19 Nocturne Boulevard - THE HAUNTER OF THE DARK (Lovecraft 5 #2) - Reissue!
Five friends gather for another story - this one of an artist doomed for his curiousity.\xa0\xa0
Cast List
Edward - Bryan Hendrickson
Charles - Michael Coleman (Tales of the Extraordinary)
Warren - Glen Hallstrom
Richard - Philemon Vanderbeck
Herbert - Carl Cubbedge
Blake - Derek Fetters (Unspeakable and Inhuman)
Music by Kevin MacLeod (Incompetech.com)
Editing and Sound: \xa0 Julie Hoverson
Cover Design:\xa0 Brett Coulstock
\xa0
"What kind of a place is it?
Why it's another brownstone dinner party, can't you tell?"
*****************************************************************
THE HAUNTER OF THE DARK (Lovecraft 5, #2)
Cast:
- Edward, a writer
- Charles, a dilettante
- Herbert, a scientist
- Richard, a painter
- Warren, a professor
- Robert Blake, deceased writer
OLIVIA \xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0Did you have any trouble finding it?\xa0 What do you mean, what kind of a place is it?\xa0 Why, it's Charles' house again, can't you tell?\xa0
MUSIC
SOUND \xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0MUSIC, but muffled
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 CUPBOARD CLOSES, FEET APPROACH
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Try this one.
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 BOX HANDED OVER
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Thanks.\xa0 [quiet, a bit diffident] And... and I appreciate your putting us up tonight, Charles.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 [breezily covering] In my own interest, I assure you.\xa0 I've no wish to climb five flights of rickety stairs and squat in your cramped dormer just to hear a story.
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 WALKING
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 And I have no wish to disappoint you.\xa0 [perking up] \xa0Though you really can't knock the cramped dormer for atmosphere...
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 We'll just look at this as my way of supporting the arts, shall we?
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 DOOR OPENS
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 MUSIC LESS MUFFLED, SOUND OF FIREPLACE
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Here we are.
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 WALKING IN
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Aha!
HERBERT \xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0There you are!
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Where did you have to go for it? \xa0China?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 I knew I had a few of these still lying around. \xa0Just take one to start - they're wicked sour.
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 BOX OPENS, PICKING OUT CANDIES
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Richard?
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Perhaps just one.\xa0 [pops into mouth, reacts]\xa0
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 [chuckles]\xa0 I've tried many kinds of native confectionery in my travels, back in the day.\xa0 [puts into mouth, reacts, but tries not to]\xa0 [slightly breathless] Ah, yes.\xa0 Much like the salted ginger prunes I tried in [deep breath] Hong Kong [coughs slightly] in 1907.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 So jaded, Warren.\xa0 [teasing] Aren't you having one, Herbert?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 I've never understood the point of discomfiting oneself by eating painful food.\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [trying not to pucker] It's really quite tasty.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 I'll stick to my drink, thank you very much.
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 BOX SET DOWN, SHUT
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Can't blame you, though I find myself rather more partial to these than I ought.\xa0 [pops something into mouth, then talks around it with no apparent difficulty]\xa0 So, Edward?
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 SECOND BOX SET DOWN ON TABLE
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Um!\xa0 [removes candy with a slight slurp]\xa0 Right.\xa0 Of course.
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 SHUFFLING PAPERS
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Isn't this supposed to be a true story?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [baffled] Yes, why do you ask?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Why the manuscript, then?\xa0 How can we trust anything you've written down to be fact and not one of your fantastical fictions?
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 He has a point.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Oh, that's simple.\xa0 I didn't write any of this.\xa0
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [give it] Here.\xa0
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 PAPER CHANGES HANDS
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [agreeing] Well.\xa0 It's certainly not your handwriting.\xa0 [to Edward] Is it some long lost maiden aunt?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Let me look.\xa0 Hmph.\xa0 Spiky.\xa0
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 [looking over his shoulder]\xa0 Copperplate.\xa0 Quaint.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Are the experts satisfied?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 I reserve judgment.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 [chuckles]\xa0 I'm not such a stickler for provenance - after all, you're not one of my students.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Tell us then, raconteur, who is it that inspires this tale?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Robert Blake.
