Speaker 1: Come in.
Speaker 2: Welcome.
Speaker 1: I'm e. G. Marshall.
Speaker 2: A tryptich is defined in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary as a
picture or carving in three parts side by side, especially
an altarpiece consisting of a central panel and two flanking
panels that fold over it. Thus, by definition, it represents
the sacred figure and usually three aspects of that figure.
This story concerns a tryptich that represents a holy, profane,
and baleful figure in all its different aspects. Our mystery
drama Cryptic for a Witch was written especially for the
Mystery Theater by Ian Martin and stars Margaret Hamilton. It
is sponsored in part by Listering Lozenges and Buick Motor Division.
I'll be back shortly with that one. In many cultures,
the aged had a function and were treated with reverence
and respect less and less. This is true of the
accidental cultures. I enter no discussion of whether this is
right or wrong. Frequently the elderly would prefer to be
left alone to pursue their own destinies. And yet when
the moment comes and some very ancient relative is left alone,
particularly a woman, some atavistic instinct or is it just
plain guilt drives many of us to open at least
our homes, if not wholly our hearts to them. This
is the story of to such people. But may Heaven
protect you from the strange and awful experience they unwillingly
laid themselves open to.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Well Jones, as the governor of North Carolina said to
that other guy, this is just about it.
Speaker 4: Did I know my great grandfather was going to get
married again just before he died?
Speaker 1: And now I thought I was marrying an orphan? No,
I find out your tricked me.
Speaker 3: Oh, I just forgot about Charlie.
Speaker 4: He's sixty years older than me.
Speaker 3: I didn't even know he was at live.
Speaker 4: But she wrote such a sweet matters. There isn't anyone
else's family to at least I can do to help
out pull old Charlie's widow till she finds out what
she's going to do.
Speaker 2: Okay, nowhere, how old is Old Charlie's widow?
Speaker 1: Anyway?
Speaker 3: Search me?
Speaker 4: Just before our wedding, when mother died, she mentioned out
of the blue that my great grandfather had suddenly married.
Speaker 3: At the age of eighty two.
Speaker 4: Then you came into my mind, and they had thought
I ever had went out the wintu.
Speaker 2: And that's why I'm so jealous of anyone horning in.
Speaker 3: Oh, Charlie had a real eye for the ladies.
Speaker 4: The first few times he married, only one of them
wasn't young enough to be his daughter. This one might
turn out to be young enough to be as gred.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess we're about to find out.
Speaker 1: Like you said, this is.
Speaker 2: It for better or for worse? The times you looked
back and would like to have fit in.
Speaker 3: Your tongue for some crazy thing you.
Speaker 2: Blurt out, Not that I knew right away. Matter of fact,
when we first smothered her, Oh, Galvin, it looks so bad. Oh,
she was no spring chicken. She was old, all right,
a little round faced like a withered apple that's still,
had red cheeks and sharp blue eyes that glittered like agates,
and didn't miss a trick. Darting out from the shadows
of a wide brimmed hat with a conical crown.
Speaker 1: It looked a little like it might have been left.
Speaker 2: Over from the Halloween before.
Speaker 1: All gray.
Speaker 2: She was surprised, skipping along like a sandpiper with a
pet carrier in one hand.
Speaker 1: And a carpet bag in the other.
Speaker 3: John I'm your your great grandfather's ester, and this must
be Walker. Hello, dear, how did you know? You know
you're anywhere spending image?
Speaker 1: You Charlie only prettier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me take those everythings from member.
Speaker 3: Band takes no problem.
Speaker 1: You can have the bag.
Speaker 3: I'll hang on a smoky He likes to stay real
close smoking. My cat s you're on your tone again.
Just want to get Captain jack ont of my pocket
before he stirs up a reader some.
Speaker 5: Of the words cat and gavation.
Speaker 2: You talk.
Speaker 3: It's cause he talk. He's a parrot, well, a kind
of parrot. Haf moon they're called. You don't mind about smoking,
Captain Jackson won't be any trouble, of course.
Speaker 1: We don't mind.
Speaker 3: Gets a little surprise.
Speaker 1: That doesn't that bird me a cage.
Speaker 3: Can't abide them. He sits on my shoulder or a
perch I had for an uncoffee. Then he won't hie away.
Cat Flight said as I could not that he would anyways.
Speaker 2: You mean you've brought that bird all the way from
Minnesota in your coat pocket.
