Tom shrugs. “Look, Chris. Seriously. You’re not a monster,” he says. “You’re better looking than a lot of people.” He pauses, and blurts, “Like burn victims.” He laughs out loud. “Sorry,” he says.
“Thanks for your support,” I say.
Tom demands, “What?”
“You really can be a bastard,” I say.
He looks at me. “Why?” he sneers. “Because I could peg Rebecca Schwartz to the floor in my sleep?”
That is it.
I feel a violent urge. I do not know where it comes from. I am grappling with him, and he has fallen back on the grass. “You bastard!” I am saying. I am saying it again and again. I feel strangely strong. I want something terrible to happen to him. My mouth is watering.
For a moment, we perch there. My knee pins his stomach. The waves are lapping on the shore. I look at the water. The man in black has heard us shout. He turns back toward us. Slowly, he points his finger.
My eyes swoop down and hit the lake. There, beside Tom’s shoulder, they rest on the water.
It is then that I see that I have no reflection.
I see the clouds behind my head. I see Tom’s shoulder hanging out over the water. I look down and see our legs, lying in the mud. His are reflected; mine are not.
“You are so full of shit,” he says, seeing how I’ve frozen.
When he pushes me off, I lie there, staring sideways at the water. I will not say anything to him about it. I desperately want to blurt, “I’m not in the water!” But I won’t. I won’t tell him. It is probably just some trick of the light. I need to stop and stare and see what trick of the light it is. All I need to do is bend my head a different way.
I watch Tom swear and wring out the cuff of his jeans.
Jerk is fussing around us. “Are you okay? Are you, like, okay? Hey, what —?”
“Come on,” says Tom.
I watch their legs walk away over the grass. Tom’s dry foot and wet foot going plod, squoosh, plod, squoosh.
I wait for a minute. The plod, squoosh fades to nothing. Then I roll over so that my head is projecting out over the water.
I watch and breathe shallowly. Nothing at first. Then, slowly, slowly, I watch my face reappear in the reservoir.
For a while I lie like that, my leg in the mud, my face hanging a few inches above the ripples that, just a few moments before, would not hold my image.
A figure is bending over me. The man in black is at my side. He reaches down one of his fine hands and pulls me to my feet.
His face is hard and young and almost elfin. Though he is wearing a sharp sixties suit, it looks as if he could play the panpipe and worship things among the toadstools. He has a compassionate smile, though. “I saw what happened,” he says.
I look at him. I am sort of wary, because I am not quite sure what happened.
“How they ganged up on you,” he says.
I shrug, and I say, “I started it.”
He nods, and his hair moves in the wind. He puts his hands in his pockets. “Did you? Did you start it? Who can say? You are going through a difficult age,” he says, “I’m sure. So many contrary emotions. Some of them very new and violent. You won’t be a boy for long. There are a lot of changes you’re going through right now. Hormonal and so on.”
“Yes,” I say. I want to escape. One of my feet steps toward Tom and Jerk, who are getting farther and farther away. I can tell Tom is mimicking me, and Jerk is nodding sadly.
The man in black squints down the shore at them. Then, with a wide smile, he adds suddenly, “You must feel very disoriented sometimes.”
“Yes,” I mumble. I want to run and rejoin Tom and Jerk, because if I don’t rejoin them soon, Tom will not forgive me. Instead of forgiving me, he will employ his Five-Alarm Sarcasm, which has been known to strip the finish off Colonial furniture.
The clouds can be seen moving on the surface of the water.
“I saw you the other night at the lynching,” says the young man, rocking on his heels. “You seemed surprised. Startled? Uneasy?”
I nod.
“I saw her die,” he says, looking above my left shoulder out at the lake, biting his upper lip for a moment in regret. “The stake didn’t go in correctly. It was too large to fit through her ribs. As the executioner pounded it in, you could hear the ribs popping and cracking.” He looks at me. “Watching a vampire die, the worst part is the heart. It’s acquired a life of its own by that time. When the stake reaches the heart, the heart starts squealing in terror. Like a piglet.”
