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August 21, 2025 • 10 mins
Dive into the haunting world of Everil Worrell, one of the pioneering female voices in weird fiction during the early days of Weird Tales magazine. The year 1927 was particularly significant for Worrell, as she graced both the January and December issues with her chilling undead tales, Leonora and The Canal. Notably, The Canal was cherished by none other than H. P. Lovecraft, who frequently named it among his top six stories published in Weird Tales. This gripping narrative weaves a striking atmosphere of love and dread that will linger long after the last word, while Leonora perfectly complements it, exploring the irresistible allure of a mysterious entity from beyond. (Summary by Ben Tucker)
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Section two of The Canal and Leonora by Everel Barrel.
The slibbervox recording is in the public domain. Read by
Ben Tucker, Section two the Canal, Part two. It was
all the assurance I could get that night. She had
come back to the side of the cabin where she

(00:22):
had sat crouched before, and she resumed again that posture,
and sat still and silent, watching me. Sometimes I could
see her eyes upon me, and sometimes not, but I
felt that their gaze was unwavering. The little cold breeze,
which I had finally forgotten while I was talking with her,
was blowing again, and the unwholesome smell of decay grew heavier.

(00:45):
Before the dawn, she would not speak again, nor answer
me when I spoke to her, and I grew nervous
and strangely ill at ease. At last I went away,
and then the first faint light of dawn, I slipped
up the stairs of my rooming house and into my
own room. I was deadly tired at the office next day,

(01:07):
and day after day slipt away, and I grew more
and more weary. For a man cannot wake day and
night without suffering, especially in hot weather, and that was
what I was doing. I haunted the old tow path
and waited night after night on the bank opposite the
sunken boat. Sometimes I saw my lady of the darkness,
and sometimes not. When I saw her, she spoke little,

(01:31):
but sometimes she sat there on the top of the
cabin and let me watch her till the dawn, or
until the strange uneasiness that was like fright drove me
from her and back to my room, where I tossed
restlessly in the heat and dreamed strange dreams, half waking,
till the sun shone in on my forehead, and I
tumbled into my clothes and down to the office again.

(01:55):
Once I asked her why she had made the fanciful
condition that she would not come ashore to meet me
until the waters of the canal had ceased to run.
How eagerly I studied those waters, how I stole away
at noontime more than once, not to approach the old boat,
but to watch the almost imperceptible downward drift of bubbles,
bits of straw, twigs and rubbish. My questioning displeased her,

(02:20):
and I asked her that no more. It was enough
that she chose to be whimsical. My part was to wait.
It was more than a week later that I questioned
her again, this time on a different subject, And after
that I curbed my curiosity relentlessly. Never speak to me
of things you do not understand about me, never again,

(02:41):
or I will not show myself to you again. And
when I walk on the path yonder, it will not
be with you. I had asked her what form of
persecution she and her father had suffered in the city
that had driven them out to this lonely place, and
where in the city they had lived. Frightened seriously lest
I lose. Then I was sure I had gained with her.

(03:02):
I was about to speak of something else, but before
I could find the words, her low voice came to
me again. It was horrible, horrible, those little houses below
the bridge, those houses along the canal. Tell me, are
they not worse than my boat? Life there was shut
in and furtive. I was not free as I am now,

(03:25):
And the freedom I will soon have will make me
forget the things I have not yet forgotten. The screaming,
the reviling and cursing, fear and flight. As you passed
back by those houses, Think how you would like to
be shut in one of them, and in fear of
your life, and then think of them no more, for

(03:46):
I would forget them, and I will never speak of
them again. I dared not answer her. I was surprised
that she had vouchsafed me so much, But surely her
words meant this, that before she had come to life
on the decaying, water rotted old boat, she had lived
in one of those horrible houses I passed by on
my way to her, those houses, each of which looked

(04:09):
like the predestined scene of a murder. As I left
her that night, I felt that I was very daring.
One or two nights more, and you will walk beside me,
I called to her. I have watched the water at noon,
and it hardly moves at all. I threw a scrap
of paper into the canal, and it whirled and swung
a little, where a thin skim of oil lay on

(04:30):
the water down there, oil from the big, dirty city
you are well out of. But though I watched and watched,
I could not see it move downward at all. Perhaps
tomorrow night, or the night after, you will walk on
the bank with me. I hope it will be clear
in moonlight, and I will be near enough to see
you clearly as well as you seem always to see
me in darkness or moonlight equally well. And perhaps I

(04:54):
will kiss you, but not unless you let me. And
yet the next day, for the first time, my thoughts
were definitely troubled. I had been living in a dream.
I began to speculate concerning the end of the path
on which my feet were set. I had conceived from
the first such a horror of those old houses by
the canal. They were well enough to walk past, nursing

(05:17):
gruesome thoughts for a midnight treat. But much as I
loved all that was weird and eerie about the girl
I was wooing, so strangely, it was a little too
much for my fancy that she had come from them.
By this time I had become decidedly unpopular in my
place of business, not that I had made enemies, but
that my peculiar ways had caused too much adverse comment.

