Summoning the Night

by Jenn Bennett

  After he begged me to get a cart so that we could load up on grass jelly, silkworm pupae, and fish balls—which I refused to do—Lon stepped up behind me and spoke over my shoulder.

  “Found her.” He grabbed a can of congealed reindeer meat out of Jupe’s hand and set it on the shelf. “Listen,” he said in a low voice, heavy as steel. “This is serious—the first real thing I’ve ever let you do as an adult and not a kid. So stop screwing around.”

  Jupe’s mouth scrunched up in embarrassment as he blinked up at Lon. “Okay.”

  “I’m having some serious doubts about pulling you into this,” Lon admitted.

  So did I, but we were desperate. The fruitless Polaroid had haunted him like a bad dream, while the origin of the strange markings on the seven magical circles I’d photographed in the cannery continued to elude both of us. Lon said Jupe’s knack would probably be less traumatic on Cindy than dosing her with one of my medicinals. I agreed.

  “I can handle it, Dad. I swear.”

  Lon frowned. “I hope so. This is not something I take lightly. I’ll say it one more time—you’ll only use your knack exactly as we discussed unless one of us tells you otherwise.”

  “Yeah, I understand.”

  “And as you know,” Lon continued, “Dr. Spendlove can get the truth out of you whether you like it or not, so if I even think you’ve been using it for the wrong reason, like cheating on tests or getting some girl to kiss you—”

  Jupe feigned offense, his mouth forming an O. What a liar. He’d definitely already thought about using his knack for that. He’d better not have tried.

  “—I will take you in to see him and he’ll find out exactly how many times you’ve used your knack and why.”

  Jupe stuck a long finger into his curls, slowly scratching the side of his head. “All right, I get it for chrissake. What I don’t get is why the two of you are doing all this. You aren’t cops,” he challenged.

  Lon paused, staring at Jupe with fire in his eyes, then took a deep breath and answered in a calm voice. “You know the code? How we keep the demon talk quiet around savages?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This is an Earthbound matter,” Lon explained, then added, “Ambrose Dare is asking us to help.”

  “Mr. Dare? Whoa.”

  “Yeah, whoa. And if you can’t handle it, then we’ll just go back to testing your knack with Dr. Spendlove’s ‘favorite color’ suggestion . . .”

  “I can handle it!” Jupe insisted.

  “And you can’t breathe a word of this to people at school. You’re going to want to brag—I know you. But you can’t. Not even to your best friends.”

  “What about Mr. and Mrs. Holiday?”

  Lon shook his head. “Only the three of us.” He pointed for emphasis—one, two, three. “This is serious family business.”

  Us. Family. I was included. My mind raced back to the promises we’d made in the kitchen the other night and lumped it in with Jupe’s casual kiss on my forehead . . . and now this. Something fragile cracked inside me. My chest felt warm. I blinked away emotion as Lon’s eyes flicked to mine. Get it together, Bell.

  “Can you promise me that you’ll keep quiet?”

  “I promise.” Jupe held his head a little higher and added, “You can count on me.”

  “I know I can.” Lon gave him a muted smile and squeezed his shoulder. And that was that.

  We followed Lon to the back of the store. Cindy Brolin leaned behind the fish counter, hosing it down for the night. I puffed out my cheeks as we approached, trying to banish the stench. When she saw us, panic exploded over her face.

  “Hello, Cindy,” I said, holding my hands up like she was some skittish pony that might bolt out of the pen. “We only want to talk again for just a minute. Real fast, promise.”

  “I’m at work. I can’t talk.” With reddening cheeks and crazy eyes, she glanced around the area, maybe with hopes that her manager was somewhere nearby and could save her. The only person in sight was an old woman three aisles down pushing a cart filled with large multipacks of ramen noodles.

  “Look, I’ll come clean. We aren’t really writing a historical book about La Sirena’s schools,” I said. “Surely you’ve heard there are now three kids missing.”

  She stiffened. Water dripped from the nozzle of the hose she held in one hand.

