As I stand there in that dank and grave-chilled sanctuary, I feel almost drunk with a sudden realization: In an hour, I figure, we'll be well away from here and Chet will have cured me of my curse forever. Good-bye, vampires. Good-bye, midnight hour. Good-bye, Tch'muchgar, the Melancholy One, Vampire Lord.

We walk back down the aisle. Over in the side aisle, rolled up, lies a mildewed cloth banner with faceless felt figures in bright colors. A stack of songbooks leans up against a wall. Someone has poured a bucket of red paint all over them.

In the hallway, one of the men with the bleeding arms leans up against the window frame, smoking.

"Christopher has spoken with the Melancholy One," Chet announces beatifically.

Several men walk over. They all look at me. I nod.

"s.h.i.t, great," says the guy smoking the cigarette. "What . . . I mean, what did he say?"

Chet looks at me, scratching the corner of his mouth with his pinkie.

I squirm for a minute. Then I say, "He proclaims that he shall lead us all to Victory. With a capital V."

Dr. Chasuble looks at the others. "Great!" he says.

"Yeah, great!"

Dr. Chasuble, Chet, and I go back into the parish hall. Everyone looks up at us. Dr. Chasuble and Chet smile at them to rea.s.sure them. Some of them smile back, and on so many faces, I see fangs.

What looks like a middle-aged lady dressed in cornflower blue rayon slacks is standing by the food table as we pa.s.s. "Go well?" she asks.

"Yes, indeed," says Chet.

She gestures toward the two ca.s.seroles. "Would you like some of Jennifer or Dave?"

"No, thanks," says Chet.

She looks at me and offers, "Jennifer Carreiras, fifteen, of Haverhill, or Dave Philips, fifty-three, of Springfield? Dave has a broccoli garnish, and Jenn has Doris Blum's special cornflakes crust - lots of crunchy bits."

"No, thanks," says Chet. "We have someone waiting for us out in the car."

"Oh! Bon appet.i.t," says the woman in cornflower blue.

The teenagers are staring at me from their corner. The kid with the tattoo has tilted back in his chair and is looking at me enviously and with a little bit of hate. I want to get the h.e.l.l out of there.

Dr. Chasuble is talking quietly with Chet as we walk out. They talk about the technical aspects of spells and when spells are to be cast.

We are outside. A chill wind is blown in rags and tatters through the trees. One lone frog is belching in the swamp.

Suddenly, I say to Dr. Chasuble, "I thought you only sucked blood. Why are you eating flesh?"

He looks at me curiously for a second. "We," he says softly. "Not 'you.'"

I can tell Chet is angry about the slip.

The bullfrog calls through the trees.

Dr. Chasuble says, "Eating flesh is a disgusting habit. I agree. We do it mostly for the little ones, the kids, when they haven't yet become vampiric. It's important to accustom them to the idea of taking human life for food. Otherwise, they can prove very dangerous and difficult to the family when p.u.b.erty hits."

Chet nods. "The family that preys together, stays together."

Dr. Chasuble laughs and puts his arm around my shoulder. "But look. Forget about eating. Drinking - that's the thing. Exsanguination - draining blood - is a beautiful act, Christopher. At first, of course, it will be messy. Before you get the hang of it, you'll gag, and lap, but after a while you'll learn how to really use your fangs to your best advantage. When you're a real pro, the pumping of the heart will send the blood squirting right into your mouth. Effortless. Sweet. Thick. Tart.

"And then it's a beautiful moment. Lying on top of someone, feeling the quivering of their heart and just slowly, smoothly, silently pulling their lifeblood out of them. It's a very gentle-feeling death. Eventually, they just stop struggling."

He stands back from me. The frog is silent in his pond. "And remember," he says. "Lolli is up for a date whenever you want to have your first experience. I imagine Chet can teach you a thing or two, but Lolli has a good head on her shoulders and can show you the ropes. If you don't feed soon, your blood-l.u.s.t is going to become overpowering, your fangs will come out, and people will start to notice things."

Chet holds out his hand. "We'll be in touch," he says.

"Chet," says Dr. Chasuble, shaking.

"Nice to meet you," I say.

"And we'll be in touch, too," says Dr. Chasuble. "Hope you'll join us during the Sad Festival of Vampires. Long reign Tch'muchgar."

"Long reign Tch'muchgar," I agree hastily.

"Hey, ditto," says Chet the Celestial Being.

We walk down the drive toward Chet's car.

Tom and Jerk are toppled in the back seat. Jerk has curled up awkwardly with his cheek on his knee, and there is drool on the denim.

Without talking, Chet starts the car, puts it into drive, and heads back down the cracked road. We drive for a ways before we start to pa.s.s small bungalows in the woods, some of them with sagging aluminum toolsheds or car trailers for boats, resting on the pine needles.

Chet seems mildly triumphant. "Very well done," he says. "You cut it a bit fine there at the end. With the 'you.'"

"Now do you cure my vampirism?" I ask.

"Yes, of course," says Chet. "I'll send someone around. I'm not authorized to do it myself. But I'll arrange for an annulment of the curse. Do you know your social security number?"

"No," I say.

"Hm," he says, pondering as he taps on the steering wheel. "It may take a couple extra days then. But there will be someone, don't worry."

"Have you figured out any more about how I got cursed?" I ask. "I mean, I don't think I've ever been bitten or anything."

"No, I haven't. As to guesses? Difficult to say. It might have been years ago, and it's just taking effect now because of p.u.b.erty and hormonal changes, sort of like asthma or allergies. In any event, we'll have you fixed up in a jiffy."

We approach the highway. And we are soaring along it, the wind whiffling in through the back window.

