History Recap / TalesFromTheCryptS2E14LowerBerth

!Tropes:

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse?: When we last see baby Cryptie, he's all alone in his cave home, Feeley and the police having fled after discovering the morbid scene of his parents' bodies. Considering the Crypt Keeper we see in modern day is the corpse of an adult male, he was likely discovered, but we don't learn anything more about his upbringing.

Ernest Feeley's Fantastic Fairway of Freaks is a dime-a-dozen sideshow in Depression-era America. They have the usual exhibits; a fat lady, a family of dwarfs, a human skeleton, and so on. However, Feeley's has ''one'' exhibit that sets the other sideshows apart: a mentally ill, horribly disfigured young man with two faces named Enoch, whose caretaker, Mr. Sickles, wastes no opportunity to abuse. The unfortunate problem with Enoch is that the birth defect that gave him his two faces is slowly killing him, and the sideshow will soon lose its star exhibit. Sickles has tried hiding this news from Feeley by bribing the company doctor, but Feeley found out anyway.

A few days later, Zachary Cling, a shifty British doctor, enters the sideshow with a deal to make with Sickles. In Cling's possession is Myrna, a genuine Egyptian mummy he won in a poker game. Cling tells Sickles that Myrna (formerly "Mirana") was a slave girl who died at the age of 16, buried alive after rejecting the advances of the Pharaoh. All Cling asks for in exchange for letting the sideshow add Myrna to their menagerie is forty percent commission of the profits she brings in. With not much else in his favor, Sickles accepts. Myrna soon becomes a godsend for Feeley, bringing in a plethora of new customers. While she makes quite an impact on the crowd, Myrna makes more of an impact with Enoch, the two-faced man falling in love with his adjacent exhibit. After a young girl gives Enoch her doll, Sickles comes in for his usual round of abuse. Before he can go through with his torment, however, he notices something on the newspapers that line Enoch's cage: a headline about a stolen mummy.

Confronting Cling about this, the doctor confesses that Myrna is indeed a stolen treasure, having robbed her from a boat in New Orleans. It's not the mummy herself that interests him, but the necklace around Myrna's neck. The bauble he claimed was "costume jewelry" turns out to be very real and very valuable. As he explains, the necklace is cursed, as any man who tries to remove it from Myrna's person will fall victim to castration. Sickles doesn't buy his story and storms off to claim the necklace. When Cling tries to stop him, Sickles accidentally stabs him with a pair of shears, killing him. Sickles wanders back to the sideshow and plants the shears in Enoch's cage with the intention to frame him for Cling's killing so he can make off with the necklace. Enoch has unfortunately had enough of Sickles' abuse, and as he watches his longtime abuser fiddle with his mummified love, he grabs the shears and liberates Sickles of his testicles, and ironically filling out the curse. As Myrna's eyes pop open, Enoch manages to escape with her, vanishing into the night as Sickles' corpse takes her place in her sarcophagus, shocking the crowd.

* SparedByTheAdaptation: An interesting variation with Enoch. In the comic (where he had two heads instead of two faces), he was dead long before the story takes place, though he and Myrna somehow come back to life and elope in the middle of the night. Here, he's alive, but is gradually dying. However, if the Crypt Keeper's comments in the comic are to be believed, he keeps in touch with his folks, while their counterparts in the show are good as dead.

** Enoch and Myrna. The former is a severely disabled man with a horrific birth defect who spends his days caged and beaten in a sideshow, while the latter was a 16 year old Egyptian slave buried alive for refusing the pharaoh's advances.
** The Crypt Keeper himself qualifies, having never known his parents, and recounting the story leigitimately drives him to tears.

->'''Crypt Keeper:''' ''(rocking a stuffed doll in a crib)'' Shhhh! Awww... There, there. Isn't it just so cute that you '''''wanna?!...''''' ''(raises a hammer to the doll, then notices the camera)'' Oops! Crypt Keeper here, kiddies. And speaking of "kiddies", tonight's sickening saga should be subtitled a ''Tale from the'' '''''Crib.''''' Yes, fear fans. I've got a real nursery ''crime'' for you this time. It's all about the humble beginnings of my favorite horror hero. So call the babysitter, and break out the barf bags, as I narrate a nauseating novella with a very special place in my heart. I affectionately call this one: '''Lower Berth.'''