  “More children might be taken,” Lon said. “This is my kid here, and I don’t want him to be the next victim. The Snatcher took seven kids in the 1980s. We think you know something about it.”

  “Why . . .” Her voice cracked. “Why would I know something about that?” Wisps of dyed red hair clung to the sweat on her forehead. She wiped the side of her face on her shoulder.

  Lon nudged Jupe. I glanced around, ensuring that we were still alone, then looked at Jupe. Just like we rehearsed. Now or never, kid. You’re on. He took a deep breath, then balled up his hands into fists.

  “Cindy,” he commanded with confidence over the fish counter, like he did this for a living. His eyes were slitted, and Dr. Spendlove was right: they were flicking back and forth. “You trust us. You want to tell us everything you remember about the Snatcher. You’re tired of keeping secrets and you want to be helpful. You aren’t afraid anymore.”

  Cindy looked momentarily confused, just like the amusement park ride operator. Her face knotted up as if she might burst into tears. Then her shoulders sagged. She set the hose down and peeled off long black rubber gloves. “I don’t know if what I remember will help,” she said timidly. “I can take a short break, but let’s talk outside.”

  We followed her down a tiled hallway past the swinging warehouse doors to a locked rear entrance. She entered a four-digit code and waited for the door to beep. It opened onto a deserted loading dock at the side of the parking deck. After a few steps, we huddled together under a covered walkway, next to an ashtray and a bench with peeling paint.

  “So, what do you want to know?” she said, keeping her eyes on the cement as she fumbled around inside her Starry Market apron pocket for her cigarette case.

  “Did the Snatcher take you?” I asked.

  She took out a cigarette and paused, as if her brain was fighting Jupe’s persuasion. At length, she finally said, “Not exactly. I got away.”

  I glanced at Lon. Bingo.

  Cindy leaned against the bench. “I was fifteen at the time. My best friend had dropped me off at home. It was Friday, the day before Halloween. It wasn’t too late, maybe nine or ten, but I knew my parents were asleep. I hung around outside on our front porch to sneak a cigarette. Next thing I knew, someone was hauling me up into the air and over the railing. He was hiding in the bushes, I guess. Yanked me from behind.”

  Jupe made a noise beside me. I touched his hand with the back of mine and he immediately held it.

  “I tried to scream,” she said, “but he got a hand over my mouth before I could. Kicked out my feet, dropped me to the ground, and held me down in the grass. For a second, I thought he was going to rape me or something. It didn’t even cross my mind that it was the Snatcher.”

  “What made you realize it?” I asked quietly, squeezing Jupe’s hand.

  She shuffled one foot in front of her, tracing some invisible pattern on the walkway. “He whispered something to me. He said, ‘Cindy Brolin, number seven.’ I thought I was going to die of fright right then. Everyone was talking about the Snatcher those days. La Sirena was terrified. Every day we waited to hear if someone else had been taken. I knew the boy that got taken before me. Knew he was number six . . .” Her voice trailed off as she took a drag and her cigarette ashed; she flicked the filter roughly.

  “What happened then?” Lon prompted.

  “He mumbled something about needing a taste of me to be sure that I was ‘viable.’ Then he bit me.”

  “Bit you?”

  Cindy nodded. “Yeah. Right on the arm.” She pushed up the blue sleeve of her shirt, revealing a faded, crescent-shaped scar above her left elbow. “Ha
d to have ten stitches. My parents told the doctor who sewed me up at the emergency room that it was a dog bite.” She laughed nervously, then pushed her sleeve down. “I’ve been having nightmares about that bite ever since you both showed up at my apartment and told me that kids were going missing again.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  She shook her head and looked away. “Anyway, he took the chunk out of my arm, then said something in another language.”

  “Any idea which language?” Lon asked.

  “It was crazy-sounding. Kinda like—”

  “Like what?”

  “This is going to sound stupid, but it was almost like some alien sort of language from a Star Trek movie or something. Silly, right?”

