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The Rats In The Walls by The Black Mass
This week on The Horror, an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's story, The Rats In The Walls. This production of The Black Mass aired in July of 1964. Listen to more from The Black Mass https://traffic.libsyn.com/forcedn/e55e1c7a-e213-4a20-8701-21862bdf1f8a/TheHorror1210.mp3 Download TheHorror1210 | Subscribe | Spotify | Support The Horror
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- [00:06]
Eric Bowersfeld
Oh, stories. Real stories. And murder too. Turn out your legs. Turn them out. Good evening. Come in, won't you? What's the matter? Surely you're not nervous. Perhaps you can come by telling a story we are meant to call from.
- [00:31]
Bernard Mays
Out of the past. Stories strange weird tales of mystery and terror by radio's masters of the macabre.
- [00:41]
Eric Bowersfeld
Story of the supernatural, the supernova dramatized by fantasy. The mystery, the unknown. We tell you this Franklin, so if you wish to avoid the excitement tension of these magnet play.
- [01:03]
Host of the Black Mass
Welcome back to the Horror Old fashioned fear since 2007. Thanks for joining me. This week we're going to hear from the Black Mass this time. A series that aired irregularly from 1963 to 1965. About 31 episodes were produced for KPFA in California. Our story today is the Rats in the Walls from H.P. lovecraft story he wrote in 1923. It was first published in Weird Tales in March of 1924 and adapted here by the Black Mass.
- [01:36]
Eric Bowersfeld
Welcome to the Black Mass. Jesus. One of the foremost writers of pure horror and the supernatural is H.P. lovecraft. He regarded all his work as based on the idea that the world was inhabited at one time by another race which in practicing black magic, lost its foothold and was expelled, yet lives on outside, ever ready to take possession of this earth again. Tonight we bring you one of his most famous tales, the Rats in the Walls by H.P. lovecraft S.A. the restoration of Exham Priory had been a stupendous task, for little had remained at the deserted pile but a shell like ruin. But because it had been the seat of my ancestors, I let no expense deter me. The place had not been inhabited since the reign of James I, when a tragedy of intensely hideous, though largely unexplained nature occurred. It appeared that my ancestor was accused, with much reason, of having killed all the other members of his household in their sleep. This deliberate slaughter, which included his father as well as three brothers and two sisters, was strangely condoned by the villagers and slackly treated by the law. With this sole heir nevertheless legally denounced as a murderer, the estate had reverted to the Crown. The accused man, making no attempt to exculpate himself or regain his property. Shaken by some horror greater than that of conscience or the law, and expressing only a frantic wish to exclude the ancient edifice from his sight and memory, Walter de La Power fled to the United States, where by the end of several generations the family had achieved the proud and honorable, if somewhat reserved and unsocial Virginia line. After the Civil War, the family moved north I emerged and grew to manhood, to middle age and to ultimate wealth within the grayness of a Massachusetts business life. My wife, Emily, died shortly after the birth of our only son, Alfred, and Alfred in the aviation Corps in 1917, they both had died, leaving me old, bereaved and aimless. A retired manufacturer, I travelled eventually to England, eventually to Anchester, eventually to the ancient family seat, Exham Priory itself. A jumble of tottering medieval ruins covered with lichens, perched perilously upon a precipice denuded of flaws and other interior features save the stone walls and the separate towers. The Priory had been allotted to the estate of the Naris family by the Crown. And now, three centuries later, I purchased the ruin for a surprisingly reasonable figure and resolved to divert my remaining years by restoring. Restoring my ancestral home. I had secured the interest, assistance and the friendship of Captain Naris, whose knowledge of the place had been increased through the years by his having accompanied the many architects and. And antiquarians who loved to examine the strange rabbit.
- [08:40]
Bernard Mays
The. Mind your foot on that big stone over there. The. The architecture, you see is peculiarly composite. Gothic towers resting over there on Saxon or Romanesque substructure. The foundation is of a still earlier order. Friend of orders, I suppose. Roman or even Druidic or native Cymric, if legends speak truly. And merged on the one side you see down here with the solid limestone of the precipice.
- [09:08]
Eric Bowersfeld
Amiable Captain Norris. The place and its ancestry had an almost consuming fascination for him. He knew every detail of its history and its former structure and became of inestimable help in the reconstruction.
