Original subtitles

SERLING: Starring tonight:

Patty Duke,

Carl Reiner,

Virginia Mayo,

John Carradine,

David Wayne

and Cesar Romero.

Good evening.

A most cordial welcome to a display of canvases

from what you might call the mausoleum school of art.

Subject, a common enough item utilized by teenagers and tycoons,

the daily journal in which we notate the happenings of our day-to-day existence.

But in this instance, a unique periodical that doesn't record what was,

but rather predicts what will be.

Its title, The Diary.

It's our initial offering in the Night Gallery.

And on this New Year's Eve, we come to our last item,

the Holly Schaefer Portfolio of Particularly Unpalatable People.

Tonight's subject, Miss Carrie Crane, movie star emeritus.

If you're over the age of 50, the name may tug at your memory.

I was never a fan of Miss Crane's thespic talent or lack thereof,

and I am currently less than a fan of her nocturnal antics,

said antics of this somewhat faded and jaded relic of Mack Sennett

having to do with being picked up last night

for drunk and disorderly conduct on the Sunset Strip.

This is a picture of the event.

This was her third adventure in as many weeks.

Take a look at the calendar, Carrie, darling.

It's December of 1970. Prohibition has passed us by.

Hollywood is the Fondas and the Hondas.

It's no longer Fairbanks and Pickford and lesser lights like Miss Carrie Crane.

So stop acting, Miss Crane,

as if you were a pushy ingénue on the way up.

Because you aren't and you're not.

You're an aging broad who makes a spectacle of herself

like the Wicked Witch of the West in hot pants.

Elsewhere on this New Year's Eve...

Miss Crane. I'd recognize you anywhere.

Miss Schaefer's apartment, please.

She's having a party, and I can't let anyone up without her permission.

Maybe... Maybe one exception, for old times' sake?

I just want to wish her a happy New Year.

I'd like to accommodate you, Miss Crane, but...

Please. It's important to me. I'll just stay a moment.

Well, look who's here,

fresh from a triumphant engagement at the West Hollywood drunk tank.

Holly, can't we adjourn this to another room?

And deny our guests of a scene of such potentially heart-rending melodrama?

Over here, all right, Miss Crane?

A superb business manager, my Jeb, but a lousy showman.

If you two girls will excuse me...

In case there's any bloodletting, I'd just as soon have a witness.

Now, my darling, if it's not too presumptuous of me to ask,

how did you get up here uninvited?

The guard downstairs was very kind. He remembered me.

Oh, how nice.

Well, he's going to have an even better reason to remember you after this.

Every Friday at the unemployment office.

Now, about that package you're clutching. Don't tell me. Let me guess.

It's a pearl-handled revolver, all primed and loaded.

Nothing quite so lethal, I regret to say.

Then a peace offering, perhaps.

Or a bribe?

A little something intended to lever my foot from the back of your neck?

How very much like you, Holly, to look for motives in dark places.

You give the worst, so that's what you expect from everyone.

Now comes the plaintive lament about her lost man,

the one I stole.

And what would you call it?

Incredible.

To have been on earth as long as you have

and not to know that a man isn't stolen, he's relinquished.

As for the towheaded bronco rider who occasionally squired you about,

you're right.

He did sort of gravitate my way.

But then, that is the way of the world, isn't it?

The rich get richer and the old broads get older.

And after him, the heir apparent.

Tell me, Mr. Harlan,

is your ex-wife as philosophical as I'm supposed to be?

No, as a matter of fact, she's not.

If either of you need a tourniquet, I'll be outside.

Well,

in a life already notorious for spectacular boo-boos,

you've hit an all-time high.

If you thought tonight's telecast was something,

catch me tomorrow.

Oh, before you heave me out on my ear, Holly,

aren't you the least bit curious to know what's in this package?

It's a diary, Holly.

I bought it in an obscure little shop.

They sell funny little things, curios, potions, talismans.

All sorts of peculiar little items.