RICHARD\xa0 \xa0\xa0[sharp] Blake?\xa0
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 SNATCHES PAPERS
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [urgent] This is Blake's?\xa0 What is it?\xa0 How did you get it?\xa0
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 PAPERS SNATCHED BACK
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 All in good time.\xa0 [sniffs annoyedly]
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 PAPERS BEING STRAIGHTENED, PLOPPED DOWN
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [with import, beginning his tale] This?\xa0
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 PATS PAPERS AND BOX
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 This is all that's left of Robert Blake.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 He-- [cuts himself off]
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [intense] You were about to say - Blake died, 17 days ago, during a storm that knocked out half the electricity in the city.\xa0 Died... under very peculiar circumstances, indeed.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 [after a slight pause] And for those of us less acquainted with the deceased?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Huh?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Yes.\xa0 Who is - was - Robert Blake?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 You haven't heard of him?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 I vaguely recall something about a Blake.\xa0 Isn't he some kind of artist?\xa0 Considered rather... blasphemous?\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Blake was a writer and a painter, yes.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 But I was under the impression he was long-dead.\xa0 A century or more.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [puzzled] No.\xa0 Robert died 17 days ago--
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Oh!\xa0 I expect you're thinking of William Blake.\xa0
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 The one who painted the great red dragon and the woman clothed in the sun?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 [snort of derision]\xa0 I don't waste precious memory on such trivia.\xa0 I can put names to three paintings - the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, and Whistler's Mother.\xa0 And that's only because those are ubiquitous.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Any chance that the two painting Blakes are connected somehow?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Dunno.\xa0 Could be.\xa0 Hmm.\xa0 Robert hailed from Milwaukee, but I don't know anything more about his family.\xa0 [shrugs] It would explain some of Robert's peculiar artistic leanings.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 I've met Blake - this Blake - on several occasions.\xa0 I can't say I like - liked - him, but I didn't dislike him either.\xa0 His work was rather ... unusual. \xa0Though I'm only acquainted with his paintings.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 His writing was just as odd - both fiction and non.\xa0 This [taps the papers] is supposedly the latter.\xa0 A journal.\xa0 [with heavy import]\xa0 His last days.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Ahhh...
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 OPENS BOX, TAKES CANDY
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 How did you come by it?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Let me start at the beginning.\xa0 Blake and I have been informally acquainted for years.\xa0 We interacted through the magazines that carried our works, corresponded now and then, and [chuckles] lampooned each other a bit.\xa0 I wrote a mad protagonist once named Blake Roberts, and he in turn--
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Hmph. \xa0His paintings show no trace of a sense of humor.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 There's more to any man than shows in his public face.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Who said that?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 [dry, teasing] \xa0Thought I did.
WARREN \xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0[sigh] Never mind.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [prompting] Blake?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [overriding them all, narrating] Cautious investigators will hesitate to challenge the common belief that Robert Blake was killed by lightning, or by some profound nervous shock derived from an electrical discharge.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Lightning?\xa0 I thought he died in his rooms.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Was he burned?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Not at all.\xa0
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 But the papers put it down to lightning?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 I know I'm more used to writing a story than telling it, but you fellows should give me some room to breathe, here.\xa0 Stop jumping on me every time I come up for air!\xa0
EVERYONE\xa0\xa0\xa0 [mumbled apologies]
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [poetry] I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim,
Where they roll in their horror unheeded,
Without knowledge or lustre or name.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Yours, or his?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [chuckles] His.\xa0 [deep breath]\xa0 All right, now I have written some notes to follow, condensing some of this, and including some outside information.\xa0 So don't get confused.\xa0
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 RUSTLE OF PAPERS
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Blake died with a horrible expression on his face.\xa0 The police and coroner blame it on the sudden contraction of the musculature due to the sudden ingress of electricity.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 It's not unheard of.
EDWARD \xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0But the entries in his diary might suggest another source of the horrible grimace.\xa0 Fear.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Scared to death?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Or scared at the moment of death.\xa0 Either way, it's no doubt he worked himself up into a state of absolute terror shortly before his demise.\xa0 His diary entries are clearly the result of a fantastic imagination aroused by certain local superstitions.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Local to here?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Providence.\xa0
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 [knowingly] Rhode Island.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Blake is - was a writer and painter devoted to the field of myth, dream, terror, and superstition--
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Sounds like someone we know.\xa0 Hmm?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [sigh] His end began with a deserted church on Federal Hill.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 What denomination?
