Speaker 1: Come in, we welcome.
Speaker 2: I'm E. G.
Speaker 3: Marshall.
Speaker 1: It's pleasant out with the moon riding high, bright enough
almost to read by the very opposite of the night
that Julie Connor's story begins for us, a black and
lowering night, the atmosphere heavy with a promise of rain, dark,
the dark, not being able to see, only to imagine
what surrounds us. For some, it is peopled with presences, things,
and unimaginable horrors. Why that's what our story is about.
It begins as we listened to Julie move and moan
in her sleep. Our mystery drama The Dark Closet was
written especially for the Mystery Theater by Ian Martin and
stars Fred Gwynn. It is sponsored in part by Buick
Motor Division and sin Off the Sinus Medicines. I'll be
back shortly with that one for the goblins of Get
You if you don't watch out. No American kid of
my generation escaped the dire prediction of little orphan Annie,
for whom James Whitcomb Riley had begun his poem prophetically
with the words came to our house to stay.
Speaker 3: I know for me she did.
Speaker 1: I can still remember the little boy who went to
bed and when they turned the covers down, he wasn't
there at all. The little girl who says, two great
big black things are standing by her side, who snatched
her through the ceiling, for she knowed what she's about,
For the goblins, he'll get you. Hiss, you don't watch out.
I wonder what goblin holds Julie Connors in his stall.
Speaker 4: Tell me help, Julie.
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 5: The the light? Please?
Speaker 6: Thank god, thank god?
Speaker 2: Why didn't you turn on the light by the bed.
Did you have to break that lamb?
Speaker 3: I didn't mean to.
Speaker 7: I was just so scared I reached out to turn
it on and knocked.
Speaker 6: It over by accident.
Speaker 2: That was one of your mother's favors.
Speaker 6: Pop, don't blame me too much. Someone turned it off,
someone meaning me.
Speaker 2: I told you time and time again, Julie, waste not,
want not. I looked in here when I got home
and you were sound asleep, lamp still lit.
Speaker 7: I only keep it that way this time of year,
when it gets dark so early. Just tell me, knowing
you're home.
Speaker 2: Huh, Why what are you afraid of? And you don't
have to go to bed so early?
Speaker 5: I got nothing else to do.
Speaker 4: Oh, we're in town.
Speaker 2: You've got the television.
Speaker 6: I'm tired of that old too. Living other people's lives though,
I want to live my own.
Speaker 2: Yeah, time enough for that.
Speaker 6: I'm seventeen going on eighteen.
Speaker 2: All the more reason. You don't need lights on when
you're sleeping, and stop having those nightmares. I reckon. That's
what it was again, huh an one of them?
Speaker 8: Yeah, what.
Speaker 6: Doesn't matter, m.
Speaker 2: Then I'll say it for you. The Boogeyman again. That's book.
I swear. I don't know what I'm gonna do with you.
Speaker 4: Child, Child, that's the trouble.
Speaker 2: That's what you ain't anymore, except in half the time
you act like it was one.
Speaker 6: Maybe it would help pop if you stop trying to
cheat you like one.
Speaker 2: You think you're not.
Speaker 5: Last year of high school.
Speaker 6: I've been keeping house for you ever since, Mamma.
Speaker 2: Do we won't talk about your mom?
Speaker 3: Okay, Bob.
Speaker 7: All I meant to say was if you can trust
me to take care of the house, well you could
trust me to take care of myself.
Speaker 9: You work afore the midnight shift.
Speaker 8: Eh.
Speaker 6: I kept living here nights I could date, except I don't.
Speaker 2: Want you dating, and I'm not around me, the kind
of guy you're going with, not these days the riff raft.
Speaker 7: That's abroad, because maybe a guy has long hair, and
whereas old jeans should make so much difference on the.
Speaker 6: Farm, what we wore was Jean.
Speaker 4: I just don't want to see you run around the trash.
Speaker 2: He was all in the level, Julie. Don't try to
be one hair in the city. Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 6: Ma.
Speaker 2: That's the way you are to turn now.
Speaker 3: And see.
Speaker 6: Can't you have it for kept?
Speaker 8: Mo?
Speaker 5: What I mean?
Speaker 6: Try to hide your way in the back of your
mind like we all have to.
Speaker 5: I think of today?
Speaker 2: Uh I can. I can never shut your mother away. Yeah.
I just wish you could learn and live like it,
make your peace with the world. Then maybe you could
shut off these dreams that hurt you. Yeah, and it
hurt me too.
Speaker 7: Maybe if I just got a little more freedom.
