There were some socks but no shoes. He put the socks on andcontinued his search. If only a weapon were here. No luck. Too much to hope for, ofcourse. The two lower drawers were crammed with flat transparent plasticenvelopescontaining something unidentifiable. He opened one and shook out thecontents. It fluttered out like a transparent flag to a length of about sixfeet. It had four extensions, a thick mass of hair on one end, and a circularpatch of hairin the middle. Just beside the thick mass of hair was a small red valve like that on a child's plastic inflatable swimming pool. He blew it up andfelt weakened by the exertion before he had completed the job.
After seeing what he had, he was horrified, although he hadsuspected whatthe result would be.
Somehow, Colben's skin had been stripped from his body and madeinto a balloon. The apertures: earholes, mouth, anus, and the mutilatedpenis, had beensewn over with flaps of skin. His eyes had been painted blue, and themouth was painted with a facsimile of labial red. The pubic hairs were stillattached, andthese, together with the sewed fold between his legs, gave him awomanish appearance.
Childe did not have time to deflate him. He pushed him sailingaway, andfrantically removed the contents of the other envelopes. One was thehead of Budler. He presumed that the wolf in the film had eaten the rest ofBudler or so mangled it that it could not be used for a balloon. His head wentspinning overand over toward the corner, where Colben, turned upside down by theweight ofhis 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 rightlength orcolor of hair for Sybil. Despite this, he inflated all of them. Whenhe had blown up the last one, he was panting as if he had run a half-milethrough thesmog. The effort was only partly responsible. He had been so certainthat the last one would have Sybil's features.
He sat down and sipped on another glass of water. There werethirty-eightskins at one end of the room. Most of them were upside down, but afew had fallen against the others and leaned one way or another. The lightfrom a lampin the corner shone through many of them so that they seemed a mob ofdrunken ghosts. The draft from the air-conditioning moved them back and fortha 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 orIndians. Of the females, nine were Caucasians and four were Negresses.
All were adult. If any had been children, he would not have beenable to endure it. He would have run screaming down the hall. He thought hewas tough, but he would not have been able to stand the sight of the inflatedskins of children.
As it was, he was angry and sick. More angry than sick at themoment. What were they planning on doing with these...these corpse-balloons? Fillthem with hydrogen and send them flying over Los Angeles?
That was probably exactly what they would do. It would be on apar, no, would surpass, the effrontery of the films.
He rose and took a bottle of vodka by the neck and went back tothe doorway of the room in which he had left Mrs. Grasatchow. She was sitting upand vomiting. Blood was still trickling from her nostrils. On seeingChilde, shesnarled and managed to lift herself to her feet. Blood and vomitsmeared her immense belly.
"You'll beg me to kill you!" she screamed.
"Why will I?" he said. He stepped inside the room. "Before I killyou, Iwant you to tell me why you did that to all those people? And why didyou stripoff their skins?"
"I'll rip your balls off!" she shouted. She charged him then; hebraced himself, the bottle lifted high. But she stepped on the turd and herfeet shot up and ahead of her and she fell heavily on her back. She lay there, groaningbut seemingly knocked out. He hit her, once, on the side of her headwith the bottle she had dropped and then locked the door to the room. Thebottle in one hand and her purse on the other arm, and his penis sticking out--whata hero I make! he thought--he entered the room in which he had first beenchained.
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 toldit, butthey would have to believe that a part of it was true when he showedthem Colben and Budler. And another picked at random who might turn out to havebeen reported missing.
The deflation was as ghastly as he had expected. The air hissedout, andBudler and the woman shrank like the witch on whom Dorothy had thrownwater. But Colben--he always was slippery--got away and shot around the room, butting intoseveral of the phantoms and knocking them heads over heels. He cameto rest draped over the bar. Childe pulled him off the bar then as he hadpulled himaway several times when he was living. He rolled him up and stuffedhim 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 experimentsof runninghis hand along the juncture of the blocks which Dolores had pressed. He steppedinside with a pencil-flashlight taken from the purse. The sectionswung shutbehind him, and he began walking slowly. The passageway was warm anddusty andnarrow. It led past several rooms, each of which had a one-way mirrorbut no entrance that he could detect. They were similar to those lining theother hallway. A stairway confronted him. He walked up this uneasily, although he didnot 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 offeredhim two routes. There were prints in the dust, a long pointed shoeprint whichhe presumed was the baron's and those of a dog's or a wolf's. The latestled 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 heopenedthese, he saw through one-way mirrors into a number of rooms, one ofwhich he thought he remembered. It was a Louis Quatorze bedroom, but it didnot seem quite like the one he remembered. It did have an entrance through thepaneling. He took it and after stepping softly around it and looking into thebathroom, knew this was not the same room. The queer disturbing mirror wasmissing. Hestarted to open the door to look out into the next room or thehallway butthought better of it. He placed his ear against the wood and was gladthat he had done so. The murmur of voices came through the wood.
The keyhole let him hear more clearly but not clearly enough. After turningoff all the lights in the room, he turned the knob carefully andeased the door open. The voices came from the end of the hall. He could see partwaydown it but not far enough to see the speakers. The voices were identifiable, except fortwo. These could be Chornkin's and Krautschner's, since they had notspoken whenintroduced or at the dinner table. They could also be those ofnewcomers.
"...much energy from Magda, as I said before," Igescu was sayingloudly. Heseemed angered and, perhaps, a little frightened. "I think Doloreshad gatheredenough around her to take tangible and enduring shape, enough torender Magdapowerless for a moment and suck her almost dry. She didn't kill Magdabut she came damn close. And then Glam, that damn fool! he deserved what hegot! Butthen what can you expect from his kind? Glam fucked her, although I'dwarned him often enough what might happen. I think be thought he was safe. Butthe very actof 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 notunderstand what he was saying. Igescu's reply was loud enough.