The Summoning

Steve crossed himself "We get should everyone into the churches. The whole town. Hole up there, right it out. Use 'em like forts."

"Churches won't protect you," Rich said. "The vampire lives in a church." Robert got up, turned off the VCR, turned off the TV. Sue's grandmother said something in Cantonese.

"Does anyone want to back out?" Sue translated. She looked around the room, at Robert, Rich, Rossiter, Woods, Buford, and the two policemen, her eyes searching each face. "That is what is living inside the church. It's hundreds maybe thousands of years old. It's killed more people than any of us can imagine. It will not be lying in a coffin.

It will not be sleeping. If the church is light tight and I think it is, chances are the cup hugirngsi will I awake and waiting for us. We may all be killed. If any. you don't want to go through with this, say it now." No one said a word.

Sue looked at her grandmother.

"Let's do it," Robert said.

The wind began as they pulled out of the station parking lot, a cold, gritty gale that carried in tumbleweeds from the surrounding desert and filled the air with blowing sand, effectively cutting visibility to several yards.

Rich stared out the window of Robert's car at the unending cloud of swirling dust. He didn't like this at all. The darkness of night could at least be penetrated by light, but there was no way to nullify the effects Of a dust StOITn.

He wondered if the cup hugrngs/had somehow started the freakish wind.

"We'll find them," Robert said gently. "They'll be okay."

"What?"

"Anna and Corrie."

Rich nodded. "Yeah." He gave his brother a reassuring smile. He was fooling himself. He knew that. Despite what Sue's grandmother said, or what Sue said her grandmother said, he did not think Corrie and Anna were safe and in hiding. He knew, in his bones, that the cup hug/rngs/had found them in the church. And the monster did not take prisoners. It killed. Period.

But though he knew this inside, Rich still kept pretending to others he believed his family was safe, half pretending to himself. It was easier this way. He didn't have time to deal with emotions right now.

He could not allow him self to experience grief and pain and loss. That would come later. Right now he had a monster to destroy.

He looked out the window, at the vague silhouettes of the few buildings that could be seen through the blowing sand.

The dust storm, he thought, sounded almost like a terfall.

They were lined up in the street outside the church, waiting. Weapons in hand.

Wheeler's congregation.

Robert rounded the corner and slammed on his brakes, the other patrol car nearly plowing into his rear end.

The street was blocked. Scores of people--maybe a him dred, maybe more--stood in the center of the road. They were visible as little more than an army of shadows behind a curtain of sand, but it was obvious even through the swirling dust that they were clutching shovels and axes and pitchforks---implements that could double as weapons.

The radio crackled, and Rossiter's dry voice came over the tiny speaker. "Welcoming committee."

Several men in the front of the line were cradling rifles or shotguns in their arms, and before Robert even knew what had happened, the front and back windshields of the cruiser exploded in a shatter of Sand and safety glass, and a bullet buzzed past his head like a bee.

Immediately, instinctively, he threw the car into reverse and swung back around the corner, nearly colliding with the other patrol car as he swerved out of the line of fire. "Get downl" he ordered. He braked to an abrupt halt just in front of the fire truck. He quickly picked up the mike, pressed down the speak button. "Stay inside," he said.

"Don't get out."

He grabbed his rifle from its overhead rack and used the butt to clear out the remaining glass in the windshield.

The wind was dying down slightly, visibility improving, and he could see that the street was clear. The crowd had not followed him around the corner. The people were staying in front of the church. He looked over at Rich, next to him, at Sue and her grandmother, ducking down in the backseat. "Are you all right? Is anyone hurt?"

"We're fine," Sue said.

"Just a little shaken," Rich agreed.

"This is going to be a little tougher than we anticipated," Robert said.

"We have to get into the church," Sue told him. "We have to get in and out of there before dark."

I "And we have to set up the hoses," Rich said.

Robert picked up the mike again, spoke into it. "Agent

Rossiter? Do you have any idea how we can disperse that crowd?"

Rossiter's voice crackled over the speaker. "You have riot gear, don't you? Gas 'em."

"Shit."

"Would tear gas work?" Rich asked. "It doesn't cause any permanent damage, does it?"

"In this wind? It wouldn't even get half of them. Be sides, we only have two canisters, and they're both back at the station."

"Then what are we--"

"Let me handle it." Robert opened the door, held tightly on to his rifle as he stepped out of the patrol car. Behind him, he heard the sound of the fire engine's front door slamming, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Rossiter and Buford step onto the sidewalk, the FBI agent holding a service revolver, Buford clutching his shotgun.

Steve and Ben came out of the other patrol car, guns drawn.

"Hand me that bullhorn," Robert said, and Rich gave it to his brother.

"Testing!" Robert said. His voice was loud enough to be heard from at least a block away, even with the wind. He looked toward Rossiter, Buford, Steve, and Ben. "Let's go," he said. "But be careful." He looked back toward Rich. "Make sure everyone else stays in the cars.

If you hear any shots, get down."

Rich nodded :

The wind had subsided, but sand was still swirling in the air, and Robert wished he had worn sunglasses or goggles He blinked, trying to protect his eyes against the flying grains that hit his face as he walked forward.

He peeked around the empty office building at the corner.

They were still there, in the middle of the street. Wheeler was standing in front of them.

He stared through the dust at the preacher, standing with his congregation, and found himseffwondering what he would do if Wheeler asked to see a search warrant.

Could this all be a big mistake?

