The Summoning

by Bentley Little

  Robert wondered if the preacher really thought he'd spoken to Jesus Christ.

  Yes, he thought, looking into Wheeler's face, he did.

  Robert glanced down the sidewalk, trying to see where the new addition came closest to the edge of the property line--the spot where Martinez claimed to have peeked inside the church and seen the demon.

  "May I help you, Chief Carter?"

  Robert turned again to face the preacher. Once more, he shifted his belt, reassured by its weight, by the presence of the holster. He nodded a greeting as he walked across the dirty sidewalk to the steps. "As a matter of fact, you can. I've had a few complaints lately from some of your neighbors. As I'm sure you know, some of them don't take kindly to construction going on all hours of the day and night."

  Wheeler's smile did not falter. "Go on."

  "Well, I just thought you could stop the pounding and sawing after six or seven in the evening as sort of a good will gesture. There are some hardworking Christians around here who need their sleep."

  "Good Christians? If they were good Christians, they would understand the importance of the Church of the

  Living Christ. If they were good Christians, they would be volunteering to help with the construction of this glory to God's greatness instead of trying to place obstacles in its path."

  That tack had backfired, but Robert kept his voice calm and friendly, maintaining his easy smile. "That may be true, Reverend, but I think it's a fair request--"

  "Is it fair to try to stop the will of the Lord?"

  "I'm sure your volunteers need rest too."

  "They don't like the color either, do they? Those people who complain?

  They don't like the color the Lord Jesus Christ has chosen to make His church?"

  Robert glanced down at the sidewalk. "I wouldn't know about that."

  "Black is Christ's favorite color. In Heaven, His rooms are the color of jet. There is a glorious mansion of blackness to house the Lord of hosts."

  Robert shook his head. "Look, I'm asking you kindly, as an act of charity so to speak, to cut down on the noise. Your people can still paint, can still do quiet work. Just cut out the sawing and hammering and loud stuff between, say, eight at night and six in the morning."

  "No. I am afraid construction of the Lord's home cannot be postponed for the convenience of unbelievers."

  "I don't want to right with you, Reverend."

  "Then don't."

  "I could charge you with disturbing the peace, you know--if I wanted to get nasty. I hope it doesn't come to that. But the people who live in this neighborhood have rights too. What we need to do here is reach some kind of compromise, find a way to satisfy both sides."

  "There is only one side. And if you try to halt construction on this church for even a minute, I will slap you, the police department, and the town with a harassment suit."

  Robert started up the steps. "I don't know who you think--"

  "You are trespassing on my land," Wheeler said. "Get off my property.

  You have no warrant."

  Robert stared at him in disbelief. "This is a church." "It is my church. It is not public property." "Jesus Christ."

  The pastor's face turned a deep cranberry red. He turned and walked into the building without speaking, closing the door loudly and firmly shut behind him. Robert waited for a few moments at the bottom of the steps, on the public sidewalk, not on church property, but when it became clear that Wheeler was not going to come out again, he headed back to the cruiser.

  If that son of a bitch wanted to play hardball, then hardball it would be.

  He did not look back at the church as he peeled out and sped down the street.

  Rich came by after four. He'd brought Anna with him, and he left her out in the lobby where Lee Anne and Jud could keep her occupied at the front desk, and walked back to Robert's office alone.

  Robert was scanning the index of The Vampire: His Kith and Kin when his brother knocked on the door and stepped into the office. He looked up, smiled tiredly, and closed the book. "How's the news biz?"

  "Still on a winning streak." Rich nodded toward the pile on his brother's desk as he leaned against the window. "What's with the books?"

  "I've been reading up on vampires." Robert smiled wryly, picked up the top volume. "I thought I could learn something, but most of it's a load of crap. I've gotten some history, but mostly it's a lot of English professors talking about the 'metaphor of the vampire," explaining how sex lies at the root of the vampire's appeal. The reason people have been interested in vampires over the centuries is because they're supposed to be sexy. The vampire represents repressed sexuality, you know."

