 0-380-77180-2

All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information address Michael Larsen-Elizabeth Pomada, Literary Agents, 1029 Jones Street, San Francisco, California 94109

First Avon Printing, May, 1981

AVON TRADEMARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. AND U® OTHER COUNTRIES, MARCA REOISTRADA, HECHO EN U.S.A.

Printed in the U.S.A.

10 9876543

For Sally, who helped me reach

It was midnight in Topanga I heard the DJ say "There's a full moon rising Join me in LA. . . ."

—
Warren Zevon

I'd kill for love

I'd kill for love

As sure as there's
a
God above

I'd kill for love

—
Rory Black

Shadows shifting everywhere; Very thin and very tall, Moving, mingling on the wall, Till they make one Shadow ail

—
Augustus Julian Requier

I'd like to express appreciation to a number of people who helped me in researching this book and putting it all together: W. B. McDonald, M.D.; James R. Fletcher, M.D.; Gunnery Sergeant Larry Rocke, USMC; Captain Paul T. Taylor, USMC; Detective Sergeant William Ludlow; Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally for keeping the legends alive; and Mike and Elizabeth.

R.M.

Tonight there were demons in the hearth.

They spun, arched, and spat at the eyes of the boy who sat at the fire's edge, his legs crossed under him in that unconscious way children have of being incredibly supple. Chin supported by palms, elbows supported by knees, he sat in silence, watching the flames gather, merge, and break into fragments that hissed with secrets. He had turned nine only six days ago, but now he felt very old because Papa wasn't home yet and those fire-demons were laughing.

While I'm away, you must be head of the house,
Papa had said as he coiled a line of thick rope around his bear's paw of a hand.
You must take care of your mother and see that all goes well while I and your uncle are gone. Do you understand that?

Yes, Papa.

And see that you bring in the wood for her when she asks and stack it neatly along the wall so it can dry. And anything else she asks of you, you'll do, yes?

I will.
He could still see his father's fissured, wind-ravaged face towering over him and feel the rough-as-hearthstones hand on his shoulder. The grip of that hand had conveyed an unspoken message: This is a serious thing I do, boy. Make no mistake about that. Watch out for your mother and be careful.

The boy understood, and Papa had nodded with satisfaction.

The next morning he watched through the kitchen window while Uncle Josef hitched the two old, gray and white horses to the family's wagon. His parents had drawn away, standing across the room near the bolted slab of a door. Papa had put on his woolen cap and the heavy sheepskin coat Mama had made for him as a Christmas present years before, then slipped the coil of rope around one shoulder. The boy picked listlessly from a bowl of beef broth and tried to listen, knowing that they were whispering so that he would not hear. But he also knew that if he did hear, he really wouldn't know what they were whispering about, anyway.
It's not fair!
he told himself as he dipped his fingers into the broth and brought out a chunk of meat.
If I'm to be the head of the house, shouldn't I know the secrets, too?

Across the room Mama's voice had suddenly surged up out of control.
Let the others do it! Please!
But Papa had caught her chin, tilted her face up, and looked gently into those morning-gray eyes.
I have to do this thing,
he'd said, and she looked like she wanted to cry but could not. She'd used up all her tears the night before, lying in the goose-down bed in the other room. The boy had heard her all through the night. It was as if the heavy hours were cracking her heart and no amount of time on the other side of twilight could ever heal it again.
No, no, no,
Mama was saying now, over and over again as if that word had some magic that would prevent Papa from stepping out into the snowy daylight, as if that word would seal the door, wood to stone, to keep him within and the secrets out.

And when she was silent, Papa had reached up and lifted the double-barreled shotgun from the gunrack beside the door. He cracked open the breech, loaded both chambers with shells, and carefully laid the weapon down again. Then he had held her and kissed her and said I
love you.
And she had clung to him like a second skin. That was when Josef had knocked at the door and called out,
Emil! We're ready to leave!

Papa had hugged her a moment longer, then gripped the rifle he had bought in Budapest, and unlatched the door. He stood on the threshold, and snowflakes flew in around him.
André!
he had said, and the boy had looked up.
You take care of your mother, and make sure this door stays bolted. Do you understand?

Yes, Papa.

In the doorway, framed against a bleached sky and the purple teeth of the distant mountain ranges, Papa had turned his gaze upon his wife and had uttered three softly spoken words. They were indistinct, but the boy caught them, his heart beating around a dark uneasiness.

Papa had said,
Watch my shadow.

When he stepped out, a whine of November wind filled the place he'd left. Mama stood at the threshold, snow blowing into her long dark hair, aging her moment by moment. Her eyes were fixed on the wagon as the two men urged the horses along the cobbled path that would take them to the others. She stood there for a long time, face gaunt against the false white purity of the world beyond that door. When the wagon had lumbered out of sight, she turned away, closed the door, and bolted it. Then she had lifted her gaze to her son's and had said with a smile that was more like a grimace,
Do your schoolwork now.