Could May Ling just be a superstitious old woman? He looked at the huge group of armed people standing in the center of the road in front of the black church. No. There was no mistake. As much as he might like to talk himself out of it, this was real.

He placed the bullhorn to his lips, pressed down on the amplification button. "This is the police!" he said. His voice carried clearly over the dying wind, sounded like the voice of a movie cop, not his own. "Put down your weapons!"

"We don't want you!" someone yelled. "We want the chinks!"

"Put down your weapons!" Robert repeated.

"We'll take you out, too, if we have to!"

The twenty or so men and women standing in a single line in front of the rest of the crowd wore uniforms of underwear, Robert saw, dyed black. He recognized a few of them--Sophocles Johnson holding an ax;

Merle Law with what looked like a gas-powered chain sawBbut most of the faces were unfamiliar to him.

From behind the people on the street, from the roof of the church, absurdly, came the sounds of hammering, muffled by the wind, as volunteers continued with their construction work, oblivious to the goings-on below.

Robert moved to the center of the intersection. He stood, legs spread, holding the rifle. He'd expected his stance to be at least somewhat threatening, but even the young women in the massive crowd before him did not seem to be cowed.

"Begone!" Wheeler screamed. "Before somebody drops a house on you Robert cleared his throat. He needn't have worried about the preacher asking rational questions about search warrants. He placed the bullhorn to his mouth. "Please dispersel"

"You will never set foot on this sacred land! As Jesus said, "You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires." You shall not set foot in the house of the Lord!" Wheeler glared at Robert, then turned, walked back through the crowd toward the church

What the fuck was that?" Buford asked.

Robert shrugged. He again cleared his throat, ad dressed the congregation through the bullhorn. "By the order of the Rio Verde Police Department, you are hereby ordered to disperse! Put down your weapons and move out of the street!

No one in the crowd moved.

"If you do not vacate the premises, you will be placed under arrestl"

A shot was fired over his head.

"What do we do?" Steve called out nervously.

Buford backed up. "Do we shoot? We can't shoot 'em, can we?"

"Fire on them if they attack," Rossiter said. "Get the ones with the rifles."

Robert turned around, looked back at the cars. Rich, Sue, and Sue's grandmother had gotten out of the patrol car. The grandmother was walking toward the corner.

"What are you doing?" he demanded. Rich, grab

"Leave her aloneI" Sue said. The grandmother reached the corner, walked out from behind the office building into the intersection.

The crowd went crazy. They stormed forward as one, screaming wildly, weapons raised.

"Get ready to fir et Rossiter said.

And Sue's grandmother started chanting.

He could not hear the words above the noise of the onrushing attackers and his own panicked instructions to his men, but he could see her lips moving, her mouth opening and closing, her almond eyes trained fearlessly on the angry congregation before her. She stood alone, unafraid, a frail, wrinkled old lady who looked like a turtle. He wanted to scream at her, but there was such authority in her stance, such a confident sureness in her gaze, that he allowed himself to hope, to believe, that she knew what she was doing.

She did.

A shot was fired. And another. But that was all. Neither bullet hit its mark, and before he, Rossiter, Buford, Steve, or Ben could fire even a single return shot, it was over. The people in the forefront of the crowd were slowing, stopping. The generic look of single-minded mania that had been imprinted on their faces was leaving, confusion emerging in its stead. Weapons were being lowered. One woman stopped running, stopped walking, sat down on the curb, and began to cry.

"Kill the chinks!" someone in the back of the crowd yelled, but his order went unheeded. More people began to slow, stop, as Sue's grandmother continued chanting.

Sue stepped beside Robert, and he turned to face her. "What's she saying?" he asked. - . She shook her head. "I don't know. All I know is that it's something that counteracts the influence of the cup hug/rngs/."

"You don't know? What do you mean you don't know?"

"It's not in Cantonese. I can't understand what she's saying."

From the rear of the congregation, a man with a machete strode forward.

He was old, sixty or seventy, and looked like a retired bureaucrat or businessman of some sort, but the bland features of his face had been distorted by hate and fury into something else. The old woman's chanting seemed to be having no effect on him. He moved past the first row of now silently milling people, then rushed forward, machete held high. "His will be done!" he shouted.

Rossiter cut him down in midstride. Robert was still deciding whether to hit the man with the butt of his rifle or shoot him in the legs, when the FBI agent's bullet tore through the man's heart. The man fell, dropping the machete. A gushing pool of blood began spreading immediately out from under the body, grains of tan sand blowing onto the top of the sticky red liquid.

"Let's go in," Rossiter said. The rest of the congregation was in disarray. There were a few others who had not succumbed to the chanting, who were still defiantly holding on to their weapons, but none with the concentrated fury of the fallen man.

"Call an ambulance," Robert ordered Ben. His gaze moved on to Woods, now finally getting out of the other car. "Brad!" he called. "Get over here! We have a man downl"

"He's dead," Rossiter said.

The coroner ran up, knelt next to the body, placed his fingers to the man's wrist and neck, nodded. "He's gone."

"Get the irn-e truck," Robert said. "I don't know how much time we've got here, how long this is going to last, but we've got to get in there while we can." He turned back toward Ben, who was calling the ambulance from his patrol car. "Bring the weaponsl" he yelled. Ben nodded, started the car.

Buford ran back to the fire engine, while the rest of them walked slowly along the sidewalk toward the church. Robert, Rossiter, and Steve kept their guns drawn and ready, but no one made a move toward them, no one even seemed to notice that they were there.

