Speaker 1: Come in welcome.
Speaker 2: I'm e. G.
Speaker 3: Marshall.
Speaker 4: I don't know about you, but to me, the tinkling
sound of a music box has always charmed and soothed me,
conjuring up pleasant memories and the balm of sweet nostalgia.
Speaker 5: It still does in spite of this story.
Speaker 4: But if it sends a childs will you don't please
blame it on music boxes in general, Just on this one.
And it's haunting tune that struck a chord from the past,
that stirred up something infinitely more gruesome and deadly than nostalgia.
Speaker 5: Oh, Susannah was so lucky, this wonderful house, the futures
dream almost come true already. Do you like your birthday present?
Speaker 6: I loved this music box. I love you, Hank everything
you do for me, until I found the past coming
up to haunt me.
Speaker 5: What do you mean, I don't.
Speaker 6: Know, It's just the music box. As soon as it
started to play, my eyes were drawn away down to
the end of the garden path, to the summerhouse, to
the girl and the colonel undress.
Speaker 7: Who's dancing there?
Speaker 5: What girl? I can't see anyone.
Speaker 6: I was afraid you might say that.
Speaker 7: Somehow I know she isn't really there.
Speaker 6: She has to be a ghost, But why would you
want to haunt me?
Speaker 4: Our mystery drama The Special Under was written especially for
the mystery theater by Ian Morrin and stars Jadder Rowland
and Don Scardino. I was reminded of this story a
week or so ago when I picked up the morning
paper and read that a small town was advertising for
a doctor and willing to finance him and as many
partners as he could attract in setting up a clinic
in outlying areas. Medical men general practitioners are always in
demand today, how much more so in the last century,
which is how the newly married doctor Henry Fleming and
his bride Susannah, came to Huntington House some one hundred
years ago via the new Union Pacific Railroad, which had
finally linked the East with the West.
Speaker 3: Do I have the honor of addressing missus Fleming? Yes, sir,
I'm Youford Hughes alam me to assist you, Ezrael get
the ladies corpetbag.
Speaker 5: Yes, sir, I'll relieve you that bag.
Speaker 6: Why thank you?
Speaker 3: As mister Ezra Whitfield, Beaver City's most prominent lawyer. In
more ways than one, they say, success goes to a
man's head. In Ezra's case, he went through his waistline.
There we are, man, and you'd be our new doctor, sir.
Speaker 5: Friends banking new sir just graduated out of medical school.
Speaker 1: Ah, but from Harvard.
Speaker 7: A little barriers.
Speaker 1: Why don't you worry? Missus Ferry, Well, i'd like.
Speaker 7: To checking and make sure our trunks are there.
Speaker 1: Ah, ma'am.
Speaker 3: I think it's more appropriate for Ezrael to help you
in that area while I make your husband.
Speaker 1: As welcome as I can.
Speaker 2: I sure, Missus Fleming, I can see your trunks are
all off. Just go check them over.
Speaker 5: Okay, honey, this is my job.
Speaker 1: That's fine.
Speaker 3: Young woman's eminently equipped to be a doctor's wife or anyone's.
Speaker 5: Susanna is one of the kind.
Speaker 1: I support your opinion.
Speaker 3: Just as soon as the mississ had checked out your belongings,
I have a wagon waiting to take them to your house.
I have a break so that we can stop by
the bank and sign our agreements.
Speaker 5: I think Susanna is a bit worn out. Do we
perhaps get settled first and then the papers.
Speaker 3: My dear boy, I'm sorry I should say, doctor, forgive me,
it's all right.
Speaker 5: I'm young, but I have knowledge. Don't worry.
Speaker 3: I have no worries about your abilities after our long correspondence,
and I don't want to lose you.
Speaker 1: You are needed here.
Speaker 3: We'll all just try to put out and make you
feel it home right here. Well, now, sir, there she
is Huntington House.
Speaker 7: Oh hey, right on the ridge. It's beautiful, isn't it?
Speaker 5: Surely is?
Speaker 6: How certainly is Peggy House?
Speaker 5: Well, we're only going to be using a corner of
it the rest of us for a clinic. As we plan.
Speaker 7: I hope we can get them on the doctors to
fill it up.
Speaker 1: You leave that to me, ma'am. Feaver.
Speaker 3: Cities may be a very rich man, and I wanna
file some of my good luck back into it.
Speaker 1: And that's why I advertise in the East to get
a doctor out here.
Speaker 5: I'll try not to make you sorry for your generosity
in any way.
Speaker 3: Oh, easy enough, alright before your front door.
