The Summoning

by Bentley Little

  Only Caleb looked as though he'd died decades--not days---ago.

  Robert put forth a tentative finger. The skin he touched was dry and brittle. -J The vampire had smelled fresh meat.

  He pushed the thought from his mind. "Ted," he said. "Get on the radio to the station. I wantJud out here with a camera. Get Woods here too. I want a medical opinion on this."

  "Yes, sir."

  "And see if we can use Globe's K-9."

  [ , "You're not going to want to hear this," Stu said quietly.

  "But I think it was a vampire."

  Hillman nodded fearfully. "I think so too."

  "Don't be stupid."

  "Stupid? This whole place was uprooted. In an hour.

  Mr. Peterson's body has been sucked dryB"

  "The vampire got a mouthful of embalming fluid then."

  "Those bones were broken open because he was looking for the marrow."

  Robert kept his face as impassive as possible. "We're here for ten minutes, we haven't even started our investigation, and already you're jumping to conclusions. Idiotic conclusions, I might add." You don't think all this is weird? Mr. Torres--"

  "Yes, it's weird. But we don't know what's doing this, and until we do know, I want you to keep your mouth shut. There are going to be enough rumors as it is. I don't want any of them to originate with the police department.

  You got that? If you have theories, you keep them to your self."

  "Are you going to tell your brother?"

  Robert glared at him. "Yes, I am. I think he has a right to know since his parents are lying over there with their graves dug up."

  Stu looked down at the ground. "Sorry. I just meant that, since he's on the paper and all---"

  "I know exactly what you meant. Now if you don't think you can handle this investigation without blaming every thing on monsters, I'll get Steve out here and assign you to the desk."

  "I can handle it."

  "I hope so." Robert looked at the young officer, then sighed. "While we're waiting, why don't you take Mr. Hillman's statement."

  "Why? Am I a suspect? I swear to God, I didn't do itw" "You're not a suspect. But you're the closest thing we have to a witness. We just have to record what you saw and when you saw it."

  He blinked. "Oh. Okay."

  Robert stood alone next to Caleb's dehydrated body and empty coffin as Stand and the old man headed back through the cemetery toward the caretaker's house.

  Looking for bone marrow.

  The idea made sense.

  Shivering, he looked again at the tight, grinning face of the corpse.

  There was the sound, far off, of a coyote howling. A cliched noise at a cliched time, but it did its work, and the peach fuzz on the back of his neck bristled, turning into goose bumps on his arms.

  Turning to face the bright beams of the car, he followed the others out of the cemetery.

  It was time to call Pdch.

  Sue stood for a moment in the middle of Center Street, looking at the front of the newspaper office. Stenciled white lettering in a rainbow curve on the window read: " RIO VERDE GAZE TITE Beneath that, the chipped and faded ghosts of previous letters could be seen on the dusty glass. A lone pickup was parked next to the door.

  She had passed by the newspaper office plenty of times but had never really noticed it before. It was located in one of the nearly identical sandstone brick buildings that made up most of the town's business district, lost amidst the proliferation of lawyers' offices, insurance offices, real estate offices, and title companies. Across the street was a small house that had been turned into a bauty salon, and next to that a metal quonset hut that was home to the American Legion Thrift Store.

  She walked slowly across the asphalt, wondering if CarterRichwas watching her through the window. She felt exposed and a little embarrassed, and she wished she'd had her father drop her off farther away. Her palms were sweaty, and she wiped them on her jeans. Jeans?

  She glanced down at her pants. She should have worn some thing dressier the first day. A skirl A nice blouse. Earrings. Jewelry.

  At least she'd thought to put on makeup.

  The door to the office opened, and Rich walked across the hard dirt parking lot toward her. He had been watching. "Hello," he said. "I'm glad you're here."

  "Hi." Sue nodded at him. He looked tired, she thought. The other night, at the school, he'd seemed vigorously healthy, but now there were dark circles around his red-rimmed eyes, and his face seemed thinner, though she knew that he could not have lost weight since Thursday. His clothes were wrinkled enough to have been slept in.

  He must have caught her looking at him and correctly interpreted the expression on her face, because he gave her a wan grin. "Forgive my appearance. I'm not usually this seedy, but I've been up most of the night. The graves at the cemetery were all dug up, and I had to cover the story. I was at the cemetery until one, and then I went back home to write the article." He cleared his throat, and his smile faded.

  "Also, two of the graves were my parents'."

  "I'm sorry." Sue looked away, not knowing what to say. She focused her gaze on an oversize bee de scuttling across the dirt. "You know, if this is inconvenient, I could come back another tim em

  "Inconvenient? You're a lifesaver. I need someone right now." Sue licked her lips. "I'm not sure how much help I'll

  "Don't worry about it. I'll teach you what you need to know. Right now, I'll take you on a tour of the facilities." He opened the door and stepped aside to let her in.

  Inside, the newspaper office seemed bigger than it looked from the street. Next to the window was a low naugahyde couch and a wire rack filled with copies of last week's edition. Across from the couch, a kindly looking old lady sat behind an overlarge desk sorting through what looked like bills or invoices. There was a modular room divider in back of the woman's chair, and a cat calendar and various photos of cats clipped from magazines were tacked to the fabric wall. Over the top of the divider, she could see into the room beyond.

