August 21, 2025 • 28 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 five of the Canal and Leonora by Everall whirl
This LibriVox recordings in the public domain read by Ben
Tucker Leonora. I am writing this because I shall not
long be able to write it. Why does one long
(00:21):
for the understanding and sympathy of his fellow beings? Long
to have that even after the worse has befallen and
he has gone from this life to that which awaits him.
How many bottles laden with last messages float on lonely
unknown ocean surges, or sink to the bottom of the sea.
It will be so with this my last message. That is,
(00:45):
it will go uncredited, unbelieved, uncomprehended, although will doubtless be read.
But I've told my story many times and heard them
say that I am mad. I know they will say
that after I am gone, gone from behind these bars
and to the horrors of the fate that will overtake
my spirit, somewhere out in the open spaces and the
(01:07):
blackness of night into which it will go, he will
be there, one of the shadows that lurk in old
cemeteries and sweep across lonely roads, where the winds moan
and wander homeless and hopeless across the waste spaces of
the earth, from dusk till dawn bawn. But I will
(01:30):
tell my story for the last time. Even now. My
years are those of a young girl. I am only seventeen,
and they say I have been mad more than a year.
When I was sixteen, my eyes were bright and my
cheeks red with a color that did not come off
when I washed my face. I lived in the country,
and I was an old fashioned girl in many ways.
(01:53):
I roamed freely over the countryside, and my wanderings were
shared by my only close friend, or else were lonely.
The name of my friend was Margaret. Mine was Leonora.
The two of us lived only a quarter of a
mile apart, and between us ran a lonely little road
crossed by another like it. Our parents believed that it
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was safe for us, or for any child, to traverse
this road between our houses alone at any hour. We
had done it from our youngest days. It should have
been safe, for we were far from cities and malefactors
or any sort or utterly unknown in our secluded part
of the country. There were disadvantages attendant on living in
(02:39):
such isolation, but there were advantages too. Margaret's family were
simple farmer folk of sterling Worth. My father was a
student of some means, who could afford to let the
world go by. On dark or stormy nights, sundown generally
found me safe indoors for the night, spending the evening
by the open fire. Moonlight nights I loved, and on
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nights when the moon was bright, I often stayed at
Margaret's house, taking advantage of my freedom to wander home
alone as late as midnight. Sometimes Margaret did this too,
staying late with me and going home without thought of fear.
But I was the venturesome one, the one who loved
to be abroad in the moonlight to horrors such as
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came to me, marched toward one from the hour of birth,
so that every trait, every characteristic is inclined to meet them.
Up to my sixteenth birthday, my life had been like
a placid stream. It had been without excitement and almost
without incident. Perhaps its very calm had made me ready
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for adventure. On my sixteenth birthday, Margaret dined at my
house and I supped with her. It was our idea
of a celebration. It was October and the night of
the full moon. I did not start home until nearly midnight.
I would not reach home until a little after that,
but that would not matter, because my father would be
asleep in bed, and in any case, not worried about
(04:09):
me or interested. In the hour of my arrival, the
bright colors of autumn leaves, strangely softened and dimmed in
the moonlight, rose all around me. Single leaves drifted through
the still air and fell at my feet. The moon
had reached mid heaven, and the sky was like purple velvet.
I was happy. It was too beautiful a night to
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go home. It was a night to enjoy to the fullest,
to wander through, going over strange roads, going farther than
I had ever gone. I threw out my arms in
the moonlight, posing like a picture of a dancing girl,
which my father had I had never seen a dancer,
and flitted down the road. As I reached the cross road,
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the sound of our clock chiming midnight drifted to my ears,
and I stopped. A beautiful, high powered car stood just
at the entrance to our road, its head lights off,
its parking lights hardly noticeable in the brilliant moonlight. I
knew it was a fine car, because my father had one,
and on rare occasions the fit took him to drive it.
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When he drove it, I went with him, and I
noticed cars for I loved them. I loved their strength
and speed in their fine lines. I loved to rush
through the air in my father's car, and was never
happier than when I could coax him to drive the
twenty miles to the state road and go fast on
the perfect paving. But aside from my father's car, I
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had never seen a good one on these little back
country roads. I stopped, although I knew I ought to
go on, And as I stopped just short of the
cross road, the big car glided softly forward a few
feet until it stopped, blocking the road to my father's house.
My father's motor was a silent one, but this car
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actually moved without the slightest sound. Until now, I had
not seen the driver. Now I looked at him. His
face was shadowy in the moonlight, perhaps it did not
catch the direct light. There was a suggestion of strong,
very sharply cut features of a smile and a deep
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set gaze. My pen shakes until I can hardly write
the words. But I heard the doctor say to day
that I had nearly reached the end of my strength,
and any night, with its horrors, may be the end.
I must control myself and think of the things I
am riding down as they seemed to me at the time.
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I was just turned sixteen, and this was romance, and
so I stopped and talked to him. Although exchanged few
words that night, he did not ask me to ride
with him, and so I was less afraid for what
the romance was. Fear, but I answered his questions. What
is your name, he asked, and I answered Leonora. It
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is music in my ears, he said softly, and again
I felt that this was romance. I felt it again
when he added I have been looking for you for
a long time. Of course I did not dream. I
did not think that he meant that. I had read
novels and love stories. I knew how to take a compliment.
