On Lammas Night, 1924, Dr Houghton of Aylesbury was hastily summoned by Wilbur Whateley, who had lashed his one remaining horse through the darkness and telephoned from Osborn"s in the village. He found Old Whateley in a very grave state, with a cardiac action and stentorous breathing that told of an end not far off. The shapeless albino daughter and oddly bearded grandson stood by the bedside, whilst from the vacant abyss overhead there came a disquieting suggestion of rhythmical surging or lapping, as of the waves on some level beach. The doctor, though, was chiefly disturbed by the chattering night birds outside; a seemingly limitless legion of whippoorwills that cried their endless message in repet.i.tions timed diabolically to the wheezing gasps of the dying man. It was uncanny and unnatural too much, thought Dr Houghton, like the whole of the region he had entered so reluctantly in response to the urgent call.
Towards one o"clock Old Whateley gained consciousness, and interrupted his wheezing to choke out a few words to his grandson.
"More s.p.a.ce, w.i.l.l.y, more s.p.a.ce soon. Yew grows an" that grows faster. It"ll be ready to serve ye soon, boy. Open up the gates to Yog-Sothoth with the long chant with the long chant that ye"ll find on page 751 of the complete edition, an" then put a match to the prison. Fire from airth can"t burn it nohaow."
He was obviously quite mad. After a pause, during which the flock of whippoorwills outside adjusted their cries to the altered tempo while some indications of the strange hill noises came from afar off, he added another sentence or two.
"Feed it reg"lar, w.i.l.l.y, an" mind the quant.i.ty; but dun"t let it grow too fast fer the place, fer ef it busts quarters or gits aout afore ye opens to Yog-Sothoth, it"s all over an" no use. Only them from beyont kin make it multiply an" work...Only them, the old uns as wants to come back..."
But speech gave place to gasps again, and Lavinia screamed at the way the whippoorwills followed the change. It was the same for more than an hour, when the final throaty rattle came. Dr Houghton drew shrunken lids over the glazing grey eyes as the tumult of birds faded imperceptibly to silence. Lavinia sobbed, but Wilbur only chuckled whilst the hill noises rumbled faintly.
"They didn"t git him," he muttered in his heavy ba.s.s voice.
Wilbur was by this time a scholar of really tremendous erudition in his one-sided way, and was quietly known by correspondence to many librarians in distant places where rare and forbidden books of old days are kept. He was more and more hated and dreaded around Dunwich because of certain youthful disappearances which suspicion laid vaguely at his door; but was always able to silence inquiry through fear or through use of that fund of old-time gold which still, as in his grandfather"s time, went forth regularly and increasingly for cattle-buying. He was now tremendously mature of aspect, and his height, having reached the normal adult limit, seemed inclined to wax beyond that figure. In 1925, when a scholarly correspondent from Miskatonic University called upon him one day and departed pale and puzzled, he was fully six and three-quarters feet tall.
Through all the years Wilbur had treated his half-deformed albino mother with a growing contempt, finally forbidding her to go to the hills with him on May Eve and Hallowma.s.s; and in 1926 the poor creature complained to Mamie Bishop of being afraid of him.
"They"s more abaout him as I knows than I kin tell ye, Mamie," she said, "an" naowadays they"s more nor what I know myself. I vaow afur Gawd, I dun"t know what he wants nor what he"s a-tryin" to dew."
That Hallowe"en the hill noises sounded louder than ever, and fire burned on Sentinel Hill as usual; but people paid more attention to the rhythmical screaming of vast flocks of unnaturally belated whippoorwills which seemed to be a.s.sembled near the unlighted Whateley farmhouse. After midnight their shrill notes burst into a kind of pandemoniac cachinnation which filled all the countryside, and not until dawn did they finally quiet down. Then they vanished, hurrying southward where they were fully a month overdue. What this meant, no one could quite be certain till later. None of the countryfolk seemed to have died but poor Lavinia Whateley, the twisted albino, was never seen again.
In the summer of 1927 Wilbur repaired two sheds in the farmyard and began moving his books and effects out to them. Soon afterwards Earl Sawyer told the loungers at Osborn"s that more carpentry was going on in the Whateley farmhouse. Wilbur was closing all the doors and windows on the ground floor, and seemed to be taking out part.i.tions as he and his grandfather had done upstairs four years before. He was living in one of the sheds, and Sawyer thought he seemed unusually worried and tremulous. People generally suspected him of knowing something about his mother"s disappearance, and very few ever approached his neighbourhood now. His height had increased to more than seven feet, and showed no signs of ceasing its development.
V.
The following winter brought an event no less strange than Wilbur"s first trip outside the Dunwich region. Correspondence with the Widener Library at Harvard, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the British Museum, the University of Buenos Aires, and the Library of Miskatonic University at Arkham had failed to get him the loan of a book he desperately wanted; so at length he set out in person, shabby, dirty, bearded, and uncouth of dialect, to consult the copy at Miskatonic, which was the nearest to him geographically. Almost eight feet tall, and carrying a cheap new valise from Osborn"s general store, this dark and goatish gargoyle appeared one day in Arkham in quest of the dreaded volume kept under lock and key at the college library the hideous Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred in Olaus Wormius" Latin version, as printed in Spain in the seventeenth century. He had never seen a city before, but had no thought save to find his way to the university grounds; where, indeed, he pa.s.sed heedlessly by the great white-fanged watchdog that barked with unnatural fury and enmity, and tugged frantically at its stout chain.
