19 Nocturne Boulevard - Lovecraft 5 THE SHUNNED HOUSE - Reissue
Charles takes the lead again, recounting the adventures of an unfortunate uncle.
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Cast List
- Herbert - Carl Cubbedge
- Warren - Glen Hallstrom
- Charles - Michael Coleman (Tales of the Extraordinary)
- Richard - Philemon Vanderbeck
- Edward - Mathias Rebne-Morgan
- Randolph - Sebastian Orr
- Elihu, uncle - Charles Austin Miller
- Ann, servant - Julie Hoverson
Music by incompetech.com and a-mclassical.com
Editing and Sound:\xa0\xa0 Julie Hoverson
Cover Design:\xa0 Julie Hoverson / Brett Coulstock
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"What kind of a place is it?
Why it's Charles' study again, can't you tell?"
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THE SHUNNED HOUSE (Lovecraft 5, #6)
Cast:
- Edward, a writer
- Charles, a dilettante
- Herbert, a scientist
- Richard, a painter
- Warren, a professor
- Randolph, cousin
- Elihu, uncle
- Ann, servant
\xa0
OLIVIA \xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0[opening credits] Did you have any trouble finding it?\xa0 What do you mean, what kind of a place is it?\xa0 Why, we've returned to Charles' comfortable brownstone, can't you tell?\xa0
Scene 1.\xa0\xa0\xa0
MUSIC
SOUND \xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0MUSIC PLAYS
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 I should warn you all from the outset that this is a rather more mundane story than most of those brought to this gathering.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 As long as you feed me this well, Charles, I'd listen to a story about a dog.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Oh?\xa0 I know this fellow in Andalusia...\xa0 A friend of a friend.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 [cutting in] My story involves... a vampire.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 And you tell us?\xa0 Right up front?\xa0 That's poor narrative framing.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 No, no, there's a perfectly good reason to get it out in the open right away.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Vampires?\xa0 Haven't they been adequately explained by contemporary science?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 See?\xa0
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 The existence of vampires has been .. debatable... for several centuries.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Ah.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 The vampire myth is almost certainly explainable.\xa0 Most simply by common or garden anemia--
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Or any number of similarly communicable diseases, for example, consumption--
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Tuberculosis.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 --which, until very recently, were often attributed to supernatural origin.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 But now, with our understanding of germs and the vectors of infection, vampires must be relegated to the vast list of creatures that have been debunked.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 [aside] I'll give Warren and Herbert one more minute.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 I'm just stunned that they seem to be on the same side.\xa0 Science and History are usually at odds.
EDWARD \xa0\xa0\xa0Fiction can go either way.\xa0
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 It's fascinating to consider the mindset that created a myth such as that of the vampire.\xa0
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Created?\xa0 You think someone sat down and designed them, like a new model of automobile?
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Created it to account for otherwise inexplicable events.\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 More like a detective, trying to piece together a crime from the clues.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Do you know that in historical folklore, vampires were said to always return and prey on members of their own family before passing to others?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Again, a simple disease contagion statistic.\xa0 With the substandard hygiene of past eras, it was almost inevitable that those in close proximity to a dying person were the most likely--
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Enough!\xa0
[moment of silence]
Scene 2.\xa0\xa0\xa0
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Thank you for the erudite exposition.\xa0 I'm quite sure we'll come back to this throughout the lecture.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [laughing] Please raise your hand if you have any questions.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Over here?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 [chuckling]\xa0 The chair recognizes the commissioner for art.\xa0 Richard?
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Thank you.\xa0 My question - does the name Stoker come into this story anywhere?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 No.\xa0 Despite the nature of the central creature involved, or supposedly involved, the story has a long and verifiable history, which began well before any of such contemporary novels appeared on bookstands.\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 I dunno - there have been similar creatures haunting Gothic novels for nearly two centuries.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Aren't they all explained away by the end of the book?\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Only in Radcliffe.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 You need a gavel, Charles, so you can call us to order.
Scene 3.\xa0\xa0\xa0
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 My story is about a house.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 A vampire house? [laughs]
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Well....\xa0 A cursed house.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 A curse?\xa0 AND a vampire?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Do you mean a house in the sense of a family line or a physical house?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 The latter.\xa0 This house happens to be in Providence.\xa0 And while I could lie and tell you this was another personal experience, in truth, it happened to a cousin of mine.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Your cousin is a vampire house?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 You forgot to raise your hand, Edward.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 This particular area of Providence was haunted by Poe in his day.\xa0 Sometime in the 1840s, he was wont to pass by this very house on visits to the poetess Mrs. Whitman.\xa0
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Whitman?\xa0 Should we know her?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 We certainly know Poe.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 She was an ardent spiritist and something of an early suffragette.\xa0 I haven't come across any of her writings myself.\xa0 Almost as much a draw as the lady, though, St. John's churchyard was also along Poe's route.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Is Poe in this story?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 He's merely making an appearance for historical perspective.\xa0 Setting the time and place.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Understood.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 The point - the irony is this - the world's greatest master of the terrible and the bizarre regularly passed a particular house on the eastern side of the street; a dingy, antiquated structure perched on the abruptly rising side hill. \xa0There is no evidence that he even noticed it. \xa0And yet that house, to certain persons, equals or outranks in horror Poe's wildest phantasy.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [avid] Now we get into it!
