Dead Giveaway by J. Vernon Shea

0:00Welcome to Horop Apple. Dad Giveaway is a myth-hospor-y by J. Vernon Shea, first published in the main 1976 edition of Voot Tray. The story is a sequel to the Hunter of the Graveyard. On Halloween night, Earl Death's Hill Cemetery sturs, and something ancient answers the call. As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this one. Dad Giveaway by J. Vernon Shea

1:03One Miss Mary Pebidi turned, as was her want, into the street that led to world Death's Hill Cemetery. It was almost a daily ritual with her, barring abominable weather. Her progress down the sharply sloping street did not go unabserved. For a few people outside, it was a blustery day, with tall trees bent low as if trying to send more roots into the ground, turned to stare at her, and people inside pushed aside curtains for a better look. For Miss Pebidi had become somewhat of an institution upon the street. It always looked as if she had picked the clothes that were closest to hand, and her wardrobe must have bulged with bizarre items. People were curious, and even made bets as to what the next day's outfit would be like. Today's ensemble was a conglomeration of clothing of various periods, all completely out of fashion. Tonight would be Halloween, but she wore a summary flowered hat.

2:07Although the flowers were artificial, they somehow looked wilted and dusty. My red velvet dress was of 1910 length, and in the rear it was stuck in the crack of her behind, exposing a great expanse of petticate. Over it she had put on a button-down man sweater which may have belonged to her brother, and upon her feet she wore black high-button shoes. She carried an unraised pink parasol which the wind sought, raffling its silk furiously. She was walking into the wind, and a sharp sting brought an unacustomed arosiness to her with its cheeks. And then the calls came. Crazy Mary won't you go home! Crazy Mary won't you go home! It was the children, sprung up magically everywhere. A few of the bolder ones would approach her closely, recite their lines, then dart giggling around the corners of houses. This pervity did not mind them, having become accustomed to them.

3:09But as usual she passed her hand across her brow in bewilderment, wondering who crazy Mary might be. The children followed her to distance down the street, chanting. And now she was approaching the old Elma Harrod house. Usually deserted for the city had boarded it up and shut off the utilities after Harrod's mysterious and horrifying death. It now thronged with life, a group of teenagers were upon the porch watching her. One of them, whose name she had never known, but whom she recognised as one of her principal tormentors, came from the porch over to her. He recited some just coined lines. To ask up your ass, high-buttoned shoes, once something else up your ass, it's time to choose. She caught her breath in shock at the fountess of the language. Once then the teenager seized the parasol and gave it a twirl. Still clinging to it, Miss Mary pervity was spun around, and she almost fell to the sidewalk

4:12in dizziness. "'Er, you want to dance,' the teenager said, and he pushed her backwards in a parody of the waltz. "'Let her alone, God damn it,' someone said. It was old a meal-vice-copp who lived two doors away. Old a meal-vice-copp who kept to himself and never bothered much with children. The teenager let Miss pervity loose in astonishment. Old a meal picked up the parasol which had fallen to the sidewalk, and handed it ceremoniously to Miss pervity. "'Would you come to my house and rest a while?' he asked her. "'Oh, no, no,' she said. I must get to the cemetery,' but why today? It's cold and windy out there. I must get to the cemetery,' she said, as if by-roaked, and she wore the bewildered look again. Why must she get to the cemetery? She couldn't remember. Oh, yes, it was to find Benji, her little brother. She had lost Benji somewhere, and she could never remember just where.

5:14She had a hazy recollection that it had something to do with old death-sill-semetry, and that was why she made her daily trips there, and the hope that someday she would remember exactly. She wanted Benji back. She needed him. It was so lonely in her apartment without him. He'd always known what to do. A man no such things, a woman doesn't. Had Benji grown to manhood, was she thinking of someone else? She wished she could remember. The wind died down strangely as she entered old death-sill-semetry. The death of Elma Harrod, the TV horror film host, had received national publicity, and the cemetery was now somewhat of a tourist attraction. Tourist came once, and never returned. So the city officials have been compelled to cut a road through the back section into which the street debouched, and had even raised some rundown houses of a nearby slam area to make room for a new section of the cemetery. As some of the city residents had expressed a perverse desire to be buried there.