Wilbur had with him the priceless but imperfect copy of Dr Dee"s English version which his grandfather had bequeathed him, and upon receiving access to the Latin copy he at once began to collate the two texts with the aim of discovering a certain pa.s.sage which would have come on the 751st page of his own defective volume. This much he could not civilly refrain from telling the librarian the same erudite Henry Armitage (A.M. Miskatonic, Ph.D. Princeton, Litt.D. Johns Hopkins) who had once called at the farm, and who now politely plied him with questions. He was looking, he had to admit, for a kind of formula or incantation containing the frightful name Yog-Sothoth, and it puzzled him to find discrepancies, duplications, and ambiguities which made the matter of determination far from easy. As he copied the formula he finally chose, Dr Armitage looked involuntarily over his shoulder at the open pages; the left-hand one of which, in the Latin version, contained such monstrous threats to the peace and sanity of the world.
Nor is it to be thought (ran the text as Armitage mentally translated it) that man is either the oldest or the last of earth"s masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the s.p.a.ces we know, but between them, they walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They had trod earth"s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man"s truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them. They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraver, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. Ia! Shub-Niggurath! As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again.
Dr. Armitage, a.s.sociating what he was reading with what he had heard of Dunwich and its brooding presences, and of Wilbur Whateley and his dim, hideous aura that stretched from a dubious birth to a cloud of probable matricide, felt a wave of fright as tangible as a draught of the tomb"s cold clamminess. The bent, goatish giant before him seemed like the sp.a.w.n of another planet or dimension; like something only partly of mankind, and linked to black gulfs of essence and ent.i.ty that stretch like t.i.tan phantasms beyond all spheres of force and matter, s.p.a.ce and time. Presently Wilbur raised his head and began speaking in that strange, resonant fashion which hinted at sound-producing organs unlike the run of mankind"s.
"Mr Armitage," he said, "I calc"late I"ve got to take that book home. They"s things in it I"ve got to try under sarten conditions that I can"t git here, en" it "ud be a mortal sin to let a red-tape rule hold me up. Let me take it along, Sir, an" I"ll swar they wun"t n.o.body know the difference. I dun"t need to tell ye I"ll take good keer of it. It wan"t me that put this Dee copy in the shape it is..."
He stopped as he saw firm denial on the librarian"s face, and his own goatish features grew crafty. Armitage, half-ready to tell him he might make a copy of what parts he needed, thought suddenly of the possible consequences and checked himself. There was too much responsibility in giving such a being the key to such blasphemous outer spheres. Whateley saw how things stood, and tried to answer lightly.
"Wal, all right, ef ye feel that way abaout it. Maybe Harvard won"t be so fussy as yew be." And without saying more he rose and strode out of the building, stooping at each doorway.
Armitage heard the savage yelping of the great watchdog, and studied Whateley"s gorilla-like lope as he crossed the bit of campus visible from the window. He thought of the wild tales he had heard, and recalled the old Sunday stories in the Advertiser; these things, and the lore he had picked up from Dunwich rustics and villagers during his one visit there. Unseen things not of earth or at least not of tridimensional earth rushed foetid and horrible through New England"s glens, and brooded obscenely on the mountain tops. Of this he had long felt certain. Now he seemed to sense the close presence of some terrible part of the intruding horror, and to glimpse a h.e.l.lish advance in the black dominion of the ancient and once pa.s.sive nightmare. He locked away the Necronomicon with a shudder of disgust, but the room still reeked with an unholy and unidentifiable stench. "As a foulness shall ye know them," he quoted. Yes the odour was the same as that which had sickened him at the Whateley farmhouse less than three years before. He thought of Wilbur, goatish and ominous, once again, and laughed mockingly at the village rumours of his parentage.
"Inbreeding?" Armitage muttered half-aloud to himself. "Great G.o.d, what simpletons! Show them Arthur Machen"s Great G.o.d Pan and they"ll think it a common Dunwich scandal! But what thing what cursed shapeless influence on or off this three-dimensional earth was Wilbur Whateley"s father? Born on Candlemas nine months after May Eve of 1912, when the talk about the queer earth noises reached clear to Arkham what walked on the mountains that May night? What Roodmas horror fastened itself on the world in half-human flesh and blood?"
During the ensuing weeks Dr Armitage set about to collect all possible data on Wilbur Whateley and the formless presences around Dunwich. He got in communication with Dr Houghton of Aylesbury, who had attended Old Whateley in his last illness, and found much to ponder over in the grandfather"s last words as quoted by the physician. A visit to Dunwich Village failed to bring out much that was new; but a close survey of the Necronomicon, in those parts which Wilbur had sought so avidly, seemed to supply new and terrible clues to the nature, methods, and desires of the strange evil so vaguely threatening this planet. Talks with several students of archaic lore in Boston, and letters to many others elsewhere, gave him a growing amazement which pa.s.sed slowly through varied degrees of alarm to a state of really acute spiritual fear. As the summer drew on he felt dimly that something ought to be done about the lurking terrors of the upper Miskatonic valley, and about the monstrous being known to the human world as Wilbur Whateley.
