The Summoning

by Bentley Little

  To the point of precipitating radical behavioral changes. From the brief conversation I had with his daughters, and from my own discussion with him and observation of his behavior, it appears quite likely that he saw or experienced something that so shocked or frightened him that his psychological defenses were shattered. He retreated into the person you discovered in the septic tank."

  Woods looked at Robert, then at the psychiatrist. He cleared his throat. "What if a person saw a vampire? Do you think that would produce the sort of shock necessary to cause this change?"

  Jacobson gowned. "A vampire? What do you mean?"

  "A monster," Rich said. "A guy with a black cape and fangs who sucks blood."

  "This is not a joking matter," the psychiatrist said, standing. "I don't have time to play games with you. I was called in here and asked to look at this man, and I've given you my opinion. My recommendation will be for him to remain at the hospital in Florence for further examination

  Robert stared at Woods and found himself hoping that the coroner would pursue this line of reasoning, would say, "We're not joking," would press the psychiatrist on the vampire issue, but Woods remained silent, eyes down cast. Robert glanced at his brother, who looked away.

  Jacobson began gathering his papers.

  "What sort of thing could frighten a man this badly?"

  Robert asked. "I know Mike--knew Mike--and he is not an easily frightened man."

  Jacobson looked up, shook his head, his left hand toying with one of his earrings. "I don't know," he said. He thought for a moment, and a slow smile spread across his face. "But we'll find out. And when we do... that's going to be interesting. Very interesting."

  "Susan."

  The words were a whisper, spoken with a Cantonese accent. Soo-sun.

  "Susan."

  She opened one eye, peered into the darkness. There was an unfamiliar weight on the end of her bed, an indentation that affected a gravitational pull on her feet. Outside there was wind, a sibilant dust storm that played around with the defenses of the house but was not strong enough to attack. The pillow next to her face smelled faintly of breath.

  Stretching up and out of the fetal position in which she slept, Sue saw her grandmother sitting on the edge of the bed, a small hunched shape in the too large darkness. She rubbed her eyes. "What is it?" she. asked tiredly in English, then, correcting herself, in Cantonese.

  Her grandmother was silent for a moment, the only noise in the room her labored breathing, which blended perfectly with the sandstorm outside.

  Sue felt a dry cold hand touch her cheek, trace her chin. "I dreamt again of the cup hu rngs/." Sue said nothing.

  "I have dreamed for five nights of the cup hugirngsi. '" Cup Hu Girngsi.

  Sue knew the sounds, knew the words they formed, but she had never before heard them spoken together, and their combination sent an icy shiver of fear down her spine Cup hugirngsi. Corpse-who drinks-blood.

  She looked carefully at her grandmother's face, searching for a sign that the old woman was joking. But her grandmother's gaze remained unwavering, her expression deadly serious, and Sue knew from the fact that her grandmother was here, in her bedroom, at this time of night, that this was no joke. She reached up, instinctively touched the jade around her neck.

  "Yes," her grandmother said, nodding.

  Sue felt cold, and she wrapped the sheet more tightly around her body.

  She wanted to be able to laugh off what her grandmother was trying to tell her, wanted to be able to fall back asleep and forget that this conversation had ever taken place, but sleepiness had left her completely. She found herself thinking of Manuel Torres, of Rich's parents and the others in the cemetery.

  Of what she had felt at the school that night.

  Her grandmother suddenly leaned forward, eyes wide. "You have sensed it too!"

  Sue shook her head. "No." ...... "You have. You cannot hide it from me." Her grandmother was whispering, and her voice was nearly indistinguishable from the wild wind outside "You know of the cup hugirngsi."

  "I have never heard that name before." "It is called something else in America." "Vampire," Sue said.

  "Vampire. Yes." Nodding. "But we know it as the cup hug/rngsi. I have dreamed of it now for five nights, and it is here. You have sensed it too." "I have not sensed anything." "You have."

  "I cannot 'sense' things."