(05:41):
It would have taken very little, I think, to have
made the entire office force decide that I was mad.
After the events of the next twenty four hours, and
after this letter is found and read, they will be
sure that they knew it all along at this time, however,
they were punctiliously polite to me and merely let me
alone as much as possible, which suited me perfectly. I

(06:03):
dragged wearily through day after day, exhausted for lack of sleep,
conscious of their speculative glances, living only for the night
to come. But on this day I approached the man
who had invited me to the camp across the river,
who had unknowingly showed me the way that led to
my love. Have you ever noticed the row of tumbled

(06:27):
down houses along the canal on the city side, I
asked him. He gave me an odd look. I suppose
he sensed the significance of my breaking silence after so
long to speak of them, since that in some way
I had a deep interest in them. You have odd tastes, Morton,
he said, after a moment. I suppose you wander into

(06:48):
strange places sometimes. I've heard you speak of an enthusiasm
for graveyards at night. But my advice to you is
to keep away from those houses there unsavory and their
reputation is savory. Positively, I think you'd be in danger
of your life if you go poking around there. They
have been the scene of several murders, and a dope
din or two has been cleaned out of them. Why

(07:11):
in the world you should want to investigate them. I
don't expect to investigate them, I said testily. I was
merely interested in them from the outside. To tell you
the truth, I had heard a story, a rumor. Never
mind where, but you say there have been murders there.
I suppose this rumor I heard may have had to
do with an attempted one. There was a girl who
lived there with her father once, and they were set

(07:33):
upon there or something of the sort, and had to
run away. Did you ever hear that story? Barrett gave
me an odd look, such as one gives in speaking
of a past horror so dreadful that the mere speaking
of it makes it live terribly again. What you say
reminds me of a horrible thing that was said to
have happened down there once. He said. It was in

(07:55):
all the papers. A little child disappeared in one of
those houses, and a couple of poor lodgers who lived there,
a girl and her father were accused of having made
away with it. They were accused, They were accused. Oh well,
I don't like to talk about such things. It was
too dreadful. The child's body was found, part of it

(08:19):
was found. It was mutilated, and the people in the
house seemed to believe it had been mutilated in order
to conceal the manner of its death. There was an
ugly wound in the throat. It finally came out, and
it seemed as if the child might have been bled
to death. It was found in the girl's room, hidden away.
The old man and his daughter escaped before the police

(08:40):
were called. The country side was scoured for them. The
whole country was scoured, but they were never found. Why
you must have read it in the paper several years ago,
I nodded with a heavy heart. I had read it
in the papers, I remembered now and again a terrible
questioning came over me. Who was this girl? What was

(09:04):
this girl who seemed to have my heart in her keeping?
Why did not a merciful God let me die? Then,
befogged with exhaustion, bemused in a dire enchantment, my mind
was incapable of thought, and yet some sole process akin
to that which saves the sleepwalker, poised at perilous heights,

(09:26):
sounded its warning. Now my mind was filled with doleful images.
There were women I had heard and read, who slew
to satisfy a bloodlust. There were ghosts specters call them
what you will. Their names have been legion in the
dark pages of that lore which dates back to the
infancy of the races of the earth, who retained even

(09:47):
in death this blood lust. Vampires they had been called
that I had read of them corpses by day, spirits
of evil by night, roaming abroad, and their own form,
or in the forms of bats or unclean beasts, killing
body and soul of their victims. For whoever dies of

(10:08):
the repeated kiss of the vampire, which leaves its mark
on the throat and draws the blood from the body,
becomes a vampire. Also of such beings I had read,
and horror of horrors, And that last cursed day at
the office I remembered reading of these vampires, these undead,

(10:29):
that in their nocturnal flights they had one limitation. They
could not cross running water. End of section two. The Canal,
Part two
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