VI.
The Dunwich horror itself came between Lammas and the equinox in 1928, and Dr Armitage was among those who witnessed its monstrous prologue. He had heard, meanwhile, of Whateley"s grotesque trip to Cambridge, and of his frantic efforts to borrow or copy from the Necronomicon at the Widener Library. Those efforts had been in vain, since Armitage had issued warnings of the keenest intensity to all librarians having charge of the dreaded volume. Wilbur had been shockingly nervous at Cambridge; anxious for the book, yet almost equally anxious to get home again, as if he feared the results of being away long.
Early in August the half-expected outcome developed, and in the small hours of the 3rd Dr Armitage was awakened suddenly by the wild, fierce cries of the savage watchdog on the college campus. Deep and terrible, the snarling, half-mad growls and barks continued; always in mounting volume, but with hideously significant pauses. Then there rang out a scream from a wholly different throat such a scream as roused half the sleepers of Arkham and haunted their dreams ever afterwards such a scream as could come from no being born of earth, or wholly of earth.
Armitage, hastening into some clothing and rushing across the street and lawn to the college buildings, saw that others were ahead of him; and heard the echoes of a burglar-alarm still shrilling from the library. An open window showed black and gaping in the moonlight. What had come had indeed completed its entrance; for the barking and the screaming, now fast fading into a mixed low growling and moaning, proceeded unmistakably from within. Some instinct warned Armitage that what was taking place was not a thing for unfortified eyes to see, so he brushed back the crowd with authority as he unlocked the vestibule door. Among the others he saw Professor Warren Rice and Dr Francis Morgan, men to whom he had told some of his conjectures and misgivings; and these two he motioned to accompany him inside. The inward sounds, except for a watchful, droning whine from the dog, had by this time quite subsided; but Armitage now perceived with a sudden start that a loud chorus of whippoorwills among the shrubbery had commenced a d.a.m.nably rhythmical piping, as if in unison with the last breaths of a dying man.
The building was full of a frightful stench which Dr Armitage knew too well, and the three men rushed across the hall to the small genealogical reading-room whence the low whining came. For a second n.o.body dared to turn on the light, then Armitage summoned up his courage and snapped the switch. One of the three it is not certain which shrieked aloud at what sprawled before them among disordered tables and overturned chairs. Professor Rice declares that he wholly lost consciousness for an instant, though he did not stumble or fall.
The thing that lay half-bent on its side in a foetid pool of greenish-yellow ichor and tarry stickiness was almost nine feet tall, and the dog had torn off all the clothing and some of the skin. It was not quite dead, but twitched silently and spasmodically while its chest heaved in monstrous unison with the mad piping of the expectant whippoorwills outside. Bits of shoe-leather and fragments of apparel were scattered about the room, and just inside the window an empty canvas sack lay where it had evidently been thrown. Near the central desk a revolver had fallen, a dented but undischarged cartridge later explaining why it had not been fired. The thing itself, however, crowded out all other images at the time. It would be trite and not wholly accurate to say that no human pen could describe it, but one may properly say that it could not be vividly visualized by anyone whose ideas of aspect and contour are too closely bound up with the common life-forms of this planet and of the three known dimensions. It was partly human, beyond a doubt, with very manlike hands and head, and the goatish, chinless face had the stamp of the Whateleys upon it. But the torso and lower parts of the body were teratologically fabulous, so that only generous clothing could ever have enabled it to walk on earth unchallenged or uneradicated.
Above the waist it was semi-anthropomorphic; though its chest, where the dog"s rending paws still rested watchfully, had the leathery, reticulated hide of a crocodile or alligator. The back was piebald with yellow and black, and dimly suggested the squamous covering of certain snakes. Below the waist, though, it was the worst; for here all human resemblance left off and sheer phantasy began. The skin was thickly covered with coa.r.s.e black fur, and from the abdomen a score of long greenish-grey tentacles with red sucking mouths protruded limply.
Their arrangement was odd, and seemed to follow the symmetries of some cosmic geometry unknown to earth or the solar system. On each of the hips, deep set in a kind of pinkish, ciliated orbit, was what seemed to be a rudimentary eye; whilst in lieu of a tail there depended a kind of trunk or feeler with purple annular markings, and with many evidences of being an undeveloped mouth or throat. The limbs, save for their black fur, roughly resembled the hind legs of prehistoric earth"s giant saurians, and terminated in ridgy-veined pads that were neither hooves nor claws. When the thing breathed, its tail and tentacles rhythmically changed colour, as if from some circulatory cause normal to the non-human greenish tinge, whilst in the tail it was manifest as a yellowish appearance which alternated with a sickly grayish-white in the s.p.a.ces between the purple rings. Of genuine blood there was none; only the foetid greenish-yellow ichor which trickled along the painted floor beyond the radius of the stickiness, and left a curious discoloration behind it.
