The Dunwich Romance (7 page)

I wonder if he notice that...
However, these ruminations, though they expended only moments, left an uncomfortable silence, so she carried on her perky reply, “Yew been nicer ta me than...wal, anyone I can ever ‘member meetin’, and I’d never be rude so ta jess leave withaout me sayin’ so fust. Naow, let me help ya git them critters skinned and gutted. No reason yew should do all this work withaout me liftin’ a finger ta help.”

Wilbur’s colossal physique went from tense to lax. “Nup. ‘Tis my job, and I’ll have in done in a jiff. Why not ye jess wait fer me in the tool-haouse, take a rest?”

“Okay.”

Upon the instant of returning to the shed—and with no conscious mandate whatever—Sary’s hands slipped up the inside of her gown to further caress her sex. Even this long after her eruptive orgasm, the exotic pleasure lingered; she even felt as though she could masturbate again.
Jess sumpin’ ‘baout Wilbur got me hotter’n the top of a Dutch oven...
, but only then did she catch herself, and expeditiously withdrew her hands. What might Wilbur conclude were he to walk in suddenly?

Several minutes later, he indeed returned, ducking below the door’s transom.

“That’s shore a fast skinnin’ and guttin’ job,” Sary observed. Just looking at him, however, had her painstakingly sidetracked. Why this misproportioned giant kindled her so lickerishly, she could not appraise, but she recognized this:
If thar ever be a man I’d want to lay me right daown and fuck me, why...it’d be him
.

“Been dressin’ critters so long, I kin dew it in my sleep,” Wilbur’s voice wavered in its bizarre depth. “Say”—he stepped forward—“I bet’cher ear don’t hurt naow, huh?”

The question sparked in Sary’s head, as she realized his assertion was true. “Yew was right, Wilbur. I don’t got no pain a’tall no more.”

His huge hands rested on her shoulders, urging her toward the cot. At first, Sary’s loins made a steamy, spontaneous clench; her crudest impulses hoped he meant to immediately prostrate her on the cot and
have
her, just as per her fantasy—

“Set ye daown right here,” he said instead, gesturing the cot. “Gonna check it.”

When seated, Sary was surprised by the daintiness with which Wilbur’s enormous hands removed the poultice he’d previously applied. “Thar,” he remarked in a manner that seemed proud. “All healed up, jess like I say.”

Sary felt her remaining ear and easily discerned that even the dog’s bite marks were healed. “That’s
amazin’.
I carn’t thank yew enough, Wilbur.”

“Warn’t nuthin’,” he said, then loped toward the desk. But something caught his eye on the big table.

“Oh, I see ye took a look at the
Necronomicon.
”

“Huh?”

“The big book with the hinges,” he clarified, regarding the creepy tome she’d peeked at.

“Wal, yeah,” she confessed. “Hope ya en’t mad—”

“Naw.” He flipped to a few age-fattened pages. “Probably nuthin’ in it ye’d understant no ways, nor be interested in.”

Sary was relieved that he didn’t consider her “peek” a trespass into his privacy. “My mother teached me ta read a little, but I couldn’t make hardly nothin’ aout’a all them fancy words. I just thought it was a Bible.”

“Wal, it ‘tis in a manner.” Wilbur’s peculiarly dark eyes remained focused on the pages he scanned. “Been somethin’ I study quite a bit. Only problem is there be some flawed incantations.”

Sary cast a querying glance. “What’s that mean?”

Hinges creaked when he closed the prodigious book. “My grandsire tolt me that when this heer copy be translated inta English, someone monkeyed with the words—on purpose probably—so’s ta take away the book’s...what was that word he used?
Efficacy,
I think. Ee-yuh. The monkeyin’ took off the book’s efficacy, which means some’a its best parts wun’t work.”

By now, Sary’s not-terribly-formidable intellect had lost all comprehension as to what the giant man might mean; but, so not to feel stupid, she merely gave a nod, and said, “Oh.”

Next, Wilbur’s large-pored face glanced frustratedly to the map pinned to the wall.

That college in Arkham,
Sary recalled.
And sumpthin’ wrote on it abaout books...

“So’s naow I got ta go back to Miskatonic and get me another look at the unflawed copy they got thar.”

