Image of the Beast and Blown (8 page)

He spread both hands out and then said, "But let me
conduct you through my house. I always have the guided
tour first for strangers. Hamlet can come with us or look
around on his own, if he wishes. Now, this blow-up
here is of Alfred Dummel and Else Bennrich in the
German film,
The Blood Drinker,
made in 1928. It had
a rather limited distribution in this country, but I was
fortunate enough—I have many many friends all over
the world—to get a print of the film. It may be the only
print now existing; I've made inquiries and never been
able to locate another, and I've had many people try-
ing to find another for me …"

Childe restrained the impulse to tell Heepish that he
wanted to see the newspaper files at once. He did not wish
to waste any time. But Jeremiah had told him how he
must behave if he wanted to get maximum cooperation
from his host.

The house was crammed with objects of many vari-
eties, all originating in the world of terror and evil
shadows but designed and manufactured to make
money. The house was bright with illuminations of many
shades: bile-yellow, blood-red, decay-purple, rigor mortis-
grayblue, repressed-anger orange, but shadows seemed
to press in everywhere. Where no shadow could be,
there was shadow.

An air-conditioner was moving air slowly and icily, as
if the next glacial age were announcing itself. The air
was well-filtered, because the burning of eyes and
throat and lungs was fading. (Something good to say
about ice ages.) Despite this, and the ridges of skin
pinched by cold air, Childe felt as if he were suffocating
with the closeness and bulk and disorder of the books,
the masks, the heads of movie monsters, the distorted
wavy menacing paintings, the Frankenstein monsters
and wolfmen dolls, the little Revolting Robot toys, the
Egyptian statues of jackal-headed Anubis, the cat-
headed Sekhmet.

The room beyond was smaller but also much more
cluttered.

Woolie gestured vaguely—all his gestures were as
vague as ectoplasm—at the leaning and sometimes
collapsed piles of books and magazines.

"I got a shipment in from a collector in Utica, New
York," Heepish said. "He died recently."

His voice deepened and richened almost to oiliness.
"Very sad. A fine man. A real fan of the horror. We
corresponded for years, more than I care to say, although
I never actually got to meet him. But our minds met,
we had much in common. His widow sent me this stuff,
told me to price it at whatever I thought was fair. There's
a complete collection of
Weird Tales
from 1923 through
1954, a first edition of Chambers'
King in Yellow,
a first
edition of
Dracula
with a signature from Bram Stoker
and Bela Lugosi, and, oh! there is so so much!"

He rubbed his hands and smiled. "So much! But the
prize is a letter from Doctor Polidori—he was Byron's
personal physician and friend, you know—author of an
anonymous book—I have several first editions of the first
vampire novel in English—
THE VAMPYRE.
Doctor
Polidori! A letter from him to a Lady Milbanks de-
scribing how he got the idea for his novel! It's
unique! I've been lusting—literally lusting—for it ever
since I heard about it in 1941! It'll occupy a prominent
place—perhaps the most prominent—on the front
room wall as soon as I can get a suitable frame!"

Childe refrained from asking where he would find a
bare place on the wall.

Heepish showed him his office, a large room con-
stricted by many rows of ceiling-high bookcases and by
a huge old-fashioned rolltop desk engulfed by books,
magazines, letters, maps, stills, posters, statuettes, toys,
and a headsman's axe that looked genuine, even to the
dried blood.

They went back to the room between the office and
living room, where Heepish led Childe into the kitchen.
This had a stove, a sink, and a refrigerator, but other-
wise was full of books, magazines, small filing cases,
and some dead insects on the edges of the open cup-
boards and on the floor.

"I'm having the stove taken out next week," Heepish
said. "I don't eat in, and when I give a party, I have
everything brought in."

Childe raised his eyebrows but said nothing. Jeremiah
had told him that the refrigerator was so full .of micro-
films that there was little room for food. And at the
rate the film was coming in, there would soon not be
space enough for a quart of milk.

