Image of the Beast and Blown (32 page)

A few seconds later, Vivienne began to move up and
down on his cock, and he could feel the body of the
snake-thing sliding back and forth in him. Its mo-
tion seemed to be independent of hers; it was moving
much faster than her motions could account for.

The warmth and relaxation within his rectum and
his bowels gave way to an almost hot feeling and a
tension. The tension was, however, near-ecstatic. His in-
sides felt as ready for orgasm as his penis. Both ex-
quisitenesses acted as sine waves out of phase with
each other. But as Vivienne increased her slidings up and
down his pole, and as the snake-thing continued at the
same rapid pace, the waves slowly came into phase.

There was a moment of glory: a flashing red light
across his eyes, a spurt of metal rubbing against his
pleasure nerves, a breaking through of a red-hot drill
in the center of his brain, and he exploded. It was as
if he had been turned inside out as he passed through
some fifth-dimensional continuum. He was a glove of
flesh removed from a hand, inverted, and exposed to
radiations that would never have reached him other-
wise, intensely delightful radiations.

Vivienne sat on him for a while but rotated on his
cock so that she could face him. The action pulled the
snake-thing along, but it, apparently, was through. It
slid out of his anus and then was facing him. Its shaft
and head were smeared and it was still expelling a musky
gray fluid from its mouth. When the flow had ceased,
its forked tongue flickered out and began to clean its
face. Within a few minutes, its face and beard looked as
if it had showered.

Though it did not look as vicious as before, it still
looked dangerous.

Childe was glad to see it withdraw, although he
wished that it had not first moved up her body and kissed
her on the lower lip with its thin mouth.

Vivienne scooted up when the thing disappeared into

her cunt, and his penis slipped out of her anus. She
kissed him and said, "I love you."

He could not reply, but he thought, "Love?"

He wished he could vomit.

At that moment, three men entered the room. One of
them had a cane, from which he pulled a thin-
bladed sword. He stuck the point of it against Vivienne's
neck.

She turned pale and said, "Why are you breaking the
truce?"

25

Forrest J Ackerman, hiding in the bushes, was getting
wetter. He was also becoming madder.

Three days ago he had received through the mail a
large flat box. This had come from England, and it con-
tained an original painting by Bram Stoker. The painting
depicted Count Dracula in the act of sucking blood
from the throat of a young blonde. Many illustrations
have done this; a number of reprints of
Dracula,
writ-
ten by Bram Stoker, have shown Dracula going down on
a sleeping young beauty, and innumerable advertise-
ments and stills for various Dracula movies have
shown this.

But this was the only painting of Dracula done by
the author himself. Until a few months ago, its existence
had been unknown. Then a dozen oil paintings and a
score of ink drawings had been found in a house in
Dublin, once owned by a friend of Stoker's. The pres-
ent owner had discovered the works in a boarded-up
closet in the attic. He had not known what the paint-
ings and drawings represented in money. He had sold
them to an art dealer for several pounds and thought
himself well ahead.

But the dealer had brought in handwriting experts
who verified that the signature on the illustrations was
indeed Bram Stoker's. Forry Ackerman, reading of
this, had sent a wire to the Dublin art dealer and offered
to top any price submitted. The result was that he got
his painting but had to go to the bank to get a loan. Since
then, he had been waiting anxiously and could talk of
little but the expected arrival.

When he unwrapped it, he was not disappointed. Ad-
mittedly, Stoker was no St. John, Bok, Finlay, or even
a Paul. But his work had a certain crude force that a
number of people commented upon. It was a primitive,
no doubt of that, but a powerful primitive. Forry was
glad that it had some artistic merit, although he
had no knowledge of what constituted "good art" and no

desire to learn. He knew what he liked, and he liked this.

Besides, even if it had been less powerful, even
crude, he would not have cared. He had the
only orig-
inal painting
of Dracula by the author of
Dracula.
No
one else in the world could claim that.

This was no longer true.

That night he had come home to his house in the 800
block of Sherbourne Drive. It was raining then as now,
and water was pouring down his driveway into the street.
The street was flooded but the water had not yet risen
to cover the sidewalk. It was after one o'clock, and
he had just left a party at Wendy's to come here be-
cause he had to get out one of his comic magazines.
As editor of
Vampirella
and some horror maga-
zines, he had hard schedule dates to meet. He had to
edit
Vampirella
tonight and get it out in the morning,
air mail, special delivery, to his publisher in New York.

He had unlocked the door and entered the front room.
This was a rather large room decorated with large and
small original paintings of science-fiction and fantasy
magazine covers, paintings done on commission, stills
from various horror and so-called science-fiction movies,
photographs of Lon Chaney, Jr., as the Wolf Man, Boris
Karloff as Boris Karloff, and Bela Lugosi as Dracula.
Each bore a signature and a dedication of best wishes
and fondest regards to "Forry." There were also heads
and masks of Frankenstein's monster, the Creature from
the Black Lagoon, King Kong, and a number of other
fictional monsters. The bookshelves reached from floor
to ceiling at several places, and these were jammed
with the works of science-fiction authors, Gothic novel
writers, and some volumes on exotic sexual practices.

Forry's house had to be seen to be visualized. It had
once been his residence, but he had filled it with works
evaluated at over a million dollars. He had moved into
Wendy's apartment and now used the house as his busi-
ness office and as his private museum. The day would
come—perish the day!—when he would no longer be
around to enjoy, to vibrate with joy, in the midst of
his dream come true. Then it would become a public
museum with the great Ray Bradbury as trustee, and
people would come from all over the world to view his

collection or to do research in the rare books and with
the paintings and manuscripts and letters. He was think-
ing about having his ashes placed in a bronze bust of
Karloff as Frankenstein's monster and the bust put on a
pedestal in the middle of this room. Thus he would be
here in physical fact, though not in spirit, since he re-
fused to believe in any survival after death.