  "This," Rich said, gesturing elaborately toward the old lady, "is Carole Taylor. My right arm. She mans--or womans, or persons--the front desk, answers all phone calls, deals with all walk-ins, is in charge of circulation and billing, and does many other things too numerous for me to mention and too complicated for me to understand."

  Carole giggled. "Knock it off, Rich." She smiled at Sue.

  "How are you, dear?" "Fine."

  "Rich never has been able to do a proper introduction.

  You're Susan Wing?"

  "Yes. Sue."

  "Well, I'm glad that you're here. We're both glad that you're here."

  Sue immediately liked the woman. She had a soft, al most musical, voice and a natural air of friendliness. She looked the way Sue had always imagined Santa's wife would look: white hair in a bun, plump happy face, small wire-rimmed spectacles.

  Rich walked behind the desk and put an arm around Carole's shoulder.

  "If you have any questions about any thing and I'm not here, ask Carole. Come to think of it, even if I am here, ask Carole."

  The old woman giggled again.

  The editor walked around the side of the room divider, motioning for Sue to follow. "Enter the newsroom."

  The "newsroom" was not as glamorous as she'd thought it would be. In fact, it seemed depressingly mundane, even slightly run down, looking more like the tired office of a failing realtor than the bus ding information vortex she'd seen in cinematic newsrooms. Four parallel rectangles of fluorescent light were inset into the stucco ceiling. One of the bulbs in the middle rectangle had burned out, and while there was no lessening of illumination, the darkened light bar added to the office's overall air of shabbiness. She followed Rich across the faded gray carpet. There were only three desks and one table, all piled high with mail and typing paper. A third table lay overturned against the wall to the left, a clamp on one of its upward-pointing legs. Adjacent to the largest desk was a small stand on top of which was situated a co
mputer terminal.

  Two open black doorways disrupted the otherwise perfect white of the back brick wall.

  "It's not much, but it's home."

  Sue nodded, saying nothing.

  "You were expecting "Lou Grant'?"

  She reddened. "No, it's not that . ,. "Of course not. Look, I know this place doesn't look great. But you'll get used to it. It's like a cheap car. It'll get you where you want to go."

  Sue gave him a halfhearted smile,

  "Over here is my desk." He walked over to the large desk with the adjacent computer. "Over there'mhe pointed toward the desk with the least amount of clutter' is where you'll be working. The other desk is Jim Fredricks's."

  "How many people work here?" . "You're looking at 'em. This is strictly a two-man operation--or a two-man-one-woman operation, now that you're here. Jim works part time and covers sports. Four or tve people contribute weekly' columns and, of course, we print letters, but all of the news stories, features, and editorials are written by me."

  "Why did the other person quit, the person before me?"

  "My wife? She got a job at the Church of... at Pastor Wheeler's church."

  "Oh."

  "Do you know Pastor Wheeler?"

  She shook her head.

  "I don't either. Anyway, this is it. This is the Gazette. A few years ago, we did have another reporter, a kid about your age from the U of/L Tad Pullen.i don't know if you remember reading his byline. It was just about breaking us to keep him on. As I'm sure you've noticed, there's very little real news in Rio Verde. There's also very little real advertising. The Gazette is not a big moneymaking operation. Tad eventually found a job up in Flagstaff." Sue nodded.

  A kid about her age.

  Other people her age had already graduated from college, were already starting careers, and here she was, still living at home, still clearing tables, taking night courses that didn't have enough people to keep them open. The optimistic enthusiasm she'd felt when she'd awakened this morning had entirely dissipated.

  Rich put his hand on top of the computer. "We have only the one VDT, so if you're going to be m'waiting articles for us, this is where the deed will be done. Of course, you can write your original out in long-hand or on a typewriter at home, whatever makes you feel comfortable, but you'll eventually have to retype it on the VDT because this is where we put your story on disk. We'll then take the disk over to the Compugraphic, which prints out a camera ready copy." He nodded toward one of the open doors in the back wall. "Come on, I'll show you."

  They walked across the worn carpet to the doorway. Rich went in front, flipped on a light. "Pasteup."

  Sue glanced around. The entire left side of the room was taken up by two upward slanting tables with tops of cloudy glass. Against the facing wall was a huge blue machine on top of which was situated a strange black object that resembled an overlarge film canister.

  "The Compugraphic," Rich said, following her gaze.

  He walked over, flipped up a corner panel of the machine, and placed the black canister in the niche. He shut the panel. "Your disk will go here," he said, pointing toward a narrow horizontal slot next to a series of square green and red buttons. "We flip the switch, there are some noises and gyrations, and, voila, exposed paper rolls into that black doohickey I just put inside there. We take that to the darkroom, put it in another machine, and camera ready copy comes out." He moved beside a flat table to the left of the Compugraphic, touching a low silver object that looked like a rolling pin welded to a paper cutter.

  "We wax the copy here, and paste it up on the light tables. Once the entire newspaper is pasted up, it goes to the printer.