A Jeep pulled behind the fire truck and patrol car as they turned the corner, and Robert saw Chief Simmons and Rand Black inside. The Jeep and truck pulled directly in front of the black church. All three men got out. Buford walked over to his fellow firemen, and they spoke for a moment, then started unrolling hose from the back of the fire engine.

Sue's grandmother had finally stopped chanting, and despite the sounds of crying, the air seemed strangely dead with the cessation of that quiet voice; Robert turned toward Sue. "Can she stop like that? Are they going to revert? Or is that it? Did she cure them?"

Sue translated, listened, translated back. "They will not attack us." of "Steve," them. Lock Robert them ordered, in the trunk." "pick up those weapons. All

"What should we do with them?" He nodded toward the people milling about. "We can't arrest them all. We don't have enough room in the jail."

"Call Cash. Let the state police handle it. It'll make them feel useful." They reached the steps of the church. He told Rich and Woods, Sue and her grandmother to remain with Ben at the foot of the steps, then walked down the sidewalk to where Buford was screwing the hose onto the side of the fire hydrant. Farther down the block,

Simmons and Rand were hooking another hose up to the hydrant in front of the old Big A building. "How long's it going to take to set these up?" Robert asked.

"Five minutes," Buford said. "If Compton comes through on the water.

The chief 3id he already talked to him. We should be able to swing it."

The ambulance came, sirens blaring, while Buford, Rossiter, Simmons, and Rand were positioning the mouths of the hoses at either side of the church, facing east. Rich stood next to Sue and her grandmother, holding on to the willow spears. Woods made sure that the baht g' leaning against the side of the patrol car did not fall.

Robert authorized removal of the body, helped the arty bulance men fill out a preliminary report, and by the time he finally turned back around, the hoses were secured and in place.

"We're ready," Buford said.

Robert nodded. "All right, then. Do iL"

Buford got into the truck, started the pump. Simmons and Rand, each manning a hose, opened the nozzles. Twin jets of pressurized water, with enough power for visible back-kicks that nearly knocked the firemen off their feet, exploded forth from the oversize hoses on each side of the church. Sand and dirt were blown instantly out of the ground as the concentrated water carved its own niche in the earth, uprooting weeds and small cacti that were immediately carried away in the newly formed streams.

Robert was impressed. He looked for Sue's grandmother, saw an expression of approval on her lined face, and felt good. He walked over to the fire truck, looked up at Buford. "How long can these be kept up?" "Don't know," he admitted.

"We'd better get in now, then. We've wasted enough ii

Buford jumped down from the cab, and the two of them hurried with Rossiter to where the rest of the seven stood waiting. "Ready?" Robert said.

They nodded.

Robert called Steve and Ben over. "You stay out here," he ordered the two policemen. "We're going in. I don't know what's going to happen, but if things get hairy, call for backup. And make sure those state police get their lazy asses over here. We'll do what we have to and be out as soon as we can! "Be careful," Steve said.

"That's the plan."

Rich passed out flashlights and the spears, and he and Wood carded the baht gwa between them across the side walk. The seven of them walked through the remnants of Wheeler's army, up the church steps, until they reached the door. Robert had expected the door to be locked, bolted from the inside, maybe with a huge bar of steel like those old cathedrals in the movies. But the black door opened easily when he turned the knob and pushed. The interior of the church was dark and smelled of paint and sawdust.." and blood.

Sue's grandmother said something.

"Is everyone wearing jade?" Sue asked.

They all nodded.

She and her grandmother pushed past Robert, walked into the church.

"Let's find the cup hugimgsi. "'

What had happened to her D/Lo Ling Gum

Sue walked into the black church, clutching her flash light and spear.

D/Lo Ling Gum was supposed to help her, to guide her, but the power lay silent, dormant within her. She received no images or intuitive flashes as she stepped across the church threshold.

She had thought Di Lo Ling Gum would be something she could control, something that obeyed her will, but instead it seemed to exist independently of her and to work only when it wanted to.

She found herself wondering what would happen if her grandmother was killed, either by the cup hu imgzi or by Pastor Wheeler, who was still around somewhere. She would be expected to take over, lead them, tell them what to do. Yet she had nothing but the vaguest idea of what was supposed to occur.

Why had her grandmother not told her more?

There was a hard knot of fear in the pit of her stomach that made her want to vomit and void her bladder at the same time. She thought she was doing a good job of main mining a calm outward appearance, but the truth was that she had to condnce herself to take each tiny step forward, that she was so terrified she could barely think straight

She glanced over at her grandmother, who smiled reassuringly at her.

They walked out of the entryway into the chapel.

The fear she'd experienced only seconds before was nothing compared to the powerful new emotion Sue felt now, this gradation of terror that had no name. Every fiber of her being was telling her to get out of here, to turn tail and run, and it took every ounce of courage she had to override that instinct.

The inside of the church looked like a taxidermist' paradise. The walls were festooned with the bodies of go cats and javelin as sucked dry and suspended from hooks. Dead hawks hung on wires from the high vaulted ceiling. There was no floor, only hard dirt, and there were three huge openings in the earth, each the size of a small room

Next to each opening were piles, of debris No, not debris. Plants and animals.

Sacrifices to the cup hugirngsi.

"esus "

Rich whispered behind her.

She turned her attention toward the front of that church. At the foot of the altar, a crowd of dead animals was arranged around Jesus' feet.

The figure of Jesus itsei impaled on a grossly oversize cross She sucked in her breath, took a step forward, shining her flashlight.