Speaker 2: In a couple of months, you'll be eighteen. I have
no control over you then, But until you reach that birthday,
I will not let you run wild like all the
other kids. I promise your mother that force died.
Speaker 6: Why don't you trust me, Pop, leave me to make
my own decisions?
Speaker 2: I can't, I promise Mary. She wanted only the best
for you.
Speaker 7: She isn't here to find it for me anymore. Let
me do my own finding.
Speaker 2: No, by heaven, I give my word, I keep it.
Speaker 6: Ten seventh, that's mean for a day, tomorrow night.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't hear good things about 'em.
Speaker 6: You mean I can't go.
Speaker 2: I mean you better not. I have six months left
to bring you to your mother's image. I will do
everything I can to make you that. But it's about
your dream.
Speaker 9: I forget it.
Speaker 7: It doesn't matter anymore. I'm just being a child, and
I know it. I can see that. It's time for
me to glow up.
Speaker 6: Good night, Pop. You need your sleep, me too?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, sure you okay, don't.
Speaker 6: Worry about me. Three teens, Yeah, go.
Speaker 2: Out, and they left for me. I just wish I
could make sure that the whole lifetime I might have
to feel well, Uh, turn off a life.
Speaker 6: No, I I mean I I'll get it.
Speaker 3: I I have I.
Speaker 6: Have to go to the bathroom, I pop, Ah, I love.
Speaker 4: You, sure, I you know how I.
Speaker 2: Try to feel. Julie. It's just since married. I yeah,
there is much together. Yeah, good night.
Speaker 6: When she was alive, it wasn't much for you to give.
Oh god, well the daylight never come.
Speaker 10: Hey, you are pretty freaked out there, my old lady.
Speaker 6: Thanks for the lift, and I'm not your old lady.
Speaker 10: Oh these last few weeks, uh, I thought we were
finally gonna begin to make it.
Speaker 6: Oh damn, it's not you.
Speaker 2: It's ah, I know your father.
Speaker 6: No, no, not that so much. Something else? H oh,
something I can't explain.
Speaker 5: May you ought to dump me?
Speaker 6: Not any good for you?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I've been stringing me along there. What's got you down?
Speaker 4: Sneaking out with me? Knight spine?
Speaker 5: You old dodos back.
Speaker 6: I don't like it. For what other way is there.
Speaker 2: Still expects you to sit on the knit or something?
Speaker 3: Huh?
Speaker 6: What's the way he was brought up and mom? They
were fond people.
Speaker 10: Your mother's been dead for uh six years, hasn't she.
Speaker 6: Yeah that's a big hang up.
Speaker 7: Really, Pop goes overboard about trying to you know, pre
tech me, like he thinks mom would have.
Speaker 6: Forget it.
Speaker 2: Look, he still got a dates for tonight, right.
Speaker 3: Oh sure.
Speaker 6: I even tried to tell Pap about going out with
you when he came home.
Speaker 9: When he blew a gaskt.
Speaker 5: I let it go.
Speaker 6: I didn't wanna upset him.
Speaker 4: I'm shut up. He's gotten out of style.
Speaker 10: Baby, he belongs to a wax museum.
Speaker 2: Take a good look at yourself in the mirror.
Speaker 10: He got circles under your eyes like some old uh
broader thirty.
Speaker 6: I told you that isn't pop it. It's this this
crazy nightmare I have all the time.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, well, okay, let's see.
Speaker 2: I tell you what.
Speaker 10: You're gonna get a good sleep tonight. Old Doc Tim
is gonna guarantee it. Oh how I'm gonna borrow at
some wheels and take a little booze, and you're gonna
take a couple of belts.
Speaker 5: See what you need is to relax.
Speaker 6: Maybe you'll write him. I'm so uptight.
Speaker 9: I you know something.
Speaker 7: Last few weeks, I I think he's gonna flight.
Speaker 6: I went with my legs.
Speaker 4: Well at the night.
Speaker 7: We're gonna do better than that.
Speaker 10: You're gonna blow your mind.
Speaker 6: Gee, where'd you get a.
Speaker 5: Car like this?
Speaker 9: That's dove but stoj can bean god.
Speaker 2: Marvel a magician.
Speaker 5: I waved my match ground.
Speaker 6: And you've been drinking?
Speaker 3: How did you do?
Speaker 7: Hey?
Speaker 5: Open the glove compartment.
Speaker 3: Oh it's a liquor.
Speaker 5: Where'd you get that.
Speaker 10: So on the family, kiddo wave, my old man boys
is down. You'll never miss one bottle? Uh here there
and the cars, m uncle Joe's go ahead, take the
bottle out.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 6: I don't want yet. You shouldn't have any more.