“Go back? Yew mean ya already been?”

“Ee-yuh. Onct.” In his tone, there came a negative inference regarding the excursion. “But the man runs the library thar, he en’t much. Armitage be his name. Treated me like I be scum’n sent me aout.”

Sary felt badly for her friend’s frustration, but all she could offer was, “Wal, then, ain’t it likely he’ll send ya aout again?”

Wilbur’s look to her might have been called desperate and pleading. But of her question, he added nothing.

Her generally unfired libido still raged betwixt her thighs, yet other questions battled with it, questions she burned to ask. Like: what was Wilbur keeping in the big house, and why had he deposited the dead dog in it? What could account for the extensiveness of the interior planks, timbers, wall- and door-frames, etc. that had been piled outside? And—

What be them weird white ball-things in the crook of the bush?

Better judgment prevailed, however, not typical of her.
Why ask stuff that don’t be none’a my business?
And in a moment, she felt her eyelids droop; a drowse was coming on with promptitude.

Wilbur had taken a seat at the big desk with all the slots. “I’ll jess be a little while heer,” and then he appeared—pen in hand—to devote his attention to the sheets of paper Sary had seen, those filled with writing whose words were constituted in an alphabet she’d never seen. But this was all she remembered observing before her fatigue pulled her down on the cot...

In the sweet, scintillant darkness behind her sleeping mind’s eye, she dreamed of Wilbur lying beside her, kissing her...

Some time later, when her eyes fluttered open, she could tell by the tiny windows that the sun had moved considerably. She yawned and sat back up, surprised. “Why, I must’a been asleep.”

“Ee-yuh,” Wilbur replied. He remained scribbling at the monumental desk. “Ye needed it. ‘Baout an hour ye was out, I’d say.”

She felt energized now, in her mind, but also in her nerves. That dream, short and incomplete as it had been, left her nipples more gorged with excited blood than ever; it seemed impossible for Wilbur not to notice their swelling against the material of the fine, black dress. She returned her gaze to the arch-backed, intent figure at the desk...

Ever the more now, this man, Wilbur Whateley, was striking her as one of uttermost fascination.

“Must be quite a letter writer,” she said from her place on the cot. “All them neat little slots is mostly full.”

He replied without addressing her. “Been sendin’ and gettin’ lots of letters over the yeers. But this heer’s just my keepin’ a journal fer myself. If ye’d took a glance at it, you’d see it be writ in a secret way. A
cipher
‘tis called. My grandsire teached me, so’s I could read what he left. Guess that’s what I’m doin’ too, leavin’ a record’a such stuff as pertains to family business, suthin’ that not jess anyone could read.”

This Sary hardly understood, either. But her eyes held fast on the high desk. “Ain’t never seen a desk so big’n interestin’.”

Wilbur nodded, his fountain pen scribbling. “‘Tis nice, all right. I used ta use that old bureau over thar for my desk, but then one time I were in Osborn’s general store tew buy me a valise to hold papers”—without removing his eyes from the sheet, his long, stout finger indicated said valise in the corner—“ta take with me to Miskatonic that fust time I went. But out front, I spied Zech Whateley’s wagon a-settin’ thar with this desk in it’n a For Sale sign. So’s I bought it off him. Naow, he charged me a peck, for sure, but that’s ‘cos he knowed we got money. Same man used ta sell us cattle, and the bugger always upcharged my grandfather.”

Sary found it curious: the reference to money. She’d believed the country offshoots of the Whateleys to be as poor as her own family.

“Never thought much’a Zech; dun’t matter he’s blood. Lotta the Whateleys en’t no good, ‘specially’s after the way they treat my grandfather. Thiefs, liars, the bunch of ‘em. But when I espied me that thar desk, I took a fancy to it, so’s I say what the hey, I buyed it.” Wilbur frowned in a half-smiling way. “Wun’t surprised when Zech charge me
extra
fer takin’ it to the tool-haouse in his wagon.”

