Image of the Beast and Blown
Page 11
kin and Mrs. Krautschner but they did not smile or say
anything. They seemed eager to get back to their game.
Igescu did not explain what their status was but Childe
thought that the girl must be the house guest he had
mentioned.
Glam appeared suddenly and noiselessly, as if he slid
spaces around him instead of moving himself. He
gave a manila envelope to Igescu. Childe glanced at
Igescu as he removed the photo from the envelope, then
he looked up. Glam had gone as swiftly and silently as
he had entered.
The photo was taken from about forty feet during
the daytime. Light flooding in from the large window
showed everything in detail. There was Dolores del
Osorojo just about to leave the hall through a doorway.
The edge of the doorway and part of a chair nearby
could be faintly made out through her. She was look-
ing back at the camera with the same faint smile as in
her painting.
"I'll have to have it back," Igescu said.
10
"As you say, a photo proves nothing," Childe said. He
looked at his wristwatch. A half hour left. He opened
his mouth to ask about the car accident and the morgue
incident but Magda Holyani entered.
She was a tall, slim, small-breasted woman of about
thirty with beautiful although disproportioned features
and thick pale-yellow hair. She walked as if her bones
were flexible or as if her flesh encased ten thousand
delicate intricately articulated bones. The bones of her
head seemed to be thin; her cheekbones were high, and
her eyes were tilted. The mouth was too thin. There was
something indefinably reptilian about her, or, to be
more exact, snakish. This was not repulsive. After all,
many snakes are beautiful.
Her eyes were so light he thought at first they were
colorless, but, closer, they became a very light gray. Her
skin was very white, as if she shunned not only the sun
but the day. It was, however, flawless. She had no makeup
whatever. The lips would have looked pale if she had
been standing next to a woman with rouged lips, but set
against her own white skin they seemed dark and bright.
She wore a tight-fitting black dress with a deep
square-cut bodice and almost no back. Her stockings were
black nylon, and the high-heeled shoes were black. She
sat down after being introduced, revealing beautiful,
but seemingly boneless, legs from the mid-thigh down.
She took over the conversation from Igescu, who lit up
an expensive cigar and seemed to become lost in gazing
into the smoke.
Childe tried to keep the conversation to a question-
and-answer interview, but she replied briefly and un-
satisfactorily and followed with a question each time
about himself or his work. He felt that he was being in-
terviewed.
He was becoming desperate. This would be his only
chance to find out anything, and he was not even get-
ting a "feel" of lightness or wrongness about this place
and its tenants. They were a little odd, but this meant
nothing, especially in Southern California.
He noticed that Glam was busying himself nearby
with emptying the Baron's and Magda's ash trays, refilling
the glasses, and at the same time managing to keep his
eyes on the woman. Once, he touched her, and she
snapped her head back and glared at him. Igescu was
aware that Childe was taking this in, but he only smiled.
Finally, Childe ignored her to ask Igescu directly if
he would care to comment on the much-publicized "vam-
pire" incident. After all, it was this that had brought
him out here. And so far he had not learned much.
The article would be spare, if indeed he had enough
data to make an article.
"Frankly, Mr. Wellston," Igescu said, "I permitted this
interview because I wanted to kill people's curiosity about
this once and for all. Essentially, I am a man who likes
privacy; I am wealthy but I leave the conduct of my
business to others and enjoy myself. You have seen my
library. It is very extensive and expensive and contains
many first editions. It covers a wide variety of subjects.
I can say without bragging that I am an extremely well-
read man in many languages. Ten shelves are filled with
books on my hobby: precious stones. But you may also
have observed several shelves filled with books on
such subjects as witchcraft, vampirism, lycanthropy, and
so on. I am somewhat interested in these, but not, Mr.
Wellston, because I take a professional interest."
He smiled over his cigar and said, "No, it is not be-
cause I am a vampire, Mr. Wellston, that I have read in
these subjects. I took no interest in them until after the
incident that caused you to come here. I thought that if
I were to be accused of being a vampire, I had better
find out just what a vampire was. I knew something
about them, of course, because after all, I do come
from an area in which the peasants believe more in
vampires and the devil than they do in God. But my
tutors never went much into folk-lore, and my contacts
with the local non-nobility were not intimate.
