Image of the Beast

Why hadn't he done this before? Because he had been too harriedto have time to think, that was why. No more. He was fighting back.

If he could find a room with windows to the outside, he would gothrough it, even if it meant a drop from the second story. He'd let them worryabout the fire while he got over the walls to his car and then to the police.

He heard voices outside the door to the room and went back into the passageway. He ran down it, using his flashlight, although the firewas providing an adequate twilight for him. A corner took him away fromit, however. He stopped and sent the beam down one corridor to check ahead of him. Nothingthere. He started to turn to probe the corridor on the other side ofthe intersection, and he froze. Something had growled at the far end.

Faint clicks sounded. Claws or nails on the naked boards of the

floor? A howl made him jump. It was a wolf. Suddenly, the clicking, which had been leisurely, became rapid.

The wolf howled again. He turned his flashlight on the corner of thepassageway at thefar end just in time to see a big gray shape come around it, eyesglowing in thebeam. Then the shape, snarling, was bounding toward him.

And behind it came another.

Childe thrust almost blindly at the hurtling shape. His swordtraveled in the general direction of the beast as it sprang, but its speed andferocious voice disconcerted him. Despite this, the blade struck it squarelysomewhere. A shock ran along his arm, and, although he had leaned forward in whathe hopedwas a reasonable imitation of a fencer's lunge, he was thrownbackward. He landed on his rump but scrambled to his feet, yelling as he did so. The flashlight, which had fallen, was pointing down along the floor atthe second wolf. This was several yards away and crouching as it advanced slowlytoward Childe.

It was smaller, the bitch of the pair, and presumably had sloweddown to find out what was going on before it attacked.

Childe did not want to expose his side to the bitch, but he didnot want to meet her charge without a weapon. He grabbed the hilt of the rapier, put hisfoot on the body, and pulled savagely. The carcass was palelyilluminated in the side-wash of the flashlight. The sword shone dully, and darknessstained the fur around the beast's neck. The rapier had gone in three-quarters of itslength, through the neck and out past the bottom rear of the skull.

The rapier pulled out reluctantly but swiftly. The shewolfsnarled and bounded forward, her nails clicking briefly. Childe had a few inchesof blade to withdraw yet and would have been taken on the side. Her jaws wouldprobably haveclamped on his shoulder or head, and that would have been the end ofhim. A wolf's jaws were strong enough to sever a man's wrist with one snap.

The bitch, however, slipped on something and skidded on oneshoulder into the rump of the dead wolf. Childe leaped backward, taking the swordwith him and then as quickly lunged and ran her through the shoulder as shebounded to her feet. She snarled again and her jaws clashed at him, but he pushedwith all his weight against the hilt and drove her back so that she fell over thedead wolf. He continued to push, digging his heels into the wood. The blade sankdeeper andpresently the tip ground against the floor. Before that, the bitchwas silent and still.

Shaking, breathing raspingly as if his lungs needed oil, hepulled therapier out and wiped it on the she-wolf's fur. He picked up theflashlight andran its beam over the wolves to make sure they were dead. Theiroutlines were becoming indistinct. He felt dizzy and had to shut his eyes and leanagainst thewall. But he had seen what the bitch had slipped on. A smear of hissemen.

Voices drifted around the corner from which the wolves had come. He ran down the passageway, hoping that they would become too occupied withfighting thefires to chase him. The corridor ran into another at right angles toit, and hetook the left turn. His beam, dancing ahead of him, picked out asection of wall and a locking mechanism. He went through it, his sword ready, but hewas unable to restrain his wheezing. Any occupant of the room, unless he weredeaf, wouldbe warned.

The room was broad and high-ceilinged, so high that it must havedisplacedtwo rooms above it and may have gone almost to the roof. The wallswere paneledin dark oak, and huge rough-hewn oak beams ran just below the heavilyshadowed ceiling. The floor was dark polished oak. Here and there was a wolfor bear skin. The bed was a framework with eight thick rough-hewn oaken logs, low footboard and headboard, and planks laid across the framework.

Lying on the planks was a huge oak log squared off at thecorners. It had been gouged out on its top with axe and chisel. The gouge was wideand deepenough to hold a tall man. It did hold a man. The baron, covered witha bearskin to his neck, lay on his back in the hollow. There was dirt beneathhim and dirt humped under his head for a pillow.

His face was turned straight upward. His nose looked huge andlong. Hislower lip had slipped a little to reveal the long white teeth. Hisface was as greenish-gray as if he had just died. This may have been because ofthe peculiargreenish light flickering from four fat green candles, two at eachcorner of the log-coffin.

Childe pulled the bearskin back. The baron was naked. He put hishand on the baron's chest and then on his wrist pulse. There was no detectableheartbeat, and the chest did not move. An eyelid, peeled back, showed onlywhite.

Childe left the baron and pulled two drapes back. Two enormousFrench windows were grayly bared. It was daytime, but the light was verydark, as ifnight had left an indelible stain. The sky was dark gray withstreamers of green-gray dangling here and there.

Childe looked in the darkness under the planks supporting thelog-coffin. Hefound a roughly-worked oaken lid. He felt cold. The silence, thesputteringgreen candles, the heavy dark wood everywhere, the ponderous beams, which seemed to drip shadows, the roughness, indeed, the archaicness, of the room, and the corpse-like sleeper, who was so expected and yet so unexpected--thesefell like heavy shrouds, one over the other, upon him. His breath sawed in histhroat.

Was this room supposed to be a reproduction of a room in theancestral castle in Transylvania? Why the ubiquitous primitively worked oak? And why thiscoffin when Igescu could afford the best?

Some things here accorded with the superstitions (which, as faras he was concerned, were not superstitions). Other things be could not accountfor.

He had a hunch that this room was built to conform to specifications farmore ancient than medieval ones, that the oak and the log and thecandles had been in use long before the Transylvanian mountains were so named, long beforeRumania existed as a colony of the Romans, long before the mothercity, Rome, existed, and probably long before the primitive Indo-European speakers began tospread out of the homeland of what would someday be called Austriaand Hungary. A type of this room, and a type of this man who slept in the log, inone form or another, had existed in central Europe, and elsewhere, when men spokelanguagesnow perished without a record and when they still used flint tools.

Whatever the origin of his kind, however closely or distantly heresembled the creature of folklore, legend, and superstition, Igescu was forcedto be as good as dead when daylight arrived. The rays of the sun containedsome force responsible for diurnal suspended animation. Perhaps some otherphenomenonco