05 - PD Goth by Various

Immerse yourself in a chilling collection of eerie tales carefully selected from the vast library of Project Gutenberg, brought to life through the captivating narration of BellonaTimes.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section five of pd goth This is the LibriVox according
All LibriVox accordings are in the public domain. For more
information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. In
the Dark by Ronald Kaiser. It was a tale of
sheer horror that old acid Greg poured onto the de dictaphone.

(00:21):
The watchman's flashlight printed a white circle on the frosted glass,
black lettered door. Greg Chemical Co. Mfrs ASA, Greg President Private.
The watchman's hand closed on the knob, rattled the door
in its frame. Queer but thought the sound had seemed
to come from in there, But that couldn't be. He

(00:43):
knew that mister Greg and Missus Carothurs carried the only
keys to the office, so any intruder would have been
forced to smash the lock. Maybe the sound came from
the storage room. The watchman clumped along the rubber matted corridor,
flung his weight against that It opened hard, being of
ponderous metal fitted into a cork casing. The room was

(01:07):
an air tight, fire proof bault. Really, his shoes gritted
on the concrete floor as he prowled among the big
porcelain bats. The flashlight boured through bluish haze to the
concrete walls. Acid fumes escaping under the bat lids made
the haze and seared the man's throat. He hurried out
coffee and wiping his eyes. It was damn funny. Every

(01:30):
night lately heard the same peculiar noise somewhere in this
wing of the building, like a body groaning and turning
in restless sleep. It was It scared him. He didn't
mention the mystery to anyone, though. He was an old man,
and he didn't want mister Greg to think he was
getting too old for the job, as to think I
was crazy if I told him about it, he mumbled

(01:52):
inside the office. Oza Gregg heard the muttered words plainly.
He sat very still in the big leather cushioned chair,
hardly breathing, until the scrape of the watchman's feet had
thinned away down the hall. There was no light in
the room to betray him, only the cherry colored tip
of his cigar, which couldn't be visible through the frosty
glass door. Anyway. It'd be an hour before the watchman's

(02:15):
round brought him past the office again. Oza Gregg had
that hour if he could screw up his nerve to
use it. He took the frayed end of the cigar
from his mouth, his hand, which had wasted to mere
skin and bone these past few months, groped through the darkness,
slid over the polished coolness of the dike to phone hood,

(02:36):
and snapped the switch machinery faintly word his fingers found
the tube, lifted it. Miss Caruthers, he snapped. He then hesitated.
Surely he could trust Mary Caruther's. He'd never wondered about
her before. He'd been the secretary for a dozen years. Lately,
since he couldn't look after affairs himself as he used to,

(02:57):
she had practically run the business. She was forty, sensible, unbeautiful,
and tight lipped. How he had to trust her. His
voice plunged into the darkness. What I have to say
now is intended for missus Gregg's ears only. She will
take the first boat home. Of course, meet that boat
and bring her to the office. Since my wife knows
nothing about a dictaphone, it will be necessary for you

(03:20):
to set this record running. As soon as you have
done so, to leave her alone in the room. Make
sure she's not interrupted for a half hour that's all.
He waited a decent interval. The invisible needle peeled its
thread into the revolving wax cylinder. Jeannette murdered as a
greg and hesitated again. This wasn't going to be easy

(03:41):
to say, He decided to begin matter of factly. As
you probably know, my will and the insurance policies are
in the vault at the First National I believe you
will find all my papers in excellent order. If any
questions arise, consult Miss Caruther's. What I have to say
to you now is purely personal. I feel, my dear,
that I only explanation that is God. It came harder

(04:03):
than he had expected. Jeannette, he started in afresh. You
remember three years ago when I was in the hospital.
You were in Palm Beach at the time. I wired
that there'd been an accident here at the plant. That
wasn't strictly so the fact is I gotten mixed up
with the girl. He paused, shivering in the darkness. A
picture of dot swam before him. The oval face, framed

(04:26):
by gleaming swirls of lemon tinted hair, had pouting, scarlet
lips and eyes whose allure was intensified by violent makeup.
The full length picture of her included a streamlined, full, blossomed,
and yet delectably lithe body, a costly enticing Broadway chorus orchard.
As a matter of fact, that was where he'd found her.

