Image of the Beast and Blown (20 page)

that it was possible that some aliens kept shuttling back
and forth between this world and the native world and
were actually ghosts in both worlds."

"Do you really expect me to believe that?" Childe said.

The baron puffed again and looked at the smoke as if
it were a suddenly realized phantom. He said, "No. Be-
cause I don't believe the ghost theory myself. Not as Le
Garrault expounded it."

"What do you believe then?"

"I really don't know," the baron said, shrugging.
"Ghosts don't come from any universe I am familiar with.
Their origin, their
modus operandi,
are mysterious. They
exist. They can be dangerous."

Childe laughed and said, "You mean that vampires
and werewolves, or whatever the hell they are, fear
spooks?"

The baron shrugged again and said, "Some fear them."

Childe wanted to ask more questions but decided not to
do so. He did not want the baron to know that he had
found the room with the cameras and the Y-shaped table.
It was possible that the baron intended to let him go, be-
cause he could dispose of the incriminating evidence be-
fore Childe could get the police here. For this reason,
Childe did not ask him why Colben and Budler had hap-
pened to be his victims. Besides, it seemed obvious that
Budler had been picked up by one of this group as a vic-
tim of their "fun." Magda or Vivienne or Mrs. Kraut-
schner, probably, had been the woman Colben had seen
with Budler. And Colben, following Budler and the
woman, had been detected and taken prisoner.

The baron rose and said, "We might as well rejoin the
others. From the sounds, I'd say the party is far from
dead."

Childe stood up and glanced at the open doorway,
through which laughter and shrieks and hand-clapping
spurted.

He jumped, and his heart lurched. Dolores del Osorojo
was walking by the doorway. She turned her head and
smiled at him and then was gone.

15

If the baron had seen her, he gave no sign. He bowed
slightly and gestured Childe to precede him. They went
down the hall—no Dolores there—and were back in the
dining room. O'Faithair was playing wildly on the grand
piano. Childe did not recognize the music. The others
were sitting at the table or on sofas or standing by the
piano. Glam and the two women had cleared off the table
and were carrying off the dishes from the sideboards. Mrs.
Grasatchow was now drinking from a bottle of cham-
pagne. Magda Holyani was sitting on an iron skeletal
chair, her formal floor length skirt pulled up around her
waist to expose her perfect legs to the garter belt. Dark-red
hair stuck out from under the garter belt. A half-smoked
marijuana cigarette was on the ashtray on the table by her
side.

She was looking through an old-time stereoscope at a
photograph. Childe pulled her skirt down because the
sight of her pubic hairs bothered him, and he said, "That's
a curious amusement for you. Or is the picture … ?"

She looked up, smiling, and said, "Here. Take a look
yourself."

He placed the stereopticon against his eyes and ad-
justed the slide holding the picture until the details became
clear and in three-dimensions. The photograph was inno-
cent enough. It showed three men on a sail boat with a
mountain in the distant foreground. The photograph
had been taken close enough so that the features of the
men could be distinguished.

"One of them looks like me," he said.

"That's why I got this album out," she said. She
paused, drew in deeply on the marijuana, held the smoke
in her lungs for a long time, and then puffed out. "That's
Byron. The others are Shelley and Leigh Hunt."

"Oh, really," Childe said, still looking at the picture.
"But I thought ... I know it … the camera wasn't
invented yet."

"That's true," Magda said. "That's not a photograph."
He did not get a chance to ask her to explain, because

two enormous white arms went around him from behind
and lifted him off his feet. Mrs. Grasatchow, shrieking
with laughter, carried him to a sofa and dropped him on
it. He started to get up. He was angry enough to hit her,
and had his fist cocked, when she shoved him back down.
She was not only very heavy; she had powerful muscles
under the fat.

"Stay there, I want to talk to you and also do other
things!" she said.

He shrugged. She sat down by him, and the sofa sank
under her. She held his hand and leaned against him and
continued the near-monologue she had been maintaining
at the table. She told him of the men who had lusted
after her and what she'd done to them. Childe was begin-
ning to feel a little peculiar then. Things were not quite
focused. He realized that he must be drugged.

A moment later, he was sure of it. He had seen the
baron walk to the doorway and looked away for a second.
When he looked back, he saw that the baron was gone. A
bat was flying off down the hallway.

The change had taken place so quickly that it was as if
several frames of film had been spliced in.

