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,