Chapter 3

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
the hilltops. He came of a line where tradition ran strong, and his
memories of chantings in the great stone circles were not altogether
connected with Wilbur and his grandfather.

Darkness fell upon a stricken countryside too passive to organize
for real defense. In a few cases closely related families would band
together and watch in the gloom under one roof; but, in general there
was only a repetition of the barricading of the night before, and a
futile, ineffective gesture of loading muskets and setting pitchforks
handily about. Nothing, however, occurred except some hill noises; and
when the day came there were many who hoped that the new horror had
gone as swiftly as it had come. There were even bold souls who proposed
an offensive expedition down in the glen, though they did not venture
to set an actual example to the still reluctant majority.

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
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 eons
ago. At other times he would call for the dreaded _Necronomicon_ and
the _Dæmonolatreia_ of Remigius, in which he seemed hopeful of finding
some formula to check the peril he conjured up.

"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
yelled agin, an' says the front yard picket fence bed jest crumpled up,
though they wa'n't no sign o' what done it. Then everybody on the line
could hear Cha'ncey an' ol' Seth Bishop a-yellin', tew, an' Sally was
shriekin' aout that suthin' heavy hed struck the haouse--not lightnin'
nor nothin', but suthin' heavy agin' the front, that kep' a-launchin'
itself agin an' agin, though ye couldn't see nuthin' aout the front
winders. An' then ... an' then...."

Lines of fright deepened on every face; and Armitage, shaken as he was,
had barely poise enough to prompt the speaker.

"An' then ... Sally she yelled aout, 'O help, the haouse is a-cavin'
in' ... an' on the wire we could hoar a turrible crashin', an' a hull
flock o' screamin' ... jest like when Elmer Frye's place was took, only
wuss...."

The man paused, and another of the crowd spoke.

"That's all--not a saound nor squeak over the 'phone arter that. Jest
still-like. We that heerd it got aout Fords an' wagons an' raounded
up as many able-bodied men-folks as we could get, at Corey's place,
an' come up here ter see what yew thought best ter dew. Not but what I
think it's the Lord's judgment fer our iniquities, that no mortal kin
ever set aside."

Armitage saw that the time for positive action had come, and spoke
decisively to the faltering group of frightened rustics.

"We must follow it, boys." He made his voice as reassuring as possible.
"I believe there's a chance of putting it out of business. You men
know that those Whateleys were wizards--well, this thing is a thing
of wizardry, and must be put down by the same means. I've seen Wilbur
Whateley's diary and read some of the strange old books he used to
read, and I think I know the right kind of a spell to recite to make
the thing fade away. Of course, one can't be sure, but we can always
take a chance. It's invisible--I knew it would be--but there's a powder
in this long-distance sprayer that might make it show up for a second.
Later on we'll try it. It's a frightful thing to have alive, but it
isn't as bad as what Wilbur would have let in if he'd lived longer.
You'll never know what the world has escaped. Now we've only this one
thing to fight, and it can't multiply. It can, though, do a lot of
harm; so we mustn't hesitate to rid the community of it.

"We must follow it--and the way to begin is to go to the place that has
just been wrecked. Let somebody lead the way--I don't know your roads
very well, but I've an idea there might be a shorter cut across lots.
How about it?"

The men shuffled about a moment, and then Earl Sawyer spoke softly,
pointing with a grimy finger through the steadily lessening rain.

"I guess ye kin git to Seth Bishop's quickest by cuttin' acrost the
lower medder here, wadin' the brook at the low place, an' climbin'
through Carrier's mowin' an' the timber-lot beyont. That comes aout on
the upper rud mighty nigh Seth's--a leetle t'other side."

Armitage, with Rice and Morgan, started to walk in the direction
indicated; and most of the natives followed slowly. The sky was growing
lighter, and there were signs that the storm had worn itself away. When
Armitage inadvertently took a wrong direction, Joe Osborn warned him
and walked ahead to show the right one. Courage and confidence were
mounting; though the twilight of the almost perpendicular wooded hill
which lay toward the end of their short cut, and among whose fantastic
ancient trees they had to scramble as if up a ladder, put these
qualities to a severe test.

At length they emerged on a muddy road to find the sun coming out.
They were a little beyond the Seth Bishop place, but bent trees and
hideously unmistakable tracks showed what had passed by. Only a few
moments were consumed in surveying the ruins just around the bend. It
was the Frye incident all over again, and nothing dead or living was
found in either of the collapsed shells which had been the Bishop house
and barn. No one cared to remain there amidst the stench and the tarry
stickiness, but all turned instinctively to the line of horrible prints
leading on toward the wrecked Whateley farmhouse and the altar-crowned
slopes of Sentinel Hill.

As the men passed the site of Wilbur Whateley's abode they shuddered
visibly, and seemed again to mix hesitancy with their zeal. It was
no joke tracking down something as big as a house that one could not
see, but that had all the vicious malevolence of a demon. Opposite the
base of Sentinel Hill the tracks left the road, and there was a fresh
bending and matting visible along the broad swath marking the monster's
former route to and from the summit.