Thirsty (22 page)

“I’ll turn myself in,” I threaten him. “I’ll tell them what’s happened.”

Chet shakes his head. “Is that wise, Christopher? Is that really wise? Don’t forget that you’re guilty of first-degree deicide. Killing a god. The Forces of Light will demand to try you. Tch’muchgar was their prisoner. They wanted him to live. They’ll find you guilty and commence torture. Believe me, they’ll take advantage of the fact that you can’t die of normal causes. Do you really want to spend all of eternity that way, Christopher? Being tortured slowly by white faceless glowing beings?

“Of course, you won’t be much better off at home. You’re going to go insane soon. You’re going to kill someone. If for some reason you don’t, you’re going to fall into a coma, starved. Either way, you’re bound to have a stake driven through your heart. This is a diverting little problem, isn’t it, Christopher?”

I wait for him to go on. His face brightens and he says, “Here, let’s think about this idea.”

“What?” I grunt.

“You could go join the vampire band. They’d teach you the rudiments of killing and concealment. Offer emotional support. That might be the only place you’d be safe . . .”

“You think I should?”

“But, of course, you have unfortunately just murdered their god and sole hope of victory. Soon they’ll figure it out; then they’ll bite your throat out. So I guess that isn’t such a good idea after all.” He shrugs. “You know what, Christopher? You’re screwed. Well, I’m going now.”

“You bastard,” I say, stunned. “You are a complete bastard.”

“Not so far off the truth,” he agrees blandly. “Hypostatic parthenogenesis.”

“You can’t just leave me.”

“Of course I can. I’ll take a lot of pleasure in it, too.”

“You can’t leave!”

“Not without slapping you first,” he agrees and slaps me for no reason.

I stagger back against a tree.

“It takes so little,” he muses, “to cause biological beings pain.” His leg swipes upward and catapults into my shin. I topple on the ground, swearing and clutching. “Very strange.” He titters. “I’ve been given so much power, Christopher, so much in payment for this little gig. I feel almost young again. Do you understand? I’m seeing new things! I’ll be like a god soon! Despoiling worlds! A reign of terror! Ha!” He performs a quick dance upon the summer moss.

I’m rising to my feet as he hops in his jig. I’m careful, slow, ready to attack.

Above him, the horrified moon looks down through the black branches of pine. He trots and skips, chuckling and hopping, clapping and laughing beneath the night sky.

My teeth are now moving, they’re sliding and pointing, they’re ready for battle and blood in my veins.

He’s tapping and spinning and whirling and laughing; he’s hooting great names in the still of the night.

I take a step forward.

I scowl.

And I pounce.

Whack!
His fist flies out, and I go careening backward, my nose splattering blood down my face.

I’m on all fours again, kneeling in the moss.

Blood in my mouth.

I’m thirsty now. I lick at it quickly.

His shoes move across the moss toward me.

I’m hungry for the attack. I tense my muscles.

“It’s bad manners to kick a man when he’s down,” Chet says, “but it’s just Too! Much! Damn! Fun!” and with each word, he delivers a savage kick in my side or my arm or my head.

I roll.

I can’t tell which way is up. I feel the weight of my body, but can’t tell how it’s falling. My lips are sticky. Sticky. I lick them. I want his blood.

“Why me?” I gasp. I want his blood.

“Why did I choose you, Christopher? Because you threw the Forces of Light off my trail,” he says. “They thought that because you were a child, you were innocent, working for them. It took them months to figure out the truth. And by the time they did, you were marked as mine; there was nothing they could do.” His voice is ringing in my head — all around me, like a halo of feedback in burning red. “But do you know the other reason I chose you, Christopher? Because I knew you were an incompetent: self-pitying; self-absorbed; self-centered. The perfect teen. I knew you wouldn’t ask the right questions at the right time. In other words,” he says, leaning down and placing his hand kindly on my crippled shoulder, “I chose you because, to quote Tom, your best friend in this world, you are a complete peckerhead.”