Zech?
Sary wondered. “Oh, you mean Zechariah,” and instantly Sary’s spirits darkened. “I dun’t think mutch’a him neither, nor his son Curtis. One time...,” but then her revelation dwindled. Why tell Wilbur something so unpleasant? The fact was, Zechariah and Curtis had once paid her a dime each to partake in intercourse with her near the old collapsed Hoadley house, but when their semen had been drained, they’d then seen fit to drain their
bladders
as well, all over her till she was sopping. Many customers, in fact, had felt obliged to urinate on her in her professional past, an impulse she never understood. “They’s talk mean ta me fer no reason,” she said instead, “so I say ta Hades with ‘em.”

Wilbur nodded in approval.

“‘N fact,” she carried on, “I dun’t think much’a any of thems that lounge about Obsborn’s store. Can tell jess by the way they look in their face they ain’t nice folk.”

“Naw, most of ‘em en’t, I’se afraid.” The ciphered scribbling continued. “Suthin’ ‘baout this whole area seem ta be all growed up with bad folk same way a field’s growed up with weeds.”

Sary rambled on, as she was wont to do when in the midst of someone she liked (which was woefully infrequent). “I went in thar onct ta buy me some rock candy, which be my favorite, but t’was a penny short, and that awful Joe Osborn say he won’t give me none unless I fuck ‘em all. Over a dang
penny.
”

Wilbur paused again, but looked at her this time in a quelled distress.

“I
didn’t,
a’course,” Sary added with some haste. “Gawd. I know I got me
some
pride... Then I tried to buy some another time when that old man Tobias Whateley was workin’, and I give him a dime but he only give me a nickle’s worth.”

Suddenly Wilbur was tapping the end of his pen in some remote calculation. “So ‘tis rock candy ye like? Wal, I do too.” His long arm maneuvered awkwardly until he was able to reach into a pocket. He withdrew a dollar bill. “Seein’ haow I’ll be writin’ a bit more, why dun’t you go on up thar’n buy us a big bag?”

Sary thrilled at the prospect and also Wilbur’s excess of generosity.
Why’s he so nice ta me but en’t tried ta git to my pussy?
The instance seemed unfathomable. “Thank yew, Wilbur!” she expressed, jumped up, and took the dollar.

“No point’n ye settin’ heer bored whiles I do this—”

“I won’t be long!” and she was already directing herself toward the door. “I en’t had rock candy is soooo long! Thank yew double!”

Wilbur turned to look at her; his own delight at seeing her so happy appeared muddied by some private distraint.

But Sary knew at a glance. “And
don’t worry!
I’ll be back!”

Wilbur smiled an interior relief as Sary scurried out the tool-house door.

Six

July 28, 1928 latur

After Sary wake up, she git all excited wen I give her a dollar for rock candy. Make me feel real good to see her happy like that. She didn’t nap atall when I go out earliur, tired as she was, but dozed off after I take off her bandige. Now she be on her way to Osborn’s. Few minutes after she leave, I just had to go out to the bush and have at myself with my hand again. Seein her beauty, an just the way she be, and her eyes and smile, leeve me no choice. Saw the pile of my jack-off look disturbed, thogh. Couldnt be a animal on account no critter come neer the house. Hope it weren’t Sary who found it and diddled with it—can’t imagine what shed think. I probably just mistaken is all.

Was calclating the new Alko passages (I didn’t like them at first) I larned as I walked back to the pasture where that fat Rufus boy do all them bad things to Sary. Folks never lern it seems. Also thought hard about what might be wrong with page 751 of the Dee, like exzactly. Cud it be its not the wurds theerselves that was writ in flawed but maybe just the angles of the planes? Frum what I read, the unproper angles would muss up the Dho and the Dho-Hna and make it impossible to send word to the city between the magnetik poles. Just don’t know fer sure. Got ta stop worryin and just git reddy.

So anywaye I get back to that old shitty pastureland whitch used to belong ta Elmer Frye, I think, and pick up Hutchins ded collie and sling it over my back. Had to wunder, though, what ole man Hutchins look like on his face (and asettin in that wheelchar I put him in) when his fat son come in all ablubberin and wailin and holding a empty sack that was previous fulla his balls. Bet ole Elam raged shakin his fist and avowin to kill me like he been dewin all these years. I kind of chuckle at the thought cos he know he cant do nuthin to me even if he possess the curage to try. Tis a rule my grandsire teech me long ago when I first started understanding talk, that bad folks don’t nevur turn good, they always be bad, and most of em be cowerds too.