La Frecuencia Kirlian (2017) s01e05 Episode Script
Un Viejo y su Perro
1
I became friends with the old man
because he was a prisoner in is own home,
because he was tied to
his immense wheelchair,
and because everyone
deserves a glass of water.
I became his friend after
getting that new job,
the one that made me walk through my
childhood neighborhood to save time,
when I hadn’t yet listened to the
radio or knew the truth about Kirlian,
sometime before he asked
me to kill the neighbor’s dog.
For your consideration,
an anonymous report enclosed
in the “annoying neighbors” folder
from the local police archive.
There’s a house like this one in every
neighborhood and every town,
there’s about a dozen
of them in Kirlian.
Houses that kids avoid
out of fear,
and adults do so
out of wisdom.
Houses inhabited by witches,
monsters and ogres.
You're listening
to "The Kirlian Frequency".
"An Old Man and his Dog"
"Help me!" were the first words
I heard the old man say.
I knew him from my childhood,
when I had friends in the neighborhood.
We were afraid of him,
always sitting up against a small
window that faced the street.
We thought he was an ogre and
that he lived in a ‘bad house’.
The inside of the house was
not at all what I had imagined.
Instead of piles of kid’s
bones in the corners,
which gave me nightmares as a child,
there was nice furniture and
a wall full of portraits.
He asked me to serve
him a glass of water,
and he explained that the kitchen door
was too narrow for his wheelchair,
so he couldn’t get it himself.
He told me his daughters
in law never left enough
water out for him
because they despised him.
His sons, his daughters
in law, his grandchildren.
They all lived in that big house,
although they spent all day out,
working or studying.
That ogre that children feared
spent all day inside,
locked up, alone and most
of the time, without water.
From that day on
I visited him regularly.
I would leave my house early on
my way to work to dedicate
a few minutes to him
every morning,
and slowly we became friends.
A few weeks had gone by since
I started visiting him,
when he asked me to kill
the neighbor’s dog,
because he said it barked all day
long and it was driving him crazy.
That was the first time
I noticed the dog
that peeked through the bars
of the garden next door.
I also noticed that even though the old man
was obsessed with it, he had never seen it.
I knew it by the way he described it,
and the way the dog really was.
A few months back, new neighbors
had moved in next door,
then, out of nowhere, the
barking had begun.
Every afternoon, everyday,
as soon as the old man was left alone.
‘You’re imagining things’,
his sons said.
But the worst part,
what infuriated him the most,
crippled in his wheelchair
by the window,
was that the dog
barked at him.
I tried to generate some
empathy in him,
so I said "Maybe they leave
it alone just like you".
But there was no way.
The old man hated that the dog
barked only when they were alone,
as if it wanted to tell him
an impossible secret
or mock him and
his solitude.
Eventually the old man told me he had tried
to find an accomplice before he knew me.
He promised him $50
if he beat up the dog
until it stopped barking,
or until it died.
The kid went up to the front
of the dog’s garden,
and the old man could no
longer see what happened.
The stick fell to the ground,
the kid ran away and the old
man never saw him again.
With tears in his eyes,
the old man begged me
to finish the job the kid
had left undone.
Tired of the whole matter,
I thought I could scare the dog
without actually killing it,
and that would calm the
old man for a while.
The dog recoiled to the
house’s door,
but it didn’t growl or
try to attack me.
It looked straight into my eyes
and I could almost feel some
of the human intelligence the
old man thought it had.
And then
I knew it all.
I can’t explain what
I saw or felt,
but I knew there was something
wrong in the old man’s house.
I knew there was something
bad in Kirlian,
or rather, many bad things,
waiting for their turn, hiding.
And somehow,
the dog knew it too.
The old man got furious at
me, cursed at me
and finally he began to cry,
begging me not to abandon him.
I left and I didn’t see
him for a while.
I went back there a week ago,
and I found him extremely unwell,
thin and with circles under his eyes,
he seemed 10 years older.
He was more scared
than angry,
and above all things,
he was bereaved.
He said that the dog had barked even
more insistently in the last few days,
and that he hated it
more than ever.
That the barking had become
higher and more annoying,
aphonic and constant.
It didn’t bark when the old man
was alone anymore,
but now it was all day long.
And he said that two days before,
the last afternoon he heard the dog,
it’s broken barks had
made way to language.
The dog screamed, with a teenager’s
voice because it was still a pup.
He screamed with
it’s throat torn,
like someone who has screamed
for hours, days and weeks.
The old man looked
seriously at me.
