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  The Summoning

  Bentley Little

  Darkness is descending on the small town of Rio Verde, Arizona. An evil older than time is rising from the desert, waiting for night to fall and a reign of terror to begin...Brad Woods had performed a lot of autopsies, but never one like this. The body was purged of all blood. And something told Brad this was only the beginning of a nightmare.Fear made Sue Wing run from the darkened school that night, fear she could only name in the Cantonese of her grandmother: Cup-hu-girngsi...corsope-who-drinks-blood...Vampires. The Devil, incarnate, stalking the streets of Rio Verde. Small-town reporters like Rich Carter didn't believe in such things. But he would come to believe with a faith borne of horror after horror...

  The Summoning

  By Bentley Little

  LITTLE IS ABSOLUTELY

  THE-BEST IN THE BUSINESS

  ―STEPHEN KING

  THE NOVELS OF BENTLEY LITTLE ARE:

  "ELECTRIFYING."-West Coast Review of Books

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  850 Third Avenue

  New York, NY 10022

  Copyright © 1993 by Bentley Little

  All rights reserved.

  For my grandpa, Lloyd Little, who was there for my family through thick and thin, and who, when I needed it most, helped me out with a "74 Dodge Dart, my first reliable car.

  Thanks to the regulars: Dominick Abel, Keith Neilson, Larry and Roseanne Little, Judson and Krista Little.

  Thanks also to Richard Laymon, for his much needed and much-appreciated support.

  Special thanks to Wai Sau Li, for her assistance with Chinese language, customs and lore; and to the Chu family--Danny, Salina, Fanny, Henny and Susan--for giving me a glimpse into Chinese restaurant life.

  Before me floats an image, man or shade,

  Shade more than man, more image than a shade; For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth

  May unwind the winding path;

  A mouth that has no moisture and no breath Breathless mouths may summon;

  I hail the superhuman; "

  I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.

  ―William Butler Yeats "Byzantium"

  Jesus appeared to the Pastor Clan Wheeler while he slept. Tall and healthy, bathed in a shimmering glow, Jesus strode across the meadow grass and through the trees while Wheeler followed. It was day, a clear glorious day with the sun hanging warm and white in a deep blue cloudless sky. Around him, the trees and plants were green, bright green, free from dust and dirt, and the grass beneath his feet felt soft and smooth and cushiony. The fresh air was alive with the vibrant sound of birdsong.

  Jesus walked around a copse of manzanita bushes, and now Wheeler knew where they were. He recognized the empty feed and grain store and the smattering of trailers which flanked Highway 370 on the north side of town. Only... Only this wasn't desert. And the trailers did not look as shabby as they usually did. Indeed, each seemed bright and shiny and new, and colorful flowers were planted in the lush ground surrounding them. The feed and grain store, while still empty, also seemed refurbished, as though waiting for someone to move in.

  Moving gracefully, almost gliding, Jesus ascended the Steep incline which led to the raised road and began walking down the center stripe of the highway. Wheeler followed, past the new Texaco station, past the rebuilt fence of the Williams's old horse corral, until they came to a small clearing between the empty mining administration building and the assaying office at the top of the hill.

  Now Jesus stopped and turned to face him. The Savior's features were framed by beautiful hair that hung in thick curls around His shoulders, and His reddish brown beard shone in the sunlight. The expression on His face was one of infinite patience and understanding, and when He spoke His voice carried the firm yet comforting tone of Truth.

  "Clan," He said, and His voice was music to Wheeler's ears, "I have chosen you for a special task."

  Wheeler wanted to respond, wanted to fall to his knees and sob his grateful thanks, but he was rooted in place, transfixed by the power radiating from Christ's form.

  Jesus lifted an arm, gestured toward the land around him. "This is where you will build your church."

  Now Clan Wheeler found his voice. "What kind of church am I to build?"

  Jesus said nothing, but the church appeared immediately in Wheeler's mind. In one epiphanous instant, he knew everything about the church to be, from its dimensions to its construction materials to the placement of items within its rooms. It was an awesome structure, overwhelming in its scope and ambition, a tremendous testament to God's living glory that rendered p, ale the cathedrals of old and seemed far too grandiose and spectacular to be hidden away in a town like Rio Verde.

  "The Lord's greatness can be honored any place at any time," Jesus said, answering his concern before it was vocalized. "The Lord need not locate His church where people will see it; people will see it where it is located."

  And Wheeler understood. The faithful, the worthy, the deserving, they would know where the church was built and would make the effort to visit it. Pilgrims from all over the world would flock to Rio Verde to experience the glory of Christ reflected in the magnificence of His church. The blind would be sighted by casting their dead eyes upon it, the crippled would be healed by touching its walls. Believers would be rewarded, nonbelievers would come to believe. Wrong would be righted, and the kingdom of God on earth would spread from the germ of this humble beginning.

  Wheeler's eyes filled with tears, and the transcendent form of the Savior began to blur. "I .. . I love you," Wheeler stammered, falling to his knees.

  Jesus smiled, a smile so radiant and beatific that it cut through the wavering wall of tears and shone full force on Wheeler's face. "I know," Jesus said.

