Thirsty - M. T. Anderson [30]
“Ready?” says Chet, standing over me. Beside him is a man who looks like he is in his thirties, wearing a saggy European suit and a shirt with no collar. His hair goes down to his shoulders.
“Hi, Chistopher,” he says with a fake-o smile. “I’m Dr. Chasuble. You may have received a letter from my daughter?”
“Yes,” I say. “It’s nice to meet you. She has a way with colored pens.”
He laughs, and I shake his hand, but suddenly I realize that I am sitting down and should be standing up to be polite. I stand up, but he’s already stopped shaking my hand. Now the teenagers are staring at me. I can feel their interest and disdain.
“Shall we go in?” asks Chet.
“After you,” says Dr. Chasuble, gesturing toward some double doors at the other end of the parish hall.
We walk down the length of the room, and I can tell people are staring at me. Some of them stop talking and lay their plastic forks down beside their plates. I am sweating, and I feel like I am very confused. The smell of the casseroles clogs my nostrils.
I say politely, “Mmm! Chicken casserole.”
Chet’s eyes are secretly dark, but he puts his arm around me and says brightly, “Christopher, that isn’t chicken.”
I look back at the room full of them eating it. I think of the father, bending low — “May I have some more?” — and I think of the cheesy flesh sliding down the child’s gullet. I stop and stare; Chet pushes me on. We have arrived at the double doors. Dr. Chasuble opens them. We pass through a hall where the windows are broken, with webs of torn plastic strung over them to keep out the rain; a rotting corkboard is stuck full of messages held on with voodoo pins. We come to the far end of the hall, and Dr. Chasuble opens another door. Then we are in the sanctuary of the church of Tch’muchgar.
The church is tall and full of wine dark shadows.
The pews are empty. There are no hymnals or prayer books.
At the far end, up near the altar, three men are standing, their arms outstretched.
Among them floats an eye of red.
We walk up the aisle, our shoes clattering on the bare floor. I can hear the thick breath going in and out of Dr. Chasuble’s nostrils.
I’m electric with vertigo, even though I’m on the ground, vertigo like I felt once when I stood on the edge of a high cliff in Arizona and looked straight down. I keep swallowing, but my throat is dry.
We approach the eye, a burned hole in the air. There are crates opened, filled with paper sacks of powders and chalks. Books lie open on the floor. Standing around the dais limply, like ungainly storks in a mire, are twelve abandoned music stands. On several of them there are yellow Schirmer & Co. music scores, which say in blue writing Maruczek: Eight Atonal Chants for Unhallowed Liturgies, Winds and Mixed Chorus.
The eye glows red among the three men. Their sleeves are drawn back, and they have scratched bleeding symbols in their forearms.
There is a hum, as of energy.
“I’ll take over from here,” says Chet. “The Melancholy One wishes to meet this child.”
I am feeling sick. I cannot tell what is happening to me.
“All right. Please,” says Dr. Chasuble to the three men.
Chet has moved to the center, by the eye, and he is spinning it between his hands like one of those tops on a string, spinning it so it burns more redly, and lights his polka-dot tie, and grows, and spits sparks.
The three men lower their hands and move away.
“Come on,” says Dr. Chasuble, gesturing to the men.
“Five minutes,” says Chet. “He should be indoctrinated by then.”
And suddenly, I am afraid of him.
The others are shuffling back along the aisle. Chet still stands, his eyes closed, massaging the eye, and I suspect it is the gateway to Tch’muchgar’s world.
The pool of light is growing larger and larger, and now I can hear it moaning with energy, and I am wondering whether to make a break for it.
I do not know what to do. Suddenly I am unsure of it all, and I realize that if Chet is not what he seems, I am lost. If he is not from the Forces of Light, then I am tiny in the jaws of an evil god, and