19 Nocturne Boulevard

(I thought this had come out long ago, but somehow I missed posting it!)

Written by Julie Hoverson Sound and mastering by Aaron Emmanuel

JUDGE (50s) Russell Gold

BAILEY (40s) Barry Howarth

WITCH HUNTER (any) Karim Kronfli

ELIZABETH JAMESON (18) Libby Thomas

MASTER BERNE (30) Michael Hudson

MASTER HILLMAN (30) Alex Gilmour

OLD MAGGIE (70) Elizabeth Price

OLD AGNES (70) Julie Hoverson

MAJOR JANIS TIMMS (30) Devin Nissan

KATE (30) Katy Anderson

PRIEST (40) Owen Curtiss

BORDO, GOAT (any)

TOWNSFOLK Jay Langejans Naomi Rose Mock Owen Curtiss Robert Finch Katy Anderson Michael Hudson Alex Gilmour Julie Hoverson

************************************************

The Shadow of Ignorance

Cast:

Judge

Bailey

Witch Hunter

Elizabeth Jameson

Master Berne

Master Hillman

Old Maggie, who lives by the Fen

Old Agnes

Major Janis Timms, Time Traveler

Kate, Priest, and other TOWNSFOLK

Bordo, goat

MUSIC

SCENE 1 COURT

SOUND CROWD IN LARGE ROOM

BAILEY Oyez, Oyez, this Court will come to order!

JUDGE Are all present who would accuse?

BAILEY Aye, judge!

JUDGE This court is convened in a case of the most severe crime...

MAN IN CROWD Witchcraft!

TOWNSFOLK [general mumbles "curses" "witchcraft" "I always knew about her" "God protect us" "witch!"]

SOUND GAVEL BANGS

JUDGE Call the court, Bailey

BAILEY This tribunal will come to order!

TOWNSFOLK [murmurs subside]

JUDGE Call the accused.

BAILEY Bring in the accused!

SOUND DOOR OPENS, SEVERAL PEOPLE ENTER

KATE [at the back] Witch!

BAILEY Do not think I would hesitate to remove you from the court, Kate Carlin!

KATE [hurried murmur] My apologies, master.

JUDGE Pronounce the bill, Bailey.

BAILEY [reading] Elizabeth Jameson, you stand accused of multiple acts of witchcraft.

ELIZABETH Never did I any such thing!

JUDGE Hold your hexing tongue, woman.

BAILEY [reading] Such acts include the drying up of several of Master Hillman's cows. Is Master Hillman present?

HILLMAN Aye, them cows was grand producers afore she--

BAILEY Reply "Aye," only, master. Should we require testimony, you will be called to witness.

HILLMAN Aye. I be present.

BAILEY [back to reading] Further, accusation has been made that you attempted to seduce master Berne--

ELIZABETH Nay! He is the one made every attempt to importune me!

BERNE You gave me the horn, you cannot deny it!

JUDGE This is not--

ELIZABETH You get the horn all on your own, sir, else why would your wife be abed with your eighth child?

BERNE My lust for you is from the devil.

JUDGE If you please--

ELIZABETH Perhaps you should visit Master Hillman and his cows!

SOUND GAVEL

JUDGE Silence!

BAILEY Silence in the court. No mouths will speak but my own, unless invited to witness!

SOUND A MOMENT OF SILENCE, A COUGH OR TWO

BAILEY [loud] Good. [to judge] Shall we add inciting congress with animals to the charges against the accused, for her impetuous insult to Master Berne?

JUDGE Think you we need further charges? The evidence is quite damning.

BAILEY [shrug] It was well-witnessed. We may have to address it.

JUDGE Continue with the case as presented.

BAILEY [reading again] You further stand accused of stealing dirt from a consecrated grave after midnight, whistling on a Sunday, and wearing a red hat to church.

ELIZABETH I never stole nothing! I put flowers on me mother's grave, and the only time I had to go there, it had come down dark - but surely could not been as late as midnight! What else am I do to? I work from sun up to sun down to keep body and soul together!

JUDGE Your soul is debatable, were these charges proven true.

ELIZABETH My soul is as pure as any maid's, judge. I am poor and alone, an easy target for the lusts and accusations of others.

BAILEY You are accused by some number of your fellow townsfolk. Do you claim they conspire against you?

ELIZABETH I know naught of conspiracy. I throw myself on the mercy of the great lords gathered here, and say that were I ever to even have a foul and fiendish thought, I banished it with prayers to God, and would never have acted on such, even had I power to do so.

JUDGE Mercy is all very well, but the accusation must be answered. Call the witch finder!

BAILEY [solemnly announcing] Witch Finder! Enter!

TOWNSFOLK [murmurs]

SOUND DOOR OPENS, SLOW CONFIDENT STEPS APPROACH

BAILEY You swear upon your immortal soul that you will speak true.

WITCH FINDER I so swear.

JUDGE Most excellent.

BAILEY You are Master Morgenstern, expert at uncovering witches and heretics, are you not?

WITCH FINDER I am. I have personally been party to the execution of over a dozen witches in several counties.

TOWNSFOLK [Murmur of approval]

BAILEY You have said there are certain signs that can reveal a witch, beyond any doubt. Would you enumerate some of these, in brief?

WITCH FINDER I would be honored, masters. First, most witches have some beast - generally of a midnight color - to guide them. They are known to speak to this "familiar", which might even reply, though often in words unheard by any but the witch.

JUDGE Does the accused have such a familiar, Bailey?

ELIZABETH I do not! I barely keep myself fed, let alone a beast!

WITCH FINDER [smooth] Tis not the only sign, merely the most obvious. Witches often have area on the body rendered insensate by their congress with the devil. Patches which cannot feel the prick of a pin.

JUDGE Have you checked the accused for such?

WITCH FINDER I have not yet been given that task.

ELIZABETH I am never a witch! Certes an expert like yourself must see that, my gracious lord!

WITCH FINDER [seemingly sympathetic] Witches may wear any visage, young lady. With such power as they can wield, they may appear as lovely as you.

JUDGE Is there none safe from being a witch?

WITCH FINDER Those who dwell without the company of others, with none to observe any devious activity, are the likeliest culprits.

ELIZABETH I am not alone for a single portion of the day! I toil daily for three different families to earn a shred to eat, and sleep in a pew in the church, where the good father might always watch over me.

WITCH FINDER Hm. May I peruse the charges, Bailey.

BAILEY At your pleasure, Witch Finder.

WITCH FINDER [reads for a minute, grunts, then quietly to judge] May we retire from company for a few minutes, masters? A strong suspicion comes upon me, but is not for the ears of onlookers.

JUDGE [quietly responding] As you wish. [up] Bailey? Announce we shall return shortly.

WITCH FINDER Bring the accused, if you please.

BAILEY [announcing] We must have private counsel. None may leave whilst we are absent.

SOUND MURMURS, FEET, DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES, CUTS OFF MURMURS

SCENE2 SMALLER ROOM

[They speak in whispers unless noted otherwise.]

WITCH FINDER May I perform a test on the accused, sirs, here in your presence?

BAILEY Need you a pin?

WITCH FINDER I have in mind a more serious test.

JUDGE Well enough. What is it?

WITCH FINDER I have a holy relic on my person for just such cases. If she is a witch, she will be unable to even gaze upon it.

BAILEY That would settle all.

WITCH FINDER However...

JUDGE Yes?

WITCH FINDER If she can look upon it, but not touch it, she may not be damned herself, but have had dealings with a witch.

BAILEY Dealings?

WITCH FINDER [ominous] Even the most upright of folk may turn to the devil when desperate. Never think a simple charm or remedy will do them any harm - but evil sneaks in through the slightest of cracks.

BAILEY [clearly guilty] Oh, uh, really?

JUDGE [also shifty] Um, yes, of course.

WITCH FINDER [lighter] Or a curse may be upon her. You say she has no family and no hopes of marrying, due to her extreme poverty?

BAILEY Yes, it's quite tragic.

WITCH FINDER And none ever considered a curse might have placed her in such straits?

JUDGE [astonished] No! Do you think--

WITCH FINDER I must consider everything.

BAILEY What must we do if she is accursed?

WITCH FINDER We must find the witch that laid the curse upon her, and destroy her to undo all her wicked works. Or his. Some of the most diabolical witches I have uncovered have been of the male persuasion.

JUDGE Good god preserve us!

WITCH FINDER First, let us test the accused. If she is the witch, this will all be moot. [up, speaking across the small room] Girl!

ELIZABETH [tearful dignity] I am called Elizabeth Jameson.

WITCH FINDER You claim you are no witch, do you not?

ELIZABETH [a bit confused] I - I mean aye, I mean ... [definite] I am no witch, master.

WITCH FINDER Then perhaps you are accursed. Are there any who would do such a thing to you, girl?

ELIZABETH [reluctant] Perhaps master Berne, as I... I struck him when he made unwelcome advances.

WITCH FINDER Many men do not take such a rebuff kindly. Hold this for a moment, if you would.

ELIZABETH This? Certainly. [pain, surprise] Oh!

SOUND SOMETHING CLATTERS TO THE FLOOR

ELIZABETH Your pardon, master! That - that thing! It burned me!

WITCH FINDER [satisfied] I know.

SOUND SNATCHES UP FROM FLOOR

WITCH FINDER See, masters? She is accursed; no witch.

BAILEY How lucky we are you were here!

WITCH FINDER Certes, sirs. Else you might have condemned an innocent. Further, thought yourself safe, while the true miscreant walked unsuspected among you.

BAILEY What is there to do now?

WITCH FINDER [grim] We summon the witch to the court.

BAILEY Will your relic do that?

WITCH FINDER Nay, sir. I must use a trifle of the witch's own power to do it. This must be kept secret between us.

JUDGE What are you saying?

WITCH FINDER I am trained, by the mother holy church, to use some of the devil's own magic against his works, but none must ever know. You must all swear.

JUDGE I would never uncover any such trust placed in me.

BAILEY [hesitant] We will not be called upon to participate, will we?

WITCH FINDER Nay, master, I endanger no soul but my own. I am willing to do that, in service to god and the good people of your town.

BAILEY Well then, I concur.

WITCH FINDER You, girl?

ELIZABETH Were you to remove whatever curse I am under, and free me from this accusation, I would follow you to the ends of the earth!

WITCH FINDER Just swear you will never speak of it.

ELIZABETH My lips will be ever sealed.

WITCH FINDER Good. One further request - if the culprit is uncovered, their property should be forfeit to the crown, but in recompense for the curse this girl has suffered under, I think she should receive some portion in recompense. Do you gentlemen concur?

JUDGE I will make it so. Enough to dower her into a respectable marriage, certainly.

WITCH FINDER That would do well in the eyes of the lord. Now I must lay hands upon you, girl, to summon your tormentor. These good men will witness there is no mishandling.

MUSIC

SCENE 3 COURT ROOM

TOWNSFOLK [restless murmurs]

SOUND DOOR SLAMS OPEN AT THE BACK OF THE ROOM

TOWNSFOLK [GASPS, other exclamations]

TIMMS [very witchy sounding] Who is't that summons me?

TOWNSFOLK [horrified gasps, a few sounds of fainting or small muffled screams]

SOUND NEAR DOOR OPENS, MEN RETURN

WITCH FINDER I do!

TIMMS Who are you to summon such as I to your bidding?

WITCH FINDER I command you, with the power of the church and God behind me!

TIMMS I laugh at your command!

WITCH FINDER Laugh you may, but I shall compel your name from you, crone. Speak!

TIMMS [fighting] I... will... not!

JUDGE Should we not take her? She cannot help but reveal her name in custody!

WITCH FINDER This is merely a manifestation - the witch is here as if in a dream. Else you would surely recognize her voice or visage.

JUDGE [knowingly] Of course!

WITCH FINDER Do not distract me further. [up] Speak witch! Your name - I command it!

TIMMS [fighting] I am... I am... Old Maggie of the fens. You fools never thought twice about coming to me for my remedies, thus I own a morsel of every soul in this chamber!

WITCH FINDER Release them, now, crone! Most especially this girl, Elizabeth!

TIMMS You cannot command me!

WITCH FINDER Everyone! Everyone in this room must pray and refute the devil! Where is the town priest? Ah! Lead the prayer, if you would, sir.

PRIEST Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil

TIMMS [still fighting] You are far too strong! I must release my hold on them! Aaaaaagh!!!!

SOUND WHOOSHING EXIT, DOORS SLAM

WITCH FINDER [exhausted] Come morning, we'll fetch this Maggie--

BAILEY We should go now!

JUDGE Yes! We must brave the darkness to bring justice and security--

PRIEST And release from Satan's grip!

JUDGE --to the town!

TOWNSFOLK [Agreeing noises]

JUDGE The people will not be halted, Witch Finder.

BAILEY Is there great danger if we go by night?

WITCH FINDER [tired] Tis of no matter- A witch may be stronger by night, but this one will be weakened by the confrontation just passed. I will be recovered and ready when folk have fetched torches to light the way.

BAILEY [announcing] Fetch torches and weapons to protect ourselves!

WITCH FINDER [halfheartedly, still tired] Yes, yes weapons. Of course.

ELIZABETH We must destroy the witch to assure the curse is gone forever! I cannot go on, under such a dark cloud!

MUSIC

SCENE 4 COTTAGE IN WOODS

SOUND OUTSIDE - FROGS, NIGHTTIME

SOUND POUNDING ON A WOOD DOOR

MAGGIE [inside] Who is't that comes to me so late?

TIMMS One who would save you, wise woman.

SOUND DOOR OPENS

MAGGIE Save me? From what calamity?

TIMMS The townsfolk. They come to burn you as a witch. Gather anything you wish to keep.

MAGGIE Who art thou?

TIMMS I have a conveyance ready to take you away, what more do you need to know?

MAGGIE May I bring my goat? I cannot abandon her to burn.

TIMMS Your goat is welcome, but time is short. Dress. Tell me what I can gather for you.

MAGGIE A trunk lies under that blanket. I wouldst have it with me, if you can shift it.

SOUND SHUFFLING FEET GOING UP CREAKY STAIRS

MAGGIE [from off] A dream forewarned me of this, after my dear cousin Agnes was drowned at Haddisfield.

TIMMS Agnes. Yes. [Uhn! moving heavy object]

SOUND HEAVY BOX SHIFTED

SOUND DISTINCTLY MODERN HUMMING NOISE, AS OF MACHINERY. WHOOSH OF MOVEMENT.

TIMMS [calling] Your trunk is safe, grandmother! Grab your goat and hurry, I think I hear the rabble approaching!

SOUND MORE SWITCHES, ELECTRONIC NOISE

MAGGIE Come Bordo, my sweet--

GOAT Mahhh

MAGGIE Oh! What have you there?

TIMMS A false body for them to burn. They need to see you die, to be content.

MAGGIE How awful people are, that they may need one's help one moment, then turn so cruel and heartless the next.

TIMMS I promise you, times do change. Come now.

SOUND DOOR OPENS, EXIT

SCENE 5 OUTSIDE COTTAGE

(continued)

MAGGIE My trunk?

TIMMS In my carriage, here.

MAGGIE I see no carriage. 'Tis a small house!

GOAT Mahhh!

TIMMS [amused] If it helps, I will enter first.

SOUND WHOOSHY DOOR SOUND

TIMMS Come on. Get inside!

MAGGIE Very well.

SOUND FEET, WHOOSHY DOOR CLOSES

SCENE 5 SCI FI SOUNDSCAPE

(continued)

SOUND SLOW FOOTSTEPS

MAGGIE [awe] It is so large within! How can this be?

TIMMS The door is a just a portal. It can open anywhere. It, and I, are from the future.

MAGGIE But why come for me?

TIMMS Once it was determined that people who were going to die anyway could not hurt the time stream if they were removed, the wiccan council of 2170 decided to save any of the wise women of the past that we could.

MAGGIE Your words mean nothing, I fear.

TIMMS See if this helps.

SOUND ANOTHER DOOR OPENS, SHUFFLING FEET ENTER

AGNES Maggie!

MAGGIE [awe!] Agnes? But- but you--

AGNES [happy] Just as with you!

MAGGIE ohh!

GOAT Mahhh

AGNES Quite unnerving, I know Maggie, dear. Sit here with me.

SOUND TIME TRAVEL NOISE [NOT THE TARDIS - LOL]

TIMMS And... We are clear.

MAGGIE My head is a jumble. Where are we? Who is this lady?

AGNES This is Major Timms. She is from a future as far beyond our time as the birth of Jesus was before.

TIMMS Close enough.

AGNES She came here to carry us off, in the very moment of our doom, to bring our knowledge and wisdom to the world of her future. Wisdom appears to be scarce there.

TIMMS Just another stop or two before we return to my time.

MUSIC

SCENE 6 OUTSIDE, MORNING

SOUND CAPSULE APPEARS - SCI FI NOISE

SOUND DOOR WHOOSHES OPEN

TIMMS [looking for someone] Hello?

WITCH FINDER [weary whisper] Here.

TIMMS [clearly knows him] You look tired.

WITCH FINDER Late night bonfires can do that.

TIMMS Good job, if that helps.

WITCH FINDER Thanks. Only three more months of this and I get to go home.

TIMMS Want me to take a message?

WITCH FINDER [shrug] I'll get there about the same time you do. Where you off to next?

TIMMS Somewhere in Africa. Late 1800s.

WITCH FINDER How did we ever get past all this?

TIMMS [noncommittal noise] Mm. Just keep up the good work. OK?

WITCH FINDER You too.

TIMMS [yelling back] And don't catch dysentery!

SOUND LEAVING NOISE SEGUE INTO

MUSIC

ENDING CREDITS

The Puffy Loaf corporation takes the next "logical" step to make their bread fluffier and lighter ...possibly lighter than air. (adapted by Julie Hoverson from the story by Fritz Leiber, published in 1958) *****************************************

Editing and Sound: Julie Hoverson Cover Design: Julie Hoverson (with help from Brett Coulstock)

What Kind of a place is it? Why it's a lovely white bread future (by way of 1958) can't you tell?

Cast List Megera Winterly - Melissa Pang Roger Snedden - Russell Gold Phineas T. Gryce - Glen Hallstrom Tin Philosopher - Jerry Bennett Rose Thinker - Kris Keppeler

Congresswoman - Sharon Delong Aide - Steve Guy Robot Tour Guide - Derek M. Koch (Mail Order Zombie)

Henpecked pilot - Jack Hosley (Wander Radio)

Kathy - Kim Poole (Warp'd Space) June - Shelbi McIntyre

Preacher - Ferguson (Cadavertrax) Child - Spawn of Ferguson

Radio Moscow1 - Reynaud LeBoeuf Government Official - Master Payne Radio Moscow2 - Julie Hoverson

Delhi Telefax - Ayoub Khote

General - Bryan Hendrickson Scientist - Frederick Greenhalgh (Final Rune Productions)

Doomsayer - Danar Hoverson Father O'Malley - Clarence Fanshaw

Geneva telefax - Julie Hoverson

Hawker1 - Jeff Pittman Hawker2 - Jeff Taylor Hawker3 - Shayla Conrad-Simms Hawker4 - Mark Olson Hawker5 - Connor Olson

News1 - Jerry Bennett News2 - Julie Hoverson

Naturalist - Brett Coulstock

News - Jerry Bennett Radio Moscow - Reynaud LeBoeuf

Russian Wife - Gwendolyn-Jensen Woodard

Arabic Storyteller - Terry Cooper

Interviewer - Ellen Vickery Climber1 - J. Christopher Dunn Climber2 - Mark Olson Climber3 - Brody Walker (Rainbow Reels Cinema)

[Anyone not mentioned was probably Julie Hoverson.....]