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 The house was - and for that matter still is - of a kind to attract the attention of the curious. \xa0It followed the colonial lines of the middle eighteenth century - the prosperous peaked-roof sort of farm house; two stories; dormerless attic; Georgian doorway and interior paneling.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 All the best accoutrements of the mid 1700s?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Ayup.\xa0 Facing south, it's buried to the lower windows in the hillside, and exposed to the foundations on the street.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [knowing] I've seen a few of those.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Its construction, over a century and a half ago, followed hard upon the rerouting of the nearby road.\xa0 Benefit Street - at the time called Back Street - wound through the graveyards of the first settlers.\xa0 It was straightened only when the removal of the bodies to the North Burial Ground made it decently possible to cut across the old family plots.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Aha!
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 A house built over the miasmatic remains of a graveyard?\xa0 Simply begging for some festering disease to seep in through the foundation.
Scene 4.\xa0\xa0\xa0
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Uh... May I?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Recognized.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 When you speak of this being a "vampire", do you specifically speak of a walking corpse that drinks blood, or the more classic creature of folklore which is something like a stealer of soul or essence?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Warren!\xa0 You sounded almost impartial before, and now this?
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Whether or not I believe in such a creature, it's important to uncover what the people involved believe, regardless of the underlying source.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Hmph.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 I may have to leave the ultimate decision up to you as to what particular phylum this entity falls into.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Don't try to make taxonomical jokes.\xa0 It doesn't suit you.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Moving on.\xa0 I should point out that while I was not a witness to all the events of my story, I have been to - and in fact, been in - the house in question.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Do tell?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Boys will be boys, and visits in my youth to my cousin--
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 The one who witnessed these events?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Ayup.\xa0 Visits with his family every summer.\xa0 And many boyish dares ended with someone venturing into the empty, foreboding edifice.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Empty?\xa0 Providence isn't a place where houses generally stand empty for long.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Precisely.\xa0 And this one should have been occupied, except for--
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 The vampire?\xa0 Or the Curse?\xa0 The Curse of the Vampire?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Not precisely.\xa0 You see the house wasn't associated with anything like that at the time, it was simply thought... unlucky.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 [very snide] Oh, yes.\xa0 That's much more classifiable.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 People just kept dying in the house.\xa0 Individually, they were generally attributed to something more along the lines you've suggested, Herbert - bad air, foul fungus in the basement, something material and accountable, and yet...
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Yet?
Scene 5.\xa0\xa0\xa0
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 That's for later.\xa0 There's quite a tragic history to the house, which I will touch upon, but let me finish with my own impressions first - the facts, anyway.\xa0
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Well, I can agree with that.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 It was the dank, humid cellar which exerted the strongest repulsion on us - even though it was wholly aboveground on the street side, with only a thin door and window-pierced brick wall to separate it from the busy sidewalk.\xa0 We scarcely knew whether to haunt it in spectral fascination, or to shun it for the sake of our souls and our sanity.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Facts, he says.\xa0 Hmph.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 For one thing, the bad odour of the house was strongest there; and there were white fungous growths which occasionally sprang up in rainy summer weather from the hard earthen floor.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 What kind of fungi?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 I'm no expert.\xa0 Something between toadstools and Indian pipes?\xa0 They rotted and became slightly phosphorescent; so that nocturnal passers-by sometimes spoke of witch-fires glowing behind the broken panes of the foetor-spreading windows.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [shudder]\xa0 Interesting.\xa0 [musing] True phosphorescence is a colour that's so hard to capture...\xa0
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 We never - even in our wildest Hallowe'en moods - visited this cellar by night, but in some of our daytime visits could detect the glowing of the fungi, especially when the day was dark and wet. \xa0And something else... [trails off]
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 [sincere] It really bothered you, didn\u2019t it?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Distressing events have so much more influence when one is impressionable ...and young.\xa0 [shaking it off]\xa0 Lets have a bit more of vampires while I regain my composure - meaning while I fetch myself something to drink.\xa0 Warren, if you would?\xa0
Scene 6.\xa0\xa0\xa0
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Oh, well...\xa0 Some basic facts, then.\xa0 Vampires were originally believed to be a form of revenant - the returning spirit of a recently deceased person, not a physical manifestation at all.\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Really?\xa0 Not bloated corpses returning to gorge on the gore of gorgeous...um, gamines?
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [laughs]\xa0 Gratuitous.\xa0 I believe it was Stoker who started a lot of what most people think of as "vampire traditions?"
