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CHAPTER 10

"As you say, a photo proves nothing," Childe said. He looked athis wristwatch. A half hour left. He opened his mouth to ask about thecar accident and the morgue incident but Magda Holyani entered.

She was a tall, slim, small-breasted woman of about thirty withbeautiful although disproportioned features and thick pale-yellow hair. Shewalked as if her bones were flexible or as if her flesh encased ten thousand delicate intricately articulated bones. The bones of her head seemed to bethin; hercheekbones were high, and her eyes were tilted. The mouth was toothin. There was something indefinably reptilian about her, or, to be more exact, snakish. This was not repulsive. After all, many snakes are beautiful.

Her eyes were so light he thought at first they were colorless, but, closer, they became a very light gray. Her skin was very white, as if sheshunned not only the sun but the day. It was, however, flawless. She had nomakeup whatever. The lips would have looked pale if she had been standing next to awoman with rouged lips, but set against her own white skin they seemed dark andbright.

She wore a tight-fitting black dress with a deep square-cutbodice and almost no back. Her stockings were black nylon, and the high-heeledshoes were black. She sat down after being introduced, revealing beautiful, butseemingly boneless, legs from the mid-thigh down. She took over theconversation from Igescu, who lit up an expensive cigar and seemed to become lost ingazing intothe smoke.

Childe tried to keep the conversation to a question-and-answerinterview, but she replied briefly and unsatisfactorily and followed with aquestion eachtime about himself or his work. He felt that he was beinginterviewed.

He was becoming desperate. This would be his only chance to findout anything, and he was not even getting a "feel" of rightness orwrongness aboutthis place and its tenants. They were a little odd, but this meantnothing, especially in Southern California.

He noticed that Glam was busying himself nearby with emptying theBaron's and Magda's ash trays, refilling the glasses, and at the same timemanaging tokeep his eyes on the woman. Once, he touched her, and she snapped herhead back and glared at him. Igescu was aware that Childe was taking this in, but he onlysmiled.

Finally, Childe ignored her to ask Igescu directly if he wouldcare to comment on the much-publicized "vampire" incident. After all, it wasthis that had brought him out here. And so far he had not learned much. Thearticle would be spare, if indeed he had enough data to make an article.

"Frankly, Mr. Wellston," Igescu said, "I permitted this interviewbecause I wanted to kill people's curiosity about this once and for all. Essentially, I ama man who likes privacy; I am wealthy but I leave the conduct of mybusiness to others and enjoy myself. You have seen my library. It is veryextensive and expensive and contains many first editions. It covers a wide varietyof subjects. I can say without bragging that I am an extremely well-readman in many languages. Ten shelves are filled with books on my hobby: precious stones. But you may also have observed several shelves filled with books onsuch subjects as witchcraft, vampirism, lycanthropy, and so on. I amsomewhat interested in these, but not, Mr. Wellston, because I take aprofessionalinterest."

He smiled over his cigar and said, "No, it is not because I am avampire, Mr. Wellston, that I have read in these subjects. I took no interestin them until after the incident that caused you to come here. I thought thatif I were to be accused of being a vampire, I had better find out just what avampire was. I knew something about them, of course, because after all, I do come from an area in which the peasants believe more in vampires and the devilthan they doin God. But my tutors never went much into folk-lore, and my contactswith the local non-nobility were not intimate.

"I decided to give you this interview so that, once and for all, this nonsense about my vampirism could be quelled. And also, to divertattention from me toward the only truly supernatural feature of this house: Doloresdel Osorojo. I have changed my mind about photographs for your article. Iwill have Magda send you a number. These will show some of the rooms in thehouse and various photos of the ghost. I will do this on the condition that youmake it clear in your article that I am a man who likes privacy and a quietlife and that the vampire talk is nonsense. After getting that out of the way, you maystress the ghost as much as you like. But you must also make it clearthat there will be no other interviews with anybody and that I do not like to bedisturbed by curiosity-seekers, spiritualists, or journalists. Agreed?"

"Certainly, Mr. Igescu. You have my word. And of course, asagreed, you willedit the article before it's published."

Childe felt a little dizzy. He wished that he had not acceptedthe brandy. It had been four years since he had drunk anything, and he would nothave broken his rule now, except that Igescu had praised the brandy as being sorare that he had been tempted to try it. And he had also not wanted to offend hishost in anyway if he could help it. He had, however, not had more than onetumbler. The stuff was either very potent or he was vulnerable after the long dryperiod.

Igescu turned his head to look at the tall dark grandfatherclock. "Your time is about up, Mr. Wellston."

