Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois (67 page)

Lilly replaced the rock in the box and pulled out a folded sheaf of papers held together with a paperclip. Deciding to postpone some papers needing to be corrected, he settled back in his chair and began to read.

Some minutes later, he was sufficiently intrigued to call Eric Leander right away. It turned out that the contact number given was for his cell phone, and he soon found himself talking to the museum curator. Lilly thanked him for sending him the stone, and expressed a definite interest in visiting Fitch’s pasture with a few students to conduct a formal dig. No, he did not anticipate the operation to take more than the good part of a Saturday morning and afternoon and, after being assured that the farmer in question would not mind the arrangement, Lilly scheduled the following weekend for the visit.

“Miss Farnum,” Lilly called after he had hung up the phone.

“Yes, professor?”

“Can you pick out a few of the grad students to accompany us on a limited dig this weekend? The usual gear.”

“Of course, professor.”

“And Miss Farnum, don’t forget to tell everyone to dress warmly.”

“Yes, professor,” said the girl happily, and departed on her errand.

Four days later, Lilly was in a good mood.

It was a sunny autumn day, one spent in the field and away from the stuffy confines of the classroom, even a rather prosaic dig practically right next door to the campus of Miskatonic, but still much to be preferred than being cooped up indoors. That, and Lilly always felt invigorated among the company of young people eager to learn, company made all the more pleasant by the presence of Miss Farnum, of whom he had long since dismissed any feelings of foolishness in finding her attractive. There was nothing wrong in admiring a fine specimen of female pulchritude, even among his students.

The little entourage had left the school’s campus early that morning in a pair of Range Rovers packed with graduate students and the equipment they would need to conduct a proper excavation. Progress along Route 128 was swift under the hands of two male students, and soon they found themselves on the old Aylesbury Pike interchange and looking for the turnoff to Dunwich. As it turned out, no sign was needed to tell them that they had arrived, as the neat pavement running through Dean’s Corners ended at the town line and Dunwich’s less-well-maintained roads began. Winding in and out of wooded hollows still dark before 10 o’clock in the morning, the two vehicles finally emerged in the town’s center, and before long pulled up in front of the Historical Society Museum which was located in a former mansion erected in 1718 that at one time had been the home of a governor of Massachusetts.

There, Eric Leander was waiting for them on the sidewalk. As the two Miskatonic vehicles arrived, he stepped forward and leaned toward the open window that Lilly had lowered.

“Prof. Lilly, I presume?” asked Leander.

“I am. And you are Eric Leander, curator of the Historical Society Museum?”

“That’s right. I’m happy to see you, professor. Shall we waste no time and head out to the site?”

“Lead on!”

Leander turned and dashed over to a waiting pickup and slipped inside. A moment later, the two Range Rovers were following the truck as it led them a short way down Main Street before taking a right just out of the downtown area. Immediately, they were plunged into farm country dotted now and then with century-old homes, barns in varying states of repair, and odd silos and chicken coops. Between swaths of woodland, hilly pastures still shown green with grass dotted here and there with grazing cows.

Some miles from town, the pickup slowed and turned again, this time with a mail box labeled “Fitch” marking the entrance of a narrow lane. With tires crunching gravel, the three vehicles progressed along a narrow but rushing brook until arriving at last in the yard before a well-maintained farm house. Directly next to it stood a barn with chicken coop behind. Just then, a big rooster stood on a fence post regarding the new arrivals warily.

Leander leapt from his truck, slamming the door behind him just as Ebnezer Fitch stepped out onto the farm house porch, a screen door slamming behind him.

“Good morning, Ebnezer,,” said Leander. “This is Prof. Lilly, from Miskatonic University.”

“‘Mornin’, perfessor,” said Ebnezer, unsure of how he should act.

“Good morning, Mr. Fitch,” replied Lilly, extending a hand. “I understand you found something interesting in your field a few days ago?”

“I did and you suspect there might be more of them rocks out there?”

