CZM Book Club: "Luella Miller" by Mary Wilkins Freeman

Margaret reads you a spooky vampire story that's quite a bit different.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. It's the Cool Zone Media Boom Club
Spooky Month Edition. I don't know exactly when Spooky Month
starts and ends, but I never know when Spooky Month
starts and ends because one of my favorite songs is
my Ministry. Well it's not really one of my favorite songs,

(00:22):
but it's an interesting song. It's called every Day Is Halloween,
and I like the concept of it. But you know
what bothers me the most about that song, every Day
is Halloween. There's no space between every day and every
day when you're talking about every single day is two words.
Every day is instead and adjective describing something that is commonplace.

(00:47):
And so that song bothers me. But that's not why
you're here. You're not here to hear my pedantic takes
on old goth songs. You're here for the cools On
Media book club, the only book club where you don't
have to do the reading because I do it for you.
I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, And for Spooky Month, I'm
going to read you spooky stories. Only this first one

(01:09):
that I want to read you, the one I'm going
to read you today. Okay, you know how I like
reading you all old vampire stories. I'm probably gonna do
that a whole bunch more because I really like the
old vampire stories. I like the old stories old horror
because they were super earnest. You didn't have to talk
about how everyone knows everything about vampires and you know,
whatever mythical creature, you just do it. You could just

(01:33):
talk about things earnestly, as if you weren't in conversation
with all of the things that came before it. But
then this week's story, it's from nineteen oh two, and
it is in conversation with previous vampire fiction, but in
an interesting way. One of the stories that I read

(01:53):
you a long time ago was The Vampire, and it
was basically about how Lord Byron is pretty much a vampire, right,
And it's pretty literal, and it draws clearly from the
vampire legends of Eastern Europe, in which they're a little
bit more like they're more like general monsters in the
older stories, right. And the Vampire from I want to

(02:15):
say eighteen, like fifteen or something, but I can't remember.
It's the first time you of the aristocratic vampire, and
so you start getting this idea of the vampire as
this kind of class indicator of the way that the
rich suck the blood out of everything. Now, what if
you took a story like that and you left only

(02:35):
the metaphor, you might get a story like Mary Wilkins
Freeman wrote a story called Luella Miller, and that's what
we're going to read today on Spooky Month, about the
way that spooky rich people to extract our value. Don't worry,

(02:59):
it's not like quite as over the top as that,
although it's not that far from it. I hope you
enjoy it. Lluella Miller by Mary Wilkins Freeman. Close to
the village street stood the one story house in which
Lluella Miller, who had an evil name in the village,

(03:20):
had dwelt. She had been dead for years, Yet there
were those in the village who, in spite of the
clearer light which comes on the vantage point from a
long past danger, half believed in the tale which they
had heard from their childhood in their hearts, although they
scarcely would have owned it was a survival of the
wild horror and frenzied fear of their ancestors who had

(03:41):
dwelt in the same age with Lluella Miller. Young people
even would stare with a shudder at the old house
as they passed, and children never played around it, as
there was their wont around an untenanted building. Not a
window in the old Miller House was broken. The pains
reflected the morning sunlight and patches of emerald and blue,

(04:02):
and the latch of the sagging front door was never lifted,
though no bolt secured it. Since Lluella Miller had been
carried out of it, the house had had no tenant
except one friendless old soul who had no choice between
that and the far off shelter of the open sky.
This old woman, who had survived her kindred and friends,

(04:23):
lived in the house one week. Then one morning, no
smoke came out of the chimney, and a body of
neighbors a score strong, entered and found her dead in
her bed. There were dark whispers as to the cause
of her death, and there were those who testified to
an expression of fear so exalted that it showed forth
the state of the departing soul upon the dead face.

