Image of the Beast and Blown (34 page)

cunts, you can bet on that. And bruises. And you would
be naked and dazed, as if you had, shall we say, gone
mad with lust?"

Forry looked at them. All were grinning now, and they
looked very evil. They also looked as if they meant to
do whatever Heepish ordered.

He was in a nightmare. What kind of evil beings
were these? All this for a painting?

He said, loudly, "Get out of the way! I'm coming
through! This painting is mine! And you're not going to
intimidate me! I don't care what you do, you're not
getting to keep this! I might have given it to you, Heepish,
if you'd become a good friend and wanted it badly
enough! But not now! So out of the way!"

Holding the painting as if it were a shield or a batter-
ing ram, he walked towards Heepish and the naked
Rumbow.

27

Herald Childe drove slowly through the rain and the
high waters. His windshield wipers were not able to cope
at this moment, so dense was the downpour. His head-
lights strove to pierce the sheets with little effect. Other
cars, driven by more foolhardy Angelenos, passed him
with great splashings.

It took him more than two hours to get to his house
in Topanga Canyon. He drove up the steep sidestreet
at ten miles an hour while water, several inches deep,
poured down past him. As he turned to go into his
driveway, he noticed the car beneath the oak tree by the
road. Another car that had been abandoned here, he
supposed. There had been seven automobiles left here
within the past several weeks. All were of the same model
and year. All had been by the oak tree when he awoke
in the morning. Some had been left for a week before the
cops finally came and towed them away. Some had been
there a few days and then had disappeared during the
early morning hours.

He did not know why somebody was abandoning cars
in front of his house or, if not outright abandoning them,
was parking them for such a long time. His neighbors for
two blocks on either side of the house and both sides
of the street knew nothing about the cars.

The cops said that the cars they'd towed away were
stolen.

So here was the seventh. Possibly the seventh. He must
not jump to conclusions. It could belong to somebody
visiting his neighbors. He would find out soon enough.
Meanwhile, he needed to get to bed. To sleep. He had
had more than enough of that other bedtime activity.

The house was his property. He owed nothing on it
except the yearly taxes. It was a five room bungalow,
Spanish style, with a big backyard and a number of trees.
His aunt had willed it to him, and when she had died
last year, he had moved in. He had not seen his aunt
since 1942, when he had been a child, nor had he ex-
changed more than three letters with her in the past ten

years. But she had left all her property to him. There was
enough money so that he had the house left after paying
off the inheritance tax.

Childe had been a private detective, but, after his ex-
periences with Baron Igescu and the disappearance of
his wife, he had quit. He wasn't a very good detective,
he decided, and besides, he was sick of the business. He
would go back to college, major in history, in which he
had always been interested, get a master's and, possibly,
a Ph.D. He would teach in a junior college at first and,
later, in a university.

It would have been more convenient for him to take
an apartment in Westwood where he would be close to
the UCLA campus. But his money was limited, and he
liked the house and the comparative quiet, so he drove
every day to school. To save gas and also to find a park-
ing place easier on the crowded campus, he rode a
motorcycle during the week.

Just now the school was closed because of vacation.

It was a lonely life. He was busy studying because
he was carrying a full load, and he had to keep up the
house and the yard, but he still needed someone to talk to
and to take to bed. There were women who came up to
his house from time to time: teachers his own age or a
little older, some older students, and, occasionally, a
younger chick who dug his looks. He resembled a rough-
hewn Lord Byron.
With a clubfoot mind,
he always
added mentally when someone commented on this. It
was no secret to him that he was neurotic. But then
who wasn't? If that was any consolation.

He turned on the lights and checked the windows to
make sure again that none were leaking. It was a com-
pulsive action he went through before leaving and after
coming back—at least three times each time. Then he
looked out the back window. The yard was narrow but
deep, and this was good. Behind it towered a cliff of dirt,
which had, so far, not become a mud flow. Water poured
off it and drowned his backyard, and the water was up
over the bottom steps of the back porch stairs. He un-
derstood, from what his neighbors said, that the cliff had
been closer to the house at one time. About ten years ago
it had slid down and covered the backyard almost to the
house. The aunt had spent much money having the dirt

hauled away and a concrete and steel wire embankment
built at the foot of the cliff. Then, two years ago, in the
extraordinarily heavy rains, the cliff had collapsed again.
It had, however, only buried the embankment and come
about six feet into the yard. The aunt had done nothing
about it, and, a year later, had died.

The entire Los Angeles, Ventura, and Orange County
area was being inundated. The governor was thinking
about having Southern California declared a disaster
area. Houses had floated away, mud slides had buried
other houses, a car had disappeared in a hole in Ven-
tura Boulevard, a woman waiting for a bus in downtown
Los Angeles had been buried in a mud slide, houses were
slipping in the Pacific Palisades' and in the canyons
everywhere.

There was only one consolation about the deluge. No
smog.

Childe went into the kitchen and opened the pantry
and took out a bottle of Jack Daniels. He seldom drank,
preferring marijuana, but when he was downcast and up-
set, marijuana only made him more gloomy. He needed
something to dull his mind and nerves, and Tennessee
mash on the rocks would do it.

He sipped the stuff, shaking and making a face as he
did so. After a while, he could swallow it without re-
pugnance. A little later, he could sip on it with pleasure.
He began to feel numb and even a trifle happy. The
memory of Vivienne was still with him, but it did not
shake him so much now.

The three men had entered and one had delicately
placed the tip of his sword against Vivienne's neck. She
had said something about his breaking the truce.

What truce? He had never found out. But the man
with the sword cane had accused her and her people—
he called them Ogs—of first breaking the truce. The Ogs
had captured Childe and abused him. This was definitely
against the rules. He was not even to be aware of their
existence or of that of the Tocs.

