Could You Repeat That, Mr. Wolfman?

There are reasons why various monsters, ghouls, invading space aliens, vampires, wolfmen, men built from the spare parts of other men and electrified somehow into life, the walking dead, and the entire range of first-rate horror characters tend to prey upon the young and the beautiful, and I think we come close to hitting on this reason when we note that these young people have virtually none of the ordinary loss of hearing or eyesight that comes with age.

No self-respecting Thing of Unspeakable Horror likes to repeat himself and I can tell you from experience that nearly everybody and nearly everything around here is asked to repeat him or herself around the clock.

The soundscape that we travel through grows less distinct the further into the decades we plow. This is not entirely unpleasant by the way. You may savor and celebrate separately each ingredient that goes into a favorite recipe, or you can simply enjoy the final dish, figuring that the vanilla and brown sugar are in there somewhere. “It’s all good!” you might tell yourself.

So it is with distinct sounds from the environment, the barking dog or the wind in the upper reaches of the trees or the light spatter of rain upon hot concrete, which merge together with a thousand other splashes of sound into an undifferentiated flow.

Again, “It’s all good!” is something you might fruitfully tell yourself.

And it is, all good I mean, except that it somewhat takes you out of the running when it comes to meeting and interacting with interesting madmen, various beasts from underneath the Earth, and hulking horrors on a stroll.

Fine people, for instance the unnamed narrator in Edgar Allen Poe’s The Mask of Amontillado, might corner you at a cocktail party and indicate that he has an interesting story to tell:

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely, settled --but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.  

 As you stand there in what he takes to be rapt fascination, what he does not want to hear from you at this point is, “come again?”

This vexes his unquiet spirit further and he says, rather shortly it seems to you, “What part didn’t you catch?”

This is a moment for you to frankly admit your sheepishness. “Well, really I was tracking up until the words ‘vowed revenge,’ but then the murmur of conversation around us rose in volume and the game was on in the living room and there must have been a flag on the play for it got pretty noisy in there, maybe it’s better to just start from the beginning.”

And maybe he does, maybe he goes through the whole thing with this fellow Fortunato, whom he seems to have strong negative feelings for, and the many hints of where this story is going – nowhere good for Fortunato by your guess – but a fair amount of the magic is gone, and the conversation soon enough sort of peters out.

The two of you might still stand there, scuffing the toes of your shoes into the ground the way people do when they don’t know what to say to one another, but any honest observer would say that it would be best to put this conversation in the discard pile and move on to another guest.

Well, sometimes that’s just the way that things work.

Or take the case of Sheridan Le Fanu, who turns out to have written the first vampire novel, Carmilla. You might see him at the hardware store or in the church parking lot, and he more or less grabs you by the lapels and says,

I saw something moving round the foot of the bed, which at first I could not accurately distinguish. But I soon saw that it was a sooty-black animal that resembled a monstrous cat. It appeared to me about four or five feet long for it measured fully the length of the hearthrug as it passed over it; and it continued to-ing and fro-ing with the lithe, sinister restlessness of a beast in a cage. I could not cry out, although as you may suppose, I was terrified. Its pace was growing faster, and the room rapidly darker and darker, and at length so dark that I could no longer see anything of it but its eyes. I felt it spring lightly on the bed. The two broad eyes approached my face, and suddenly I felt a stinging pain as if two large needles darted, an inch or two apart, deep into my breast. I waked with a scream.

You appreciate that he has chosen you to relate this tale to, and recognize that it is an opportunity for the two of you to become closer. But for the life of you you lost him just after the words ‘foot of the bed.’ He is an intense fellow and obviously wants to connect, so it is with real reluctance that you cup your hand behind your ear and say, “could you repeat that?”

There goes another conversation down the drain.

There are times though when this encroaching subtraction of hearing can be a benefit, and may even save mankind from the cruel lash of enslavement by an invading space army.

Take the case of a man in Later Middle Age or Early Decrepitude, either description will do, who finds himself with a broken down car in a deserted stretch of highway.

It is common in these situations for a spaceship of some variety to land right at this time and for its occupant to emerge from its interior and strike up a conversation with little old you.

Some things are baked in the cake so we can presume that the alien ship has indeed landed and this big old ramp has lowered to the ground, and out of it comes this individual with several pronounced characteristics that indicate that he is not of this earth at all.

Such as?

He has tentacles for one thing, and a long tail like a dragon, and his several eyeballs are on stalks that extend from his forehead, and, oh, just a bunch of things.