“Could be. From what I know of the people who used such stones, they were needed in religious rituals that usually demanded more than one to work properly…at least such was the belief of the cultists.”

“Cultists, huh? I don’t like the sound of that. If there are any more of those things out there, or anything else of theirs, I’d shore like to have you dig ‘em up and get ‘em out of here. I’m a proper Christian man and don’t want nothin’ to do with devil worshipers or whatever they be.”

“Well, we’ll see if we can oblige you, Mr. Fitch. Now if you’ll just point us in the direction of the field…”

“Leander, here, can take you there. I..I have work to do around the farm.”

“No problem, Ebnezer. Shall we go professor?”

“By all means.”

The little party reentered their various vehicles and, once again led by the pickup truck, trundled along a bumpy cart path that took them through forest where the rays of the morning sun had just begun to penetrate, their golden beams slashing through trees almost entirely stripped of their leaves and stretching shadows along the ground. At last, the convoy broke into the open and full sunlight as Leander stopped at the edge of a wide pasture whose soil had obviously been turned over recently.

Hopping from his Range Rover, Lilly wasted no time barking orders to his students to unload equipment even as Leander led him to where Fitch had uncovered the stone.

“You can see where the furrows have been disturbed over there,” said Leander, pointing. “That’s where Ebnezer found the object.”

“Good, we’ll use that as our center point and perform some test bores in concentric circles out from there.”

“Will that take long?”

“About an hour or so. Based on the markings on the stone, I’ve studied a bit about the cult associated with them, and have a pretty good idea of how the stone we have fits into the ritual pattern. So I don’t anticipate the need for spending too much time rooting around at random….Tony!” called Lilly, interrupting himself. “Set the first series for about ten yards!”

“Right, prof!” came the reply as Tony began to direct the other grad students in the work.

“Must be nice to have students who know what they’re doing to help you out on projects like this,” noted Leander.

“Oh, yes. And it’s also good being in their company, I always find their youthful exuberance invigorating.”

As it turned out, Lilly was quite right in his assumptions and very quickly, the perimeter of the dig was established and testing soon located three more stones similar to the first.

“Keep at it,” encouraged Lilly to his students. “There should be at least one more out there.”

“Frankly, I’m amazed that you were able to get such results so fast,” Leander was saying as he watched Lilly and Miss Farnum carefully clean the stones with soft bristled brushes.

They were standing at a folding table beneath a light canopy held up by four thin poles. On the table were ranged four carefully-marked trays, a couple of them holding two of the stones found so far.

“That’s enough for now, Miss Farnum,” Lilly said as the girl finished cleaning the third stone. “You can start to get the packing ready.”

“I know it’s early, professor, but is there anything you can deduce from your findings so far?” asked Leander.

“Not much. But because the stones were located almost exactly where they were supposed to be, then I think it’s safe to assume that much of the rest of the material I consulted back at the university is also accurate. This is definitely a worship site for Nodens, a being in the cosmology popularly known as the Cthulhu Myth Cycle.”

“I’m not sure I follow you, professor,” admitted Leander. “What is this cycle?”

“Briefly, it seems to be an association of prehistoric religious trends that at some time were drawn together in a loose cosmogeny dominated by the Elder Gods,” explained Lilly. “The hierarchy of entities associated with the cycle are supposed to be imprisoned around the solar system, with not a few here on Earth including the most notorious, Cthulhu, who is believed by followers to be trapped beneath the sea…

“You speak of this cycle as if it were still an active religion…”

“Well it is, to some extent. Not as widespread as our current world religions, of course, but it does command the loyalty of more than a few disillusioned souls…”

“A local…historian, told us much the same thing before I contacted you, professor,” said Leander. “We didn’t believe him…”

“Local crackpot, I presume?”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it so crudely…”

“I didn’t intend to be insulting to the fellow,” said Lilly. “I was just guessing at what residents likely think of him. In my business, I’ve learned not to dismiss out-of-hand the oral histories held by locals.”