  "Yes, you can. You have D/Lo Ling Gum. ""

  "I do not!"

  "Your mother does not. Your father does not. John does not. You do.

  "She reached for Sue's hand, tightly clutching the sheet, and squeezed it. "Do not be afraid."

  "I am not afraid, because there is no cup hugirngsi. "" "There is. I have seen it." Her grandmother was silent for a moment. The wind outside seemed to grow louder and sounded almost liquid. When she spoke again, Sue had to lean forward to listen. "I was eight years old when the cup hu #rngsi came. We lived in Cuangxun, a small village in Hunan. I was young, and it was a long, long time ago, but I remember it all. I can still see the houses on the hill in the early morning mist, standing like silent sentries in the fog.

  "I can still hear the screams of Wai Fan echoing through the valley."

  She stared in Sue's direction but past her, not at her. "We were awakened by the echoes of those screams. I was frightened and confused, and I ran into my parents' room. Father and Mother knew immediately what had happened. They knew it was the cup hugirngsi.

  That frightened me even more, the very words terrified me. I had never seen my parents scared--I had never seen them not be in complete control--and the haunted looks on their faces made me more afraid than anything I had ever seen. I realized, that whatever was happening, they could not protect me from it. They were yelling but not arguing, and that was scary also.

  "They did not want to bring me with them, but they were more afraid to leave me alone, so Mother grabbed my hand, and we ran down the path, through the cold mist to the house of Wai Fan. The air felt different to me as we ran, not the way it usually did, and I could smell something strong that I did not like. We were running south, away from the open end of the valley, but it felt as though we were running north, and I knew that some thing had happened to my sense of direction.

  "When we reached the house there was already a crowd, and Mother left me outside with Father and the other men and children, and went inside with the women. I was too afraid to talk or ask any questions---all of the children were--but I understood from what the fathers said and the few words I could hear from inside that all three sons of Wai Fan had been killed by the cup hugirngsi.

  "We stood, waiting. The air became even colder, the bad smell stronger, and then we saw it, floating down the path in front of the house in the mist: the cup hugirngsi. Father whispered and said it was Chun Li Yeung, who had died the year before, and someone else whispered that it was Ling Chek Yee, but I saw something that no one else saw, and I did not say anything because the figure I saw floating through the mist was not the corpse of anyone we knew. It was not a corpse at all. It was not human. It had never been human. It was a different creature entirely older than any human corpse could have been. A monster. It looked at me and saw me, and it knew that I saw it for what it was. And then it disappeared into the mist and was gone."

  "What did it look like?" Sue asked.

  "You do not want to know." . "Yes, I do."

  "No, you do not." Her grandmother was silent for a moment, staring not into space but into time. Sue said nothing, waited for her grandmother to continue.

  Finally the old woman did, and her voice was sadder, softer. "I knew after that that I was different from every one else, that I had Di Lo Ling Gum. The knowledge comforted me, but it also frightened me. I talked about it to my father and mother, to the wise men of the village, hoping that someone could teach me, train me, tell me what to do, but there was no one in Cuangxun who understood

  "I had thought, I had hoped, that the cup hugirngsi would go away after that, afte
r killing the sons of Wai Fan, but it did not. It remained in the hills, feeding off the hong mau, growing stronger. In the day, the men went looking for it, hunting it. In the night, we all stayed locked in our houses. A baby was taken from one of the young women in the village. One of the hunters did not return. The land itself began to die. The trees dried up, and the bamboo, and the rice in the fields. There were no more animals to be found. One old man, Tai Po, wanted to offer a sacrifice to the cup hug'irngsi, believing that would appease it. He suggested that we offer a virgin to the monster but I knew this would not work, and I said so, and because of my power they believed me.

  "In the end, we decided to leave. Father thought that it would be better to begin a new life in Canton than remain in Cuangxun or anywhere in Hunan. Several families left at once, ours and six others.

  I do not know what happened to those who remained behind.