There is no need to ask him where he went to high school. It is clear as clear can be that he is not from around here.

Like any traveler he seeks to communicate and make his message known and it is at this point that he says, “Look upon my intergalactic armada, worm earthling, and despair. Prepare to meet thy doom.”

This has been delivered in what you might call an official tone of voice, but now he says in a more offhand manner, “I know what you’re going to say, but don’t think you can negotiate with us, that’s what they tried to do on Alpha Centauri 21, but we’re not really what you call negotiators, we just more or less come in and level the planet and move on to the next one. More than a hobby, less than a full time job, something in between I would say.”

Well, I say that this individual says all this, but this is more like what I’ve pieced together after the fact, as I’m having quite a bit of trouble understanding him.

There’s a fair amount of background noise for one, what with the mother ship chugging away there right behind us, and though he has a booming voice, this new acquaintance of mine, he is also about sixteen feet tall and is talking over my head.

“Say again?” I reply, doing the cupped hand behind my ear thing.

“I said, look upon my intergalactic armada, worm earthling, and despair. Prepare to meet thy doom.”

I am puzzled. “Warm earthling? What’s a warm earthling?”

“Worm earthling, worm. You know, those things that crawl around on the ground.”

“Oh, ah,” I say, anxious to keep up my end of the conversation. “Got it. I thought you were calling us warm earthlings, which is true enough, but not much of an insult. I mistook warm for worm, as in ‘it looks like it’s gonna be a warm one.’ You’d never say ‘it looks like it’s gonna be a worm one.’ Common mistake I suppose. Probably happens every day. Now, give it to me one more time, if you would, I almost got it.”

“The whole thing?”

“The whole thing. I do appreciate it.”

He rolls his eyes a bit, all fourteen of them, sighs and says, “Look upon my intergalactic armada, worm earthling, and despair. Prepare to meet thy doom.” He seems to be running out of steam a bit if you asked me. Well, we all do when a conversation is going on longer than you ever thought it was going to.

“What kind of armada?”

“Intergalactic.”

I cup my hand behind my ear again. “One more time.”

“In-ter-ga-lac-tic.” There’s a bit of frostiness in his tone now.

“Well, it’s nothing to get huffy about. Plenty of people my age have a bit of a hearing loss. Why, you see these advertisements in the magazines every day of some fit-looking older gent out on the dance floor rumba-ing up a storm, wearing his Invisible Miracle Ear and having the time of his life. You see them walking down the beach barefoot hand in hand with their silver-haired partner just yakking away. Don’t tell me that a little hearing loss slows them down!”

There is a pronounced silence. Then he gathers himself again.

“Look:

 Intergalactic.

Armadas.

Worm.

Despair.

Prepare.

Meet.

Doom.”

He’s losing some of the forcefulness of his message I think, though I’m too polite to tell him so, this last exchange seems like nothing so much as a few notes written down on an index card as you might have in hand when you go before a room of engaged Rotarians to make a speech on “Fluoride in the Water? Let’s Think Before We Act.”

“it’s nice to meet you, too,” I say, or maybe I say, “about 12:10, but my wristwatch always runs a few minutes fast, so call it 12:08,” or maybe I say, “it’s Wednesday,” or perhaps “about 30 miles up this road.”

There is another moment of silence between us, which is now become more the norm than the exception.

 I won’t say that he digs his toes into the dirt and scuffs about a bit as if wondering what to do next, for one thing, he didn’t have toes as such, more like clawlike appendages, but you could tell he was thinking.

“Listen. Is everyone here just like you?”

“Pardon?”

There is a grim set to his jaw. “Do you know of any other planets in this solar system where the population is a little easier to communicate with?”

I’m happy to reply promptly. “Well that's nice of you, maybe I will take a cup. Cream and sugar if you've got it."

At this he ponders and then turns away, clacking back up his ramp like a man, or an alien being, I suppose, who is now sadder but wiser, a little defeated if you want to know the truth. He might pause once or twice and look back at me as if thinking about giving it one more shot, but all he sees then is me looking hopefully his way with my hand behind my ear.

He’s not the type to just leave it at that though, you and I have both known these people who always have to get in the last word, and he turns to make once final proclamation.

“We shall return, earthlings! Your destruction shall be complete! You are helpless in the face of our immense power!”

Right before he closes the hatch and the photonic interstellar motors start up for real this time, I look him directly in the eyes.

And though it might seem cruel to some, I just go ahead and let him have it; after all, he was planning to invade and destroy us and what-not, and I say… “Eh? Didn’t quite catch that last part.”