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 I confess I am not particularly conversant with the novel.\xa0 I'm not much for such sensational fiction.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 I am.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 I am.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Don't look at me.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Go on.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [prompting] They drink blood?
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Probably attributable to either anemia, as Herbert suggested, or to any number of wasting diseases that plagued people.\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 But what about the bite marks?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Disease sores.\xa0 Or the predation of rats.\xa0 Which, in turn, spread disease.\xa0
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Very likely.\xa0 Rats have lived cheek and jowl with humans since the dawn of civilization.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Stoker did make the connection between his vampire and rats - he was supposed to be able to summon and control them.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 If you consider the "vampire" as symbolic of disease, then its presumed connection to rats is fairly logical.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 But Dracula also couldn't enter a home without being invited?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 [drink - ahh] On the other hand, we boys could, and did.\xa0 Why don't I take my narrative back up?
Scene 7.\xa0\xa0\xa0
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Go ahead.\xa0
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 I won't be able to adequately describe the place to convey the depth of the horror we felt in its presence.\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 We promise to laugh quietly.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 No need.\xa0 [deep breath, bracing himself]\xa0 There was this sort of cloudy whitish pattern on the dirt floor - a vague, shifting deposit of mould or nitre which we usually seemed to be able to trace out amidst the sparse fungous growths near the huge fireplace of the basement kitchen.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Something carved into the floor?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Floor was dirt.\xa0 No.\xa0 This patch... it bore an uncanny resemblance to a doubled-up human figure.\xa0
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Like some sort of primitive grave-marking?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 [growing haunted] On one certain rainy afternoon I fancied I glimpsed a thin, yellowish, shimmering exhalation rising from the nitrous pattern toward the yawning fireplace. \xa0[brisk]\xa0 Shortly after, my cousin and I broached this to our uncle.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Perhaps you could put names to these people?\xa0
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Of course.\xa0 My cousin - well, I'll just call him Randolph, and our uncle's name is Elihu Whipple.\xa0 Doctor Elihu Whipple.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Whipple?\xa0 I know him - or have met him, but didn't he recently--?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 [cutting him off]\xa0 Yes, yes.\xa0 I'll get there.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Ooh!\xa0 A mystery.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Uncle Elihu never pooh-poohed our concerns about the house.\xa0 As it turned out he'd done a good deal of research on it, himself.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 The house is still standing, is it?\xa0 Might be worth making a day trip to Providence - or rather a night trip.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Probably futile - the house has been cleaned and is once more gainfully employed.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 A happy ending?\xa0 To a vampire story?\xa0 Say it isn\u2019t so!
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 [grim] Not as happy as all that, I warrant.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Not fair!\xa0 You know something!
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 How do you mean the house has been cleaned?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Everything natural around the house used to be ... wrong.\xa0 From the aforementioned fungus to the tree roots that grew into the cellar, and the weeds that flourished in the back yard - everything was twisted and flabby and somehow unnatural.\xa0 And now--
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 All better?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Yes.\xa0 But at a cost.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 [serious] Yes.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 The history of the house is long-winded, statistical, and drearily genealogical, but there runs through it a continuous thread of brooding, tenacious horror and preternatural malevolence.\xa0 My cousin and uncle apparently became obsessed with charting every death possibly attributable to the house.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 [carefully choosing his words to not give anything away] I never fancied Whipple as an historian?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 A physician and amateur antiquarian.\xa0 And yet, he approached the problem much as Herbert might - as a technical one.\xa0 Hygiene and germs.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Oh.\xa0 A realist.\xa0 In your family?\xa0
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Yes.\xa0 Well, every herd has its black sheep.\xa0 Now, the origin of the house, amidst a maze of dates, revealed no trace of the sinister. \xa0It was built by a merchant, William Harris.
Scene 8.\xa0\xa0\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Built on a recently moved graveyard?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 A recently-straightened part of the street, anyway.\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 But there must be something?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Actually, from what I understand, the land the house stands upon was never marked for graves.\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Why bring up the graves, then, if they're not relevant?
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Setting tone.\xa0\xa0
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Of course, vampires were supposed to be buried in unhallowed ground, like suicides, so the LACK of a consecrated churchyard is possibly just as significant.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 The following spring, sickness occurred among the Harris children, and two of the four died within a month. \xa0
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Children are particularly susceptible to many kinds of disease.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 And one of the two servants died of it in the following June. \xa0The remaining servant, Eli, constantly complained of weakness.\xa0
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Servants have traditionally been drawn from the lower classes, who in turn tend to be more superstitious, and therefore more inclined to give credence to, and in turn be affected by, such things.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Eli died the next year, as did the master of the house and a third of the four children.\xa0
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Goodness!