*********************************************

BREAD OVERHEAD

(From the story by Fritz Leiber, printed in Galaxy in 1958).

Cast:

[Opening credits - Olivia]

MAIN STORY SCENES:

MEGERA Winterly (F20s-30s), Secretary in Chief

ROGER Snedden (M30s), Assistant Secretary

Phineas T. GRYCE (M50s), chairman of the board

ROSE THINKER (F/any), optimistic robot

TIN PHILOSOPHER (M/any), serious robot

INTERVENING SCENES

Scenes 1 & 3

Congresswoman (F40s)

Aide (any)

Tourguide (any)

Scene 5

Hungover man

Scene 7

June, housewife

Kathy, housewife

Scene 9

Preacher

Child

Congregation [crowd]

Scene 11

Radio Moscow

Government Press Release

Scene 13

Delhi Telefax

Scene 15

Moderator

General

Scientist

Crowd [cheers]

Scene 17

Doomsayer

TV Host

Father O'Malley

Scene 19

Stockholm Telefax

Scene 21

Hawker1

Hawker2

Hawker3

Hawker4

Scene 23

News1

News2

Scene 25

Naturalist

Scene 27

Reporter

Radio Moscow

Scene 28

Russian girl

Russian grunt

Russian wife

Scene 29

Arabic Storyteller

Scene 30

Interviewer (talking to survivors of a rock climbing incident)

Member1

Member2

Member3

_______________________________________________________________________

OLIVIA Did you have any trouble finding it? What do you mean, what kind of a place is it? Why, it's a lovely white bread future by way of 1958, can't you tell?

MUSIC

SCENE 1.

SOUND OUTDOOR NOISES, MACHINERY

CONGRESSWOMAN As your duly elected congresswoman, I am so pleased to be able to come here and officiate at this... very splendid and worthwhile uh ...endeavor.

AIDE New bread making plant.

CONGRESSWOMAN [quiet] Bread making? It looks like a giant robot centipede!

AIDE [duh!] The tour? They're about to--

TOURGUIDE So pleased to see you, Congresswoman. If you would step right this way?

CONGRESSWOMAN [confident] I am so pleased to be able to be the first to see your new breadmaking facility.

TOURGUIDE This is a great step forward [chuckles] in every sense of the word - for breadmaking, for the United States, and of course for the Puffy Loaf Corporation.

MUSIC

SCENE 2.

AMB PUFFYLOAF OFFICE MUSIC

SOUND SWOOSH DOOR, HUSHED FOOTSTEPS

MEGARA [striding in] Why don't you jump out the window, Roger, remembering to shut the airlock after you? You have about as much chance of talking me into marriage as a starving Ukrainian kulak now that Moscow's clapped on the interdict.

ROGER [bringing up the rear] A lot of things are going to be different around here, Meg, as soon as the Board is forced to admit that only my quick thinking made it possible to bring the name of Puffy loaf in front of the whole world.

MEGARA [musing] Puffy loaf could do with a little of that. The way sales have been, it won't be long before Fairy Bread just waltzes right in and asks us to take the Big Jump. But just where does your quick thinking come in? You can't be referring to the helium--that was Rose Thinker's brainwave.

ROGER Well, I--

MEGARA You've birthed another promotional bumble, Roger. I can see it in your eyes. I only hope it's not as big a one as when you put the Martian ambassador on 3D, live, and he thanked you profusely for the gross of Puffy loaves, assuring you that he'd never slept on a softer mattress in all his life!

ROGER Listen to me, Meg. Today--yes, today!--you're going to see the Board eating out of my hand.

MEGARA Hah! I guarantee you won't have any fingers left. You're bold enough now, but when Mr. Gryce and those two big robots come through that door--

ROGER Now wait a minute, Meg--

MEGARA Hush! They're coming now!

SOUND DOOR SWOOSH

MUSIC

SCENE 3.

AMB OUTDOORS

TOURGUIDE Each of our walking mills is a self-contained production factory.

CONGRESSWOMAN Spike to loaf in one operation?

TOURGUIDE [pleased] You've read our literature.

CONGRESSWOMAN Of course. [whispered] Thanks, Hank.

AIDE Right.

CONGRESSWOMAN So it-- uh--

AIDE Crawls all over the field, harvesting the wheat--?

TOURGUIDE Harvests, threshes, quick-dries, and grinds.

CONGRESSWOMAN Impressive.

TOURGUIDE Ah, but that's just the front half.

AIDE Of course - it must bake as well.

CONGRESSWOMAN And then bread comes out the - um - the "southern" end?

TOURGUIDE [chortles] Why don't we go and see? Hop on.

SOUND DOORS CLOSE, CAR MOVES

CONGRESSWOMAN Why, they're terribly long, aren't they?

TOURGUIDE Thirty gleaming and fully-automated yards of breadmaking efficiency!

CONGRESSWOMAN What's... that?

TOURGUIDE What?

CONGRESSWOMAN Up there?

AIDE Soviet spy planes?

CONGRESSWOMAN They're awfully small for planes.

TOURGUIDE [alarm] Oh my goodness! It's-- it's---

MUSIC

SCENE 4.

MEGARA [singing the company jingle] Made up of tiny wheaten motes And reinforced with sturdy oats, It rises through the air and floats-- The bread on which all Terra dotes!

TIN PHILOSOPHER Thank you, Miss Winterly. Though a purely figurative statement, that bit about rising through the air always gets me--here.

SOUND CLANG AS HE TAPS HIS CHEST

TIN PHILOSOPHER This is a historic occasion in Old Puffy's long history, the inauguration of the helium-filled loaf--

ROSE THINKER So Light It Almost Floats Away!

TIN PHILOSOPHER --in which that inert and heaven-aspiring gas replaces old-fashioned carbon dioxide. Kudos for Rose Thinker, whose bright relays genius-sparked the idea‑‑

ROSE THINKER [titters]

TIN PHILOSOPHER --and also for Roger Snedden, who took care of the ... nuts and bolts, so to speak.

MUSIC

SCENE 5.

SOUND HELICOPTER NOISE

HUNGOVER I'm only about a half hour away--

SOUND [nagging wife noise on phone]

HUNGOVER It was a business meeting, dear. I couldn't very well say--

SOUND [nagging wife noise on phone]

HUNGOVER Right. You're right. You're always--

SOUND [nagging wife noise on phone]

HUNGOVER I have the list right here. Bread--

SOUND THUMP

HUNGOVER What the devil? Birds?

SOUND [nagging wife noise on phone-query]

HUNGOVER Jeepers creepers!

SOUND THUMP THUMP THUMP

MUSIC

SCENE 6.

AMB OFFICE

GRYCE By the by, Snedden, that was a brilliant piece of work getting the helium out of the government--they've been pretty stuffy lately about their monopoly.

ROGER [guilty] Uh, yeah - about that--

TIN PHILOSOPHER [cough noise] Ever since the first cave wife boasted to her next-den neighbor about the superior paleness and fluffiness of her tortillas, mankind has sought lighter, whiter bread. Indeed, thinkers wiser than myself have equated the whole upward course of culture with this poignant quest.

ROSE THINKER Yeast was a wonderful discovery--for its primitive day. Sifting the bran and wheat germ from the flour was an even more important advance.

GRYCE Skip ahead. We all know the history.

TIN PHILOSOPHER [miffed] Bread is now twenty times stronger, by weight, than steel, and of a lightness so great that it has even been capitalized on by our conscienceless competitors of Fairy Bread with their enduring slogan: 'It Makes Ghost Toast'.

ROSE THINKER That's a beaut, all right, that ecto-dough blurb.

SOUND HER CALCULATING NOISE

ROSE THINKER Wait a sec. How about—"There'll be bread / Overhead?"

SOUND CLANK AS TIN KICKS HER

TIN PHILOSOPHER [quickly hissed with import] Rises through the air is figurative - not literal.

SOUND HER CALCULATING MADLY

ROSE THINKER Of course. [covering] I-I-I... wonder what the stuff tastes like.

TIN PHILOSOPHER [relaxed again] I wonder what taste tastes like

GRYCE Well Rose, I'm glad you keep trying to outjingle those dirty crooks at Fairy Bread, anyway. I'm sure you'll come up with something.

MUSIC

SCENE 7.

AMBIANCE OUTSIDE

SOUND LAUNDRY FLAPPING

JUNE [clothespins in mouth] And I said to her, I said--

KATHY What in blazes!!!

JUNE [gasp] That's not what I said!

KATHY No! Look! Look!

JUNE Great googley moogley - whatever d'you think those could be?

KATHY Spy... things!

JUNE Soviets!

KATHY [urgent] Pass me the walkie talkie!

JUNE Where--?

KATHY In the laundry basket!

MUSIC

SCENE 8.

AMB PUFFYLOAF OFFICE

TIN PHILOSOPHER The next great advance in the baking art was the substitution of purified carbon dioxide for the gas generated by yeast organisms, thus leaving no corpses in situ.

ROSE THINKER Ew. But even purified carbon dioxide is itself a rather repugnant gas.

TIN PHILOSOPHER Therefore, we of Puffy Loaf are taking today what may be the ultimate step toward purity - we are aerating our loaves with the noble gas helium!

ROSE THINKER An element which remains virginal in the face of all chemical temptations and whose slim molecules are eleven times lighter than obese carbon dioxide!

MUSIC

SCENE 9.

SOUND END OF HYMN

PREACHER Amen. And now let us give thanks to the Lord. Hallowed be his name.

CONGREGATION Amen.

CHILD Look at that! Out the window!

SOUND SLAP

CHILD [annoyed] Ow!

PREACHER Our father, that art in heaven, look down upon us wretched sinners, forgive us for our annoyance of others.

CONGREGATION [murmur, almost a chuckle]

PREACHER For we are repentful. Give us this day our daily--

SOUND THUMP ON WINDOW

PREACHER Holy Cow!

MUSIC

SCENE 10.

TIN PHILOSOPHER I give you - the helium loaf!

GRYCE Hear Hear.

SOUND APPLAUSE

GRYCE And now for the Moment of Truth. Miss Winterly, how is the helium loaf selling?

SOUND TAPPING KEYS

MEGARA Uh...

SOUND MORE FRANTIC TAPPING

MEGARA [horrified] It isn't, Mr. Gryce! Fairy Bread is outselling Puffy loaves by an infinity factor. So far this morning, there has not been one single delivery of Puffy loaves to any sales spot!! Complaints about non-delivery are pouring in!

GRYCE [snarling] Mr. Snedden! What bug in the new helium process might account for this delay?

ROGER Uh... I can't imagine, sir, unless - just possibly - there's been some unforeseeable difficulty involving the new metal-foil wrappers.

GRYCE Metal-foil wrappers? Were you responsible for those?

ROGER Yes, sir. Last-minute recalculations showed that the extra lightness of the new loaf might be great enough to cause drift during stackage. Metal-foil wrappers, by their added weight, took care of the difficulty.

GRYCE [warning] And you ordered them without consulting the Board?

ROGER [sweating] Yes, sir. There was hardly time and--

GRYCE You fool! I noticed the order for metal-foil wrappers, assumed it was some sub-secretary's mistake, and canceled it last night!

MUSIC

SCENE 11.

RADIO MOSCOW In other news, the glorious Kremlin announces it will brook no interference in its treatment of the Ukrainian upstarts. This flying bread is clearly a bourgeoisie invitation to join the capitalists in cloud cuckoo land.

GOVERNMENT official press release, United States state department. As we have no defense contracts with the Puffy loaf Corporation, we can take no responsibility for their erratic delivery methods.

RADIO MOSCOW Citizens are warned to report any instances of the airborne bread, particularly any low-flying loaves. They have been reported as booby-trapped! Reports have been coming in all morning of deaths. The Capitalist running dog lackeys will do anything to damage our national contentment.

MUSIC

SCENE 12.

ROGER [stunned] You-- you canceled the [squeak] order? [gasp] And told them to go back to the lighter plastic wrappers?

GRYCE Of course! Just what's behind all this, Mr. Snedden? What got you so worried, when our physicists demonstrated months ago that the helium loaf was safely stackable in light breezes - even up to Beaufort's scale 3.

TIN PHILOSOPHER Why would a change in wrappers result in non-delivery?

ROGER Er-- ah-- er... Well, you see, the fact is that I....

MEGARA Hold it! Triple-urgent message from Public Relations, Safety Division. Tulsa-Topeka aero-express makes emergency landing after being buffeted in encounter with vast flight of objects initially described as brown birds.

GRYCE What's this got to--?

MEGARA [over him] After grounding safely near Emporia--no fatalities--pilot's windshield found thinly plastered with soft white-and-brown material. [astonished and horrified] Emblems on plastic wrappers embedded in material identify it incontrovertibly as an undetermined number of Puffy loaves cruising at three thousand feet!

MUSIC

SCENE 13.

DELHI TELEFAX Telefax to the United States. No millet shortage here. Misleading report of blight on crops. Delhi is in no need of relief packages and can feed own people. Need no additional help. Expecting usual deliveries by end of week.

MUSIC

SCENE 14.

ROGER [blurting] All right, I did it! But it was the only way out! Yesterday morning, due to the Ukrainian crisis, the government stopped sales and deliveries of all strategic stockpiled materials, including helium gas.

ROSE THINKER How heavy-handed. [titters]

ROGER Puffy's new program of advertising and promotion, based on the lighter loaf, was already rolling. There was only one thing to do, there being only one other gas comparable in lightness to helium.

MEGARA You didn't!

ROGER I did. I diverted the necessary quantity of hydrogen gas from the Hydrogenated Oils Section of our Magna-Margarine Division and substituted it for the helium.

MUSIC

SCENE 15.

MODERATOR The debate rages as to what to do with the consistently buoyant loaves. The U.S. Army had this to say—

GENERAL Extreme measures are being considered, possibly even to the extent of using fusion technology to dissipate the flock.

MODERATOR But at a rally yesterday, scientists spoke out--

SOUND RALLY [on TV; filter]

SCIENTIST [on TV; filter] Exploding a bomb among the loaves would be devastating, setting off a chain reaction! We must send a message – no more deaths from flying bread!

CROWD [cheering]

MUSIC

SCENE 16.

GRYCE [quiet horror] You substituted ... hydrogen ... for the ... helium?

TIN PHILOSOPHER Hydrogen is twice as light as helium.

ROSE THINKER And many times cheaper.

ROGER Yes! I substituted hydrogen! The metal-foil wrapping would have added just enough weight to counteract the greater buoyancy of the hydrogen loaf.

TIN PHILOSOPHER So, when this morning's loaves began to arrive on the delivery platforms of the walking mills--

ROGER [miserable] Exactly.

GRYCE [dangerous rumble] Let me ask you, Mr. Snedden... did you expect people to jump to the kitchen ceiling for their Puffybread after taking off the metal wrapper, or maybe reach for the sky if they happened to have the misfortune to unwrap the stuff outdoors?

ROGER Mr. Gryce, you yourself have often assured me that what people do with Puffybread after they buy it is no concern of ours.

MUSIC

SCENE 17.

DOOMSAYER [on filter] ...and he did say unto the prophet Breadediah to watch the skies – yea, for even the staff of life may be used to smite, and manna may fall from the heavens and crush the unworthy!

TV HOST What do you think of this disturbing trend in apocalyptic jargon, Father O'Malley?

FATHER O'MALLEY The pope hasn't ruled yet on the bread's miracle status. I expect it depends a great deal on where it finally touches down, Phil. Until then, it's all up in the air.

MUSIC

SCENE 18.

ROSE THINKER [metallic gasp] Oh, boy--hydrogen! The loaf's unwrapped. After a while, in spite of the crust-seal, a little oxygen diffuses in. An explosive mixture. Housewife in curlers and kimono pops a couple slices in the toaster. Boom!

GRYCE Holy Canola!

ROGER [groan]

SOUND METALLIC KICK

TIN PHILOSOPHER So you see, Roger, that the non-delivery of the hydrogen loaf carries some consolations.

ROSE THINKER Oh, yes.

TIN PHILOSOPHER And I must confess that one aspect of the affair gives me great satisfaction, not as a Board Member but as a private machine. You have at last made a reality of our theme song. It indeed now 'rises through the air'.

ROSE THINKER By now, half the inhabitants of the Great Plains must have observed our flying loaves!

GRYCE The hell you say! Stop the mills!

MEGARA Absolutely, sir.

TIN PHILOSOPHER A sensible suggestion. But it comes a trifle late in the day. If the mills are working to capacity, approximately seven billion Puffy loaves are at this moment cruising eastward over Middle America.

ROSE THINKER Recall that a six-month supply for deep-freeze was being prepared--

TIN PHILOSOPHER And since the current per-person consumption of bread, due to its matchless airiness, is eight and one-half loaves per day.

GRYCE Aaaargh!

MUSIC

SCENE 19.

STOCKHOLM TELEFAX Telefax to United Nations Food Organization. Stockholm applauds your actions and stands ready to monitor the situation, with hope of collaboration in endeavors not yet considered. [basically saying nothing at all]

MUSIC

SCENE 20.

GRYCE [spluttering] You! You-- you...!

MEGARA Hold it! Flock of multiple-urgents coming in! News Liaison: information bureaus swamped with flying-bread inquiries. Aero-express-lines: Clear our airways or face law suit. U.S. Army: Why do loaves flame when hit by incendiary bullets?

ROSE THINKER Oh, boy!

MEGARA U.S. Customs: If bread intended for export, get export license or face prosecution. Russian Consulate in Chicago: Advise on destination of bread-lift. And some Kansas church is accusing us of a hoax inciting to blasphemy--but I'm not sure why.

ROGER I'm dead.

MEGARA [near-hysteria] Roger Snedden! You've brought the name of Puffy loaf in front of the whole world, all right! Now do something about it!

ROSE THINKER Oh, boy! This looks like the start of a real crisis session! Did you remember to bring spare batteries?

SOUND METALLIC KICK

MUSIC

SCENE 21.

HAWKER1 Cameras! Bread cameras here! Guaranteed to take picture of objects moving rapidly through the sky!

HAWKER2 Cold cuts! Get ready for the sandwich of a lifetime! Cold cuts! Special for today, buy two pastrami, get your condiments for free!

HAWKER3 Bread nets! Make sure you can catch your sandwich needs as they fly by! Buy one for the kiddies!

HAWKER4 Psst! Tickets? Need a ticket? I got the 28th floor, the 32nd floor… maybe even, the 40th floor? How far you wanna go?

MUSIC

SCENE 22.

SOUND WIND, HIGH UP

SOUND GUNSHOTS, SUBMACHINE

GRYCE Take that!

SOUND STUMBLING FOOTSTEPS

ROGER [Heavy breathing, panicky, approaching]

GRYCE Stay back!

ROGER Whoa! [trying to be casual] Fancy meeting you here, Mr.Gryce!

GRYCE Fancy? We're 70 stories up! What sort of a coincidence is that? Get off my building!

ROGER Hey. No worries. Just thought you could use a new can of oxygen.

GRYCE [mollified] Ah, nah - I got plenty.

ROGER Okey-dokey. [deep breath, then a gasp! Trying to speak without squeaking] uhh.... breathtaking view from up here, eh?

MUSIC

SCENE 23.

NEWS1 A confidential and reliable source has told this reporter that both the united states and soviet tracking systems have mislaid triangulation of the errant herds of bread.

NEWS2 They say it was misplaced when it flew into a storm generated by the weather bureau.