Speaker 6: Hang it, I'm scared it.
Speaker 5: It looks so big, sure, honey, that's the point. It's
the beginning of a hospital that someday the whole West
is going to talk about the whole country. What are
you mumbling about, darling?
Speaker 6: Oh nothing?
Speaker 7: Hang oh, what'll.
Speaker 6: Take you later.
Speaker 5: Let's go have a look at our new home.
Speaker 3: I calculate you hiding all after your journey. I should
have taken you straight into the house, but with the
light going, I wanted to see you a little of
the grounds.
Speaker 6: It's amazing. I can't believe the house has been empty
all that time, after fifteen years.
Speaker 5: I expected a jungle.
Speaker 3: Oh there's been a housekeeper here all these years, Missus Bunter,
and for years her son kept the outside of the place.
Speaker 6: Oh hag look at that little summerhouse till at the
end of the path. Isn't it lovely?
Speaker 5: I sure is?
Speaker 1: Is that?
Speaker 8: Ah?
Speaker 6: I wanna go there right now.
Speaker 1: M m, it's almost sundown. I let it wait. Fire
with you, Missus Fleming.
Speaker 5: Why why?
Speaker 1: Because they ain't gonna go away?
Speaker 3: And I can smell there's Missus bunt has supper about ready.
I'm sure you must be hungry after the long trip.
Speaker 5: I know I am hungry as a bear. Come on, honey,
it can't be all that important.
Speaker 6: No, of course, not just a silly whim. But funny
how it draws me though someone was begging me.
Speaker 5: To meet from there, and so there is me. But
by moonlight. It's a perfect place for young lovers, wouldn't
you say, mister.
Speaker 3: Hughes, Mm, I reckon. That depends on the point of view.
Well shall we travel on in and say? How do
you dwell in?
Speaker 5: Bunter By all means? Don't poor kid to come back?
Sus Anna, are you coming?
Speaker 6: Yes? Yes, Hank, Just stay close to me, don't leave
me alone.
Speaker 8: My what pretty clothes you have, Missus Fleming? Boston ms
bek chrite a city?
Speaker 7: Why yes, Missus Bunter h it is.
Speaker 5: It's a beautiful town.
Speaker 8: I'm surprised you ever come away from there out here
to the west. If I was you, I'd pick up
the skirts and get right back there.
Speaker 6: Why whatever do you mean?
Speaker 8: Are there things best not talked about. I'm just saying
what I think has to be fet.
Speaker 6: You sound as if you don't want us here.
Speaker 8: There's a black shadow lays over this house, Missus Fleming,
and I don't want nobody else should lose the light
under it. Special ways, No two nice young UN's like you.
But please don't say nothing to mister Buford about what
I said.
Speaker 5: Wouldn't want to lose my job?
Speaker 8: Well we can hardly just leave it at that. I'd
like to know what you mean. I promise to take
as soon as I can. But right now, God to
go get supper around the table.
Speaker 5: I can't get over that cellar. Why it's almost set
up for a clinic already. But mister Huntington wasn't.
Speaker 3: A doctor, no son, he sure wasn't that well. What
did he do well, honey? Mostly made money?
Speaker 1: Yes, him.
Speaker 3: He looked to be about the richest man in this
part of the country. Once he used to raise cattle.
Then he found a gold mine right here on his
own property over the other side of the redge over there.
Speaker 5: Mm is it still acting?
Speaker 3: No, Paine ran out twenty years ago, but not before
he piled up a bundle. I should know. I was
his banker, ay said Carson. Huntington retired before he was forty.
Speaker 5: What did he do with himself then?
Speaker 3: Oh, mainly he devoted himself to being a father. But
he liked hunting real good. And you've only got to
take a look around the walls to see where.
Speaker 1: That led him to.
Speaker 5: You mean all the stuffed heads, hm, moose, buffalo, deer
that are all over the place. He liked to collect 'em.
Speaker 3: More mad he stuffed 'em all himself, built himself all
those tile rooms downstairs, and worked just like a doctor
in a white coat and all uh a taxiderm say
uh more mad You know how one thing leads to another,
and uh, well it comes your lady.
Speaker 1: I must leave you to his supper.
Speaker 7: I was just going to ask you if you would
j join us.
Speaker 6: Missus Blunder tells me there's enough for you and mister
Whitfield too, if you cook.
Speaker 5: Like that every night. Missus Bunder, I made just a
bandon my wild take you there.
Speaker 8: But I'm sure she's a mighty fine cook herself.
