The Dunwich Romance (5 page)

Wilbur rummaged in a storage crate set on end, which sufficed for a closet. “Ee-yuh. The bugs most folks got dun’t afflict us heer. Likely, ye noticed theer en’t no trace of maouse droppin’s or rat holes, neither, and ye’ll never see no spiders and such araound.” He seemed to hunt with deliberation for something in the make-shift closet. “No critters outside, neither, not fer hunnerts of ells; ‘tis why I gotta set my traps ways on aout in the woods.”

“No critters outside?” she asked with emphasis.

Wilbur’s big crinkly-haired head shook to indicate the negative. “No bugs, no critters, no worms—nuthin’. Nuthin’ like that come on the property, and ‘tis been that way sinct me and—” but here Wilbur’s speculation held in momentary check, as if he were considering a more desirable choice of words. “Not sinct I were born, my grandsire say. He say it jess might be on acaount of, wal, haow I got me a more powerful smell than folks hereabaouts.”

“What abaout that big haouse’a yours that yew use for storage naow? Any varmints in thar?”

“No,” Wilbur said in a dry croak as though some inner monitor signaled a sign of dissembled distress. But then he turned, seeming not distressed in the least, and held out on a hanger a long diaphanous black gown that shined unlike any fabric Sary had ever beheld.

A breath lodged in her chest. “That en’t fer me ta whar, is it?”

“It sure enough is. ‘Twas my mother’s... Yew’d do it service ta wear it.”

Sary was awestruck; never in her life had she seen much less worn such a beautiful garment.

“And it en’t yours jess to wear, mind ya. It’s fer ye to have.”

Calculating his words took time. This she could not believe. “Wilbur, I could never take this fine dress as a gift.”

“‘Tis yours naow.” He smiled crookedly but veritably, then placed the shimmering gown across her arms. “Why dun’t ye put it on while’s I go fetch our supper aout the smoker?” and with that, he thunked out of the shed and closed the door.

A corner of Sary’s eye effused a single tear. No doubt existed. This was the nicest day she’d ever been blessed enough to live.

Five

At the finish of a meal she might refer to as sumptuous (had the word existed in her vocabulary), Wilbur had tended to her remaining ear with some manner of poultice saturated with a mucilaginous medicine that he’d owned, “‘Tis’ll take the pain right off, and heal them bitemarks up. My grandsire tell me he get this from
his
grandsire, so’s ye can bet it’s old. Old-time medicine’s better’n new.”

The pain, indeed, dissipated immediately. “It’s workin’, all right—thanks!” Sary said.

Wilbur applied some tape to hold the poultice in place, and promised, “Ye’ll be fine in a jiffy. If ye’re wonderin’, this be nothin’ scarcely more than some mashed up tar root.”

“That’s all?” Sary questioned.

“Wal, plus mixed in is a bit’a this and a dab’a that,” and he pointed to a glass cabinet full of small old-style medicine bottles. “Locust juice, snake heart, blue iris petals. It wucks, it does. Jess ye wait.”

Sary wasn’t sure but she thought she glimpsed a few bottles of preserved toads, salamanders, and bats as well.

With Wilbur’s first aid complete, the two of them engaged in further discourse, then, more full-bellied than she’d been in distant memory, Sary yawned. The day still shined brightly beyond the small, high windows, yet Wilbur needed no further clue to sense that she was whelmed by fatigue. He pointed to a mattressed cot beside the high desk. This was obviously where Wilbur slept, for the crude but precisely constructed low table at the cot’s end demonstrated the extra length needed for his abnormally long legs. “You’re bushed, Sary, I’se kin tell, so jess ye go on’n have yerself a nap while I run some errands.”

The idea of a nap, after the luxuriant shower and then huge helpings of exquisitely seasoned smoked meats, sounded lovely to her, but— “Aw, no, that’d be rude after all yew done fer me. I’ll help ya with your errands.”

Wilbur’s head shook in a manner that was not dominating at all but insistent just the same. “Git ye some rest. I wun’t lollygag so’s ta leave ye alone too long.”