6:19But even with the changes, old death-sill-semetry remained much the same. It was still a place which did not welcome intruders. She shivered with sudden cold. Despite the frequency of her visits, Miss Pabody still felt herself an intruder. The cemetery gave her a feeling of guilt, as if she had done something very wrong there years before. But she could never remember just what. Her visits were in a measure, an atonement. As she made her way into the cemetery grounds, she could hear the old scattering sounds with which the place abounded. Something was lurking behind that tree over there. If she remained quite still, she might catch a glimpse of its face. Could it be little Benji, playing tricks upon her? Benji, she called out with a sudden impulse. Where are you? It's your sister Mary. You called me Mamie, don't you remember? There was no response.

7:19But the scattering sounds seemed to be intensified. And down the hillside, thick now with one splendid leaves, the figure with the red velvet dress and pink parasol strolled, calling out Benji, time and again. The sunlight muted, without warmth as it struggled to penetrate the maze of trees. Overhead. Miss Pabody was seeking one particular grave, her own discovery. Now that the city provided caretakers who mowed the grass occasionally, but with the greatest reluctance, caretakers never stayed on their jobs very long, and graves were easier to find. She had merely to brush the dead grass away from the markers with her foot. She was engaged in doing so, when she noticed a very curious thing. She had frequently passed the grave of Obadaya Carter and her trips here. One of the oldest graves in the cemetery. One whose marker bore almost obliterated dates. 1790 blank.

8:2018 blanks seven. But today all the grass and weeds surrounding it were cleared away, and the marker looked freshly washed. And much more disturbing, the marker did not quite meet the pack-tourth around it. It looked for all the world like a fresh grave. The Carter grave had always seemed to Miss Pabody much too close to the place which Elmer Harrod had called Witch's Hollow, a place she always scurted for her liking, and she hurried on. Not that she had ever met a witch there. She always was afraid that if she did meet something there, it would be something far worse than a witch. She reached the object of her search almost too soon, almost unexpectedly. It was another very old grave. Probably even older than Carter's. For the time had done even more damage to the carving. Only Benjamin was discipleable. The eroded surname defined identification.

9:20The little she could make out certainly didn't look like Pabody, but it might be. One part of her brain told her that this couldn't be Benji's grave. For Benji wasn't that old. But it was the only Benjamin she had ever been able to discover in the cemetery, and she felt for it a sense of proprietorship. Sometimes she even brought flowers to strew upon it, which someone had always removed by the next day. The grave was always the end point of her journey, and as was her want, she stretched herself tiredly upon its marker. But the cold air and the cold marble soon penetrated her dress and thin sweater. Then she had to rise. She thought she would return by a different route, and she chose to go by way of the new section. Perhaps she might even find Benji there. She didn't much like the new section. Forced today it usually had a few visitors. It had an air of modernity not in keeping with old death-sill cemetery.

10:23The graves were packed much too closely together, and the grass looked freshly watered and manicured. The newest grave which bore the name a rustle-carmody was blazing with flowers, cut ones, and potted ones. This fellow has too many flowers. Miss Pebidi said to herself, while this poor soul doesn't have any. So putting her parasol down, she picked armfuls of flowers from the Carmody grave and placed them upon the grave of his neighbour, distributing them equally. It was becoming dark as she approached the new shaft which had become the tallest thing in the cemetery, a focal point. As always she felt a touch of chill as she gazed up at it. It was made of some curious black polished stone, and it stretched up much higher than Miss Pebidi could reach, and it rested upon a thick circular platform composed of the same black stone. Both sides of the shaft, it was really an obelisk, but Miss Pebidi didn't know that,