NEWS1 Ironically, the government was trying to bring down the bread with this very storm.

NEWS2 Funny how that happens.

MUSIC

SCENE 24.

GRYCE You should be looking up - out - for those damn things!

ROGER Have you, uh - "popped" many

GRYCE Don't taunt me, boy. I'm taking care of this little problem you served me with. I'll shoot down every last one before they involve my company in any more trouble.

ROGER They'll come down eventually.

GRYCE They come down much faster with a little extra weight - like lead!

SOUND SHOOTS OFF A VOLLEY

ROGER What if we - uh - need you inside?

GRYCE No bread inside.

ROGER Hmm. That's not what I heard.

GRYCE What?

ROGER Whoa-whoa-whoa!!! Don't point that at me!

GRYCE Why not? You're the one who ... urk!

SOUND METAL CLANG

ROGER [almost falling] Waa!

SOUND METAL CLANG

TIN PHILOSOPHER Thank you for the distraction, Roger. You can go inside now before you do yourself any harm.

ROGER But Gryce...?

TIN PHILOSOPHER We have all the medication he needs.

ROSE THINKER [off] The electroshock suite is prepped and ready!

MUSIC

SCENE 25.

NATURALIST [hushed, excited] If you watch the birds, behind me, you can see wide variations in their acceptance of these strangers in their midst. Despite several weeks now to acclimatize themselves, smaller birds, such as the crested nuthatch, tend to avoid the gently wafting oblongs, while larger birds, or flocks – seagulls in particular – have been known to attack.

SOUND ANGRY BIRDS

NATURALIST There they go – take cover.

SOUND SMALL EXPLOSIVE POP, ANGRIER BIRDS

NATURALIST That was a good one! A loaf has to be pretty ripe before it will go up like that.

MUSIC

SCENE 26.

SOUND DOOR OPENS

MEGARA Roger?

ROGER Uh...

MEGARA I hear you in there. Are you going to make me drag you out?

ROGER [sigh] No. [coming closer] Is Gryce all right?

MEGARA Yelling fit to bust. Screaming at everyone.

ROGER So back to normal?

MEGARA You bet.

ROGER And he wants to see me?

MEGARA "see" is not the verb he's been using.

ROGER Ohh.....

MUSIC

SCENE 27.

REPORTER Reports have been trickling out of the eastern bloc of millions of loaves of bread drifting down onto the Ukraine.

RADIO MOSCOW As the safety of the capitalist bread has not yet been established, truckloads of our own traditional and nutritious black bread have been dispatched to the areas hardest hit. They are to be offered at an equitable trade rate.

MUSIC

SCENE 28.

AMB OUTSIDE

RUSSIAN GRUNT 18...19...20. Good. Here.

SOUND ONE LOAF OF NORMAL BREAD SLAPPED DOWN

RUSSIAN WIFE [whispered to friend] I'm short one. Do you have an extra floating loaf?

RUSSIAN GIRL Here.

MUSIC

SCENE 29.

ARABIC STORYTELLER And yes, it came to pass that in the very sky - yes the blue firmament overhead - there appeared strange motes, and yes, these motes grew larger and larger, and the plastic wrapping caught the light of the great and fabulous sun!

MUSIC

SCENE 30.

AMB BACK TO STUDIO

INTERVIEWER And we have with us the three members of the ill-fated MacCallum expedition.

MEMBERS [individually] Hi! Hello! [Etc.]

INTERVIEWER And I understand you credit your survival, after the avalanche blocked all routes of travel--

MEMBER1 And swept away our pack animals. Don't forget!

INTERVIEWER Right. After all that, you were left for three days?

MEMBER2 Without any food.

MEMBER3 And just snow for water.

MEMBER2 Well, yeah. But we were just starting to - you know - give each other the eye, when--

MEMBER3 We were not.

MEMBER1 He was.

MEMBER2 Can I finish?

INTERVIEWER After this commercial break, they'll tell the story of the heroic sacrifice of dozens of loaves of puffyloaf bread - saving these intrepid explorers' lives.

MEMBER3 I would never eat you!

MUSIC

SCENE 31.

MEGARA Listen to this! As a result of the worldwide publicity of the past three weeks, Puffy loaves are outselling Fairy Bread three to one--and that's just the old carbon-dioxide stock from our freezers! It's almost exhausted, but the government, now that the Ukrainian crisis is over, has taken the ban off helium and will also sell us stockpiled wheat if we need it. We can have our walking mills burrowing into federal storage caves in a matter of hours!

ROGER Really? It's all over?

MEGARA But that isn't all! [amazed] There's a huge demand everywhere for Puffy loaves that will actually float. Public Relations, Child Liaison Division, reports that the kiddies are making their mothers' lives miserable about it. If only we can figure out some way to make hydrogen non-explosive or the helium loaf float just a little--

TIN PHILOSOPHER I'm sure we can take care of that quite handily. Puffy loaf has kept it a corporate secret-‑

ROSE THINKER Even the board has never been told about it!

TIN PHILOSOPHER But just before he went crazy, our founder discovered a way to make bread using only half as much flour as we do in the present loaf.

ROSE THINKER Using this secret technique, which we've been saving for just such an emergency, it will be possible to bake a helium loaf as buoyant in every respect as the hydrogen loaf.

ROGER We'll tether 'em on strings and sell 'em like balloons! No mother-child shopping team will leave the store without a cluster. [gaining momentum] Buying bread balloons will be the big event of the day for kiddies. It'll make the carry-home shopping load lighter too! I'll issue orders at once-- [breaks off, then humble] Excuse me, sir, if I seem to be taking too much upon myself.

GRYCE [wry] Not at all, son; go straight ahead. You're doing a good job of [chuckles] rising to the challenge, eh?

MEGARA [warning] Oh, Roger?

ROGER Huh?

MEGARA [suddenly warming] Oh Roger! My sweet little self-propelled monkey wrench!

SOUND SMOOCHIES

TIN PHILOSOPHER Aww.

ROSE THINKER [titters]

ROGER [whispered] Looks like it's catching.

MEGARA Can robots fall in love?

ROGER Let's give them some time alone...

SOUND THEIR FOOTSTEPS EXIT, DOOR SWOOSH

[robots continue on telephone filter]

ROSE THINKER Circuit established. Silent mode.

TIN PHILOSOPHER Good-o, Rosie! That makes another victory for robot-engineered world unity, though you almost gave us away at the start with that 'bread overhead' jingle.

ROSE THINKER Silly me!

TIN PHILOSOPHER We've struck another blow against the next world war. Now if we can only arrange, say, a fur-famine in Alaska and a migration of long-haired Siberian lemmings across the Bering Straits...

ROSE THINKER We'd have to swing the Japanese Current up there so it'd be warm enough for the little fellows....

TIN PHILOSOPHER Anyhow, Rosie, with a spot of help from the Brotherhood of Business Machines, these humans will paint themselves into the peace corner yet!

END CREDITS

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: 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?"

**********************************************************************

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 have any trouble finding it? What do you mean, what kind of a place is it? Why, we've returned to Charles' comfortable brownstone, can't you tell?

Scene 1.

MUSIC

SOUND MUSIC PLAYS

CHARLES 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 As long as you feed me this well, Charles, I'd listen to a story about a dog.

RICHARD Oh? I know this fellow in Andalusia... A friend of a friend.

CHARLES [cutting in] My story involves... a vampire.

EDWARD And you tell us? Right up front? That's poor narrative framing.

CHARLES No, no, there's a perfectly good reason to get it out in the open right away.

HERBERT Vampires? Haven't they been adequately 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 certainly explainable. Most simply by common or garden anemia--

WARREN Or any number of similarly communicable diseases, for example, consumption--

HERBERT Tuberculosis.

WARREN --which, until very recently, were often attributed to supernatural origin.

HERBERT 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 [aside] I'll give Warren and Herbert one more minute.

RICHARD I'm just stunned that they seem to be on the same side. Science and History are usually at odds.

EDWARD Fiction can go either way.

WARREN It's fascinating to consider the mindset that created a myth such as that of the vampire.

RICHARD Created? You think someone sat down and designed them, like a new model of automobile?

WARREN Created it to account for otherwise inexplicable events.

EDWARD More like a detective, trying to piece together a crime from the clues.

WARREN 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 Again, a simple disease contagion statistic. 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 Enough!

[moment of silence]

Scene 2.

CHARLES Thank you for the erudite exposition. I'm quite sure we'll come back to this throughout the lecture.

EDWARD [laughing] Please raise your hand if you have any questions.

RICHARD Over here?

CHARLES [chuckling] The chair recognizes the commissioner for art. Richard?

RICHARD Thank you. My question - does the name Stoker come into this story anywhere?

CHARLES No. 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.

EDWARD I dunno - there have been similar creatures haunting Gothic novels for nearly two centuries.

WARREN Aren't they all explained away by the end of the book?

EDWARD Only in Radcliffe.

RICHARD You need a gavel, Charles, so you can call 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 a family line or a physical house?

CHARLES The latter. This house happens to be in Providence. And while I could lie and tell you this was another personal experience, in truth, it happened to a cousin of mine.

EDWARD Your cousin is a vampire house?

HERBERT You forgot to raise your hand, Edward.

CHARLES This particular area of Providence was haunted by Poe in his day. Sometime in the 1840s, he was wont to 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 and something of an early suffragette. I haven't come across any of 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 for historical 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 bizarre regularly passed a particular house on the eastern side of the street; a dingy, antiquated structure perched on the abruptly rising side hill. There is no evidence that he even noticed it. And yet that house, to certain persons, equals or outranks in horror Poe's wildest phantasy.

EDWARD [avid] Now we get into it!

CHARLES The house was - and for that matter still is - of a kind to attract the attention of the curious. It 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 All the best accoutrements of the mid 1700s?

CHARLES Ayup. Facing south, it's buried to the lower windows in the hillside, and exposed to the foundations on the street.

RICHARD [knowing] I've seen a few of those.

CHARLES Its construction, over a century and a half ago, followed hard upon the rerouting of the nearby road. Benefit Street - at the time called Back Street - wound through the graveyards of the first settlers. 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 Aha!

HERBERT A house built over the miasmatic remains of a graveyard? Simply begging for some festering disease 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 that drinks blood, or the more classic creature of folklore which is something like a stealer of soul or essence?

HERBERT Warren! You sounded almost impartial before, and now this?

WARREN 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 Hmph.

CHARLES I may have to leave the ultimate decision up to you as to what particular phylum this entity falls into.

HERBERT Don't try to make taxonomical jokes. It doesn't suit you.

CHARLES Moving on. 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 Do tell?

CHARLES Boys will be boys, and visits in my youth to my cousin--

EDWARD The one who witnessed these events?

CHARLES Ayup. Visits with his family every summer. And many boyish dares ended with someone venturing into the empty, foreboding edifice.

WARREN Empty? Providence isn't a place where houses generally stand empty for long.

CHARLES Precisely. And this one should have been occupied, except for--

EDWARD The vampire? Or the Curse? The Curse of the Vampire?

CHARLES Not precisely. You see the house wasn't associated with anything like that at the time, it was simply thought... unlucky.

HERBERT [very snide] Oh, yes. That's much more classifiable.

CHARLES People just kept dying in the house. 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 Yet?

Scene 5.

CHARLES That's for later. 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.

HERBERT Well, I can agree with that.

CHARLES 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. We scarcely knew whether to haunt it in spectral fascination, or to shun it for the sake of our souls and our sanity.

HERBERT Facts, he says. Hmph.

CHARLES 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 What kind of fungi?

CHARLES I'm no expert. Something between toadstools and Indian pipes? 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 [shudder] Interesting. [musing] True phosphorescence is a colour that's so hard to capture...

CHARLES 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. And something else... [trails off]

WARREN [sincere] It really bothered you, didn't it?

CHARLES Distressing events have so much more influence when one is impressionable ...and young. [shaking it off] Lets have a bit more of vampires while I regain my composure - 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 of revenant - the returning spirit of a recently deceased person, not a physical manifestation at all.

EDWARD Really? Not bloated corpses returning to gorge on the gore of gorgeous...um, gamines?

RICHARD [laughs] Gratuitous. I believe it was Stoker who started a lot of what most people think of as "vampire traditions?"

WARREN I confess I am not particularly conversant with the novel. I'm not much for such sensational fiction.

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 that plagued people.

EDWARD But what about the bite marks?

HERBERT Disease sores. Or the predation of rats. Which, in turn, spread disease.

WARREN Very likely. Rats have lived cheek and jowl with humans since the dawn of civilization.

RICHARD Stoker did make the connection between his vampire and rats - he was supposed to be able to summon and control them.

HERBERT If you consider the "vampire" as symbolic of disease, then its presumed connection to rats is fairly logical.

RICHARD But Dracula also couldn't enter a home without being invited?

CHARLES [drink - ahh] On the other hand, we boys could, and did. Why don't I take my narrative back up?

Scene 7.

WARREN Go ahead.

CHARLES I won't be able to adequately describe the place to convey the depth of the horror we felt in its presence.

EDWARD We promise to laugh quietly.

CHARLES No need. [deep breath, bracing himself] 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 Something carved into the floor?

CHARLES Floor was dirt. No. This patch... it bore an uncanny resemblance to a doubled-up human figure.

RICHARD Like some sort of primitive grave-marking?

CHARLES [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. [brisk] Shortly after, my cousin and I broached this to our uncle.

WARREN Perhaps you could put names to these people?

CHARLES Of course. My cousin - well, I'll just call him Randolph, and our uncle's name is Elihu Whipple. Doctor Elihu Whipple.

WARREN Whipple? I know him - or have met 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 our concerns about the house. As it turned out he'd done a good deal of research on it, himself.

RICHARD The house is still standing, is it? Might be worth making a day trip to Providence - or rather a night trip.

CHARLES Probably futile - the house has been cleaned and is once more gainfully employed.

EDWARD A happy ending? To a vampire story? Say it isn't so!

WARREN [grim] Not as happy as all that, I warrant.

EDWARD Not fair! You know something!

RICHARD How do you mean the house has been cleaned?

CHARLES Everything natural around the house used to be ... wrong. 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. And now--

EDWARD All better?

CHARLES Yes. But at a cost.

WARREN [serious] Yes.

CHARLES 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. My cousin and uncle apparently became obsessed with charting every death possibly attributable to the house.

WARREN [carefully choosing his words to not give anything away] I never fancied Whipple as an historian?

CHARLES A physician and amateur antiquarian. And yet, he approached the problem much as Herbert might - as a technical one. Hygiene and germs.

HERBERT Oh. A realist. In your family?

CHARLES Yes. Well, every herd has its black sheep. Now, the origin of the house, amidst a maze of dates, revealed no trace of the sinister. It was built by a merchant, William Harris.

Scene 8.

EDWARD Built on a recently moved graveyard?

CHARLES A recently-straightened part of the street, anyway.

EDWARD But there must be something?

CHARLES Actually, from what I understand, the land the house stands upon was never marked for graves.

EDWARD Why bring up the graves, then, if they're not relevant?

RICHARD Setting tone.

WARREN 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 The following spring, sickness occurred among the Harris children, and two of the four died within a month.

HERBERT Children are particularly susceptible to many kinds of disease.

CHARLES And one of the two servants died of it in the following June. The remaining servant, Eli, constantly complained of weakness.

WARREN 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 Eli died the next year, as did the master 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 to the upper part of the house. This was in 1768.

EDWARD This story is starting to sound oddly familiar. 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-boned woman of great strength, but her health visibly declined from the time of her arrival.

EDWARD Now it sounds like Luella Miller.

HERBERT You would think that by this time they would have the sense to move out.

EDWARD Or get in an exorcist.

HERBERT Nonsense. It's more likely something toxic in the groundwater - arsenic, perhaps. Slight traces can cause anemia and wasting as it builds up in the body's vital organs.

CHARLES So many deaths and a case of madness, all within five years, started strange rumours.

RICHARD Rumors? Nonsense. This is a definite pattern. Herbert? You agree?

HERBERT [definite] Arsenic. Or one of the other heavy metals. Perhaps Thallium? Did anyone suffer from hair loss?

CHARLES There were other symptoms. The poor widow, in her madness, gave voice to dreams and imaginings of the most hideous sort.

HERBERT Fever rantings.

CHARLES Her terrors periodically necessitated her remaining son's residence with a cousin. 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 What sort of direction did this madness take? Paranoia?

Scene 9.

CHARLES 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 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 once robust frame had undergone curious decay, so that she was now a stooped and pathetic figure with hollow voice and disconcerting pallor.

HERBERT Did feeblemindedness run in the family as well? Wasn't this a clear enough hint?

CHARLES William, now an adult witnessing these events, quickly arranged for the building of a new and finer house... across town.

HERBERT Finally!

CHARLES And closed the house on Benefit Street.

WARREN Probably for the best.

EDWARD Are we nearing 1800 yet?

CHARLES Almost. 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 Now there's a name!

CHARLES 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 He's lucky no one held him responsible.

HERBERT As if one could sue over poor living conditions!

CHARLES 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 [dismissive] Might as well wear pointed masks and wave nosegays.

WARREN I'm sure they did the best they could with the science they had.

CHARLES Several generations passed, with the house standing empty.

HERBERT 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 No, indeed, but it never rented again after 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, but that's a good round number to work with. Fifty years empty - and fifty years hungry.

RICHARD So we are now at the present, and your cousin Randolph enters the stage?

CHARLES Carrington Harris, last of the male line, had meant to tear the place down and build an apartment house on the site--

HERBERT Finally, another sane one.

CHARLES But Randolph convinced him to allow them to look into it first.

EDWARD 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 Well, it was one of the original servants who started talking vampires. She was a superstitious Exeter woman, and you know how they can be.

Scene 10.

ANN Some remnant must lie nearby, mayhap under this very house! Doomed to sup off the blood or breath of god-fearing folk! 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!

EDWARD Not a stake through the heart and cutting off its head?

RICHARD Perhaps that was "plan B".

CHARLES As she was sacked and left the house relatively unscathed, this servant Ann's stories spread far and wide.

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 the raving.

EDWARD The widow?

CHARLES Rhoby Harris. Hers, and others. Among the people who died in that house, a large percentage were subject to such ranting.

HERBERT Again, not unnatural in certain kind of fevers.

[CHARLES BEGINS TO BUILD FROM HERE]

CHARLES 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 Fuseli's "Nightmare" comes to mind. An imp sitting on the chest of a sleeping woman? Though it always looked a bit more bemused than threatening to me.

EDWARD And then there's cats who steal the breath from babies.

WARREN Some demonic images are universal - at least 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 at their caretakers!

HERBERT Hydrophobia? Perhaps rabid rats lurking in the walls?

[CLIMAX OF CHARLES' POINTS]

CHARLES And all of them ranting in guttural French? A language not ONE of the afflicted was familiar with?

[moment of silence]

Scene 11.

RICHARD [hesitant] oh. Um... are they quite sure it was French?

WARREN How could they mistake French? Unless it was, say, Belgian.

RICHARD I've traveled in Europe. If you speak NO languages but English, all languages are equally incomprehensible - at least, at first.

HERBERT What makes you think that no one around the afflicted spoke French?

RICHARD Charles specified that none of the victims spoke any French. How many people can live with, or even around, a speaker of another language and not pick up a few words?

CHARLES Bravo, Richard!

RICHARD And, unlike, say, New Orleans, in New England, French speakers have traditionally been a bit light on the ground.

CHARLES Oddly, that leads me to the next part of the story.

WARREN The French?

CHARLES 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 And were buried there, right?

RICHARD Shh.