Speaker 5: Oh matter of fact, you wouldn't think of it to
look at her, but she is.
Speaker 2: And the housekeeper sure is good to see love lighting
up this gloomy old place again, just like the good
old days.
Speaker 1: Viewford A.
Speaker 5: Mm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's Israel.
Speaker 3: But let's not go digging into the past. These two
young folk represent the future. They're not interested in what's
been Oh but.
Speaker 5: We are at least die in Oh so am, I
I'll just take the tray out of the kitchen. I'll
bring the coffee in soon.
Speaker 2: Well, And who wonders she doesn't wanna listen to Israel
you talk too much.
Speaker 5: What do I say?
Speaker 1: Nothing much so far, it's usually too much. I reckon.
Speaker 3: I have to tell you a little about the house,
but it's better for you to get it for me.
Speaker 1: And from some old windbag like Ezra.
Speaker 2: Tar Nation Puford, that's no way to talk.
Speaker 1: I tell you what it is, Missus Fleming.
Speaker 3: Our house stays empty like this one did for over
fifteen years, and people start to build legends, even the
dried up old lawyer like Ezra here. Now I'm a banker, businessman.
I give you the plain facts.
Speaker 5: We'd appreciate that, sir, I'd like to hear the legends.
Speaker 3: Well, let's start with the facts. It's about sixty years
back that Carson married Sarah.
Speaker 2: Sixty two, almost to the day.
Speaker 3: Well you were old enough to remember exactly. It was
before my time.
Speaker 2: I'd just opened my office and Carson Huntington was one
of my first clients. His folks had left him quite
a spread, and he sold off enough cattle to build
this big mansion for Sarah.
Speaker 5: Oh she was a beauty all right.
Speaker 2: And well fixed yourself.
Speaker 5: That was some wedding.
Speaker 1: Now we don't have to go into every detail.
Speaker 2: They mentioned it because they were so happy, those two,
just like these youngers, and how could they have known
the tragedy that was to be the most part of
their lives.
Speaker 7: Tragedy.
Speaker 2: I suppose twenty years longing for a child and never
being able to produce one isn't tragedy enough. I suppose
when Rachel did come to 'em, her being born premature
and blind and mute wasn't tragedy. I suppose Rachel's death
that's enough.
Speaker 6: Ezra, No, please, we'd like to know.
Speaker 1: No what Ezra says were true.
Speaker 3: Sarah did have a baby too late in life, a
little whisper of a girl who was blind and mute.
They doated on her, devoted sixteen years of their lives
and bringing her up, pampered and coddled her like she
was made of China. They were recluses here and saw
a few people. When Rachel was sixteen, she fell in love.
Speaker 2: With Ellen, but HER's son Elisha, lost to Chickamauga and
the war between the States.
Speaker 1: To soul Lord Rodditch.
Speaker 3: You mean he was in his twenties and he just
took advantage of the poor little thing. And naturally it
was an unstutable match from any point of view. So
the boy was fired by Carson ran off to join
the army. Rachel took it real hard, thinking he'd run
off on her because of her her well deficiencies, and
went into a decline and died from a kind of
colic broken heart.
Speaker 1: More likely, uh than the hearts were broken.
Speaker 3: It with Sarah and Carson's and after the burial, and
they hauled themselves away here at Huntingdon Ouse, and no
one saw hiring a hair of him for a year,
And then one day, suddenly, unexpectedly, they both died.
Speaker 1: Like a bolt from the blue. Mm. He means that
quite literally.
Speaker 3: They were on their way to church on the anniversary
of Rachel's death, and pulled under a tree to escape
a sudden thunderstorm, and the tree was druck by lightning,
and both of 'em were killed.
Speaker 1: How awful, Yes, they were all relative.
Speaker 2: And the will specified that the house was to be
kept and maintained in Purpetue.
Speaker 3: As now and I think, as around I should mosey
along and let you settle in.
Speaker 9: Oh good night, mister h mister Winthill, and drive carefully,
come on bedtime.
Speaker 5: Oh look at the moon, isn't it lovely? Not when
I'm so tired.
Speaker 1: I can't even open my eyes to see that You're.
Speaker 5: Not that tired. Maybe you had too much wine.
Speaker 6: Let's walk down.
Speaker 5: To that that little summer house.
Speaker 10: Oh oh, come on, have a hard honey, Come come.
Speaker 5: What do you expect to find there?
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 5: Well you're not gonna find out tonight. Come on, I'm
taking you up to bed, Yes, darling.
Speaker 7: Gonna take me to bad and warm and hold me.
