Latest / Book of the Damned / Canal, and Leonora - Everil Worrell

Transcript

Canal, and Leonora - Everil Worrell · Book of the Damned

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Section one of The Canal and Leonora by Everill Warrel.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Read by Ben Tucker. The Canal
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: and Leonora by Everill Warrel. Section one the Canal, Part one,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: past the sleeping city, the river sweeps along its left bank,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the old canal creeps. I did not intend that to
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: be poetry, although the scene is poetic, somberly, gruesomely poetic,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: like the poems of Poe. Too well, I know it
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: too often have I walked over the grass grown path,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: beside the reflections of black trees and tumble down shacks
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: and distant factory chimneys, and the sluggish waters that move
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: so slowly and cease to move at all. I shall
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: be called mad, and I shall be a suicide. I
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: shall take no pains to cover up my trail or
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: to hide the thing that I shall do. What will
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: it matter afterward what they say of me, if they
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: knew the truth, if they could vision even dimly, the
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: beings with whom I have consorted, if the faintest realization
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: might be theirs of the thing I am becoming, and
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: of the fate from which I am saving their city.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Then they would call me a great hero. But it
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: does not matter what they call me. As I have
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: said before, let me write down the things I am
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: about to write down, and let them be taken as
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: they will be taken, the last ravings of a madman.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: The city will be in mourning for the thing I
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: shall have done, but its mourning will be of no
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: consequence besides that other fate from which I shall have
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: saved it. I have always had a taste for nocturnal prowling.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: We as a race have grown too intelligent to take
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: seriously any of the old instinctive fears that preserved us
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: through preceding generations. Our soul remaining salvation, then, has come
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: to be our tendency to travel in herds. We wander
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: at night, but our objective is somewhere on the brightly
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: lighted streets, or still somewhere where men do not go alone.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: When we travel far afield, it is in company few
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: of my acquaintance. Few in the whole city here would
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: care to ramble at midnight over the grass grown path
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: I have spoken of, not because they would fear to
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: do so. But because such things are not being done well.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: It is dangerous to differ individually from one's fellows. It
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: is dangerous to wander from the beaten road. And the
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: fears that guarded the race and the dawn of time
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: and through the centuries were real. Fears found it on reality.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: A month ago, I was a stranger here. I had
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: just taken my first position. I was graduated from college
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: only three months before. In the spring. I was lonely,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: and likely to remain so for some time, for I
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: have always been of a solitary nature, making friends slowly.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I had received one invitation out to visit the camp
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: of a fellow employee in the firm for which I worked,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: a camp which was located on the farther side of
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: the wide river, the side across from the city and
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the canal, where the bank was high and steep and
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: heavily wooded, and little tents blossomed all around the water's edge.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: At night, these camps were a string of sparkling lights
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: and tiny, leaping camp fires, and the tinkle of music
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: carried faintly far across the calmly flowing river. That far
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: bank of the river was no place for an eccentric,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: solitary man to love, but the near bank, which would
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: have been an i sore to the campers had not
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: the river been so wide. The near bank attracted me
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: from my first glimpse of it. We embarked in a
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: motor boat at some distance down stream, and swept up
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: along the near bank, and then out and across the current.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: I turned my eyes backward, the murk of stagnant water
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: that was the canal, the jumble of low buildings beyond it,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: the lonely, low lying waste of the narrow strip of
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: land between canal and river, the dark, scattered trees growing there.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: I intended to see more of these things. That week
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: end bored me, but I repaid myself no later than
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Monday evening. The first evening, when I was back in
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: the city, alone and free, I ate a solitary dinner.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Immediately after leaving the office, I went to my room
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: and slept from seven until nearly midnight. I wakened naturally then,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: for my whole heart was set on exploring the alluring
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: solitude I had discovered. I dressed, slipped out of the
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: house and into the street, started the motor in my roadster,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: which I had left parked at the kerb, and drove
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: through the lighted streets. I left behind that part of town,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: which was thick with vehicles carrying people home from their
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: evening engagements, and began to thread my way through darker
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: and narrower streets. Once I had to back out of
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: a cul de sac, and once I had to detour
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: around a closed block. This part of town was not alluring,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: even to me. It was dismal without being solitary. But
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: when I had parked my car on a rough, cobbled
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: street that ran directly down into the inky waters of
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: the canal and crossed a narrow bridge, I was repaid.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: A few minutes set my feet on the old tow path,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: where mules had drawn river boats up and down only
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: a year or so ago, across the canal. Now, as
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: I walked up stream at a swinging pace, the miserable
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: shacks where miserable people lived, seemed to march with me
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: and then fell behind. They looked like places in which
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: murders might be committed, every one of them. The bridge
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: I had crossed was near the end of the city,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: going north, as the canal marked its western extremity. Ten
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: minutes of walking, and the dismal shacks were quite a
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: distance behind. The river was farther away in the strip
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: of waste land, much wider and more wooded, and tall
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: trees across the canal marched with me, as the evil
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: looking houses had done before. Far and faint, the sound
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: of a bell in the city reached my ears. It
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: was midnight. I stopped, enjoying the desolation around me. It
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: had the savor I had expected and hoped for. I
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: stood for some time looking up at the sky, watching
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: the low drift of heavy clouds, which were visible in
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: the dull, reflected glow from distant lights in the heart
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: of the city, so that they appeared to have a
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: lurid phosphorescence of their own. The ground under my feet,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: on the contrary, was utterly devoid of light. I had
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: felt my way carefully, knowing the edge of the canal,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: partly by instinct, partly by the even more perfect blackness
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: of the water in it, and even holding pretty well
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: to the path because it was perceptibly sunken below the
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: ground beside it. Now, as I stood motionless in the spot,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: my eyes upcast, my mind adrift with strange fancies. Suddenly
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: my feelings of satisfaction and well being gave way to
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: something different. Fear was an emotion unknown to me, for
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: those things which make men fear, I had always loved.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: The graveyard at night was to me a charming place
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: for stroll and meditation. But now the roots of my
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: hair seemed to move upright on my head and along
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: all the length of my spine. I was conscious of
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: a prickling, tingling sensation, such as my forefathers may have
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: felt in the jungle when the hair on their backs
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: stood up, as the hair of my head was doing now. Also,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: I was afraid to move, And I knew that there
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: were eyes upon me, and that that was why I
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: was afraid to move. I was afraid of those eyes,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: afraid to see them, to look into them. All this
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: while I stood perfectly still, my face up tilted toward
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: the sky. But after a terrible mental effort, I mastered
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: myself slowly, slowly, with an attempt to propitiate the owner
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: of the unseen eyes. By my casual manner, I lowered
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: my own I looked straight ahead at the softly swaying
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: silhouette of the tree tops across the canal as they
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: moved gently in the cool night wind. At the mass
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: of blackness that was those trees, and the opposite shore,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: at the shiny blackness, where the reflections of the clouds
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: glinted vaguely and disappeared, that was the canal. And again
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: I raised my eyes a little, for just across the canal,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: where the shadows massed most heavily, there was that at
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: which I must look more closely. And now, as I
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: grew accustomed to the greater blackness and my pure expanded,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: I dimly discerned the contours of an old boat or barge,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: half sunken in the water, an old, abandoned canal boat.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: But was I dreaming? Or was there a white clad
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: figure seated on the roof of the low cabin aft,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: a pale heart shaped face gleaming strangely at me from
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: the darkness, the glow of two eyes seeming to light
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: up the face and to detach it from the darkness.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Surely there could be no doubt as to the eyes.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: They shone as the eyes of animals shine in the dark,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: with a phosphorescent gleam and a glimmer of red. Well,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I had heard that some human eyes have that quality
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: at night. But what a place for a human being
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: to be a girl too. I was sure that daintily
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: heart shaped face was the face of a girl. Surely
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: I was seeing it clearer and clearer, either because my
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: eyes were growing more accustomed to peering into the deeper shadows,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: or because of that phosphorescence in the eyes that stared
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: back at me. I raised my voice softly, not to
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: break too much the stillness of the night. Hello, who's there?