Jesus was the dead and mounted body of Jim Hollis. She stared at the figure. The ranch owner's dried and shriveled form was nailed to the cross with what looked like old railroad spikes, and the spikes had shattered and flattened the withered hands and feet through which they'd been pounded. Hollis's eyes were missing--black holes rimmed with wrinkled skin marking where they had been--and all of the teeth had been knocked out of his mouth. "

The martyred figure seemed blasphemous to Sue, and as she turned to look at her companions, she saw the expressions of fear, shock, and revulsion on their faces.

"It is a warning," her grandmother said. "The cup hu

/rngs/is trying to scare us away."

"It's succeeding," Sue said in Cantoncs i She translated her grandmother's words into English.

"Where's the vampire?" Rossiter asked, and the sound of his flat, totally unemotional voice made everything sccma little less frightening. It was calming. Sue was ddenly glad the FBI agent was with them.

She translated her grandmother's words as the old woman spoke them: "It is underneath us. The cup g/rngs/must spend most of its daylight hours in the earth."

"So we have to go down there?" Robert pointed toward the openings. Sue nodded.

"He can't go over flowing water," Woods said. "Can he go under it?"

Sue had not thought of that. She looked again toward her grandmother, translated the question. Her grandmother frowned, and Sue realized that she had not thought of this possibility either. "We will find out," Sue repeated the words in English. The answer did not seem to boost anyone's confide no "How do we get down there?" Rich asked.

Robert pointed at two hubs of metal peeking over that a of the middle hole. "Ladder. If I'm not mistaking This is the one that our friend the Pastor used right there. "I'll go first," Rossiter volunteered.

Robert nodded. "I'll go last."

It took nearly ten minutes for all of them to dim down. Sue did not like heights, and more than once she thought she would slip, her hands were so sweaty. finally they made it safely to the bottom. Her grandmother had little more difficulty. The old woman's legs were tired, her grip weak, and even with Rich climbing directly below her, helping her down, she still needed extra assistance race. Woods came after her, periodically reaching down ) help hold her hands between one rung and another when she reached the tunnel floor, she was sweating an out of breath, her overly rapid pulse visible in the throl f her neck.

Once again, Sue realized how old her grandmother was and how frail.

What if she had a heart attack before they even found he cup hugirngsit. Sue pushed the thought from her.

The air down here was dank and fetid. It smelled almost like a sewer or a dump. Almost. But there was enough odor here, the stench of death, a dusty, decaying scei that just missed being cloyingly sweet.

Rich climbed halfway back up the ladder, took the ba gnva from his brother, handed it down to Woods.

"All here," Robert announced a few moments later he hopped off the ladder. He was feigning a confidence he lid not feel, but Sue admired his bravery.

She looked down the length of the tunnel, shining her flashlight. They were all shining their lights, the beams following the eyes and interests of their owners, and it produced a low-level strobe effect that made the high and strangely rounded passage seem that much deeper and darker.

"One of us will die," her grandmother said softly.

There was surprise in her voice.

And fear.

She had not expected this.

Sue felt cold. She shone her light on the old woman's face, then quickly moved it away when her grandmother shut her eyes against the beam.

"What did she say?" Robert asked.

""We'd better start walking," Sue said.

She let them think it was a translation.

Rich looked over at Woods, placed his spear in his flashlight hand, and picked up his half of the baht gwa. He shone his flashlight into the tunnel ahead. He had expected the other two openings in the floor of the church to empty here as well, but the hole through which they'd come was at the beginning of this passage, which meant that the other openings led to different tunnels altogether. Tunnels heading in other directions.

He hoped they were going the right way.

He didn't want to be caught in this labyrinth when night fell.

"What direction are we heading?" he asked suddenly. Robert looked at him. "East. Why?" "The streams."

Robert looked up. "I didn't even think about that." He looked back up through the hole to the church, then glanced down the length of the tunnel, gauging its direclion. "Luck of the Irish," he said. "I think we're safe. I think we're between the streams. Assuming that idea works at all."

"If the cup hugirngsi's close enough. If the streams don't peter out."

.... "You know," Buford said, "I bet this empties out by the arroyo."

Robert nodded. "I bet you're right."

They began walking. Multiple flashlight beams scanned the curved sides of the tunnel. Rich looked over at his brother. He could tell from Robert's expression that he felt foolish with the willow spear in his hand, the jade choker around his neck. He would probably have felt more comfortable with his fingers around the butt of a45, but he obviously knew that his usual modes of thought did not apply down here.

In a true show of faith, Robert had even left his rifle outside with Steve. He knew that they were not dealing with a criminal, or even with the type of movie monster that could be taken out by firepower.

They were up against something so old and alien that even their knowledge of the supernatural could have no bearing on their actions.

They were entirely in the hands of Sue's grandmother. Rich, too, would have probably felt more secure if Robert and the FBI agent were packing heat, but he knew that was just conditioning. They were as safe now as they could possibly be under the circumstances.

No matter what happened, he thought, no matter how things turned out, he was proud to be here. Proud to be there with these six people.

Even Rossiter.

They continued walking. And then he heard it. The Laughing Man.

% His mouth suddenly felt as though it was filled with cotton, his saliva dried up at the source. The sound was coming from far away, from somewhere deep in the tunnel but even faint and muffled, he recognized the sound of the Laughing Man. His brain told him that this merely his own demon projected back at him, that the cup hugirngsi looked like that baby-faced monster from the videotape, that no one else probably even heard the sound, but his instinct was stronger than his intellect, and was suddenly deeply and uncontrollably afraid. He knew he could not face the Laughing Man again. He was not brave enough to see it once more.