(04:46):
The old woman had been hale and hearty when she
entered the house, and in seven days she was dead.
It seemed that she had fallen, a victim to some
uncanny power. The minister talked in the pulpit with co
overt severity against the sin of superstition. Still the belief
prevailed not a soul in the village but would have

(05:08):
chosen the almshouse rather than that dwelling. No vagrant, if
he heard the tale, would seek shelter beneath that old
roof on hallowed by nearly a half century of superstitious fear.
There was only one person in the village who had
actually known Luella Miller. That person was a woman well
over eighty, but a marvel of vitality and unextinct youth,

(05:31):
straight as an arrow with the spring of one recently
let loose from the bow of life. She moved about
the streets, and she always went to church rain or shine.
She had never married, and she had lived alone for
years in a house across the road from Llewella Miller's.
This woman had none of the garrulousness of age. But

(05:52):
never in all her life had she ever held her
tongue for any will save her own, And she never
spared the truth. When she essayed to present. She it
was who bore testimony to the life evil, though possibly
wittingly or designedly so, of Lluella Miller, and to her
personal appearance. When this old woman spoke, and she had

(06:12):
the gift of description, although her thoughts were clothed in
the rude vernacular of her native village, one could seem
to see Luella Miller as she had really looked. According
to this woman, Lydia Anderson, by name, Luella Miller had
been a beauty of a type rather unusual in New England.
She had been a slight, pliant sort of creature, as

(06:33):
ready with, as strong, yielding to fate, and as unbreakable
as a willow. She had glimmering lengths of straight, fair hair,
which she wore softly looped round a long, lovely face.
She had blue eyes, full of soft pleading, little slender,
clinging hands, and a wonderful grace of motion and attitude.

(06:54):
Luella Miller used to be sitting in a way nobody
else could if they sat up and studied a week
as Sundays, said Lydia Anderson. And it was a sight
to see her walk. If one of them willows over
there on the edge of the brook could start up
and get its roots free of the ground and move off.
It would go just the way Luella Miller used to.
She had a green shot silk she used to wear too,

(07:16):
and a hat with green ribbon streamers, and a lace
veil blowing across her face and outside ways, and a
green ribbon flyin' from her waist. That was what she
came out bride in when she married Erastus Miller. Her
name before she was married was Hill. There was always
a sight of El's in her name, married or single.
Arrastes Miller was good lookin' too, better lookin than Luella.

(07:39):
Sometimes I used to think that Luella wasn't so handsome.
After all, Erastus just about worshiped her. I used to
know him pretty well. He lived next door to me
and we went to school together. Folks used to say
he was waitin on me, but he won't. I never
thought he was, except once or twice when he said
things that some girls might have suspected meant something. That

(08:00):
was before Lluella came here to teach the district school.
It was funny how she came to get it for
Folks said she hadn't any education and that one of
the big girls Lottie Henderson used to do all the
teaching for her while she sat back and did embroidery
work on a cambric pocket handkerchief. Lottie Henderson was a
real smart girl, a splendid scholar, and she just set

(08:20):
her eyes by Lluella as all the girls did. Lottie
would have made a real smart woman. But she died
when Lluella had been here about a year, just faded
away and died. Nobody knew what ailed her. What I'm
thinking ailed her was that she didn't have the products
and services that support this show. If only she'd had
those products and services, maybe she would have survived to

(08:41):
become that smart scholar. Indeed, and we're back. She dragged
herself to the schoolhouse and helped Luela teach till the

(09:03):
very last minute. The committee all knew how Luella didn't
do much of the work herself, but they winked at it.
It wasn't long after Lottie died that Erastes married her.
I always thought he hurried it up because she wasn't
fit to teach. One of the big boys used to
help her after Lottie died, but he hadn't much government
and the school didn't do very well, and Luella might

(09:24):
have had to give it up, for the committee couldn't
have shut their eyes to things much longer. That boy
that helped her was a real honest, innocent sort of fellow.
And he was a good scholar too. Folks say he
overstudied and that was the reason he took crazy the
year after Lluella married. But I don't know. I don't
know what made Erastus Miller go into consumption of the

(09:46):
blood the year after he was married. Consumption wasn't in
his family. He just grew weaker and weaker and went
almost bent double when he tried to wait on Luella,
and he spoke feeble like an old man. He worked
terrible hard till the last, trying to save up a
little to leave Luella. I've seen him out in the
worst storms on the wood sled he used to cut