SOUND \xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0PAPERS SHUFFLE
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 The notes don't say what it started as.\xa0 Probably doesn't matter.\xa0 It was bought and rededicated to something called the Starry Wisdom sect.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Starry Wisdom?\xa0 Astronomers?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [chuckles] There's definitely some star-gazing involved in their beliefs.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 [musing] Starry wisdom.... starry wisdom.... Hmm.\xa0 I've heard something about them.\xa0 [dismissive]\xa0 It will come to me.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 He took up residence in Providence last winter, in the upper floor of a "venerable dwelling where huge, friendly cats sunned themselves atop a convenient shed".
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 He writes about cats?\xa0 [disparaging]\xa0 He was an only child, wasn't he?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [sigh]\xa0 He also writes a lot about the local architecture, but I'll skip that as well.\xa0
BLAKE \xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0My desk faces a window commanding a splendid view of the lower town's outspread roofs and the mystical sunsets that flame behind them.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 [dismissive] Cats... and sunsets.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Some two miles away rose the spectral hump of Federal Hill.
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 [diary] I have a curious sense that I gaze out upon some unknown, ethereal world which might or might not vanish in dream if I ever tried to seek it out and enter it in person.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Blake settled down to write and paint.\xa0 During that first winter he produced five of his best-known short stories - The Burrower Beneath, The Stairs in the Crypt--
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Oh, that was a corker.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 You actually read this nonsense?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 O'course.\xa0 Have a subscription and all.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Blake also painted seven canvases that season - studies of nameless, unhuman monsters, and profoundly alien, non-terrestrial landscapes.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 My favorites.\xa0 If I do say so myself, though, I do better with....beings, while he should stick - have stuck - to exteriors.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 But the church kept drawing his thoughts.\xa0
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 At sunset the great tapering steeple loomed blackly against the flaming sky.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [speculative] Makes me wish I was more familiar with Providence.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Blake made his first and only pilgrimage to the building just before the aeon-shadowed Walpurgis time.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 What?
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Also known as May eve.\xa0 Ostensibly, it's the festival of Saint Walpurga--
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 There's a name for you.\xa0
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 What was she the saint of?
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Not my area.\xa0 But I say "ostensibly", since it was one of those pagan holidays that the church found they couldn't quite ever abolish, so they replaced it, figuring if the populace wanted a holy day, it might as well be a proper Catholic one.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 And the pagan holiday it replaced?
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Beltane.\xa0 A spring fertility festival.\xa0 It was a counterpart to All Hallow's Eve - note that they fall on opposite ends of the calendar.\xa0
RICHARD \xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0The nights that witches fly!\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 So he took a walk sometime in late April.
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 I noted the foreign signs over curious shops in brown, decade-weathered buildings. Now and then a battered church fa\xe7ade or crumbling spire came in sight, but never the blackened pile I sought.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 It was like a labyrinth.\xa0 None of the streets went anywhere.\xa0 When he asked a shopkeeper about the church, the man's face blanched with fear, and Blake saw him make a curious sign with his right hand.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Does it say what the sign looked like? Perhaps something like this?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Isn't that the same hand gesture you see in ancient paintings of sages and saints?
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 It appears often in Hindu art as well.
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 [cutting in] Suddenly a black spire stood out against the cloudy sky to the left. Twice I lost my way, but somehow dared not ask any help.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 And then he was there.\xa0 In a wind-swept open square towered over by the grim bulk of the decrepit church.
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 I wondered how the panes of the gothic windows could have survived, in view of the known habits of small boys the world over.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 [laughing]\xa0 I think we all had our turn in our youth.\xa0 Why I remember--
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Knee breeches and buckle shoes?\xa0 When you write your own reminiscences, and then die in a strange and terrifying way, then we can discuss it.\xa0 Go on, Edward.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 It took Blake some time, both to clear the fence and to find a shiftable basement window, but finally he was inside.
