Image of the Beast and Blown (23 page)

Mrs. Grasatchow still lay on her back, arms and legs
outflung, her mouth open, and her eyes open and showing
white, as if hardboiled eggs had been stuffed into the
sockets.

He noticed a large turd spread out on the rug between
him and Mrs. Grasatchow. So, he had been "scared
shitless" sometime during the fight. He had not known
when he spurted out the excrement; it did not matter.
He was sure that he had expelled the turd and not she,
although it was possible that she had when he had
jumped on her face. It was, however, so far from her
that he doubted it.

Gingerly stepping by the turd, he walked to her purse,
which was near the door. In it he found the key to the
door. She had locked the door after looking down the
hallway the last time. He unlocked it and, carrying her
purse, went down the hall toward the room in which he
had originally been imprisoned.

First, though he hated the idea of any delay, he had
to investigate the other rooms along the hall. There was
always the chance of other prisoners there. Perhaps Sybil
was in one. Six doors were closed. Three were unlocked
and contained not much of interest. Three opened to the
key from the fat woman's purse.

The first two were small rooms with padded walls and
floor. The third contained some furniture, modern Dan-
ish, with a color TV set, a well-stocked bar, a pool table,
and cartons of cigarettes and cigars and boxes of
marijuana sticks and bottles with pills of various sizes,
shapes, and colors. It looked as if it might be a rest
room or recreation room. The occupants could relax here

between their working bouts in the other room. There was
also a large bureau with a mirror, which he did not
think was one-way. The top of it was crowded with
cosmetics and held some wigs.

He opened the drawers, hoping to find some clothes he
could wear. Before he could examine one, he was over-
come with another semi-epileptic orgasm and jetted over
the clothes in the top drawer. There was a washroom
which he used to clean his genitals, face and hands,
and his mouth. He drank several glasses of water and
returned to the bureau.

There were some T-shirts and gym shorts. He found
some that were near enough to his size and put them
on. Then it occurred to him that he was going to have
another ejaculation soon and would be very uncomfort-
able. It was either that or stick his cock out. He decided
on the latter, although he felt ridiculous. And he looked
ridiculous in the mirror. A knight with a stubby delicate
lance. Some knight! Some detective! A private dick be-
come public.

There were some socks but no shoes. He put the socks
on and continued his search. If only a weapon were here.
No luck. Too much to hope for, of course. The two
lower drawers were crammed with flat transparent plastic
envelopes containing something unidentifiable. He opened
one and shook out the contents. It fluttered out like a
transparent flag to a length of about six feet. It had
four extensions, a thick mass of hair on one end, and a
circular patch of hair in the middle. Just beside the thick
mass of hair was a small red valve like that on a
child's plastic inflatable swimming pool. He blew it up
and felt weakened by the exertion before he had com-
pleted the job.

After seeing what he had, he was horrified, although
he had suspected what the result would be.

Somehow, Colben's skin had been stripped from his
body and made into a balloon. The apertures: earholes,
mouth, anus, and the mutilated penis, had been sewn
over with flaps of skin. His eyes had been painted blue,
and the mouth was painted with a facsimile of labial
red. The pubic hairs were still attached, and these, to-
gether with the sewed fold between his legs, gave him a
womanish appearance.

Childe did not have time to deflate him. He pushed
him sailing away, and frantically removed the contents
of the other envelopes. One was the head of Budler. He
presumed that the wolf in the film had eaten the rest of
Budler or so mangled it that it could not be used for a
balloon. His head went spinning over and over toward
the corner, where Colben, turned upside down by the
weight of his hair, and the valve on the back of his
neck, stood on his head.

There were a number of women, only four of whom
had the right length or color of hair for Sybil. Despite
this, he inflated all of them. When he had blown up the
last one, he was panting as if he had run a half-mile
through the smog. The effort was only partly responsible.
He had been so certain that the last one would have
Sybil's features.

He sat down and sipped on another glass of water.
There were thirty-eight skins at one end of the room.
Most of them were upside down, but a few had fallen
against the others and leaned one way or another.
The light from a lamp in the corner shone through many
of them so that they seemed a mob of drunken ghosts.
The draft from the air-conditioning moved them back
and forth a little as if they were phantoms of the
drowned.

Thirty-eight. Twenty-five males. Thirteen females. Of
the males, fifteen were Caucasians, seven were Negroes,
three were Mongolians or Indians. Of the females, nine
were Caucasians and four were Negresses.

All were adult. If any had been children, he would
not have been able to endure it. He would have run
screaming down the hall. He thought he was tough, but
he would not have been able to stand the sight of the
inflated skins of children.

As it was, he was angry and sick. More angry than
sick at the moment. What were they planning on doing
with these … these corpse-balloons? Fill them with
hydrogen and send them flying over Los Angeles?

That was probably exactly what they would do. It
would be on a par, no, would surpass, the effrontery of
the films.

He rose and took a bottle of vodka by the neck and
went back to the doorway of the room in which he had

left Mrs. Grasatchow. She was sitting up and vomiting.
Blood was still trickling from her nostrils. On seeing
Childe, she snarled and managed to lift herself to her
feet. Blood and vomit smeared her immense belly.

"You'll beg me to kill you!" she screamed.

"Why will I?" he said. He stepped inside the room.
"Before I kill you, I want you to tell me why you did
that to all those people? And why did you strip off their
skins?"

"I'll rip your balls off!" she shouted. She charged him
then; he braced himself, the bottle lifted high. But she
stepped on the turd and her feet shot up and ahead of
her and she fell heavily on her back. She lay there, groan-
ing but seemingly knocked out. He hit her, once, on the
side of her head with the bottle she had dropped and
then locked the door to the room. The bottle in one hand
and her purse on the other arm, and his penis sticking
out—what a hero I make! he thought—he entered the
room in which he had first been chained.