Speaker 10: Oh come on, I'm just putting you on. I only
had one little drink. And if I remember, you promised
you were gonna join me.
Speaker 6: Okay, why not right out of a bottle?
Speaker 4: I got no glasses.
Speaker 6: Okay, here are go? Hey it's almost empty.
Speaker 10: No, no, no, I ain't steak a phone bottle.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, come on.
Speaker 5: And kill it.
Speaker 9: No, I just want a small ship.
Speaker 6: Where are we going?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Starland?
Speaker 10: Live it up, big goll and ride the games that disco?
Speaker 9: How liquor?
Speaker 3: Starland?
Speaker 6: What ain't gonna use for money?
Speaker 10: That is no problem?
Speaker 6: What we're starting down for?
Speaker 4: There's uh liquor store up ahead of you.
Speaker 6: Oh why don't we forget it? I I I don't
want anymore?
Speaker 10: Baby, baby, don't you remember the night? The night we're
gonna open up your skull and let all those little
men out.
Speaker 5: You just keep a running. I'll be right back. It's
serious so deserted. Uh yeah, tell on the radio. Keep
the company.
Speaker 8: Okay, put a shot.
Speaker 5: It sounded like joy, my joy? Kid him joy? Help
me kick him? What happen?
Speaker 9: Hold me? I can't stay.
Speaker 2: You gotta get to the car.
Speaker 9: Get me hold I've got you.
Speaker 6: Kill let the gun?
Speaker 9: You coulda gun?
Speaker 5: Kill him that?
Speaker 3: What are you doing?
Speaker 6: You the gun?
Speaker 9: I'm killing you here?
Speaker 8: Men?
Speaker 3: How curious are today?
Speaker 2: I just took your gun.
Speaker 6: It isn't mind up of the Hi.
Speaker 1: Okay, Jake, get in the side the liaquer store and
see what happened.
Speaker 5: I'll handle this end of it.
Speaker 3: I'll put your hand.
Speaker 2: Behind your back. Oh I do you want your sidekick
here to.
Speaker 5: Bleed the death?
Speaker 1: Now behind the back?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 5: Oh no, I'm sorry you too.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry you play rough games.
Speaker 3: You gotta take what comes with them.
Speaker 2: I climb over to the car.
Speaker 3: I've got a radio emergency for an ambulance.
Speaker 1: Well, doctor Sarah Brown me, what are you doing here
this time of night?
Speaker 5: Well, I'll tell you, Reverend Samuel Prior, I've been called
in as a special consultant on the shooting case that
was brought in.
Speaker 1: Oh you mean the boy killed the liquor shop older
mm hmmmmm. Well he doesn't need a psychiatrist Sally, he's
more out to need me. They've had he been on
R two and a half hours already.
Speaker 5: He's not my patient.
Speaker 3: Little girl who was with him finally took her back
to the station house for questioning and.
Speaker 4: To lock her up.
Speaker 5: Mmm, only she didn't stay locked up. There's a Sergeant
Lawrence on the way back here with her. Oh, oh,
I guess I hear. Now let me go there, Connors.
Speaker 1: Just you pull him down now, if you'll only talk for.
Speaker 5: Oh? Is that gonna lock me up again? This time?
Speaker 7: I will burk my head wide open.
Speaker 5: I won't let him get me. Of course, we won't
let him get you, whoever he is, Julie, this is
a hospital. You're perfectly safe, now, aren't you being foolish?
How do you know me? Come on, I've been expecting you.
I'm doctor Browning.
Speaker 6: Oh sure, they head doctor.
Speaker 7: Well, don't figure out putting me in any.
Speaker 6: Pet itself, cause if you do, you'll see the biggest
wing being yet.
Speaker 5: No padded sell, no keys. You'll have to be confined
to your room, but you don't have to close the door,
and there are two big windows alright, honest, Well, in
what it's late, I want you to get undressed and
get into bed. Then I'll give you something to help
you sleep, and while we're waiting for it to work,
we'll talk a little. Nurse when you show Ms Connors
to her room, Miss, do I have hey? Sergeant, does
she have to be handcuffed?
Speaker 2: I know if you don't think she needs 'em?
Speaker 5: Now? Doctor, No, I don't. Okay, okay, doctor, you go
with the nurse and the sergeant. I'll be up in
a moment.
Speaker 3: I will for you. Well, looks like you just made
a friend.
Speaker 5: Yes, and I need you, Sam. Could we go to
my office for a moment or two. Something's haunting that child,
something beyond tonight. You talked to her earlier. Maybe you
can give me a clue to who her private boogein
in is.