“That’s . . . of . . . okay. Thanks,” I mutter. “I guess I better catch up with my friends.” I start to walk away.
Tom and Jerk are now far away, walking shoulder to shoulder. I would stay and talk to this man, who I can see has an unusual and stimulating viewpoint, except that he is obviously a psychopath and I’m not yet interested in dying. (LOCAL BOY FOUND DECAPITATED IN DITCH: “MISSING HEAD NOT MUCH OF A LOSS,” SAYS EX-FRIEND TOM.) I am walking away down the path of yellow grass.
“I saw the whole fight just now,” the man in black is repeating behind me.
I keep walking.
“I saw what you saw,” he says.
I keep walking.
“I saw that you had no reflection in the lake.”
I stop. Chills go up and down my spine.
I turn back to him.
“No reflection.” He has stepped back and is sitting down casually on the embankment. “Don’t worry. I’ve been sent to help you.”
“What?” I say. “Help?”
“I am an avatar of the Forces of Light.”
“What?” I say stupidly.
“I’m a celestial being. I’ve been sent to ask your help. Must I shout, Christopher?” I walk back warily to his side.
“How do I know that you’re a celestial being?” I ask. “You don’t look anything like a celestial being to me.”
He rolls his eyes and smiles a disappointed little smile. Then he wavers and flickers like a flame on the wind. He disappears and reappears.
When he is fully substantial again, I say to him, “I guess you are a celestial being.”
“You see?”
“Um, you have two left hands now.”
He swears and switches his hand back. “That should be ample proof, in any case,” he says. Out of his pocket he takes a pair of designer sunglasses with thin horn rims. He puts them on. “We in the Forces of Light are worried about you, Christopher.”
I stare at him. “What?” I say.
“We’re worried because you’re going to become a vampire.”
“What? No.”
“Yes. You know it. You are —”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No. That was just a trick of the light, and —”
“Yes, Christopher. Yes.” He nods, slowly and finally. He has held up both his hands for silence, like he’s about to cue an invisible ghost orchestra playing cow-skull fiddles. He repeats gently, pleadingly, “Yes, Christopher.”
“But I’m not dead.” I am backing away from him, feeling a little sick and panicked. I realize I keep touching my cheek with my finger. “I can’t be a vampire. I’m not dead.”
“Vampirism is a lonely highway, and there are many routes that lead there,” he says. “Stop moving backward. Some vampires were cursed after they died; some were born with the curse, passed on from their parents; some were cursed while still alive. You have the curse in you. I don’t know why. But puberty has set it off within you. Hormones. In a few months — four, I’d say, at the outside — you’re going to be fully vampiric. You’re going to need blood to survive. I said stop moving backward. You’re about to trip over a hummock.”
“Where did I get the curse?”
“I said I don’t know. I’m sorry.” He folds his hands in front of him. “That is not the question. The question is what you’re going to do now. You have to think of your health. Vampires heal almost instantaneously. T
hey’re very hard to kill for this reason. You will stop aging in a few years, and you will be immune to disease. But it remains a sad little irony — this is an irony you will find very sad, Christopher — the sad irony is that most vampires die very quickly. You can be killed with a stake through the heart if you are caught. Or you can starve to death if you don’t drink human blood. That’s a tall order, drinking human blood. You will have to kill to live.”
“I’ve got to go,” I babble. “I have to catch up with my friends.” I gesture wildly toward Jerk and Tom.
The celestial being’s gaze shifts and he focuses on them. Far down the shore, Jerk is chasing pigeons. He makes roaring noises and waves his arms at them. He is so far away it sounds like he is mewling like a kitten.
I say apologetically, “They may not be much, but they are the only friends I have.”
The celestial being in the sharp black suit smiles quickly at me. “I try hard,” he says, “to love every human soul.”
