Feb 17, 2022
Charles takes the lead again, recounting the adventures of anunfortunate uncle.
Cast List
- Herbert - Carl Cubbedge
- Warren - Glen Hallstrom
- Charles - Michael Coleman (Tales of theExtraordinary)
- 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: Julie Hoverson
Cover Design: Julie Hoverson / Brett Coulstock
"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
OLIVIA [opening credits] Did you haveany trouble finding it? What do you mean, what kind of aplace is it? Why, we've returned to Charles' comfortablebrownstone, can't you tell?
Scene 1.
MUSIC
SOUND MUSIC PLAYS
CHARLES I should warn you all from the outsetthat this is a rather more mundane story than most of those broughtto this gathering.
EDWARD As long as you feed me this well,Charles, I'd listen to a story about a dog.
RICHARD Oh? I know this fellow inAndalusia... A friend of a friend.
CHARLES [cutting in] My storyinvolves... a vampire.
EDWARD And you tell us? Right upfront? That's poor narrative framing.
CHARLES No, no, there's a perfectly goodreason to get it out in the open right away.
HERBERT Vampires? Haven't they beenadequately explained by contemporary science?
CHARLES See?
WARREN The existence of vampires has been ..debatable... for several centuries.
EDWARD Ah.
HERBERT The vampire myth is almost certainlyexplainable. Most simply by common or garden anemia--
WARREN Or any number of similarly communicablediseases, for example, consumption--
HERBERT Tuberculosis.
WARREN --which, until very recently, wereoften attributed to supernatural origin.
HERBERT But now, with our understanding ofgerms and the vectors of infection, vampires must be relegated tothe vast list of creatures that have been debunked.
CHARLES [aside] I'll give Warren and Herbertone more minute.
RICHARD I'm just stunned that they seem to beon the same side. Science and History are usually atodds.
EDWARD Fiction can go either way.
WARREN It's fascinating to consider themindset that created a myth such as that of the vampire.
RICHARD Created? You think someone satdown and designed them, like a new model of automobile?
WARREN Created it to account for otherwiseinexplicable events.
EDWARD More like a detective, trying to piecetogether a crime from the clues.
WARREN Do you know that in historicalfolklore, vampires were said to always return and prey on membersof their own family before passing to others?
HERBERT Again, a simple disease contagionstatistic. With the substandard hygiene of past eras, it wasalmost inevitable that those in close proximity to a dying personwere the most likely--
CHARLES Enough!
[moment of silence]
Scene 2.
CHARLES Thank you for the eruditeexposition. I'm quite sure we'll come back to this throughoutthe lecture.
EDWARD [laughing] Please raise your hand ifyou have any questions.
RICHARD Over here?
CHARLES [chuckling] The chair recognizesthe commissioner for art. Richard?
RICHARD Thank you. My question - doesthe name Stoker come into this story anywhere?
CHARLES No. Despite the nature of thecentral creature involved, or supposedly involved, the story has along and verifiable history, which began well before any of suchcontemporary novels appeared on bookstands.
EDWARD I dunno - there have been similarcreatures haunting Gothic novels for nearly two centuries.
WARREN Aren't they all explained away by theend of the book?
EDWARD Only in Radcliffe.
RICHARD You need a gavel, Charles, so you cancall us to order.
Scene 3.
CHARLES My story is about a house.
EDWARD A vampire house? [laughs]
CHARLES Well.... A cursed house.
WARREN A curse? AND a vampire?
EDWARD Do you mean a house in the sense of afamily line or a physical house?
CHARLES The latter. This house happensto be in Providence. And while I could lie and tell you thiswas another personal experience, in truth, it happened to a cousinof mine.
EDWARD Your cousin is a vampire house?
HERBERT You forgot to raise your hand,Edward.
CHARLES This particular area of Providence washaunted by Poe in his day. Sometime in the 1840s, he was wontto pass by this very house on visits to the poetess Mrs.Whitman.
RICHARD Whitman? Should we know her?
EDWARD We certainly know Poe.
CHARLES She was an ardent spiritist andsomething of an early suffragette. I haven't come across anyof her writings myself. Almost as much a draw as the lady,though, St. John's churchyard was also along Poe's route.
EDWARD Is Poe in this story?
CHARLES He's merely making an appearance forhistorical perspective. Setting the time and place.
WARREN Understood.
CHARLES The point - the irony is this -the world's greatest master of the terrible and the bizarreregularly passed a particular house on the eastern side of thestreet; a dingy, antiquated structure perched on the abruptlyrising side hill. There is no evidence that he even noticedit. And yet that house, to certain persons, equals oroutranks in horror Poe's wildest phantasy.
EDWARD [avid] Now we get into it!
CHARLES The house was - and for that matterstill is - of a kind to attract the attention of thecurious. It followed the colonial lines of the middleeighteenth century - the prosperous peaked-roof sort of farm house;two stories; dormerless attic; Georgian doorway and interiorpaneling.
RICHARD All the best accoutrements of the mid1700s?
CHARLES Ayup. Facing south, it's buriedto the lower windows in the hillside, and exposed to thefoundations on the street.