Speaker 3: Of course he sleeps there. Oh, I take him out.
Let me change planes. He was complaining, he.
Speaker 2: Does really like to fly, Oh that's a switch. Well,
shall we get this show on the road. It was
a kind of comical to the I mean, you know,
I was twenty three, a rookie cop, just off probation
after a hitching the Navy, and already I was married,
had a kid, and now I just inherited an aged
great grandmother, plus a cat and a talking parrot.
Speaker 1: Who needs it?
Speaker 2: I started off easy, play it cool, just like Joan
and me agreed no ties except for getting married, but
it's outside of that. Just hang loose, enjoy being young,
and keep all the options open, and before you know it,
we're trapped.
Speaker 3: Who are Will you climb off the ceiling hand? Wouldn't
one of It's crazy?
Speaker 2: The whole thing is christ ant hester a Catholic bites
and I'm not giving you any line, but I think
about half fake pellet is on something?
Speaker 3: You know that funny? You know you you really object
to have been here, don't you?
Speaker 2: Or what about our vacation on the cake or we're
gonna have to lugger there?
Speaker 3: Not on a bet.
Speaker 2: It's just us alone.
Speaker 4: Thank your sister Rosie, who's gonna take our child in
heir off her hands for two weeks is he tellators
can be is some mu in time of dire distress,
wells anything happened to Rosie and hester could come well.
We decided that was the best name for her. Everything
else is sort of clumsy. Anyway, As I was saying,
Ancestor could always still in this babysitter.
Speaker 2: Now, I wouldn't leave Kip alone here in the apartment
with an old.
Speaker 3: Witch like that fell color a witch. He's a sweet
old lady.
Speaker 4: Oh you have something special against Ancestor?
Speaker 1: No baby, Now what could I have against well?
Speaker 2: Like you said, a nice, sweet old lady. But for once,
and I guess the first time, I wasn't telling the wife.
Speaker 1: I loved the truth.
Speaker 2: On the surface, everything's nice about antstiny, even that spite
folk Chatama tuckingming me burned.
Speaker 1: But the bite we are wrong somewhere. Maybe it's the
reason I became a cup.
Speaker 2: I got this special thing about people. All I gotta
do is meet.
Speaker 1: Someone when a minute some buzzer goes off. Wrong guy,
right guy.
Speaker 3: It's never failed me yet, of course, Rosie, I understand.
Speaker 4: Uh No, we couldn't take a chance at Kit's age.
Oh please, don't worry.
Speaker 3: We're working out.
Speaker 1: There.
Speaker 6: Is something wrong, Joan, dear?
Speaker 3: Oh, well, nothing earthshaking.
Speaker 4: I guess it's just that a vacations messed up. Oh
what's the matter, Oh Rosie's oldest child. They just come
down with me.
Speaker 3: So that changes all our plans, doesn't it?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 4: Not yours, hussy? You asked after delude the end of
the week.
Speaker 3: I'd be happy to put things off and stay here
until you've heard your vacation. I couldn't do there, Kip
would be.
Speaker 4: Too much for you.
Speaker 3: And and there's unless you wanted to come along with
that to the cave.
Speaker 4: It's lovely then, and Wat and I could have our cake.
Speaker 3: And eat it too, if you're sure Walt wouldn't mind,
I'd be happy to.
Speaker 2: How could I object or complain?
Speaker 1: It seemed that perfect solution?
Speaker 2: And why was I ridden with doubts and fears that
I concealed from Joan? They only began to take shape
when we finally did.
Speaker 1: Go to the cake.
Speaker 2: The cabin was right on the beach, up on a
sandy facing the Atlantic.
Speaker 1: Joan and I had lots of time to swim and surf,
while ant Hester kept an eye on Kip.
Speaker 2: Every so often, Joan would.
Speaker 1: Have mother's guilt feelings.
Speaker 2: And decided that this particular morning would be just for
kipping her. And on one of these mornings, I had
gone beachcombing, and on the way back had stopped for
a rest covered by sea grapes, and.
Speaker 1: Had fallen asleep.
Speaker 2: All of a sudden some evening time, clock woke me and I.
Speaker 1: Was looking towards the beach, where I saw smoking.
Speaker 2: The cat prowling and pawing in the receiving tide, as
if you were harvesting. Not to my feet, my eyes,
even after sleep, were still partially sunblinded, and headed down
to the water. As I came near, that cat looked
around and seeing me, suddenly fiddled out to ant hester's plumpness,
barefoot and bear legged, her skirts piped up to her knees. Panhster,
Why hell, no, law, What am i You're doing here?