Speaker 1: It's so easy for all of us, no matter how
sure we think we are, to panic at what we
don't understand, terrors and strange noises that come to us
from the dark outside. But when the nameless fight wells
up from inside, creating our own boogeyman, call it what
you want, then we are truly possessed, and the only
last hope is to exorcise the unnamed thing within us.
How the turn shortly with that too. Exorcism is a covenient,
old fashioned word. It conjures picture of the damned or
possessed rising under the influence of some foul demon r
It once was the sole province of the religious and
even in modern terms still is. But it is well
established by now that the psychiatrist is equally important, and
church and medicine work as partners, like the Reverend Sam
Pryor and doctor Sarah Browning.
Speaker 5: So the police waught a psychiatric evaluation of Julie Connor's
They were holding her for bail and locked her in
a cell, and she went berserk. Did you see the
bruises on her?
Speaker 3: Foreheg I did claustrophogia.
Speaker 5: Apparently, but that's for later. The point is that even
if it is bonafide, it's only a symptom, not a disease.
What worries me is less a girl than the father.
Speaker 3: Oh smarter with mister Cunners.
Speaker 5: What kind of father abandons a seventeen year old girl
who's never been in any real trouble to face jail
before she's been found guilty.
Speaker 1: Well, she's a suspected accomplice, and the murder of a
liquor store, hald up her even the murder, Sam, can.
Speaker 5: You honestly believe that child could handle a heavy gun
like the one that was used?
Speaker 3: Was no way of proving that until the boys she
was with comes too. If he ever does that, bad Sam.
He's young, but not so good Sally. Uh, what was
the bond on the girl?
Speaker 5: The police don't really suspect her as a principal, only
a few thousand mm, except that her father refused to
post it.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe he can't afford it.
Speaker 5: He can. I call him this morning, he repears, to
talk to me.
Speaker 1: Do you seriously imagine that my winning personality might succeed
where yours failed?
Speaker 5: A doctor, you might apply a little occupational leverage. The
father is a deacon at the plane View's church, Oh.
Speaker 1: Of which the minister happens to be a close friend
of mine.
Speaker 5: Sam, mm, I can't judge's the girl without knowing something
about her background, her history, her life. There isn't time
for deep analysis. Her father is the only one who
can tell me quickly.
Speaker 3: Oh, no mother or relatives.
Speaker 5: No mother, no relatives close enough to be of value.
I know it's an imposition.
Speaker 1: Well, that's when you ask me, Shelley, you give me
the address and I'll go beard your lion in his death.
Speaker 6: Hello, Julie, Oh to you, doctor, Hu's Tim.
Speaker 5: He's still in the recovery room. How are you?
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I promise you a view from a window? Is it
all right?
Speaker 7: Ever since the sun came up, Trees and shrubs, flowers
and green rolling out as far as.
Speaker 6: You can see, just like the farm was the.
Speaker 9: Farm where I grew up before we moved to the city.
Speaker 6: About a thousand years ago, or maybe five thousand. Okay, Doc,
what always.
Speaker 9: To start with the lie detector?
Speaker 5: Don't fight me, Julie, I'm on your side. Do me
a favor.
Speaker 6: I guess I owe you one getting those handcuffs offt
of me, so i'll trade.
Speaker 5: Just tell me the truth about everything, good, bad and different.
Just all the truth. That's what I'm after.
Speaker 6: You don't ask so much, Huh.
Speaker 5: When I was a little girl, my father used to
say to me, Sally, Sally, Well, my name's really Sarah,
but I always hated it, so I got to be
called Sally anyway.
Speaker 6: Pop, Uh, that's what I call my father.
Speaker 5: Anyway. Pop always said to me, don't do a power
of wishing, Sally, cause the Lord's too busy to come
through for everyone. But if you do wish, always wish big.
So that's how it is with you and me, Julie.
I wish and bid. You'll tell me everything.
Speaker 6: Gee dot ah, what's the difference?
Speaker 9: What have I got to lose?
Speaker 6: So too, It's just like any other boy. I had
to bust out of home for some kicks some of
the time.
Speaker 5: But you've known him for a while. Well, sure we
were in the same class at school. You weren't surprised
when he picked you up in a car this time.
Speaker 7: Sure he was, especially when he said we were heading
the Star and Park, you know, the rides and all,
and he wanted to gave a disc attack.
Speaker 5: I just didn't feel right.
Speaker 6: He never had money like that before.
Speaker 5: But you went, yeah, I went.
Speaker 6: I was ready to go anywhere that night. I thought
I even had a drink.
Speaker 9: Now I don't usually because it it it makes me
feel kind of dizzy. And I thought it right, chase away.