  When Wheeler awoke it was morning, and he found himself staring up at the white speckled ceiling above his bed. He lay there for a moment, thinking, then threw off the covers. He stood and walked across the cold wooden floor to the window, feeling both frightened and exhilarated. He had no doubt of the veracity of his vision, that he had seen the Lord Jesus Christ. God had spoken to him. The sincerity and fervency of his untiring efforts to spread the gospel had been noticed in Heaven, and he had been specifically chosen by Jesus to assist Him in the performance of this duty, to construct this great monument to God's glory.

  Wheeler had no illusions about himself. He knew he was small dine. He did not command the attention of the TV evangelists, did not have a nationwide following and probably never would. Then again, maybe God did not look favorably on the way the big-time pastors traded on the Lord's name for their own profit. Maybe He had been looking for just such a humble preacher as himself to carry out His wishes.

  Wheeler was not vain enough to believe that he was the only man on earth qualified to perform in the service of the Lord, and he would not be surprised to discover that Jesus had spoken to several men of God other than him self, exhorting all of them to construct churches in different areas of the country or the world. It was unrealistic to suppose that he, Clan Wheeler, out of all of the billions of individuals on the planet, had alone been chosen to do the bidding of the Lord.

  Then again... He thought of Noah, thought of Moses, thought of

  Abraham.

  , Wheeler looked out the window and down the hill toward the abandoned storefront where his church had been forced to hold its first meetings.

  He couldn't really see the storefront, could only see a portion of its tar-papered roof between the other buildings, but he knew it was there, and its presence made him feel goock He had carved out a niche in this town with nothing going for him but his own gift of gab and an undying faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. For the past ten years h
e had been preaching the living gospel in Rio Verde, and despite the presence of established churches, he had found a following and formed a congregation. Donations had allowed him to eventually move out of his original storefront and purchase the old Presbyterian church when that denomination had constructed a new and bigger building on the east end of town. He had continued expanding his flock, making no concessions to modernity, refusing to follow the example of the chain churches and compromise the words of the Lord with secular notions of tolerance. "

  .... And now Jesus had rewarded him. :

  Wheeler turned away from the window. He knew what he had to do. The path for him had been illuminated, and he had been given detailed instructions. He would obtain a loan, sell this house, take up a collection, do everything he could and anything he had to to pay for the building of the new church. He would have meetings in the vacant lot next to the Dairy Queen, like he did in the old tent days in Phoenix.

  The Lord's will would be done.

  Shadows shrunk as the sun rose in the east and the desert dawn gained strength. Wheeler continued to stare out the window. The adrenaline within him was still high, but the fear and excitement he had experienced only a few moments before had metamorphosed into something like the peace he had felt when he had been with Jesus. He felt strangely calm. He would have expected to feel tense, pressured, as though the weight of the world had just been placed on his shoulders.

  He had met and spoken with Jesus Christ, had been instructed to build a magnificent temple of the Lord, had been asked to participate in the biggest event in the history of modern Christianity, yet he felt oddly disassociated from it all, as though he were watching it happen to someone else.

  He smiled as he looked out over the shabby town. Here he was, in this small house in this nondescript desert community, and he alone knew the solution to a question that not even the world's greatest theologians could have answered. It was not an important question, not anything earth-shattering, but somehow it made him feel better than everything else he had learned during the night.

  Black.

  Jesus' favorite color was black.

  Sue Wing tried to be as unobtrusive as possible as she stood behind the restaurant's cash register, folding the newly printed take-out menus.

  Behind her, in the kitchen, she heard her parents atgxting loudly in Cantonese, her mother insisting that the air conditioner be set at eighty degrees in order to save money, her father stating that he was going to leave it at seventy so their customers would be comfortable.

  Underneath the arguing, from farther back in the kitchen, she heard the tinkly, dissonant sounds of her grandmother's music, faint but appropriate, like a soundtrack to her parents' heated discussion.

  Sue picked up another menu, matching the edges and creasing the fold.

  She glanced over the top of the register at the restaurant's lone customers, two yuppies who had obviously stopped in town on their way to the lake or the dude ranch. Both of them had short brownish hair, the man's a little shorter than the woman's, and both wore expensive clothes of studied casualness, fashion statements that were supposed to show that they were at once hip and weekend relaxed. The woman had pushed her lightly tinted sunglasses to the top of her head. The man's sunglasses lay on the table beside his elbow. Through the window of the restaurant, Sue could see the couple's red sports car.

  She had not liked the man and woman on sight, had not liked the condescending way in which they'd looked around the interior of the small take-out restaurant, as though they had been expecting waiters and banquet tables, had not liked the way they'd exchanged smug, derogatory glances over the contents of the menu.

  She peeked at them over the top of the register. They were eating with chopsticks, and though they handled the utensils fairly well, it stir seemed phony to Sue, a pretentious affectation. She had never understood what made affluent white Americans want to use chopsticks--while eating Chinese food. These people used chopsticks at no other time, did not utilize the utensils when eating American food or Mexican food or while they were cooking, but they insisted on using them when they had Chinese food. Did it make them feel more ethnic, as though they were broadening tkeir cultural horizons? She didn't know.

