slept off his disorder that night without developing any real fever. He
woke late Friday, clear of head, though sober, with a gnawing fear and
tremendous sense of responsibility. Saturday afternoon he felt able to
go over to the library and summon Rice and Morgan for a conference, and
the rest of that day and evening the three men tortured their brains
in the wildest speculation and the most desperate debate. Strange and
terrible books were drawn voluminously from the stack shelves and from
secure places of storage, and diagrams and formulæ were copied with
feverish haste and in bewildering abundance. Of skepticism there was
none. All three had seen the body of Wilbur Whateley as it lay on the
floor in a room of that very building, and after that not one of them
could feel even slightly inclined to treat the diary as a madman's
raving.
Opinions were divided as to notifying the Massachusetts State Police,
and the negative finally won. There were things involved which simply
could not be believed by those who had not seen a sample, as indeed was
made clear during certain subsequent investigations. Late at night the
conference disbanded without having developed a definite plan, but all
day Sunday Armitage was busy comparing formulæ and mixing chemicals
obtained from the college laboratory. The more he reflected on the
hellish diary, the more he was inclined to doubt the efficacy of any
material agent in stamping out the entity which Wilbur Whateley had
left behind him--the earth-threatening entity which, unknown to him,
was to burst forth in a few hours and become the memorable Dunwich
horror.
Monday was a repetition of Sunday with Dr. Armitage, for the task
in hand required an infinity of research and experiment. Further
consultations of the monstrous diary brought about various changes of
plan, and he knew that even in the end a large amount of uncertainty
must remain. By Tuesday he had a definite line of action mapped out,
and believed he would try a trip to Dunwich within a week. Then, on
Wednesday, the great shock came. Tucked obscurely away in a corner of
the _Arkham Advertiser_ was a facetious little item from the Associated
Press, telling what a record-breaking monster the bootleg whisky of
Dunwich had raised up. Armitage, half stunned, could only telephone
for Rice and Morgan. Far into the night they discussed, and the next
day was a whirlwind of preparation on the part of them all. Armitage
knew he would be meddling with terrible powers, yet saw that there was
no other way to annul the deeper and more malign meddling which others
had done before him.
9
Friday morning Armitage, Rice and Morgan set out by motor for Dunwich,
arriving at the village about 1 in the afternoon. The day was pleasant,
but even in the brightest sunlight a kind of quiet dread and portent
seemed to hover about the strangely domed hills and the deep, shadowy
ravines of the stricken region. Now and then on some mountain top a
gaunt circle of stones could be glimpsed against the sky. From the
air of hushed fright at Osborn's store they knew something hideous
had happened, and soon learned of the annihilation of the Elmer Frye
house and family. Throughout that afternoon they rode around Dunwich,
questioning the natives concerning all that had occurred, and seeing
for themselves with rising pangs of horror the drear Frye ruins with
their lingering traces of the tarry stickiness, the blasphemous tracks
in the Frye yard, the wounded Seth Bishop cattle, and the enormous
swaths of disturbed vegetation in various places. The trail up and down
Sentinel Hill seemed to Armitage of almost cataclysmic significance,
and he looked long at the sinister altarlike stone on the summit.
At length the visitors, apprised of a party of State Police which had
come from Aylesbury that morning in response to the first telephone
reports of the Frye tragedy, decided to seek out the officers and
compare notes as far as practicable. This, however, they found more
easily planned than performed; since no sign of the party could be
found in any direction. There had been five of them in a car, but now
the car stood empty near the ruins in the Frye yard. The natives, all
of whom had talked with the policemen, seemed at first as perplexed as
Armitage and his companions. Then old Sam Hutchins thought of something
and turned pale, nudging Fred Farr and pointing to the dank, deep
hollow that yawned close by.
"Gawd," he gasped, "I telled 'em not ter go daown into the glen, an' I
never thought nobody'd dew it with them tracks an' that smell an' the
whippoorwills a-screechin' daown thar in the dark o' noonday...."
A cold shudder ran through natives and visitors alike, and every ear
seemed strained in a kind of instinctive, unconscious listening.
Armitage, now that he had actually come upon the horror and its
monstrous work, trembled with the responsibility he felt to be
his. Night would soon fall, and it was then that the mountainous
blasphemy lumbered upon its eldritch course. _Negotium perambulans in
tenebris...._ The old librarian rehearsed the formulæ he had memorized,
and clutched the paper containing the alternative ones he had not
memorized. He saw that his electric flashlight was in working order.