But he came out of it at once and went into the
recreation room. He needed evidence. The police
wouldn't believe much of his story after he told it, but
they would have to believe that a part of it was true when
he showed them Colben and Budler. And another picked
at random who might turn out to have been reported
missing.

The deflation was as ghastly as he had expected. The
air hissed out, and Budler and the woman shrank
like the witch on whom Dorothy had thrown water. But
Colben—he always was slippery—got away and shot
around the room, butting into several of the phantoms
and knocking them heads over heels. He came to rest
draped over the bar. Childe pulled him off the bar then
as he had pulled him away several times when he was
living. He rolled him up and stuffed him into the purse on
top of Budler's head and the red-headed woman.

The section of wall opened for him after a number of
experiments of running his hand along the juncture of
the blocks which Dolores had pressed. He stepped inside
with a pencil-flashlight taken from the purse. The sec-
tion swung shut behind him, and he began walking
slowly. The passageway was warm and dusty and narrow.
It led past several rooms, each of which had a one-way

mirror but no entrance that he could detect. They were
similar to those lining the other hallway, A stairway con-
fronted him. He walked up this uneasily, although he
did not think that it could be a trap, since he was so
deep in the earth. But he could not be sure. At the top,
he was in a passageway which offered him two routes.
There were prints in the dust, a long pointed shoeprint
which he presumed was the baron's and those of a dog's
or a wolf's. The latest led to his right, so he decided to
follow them. One way was as good as another, and
something had to decide him.

His flashlight showed him several squares in the walls.
When he opened these, he saw through one-way mirrors
into a number of rooms, one of which he thought he
remembered. It was a Louis Quatorze bedroom, but it
did not seem quite like the one he remembered. It did
have an entrance through the paneling. He took it and
after stepping softly around it and looking into the bath-
room, knew this was not the same room. The queer
disturbing mirror was missing. He started to open the
door to look out into the next room or the hallway but
thought better of it. He placed his ear against the wood
and was glad that he had done so. The murmur of voices
came through the wood.

The keyhole let him hear more clearly but not clearly
enough. After turning off all the lights in the room, he
turned the knob carefully and eased the door open. The
voices came from the end of the hall. He could see part-
way down it but not far enough to see the speakers.
The voices were identifiable, except for two. These could
be Chornkin's and Krautschner's, since they had not
spoken when introduced or at the dinner table. They
could also be those of newcomers.

"… much energy from Magda, as I said before,"
Igescu was saying loudly. He seemed angered and,
perhaps, a little frightened. "I think Dolores had gathered
enough around her to take tangible and enduring shape,
enough to render Magda powerless for a moment and
suck her almost dry. She didn't kill Magda but she came
damn close. And then Glam, that damn fool! he deserved
what he got! But then what can you expect from his
kind? Glam fucked her, although I'd warned him often
enough what might happen. I think he thought he was

safe. But the very act of fucking gave her energy enough;
she came to and found Glam in her, how she hated him!
And you saw Glam!"

The strange male voice interrupted softly, Childe could
not understand what he was saying. Igescu's reply was
loud enough.

"Yes, Magda got the energy but not enough! She's
stuck in stasis, and she won't get out unless she kills
another! Which will mean someone here, in this house!"

The strange female voice spoke then; it was even
softer than the male's. Igescu said, "Childe would do it!
I had other plans for him, but I can give them up! We
have to find Magda first and get her to Childe! Other-
wise … !"

"Dolores?" Mrs. Pocyotl said.

Childe could almost see the baron's shrug. The
baron said, "Who knows? She's X! A dangerous X! If
she can do that to Magda, she can do that to any of us.
But I doubt that she could attack more than one of us
at a time and I think she'd have to surprise us, just as
she must have surprised Magda! So, we'd better hang
together, as …"

A shout interrupted him. Footsteps sounded. The group
was going around the corner and down the stairs to the
cause of commotion. More shouts. He swung the door
wider and peeped down the hall. The only one there was
Bending Grass, who leaned his stocky form against the
wall and cocked his head to look down the stairway.
Then somebody called his name and he disappeared.

Childe ran down the hallway to the only door opened.
This was by the head of the steps, and the group had
been assembled outside it. He stuck his head in. The
room was strange, looked more like a movie director's
idea of a Turkish harem than anything else. There were
rugs and drapes and cushions and ottomans and even a
hookah and a dresser so low that Magda must have had
to sit cross-legged while she looked in the mirror. There
was a marble-lined bath sunk level with the floor. It
was almost large enough to qualify as a small swimming
pool. Beyond it was a low marble enclosure which pre-
sumably had served Magda as a bed, since it was piled
with cushions and pillows and canopied with many silk
veils.

Glam's black soft-leather boots stuck out over the en-
closure. Childe walked swiftly in, past the bath, which
was full of cold water, and looked over the marble railing.
Glam had died with his boots on. Also, his pants. He
had stripped off his shirt and undershirt and pulled his
pants down around his knees, but he had been too eager
to bother taking all of his clothes off.

There was blood on his pants and much blood on his
body. Blood had spurted out from his ears, nostrils, eyes,
mouth, anus, and penis. Something had violently
squeezed him. The ribs were caved in; the arms were
flattened; the hip bones had been pushed inward toward
each other. Not only blood had been expelled from every
aperture. The contents of the bowels and about six feet
of the bowels themselves had been pressed out of his
anus.