Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the Spookfest. I'm Josh and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and we're flying solo today. I should probably stop
Speaker 2: speaking like this because I'll bet it's getting annoying.
Speaker 3: That's right, Welcome to the One of our most fun
Speaker 3: traditions are ad free Spooctacular, where in which we read
Speaker 3: two stories, one of your choosing and one of mine,
Speaker 3: and yours is up first by Edward Frederick Benson, Is
Speaker 3: that right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, better known as EF to his friends.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Did you see where this was published? Should we
Speaker 3: give a shout out to that?
Speaker 2: It was published in one of his books? He wrote
Speaker 2: several books, but this one comes from ninth Team twelve.
Speaker 2: And I don't remember the name of the book, Chuck,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 3: Well, I have it, sir. It was first published in
Speaker 3: an anthology called The Room in the Tower and Other Stories.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 3: And this is not The Room in the Tower. So
Speaker 3: this is and other Stories, but it's called Caterpillars. And
Speaker 3: at first I thought, by the way this was going
Speaker 3: to be you know, we read stuff in the public domain,
Speaker 3: so a lot of these stories are sort of like
Speaker 3: you know, the creepy house and the you know, there's
Speaker 3: not actually a creature or monster. It's like it was
Speaker 3: within me all along. Sure that was the direction of
Speaker 3: a lot of these stories, but this one actually has
Speaker 3: a nice little payoff with some real creep stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a creepster for sure. And before we
Speaker 2: get started, Chuck, I want to tip our hats to Ben,
Speaker 2: guest producer, Ben that's right, who last year just laid
Speaker 2: a smack down with his first version of editing one
Speaker 2: of our Halloween spectaculars, and I expect to do it again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, and we plugged it recently. But Ben
Speaker 3: is a musician, so we might as well plug it
Speaker 3: again here since everyone's listening here at the top. Ben
Speaker 3: has a new collection of songs out called Songs for
Speaker 3: Sleeping Dogs, and it is great. It's instrumental, it's very
Speaker 3: biby and cool, and you can find it wherever you
Speaker 3: find any music.
Speaker 2: Yep, wait to go, Ben, Okay, I say we get
Speaker 2: started as per usual. We haven't talked about this at
Speaker 2: all up until this very moment.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: I didn't even know you knew the name of the
Speaker 2: anthology until you busted it out. It was spectacular.
Speaker 3: That's how we roll.
Speaker 2: So who wants to read first? You or me?
Speaker 3: I mean your story? So I say you kick it off?
Speaker 2: Okay, all right? Are you ready for this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's do it. Do your cheeks, Oh wow, it's
Speaker 3: been a while. Let me see if they still flop.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this is gonna be a good one, I
Speaker 2: can tell. And everyone, here we go. Settle in, put
Speaker 2: on some fake cobwebs all over your skin, get a
Speaker 2: mug of bat juice, and get ready for caterpillars. By E. F. Benson.
Speaker 2: I saw a month or two ago in an Italian
Speaker 2: paper that the Via Cascana in which I once stayed
Speaker 2: had been pulled down, and that a manufactory of some
Speaker 2: sort was in process of erection on its site. There
Speaker 2: is therefore no longer any reason for refraining from writing
Speaker 2: of those things which I myself saw or imagined I
Speaker 2: saw in a certain room and on a certain landing
Speaker 2: of the via in question, nor from mentioning the circumstances
Speaker 2: which followed, which may or may not, according to the
Speaker 2: opinion of the reader, throw some light on or be
Speaker 2: somehow connected with this experience. Everybody got that?
Speaker 3: Can I stop you real quick? We're going with the via.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, what would you say a valet?
Speaker 3: How I say a villa like a you know, an
Speaker 3: Italian villa? You say, bea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the l's make it nice. It sounds all right,
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 3: I'm following your lead. Bell.
Speaker 2: Well, then maybe we can look up who is correct,
Speaker 2: and then Ben cann edit in your voice over mine.
Speaker 3: No, no for villa.
Speaker 2: Are you ready?
Speaker 3: I'm ready.
Speaker 2: The Keskana wasn't always but one a perfectly delightful house.
Speaker 2: Yet if it were standing now, nothing in the world
Speaker 2: I use the phrase in the literal sense, would induce
Speaker 2: me to set foot in it again, For I believe
Speaker 2: it to have been haunted in a very terrible and
Speaker 2: practical manner. Most ghosts, when all is said and done,
Speaker 2: do not do much harm. They may perhaps terrify, but
Speaker 2: the person whom they visit usually gets over their visitation.
Speaker 2: I feel like that's quite a presumption, don't you. Yeah, totally,
Speaker 2: Like what about somebody whose hair is white because they're
Speaker 2: being that scared. It's tough to get over that's happened. Okay,
Speaker 2: back to it. They may, on the other hand, be
Speaker 2: entirely friendly and beneficent, but the appearances in the via
Speaker 2: Cascana were not beneficent, and had they made their visit
Speaker 2: in a very slightly different manner. I do not suppose
Speaker 2: I should have got over it any more than Arthur
Speaker 2: Inglis did me think.
Speaker 3: I think, so far, so good. We have that scary
Speaker 3: setup of a creepy place, which seems to be most
Speaker 3: of our stories. But again, this one goes in a
Speaker 3: different direction.
Speaker 2: You want me to keep going?
Speaker 3: Ah, yeah, I feel like you're doing strong work.
Speaker 2: Oh okay. The house stood on an islex clad hill,
Speaker 2: alex being holly bushes. Oh not far. Yeah, I looked
Speaker 2: it up, not far from Sestry to Levante on the
Speaker 2: Italian Riviera, looking out over the iridescent blues of that
Speaker 2: enchanted sea, while behind it rose the pale green chestnut
Speaker 2: woods that climb up the hillsides till they give place
Speaker 2: to the that black in contrast with them, crowned the
Speaker 2: slopes all round at the garden, in the luxurious of
Speaker 2: mid spring, bloomed and was fragrant, and the scent of
Speaker 2: magnolia and rose borne on the salt freshness of the
Speaker 2: winds from the sea flowed like a stream through the
Speaker 2: cool vaulted rooms.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's got it right.
Speaker 2: This is a very nice house.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sounds lovely.
Speaker 2: He continues on the ground floor, a broad pillared loja.
Speaker 2: And I look this up too. A lojah is a corridor.
Speaker 2: But that is essentially like a place, a corridor where
Speaker 2: you'd sit with arches in the front face. It's not
Speaker 2: just open with like a railing, Okay. And also that
Speaker 2: means that Robert Lojah's name means Robert corridor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the first thing I thought of.
Speaker 2: So the lojah ran round three sides of the house,
Speaker 2: the top of which formed a balcony for certain rooms
Speaker 2: of the first floor. The main staircase, broad and of
Speaker 2: gray marble, steps led up from the hall to the
Speaker 2: landing outside these rooms, which were three in number, namely
Speaker 2: two big sitting rooms and a bedroom arranged en suite. Well,
Speaker 2: the latter was unoccupied, the sitting rooms were in use.
Speaker 2: From these the main staircase was continued to the second floor,
Speaker 2: where were situated certain bedrooms, one of which I occupied,
Speaker 2: while from the other side of the first floor landing,
Speaker 2: some half dozen steps led to another suite of rooms, where,
Speaker 2: at the time I am speaking of Arthur Ingliss, the
Speaker 2: artist had his bedroom and studio. Thus the landing outside
Speaker 2: my bedroom at the top of the house commanded both
Speaker 2: the landing of the first floor and also the steps
Speaker 2: that led to Ingliss's room, Jim Stanley and his wife finally,
Speaker 2: whose guest I was occupied. Rooms in another wing of
Speaker 2: the house were also were the servants quarters. And I
Speaker 2: feel like this is way way too much detail about
Speaker 2: this house.
Speaker 3: That's what they all do though, all these old stories.
Speaker 3: I feel like there's always a very detailed sort of map,
Speaker 3: and at the end of all of them fa like
Speaker 3: they almost should type does everyone get it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, I've read the story a bunch of times
Speaker 2: and I still don't have any conception a mental map
Speaker 2: of this house. It's all just blobs of steps in
Speaker 2: like sitting rooms, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but having known what happens, Really, the only important
Speaker 3: thing you need to know is this guy's staying in
Speaker 3: a room upstairs and there's another room close by that's unoccupied.
Speaker 2: Very nice. Yeah you want to take over here?
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, sounds like a good switch. I arrived just
Speaker 3: in time for lunch on a brilliant noon of mid May.
Speaker 3: The garden was shouting with color and fragrance.
Speaker 2: Bernciena and not less.
Speaker 3: Delightful after my broiling walk up from the marina should
Speaker 3: have been the coming from the reverberating heat and blaze
Speaker 3: of the day into the marble coolness of the villa.
Speaker 2: Is that where you're going.
Speaker 3: With with villa only in parentheses. The reader has my
Speaker 3: bare word for this and nothing more. Only the moment
Speaker 3: I set foot in this house, I felt that something
Speaker 3: was wrong. This feeling, I may say, was quite vague,
Speaker 3: though very strong. And I remember that when I saw
Speaker 3: letters waiting for me on the table in the hall,
Speaker 3: I felt certain that the explanation was here. I was
Speaker 3: convinced that there was bad news of some sort for me.
Speaker 3: Yet when I opened them, I found no such explanation
Speaker 3: for my premonition. My correspondence all reeked to prosperity. Yet
Speaker 3: this clear miscarriage of a presentiment did not dissipate my
Speaker 3: uneasiness in that cool, fragrant house. That was something wrong.
Speaker 3: So homeboy gets some letters and things like that's what
Speaker 3: I think is my bad feeling, like I've got bad
Speaker 3: news awaiting me. But it's all great news.
Speaker 2: But also keep in mind he's a house guest, and
Speaker 2: he plans to stay so long that he's forwarded as
Speaker 2: mail here. I hope he cleared that with the hosts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a little weird too. A lot of presumptions
Speaker 3: going on here. Yeah, here we go. I'm at pains
Speaker 3: to mention this, because to the general view, it may
Speaker 3: explain that though I am, as a rule so excellent
Speaker 3: a sleeper, that the extinction of my light on getting
Speaker 3: into bed is apparently contemporaneous with being Paul. On the
Speaker 3: following morning, I slept very badly. He could have said,
Speaker 3: I sleep great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I kind of like that one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I slept very badly on my first night in
Speaker 3: the Villa Caskana. It may also explain the fact that
Speaker 3: when I did sleep, if it was indeed in sleep
Speaker 3: that I saw what I thought I saw, I dreamed
Speaker 3: in a very vivid and original manner. Original, that is
Speaker 3: to say, in the sense that something that, as far
Speaker 3: as I knew, had never been previously entered into my
Speaker 3: consciousness usurped it then. But since in addition to this
Speaker 3: evil premonition, certain words and events occurring during the rest
Speaker 3: of the day might have suggested something of what I
Speaker 3: thought happened that night, it will be well to relate them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Benson never met a parenthesis that he didn't like.
Speaker 3: Oh, man, you after lunch, then I went round the
Speaker 3: house with missus Stanley, and during our tour she referred,
Speaker 3: it is true to the unoccupied bedroom on the first floor,
Speaker 3: which opened out of the room where we had lunched
Speaker 3: a little more mapping going on. Uh are you going
Speaker 3: to do? You want to read her voice?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 3: All right, we left that unoccupied, she said, because Jim.
Speaker 2: And I have a charming bedroom and dressing room, as
Speaker 2: you saw in the wing, and if we used it ourselves,
Speaker 2: we should have to turn the dining room into a
Speaker 2: dressing room and have our meals downstairs. As it is, however,
Speaker 2: we have our little flat here. Arthur Inglis has his
Speaker 2: little flat in the other passage. And I remember parentheses.
Speaker 2: Aren't I extraordinary that you once said that the higher
Speaker 2: up you were in a house, the better you were pleased.
Speaker 2: So I put you at the top of the house
Speaker 2: instead of giving you that room.
Speaker 3: Hey, And I imagine this guy at this point is like,
Speaker 3: oh god, lady, just can I go to my room?
Speaker 3: Got a crossword puzzled to do you want to take
Speaker 3: it from there?
Speaker 2: Oh? Sure? It is true that a doubt vague as
Speaker 2: my uneasy premonition crossed my mind at this I did
Speaker 2: not see why missus Bany should have explained all this
Speaker 2: if there had not been more to explain. I allow
Speaker 2: therefore that the thought that there was something to explain
Speaker 2: about the unoccupied bedroom was bometarily present to my mind.
Speaker 3: I got to say, though, I really do love that
Speaker 3: he did acknowledge what we disacknowledged, Like she didn't have
Speaker 3: to say all that.
Speaker 2: No, And if you're like, what is this guy talking about?
Speaker 2: So basically he's laying all this out and he's letting
Speaker 2: you know everything that possibly could have influenced him imagining this. Yeah,
Speaker 2: to leave it to you, the reader slash listener, to
Speaker 2: decide if it was imagined or not. I think that's
Speaker 2: what he's doing. That's how I'm interpreting it same, that's
Speaker 2: what cliff Notes said at least.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The second thing that may have borne on my dream
Speaker 2: was this. At dinner, the conversation turned for a moment
Speaker 2: on ghosts. English, with a certainty of conviction, expressed his
Speaker 2: belief that anybody who could possibly believe in the existence
Speaker 2: of supernatural phenomena was unworthy of the name of an
Speaker 2: ass burn. The subject instantly dropped. You can't imagine. As
Speaker 2: far as I can recollect, nothing else occurred or was
Speaker 2: said that could bear on what follows. I needed to
Speaker 2: take a simple water.
