The Dunwich Horror 6

The Dunwich Horror 6

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 and saplings led steeply upward, 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

around 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 center of a vast space

thrashed around by the mountainous horror, whilst upon its slightly

concave surface was a thick fetid 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 surprize. 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.

 

 

8

 

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 languages

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

formulæ 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 formulæ 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 massed 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 _Traité des Chiffres_, Falconer's

_Cryptomenysis Patefacta_, Davys' and Thicknesse's Eighteenth Century

treatises, and such fairly modern authorities as Blair, von Marten,

and Klüber's _Kryptographik_. He interspersed his study of the books

with attacks on the manuscript 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 can not take body without human blood. That upstairs

looks it will have the right cast. I can see it a little when I

make the Yoorish sign or blow the power 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-gray. 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 an 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