(10:06):
and sell wood, and he was hunched up on top,
lookin more dead than alive. Once I couldn't stand it,
I went over and helped him pitch some wood onto
the cart. I was always strong in my arms. I
wouldn't stop for all he told me to, And I
guess he was glad enough for the help. That was
only a week before he died. He fell on the
kitchen floor while he was getting breakfast. He always got

(10:28):
breakfast and let Luella stay abed. He did all the
sweepin and washin and ironin and most of the cookin'.
He couldn't bear to have Lluella lift her finger, and
she let him do for her. She lived like a
queen for all the work she did. She didn't even
do her sewing. She said it made her shoulder ache
to sew. And poor Erastus's sister Lily used to do

(10:49):
all her sewing. She wasn't able to either. She was
never strong in her back, but she did it beautifully.
She had to to suit Luella. She was so dreadful particular,
I never saw anything like the fagot in and hemstitch
and that Lily Miller did for Luella. She made all
of Luella's wedding outfit and the green silk dress after
Maria Babbitt cut it. Maria, she cut it for nothin',

(11:14):
and she did a lot more cutting and fittin for
nothin for Luella too. Lily Miller used to live with Luella.
After Erastus died, she gave up her home, though she
was real attached to it and one a mite afraid
to stay alone, she rented it and she went to
live with Luella right away after the funeral. Then this

(11:34):
old woman, Lydia Anderson, who remembered Lluella Miller, would go
on to relate the story of Lily Miller. It seemed
that on the removal of Lily Miller to the house
of her dead brother to live with his widow, the
village people first began to talk. This Lily Miller had
been hardly past her first youth and a most robust
and blossoming woman, rosy cheeked, with curls of strong black

(11:55):
hair overshadowing round candid temples, and bright dark eyes. It
was not six months after she had taken up her
residence with her sister in law that her rosy color
faded and her pretty curves became wan hollows. White shadows
began to show in the black rings of her hair,
and the light died out of her eyes. Her features sharpened,
and there were pathetic lines at her mouth, which yet

(12:18):
always wore an expression of utter sweetness. And even happiness.
She was devoted to her sister. There was no doubt
that she loved her with her whole heart, and she
was perfectly content in her service. It was her sole
anxiety lest she should die and leave her alone. The
way Lily Miller used to talk about Luella was enough
to make you mad and enough to make you cry,

(12:38):
said Lydia Anderson. I've been there sometimes towards the last,
when she was too feeble to cook, and carried her
some blancmange or custard, something I thought she might relish,
and she'd thank me. And when I asked her how
she was, she said she felt better than she did yesterday,
and asked me if I didn't think she looked better. Dreadful, pitiful,
and say, poor Luella had an awful time taking care

(13:00):
of her and doing the work. She wasn't strong enough
to do anything when all the time Luella wu wasn't
lifting a finger, and poor Lily didn't get any care
except what the neighbors gave her. And Luella eat up
everything that was carried in for Lily. I had it
real straight that she did. Luella used to just sit
and cry and do nothing. She did act real fond

(13:22):
of Lily, and she pined away considerable too. There was
those that thought she'd go into decline herself. But after
Lily died, her aunt Abby mixture came, and then Luella
picked up and grew as fat and rosy as ever.
But poor Aunt Abby begun to droop the way Lily had.
And I guess somebody wrote her married daughter, miss sam Abbott,

(13:42):
who lived in bar for She wrote her mother that
she must leave right away and come to make her
a visit. But Aunt Abby wouldn't go. I can see
her now. She was a real good looking woman, tall
and large, with a big square face and a high
forehead that looked of itself, kind of benevolent and good.
She just tended out on Luella as if she had
been a baby, And when her married daughter sent for her,

(14:04):
she wouldn't stir one inch. She'd always thought a lot
of her daughter too, but she said Lluella needed her,
and her married daughter didn't. Her daughter kept writing and writing,
but it didn't do any good. Finally she came, and
when she saw how bad her mother looked, she broke
down and cried, and all but went on her knees
to have her come away. She spoke her mind out
to Luella too. She told her that she'd killed her