Childe wondered why the baron was so concerned with time, when, by his ownadmission, he seldom went any place or did anything particularlypressing. Buthe did not ask. The baron would have regarded such a question as tooimpertinentto answer with anything but cold silence.

Igescu stood up. Childe rose also. Magda Holyani finished herdrink and gotup from the chair. Glam appeared in the doorway, but Igescu said, "Miss Holyaniwill drive Mr. Wellston to the gate, Glam. I need you for anotherduty."

Glam opened his mouth as if he meant to object but shut itimmediately. Hesaid, "Very well, sir," and wheeled around and walked away.

Igescu said, "If you'd like some more material for your article, Mr. Wellston, you might look up Michel Le Garrault in the UCLA library. I have copies of two of his works, first editions, by the way. The oldBelgian had somevery interesting and original theories about vampires, werewolves, and other so-called supernatural phenomena. His theory of psychic imprinting isfascinating. Have you read him? Can you read French?"

"Never heard of him," Childe said, wondering if he would havefallen into a trap if he had professed familiarity. "I do read French."

"There are many so-called authorities on the occult andsupernatural whohave not heard of Le Garrault or had no chance to read him. I recommend that yougo to the rare book section of the UCLA library and ask for Les Mursecroules. Translations of the original Latin were made in French and, curiously, inBohemian, and these are very rare indeed. There are, as far as Iknow, only tenLatin copies in the world. The Vatican has one; a Swedish monasteryhas two; I, of course, have one; the Kaiser of Germany had one but it was lostor, probably, stolen after he died at Doorn; and the other five are in statelibraries at Moscow, Paris, Washington, London, and Edinburgh."

"I'll look him up," Childe said. "Thanks very much for theinformation."

He turned to follow Igescu out and saw the woman in Spanishdress, high combstuck in her black hair, just stepping into a doorway at the end ofthe hall. She turned her head and smiled and then was gone.

Igescu said, calmly, "Did you see her, too?" "Yes, I did. But I couldn't see through her," Childe said. "I did," Magda Holyani said. Her voice shook a little. Childe


looked at her. She seemed to be angry, not frightened.


"As I said, she has been getting more and more opaque," Igescusaid. "The solidifying is so subtle, that it's only noticeable if you comparewhat she was six months ago with what she now is. The process has been very slowbut steady. When I first moved in here, she was almost invisible."

Childe shook his head. Was he really discussing a ghost as if itexisted? And why was Magda so upset? She had stopped and was staring at thedoorway as ifshe were resisting the impulse to chase after the thing.

"Many people, more people than care to admit, have seen ghostlyphenomena--something weird and unexplainable, anyway--but neither thephenomenondoesn't repeat itself or else the people visited ignore it and itgoes away. ButDolores, ah, there is another story! Dolores is ignored by me, exceptfor an occasional picture-taking. Magda used to ignore her but now she seemsto be getting on her nerves. Dolores is gaining substance from somewhere, perhaps fromsomeone in this house."

Certainly, the story of Dolores was gaining substance. If a photo of her was no evidence that she existed, neither was the fact that he had seenher. For some reason, Igescu might have planned this whole thing, and if he, Childe, wereto run after Dolores and try to seize her, what would his hands closeon? He had a feeling that he would grip solid flesh and that the young womanwould turn out to have come into existence about twenty years ago, not one hundredand fifty.

At the door, he shook hands with Igescu, thanked him, andpromised to sendhim a carbon of the article for editing. He followed Magda to the carand turned once before getting in to look back. Igescu was gone, but a blind hadbeen half-raised and Glam's bulldog face and batwing ears were plainlyvisible.

He got into the front seat with Magda at her invitation. Shesaid, "My jobpays very well, you know. It has to. It's the only thing that wouldmake it endurable. I almost never get a chance to go to town and the onlyones I can talk to, ever, are my boss and a few servants and occasionally aguest."

"Is it hard work?" Childe asked, wondering why she was tellinghim this. Perhaps she had to unburden herself to someone.

"No. I take care of his few social obligations, makeappointments, act asmiddle man between him and his business managers, do some typing onthe book he's writing on jewels, and spend more time than I care to stayingaway fromthat monster, Glam."

"He did nothing definite, but I got the idea that he's quiteattached to you," Childe said.

The beams swept across trees as the car went around a corner. Themoon was up now, and he could see more distinctly. He could be wrong, but itseemed to him that they were not on the same road he had traveled on the wayup.

"I'm taking the longer, no less scenic, route," she said, as ifshe had read his mind. "I hope you don't mind. I feel that I just have to talk tosomebody. You don't have to listen to me, of course, there's no reason why youshould."

