The Summoning

by Bentley Little

  Robert nodded at her. His eyes looked tired, and it appeared as though he hadn't shaved; there was brown and black stubble on his chin. "Hi there," he said. "Hi."

  Rich emerged from paste up an X-acto knife in his hand. "I thought I heard your voice," he said to his brother. He smiled at the big man.

  "Hey, Pee Wee."

  Pee Wee nodded absently to the editor, but he was staring at Sue, studying her. There was nothing sexual in his gaze, nothing sleazy or secretive or even remotely salacious, only an open, honest interest, and although he did not take his eyes off her, she found that she didn't mind the attention. "Aren't you going to introduce us?" he asked Rich.

  The editor shook his head. "My manners again. I guess I should have gone to finishing school. Pee Wee, this is Sue Wing, the newest addition to our newspaper family. Sue, this is Pee Wee Nelson. I don't know if you rem em her, but he used to be police chief before Robert."

  The big man smiled at her. "Pleased to meet you, little lady.

  There was SOmething about Pee Wee that put her at ease, that made her feel comfortable in his presence. She smiled back at him. "Hello."

  "He's retired now," Rich explained. "Lives alone in the desert, spending his time living off the land and making mirrors like some leftover overage hippie."

  Pee Wee laughed.

  "He's very talented, though," Rich said. "And a great feature story. I think we tap him for an interview and photo essay at least once a year."

  The big man squinted at Sue. "You know, you look familiar to me. I don't know how, but it seems like I met you before somewhere."

  "I don't think so," she said politely.

  "Maybe I'm just getting senile."

  "Sue's writing an article on Chinese vampires," Rich said. He cleared his throat. "She thinks that's what we have here in Rio Verde."

  There was silence. Spoken at a different time, in a different tone of voice, those words would have been cruelly mocking, dismissively condescending, but Rich had said them straight, seriously, with respect, and that was how they were taken by the other two men. She was acutely aware of the fact that she was not embarrassed by the revelation, but proud.

  "She's the one who told me about the jade," he explained.

  "I was doing some reading yesterday," Robert said, "'and in the Basil Copper book I checked out of the library it talks a little bit about Chinese vampire legends. It didn't say anything about using jade for protection."

  Sue turned to him. "So?"

  "Well, are you sure you got your story straight on this?" Sue's jaw muscles tightened. "Are you going to believe a paragraph in some book about vampire /egends or my grandmother, who's had firsthand experience with the cup

  "Just calm down there, hon.

  "My name's not "Hon." My name's Sue."

  Rich grinned.

  "I didn't me ann

  "Believe it or not, there are things that weren't told to Western writers about the cup hugirngsi. Western scholars don't know everything there is to know about my culture. I know a little something about it myself."

  "I was just asking," Robert said humbly. "I believe you." He held out his right hand. "i'm wearing a jade ring, see?"

  Pee Wee laughed. "I like her," he said to Rich.

  The editor grinned. "I'm just glad she's on our side." There was silence among them for a moment. Robert scratched his stub bled chin.

  "Have you asked your grand mother where she thinks the vampire might be? I assume Chinese vampires hide during the day like American vampires. He has to have a place somewhere."

  "There are no "Chinese vampires' or "American vampires." Those are only different ways of looking at the same creature, the cup hugirngsi."

  "Whatever. Do you know where he is?

  Sue paused. "I felt it at the school," she said. "The high school."

  She looked at Rich. "The night I tried to sign up for your class."

  He licked his lips. "At the school?"

  She nodded.

  "Did you notice anything about it?" Robert asked. "What did it look like?"

  "It's old," she said quietly. "That's what stood out the most to me.

  It's very, very old."

  "Where did you see it?"

  "I didn't see it, exactly. I felt it. I sensed its presence. It was like... I don't know. I just knew that it was there. And I knew it was ancient." She met the police chief's gaze. "It was by the lockers, at the end of the main corridor."

  "That's a place to start."