(14:25):
husband and everybody that had anything to do with her,
and she'd thank her to leave her mother alone. Luella
went into hysterics, and Aunt Abby was so frightened that
she called me after her daughter went, missus sam Abbott.
She went away fairly, crying out loud in the buggy,
and the neighbors heard her, and well she might, for
she never saw her mother again alive. I went in

(14:47):
that night when on Abbey called for me, standing in
the door with her little green checked shawl over her head.
I can see her. Now, do come over here, miss Anderson,
she sung out, kind of gasping for breath. I didn't
stop for anything. I I put over as fast as
I could. And when I got there, there was Luella
laughin and cryin altogether, and Aunt Abby tryin to hush her.

(15:09):
And all the time she herself was as white as
a sheet, shaken, so she could hardly stand. For the
land's sakes, Missus Mixter says, I you look worse than
she does. You ain't fit to be up out o
your bed. Oh, there ain't nothin the matter with me,
says she. Then she went on talkin to Luella. There
there don't don't, poor little lamb, says she. On Abby

(15:30):
is here, she ain't goin away and leave you, don't
poor little lamb, do leave her with me, Missus Mixter,
and you get back to bed, says I. For Aunt
Abby had been lyin down considerable lately, though somehow she
contrived to do the work. I'm well enough, says she.
Don't you think she had better have the doctor, Missus Anderson,

(15:51):
the doctor, says I. I think you had better have
the doctor. I think you need him much worse than
some folks I could mention. And it looks right straight
at Lluella Miller, laughing and crying and going on as
if she was the center of all creation. All the
time she was acting so seemed as if she was
too sick to sense anything. She was keeping a sharp
lookout as to how we took it out of the

(16:13):
corner of her eye. I see her. You could never
cheat me about Luella Miller. Finally I got real mad,
and I run home, and I got a bottle of
valarian I had, and I poured some boiling hot water
on a handful of catnip, and I mixed up that
catnip tea with most of half a wine glass of Valarian,
and I went over with it to Luella's. I marched
right up to a Luella holding out that cup, all smokin' now,

(16:36):
says I, Luella Miller, you swallow this? What is it? Oh?
What is it? She sort of screeches out. Then she
goes off a laughing enough to kill poor lamb, Poor
little lamb, says aunt Abby, standing over her all kind
of tottery and trying to bathe her head with camphor.
You swallow this right down, says I. And I didn't

(16:57):
waste any ceremony. I just took a hold of Luella
Miller chin and I tipped her head back, and I
caught her mouth open with laughing, and I clapped that
cup to her lips, and I fairly hollered at her. Swallow, swaller, swallower,
and she gulped it right down, she had to, and
I guess it did her good anyway. She stopped crying
and laughing and let me put her to bed, and

(17:18):
she went to sleep like a baby. Inside half an hour.
That was more than poor on Abby did. She lay
awake all that night, and I stayed with her, though
she tried not to have me, said she wants sick
enough for watchers. But I stayed, and I made some
good corn meal gruel, and I fed her a teaspoon
every little while all night long. It seemed to me

(17:38):
as if she was just dying from being all war out.
In the morning, as soon as it was light, I
run over to the Bisbees and send Johnny Bisbee for
the doctor. I told him to tell the doctor to hurry,
and he come pretty quick. Poor on Abby didn't seem
to know much of anything. When he got there. You
couldn't hardly tell she breathed, she was so used up.

(17:59):
When the doctor had gone, Luella came into the room
looking like a baby in her ruffled nightgown. I can
see her now. Her eyes were as blue, and her
face all pink and white, like a blossom. And she
looked at Aunt Abby in the bed, sort of innocent
and surprised. Why, says she. Aunt Abby ain't got up yet. No,
she ain't, says I. Pretty short, I thought I didn't

(18:22):
smell the coffee says Luella. Coffee says I, I guess
if you have coffee this morning, you'll make it yourself.
I never made the coffee in all my life, says she, dreadful, astonished.
Erastus always made the coffee as long as he lived,
and then Lily made it, and then Aunt Abby made it.
I don't believe I can make the coffee, Miss Anderson.