  "Any questions?

  Sue shook her head.

  "Don't worry. You won't be tested on this. I just wanted to acquaint you with the place. You'll have plenty of opportunity to learn how everything works later."

  Rich led the way out of the room, shutting off the lights behind them.

  He peered into the next doorway over. "Darkroom," he said. "Not much to see there." He reached in, closed the door. "And that's it. That's the tour." The two of them walked back to Rich's desk. He seated himself behind the desk, motioned for her to take the metal folding chair opposite. "Now the question is, do you still want to go through with this, or do you want to quit?"

  "Drop the, class? Never."

  "Good." He picked up a round piece of flat white plastic, spun the smaller concentric circle attached to it, reading the numbers on the edge of the circle. "Do you know how to work a pica wheel?" She shook her head.

  "Do you know what a pica wheel is?"

  "No."

  "Do you know what a pica is?"

  "No. I thought this was going to be a beginning class."

  "It was, it was. But the lesson plans have changed.

  Which is probably to your advantage. You're going to get a crash course covering beginning, intermediate, and advanced journalism. Only instead of learning the subject the way the book says you're supposed to, you'll be picking up things as needed. Your academic journalism may suffer, but you'll learn what it takes to put out a real news paper. When you do get into a regular class, you'll be way ahead of everyone else. By the way, did you bring that writing sample I asked for?"

  "I couldn't find anything," she admitted. "But I did write a short story about my parents' restaurant."

  "Short story?" He frowned.

  "Nonfiction." , ...... "Then it's an article, not a short story. First lesson: terminology."

  "Should I write that down? Should I be taking notes?" "Not unless you want to."

  "So what is this exactly? A job or a class?"

  "Both."

  Sue sighed. "I told my parents it's a class. They think there's a field trip today to the newspaper. I didn't tell them that's what was happening, but I sort of let them think it. I should've corrected them, but..." She shook her head. "My father will be cool, as long as it doesn't affect my work at the restaurant, but I'm not sure what my mother's going to say."

  Rich smiled sympathetically. "Do you want me to talk to your parents?"

  "No," she said quickly. "I'll do it. But I do need to know what my hours are and all that sort of thing."

  "The hours are flexible. You come in when you can, work when you want to. I'll give you assignments and deadlines, and as long as you meet those deadlines, no problem."

  "How is the grading going to work? Are there still going to be tests?"

  "Every Thursday. The newspaper's going to be your test. And don't worry about grades. This is strictly pass fail "Do you have an assignment for me yet? .... He grinned. "Glad you asked. You get to go through all that mail on your desk over there, separate the press releases from the ads, then pick out one with a local angle and rewrite it as a feature. That was the first assignment

  I was given when I was an intern."

  "Did it teach you anything?"

  "Not really. But that mail does need to be sorted, and it'll give you something to do while I go over your article." "I guess you want the article, then." "It would help."

  She reached into her purse, pulling out several folded pages paper clipped together and handing them to him. "Here."

  He scanned the top page, then looked up at her. "I'm impressed. You've got the right format and everything."

  She smiled self-consciously. "It's amazing what you can learn on a trip to the library."

  He smiled back, but above his mouth his eyes were trou bled. Now that she looked, she saw that the easy good humor that had been so natural to Rich the other evening seemed forced today. She suddenly remembered what had happened, where he'd been all night. She glanced away from the editor, unable to meet his gaze. She tried to imagine how she would feel if her parents' graves had been dug up, but she didn't even want to think about her parents dying and immediately pushed the thought from her mind. "I'll, uh, start looking through that mail," she said. :::'.

  "Okay. I'll go over your article."

  Sue went to the
other desk, her desk, sat down, and began opening envelopes. Before she was even a fourth of the way through the pile, Rich was calling her back. She walked over, and he handed her the pages. She sat down in the folding chair, feeling as though she'd been kicked in the stomach. She'd spent the better part of yesterday working on the story, revising and rewriting it until she felt it was as good as she could make it, but obviously it hadn't been good enough.

  The top page alone was covered with red pencil--squiggles and circles and unfamiliar marks.

  "Not bad," Rich said. "I'm impressed."

  She looked up to see if he was being facetious, but his smile was gentle and understanding and not at all sarcastic. She felt confused and flustered. "Not bad? Then what's all.." this?"

  "Copyediting symbols. Some are corrections, but most are just symbols that tell the typesetter what to do. You'll be doing your own typesetting here, but I thought it was important for you to learn the symbols anyway. Typesetters don't go by the appearance of the manuscript, they go by what you tell them, so you should learn how to prepare your copy. The story itself, though, is pretty good. You're not a bad writer."

  "Really?"

  "You're not a journalistic writer yet. This reads more like a report for an English class than a news article, but I think you'll be able to make the transition without too much trouble."

  He spent the next half hour explaining to her the basics of copy editing telling her what the symbols on her paper meant and when and how they were used. He then gave her a short assignment: copy edit one of the press releases she'd come across in the mail.

  He opened the middle drawer of his desk, then the drawers on the side, searching for something. "I was going to get you a pen, but I don't seem to have any extras here. Why don't you ask Carole to get you some."