RICHARD [knowing] I've seen a few ofthose.
CHARLES Its construction, over a century and ahalf ago, followed hard upon the rerouting of the nearbyroad. Benefit Street - at the time called Back Street - woundthrough the graveyards of the first settlers. It wasstraightened only when the removal of the bodies to the NorthBurial Ground made it decently possible to cut across theold family plots.
EDWARD Aha!
HERBERT A house built over the miasmaticremains of a graveyard? Simply begging for some festeringdisease to seep in through the foundation.
Scene 4.
WARREN Uh... May I?
CHARLES Recognized.
WARREN When you speak of this being a"vampire", do you specifically speak of a walking corpse thatdrinks blood, or the more classic creature of folklore which issomething like a stealer of soul or essence?
HERBERT Warren! You sounded almostimpartial before, and now this?
WARREN Whether or not I believe in sucha creature, it's important to uncover what the peopleinvolved believe, regardless of the underlying source.
HERBERT Hmph.
CHARLES I may have to leave the ultimatedecision up to you as to what particular phylum this entity fallsinto.
HERBERT Don't try to make taxonomicaljokes. It doesn't suit you.
CHARLES Moving on. I should point outthat while I was not a witness to all the events of my story, Ihave been to - and in fact, been in - the house inquestion.
EDWARD Do tell?
CHARLES Boys will be boys, and visits in myyouth to my cousin--
EDWARD The one who witnessed these events?
CHARLES Ayup. Visits with his familyevery summer. And many boyish dares ended with someoneventuring into the empty, foreboding edifice.
WARREN Empty? Providence isn't a placewhere houses generally stand empty for long.
CHARLES Precisely. And this one shouldhave been occupied, except for--
EDWARD The vampire? Or the Curse?The Curse of the Vampire?
CHARLES Not precisely. You see the housewasn't associated with anything like that at the time, itwas simply thought... unlucky.
HERBERT [very snide] Oh, yes. That'smuch more classifiable.
CHARLES People just kept dying in thehouse. Individually, they were generally attributed tosomething more along the lines you've suggested, Herbert - bad air,foul fungus in the basement, something material and accountable,and yet...
EDWARD Yet?
Scene 5.
CHARLES That's for later. There's quitea tragic history to the house, which I will touch upon, but let mefinish with my own impressions first - the facts, anyway.
HERBERT Well, I can agree with that.
CHARLES It was the dank, humid cellar whichexerted the strongest repulsion on us - even though it was whollyaboveground on the street side, with only a thin door andwindow-pierced brick wall to separate it from the busysidewalk. We scarcely knew whether to haunt it in spectralfascination, or to shun it for the sake of our souls and oursanity.
HERBERT Facts, he says. Hmph.
CHARLES For one thing, the bad odour of thehouse was strongest there; and there were white fungous growthswhich occasionally sprang up in rainy summer weather from the hardearthen floor.
HERBERT What kind of fungi?
CHARLES I'm no expert. Something betweentoadstools and Indian pipes? They rotted and became slightlyphosphorescent; so that nocturnal passers-by sometimes spoke ofwitch-fires glowing behind the broken panes of the foetor-spreadingwindows.
RICHARD [shudder] Interesting.[musing] True phosphorescence is a colour that's so hard tocapture...
CHARLES We never - even in our wildestHallowe'en moods - visited this cellar by night, but in some of ourdaytime visits could detect the glowing of the fungi, especiallywhen the day was dark and wet. And something else... [trailsoff]
WARREN [sincere] It really bothered you,didn’t it?
CHARLES Distressing events have so much moreinfluence when one is impressionable ...and young. [shakingit off] Lets have a bit more of vampires while I regain mycomposure - meaning while I fetch myself something to drink.Warren, if you would?
Scene 6.
WARREN Oh, well... Some basic facts,then. Vampires were originally believed to be a form ofrevenant - the returning spirit of a recently deceased person, nota physical manifestation at all.
EDWARD Really? Not bloated corpsesreturning to gorge on the gore of gorgeous...um, gamines?
RICHARD [laughs] Gratuitous. Ibelieve it was Stoker who started a lot of what most people thinkof as "vampire traditions?"
WARREN I confess I am not particularlyconversant with the novel. I'm not much for such sensationalfiction.
EDWARD I am.
RICHARD I am.
HERBERT Don't look at me.
EDWARD Go on.
RICHARD [prompting] They drink blood?
WARREN Probably attributable to either anemia,as Herbert suggested, or to any number of wasting diseases thatplagued people.
EDWARD But what about the bite marks?
HERBERT Disease sores. Or the predationof rats. Which, in turn, spread disease.
WARREN Very likely. Rats have livedcheek and jowl with humans since the dawn of civilization.
RICHARD Stoker did make the connection betweenhis vampire and rats - he was supposed to be able to summon andcontrol them.
HERBERT If you consider the "vampire" assymbolic of disease, then its presumed connection to rats is fairlylogical.
RICHARD But Dracula also couldn't enter a homewithout being invited?