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 The widow fell victim to insanity, after such a series of tragedies, and was thereafter confined to the upper part of the house.\xa0 This was in 1768.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 This story is starting to sound oddly familiar.\xa0 Was there a meteorite involved?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 [scoffing] In Providence?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 The widow's sister, Mercy Dexter, moved in to take charge of the family. Mercy was a plain, raw-boned woman of great strength, but her health visibly declined from the time of her arrival.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Now it sounds like Luella Miller.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 You would think that by this time they would have the sense to move out.\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Or get in an exorcist.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Nonsense.\xa0 It's more likely something toxic in the groundwater - arsenic, perhaps.\xa0 Slight traces can cause anemia and wasting as it builds up in the body's vital organs.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 So many deaths and a case of madness, all within five years, started strange rumours.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Rumors?\xa0 Nonsense.\xa0 This is a definite pattern.\xa0 Herbert?\xa0 You agree?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 [definite] Arsenic.\xa0 Or one of the other heavy metals.\xa0 Perhaps Thallium?\xa0 Did anyone suffer from hair loss?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 There were other symptoms.\xa0 The poor widow, in her madness, gave voice to dreams and imaginings of the most hideous sort.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Fever rantings.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Her terrors periodically necessitated her remaining son's residence with a cousin.\xa0 He improved during these visits, and, had Mercy been as wise as she was well-meaning, she would have let him live away permanently.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 What sort of direction did this madness take?\xa0 Paranoia?
Scene 9.\xa0\xa0\xa0
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Now, William, the one remaining child of this unfortunate house, broke away from the place in his teens by enlisting - what with the [ahem] trouble with Great Britain.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 What trouble?
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 [hinting]\xa0 Consider the year?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 I don't know what year we're at.\xa0 I haven\u2019t been taking notes.\xa0
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 1775.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Oh, of course.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 William was away for the duration, married, and returned to his family home to find tragedy.\xa0
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 No "Mercy"?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Mercy was still there, but her once robust frame had undergone curious decay, so that she was now a stooped and pathetic figure with hollow voice and disconcerting pallor.\xa0
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Did feeblemindedness run in the family as well?\xa0 Wasn't this a clear enough hint?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 William, now an adult witnessing these events, quickly arranged for the building of a new and finer house... across town.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Finally!
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 And closed the house on Benefit Street.\xa0
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Probably for the best.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Are we nearing 1800 yet?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Almost.\xa0 William and his wife passed away in the yellow fever epidemic of 1797, leaving their child in the care of a cousin, Rathbone Harris.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Now there's a name!
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Rathbone was a practical man, and rented the Benefit Street house despite dead William's wish that it remain vacant. He did not concern himself with the deaths and illnesses which caused so many changes of tenants, or the steadily growing aversion with which the house was generally regarded.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 He's lucky no one held him responsible.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 As if one could sue over poor living conditions!
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 In 1804, the town council ordered the place fumigated with sulphur, tar and gum camphor due to several more deaths - presumably caused by the passing fever epidemic.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 [dismissive] \xa0Might as well wear pointed masks and wave nosegays.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 I'm sure they did the best they could with the science they had.\xa0
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Several generations passed, with the house standing empty.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 And yet, whether operating under rank superstition or sound scientific principals, it never occurred to them to simply tear it down, clear the ground, and begin anew with clean pipes from a municipal water source?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 No, indeed, but it never rented again after the series of deaths culminating in 1861.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 So when you braved its depths, it had lain fallow for some ... 50 years?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 I'm a bit older than that, but that's a good round number to work with.\xa0 Fifty years empty - and fifty years hungry.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 So we are now at the present, and your cousin Randolph enters the stage?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Carrington Harris, last of the male line, had meant to tear the place down and build an apartment house on the site--
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Finally, another sane one.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 But Randolph convinced him to allow them to look into it first.\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 With the history you've given - I'll agree it shows a pattern of misfortune, but what, precisely, made you think of vampires, and not ghosts or curses, or poison, or any of the other various explanations we've found?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Well, it was one of the original servants who started talking vampires.\xa0 She was a superstitious Exeter woman, and you know how they can be.
Scene 10.\xa0\xa0\xa0
ANN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Some remnant must lie nearby, mayhap under this very house!\xa0 Doomed to sup off the blood or breath of god-fearing folk!\xa0 My own grand-dam told me time and again, Ann, she said, to destroy such a hellion, ye must find its earthly shell, and burn its black and festering heart!\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Not a stake through the heart and cutting off its head?
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Perhaps that was "plan B".
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 As she was sacked and left the house relatively unscathed, this servant Ann's stories spread far and wide.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 So that is one.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 One what?
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Reason to bring up vampires.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Hardly a credible witness.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Ah yes.\xa0 There was also the raving.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 The widow?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Rhoby Harris.\xa0 Hers, and others.\xa0 Among the people who died in that house, a large percentage were subject to such ranting.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Again, not unnatural in certain kind of fevers.
[CHARLES BEGINS TO BUILD FROM HERE]
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 In their more lucid moments, several of the afflicted went on about sharp teethed, glassy-eyes creatures that crouched on their chests and scratched at their necks?
