The Summoning

by Bentley Little

  The darkened room?

  He had faJlen asleep with the light on.

  The mayor sat up in bed, the movement awkward due to the bulky and closely wrapped blankets. He twisted his arms free, and reached to the left, his fingers finding and turning the black plastic knob just below the bulb on the nightstand lamp. Nothing. The light did not go on.

  Then he remembered. He had been watching TV when he fell asleep also, a rerun of Mash.

  Blackout. It had to be a blackout. He felt around the top of the nightstand for his glasses, found them, and put them on. The fuzzy monochromatic blackness was differentiated into shades and gradations, and he saw the outline of his dresser, desk, file cabinet. There was nothing out of the ordinary in the room, nothing there that shouldn't be, no unaccounted-for pools of shadow, but he still felt nervous.

  As though there was someone in the room with him.

  Or something.

  Through the top of his pajamas, his fingers found the silver crucifm on the thin chain around his neck. He felt reassured just touching it, but the feeling that he was not alone did not go away. He extracted the rest of his body from the tangled blanket and swung his legs off the mattress.

  A cold breeze blew against the skin of his feet from underneath the bed.

  Instinctively, without thinking, he jumped, pushing off from the floor, leaping away from the bed. He sprang toward the bathroom and caught himself, his fingers grabbing both sides of the doorjamb.

  Something moved within the bathroom, doubled by the mirror

  The vampire!

  The monster loomed out of the darkness before him. He was tall and aristocratic, vaguely European. In life, he must have cut an impressive figure.. In death, he was truly terrifying. His skin was the bluish white of an untouched corpse, and a palpable sense of coldness radiated outward from his form. There was no expression on the impassive face, only an all-consuming hunger in the red rimmed eyes and a glimpse of white fang between partially parted lips.

  The mayor wanted to run but could not, wanted to scream but was unable.

  The vampire smiled. Blood filled the thin, gummed spaces between his teeth.

  No! The mayor fumbled with the top of his pajamas, then tore the top open and held forth his crucifix. The vampire chuckled, an evil inhuman sound that seemed more like an expression of disdain than mirth, and snatched the crucifix from the mayor's fingers. The mayor's skin burned where the vampire touched it, as though it had been seared with a branding iron, and he watched as the white fist clenched, grinding the silver crusefix to powder that slipped through the long, tapered fingers.

  The burning pain awakened him, enabling him to throw off the shocked lethargy that had settled over his mind, and he quickly backed away from the bathroom. Taking a chance, knowing he had nothing to lose, that this was the only way he could even hope to escape, he turned his back on the vampire and ran out of the bedroom into the hallway. He raced down the hall to the front door, running as fast as he could, his heart pounding painfully in his chest. As he fumbled with the doorknob, he turned to look behind him and saw the vampire gliding smoothly and effortlessly in his direction. The monster was grinning, and his fangs glinted in the weak moonlight that shone through the open doorways of the den and bedrooms.

  The door was locked, and the mayor tried desperately to turn the small piece of metal that would throw the deadbolt, but his sweaty fingers slipped on the catch.

  And then a huge freezing hand grabbed the top of his head, palming it like a basketball, and turned him around. He was staring into the most ancient and evil eyes he had ever seen, and then his head was being bent, his neck exposed.

  He felt himself die, and it was not at all the way he'd thought it would be. There was no floating sense of peace, no drifting off into a pleasant sleep. There was the sharp shocking pain of skin being ripped open, blood gushin out, the vampire biting harder, clamping down, teeth tearing through veins into muscle. Then he felt a sudd et slashing agony that jerked his entire body, burnin! through his innards like acid. Spasms of torment rippinl simultaneously through individual parts of his body that had never before experienced sense: spleen, appendi liver. He would have doubled over from the power full wrenching cramps, but the vampire was still holding hit up. He felt his bowel and bladder muscles give way, but nothing came out, and he knew that all of the fluids in his body were being vacuumed out through his neck.