  Odd, but not silly. Lon was good with languages. He quizzed her, asking if what she’d heard sounded like Latin, speaking a few words in Latin for her to compare with her memory. Definitely not, she said. He tried a little Greek. Not that either, she said. Nor Egyptian, nor Enochian. That ruled out most of the basic spells. Dare was convinced that Bishop had been trying to re-create the transmutation initiation ritual, that the research notes were in the same journal with the list of the original missing kids. Notes in Latin. But if it wasn’t Bishop who was taking the kids, then maybe the notes they found in Bishop’s house were for the real Snatcher. Maybe he was forcing Bishop into helping him. Maybe he was another disgruntled Hellfire member who wanted the same power that the officers had. He could’ve turned on Bishop if the transmutation spell didn’t work out. . . .

  “Okay,” Lon said, giving up on the mystery language, “what happened after he bit you and spoke strangely?”

  “He still had one hand over my mouth, so I couldn’t scream, but I saw my cigarette on the ground where I’d dropped it when he first grabbed me. While he was talking in that other language, I picked up the cigarette and shoved it into his face.”

  “Aww, shit,” Jupe murmured.

  She shrugged. “I only got his cheek. But it was enough to surprise him. He rolled off me, acting insane. Kicking and yelling. I didn’t stick around to see what was going on, just jumped up and ran to my front door. He came after me, but I pounded on the door, and my parents woke up and let me in. He took off. I never saw him again.”

  “Your parents didn’t go to the police?” Lon asked.

  “My dad reported it anonymously from a phone booth at the emergency room. I remember my parents arguing about it in the car on the way to the hospital. This Snatcher had already managed to take six kids, and the police didn’t have any leads. People were pissed off at them. Picketing outside the sheriff’s department. And my mom didn’t want to draw attention. All the other families were on the news, reporters camping outside their homes. Mom was too afraid that the guy would come back for me. Or my little sister. She was fourteen at the time, only a year younger, and she has a disability. She couldn’t walk so good. Still can’t. Mom said she was easy prey. My uncle came over and helped my dad search the neighborhood when we got back home. Mom was hysterical. Later that night, she had a nervous breakdown.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She sniffled, then wiped her nose. “It wasn’t her first one. When I was younger, she stayed in a hospital for a couple of months after losing a baby. Anyway, if the police did catch him, I would’ve had to testify in court—and if he ever got out on parole, or if they screwed up the case, he might come after me in the future. That’s what my dad said. A couple of weeks after my mom’s breakdown, we packed up and moved to my uncle’s house in Morella. My dad was just doing what he felt was best for us, you know?”

  “That’s all anybody can do,” said Lon sympathetically.

  “I know this might be an odd question,” I said, “but at the time, were you experimenting with anything occult-related? Learning about magick, that kind of thing?”

  “Huh? Like witchcraft? No. Why?”

  “Just wondering,” I said. Seeing Lon give me a strange look out of the corner of my eye, I changed the subject. “Can you tell us what he looked like?”

  She licked her lips and stubbed out her cigarette. “Human. White. Dark hair. Really short. I was so mad at myself later that I let a puny little guy like that get the best of me, but I guess in the end I got away.”

  Dark hair and short. Definitely not Bishop, based on the photos I’d seen. But we already knew that. And there had to be hundreds of men with that description in La Sirena.

  “Oh, and there’s one more thing,” she added. “His eyes. I’ll never forget them. They were two different colors.”

  Mismatched eyes. One blue, one brown. Very unusual, indeed.

  I was fired up when we left Starry Market. Lon was, too. His energy level zoomed from slow and steady to bright and bushy-tailed. But when Jupe wanted to play detective along with us, Lon flashed me one of his famous “not in front of the kid” looks. So I steered the conversation in a different direction and proposed a pit stop in Morella before we drove back to the coast—something to distract Jupe and give me time to speak privately with Lon.

  The Black Cherry is an all-night diner that sits on a busy corner down the block from Starry Market. With its neon sign of blinking fruit outside and Miami art deco interior, the diner drew an eclectic crowd of hipsters, freaks, and geeks of all ages. But the real reason I suggested we stop there was because of their retro arcade room.

