The Dunwich Romance (6 page)

Beneath a long rickety canopy of wood-slats, cords of firewood sat neatly stacked, surely an amount that would take months of a cruel winter to deplete. But the oddity was what sat heaped in a ten-foot-high pile
next
to the firewood.

Building scrap in the manner of a great tumble of house lumber: rafters, beams, doors and their frames, wall-slats, and even great chunks of whole walls. By the looks of the pile, these materials came clearly from
interior
construction, but they’d now become subject just as clearly to an act of
de
construction, as if aspects of the interior had been sundered.
I wonder if Wilbur done knocked out all’a the walls of the big haouse...
Whatever it was he stored inside must be quite large. Why a pile of wood-scrap would instill in her a sense of foreboding she didn’t know.

Pursing her lips as if at a rank sapor, she continued her meandering examination of the property.

A number of prodigious drakeberry bushes, in long ranks, diced up the grassy region just beyond the tool-house. Amid the bush by which she walked the closest, she noticed a natural indentation, like a cove of sorts, deep and tall enough for one to enter without being seen by anyone not in close proximity, and it was into this “cove” that Sary’s curiosity took her next.

The cove curled inward in nearly a hook-shape, and at its furthest limit she noticed...

What’s them THINGS?

A pile of singularly curious...
things
lay on the ground; Sary’s immediate tendency was to divine the impression of pony stools, for they existed as roundish wads approximately an inch wide apiece. Size and shape, however, was where this similarity ended: pony stools, or any excrement that Sary knew of, always bore a rather universal brownish color, while the pile of things she looked at now were far more akin to the color of a peeled banana slightly overripe. This mystery-laden pile stood perhaps two feet in height, tapering as it ascended. Most would find the nature of the wad-like objects as unpleasant or even foul, yet Sary found them only objectively interesting, considering how accustomed her life had made her to the unpleasant, the foul, the disgusting, etc. And it was this curiosity which urged her to stoop and pick up between her fingers the topmost object...

A strange slimy texture registered immediately. When she lifted the thing she expected it to separate from the heap individually but this was not the case; instead, more of the off-white balls came with the first, and now she perceived that they were in some manner connected, as of a grotesque string of pearls. Fascination finnicked with her. She kept lifting the first ball but found that the entire queue of the others stopped at exactly ten balls. This led her to assume that the remainder of the pile existed similarly: a string of ten slimy balls deposited and redeposited over a period of time, comprising the entire heap...

Whatever could the things be?

Fascinated though she was, Sary ended her examination and presumed to continue visually surveying more of Wilbur’s property, in which, after taking leave of the bush’s hidden cove, she crossed it to look around.

The latrine ditch was what she glimpsed next, along with its tightly lashed frame of logs where one would sit to defecate. It reminded her that she herself needed to urinate, but she’d always been fearful of such waste-ditches, for once her father had thrown her into one after a particularly vehement session of forced intercourse. She’d been very young at the time—six or seven—and as she recalled, his reaction had not been positive when she’d refused to lap up the traces of his semen which had leaked out of her after his climax. So it was a trip to the bottom of the latrine that was her compensation for such non-compliance.

She picked another ample drakeberry bush behind which to secret herself, then raised with care her luxurious black dress, and immediately lowered herself to a squat. It was then that all of the pleasant sensations her skin had been receptive to today...had commingled, and then intensated to an effect many times more robust: the comfort of being carried in Wilbur’s strong arms, then the feel of her own hands caressing the suds of the ash soap all over her body in the shower machine, then—much more so—the feel of
Wilbur’s
hands sliding up and down in the cleave of her buttocks and how she cringed for the fantasy of the elongated fingers sliding into her private orifi... Even the captivating black gown itself beguiled her in some concupiscent manner, some mystery of its fabric that felt, whenever she walked, as of the hands or even the tongue of some semi-palpable wraith tenderly stroking her skin. Foggy-eyed with these muses, a few moments passed, then her bladder began to void; the stream glittered as it arced out of her and up, and then she discovered her index and middle fingers were V’d at the folds her of sex, opening it; it was such that even the mundane function of urinating pushed more lustful desires into her head. The stream declined, then ceased, yet she remained in her lewd squat, at once finding one hand slipped into the gown’s top, fondling a breast; her fingers catered to the already nerve-plump nipple which sent the most delectable sensations gusting to her privates. Then she imagined Wilbur’s fingers there, then his mouth,
sucking.