  His last coherent thought was uncharacteristically un. selfish: I hope they cremate my body. I hope they don't let me come back.

  It wasn't just chilly, it was downright cold, and Janine wished she'd brought a jacket. Her breath escaped from between her lips in visible puffs of white, and she rocked her hands under her armpits for warmth as she hurried across the open area between the buildings. It was quiet tonight: no fighting cats, no howling dogs, no cawing birds, not even the whisk like scuttling of nocturnal bugs and lizards. No natural noises at all. There was only the muffled rhythmic sound of machinery the dishwashers in the kitchen, the heaters on the roof--and, from the rooms, occasional human voices and the fake, flat sounds of television.

  She didn't like walking alone across the ranch, not since Terry Clifford's murder, but it was the beginning of the off-season, she was pulling double duty, and she knew that if she balked or complained, her hours would be cut. Or worse. Hollis seemed to be on a rampage, punishing anyone who even appeared to believe in the existence of vampires.

  Vampires.

  She looked toward the flat boxlike structure at the north end of the ranch. The stables.

  She walked faster.

  And the lights went out.

  They went off first in the main building, then around the pool, then in the guest lodges. The recessed bulbs along the pathway faded away into nothing. She was un able to see even the path beneath her feet, and was forced to slow down, staying on track only by the feel of the concrete walk. She wanted to run, but she was afraid she would trip and fall, and she definitely didn't want that to happen.

  She swallowed hard, forced herself to walk slowly for ward, one step at a time, though a feeling of panic was growing within her. Something was wrong. The ranch's backup generators weren't kicking in the way they were supposed to. The lights weren't coming back on.

  She stepped on something. Something hard and brittle that cracked beneath her boot and felt like neither rock nor branch. She stopped, crouched down, looked.

  It was a jackrabbit.

  A jackrabbit that had been drained of blood.

  Oh, God. She stood, wishing suddenly that she hadn't lost the piece of jade Sue had given her, wishing that she hadn't been too embarrassed to tell Sue she'd lost the jade and wanted another. But the time for wishing was past. The vampire was here.

  She heard shouting from somewhere. It sounded as though it was coming from her left, from one of the guest lodges, but she couldn't be sure.

  The darkness seemed to do something to the acoustics, to warp the directional capabilities of her hearing. She ran to her right, breaking away from the path and speeding through the sand towed the nearest building, navigating by instinct. The laundry room was in here. Assuming the vampire wasn't in the laundry room--and why would he be with so much fresh meat elsewhere?--she could lock herself inside and wait it out until morning. The laundry room's door and walls were especially thick, to muffle the sounds of the washing machines, and there were no windows. It was probably the safest place in the whole ranch.

  Her right sank into the sand, and she slip[ nearly twisting her ankle, before quickly righting her" Her heart was pounding crazily, and she wondered if vampire could hear it. She thought, absurdly, that sound of a beating heart was probably like a dinner to a vampire, calling him, like an amplified tom-ton his head.

  She ran faster.

  She finally reached the building's double side do yanking open the left door and running inside.

  Ramon and Jose were lying in the hall, outside the dry room.

  It was dark in the
hallway, but there was a flashli lying between the sprawled corpses on the floor, the shining through cracked glass onto a portion of Ram hand and Jose's shoulder.

  Flashlight?

  Her mouth felt dry. They had to have gotten the light out after the blackout hit. That was three mini ago, four at the most.

  Which meant that the vampire was probably still in building.

  She ran over, picked up the flashlight. She shone beam down the hallway. To the left, to the right. The way was empty. She saw no other bodies. And no yarn[

  She ran. Her boots echoed on the wood floor. ' sound was loud in the stillness, would alert anyone--anything --in the building to the fact that she was here, but there was nothing she could do about it, and she forced legs to pump harder. The door at the other end of hall opened onto the parking lot. If she could make it of here, she could run straight to her car, take off and She reached the door, shoved it open.

  And the vampire was right in front of her.