It was three days since he had gone. Now demons laughed and danced in the fire, and some terrible, intangible thing had entered the house to sit in the empty chair before the hearth, to sit between the boy and woman at their evenings meals, to follow them around like a gust of black ash blown by an errant wind.

The corners of the two-room house grew cold as the stack of wood slowly dwindled, and the boy could see a faint wraith of mist whirl from his mother's nostrils whenever she let out her breath.

"I'll take the axe and get more wood," the boy said, starting to rise from his chair.

"No!" cried his mother quickly and glanced up. Their gray eyes met and held for a few seconds. "What we have will last through the night. It's too dark out now. You can wait until first light."

"But what we have isn't enough ..

"I said you'll wait until morning!" She looked away almost at once, as if ashamed. Her knitting needles glinted in the firelight, slowly shaping a sweater for the boy. As he sat down again, he saw the shotgun in the far corner of the room. It glowed a dull red in the firelight, like a watchful eye in the gloom. And now the fire flared, spun, cracked; ashes churned, whirled up the chimney and out. The boy watched, heat striping his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose, while his mother rocked in the Chair behind him, glancing down occasionally at her son's sharp profile.

In that fire the boy saw pictures coming together, linking into a living mural: he saw a black wagon drawn by two white horses with funeral plumes, their cold breath coming out in clouds. In that wagon a simple, small coffin. Men and women in black, some shivering, some sobbing. Others following the wagon, boots crunching through a crust of snow. Muttered sounds. Faces layered with secrets. Hooded, fearful eyes that stared out toward the gray and purple rise of the Jaeger Mountains. The Griska boy lay in that coffin, and what remained of him was now being carried by the procession to the cemetery where the
lelkesz
waited.

Death.
It had always seemed so cold and alien and distant to the boy, something that belonged not to his world, nor to the world of his Mama and Papa, but rather to the world that Grandmother Elsa had lived in when she was sick and yellow-fleshed. Papa had used the word then—
dying. When you're in the room with her, you must be very quiet because she can't sing to you anymore, and all she wants to do now is sleep.
To the boy death was a time when all songs ceased and you were only happy when your eyes were closed. Now he stared at that funeral wagon in his memory until the log collapsed and the tendrils of flame sprang up in a different place. He remembered hearing whispers among the black-garbed villagers of Krajeck:
A terrible thing. Only eight years old. God has him now.

God? Let us hope and pray that i
t
is indeed God who has Ivon Griska.

The boy remembered. He had watched the coffin being lowered by a rope and pulley into the dark square in the earth while the
lelkesz
stood intoning blessings and waving his crucifix. The casket had been nailed shut and then bound with barbed wire. Before the first shovelful of dirt was thrown, the
lelkesz
had crossed himself and dropped his crucifix into the grave. That was a week ago, before the widow Janos had disappeared; before the Sandor family vanished on a snowy Sunday night, leaving all their possessions behind; before Johann the hermit reported that he had seen naked figures dancing on the windswept heights of Mount Jaeger and running with the big timber wolves that stalked that haunted mountain. Soon after that Johann had vanished along with his dog, Vida. The boy remembered the strange hardness in his father's face, a flicker of some deep secret within his eyes. Once he had heard Papa tell Mama,
They're on the move again.

In the fireplace, wood shifted and sighed. The boy blinked and drew away. Behind him his mother's needles were still; her head was cocked toward the door, and she was listening. The wind roared, bringing ice down from the mountain. The door would have to be forced open in the morning, and the hard glaze would shatter like glass.

Papa should be home by now,
the boy told himself.
It's so cold out tonight, so cold . . . surely Papa won't be gone much longer.
Secrets seemed to be everywhere. Just yesterday night someone had gone through the Krajeck cemetery and dug up twelve graves, including Ivon Griska's. The coffins were still missing, but it was rumored that the
lelkesz
had found bones and skulls lying in the snow.

Something pounded at the door, a noise like a hammer falling upon an anvil. Once. And again. The woman jumped in her chair and twisted around.

"Papa!" the boy shouted joyfully. When he stood up, the flame-face was forgotten. He started toward the door, but his mother caught his shoulder.

"Hush!" she whispered, and together they waited, their shadows filling the far wall.

More hammering on the door—a heavy, leaden sound. The wind screamed, and it was like the wail of Ivon Griska's mother when the sealed coffin was lowered into the frozen dirt.

"Unbolt the door!" Papa said. "Hurry! I'm cold!"

"Thank God!" Mama cried out. "Oh, thank God!" She moved quickly to the door, threw back the bolt, and flung it open. A torrent of snow ripped at her face, the wind distorting eyes, nose, and mouth. Papa, a huddled shape in his hat and coat, stepped into the dim firelight, and diamonds of ice sparkled in his eyebrows and beard. He took Mama into his arms, his massive body almost engulfing her. The boy leapt forward to embrace his father, grateful that he was home because being the man of the house was much more difficult than he had imagined. Papa reached out, ran a hand through the boy's hair, and clapped him firmly on the shoulder.