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- The Price of Fear, brought to you by Vincent Price. Yes, I remember Adlestrop the name, because one afternoon of heat, the express train drew up there unwontedly. Hello, Welcome. That poem by Edward Thomas Will I feel sure be familiar to some of you. But for myself, well, let's say it evokes a very particular occasion, a story so bizarre and so horrendous I still find it difficult to decide whether it actually happened or not. I've called it blind man's bluff. But to begin at the beginning. Then, I was on my way to visit some friends in a remote part of the West Country. The train was certainly no express, but we were jogging along quite nicely through the lovely Cornish countryside, when suddenly we braked and stopped an unscheduled stop at no hardly a station even at its best country hall, so insignificant that it was not even considered worthy of a name board. The window was already lowered to its full. I looked out on a single small shack, which obviously served as ticket and parcel office combined. But no activity there, or for that matter, anywhere else. Discarded and rusting milk churns, a mongrel dog panting in the sun, the drone of bees, and far off over fields, a glimpse of a church tower, but no life, no apparent reason for what seemed a simply endless delay. Until at the very moment when I'd all but decided to investigate the reason, we began to pull away. It was then I saw him, a man rushing through the entrance along the platform towards the now fast moving train, rushing so heedlessly that it seemed he actually intended to throw himself under the very wheel. Instinctively, and probably against my better judgment, I opened the compartment door, called out, offered a hand, and finally managed to haul him aboard. But it wasn't until I had subsided into my seat, directly opposite my rescue companion, that I realized how truly foolhardy we had both been. The man was blind quite live. I knew, you truly kind the risk yourself like that truly kind load. At least I could do. Anyone would have done the same. They wouldn't. They wouldn't, not any one, not most lather, most understood and watched, maybe even oh for the worst. No, But that the worse were you should in had suggested miss foot in the sudden toppler screeching of brakes, And then they all had climbed out to see my God, to pull their putred eyeballs. By God, the thing under the wheels, by God, I know you see, by God, how I know? His knuckles were white about the stick, gnarled white knuckles, about the white peeling paint of his blind man's stick. He wore a long, old fashioned raincoat reached quite down to his ankles in spite of the stifling heat. He buttoned it up tight around his throat, and a black beret pulled down almost to his eyebrows. But most of all, the spectacles, so deep and black, they seemed like like the sockets of the dead, fathomless, with only the reflection of my own curiosity staring back at me, my own reflection, and the sudden and uncomfortable conviction that I I was being watched, watched and assessed, inexorably assessed the big I don't know why they wish it. I know fine, why all right? I beg your pardoner de misfortune clamority. It gives them this feeling of power to see it gives them the feeling of being one up all the time, of being superior all the time. But surely the majority of us must be allowed some feeling of compasion passion, He says, well, I certainly never intended to suggest that we're all alike, and foolish to presume. Still, you did offer a help in hand at risk of life, and Limb will grant you that. But smoke then if you must. Why, well, your damn road's going to light up, right, I did you know that I wanted a cigarette? Er? Sep should He is a toughy nose word for you in it, but bang on target. All right, you're done with it, devil burn sep sh It's the gift God gives us specials, you see, to make up for the things he's taken away, God or the devil. Oh what will you smoke too? Oh? There's no good looking put out good abide the damn thing. Look if you'd rather, I say that today, suggested it in the first place, tonight. But Goindy, you task, goody, you tougher mm perception, no sight h never have done. Oh I am sorry it smell touch read your mind like a book, and no mistake said, don't ever get round to thinking different. No, m, I'm sorry for that, not wanting to say that just by way of protecting myself. You see, uh t. But most on account of him, boy can can be named conn be nature never told him to his face, of course, it would have been the end of me to tell it to his face. The blind man's knuckles tightened about the handle of his stick again, but a sudden tautness about the shoulders to a feeling of violence so suppressed, so pent I hesitated to ask the next question, But there was no need. Again, he anticipated, do you like? But I told you that once already in my calm, think about him anymore? Not a thing to be thought about. You see your friend? Then? No full of friend, never a friend. Oh. Time passing, and all begins to wonder if he wasn't sent a means maybe means get mailn back revenge people who were the way it was decided for me happy once before called mother home just a small farm workers cottage o'leo. I'd never known familiar to me, See