CHARLES [drink - ahh] On the other hand, weboys could, and did. Why don't I take my narrative backup?
Scene 7.
WARREN Go ahead.
CHARLES I won't be able to adequately describethe place to convey the depth of the horror we felt in itspresence.
EDWARD We promise to laugh quietly.
CHARLES No need. [deep breath, bracinghimself] There was this sort of cloudy whitish pattern on thedirt floor - a vague, shifting deposit of mould or nitre which weusually seemed to be able to trace out amidst the sparse fungousgrowths near the huge fireplace of the basement kitchen.
EDWARD Something carved into the floor?
CHARLES Floor was dirt. No. Thispatch... it bore an uncanny resemblance to a doubled-up humanfigure.
RICHARD Like some sort of primitivegrave-marking?
CHARLES [growing haunted] On one certain rainyafternoon I fancied I glimpsed a thin, yellowish, shimmeringexhalation rising from the nitrous pattern toward the yawningfireplace. [brisk] Shortly after, my cousin and Ibroached this to our uncle.
WARREN Perhaps you could put names to thesepeople?
CHARLES Of course. My cousin - well,I'll just call him Randolph, and our uncle's name is ElihuWhipple. Doctor Elihu Whipple.
WARREN Whipple? I know him - or havemet him, but didn't he recently--?
CHARLES [cutting him off] Yes,yes. I'll get there.
EDWARD Ooh! A mystery.
CHARLES Uncle Elihu never pooh-poohed ourconcerns about the house. As it turned out he'd done a gooddeal of research on it, himself.
RICHARD The house is still standing, isit? Might be worth making a day trip to Providence - orrather a night trip.
CHARLES Probably futile - the house has beencleaned and is once more gainfully employed.
EDWARD A happy ending? To a vampirestory? Say it isn’t so!
WARREN [grim] Not as happy as all that, Iwarrant.
EDWARD Not fair! You know something!
RICHARD How do you mean the house has beencleaned?
CHARLES Everything natural around the houseused to be ... wrong. From the aforementioned fungus to thetree roots that grew into the cellar, and the weeds that flourishedin the back yard - everything was twisted and flabby and somehowunnatural. And now--
EDWARD All better?
CHARLES Yes. But at a cost.
WARREN [serious] Yes.
CHARLES The history of the house islong-winded, statistical, and drearily genealogical, but there runsthrough it a continuous thread of brooding, tenacious horror andpreternatural malevolence. My cousin and uncle apparentlybecame obsessed with charting every death possibly attributable tothe house.
WARREN [carefully choosing his words to notgive anything away] I never fancied Whipple as an historian?
CHARLES A physician and amateurantiquarian. And yet, he approached the problem much asHerbert might - as a technical one. Hygiene and germs.
HERBERT Oh. A realist. In yourfamily?
CHARLES Yes. Well, every herd has itsblack sheep. Now, the origin of the house, amidst a maze ofdates, revealed no trace of the sinister. It was built by amerchant, William Harris.
Scene 8.
EDWARD Built on a recently movedgraveyard?
CHARLES A recently-straightened part of thestreet, anyway.
EDWARD But there must be something?
CHARLES Actually, from what I understand, theland the house stands upon was never marked forgraves.
EDWARD Why bring up the graves, then, ifthey're not relevant?
RICHARD Setting tone.
WARREN Of course, vampires were supposed to beburied in unhallowed ground, like suicides, so the LACK of aconsecrated churchyard is possibly just as significant.
CHARLES The following spring, sicknessoccurred among the Harris children, and two of the four died withina month.
HERBERT Children are particularly susceptibleto many kinds of disease.
CHARLES And one of the two servants died of itin the following June. The remaining servant, Eli, constantlycomplained of weakness.
WARREN Servants have traditionally been drawnfrom the lower classes, who in turn tend to be more superstitious,and therefore more inclined to give credence to, and in turn beaffected by, such things.
CHARLES Eli died the next year, as did themaster of the house and a third of the four children.
WARREN Goodness!
CHARLES The widow fell victim to insanity,after such a series of tragedies, and was thereafter confined tothe upper part of the house. This was in 1768.
EDWARD This story is starting to sound oddlyfamiliar. Was there a meteorite involved?
HERBERT [scoffing] In Providence?
CHARLES The widow's sister, Mercy Dexter,moved in to take charge of the family. Mercy was a plain, raw-bonedwoman of great strength, but her health visibly declined from thetime of her arrival.
EDWARD Now it sounds like Luella Miller.
HERBERT You would think that by this time theywould have the sense to move out.
EDWARD Or get in an exorcist.
HERBERT Nonsense. It's more likelysomething toxic in the groundwater - arsenic, perhaps. Slighttraces can cause anemia and wasting as it builds up in the body'svital organs.
CHARLES So many deaths and a case of madness,all within five years, started strange rumours.
RICHARD Rumors? Nonsense. This isa definite pattern. Herbert? You agree?
HERBERT [definite] Arsenic. Or one ofthe other heavy metals. Perhaps Thallium? Did anyonesuffer from hair loss?