Speaker 3: Me? Oh, the gathering completely by.
Speaker 1: Prettiest thing from a distance.
Speaker 2: I not seem silly to say it.
Speaker 1: But you look like smoky my cat.
Speaker 3: For Land's sake, how would a cat go near seawater?
You look pretty sunburned. Maybe you've got a little too
much dumb You feel all right?
Speaker 1: Yes, I guess so do you? Want to see me before.
Speaker 2: On my little seacret.
Speaker 3: Tell you better get back up to the house and
let you and you're pretty Joe and go Dickenson, why
you got the chance?
Speaker 1: The chance?
Speaker 3: Whom you know what I mean? Summer is growing short,
not much time left.
Speaker 2: And innocent enough remark surely it was growing short and
soon you'd have to get back to the city.
Speaker 1: But why did it have.
Speaker 2: Some sort of eerie significance to me?
Speaker 1: Why did I feel a long.
Speaker 2: Run of cold fingers down my back? H needs a
queasy feeling a cop gets every time he has to
draw a gun to protect himself.
Speaker 1: The weather turns down as Jones and going back to Shorefoards.
Speaker 4: Walks, Oh, I don't care about the weare there, they've
gotten back before that.
Speaker 1: Light and fun. You want to get home to me? Sure?
Speaker 3: How about you?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well her else?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know. You don't seem to like her,
how much as my aunt has to came around?
Speaker 2: Okay, the one way, the cards on the table, I.
Speaker 7: Don't you are not I don't know how to telligence.
Speaker 1: I used to read.
Speaker 2: Books about the hackles rising on someone's neck. I never
knew exactly what it meant, I do know, well, how.
Speaker 4: Good he you have to have feathers like a bird
or hair like an animal.
Speaker 2: I feel as if I do I smoke, you're captain
Jack the I'm holy three. And now when she puts
that add on, she looks just like a witch.
Speaker 3: Oh well, howl.
Speaker 4: How can you say something like that about somebody's sweet
and helpful.
Speaker 3: As a he has? I don't know, it just doesn't
make any sense.
Speaker 2: Its like this afternoon the cans I mean, uh, she
I'm I mean, well, what w amp has to be
doing together?
Speaker 1: I see we Well, maybe you.
Speaker 4: Haven't noticed that the laso has happened inspite of bite.
Speaker 3: Him in helcoth everything we take. I been hating a
crowd at hen because you have an old paston entity fire.
He the apartment and he knew.
Speaker 2: Joe, why don't you promise me something? Don't take any
of that tea me guy, I.
Speaker 1: Want to promise on your love for me.
Speaker 2: Don't touch that tea.
Speaker 4: You don't ride, don't go your school.
Speaker 3: I'm with you. You're the man that calls the jury.
Speaker 2: If Joan was puzzled at me, so was I at myself.
Speaker 1: What was it?
Speaker 2: This subconscious fear that slowly was invading me.
Speaker 1: What was I afraid of?
Speaker 2: A little old lady and a cat and a bird.
She tended it carefully as our child, But some wild
alarm bell was ringing deep in the pit of.
Speaker 1: My stomach, and my.
Speaker 2: Police training reacted instinctively that night through the precinct station,
I put some queries on the wires, and I picked
up a sample of the seaweed and airmailed it to
the police lab. Police confirmed Charles Herold he'd be died
when his house burned down on date named.
Speaker 1: Also killed in fire was his.
Speaker 2: Wife less than twelve months Hester Combs Higbne Channing. Both
buried Sunnyside Garden Cemetery. No known relatives, funeral expenses covered
by a state, no residue. My esp working again, this
time when I least wanted it. If Jones ant Hester
was dead, Oh what was this stranger in our home?
Speaker 3: What you want?
Speaker 2: And then not cling shot? Hello?
Speaker 1: Oh it's g hi Jake.
Speaker 7: What you got on this chunk you mailed me for analysis?
Speaker 1: Yeah? The seaweed, That's what it.
Speaker 2: Is, all right, seaweed?
Speaker 7: Nothing but a simple hun.
Speaker 2: I's a poisonous absolutely not.
Speaker 7: What harmifly and.
Speaker 2: Unless, of course unless what of course.