As the presence of the three men seemed to rouse the dying thing, it began to mumble without turning or raising its head. Dr Armitage made no written record of its mouthings, but a.s.serts confidently that nothing in English was uttered. At first the syllables defied all correlation with any speech of earth, but towards the last there came some disjointed fragments evidently taken from the Necronomicon, that monstrous blasphemy in quest of which the thing had perished. These fragments, as Armitage recalls them, ran something like "N"gai, n"gha"ghaa, bugg-shoggog, y"hah: Yog-Sothoth, Yog-Sothoth..." They trailed off into nothingness as the whippoorwills shrieked in rhythmical crescendos of unholy antic.i.p.ation.
Then came a halt in the gasping, and the dog raised its head in a long, lugubrious howl. A change came over the yellow, goatish face of the prostrate thing, and the great black eyes fell in appallingly. Outside the window the shrilling of the whippoorwills had suddenly ceased, and above the murmurs of the gathering crowd there came the sound of a panic-struck whirring and fluttering. Against the moon vast clouds of feathery watchers rose and raced from sight, frantic at that which they had sought for prey.
All at once the dog started up abruptly, gave a frightened bark, and leaped nervously out of the window by which it had entered. A cry rose from the crowd, and Dr Armitage shouted to the men outside that no one must be admitted till the police or medical examiner came. He was thankful that the windows were just too high to permit of peering in, and drew the dark curtains carefully down over each one. By this time two policemen had arrived; and Dr Morgan, meeting them in the vestibule, was urging them for their own sakes to postpone entrance to the stench-filled reading-room till the examiner came and the prostrate thing could be covered up.
Meanwhile frightful changes were taking place on the floor. One need not describe the kind and rate of shrinkage and disintegration that occurred before the eyes of Dr Armitage and Professor Rice; but it is permissible to say that, aside from the external appearance of face and hands, the really human element in Wilbur Whateley must have been very small. When the medical examiner came, there was only a sticky whitish ma.s.s on the painted boards, and the monstrous odour had nearly disappeared. Apparently Whateley had had no skull or bony skeleton; at least, in any true or stable sense. He had taken somewhat after his unknown father.
VII.
Yet all this was only the prologue of the actual Dunwich horror. Formalities were gone through by bewildered officials, abnormal details were duly kept from press and public, and men were sent to Dunwich and Aylesbury to look up property and notify any who might be heirs of the late Wilbur Whateley. They found the countryside in great agitation, both because of the growing rumblings beneath the domed hills, and because of the unwonted stench and the surging, lapping sounds which came increasingly from the great empty sh.e.l.l formed by Whateley"s boarded-up farmhouse. Earl Sawyer, who tended the horse and cattle during Wilbur"s absence, had developed a woefully acute case of nerves. The officials devised excuses not to enter the noisome boarded place; and were glad to confine their survey of the deceased"s living quarters, the newly mended sheds, to a single visit. They filed a ponderous report at the courthouse in Aylesbury, and litigations concerning heirship are said to be still in progress amongst the innumerable Whateleys, decayed and undecayed, of the upper Miskatonic valley.
An almost interminable ma.n.u.script in strange characters, written in a huge ledger and adjudged a sort of diary because of the s.p.a.cing and the variations in ink and penmanship, presented a baffling puzzle to those who found it on the old bureau which served as its owner"s desk. After a week of debate it was sent to Miskatonic University, together with the deceased"s collection of strange books, for study and possible translation; but even the best linguists soon saw that it was not likely to be unriddled with ease. No trace of the ancient gold with which Wilbur and Old Whateley had always paid their debts has yet been discovered.
It was in the dark of September ninth that the horror broke loose. The hill noises had been very p.r.o.nounced during the evening, and dogs barked frantically all night. Early risers on the tenth noticed a peculiar stench in the air. About seven o"clock Luther Brown, the hired boy at George Corey"s, between Cold Spring Glen and the village, rushed frenziedly back from his morning trip to Ten-Acre Meadow with the cows. He was almost convulsed with fright as he stumbled into the kitchen; and in the yard outside the no less frightened herd were pawing and lowing pitifully, having followed the boy back in the panic they shared with him. Between gasps Luther tried to stammer out his tale to Mrs Corey.
"Up thar in the rud beyont the glen, Mis" Corey they"s suthin" ben thar! It smells like thunder, an" all the bushes an" little trees is pushed back from the rud like they"d a haouse ben moved along of it. An" that ain"t the wust, nuther. They"s prints in the rud, Mis" Corey great raound prints as big as barrel-heads, all sunk dawon deep like a elephant had ben along, only they"s a sight more nor four feet could make! I looked at one or two afore I run, an" I see every one was covered with lines spreadin" aout from one place, like as if big palm-leaf fans twice or three times as big as any they is hed of ben paounded dawon into the rud. An" the smell was awful, like what it is around Wizard Whateley"s ol" haouse..."