CHARLES There were othersymptoms. The poor widow, in her madness, gave voice todreams and imaginings of the most hideous sort.
HERBERT Fever rantings.
CHARLES Her terrors periodically necessitatedher remaining son's residence with a cousin. He improvedduring these visits, and, had Mercy been as wise as she waswell-meaning, she would have let him live awaypermanently.
WARREN What sort of direction did this madnesstake? Paranoia?
Scene 9.
CHARLES Now, William, the one remaining childof this unfortunate house, broke away from the place in his teensby enlisting - what with the [ahem] trouble with Great Britain.
EDWARD What trouble?
WARREN [hinting] Consider the year?
EDWARD I don't know what year we're at.I haven’t been taking notes.
CHARLES 1775.
EDWARD Oh, of course.
CHARLES William was away for the duration,married, and returned to his family home to find tragedy.
RICHARD No "Mercy"?
CHARLES Mercy was still there, but her oncerobust frame had undergone curious decay, so that she was now astooped and pathetic figure with hollow voice and disconcertingpallor.
HERBERT Did feeblemindedness run in the familyas well? Wasn't this a clear enough hint?
CHARLES William, now an adult witnessing theseevents, quickly arranged for the building of a new and finerhouse... across town.
HERBERT Finally!
CHARLES And closed the house on BenefitStreet.
WARREN Probably for the best.
EDWARD Are we nearing 1800 yet?
CHARLES Almost. William and his wifepassed away in the yellow fever epidemic of 1797, leaving theirchild in the care of a cousin, Rathbone Harris.
RICHARD Now there's a name!
CHARLES Rathbone was a practical man, andrented the Benefit Street house despite dead William's wish that itremain vacant. He did not concern himself with the deaths andillnesses which caused so many changes of tenants, or the steadilygrowing aversion with which the house was generally regarded.
EDWARD He's lucky no one held himresponsible.
HERBERT As if one could sue over poor livingconditions!
CHARLES In 1804, the town council ordered theplace fumigated with sulphur, tar and gum camphor due to severalmore deaths - presumably caused by the passing fever epidemic.
HERBERT [dismissive] Might as well wearpointed masks and wave nosegays.
WARREN I'm sure they did the best they couldwith the science they had.
CHARLES Several generations passed, with thehouse standing empty.
HERBERT And yet, whether operating under ranksuperstition or sound scientific principals, it never occurred tothem to simply tear it down, clear the ground, and begin anew withclean pipes from a municipal water source?
CHARLES No, indeed, but it never rented againafter the series of deaths culminating in 1861.
EDWARD So when you braved its depths,it had lain fallow for some ... 50 years?
CHARLES I'm a bit older than that, butthat's a good round number to work with. Fifty years empty -and fifty years hungry.
RICHARD So we are now at the present, and yourcousin Randolph enters the stage?
CHARLES Carrington Harris, last of the maleline, had meant to tear the place down and build an apartment houseon the site--
HERBERT Finally, another sane one.
CHARLES But Randolph convinced him to allowthem to look into it first.
EDWARD With the history you've given - I'llagree it shows a pattern of misfortune, but what, precisely, madeyou think of vampires, and not ghosts or curses, or poison, or anyof the other various explanations we've found?
CHARLES Well, it was one of the originalservants who started talking vampires. She was asuperstitious Exeter woman, and you know how they can be.
Scene 10.
ANN Some remnant must lie nearby, mayhap underthis very house! Doomed to sup off the blood or breath ofgod-fearing folk! My own grand-dam told me time and again,Ann, she said, to destroy such a hellion, ye must find its earthlyshell, and burn its black and festering heart!
EDWARD Not a stake through the heart andcutting off its head?
RICHARD Perhaps that was "plan B".
CHARLES As she was sacked and left the houserelatively unscathed, this servant Ann's stories spread far andwide.
WARREN So that is one.
CHARLES One what?
WARREN Reason to bring up vampires.
HERBERT Hardly a credible witness.
CHARLES Ah yes. There was also theraving.
EDWARD The widow?
CHARLES Rhoby Harris. Hers, andothers. Among the people who died in that house, a largepercentage were subject to such ranting.
HERBERT Again, not unnatural in certain kindof fevers.
[CHARLES BEGINS TO BUILD FROM HERE]
CHARLES In their more lucid moments, severalof the afflicted went on about sharp teethed, glassy-eyes creaturesthat crouched on their chests and scratched at their necks?
RICHARD Fuseli's "Nightmare" comes tomind. An imp sitting on the chest of a sleeping woman?Though it always looked a bit more bemused than threatening tome.
EDWARD And then there's cats who steal thebreath from babies.
WARREN Some demonic images are universal - atleast among the various Christian branches.
CHARLES In the last throes of their disease,many of these afflicted even began to foam and bite and scratch attheir caretakers!
HERBERT Hydrophobia? Perhaps rabid ratslurking in the walls?
[CLIMAX OF CHARLES' POINTS]
CHARLES And all of them ranting in gutturalFrench? A language not ONE of the afflicted was familiarwith?
[moment of silence]
Scene 11.
