Message #3510

[Zodiac]

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 shell 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 manuscript in strange characters, written in
a huge ledger and adjudged a sort of diary because of the spacing 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 pronounced 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--twict 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 Whateleys cattle ever senct Lavinny's black
brat was born. Seth hes 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 assuredly 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 Associated 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 muffled 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 titan 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 passive 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 repetition 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 passage 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 hellish fires and
chant their hellish rituals by the table-like stone on May Eve and
Hallowmass. Now that very stone formed the centre of a vast space
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 assembled 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-shell, 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.