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THE DUNWICH HORROR

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Zodiac
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« on: February 27, 2007, 12:51:25 am »

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 manuscript 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
assistance 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 manuscript with the
preliminary assumption 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 mass 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 manuscript 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 manuscript, 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 passage 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 passage 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 manuscript 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 manuscript, 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 a easy chair in his office, but was at the manuscript 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
God'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 entity 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 theml' 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. 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 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 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 formulae 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.


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