Aw, durn, that feels good...

She licked the fingerpad of her other hand, stroked the pink nub of her clitoris, once very slowly, then again twice. Her body’s reaction to this meager tending was an intoxicating tension; her head rolled around. Two more quicker strokes brought a pulsing outburst to her loins whose density of pleasure caused her to fall over and cringe. She twitched there on the ground, her face overcome by a smile of delight the likes of which she’d not experienced in years. The initial impulse to masturbate had been puissant enough; however, it was the fantasy of
Wilbur’s
participation that had set her sexual responses off like a black-powder keg.

Sary lay sidled over awhile longer, pilfering out the last of the after-sensations, but then—

Terror came.

The unmistakable scuff of footfalls could be heard not far off.
Aw, Gawd, please let it be that no one seen me!
She jumped up (hoping that the bush’s partial coverage had concealed her from the interloper) and righted her gown as best she could. Either the walker was Wilbur or it was—

Wilbur said he boarded up his haouse ‘cos folks sometimes try ta break in...

Sary prayed to God that it wasn’t some foul-minded Dunwich thief trespassing upon the property. If such a man saw Sary, out here all by herself?

She knew she’d be raped most dementedly.

She peeked around the edge of the bush, yet her eyes only had time to glimpse a figure turn round the hill and disappear behind the sheds, which could only mean...

He be headin’ for the big house...

A daring not typically known to her had her quickly dart from the bush, past the latrine, and to the wall of the smoking-house. It was a deep breath she drew into her lungs, then... She peeked around the smoker’s corner.

Thank yew, Gawd...

Relief assailed her when she easily identified the “interloper” as Wilbur himself. She was about to call out a greeting but impulse at the last moment caused her to forbear the gesture. Impulse, but also...observation.

What’s that over his back?

Indeed, a sack of some kind seemed to be slung across the gargantuan man’s back as he walked with deliberance toward the boarded-up house. However, Sary now discerned that one of the house’s doors stood absent of the nailed planks and beams that sealed all the others and windows. Instead, it was barred by upper and lower iron struts fixed across the egress by two large and ponderous old locks. Wilbur, still not at all cognizant of Sary’s vigilance, extracted a key, unfastened the locks, and opened the door...

The young woman’s angle of observation afforded her a fair view into the domicile’s east end, and the sunlight, though partially truncated, showed her only vast emptiness inside.
Whatever it ‘tis Wilbur keep stored in thar, it gotta all be at the other end,
she deduced.

She naturally expected Wilbur to enter the leaning abode, but this he did not do. Instead, and most curiously, he remained where he stood outside, and then it looked as though he were
talking...

Who the hail he talkin’ tew if thar en’t no one livin’ inside?
The extended distance prevented Sary’s deciphering any of what her rescuer was saying.

And next?

Wilbur made the oddest gesture with his hand: at first Sary believed him to be crossing himself the way a priest or minister would, but the motions that were made indicated something far more complicated. It was only a moment later, then, that the colossan unslung the burden across his back and flung it into the house. Then he re-barred and locked the entry.

Sary’s plentiful curiosity took on a tinge of something not unlike dread, for in the few seconds before Wilbur had resecured the door, she’d verified that it was no sack at all that he’d tossed within. It was a dead dog.

A dead
collie,
to be more unequivocal.

Same exact dog that awful Hutchins boy sicked on me,
she knew, and how could any doubt exist? She’d seen Wilbur blow the barbarous animal’s brains out with a pistol.