"I am thinking about building an extension to my
house," Heepish said. "As you can see, I'm a teeny-
weeny bit crowded now, and heaven knows what it will
be like five years from now. Or even one."

Woolston Heepish had been married—for over fifteen
years. His wife had wanted children, but he had said no.
Children could not be kept away from his books, mag-
azines, paintings and drawings, masks and costumes,
toys and statuettes. Little children were very destruc-
tive.

After some years, his wife gave up her wish to have
babies. Could she have a pet, a cat or a dog? Heep-
ish said that he was indeed very sorry, but cats clawed
and dogs chewed and piddled.

The collection increased; the house shrank. Furniture
was removed to make room for more objects. The day
came when there was no room for Mrs. Heepish.
The
Bride of Frankenstein
was elbowing her out. She knew
better than to appeal for even a halt to the collecting,
and a diminution was unthinkable. She moved out and
got a divorce, naming as co-respondent
The Creature
from the Black Lagoon.

It was only fair to Heepish, Jeremiah had said, to let
Childe know that Heepish and his wife were the best of
friends and went out together as much as when they had
lived together. Perhaps, though, this was the ex-Mrs. Heep-
ish's way of getting revenge, because she certainly rode
herd on him, and he meekly submitted with only a few
grumbles now and then.

Now Heepish himself was being forced out. One day, he
would come home after a late meeting of
The Count Drac-
ula Society
and open the front door, and tons of books,
magazines, documents, photographs, and bric-a-brac
would cascade out, and the rescuers would tunnel down to
find Woolston Heepish pressed fiat between the leaves of
The Castle of Otranto.

Childe was led into an enclosed back porch, jammed
with books like the other rooms. They stepped out the

back door into a pale green light and an instant sensation
as of diluted sulphuric acid fumes scraping the eyes. Childe
blinked, and his eyes began to run. He coughed. Heepish
coughed.

Heepish said, "Perhaps we should pass up the grand
tour of the garage, but…"

His voice trailed off. Childe had stopped for a moment;
Heepish was a figure as dark and bulky and shapeless as
a monster in the watery mists of a grade-B movie.

The door squeaked upward. Childe hastened to enter
the garage. The door squeaked down and clanged shut.
Childe wondered if this door, too, were connected to a re-
cording taken from the old
Inner Sanctum
radio program.
Heepish turned on the lights. More of the same except
that there was dust on the heads, masks, books, and maga-
zines.

"I keep my duplicates, second-rate things, and stuff I just
don't have room for in the house at the moment," Heep-
ish said. Childe felt that he was expected to ejaculate over
at least a few items. He wanted to get out of the hot,
close, and dead air into the house. He hoped that the files
he wanted were not stored here.

Childe commented on an entire bookshelf dedicated to
the works of D. Nimming Rodder.

Heepish said, "Oh, you noticed that he is the only liv-
ing author with an individual placard in my collection in
the house? Nim is my favorite, of course, I think he's the
greatest writer of all time, in the Gothic or horror genre,
even greater than Monk Lewis or H. P. Lovecraft or Bram
Stoker. He is a very good friend of mine.

"I keep many duplicates of his works out here because
he needs one now and then to use as tearsheets or refer-
ence for a new anthology. He has had many anthologies,
you know, just scads of reprints and collections taken from
his collections, and collections from these. He's probably
the most recollected man on Earth."

Childe did not smile. Heepish shrugged.

There was a large blow-up of Rodder tacked to an up-
right. In heavy black ink below: TO MY FIRST FAN
AND A GREAT FRIEND, MISTER HORROR HIM-
SELF, WITH INTENSE AFFECTION FROM NIM.
The thin, pale face with the collapsed cheeks, sharp nose,
and the huge-rimmed spectacles looked like that of a

spooky and spooked primate of the Madagascar jungle,
like a lemur's. And lemur, now that Childe considered it,
originally meant a ghost. He grinned. He remembered
the entry in the big unabridged dictionary he had referred
to so often at college.

