Halloween Countdown, Day 4

[eldritchhobbit]

Listening to the Halloween Haunt podcast is a great way to celebrate the season. Check it out!


Now, a public service announcement, to help make your Halloween season safe:




One of my goals for this Halloween countdown is to provide a wide variety in the spooky readings. To that end, here's something completely different from yesterday's text. Let's conjure up the atmosphere of those great 1950s "B horror" flicks...

Text of the Day: Today's text is a short story: "The Leech" by Phillips Barbee, originally published in the December 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction.

Excerpt:
The leech was waiting for food. For millennia it had been drifting across the vast emptiness of space. Without consciousness, it had spent the countless centuries in the void between the stars. It was unaware when it finally reached a sun. Life-giving radiation flared around the hard, dry spore. Gravitation tugged at it.

A planet claimed it, with other stellar debris, and the leech fell, still dead-seeming within its tough spore case.

One speck of dust among many, the winds blew it around the Earth, played with it, and let it fall.

On the ground, it began to stir. Nourishment soaked in, permeating the spore case. It grew—and fed.

Read the complete story.

Download an unabridged narration from Librivox.org.

Comments

[sittingduck1313.livejournal.com]

Speaking of B horror movies and Vincent Price, I recall when I first saw The House on Haunted Hill, the similarity in title caused me to think that it was an adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House. The plots of the two do have enough of a superficial resemblance to give the impression that it was the case (though with considerable Adaptation Decay). But as it turns out, both came out in the same year. So unless William Castle had been rooting through Shirley Jackson's trash (or vice versa), it's all just a weird coincidence.

[agentxpndble.livejournal.com]

LOL Price! He was so awesome!

Funny... Guns have been on my mind this morning as they have recently passed a "concealed carry" law in WI (All hail our glorious leader!) and "no guns permitted" signs are poping up in EVERY entrance in town. Making impossible to *not* think about guns all the live long day. :::sigh:::

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

If you see anyone who looks like Vincent Price, run! I doubt signs would stop him. ;)

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

The plots of the two do have enough of a superficial resemblance to give the impression that it was the case (though with considerable Adaptation Decay).

You know, now that you mention it... that's an excellent point!

But as it turns out, both came out in the same year. So unless William Castle had been rooting through Shirley Jackson's trash (or vice versa), it's all just a weird coincidence.

Wow. I didn't realize they were the same year. Isn't that bizarre?!?

[penfold-x.livejournal.com]

That LOL is priceless (no pun intended).

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Bwahahaha!