(04:49):
I won't make any excuses for myself, asa Greg said harshly.
I might point out that you were always in Florida,
or Bermuda or France, and that I was a lonely man,
but it wasn't just loneliness, and I didn't seek companionship.
I thought I was making a last bout of romance.
I was successful, sixty and silly, and I did all

(05:11):
the damn fool things. I even wrote letters to her,
popsy wopsie letters. The detaphone couldn't record the grimace that
jerked his lips. She saved them, of course, and by
and by she put in price on them ten thousand dollars.
Dot claimed that that one of those filthy tabloids had
offered her that much for them, and what was a

(05:33):
poor working girl to do? She lied, I knew that.
I told her to bring letters to the office after
business hours and I'd take care of her. I took
care of her, all right, I shot her, Jeanette. He
mopped his face with a handkerchief that was already damp.
Not on account of the money, you understand. It was
the things she said after she had took the bills

(05:55):
into her purse, vile things about the way she had
earned it ten times over by during my briefly kisses.
I'd really loved that girl, and I thought she'd care
for me a little. It was her hate that maddened me,
and I got the gun out of my desk drawer.
Ozagregg reached through the darkness for the switch. He fumbled

(06:15):
for the bottle, which stood on the desk. His hand trembled,
spilling some of the liquor onto his lap. He drank
from the bottle. This part of the story he'd skip.
It was too horrible even to think about it. He
didn't want to remember how the blood pooled inside Dot's
fur coat, and how he'd managed to carry the body
out of the office without leaking any of her blood
onto the floor. He tried to forget the musky sweetness

(06:37):
of the perfume on the dead girl, mingled with that
other evil blood smell. Especially, he didn't want to remember
the frightful time he'd had stripping the gold rings from
her fingers and the one gold tooth in her head.
The horror of it coiled in the blackness about him.
His own teeth rattled against the bottle. When he gulped
the second drink, he snapped the switch savagely, but when

(06:59):
he spoke, his voice cringed into the tube. I carried
her into the storage room. I got them lit off
one of the acid tanks. The vat contained an acid
powerful enough to destroy anything except gold. In fact, the
vat itself had to be lined with gold leaf. I
knew that in twenty four hours there wouldn't be a
recognizable body left, and in a week there wouldn't be

(07:20):
anything at all. No matter what the police suspected, they
couldn't prove a murder charge without a corpus delectcy. I
had committed the perfect crime, even for one thing. I
didn't realize that there'd be a splash when she went
into the vat. Greg laughed, not pleasantly. His wife might
think it ben a sob when she heard this record.

(07:41):
Now you understand why I went to the hospital, he jerked.
Possibly you call that poetic justice. Oh God, his voice
broke again. He thumbed off the switch and mopped his
face with the damp lightning the rest. How could he
explain the rest of it? He spent a long minute
arranging his thoughts. You haven't any idea, he resumed, No
one has any idea of how I'd been punished for

(08:02):
the thing I did. I don't mean the sheer physical agony,
but the fear I'd talked coming out of the ether
at the hospital, the fear that she'd been traced to
my office. I'd simply hidden her rings away, expecting to
drop them into the river, or that she might have
confided inner lover, yes she had one, or suppose A
whopping big order came through and that tank was emptied

(08:25):
the very next day, and I couldn't ask any questions.
I didn't even know what was in the papers. However,
that part of it gradually cleared up. I queensed Missus
Carruther's and learned that an unidentical female body had been
fished out of the East River a few days after
Dot disappeared. That's how the police solved the case. I

(08:45):
got rid of her rings. I ordered that the vat
left alone. The other thing began about six months ago.
A spasm comforted his face. His fingers ached their grip
into the dictaphone too, Jeanette, Remember when I began to
object to the radio, how I'd shout at you to
turn it off in the middle of a program. You

(09:05):
thought I was ill and worried about business. You were wrong.
The thing that got me was hearing her voice. He
gripped the gold cigar, chewed it. It's very strange that
you didn't notice it. No matter what station we dialed to,
always that same voice came stealing into the room. But
perhaps you did notice. You said once or twice that
all those blues singers sounded alike, and she was a

(09:28):
blue singer. It was she all right somewhere out in
the either, reminding me. The next thing was well. At first,
when I noticed in the office, I thought miss Caruthers
had suddenly taken up with young ideas. You see, I
kept smelling perfume, and he smelled it. Now. It was
like a miisma in the dark. It isn't anything that
Caruthers wears, he grated. It comes from, yes, a storage room.

