People of the Dark
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
I came to Dragon's Cave to kill Richard Brent. I went down the dusky avenues made by the towering trees and my mood well matched for the primitive grimness of the scene. The approach to Dragon's cave is always dark for the mighty branches and thick leaves shut out the sun, and now the somberness of my own soul made the shadows seem more ominous and gloomy than was natural. Not far away, I heard this slow wash of the waves against the tall cliffs, but the sea itself was out of sight, masked by the dense oak forest, the darkness and the stark gloom of my surroundings gripped my shadowed soul as I passed beneath the ancient branches. As I came out into a narrow glade and saw the mouth of the ancient cavern before me, I paused, scanning the caverns exterior and the dim reaches of the silent oaks. The man I hated had not come before me. I was in time to carry out my grim intent. For a moment. My resolution faltered. Then, like a wave, their surged over me, the fragrance of Eleanor Bland, a vision of wavy golden hair in deep gray eyes changing and mystic as C. I clenched my hands until the knuckles showed white and instinctively touched the wicked snub nose revolver whose weight sagged my coat pocket. But for Richard Brent, I have felt certain I had already won this woman desire for whom made my waking hours a torment and my sleep a torture. Whom did she love? She wouldn't say. I do not believe she knew. Let one of us go away, I thought, and she would turn to the other. And I was going to simplify matters for her and for myself. By chance, I had overheard my blond English rival remark that he intended coming toe lonely Dagens cave on an idol exploring outing alone. I am not by nature criminal. I was born and raised in, ah, hard country, and I've lived most of my life on the raw edges of the world, where a man took what he wanted if he could, and the mercy was virtue, little known. But it was a torment that racked me day and night that sent me out to take the life of Richard Brent. I've lived hard and violently, perhaps when love overtook me and also was fierce and violent. Perhaps I was not wholly saying what with my love for Eleanor Bland on my hatred for Richard Brent. Under any other circumstances, I would've been glad to have called him friend. Ah, fine, rangy, upstanding young fellow, clear eyed and strong. But he stood in the way of my desire and he must die. I stepped into the dimness of the cavern and halted. I had never before visited Dagens Cave. Yet a vague sense of my misplaced familiarity troubled me. As I gazed on the high arching roof, the even stone walls in the dusty floor, I shrugged my shoulders, unable to place the elusive feeling. Doubtless it was evoked by a similarity to the caverns in the mountain country of the American Southwest, where I was born and spent my childhood. And yet I knew I had never seen a cave like this one, whose regular aspect gave rise to myths that it was not a natural cavern but had been hewn from solid rock ages ago by the tiny hands of the mysterious little people and the prehistoric beings of British legend. The whole countryside, thereabouts, was a haunt for the ancient folklore the country folk were predominantly Celtic here in the Saxon invaders had never prevailed, and the legends reached back in that long settled countryside further than anywhere in England. Back beyond the coming of the Saxons. I an incredibly beyond that distant age and becoming of the Romans, whose unbelievably ancient days the native Britons ward with black haired Irish pirates. The little people, of course, had their part in the Lord. Legend said that this cavern was one of their last stronghold against the conquering kilts and hinted at lost tunnels long fallen in or blocked up, connecting the cave with a network of subterranean corridors which honey comb the hills with these chance meditations vying idly in my mind with grimmer speculations, I passed through the outer chamber of the cavern and entered a narrow tunnel, which I knew by former descriptions connected with a larger room. It was dark in the tunnel, but not too dark for me to make out. The vague have two faced outlines of mysterious etchings on the stone walls. I ventured to switch on my electric torch and examine them more closely. Even in their dimness. I was repelled by their abnormal and revolting character. Surely no men cast in human mold as we know it scratch those grow test obscenities. The little people. I wondered if those anthropologists were correct in their theory of the squat, mongoloid aboriginal race so low in the scale of evolution as to be scarcely human, yet possessing a distinct though repulsive culture of their own. They had vanished before the invading races, theory said, forming the base of all Aryan legend of trolls, elves, dwarves and witches living in caves From the start, thes Aborigines had retreated farther and farther into the caverns of the hills before the conquerors, vanishing at last entirely through folklore, fancy pictures, their descendants still dwelling in the lost chasms far beneath the hills low, some survivors oven outworn age. I snapped off the torch and passed through the tunnel to come out to a sort of doorway, which seemed entirely too symmetrical to have been the work of nature. I was looking into the vast, dim cavern and somewhat lower level than the outer chamber, and again I shuddered with a strange alien sense of familiarity. A short flight of steps led down from the tunnel to the floor of the cavern, tiny steps to small for human feet carved into solid stone. Their edges were greatly worn away, as if by ages of use. I started the descent. My foot slipped. Suddenly, I instinctively knew what was coming. It was all in part of that strange feeling of familiarity, but I could not catch myself. I fell headlong down the steps and struck the stone floor with a crash that blotted out my senses.