11:27but covered with some very weird and outre drawings and sentences, presumably in a great many languages, none of which Miss Pebidi understood. For instance, the top lines were in Assyrian-cuniform symbols, which in amateur linguist amongst the city officials had transliterated as Kutulu, Shab, and Nagara. The sounds of these symbols had so disturbed him. He had the eerie sensation that something close by had stopped to listen, that he had refused to continue his research, and the drawings were of a nature which Miss Pebidi refused to contemplate steadily. There were faces there which reminded her of the statues of Easter Island, and there was something which looked like a horrendous goat, and there was something much worse which had a great many tentacles. There were depictions of actions which were obviously obscene, and even more nauseating. Depictions of people being devoured by nameless monsters. It must have taken the stone cutter, or stone cutters, tremendous time and effort to perform

12:33so horrifying at task. Beautiful, isn't it? A voice behind her said. And turning, Miss Pebidi saw that the speaker had a profile which reminded her of a frog or toad. He was obviously some inhabitant of nearby Innsmouth, but there was no longer an Innsmouth. Trambling, Miss Pebidi hurried away as fast as she could, her parasol bounding ahead of her, like a jack-rappet. Two. At the approach of twilight, Mrs. Charlotte Carmody seated herself in the chair by the window which commanded the best view of the street. The strong winds had not yet subsided, and she was conscious of a draft from the window. The furnace was on, but she felt cold, and she rose and got herself a sweater. She had not felt really warm since the moment last week when she had seen the casket of

13:33her son Russell being lowered into the new grave in Old Deaths Hill Cemetery. She shivered at the memory, and she dabbed with her hankerchief at her red, swollen eyelids. The house was cold, cold, old, and empty like herself. Why had she picked such somber furniture? She needed bright, warm colors. Russell cold in his grave, and she heared all alone, the bleak years without Russell stretched in terminably ahead. She was not really old, and she knew she was going to live for a long, long time. And now the street was becoming dark, and already people were beginning to welcome the Hallowenas. She perched her lips. The good, the generous people. What an easy way to buy friendship, with just a few bags of penny candy. Trick a treat indeed! It was really a kind of blackmail. Nobody had ever given her anything when she was a girl in St. Louis.

14:36Children then were content just to dress up in costume and parade up and down the streets. But the kids today were spoiled, spoiled rotten. Look at the way they went through a garden after a ball and trampled her roses, and daring to ride up and down her sidewalk on their bikes. Oh, mother, they don't mean anything. Russell used to demonstrate. But Russell was too easy going. One had to assert one's rights, and so she had to yell at them, if you don't get out of my garden, I'm going to call the police. And she had meant it. Let them call her the mean old lady. Well, she had no intention of turning on her porch light. She never had before, and she wasn't going to set a precedent tonight. The children on this street knew her too well. They'd never dream of ringing her doorbell. She'd never let them in if they did. She saw now a car being driven slowly down the street, and coming to a halt, and her mother letting her small children just weep tots out, and waiting while they rang doorbells,

15:41and came back to the car loaded with gifts, and then came a mother walking with her children, bending over them and tying their scarves tighter, bundling them against the cold. They bowed so with clothing that their skeleton costumes ring congruous. Well, Mrs. Carmody thought, the city streets were so dangerous nowadays it was no wonder that parents were afraid to let children venture out after dark. Everything sounds came suddenly from further down the street, from Elma Harrod's old place. It wasn't Harrod making all that racket that was sure. And now it was really dark out, and time for her to repair to the back of the house. On Halloween night she always turned off the lights in front to make the children think she wasn't home. She sat down at her kitchen table, and began to read the evening paper. But it was even chilly of facing the north with its cold wind, and she had to turn on the stove to get more heat. She rubbed her hands together over the gas flame.

16:44How prominent the veins on the backs of her hands were getting to be, and there were even a couple of horrid brown spots, so she was getting old, getting old. She was in the midst of reading her paper when the doorbell rang. It must be some mistake. Some child knew to the neighbourhood who didn't know her reputation. But the ringing persisted for long minutes, and at last Mrs. Carmerty went to her seat by the window and pushed aside her curtain. A group of masqueraders was on her porch, carrying shopping bags already almost filled, mostly small children, but they were accompanied by some larger boys. The leader seemed to be the rowdy red-haired teenager who used to be her paperboy. He must have sensed her presence by the window, for he called out suddenly, trick-a-treat, trick-a-treat! And after a moment he added the grim line, treat, or you'll be tricked.

