Image of the Beast / Blown

  Budler must have had a latent homosexual tendency

  which was developed, possibly under the influence of

  drugs, during the conditioning. One of the men blew him

  several times, and twice Budler buggered the big man.

  The third man appeared in one scene only, and this time

  it was in what Childe thought would be the grand finale.

  He braced himself for something terrible to happen to

  Budler, but aside from being exhausted, Budler seemed to

  suffer no ill effects. Budler and the three men and three

  women formed many configurations with, usually, Bud-

  ler as the focus of the group.

  The Commissioner, sitting by Childe, said at this point,

  "This is quite an organization. Besides the six there,

  there must be two, at least, handling the cameras."

  The last scene (Childe knew it was the last because

  the Commissioner told him just as it flashed on) showed

  Budler screwing one of the well-built women dog-fashion.

  The cameras came in at every angle except that which

  would show the woman's face. There were a number of

  shots which must have been taken through a long flexible

  optical fiber device, because there were closeups of a

  seemingly gargantuan penis driving in under a cavernous

  anus into an elephantine slit. The lubricating fluid flowed

  like spillage over a too-full dam.

  And then the camera seemed to inch forward along the

  penis, now quiescent, and into the slit. Light blazed up,

  and the viewers seemed to be surrounded by thousands

  of tons of flesh. They were looking down at the penis, a

  whale that had crashed into an underseas cave. Then

  they were looking up at the ceiling of wet pale red flesh.

  Suddenly, the light went out and they were back

  again, looking at Budler and the woman from the side.

  The two were on the bed, she face-down and her arms to

  one side and her buttocks raised by a pillow under her

  stomach. He was straddling her, one knee between the

  legs, and rocking back and forth.

  Suddenly, so suddenly that Childe gasped and thought

  his heart would stop, the woman became a female

  wolf. Budler was still astride her and pumping slowly

  away when the transformation took place. (A trick of

  photography, of course. A trick involving drugs, surely,

  because Budler acted as if the woman had metamor-

  phosed.) He stopped, raised his hands, and then sat up,

  his penis withdrawing and beginning to droop. He looked

  shocked.

  Snarling, the wolf turned and slashed.

  It happened so quickly that Childe did not understand

  immediately that the powerful jaws had taken the penis

  off close to the root.

  Blood spurted out of the stump and over the wolf and

  the bed.

  Screaming, Budler fell backward. The wolf bolted the

  organ down and then began biting at the man's testicles.

  Budler quit screaming. His skin turned blue-gray, and the

  camera left the wounds where the genitals had been and

  traveled up to show his dying face.

  There was the tinny piano music again, Dvorak's

  Humoresque. The Dracula burst through the curtains

  with the same dramatic gesture of the cape thrown aside

  to reveal his face. The camera traveled down then and

  verified what Childe thought he had seen when the man

  entered but had not been certain about. The Dracula's

  penis, a very long and thin organ, was sticking out of the

  fly. The Dracula cackled and bounded forward and

  leaped upon the bed and grabbed the wolf by the hairs

  of its flanks and sank his penis into it from behind.

  The wolf yowled, its mouth open, a piece of testicle

  falling out. Then, as the Dracula rammed it, driving her

  forward and inching along on his knees, the wolf began

  tearing at the flesh between the legs of Budler.

  Fadeout. TO BE CONTINUED: in blazing white let-

  ters across the screen. End of film.

  Childe became sick again. Afterward, he talked with

  the Commissioner, who was also pale and shaking. But

  he was not shaky in his refusal to take any action about

  Igescu. He explained (which Childe knew) that the

  evidence was too slight, in fact, it was nonexistent. The

  "vampire" angle, the wolves on the estate, the (sup-

  posed) drugging of him by Igescu's secretary, the wolf

  hairs found in Budler's car, the wolf in the film, all these

  certainly would make investigation of Igescu legitimate.

  But Igescu was a very rich and powerful man with no

  known criminal records or any suspicions by the authori-

  ties of criminal connections, if the police were to do any-

  thing, and he did not see how they could, the Beverly

  Hills Police would have to handle the investigation.

  The essence of his remarks was what Childe had ex-

  pected. He would have to get more conclusive evidence,

  and he would have to do it without any help from the

  police.

  Childe drove back through a darkening air. The weird

  white light was slowly turning green-gray. He stopped at

  a service station to fill his tank and also to replace the

  broken headlamp. The attendant, after stamping the form

  for his credit card, said, "You may be my last customer.

  I'm taking off just as soon as I get the paperwork out of

  the way. Getting out of town, friend. This place has had

  it!"