Speaker 7: It's kind of nutty, you know, but it's a special
fungus in a way, and.
Speaker 1: A come on, Jake, let me have it.
Speaker 2: I feel kind of silly, walk I mean, it's only
because there since more diet, I'm kind of a well,
like Dickens, an old antiquarian, and I read up on
offbeat subjects like what, well, there's particular seaweed in the
Middle Ages and all like that. It was like, you know,
frog's eyes and bats fur and all the jump that
got boiled up in a cauldron when someone wanted to
mess around.
Speaker 7: With black magic.
Speaker 1: I mean, kind of crazy even to mention it.
Speaker 7: But since it worries you so much, there's no chance
you kind of witch somewhere at your house? Is there?
Speaker 2: The first side panel of the cryptic Hester Higbee, from
Waltz's point of view, a hazy picture not yet formed,
but an icy fear gripping at his vitals. Truth or
fancy that will have to wait Jones evaluation at least,
and events beyond that. I'll return shortly for that too.
Of course, nobody believes in witches anymore, and yet it's
a little like superstitions nobody believes in them, and yet
do many of us like to have a black cat
cross our path. If you're like most people, do you
try to avoid walking under a ladder Except for sheer bravado.
On the other hand, there are people who are so
healthy in mind and body, so open hearted and so generous,
and who, without being Pollyanna do look by habit on
the best side of everything, people like Joan Madden.
Speaker 4: I should have known not to give into my old
fashioned sentimentality ever since I should walk.
Speaker 3: I've been a sucker for every stray dog and lost kitten.
It wasn't through the world. I knew he didn't want
to take on any extra burdens, and it was.
Speaker 4: Stupid not to remember that he was just really only
getting his nerves back.
Speaker 3: In shape after that sweeked out war. He got stuck in.
But great Grandpa's letter was so sweet and so sad.
Speaker 4: I just didn't have the heart to refuse his dying request.
So I had to tell aunt has to to come.
Speaker 3: And stay with us. I just never figured that what
would get hurt.
Speaker 2: Just give me a straight answer, Joan, have you laid
off that seaweed dunk?
Speaker 1: She's been trying to feed you.
Speaker 4: Of course I have. It's it's yeah, Well anyway, I
don't eat anything without researching it first.
Speaker 3: You know, you talk as though she might try to
poison me.
Speaker 1: I don't know what she's up to.
Speaker 3: Well, why should she be up to anything.
Speaker 2: Because she isn't who she's supposed to be. We don't
know that. Bill Cox got on the telics to the
Duluth Police Department and sent me a copy of the
teletype he got in reply, your great grandfather's wife got
incinerated with him when his house burned down. No, she didn't, Joan,
Let's not get around. I got this through police channel.
Speaker 4: Who even the police can make a mistake, just like you.
Speaker 1: What's that supposed to mean?
Speaker 4: Oh, you haven't given aunt Hester a chance to tell
her side of this story.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's do that little thing right now.
Speaker 1: Now, let me get this straight.
Speaker 2: Aunt Hester or whoever you are. You weren't in the
house when it burned down.
Speaker 3: Then sakes water, of course not. How could I be
here if I haven't been? Oh dear, what's the matter?
I think I'd dropped the stitch.
Speaker 2: Let me see now, look, if you weren't in the house, where.
Speaker 1: Were you.
Speaker 3: I don't think I want to say, why not? It's
sort of important. I suppose it could be made to be.
Dear me, he was such a good man. I'm kind,
but we week and terribly careless. Oh oh, it's beginning
to get dark, isn't it. I'll turn on the lights.
Oh no, No, first, the windows, the rates and the
shutters are siah for God. There say see you like that?
Got ever so much? The night must always be shut out,
especially here. You can put the lights down now as
you want.
Speaker 2: I'm still waiting for an answer for me.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, about the house burning down. Oh, dear, I
hoped I wouldn't have to go into this. But now, Walter,
don't look so grim. It's all perfectly logical. It's it's
terribly unpleasant. I'm afraid when Charlie wrote that note about me,
he wasn't quite telling the truth. He did say he
had lucas erstenotosis. This snanatus, didn't he Yes, Uh, we
didn't know what it was. That's the bad kind terminal.
Only it wasn't true. He was just trying to cover up.
Speaker 1: Cover up what or that?
Speaker 3: Even though I loved him, I'd had to take smoky
in captain Jack and leave him. Why, Oh my, I
guess I can't pull any punctures.