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Are you lost or marooned? And can I help? There
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: was a little pause. I was conscious of a soft
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: lapping at my feet. A stronger night wind had sprung up,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: was ruffling the dark waters. I had been overwarm, and
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: where it struck me the perspiration turned cold on my body,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: so that I shivered uncontrollably. You can stay and talk
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: awhile if you will. I am lonely but not lost.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: I I live here. I could hardly believe my ears.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: The voice was little more than a whisper, but it
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: had carried clearly a girl's voice, sure enough, and she
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: lived there in an old, abandoned canal boat, half submerged
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: in the stagnant water. You are not alone there no,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: not alone. My father lives here with me, but he
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: is deaf, and he sleeps soundly. Did the night wind
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: blow still colder, as though it came to us from
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: some unseen frozen sea. Or was there something in her
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: tone that chilled me? Even as a strange attraction drew
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: me toward her. I wanted to draw near to her,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: to see closely the pale, heart shaped face, to lose
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: myself in the bright eyes that I had seen shining
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: in the darkness. I wanted. I wanted to hold her
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: in my arms, to find her mouth with mine, to
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: kiss it. With a start, I realized the nature of
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: my thoughts, and for an instant lost all thought and surprise.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Never in my twenty two years had I felt love
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: before my fancies had been otherwise directed. A moss groan
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: fallen gravestone was a dearer thing to me to contemplate
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: than the fairest face in all the world. Yet surely
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: what I felt now was love. I took a reckless
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: step nearer the edge of the bank. Could I come
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: over to you, I begged. It's warm, and I don't
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: mind a wedding. It's late, I know, but I would
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: give a great deal to sit beside you and talk,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: if only for a few minutes before I go back
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: to town. It's a lonely place here for a girl
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: like you to live. Your father should not mind if
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: you exchange a few words with some one occasionally. Was
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: it the unconventionality of my request that made her next
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: words sound like a long drawn shudder of protest. There
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: was a strangeness in the tones of her voice that
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: held me wondering. Every time she spoke no, no, oh, no,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: you must not swim across. Then Could I come tomorrow
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: or some day soon in the daytime? And would you
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: let me come on board then? Or would you come
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: on shore and talk to me? Perhaps not in the daytime,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: never in the daytime. Again, the intensity of her low
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: toned negation held me spell bound. It was not her
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: sense of the impropriety of the hour, then, that had
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: dictated her manner. For surely any girl with the slightest
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: sense of the fitness of things would rather have a
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: tryst by daytime than after midnight. Yet there was an
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: interference in her last words that if I came again,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: it should be again at night. Still feeling the spell
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: that had enthralled me, as one does not forget the
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: presence of a drug in the air that is stealing
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: one's senses, even when those senses begin to wander and
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: to busy themselves with other things. I yet spoke shortly.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Why do you say never in the daytime? Do you
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: mean that I make more than this once at night? Though?
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Now you won't let me cross the canal to you
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: at the expense of my own clothes, And you won't
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: put down your plank or drawbridge or whatever you come
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: on shore with and talk to me here for only
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: a moment. I'll come again if you'll let me talk
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: to you instead of calling across the water. I'll come
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: again any time you will let me, day or night.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: I don't care. I want to come to you, But
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: I only ask you to explain. If I came in
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: the daytime and met your father, wouldn't that be the
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: best thing to do. Then we would be really acquainted.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: We could be friends. In the night time. My father sleeps.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: In the daytime I sleep. How could I talk to
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: you or introduce you to my father? Then if you
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: came on board this boat in the daytime, you would
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: find my father and you would be sorry. As for me,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: I would be sleeping. I could never introduce you to
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: my father. Do you see you sleep soundly? You and
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: your father? Again, there was pique in my voice. Yes,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: we sleep soundly, and always at different times, always at
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: different times. We are on guard. One of us is
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: always on guard. We have been hardly used down there
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: in your city, and we have taken refuge here, and
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: we are always always on guard. The resentment vanished from
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: my breast, and I felt my heart go out to
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: her anew. She was so pale, so pitiful in the night.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: My eyes were learning better and better how to pierce
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: the darkness. They were giving me a more definite picture
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: of my companion. If I could think of her as
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: a companion between myself and whom stretched the black water,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: the sadness of the lonely scene, the perfection of the
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: solitude itself, these things contributed to her pitifulness. Then there
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: was that strangeness of atmosphere, of which even and yet
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: I had only partly taken note. There was the strange
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: shivering chill, which yet did not seem like the healthful
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: chill of a cool evening. In fact, it did not
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: prevent me from feeling the oppression of the night, which
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: was unusually sultry. It was like a little breath of
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: deadly cold that came and went, and yet did not
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: alter the temperature of the air itself, as the small
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: ripples on the surface of water did not concern the
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: water even a foot down. And even that was not all.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: There was an unwholesome smell about the night, a dank,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: moldy smell. It might have been the very breath of
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: death and decay. Even I, the connoisseur in all things
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: dismal and unwholesome, tried to keep my mind from dwelling
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: over much upon that smell. What it must be to
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: live breathing a constantly inn, I could not think. But
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: no doubt the girl and her father were used to it,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: and no doubt it came from the stagnant water of
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: the canal, and from the rotting wood of the old,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: half sunken boat that was their refuge. My heart throbbed
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: with pity again, their refuge. What a place. And my
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: clearer vision of the girl showed me that she was
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: pitifully thin, even though possessed of the strange face that
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: drew me to her. Her clothes hung around her like
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: old rags. But hers was no scarecrow aspect. Although little
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: flesh closed her bones, her bones were beautiful. I was
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: sure the little pale, heart shaped face would be more
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: beautiful still if I could only see it closely. I
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: must see it closely. I must establish some claim to
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: consideration as a friend of the strange, lonely crew of
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: the half sunken wreck. This is a poor place to
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: call a refuge, I said. Finally, one might have very
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: little money and yet do somewhat better. Perhaps I might
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: help you. I am sure I could. If your ill
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: treatment in the city was because of poverty. I am
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: not rich, but I could help that. I could help
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: you a little with money, if you would let me,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Or in any case, I could find a position for you.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: I'm sure I could do that. The eyes that shone
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: fitfully toward me, like two small pools of water intermittently
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: lit by a cloud swept sky, seemed to glow more brightly.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: She had been half crouching, half sitting on top of
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: the cabin. Now she leaped to her feet with one quick, sinuous,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: abrupt motion, and took a few rapid, restless steps to
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: and fro before she answered, When she spoke. Her voice
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: was little more than a whisper, yet surely rage was
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: in its shrill sibilance. Fool, do you think you would
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: be helping me to tie me to a desk, to
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: shut me behind doors, away from freedom, away from the
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: delight of doing my own will, of seeking my own way. Never,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: never would I let you do that. Rather, this old boat,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: rather a deserted grave under the stars for my home,
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: A boundless swept over me, and a positive feeling of
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: kinship with this strange being whose face I had hardly seen,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: possessed me. So I myself might have spoken, so I
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: had often felt, though I had never dreamed of putting
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: my thoughts so definitely, so forcefully. My regularized daytime life
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: was a thing, I thought little love. I really lived
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: only in my nocturnal prowlings. Why this girl was right.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: All of life should be free and spent in places
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: that interested and attracted. How little, how little I knew
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: that night that dread forces were tugging at my soul,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: were finding entrance to it, an easy access through the
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: morbid weakness of my nature. How little I knew at
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: what a cost I deviated so radically from my kind
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: who heard in cities and love well lit ways, and
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: the sight of man, and sweet and wholesome places to
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: be solitary in when the desire for solitude comes over them.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: That night it seemed to me that there was but
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: one important thing in life to allay the angry passion
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: my unfortunate words had aroused in the breast of my beloved,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: and to win from her some answering feeling. I understand
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: much better than you think, I whispered tremulously. What I
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: want is to see you again, to come to know you,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: and to serve you in any way that I may.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Surely there must be something in which I can be
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: of use to you. All you have to do, from
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: to night on forever is to command me. I swear it.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: You swear that you do, swear it. Delighted at the
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: eagerness of her words, I lifted my hand toward the
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: dark heavens. I swear it. From this night on forever,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: I swear it. Then listen to night. You may not
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: come to me, nor I to you. I do not
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: want you to board this boat, not to night, not
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: any night, and most of all, not any day. But
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: do not look so sad. I will come to you. No,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: not to night, perhaps not for many nights. Yet before
