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Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[00:30] When a vengeful cat casts a spell, it's best to tread lightly. Bram Stoker, today on The Classic Tales Podcast. Welcome to this vintage episode of The Classic Tales Podcast, where an audiobook format gives you an immersive experience in classic literature. You can get friendlier with the classics you know and discover new favorites. I'm your host, BJ. Harrison. I'm glad you could join us. For years, I listened to David Copperfield by Charles Dickens every year. There was just something nourishing when I revisited that story, and there still is. The characters, the themes, the masterful language. It was a literary feast, and I always picked up something new. I don't know how you are, but sometimes, I'm not in a place where I can handle a book. It just doesn't work for some reason. Then, a year or two later maybe, the same book absolutely hits the spot. With the Audiobook Library Card, you can always find something that will meet you where you are. And you can start, stop, try again, as much as you want. In a Wodehouse mood, dozens of hours. Need to scratch a historical itch? How about Plutarch's Lives of Famous Greeks and Romans, or The Count of Monte Cristo? Coming up on 19 years of personally narrated audiobooks. Also, you don't need to place orders. Buttons to download each title are found in the product description. So it's super easy to bop around and see what you like. Now you can share it with friends, family, or clients, whatever works. Go to audiobooklibrarycard.com and choose the plan that's right for you. And now, The Squaw, by Bram Stoker. Nuremberg at the time was not so much exploited as it has been since then. Irving had not been playing Faust, and the very name of the old town was hardly known to the great bulk of the traveling public. My wife and I, being in the second week of our own honeymoon, naturally wanted someone else to join our party. So that when the cheery stranger, Elias P. Hutchison, hailing from this main city, bleeding gulch, Maple Tree County, Nebraska, turned up at the station at Frankfurt and casually remarked that he was going on to see the most all-fired old Methuselah of a town in Europe, and that he guessed that so much traveling alone was enough to send an intelligent, active citizen into the melancholy ward of a daft house, we took the pretty broad hint and suggested that we should join forces. We found on comparing notes afterwards that we had each intended to speak with some diffidence or hesitation, so as not to appear too eager, such not being a good compliment to the success of our married life, but the effect was entirely marred by our both beginning to speak at the same instant, stopping simultaneously and then going on together again. Anyhow, no matter how, it was done, and Elias P. Hutchison became one of our party. Straightway Amelia and I found the pleasant benefit. Instead of quarreling, as we had been doing, we found that the restraining influence of a third party was such that we now took every opportunity of spooning in odd corners. Amelia declares that ever since she has, as the result of that experience, advised all her friends to take a friend on the honeymoon. Well, we did Nuremberg together, and much enjoyed the racy remarks of our transatlantic friend, who from his quaint speech and his wonderful stock of adventures might have stepped out of a novel. We kept, for the last object of interest in the city to be visited, the burgh, and on the day appointed for the visit, strolled round the outer wall of the city by the eastern side. The burgh is seated on a rock dominating the town, and an immensely deep thoss guards it on the northern side. Nuremberg has been happy in that it was never sacked. Had it been, it would certainly not be so spick and span perfect as it is at present. The ditch has not been used for centuries, and now its base is spread with tea gardens and orchards, of which some of the trees are of quite respectable growth. As we wandered round the wall, dawdling in the hot July sunshine, we often paused to admire the views spread before us, and in especial the great plain covered with towns and villages and bounded with a blue line of hills, like a landscape of Claude Lorraine. From this we always turned with new delight to the city itself, with its myriad of quaint old gables and acre-wide red roofs dotted with dormer windows, tier upon tier. A little to our right rose the Towers of the Burg, and nearer still, standing grim, the Torture Tower, which was and is perhaps the most interesting place in the city. For centuries the tradition of the Iron Virgin of Nuremberg has been handed down as an instance of the horrors of cruelty of which man is capable. We had long looked forward to seeing it, and here at last was its home. In one of our pauses, we leaned over the wall of the moat and looked down. The garden