Speaker 6: Never, never let me call.
Speaker 3: Susannah finally fell asleep, shutting her ears against that still
small voice in her head. Tomorrow she will talk to
Hank about it, and about Huntingdon House outdoors.
Speaker 2: The moon is at its zenis? Does something move strangely
in the shadows? And if you strain your ears, can
you hear the sound.
Speaker 1: Of a music box? I'll return shortly with that. Two.
Speaker 3: It's just before dawn, with the moon sloping down the sky,
the last of the full moon. In a strange new
bed in Huntingdon House, doctor Henry Fleming lies sleeping gently
beside him. Susannah stirs with little whimpers as that importunate
voice penetrates her sleep.
Speaker 11: But I will beat back, Susanna for Captny down for Captney.
Speaker 5: Now, huh who who is? What do you want? H
you say, honey, huh oh oh oh nothing hack.
Speaker 7: Just a dream.
Speaker 5: It's just.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't I get here?
Speaker 5: What do you mean, sweetie?
Speaker 6: There's something wrong. It isn't a happy house the way
you and I want.
Speaker 5: What do you mean you want to to leave?
Speaker 6: You know we can't do that.
Speaker 7: You've tied up your whole future here.
Speaker 5: I've tied up my whole future with you. That comes first.
But why what is it? Don't you like here? Of
all the sad history which is buried in the past.
Speaker 6: As mister Hugh said, it isn't buried in the past
no matter what he says.
Speaker 5: What does that mean?
Speaker 7: Since the first moment I got here last night, there's.
Speaker 6: A voice voice, m my young girl's voice that calls
to me, speaks to me.
Speaker 5: Just to you alone. I guess if you haven't heard it, Well,
so that's why you've been so funny a couple of times.
Well what does this voice say?
Speaker 6: Nothing? Really, just calling me to help and to come.
Speaker 5: To her, Susie.
Speaker 6: Oh, I always mistrust your motives when you call me that.
Speaker 5: Well don't this time? I just wanted to say we
were both dead tired after a ten day journey across
the country. Nothing about last night was wholly real. Our
life in the West starts as of this morning. Uh,
let's give it a day or two so we can
really judge it. Then. If it's wrong or or your
voice is still speak to you, I promise we'll face
up to it.
Speaker 6: You don't believe me, Perhaps you're right. This morning it
was so faint I could scarcely hear it. Alright, Haank Darling.
Let's forget about me and concentrate on your life.
Speaker 12: Mm oh, Ellen, Oh, I mean missus Bunder an apron
full of fresh eggs.
Speaker 8: Every morning, ma'am if you want 'em, we have a
power layers.
Speaker 7: Can I help fix breakfast?
Speaker 5: Oh? A lady like you have no place in the kitchen.
Speaker 7: I want to be here, And do I have to call.
Speaker 6: You missus Bunder? Couldn't it be just Ellen and Susannah
or Susan or whatever you wanna call me.
Speaker 8: You're a sweet child, and it's good to see a
bright fresh face here.
Speaker 6: But is it wise for us to be that close?
I don't care if it's wise. I need a friend
and someone to answer some of my questions.
Speaker 5: Alright, little one, you have a friend.
Speaker 6: I'm so glad. Yesterday I I thought you would've done
anything to get me out of here.
Speaker 5: I should be ashamed.
Speaker 8: I suppose this house has been my life, But for
all the tragedy, it has treated me well enough.
Speaker 7: Then why do you resent my coming here?
Speaker 8: It isn't you, dear heart, It's only the But I
thought the past was buried. Why don't you accept your
good fortune as it is and leave the ghost of
yesterday buried and forgotten?
Speaker 7: I will if they.
Speaker 6: Leave me alone.
Speaker 5: Now. I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 7: That's two of us.
Speaker 6: Yesterday, when there was time, you said you would explain
about the black shadows that lie over this house.
Speaker 8: It isn't the time yet. Certain people would be judged wrong.
Speaker 6: Rachel Huntington, for example.
Speaker 5: What do you know of her?
Speaker 6: Only that she died mysteriously and that she loved your son.
Speaker 5: My son, my son. That was a fine, true boy.
Then until he was cast out?
Speaker 6: What happened?
Speaker 8: I neither excuse him or blame him. They might have
found a life together. Stead, my Elisha was thrown out,
sent to be cannon fodder. Cause two children of love
had committed the oldest sin in the world, a sin
that wedlock would have wiped out.
Speaker 7: I didn't realize that, you mean that Rachel Hyde.