Speaker 6: But the guy that follows me go on, Tim had
an almost empty bottle. He gave me a drink and
and he he said, you.
Speaker 5: Wanted to stop and get more tell me about the
man you say follows you.
Speaker 6: I don't wanna talk about that.
Speaker 5: Then don't tell me more about what happened.
Speaker 7: Well, we stopped at this liquor store and Tim left
me in the car.
Speaker 5: M called me to turn on the radio.
Speaker 9: I heard him throw away the empty cause it.
Speaker 6: Broke, and the smashing the street. I didn't like that.
Speaker 5: Why, well, things should be.
Speaker 9: Tidy and need normalways.
Speaker 7: Well, I I was listening to the radio and then
these two noises. I just couldn't believe they were shot.
When Tim came out, he was all bleeding.
Speaker 6: He could hardly stand up. And then I don't know,
the police came in the ambulance.
Speaker 9: They took Tim away to the hospital.
Speaker 6: And needed stations house.
Speaker 5: And booked you as an accessory. Yes, do you know
the charges? Well, M Roberrian, you didn't know Tim was
driving a stolen car.
Speaker 9: No, he said it with his.
Speaker 6: Uncles and he meant it to him. Why are you
asking me all these questions?
Speaker 5: Well, some of them I'm asking because I felt you'd
rather have me do it than the police.
Speaker 9: Oh, why doesn't Tim tell him the truth?
Speaker 5: Julie, Dear, Tim is still unconscious, he can't talk and
tim isn't my interest? You are? Tell me more about
the police station. Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 6: Things took forever.
Speaker 5: They came, took my fingerprints, and then.
Speaker 7: Uh they put me to sell and uh locked the door. Yes,
they turned up the light and I try to tell
him not to because my pop was coming. I asked
him to call him. They just didn't pay any attention
and got me in the wall.
Speaker 5: He was there. I knew he was gonna get me.
I just screamed and screamed it.
Speaker 6: The police lady came.
Speaker 7: I told her to get my bob to get me
out of there.
Speaker 5: And what did she say?
Speaker 6: She said he'd been there and.
Speaker 5: He wasn't going to let me out.
Speaker 7: I've just been all day.
Speaker 6: That's how he went bananas and beat my head against
the wall and the boy.
Speaker 5: Then I don't know. Everything just went to last and
when you woke up, he'll bring me in here to
the hospital when I met you, all right, Julie, just
a few more questions. Sit on the bed, Okay, then okay,
whyn't you just lie back? That's right. Look, I know
you've been through a bad time and jail would scare
the daylights out of me, But Why would it drive
you up the wall the way it did?
Speaker 9: Because it was just like like when I was a
kid and I I could in my closet.
Speaker 5: To punish you.
Speaker 3: F who who?
Speaker 5: What? Who? Locked you up like my mother? And inside
in the dark you were terrified. I always the hype
choke it.
Speaker 9: There wasn't any light nm you couldn't see.
Speaker 3: The walls.
Speaker 5: You could just feel them. You could feel the moving in.
I closed my eyes.
Speaker 6: I always hope my own private dark.
Speaker 5: Wouldn't be scary if the other and the other would
come the other.
Speaker 3: First.
Speaker 9: I could hear his breathing, his voice, terrible whispering sound.
Speaker 5: But how did you know that this, this boogie man
wouldn't get you?
Speaker 7: I always knew Pop would come to Setney.
Speaker 5: Free, and he always did, except this time. How could
he do that to me?
Speaker 9: How could he need he shut up?
Speaker 5: When he loves me just the way I love him?
Speaker 9: How can you let me be there alone, to.
Speaker 6: Be swallowed up by the dark for everyone?
Speaker 5: All right, all right, Julie, it's gonna be all right.
Don't worry. We're gonna get you all straightened out.
Speaker 6: Oh don't.
Speaker 5: I'm afraid, We're all afraid Julie of so many things.
If I asked you to call me Sally as I
called you Julie, who do make it easier? Oh you're
so kind? Huh?
Speaker 3: I do trust you?
Speaker 5: How you say? Oh, I just want my Bob. I
know you do.
Speaker 6: Well, Please don't let him walk away from me.
Speaker 9: If he did, I I couldn't move.
Speaker 6: You don't think he really will, do you?
Speaker 8: Uh?
Speaker 1: Doctor Ronnie isn't back in that office, but uh, she
should be shortly.
Speaker 3: We can wait for her there.
Speaker 2: I don't know why we're talking to this except that
you and my pastor good friends Reverend pie Ah a
friend in need. Uh what does that mean?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 1: That's something we all need on particular occasions, but uh
really all the time. Yes, this is doctor Bowne's office.