- [09:22]
Bernard Mays
The Priory itself actually stands on the side of a prehistoric temple. Druidical or anti. Druidical thing, which must have been contemporary Stonehenge and dates like that.
- [09:34]
Eric Bowersfeld
Well, it's unfortunate that our neighbours aren't all antiquarians, such as you, Captain Norreys. I had not been in Anchester a day before I knew I came from an accursed house.
- [09:43]
Bernard Mays
Oh, yes, the country folk around here have their own sense of tradition, I'm afraid. They hated the Priory hundreds of years ago when your ancestors lived here, and they hate it now with the moss and mold of abandonment on it. We'll have to go outside of the immediate vicinity for our workers. You see, it isn't so much hatred as the. The almost unbelievable fear they have of the place. And the scope appears to include both the Priory and, I'm afraid, its ancient family.
- [10:14]
Eric Bowersfeld
Yes, I don't seem to be able to convince the villagers how little I know of my heritage.
- [10:19]
Bernard Mays
Oh, but to them, a lineage is beyond a message of knowing. It's in the bone and blood itself. I'm not sure I disagree. But what do we see? After three centuries, a power has returned to his ancient site to reconstruct the very house. And for the villagers, you've come to restore a symbol abhorrent to them. Oh, rational or not, you know they view Exham Priory as nothing less than a haunt of fiends and werewolves, Captain Norris.
- [10:45]
Eric Bowersfeld
Superstitions. Superstitions. Ghosts and Ghosts?
- [10:49]
Bernard Mays
Oh, no, not quite that.
- [10:50]
Eric Bowersfeld
Ah, you share their worries nevertheless.
- [10:53]
Bernard Mays
Well, so would you. Power. It's not a matter of the present. And it's not all superstition. This is an ancient place that indescribable rights had been celebrated here. No one doubts rights of the sibili worship the Romans had introduced. Inscriptions, still visible in the sub cellar of the Priory bear the unmistakable letters and signs of Magna Martyr, whose dark worship was once vainly forbidden to Roman citizens. About a thousand A.D. the place is mentioned as being a substantial stone priory housing a strange and powerful monastic order and surrounded by extensive gardens. You will see them right over there.
- [11:35]
Eric Bowersfeld
Oh, yes, yes.
- [11:36]
Bernard Mays
Now, mind that stone there. You know, the people didn't need any walls to keep them out. They were too frightened of the place altogether. It was never destroyed by the Danes. Oddly enough, after the Norman Conquest it must have declined tremendously. There was no impediment. When Henry III granted the site to your ancestor, Gilbert de La Poa, he was called then, first Baron Exon in, I think 12. Yes, 1261.
- [12:02]
Eric Bowersfeld
Yes. Well, then it's the location, the house, not the family that inherits the bad name.
- [12:07]
Bernard Mays
Well, they became aligned, you see, and not, so far as we know, unwillingly. True, before their occupation, the family bore no evil report. But something strange must soon have occurred. You know, in one chronicle there's a reference to Adela Poa as cursed of God. It's a strange phrase. Village legendary, had nothing but evil and frantic fear to tell of the castle. The fireside tales were of the most grisly description. All the mind, your head durn all the ghastlier. Because of their frightened reticence and cloudy evasiveness. I'm afraid they represented your ancestors as a race of hereditary demons.
- [12:47]
Eric Bowersfeld
But what precisely happened, Norris? What went on?
- [12:51]
Bernard Mays
Well, there are the vaguer tales, hackneyed spectral law, perhaps. Wails and the usual howlings heard around the place. Graveyard stench after the spring rains. The servant girl who'd gone mad at what she saw in the Full light of day in the Priory, the accounts of vanished peasants are less to be dismissed. Though not especially significant in view of medieval custom. Prying curiosity meant death. And more than one severed head had been publicly shown on the bastions around Exham Priory. Ah, yes, well, it's difficult. A few of the tales were exceedingly picturesque. For instance, the belief that a legend of bat winged devils kept witches Sabbath each night at the Priory. A legend whose sustenance must explain the disproportionate abundance of coarse vegetables harvested in the gardens. But most vivid of all, there was the dramatic epic of the rats.
- [13:46]
Eric Bowersfeld
The rats?