Speaker 8: Didn't know it myself till after lie she'd been sent
away for sure, till after her death when I talked
to Missus Huntington, Will you tell me what you were
hitting at last night? I think you ought to go
from here now by the going's good.
Speaker 6: It's funny. I get a feeling you're thinking less of
me than you are of yourself.
Speaker 7: Maybe you're the one who should leave.
Speaker 8: Oh oh no, please, please don't send me away.
Speaker 5: I promise.
Speaker 8: If your promise to let me stay, I won't open
my mouth again.
Speaker 6: It's just so strange about missus Blunter Hank. I mean,
you know I'm sensitive to.
Speaker 5: People, don't I just my little witch or medium or
whatever you are. No, don't talk about me like that, Darling.
I didn't mean anything. It's just that you are psychic clairvoyant.
You have some kind of perception that's extra more than
other people's.
Speaker 7: You do believe that, don't you, even if you're a doctor.
Speaker 5: Too many things have happened in our lives for me
not to remember how you woke me trying to tell
me that my father was in danger. Yes, and we
found out afterward it was exactly the moment he'd had
his heart attack.
Speaker 7: I don't always see bad things, of course not.
Speaker 5: You also told me the moment our child started to
grow inside you, long before any doctor could have known. Darling,
I believe in your your intuitions. What about the voice
you thought you heard when we first came here.
Speaker 6: Oh, there hasn't been a hint of that for a month.
I don't know what it was. What's that you have
in your hand?
Speaker 5: Oh, it's funny. I was poking around on the second floor, Uh,
in that sort of special little wing, the.
Speaker 6: One you were thinking about for the laboratory, in all
the new microscopic equipment.
Speaker 5: First. Yeah, well that's where I found this box, just
lying in the middle of the floor.
Speaker 6: What is it.
Speaker 5: It's a music box, Oh, an old one that that
doesn't work.
Speaker 6: Are you sure?
Speaker 5: Well it's probably just rusted, needs some oil.
Speaker 6: Could you fix it?
Speaker 5: Maybe? I'm not sure. I want to.
Speaker 6: I want you to.
Speaker 5: That's a strange tone from you.
Speaker 7: Oh, I didn't mean please hank it. I'd like you
to try to.
Speaker 6: Make it work.
Speaker 5: If you'll tell me why it's so important.
Speaker 6: The voice I thought I heard when we first came here,
when it spoke to me far away in the background,
a music box was playing.
Speaker 5: I see, Is that why you hesitate? Partly? Something tells
me I should take this lovely old walnut box and
bury it in the ground or the deepest lake I
can find.
Speaker 7: Why.
Speaker 5: Well, the room where I found it had only one window,
and shaded by the vines which clamber all over the house.
The wing must have been closed off for years. The
dust was an inch thick. It was eerie that everywhere
I went I left my footprints outlined clearly behind me.
Speaker 6: Wait till missus Blunter and I get in there with
some mops and a broom. We'll chase the dirt out
and wipe out your footprints.
Speaker 5: No, I'm sure you will. There's only one thing you
can't wipe out. What's that the spot where the box
was lying covered with cobwebs.
Speaker 7: Oh, why can't we clean the that up too?
Speaker 5: Because when I picked it up there was no depression
for all its weight, no mark to show it had
lain there for any time at all, except for the
fact that it lay in the center of the room
with no footprints in the dust coming or going. It
could have been placed there yesterday or this morning before
I entered the room. Do you still want me to
see if I can make it play its song again?
Speaker 6: Haank?
Speaker 1: Who else?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 6: It could have been missus bunder Look at that full
red moon.
Speaker 5: Isn't it gorgeous? Yes? I have a little present for you.
Oh what your music box? It plays?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 5: Let me hear very well? Do you remember something? What?
Today is your birthday? That's why I work so hard
to have this ready for you. I know it isn't
much of a present, but this year with all the
other expenses. And what is it?
Speaker 6: That melody?
Speaker 5: You know it?
Speaker 6: That's the song that was playing behind the ghost voice?
Speaker 5: That what is it? Darling hawk? Where at the summerhouse?
Speaker 6: Don't you see her?
Speaker 5: There's nobody there?
Speaker 6: There is See how she blungs and a and spins with.
Speaker 7: Her her crinoline swirling around her.
Speaker 6: She's calling to me. I can hear her. I got
to go to her. Come with me, Hank, Come with me.
Speaker 5: Don't worry s Sanna. I won't let you out of
my sight. You see, there's no one.