(18:43):
You can make it or go without, just as you please,
says I. Ain't aunt Abby gonna get up, says she.
I guess she won't get up, says I, sick as
she is. I was getting madder and madder. There was
something about that little pink and white thing standing there
and talking about coffee when she had killed so many
better folks than she was and had just killed another

(19:05):
that made me feel most as I wish somebody would
up and kill her before she had a chance to
do any more harm. Is aunt Abby sick, says Luella,
as if she was sort of aggrieved and injured. Yes,
says I, she's sick and she's going to die, and
then you'll be left alone and you'll have to do
for yourself and wait on yourself or do without things.

(19:26):
I don't know, but I was sort of hard, but
it was the truth. And if I was any harder
than Lluella Miller had been, I'll give up. I ain't
never been sorry that I said it. Well, Lluella she
up and had hysterics again at that, and I just
let her have them. All I did was to bundle
her into the room on the other side of the entry,
where Aunt Abby couldn't hear her if you want past it,

(19:47):
and I don't know what she was, and set her
down hard in a chair and told her not to
come back into the other room, and she minded. She
had her hysterics in there until she got tired. When
she found out that nobody was coming to call her
and do for her, she stopped, at least I suppose
she did. I had all I could do with poor
aunt Abby trying to keep the breath of life in her.

(20:09):
The doctor had told me she was dreadful low, and
give me some very strong medicine to give her in
drops real often, and told me real particular about the nourishment. Well,
I did as he told me, real faithful, till she
wasn't able to swallow any longer. Then I had her
daughter sent for I had begun to realize that she
wouldn't last any time at all. I hadn't realized it before, though,

(20:32):
I spoke to Luella the way I did the doctor.
He came, and Missus sam Abbott when she got there,
it was too late. Her mother was dead. Aunt Abby's daughter.
Just give one look at her mother laying there. She
turned sort of sharp and sudden and looked at me.
Where is she? And I knew she met Lluella. She's

(20:53):
out in the kitchen, says I. She's too nervous to
see folks die. She's afraid it'll make her sick. The
doctor speaks up. Then he was a young man. Old
Doctor Park had died the year before, and this was
a young fellow just out of college. Missus Miller is
not strong, says she kind of severe, and she's quite
right in not agitating herself. You are another young man.

(21:14):
She's got her pretty claw on you, thinks I. But
I didn't say anything to him. I just set over
to Missus sam Abbot that Luella was in the kitchen,
and Missus sam Abbot she went out there and I
went too, and I never heard anything like the way
she talked to Lluella Miller. I felt pretty hard to
Lluella myself, but this was more than I ever would
have dared to say. Lluella, she was too scared to

(21:36):
go into hysterics. She just flopped. She seemed to just
shrink away to nothing in that kitchen chair, with Missus
sam Abbot standing over her and talking and telling her
the truth. I guess the truth was most too much
for her, and no mistake, because Lluella presently actually did
faint away, and there won't any sham about it, the
way I always suspected there was about them hysterics. She

(21:59):
fainted dead away and we had to lay her flat
on the floor, and the doctor he came running out
and said something about a weak heart, dreadful fears to
Missus sam Abbott. But she wasn't a mite scared. She
faced him just as white as even. Lluella was laying
there looking like death, and the doctor feeling her pulse weak,
hert says she weak, hert weak, Fiddlesticks, There ain't nothing

(22:19):
weak about that woman. She's got strength enough to hang
on to other folks till she kills them weak. It
was my poor mother that was weak. This woman killed
her as sure as if she had taken a knife
to her. But the doctor, he didn't pay much attention.
He was bending over Luella, laying there with her yellow
hair all streaming in, her pretty pink and white face
all pale, and her blue eyes like stars gone out,

(22:42):
and he was holding onto her hand and smoothing her
forehead and telling me to go get Brandy in on
Abby's room. And I was as sure as I wanted
to be that Lluella had gotten somebody else to hang
on to. Now Aunt Abby was gone, and I thought
of poor Erastus Miller, and I sort of pitied. The
young doctor led away by a pretty face, and I
made up my mind I'd see what I could do.

