The Dunwich Horror 5

The Dunwich Horror 5

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 elements in Wilbur Whateley must have been

very small. When the medical examiner came, there was only a sticky

whitish mass on the painted boards, and the monstrous odor 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.

 

 

7

 

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 wofully 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 court-house 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 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 7 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 daown 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 daown into the rud. An' the smell was awful, like what it is

araound 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 neighbors; 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 toward 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-post-in', and couldn't haff talk fer

bein' scairt! He says Ol' Whateley's haouse is all blowed up, with

the timbers scattered raound like they'd ben dynamite inside; only

the bottom floor ain't through, but is all covered with a kind o'

tarlike 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 blowed-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

which way wherever it goes.

 

"An' he says, says he, Mis' Corey, as haow he sot to look fer Seth's

caows, frighted 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

wun'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 fer one think that black Wilbur Whateley, as come to

the bad eend he desarved, 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' lass night, an' towards mornin' Cha'ncey

he heerd the whippoorwills so laoud in Col' Spring Glen he couldn't

sleep none. Then he thought he heerd another faintlike saound over

towards Wizard Whateley's--a kinder rippin' or tearin' o' wood, like

some big box or 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 daown 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 new-made 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 road-sides.

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 fetor; 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 afterward 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 2 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 neighbors, 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 defense 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 demoniac piping of 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 about 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 half-way between soundness and decadence,

made darkly wild suggestions about rites that ought to be practised on