The Summoning

by Bentley Little

  Corrie blinked, sitting up straight. That wasn't the Bible she realized. That was Shakespeare. Harlgl. That wasn't what Jesus said after throwing the moneylenders from the temple, it was what Hamlet said after the play he'd staged confirmed that his uncle had killed his father. A chill passed through her, and for a brief second she considered standing up, walking out, walking out but as she looked up at the preacher in the pulpit, he smiled beatifically at her, and suddenly it didn't seem to matter. The Bible, Ha/, what difference did it make? It was the words that were important, not their source.

  Something seemed wrong with that too, something about that line of reasoning didn't seem right, but she couldn't concentrate, couldn't think why.

  She sat through the rest of the sermon, through the construction update, through the hymns, and got up to leave with everyone else. She walked slowly out of the chapel, and from the addition, she heard the sound of the new children's choir practicing. Innocent young voices singing the song Pastor Wheeler had had her type earlier in the weel

  Jesus loves blood this I know For the Bible tells me so

  Corrie shivered and walked out to the car, glad that Rich had not allowed Anna to come to church. She would not right him on that anymore, she decided.

  From now on, if their daughter did not want to go to church, she did not have to go.

  Yes, Jesus loves blood! Yes, Jesus loves blood! Yes, Jesus loves blood! The Bible tells me so!

  Wheeler, standing on the church steps, waved to her as she pulled away from the curb and headed for home.

  The humidity was going to go up tomorrow. Terry Clif- could feel it in his bad leg. The damn thing hurt like felt like it was a fucking pincushion below the knee and it only did that when they were going to have or a real sweat basket motherhumper of a day. There were no rain clouds blocking the stars tonight. When was this unnatural weather going to end? Terry limped down the kitchen steps and hobbled the man-made meadow in back of the main build He heard screams and splashes coming from the pool

  Those young California jocks, no doubt, trying to the bimbos they'd brought along on this trip. He irossed the lighted path that led between the buildings and continued in back of the sleeping quarters.

  From the io pen window of one of the guest rooms, he heard the ounds of an argument backed by a soundtrack of gunfire from the TV.

  Cable, he thought. Now that was a damn brilliant invention. If they'd had cable or satellite TV when he was riding the range, he might've stuck with it. If he could've come back to the bunkhouse after a day of roping and branding and watched some sex and shooting, he might back in Wyoming today.

  Might. bly ..... Probably not.

  Truth was, he was never cut out to be a cowboy. Not a real one. He had the knowledge, he had the skills, he had the talent but he didn't have the temperament. There was only so much of that lonesome self-suffcient don'tneednuthin'butmy-horse crap he could take. It looked heroic as hell in the movies. When John Wayne and Alan I.add rode tall in their saddles, afraid of nothing and nobody, he couldn't imagine anyone not wanting to be like them. But the reality of the cowboy life, working ten hours at a stretch, not being able to bathe for days at a time, eating shitty food, sleeping in worn bedrolls on top of rocks and ruts, being bitten alive by bugs, waking up in the middle of the night and listening to the farting of the animals and the sound of other men beating offmthat was something else.

  He needed people, noise, light, civilization. He liked cowboying, but he had to admit that he was a dude at heart.

  That was why he felt so lucky to have gotten in at the Rocking DID. ,

  He'd been up in Payson for the rodeO when he'd heard through the grapevine that a dude ranch was opening down in Rio Verde and that the owner was looking for a horseman to manage the stables. He'd never heard of Rio Verde, had never done any stable work or horse maintenance for an animal other than his own, but the promise of a clean bed, a steady paycheck, and access to a hotel style swimming pool sounded mighty good. The other cowboys laughed off the idea, deriding it as pansy work, but he'd immediately hitched a ride to Globe and then to Rio Verde, where he lied through his teeth to the ranch manager who interviewed him. The manager was a city boy, and though Terry thought the man would catch on to him eventually, he figured he would have a good relaxing few weeks of work before anyone discovered that he wasn't qualified for the position. Only no one ever discovered it. He knew more about horses than anyone else who worked at the ranch, more than Hollis or any of his employees, more than any of the guests, and apparently that was good enough. And, of course, in time, he had learned by experience, through trial and error, and actually had become qualified for the job.

