Image of the Beast

  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 somebody with, a big library on vampires and on other things that bump 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 permission, and if he isn't expecting you, he usually won't answer 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 indicated 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 feeling, 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 concussion. 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 objects 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 people 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 tobacco, marijuana, a pungent heavy unidentifiable something suggestive of spermatic fluid, incense, a soupcon 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 mindreading. 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 unaccountably 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 criminals.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 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 Godzilla.

  They went around the side of the house to the driveway. 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 li
ke 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 WolfMan nailed against the walls. And several NO SMOKING ABSOLUTELY signs. Another forbade any alcoholic beverages 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 moment 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 Jeremiah introduced as Woolston Q. Heepish.

  "Woolie" was about six feet in height, portly and soft-looking, moderately paunched, with a bag of skin hanging 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, legendary, 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 details.

  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 prayerful 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 browsing through. Still..."

  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 trying 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 varieties, 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 describing 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 constricted 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 cupboards 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 microfilms 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, magazines, paintings and drawings, masks an
d costumes, toys and statuettes. Little children were very destructive.

  After some years, his wife gave up her wish to have babies. Could she have a pet, a cat or a dog? Heepish 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. Heepish'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 Dracula 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 flat 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 sulfuric 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 i€ this door, too, were connected to a recording 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 magazines.