Speaker 2: You see, Charlie was a chaser, a chaser.
Speaker 4: He was woman crazy and had gotten so bad I
I'd had to move out little bit. I realized how
lucky I'd had, or I would have been burned up
in that house.
Speaker 2: Are you trying to tell me that a man of
eighty two was still t I well, and I mean
were still.
Speaker 1: Messing around with other women.
Speaker 3: You better believe it, son, and he had another woman
with him when the house burned down. I'm sorry to
blacken his name for you, Jonie, but that's about the
size of it. All the times I used to warn
him about smoking the cigars in bed.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, Wait a minute.
Speaker 2: You don't actually expect me to believe all this stuff?
Speaker 3: Why not when it's the truth.
Speaker 2: Because the in her water, I mean, what.
Speaker 3: About this other woman.
Speaker 2: She must have friends or relatives or something. You can't
just leave them wondering what's happened to him?
Speaker 3: What good would it do them to know that she'd
been burned to a Chris. Besides Darling and with the
drifter and the dead beat, she was.
Speaker 4: Also a professional nobody will miss her. But I'd asked
her what about the estate, and yeah, there wasn't the estate.
Speaker 3: What money we had was mine.
Speaker 2: Yes, but the house the insurance.
Speaker 3: Didn't own it. Charlie had no insurance.
Speaker 1: Yes, but you've thrown away your identity.
Speaker 2: You can't even get Social Security or.
Speaker 3: I won't be needing any of it. You see, I'm
the one who hasn't much longer to live the pains
of the gun already. I'll be all right, though. The
doctor said it would be quick if if you'll just
keep a roof over my head till till the dark
angel comes to pull me in his way. And he's
facial to study.
Speaker 4: He felt almost a sorry for him, as I did,
poor and after, but I managed to get him out
of the room and out of the house for a
long walk on the beach just as well, because we
had amounted to her first corner and the way he
carried her really scared me.
Speaker 2: And I'm telling you she's up faith, she's lying through
her teeth, and I want her out of this house.
Speaker 3: Darling, please coming down.
Speaker 4: You know I can't just tell my pearl Andrews, you
don't have a listen to what I'm trying to tell
you she's not your poor all loud, all.
Speaker 3: Right, you're a rafe. Don't get yourself good sick.
Speaker 4: And even if she isn't, she's the three old lady
was nowhere to go.
Speaker 2: I know where she can go as far as I'm concerned,
and as far as I'm concerned, it's right where she
belongs to.
Speaker 3: The old witch walk at Billy didn't. If it's things
a rich, yes there is.
Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you something about that sweet old
lady of yours. I think she burned the house down,
and by me, the only reason she took a plane
here was to make things look good. She could just
as easily admit it on a broomstick to have him.
Speaker 3: Please. Now look, I want you to return and relax.
It's just like it was after who came back from overseas.
Maybe they had to call doctor Paul Ateman. How don't you.
Speaker 1: Doctor dam mean?
Speaker 2: All I need is the evidence of mine own eyes
and ears and my police.
Speaker 4: And thinks, what do you mean evidence of your eyes
and ears?
Speaker 2: I told you right then about there on those rocks,
that's where I saw the cat pouring.
Speaker 3: About in the water, and then all of a.
Speaker 2: Sudden, the cat changed into antestor.
Speaker 3: Why you've been sleep? That?
Speaker 2: Would you the.
Speaker 3: Hallucination?
Speaker 2: I don't hallucinate it, but not anymore anyways.
Speaker 1: And it isn't only that.
Speaker 2: But she talks of that bird, the Captain Jack, all
the time, and sometimes there's a third voice like the cat,
and he talks back.
Speaker 1: I hear them, don't you know?
Speaker 2: So now you think I'm hearing things too.
Speaker 3: I mean, Captain Jack says that, you little word. But
how could a cat.
Speaker 2: Talk because they're not just a cat and a bird
anymore than she's your ant pastor or even human. I
tell you she's a witch and the other two are
her familiars.
Speaker 1: Well what I went to the library and read up
on it.
Speaker 2: There were two kinds of minor spirits that witch has had,
or have called familiars.
Speaker 1: One was a dibinding familiar.
Speaker 2: And the other was a domestic one.
Speaker 4: Oh honey, look at me, now, you can't honestly believe
all their.
Speaker 3: Spilgy suppose I do? And I think she's hit and
you ought to see a doctor.