17:45You can stay there all night if you want to. Mrs. Carmerty thought, I'm not going to open the door. Where was Russell when she needed him? Oh, yes, oh yes. She started to cry again and returned to the kitchen. She'd barely began to read again when they came at tapping at her high-side window, looking up she saw a blazing orange face leering down at her. Pain shot sharply across her heart, but after a moment she recognized it for what it was. It's just a jack-a-lenton. Come out, Charlotte. A voice came. We know you're in there. If you children don't go away, she screamed then. I'm going to call the police. Ah, ah, sweet Charlotte, the voice said mockingly, and she heard feet running away, and silence held, for a little while. Three. Older meal, vice-cop, was the first person upon the street to switch on his porch light.

18:49The porch was decorated with Halloween motifs, pumpkins and Indian corn and corn husks upon the railings, cutouts of black cats in the windows, and upon the porch a witch, and driven by an electric motor, who rocked back and forth upon her broomstick, tittering evilly. He went back to the kitchen and removed the last tray of candy molds from the refrigerator. The tray contained chocolates which he had been preparing lovingly all day. He touched one of the chocolates tentatively. Yes, it was sufficiently hard. He sat down at the kitchen table, and began to wrap the chocolates in the expensive looking wrappers he had carefully saved all year. He had quite an accumulation of them. For, like his dear Fuura before him, he indulged his craving for sweets. The table was piled high with his day's handy-work, hand-deb chocolates. He hadn't the slightest desire, of course, to nibble upon one of them, for he knew what they contained.

19:50Things carefully preserved for just this day. Things selected just for the children of his street. Things like, used razor blades and ground glass and dead insects and rat excrement. Oh, they would serve the little bastards right. Scarsely a day passed that they didn't disturb him with their noise and their tricks. Almost every day some youngster, he could never catch him at it or he'd box his ears, twisted the outside rearview mirror around so that he could no longer see of a car was approaching, and this was dangerous, especially in the winter months when his rear window was steamed up, or thick with ice. He had thanked the youngster would eventually tire of his little game, but he never did. And once he had found the mirror with its cracked glass hanging by shreds, it looked as if someone had deliberately struck it with a hammer, or possibly it had been shattered by a ball thrown in a game. And sometimes the children stole the cover of his gasoline tank or filled the tank with dirt,

20:52once they'd removed his hub caps and filled them with stones and replaced them. And such a dreadful racket had developed when he started out that he had thought his muffler was dragging along the street. In the summer months, the children were always darting out into the street unexpectedly to retrieve a ball or riding their bicycles in the middle of the street. And when he returned from work, there would be out in the street playing baseball, that stupid American game practically dared him to run over them. Or they would ask him not to park in just that spot as it was first base, but to park further up the street. They were not so poor damages car tonight, he had it stored away in a safe place. And the racket they created was even worse. The calls and the screams and the off-key singing, his sense of hearing had always been extremely acute, and age had dimmed it only a little. It had been an asset in the grand old days of the Fatherland when he had served as concertmaster with the leading orchestras. The proudest day of his

21:55life, of course, had come, and he shivered in ecstasy at the memory. When the führer had attended a Wagnerian matinee had come backstage and personally shaken his hand. Oh, the fools, the swindogs, the poor benighted fools. Germany was no longer a fit place to live. They had thrown him into prison and carefully de-notsified him. If anyone could have raised those glorious years, they no longer wanted him in their orchestras. So now he was a DP in this boobland where he could not play a strata various, because of his arthritic fingers, but instead served as a...he could not force himself to complete the thought. The doorbell rang just then. An old amoeil vice-cop began to harm triumphantly, the opening bars of the Beethoven fifth, the fate knocking at the door theme, as he hurried to answer it. It was much later an old amoeil had disposed of almost all his chocolates.

