Later

38

Now I’m twenty-two—almost twenty-three, in fact—and living in the land of later. I can vote, I can drive, I can buy booze and cigarettes (which I plan to quit soon). I understand that I’m still very young, and I’m sure that when I look back I’ll be amazed (hopefully not disgusted) by how naïve and wet behind the ears I was. Still, twenty-two is light years from thirteen. I know more now, but I believe less. Professor Burkett would never have been able to work the same magic on me now that he did back then. Not that I’m complaining! Kenneth Therriault—I don’t know what he really was, so let’s stick with that for now—was trying to destroy my sanity. The professor’s magic saved it. It may even have saved my life.

Later, when I researched the subject for an anthropology paper in college (NYU, of course), I discovered half of what he told me that day was actually true. The other half was bullshit. I have to give him credit for invention, though (full marks, Mom’s British romance writer Philippa Stephens would have said). Check this out, and dig the irony: my Uncle Harry wasn’t even fifty and totally gaga, while Martin Burkett, although in his eighties, could still be creative on the fly… and all in service of a troubled boy who turned up uninvited, bearing a casserole and a weird story.

The Ritual of Chüd, the professor said, was practiced by a sect of Tibetan and Nepalese Buddhists. (True.)

They did it to achieve a sense of perfect nothingness and the resulting state of serenity and spiritual clarity. (True.)

It was also considered useful in combating demons, both those in the mind and the supernatural ones who invaded from the outside. (A gray area.)

“Which makes it perfect for you, Jamie, because it covers all the bases.”

“You mean it can work even if Therriault’s really not there, and I’m just crazypants.”

He gave me a look combining reproach and impatience that he probably perfected in his teaching career. “Stop talking and try listening, if you don’t mind.”

“Sorry.” I was on my second cup of tea, and feeling wired.

With the groundwork laid, Professor Burkett now moved into the land of make-believe… not that I knew the difference. He said that chüd was especially useful when one of these high-country Buddhists encountered a yeti, also known as the abominable snowman.

“Are those things real?” I asked.

“As with your Mr. Therriault, I can’t say with any surety. But—also as with you and your Mr. Therriault—I can say that the Tibetans believe they are.”

The professor went on to say that a person unfortunate enough to meet a yeti would be haunted by it for the rest of his life. Unless, that was, it could be engaged and bested in the Ritual of Chüd.

If you’re following this, you know that if bullshit was an event in the Olympics, the judges would have given Professor Burkett all 10s for that one, but I was only thirteen and in a bad place. Which is to say I swallowed it whole. If part of me had an idea of what Professor Burkett was up to—I can’t really remember—I shut it down. You have to remember how desperate I was. The idea of being followed around by Kenneth Therriault, aka Thumper, for the rest of my life—haunted by him, to use the professor’s word—was the most horrible thing I could imagine.

“How does it work?” I asked.

“Ah, you’ll like this. It’s like one of the uncensored fairy tales in the book I gave you. According to the stories, you and the demon bind yourselves together by biting into each other’s tongues.”

He said this with a certain relish, and I thought, Like it? Why would I like it?

“Once this union has been accomplished, you and the demon have a battle of wills. This would occur telepathically, I assume, since it would be hard to talk while engaged in a… mmm… mutual tongue-bite. The first to withdraw loses all power over the winner.”

I stared at him, my mouth open. I had been raised to be polite, especially around my mother’s clients and acquaintances, but I was too grossed out to consider the social niceties. “If you think I’m going to—what?—french-kiss that guy, you’re out of your mind! For one thing, he’s dead, did you not get that?”

“Yes, Jamie, I believe I did.”

“Besides, how would I even get him to do it? What would I say, come on over here, Ken honey, and slip me some tongue?”

“Are you finished?” Professor Burkett asked mildly, once again making me feel like the most clueless student in class. “I think the tongue-biting aspect is meant to be symbolic. The way chunks of Wonder Bread and little thimbles of wine are meant to be symbolic of Jesus’s last supper with his disciples.”

I didn’t get that, not being much of a churchgoer, so I kept my mouth shut.

“Listen to me, Jamie. Listen very carefully.”

I listened as if my life depended on it. Because I thought it did.