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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Section three of The Canal and Leonora by Everill Roil.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by
Bent Tucker The Canal, Part three. That night, I went
my usual nightly way, with tears of weakness on my face,
for my weakness was supreme, and I recognized fully at
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last the misery of being the victim of an enchantment
stronger than my feeble will. But I went. I approached
the neighborhood of the canal boat as the distant city
clock chimed the first stroke of twelve. It was the
dark of the moon, and the sky was overcast heat.
Lightning flickered low in the sky, seeming to come from
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every point of the compass, and circumscribe the horizon, as
if unseen. Fires burned behind the rim of the world
by its fitful glimmer. I saw a new thing between
the old boat and the canal bank, stretched along long, slim,
solid looking shadow. A plank had been let down. And
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that moment I realized that I had been playing with
powers of evil which had no intent now to let
me go, which indeed were about to lay hold upon
me with an inexorable grasp. Why had I come to night.
Why but that the spell of the enchantment laid upon
me was a thing more potent and far more unbreakable
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than any wholesome spell of love. The creature I sought out, Oh,
I remembered now, with the cold perspiration beating my brow,
the lower hidden away between the covers of the dark
old book, which I had read so many years ago,
and half forgotten until dim memories of it stirred within
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me this last day and night. My lady of the night,
no woman of wholesome flesh and blood and odd perverted
tastes that matched my own, but one of the undead.
In that moment, I knew it, and knew that the
vampires of old legends polluted still in these latter days
the fair surface of the earth. And on the instant
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behind me in the darkness, there was the crackle of
a twig, and something brushed against my arm. This, then,
was the fulfillment of my dream. I knew, without turning
my head that the pale, dainty face thats glowing eyes
was near my own, that I had only to stretch
out my arm to touch the slender grace of the
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girl I had so longed to draw near I knew
and should have felt the rapture I had anticipated. Instead,
the roots of my hair prickled coldly, unendurably, as they
had on the night when I had first sighted the
old boat. The miasmic odors of the night, heavy and
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oppressive with heat, and unrelieved by a breath of air,
all but overcame me, and I fought with myself to
prevent my teeth clicking in my head. The little waves
of coldness I had felt often in the spot were
chasing over my body, yet they were not from any breeze.
The leaves on the trees hung down, motionless, as though
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they were actually wilting on their branches. With an effort,
I turned my head. Two hands caught me around my neck.
The pale face was so near that I felt the
warm breath from its nostrils fanning my cheek, And suddenly
all that was wholesome in my perverted nature rose uppermost.
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I longed for the touch of the red mouth, like
a dark flower opening before me in the night. I
longed for it, and yet more I dreaded it. I
shrank back, catching in a powerful grip the fragile wrists
of the hands that strove to hold me. I must not,
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I must not yield to the faintness that I felt
stealing languorously over me. I was facing down the path
towards the city below. Rumble of thunder the first broke
the torrid hush of the summer night. A glare of
lightning seemed to tear the night asunder, to light up
the whole universe. Overhead, the clouds were careening madly in
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fantastic shapes, driven by a wind that swept the upper
heavens without as yet causing even a trembling in the air.
Lower down and far down the canal, that baleful glare
seemed to play around and hover over the little row
of shanties, murder cursed, and haunted by the ghost of
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a dead child. My gaze was fixed on them, while
I held away from me the pallid face and fought
off the embrace that sought to overcome my resisting will.
And so a long moment passed, the glare faded out
of the sky, and a greater darkness took the world.
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But there was a near more menacing glare fastened upon
my face, the glare of two eyes that watched mine,
that had watched me as I, unthinking stared down at
the dark houses. This girl, this woman who had come
to me at my own importunate requests, did not love me,
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since I had shrunk from her. She did not love me.
But it was not only that she had watched me
as I gazed down at the houses that held her
dark past. And I was sure that she divined my thoughts.
She knew my horror of those houses, she knew my
newborn horror of her, and she hated me for it,
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hated me more malignantly than I had believed a human
being could hate. And at that point in my thoughts,
I felt my skin prickle and my scalp rise again,
could a human being cherish such hate? As I read
trembling more and more in those glowing fires lit with
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what seemed to me more like the fires of hell
than any light that ought to shine in a woman's eyes.