  "I may follow you," Childe said. "But I got some un-

  finished business to attend to first."

  "Yeah? This town's gonna be a ghost town; it's already

  on the way."

  Childe drove into Beverly Hills to shop. He had a

  difficult time finding a parking space. If it was going to

  be a ghost town, it did not seem that it would be so

  soon. Perhaps most of the people were getting supplies for

  the second exodus or were stocking up before the stores

  were again closed. Whatever the reason, it was two and a

  half hours before he got all he wanted, and it took a

  half-hour to drive the mile and a half to his apartment.

  The streets were again jammed with cars. Which, of

  course, only speeded up the poisoning of air.

  Childe had intended to drive out to Igescu's at once,

  but he knew that he might as well wait until the traffic

  thinned out. He spent an hour reviewing what he meant

  to do and then tried to call Sybil, but the lines were

  busy again. He walked to her apartment. He was goggled

  and snouted with a gas mask he had purchased at a

  store which had just gotten a shipment in. So many

  others were similarly masked, the street looked like a

  scene on Mars.

  Sybil was not home. Her car was still in the garage.

  The note he had left in her apartment was in the exact

  position in which he had placed it. He tried to get a

  long-distance call to her mother put through but had

  enough trouble getting the operator, who told him he

  would have to wait for a long time. She had been ordered

  to put through only emergency calls. He told her it was

  an emergenc
y, his wife had disappeared and he wanted

  to find out if she had gone to San Francisco. The operator

  said that he would still have to wait, no telling how

  long.

  He hung up. He walked back to his apartment and

  re-checked the automatic recorder with the same nega-

  tive results. For a while he watched the news, most of

  which was a repetition or very slight up-dating of accounts

  of the smog and the emigration. It was too depressing,

  and he could not get interested in the only non-news

  program, Shirley Temple in Little Miss Marker. He tried

  to read, but his mind kept jumping back and forth from

  Budler to his wife.

  It was maddening not to be able to act. He almost

  decided to buck the traffic, because he might as well be

  doing something and, moreover, once off the main roads,

  he might be able to travel speedily. He looked out at the

  street, packed with cars going one way, horns blaring,

  drivers cursing out their windows or sitting stoic, tight-

  lipped, hands gripping the wheels. He would not be able

  to get his car out of the driveway.

  At seven, the traffic suddenly became normal, as if a

  plug had been pulled some place and the extra vehicles

  gulped down it. He went into the basement, drove the

  car out, and got into the street without any trouble. A

  few cars drove down the wrong side, but these quickly

  pulled over into the right lane. He got to Igescu's before

  dusk; he had had to stop to change a flat tire. The roads

  were littered with many objects, and one of these, a nail,

  had driven into his left rear tire. Also, he was stopped

  by the police. They were looking for a service station

  robber driving a car of his make and color. He satisfied

  them that he was not a criminal, not the one they were

  looking for, anyway, and continued on. The fact that

  they could concern themselves with a mere holdup at

  this time showed that the traffic had eased up consider-

  ably, in this area, at least.

  At the end of the road outside Igescu's, he turned the

  car around and backed it into the bushes. He got out and,

  after removing the gas mask, raised the trunk and took

  out the bundle he had prepared. It took him some time to

  carry the cumbersome load through the thick woods and

  up the hill to the wall. Here he unfolded the aluminum

  ladder, locked the joints, and, with the pack on his back,

  climbed up until his head was above the wire. He did

  not intend to find out if the wire was electrified. To do so

  might set off an alarm. He pulled up the long rubberized

  flexibile tunnel, a child's plaything, by the rope tied

  around its end.

  He hoisted it until half its length was over the wire

  and then began the unavoidably clumsy and slow ma-

  neuver of crawling, not into it but over it. His weight

  pressed it down so that he had a double thickness be-

  tween him and the sharp points of the wire. He was

  able to turn, straddling the wire, and pull the ladder

  slowly up after him with the rope, which he had taken

  from the tunnel and tied to the ladder. He was very

  careful not to touch the wire with the ladder.

  He lifted it up and turned it and deposited its end

  upon the ground on the inside of the wall. Once his

  feet were on the rungs, he lifted up the tunnel and

  dropped it on the ground and then climbed down. He

  repeated this procedure at the inner wall up to the point

  where he reached the top of the wall. Instead of climbing

  on over, he took two large steaks from his backpack

  and threw them as far as he could. Both landed upon

  leaves near the foot of a large oak. Then he pulled the

  tunnel back and retreated down the ladder. He sat with

  his back against the wall and waited. If he did not

  succeed with this step within two hours, he would go on

  in, anyway.