Here he faltered, and seemed to shiver afresh with the fright that had sent him flying home. Mrs Corey, unable to extract more information, began telephoning the neighbours; thus starting on its rounds the overture of panic that heralded the major terrors. When she got Sally Sawyer, housekeeper at Seth Bishop"s, the nearest place to Whateley"s, it became her turn to listen instead of transmit; for Sally"s boy Chauncey, who slept poorly, had been up on the hill towards Whateley"s, and had dashed back in terror after one look at the place, and at the pasturage where Mr Bishop"s cows had been left out all night.
"Yes, Mis" Corey," came Sally"s tremulous voice over the party wire, "Cha"ncey he just come back a-postin", and couldn"t half talk fer bein" scairt! He says Ol" Whateley"s house is all bowed up, with timbers scattered raound like they"d ben dynamite inside; only the bottom floor ain"t through, but is all covered with a kind o" tar-like stuff that smells awful an" drips daown offen the aidges onto the graoun" whar the side timbers is blowed away. An" they"s awful kinder marks in the yard, tew great raound marks bigger raound than a hogshead, an" all sticky with stuff like is on the browed-up haouse. Cha"ncey he says they leads off into the medders, whar a great swath wider"n a barn is matted daown, an" all the stun walls tumbled every whichway wherever it goes.
"An" he says, says he, Mis" Corey, as haow he sot to look fer Seth"s caows, frightened ez he was an" faound "em in the upper pasture nigh the Devil"s Hop Yard in an awful shape. Haff on "em"s clean gone, an" nigh haff o" them that"s left is sucked most dry o" blood, with sores on "em like they"s ben on Whateley"s cattle ever senct Lavinny"s black brat was born. Seth he"s gone aout naow to look at "em, though I"ll vaow he won"t keer ter git very nigh Wizard Whateley"s! Cha"ncey didn"t look keerful ter see whar the big matted-daown swath led arter it leff the pasturage, but he says he thinks it p"inted towards the glen rud to the village.
"I tell ye, Mis" Corey, they"s suthin" abroad as hadn"t orter be abroad, an" I for one think that black Wilbur Whateley, as come to the bad end he deserved, is at the bottom of the breedin" of it. He wa"n"t all human hisself, I allus says to everybody; an" I think he an" Ol" Whateley must a raised suthin" in that there nailed-up haouse as ain"t even so human as he was. They"s allus ben unseen things araound Dunwich livin" things as ain"t human an" ain"t good fer human folks.
"The graoun" was a-talkin" las" night, an" towards mornin" Cha"ncey he heered the whippoorwills so laoud in Col" Spring Glen he couldn"t sleep nun. Then he thought he heered another faint-like saound over towards Wizard Whateley"s a kinder rippin" or tearin" o" wood, like some big box er crate was bein" opened fur off. What with this an" that, he didn"t git to sleep at all till sunup, an" no sooner was he up this mornin", but he"s got to go over to Whateley"s an" see what"s the matter. He see enough I tell ye, Mis" Corey! This dun"t mean no good, an" I think as all the men-folks ought to git up a party an" do suthin". I know suthin" awful"s abaout, an" feel my time is nigh, though only Gawd knows jest what it is.
"Did your Luther take accaount o" whar them big tracks led tew? No? Wal, Mis" Corey, ef they was on the glen rud this side o" the glen, an" ain"t got to your haouse yet, I calc"late they must go into the glen itself. They would do that. I allus says Col" Spring Glen ain"t no healthy nor decent place. The whippoorwills an" fireflies there never did act like they was creaters o" Gawd, an" they"s them as says ye kin hear strange things a-rushin" an" a-talkin" in the air dawon thar ef ye stand in the right place, atween the rock falls an" Bear"s Den."
By that noon fully three-quarters of the men and boys of Dunwich were trooping over the roads and meadows between the newmade Whateley ruins and Cold Spring Glen, examining in horror the vast, monstrous prints, the maimed Bishop cattle, the strange, noisome wreck of the farmhouse, and the bruised, matted vegetation of the fields and roadside. Whatever had burst loose upon the world had a.s.suredly gone down into the great sinister ravine; for all the trees on the banks were bent and broken, and a great avenue had been gouged in the precipice-hanging underbrush. It was as though a house, launched by an avalanche, had slid down through the tangled growths of the almost vertical slope. From below no sound came, but only a distant, undefinable foetor; and it is not to be wondered at that the men preferred to stay on the edge and argue, rather than descend and beard the unknown Cyclopean horror in its lair. Three dogs that were with the party had barked furiously at first, but seemed cowed and reluctant when near the glen. Someone telephoned the news to the Aylesbury Transcript; but the editor, accustomed to wild tales from Dunwich, did no more than concoct a humorous paragraph about it; an item soon afterwards reproduced by the a.s.sociated Press.