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 The colossal nave was an almost eldritch place with its drifts of dust. Over all this hushed desolation played a hideous leaden light as the declining afternoon sun sent its rays through the strange, half-blackened panes of the great apsidal windows.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 The stained glass windows seemed to give Blake a nervous moment - both because they were heavily encrusted with soot, and, in a more subtle way, from the subject matter.
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 The few saints depicted bore expressions distinctly open to criticism, while one of the windows seemed to show merely a dark space with spirals of curious luminosity scattered about in it.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 "Open to criticism"?\xa0 That's all he said?\xa0 That conjures up far too many possibilities!\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 That's all.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [frustrated noise]\xa0 Oh.\xa0 They could be cannibalistic, or lascivious, or cross-eyed.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Don't know.\xa0 In a rear room, Blake found shelves of mildewed, disintegrating books.
BLAKE \xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0They were the black, forbidden things which most sane people have never even heard of, or have heard of only in furtive, timorous whispers.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 You know the type.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 [avid] Oh, yes, but did he give any details?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 There's a whole list - but it's not really germane to--
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Resign yourself, dear boy.\xa0 Let Warren salivate a bit.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [sigh] Here.
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 PAPER MOVES
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Excellent!\xa0 [musing]\xa0 Necronomicon, yes - ah, in Latin!\xa0 That would be the Vermius translation.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 He also grabbed a small notebook filled with entries in some cryptic code.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 [muttering] The Liber Ivonis?\xa0 Sinister.\xa0 [chuckles]\xa0 Ah, the infamous Cultes des Goules of Comte d'Erlette--
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 [sigh, disdainful]\xa0 You sound like a zealot saying his rosaries - or whatever they say.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 He sounds like a collector.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 [wistful]\xa0 If only.\xa0 [normal] But I must be satisfied caring for the collections of others.\xa0 Most of these books shouldn't be in the hands of any individual anyway.\xa0 They are much too--
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Evil?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Evil is a construct of morality.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Oh, lord--
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 As is religion.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 I don't think a book, at least, CAN be evil. You can only be evil if you have free will.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Oh, now this is my field, and when I tell you the Unaussprechlichen Kulten of von Junzt, or old Ludvig Prinn's hellish De Vermis Mysteriis is an evil book, you may take my word.
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 SNATCH OF PAPER
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 [upset] Hey!
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 You may have it back at the end of class.
EVERYONE\xa0\xa0\xa0 [Chuckles]
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 So. \xa0[looking for his place] Room full of creepy books, Blake takes the diary, goes upstairs.\xa0 Right.\xa0 Aha!
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 SLAPS PAPER DOWN, WOOD BOX STARTS TO SHIFT.\xa0 A STRANGE CHIMING NOISE.\xa0 CATCH BOX
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [gasp!]\xa0
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Oh!\xa0 Best watch that!
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Yeah.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 What IS it?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 [overly nonchalant] A box.\xa0 What does it look like?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [back to narration] Blake found a room upstairs, faintly lit by screened windows. \xa0In one corner, a ladder led up to the closed trap door of the windowless steeple.
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 In the centre of the dust-laden floor rose a curiously angled stone pillar some four feet in height and two in diameter, covered on each side with bizarre, crudely incised and wholly unrecognizable hieroglyphs.
EDWARD \xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0On this pillar rested a metal box of peculiarly asymmetrical form--
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [knowing] Ah.\xa0 Boxes.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 "Asymmetrical"?\xa0 Nothing more specific?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 That's all his notes say--
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 How unspecific.\xa0 Asymmetrical merely means lacking in symmetry, which in turn means without any axis you could draw which would create a mirror image one side to the other.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Huh?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Symmetrical means the same on both sides--
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 [correcting] Mirror image on both sides.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Right.\xa0 So, for instance your face is symmetrical--
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 No human face is perfectly symmetrical.\xa0 Nothing lines up exactly if you look close enough.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Roughly symmetrical, then.\xa0 You have an eye on each side of a nose, which has two nostrils to balance one another, and so on.
WARREN \xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0So as a way to picture an asymmetrical face, you might have an eye down on the jawline, and the nose up at the temple?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Only if there wasn't a comparable eye and nose to match on the other side of the face.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 So was this box only as asymmetrical as a typical face, or was it grossly unbalanced?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Uh... the notes just say asymmetrical.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 [annoyed sigh]\xa0 Laymen.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 That box isn't important anyway - it's long gone.\xa0 But what it held...