I paid an enormous sum of money for it.

Well, words cannot adequately describe

my profound emotion.

Good night, grandmother.

"New Year's Day. A bummer all the way around.

"Can't shake that miserable disquiet over Crane's suicide.

"And how typically hambone to do it on New Year's Eve.

"Can't make it in life, so do it in death.

"But even so, an ugly little preface to what I hope is a better New Year."

It's my handwriting, but I didn't write it.

Jeb?

Hey, hey, go back to sleep.

Only the milkmen are up and about.

I can't. I couldn't.

What about you? Did you sleep at all?

Oh, in spurts.

It wasn't easy.

Well, it's morning. A new day.

Explain it to me.

Explain what?

What you couldn't explain last night.

I have never written in this diary,

yet Carrie Crane had no sooner left when the first page was filled in.

And then, minutes later, she walks in front of a car.

Holly.

No, honey, I don't want to be held and I don't want to be humored.

I want answers.

Please don't look at me as if you can't decide

whether to flag the next elevator or book me a reservation in a rubber room.

A simple answer to an impossible question.

How did an entry in my handwriting appear in this diary

describing a suicide before it even happened?

She planted it in your mind, darling.

Something she said, the way she acted. That's why you wrote it.

I didn't write it, I tell you! I never touched that thing!

Holly, what other explanation is there?

I guess you're right.

There's my girl.

We'll just leave it at that and forget it.

Agreed?

I'm gonna go put on some coffee.

If your head is half as big as mine is, we're both red blanket cases.

I never did like that broad anyway. She was a vindictive lush.

You know what she called me?

A direct quote, my dear.

She said I was "a malignant crossbreed between a vulture and a hotel dick."

Now she's dead anyway, so who cares?

Holly?

Yeah?

You said only the first page was filled in, right?

That's right.

The second page is filled in, too.

"January 2nd.

"Didn't work last night.

"Should have gone to the desert or up to Arrowhead,

"but no sun in one and no snow in the other.

"So just stayed home.

"To top everything off, the phone was out of order."

I didn't write that, either.

Oh, help you with those, Miss Schaefer?

You just sit where you are, Georgie Porgie.

The last time you got into the act, I wasn't too crazy about the results.

Well, I want to apologize for letting Miss Crane in night before last,

but she said she had this present for you.

Yeah.

Terrible thing.

It's terrible. She was a real beauty in her time.

Well, that day has long fled the premises, Georgie.

So you just remember that the next time you feel your heart melting

over some antique has-been.

I don't care if they wheel in a gift-wrapped Rolls Royce.

You keep them out of my digs. You read me, Georgie?

Yes, ma'am.

Oh, Miss Schaefer, I thought you was at the television studio.

Say again?

I figured you'd be at the studio by now, getting ready to tape your show.

Oh, there's plenty of time yet. I've got at least an hour.

I want this thing burned.

Did you say burned?

Burned.

Incinerated. Cremated.

And finish up later, will you?

How much later, Miss Schaefer?

I was hoping to get home a little early tonight.

All right, then, just leave it and do it tomorrow.

Miss Schaefer? Are you all right?

I busted it.

I busted the telephone.

Well, you've listened to my bizarre little tale.

What's your professional assessment, Doctor?

Do I have the necessary requirements for a tour of duty on that couch over there?

You make it sound like punishment, Miss Schaefer.

Well, coming here wasn't my idea. It was Jeb's. Mr. Harlan's.

Soft, gentle, friendly persuasion.

"Go get your head examined, lover."

You say there have been two notations predicting future events,

and all these events came to pass.

A suicide, my phone being out of order

and missing tonight's show.

You canceled your show, Miss Schaefer, in order that I might fit you in.

It was entirely your own doing.

Had you waited until tomorrow, gone ahead and done your program,

then you would have foiled the prophecy.

Is this not true?

And the other things?

You're gonna tell me that those were of my own doing, too?

It was you who dropped the telephone.

If nothing else, you must admit that you've been a very cooperative accomplice.