seemed quite 50 or 60 feet below us, and the sun pouring into it with an intense, moveless heat, like that of an oven. Beyond rose the gray, grim wall, seemingly of endless height, and losing itself right and left in the angles of bastion and counterscarp. Trees and bushes crowned the wall, and above again towered the lofty houses on which massive beauty time has only set the hand of approval. The sun was hot and we were lazy. Time was our own, and we lingered leaning on the wall. Just below us was a pretty sight. A great black cat lying stretched in the sun, whilst round her gambled prettily a tiny black kitten. Her mother would wave her tail for the kitten to play with, or would raise her feet and push away the little one as an encouragement to further play. They were just at the foot of the wall, and Elias B. Hutchison, in order to help the play, stooped and took from the wall a moderate-sized pebble. See, he said, I will drop it near the kitten, and they will both wonder where it came from. Oh, be careful, said my wife, you might hit the dear little thing. Not me, ma'am, said Elias P. Why, I'm as tender as a main chariotry. Lord bless you, I wouldn't hurt the poor pretty little critter more than I'd scalp a baby. And you may bet your variegated socks on that. See, I'll drop it furroway on the outside, so as not to go nearer. Thus saying, he leaned over, and held his arm out at full length, and dropped the stone. It may be that there is some attractive force which draws lesser matters to greater, or more probably that the wall was not plumb, but sloped to its base, we not noticing the inclination from above. But the stone fell with a sickening thud that came up to us through the hot air right on the kitten's head, and shattered out its little brains then and there. The black cat cast a swift upward glance, and we saw her eyes like green fire fixed an instant on Elias P. Hutchison. And then her attention was given to the kitten, which lay still with just a quiver of her tiny limbs, whilst a thin red stream trickled from a gaping wound. With a muffled cry, such as a human being might give, she bent over the kitten, licking its wound and moaning. Suddenly she seemed to realize that it was dead, and again threw her eyes up at us. I shall never forget the sight, for I looked the perfect incarnation of hate. Her green eyes blazed with lurid fire, and the white sharp teeth seemed to almost shine through the blood which dabbled her mouth and whiskers. She gnashed her teeth, and her claws stood out stark, and at full length on every paw. And she made a wild rush up the wall as if to reach us. But when the momentum ended, fell back, and further added to her horrible appearance, for she fell on the kitten, and rose with her back first smeared with its brains and blood. Amelia turned quite faint, and I had to lift her back from the wall. There was a seat close by in shade of a spreading plane tree, and here I placed her whilst she composed herself. Then I went back to Hutchison, who stood without moving, looking down on the angry cat below. As I joined him, he said, well I guess that are the savagest beast I ever see. Except once when an Apache Squaw had an edge on a half breed with a nicknamed Splinters, cuz the way he fixed up her papoose which he stole on a raid, just to show that he appreciated the way they had given his mother the fire torture. She got that kind of look so set on her face that it just seemed to grow there. She followed Splinters more than three years till at last the Braves got him and handed him over to her. They did say that no man, white or Indian had ever been so long a dying under the tortures of the Apaches. The only time I ever see her smile was when I wiped her out. I came on the camp just in time to see Splinters pass in his checks, and he wasn't sorry to go either. He was a hard citizen, and though I never could shake with him after that papoose business, for it was bitter bad, he should have been a white man, for he looked like one. I see he had got paid out in full. Pardon me, but I took a piece of his hide from one of his skinning posts and had it made into a pocketbook, it's here now. And he slapped the breast pocket of his coat. Whilst he was speaking, the cat was continuing her frantic efforts to get up to the wall. She would take a run back and then charge up, sometimes reaching an incredible height. She did not seem to mind the heavy fall, which she got every time, but started with renewed vigor. And at every tumble, her appearance became more horrible. Hutchison was a kind-hearted man. My wife and I had both noticed little acts of kindness to animals, as well as to persons. And he seemed concerned at the state of fury to which the cat had wrought herself. Well now, he said, I do declare that the poor critter seems quite desperate. There, there, poor thing, it was all an accident. Though that won't bring back your little one to you. See, I wouldn't have had