 Are you upset with today's headlines, worried about the high cost of living, want to get away from it all? CBS offers you escape. You are the friend of a man living in death, confident of a ghoul, witness to a nameless terror. You are a guest in the House of Usher. The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Escape, produced and directed by William N. Robeson and carefully plotted to free you from the four walls of today for a half hour of high adventure. Tonight, we escape to a gloom shrouded moor and a house where dread holds sway as Edgar Allen Poe recounts it in his famous story, The Fall of the House of Usher. It is with some regret, but I believe advisable that I identify myself only as a friend of Roderick Usher, certainly the last and perhaps the only friend of that unhappy man. Having only one sister, he was the last male descendant of the ancient House of Usher. Roderick had been one of my boon companions in boyhood, but many years had elapsed now since our last meeting. And so as I held his letter in my hand, not yet opening it, I reflected with no little sadness upon the devious fates that chart our courses and drive old friends away from one another. But then a sudden feverish and nostalgic curiosity laid hold of me and with fingers made clumsy by their eagerness, I tore open the letter and read, My dear friend, my need of you has so far outgrown my pride that I'm going to request a favor which I realize full well may involve considerable inconvenience to yourself. For some time past, I have been suffering from an acute bodily illness, illness intensified by serious mental oppression, if I may so call it. A horror which looms over me, a horror grown so great, I dare no longer face it alone. And so in all humility and for the sake of years gone by, I beseech you to come to me at once, here to the family estate in the north. Should events conspire to prevent your coming, then only God may know the consequences. Your friend in desperation, Roderick Usher. And so it happened that at the end of a dull, dark and soundless day in the middle of October, I found myself as the shades of evening drew on within view of the grim and melancholy house of Usher. I confess that the first sight of the house, the fungus-covered walls of stone thrusting their crumbling ramparts against the darkening sky, rising out of the sullen sluggish waters of the black tarn at their base, the bleak and vacant windows staring blindly, the bone-white trunks of decaying trees. These things filled me with a nameless and desolate terror so that I reigned in my horse and sat trembling, half fearing to cross the wooden bridge that led over the waters of the moat and up to the entrance of the house of Usher. Then impatiently I shook off this strange feeling of drift and was an instant later clattering over the wooden bridge and onto the courtyard. I dismounted quickly, tossed my reins to the silent lackey who approached, strode across the gravel and up to the massive wooden portal, the door of the house of Usher. Good afternoon. My name is... I know. You're the friend of Master Rodrik. Please come inside, sir. Thank you. But may I inquire how it happens you know me? You have been expected for some time, sir. Yes, true. But also I'm a stranger to you and could be some other visitor. That you could be anyone other than the friend who Master Rodrik expects, sir, would be impossible. You see, no one else would ever come to this house. Then I followed his stealthy footsteps through many dark and intricate passages. My earlier foreboding heightened and was made fearful by the somber aspect of the hallways by which we passed. The many unused rooms reaching out with their vast emptiness like some hideous jungle creeper. But at length we stood before the door of the Master's studio and there the servant left me, departed and left me to go in alone. The man across the room half reclining on the couch his back turned toward me, did not hear the opening of the door. For the space of several heartbeats I saw only the deathly pale and ghastly sunken features of a stranger. Then only with difficulty could I recognize behind that mask my boyhood friend. For surely under light of heaven no man had ever before so terribly altered and so brief a time. I said, Rodrik Usher. Oh, oh my friend, my friend, you've come at last. Thank God you did come. Oh, Rodrik, did you not know I would? Could you not be sure that no long years would ever dim the friendship we shared in youth? So many things have dimmed. Ah, youth. It seems so long ago. But now you're here and we'll find it and relive it all over again every glorious moment of it and all these shadows, all these gibbering phantoms that haunt me, they'll be driven out and then the sun will shine again and we'll be young again and relive... Rodrik. Oh, oh, but