Next you'll have me convinced that I pushed Carrie Crane in front of that car.

Well, that's what they'd like you to believe, isn't it?

Suicides.

It's their parting gift, an act of punishment.

They'd like us to feel responsible for their death.

It can be, sometimes.

In this case, I'm inclined to agree with you.

The explanation is insufficient to our needs.

That's wonderful, Doctor.

Thirty-five bucks an hour to find out something

that I knew before I came through that door.

Oh, I'm not without a theory.

There have been cases like this, Miss Schaefer.

They're not covered by psychiatry, however.

Well, what, then?

It has to do with certain forms of clairvoyance, telepathy.

An area called hyperesthesia.

That would make a great lounge act in Vegas.

If, instead of appearing in your diary,

you had actually seen it, had visions of it,

I think we might call it paranormal precognition.

It's rare,

but it's not unheard of.

In your case, I think what's happening

is an altogether subconscious compulsion to write these visions down,

with no recollection, however, of having done so.

That's the weenie, huh?

My subconscious is the culprit.

Thank you very much, Doctor.

The next time I have a problem, I'll take it to Popular Mechanics.

Your hour isn't up yet.

That's okay. Keep the change.

You spoke earlier

of the accusations Miss Crane leveled at you.

Wouldn't you like to explore those?

In walks Sigmund Freud.

Did I hate my mother? Did I love my father?

What's my position on women's lib?

Look, I'll give you Holly Schaefer in one terse, cogent paragraph.

I grew up in a tenement building. I had to scrounge for what I got.

Nobody gave me anything. I had to take it.

And that included?

Everything.

And no guilts, Doctor. No guilts at all.

I see.

You see?

You see nothing.

You think you see.

The classic guilt neuroses.

The lady is a predatory grabber.

Lady can't face it. Lady would like to hide it in her subconscious.

Lady sublimates it by making kooky entries in a diary

and has no idea...

"January 3rd.

"A black day.

"Jeb is gone,

"a man I loved wiped out for no good reason.

"I can't live with his death.

"I can't live with the knowledge that somehow,

"in a manner both mysterious and unfathomable, I was responsible.

"This whole thing must end.

"I can endure no more of it. The wrong people are dying.

"I may be able to justify my sins, but I can no longer forgive them.

"Dear God, after this, how do I live with myself?"

Where is he? Where's Mr. Harlan?

He's gone. Over an hour ago.

In fact, he should be landing in San Francisco about now, Miss Schaefer.

San Francisco?

Mmm-hmm. Business. In fact, some of your investments, I believe.

My...

Look, I've got to reach him. I've got to talk to him immediately.

I don't see how. I don't even know what hotel he's stopped at.

You see, he left so suddenly, there was not even time to make reservations.

Look, I've got to talk to him. Don't you understand that?

Well, I'm sure he'll be telephoning in.

Tomorrow morning, first thing.

Yes, of course he will.

Well, look, when he calls, you tell him to stay put,

not to leave that hotel for anything.

You've got to tell him that.

Miss Schaefer, if you could just tell me what this is all about, perhaps...

I'll tell you what it's about.

You tell him that if he doesn't anchor himself to some real estate tomorrow,

he's going to wind up in the obituaries.

Tell him that's the way it is in the diary!

You've got to tell him that! You've got to tell him!

You've just got to tell him that!

Somebody's got to tell him. You've got to tell him.

Tell him. You've got to tell him.

You mustn't blame yourself.

You were hysterical. I couldn't control you.

I thought perhaps if he were here...

So when he phoned me last night,

anxious to know how our consultation had gone,

I expressed my concern to him.

He was on his way to the San Francisco airport when it happened.

He was killed instantly.

Everything I touch turns to graveyards.

Everything.

He phoned me. I was the reason he was hurrying back, not you.

Because of me, Doctor. Don't you see?

Because of me.

I'm 29 years old,

and in all those years I've only loved once. Jeb.