Speaker 3: Chuck, unworthy of the name of an ass.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is pretty low.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and or English is just roasting people.
Speaker 2: But also you can see this guy with a walrus
Speaker 2: mustache wearing a pith helmet at lunch, Yeah, being a
Speaker 2: pompous jerk, and everyone's like, well, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: say wow, I feel about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: So dinner has taken place, and now he's going to bed.
Speaker 2: And we know this because he says. We all went
Speaker 2: to bed rather early, and personally, I yawned my way upstairs,
Speaker 2: feeling hideously sleepy. My room was rather hot, and I
Speaker 2: threw all the windows wide and from without poured in
Speaker 2: the white light of the moon and the love song
Speaker 2: of the many nightingales. I n dressed quickly and got
Speaker 2: into bed. But though I had felt so sleepy before,
Speaker 2: I now felt extremely wide awake. Yeah, but this guy
Speaker 2: I was okay with it, because he says, but I
Speaker 2: was quite content to be awake. I did not toss
Speaker 2: or turn I felt perfectly happy listening to the song
Speaker 2: and seeing the light. Then it is possible I may
Speaker 2: have gone to sleep, and what follows may have been
Speaker 2: a dream. I thought, anyhow, that after a time, the
Speaker 2: nightingale ceased singing, and the moon sank. I thought also
Speaker 2: that if for some explained reason, I was going to
Speaker 2: lie awake all night, I might as well read. And
Speaker 2: I remembered that I had left a book in which
Speaker 2: I was interested in the dining room on the first floor,
Speaker 2: which has seventeen steps and is heady corner to the
Speaker 2: maid's corners.
Speaker 3: Each step is but eight inches in depth and made
Speaker 3: of oak, white oak.
Speaker 2: From the black forest. So I got out of bed,
Speaker 2: lit a candle and went downstairs. I went into the room,
Speaker 2: saw on a side table the book I had come
Speaker 2: to look for, and then simultaneously saw that the door
Speaker 2: into the unoccupied bedroom was open. Yeah, not only that, chuck,
Speaker 2: A curious gray light, not of dawn nor of moonshine,
Speaker 2: came out of it, and I looked in the bed.
Speaker 2: Stood just opposite the door a big four poster, beautiful
Speaker 2: lots of carvings hung with tapestry at the head. Then
Speaker 2: I saw that grayish light of the bedroom came from
Speaker 2: the bed, or rather from what was on the bed,
Speaker 2: where it was covered with great caterpillars get this, a
Speaker 2: foot or more in length, which crawled over it. They
Speaker 2: were faintly luminous, and it was the light from them
Speaker 2: that showed me the room. Instead of the sucker feet
Speaker 2: of ordinary caterpillars. They had rows of pincers, like crabs,
Speaker 2: and they moved by grasping what they lay on with
Speaker 2: their pincers and then sliding their bodies forward. This is
Speaker 2: where it turns creepster, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you have no idea the sense of relief.
Speaker 3: When I was like, is this all just about a
Speaker 3: sense of dread? Because I feel like all these stories
Speaker 3: are just about a sense of dread. And then when
Speaker 3: these crab caterpillars, mutant crab caterpillars came on the scene,
Speaker 3: I was really knocked out.
Speaker 2: It gets even worse, though, Chuck.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He says that in color, these dreadful insects were yellowish gray,
Speaker 2: and they were covered with irregular lumps and swellings. There
Speaker 2: must have been hundreds of them. These are foot long
Speaker 2: caterpillars with crab pincers for feet, For they formed a
Speaker 2: sort of writhing, crawling pyramid on the bed. Occasionally one
Speaker 2: fell off onto the floor with a soft, fleshy thud,
Speaker 2: and though the floor was of hard concrete, it yielded
Speaker 2: to the pincer feet as if it had been putty,
Speaker 2: and crawling back, the caterpillar would mount onto the bed
Speaker 2: again to rejoin its fearful companions. They appeared to have
Speaker 2: no faces, so to speak, but at one end of
Speaker 2: them was a mouth that opened sideways and respiration.
Speaker 3: Yeah all right, I mean, bravo, bravo Ef Benson for
Speaker 3: coming up with some really creepy stuff. Yeah, it shocked me.
Speaker 3: I was not expecting this, and now we have a
Speaker 3: genuine sort of monsters situation. I love it.
Speaker 2: You know, I thought this one was gonna get you,
Speaker 2: because you're absolutely right. Almost all of our previous stories
Speaker 2: have been about like a house, an empty house, and
Speaker 2: most of the time it is just dread. Very few
Speaker 2: things actually happened. Something happens here, and it is fat, lumpy,
Speaker 2: foot long caterpillars, hundreds of them on this bed of
Speaker 2: this unoccupied room.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I wonder what kind of drugs Ef was taking.
Speaker 2: He was passing the ether rag.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what did they have back then yet probably ether.
Speaker 2: Oh they had a lot of ether?
Speaker 3: Is it me? Is it time?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah? I think so?
Speaker 3: All right, Then as I looked, it seemed to me
Speaker 3: as if they all suddenly became conscious of my presence.
Speaker 3: All the mouths, at any rate were turned in my direction,
Speaker 3: and next moment they began dropping off the bed with
Speaker 3: those soft, fleshy thuds onto the floor and wriggling towards me.
Speaker 3: For one second a paralysis as of a dream was
Speaker 3: on me. But the next I was running upstairs again
Speaker 3: to my room, and I remember feeling the cold of
Speaker 3: the marble steps on my bare feet. They're marble, they're
Speaker 3: not oak, right, Yeah, oh well I rushed onto my
Speaker 3: You know, marbles a lot to take care of. So
Speaker 3: that that's not the great, great choice for a floor,
Speaker 3: especially stairs.
Speaker 2: It's true, and it could have still possibly come from
Speaker 2: the Black forest, so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe so you got to seal that stuff though
Speaker 3: every year or so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But I want to give a little shout out here, Chuck.
Speaker 2: If this is genuine, you can make a poultice out
Speaker 2: of baking soda and water only, and you have to
Speaker 2: make it kind of thick. Okay, but if you have
Speaker 2: like a wine spot or something sunk into your marble countertop. Huh,
Speaker 2: put that on there, leave it for a couple of hours,
Speaker 2: scrape it off and wipe it down. I'm not kidding.
Speaker 2: Your red wine spot will be gone from the mark.
Speaker 2: It's a miracle of housekeeping.
Speaker 3: Well, mister fancy pants, I have no marble, but I
Speaker 3: do drink wine. But I'll keep that in mind if
Speaker 3: I'm ever at a fancy pants house.
Speaker 2: It works. I have limestone on my countertop, and it
Speaker 2: works for that too. Like, oh yeah, it works for
Speaker 2: for Micah. For Micah, it works for whatever. The like
Speaker 2: a plasticly shiny cabinet door is made of all right,
Speaker 2: lamb in it. It works on lamin it's it works everywhere.
Speaker 3: Man, I didn't see this coming. I didn't what a turn?
Speaker 3: Where were we? Fleshy thuds, paralysis running upstairs marble floors,
Speaker 3: that's right, all right? So he ran up the marble
Speaker 3: floors and into that bedroom, which is the sensible thing
Speaker 3: to do. I rushed into my bedroom and slammed the
Speaker 3: door behind me, and then I was certainly wide awake.
Speaker 3: Now I found myself standing by my bed with the
Speaker 3: sweat of terror, pouring from me. The noise of the
Speaker 3: banged door still rang in my ears. But as would
Speaker 3: have been more usual if this had been mere nightmare,
Speaker 3: the terror that had been mine when I saw those
Speaker 3: foul beasts crawling about the bed or dropping softly on
Speaker 3: the floor did not cease then awake. Now, if dreaming
Speaker 3: before I did not at all recover from the horror
Speaker 3: of dream, did not seem to me that I had dream.
Speaker 3: And until dawn I sat or stood, not daring to
Speaker 3: lie down, thinking that every rustle or movement that I
Speaker 3: heard was the approach of the caterpillars to them, and
Speaker 3: the claws that bit into the cement. The wood of
Speaker 3: the door was child's play. Steel would not have kept
Speaker 3: them out. So basically like, this guy's just waiting for
Speaker 3: these caterpillars to bum rush him. Yeah, and all night long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's saying to himself the.
Speaker 3: Horror, Yeah, That's what I'd be saying. But with the
Speaker 3: sweet and noble return of the day, the horror vanished,
Speaker 3: The whisper of wind became benignant again. The nameless fear,
Speaker 3: whatever it was, was smoothed out and terrified me no longer.
Speaker 3: Dawn broke queless at first, then it grew dove colored.
Speaker 3: I like this detail, by the way. Then the flaming
Speaker 3: pageant of life spread over the sky. The admirable rule
Speaker 3: of the house was that everybody had breakfast where and
Speaker 3: when he pleased, And in consequence, it was not till
Speaker 3: lunchtime that I met any of the other members of
Speaker 3: our party, since I had breakfast on my balcony and
Speaker 3: wrote letters and other things to lunch. In fact, I
Speaker 3: got down to that meal rather late, and the other
Speaker 3: three had begun. Between my knife and fork there was
Speaker 3: a small pill box of cardboard, and as I sat
Speaker 3: down Ingliss spoke, should I do English?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, let's hear what you got?
Speaker 3: And these are Brits, right, m hm? And English is
Speaker 3: kind of an ahole right.
Speaker 2: A little bit. He was the guy wearing the pith
Speaker 2: helmet and walrus and overly emphatically stating his opinion is fact.
Speaker 3: Right, and we know what he does later, So he's
Speaker 3: an a hole. Do look at that? He said, since
Speaker 3: you are interested in natural history, I found it crawling
Speaker 3: on my couch of pain last night, and I don't
Speaker 3: know what it is. You want to pick it up? There?
Speaker 2: Sure? I think that before I opened the pill box.
Speaker 2: I expected something of the sort which I found in it.
Speaker 2: Inside it, anyhow, it was a small caterpillar, grayish yellow
Speaker 2: in color, with curious bumps and excreases on its rings.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what a word.
Speaker 2: It was extremely active, hurried around the box this way, Matt.
Speaker 2: Its feet were unlike the feet of any caterpillar I
Speaker 2: ever saw. They were like the pincers of a crab.
Speaker 2: M I looked and shut the lid down again.
Speaker 3: All right, so this is These are in real life.
Speaker 3: Now They're not a foot long, but they have been realized. No,
Speaker 3: it wasn't a dream.
Speaker 2: No, do you want you should be Oh? I don't
Speaker 2: know that. We ever hear his name? Is it the narrator?
Speaker 3: No, I'll be English. You could be the narrator.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's see. Let's see. So he's terrified. No, I
Speaker 2: don't know it, I said, but it looks rather unwholesome.
Speaker 2: What are you going to do with it? Oh? I
Speaker 2: shall keep it, Oh said English.
Speaker 3: It has begun to spin. I want to see what
Speaker 3: sort of Martha turns into.
Speaker 2: I opened the box again and saw these hurrying movements,
Speaker 2: where indeed the beginning of spinning of the web of
Speaker 2: its cocoon. Then English spoke again.
Speaker 3: It has got funny feet too, he said, they're like
Speaker 3: crabs pincers. What's the Latin for crab?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yes, cancer, So in case it is unique, let's christen
Speaker 3: it mm cancer Engli censes.
Speaker 2: I love how inevitably all your voices end up being
Speaker 2: an old witch's every time. And it's a great voice too,
Speaker 2: so I'm always very satisfied when that starts to happen.
Speaker 3: I love it. He names this thing after himself.
Speaker 2: What a jerk, I know, he is? Uh Oh, I
Speaker 2: continue on right, Yeah. Then something happened in my brain,
Speaker 2: some momentary piece together of all that I had seen
Speaker 2: or dreamed. Something in his words seemed to me to
Speaker 2: throw light on it all, and my own intense horror
Speaker 2: at the experience of the night before linked itself onto
Speaker 2: what he had just said. In effect, I took the
Speaker 2: box and threw it, caterpillar and all out of the window. Hugh,
Speaker 2: this must have been fairly surprising. In the middle of
Speaker 2: the conversation, just picks up the box and throws it
Speaker 2: out of the window. There was a gravel path just outside,
Speaker 2: and beyond it a fountain playing into a basin. The
Speaker 2: box fell on to the middle of this English laughed.
Speaker 3: Oh, so the students of the occult don't like solid facts,
Speaker 3: he said, My poor caterpillar.
Speaker 2: The talk went off again at once to other subjects.
Speaker 2: I can imagine everybody's a little embarrassed that I was
Speaker 2: just so anyway, how about them Yankees?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: And I have only given in detail as they happen,
Speaker 2: these trivialities in order to be sure myself that I
Speaker 2: have recorded everything that could have borne on occult subjects,
Speaker 2: or on the subject of caterpillars. He really wants you
Speaker 2: to know, like I'm giving you all this, all the
Speaker 2: stuff here. I'm surprised he didn't say what he had
Speaker 2: for launch and breakfast.
Speaker 3: Agreed.
