Helen shifted closer to me. “This place gives me the creeps, Les.”
“They’re probably all in the house,” I said. “Ah, look, there are a number of parked cars, and there’s somebody on the side terrace.”
I stopped the car behind four or five others and Helen and I got out and walked to the stone terrace. Frank Bord, the publisher, and his exquisite little wife, Lillian, were lounging on easy chairs and sipping drinks.
Bord waved a hand toward us. “Hi, folks. So it’s going to be a party after all. The Rooneys are somewhere inside. Haven’t seen hide or hair of anybody else save a moody servant named Si who brought us drinks.”
“Where are the Cuylers?” I asked.
“Search me. All we could get out of the servant was that they’d be down eventually. Hell of a way to receive guests. Look for Si and you can get some drinks.”
Helen and I passed into the house. We found ourselves in an enormous drawing room. Sitting on a couch at the farther side were Victor Rooney, the Broadway producer, and Jane, his wife, a charming redhead.
As we entered, Jane was saying: “I don’t like it. There’s an atmosphere about this place which—well, makes me uncomfortable. There seems to be only one servant in this huge place and the Cuylers don’t seem to be about and we haven’t even been shown to our rooms.”
Victor Rooney saw us and stood up. “Greetings, folks. Looks like a gathering of the clan. Guess Roland wants us all in on the reading of his new book.” He raised his voice. “Hey, Si! Drinks for four.”
Several minutes later a squat man with shoulders the width of a barn door came in with a tray on which were four cocktail glasses. If the servant had mixed the drinks himself, he could have made a fortune as a bartender. It was the smoothest liquor I had ever tasted and had a curiously exotic flavor.
By the time we had finished the drinks, we heard another car pull up. The four of us went out to the terrace and joined the Bords. The latest arrivals were Rob and Inez Spaulding. He was also a producer, a friendly rival to Frank Bord. His wife had been a former showgirl—a statuesque blonde who made up in figure what she lacked in brains.
We called for eight more cocktails from Si and stood about drinking and raking the Cuylers over the coals for not having come down to receive us.
“Damn them, I’m going up to find them,” Bord announced.
“Let’s all go,” Inez Spaulding put in.
We started into the house. And as we entered the drawing room, we saw Roland and Clara Cuyler coming toward us.
“It’s about time you two paid some attention to us,” Victor Rooney growled.
Suddenly we all stopped dead, staring at Roland and Clara Cuyler. Something had happened to them—to their faces which seemed to have become lined and flabby with age within a couple of weeks; to their bodies which drooped in attitudes of utter hopelessness. And they stopped also and moved close together, each holding to the other as if in that way they found the courage necessary to face us.
“I couldn’t help it,” Roland Cuyler muttered across the room to us in a weak voice. “She made me write those letters to you and invite you to this hell. I held out as long as I could, but she—”
“Whom are you talking about?” I demanded, feeling my heart turn to stone.
“Haven’t you guessed?” a voice said softly. Yes, I had guessed at Cuyler’s first words; and now, turning my head toward another door at the side of the room, I saw that my worst fears were justified.
Tala Mag stood just inside of the doorway, a self-satisfied smile playing on her red lips. Her gold-flecked eyes glowed with an exalted sense of victory. She moved toward us a few steps, and her body was a glorious blue-and-gold flame. She was clad in a blue evening gown which was spun of incredibly delicate silk so that it covered her without hiding her voluptuously curved flesh.
I felt the pressure of Helen’s hand tightening on my arm. We all stared at Tala Mag with a kind of dreadful fascination, and I realized, somehow, that all the other men in the room had met her, and had had some sort of unpleasant experience with her.
Tala Mag laughed. “I have told each of you men that you shall see me again. I am not one to be spurned or insulted. You, Frank Bord, would not publish my manuscript and called me vile names. You, Bob Spaulding, read my manuscript and returned it with a nasty note and then absolutely refused to see me. Victor Rooney, you would not produce a play of mine and, when I offered myself to you, took me and then spurned me. Lester Marlin, you I hate with all the depth of my being. Indeed, I hate and despise all of you and your pretty, vapid wives.”