He folds his hands in his lap. “May I continue? Please, Christopher, don’t try to run away from this. I told you that I’m here to help you. Do you understand? Help.”
“How can you help me?”
“You, Christopher, are on the cusp. You may move through both human and vampiric society with impunity. To humans, you are a human; to vampires, a vampire. In a few months, that will not be the case.”
“Why?” I ask. “What will the case be?”
“Since you ask about the case, I’ll tell you. You’ll be too savage and crazy to fit in among the human population. To the vampires, if you haven’t killed, you’ll still be too human to run with them. Human, meaning reluctant to stalk people and suck their blood.”
The sky is graying. The lake looks like granite. “I’m not going to stalk any people,” I protest, almost tripping over the words. “I’m not that kind of person.”
The celestial being looks at me with eyes invisible behind his dark designer glasses. He tells me, “You know what I am talking about. You know you are becoming a vampire. The vampiress recognized it in you. Vampires can see other vampires. And you don’t reflect when the blood-lust is upon you. You saw it in the lake.”
“I don’t know —”
“Water doesn’t lie.” He still stares at me. “Your thirst is only beginning now. When you get angry, you become vampiric. And vice versa. When you get thirsty, you get angry without reason. Increasingly. You feel prone to violence. You feel prone to drink blood. In four months, your blood-thirst will have overwhelmed you. You won’t be able to control yourself for long.”
“I don’t have to listen to this,” I say. “This is all the completest bullshit. I bet you’re not a celestial being at all.”
“I am too a celestial being. Christopher, I can help you. If you help the Forces of Light and act as a secret spy in the ranks of the damned, then we guarantee that we will cure you one hundred percent of the fatal scourge of vampirism.”
He waits. “And if you don’t,” he adds with quiet simplicity, “in five months you’ll be dead. This is not a threat; it is the truth. Either you will not have killed, in which case you’ll die of starvation, or you will have killed and been caught and lynched. Holy water to sear and blind you. A stake in your chest to finish you off.”
“What if I’m not turning into a vampire?”
“You are turning into a vampire. Don’t doubt it.”
We remain there for a moment. I am standing, with mud drying on my shoe. He is sitting, with the grass blowing around him. I feel like I cannot hear my own thoughts. Inside my head it is silent. The sky is getting darker.
“You have heard of Tch’muchgar?” he asks me suddenly.
“The Vampire Lord?”
“Yes. That’s the very one.”
“It’s not a common name,” I say, shrugging.
“No,” he agrees. “I can tell it is going to be a pleasure to work with you. Now consider Tch’muchgar: blasted from this world in man’s prehistory by the Forces of Light, snared in the most potent of enchantments for his grotesque misdeeds, and imprisoned in a foreign world that happens to have one of its points of entrance underneath this fine municipal reservoir. This is all true as you’ve heard it. Also very real are the spells that yearly must be cast here and in the White Hen Pantry off Route 62.
“This summer, Tch’muchgar will try to escape. He is locked in a parallel world — unable to move even a fraction, unable to see, seething with hatred. You see, we in the Forces of Light do not kill. It is a rule of ours: No death by our hands. Sometimes the greater punishment is to let something live.
“Though Tch’muchgar technically has no power in this world, he has managed to stain certain impressions on the minds of his vampiric servants. Vampires are loners, but he’s convinced them to work together. The plan is that this summer, during your Sad Festival of Vampires, they will interrupt the spells of binding that your townspeople cast yearly to hold Tch’muchgar; they will interrupt the spells just when those bonds are being reforged and are at their most delicate. Then the Vampire Lord will return, burst back into the world, and chaos will ensue.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think I’ve been very clear so far, Christopher. Tch’muchgar the Vampire Lord will return and probably conquer most if not all of North America. Then he will most likely start to use mankind as cattle. Keep a few around as studs to corral and breed. Cripple their children. Lock each one in its dark little cubbyhole for easy storage until it starts to mature. Keep the race fed on a protein-rich diet. Then kill them, one by one, and drink their blood.”
