Image of the Beast

  He felt sick, but he did not think be was going to vomit. If he was, he could not feel anything churning up. His insides were too numb for anything except a vague feeling of queasiness.

  He fell over on his side and could not get up again no matter how hard he struggled. Or tried to struggle, rather, because his efforts were all mental. His muscles, as far as he could tell, failed to respond with even a tremor.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 24

  When he saw the golfball-sized head of the thing poke out from beyond the end of the bed, Childe realized what he had done. By yanking so savagely on that thing, he had jerked it loose from some base in her body, probably in her uterus. This was what he had intended. But he could never have visualized that pulling the thing was like pulling the cord on one of those burro dolls--what were they called?--that were hung up in Mexican homes on Christmas. Pull the string, and they ripped open, and all the goodies spilled out.

  The thing had been her string, and when it was torn out, she fell apart, and all her goodies, separate entities, spilled out. And began a walk that only a Bosch could paint.

  Now the thing was gliding snakelike towards him, its forepart raised off the ground and the slimy, goateed, shark-toothed, scimitar-nosed, garnet-eyed head was pointed at him. Its mouth was writhing, and a piping was issuing from the invisible lips.

  Childe could do nothing but lie on his side, his eyes fixed on the approaching thing. He wondered what it had in mind for him. Its bite was poisonous, and while its poison had paralyzed Bill but left his sexual organs active, it might be fatal if he were bitten again. Moreover, Vivienne said an antidote had to be given, and she, as far as he knew, was the only one who could do that. But not while she was in this condition.

  A glob of coiled intestines crossed before him, cutting off his view of the snake-thing. Behind it came the spinal area, a flesh centipede. This reeled blindly into a foot, which was traveling upside down, its sole pointed towards the ceiling, while twenty legs bore it to wherever it was going. The spine and the foot fell over on their side and kicked their legs for a while before managing to get back up.

  The snake-thing crawled nearer. Childe watched it and speculated on whether or not its underside was equipped with many moving plates to enable it to progress so serpentinely. Did it have an ophidian skeleton?

  He was so numb that it did not occur to him to wonder how this whole process could come about. He just accepted it.

  Presently, the many-legged cunt, still followed by the many-legged uterus, walked towards him. The hairy-back animal bumped into his stomach, staggered back, half-turned, and bumped along his body. It stopped when it came into contact with his chin, slid along it and around to his mouth, where it stopped. He could not see it, but he had the feeling that it was leaning against his lips. Its hairs brushed his nose and made him want to sneeze. The odor from it was clean and faintly musky, and under other circumstances he would have enjoyed it very much.

  The cunt remained by him, pressing on his mouth, as if it recognized something familiar in its blind and deaf world. The uterus was nestled against his neck, its wet skin on his skin.

  The snake-thing kept on coming towards him and then it disappeared around his head. He tried to throw his head back and to turn it, but he could not. Within a few seconds, he felt it crawling up over the back of his head. He wanted to scream, to make a superhuman effort that would enable him to burst out of his own skin and run out of the room. Then the thing was coiled up on his cheek, and the wet beard was tickling the lobe of his ear.

  The voice was tiny and tinny.

  The words were unintelligible. They were in that same language he had heard before, in between French and Spanish. Like an unnasalized, untruncated French. An archaic French, perhaps.

  The tiny tinny voice raged on. Its forked tongue flicked against the inner part of his ear.

  Suddenly, there was a silence. The body was still there, but it was motionless. The vagina-thing abruptly scuttled away with the uterus-thing nosing after it. Vivienne's head appeared from under the bed and stalked slowly towards him. Her tongue was sticking out from her lax lips, and her bright eyes stared at him.

  Her head stopped a few feet from his eyes. Her eyes looked up, evidently at the thing on his cheek. Her lips moved, but no voice issued. This was to be expected, since she had no lungs. The lungs were twin creatures lurching like sick dinosaurs along a drying swamp towards the far wall.

  Maybe, Childe thought, maybe the thing can lip-read. Maybe she's giving him instructions for starting the reassembly process.

  But what if there is no reassembly? What if this is final? What do I know about her or others of her kind? All were strange, but Vivienne was the strangest. She did not fit into any categories of vampire or werewolf or lamia or ghost. Maybe, when the cord is yanked, the lanyard pulled, she has had it. Surely, she--her parts that is--can't survive long in this condition. They have to eat and to excrete, they are as subject to natural laws as any other creatures, even if they seem to be unnatural.