RICHARD [hesitant] oh. Um... arethey quite sure it was French?
WARREN How could they mistake French?Unless it was, say, Belgian.
RICHARD I've traveled in Europe. If youspeak NO languages but English, all languages are equallyincomprehensible - at least, at first.
HERBERT What makes you think that no onearound the afflicted spoke French?
RICHARD Charles specified that none of thevictims spoke any French. How many people can livewith, or even around, a speaker of another language and notpick up a few words?
CHARLES Bravo, Richard!
RICHARD And, unlike, say, New Orleans, in NewEngland, French speakers have traditionally been a bit light on theground.
CHARLES Oddly, that leads me to the next partof the story.
WARREN The French?
CHARLES Following up on the French connection,Randolph and Elihu uncovered historical references to a Frenchfamily who settled in the area long before this house wasbuilt.
EDWARD And were buried there,right?
RICHARD Shh.
CHARLES A lease from 1697, showed a smalltract of ground being let to an Etienne Roulet.
WARREN Roulet? Why does that soundfamiliar?
CHARLES And yes, the Roulets hadlaid out their graveyard behind their cottage, and no record of anytransfer of graves existed.
EDWARD Hah! And why were they in thearea? On the run from witch trials?
Scene 12.
CHARLES The Edict of Nantes, actually.
EDWARD The what?
WARREN Huguenots?
CHARLES Precisely.
EDWARD [louder] What?
WARREN French protestants, driven out ofFrance after the country declared itself definitely Catholic.And it wouldn't be the Edict that drove them out - that wasearlier.
EDWARD Wasn't there something about Huguenotsin a moving picture?
RICHARD Intolerance. Right next to theBabylonian orgy scenes.
CHARLES Ahem. The Roulets wereunpopular, and had already been not-so-politely asked to leave EastGreenwich. Apparently their sort of Protestantism didn'tquite fit with the standards of New England society.
EDWARD I thought all protestants were prettymuch the same?
WARREN [guffaws]
RICHARD To misquote Wilde, they're one churchseparated by a common religion.
HERBERT Religion is such a futile waste oftime.
CHARLES Etienne Roulet wasn't much of afarmer, but he could read and write and figure - the words "drawingqueer diagrams" appear in one of the accounts, but withoutdetails. So Roulet was employed in a clerical post at PardonTillinghast's wharf.
HERBERT Tillinghast? Huh.[recalling "from beyond"]
RICHARD Small world.
CHARLES New England, especially.Everyone's always related to everyone, and knows everyoneelse. Everyone important, anyway. So the Roulets, beingso entirely ...other... were never accepted.
RICHARD Roulet! I have it!
CHARLES Oh?
RICHARD I don't know any of the dates, but Ithink it was in the reign of Henri the fourth of France. Idon't know why, but I associate it with "Boy bitten by lizard" anda couple of particularly gruesome beheadings of John theBaptist. [explaining] Paintings. There was aRoulet accused of being a ... [falters, not sure] awerewolf?
WARREN I knew there wassomething! Yes of course -a Jacques Roulet. An indigentaccused of the horrid murder of a young man. From what littleI can recall, he claimed he had changed into a wolf and wastherefore condemned to death, but ultimately commuted to lifeimprisonment in a madhouse.
EDWARD And you just know this, Warren,off the top of your head?
WARREN Well, I was going through acouple of books recently, looking for tales... well... that I mightbring HERE.
EDWARD [laughs]
RICHARD Any more salacious details? Iseem to remember hints of cannibalism?
WARREN 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.
EDWARD But what would a werewolf in Francehave to do with a vampire or ghost in Providence?
HERBERT Or disease.
WARREN Actually, werewolves and vampires haveoften gone hand in hand - the werewolf being generally consideredone who has sold his soul in a pact with the devil, and the vampirebeing the soulless revenant of someone who died either while undersuch a pact or as the victim of such a fiend.
EDWARD So being a werewolf in life makes oneinevitably a vampire after death?
CHARLES Much like going to Boston Latin leadsinevitably to Harvard.
[general laughter]
CHARLES So. On to my relations and the houseon Benefit street.
EDWARD That would make a good title for astory. [ominous] The House on Benefit Street.
CHARLES They went about the whole thing withan eye to scientific method. Truly. Even brought alongvarious mechanical devices.
HERBERT Such as?
CHARLES [sigh] I was really hoping to passover this. I don't know. Just say mechanical devicesand leave it at that.
HERBERT Imprecision. Alwaysimprecision.
CHARLES They brought the devices in during theday - and recall, they can walk directly in from the street intothe dreaded basement.
EDWARD Or directly out, as the case maybe.
CHARLES Randolph spent the day poking around,but found only the same depressing mustiness and faint suggestionsof noxious odours.
RICHARD Well, if it was daylight, anythingphosphorescent would lie unseen.
CHARLES Precisely. So he tried again,this time by night. And with somewhat more trepidation.
Scene 13.
RANDOLPH One stormy midnight, I ran the beamsof an electric torch over the mouldy floor. The place haddispirited me curiously that evening, and I was almost preparedwhen I saw a particularly sharp definition of the "huddled form" werecalled from boyhood.