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Fuseli's "Nightmare" comes to mind.\xa0 An imp sitting on the chest of a sleeping woman?\xa0 Though it always looked a bit more bemused than threatening to me.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 And then there's cats who steal the breath from babies.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Some demonic images are universal - at least among the various Christian branches.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 In the last throes of their disease, many of these afflicted even began to foam and bite and scratch at their caretakers!
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Hydrophobia?\xa0 Perhaps rabid rats lurking in the walls?
[CLIMAX OF CHARLES' POINTS]
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 And all of them ranting in guttural French?\xa0 A language not ONE of the afflicted was familiar with?
[moment of silence]
Scene 11.\xa0\xa0\xa0
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [hesitant] oh.\xa0 Um...\xa0 are they quite sure it was French?
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 How could they mistake French?\xa0 Unless it was, say, Belgian.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 I've traveled in Europe.\xa0 If you speak NO languages but English, all languages are equally incomprehensible - at least, at first.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 What makes you think that no one around the afflicted spoke French?
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Charles specified that none of the victims spoke any French.\xa0 How many people can live with, or even around, a speaker of another language and not pick up a few words?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Bravo, Richard!\xa0
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 And, unlike, say, New Orleans, in New England, French speakers have traditionally been a bit light on the ground.\xa0
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Oddly, that leads me to the next part of the story.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 The French?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Following up on the French connection, Randolph and Elihu uncovered historical references to a French family who settled in the area long before this house was built.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 And were buried there, right?
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Shh.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 A lease from 1697, showed a small tract of ground being let to an Etienne Roulet.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Roulet?\xa0 Why does that sound familiar?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 And yes, the Roulets had laid out their graveyard behind their cottage, and no record of any transfer of graves existed.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Hah!\xa0 And why were they in the area?\xa0 On the run from witch trials?
Scene 12.\xa0\xa0\xa0
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 The Edict of Nantes, actually.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 The what?
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Huguenots?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Precisely.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [louder] What?
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 French protestants, driven out of France after the country declared itself definitely Catholic.\xa0 And it wouldn't be the Edict that drove them out - that was earlier.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Wasn't there something about Huguenots in a moving picture?\xa0
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Intolerance.\xa0 Right next to the Babylonian orgy scenes.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Ahem.\xa0 The Roulets were unpopular, and had already been not-so-politely asked to leave East Greenwich.\xa0 Apparently their sort of Protestantism didn't quite fit with the standards of New England society.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 I thought all protestants were pretty much the same?\xa0
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 [guffaws]
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 To misquote Wilde, they're one church separated by a common religion.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Religion is such a futile waste of time.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Etienne Roulet wasn't much of a farmer, but he could read and write and figure - the words "drawing queer diagrams" appear in one of the accounts, but without details.\xa0 So Roulet was employed in a clerical post at Pardon Tillinghast's wharf.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Tillinghast? \xa0Huh. [recalling "from beyond"]
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Small world.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 New England, especially.\xa0 Everyone's always related to everyone, and knows everyone else.\xa0 Everyone important, anyway.\xa0 So the Roulets, being so entirely ...other... were never accepted.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Roulet!\xa0 I have it!
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Oh?
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 I don't know any of the dates, but I think it was in the reign of Henri the fourth of France.\xa0 I don't know why, but I associate it with "Boy bitten by lizard" and a couple of particularly gruesome beheadings of John the Baptist.\xa0 [explaining]\xa0 Paintings.\xa0 There was a Roulet accused of being a ... [falters, not sure]\xa0 a werewolf?\xa0
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 I knew there was something!\xa0 Yes of course -a Jacques Roulet.\xa0 An indigent accused of the horrid murder of a young man.\xa0 From what little I can recall, he claimed he had changed into a wolf and was therefore condemned to death, but ultimately commuted to life imprisonment in a madhouse.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 And you just know this, Warren, off the top of your head?
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Well, I was going through a couple of books recently, looking for tales... well... that I might bring HERE.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [laughs]
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Any more salacious details?\xa0 I seem to remember hints of cannibalism?
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Without any notes, I cannot be precise, but I think he was found in a wood, covered in blood and flesh, shortly after the killing of a boy by a pair of wolves. \xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 But what would a werewolf in France have to do with a vampire or ghost in Providence?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Or disease.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Actually, werewolves and vampires have often gone hand in hand - the werewolf being generally considered one who has sold his soul in a pact with the devil, and the vampire being the soulless revenant of someone who died either while under such a pact or as the victim of such a fiend.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 So being a werewolf in life makes one inevitably a vampire after death?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Much like going to Boston Latin leads inevitably to Harvard.