22:57He went to his front window and peered out. The wind had died down, and the trees and the few flowers which had survived the cold were barely quivering. The street was deserted, except for one figure, a toll and very emaciated one, dressed very fittingly in a skeleton costume which leaned against a meal's gatepost, as if too weary or too shy to enter the yard. Amoeil gathered up the rest of his chocolates and put them in a bag and opened his door. Come, Eilat! he called. I have a nice treat for you. The figure with the skeleton mask looked up and shook its head. It raised a bony finger and beckoned to Amoeil. Okay, if you want to play games, thought Amoeil, a trifle annoyed. He hurried over to the figure, and now he could see the figure more clearly. The skeleton face was not a mask.

24:00Four. Cut it down a bit, guys, said Ronnie Sears. A rolled Charlotte would be calling the pigs. Still in Halloween costume, they were sprawled comfortably upon the floor or upon sofas feet over the sides, and the room Elma Harrod used as a recording studio. A few of the younger ones were puffing upon reefers, which they didn't really like but felt that they should, but most of them stuck to cigarettes adulterated only by their natural poisons. Ronnie's parents were away for the evening, not willing to cope with the Halloween-ness, and as usual upon such occasions Ronnie had run a cable from his house next door to the Harrod House for lights, and had turned on the water from the street-main. The Harrod House served effectively as a clubhouse for the neighborhood children. Although usually they just played Harrod's old tapes or leaped through his books, they didn't know how to operate his movie projector. Oh, don't be a candy-ass ron, one of them said. This music is cool.

25:05Right, on, brother? Yeah, said Ronnie Sears. But what we need now is some real creepy music, you know, like Dr. Fibes played on the organ. What we have here is a failure of communication. We're supposed to be scaring the hell out of the old bastards. Right, on, man, creepy music for the creeps. Like old, a meal-wise head. Did you notice how sweetly he handed out his candy? I'll bet it's full of bugs. Shit, man, I'm not going through all these tapes just for spook music. Say, here's something we haven't played yet. And he picked up a small tape recorder from Elma Harrod's writing desk. It was the tape recorder which had been found upon Harrod's corpse. The police had played it back repeatedly for a possible clue to his death, but the words didn't make sense. They were just gibberish. Well, play it, man. Night. The sighing of the wind in the trees. Little odd, scuttering sounds. Say, that sounds just like the cemetery. Oh, turn it off. It don't say nothing.

26:09As if to refute him, words suddenly tumbled forth. And Harrod's recognizable voice. Yah, yah, casulu for tagon. From gluey magla, casulu real yeah, waga nagu for tagon. What in the hell is that? Great, man. Great. It's just what we need it. Turn it up louder. This'll frighten them out of their fright wicks. No, don't. I don't like it. It's scary. Listen to the candy-ass. Why don't you go home to Mama? The volume was increased, and they played the recording endlessly. There was something oddly fascinating about the uncouth sounds, something that seemed to evoke memories. They thought of nearby Enzmuth, now destroyed, and of the great ref out in its harbor, and of the fish faces, and the frog faces who had dwelled there, who had practiced unseemly rights. Yah, yah, casulu for tagon. From gluey magla, casulu real yeah,

27:14waga nagu for tagon. They heard the sounds again. But this time they seemed to be coming from a great distance. They couldn't seem to pinpoint the direction. Some claim that they came from the cemetery, while others insisted that they were in the house itself, at a point beneath them. Possibly the basement. The sounds were clearer now, clearer and closer. They were changing into a chenting, at a fast atempo, and woods were being added. Woods knocked to be found upon the tape recorder. Yah, Shabna Gureth, the black goat of the woods with a thousand young. The black goat of the woods with a thousand young. Man is this far out. I'm getting out of here, one small boy said, and he departed to derisive cries. Yah, la thoteppe, nagar casulu. Hasta, yig father of serpents, sathagur, yogsathoth, yan, asathoth. Yah, yah, great casulu,

28:19la moor katulas, he who is not to be named. You think it could be the old creeps trying to play tricks upon us? You're out of your ever-loving mind. For some time, unconsciously they had been aware of sounds. Sounds odious, inexplicable, and they seemed to denote movement of some kind, for they were obviously coming nearer. They were accompanied always by the chanting of the gibberish woods, gibberish to the boys, but obviously not gibberish to whomever was making them. They had a perceptible rhythm, and were apparently an incantation, an evocation of some kind, a calling forth of what? They must be coming from the cell, said Ronnie Sears. Agreed? There was a murmur of a scent. Let's take a look, see. Oh, do we have to? Don't be a candy-ass all your life. But there was nothing in the cellar. A dankened cobwebbed place where Elma harrid had stored things which must have spoiled by now. For there was quite a perceptible stench.

