"Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras—dire stories of Celæno and the Harpies—may reproduce themselves in the brain of superstition—but they were there before. They are transcripts, types—the archetypes are in us, and eternal. How else should the recital of that which we know in a waking sense to be false come to affect us at all? Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects, considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us bodily injury? Oh, least of all! These terrors are of older standing. They date beyond body—or without the body, they would have been the same.... That the kind of fear here treated is purely spiritual—that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless on earth, that it predominates in the period of our sinless infancy—are difficulties the solution of which might afford some probable insight into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep at least into the shadowland of pre-existence."—Charles Lamb: Witches and Other Night-Fears.
When a traveler in north Massachusetts takes the at the of the Aylesbury just Dean's Corners he comes upon a and country. The ground higher, and the brier-bordered press closer and closer against the of the dusty, road. The trees of the belts too large, and the wild weeds, brambles, and a not often in settled regions. At the same time the planted appear and barren; while the houses wear a of age, squalor, and dilapidation. Without why, one to ask from the gnarled, now and then on or in the sloping, rock-strewn meadows. Those are so and that one somehow by things, with which it would be to have nothing to do. When a in the road the in view above the woods, the of is increased. The are too and to give a of and naturalness, and sometimes the sky with the circles of tall with which most of them are crowned.
Gorges and of problematical the way, and the always of safety. When the road again there are of that one dislikes, and almost at when and the come out in to to the raucous, of bullfrogs. The thin, line of the Miskatonic's upper has an as it close to the of the among which it rises.
As the nearer, one their more than their stone-crowned tops. Those up so and that one they would keep their distance, but there is no road by which to them. Across a one sees a small village the and the of Round Mountain, and at the of an period than that of the region. It is not to see, on a closer glance, that most of the houses are and to ruin, and that the broken-steepled church now the one of the hamlet. One to trust the of the bridge, yet there is no way to avoid it. Once across, it is hard to prevent the of a faint, odor about the village street, as of the and of centuries. It is always a to clear of the place, and to the narrow road around the of the and across the level country till it the Aylesbury pike. Afterward one sometimes that one has been through Dunwich.
Outsiders visit Dunwich as as possible, and since a season of all the pointing toward it have been taken down. The scenery, by any ordinary canon, is more than beautiful; yet there is no of or tourists. Two centuries ago, when talk of witch-blood, Satan-worship, and was not laughed at, it was the to give for the locality. In our age—since the Dunwich of 1928 was up by those who had the town's and the world's at heart—people it without why. Perhaps one reason—though it can not apply to strangers—is that the are now decadent, having gone along that path of so common in many New England backwaters. They have come to a by themselves, with the well-defined and physical of and inbreeding. The of their is low, their of and of half-hidden murders, incests, and of almost and perversity. The old gentry, the two or three families which came from Salem in 1692, have above the level of decay; though many are into the so that only their names as a key to the they disgrace. Some of the Whateleys and Bishops still send their sons to Harvard and Miskatonic, though those sons return to the under which they and their were born.
No one, those who have the the horror, can say just what is the with Dunwich; though old speak of and of the Indians, which they called of out of the great hills, and wild prayers that were answered by loud and from the ground below. In 1747 the Reverend Abijah Hoadley, newly come to the Congregational Church at Dunwich Village, a on the close presence of Satan and his imps, in which he said:
It must be allow'd that these Blasphemies of an Train of Dæmons are Matters of too common Knowledge to be deny'd; the Voices of Azazel and Buzrael, of Beelzebub and Belial, being from under Ground by above a Score of Witnesses now living. I myself did not more than a Fortnight ago catch a very plain Discourse of Powers in the Hill my House; there were a Rattling and Rolling, Groaning, Screeching, and Hissing, such as no Things of this Earth cou'd up, and which must needs have come from those Caves that only black Magick can discover, and only the Divell unlock.
Mr. Hoadley soon after this sermon; but the text, printed in Springfield, is still extant. Noises in the to be reported from year to year, and still a puzzle to and physiographers.
Other tell of near the hill-crowning circles of pillars, and of to be at hours from points at the of the great ravines; while still others try to the Devil's Hop Yard—a bleak, where no tree, shrub, or grass-blade will grow. Then, too, the are of the which on warm nights. It is that the are in wait for the of the dying, and that they time their in with the sufferer's breath. If they can catch the when it the body, they away in laughter; but if they fail, they into a silence.