such a thing happen for a thousand. Just shows what a clumsy fool of a man can do when he tries to play. Seems I'm too darn slipper handed to even play with a cat. Say, Colonel, it was the pleasant way he had to bestow titles freely. I hope your wife don't hold no grudge against me on account of this unpleasantness, or I wouldn't have had it occur on no account. He came over to Amelia and apologized profusely. And she, with her usual kindness of heart, hastened to assure him that she quite understood that it was an accident. Then we all went again to the missing wall and looked over. The cat, missing Hutchison's face, had drawn back across the moat and was sitting on her haunches as though ready to spring. Indeed, the very instant she saw him, she did spring, and with a blind, unreasoning fury, which would have been grotesque, only that it was so frightfully real. She did not try to run up the wall, but simply launched herself at him as though hate and fury could lend her wings to pass straight through the great distance between them. Amelia, womanlike, got quite concerned and said to Elias P in a warning voice, oh, you must be very careful. That animal would try to kill you if she were here. Her eyes looked like positive murder. He laughed out jovially. Excuse me, ma'am, he said, but I can't help laughing. Fancy a man that has fought grizzlies and engines being careful of being murdered by a cat. When the cat heard him laugh, her whole demeanor seemed to change. She no longer tried to jump or run up the wall, but went quietly over. And sitting again beside the dead kitten, began to lick and fondle it as though it were alive. See, said I, the effect of a really strong man, even that animal in the midst of her fury recognizes the voice of a master and bows to him. Like a squaw was the only comment of Elias P. Hutchison, as we moved on our way round the city-foss. Every now and then we looked over the wall and each time saw the cat following us. At first she had kept going back to the dead kitten, and then as the distance grew greater, took it in her mouth and so followed. After a while, however, she abandoned this, for we saw her following all alone. She had evidently hidden the body somewhere. Amelia's alarm grew with the cat's persistence, and more than once she repeated her warning. But the American always laughed with amusement, till finally seeing that she was beginning to be worried, he said, I say, ma'am, you needn't be scared over this cat. I go healed, I do. Here he slapped his pistol pocket at the back of his lumbar region. Well, how sooner and have you worried, I'd shoot the critter right here and risk the police interfering with the citizen of the United States for carrying arms contrary to regulations. As he spoke, he looked over the wall, but the cat on seeing him retreated with a growl into a bed of tall flowers and was hidden. He went on, blessed if that dark critter ain't got more sense than was good for in most Christians. I guess we've seen the last of her. You bet you'll go back now to that busted kitten and have a private funeral for it, all to herself. Amelia did not like to say more, lest he might, in mistaken kindness to her, fulfill his threat of shooting the cat. And so we went on and crossed the little wooden bridge leading to the gateway whence ran the steep paved roadway, beneath the burgh and the pentagonal torture tower. As we crossed the bridge, we saw the cat again down below us. When she saw us, her fury seemed to return, and she made frantic efforts to get up the steep wall. Hutchison laughed as he looked down at her and said, Good-bye, old girl. Sorry I injured your feelings, but you'll get over it in time. So long. And then we passed through the long, dim archway and came to the gate of the burgh. When we came out again after our survey of this most beautiful old place, which not even the well-intended efforts of the Gothic restorers of forty years ago had been able to spoil, though their restoration was then glaring white, we seemed to have quite forgotten the unpleasant episode of the morning. The old lime tree, with its great trunk gnarled with the passing of nearly nine centuries, the deep well cut through the heart of the rock by those captives of old, and the lovely view from the city wall whence we heard, spread over almost a full quarter of an hour, the multitudinous chimes of the city had all helped to wipe out from our minds the incident of the slain kitten. We were the only visitors who had entered the torture tower that morning, so at least said the old custodian, and as we had the place all to ourselves, were able to make a minute and more satisfactory survey than would have otherwise been possible. The custodian, looking to us as the sole source of his gains for the day, was willing to meet our wishes in any way. The torture tower is truly a grim place, even now when many thousands of visitors have sent a stream of life and the joy that