Image of the Beast

by Philip José Farmer

  "Never heard of him," Childe said, wondering if he would have fallen into a trap if he had professed familiarity. "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 ecroules. 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 Doorn; and the other five are in state libraries at Moscow, Paris, Washington, 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 unexplainable, 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 invitation. 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 appointments, act as middle man between him and his business 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 structure 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 unselfconsciously 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 was 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 summerhouse. 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, possibly, 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-making with Sybil, and he did not intend to suffer again.

  Inside the house, he looked around. There could be no cameras hidden here. If there were any, they'd have to be attached to the trees on the edge of the clearing, and he could not see how they would be able to film much, even if they were equipped with black-light devices. The vines and their supports would bar anything except patches of skin and an occasional glimpse of a head or limb. Besides, what did he have to lose? Blackmail could not be the object of such a game.

  Magda yanked off the blanket acting as a dust cover for the sofa. She turned then, the moonlight falling through the vines dappling her pale skin. Childe took her in his arms and kissed her again, r
an his hands down her back--she had the muscle tone of a young puma--the inward fall of the waist and the outward fall of the hips. The garter belt annoyed him, so he sank to his knees and unfastened the stockings and pulled them down and then pulled down on the garter belt. She kicked them to one side and put her hands on the back of his head and pulled him towards her cunt. He allowed her to press his face against the hairs, and he ran his tongue out and inserted it just below the opening of the lips and tickled the clitoris with its tip. She moaned and clutched him tighter.

  But he stood up, sliding his tongue up from her cunt and along her belly and up to her nipple, which he began to suck again. He stepped backwards until she fell on the sofa, her legs sticking out, her heels resting on the floor. Then he got down on his knees again and licked her clitoris once more and then slid down and thrust his tongue again and again into her vagina. She began to twist her hips a little, but he reached up and pressed down on her belly to indicate that she should hold still.

  Her cunt tasted as sweet as Sybil's and the hairs seemed to be softer. He put one finger inside her cunt and another finger of the same hand up her anus and then, working the hand slowly in and out, rubbed his tongue back and forth over her clitoris and then later tongue-fucked her while his fingers increased the speed of their in-and-outs into her cunt and anus.

  She came with a scream and a sudden tightening of thighs about his head. The grip was so strong that he could not move his fingers.

  He could stand it no longer. He had had no emissions for two weeks because of involvement in a case which he had wound up just before Colben disappeared. He had been busy night and day and when he managed to snatch some sleep even his unconscious had been too tired to whip up a sexual dream. Then the frustration with Sybil had made him hypersensitive. In a minute, he was going to come, whether he was in Magda or the air.

  "I can't wait," he said. "It's been too long."

  He started to get down beside her and to help her scoot up on the sofa so she could lie full length. But she said, "You're ready to come?"

  "It's been too long. I'm full to bursting," he groaned.

  She pushed him down and ran her tongue along his belly and wet his pubic hairs with her saliva and tongue and then closed her lips upon the head of his cock. She slid it back and forth in her lips twice, and with a scream that matched hers of a moment ago, he burst in her mouth.

  He lay there, feeling as if a tide inside him were withdrawing to some far-off horizon. He did not say anything; he expected her to get up and spit out the stuff, as Sybil always did. Sybil also always immediately brushed her teeth and gargled with Listerine. Not that he blamed her, certainly. He could understand that, once the excitement was gone, the thick ropy stuff could become disgusting. He knew how it tasted. When he had been fourteen, he and his fifteen year old brother had gone through a period of about six months when they had sucked each other off. And then, by mutual and silent consent, they had quit and that had been the last of his homosexual experiences and, as far-as he knew, of his brother's. Certainly, his brother, who was such a cocksman that he must be a compulsive, hated fairies, and once, many years later, when Childe had referred to their experimentations, his brother had not known what he was talking about. He was either too ashamed of it now to admit it or else had actually buried it so deep that he did not remember.

  But Magda did not leave him. She audibly swallowed several times and then renewed her sucking. He sat up and bent over so he could cup her breasts in his hands while she was mouthing his glands. And then, just as his penis was at almost full erection, he thought of Colben and the iron teeth. This woman could be the actress in that movie.

  She looked up at him suddenly and said, "What's wrong?"

  "Listen," he said, "and don't get mad. Or laugh. But do you have false teeth?"

  She sat up and said, "What?" Her voice was thick with fluid.

  "Do you have false teeth?"

  "Why do you want to know?" Then she laughed and said, "You want me to take them out?"

  "If you have false teeth."

  "Do I look that old?"

  "I've known several nineteen-year-olds who had false choppers," he said.

  "Kiss me and I'll tell you," she said.

  "Certainly."

  He held her tightly while he probed her mouth with his tongue. He sniffed in the wild-beast odor of his own semen and tasted the thick-oil gluey-seeming product of his own body. Far from being unpleasant, it excited him. She had her hand on his cock, and, feeling it swell, immediately withdrew from his arms and went down on him again. Evidently, she did not intend for him to find out if she did have false teeth or perhaps she thought that his tongue would have determined that.