Speaker 1: Listen.
Speaker 2: I just want that woman out of the house and out.
Speaker 3: Of our lives, So don't ask me to do that.
To the poor old thing. Look where could she work
from me? Huh? How could she hurt me?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 4: You can see from the way she keeps kid, how
highness and well meaning she is.
Speaker 2: Oh, good lord, maybe that's what she's after.
Speaker 1: The baby. And we left her alone with him.
Speaker 2: Oh, you light.
Speaker 3: You scared me to death, the two of you running
like that and bursting to the house. I thought you'd
wake up poor little kid.
Speaker 4: Look at him having at le afternoon Nap was smoking
in his arms, and Captain Jack perched on the edge
of the crib, keeping for the old and all, Oh dear.
Speaker 3: When the sun goes down, my old bones have an ache.
And I look at you, Joan Darley, and think to myself,
what a wonderful thing it is to have a young,
healthy body at one's command. How much you make me
long to be just as you are.
Speaker 4: Now, Look where are you going from?
Speaker 2: I'm going into town to nail this thing down once
and for all.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 2: I can use the police teletype and I'm gonna get
a court order from the Duluth Police Department to exhume
the remains of whoever died in that fire once and
for all. I mean to find out just who and
what it is we have living in our house, and
darling on when it comes from you? What don't you
leave Kip alone for one minute while I'm gone?
Speaker 3: Why you're not really serious?
Speaker 1: A hut?
Speaker 2: I was never more serious in my life, because if
that woman represents a threat to you or our future,
I wouldn't hesitate for a moment to wipe her off
the face of the earth.
Speaker 4: Or and that's the reason, just to things what was gone?
I called doctor Damon because the way I thought what
was wrong around our house was my poor husband. He
was back in a Tilston, just like after the war.
Speaker 3: He was round the bend. Somehow I had to find
a way to bring him back or.
Speaker 2: The second panel of the triptych is Joan right? Has
she reason to be worried about Walt? Or is she
perhaps worrying about the wrong person, shutting.
Speaker 1: Her eyes to the real danger?
Speaker 2: Is aunt Hester what she seems to Joan or what
Walt is convinced she is? And if wild, as it seems,
she were a witch, what is it she's after? I'll
return shortly without three And now at last, for the
central panel, the sum and substance of the two side portraits.
We have examined the real truth about Hester Madden. But first,
a harried phone call from Joan to Dtor Damon, monitored
unaware by either of the principles, by that sweet old
lady hester On a convenient extension.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry about you, doctor, but I am frantic.
Speaker 7: I don't blame you. I had hoped that Walter had
found himself. Can you get him back to town to
see me? Hi, Daddy, Well, I have a free week.
I might take advantage of this opportunity to run down
to the cable.
Speaker 3: I don't know if we can put you on.
Speaker 1: No need.
Speaker 7: I have a little summer cabin in Orleans. I could
just gop in on you work casually and check out.
Speaker 4: What if you only cut ow? You know me, PI
don't easily. But well, this whole thing has got me
really strung out.
Speaker 5: Okay, I'll be there, count on me.
Speaker 7: Just give me directions.
Speaker 3: Huh No, you roast in hell forever, doctor Damon. If
you try to cross my path, the psychiatrists.
Speaker 5: Rost them in the hall, rost them in a hart.
Speaker 2: How much time do I still have? Not much?
Speaker 1: The morn is full.
Speaker 3: As we had as well. Bend and young jam die
to make the change. She's not prepared. Give me the
dried seaweed.
Speaker 5: I don't make sure it's ducked in the salad she
makes us for dinner.
Speaker 3: I'd better handle down.
Speaker 5: No, no good. He wouldn't let you near her, even
if she would them.
Speaker 3: And double down him made the torch of hecatey tinge
his eyes, her spear ripped through his vitals, and her
hands run him down and tear him to pieces. If
it weren't for him, it all would have been so easy.
Maybe it would be better to move as soon as possible,
even right now, while he isn't here. Yeah, a lad
would be taking to work of a change for all
of that.
Speaker 2: She's right.
Speaker 3: We exist only as life you do.
Speaker 2: Why should I care about you?
Speaker 3: You're only projections of me that I can slip off
like a candle if.
Speaker 6: I want to and be all alone without your familia
eyes do unders down and there.
Speaker 3: Hard If you did.
Speaker 4: Send bestill E had on nothing nice life out to.