"I decided to give you this interview so that, once
and for all, this nonsense about my vampirism could be
quelled. And also, to divert attention from me toward
the only truly supernatural feature of this house: Dolores
del Osorojo. I have changed my mind about photo-
graphs for your article. I will have Magda send you a
number. These will show some of the rooms in the
house and various photos of the ghost. I will do this on
the condition that you make it clear-in your article that
I am a man who likes privacy and a quiet life and that
the vampire talk is nonsense. After getting that out of the
way, you may stress the ghost as much as you like. But
you must also make it clear that there will be no other
interviews with anybody and that I do not like to be dis-
turbed by curiosity-seekers, spiritualists, or journalists.
Agreed?"
"Certainly, Mr. Igescu. You have my word. And of
course, as agreed, you will edit the article before it's
published."
Childe felt a little dizzy. He wished that he had not
accepted the brandy. It had been four years since he
had drunk anything, and he would not have broken
his rule now, except that Igescu had praised the brandy
as being so rare that he had been tempted to try it. And
he had also not wanted to offend his host in any way
if he could help it. He had, however, not had more
than one tumbler. The stuff was either very potent or he
was vulnerable after the long dry period.
Igescu turned his head to look at the tall dark grand-
father clock. "Your time is about up, Mr. Wellston."
Childe wondered why the baron was so concerned
with time, when, by his own admission, he seldom went
>
any place or did anything particularly pressing. But
he did not ask. The baron would have regarded such
a question as too impertinent to answer with anything
but cold silence.
Igescu stood up. Childe rose also. Magda Holyani fin-
ished her drink and got up from the chair. Glam ap-
peared in the doorway, but Igescu said, "Miss Holyani
will drive Mr. Wellston to the gate, Glam. I need you
for another duty."
Glam opened his mouth as if he meant to object but
shut it immediately. He said, "Very well, sir," and
wheeled around and walked away.
Igescu said, "If you'd like some more material for your
article, Mr. Wellston, you might look up Michel Le
Garrault in the UCLA library. I have copies of two of
his works, first editions, by the way. The old Belgian
had some very interesting and original theories about
vampires, werewolves, and other so-called supernatural
phenomena. His theory of psychic imprinting is fascinat-
ing. Have you read him? Can you read French?"
"Never heard of him," Childe said, wondering if he
would have fallen into a trap if he had professed famil-
iarity. "I do read French."
"There are many so-called authorities on the occult
and supernatural who have not heard of Le Garrault or
had no chance to read him. I recommend that you go to
the rare book section of the UCLA library and ask
for Les Murs écroulés. Translations of the original
Latin were made in French and, curiously, in Bohemian,
and these are very rare indeed. There are, as far as I
know, only ten Latin copies in the world. The Vatican
has one; a Swedish monastery has two; I, of course,
have one; the Kaiser of Germany had one but it was
lost or, probably, stolen after he died at Doom; and the
other five are in state libraries at Moscow, Paris, Wash-
ington, London, and Edinburgh."
"I'll look him up," Childe said. "Thanks very much
for the information."
He turned to follow Igescu out and saw the woman in
Spanish dress, high comb stuck in her black hair, just
stepping into a doorway at the end of the hall. She
turned her head and smiled and then was gone.
Igescu said, calmly, "Did you see her, too?"
"Yes, I did. But I couldn't see through her," Childe
said.
"I did," Magda Holyani said. Her voice shook a
little. Childe looked at her. She seemed to be angry, not
frightened.
"As I said, she has been getting more and more
opaque," Igescu said. "The solidifying is so subtle, that
it's only noticeable if you compare what she was six
months ago with what she now is. The process has been
very slow but steady. When I first moved in here, she
was almost invisible."
Childe shook his head. Was he really discussing a
ghost as if it existed? And why was Magda so upset?
She had stopped and was staring at the doorway as if
she were resisting the impulse to chase after the thing.
"Many people, more people than care to admit, have
seen ghostly phenomena—something weird and unexplain-
able, anyway—but neither the phenomenon doesn't repeat
itself or else the people 'visited' ignore it and it goes away.
But Dolores, ah, there is another story! Dolores is ignored
by me, except for an occasional picture-taking. Magda
used to ignore her but now she seems to be getting on her
nerves. Dolores is gaining substance from somewhere,
perhaps from someone in this house."
Certainly, the story of Dolores was gaining substance.