  Now he was damn good at it, if he did say so himself.

  The stables were separated from the rest of the ranch by a short stretch of artificially landscaped desert, a football-field-length section of ground that featured all of Ari zona's most famous and photogenic desert shrubs and cacti placed in well-thought-out order. The stables were located away from the eating, sleeping, and recreation areas in order to foster the impression that this was an actual working ranch--and to ensure that guests weren't disturbed by the sounds and smells of horses. They could feel like real ranch hands when they fed the animals, when they saddled up and rode the preexisting trails, but when they returned to their rooms or went to the dining hall or the pool, they needed to be able to leave that all be hind. They were paying for fantasy, not reality.

  Terry had been thinking a lot about fantasy lately, about ghosts and monsters, legends and rumors. He was sup posed to be a rough, tough hombre, and for the most part he played the role well, but he'd become increasingly nervous the past few weeks about these nightly checkup runs. Ordinarily, he enjoyed his last lone visit to the stables. each evening, relishing the time spent with the animals His animals. It was here that he allowed himself to look with pride upon his accomplishments of the day, and it was here he felt most acutely his contribution to the success of the ranch. Since the murder of Manuel Torres, however, that peace of mind had been disintegrating. Each time he went out here now, the desert seemed darker, the stable area more deserted. More than once, he had thought that if something came for him here, no one at the ranch would hear it. Hi body would not be found until morning. Terry was not an overly superstitious man. He didn't have the type of imagination that saw aliens in every falling star or creatures in every shadow. But he had seen and heard enough over the years that he did not automatically dismiss such things out of hand. He'd heard tell of cursed Indian ground, haunted stretches of road, ghost towns that were home to actual ghosts. He knew the stories about the Mogollon Monster up in the Rim Country, had heard firsthand abut the dangers of staying too long in the Superstitions. He did also known Manuel Tortes, and the old mechanic's death had hit him hard.

  Manuel had worked on most of the vehicles here at the ranch, had been the one to rebuild the engine on his own pickup, and Terry could not get used to the idea that all of his blood had been sucked out through a bite in his neck. No matter how you looked at it, that just wasn't something that was possible for a human being to do. That was the work of a vampire. Vampire talk was all around town, in the feed store, in Basha's, at First Interstate, practically every place he went. Hollis forbade such talk at the ranch, determined to keep his guests out of earshot of local news, but there was talk here too. Ran McGregor, one of the trail guides, had whispered to him the other day that he'd seen a coyote lying off in the brush that looked like all its innards had been sucked out, that looked like a pelt laid over a skeleton.

  Maybe he was reading interpretations into things that weren't there, but it seemed to him that the horses had been a bit skittish lately too, and that worried him. He knew that animals were more attuned to changes in their environment than people were, more instinctive in their perceptions, and he couldn't help wondering as he came out here each night if something was out there in the darkness waiting for him.

  For the past few weeks, and espe
cially the past week, since the kids' bodies had been found in the river, his nightly rounds had been much less thorough than they usually were.

  He reached the back of the stables and grabbed the raring at the side of the building as he slid down the dirt incline to the front. Before him, a long row of horse stalls stretched into the darkness, the identical black squares above the bottom gates through which the heads and necks of the horses usually protruded now empty. He stood there for a moment, not sure if he should proceed or hightail it back to the lighted safety of his quarters. Something was definitely wrong.

  Ordinarily, when the horses heard him slide down the short slope at the side of the building, they became restless, whinnying and snorting, moving around in their stalls, anticipating the late-night snack he usually fed them. But tonight there was nothing, no snuffling or snorting, no sticking of heads out the open top halves of stalls .....