He stands upright.

I lunge for his feet.

I pass through them, and he stands with his foot on my head.

He rocks the heel against my forehead. “No, Christopher. You won’t win this one.”

I am thinking wildly in my head, under his foot. What I realize is he must take me with him. I must become his assistant. I will help him in his evil; then one day, I will turn. I will betray him.

“You’ve got to take me with you. I’ll help you.”

“Good-bye, Christopher.”

“You’ve got to! You made me what I am!”

“No, I didn’t. Good-bye.”

“Chet! Pleathe! I can help you. We can work together.”

“No, we can’t, Christopher. I can read your thoughts now, and they’re stupid.”

“Chet!”

“That’s not my name. You don’t even know my name.”

The foot lifts off me.

I lunge again.

Again I fall through him.

He steps back.

“You can’t —”

“I can.”

“No, Chet!”

“That’s not my name.”

“Pleathe!”

“No.”

“God, pleathe!”

“Good-bye.”

“I’m tho alone!
I’m tho alone!
” I scream, terrified.

For a moment, the un-celestial being eyes me up and down. Almost with compassion. Then slowly, whimsically, he recites, “In the midst of life, we are in death. Of whom may we seek for succor, sucker?”

He smiles at me.

Then he vanishes and leaves me appalled; for I know, and realize, that all he has said is true.

I
am in my room.

I’m grounded for staying out after midnight. Somehow, that does not seem important to me now.

I look at my posters on my wall and at the stack of CDs next to my CD player. They don’t seem like mine anymore. I don’t want to listen to any of them. I don’t want to look at the posters. They are of someone else’s favorite thrash bands. They are covered with someone else’s clever comments in black and silver magic markers. So I tear them down and crumple them up.

For a minute, I consider drawing big Xs on the walls where they hung. But I can’t. It would take too long. Instead, I throw the pen against the wall. I pick it up and throw it again. I can’t be violent enough to the pen, so I twist it and step on it until it breaks and spreads ink on the tasteful wall-to-wall carpeting.

Earlier today, I saw Lolli die on TV. We were all sitting around the television, eating together and watching the news, like everyone else in town. They were showing the footage as I came back from throwing up.

Even with the special lens filters they use, Lolli hardly showed up on the screen.

“. . . Unfortunately, the police did not manage to get the vampiress inside the courthouse. During the ride from the Rigozzi house, where she was first injured, she regained consciousness. It appears that the substantial contusions, breaks, and fractures she sustained as a result of the automobile impact had healed to such an extent that when the police attempted to remove her from the vehicle, she attacked. Fortunately, her spine was still snapped, leaving her unable to move the lower half of her body. The crowd . . .”

I didn’t listen any longer. The words were a babble. I just watched.

It had all happened as Chet said it had. The police went to take Lolli out of the car and transport her into the courthouse. She lashed out. One of the escorts tripped and fell. The crowd couldn’t be controlled. They swarmed in around her. She tried to fight them or run, her eyes rolling crazily, her hips lying motionless in the muck of the gutter.

People poured around her with knives, with stones, with bits of glass. Each one taking their turn to gouge. Piling on top of one another. Screaming and yelling. Then I couldn’t see her. People were all around her. They were on top of her. She was gone beneath them. She was gone.

At the back of the crowd, I saw Chet. He was there before the courthouse, standing at the back of the crowd, his face red and distorted with rage, shaking his fist, urging them on to kill her.

“. . . of sixteen apparent years of age. Her companion, nicknamed Bat, is still at large. Peter Gallagher, the teen injured in the first heroic struggle with the vampires, was rushed to the hospital, where he is reported to be in serious condition.”