Rice, beside him, took from a valise a metal sprayer of the sort used
in combating insects; whilst Morgan uncased the big-game rifle on which
he relied despite his colleague's warnings that no material weapon
would be of help.
Armitage, having read the hideous diary, knew painfully well what kind
of a manifestation to expect, but he did not add to the fright of the
Dunwich people by giving any hints or clues. He hoped that it might
be conquered without any revelation to the world of the monstrous
thing it had escaped. As the shadows gathered, the natives commenced
to disperse homeward, anxious to bar themselves indoors despite the
present evidence that all human locks and bolts were useless before a
force that could bend trees and crush houses when it chose. They shook
their heads at the visitors' plan to stand guard at the Frye ruins near
the glen; and as they left, had little expectancy of ever seeing the
watchers again.
There were rumblings under the hills that night, and the whippoorwills
piped threateningly. Once in a while a wind, sweeping up out of Cold
Spring Glen, would bring a touch of ineffable fetor to the heavy night
air; such a fetor as all three of the watchers had smelled once before,
when they stood above a dying thing that had passed for fifteen years
and a half as a human being. But the looked-for terror did not appear.
Whatever was down there in the glen was biding its time, and Armitage
told his colleagues it would be suicidal to try to attack it in the
dark.
Morning came wanly, and the night-sounds ceased. It was a gray, bleak
day, with now and then a drizzle of rain; and heavier and heavier
clouds seemed to be piling themselves up beyond the hills to the
northwest. The men from Arkham were undecided what to do. Seeking
shelter from the increasing rainfall beneath one of the few undestroyed
Frye outbuildings, they debated the wisdom of waiting, or of taking the
aggressive and going down into the glen in quest of their nameless,
monstrous quarry. The downpour waxed in heaviness, and distant peals of
thunder sounded from far horizons. Sheet lightning shimmered, and then
a forky bolt flashed near at hand, as if descending into the accursed
glen itself. The sky grew very dark, and the watchers hoped that the
storm would prove a short, sharp one followed by clear weather.
It was still gruesomely dark when, not much over an hour later, a
confused babel of voices sounded down the road. Another moment brought
to view a frightened group of more than a dozen men, running, shouting,
and even whimpering hysterically. Someone in the lead began sobbing out
words, and the Arkham men started violently when those words developed
a coherent form.
"Oh, my Gawd, my Gawd!" the voice choked out; "it's a-goin' agin, _an'
this time by day_! It's aout--it's aout an' a-movin' this very minute,
an' only the Lord knows when it'll be on us all!"
The speaker panted into silence, but another took up his message.
"Nigh on a haour ago Zeb Whateley here heerd the 'phone a-ringin', an'
it was Mis' Corey, George's wife that lives daown by the junction.
She says the hired boy Luther was aout drivin' in the caows from the
storm arter the big bolt, when he see all the trees a-bendin' at the
maouth o' the glen--opposite side ter this--an' smelt the same awful
smell like he smelt when he faound the big tracks las' Monday mornin'.
An' she says he says they was a swishin', lappin' saound, more nor
what the bendin' trees an' bushes could make, an' all on a suddent the
trees along the rud begun ter git pushed one side, an' they was a awful
stompin' an' splashin' in the mud. But mind ye, Luther he didn't see
nothin' at all, only jest the bendin' trees an' underbrush.
"Then fur ahead where Bishop's Brook goes under the rud he heerd a
awful creakin' an' strainin' on the bridge, an' says he could tell the
saound o' wood a-startin' to crack an' split. An' all the whiles he
never see a thing, only them trees an' bushes a-bendin'. An' when the
swishin' saound got very fur off--on the rud towards Wizard Whateley's
an' Sentinel Hill--Luther he had the guts ter step up whar he'd heerd
it fust an' look at the graound. It was all mud an' water, an' the sky
was dark, an' the rain was wipin' aout all tracks abaout as fast as
could be; but beginnin' at the glen maouth, whar the trees bed moved,
they was still some o' them awful prints big as bar'ls like he seen
Monday."
At this point the first excited speaker interrupted.
