The others were not following, and Sue did not know what they were doing, but right now that didn't matter.
It was over.
It was done.
She followed her grandmother up the ladder and into the church. The black walls and painted windows seemed glaringly bright after the darkness underground, and the afternoon sunlight streaming through the still-open doors was painful in its intensity.
Unfazed, unhesitating, her grandmother walked through the doorway and, with a grunt and a push, threw the skin and the spear outside, into the sunlight. The skin unfurled a bit and lay on the cement for a moment before it started to hiss and steam. The long tufts of hair blackened withered; the skin began to bubble. A moment later, there was nothing left but a pool of sticky pinkish liquid on the top of the church steps.
Both she and her grandmother were sweating and soaked with still-wet blood. They looked like monsters themselves, but for the first time in a long while, Sue felt good. It would not last long, she knew. The horrors would catch up with her ore quickly than she wanted or probably could handle, but for now she felt fine. She reached out, grabbed her grandmother's frail, wrinkled hand, and the two of them walked outside, into the fresh air, into the desert sunshine.
Robert carried his brother's body out of the chamber, out of the tunnel, out of the church. Rich was soaked and sticky with blood, and it was impossible to remove the agonized expression that had cemented itself onto his dying face, but there was no way in hell that he was going to leave his brother alone down here for even one second. He thought of ordering Woods and Rossiter to carry up Connie's and Anna's bodies as well--or what was left of them---but decided that he could not do that. He would come back for them himself.
Both Woods and Buford offered to help him carry Rich, but though the offers were heartfelt, and his brother's body grew heavy almost immediately after picking it up, he had to turn them down. He did need some help on the ladder, and Woods stood below, pushing up, while Robert pulled from above, but once on the surface he again lifted Rich himself and carried him outside, where he finally placed him carefully on the sidewalk.
Rich.
He realized as he looked down at his brother's silently screaming face that he had no family left. Rich had been it. After all the years, after all they'd been through together after all the times they'd fought, after all the times they'd been there for each other, how could it end like this? Rich's death had not even been heroic. It had been a mistake.
Something he should have been able to prevent. Schizophrenically, he wanted to call Rich and tell him to grab his camera, get over here, and take some pictures, though he was staring down at Rich's dead body this very moment.
He wanted to cry but knew he could not.
The state police had arrived en masse and had already led away much of Wheeler's congregation. Those who hadn't been arrested yet stood or sat on the ground, staring at nothing, faces blank.
Chief Simmons ran over to meet him, as did Steve, Stu, and Ben. He turned away from them, looking back into the church, not ready to face them yet, not ready to ex plain what had happened, not ready to make decisions or give orders. There was going to be one major cleanup here. There were a lot of bodies to be brought out from underneath the church. Maybe the state police could call in extra men. Maybe Rossiter could get some FBI agents to help.
The town was still crawling with press and the media, and he knew that there was no way publicity could be voided. What would this news do when it got out, when the whole story was told? What impact would it have? Would it change opinions and perceptions? Would people be looking behind every corner for supernatural beings, jumping at every shadow in fear of vampires? Or would the story of the cup hugirngsi be told, ignored, then for gotten? The latter, he suspected. How many tragedies happened each year? Plane crashes, earthquakes, fires? And how many of them did people remember after a day or two? What specifics from past disasters had been retained in the national consciousness?
Very few.
The general public had a short memory.
This, too, would pass. None of them would ever forget it, none of the people in Rio Verde, none of the people who had been here today, but to the world at large, this would be just another one of today's sound bites, as ephemeral as yesterday's news.
But this was different, he told himself. This was big. The existence of vampires, of the supernatural, had been proved. Evil had been fought and conquered.
It wasn't different, though. He knew that. Television trivialized, articles distanced. In a week, Rio Verde would be the subject of monologue jokes and tabloid shows.
"Are you okay?" Simmons asked, running up to him, He nodded, turned toward his men. He didn't have a family anymore, but he still had a town, battered and bruised though it was, and he had never in his life been so glad to see anyone as the men standing before him now. He and the other six Rich
--had only been down there for an hour or so, maybe less, but it felt as though they'd been gone forever, and the faces of his officers looked welcome as hell to him right now. "Get--" he started to say, but his voice choked. He looked down at his brother, and in the short space between Rich's Levi's and tennis shoes, he saw that his brother had put on mismatched socks. One brown, one blue.
""Get--" he started to say again.
And he began to cry.
In her dream she was suffocating, not able to breathe, though there was nothing obstructing her mouth or nostrils. She was in a green room with green furniture, lying on a green antique fainting couch, and blood covered the floor to the depth of several inches, moving in currents, lapping in waves at the feet of the couch, the tables the chairs. She was on the couch with Rich, and he was kissing her between the legs, only she kept trying to push him away because she was having her period, and her grandmother was tap dancing in the blood and singing "Singin' in the Rain" in Cantonese.
She awoke feeling tired and sore and. emotionally wrung out. Through her window, she could see that the sun had been up for some time, that it was probably close to noon.
Today was Rich's funeral, she realized.
From down the hall, from the living room, she heard her parents arguing, their voices pitched low but still audible. Underneath their voices was the sound of one of her grandmother's Chinese music tapes.