CHARLES Even while he watched, he seemed tosee the thin, yellowish, shimmering exhalation which had startledus years before.
RANDOLPH A subtle, sickish, almost luminousvapour rose, which seemed to develop vague and shocking suggestionsof form, before passing into the blackness of the great chimney,leaving foetor in its wake. Refusing to flee, I watched itfade - and as I watched I felt it was in turn watching me greedilywith eyes more imagined than visible.
CHARLES The upshot of this palpablemanifestation was that they determined to both spend the night inthe house. After papering the windows, to avoid the eyes ofpossible onlookers, they added camp chairs and cots to theiraccoutrements and settled in.
RANDOLPH We were not, as I have said, in anysense childishly superstitious, but scientific study and reflectionhad taught us that the known universe of three dimensions embracesthe merest fraction of the whole cosmos of substance andenergy.
HERBERT [interested] Scientificapproach, indeed. I assumed you were exaggerating.
CHARLES I accept your apology.
HERBERT I didn't apologize.
RANDOLPH To say that we actually believed inthe supernatural would be carelessly inclusive. Rather saythat we were not prepared to deny the possibility of certainmodifications of vital force and matter, of something that mightexist only infrequently in three-dimensional space because of amore intimate connection with other spatial units.
EDWARD I'm not even going to ask.
HERBERT They were approaching the matter as ifthe potential creature was something that exists in an ...adjacentdimension. Interesting.
RANDOLPH The family of Roulet had likelypossessed an abnormal affinity for outer circles of entity.Could not, then, some force drawn or created by this passioncontinue to function in the vicinity long after the originalparticipants were dead and gone?
HERBERT Unfortunately, there is no way toprove or disprove such sloppy hypotheses. [musing] And yet,one might easily imagine an alien nucleus of substance or energy,formless or otherwise, kept alive by imperceptible subtractionsfrom the life-force or bodily tissue and fluids of more traditional"living things".
EDWARD Which, I believe, would make itsomething called ...a "vampire"?
HERBERT [ignoring him] Such a thing might beactively hostile, or simply motivated by self-preservation.
EDWARD Back to Luella Miller.
Scene 14.
RICHARD Regardless, in any good socialcircles, eating people is considered... unacceptable.
HERBERT Well, of course such a creature wouldhave to be eliminated, and yet the concept isfascinating.
WARREN Perhaps such creatures, throughouthistory, formed the basis for many such myths.
CHARLES But this myth is the only one we'redealing with tonight. Randolph and Elihu were ready foranything they could be ready for.
RANDOLPH We had devised two weapons to fightit; a large Crookes tube operated by powerful storage batteries andprovided with peculiar screens and reflectors, in case it provedintangible and opposable only by vigorously destructive etherradiations--
HERBERT Is this item available for anexamination?
CHARLES I might ask him. But not for acouple of months. He's rather busy at the moment.
EDWARD Oh, no - don't tell me he's in amadhouse?
CHARLES [considering, then definite] Mm.No.
RANDOLPH We also had a pair of militaryflame-throwers of the sort used in the World War, in case thecreature proved material and susceptible of standarddestruction. We were prepared to burn the thing's heart out -if heart existed to burn.
HERBERT This is the sort of preparationsorely lacking in most of these so-called ghost stories. Andnary a religious icon in sight?
CHARLES Um, no.
HERBERT I am impressed.
EDWARD You don't mind that they planned to"burn its heart out", so long as they didn't brandish a crucifixwhile they did it?
HERBERT Melodramatic, perhaps, but burning theheart out of any living creature is just as likely to be aneffective way of destroying it.
RANDOLPH Our cellar vigil began at 10 P.M.,daylight saving time. A weak, filtered glow from therain-harassed street lamps outside, and a feeble phosphorescencefrom the detestable fungi within, showed the dripping stone of thewalls.
CHARLES They left the street door unlocked, incase of a sudden need to depart. And they sat, playingstalking goat to a creature as potentially deadly as any man-eatingtiger. They talked far into the night until Uncle Elihu,being the older, grew drowsy.
RANDOLPH Something like fear chilled me as Isat there in the small hours alone - I say alone, for one who sitsby a sleeper is indeed alone; perhaps more alone than he canrealize. Once, when the noisome atmosphere of the placeseemed about to sicken me, I opened the door and looked up and downthe street, feasting my eyes on familiar sights and my nostrils onwholesome air.
CHARLES He returned inside, ready to tradeshifts with the elder man. But all was not well.
RANDOLPH As I turned my electric flashlight onhim, all at once he commenced to mutter. The words were atfirst indistinguishable, and then, with a tremendous start, Irecognized something about them which filled me with icy fear!
RICHARD Francais?
CHARLES Oui. Now, Uncle Elihu could readand write in a passable Gallic hand, and presumably COULD speak thetongue as well. So it might ... possibly be ...coincidence.
RANDOLPH Suddenly a perspiration broke out onthe sleeper's forehead, and he leapt abruptly up, half awake.The jumble of French changed to a cry in English!