More strangeness, in a manner by which she could make no deductions.

She expected Wilbur to return to the tool-shed, but instead he loped straight away from the big house and into the twisted woods.
Whar’s he goin’ naow?
Sary meandered about the property, looking errantly at the splotches of grass and wild beds of flowers, noting again nary a sign of insect activity, and no bees rummaging for pollen. “Wal, hey thar!” Wilbur greeted her when he’d reappeared some twenty minutes later. “Hi, Wilbur. I was gettin’ ta miss yew,” she said, acknowledging now that his departure, admixed with the inexplicable observations she’d made, had left her vaguely unnerved. But Wilbur’s big, angular face seemed to betray a hint of happiness when she’d said she missed him. “Sorry, I took a tad longer’n I thought. Ran into that bald fella, Kyler be his name—he abaout the only Dunwicher who’ll share a good word with me. A
soothsayer
is what he claim he is.”

The word perplexed Sary. “A sooth—
what?
”

“One who tell fortunes, like I heerd they got at curnivals. Dun’t know haow true it ‘tis, though.”

All she could think to say was, “Carn’t say I’se heerd of him, but I’m glad you got a friend.” Her expression cheered. “Wal, naow ya got two friends, me bein’ the second.”

Wilbur’s approach slowed, as more inner happiness seemed to dawn within him.

“We’ll be friends, always, Sary,” he replied in a solemn tone.

Wilbur was so tall that Sary unconsciously stood on tiptoes to see what he had now on his shoulder.
Not another dead dog,
she hoped, but in a moment identified a trap rope.

“So that’s what yew were doin’ in the woods,” she observed. “Checkin’ yer traps.”

“Ee-yuh.” He’d reached her by now and unshouldered the cord, attached to which were several squirrels, a muskrat, and a woodchuck. “A more than midland ketch today,” his dark, warble of a voice reported. “En’t ketched a woodchuck in spell. But like I told ye, I gotta walk aout in the wood a good distance ‘cos critters dun’t come near the haouse.”

Sary naively wondered if he intended to deposit these animals into the big house as he’d done with the dog, but,
‘A’course not. They’se for him ta put in the smoke-house,
she realized.

“Hope ye have a likin’ for woodchuck.”

“Oh, I dew—”

“I got a old family recipe that make it taste like duck...” A pause, then his large dark eyes blinked on an afterthought. “Aw, but ye sure didn’t have yerself much of a nap, huh?”

Sary shook her head, admitting to the distraction of how glad she was to see him. “‘Tis funny. Tired as I was, the minute yew left, I couldn’t sleep a wink so’s I just kind’a walked abaout, lookin’ raound yer land. Hope ya dun’t mind.”

“Not one bit,” Wilbur said, but he seemed distracted as well, distracted by her simple presence. His eyes persisted on her: each time he was about to speak, he stalled. “I...uh. Aw, durn, Sary...”

“What?”

“I’se jess real happy yew stayed. Whole time I was aout, I thought sure ye’d be gone time I got back...”

She grinned at the absurd remark. “Wilbur, I wouldn’t just up’n leave withaout sayin’ goodbye.”

The huge man shuffled awkwardly in his big boots. “I know the way I look put gals off—”

“The way yew look’s just fine ta me, so’s I carn’t think’a what yew mean,” she tried to allay his faltering esteem. Yes, Wilbur’s physical aspect diverged a great deal from that of other men, but Sary only found this trait unique and interesting, not repugnant. She thought,
The way my face look, no ear, all scarred’n pocked, nose mashed up by my pa? It be a blessin’ from Gawd Wilbur even turn a glance at me.
Through the self-analysis, however, she realized that not only was she comfortable with Wilbur’s appearance, she felt progressively more attracted to him, this latter fact being betrayed then and there as she felt her nipples tingle and begin to stand up beneath the sheer cover of the dress.