These tales, of course, are and ridiculous; they come from very old times. Dunwich is old—older by than any of the thirty miles of it. South of the village one may still the and of the Bishop house, which was 1700; the of the at the falls, in 1806, the most modern piece of to be seen. Industry did not here, and the Nineteenth Century movement proved short-lived. Oldest of all are the great of rough-hewn on the hilltops, but these are more to the Indians than to the settlers. Deposits of and bones, these circles and around the table-like on Sentinel Hill, the popular that such were once the burial-places of the Pocumtucks; though many ethnologists, the of such a theory, in the Caucasian.
2
It was in the of Dunwich, in a large and set against a four miles from the village and a mile and a from any other dwelling, that Wilbur Whateley was at 5 a. m. on Sunday, the second of February, 1913. This date was it was Candlemas, which people in Dunwich under another name; and the in the had sounded, and all the dogs of the had persistently, the night before. Less of notice was the that the mother was one of the Whateleys, a deformed, woman of 35, with an and half-insane father about the most of had been in his youth. Lavinia Whateley had no husband, but according to the of the region no attempt to the child; the other of the country might—and did—speculate as as they chose. On the contrary, she proud of the dark, goatish-looking who such a to her own and pink-eyed albinism, and was to many about its powers and future.
Lavinia was one who would be to such things, for she was a to in the and trying to read the great books which her father had through two centuries of Whateleys, and which were fast to pieces with age and worm-holes. She had been to school, but was with of that Old Whateley had her. The had always been of Old Whateley's for black magic, and the death by of Mrs. Whateley when Lavinia was twelve years old had not helped to make the place popular. Isolated among influences, Lavinia was of wild and and occupations; was her much taken up by in a home from which all of order and had long since disappeared.
There was a which above the hill and the dogs' barking on the night Wilbur was born, but no doctor or at his coming. Neighbors nothing of him till a week afterward, when Old Whateley his through the into Dunwich Village and to the group of at Osborn's store. There to be a in the old man—an added of in the brain which him from an object to a of fear—though he was not one to be by any common family event. Amidst it all he some of the later noticed in his daughter, and what he said of the child's was by many of his years afterward.
"I dun't what think—ef Lavinny's boy looked like his pa, he wouldn't look like nothin' ye expeck. Ye needn't think the only is the hereabouts. Lavinny's read some, an' has some the most o' ye only tell abaout. I calc'late her man is as good a husban' as ye this of Aylesbury; an' ef ye as much the as I dew, ye wouldn't no church weddin' her'n. Let me tell ye suthin'—some day folks'll a child o' Lavinny's a-callin' its father's name on the top o' Sentinel Hill!"
The only who saw Wilbur the month of his life were old Zechariah Whateley, of the Whateleys, and Earl Sawyer's common-law wife, Mamie Bishop. Mamie's visit was one of curiosity, and her did to her observations; but Zechariah came to lead a pair of Alderney which Old Whateley had of his son Curtis. This marked the of a of cattle-buying on the part of small Wilbur's family which ended only in 1928, when the Dunwich came and went; yet at no time did the Whateley over-crowded with livestock. There came a period when people were to up and count the that on the above the old farmhouse, and they more than ten or twelve anemic, bloodless-looking specimens. Evidently some or distemper, from the or the and of the barn, a the Whateley animals. Odd or sores, having something of the of incisions, to the visible cattle; and once or twice the months they about the of the gray, old man and his slatternly, crinkly-haired daughter.
In the after Wilbur's birth Lavinia her in the hills, in her arms the child. Public in the Whateleys after most of the country had the baby, and no one to on the which that every day to exhibit. Wilbur's was phenomenal, for three months of his birth he had a size and power not in under a full year of age. His and his a and in an infant, and no one was when, at seven months, he to walk unassisted, with which another month was to remove.
It was after this time—on Hallowe'en—that a great was at midnight on the top of Sentinel Hill where the old table-like its of bones. Considerable talk was started when Silas Bishop—of the Bishops—mentioned having the boy up that hill ahead of his mother about an hour the was remarked. Silas was up a heifer, but he nearly his mission when he the two in the light of his lantern. They almost through the underbrush, and the to think they were unclothed. Afterward he not be sure about the boy, who may have had some of a and a pair of dark or on. Wilbur was alive and without complete and attire, the or of which always to him with anger and alarm. His with his mother and in this respect was very until the of 1928 the most of reasons.