Speaker 3: Tell them the truth. Let you need not die. If
you want them to say me, what come back?
Speaker 1: Do we claim me? All boy?
Speaker 3: No, you wouldn't do that to me. Long and you
don't do anything do on. My true name is maher Geist,
and I'm the oldest order of the Witches, the witches
of the Seas. I was born before the world again,
and my stand of alloted years were seven thousand and seven.
But when at last my time came to return and
mingle the nameless droplets among the uncounter of the great oceans,
I could not bring myself in the way the law.
To escape my avenging sisters of the sea, I had
to find an earthly body to house thy spirit.
Speaker 1: I called them.
Speaker 3: All the ancient arts, magic, divinations, astrology, enchantments to find
a young girl whose sign was my sign, whose birth
date reflected the conjunction of our houses, the ascendancy of
whose planets and stars matched my old Every two generations,
says the body I have possessed begins to disintegrate with age.
I have found cocless s tymes, a new one to possess.
The alternative is too hideous to contemplate. I need the body.
Speaker 2: Of Joe Madda, and.
Speaker 3: Nothing shall stop me from invading it and making it
my old And nothing shall stop fiel me. You're gude,
don't call me by that name. Why give me yes?
What can I afford to wait?
Speaker 1: M to buy me.
Speaker 3: Now a leb?
Speaker 5: Come?
Speaker 3: What is the man Walter Madden doing?
Speaker 2: Ky?
Speaker 5: Is there changing for an order to exhume the body,
to examine the one of the women who died in
the fire. He don't want me to see any further.
Speaker 3: As far as you can.
Speaker 5: The skull was not destroyed.
Speaker 4: They will find where you struck her and killed her,
and by the teeth they.
Speaker 2: Will know her as someone other than you.
Speaker 5: They will look further and find the fire was set
by someone, and they will start to look for you.
Speaker 3: I knew it, Magris. What is the girl doing now?
Speaker 6: Garding her child.
Speaker 3: To be taught?
Speaker 6: Her husband told her to. He is most afraid you
mean the boy.
Speaker 3: Hind does she still trusts me? He is not even
thinking of you. She worries about her husband.
Speaker 6: That he is losing control of his mind as he
did one's before.
Speaker 3: He does not think that I am a witch.
Speaker 6: He doesn't believe I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Let us do everything to make her think he.
Speaker 2: Has gone mad.
Speaker 6: Odia it am hester, dear, Oh just a minute, anything wrong?
Speaker 3: Why no, dear, That's what I was going to ask you.
Sh She gets asleep. Everything all right, of course. Why
shouldn't it be no reason except it isn't like you
to shut yourself away.
Speaker 2: I thought maybe you.
Speaker 3: R Kip might not be feeling Oh no, no, it's
just it's cold.
Speaker 4: Yes, I'm just not used to feeling at sic.
Speaker 3: And if you have a cold, you shouldn't be sitting
locked up in the same room with a boy.
Speaker 1: You'll give it to him.
Speaker 3: Oh, I never said of that. I've just made a
nice cup of tea. Why don't you come and join me?
Following her downstairs, I could feel the saliva thicken in
my mouth with envy. I was never more conscious of
arthritic joints, the sagging flesh, the muffles that barely had
vitality enough to respond to the message of the brain.
There in front of me was that shining hair with
a natural curl, the live muscles rippling just under the skin,
the easy, jaggy step that had no fear of the
treachery steps to the old and feeble. Just as we
reached the bottom of the stairs, the fat door was
thrown open hurriedly, and Walt came in junior all right,
of course, and Hester and I just about to have
a cup of tea when you join it. I left
them upstairs. You asleep.
Speaker 4: Maybe since it won't be too long till dinner, you've
gotta have a drinker.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I I wanna talk to you.
Speaker 3: Why don't you let me attend it inner?
Speaker 7: Dear?
Speaker 2: Why don't you just go in the back end has
to stay in your room?
Speaker 1: What? Just let me handle things?
Speaker 3: Of course I'll go right now.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't want to be in a way.
Speaker 3: All right, smoky, you'll get your dinner, but we're all
gonna have to wait. Walter just isn't feeling himself tonight.
Speaker 5: Put him in second eg what him a second eight?
Speaker 1: He saying?
Speaker 2: What section eight service linger for the nut hoouse?
Speaker 1: The looney bin? Do you still think I'm a candidate?
Speaker 3: Walk? Don't talk like that?