  There is nothing unnatural in this universe. Anything that seems so just isn't explained yet. All things can be explained by natural laws. If you don't know certain laws, then you think a thing is unnatural.

  The snake-thing slid down over his eyes onto the floor. It crawled to Vivienne's head and coiled there while the upper part rose to a point a few inches before her eyes. It swayed back and forth like a cobra, and sometimes its head turned. Its mouth was working, and its face was twisted with rage. Only when its head was turned towards him could Childe hear the faint piping voice. It was still using the unknown tongue.

  Presently it communicated something or it tired of trying to communicate. It turned and crawled to a point just past his chin. He could not see what it was doing until a moment later. It crawled out past him, towing the uterus behind it. Its tail had been inserted into the interior and probably was being implanted again.

  When it was a little distance past his head, it stopped and turned again. It crawled back towards him, stopping with the uterus leaning up against his forehead. The vagina moved away, and he was able to see that the snake-thing was butting it with its head. Herding it.

  When it had the vagina maneuvered into the proper position, it slipped through from the rear of the vagina and emerged through the slit. The vagina moved backwards as if impelled by telepathy until it was reunited with the uterus-thing.

  Now what? Childe thought, and then he was able to worry about himself for the first time. Maybe the poison did wear off; maybe Vivienne had been lying about the necessity of the antidote. She must have wanted to give Bill an antidote to get him going more quickly. And at the same time she had administered the poison that would stop his heart. If she had not lied about that, of course.

  He tried to move but was as unable as before. However, his thinking and his vision were not as unfocused.

  Now he began to be impressed with the utter alienness of the life before him. That a living body could fall apart into discrete creatures which were mobile was unthinkable. But there they were. And how did they survive so long? The blood system, for instance, had been cut off, sealed into each creature, but the circulation, of course, had stopped. That was easy to see. There was the heart, its veins and arteries closed up, moving away from him towards the underside of the bed on thirty frail legs. Something about it reminded him of a headless chicken.

  But how did these things, live without the bringing in of oxygen and the carrying away of waste? They had to have some auxiliary source of energy and excretion. Had to Nave!

  And how did Vivienne manage to hide all these fissures and cleavages, all these legs and God knew what other biological mechanisms, in her body? She should have looked fat and lumpy, but she had not. She had a superb body and that face, that painfully beautiful face, now walking around on a score of skinny legs and four support legs from behind her ears!

  The snake-thing dragged itself in front of him, trailing the uterus, in chase of the
anus and buttocks. Obviously it intended to unite with them. But what then? It was becoming unwieldy and could not corner too many other pieces and unite before it became too heavy and too awkward.

  The head had been busy while he watched the snake-thing. It had kicked and pushed shoulders and a neck until they were huddled together in a corner of the room. Then the head went off in pursuit of various entrail things while the snake-thing backed into the buttocks and anus and hooked up as a railroad engine would hook up several cars with another.

  At that moment, he felt the floor vibrate slightly under him. A second later, two large shoes were by his head. Then the shoes moved on out past him, and he saw the chauffeur. He was a big man with a skin as dark as a sunburned Sicilian's, but his features were Baltic. He had a broad face with high cheekbones and a high forehead and straight dark hair. The scene before him did not seem to bother him in the least.

  With swift but efficient movements, he began to reassemble Vivienne Mabcrough. The parts were placed together or one inserted into another, and presently she was stretched out on the floor in a unit. The fissures closed; the cracks disappeared; the cleavages filled out. When her skin was again unbroken, he hit her over the heart with his fist. She gasped for air, breathed for a while, and then sat up. She was a little unsteady but waved the hand of the chauffeur away.

  The head of the snake-thing came out of her slit and stared angrily at him.

  "Barton," she said, "put him on the bed and undress him."

  Wordlessly, Barton picked Childe up in his arms and laid him out on the bed. He proceeded to take off all of Childe's clothes and to hang them up neatly in the closet. The shoes and socks went under a chair. Childe could see this because he was able by then to turn his head. He could not, however, talk.

  "You can go now, Barton," Vivienne said.

  The big dark man looked emotionlessly at Childe. Then he said, "Very well, madame," and left.

