Image of the Beast and Blown (16 page)

enough trouble getting the operator, who told him he
would have to wait for a long time. She had been ordered
to put through only emergency calls. He told her it
was
an emergency, his wife had disappeared and he wanted
to find out if she had gone to San Francisco. The operator
said that he would still have to wait, no telling how
long.

He hung up. He walked back to his apartment and
re-checked the automatic recorder with the same nega-
tive results. For a while he watched the news, most of
which was a repetition or very slight up-dating of accounts
of the smog and the emigration. It was too depressing,
and he could not get interested in the only non-news
program, Shirley Temple in
Little Miss Marker.
He tried
to read, but his mind kept jumping back and forth from
Budler to his wife.

It was maddening not to be able to act. He almost
decided to buck the traffic, because he might as well be
doing something and, moreover, once off the main roads,
he might be able to travel speedily. He looked out at the
street, packed with cars going one way, horns blaring,
drivers cursing out their windows or sitting stoic, tight-
lipped, hands gripping the wheels. He would not be able
to get his car out of the driveway.

At seven, the traffic suddenly became normal, as if a
plug had been pulled some place and the extra vehicles
gulped down it. He went into the basement, drove the
car out, and got into the street without any trouble. A
few cars drove down the wrong side, but these quickly
pulled over into the right lane. He got to Igescu's before
dusk; he had had to stop to change a flat tire. The roads
were littered with many objects, and one of these, a nail,
had driven into his left rear tire. Also, he was stopped
by the police. They were looking for a service station
robber driving a car of his make and color. He satisfied
them that he was not a criminal, not the one they were
looking for, anyway, and continued on. The fact that
they could concern themselves with a mere holdup at
this time showed that the traffic had eased up consider-
ably, in this area, at least.

At the end of the road outside Igescu's, he turned the
car around and backed it into the bushes. He got out and,
after removing the gas mask, raised the trunk and took

out the bundle he had prepared. It took him some time to
carry the cumbersome load through the thick woods and
up the hill to the wall. Here he unfolded the aluminum
ladder, locked the joints, and, with the pack on his back,
climbed up until his head was above the wire. He did
not intend to find out if the wire was electrified. To do so
might set off an alarm. He pulled up the long rubberized
flexibile tunnel, a child's plaything, by the rope tied
around its end.

He hoisted it until half its length was over the wire
and then began the unavoidably clumsy and slow ma-
neuver of crawling, not into it but over it. His weight
pressed it down so that he had a double thickness be-
tween him and the sharp points of the wire. He was
able to turn, straddling the wire, and pull the ladder
slowly up after him with the rope, which he had taken
from the tunnel and tied to the ladder. He was very
careful not to touch the wire with the ladder.

He lifted it up and turned it and deposited its end
upon the ground on the inside of the wall. Once his
feet were on the rungs, he lifted up the tunnel and
dropped it on the ground and then climbed down. He
repeated this procedure at the inner wall up to the point
where he reached the top of the wall. Instead of climbing
on over, he took two large steaks from his backpack
and threw them as far as he could. Both landed upon
leaves near the foot of a large oak. Then he pulled the
tunnel back and retreated down the ladder. He sat with
his back against the wall and waited. If he did not
succeed with this step within two hours, he would go on
in, anyway.

The darkness settled, but it did not seem to get any
cooler. There was no air moving, no sound of bird or in-
sect. The moon rose. A few minutes later, a howling
jerked him to his feet. His scalp moved as if rubbed
by a cold hand. The howling, distant at first, came closer.
Soon there was a snuffling and then a growling and
gobbling. Childe waited and checked his Smith & Wesson
Terrier .32 revolver again. After five minutes by his
wristwatch, he climbed over the wall, pulling the tunnel
and ladder after him as he had done at the first wall. He
laid them on the ground behind a tree in case anybody
should be patrolling the wall. Gun in hand, he set out

to look for the wolves. The bones of the steaks had been
cracked and partially swallowed; the rest was gone.

He did not find the wolves. Or he was not sure that
what he did find were the wolves.

He stepped into a clearing and then sucked in his
breath.

