Image of the Beast

The scrapbooks were titled with various subjects: MOVIE VAMPIRES, GERMAN AND SCANDINAVIAN, 1919-1939; WEREWOLVES, AEMRICAN, 1865-1900; WITCHES, PENNSYLVANIAN, 1880-1965; GOLEM, EXTRA-FORTEANA, 1929-1960; SOUTHERNCALIFORNIA VAMPIRE FOLKLORE AND GHOST STORIES, 1910-1967; and so on.

Childe had gone through thirty-two such titles before he came tothe last one. They had all been interesting but not very fruitful, and he didnot know that the one which was in his hands was relevant. But he felt his heart quickenand his back became less stiff. It could not be called a clue, but itat 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 longparagraphswere devoted 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. Accordingto the article, no one could get close enough to it on the ground touse a camera effectively. The house was set on a low hill in the middle ofa large--for Southern California--walled estate. The grounds were wellwooded so that the house could not be seen from anywhere outside the walls. Thenewspapercameramen had been unable to get photos of it in 1948, when the ownerof Trolling House had become temporarily famous, and the newsmen had nobetter luck in 1958, when this article, recapitulating the events of ten yearsbefore, hadbeen published. There was, however, a picture of a pencil sketch madeof the "vampire," Baron Igescu, by an artist who had depended upon hismemory afterseeing the baron at a charity ball. No photographs of the baron wereknown to be in existence. Very few people had seen the baron, although he hadmade several appearances at charity balls and once at a Beverly Hills taxpayersprotestmeeting.

Trolling House was named after the uncle of the present owner. The uncle, also an Igescu, had traveled from Rumania to England in 1887, stayedthere one year, and then moved on to America in 1889. Upon becoming a citizenof the United States of America, Igescu had changed his name to Trolling. Noone knew why. The mansion was on woodland surrounded on all sides by a highbrick wall topped with iron spikes between which barbed wire was strung. Builtin very lateVictorian style in 1900 in what was then out-of-the-way agriculturalland, itwas a huge rambling structure. The nucleus was a part of the originalhouse. This was, naturally, a Spanish-style mansion which had been built bythe eccentric (some said, mad) Don Pedro del Osorojo in the wilderness ofwhat was to become, a century later, Beverly Hills. Del Osorojo was supposedto have been a relative of the de Villa family, which owned this area, but thatwas not authenticated. Actually little was known of del Osorojo except thathe was a recluse with an unknown source of wealth. His wife came from Spain(this waswhen California was under Spanish rule) and was supposed to have beena Castilian noble.

The present owner, Igescu, was involuntarily publicized in 1938when he was brought dead-on-arrival into the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital after acar collision at Hollywood and La Brea. At twilight of the following day, the countycoroner was to perform an inquest. Igescu had no perceptible woundsor injuries.

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

This story was picked up by newspapers throughout the Statesbecause a reporter jestingly pointed out that Igescu had (1) never been seen inthe daytime, (2) was of Transylvanian origin, (3) came from anaristocratic familywhich had lived for centuries in a castle (now abandoned) on top of ahigh steephill in a remote rural area, (4) had shipped his uncle's body back tothe old country to be buried in the family tomb, but the coffin haddisappeared enroute, and (5) was living in a house already well known because ofthe ghost ofDolores del Osorojo.

Dolores was supposedly the spirit of Don Pedro's daughter. Shehad died of grief, or killed herself because of grief. Her lover, or suitor, wasa Norwegiansea-captain who had seen Dolores at a governor's ball during one ofher rare appearances in town. He seemed to have lost his sanity over her. Heneglectedhis ship and its business, and his men deserted or were thrown intothe local jail for drunke

Lars Ulf Larsson, the captain, barred by the old don from seeingDolores, managed to sneak into the house and woo her so successfully that shepromised torun 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 DonPedro had killed him and buried his body on the estate. Another said that thebody hadbeen thrown into the sea.

Dolores had gone into mourning and died several weeks later. Herfather went hunting into the hills several weeks after she was buried and failedto return. Search parties could not find him; it was said that the Devil hadtaken him.

Later occupants of the house reported that they sometimes sawDolores in the house or out on the lawn. She was always dressed in a black formalgown of the1810's and had black hair, a pale skin, and very red lips. Herappearances werenot frequent, but they were nerve wracking enough to cause a longline of tenants and owners to move out. The old mansion had fallen into ruins, exceptfor two rooms, when Uncle Igescu bought the property and built hishouse around the still-standing part.

Despite the publicity about the present Igescu, not much wasreally knownabout him. He had inherited a chain of grocery stores and an exportbusiness from his uncle. He, or his managers, had built the stores into alarge chain ofsupermarkets in the Southwest and had expanded the export business.

Childe found the ghost interesting. Whether or not she had beenseen recently was not known, because Igescu had never said anything abouther. 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 ahighforehead and high cheekbones and large eyes and thick eyebrows. Hehad a thick down drooping Slovak coal miner's type of moustache.

Heepish returned, and Childe, holding the sketch so he could see it, said, "This man certainly doesn't look Draculaish does he? More like the grocery store man, which he is, right?"

Heepish poked his head forward and squinted his eyes. He smiledslightly. "Certainly, he doesn't look like Bela Lugosi. But the Dracula of thebook, BramStoker's, had just such a moustache. Or one like it, anyway. I triedto get intouch with Igescu several times, you know, but I couldn't get throughhis secretary. She was nice but very firm. The Baron did not want to bedisturbed with any such nonsense."

Heepish's tone and weak hollow chuckle said that, if there wereanynonsense, 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 unlisted." "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? Ifeel I owe yousomething, for your time and fine cooperation. Perhaps, I might beable to digup something for your collection."

"Well, you can have the number," Heepish said, warming up. "Butit's probably been changed."

He conducted Childe downstairs and, while Childe waited under ashelf which held the heads of Frankenstein's monster, The Naked Brain, and a hugeblack long-nailed warty rubbery hand of some nameless creature from some(deservedly) forgotten movie, Heepish plunged into the rear of the house down adim corridor with plastic cobwebs and spiderwebs between ceiling and wall. Hedived 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 permissionto try thenumber. He dialed and got what he expected, nothing. The lines werestill tied up. He tried the LAPD number. He tried his own phone. More nothing.