We drive along, and I am half dazed by what I have seen. In my head I am picturing what I will be able to say to Rebecca during the Sad Festival of Vampires: We are standing by the reservoir, and the air of the summer's night is as sweet as wine, and she's saying, "Come on. Did you really enter Tch'muchgar's world and set in place the seed of his destruction?"

"Yes!" I say, laughing. "Didn't I just say that?"

"You did just say that, but also you were lying."

"I was not lying."

"Okay. You weren't lying."

And her soft face is lit by the fireworks going off above, as the towering vampire Tch'muchgar explodes above the lake. There are vampire parts blowing up every which way, and he's yodeling as he blows up and falls in sizzling chunks into the reservoir. People on the beaches lie together with their head in one another's lap, or lean against one another, and when Tch'muchgar does a particularly colorful explosion, everyone says, "Oooh! Aaah!"

And I turn to Rebecca and look at her smoky eyes and her careful lips, and I feel the warmth of her against me. We lie stretched out beneath the trees, looking up at the stars and the exploding Vampire Lord, and our thoughts are so content and similar that they rub up against each other like cats.

I sit up. The car is idling, sitting on the dark lane near the water tower. Chet has undone his seatbelt and is twisted in his seat. His arms shoot backward, and his fingers are pressed against Tom's and Jerk's foreheads.

"We'll set them where they were. Erase their memories. Then you can rejoin them."

I look into the tangled woods. "What about that Thing that was stalking me? With the alien toupee?"

"Don't worry," says Chet. "It can't touch you. And anyway, it's not in the woods anymore."

"Thank goodness," I say.

"It's at your house." He lifts his fingers off their foreheads. Jerk's skin is so pasty the fingers have left red welts. "Okay, boys. Get out of the car and walk into the woods that way. Then why don't you come to your senses. You're looking for Christopher."

In a matter-of-fact kind of way, as if they were getting out to run into McDonald's, Tom and Jerk open the doors and get out. They don't speak, but they shake their limbs uncomfortably.

"And take the d.a.m.n dog."

Jerk reaches in and pulls at Bongo's collar. Bongo is whining. It sounds like someone scrubbing a window.

Together, they walk off into the woods.

"What am I going to do?" I ask. "That Thing's waiting for me!"

Chet shakes his head. "It can't touch you, because I have my mark on you. The Thing is just observing you. Trying to figure out what we're up to. Are you going to get out, too? I think you'll want to walk home with the others for company."

So I get out, too. I shut my door behind me.

"Good night," says Chet, leaning down to call through the window. "And good job. With saving the world, I mean. We'll send someone around soon about the vampirism, and I'll come by if I have the time."

Suddenly, I have a very suspicious feeling. Chet is waving and smiling. His smile is very fake.

"Wait!" I say.

But he is still waving, and the window is rolling up, and he pulls out onto the road and drives off.

"Wait! Chet! I can't sleep! Please! I can hardly eat!"

I listen to the motor fade down the lane as the car rolls past broken stone walls.

"Chet!"

The lights of his car disappear.

"d.a.m.n."

I walk into the woods.

I cannot place where I am.

Then I hear Tom and Jerk thrashing in the distance.

I run toward them.

They are standing in the woods, looking for the road with the flashlight.

"Where were you?" says Tom, as I run up. He looks confused and a little frightened, as if he can't remember something, but won't admit it.

"Over there," I answer; but I don't point anywhere.

It takes us about half an hour to find our way home. Bongo has quieted down by now. He is exhausted. We go under the railroad bridge. We drop Jerk off at his house and tell him we'll see him tomorrow. We hear him crooning to the dog as he goes inside that it's feeding time for Bongo; that Bongo is a good boy.

We walk back to Tom's. I call my father for a ride.

Who knows what is happening. Who knows whether Chet is on the level, and who knows whether I have just made an error and given Tch'muchgar some hideous tool for evil, and who knows when I shall be cured and be able to sleep again soundly.

My father comes to get me.

Now the cla.s.sic rock station is playing hits from the seventies.

My father doesn't know the words, so he cannot sing along.

Once the rains have stopped, the things that were dead start growing.

The blossoms come out in the orchards. They are wrapped around the trees like great white smothering sheets. And there are streets where tree after tree is the bright unnatural pink of circus candy. You can almost hear madcap carousel music just looking at the pink trees drifting by the bus.

The earth is giving birth to insects. At first, there are only a few mosquitoes. Then the swamp starts disgorging them as if spitting watermelon seeds. Little heat-seeking watermelon seeds, spat from between its gap-toothed grin. Flies bounce against the windows. Moths. .h.i.t the screens at night. Ants are in our Life cereal, marching five by five and six by six, like in the song.

Dead fish lap at the edges of the reservoir. I don't understand their life cycle, but maybe they waited all winter to die, or maybe their flat corpses have been stacked under the ice all winter like TV dinners and just now floated to the top.

I can't believe Chet has abandoned me again. I am sure he will be back like he promised, but it would just make me feel better if I knew. I wish I could get in touch with him. Strange things are happening to my body. Things are twisting and poking in my mouth, and I have an orthodontist's appointment coming up.

The Thing with the One-Piece Hair appears and disappears without warning. Some days it is there, staring, following me to school, leaving no crushed footprints as it trudges across the gra.s.s. Sometimes I do not see it for days on end.

At night sometimes, when I can't sleep, I get up and go to the window. The Thing stands there, below, beneath the lamppost, on the spot where Jon Edwards broke his arm two years ago on a skateboard while saying the words, "I go as fast as spitfire!"

When I am feeling all alone at two or three in the morning, sometimes I wave to the unmoving, unholy Thing. h.e.l.lo, Mr. Thing with the One-Piece Hair!

As Chet promised, it does nothing to harm me now. It does nothing but watch and wait.