Budler or so mangled it that it could not be used for a
balloon. His head went spinning over and over toward
the corner, where Colben, turned upside down by the
weight of his hair, and the valve on the back of his
neck, stood on his head.
There were a number of women, only four of whom
had the right length or color of hair for Sybil. Despite
this, he inflated all of them. When he had blown up the
last one, he was panting as if he had run a half-mile
through the smog. The effort was only partly responsible.
He had been so certain that the last one would have
Sybil's features.
He sat down and sipped on another glass of water.
There were thirty-eight skins at one end of the room.
Most of them were upside down, but a few had fallen
against the others and leaned one way or another.
The light from a lamp in the corner shone through many
of them so that they seemed a mob of drunken ghosts.
The draft from the air-conditioning moved them back
and forth a little as if they were phantoms of the
drowned.
Thirty-eight. Twenty-five males. Thirteen females. Of
the males, fifteen were Caucasians, seven were Negroes,
three were Mongolians or Indians. Of the females, nine
were Caucasians and four were Negresses.
All were adult. If any had been children, he would
not have been able to endure it. He would have run
screaming down the hall. He thought he was tough, but
he would not have been able to stand the sight of the
inflated skins of children.
As it was, he was angry and sick. More angry than
sick at the moment. What were they planning on doing
with these … these corpse-balloons? Fill them with
hydrogen and send them flying over Los Angeles?
That was probably exactly what they would do. It
would be on a par, no, would surpass, the effrontery of
the films.
He rose and took a bottle of vodka by the neck and
went back to the doorway of the room in which he had
left Mrs. Grasatchow. She was sitting up and vomiting.
Blood was still trickling from her nostrils. On seeing
Childe, she snarled and managed to lift herself to her
feet. Blood and vomit smeared her immense belly.
"You'll beg me to kill you!" she screamed.
"Why will I?" he said. He stepped inside the room.
"Before I kill you, I want you to tell me why you did
that to all those people? And why did you strip off their
skins?"
"I'll rip your balls off!" she shouted. She charged him
then; he braced himself, the bottle lifted high. But she
stepped on the turd and her feet shot up and ahead of
her and she fell heavily on her back. She lay there, groan-
ing but seemingly knocked out. He hit her, once, on the
side of her head with the bottle she had dropped and
then locked the door to the room. The bottle in one hand
and her purse on the other arm, and his penis sticking
out—what a hero I make! he thought—he entered the
room in which he had first been chained.
But he came out of it at once and went into the
recreation room. He needed evidence. The police
wouldn't believe much of his story after he told it, but
they would have to believe that a part of it was true when
he showed them Colben and Budler. And another picked
at random who might turn out to have been reported
missing.
The deflation was as ghastly as he had expected. The
air hissed out, and Budler and the woman shrank
like the witch on whom Dorothy had thrown water. But
Colben—he always was slippery—got away and shot
around the room, butting into several of the phantoms
and knocking them heads over heels. He came to rest
draped over the bar. Childe pulled him off the bar then
as he had pulled him away several times when he was
living. He rolled him up and stuffed him into the purse on
top of Budler's head and the red-headed woman.
The section of wall opened for him after a number of
experiments of running his hand along the juncture of
the blocks which Dolores had pressed. He stepped inside
with a pencil-flashlight taken from the purse. The sec-
tion swung shut behind him, and he began walking
slowly. The passageway was warm and dusty and narrow.
It led past several rooms, each of which had a one-way
mirror but no entrance that he could detect. They were
similar to those lining the other hallway, A stairway con-
fronted him. He walked up this uneasily, although he
did not think that it could be a trap, since he was so
deep in the earth. But he could not be sure. At the top,
he was in a passageway which offered him two routes.
There were prints in the dust, a long pointed shoeprint
which he presumed was the baron's and those of a dog's
or a wolf's. The latest led to his right, so he decided to
follow them. One way was as good as another, and
something had to decide him.
His flashlight showed him several squares in the walls.
When he opened these, he saw through one-way mirrors
into a number of rooms, one of which he thought he
remembered. It was a Louis Quatorze bedroom, but it
did not seem quite like the one he remembered. It did
have an entrance through the paneling. He took it and
after stepping softly around it and looking into the bath-
room, knew this was not the same room. The queer
disturbing mirror was missing. He started to open the
door to look out into the next room or the hallway but
thought better of it. He placed his ear against the wood
and was glad that he had done so. The murmur of voices
came through the wood.