forgive me, my friend. My excessive joy at the sight of you after so many years drives me into a frenzy of talk. How many years has it... Oh, no matter. It is enough that you are here, here and brought with you all the lost all the happy days of my boyhood. But I'd expect it from your letter to find you in serious straits indeed. Instead, you seem in the best of spirits. You have the right to know. But in all frankness, here in your presence I find it difficult to credit important to those things which only yesterday filled me with terror. True, I've been ill. A nervous affliction, something in the nature of a family weakness probably. It has affected me with a morbid acuteness of the senses such that quite often the least sounds and odours and colours become irritating beyond endurance. Then I've eaten but little, as you can see. But surely you've retained the services of a physician. A physician? Oh, yes, of course. He calls almost daily. Though it is more often Madeline that he attends. You remember my twin sister Madeline? For her I fear more greatly than for myself. Even today she's taken to her bed and I have no doubt. We'll never rise from it again. Oh, a tragedy. The sympathies of my heart go out to you. Oh, but leave it for the present. Leave it to dream of all those happy days we left so far behind. Everything will be different now that you're here. Do you remember when we went well? But the happy forgetfulness which Roderick found in my coming was short-lived. And in a few days he had sunk into a morose torpor from which only occasionally with frantic difficulty could he reach the joy of our first few hours of meeting. More often his mental apathy was broken by bursts of vicious temper and violent ill humor. Fits I could only excuse on the basis of his illness. And that illness began in my mind to assume a most mysterious character. Being unable to divine its true nature from Roderick's hesitant offerings, I took the liberty of questioning the physician a few days later when I chanced to encounter him in a hallway. Yes, she's resting as well as might be expected. But she continues to decline. Is that not correct, doctor? That would seem to be the case. And the malady, the illness which has stricken her, is it the same as that which affects her brother Roderick? I may venture that it is. Might I inquire the nature of this illness? As to that, I am unable to say. You imply then that I have no right to the information? Not at all. I am confessing to you quite simply, sir. I do not know what afflicts Madeline and Roderick Usher. And so a week passed. A week in which the sullen, leaden skies darkened into deeper oppressiveness. And which Roderick's deathly pallor and creeping mental disillusion grew more apparent. A week in which the monstrous atmosphere of this ancient morselium began to crawl insidiously within my own consciousness, stirring into life a formless, unknown dread. Then one evening we were sitting in the vaulted studio while the first shadows of night began to flow together into pools of darkness. Roderick had been unusually troubled during the day and had been trying to find some solace by playing on the violin. Of a sudden, there came a knock upon the door. Stop it! Stop that infernal pounding! Do you hear? Do you wish to drive me completely mad? Open the door and come in, come in! It's the doctor. Well, what is it? What do you want? Master Usher, I regret that I must say this, but it is my sad duty to inform you that your sister Madeline is no longer living. Madeline, my sister, then she's dead. She breathes no more. Dead? And perhaps, my dear doctor, you can tell me what caused her death. Unfortunately, I can only take refuge in the term heart failure. Heart failure? Yes! Very well, doctor. If you'll be kind enough to wait, I'll come down directly and discuss the arrangement. At your service. I bid you good afternoon, gentlemen. Roderick, I assure you of my deepest sympathy. You do. Your deepest sympathy. The doctor regrets his sad duty. Are you fools, both of you fools? I don't understand. Haven't you seen it yet? Can you not feel it about you? The horrid monstrous brooding spirit of this accursed house. Can't you hear its evil laughter as it lurks in the hallways and grows fat upon the soul? My dead sister! Roderick, can't you see that it matters nothing to me that she's dead but I, myself, walk but a few steps behind her into the same shadows of hell. Can't you sense those hideous tentacles even now reaching out for me? For me, who now the last living if it be living, the last living descendant of the accursed house of Usher. Such was the passing of Madeline Usher. Once living, now dead. And her very death untimely in its aspects bore to my trembling soul a portent of events yet more hideous, more horrible, and yet to come. At a