Image of the Beast and Blown (7 page)

up on the second floor. I'll help as soon as I get to feeling
better."

"What happened to the man?" Childe said.

"He's on a mattress on the floor of the second level.
He's unconscious, breathing a few bubbles of blood, poor
unhappy soul, but Sheila's taking care of him, too. She
feels bad about shoving him; she's got a hasty temper
but underneath it all she truly loves."

"I was going to offer to help," Childe said, "but I
can't see standing around for hours. Besides ..."

Jeremiah asked him what the
besides
meant. Childe told
him about Colben and the film. Jeremiah was shocked.
He said that he had heard a little about it over the radio.
He had not received a paper for two days, so he had no
chance to read anything about it. So Childe wanted some-
body with a big library on vampires and on other things
that boomp in the unlit halls of the mind?

Well, he knew just the man. And he lived not more
than six blocks away, just south of Wilshire. If anybody
would have the research material, it would be Woolston
Heepish.

"Isn't he likely to be trying to get out of town?"

"Woolie? By Dracula's moustache, no! Nothing, except
maybe an atomic attack threat, would get him to desert
his collection. Don't worry; he'll be home. There
is
one
problem. He doesn't like unexpected visitors, you got to
phone him ahead of time and ask if you can come, even
his best friends—except maybe for D. Nimming Rodder
—are no exceptions. Everybody phones and asks permis-
sion, and if he isn't expecting you, he usually won't an-
swer the doorbell. But he knows my voice; I'll holler
through the door at him."

"Rodder?
Where have … ? Oh, yes! The book and
TV writer! Vampires, werewolves, a lovely young girl
trapped in a hideous old mansion high on a hill, that sort
of thing. He produced and wrote the
Shadow Land
series, right?"

"Please, Herald, don't say anything at all about him
if you can't say something good. Woolie worships D.
Nimming Rodder. He won't hit you if you say anything
disparaging about him, but you sure as Shiva won't get
any cooperation and you'll find yourself frozen out."

Childe shifted from one foot to another and coughed.

The cough was only partly from the burning air. It indi-
cated that he was having a struggle with his conscience.
He wanted to stay here and help—part of him did—but
the other part, the more powerful, wanted to get out and
away and on the trail. Actually, he couldn't be much
use here, not for some time, anyway. And he had a feel-
ing, only a feeling but one which had ended in something
objectively profitable in the past, that something down
there in the dark deeps was nibbling at his hook.

He put his hand on Jeremiah's bony shoulder and said,
"I'll try to phone him, but if …"

"No use, Herald. He has an answering service, and it's
not likely that'll be working now."

"Give me a note of introduction, so I can get my foot
in the door."

Jeremiah smiled and said, "I'll do better than that.
I'll walk with you to Woolie's. I'm just in the way here,
and I'd like to get away from the sight of so much
suffering."

"I don't know," Childe said. "You could have a con-
cussion. Maybe you ..."

Jeremiah shrugged and said, "I'm going with you. Just
a minute while I find the women and tell them where
I'm going."

Childe, waiting for him, and having nothing to do but
watch and listen, understood why Jeremiah wanted to get
away. The blood and the groans and weeping were bad
enough, but the many chopping coughs and loud, long
pumping-up-snot-or-blood coughs irritated, perhaps even
angered him, although the anger was rammed far down.
He did not know why coughs set him on edge so much,
but he knew that Sybil's nicotine cough and burbling
lungs, occurring at any time of day or night and especially
distressing when he was eating or making love, had
caused their split as much as anything. Or had made him
believe so.

Jeremiah seemed to skate through the crowd. He took
Childe's hand and led him out the front door. It was three
minutes after 12:00. The sun was a distorted yellow-
greenish lobe. A man about a hundred feet east of them
was a wavering shadowy figure. There seemed to be thick
and thin bands of smog sliding past each other and thus
darkening and lightening, squeezing and elongating ob-

jects and people. This must have been an illusion or some
other phenomenon, because the smog was not moving.
There was not a rumor of a breeze. The heat seemed to
filter down through the green-grayishness, to slide down
the filaments of smog like acrobats with fevers and sprawl
outwards and wrap themselves around people.

Childe's armpits and back and face were wet but the
perspiration only cooled him a little. His crotch and his
feet were also sweating, and he wished that he could wear
swimming trunks or a towel. It was better outside than in
the hospital, however. The stench of sweaty frightened peo-
ple had been powerful, but the noise and the sight of the
misery and pain had made it less offensive. Now he was
aware that Jeremiah, who was, despite being a "hippie," a
lover of baths, a true "water brother" as he liked to say,
stank. The odor was a peculiar combination of pipe to-
bacco, marijuana, a pungent heavy unidentifiable some-
thing suggestive of spermatic fluid, incense, a soupçon of
rosewater on cunt, frightened sweat, extrusion of excited
shit, and, perhaps, inhaled smog being sweat out.

Jeremiah looked at Childe, coughed, smiled, and said,
"You smell like something washed up out of the Pacific
deeps and two weeks dead yourself, if you'll forgive my
saying so."

Childe, although startled, did not comment. Jeremiah
had given too many evidences of telepathy or mind-
reading. However, there were other explanations which
Childe did not really believe. Childe's expression could
have told Jeremiah what he was thinking, although Childe
would have said that his face was unreadable.

He walked along with Jeremiah. They seemed to be in a
tunnel that grew out of the pavement before them and fell
flat onto the pavement behind them. Childe felt unaccount-
ably happy for a moment despite the sinus ache, throat and
eye burn, insidious crisping of lungs, and stabbing in his
testicles. He had not really wanted to be a good servant in
the hospital; he wanted to sniff out the tracks of crimi-
nals.