(23:04):
And so she used the products and services in this
show to defeat the greater enemy that is the metaphor
for the rich upper class and how they don't do
anything and expect the working class to do it, and
then act like they are the rich ones and get
real upset when you call them on a shit. That's
the products and services, that's what they can do for you,

(23:38):
and we're back. I waited till Aunt Abby had been
dead and buried about a month and the doctor was
going to see Luella Steady and folks were beginning to talk.
Then one evening, when I knew the doctor had been
called out of town and wouldn't be round, I went
over to Luella's. I found her all dressed up in
a blue muslin with white polka dots on it, and
her hair curled just as pretty when a young girl

(24:00):
in the place could compare with her. There was something
about Luella Miller seemed to draw the heart right out
of you, but she didn't draw it out of me.
She was setting rocking in the chair by her sitting
room window, and Maria Brown had gone home. Maria Brown
had been in to help her, or rather to do
the work for Luella want helped when she didn't do anything.

(24:21):
Maria Brown was real capable, and she didn't have any ties.
She went married and lived alone, and so she'd offered.
I couldn't see why she should do the work any
more than Luella. She wonn't any too strong, but she
seemed to think she could, and Luella seemed to think
so too, So she went over and did all the work,
washed and ironed and baked while Luella sat and rocked.

(24:41):
Maria didn't live long afterward. She began to fade away,
just the same fashion the others had. Well, she was warned,
but she acted real mad when folks said anything. Said
Luella was a poor, abused woman, too delicate to help herself,
and they'd ought to be ashamed. And if she died
helping them that couldn't help themselves, she would, and she did.

(25:02):
I suppose Maria has gone home, says I to Luella,
when I had gone in and sat down opposite her. Yes,
Maria went about a half hour ago, after she had
got supper and washed the dishes, said Luella in her
pretty way. I suppose she has got a lot to
work to do in her own house tonight, says I.
Kind of bitter, but that was all thrown away on

(25:24):
Lluella Miller. It seemed to her right that other folks
that won any better than she was herself should wait
on her. And she couldn't get it through her head
that anybody should think it wonn't right, Yes, said Luella,
real sweet and pretty. Yes, she said she had to
do her washing tonight. She has let it go for
a fortnight along of coming over here, why don't she

(25:45):
stay home and do her washing instead of coming over
here and doing your work when you're just as well
able and enough sight more so than she is to
do it, says I. Then Luella looked at me like
a baby who has had a rattle shook at it.
She sort of laughed as innocent as you please. Oh,
I can't do the work myself, miss Anderson, says she.

(26:05):
I never did. Maria has to do it. Then I
spoke out, has to do it, says I has to
do it. She don't have to do it either. Maria
Brown has her own home and enough to live on.
She ain't beholden to you to come over here and
slave for you and kill herself. Lluella she just sat
and stared at me for all the world, like a

(26:26):
doll baby that was so abused that it was coming
to life. Yes, says I, she killin herself. She's gonna
die just the way Erastus did and Lily and your
aunt Abby. You're killing her just as you did them.
I don't know what there is about you, but you
seem to bring a curse, says I. You kill everybody
that is fool enough to care anything about you and

(26:47):
do for you. She stared at me, and she was
pretty pale. And Maria, ain't the only one you're gonna kill,
says I. You're gonna kill doctor Malcolm before you're done
with him. Then a red color came flaming all over
her face. I ain't going to kill him either, says she,
and she begun to cry. Yes, you be says I.
Then I spoke as I never spoke before. You see,

(27:10):
I felt it on account of erastus. I told her
that she hadn't any business to think of another man
after she'd been married to one that had died for her,
that she was a dreadful woman. And she was. That's
true enough, But sometimes I have wondered lately if she
knew it, if she wan't like a baby with scissors
in its hand, catting everybody without knowing what it was doing. Luela,