  Our late-night dinner was mostly spent ensuring that Jupe wasn’t too freaked out about what we’d all just heard. I was kinda proud of him, to be honest. Lon too. Cindy seemed to be okay when we left her, but I was concerned that Jupe’s persuasion could wear off eventually, and she might regret everything that she told us. I left her my cell number, just in case she wanted to talk later.

  After several minutes of chatting, Lon told him he’d done a good job and Jupe bounced away to the adjoining room, drawn to the bleeps and bloops of classic video games. The second his low-top sneakers squeaked around the corner of our booth, I turned to Lon to discuss Cindy Brolin’s memories and found him grinning a smug, cat-ate-the-canary grin. His arm flew out and hooked me around the waist. With one quick tug, he slid me across the seat and planted a firm kiss on my lips. I nearly gasped for breath when he released me.

  “What was that for?” I asked with a laugh.

  “Because my son got us some damn good information.”

  “Oh, now you’re loving his knack, huh?” I teased.

  He snorted. “Still hating it. Still a little worried that it might not have been the best decision to bring him into this. But if what he did tonight helps to save some kids, then maybe I’m not the worst father in the world.”

  “You’re far from that.”

  He smiled at me. I smiled back.

  “So, the Snatcher was a biter,” I said, clicking my teeth together.

  Lon leaned backed in the booth. “She said he bit her arm to see if she was—”

  “Viable,” I finished. “Yeah, how weird was that?”

  “Maybe he was using blood for some sort of spell with the kids, and was looking for something specific. The amount of Heka inside someone, possibly.”

  “I’ve never heard of anyone who could judge that by taste.”

  He absently traced his pirate mustache down around his mouth with his thumb and index finger. “Me either.”

  “Okay, apart from that, he identified her as number seven. And I’m still convinced the mandalas we found at the cannery had to be traps. He was holding the kids in there until Halloween. The circle of trees with their names at Sandpiper Park screams big-ass ritual.”

  Lon paused while the waitress filled our glasses and asked if we wanted dessert before she brought us our check. After she left, he continued. “What kind of ritual, I don’t know. But I think we can safely rule out the theory that this was just Bishop experimenting with the transmutation spell. So what kind of ritual requires very specific kids?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t see how seven young teenagers without magical ski
lls would be useful in any kind of working.”

  “That’s why you asked Cindy about occult leanings?”

  I nodded. “If all the kids were magically gifted, I could understand the Snatcher’s choosing them to raise Heka. But he was tasting her blood as a qualifier for something more.”

  “Sacrifices?”

  “No idea, but I hope to hell not.” As an attempted-sacrifice survivor myself, I’d had about all I could handle of that bullshit. I twisted around in my seat. “All I know is that Bishop didn’t commit suicide in that cannery, and whoever carved those mandalas knows some strange magick.”

  Lon groaned. “Yeah, and I can think of one local person who knows a lot of strange magick.”

  “Who?”

  “The magician who conducted the transmutation spells on the Hellfire members in the eighties.”

  “You mean to tell me that the Hellfire Club hired a human magician to cast the transmutation spells?”

  “More than one over the years. You thought we did it ourselves?”

  “Well . . . yeah. You said your dad and Dare cast it on themselves when they first found the spell.”

  He stretched his back and grimaced, trying to get comfortable. “People who aren’t naturally talented can’t churn out magick. The early Hellfire members had the glass summoning circles designed for the Hellfire caves, but they didn’t charge them when they were installed, Frater Karras did.”

  Who?

  Frater Karras, Lon explained, was a member of a small esoteric organization until he and his brother left the order and went rogue. Did magick for hire in central California in the 1970s. The Hellfire Club used Frater Karras as a freelancer to conduct transmutation spells and perform other miscellaneous magical jobs. “They paid him exorbitant amounts of money for his magical work, and to keep quiet. He worked with them on and off for about ten years, until he had a car accident and physically couldn’t work anymore. That’s when his brother took over his duties—he worked for the Hellfire Club until he died in the 1990s. His brother was the one who cast my transmutation spell.”