Feeley's Fantastic Fairway of Freaks is a dime a dozen sideshow in Depression era America. They have the usual exhibits. A fat lady, a family of dwarfs, fire eaters, and so on. However, Feeley's has ''one'' exhibit that sets the other sideshows apart: "Enoch, the Two-Faced Man", a mentally ill, horribly disfigured young man with two faces as the result of a birth defect, whose caretaker, Mr. Sickles, wastes no opportunity to abuse. The unfortunate problem with Enoch is that his birth defect is slowly killing him, and the sideshow will soon loses its star exhibit. Sickles tries hiding this from Feeley by bribing the company doctor, but Feeley finds out anyway.

The mysterious Zachary Cling, a shifty British doctor, enters the sideshow with quite the deal to make with Sickles. In Cling's possession is Myrna, a genuine Egyptian mummy he won in a poker game. Cling tells Sickles that Myrna (whose name was once "Mirana") died at the age of 16, buried alive after rejecting the advances of the Pharaoh. All Cling asks for in exchange for letting the sideshow add Myrna to their menagerie is forty percent commission of the profits she brings in. With not much else in his favor, Mr. Sickles accepts.

Myrna soon becomes a godsend for Feeley, bringing in a plethora of new customers. While she makes quite an impact on the crowd, she makes more of an impact with Enoch, the two-faced man falling in love with his adjacent exhibit. After a young girl gives Enoch her doll, Sickles comes in for his usual round of abuse to Enoch. But before he can go through with his torment, he notices something on the newspapers that line Enoch's cage: Myrna is a stolen treasure.

Confronting Cling about this, he confesses that he did indeed steal Myrna from a boat in New Orleans. It's not the mummy that interests him (in his words, "I hardly have any use for a 4000-year-old dead woman!"), but the necklace around Myrna's neck. The bauble he claimed was "costume jewelry" turns out to be very real and very valuable. As he explains, the necklace is cursed, and any man who tries to remove it from Myrna's person will fall victim to castration. Sickles doesn't buy his story and storms off to claim the necklace. When Cling tries to stop him, Sickles accidentally stabs him with a pair of shears, killing him.

Sickles wanders back to the sideshow and plants the shears in Enoch's cage with the intention to frame him for Cling's killing so he can make off with the necklace. But Enoch has had enough of Sickles' abuse, and as he watches his longtime abuser fiddle with his mummified love, he grabs the shears and liberates Sickles of his testicles with them, and ironically filling out the curse. Enoch manages to escape with the mummy, vanishing into the night.

One year later, Feeley's sideshow has returned to the town where Enoch murdered Sickles. The police approach Feeley and lead him to a nearby cave. They find Enoch inside, dead and wearing a smile on his two faces, in the arms of his ancient love. Feeley and the cops leave the cave, but they turn out to have missed [[UglyCute a very ugly baby sitting in the corner of the cave;]] the unholy product of Enoch and Myrna's twisted love: [[OriginsEpisode The Crypt Keeper.]]

* AccidentalMurder: Sickles does this to Cling, then attempts to frame Enoch for it.
* AgeGapRomance: Enoch, who is likely in the early teens of age, is attracted to the 4000 year old Myrna.
* AssholeVictim: Sickles, Enoch's abuser.
* BittersweetEnding: Enoch and Myrna run off together, make a little home for themselves, and spend a year living the free, happy lives that they were always denied. They die in each other's arms not long after their baby is born.

* BuriedAlive: According to Cling, Myrna was buried alive at 16 for refusing the pharaoh's advances.
* ChekhovsGun: The doll that the Crypt Keeper is seen playing with in the opening segment of the episode. As it happens, we later learn that it's the same doll he had as a baby, and that he was given it by his father, after it was given to ''him'' by a little girl.

* CreepyCircusMusic: Courtesy of a steamy calliope playing an eerie tune all throughout the episode.
* DeathByAdaptation: Sickles did not die in the original comic version of the story.
* DisproportionateRetribution: The pharaoh who ordered Myrna buried alive did so solely because she repelled his advances.
* TheDogBitesBack: Enoch strikes back at Sickles when he dares try and rob his undead love, getting vengeance for all his abuse by castrating him with shears.

