Image of the Beast / Blown
Page 14
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-