The Dunwich Romance (18 page)

It was as though some hellish subterranean entity were endeavoring to
form words,
though they be words from no language she could contemplate. If such an utterance might be illustrated, it would be as thus: “
NGH’NAAAAAA-EEEE-BRLUB-H’YUH-D’NAH-YOGSOTHOTH...
”

Then the sky CRACKED! once more. A windless gust slammed Sary flat upon her back, and as still another CRACK! rocked the firmament, she screamed, presuming that the event her mother had once whispered of, the Day of Dissolution, was at hand.

In the margin of a blink, however—

Sary sat up, staring.

—a perfection of silence held dominion over all.

Sary rose, boggled. Surely an experience of such impact could not have been the product of imagination. But her perplexity was not long to last, as the urgence of her mission returned to her mind: Wilbur.

Her eyes flicked back and upward. Atop Sentinel Hill the fire still burned. She leapt ahead with the dread alarm in her heart, and a prayer in her mind exploded forth:
Please, Gawd! Let it be that Wilbur en’t up thar in them flames!

Sary broke into a hard run—

Only to come to a complete halt.

The figure in the smoke-tinged moonlight coming along the trail was Wilbur.

When previously her screech had been one of fright, she now screeched in exultance. She ran ahead and fully jumped into Wilbur’s arms, to hug and kiss him, to latch hold onto him for dear life—indeed, the
celebrate
the fact that he’d come off the fiery hill unharmed.

The giant seemed awestruck by the surprise. “Wal, naow—calm ye daown! Why ye be all a-tremble?”

Still hugging him in utmost desperation, she could only reply in pants, gasps, and fits. “I see the flames burnin’ up on Sentinel Hill, and had the awfulest notion that’s whar yew went off to!” She burst into outright sobs. “Aw, Wilbur! I was so afeared yew be burnin’ right along with them flames!”

“Thar, thar, hon.” He let his embrace sooth her. “I be jess perfectly fine, as ye can see. ‘Tis true I was up Sentinel Hill, but I made it be that the fire I set couldn’t spread nowhere.”

“The fire...
yew
set?”

“Eee-yuh,” he said in a softer intonation. He gently turned her about, to head back to the tool-house. A perceptive person might’ve noted a shift in his character as if to mollify any trepidation that Sary entertained. Pronouncing the word “worship” as
waship,
he said, “See, fires be the way some folks worship the gods they’se believe in.”

Sary’s expression suggested cogitation. “Wal, when my ma took me to church sometimes, they inside all dressed up in theer vestments’d light candles afore the sarvice. Is
that
like what yew mean?”

After a pause, Wilbur replied, “Ee-yuh. Same thing in a manner. And, see, I go up Sentinel Hill on accaount that be to me what charch be for most folks—just that it’s a different sort of place to pay tribute to what ye believe in. Not ever-one worship the same, nor on the same days neither.” He walked slowly with his arm about her shoulder, and he seemed to take considerable care in the words he selected, as if about to divulge to her some manner of deep, intricate tractate. “Jess as most go to charch on Sunday, and on especial days like Christmas and Easter, there’s others, like me, who got a
different
religion, that calls on ‘em to worship a
different
god, but mind ye, it en’t on Sundays, nor on Easter or Christmas but at night mostly, durin’ special times like Lammas, fer instance, which be right naow—”

A familiarity sparked in Sary, which gave her reason to make an active remark. “Oh, I know of Lammas ‘cos my ma and me heerd the minister talk abaout it onct, back before my father forbid us to go to church. We’d take a loaf’ve bread and say prayers over it, then burn it so’s the smoke float all the way up to God. If I ‘member proper, Lammas was haow we thank God for givin’ us the fust harvest.”

Wilbur nodded resolutely. “‘Tis quite true that Lammas fount its way into Christian thinkin’ way back, but actually it be much older’n all that. Same goes fur Candlemas which be knowed as Roodmas ‘raound heer, and ‘tis the day I was borned, matter’a fact. And the same for
Beltane Eve,
also called the Walpurgis Night, and then also for Eve’a All Saints which used to be called Samhain back in olden days they called
Pagan
times, but naow most think of as Hallowe’en. ‘Tis funny haow almost all religions on the airth got some link ta them there special days, but what most dun’t cal’clate is there be a
reason
they got ketched up with special power that dun’t in no way connect to the Christian God nor the Jewish one, nor what folks far off believe in, Gods knowed as Buddha and Allah and such.”

Sary was squinting through the information, which she found interesting in spite of her deficit of understanding. “Yew say there be a
reason
them days is special?”

Another determined nod from Wilbur. “There is, surely, and the reason be this: them days is special ‘cos of haow the
stars
be arranged.”

Sary stared and blinked. “The
stars?
”

“Ee-yuh,” Wilbur’s inscrutable voice assured. “The way the stars show theerselfs”—he pronounced the next word with much attentiveness—“cosmologically, which I dun’t ‘spect ye know abaout. Stars like Aldebaran, and Procyon, and Betelgeuse. Has all ta dew with the angles and the planes of their configgerations. S’where the power come from, see? Aw, wal, ye probably dun’t, ‘cos it be quite taxin’ on one’s brain and require yeers of study. Took me quite a spell to have a fair understandin’.”

At this point, Sary became utterly dispossessed of any hope of comprehension. She recalled none of such things from the church sermons; but then again, she’d always been subject to a less-than-formidable attention span.

Her pace slowed, and she asked the only thing that then occurred to her: “So...what it be yew got is a god
different
from the Christian God an’ the man named Jesus?”

“That’s right.
Different
from all that.”

“Wal...what be
your
God’s name?”

Wilbur’s hesitation seemed to grow more complex through each stride, and when he spoke to answer, the reply sounded more akin to regurgitation than speaking:

“Yog-Sothoth.”

