Thirsty - M. T. Anderson [31]
“Go on,” says Chet. He opens his eyes and looks at me. “Go on. Quickly. Where angels fear to tread.”
I stand there. The roof of the church is dark and about me like vast moldy wings. I can hear, as if I were underwater, the distorted sounds of singing and talking from the other room.
“Enter,” hisses Chet. “Enter, now.”
“Should I —?”
“Enter. Walk. Drop the Arm.”
I am frightened.
“Get going,” he says, almost baring his teeth. “This isn’t easy. Come on, you — good god, your world is . . . Would you go?”
I balk — “Get in there,” Chet demands. “Now. Or we’ll never believe you want your vampirism cured, and the whole deal’s off.”
“Chet —,” I say, backing away.
“Your only hope. Our only hope.”
“Please can I —”
“Go!”
There’s nothing else to do.
So I step into the circle.
And I drop through space without time, and I am in Tch’muchgar’s world.
Darkness and wet.
For a minute, I just hang there and wonder where I am.
Like being under the reservoir in winter, I realize. Hanging far beneath the ice, while above it is a bleak day and the leaves are on the ground and the waters are dead and the trees are just streaks of brown scraped on the plain white sky.
Down here, there is nothing to see; no motion anywhere. No light at all.
But this, if it were a lake, and not a world, would be a lake with no bottom, and no surface, and there is no life within it. I can feel that. I can still feel the vertigo in my toes, as they hang in nothing, and I know that this murky world spreads out dark and dead into infinity.
Though I am hanging in what feels like water, it must not be water. It feels thicker for one thing, as if I were dunked in embalming fluid. For another thing, I do not choke when I breathe it.
This infinite lake is empty, has never known life, except that somewhere Tch’muchgar must be lying, waiting for his release. I can hear a distant noise, or perhaps it is in my head, the static from his thoughts, like the far-off hum of a highway when you’re snorkeling deep in the coldest part of the lake. A sound or sense like the thrumming, again and again, of military trucks in a convoy rumbling over a distant bridge.
If I can hear him, I wonder if he can hear me.
I have the Arm in my hand. I feel around the edge for the first rune. I touch it and whisper, “Light, I invoke you.”
The second rune. “Light, I invoke you.”
The third. “Light, I invoke you.”
The fourth. “Light, I invoke you.”
And with that, the disk starts to glow, and a voice faintly says all around me, “Activated.”
As Chet has told me to do, I release the disk. Then I reach out and impulsively clutch it (the blue light picking my fingers out of the murk) — I may have made a mistake.
Have I? I don’t know. What else, I wonder, can I do? Tentatively, I push it out into the void.
It floats away, but I can’t tell how fast, or how far away it is from me. The light continues in the darkness, lighting nothing, drifting.
I hang there for a minute. Chet will pull me out. This is what he has told me.
And I start to realize that, though there could be no breeze here, and though there is no life to stir the water, the plasma all around me is starting to move and eddy.
The sound is approaching me, too. Getting louder. I am in the midst of something. Everything is thickening.
It is then that I realize that the movements themselves are the thoughts of great Tch’muchgar, all around me, vast, rebounding. I am in the midst of him. The Vampire Lord is thinking; and I can feel the currents of his thoughts slither and snake around me like a cluster of prying water moccasins.
I start flailing my arms and shouting. My arms can hardly trawl through the thick slime; my legs kick against nothing; and still the curious currents crawl and prod me and slink up and down my face and legs, the thoughts and sardonic bemusements of the Vampire Lord.
He is all around me, and I can hardly move