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Do you often pass this way as late as this?
Something made me hesitate. But something about him, something about
our meeting alone in the moonlight, fascinated me. If I
said no, perhaps I would never see him again. Very
often when the moon is full, I said, and moved
to go round the car in a moment, the gloved
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hand that rested on the wheel had touched the broad
brim of his hat. Another movement, and the car shot
silently ahead and was gone. I ran home with a
beating heart. My last words had almost made a rendezvous
of the night of the next full moon. If I desired,
there might be another encounter. Yet it was two months
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later when we met again. The very next full moon
had been clear, cloudless, frostily cold, a lovely November night.
But that night I was afraid. I was so afraid
that I even avoided the full light of the moon
when I crossed our yard and the early evening to
bring in a book I had left lying outside. At
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the thought of traversing the road that led to Margaret's house,
every instinct within me rebelled. At midnight, I was lying
in my bed, with the covers drawn close round me,
and my wide open eyes turned resolutely away from the
patch of moonlight that lay deathly white beneath my open window.
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I was like a person in a nervous fit, aye
who had never known the meaning of nerves. But the
second month it was different. After all, it was a
fine thing to have mystery and romance. For the taking mine?
Or were they mine for the taking? Perhaps the man
in the long low car had never come again, would
never come again, but his voice had promised something different.
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Would he be there to night? Had he been there
a month ago? Curiosity began to drive me before it.
After all, he had made no move to harm me,
and there had been something about him, something that drew
and drew me. Surely my childish fears were the height
of folly, the product of my loneliness. I went to
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Margaret's and stayed late, almost as on that other night,
until the clock struck twelve. At last, with a self
consciousness that was noticeable only to me, I wrapped my
heavy coat around me and went out into the night.
The night had changed. It was bitterly cold, and there
was a heavy freezing mist in the air, which lay
(10:04):
thickly in the hollows. The shadows of the bare trees
struck through the dismal vapors like dangling limbs of skeletons.
What am I writing? Thinking of the scream that pierced
the night I could not suppress. I must control myself,
or they will come in silence me, and I must
finish this to night. I must finish it before the
(10:24):
hour of dawn. That is the hour I fear worse
than the hour of midnight. It is the hour when
those outside must seek their dreadful homes, the hour when
striking fleshless fingers against my window pane is not enough.
But they would take me with them where they go.
(10:47):
Were I but not another living soul have been before?
And whence I shall never escape again. I walked down
slowly toward the cross road. I would not have lingered.
I would have been glad to find the cross road empty.
It was not. There stood the car black. I had
(11:09):
not noticed its color before. Low hung spectral fingers of
white light from its cow lights, piercing the mist. The
cross road was in the hollow, and the mist lay
very heavily there, so heavily that I could hardly breathe.
He was there in the car, his face more indistinct
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in the shadow of his broad brimmed hat than it
had been before. I thought his gloved hand resting as
before upon the wheel, and again, with a thrill of fear,
there went a thrill of fascination through me. He was different,
different from every one else. I felt strangeness, romance, and
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his manner was that of a lover. In my inexperience,
I knew it, Will you ride to night, Leonora? It
had come the next advance, the invitation, But I was
not going with him. I had got the thrill I
had come for. He had asked me, and that was enough.
(12:14):
It was enough now. If I never saw him again,
this was a better stopping point. Remember that I was
only sixteen. A stranger had come out of the night,
had been mysteriously attracted to me, and I to him.
He had asked me to ride with him. I do
not know what I said. Somehow I must have communicated
(12:34):
to him what I felt, my pleasure in being asked,
my refusal. His gloved hand touched his hat, and the
farewell gesture I remembered another night, Leonora, Leonora. The car
glided forward and was gone, But the echo of his
(12:55):
voice was in my ears. His voice deep, strange, different,
but the voice of a lover. My inexperience was sure,
And already I doubted if, after all, this would be
enough for me. If I never saw him again another time,
he would be as punctilious as little urgent. But he
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might say what would he say? The January moon we
hardly saw, so bitter were the storms of that winter,
so unbreaking the heavy clouds that shut us from the sky.
The February full moon was crystal clear in a sky
of I see light. The snow covered ground sparkled, and
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the branches of the trees were ice coated and burned
with white fire. But I clung to the fireside, and
again crept early within my blankets, drawing them over my head.
I was in the grip of the fear that had
visited me before. I was like a person in the
grip of a phobia, such as they say that I
have now shining the moonlight and the open air. It
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was March. Next month would bring the spring, and then
would follow summer. The world would be a soft and
gentle world again, in which fear would have no place.
Yet I begun to long for a repetition of the
meetings at the cross Road, a repetition that should have
the same setting, the rigors of winter, rather than the
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entirely different surroundings of the season of new buds and
new life. My last attack of unreasoning terror had passed
away again and again it seemed as though it left
behind it a reaction that urged me more strongly than
ever toward adventure. Had he been at the cross road
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in the bitter storms of January and on the sparkling
white night which I spent close indoors, would he be
there on the night of the next full moon, the
March moon. There was still no breath of spring in
the air. On that night. The winter snow lay in
the hollows, no longer whitely sparkling, but spoiled by the
cold rains that had come since it had fallen. The
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night sky was wild with wind torn clouds, and the
moonlight was now clear and brilliant, now weirdly dim and
again swept away by great black, sweeping shadows. The air
was full of the smell of damp earth and rotted leaves.