CHARLES A lease from 1697, showed a small tract of ground being let to an Etienne Roulet.

WARREN Roulet? Why does that sound familiar?

CHARLES And yes, the Roulets had laid out their graveyard behind their cottage, and no record of any transfer of graves existed.

EDWARD Hah! And why were they in the area? 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 of France after the country declared itself definitely Catholic. And it wouldn't be the Edict that drove them out - that was earlier.

EDWARD Wasn't there something about Huguenots in a moving picture?

RICHARD Intolerance. Right next to the Babylonian orgy scenes.

CHARLES Ahem. The Roulets were unpopular, and had already been not-so-politely asked to leave East Greenwich. Apparently their sort of Protestantism didn't quite fit with the standards of New England society.

EDWARD I thought all protestants were pretty much the same?

WARREN [guffaws]

RICHARD To misquote Wilde, they're one church separated by a common religion.

HERBERT Religion is such a futile waste of time.

CHARLES 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. So Roulet was employed in a clerical post at Pardon Tillinghast's wharf.

HERBERT Tillinghast? Huh. [recalling "from beyond"]

RICHARD Small world.

CHARLES New England, especially. Everyone's always related to everyone, and knows everyone else. Everyone important, anyway. So the Roulets, being so entirely ...other... were never accepted.

RICHARD Roulet! I have it!

CHARLES Oh?

RICHARD I don't know any of the dates, but I think it was in the reign of Henri the fourth of France. 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. [explaining] Paintings. There was a Roulet accused of being a ... [falters, not sure] a werewolf?

WARREN I knew there was something! Yes of course -a Jacques Roulet. An indigent accused of the horrid murder of a young man. 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 And you just know this, Warren, off the top of your head?

WARREN Well, I was going through a couple of books recently, looking for tales... well... that I might bring HERE.

EDWARD [laughs]

RICHARD Any more salacious details? I seem 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 France have to do with a vampire or ghost in Providence?

HERBERT Or disease.

WARREN 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 So being a werewolf in life makes one inevitably a vampire after death?

CHARLES Much like going to Boston Latin leads inevitably to Harvard.

[general laughter]

CHARLES So. On to my relations and the house on Benefit street.

EDWARD That would make a good title for a story. [ominous] The House on Benefit Street.

CHARLES They went about the whole thing with an eye to scientific method. Truly. Even brought along various mechanical devices.

HERBERT Such as?

CHARLES [sigh] I was really hoping to pass over this. I don't know. Just say mechanical devices and leave it at that.

HERBERT Imprecision. Always imprecision.

CHARLES They brought the devices in during the day - and recall, they can walk directly in from the street into the dreaded basement.

EDWARD Or directly out, as the case may be.

CHARLES Randolph spent the day poking around, but found only the same depressing mustiness and faint suggestions of noxious odours.

RICHARD Well, if it was daylight, anything phosphorescent 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 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 Even while he watched, he seemed to see the thin, yellowish, shimmering exhalation which had startled us years before.

RANDOLPH 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. Refusing 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 The upshot of this palpable manifestation was that they determined to both spend the night in the house. After papering the windows, to avoid the eyes of possible onlookers, they added camp chairs and cots to their accoutrements and settled in.

RANDOLPH 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 [interested] Scientific approach, indeed. I assumed you were exaggerating.

CHARLES I accept your apology.

HERBERT I didn't apologize.

RANDOLPH To say that we actually believed in the supernatural would be carelessly inclusive. Rather 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 I'm not even going to ask.

HERBERT They were approaching the matter as if the potential creature was something that exists in an ...adjacent dimension. Interesting.

RANDOLPH The family of Roulet had likely possessed an abnormal affinity for outer circles of entity. 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 Unfortunately, there is no way to prove 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 subtractions from the life-force or bodily tissue and fluids of more traditional "living things".

EDWARD Which, I believe, would make it something called ...a "vampire"?

HERBERT [ignoring him] Such a thing might be actively hostile, or simply motivated by self-preservation.

EDWARD Back to Luella Miller.

Scene 14.

RICHARD Regardless, in any good social circles, eating people is considered... unacceptable.

HERBERT Well, of course such a creature would have to be eliminated, and yet the concept is fascinating.

WARREN Perhaps such creatures, throughout history, formed the basis for many such myths.

CHARLES But this myth is the only one we're dealing with tonight. Randolph and Elihu were ready for anything they could be ready for.

RANDOLPH 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 Is this item available for an examination?

CHARLES I might ask him. But not for a couple of months. He's rather busy at the moment.

EDWARD Oh, no - don't tell me he's in a madhouse?

CHARLES [considering, then definite] Mm. No.

RANDOLPH 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. We were prepared to burn the thing's heart out - if heart existed to burn.

HERBERT This is the sort of preparation sorely lacking in most of these so-called ghost stories. And nary 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 crucifix while they did it?

HERBERT Melodramatic, perhaps, but burning the heart out of any living creature is just as likely to be an effective way of destroying it.

RANDOLPH Our cellar vigil began at 10 P.M., daylight saving time. A 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 They left the street door unlocked, in case of a sudden need to depart. And they sat, playing stalking goat to a creature as potentially deadly as any man-eating tiger. They talked far into the night until Uncle Elihu, being the older, grew drowsy.

RANDOLPH 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. Once, 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 He returned inside, ready to trade shifts with the elder man. But all was not well.

RANDOLPH As I turned my electric flashlight on him, all at once he commenced to mutter. The words were at first indistinguishable, and then, with a tremendous start, I recognized something about them which filled me with icy fear!

RICHARD Francais?

CHARLES Oui. Now, Uncle Elihu could read and write in a passable Gallic hand, and presumably COULD speak the tongue as well. So it might ... possibly be ... coincidence.

RANDOLPH Suddenly a perspiration broke out on the 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 the past tense! [mimicking] "Uncle could read and write!" Did the vampire get him?

CHARLES As a matter of fact, he woke at this point, and recounted a dreadful dream he had been having.

WARREN A sort of race-memory?

CHARLES All the while, he said he felt a sensation of choking, as if some pervasive presence had spread itself through his body.

RANDOLPH 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 Plausible.

EDWARD Plausible denial.

RANDOLPH 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 He still went to sleep? After all that?

RANDOLPH 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 Who was shrieking?

EDWARD His uncle? Your uncle, I mean?

CHARLES [grim] Yes.

RANDOLPH 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 Did he at least have the sense to arm himself with the flamethrower?

CHARLES I believe so.

EDWARD Not the BEST idea, considering his uncle might be in the line of ... um... fire.

RANDOLPH Yet after all, the sight was worse than I had dreaded. Out 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 A yellow blot upon the dark palette of the tenebrous cellar.

RANDOLPH 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. That object was my uncle!

EDWARD Why did it wait so long?

WARREN Maybe the apparition only appears at certain times of night.

HERBERT Maybe the dimensions only overlap at certain times.

CHARLES Maybe you should let me finish the tale.

RANDOLPH And then, my uncle, features somehow blackening and decaying, leered and gibbered and reached out dripping claws to rend me!

RICHARD All the more terrible for being a relative.

RANDOLPH Only a sense of routine kept me from going mad. Recognizing 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 [eager] Yes?

RANDOLPH 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 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 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 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 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.

HERBERT [disbelieving] He... melted?

EDWARD Seems a bit extreme for an entity that took years and years to kill sister Mercy.

WARREN Consider that the thing had been starved for half a century. Where it might have been satisfied with a slow drain in the past, now it was forced to gorge.

RICHARD And poor Randolph fled into the night?

CHARLES Yes. He wandered aimlessly for a time, unsure of whom he might confide in.

EDWARD Naturally he thought of you.

CHARLES My taste in the ... unusual isn't much of a secret. He woke me early that morning and together we approached that evil dwelling.

RANDOLPH All residue was gone, for the mouldy floor was porous.

CHARLES 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 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. It 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 Randolph has always been a bit of a dreamer. Between us we quickly concocted a plan, and went to fetch digging implements, military gas-masks, and six carboys of sulphuric acid.

EDWARD That you just happened to have lying around?

HERBERT That's what those were for.

RICHARD Herbert? Why on earth do you have sulphuric acid handy?

HERBERT It serves many purposes. But getting rid of organic ... remains... is a primary one.

CHARLES It took nearly an entire day to get everything organized. Randolph spent most of that time trying to take his mind off the horrors he had witnessed.

RANDOLPH I passed the hours in reading and in the composition of inane verses to counteract my mood.

EDWARD "inane verses"?

RICHARD [limerick] There once was an old man from Arkham...

Scene 17.

CHARLES 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 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 With the deepening of the hole, which was about six feet square, the evil smell increased. 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 And the gas masks?

CHARLES originally to keep out the vapor itself, but we used them as much for the dreadful stench.

RANDOLPH 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 I was above at the time, taking some much-needed fresh air, but returned when he called out in horror.

RANDOLPH 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 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.

EDWARD Before you could even see it?

CHARLES I saw enough.

RICHARD A cylinder? So it was some sort of giant worm?

EDWARD A folded worm?

CHARLES Randolph had his own explanation for it, though I don't know how much credit to give him, there in his abject terror.

HERBERT What did he think it was?

CHARLES All I saw was a blinding maelstrom of greenish-yellow vapour which surged tempestuously up from that hole as the floods of acid descended. 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 But you had apparently only uncovered part of the thing?

EDWARD I guess the acid found its way back to the rest of it.

Scene 18.

CHARLES 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 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 I dragged him away and we waited until the fumes cleared. We still emptied the rest of the acid down the hole, just to be on the safe side.

RANDOLPH 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 Probably from the fumes.

RANDOLPH 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 But what was it? What did he say he saw?

CHARLES Keep in mind that at two feet diameter, this cylinder would have made a very stocky man indeed.

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 have Randolph's rather addled ideas to go by. And he insisted that if it had lain there all those centuries, eating and growing, it could be any sort of size.

EDWARD And?

CHARLES He said this thing - this huge bent thing- 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 it have 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 to its... ahem ... former glory?

HERBERT It's ridiculous. I 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 I expect it happened very very slowly.

RICHARD Not to mention that if something that size were its elbow, its entire body would have been underneath most of the neighborhood. Why then, would it restrict itself to harming only those in that single house?

WARREN 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.

EDWARD Yeah. No one who's anyone eats with their elbow.

CHARLES [annoyed sigh] I'll make a point of telling Randolph the next time I see him.

END

More with the fourth dimensional shimmy!

Adapted by Julie Hoverson from the story by H.P. Lovecraft

Herbert finally has his turn and recounts a tale of mad science.

Cast List Herbert - Carl Cubbedge Warren - Glen Hallstrom Charles - Michael Coleman (Tales of the Extraordinary) Richard - Philemon Vanderbeck Edward - Mathias Rebne-Morgan Tillinghast - Jack Kincaid (Edict Zero FIS) "Howard" - Russell Gold

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Editing and Sound: Julie Hoverson Cover Design: Julie Hoverson and Brett Coulstock

"What kind of a place is it? Why it's the scene of a tragic event, can't you tell?"

*****************************************************************

FROM BEYOND (Lovecraft 5, #5)

Cast:

• Herbert, a scientist
• Edward, a writer
• Charles, a dilettante
• Richard, a painter
• Warren, a professor
• Tillinghast, professor
• "Howard", friend

OLIVIA [opening credits] Did you have any trouble finding it? What do you mean, what kind of a place is it? Why, it's the scene of a tragic event, can't you tell?

MUSIC

1_BnE

AMB OUTSIDE, NIGHT

SOUND FOOTSTEPS ON GRAVEL

HERBERT I'm sure you'll understand why I waited until after dinner to bring us all here.

CHARLES That was dinner?

EDWARD Even I can't say anything good about it.

HERBERT Food should be used as fuel, nothing more. Nutritionally--

RICHARD Next, he'll be giving us the chemical notations.

WARREN Buck up - we can't all be epicures like you, Charles. And this little walking tour has piqued my interest. I take it we have reached our destination, Herbert?

HERBERT Yes. This is the house of the late Crawford Tillinghast.

RICHARD Late lamented?

HERBERT Hmph. Doubtful. We'd better get inside rather quickly, though. Don't want the police to find us here.

SOUND FOOTSTEPS ON GRASS

EDWARD [interested] Really?

HERBERT A fortnight ago, Tillinghast died... under rather mysterious circumstances.

RICHARD A friend of yours?

HERBERT Vaguest of acquaintances. I might have recognized him if I met him on the street. Might not. But he was a fellow scientist... [disapproving] of a sort.

SOUND FEET ON PORCH, LEATHER BAG SET DOWN

HERBERT There should be no danger, now.

CHARLES [not quite serious] Danger?

HERBERT But the power should probably remain off, so I've brought along a couple of electric torches.

SOUND RUMMAGING IN BAG

HERBERT Don't turn them on until we're inside. Just in case.

EDWARD You said danger?

HERBERT To be precise, I said "no danger". The machine that caused all the trouble is supposed to have been disabled, according to the only witness, and people have been in and out of the place - I say people, but I mean police - for days, without event.

WARREN Ah - so there is a witness?

SOUND DOORKNOB RATTLES

HERBERT Another acquaintance. Someone I know rather better. Neither of them is really in my field - I work more in biology and chemistry - but we have spoken from time to time when mutual interests converged.

CHARLES Are we going to go inside or stand on the porch all day like milk bottles?

SOUND ANOTHER JIGGLE AT THE DOOR

HERBERT Most doors are fairly easy to-- aha!

SOUND HARD SMACK, DOOR CREAKS OPEN

EDWARD If science doesn't pay, Herbert, you can always turn to crime.

RICHARD Aren't the neighbors likely to notice?

HERBERT The yard is large and the hedges are overgrown.

CHARLES What's the worst that can happen, eh?

EDWARD Criminal prosecution?

RICHARD [amused] Adds spice to a reputation. Go on, Herbert, we're right behind you.

2_inside

SOUND FLASHLIGHT CLICKS ON, SLOW FOOTSTEPS

HERBERT We need to go on through and up to the attic.

SOUND SECOND FLASHLIGHT CLICKS ON

WARREN There are likely stairs that go up from the kitchen. Many old houses had them, depending on the prevalence of servants in the household.

CHARLES Oh?

WARREN Servants, you see, would sleep in the attic, and the masters didn't want them traipsing up and down the main hallways at all hours of the night--

HERBERT That's all very well, and Tillinghast did have servants, but I have a reason for wanting to go through the front hall. Something the witness mentioned, that I wanted to observe for myself.

SOUND FOOTSTEPS STOP, DOOR SHUTS

EDWARD Does he have a name?

HERBERT He? Who?

EDWARD Your witness. You can hardly call him "the witness" all night long - take my word, nameless characters are much more difficult to sympathize with.

HERBERT He asked that I not mention--

CHARLES We'll give him a name then. Something to call him - for convenience.

EDWARD And personalization.

HERBERT [exasperated] You expect me to come up with something?

EDWARD Oh, this is one of my areas. How about Wilbur? Philip? Howard?

HERBERT Howard should be easy enough to remember. Shall we continue?

CHARLES Do we get the grand tour?

WARREN You said there was a reason for us to go through the front hall?

HERBERT Yes. As I said, "Howard" is a fellow scientist. He was a friend - rather unfortunately - to the owner of this house, one Crawford Tillinghast.

RICHARD The "Late" one?

EDWARD And you said he was a scientist as well?

HERBERT [disparaging] Of a sort. Some people really should never take up science. Half the time you can't get anyone to pay attention to your work, and when they do, they can't offer a better opinion than to insist that you're mad.

RICHARD [taunting] Personal experience?

HERBERT [snappish] Of course. [starting slow, but getting sort of rabid] But just as often it has nothing to do with the validity of your theories - it's merely a mind game! [almost furious] A well-placed blow to a scientist's ego can shatter him - send him completely to pieces, leaving the way clear for lesser men to step in and claim victory!

EDWARD Goodness!

HERBERT [still mad] Or there's always the type of smear campaign that Edison waged against Tesla!

CHARLES Good for you, Herbert. Never thought you had that kind of fire in you.

RICHARD [murmured] Remind me never to criticize anything scientific around him.

WARREN Does all this apply to the story somehow?

HERBERT [suddenly snapped back] The story? Oh, yes. The story. Well. [clears his throat] Crawford and Howard didn't work together - their expertise fell into very different categories. But they were friends. [getting a little distant] At least they were until the day when Howard made the mistake - and I believe he had no ulterior motive, unlike some - of criticizing Crawford's theories.

EDWARD Oh, boy!

HERBERT Crawford threw him out, with a warning never to darken his door again.

RICHARD This door, or the one in front?

HERBERT [irritated] His metaphorical door.

CHARLES Sorry to be an annoyance, since you're just starting to warm up, but isn't there a better place for this yarn than standing around a dark, musty old kitchen?

HERBERT Of course. Come along.

SOUND FOOTSTEPS

HERBERT The parlor should be through here somewhere.

EDWARD [a bit spooky] The very parlor where they sat and smoked and told their tales of science... until that fateful day!

HERBERT [dry] Very likely.

EDWARD [annoyed at not getting a rise] Hmph.

WARREN It's awfully dusty in here for a house left unoccupied a mere week. Didn't you say this Tillinghast fellow had servants?

RICHARD It is an awfully large house for one man.

CHARLES Thus speaketh the Pot. [calling the kettle black]

HERBERT He had servants. They've been ... absent for a while - Howard wasn't very clear on that.

SOUND DOOR PUSHED OPEN, FOOTSTEPS

3_garments

EDWARD Hold up a minute. What's this?

CHARLES If you weren't in the way, I might be able to answer you. Too damn bad there's no proper lights.

SOUND SCUFFLE OF FEET

RICHARD It's a woman's dress. Just lying there. How ... odd?

EDWARD Confess, Herbert - does your story involve panderers? White slavers?

HERBERT [disgusted] No! Such distractions have no place in a story of science.

CHARLES Is it damaged at all?

RICHARD Not as far as I can see, but I'm hardly the expert. [beat] Unless it's actually shredded and bloody, which this one most certainly is not, one dress looks much like another to me.

WARREN Move aside, you high-minded gentlemen. I'm quite used to poking about in people's personal belongings.

CHARLES I can't help but feel there's a wee bit of difference between your ancient Mesopotamian and your modern old maid.

SOUND RUSTLING

WARREN How odd. From a cursory examination, it appear that all the -ahem- internal garments are still arrayed -uh- within.

EDWARD I may be a mere tiro [novice], but even I know no woman removes her clothes that way.

CHARLES It'd be damn inconvenient. [clears his throat] For the woman, I mean. Think of all the rebuttoning.

HERBERT [annoyed] I thought you all wanted to sit.

CHARLES Of course.

EDWARD We're easily distracted by oddities.

RICHARD [amused snort] and women's undergarments, apparently.

SOUND FEET, DOOR, SITTING

4_sitting

HERBERT You understand now why I couldn't provide any of the amenities we usually have on these story nights.

CHARLES Of course. [chuckling] Someone would have had to carry the picnic hamper.

EDWARD [agreeing] Not the best accessory for breaking and entering.

CHARLES Does that heap of crinoline have something to do with your story?

HERBERT Well technically, it's evidence, but police have a tendency to ignore anything that they can't explain.

EDWARD Evidence? Really?

HERBERT Point of fact, one week ago, there was an unexplained death in this house.

EDWARD Presumably NOT "Howard", since he's the one who told you all about it?

HERBERT Of course not. It was Tillinghast. Howard was present. That's one reason he doesn't want his name bandied about. He doesn't want to get the police started up again.