"But _that_ ain't the trouble naow--that was only the start. Zeb here
was callin' folks up an' everybody was a-listenin' in when a call from
Seth Bishop's cut in. His haousekeeper Sally was carryin' on fit ter
kill--she'd jest seed the trees a-bendin' beside the rud, an' says
they was a kind o' mushy saound, like a elephant puffin' an' treadin',
a-headin' fer the haouse. Then she up an' spoke suddent of a fearful
smell, an' says her boy Cha'ncey was a-screamin' as haow it was jest
like what he smelt up to the Whateley rewins Monday mornin'. An' the
dogs was all barkin' an' whinin' awful.
"An' then she let aout a turrible yell, an' says the shed daown the
rud hed jest caved in like the storm hed blowed it over, only the wind
wa'n't strong enough to dew that. Everybody was a-listenin', an' ye
could hear lots o' folks on the wire a-gaspin'. All to onct Sally she
yelled agin, an' says the front yard picket fence bed jest crumpled up,
though they wa'n't no sign o' what done it. Then everybody on the line
could hear Cha'ncey an' ol' Seth Bishop a-yellin', tew, an' Sally was
shriekin' aout that suthin' heavy hed struck the haouse--not lightnin'
nor nothin', but suthin' heavy agin' the front, that kep' a-launchin'
itself agin an' agin, though ye couldn't see nuthin' aout the front
winders. An' then ... an' then...."
Lines of fright deepened on every face; and Armitage, shaken as he was,
had barely poise enough to prompt the speaker.
"An' then ... Sally she yelled aout, 'O help, the haouse is a-cavin'
in' ... an' on the wire we could hoar a turrible crashin', an' a hull
flock o' screamin' ... jest like when Elmer Frye's place was took, only
wuss...."
The man paused, and another of the crowd spoke.
"That's all--not a saound nor squeak over the 'phone arter that. Jest
still-like. We that heerd it got aout Fords an' wagons an' raounded
up as many able-bodied men-folks as we could get, at Corey's place,
an' come up here ter see what yew thought best ter dew. Not but what I
think it's the Lord's judgment fer our iniquities, that no mortal kin
ever set aside."
Armitage saw that the time for positive action had come, and spoke
decisively to the faltering group of frightened rustics.
"We must follow it, boys." He made his voice as reassuring as possible.
"I believe there's a chance of putting it out of business. You men
know that those Whateleys were wizards--well, this thing is a thing
of wizardry, and must be put down by the same means. I've seen Wilbur
Whateley's diary and read some of the strange old books he used to
read, and I think I know the right kind of a spell to recite to make
the thing fade away. Of course, one can't be sure, but we can always
take a chance. It's invisible--I knew it would be--but there's a powder
in this long-distance sprayer that might make it show up for a second.
Later on we'll try it. It's a frightful thing to have alive, but it
isn't as bad as what Wilbur would have let in if he'd lived longer.
You'll never know what the world has escaped. Now we've only this one
thing to fight, and it can't multiply. It can, though, do a lot of
harm; so we mustn't hesitate to rid the community of it.
"We must follow it--and the way to begin is to go to the place that has
just been wrecked. Let somebody lead the way--I don't know your roads
very well, but I've an idea there might be a shorter cut across lots.
How about it?"
The men shuffled about a moment, and then Earl Sawyer spoke softly,
pointing with a grimy finger through the steadily lessening rain.
"I guess ye kin git to Seth Bishop's quickest by cuttin' acrost the
lower medder here, wadin' the brook at the low place, an' climbin'
through Carrier's mowin' an' the timber-lot beyont. That comes aout on
the upper rud mighty nigh Seth's--a leetle t'other side."
Armitage, with Rice and Morgan, started to walk in the direction
indicated; and most of the natives followed slowly. The sky was growing
lighter, and there were signs that the storm had worn itself away. When
Armitage inadvertently took a wrong direction, Joe Osborn warned him
and walked ahead to show the right one. Courage and confidence were
mounting; though the twilight of the almost perpendicular wooded hill
which lay toward the end of their short cut, and among whose fantastic
ancient trees they had to scramble as if up a ladder, put these
qualities to a severe test.
At length they emerged on a muddy road to find the sun coming out.