29:25But they were obviously closer to the source of the sounds, and of the chanting. When they pressed their ears against one wall, the sounds were magnified. Say, didn't Harrid say something about a secret passageway down here in one of his broadcasts? No, he said he had a dream about a secret passageway. Well, there must be one somewhere. Let's try pressing on the bricks or looking for a switch. The switch was soon discovered. A section of the wall moved back with a squeaking protest from un-oiled fixtures, and a surprisingly wide and high tunnel was revealed. The air from the tunnel was musty and foul, hinting of things long dead, strong enough to make them recoil involuntarily. And at the tunnel entrance, the sounds and the chanting could be heard with considerable clarity. Somewhere, there was a splashing sound, like that of a hippopotamus dropping into water.

30:26Man, I'm not going in there? A hoe yes you are, and he was pushed into the tunnel. Nothing came along to gobble him up. None of the boys really wanted to enter the tunnel, but none of them wanted to be accused of cowardice, either. The longer they looked at the tunnel, the more their curiosity grew, and with it the fascination which tunnels and secret passageways have always exerted upon mankind. Well, let's go, man, Ronnie Sears said, and he took the initiative. The tunnel dipped sharply into the burrows of the earth, a tunnel which many people had passed through before. For there were fixtures to hold torches, and little recesses cut into the walls, which so far as Ronnie's flashlight could discover, were quite unoccupied now. Nothing disturbed their progress, not even a rent. Progress, for some odd reason, they found themselves hurrying. None of the boys wanted to be at the tail of the procession, so they were all bunched together as

31:29closely as the width of the tunnel would permit. The tunnel took weird twists and turns. Sometimes the sound of the chanting seemed to be above them, sometimes even beneath them, and such was the subtle insistence of the rhythm that one or more of the boys would find themselves chanting along with it. They had picked up the words very quickly. Bethmurah, Lang, Inzmuth, the lake of Haali, the stalker among the stars. Yaa, Shabnukurath. It was very much later that they detected illumination toward the tunnel's end, and the chanting that a sail-there-yard drums increase now manyfold, and the full hardiness of their ventures struck them all at once, and they stopped in their tracks. But the sounds and the chanting continued without pause. And presently they could see in the distance the flaring of torches, boner loft, torches which lit up a noisome black lake into which water from the roof of the tunnel constantly dripped,

32:35and the torches were being carried by a number of people with monstrous frog faces, the people formally of Inzmuth. It was time then to retreat, and they started to do so, but just then one of the boys cried, LOOK, and pointed to the tunnel ahead, an entire block of the flooring was being raised slowly, and from it an overpowering sea-stanch was emanating, and an ever-lenthening coil of tentacle came probing across the floor to ward them. 5 Miss Mary Pebidi had been wandering day-sedly through the cemetery for hours. She couldn't seem to be able to find the way out. She had never been in the cemetery at night before, and everything looked different, different, and much more malign. The little scattering sounds were much louder now, and once and again she could hear the cry of something apparently in mortal agony.

33:38She leaned against the bowl of a tree and shivered, for her thin sweater afforded scant warmth, and it was very much colder now. From quite a distance away she could hear dogs barking, and she felt a moment of relief for the sound denoted the street-by-which she had entered, and people there. Oh, she had been seeing people of a kind all night. She seemed perpetually to be turning into the witch's hollow, where we gathered the fish-faces and the frog-faces performing some strange ritual, or other, and chanting the most frightening sounds. But she preferred even them to the sight of the tall shaft in the new part of the cemetery. Whenever she passed by it, it seemed to be slowly revolving upon its platform, and she grew quite dizzy at the sight. Mamey! The call came from not far away. Miss Pebidi listened intently. Mamey! Where are you? I'm cold, and I'm lonely.