  She did know that while her parents and grandmother used chopsticks exclusively, she herself used either forks or chopsticks, depending on what was on the table Her brother John preferred forks and seldom used chopsticks at all.

  The woman looked up, and Sue quickly returned her attention to the menus.

  "Miss?" the woman called, raising a tan hand.

  Sue stepped around the register and over to the table "Could we have some more soy sauce?" The woman pronounced the word "soy" in a strangely awkward glottal-stopped manner that was supposed to be authentic but resembled neither Mandarin nor Cantonese.

  "Certainly," Sue said. She hurried back into the kitchen and grabbed a handful of the small foil-wrapped packets of soy sauce from the. box next to the door. Her parents stopped their argument the instant she walked into the kitchen, her father moving over to the stove, her mother heading through the back door to the small room where her grandmother was chopping vegetables. "

  She returned to the front of the restaurant. The man and woman ignored her as she placed the packets of soy sauce next to their plates.

  Moving back behind the register, she once again began folding menus.

  The kitchen was quiet now, the only noise her grandmother's music issuing from the cassette player. She stared down at the menus as she folded. Her parents had not resumed their argument, afraid that she would hear them. They always did this, trying to pretend in front of her and John that they always saw e),e-to-eye on evert thing that they were always in complete accord and never fought. Both she and her brother knew better, but they never said anything about it. Not to their parents.

  Sometimes she wished that her family could hash out their problems in the open like a typical American family instead of keeping everything so secretive all the time. It would make things a lot easier in the long run.

  The yuppies departed, leaving behind an inappropriately large tip. Sue cleared the table taking the plates back to the sink where her mother, grateful for something to do, had already started washing.

  "Clean table," her father told her bluntly in English. "I always do," she said.

  She grabbed a wet cloth and wrapped it around her hand as she walked back out front. She looked up while she wiped the table and through the front window she saw John running up the street toward the restaurant. He jumped over the small ditch next to the parking lot and ran across the dirt. He pushed open the restaurant door, causing the attached bells to tinkle, and threw his books on the table nearest the entrance before heading into the kitchen to get something to drink.

  "Friday," he said. "Finail),."

  She watched her brother without being obvious about it. He was out of breath, but he didn't appear frightened, and she relaxed a little. Last week, a couple of bullies from his junior high had threatened to beat him up, and he had run home in terror. This week, she supposed, the bullies had moved on to someone else.

  He came back out a moment later, Dr. Pepper it hand "What are they fighting about this time?" he asked, nod ding toward the kitchen.

  Sue smiled. "You could tell?" =,

  Neither of them are talking." i: ..

  "Air-conditioning," she said.

  "Air-conditioning? Again?" John grinned and shook his head. "Let's turn it down to fifty and open all the doors so the air gets out and drive them both crazy." "Knock it off," she said, laughing. "It'd be fun."

  She threw the washcloth at him. He caught it and tried to whip her with it, but she ran around the table

  "You can't escape me!"

  They ran behind, between, and around the restaurant's four tables, chasing each other, yelling, throwing the wash cloth, until their father came out of the kitchen and angrily told them to knock it off.

  They stopped, and John glumly h
anded the washcloth to his father.

  "Another fun Friday evening with the Wing family," he said. "

  Business was slow, and instead of waiting until after the restaurant closed to eat dinner the way they usually did, they ate early. Their father brought out a platter of chow fun around seven o'clock and set it on the largest table, telling Sue and John, who were both reading, to get plates, chopsticks and forks. They put away their books and followed their father into the kitchen while their mother and grandmother set out bowls of rice.

  The meal was pleasant, the air-conditioning argument having been resolved, and after dinner, after they had drunk the mo qua soup, after the table had been cleared Sue told her parents that she was going to go to the theater. There was a new Woody Allen movie playing, she explained and this was its last day.

  "Me too!" John said. "I want to go tool"

  "No," Sue told him.

  "Why not?" Her mother asked in Cantonese. "Why don't you want your brother to go with you?"

  "Because I'm going with a friend of mine." "Which friend?"

  "Mother, I'm twenty-one, I'm old enough to go to stupid movie without being treated like a criminal."

  "A boy? Are you going to the theater with a boy?" "No." "Yes, you are. And you are ashamed to show him to ( your family, and you are sneaking around our backs." "Fine then. I won't go."

  "Go," her father said. "It's okay."

  "We don't even know this boy!"

  "There is no boy!" Sue told her mother, exasperated "If I was going out on a date, I, would tell you. I am not going on a date."

  "Then why can't I go?" John asked.

  "It's rated "R'."

  "Rated "R'?" her mother said. "I'm not sure you shoul( be seeing this movie."

  "I've seen thousands of "R' movies on cable. So haw you, So has John."

  "Then why can't I go?" John asked.

  Sue threw up her hands. "Forget it!" she said in Er English. "God, if I knew it was going to be this complicatec I wouldn't're even brought it up!"