They were a little beyond the Seth Bishop place, but bent trees and
hideously unmistakable tracks showed what had passed by. Only a few
moments were consumed in surveying the ruins just around the bend. It
was the Frye incident all over again, and nothing dead or living was
found in either of the collapsed shells which had been the Bishop house
and barn. No one cared to remain there amidst the stench and the tarry
stickiness, but all turned instinctively to the line of horrible prints
leading on toward the wrecked Whateley farmhouse and the altar-crowned
slopes of Sentinel Hill.
As the men passed the site of Wilbur Whateley's abode they shuddered
visibly, and seemed again to mix hesitancy with their zeal. It was
no joke tracking down something as big as a house that one could not
see, but that had all the vicious malevolence of a demon. Opposite the
base of Sentinel Hill the tracks left the road, and there was a fresh
bending and matting visible along the broad swath marking the monster's
former route to and from the summit.
Armitage produced a pocket telescope of considerable power and scanned
the steep green side of the hill. Then he handed the instrument to
Morgan, whose sight was keener. After a moment of gazing Morgan cried
out sharply, passing the glass to Earl Sawyer and indicating a certain
spot on the slope with his finger. Sawyer, as clumsy as most non-users
of optical devices are, fumbled a while; but eventually focused the
lenses with Armitage's aid. When he did so his cry was less restrained
than Morgan's had been.
"Gawd almighty, the grass an' bushes is a-movin'! It's a-goin'
up--slow-like--creepin' up ter the top this minute, heaven only knows
what fer!"
Then the germ of panic seemed to spread among the seekers. It was one
thing to chase the nameless entity, but quite another to find it.
Spells might be all right--but suppose they weren't? Voices began
questioning Armitage about what he knew of the thing, and no reply
seemed quite to satisfy. Everyone seemed to feel himself in close
proximity to phases of nature and of being utterly forbidden, and
wholly outside the sane experience of mankind.
10
In the end the three men from Arkham--old, white-bearded Dr.
Armitage, stocky, iron-gray Professor Rice, and lean, youngish Dr.
Morgan--ascended the mountain alone. After much patient instruction
regarding its focusing and use, they left the telescope with the
frightened group that remained in the road; and as they climbed they
were watched closely by those among whom the glass was passed around.
It was hard going, and Armitage had to be helped more than once. High
above the toiling group the great swath trembled as its hellish maker
repassed with snail-like deliberateness. Then it was obvious that the
pursuers were gaining.
Curtis Whateley--of the undecayed branch--was holding the telescope
when the Arkham party detoured radically from the swath. He told the
crowd that the men were evidently trying to get to a subordinate peak
which overlooked the swath at a point considerably ahead of where the
shrubbery was now bending. This, indeed, proved to be true; and the
party were seen to gain the minor elevation only a short time after the
invisible blasphemy had passed it.
Then Wesley Corey, who had taken the glass, cried out that Armitage was
adjusting the sprayer which Rice held, and that something must be about
to happen. The crowd stirred uneasily, recalling that this sprayer was
expected to give the unseen horror a moment of visibility. Two or three
men shut their eyes, but Curtis Whateley snatched back the telescope
and strained his vision to the utmost. He saw that Rice, from the
party's point of vantage above and behind the entity, had an excellent
chance of spreading the potent powder with marvelous effect.
Those without the telescope saw only an instant's flash of gray
cloud--a cloud about the size of a moderately large building--near the
top of the mountain. Curtis, who had held the instrument, dropped it
with a piercing shriek into the ankle-deep mud of the road. He reeled,
and would have crumpled to the ground had not two or three others
seized and steadied him. All he could do was moan half-inaudibly:
"Oh, oh, great Gawd ... _that ... that_...."
[Illustration: "Oh, oh, great Gawd ... that ... that."]
There was a pandemonium of questioning, and only Henry Wheeler thought
to rescue the fallen telescope and wipe it clean of mud. Curtis was
past all coherence, and even isolated replies were almost too much for
him.
"Bigger 'n a barn ... all made o' squirmin' ropes ... hull thing sort
o' shaped like a hen's egg bigger'n anything, with dozens o' legs like
hogsheads that haff shut up when they step ... nothin' solid abaout
it--all like jelly, an' made o' sep'rit wrigglin' ropes pushed clost
together ... great bulgin' eyes all over it ... ten or twenty maouths
or trunks a-stickin' aout all along the sides, big as stovepipes, an'
all a-tossin' an' openin' an' shuttin' ... all gray, with kinder blue
or purple rings ... _an' Gawd in Heaven--that haff face on top_!..."