Two bodies lay in the moonlight. They were uncon-
scious, which state he had expected from the eating of
drugged meat. But these were not the hairy, four-legged,
long-muzzled bodies he had thought to see. These were
the nude bodies of the young couple who had played
billiards in the Igescu house. Vasili Chornkin and Mrs.
Krautschner slept on the grass under the moon. The boy
was on his face, his legs under him and his hands by his
face. The girl was on her side, her legs drawn up and
her arms folded beside her head. She had a beautiful
body. It reminded him of one of the girls he had seen in
the films and especially of the girl Budler had been fuck-
ing dog style.

He had to sit down for a while. He felt shaky. He did
not think that this was possible or impossible. It just
was,
and the
was
threatened him. It threatened his belief
in the order of the universe, which meant that it threatened
him.

After a while he was able to act. He used tape from his
backpack to secure their hands behind them and their
ankles together. Then he taped their mouths tightly and
placed them on their sides, facing each other and as close
together as possible and taped them together around the
necks and the ankles. He was sweating by the time he
had finished. He left them in the glade and hoped that they
would be very happy together. (That he could think this
showed him that he was recovering swiftly.) They should
be happy if they knew that he had planned to cut the
throats of the wolves.

He headed toward where the house should be and
within five minutes saw its bulk on top of the hill and
some rectangles of light. Approaching it on the left, he
stopped suddenly and almost fired his revolver, he was
so upset by the abrupt appearance of the figure. It flitted
from moonlight into shadow and back into shadow and
was gone. It looked as if it were a woman wearing an
ankle-length dress with a bare back.

For the third time that night, he felt a chill. It must
have been Dolores. Or a woman playing the ghost. And
why should a fraud be out here when there was no need
to play the fraud? They did not know that he was here.
At least, he hoped not.

It was possible that the baron wanted to shock another
guest tonight and so was using this woman.

The driveway had five cars besides the Rolls-Royce
Silver Cloud. There were two Cadillacs, a Lincoln, a
Cord, and a 1929 Duesenberg. Neither wing showed a
light, but the central part was well-lit.

Childe looked for Glam, did not see him, and went
around the side. There was a vine-covered trellis which
afforded easy access to the second story balcony. The
window was closed but not locked. The room was dark
and hot and musty. He groped along the wall until he
found a door and slowly swung it out. It was a closet door
in which hung dark musty clothes. He closed the door and
felt along it until he discovered another door. This led to
a hallway which was dimly lit by moonlight through a
window. He used his pencil-thin flashlight now and then
to guide himself. He passed by a stairway leading to the
story below and the story above and pushed open a door
to another hallway. This had no illumination at all; he
fingered his way to the other end with his flashlight.

Sometimes he stopped to put his ear against a doorway.
He had thought he had heard the murmurs of voices be-
hind them. Intent listening convinced him that nobody was
there, that his imagination was tricking him.

At the end of this hallway, twice as long as the first, he
found a locked door. A series of keys left the lock un-
turned. He used his pick and, after several minutes' work,
during which the sweat ran down his eyes and his ribs
and he had to stop several times because he thought he
heard footsteps and, once, a breathing, he solved the puz-
zle of the tumblers.

The door opened to a shaft of light and a puff of cold
air.

As he stepped through into the hallway, he caught a
flash of something on his left at the far end. It had moved
too swiftly for him to identify it, but he thought that it was
the tail end of Dolores' skirt. He ran down the hallway as
quietly as he could with his sneakers on the marble tile

floor (this was done in much-marbled and ornate-
woodworked Victorian style even if it was in the Spanish
part). At the corner, he halted and stuck his head around.

The woman at the extreme end was facing him. By the
light of a floor lamp near her, he could see that she was
tall and black-haired and beautiful—the woman in the
portrait above the mantel in the drawing room.

She beckoned to him and turned and disappeared
around the corner.

He felt a little disoriented, not so much as if he were
being disconnected from a part of himself inside himself
but as if the walls around him were being subtly warped.