I had resolved that the next time I saw her I would beat her within an inch of her life. But I found a great weakness stealing over me which kept me rooted to the spot. Not a physical weakness so much as something insidious inside of me which robbed me of the power of action. It was fear for what this creature of hell might do to Helen, and at the same time it was something else. Through my mind flickered the thought that the cocktails I had drunk might have been drugged. That must have been it, in part, because like myself none of the others uttered a word or made a movement. We stood bunched like statues.
Tala Mag was speaking again. “Tell them, Roland Cuyler, how completely they are in my power.”
Cuyler shuddered. “You cannot escape. There are two walls, neither of which can be surmounted. And then those terrible servants. Believe me, I didn’t want to lure you here. But she would have found another way and—and they whipped Clara.” Clara Cuyler moaned and swayed against her husband. She was wearing a sleeveless dress, and sunlight, streaming through a window, glinted on a bare white shoulder, and I saw an ugly welt, like a ragged finger, mar her flesh and disappear under the dress.
The sight of that whip mark brought vividly home to me the torment I myself had suffered and what mercy Helen and I and the others could expect from Tala Mag; and I snapped out of my trance and hurled myself at her. My hands were on her at the moment when she cried out. My fingers closed about her throat. I felt her body thrash against me; I saw her gray eyes almost pop from their sockets as I bore her down to the floor. And all about me voices screamed in fear and horror, but I ignored them, conscious only that I could save Helen from hell only by ridding the world of this creature.
Suddenly my fingers were torn away from Tala Mag’s throat, and I was plucked off her as if I were a child in a strong man’s grip. I was lifted high in the air and tossed down to the hard floor. Stunned, I lay there, trying to clear the fog from my brain.
The screams went on. Painfully I sat up and looked about at a nightmare scene.
Emil, Tala Mag’s huge servant, had torn me away from his mistress, and there were three other men in the room, as big as Emil or nearly as strong. One was Si, the squat servant who had brought us the drinks, and his massive shoulders gave him the power of Emil. And there were two others, hulking brutes, against whom our average human strength was puny.
* * * *
Three of the servants were each holding Bord and Spaulding and Rooney, while the fourth had a whip in his hand with which he kept our four wives in a screaming huddle in a corner of the room. Tala Mag had risen to her feet and was holding her throat where my fingers had bruised her and her body trembled with excitement. Roland Cuyler offered no resistance; he stood holding his wife to his chest, both their spirits utterly broken.
I bounded to my feet and hurled myself at Si, who was holding Bob Spaulding. My fist drove into his face. The blow hadn’t the slightest effect. He dropped Spaulding, whom he had knocked unconscious, and turned to me. He crushed me in a bear’s hug, pinning my arms to my side, and he lifted my thrashing body and carried me into another room. There he shoved me against a wall and held me with one hand in spite of my most violent struggles, while with his free hand he fumbled with something. I heard the rattling of chains, felt gyves snap about my wrists. He left me there more helpless in the chains than ever I had been in his tremendous grip.
I noticed then that I was in a bare stone
room. On either side of me other chains were imbedded in the wall. One by one the other men were brought in and their wrists were fastened to chains, Even Roland Cuyler who had no resistance left in him.
When we were all chained, our wives were driven in by the servant who had the whip. I cried out when I saw the murderous tip bite into Helen’s back as she stumbled; futilely I tore at the chains. Then the five women cowered moaning against the wall on the opposite side of us, not making a motion for fear of the whip.
“Les!” Helen wailed. “Oh, God, Lester!”
And terror tore from the throat of each woman the name of her husband, and none of us men could do anything to help them.
Tala Mag entered the room. Triumphantly she ran her eyes over all of us and laughed. In my despair I saw a fragmentary hope to save Helen and the others.
“Tala!” I cried. “You wanted me once. Let them go and I will be your slave.”
Her lips curled. “You are too late by several weeks, Lester Marlin. I could have loved you more than any man was ever loved. Now I hate you.” She turned to one of the servants. “Wick, bring in Portia Teele.”
