The Dunwich Horror 7

The Dunwich Horror 7

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. 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 formulæ were copied with

feverish haste and in bewildering abundance. Of skepticism 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 formulæ 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.

 

 

9

 

Friday morning Armitage, Rice and Morgan set out by motor for Dunwich,

arriving at the village about 1 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 altarlike 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 nobody'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 perambulans in

tenebris...._ The old librarian rehearsed the formulæ he had memorized,

and clutched the paper containing the alternative ones 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 fetor to the heavy night

air; such a fetor as all three of the watchers had smelled once before,

when they stood above a dying thing that had passed 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 gray, 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

northwest. 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 heerd 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 jest 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 bed 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 ter

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 all barkin' an' whinin' awful.

 

"An' then she let aout a turrible yell, an' says the shed daown the

rud hed jest caved in like the storm hed blowed it over, only the wind

wa'n't strong enough to dew that. Everybody was a-listenin', an' ye

could hear lots o' folks on the wire a-gaspin'. All to onct Sally she