Scene 15.
ELIHU My breath, my breath!
EDWARD Wait! You just used thepast tense! [mimicking] "Uncle could read andwrite!" Did the vampire get him?
CHARLES As a matter of fact, he woke at thispoint, and recounted a dreadful dream he had been having.
WARREN A sort of race-memory?
CHARLES All the while, he said he felt asensation of choking, as if some pervasive presence had spreaditself through his body.
RANDOLPH I reflected that dreams are onlydreams, and that these visions could be, at most, no morethan my uncle's reaction to the investigations which had latelyfilled our minds to the exclusion of all else.
HERBERT Plausible.
EDWARD Plausible denial.
RANDOLPH My uncle seemed now very wakeful, andwelcomed his period of watching even though the nightmare hadaroused him far ahead of his allotted two hours.
EDWARD He still went to sleep? After allthat?
RANDOLPH It was not a pleasant sleep, and fora second I was not sorry for the echoing shriek which clove throughthe barriers of dream and flung me to a sharp and startledawakeness.
RICHARD Who was shrieking?
EDWARD His uncle? Your uncle, Imean?
CHARLES [grim] Yes.
RANDOLPH As I turned, I dreaded what I was tosee; for the scream had been in my uncle's voice, and I knew notagainst what menace I should have to defend him and myself.
HERBERT Did he at least have the sense to armhimself with the flamethrower?
CHARLES I believe so.
EDWARD Not the BEST idea, considering hisuncle might be in the line of ... um... fire.
RANDOLPH Yet after all, the sight was worsethan I had dreaded. Out of the fungous-ridden earth steamedup a vaporous corpse-light, yellow and diseased, which bubbled andlapped to a gigantic height in vague outlines half human and halfmonstrous.
RICHARD A yellow blot upon the dark palette ofthe tenebrous cellar.
RANDOLPH I say that I saw this thing, but atthe time it was to me only a seething dim cloud of fungousloathsomeness, enveloping the one object to which all myattention was focused. That object was my uncle!
EDWARD Why did it wait so long?
WARREN Maybe the apparition only appears atcertain times of night.
HERBERT Maybe the dimensions only overlap atcertain times.
CHARLES Maybe you should let me finish thetale.
RANDOLPH And then, my uncle, features somehowblackening and decaying, leered and gibbered and reached outdripping claws to rend me!
RICHARD All the more terrible for being arelative.
RANDOLPH Only a sense of routine kept me fromgoing mad. Recognizing the bubbling evil as no substancereachable by matter or material chemistry, I threw on the currentof the Crookes tube apparatus, and focused the strongest etherradiations.
HERBERT [eager] Yes?
RANDOLPH There was a frenzied sputtering, andthe yellowish phosphorescence grew dimmer to my eyes. But I sawthat the waves from the machine had no effect whatsoever.
CHARLES Then, in the midst of that daemoniacspectacle, he saw a fresh horror which sent him fumbling andstaggering towards that unlocked door to the quiet street, carelessof what terrors he might loose upon the world.
RANDOLPH In that dim blend of blue and yellowlight, the form of my uncle commenced a nauseous liquefaction whoseessence eludes all description, and in which there played acrosshis vanishing face such changes of identity as only madness canconceive. He was at once a devil and a multitude, a charnel-houseand a pageant.
CHARLES He said that dozens, or perhapshundreds, of faces played briefly across the countenance of ourdear uncle - showing, perhaps, all those whose lives had beentainted by the shadowy intruder.
RANDOLPH Toward the last, it seemed as thoughthe shifting features strove to form contours like those of myuncle's kindly face. I like to think that he existed at thatmoment, and that he tried to bid me farewell before the finaldissolution.
Scene 16.
HERBERT [disbelieving] He...melted?
EDWARD Seems a bit extreme for an entity thattook years and years to kill sister Mercy.
WARREN Consider that the thing had beenstarved for half a century. Where it might have beensatisfied with a slow drain in the past, now it was forced togorge.
RICHARD And poor Randolph fled into thenight?
CHARLES Yes. He wandered aimlessly for atime, unsure of whom he might confide in.
EDWARD Naturally he thought of you.
CHARLES My taste in the ... unusual isn't muchof a secret. He woke me early that morning and together weapproached that evil dwelling.
RANDOLPH All residue was gone, for the mouldyfloor was porous.
CHARLES I saw the cot, the chairs, theinstruments, and even the yellowed straw hat of my uncle. But nosign of the figure in the floor.
RANDOLPH I tried to conjecture as nearly assanity would let me just what had happened, and how I might end thehorror, if indeed it had been real. It did not seem to bematter, nor ether, nor anything else conceivable. What, then, butsome exotic emanation; some vampirish vapour such as those thatrustics claim lurk over certain church yards?
CHARLES Randolph has always been a bit of adreamer. Between us we quickly concocted a plan, and went tofetch digging implements, military gas-masks, and six carboys ofsulphuric acid.
EDWARD That you just happened to have lyingaround?
HERBERT That's what those were for.
