If Setrakian ever understood true thirst, it was that day. Water carriers circulated among the prisoners constantly, though many of them themselves fell prey to heat seizures. The burning hole was well fed that day. Setrakian had managed to collect what he needed: a length of raw white oak, and a bit of silver for the tip. That was the old way to dispose of the strigoi, the vampire. He had sharpened the tip for days before treating it with the silver. Smuggling it into his barracks alone took the better part of two weeks of planning. He had lodged it in an empty space directly behind his bed. If the guards ever found it, they would execute him on the spot, for there was no mistaking the shape of the hardwood as a weapon.
The night before, Sardu had entered the camp late, later than usual. Setrakian had lain very still, waiting patiently for it to begin feeding on an infirm Romani. He felt revulsion and remorse, and prayed for forgiveness-but it was a necessary part of his plan, for the half-gorged creature would be less alert.
The blue light of impending dawn filtered through the small grated windows at the east end of the barracks. Just what Setrakian had been waiting for. He pricked his index finger, drawing a perfect crimson pearl out of his dry flesh. Yet he was completely unprepared for what happened next.
He had never heard the Thing utter a sound. It conducted its unholy repast in utter silence. But now, at the smell of young Setrakian's blood, the Thing groaned. The sound reminded Setrakian of the creaking sound of dry wood when twisted, or the sputter of water down a clogged drain.
In a matter of seconds, the Thing was at Setrakian's side.
As the young man cautiously slid his hand back, reaching for the stake, the two locked eyes. Setrakian couldn't help but turn toward it when it moved near his bed.
The Thing smiled at him.
"Ages since we fed looking into living eyes," the Thing said. "Ages..."
Its breath smelled of earth and of copper, and its tongue clicked in its mouth. Its deep voice sounded like an amalgam of many voices, poured forth as though lubricated by human blood.
"Sardu...," whispered Setrakian, unable to keep the name to himself.
The beady, burnished eyes of the Thing opened wider, and for a fleeting moment they looked almost human.
"He is not alone in this body," it hissed. "How dare you call to him?"
Setrakian gripped the stake behind his bed, slowly sliding it out...
"A man has the right to be called by his own name before meeting God," said Setrakian, with the righteousness of youth.
The Thing gurgled with joy. "Then, young thing, you may tell me yours..."
Setrakian made his move then, but the silver tip of the stake made a tiny scraping noise, revealing its presence a mere instant before it flew toward the Thing's heart.
But that instant was enough. The Thing uncoiled its claw and stopped the weapon an inch from its own chest.
Setrakian tried to free himself, striking out with his other hand, but the Thing stopped that too. It lacerated the side of Setrakian's neck with the tip of its stinger-just a gash, coming as fast as the blink of an eye, enough to inject him with the paralyzing agent.
Now it held the young man firmly by both hands. It raised him up from the bed.
"But you will not meet God," the Thing said. "For I am personally acquainted with him, and I know him to be gone..."
Setrakian was on the verge of fainting from the vicelike pressure the claws exerted upon his hands. The hands that had kept him alive for so long in that camp. His brain was bursting with pain, mouth gaping, lungs gasping for breath, but no scream would surge from within.
The Thing looked deep into Setrakian's eyes then, and saw his soul.
"Abraham Setrakian," it purred. "A name so soft, so sweet, for a boy so full of spirit..." It moved close to his face. "But why destroy me, boy? Why am I so deserving of your wrath, when around you you find even more death in my absence. I am not the monster here. It is God. Your God and mine, the absent Father who left us all so long ago...In your eyes I see what you fear most, young Abraham, and it is not me...It is the pit. So now you shall see what happens when I feed you to it and God does nothing to stop it."
And then, with a brutal cracking noise, the Thing shattered the bones in the hands of young Abraham.
The boy fell to the floor, curled in a ball of pain, his crushed fingers near his chest. He had landed in a faint pool of sunlight.
Dawn.
The Thing hissed, attempting to move close to him one more time.
But the prisoners in the barracks began to stir, and as young Abraham lost consciousness, the Thing vanished.
Abraham was discovered bleeding and injured before roll call. He was dispatched to the infirmary from which wounded prisoners never returned. A carpenter with broken hands served no purpose in the camp, and the head overseer immediately approved his disposal. He was dragged out to the burning hole with the rest of the roll-call failures, made to kneel in a line. Thick, greasy, black smoke occluded the sun above, searing hot and merciless. Setrakian was stripped and dragged to the very edge, cradling his destroyed hands, shivering in fear as he gazed into the pit.
The searing pit. The hungry flames twisting, the greasy smoke lifting away in a kind of hypnotic ballet. And the rhythm of the execution line-gunshot, gun carriage clicking, the soft bouncing tinkle of the bullet casing against the dirt ground-lulled him into a death trance. Staring down into the flames stripping away flesh and bone, unveiling man for what he is: mere matter. Disposable, crushable, flammable sacks of meat-easily revertible to carbon.
The Thing was an expert in horror, but this human horror indeed exceeded any other possible fate. Not only because it was without mercy, but because it was acted upon rationally and without compulsion. It was a choice. The killing was unrelated to the larger war, and served no purpose other than evil. Men chose to do this to other men and invented reasons and places and myths in order to satisfy their desire in a logical and methodical way.
As the Nazi officer mechanically shot each man in the back of the head and kicked them forward into the consuming pit, Abraham's will eroded. He felt nausea, not at the smells or the sights but at the knowledge-the certainty-that God was no longer in his heart. Only this pit.
The young man wept at his failure and the failure of his faith as he felt the muzzle of the Luger press against the bare skin-
Another mouth at his neck-
And then he heard the shots. From across the yard, a work crew of prisoners had taken the observation towers and were now overriding the camp, shooting every uniformed officer in sight.
The man at his back went away. Leaving Setrakian poised at the edge of that pit.