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: very long I will come to you there on the
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: bank of the canal, when the water in the canal
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: ceases to flow. I must have made a gesture of
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: impatience or of despair. It sounded like a way of
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: saying never. For why should the water in the canal
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: cease to flow? She read my thoughts in some way,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: for she answered them, you do not understand I am
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: speaking seriously. I am promising to meet you there on
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: the bank, and soon. For the water within these banks
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: is moving slower, always slower. Higher up. I have heard
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: that the canal has been drained. Between these lower locks.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: The water still seeps in and drops slowly, slowly down stream.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: But there will come a night when it will be
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: quite quite stagnant. And on that night I will come
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: to you. And when I come, I will ask you
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: a favor, and you will keep your oath. End of
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Section one The Canal, Part one. Section two of The
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Canal and Leonora by Everill Barrel. The Slebrivox recording is
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: in the public domain. Read by Ben Tucker. Section two
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: The Canal, Part two. It was all the assurance I
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: could get. That night, she had come back to the
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: side of the cabin where she had sat crouched before,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: and she resumed again that posture and sat still and silent,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: watching me. Sometimes I could see her eyes upon me,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: and sometimes not, but I felt that their gaze was unwavering.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: The little breeze, which I had finally forgotten while I
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: was talking with her, was blowing again, and the unwholesome
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: smell of decay grew heavier. Before the dawn, she would
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: not speak again, nor answer me when I spoke to her,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: and I grew nervous and strangely ill at ease. At last,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: I went away, and then the first faint light of dawn,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: I slipped up the stairs of my rooming house and
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: into my own room. I was deadly tired at the
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: office next day, and day after day slipt away, and
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: I grew more and more weary. For a man cannot
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: wake day and night without suffering, especially in hot weather,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: and that was what I was doing. I haunted the
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: old tow path and waited night after night on the
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: bank opposite the sunken boat. Sometimes I saw my Lady
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: of the darkness, and sometimes not. When I saw her.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: She spoke little, but sometimes she sat there on the
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: top of the cabin and let me watch her till
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: the dawn, or until this strange uneasiness that was like
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: fright drove me from her and back to my room,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: where I tossed restlessly in the heat and dreamed strange dreams,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: half waking, till the sun shone in on my forehead,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: and I tumbled into my clothes and down to the
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: office again. Once I asked her why she had made
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: the fanciful condition that she would not come ashore to
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: meet me until the waters of the canal had ceased
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: to run. How eagerly I studied those waters, how I
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: stole away at noontime more than once, not to approach
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: the old boat, but to watch the almost imperceptible downward
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: drift of bubbles, bits of straw, twigs and rubbish. My
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: questioning displeased her, and I asked her that no more.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: It was enough that she chose to be whimsical. My
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: part was to wait. It was more than a week
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: later that I questioned her again, this time on a
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: different subject, and after that I curbed my curiosity relentlessly.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Never speak to me of things you do not understand
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: about me, never again, or I will not show myself
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: to you again. And when I walk on the path yonder,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: it will not be with you. I had asked her
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: what form of persecution she and her father had suffered
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: in the city that had driven them out to this
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: lonely place, and where in the city they had lived.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: Frightened seriously, lest I lose the ground, I was sure
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: I had gained with her. I was about to speak
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: of something else, but before I could find the words,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: her low voice came to me again. It was horrible, horrible,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: those little houses below the bridge, those houses along the canal.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Tell me, are they not worse than my boat? Life
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: there was shut in and furtive. I was not free
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: as I am now, And the freedom I will soon
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: have will make me forget the things I have not
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: yet forgotten. The screaming, the reviling, and cursing, fear and flight.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: As you passed back by those houses, think how you
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: would like to be shut in one of them and
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: in fear of your life, And then think of them
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: no more, for I would forget them, and I will
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: never speak of them again. I dared not answer her.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: I was surprised that she had vouchsafed me so much.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: But surely her words meant this, that before she had
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: come to live on the decaying, water rotted old boat,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: she had lived in one of those horrible houses I
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: passed by on my way to her, those houses, each
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: of which looked like the predestined scene of a murder.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: As I left her that night, I felt that I
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: was very daring. One or two nights more, and you
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: will walk beside me, I called to her. I have
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: watched the water at noon, and it hardly moves at all.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: I threw a scrap of paper into the canal, and
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: it whirled and swung a little, where a thin skim
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: of oil lay on the water down there, oil from
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: the big, dirty city you are well out of. But
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: though I watched and watched, I could not see it
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: move downwards at all. Perhaps tomorrow night, or the night after,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: you will walk on the bank with me. I hope
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: it will be clear in moonlight, and I will be
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: near enough to see you clearly, as well as you
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: seem always to see me in darkness or moonlight equally well.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: And perhaps I will kiss you, but not unless you
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: let me. And yet the next day, for the first time.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: My thoughts were definitely troubled. I had been living in
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: a dream. I began to speculate concerning the end of
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: the path on which my feet were set. I had
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: conceived from the first such a horror of those old
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: houses by the canal. They were well enough to walk past,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: nursing gruesome thoughts for a midnight treat. But much as
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: I loved all that was weird and eerie about the
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: girl I was wooing, so strangely, it was a little
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: too much for my fancy that she had come from them.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: By this time I had become decidedly unpopular in my
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: place of business, not that I had made enemies, but
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: that my peculi wiliar ways had caused too much adverse comment.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: It would have taken very little, I think, to have
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: made the entire office force decide that I was mad.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: After the events of the next twenty four hours, and
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: after this letter is found and read, they will be
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: sure that they knew it all along. At this time, however,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: they were punctiliously polite to me and merely let me
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: alone as much as possible, which suited me perfectly. I
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: dragged wearily through day after day exhausted for lack of sleep,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: conscious of their speculative glances, living only for the night
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: to come. But on this day I approached the man
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: who had invited me to the camp across the river,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: who had unknowingly showed me the way that led to
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: my love. Have you ever noticed the row of tumbled
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: down houses along the canal on the city side, I
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: asked him. He gave me an odd look. I suppose
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: he sensed the significance of my breaking silence after so
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: long to see speak of them, since that, in some
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: way I had a deep interest in them. You have
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: odd tastes Morton, he said, after a moment. I suppose
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: you wander into strange places sometimes. I've heard you speak
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: of an enthusiasm for graveyards at night. But my advice
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: to you is to keep away from those houses. There
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: unsavory and their reputation is unsavory. Positively, I think you'd
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: be in danger of your life if you go poking
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: around there. They have been the scene of several murders,
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: and to dope den or two has been cleaned out
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: of them. Why in the world you should want to
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: investigate them. I don't expect to investigate them, I said testily.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: I was merely interested in them from the outside. To
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: tell you the truth, I had heard a story, a rumor,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: never mind where, but you say there have been murders there.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: I suppose this rumor I heard may have had to
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: do with an attempted one. There was a girl who
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: lived there with her father once, and they were set
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: upon there or something of the sort, and had to
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: run away. Did you ever hear that story? Barrett gave
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: me an odd look, such as one gives in speaking
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: of a past horror so dreadful that the mere speaking
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: of it makes it live terribly again. What you say
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: reminds me of a horrible thing that was said to
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: have happened down there once. He said. It was in
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: all the papers. A little child disappeared in one of
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: those houses, and a couple of poor lodgers who lived there,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: a girl and her father, were accused of having made
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: away with it. They were accused, they were accused. Oh well,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: I don't like to talk about such things. It was
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: too dreadful. The child's body was found, part of it
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: was found, it was mutilated, and the people in the
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: house seemed to believe it had been mutilated. In order
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: to conceal the manner of its death. There was an
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: ugly wound in the throat. It finally came out, and
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: it seemed as if the child might have been bled
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: to death. It was found in the girl's room, hidden away.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: The old man and his daughter escaped before the police
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: were called. The countryside was scoured for them. The whole
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: country was scoured, but they were never found. Why you
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: must have read it in the paper several years ago.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: I nodded with a heavy heart. I had read it
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: in the papers, I remembered now and again a terrible
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: questioning came over me. Who was this girl? What was
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: this girl who seemed to have my heart in her keeping?