Speaker 6: Here, But there was there still is only what happened
to the music box?
Speaker 5: It ran down?
Speaker 6: Wind it up?
Speaker 5: No, I should never have fixed it so that it
would play.
Speaker 6: It doesn't matter.
Speaker 5: She would have reached me anyway. Wait, I to me,
Come to me, get to Rachel.
Speaker 6: How the music?
Speaker 5: Was she just talking to you the ghost? Yes it
was Rachel, but she's been How could she talk to you?
She was amused?
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 7: I don't think she wants to hurt me. She wants
me to help.
Speaker 5: Help her to do what how?
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 7: I'm not even sure.
Speaker 6: It's a The ghost is trying to reach me, cares
me more than anything.
Speaker 5: Susie, you can't be serious. What are you trying to say?
Speaker 6: There's something terribly wrong about it all, Darling, and somehow
missus Bunter is mixed up in it. I know she is.
Speaker 5: In what way?
Speaker 8: Do you know?
Speaker 6: I like to keep charge of household accounts and things,
the supplies, the towels and linens, everything that goes with
the house. Too many things are missing in too obvious
a pattern, Hank. There's someone living in this house.
Speaker 5: We don't know about. And you think, what can I think?
You mean that Rachel never dies, right? That somehow she's
still alive.
Speaker 6: I think she's not in her grave, and that she
is calling me for help to get her out of
some captivity that has a chain her for fifteen years.
Speaker 7: Somehow I've got to find a way to help her.
Speaker 4: Now, there's an interesting corner to turn in a story,
to find that a ghost, a well established.
Speaker 1: Ghost, may not be one.
Speaker 4: After all, something we almost find out when I returned
with Act three. The full moon passes for a moment
behind clouds, blowing Hank a worried frown, which she can
conceal from his wife. His mind is a spinning mixture
of thoughts he is fighting to keep from coagulating. They
must be kept separate to evaluate them. Is Susannah simply
suffering from the vagaries of a lady in her as
would have been said in those times interesting condition? Or
is there really an extra presence hidden in Huntington House?
Speaker 5: If Rachel, if that's who it is, won't reveal herself
to us openly, how can we find a way to
help her?
Speaker 7: You don't think I'm crazy, do you?
Speaker 8: Hang?
Speaker 6: There is some mystery that's got to be cleared away
before we can ever live in this house.
Speaker 5: But you really believe it's possible that someone or or
something is hiding.
Speaker 6: Here, someone from the amount it uses up in food
and linen and towels. But at the same time something
that isn't natural, it's supernatural. Huh what is it? Oh?
It's just the moon coming out from behind the clouds again,
bright as some enormous chandelier on in the sky. If
only I wait, he said, the music box started again.
There quick before the moon goes behind the clouds.
Speaker 5: Are you sure you want to yes?
Speaker 6: Yes, quickly?
Speaker 5: Okay, Well look there he is, damn where up the
path towards the front door, and she's she's beckoning for
us to come. What is it?
Speaker 11: Oh?
Speaker 7: The moon behind the clouds again.
Speaker 6: I can't see.
Speaker 5: Come, let's go.
Speaker 6: There's no one here.
Speaker 5: The front door is opening.
Speaker 6: What happened to the music box?
Speaker 5: It stopped? I don't know why? Who you are, doctor Flemy?
What is it? Ellen? What's wrong? I think he's dying? Please?
Could you come to him and try to save.
Speaker 8: His life, even if he isn't worth it?
Speaker 5: Save whose life?
Speaker 8: My son?
Speaker 7: I'll show you where he is.
Speaker 5: He's hiding out the barn, hold the lantern. Higher, missus buner.
That's it. Oh, oh, hurt there some how about here? Oh,
and Hurt's pretty good. He's burning up with fever. We've
got to get him up to the house. See if
we can't bring it down.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, no, sir, you bring me up to the house.
Speaker 5: You're just signing my death warrant. What's he talking about?
There's a wanted poster out for him. Murder and highway robbery.
Speaker 8: He killed a United States marshal making his getaway up
Cheyenne day.
Speaker 5: If I can't get him where I can treat him properly,
it won't be the government signs your son's death warrant.
Speaker 7: This is your son, Ellen. More's the shame.
Speaker 6: Yes, but I thought he was dead in the Civil War.
Speaker 7: I'd take my pride in him if it had been.
Speaker 8: But he deserted the army to take up with a
bunch of cut throats and outlaws, robbing and stealing and killing.
Did He got wounded and came crawling home to me
to beg.