later hour of that same sad night, Roderick came into my chamber to voice an intention so morbidly unnatural that for the moment I could only feel that his tottering reason had at last failed him entirely. Then you refuse? But Roderick, this is madness. I tell you, before this night is over the coffin body of my sister shall rest in the vault beneath this house and if you will not help me I shall do it myself. But why? Why? I could not stand to think of her buried out there in the dark graveyard alone among the dead. Roderick, she too is dead. It's fantastic how little we know of death or of life the doctor says she no longer breathes. She is dead. She was so lovely was my sister. Roderick, I must keep Madeline near me. Nothing but evil would come of such an act. I can trust no one, but you, not even the physician himself. He hates us because he can't discover what it is that kills us. Even he might steal the body of my beloved sister. You understand, don't you, my friend? Yes, Roderick. Yes, I understand. And so it came about near midnight. We two alone made our way to an upper chamber of the house and taking up the black coffin between us in the shuddering light of candles we walked the tortuous passageways slowly descended the curving stairs of stone past beneath the moldy level of the earth forced open a massive and aged rusted door of iron and stood at last with our ghastly burden in a subterranean dank in musty crypt underneath the house of Usher. Over here, my friend, on these trestles now a trifle higher with the head. There. Oh, may you sleep in peace and dream, sweet sister, from I who tread the same path soft behind you. Come, Roderick, the thing is done. Oh, wait. Say a moment. We've not yet fixed the coffin lid. See? I've left it loose so it can be turned back. No, I beg you. A last farewell, no more. Look. Is she not beautiful? Yes, she was very beautiful. Was? Yes, of course. The look of her confused me. But do you not see it too? The warm glow of the cheeks, the eyes shut softly, those lips half-parted. Does it not seem that she may rise up and speak to us at any moment? This gruesome place inspires us morbid fancies. Morbid fancies? But now dead she seems to live and living seems already dead. Man, you seek out madness. You court it with your very thoughts. And if I do, what matters? What value can there be in reason without the hope of life? Dead you say to me, she is dead. But what certainty? Why not with equal reason say instead she lives? And that I? I, the last of Usher, am the one who is already dead. I prevailed upon my friend at last to leave that mournful place, and so with grim finality we secured the ebb and lid, took up our flickering candles and departed from the crypt, leaving it alone with its darkness in death. The ponderous portal closed behind us, and then my soul, for one brief instant, felt the dread and awful meaning of eternity. There followed then a week of such dreary gloom and melancholy that my own spirit quavered at the menace of the nameless thing and shadowed in that house by perceptible degrees the living soul of Roderick Usher flickered lower. More ghastly grew his pallor, more tremulous the extremity of his terror. The eighth day following the death of Lady Madeleine fell upon the last day of grim and gray October and brought with it as the curtains of night descended, the fitful breath of a rising tempest, uneasy gusts of sodden rain, and the sound of sullen, thunderous rumbles born of the dim flares of sheet lightning somewhere behind the lowering pall. I retired at a late hour, but found sleep impossible. At length overpowered by some strange presentiment of evil, I found my reposeful inaction no longer indurable, and so I arose, threw on my clothes in haste, and fell to pacing the floor of my darkened chamber. Then in one instant a soft sound in the blackness froze my steps in paralysis of terror. The latch of my chambered door was being lifted from without. Who is it? Who is it I say? It is I, Roderick. Oh. Oh, Roderick. What are you doing up and about at this hour in pitch blackness? Wait, let me light the candles. No, I am quite used to darkness. I heard your footsteps and knew that you must be awake even as I was. But... Can it be that you've not seen it? I don't understand you. I've seen nothing. Then stay. You shall see it. Even as I've seen it for these past two hours. Wait, wait. I'll throw open the casement window. It was indeed a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and in its beauty. The exceeding density of the clouds which hung so low as to press upon the turrets of the house did not prevent our perceiving the velocity with which they flew careening from all points against one another. We had no glimpse of the moon or stars, but terrible to behold, the under-surfaces of the huge cloud