I did not go to Margaret's. I sat by the fire,
dreaming strange dreams, while the clock ticked the hours slowly by,
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and the fire sank low. At eleven, my father yawned
and went up to his room. At a quarter before twelve,
I took my heavy cloak and wrapped it around me.
A little later I went out. I knew that I
would find him waiting. There was no doubt of that
to night. It was not curiosity that drove me, but
some deeper urge, some urge I know no name, for
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I was like a swimmer and a dangerous current, caught
at last by the undertow. The car stood in the
cross road, low and dark. Although it was a finely
made machine, I was sure it seemed to me, for
the first time to be in some way very peculiar.
But at that moment a cloud swept across the face
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of the moon, and I lost interest in the matter,
with the last vague thought that it must be a
foreign make. Then suddenly I was aware that, for the
first time, the stranger had opened the door of the
car before me. Indeed, this was the first time I
had approached on the side of the vacant seat beside
the driver. We ride to night to Leonora. Why not?
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Why not? And what else did you come out for?
That was true? For the first time I now met him,
not on my way home, not on my way anywhere.
I had met him, only to meet him, and he
expected me to ride. He had never forced or tried
(17:06):
to urge me, But to night he expected me to ride.
Wouldn't it seem silly to have come out only to
exchange two or three words and go back. And wouldn't
it be better to go with him? A less an
inexperienced girl might take the trouble to leave her house
on a stormy March night for the sake of a
real adventure. Only a very green country girl would have
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come out at all, for less I would go. I
had entered the car, I sat beside him, and when
the moon shone out brightly, I tried to study his face.
As he started the car down the narrow road. I
met with no success. I had become conscious of a
burning anxiety to see more clearly what was the manner
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of this man who had been the subject of so
much speculation, the reason of so many dreams. But here
beside him, I could see him no more clearly than
I had seen him from the road. The sight of
his face, which was turned toward me, and which was
partly exposed between the deep brimmed hat and the turned
up collar of his cloak, was still deeply shaded by
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the car itself, so that I had the same elusive
impression as before, of strong, sharp features, a deep set gaze,
a smiling expression. We drove fast over strained roads, so
closely was my attention centered upon my companion that I
did not concern myself the way we went. Later, I
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was to become uneasy over the distance we traversed, but
when I did, he reassured me, and I believed that
we were then on our way home, and nearly there.
I thought he meant by home, my father's house. And
had I not thought that, my wildest nightmare could not
have whispered to me what it was that he called home.
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He was very silent. I spoke little, and he seldom
answered me. That did not alarm me as it might
have done, because of my ever present conviction of my childishness,
my crudeness. I blamed myself because my remarks were so
stupid that they were not worth a reply, and the
taciturnity that so embarrassed me. It added to the fascination
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that made me sit motionless hour after hour, longing more
than anything else in the world to get a good
look at the face beside me, to arouse more interest
in my companion. Once only he spoke of his own accord.
He asked me why I was called Leonora. I asked
him if he did not think it was a pretty name,
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remembering how he had said at our first meeting that
it was music in his ears. But I was disappointed,
for he did not compliment my name again. Some would
say it was an ill starred name, But luckily people
are not superstitious as they used to be. If that
is lucky, you cannot call it ill starred. I wanted
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to provoke him into talking more to me. I wanted
his attention, but he did not answer me. I cannot
go on. I cannot finish my stories I intended to do,
telling things as they happened in their right order. There
are things I must explain, things that people have said
about me that I must deny. And the night is
growing late, and the rapping I hear all night long
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upon my window pane, between the bars that shut me
in but that will soon protect me no longer, is
growing louder as the dawn approaches. The pain in my heart,
of which the doctor has said I would die soon,
is growing unendurable. And when I come to the end
of my story, to the end which I will set down,
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I do not know what will happen then. But that
which I am to write of is so dreadful that
I have never dared to think of it, Not of
that itself, but of the horrible ending to the story
I am telling. I must finish before the dawn, for
it is at the dawn that they must go, and
it is then that they would take me where He
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waits for me, always at dawn. But to explain, first,
people say I am mad. You who will read this
will doubtless believe them. But tell me this. Where was
I from the time I disappeared from my father's house
until I was found mad, as they say, and clutching
in my frenzied grasp the finger of a skeleton. And
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what dread struggle did I tear that finger loose? And
from what dreadful hand? And although I, a living woman,
could not remain in the abode of death, if I
had not been touched by the very finger of death.