Speaker 5: Me to save his life. What could I do? He
is he was my only child. I didn't know how
to turn my back on it.
Speaker 2: I should never put you on the spot, Ma, I
don't deserve nothing better than I got a bullet and
my gut.
Speaker 5: I should have let us take me. It's on good time,
just what it's doing.
Speaker 2: Raw.
Speaker 3: No I was.
Speaker 2: I was wide open and bleeding like a stuck pig
when I crawled in here over a month ago.
Speaker 1: Ma nursed me back to.
Speaker 5: Health and and the wound closed up. And then this
damn fever got to me. Because you still have that
bullet locked up inside you. It's festering. You have parrotonitis,
and the poison will kill you unless I get that
bullet out. You were, you were a real doctor. I have
a sheepskin, says I am, And that means, by law,
you're gonna have to let him know I'm still alive,
and I'm gonna have to hang just the same.
Speaker 2: We can talk about that, lady. Oh no, sir, Johnny Law,
don't get me now. Everybody stay right where they are,
nice and easy while I get out of here. Ain't
no use trying to reach for me. You lost me
a long time ago, just like I lost myself. The
only thing outside of you I'm really sorry for is
I never should have hurt Rachel. The funny thing is
I really loved her. If only we'd ever had a chance, Mom,
I wish I I could have done better by you
and it Rachel, nice, Jock.
Speaker 7: Hush, Missus Buncher, let my husband handle it.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry it was too late this time. He's he's
really dead. There's nothing much I can do, missus Butcher.
I'll have to write in and tell the authorities.
Speaker 8: There was no real excuse for all the pits he'd
done the past few years. If he ever had the chance,
he might've amounted to something.
Speaker 5: You should've seen him with, Rachel.
Speaker 7: Oh, don't torture yourself with memory.
Speaker 5: Well, I can. Was a good one.
Speaker 7: In spite of the misfortune's birth brought her. She was
a bride and full of the joy of life.
Speaker 5: You should've seen her.
Speaker 7: Dance, dance.
Speaker 6: And she was blind, wasn't she?
Speaker 5: Oh, that seemed to make no difference.
Speaker 7: She could hear sharp with the dad.
Speaker 5: I always said, what a pity it was.
Speaker 8: Then never got her a piano forty for her to learn.
Speaker 5: To play by herself. But they never did. Just music buckles.
Speaker 8: Oh, yes, like this, well, yes, that looks like one
of 'em.
Speaker 6: That box does seem familiar, Ellen, Are you sure?
Speaker 7: Rachel Huntingdon is dead.
Speaker 8: Well, I'm sure she is.
Speaker 6: I know it.
Speaker 8: To keep her from running after my eluge, they poisoned her.
Speaker 7: What did you actually see her dead?
Speaker 8: They'd sent me away, and then then she died so suddenly.
And I came to the funeral and I stood in
the back so wouldn't be seen, and I saw the
coffin lowered into the ground and the dirt covering it,
and the minister commending her to heaven.
Speaker 5: Is that what you mean, miss Susan?
Speaker 6: I I don't know what I mean, And this isn't
any time to talk about it.
Speaker 5: First of all, let's go get the minister.
Speaker 6: And see your son decently buried.
Speaker 5: You sure you don't wanna come with me?
Speaker 6: No, darling, I really think I ought to stay with
poor Ellen.
Speaker 5: You're not afraid of anything.
Speaker 6: Why should I be?
Speaker 5: Well, you were the one who sends another presence in
the house.
Speaker 6: But that's all over now we know it was Ellen's son.
Speaker 5: Only that's not what you were hearing. You were hearing
a woman's voice calling.
Speaker 6: To you to help the man she loved, who just died,
and who must be with her.
Speaker 5: Now there's nothing to be afraid of anymore. I I
don't know. I'm not sure I should leave you alone.
Speaker 6: Nope, don't be silly. You'll be back in an hour
or so. And even if poor little Rachel wanted to
haunt me, he couldn't mean me anyhow.
Speaker 5: Well, it's a dark night, and even if she wanted to,
she only seems to come when the moon is bright.
Promise me, you'll go straight to bed, lock the door
and wait for me.
Speaker 6: I will hurry.
Speaker 5: Don like the wind, you go straight upstairs?
Speaker 1: Bye?
Speaker 2: Is that her?
Speaker 11: By?
Speaker 6: Hank?
Speaker 7: Aren't you going up to bed?
Speaker 8: Ellen?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 5: I suppose so.
Speaker 8: And oh't know what for?
Speaker 5: I won't sleep.