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Why did not a merciful God let me die? Then,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: befogged with exhaustion, bemused in a dire enchantment, my mind
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: was incapable of thought. And yet some sole process, akin
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: to that which saves the sleep walker, poised at perilous heights,
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: sounded its warning. Now my mind was filled with doleful images.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: There were women I had heard and read who slew
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: to satisfy a blood lust. There were go specters. Call
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: them what you will. Their names have been legion in
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: the dark pages of that lore, which dates back to
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: the infancy of the races of the earth, who retained
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: even in death, this blood lust. Vampires they had been called,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: that I had read of them corpses by day, spirits
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: of evil by night, roaming abroad, and their own forms,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: or in the forms of bats or unclean beasts, killing
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: body and soul of their victims. For whoever dies of
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: the repeated kiss of the vampire, which leaves its mark
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: on the throat and draws the blood from the body,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: becomes a vampire. Also of such beings I had read,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: and horror of horrors, And that last cursed day at
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: the office I remembered reading of these vampires, these undead,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: that in their nocturnal flights they had one limitation. They
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: could not cross running water. End of Section two The Canal,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: Part two, Section three of The Canal and Leonora by
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: Everell Roil. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Read by Ben Tucker, The Canal, Part three. That night
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: I went my usual nightly way with tears of weakness
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: on my face, for my weakness was supreme, and I
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: recognized fully at last the misery of being the victim
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: of an enchantment stronger than my feeble will. But I went.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: I approached the neighborhood of the canal boat as the
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: distant city clock chimed the first stroke of twelve. It
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: was the dark of the moon, and the sky was
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: overcast heat. Lightning flickered low in the sky, seeming to
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: come from every point of the compass, and circumscribe the horizon,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: as if unseen fires burned behind the rim of the
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: world by its fitful glimmer, I saw a new thing
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: between the old boat and the canal bank, stretched a long, slim,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: solid looking shadow. A plank had been let down. And
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: that moment I realized that I had been playing with
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: powers of evil which had no intent now to let
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: me go, which indeed were about to lay hold upon
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: me with an inexorable grasp. Why had I come to night?
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: Why but that the spell of the enchantment laid upon
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: me was a thing more potent and far more unbreakable
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: than any wholesome spell of love. The creature I sought out, Oh,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: I remembered now, with the cold perspiration beating my brow,
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: the lower hidden away between the covers of the dark
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: old book, which I had read so many years ago,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: and half forgotten until dim memories of it stirred within
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: me this last day and night. My lady of the night,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: no woman of wholesome flesh and blood and odd perverted
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: tastes that matched my own, but one of the undead.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: In that moment I knew it, and knew that the
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: vampires of old legends polluted still in these latter days
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: the fair surface of the earth. And on the instant
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: behind me in the darkness, there was the crackle of
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: a twig, and something brushed against my arm. This, then,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: was the fulfillment of my dream. I knew, without turning
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: my head that the pale, dainty face thats glowing eyes
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: was near my own, that I had only to stretch
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: out my arm to touch the slender grace of the
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: girl I had so longed to draw near. I knew
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: and should have felt the rapture I had anticipated. Instead,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: the roots of my hair prickled coldly, unendurably, as they
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: had on the night when I had first sighted the
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: old boat. The miasmak odors of the night, heavy and
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: oppressive with heat, and unrelieved by a breath of air,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: all but overcame me, and I fought with myself to
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: prevent my teeth clicking in my head. The little waves
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: of coldness I had felt often in the spot were
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: chasing over my body, yet they were not from any breeze.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: The leaves on the trees hung down, motionless, as though
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: they were actually wilting on their branches. With an effort,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: I turned my head. Two hands caught me around my neck.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: The pale face was so near that I felt the
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: warm breath from its nostrils fanning my cheek. And suddenly
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: all that was wholesome in my perverted nature rose uppermost.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: I longed for the touch of the red mouth, like
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: a dark flower opening before me in the night. I
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: longed for it, and yet more I dreaded it. I
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: shrank back, catching in a powerful grip the fragile wrists
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: of the hands that strove to hold me. I must not,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: I must not yield to the faintness that I felt
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: stealing languorously over me. I was facing down the path
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: towards the city. A low rumble of thunder, the first
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: broke the torrid hush of the summer night. A glare
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: of lightning seemed to tear the night asunder to light
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: up the whole universe. Overhead, the clouds were careening madly
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: in fantastic shapes, driven by a wind that swept the
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: upper heavens without as yet causing even a trembling in
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: the air. Lower down and far down the canal, that
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: baleful glare seemed to play around and hover over the
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: little row of shanties, murder cursed, and haunted by the
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: ghost of a dead child. My gaze was fixed on them,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: while I held away from me the pallid face and
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: fought off the brace that sought to overcome my resisting will.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: And so a long moment passed, the glare faded out
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: of the sky, and a greater darkness took the world.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: But there was a near more menacing glare fastened upon
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: my face, the glare of two eyes that watched mine,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: that had watched me as I, unthinking stared down at
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: the dark houses. This girl, this woman who had come
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: to me at my own importunate requests, did not love
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: me since I had shrunk from her. She did not
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: love me. But it was not only that she had
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: watched me as I gazed down at the houses that
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: held her dark past and I was sure that she
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: divined my thoughts. She knew my horror of those houses,
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: she knew my newborn horror of her, and she hated
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: me for it, hated me more malignantly than I had
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: believed a human being could hate. And at that point
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: in my thoughts, I felt my skin prickle and my
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: scalp rise Again, could a human being cherish such hate?