Then tell me this, Why is my flesh like the
flesh of the dead, so that the doctors say it
is like Lepre's flesh, although it is not Lepres? What
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God it were? Now let me go on our silent
drive cantinued through the flying hours, flying hours, for I
was unconscious of the lapse of time, except for the
once when I vaguely became uneasy at our long journey,
and was reassured. Had he who sat behind the wheel
refused to answer my questioning, then perhaps I would then
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have become frantic with terror. But his deep, soothing voice
worked a spell on me once more, and in his
reply I thought I could detect a real solicitude, which
comforted me. I was assured that we would shortly reach
my father's house. I would slip in before my father
could possibly have waked, and avoid questioning. As the night
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grew older, it became more dismal. The moon, which had
swung high overhead, sent long shadows scurrying from every tree
and shrub, every hill and hummock. As we dashed by,
the wind had fallen, but yet blew hard enough to
make a moaning, wailing sound which seemed to follow us
through the night. The clouds that had swept in great
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masses across the sky had changed their shapes and trailed
in long, somber, broken streamers, like torn black banners. The
smell of dank, soggy earth and rotting leaves of mold
and decay was heavier since the wind had sunk a little. Suddenly,
I had a great need for reassurance and comfort. My
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heart seemed breaking with loneliness and with a strange, unreasoning despair.
I turned to the silent figure at my side, and
it seemed that he smelled of the stagnant odor of
decay that filled the night. That the smell and the
oppression were heavier because I had leaned nearer to him.
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I looked with a more intense gaze than I had
yet turned on him. Not at the face that bent
above me now, the face that still eluded and baffled me,
but down at the arm next to me, at the
slip of his cloak of heavy black cloth. For something
had caught my eye, something moved. Oh what was this horror?
(24:09):
And why was it so horrible? A slowly moving worm
upon his sleeve. I shuddered so that I clashed my
teeth together. I must control myself. And then, as though
my deep alarm were the cue for the hidden event
to advance from the future upon me, the car was
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gliding to a stop. I tore my horrified gaze from
the black clad arm and looked out of the car.
We were gliding into a cemetery. Not here, Oh, don't
stop here, I gasped the words as one gasps in
a nightmare. Yes, here the deep voice was deeper. It
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was deep and hollow. There was no comfort in it.
The mask was off my fear. At least I was
face to face with that, though I had not yet
seen that other face. I leaped from the car and
fell fainting beside it. Black, low, hung and long and narrow.
I'd been to but one funeral in my life, but
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I knew it now. It was the shape of a coffin.
After that, I had no hope. I was with a madman.
Or He dragged me in gloved hands through which the hard,
long fingers bruised my flesh, past graves, past tomb stones
and marble statues, and I was numb. I saw among
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the graves, or seemed to see. Oh, let me say,
I saw strange things, for I have seen them since.
And I was numb. He dragged me toward an old, old,
sunken grave, headed by a time stained stone that settled
to one side, so long it had marked that spot.
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And suddenly the nightmare dreaminess that had dulled my senses
gave way to some keener realization of the truth. I struggled.
I fought back with all my little strength, till I
tore the glove from his right hand, and the finger
of his right hand snapped in my grasp, snapped and
gave way. I struggled in the first faint rays of dawn,
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struggled as I felt the old, old, sunken earth give
way beneath my feet, and the sun rose over the
edge of the earth, inflamed red into my desperate eyes.
I turned for the last time to the inscrutable face,
and in those blood red rays of the dawn, I
saw at last revealed the grinning, fleshless jaws, the empty
(26:45):
eye sockets of statement by the Superintendent of Saint Margaret's
Insane Asylum. This document was found in the room of Leonora,
who was pronounced dead of heart failure by the resonant
physician attendants who rushed to the room on hearing wild
cries and who found her dead. Believed the fatal attack
to have been caused by the excitement of writing down
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her extraordinary narration. The doctor who had attended her considered
her the victim of a strange form of auto hypnosis.
She undoubtedly disappeared from her home on the night of
the eighteenth of March, and was found two days later
in an old cemetery three hundred miles away. When found,
she was incoherent and hysterical, and was holding in her
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hand the finger of a skeleton. How and where she
might have come by this it was and is impossible
to surmise. It seems, however, that she must have been
lured from her home by some stranger and have escaped
or been abandoned near the cemetery. That she must have
read of the legend of Leonora, and that it must
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have made a morbid impression on her mind, which, later,
following the shock which caused her to lose her reason,
dictated the form her insanity was to take. It is
true that her skin, from the time of her discovery
in the graveyard guard had a peculiar appearance, suggestive of
the skin of a leprous person, or even more of
that of a corpse, and which she does not mention.
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It also exuded a peculiar odor. These phenomena were among
those attributed by the doctor to the effects of auto hypnosis,
his theory being that just as a hypnotized person may
be made to develop a burn on the arm by
the mere suggestion without the application of heat. Leonora had
suggested to herself that she had been contaminated by the
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touch of death, and that her physical nature had been
affected by the strength of this suggestion. End of Section
five Leonora, end of the Canal and Leonora by everil
Or el
Section five of the Canal and Leonora by Everall whirl
This LibriVox recordings in the public domain read by Ben
Tucker Leonora. I am writing this because I shall not
long be able to write it. Why does one long
(00:21):
for the understanding and sympathy of his fellow beings? Long
to have that even after the worse has befallen and
he has gone from this life to that which awaits him.