Speaker 6: You must come on. We'll have a hot toddy in
the kitchen and then go up together.
Speaker 5: The Huntingtons should have left her alone.
Speaker 8: She'd been better off with him the way things happened,
Lord knows, he'd have been better.
Speaker 5: Off with her.
Speaker 7: They loved her and wanted to protect her.
Speaker 8: Would have been the same, She been normal. They waited
too long to have a child. When at last she
came to them, they smothered her. The only freedom she
ever had was her dancing in her music boxes.
Speaker 6: Like this one?
Speaker 5: Where'd you find that?
Speaker 6: I didn't hankd it in the little room on the
top floor of the wing, Rachel's old.
Speaker 8: Room, but that part of the house had been shut
up ever since I came back.
Speaker 5: That was part of what it said in the wheel.
Speaker 6: Why didn't you.
Speaker 11: Turn that on?
Speaker 6: I didn't. I just started by itself. I know that tune.
I thought you said you couldn't tell one tune from that.
Speaker 5: I can that one.
Speaker 7: It was her favorite.
Speaker 5: Turn it off. That's better.
Speaker 8: I don't wanna be reminded of a poor little Rachel tonight.
Speaker 6: What is it, missus? Sh she's calling me again?
Speaker 11: Color on cold?
Speaker 5: No what.
Speaker 11: I wanted to lie with my lover? Cringe, cringle, peep, spring, pee,
screen peep.
Speaker 5: Where are you going?
Speaker 6: Where the music box is leaving me? This time? I
cannot fail her.
Speaker 5: Don't go in there. That's missus Rachel's old room.
Speaker 6: This is where she bids me come hold your candle higher.
It's empty now, nothing left but does But.
Speaker 5: It's less than half a room.
Speaker 7: There's a wall built there where in front of us.
Speaker 8: There's two great windows beyond that they look down on
the garden. But this wall, I don't know where it
came from, or when.
Speaker 11: It was built, or.
Speaker 6: Why there's no door in it.
Speaker 7: It's papered all the way across.
Speaker 6: The candle blew out. Oh my man, I'm still left.
And look there where the wind, toilet paper, off the
wall to the door.
Speaker 7: Don't go in there, miss Susan.
Speaker 8: I have to.
Speaker 6: This is what she's been calling me to do.
Speaker 5: Oh, oh my god, what is it?
Speaker 7: Look on the bed, it's it's missus Rachel's room, just
as I was.
Speaker 5: And that's her, just as she was. Oh the good
Lord protect us. How could she still be alive after
fifteen years?
Speaker 6: I do.
Speaker 11: I take me to the grade so I can leave
at last.
Speaker 5: Oh, my darling, I can't believe it. When mister Houston,
I came home and that wind and couldn't find you,
I thought I'd lose my mind. I imagined all kinds
of things, but nothing like this. Is she alive?
Speaker 6: No, she's dead, and she has been all these years.
Speaker 5: But it's not possible. Fifteen years. You can't preserve a corpse.
Speaker 1: How he excuse me, doctor Fleming.
Speaker 5: Uh what, mister Houston? Believe me?
Speaker 1: I had no idea.
Speaker 3: I knew how Carson and Sarah worshiped the child, but
I never dreamed of a lover as sick as this.
This was their way of keeping her for the rest
of their lives, preserved so that they could never lose her.
But how h I'm a banker, I can't tell you.
But her room her medically sealed, and all Carson's skills.
And I told you he was a taxidermist, but I
never did get a chance to tell you. He ended
up his life here in this city as our under taken.
A grisly ending to a weird story and yet a
happy one. Rachel Huntingdon was finally laid to her rest,
alongside the man who might have been her husband. Huntingdon
House was cleared of all shadows and became the nucleus
of one of the country's finest hospitals, renowned for the
miracles it achieves in saving life rather than preserving the
illusion of it.
Speaker 5: I'll be back shortly.
Speaker 4: Such an alluring, gentle, lovely sound, the tinkle of a
music box, and yet hearing one, I tend to shudder,
picturing that law dead girl, her eyes open in an
unwinking stare, and the voice that never could speak in life,
crying out in desperation for peace, never to be heard
till at last came Susannah with her.
Speaker 5: Gift of perception.
Speaker 4: Our cast included Don Scardino, Jadder, Roland, Stats, Cotsworth and
Potoniac and Robert Maxwell. The entire production was under the
direction of Hyman Brown G. Marshall, inviting you to return
to our Mystry Theater for another adventure in the macabre.
Until next time, pleasant dreams.