Later

43

I was still scared of Therriault, but I no longer thought that I might chicken out if an opportunity came to put Professor Burkett’s ritual into practice. I only needed to be ready. For Therriault to get close, in other words, not just be across the street or standing near third base at Citi Field.

My chance came on a Saturday in October. I was going down to Grover Park to play touch football with a bunch of kids from my school. Mom left me a note that said she’d stayed up late reading Philippa Stephens’s latest opus and was going to sleep in. I was to get my breakfast quietly, and no more than half a cup of coffee. I was to have a good time with my friends and not come home with a concussion or a broken arm. I was to be back by two at the very latest. She left me lunch money, which I folded carefully into my pocket. There was a PS: Would it be a waste of time to ask you to eat something green, even a scrap of lettuce on a hamburger?

Probably, Mom, probably, I thought as I poured myself a bowl of Cheerios and ate them (quietly).

When I left the apartment, Therriault wasn’t on my mind. He spent less and less time there, and I used some of the newly available space to think about other things, mostly girls. I was dwelling on Valeria Gomez in particular as I walked down the hall to the elevator. Did Therriault decide to get close that day because he had a kind of window into my head, and knew he was far from my thoughts? Sort of a low-grade telepathy? I don’t know that either.

I pushed the call button, wondering if Valeria would come to the game. It was quite possible because her brother Pablo played. I was deep in a daydream of how I caught a pass, evaded all would-be touchers, and sped into the end zone with the ball held high, but I still stepped back when the elevator arrived—that had become second nature to me. It was empty. I pushed for the lobby. The elevator went down and the door opened. There was a short stub of hallway, and then a door, locked from the inside, which gave on a little foyer. The door to the outside wasn’t locked, so the mailman could come in and put the mail in the boxes. If Therriault had been out there, in the foyer, I couldn’t have done what I did. But he wasn’t in the foyer. He was inside, at the end of the hall, grinning away like doing so was going to be outlawed the day after tomorrow.

He started to say something, maybe one of his bullshit prophecies, and if I’d been thinking of him instead of Valeria, I probably would have either frozen in place or stumbled back into the elevator car, whamming on the DOOR CLOSE button for all I was worth. But I was being pissed at him for intruding on my fantasy and all I remember thinking was what Professor Burkett told me on the day I brought him the casserole.

“The tongue-biting in the Ritual of Chüd is only one ceremony before meeting an enemy,” he said. “There are many. The Maoris do a war-cry dance as they face their opponents. Kamikaze pilots toasted each other and photographs of their targets with what they believed was magical saké. In ancient Egypt, members of warring houses struck each other on the forehead before getting out the knives and spears and bows. Sumo wrestlers clap each other on the shoulders. All come down to the same thing: I meet you in combat, where one of us will best the other. In other words, Jamie, don’t bother sticking out your tongue. Just grab your demon and hold on for dear life.”

Instead of freezing or cringing, I bolted thoughtlessly forward with my arms out, like I was about to embrace a long absent friend. I screamed, but I think only in my head, because nobody looked out from one of the ground-floor apartments to see what was going on. Therriault’s grin—the one that always showed that lump of dead blood between his teeth and cheek—disappeared, and I saw an amazing, wonderful thing: he was afraid of me. He cringed back against the door to the foyer, but it opened the other way and he was pinned. I grabbed him.

I can’t describe how it went down. I don’t think a much more gifted writer than I am could, but I’ll do the best I can. Remember what I said about the world trembling, or vibrating like a guitar string? That was what it was like on the outside of Therriault, and all around him. I could feel it shaking my teeth and jittering my eyeballs. Only there was something else, on the inside of Therriault. It was something that was using him as a vessel and keeping him from moving on to wherever dead people go when their connection to our world rots away.

It was a very bad thing, and it was yelling at me to let it go. Or to let Therriault go. Maybe there was no difference. It was furious with me, and scared, but mostly it was surprised. Being grabbed was the last thing it had expected.

It struggled and would have gotten away if Therriault hadn’t been pinned against the door, I’m sure of that. I was a skinny kid, Therriault was easily five inches taller and would have outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds if he’d been alive, but he wasn’t. The thing inside him was alive, and I was pretty sure it had come in when I was forcing Therriault to answer my questions outside that little store.

The vibration got worse. It was coming up through the floor. It was coming down from the ceiling. The overhead light was shaking and throwing liquid shadows. The walls seemed to be crawling first one way and then the other.

“Let me go,” Therriault said, and even his voice was vibrating. It sounded like when you put waxed paper over a comb and blow on it. His arms flew out to either side, then closed in and clapped me on the back. It immediately became hard to breathe. “Let me go and I’ll let you go.”

“No,” I said, and hugged him tighter. This is it, I remember thinking. This is Chüd. I’m in mortal combat with a demon right here in the front hall of my New York apartment building.

“I’ll strangle the breath out of you,” it said.

“You can’t,” I said, hoping I was right about that. I could still breathe, but they were mighty short breaths. I began to think I could see into Therriault. Maybe it was a hallucination brought on by the vibration and the sense that the world was on the verge of exploding like a delicate wine glass, but I don’t think so. It wasn’t his guts I was looking at but a light. It was bright and dark at the same time. It was something from outside the world. It was horrible.