And through all this not a word had passed between us.
So far I have written calmly. I wish that I
could write on so to the end. If I could
do that, there might be one or two of those
who will regard this as the document of a maniac,
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who would believe the horrors of which I am about
to write. But I am only flesh and blood at
this point in the happenings of the awful night, my
calmness deserted me. At this point I felt that I
had been drawn into the midst of a horrible nightmare
from which there was no escape, no waking. As I write,
this feeling again overwhelms me, until I can hardly write
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at all. Until, were it not for the thing which
I I must do, I would rush out into the
street and run, screaming until I was caught and dragged
away to be put behind strong bars. Perhaps I would
feel safe there. Perhaps I know that, terrified at the
hate I saw confronting me in those redly gleaming eyes,
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I would have slunk away. The two thin hands that
caught my arm again were strong enough to prevent that. However,
I had been spared her kiss. I was not to
escape from the oath I had taken to serve her.
You promised, you, swore, she hissed in my ear, And
to night, you are to keep your oath. I felt
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my senses real my oath. Yes, I had an oath
to keep. I had lifted my hand toward the dark heavens,
and swore to serve her in any way she chose freely,
and of my own volition I had sworn. I sought
to evade her. Let me help you back to your boat,
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I begged. You have no kindly feeling for me, and
you've seen it. I love you no longer. I will
go back to the city. You can go back to
your father and forget that I broke your peace. The
laughter that greeted my speech, I shall never forget, not
in the depths under the scummy surface of the canal,
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not in the empty places between the worlds, where my
tortured soul may wander. So you do not love me,
and I hate you, fool have I waited these weary
months for the water to stop, only to go back
now After my father and I returned here and found
the old boat rotting in the drained canal, and took
refuge in it when the water was turned into the
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canal while I slept, so that I could never escape
until its flow should cease. Because of the thing that
I am. Even then, I dreamed of to night when
the imprisonment we still shared ceased to matter. To my father,
come on board the deserted boat tomorrow, and see why
if you dare still, I dreamed on of to night.
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I've been lonely, desolate, starving. Now the whole world shall
be mine, and by your help, I asked her somehow
what she wanted of me, and a madness overcame me,
so that I hardly heard her reply. Yet somehow I
knew that there was that on the opposite shore of
the great river, where the pleasure camps were, that she
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wanted to find. And the madness of my terror she
made me understand and obey her. I must carry her
in my arms across the long bridge over the river,
deserted in the small hours of the night. The way
back to the city was long to night long. She
walked behind me, and I turned my eyes neither to
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right nor left. Only as I passed the tumble down houses,
I saw their reflection in the canal, and trembled so
that I could have fallen to the ground. At the
thoughts of the little child a woman had been accused
of slaying there, and at the certainty I felt that
she was reading my thoughts. And now the horror that
engulfed me darkened my brain. I know that we set
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our feet upon the long, wide bridge that spanned the river.
I know that the storm broke there, so that I
battled from my footing almost for my life, it seemed,
against the pelting deluge, and the horror I had invoked
was in my arms, clinging to me, burying its head
upon my shoulder. So increasingly dreadful had my pale faced
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companion become to me that I hardly thought of her
now as a woman at all, only as a demon
of the night. The tempest raged still as she leaped
down out of my arms on the other shore, And
again I walked with her against my will, while the
trees lashed their branches madly around me, showing the pale
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under sides of their leaves in the vivid, frequent flashes
that rent the heavens. On and on we went, branches
flying through the air and missing us. By a miracle
of ill fortune, such is she and I are not
slain by falling branches. The river was a welter of
white caps, flattened down into strained shapes by the pounding rain.
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The clouds, as we glimpsed them, were like devils flying
through the sky past dark tint after dark tint. We
stole and passed a few where lights burned dimly behind
their canvas walls. And at last we came to an
old quarry and to its artificial ravine. She led me
and up to a crevice in the rock wall. Reach
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in your hand and pull out the loose stone. You
will feel, she whispered, It closes an opening that leads
into deep caverns. A human hand must remove that stone.
Your hand must move it. Why did I struggle so
to disobey her? Why did I fail? It was as
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though I knew, but my failure was fore ordained. I
had taken an oath. End of the canal. Part three,