Speaker 2: But at the moment when I threw the pill box
Speaker 2: into the fountain, I lost my head. My only excuse
Speaker 2: is that, as is probably plain, the tenant of it
Speaker 2: was in miniature exactly what I had seen crowded onto
Speaker 2: the bed in the unoccupied room. I think that was
Speaker 2: an unnecessary thing to point out. Yeah, and though this
Speaker 2: translation of those phantoms into flesh and blood or whatever
Speaker 2: it is the caterpillars are made of, ought perhaps to
Speaker 2: have relieved some of the horror of the night. As
Speaker 2: a matter of fact, it did nothing of the kind.
Speaker 2: It only made the crawling pyramid that covered the bed
Speaker 2: in the unoccupied room more hideously real.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I could imagine, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't see this thing that was the actual, like
Speaker 2: similacrum of what had scared the Jesus out of me
Speaker 2: the night before. Why would that make you feel any better?
Speaker 3: Now? Agreed?
Speaker 2: You want me to keep going? It seems like you
Speaker 2: could do this now, all.
Speaker 3: Right, I'll take ever.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: After lunch we spent a lazy hour or two strolling
Speaker 3: about the garden or sitting in the Robert loggia. And
Speaker 3: it must have been about four o'clock when Stanley and
Speaker 3: I started off to bathe down the path that led
Speaker 3: by the fountain into which I had thrown the pill box.
Speaker 3: The water was shallow and clear, and at the bottom
Speaker 3: of it I saw its white remains. The water had
Speaker 3: disintegrated the cardboard, and it had become no more than
Speaker 3: a few strips and shreds of sodden paper. The center
Speaker 3: of the fountain was a marble Italian cupid, which squirted
Speaker 3: the water out of a wine skin held under his arm.
Speaker 2: That's not where I was expecting him to say, it
Speaker 2: was scorting from.
Speaker 3: Nope, A lot of times it comes right out of
Speaker 3: a little marble peepee.
Speaker 2: It's a tinkle.
Speaker 3: It's a tinkle exactly. And crawling up its leg was
Speaker 3: the caterpillar. Strange and scarcely credible, as it seemed. It
Speaker 3: must have served vibe the falling to bits of its
Speaker 3: prison and made its way ashore. And there it was,
Speaker 3: out of arms reach, weaving and waving this way and
Speaker 3: that as it evolved its cocoon. Then as I looked
Speaker 3: at it seemed to me again that like the caterpillar
Speaker 3: I had seen last night, it saw me, and, breaking
Speaker 3: out of the threads that surrounded it, crawled down the
Speaker 3: marble leg of the cupid and began swimming like a
Speaker 3: snake across the water of the fountain towards me. Oh
Speaker 3: my god, it came with extraordinary speed. The fact of
Speaker 3: a caterpillar being able to swim was new to me.
Speaker 3: That's in parentheses, of course, And in another moment was
Speaker 3: crawling up the marble lip of the basin. Just then
Speaker 3: Inglish joined us, why if it isn't old cancer Inglish
Speaker 3: sensu again, he said, catching the side of the beasts.
Speaker 3: What a tearing hurry it is in We were standing
Speaker 3: side by side on the path, and when the caterpillar
Speaker 3: had advanced to within about a yard of us, it
Speaker 3: stopped and began waving again, as if in doubt as
Speaker 3: to the direction in which it should go. Then it
Speaker 3: appeared to make up its mind and crawled onto English's shoe.
Speaker 3: It likes me best, he said, But I don't really
Speaker 3: know that I like it. And as it won't drown,
Speaker 3: I think perhaps he shook it off the shoe onto
Speaker 3: the gravel path and trod on it. Nice man. English
Speaker 3: guy just stomps this thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well he's the pith helmet type and they do
Speaker 2: those kind of things. They don't have a huge value
Speaker 2: on bug life, agreed, They didn't even like the movie
Speaker 2: A Bug's Life. Noh am, I starting again.
Speaker 3: Yeah it feels like you.
Speaker 2: Okay, all afternoon, the air got heavier and heavier with
Speaker 2: the Sirocco that was, without doubt coming up from the south.
Speaker 2: Would you say that as Sorocco or.
Speaker 3: Sirocha, I mean, Chuck would say so.
Speaker 2: Well. VW always call it Sorocco.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, those are great cars here.
Speaker 2: They are, uh and that night again I went to
Speaker 2: bed feeling very sleepy, but below my drowsiness, so to speak,
Speaker 2: there was the consciousness, stronger than before, that there was
Speaker 2: something wrong in the house, that something dangerous was close
Speaker 2: at hand. Breaking for water, gope, cope, ah. But I
Speaker 2: fell asleep at once, and how long after I do
Speaker 2: not know. Either woke or dreamed. I awoke feeling that
Speaker 2: I must get up at once, or I should be
Speaker 2: too late. That was in italics this time, then dreaming
Speaker 2: or awake parentheses. I lay and fought this fear, telling
Speaker 2: myself that I was but the prey of my own nerves,
Speaker 2: disordered by sorocco or what not, and at the same time,
Speaker 2: quite clearly knowing in another part of my mind, so
Speaker 2: to speak, that every moment's delay added to the danger.
Speaker 2: At last, the second feeling became irresistible, and I put
Speaker 2: on my coat and trousers and went out of my
Speaker 2: room onto the landing. And then I saw that I
Speaker 2: had already delayed too long, and that I was now
Speaker 2: too late. The whole of the landing of the first
Speaker 2: floor below was invisible under the swarm of caterpillars that
Speaker 2: crawled there. The folding doors into the sitting room from
Speaker 2: which opened the bedroom where I had seen them last
Speaker 2: night were shut, but they were squeezing through the cracks
Speaker 2: of it and dropping one by one through the keyhole,
Speaker 2: elongating themselves in a mere string as they passed, and
Speaker 2: growing fat and lumpy again. I'm emerging, ghil. Some, as
Speaker 2: if exploring, were nosing about the steps into the passage
Speaker 2: at the end of which were Inglish's room. Others were
Speaker 2: crawling on the lowest steps of the staircase that led
Speaker 2: up to where I stood. The landing, however, was completely
Speaker 2: covered with them. I was cut off and of the
Speaker 2: frozen horror that seized me when I saw that I
Speaker 2: can give no idea in words.
Speaker 3: I bet he could if you tried.
Speaker 2: Okay, continuing on chuck. Then at last a general movement
Speaker 2: began to take place, and they grew thicker on the
Speaker 2: steps that led to Inglis's room. Gradually, like some hideous
Speaker 2: tide of flesh, they advanced along the passage, and I
Speaker 2: saw the foremost visible by the pale, gray luminousness that
Speaker 2: came from them, reach his door. He's like, better you
Speaker 2: than me, Anglis. Yeah, again and again, I tried to
Speaker 2: shout and warn him and terror all the time that
Speaker 2: they would turn at the sound of my voice and
Speaker 2: mount my stare instead. But for all my efforts, I
Speaker 2: felt no sound came from my throat. They crawled along
Speaker 2: the hinge crack of his door, passing through as they
Speaker 2: had done before, and still I stood there, making impotent
Speaker 2: efforts to shout to him, to bid him escape while
Speaker 2: there was time. This is getting serious. At last the
Speaker 2: passage was completely empty. They had all gone, and at
Speaker 2: that moment I was conscious for the first time of
Speaker 2: the cold of the marble landing on which I stood barefooted.
Speaker 2: The dawn was just beginning to break in the eastern sky.
Speaker 3: Sunrise always a good sign.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That seems to chase away the nasties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, I'm bringing it home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, bring us home, Chuck.
Speaker 3: Six months later, I met missus Stanley in a country
Speaker 3: house in England. We talked on many subjects, and at
Speaker 3: last she said.
Speaker 2: Oh, h oh, that's me. I'm hurt.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I don't think I've seen you since I
Speaker 4: got the dreadful news about Arthur English.
Speaker 2: A month ago. And this guy's still scared. So he
Speaker 2: says I haven't.
Speaker 3: Heard said I.
Speaker 2: No, he's got cancer. They don't even advise an operation,
Speaker 2: for there is no hope of a cure. He is
Speaker 2: riddled with it, the doctor's say.
Speaker 3: Now, during all these six months, I do not think
Speaker 3: a day has passed on which I had not had
Speaker 3: in my mind the dreams, parentheses, or whatever you like
Speaker 3: to call them, which I had not seen in the
Speaker 3: villa Cascana.
Speaker 2: It is awful, is it not.
Speaker 4: She continued, And I can't help feeling that he may
Speaker 4: have caught it at the via.
Speaker 3: What's a villa?
Speaker 2: Caught it at the villa?
Speaker 3: I asked. She looked at me in blank surprise.
Speaker 4: Why did you say that, she asked?
Speaker 2: How did you know?
Speaker 3: Then? She told me in the unoccupied bedroom, a year before,
Speaker 3: there had been a fatal case of cancer. She had,
Speaker 3: of course taken the best advice, and had been told
Speaker 3: that the utmost dictates of prudence would be obeyed, so
Speaker 3: long she did not put anybody to sleep in the room,
Speaker 3: which had also been thoroughly disinfected and newly whitewashed and painted.
Speaker 2: But that's it, Yeah, that's it. But ellipses, I even
Speaker 2: went back and double checked that I had copied and
Speaker 2: pasted everything.
Speaker 3: But I did too, that was it. Yeah, it just
Speaker 3: ends with the you know that room had cancer in it.
Speaker 2: It seems like, yeah, and those things transferred cancer, which
Speaker 2: explains why they were lumpy. Sure they were tumorous, I
Speaker 2: guess you'd say. And then also when he said that
Speaker 2: Arthur Ingliss called them cancer eng census, I think, yeah,
Speaker 2: English census. That that kind of trips something in his mind.
Speaker 2: So yeah, was it maybe.
Speaker 3: It's a vanity tale, morality tale.
Speaker 2: Was it a dream, Chuck or did he really experience
Speaker 2: all this?
Speaker 3: I think it's all real.
Speaker 2: I do too. Let's go with that since it's a
Speaker 2: good horror story.
Speaker 3: All right. Moving on, then we come to my pic,
Speaker 3: which is it's called the Deep Brows. It is what
Speaker 3: I say, brows, the deep drowse, and it's this is
Speaker 3: taken from Weird Tales, which volume was this September nineteen
Speaker 3: forty nine, that the Great pulp Rag Weird Tales. And
Speaker 3: this is sort of a mysterious case because Alison be
Speaker 3: Harding is listed as the writer. But Alison b Harding
Speaker 3: is a bit of a mystery, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The closest I've seen as someone a master as
Speaker 2: Gene Milligan. But that's pretty far from being proven without
Speaker 2: a doubt.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. I've seen various things. I've seen
Speaker 3: Gene Milligan or Lamont Buchanan or maybe a husband wife team.
Speaker 3: But it was a non diplom and this is someone
Speaker 3: who didn't want to be recognized because they wrote whoever.
Speaker 3: It was like ten or fifteen stories, most of which
Speaker 3: were in weird weird tales in like the nineteen forties
Speaker 3: and fifties, and then just sort of stopped writing and disappeared.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty neatly interesting. I think that they were so
Speaker 2: adamant about their pseudonym because that they were being paid
Speaker 2: under the table.
Speaker 3: Oh maybe so, or maybe they had some I think
Speaker 3: one of them was an attorney or something, so maybe
Speaker 3: they didn't like sometimes they have like a proper job
Speaker 3: in writing for a pulp rag wouldn't be looked upon favorably.
Speaker 2: It would be today because they turned out to be
Speaker 2: one of the great overlooked horror writers of all time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, agreed? All right, So without any further ado, maybe
Speaker 3: i'll start this one out. Does that sound good?
Speaker 2: I think that's a great idea.
Speaker 3: This is the Deep Brows by pen name Alison B. Harding.
Speaker 2: Did you say brows again?
Speaker 3: I think I did the deep drowse? What is my
Speaker 3: deala the deep drows Wow? All right, here we go.
Speaker 3: Arthur Hodges had very bad hay fever. He and his
Speaker 3: wife Francis lived in a cheerful white painted woodhouse with
Speaker 3: a big stone chimney and a tastefully designed stone terrace
Speaker 3: out back. That they lived in this house in the
Speaker 3: country was one of the factors that made the Hodges
Speaker 3: place in the history of this world secure. For whatever
Speaker 3: stretch of time there is a head for this universe, everything,
Speaker 3: of course, had to dovetail perfectly. Have you ever thought
Speaker 3: about an accident, for instance, a man who was hit
Speaker 3: on the head by flower pot or a brick. The
Speaker 3: man is say, forty years old, and yet the months
Speaker 3: and days and hours and seconds of those forty years
Speaker 3: have to be perfectly synchronized to bring him to that
Speaker 3: spot on the sidewalk precisely at the time that the
Speaker 3: brick is unloosened by the wind and sent plummeting on
Speaker 3: its mission of death. Three pt Anderson Magnolia set up
Speaker 3: for sure. So it was with the Hodges. Then, you see,
Speaker 3: Arthur Hodges was a writer. That's important. If everything else
Speaker 3: had been perfect but he hadn't been a writer, there
Speaker 3: would have been no record for the incredible events that
Speaker 3: follow Likewise, everything else would have been upset if Arthur
Speaker 3: Hodges just hadn't been a successful writer, Just being a
Speaker 3: writer wouldn't have been enough, because his junk, as he
Speaker 3: called it in his deprecating fashion, was turned out with
Speaker 3: sufficient facility and talent to have made his name a
Speaker 3: headliner on many of the nation's biggest magazines. He had
Speaker 3: more than enough money.