That night everyone went home, and every house and barn was barricaded as stoutly as possible. Needless to say, no cattle were allowed to remain in open pasturage. About two in the morning a frightful stench and the savage barking of the dogs awakened the household at Elmer Frye"s, on the eastern edge of Cold Spring Glen, and all agreed that they could hear a sort of m.u.f.fled swishing or lapping sound from somewhere outside. Mrs Frye proposed telephoning the neighbours, and Elmer was about to agree when the noise of splintering wood burst in upon their deliberations. It came, apparently, from the barn; and was quickly followed by a hideous screaming and stamping amongst the cattle. The dogs slavered and crouched close to the feet of the fear-numbed family. Frye lit a lantern through force of habit, but knew it would be death to go out into that black farmyard. The children and the women-folk whimpered, kept from screaming by some obscure, vestigial instinct of defence which told them their lives depended on silence. At last the noise of the cattle subsided to a pitiful moaning, and a great snapping, crashing, and crackling ensued. The Fryes, huddled together in the sitting-room, did not dare to move until the last echoes died away far down in Cold Spring Glen. Then, amidst the dismal moans from the stable and the daemoniac piping of the late whippoorwills in the glen, Selina Frye tottered to the telephone and spread what news she could of the second phase of the horror.
The next day all the countryside was in a panic; and cowed, uncommunicative groups came and went where the fiendish thing had occurred. Two t.i.tan swaths of destruction stretched from the glen to the Frye farmyard, monstrous prints covered the bare patches of ground, and one side of the old red barn had completely caved in. Of the cattle, only a quarter could be found and identified. Some of these were in curious fragments, and all that survived had to be shot. Earl Sawyer suggested that help be asked from Aylesbury or Arkham, but others maintained it would be of no use. Old Zebulon Whateley, of a branch that hovered about halfway between soundness and decadence, made darkly wild suggestions about rites that ought to be practiced on the hill-tops. He came of a line where tradition ran strong, and his memories of chantings in the great stone circles were not altogether connected with Wilbur and his grandfather.
Darkness fell upon a stricken countryside too pa.s.sive to organize for real defence. In a few cases closely related families would band together and watch in the gloom under one roof; but in general there was only a repet.i.tion of the barricading of the night before, and a futile, ineffective gesture of loading muskets and setting pitchforks handily about. Nothing, however, occurred except some hill noises; and when the day came there were many who hoped that the new horror had gone as swiftly as it had come. There were even bold souls who proposed an offensive expedition down in the glen, though they did not venture to set an actual example to the still reluctant majority.
When night came again the barricading was repeated, though there was less huddling together of families. In the morning both the Frye and the Seth Bishop households reported excitement among the dogs and vague sounds and stenches from afar, while early explorers noted with horror a fresh set of the monstrous tracks in the road skirting Sentinel Hill. As before, the sides of the road showed a bruising indicative of the blasphemously stupendous bulk of the horror; whilst the conformation of the tracks seemed to argue a pa.s.sage in two directions, as if the moving mountain had come from Cold Spring Glen and returned to it along the same path. At the base of the hill a thirty-foot swath of crushed shrubbery saplings led steeply upwards, and the seekers gasped when they saw that even the most perpendicular places did not deflect the inexorable trail. Whatever the horror was, it could scale a sheer stony cliff of almost complete verticality; and as the investigators climbed round to the hill"s summit by safer routes they saw that the trail ended or rather, reversed there.
It was here that the Whateleys used to build their h.e.l.lish fires and chant their h.e.l.lish rituals by the table-like stone on May Eve and Hallowma.s.s. Now that very stone formed the centre of a vast s.p.a.ce thrashed around by the mountainous horror, whilst upon its slightly concave surface was a thick and foetid deposit of the same tarry stickiness observed on the floor of the ruined Whateley farmhouse when the horror escaped. Men looked at one another and muttered. Then they looked down the hill. Apparently the horror had descended by a route much the same as that of its ascent. To speculate was futile. Reason, logic, and normal ideas of motivation stood confounded. Only old Zebulon, who was not with the group, could have done justice to the situation or suggested a plausible explanation.
Thursday night began much like the others, but it ended less happily. The whippoorwills in the glen had screamed with such unusual persistence that many could not sleep, and about 3 a.m. all the party telephones rang tremulously. Those who took down their receivers heard a fright-mad voice shriek out, "Help, oh, my Gawd!..." and some thought a crashing sound followed the breaking off of the exclamation. There was nothing more. No one dared do anything, and no one knew till morning whence the call came. Then those who had heard it called everyone on the line, and found that only the Fryes did not reply. The truth appeared an hour later, when a hastily a.s.sembled group of armed men trudged out to the Frye place at the head of the glen. It was horrible, yet hardly a surprise. There were more swaths and monstrous prints, but there was no longer any house. It had caved in like an egg-sh.e.l.l, and amongst the ruins nothing living or dead could be discovered. Only a stench and a tarry stickiness. The Elmer Fryes had been erased from Dunwich.
VIII.
In the meantime a quieter yet even more spiritually poignant phase of the horror had been blackly unwinding itself behind the closed door of a shelf-lined room in Arkham. The curious ma.n.u.script record or diary of Wilbur Whateley, delivered to Miskatonic University for translation had caused much worry and bafflement among the experts in language both ancient and modern; its very alphabet, notwithstanding a general resemblance to the heavily shaded Arabic used in Mesopotamia, being absolutely unknown to any available authority. The final conclusion of the linguists was that the text represented an artificial alphabet, giving the effect of a cipher; though none of the usual methods of cryptographic solution seemed to furnish any clue, even when applied on the basis of every tongue the writer might conceivably have used. The ancient books taken from Whateley"s quarters, while absorbingly interesting and in several cases promising to open up new and terrible lines of research among philosophers and men of science, were of no a.s.sistance whatever in this matter. One of them, a heavy tome with an iron clasp, was in another unknown alphabet this one of a very different cast, and resembling Sanskrit more than anything else. The old ledger was at length given wholly into the charge of Dr Armitage, both because of his peculiar interest in the Whateley matter, and because of his wide linguistic learning and skill in the mystical formulae of antiquity and the middle ages.