The next January were in the that "Lavinny's black brat" had to talk, and at the age of only eleven months. His speech was of its from the ordinary of the region, and it a from of which many children of three or four might well be proud. The boy was not talkative, yet when he spoke he to some by Dunwich and its denizens. The did not in what he said, or in the he used; but with his or with the organs that produced the spoken sounds. His aspect, too, was for its maturity; for though he his mother's and grandfather's chinlessness, his and nose with the on his large, dark, almost Latin to give him an air of quasi-adulthood and well-nigh intelligence. He was, however, despite his of brilliancy; there being something almost or about his thick lips, large-pored, skin, hair, and ears. He was soon more than his mother and grandsire, and all about him were with to the magic of Old Whateley, and how the once when he the name of Yog-Sothoth in the of a circle of with a great book open in his arms him. Dogs the boy, and he was always to take against their barking menace.
3
Meanwhile Old Whateley to without the size of his herd. He also cut and to repair the parts of his house—a spacious, peaked-roofed end was in the hillside, and three least-ruined ground-floor rooms had always been for himself and his daughter. There must have been of in the old man to him to so much hard labor; and though he still at times, his to the of calculation. It had as soon as Wilbur was born, when one of the many tool-sheds had been put in order, clapboarded, and with a fresh lock. Now, in the upper of the house, he was a no less craftsman. His itself only in his tight boarding-up of all the in the section—though many that it was a thing to with the at all. Less was his fitting-up of another room for his new grandson—a room which saw, though no one was to the closely-boarded upper story. This he with tall, shelving; along which he to arrange, in order, all the books and parts of books which his own day had been in odd of the rooms.
"I some use of 'em," he would say as he to a black-letter page with paste prepared on the stove, "but the boy's to make use of 'em. He'd 'em as well as he for they're goin' to be all of his larnin'."
When Wilbur was a year and seven months old—in September of 1914—his size and were almost alarming. He had as large as a child of four, and was a and talker. He ran about the and hills, and his mother on all her wanderings. At home he would over the pictures and in his grandfather's books, while Old Whateley would and him through long, afternoons. By this time the of the house was finished, and those who it why one of the upper had been into a solid door. It was a window in the of the east end, close against the hill; and no one why a was up to it from the ground. About the period of this work's people noticed that the old tool-house, locked and since Wilbur's birth, had been again. The door open, and when Earl Sawyer once after a cattle-selling call on Old Whateley he was by the odor he encountered—such a stench, he averred, as he had in all his life near the Indian circles on the hills, and which not come from anything or of this earth. But then, the homes and of Dunwich have been for immaculateness.
The months were of visible events, save that to a slow but in the hill noises. On May Eve of 1915 there were which the Aylesbury people felt, the Hallowe'en produced an with of flame—"them Whateleys' doin's"—from the of Sentinel Hill. Wilbur was up uncannily, so that he looked like a boy of ten as he entered his fourth year. He read by himself now; but talked much less than formerly. A settled was him, and for the time people to speak of the look of in his face. He would sometimes an jargon, and in which the with a of terror. The toward him by dogs had now a of wide remark, and he was to a pistol in order to the in safety. His occasional use of the did not his the owners of guardians.
The at the house would often Lavinia alone on the ground floor, while odd and in the boarded-up second story. She would tell what her father and the boy were doing up there, though once she and an of when a fish-peddler the locked door leading to the stairway. That told the store at Dunwich Village that he he a on that above. The reflected, of the door and runway, and of the that so disappeared. Then they as they of Old Whateley's youth, and of the that are called out of the earth when a is at the proper time to gods. It had for some time been noticed that dogs had to and the whole Whateley place as as they and Wilbur personally.
In 1917 the came, and Squire Sawyer Whateley, as of the local board, had hard work a of Dunwich men fit to be sent to a camp. The government, at such of decadence, sent officers and medical to investigate; a survey which New England newspaper readers may still recall. It was the this which set reporters on the of the Whateleys, and the Boston Globe and Arkham Advertiser to print Sunday of Wilbur's precociousness, Old Whateley's black magic, the of books, the sealed second of the farmhouse, and the of the whole region and its hill noises. Wilbur was four and a then, and looked like a of fifteen. His lip and were with a dark down, and his voice had to break. Earl Sawyer out to the Whateley place with sets of reporters and camera men, and called their attention to the which now to from the sealed upper spaces. It was, he said, like a he had in the tool-shed when the house was repaired, and like the which he sometimes he near the circles on the mountains. Dunwich read the when they appeared, and over the mistakes. They wondered, too, why the so much of the that Old Whateley always paid for his in gold pieces of date. The Whateleys had their visitors with ill-concealed distaste, though they did not by a or to talk.