Moreover, they had endangered Childe's - life. He
might have been killed because of their irresponsible be-
havior. In fact, the Tocs were not sure that the Ogs had
not had it in mind to kill Childe.

"You know as well as you know anything that we

agreed on The Face of Barrukh and the Testicle of
Drammukh that we would let The Child develop until
he was ready!" the swordsman said.

"The Child?" thought Herald. "Or did he mean The
Childe?"

Later, he thought, "Possibly the two are the same."

Vivienne, still crouching on the bed, had said, "It was
an accident that he came to our house—to Igescu's, I
mean. He insisted on breaking in and spying on us, and
the temptation to partake of his power was too much for
us. In that, we were guilty. Then things got out of hand.
We did not handle him correctly, I'll admit. We forgot
that he would have to be watched very closely; he looks
so human it's easy to do, you know. And he acts so
stupidly at times, he made us a little contemptuous of
him."

"Of The Child?" the swordsman said. "I think you are
the stupid ones. He is not an adult yet, you know, so you
can't expect him to act like one. Anyway, I doubt the
adulthood of any of you Ogs."

Vivienne, looking then at Childe, said, "We've been
talking in English!"

She burst into a spew of a language which he had
heard before even if it was unintelligible to him. It was
the same language that his captors had used when he was
a prisoner in Igescu's.

Though he did not understand what followed, he was
able to determine the name of the swordsman. It was
Hindarf.

Hindarf seemed inclined to run Vivienne through, but
she talked him out of it. Finally, Hindarf pricked him
with a needle, and presently he was able to function al-
most normally. He got dressed and allowed himself to
be escorted out of the house. He was still too shaky to
drive, so Hindarf drove while the two men followed in
their car. Hindarf refused to answer Childe's questions.
His only comment was that Childe should stay away
from the Ogs. Apparently, he had believed Vivienne's
story that Childe was the intruder in this case.

A few blocks before they came to the turnoff to
Topanga Canyon, Hindarf stopped the car. "I think you
can drive from here on."

He got out and held the door open for a moment while

rain fell into the car and wet the driver's seat and the
steering wheel.

He stuck his face into the car and said, "Please don't
go near that bunch again. They're deadly. You should
know that. If it weren't ..."

He was silent for several seconds and then said,
"Never mind. We'll be seeing you."

He slammed the door shut. Childe scooted over into
the driver's seat and watched Hindarf and the others
drive away. Their car swung around and went down
Topanga Canyon.

As he sat in the front room and tried to watch TV
while he swigged Jack Daniels, he thought of that even-
ing. Almost nothing made sense. But he did believe that
Igescu and Krautschner and Bending Grass and Pao and
the others had not been vampires, werewolves, were-
bears, or what have you. They were very strange, bor-
dering on the unnatural, or what humans thought of as
unnatural. The theory advanced by Igescu, and pre-
sumably invented by the early 19th century Belgian, "ex-
plained" the existence of these creatures. But Childe was
beginning to think that Igescu had led him astray. He
did not know why he would lie to him, but there seemed
to be many things he did not know about this business.

If he had any sense, he would follow Hindarf's advice.

That was the trouble. He had never shown too much
common sense.

Fools rush in,
and so forth.

After four shots of mash whiskey on an empty stom-
ach, one also unaccustomed to liquor, he went to bed.
He slept uneasily and had a number of dreams and
nightmares.

The persistent ringing of the telephone woke him. He
came up out of a sleep that seemed drugged, and was,
if alcohol was a drug. He knocked the phone off while
groping for it. When he picked it up, an unfamiliar male
voice said, "Is this McGivern's?"

"What number did you want?" Childe said.

The phone clicked. He looked at the luminous hands
of his wristwatch. Three o'clock in the morning.

He tried to go back to sleep but couldn't. At ten after
three, he got up and went into the bathroom for a drink
of water. He did not turn on the light. Going out of the

bathroom, he decided to check on the condition of the
street before he went back to bed. It was still raining
heavily, and the street had been ankle-deep in water when
he had driven up before the house.

He pulled the curtain back and looked out. The car
that had been parked under the oak tree was pulling
away. The lights from the car behind it showed that a
man was driving it. The car swung around and started
slowly down the street towards Topanga Canyon. The
lights of the other car shone on the pale face of Fred
Pao, the Chinese he had seen at Igescu's. His lights threw
the profiles of the three men in the other car into silhou-
ette. One of them looked like Bending Grass, the Crow
Indian, or Crow werebear, but that could not be. Bend-
ing Grass had died under the wheels, of his car when
Childe had escaped from the burning Igescu mansion.

He turned and ran into the bedroom and slipped into
a pair of pants and shoes without socks. He ran into
the front room, put on a rainhat and raincoat and
picked up his wallet and car keys from the dining room
table. He got into the car and took off backwards, splash-
ing water as if he were surfriding as he backed onto the
street. He drove faster than he should have and twice
skidded and once the motor sputtered and he thought he
had killed it.

He caught up with them about a quarter of a mile up
Topanga. The lead car was slowing down even more and
looked as if it would swing into a private road that went
up the steep hill. He had never been up it, but he knew
that it led to a huge three-storied house that had been
built when the road was a dirt trail. It stood on top of a
hill and overlooked much of the area, including his own
house.

Abruptly, the lead car stopped. The car behind it
also stopped. He had to go on by them; they would be-
come suspicious if he also stopped. At the top of the
hill he slowed down, found a driveway, turned in, and
backed out. He came down the hill again in time to see
the two cars heading back down Topanga Canyon.

He wondered what had made them change their
minds? Had they become suspicious of him? Perhaps they
had seen his lights as he turned onto Topanga.

Childe followed them into Los Angeles. The cars pro-