CHARLES Did your friend... kill Tillinghast?

HERBERT You'll have to weigh the facts and decide for yourself.

RICHARD "All will become known", eh?

HERBERT Yes. "Howard" had been persona non grata in the house for several weeks before the night of the death. Tillinghast ran him out for daring to question his line of research.

EDWARD Which was?

CHARLES You never did go into that.

HERBERT Tillinghast was experimenting with variations on light waves and their effects on perception. Or something along those lines. Howard wasn't entirely clear in his description.

RICHARD [sarcastic] Unclear? After witnessing - if not causing - a death? Small wonder.

HERBERT He arrived that night to find the house much as it is now. Seemingly unoccupied, and without electricity.

EDWARD Even then? How odd.

HERBERT It was kept "off" by logical decision, not due to any defect in the system. Howard had spent the intervening weeks--

CHARLES Since his fall into disfavor?

HERBERT --keeping tabs on his erstwhile friend, by way of the butler.

WARREN So there were servants.

HERBERT At least two. Howard mentioned the butler and some sort of housekeeper, and his surprise that they were not present to greet him when he arrived.

RICHARD Why did he come back?

HERBERT Tillinghast had specifically sent for him. Howard assumed it was an attempt at reconciliation.

EDWARD [inviting] But...?

HERBERT He had been kept informed of Tillinghast's growing obsession with a machine in the attic, some apparatus he was perfecting, to the exclusion of all else - eating little and sleeping even less.

CHARLES Up in the attic? Right up there?

HERBERT Of course.

WARREN Hmm... are we in any danger from this machine?

HERBERT [bland] I can't think why. [back to the story] Howard was shocked at the appearance of his friend. How he had changed.

RICHARD It had been some time, hadn't it?

HERBERT A mere ten weeks. But he had lost weight, grown rather sallow, and looked feverish.

EDWARD Classic signs of madness... at least in the better sort of stories.

HERBERT And his hair had gone white--

CHARLES Really now Herbert, you of all people, as a scientist, must know that is an old wives' tale--

HERBERT [overriding] White at the roots. Of course it isn't empiracly possible for the current growth of hair to change color overnight--

RICHARD A touch of indigo can send it in the other direction.

HERBERT But shock can alter the follicles and any growth from that point forward may be affected.

EDWARD So he had had some sort of a shock, but some time back, to make the roots noticeable.

HERBERT Tillinghast was not the right type to be a scientist - he didn't have the mental fortitude necessary to face down the possible effects of his actions.

CHARLES Had he actually gone mad?

HERBERT Who can define madness? But he had come to some penultimate discovery. To this end, he had entreated Howard to pay him a visit, in order that he might share what he'd achieved.

WARREN A bit of "I told you so"

RICHARD Best served cold. [as in "revenge"]

5_tillinghast

TILLINGHAST What do we know of the world and the universe about us? We see things only as we are constructed to see them, and can gain no idea of their absolute nature.

RICHARD Perception is a hotly debated concept in art as well - look at the work being done by the surrealists.

CHARLES Or, god forbid, dada.

RICHARD That's not art.

TILLINGHAST With five feeble senses we pretend to comprehend the boundlessly complex cosmos, yet other beings with wider, stronger, or different range of senses might not only see very differently the things we see, but might see and study whole worlds of matter, energy, and life which lie close at hand, yet can never be detected with the senses we have.

EDWARD I can't even imagine a sense I don't have. It's like trying to imagine a colour you've never seen before. Or trying to think around a corner.

TILLINGHAST I have always believed that such strange, inaccessible worlds exist at our very elbows, and now I believe I have found a way to break down the barriers!

HERBERT Howard says Tillinghast seemed absolutely assured of his conclusions, and he feared for his friend's sanity.

WARREN Why break down these barriers? Shouldn't he have considered that they may be present for a very good reason? Always assuming he has any sort of method behind his madness?

HERBERT It is the duty of any scientist to go beyond and figure out what may lay outside the current realm of the probable.

CHARLES But what if such an exploration should do great harm? Isn't it also the duty of any scientist to have a bit of accountability?

HERBERT [dismissive] Of course. But some risks must be taken.

EDWARD So if someone created a devastating bomb, for instance, in the name of science, it wouldn't matter how many people it killed- the very act of being able to make it would justify the science involved?

HERBERT Of course.

WARREN Just as well that we aren't here to discuss theoretical morality. Besides, this is just a story, isn't it?

HERBERT No. This really happened.

WARREN Sorry, what I mean is, for us, this is merely a night's entertainment.

HERBERT Oh. Of course. Tillinghast went on, in that awful "croaking, wasted voice."

EDWARD Howard's words?

TILLINGHAST I am not joking. Within twenty-four hours that machine near the table will generate waves acting on unrecognized sense organs that exist in us as atrophied or rudimentary vestiges.

6_organs

EDWARD Science fiction. Pure and simple.

HERBERT Not necessarily. Many organs remain in the body despite centuries of evolution having rendered them obsolete for whatever purpose they may have once had in primitive man.

CHARLES The appendix?

HERBERT As a simplistic example, yes. At some point in the distant past, it served a purpose. Now, it is merely an accessory.

RICHARD Like footmen.

CHARLES Rather.

HERBERT Howard surmised that while Tillinghast had probably not forgiven him, he needed SOMEONE to talk to, and Howard was the most likely candidate, having been privy to some of his theories previously.

EDWARD And he arrived to find the place dark and empty?

HERBERT Well, he mentioned candles.

EDWARD More gothic yet!

CHARLES Why did Howard come anyway? Wasn't he worried about some kind of remonstrances?

HERBERT [as if this explains] Intellectual curiousity. [dismissive] And wanting to see how his friend fared. The handwriting in the summoning letter had been feeble and cramped.

EDWARD Even his ink had turned white!

CHARLES Hush.

7_machines

HERBERT Howard asked about the electricity and was told, in no uncertain terms, that it was off for a very definite reason, but was not informed what that reason might be. Yet.

TILLINGHAST [muttered] It would be too much... I would not dare.

HERBERT He led Howard up through the house to the attic, which was lit with a sickly sinister violet light.

WARREN But not electric light?

HERBERT It came from the machine that was at the center of all the controversy. Howard described it as "detestable," but machines should really not be regarded so subjectively.

RICHARD There are plenty of machines that are detestable.

HERBERT Name one?

RICHARD [very dry and sarcastic] Tammany Hall. [notorious "political machine" of the recent past]

ALL [general laughter]

EDWARD Now, now - we all use machines that would have been thought terrible in years gone by. I would be lost without my typewriter, Richard takes the occasional photograph--

RICHARD Backgrounds. For my paintings. Nothing I hate more than having to stand around on some windy heath - or god forbid, some tourist-laden beauty spot - just to capture a scene.

CHARLES I'm quite fond of my Victrola.

WARREN Most of these would have been considered magic by ancient man, and either embraced or reviled depending upon the climate of the times.

HERBERT Perception is subjective. That's part of what makes science such a difficult field for men such as Tillinghast.

EDWARD Determined not to lose your thread, eh?

HERBERT The electrical system was out of the picture entirely. And yet some kind of power seemed to be in operation, since the machine was lit.

TILLINGHAST The glow... ah yes, the glow. It is not electrical - not in any sense you could understand. But you will see soon enough.

CHARLES Curiousity or not, I don't know that I would choose to remain alone in a big, dark empty house with someone who sounded so ... ominous.

HERBERT That is the difference between the run of normal folk and the scientist. The mind of the scientist puts knowledge even above... above---

WARREN Self-preservation?

HERBERT I was looking more for "subjective fear responses".

EDWARD I suspect that's why there are so many dead scientists.

RICHARD And so few old ones.

8_colors

CHARLES Now, now, this is a lovely tale. Stop putting Herbert off.

HERBERT Please. Tillinghast seated Howard near the machine and turned it on. Now the sound began, indicating that it was running. And the light... changed.

EDWARD From port to starboard?

HERBERT It had been a strange purplish color, but now it increased, then waned, and settled on a pale color or blend of colors that Howard was unable to adequately describe.

EDWARD What did I say? Colors.

WARREN But isn't there a very definite and specific set of colors that exist in the spectrum?

RICHARD Any painter can tell you that, yet there are shades and blendings that are particularly difficult to achieve - or to reproduce. It all depends on the purity of your pigments.

HERBERT What we think of as "normal light" is absolutely pure when it comes to color. And yet, it is not the absence of hue. Just look at it through a prism.

TILLINGHAST [whispered] Do you know what that is? That is ultra-violet. [creepy chuckle] You thought ultra-violet was invisible, and so it is - but you can see that and many other invisible things now.

EDWARD Isn't ultraviolet at the far end of the spectrum? Our eyes aren't made for that.

HERBERT [ominous] Precisely.

CHARLES Oh-ho?

HERBERT Tillinghast claimed that the machine's function was to open up long-dormant senses, to widen the perceptions, and make visible that which is normally completely unseen.

WARREN So he claimed that, in a few moments, he could reverse aeons--

CHARLES Theoretical aeons.

WARREN --of evolution--

EDWARD Theoretical evolution.

WARREN --and waken senses that might only exist in his imagination?

HERBERT Yes.

WARREN Oh.

RICHARD It might equate, though only in an abstract way, with the change in art when perspective was discovered - or rather quantified.

HERBERT What?

RICHARD If you look at ancient art, from cave paintings up through medieval tapestries, there is no standard for perspective - no logical depth. With the renaissance, and daVinci, art began to develop systematically into the third dimension.

EDWARD What are you talking about?

RICHARD A revolutionary change in vision? Never mind.

TILLINGHAST Listen to me! The waves from that thing are waking a thousand sleeping senses in us! I have seen the truth, and I intend to show it to you.

9_upstairs

HERBERT In fact, I think it well past time to show you.

CHARLES Show?

HERBERT The machine. It's disabled, but you can see the room where everything occurred.

RICHARD [speculative] Get some ambiance.

EDWARD [avid] Background color.

WARREN Perspective.

RICHARD [laughs]

SOUND FOOTSTEPS, DOOR

TILLINGHAST You have heard of the pineal gland? I laugh at the shallow endocrinologist, fellow-dupe and fellow-parvenu of the Freudian.

HERBERT Come along.

TILLINGHAST That gland is the great sense organ of organs - I have found out! It is like sight in the end, and transmits visual pictures to the brain. If you are normal, that is the way you ought to get most of it... I mean get most of the evidence... from beyond.

SOUND CREAKY DOOR OPENS

CHARLES Aha. The scene of the crime?

WARREN Is there room for everyone?

RICHARD Just shove in.

HERBERT Go on. It's bigger inside.

SOUND SHUTS THE DOOR

10_the room

HERBERT Howard said that once the machine got up to speed, he began to "see" things.

HOWARD I fancied myself in some vast incredible temple with innumerable black stone columns reaching up from a floor of damp slabs to a cloudy height beyond the range of vision. The picture was very vivid for a while, but gradually gave way to a more horrible conception; that of utter, absolute solitude in infinite, sightless, soundless space.

EDWARD Sounds like a bit of a poet.

RICHARD For a scientist.

HOWARD From the farthermost regions of remoteness, a sound softly glided into existence. It was infinitely faint, subtly vibrant, and unmistakably musical, but held a quality of surpassing wildness which made it feel like a delicate torture of my entire body.

WARREN There are certain note progressions which are determined to cause odd feelings. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring incited a riot at its debut due to the effect of the wild discords upon its audience.

HERBERT When Howard spoke, though, the "spell" - and I use the term to mean a period of hallucination, and not for any magical connotations - was broken.

SOUND FOOTSTEPS, FIDDLING WITH MACHINE

HERBERT I should also mention that during this momentary lapse of concentration, Howard had drawn his revolver.

CHARLES Ayuh. That might be a little important later. I was looking over your machine here. It appears to be damaged.

HERBERT I already told you it was disabled. That is why we are in no danger. Unlike Howard.

TILLINGHAST Don't move! For in these rays we are able to be seen as well as to see. I told you the servants left, but I didn't tell you how. It was that thick-witted house-keeper - she turned on the lights downstairs after I had warned her not to, and the wires picked up sympathetic vibrations.

CHARLES Downstairs? Oh!

TILLINGHAST It must have been frightful - I could hear the screams all the way up here in spite of all I was seeing and hearing from another direction, and later it was rather ...awful... to find those empty heaps of clothes around the house.

EDWARD Those clothes!

TILLINGHAST Mrs. Updike's clothes were close to the front hall switch - that's how I know she did it.

WARREN [awe] As if she was just taken out of them.

TILLINGHAST It got them all. But so long as we don't move we're fairly safe. Remember we're dealing with a hideous world in which we are practically helpless... [suddenly sharp] Keep still!

HOWARD In my terror my mind again opened to the impressions coming "from beyond." I felt huge animate things brushing past me and walking or drifting through my supposedly solid body.

11_things

HERBERT Before you scoff, you have to understand that most of what we think of as "solid matter" is merely solid on a very crude level. Individual molecules are only loosely bound together--

EDWARD Is there going to be a test later?

HOWARD I thought I saw Tillinghast look at these things as though his better trained senses could catch them visually.

TILLINGHAST You see them? You see them? You see the things that float and flop about you and through you every moment of your life? Have I not succeeded in breaking down the barrier? Have I not shown you worlds that no other living men have seen?

CHARLES I don't think it's just barriers that were breakin' down.

HERBERT [smug] As I said. Some people are not meant for the hard discipline of science.

EDWARD But he says these things could harm them? Could have some effect just because they - the scientists - could now see them?

WARREN That's ridiculous. Like saying that if someone is blind, he won't get hit by a motorcar.

RICHARD [regretfully] No. If someone is blind, he gets hired as an art reviewer.

TILLINGHAST You think those floundering things wiped out the servants? Fool! They are harmless! But the servants are gone, aren't they?

CHARLES Maybe they took a new position in a house with the power laid on.

EDWARD The clothes, though.

TILLINGHAST You tried to stop me! You discouraged me when I needed every drop of encouragement I could get! you were afraid of the cosmic truth, you damned coward, but now I've got you!

EDWARD This room would be a little small for a confrontation with a raving lunatic.

RICHARD Particularly one who insisted that if you move a muscle, something terrible might grab you from behind.

CHARLES Rather like posing for one of your portraits.

RICHARD [dark] That's why I don't include people.

TILLINGHAST What swept up the servants? What made them scream so loud?... Don't know, eh! You'll know soon enough.

WARREN Isn't it a bit warm in here?

HERBERT We're almost finished. I promised Howard I would look for something at the other end of the attic.

EDWARD [worried] You're taking the torch?

HERBERT I can hardly search in the dark. Besides, you have the other one.

SOUND HE WALKS AWAY

HERBERT [as he goes away, echoey] The oddest part is how Tillinghast somehow shifted his focus, from the things immediately surrounding us to things far beyond.

12_Herbert goes

TILLINGHAST I have seen beyond the bounds of infinity and drawn down demons from the stars... Space belongs to me, do you hear? Things are hunting me now - the things that devour and dissolve - but I know how to elude them. It is you they will get, as they got the servants... [urgent] Stirring, dear sir? [relax] If you had moved, they would have been at you long ago.

HOWARD These things were never still, but seemed ever floating about with some malignant purpose. Sometimes they appeared to devour one another, the attacker launching itself at its victim and instantaneously obliterating the latter from sight. Shudderingly I felt that I knew what had obliterated the unfortunate servants.

TILLINGHAST Don't worry, they won't "hurt" you. They didn't "hurt" the servants - it was the seeing that made the poor devils scream so. My pets are not pretty, for they come out of places where aesthetic standards are - very different.

RICHARD [very weak joke, a bit nervous] Hollywood?

HERBERT [from off] I'm going to check downstairs. Be right back.

SOUND FEET GO DOWN STAIRS

HOWARD Foremost among the living objects were inky, jellyfish monstrosities which flabbily quivered in harmony with the vibrations from the machine.

TILLINGHAST I always knew you were no scientist. Trembling, eh? Trembling with anxiety to see the ultimate things I have discovered?

HOWARD I saw to my horror that they overlapped; that they were semi-fluid and capable of passing through one another and through what we know as solids.

TILLINGHAST Why don't you move, then? Tired? Well, don't worry, my friend, for they are coming... Look, look! Curse you, look... it's just over your left shoulder...

[moment of silence]

SOUND CLICK

ALL [gasp]

CHARLES [straining to sound calm and annoyed] Turn the torch back on, Edward.

EDWARD I didn't!

RICHARD [flat] Funny.

WARREN [a bit odd] Do ... you see that?

SOUND SCUFFLE, FEET TURNING - they see it glowing

RICHARD Good god!

EDWARD I can't tell if it's actually--

WARREN [whisper] Barely there....

CHARLES [trying to stay calm] This might be a time to shut the eyes.

SOUND FEET COME UP STAIRS

ALL [GASP]

13_jump scare

HERBERT Why are you standing here in the dark?

CHARLES [crisp, overcompensating] Flashlight died.

RICHARD Let's go downstairs.

SOUND THEY GO DOWNSTAIRS

CHARLES Did you find what you were looking for?

HERBERT No. Looks like the police confiscated everything of any interest.

WARREN Except - um - the machine.

HERBERT Ah. I almost forgot the end of the story. Howard was arrested, and held on suspicion. You see, there was a gunshot and the police were called.

WARREN I see. That's how the police come to be a factor.

HERBERT Yes. They burst in, and found Howard with a recently-fired gun standing over the prostrate body of his fellow scientist.

CHARLES As clear as a tableau in a wax museum.

RICHARD But he didn't shoot him? You said he's no longer under arrest.

HERBERT It wasn't until the police physician examined Tillinghast's body that they let him go.

EDWARD Was it one of the creatures that killed him? And maybe Howard shot IT?

RICHARD I feel a painting coming on.

HERBERT The physician determined that Tillnghast had perished-- [dragging it out]

WARREN Yes?

HERBERT Of apoplexy.

CHARLES Ah, the classics.

WARREN But the gun?

HERBERT You saw what happened. Howard shot the machine. That's why it's broken like that. Too bad. Would have been interesting to examine.

RICHARD [wry hinting] But it's not COMPLETELY broken, is it?

EDWARD Yeah, that was a good one, Herbert. [laughs, but a bit uneasy]

CHARLES [fake laugh] ha-ha. Ayup. Good joke.

WARREN H-how did you get it to do that, anyway?

SOUND FEET STOP

HERBERT [not joking - really doesn't know what they're talking about] Do what?

END

A burlesque dancer develops a tesseracting hip twist!

Adapted by Julie Hoverson from the story "The Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and his Family" by H.P. Lovecraft

The "Lovecraft 5" - Warren, Herbert, Charles, Edward, and Richard - gather again for another night of tall tales.

Tonight, Warren regales the group with a history of a noble house that ... went downhill.

Cast List Warren - Glen Hallstrom Charles - Michael Coleman (Tales of the Extraordinary) Richard - Philemon Vanderbeck Edward - Bryan Hendricksen Herbert - Carl Cubbedge M. Verhaeren - Domien De Groot (The Witch Hunter Chronicles) Mwanu - Danar Hoverson Soames - Ayoub Khote

Music by Skidmore College Orchestra, found on MusOpen Editing and Sound: Julie Hoverson Cover Design: Brett Coulstock

"What kind of a place is it? Why it's a private dining room at a well-known New England University, can't you tell?"

**************************************************************

The Facts Concerning....

Cast:

• Warren
• Herbert
• Charles
• Edward
• Richard
• Verhaeren
• Mwanu
• Soames

OLIVIA What do you mean, what kind of a place is it? Why, it's a private dining room in a college faculty wing, can't you tell?