"Pour it on me," he said. "I like to hear your voice."

They passed through the gateway of the inner wall. She droveslowly, infirst gear, as she talked, and once she put her hand on his leg. Hedid not move. She took her hand off after a minute when she had to stop thecar. Theyhad driven off the road onto a narrow stone-covered path which ledthrough abreak in the trees to a clearing. A small summerhouse, a round woodenstructure on a high round cement base, stood there. Its open sides were partially coveredwith vines, so that its interior was dark. A flight of cement stepsled up tothe wide entrance.

"I get very lonely," she said, "although the baron is charmingand does talk a lot. But he's not interested in me in the way some employers are intheir female employees."

He did not have to ask her what she meant by that. She had puther hand on his leg again, seemingly as accidentally or unselfconsciously asbefore. He said, "Are there wolves out here, too? Or are they all inside theinner wall?"

She was leaning closer now, and her perfume was so strong that itseemed to soak into his pores. He felt his penis swelling and he took her handand moved it so that it was on his penis. She did not try to take her handaway.

He reached over and ran a finger down along the curve of the leftbreast and down the cleavage into the breast. His hand went on down and slidbetween the cloth and breast and rubbed over the nipple. The nipple swelled, andshe shuddered. He kissed her with many slidings of his tongue along hersand over her teeth. She fumbled along his zipper, found it, pulled it slowlydown, andthen probed through the opening of his jockey shorts. He unbuttonedthe front of her dress and quickly verified what he had suspected. She worenothing beneaththe dress except for a narrow garter belt. The breasts were small butshapely. He bent over and took a nipple in his mouth and began sucking. Shewas breathingas hard as he.

"Let's go in the summerhouse," she said softly. "There's a couchin there."

"All right," he said. "But before we go any further, you shouldknow I'm unprepared. I don't have any rubbers."

He would not have been surprised if she said that she had some inher handbag. It wouldn't have been the first time that this had happenedto him.

But she said, "Never mind. I won't get pregnant."

Shakily, he followed her out of the car, sliding past the wheel. She turned and slid the dress off her shoulders. The moonlight gleamed on thewhitest flesh possible, on dark wet nipples, and dark triangle of pubic hairs underthe garterbelt. She kicked her shoes off and, clad only in belt and stockings, swayedtowards the summerhouse.

He followed her, but he was not so excited that he did not wonderabout cameras and sound devices in the summerhouse. He knew that he was good-looking, but he was not, after all, a god who swept all women before him on a tide of desire. If Magda Holyani seduced him on such short acquaintance, she either was very hard-up or had a motive that he might not like if he knew. Or, possibly, both. She did not seem to be faking her passion.


If, for some reason, she thought she could lead him so far, turnhim on and then turn him off, she was going to be surprised. He had suffered agood part ofyesterday with a painful ball-ache because of his unfinished lovemaking withSybil, and he did not intend to suffer again.

Inside the house, he looked around. There could be no camerashidden here. If there were any, they'd have to be attached to the trees on theedge of theclearing, and he could not see how they would be able to film much, even if theywere equipped with black-light devices. The vines and their supportswould bar anything except patches of skin and an occasional glimpse of a heador limb. Besides, what did he have to lose? Blackmail could not be the objectof such a game.

Magda yanked off the blanket acting as a dust cover for the sofa. She turned then, the moonlight falling through the vines dappling her pale skin. Childe took her in his arms and kissed her again, ran his hands down herback--she had the muscle tone of a young puma--the inward fall of the waist and theoutward fall of the hips. The garter belt annoyed him, so he sank to hisknees and unfastened the stockings and pulled them down and then pulled down onthe garterbelt. She kicked them to one side and put her hands on the back ofhis head and pulled him towards her cunt. He allowed her to press his face againstthe hairs, and he ran his tongue out and inserted it just below the opening ofthe lips andtickled the clitoris with its tip. She moaned and clutched himtighter.

But he stood up, sliding his tongue up from her cunt and alongher belly andup to her nipple, which he began to suck again. He stepped backwardsuntil she fell on the sofa, her legs sticking out, her heels resting on thefloor. Then he got down on his knees again and licked her clitoris once more andthen slid down and thrust his tongue again and again into her vagina. She began totwist her hips a little, but he reached up and pressed down on her belly toindicate that she should hold still.

Her cunt tasted as sweet as Sybil's and the hairs seemed to besofter. He put one finger inside her cunt and another finger of the same hand upher anus and then, working the hand slowly in and out, rubbed his tongue back and forth over her clitoris and then later tongue-fucked her while his fingersincreased the speed of their in-and-outs into her cunt and anus.