  Rich stared at the blade of his X-acto knife, turning the knife in his hands. "What if it is as old as you think? What if it is centuries old? How can we right something like that? Our little lives pass by in a blink of its eye. We're nothing to it; we're no threat."

  "My grandmother is."

  Pee Wee shook his head. "If it's always been here, how come it didn't start killing until now? I don't buy this invincible stuff. That's crap." He nodded toward Sue, smiled at her. "I'm with Sue here. I think we can right it."

  "I hope so," Rich said."

  Robert nodded. "Me, too."

  Robert and Pee Wee went into the paste up room with Rich, while Sue finished typing her article. Robert and Pee Wee left soon after, and she went into the back to help Rich and Fredricks put the paper to bed.

  Robert returned alone a little after noon. Fredricks had gone home nearly an hour before, and she and Rich were alone in the back room. It was Rich's turn to pick up Anna from school, and Robert offered to accompany his brother on the trip. It was obvious to Sue that the police chief had something he wanted to say to Rich alone, so she declined Rich's invitation to join them. The editor promised before they left that he would bring back tacos and a Coke for her lunch, and she gratefully and hungrily accepted.

  They'd been gone only a few minutes, and she was still looking through her desk drawer for a blue correcting pencil with which to go over the pages, when the front door to the office opened and she heard Carole's cheerful greeting. "Good afternoon, sir. May I help you?"

  The visitor had the pained, gruff voice of an older man. "I need to talk to Rich."

  "What does this concern?" the secretary asked.

  "I have an item to put in the "Upcoming Events' column

  "Then you need to speak to Miss Wing. She's out of the office right now."

  "Who's Miss Wing?"

  "The chink that Rich hired."

  Sue felt her stomach drop and her chest tighten. She had to remind herself to breathe. The secretary's voice was just as saccharine sweet as always as she continued to talk to the man, but Sue heard only the tone, not the substance. The wordmthat word--was still echoing in her mind.

  Chink. It was the fact that Carole knew her personally and still chose to refer to her in such a degradingly depersonalized way that hurt her the most. In that telltale moment, she had been granted a glimpse behind the facade, and she knew now that Carole's grandmotherly niceness was only a show, a front.

  It felt to Sue as though the ground had been pulled out from underneath her. A moment ago, this newsroom had been her home, a place as known and comfortable to her as the restaurant, but now she felt like an intruder, her surroundings suddenly alien.

  In high school, she'd never encountered any overt racism, but she'd heard the jokes out of the corner of her ear. "Her pussy's sideways, too," Bill Catfield had said once to his friends. She'd wanted to tell him that her eyes weren't "sideways," that her mouth wasn't

  "sideways," and that even a pinhead could deduce from that that her vagina would not be "sideways" either, but she'd walked by and pretended not to hear, trying to ignore the snickers of Bill and his friends.

  She'd done a lot of ignoring over the years. And she'd hought all that was done with.

  But apparently not. She closed her drawer, walked over to Rich's desk and looked through it, and went back to paste up before realizing that if she was going to find a blue pencil, she would have to get one from Carole.

  She didn't want to face the secretary, wa
s afraid to face her. Her hands were shaking slightly, and for some absurd reason she felt guilty, as though she had done something wrong, but she forced herself to walk around the partition to the front office.

  Carole smiled sweetly at her. "Oh, hello, honI didn't know you were here."

  "I uh, was in the back," Sue lied. "Pasting up. I was wondering if you have a blue correction pencil I could use."

  "Why sure." Carole opened her middle drawer, took out a pencil, and handed it to Sue, who took it with trembling fingers. "By the way, a man stopped by with an item for "Upcoming Events." " She handed Sue a pink "While You Were Out" note. "He said to give him a call."

  Sue nodded. "Thanks." She walked quickly back be hind the modular wall into the newsroom. She vowed to herself that she would not be intimidated by the secretary's bigotry, that she would not allow the old woman's attitude to dictate her actions or affect her in any way.