Sary looked at him. Had she heard something queerly similar just minutes ago, not via Wilbur’s voice, but pronounced via the impossible mumbling which seemed sourced underground? As she wondered over this, though, she winced, for something, perhaps a natural spasm, or then again perhaps something more foreboding, supplanted in her head an ache that was brief yet pin-point. “Ain’t never heard’a him,” she said in a shorter breath. “Yew sure he’s a real god and not juss make-believe?”

“He be real, all right. I know it. He answers my prayers... Do
your
god answer yer prayers?”

“Oh, yeah!” came Sary’s enthusiastic reply. “He did jess naow as a matter’a fact!”

Wilbur’s cast of face indicated intense interest. “Jess naow?”

“Um-hmm. I prayed to Him that He make it be yew warn’t burnin’ up in that fire, and...heer yew is!”

“Ye dun’t say?”

“Oh, yeah,” she continued, “and ‘member that day jest a few days ago, when Rufus Hutchins was puttin’ up quite a hurtin’ ta me? I prayed for Jesus to save me, and”—Sary squeezed Wilbur’s hand—“and lookit what happen! Jesus sent me
yew!
”

Wilbur nodded via a pretense to appear convinced. In his own mind, however, the colossal man was thinking,
I got me a funny feelin’ it ‘tweren’t Jesus...

Fourteen

August 1, 1928 late morning

Came down from Lammas late lass night, and Sary see me. All out of sorts she wuz, thinkin I got burnt up in the Fires. Its funny how things can go so everlivin good and be so bollixed up at the same tyme. Never heard Them speak so clear to me in the passt, and never afore has the manner of my chants work so perfect. I know it be over all this time that the doodads up in my throat that makes for speaking have got well-prackticed and can reech out to the Old Ones far better than any man who be full human and know the same Rites as me. Grandsire tolt me this wud happen, and durn if he warnt right. But of corse with good news there offen be bad, and this be—as Grandfather used to say, I think—“No ‘ception to the rool.” Earlier I open the house door and go and see that One inside after making the Voorish, and it has got so big it can’t barely fit all the way in there. It know now it be eating too mutch, which be why it got too big, but I know it is my fault this happened. I shud’ve payd more attention, I didnt calclate things right. I felt so bad looking in there and seeing it so starving and misserable. Makes me think bak to that fella Kyler none too long ago, the soothsayer, n how he said somethin like I’ll get whut I want but not in the manner I most hope for. Guess he reely is a soothsayer.

Because I know now I will not be able to open the Gate to Yog-Sothoth.

That One in there know it too.

But there stil be plenty to do. Just cuz I cant open to Yog-Sothoth don’t mean someone else can’t. Why else wuold the Voices on the Hill say what they said?

So anywaye when I come down last nite and got Sary calmed down, she start askin about what I was doing up there, and I was serious on the spot for a answer. So when I tolt her the Fires and all just be another way of worship, she got to talkin about religion, and askin still more. Hope what I sed made sence to her. Least I can tell she not be like most everyone else round here, harborin hate for someone who look diffrent and have different beleefs.

But now that I think about things deeper, I see all is not lost. Just got to be smart and make the Old Ones proud of me. THAT be how I prove to them I am worthy of the privilige they offer me and my exhalted heritage.

Yes. I will prove it all to them.

Sary seem to beleeve in the Christian God, like so many othurs round here claim to. All my life I hear a saying they got and the saying be this: “God works in missterious ways.”

So does Yog-Sothoth.

Fifteen

Indeed, in a dearth for phraseology more definitive, Wilbur had been well-afforded not only the situation’s seriousness but also its
fact:
that this phase of his life would soon be at an end. Yet the example of his existence had hitherto apprized him equally of this: With every end, there came a beginning. This knowledge—for he was
certain
 of it—gladdened him to no small measure.

The remainder of the afternoon of the first of August he thrilled to spend with Sary. They ambled the wild brush near Ten Acre Meadows, crossed through fields of stunning flowers, and kissed in the old lattice-work which fronted the abandoned Hyde Mansion. During the entirety of their walk together, only very few moments transpired when they were not holding hands or touching in some endearing way. Wilbur’s consciousness, whenever he was in Sary’s proximity, felt expanded as if some arcane and impalpable aspect her life-force allowed for him to experience a mode of happiness that exceeded the limit of his brain’s qualification to feel it. He was bursting with joy—

—even in the knowledge that he would likely be dead soon.

These “endearing” intimacies—it should come as no wonder—magnified later in the day into activities far more robust, which provided for Wilbur several instantaneous ejaculations, and for Sary several bouts of half-hour-long orgasms. Wilbur’s “seed”—it was now plain to her—proved the vital desideratum for orgasms so potent; in fact, the effect of this oddly shaped material on her libidinal system left her more sexually satisfied than nearly any woman to ever trod upon the earth, since only a handful, in all of human history, had ever experienced intercourse with one as para-worldly as Wilbur. Afterward, with her face imprinted by what seemed a permanent grin of satiation, Sary lay on the cot like something boneless and absent of all vim, though her groinal nerves still pulsed euphorently in post-orgasmic
ecstasis.
The sky was darkening by the time her senses began to resume a semblance of order, and then her previously orgasm-discombobulated vision focused through inconsiderable lamplight; she found Wilbur bent over attentively at his desk, whereto he’d moved the iron-hinged book. His engrossment was undeniable as he was reading intently; his lips moved in silence as he seemed to recite extracts to himself. Sary wanted to go over there and take an interest in his studies, but the carnal “working over” he’d unleashed left her with not even enough energy to move. Minutes later he closed the book rather gingerly, so not to allow any undue noise to be made; it was clear Wilbur believed her to be asleep and sought not to wake her. So...