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 Beneath decade-deep dust was an egg-shaped or irregularly spherical object some four inches through.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 [starting again] Irregularly spherical?
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Oh, not again!
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 The four-inch irregular sphere turned out, once the dust was gone, to be a nearly black, red-striated polyhedron with many irregular flat surfaces; either a very remarkable crystal of some sort or an artificial object of carved and highly polished mineral matter.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Crystals form naturally according to--
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Hush!\xa0
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Hmph.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [placating] So it was carved that way.\xa0 Good point.
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 Once exposed, it exerted an almost alarming fascination. I could scarcely tear my eyes from it.\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 But he did.\xa0 I mean, he must have, since he notes there was something else in the room.\xa0 Or, should I say, someone?\xa0 In the far corner, right at the foot of the ladder, was a hump of dust--
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 Hand and handkerchief soon revealed a human skeleton. I examined a reporter's badge, a celluloid advertising calendar for 1893, some cards with the name "Edwin M. Lillibridge", and a paper covered with pencilled memoranda.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Blake copied the text into his diary, for fear the paper would eventually crumble away to nothing.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 I think I'll have another--
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 SHIFT OF BOX
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [a little too vehement] Not that box!\xa0 I mean, the candy is in YOUR box. Over there.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 [bit of a smirk] Oh.\xa0 How forgetful of me.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 What is it with the boxes?\xa0
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [knowing laugh]
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 The notes were typical journalistic jottings, a list of dates and events - all involving the church.\xa0 From "Prof. Enoch Bowen home from Egypt May 1844 - buys Church in July" the notes list a number of instances of people speaking or acting against Starry Wisdom, and finally, in April 1877, a number of members were apparently run out of town for their "beliefs."
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Ah! \xa0THAT's what I've been trying to remember!\xa0 Starry Wisdom, indeed.\xa0 Weren't they accused of human sacrifice?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 The notes do list a number of disappearances attributed to them.\xa0 Here, see for yourself.
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 PAPER BEING PASSED
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 [dryly sarcastic] Because, of course, no one ever leaves home of their own accord.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 The community around was mostly catholic.\xa0 Pretty tightly knit.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Tightly wound, too, from the sound of it.\xa0 Here it says that a mob of "Irish boys" - shouldn\u2019t that be "lads"? - attacked the church, but it doesn't say what came of it.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 The locals assumed whatever was going on was devil worship.\xa0 That's certainly why Lillibridge broke in.
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 They say the Shining Trapezohedron shows them heaven and other worlds, and that the Haunter of the Dark tells them secrets.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Did Lillibridge fall off the ladder?\xa0 That could easily snap a man's neck, given enough height, or the proper trajectory.\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 The cause was ... uncertain.
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 I stooped over the gleaming bones. Some of them were badly scattered, and a few seemed oddly ...dissolved at the ends. The skull was in a very peculiar state - stained yellow, and with a charred aperture in the top as if some powerful acid had eaten through the solid bone.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Before he realized it, Blake found himself staring at the trapezohedron again, and letting its curious influence call up images in his head.
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 [very spooky] And beyond all else I glimpsed an infinite gulf of darkness, where solid and semisolid forms were known only by their windy stirrings, and cloudy patterns of force seemed to superimpose order on chaos and hold forth a key to all the paradoxes and arcana of the worlds we know.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 [disgusted] Purple prose.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 It's very evocative.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 There are certain primitive tribes who ingest drugs to glimpse just such visions.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Not another--
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 No, really, I was just about to say that if there was some item that caused "visions", it could easily have become the central focus of a religious cabal.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Good and concise.
WARREN \xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0If I was gong to wax on, it would be to draw a comparison to the myth of Pandora, or some other famous myth regarding the dangers of curiosity.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Well, thank goodness you restrained yourself.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Blake finally managed to pull himself away.\xa0 Probably noticed the day was waning, and he hadn't thought to bring a torch.
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 It was then, in the gathering twilight, that I thought I saw a faint trace of luminosity in the crazily angled stone. Was there a subtle phosphorescence of radio-activity about the thing?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Finally something I can grasp.\xa0 Radio-activity is a concrete scientific essence, and could easily be the source of any number of superstitious explanations.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 If it comes up again, we'll consult you.