  But she was still shaking as she went into the back room and started to proof the front page.

  Sue felt drained by the time she arrived at the restaurant. She wanted to go into the back and talk to her grand mother, but before she even reached the cash register her mother was walking toward her, motioning toward theta ble where John was busily writing on a mimeographed worksheet. "I want you to help your brother with his homework."

  Sue did not even feel like arguing. She dropped her notebook on the table. "Fine," she said in English.

  She pulled up a chair and sat down. John, seated opposite her, papers fanned out before him, textbooks piled near his elbow, looked up. "I don't need your help," he said.

  "Mother wants me to help you. I don't want to." "Why do I have to do homework today anyway? It's Friday. Why can't I just do it Sunday and take today and tomorrow off?."

  "Talk to them."

  "They don't understand anything."

  "Tough." Sue leaned forward to look at his worksheet.

  "What do you need help with?"

  "I told you. Nothing."

  "Then why did Mother tell me to help you?"

  "Because they're fighting and they don't want you to go back there.

  We're not supposed to know."

  Sue listened. Sure enough, she could hear the low, angry tones of a hushed argument coming from the kitchen. "What are they fighting about?" she asked.

  "The menus." '

  "What about the menus?

  "Who knows? Who cares?"

  Sue sighed, leaning back in her chair. She wished some times that she and John were closer. She wished she could talk to him, seriously talk to him. But they'd never had that sort of relationship; she'd never been the patient, understanding older sister, he'd never been the adoring younger brother, and it was too late for them to change now. Their roles were set, the confines of their relation ship clear

  E Had he been acting differently lately? That was something she had not been able to determine. Her grand mother and parents had been closely watching him also, she knew, and although none of them had discussed it, all of them had been tiptoeing around him, treating him as they would someone with a fatal disease. Maybe he sensed it, maybe he could tell.

  Maybe that's why he was so angry.

  Influenced.

  John pushed his paper across the table toward her, spinning it around.

  "Okay," he said. "Number five. See if you can figure it out."

  Sue looked down at the worksheet, read the question, a simple geometry problem, and turned the paper sideways between them so they could both look at it. She leaned forward over the table and explained to him how to figure it out.

  He sat back in his chair, frowned at her. ""Ya tsa may," he said.

  She hit his shoulder. "Shut up. Your breath's worse than mine."

  "He won't want to kiss you." "Who?" "The editor."

  She shook her head. "Don't be stupid." John grinned. "You like him, huh?" Sue reddened. "Knock it off." "I'm telling Father." "Telling him what?"

  "That you like that old guy." "He's not that old." "See? I'm telling."

  She pushed the paper across the table at him. "Fine.

  Do your own homework. I hope you fail."

  "I didn't want your help anyway."

  She walked around the register, into the kitchen. Her parents were still arguing, but they shut up the second she came through the door.

  She opened the refrigerator, grabbed a can of Coke, and continued through the kitchen into the back room, where her grandmother was plucking a chicken. "Hello, Grandmother," she said.

  The old woman turned down the volume on the cassette player next to her, atonal Chinese music fading into a pleasant muted tinkle. Her fingers continued to pull feathers from the chicken as she looked up at Sue. "More have died," she said.

  Sue looked at her grandmother, confused, not knowing if that was a statement or a question. "I don't know," she said, a response that applied either way.

  "More will die."

  Sue sat down on an overturned vegetable crate next to her grandmother.

  "Why will more people die? If we are going to right the cup hugirngsi, why don't we right it now? Why are we waiting? Can't you find out where it is hiding? Can't we go there and destroy it?"

  Her grandmother did not answer. "I dreamed last night of amirror man.

  A giant who makes mirrors." "A real giant?" Sue asked. "Or a tall man?" "A tall man."

  "Pee Wee Nelson."

  "Do you know him?" Her grandmother did not sound surprised.

  "I just met him today. He used to be the police chief. He is a friend of my editor and his brother, the current police chief."