masses as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us were glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and clearly visible phosphorescence which hung like a shroud about the mansion itself. You see, my friend, tonight the thing grows bolder. Do you know the strength from the storm and from the dead soul it's eaten? No, no, Roderick. You must not look at this. Here, I shall close this window and pull these curtains. And now, candlelight, such darkness is the very mother of evil fear. There. Now come, sit here. Suppose I read aloud from some book or another. As you wish. I presume it matters little witch. Here, tell us a volume of the Mad Trist by Canning. Will it serve? As you said, it matters little. I've always found the scene to be quite entertaining where an aetherwood dreams of fighting a dragon. Now let's see. Oh, yes. Here it is. And so, aetherwood waited no longer to hold Polly with the hermit who mocked him from inside the hut, but feeling the rain upon his back and fearing the rising of the tempest uplifted his axe and quickly made a hole in the plankings of the door for his gauntlet at hand. And now, pulling sturdily, he so cracked and ripped all asunder that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarmed and reverberated out the forest. Why do you stop? Oh, yes. That's strange. I fancied. I just heard the very sound I read about. Let us say it was caused by the storm break continuum. Oh, yes, the storm. Of course. But aetherwood, upon entering the door, was amazed to perceive no sign of the evil hermit, but instead a dragon of prodigious and scaly demeanor which sat on guard before a shield of shining brass. And aetherwood uplifted his axe and struck the head of the dragon, which fell before him with a shriek so horrid and harsh like it was never before. What sound is that? Sound? The shriek of a dragon, my friend, read on. Oh, yes. Very well. And now the champion, be thinking himself of the shield of brass, approached across the silver floor to where the shield hung upon the wall. But the shield not waiting for his coming loosed and fell upon the silver floor with a mighty great... Roderick, I tell you something moves within this house. That sound, it reverberated through the very walls. Can you tell me now you did not hear it? Hear it now? Oh, yes, I hear it and have heard it long moments, hours, many days have I heard it. Yet I dare not speak. But why do you not know we put her living in the tomb? I tell you now, I heard her first feeble movements in the coffin many, many days ago and I felt that it mattered little, but now she comes to upraise me for my haste and that last dread sound, yes, I heard it the opening of a metal door to be crippled beneath the house. Now, she comes here. Have I not heard her footsteps on the stair? Do I not distinguish the heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman that I am, I tell you that she now stands without that door but even how she opens it. In the flickering light of candles, in the gloom and curtain doorways stood the shrouded body of Lady Madeline. For one shuddering instant she swayed there. Then as Roderick uttered a single piteous cry she fell upon him in violent and now final death agony and bore him to the floor, a corpse. From that chamber and from that mansion I fled aghast out the massive portal over the causeway into the night. Suddenly the shot along the path of wild light and I looked back in heightened terror for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The baleful gleam came from the setting full and blood red moon which now shone vividly through a widening crack in the walls of the house itself and even as I gazed its vision opened rapidly there came a fierce breath at the tempest the entire lunar war bursted once upon my side. My brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder there came a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of thousand waters. And the dark deep tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently forever the pitiful ruins of the ancient house of Usher. Escape is produced and directed by William M. Robson and tonight brought to you the fall of the house of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe. Adapted for radio by Les Crutchfield with Paul Freese as the narrator Ramsey Hill as Roderick Usher and Sheridan Hall as the physician. The special musical score was conceived and conducted by Sy Fuhrer. Next week You are the victim of a poor man pursued from the west coast of Africa to the west end of London by a dead man's head which grins at you upside down. Next week, escape with H. G. Wells gripping story Pollock and the poor man. Good night then until this same time next week when CBS again offers you escape. This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System.