When a traveller in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury Pike just beyond Dean’s Corners, he comes upon a lonely and curious country. . . . It is always a relief to get clear of the place, and to follow the narrow road around the base of the hills and across the level country beyond till it rejoins the Aylesbury pike. Afterwards one sometimes learns that one has been through Dunwich.
“The Dunwich Horror” . H. P. Lovecraft (1929)
I.
Enoch Coffin drove his truck along the rutted road, past the stone wall of what might once have been a habitation, although no house stood within sight. There was just a wide dry field that reached to where the lush forest took over on the rising slopes, with here and there growths of high weeds mingled with the tall yellow grass. The sky was overcast and the weather cool, but Enoch liked the window down when he drove and didn’t mind the chill. “Lonesome country,” he mumbled as his pickup bumped over the road’s furrows, and he cast a backward glance to make certain the artistic gear in the rear cargo bed had remained secure. Further on, the road inclined and he could see the mountains above the dense woodland, and something in the primeval aura of the sight excited him—he felt very far from Boston. As his truck crossed over the bridges that spanned ravines and narrow rocky vales, he studied the curious manner in which some of those ancient bridges had been constructed, how various combined portions of timber seemed emblematic in the signs and signals they suggested. The domed hills were close now, and he stopped the truck in order to step out and piss; and as he relieved himself he marveled at the stillness all around as his eyes scanned the shimmering line of the Miskatonic River that passed below the wooded hills. As he stood there a ratty jalopy passed him on the road, and he smiled at the way the suspicious eyes of its driver studied him. Whistling, Enoch raised a hand and made the Elder Sign, which the other driver hesitantly returned.
He drove onward and came to a bumpy riverside road and then drove slowly across an ancient bridge that crossed the Miskatonic, experiencing a sense of nervous expectancy concerning the soundness of the bridge. The structure’s hoary age affected Enoch’s senses and filled him with foreboding—such things should not be, should not exist in this modern age. The artist was delighted that it did exist so as to spin its macabre spell. But the tenebrous bridge was merely prelude. As the pickup truck slowly crossed it, Enoch sensed a change in the air that wafted through his vehicle’s window. The shadowed atmosphere felt, somehow, heavier, and it carried an extremely unpleasant smell such as he had never experienced. Reaching, finally, the other end of the bridge, his truck drove again across a rough road and Enoch laughed out loud at the sight of Dunwich Village before him, huddled beneath what he knew from his yellowed map was Round Mountain. His fingers itched for pen and pad so that he could capture the uncanny sight with his craft. How could such squalid, disintegrating buildings still be standing? In what era had they been raised? Enoch then began to notice some few lethargic citizens who shuffled in and out of one ridiculously old broken-steepled church that now served as general store, and the artist was amazed at how the inhabitants of the village were so in tune with its aura of strange decay. He had entered an alien realm. The foetid stench of the air breathed in was almost intolerable, even to one such as Enoch who relished decayed necromancy.
He drove for another three miles, checking with his 1920’s map that his correspondent had sent him, and stopped at the pile of ruins that had once been a farmhouse just below the slope of Sentinel Hill. He sat for a while in his stilled vehicle and watched the three persons who worked at a curious construction of wood, a kind of symbolic design that reminded Enoch of the patterns he had seen on the bridges he had crossed on his way to Dunwich. Finally, he pushed open his door and stepped onto the dusty road, holding out his hand to the frantic beast that rushed to him and licked his palm.
“Spider,” a man called to the dog, which moved from Enoch and trotted to his master. The artist approached the stranger and they exchanged smiles. “Mr. Coffin, I recognize you from the newspaper photos. I’m Xavier Aboth.” Enoch reached for and clasped the young man’s extended hand. “You found your way easily?”
“Oh yeah, your grandpappy’s map served me well. I took very good care of it, it’s so delicate.” He looked to the top of the high hill and could just see some of the standing stones with which it was crowned. “The infamous Sentinel Hill. And this must once have been the Whateley farmstead.”