familiar familiar as the back of this hand. Important that in every corner, every stare the way every stick of furniture was arranged in her and everything changing anything around give you a feeling of security I couldn't have found nowhere else. She gave me that, My mother gave me that. I I can see what it must have meant to you. You can see she made for it. Mine worked up at the big house. Not a mansion exactly, but in a way she described it as Mellor's makes no difference. Hard work, bad pay, long hours again, ruddy power, the stronger the weak in it. But at least the stinking pittens they allowed kept the thatch over. A sacrificer was glad to make. Mm never did get over her death, bad enough, sitting by the side of the bed and watching somebody died. But when all you got to go by is feel the pulse, the listen to their breathing hard that m well what did you do after? First? Off? Seeing no answer bit she managed to say, but on the side, well, soon gone in it. And then one day I get this idea, almost as though me to get it the damn sound and unceived at the time. Well there's this still the old room standing in the Yes, why not I think still play harvest labor being taken on, but the estate all crying out for a place to lay their heads, and me with no barn luff, neither a fair share of home comforts. Besides, so I put this, I put this card stuck up in the post office window, dying, and I wait, I wait, but not for too long. Convoy sort of that home from home. He has a raddy golder coolie. This is my mother's room. Yeah, we're still don I get a swing at the world off to it. Yeah, I see such junk. Please be careful, worry can always have it written in the least. Can't we some kind of inventory? Did you ever get around your actual inventory? Pops? Oh dear, oh dear, Oh, well there's one, look like and we won't have to be worrying our heads about. Please, in the name of God, let's have this window open. Run he plays sticks and offus. Oh, you could make some changes. Room would be yours. So you you've been taitler, make some change? Yeah, some changes, all right? Have you think the rent to it? You could discuss asking Christ can wait, but there would be changes, yes, changes all right. See well, love of God, you didn't honestly think I've been moving in You just taking your old lady's place, Did you chechy, Pops, taken over the nurse companion bit just where she left off. If it's a white stick and alsatian dog get your asking should have tried getting it straight from the start. Far as my handicap goes, well, then I think i'mself sufficient. I'm sure you are. I noticed that the way you groped yourself across that landing just now, Okay, it's been some time, it's been to me mother's death, well sometime, eh. How about the way you've tumbled across that chair. A minute we get through the door. He just a touch of the old circus act for my benefit. I suppose when she was ill there was this nurse real in some of the furniture in view the special circumstances, you understand, I understand, Pops. The sixty four dollar question is do you sorry damn as well as blind? Eh? Well, I'm asking you, Pops, if you finally got around persuading me to move into this re written Garrett, do you honestly know what you be letting yourself in for luck at the best and at the worst. You're making it soundly like some kind of threat change Pops. But then it all comes down to that in the end. But you still agreed to take him at first. But the weeks passed though no other offers. They took the card from the post office. Wind of the people up the big house were getting pressing threats, eviction, legal action, only roots. I had, you see no choice, so can moved in? Moved in? All right? Yeah, and I did me best for him. At first. I was even glad just for the sound of another voicer about the place natural in the past couldn't be good, but it's funnier, eager we all are just to be alive and the present of any kind of present. And it didn't work out. Then huh. He took over completely, not just his own room completely, his friends from the estate up drinking all the hours. God made no notion about paying the rentant. And then early one morning, yeah, my mother's things cloth photographs the brick a brack of a lifetime. Really a pathetic pire at the bottom of the garden. Ha ha, you rady rot stink, Pops, that's all you got going here? Line is a rotten mule made. But can't just smell the stink of her eye? Not to drive the starlings off the trees, in it. In it, though I stink and pass and a maggot ridden old bidy's garbage. That's all we've got here, dude, You no right cone right whose bleeding nostrils that they've been getting up every hour of the day and night. I look space to expand your see, pop says what corn needs. I'm never gonna get it with this rag bag of milled you clapping up the place? Now? Was he? He could have asked? Come on? So it's asking terms we're after now, is it? Yes, sir? No, sir? Free bags full? Sir? Now? Is it? If you just ask first? I could have moved and can lay somewhere only you away. So look at it this way, my dear old mom convoys saving you all that extra travel, isn't it. Ye'll tell you something funny though. A couple of weeks back, our damn well goes putting myself out trying to sell the staff you try to sell my