They interviewed Mayor Pensonville. He straightened his tie pin. “It was a brave thing Peter Gallagher and Anthony Rigozzi did. I’d like to shake those young men’s hands. It took something to stand up to these vampires. If everyone in this country had that something, then maybe, just maybe, there would be less vampires, and more —” (he hesitated) “more streets that would be safe for our children. All I can say is ‘Bravo! to them’ and ‘Vampires beware!’” He held up a finger. “I pledge — yes, I pledge: We will not stop until our children are safe to walk on the streets at night! We all are on the lookout!”

I turn and see that my mother has put down her fork and is watching me. Her eyes blink quickly, nervously. “Tomorrow we’re going down to see the doctor again. We’re going down there tomorrow, and if it turns out that all this time — if it turns out you’re a vam —” She can’t say the word. Her face twists around it, looking frightened and dangerous, and it won’t come out.

“Goddamn, Mom,” says my brother, glaring at her. He slams back his chair and leaves the table.

She points. “I’m telling you. If you’re —”

Again, she just shakes her head.

My father looks at his empty plate.

No,
I think to myself as I throw up again in the bathroom.
She would not turn me in. My own mother would not. She would not actually turn me in.

Sometime in the afternoon, Jerk calls.

Brrring brrring. Brrring brrring.

“Christopher,” says my father through the door. “It’s for you. It’s Je — uh, Michael. You can take it.”

I go down to the bottom of the stairs, past my father, to take the phone.

“Hey, Chris. Yo. Hey,” says Jerk.

“Hi, Jerk. How can I help you?”

“Man, how are you? I mean, what happened? I was really worried about you.”

I ask sharply, “Why, Jerk? Why were you worried?”

“We were all worried. Rebecca was really worried about you.”

I’m jumpy now. “Why? What did she say?”

“She said you, like, freaked out. She thought there was really something wrong with you.”

“Oh god, no. She didn’t.”

“I mean, not like wrong with you wacko funny farm, but wrong with you, like something bad had happened. She said you were hiding your mouth and talking really weird.”

“Oh, man. Oh. Damn!”

“What’s the problem? Are you okay?”

“Did she say anything else?”

“I mean, she talked about it with Tom. He kind of explained that he’d been worried about you for the last couple of months, concerned ’cause he said you’ve been acting kind of, you know. Like he always says, that you’ve been acting like you have some problem.”

“He said that to her? What did she say?”

“Then we heard that that girl you knew, you know, Lolli, the one from out of town, was a vampire. Did you hear? She, like, tried to kill Pete Gallagher. She was completely crazy. Man, it was horrible. He’s in the hospital. They say he’ll probably never play lacrosse again.”

“What about Rebecca?”

“I don’t know. She was really worried about you and stuff, especially after we heard about Lolli. And then Kristen started crying and Chuck put his arm around her, so Tom put his arm around Rebecca. They talked about how everything was so frightening, and how they were all really worried about you, and, you know, I left but I guess they all stayed out really late, sitting down by the reservoir, talking together about you and stuff. So I guess Tom and Rebecca are sort of, you know, like, going out now.”

“
What?
” I scream. “He’s doing this just to spite me! Isn’t he? He’s doing this just to spite me!”

“No,” stutters Jerk nervously. “No, no he’s not.”

“That’s why he’s going out with her! Just to goddamn show me I can’t! That bastard! Isn’t that the reason?” I am in a fury. I pound my fist against the wall. My mother opens the door to the living room.

“Why are you out of your room?” she jabbers anxiously, hanging back, as if ready to bolt. “Why are you out of your room? Get back to your room until I tell you to come out. Go on!” She gestures once, agitated, then ducks back into the living room.

Jerk waits for things to quiet down.

“Isn’t that the reason?” I hiss. “For Tom.”

He says, bewildered, “No. He’s doing it because she’s really nice. I talked to her for a while. She is. I mean, really nice. He’s going out with her because she’s really nice and interesting and stuff. She knows all this stuff about ancient spells and —”

“Thank you, Jerk,” I say. “I really value your opinion.”