- [13:47]
Bernard Mays
Yes, the scampering army of obscene vermin which had burst forth from the castle a couple of months after the tragedy that doomed the place to desertion three centuries ago. Now, you know, a lean, filthy, ravenous army which had swept all before it and devoured fowl, cats, dogs, hogs, sheep and, you know, even two villagers before its fury was spent around that unforgettable rodent army. A cycle of myths revolves scattered among the village homes and brought curses and horrors in its train.
- [14:23]
Eric Bowersfeld
That was just three months after Walter de la Power had murdered his family and fled to Virginia.
- [14:29]
Bernard Mays
Yeah, yes, I should say about that.
- [14:31]
Eric Bowersfeld
You know, one thing puzzles me about that murder. Walter de la Power must have known for years the sinister tales about his family. So that this material could have given him no fresh impulse. I can scarcely conjecture what discovery could have prompted an act so terrible. What had he witnessed or stumbled upon?
- [14:51]
Bernard Mays
Oh, take this pass downhill. Well, the general whispered sentiment seems to have been that he purged the land of immemorial cur.
- [15:14]
Eric Bowersfeld
Such was the law that assailed me as I began with an elderly obstinacy, the work of restoring my ancestral home. While living with Captain Norrie's family during the restoration of the Priory, I collected many such tales of superstition or facts. But it must not be imagined that they formed my principal psychological environment. I was constantly praised and encouraged by Captain Norris and the antiquarians who surrounded and aided me when the task was done. Over two years after its commencement, I viewed the great rooms with pride. Wainscotted walls, vaulted ceilings, mullioned windows, broad staircase. All there. All as it had been. Every attribute of the Middle Ages was cunningly reproduced. The new parts blended perfectly with the original stone walls and foundations. The seat of my father's was complete and I looked forward to redeeming at last the local fame of the line, which ended with me. The interior of the old house was in truth wholly new. And free from old vermin and old ghosts. The first incident occurred six days after I moved into the priory. That night, dispensing as usual with a valet, I retired to the west tower chamber, which I had chosen as my own. The room was circular, very high and without wainscoting, the stones being hung with tapestries. I did not draw the curtains, but gazed out at the narrow north window which I faced from the canopied four poster. At some time I must have fallen quietly asleep, but I recall a distinct sense of leaving strange dreams. As I awoke, I found myself looking intensely at a point on the wall, a point to which my eye had nothing to mark it, but toward which all my attention was directed. Whether the tapestry actually moved, I cannot say. I think it did, very slightly. But what I can swear to is that behind it I heard a low, distinct scurrying, as of mice or rats. Then it was gone. Some sort of effect of echo, perhaps, coming from some other area of the house. There was no need of my looking behind the arras, for the walls were of solid stone, several feet thick. It was a while before I could drift back to sleep, and I seemed directly to re enter my earlier dream. Except that this time the vision was clearly, horribly before me. I seemed to be looking down, down from an immense height upon a twilit grotto, knee deep with filth, where a white bearded demon, a swineherd, drove about with his staff. A flock of fungus beasts whose appearance filled me with unutterable loathing. Then, as the swineherd paused and nodded over his task, a mighty swarm of rats rained down on the stinking abyss and fell to devouring beasts and men. But suddenly I was awake. Wide awake. On every side of the chamber, the walls were alive with nauseous sound, the verminous slithering of ravenous gigantic rats. I could see a hideous shaking all over the tapestry. But the motion disappeared almost at once, and the sound with it. I sprang out of bed and tore aside the arras to see what lay beneath it. Nothing. Nothing but the patched stone wall. I stepped out of the room and stood for a moment at the head of the great ancient stairway, listening. Listening to the house. I could hear them. I could hear them faintly at first, but coming from all the walls. And as I descended, the stampeding continued with such force and distinctness that I could finally assign to their motions a definite direction. These creatures, in numbers apparently inexhaustible, were engaged in one stupendous migration from inconceivable heights to Some depth inconceivably below.
- [20:53]
Bernard Mays
Rats.
- [20:54]
Eric Bowersfeld
When I questioned the servants, they said they heard nothing. I didn't want to alarm them by insisting no, I wasn't dreaming. Norris, it was no dream.
- [21:05]
Bernard Mays
But there have been no rats at the priory for 300 years. Even the field mice couldn't be found in these high walls.
- [21:12]
Eric Bowersfeld
Wherever would they be found? In walls of solitude. Stone.
- [21:18]
Bernard Mays
You say? They were headed downward.