[general laughter]
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 So. On to my relations and the house on Benefit street.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 That would make a good title for a story.\xa0 [ominous] The House on Benefit Street.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 They went about the whole thing with an eye to scientific method.\xa0 Truly.\xa0 Even brought along various mechanical devices.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Such as?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 [sigh] I was really hoping to pass over this.\xa0 I don't know.\xa0 Just say mechanical devices and leave it at that.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Imprecision.\xa0 Always imprecision.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 They brought the devices in during the day - and recall, they can walk directly in from the street into the dreaded basement.\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Or directly out, as the case may be.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Randolph spent the day poking around, but found only the same depressing mustiness and faint suggestions of noxious odours.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Well, if it was daylight, anything phosphorescent would lie unseen.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Precisely.\xa0 So he tried again, this time by night.\xa0 And with somewhat more trepidation.
Scene 13.\xa0\xa0\xa0
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 One stormy midnight, I ran the beams of an electric torch over the mouldy floor. The place had dispirited me curiously that evening, and I was almost prepared when I saw a particularly sharp definition of the "huddled form" we recalled from boyhood.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Even while he watched, he seemed to see the thin, yellowish, shimmering exhalation which had startled us years before.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 A subtle, sickish, almost luminous vapour rose, which seemed to develop vague and shocking suggestions of form, before passing into the blackness of the great chimney, leaving foetor in its wake. \xa0Refusing to flee, I watched it fade - and as I watched I felt it was in turn watching me greedily with eyes more imagined than visible.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 The upshot of this palpable manifestation was that they determined to both spend the night in the house.\xa0 After papering the windows, to avoid the eyes of possible onlookers, they added camp chairs and cots to their accoutrements and settled in.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 We were not, as I have said, in any sense childishly superstitious, but scientific study and reflection had taught us that the known universe of three dimensions embraces the merest fraction of the whole cosmos of substance and energy.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 [interested]\xa0 Scientific approach, indeed.\xa0 I assumed you were exaggerating.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 I accept your apology.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 I didn't apologize.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 To say that we actually believed in the supernatural would be carelessly inclusive. \xa0Rather say that we were not prepared to deny the possibility of certain modifications of vital force and matter, of something that might exist only infrequently in three-dimensional space because of a more intimate connection with other spatial units.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 I'm not even going to ask.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 They were approaching the matter as if the potential creature was something that exists in an ...adjacent dimension.\xa0 Interesting.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 The family of Roulet had likely possessed an abnormal affinity for outer circles of entity.\xa0 Could not, then, some force drawn or created by this passion continue to function in the vicinity long after the original participants were dead and gone?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Unfortunately, there is no way to prove or disprove such sloppy hypotheses.\xa0 [musing] And yet, one might easily imagine an alien nucleus of substance or energy, formless or otherwise, kept alive by imperceptible subtractions from the life-force or bodily tissue and fluids of more traditional "living things".
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Which, I believe, would make it something called ...a "vampire"?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 [ignoring him] Such a thing might be actively hostile, or simply motivated by self-preservation. \xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Back to Luella Miller.
Scene 14.\xa0\xa0\xa0
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Regardless, in any good social circles, eating people is considered... unacceptable.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Well, of course such a creature would have to be eliminated, and yet the concept is fascinating.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Perhaps such creatures, throughout history, formed the basis for many such myths.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 But this myth is the only one we're dealing with tonight.\xa0 Randolph and Elihu were ready for anything they could be ready for.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 We had devised two weapons to fight it; a large Crookes tube operated by powerful storage batteries and provided with peculiar screens and reflectors, in case it proved intangible and opposable only by vigorously destructive ether radiations--
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Is this item available for an examination?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 I might ask him.\xa0 But not for a couple of months.\xa0 He's rather busy at the moment.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Oh, no - don't tell me he's in a madhouse?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 [considering, then definite] Mm.\xa0 No.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 We also had a pair of military flame-throwers of the sort used in the World War, in case the creature proved material and susceptible of standard destruction.\xa0 We were prepared to burn the thing's heart out - if heart existed to burn.
HERBERT \xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0This is the sort of preparation sorely lacking in most of these so-called ghost stories.\xa0 And nary a religious icon in sight?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Um, no.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 I am impressed.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 You don't mind that they planned to "burn its heart out", so long as they didn't brandish a crucifix while they did it?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Melodramatic, perhaps, but burning the heart out of any living creature is just as likely to be an effective way of destroying it.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 Our cellar vigil began at 10 P.M., daylight saving time. \xa0A weak, filtered glow from the rain-harassed street lamps outside, and a feeble phosphorescence from the detestable fungi within, showed the dripping stone of the walls.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 They left the street door unlocked, in case of a sudden need to depart.\xa0 And they sat, playing stalking goat to a creature as potentially deadly as any man-eating tiger.\xa0 They talked far into the night until Uncle Elihu, being the older, grew drowsy.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 Something like fear chilled me as I sat there in the small hours alone - I say alone, for one who sits by a sleeper is indeed alone; perhaps more alone than he can realize. \xa0Once, when the noisome atmosphere of the place seemed about to sicken me, I opened the door and looked up and down the street, feasting my eyes on familiar sights and my nostrils on wholesome air.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 He returned inside, ready to trade shifts with the elder man.\xa0 But all was not well.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 As I turned my electric flashlight on him, all at once he commenced to mutter. \xa0The words were at first indistinguishable, and then, with a tremendous start, I recognized something about them which filled me with icy fear!