Or was it a change? There was nothing to have kept the
baron from slipping off around the corner and releasing a
bat. Or it was possible that there was, objectively, no bat,
that he was seeing it because he had been drugged and
because of the suggestions that Igescu was a vampire.

Childe decided to say nothing about it. Nobody else
seemed to have noticed it. They were not in shape to
have noticed anything except what they were concentrat-
ing upon. O'Faithair was still playing madly. Bending
Grass and Mrs. Pocyotl were facing each other, writhing
and shuffling in a parody of the latest dance. The red-
head beauty, Vivienne Mabcrough, was sitting on an-
other sofa with Rebecca Ngima, the beautiful Negress.
Vivienne was drinking from a goblet in one hand while
the other was slipped into the front of Ngima's dress.
Ngima had her hand under Vivienne's dress. Pao, the
Chinese, was on his back, his legs bent to support
Magda, who was standing on his feet and getting ready
to do a backward flip. She had taken off her shoes and
dress and was clad only in her garter belt, stockings, and
net bra. She steadied herself and then, as Pao shoved up-

wards, soared up and over and landed on her feet. Childe
thought that her unshod feet would have broken with the
impact, but she did not seem to be bothered. She laughed
and ran forward and did a forward flip over Pao and
landed in front of a sofa on which Igescu's great-
grandmother sat. The old woman reached out a claw and
ripped off Magda's bra. Magda laughed and pirouetted
away across the floor.

The baron had sauntered over to behind the baroness
and had leaned over to whisper something to her. She
smiled and cackled shrilly.

And then Magda ended her crazy whirl on Childe's lap.
His head was pressed forward against her breasts. They
smelled of a heady perfume and sweat and something in-
definable.

Mrs. Grasatchow shoved Magda so vigorously that
she fell off Childe's lap and onto the floor. She looked up
dizzily for a moment, her legs widespread to reveal the
red-haired slit.

"He's mine!" Mrs. Grasatchow shrilled. "Mine! You
snake-bitch!"

Magda got to her feet unsteadily. Her eyes uncrossed.
She opened her mouth and her tongue flickered in and out
and she hissed.

"Stay away!" Mrs. Grasatchow said in a deeper voice.
Had she really grunted?

Glam entered the room. He scowled at Magda. Evi-
dently he did not like to see her in the almost-nude and
making a play for Childe. But the baron froze him with a
glare and motioned for him to leave the room.

"Stay away, huh?" Magda said. "You have no author-
ity over me, pig-woman, nor am I afraid of you!"

"Pigs eat snakes," Mrs. Grasatchow replied. She
grunted—yes, she grunted this time—and put one flesh-
festooned arm over his shoulders and began to unzip his
fly with the other hand.

"You've eaten everything and everybody else, but you
haven't, and you aren't going to, eat this snake," Magda
said, spraying saliva.

Childe looked around and said, "Where are the cam-
eras?"

"Everything's impromptu tonight," Mrs. Grasatchow
said. "Oh, you look so much like George."

Childe presumed that she meant George Gordon, Lord
Byron, but he could not be sure and he did not care to
play her game, anyway.

He pushed her hand away just as she closed two fingers
on his penis, which, to his chagrin, was swelling. He felt
nothing but repulsion for the fat woman, yet a part of
him was responding. Or was it seeing Magda and also
sharing in the general atmosphere of excitement? The
drug, which he was sure he had been given, was basically
responsible, of course.

Magda sat down on his lap again and put her arms
around his neck. Mrs. Grasatchow, snarling, raised her
hand as if to strike Magda, but she let it drop when the
baroness called shrilly across the room. At that moment, a
pair of large doors swung open. Childe, catching the
movement at the corner of his eyes, turned his head. The
baron was standing in the doorway. Behind him was
the
billiard room or
a
billiard room. It looked much like the
first one he had seen. The blond youths, Chornkin and
Krautschner, were playing.

The baron advanced across the room and, when a few
paces behind Childe, said, "The police don't know he's
here."

Childe erupted. He came off the sofa, tossing Magda
away and then leaping over her and running toward the
nearest door. He got to the hallway and was jerked vio-
lently off his feet, swung around, and pressed close to
Glam. The great arms made him powerless to do anything
except kick. And Glam must have been wearing heavy
boots under his pants legs. Certainly he acted as if he did
not feel the kicks. Perhaps he didn't. Childe may have
had little strength.

