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I.
I cannot say precisely why my eccentric
Uncle Absalom had chosen me to inherit what remained of his worldly estate.
Nonetheless, on the 5th of June I took up residence in the old mansion that rose
in all its decadent grandeur amid the wild Dunwich countryside. My uncle's
bequest had been generous enough, notwithstanding his rather odd stipulation
that I burn several listed volumes from his vast library and fill in the
surprisingly large sub-cellar of the house.
I soon made ready to discharge the
first of these obligations, starting a fire in the huge old hearth. It was not
difficult to locate the books which he apparently hoped might follow him into
whatever afterlife had claimed him. Several of the titles meant nothing to me
--- the Celaeno Fragments, Cultes des Goules, and one whose
leathery binding seemed damnably reminiscent of human hide --- the
blasphemous R'lyeh Text. This last intrigued me all the more for the
alien tongue in which it was written. An amateur linguist, I tried my skill at
enunciating a few underlined words on the page where a bookmark had been placed:
"mglw' nafh fhthagn-ngah cf 'ayak 'vulgtmm 'vugt-lagln. . . ."
The hour had grown late, and I decided
to resume my duties the next morning. Retiring to bed, I noted the abnormally
loud chorus of frogs and whippoorwills in the woods at the edge of the lot.
Perhaps they disturbed my rest more than I realized at the time, for though I
fell asleep easily enough, my dreams were troubled by visions of great forms,
half-saurian, half-octopoid, ranged against a background of cyclopean masonry.
II.
Only partly rejuvenated by the night's
sleep, I began again perusing the contents of Uncle Absalom's study. Apparently
he had made a file of clippings from local papers dealing with bizarre, yet
seemingly unrelated matters. Several items from The Arkham Advertiser had
to do with unexplained disappearances and cattle-mutilations, while others
recorded strange goings on in nearby Innsmouth, where Federal agents had had to
put a stop to some unspecified mischief.
My reverie was rudely interrupted by
the ringing of the telephone, which I straightway discovered was a party line.
With shameless curiosity, I listened in upon the conversation of two Dunwich
locals: ". . . Libby, yew mark my words, it's a' startin' agin'! Didn't I
tell ye it'd commence agin' soon as that feller moved inter th' ol' Absalom
Whateley place? An' sure enuff, this mornin' both Lem's prize bulls is gone!
What or --- Gawd ferbid --- who'll be next!?"
I was shocked, to say the least! I had
moved in only the day before and was already the subject of malicious gossip!
Perhaps a visit to town would shed some light on the matter.
Once in the local dry goods store, I
sought out the clerk, introducing myself as Casper Whateley. The poor man, one
Amos Bishop, seemed to blanch white. "Yew one o' them Whateleys,
what's allus callin' things aouta th' skies? Go back wheer ye came from, 'fore
it's tew late!"
Returning to the old house more
mystified than before, I decided my answer, if answer there were, must lie
hidden in my uncle's books, the very books I had almost consigned to the flames
the previous night. There I read of fantastic entities with names like Cthulhu,
Hastur, Ithaqua, Lloigor, and Cthugha. Somehow I knew that it was these very
beings of whom I had dreamt last night! Just what kind of researches had Uncle
Absalom been engaged in? And, worse yet --- what kind of deeds?
III.
I come now to the portion of my tale
which seems scarcely less incredible to me than it doubtless will to the reader.
For once more my thoughts were interrupted, this time by a strange sound . . . below
me. The sub-cellar! In my preoccupation with my uncle's hellish books I had
completely forgotten it. Following the sound as best I could, I found my way
down to the subterranean chamber. It did not contain the source of the sound,
which was now more clearly identifiable as the lumbering, soggy echoes of
mammoth footsteps far beneath the very foundations of the house.
But if the sub-basement were not the
source of the sound, it was indeed the source of an equally horrifying stench,
like that of a slaughterhouse. For scattered all about, almost concealing the
traces of chalk circles and pentacles on the stone floor, were the carcasses of
one or more cows, or . . . bulls?
The cover of night found me two miles
further into the countryside, climbing over the rail fence of the Dunwich
Cemetery. Whether it was instinct or an influence from some other unnameable
source I cannot say, but an inner voice assured me that the end of the whole
horrific business lay here in my uncle's final resting place. After some
searching I found the grave and set to work, swallowing my own disgust and
self-revulsion as I did so. Finally, the wood of the coffin came into view. With
some surprise I noticed that the casket had been laid so that the grave marker
rose directly over the middle of the box, not at its head, as was the usual
arrangement. Thus, to unearth the whole length of the casket, I had to displace
the gravestone. The stone itself was of curious design, having neither the basic
rectangular shape nor that of a cross, but rather that of a five-pointed star,
with some sort of pattern carved upon it. With the marker thus out of the way,
freeing the coffin was comparatively simple.
I paused, momentarily startled by a
swelling crescendo of whippoorwills that seemed to explode out of nowhere.
Regaining as much composure as the surroundings allowed, I made ready to uncover
the corpse. But I was not prepared for the sight that greeted me upon opening
the box. For my uncle's form was as I remembered it in life, save for the merest
suggestion of something oddly ichthyic or batrachian about the features. He
seemed not dead, certainly not decayed, but merely asleep. Yet I had but a
glimpse of him in this state. The coffin lid had come open only with difficulty,
and I was forced to wrench it free with one great effort. As the lid fell all
the way to the ground, the hinges shattered, as did the star-shaped stone, upon
which it fell. At this, my Uncle Absalom's eyes flew open in an expression of
sheer terror, matched instantly by my own, as I beheld what followed. For his
formerly inert form began to erupt in bloody furrows, rent and mutilated by
unseen talons!
The authorities at this place where I
am now confined accuse me of desecrating the corpse, but I know only too well
that Uncle Absalom's dismemberment was the work of whatever eldritch entity
my idle mouthing of an ancient incantation had released, and which my clumsiness
had given access to my uncle's hitherto protected sleeping form!
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