Image of the Beast / Blown

by Philip José Farmer

  friend who also wanted to get out of town.

  Who was the friend? Cherril did not know. But she was

  frantic, and she had tried to get hold of Childe. When he

  had not answered after five tries, she had given up on

  him. The state police had reported that Sybil was not

  involved in any of the many accidents between Los

  Angeles and San Francisco during that time.

  Childe told Cherril not to worry, that many people

  were still missing. Sybil would show up safe and sound.

  He would not rest until he found her. And so on.

  When he hung up the phone, he felt empty. The next

  day, he was as hollow, and he had to admit that he knew

  no more than what Cherril had told him. The "friend"

  he suspected Sybil to have driven off with, Al Porthouse,

  denied having seen her for two weeks.

  Childe gave up, temporarily, and turned his attention

  elsewhere. The baron's house had been burned out, al-

  though the rains had kept it from being completely de-

  stroyed. There were no bodies in the ruins, in the yard, or

  in the woods. Mrs. Grasatchow's purse was not found.

  Childe remembered the automobile that had raced

  by him after he had driven away from the baron's. Who-

  ever the six had been, they had cleaned up thoroughly.

  But what had happened to Dolores?

  He drove out to the estate and went over the wall

  again, the police having locked the main gate. His poking

  around uncovered nothing. The police did not know his

  story, of course. He knew better than to tell them any-

  thing except that he had visited the baron just once and

  that briefly. They had questioned him and then had

  said that they were puzzled by the disappearance of the

  baron, secretary, servants, and chauffeur, but so far no

  information had come in. For all they knew, the house-

  hold had left for parts unknown, the house had burned

  by accident, and any day now they might hear from the

  baron.

  Late that afternoon, he returned to his apartment.

  He was shrouded in his thoughts, which were concerned

  with moving to some place where smog would not be a

  problem for years to come. It was some time before he

  realized that the phone must have rung at least a dozen

  times. It had started while he was unlocking the door.

  The voice was a pleasant baritone.

  "Mr. Childe? You don't know me. We haven't met,

  fortunately for you, although I think we passed each

  other on the road outside the Baron Igescu's estate sev-

  eral days ago."

  Childe did not reply for a moment, then he said,

  "What do you want?"

  His voice was steady. He had thought it would crack,

  as if it were crystallized with the ice encasing him.

  "You have been very discreet, Mr. Childe, in not tell-

  ing the police. Or, as far as we know, anybody. But we

  want to ensure your silence, Mr. Childe. We could easily

  do that by methods you well know by now. But it pleases

  us to have you know about us and yet be able to do

  nothing."

  Childe shouted, "What did you do with Sybil?"

  There was a silence. And then the voice, "Sybil?

  Who's she?"

  "My wife! My ex-wife, I mean! You know, damn

  you! What have you done with her, you filthy monster,

  unnatural … !"

  "Nothing, I assure you, Mr. Childe."

  The voice was cool and mocking.

  "We rather admire you, Mr. Childe, because of what

  you accomplished. Congratulations. You managed to

  kill, permanently, a number of our friends who have

  survived for a very long time indeed, Mr. Childe. You

  could not have done it without the help of del Osorojo, of

  course, but that was something we did not foresee. The

  baron did not anticipate it, and for his carelessness, or

  ignorance, he paid, and those with him. Some of them,

  anyway."

  This was his last chance to find out anything about

  them.

  He said, "Why the films? Why were they sent in to

  the police?"

  "The films are made for our private use, for our en-

  tertainment, Mister Childe. We send them to each other

  all over the world. Via private couriers, of course. The

  baron decided to break a precedent and to let the others

  in on some of them. Because we would enjoy the furor

  and the shaking up of the police. The shaking up of all

  humans, in fact. The baron and his group were going

  to move out soon, anyway, so there was no chance of our

  being connected with the films.

  "The baron planned on mailing the films of earlier

  subjects, working backward chronologically, to the police.

  Most of the subjects had been listed as missing persons,

  you know, and the earliest had been dropped by the

  police because the cases were so old. You found their

  skins. And lost them.

  "You were lucky or smart. You used an unorthodox

  method of investigation and stumbled across the truth.

  The baron couldn't let you go then because you knew

  too much, so he decided you would become the latest

  subject. Now, the baron won't have to leave this area

  to get away from the smog ..."

  "I saw the old woman, the baroness, trying to conjure

  up smog!" Childe said. "What ..."

  "She was trying to get rid of it, you fool! This used

  to be a nice place to live in but you humans … !"

  Childe could feel the fury making the man inarticulate.

  However, when the voice returned, it was again cool and

  mocking.