34:39Benji? Benji's that you, Benji? There was no immediate answer. Miss Pebidi hastened in the direction of the voice, almost tripping over her parasol. Oh, there you are, Benji! She harried to what seemed to be Benji as she remembered him. A small boy in a cap and old-fashioned knickers, but which turned into a tree trunk when she got there. It was so dark in here under the trees. She would never find Benji now. She turned away into disappointment, and almost ran into something in her path, something very tall and very dark and quite distinguishable. It blocked her path again and wrapped itself around her. Let me go! You're not Benji! Oh, yes, I am. Used to be. Did you really want to find Benji? Benji, remember whom you hit over the head with a rock and buried here? I was not quite dead then. Let me go! You're hurting me! Yes, I'm Benji.

35:41I'm so cold and so lonely and so very, very hungry. Six. The night wore on, so full of horrors, that Mrs. Carmody felt that she would never be able to sleep. The wind rose again and rattled the windows of her bedroom, and it moaned occasionally, like a Benji. A dog kept barking, then the sound became a duo, and then a trio, and then a quartet, a contagious thing, but there was nothing joyous about it. They seemed to share mutually a misery. The dog seemed disturbed by the presence of some stranger, or strange as upon the street. But presently their sounds were transmuted oddly. They became wines and moans and winpers to be let in. Then one of them yelped out in agony, and the other three became panicky, and Mrs. Carmody could mentally visualize their straining at their leashes. The sounds from Elma Harrod's old house frightened

36:46her even more. She had heard Harrod's familiar sardonic voice repeatedly, and her heart had pounded wildly. But then she had realized that these must be playbacks from old broadcasts. Playbacks, for she recognized the music, and some of the lines from years ago. But then still in Harrod's voice came some new words. Words they must be, but they didn't make sense yet. They were curiously detestable. Words like biblical lines read backwards at a black Sabbath. Words that seemed to evoke some ancestral horror. She felt that she had heard these words somewhere before, and she didn't want to remember where. Then, from the direction of the cemetery, the words were repeated, repeated, and their new words were added in the same kind of abominable gibberish. Words that were like the names of forbidden places. The words increased in volume,

37:46and Mrs. Carmody had the chilling sensation that whoever was uttering them was coming nearer, was approaching her street. Not whoever, for there was more than one voice. There were many voices. Then, abruptly, the sounds from the Harrod house ceased, but they're still sounded as if there were a great deal of activity in the cemetery. Once she thought she heard a woman screaming, and the voices repeating their sinister dog-roll did not die down, but came ever closer. And now it was her house that was being besieged. She had heard the trundle of heavy wheels from the cemetery. There had been a cart upon her street before, and the whinnying of horses, and the group of people driving the cart, speaking minimally among themselves. They were stopping at each house in turn, like garbage collectors making their rounds, and they moved quite slowly, as if their burdens were heavy. The dogs were frantic at their approach,

38:47and now they were in front of her house. I seemed to engulf her in her bed. Her curiosity had quite forsaken her. She had absolutely no desire to see who more watt was out there. She was a woman who had rarely experienced terror, but she was afraid now as she had never been afraid before in her life. There came the sound of some ornum, something laboriously climbing her steps, dragging himself or itself across the porch, trying the door, rattling the door handle, scrabbling as with claws at the door and windows. She listened in an agony of suspense, then getting no repose, the visitor reversed his or its procedure, and retreated from her steps. But then she could hear the unwelcome visitor coming with what seemed like infinite slowness down her sidewalk and stopping under her bedroom window. Mother, the voice came.