Just Jeb, no one else.

I think if he'd asked me, pretty please, I'd have died for him.

Tell me, Doctor,

what have I got to show for those 29 years?

A fancy high-rise apartment,

a catalog of victims

and a growing list of corpses.

That's a pretty pathetic inventory, wouldn't you say?

Miss Schaefer...

Maybe I'll retire television's foremost hatchet lady.

Put my talent... What did you call it?

Precognition, to more productive use.

The ponies, maybe.

Pimlico, Hialeah, Saratoga, Hollywood Park.

All I have to do is look in the diary, check the winners

and make my bets.

It's like having a copy of tomorrow's newspaper.

How can I lose? Nine horses, nine winners.

I'll...

What is it?

There's nothing written in it.

January 4 is a blank page.

Miss Schaefer, throw that thing away. Get rid of it.

What good would that do?

Do you think for a moment that I don't realize what this means?

Just because there's nothing written on this page

doesn't signify that it bears no meaning.

Last entry, January 3rd.

"The wrong people are dying.

"Dear God, after this, how do I live with myself?"

Can't you understand now why it's blank?

Last entry. Holly gives it to Holly.

You dig, shrink? Next entry, nothing.

The page is blank

because I won't be alive to write in it.

Not after tomorrow.

Nurse?

Nurse, I've got to see Dr. Mill.

You've got to get him for me!

Nurse?

Do you hear me?

Nurse, are you there?

Can't you hear me? Get me Dr. Mill!

Nurse!

I didn't want to disturb you, Doctor, but I...

Dr. Mill! I've got to see Dr. Mill!

That has been going on all evening.

I'll look in on it.

Yes, Miss Schaefer?

Schaefer?

Never heard of her.

Nobody here but us historical figures.

Me? I'm Napoleon's favorite mistress.

Next door we have Delilah, who's planning the grand opening of a men's barbershop.

Down the hall, there's a lady who recites a lot.

Goes by the name of Sarah Bernhardt.

Just historical figures.

Hysterical, historical figures!

The nurse said you were calling for me?

It's almost 12:00.

In a few minutes, it's gonna be January 5th.

I know.

Well, I asked the nurse for a pen or a pencil and she wouldn't let me have it.

You know why, Miss Schaefer. Coming here was your idea.

You laid down the ground rules.

No sheets, no ropes, no silverware, no plates, nothing sharp.

No instruments at all with which you might do yourself bodily harm.

I know.

But I've been thinking about it.

Maybe I was wrong.

See, I just assumed, when I read that last entry in the diary,

that because the page was blank,

I was automatically gonna do myself in.

But I ruled out the prospect of natural causes.

A heart attack, a massive cerebral hemorrhage,

an unexpected aneurism.

You're in perfect physical health, Miss Schaefer.

You read about it every day.

People with no past medical history all of a sudden dropping dead.

So don't tell me it can't happen to me. It can.

And it will! Unless...

But I can beat the rap.

I have a plan. I have it all figured out.

It's so simple, it's crazy.

I mean, I don't know why I didn't think of it before.

The page is blank, yes?

Don't you see?

I mean, it's so obvious, it's ridiculous.

All I have to do is write something on that blank page.

I don't have to die.

I can write anything, anything at all.

If I write on the page, it means nothing happened to me.

Don't you see?

I mean, how could I write something if I was already dead?

Doctor, in 10 minutes, it's gonna be 12:00.

For God's sakes, please get me a pen!

I'll be right back.

In the upper right-hand drawer you'll find a pen.

Would you give it to me, please?

You're going to let her have it?

You're new on this ward, aren't you?

It's my first shift.

I thought so. Otherwise, you'd know. We give her a pen every evening.

Every evening, Doctor?

Yes. Miss Schaefer has been a patient at this sanitarium

going on five years now.

Hurry, Doctor! Hurry!

Yes, Miss Schaefer. I'm hurrying.

7:00 already. I hadn't realized it was so late.

Well, this is the last one.