  She stopped, nearly fell, but she grabbed onto the side of the closing door and only by luck regained her balance. The vampire was bending over a boy lying dead or unconscious on the sidewalk next to the parking lot.

  He did not look like a vampire. He looked like a zombie, movie zombie, one of those poorly made up zombies from Night of the Living Dead. If she had seen this in a fright flick, she would have laughed. But the fact that the vampire in real life was not a sophisticated special effect but a B-movie monster with a bad makeup job was somehow much more frightening than anything else could have been,

  The vampire bent over the boy. His head did not touch the child's neck but hovered about an inch above. She saw the boy's bodily fluids sucked up, vacuumed into the monster's mouth, a sickening mixture of red and green and brown and yellow that was simultaneously thick and thin, a torrent of combined liquids that spewed forth from the neck as the body visibly withered.

  She'd been standing in the doorway for no more than three seconds, but the intensity of the scene before her was so great that every aspect of it was burned permanently onto her memory. She let go of the door, and the vampire looked up. She saw lust in those black-ringed zombie eyes .... She thought of the fetus inside her.

  Her baby.

  The monster grinned.

  She broke, ran screaming toward the parking lot. There were other people screaming now: women, children, and most frighteningly, men.

  There was not just one vampire, she thought. There were many. An army of the undead. They were here, and they were hungry, and they were taking over.

  She turned and looked over her shoulder, but the vampire was not following. He had found another victim.

  Ahead, she saw Sally Mae crying, leaning despairingly against the hood of a pickup truck, ShOt running out from her nose and over her lips.

  Sally Mae did not seem to know where she was or what was happening, and her eyes registered no recognition as they looked into Janine's.

  Janine grabbed the other woman by the arm, pulling her through the parking lot. "Come onI" She had already taken out her keys, and when she reached her car she quickly unlocked the driver's door. "Get inI" she said.

  Sally Mae looked at her uncomprehendingly.

  "Get in the carl" Janine screamed. She shoved the other woman onto the seat, pushed her past the steering wheel to the passenger side, and hopped in herself, slam ming the door and locking it. She started the car, floored the gas pedal, and peeled out, speeding toward the highway. '

  "What in cow's ass heaven is that?"

  RHal, the friendlier guide, stood and walked over to where his partner stood looking toward the ranch. "What?"

  Tracy looked quizzically at her husband over the campfire. Ralph only shrugged.

  "Listen. Don't you hear it?"

  RHal shook his head. "No..." His eyes idened. "Yes!' "What is it?"

  Tracy asked.

  Rhal walked over, threw another branch onto the blaze "You two stay here by the campfire. We'll be back in two shakes of a lamb's tail."

  Two shakes of a lamb's tail? Did they really talk like that, Tracy wondered, or was this something they just put on for tourists? "Where are you going?" she asked.

  "Back to the ranch to see what's happening."

  ' Ralph stood. "We might as well go, too. It's getting cold out here, and I'm sure we'd be much more comfortable in our rooms than we would out in these sleeping bag"

  "We're camping," Tracy said firmly, fixing him with a determined stare.

  Ralph sighed, sat down. ""Whatever you say."

  "What's the point of going to a dude ranch if you're just going to treat it like a hotel? Why did we come all the way out here if we weren't going to take advantage of it?"

  "I said okay."

  "We'll be back," Hal said, nodding at them. The other guide had already mounted, his horse, and Hal followed, slipping his foot easily into the stirrup and swinging his leg over the saddle. With a "Hey[" and a couple of clicks, the two cowboys were off, riding into the desert night.

  Tracy leaned back on her sleeping bag, staring up at the stars. It was cold out here, but it was invigorating, and she felt' Trace

  She turned her head toward Ralph. "Yeah?"

  "Lookl"

  She sat up, followed his pointing finger.

  A bird was hovering in the air above the desert at approximately the spot where the ranch was located.

  "It's a phoenix," Ralph said, his voice quiet and filled with awe.

  It was.