Speaker 2: All this is important, I think, is what Alison B.
Speaker 2: Harding is saying.
Speaker 3: That's right. Money meant two new autos in the two
Speaker 3: car garage out back. His pretty redhead wife Fran dressed inconspicuously,
Speaker 3: but in the good taste, which signals expensive clothes. And
Speaker 3: this is of course the most important part. He had
Speaker 3: What he jokingly confided to his neighbors was a hermetically
Speaker 3: sealed study and bedroom for those summer months when ragweed,
Speaker 3: Timothy and other such deadly pollens would have made his
Speaker 3: life in the country quite terrible. They had a joke,
Speaker 3: Fran and Arthur did from July through September he takes
Speaker 3: some manuscripts down to the post office to mail, and
Speaker 3: also provide himself with a few other errands in town
Speaker 3: to keep him away a couple of hours. By the
Speaker 3: time he got home. Depending on the length of his mission,
Speaker 3: fran could predict almost exactly how red his eyes would be,
Speaker 3: how uncomfortable his nose. It's quite a joke, all right,
Speaker 3: So these are This is a wealthy or at least
Speaker 3: a well to do author living in the country. But
Speaker 3: he has very bad allergies. So he has a safe room.
Speaker 2: Yes, a hermetically sealed one too.
Speaker 3: That's right, you can pick it up from their mind,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 2: Arthur had a habit of coming in with whatever packages
Speaker 2: he collected in the village, banging the summer screen door
Speaker 2: of the porch and saying, funny thing, Darling, I feel
Speaker 2: fun I guess we'll turn off the damn air conditioning
Speaker 2: unit and save on our electric bill. But this was
Speaker 2: always announced in a deeply nasal voice. Oh let me
Speaker 2: try that again.
Speaker 5: For I, Thirk Darling ar felt fine, our gust will
Speaker 5: turn off the damn air conditioning save on.
Speaker 2: Our electric bell. Oh man, go for it, and he
Speaker 2: would almost immediately subside into a frenzy of sneezing and wheezing,
Speaker 2: whereupon his wife would push him into the study bedroom
Speaker 2: part of the house, where the engineers who'd installed the
Speaker 2: expensive but efficient unit swore not a breath of outside
Speaker 2: air could penetrate. Arthur worked in here most of the day,
Speaker 2: except for periods of never more than a few hours
Speaker 2: when he played tennis at the club or used the
Speaker 2: swimming pool there with Fran and his other friends. If
Speaker 2: there was a bridge game schedule, it always took place
Speaker 2: in Arthur's study. He's got some bad, bad allergies.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The whole business, in other words, was accepted by the
Speaker 2: neighbors and nobody thought anything about it. If he'd been poor,
Speaker 2: Arthur obviously would have had to suffer or live in
Speaker 2: the city as far away as possible from growing things.
Speaker 2: But his three months of travail had now been neatly
Speaker 2: gotten around by the ACME Air Conditioning Units Company, Detroit, Michigan.
Speaker 2: Of course, it had taken extra airproofing of the windows
Speaker 2: so that all cracks of the two rooms could be
Speaker 2: perfectly sealed, and that, in addition to the conditioning machines themselves,
Speaker 2: was expensive, but it kept them both out in the country,
Speaker 2: which they liked and had become as much a part
Speaker 2: of their lives to be taken for granted as the
Speaker 2: dishwasher in the kitchen or the electric door on the garage. Fancy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so now it is easy to see the component parts
Speaker 2: of the whole affair. Arthur had very bad hay fever,
Speaker 2: but he liked the country, lived in the country, and
Speaker 2: got around his July through September agonies because he had
Speaker 2: the money to purchase for himself a hermetically sealed refuge.
Speaker 2: And he was a writer. Don't forget that.
Speaker 3: It's actually written in there, yeah.
Speaker 2: With an exclamation point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a nice little summation. Shall I takeover you?
Speaker 2: Shall?
Speaker 4: All right?
Speaker 3: It was a late afternoon of August fourteenth. Brand came
Speaker 3: back from the village in the convertible to find Arthur
Speaker 3: out on the lawn practicing with a putter. She forgot
Speaker 3: to upbraid him for his running nose and swollen eyes
Speaker 3: because of the important looking envelope in her hand. A
Speaker 3: writer's wife gets to sense these things, open it up,
Speaker 3: she ordered. The registered letter was from a movie company.
Speaker 3: Hodges had been dickering with them on his latest cereal
Speaker 3: for one of the big magazines. The letter was good news.
Speaker 3: They were offering to buy, and at the kind of
Speaker 3: fabulous price that movies deal in. Woh, said Arthur, holding
Speaker 3: the open letter in one hand and clutching for his
Speaker 3: pocket handkerchief with the other.
Speaker 2: Well that's pretty cot.
Speaker 3: He tried, as always to appear unconcerned, but Fran threw
Speaker 3: her arms around his neck and gave him a big kiss.
Speaker 3: You're wonderful, darling, she cried gaily. He sighed, trying not
Speaker 3: to show how pleased he was with the news at
Speaker 3: her attentions.
Speaker 2: At least those will play for the air conditioner for
Speaker 2: another summer.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 3: How did she tolerate this guy?
Speaker 2: I don't know, but she is pretty pretty kind to him,
Speaker 2: it seems.
Speaker 3: Uh. Then Fran took him by the elbow and steered
Speaker 3: him inside. You'll get back into the cave, she ordered him.
Speaker 3: It was their pet name for their sanctified haven of
Speaker 3: pure manufactured pollen tree air. The breeze died down, and
Speaker 3: with the wind gone, it grew very hot. Fran prepared
Speaker 3: a cold supper and brought it into Arthur's den. She
Speaker 3: thought it was actually much nicer here than outside, where
Speaker 3: the humidity had become a crescent. She looked out across
Speaker 3: the green country from the window of his study, and
Speaker 3: noticed and the failing light, the pockets of fog to
Speaker 3: the lower lives of land art, she said, turning away
Speaker 3: from her contemplation to the window scene and spooning up
Speaker 3: some of her potato salad. It's nice detail, she said.
Speaker 3: I think we ought to celebrate your latest triumph. She
Speaker 3: went back to American by the way, Kay, she forgot
Speaker 3: where she was from for a moment. He made a
Speaker 3: deprecating gesture with his hand. No, I really mean it.
Speaker 3: We haven't seen some of the old gang for a while.
Speaker 3: Jack and Cynthia, for instance. We ought to really have
Speaker 3: them out. And then there's Tim and Mary. Let's have
Speaker 3: quite a party, he warmed to the idea. Thinking about
Speaker 3: it as she went, she took some plates into the
Speaker 3: other part of the house and got some ice cream
Speaker 3: out of the freezer to bring it back to the study.
Speaker 3: She noticed then how warm the rest of the house
Speaker 3: was after the clean cool air of the cave. As
Speaker 3: an afterthought, she decided first to bring a deck chair
Speaker 3: in that they'd left on the terrace where she'd been
Speaker 3: sunning herself in shorts earlier that day. When Fran went outside,
Speaker 3: she noticed again the oppressive heaviness of the air made
Speaker 3: it hard to breathe. It made her sleepy. With the
Speaker 3: evening approach, the darkening sky was burned with purple and orange.
Speaker 3: She thought it probably meant another blisterer tomorrow. She went
Speaker 3: back into the cave with the ice cream in the plates,
Speaker 3: slammed the special door which hermetically sealed it, and they
Speaker 3: started talking about their plans again. This is the night
Speaker 3: of August fourteenth, the night which would initiate Arthur Hodges
Speaker 3: to the part he would play, which in its way,
Speaker 3: would make him as famous in the sweep of history
Speaker 3: as the names of Darwin, or Columbus or fran Aside
Speaker 3: from being pretty, was a methodical girl. She was self
Speaker 3: appointed watchdog of the budget. No Darling Brand insisted it
Speaker 3: would be a lot of fun to have a celebration
Speaker 3: next weekend would be fine, and she mentioned his very
Speaker 3: best friends, the Fisks and the Barns. Fill out the
Speaker 3: big guns. I'm going to call them, she said, resolutely.
Speaker 2: Do no.
Speaker 3: You'se trying to Arthur suggested.
Speaker 2: He's one of those office wretches, and you'd simply remind
Speaker 2: barn and I think he wasn't home. Yet, it's nearly eight.
Speaker 3: O'clock, said Fran, reproachfully with a new look at the
Speaker 3: small desk clock, getting ready to tinkle the news. I'll
Speaker 3: try Jack and Cynthia. Doodling with a phone pad, she
Speaker 3: noted the time eight pm, just as the clock chimed
Speaker 3: out musically, she asked the operator for the FISKS number
Speaker 3: and waited for three rings. Cynthia, she helloed to the
Speaker 3: feminine voice. It answered, it's Fran Hodges. Take it away.
Speaker 2: I will, but first I want to point out happily
Speaker 2: that Tinkle has made an appearance in both stories.
Speaker 3: Now, oh, that's right to tinkles.
Speaker 2: Arthur could hear the other girl squeal with delight over
Speaker 2: the phone. Fran began to explain the invitation, and from
Speaker 2: his wife's expression and the noises from the earpiece, Arthur,
Speaker 2: from the other side of the room could tell that
Speaker 2: the invitation had gone over well and the girls were
Speaker 2: about to get on all sorts of other subjects. He
Speaker 2: came over, say hello, to sit there for man, let
Speaker 2: me speak to that shyst the husband of hers. Fran
Speaker 2: wrinkled up her nose and mocked anger at this inner
Speaker 2: eruption of their gossip, but after all, it was his night. Cynthia,
Speaker 2: where's Jack, She relaid over the phone.
Speaker 3: Oh so early, Well, throw some water on him or something.
Speaker 3: Art wants to speak to him.
Speaker 2: She covered the mouthpiece with her hand.
Speaker 3: Old Ad just crept up on the barrister. Sin says,
Speaker 3: he's sleeping on the living room sofa.
Speaker 2: Probably what too many on the way home? Art put
Speaker 2: in irreverently. Oh, Jack, Friend's attention was called back to
Speaker 2: the phone.
Speaker 3: Don't make your excuses to me. If I were your wife,
Speaker 3: I'd make you do the dishes that would keep you awake.
Speaker 3: Here's my genius husband with a momentous word for you.
Speaker 3: It's probably a lie, Jack about his latest golf score.
Speaker 3: Don't believe it.
Speaker 2: Fran handed the receiver over to her husband. Oh, counselor
Speaker 2: said Art into the phone. They talked and joked, and
Speaker 2: then Jack relaid through Art to Fran. Some thought about
Speaker 2: a big casey heg coming up at the end of
Speaker 2: next week. If it broke in a certain way, he'd
Speaker 2: probably not be able to make it, or at least
Speaker 2: it would be difficult. He was hearing from the client involved.
Speaker 2: As a matter of fact. Later that evening, Friend made
Speaker 2: another face and took the phone away from Art.
Speaker 3: Jack put Cynthia back on. You men always louse everything up. Look, Sin,
Speaker 3: after Jack has heard from this old client, you call
Speaker 3: us back tonight, will you. Oh, we'll be up to
Speaker 3: well after midnight. How is it in there, hot? I
Speaker 3: bet it is. We're in the cave now to cure
Speaker 3: Art sniffles. I stepped outside for a minute after supper,
Speaker 3: and there wasn't a breath of air even here in
Speaker 3: the country. You be sure and do that, Sin. We'll
Speaker 3: wait for you. We're going to call Tim and Mary Barnes.
Speaker 3: We thought we'd get them because you and Jack can
Speaker 3: always beat them at bridge, and Art loves mister Barnes
Speaker 3: because he once took him in a golf match.
Speaker 2: Here from you later, baby friend hung up. It was
Speaker 2: eight thirty.
Speaker 3: Grains, a real pistol. We really shouldn't have talked so long,
Speaker 3: she reproached. But I guess we can afford it now,
Speaker 3: can't we.
Speaker 2: Genius Art ruffled her hair and then kissed an auburn
Speaker 2: curl on the top of her head. Night rates. He murmured,
Speaker 2: That's what I'm counting on.
Speaker 5: Tried Tim marry old mad Barnes ought to be hoped
Speaker 5: from his vulgar money baking pursuits by now, Gee, I'm
Speaker 5: glad I don't commute to the city every day and
Speaker 5: then come back to some suburban neighborhood house that looks
Speaker 5: so much like the neighbors on either side. You have
Speaker 5: to be careful, you don't go in the wrong door.
Speaker 5: Cut somewhere out to Bothe.
Speaker 3: You skirted very closely to Homer Simpson there first I did.
Speaker 2: That was a complete accident. I've never been able to
Speaker 2: do Homer. But now I know the secret.
Speaker 3: That's amazing.
Speaker 2: Yes, agreed, I just amazed myself. Should I continue?
Speaker 3: Ah? Sure?
Speaker 2: Frank gave the suburban number that belonged to the Barns,
Speaker 2: and Art stole the phone from her hand. The study
Speaker 2: window showed that it was completely dark outside. Now, miss Barnes,
Speaker 2: Arthur boomed, these are your long art country colored to
Speaker 2: the hodges. He frowned a bit, and after a moment,
Speaker 2: passed the phone back to his wife. His mouth formed
Speaker 2: the words think we just start them? Frank carried on nobly.
Speaker 2: Tim wasn't back from the city yet. Was it beastly hot?
