From Page to Poe: The Adaptation of 'Three Skeleton Key' to Radio

At this point, the two stories diverge. Three Skeleton Key is located only 20 miles from the mainland (a fact which the radio play does not make clear). There was only one thing left to do. After debating all the ninth day, we decided not to light the lantern that night. This is the greatest breech of our service, never committed as long as the tenders of the light are alive, for the light is something sacred, warning ships of danger in the night. Either the light gleams, a quarter hour after sundown, or no one is left to light it. Well, that night, Three Skeleton Key was dark, and all the men were alive. At the risk of causing ships to crash on our reefs, we left it unlit, for we were worn out - going mad! That very same night, the rats manage to get into the tower. At two in the morning while Itchoua was dozing in his room, the sheet of metal sealing his window gave way. The chief had just enough time to leap to his feet and cry for help, the rats swarming over him. But Le Gleo and I, who had been watching from the lantern-room, got to him immediately, and the three of us battled with the horde of maddened rats which flowed through the gaping window. They bit, we struck them down with our knives - and retreated. We locked the door of the room on them, but before we had time to bind our wounds, the door was eaten through and gave way, and we retreated up the stairs, fighting off the rats that leapt at us from the knee-deep swarm. I do not remember, to this day, how we ever managed to escape. All I can remember is wading through them up the stairs, striking them off as they swarmed over us, and then we found ourselves, bleeding from innumerable bits our clothes shredded, sprawled across the trap-door of the lantern-room - without food or drink. Luckily, the trapdoor was metal set into the granite with iron bolts.	The rats manage to get in the tower. JEAN (narrates): It went on all day. And then... I was lying in bed. It was about midnight. I was very tired and I was just beginning to fall off to sleep when I became conscious of a new sound. An odd CRUNCHING noise. JEAN (narrates): Couldn't figure it at first. I got up, lit the lamp and went to the window. Even as I looked at it, I saw one of the panes begin to sag in. They had eaten the wood away! QUICK FOOTSTEPS JEAN (yelling): Louis! Louis! Come quick! LOUIS: Wha-? What is it? JEAN: They've found a way in. (narrates) I held the glass with my hand. Now, they were all going crazy and, assured of the success of this maneuver, were all nibbling away at the wood. Louis ran below and then returned with a large sheet of tin. HAMMERING nails. JEAN (narrates): We spread it against the window and hammered it into place. Even as we did so, we felt the heavy bodies thudding against the other side as the window gave way. The HAMMERING stops. LOUIS: That ought to hold. If it doesn't, we're done for. JEAN: Rats can't eat tin. LOUIS: No. They can't. A distant CRASH of glass. JEAN: What was that? LOUIS: I don't know. It came from below. JEAN: The storeroom window! FOOTSTEPS start and abruptly stop. Rats SHRIEKING loudly. LOUIS: They're in! They're swarming up the stairs! JEAN: Drop the trap. LOUIS: Right. The heavy wooden trapdoor DROPS. Two noisy rats SHRIEK loudly. JEAN: Two of them got in! LOUIS: Let's go after them! JEAN (narrates): We didn't have to go after them. They came at us! I leaped to one side and grabbed a marlin spike, swung, and smashed one in mid-air. A rat is SMASHED. Louis YELLS in pain. JEAN (narrates): I whirled to see Louis with the other. It had ripped his hand open and the blood was pouring all over the place. He held his hand aloft and kicked at the snarling rat. I stepped and swung and got him.
	Another rat KILLED. LOUIS: My hand! He got my hand! JEAN: That's both of them, Louis. I-I'll get you something to tie that up. LOUIS: Blood! Look at it! My- my-! Blood! I'm bleeding! JEAN: Now, don't worry , Louis. Here, look, I'll wind this kerchief around it. It'll be okay. LOUIS (whimpering): Blood... JEAN: There now. It's not bad. Just a flesh -- (narrates) Then I became conscious of another new sound. A quiet MUNCHING noise. JEAN (narrates): They were gnawing their way through the wooden trap door. I watched the wood, fascinated. And even as I did, it began to give way. And a bristling, whiskery nose showed through. (to Louis) Louis! Louis, we've got to go up! Scrambling FOOTSTEPS up the stairs. JEAN (narrates): Next level was the living quarters and the kitchen. I slammed the trap door there, too. Another trap door SLAMS. JEAN (narrates): But it too was wood. LOUIS (to himself): My... blood. (to Jean) What are we going to do? JEAN: I don't know. They'll be through this one in a moment. LOUIS: The gallery! The trap door in the gallery is metal! JEAN: Good! Come on! Running FOOTSTEPS up the stairs. A metal trap door SLAMS. JEAN (narrates): We made it. ...