Sary yawned again, bringing one fist to her puff-lipped mouth, then stretching her arms in the extravagant black dress. “Wal, okay. Thanks. I am tired all’s a suddent.”

Pleased, Wilbur took his leave of the shed. Even behind the heavy wood door, his enormous booted feet could be heard thudding the ground. But just as Sary would venture to the long, appended cot, her fatigue was instantly superimposed by an irresistible inquisitiveness. Her feet took her timidly about the structure’s cramped interior. She glimpsed some sheets of handwriting in a binder on the desk, and though Sary did have some reading skills, thanks to her mother’s diligence, she could make nothing of the unintelligible scribblings. They were more than simply words she’d never seen, but instead unlike words at all.

Rows of hoary books filled a handmade shelf, and atop a table of heavy oak, amid some scatterings of papers, sat a thick, iron-hinged tome that looked ancient. If there’d been a title on the cover, age and considerable wear had removed all vestige. Although Sary knew she shouldn’t—the book was not hers, nor any of her business—she gently lifted the stout cover, hearing its hinges grind, and, with some difficulty, read this:

NECRONOMICON

Ye Booke of Laws of ye Dead

As record’d by Abdul Al-Hazred,

Mad Arab of Damascus

Translat’d from the Latin of Olaus Wormius

by Dr. John Dee

for Her Majesty the Queen,

Elizabeth the First

London, 1582

Strips of thin leather marked certain places in the age-plumpened book: she turned to one, and found herself on page 751. So ancient was the paper that it reminded her of the softness of felt, yet worm-holes pocked the sheet like overlarge flyspecks. Sary could only read one line before a nauseousness rushed to her stomach:

...be thee One of Fayth, thou shalt hear Their Gibbers from deepe beneath ye Ground and amid ye Stonie Places of Reverence where ye sanctified words hath been spake, and, yea, high up from ye Heavens; if thee be estimat’d to be Worthie of Their observance. Hark! Yog-sothoth be ye key, and unto ye faythfull, forsooth, yog-sothoth wilt smile...

Stalwart Venturer, keepe thy fayth, for upon this page be ye secret—yea!—the Dho and the Dho-Hna...

Something arcane about the sentences and their fancy winged letters left a sense in Sary’s brain that existed with a similitude to the taste left in her mouth several years ago when a man passing through town (Harley Warren, he’d called himself, and said he was from the South) had paid her half a dollar to suck on his anus while he partook in masturbation.

Yuck...

She closed the wretched book at once and turned away.

The recollection bothered her most, the page’s references to noises “deepe beneath ye ground” and “stonie places.”

Next, her eyes scanned the high, elaborate desk, a desk larger than any she’d been aware of. There was a newspaper—the
Aylesbury Transcript
—some manner of fiction magazine—
Home Brew,
dated February, 1922—a trade journal from January, 1928, called
The Nathaniel Derby Pickman Foundation,
announcing an upcoming expedition to Antarctica, a place Sary had never heard of;
plus less distinct curiosa in the form of pamphlets, strips of handwritten notes, and cancelled stamps including a twenty-four-cent stamp depicting an upside-down aeroplane. While Sary had heard of these inconceivable flying machines, she’d never seen one. Were they designed to fly upside-down? But more of those odd papers of indecipherable writing lay about the sliding top in a more orderly fashion. When she innocently opened one of its miniature drawers, she squinted at a small jar unto whose lid was affixed a string; from the string pendulated a lump of some dark metal, while the jar was labeled in handwriting
A. Bierce.
Behind it a second jar was found, labeled
t.o.m.
She opened another drawer but re-closed it right away with a gasp, for it contained what appeared to be the eyes and nose-cavity of a yellowed skull. No, she’d not be opening any more drawers! Yet the desk and all its Gordian complexity held her spellbound where she stood. All those letter-slots, and letters in almost all of them! Were they letters Wilbur was writing? If so, the prospect seemed irregular, for Wilbur didn’t strike her as a man with many correspondents. More likely than not, they were old family letters. Her curiosity felt as one of perfect innocence when her fingers slipped a few envelopes out...