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: As I read trembling more and more in those glowing fires,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: lit with what seemed to me more like the fires
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: of hell than any light that ought to shine in
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: a woman's eyes. And through all this not a word
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: had passed between us. So far I have written calmly.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: I wish that I could write on so to the end.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: If I could do that, there might be one or
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: two of those who will regard this as the document
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: of a maniac, who would believe the horrors of which
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: I am about to write. But I am only flesh
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: and blood. At this point in the happenings of the
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: awful night, my calmness deserted me. At this point I
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: felt that I had been drawn into the midst of
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: a horrible nightmare from which there was no escape, no way.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: King as I write, This feeling again overwhelms me until
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: I can hardly ride at all, Until, were it not
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: for the thing which I must do, I would rush
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: out into the street and run, screaming until I was
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: caught and dragged away to be put behind strong bars.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Perhaps I would feel safe there. Perhaps I know that,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: terrified at the hate I saw confronting me in those
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: redly gleaming eyes, I would have slunk away. The two
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: thin hands that caught my arm again were strong enough
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: to prevent that. However, I had been spared her kiss.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: I was not to escape from the oath I had
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: taken to serve her. You promised, you swore, she hissed
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: in my ear, and to night, you are to keep
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: your oath. I felt my senses real my oath. Yes,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: I had an oath to keep. I'd lifted my hand
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: toward the dark heavens and swore to serve her in
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: any way she chose freely, and of my own volition
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: I had sworn. I sought to evade her. Let me
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: help you back to your boat, I begged. You have
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: no kindly feeling for me, and you've seen it. I
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: love you no longer. I will go back to the city.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: You can go back to your father and forget that
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: I broke your peace. The laughter that greeted my speech,
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: I shall never forget, not in the depths under the
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: scummy surface of the canal, not in the empty places
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: between the worlds, where my tortured soul may wander. So
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: you do not love me, and I hate you, fool
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: have I waited these weary months for the water to stop,
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: only to go back now After my father and I
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: returned here and found the old boat rotting in the
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: drained canal, and took refuge in it when the water
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: was turned into the canal while I slept, so that
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: I could never escape until its flow should cease because
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: of the thing that I am. Even then, I dreamed
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: of tonight, when the imprisonment we still shared ceased to
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: matter to my father, Come on board the deserted boat
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: tomorrow and see why if you dare still I dreamed
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: on of to night. I've been lonely, desolate, starving. Now
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: the whole world shall be mine, and by your help.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: I asked her somehow what she wanted of me, and
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: a madness overcame me, so that I hardly heard her reply.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Yet somehow I knew that there was that on the
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: opposite shore of the great river, where the pleasure camps were,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: that she wanted to find, And the madness of my
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: terror she made me understand and obey her. I must
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: carry her in my arms across the long bridge over
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: the river, deserted in the small hours of the night.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: The way back to the city was long to night long.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: She walked behind me, and I turned my eyes neither
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: to right nor left. Only as I passed the tumble
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: down houses, I saw the reflection in the canal and
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: trembled so that I could have fallen to the ground
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: at the thoughts of the little child this woman had
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: been accused of slaying there, and at the certainty I
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: felt that she was reading my thoughts. And now the
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: horror that engulfed me darkened my brain. I know that
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: we set our feet upon the long, wide bridge that
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: spanned the river. I know that the storm broke there,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: so that I battled for my footing almost for my life,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: it seemed, against the pelting deluge. And the horror I
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: had invoked was in my arms, clinging to me, burying
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: its head upon my shoulder. So increasingly dreadful had my
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: pale faced companion become to me that I hardly thought
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: of her now as a woman at all, only as
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: a demon of the night. The tempest raged still as
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: she leaped down out of my arms on the other shore.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: And again I walked with her against my will, while
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: the trees lashed their branches madly around me, showing the
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: pale under sides of their leaves and the vivid, frequent
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: flashes that rent the heavens. On and on we went,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: branches flying through the air and missing us by a
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: miracle of ill fortune. Such is she and I are
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: not slain by falling branches. The river was a welter
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: of white caps, flattened down into strange shapes by the
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: pounding rain. The clouds, as we glimpsed them, were like
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: devils flying through the sky, past dark tent after dark tin.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: We stole and passed a few where lights burned dimly
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: behind their canvas walls. And at last we came to
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: an old quarry and to its artificial ravine. She led
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: me and up to a crevice in the rock wall.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: Reach in your hand and pull out the loose stone.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: You will fell, she whispered, it closes an opening, it
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: leads into deep caverns. A human hand must remove that stone,
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Your hand must move it. Why did I struggle so
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: to disobey her? Why did I fail? It was as
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: though I knew, But my failure was fore ordained. I
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: had taken an oath. End of the Canal, Part three,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: Section four of The Canal and Leonora by Everell Warrel,
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: the LibriVox recordings in the public domain read by Ben Tucker,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: The Canal, Part four. If you who read have believed
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: that I have set down the truth thus far, the
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: little that has left you will call the ravings of
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: a madman overtaken by his madness. Yet these things happened.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: I stretched out my arm, driven by a compulsion I
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: could not resist. At arm's length in the niche in
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: the rock, I felt something move the loose rock, a long,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: narrow fragment, much larger than I had expected. Yet it
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: moved easily, seeming to swing on a natural pivot outward.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: It swung toppling toward me. A moment more, and there
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: was a swift rush of the ponderous weight I had loosened.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: I leaped aside and went down my forehead grazed by
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: the rock. For a brief moment, I must have been unconscious,
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: but only for a moment. My head was a stabbing
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: agony of pain on real lights flashing before my eyes.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: I yet knew the reality of the storm that beat
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: me down. As I struggled to my feet. I knew
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: the reality of the dark loathsome shapes that passed me
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: in the dark, crawling out of the orifice in the
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: rock and flapping through the wild night along the way
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: that led to the pleasure camps. So the caverns I
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: had laid open to the outer world were infested with bats.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: I had been inside unlit caverns and had heard there
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: the squeaking of the things, felt and heard the flapping
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: of their wings. But never in all my life before
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: had I seen bats as large as men and women.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: Sick and dizzy from the blow on my head and
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: from disgust, I crept along the way they were going.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: If I touched one of them, I felt that I
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: should dive of horror. Now, at last, the storm abated,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: and a heavy darkness made the whole world seem like
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: the inside of a tomb, where the tents stood in
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: a long row. The number of the monster bats seemed
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: to diminish. It was as though horrible thought they were
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: creeping into the tin with their slumbering occupants. At last
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: I came to a lighted tint and paused, crouching so
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: that the dim radiance that shone through the canvas did
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: not touch me in the shadows. And there I waited,
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: but not for long. There was a dark form silhouetted
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: against the tint. A movement of the flap of the tent,
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: a rustle and confusion, and the dark thing was again
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: in silhouette, but with a difference in the quality of
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: the shadow. The dark thing was inside the tint, now,
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: its back wings extending across the entrance through which it
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: had crept. Fear held me spellbound, and as I looked,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: the shadow changed again, imperceptibly, so that I could not
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: have told how it changed. But now it was not
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: the shadow of a bat, but of a woman. The storm,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: the storm, I'm law exhausted. I crept in here to
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: beg for refuge until the dawn. That low, thrilling, sibilant voice,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: too well, I knew it. Within the tint. I heard
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: a murmur of acquiescent voices at last, I began to understand.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: I knew the nature of the woman I had carried
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: over the river in my arms, the woman who would
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: not even cross the canal until the water should have
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: ceased utterly to flow. I remembered books I had read, Dracula,
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: other books and stories. I knew they were true books
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: and stories. Now I knew those horrors existed for me.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: I had indeed kept my oath to the creature of darkness.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: I had brought her to her kind under her guidance.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: I had let them loosen hordes upon the pleasure camps.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: The campers were doomed, and through them others. I forgot
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: my fear. I rushed from my hiding place up to
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: the tent door, and there I screamed and called aloud,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: Go take her in. Don't let her stay, nor the others.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: They have crept into the other tents. Wake all the campers.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: They will sleep on to their destruction. Drive out the interlopers,
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: Drive them out quickly. They are not human, No, and
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: they are not bats. Do you hear me? Do you understand?
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: I was fairly howling in a voice that was strange
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: to me. She is a vampire. They are all vampires, vampires.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: Inside the tent, I heard a new voice. What can
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: be the matter with that poor man? The voice said
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: it was a woman's and gentle crazy, somebody out of
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: his soutz's deer. A man's voice answered, don't be frightened.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: And then the voice I knew so well, so well,
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: I saw a rock strike a man on the head
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: in the starm. He staggered away, but I suppose it
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: crazed him. I waited for no more. I ran away
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: madly through the night and back across the bridge to
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: the city. Next day to day I boarded the sunken
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: canal boat. It is the abode of death. No woman
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: could have lived there. Only such an one as she.