  There was something else wrong too, something different something he couldn't quite put his finger on.

  Terry reached over, next to the closed door of the tool room, and turned the metal knob on the outside wall. The knob clicked, and the series of overhanging lights above the stalls winked into existence.

  There was a stirring in the first stall and Jasper, the ranch's largest sorrel stallion whinnied and poked his head around the edge of the opening.

  "Hey, Jasper," Terry said. He walked over and patted the horse's head.

  The fear he'd felt a moment before was gone, but the sense of unease remained.

  Terry looked around. There were shadows outside the stable yard, areas of fuzzy blackness surrounding the saguaros and palo ver des troughs of darkness in the low ditch running parallel to the riding trail. There was no moon. It would be up in the early morning and would hang there pale and emasculated in the blue light of day until sometime around noon, but for now it was nowhere to be seen, and the world was black, the combined brilliance of billions of stars failing to make even a dent in the dark desert night.

  ' Behind him Jasper whinnied, a quiet sound of fear, the -familiar warning noise he made when he could smell something he didn't like but had not yet seen it. The horse shuffled, backing into the wall of his stall, causing the old boards to make a cracking, creaking sound. Other than that, the stable area was quiet. No sounds from the other horses.

  No faint music from the guest rooms of the ranch. No barking dogs.

  No cicadas.

  Terry knew now why he had felt so nervous, why something had felt so wrong. The cicadas were silent. Their familiar background chirruping, something he took for granted and usually didn't notice at all, was missing, and it was the absence of that sound which had set him on

  What could sea're cicadas into silence? - ....... :

  It was a good question, but he did not want to know the answer. He found himself thinking of Manuel lying in the arroyo, of those kids' bodies trapped in cottonwood roots by the edge of the river. Cicadas didn't scare. They just didn't. They could be startled and temporarily hushed, but they got used to situations almost immediately.

  If a person walked up to a tree in which the insects were roosting, they would shut up for a second, then would start up again, instantly adapting to the person's, presence.

  But the cicadas had been silent now for over five minutes

  Terry realized that he had not heard a single sound from any of the stalls other than Jasper's, and he limped to the next stall over, peeking in ....... Betty, the ranch's cutest filly, was lying crumpled and shrunken on the straw, half in shadow, half in the light. Even in that partial visibility, he could see that her body had been drained of blood and probably a lot of other things as well. Her well-muscled legs were thin straight sticks, and her ribs showed in shadowed slats across her stomach. There was a sickening stench of rot and decay in the small enclosure.

  Terry backed up, nearly gagging, and hurried as quickly as he could past Jasper stallwjust as the horse crumpled to the ground.

  The vampire!

  His leg was hurting like a bastard, but he tried to ignore the pain and pull himself up the incline at the side of the building using the railing.

  A black shape loomed out of the darkness above him. Terry would have fallen had he not been holding the handrail. He stared upward. There was something about the shape that was familiar to him, and he might have thought he'd seen the figure before, as a child, only he knew instinctively that that was impossible because the shape was so old, so very ancient, and he knew that nothing like it had been seen since long before his birth.

  It was large, its bulk blotting out the Big Dipper in the sky behind it, and it began to move slowly forward, down the incline toward him.

  It moved smoothly, as though not propelled by legs or feet. It did not gain clarity as it approached the details of its face and form were not revealed it remained as murkily vague as it had at the top of the short slope, but as it drew nearer he could hear it, a sound like liquid, like water.

  "Love," the figure whispered, and its voice was low and assured and filled with the confidence of age. Terry heard wind in that whisper, and sand, and years. Years. Love?

  *

  He wanted to turn, wanted to run, but he couldn't. He was frozen in place, and he realized that even if he had been able to move, his gimp leg would not have enabled -' " him to run fast enough to escape. A slimy hand pulled his own fingers from the handrail, " closing over his fist. Another slipped around his body, "' lifted him up.

  He smelled rot, death. -' The figure spoke again, and Terry realized that the * seven word it had spoken before had only sounded like

  "love."