** In his intro, the Crypt Keeper says this story is about the beginnings of his favorite horror hero. He doesn't tell you that he means himself.
** When offering the deal to have Myrna exhibited, Cling tells Sickles that he needs to keep a low profile for a while. It's because he stole Myrna from a ship instead of winning her in a card game like he said.

* FrameUp: Sickles intended to frame Enoch for killing Cling so he could steal Myrna's necklace and flee the sideshow.
* TheFreakshow: Feeley's sideshow is one, and it's the primary setting of the episode.
* FreudianExcuse: Let's just say this episode explains a lot about you-know-who.
* GlowingEyes: Myrna, when her necklace is removed by Sickles and after Enoch attacks him, has her eyes suddenly pop open and start glowing at the sound of Sickles' screaming, breaking her curse.
* GoodParents: As good as a severely disabled man and a 4000-years-dead mummy living in an unheated cave can hope to be. Baby Cryptie is chubby and well cared for, wearing little clothes and babbling for "mama", and in the company of the doll Enoch gave him. By all indications, he was very well loved.
* GroinAttack: The curse Myrna's necklace carries subjects this to any man who attempts to steal it from her.
* IJustWantToBeNormal: Although he can't vocally express it, Enoch really just wants to have a normal life, someone to love, a happy family, and to not be locked in a cage and paraded around like a freak.
* ILoveTheDead: Enoch gradually falls in love with Myrna, who has spent the last 4000 years dead and mummified. It's excusable because she's the first woman he's seen on a regular basis for a long time.
* InNameOnly: In the original comic book, Enoch was a two-headed corpse instead of a living two-faced man, and Feeley actually retrieved him and Myrna when they found them in the cave. Other than these changes, the episode is for the most part faithful to the comic book version, including the revelation that Enoch and Myrna are the Crypt Keeper's parents.
* IronicEcho: Enoch's only intelligible words are "Naughty boy!", Sickles' favorite line, before he delivers his caretaker's KarmicDeath.
* JerkAss: Sickles, who abuses the deformed and mentally ill Enoch with a whip. To be fair, he's an asshole partially because he's ridiculed and pushed around by the equally JerkAss Feeley.
* KickTheDog: Sickles constantly abuses Enoch verbally and physically. Stealing Myrna's necklace was all poor Enoch could take from him.
* LateArrivalSpoiler: The twist ending is usually the first thing about this episode anyone ever talks about. The producers and writers had no problem openly discussing the twist in the Season 2 DVD's "Making of" feature, so if you watched that first, you were really out of luck.
* MandatoryMotherhood: To the extent that ''Enoch'' is the one who definitively wants children. Everyone just kind of assumes Myrna must have had them, and that the fact that she never had them is the tragic thing about her death.
* ManlyTears: During the outro, the Crypt Keeper ''weeps'' over his parents.
* MassOhCrap: Before fleeing with Myrna, Enoch put Sickles' body in her sarcophagus. An unaware Feeley later presents what he thinks is Myrna to a crowd. One curtain pull later, Feeley and the crowd are horrified as they stare at the dead man.

* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: The outro is one of the very few times we see the Crypt Keeper be anything other than his morbid self. While he still cracks a joke or two, he can't help but sob his heart out because his parents are long gone.
* PetTheDog: A little girl, Elizabeth, gives Enoch her doll, who later gives it to his infant son.
* ProperlyParanoid: Sickles finds it rather suspicious that Cling went to him for his deal to display Myrna instead of Feeley. This is true because he stole Myrna from a boat so he could take the cursed necklace she wears.
* {{Pun}}: The Crypt Keeper opens by referring to this story as ''Tales from the Crib''.
* RealAfterAll: Cling believes Myrna's curse of castration is real because it happened to a man he hired to remove her necklace for him.
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: When Sickles tries to throw his weight around, Feeley reveals he knows Enoch is already dying and proceeds to put Sickles in his place.
-->"Did you really think you could bribe the company doctor to keep it from me? Well, apparently, your freak isn't the only one with two faces, is he? No, Sickles, your meal ticket's godforsaken life is winding toward a merciful end, so please, don't tell me how much I need you. We'll play it out as long as it takes--a month, a week, but as long as you own him, then I own you, and we do things my way. Understand, Mr. Sickles?"
* SayMyName: Enoch can't articulate himself very well, but he makes every effort to say Myrna's name.
* SecretlyDying: Unknown to Enoch, his birth defect is slowly killing him. Sickles knew this, and bribed the sideshow's doctor to hide it from Feeley, only for Feeley to quickly discover it anyway.
* SpannerInTheWorks: According to the police officer, a boy was exploring the cave and stumbled upon Enoch and Myrna's home.
* SparedByTheAdaptation: An interesting variation with Enoch. In the comic (where he had two heads instead of two faces), he was dead long before the story takes place, though he and Myrna somehow come back to life and elope in the middle of the night. Here, he's alive, but is gradually dying. However, if the Crypt Keeper's comments in the comic are to be believed, he managed to keep in touch with his folks, while their counterparts in the show are good as dead.

* TimeSkip: The end of the episode skips ahead a year to show what became of Enoch and Myrna.

* TogetherInDeath: Enoch and Myrna, after escaping to the happy life they always wanted.

* TragicMonster: Enoch and Myrna both. The former is a severely disabled man with a horrific birth defect who spends his days caged and beaten in a sideshow, while the latter was a 16 year old Egyptian slave buried alive for refusing the pharaoh's advances.
** The Cryptkeeper himself qualifies, having never known either of his parents, and recounting the story leigitimately drives him to tears.
* TwoFaced: Enoch has a second face growing out of the left side of his head, which is hinted to be the result of a birth defect.
* WhamShot: After Feeley and the cops leave the cave, we pan over to see that Enoch and Myrna have had a baby. That's not the wham, however. The wham is that ''it's the Crypt Keeper''.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse?: When we last see baby Cryptie, he's all alone in the cave, Feeley and the police having fled after discovering the morbid scene. Considering the Crypt Keeper we see in modern day is the corpse of an adult male, he was likely recovered, but we don't learn any more about his upbringing.

->'''Crypt Keeper:''' ''(drying his teary eyes and blowing his nose with a handkerchief; clutching the doll his father gave him)'' Oh, sorry, kiddies! But that story just makes me go all to ''pieces.'' ''(throw the doll aside and cackles)'' I was a cute little terror tyke though, wasn't I? As for Enoch and Myrna, I guess you figured out by now where I get my ''good looks''. Old Two-Face was my daddy and the mummy was my mommy! ''(cackles, then sobs)'' Oh, if they'd only lived long enough to see me become a star! We never even got a chance to play hide and go ''shriek'' together! ''(sobs, turning into a broken cackle)''

Feeley's Fantastic Fairway of Freaks is a dime a dozen sideshow in Depression era America. They have the usual exhibits. A fat lady, a family of dwarfs, fire eaters, and so on. However, Feeley's has ''one'' exhibit that sets the other sideshows apart: "Enoch, the Two-Faced Man", a mentally ill, horribly disfigured young man with two faces as the result of a birth defect, whose caretaker, Mr. Sickles, wastes no opportunity to abuse the poor guy. The unfortunate problem with Enoch is that his birth defect is slowly killing him, and the sideshow will soon loses its star exhibit. Sickles tries hiding this from Feeley by bribing the company doctor, but Feeley finds out anyway.

* TheWoobie: The Crypt Keeper, by the reveal in the ending.
** His father, Enoch, was a bigger one. The victim of a birth defect that rendered him mentally ill and was slowly killing him, he would be regularly abused by his hateful caretaker and treated as an animal to be locked in a cage.

Feeley's Fantastic Fairway of Freaks is a dime a dozen sideshow in Depression era America. They have the usual exhibits. A fat lady, a family of dwarfs, fire eaters, and so on. Feeley's has ''one'' exhibit that sets the other sideshows apart: "Enoch, the Two-Faced Man", a mentally ill, horribly disfigured young man with two faces as the result of a birth defect. Whose caretaker, Mr. Sickles, wastes no opportunity to abuse the poor guy. The unfortunate problem with Enoch is that his birth defect is slowly killing him, and the sideshow will soon loses its star exhibit. Sickles tries hiding this from Feeley by bribing the company doctor, but Feeley finds out anyway.