  Rich smiled halfheartedly.

  Robert shook his head. "Real vampires aren't sexy, though, are they?

  The word 'suck' sounds erotic when you read it, but when you come across the body of someone who's been completely drained of all fluids, it's not erotic, just scary as hell." He dropped the book on his desk.

  "English professors. Literary critics. Who are these people and why don't they just use a little common sense?

  Bloodsucking is sexy these men get boners when they cut themselves shaving? Do these women get all hot and wet when they slice their fingers chopping vegetables? Jesus, what happens when they participate in the blood drive? There must be orgasms galorel" He snorted. "Who perpetuates this shill"

  Rich smiled. "They're talking about vampires in literature Not real life. They don't know there are vampires in real life."

  "Well, there are That's not a metaphor runnin around loose out there and draining people of blood." He pushed the pile of books away from him and stood. "We need to kill this fucker, not interpret his meaning. I got more information about vampires from horror flicks than I did from most of these books."

  "They're right about one thing," Rich said. "There is an appeal to vampires. But it's not sex. It has nothing to do with eroticism or repressed desire or forbidden love or any of that." He pointed out the window toward the black church, visible over a low row of houses. "It's the same appeal as that, as religion. It's a chance to live for ever.

  A guarantee that your consciousness will survive death."

  "What can we do about that place?" Robert walked over to the window to join his brother. "I can't get a search warrant because I have no probable cause. Judge Simons says that the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and that a preacher can build whatever kind of church he wants. He looked me straight in the eye and told me that a preacher should be able to do that without fear of police harassment."

  "He's right."

  "I know he is. But it pisses me off." Robert shook his head. "Maybe we should just burn the fucking place down."

  Rich smiled. "Do you ever wonder what people would think if our conversations were bugged? I mean, here we are, the police chief and the editor of the paper, talking about setting fire to a church."

  "I wasn't serious. "I know. But it's still a strange thing for people in our positions to discuss."

  "We were brothers before we got our jobs. We were speaking as brothers, not cop and reporter."

  "Forget it," Rich said. "It was just an observation. Damn, you're testy today."

  "A vampire's out there killing people. What do you expect?"

  "You know, I was thinking this afternoon about that old ghost town off the Globe Highway."

  Robert frowned. "What ghost town? Those four old shacks by the side of the road?"

  ""Yeah. I mean, that place has no name. No one knows who used to live there or why they left."

  "So there are a lot of little ghost towns like that all across the Southwest. Little places that no one knew about and that just disappeared. I was thinking maybe there's a trail of them. A trail of them across the country, lading all the way back to, I don't know, Roanoke." "Now you're stretching."

  "Am I? We've got a vampire here that's who-knowshowmany-centuries old.

  He's had to feed off something all those hundreds of yea
rs. You don't think it's reasonable to assume that he's been traveling around? You think he's been in Rio Verde all this time?"

  "All those years." Robert sighed. "Intimidating, isn't it?"

  "No kidding." "Maybe he's not that old. Maybe he was only made recently."

  "Then where's the vampire who made him?" Rich stared out the window.

  "Either wgy, there's an old one out there."

  "So you think it's a vampire now, too?"

  Rich shrugged. "I guess I do. You know, I was talking to Sue Wing, and she told me about Chinese vampires. Cup hugirngsis, they call them."

  "Cup-who-girng-sees? How do you spell that?"

  "I don't know. But, according to the Chinese, vampires aren't afraid of garlic, they're afraid of willow. You keep them away with jade, not crosses."

  "I was thinking of having my men wear crogses, just in case."

  "Maybe you should have them wear jade, too. It can't hurt."

  "How many different vampire legends are there?" "Who knows? I told Sue to write a feature about vampires, tell people how they can protect themselves according to the English, the Chinese, whatever other U!tU(gS she can dig up."

  "A vampire story in the paper?"

  "It's a feature. It'll be presented like an interesting discussion of foreign customs and beliefs--but I bet there are a lot of people out there who'll be grateful for the information from a practical standpoint. People are worded."