Speaker 2: I can't imagine going to a woman psychiatrice.
Speaker 3: We neither can I.
Speaker 1: But because you're a minister, Uh no, no, because I
don't need one. And uh my collar you must remember
makes sex immaterial? Yeah, cause, hey, whatever criminal aspects this
case involves, can scarcely touch your daughter. She was by
all evidence, she was an innocent bystander, except for the
impetus that we drove her out of an empty house
and involved her.
Speaker 2: What do you trying to say?
Speaker 1: I'm not trying you say. I discussed this case with
doctor Browning, and we are both in agreement. Your daughter
is possessed by uh, a malignant spirit, something beyond her
comprehension or ability to handle, which has driven her into
a horrendous situation, one innocent man's death and another possible one.
The young man was the instrument of the first.
Speaker 3: But where does your daughter's get or has she any
real guild?
Speaker 1: Of all the bear on those young shaken shoulders. Oh,
the hold up of a liquor store goes wrong, the
owner is shocked to death. A boy is the apparent murderer,
a girl within a possible accomplice. What peculiar twist of
fate put her there? What punishment or resolution should come
from the circumstances. We will leave you to judge that
after I return shortly with the third act. This is
a story which wanders the fields of modern psychiatry and
tries to plumb the depths of subjective terror grown from
within rather than impressed from without. So we returned to
a minister who faces an anguished father and a history
still buried in the shadows of the past.
Speaker 2: I don't know why I let myself get talking of
this reverend.
Speaker 1: For your daughter's sake, I told you I'm truer her
Ms Connors. You cannot abandon your child. She's only been arrested,
not sentenced. She hasn't been proven guilty.
Speaker 2: She was in a stolee call the boy? What a record?
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know that.
Speaker 1: So isn't it just possible that Julie didn't eat it?
Speaker 2: No, I forget it. She lied anyone to try and
take him in. But there's time she didn't get away
with it, except she managed to take away out of jail.
Speaker 3: I mean, why are you so bitter against her?
Speaker 2: I'm not bitter, are you sure?
Speaker 1: And doctor Browning doesn't think she's faking. She thinks Julie
has real claustrophobia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you mean?
Speaker 1: A terror of being shut away in a confined or
narrow space sick.
Speaker 2: So that's the story she's trying to sell.
Speaker 3: We all have it more or less.
Speaker 5: Now, perhaps your daughter I didn't mean to eat, but
I just had a long talk with your daughter. Mister
Connor's I think it's true. Who are you? Oh?
Speaker 1: This is doctor Browning the psychiatrist in charge.
Speaker 3: Of your daughter's case.
Speaker 2: Huh pschiatrist, that's.
Speaker 5: Right, a profession I gather may not be too popular
with you, mister Connors, but I am going to be
important in your life.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: I want to be frank and I don't want to
sound arbitrary. But what happens in a few weeks until
the trial, as far as Julie is concerned, is almost
entirely up to me.
Speaker 2: If you're trying to trick me into posting a bond
for the AD says no, let us stay in jail
learn a lesson for us.
Speaker 5: That's just what your daughter shouldn't Well, I'll amend that
can't do. She's a very insecure and disturbed girl.
Speaker 2: Am I supposed to be responsible for Julie? Am I
to take the blame?
Speaker 5: I don't like the word blame. Let's say you might
be a factor along with others. What others Julie's mother,
for example?
Speaker 2: Don't you say one word against Julie's mother? Mary was
a saint.
Speaker 5: From what Julie told me, a different picture could be imagined.
Speaker 2: Whatever she said was lies lies possibly.
Speaker 5: But if she's lie, I'd like to find out why now,
mister Connors, won't you sit down and help.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, doctor, I have a job do. I don't
see how I can help you.
Speaker 1: If you'll excuse me, I think i'm superfluous in this discussion.
And also I have word to do now. I promise
to visit your daughter. Can I tell her you'll be
up to see her?
Speaker 2: Mister Conno, you can tell her I never want to
see her again.
Speaker 1: Well that's a message you'll have to convey by yourself.
Excuse me, hm, m I uh a reverend prior this
intensive care?
Speaker 8: Uh?
Speaker 1: Yes, I wanna ask about Tim Sadler, the boy who
was shot in the hold up.
Speaker 3: Ah, I see.
Speaker 1: Well if there's any change, I'll be on four fifty.
Would you will notify you please immediately?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Thank you a lot, Miss conce Hi.
Speaker 6: Oh excuse me, reverend?
Speaker 3: Well for what who?
Speaker 6: You're a minister and all? I didn't mean to be rude.
I I don't wanna answer any more questions.
