Blunderball

Transcript One

SEGMENT 1:

[Recording begins.]

This is Professor Granham of the Department of Xenobiology at King's College London, recorded July 16th, 1930. I leave this message partly because others will doubtless come looking for me, and partly because the...the [inaudible] compels me. There will be those at the University who know the nature of my latest avenue of research and may be able to retrace my steps. Please do not attempt to do so. If you were to see what I had seen...such glory, such hideous-

[Here there is a knot in the wire where a length has been excised. Staff are reminded to check all wastepaper baskets thoroughly before emptying.]

I have wrestled with the possibility of making my discovery known. Part of me wishes to reveal what I found, to allow my colleagues the opportunity to...to make it safe somehow. To stand against the horror I could not. But I know that at best this is foolish. At worst, the will of...

[Extended pause.]

The best security here is oblivion. The Alterworld is a vast, dark place. For every creature caught in the lamplight, a hundred may slink by unseen. I have every hope that if my instructions are followed...if my wishes honoured...this one may remain forgotten for decades to come.

[Papers rustling.]

My instructions are thus: destroy this recording and the fragments in the locked drawer of my desk. Keep no record and make no attempt to reassemble them. I am...obliged to speak certain truths. However, if I speak them to this machine, no one is obliged to hear them. I will take measures to avoid this. It is the last resistance I can muster. I hope that this arrangement will see an end to the nightmare. Destroy this recording. Burn all the notes that I have made since November of 1929. And please entrust Brutus to my sister: she will know how to care for him.

[Papers crumpling.]

There! That ought to-

SEG. 2:

-can only hope that nobody is foolish enough to reconstruct these words. The thing of which I speak exerts a powerful influence upon the mind. It is this influence that compels me to leave a record of-

SEG. 3:

-but I fear the creature counts on more than mere curiosity to draw in new flesh. I fear that its influence can be felt through the account itself, as I felt it through the ether. In all these nights, all these dreams, not once have I found any insight into its nature or its motives. It is...[inaudible]. I see its body every time I close my eyes. Though it-

SEG. 4:

-an [inaudible], an anemone. And yet it stalks me every night! Its arms like antlers stretch down from the stars. It seems strange to repeat myself like this, but I must: if you are listening now, you are in danger. Dissolve the wire in nitric acid. Heat it until it no longer holds the sound. If you have any respect for my work trust me when I-

SEG. 5:

-that it was beautiful-

SEG. 6:

Perhaps I pitied it. It seemed such a small thing. I wondered how it could possibly survive on that harsh plane. How it could feed. Then one night I found myself standing alone out in the second layer, wearing nothing but my nightshirt. I must have dropped the apparatus the moment I arrived and stumbled God knows how far through the mud. It was only when-

SEG. 7:

-clinging to me, tendrils fast around my ankle, the barbs tearing at my skin. Never before had Brutus bitten me, and never has he since.

[Brutus imitates telephone.]

I am convinced he knows this creature. Had I not brought him in my stupor, I would surely have been lost. Perhaps if he had been with me on that day in November, none of this would have happened at all.

SEG. 8:

-senses are obviously better suited to that environment than mine. Where I can see no farther than the reach of my light, he might hear a large creature from a mile's distance or more. Yet this one is silent. Perhaps he detected nothing more than my unusual behaviour, but the strength of his reaction suggests to me that he recognised the threat. But this would beg the question-

SEG. 9:

-resistant to its influence, or does it simply have no interest in his kind? It had once been my opinion that the snatchers and the bloaters of the Alterworld are like the man-eaters of India. That they will not seek out human flesh until they taste it, and that once they taste it they know-

SEG. 10:

-significance of this will not be lost on the imbecile who dares to seek it out. We say that we discover these things, but-

SEG. 11:

-hunted man before there were men to hunt.

SEG. 12:

-through the ether, and before that through our dreams. In the arms. In the antlers. The man in the street might see Satan's likeness. I see [inaudible]. The-

SEG. 13:

-hope you will understand. The location follows.

[Papers rustling.]

Stop listening now. Stop listening. Fifty-one degrees, twenty-five minutes, forty-three seconds north, one degree, fifty-one minutes, fifteen seconds west. In the second layer. I hope to-

SEG. 14:

-that it is unrecoverable. That my scissors find the most crucial points and the words are indistinct. But the horned god prevents me from confirming this. I would only be driven to record it again.

SEG. 15:

-destroy this recording. Tell no one it was found.

[Recording ends.]