  The old woman nodded, as if this was what she had expected to hear. "We must talk to this tall man. We will need amirror to use against the cup hugirngsi. '"

  "A mirror?"

  1 "Baht gwa. The mirror with eight sides." The old fingers moved away from the chicken, traced a delicate octagon in the air. "It will reflect and frighten the cup hugirngsi. Even tse raor are afraid of their own appearance."

  "But what are we going to do? Are we going to wait for the cup hugirngsi to come to us and attack?"

  "No," her grandmother replied, resuming her plucking of the chicken.

  "We will go to its lair and confront it there."

  "Where is that?"

  I do not know."

  "How will we find out where it is?"

  "ZJi Lo Ling Gum. '"

  Sue shook her head, frustrated. "Well, when will we find out?"

  "when it is time."

  "What if we find out too late? What will we do then?" The old woman's voice was low and filled with an emotion Sue had never before associated with her grandmotherwfear. "I do not know," she said quietly.. "I don't know." " stared at the figure in disbelief. Fifteen thousand.

  Fifteen thousand people had died of exsanguination in the United States since the FBI had begun keeping statistics. And that only included the information that had been entered into the computer. Who knew how many more cases were sitting in files that had not yet been in put? The pre-1920 backlog was not a high priority, and updating of the computer files was being done piecemeal. Fifteen thousand.

  Rossiter turned down the intensity knob on the screen, the amber numbers fading into black. A pattern had emerged here, but it was not a pattern that made any sense. With few exceptions, the murders recorded had traced a recognizable path across the country that corresponded to a very definite time line. It was as if the murderer or murderers had crisscrossed the nation for the past six decades, killing as they went, draining the blood of people from the West Coast, the Midwest, the East Coast, the South, and the West.

  The amazing thing was that there was nothing more to go on, no other tie-ins, not even an increase in other crimes along those routes. In a few cases, there had been arrests, but no convictions, the individual trials obviously attempts by the politically ambitious to prove to the voting public their criminal-catching credentials despite the o1> vious lack of evidence.

  If these deaths r
eally were connected, how had the killers survived in their travels? They hadn't robbed stores or houses along the way, apparently they had not even stolen from the victims. Had they taken ordinary day jobs to earn money while they went on their cross-country killing spree? Were they now working as clerks at the drugstore in Rio Verde? Attendants at the gas station? It just didn't jibe. Some of the murders were too far apart in too short a period of time. There had to be pieces of the puzzle still missing. From the facts available to him now, it could reasonably be deduced that the murderers had not had to eat, buy gas, or find places to stay, that the killings themselves had been sustenance enough--and he knew that could not be the case.

  Sustenance.

  It was still in the back of his mind, though he didn't want to admit it.

  Vampires.

  Rossiter closed his eyes, massaged his temples. He was not an overly imaginative man. Even as a child, he had never been afraid of ghosts or monsters or the dark. His fears had always been more concrete: accidents, adults, the tangible dangers of the real world.

  But he had not been able to shake this vampire fixation, and when he tried to rationally analyze each new piece of information he uncovered, his mind kept drifting back to thoughts of the undead. He'd considered pulling in another agent to look at the data, maybe Buetell or Hammon, who were assigned to the case anyway, but he didn't want to give up his baby just yet. The more of a hot dog he was, the more he brought in on his own, the greater the reward would be careerwise. Before he started adding others onto the bandwagon, he had to be sure that his contribution was definitive and documented, that it would be clear to everyone that this was his idea and that the essential work had been done by him.

  One interesting thing he'd discovered was that the Bureau did maintain quite a bit of information on vampires. He'd checked out several books and articles from the Bureau's library, three of which had to be sent from D.C., and he'd accessed two studies on the subject that had been conducted by operatives in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Of course, the existence of such information didn't mean much--the Bureau had files on anything and everything even remotely related to murder and death--but if he ever decided to pursue the vampirism angle, he at least knew he had Bureau sources he could quote for backup.