Okay.

If you do not mind. I have this thing about mirrors.

Won't you sit down, please?

Thank you.

This won't take long. Your name, please?

Count Dracula.

Your address?

Post Office Box 13, Bistritz, Transylvania.

This is most generous of you, Your...

Do I say Highness?

Your Eminence will suffice.

Your Eminence.

After all, it isn't often that we get people of your station in life,

especially foreign visitors to our sunny shores, which is a shame,

because the cause, as you well know, is a worthy one.

Oh, I can think of none worthier.

You keep looking at our equipment.

There's nothing to be afraid of, you know.

Afraid? Me?

Good.

Well, it's just that some people are a trifle squeamish on their first visit.

Young lady, I am never squeamish.

Oh, good.

Because, after all, it is only one pint.

Oh, but one pint will not do.

Won't do?

Better make it three.

Three?

Your Eminence, that's most commendable of you,

but I'm afraid it's impossible.

Oh, I can see that this is the first time you've given.

There appears to be a slight misunderstanding.

Your Eminence?

Young lady, this is a blood bank?

Certainly.

Ah! Well, then, I wish to apply for a loan.

Our painting reminds us that there's a strange fascination

to digging holes alongside ancient oaks.

You give the average man a shovel and an X on a map

and the fantasies come thick and fast.

Pirate gold, hidden Confederate treasure and sometimes the unexpected.

And sometimes the unwelcome. Hence the title Big Surprise.

Uh-oh. There he is.

What do you think he wants?

Why don't you ask him?

Are you kidding? I wouldn't go near him for a million dollars.

Has anybody ever gone near him?

Not unless they were crazy.

Come here. I have something to tell you.

He means you, Chris.

Does not.

You, with the blue jacket.

See? He does mean you.

So what?

Don't be afraid, lad. I won't hurt you.

Go on. See what he wants.

You chicken?

Shut up.

I won't hurt you. Come here.

Well, go on.

He is chicken.

I am not!

Go talk to him, then.

Come on!

Go on.

If you're so brave, why don't you do it?

Trying to get out of it?

I'm not trying to get out of anything.

Then do it.

All right.

That's it. That's it, lad.

Come a little closer.

You're not afraid of old Mr. Hawkins, are you?

I'm not afraid of anything.

That's a lad.

What's your name?

Chris.

Well, Chris,

how would you like a big surprise?

Huh?

You know where Miller's field is?

You know where that great big oak tree is?

Go over to that tree.

Face the steeple of the church. You understand?

Yeah.

Walk 10 paces, dig down four feet.

Understand?

Walk 10 paces, dig down four feet,

and there you'll find a great big surprise.

Don't forget!

What did he say?

Come on, man!

You think there's something down there, really?

Nah. There's nothing down there.

Why'd he tell me there was?

He's pulling a prank.

Yeah, but why?

What good would it do him?

He wouldn't know if we dug the hole or not.

He's always at home.

How do you know?

Because he's always there.

Have you ever seen him leave?

Has anybody?

It's a prank.

Yeah? Well, what if it isn't?

All right, then, what is it?

Well, suppose there's money down there.

Did he say there was?

Well, he wouldn't say.

He'd just let you find it, huh?

And after you found it, you'd go running back and give it to him, I suppose.

Yeah, I would.

Like fun you would. And he knows it.

That's why there's no money down there.

What if there is, though?

What?

No, really. He's old, ain't he?

Maybe money don't mean nothing to him anymore.

Maybe he's one of those crazy guys who likes to give money to people 'cause...

'Cause it makes them feel good.

Well, there's only one way we can find out.

What are you gonna dig with? Your hands?

We'll go borrow some shovels from Miller's barn.

You wanna?

We'd be wasting our time.

I'm gonna do it.

Me, too.

Waste of time.

One, two, three, four,

five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10.

Stupid!

You dig awhile now.

You don't dig, you don't share.

Share what? There's nothing down there.

Then why don't you just go home?