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Francais?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Oui.\xa0 Now, Uncle Elihu could read and write in a passable Gallic hand, and presumably COULD speak the tongue as well.\xa0 So it might ... possibly be ... coincidence.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 Suddenly a perspiration broke out on the sleeper's forehead, and he leapt abruptly up, half awake. \xa0The jumble of French changed to a cry in English!
Scene 15.\xa0\xa0\xa0
ELIHU\xa0\xa0\xa0 My breath, my breath!
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Wait!\xa0 You just used the past tense!\xa0 [mimicking] "Uncle could read and write!"\xa0 Did the vampire get him?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 As a matter of fact, he woke at this point, and recounted a dreadful dream he had been having.\xa0
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 A sort of race-memory?\xa0
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 All the while, he said he felt a sensation of choking, as if some pervasive presence had spread itself through his body.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 I reflected that dreams are only dreams, and that these visions could be, at most, no more than my uncle's reaction to the investigations which had lately filled our minds to the exclusion of all else.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Plausible.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Plausible denial.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 My uncle seemed now very wakeful, and welcomed his period of watching even though the nightmare had aroused him far ahead of his allotted two hours.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 He still went to sleep?\xa0 After all that?
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 It was not a pleasant sleep, and for a second I was not sorry for the echoing shriek which clove through the barriers of dream and flung me to a sharp and startled awakeness.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Who was shrieking?\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 His uncle?\xa0 Your uncle, I mean?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 [grim] Yes.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 As I turned, I dreaded what I was to see; for the scream had been in my uncle's voice, and I knew not against what menace I should have to defend him and myself.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Did he at least have the sense to arm himself with the flamethrower?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 I believe so.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Not the BEST idea, considering his uncle might be in the line of ... um... fire.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 Yet after all, the sight was worse than I had dreaded. \xa0Out of the fungous-ridden earth steamed up a vaporous corpse-light, yellow and diseased, which bubbled and lapped to a gigantic height in vague outlines half human and half monstrous.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 A yellow blot upon the dark palette of the tenebrous cellar.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 I say that I saw this thing, but at the time it was to me only a seething dim cloud of fungous loathsomeness, enveloping the one object to which all my attention was focused. \xa0That object was my uncle!
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Why did it wait so long?
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Maybe the apparition only appears at certain times of night.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Maybe the dimensions only overlap at certain times.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Maybe you should let me finish the tale.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 And then, my uncle, features somehow blackening and decaying, leered and gibbered and reached out dripping claws to rend me!
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 All the more terrible for being a relative.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 Only a sense of routine kept me from going mad. \xa0Recognizing the bubbling evil as no substance reachable by matter or material chemistry, I threw on the current of the Crookes tube apparatus, and focused the strongest ether radiations.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 [eager] Yes?\xa0
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 There was a frenzied sputtering, and the yellowish phosphorescence grew dimmer to my eyes. But I saw that the waves from the machine had no effect whatsoever.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Then, in the midst of that daemoniac spectacle, he saw a fresh horror which sent him fumbling and staggering towards that unlocked door to the quiet street, careless of what terrors he might loose upon the world.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 In that dim blend of blue and yellow light, the form of my uncle commenced a nauseous liquefaction whose essence eludes all description, and in which there played across his vanishing face such changes of identity as only madness can conceive. He was at once a devil and a multitude, a charnel-house and a pageant.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 He said that dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of faces played briefly across the countenance of our dear uncle - showing, perhaps, all those whose lives had been tainted by the shadowy intruder.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 Toward the last, it seemed as though the shifting features strove to form contours like those of my uncle's kindly face. I like to think that he existed at that moment, and that he tried to bid me farewell before the final dissolution.
Scene 16.\xa0\xa0\xa0
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 [disbelieving] He... melted?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Seems a bit extreme for an entity that took years and years to kill sister Mercy.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Consider that the thing had been starved for half a century.\xa0 Where it might have been satisfied with a slow drain in the past, now it was forced to gorge.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 And poor Randolph fled into the night?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Yes.\xa0 He wandered aimlessly for a time, unsure of whom he might confide in.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Naturally he thought of you.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 My taste in the ... unusual isn't much of a secret.\xa0 He woke me early that morning and together we approached that evil dwelling.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 All residue was gone, for the mouldy floor was porous.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 I saw the cot, the chairs, the instruments, and even the yellowed straw hat of my uncle. But no sign of the figure in the floor.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 I tried to conjecture as nearly as sanity would let me just what had happened, and how I might end the horror, if indeed it had been real. \xa0It did not seem to be matter, nor ether, nor anything else conceivable. What, then, but some exotic emanation; some vampirish vapour such as those that rustics claim lurk over certain church yards?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Randolph has always been a bit of a dreamer.\xa0 Between us we quickly concocted a plan, and went to fetch digging implements, military gas-masks, and six carboys of sulphuric acid.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 That you just happened to have lying around?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 That's what those were for.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Herbert?\xa0 Why on earth do you have sulphuric acid handy?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 It serves many purposes.\xa0 But getting rid of organic ... remains... is a primary one.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 It took nearly an entire day to get everything organized. \xa0Randolph spent most of that time trying to take his mind off the horrors he had witnessed.\xa0
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 I passed the hours in reading and in the composition of inane verses to counteract my mood.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 "inane verses"?