The keyhole let him hear more clearly but not clearly
enough. After turning off all the lights in the room, he
turned the knob carefully and eased the door open. The
voices came from the end of the hall. He could see part-
way down it but not far enough to see the speakers.
The voices were identifiable, except for two. These could
be Chornkin's and Krautschner's, since they had not
spoken when introduced or at the dinner table. They
could also be those of newcomers.
"… much energy from Magda, as I said before,"
Igescu was saying loudly. He seemed angered and,
perhaps, a little frightened. "I think Dolores had gathered
enough around her to take tangible and enduring shape,
enough to render Magda powerless for a moment and
suck her almost dry. She didn't kill Magda but she came
damn close. And then Glam, that damn fool! he deserved
what he got! But then what can you expect from his
kind? Glam fucked her, although I'd warned him often
enough what might happen. I think he thought he was
safe. But the very act of fucking gave her energy enough;
she came to and found Glam in her, how she hated him!
And you saw Glam!"
The strange male voice interrupted softly, Childe could
not understand
what he was saying. Igescu's reply was
loud enough.
"Yes, Magda got the energy but not enough! She's
stuck in stasis, and she won't get out unless she kills
another! Which will mean someone here, in this house!"
The strange female voice spoke then; it was even
softer than the male's. Igescu said, "Childe would do it!
I had other plans for him, but I can give them up! We
have to find Magda first and get her to Childe! Other-
wise … !"
"Dolores?" Mrs. Pocyotl said.
Childe could almost see the baron's shrug. The
baron said, "Who knows? She's X! A dangerous X! If
she can do that to Magda, she can do that to any of us.
But I doubt that she could attack more than one of us
at a time and I think she'd have to surprise us, just as
she must have surprised Magda! So, we'd better hang
together, as …"
A shout interrupted him. Footsteps sounded. The group
was going around the corner and down the stairs to the
cause of commotion. More shouts. He swung the door
wider and peeped down the hall. The only one there was
Bending Grass, who leaned his stocky form against the
wall and cocked his head to look down the stairway.
Then somebody called his name and he disappeared.
Childe ran down the hallway to the only door opened.
This was by the head of the steps, and the group had
been assembled outside it. He stuck his head in. The
room was strange, looked more like a movie director's
idea of a Turkish harem than anything else. There were
rugs and drapes and cushions and ottomans and even a
hookah and a dresser so low that Magda must have had
to sit cross-legged while she looked in the mirror. There
was a marble-lined bath sunk level with the floor. It
was almost large enough to qualify as a small swimming
pool. Beyond it was a low marble enclosure which pre-
sumably had served Magda as a bed, since it was piled
with cushions and pillows and canopied with many silk
veils.
Glam's black soft-leather boots stuck out over the en-
closure. Childe walked swiftly in, past the bath, which
was full of cold water, and looked over the marble railing.
Glam had died with his boots on. Also, his pants. He
had stripped off his shirt and undershirt and pulled his
pants down around his knees, but he had been too eager
to bother taking all of his clothes off.
There was blood on his pants and much blood on his
body. Blood had spurted out from his ears, nostrils, eyes,
mouth, anus, and penis. Something had violently
squeezed him. The ribs were caved in; the arms were
flattened; the hip bones had been pushed inward toward
each other. Not only blood had been expelled from every
aperture. The contents of the bowels and about six feet
of the bowels themselves had been pressed out of his
anus.
Near the bed, a section of wall stood open. Whether
Magda had taken this or Igescu had opened it to see
if she had taken it, Childe could not know. But he
could not linger long here; his route of escape was sud-
denly no longer a matter of choice. Voices announced
the return of the others. He might have had time to slip
back through the door and up the hallway, but he did
not dare chance it. He went through the opening in the
wall.
Before he had taken a dozen steps, he was seized.
He groaned with a despairing ecstasy and braced him-
self with both hands against the walls while he spouted
and shook. Afterward, he cursed, but he could do noth-
ing about his condition. He walked on. His penis still
stuck straight out and slightly at an upward angle, like
the bowsprit of a ship. The cone was working within him.
God knew how long its effect lasted, how long it would
take to melt entirely away.