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 I seized the cover of the long-open box and snapped it down. At the sharp click of that closing, a soft stirring sound seemed to come from the steeple's eternal blackness overhead, beyond the trap-door.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 That finally frightened him, and he plunged wildly out into the street, running all the way home.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Didn't get lost this time?
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 [wistful] I don't suppose the church is still there - you said this all happened fairly recently?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 It burned down the day after Blake's death.\xa0
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Blast.\xa0 Evil or not, those books are a great loss to the general body of human knowledge.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 During the days which followed, Blake did a lot of research, and worked feverishly at the cryptogram in the notebook.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 I do like a good cryptogram.\xa0
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 He says he solved the code in June, but didn't bother to include an actual translation in here. There are sketchy references to a "Haunter of the Dark" that could be awakened by someone gazing into the Shining Trapezohedron.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 You mean, just as he had looked into it?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 And he clearly believed that he had inadvertently summoned it.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Hah!\xa0 Like Pandora - letting the cat out of the bag, or rather the monsters out of the box.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 He didn't open the box.\xa0 Just gazed into the stone.\xa0 The box was already open.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 A metaphorical opening of the way, then - still amounts to the same thing.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Some creature from an undefined place regarded this stone as what - the operator on its personal telephone exchange?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 He felt like it was just watching for its chance to walk abroad.\xa0 He also notes, however, that the streetlights seemed to keep it trapped - forming a bulwark of light against its escape.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Throughout history, light has been the enemy of evil.\xa0 Whether it's sunlight causing harm to a shade or the reversion to human of a lycanthrope with the dawn.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 And ghosts don't walk around by day - it would fade their sheets.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Blake writes a lot about the Shining Trapezohedron, calling it a window on all time and space, and trying to trace its largely unbelievable history.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Unbelievable?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Brought from some other sphere or planet by some elder race.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Hmph.\xa0 That's just superstitious claptrap repackaged for a modern age. \xa0Any number of objects have fallen to earth with origins clearly outside what we think of as the normal world.\xa0
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 I heard about a meteor up north that had some quite terrible effects.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 And yet, they have no root in "evil", beyond what we attribute to them.\xa0 Science doesn't shy away the way religion does.\xa0 We don't just hang a sign on it that says "here there be dragons" and nervously turn our backs.\xa0 Science grows to encompass new information.\xa0
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [snide] Like an amoeba absorbs its food?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 [thinks, then] Hmm.\xa0 I suppose that's one way of picturing it.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Or water flowing into a series of newly-dug irrigation trenches.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 [prompting] Realms "beyond"?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Blake seemed to think that the only way to banish the evil was to bury the stone and let daylight into the steeple.
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 PICKS UP AND OPENS BOX, THEN SHUTS IT AGAIN QUICKLY
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 At the same time, however, Blake goes on at some length about his morbid longing to gaze again into the cosmic secrets of the glowing stone.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Impressionable people should stay out of certain fields of endeavor.\xa0
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Oh?\xa0
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 People with fragile minds are better left to the arts than to science, or investigations into the unknown.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 I'll have you know that Art can be a terrible wretch of a mistress.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 With science, you can work your entire life, and never get a single word of encouragement.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Academia is entirely indifferent to any of us who toil in her fields.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 At least your field moves forward slowly enough that by the time someone proves your theory wrong, you've been dead long enough to be an exhibit yourself.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Shall we put them in opposite corners, or have them construct essays on their misconduct?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 There aren't enough corners, even in YOUR house.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 My apologies.\xa0
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Hmph.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 So sorry.\xa0 Pray go on.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 The morning of July 17, something in the paper really set Blake off. \xa0During the night, a storm had put the city's lighting-system out for a full hour.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 I'll bet that didn't go over well.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 The superstitious locals ran mad.\xa0 They surrounded the old church, brandishing candles and lamps.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 A vigil.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 And shuddered at the horrible noises coming from within.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 I know a few buildings I regard that way.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Soon after, in daytime, reporters broke in and found the dust within was all churned up. There was also a bad odour everywhere, and here and there were bits of yellow stain and patches of what looked like charring.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Similar to the bones?\xa0 Did anyone ever run any scientific tests on any of this residue?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Not that I have any note on.\xa0 The reporters \xa0noted the stone pillar, but the metal box and the old mutilated skeleton were not mentioned.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Hmm.\xa0 Gone, or simply overlooked?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 The newspapers love to print prurient details.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 How prurient is a rock in a box?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 From this point onwards Blake's diary shows a mounting tide of horror and apprehension. He frantically telephoned the electric light company more than once, asking - even demanding - that desperate precautions be taken to avoid another loss of power.