Speaker 2: There couldn't be much worse off in the city. Oh, yes,
Speaker 2: Fran nodded to reassure Mary. She just talked to the
Speaker 2: Fisks and they said the city was simply unbearable. Poor Tim,
Speaker 2: what was keeping him? Well? Anyway, you too need a
Speaker 2: vacation in the country. How about next weekend. Look, we'll
Speaker 2: call again a bit later after Tim's home. She hung up. Funny,
Speaker 2: Fran said.
Speaker 3: It, what well, I mean, we lead this bucolic life
Speaker 3: of solitary splendor, where you can't see your next door
Speaker 3: neighbor's house without a telescope. We're supposed to be lazy
Speaker 3: and going to weed, while our city friends and their
Speaker 3: first cousins, the suburbanites are still supposed to be in
Speaker 3: there swinging with their eyes on the main chance.
Speaker 2: What's the point, Arthur asked.
Speaker 3: Oh, nothing, exactly, replied Fran. Except when we call these
Speaker 3: live wires. Jack sounds asleep at the end of a
Speaker 3: big career punching day, and Mary, well, I have the
Speaker 3: sneaky feeling we woke her up.
Speaker 5: Art nodded, Think you're right. Well, I always said this
Speaker 5: was the racking out here of the real country.
Speaker 3: Aren't you glad that I agree with you?
Speaker 2: Frank came over to his side and rumpled his hair.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't like it so much out here without me, honey.
Speaker 2: He said, and kissed her.
Speaker 3: Whah.
Speaker 2: Then he had a thought.
Speaker 5: You're gonna put the garage door down, did you?
Speaker 3: No? But silly, don't bother about it. It's not going
Speaker 3: to rain or snow tonight as.
Speaker 2: Well, said Art. Principals turn and all that. You know, silly, silly,
Speaker 2: said Fran.
Speaker 3: And you might get sneezing again.
Speaker 5: I hope I do so I could come back here.
Speaker 5: I really appreciate. But this setup is costure bay.
Speaker 3: Homer was it again? Yeah, just a little tinge, a
Speaker 3: homeric tinge.
Speaker 2: This also has just evolved into a John Cheevers story
Speaker 2: where a couple in the country's trying to get their
Speaker 2: city friends to come out for a night of bridge.
Speaker 3: Totally.
Speaker 2: You want to take it a call?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 3: Sure. He went out and into the unair conditioned part
Speaker 3: of the house. It was very warm, and almost immediately
Speaker 3: he began to sweat. God, how it must be in
Speaker 3: the city. He started out the back door and found
Speaker 3: he couldn't see a thing in the starless night. He
Speaker 3: came back and got the torch that hung in the
Speaker 3: coat closet, followed its rays to the garage. He thumbed
Speaker 3: the down switch that controlled the electric doors, and they
Speaker 3: rumbled into place. Because he got pleasure out of the
Speaker 3: accoutrement that science had designed for easier living, he thumbed
Speaker 3: the upswitch and watched the doors rise again. Doat up
Speaker 3: door groats down. It was neat the whole operation. He
Speaker 3: let them descend, and then stood there with the flash
Speaker 3: turned off, trying to see if his eyes would grow
Speaker 3: accustomed to the gloom. Somewhere out towards where the bird
Speaker 3: bath stood, a firefly pricked the wall of blackness. Momentarily,
Speaker 3: he shone the light and picked up the marble path.
Speaker 3: Oh more marble. Mm hm, you know what's good for that?
Speaker 2: A poultice made a baking soda in some water.
Speaker 3: That's right. Arthur walked a few steps away from the
Speaker 3: house in the garage, passed the bird bath towards the field,
Speaker 3: enjoying the freedom of these few steps as someone does
Speaker 3: who has even the relatively inoffensive restriction that he did.
Speaker 3: Things always looked different at night, he reminded himself, as
Speaker 3: he torched the yellow beam of the flashlight. Here and there,
Speaker 3: the trees and shrubbery had a particular lifeless aspect, as
Speaker 3: though they were prop scenery from the ridge that crowned
Speaker 3: the southern horizon of his property. The far away lights
Speaker 3: of a speeding car shoveled the gloom back for a
Speaker 3: few instants, and then with a vehicle gone on its
Speaker 3: dark errand there was nothing but the little light in
Speaker 3: his hand and the occasional, very seldom pinprick of a
Speaker 3: firefly off to the left, or perhaps over.
Speaker 2: To the right, and just.
Speaker 3: Not in front of him. The ground underneath his moccasins
Speaker 3: had its fine sheen of night dew. He could feel
Speaker 3: the taller blades of grass swish damply against his ankles.
Speaker 3: As he walked from out of the endless blackness that
Speaker 3: stretched away from where he stood across the universe, something
Speaker 3: came that blinked green and red in the sky. It
Speaker 3: was the male plane heading for the state capitol one
Speaker 3: hundred miles north, and idly he turned his flash upward
Speaker 3: and pinched the switch and a staccato series, then, thinking
Speaker 3: foolishly of the action, flicked it off to them. If anything,
Speaker 3: it would be as a firefly was to him, a
Speaker 3: tiny indistinct something for an instant against the pall of
Speaker 3: darkness that cover the earth.
Speaker 2: I just want to add here, Chuck that if you listener,
Speaker 2: like me, thought that that was going to become something
Speaker 2: later on, it doesn't.
Speaker 3: Well, it sort of does. The plane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, him flashing the plane, I thought something bad
Speaker 2: was going to come of it, and nothing does whatsoever?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right, but you know, if a plane flies
Speaker 3: over an act one, it may not fly over neck three.
Speaker 2: That's true, the spoiler. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The plane fled from him into the northern night, fled
Speaker 3: as though afraid, and a feeling of momentous loneliness welled
Speaker 3: up inside of him, making him turn abruptly so he
Speaker 3: could see the lights of the house, their house, brands
Speaker 3: and his you know, their house, the one they live in,
Speaker 3: just right there where he just came from.
Speaker 2: Sometimes off the left, sometimes off to the right.
Speaker 3: He walked rapidly back in this time, secured the front
Speaker 3: and back doors and windows for the night, before rejoining
Speaker 3: Fran in the cave. You can pick it up, but
Speaker 3: I believe I'm Fran.
Speaker 2: You are Nobody's called, she said petulantly.
Speaker 3: Have you been outside all this time fussing with that
Speaker 3: old garage door that tickles you?
Speaker 2: So he nodded, how many sneezes? Not one, he avowed,
Speaker 2: surprised at the realization himself. She squinted at him dubiously.
Speaker 2: Upop my honor. He put a hand on his heart
Speaker 2: and raised the other. I don't think there's a tough
Speaker 2: air out there to blow the old Paul on a
Speaker 2: round bity stuffy. He sank down in a chair and
Speaker 2: enjoyed the cool, pure oxygen of the room. I tell you, Fran,
Speaker 2: this thing's worth it. I mean, even if you didn't
Speaker 2: have an allergy or ghastly hay fever or anything.
Speaker 3: I'm picturing Dennis Hopper now in blue velvet, sucking off
Speaker 3: that mask.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was trying for Dennis Miller. No crop, this
Speaker 2: is silly, Fran said. After a while longer.
Speaker 3: I'm going to call the FISKS. They promised to call,
Speaker 3: and they have it.
Speaker 2: Fran picked up the receiver and it was just past
Speaker 2: ten thirty. Arthur went over and sat beside her, held
Speaker 2: his head close to hers eavesdropper, she whispered. They both
Speaker 2: stropp her. They both had the same reaction when the
Speaker 2: voice answered. As they said afterward, and as Arthur wrote it,
Speaker 2: it was don't forget he was a writer and he's wealthy.
Speaker 2: It was Cynthia's voice, and yet it wasn't. Arthur's first
Speaker 2: thought was that she'd been drinking. Fran more charitably thought
Speaker 2: that she was ill.
Speaker 3: Darling, you were going to call where's Jack? You sound
Speaker 3: a little funny.
Speaker 2: Cynthia talked, and as she talked her voice got stronger.
Speaker 2: It was so terribly hot there in town, she apologized.
Speaker 2: Finally Jack came to the phone, groggy in voice too. Yes,
Speaker 2: his client had called up quite a long time ago.
Speaker 2: It had been kind of unsatisfactory, but hang it all
Speaker 2: they'd come out the next weekend.
Speaker 3: I guess that should be Cynthia. I'm gonna mony python
Speaker 3: this whole thing, all right, all right, who is Cynthia?
Speaker 3: Who is Sydney?
Speaker 2: What's her motivation?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Exactly? Well she's not sounding well too though, right.
Speaker 2: No, she sounds very tired.
Speaker 6: Okay, gee, I think we need to get.
Speaker 2: Away, Cynthia confided.
Speaker 6: Jack's just worn out, and I feel pretty mush too.
Speaker 2: Then Frank couldn't get Cynthia's attention for a few minutes,
Speaker 2: and when the other girl came back on the phone,
Speaker 2: she had an edge of excitement in her voice, Chuck,
Speaker 2: can you hear that?
Speaker 6: Fan, I mean over the phone. Listen as I hold
Speaker 6: the mouth piece this way.
Speaker 4: Can you hear it?
Speaker 2: Fran listened intently, and Arthur pressed his ear as close
Speaker 2: to the receiver as he could. There was something like
Speaker 2: a hissy radiator, little boiler letting off steam. Cynthia came
Speaker 2: back on.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I think the heat Scottess.
Speaker 6: We just love to come out to the country.
Speaker 2: Before they rang up, which means hang up, hung up.
Speaker 2: Cynthia dropped the phone once and had to pick it up.
Speaker 2: Ran hung up. Worried, drunk, said Arthur. His hay fever
Speaker 2: had come back.
Speaker 3: Don't be silly, his wife.
Speaker 2: Is it remonstrated?
Speaker 3: I think remonstrated.
Speaker 2: Okay, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Remonstrat It sounds right too, but.
Speaker 2: Also it looks a lot like demonstrated. But the D
Speaker 2: and the R were switched at birth.
Speaker 3: That's right. Don't be silly.
Speaker 2: Oh, his wife remonstrated, remonstrated.
Speaker 3: She doesn't drink jack. Maybe once in a while, but
Speaker 3: she doesn't. I'm worried. I think they're both sick, like
Speaker 3: food poisoning or something.
Speaker 2: So now his hay fever is coming in and out
Speaker 2: by the second. Well, as long as it's over by
Speaker 2: the next weekend. Arthur put in, go ahead, try the
Speaker 2: Barnes And my little technique didn't work as well as
Speaker 2: I thought. But I was ramming the sides of my
Speaker 2: nose trying to come in and out of a nasally quality,
Speaker 2: and I can tell you from experience it doesn't work.
Speaker 3: Okay, don't try it at home.
Speaker 2: Frank gave the number and waited. The connection took quite
Speaker 2: a while, and when it was made, Arthur saw his
Speaker 2: wife's face tighten.
Speaker 3: I can hardly hear you, Mary. What is it. Yes,
Speaker 3: it's Fran Hodges. We're calling up about next weekend. What Mary?
Speaker 3: It's awfully hard to understand. You must be a bad connection.
Speaker 3: What's wrong with Tim?
Speaker 2: Arthur was watching her expression from the lounge chair.
Speaker 3: Yes, he's probably been working too hard. You don't sound
Speaker 3: too spry yourself, my chicken. Hey, listen, you both need
Speaker 3: a rest. What here? What?
Speaker 2: Fran's face blanched a bit then, and her eyes saw Arthur's.
Speaker 3: Now you just pack yourself into bed, young lady, and
Speaker 3: make your plans tomorrow morning. With that overworked money making
Speaker 3: husband of yours, come out before the weekend. Have Tim
Speaker 3: knock Off come out Wednesday. We'd love to have you anytime.
Speaker 2: Fran hung up slowly.
Speaker 3: I think our friends are all giving out. She sounded
Speaker 3: awfully funny and said, oh, you men are terrible. She
Speaker 3: said she couldn't seem to wake him up, that he
Speaker 3: got back from the station and just sort of collapsed. Apparently,
Speaker 3: Arthur commented.
Speaker 5: The Barns and the fifth separated by what fifty or
Speaker 5: sexty miles? And your theory is that they both got
Speaker 5: food points in from the Saint Bad oysters.
Speaker 3: We might eat subs for you.
Speaker 2: Can you understand what he's saying essentially? So this is
Speaker 2: what I'll do. I'll read it like that, unintelligibly, and
Speaker 2: then I'll explain what he just said.
Speaker 3: It's sort of like Gary Oldman and slow Horses. You
Speaker 3: really need to turn those subs on.
Speaker 2: Okay, I don't know the reference, but I will do
Speaker 2: what you say.
Speaker 3: Oh you don't watch the Horses. I thought you watched that.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: Is it a TV show?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Is it a limited series?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 3: No, I think it's in season five or so. It's great.
Speaker 2: I tried Tulsa King last night and was like, I'm
Speaker 2: just not in the mood for any like mean bullying
Speaker 2: right now. So I didn't go any further than the
Speaker 2: first like fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3: Oh, I have not seen that. But a friend of
Speaker 3: the show, Kevin Pollock, is in the new season.
Speaker 2: He sure is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're shooting here in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't know that. It looks a lot like Tulsa.
Speaker 3: I think they do some exteriors there, I see anyway,
Speaker 3: is this me?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: All right, Franz smiled. It's funny, though, art about one thing.