  Robert leaned against his desk. "Tell me about it." Rich paused.

  "The reason I stopped by is because I think we should bring this up at the town council meeting next Thursday. This is getting too big. I think we need to develop some sort of... civil defense plan. I think we need to organize. We're not getting anywhere just waiting around for the vampire to strike again. We need to act, not react. We have to try to do something before someone else is killed."

  Robert nodded. "You're right. I've thought that too. Woods told me that over a week ago, but I've been so busy bagging bodies and following up on all the crackpot calls I've been getting, that I haven't even had time to think. I've probably slept a total of ten hours for the past two weeks." He looked at his brother. "You want to put together a presentation?"

  "Sure."

  "We'll deliver it together. It'll give it more weighL" He cleared his throat. "Do you have a cross?"

  Rich shook his head. "No. I'm sure Corrie does, though."

  Robert walked around the desk, opened the top middle drawer, and drew out a thin gold chain with a crucifix dangling from the end, He threw it to his brother. "Here.

  Take this. I'll get another one."

  "I'm sure Corrie---"

  "This one's for you. Get one for Corrie and Anna if they don't have them. Buy some jade while you're at it. Go to Fritz's Jewelry Store.

  Charge it to me if you can't afford it. Fritz owes me a favor."

  Rich stared at his brother, then slowly nodded. "Thanks," he said.

  Robert closed the drawer, not meeting Rich's gaze. "Just do it."

  What in God's name was she doing here?

  Shelly stared out the windshield of the van at Sue's home. There was a small square of light from the bathroom window on the side of the house, but other than that the place was dark. Sue, and the rest of her family, were dead asleep. Dead. Asleep.

  Shelly shivered.

  "What time you got?" Mr. Hillman asked.

  There was the sound of shuffling in the back. "one-thirty," Mr.

  Grimes said.

  Shelly turned around, looked at the two men, at the silhouetted forms of the others inside the van. There was an almost palpable sense of excitement within the vehicle, and though she felt it too, though her blood was racing, and she could hardly wait to get outside and get to work, she sensed that they were all a little too excited, a little too pumped up, that things tonight might go too far. That scared her.

  That scared her a lot.

  It had started out innocently enough. She'd gone last Sunday to the Church of the Holy Trinity. She'd heard the rumors, she'd heard the gossip, and she was curious. The service had been held outside, in the vacant lot behind the church, and there had been over a hundred people there, sitting on benches, on folding chairs, on blankets, on boulders.

  It had been several years since she'd been to any religious service at all, and she was not sure what prompted her to attend this one. She remembered church as being dry and somewhat boring, like a documentary--something you knew was good for you but didn't enjoy.

  But she had enjoyed Wheeler's sermon.

  Oh, yes, she had enjoyed it immensely.

  The preacher told it like it was. His topics were not parables from the past, Bible stories from two thousand years ago. He talked about the present.

  And the future. It was his talk of the world to come that had really held her spellbound; her and all of the other people sitting enthralled in the cold desert air. Pastor Wheeler did not talk in generalities, did not make vague promises about some faraway future. He spoke in specifics, explained how Jesus would wipe the slate clean, would crush the Catholics bury the Baptists, maul the Methodists. Jesus liked blood, the preacher said, and the taste of human flesh. Christ would feast on the diseased and corrupted bodies of the unrighteous and cleanse the earth. Their discarded bones would line Highway 370, the border of the path of righteousness that would lead through this barren waste land to the Church of the Living Christ.

  The people around her had really gotten into the sermon, shouting

  "Hallelujah" and "Praise Jesus!" and she had gotten into it, too. It was as if her eyes had been opened, as if she had merely been existing for the past twenty-two years of her life and had now been invited to live. The loose ends of her world, the unconnected bits and pieces that she had learned and absorbed over the years had suddenly fallen into place, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and she suddenly knew why she had been born, why she was here.

  To serve the Lord Jesus Christ

  And Jesus would walk among them next week.