follows life into the place. But at the time I mention, it wore its grimmest and most gruesome aspect. The dust of ages seemed to have settled on it, and the darkness and the horror of its memories seemed to have become sentient in a way that would have satisfied the pantheistic souls of Philo or Spinoza. The lower chamber, where we entered, was seemingly in its normal state filled with incarnate darkness. Even the hot sunlight streaming in through the door seemed to be lost in the vast thickness of the walls, and only showed the masonry rough as when the builders' scaffolding had come down, but coated with dust and marked here and there with patches of dark stain, which, if walls could speak, could have given their own dread memories of fear and pain. We were glad to pass up the dusty wooden staircase, the custodian leaving the outer door open to light us somewhat on our way. For to our eyes, the one long-wicked, evil-smelling candle stuck in a sconce on the wall gave an inadequate light. When we came up through the open trap in the corner of the chamber overhead, Amelia held on to me so tightly that I could actually feel her heart beat. I must say for my own part that I was not surprised at her fear, for this room was even more gruesome than that below. Here there was certainly more light, but only just sufficient to realize the horrible surroundings of the place. The builders of the tower had evidently intended that only they who should gain the top should have any of the joys of light and prospect. There, as we had noticed from below, were ranges of windows, albeit of medieval smallness, but elsewhere in the tower were only a few very narrow slits such as were habitual in places of medieval defense. A few of these only lit the chamber, and these so high up in the wall, that from no part could the sky be seen through the thickness of the walls. In racks, and leading in disorder against the walls, were a number of headsman's swords, great double-handed weapons with broad blade and keen edge. Hard by were several blocks where on the necks of the victims had lain, with here and there deep notches where the steel had bitten through the guard of flesh and shored into the wood. Round the chamber, placed in all sorts of irregular ways, were many implements of torture which made one's heart ache to see. Chairs full of spikes which gave instant and excruciating pain. Chairs and couches with dull knobs whose torture was seemingly less, but which, though slower, were equally efficacious. Racks, belts, boots, gloves, collars, all made for compressing at will. Steel baskets in which the head could be slowly crushed into a pulp if necessary. Watchman's hooks with long handle and knife that cut at resistance. This a specialty of the old Nuremberg police system, and many, many other devices for man's injury to man. Amelia grew quite pale with the horror of the things, but fortunately did not faint. For being a little overcome she sat down on a torture chair, but jumped up again with a shriek, all tendency to faint, gone. We both pretended that it was the injury done to her dress by the dust of the chair, and the rusty spikes which had upset her, and Mr. Hutchison acquiesced in accepting the explanation with a kind-hearted laugh. But the central object of the whole of this chamber of horrors was the engine known as the Iron Virgin, which stood near the center of the room. It was a rudely shaped figure of a woman, something of the bell order, or to make a closer comparison, of the figure of Mrs. Noah in the children's arc, but without that slimness of waist and perfect rondeur of hip which marks the aesthetic type of the Noah family. One would hardly have recognized it as intended for a human figure at all, had not the founder shaped on the forehead a rude semblance of a woman's face. This machine was coated with rust without and covered with dust. A rope was fastened to a ring in the front of the figure, about where the waist should have been, and was drawn through a pulley fastened on the wooden pillar which sustained at the flooring above. The custodian pulling this rope showed that a section of the front was hinged like a door at one side. We then saw that the engine was of considerable thickness. Leaving just room enough inside for a man to be placed. The door was of equal thickness, and of great weight, for it took the custodian all his strength, aided though he was by the contrivance of the pulley, to open it. This weight was partly due to the fact that the door was of manifest purpose hung so as to throw its weight downwards, so that it might shut of its own accord when the strain was released. The inside was honeycombed with rust, nay more. The rust alone that comes through time would hardly have eaten so deep into the iron walls. The rust of the cruel stains was deep indeed. It was only, however, when we came to look at the inside of the door that the diabolical intention was manifest to the