California law, however, forbade any such deposit of
one's ashes. The morticians' and cemetery owners' lobby
had insured that the legislature passed laws beneficial to
their interests. Even a man's ashes had to be buried in
a cemetery, no matter what his wishes. There was a
provision that ashes could be scattered out over the sea,
but only from an airplane at a suitable distance and height.
The lobby ensured that the ashes of a number of de-
ceased were stored until a mass, thus economical, flight
could be made.

Forry, thinking about this, suppressed his anger at the
money-hungry and essentially soulless robbers of the
bereaved. He wondered if he could not make some
arrangements for an illegal placing of his ashes in the
bust. Why not? He could get some of his friends to do
it. They were a wild bunch—some of them were—and
they would not be stopped by a little illegality.

While he was standing there, taking off his raincoat.
he looked around. There was the J. Allen St. John
painting of Circe and the swine, Ulysses' buddies. And
there, pride of his prides, and there … and there ...

The Stoker was gone.

It had been hung on a place opposite the door so
that anybody entering could not miss seeing it. It had
displaced two paintings. Forry had had a hard time
finding space in this house where every inch of wall
was accounted for.

Now, a blank spot showed where it had been.

Forry crossed the room and sat down. His heart beat
only a little faster. He had a faulty pacemaker; it con-
trolled the heart within a narrow range, and that ex-
plained why he had to take stairs slowly and could not
run. Nor did excitement step up the heart. The emotions
were there, however, and they made him quiver when he
should have beat.

He thought of calling the police, as he had done sev-
eral times in the past. His collection had been the object
of attentions of many a burglar, usually a science-fiction
or horror addict who brushed aside any honesty he might
have possessed in his lust to get his hands on books,
paintings, stills, manuscripts, masks, photographs of the
famous, and so forth. He had lost thousands of dollars
from this thievery, which was bad enough. But the realiza-
tion that some of the works were irreplaceable hurt him
far worse. And the thought that anybody could do these
evil things to him, who loved the world as he did not
love God, hurt. Who loved people, rather, since he was
no Nature lover.

Putting aside his first inclination to call the police, he
decided to check with the Dummocks. These were a
young couple who had moved in shortly after the pre-
vious caretakers, the Wards, had moved out. Renzo and
Huli Dummock were broke and houseless, as usual, so
he had offered them his hospitality. All they had to do
was keep the house clean and fairly well ordered and
act as helpers sometimes when he gave a party. Also,
they would be his burglar insurance, since he no longer
lived in the house.

He went upstairs after calling a number of times and
getting no answer. The bedroom was the only room in
the house which had space for residents. There was a
bed and a dresser and a closet, all of which the Dum-
mocks used. Their clothes were thrown on the bed, the
floor, the dresser top, and on a pile of books in one cor-
ner. The bed had been unmade for days.

The Dummocks were not there, and he doubted they
could be anyplace else in the house. They had gone
out for the night, as they quite often did. He did not
know where they got their money to spend, since Huli
was the only one working and she did that only between
fits of apathy. Renzo wrote stories but had so far been
able to sell only his hardcore pornography and not much
of that. Forry thought they must be visiting somebody
off whom they were undoubtedly sponging. This increased
his anger, since he asked very little of them in return for
room and board. Being here nights to watch for burglars
had been their main job. And if he reproached them for

falling down on this, they would sneer at him and accuse
him of exploiting them.

He searched through the house and then put on his
raincoat and went out to the garage. The Stoker painting
was not there.

Five minutes later, he got a phone call. The voice was
muffled and unrecognizable, although the caller had iden-
tified himself as Rupert Vlad, a friend and a committee-
man in the Count Dracula Society. Since Forry took all
his calls through the answering service, he could listen in
and determine if he wished to answer any. This voice
was unfamiliar, but the name got the caller through.

"Forry, this isn't Vlad. Guess you know that?"

"I know," said Forry softly. "Who is it?"

"A FRIEND, Forry. You know me, but I'd just as
soon not tell you who I really am. I belong to the Lord
Ruthven League and the Count Dracula Society, too. I
don't want to get anybody mad at me. But I'll tell you
something. I heard about you getting that painting of
Dracula by Stoker. I was going to come over and see it.
But I attended a meeting of the Lord Ruthven League
… and I saw it there."

"You what?" Forry said shrilly. For once, he had lost
his self-control.

"Yeah. I saw it on the wall of, uh, well …"

There was a pause.

Forry said, "For the sake of Hugo, man, don't keep
me hanging in air! I have a right to know!"

"Yeah, but I feel such a shit finking on this guy.
He…"

"He's a thief!" Forry said. "A terrible thief! You
wouldn't be a fink. You'd be doing a public service! Not
to mention servicing me!"

Even in his excitement and indignation, he could not
keep from punning.

"Yeah, uh, well, I guess you're right. I'll tell you. You
go right over to Woolston Heepish's house. You'll see
what I'm talking about."

"Woolston Heepish!" Forry said. He groaned and then
added, "Oh, no!"

"Uh, yeah! I guess he's been bugging you for years,
right? I kinda feel sorry for you, Forry, having to put up

with him, though I must say he does have a magnificent
collection. I guess he should, since he got some of it from
you."