She came with a scream and a sudden tightening of thighs abouthis head. The grip was so strong that he could not move his fingers.

He could stand it no longer. He had had no emissions for twoweeks because of involvement in a case which he had wound up just before Colbendisappeared. He had been busy night and day and when he managed to snatch somesleep even hisunconscious had been too tired to whip up a sexual dream. Then thefrustration with Sybil had made him hypersensitive. In a minute, he was going tocome, whether he was in Magda or the air.

"I can't wait," he said. "It's been too long."

He started to get down beside her and to help her scoot up on thesofa so she could lie full length. But she said, "You're ready to come?"

"It's been too long. I'm full to bursting," he groaned.

She pushed him down and ran her tongue along his belly and wethis pubichairs with her saliva and tongue and then closed her lips upon thehead of his cock. She slid it back and forth in her lips twice, and with a screamthat matched hers of a moment ago, he burst in her mouth.

He lay there, feeling as if a tide inside him were withdrawing tosome far-off horizon. He did not say anything; he expected her to get upand spit outthe stuff, as Sybil always did. Sybil also always immediately brushedher teeth and gargled with Listerine. Not that he blamed her, certainly. Hecould understand that, once the excitement was gone, the thick ropy stuffcould become disgusting. He knew how it tasted. When he had been fourteen, he andhis fifteen year old brother had gone through a period of about six months whenthey hadsucked each other off. And then, by mutual and silent consent, theyhad quit andthat had been the last of his homosexual experiences and, as far-ashe knew, ofhis brother's. Certainly, his brother, who was such a cocksman thathe must be a compulsive, hated fairies, and once, many years later, when Childehad referred to their experimentations, his brother had not known what he wastalking about. He was either too ashamed of it now to admit it or else had actuallyburied it so deep that he did not remember.

But Magda did not leave him. She audibly swallowed several timesand then renewed her sucking. He sat up and bent over so he could cup herbreasts in his hands while she was mouthing his glands. And then, just as his peniswas at almost full erection, he thought of Colben and the iron teeth. This woman could

be the actress in that movie. She looked up at him suddenly and said, "What's wrong?" "Listen," he said, "and don't get mad. Or laugh. But do you have

false

teeth?" She sat up and said, "What?" Her voice was thick with fluid. "Do you have false teeth?" "Why do you want to know?" Then she laughed and said, "You want

me to take

them out?" "If you have false teeth." "Do I look that old?" "I've known several nineteen-year-olds who had false choppers,"

he said. "Kiss me and I'll tell you," she said. "Certainly." He held her tightly while he probed her mouth with his tongue. He

sniffed in the wild-beast odor of his own semen and tasted the thick-oil gluey- seemingproduct of his own body. Far from being unpleasant, it excited him. She had her hand on his cock, and, feeling it swell, immediately withdrew fromhis arms and went down on him again. Evidently, she did not intend for him to findout if she did have false teeth or perhaps she thought that his tongue wouldhave determined that.

Whatever her reasons, she would not tell him, unless he were touse force, he was sure of that. He leaned back and let her work on him. And after a while he rolled her over and she opened her legs and took his penis gentlyin her fingers and guided him in. He had no sooner sunk in to the hairs thanshe squeezed down on his cock with her muscles and continued to squeezeas if she had a hand inside her cunt. And then, once again, thinking of thefilm, hebecame soft. He remembered that bulge behind the G-string of thewoman in the film.

"For God's sake," she said. "What's the matter now?"

"I thought I saw somebody in the shadows," he said, the onlyexcuse he could grasp at the moment. "Glam?"

"It had better not be," she said. "I'll kill him if it is. Sowill the baron."

She stood up on the sofa and called, "Glam? Glam? If you'rethere, youasshole, you better start running and fast. Otherwise, it's the otherend of the wolf for you."

There was no answer. Childe said, "The other end of the wolf? What do youmean?"

"I'll tell you later," she said. "He's not out there; if he is, he isn't going to bother us. Come on, please. I'm ready to explode."

Instead of reaching for him, she got down off the sofa and crossed the summerhouse to a small cabinet on a stand in the shadows. She came back with a bottle with a squat body and a long narrow neck with a wide mouth. Itwas half-full. She drank some, swished some in her mouth, and still, holding it, pressed her lips against his and squirted the liquid into his mouth. It was hot and thick and slightly tart. He swallowed some and immediately felthis anxieties draining off.

"What the hell is that?"