If a photo of her was no evidence that she existed,
neither was the fact that he had seen her. For some
reason, Igescu might have planned this whole thing, and
if he, Childe, were to run after Dolores and try to seize
her, what would his hands close on? He had a feeling
that he would grip solid flesh and that the young woman
would turn out to have come into existence about twenty
years ago, not one hundred and fifty.
At the door, he shook hands with Igescu, thanked
him, and promised to send him a carbon of the article
for editing. He followed Magda to the car and turned
once before getting in to look back. Igescu was gone,
but a blind had been half-raised and Glam's bulldog face
and batwing ears were plainly visible.
He got into the front seat with Magda at her invita-
tion. She said, "My job pays very well, you know. It
has to. It's the only thing that would make it endurable.
I almost never get a chance to go to town and the only
ones I can talk to, ever, are my boss and a few servants
and occasionally a guest."
"Is it hard work?" Childe asked, wondering why
she was telling him this. Perhaps she had to unburden
herself to someone.
"No. I take care of his few social obligations, make ap-
pointments, act as middle man between him and his busi-
ness managers, do some typing on the book he's writing
on jewels, and spend more time than I care to staying
away from that monster, Glam."
"He did nothing definite, but I got the idea that he's
quite attached to you," Childe said.
The beams swept across trees as the car went around
a corner. The moon was up now, and he could see
more distinctly. He could be wrong, but it seemed to him
that they were not on the same road he had traveled on
the way up.
"I'm taking the longer, no less scenic, route," she
said, as if she had read his mind. "I hope you don't
mind. I feel that I just have to talk to somebody. You
don't have to listen to me, of course, there's no reason
why you should."
"Pour it on me," he said. "I like to hear your voice."
They passed through the gateway of the inner wall.
She drove slowly, in first gear, as she talked, and once
she put her hand on his leg. He did not move. She took
her hand off after a minute when she had to stop the
car. They had driven off the road onto a narrow stone-
covered path which led through a break in the trees to a
clearing. A small summerhouse, a round wooden struc-
ture on a high round cement base, stood there. Its open
sides were partially covered with vines, so that its interior
was dark. A flight of cement steps led up to the wide
entrance.
"I get very lonely," she said, "although the baron is
charming and does talk a lot. But he's not interested in
me in the way some employers are in their female
employees."
He did not have to ask her what she meant by that.
She had put her hand on his leg again, seemingly as
accidentally or unself-consciously as before. He said,
"Are there wolves out here, too? Or are they all inside the
inner wall?"
She was leaning closer now, and her perfume was so
strong that it seemed to soak into his pores. He felt his
penis swelling and he took her hand and moved it so that
it wa
s on his penis. She did not try to take her hand
away.
He reached over and ran a finger down along the curve
of the left breast and down the cleavage into the breast.
His hand went on down and slid between the cloth and
breast and rubbed over the nipple. The nipple swelled,
and she shuddered. He kissed her with many slidings of
his tongue along hers and over her teeth. She fumbled
along his zipper, found it, pulled it slowly down, and
then probed through the opening of his jockey shorts.
He unbuttoned the front of her dress and quickly verified
what he had suspected. She wore nothing beneath the
dress except for a narrow garter belt. The breasts were
small but shapely. He bent over and took a nipple in his
mouth and began sucking. She was breathing as hard as
he.
"Let's go in the summerhouse," she said softly.
"There's a couch in there."
"All right," he said. "But before we go any further,
you should know I'm unprepared. I don't have any
rubbers."
He would not have been surprised if she said that she
had some in her handbag. It wouldn't have been the first
time that this had happened to him.
But she said, "Never mind. I won't get pregnant."
Shakily, he followed her out of the car, sliding past
the wheel. She turned and slid the dress off her shoulders.
The moonlight gleamed on the whitest flesh possible, on
dark wet nipples, and dark triangle of pubic hairs under
the garter belt. She kicked her shoes off and, clad only
in belt and stockings, swayed towards the summerhouse.
He followed her, but he was not so excited that he did
not wonder about cameras and sound devices in the sum-
merhouse. He knew that he was good-looking, but he was
not, after all, a god who swept all women before him
on a tide of desire. If Magda Holyani seduced him on
such short acquaintance, she either was very hard-up or
had a motive that he might not like if he knew. Or, pos-
sibly, both. She did not seem to be faking her passion.
If, for some reason, she thought she could lead him so
far, turn him on and then turn him off, she was going to
be surprised. He had suffered a good part of yesterday
with a painful ball-ache because of his unfinished love-