“Well, the funny thing is that this fellow, Mose Corwin, also connected this Nodens with the stones.”

“And you didn’t believe him?”

Leander shrugged. “This town has had more than its share of strange lore and local legends, professor. The people hereabouts are eager to play them down. They don’t want Dunwich to end up overrun by the type of commercialism that has ruined Salem.”

“I understand, but at the same time, the town shouldn’t be too quick to deny its own history. What has happened, has happened, and no amount of self-delusion will change that fact. More to the point, if residents are determined to turn their backs on the town’s history, others are not. These stones, though old, are not that old. They don’t even date back as far as the settlement era. In fact, I daresay they were created less than 100 years ago by Europeans and not native Americans.”

“But why?” asked Leander.

“For worship of course. You see, due to the lack of a written language or permanent art, much of the history of American Indians has vanished, so that what we do know about their ways of life prior to the arrival of the first explorers has been that preserved by Europeans. That includes some of their religious practices, practices that Europeans have not been immune to. The earliest references to such were made by John Winthrop himself. At that time, it was not uncommon for settlers to ‘go native’ as they say and since then, the phenomenon has persisted.”

“Are you suggesting that some benighted souls placed these stones here as part of some current religious observance?”

“Exactly. The soil strata indicates nothing else. These stones, which may have been in the possession of the cult for decades, were placed here recently for the express purpose of worship. Likely, the cultists had not completed their ritual before Fitch dug one of them up.”

“So not being as old as all that, can they still be of interest to you?”

“Oh, certainly! I can say right now that the workings on these stones are greatly similar to work found in artifacts taken from Indian mounds in Ohio…and those have been definitely dated to 900 BC. If nothing else, they furnish a good link between the recent past and older practices that go back hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. I’m sure the university’s native studies department will be eager to study them.”

“I’m finished, professor,” interrupted Miss Farnum, who had been packing the stones in individual containers and labeling each with identifying information on the outside. “We’re only waiting to see if the others can find…”

“Professor,” Tony was saying as he approached the canopy. “We found the last one.”

“Wonderful!” declared the professor as he took the muddy stone in hand. “I’ll clean it off while you boys gather up the equipment. I think we’re finished here.”

Within another half hour, everything was packed up back in the Range Rovers and the field more or less restored to its original condition.

“All that remains now is to have Mr. Fitch sign a release form for the artifacts so we can take them back to the university for study,” said a satisfied Lilly.

To Lilly’s surprise, getting the farmer’s permission was easier than he anticipated. He had hardly begun to explain the need for signing the release form than Fitch fairly snatched the clipboard from his hands and signed it.

It seemed to Lilly that the man was overly eager to fulfill the legal detail, even waving-off talk of returning them in a timely fashion. In fact, Leander seemed more fretful about getting them back for his museum than the owner was.

He had awoken with a start, a cry even, and discovered that his pajamas were soaked in perspiration. Curled up in a ball near the bed’s headboard, it took some time before he calmed down enough to unwind and gather his thoughts. But when he did, he realized that he had had the dream again, nightmare this time. In the past, the dreams had been vague and difficult to recall by morning’s light. But this time it was still night, and he had the distinct impression that if he tried, it would all come back to him. Not ready to make the effort, he was still shaken by the experience and decided that a cup of coffee heavily laced with some of Bobby Winthrop’s moonshine would be just the thing to calm his nerves.

At first, recollection was difficult. It was as if something inside of him refused to cooperate, actively resisting any effort to revisit the nightmare. But he reminded himself that he was a priest of Nodens, high priest as a matter of fact, destined to serve the great one upon the day of Release, when the Old Gods would be imprisoned no more and allowed to ravage a helpless and supine Earth. On that day, he planned to be under the protection of Nodens and thus be spared the terrible fate of his fellow men. He took strength from that knowledge and turned his attention to recalling the dream.