Image of the Beast / Blown

by Philip José Farmer

  was nothing. Rodder had stolen three of his stories,

  giving credit to himself, Rodder, as author. Bredburger

  cornered Rodder twice and forced him to admit the

  theft and to pay him. Rodder's excuse was that he'd

  signed to write two-thirds of the series himself and he

  wasn't up to it, so, in desperation, he'd lifted Bredburger's

  stories. He didn't say anything about plagiarizing from

  other people, of course. Bredburger said he'd been prom-

  ised payment for the third stolen story but so far hadn't

  gotten it and wouldn't unless he vigorously pursued

  Rodder or went through the courts.

  "A third author then said that the first would have to

  stand in line behind about twenty if he wanted to sue or

  to take it out of Rodder's hide.

  "That's your D. Nimming Rodder. Your great champion

  of the little man, of the nonconformist, of the honest

  man."

  Childe stopped. He was surprised that he had run on

  so. He did not want to quarrel. After all, he was to be

  indebted to this man, if this grand tour ever ended. On

  the other hand, he was itchy with anger. He had seen too

  many corrupt men highly honored by the world, which

  either did not know the truth or ignored it. Also, the ir-

  ritation caused by the smog, the repressed panic arising

  from fear of what the smog might become, Colben's

  death, the frustrating scene with Sybil, and Heepish's

  attitude, undefinedly prickly, combined to wear away the

  skin and fat over his nerves.

  Heepish's gray eyes seemed to retreat, as if they were

  afraid they might combust if they got too close to the

  light and air. His neck quivered. His moustache drew

  down; invisible weights had been tied to each end. His

  nostrils flared like bellows. His pale skin had become red.

  His hands clenched.

  Childe waited while the silence hardened like bird

  lime. If Heepish got nasty, he would get just as nasty,

  even though he would lose access to the literature he

  needed. Childe had been told by Jeremiah that Heepish

  had gotten the idea for his collection from observing a

  man by the name of Forrest J Ackerman, who had

  probably the greatest private collection of science-fiction

  and fantasy in the world. In fact, Heepish had been

  called the poor man's Ackerman, though not to his face.

  However, he was far from poor, he had much money—

  from what source nobody knew—and his collection

  would someday be the world's greatest, private or public.

  But at this moment he was very vulnerable, and

  Childe was willing to thrust through the crack in the

  armor.

  "Well!" Heepish said.

  He cocked his head and smiled thinly. The moustache,

  however, was still swelled like an elephant seal in mating

  season, and his fingers were making a steeple, then sepa-

  rating to form the throat-holding attitude.

  "Well!" he said again. His voice was as hard, but there

  was also a whine in it, like a distant mosquito.

  "Well!" Childe said, aware that he would never know

  what Heepish was going to say and not caring. "I'd like to

  see the newspaper files, if possible."

  "Oh? Oh, yes! They're upstairs. This way, please."

  They left the garage, but Heepish put the photograph of

  Rodder under his arm before following him out. Childe

  had wondered what it was doing out in the garage, any-

  way, but on re-entering the house, he saw that there were

  many more photographs—and paintings and pencil

  sketches and even framed newspaper and magazine clip-

  pings containing Rodder's portrait—than he had thought.

  Heepish had had one too many and stored that one in the

  garage. But now, as if to show Childe his place, to put him

  down in some obscure manner, Heepish was also bringing

  this photograph into the house.

  Childe grinned at this as he waited for Heepish to lead

  him through the kitchen and hall-room and turn right to go

  up the narrow stairs. The walls were hung with many pic-

  tures and paintings of Frankenstein's monster and Dracula

  and an original by Hannes Bok and another by Virgil

  Finlay, all leaning at slightly different angles like head-

  stones in an old neglected graveyard.

  They went down a short hallway and into a room with

  the walls covered with paintings and photographs and

  posters and movie ad stills. There were a number of curi-

  ous wooden frames, sawhorses with castles on their backs,

  which held a series of illustrations and photos and news-

  paper clippings on wooden frames. These could be turned

  on a central shaft, like pages of a book.

  Childe looked through all of them and, at any other

  time, would have been delighted and would have lingered

  over various nostalgic items.

  Heepish, as if the demands on him were really getting

  to be too much, sighed when Childe asked to see the

  scrapbooks. He went into an enormous closet the walls of

  which were lined with bookshelves stuffed with large scrap-

  books, many of them dusty and smelling of decay.

  "I really must do something about these before it's too

  late," Heepish said. "I have some very valuable—some

  invaluable and unreplaceable—material here."

  He was still carrying Rodder's photo under one arm.