- [21:23]
Eric Bowersfeld
Captain. Nor is helped me explore the sub seller. But absolutely nothing untoward was found. We could not, however, repress a thrill at the knowledge that this vault was built by Roman.
- [21:35]
Bernard Mays
You see up here it's not the debased Romanesque of the bungling Saxons, but the severe and harmonious classicism of the age of the Caesars. Look here at these inscriptions. TM Temp Dona Lucius Pragius Pontificatus. Or is it Atis? Yes, Atis.
- [21:58]
Eric Bowersfeld
The reference made me shiver. But I had read Catullus and knew something of the hideous rites of the Eastern God whose worship was so mixed with that of Cybele.
- [22:08]
Bernard Mays
Look, hold your lantern up here. No, not. Not that one. By this stone block here.
- [22:14]
Eric Bowersfeld
Oh yes, I see.
- [22:15]
Bernard Mays
Yes. You see the design cut into it. A sort of rayed sun. That's not Roman. No, it's not Roman at all. It's of an earlier origin. These. These altars had merely been adopted by the Roman priests from some older perhaps aboriginal temple on the same site. Come down here. Let's have a look down here.
- [22:34]
Eric Bowersfeld
Norries and I determined to pass the night in. The crypt and couches were brought down by the servants. We retired with the lantern still burning to await whatever might occur. The vault was very deep in the foundations of the priory. And that it had been the goal of the scuffling and unexplainable rats I could not doubt. But why? Why? As we lay there expectantly, I found my vigil occasionally mixed with half formed dreams. I saw the twilight grotto and the swineherd. The fungus beasts wallowing in fill. They seemed nearer, nearer and more distinct. I could almost observe their features. Beasts, but not exactly beasts. They became more distinct as I watched. Looking up at me. Terrifying. Terrifying. Norris. Norris, wake up. Norris, wake up. Wake up.
- [23:53]
Bernard Mays
What's wrong?
- [23:53]
Eric Bowersfeld
Do you hear? Did you hear them? Did you hear them? Norris?
- [23:56]
Bernard Mays
What? What?
- [23:56]
Eric Bowersfeld
The rats.
- [23:57]
Bernard Mays
Rats. I. I heard. I heard nothing. Nothing at all.
- [24:00]
Eric Bowersfeld
Still downward they were. They were going still farther down. There are cellars below us.
- [24:04]
Bernard Mays
Nor is cellars.
- [24:05]
Eric Bowersfeld
Norris. Was it hallucination? Was it madness? Why have they stopped? Why have they stopped? Why why is it silent now?
- [24:13]
Bernard Mays
Perhaps you've been shown what certain forces wish to show you.
- [24:17]
Eric Bowersfeld
They were headed downward in this altar. See, Norris, the lantern. The lantern flickers at the crevice here. Between the altar and the floor. There must be some kind of.
- [24:26]
Bernard Mays
By Joe.
- [24:27]
Eric Bowersfeld
There must be some way of descending, some door, some. Some kind of entrance.
- [24:34]
Bernard Mays
Balanced by some sort of counterweight, I expect. You see it. Look at here.
- [24:38]
Eric Bowersfeld
Look.
- [24:39]
Bernard Mays
The entire stone pivots aside. By Jove. There's your cellar. Power.
- [24:55]
Eric Bowersfeld
Stone steps descended into an abysmal dark. But scrawled across them as far as we could see. Skeletons. Skeletons. Attitudes of panic, fear. All over them, the marks of rodent noise. A ghastly array of human or semi human bones. Cretinism and semi apedom. We descended the hellishly littered steps.
- [25:24]
Bernard Mays
Horrifying, but extraordinary. Look here. Out through solid rock. Notice the strokes here. Look. According to the direction of whom this passage must have been chiselled from beneath. Upward, you know.
- [25:39]
Eric Bowersfeld
Look at that.
- [25:41]
Bernard Mays
You notice the air. There's a cool movement of air. Probably some fissure in the cliffs above. Yes. Look. Look, Pa. The stairway ends here. There's light filtering down from somewhere up here. I can't quite see it, but hey, it must be morning outside, you know. Almost enough light to see. It's a sort of grotto. Enormous. You can just barely.
- [26:08]
Eric Bowersfeld
The descent from reality had almost prepared me for what was to come. Norris, when I reached him, stared out with a look resembling that of the skulls at his feet. Then I followed his eyes over the subterranean world before us.