  "I suggest you look in your bedroom. And remember

  to keep silent, Mister Childe. Otherwise …"

  The phone must have been moving down to the rest.

  But, before the click, he heard bells tolling and an organ

  playing the first bar of Gloomy Sunday. He could ima-

  gine the rest of the music and the Inner Sanctum rusty-

  hinge screeching.

  He stood for a while with the phone in his hand.

  Woolston Heepish? That call came from the house of

  Woolston Heepish?

  Nonsense! There must be another explanation. He did

  not even want to think about the implications, if … no,

  forget this.

  He put the phone down, and then remembered with a

  start what the man had advised. He slowly walked into

  the bedroom. The bedside lamp had been turned on

  during his absence.

  She was in bed, staring straight up. A sheet was

  draped over her to just below the naked breasts. Her

  black hair was spread out on the pillow.

  He came closer and murmured. "I didn't think they

  could harm you, Dolores."

  He pulled the sheet back, expecting to find the

  evidences of some horror committed upon her. She was

  unmarked.

  But her body tilted upward, the feet rising first, the

  stiff legs following, and then, as the body began to point

  straight upward, it rose toward the ceiling. The heavy

  hair, and the little red valve on the back of the neck,

  stopped it from floating up all the way.
<
br />   The makeup was very good. It had given her skin a

  solid fleshy appearance and kept him from seeing through

  it.

  Childe had to leave the room for a while and sit

  down.

  When he came back, he stuck a pin in her. She ex-

  ploded with a bang as loud as a pistol's. He cut her up

  into strips with scissors and flushed her down the toilet,

  except for the head hair, which he put into the garbage.

  A century and a half of haunting, a brief fleshing, a

  few short and wild copulations, a few killings of ancient

  enemies, and here she was. Rather, there she went. One

  dark eye, long eyelashes, a thick black eyebrow whirled

  around and around and then were sucked down.

  At least, he had not found Sybil's skin in his bed.

  Where was she? He might never find out. He did not

  think those "people" knew. The "man" had sounded

  genuinely puzzled.

  It was not necessary to postulate those "people" to ac-

  count for her disappearance. Human beings had enough

  monsters of their own.

  21

  It seemed that the rain would never stop.

  On the evening of the sixth day, in a city like the

  planet of Venus in a 1932 science-fiction story, Herald

  Childe followed Vivienne Mabcrough.

  A few minutes before, he had stopped behind a big

  black Rolls-Royce, waiting for a light change at the

  intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Canon

  Drive in Beverly Hills. The Rolls was equipped with

  rear window wipers, and these enabled Childe to see

  Vivienne Mabcrough. She was in the back seat with a

  man and turned her head just as the light changed to

  green.

  For several seconds, while horns blared behind

  him, he had an impulse to let her go. If he trailed her,

  he might find himself the object of attention from her

  and her kind. That was something no sane man and very

  few insane would wish.

  Despite this, he moved the 1972 Pontiac across the

  street after the Rolls, cutting off a Jaguar which had

  swung illegally to his left to pass him. The Jaguar's

  horn blared, and the driver mouthed curses behind his

  glass and plastic enclosure. A spray of water covered

  Childe's car, and then the wipers removed it. He

  could see the Rolls turn west on Little Santa Monica,

  going through a yellow light. He stopped for the red

  and, seeing no police car in any direction—though he

  could not see far because of the gray curtains of water

  —he went left on the red light. He saw the taillights of

  the Rolls turn right and followed. The Rolls was stopped

  before the Moonlark Restaurant, and Vivienne and her

  escort were getting out. They only had to take one step

  to be under the canopy and a doorman assisted them.

  The Rolls drove off then, and Childe decided to follow

  it. The driver was a uniformed chauffeur and possibly he

  would take the car back to Vivienne's residence. Of

  course, the car could be her partner's, but that did not

  matter. Childe wanted to know where he lived, too.

  Although he was no longer a private detective,

  Childe had kept his recording equipment in the car. He

  described the car and the license plate number into the

  microphone while he tracked it back across Santa

  Monica and then north of Sunset Boulevard. The

  car swung onto Lexington, and in two blocks drove

  onto the circular driveway before a huge Georgian man-

  sion. The chauffeur got out and went down the walk

  along the side of the house to the rear. Childe drove

  half a block and then got out and walked back. The

  rain and the dusky light made it impossible for him

  to see any house addresses from the street. He had to go

  up the driveway, hoping that no one would look out. The

  house was lit within, but he could see no sign of life.

  He returned to the car, which he entered on the right

  side because he did not wish to wet his shoes and legs.