Speaker 3: Oh who does?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 3: Will avoid him?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 3: Leading ones anyway? Who it's a pretty nice for you.
Speaker 6: I had that one reminds me of the farm I was,
uh where all where I grew up.
Speaker 5: You like being out there that in the city.
Speaker 6: Mm these Papa was happy out there nice.
Speaker 3: Well, he still seems pretty nice.
Speaker 7: He's here in the hospital talking to the shrink and
then a shrink, you know, doctor Browning.
Speaker 3: Uh Huh.
Speaker 6: People won't come and see me. You don't have to
tell me.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 6: It doesn't matter. Nothing matters.
Speaker 3: Talk you about pupetually. Oh.
Speaker 7: I gave it up soon after mother died, when I
got old enough to realize he never wanted me.
Speaker 6: Uh, I could never take her place.
Speaker 9: I had to die too.
Speaker 7: Never been able to admit it. He hates me for
being alive instead of her. Only Why can't I even
it up and hate him back?
Speaker 8: Uh?
Speaker 5: And I don't mean to pry, but you did love
your wife very much, mister Connor's.
Speaker 2: My old life began and ended with her.
Speaker 5: She returned that love.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Mary loved me.
Speaker 5: Exact why she resented it when Julie arrived.
Speaker 2: M Mary resent Julie. She loved her, and you h
of course, he who doesn't want kids?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Sure on a farm, maybe I was kind of disappointed.
It wasn't a boy farmer needs a boy and girls.
But that was only at first at first, well, and
there was things went wrong. We wanted to have any
more kids. Uh, that was the Lord's will. Then, after
all the years we tried and found, God said against us. Uh,
Julie was growing up. Bad street was showing through. I
told her she was too soft on her What bad street,
The things she do. When she was eight, she climbed
that big old maple behind the house and got a
treat like a cat. We had to get the county
hooking ladder from the fire department and set her down.
And then one summer she fooled us off. She was
drown the river m By the time she was ten,
she run away from home. Regular not so much couldn't
be found. Then at twelve, Uh, I swear I couldn't
blame 'em. The boys came swarming around. UH tell you true.
She was lovable and damnable to.
Speaker 5: Handle that her and your wife tried to punish her somehow,
or at least controller, so she took to locking her
in the closet.
Speaker 3: Hu, who told you that? What Julie? That was what
she said? Yes, damn if.
Speaker 2: Now you don't see what a liar she is. So
I one not to punish her. Now, I was the
one who locked her in the closet.
Speaker 5: Oh, I see, But you were always the one who
came back to let her out up till now.
Speaker 2: Doctor. But I'm not there no out anymore as a
father or a bailiff. This time she brought a whole
problem and she can stay in the closet for good.
Speaker 5: Mister Connors, I want you to listen.
Speaker 2: To no, ma'am. You can take up for Julia all
you want, but you ain't gonna.
Speaker 3: Change my mind.
Speaker 5: I'm not taking up for Julia. I'm taking up for
both of you.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 5: And I'll thank you not to call me ma'am. I
am doctor, doctor Sarah Brownie, and a specialist in human relationships.
Two minutes is all I ask?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Two minutes, well a reasonable time.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, No, that isn't what I mean.
Speaker 5: It's just.
Speaker 2: That's what Mary always used to say to me when
she wanted something good.
Speaker 3: First.
Speaker 2: I I like, I'll give you a two minutes.
Speaker 3: Doctor.
Speaker 5: For what to try to get you to look at
your lives clearly yours and Julie's, to give you what
you need. Mister Connor's love I had that lusted your wife's,
but not your daughter's.
Speaker 2: Julie don't love me, not like not, not the way.
Speaker 5: You couldn't be more wrong.
Speaker 2: All her life she was set against me, trying to
bedevil me, show me her own.
Speaker 5: Way, fight me, because all her life you couldn't give
her what she really wanted, a father's love. Try to
see it from her point of view, mister Connor's. She
was a child who grew up in a house where
her parents loved each other so much. She felt excluded,
an only child with nowhere else to reach for love.
Speaker 2: But Mary loved her.
Speaker 5: Of course, a girl takes her mother's love for granted,
except that she so often thinks of her as a
rival for her father's affections. How much love did you
offer her? Did she ever find from you?
Speaker 2: I was a farmer, I was up from donald sundown.
Then I still chores knights.
Speaker 4: Was so tired of.
Speaker 3: That much time for exactly.
Speaker 5: And there was always the thought that had Julie been
a boy, she could have worked with you, taken some
of those chores off your shoulders, been more of a companion.
Speaker 2: Yeh, don't make me out no ogre. Maybe some of
the things you say true, But Julie didn't have to
act up the way she did.