full. Here were several long spikes, square and massive, broad at the base and sharp at the point, placed in such a position that when the door should close, the upper ones would pierce the eyes of the victim, and the lower ones his heart and vitals. The sight was too much for poor Amelia, and this time she fainted dead off, and I had to carry her down the stairs, and place her on a bench outside till she recovered. That she felt it to the quick was afterwards shown by the fact that my eldest son bears to this day a rude birthmark on his breast, which has by family consent been accepted as representing the Nuremberg Virgin. When we got back to the chamber, we found Hutchison still opposite the Iron Virgin. He had been evidently philosophizing, and now gave us the benefit of his thought in the shape of a sort of exhortium. Well, I guess I've been learning something here while Madam has been getting over her faint. It appears to me that we're a long way behind the times on our side of the big drink. We used to think out on the plains that the Injun could give us points in trying to make a man uncomfortable. But I guess your old medieval law-and-order party could raise him every time. Splinter's was pretty good in his bluff on the Squaw, but this here young miss held a straight flush all high on him. The points of them spikes are sharp enough still, though even the edges are eaten out by what used to be on them. It'd be a good thing for our Indian section to get some specimens of this here play toy to send round to the reservations just to knock the stuffing out of the bucks, and the Squaw's too by showing them as how old civilization lays over them at their best. Guess what I'll get in that box a minute just to see how it feels. No, no, said Amelia, it is too terrible. Guess ma'am nothing's too terrible to the explorer in mind. I've been in some queer places in my time. Spent a night inside a dead horse, while a prairie fire swept over me in Montana territory. And another time slept inside a dead buffalo when the Comanches was on the war path and I didn't care to leave my card on them. I've been two days in a caved in tunnel in the Billy Brancho gold mine in New Mexico and was one of the four shut up for three parts of a day in the case on what slid over on her side and we were set in the foundations of the Buffalo Bridge. I've not funked an odd experience yet and I don't propose to begin now. We saw that he was set on the experiment. So I said, well, hurry up old man and get through it quick. All right, General, said he. But I calculate we ain't quite ready yet. The gentlemen, my predecessors, what stood in that fair canister, didn't volunteer for the office, not much. And I guess there was some ornamental tying up before the big stroke was made. I want to get into this thing fair and square and I must get fixed up proper first. I dare say this old galook can raise some string and tie me up according to sample. This was said interrogatively to the old custodian, but the latter, who understood the drift of his speech, though perhaps not appreciating to the full the niceties of dialect and imagery, shook his head. His protest was, however, only formal and made to be overcome. The American thrust a gold piece into his hand, saying, Take it, Pard, it's your pot, and don't be scared. There's ain't no necktie party that you're asked to assist in. He produced some thin frayed rope and proceeded to bind our companion with sufficient strictness for the purpose. When the upper part of his body was bound, Hutchison said, Hold on a moment, Judge. Yes, I'm too heavy for you to tote into the canister. You just let me walk in, and then you can wash up regarding my legs. Whilst speaking, he had backed himself into the opening which was just enough to hold him. It was a close fit and no mistake. Amelia looked on with fear in her eyes. But she evidently did not like to say anything. Then the custodian completed his task by tying the American's feet together so that he was now absolutely helpless and fixed in his voluntary prison. He seemed to really enjoy it, and the incipient smile, which was habitual to his face, blossomed into actuality as he said, guess this here Eve was made out of the rib of a dwarf. There ain't much room for a full grown citizen of the United States to hustle. We used to make our coffins more roomier in Idaho territory. Now Judge, you just begin to let this door down, slow on to me. I want to feel the same pleasure as the other Jays had when those spikes began to move towards their eyes. No, no, no, broke Amelia hysterically. It is too terrible. I can't bear it. I can't, I can't. But the American was obdurate. Say, Colonel, said he, why not take madame for a little promenade? I wouldn't hurt her feelings for the world. But now that I am here, having come eight thousand miles, wouldn't it be too hard to give up the very experience I've been pining and panting for? A man can get to feel