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: The old man's corpse was there, must have died long
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: long ago. The smell of death and of decay on
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: the boat was dreadful. Again. I felt that I understood
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: back in those awful houses, she had committed the crime
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: when first she became the thing she is, and he
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: her father, less sins steeped and less accursed, attempted to
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: destroy the evidence of her crime, and fled with her,
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: but died without becoming like her. She had said that
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: one of those two was always on watch. Did he
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: indeed divide her vigil on the boat? What more fitting
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: the dead standing watch would be undead? And no wonder
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: that she would not let me board the craft of death,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: even to carry her away. And still I feel the
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: old compulsion. I have been spared her kiss, but for
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: a little while. Yet I will not let the power
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: of my oath to her draw me back till I
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: enter the caverns with her and creep forth in the
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: form of a bat, to prey upon mankind. Before that
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: can happen, I too will die. To day in the city,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: I heard that a horde of strange insects of small
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: animals infested the pleasure camped last night. Some said, with
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: horror bated breath, that they perhaps were rats. None of
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: them were seen, but in the morning nearly every camper
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: had a strange, deep wound in his throat. I almost
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: laughed aloud. They were so horrified at the idea of
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: an army of rats creeping into the tints and biting
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: the sleeping occupants on their throats. If they had seen
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: what I saw, if they knew that they are doomed
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: to spread corruption, So my own death will not be enough.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: To day I bought applies for blasting. To day I
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: will set my train of dynamite from the hole I
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: made in a cliff where the vampires creep in and out,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: along the row of tints as far as the last one.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: Then I shall light my fuse. It will be done
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: before the dawn tomorrow. The city will mourn its dead
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: and execrate my name. And then at last, in the
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: slime beneath the unmoving waters of the canal, I shall
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: find peace. But perhaps it will not be peace, for
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: I shall seek it midway between the old boat with
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: its cargo of death, and the row of dismal houses,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: where a little child was done to death when first
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: she became the thing she is. That is my expiation.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: End of the Canal, Part four, Section five of the
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: Canal and Leonora by ever All whirl this LibriVox Recordings
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: in the public Domain, read by Ben Tucker Leonora. I
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: am writing this because I shall not long be able
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: to write it. Why does one long for the understanding
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: and sympathy of his fellow beings? Long to have that,
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: even after the worse has befallen, and he has gone
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: from this life to that which awaits him. How many
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: bottles laden with last messages float on lonely unknown ocean surges,
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: or sink to the bottom of the sea. It will
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: be so with this my last message. That is, it
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: will go uncredited, unbelieved, uncomprehended, although will doubtless be read.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: But I've told my story many times and heard them
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: say that I am mad. I know they will say
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: that after I am gone, gone from behind these bats
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: into the horrors of the fate, that will overtake my spirit,
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: somewhere out in the open spaces and the blackness of
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: night into which it will go, he will be there,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: one of the shadows that lurk in old cemeteries and
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: sweep across lonely roads, where the winds moan and wander,
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: homeless and hopeless, across the waste spaces of the earth,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: from dusk till dawn bawn. But I will tell my
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: story for the last time. Even now. My years are
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: those of a young girl. I am only seventeen, and
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: they say I have been mad more than a year.
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: When I was sixteen, my eyes were bright and my
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: cheeks red with a color that did not come off
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: when I washed my face. I lived in the country,
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: and I was an old fashioned girl in many ways.
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: I roamed freely over the countryside, and my wanderings were
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: shared by my only close friend, or else were lonely.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: The name of my friend was Margaret, Mine was Leonora.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: The two of us lived only a quarter of a
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: mile apart, and between us ran a lonely little road
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: crossed by another like it. Our parents believed that it
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: was safe for us, or for any child, to traverse
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: this road between our houses alone at any hour. We
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: had done it from our youngest days. It should have
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: been safe, for we were far from cities and malefactors
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: or any sort or utterly unknown in our secluded part
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: of the country. There were disadvantages attendant on living in
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: such isolation, but there were advantages too. Margaret's family were
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: simple farmer folk of sterling Worth. My father was a
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: student of some means, who could afford to let the
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: world go by. On dark or stormy nights, sundown generally
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: found me safe indoors for the night, spending the evening
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: by the open fire. Moonlight nights I loved, and on
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: nights when the moon was bright, I often stayed at
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: Margaret's house, taking advantage of my freedom to wander home
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: alone as late as midnight. Sometimes Margaret did this too,
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: staying late with me and going home without thought of fear.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: But I was the venturesome one, the one who loved
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: to be abroad in the moonlight, to horrors such as
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: came to me, marched toward one from the hour of birth,
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: so that every trait, every characteristic is inclined to meet them.
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: Up to my sixteenth birthday, my life had been like
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: a placid stream. It had been without excitement and almost
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: without incident. Perhaps its very calm had made me ready
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: for adventure. On my sixteenth birthday, Margaret dined at my
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: house and I supped with her. It was our idea
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: of a celebration. It was October and the night of
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: the full moon. I did not start home until nearly midnight.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: I would not reach home until a little after that,
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: But that would not matter, because my father would be
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: asleep in bed, and in any case, not worried about
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: me or interested. In the hour of my arrival, the
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: bright colors of autumn leaves, strangely softened and dimmed in
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: the moonlight, rose all around me. Single leaves drifted through
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: the still air, and fell at my feet. The moon
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: had reached mid heaven and the sky was like purple velvet.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: I was happy. It was too beautiful a night to
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: go home. It was a night to enjoy to the fullest,
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: to wander through, going over strange roads, going farther than
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: I had ever gone. I threw out my arms in
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: the moonlight, posing like a picture of a dancing girl,
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: which my father had. I had never seen a dancer,
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: and flitted down the road. As I reached the cross road,
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: the sound of our clock chiming midnight drifted to my ears,
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: and I stopped. A beauti full, high powered car stood
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: just at the entrance to our road, its headlights off,
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: its parking lights hardly noticeable in the brilliant moonlight. I
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: knew it was a fine car because my father had one,
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: and on rare occasions the fit took him to drive it.
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: When he drove it, I went with him, and I
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: noticed cars for I loved them. I loved their strength
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: and speed, in their fine lines. I loved to rush
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: through the air in my father's car, and was never
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: happier than when I could coax him to drive the
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: twenty miles to the state road. And go fast on
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: the perfect paving. But aside from my father's car, I
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: had never seen a good one on these little back
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: country roads. I stopped, although I knew I ought to
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: go on, And as I stopped just short of the
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: cross road, the big car glided softly forward a few
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: feet until it stopped, blocking the road to my father's house.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: My father's motor was a silence one, but this car
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: actually moved without the slightest sound. Until now, I had
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: not seen the driver. Now I looked at him. His
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: face was shadowy in the moonlight, perhaps it did not
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: catch the direct light. There was a suggestion of strong,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: very sharply cut features of a smile and a deep
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: set gaze. My pen shakes until I can hardly write
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: the words. But I heard the doctor say to day
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: that I had nearly reached the end of my strength,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: and any night, with its horrors, may be the end.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: I must control myself and think of the things I
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: am riding down as they seemed to me. At the time,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: I was just turned sixteen, and this was romance, and
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: so I stopped and talked to him. Although exchanged few
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: words that night, he did not ask me to ride
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: with him, and so I was less afraid for what
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: the romance was fear, but I answered his questions. What
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: is your name, he asked, and I answered Leonora. It
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: is music in my ears, he said softly, and again
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: I felt that this was romance. I felt it again
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: when he added I have been looking for you for
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: a long time. Of course I did not dream. I
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: did not think that he meant that. I had read
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: novels and love stories. I knew how to take a compliment.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: Do you often pass this way as late as this?