  After the sermon, she had hung around, not knowing anyone but wanting to meet everyone. She'd spied Mr. and Mrs. Grimes, whom she recognized from the Ranch

  Market, and walked over to them. They were talking with a group of five or six other men and women, and all of them had turned toward her when she'd walked up.

  "Jesus hates Chinks," Mrs. Grimes said. "The pastor said last week that He hated those slant-eyed heathens."

  "Yes," Shelly said, nodding. She did not know why she was agreeing; she only knew that it felt right.

  "Do you want to help us smoke 'em out?" another man asked. He grinned, and there was something infectious in his grin, and she found herself smiling back at him. He looked vaguely familiar, and she knew that she'd seen him around town.

  Mr. Grimes nodded his approval. "You're in, then."

  Shelly had looked around the lot, noticing that most of the congregation had broken into small groups of ten or eleven. All of them seemed to be huddling closer together becoming more intense, more insular in their discussions. I Were they making similar plans?

  It was possible. The Lord worked in mysterious ways.

  A short, bald man with a curly gray beard scratched his weathered cheek. "I can get the gasoline," he said. "But what about the kindling?"

  "No problem," Mr. Grimes said.

  And now they were here.

  Once more, Shelly looked out the windshield at Sue's darkened house.

  She still felt good about what they were going to do. It still felt right to her. She had no second thoughts, no feelings of guilt or pangs of conscience. This might frighten Sue into seeing the error of her ways, into going to church, into realizing, before next week, before it was too late, that Jesus was the truth and the light. And if it did go too far, if something happened and someone got hurt, well, then it was God's will.

  But she and Sue had been friends forever. Since second grade, when they'd met in Mrs. Michaels's class. They'd gone through a
n awful lot together. Grammar school and junior high and high school. Phases and stages: dolls and music and boys. Sue was her best friend in the world.

  But Jesus was more than a friend.

  And if she expected to be one of The Chosen, one of

  The Forty, she had to prove herself.

  "I think they leave the bathroom light on all night," she said. "I don't think anyone's up.

  "I think you're right," Mrs. Grimes said. She opened her door, got out on the driver's side, and walked to the back of the van, opening it. "Be quiet," she said. "And let's do it quickly."

  Shelly got out on the passenger side. Her adrenaline was pumping, and she felt ready for anything.

  "Jesus wants us to take out those trees," Mr. Hillman said. "The pastor said that's the most important thing."

  There were whispers of agreement from the other men and women getting out of the van.

  Shelly grabbed one of the Hefty bags filled with the dried leaves they were going to use as fuel for the fire. It felt full and weighty in her grasp, satisfyingly full. Next to her, Hal Newman, the old man with the beard, grabbed his cans of gasoline. "Let's fry us up some chink," he said.

  Shelly grinned at him. "Let's do it." " gasoline

  Sue was awakened by the smell of smoke and

  Her first coherent thought was that the house was burning down. She tried to leap out of bed, but with the partial coordination of the half-awake, she got tangled up in her sheets and fell to the floor, landing loudly on her side.

  She didn't know whether it was her fall or the smoke smell that had awakened her parents, but she heard them talking loudly and excitedly in their bedroom, and she caught the muffled words "fire" and "trees?"

  She stood up, untangling herself from the sheets, and saw a thin wisp of smoke drifting through her open window from between the curtains.

  She hurried out of her bedroom, down the hall to her parents' bedroom, and through their window she saw an orange-yellow glow in the front yard..

  The willows were on fire.

  Her father was already dressed and hurrying out of the room, yelling for her to call the fire department, but she stared out the window, transfixed. There were two fires, one at the foot of each tree, and though the blazes were large and growing larger, they had not yet engulfed the trees. They seemed to be burning built-up piles of garbage and debris at the foot of the willows. Across the street, lights were on in the Malverns' and Chapmans' houses, and, silhouetted figures were standing at the windows. There was no sound of sirens, not even from across town, and Sue realized that none of their neighbors had bothered to call the fire department.