04 - Canal, and Leonora by Everil Worrell

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)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section four of The Canal and Leonora by Everel Wharrel.
The LibriVox recordings in the public domain read by Ben Tucker,
The Canal, Part four. If you who read have believed
that I have set down the truth thus far, the
little that has left you will call the ravings of

(00:23):
a madman overtaken by his madness. Yet these things happened.
I stretched out my arm, driven by a compulsion I
could not resist. At arm's length in the niche in
the rock, I felt something move the loose rock, a long,
narrow fragment, much larger than I had expected. Yet it

(00:45):
moved easily, seeming to swing on a natural pivot outward.
It swung toppling toward me. A moment more, and there
was a swift rush of the ponderous weight I had loosened.
I leaped aside and went down, my forehead grazed by
the For a brief moment I must have been unconscious,
But only for a moment. My head was a stabbing

(01:07):
agony of pain on real lights flashing before my eyes.
I yet knew the reality of the storm that beat
me down. As I struggled to my feet, I knew
the reality of the dark loathsome shapes that passed me
in the dark, crawling out of the orifice in the
rock and flapping through the wild night along the way

(01:28):
that led to the pleasure camps. So the caverns I
had laid open to the outer world were infested with bats.
I had been inside unlit caverns, and had heard there
the squeaking of the things, felt and heard the flapping
of their wings. But never in all my life before
had I seen bats as large as men and women.

(01:53):
Sick and dizzy from the blow on my head and
from disgust, I crept along the way they were going.
If I touched one of them, I felt that I
should die of horror. Now, at last, the storm abated,
and a heavy darkness made the whole world seem like
the inside of a tomb. Where the tents stood in
a long row. The number of the monster bats seemed

(02:16):
to diminish. It was as though horrible thought they were
creeping into the tents with their slumbering occupants. At last
I came to a lighted tent and paused, crouching so
that the dim radiance that shone through the canvas did
not touch me. In the shadows and there I waited,

(02:39):
but not for long. There was a dark form silhouetted
against the tint, A movement of the flap of the tent,
a rustle and confusion, and the dark thing was again
in silhouette, but with a difference in the quality of
the shadow. The dark thing was inside the tent, now,
its back wings extending across the entrance through which it

(03:03):
had crept. Fear held me spellbound, And as I looked,
the shadow changed again, imperceptibly, so that I could not
have told how it changed. But now it was not
the shadow of a bat, but of a woman. The storm,
the storm I am lost. Exhausted, I crept in here

(03:26):
to beg for refuge until the dawn. That low, thrilling,
sibilant voice, too well, I knew it. Within the tint,
I heard a murmur of acquiescent voices. At last I
began to understand. I knew the nature of the woman
I had carried over the river in my arms, the
woman who would not even cross the canal until the

(03:47):
water should have ceased utterly to flow. I remembered books
I had read, Dracula, other books and stories. I knew
they were true books and stories. Now I knew those
horrors existed for me. I had indeed kept my oath
to the creature of darkness. I had brought her to
her kind under her guidance. I had let them loosen

(04:10):
hordes upon the pleasure camps. The campers were doomed, and
through them others. I forgot my fear. I rushed from
my hiding place up to the tent door, and there
I screamed and called aloud. Don't take her in, don't
let her stay, nor the others. They have crept into
the other tents. Wake all the campers. They will sleep

(04:31):
on to their destruction. Drive out the interlopers. Drive them
out quickly. They are not human, No, and they are
not bats. Do you hear me? Do you understand? I
was fairly howling in a voice that was strange to me.
She is a vampire. They are all vampires. Vampires. Inside
the tent, I heard a new voice. What can be

(04:54):
the matter with that poor man? The voice said It
was a woman, said, gentle crazy, somebody out of his
sutz's deer. A man's voice answered, don't be frightened. And
then the voice I knew so well, so well. I
saw a rock strike a man on the head. In
the storm, he staggered away, but I suppose it crazed him.

(05:18):
I waited for no more. I ran away, madly, threw
the night, and back across the bridge to the city.
Next day to day I boarded the sunken canal boat.
It is the abode of death. No woman could have
lived there, only such an one as she. The old
man's corpse was there, must have died long long ago.

(05:43):
The smell of death and of decay on the boat
was dreadful. Again I felt that I understood back in
those awful houses, she had committed the crime when first
she became the thing she is, and he, her father
less sins steeped and less accursed, attempted to destroy the
evidence of her crime, and fled with her, but died

(06:05):
without becoming like her. She had said that one of
those two was always on watch? Did he indeed divide
her vigil on the boat? What more fitting the dead
standing watch would the undead? And no wonder that she
would not let me board the craft of death, even
to carry her away. And still I feel the old compulsion.

(06:28):
I have been spared her kiss, but for a little while.
Yet I will not let the power of my oath
to her draw me back till I enter the caverns
with her and creep forth in the form of a bat,
to prey upon mankind. Before that can happen, I too
will die. To day in the city I heard that
a horde of strange insects of small animals infested the

(06:50):
pleasure camped last night. Some said, with horror bated breath,
that they perhaps were rats. None of them were seen,
but in the morning nearly every camp had a strange,
deep wound in his throat. I almost laughed aloud. They
were so horrified at the idea of an army of
rats creeping into the tints and biting the sleeping occupants

(07:11):
on their throats. If they had seen what I saw,
if they knew that they are doomed to spread corruption.
So my own death will not be enough. To day
I bought supplies for blasting. To day I will set
my train of dynamite from the hole I made in
a cliff where the vampires creep in and out along

(07:33):
the row of tints as far as the last one.
Then I shall light my fuse. It will be done
before the dawn tomorrow. The city will mourn its dead
and execrate my name. And then at last, in the
slime beneath the unmoving waters of the canal, I shall

(07:53):
find peace. But perhaps it will not be peace, for
I shall seek it midway between the old boat with
its cargo of death, and the row of dismal houses,
where a little child was done to death. When first
she became the thing she is. That is my expiation.

(08:15):
End of the Canal, Part four,