  Whatever her reasons, she would not tell him, unless he were to use force, he was sure of that. He leaned back and let her work on him. And after a while he rolled her over and she opened her legs and took his penis gently in her fingers and guided him in. He had no sooner sunk in to the hairs than she squeezed down on his cock with her muscles and continued to squeeze as if she had a hand inside her cunt. And then, once again, thinking of the film, he became soft. He remembered that bulge behind the G-string of the woman in the film.

  "For God's sake," she said. "What's the matter now?"

  "I thought I saw somebody in the shadows," he said, the only excuse he could grasp at the moment. "Glam?"

  "It had better not be," she said. "I'll kill him if it is. So will the baron."

  She stood up on the sofa and called, "Glam? Glam? If you're there, you asshole, you better start running and fast. Otherwise, it's the other end of the wolf for you."

  There was no answer. Childe said, "The other end of the wolf? What do you mean?"

  "I'll tell you later," she said. "He's not out there; if he is, he isn't going to bother us. Come on, please. I'm ready to explode."

  Instead of reaching for him, she got down off the sofa and crossed the summerhouse to a small cabinet on a stand in the shadows. She came back with a bottle with a squat body and a long narrow neck with a wide mouth. It was half-full. She drank some, swished some in her mouth, and still, holding it, pressed her lips against his and squirted the liquid into his mouth. It was hot and thick and slightly tart. He swallowed some and immediately felt his anxieties draining off.

  "What the hell is that?"

  "It's a liqueur made in Igescu's native province," she said. "It's supposed to have an aphrodisiac effect. I understand that there isn't any true aphrodisiac, but this stuff does one thing. It burns away the inhibitions. Not that I thought I'd ever have to use it on you."

  "I won't need any more of it," he said. His penis was rising as if it were a balloon being filled for a transatlantic voyage. A beam of moonlight fell on it, and Magda, seeing it, squealed with delight.

  "Oh, you beauty! You great big beauty!"

  She lay down and raised her legs and he entered again and then, for a long long time, said nothing. It was a peculiarity of his that if he were blown at the beginning, he took a long time coming the second time. Magda seemed to have an almost unbroken series of orgasms during this time and when he finally came she clawed his back until the blood ran off. He did not mind at the time, but later he cursed her. It was a theory of his that women who clawed your back when they came were actually attempting to prove how passionate they were, but he was willing to admit that he could be wrong.

  They lay there for some time by each other, not saying a word. They were sheathed in sweat and would have been grateful for a breeze. But the air was as still as before.

  Finally, he said, "There's no use your playing with it. Not for some time. I'm shot out. I could stay and be all right within an hour, but I have to go pretty soon."

  He was thinking that he was supposed to have called Mustanoja by now.

  "I'm not unsatisfied, baby," she said, "but I could be whipped up into enthusiasm again and I'd like to be. You don't know how long it's been for me!"

  She reached for the bottle, which was on
the floor by the sofa.

  "Let's have another drink and see what happens."

  He watched her to make sure that she drank again out of the bottle before he drank. He took a small swallow and then said, "What's this about Glam and the other end of the wolf?"

  She laughed and said, "That big ugly dumbshit! He wants me, but I can't stand him, and he'd probably try to rape me, he's such a moron, but he knows that if I didn't kill him, Igescu would! You must know about the wolves, since you mentioned them. I was walking in the woods one evening when I heard one of the wolves howling and snarling. It sounded as if it were in pain, or, at least, in trouble of some kind. I went up a hill and looked down in a hollow, and there was the female wolf, her head in four nooses, and the ends of the nooses tied to trees. She couldn't go back or forward, and there was Glam, all his clothes off except for his socks and shoes, holding the wolf by the tail and fucking her. I think he must have been hurting her, I don't know how big a female wolf's cunt is, but I don't think they're built to take an enormous cock like Glam's. I really think she was hurting. But Glam, that animal Glam, was fucking her."

  Childe was silent for a moment and then he said, "What about the male wolf? Wasn't Glam afraid of the male wolf?"

  She laughed and said, "Oh, that's another story," and she laughed for a long time.

  When she stopped, she raised the bottle and poured liquid on her nipples and then on her pubic hairs.

  "Lick it off, baby, and then we'll make love again."

  "It won't do any good," Childe said. But he rolled over and sucked on her nipples for a while and finger-fucked her until she came again and again and then he kissed her belly, traveling downward until his mouth was against the tight hairs of her cunt. He tongued off the liqueur and then jabbed his tongue as far as he could until his jaws and tongue hurt. When he stopped, he was rolled over by her strong hands and she gently nibbled at his penis until it rose like a trout to a fly. He mounted her from behind, and she told him to be quiet, he did not have to wear himself out. She contracted the muscles of her vagina as if it were a hand and this time he kept his erection. He seemed to be getting a little dizzy and a little fuzzy. He knew that he had made a mistake drinking that liquid; it couldn't be poison, because she wouldn't have drunk it also. But he wondered if it had a property of becoming narcotic if it were on epidermis. Could its interaction with the skin of her nipples and cunt have produced something dangerous only to him?