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: Something made me hesitate. But something about him, something about
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: our meeting alone in the moonlight, fascinated me. If I
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: said no, perhaps I would never see him again. Very
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: often when the moon is full, I said, and moved
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: to go round the car. In a moment, the gloved
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: hand that rested on the wheel had touched the broad
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: brim of his hat. Another movement and the car shot
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: silently ahead and was gone. I ran home with a
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: beating heart. My last words had almost made a rendezvous
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: of the night of the next full moon. If I desired,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: there might be another encounter. Yet it was two months
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: later when we met again. The very next full moon
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: had been clear cloudless, frostily cold, a lovely November night.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: But that night I was afraid. I was so afraid
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: that I even avoided the full light of the moon
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: when I crossed our yard, and the early evening to
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: bring in a book I had left lying outside. At
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: the thought of traversing the road that led to Margaret's house,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: every instinct within me rebelled. At midnight, I was lying
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: in my bed, with the covers drawn close around me,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: and my wide open eyes turned resolutely away from the
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: patch of moonlight that lay deathly white beneath my open window.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: I was like a person in a nervous fit ay
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: who had never known the meaning of nerves. But the
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: second month it was different. After all, it was a
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: fine thing to have mystery and romance for the taking mine,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: or were they mine for the taking? Perhaps the man
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: in the long low car had never come again, would
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: never come again, but his voice had promised something different.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: Would he be there to night? Had he been there
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: a month ago? Curiosity began to drive me before it.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: After all, he had made no move to harm me,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: and there had been something about him, something that drew
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: and drew me. Surely, my childish fears were the height
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: of folly, the product of my loneliness. I went to
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: Margaret's and stayed late, almost as on that other night,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: until the clock struck twelve. At last, with a self
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: consciousness that was noticeable only to me, I wrapped my
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: heavy coat around me and went out into the night.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: The night had changed. It was bitterly, and there was
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: a heavy freezing mist in the air, which lay thickly
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: in the hollows. The shadows of the bare trees struck
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: through the dismal vapors like dangling limbs of skeletons. What
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: am I writing? Thinking of the scream that pierced the
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: night I could not suppress. I must control myself or
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: they will come in silence me, and I must finish
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: this to night. I must finish it before the hour
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: of dawn. That is the hour I fear worse than
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: the hour of midnight. It is the hour when those
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: outside must seek their dreadful homes, the hour when striking
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: fleshless fingers against my window pane is not enough. But
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: they would take me with them where they go. Were
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: I but not another living soul have been before? And
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: whence I shall never escape again? I walked down slowly
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: toward the cross road. I would not have lingered I
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: and have been glad to find the cross road empty.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: It was not there stood the car black. I had
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: not noticed its color before. Low hung spectral fingers of
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: white light from its cow lights, piercing the mist. The
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: cross road was in the hollow, and the mist lay
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: very heavily there, so heavily that I could hardly breathe.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: He was there in the car, his face more indistinct
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: in the shadow of his broad brimmed hat than it
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: had been before. I thought his gloved hand resting as
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: before upon the wheel, and again with a thrill of fear.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: There went a thrill of fascination through me. He was different,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: different from every one else. I felt strangeness, romance, and
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: his manner was that of a lover. In my inexperience,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: I knew it, will you ride to night, Leonora. It
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: had come the next advance, the invitation. But I was
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: not going with him. I had got the thrill I
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: had come for he had asked me, and that was enough.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: It was enough now if I never saw him again,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: this was a better stopping point. Remember that I was
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: only sixteen. A stranger had come out of the night,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: had been mysteriously attracted to me, and I to him.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: He had asked me to ride with him. I do
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: not know what I said. Somehow I must have communicated
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: to him what I felt, my pleasure in being asked,
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: my refusal. His gloved hand touched his hat, and the
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: farewell gesture I remembered another night, Leonora, Leonora. The car
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: glided forward and was gone, But the echo of his
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: voice was in my ears, his voice deep, strange, different,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: but the voice of a lover my inexperience was sure.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: And already I doubted if, after all, this would be
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: enough for me. If I never saw him again another time,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: he would be as punctilious as little urgent. But he
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: might say, what would he say? The January moon we
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: hardly saw, so bitter were the storms of that winter,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: so unbreaking the heavy clouds that shut us from the sky.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: The February full moon was crystal clear in a sky
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: of I see light. The snow covered ground sparkled, and
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: the branches of the trees were ice coated and burned
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: with white fire. But I clung to the fireside, and
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: again crept early within my blankets, drawing them over my head.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: I was in the grip of the fear that had
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: visited me before. I was like a person in the
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: grip of a phobia, such as they say that I
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: have now the moonlight and the open air. It was
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: March next month would bring the spring, and then would
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: follow summer. The world would be a soft and gentle
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: world again, in which fear would have no place. Yet
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: I begun to long for a repetition of the meetings
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: at the cross Road, a repetition that should have the
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: same setting the rigors of winter, rather than the entirely
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: different surroundings of the season of new buds and new life.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: My last attack of unreasoning terror had passed away again,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: and again it seemed as though it left behind it
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: a reaction that urged me more strongly than ever toward adventure.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: Had he been at the cross road in the bitter
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: storms of January and on the sparkling white night which
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: I spent close indoors, would he be there on the
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: night of the next full moon, the March moon. There
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: was still no breath of spring in the air. On
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: that night. The winter snow lay in the hollows, no
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: longer whitely sparkling, but spoiled by the cold rains that
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: had come since it had fallen. The night sky was
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: wild with wind torn clouds, and the moonlight was now
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: clear and brilliant, now weirdly dim and again swept away
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: by great, black, sweeping shadows. The air was full of
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: the smell of damp earth and rotted leaves. I did
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: not go to Margaret's. I sat by the fire, dreaming
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: strange dreams while the clock ticked, the hours slowly by,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: and the fire sank low. At eleven, my father yawned
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: and went up to his room. At a quarter before twelve,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: I took my heavy cloak and wrapped it around me.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: A little later I went out. I knew that I
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: would find him waiting. There was no doubt of that.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: To night, it was not curiosity that drove me, but
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: some deeper urge, some urge I know no name, for
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: I was like a swimmer and a dangerous current, caught
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: at last by the undertow. The car stood in the
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: cross road, low and dark. Although it was a finely
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: made machine, I was sure it seemed to me, for
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: the first time to be in some way very peculiar.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: But at that moment, a cloud swept across the face
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: of the moon, and I lost interest in the matter,
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: with the last vague thought that it must be a
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: foreign make. Then suddenly I was aware that, for the
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: first time, the stranger had opened the door of the
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: car before me. Indeed, this was the first time I
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: had approached on the side of the vacant seat beside
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: the driver. We ride to night to Leonora. Why not?
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: Why not? And what else did you come out for?
