Twice-Told Tales

Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment: Two septuagenarian friends, Dr Carl Heidegger and Alex Medbourne, come together to commiserate the anniversary of Heidegger’s fiancée Sylvia’s death, after she collapsed on the eve of their wedding. Heidegger has spent the ensuing 38 years unmarried. But then a storm blows the entrance to Sylvia’s crypt open and they are startled to find her body preserved, looking just the same she was when she died. Heidegger realizes that the water dripping onto the coffin contains a heretofore unknown mix of elements that has stopped her aging. He distils the water and they take turns drinking it and instantly regain their youth. But then Heidegger has the idea that the water can be used to bring Sylvia back from the dead. Rappaccini’s Daughter: While visiting Padua, young student Giovanni Guasconti becomes captivated with a beautiful woman he sees out his window across the courtyard. He finds that she is Beatrice, the daughter of the eminent scientist Giacomo Rappaccini. However she shuns all meeting with him and will allow none into the courtyard. He fights his way to see her – only to find that her father, desiring to protect her from sin, has injected her with plant toxins that make her deadly to all who touch her. The House of the Seven Gables: Gerald Pyncheon returns to his family home, along with his new bride Alice. Ignoring warnings of the family curse, he determines to find the treasure that is reputedly buried in a vault somewhere in the house. Alice is haunted by visions of the past and comes to learn of how 150 years before Pyncheon’s ancestor convicted an innocent man of witchcraft so that he could commandeer his property to build the house and how all Pyncheon men have been cursed to die since.