Thirsty - M. T. Anderson [50]
I know she doesn’t want to hear. I can tell she’s afraid.
So I don’t answer and go upstairs.
I sit down on my chair. I lay my head down on my desk like it’s a broken appliance and I’m dropping it off for repairs.
Briefly, I sleep. I dream of wielding great gouts of fire that wallop the vampires, as they cast their wicked spells. I dream of being cured by a kind touch from Chet. I dream that Rebecca Schwartz loves me and I talk to her like I would talk to no one else. I picture her careful, clever face, and I picture kissing it and her smooth white neck. I kiss her right where the pulse is, and I can feel how hot her blood is. I can feel it moving through her like quick fire; I can sense it caressing her breasts from the inside, circling like electrons around her secret womb.
I can feel it in my mouth, running down my throat. I feel strong again; I feel alive; I feel the spark of her life twitching in my heart as she drains into me, from under me, as I feel her spasms beneath me and her death.
My alarm rings. A half hour has passed. It is time for school. I lift my head slowly, like a moss-covered prehistoric sea turtle might if it were woken up by B movie radiation leakage.
Even the early morning sun is painful. I stand up.
I am not a morning person.
I am not an afternoon person either.
I guess that I am not a person at all.
It is the Sad Festival of Vampires.
At midnight, the runes and spells of warding will have been read, the White Hen shut, and the fate of the world decided.
And if Tch’muchgar is to come from his prison world and thunder through the forests he will have come; and there will be screaming in the lonely houses by the lake and burning in the towns.
And I do not know what to do.
Every city has its rituals to stave off evil and to satisfy the Forces of Light. At least in Clayton, we don’t sacrifice people anymore. In Boston it is bad because every year virgins must be offered to the spirits there.
There it is done democratically, through a lottery. The night before the lottery, the city holds a great celebration, like Mardi gras. Originally, it was a night when families could be together for maybe the last time before the name was drawn, the name of a virgin daughter or son. Now it is a difficult night for parents; they must decide whether to enjoy that last night together, sitting sadly in party frocks around their dining room table while outside the horns razz and glass breaks, or whether to push their sons and daughters out of the house, out into the parties and sweat, and tell them to go and lose their virginity in the crowds.
Needless to say, the night before the lottery is held each year, many seniors from our school take the Worcester-Boston bus, whooping and pounding on the windows. The next morning they come back out in the dismal light with stories of what they did behind dumpsters or in hotels.
Nobody knows what happens to the sacrifices after they’re left in a vault beneath the city. Usually they’re just gone in the morning and are never heard from again. Once, a mangled and tattered body was seen cawing and flapping its way crowlike out to sea.
In any case, in Clayton our rituals are not so dramatic.
From the Clayton Crier:
I’ve heard spring’s over and summer’s here — a little bird told me! School’s almost out and the nights are getting hot. And that means only one thing: time for the Wompanoag Valley Sad Festival of Vampires!
Yes, step right up, step right up for the best weekend of singing and dancing and carnival rides you’ll ever sink your teeth into! The fair is coming to Barley’s Field! That means fun, hayrides, clowns, games, carbonation, whipped cream, sacrificial goats in the petting zoo, etc., etc.! And while you’re there at the fair on Saturday night, from nine to midnight catch the loudspeaker broadcast of our quaint and ancient ritual of binding the Vampire Lord! So come: Listen, eat, drink, and be merry!
Sad