4
For a decade the of the Whateleys into the life of a used to their and to their May Eve and All-Hallow orgies. Twice a year they would light on the top of Sentinel Hill, at which times the would with and violence; while at all there were and doings at the farmhouse. In the of time to in the sealed upper when all the family were downstairs, and they how or how a cow or was sacrificed. There was talk of a to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; but nothing came of it, since Dunwich are to call the world's attention to themselves.
About 1923, when Wilbur was a boy of ten mind, voice, stature, and gave all the of maturity, a second great of on at the old house. It was all the sealed upper part, and from of people that the and his had out all the and the floor, only one open the ground and the roof. They had the great chimney, too, and the range with a stove-pipe.
In the after this event Old Whateley noticed the number of that would come out of Cold Spring Glen to under his window at night. He to the as one of great significance, and told the at Osborn's that he his time had almost come.
"They in with my breathin' naow," he said, "an' I they're gittin' to my soul. They know it's a-goin' aout, an' dun't calc'late to miss it. Yew'll know, boys, I'm gone, they me er not. Ef they dew, they'll keep up a-singin' an' laffin' till o' day. Ef they dun't, they'll like. I them an' the they some sometimes."
On Lammas Night, 1924, Dr. Houghton of Aylesbury was by Wilbur Whateley, who had his one through the and from Osborn's in the village. He Old Whateley in a very state, with a action and that told of an end not off. The and by the bedside, from the overhead there came a of or lapping, as of the on some level beach. The doctor, though, was by the night outside; a of that their message in to the of the man. It was and unnatural—too much, Dr. Houghton, like the whole of the region he had entered so in response to the urgent call.
Toward 1 o'clock Old Whateley consciousness, and his to out a to his grandson.
"More space, Willy, more space soon. Yew grows—an' that faster. It'll be to ye soon, boy. Open up the gates to Yog-Sothoth with the long that ye'll on page 751 of the complete edition, an' then put a match to the prison. Fire from can't it nohaow!"
He was mad. After a pause, which the of their to the while some of the hill came from off, he added another or two.
"Feed it reg'lar, Willy, an' mind the quantity; but dun't let it too fast the place, ef it or ye opens to Yog-Sothoth, it's all over an' no use. Only them from make it an' work.... Only them, the old as wants to come back...."
But speech gave place to again, and Lavinia at the way the the change. It was the same for more than an hour, when the final came. Dr. Houghton over the as the of to silence. Lavinia sobbed, but Wilbur only the hill faintly.
"They didn't him," he in his voice.
Wilbur was by this time a of in his one-sided way, and was by to many in places where and books of old days are kept. He was more and more and around Dunwich of which at his door; but was always able to through or through use of that fund of old-time gold which still, as in his grandfather's time, and for cattle-buying. He was now of aspect, and his height, having the normal adult limit, to that figure. In 1925, when a from Miskatonic University called upon him one day and and puzzled, he was six and three-quarters tall.
Through all the years Wilbur had his half-deformed mother with a contempt, her to go to the with him on May Eve and Hallowmass; and in 1926 the to Mamie Bishop of being of him.
"They's more him as I than I tell ye, Mamie," she said, "an' they's more what I know myself. I Gawd, I dun't know what he wants what he's a-tryin' to dew."
That Hallowe'en the hill louder than ever, and fire on Sentinel Hill as usual, but people paid more attention to the of of which to be assembled near the Whateley farmhouse. After midnight their notes into a of which all the countryside, and not until did they down. Then they vanished, where they were a month overdue. What this meant, no one be till later. None of the to have died—but Lavinia Whateley, the albino, was again.
In the of 1927 Wilbur repaired two in the and moving his books and out to them. Soon Earl Sawyer told the at Osborn's that more was going on in the Whateley farmhouse. Wilbur was all the doors and on the ground floor, and to be taking out as he and his had done four years before. He was in one of the sheds, and Sawyer he and tremulous. People him of something about his mother's disappearance, and very approached his neighborhood now. His had to more than seven feet, and no of its development.