  The dirty gray-brown water had filled the street from

  curb to curb and was running over onto the strips of

  grass between street and sidewalk.

  In the car, he recorded the address. But instead of

  driving off, he sat a long time and considered what he

  should do next.

  They had not bothered him since that night in Baron

  Igescu's house, so why should he bother them?

  They were murderers, torturers, abductors. He knew

  this with the certainty of personal experience. Yet he

  could not prove what he knew. And if he told exactly

  what had happened, he would be committed to a

  mental institution. Moreover, he could not blame the

  authorities for putting him away.

  There were times when he could not believe his own

  vivid memories. Even the most piercing, of when he

  had flushed the complete skin of Dolores del Osorojo,

  eyes and all, down the toilet, was beginning to seem un-

  believable.

  The mind accepted certain forms and categories, and

  his experiences in that enormous old house in north-

  ern Beverly Hills were outside the accepted. And so it

  had been natural that his mind should be trying to bury

  these forms and categories. Shove them down, choke

  them off in the dusty dusky cellar of the unconscious.

  He could just go home to his place in Topanga Canyon

  and forget all about this, or try to.

  He groaned. He was hooked and couldn't fight loose.

  If he had not seen Vivienne, he might have continued to

  ignore his desires to take up the trail once more. But

  the sight of her had gotten him as eager as an old blood-

  hound that whiffs fox on the wind from the hills.

  He drove away and did not stop until he pulled into a

  Santa Monica service station. There was a public phone

  booth here, which he used to call the Los Angeles Po-

  lice Department. His friend, Sergeant Furr, finally an-

  swered. Childe asked him to check out the license

  number of the Rolls. Furr said he would call him back

  within a few minutes. Three minutes later, the phone

  in the booth rang.

  "Hal? I got it for you. The Rolls belongs to a Mrs.

  Vivienne—V-I-V-I-E-N-N-E—Mabcrough. I don't know

  how you pronounce that last name. M-A-B-C-R-O-U-G-H.

  Mabcrow, Mabcruff?"

  "Mabcrow," Childe said.

  The address was that of the house where the Rolls

  was parked.

  Childe thanked Furr and hung up. Vivienne was con-

  fident that he would not bother her anymore. She had

  not changed her name. Evidently she believed that he

  had had such a scare thrown into him, he would under

  no circumstances come near her or her kind—whatever

  that was.

  He trudged through the rain and got into the car

  and drove slowly and carefully back to the house in

  which Vivienne Mabcrough lived. It was nightfall now,

  and the streets of Beverly Hills in the downtown dis-

  trict were little rivers, curb to curb and overflowing.

  Although this wa
s a Thursday night, there were very

  few pedestrians out. The usual bumper-to-bumper traf-

  fic was missing. Not half a dozen cars were in sight

  within the distance of three blocks in any direction.

  Santa Monica Boulevard traffic was heavier, because

  it served as a main avenue for those on their way to

  Westwood or West Los Angeles or Santa Monica on

  one side of the street, and on their way to Los Angeles,

  or parts of Beverly Hills, on the other.

  The headlights looked like the eyes of diluvian mon-

  sters burning with a fever to get on the Ark. A car had

  stalled as it was halfway through making a left turn

  from Santa Monica onto Beverly Drive, and the mon-

  sters were blaring or hooting at it. Childe nudged his

  car through the intersection, taking two changes of light

  to do so because cars in the lanes at right angles insisted

  on coming through instead of waiting so that the inter-

  section could be cleared.

  When he got through, he proceeded up Beverly Drive

  at about twenty miles an hour but slowed to fifteen after

  several blocks. The water was so high that he was afraid

  of drowning out his motor, and his brakes were

  getting wet. He kept applying a little pressure intermit-

  tently to the pedal in order to keep the brakes dry, but

  he did not think he was having much success. Four cars

  went by him, passing from behind or going the other

  way, and these traveled so fast they threw water all

  over his car. He wanted to stick his head out of the win-

  dow and curse at them for their stupidity and general

  swinishness, but he did not care to be drenched by the

  next car.

  He parked half a block down from the Mabcrough

  residence. Hours passed. He was impatient at first, and

  then the habits of years of sitting and waiting while he

  was a private eye locked into his nervous system. He

  pissed a couple of times into a device much like air-

  plane pilots use. He munched on some crackers and a

  stick of beef jerky and drank coffee from a canteen.

  Midnight came, and his patience was beginning to thin

  out against the grindstone of time.

  Then the chauffeur came out from behind the house,

  got into the Rolls, and drove off. Childe could see the

  dark figure, outlined by the lights from within the house.