He grabbed my hands to
stop me from leaving,
and said the dog had stopped
barking and started talking,
and it said
"Your daughters in law
want to kill you, old man!
I heard them outside,
in the backyard!
Get out of that house
while you can!"
Immediately after the dog spoke,
it’s owners got out to the garden,
grabbed it by the leash
and took him inside.
The dog screamed
"He has to know".
The dog only tried to
help him all along,
but the old man didn’t
want to listen.
He asked me to help him
escape from his house,
and I didn’t know what to do.
I excused myself in the clumsiest
and most cowardly way,
saying I was late for work.
I left, I ran away and
didn’t go back.
For the next couple of days I tried
pretending nothing had happened,
that I had imagined
the whole thing,
that Kirlian was no different
from other places.
I was never a listener,
but I found out that everything
was there if you payed attention.
It was as if there was
two Kirlians out there,
the one that listened and
the one that ignored.
The one that thought there was
something wrong in the town,
and the one that knew it.
This morning I found
the news in the paper:
it said an old man had fell down
the stairs that separated the kitchen
from the backyard of the house
where he lived with his family,
and he had been crushed
by his own wheelchair.
He had a blunt blow
in his head.
Apparently, the oxygen tank that had
helped him breathe for the last months
had come off from the wheelchair
and struck him fatally in the head.
But the old man didn’t
use an oxygen tank,
and he could not get to the
kitchen in his wheelchair.
I went by the house this afternoon,
and I saw the family for the first time.
It was midday and
the house was full.
They all seemed happy, and
comfortable, and peaceful.
Oh my God.
The neighbors said they
had the dog put to sleep.
It had become rabid and
would not stop barking
Screaming.
I have no proof of
what I have just told,
no one will ever confess to it
and the two key witnesses are dead.
The family’s name is not important,
even though what they did was terrible,
I feel they are protected somehow.
There are two Kirlians out there,
and there’s nothing
to be done to one of them,
maybe just stay alert.
There is something
protecting it,
but I also think that there is
something trying to warn us,
and that warning can come
from the least expected places:
a radio,
a talking dog, or
Never walk close to the
walls on the sidewalk;
dogs, crazy people, and ogres are
on the lookout for the unsuspecting.
This is a special announcement
of the local Animal Shelter
and your favorite radio show:
The Kirlian Frequency.
F.B. Cavalcante
I became friends with the old man
because he was a prisoner in is own home,
because he was tied to
his immense wheelchair,
and because everyone
deserves a glass of water.
I became his friend after
getting that new job,
the one that made me walk through my
childhood neighborhood to save time,
when I hadn’t yet listened to the
radio or knew the truth about Kirlian,
sometime before he asked
me to kill the neighbor’s dog.
For your consideration,
an anonymous report enclosed
in the “annoying neighbors” folder
from the local police archive.
There’s a house like this one in every
neighborhood and every town,
there’s about a dozen
of them in Kirlian.
Houses that kids avoid
out of fear,
and adults do so
out of wisdom.
Houses inhabited by witches,
monsters and ogres.
You're listening
to "The Kirlian Frequency".
"An Old Man and his Dog"
"Help me!" were the first words
I heard the old man say.
I knew him from my childhood,
when I had friends in the neighborhood.
We were afraid of him,
always sitting up against a small
window that faced the street.
We thought he was an ogre and
that he lived in a ‘bad house’.
The inside of the house was
not at all what I had imagined.
Instead of piles of kid’s
bones in the corners,
which gave me nightmares as a child,
there was nice furniture and
a wall full of portraits.
He asked me to serve
him a glass of water,
and he explained that the kitchen door
was too narrow for his wheelchair,
so he couldn’t get it himself.
He told me his daughters
in law never left enough
water out for him
because they despised him.
His sons, his daughters
in law, his grandchildren.
They all lived in that big house,
although they spent all day out,
working or studying.
That ogre that children feared
spent all day inside,
locked up, alone and most
of the time, without water.
From that day on
I visited him regularly.
I would leave my house early on
my way to work to dedicate
a few minutes to him
every morning,
and slowly we became friends.
A few weeks had gone by since
I started visiting him,
when he asked me to kill
the neighbor’s dog,
because he said it barked all day
long and it was driving him crazy.
That was the first time
I noticed the dog
that peeked through the bars
of the garden next door.
I also noticed that even though the old man
was obsessed with it, he had never seen it.
I knew it by the way he described it,
and the way the dog really was.
A few months back, new neighbors
had moved in next door,
then, out of nowhere, the
barking had begun.