Lemur—Latin
lemures
nocturnal spirits, ghosts; akin to
Greek
lamia,
a devouring monster,
lamas
crop, maw,
lamia,
pl., chasm, Lettish
lamata
mousetrap; basic idea: open
jaws.

7

Childe, looking at Rodder's photograph, grinned
widely.

Heepish said, "What's so funny? I could stand a little
laugh in these trying times."

"Nothing, really."

"Don't you like Rodder?"

Heepish's voice was controlled, but it contained a hint
of a well-oiled mousetrap aching to snap shut.

Childe said, "I liked his
Shadow Land
series. And
I liked his underlying themes, aside from the spooky
element. You know, the
little man
fighting bravely
against conformity, authoritarianism, vast forces of cor-
ruption, and so on, the lone individual, the only honest
man in the world—I liked those things. And every time
I read an article in the newspapers about Rodder, he's
always described as honest, as a man of integrity. Which
is really ironic."

Childe stopped and then, not wishing to continue but
impelled to, said, "But I know a guy …"

He stopped. Why tell Heepish that the
guy
was Jere-
miah?

"This guy was at a party which consisted mainly of
science-fiction people. He was standing within earshot of
a group of authors. One was the great fantasy writer,
Breyleigh Bredburger. You know of him, of course?"

Heepish nodded and said, "After Rodder, Monk
Lewis, and Bloch, my favorite."

Childe said, "Another author, I forget his name, was
complaining that Rodder had stolen one of his magazine
stories for his series. Just lifted it, changed the title and
few things, credited it to somebody with an outlandish
Greek name, and had, so far, refused to correspond with
the author about the alleged theft. Bredburger said that
was nothing. Rodder had stolen three of his stories,
giving credit to himself, Rodder, as author. Bredburger
cornered Rodder twice and forced him to admit the
theft and to pay him. Rodder's excuse was that he'd
signed to write two-thirds of the series himself and he

wasn't up to it, so, in desperation, he'd lifted Bredburger's
stories. He didn't say anything about plagiarizing from
other people, of course. Bredburger said he'd been prom-
ised payment for the third stolen story but so far hadn't
gotten it and wouldn't unless he vigorously pursued
Rodder or went through the courts.

"A third author then said that the first would have to
stand in line behind about twenty if he wanted to sue or
to take it out of Rodder's hide.

"That's your D. Nimming Rodder. Your great champion
of the
little man,
of the nonconformist, of the
honest
man."

Childe stopped. He was surprised that he had run on
so. He did not want to quarrel. After all, he was to be
indebted to this man, if this grand tour ever ended. On
the other hand, he was itchy with anger. He had seen too
many corrupt men highly honored by the world, which
either did not know the truth or ignored it. Also, the ir-
ritation caused by the smog, the repressed panic arising
from fear of what the smog might become, Colben's
death, the frustrating scene with Sybil, and Heepish's
attitude, undefinedly prickly, combined to wear away the
skin and fat over his nerves.

Heepish's gray eyes seemed to retreat, as if they were
afraid they might combust if they got too close to the
light and air. His neck quivered. His moustache drew
down; invisible weights had been tied to each end. His
nostrils flared like bellows. His pale skin had become red.
His hands clenched.

Childe waited while the silence hardened like bird
lime. If Heepish got nasty, he would get just as nasty,
even though he would lose access to the literature he
needed. Childe had been told by Jeremiah that Heepish
had gotten the idea for his collection from observing a
man by the name of Forrest J Ackerman, who had
probably the greatest private collection of science-fiction
and fantasy in the world. In fact, Heepish had been
called the poor man's Ackerman, though not to his face.
However, he was far from poor, he had much money—
from what source nobody knew—and his collection
would someday be the world's greatest, private or public.

But at this moment he was very vulnerable, and