"Do you hear that?" Sue asked, her voice hushed and fearful. "That laughing? ..... Oh, Cod, Rich thought. She heard it too. He glanc over at Robert. His brother was already looking at him, face pale.

Sue's grandmother said something in Cantonese.

"Noises cannot hurt us," Sue translated. "Ignore them. There will be more."

They shone their lights ahead, toward the source of the sound. The walls of the tunnel before them were no longer smooth, no longer rounded, but looked rough and bulgingly irregular.

Rich was the first to realize why. "Jesus," he breathed. The tunnel before them was lined with the nude dehydrated bodies of men and women, many more than they would have imagined. As they drew closer, Rich saw that all of them "aere arranged in grotesque biblical tableaux, cruel, blasphemous parodies of sacred scenes. Daniel in the lion's den: Daniel, a castrated child; the lions, dead kit tens. The feeding of the ratdtiautes: the multitudes, a score of old men, dead rats in their outstretched hands; Jesus, a naked mummified young woman with her breasts re moved.

"Holy fuck."

Rich looked up at the sound of his brother's voice.

Robert was a little ways ahead and standing next to Woods, looking at a tableaux on the other side of the passage. Rich put down his side of the baht gwa.

It was Pare Frye, naked and standing between Am Hewett and another older man. She was made up like a prostitute and obviously supposed to be Mary Magdalene, the rouge and lipstick and overdone eyeshadow appearing frighteningly out of place on the shrunken skeletal child's face. Behind Pam and the others, Mayor Tillis stood as Jesus, holding his hands out in mocking benediction.

Rich swallowed, tasting bile. Rio Verde's dead and missing were here, were all down here, and the extent of the up hugirngsi's butchery was staggering. The few bodies that had been found in town, the few missing people of whom they were aware, were merely the tip of the iceberg. The cup hug/rngs/liked to save its victims.. And play with their bodies.

But why had it left some out where they could be found? Why hadn't it taken Manuel Tortes or Terry Clifford down here? Why hadn't it hidden the two teenagers killed in the river?

Because it had wanted them to find the bodies. Because it had been toying with them.

He suddenly realized the enormity of what they were up against.

"How long has it been here?" Robert said softly. "How long has it been in our town?" He pointed toward a shriveled husk of a body lying on the ground at Pam's feet. "That's Lew Rogers. He and his girlfriend skipped town about two years ago. We thought. I figured it was because of all they owed."

On the other side of the passage, Sue gasped, her sharp and sudden intake of breath echoing and unusually loud.

Rich hurried over to where she stood, followed her gaze. It was a nativity scene, only baby Jesus was a tiny, hydrated, barely formed fetus, connected by a tiny urn bilical cord to a mummified Mary whose empty breasts were little more than flattened flaps of dried wrinkled skin.

"That's my friend," Sue whispered. "That's Janine." Her grandmother spoke in a clear strong voice, and Sue's attention shifted from the manger scene to the old woman. "What did she say?" Rich asked.

"She says it knows we are. coming. It put these here to warn us, to frighten us." . He nodded. "It's trying to scare us away."

Sue shook her head. "No. It wants us to come." They were all gathered around her now, the other six. They had looked where they'd wanted, had not liked what they'd seen, and had come together around Sue and her grandmother for protection and reassurance. Robert was pensive, Woods and lSuford silent and subdued, and even Rossiter's aggressive assurance seemed to have fled. They were a more thoughtful group than they had been up above, more fully aware of what they were facing, but Rich was not sure that was a good thing. They needed some cockiness now, they needed some aggressiveness. They needed the bravery of the foolhardy.

There was none of that now. He felt as though they'd all given up before they'd started, and that frightened him. He thought of Corrie, thought of Anna, tried to tell himself they were up ahead, hostages to the cup hugirngsi. He looked at Sue. "Corrie and Anna are not in hiding, are they? They didn't sense danger coming and find some place to hide, did they?"

Sue looked over at her grandmother but did not translate. "I don't think so," she said.

Rich nodded. "I think they're up ahead. I'm going to find them." He held up his spear and flashlight, lifted his half of the baht gta.

"Dead or alive, I'm going to find them."

The started forward.

They followed him. As he'd thought, as he'd hoped, his determination seemed to have energized his companions, provided them with renewed purpose, and they strode with him down the center of the earthen tunnel, flashlights trained in unison on the darkness directly before them, no beams sidetracked by the strange staged scenes off to the sides.

The tunnel curved slightly to the left--underneath the stream.-and then narrowed. The rounded ceiling grew flatter, rougher.

They stopped walking. Before them was a doorway, a high thin slice in the hard packed earth that led into even deeper darkness. i And would allow only one of us through at a time.

"I'm going through," Rich announced, putting down the baht gwa. His heart was trip-hammering in his chest with attack force, and there was nothing in his life he had ever felt less like doing, but he knew that this was why he was here, this was why he had come. The time for selfishly succumbing to fear had passed.

Robert grabbed his arm, held him back. "You're not going in first. I am."

Rich managed a smile. "You want to hog all the glory for yourself?."

"it's probably a rap. I'm better prepared to deal with something like that than you."

Sue's grandmother slid through the opening.

"Heyt" Robert yelled.

There was no time to argue now. Robert quickly followed the old woman;

Rich followed Robert. They walked through, one after the other, in an order that was entirely circumstantial: Sue, Buford, Woods, Rossiter.