Speaker 1: Not just leave me alone. By this weekend, we should
know the truth about who that woman is.
Speaker 2: If she is your sweet old great grandmother, I'll apologize.
But if she's what I think she is, if she
means any harm to you or Kip, so help me,
I'll murder her.
Speaker 3: What time is it now?
Speaker 5: Why have to eight thou midnight?
Speaker 3: Hi died? Then we were back before then? How to
get Joan alone. How does sub do her so I
can have the power to take possessions?
Speaker 6: Now along Walter.
Speaker 3: Is answering, and Joan is in the kitchen alone. This
may be our chance.
Speaker 2: Sh I want to hear this?
Speaker 3: Well, damon, what do you do?
Speaker 1: But come in?
Speaker 6: Come out of a terrible weather.
Speaker 7: Come in the living room.
Speaker 2: John's in the kitchen, should be right out.
Speaker 1: What brings you here? Did Jon? Send Field? Never mind
that now I command, don't try to sidestep.
Speaker 2: I suppose she thinks I'm blacking out again. If you'd
shut up for a moment. No matter what brought me here,
the weather is all that matters.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 2: I've been listening to the radio driving up Blackwater Dunes.
Here is headed for the highest.
Speaker 1: Tide in history.
Speaker 2: There's more danger to you and your family from the
elements outside than any foreign element you fear may be
loose inside. Watch, I'm close the door before we talk
any further.
Speaker 3: You're in the living your place to change?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, here's that is who?
Speaker 6: Hi?
Speaker 3: Are you looking at me like that? In the name
of the born, this one that discreates the knight and
the day, In the name of the Abash, In the
name of tar and cam I abjured enough to move.
Oh my God, protect me?
Speaker 2: What was right?
Speaker 3: Why my way?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: My eyes?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: I set her beat away until he don here dies. Yeah,
while he is on Manabas may.
Speaker 5: Come on to see your sunny body's come on her.
Speaker 2: First, and I just wanted to travel quickly and so
let her lips touch jos, he'll touch my wad.
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 2: She and has to do his name? My had just
fo seeks ab pets can run before the sea swamps
us all for I never saw a tie like that,
came in like a giant hand and swept everything away.
Speaker 3: You were you are right, You're good, Okay, you came
in time for even if it was for.
Speaker 2: The wrong reason. Was let me Joan thought you needed
psychiatric hill And I can't blame anyone who wanders the
labyrinths of the mind has to be familiar with ghosts
and witches and everything that haunts our dreams, waking ends sleeping.
There is a phenomenon I know from all my reading
that never ceases to haunt me, even me who has
to deal with the fragmentation of personality, so much fragmentation.
You mean, what happened when I tried to grab hester
or whatever she was. I'll never forget that sight. A
little black, rusty woman who broke up into countless numbers
of other little rusty women in black dresses, all mirror
images running in every direction at once. Protection of image
or magic, secret of only one kind of witch to see,
which old as her Celtic heritage and beyond, perhaps as
old as time.
Speaker 3: That's what Joan was saved from.
Speaker 2: Becoming another of those faceless bodies she possessed and used up.
You mean it was Joan she wanted, and that she's
still in danger, not anymore?
Speaker 1: What do you mean?
Speaker 2: Look at where your house used to stand, wiped up
by a cataclysmic tide that reached from the sea like
a monstrous god hand. You and Joan are safe now
the sea has reclaimed its hold. It was the great
German poet Girter who wrote of a mystic goddess who
came from the sea Margeist, which means simply sea ghost.
The sea ebbs and surges, timeless and inexorable. But what
it sucks away in the undertoe does not always return
with this succeeding wave. Eventually it swallows up what it
wills and no hand natural or supernatural can stay it.
In the end, the sea always wins.
Speaker 1: I'll be back shortly.
Speaker 2: It was Malcolm in Macbeth who said, of the end
of the Thane of Corridor, I saw him die. Nothing
in his life became him like believing it. The context
of the remark, of course, was somewhat different. He meant
it as a tribute hester Or Meyergeist's death was a
long delayed blessing for Joan Madden and all the world.
No young girl listening to this story, born under the
sign of Virgo, can help but sleep easier Tonight and
other nights. Our cast included Margaret Hamilton, Christopher Tabori, E. V. Justter,
and Gilbert Mack. The entire production was under the direction
of Hyman Brown.
Speaker 1: You know what you don't always d