Image of the Beast / Blown

  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 …"

  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 m
ovie 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