Bentley Little - The Summoning

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.