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 My worst fears concerned the unholy rapport I felt existed between my mind and that lurking horror in the distant steeple- that monstrous thing of night which my rashness had called out of the ultimate black spaces.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Sounds like he should have invested his last dollar in safety lanterns.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 And a trip to the tropics!
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 People calling on him at the time remember how he would sit and stare out of the west window.\xa0 He spoke often of strange dreams - not nightmares, precisely, but eerily similar to the vision he'd had when gazing into the stone.\xa0
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Sounds almost like shellshock.\xa0 The way memories come back to haunt soldiers.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 It got worse.\xa0 He kept stout cords near his bed so he could bind his ankles at night to prevent himself from somnambulism.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 I had a friend had to do that once.\xa0 If the struggle to get out of bed didn't waken him, the falling flat on his face certainly would.
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 I thought often of the ancient legends of Ultimate Chaos, at whose centre sprawls the blind idiot god Azathoth, Lord of All Things, encircled by his flopping horde of mindless and amorphous dancers, and lulled by the thin monotonous piping of a demoniac flute held in nameless paws.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Azathoth!\xa0 Now there's a name to conjure with!\xa0 Or not to...\xa0 preferably.\xa0 [winding down] Probably best not to mention it at all.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 The night of the 30th, Blake came to suddenly, finding himself in a horribly familiar darkened space.\xa0 A panic flight ensued, leaving him senseless until morning.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Are you saying he managed to sleepwalk all the way across town?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Well, the next morning he found himself lying on his study floor fully dressed. Dirt and cobwebs covered him, and every inch of his body sore and bruised. He writes that his hair was badly scorched, and a trace of a strange evil odour clung to his clothing. It was then that his nerves broke down.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 I think he was overdue.\xa0
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 While I don't understand the phenomena of sleepwalking, I do accept that it occurs.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 How big of you.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 But while one might walk in such a fugue-like state, would one take such niceties as getting dressed into consideration?
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 It's probably much like a state of mesmerism.\xa0 One does what one is told to so.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 But if no one told him--
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Should be obvious.\xa0 We've all been told enough times in our lives not to go outside without a jacket.\xa0
EVERYONE\xa0\xa0\xa0 [general laughter]
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 August eighth.\xa0 The great storm broke just before midnight. Lightning struck in all parts of the city, and a couple of remarkable fireballs were reported. \xa0Blake was utterly frantic and recorded everything in his diary-
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Did he write that he was frantic?
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 He was the type to record everything.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 It was more the tone of the things he did write, but his handwriting is very telling, too.\xa0 See?
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 PAPERS PASS
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Interesting.
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 PAPERS PASS
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Ah.\xa0 Yes.\xa0 The way it changes - getting bigger, and less readable.\xa0
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Also harder to write once the lights go out.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 That hadn't happened - yet.\xa0 See, he's still fretting over it right here.\xa0 "The lights must not go";
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 "It knows where I am";
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 "I must destroy it"; and
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 "it is calling to me, but perhaps it means no injury this time";
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 --are found scattered down two of the pages.\xa0 Ending with--
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 "Lights out- God help me."