  Tracy stared at the bird. It was huge, the size of a small plane, and totally unlike anything she had ever seen. It seemed to glow from within, radiating a diffused white light that brought into extraordinarily vivid clarity every feather, every talon, every detail of the creature's majestic body. The bird looked more real than real, a three-dimensional being in a two-dimensional world. There were colors in its plum age that she had never seen before, that were not variations on black or white or blue or yellow or red, colors that wet not part of the known spectrum. : ..: /

  "Are they having some kind of laser show?" Ralp asked. "Is that what this is? I don't remember readin anything about it in the list of events."

  She ignored him. It wasn't a laser show. It was a bird, A real bird.

  An honest-to-God phoenix. She re ache across her sleeping bag and grabbed the strap of her can corder case. She unzipped the vinyl bag and took out that camera. She wasn't sure there was enough light for her to shoot, and she knew instinctively that there was no way this magnificence could ever translate to videotape, but she had to try.

  She aimed the camcorder at the bird, pressed down o the "Record" button, and began to speak for the beneit of the mulddi,r--ecdonal microphone. "It is about nine thirty, and we are in the desert outside the Rocking Ranch in Rio Verde .."

  Jamped do the narrow dirt road that led to highway, refusing to look in the rearview mirror, concentrating solely on the portion of the road before them that: was illuminated by the headlights. Sally Mae lay huddle against the passenger door not moving, not speaking, n even whimpering.

  They had passed no other vehicles, had seen nota lights or headlights, andJanine wondered if they were the only ones to have escaped. How many people were at the ranch right now? Fifteen employees, maybe.

  About twenty five guests. , I Could the vampires have killed forty people?

  She pressed down harder on the gas pedal, but the car was just heading into a turn and the vehicle fishtail wildly in the dirt as the road curved. Janine held hard to the wheel, struggling to maintain control, straightening out only after almost swerving into the adjoining ditch.

  Ahead, her high beams reflected off the bullet-riddled face of the stop sign that stood at the edge of the highway. They'd made it!

  She slowed down, the car bumping over the serrated steel of the cattle guard that separated the dirt from the asphalt.

  And the car stalled.

  Died.

  No! Janine pumped the gas pedal, trying to will the car back to li
fe, but there was no response, and the vehicle rolled back a few feet on the slight incline.

  "Start, you piece of shift" Janine was screaming at the car and crying at the same time, tears blurring her vision as she turned the key in the ignition and heard only a series of impotent clicks. Sally Mae, still huddled in the corner, made a low, incoherent sound of abject terror. "Shut up!" Janine yelled at her. She turned, slapped the woman hard across the face.

  And saw movement through the passenger window. "Help!" The windows were closed, there were no lights on the empty highway, no ears, no trucks, but she screamed anyway, a raw panicked shriek that threatened to permanently damage her vocal cords. "Help!" She pumped desperately on the gas, turned the key.

  The monster was coming.

  He lurched toward them out of the darkness, an over tall man in a frayed out-of-date suit, face rotting from the inside out, decay pushing through the thin layer of skin on the forehead, cheeks, and chin. He staggered around the front of the car, through the twin beams of the head lights, and around to the driver's side asJanine continued to frantically turn the ignition key. He grinned, revealing dirty bloody teeth. His bulging eyes looked downward from her face to her abdomen.

  He knew she was pregnant. He could sense it. BiHe would eat the fetus,

  "Don't morel" Janine screamed, though Sally Mae had not moved at all.

  "Stay in here! The door's locked[ He can't get in"

  A fist punched through the window, shattering the glass!

  She did not even have time to cry out as strong fingers closed around her neck and yanked her outside, through the broken window, into the cold air of the night.

  The hotel room was shitty. It was supposedly the best that the town had to offer, but despite the bland pleasant clean lines of the accommodations and the reassuring presence HBO and CNN on the television, there was something set ond-rate about the room, as though it was straddling that line between adequate and shabby and was leaning clearly toward the latter,

  But Rossiter didn't care. He felt good, charged, mot alive than at any time since he'd left the Academy an happier than he'd been since he'd come to this hellisl state.