How many bottles laden with last messages float on lonely
unknown ocean surges, or sink to the bottom of the sea.
It will be so with this my last message. That is,
(00:45):
it will go uncredited, unbelieved, uncomprehended, although will doubtless be read.
But I've told my story many times and heard them
say that I am mad. I know they will say
that after I am gone, gone from behind these bars
and to the horrors of the fate that will overtake
my spirit, somewhere out in the open spaces and the
(01:07):
blackness of night into which it will go, he will
be there, one of the shadows that lurk in old
cemeteries and sweep across lonely roads, where the winds moan
and wander homeless and hopeless across the waste spaces of
the earth, from dusk till dawn bawn. But I will
(01:30):
tell my story for the last time. Even now. My
years are those of a young girl. I am only seventeen,
and they say I have been mad more than a year.
When I was sixteen, my eyes were bright and my
cheeks red with a color that did not come off
when I washed my face. I lived in the country,
and I was an old fashioned girl in many ways.
(01:53):
I roamed freely over the countryside, and my wanderings were
shared by my only close friend, or else were lonely.
The name of my friend was Margaret. Mine was Leonora.
The two of us lived only a quarter of a
mile apart, and between us ran a lonely little road
crossed by another like it. Our parents believed that it
(02:17):
was safe for us, or for any child, to traverse
this road between our houses alone at any hour. We
had done it from our youngest days. It should have
been safe, for we were far from cities and malefactors
or any sort or utterly unknown in our secluded part
of the country. There were disadvantages attendant on living in
(02:39):
such isolation, but there were advantages too. Margaret's family were
simple farmer folk of sterling Worth. My father was a
student of some means, who could afford to let the
world go by. On dark or stormy nights, sundown generally
found me safe indoors for the night, spending the evening
by the open fire. Moonlight nights I loved, and on
(03:06):
nights when the moon was bright, I often stayed at
Margaret's house, taking advantage of my freedom to wander home
alone as late as midnight. Sometimes Margaret did this too,
staying late with me and going home without thought of fear.
But I was the venturesome one, the one who loved
to be abroad in the moonlight to horrors such as
(03:28):
came to me, marched toward one from the hour of birth,
so that every trait, every characteristic is inclined to meet them.
Up to my sixteenth birthday, my life had been like
a placid stream. It had been without excitement and almost
without incident. Perhaps its very calm had made me ready
(03:48):
for adventure. On my sixteenth birthday, Margaret dined at my
house and I supped with her. It was our idea
of a celebration. It was October and the night of
the full moon. I did not start home until nearly midnight.
I would not reach home until a little after that,
but that would not matter, because my father would be
asleep in bed, and in any case, not worried about
(04:09):
me or interested. In the hour of my arrival, the
bright colors of autumn leaves, strangely softened and dimmed in
the moonlight, rose all around me. Single leaves drifted through
the still air and fell at my feet. The moon
had reached mid heaven, and the sky was like purple velvet.
I was happy. It was too beautiful a night to
(04:32):
go home. It was a night to enjoy to the fullest,
to wander through, going over strange roads, going farther than
I had ever gone. I threw out my arms in
the moonlight, posing like a picture of a dancing girl,
which my father had I had never seen a dancer,
and flitted down the road. As I reached the cross road,
(04:55):
the sound of our clock chiming midnight drifted to my ears,
and I stopped. A beautiful, high powered car stood just
at the entrance to our road, its head lights off,
its parking lights hardly noticeable in the brilliant moonlight. I
knew it was a fine car, because my father had one,
and on rare occasions the fit took him to drive it.
(05:17):
When he drove it, I went with him, and I
noticed cars for I loved them. I loved their strength
and speed in their fine lines. I loved to rush
through the air in my father's car, and was never
happier than when I could coax him to drive the
twenty miles to the state road and go fast on
the perfect paving. But aside from my father's car, I
(05:41):
had never seen a good one on these little back
country roads. I stopped, although I knew I ought to
go on, And as I stopped just short of the
cross road, the big car glided softly forward a few
feet until it stopped, blocking the road to my father's house.
My father's motor was a silent one, but this car
(06:02):
actually moved without the slightest sound. Until now, I had
not seen the driver. Now I looked at him. His
face was shadowy in the moonlight, perhaps it did not
catch the direct light. There was a suggestion of strong,
very sharply cut features of a smile and a deep
(06:23):
set gaze. My pen shakes until I can hardly write
the words. But I heard the doctor say to day
that I had nearly reached the end of my strength,
and any night, with its horrors, may be the end.
I must control myself and think of the things I
am riding down as they seemed to me at the time.
(06:43):
I was just turned sixteen, and this was romance, and
so I stopped and talked to him. Although exchanged few
words that night, he did not ask me to ride
with him, and so I was less afraid for what
the romance was. Fear, but I answered his questions. What
is your name, he asked, and I answered Leonora. It
(07:08):
is music in my ears, he said softly, and again
I felt that this was romance. I felt it again
when he added I have been looking for you for
a long time. Of course I did not dream. I
did not think that he meant that. I had read
novels and love stories. I knew how to take a compliment.
(07:32):
Do you often pass this way as late as this?
