Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
English
Voice Age
Senior (55+)
Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
an excerpt from creatures of light and darkness. Read by Ron Armstrong prelude in the House of the dead. The man walks through his 1000 year, even the House of the dead. If you could look about the enormous room through which he walks, you couldn't see a thing, it's far too dark for eyes to be of value, for this dark time will simply refer to him as the man. There are two reasons for doing so. First he fits the general and generally accepted description of an unmodified male human model, being walking upright, having opposable thumbs and possessing the other typical characteristics of the profession. And second, because his name has been taken from him. There's no reason to be more specific at this point in his right hand the man bears the staff of his master, and it guides him through the dark. It tugs him this way that way it burns his hand, his fingers, his opposing thumb. If his foot strays a step from its ordained path. When the man reaches a certain place within the darkness, he mounts seven steps to a stone dais and wraps three times upon it with the staff. Then there is light dim in orange and crowded into corners. It shows the edges of the enormous unfilled room. He reverses the staff and screws it into a socket in the stone. Had you ears in that room you would hear a sound as of winged insects circling near you withdrawing returning only the man hears it, though there are over 2000 other people present, but they are all of them dead. They come up of the transparent rectangles which now appear on the floor, come up un breathing, unblinking and horizontal, and they rest upon invisible catapults at a height of two ft, and their garments in their skins are of all colors and their bodies of all ages now. Some have wings and some have tails, and some have horns and some long talents. Some have all of these things, and some have pieces of machinery built into them, and some do not. Many others look like the man unmodified. The man wears yellow breeches and a sleeveless shirt of the same color. His belt and cloak are black. He stands beside his master's gleaming staff, and he regards the dead beneath him. Get up! He calls out all of you and his words, mixed with the humming that is in the air, and are repeated over and over again, not like an echo fading, but persistent and recurring with the force and an electric alarm. The air is filled and stirred. There comes a moaning and a creaking of brittle joints, then movement, rustling, clicking, chafing. They set up. They stand up, then sound and movement cease, and the dead stand like unlit candles beside their open graves