(27:32):
she kept getting paler and paler, and she never took
her eyes off my face. There was something awful about
the way she looked at me and never spoke one word.
After a while, I quit talking and went home. I
watched that night, but her lamp went out before nine
o'clock and when doctor Malcolm came driving passed and sort
of slowed up. He see there won any light, and
he drove along. I saw her sort of shy out

(27:53):
of meat in the next Sunday too, so he shouldn't
go home with her, and had begun to think maybe
she did have some conscience after all. It was only
a week after that Maria Brown died sort of sudden
at the last, though everybody had seen it was coming well.
Then there was a good deal of feeling in pretty
dark whispers. Folks said that the days of witchcraft had
come again, and they were pretty shy of Lluella. She

(28:16):
acted sort of offish to the doctor and he didn't
go there, and there won't anybody to do anything for her.
I don't know how she did get along. I wouldn't
go in there and offer to help her, not because
I was afraid of dying like the rest. But I
thought she was just as well able to do her
own work as I was to do it for her.
And I thought it was about time she did it
and stop killin other folks. But it went very long

(28:38):
before folks began to say that Luella herself was going
into decline. Just the way her husband and Lily and
Aunt Abby and others had, and I saw myself that
she looked pretty bad. I used to see her go
and pass from the store with a bundle, as as
if she could hardly crawl. But I remember how Erastus
used to wait and tend when he couldn't hardly put
one foot before the other. And I didn't go out

(29:00):
to help her. But at last one afternoon I saw
the doctor come driving up like mad with his medicine chest,
and Missus Babbitt came in after supper and said that
Luela was real sick. I'd offer to go in and
nurse her, says she, But I've got my children to consider,
and maybe it ain't true what they say, but it's
queer how many folks that have done for her have died.

(29:22):
I didn't say anything, but I considered how she had
been Erastus's wife, and how he had set his eyes
by her, and I made up my mind to go
in the next morning unless she was better, and see
what I could do. But the next morning I see
her at the window, and pretty soon she came stepping
out as spry as you please. And a little while
afterward Missus Babbitt came in and told me that the
doctor had got a girl from out of town as

(29:44):
Sarah Jones to come there, and she said she was
pretty sure that the doctor I'm going to marry Luella.
I saw him kiss her in the door that night myself,
and I knew it was true. The woman came out
that afternoon, and the way she flew around was a caution.
I don't believe Lluella had swept since Maria had died.
She swept and dusted and washed and ironed. Wet clothes

(30:06):
and dusters and carpets were flying over there all day,
and every time Lluella set her foot out when the
doctor wasn't there, there was Sarah Jones helping her up
and out and down the stairs, as if she hadn't
learned to walk. Well. Everybody knew that Lluella and the
doctor were going to get married, but it wasn't long
before they began to talk about his looking so poorly,
just as they had about the others, and then they

(30:27):
talked about Sarah Jones too. Well. The doctor did die,
and he wanted to be married first so as to
leave what little he had to Luella. But he died
before the minister could get there, and Sarah Jones died
a week afterward. Well, that wound everything up for Lluella Miller.
Not another soul in the whole town would lift a
finger for her. There got to be a sort of panic.

(30:48):
Then she began to droop in good earnest. She used
to have to go to the store herself for Missus
Babbitt was afraid to let Tommy go for her. And
I've seen her going past and stop in every two
or three steps to rend. Well. I stood it as
long as I could. But one day I see her
coming with her arms full and stopping to lean against
the Babbitt fence, and I run out and took her

(31:09):
bundles and carried them to her house. Then I went
home and never spoke one word to her, though she
called after me, dreadful, kind of pitiful. Well, that night
I was taken sick with a chill, and I was
sick as I wanted to be for two weeks. Missus
Babbitt had seen me run out to help Luella, and
she came in and told me I was going to
die on account of it. I didn't know whether I

(31:30):
was or not but I considered I had done right
by Erastus's wife. That last two weeks, Lluella she had
a dreadful hard time. I guess she was pretty sick,
and as near as I could make out, nobody dared
to go near her. I don't know, as she was
really neat in anything very much, for there was enough
to eat in her house, and it was warm weather,
and she made out to cook a little flour gruel