"It's a liqueur made in Igescu's native province," she said. "It's supposedto have an aphrodisiac effect. I understand that there isn't any trueaphrodisiac, but this stuff does one thing. It burns away theinhibitions. Not that I thought I'd ever have to use it on you."

"I won't need any more of it," he said. His penis was rising asif it were a balloon being filled for a transatlantic voyage. A beam of moonlightfell on it, and Magda, seeing it, squealed with delight.

"Oh, you beauty! You great big beauty!"

She lay down and raised her legs and he entered again and then, for a longlong time, said nothing. It was a peculiarity of his that if he wereblown at the beginning, he took a long time coming the second time. Magdaseemed to have an almost unbroken series of orgasms during this time and when hefinally cameshe clawed his back until the blood ran off. He did not mind at the time, butlater he cursed her. It was a theory of his that women who clawedyour back whenthey came were actually attempting to prove how passionate they were, but he was willing to admit that he could be wrong.

They lay there for some time by each other, not saying a word. They weresheathed in sweat and would have been grateful for a breeze. But theair was as still as before.

Finally, he said, "There's no use your playing with it. Not forsome time. I'm shot out. I could stay and be all right within an hour, but Ihave to gopretty soon."

He was thinking that he was supposed to have called Mustanoja bynow.

"I'm not unsatisfied, baby," she said, "but I could be whipped upinto enthusiasm again and I'd like to be. You don't know how long it'sbeen for me!"

She reached for the bottle, which was on the floor by the sofa. "Let's have another drink and see what happens." He watched her to make sure that she drank again out of the


bottle before he drank. He took a small swallow and then said, "What's this about Glamand the other end of the wolf?"

She laughed and said, "That big ugly dumbshit! He wants me, but I can't stand him, and he'd probably try to rape me, he's such a moron, buthe knows that if I didn't kill him, Igescu would! You must know about thewolves, sinceyou mentioned them. I was walking in the woods one evening when Iheard one of the wolves howling and snarling. It sounded as if it were in pain, or, at least, in trouble of some kind. I went up a hill and looked down in ahollow, and therewas the female wolf, her head in four nooses, and the ends of thenooses tied to trees. She couldn't go back or forward, and there was Glam, all hisclothes off except for his socks and shoes, holding the wolf by the tail andfucking her. Ithink he must have been hurting her, I don't know how big a femalewolf's cunt is, but I don't think they're built to take an enormous cock likeGlam's. I really think she was hurting. But Glam, that animal Glam, was fuckingher."

Childe was silent for a moment and then he said, "What about themale wolf? Wasn't Glam afraid of the male wolf?"

She laughed and said, "Oh, that's another story," and she laughedfor a longtime.

When she stopped, she raised the bottle and poured liquid on hernipples andthen on her pubic hairs.

"Lick it off, baby, and then we'll make love again."

"It won't do any good," Childe said. But he rolled over andsucked on her nipples for a while and finger-fucked her until she came again andagain andthen he kissed her belly, traveling downward until his mouth wasagainst thetight hairs of her cunt. He tongued off the liqueur and then jabbedhis tongueas far as he could until his jaws and tongue hurt. When he stopped, he was rolled over by her strong hands and she gently nibbled at his penisuntil it rose like a trout to a fly. He mounted her from behind, and she toldhim to be quiet, he did not have to wear himself out. She contracted themuscles of her vagina as if it were a hand and this time he kept his erection. Heseemed to be getting a little dizzy and a little fuzzy. He knew that he had made amistake drinking that liquid; it couldn't be poison, because she wouldn'thave drunk it also. But he wondered if it had a property of becoming narcotic if itwere on epidermis. Could its interaction with the skin of her nipples andcunt have produced something dangerous only to him?

Then the thought and the alarm were gone.

He remembered vaguely an orgasm that seemed to go on forever, like the thousand-year orgasm promised the faithful of Islam in heaven when they areenfolded by a houri. There were blanks thereafter. He could remember, as if he were seeing himself in a fog, getting his car and driving off whilethe road wiggled like a snake and the trees bent over and made passes at himwith their branches. Some of the trees seemed to have big knotty eyes and mouthslike barkycunts. The eyes became nipples; sap oozed out of them. A tree gavehim the finger with the end of a branch.

"Up yours, too," he remembered yelling, and then he was on abroad road with many lights around him and horns blaring and then there was the sametree againand this time it beckoned at him and as he got closer he could seethat its mouth was a barky cunt and that it was promising him something he hadnever had before.

And so it was. Death.


CHAPTER 9 | Image of the Beast | CHAPTER 11