There was an interval of suspense, during which the wailing of the women continued and the groan of the men. And then Portia Teele, the writer of sentimental love stories, was led into the room by the servant called Wick.
She was a plump woman, past the bloom of youth. She stopped in her tracks when she saw us and a moan passed her lips. Wick closed a big hand over the back of her neck and thrust her forward so that she came stumbling to the center of the room.
Tala Mag stood there waiting for her. Portia fell on her knees before her and clawed at her dress.
“Tala, for God’s sake, haven’t I always been your friend?”
“Friend!” Tala Mag sneered. “Yes, you helped me with my literary style, but would you publish my masterpiece under your name?”
“I couldn’t, Tala. My reputation.”
“Let the fact that your reputation remains unblemished console you now,” Tala Mag chortled. “Clops, attend to her.”
The fourth servant lifted Portia. Wick stretched a hand toward the ceiling and pulled down two chains on pulleys, like those to which I had been fastened in Tala Mag’s library. Portia shrieked wildly as she struggled in that powerful grip. Wick secured her wrists to the chains and pulled a rope over the pulleys, lifting Portia’s writhing body from the floor. And she hung there, her face frightful with terror, her eyes pools of impending madness.
“Tala!” she shrilled. “In the name of heaven! I’ll do anything you ask.”
Tala Mag shrugged her bare shoulders. “The time for mercy is past. Besides, my dear Portia, I require somebody to be made an example of for my other guests, and you have been selected.”
I knew then that her statement that she hated us because we had not helped her advance her literary career was a lie. She hadn’t cared about that at all. Her manuscript, at least where I was concerned, had been simply an excuse to thrust herself at me. Her literary pretensions had been simply an act to inculcate in herself hatred for us. Because she wanted to hate and find expression for hatred. Something subhuman and diabolical in her demanded that it be sated by the torment of others.
She stepped to where Portia Teele hung. “You are about to experience sensations which are denied to most of us. For long, long minutes you are going to live as fully as any person has ever lived, with every nerve quivering and throbbing, every atom of your being fully alive.”
And with her own hands she ripped the clothing from Portia Teele. Then she stooped and pulled off Portia’s shoes and stockings, and Portia hung naked from the chains, sobbing and shrieking and writhing.
“All right, Clops,” Tala Mag said.
All heads turned to the door through which the giant Clops was coming. Before him he wheeled a brazier in which irons glowed white-hot in burning coals.
CHAPTER IV
THE DEVIL’S DAUGHTER
It is said that there is no pain as great as the pain inflicted by fire. Seeing how Portia Teele suffered, I can believe that. The whipping I had received from Tala Mag was nothing compared to what the servant Clops did to Portia with those hot irons.
We all turned our eyes away, of course, and our wives sank to the floor and buried their faces in their arms, but we couldn’t shut out her inhuman screams. Some of us had to look now and then, as if invisible wires drew our gazes.
After a while one of her large breasts melted away under the iron as if it had been ice. There was no blood, for the heat cauterized as it burned. Clops shifted the iron to a fresh spot; momentarily it sizzled as it touched the clammy perspiration covering agonized flesh. Then the stench of burning flesh grew heavier.
And Tala Mag watched intently with bosom heaving and nerves twitching under her high cheekbones, her stare missing no detail of the torture.
Minutes or hours may have passed before the screams stopped. Horror drags time out to its utmost. But I do know that night had fallen when Clops wheeled the brazier to a corner of the room.
The thing dangling from the chains was no longer a woman. Its skin had been replaced by a mantle of smoldering scar tissue. The head hung forward with long hair cascading over fattened chest where breasts had been. Nausea churned in all of us.
I glanced across at Helen and saw that she had mercifully fainted. So had two of the other women, but they were not permitted that method of escape. One of the servants threw water on them, reviving them.
What now? What new hellishness would the degenerate mind of that she-fiend conceive? Would she serve Helen and the other women the same way as she had Portia Teele? God!