  Childe wondered what his place was in Vivienne's group. If Barton was wholly of human origin, then he was one of the vilest collaborators in history. Or in unhistory, since history, or any human science or scientific discipline, refused to acknowledge the existence, or the possibility of existence, of these beings.

  Vivienne stood over him and bent down so that one breast hung above his mouth a few inches.

  She said, "You frustrated me, my beautiful Herald Childe, and I don't like to be frustrated. You took away my Bill, a stupid ass of a man but a great cock. So you will substitute for him, even though you are now forbidden."

  He wanted to ask her what she meant by "forbidden" but could not even open his mouth.

  Vivienne kissed him and thrust her tongue into his mouth and felt his tongue and teeth and gums while she played with his cock with one hand. Despite himself, he responded. His penis felt slightly titillated; it warmed up and swelled a little, if his sense of feel was any indication.

  Vivienne moved herself up then and put her nipple in his mouth, but he was unable to suck on it. If he had been able, he would have refused. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but she was by now far from the most desirable. He did not care for murdereresses at all, and he loathed her for that thing coiled in her womb. He hoped it was still there, but he doubted it. His anus was beginning to contract in dread of its coming.

  Even though he did not suck or tongue it, her nipple grew large and hard in his mouth. She withdrew it and put the other one between his lips, and it grew large. Then she began to kiss his nipples and to stroke his cheeks with her fingers. She slowly traced her tongue down his belly, working back and forth and across, drawing geometric designs with its tip.

  When she came to his pubic hairs, she ran her tongue along the edge of the hairline and then worked her tongue over the hairs until they were wet. His penis swelled some more. He did not want it to be affected in the least by her, but the paralyzing effect of the bite made him unable to resist. He loathed her and he wanted to scream at the thought of the snake-thing. But the loathing and the horror were numbed, far away. The pleasure of her tongue and lips was the immediate entity.

  When he felt her mouth closing around his testicles, he began to be flooded with a hot sensation. It arose from under his navel and spread outwards but chiefly towards the base of his penis. When it oozed into his penis, it filled it out so that it rose up straight and hard.

  After a while, she pushed the testicles out with her tongue and lowered her head over his cock. Her lips went softly and wetly around the head, and her tongue pressed against the slit in its end. He groaned deep within himself and could not repress a desire to move his hips upward to drive his prick deeper into her mouth. The desire was all that resulted; his hips remained motionless.

  Vivienne continued to suck on the glands and occasionally to move her head down so that the shaft went in all the way. The warmth at the base of his penis became a rod of fire which stretched from the tip of his spine to the tip of his cock. The heavy gray fluid was moving slowly, rubbing against excited nerves, towards the entrance to his shaft.

  Suddenly, Vivienne got up and turned around, presenting that lovely back and the egg-shaped buttocks. She squatted over him and reached down and tenderly took the head between her fingers. This she guided into her anus as she lowered herself down on it. The head stuck in the tight mouth for a minute and then abruptly slid in. It moved against a warm slick surface until the flesh of her ass was against his pubic hairs.

  She lowered and raised herself slowly several times, causing him to feel ecstatic. It would not take much of this to make him come. And he did not like buggering. Though he had done it several times to women who liked it, he had a distaste for it. Now his repulsion was on the edge of his mind. It bulked large enough for him to be aware of it, but it did not bother him.

  She stopped on an upward movement, leaving his cock half in.

  Knowing what was about to happen, he mentally gritted his teeth. The horror did not draw any blood from his engorged penis, however.

  Suddenly, something slipped down over his testicles. It slid over the sac and under, and something--the thing's bearded little head, of course--touched his anus. Then it entered and was pushing into his anus and then up his rectum. It felt hard and solid and unpleasant, as when a doctor stuck a finger up him for a prostate examination. But this disagreeable sensation did not last long. Something, perhaps its bite or the substance released by its bite, turned unpleasantness into a warm and relaxing feeling.

  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 motion seemed to be independent of hers; it was moving much faster then 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 insides felt as ready for orgasm as his penis. Both exquisitenesses 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 otherwise, 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 vici
ous 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?"

  * * *

  CHAPTER 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 contained an original painting by Brain 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, written by Bram Stoker, have shown Dracula going down on a sleeping young beauty, and innumerable advertisements 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 present owner had discovered the works in a boarded-up closet in the attic. He had not known what the paintings 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.