Something made me hesitate. But something about him, something about
our meeting alone in the moonlight, fascinated me. If I
said no, perhaps I would never see him again. Very
often when the moon is full, I said, and moved
to go round the car in a moment, the gloved
(07:54):
hand that rested on the wheel had touched the broad
brim of his hat. Another movement, and the car shot
silently ahead and was gone. I ran home with a
beating heart. My last words had almost made a rendezvous
of the night of the next full moon. If I desired,
there might be another encounter. Yet it was two months
(08:15):
later when we met again. The very next full moon
had been clear, cloudless, frostily cold, a lovely November night.
But that night I was afraid. I was so afraid
that I even avoided the full light of the moon
when I crossed our yard and the early evening to
bring in a book I had left lying outside. At
(08:36):
the thought of traversing the road that led to Margaret's house,
every instinct within me rebelled. At midnight, I was lying
in my bed, with the covers drawn close round me,
and my wide open eyes turned resolutely away from the
patch of moonlight that lay deathly white beneath my open window.
(08:56):
I was like a person in a nervous fit, aye
who had never known the meaning of nerves. But the
second month it was different. After all, it was a
fine thing to have mystery and romance. For the taking mine?
Or were they mine for the taking? Perhaps the man
in the long low car had never come again, would
never come again, but his voice had promised something different.
(09:20):
Would he be there to night? Had he been there
a month ago? Curiosity began to drive me before it.
After all, he had made no move to harm me,
and there had been something about him, something that drew
and drew me. Surely my childish fears were the height
of folly, the product of my loneliness. I went to
(09:43):
Margaret's and stayed late, almost as on that other night,
until the clock struck twelve. At last, with a self
consciousness that was noticeable only to me, I wrapped my
heavy coat around me and went out into the night.
The night had changed. It was bitterly cold, and there
was a heavy freezing mist in the air, which lay
(10:04):
thickly in the hollows. The shadows of the bare trees
struck through the dismal vapors like dangling limbs of skeletons.
What am I writing? Thinking of the scream that pierced
the night I could not suppress. I must control myself,
or they will come in silence me, and I must
finish this to night. I must finish it before the
(10:24):
hour of dawn. That is the hour I fear worse
than the hour of midnight. It is the hour when
those outside must seek their dreadful homes, the hour when
striking fleshless fingers against my window pane is not enough.
But they would take me with them where they go.
(10:47):
Were I but not another living soul have been before?
And whence I shall never escape again. I walked down
slowly toward the cross road. I would not have lingered.
I would have been glad to find the cross road empty.
It was not. There stood the car black. I had
(11:09):
not noticed its color before. Low hung spectral fingers of
white light from its cow lights, piercing the mist. The
cross road was in the hollow, and the mist lay
very heavily there, so heavily that I could hardly breathe.
He was there in the car, his face more indistinct
(11:31):
in the shadow of his broad brimmed hat than it
had been before. I thought his gloved hand resting as
before upon the wheel, and again, with a thrill of fear,
there went a thrill of fascination through me. He was different,
different from every one else. I felt strangeness, romance, and
(11:52):
his manner was that of a lover. In my inexperience,
I knew it, Will you ride to night, Leonora? It
had come the next advance, the invitation, But I was
not going with him. I had got the thrill I
had come for. He had asked me, and that was enough.
(12:14):
It was enough now. If I never saw him again,
this was a better stopping point. Remember that I was
only sixteen. A stranger had come out of the night,
had been mysteriously attracted to me, and I to him.
He had asked me to ride with him. I do
not know what I said. Somehow I must have communicated
(12:34):
to him what I felt, my pleasure in being asked,
my refusal. His gloved hand touched his hat, and the
farewell gesture I remembered another night, Leonora, Leonora. The car
glided forward and was gone, But the echo of his
(12:55):
voice was in my ears. His voice deep, strange, different,
but the voice of a lover. My inexperience was sure,
And already I doubted if, after all, this would be
enough for me. If I never saw him again another time,
he would be as punctilious as little urgent. But he
(13:16):
might say what would he say? The January moon we
hardly saw, so bitter were the storms of that winter,
so unbreaking the heavy clouds that shut us from the sky.
The February full moon was crystal clear in a sky
of I see light. The snow covered ground sparkled, and
(13:39):
the branches of the trees were ice coated and burned
with white fire. But I clung to the fireside, and
again crept early within my blankets, drawing them over my head.
I was in the grip of the fear that had
visited me before. I was like a person in the
grip of a phobia, such as they say that I
have now shining the moonlight and the open air. It
(14:04):
was March. Next month would bring the spring, and then
would follow summer. The world would be a soft and
gentle world again, in which fear would have no place.
Yet I begun to long for a repetition of the
meetings at the cross Road, a repetition that should have
the same setting, the rigors of winter, rather than the
(14:27):
entirely different surroundings of the season of new buds and
new life. My last attack of unreasoning terror had passed
away again and again it seemed as though it left
behind it a reaction that urged me more strongly than
ever toward adventure. Had he been at the cross road
(14:48):
in the bitter storms of January and on the sparkling
white night which I spent close indoors, would he be
there on the night of the next full moon, the
March moon. There was still no breath of spring in
the air. On that night. The winter snow lay in
the hollows, no longer whitely sparkling, but spoiled by the
cold rains that had come since it had fallen. The
(15:11):
night sky was wild with wind torn clouds, and the
moonlight was now clear and brilliant, now weirdly dim and
again swept away by great black, sweeping shadows. The air
was full of the smell of damp earth and rotted leaves.