One of the light house keepers goes irretrievably mad in the lantern room. Le Gleo, who was in as bad a state (and so was I, for that matter) stared at the chief and me vacantly, started as his gaze swung to the multitude of rats against the glass, then suddenly began laughing horribly. ''Hee! Hee! The Three Skeletons! Hee! hee! The Three Skeletons are now six skeletons! Six skeletons! He threw his head back and howled, his eyes glazed, a trickle of saliva running from the corners of his mouth and thinning the blood flowing over his chest.	One of the light house keepers goes irretrievably mad in the lantern room (termed the gallery in this story, as opposed to the concrete walk outside the lantern room). AUGUSTE (laughs, to the rats): Would you like to come in, my beauties? Would you? I hold the powers of life and death. And I can let you in the door. JEAN (narrates): Auguste was standing by the glass and in one hand he held a wrench. Metal TAPPING on glass. Auguste CACKLING madly. JEAN (narrates): He was tapping the glass gently. Not quite hard enough to break it. I eased myself to my feet and slowly, very slowly, tiptoed toward him. AUGUSTE (to the rats): All I have to do is tap just a little harder. Uhh-- Jean KNOCKS Auguste unconscious. JEAN (narrates): I found a coil of wire in the tool kit and I trussed him up, fastening him to a stanchion in the center of the room. Louis was of no help. He lay on his side looking at his bloody hand, weak and sick as a baby. So there I was, a lunatic and a coward for company, and all about, watching our little drama, the rats. ...
Leaving the light off has achieved its desired affect and a rescue boat from the mainland arrives, and sees that the island is covered with rats. They return with a fireboat, whose powerful jets of water knock the rats into the water where they are eaten by sharks. But there are too many rats. The next day the rescuers put a barge next to the key, filled with meat. After the rats board it, it is towed out into deeper water and set on fire. The barge was covered with flames immediately, and the rats took to the water in swarms, but the patrol boat bombarded them with shrapnel from a safe distance, and the sharks finished off the survivors. A whaleboat from the patrol boat took us off the island and left three men to replace us. By nightfall we were in the hospital in Cayenne. Jean gives an account of his two friends - Le Gleo locked up in an asylum, Itchoua dying from one of his rat bites. Jean concludes: As for me - when they fumigated the light and repaired the damage done by the rats, I resumed my service there. Why not? No reason why such an incident should keep me from finishing out my service there, is there? Besides - I told you I liked the place - to be truthful, I've never had a post as pleasant as that one, and when my time came to leave it forever, I tell you that I almost wept as Three Skeleton Key disappeared below the horizon.	In Toudouze's story, the men use human ingenuity to defeat the rats, by turning off the light deliberately and thus summoning help from the mainland. For James Poe's adaptation, the ending is much more frightening. JEAN (narrates): ...And the following night, I again tended the light but the small supply of spare wicking we kept in the gallery had become exhausted and quite suddenly, about midnight, the light went out. The sound of quietly SQUEAKING rats. JEAN (narrates): Nothing I could do. Wicks were stored three levels below. Nothing I could do. Nothing. From time to time, I'd strike a match to see the clock. Match STRIKES. Rats REACT. JEAN (narrates): And when I did, it lit up the million red eyes about us. All about us. Watching. Waiting. Below, it had grown quiet. They'd cleaned us out and now they too were waiting. All waiting. And then the rats -- quite suddenly -- were silent. A long moment of SILENCE, followed by the distant sound of a CORNET playing a plaintive, mournful tune. JEAN (narrates): And then, I heard it. The TUNE continues. JEAN (narrates): And then I saw... the sky and the stars.! The rats were gone! I went to the glass. Out there in the water, a small freighter -- a banana boat -- showing a few lights, came softly and innocently at us. The light was out. They didn't know! I wanted to open the windows to call out to them. To warn them somehow but -- I was afraid. What if-what if the rats were hiding from me? Tricking me? So I waited. She grounded very softly on a reef not two hundred yards from the key. Grounded so gently that the man playing the cornet -- was he a passenger or a crewman off watch? -- didn't even stop playing. They tried washing her back off. I could have told them to save their fuel. The tide was rising, would've floated her free. And I waited. The cornet player continues, then stops suddenly, all is SILENT for a long moment. JEAN (narrates): That's all. That's the story. The sun came up and there wasn't a rat on the whole key. Every last one of that terrible army had left us, gone back to sea... on their new ship. Auguste? Insane asylum. He never recovered. And Louis? They took him into Cayenne where he died of blood poisoning from his bite. (yawns) Oh, yes, well, that's the whole of it. And if you'll excuse me now, I must go set my traps. No, no. Mouse traps. No rats in this lighthouse, I should say not. Life in the lights isn't bad. But sometimes when I see a strange vessel approaching I get a little nervous, sure. Somewhere on the seas, there's a little banana boat without a crew. That is, without a human crew.