Bentley Little - The Summoning

Woods had declared the official cause of death to be, in layman's terms, exsanguination--loss of blood--but the circumstances surrounding that blood loss were truly frightening. For it was not only blood that had been removed from Manuel Torres's corpse, it was water, spinal fluid, saliva, semen, bile every liquid that the human body produced or retained. And all of these fluids had been sucked out through a single hole bitten into the mechanic's neck.

That was the word they had tiptoed around, had been afraid to say. It was ludicrous, of course, but it was also scary as hell. He had quizzed the coroner on the findings, asking if it would be physically possible for a deranged individual to suck out all of those fluids by placing his or her mouth on the wound. He knew from seeing Manuel's shriveled body that such an idea was absurd, but Woods had replied seriously that, yes, it would be possible with the aid of a pump strong enough to collapse inter organ membrane walls but not so strong as to significantly damage the organs themselves--although the coroner had to admit that he had never heard of the existence of such a device, and he didn't know how such a device could do exactly the same thing to the infinitely more fragile body structures of the animals found next to the corpse.

The truth was, neither of them had any idea how it had happened. The only theory that offered any explanation was vampirism.

But there were no such things as vampires.

Robert felt cold, though the night was not particularly chilly. The short peach-fuzz hairs on the back of his neck prickled. He was glad that Ted was on duty tonight. He would not have wanted to be alone in the police office right now. Pussy, he told himself.

He shook his head, smiling wryly as he pushed open the glass door.

Robert Carter. Pussy shit face Might be a good title for his autobiography.

He walked inside, nodding at Ted, who was sitting behind the front counter. "How's it going tonight?" "It's not." "Good."

Ted stood, stretched, held his back. "Mary Beth Vigil called again, though. She says Mike's still missing." Robert frowned. "What'd you tell her?"

"I told her she had to wait twenty-four hours to file a missing persons report. She said it's been twelve hours already."

"Shit." :

Mary Beth had phoned earlier in the afternoon to tell them that her father had not returned from a fig run to Casa Grande. He'd called her from the Gasa Grande Dairy Queen before heading back to Rio Verde and had told her that he'd be home in two hours, but when three and a half hours had passed and he still hadn't arrived, Mary Beth had called them. They'd contacted the Department of Public Safety to see if there'd been any accidents on the highway, but none had been reported, and they'd assumed that Mike had stopped off at a truck stop for a piece of pie, or maybe just stopped off for a piece. He had been known to frequent Nicole's and was not above picking up hitchhikers in his more desperate moments.

Now Robert was not so sure. It wasn't like Mike to disappear for this long without letting anyone know where he was, particularly once he'd called and specifically said he was coming home.

"Did you call DPS again?" he asked Ted.

The deputy nodded. "No accidents, no stalls. Their helicopter flew the route an hour or so before sundown."

Robert felt the chill return. It was probably unrelated he hoped to Christ it was unrelated--but he could not help thinking that whoever had killed Manuel Torres was still at large.

He imagined Mike lying at the bottom of the arroyo, his body shriveled and shrinking and dry.

The worry must have shown on his face, because Ted looked at him sympathetically. "You seem pretty worn out."

"Yeah," he admitted.

"Go home then. Get some rest." ,

He shook his head. "We have to come up with some leads on this murder." :::

"Tonight? There's nothing we can do tonight. Go home."

Robert ran a hand through his hair. He looked at the deputy, felt the sting of tiredness, and was forced to rub his eyes. "You're right," he said. He reached over the counter and picked up a rubber-banded stack of forms. "I'll take the answering machine off so I can hear the phone. If DPS calls or anything else comes up, give me a ring."

"Will do."

It was late, and the streets were empty as Robert drove home. He passed Rich's house and was going to give his usual shave-and-a-haircut honk as he drove by, but he saw that all of the lights were off and figured his brother and the family were already asleep. He turned onto Sagebrush, feeling slightly lonely. The moon was out, reflected in the front windows of all the homes on the right side of the street, and its dim bluish glow made the street look vacant and abandoned, like part of a ghost town.

The road curved at the foot of the hill, winding out toward the desert.

The houses here were farther apart, with stretches of sand in between.

In his parents' time, this had really been the boonies, and the school bus had had to make a special trip out this way just to pick up him and Rich. More homes had been built since then, but this was still the least populated section of Rio Verde, and cactus here still far outnumbered people. Most of the time he liked it this way--it meant he could crank up his stereo to maximum volume without disturbing his neighbors; it meant he could target practice in the desert behind his house without fear of hitting anything but rocks but sometimes he felt isolated from the rest of the town, from the rest of the world, and at those times he wished that, instead of buying Rich out, he had sold the old homestead and both of them had moved closer to town.

He swung the car next to his mailbox, rolled down the window, and checked to see if he'd gotten any mail. Pulling out three bills, he tossed them on the passenger seat next to him, then drove over the old boards that covered the culvert, and pulled to a stop on the dirt driveway in front of the toolshed.

As always, the house was empty, the living room dark and silent as he walked through the door. He had been alone longer than he'd been married, but somehow he'd gotten used to certain aspects of married life and had never been able to wean himself of them.

One was coming home to a warm lighted house.

He threw his keys on the coffee table and turned on the lights in the living room, dining room, and kitchen. The house seemed quieter than usual, and he walked over to the TV and turned it on, grateful for some noise. On HBO, a police detective was inviting a pretty young woman back to his apartment.

He went into the kitchen, got a beer out of the refrigerator, and stood in the doorway for a moment, watching the television. He could not remember the last time he'd invited a woman over. There had been a few after Julie, one-night sluts he'd corralled in the roper bars, but those he'd brought home more for spite than pleasure, as ammunition to use as return fire in case he and Julie ever got back together again.

They never had gotten back together, though, had never even seen each other after, that last court appearance, and he had gradually stopped bagging the bimbos, realizing that there was no point to it.

The frightening thing was that he did not really miss them. Sex had just sort of drifted out of his life, and he had not even cared. He could not even remember the last time he'd beat off.

He sat down on the couch, feeling depressed.

Sometimes he wondered if he wasn't just wasting his life in Rio Verde.

He had never lived anywhere else, had never even been out of Arizona for more than a few days at a time, and he wondered what it would be like to move to a different state. Rich often told him he was lucky not to have made the mistakes he himself had made in moving away, but Robert wondered. Rich was different, always had been. Rich could be happy in prison if he had enough books to read. He, on the other hand, lived in the real world more than in his mind, and he needed physical, material things to make him happy.