Speaker 3: She said something about hissing too, just like sin. Fran's
Speaker 3: hand came up to her mouth and her eyes got bigger. Darth,
Speaker 3: you don't suppose you don't suppose it's any sort of
Speaker 3: enemy attack. You know that article we read about, you
Speaker 3: know the way when war came this time, Arthur laughed heartily.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, So, by a quick instant poll on social media,
Speaker 2: we've decided that Arthur's hay fever no should go away.
Speaker 3: No snappole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now, wait a minute. I'm supposed to be the
Speaker 2: one with the imagination. I make money out of it,
Speaker 2: and you're doing it for free.
Speaker 3: She relaxed. But he saw the puzzlement was still in
Speaker 3: her face. To reassure her, he switched the radio on
Speaker 3: and the sounds of a jazzy record filled to study.
Speaker 3: The MC came on sounding sleepy, but then they all
Speaker 3: do and have her ages. There was certainly no momentous
Speaker 3: we interrupt this program to bring you a special bulletin.
Speaker 3: The president has just announced that this country has been
Speaker 3: attacked by and so forth. Nothing like that.
Speaker 2: He sounded like, pee wee herman.
Speaker 3: Oh Beijing, mister Harriman, that's right, that's one of my
Speaker 3: favorite parts of That's great. He saw that Frans Fright
Speaker 3: had passed. But then she said, resolutely turn that thing down, art,
Speaker 3: will you. I'm going to call Jack and Cynthia again.
Speaker 2: So he did another snappole, and it turns out people
Speaker 2: did like the nasally voice.
Speaker 3: After all, great, it's back.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 5: Look this time you really are going to wake them up.
Speaker 5: It's getting hot towards midnight.
Speaker 3: But I knew his wife, and when she was determined
Speaker 3: to do something, she did it. Luckily, he reflected many
Speaker 3: times in the past it usually had turned out to
Speaker 3: be the right thing. He shrugged his shoulders and said,
Speaker 3: half jokingly.
Speaker 5: Well, I warned you after this, they'll never even think
Speaker 5: of accepting our invitation next weekend, we'll be in their
Speaker 5: doghouse for weeks.
Speaker 3: Fran dialed the operator, gave the number, and in the
Speaker 3: interim before the connection was made, the quiet of the
Speaker 3: country seemed depressed from the black out of doors around
Speaker 3: them in this lit oasis of the night. Takes that
Speaker 3: operator an awfully long time, said fran aloud. Finally the
Speaker 3: ringing commenced. It seemed interminable to Art, sitting on the
Speaker 3: other side of the room. At last there was an
Speaker 3: answer for Franz said hello, Cynthia, but all was not well.
Speaker 3: Art knew from the way his wife's hand tightened to
Speaker 3: whiteness around the receiver. Frand seemed to be explaining, pleading,
Speaker 3: and finally Arthur came to her side and spoke down
Speaker 3: to her upturned.
Speaker 2: Face, what's the matter?
Speaker 3: She shook her head. He took the phone, and a
Speaker 3: sloth's voice assailed him, droning on. Fran was sitting on
Speaker 3: the edge of her chair, terrified that he called, sharply.
Speaker 2: What wrong, aren't you ill? Worre doc put a mom He.
Speaker 3: Could barely make sense out of this thing. Cynthia was
Speaker 3: saying slowly laboriously, as though drugged or sick, that Jack
Speaker 3: had passed out, and that funny she couldn't seem to
Speaker 3: get any help. He listened for a moment more and
Speaker 3: then hung up. Quickly he died for the operator, and
Speaker 3: after long seconds she came on.
Speaker 2: I'm going to call doctor McCollum in tout.
Speaker 3: Do you remember how fran nodded approval?
Speaker 2: So something really weird is going on with everybody.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is no John Cheever, No, I think.
Speaker 2: I suspect it has something to do with the shrubbery
Speaker 2: looking like movie props.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm going to start up again.
Speaker 3: You ready, I'm ready.
Speaker 2: He was a physician they'd known. This is a doctor McCollum,
Speaker 2: who Art's calling. He was a physician they'd known when
Speaker 2: they lived not many blocks away from the Fisks. The
Speaker 2: McCallum connection seemed to take an eternity, and then there
Speaker 2: was a voice at the other end. Arthur asked for
Speaker 2: the doctor, and the voice said, slowly, Doctormer calms Becking.
Speaker 2: Hodges identified himself and told what he thought that the Fisks,
Speaker 2: good friends of his, were apparently unable to get aid.
Speaker 2: Could doctor McCollum, go himself or get someone. There was
Speaker 2: a long pause, then the voice answered.
Speaker 5: Funny Hodges, damn funny, something strange.
Speaker 2: There was a noise and an interruption. Arthur's helloes brought
Speaker 2: no new response. He kept us back to Fran as
Speaker 2: he hung up for fear she would find fuel for
Speaker 2: her fright in his expression, he would try the Barnes.
Speaker 2: The minutes ticked away. Their village operator was apparently no
Speaker 2: here she was. He gave the number and there was
Speaker 2: another long wait, and then the sound of ringing in
Speaker 2: the city suburb. He waited no usual time, but allowed
Speaker 2: fully five minutes. Finally he pictured the scene. The phone
Speaker 2: was dragged from its cradle. It was Tim, a lethargic Tim,
Speaker 2: who slurred his words. Arthur asked Tim if Mary was
Speaker 2: all right? Was the mumbled answer, you.
Speaker 3: Know what's happening? What the deep browse, the beep drowse,
Speaker 3: the pep trows is happening?
Speaker 2: Okay, Arthur spoke quickly. Then I want you listen to
Speaker 2: me carefully, call a doctor, Tim, or your local police.
Speaker 2: Do it immediately.
Speaker 3: Do you hear me?
Speaker 2: Hear you, echoed the voice weakly. Tullip, tell them how
Speaker 2: you feel and ask for help. Do that, Tim, do
Speaker 2: it right away. The voice at the other end gurgled
Speaker 2: something unintelligibly.
Speaker 6: Oh god, what.
Speaker 2: Arthur cradled the phone. He turned squarely to face frame.
Speaker 2: Something happened, darl like, I don't know what. See what
Speaker 2: you can get on the radio. She jumped at his bidding.
Speaker 2: He was at the phone again, dialing, dialing. Finally, the
Speaker 2: operator sounding like Cynthia, like doctor McCollum, like Tim. The police,
Speaker 2: he said, distinctly, great band, give me the police. The
Speaker 2: operator's fumblings were audible. He heard her mouth the word
Speaker 2: police as a drunk would. But at last her instinctive
Speaker 2: reflex is taking over, he guessed. The connection was made.
Speaker 2: A gruff male voice mumbled what might have been police heads,
Speaker 2: and then subsided into a deep, long yawn. Before Arthur
Speaker 2: had a chance to say anything. Look, this is Arthur Hodges,
Speaker 2: he persevered. I big colleagues of friends abide around the country,
Speaker 2: and I don't know what it is, but everybody acts
Speaker 2: kind of drugged. The policeman's gruff voice mumbled something about
Speaker 2: just drunks, yawned again and became quiet. Hello, Hello, shouted Arthur.
Speaker 2: There was no response, he hung up. Finally, Darling Frank
Speaker 2: called a small, frightened voice, Starley from the other side
Speaker 2: of the room.
Speaker 3: There seems to be an awful lot of silences on
Speaker 3: the air, even for past one.
Speaker 2: But even as she spoke, a cophony of jazz broke
Speaker 2: into the still room, and they both brightened with the
Speaker 2: noise of a saxophone being strangled over and over again. Ark,
Speaker 2: the jobs are down, he said, in an attempt at lightness.
Speaker 2: They sat and waited for what neither knew. Frank kept
Speaker 2: looking at the telephone, and they both had their ears
Speaker 2: glued to the radio. It was a typical all night
Speaker 2: disc jockey show, the record set up in a series
Speaker 2: beforehand and automatically playing one after another, but without the
Speaker 2: MC's comments between each. That was Arthur's fear, but he
Speaker 2: did not give words to it. He knew Fran and
Speaker 2: he knew what she was thinking. He was thinking himself.
Speaker 2: Somehow something had happened. The record on now was something
Speaker 2: by Andre Pustole. Yes, it had a noisome, crashing crescendo
Speaker 2: at the end. The silence following it was, by contrast,
Speaker 2: even heavier. No other record, no voice making between disc comments,
Speaker 2: They both waited, smiled bravely inside their heads, thinking the
Speaker 2: next minute, the next second, there are silences on the air.
Speaker 2: Suppose you had to go to the washroom. Even disc
Speaker 2: jockeys are human. Somebody will come on. But there was nothing.
Speaker 2: Finally they knew it. They looked at each other, and
Speaker 2: Arthur managed another smile. Franz answering grin. Like the radio
Speaker 2: lacked life, to keep busy, to keep from saying anything.
Speaker 2: Arthur picked up the phone again. He held it free
Speaker 2: for fifteen minutes, dialing at intervals, but there was no operator,
Speaker 2: and the telephone was as dead as if he must
Speaker 2: wait till tomorrow for it to be invented.
Speaker 3: All right, should I pick it up? H All right,
Speaker 3: here we go. There were still the dial numbers left
Speaker 3: to him, and one after or another, Arthur methodically dialed
Speaker 3: the numbers of friends and acquaintances. Hereabouts the phones would ring,
Speaker 3: each with their different timber, but there were no answers.
Speaker 3: Across the dark brow at the town with its mantle
Speaker 3: of night. From this valley and this ridge on across
Speaker 3: the black shrouded lanes and vales and hills, the phones
Speaker 3: chimed and vibrated and rang and shrill, but they stopped
Speaker 3: only when he admitted defeat by hanging up across this
Speaker 3: town and further, much further. As he knew, there seemed
Speaker 3: no one. A peculiar theory was forming in Arthur's mind.
Speaker 3: After all, they were all right, unaffected. Apparently there was
Speaker 3: a mister Hoskins, a small bentman who was caretaker at
Speaker 3: the movie house. He took tickets and often worked in
Speaker 3: the projection room and slept in the barn like building
Speaker 3: at night, for he, like Arthur, was a hay fever sufferer.
Speaker 3: The building was air conditioned, even though not with the
Speaker 3: scientific perfection of the cave. Anyway, Hoskins swore it helped.
Speaker 3: So Arthur called the theater, knowing that the late movie
Speaker 3: would have been out now for about an hour. The
Speaker 3: phone was downstairs. He could picture it from his and
Speaker 3: Frans excursions by a window in the lobby. Hoskins room
Speaker 3: was above. The phone rang and rang. It was like
Speaker 3: those others. As he was about to give up, a
Speaker 3: click made it suddenly importantly different, and there was Hoskins,
Speaker 3: his old man's quavering voice, sleepy and queerless. But it
Speaker 3: made sense, as he understood. When Arthur identified himself.
Speaker 2: Mister hawk sits listen very carefully. Your life may depend
Speaker 2: on it.
Speaker 3: The other man made some protest about was this a joke,
Speaker 3: but Arthur went.
Speaker 5: On, whatever you do, whatever you do, mister Hoskins, don't go.
Speaker 3: But the caretaker broke in.
Speaker 2: I think you're the caretaker. If anybody you're born to
Speaker 2: play that part.
Speaker 3: That's right way, mister Hodges.
Speaker 6: Mister Hodges through the window here, I can see him
Speaker 6: through the street. There's really some people lying there, mister Hodges.
Speaker 6: I think there must have been an accident. I have
Speaker 6: to go out and see.
Speaker 2: See. That was wonderful. I could not come up with
Speaker 2: that one.
Speaker 3: Uh take it over.
Speaker 2: Even as Arthur screamed at the man screamed no, no,
Speaker 2: what urry dude, don't go out. He knew it was
Speaker 2: too late. The phone clicked and Hoskins was off on
Speaker 2: his Errand there must be others like that, Arthur reasoned,
Speaker 2: in the country, in the state, the nation. But who
Speaker 2: knew how broad this was or what it was? But
Speaker 2: had those others any chance? Without knowing suspecting, Arthur made
Speaker 2: up his mind, rad I'm going out a bit. She
Speaker 2: was on her feet, her arms around him, tears very
Speaker 2: close to the surface.
Speaker 3: No art, Please, don't, please, please, something's terribly wrong. Don't
Speaker 3: leave me.
Speaker 2: He held her gently and caressed her red hair, only
Speaker 2: for a take of friend, Honey, I'm trying to dope
Speaker 2: this thing out.
Speaker 3: It's war, isn't it? Art? Some kind of poison gas.
Speaker 5: I don't know, honey, but it's the best that I
Speaker 5: can take a turn around outside. I won't go far,
Speaker 5: but we've got to know what's going on, you mean,
Speaker 5: she said.
Speaker 3: Hopefully we might be in some sort of pocket here
Speaker 3: on the ridge that doesn't get the gas.
Speaker 2: Could be, he said, but it was a forlorn hope.
Speaker 2: He took the flashlight and she walked him to the
Speaker 2: door of the cave, her fingers entwined tightly in his.
Speaker 3: If you're not back in ten minutes, I'm coming.