I did not go to Margaret's. I sat by the fire,
dreaming strange dreams, while the clock ticked the hours slowly by,
(15:36):
and the fire sank low. At eleven, my father yawned
and went up to his room. At a quarter before twelve,
I took my heavy cloak and wrapped it around me.
A little later I went out. I knew that I
would find him waiting. There was no doubt of that
to night. It was not curiosity that drove me, but
some deeper urge, some urge I know no name, for
(16:01):
I was like a swimmer and a dangerous current, caught
at last by the undertow. The car stood in the
cross road, low and dark. Although it was a finely
made machine, I was sure it seemed to me, for
the first time to be in some way very peculiar.
But at that moment a cloud swept across the face
(16:21):
of the moon, and I lost interest in the matter,
with the last vague thought that it must be a
foreign make. Then suddenly I was aware that, for the
first time, the stranger had opened the door of the
car before me. Indeed, this was the first time I
had approached on the side of the vacant seat beside
the driver. We ride to night to Leonora. Why not?
(16:46):
Why not? And what else did you come out for?
That was true? For the first time I now met him,
not on my way home, not on my way anywhere.
I had met him, only to meet him, and he
expected me to ride. He had never forced or tried
(17:06):
to urge me, But to night he expected me to ride.
Wouldn't it seem silly to have come out only to
exchange two or three words and go back. And wouldn't
it be better to go with him? A less an
inexperienced girl might take the trouble to leave her house
on a stormy March night for the sake of a
real adventure. Only a very green country girl would have
(17:30):
come out at all, for less I would go. I
had entered the car, I sat beside him, and when
the moon shone out brightly, I tried to study his face.
As he started the car down the narrow road. I
met with no success. I had become conscious of a
burning anxiety to see more clearly what was the manner
(17:51):
of this man who had been the subject of so
much speculation, the reason of so many dreams. But here
beside him, I could see him no more clearly than
I had seen him from the road. The sight of
his face, which was turned toward me, and which was
partly exposed between the deep brimmed hat and the turned
up collar of his cloak, was still deeply shaded by
(18:14):
the car itself, so that I had the same elusive
impression as before, of strong, sharp features, a deep set gaze,
a smiling expression. We drove fast over strained roads, so
closely was my attention centered upon my companion that I
did not concern myself the way we went. Later, I
(18:35):
was to become uneasy over the distance we traversed, but
when I did, he reassured me, and I believed that
we were then on our way home, and nearly there.
I thought he meant by home, my father's house. And
had I not thought that, my wildest nightmare could not
have whispered to me what it was that he called home.
(18:58):
He was very silent. I spoke little, and he seldom
answered me. That did not alarm me as it might
have done, because of my ever present conviction of my childishness,
my crudeness. I blamed myself because my remarks were so
stupid that they were not worth a reply, and the
taciturnity that so embarrassed me. It added to the fascination
(19:20):
that made me sit motionless hour after hour, longing more
than anything else in the world to get a good
look at the face beside me, to arouse more interest
in my companion. Once only he spoke of his own accord.
He asked me why I was called Leonora. I asked
him if he did not think it was a pretty name,
(19:42):
remembering how he had said at our first meeting that
it was music in his ears. But I was disappointed,
for he did not compliment my name again. Some would
say it was an ill starred name, But luckily people
are not superstitious as they used to be. If that
is lucky, you cannot call it ill starred. I wanted
(20:05):
to provoke him into talking more to me. I wanted
his attention, but he did not answer me. I cannot
go on. I cannot finish my stories I intended to do,
telling things as they happened in their right order. There
are things I must explain, things that people have said
about me that I must deny. And the night is
growing late, and the rapping I hear all night long
(20:26):
upon my window pane, between the bars that shut me
in but that will soon protect me no longer, is
growing louder as the dawn approaches. The pain in my heart,
of which the doctor has said I would die soon,
is growing unendurable. And when I come to the end
of my story, to the end which I will set down,
(20:49):
I do not know what will happen then. But that
which I am to write of is so dreadful that
I have never dared to think of it, Not of
that itself, but of the horrible ending to the story
I am telling. I must finish before the dawn, for
it is at the dawn that they must go, and
it is then that they would take me where He
(21:11):
waits for me, always at dawn. But to explain, first,
people say I am mad. You who will read this
will doubtless believe them. But tell me this. Where was
I from the time I disappeared from my father's house
until I was found mad, as they say, and clutching
in my frenzied grasp the finger of a skeleton. And
(21:32):
what dread struggle did I tear that finger loose? And
from what dreadful hand? And although I, a living woman,
could not remain in the abode of death, if I
had not been touched by the very finger of death.