  "We survived. In Canton, I found a teacher. I learned the ways of spirits and tse mot. I learned how to protect against the cup hug'irngsi, but I never again saw one."

  The wind outside had stopped, and the house seemed suddenly quiet, too quiet. "There are such monsters, Susan. There always have been. There always will be."

  Sue shifted uncomfortably against the backboard. She did not know what to say. She did not exactly believe in vampires, but her grandmother's story had frightened her, and she could not say that she entirely disbelieved it.

  Her grandmother patted her hand. "We will speak more of this later, when you are not so tired. We know what is out there, and it is our responsibility to make sure that it is stopped." She stood and moved away from the bed, walking into the darkness.

  It is our responsibility to must make sure that it is stopped. What did that mean? Sue wanted to ask, but her grandmother was already out of the room and closing the door, and she knew that she would have to wait until morning for an answer to that question.

  She listened to her grandmother return to her own bedroom. She remained sitting, no longer tired. She heard her parents talking in their room down the hall, their voices little more than low, muffled mumbles. Had they been talking before? She'd thought they'd been asleep. She held her breath, trying not to make any noise, but though she strained to hear what they were discussing, she could make out nothing.

  She sat in the darkness, still clutching the edge of her sheet, staring out toward the curtained window, feeling cold. She was not sure whether or not she believed her grandmother, but she had to admit that ever since she'd gone to the school that night she'd felt something in the air, an indefinable sense of wrongness, the impression that everything was not as it should be.

  Maybe her grandmotlr was right. Maybe she did have a touch of Di Lo Ling Gum. She lay down again, her head sinking into the fluffy pillow.

  She thought back, trying to recall if she'd picked up on any supernatural vibes at any time in her life, but could not.

  She fell asleep soon after, and she dreamed of a rotted corpse, blood dripping from its grinning lips, floating through fog in a Chinese mountain village, searching for her, calling her name .... The next day, at the restaurant, Sue tried to stay as far away from her grandmother as possible, making an extra effort not to be alone with the old woman. She felt bad about it, ashamed, but in the clear light of day the talk of D/Lo Ling Gum and the cup hugirngsi seemed down right silly. She felt embarrassed for her grandmother and found herself wondering, guiltily, if perhaps the old woman's mind was slipping.

  By lunchtime, the kitchen was almost unbearably hot and humid. The ventilation system was on, but her father was cooking on four woks at once, as well as deep-frying two orders of shrimp, and the air, recycled or not, was sweltering.

  Sue took the plastic bowl of chopped onions from the back counter and handed it to her father.

  "More chicken," he said in English.

  She hurried across the palleted floor and opened the oversize freezer, taking out the bag filled with sliced breasts that he had prepared that morning. She passed by John, who leaned against the counter and stared up at the TV. "Why don't you help out?" she asked.... He grinned at her, raised his eyebrows "Father!" "John, help your " sister"

  "Why do I always have to do all the work? It's not fair. She gets to spend all day at that dumb newspaper, and I have to stay here and do everything."

  "You do nothing around here," Sue said. "I could have five other jobs and still help out more than you do."

  "Stop arguing," their father said in Cantonese. "Susan, you help me.

  John, you help your mother out front."

  "John!" ..... "Have fun," Sue said in English

  "Susan!"

  John stormed out of the kitchen, and Sue turned back toward her father.

  He was scowling at her, but she could tell from his eyes that it was an act, and as he flipped the shrimp onto two plates, he was smiling.

  John returned a few moments later, polite, humbled, and obsequious. He lightly tapped her shoulder. "Sue, greatest sister ever to walk the face of the earth--"

  She smiled. "What do you want?"

  "Trade with me. Let me work in the kitchen. There's a guy from my science class out front, and I don't want him to see me."

  "Why?"

  "Because."

  "Because why?"