Sickles wanders back to the sideshow and plants the shears in Enoch's cage with the intention to frame him for Cling's killing so he can make off with the necklace. But Enoch has had enough Sickles' abuse. Watching his longtime abuser fiddle with his mummified love, he grabs the shears and liberates Sickles of his testicles with them, ironically filling out the curse. Enoch manages to escape with the mummy, vanishing into the night.

Welcome to Feeley's Fantastic Fairway of Freaks! A dime a dozen sideshow in the Depression era of America. They have the usual exhibits. A fat lady, a family of dwarfs, fire eaters, and so on. But Feeley's has ''one'' exhibit that sets them apart:

Enoch, the two-faced man! A horribly disfigured young man with two faces, and an abusive caretaker named Mr. Sickles.

Problem with Enoch is, his clock is ticking down. He'll be dead before they know it. And without him, the sideshow loses its star exhibit. Sickles tries hiding this from Feeley by bribing the company doctor, but he finds out anyway. What will they do when their star attraction kicks the bucket?

Enter the mysterious Doctor Zachary Cling. A shifty Brit, with quite a deal to make with Sickles. In Clings possession, is a genuine Egyptian mummy. Won from a man in a game of poker. A slave girl named Mirana (Though Cling prefers Myrna) who rejected the advances of her Pharaoh, and was BuriedAlive for it. All he asks for, is forty percent commission of the profits Myrna makes them. With not much else in his favor, Mr. Sickles accepts.

Myrna is a godsend for Feeley, bringing in a plethora of new customers. While she makes quite an impact on the crowd, she makes more of an impact with Enoch. Yes, the two-faced man is in love with his adjacent exhibit. After a young girl gives Enoch her doll, Sickles comes in for his usual round of Enoch abuse, but notices something on the newspapers that line his cage: Myrna is stolen.

Confronting Cling about this, he confesses stealing it from a boat in New Orleans. But it's not the mummy that interests him (in his words, "I hardly have any use for a 4000-year-old dead woman!"). It's Myrna's necklace. The bauble he claimed was "Costume jewelry". Turns out they're very real, very valuable, and very cursed. As he explains, any person who tries to remove Myrna's family jewels, will lose their own: a castration curse. Sickles doesn't buy his story and storms off to claim the necklace. When Cling tries to stop him, Sickles accidentally stabs him with a pair of large shears, killing him.

Sickles wanders back to the freak show, planting the murder weapon in Enoch's cage, intending to frame him for Cling's killing and make off with the necklace. But Enoch has had enough. Watching his longtime abuser fiddle with his mummified love, he grabs the shears and liberates Sickles of his junk with them, ironically filling out the curse. Enoch makes off with Myrna, and vanishes into the night.

One year later, Feeley's sideshow has returned to the town where Enoch murdered Sickles. The police approach Feeley and lead him to a nearby cave. There is Enoch, dead, with a smile on his two faces, in the arms of his ancient love. Feeley and the cops leave the cave, but they missed something: a baby! [[UglyCute A very ugly baby.]] The unholy product of Enoch and Myrna's twisted love: [[OriginsEpisode The Crypt Keeper.]]
----

* AccidentalMurder: Sickles does this to Cling.
* AssholeVictim: Sickles.
* BittersweetEnding: Enoch and Myrna run off together, make a little home for themselves, and spend a year living the free, happy lives they were always denied. They die in each other's arms not long after their baby is born.
* BuriedAlive: According to Cling, the mummy was buried alive at 16 for refusing a pharaoh's advances.
* ChekhovsGun: The doll the Crypt Keeper is seen playing with in the opening segment of the episode. As it happens, we later learn that it's the same doll he had as a baby.

* CreepyCircusMusic: Courtesy of a pretty steamy calliope playing an eerie tune in the establishing shot of the carnival.
* DeathByAdaptation: Enoch's owner did not die in the original comic version of the story.
* TheDogBitesBack: Enoch strikes back at Sickles when he dares try and rob from his love mummy.