- [26:27]
Bernard Mays
Dear God, we must not underestimate the archaeological importance of such a discovery as this.
- [26:38]
Eric Bowersfeld
The twilight grotto was of enormous height and stretched farther than any eye could see. There were buildings and other architectural remains. In the center, a circle of monoliths, but dwarfed everything. Dwarfed by the spirit. Spectacle on the ground, an insane tangle of bones. Human, or nearly so. Like a foamy sea, they stretched pastures of demonic frenzy. Either fighting off some menace or clutching other forms with cannibal intent.
- [27:10]
Bernard Mays
Yes, these skulls suggest a rather baffling mixture. Mostly lower in the scale of evolution. Emphatic, anthropus, but in every case definitely human. Human, actually. Some of them seem to be supremely insensitively developed types.
- [27:26]
Eric Bowersfeld
Horror. Horror upon horror.
- [27:30]
Bernard Mays
All the bones gnawed.
- [27:32]
Eric Bowersfeld
Altars serving as butcher shop and kitchen.
- [27:35]
Bernard Mays
Mostly by rats.
- [27:36]
Eric Bowersfeld
Cauldrons, dining tables.
- [27:39]
Bernard Mays
Not all by rats, my jo.
- [27:41]
Eric Bowersfeld
Goblets. Brown stained and dried hara of.
- [27:46]
Bernard Mays
Notice the stone pens over here. For the keeping of herd, I expect. And out of which they must have broken in their last delirium of hunger or rat fear. Herds of some primordial human type. And there, a row of cells nearly rusted through, tenants still locked inside.
- [28:08]
Eric Bowersfeld
And on the bony forefinger of one, a seal ring with my own coat of arm.
- [28:17]
Bernard Mays
Strange ideographic carvings here on some of the skulls.
- [28:20]
Eric Bowersfeld
Here.
- [28:20]
Bernard Mays
Look at here. Look at this. Pa. You know, I believe they're Phrygian in origin. Cases of formally arranged bones with parallel inscriptions in Greek and Latin.
- [28:34]
Eric Bowersfeld
Still downward, I could hear them. Where else? Where else could they draw me across the grotto? Carrion, pits of sore bones, picked bones, open skulls, Nightmare chasms, unhallowed. Centuries grinning their unnameable fancies. Then. Then to the edge of a depth hideously foreshadowed by my dreams.
- [29:08]
Bernard Mays
An apparently boundless depth. Power. There's no end to it. A great mouth lined with human debris, spewing, swallowing, yawning out from the primordial power. Power. Stay out of it. Stay out of it, man.
- [29:29]
Eric Bowersfeld
The rats, questing new horrors, determined to lead me on. I ran, ran, followed, following them, following them. I heard voices, echoes. But above all that insidious scurrying, I felt them all around me. I was one of them. Part of the ravenous that feasts on the living and the dead. Well, why shouldn't rats eat a dilla powa as Adila power eats forbidden things. No, no, no. I am not that demon in the twilight grotto. It's not Nari's body I tear apart. It's not blood I feast upon and flesh I lick. Hyatt, me. You faint and tear at what my family do. That is what they said. I said when they found me in the blackness over the half eaten body of Captain Naris. Now they have blown up Exham Priory and shut me into this bar room at Harnwell with fearful whispers about my heredity and experience. When I speak of poor Naris, they accuse me of a hideous thing. But they must know that I did not do it. I did not do it. They must know it was the rats. It was the rats whose scampering will never let me sleep. The demon rats that raced behind the padding of this room and beckon me down to greater harvest than I have ever known. Rats. Rats. They can never hear the rats. The rats in the wall. That was the rats in the walls by HP Lovecraft. The technical production was by John Whiting. The part of Captain Norris was played by Bernard Mays. The part of De La Power and the adaptation were by your host of the Black Mass, Eric Bowersfeld. And now, good night.
- [33:41]
Host of the Black Mass
That's the Horror for this week. You can find more from the Black Mass, the Horror and all of the other Relic radio shows@ Relicradio.com. our shoutcast stream is there as well with even more old time radio. If you'd like like to help support this and all of that, visit donate. Relicradio.com or click on one of the links on the website. Your support makes all of this possible and has since 2007. Thanks to those who have helped out. Thanks for joining me this week. I'll be back tomorrow with Strange Tales next Saturday with our next episode of the Horror.