(31:51):
every day. I know, but I guess she had a
hard time. But I guess she had had a hard time.
She that had been petted and done for all her life.
When I got so I could get out, I went
over there one morning. Missus Babbitt had just come in
to say she hadn't seen any smoke, and she didn't know,
but it was somebody's duty to go in. But she
couldn't help thinking of her children. And I got right up,

(32:12):
though I hadn't been out of the house for two weeks,
and I went in there and Luella was laying on
the bed and she was dying. She lasted all that
day and into the night, but I sat there after
the new doctor had gone away. Nobody else dared to
go there. It was about midnight that I left her
for a minute and run home and get some medicine
I had been taken for I'd begun to feel rather bad.

(32:35):
It was a full moon that night, and just as
I started out my door to cross the street back
to Luella's, I stopped short, for I saw something. Lydia
Anderson at this juncture always said with a certain defiance,
as she did not expect to be believed, and then
proceeded in a hushed voice. I saw what I saw,
and I know I saw it, and I will swear

(32:56):
on my deathbed that I saw it. I saw Lluella
Miller and Erastus Miller, and Lily and Aunt Abby and
Maria and the doctor and Sarah, all going out of
her door, and all but Luella shone white in the moonlight,
and they were all helping her along till she seemed
to fairly fly in the midst of them. Then it

(33:17):
all disappeared. I stood a minute with my heart pounding.
Then I went over there. I thought of going for
Missus Babbitt, but I thought she'd be afraid, so I
went alone. Though I knew what had happened. Luella was
laying real, peaceful dead on her bed. This was the
story that the old woman Lydia Andersen told, but the

(33:39):
sequel was told by the people who survived her, and
this is the tale which has become folklore in this village.
Lydia Andersen died when she was eighty seven. She had
continued wonderfully hale and hardy for one or your years
until about two weeks before her death. One bright moonlit evening,
she was sitting beside a window in her parlor when

(33:59):
she made a sudden exclamation and was out of the
house and across the street before the neighbor who was
taking care of her could stop her. She followed as
fast as possible, and found Lydia Anderson stretched on the
ground before the door of Luella Miller's deserted house, and
she was quite dead. The next night there was a
red gleam of fire athwart the moonlight, and the old

(34:21):
house of Lluella Miller was burned to the ground. Nothing
is now left of it except a few old cellar
stones in a lilac bush, and in summer, a helpless
trail of morning glories among the weeds, which might be
considered emblematic of Luella herself. The end, that's the story,

(34:42):
and I find it so fascinating because I'm like, I
wonder how far back the idea of the sort of
psychic vampire goes, and I like, how like its first incarnation.
I mean, obviously this is very gendered, right, but it's
about the helplessness of people who aren't working and are
expecting others to do the work for them. And obviously right,

(35:02):
because it gets real complicated when you put it in
the conception of like disability and understanding disability. I think,
based on what I understand of Mary Wilkin Freeman's other work,
this is more of a class thing. Specifically, Mary was
very actively a proto feminist and also wrote specifically about
the underclasses a lot. And that doesn't mean that everything
she did was like good and perfect, or that the

(35:23):
story is good and perfect, but I just like, I
find it so fascinating also because it's still kind of
a vampire story, right. You're stripping away the like can't
go in the sun, afraid of crosses, hungry for blood,
but it's still this like slow draining of everyone around
you that comes that's like mapped to the upper classes.

(35:45):
And then also that last bit, the last little like
actual ghost story part, kind of puts it firmly in
the this is a little supernatural tale and it's still
got all the like gothic stuff of the spooky manner
and the like now all that's left or the flowers
that road there. So I hope you enjoyed it as
much as I did. And next week I'll read you

(36:05):
more spooky stories unless I read you something different, but
it'll probably be spooky because every day with a space
is Halloween. It could Happen here as a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us
out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

(36:26):
listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could
Happen Here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Thanks for listening.