  "Mother's trying to talk to his parents." :'

  The past came rushing back in a wave of emotional recognition, and Sue nodded, understanding what her brother meant without him having to spell it out. She too had been embarrassed by her mother, by her father, by everything her parents did or said, a magnification of the mortification all teenagers felt in regard to their parents' behavior. She had spent most of her grammar school years trying to deny any association with her family.

  She recalled even being embarrassed by their yard, wondering why her father had chosen to draw attention to himself by imposing his own artificial conception of nature on the desert instead of adapting to the local terrain like everyone else. All of the other houses on their street had had sand or gravel with rearrangements of existing vegetation: cactus, sagebrush, succulents. Her father had planted a yard--grass, flowers, and two ludicrous willow trees which flanked the sides of the driveway.

  Even now, she still wasn't quite sure how she felt about her family.

  For years she had not wanted to be seen in public with her parents, avoiding shopping trips, dreading open houses and back-to-school nights. She'd seen the smirks on the faces of her classmates, heard the snickers, when her mother had come to pick her up from school and called out to her in Cantonese. For a whole year, third grade, the year that the schoolyard rhyme "Chinese .. .

  Japanese .. . Dirty knees .. . Look at these[" had made the rounds, and Cal Notting had teased her unmercifully by pulling taut the corners of his eyes and sticking out his front teeth in imitation of a stereotypical "Chinaman," she'd prayed each night before going to bed that her parents would wake up in the morning and speak perfect English. She had never been to church in her life and did not really understand the concept of God, but she'd heard enough about praying from her friends and from television to have gotten a general idea of what she was sup posed to do. So she'd folded her hands, closed her eyes, started off with "Dear God," followed that with her wish list, and signed off with "Amen." It hadn't worked, though, and she'd given up the prayers when she'd graduated to fourth grade.

  That embarrassment had ended somewhere along the line, but those years had taken their toll.

  John was still stuck at that hypersensitive stage, and she was a little worded about him. By the time she was his age, she had already started growing out of it and coming to terms with her family and her background.

  She wondered if that was something John would ever be able to reconcile within himself.

  It was hell living in two cultures. "Okay," she said. "I'll trade."

  "If mother says anything, tell her it was your idea." She was about to argue with him, then changed her mind. "All right," she agreed. She caught her
father's eye, and he gave her an approving nod .... He understood.

  Her mother wouldn't understand, and Sue was glad that she had not been in the kitchen with them. It would only have resulted in an argument.

  Her parents were so dissimilar in so many ways that Sue often wondered whether their marriage had been arranged-although she'd never been brave enough to ask. She realized as she picked up a completed order from the low shelf next to her father that she did not really know how her parents met. All she knew was that they had been living in Hong Kong and had married there. That was it. Her friends all seemed to know the intimate details of their parents' courtships and were able to recite specifics the way they would the plot of a movie. She and John knew no such stories of their parents' past.

  Her mother came in through the door to the dining room. "Hurry up, John. Customers are waiting." "That's okay, John," Sue said. "I'll get it."

  He looked at her gratefully as she handed her mother the plates and followed her out to the front.

  "You owe me," Sue said over her shoulder as she walked into the dining room.

  John nodded. "Deal."

  Corrie watched through the window as Pastor Wheeler got into his car, backed up, and pulled onto the street.

  She put down the pen she'd been writing with and flexed her fingers.

  Being a church secretary was different than she'd envisioned. She'd thought it would be a leisurely, slow-paced job: writing Thank-you notes to little old ladies, scheduling appointments with parishioners, calling people during the holidays and asking them to donate food for the poor. But she seemed to spend most of her time filling out permit applications, making out invoices, and filing requisition forms.

  /

  Not that she minded.

  Just as the subdued pastel light of the chUrch office in which she worked stood in sharp contrast to the harsh fluorescents of the paper office, the simple unstructured demands of her new position were a welcome change from the rigid deadlines of the Gazette. She might have a lot of work to do right now, but the labor was not mentally taxing, and she felt as though she finally had time to think, to sort things through in her mind.