Buford and the coroner carried the mirror between them as they moved single file through the opening.

The high narrow doorway led into a chamber, a rock room.

The lair of the cup hugirngsi.

Rich bumped into his brother and the grandmother as he stepped through.

He felt the hard tenseness of his brother's muscles, felt the trembling fear of the old woman as he grabbed her arm to keep her from falling.

The undirected beam of his flashlight shone upon the nearest wall, and as he righted himself and stepped out of the way to let Sue through behind him, he saw not dirt, as he would have expected, not rock, but colors, shapes. Paintings.

His flashlight beam played over the wall, joined by Robert's, then Sue's, then Buford's.

"Mother of shit," Buford breathed.

The walls of the chamber were decorated with an unearthly mural, a pictographic rendering of horrors and atrocities so overwhelmingly evil that he was grateful the flashlights revealed only a small portion of it. He moved closer, tentatively touched the wall. His beam revealed the visages of beings that had either never existed or had lived so long ago that their existence remained unrecorded. There were bodies flayed, souls in torment, every perversity imaginable and many unimaginable depicted in the unholy picture.

He had assumed that the vampire was a creature operating on instinct, not intelligence--a being that existed only to feed. But the mural proved that they were dealing with something much more complex, a creature that was not acting simply on impulses, but a being that was actively and sophisticatedly evil. Whether the mural was a recorded history, depicting scenes that had actually occurred, or whether it was merely an example of artistic expression, it was the product of a profoundly corrupt mind, and Rich grew cold as he tried to imagine the cup hugirngsi sitting alone in this underground darkness, painting these painstakingly detailed horrors.

Only his mind did not see that overly tall baby-faced thing from the videotape.

F He saw in his. mind the Laughing Man.

The idea of the Laughing Man chuckling to himself, alone in the darkness, frightened Rich more than any thing else could have.

There was the sound of wind or water, an indeterminate whooshing rush, and all flashlights turned toward the noise. Against the far wall, the beams revealed a throne, an oversize throne made of bones and skulls and animal heads.

Upon the throne sat the Pastor Mr. Wheeler.

Rich looked at the pastor, saw the wildness in his eyes, the bloody Bible on his lap, and for a brief second he thought they'd all been wrong, they'd all been fooled, there was no cup hugrngsi, there was only this human fanatic and his cult of human followers who'd been terrorizing the town.

And C, or and Anna were safe.

Then he heard the laughing, saw the shadow loom next to the throne, felt the temperature drop.

The cup hugirngsi.

He backed up, bumped into Sue, and only that contact kept him from running out through that narrow doorway the way he'd come in. He could feel the scream building in his throat. The shadowy figure moved into one of the flashlight beams, and it was the Laughing Man. He saw that grinning, characterless face, heard that horrible throaty chuckle.

Then the figure turned toward them, and he saw the faint traces of other faces as well. The structure of the head seemed to shift as the creature moved. Did the monster now have Elvis's lips?. Dracula's widow's peak? Oriental eyes? Skin fashioned from sand? Was that Jesus Christ hiding underneath there? He had been right, he realized, but he took no comfort from that fact. The cup hugirngsi did indeed draw from mythologies for its appearance, for its form, tapping those deep and primal images that spoke so personally and so eloquently to the holder of the mythology.

"What do we do?" Robert asked Sue.

"Die," the cup hugirngsi answered in a whisper like thunder.

And laughed.

Sue wet her pants.

She did not notice it until she moved closer to her grandmother and felt the warmth spreading outward from her crotch. Under any other circumstances she would have been mortified, would not have been able to think of anything else but the failure of her bladder, but she was so terrified now that the knowledge was simply registered by her brain and then instantly forgotten.

There were other things to think about.

And, under the circumstances, she was not ashamed. The cup hugirngsi looked exactly the same to her as it had on the videotape, and she knew that, unlike the others, her vision was not being filtered through her perceptions. Her grandmother grabbed her hand. She expected some sort of electricity to pass between them, expected to experience a sharing of some kind of power or insight, but there was only the physical contact of that familiar old hand, those bony fingers clutching tightly to her own. Sue's other hand hurt from clutching the spear. "What do we do?" she asked her grandmother. "The baht gwa. "

Their whispers were loud in the cavelike chamber, and she wondered if the cup hugirngsi understood what they were saying. It had spoken in English. Did it understand

Cantonese? Or did it even need to hear them at all? Could it read their minds?

"The bat gaa, "Sue repeated. "We need the mirror." "Right here,"

Rossiter said. The FBI agent pushed the reflective glass toward her across the hard-packed floor.

The cup hugirngsi was gone now. Sue could no longer see it. The tall chamber was nearly smothered in darkness, their own pitiful lights little more than narrow yellow lines in the blackness. It could be anywhere, she knew. It could be way on the other side of the chamber, it could be standing right next to them.

Did there need to be light for it to see itself in the baht

There were so many things she should have asked her grandmother before they started.

She reached for the baht g'wa, fingers curving over the top of the cold mirror. She pulled it next to her, faced it outward, hid behind it as though it was a shield.

Someone's flashlight was trained on the throne, on Wheeler. The preacher was bending forward, licking the blood off his Bible.

"Is he a cup hugimgsi*." Sue asked her grandmother. "No," the old woman said "He to be, but he is not. He has just been too close. He has been influenced."

Influenced.

"But isn't it trying to turn him into one? ........ "The cup hugirngsi is vain. It wants people to know of its deeds. That's why it has kept him alive, to spread the word of its actions.