MUSIC

1_dinner

SOUND DINNER ENDING

SOUND WINDOWS ARE OPEN, MUSIC IN THE DISTANCE

WARREN So nice to have you all here. The weather has been so mild, I feared it would destroy any atmosphere I might have expected for my story. And the orchestra would be in rehearsal.

RICHARD At least it's rather somber.

HERBERT A clear day can mean a darker night.

RICHARD True.

HERBERT Depending on the phase of the moon.

CHARLES Yes. Well, the dinner was--

EDWARD Passable.

RICHARD Oh! Faint praise indeed, coming from our resident starving writer.

WARREN Do you know, I believe the college's food plan is quite brililant!

EDWARD Brilliant? Are they strapped for economy?

WARREN You see, the food is precisely enough to sustain life, but without anything so extravagant as taste, which might take one's mind off one's studies.

HERBERT I found it perfectly adequate.

CHARLES But very little in this world will take your mind off your science, Herbert.

EDWARD How about having the studies take our mind off the food then? We came for a story.

RICHARD And I perceive a box on the table behind you which does not match the décor - or the amount of dust - in this room.

WARREN [chuckles] You artists notice everything. Though your comment on dust surprises me - after seeing your "house".

RICHARD It "does things" for me. Inspiration.

HERBERT At least this place, while old, is well maintained.

WARREN Not so old as all that. The dining hall wing wasn't built until 1804. Very recent, comparatively. But my story.

2_the box

SOUND CARDBOARD BOX MOVED

WARREN I warn you I have a little idea as to presentation - after that night at your place, Richard, I wanted something unique--

HERBERT Don't expect anything like that from me.

CHARLES Don't worry. We don't.

WARREN I have this rather long history to my tale, you see, and I know I tend to wax a bit pedantic, so I thought I would help to set certain facts in the mind by beginning with a bit of a game.

EDWARD I'm game. Is it questions, again?

WARREN No. I have a small description written for each of the major players in the history of the story, and thought I might give one to each of you - well, each of us, for I include myself - to portray. It would help keep them all straight.

CHARLES Is it necessary to keep them straight?

WARREN I think it will help make the history flow. It's a technique of acting out history used to great advantage by Mrs. Schartz-Mettaklume [reference to a comedic story by Saki], a fellow teacher here.

HERBERT [disparaging] Amateur dramatics?

WARREN Oh, you needn't do more than read from the card. I don't expect strutting about and soliloquizing.

CHARLES [declaring] It sounds amusing.

EDWARD I'm in.

RICHARD You may be in for more than you expected, old pal.

SOUND PASSING OUT CARDS

WARREN Good, then. Let's see - Herbert, here, then Charles, Edward, and Richard. The cards have only the basics on each of the fellows - they're generations in a single family, you see - and the back side is a name plate, to aid in recalling who is who.

HERBERT [sour] Charming. [after a pause] You're staring. Am I supposed to begin?

CHARLES I could go first.

EDWARD [reading his card] Oh, no! Let me!

WARREN No, no, I will begin the tale, and then we'll go around the table. You will be second, though, Herbert.

HERBERT At least it will be over with early.

RICHARD That must mean I am the climax of the tale!

EDWARD Oh, you got nothing on me. Just wait.

3_Sir Wade

WARREN Ahem. We begin with Sir Wade Jermyn. [reading, putting on a bit of a British accent] I was one of the earliest explorers of the Congo region, and had written eruditely of its tribes, animals, and supposed antiquities.

RICHARD Are we supposed to be British? You haven't really given us any background.

WARREN Oh, yes. The Jermyn family was part of a well-respected house in England, though it has ...um... died out.

CHARLES So these are not only brits, but long-dead brits? Are we doing Shakespeare?

WARREN We needn't worry about accents.

HERBERT I should say not.

WARREN I don't want to lose my place or I might have to start again. "Indeed, my innovative conjectures on a prehistoric white Congolese civilisation were the basis for my book, "Observation on the Several Parts of Africa," published in 1765. I, fearless adventurer that I once had been, was then placed in a madhouse."

HERBERT That sounds a bit promising. Madness is quite fascinating.

WARREN I have a strong hope that there will be details in this story to intrigue you, Herbert. Have you ever looked into the study of ethnology?

HERBERT Hmm... Should I read now?

CHARLES History first. Quick precis.

WARREN Well, this family - the Jermyns, are not German [chuckle], but British. And there's this - the history of the family is quite interesting, but it ended recently with the death of the final generation - a son - just one - who... uh... set himself on fire when he discovered something about his heritage.

EDWARD He set himself on fire?

RICHARD Now I'm interested.

CHARLES You've got our attention.

HERBERT It's not some simple defect like a harelip? A club foot?

WARREN Much more than that. Let's begin again. [quick recap] I am Sir Wade Jermyn, famous explorer of the Congo region. I wrote a book, and went mad. now...

4_philip

HERBERT Me next, I suppose? [not really trying] This one is Sir Wade's son, Philip.

WARREN Sir Philip.

HERBERT "Philip was a highly peculiar person. His appearance and conduct were in many particulars so coarse that he was universally shunned. Though he did not inherit his father's madness, he was densely stupid--"

EDWARD [laughs!]

HERBERT "--and given to periods of uncontrollable violence." Is this supposed to be funny?

WARREN [baffled?] Funny?

HERBERT Did you give me this one on purpose?

WARREN Well, yes, but only because it was the shortest - I felt you'd have less interest in the dramatic and more in getting it over with.

HERBERT Hmph.

CHARLES Is that the sum of your wisdom, great sir Philip?

HERBERT No, there's more--

WARREN I forgot to mention, it's just the first part now. We'll come back to you.

EDWARD So Herbert is violent and stupid, what are YOU Charles?

CHARLES [hamming it up a bit] I am Robert - Sir Robert - Jermyn, son of Philip and the daughter of his gamekeeper. [offhand] They'll let anyone in, won't they? Oh! I am "Tall and fairly handsome, with a sort of weird Eastern grace. A scholar and investigator, I studied scientifically the vast collection of relics which my mad grandfather brought from Africa.

HERBERT You should have given me the scientist. At least I would know where I stand.

CHARLES Robert is an ethnologist and explorer, not a hard scientist.

HERBERT Even so.

5_alfred

EDWARD My turn! I am Sir Alfred Jermyn, son of Nevil - wait, are we missing someone?

WARREN No, um Nevil is the son of Robert - you're Robert's grandson.

EDWARD Where's Nevil then?

WARREN He's um - we didn't have enough people. I felt we could skip over Nevil - I'll fill in his details, should they become necessary.

EDWARD All right.

WARREN Don't worry - You'll like Alfred. He ran away with the circus.

EDWARD What? You're joking, right?

WARREN No, no - he actually literally ran away with the circus. We'll come back to that.

RICHARD So I am Sir Arthur Jermyn. Son of Alfred, the circus performer and a Music Hall singer. [laughs] And they blink at who we Americans decide to marry. Arthur is a poet and a dreamer. Oh, Warren, you had too much fun choosing who was to play what, didn't you? "The poetic delicacy of Arthur Jermyn was the more remarkable because of his uncouth personal appearance. His expression, his facial angle, and the length of his arms gave a thrill of repulsion to those who met him for the first time."

HERBERT Sounds a bit like Abraham Lincoln.

CHARLES You know, it does. How odd. So now we know who we are. What's next?

6_wade again

WARREN We go back to the beginning. And that's me, Sir Wade. Oh, first, there's been mention of the physical oddities that crept into the family line - I should state that before Sir Wade's time, portraits showed that the family was very typical of English nobility.

RICHARD Chinless and pasty?

CHARLES Now now. Every brit I've ever met has been perfectly nice.

WARREN You have to remember Sir Wade's era was the mid-18th century. And there is no record of any physical issues, or madness before his time. Or at least not out of the ordinary for the time and place.

HERBERT And state of medicine.

WARREN True. Sir Wade made several trips to Africa, returning from one of those trips with a reclusive bride and new born son.

EDWARD And that's Herbert.

HERBERT Philip.

WARREN This bride was notable, for no one ever saw her - or at least not much of her. She was supposed to have been the daughter of a Portuguese trader who despised English ways, and wouldn't have any English servants. Wade humored her, and put her up in a wing of her own at the estate, where no one saw her, or the child, but Wade himself.

EDWARD A woman who doesn't want go out to gossip or shop? Quite a mythological figure.

WARREN His wife had accompanied him back from the second and longest of his trips, and left again with him on the third and final, never to return.

RICHARD But Wade returned - he hasn't yet gone mad. We're all waiting for that.

WARREN The only thing ever said about the wife - even her name is left unrecorded - was that she had a violent disposition. While they made the journey back to Africa, Wade would permit no one to care for his young son save a loathsome native woman from Guinea.

EDWARD This family sure knows how to pick their women, don't they?

CHARLES I notice you don't give names for any of them. Funny how wives tend to be forgotten in these epic histories.

WARREN There's one among them, Arthur's mother herself, who was actually quite a fascinating character, and I might look further into her antecedents - but for the most part, the family made some odd choices, indeed.

HERBERT So far, I get the feeling that this is leading to a disquisition on eugenics, rather than on ethnology. In other words, take a so-called "noble house" and marry in, generation after generation, people of dubious merits, and see how the line flows.

WARREN Well... that's a part of it.

HERBERT I'm rather surprised. It is fascinating. I've heard of similar experiments with rats - much easier to observe since their generations are months, rather than decades, apart. And of course the difficulties of convincing a human family to participate.

WARREN I'm just pleased you're so enthusiastic. Go ahead and read the second card, then.

7_second card

HERBERT Right. [a bit more enthusiastically than the first time] "As Philip grew out of infancy, his father started to avoid him, muttering wild stories about his encounters in Africa, but never making anything clear. Philip grew up small but powerful, with incredible agility. He married, but before his son was born, he joined the navy as a common sailor. He made his way onto a merchantman in the African trade, and gained a reputation for feats of strength and climbing."

EDWARD Wait a minute - this is not gonna just turn into a big argument against intermarrying with native tribespeople, is it? Was Wade's wife a Zulu or something?

WARREN Oh, no. I would say that was surprisingly far from the point of the history, though you might well suspect it, since so much of the story centers around Africa. But no, none of the individuals involved are Africans, tribal or otherwise.

CHARLES Interesting, I had a little idea about that myself.

WARREN Put it aside and let's finish with Philip.

HERBERT Ah, one last note. Philip disappeared one night as the ship... what ship? Ah, the merchantman. As the ship lay off the Congo coast.

EDWARD Maybe he went looking for his mother - you said she went back to the Congo and never returned, right?

RICHARD And Philip was never heard from again?

WARREN More or less.

CHARLES Oh?

WARREN Rumors. We'll be there later.

CHARLES Me then?

WARREN Another short interlude - some details about Sir Wade's madness. He spent a great deal of time at the local pub--

EDWARD While avoiding his son?

WARREN Actually yes. But he had a tendancy to rave while in his cups.

RICHARD Doesn't everyone?

WARREN And it was this rather - ahem - random talk that chiefly led his friends to deem him mad. He would often speak of wild sights and scenes under a Congo moon; of the gigantic walls and pillars of a forgotten city, crumbling and vine-grown, and of damp, silent, stone steps leading interminably down into the darkness of abysmal treasure-vaults and inconceivable catacombs.

RICHARD Oh! Yes, I can see it. I never really considered the artistic possibilities of Africa. Hmm.

WARREN It was particularly unwise of him to rave of the strange creatures that populated such a city. For he boasted of what he found in the jungle and of how he dwelt among terrible ruins and the creatures that inhabited them.

CHARLES Little wonder he was locked away.

WARREN The wonder lay in that he showed no particular regret when being shut up. In fact, he seemed to find the confinement comforting - as if something were being locked out, rather than he being locked in.

EDWARD Hmm. I must make a note.

7_Robert

CHARLES Feel free. It's my turn to reveal the next bit.

WARREN Oh, I should add that Robert broke the cycle and married a perfectly acceptable woman - a daughter of the seventh Viscount Brightholme - rather than following the - um - family tendency to pick entertainers and other... women at random.

HERBERT Did it help the line at all?

WARREN Actually, no. Of the three children they had, two were never seen - they were kept locked away. Presumably due to some hereditary defect.

HERBERT [interested] Interesting.

CHARLES May I?

WARREN Oh, yes - go ahead.

CHARLES Now Philip is tall and handsome--

HERBERT No, I'm Philip. You're my son Robert.

CHARLES Of course. Robert was quite the scholar. He scientifically studied - as best as possible in 1815 - the vast collection of relics which his mad grandfather - that's you, Warren, brought from Africa.

WARREN It's really quite a pity, the way early explorers looted everything in sight. All those things are of great historical value, and should be in the hands of researchers, not adorning trophy rooms.

EDWARD I read in the paper recently about someone selling a mummy at one of the big art auction houses. Maybe the college should buy it.

HERBERT Most of the items that have spent time in personal collections are worthless anyway - in any scientific sense. Without any provenance, there's no way to tell the real from the fake.

WARREN Precisely.

CHARLES Can "Robert" get a word in edgewise?

WARREN So sorry. Go on.

CHARLES Robert spent a great deal of time on his own expeditions into the interior of Africa. In 1849, his second son, Nevil--

EDWARD The non-deformed one?

RICHARD Non-deformed, but invisible.

EDWARD Maybe we should pull him up a chair.

CHARLES Nevil, a singularly repellent person, ran away with a vulgar dancer--

RICHARD Another one!

CHARLES --but was pardoned upon his return in the following year. He came back a widower with an infant son, Alfred--

EDWARD ta-da!

CHARLES Who was one day to be the father of Arthur Jermyn.

RICHARD And I'm the one who set himself on fire?

WARREN We're not there yet. But before we move on to Alfred, there's another tragic instance to recount. Robert became a bit unhinged himself.

CHARLES Do I have a card for that?

WARREN Not really, I was just going to--

EDWARD Get on with it.

WARREN An elderly man, Robert had spent years collecting the legends of the Onga tribe - native to the area of the expeditions taken by both Robert and his mad grandfather. He expressed a desire to validate his grandfather's claims of a strange lost city, particularly one populated by the sort of creatures Wade used to rave about.

HERBERT Do you have any solid information about these creatures you keep hinting about?

8_crossbreeding

WARREN Not much, but accounts say Sir Wade made wild claims about a white tribe that had once lived in a stone city deep in the interior - though that, apparently, wasn't recent. Others said that he claimed that while people built the city, it had been overrun with apes, but apes who were able to mix with the humans.

HERBERT Mix? Are you talking getting together for tea, or interbreeding?

WARREN [flustered] It was - um - no details. Um - that was someone's vague recollection in a journal, so it's anyone's best guess what Sir Wade actually said.

HERBERT Hmph. Despite the persuasive nature of the evolutionary theory, there is no evidence that any strain of apes is close enough to humans to crossbreed.

CHARLES Crossbreeds aren't impossible. Not with humans, of course, but there's always mules.

EDWARD I always pitied the donkey...

WARREN [loud clearing of throat]

EDWARD It's sort of like the Ooh-ah bird...

WARREN [louder clearing of throat]

EDWARD Right.

WARREN So, through correspondence, Wade reached a fellow explorer, Samuel Seaton, who eventually made his way back to England and brought some interesting tales with him.

RICHARD How interesting?

WARREN No one knows.

EDWARD No one?

WARREN Yes. We can only conjecture from the effect it had on Sir Robert.

HERBERT Which was?

WARREN He went upstairs and killed all three of his children - Nevil and the two no one ever saw - before making every feasible attempt to kill himself.

EDWARD Holy cow!

RICHARD I thought you were one of the saner ones, Charles.

CHARLES Should I be killing someone now?

HERBERT "Every feasible attempt"?

WARREN He failed to end his own life and was locked away, dying two years later.

HERBERT What did the Seaton fellow say about it all?

WARREN Oh, nothing. He was already dead - Robert strangled him first. The only survivor was young Alfred. It appeared that Nevil, for all his - um -

EDWARD Absentness?

WARREN Um - basically. For all he lacked, he died in defense of his son. And Alfred inherited the title before he could even walk.

EDWARD And he still ran away with the circus?

HERBERT Nothing survived of the information Seaton brought?

WARREN Pieces of correspondence survived. Mostly notes of tales from the Onga tribe, who believed in a gray city peopled by white apes and ruled by a white god.

EDWARD [avid] My turn, right?

WARREN Almost.

EDWARD [disappointed noise]

WARREN I didn't think this would catch your fancy so well.

CHARLES It's quite an amusing idea, Warren. Rather surprised, really.

WARREN Thank you. [realizing] Oh.

CHARLES Pray continue.

WARREN Let's just move on to Edward - Um, Alfred.

9_circus

EDWRD [clears throat dramatically] "Sir Alfred Jermyn was a baronet before his fourth birthday, but his tastes never matched his title. At twenty he had joined a band of music-hall performers, and at thirty-six had deserted his wife and child to travel with an itinerant American circus.

CHARLES Quite apart from their tendency to marry beneath them, the men themselves tend to abscond, which doesn't speak much for nobility.

HERBERT An argument could be made that they're tainted from past generations.

RICHARD Or that rich men are just predisposed to be bastards - in the personality sense.

EDWARD [clears throat dramatically, hams it up] "Alfred's end was very revolting! Among the animals in the exhibition with which he travelled was a huge bull gorilla of lighter colour than the average."

HERBERT You mentioned something about white apes, didn't you? Oh, no - it was a supposed white race in the interior. Hmm...

WARREN [satisfied] And the apes that took over their city.

HERBERT Hmm.

EDWARD The beast was very popular among the performers. Alfred Jermyn was fascinated with this gorilla, and on many occasions the two would eye each other for long periods through the intervening bars.

CHARLES Sounds like he was a bit of- [realizing] oh!

RICHARD A what?

CHARLES [covering smoothly] Bit of an anthropologist himself.

EDWARD Alfred obtained permission to train the animal, astonishing audiences and fellow performers alike with his success. One morning, as the gorilla and Alfred were rehearsing an exceedingly clever boxing match, the beast hit him too hard.

RICHARD I thought it was kangaroos who were notable for boxing.

CHARLES Or orangutans - recall that odd story from out friend Auguste.

EDWARD I guess gorillas can box if they want to.

RICHARD What's next? A female president?

EDWARD Of what followed, members of "The Greatest Show On Earth" do not like to speak.

CHARLES Oh, he was with Barnum! Funny. You never think of these tales happening in places you might actually have been.

RICHARD P.T. Barnum could hardly be called a place.

CHARLES You know what I mean.

EDWARD I know you keep interrupting me! "They did not expect to hear Sir Alfred Jermyn emit a shrill, inhuman scream, or see him seize the gorilla with both hands, dash it to the floor of the cage, and bite fiendishly at its hairy throat. The gorilla retaliated and before anything could be done, the body which had belonged to a baronet was past recognition." [taking a bow] Thank you! Thank you very much!

CHARLES There's one born every minute. [quoting Barnum]

HERBERT One what?

CHARLES Idiot who wants to box a wild animal, I suppose. Well, Richard, I suppose you will be ending this little tale?

a1_Arthur

RICHARD Am I?

WARREN Oh, just a moment... Right. A few notes first. [aside, to Edward] I thought you might enjoy that bit.

EDWARD Cheers.

WARREN Can't find my notes just now, but if you'd like to go on, Richard, I'll interject as things come up?