As if he were a small child, he was led into the room,
Glam holding his hand. The baron said, "Good. Good for
him and good for you. You restrained your impulse to
kill him. Very commendable, Glam."

"My reward?" Glam said.

"You'll get it. A share. As for Magda, if she doesn't
want you, and she says she doesn't, she can continue to
tell you to go to hell. My authority has its limits. Besides,
you aren't really one of us."

"You're lucky I haven't killed you, Glam!" Magda
said.

"You have depraved taste, Glam," Mrs. Grasatchow
said. "You'd fuck a snake if someone held its head,
wouldn't you? I've offered you help ..."

"That's enough of that," Igescu said. "You two can
play dice or a game of billiards for him. But the winner
saves a piece for me, understood?"

"Dice won't take so long," Magda said.

The baron nodded at Glam, who clamped a hand on
Childe's shoulder from behind and steered him out of the
room. Magda called, "See you soon, lover!"

Mrs. Grasatchow said, "In a pig's ass, you will!" and
Magda laughed and said, "He'll be in a pig's ass if you
win!"

"Don't push me too far!" the fat woman shrilled.

Then Childe was being steered down the hall to its end
and around the corner and down two flights of stairs. The
hall here was of large gray blocks of stone. The door be-
fore which they halted was of thick black wood with
iron bosses forming the outline of an archaic and grinning
face. Glam shifted his grip from the shoulder to the neck
and squeezed. Childe thought the blood would be pushed
out of the top of his head. He went to his knees and
leaned his head against the wall while his senses, and the
pain in his neck, returned. Glam unlocked the door,
dragged Childe into the room by one hand, and dropped
the hand when he came to the far wall. He completely un-
dressed the feebly resisting Childe, lifted him up and
snapped a metal collar shut around his neck. Glam picked
up the clothes and went out, locking the door behind him.

There was a single unshaded light in the center of the
ceiling. The floor was covered with straw and a few
blankets. The walls and ceilings were painted a light red.

When his strength came back, Childe found that the
metal collar was attached by a four-foot-long lightweight
chain to an eyebolt sunk into the stone of the wall. He
looked around but could see nothing to indicate that
cameras or eyes were on him. The walls and ceiling
seemed to be unbroken. However, it was possible that
one or more of the stones was actually a one-way win-
dow.

There was a rattle at the door. A key clicked in the
lock. The door swung open. Magda entered. She wore
nothing—unless you could count the key in her hand. She

stood there smiling at him. Suddenly, she whirled. She
said, "Who is that?" and he got a glimpse of her back, of
the egg-shaped hips, as she went swiftly into the hall.

There was a thump and a gasp. Then, silence.

Childe had no idea of what was happening, but he sup-
posed that Glam or Grasatchow had attacked Magda. He
had not thought that they would dare, since the baron
had made it plain exactly how far they might go.

He waited. A sound as of a bare body being dragged
along the stone floor came to him. Then, more silence.
Then, a whispering. This sound was not that of a human
voice but the friction of silk against silk.

He jerked with fright.

Dolores del Osorojo entered the doorway. With a swirl
of skirts, she turned and closed the door. She faced him
then and advanced slowly toward him, her white arms
held out to him. She was not transparent or semiopaque.
She was as solid as young flesh could be. Her black hair
and white face and red lips and white swelling bust were
solid. And sweet.

Childe was too scared to respond to the arms around
him and the breasts and lips pressed close to him. He was
cold, although her breath was hot and the tongue she slid
back and forth over his tongue was hot. Warm saliva
leaked from her mouth over his chin and down his chest.
She was panting.

Childe tried to back away. The wall stopped him. She
pressed against him, and he lacked the will, or the
strength, to try to push her away. He was still trembling.

The woman muttered something in Spanish. He did not
understand the words, but her tone was intended to be
soothing. She backed away and began to undress swiftly.
The dress slid off, and the three petticoats, and then the
knee length underwear and the long black stockings and
corset. Dolores, in the nude, was a magnificent woman.
The breasts were full and the nipples, almost as large as
the ends of his thumbs, pointed upwards slightly. The
pubic hair was thick and black and a line extended from
it upward, like the smoke from a distant fire, to her navel.
The fluid beginning to soak her hair and run down her
leg showed how deeply impatient she was.

Childe, seeing these, felt less afraid. She looked too
much of the protoplasm, too little of the ectoplasm, for