Speaker 5: That's just the point of course she did. She was
trying to win your love the only way she could,
or at least attention. She climbs a tree, pretends to drown,
runs away from home, anything to get you to come
and rescue her. Even the punishment was worth it, the
agony of the dark closet, because she knows you'll be
the one to come and save her.
Speaker 2: I ain't proud of that.
Speaker 5: Oh, we're human. We do what we do. But have
you any idea what that child suffered for your love?
Speaker 3: What do you mean?
Speaker 5: Claustrophobia is the most common fear people have. Have you
ever been locked up in the dark, mister Connors? Mm?
Speaker 2: That was since no left. I uh shut myself in
the closet. Uh hih onn't it because I don't wanna
wake up and open the door to life again.
Speaker 5: I had such love that you could have it again
a different way from Julie.
Speaker 2: No, she doesn't love me, sh she hates me.
Speaker 5: She wants to love you. Do you wanna love her?
Speaker 2: I don't know much.
Speaker 5: I don't throw it away. I've talked to her, mister Connors.
Do you know about the Boogeyman?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Not childish nonsense.
Speaker 5: Yeah, childish perhaps, but not nonsense. Imagine just shut your
eyes and try to think back to your kid years,
thrust into inky blackness that she turned no escape, the
gradual feeling that the air was getting too thick to breathe,
above all the dark and the fear that you were
locked in a coffin, and then from somewhere some fairy tale,
a ghost story. Begin to your voice.
Speaker 11: Tryj tr Nod, tell me.
Speaker 2: Nord to live.
Speaker 11: At last, the way I am, the way I should have.
Do you feel me closing you, like the walls crush
your bread?
Speaker 2: Stop it, stop it.
Speaker 4: Don't you know how long I was?
Speaker 2: Don't you see? No matter what she says, I know
she hates me, but she doesn't.
Speaker 5: In spite of everything, you couldn't be better loved, And
I can prove it to you. How Whose voice do
you think it was? She heard? Because she wasn't a
boy but just a little girl, because she felt unwanted?
Whose voice, mister Connors? Oh, oh no, oh, yes, yours,
God forgive me he will. And Julie, it isn't too late,
all her rebellion, everything she's ever done, even last night.
If she has any guilt in what happened has been
a cry for your love. Can't you offer it to
her at last?
Speaker 7: Pop, Julie, I I tellt you, I never thought you'd
come well about time.
Speaker 6: I I didn't rob anybody, Pop, honest, I didn't.
Speaker 9: I didn't know it.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter how all all I know is you're
at least from the hospital, and you're getting dressed, and
you and me and going to the police station to
post that bond, and then we're going home. And no
matter what happens, I'm gonna fight to keep you there.
Speaker 5: Oh hop hop I don't know what to say.
Speaker 2: Muh not do that much. It ain't gonna be easy
so many years to make up for you.
Speaker 6: You could just one way, with one move, h could you?
Speaker 8: Could you just hold out.
Speaker 3: Your arms, Julie, Julie, m my little girl, Oh.
Speaker 9: Pop, oh my life.
Speaker 5: Just this, It's all I ever wanted.
Speaker 1: All of us have closets in the mind where skeletons
rattle and boogeymen breathe heavy in the dark.
Speaker 5: Thank the Lord for the.
Speaker 1: People who open the doors for us, and pity all
those who don't.
Speaker 3: Have the doors open it. I'll be back shortly. Well, well.
Speaker 1: Julian Seth Conners made their piece the hard way. Perhaps
this time it will stick. At least there won't be
any more dark closets. Life is too full of them,
and the trick is to find out how to open them.
The key is easy to find, of course, it's something
very simple love. What the real trick is, however, is
to be able to give it to the right person.
Our cast included Fred Gwynn, Jodda Rowland, Christopher Tabori, Francis Sternhagen,
and Earl Hammond. The entire production was under the direction
of Hymon Brown's Radio. Mystery Theater was sponsored in part
by Uncle Ben's Long Grain and Wild Rice and Anheuser
Busch Incorporated.
Speaker 3: Brewers of Budweiser.
Speaker 1: This is Eg Marshall inviting you to return to our
Mystery Theater for another adventure in the macabre. Until next time,
Pleasant Dreams.
Speaker 2: Tonight's w R. Mystery Fitter was also brought to you,
imparked by the Shoplight.
Speaker 10: Supermarkets where you get a lot more for a little less.
Speaker 1: The preceding program was produced by the Columbia Broadcasting System.
You're able to set for news of John Scott w R.
Speaker 2: New York and Art Old General Visue,