39:47Let me in. Please let me in. She felt an excess of fury. It must be the teenage redhead coming back to pester her. How could anyone be so cruel as to torment her bereaved mother in the middle of the night, even going so far as to imitate the voice of her dead son? Well, she would get on her phone in the morning and make him wish he hadn't. Her feeling of fury quite supplanted her terror, and in a few minutes she was sleeping quite soundly. 7. Morning broke sharp and clear. There was little wind, and the sun promised to break through its bondage of clouds at any moment. It was going to be a fine day. The people who lived upon the street rose reluctantly from bed, some to get ready for work. Most of them had gone without sleep, awake the night through because of the fearsome sounds.

40:50For some obscure reason they all postponed looking outside for as long as possible. When they did, they were aghast at what they saw, and most of them called the police immediately. The police cars came presently with siren shrieking, a number of them, and almost the first act of the policeman was to barricade the street against traffic. Passersby, people from the neighbouring streets, drawn by the sirens, came harrying up and gazing down the sharp slope of the street, which led to world death's hill cemetery. The crowds increased greatly, and before long there were people there hooking balloons and roasted chestnuts and hot dogs, and downtown the city editors left their front pages open for photographs. There was really quite a lot to photograph, although later most of the pictures were killed as being too gruesome. For the nights visitors had been quite generous, bestowing upon each house in turn,

41:51either upon their lawns or propped up on steps or against trees of the trim lawns, a corpse from the cemetery. Some of the corpses were in an advanced state of putrefaction, stank quite dreadfully. While others had been stripped clean of flesh and were only skeletons, like the one which had a death lockup on the throat of old Emil Weiskopf, who stared up at the sky in a perpetual look of disbelieving horror. The very first stop the visitors had made was to Elmer Harrod's old home, and they had left Elmer himself, rather a skeleton, for he was recognizable only by his clothing. Elmer's body had lain long unclaimed in the city-mog, and it was the first one to be buried in the new section of the cemetery, dubbed Harrod Place in his honour. What no one could quite understand was why it was wrapped now in a cocoon of tapes. The streets inhabitants had a considerable problem with their pets.

42:52Some of the dogs came up sniffing at the corpses, stow back to their doghouses and lay their quivering in terror, while others worried the bones and had to be driven off by their owners. inexplicably, there was the body of a dog there also. Its body contorted quite oddly. There was one cat which had retrieved the liver from a corpse and sat there devouring it, and which spat out with blazing eyes when its owner approached it. Mrs. Charlotte Carmody had had to be removed to the hospital suffering from shock. When she had come out early that morning to sweep her sidewalk, she had found on the sidewalk beneath a bedroom window, scrabbling at the stucco, a corpse. Its face was already too decomposed to permit identification, but she had recognised the suit it wore as the suit in which she had buried her son, Russell. The police had found the old Harrod House still blazing with lights, and in one rumoured tape recorder which was still turned on. Leaving it on all night must have ruined it.

43:57For the words upon replay were quite indecisurable, just outlandish gibberish. But of the children of the neighbourhood who had occupied the house the night before, there was no trace. The police had searched the house thoroughly, and in the cellar had eventually come upon the secret tunnel, but in the tunnel itself there was nothing but a fearful odor, mostly compounded of the sea. The tunnel led up to the freshly washed grave of Uberdaya Carter, elegant in the sun. The new section of old death seal must have been visited by vandals during the night. For each of the graves had been torn up, and its contents removed. The caskets had been smashed and piled up like so much kindling wood. The police were inclined to attribute the damage to the neighbourhood children who, tiring of the Harrod House, had sought more misty elsewhere. An intensive search for the children was instituted, their descriptions broadcast a neighbouring cities. But the police didn't know

45:00what to make of the death of Miss Mary Pebidi. Her pink parasol had been raised and tossed up into the limbs of a tree, and its handbell pointed mockingly toward her corpse. Whatever it was which had eaten her had been quite selective, scooping out just the torso, leaving her head, and thin, scrawny arms and legs attached precariously to her spine. When the police had carefully lifted the corpse, it had bounced up and down upon its spine bone like a jumping jack. Nor could the police quite understand why. Of all the things in the new section of the cemetery, the only thing which had been left undisturbed was the tall obelisk. It stood there triumphantly, and the sunlight which fell upon its black stones seemed to linger longest upon the carved letters, Kathulu. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to support our work, you can find

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