  The darkness settled, but it did not seem to get any

  cooler. There was no air moving, no sound of bird or in-

  sect. The moon rose. A few minutes later, a howling

  jerked him to his feet. His scalp moved as if rubbed

  by a cold hand. The howling, distant at first, came closer.

  Soon there was a snuffling and then a growling and

  gobbling. Childe waited and checked his Smith & Wesson

  Terrier .32 revolver again. After five minutes by his

  wristwatch, he climbed over the wall, pulling the tunnel

  and ladder after him as he had done at the first wall. He

  laid them on the ground behind a tree in case anybody

  should be patrolling the wall. Gun in hand, he set out

  to look for the wolves. The bones of the steaks had been

  cracked and partially swallowed; the rest was gone.

  He did not find the wolves. Or he was not sure that

  what he did find were the wolves.

  He stepped into a clearing and then sucked in his

  breath.

  Two bodies lay in the moonlight. They were uncon-

  scious, which state he had expected from the eating of

  drugged meat. But these were not the hairy, four-legged,

  long-muzzled bodies he had thought to see. These were

  the nude bodies of the young couple who had played

  billiards in the Igescu house. Vasili Chornkin and Mrs.

  Krautschner slept on the grass under the moon. The boy

  was on his face, his legs under him and his hands by his

  face. The girl was on her side, her legs drawn up and

  her arms folded beside her head. She had a beautiful

  body. It reminded him of one of the girls he had seen in

  the films and especially of the girl Budler had been fuck-

  ing dog style.

  He had to sit down for a while. He felt shaky. He did

  not think that this was possible or impossible. It just

  was, and the was threatened him. It threatened his belief

  in the order of the universe, which meant that it threatened

  him.

  After a while he was able to act. He used tape from his

  backpack to secure their hands behind them and their

  ankles together. Then he taped their mouths tightly and

  placed them on their sides, facing each other and as close

  together as possible and taped them together around the

  necks and the ankles. He was sweating by the time he

  had finished. He left them in the glade and hoped that they

  would be very happy together. (That he could think this

  showed him that he was recovering swiftly.) They should

  be happy if they knew that he had planned to cut the

  throats of the wolves.

  He headed toward where the house should be and

  within five minutes saw its bulk on top of the hill and

  some rectangles of light. Approaching it on the left, he

  stopped suddenly and almost fired his revolver, he was

  so upset by the abrupt appearance of the figure. It flitted

  from moonlight into shadow and back into shadow and

  was gone. It looked as if it were a woman wearing an

  ankle-length dress with a bare back.

  For the third time that night, he felt a chill. It must

  have been Dolores. Or a woman playing
the ghost. And

  why should a fraud be out here when there was no need

  to play the fraud? They did not know that he was here.

  At least, he hoped not.

  It was possible that the baron wanted to shock another

  guest tonight and so was using this woman.

  The driveway had five cars besides the Rolls-Royce

  Silver Cloud. There were two Cadillacs, a Lincoln, a

  Cord, and a 1929 Duesenberg. Neither wing showed a

  light, but the central part was well-lit.

  Childe looked for Glam, did not see him, and went

  around the side. There was a vine-covered trellis which

  afforded easy access to the second story balcony. The

  window was closed but not locked. The room was dark

  and hot and musty. He groped along the wall until he

  found a door and slowly swung it out. It was a closet door

  in which hung dark musty clothes. He closed the door and

  felt along it until he discovered another door. This led to

  a hallway which was dimly lit by moonlight through a

  window. He used his pencil-thin flashlight now and then

  to guide himself. He passed by a stairway leading to the

  story below and the story above and pushed open a door

  to another hallway. This had no illumination at all; he

  fingered his way to the other end with his flashlight.

  Sometimes he stopped to put his ear against a doorway.

  He had thought he had heard the murmurs of voices be-

  hind them. Intent listening convinced him that nobody was

  there, that his imagination was tricking him.

  At the end of this hallway, twice as long as the first, he

  found a locked door. A series of keys left the lock un-

  turned. He used his pick and, after several minutes' work,

  during which the sweat ran down his eyes and his ribs

  and he had to stop several times because he thought he

  heard footsteps and, once, a breathing, he solved the puz-

  zle of the tumblers.

  The door opened to a shaft of light and a puff of cold

  air.

  As he stepped through into the hallway, he caught a

  flash of something on his left at the far end. It had moved

  too swiftly for him to identify it, but he thought that it was

  the tail end of Dolores' skirt. He ran down the hallway as

  quietly as he could with his sneakers on the marble tile

  floor (this was done in much-marbled and ornate-