mother, of course, that shark of a scrap dealer the side of the village. You had no right bites again? Are we now? Go? Easy? Moly? Unless you like to join the pyre? That is all right, old scarecrow, you'd make of it. Fancy your guy walks a bit early than to sheer a pops he worse win ashes to ashes all that. You should be hanging out of the flags, Molly, Really you should doing your favorite conboys. I mean, you say, better than settling for a feast. Tayle them moss now, And what about them chardy little cherubs up there running green with envy when mums he gets all these nice new drags for the post. God wow kicks pleasure. Yeah, you haven't got a clue. And know what I'm getting out of you? Something you're never going to get around to, Moly, like tonight for instance, me and my mate's regular old boos up my place, pops round about eight. Make yourself a bit scarcish. You will do that, wnt you Mouley with con doing the asking? Always depend on blind old Mouley when it's con doing the asking. Oh, the fire is nearly out, nothing left to save. You could always try spitting into the wind. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. And yet you you did nothing. I could have gone to the police. Should have gone to the police. I see that now. But and when you independent on the strength and decisions of others for a whole lifetime. There comes a time when your needs so desperately to feel the power of self assertion, the ability to act. Hey, I phoned a thing to do. Winter was coming. The cottage was fitted for gas. I just got caught a gas fire over his bedroom, very sensitive to cold, was calm. It burned all hours of the day and night, and sometimes sometimes he even let it burn while he slept. One night, I simply turned it off. You went into his room and turned it on. The maids of the downstairs main well then, But then, when the flames had been extinguished, turned it on again. The blanketed the crack beneath his door. Stood there long time, listening to the hiss the gases escaped into the room. Calm sleep, and it's drunken stupor become deeper, ever deeper, till I decided, did it add enough sufficient to be purpose? You mean you you've gassed him? You you made it? Well, that would have been a kind of revenge, but not too simple. I I I hated him, but there's a need beyond the hate. He was quite unconscious when I went into him, as deep and conscious as if you were under anaesthetic. Now underneath the cottage we had a cellar, and the old times that it had been useful storing apples vegetablesom No, it was quite empty till the entrances to a trap door setting to the fags of the kitchen floor, but long, long in by a big chest, useful storing firewood. I I pulled the chest aside, open the trap lord er body, and the damp smell of damp sc scurry of her hat. And you you left him there, not at once, no one more thing to do, you see, to give him a taste of the affliction. He mocked and made fun of. Over All these long months, every turned to me. Mother's neat front power. Her work basket was always on a small window table, just where I had left it, a long steel bodkin, the stout thread just right i'd returned to the cellar. There there in the eternal dark, I sewed up his eyes, stitch stitch, neatly, methodically, upper lid to lower. I sowed up his eyes, and then I left him there. What happened when the effects of the gas wore off, Oh, it allowed for that. It was to be the final irony, my final irony. M m mm hmmm, mm hmmm. Where where am I wait? It's not my room? What light? Not damn he would light, there's day lights. He's so dark. Eyes my issue, eyes said tight closed it started so not no help? Then I will cross how somebody out out l my final irony, my final triumph, and the deep down the dark, he'd search for the door. He'd search, unseeing, screaming with the searing vein of his sowed up eyes, groping, panicking round the damn lichen covered walls, searching, ever, searching for the door that would let him out and out to the light, to the help. He'd always taken for granting, not knowing, not comprehending that there there was no door, but the only way out was not in the walls, but through the trap door not three feet above his head, a trap door securely bolted but weighed down by the heavy oak chest. I left that night. I never went back. He'd be bound to miss him, I mean up at the esc over a few days. They'd miss him, but he was on the traveling casual labor. They come and went at will. For a few days. They'd miss him, then they'd forget he was only worth forgetting. The train had started a small halt. The blind man pulled himself to his feet. I opened the door and helped him down onto the deserted platform. For a single brief moment, he seemed to study me, And then he raised the opaque blackness of his glasses, and there seemed to be a smile in the milk white clouded eyes, the ghost of a smile. Then he turned and pulled that dirty raincoat even closer about him, and tapped his way towards the exit, the tap tap of his stick mingling with the bird song. We pulled away into that green, bright, whirled trees and veields. Beyond that was vincent price, bringing you the Price of Fear. Freddie Jones and Jeffrey Collins. Blind Man's Bluff was first recounted and dramatized by William Ingram and produced by John dicem