** In his intro, the Crypt Keeper says this story is about the beginnings of his favorite horror hero. He just doesn't tell you that he means himself.
** When offering the deal, Cling tells Sickles that he needs to keep a low profile for a while. It's because he stole Myrna instead of winning her in a card game.
* FormulaBreakingEpisode: One of the few episodes not set in the present.
* FrameUp: What Sickles intended to do to Enoch in the end.

* GoodParents: As good as a severely disabled man and a 4000-years-dead mummy living in an unheated cave can hope to be. Baby Crypt Keeper is chubby and well cared for, wearing little clothes and babbling for "mama", and in the company of the doll Enoch gave him. By all indications, he was very well loved.
* GlowingEyes: Myrna: when her necklace is removed by Sickles and after Enoch attacks him, her eyes suddenly pop open and start glowing at the sound of Sickles' screaming, breaking her curse.
* GroinAttack: The curse is an extreme version of this.
* InNameOnly: In the original comic book, Enoch was a two-headed corpse instead of a living two-faced man and Feeley actually retrieved him and Myrna when they found them in the cave. Other than these changes, the episode is for the most part faithful to the comic book version, including the revelation that Enoch and Myrna are the Crypt Keeper's parents.
* IronicEcho: Enoch's only intelligible words are "Naughty boy!", Sickles' favorite line, before delivering his KarmicDeath.
* KickTheDog: Sickles constantly abuses Enoch verbally and physically.

* MandatoryMotherhood: To the extent that ''Enoch'' is the one who definitively wants children. Everyone just kind of assumes Myrna must have, and that the fact that she never had them is the tragic thing about her death.

* MassOhCrap: Before fleeing with Myrna, Enoch put Sickles' body in her sarcophagus. An unaware Feeley later presents what he thinks is Myrna to a crowd. One curtain pull later, Feeley and the crowd are horrified.
* MoodWhiplash: The Crypt Keeper's outro alternates between crying and snark.
* OriginsEpisode: For The Crypt Keeper.
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: The outro is one of the very few times we see the Cryptkeeper be anything other than his morbid self. While he still cracks a joke or two, he can't help but sob his heart out, because his parents are long gone.
* PetTheDog: A little girl, Elizabeth, gives Enoch her doll.
* ProperlyParanoid: Sickles finds it's suspicious that Cling went to him for this deal instead of Feeley.

* RealAfterAll: Cling believes the curse is real because it happened to a man he hired to remove the necklace.

* SparedByTheAdaptation: An interesting variation with Enoch. In the comic (where he had two heads instead of two faces), he was dead long before the story takes place, though he and Myrna somehow come back to life and elope in the middle of the night. Here, he's alive, but dying. However, if The Cryptkeeper's comments in the comic are to be believed, he managed to keep in touch with his folks, while their counterparts in the show are good as dead.
* StrongFamilyResemblance: The shot of baby Crypt Keeper is also the only glimpse we ever get of him alive, and as it turns out, he resembles his parents quite a bit. Specifically, he inherited Myrna's dark complexion and high cheekbones, and Enoch's strong chin and light brown hair.

* TogetherInDeath: Enoch and Myrna
* TragicKeepsake: The doll.
* TragicMonster: Enoch and Myrna both. The former is a severely disabled man who spends his days caged and beaten in a sideshow, while the latter was a 16 year old Egyptian slave buried alive for refusing the pharaoh's advances.
* WhamShot: After Feeley and the cops leave the cave, we pan over to see that Enoch and Myrna had a baby. That's not the wham, however. The wham is that ''it's the Crypt Keeper''.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse?: When we last see the baby Cryptkeeper, he's all alone in the cave, the police and circus owner having fled after discovering the morbid scene. Considering the Cryptkeeper we see in modern day is the corpse of an adult male, he was likely recovered, but we don't learn any more about his upbringing.

* SparedbytheAdaptation: An interesting variation with Enoch. In the comic, where he had two heads instead of two faces, he was dead long before the story takes place, though he and Myrna somehow come back to life and elope in the middle of the night. Here, he's alive, but dying. However, if The Cryptkeeper's comments in the comic are to be believed, he managed to keep in touch with his folks, while their counterparts in the show are good as dead.