Just as he rounded the corner, he saw her skirt going
into a doorway. This led to a room halfway down the hall.
The only light was .that from the lamp on a stand in the
hallway. He groped around until he felt the light switch.
The response was the illumination of a small lamp at the
other end on a stand by a huge bed with a canopy. He did
not know much about furniture, but it looked like a bed
from one of the Louis series, Louis Quatorze, perhaps.
The rest of the expensive-looking furniture seemed to go
with the bed. A large crystal chandelier hung from the
center of the ceiling.

The wall was White paneling, and one of the panels was
just swinging shut.

Childe thought it was swinging shut. He had blinked,
and then the wall seemed solid.

There was no other way for the woman to have gone.

Do ghosts have to open doors, or panels, to go from
one room to another?

Perhaps they did, if they existed. However, he had seen
nothing to indicate that Dolores—or whoever the woman
was—must be a ghost.

If she were a hoax set up by Baron Igescu for the bene-
fit of others, and particularly for Childe, she was leading
him on for a reason that he could only believe was sinis-
ter. The panel led to a passage between the walls, and
Igescu must want him to go through a panel.

The newspaper article had said that the original house
had contained between-walls passages and underground
passages, and several secret tunnels which led to exits in
the woods. Don del Osorojo had built these because he
feared attacks from bandits, wild Indians, revolting peas-

ants, and, possibly, government troops. The Don, it
seemed, was having trouble with tax-collectors; the gov-
ernment claimed that he was hiding gold and silver.

When the first Baron Igescu, the present owner's uncle,
had added the wings, he had also built secret passageways
which connected to those in the central house. Not so
secret, actually, since the workers had talked about them,
but no drawings or blueprints of the house's construction
existed, as far as anybody knew. And most of the workers
would now be dead or so old they could not remember the
layout, even if any of them could be found.

The panel had been opened long enough for him to
know that it was an entrance. Perhaps the baron wanted
him to know it; perhaps Dolores, the ghost. In any event,
he meant to go through it.

Finding the actuator of the entrance was another matter.
He pressed the wood around the panel, tried to move
strips around it, knocked at various places on the panel
(it sounded hollow), and examined the wood closely for
holes. He found nothing out-of-the-way.

Straightening up, he half-turned in an angry movement
and then turned back again, as if he would catch some-
thing—or somebody—doing something behind his back.
There was nothing behind him that had not been there
before. But he did glimpse himself in the huge floor-to-
ceiling mirror that constituted half of the wall across the
room.

13

The mirror certainly was not reflecting as a mirror should.
Nor was it reflecting grossly or exaggeratedly, like a funny-
house mirror. The distortions—if they could be called dis-
tortions—were subtle. And as evasive as drops of mer-
cury.

There were slight shirtings of everything reflected, of
the wall behind him, the painting on the wall to one side
of him, the canopied bed, and himself. It was as if he
were looking at an underwater room through a window,
with himself deep in the water and the mirror a window,
or porthole, to a room in a subaquatic palace. The objects
in the room, and he seemed to be as much an object as
the bed or a chair, swayed a little. As if currents of cold
water succeeded by warmer water compressed or ex-
panded the water and so changed the intensity and the
refraction of lighting.

There was more to the shifting than that, however. At
one place, the room and everything in it, including him-
self, seemed almost—not quite—normal. As they should
be or as it seemed that they should be. Seemed, he
thought, because it struck him that things as they are
were not necessarily things as they should be, that custom
had made strangeness, or outrageousness (a peculiar
word, what made him think of that?), comfortable.

Then the "normality" disappeared as the objects twisted
or swayed, he was not sure which they did, and the room,
and he, became "evil."

He did not look "weak" nor "petty" nor "sneaky" nor
"selfish" nor "indifferent," all of which he felt himself to
be at various times. He looked "evil." Malignant, destroy-
ing, utterly loveless.

He walked slowly toward the mirror. His image, waver-
ing, advanced. It smiled, and he suddenly realized that he
was smiling. That smile was not utterly loveless; it was a
smile of pure love. Love of hatred and of corruption and
of all living things.

He could almost smell the stink of hate and of death.

Then he thought that the smile was not of love but