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [limerick] There once was an old man from Arkham...
Scene 17.\xa0\xa0\xa0
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Just before noon the next day, we commenced digging - right where that stain had always been seen, though there was no trace of it there in the strong morning sunshine.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 As I turned up the stinking black earth in front of the fireplace, a viscous yellow ichor oozed from the white fungi it severed.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 With the deepening of the hole, which was about six feet square, the evil smell increased.\xa0 We had arranged the great carboys of acid around and near two sides, so that when necessary they could be emptied down the aperture in quick succession.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 And the gas masks?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 originally to keep out the vapor itself, but we used them as much for the dreadful stench.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 Suddenly my spade struck something softer than earth. I shuddered and made a motion as if to climb out of the hole, which was now as deep as my neck.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 I was above at the time, taking some much-needed fresh air, but returned when he called out in horror.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 The thing I had uncovered was fishy and glassy - a kind of semi-putrid congealed jelly with suggestions of translucency. I scraped further, and saw that it had form -huge and roughly cylindrical; like a mammoth soft blue-white stovepipe doubled in two, its largest part some two feet in diameter.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Abruptly, he leaped out of the hole, then began frantically unstopping and tilting the heavy carboys, and precipitating their corrosive contents one after another down that charnel gulf.\xa0 \xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Before you could even see it?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 I saw enough.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 A cylinder?\xa0 So it was some sort of giant worm?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 A folded worm?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Randolph had his own explanation for it, though I don\u2019t know how much credit to give him, there in his abject terror.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 What did he think it was?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 All I saw was a blinding maelstrom of greenish-yellow vapour which surged tempestuously up from that hole as the floods of acid descended.\xa0 People outside, seeing the hideous yellow fumes that soared up the chimney, attributed it to a dumping of waste in the river by some factory, but I know how mistaken they are as to the source.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 But you had apparently only uncovered part of the thing?\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 I guess the acid found its way back to the rest of it.
Scene 18.\xa0\xa0\xa0
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 People also talk about the hideous noise which came at roughly the same time from some disordered water-pipe or gas main underground - but again I could correct them if I dared.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 It was unspeakably shocking, and I do not see how I lived through it. I did faint after emptying the fourth carboy; but when I recovered I saw that the hole was emitting no fresh vapours.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 I dragged him away and we waited until the fumes cleared.\xa0 We still emptied the rest of the acid down the hole, just to be on the safe side.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 The dampness was less foetid, and all the strange fungi had withered to a kind of harmless greyish powder which blew ashlike along the floor.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Probably from the fumes.
RANDOLPH\xa0\xa0\xa0 One of earth's nethermost terrors had perished forever; and if there be a hell, it had received at last the daemon soul of an unhallowed thing. And as I patted down the last spadeful of mould, I shed the first of many tears with which I have paid unaffected tribute to my beloved uncle's memory.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 But what was it?\xa0 What did he say he saw?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Keep in mind that at two feet diameter, this cylinder would have made a very stocky man indeed.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Portly, even.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 And difficult to double up that way, once obesity set in.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 What was it?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Again, I never saw it, and only have Randolph's rather addled ideas to go by.\xa0 And he insisted that if it had lain there all those centuries, eating and growing, it could be any sort of size.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 And?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 He said this thing - this huge bent thing- was ... the creature's ...elbow.
[moment of silence]
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [snickering] what?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 His words, not mine.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 But if it grew when fed, wouldn\u2019t it have shrunk when starved?\xa0 It should have been tiny.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Unless by devouring Charles's uncle - Oh, I say, I'm sorry - but perhaps that would have returned it to its... ahem ... former glory?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 It's ridiculous. \xa0I was perfectly willing to consider the possible existence of some such thing, but quite apart form the inanity of a thing which grows so large that it COULD achieve such stature - there's a simple issue of displacement of earth!
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 I expect it happened very very slowly.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Not to mention that if something that size were its elbow, its entire body would have been underneath most of the neighborhood.\xa0 Why then, would it restrict itself to harming only those in that single house?
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 True. If it were going to have a single area to draw sustenance from, you might think it would be centered on, say, the mouth.\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Yeah.\xa0 No one who's anyone eats with their elbow.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 [annoyed sigh] I'll make a point of telling Randolph the next time I see him.
END