"And that is its downfall." She reached for the mirror and tried to lift it, but the glass was too large and too heavy. Sue saw whfit she was trying to do, and she lifted one end of the mirror. Rich helped her, and among the three of them, they managed to raise the baht g'wa to face level.

"Move it slowly," her grandmother said, and Sue trans lated. She swiveled her body to the left, and Rich did the same, the face of the mirror panning across the darkened room. There was a flash of light at the far end of the chamber, almost an explosion, and a scream of agony that was loud enough to cause Sue's ears to ring.

"Don't stop!" her grandmother yelled. "You got it! It saw itself."

"What's happening?" Buford asked. His voice was high, too high, close to panic.

Sue did not answer but kept turning slowly, moving the baht gwa.

Another explosion. In the bright light of this one, a brief powder-keg flash against a side wall, she saw swirling red and a naggingly familiar shape, not the cup hugirngsi but something else, something she'd seen before and almost recognized.

The creature's voice came out of the shadows. "Clan." It was horrifying but not ugly, a strong, powerful, and undeniably charismatic voice. Sue stared into the darkness. Underneath the fear, underneath the anger and the terror, she felt a weak stirring in her blood, a faint desire to cast off her jade necklace and join Wheeler on the throne of the cup hugirngsi. Despite everything, something in the creature's voice spoke to her. She wondered if the others felt it too.

She hoped they didn't.

The creature spoke again in its dulcet tones and strange cadences:

"Kill them. Kill the chinks and their fucking friends," The attraction was gone now, if it had ever been there at all, and only the terror remained. She and Rich continued to turn slowly with the baht gwa.

On the throne, Wheeler placed the bloody Bible on the armrest and slid off the raised seat. He looked almost comical as he got off the grotesquely oversize chair, but that impression was as fleeting as it was incorrect. The preacher stood, and there was not merely fanaticism in his face, but a dangerous determination. "Jesus said to kill the fucking chinks. They are evil. They are disciples of the Adversary, and you must smite them in the name of the Lord."

"How come He can't smite us himself?." Robert stepped forward, spear thrust out in front of him, flashlight beam roaming the chamber. He faced Wheeler, shone his light into the preacher's eyes. Wheeler blinked, flinched, drew back "How come He's so afraid of us? How come He can't touch us himself? Doesn't He like the jade? Huh? Is He afraid of our little sticks? I never heard that Jesus was afraid of jade. I never knew He had a fear of willow branches. I never read that in the Bible."

Wheeler looked from Robert into the darkness to his left. There was confusion on his face, and for a brief moment the mask of fanaticism slipped.

Sue and Rich continued to pan the chamber with that mirror. Stop, she thought. Don't say anything else. Don' ruin it.

"Your followers ran away," Robert continued. "The didn't defend your church at all." He stared at that preacher.

"Nol" Wheeler yelled.

"Yes!"

"They must be here for Jesus' rebirthl .... "They decided to skip it."

Someone else's beam, maybe Woods's, maybe siter's, lit upon two dark crumpled forms half hidden b hind the irregular" bone legs of the throne. Sue knew instinctively what the flashlights had discovered even before her mind recognized the figures. Corrie. And Anna.

No, she thought, willing the beams to move on. That's what it wants.

That's why it brought them here.

But the lights remained in place, trained on the hunched and blackened forms. Another beam, Buford's, joined the other two. It was obvious now that the figures were dead and nude and female. The woman's face was shoved obscenely into the girl's crotch.

"Your wife. Your daughter." The whisper came from nowhere, came from everywhere. Rich stopped swiveling the mirror.

"NoI" Sue said. "Don't listen to it!"

"Pastor Wheeler sucked out their blood and drank it. He fucked them first. He really liked the girl."

Rich screamed. It was supposed to be a word, suppos to be "No," but was far more powerful, a loud primal negation, a full-throated denial that came straight from the depths of his soul The bahtgwa slipped from his grasp, and the up hugirngsi loomed out of the blackness, step ping into the flashlight beams as the mirror shattered on the ground. As hard as he could, Rich threw his spear at the monster, but it flew sideways and clattered impotently on the floor.

Wheeler was already upon him. He leaped at Rich's head, and the two of them fell hard on the floor at Sue's feet while Robert, Woods, Rossiter, and Buford rushed for ward to help. The two of them rolled in the broken mirror glass. Wheeler was attempting to pull the jade ring from

Rich's finger, yanking back the finger itself, breaking it.

One of us will die.

Don't let it be Rich, Sue thought, but she was not sure it was a thoughL She was not sure of anything. It was all too confusing, was happening too fast. As if in a drug scene from a sixties movie, everything seemed to be crazily off center, seen through the strobe of the flashlights and the weird angles of the shattered baht gwa. She was dimly aware that her grandmother was speaking to her, yelling at her, but amidst the other screaming she could not hear what her grandmother was saying.

The cup hugirngsi stood before them, looking just as it had in the videotape, its horridly ancient baby face twisted with hate and a sickening sort of glee. The whiteness of its skin seemed suddenly phosphorescent, lit from the matetial of its substance and not from the weak beams of the flashlights.

Rich's scream spiraled upward in intensity, shifting from anger to agony, and was cut off suddenly as Sue's flashlight hand was hit with an unexpected wash of liquid warmth. The preacher had bitten into Rich's neck, into the artery, and was vainly trying to drink the spurting blood.