  It was Childe's turn to sigh as he looked at the growing

  hill of stuff to peruse. But he sat down in a chair, placed

  his right ankle over his left thigh, and began to turn the

  stiff and often yellowed and brittle pages of the scrap-

  books. After a while, Heepish said that he would have to

  excuse himself. If Childe wanted anything, he should just

  holler. Childe looked up and smiled briefly and said that

  he did not want to be any more bother than he had to

  be. Heepish was gone then, but left an almost visible ecto-

  plasm of disdain and hurt feelings behind him.

  The scrapbooks were titled with various subjects:

  MOVIE VAMPIRES, GERMAN AND SCANDINA-

  VIAN, 1919-1939; WEREWOLVES, AEMRICAN, 1865-

  1900; WITCHES, PENNSYLVANIAN, 1880-1965;

  GOLEM, EXTRA-FORTEANA, 1929-1960; SOUTH-

  ERN CALIFORNIA VAMPIRE FOLKLORE AND

  GHOST STORIES, 1910-1967; and so on.

  Childe had gone through thirty-two such titles before he

  came to the last one. They had all been interesting but not

  very fruitful, and he did not know that the one which was

  in his hands was relevant. But he felt his heart quicken

  and his back became less stiff. It could not be called a clue,

  but it at least was something to investigate.

  An article from the Los Angeles Times, dated May 1,

  1958, described a number of reputedly "haunted" houses

  in the Los Angeles area. Several long paragraphs were de-

  voted to a house in Beverly Hills which not only had a

  ghost, it had a "vampire."

  There was a photograph of the Trolling House taken

  from the air. According to the article, no one could get

  close enough to it on the ground t
o use a camera effec-

  tively. The house was set on a low hill in the middle of

  a large—for Southern California—walled estate. The

  grounds were well wooded so that the house could not

  be seen from anywhere outside the walls. The newspaper

  cameramen had been unable to get photos of it in 1948,

  when the owner of Trolling House had become temporar-

  ily famous, and the newsmen had no better luck in 1958,

  when this article, recapitulating the events of ten years

  before, had been published. There was, however, a picture

  of a pencil sketch made of the "vampire," Baron Igescu,

  by an artist who had depended upon his memory after

  seeing the baron at a charity ball. No photographs of the

  baron were known to be in existence. Very few people

  had seen the baron, although he had made several ap-

  pearances at charity balls and once at a Beverly Hills'

  taxpayers' protest meeting.

  Trolling House was named after the uncle of the present

  owner. The uncle, also an Igescu, had traveled from Ru-

  mania to England in 1887, stayed there one year, and then

  moved on to America in 1889. Upon becoming a citizen of

  the United States of America, Igescu had changed his name

  to Trolling. No one knew why. The mansion was on

  woodland surrounded on all sides by a high brick wall

  topped with iron spikes between which barbed wire was

  strung. Built in very late Victorian style in 1900 in what

  was then out-of-the-way agricultural land, it was a huge

  rambling structure. The nucleus was a part of the original

  house. This was, naturally, a Spanish-style mansion which

  had been built by the eccentric (some said, mad) Don

  Pedro del Osorojo in the wilderness of what was to be-

  come, a century later, Beverly Hills. Del Osorojo was

  supposed to have been a relative of the de Villa family,

  which owned this area, but that was not authenticated.

  Actually little was known of del Osorojo except that he

  was a recluse with an unknown source of wealth. His wife

  came from Spain (this was when California was under

  Spanish rule) and was supposed to have been a Cas-

  tilian noble.

  The present owner, Igescu, was involuntarily publicized

  in 1938 when he was brought dead-on-arrival into the

  Cedars of Lebanon Hospital after a car collision at Holly-

  wood and La Brea. At twilight of the following day, the

  county coroner was to perform an inquest. Igescu had no

  perceptible wounds or injuries.

  At the first touch of the knife, Igescu sat up on the

  dissection slab.

  This story was picked up by newspapers throughout the

  States because a reporter jestingly pointed out that Igescu

  had (1) never been seen in the daytime, (2) was of

  Transylvanian origin, (3) came from an aristocratic fam-

  ily which had lived for centuries in a castle (now aban-

  doned) on top of a high steep hill in a remote rural area,

  (4) had shipped his uncle's body back to the old country to

  be buried in the family tomb, but the coffin had disap-

  peared en route, and (5) was living in a house already

  well known because of the ghost of Dolores del Osorojo.

  Dolores was supposedly the spirit of Don Pedro's daugh-

  ter. She had died of grief, or killed herself because of grief.

  Her lover, or suitor, was a Norwegian sea-captain who had

  seen Dolores at a governor's ball during one of her rare

  appearances in town. He seemed to have lost his sanity

  over her. He neglected his ship and its business, and his

  men deserted or were thrown into the local jail for drunk-

  enness and vagrancy.