like canned goods every time. Me and the judge here will fix up this thing in no time, and then you'll come back and we'll all laugh together. Once more the resolution that is born of curiosity triumphed, and Amelia stayed, holding tight to my arm and shivering, whilst the custodian began to slacken slowly, inch by inch, the rope that held back the iron door. Hutchison's face was positively radiant, as his eyes followed the first movement of the spikes. Well, said he, I guess I've not had enjoyment like this since I left New York, bar a scrap with the French sailor at whopping, and that weren't much of a picnic neither. I've not had a show for real pleasure in this dot-rotted continent, where there ain't no bars and no engines, and where nary a man goes healed. Slow there, judge, don't you rush this business. I wanna show for my money this game I do. The custodian must have had in him some of the blood of his predecessors in that ghastly tower, for he worked the engine with a deliberate and excruciating slowness, which after five minutes, in which the outer edge of the door had not moved half as many inches, began to overcome Amelia. I saw her lips whiten, and I felt her hold upon my arm relax. I looked around an instant for a place whereon to lay her. And when I looked at her again, found that her eye had become fixed on the side of the Virgin. Following its direction, I saw the black cat crouching out of sight. Her green eyes shone like danger lamps in the gloom of the place, and her color was heightened by the blood which still smeared her coat and reddened her mouth. I cried out, the cat, look out for the cat. For even then she sprang out before the engine. At this moment, she looked like a triumphant demon. Her eyes blazed with ferocity, her hair bristled out, till she seemed twice her normal size, and her tail lashed about as does a tiger's when the quarry is before it. Elias P. Hutchison, when he saw her, was amused, and his eyes positively sparkled with fun as he said, darned if the Squaw hadn't got all her war paint. Just give her a shove off if she comes any of her tricks on me, for I'm so fixed everlastingly by the boss that during my skin if I can keep my eyes from her if she wants them. Easy there, Judge, don't you slack that there, Roper, I'm yukered. At this moment, Amelia completed her faint, and had a clutch hold of her around the waist, or she would have fallen back to the floor. Whilst attending to her, I saw the black cat crouching for a spring and jumped up to turn the creature out. But at that instant, with a sort of hellish scream, she hurled herself, not as we expected at Hutchison, but straight at the face of the custodian. Her claws seemed to be tearing wildly, as one sees in the Chinese drawings of the dragon rampant. And as I looked, I saw one of them light up on the poor man's eye and actually tear through it and down his cheek, leaving a wide band of red where the blood seemed to spurt from every vein. With a yell of sheer terror which came quicker than even his sense of pain, the man leaped back, dropping as he did so, the rope which held back the iron door. I jumped for it, but it was too late, for the cord ran like lightning through the pulley block, and the heavy mass fell forward from its own weight. As the door closed, I caught a glimpse of our poor companion's face. He seemed frozen with terror. His eyes stared with a horrible anguish as if dazed, and no sound came from his lips. And then the spikes did their work. Happily, the end was quick, for when I wrenched open the door, they had pierced so deep, that they had locked in the bones of the skull, through which they had crushed and actually torn him. It, out of his iron prison, till, bound as he was, he fell at full length with a sickly thud upon the floor, the face turning upwards as he fell. I rushed to my wife, lifted her up, and carried her out, for feared for her reason if she should wake from her faint to such a scene. I laid her on the bench outside and ran back. Leaning against the wooden column was the custodian, moaning in pain whilst he held his reddening handkerchief to his eyes. And sitting on the head of the poor American was the cat, purring loudly as she licked the blood which trickled through the gashed sockets. I think no one will call me cruel because I seized one of the old executioner's swords and sure her in two as she sat. This is BJ Harrison. I hope you've enjoyed this vintage episode of The Squaw by Bram Stoker. If you've enjoyed this book, you might also enjoy Dracula, also by Bram Stoker. If you have the Audiobook Library Card, you can listen to it right now. Head on over to audiobooklibrarycard.com, subscribe for the Audiobook Library Card, and listen to all the classic tales you want with no ads. Thank you for joining me today and allowing classic literature to awaken your better self. Please join me next time and we'll rediscover the greatest stories ever put to paper.