  What the shape had really said was "blood."

  Rich was sitting on top of his desk, notepad on his lap "and camera slung over his shoulder, waiting for Sue when she arrived at the newspaper office. He hopped off the desk when she walked into the newsroom. "Thank God you're here," he said. "I'm going to be covering the murders, and I need you to hold down the fort. You'll have o. to take over the normal news this week. Jim'll help you,

  :

  - I but probably not much. He's got another job, and sports

  : - ...: is just about all he can handle."

  "Murders?" Sue said. "There were more?" She felt

  *" -- .+:,: weak, almost dizzy, and slightly sick to her stomach. She

  ' wondered if she looked as bad as she felt.

  ' ",:" .

  Apparently not, because Rich looked straight at her and

  - , " seemed to see nothing out of the ordinary. He nodded.

  -- "o : " :..

  "The groom at the Rocking DID was killed last night. So

  ::: :,i : .: were all of the ranch's horses."

  =- : ..

  Sue could not speak. Her mouth was dry, and she could

  : ; - * :, only nod dumbly. There was a dark, empty feeling deep inside her. If she had only talked to Rich or his brother, told them what she knew, maybe this could've been

  : avoided. Maybe the cup hugirngsi couldn't have

  " I

  But what did she know?

  And why would anyone believe her?

  And how could she have changed anything?

  It didn't matter, she told herself. It was her responsibility to do what she could. If she hadn't wasted her week end, if she'd talked to her grandmother the way she'd intended to and found out more about the cup hugirngsi, if she'd told Rich and his brother, maybe the town could have been alerted, precautions taken.

  But the restaurant had been busy, she hadn't really had a chance to talk to her grandmother. Now she had the horrible feeling that time was running out That if they did not do something, if they did not act no it would be too late.

  "It's a vampire," she said. "

  Rich stared at her. "What?"

  "A vampire's killing all these people. We call it a cup hu #rngs in Cantonese." . "Not you too."

  "My grandmother knows all about it."

  "Hold it right there." Rich took a deep b
reath. "This is going to be a very hectic weel I know there's been a lot of talk about vampires, and that may turn out to be what's occurring here, but right now I need you to help me with the paper. If you can't do that, I'll tell you right now, you're not going to get any credits at the college, and I'll find someone else to do your work. I know this is harsh, and I don't want to sound unreasonable, but this is nearly an emergency situation.

  I need to be able to count on you."

  "You can count on me, but I think we should let people know what's happening."

  "That's what we're doing. We're a newspaper. That's our job. But it's not our job to tell people there are vampires murdering people when we don't know if that's the case. Right now, another person has been killed. It is our responsibility to report that death and the circumstances surrounding it, and not to speculate further. At this point, we let people draw their own conclusions. When a cause is discovered, when the murderer is caught, we will report that also."

  Sue stared at Rich. She had never seen him this serious before, and she was a little taken aback at his intensity.

  He seemed to recognize this himself, because he slid demy smiled. His smile was not as relaxed as it usually was, nor as natural. "Sorry," he said. "Things are a little tense around here today." ....... i Sue nodded. "That's okay. I understand."

  "You're going to be doing a lot of writing this week, and I'm going to need you here. Can your parents spare

  "I'll work something out." ; .:

  "Are you sure?" ;:

  Rich's phone rang, and he started to reach for it, but then he motioned for Sue to pick up the line. "Go ahead. You've got to start sometime."

  She hurried around his desk, stood behind his empty chair, and grabbed the receiver. "Hello, R/o Verde Gazette, this is Mr. Carter's desk."

  "You're not my desk," Rich whispered. "And you're not my secretary.

  Next time, say "Newsroom." "

  She nodded at him, waved her hand, tried to concentrate on the call.

  She listened for a few moments, then said, "Wait a minute. I'll ask my editor." She put her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. "It's a rancher who says his trees are dying. He wants us to do a story on it.