Then tell me this, Why is my flesh like the
flesh of the dead, so that the doctors say it
is like Lepre's flesh, although it is not Lepres? What
(21:54):
God it were? Now let me go on our silent
drive cantinued through the flying hours, flying hours, for I
was unconscious of the lapse of time, except for the
once when I vaguely became uneasy at our long journey,
and was reassured. Had he who sat behind the wheel
refused to answer my questioning, then perhaps I would then
(22:17):
have become frantic with terror. But his deep, soothing voice
worked a spell on me once more, and in his
reply I thought I could detect a real solicitude, which
comforted me. I was assured that we would shortly reach
my father's house. I would slip in before my father
could possibly have waked, and avoid questioning. As the night
(22:40):
grew older, it became more dismal. The moon, which had
swung high overhead, sent long shadows scurrying from every tree
and shrub, every hill and hummock. As we dashed by,
the wind had fallen, but yet blew hard enough to
make a moaning, wailing sound which seemed to follow us
through the night. The clouds that had swept in great
(23:03):
masses across the sky had changed their shapes and trailed
in long, somber, broken streamers, like torn black banners. The
smell of dank, soggy earth and rotting leaves of mold
and decay was heavier since the wind had sunk a little. Suddenly,
I had a great need for reassurance and comfort. My
(23:24):
heart seemed breaking with loneliness and with a strange, unreasoning despair.
I turned to the silent figure at my side, and
it seemed that he smelled of the stagnant odor of
decay that filled the night. That the smell and the
oppression were heavier because I had leaned nearer to him.
(23:46):
I looked with a more intense gaze than I had
yet turned on him. Not at the face that bent
above me now, the face that still eluded and baffled me,
but down at the arm next to me, at the
slip of his cloak of heavy black cloth. For something
had caught my eye, something moved. Oh what was this horror?
(24:09):
And why was it so horrible? A slowly moving worm
upon his sleeve. I shuddered so that I clashed my
teeth together. I must control myself. And then, as though
my deep alarm were the cue for the hidden event
to advance from the future upon me, the car was
(24:31):
gliding to a stop. I tore my horrified gaze from
the black clad arm and looked out of the car.
We were gliding into a cemetery. Not here, Oh, don't
stop here, I gasped the words as one gasps in
a nightmare. Yes, here the deep voice was deeper. It
(24:56):
was deep and hollow. There was no comfort in it.
The mask was off my fear. At least I was
face to face with that, though I had not yet
seen that other face. I leaped from the car and
fell fainting beside it. Black, low, hung and long and narrow.
I'd been to but one funeral in my life, but
(25:18):
I knew it now. It was the shape of a coffin.
After that, I had no hope. I was with a madman.
Or He dragged me in gloved hands through which the hard,
long fingers bruised my flesh, past graves, past tomb stones
and marble statues, and I was numb. I saw among
(25:38):
the graves, or seemed to see. Oh, let me say,
I saw strange things, for I have seen them since.
And I was numb. He dragged me toward an old, old,
sunken grave, headed by a time stained stone that settled
to one side, so long it had marked that spot.
(26:00):
And suddenly the nightmare dreaminess that had dulled my senses
gave way to some keener realization of the truth. I struggled.
I fought back with all my little strength, till I
tore the glove from his right hand, and the finger
of his right hand snapped in my grasp, snapped and
gave way. I struggled in the first faint rays of dawn,
(26:22):
struggled as I felt the old, old, sunken earth give
way beneath my feet, and the sun rose over the
edge of the earth, inflamed red into my desperate eyes.
I turned for the last time to the inscrutable face,
and in those blood red rays of the dawn, I
saw at last revealed the grinning, fleshless jaws, the empty
(26:45):
eye sockets of statement by the Superintendent of Saint Margaret's
Insane Asylum. This document was found in the room of Leonora,
who was pronounced dead of heart failure by the resonant
physician attendants who rushed to the room on hearing wild
cries and who found her dead. Believed the fatal attack
to have been caused by the excitement of writing down
(27:08):
her extraordinary narration. The doctor who had attended her considered
her the victim of a strange form of auto hypnosis.
She undoubtedly disappeared from her home on the night of
the eighteenth of March, and was found two days later
in an old cemetery three hundred miles away. When found,
she was incoherent and hysterical, and was holding in her
(27:28):
hand the finger of a skeleton. How and where she
might have come by this it was and is impossible
to surmise. It seems, however, that she must have been
lured from her home by some stranger and have escaped
or been abandoned near the cemetery. That she must have
read of the legend of Leonora, and that it must
(27:48):
have made a morbid impression on her mind, which, later,
following the shock which caused her to lose her reason,
dictated the form her insanity was to take. It is
true that her skin, from the time of her discovery
in the graveyard guard had a peculiar appearance, suggestive of
the skin of a leprous person, or even more of
that of a corpse, and which she does not mention.
(28:10):
It also exuded a peculiar odor. These phenomena were among
those attributed by the doctor to the effects of auto hypnosis,
his theory being that just as a hypnotized person may
be made to develop a burn on the arm by
the mere suggestion without the application of heat. Leonora had
suggested to herself that she had been contaminated by the
(28:30):
touch of death, and that her physical nature had been
affected by the strength of this suggestion. End of Section
five Leonora, end of the Canal and Leonora by everil
Or el
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