Get out of the way, then.

Well, how about you?

I've been digging!

Well, dig some more.

I'm not gonna do it all by myself, you know.

It's four feet deep.

Is not.

It is!

No!

It is!

I told you he was pulling a prank.

He's probably rolling on his floor right now, laughing like crazy, thinking of us.

And you out here digging this stupid hole.

It's not four feet yet.

It is four feet!

And I'm clearing out.

You do that and you're not gonna be able to share.

Share what? Dirt?

You coming?

Then you're not gonna get to share, either.

Come on, let's go to my house and get something to eat.

Don't come running back to me after I find it.

What a jerk.

You'll be sorry.

So long, Digger.

I'll dig another foot.

"Can we have some, Chris?"

"No. It's mine, all mine."

Hey...

No, why should I?

Surprise.

Our final offering, a study in depth of a gentleman from the academe,

seen here at the lectern delivering a most scholarly treatise.

This particular class, I don't think you'd want to cut.

The painting's title, Professor Peabody's Last Lecture.

During the past term, we have covered the field of pagan religious cults,

taking in such far-ranging subjects as Kali, the druids, Thoth, Andramelech,

the Dionysian mysteries, obeah and the Red Vodou Sect,

Satanism, Moloch, Ifrit,

the East Indian Benjees and the Magna Mater,

all of them viewed from the perspective of an enlightened 20th century.

How patently barbaric and, if I may say so, childish.

Childish, that is,

in the sense it's childish to believe that Clark Kent, in the guise of Superman,

can leap over tall buildings in a single bound.

Yes, Mr. Bloch?

Were they really so childish, sir?

Superstition had a way of explaining things,

things that otherwise were too bewildering, too frightening to face.

Balderdash.

Superstition is and always has been a bottleneck in the path of progress.

Primeval man was out making sacrifices to nonexistent gods

when he should have been directing his energies to harnessing the elements.

Now, where was I?

Oh, yes. This should interest you, Mr. Bloch, since it illustrates my point.

We will, this afternoon, discuss what is indisputably

the most outlandishly preposterous of all the ancient cults,

one which inexplicably took root about...

Well, as recently as 50 years ago, in Arkham, Massachusetts.

I refer to the worship of a group of obscure gods

known as the Great Old Ones.

You know, as incredibly bizarre as it may seem to us now,

sitting here in our air-conditioned classrooms,

no advanced study of comparative religion would be complete

without a brief examination of them,

if only for the laughs.

Well, now, I have here, you will observe, a list of names.

These are the so-called Major Gods.

How they arrived at their pecking order is anybody's guess.

Perhaps they won their stripes in some antediluvian crap game.

Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos,

reputedly the first deity worshipped in olden Egypt.

Umr at-Tawil, the most ancient one,

whose terrible powers have been feared by all the world

since Lomar arose from the sea

and the Children of Fire came to teach the Elder Lore to men.

Reads rather like a press agent's handout, doesn't it?

Providing he was on lysergic acid at the time he wrote it.

Next, we have Hastur, the Unspeakable.

Sir?

Yes, Mr. Derleth?

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I've done a little outside reading on this subject,

and isn't the god you just mentioned...

Isn't it a punishable blasphemy to speak his name aloud?

Punishable by whom, Mr. Derleth?

Having unwittingly committed the fatal faux pas,

am I now to expect a midnight visitation

from some tentacled monstrosity from beyond the stars?

I sincerely hope not, Mr. Derleth.

My wife and I have just installed new carpeting.

Yes. Now, as I was saying

before Mr. Derleth, with commendable solicitude, chose to interrupt,

we have Great Hastur,

who, I might point out, is a half-brother to Cthulhu,

the next name on our prestigious list.

Lord of Rlyeh, Cthulhu.

Every time I pronounce that name, I'm tempted to say "gesundheit."

Cthulhu actually predates Nyarlathotep

and is said to have been worshipped in the primal Mu by the first humans.

Then there's dear old Azathoth.