How long did we stand there hugging each other? It could have been five hours or only ninety seconds. You could say five hours was impossible, someone would have come, but I think… I almost know… that we were outside of time. One thing I can say for sure is that the elevator doors didn’t close as they are supposed to five seconds or so after the passengers get out. I could see the elevator’s reflection over Therriault’s shoulder and the doors stayed open the whole time.

At last it said, “Let me go and I’ll never come back.”

That was an extremely tasty idea, as I’m sure you’ll understand, and I might have done it if the professor hadn’t prepared me for this, as well.

It will try to bargain, he said. Don’t let it. And then he told me what to do, probably thinking that the only thing I had to confront was some neurosis or complex or whatever psychological thing you want to call it.

“Not good enough,” I said, and went on hugging.

I could see more and more into Therriault, and realized he really was a ghost. Probably all dead people are and I just saw them as solid. The more insubstantial he became, the brighter that darklight—that deadlight—shone. I don’t have any idea what it was. I only knew I had caught it, and there’s an old saying that goes he who takes a tiger by the tail dare not let go.

The thing inside Therriault was worse than any tiger.

“What do you want?” Gasping it. There was no breath in him, I surely would have felt it on my cheek and neck if there had been, but he was gasping just the same. In worse shape than I was, maybe.

“It’s not enough for you to stop haunting me.” I took a deep breath and said what Professor Burkett had told me to say, if I was able to engage my nemesis in the Ritual of Chüd. And even though the world was shivering around me, even though this thing had me in a death grip, it gave me pleasure to say it. Great pleasure. Warrior’s pleasure.

“Now I’ll haunt you.”

“No!” Its grip tightened.

I was squeezed against Therriault even though Therriault was now nothing but a supernatural hologram.

“Yes.” Professor Burkett told me to say something else if I got the chance. I later found out it was the amended title of a famous ghost story, which made it very fitting. “Oh, I’ll whistle and you’ll come to me, my lad.”

“No!” It struggled. That vile pulsing light made me feel like puking, but I held on.

“Yes. I’ll haunt you as much as I want, whenever I want, and if you don’t agree I’ll hold onto you until you die.”

“I can’t die! But you can!”

That was undoubtedly true, but at that moment I had never felt stronger. Plus, all the time Therriault was fading and he was that deadlight’s toehold in our world.

I said nothing. Only clutched. And Therriault clutched me. It went on like that. I was getting cold, feet and hands losing sensation, but I held on. I meant to hold on forever if I had to. I was terrified of the thing that was inside Therriault, but it was trapped. Of course I was also trapped; that was the nature of the ritual. If I let go, it won.

At last it said, “I agree to your terms.”

I loosened my grip, but only a little. “Are you lying?” A stupid question, you might say, except it wasn’t.

“I can’t.” Sounding slightly petulant. “You know that.”

“Say it again. Say you agree.”

“I agree to your terms.”

“You know that I can haunt you?”

“I know, but I’m not afraid of you.”

Bold words, but as I’d already found out, Therriault could make as many untrue statements as he—it—wanted to. Statements weren’t answers to questions. And anybody who has to say they’re not afraid is lying. I didn’t have to wait until later to learn that, I knew it at thirteen.

“Are you afraid of me?”

I saw that cramped expression on Therriault’s face again, as if he was tasting something sour and unpleasant. Which was probably how telling the truth felt to the miserable son of a bitch.

“Yes. You’re not like the others. You see.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes I’m afraid of you!”

Sweet!

I let him go. “Get out of here, whatever you are, and go to wherever you go. Just remember if I call you, you come.”

He whirled around, giving me one final look at the gaping hole in the left side of his head. He grabbed at the door-knob. His hand went through it and didn’t go through it. Both at the same time. I know it’s crazy, a paradox, but it happened. I saw it. The knob turned and the door opened. At the same time the overhead light blew out and glass tinkled down from the fixture. There were a dozen or so mailboxes in the foyer, and half of them popped open. Therriault gave me one last hateful look over his bloody shoulder, and then he was gone, leaving the front door open. I saw him go down the steps, not so much running as plunging. A guy speeding past on a bike, probably a messenger, lost his balance, fell over, and sprawled in the street, cursing.

I knew the dead could impact the living, that was no surprise. I’d seen it, but those impacts had always been little things. Professor Burkett had felt his wife’s kiss. Liz had felt Regis Thomas blow on her face. But the things I’d just seen—the light that blew out, the jittery, vibrating doorknob that had turned, the messenger falling off his bike—were on an entirely different level.

The thing I’m calling the deadlight almost lost its host while I was holding on, but when I let go, it did more than regain Therriault; it got stronger. That strength must have come from me, but I didn’t feel any weaker (like poor Lucy Westenra while Count Dracula was using her as his personal lunch-wagon). In fact I felt better than ever, refreshed and invigorated.

It was stronger, so what? I’d owned it, had made it my bitch.

For the first time since Liz had picked me up from school that day and taken me hunting for Therriault, I felt good again. Like someone who’s had a serious illness and is finally on the mend.