Almost, he decided to hide in the passageway near
the still open panel and eavesdrop. But every second he
was in this house meant recapture and death, and he was
frightened because of what had happened to Glam and of
what the others had said about Magda. Frightened was
not strong enough. He was close to panic. And this was
strange, because the terror should have taken from him
any sexual stimulation whatsoever. Under these circum-
stances, he should have been unable to retain an erection.
But there it was, independent of his other feelings, as if a
switch had been thrown to place his genitals on a sepa-
rate circuit. The cone, whatever it was, must not only
be the prime mover of his state, it must also be the prime
feeder. It had to be furnishing the energy to keep man-
ufacturing all this spermatic fluid at such an extraordi-
nary rate of speed. Generally, when unusually stimulated,
when first in love, or sometimes when the marijuana hit
him just right, he could have three or four orgasms
within several hours. But, usually, one or two in an hour,
and he was done for four or five hours. He had some-
times twitted himself with being the most undersexed
private eye in history, without, of course, really believing
his self-deprecation. But now, he seemed to be a foun-
tain with a never-ending reservoir. And, of course, he
would be so in a situation where it was the last thing he
wanted.
Thus, when he thought he was far enough away from
the paneling, he turned on the flashlight. And he saw
the white figure of Dolores - coming toward him. Her
arms were open and she was smiling. Her eyes were
half-lidded but bright, and two patches of wetness shone
on her thighs. It seemed to be his misfortune to encounter
overlubricating women. However, after a century and a
half of enforced abstinence, she could not be blamed.
She barred his way. She was solid flesh enough, no
man knew that better than he, yet he hesitated to attack
her. The fate of Magda was warning enough. Moreover,
there was the chance that if he did what she wanted, he
might work off the effect of the cone. It was just possible.
And he thought that he probably had no choice, anyway.
So he put down his purse, turned off the flashlight, and
dropped his pants. She pulled him down on her and he
put his penis in swiftly and began to thrust without pre-
liminaries of any kind. He had hoped that he would come
at once, but even though he now had her soft wet flesh
around his penis, and though the pleasure was somewhat
heightened, he was unable to disengage himself from the
automatic effects of the cone.
At length he came and then, when he tried to pull
himself away, he found himself unable to. Her arms
looked feminine and soft enough and felt so, but she had
the strength of a python in each.
Thinking of pythons made him think of Magda, and
he became even more alarmed. If she came upon them
now, she would have him helpless … those coils …
Glam … He shuddered even as
he began to pump again.
His skin had turned cold and his hairs felt as if they
were bristling in the static of terror. His anus was a dot
of ice, a bull's eye for Magda if she crawled up behind
him and raised her head to unloose a hammer stroke.
He groaned and muttered, "I must be out of my mind,
I'm really believing that crap!" and then he groaned
again, this time because he was coming once more.
It was no use. Lying with Dolores was not canceling
or even diminishing the effects of the cone. And he was
certainly not stupid enough to bang away at her for the
sheer pleasure of it while his life was in danger. Especially
since he had had enough of this "pleasure" to last him
for a long time.
He tried to break loose. Her arms did not tighten, but
they also did not relax. He was not going to get out until
he had satisfied her or was unable to keep an erection,
and she was not going to be satisfied for a long time and
he did not know how long he would last, but he suspected
that it would be for hours and hours.
Remembering what he had done to Mrs. Grasatchow
during the fight, he bit down upon Dolores' nipple. His
bite did not take the nipple off, but it was painful enough
to cause her to open her arms and to scream. He was out
of her embrace and had jumped away to where she could
not reach him, pulled up his pants, stooped to pick up
the flashlight and purse, and was running down the pas-
sageway, before she had stopped screaming.
The noise, of course, would be heard in Magda's room
if the paneling were still open, and they would be in-
vestigating. His flashlight beam bounced up and down
and then went off into darkness at a corner. He stopped
and probed around. Apparently, he was at a dead end,
but he did not believe it. Shouts behind him sent him
into a frenzy of tapping and poking against the wall to
activate whatever mechanism moved this section. He felt
somebody brush his shoulder, somebody spoke in Span-
ish, and a white arm reached past him and touched a
cornice. Another arm pushed in on another cornice. The
blank wall became a blank darkness in which the thin
beam was lost. A hand pushed him on through—he
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