RICHARD Herbert? Why on earth do youhave sulphuric acid handy?
HERBERT It serves many purposes. Butgetting rid of organic ... remains... is a primary one.
CHARLES It took nearly an entire day to geteverything organized. Randolph spent most of that time tryingto take his mind off the horrors he had witnessed.
RANDOLPH I passed the hours in reading and inthe composition of inane verses to counteract my mood.
EDWARD "inane verses"?
RICHARD [limerick] There once was an old manfrom Arkham...
Scene 17.
CHARLES Just before noon the next day, wecommenced digging - right where that stain had always been seen,though there was no trace of it there in the strong morningsunshine.
RANDOLPH As I turned up the stinking blackearth in front of the fireplace, a viscous yellow ichor oozed fromthe white fungi it severed.
CHARLES With the deepening of the hole, whichwas about six feet square, the evil smell increased. We hadarranged the great carboys of acid around and near two sides, sothat when necessary they could be emptied down the aperture inquick succession.
EDWARD And the gas masks?
CHARLES originally to keep out the vaporitself, but we used them as much for the dreadful stench.
RANDOLPH Suddenly my spade struck somethingsofter than earth. I shuddered and made a motion as if to climb outof the hole, which was now as deep as my neck.
CHARLES I was above at the time, taking somemuch-needed fresh air, but returned when he called out inhorror.
RANDOLPH The thing I had uncovered was fishyand glassy - a kind of semi-putrid congealed jelly with suggestionsof translucency. I scraped further, and saw that it had form -hugeand roughly cylindrical; like a mammoth soft blue-white stovepipedoubled in two, its largest part some two feet in diameter.
CHARLES Abruptly, he leaped out of the hole,then began frantically unstopping and tilting the heavy carboys,and precipitating their corrosive contents one after another downthat charnel gulf.
EDWARD Before you could even seeit?
CHARLES I saw enough.
RICHARD A cylinder? So it was some sortof giant worm?
EDWARD A folded worm?
CHARLES Randolph had his own explanation forit, though I don’t know how much credit to give him, there in hisabject terror.
HERBERT What did he think it was?
CHARLES All I saw was a blindingmaelstrom of greenish-yellow vapour which surged tempestuously upfrom that hole as the floods of acid descended. Peopleoutside, seeing the hideous yellow fumes that soared up thechimney, attributed it to a dumping of waste in the river by somefactory, but I know how mistaken they are as to the source.
HERBERT But you had apparently only uncoveredpart of the thing?
EDWARD I guess the acid found its way back tothe rest of it.
Scene 18.
CHARLES People also talk about the hideousnoise which came at roughly the same time from some disorderedwater-pipe or gas main underground - but again I could correct themif I dared.
RANDOLPH It was unspeakably shocking, and I donot see how I lived through it. I did faint after emptying thefourth carboy; but when I recovered I saw that the hole wasemitting no fresh vapours.
CHARLES I dragged him away and we waited untilthe fumes cleared. We still emptied the rest of the acid downthe hole, just to be on the safe side.
RANDOLPH The dampness was less foetid, and allthe strange fungi had withered to a kind of harmless greyish powderwhich blew ashlike along the floor.
HERBERT Probably from the fumes.
RANDOLPH One of earth's nethermost terrors hadperished forever; and if there be a hell, it had received at lastthe daemon soul of an unhallowed thing. And as I patted down thelast spadeful of mould, I shed the first of many tears with which Ihave paid unaffected tribute to my beloved uncle's memory.
EDWARD But what was it? What did he sayhe saw?
CHARLES Keep in mind that at two feetdiameter, this cylinder would have made a very stocky manindeed.
RICHARD Portly, even.
HERBERT And difficult to double up that way,once obesity set in.
EDWARD What was it?
CHARLES Again, I never saw it, and only haveRandolph's rather addled ideas to go by. And he insisted thatif it had lain there all those centuries, eating and growing, itcould be any sort of size.
EDWARD And?
CHARLES He said this thing - this huge bentthing- was ... the creature's ...elbow.
[moment of silence]
EDWARD [snickering] what?
CHARLES His words, not mine.
EDWARD But if it grew when fed, wouldn’t ithave shrunk when starved? It should have been tiny.
WARREN Unless by devouring Charles's uncle -Oh, I say, I'm sorry - but perhaps that would have returned it toits... ahem ... former glory?
HERBERT It's ridiculous. I was perfectlywilling to consider the possible existence of some such thing, butquite apart form the inanity of a thing which grows so large thatit COULD achieve such stature - there's a simple issue ofdisplacement of earth!
CHARLES I expect it happened very veryslowly.
RICHARD Not to mention that if something thatsize were its elbow, its entire body would have been underneathmost of the neighborhood. Why then, would it restrict itselfto harming only those in that single house?
WARREN True. If it were going to have asingle area to draw sustenance from, you might think it would becentered on, say, the mouth.
EDWARD Yeah. No one who's anyone eatswith their elbow.
CHARLES [annoyed sigh] I'll make a point oftelling Randolph the next time I see him.
END