Speaker 2: Out, don't worry. Frad He opened the door abruptly and
Speaker 2: shut it as quickly, walking rapidly through the other part
Speaker 2: of the house, The air impressed him immediately. It was
Speaker 2: flat and had a peculiar stale quality, although some of
Speaker 2: this he discounted as being the result of having just
Speaker 2: come from the pure oxygen of the cave. They left
Speaker 2: that part out there breathing pure oxygen in the cave. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it seems foolish. He didn't bother to turn on the
Speaker 2: other house lights, but used his flash instead. The bright
Speaker 2: wallpaper and the cheerful chintz on the chairs looked strangely
Speaker 2: forlorn and unreal. Outside, the black world was very quiet,
Speaker 2: as quiet as any two am. As he stood on
Speaker 2: the terrace, he first noticed lightheadedness. A feeling of illness
Speaker 2: touched the pit of his stone, and the palms of
Speaker 2: his hands began to sweat unduly. He thought it back
Speaker 2: as best he could, listening looking for any other sound
Speaker 2: or sign in the night around of human movement, a
Speaker 2: car light from the state highway up the ridge, a
Speaker 2: plane in the heavens, a train whistle in the distance.
Speaker 2: There was nothing. There might not have been in this
Speaker 2: chosen space of time at this hour, anyway, but it
Speaker 2: was peculiarly disturbing. His brain was suddenly dull and very lonely.
Speaker 2: He wanted to sit there and then on the terrace,
Speaker 2: to recline, to put the flashlight down, loosen his belt
Speaker 2: in his collar. He turned and sped for the door
Speaker 2: of the house, his heart pounding, lights within his head
Speaker 2: despite himself and the chiding that it was purely psychological.
Speaker 2: He yawned and knew the yawn was real. Fatigue and
Speaker 2: sleepiness had struck suddenly like a heavy dose of sedative.
Speaker 2: Still going, yeah, all right, he found the knob and
Speaker 2: jerked it open through the dark corridors of the unlit
Speaker 2: part of the house and thankfully reached the door of
Speaker 2: the cave. Yanked it open and went in. His face
Speaker 2: showed more than he wanted it to, for fran came
Speaker 2: over to him and there were tears in her eyes.
Speaker 3: Are you all right, Arthur?
Speaker 2: He nodded his head and tried to smile, but the
Speaker 2: heaviness was still on him. He turned his head away
Speaker 2: so she wouldn't see his yawn, and sat down. Very suddenly,
Speaker 2: his wristwatch told him that he'd been gone but eight minutes,
Speaker 2: a very short time, so that if franz hunch about
Speaker 2: the poison gas was right, it must be a fairly
Speaker 2: potent one to strike so fast in the oxygen of
Speaker 2: the cave. Hodges soon felt better. As the small hours
Speaker 2: of the morning wore on. He made trips into other
Speaker 2: parts of the house, quick trips for his tolerance to
Speaker 2: the outside seemed to grow less and less. The almost
Speaker 2: incredible drowsiness became stronger, and he could stay away less
Speaker 2: long each time.
Speaker 3: All right, but in those trips he brought every bit
Speaker 3: of food in the house back to the cave, some sternocns,
Speaker 3: and whatever odds and ends he decided they might need.
Speaker 3: At five am, they held what he called a council
Speaker 3: of war. There was, Arthur admitted something going on. What
Speaker 3: it was, he didn't know and couldn't guess, but they
Speaker 3: were particularly lucky for their hermetically sealed quarters and the
Speaker 3: oxygen supply. They ran the radio dial up and down
Speaker 3: at intervals and found only silence. Arthur tried Hoskins again
Speaker 3: on a forlorn chance. There was no answer. No operator
Speaker 3: answered when he dialed the zero.
Speaker 2: It didn't be alone right now.
Speaker 3: He admitted. The first threads of gray were streaking the
Speaker 3: eastern view, and Arthur packed Fran onto the couch with
Speaker 3: a blanket around her, and saw her dripped off for
Speaker 3: a little nap. He sat at the desk and calculated
Speaker 3: the two most important items of their lives now food
Speaker 3: and oxygen. Of the you need water, that's really the
Speaker 3: most important. He forgot that part of these. The latter
Speaker 3: was a prime significance. The can goods, he felt could
Speaker 3: be rationed to last almost indefinitely. They'd had quite a
Speaker 3: stock in the kitchen cabinets, but oxygen. He toted up
Speaker 3: the number of fresh cylinders available. It seems like that
Speaker 3: should be totalled. But whatever, with continuous use, usually they
Speaker 3: turned the mechanism off to save on the precious stuff.
Speaker 2: As the spirit of E. F. Benson that's right.
Speaker 3: Their supply would last at the most seven or eight days.
Speaker 3: It was unthinkable that by then some explanation or solution
Speaker 3: to this whole business would not be found. At the worst,
Speaker 3: in that time an enemy would take possession, but they
Speaker 3: would at least be free from their present dilemma. It
Speaker 3: was daylight when Fran woke up, and the sun was
Speaker 3: a molten gold burning a hole through the hazy sky.
Speaker 3: As on the previous evening. The trees stood silent, almost
Speaker 3: too tired to hold up their limbs. The breath of
Speaker 3: the air stirred it was though the outside All outside
Speaker 3: was a vacuum. They opened some cans and ate, and
Speaker 3: then Arthur went into the adjacent bedroom and slept till noon.
Speaker 3: When he awoke and rejoined fran in the study. Her
Speaker 3: fright had surged upward again. He found out why almost
Speaker 3: immediately she'd admitted she'd gone out. There was some small
Speaker 3: things she wanted to get the feeling art. It was
Speaker 3: so terrible. Well, I couldn't fight against it. It was
Speaker 3: like when you take either at the hospital and you
Speaker 3: begin to float. You fight and fight, but it's stronger
Speaker 3: than you are. I just got back here. I almost
Speaker 3: fell outside the door, but I got back. It angered
Speaker 3: him a little, for he had been asleep, and if
Speaker 3: she failed to get back, he wouldn't have known until
Speaker 3: probably too late. They swore not to leave the cave
Speaker 3: hereafter at all unless absolutely necessary, and then only while
Speaker 3: the others stood by inside to perform rescue work if
Speaker 3: need be. They spent hours talking, wondering, speculating. They coaxed
Speaker 3: and wheedled the radio for sounds. It would not come.
Speaker 3: Commercials and soap operas and five piece bands became precious
Speaker 3: by their very absence. And then, as a writer will
Speaker 3: under almost any circumstances, Arthur found his way to the
Speaker 3: typewriter and began tapping the keys. Franz said, with mock pestilence,
Speaker 3: my God, you're not going to do a story now, Darling.
Speaker 3: You've forgotten, but we don't know if you have any
Speaker 3: audience left anywhere. The joke fell flat, perhaps too frightfully
Speaker 3: true for all they knew to be funny.
Speaker 2: We took another snappole, and everyone agrees that I should
Speaker 2: do Arthur as euphoric.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, no, Fran, Arthur replied, seriously, I just want to.
Speaker 2: Put the dope down on this thing since last night,
Speaker 2: sort of a chronology. You know, you can fuss with
Speaker 2: those tin cans, and so I like to keep busy.
Speaker 2: I might as well be this.
Speaker 3: And he began to bang away at the typewriter. Take
Speaker 3: it away.
Speaker 2: At first. Time passed very slowly, as though the weight
Speaker 2: of doubt that clouded their minds clung to the hands
Speaker 2: of the clock, slowed them so that one wondered if
Speaker 2: time too, had become affected by the lethargy of the
Speaker 2: outside world. Occasionally, Arthur or Fran, one or the other
Speaker 2: of them would go to the phone dial the operator
Speaker 2: or some familiar, unfamiliar number series. There was ringing showing
Speaker 2: that the inanimate sinews of wire and electricity and mechanical
Speaker 2: appliances were still alive, but nothing else, and the radio hummed.
Speaker 2: The small needle that moved across the dial from low
Speaker 2: to high chilicycles. Touching the familiar stations that customarily fed
Speaker 2: so much noise, both human and instrument, into a nation's ear,
Speaker 2: found nothing on its course. They spent much time at
Speaker 2: the windows of the study and bedroom. Off of it.
Speaker 2: They looked out at the countryside, so green with August,
Speaker 2: so familiar with things they had done. Why there see
Speaker 2: from the window was a divot dug in the lawn
Speaker 2: where Arthur had practiced as golf swing. Now in the
Speaker 2: late afternoon, there was still some haze across the land,
Speaker 2: but the sun had burned part of it away. Still,
Speaker 2: though there was no wind, and all the outside had
Speaker 2: the flat, motionless appearance of scenery weird. Without giving voice
Speaker 2: to their reason, both Arthur and fran took themselves to
Speaker 2: the window. At six p m. A four motored commercial
Speaker 2: passenger plane always shot over just southward. At the time.
Speaker 2: It was a twilight flight that impressed itself on them
Speaker 2: with the roar of its high speed, heavy motors. Arthur
Speaker 2: had joked once that he could even feel the vibration.
Speaker 2: Sitting in his bathtub. Six came and went, as did
Speaker 2: six point fifteen. A quarter of an hour later, which
Speaker 2: is appropriate. Towards six point thirty, Franz said, matter of.
Speaker 3: Factly, I guess there's no plane either.
Speaker 2: Arthur turned from the window and translated that fact onto paper.
Speaker 2: It was after supper out of cans that fran sitting
Speaker 2: cross legged on the floor, asked, suddenly.
Speaker 3: What are we going to do? We can stay here
Speaker 3: only so long. Suppose we're the only people.
Speaker 2: She left the sentence unfinished, and her fingers went to
Speaker 2: her temples. He boshed and poo pooed. But much later,
Speaker 2: after she was asleep in the bedroom, he examined the
Speaker 2: oxygen supply, computed the number of full cylinders left, and
Speaker 2: adjusted the flow of the precious air downward. The days
Speaker 2: went a little faster than as though for spite. Arthur
Speaker 2: worked some of the time at his typewriter, and Franz
Speaker 2: stood looking over his shoulder, not once again saying what
Speaker 2: she'd said.
Speaker 3: First, But darling, who's going to read this?
Speaker 2: If it had been a joke, then it was not.
Speaker 2: Now the telephone, it might as well be that the
Speaker 2: wires were cut radio likewise, it was like a detective
Speaker 2: play cat and the canary, or people marooned on an island,
Speaker 2: and the most important people in their lives were the long,
Speaker 2: gray oblong cylinders with the silver diamond shaped labels that
Speaker 2: said oxygen dangerous, inflammable, which means flammable. They were people,
Speaker 2: They lived, or at least they contributed life, and their
Speaker 2: two lives would last just so.
Speaker 3: Long, Darling, I've got an awful headache. I feel funny.
Speaker 2: And Arthur would have to turn up the oxygen supply
Speaker 2: a bit more, for it was quite suddenly seven days
Speaker 2: now the length of time their air supply would last them.
Speaker 2: But he had husbanded it.
Speaker 3: Never heard that term.
Speaker 2: I think this is you, buddy.
Speaker 3: They talked less now. A few times Art came upon
Speaker 3: Fran in the bedroom crying, but she always tried to
Speaker 3: hide it and found him a smile on short notice.
Speaker 3: That's a great sentence. Toward the end of their alloted time,
Speaker 3: as Arthur could figure it, as the last cylinder hissed
Speaker 3: out its oxygen, he wondered whether it would be better
Speaker 3: to stay here in the cave and let the stale
Speaker 3: air slowly, ever so slowly, sap their strengthen their senses,
Speaker 3: or whether they should open the door and go outside
Speaker 3: into whatever there was waiting out there. But Fran, to
Speaker 3: whom he had not wanted to bring up the subject,
Speaker 3: had thought of it. Two spoke of it, and together
Speaker 3: they decided that the known capital K was better than
Speaker 3: the unknown capital U. Besides, they'd had experience out there,
Speaker 3: and the memory of that sudden, melancholy and pathological drowsiness
Speaker 3: was not all pleasant. They started on what must be
Speaker 3: the last day. Arthur announced, somewhat weakly, for there wasn't
Speaker 3: much air left, that they'd stretch the oxygen out five
Speaker 3: days more than he'd figure it the twelfth day, murmured Fran.
Speaker 3: It reminded her of something biblical. Arthur had finished whatever
Speaker 3: he had to finish at the typewriter earlier, with nearly
Speaker 3: the last of the strength in his fingers. The page
Speaker 3: merely gave the fact of their predicament, the supreme fact
Speaker 3: of which was that their fresh oxygen had been gone
Speaker 3: since early morning. Nobody had worried about opening a can
Speaker 3: of food this day. Instead, they found themselves arm in
Speaker 3: arm and the settee by the window. He gave Fran
Speaker 3: an affectionate squeeze and noted with the terrible sadness that
Speaker 3: must be controlled for her sake. How pale she looked,
Speaker 3: he knew that he likewise must look affright. They'd leaned
Speaker 3: their heads together, their foreheads rested against the window pane.
Speaker 3: It was another warm day from the feel of the
Speaker 3: thick glass, and already the temperature of the room without
Speaker 3: its fresh, mechanically cooled oxygen, had risen noticeably. It was
Speaker 3: no day to die, Arthur thought, as men have thought
Speaker 3: of every day so marked by destiny capital. Indeed, he
Speaker 3: looked at the greenness outside, the sameness, so funny that
Speaker 3: all this had happened, that all this could have happened.
Speaker 3: He felt very tired. His breath was shallow and unsatisfying.
Speaker 3: Fran pressed against him, and he'd managed to turn his head.