This final memory, whatever it was, proved too much for poor Curtis,
and he collapsed completely before he could say more. Fred Farr and
Will Hutchins carried him to the roadside and laid him on the damp
grass. Henry Wheeler, trembling, turned the rescued telescope on the
mountain to see what he might. Through the lenses were discernible
three tiny figures, apparently running toward the summit as fast as the
steep incline allowed. Only these--nothing more. Then everyone noticed
a strangely unseasonable noise in the deep valley behind, and even in
the underbrush of Sentinel Hill itself. It was the piping of unnumbered
whippoorwills, and in their shrill chorus there seemed to lurk a note
of tense and evil expectancy.
Earl Sawyer now took the telescope and reported the three figures as
standing on the topmost ridge, virtually level with the altar-stone
but at a considerable distance from it. One figure, he said, seemed
to be raising its hands above its head at rhythmic intervals; and
as Sawyer mentioned the circumstance the crowd seemed to hear a
faint, half-musical sound from the distance, as if a loud chant
were accompanying the gestures. The weird silhouette on that
remote peak must have been a spectacle of infinite grotesqueness
and impressiveness, but no observer was in a mood for esthetic
appreciation. "I guess he's sayin' the spell," whispered Wheeler as
he snatched back the telescope. The whippoorwills were piping wildly,
and in a singularly curious irregular rhythm quite unlike that of the
visible ritual.
Suddenly the sunshine seemed to lessen without the intervention of any
discernible cloud. It was a very peculiar phenomenon, and was plainly
marked by all. A rumbling sound seemed brewing beneath the hills, mixed
strangely with a concordant rumbling which clearly came from the sky.
Lightning flashed aloft, and the wondering crowd looked in vain for
the portents of storm. The chanting of the men from Arkham now became
unmistakable, and Wheeler saw through the glass that they were all
raising their arms in the rhythmic incantation. From some farmhouse far
away came the frantic barking of dogs.
The change in the quality of the daylight increased, and the crowd
gazed about the horizon in wonder. A purplish darkness, born of
nothing more than a spectral deepening of the sky's blue, pressed down
upon the rumbling hills. Then the lightning flashed again, somewhat
brighter than before, and the crowd fancied that it had showed a
certain mistiness around the altar-stone on the distant height. No
one, however, had been using the telescope at that instant. The
whippoorwills continued their irregular pulsation, and the men of
Dunwich braced themselves tensely against some imponderable menace with
which the atmosphere seemed surcharged.
Without warning came those deep, cracked, raucous vocal sounds which
will never leave the memory of the stricken group who heard them. Not
from any human throat were they born, for the organs of man can yield
no such acoustic perversions. Rather would one have said they came
from the pit itself, had not their source been so unmistakably the
altar-stone on the peak. It is almost erroneous to call them _sounds_
at all, since so much of their ghastly, infra-bass timbre spoke to
dim seats of consciousness and terror far subtler than the ear; yet
one must do so, since their form was indisputably though vaguely that
of half-articulate _words_. They were loud--loud as the rumblings and
the thunder above which they echoed--yet did they come from no visible
being. And because imagination might suggest a conjectural source in
the world of non-visible beings, the huddled crowd at the mountain's
base huddled still closer, and winced as if in expectation of a blow.
"_Ygnaiih ... ygnaiih ... thflthkh'ngha ... Yog-Sothoth...._" rang the
hideous croaking out of space. "_Y'bthnk ... h'ehye ... n'grkdl'lh...._"
The speaking impulse seemed to falter here, as if some frightful
psychic struggle were going on. Henry Wheeler strained his eye at
the telescope, but saw only the three grotesquely silhouetted human
figures on the peak, all moving their arms furiously in strange
gestures as their incantation drew near its culmination. From what
black wells of Acherontic fear or feeling, from what unplumbed gulfs of
extra-cosmic consciousness or obscure, long-latent heredity, were those
half-articulate thunder-croakings drawn? Presently they began to gather
renewed force and coherence as they grew in stark, utter, ultimate
frenzy.
"_Eh-ya-ya-ya-yahaah ... e'yaya-yayaaaa ... ngh'aaaa ... ngh'aaaa_ ...
h'yuh ... h'yuh ... HELP! HELP! ... _ff--ff--ff_--FATHER! FATHER!
YOG-SOTHOTH!..."