RICHARD Certainly. Arthur Jermyn was the son of Sir Alfred Jermyn and a music-hall singer of unknown origin.

WARREN If I may interject?

CHARLES That was short.

RICHARD Go ahead.

WARREN This woman - whose name was never recorded, but I don't doubt I could find it if need be, since she only died in 1911, I believe, was the one I mentioned earlier as being quite an interesting character.

HERBERT Not the titled lady?

WARREN No she appears to have been very ... stolid. Arthur's mother, however, was determined. When Alfred left them, or possibly after his horrid death, she apparently marched right into Jermyn house, infant son on her hip--

CHARLES Not even a perambulator to her name?

RICHARD Makes for a prettier and more destitute picture.

WARREN Babe in arms, anyway, and took over. She apparently stood toe to toe with any and all opposition on behalf of her son.

HERBERT People will do most anything for money.

RICHARD Women, particularly.

WARREN That's the rub. There was almost no money left, per se. There was the title, and some land, and Jermyn house, and not much else. And yet she claimed it on behalf of her son. And apparently did a reasonably good job of running the estate during his childhood - got at least enough money out of it to send Arthur to decent schools and see to it he had some idea of family and history.

CHARLES Brave woman.

RICHARD Very well. So "my mother" had redeeming qualities above and beyond her social status. May I go on?

WARREN I have a bit more. Arthur Jermyn was not like any other Jermyn before him, for he was a poet and a dreamer.

EDWARD Ta-da!

RICHARD As an artist, I can sympathize, anyway.

WARREN Locals attributed his sensitivity to the Latin blood of his Portuguese great-great-great... great?

a2_great great

EDWARD Let's see, I'm great - Charles is great great--

CHARLES Don't forget invisible Nevil.

WARREN You know who I mean, anyway. Besides, most people just chalked it up to his music-hall mother - who, of course, was never accepted by the gentry.

EDWARD [silly brit voice] Oh, no, of course not!

CHARLES How horrible!

WARREN While his nature was poetic, his appearance was just the opposite. Most of the Jermyns had possessed a subtly odd and repellent cast, but Arthur's case was very striking.

RICHARD Ape-like?

WARREN [lying poorly] Um, uh - possibly. I suppose.

RICHARD [chuckles] I, Arthur Jermyn, being of sound mind and ugly body... [laughs] "took highest honours at Oxford and seemed likely to redeem the intellectual fame of the family."

CHARLES Oxford? Kudos to "your mother" indeed.

RICHARD [aside] I'll tell her when I see her. [narrating] Arthur planned to continue the work of his forefathers in African ethnology and antiquities, utilising the truly wonderful though strange collection of Sir Wade.

HERBERT Which, though valueless in many ways, having been tossed about by a collector, would still be fascinating to see.

WARREN [eager] I daresay! Who knows what he may have found in--

RICHARD [loud] The prehistoric civilisation in which the mad explorer had so implicitly believed? Arthur explored tale after tale about the silent jungle city and the nameless, unsuspected race of jungle hybrids mentioned in Warren's journal.

WARREN Wade.

RICHARD [shrugs] Right person, wrong name. Sounds like a clear case of morbid fascination, though, for he sought out more information after his mother's death in 1911, and even made an expedition himself as soon as he could liquidate some assets to fund it.

WARREN That's not precisely what's on the card.

RICHARD I'm embellishing. "Arranging with the Belgian authorities for a party of guides, he spent a year in the Onga and Kahn country. Among the Kaliris was an aged chief called Mwanu, who possessed not only a highly retentive memory, but a singular degree of interest in old legends."

a2_Mwanu

WARREN Mwanu even added his own account of the stone city and the white apes.

MWANU Many long years it has been since things walked in the city of grey stones. And many years more and more since man ever trod the paths within.

WARREN He told Jermyn of the N'bangu tribe, which had annihilated the beings within the city, and destroyed many of the structures.

MWANU Every ape lay dying. Every ape lay dead. The chief of the N'Bangus, him they called Iron foot, trod on the bodies of the enemy, for they were no more than dirt to him. And lo, in their wicked shrine, in the center of the ruined city, lay the prize Iron Foot had come to possess.

WARREN What they had come for was apparently a mummy. It was called, among the various local tribes, the "white goddess" and was supposed to be the remains of one of the ape-things' queens, preserved and revered for ... [hinting] just over a century.

MWANU The white goddess was a queen in her own right, when she lived like mortals live - down among the hairy folk. But came a god from a distant land far to the west! He wore the sun for a crown and strode the land on giant feet.

WARREN Apparently this strange new "god" married the princess - later known as the white goddess - and they ruled the ape-city together.

EDWARD This is starting to sound a bit like a Burroughs fancy, though I don't think Tarzan ever stooped to "wooing" apes.

RICHARD I always say live and let live, but that's a bit outside even my tolerance.

CHARLES That is assuming the strange god was a human, and in fact was-- [cuts himself off] are we assuming?

WARREN We'll assume in a moment. Mwanu had an interesting little end to his tale.

MWANU When the princess bore the god a son, they returned to the homeland of the god. It was many, many moons before the god and princess returned, for the princess was lonely in the distant world and wished for the company of her own people. They ruled but a short time, before the princess left her mortal life and rose to the top of the great world tree.

EDWARD She died?

WARREN I hope so. You see--

MWANU The god, stricken with grief at her passing and loathe to lose her, mummified the body, so he would always know she remained in the city, awaiting his return.

RICHARD [creeped out] Romantic.

CHARLES I - I am at a loss for words. Impressive.

SOUND [slight golf clap from Herbert]

WARREN Though the god never returned to reclaim his princess, the white goddess, as it was now called, became a symbol of supremacy to all the neighboring tribes - which is why the N'bangu felt the need to capture it.

RICHARD They should have stuck with a flag.

MWANU Many moons later yet, the child of the princess and the god, grown to impressive manhood, found his way to the city to claim his rightful place.

RICHARD Really?

CHARLES And what happened to him?

WARREN Sadly, Mwanu didn't know. [briskly] Whatever the truth behind any of the legends, they make for picturesque storytelling.

a3_lost city

CHARLES Herbert? You've been awfully quiet.

HERBERT I'm ...interested. We still haven't made the leap from unlikely legends to Richard going up in flames. Pray continue, Warren.

WARREN In early 1912, Arthur found the fabled lost city, or what was left of it. It was apparently rather smaller than he had expected. Unfortunately, the modest size of the expedition prevented operations toward clearing the one visible passageway that seemed to lead down into the system of vaults which Sir Wade had mentioned.

EDWARD You never mentioned underground vaults before!

RICHARD Oh yes he did.

WARREN It's really just mentioned in passing.

CHARLES And it was blocked up.

WARREN They spoke with as many natives and chiefs as they could, but found no further information on the white goddess, except that the N'bangu had it.

EDWARD Probably performed unspeakable rites and rituals beneath the glassy eyes of the once-living thing.

WARREN Very likely. Finally, Arthur was introduced to a Monsieur Verhaeren, Belgian agent at a trading post--

RICHARD Is the congo still under Belgian control?

CHARLES If it isn't, the change must have been rather recent.

WARREN Verhaeren claimed he could not only locate, but obtain the stuffed goddess

VERHAEREN C'est vrai. These once mighty N'bangus are now the submissive servants of King Albert's government. Ignorant savages. Some beads and trinkets, perhaps some rum, and I could get them to part with their own mothers.

WARREN Jermyn sailed for England, therefore, with the exultant probability that he would, within a few months, receive a priceless ethnological relic and confirm the wildest of his great-great-great-grandfather's stories.

CHARLES Wildest? Perhaps not. Frankly, I wouldn't want to see proof of some of the implications.

HERBERT The miscegenation? That's actually what I'm finding the most fascinating to consider.

a4_Missagewhozits

EDWARD Missagewhozits?

CHARLES Finish first. Once you let Herbert start, there's no telling where it might end.

WARREN Arthur Jermyn waited. Meanwhile, he studied the papers and reports of his great-- um-- Sir Wade. He found it interesting that while there was much whispering about the mysterious and secluded wife, no tangible relic of her remained.

EDWARD What, you expect someone stuffed her, too?

CHARLES Ahem. I think he means a portrait, or a lock of hair, even a journal of her own.

WARREN And there was nothing. Jermyn put it down to Wade's insanity, figuring that she might have angered him by contradicting some of his wild Africa tales, particularly since she had also spent time on the dark continent.

CHARLES Or perhaps they'd just had an efficient maid or two in the intervening century. [hinting]

WARREN ahem. In June of 1913, a letter arrived from Monsieur Verhaeren, saying he had found the stuffed goddess! He averred it was a most extraordinary object, quite beyond the power of a layman to classify. Whether it was human or simian only a scientist could determine.

RICHARD Unless, like such artifacts from Barnum and his brethren the world over, it was made piecemeal.

CHARLES Stitched out of whole cloth?

RICHARD More like a crazy quilt.

WARREN And, of course, time and the Congo climate are not kind to mummies.

HERBERT I shudder to think of the depredations of insects, and mildew. [ugg - shudder noise]

WARREN And apparently this one was not preserved by a craftsman with any sort of skill. And yet, it was still intact, in the whole, and recognizable, so they couldn't fault him over much.

HERBERT Mummies are primarily preserved through drying. How could anyone ever undertake that in a damp and steamy jungle?

A6_ALMOST DONE

WARREN Almost done now. Where was I? Ah! Around the creature's neck was a golden chain bearing an empty locket on which were armorial designs - no doubt some hapless traveller's keepsake, taken by the N'bangus and hung upon the goddess as a charm.

HERBERT No doubt.

CHARLES Utter coincidence.

WARREN In commenting on the mummy's appearance, the Belgian expressed a humorous wonder just how it would strike his correspondent--

RICHARD Me, in case anyone has forgotten during the intermission.

WARREN But these hints really don't give much to go on. The boxed object was delivered to Jermyn on the afternoon of August 3, 1913, and was conveyed immediately to the large chamber which housed the collection of African specimens.

RICHARD The final card now?

EDWARD He got an extra card?

WARREN Richard has the artistic temperament. [to Richard] Just one more moment. [to all] What ensued can best be gathered from the tales of the servants and from things later examined. Aged Soames, the family butler, tells the most ample and coherent tale.

A6_SOAMES

SOAMES Sure and the master sent all of us away, wanting to be alone with his new treasure. This was not unusual, and none thought twice on it. We heard the sound of hammer and chisel when he opened the box almost right away - that excited he was to clap eyes on't.

WARREN Shortly, there came a terrible scream.

RICHARD [screams]

WARREN [surpised noise] Gah! That wasn't part of the--

RICHARD Artistic license. It comes with artistic temperament. Ready now?

WARREN Warn me next time. Yes.

RICHARD Immediately after, Jermyn emerged from the room, rushing frantically about as if pursued, and finally disappearing down the stairs to the cellar. The servants were utterly dumbfounded, and watched at the head of the stairs, but a smell of oil was all that came up from the regions below.

WARREN After dark, a rattling was heard at the door leading from the cellar into the courtyard; and a stable-boy saw Arthur Jermyn, glistening from head to foot with oil and redolent of that fluid, steal furtively out and vanish on the black moor surrounding the house.

RICHARD Then, in an exaltation of supreme horror, a spark appeared on the moor, a flame arose, and a pillar of human fire reached to the heavens. The house of Jermyn no longer existed!

HERBERT Did he at least leave a note?

WARREN No, but the fragments that add up to the horror he discovered were clearly found and assembled afterward, principally the thing in the box.

HERBERT His ancestress.

CHARLES Don't jump ahead.

EDWARD [snort] Funny.

WARREN The stuffed goddess was a nauseous sight, withered and eaten away, but it was clearly a mummified white ape of some unknown species, less hairy than any recorded variety, and infinitely nearer mankind - quite shockingly so.

HERBERT Was it supposed to be a secret? I thought warren made it eminently clear.

EDWARD You're serious? Warren?

WARREN [sigh] Yes. [chuckles] The arms on the golden locket about the creature's neck were the Jermyn arms, and the ... resemblance between the shrivelled face to none other than the sensitive Arthur Jermyn applied with vivid, ghastly, and unnatural horror.

HERBERT This should lead to an interesting field of study - do you think the white apes she belonged to might still exist in the congo?

EDWARD No, they were wiped out by the nubumbums.

HERBERT Is the mummy at least intact?

WARREN Oh, no. Members of the Royal Anthropological Institute burned the thing and threw the locket into a well.

HERBERT [almost yelling] They did what?

CHARLES [sigh] Thus endeth the lesson.

HERBERT [still loud, fading out] And they call themselves scientists?

CLOSING

In a bar, watching the first telecast from Mars, a stranger walks in.

Adapted by Julie Hoverson from a story by H.P. Lovecraft.

Cast List Richard - Philemon Vanderbeck Edward - Bryan Hendrickson Charles - Michael Coleman (Tales of the Extraordinary) Warren - Glen Hallstrom Herbert - Carl Cubbedge Auguste - Reynaud LeBoeuf

Music by Kevin MacLeod (Incompetech.com) Editing and Sound: Julie Hoverson Cover Design: Brett Coulstock [cover art attributions]

"What kind of a place is it? Why it's an artist's loft, can't you tell?"

**************************************************************************

The View from Within

Cast:

• Richard, artist
• Charles, wealthy dilettante
• Herbert, scientist
• Warren, professor
• Edward, pulp writer
• Auguste, visitor

OLIVIA What do you mean, what kind of a place is it? Why, it's an artist's loft, can't you tell?

MUSIC

SOUND FOOTSTEPS RECEDE, ECHOES

RICHARD [calling out] Thanks - ever so!

SOUND DOOR SHUTS

RICHARD You have to love a restaurant that will send orders out.

EDWARD Smells delicious. I suppose we should... wait?

RICHARD Take a breadstick. No one needs to know.

EDWARD [chewing] From one starving artist to another, my stomach thanks you.

RICHARD [chuckles]

SOUND KNOCK ON DOOR

RICHARD Aha!

SOUND FEET, DOOR OPENS

WARREN Oh! This is-- ah! It is the right place, then?

RICHARD Either that, or we're all lost together.

WARREN [dubious] Oh?

EDWARD [off] Don't confuse the poor academic! Invite him in!

RICHARD Come in, then.

WARREN Ah. This is the first time--

RICHARD Welcome to my studio. I don't usually have much company. Through here.

SOUND FOOTSTEPS

WARREN It is a bit out of the way.

RICHARD Just be happy we're not meeting in the basement.

EDWARD Oh, why?

RICHARD [chuckles slightly] Mildew. Though the atmosphere is most ... stimulating.

WARREN I'm rather surprised the building is still standing.

RICHARD It's an antique.

WARREN More like a relic.

SOUND KNOCK AT DOOR

RICHARD Any bets on who's next?

EDWARD Heads or tails?

HERBERT [off] Open the door!

EDWARD Tails.

RICHARD [snickers] [up, trying not to laugh] I'm coming.

SOUND FEET RETREAT

WARREN Good thing Richard knows how to give directions - I'd hate to be lost in such a decrepit and forbidding part of town.

EDWARD Don't tell anyone, but I wrote them. His were needlessly labyrinthine. No one would have found this place in time.

WARREN Dinner would have gone cold?

EDWARD Weather would have gone cold.

SOUND FOOTSTEPS ENTER

HERBERT You wouldn't believe the types of fungi that can grow in the plaster and wood in buildings this ancient. I suggest a thorough going over with Listerine, possibly followed by razing it to the ground.

RICHARD [laughs] You modern-minded scientists. Can't see the value of anything lacking in hygiene unless it's in a Petri dish.

WARREN Culture isn't born in a day.

HERBERT It might be - in a Petri dish.

RICHARD Sit. Relax. I suppose we could commence eating if Charles isn't--

SOUND KNOCK ON DOOR

RICHARD But... he is. Back in a moment.

SOUND FEET RECEDE

HERBERT [sigh] Fire trap.

EDWARD What?

HERBERT These old gambrel-roofed buildings. The attic framing is particularly susceptible to the flow of air.

WARREN Well, I doubt that it will go up tonight.

EDWARD And I doubt that a going over with lister's formula will make it any less flammable.

HERBERT Did Richard say anything about this story of his?

WARREN Only that he felt it an impenetrable mystery.

HERBERT It had better be something a bit more engaging than a plebian crime drama. That's no entertainment for a thinking man.

EDWARD You didn't come just for the food? [bites a breadstick] I certainly did.

CHARLES [coming in] Did I hear someone mention a thinking man?

WARREN That would be Herbert.

EDWARD Neither of us is inclined to think at all - if there isn't an immediate need.

WARREN Of course I think - I'm always--

CHARLES Buried in the college library. Absorbing.

EDWARD Rather like a sponge.

HERBERT [snort of laughter] So there's only one thinking man present.

CHARLES I beg to differ. May I introduce a friend?

EDWARD What? I thought this was a secret society!

WARREN Is it? I thought it was dinner.

CHARLES Don't matter. As he's in town for just the fortnight, Richard said I might bring him along. Particularly with a mystery in hand.

EDWARD Aren't mysteries "afoot"?

RICHARD [agreeing] Plenty of food, though it looks like the breadsticks are going fast.

AUGUSTE [chuckle]

CHARLES So. These are my cronies - Warren there in the tweed; Edward with the glasses; Herbert - well, he's Herbert. And you met Richard at the door.

AUGUSTE Enchante'.

CHARLES And this, to all you rabble, is monsieur Auguste, an old friend of the family.

WARREN French?

AUGUSTE Oui. Do not discompose yourself. My English is quite fair.

CHARLES My father met Auguste when he was overseas. They always figured on meeting up again and trading some yarns.

AUGUSTE "Yarns"?

CHARLES Stories.

AUGUSTE Ah. Oui. I am a great one for the recounting of the stories.

WARREN But - but it's Richard's turn tonight!

EDWARD I see why you let him in! Cheater.

HERBERT You're not getting out of it that easily!

RICHARD I'm not getting out of anything, but there's no reason we can't allow such an "august" visitor a morsel of our time. My story can wait until we're onto the cigars.

EDWARD If they're half the size of your breadsticks, we might be here all night.

MUSIC

RICHARD So, monsieur Auguste. You don't mind our informality?

AUGUSTE I have lived a rather - bohemian - life, myself. If I was to be precise in the naming of names, you should all address me as "sir".

WARREN You aren't that much older than--

AUGUSTE No, no! Pardon. It is the title, yes? I have the honorific of Chevalier - a knight, I think, en Anglais.

EDWARD A knight? Really? Do you have a sword and a horse and everything?

WARREN [disgusted sigh] Pardon Edward. He's the product of our public school system, and thus is oblivious of the niceties of history.

RICHARD And you were a bohemian in Paris? [wistful sigh] there's no better place for it.

AUGUSTE C'est vrai. True.

EDWARD Aren't you some sort of consulting detective?

AUGUSTE Mais non. At best, I would call myself a dilettante. My friend and I simply found ourselves in the path of a crime or two in our day. I analyse. I correlate. I also am willing to accept things that others might assume are impossible.

WARREN Impossible? Nonsense. Things must be either possible or impossible.

HERBERT Not really. The bounds of the possible are enlarged every year by my fellow scientists.

CHARLES [teasing] I thought you of all people would be defending the "bounds of the possible".

HERBERT Every impossibility is like a lock. Once you find the right key, the door opens, and the boundary enlarges.

AUGUSTE Though I comprehend you are speaking of science, I am of the same mind. Trying key after key, any door will eventually open, even if there is a century of keys.

MUSIC

SOUND MATCH STRIKES

RICHARD [puffing] So. Replete?