Every afternoon, everyday,
as soon as the old man was left alone.
‘You’re imagining things’,
his sons said.
But the worst part,
what infuriated him the most,
crippled in his wheelchair
by the window,
was that the dog
barked at him.
I tried to generate some
empathy in him,
so I said "Maybe they leave
it alone just like you".
But there was no way.
The old man hated that the dog
barked only when they were alone,
as if it wanted to tell him
an impossible secret
or mock him and
his solitude.
Eventually the old man told me he had tried
to find an accomplice before he knew me.
He promised him $50
if he beat up the dog
until it stopped barking,
or until it died.
The kid went up to the front
of the dog’s garden,
and the old man could no
longer see what happened.
The stick fell to the ground,
the kid ran away and the old
man never saw him again.
With tears in his eyes,
the old man begged me
to finish the job the kid
had left undone.
Tired of the whole matter,
I thought I could scare the dog
without actually killing it,
and that would calm the
old man for a while.
The dog recoiled to the
house’s door,
but it didn’t growl or
try to attack me.
It looked straight into my eyes
and I could almost feel some
of the human intelligence the
old man thought it had.
And then
I knew it all.
I can’t explain what
I saw or felt,
but I knew there was something
wrong in the old man’s house.
I knew there was something
bad in Kirlian,
or rather, many bad things,
waiting for their turn, hiding.
And somehow,
the dog knew it too.
The old man got furious at
me, cursed at me
and finally he began to cry,
begging me not to abandon him.
I left and I didn’t see
him for a while.
I went back there a week ago,
and I found him extremely unwell,
thin and with circles under his eyes,
he seemed 10 years older.
He was more scared
than angry,
and above all things,
he was bereaved.
He said that the dog had barked even
more insistently in the last few days,
and that he hated it
more than ever.
That the barking had become
higher and more annoying,
aphonic and constant.
It didn’t bark when the old man
was alone anymore,
but now it was all day long.
And he said that two days before,
the last afternoon he heard the dog,
it’s broken barks had
made way to language.
The dog screamed, with a teenager’s
voice because it was still a pup.
He screamed with
it’s throat torn,
like someone who has screamed
for hours, days and weeks.
The old man looked
seriously at me.
He grabbed my hands to
stop me from leaving,
and said the dog had stopped
barking and started talking,
and it said
"Your daughters in law
want to kill you, old man!
I heard them outside,
in the backyard!
Get out of that house
while you can!"
Immediately after the dog spoke,
it’s owners got out to the garden,
grabbed it by the leash
and took him inside.
The dog screamed
"He has to know".
The dog only tried to
help him all along,
but the old man didn’t
want to listen.
He asked me to help him
escape from his house,
and I didn’t know what to do.
I excused myself in the clumsiest
and most cowardly way,
saying I was late for work.
I left, I ran away and
didn’t go back.
For the next couple of days I tried
pretending nothing had happened,
that I had imagined
the whole thing,
that Kirlian was no different
from other places.
I was never a listener,
but I found out that everything
was there if you payed attention.
It was as if there was
two Kirlians out there,
the one that listened and
the one that ignored.
The one that thought there was
something wrong in the town,
and the one that knew it.
This morning I found
the news in the paper:
it said an old man had fell down
the stairs that separated the kitchen
from the backyard of the house
where he lived with his family,
and he had been crushed
by his own wheelchair.
He had a blunt blow
in his head.
Apparently, the oxygen tank that had
helped him breathe for the last months
had come off from the wheelchair
and struck him fatally in the head.
But the old man didn’t
use an oxygen tank,
and he could not get to the
kitchen in his wheelchair.
I went by the house this afternoon,
and I saw the family for the first time.
It was midday and
the house was full.
They all seemed happy, and
comfortable, and peaceful.
Oh my God.
The neighbors said they
had the dog put to sleep.
It had become rabid and
would not stop barking
Screaming.
I have no proof of
what I have just told,
no one will ever confess to it
and the two key witnesses are dead.
The family’s name is not important,
even though what they did was terrible,
I feel they are protected somehow.
There are two Kirlians out there,
and there’s nothing
to be done to one of them,
maybe just stay alert.
There is something
protecting it,
but I also think that there is
something trying to warn us,
and that warning can come
from the least expected places:
a radio,
a talking dog, or
Never walk close to the
walls on the sidewalk;
dogs, crazy people, and ogres are
on the lookout for the unsuspecting.
This is a special announcement
of the local Animal Shelter
and your favorite radio show:
The Kirlian Frequency.
F.B. Cavalcante