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: That was true, for the first time I now met him,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: not on my way home, not on my way anywhere.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: I had met him, only to meet him, and he
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: expected me to ride. He had never forced or tried
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: to urge me. But to night he expected me to ride.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: Wouldn't it seem silly to have come out only to
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: exchange two or three words and go back? And wouldn't
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: it be better to go with him? A less an
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: inexperienced girl might take the trouble to leave her house
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: on a stormy March night for the sake of a
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: real adventure. Only a very green country girl would have
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: come out at all, for less I would go. I
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: had entered the car, I sat beside him, and when
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: the moon shone out brightly. I tried to study his
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: face as he started the car down the narrow road
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: I met with no success. I had become conscious of
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: a burning anxiety to see more clearly what was the
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: manner of this man who had been the subject of
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: so much speculation, the reason of so many dreams. But
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: here beside him, I could see him no more clearly
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: than I had seen him from the road. The sight
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: of his face, which was turned toward me, and which
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: was partly exposed between the deep brimmed hat and the
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: turned up collar of his cloak, was still deeply shaded
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: by the car itself, so that I had the same
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: elusive impression as before, of strong, sharp features, a deep
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: set gaze, a smiling expression. We drove fast over strained roads.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: So closely was my attention centered upon my companion that
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: I did not concern myself the way we went. Later,
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: I was to become uneasy over the distance we traversed,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: but when I did, he reassured me, and I believed
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: that we were then on our way home, and nearly
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: there I thought he meant by home, my father's house.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: And had I not thought that, my wildest nightmare could
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: not have whispered to me what it was that he
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: called home. He was very silent. I spoke little, and
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: he seldom answered me. That did not alarm me as
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: it might have done, because of my ever present conviction
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: of my childishness, my crudeness. I blamed myself because my
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: remarks were so stupid that they were not worth a reply,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: and the taciturnity that so embarrassed me. It added to
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: the fascination that made me sit motionless hour after hour,
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: longing more than anything else in the world, to get
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: a good look at the face beside me, to arouse
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: more interest in my companion. Once only he spoke of
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: his own accord. He asked me why I was called Leonora.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: I asked him if he did not think it was
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: a pretty name, remembering how he had said at our
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: first meeting that it was music in his ears. But
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: I was disappointed for he did not compliment my name again.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: Some would say it was an ill starred name. But
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: luckily people are not superstitious as they used to be.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: That is lucky you cannot call it ill starred. I
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: wanted to provoke him into talking more to me. I
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: wanted his attention, but he did not answer me. I
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: cannot go on. I cannot finish my stories I intended
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: to do, telling things as they happened in their right order.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: There are things I must explain, things that people have
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: said about me that I must deny. And the night
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: is growing late, and the rapping I hear all night
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: long upon my window pane, between the bars that shut
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: me in but that will soon protect me no longer,
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: is growing louder as the dawn approaches. The pain in
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: my heart, of which the doctor has said I would
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: die soon, is growing unendurable. And when I come to
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: the end of my story, to the end which I
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: will set down, I do not know what will happen then.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: But that which I am to write of is so
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: dreadful that I have never dared to think of it.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: Not of that itself, but of the horrible ending to
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: the story I am telling. I must finish before the dawn,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: for it is at the dawn that they must go,
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: and it is then that they would take me where
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: He waits for me, always at dawn. But to explain first,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: people say I am mad. You who will read this
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: will doubtless believe them. But tell me this, Where was
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: I from the time I disappeared from my father's house
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: until I was found mad, as they say, and clutching
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: in my frenzied grasp the finger of a skeleton. And
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: what dread struggle did I tear that finger loose? And
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: from what dreadful hand? And although I, a living woman,
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: could not remain in the abode of death, if I
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: had not been touched by the very finger of death,
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: then tell me this, Why is my flesh like the
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: flesh of the dead, so that the doctors say it
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: is like Lepre's flesh? Although it is not Lepros what
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: God it were? Now let me go on. Our silent
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: drive continued through the flying hours, flying hours, for I
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: was unconscious of the lapse of time, except for the
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: once when I vaguely became uneasy at our long journey,
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: and was reassured. Had he who sat behind the wheel
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: refused to answer my questioning, then perhaps I would then
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: have become frantic with terror. But his deep, soothing voice
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: worked a spell on me once more, and in his reply,
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: I thought I could detect a real solicitude, which comforted me.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: I was assured that we would shortly reach my father's house.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: I would slip in before my father could possibly have
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: waked and avoid questioning. As the night grew older, it
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: became more dismal. The moon, which had swung high overhead,
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: sent long shadows scurrying from every tree and shrub, every
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: hill and hummock as we dashed by, the wind had fallen,
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: but yet blew hard enough to make a moaning, wailing
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: sound which seemed to follow us through the night. The
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: clouds that had swept in great masses across the sky
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: had changed their shapes and trailed in long, somber, broken streamers,
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: like torn black banners. The smell of dank, soggy earth
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: and rotting leaves of mold and decay was heavier since
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: the wind had sunk a little. Suddenly, I had a
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: great need for reassurance and comfort. My heart seemed breaking
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: with loneliness and with a strange, unreasoning despair. I turned
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: to the silent figure at my side, and it seemed
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: that he smelled of the stagnant odor of decay that
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: filled the night. That the smell and the oppression were
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: heavier because I had leaned nearer to him. I looked
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: with a more intense gaze than I had yet turned
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: on him. Not at the face that bent above me now,
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: the face that still eluded and baffled me, but down
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: at the arm next me, at the sleeve of his
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: clothes of heavy black cloth. For something had caught my eye,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: something moved. Oh what was this horror? And why was
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: it so horrible? A slowly moving worm upon his sleeve.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: I shuddered so that I clashed my teeth together. I
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: must control myself. And then, as though my deep alarm
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: were the cue for the hidden event to advance from
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: the future upon me, the car was gliding to a stop.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: I tore my horrified gaze from the black clad arm
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: and looked out of the car. We were gliding into
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: a cemetery. Not here, Oh, don't stop here, I gasped
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: the words as one gasps in a nightmare. Yes here,
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: The deep voice was deeper, It was deep and hollow.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: There was no comfort in it. The mass was off
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: my fear. At least I was face to face with that,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: though I had not yet seen that other face. I
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: leaped from the car and fell fainting beside it. Black, low,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: hung and long and narrow. I'd been to but one
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: funeral in my life, but I knew it now. It
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: was the shape of a coffin. After that I had
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: no hope. I was with a madman. Or He dragged
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: me in gloved hands, through which the hard, long fingers
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: bruised my flesh, past graves, past tombstones and marble statues,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: and I was numb. I saw among the graves, or
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: seemed to see. Oh, let me say, I saw strange things,
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: for I have seen them since. And I was numb.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: He dragged me toward an old, old, sunken grave, headed
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: by a time stained stone that settled to one side
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: so long it had marked that spot. And suddenly the
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: nightmare dreaminess that had dulled my senses gave way to
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: some keener realization of the truth. I struggled. I fought
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: back with all my little strength, till I tore the
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: glove from his right hand, and the finger of his
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: right hand snapped in my grasp, snapped and gave way.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: I struggled in the first faint rays of dawn, struggled
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: as I felt the old, old, sunken earth give way
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: beneath my feet, and the sun rose over the edge
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: of the earth, inflamed red into my desperate eyes. I
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: turned for the last time to the inscrutable face, and
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: in those blood red rays of the dawn I saw
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: at last revealed the grinning, fleshless jaws, the empty eye
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: sockets of statement by the Superintendent of Saint Margaret's Insane Asylum.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: This document was found in the room of Leonora, who
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: was pronounced dead of heart failure by the resident physician.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: Attendants rushed to the room on hearing wild cries, and
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: who found her dead, believed the fatal attack to have
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: been caused by the excitement of writing down her extraordinary narration.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: The doctor who had attended her considered her the victim
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: of a strange form of auto hypnosis. She undoubtedly disappeared
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: from her home on the night of the eighteenth of March,
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: and was found two days later in an old cemetery
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: three hundred miles away. When found, she was incoherent and hysterical,
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: and was holding in her hand the finger of a skeleton.
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: How and where she might have come by this it
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: was and is impossible to surmise. It seems, however, that
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: she must have been lured from her home by some
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: stranger and have escaped or been abandoned near the cemetery.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: That she must have read of the legend of Leonora,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: and that it must have made a morbid impression on
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: her mind, which, later, following the shock which caused her
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: to lose her reason, dictated the form her insanity was
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: to take. It is true that her skin from the
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: time of her discovery in the graveyard had a peculiar appearance,
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: suggestive of the skin of a leprous person, or even
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: more of that of a corpse, and which she does
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: not mention. It also exuded a peculiar odor. These phenomena
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: were among those attributed by the doctor to the effects
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: of auto hypnosis, his theory being that just as a
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: hypnotized person may be made to develop a burn on
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: the arm by the mere suggestion without the application of heat,
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: Leonora had suggested to herself that she had been contaminated
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: by the touch of death, and that her physical nature
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: had been affected by the strength of this suggestion. End
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: of Section five Leonora, end of the Canal and Leonora
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: by everil Or el