Yes.

Lord of All Things.

Shub-Niggurath,

wife to Hastur.

Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Derleth. I said that name again.

I must remember to tell my wife to set places for two unexpected guests.

And finally, last but not least,

Yog-Sothoth, the Lurker at the Threshold.

My, my. Seems to be a summer storm coming up.

I trust you all brought your bumbershoots?

Yes, well, I guess that disposes of the gods.

Reads like an Albanian vaudeville program, doesn't it?

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting, for the first time on any stage anywhere,

Shub-Niggurath and her performing Cthulhus!

Yes, Mr. Lovecraft,

without whose esoteric contributions no seminar would be complete.

You have a question, sir?

Yes. Wasn't there a book, a Grand Grimoire, a testament...

Indeed there was, Mr. Lovecraft. Indeed there was.

And through a fortuitous circumstance, I have in my possession a copy of it.

Sparing no expense, I bring to you,

direct from the library of the Miskatonic University,

a manuscript of that most infamous of all cabalistic treatises,

The Necronomicon by Abdul Alhazred.

Translated from the Arabic into Greek by Theodorus Philetas, AD 950,

from Greek to Latin by Olaus Wormius, AD 1228,

black-letter edition, Germany, circa 1400.

What we have here, my dear students, is the equivalent of a paperback edition.

But we must be grateful for small favors,

since I'm given to understand that even this is a scarce item,

owing to the fact that, unlike other volumes of demonology and necromancy,

it was rigidly suppressed down through the centuries,

which serves to prove that not all fools are out buying Edsels.

This overblown gibberish, and I have read it all,

is as corruptively harmful as the Farmer's Almanac.

Yes. I have selected a few representative passages to read aloud to you.

The text itself, more than any observations I might offer,

should prove to you just how imbecilically laughable this entire religion is.

Mr. Lovecraft, you are bestirring yourself again.

May I anticipate your question?

Isn't it written that...

Yes, it is, Mr. Lovecraft. It is written,

and in terribly, terribly bad penmanship, I might add.

"All who behold this book will fall heir to ghastly consequences."

Whereupon, I can only say, Mr. Lovecraft, that having injudiciously partaken

of the blue-plate special this noon at the campus cafeteria,

I can imagine no consequences more ghastly

than the indigestion which is bedeviling me at the moment.

My, this is unseasonable weather we're having.

I'm half-tempted to suspend class

so that we can all go out and knit snoods for the strawberry crop.

No, no, no. I merely said "half-tempted." Steady yourselves.

Yes.

"Never is it to be thought

"that man is either oldest or last of the masters of earth,

"nor that the greater part of substances walks alone.

"The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are and the Old Ones shall be.

"They walk calm and primal, of no dimension, and to us unseen.

"They walk foul in lonely places where the words have been spoken

"and the rites howled through at their seasons,

"which are in the blood and differ from the seasons of man.

"The winds gibber with their voices, the earth mutters with their consciousness.

"They bend the forest, they raise up the waves, they crush the cities.

"Yet not forest or ocean or cities beholds the hand that smites.

"As a foulness shall they be known to the race of man.

"Their hands are at the throats of men forever,

"from the beginning of known time to the end of time known.

"Man rules where once they ruled!

"Soon they shall rule again where man rules now!

"They shall return,

"and on this returning shall great Cthulhu be freed

"from Rlyeh beneath the sea,

"and Him Who Is Not To Be Named shall come from his city,

"which is Carcosa near the Lake of Hali,

"and Shub-Niggurath shall come forth and multiply in her hideousness,

"and Nyarlathotep shall carry the word to the Great Old Ones and their minions,

"and Yog-Sothoth, who is All-in-One and One-in-All,

"shall lay his hand upon that who oppose him and destroy!

"Then, from the black-litten caverns within the earth

"where all is chaos and destruction,

"shall come the noxious Azathoth!

"And together they will take possession of all things that live upon earth!"

And now, if there are no further questions...