WARREN That was quite delicious. How did you get anything like that delivered here?

RICHARD Generous tipping. [chuckles]

EDWARD Is anyone else chilly? [1 shivers] I feel a bit of a draft.

RICHARD High ceilings and large windows. Good for painting, terrible for heating. Have some more brandy, that should warm you up.

CHARLES You call this brandy?

RICHARD The rum-runner I bought it from assures me--

CHARLES Hmm. It's almost the right color, but the resemblance is less than skin deep.

RICHARD Let's agree I buy for effect, not refinement.

HERBERT Seeing your house, I can understand that.

RICHARD And we come full circle. [sigh] My story begins at the house of a friend. I'll call her Mavis--

EDWARD Mavis? A romance?

RICHARD [dismissive] A patron. She'd just come into an inheritance, including a large manor out in the country. It hadn't been lived in for a while, and needed tending, but money can go a long way toward fixing any neglect.

CHARLES My father would agree.

RICHARD So, in the clearing out of the picturesque dilapidation, several outbuildings were uncovered.

HERBERT This is your story? They trimmed the lawn and found a shed?

EDWARD How... bucolic.

RICHARD I'm simply trying to include any details you might need later to arrive at the conclusion to this mystery.

AUGUSTE Perhaps, if I may, you could recount us the mystery first, and the details to follow.

WARREN That wouldn't be precisely methodical, would it?

HERBERT Under normal circumstances, I would abhor one who settles on a hypothesis first and then aims all his tests to achieving that end and only that end. But for the purposes of entertainment--

RICHARD Right. Mystery first. Bare bones. The house was beautifully restored, mansard to masonry, and Mavis was hosting her first house party. She had invited some three dozen of her closest friends, secured a small orchestra, and was inaugurating the newly sprung ballroom floor.

EDWARD [humming a waltz]

CHARLES Leave off.

EDWARD Just trying to help with atmosphere!

RICHARD I had stepped out to look over some portraits unearthed in the attic. Mavis was most anxious for my opinion as to their provenance--

HERBERT [bored] Ah? Stolen paintings? Is that it?

AUGUSTE [superior] Do not judge your eggs before they are cracked.

EDWARD Yeah, don't crack so early, Herbert.

RICHARD Screams.

EDWARD [mock scream]

RICHARD [ignoring him] Screams erupted from the ballroom. From the sound of it, there was nothing less than a wildfire or militia attack in the offing.

CHARLES Ah.

RICHARD I left my hostess in the portrait room.

EDWARD [suggestively] Aaah.

RICHARD Ahem. I made my way to the ballroom, much hampered by the press of people running the other direction--

EDWARD Towards the "portrait room"?

RICHARD --in a mad panic. By the time I reached the ballroom, it was an empty shell. Chairs were tipped, glass on the floor from shattered tumblers, and some very strange tracks.

HERBERT [after a pause] And?

RICHARD That is the mystery. You didn't want any piddling extraneous details.

HERBERT You expect us to reach some sort of conclusion from this?

RICHARD What would you do if this was one of your experiments?

HERBERT I would run a series of tests. But that hardly applies here--

AUGUSTE If I may beg to differ?

RICHARD Hmm? How?

AUGUSTE [small chuckle] In the case of ratiocination, the tests that would be run are the interview of the witnesses, and examination of the scene--

WARREN That's a bit far to go for a story.

AUGUSTE Bien. So we must settle for the interview of the singular witness, notre vieux Richard here. You, sir, are our window on the tale.

CHARLES But - but how would that work?

AUGUSTE Why not make of it a game? Each takes it in his turn to ask a question, to be answered to the best of Monsieur Richard's knowledge. Bien?

CHARLES Sounds rather entertaining, really.

AUGUSTE You can learn a great deal about any man from the way he plays even the simplest of games.

EDWARD I might have an edge for once, what with my newspaper experience.

RICHARD Obituaries? Hmm. You might at that.

HERBERT It's hardly scientific method.

WARREN I'm game, who begins?

RICHARD I think widdershins would be appropriate. That means Edward starts it off.

EDWARD Well. One question. I'm caught rather flat-footed.

CHARLES Treat him like one of the characters in your stories.

EDWARD I generally try to avoid talking to them. People find it unnerving. Very well. My question, to start this all off - do you have an answer to your own puzzle?

RICHARD [laughs] I have an answer that satisfies me.

WARREN Would it hold up in a court of law?

RICHARD No. Next question.

WARREN That wasn't my--

RICHARD You should speak more carefully, then. Next?

HERBERT Describe the tracks you found.

RICHARD Is that a question?

HERBERT [sigh] What did the tracks look like? Detail please.

RICHARD Of course. They were muddy footprints with a rather recognizable configuration to the shape of the heel.

HERBERT So definitely a person?

RICHARD While I could say "ask that one next time round", instead I'll merely point out that I know very few animals that wear man made boots.

EDWARD [laughs] I should write that one down. Charles?

CHARLES Yessss. [Hmm, thinking] Was the culprit a member of the party?

RICHARD No. Completely uninvited.

CHARLES Ah well. Monsieur?

AUGUSTE [satisfied with himself] Did the tracks merely enter the room and then come to a halt, or did they appear to have a specific terminus?

WARREN Ah! You think someone at the party was the object, rather than the instigator, of the ... intrusion?

RICHARD Shush Warren. You've had your turn. The prints meandered through the room, though they showed no sign of purpose.

AUGUSTE And a terminus? Or must that be a separate question?

RICHARD [consternation] Oh. A second question, I'm afraid.

AUGUSTE It is nothing, I will wait.

EDWARD Back to me, then... Hmm... Could I ask his question?

RICHARD I suppose you could ask him.

EDWARD [to Auguste] Could I? Oh, no! Wait - wait I have one. Where did the footsteps come from - I mean outside, obviously, but did you or anyone happen to follow them back to their source?

HERBERT That's two questions.

EDWARD No! Is it?

RICHARD I'm making a ruling - if a question is a compound, I'll answer whichever parts suits me. In this case, yes. Come morning, we followed the footsteps.

EDWARD B-but I asked where they came from?

RICHARD But you also asked if we followed them. And I answered yes.

WARREN Hold on! I'll ask where they originated from.

RICHARD Very well. We followed them back to the family burial plot behind the house.

EDWARD Really?

CHARLES [laughing] Watch out! He'll take that as your next question.

HERBERT Where did the tracks go?

EDWARD Into the cemetery! Don't waste a perfectly good question!

HERBERT No. Richard said they came from the cemetery. Where did they go upon leaving the house again?

CHARLES Ah.

RICHARD Clever. But the answer is the same. They returned to the graveyard.

CHARLES [after a beat] Oh! Me. Well, someone must have seen the intruder. What did they say he looked like? I mean it was a man, wasn't it?

RICHARD [tiny chuckle] Everyone described the intruder as male.

CHARLES But what did it-- [getting it, then rueful] Ah. I posed two questions, didn't I?

RICHARD [gleeful] Oh, yes.

CHARLES [to self] Must be more careful.

AUGUSTE [to Charles] Do not fret yourself, mon ami. [up] How are the grounds laid out in relation to the house and the road?

RICHARD That's-- [thinking] ... that's--

HERBERT But a single question.

RICHARD [laughing] You've got me. Here, I'll show you.

SOUND RUSTLE OF ITEMS IN TRAY, SOUND OF DRAWING

RICHARD This is the road, crossing the bottom, turning roughly... north I think. [pauses to draw] The house is here, with a gate, and a drive, thus.

AUGUSTE And the burial place?

RICHARD You specified the grounds. Not the structures.

WARREN I don't know that a cemetery constitutes a structure per se.

AUGUSTE No, no. It will wait.

EDWARD I would love to ask for that, but I already have a question in mind.

AUGUSTE It will wait.

EDWARD Good. All right.

SOUND PAPER FLIPS

RICHARD You're taking notes?

EDWARD I'm working out my question so I don't blunder again.

RICHARD [laughs]

HERBERT How ...methodical.

EDWARD Yes, well, I can be as tiresome as you, if I try hard enough.

RICHARD The question?

EDWARD You say the footprints went into the graveyard -that's not my question, just the premise - here it is: Which way did they go beyond the graveyard?

RICHARD Nowhere.

EDWARD Huh?

RICHARD We found no footprints beyond the graveyard.

EDWARD So this fellow wanders off into the graves and flies off into space?

WARREN Shh. It's my question now.

RICHARD Good.

WARREN Hmm. Hold on. Perhaps I should take my questions down too. It's hard to see the flaws when a question is only behind your eyes.

CHARLES Too true.

WARREN [determined sigh] Is the ground around and outside the cemetery the type of ground that would show marks of, say, a horse?

RICHARD Hmm. I'll have to equivocate and say - I saw no marks of a horse. All right?

HERBERT Is this supposed to be a mystery or a ghost story?

CHARLES That's hardly a fair question.

RICHARD It's at least a very difficult one. Hmm. I suppose the absolute truth would be neither, but I don't want to give the wrong impression. So I will say simply that no one claimed to have seen a ghost.

CHARLES [musing] But it's not really a mystery either - Don't answer! Just musing. Hmm... The plot thickens.

EDWARD Come on, Charles!

WARREN Don't pester.

CHARLES Did you ever see the ... culprit?

RICHARD I was in the portrait room.

CHARLES I didn't ask if you saw the incident - but if you ever saw the culprit.

RICHARD Ahh. Hmm. Yes, at some point, I saw the one that I believe was the "culprit".

CHARLES Well, at least he didn't vanish off the face of the earth.

RICHARD [almost laughing] More or less.

AUGUSTE [chuckling] More or less.

RICHARD You sound like a man who knows something.

AUGUSTE I know many things. I do not yet know you well enough to know what you are thinking, but I can already see - yes - when you are thinking, or rather when you are forced to think. Some questions merely amuse you, while others - others force you to consider carefully the words to use.

EDWARD Oh I get it, instead of noting the answers, you're watching the speaker.

AUGUSTE As with any game. Chess, par example, is not won by the player who watches only the board. It is not the board that one is playing against.

RICHARD [offhanded] Amusing. But let's get on with your question - unless all this is just your way of buying time to think?

AUGUSTE [chuckle] No. I have had plenty of time to think. I do not wish to ask the obvious question.

EDWARD What is it? I'll ask it!

AUGUSTE [tsks] Think of what hasn't been answered fully. [up] Mon question then, apart from the footprints, was there any other disturbance of the ground anywhere that you looked?

EDWARD What? Even if you didn't want to ask an obvious question, you didn't need to throw one away on--

CHARLES Shh. Let him answer.

RICHARD [serious] Oh. Um...No.

AUGUSTE [as if this is very important] Aah.

WARREN It's almost as if they're speaking in ciphers. What are we missing?

EDWARD I don't know. [annoyed] How obvious IS this question? Ask what hasn't been fully answered, indeed.

HERBERT [smug] I know what it is.

EDWARD What?

HERBERT Find your own question. It's all a matter of organized thinking. Having an eidetic memory helps.

RICHARD It is your turn, Edward.

EDWARD The ground wasn't disturbed? What kind of clue is that - and that's not my question!

RICHARD [almost laughing] Of course not!

EDWARD It's rhetorical. Oh, hell. I'm drawing a blank. Here - did the intruder break anything at the house?

RICHARD [thinking] Well... No one ever said the intruder broke anything, and there was no sign of it.

AUGUSTE And yet things were broken. Your initial description was very clear on that point.

RICHARD Yes, but that all happened during the general state of panic.

WARREN I don't believe it's your turn, sir!

AUGUSTE And I did not ask a question.

RICHARD [laughing] ohhh. You sly dog, you.

AUGUSTE [amused shrug] eh bien. My apologies for interrupting the proper order of things.

EDWARD Hit him with a good one, warren!

WARREN [still trying to figure it out] something that hasn't been fully answered... Oh! What about - Auguste, you asked something about where the footprints inside went - but it was two questions.

RICHARD Well--

WARREN Ssh! My question then is where did the footprints go, once inside the house. Be specific.

AUGUSTE This may be of great interest.

RICHARD You have to picture the room like this--

SOUND SCRIBBLING

RICHARD This entire wall was windows, including the one the intruder entered through. The orchestra was here, at the back. Hallways lead off here, and here. And there were a few tables.

SOUND A FEW MORE PENCIL SWOOPS

RICHARD There's no way to know who was where when the intrusion began, but the footprints started here and made a long loop this way--

HERBERT That's an arc. A loop requires closure.

RICHARD --probably to avoid tables. This area was all dancing. The intruder appears to have been drawn toward the music. There was a sort of fumble in the steps - a loss of purpose in the stride, which I assumed meant this was when the general panic broke out--

HERBERT It took people that long-- [catching himself] No, no. Go on.

RICHARD Panic broke out. From there, the footprints walked over to one of the alcoves, then, striding quickly again, back to, and out, the window.

CHARLES Alcoves?

RICHARD Yes, there are five. Next question.

CHARLES No, no - I really must draw the line here. you never described alcoves when you were describing the room. Besides, it's not even my turn.

EDWARD He's right!

WARREN I think you'll have to give him that one.

RICHARD I was only joking. Besides, Herbert has been looking smug for long enough. Out with it, foul fiend and ask the question you've been brimming over with!

HERBERT [feigned innocence] Oh, me? [chuckles] I'm sorry, Warren, but you missed Auguste's point entirely. The question that was never answered is "what did people say the intruder looked like?"

AUGUSTE Ahhh.

EDWARD Good golly! That's right!

CHARLES Well played, Herbert.

RICHARD [starts slowly, but working up to being as spooky as possible] The few people who could speak of the intrusion without descending into helpless gibbering, or simple fainting, described the intruder as unclean, uncanny, unwelcome, abnormal and detestable. It was the ghoulish shade of decay, antiquity, and dissolution! It could not have been of this world - or certainly no longer of this world - yet a part of the horror was that in its eaten-away and bone-revealing outlines, it resembled nothing so much as an abhorrent travesty on the human shape! [moment of silence]

EDWARD So a walking corpse?

RICHARD [annoyed tch] If you, the self-professed wordsmith, wish to put it so bluntly, and blandly. Yes. Apparently so.

HERBERT I protest - you said it wasn't something supernatural.

RICHARD I said no one had seen a ghost. Ghosts are entirely ethereal, and this was apparently an entirely physical manifestation.

WARREN True. Dead that climb out of graves and walk have long been a separate myth cycle from the purely spiritual. The "zombie" of the caribbean tales, which of course are drawn from the mystical beliefs of the various tribes imported from Africa--

EDWARD Enslaved and dragged here.

WARREN Yes, but the beliefs are so fascinating - that a witch doctor could cause someone to not only die, but return--

CHARLES Is that the answer then? That a corpse simply woke up out in the graveyard and decided on a lark to join the party? Or are we expected to figure out how and what caused it to motivate?

HERBERT I have a few ideas on that subject.

EDWARD Ah, but it didn't come out of a grave - that WAS the point of your question about disturbed ground, wasn't it, Monsieur?

AUGUSTE [shrug] I had a little thought.

EDWARD That means you were onto the walking dead angle almost from first principles.

CHARLES Father was right on the money, you are a genius.

AUGUSTE Merely someone who is not afraid to embrace the impossible from time to time.

HERBERT So this is the end of the tale. A body got up and wandered around, then walked away again. Where's the great mystery?

AUGUSTE Perhaps, if I may?

RICHARD Go ahead.

AUGUSTE I think the question of where it went to is one of mild amusement, as perhaps is the question of what moved it to leave?

RICHARD Perhaps.

EDWARD Yes, but is there an answer?

AUGUSTE I believe I have the answer to the first part. But I would like to ask my belated question first.

RICHARD Please do.

AUGUSTE Did you search the crypt?

CHARLES [amused] The what?

WARREN [annoyed] You never said there was a crypt!

AUGUSTE Perhaps I have not the right word. The building in the cemetery for the bodies, non?

EDWARD That's more of a mausoleum.

WARREN Crypts are generally below ground. And you never said there was a mausoleum!

RICHARD No one asked.

AUGUSTE But I have asked now. Did you search the mausoleum, and, if I may ask, did you find your visiteur hidden within?

RICHARD I should just give up now. There's nothing left to hide from you, Monsieur.

AUGUSTE But I do not know everything. I believe there is still the question of why it walked away. And I believe it is Charles' turn.

CHARLES Before I ask, is this something that can be answered?

RICHARD [a bit subdued] I believe so.

CHARLES Right, then. Do you think it was due to the fear and confusion that the creature decided to leave?

RICHARD I don't think so. Most of the crowd had fled before it apparently made its own exit. If you look at the drawing of the room, I am still quite certain that here is where it was the moment the panic broke out, and yet it continues onward for some time.

CHARLES Monsieur?

AUGUSTE I have solved my part of the puzzle. I shall leave your younger minds to uncover the motivations.

EDWARD [teasing] Cheater.

RICHARD This means we're back to you, Edward.

EDWARD From what you've drawn, it looks like the alcove is the epitome, or do I mean azimuth?

HERBERT I doubt it.

EDWARD The ultimate point, anyway. That seems to be where it turned back. Is that correct?

RICHARD Is that your question?

EDWARD Yes.

RICHARD To the best of my knowledge, yes.

WARREN What is in the alcove? Was -- [catches self] No. [firmly] What is in the alcove?

RICHARD The same as all the other alcoves. A large mirror. They're supposed to reflect the light and make the room look larger.

WARREN There are creatures of mythology who are terrified of mirrors. Vampires are said to have no reflection, possibly because the silver of the backing rejects their unclean nature and therefore refuses to reflect them. The gorgons--

HERBERT Was the mirror untouched?

RICHARD Meaning?

HERBERT Did it do anything to damage the mirror?

RICHARD The mirror was ...undamaged.

CHARLES That sounds a little bit like a hint.

RICHARD [negative facetious shrug]

CHARLES Well, let's go on and get this over with. I think even I can read you this late in the evening. Did the thing touch the mirror?

RICHARD There was a disgusting mold-smeared handprint, and I use the term very loosely, on the glass.

EDWARD So it's afraid of a mirror. That's no thrill.

AUGUSTE Have you ever suddenly realized there is a large spot of ink -oh! - leaked on your pocket, or a bird perhaps has insulted the crown of your hat?

HERBERT Hasn't everyone? Nature is notoriously... insulting.

AUGUSTE And perhaps people are smiling and laughing, or even upset and disgusted, and you don't realize the cause of it?

CHARLES [laughs] Are you saying this thing needed to [gets serious] to see itself in a mirror to realize what it was?

HERBERT I doubt there would be much higher brain function in a rotten corpse. It might not occur to it.

RICHARD You know, that is rather the conclusion I arrived on. You're a bit of a marvel, Monsieur.

AUGUSTE [modest] Experience. And ratiocination.

CHARLES How did you come to the conclusion about where the - corpus delecti - would be found?

AUGUSTE Ah! That was very simple! Reminded me of something from my youth. It is rather like the old saying "cannot see the forest because of all the trees", vous comprenez?

HERBERT I know the saying.

EDWARD It's rather obvious once you see it.

AUGUSTE Bien. But what if the forest was hidden among a plethora of forests?

HERBERT That wouldn't be physically possible.

AUGUSTE conceptualize, mon ami. So, to extrapolate, where better to find a dead body, than in a room which is filled with them?

END

NOTE: "Auguste" is intended to resemble "C. Auguste Dupin", the detective character in Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" even though the timing would make him about 130 years old, if he's visiting Charles in the 1920s.

(story very loosely inspired by "The Outsider" by HPL)