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 At 2.35 the noises at the steeple swelled.\xa0 Then, a sound of splintering wood and a large, heavy object crashed down in the yard beneath the frowning easterly fa\xe7ade.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Where were the praying multitude?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Right there.\xa0 Whom do you think was left to tell the tale?\xa0 In fact, just as the "escape" was made, with a vibration as of flapping wings, a sudden east-blowing wind snatched off hats and wrenched dripping umbrellas from the crowd.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Dousing all the tiny pinpricks of the candles?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Quite literally, if the downpour was that prodigious.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 They must have managed to get some of their lights relit, for they remained at their posts.\xa0 The rain didn't stop for another half hour, and shortly after that, the electric lights came back on.\xa0
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 You have quite a comprehensive narration, considering the burden of fear the watchers must have been laboring under.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 The papers gave these matters minor mention in connection with the general storm reports. \xa0I suspect reporters, being what they are, were present during the events.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [chuckling] Perhaps someone writing sensational fiction dropped in for a cold chill.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 The one thing that baffled press and meteorologists alike was a lone lightning-bolt that seemed to have struck somewhere in Blake's neighborhood, though no trace of its striking could afterwards be found.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 Until--?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Precisely.\xa0 When a policeman forced the door, Blake's rigid body sat bolt upright at his desk by the window, with glassy, bulging eyes, and the look of stark, convulsive fright on his twisted features!\xa0 They were reportedly quite sickened.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Police are such delicate flowers.\xa0 Always being sickened by things.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Looking at such damage objectively, a face of fear is much the same as a face in pain, it's all in the attribution the onlooker gives to the damage--
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 The coroner's physician made an examination, and despite the unbroken window, reported the death as the result of electrical shock, or rather nervous tension induced by electrical discharge.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Electricity is not an entirely understood element, even now.\xa0 New possibilities and capabilities are being discovered every day.\xa0 I've often thought myself that electricity might be the key to, say, restarting a stopped heart.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 If you don't want a stopped heart yourself, Herbert, pray let Edward finish.\xa0 We're nearly to a conclusion, if I don't miss my guess.\xa0 I think I'll turn out the electric lights.\xa0 Leave us in the dark like Blake.\xa0 Edward can keep the candle.
SOUND\xa0\xa0\xa0 GETS UP, LIGHTS CLICK OFF
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 There isn't really a nice convenient ending, just another, larger question mark.\xa0 Blake prolonged his frenzied jottings to the last.\xa0 In fact, the broken-pointed pencil was found clutched in his spasmodically contracted right hand.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Spontaneous rigor.\xa0 Not uncommon in cases of sudden, catastrophic death.\xa0 Leads to the so-called "death grip" of detective fiction.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 The entries after the failure of the lights were highly disjointed, and legible only in part.
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 Lights still out - must be five minutes now. Everything depends on lightning. Yaddith grant it will keep up!...
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Yaddith?
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Some ancient deity I'm not familiar with.
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 Some influence seems beating through it... Rain and thunder and wind deafen... The thing is taking hold of my mind... What am I afraid of? Is it not an avatar of Nyarlathotep, who in antique and shadowy Khem even took the form of man?
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 Ah, Nyarlathotep, the mysterious "dark man" who can take many forms.
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 The long, winging flight through the void... cannot cross the universe of light... re-created by the thoughts caught in the Shining Trapezohedron... send it through the horrible abysses of radiance...
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Lost his mind completely.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 I think he agreed with you.
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 My name is Blake- Robert Harrison Blake of 620 East Knapp Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin... I am on this planet...
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 As if he was trying to find his way home.
BLAKE\xa0\xa0\xa0 Azathoth have mercy!- the lightning no longer flashes- horrible- I can see everything with a monstrous sense that is not sight- light is dark and dark is light... I am it and it is I - I want to get out... must get out and unify the forces... it knows where I am... I am Robert Blake, but I see the tower in the dark. There is a monstrous odour... senses transfigured... boarding at that tower window cracking and giving way... I\xe4... ngai... ygg... I see it - coming here - hell-wind - titan blue - black wing - Yog Sothoth save me - the three-lobed burning eye...
[after a moment]
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 [sigh wistfully] I can almost smell the sulphuric tang.
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 I certainly can.\xa0 Something must be burning.
CHARLES\xa0\xa0\xa0 [over-innocent] Burning?\xa0 Nonsense.
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 There is definitely a smell.
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 [teasing] Someone here just couldn't stand the suspense, could you, Richard?
RICHARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 Moi?
HERBERT\xa0\xa0\xa0 Suspense?
EDWARD\xa0\xa0\xa0 It wasn't a very good joke, but the box - this box - contained just enough sulfur to make a good pong if anyone got nosy and opened it to see if I really had the shining trapezohedron.
WARREN\xa0\xa0\xa0 I suppose that, much like Pandora, there are certain things that you can never quite get back into a box.\xa0
END