Speaker 3: She was crying, and he kissed her. Their mouths dry
Speaker 3: except for where tear ran down and touched their lips
Speaker 3: in This would be at least their way to die
Speaker 3: as completely together as two people could be. Yeah, not
Speaker 3: quite h and that had compensation. He was going to
Speaker 3: tell her after the kiss how much he loved her.
Speaker 3: When her head moved away from his, her eyes slid
Speaker 3: from his eyes to peer out It widened and a
Speaker 3: little gasp came from her mouth. He turned. It was
Speaker 3: an effort. He looked where she was looking through the
Speaker 3: window into the outside the lawn. D D take it away?
Speaker 2: Uh? Yeah, Before I do, I should say to all
Speaker 2: of the listeners who are used to our episodes for
Speaker 2: Halloween and are like, wow, this one's going really long.
Speaker 2: We don't practice these, and we had no idea how
Speaker 2: long this one was going to be, so we're finding
Speaker 2: out with you.
Speaker 3: I read this in twenty minutes myself, but uh, you.
Speaker 2: Know, did you speed read it?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 2: You know, well I added some time with all of
Speaker 2: my jokes, snapples, quips and stupid stuff in the first one.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right, let's get on with it.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, The lifeless stage scenery had become alive for there,
Speaker 2: Hopping nonchalantly across the grass was a plump brown rabbit.
Speaker 2: It seemed to eye their window for a moment, as
Speaker 2: though it knew of the two people there, and then
Speaker 2: a hippity hopped unconcernedly on toward the terrace. The two
Speaker 2: overwhelmed people turned from their window, uttered small, meaningless noises.
Speaker 2: They made their way to the door of the cave.
Speaker 2: As best they could. Fran reached at first, but they
Speaker 2: pulled it open and went out together, arm in arm,
Speaker 2: leaving behind the manuscript neatly clipped and piled on the
Speaker 2: typewriter table, memorandum of the twelve days that eternity that
Speaker 2: had yet been so short. The rest of the house
Speaker 2: burst upon their senses, the familiar furniture, the bright wall paper.
Speaker 2: Fran was sobbing unashamedly, and Arthur, with a surge of
Speaker 2: new strength, helped her forward. After the stale, nearly airless
Speaker 2: atmosphere of the cave, even the hot stuffiness of out
Speaker 2: here was welcomed. They made the terrace door, and their
Speaker 2: weakness was a joke to be laughed at. Now they
Speaker 2: went out. They staggered out onto the lawn and the
Speaker 2: sob beneath their feet, hard and dry, for lack of
Speaker 2: rain still was a treat for their footsteps. They had
Speaker 2: not walked far when Arthur realized, with the stabbing shock
Speaker 2: of a knife in the heart, that all was not well.
Speaker 2: The same feelings as before, not the weakness and suffocation
Speaker 2: of the cave a few moments earlier, but the before
Speaker 2: when they'd been outside, since this terrible thing had happened.
Speaker 2: He turned abruptly and almost fell, and they reached for
Speaker 2: each other for mutual support. He saw that Fran was
Speaker 2: so affected too. They had not walked far, but it
Speaker 2: was too far. The stretch of lawn to the terrace
Speaker 2: to the back door was impossible, leagues uphill, dragging weight
Speaker 2: beyond measure. They fell together and lay close, panting into
Speaker 2: one another's face. There was simply an overwhelming desire to sleep,
Speaker 2: to rest. Now. Arthur saw it in Fran's face, and
Speaker 2: he had not the heart to hold up her bedtime,
Speaker 2: nor the strength to stay sleeping himself. The grass was
Speaker 2: home in a mattress, and as his head came down
Speaker 2: to it, the greenness unfolded and engulfed him. The rabbit, meantime,
Speaker 2: popped unconcerned around the corner of the house and perhaps
Speaker 2: wondered at the strange antics of these humans as he
Speaker 2: took his plump brown body across the lawn and into
Speaker 2: the field beyond.
Speaker 3: All right, this is about to get Scooby, dude.
Speaker 2: It is. But also I just want to say I
Speaker 2: triumphantly finished Arthur's parts.
Speaker 3: Well done, Robo.
Speaker 2: The same to you, my friend. You did a great sin,
Speaker 2: a great fran a great mister Hoskins, all of them bamed.
Speaker 3: Nice work. All right, I'll take this part and then
Speaker 3: you can take it home at the next Here we
Speaker 3: go the conclusion of the Beep Drowse. The Institute of
Speaker 3: Hieroglyphics had made an intensive study of all data, particularly
Speaker 3: with an eye to evaluating and discovering new facts concerning
Speaker 3: that momentous change in the solar system whose influences had
Speaker 3: caused what came to be known in future eons as
Speaker 3: the suspension polty capitalists. Amazingly enough, one of the clearest
Speaker 3: records found for in the beginning it did not seem
Speaker 3: possible that this species could be wiped out universally and
Speaker 3: so abruptly, was one made by a biped who confessed
Speaker 3: ability in existence was the making of hieroglyphics. It had
Speaker 3: taken much time, of course, for the Institute and other
Speaker 3: such institutes to understand these record symbols of another age.
Speaker 3: But this biped, whose name was A. Hodges, this is
Speaker 3: art with his companion Biped F. Hodges, good old friend,
Speaker 3: had written of the twelve days a day being a
Speaker 3: measure of time commonly used by biped science. It was
Speaker 3: in its way a classic the sudden, far more sudden
Speaker 3: than could be imagined by the most sanguine thinking of
Speaker 3: that time. The suspension of Biped civilization. This A. Hodges
Speaker 3: had told well of it in his Marks, and the
Speaker 3: Institute of Hieroglyphics, along with the other learned of the age,
Speaker 3: were inclined to accept the details set down as an
Speaker 3: accurate picture of what had taken place, at least in
Speaker 3: the first twelve days of the suspension. From the start
Speaker 3: of this event which Biped thinking would have unquestionably accepted
Speaker 3: and labeled a catastrophe, to the end of the record,
Speaker 3: there was, interestingly enough, no accurate guesses on the part
Speaker 3: of the one identified as A. Hodges as to the
Speaker 3: real significance of what was happening. Those who had studied
Speaker 3: tribal customs and actions of the Biped world averred that
Speaker 3: in that faraway period, the chief concern of any segment
Speaker 3: was that some other faction would make war upon them,
Speaker 3: a word which had vanished from the now capital n
Speaker 3: but meant the violent attacked with intent to destroy as
Speaker 3: much in the way of living organisms and material as possible.
Speaker 3: Message Biped Hodges had concerned himself with marking referring to
Speaker 3: Adam Baum and poison gas. It took some time before
Speaker 3: present eon scientists could correctly evaluate precisely what these terms meant,
Speaker 3: but both were eventually tied in by semanticists, which the
Speaker 3: tribal factionalism and the obvious intent of Biped to destroy Biped.
Speaker 3: It was the most interesting report this hieroglyphic of Hodges,
Speaker 3: for at first it was quite difficult for these enlightened
Speaker 3: of the now capital n to appreciate fully what had
Speaker 3: gone on. And then the capital t an examination of
Speaker 3: the universe and the Earth does not reveal everything, for
Speaker 3: after all, meanings and values themselves change.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, so this is taking place way into the future.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, they found his writings and don't even know
Speaker 3: what war is. And interesting to see what happens here. Right.
Speaker 2: For instance, much of the lore of those misshrouded dark
Speaker 2: ages had been handed on from generation to generation of
Speaker 2: the enlightened by what in the vernacular of the then
Speaker 2: would have been called informers in those unions called households
Speaker 2: of the biped age. Even the use of the word
Speaker 2: biped must be qualified, for there are, as any student
Speaker 2: knows bipeds today but not uniquely so, whereas in the
Speaker 2: then the biped was supreme and reigned over all, including
Speaker 2: the other forms of life that inhabited the planet, whose
Speaker 2: moraseabilities in true eventual place were neither understood nor even
Speaker 2: considered by the biped. Painstakingly information from that forgotten biped
Speaker 2: species was gathered, and of the catastrophe that had removed
Speaker 2: them from the rule of the Earth. It seemed apparent
Speaker 2: now that some cosmic force, whose mechanization had been set
Speaker 2: in motion by the shifting of great astrobodies, had altered
Speaker 2: not only the oxygen belt which surrounds this globe some
Speaker 2: very made up, but more subtly altered its ingredients. Of
Speaker 2: all living things, only the biped species, which then ruled
Speaker 2: the world had been unable to adjust to it. Because
Speaker 2: of certain structural peculiarities of the cortex. The race had
Speaker 2: been stupefied, made unconscious by the withdrawal from other's atmospheres
Speaker 2: of an ingredient necessary for the retention by the species
Speaker 2: of consciousness. The Hodges Report and other hardwon indications proved
Speaker 2: this beyond a doubt, and it was accepted by historians. Contrary,
Speaker 2: of course, to the hieroglyphics manuscript, there had been no
Speaker 2: poison gases such. There had been instead a closing of
Speaker 2: that conscious and the biped species went into a state
Speaker 2: of suspension through sleep, though it was in the last
Speaker 2: analysis starvation that caused the wiping out of that civilization. Later,
Speaker 2: these atmospheric alterations had righted themselves.
Speaker 3: So people fell into a drowse and slept such that
Speaker 3: they didn't eat and starved to death in their sleep.
Speaker 2: Pretty gnarly jeez. Another day of considerable moment in this
Speaker 2: present eon had occurred not too long ago, when ours
Speaker 2: had brought from some remote far cave place a biped who,
Speaker 2: as the last of his species, had survived. It seemed
Speaker 2: that somewhere else in the world at the time of
Speaker 2: the Great Suspension, two bipeds, one of each sex, had
Speaker 2: survived through some quirk of fate and nature. They had
Speaker 2: passed on what was left to their age through children
Speaker 2: and children's children, and so on and so forth through
Speaker 2: the years, but conditions were now too adverse for them
Speaker 2: to multiply and take back the earth as they would
Speaker 2: indubitably try to. Present historians surmised had they been able
Speaker 2: for centuries, this spark from another age had rekindled itself
Speaker 2: with new prodigy reared in a cave high in a
Speaker 2: ridge of desolate mountains at the loneliest spot in the world.
Speaker 2: Atmospheric conditions in that spot, because of natural phenomena, maintained
Speaker 2: a vacuum which allowed the retention of an ozone form
Speaker 2: not antagonistic to the Biped. But the day of greatest
Speaker 2: moment was when the last Biped was brought to the
Speaker 2: administration building. Nature Samantisis decided had robbed this one of
Speaker 2: his last chance to prolong himself in flesh and blood image.
Speaker 2: I don't know what that means, but it sounds bad.
Speaker 2: He came then to their administration halls, a strange creature
Speaker 2: on two legs, making strange, angry sounds that until the
Speaker 2: wisest were summoned, could not be interpreted. As the Biped
Speaker 2: stood in front of their councils, they urged a tablet
Speaker 2: on him and a writing device, and this being, thinking
Speaker 2: that perhaps his message would reach those of his kind
Speaker 2: somewhere some day, made markings feverishly. Then the Biped was
Speaker 2: led away, despite his violence and ravings, orders were given
Speaker 2: to care for him, well, feed him, and give attention
Speaker 2: to his every need. Afterward, wise and aged scholars were
Speaker 2: brought to study the tablet. This then had been a member,
Speaker 2: the last member of that race which had called itself human.
Speaker 2: The human had written angrily and self chiding that he
Speaker 2: had been captured by jack in wolves and brought before
Speaker 2: a jury composed of a lynx, a giraffe, two squirrels,
Speaker 2: a bear, and other creatures. His hieroglyphic markings had trailed
Speaker 2: off at the end, but there were words of obscure
Speaker 2: meaning which the wise men decided stood for anger markings.
Speaker 2: So chuck. Thus the big reveal. Eh, yeah, we'll talk
Speaker 2: about it in a second. Despite the best of care,
Speaker 2: the Biped died not long afterward, still, according to records
Speaker 2: of the event, making loud noises at his caretakers. In
Speaker 2: reviewings of the whole affair at Animal Institute, it was
Speaker 2: decided that this fact, far more clearly than any markings
Speaker 2: or other dead evidence that had been found, illustrated the
Speaker 2: basic unfitness of the Biped civilization, which should so proudly
Speaker 2: call itself human. It is obvious was the finding that
Speaker 2: the shortcomings of the Biped were many. Likewise, it was
Speaker 2: inevitable even many centuries before it happened at the time
Speaker 2: of the suspension that the biped human would vanish, that
Speaker 2: animals is enlightened of the present eon would inherit the Earth.
Speaker 3: So uh, sort of Planet of the Apes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of, but with giraffes this time in squirrels.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, this is a good one. I will
Speaker 3: say it's a fifteen pager that could have been nine easily.
Speaker 2: I mean, the whole boondoggle about trying to get the
Speaker 2: neighbors to come out seven times this was a bit much. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but it was still good and you can see why
Speaker 2: Gene Milligan was the best.
Speaker 3: Yeah, agreed. And that's the spectacular twenty twenty five style.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and I'm pretty happy with it, Chuck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can't wait to see what Ben and Jerry
Speaker 3: do with the thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Same here, and to all of you while we're
Speaker 2: waiting for Ben and Jerry to whip this thing into
Speaker 2: good shape, Happy Halloween to you. Enjoy lots of candy,
Speaker 2: look out for razor blades and apples and all that stuff,
Speaker 2: and we'll see you back in regular time after Halloween.
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