I shuffle from one leg to the other.
“Okay,” I say. “And me?”
“And you what?”
“What do you want me to do?”
The celestial being draws his fingers ticklingly along the bottom side of his jaw. Then he drops his hand to his lap again and nods. “As I’ve said, you are useful to us in the Forces of Light. You can walk among vampires without being suspected. Yet you are so young and your spirit still so transparent that you would be hard to trace with spells and wizardry if something should go wrong.
“We need you to enter the dwelling place of vampires. We need you to take within an object that I will find for you at great cost and deliver to you. You will take this object, enter the vampires’ enclave, and find the small gate they have opened to Tch’muchgar’s prison world. You will take the object through the gate, activate the object, and leave it there. Once activated, it cannot be moved or touched by anyone who is wicked or evil. It was very well designed at much expense.”
“What is it?”
“It is called the Arm of Moriator.”
“So you would like me to travel to another world, carrying a body part?” I say.
“No. You’ve misunderstood me. Arm as in arms race. It’s an archaic usage. The Arm is in fact a magic disk a few inches wide. I think it’s blue.”
“What will it do?”
“I will explain precisely when the time comes, which will be in a few weeks. Let us say for the time being that the Arm of Moriator will stop Tch’muchgar from escaping when the vampires interrupt your townspeople’s spells of binding. If he tries to escape from his prison world, he will pass out of that world but will not enter into another. He will thus cease to exist.”
The celestial being winds his fingers together with a sense of finality. “Christopher, I am giving you the chance to save your world. I don’t understand why you’re standing looking confused and frightened. I am also giving you the chance to prove that you are, deep down, a human and not a vampire. If you can prove that to us, we will lift this curse. Your fate is tied up with this quest, Christopher. You can be a hero and a human. Or you can be a vampire. And degenerate. And be hounded down by a mob after you’ve chewed through the throat of some pretty girl in an alley.”
I think about that, looking out across the reservoir. Tom and Jerk are sitting much farther down the bank, throwing stones into the water. Tom
points across to one of the islands. I look there and see a large bird flapping among the trees. I say, “But I’m just — look, I’m —”
“Christopher, Christopher, your life depends on this. The lives of everyone you know, too. Remember, in four months you’ll be ready for blood, unless you help. Remember the stake. Think about the squealing of your own vampiric little heart.” He smiles. “I’ll be in touch.”
“What if I . . . ? Isn’t there some other way?”
“There isn’t. You won’t be in danger. You’re on the cusp, remember? So you’ll slip in and slip out. Undetectable. I’m sorry I have to ask you to do this. It really won’t be as difficult as it sounds. An adventure. Just give me a few weeks to retrieve the Arm of Moriator and then we’ll talk. Three weeks is a long time when you’re becoming a vampire.”
My head is spinning. “I don’t know,” I say weakly. “I’ll think about it.”
“Christopher, this is the only way. Say yes.”
For a minute I stand there looking at him frowning with his lips pressed together. A little girl is riding a bicycle with training wheels on the ridge above us. Her father chases her and calls, “Go, Stacey! Go!” He runs against the thickening clouds.
“Okay,” I say. “If it’s got to be.”
“It has got to be. Is that a yes?”
“That’s a yes. I’ll help.”
The celestial being laughs and claps once. “That’s wonderful. You’ve made the right decision.”
“I hope I have.”
“You have. That’s just great.” He shakes his head. “This sure is a load off my mind. Now I can go and retrieve the Arm of Moriator for the next step.”
“When will that be, again?”
“In about three weeks. I’ll be in touch.”
“Okay,” I say. “What is your name?”
He looks surprised. “My name is nonverbal,” he says. “It is a pattern of thought.”
“You don’t have a name?” I ask, somewhat incredulously.
“Okay, a name,” he says, shrugging. “I don’t know. Name . . . ? Chet.”
“Chet?”
“That will do.”
“Your name is Chet? Chet the Celestial Being?”