Armitage had an idea that the alphabet might be something esoterically used by certain forbidden cults which have come down from old times, and which have inherited many forms and traditions from the wizards of the Saracenic world. That question, however, he did not deem vital; since it would be unnecessary to know the origin of the symbols if, as he suspected, they were used as a cipher in a modern language. It was his belief that, considering the great amount of text involved, the writer would scarcely have wished the trouble of using another speech than his own, save perhaps in certain special formulae and incantations. Accordingly he attacked the ma.n.u.script with the preliminary a.s.sumption that the bulk of it was in English.
Dr Armitage knew, from the repeated failures of his colleagues, that the riddle was a deep and complex one; and that no simple mode of solution could merit even a trial. All through late August he fortified himself with the ma.s.s lore of cryptography; drawing upon the fullest resources of his own library, and wading night after night amidst the arcana of Trithemius" Poligraphia, Giambattista Porta"s De Furtivis Literarum Notis, De Vigenere"s Traite des Chiffres, Falconer"s Cryptomenysis Patefacta, Davys" and Thicknesse"s eighteenth-century treatises, and such fairly modern authorities as Blair, van Marten and Kluber"s script itself, and in time became convinced that he had to deal with one of those subtlest and most ingenious of cryptograms, in which many separate lists of corresponding letters are arranged like the multiplication table, and the message built up with arbitrary key-words known only to the initiated. The older authorities seemed rather more helpful than the newer ones, and Armitage concluded that the code of the ma.n.u.script was one of great antiquity, no doubt handed down through a long line of mystical experimenters. Several times he seemed near daylight, only to be set back by some unforeseen obstacle. Then, as September approached, the clouds began to clear. Certain letters, as used in certain parts of the ma.n.u.script, emerged definitely and unmistakably; and it became obvious that the text was indeed in English.
On the evening of September second the last major barrier gave way, and Dr Armitage read for the first time a continuous pa.s.sage of Wilbur Whateley"s annals. It was in truth a diary, as all had thought; and it was couched in a style clearly showing the mixed occult erudition and general illiteracy of the strange being who wrote it. Almost the first long pa.s.sage that Armitage deciphered, an entry dated November 26, 1916, proved highly startling and disquieting. It was written, he remembered, by a child of three and a half who looked like a lad of twelve or thirteen.
Today learned the Aklo for the Sabaoth (it ran), which did not like, it being answerable from the hill and not from the air. That upstairs more ahead of me than I had thought it would be, and is not like to have much earth brain. Shot Elam Hutchins"s collie Jack when he went to bite me, and Elam says he would kill me if he dast. I guess he won"t. Grandfather kept me saying the Dho formula last night, and I think I saw the inner city at the 2 magnetic poles. I shall go to those poles when the earth is cleared off, if I can"t break through with the Dho-Hna formula when I commit it. They from the air told me at Sabbat that it will be years before I can clear off the earth, and I guess grandfather will be dead then, so I shall have to learn all the angles of the planes and all the formulas between the Yr and the Nhhngr. They from outside will help, but they cannot take body without human blood. That upstairs looks it will have the right cast. I can see it a little when I make the Voorish sign or blow the powder of Ibn Ghazi at it, and it is near like them at May Eve on the Hill. The other face may wear off some. I wonder how I shall look when the earth is cleared and there are no earth beings on it. He that came with the Aklo Sabaoth said I may be transfigured there being much of outside to work on.
Morning found Dr Armitage in a cold sweat of terror and a frenzy of wakeful concentration. He had not left the ma.n.u.script all night, but sat at his table under the electric light turning page after page with shaking hands as fast as he could decipher the cryptic text. He had nervously telephoned his wife he would not be home, and when she brought him a breakfast from the house he could scarcely dispose of a mouthful. All that day he read on, now and then halted maddeningly as a reapplication of the complex key became necessary. Lunch and dinner were brought him, but he ate only the smallest fraction of either. Toward the middle of the next night he drowsed off in his chair, but soon woke out of a tangle of nightmares almost as hideous as the truths and menaces to man"s existence that he had uncovered.