Rossiter and Buford pulled the screaming Wheeler off Rich's spastically convulsing body, and without a word, without a sound, without a second's hesitation, Robert stabbed the preacher through the chest, ramming in his spear as far as it would go, pushing it in farther with the weight of his body as he leaned on it. Wheeler stopped screaming, his eyes bulged, and blood pumped from the skin around the spear and from his still open lips. : This wasn't tight. This was not what was supposed to happen.

Sue faced the cup hugirngsi, spear thrust outward, dimly aware that her grandmother was doing the same. It was chaos in here, no one knew what they were doing. They were all going to die. Rossiter was shooting.

He had brought a gun, against her grandmother's specific instructions, and he was firing it at the cup hugirgsi, the reports echoing painfully in the chamber and blocking out all screams, all other sounds. The first slug tipped a hole through the monster's stomach, and for a brief millisecond there was a glimpse of red, a liquid swirling within the hole, and then the opening was gone, skin covering it up as if it had never existed. The slug immediately after it went through the monster's eye. There was a red hole, and then the eye returned. The other bullets, through the forehead and chest, created equally short-lived wounds that disap

Woods was on one knee, bending over Rich, pressing down on his convulsively jerking body.

Sue pointed her flashlight at the cp hugirngsi. Perhaps it had been playing with them. Perhaps, as her grand mother had suggested, it wanted to make its presence known to the world. Perhaps it had merely been bored and wanted a challenge. Whatever the impetus behind its decision to lure them here, it was not playing now. There was demonic purpose in its eyes, determination in its malevolent expression.

And yetw i : wit was afraid.

She knew it, knew it instantly, clearly, perfectly. It was not an insight or a revelation, not something that she discovered or that blossomed within her mind, it was simply there, in her brain, as though it was something she had always known.

D/Lo Ling Gum.

She was aware now, also, of the streams on the surface above them. She could feel the power in the twin flows of water even through the layers of dirt and rock above their heads. The streams were weak; beginning to drift at this point, but they were still there and still flowing east.

And they ran in converging paths on either side of the

The monster could move neither to the left nor to the right. It could only move toward them or away from them. It was trapped. :: Her grandmother was aware of it, too. Neither of them had spoken, but each was aware of what the other thought and felt, and it was as if they were one mind with two bodies as, willow spears extended, they stepped forward.

Sue sensed that something had been planned, that something big had been about to happen, and that they had stopped it before it started. They had thwarted the

But it was even more frightened.

The cup hug/rngs/hissed. All pretensions of humanity had fled. There was no charismatic dulcet-toned voice, no face or form borrowed from human minds, there was only this spitting, hissing thing, this ancient monster with its hate-twisted baby face and strange skinny body with its long growths of unnatural hair. Inside the terrible mouth, double rows of too many teeth chattered and clicked.

Sue felt pressure in her mind, as though her thoughts were surrounded by a wall, and something huge and powerful was butting against that wall, but it seemed surprisingly easy to keep that pressure at bay. She shoved her spear forward, tried to stab the cup hug/rgs/.

It backed away, hissed again, a sound like wind, like water.

This close, she could feel the coldness radiating from the monster, waves of increasingly arctic air that felt painful on her skin and made her want to flee, get away.

It was afraid of them.

Her grandmother stepped forward, tried to spear the cup hugirngsi, but her weapon swung on a slight arc to the left, and before she had a chance to adjust, to pull back, the creature's long, thin hand swiped toward the old woman's head.

A spear embedded itself in the cup hugirngs's upper arm, causing it to yank the arm back with a tortured scream. '

Another spear flew through the air, hit it in the face.

Rossiter,

Buord

Sue rushed forward, through the cold, the screaming wind water sound so loud that it hurt her ears, and with all of her might she shoved her sharpened branch of willow into the monster's stomach.

Blood exploded, flying outward, splashing everything, everyone. The monster's body crumpled, its form instantly losing shape, skin flapping like a deflated balloon as the crimson tide sloshed onto the ground in a truly amazing flood. There were no bones inside the body, no organs, only the blood, an astounding amount of it that continued to flow out of the sinking figure in a seemingly endless stream. It bubbled on the hard floor, boiling, percolating downward through the rock, but on Sue's body it felt cool and flat and dead, and as she glanced quickly around the chamber, she saw that the blood was not hurting or affecting anyone else either.

"He's dead," Woods announced behind her, and for a second she thought he meant the cup hugirngsi, but then she realized he was talking about Rich. A twisting hurt ripped through her, and she wished the cup hugirngsi was alive so she could kill it again.

Had it ever been alive?

She turned toward her grandmother, threw her arms around the old woman.

She felt exhausted all of a sudden, and she needed someone to hold on to. She was dimly aware that the moment's connection the two of them had shared was gone, but she didn't really care. Tears were streaming from her eyes, coursing down her cheeks, but she was not crying. Not yet.

There was movement around her, but she seemed not to know what it was and not to care, the actions of her companions now trivial and irrelevant to her. Her grand mother pulled away from her, touched her cheek, then bent down to pick up her spear.

There was nothing left of the cup hugrngsi now but the empty formless hull of its body, and her grandmother began speaking quietly to herself in that unfamiliar dialect as she moved next to it. Pushing up the sleeves of her blouse, the old woman wrapped the leathery skin and its irregular tufts of blood-soaked albino hair around her spear until it resembled a bulging, soggy, rolled-up carpet. She held the wrapped skin in front of her, lifting it as though it weighed nothing, and Sue followed her through the chamber's narrow doorway and down the rounded runnel the way they'd come.

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 wasn'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.