6

"You see, Ham," Childe said, "the vampire motif in the
film could mean nothing—as a clue—but I feel that it's
very important and, in fact, the only thing I can follow up.
But the chances ..."

His voice died. He and Jeremiah stood on the curb of
the north side of Burton Way and waited. The cars were
like elephants in the grayness, gray elephants with trunks to
tails, huge eyes glowing in the gloom. The lanes here were
one-way for westward traffic, but all traffic was moving
eastward.

There was only one thing to do if they wished to cross
today. Childe stepped out into the traffic. The cars were
going so slowly that it was easy to climb up on the hood of
the nearest and jump over onto the next hood and onto
a third and then a fourth and onto the grass of the divider.

Startled and outraged drivers and passengers cursed and
howled at them, but Jeremiah only laughed and Childe
jeered at them. They crossed the divider and jumped from
hood to hood again until they got to the other side. They
walked down Willaman, and every house was unlit. At
Wilshire and Willaman, the street lights were operating,
but the drivers were paying no attention to them. All were
going eastward on both sides of Wilshire.

The traffic was a little faster here but not too fast. Childe
and Jeremiah got over, although Jeremiah slipped once
and fell on top of a hood.

"Middle of this block," Jeremiah said.

The houses and apartments were middle middle-class.
The homes were the usual California-Spanish bungalows;
the apartment buildings were four or five story boxes with
some attempts at decoration and terracing outside. There
were lights in a few windows but the house before which
Jeremiah stopped was dark.

"Must not be home," Childe said.

"Doesn't mean a thing. His windows are always dark.
Once you get inside, you'll see why. He may not be home
just now; he might've gone to the store or the gas station;

they're supposed to be open, at least the governor said
they would. Let's see."

They crossed the yard. The front window looked boarded
up. At least, something dark and woody looking covered it
on the inside. Closer, he saw that the man-sized figure,
which had stood so silently and which he had thought was
an iron statute, was a wooden and painted cutout of God-
zilla.

They went around the side of the house to the drive-
way. There was a large red sign with glaring yellow letters:
MISTER HORROR IS ALIVE AND WELL IN HERE.

Beyond was a sort of courtyard with a tree which bent
at forty-five degrees and the top of which covered the porch
roof and part of the house roof like a great greenish hand.
The tree trunk was so gray and twisted and knobbed that
Childe thought for a moment that it was artificial. It looked
as if it had been designed and built as background to a
horror movie.

There were many signs on the door and the walls beside
the door, some of them "cute" and others "in" jokes. There
were also masks of Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Wolf-
Man nailed against the walls. And several NO SMOKING
ABSOLUTELY signs. Another forbade any alcoholic bev-
erages to be brought in.

Jeremiah pressed the button, which was the nose of a
gargoyle face painted around it. A loud clanging noise
as of large bells came from within and then several
bars of organ music:
Gloomy Sunday.

There was no other response. Jeremiah waited a mo-
ment and then rang the bell again. More bells and organ
music. But no one at the door.

Jeremiah beat on the door and shouted, "Open up,
Woolie! I know you're in there! It's OK! It's me, Hamlet
Jeremiah, one of your greatest fans!"

The little peep-window slid back and light rayed out.
The light was cut off, came back, was cut off again as
the peep-window swung shut. The door opened with a
screeching of rusty hinges. A few seconds later, Childe
understood that the noise was a recording.

"Welcome," a soft baritone said. Jeremiah tapped
Childe's shoulder to indicate he should precede him.
They walked in, and the man shut the door, rammed
home three large bolts, and hooked two chains.

The room was too confusing for Childe to take it in
all at once. He concentrated on the man, whom Jere-
miah introduced as Woolston Q. Heepish.

"Woolie" was about six feet in height, portly and soft-
looking, moderately paunched, with a bag of skin hang-
ing under his chin, bronze walrus moustache, square
rimless spectacles, a handsome profile from the mouth
up, a full head of dark-red, straight, slick hair, and pale
gray eyes. He hunched forward as if he had spent most
of his life over a desk.

The walls and windows of the room were covered with
shelves of books and various objects and with paintings,
movie stills, posters, masks, plastic busts, framed letters,
and blow-ups of movie actors. There was a sofa, several
chairs, and a grand piano. The room beyond looked
much the same except for its lack of furniture.

If he wanted to learn about vampires, he was at the
right place.

The place was jammed with anything and everything
concerning Gothic literature, folklore, legendry, the
supernatural, lycanthropy, demonology, witch-craft, and
the movies made of these subjects.

Woolie shook Childe's hand with a large, wet, plump
hand.

"Welcome to the House of Horror," he said.

Jeremiah explained why they were there. Woolie
shook his head and said that he had heard about Colben
over the radio. The announcer had said that Colben had
been "horribly mutilated" but he had not given any de-
tails.

Childe told him the details. Heepish shook his head
and tsk-tsked while his gray eyes seemed to get
brighter and the corners of his lips dimpled.

"How terrible! How awful! Sickening! My God, the
savages still in our midst! How can such things be?"

The soft voice murmured and seemed to become lost,
as if it were breaking up into a half dozen parts which,
like mice, scurried for the dark in the corners. The pale,
soft wet hands rubbed together now and then and several
times were clasped in a gesture which at first looked pray-
erful but also gave the impression of being placed
around an invisible neck.

"If there is anything I can do to help you track down

these monsters; if there is anything in my house to help
you, you are welcome," Heepish said. "Though I can't
imagine what kind of clue you could find by just brows-
ing through. Still …"