(09:52):
I realized that about a month ago, just after you
sailed one night I stayed late at the office and
I went in there. It seemed to be strongest around
the vat, her vat, and I lifted the lid. The sweet,
sticky musk smell hit me like a blow in the face.
And that is an all terror stocked in this room.

(10:15):
Oza Gregg, crouched in his chair, felt the weight of
fear on him like a submarine pressure. His cigar pitched
to his knees, dropped to the floor. You won't believe this, Jeanette.
He hammered the works like nailed into the darkness in
front of him. You will say that it's impossible. I
know that it is impossible. It is a psychological absurdity.

(10:35):
It hundredhickets the laws of natural science. When I saw
something on the bottom of that vat, he groped for
the bottle. His wife would hear a long gurgle and
then a coughing grasp. The vat was nearly full of
as transparent oily acid. He went on. When I saw
was a lot of sediment on the golden floor, and
there shouldn't have been any sediment. The stuff utterly dissolves

(10:58):
animal tissue bone in the common oars keeps them in suspicion.
It didn't look like sentiment either. It looked like a
heap of mold, grave mold. I replaced the lid. I
spent a week convincing myself that it was all impossible,
that I couldn't have seen anything of the sort. Then
I went to the vat again. Silence hung in the
darkness while he sucked wind into his lungs, and the

(11:21):
words burst separate, yammering shrieks. I looked night after night,
for hours at a time. I've watched the change. Did
you ever see a body decomposed? Of course not neither
have I. But you must know in a general way
what the process is. Well, this has been the exact opposite. First,
I stared at the heap of grave mold as it
shaped itself into bones, a skeleton. I watched the coming

(11:43):
of hair, a yellow tangle of it, sprouting from the
bare round skull, until, oh God, the flesh began making
himself before my eyes. I couldn't bear anymore. I stayed away,
didn't come to the office for five days. The tube
slipped from his sweating, slick finger. Panting Oza Gregg fumbled
in the dark until he found it exhaustion, not self control,

(12:05):
flattened his voice into a deadly monoton. I tried to
think of the way out, if I could fish the
corpse out of the tank. But I couldn't smuggle it
out of the planet alone. You know that, and so
do I. Besides, what will be the use if acid
can't kill her? Or nothing? Ken, That's why I can't
have the lids cemented on. It wouldn't do any good either.
Until three days ago, she hadn't the least color. Looked

(12:27):
as white as a ghost in the bath, a naked ghost,
because there's been no resurrection for her clothing. I watched
her limbs grow rosy. Her lips are scarlet, her eyes
are bright. They opened yesterday, and her breasts were rising
and falling. Oh, almost imperceptibly. But that was last night,
and tonight, I swear it. Her lips moved, she muttered

(12:50):
my name. She turned, she'd been lying on her side
over onto her back. The record would be badly blurred.
His hand shook violently, bobbled the tube against his lips.
Greg braced his elbow against the desk. She isn't dead,
he choked. She's only asleep, not very soundly, asleep. She's

(13:10):
waking up. The invisible needle quivered as it traced several noises.
There was his torture, breathing, and the clawing of his
fingernails rattling over the desk. The drawer clicked as it opened.
The loud click was the cooking of the revolver. Soon,
she's going to get onto that vack, Gregg bleeded, Jeannette,
forgive me, God, forgive me, But I will not. I cannot,

(13:31):
I dare not stay here to see her. Then the
sound of the shot brought the watchman stumbling along the corridor.
He crashed against the office door. It banged open in
a shower of falling frosted glass. The watchman's flashlight severed
the darkness and printed its white circle on the face
of Oza Greg. He had fallen back into the chair,
a blackish scout of blood running from the hole in

(13:52):
his temple. He started sightlessly into the light with his
eyes that were two gnarls of shrunken brown flesh like
knots and a pine board. Olzigreb was blind, had been
since that night. Three years passed when the acid splashed.
End of story