She got out of bed, got dressed. "
There were a lot of people at the graveside service, and many of them were people she knew, but Sue stood by herself, preferring to be alone.
She looked at the closed casket poised above the open grave and remembered the feel of Rich's hot blood splashing on her hand in the darkness.
She glanced away, looked at the sky.
There were two empty open graves on either side of Rich's, where Corrie and Anna would be buried later this afternoon. She had not known Rich's wife, but she had known his daughter, and she was going to attend the services.
There were going to be a lot of funerals this week. Including several mass burials.
Were there other cup hu rngs out there? she wondered Or was that the only one? The FBI agent had claimed--when? Thursday? It seemed like weeks, not days, ago that they had all sat in her living room talking--that he had documented records of thousands of people who'd been killed by a cup hugirngsi. Had it been their monster? Or were there others, in other states, in other countries?
She didn't want to think about that, could not allow herself to think about that. Not now, not yet, maybe not ever. They had done what they could, and their part was over.
But was it really?
Yes, she told herself.
Her eyes returned to the dark burnished wood of the raised casket. Who would take over the newspaper now? she wondered. Did Robert own it, or were there other relatives to whom it would go? It was a stupid question, but it bothered her. It didn't really matter--she was not going back there, she would not work for ... the newspaper again--but, still, it nagged at her.
What was she going to do? She was
n't needed at the restaurant. Not really. Her parents could survive without her. She had some money saved up. Maybe she could get a job in Phoenix or Mesa or Scottsdale or Tempe, work during the day, go to a community college at night. Her family could come and visit her on their days off. It was only a couple of hours' drive.
She wanted to get away from Rio Verde.
She needed to get away from Rio Verde.
The casket was lowered into the grave, the sound of the machinery creaky in the afternoon silence, and she found herself thinking of those negatives and proof sheets of Corrie that were still hanging in the newspaper office.
More than anything else, more than the faces of the mourners around her, more than the words of the pastor, it was the thought of those photos that brought home to her the sense of loss. A man. A woman.
Passion. Love. A child. All gone. Tears welled in her eyes as she thought of the first night she had met Rich, in the empty classroom at the high school. She realized that she could not remember the editor's voice. She would know it if she heard it, but she could not call it to mind.
The casket was lowered, dirt was thrown, words were said, people started to leave, many of them crying. Sue looked up, saw Robert on the other side of the grave. Through her tears, she smiled at him, he smiled at her, but neither of them made the effort to speak. She knew how he felt, she could feel his pain almost as clearly as her own, but she had nothing to say to him.
Could they have done something sooner? It seemed so obvious to her now the killings had begun at the same time that Wheeler had started adding on to his church Was there some way they could have discovered this earlier before everything had gone so far? Couldn't comm or sense have told them what was happening? Had they really] had to wait for her grandmother's Di Lo Ling Gum to happen?
Maybe, maybe not. She didn't know, and she would never know. But she did know one thing: laht sic was no set in stone. She did not have to wait passively to see what fate had in store for her. She could act instead of react, make her own decisions, steer her own course, live her own life.
But maybe that, too, was lair sic.
Maybe.
She turned away from the gravesite. The day was cool and clear, the sky a deep-sea blue, the kind of day Rich would have loved. In the distance, she heard the sound of hammers and buzz saws--the black church being dismantled.
Her grandmother had wanted to come to the funeral, had asked to come, but Sue had asked her not to. She did not know why, but she had not wanted her family to be here with her. Her grandmother, somehow, had understood.
She walked across the newly installed squares of grass, and saw Carole as she headed back to the car. The secretary turned in her direction, attempted a wave, but Sue hurriedly moved away.
As she walked, as her feet carried her over the recently restored ground, something shifted inside of her, something changed. The sadness and despair that had begun to take root within her disappeared, and she felt inappropriately light-headed, almost giddy. She knew, suddenly, with certainty, that everything was going to be all right, that she would be okay, that she and her family would live long and happy lives.
It was a strange, childishly simple thing to think, but it was what she wanted to hear, what she needed to hear, and it affected her in a way that nothing else could have. Di Lo Ling Gum ?
Perhaps it was. Or perhaps it was simply a voice within herself.
Perhaps it was merely what she wanted to believe.
She didn't care. All she knew was that she suddenly wanted to go home, to see her parents, to see John and her grandmother, to be with them ...... She looked back at Robert, now standing alone with the pastor at the edge of the grave, and thought that maybe later, maybe tomorrow, she would call him, talk to him.
No matter what happened from here on in, no matter what life threw at her, everything was going to turn out all right, everything was going to be okay.
She got in the station wagon, turned on the radio, and headed for home.
About the Author
BENTLEY LITTLE was born in Arizona a month after his mother attended the world premiere of Psycho. He now lives in California. He has worked as a newspaper reporter/photographer, video arcade attendant, window washer, rodeo gatekeeper, telephone book deliveryman, library aide, typesetter, furniture mover, salesclerk, and technical writer. He is the author of THE MAILMAN, DEATH INSTINCT and the Bram Stoker Award-winning THE REVELATION.
His girlfriend, Wai Sau, is Chinese.
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The Summoning Page 45