Wal, I’ll be...

Sary had been wrong: the giant man who’d saved her today did indeed have others to correspond with, for the letters were all addressed to
Wilbur Whateley
of
Dunwich Village,
some dating back as far as 1920. Sary knew her curiosity would have extended too far had she removed the missives from their sheaths and read of their contents, but what harm could there be in taking notice of their return addresses?

Her eyes narrowed immediately. Two were from Miskatonic University in Arkham, a town Sary had heard of and knew to be not far distant. Another from a man in Kingston, New York, named Alonzo Typer; another from a Robert Blake in someplace called Wisconsin; and yet another from someone here in Dunwich, named Septimus Bishop, though she’d never heard of this latter man, what with so many Bishops here and there. An eyebrow popped up when she read the next return address: Innsmouth, from someone named Marsh. Sary recognized the town, for it was the only town she’d ever traveled to outside of Dunwich; her mother had taken her there once to visit a friend whom she—her mother—had grown up with. The next return address owned to no location at all but only revealed: The Church of Starry Wisdom.

So it seemed that fuddlement and nothing more would be her curiosity’s prize.
I best mind my own business,
she suggested to herself.
Think I’ll have a walk aoutside,
but before she got to the door, she took notice of a block-print map that read THE CAMPUS OF MISKATONIC UNIVERSITY, and crudely circled on it with pen-ink was a square which read LIBRARY. More pen-writing instructed, WATCH FER DOG and 4
^th
WINDOW, EAST SIDE IZ CLOSEST TO RARE BOOK ROOM. Sary couldn’t imagine what these notes might mean. On a small, cherrywood end-table lay another map, but this was one folded. All she could read of its front print was HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE, MASS., EST. 1636, and more scribble, WIDENER and 2
^nd
FLOOR SPECIAL BOOKES & MSS. ROOM. More fuddled than ever, Sary turned, opened the door, and left the tool-house.

Her bare feet glided her across plush green grass; the sun beamed down, and she nearly gasped in delight when she saw how the sun’s rays caught the countless glittering flecks that seemed imbued by magic into her black gown’s intricate fabric. She fairly beamed herself.

A trace glance showed her several other sheds in the distance, some in bad repair, then she looked again to the well-built, tin-topped smoker-house which had provided her the delectable meal. Instinct warned her to keep mindful of those awful red ants that stung her feet to no end when she walked in the wrong places, but then relief came when she remembered Wilbur telling her that no varmints or insects existed anywhere near the Whateley property. She knew this to be true now more than ever, for not a single mosquito had bitten her yet, even though this time of season they were rife. The shadow of the vast Round Mountain interestingly cast a great darkened curve upon the forest belt beyond. The woods looked so lovely in that half-dark, half-bright line of contrast, but she declined activating her idea to take a stroll amongst the trees, for something seemed...unnatural about them. Surely she’d never observed trees so twisted, stout, and gnarled. Indeed, they appeared over-nourished, glutted, as though they’d grown for their centuries of existence via the sustenance of sour minerals in the soil. Some of the trees reminded her of monstrous figures as of those in nightmares.

Now her gaze surveyed her point of vantage in a wider arch. Beyond the side of the strangely boarded-up Whateley house, she could see the dirt road that eventually took one away from Dunwich, to the Aylesbury pike. It occurred to her to amble to the road, to see if Wilbur might be on his way back—she could greet him—but next, however, it was the dilapidated house that snagged her notice. Did some ugly, dark substance leak from its boarded windows and doors?
Like tar,
she associated. It may have been her imagination, then, when she thought she detected a single
quake
of the house itself, as if something huge within—the main timbers, perhaps—had hitched and settled. Then her memory brought back to her that brief but hideous noise she’d thought she heard earlier, a noise like a monumental
snort...

The great abode, like the book in the shed, caused an unpleasant throb in her belly and a minute headache, so she quickly turned to be out of sight of it. But no sooner had she traversed when she noticed another oddity...