There was a sudden silence as Tala Mag started to speak. Even the women ceased moaning, for it was plain that she was to announce the fate of the rest of us. She stood next to that dangling horror, and she was tall and beautiful in that blue. evening gown that revealed more of her golden-skinned body than no clothes at all would have.
“You have seen how this foolish woman suffered,” she said. “You realize that at a word from me each of the other five women will share her experience and worse.” A cry went up from our wives. Tala Mag lifted a hand and continued: “But I am magnanimous. I shall spare you on one condition—that you follow to the letter every command I utter. If you refuse—” She waved significantly to the dangling corpse.
We all held our breaths, knowing that whatever she would propose would be more fiendish than what had been done to Portia Teele, yet daring to hope that somehow what passed for her heart had been softened.
“Clara Cuyler, come to the center of the room,” Tala Mag ordered.
As if in a dream, Clara rose and moved away from the group of women. Her face was ugly with fear.
“Remove your clothing.”
“No!” Clara screeched. “Please!”
“You will follow my order without protest.” Clara glanced at the hideous corpse and began frantically to undress. Clara had been selected first because she had been longest under the domination of Tala Mag and feared her most. Her husband sobbed like a child. When she was utterly nude, she was allowed to return to the other women. I saw now the cruel whip marks which crisscrossed her white skin.
“Helen Marlin,” Tala Mag called. “Come here and strip.”
I ground my teeth with helplessness. One by one she would make each woman undress before her four servants and four other strangers while the woman’s husband was forced to look on. And that would be only the beginning.
* * * *
The modesty in Helen’s nature dominated the fear which must have gibbered within her. She stood up, straight and proud and defiant, but did not come forward.
“I refuse,” my wife declared firmly.
Tala laughed with glee. “The same stubborn streak as your husband, I see. Well, it will be all the more fun breaking you. You realize that you will be stripped anyway—not only of your clothing but of your skin as well.… Clops, the brazier. Emil, put her in the chains.”
Helen chewed on her knuckles as she saw Clops start wheeling the brazier from its corner and Emil advancing toward her. A whimper trickled from her throat, rising higher and higher. As for me, I was shouting something, but I cannot remember what it was. Perhaps I was cursing Tala Mag; perhaps urging Helen to give in rather than suffer the inevitable torment of fire.
When Emil actually had his hands on her and was dragging her forward, Helen cracked. The memory of what Portia Teele had endured was still too vivid in her mind to make resistance possible.
“I’ll do it!” she cried. “Please tell him to let me go.”
God, if I could have strangled Tala Mag then and there for the smug smile on her lips as she told Emil to release my wife! The giant stepped away and Helen was left alone on the floor with all eyes in the room on her.
Slowly, as if her hands were obeying a will divorced from her own, Helen pulled down the zipper in the side of her dress and drew the dress over her head. It fluttered to the floor. Momentarily she hesitated as she stood clad only in strips of silk about hips and breasts; then her hands went behind her back to the snaps of her brassiere. She removed it and it followed her dress to the floor and, her entire body suffused with pink, she cupped her palms over her splendid bared breasts.
“Continue,” Tala Mag said.
Helen tugged at the elastic of her step-ins, changed her mind and kicked off her shoes instead. Bending over, she rolled down her stockings and straightened up again, her arms once more coming up to cover her breasts. Choking whimpers of shame came from her lips.
The four mighty servants of Tala Mag had carnal eyes fixed on my wife and their ugly features were slack with degenerate lust. And even the husbands of the four other women became suddenly quiet as they stared avidly at her.
“I said strip completely,” Tala Mag rasped. And so Helen had to remove the last wisp of silk from her hips, and that too joined the rest of her garments. Completely naked she stood there, while four sub-human creatures and four other men feasted their eyes on her loveliness which had never before been exposed to any man’s gaze but mine. She was truly magnificent as she stood there, with pride returning to her; and she faced Tala Mag defiantly, knowing that however beautiful Tala Mag might be, it faded before the beauty of her own body. And Tala Mag knew that also and venom twisted her face.
The Pulp Fiction Megapack Page 6