On the morning of September fourth Professor Rice and Dr Morgan insisted on seeing him for a while, and departed trembling and ashen-grey. That evening he went to bed, but slept only fitfully. Wednesday the next day he was back at the ma.n.u.script, and began to take copious notes both from the current sections and from those he had already deciphered. In the small hours of that night he slept a little in an easy chair in his office, but was at the ma.n.u.script again before dawn. Some time before noon his physician, Dr Hartwell, called to see him and insisted that he cease work. He refused; intimating that it was of the most vital importance for him to complete the reading of the diary and promising an explanation in due course of time. That evening, just as twilight fell, he finished his terrible perusal and sank back exhausted. His wife, bringing his dinner, found him in a half-comatose state; but he was conscious enough to warn her off with a sharp cry when he saw her eyes wander toward the notes he had taken. Weakly rising, he gathered up the scribbled papers and sealed them all in a great envelope, which he immediately placed in his inside coat pocket. He had sufficient strength to get home, but was so clearly in need of medical aid that Dr Hartwell was summoned at once. As the doctor put him to bed he could only mutter over and over again, "But what, in G.o.d"s name, can we do?"
Dr Armitage slept, but was partly delirious the next day. He made no explanations to Hartwell, but in his calmer moments spoke of the imperative need of a long conference with Rice and Morgan. His wilder wanderings were very startling indeed, including frantic appeals that something in a boarded-up farmhouse be destroyed, and fantastic references to some plan for the extirpation of the entire human race and all animal and vegetable life from the earth by some terrible elder race of beings from another dimension. He would shout that the world was in danger, since the Elder Things wished to strip it and drag it away from the solar system and cosmos of matter into some other plane or phase of ent.i.ty from which it had once fallen, vigintillions of aeons ago. At other times he would call for the dreaded Necronomicon and the Daemonolatreia of Remigius, in which he seemed hopeful of finding some formula to check the peril he conjured up.
"Stop them, stop them!" he would shout. "Those Whateleys meant to let them in, and the worst of all is left! Tell Rice and Morgan we must do something it"s a blind business, but I know how to make the powder...It hasn"t been fed since the second of August, when Wilbur came here to his death, and at that rate..."
But Armitage had a sound physique despite his seventy-three years, and 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. Sat.u.r.day 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 formulae were copied with feverish haste and in bewildering abundance. Of scepticism 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 formulae and mixing chemicals obtained from the college laboratory. The more he reflected on the h.e.l.lish diary, the more he was inclined to doubt the efficacy of any material agent in stamping out the ent.i.ty which Wilbur Whateley had left behind him the earth-threatening ent.i.ty which, unknown to him, was to burst forth in a few hours and become the memorable Dunwich horror.
Monday was a repet.i.tion 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 a.s.sociated 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.
IX.
Friday morning Armitage, Rice, and Morgan set out by motor for Dunwich, arriving at the village about one 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 altar-like 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 n.o.body"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 perambuians in tenebris... The old librarian rehea.r.s.ed the formulae he had memorized, and clutched the paper containing the alternative one 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 foetor to the heavy night air; such a foetor as all three of the watchers had smelled once before, when they stood above a dying thing that had pa.s.sed 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 grey, 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 north-west. 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 heered 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 just 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 hed 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 to 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 barkin" an" whinin" awful.
"An" then she let aout a turrible yell, an" says the shed daown the rud had jest caved in like the storm bed blowed it over, only the wind w"an"t strong enough to dew that. Everybody was a-listenin", an" we could hear lots o" folks on the wire a-gaspin". All to onct Sally she yelled again, an" says the front yard picket fence hed just crumbled up, though they wa"n"t no sign o" what done it. Then everybody on the line could hear Cha"ncey an" old Seth Bishop a-yellin" tew, an" Sally was shriekin" aout that suthin" heavy hed struck the haouse not lightnin" nor nothin", but suthin" heavy again" the front, that kep" a-launchin" itself agin an" agin, though ye couldn"t see nothin" 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 hear a turrible crashin" an" a hull flock o" screaming...jes 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" rounded up as many able-bodied men-folks as we could git, 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 jedgment 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 rea.s.suring 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 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 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 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" across 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 towards 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 pa.s.sed by. Only a few moments were consumed in surveying the ruins just round the bend. It was the Frye incident all over again, and nothing dead or living was found in either of the collapsed sh.e.l.ls which had been the Bishop house and barn. No one cared to remain there amidst the stench and tarry stickiness, but all turned instinctively to the line of horrible prints leading on towards the wrecked Whateley farmhouse and the altar-crowned slopes of Sentinel Hill.
As the men pa.s.sed 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 daemon. 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, pa.s.sing the gla.s.s 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 gra.s.s an" bushes is a"movin"! It"s a-goin" up slow-like creepin" up ter the top this minute, heaven only knows what fur!"
Then the germ of panic seemed to spread among the seekers. It was one thing to chase the nameless ent.i.ty, 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.
X.
In the end the three men from Arkham old, white-bearded Dr Armitage, stocky, iron-grey 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 gla.s.s was pa.s.sed round. It was hard going, and Armitage had to be helped more than once. High above the toiling group the great swath trembled as its h.e.l.lish maker repa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed it.
Then Wesley Corey, who had taken the gla.s.s, 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 his sprayer was expected to give the unseen horror a moment of visibility. Two or three men shut their eyes, but Curtis Whateley s.n.a.t.c.hed back the telescope and strained his vision to the utmost. He saw that Rice, from the party"s point of advantage above and behind the ent.i.ty, had an excellent chance of spreading the potent powder with marvellous effect.