Archive for Stories

PseudoPod 741: Lukundoo

“Lukundoo” was first published in Weird Tales, November 1925

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:27 — 32.4MB)

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Lukundoo

by Edward Lucas White

“It stands to reason,” said Twombly, “that a man must accept the evidence of his own eyes, and when his eyes and ears agree, there can be no doubt. He has to believe what he has both seen and heard.”

“Not always,” put in Singleton, softly.

Every man turned towards Singleton. Twombly was standing on the hearth-rug, his back to the grate, his legs spread out, with his habitual air of dominating the room. Singleton, as usual, was as much as possible effaced in a corner. But when Singleton spoke he said something. We faced him in that flatteringly spontaneity of expectant silence which invites utterance.

“I was thinking,” he said, after an interval, “of something I both saw and heard in Africa.”

Now, if there was one thing we had found impossible it had been to elicit from Singleton anything definite about his African experiences. As with the Alpinist in the story, who could only tell that he went up and came down, the sum of Singleton”s revelations had been that he went there and came away. His words now riveted our attention at once. Twombly faded from the hearth-rug, but not one of us could ever recall having seen him go. The room readjusted itself, focused on Singleton, and there was some hasty and furtive lighting of fresh cigars. Singleton lit one also, but it went out immediately, and he never relit it. (Continue Reading…)

PseudoPod 740: Kecksies

“Kecksies” was first published in Regent Magazine, January 25, 1925

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:21 — 26.1MB)

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Kecksies

by Marjorie Bowen

Two young esquires were riding from Canterbury, jolly and drunk, they shouted and trolled and rolled in their saddles as they followed the winding road across the downs.

A dim sky was overhead and shut in the wide expanse of open country that one side stretched to the sea and the other to the Kentish Weald.

The primroses grew in thick posies in the ditches, the hedges were full of fresh hawthorn green, and the new grey leaves of eglantine and honeysuckle, the long boughs of ash with the hard black buds, and the wand-like shoots of sallow willow hung with catkins and the smaller red tassels of the nut and birch; little the two young men heeded of any of these things, for they were in their own country that was thrice familiar; but Nick Bateup blinked across to the distant purple hills, and cursed the gathering rain. “Ten miles more of the open,” he muttered, “and a great storm blackening upon us.” (Continue Reading…)

PseudoPod 739: Morag-of-the-Cave

First published in Hutchinson’s Mystery Story Magazine, July 1925. – “Morag-of-the-Cave” is an evocative tale of lovers from the sea that predates that fateful visit to Innsmouth by over a decade. But this version contains enough heat that Howie would have broken into a sweat.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 47:36 — 33.2MB)

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Show Notes

The pre-episode warning excerpt is from the beginning of “The Electronic Plague” by Edward Hades and it first appeared in Weird Tales, April 1925. It is narrated by Dave Robison.

Morag-of-the-Cave

by Margery Lawrence

I saw her first wandering along the bleak seashore, wrapped in the eternal shawl that cloaks the Irish peasant woman. I was staying with the O’Haras, delightful, happy-go-lucky people, but rather too strenuous and energetic for my more sedentary tastes. Fortunately we were sufficiently old friends for me to ‘gang my ain gait’ if I wanted to, and I spent much time pottering about the picturesque, dirty little village, and talking to the friendly fisherfolk. It was while I stood talking to Silis Hagan, the old woman who had nursed big Terry O’Hara, youngest of the clan, and my fiancé, through his many ills, that Morag-of-the-Cave passed by. A grey, quiet woman, tall and thin to a degree, she loitered down the sandy pathway, her hands twisted in her shawl—the absence of the usual knitting that is the ceaseless occupation of the crofter woman struck me, and I remarked on it at once. Silis shook his head as she stared at the retreating figure.

‘Sure, ’tis always so with her, poor soul, pour soul! ’Twould be better for her peace o’ mind if she’d bide quiet and mind house and work, like good Father Flaherty bids her, but no, ’tis no use. Down to the sea, down to the sea she is all her days! Herself pity her . . . Morag-of-the-Cave.’ (Continue Reading…)

PseudoPod 738: Bewitched

“Bewitched” was first published in Pictorial Review, March 1925

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:02:44 — 43.6MB)

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Show Notes

The pre-episode warning excerpt is from the beginning of “The Electronic Plague” by Edward Hades and it first appeared in Weird Tales, April 1925. It is narrated by Dave Robison.

Bewitched

by Edith Wharton

I

The snow was still falling thickly when Orrin Bosworth, who farmed the land south of Lone-top, drove up in his cutter to Saul Rutledge’s gate. He was surprised to see two other cutters ahead of him. From them descended two muffled figures. Bosworth, with increasing surprise, recognized Deacon Hibben, from North Ashmore, and Sylvester Brand, the widower, from the old Bearcliff farm on the way to Lonetop.

It was not often that anybody in Hemlock County entered Saul Rutledge’s gate; least of all in the dead of winter, and summoned (as Bosworth, at any rate, had been) by Mrs. Rutledge, who passed, even in that unsocial region, for a woman of cold manners and solitary character. The situation was enough to excite the curiosity of a less imaginative man than Orrin Bosworth.

As he drove in between the broken-down white gate-posts topped by fluted urns the two men ahead of him were leading their horses to the adjoining shed. Bosworth followed, and hitched his horse to a post. Then the three tossed off the snow from their shoulders, clapped their numb hands together, and greeted each other. (Continue Reading…)