  Lars Ulf Larsson, the captain, barred by the old don

  from seeing Dolores, managed to sneak into the house and

  woo her so successfully that she promised to run off with

  him within a week. But the night of the elopement came,

  and Larsson did not show up. He was never seen again;

  a legend had it that Don Pedro had killed him and buried

  his body on the estate. Another said that the body had

  been thrown into the sea.

  Dolores had gone into mourning and died several weeks

  later. Her father went hunting into the hills several weeks

  after she was buried and failed to return. Search parties

  could not find him; it was said that the Devil had taken

  him.

  Later occupants of the house reported that they some-

  times saw Dolores in the house or out on the lawn. She

  was always dressed in a black formal gown of the 1810's

  and had black hair, a pale skin, and very red lips. Her

  appearances were not frequent, but they were nerve-

  wracking enough to cause a long line of tenants and own-

  ers to move out. The old mansion had fallen into ruins,

  except for two rooms, when Uncle Igescu bought the prop-

  erty and built his house around the still-standing part.

  Despite the publicity about the present Igescu, not much

  was really known about him. He had inherited a chain of

  grocery stores and an export business from his uncle. He,

  or his managers, had built the stores into a large chain of

  supermarkets in the Southwest and had expanded the ex-

  port business.

  Childe found the ghost interesting. Whether or not she

  had been seen recently was not known, because Igescu

  had never said anything about her. Her last recorded

  appearance was in 1878, when the Reddes had moved out.

  Igescu's sketch in the newspaper showed a long lean face

  with a high forehead and high cheekbones and large eyes

  and thick eyebrows. He had a thick downdrooping Slovak

  coalminer's type of moustache.

  Heepish returned, and Childe, holding the sketch so he

  could see it, said, "This man certainly doesn't look Dracu-

  laish does he? More like the grocery store man, which he

  is, right?"

  Heepish poked his head forward and squinted his eyes.

  He smiled slightly. "Certainly, he doesn't look like Bela

  Lugosi. But the Dracula of the book, Bram Stoker's, had

  just such a moustache. Or one like it, anyway. I tried to

  get in touch with Igescu several times, you know, but I

  couldn't get through his secretary. She was nice but very

  firm. The Baron did not want to be disturbed with any such

  nonsense."

  Heepish's tone and weak hollow chuckle said that, if

  there were any nonsense, it was on the Baron's part.

  "You have his phone number?"

  "Yes, but it took me a lot of trouble to get it. It's un-

  listed."

  "You don't owe him anything," Childe said. "I'd like to

  have it. If I find anything you might be interested in, I'll

  tell you. How's that? 1 feel I owe you something, for your

  time and fine cooperation. Perhaps, I might be able to dig

  up something for your collection."

  "Well, you can have the number," Heepish said, warm-

  ing up. "But it's probably been changed."

  He conducted Childe downstairs and, while Childe

  waited under a shelf which held the heads of Franken-

  stein's monster, The Nak
ed Brain, and a huge black long-

  nailed warty rubbery hand of some nameless creature

  from some (deservedly) forgotten movie, Heepish plunged

  into the rear of the house down a dim corridor with plastic

  cobwebs and spiderwebs between ceiling and wall. He

  dived out of the shadows and webs with a little black book

  in his hand. Childe wrote down the number and address in

  his own little black book and asked permission to try the

  number. He dialed and got what he expected, nothing. The

  lines were still tied up. He tried the LAPD number. He

  tried his own phone. More nothing.

  Just for stubbornness, he tried Igescu's number again.

  And this time, as if the fates had decided that he should

  be favored, or by one of those coincidences too implausible

  to be believed in a novel but sometimes happening in

  "real" life, the connection went through. A woman's voice

  said, "Hello? My God, the phone works! What hap-

  pened?"

  "May I speak to Baron Igescu?" Childe said.

  "Who?"

  "Isn't this Baron Igescu's residence?"

  "No! Who is this speaking?"

  "Herold Wellston," Childe said, giving the name he had

  decided to use. "May I ask who is speaking?"

  "Go away! Or I'll call the police!" the woman screamed,

  and she hung up.

  "I don't think that was Igescu's secretary," Childe said

  in answer to Heepish's quizzical expression. "Somebody

  else has their number now."

  Not believing that it would work but willing to try, he

  dialed information. The call went right through, and he

  succeeded almost immediately in getting transferred to

  his contact. She did not have to worry about a supervisor

  listening in; she was the supervisor.

  "What happened, Linda? All of a sudden, the lines're

  wide open."

  "I don't know, one of those unexplainable lulls, the eye

  of the storm, maybe. But it won't last, you can bet your

  most precious possession on that, Herald. You better

  hurry."

  He told her what he wanted, and she got Igescu's un-

  listed number for him within a few seconds.

  "I'll drop off the usual to you in the mail before evening.

  Thanks, Linda, you beautiful beautiful."

  "I may not be here to get it if this smog keeps up," she