“Aye, that it is. We’re just sturdyin’ up the sign here. Hey—Alma, Joseph.” The lad motioned for his friends to join them. “This is the artist who was hired to illustrate my book of prose-poems. Enoch Coffin, Alma Bishop and Joseph Hulver, Jr.”
Enoch shook their hands as the woman studied him. “Clever of our Xavier, writin’ his own book. Course, he’s been to Harvard and Miskatonic. Mostly them as gone to university never return. We’re glad this one did.” She smiled slyly at the poet.
“I’ll let you two finish up. The powder is in that plastic bag there. It needs to be sprinkled exactly as ye’re sayin’ the Words.” He turned to Enoch. “My place is up a mile and a half yonder. No, Spider can chase after us on the road, he loves that. Yeah, I walked over, it’s a nice stroll. I like to stop and bury things in Devil’s Hop Yard, over there. You know, things that help enhance the alchemy of the bleak soil.”
The two men entered the pickup, and Xavier whistled to his canine, which barked joyously and ran beside the truck as Enoch drove. As he drove, Enoch glanced nonchalantly at his companion’s dirty clothes and soiled hands. Xavier was extremely unkempt, living up to the image of Dunwich folk that had been related to Enoch by some who learned that he was journeying there. The word about Dunwich and its denizens was that they were little more than ignorant hill-folk who rejected modernity and lived primitive and solitary lives. Rumors of inbreeding were prevalent, and Enoch’s one friend who had visited Dunwich Village complained of the hostility he encountered there from people who mistrusted those who were not kindred.
Enoch drove for a while and then the road turned and passed near another high hill, below which stretched an infertile hillside that was naught but rocks and corroding soil. The young man leaned out his window and called to the dog. “It’s okay, Spider, jest run.” Then he turned and smiled at Enoch, shrugging. “He gets nervous near the Hop Yard.” The truck continued to follow the road until coming to a small plot of land on which a shack that was little more than a cottage leaned beneath the dark sky. “Go ahead and park next to my old jalopy there.” The artist did so and climbed out of the vehicle, offering his hand once more to the friendly canine. He joined Xavier in taking out some of the gear from the cargo bed.
“Smells like a storm is brewing,” Enoch said, looking up at the sky.
“Aye, we’d best get this lot inside.”
The young man’s language gave Enoch pause: was this the poet who had crafted such beautiful and compelling prose-poems? The lad’s spoken language was simple and at times uncouth. Perhaps returning to this forsaken homeland after spending years away at university had killed any elegance of tongue and returned him to the local patois. He followed Xavier to the door of the house and inside, and was relieved that the place was bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside.
“I’m givin’ you the upstairs with the bed. I often just sleep down here on the sofa. The light’s real good up there cos I put in a winder in the roof above the library, to help with readin’. I like lots of light when I read. Come on up. Oh, them steps are firm, don’t worry, you just need to balance yourself cos there’s no handrails.”
They walked up what was a combination of ladder and steps, through a rectangle in the living room roof and into a cozy bedroom. Xavier tossed the equipment he was holding onto the bed and stretched as he sauntered into the next room, which proved to be a spacious study filled with books, two tables and three sturdy chairs. The ceiling was very low, just an inch from Enoch’s crown when he stood at full height. He set his gear on the bed next to Xavier’s pile and nodded with approval.
“This is nice. You’re certain you want to surrender your bed?”
“Rarely use it. And I suspect you’ll want to work up here. It’s real quiet, not another neighbor for half a mile.”
As if on cue, a faint sound of rumbling came from someplace outside. Xavier nodded.
“What was that?” Enoch asked.
“Oh, that’s just the hills. They get talkative just before a storm.” He raised his face and shut his eyes; he inhaled deeply. “Can you smell the thunder?”
Enoch’s nostrils gulped the air, as from above the ceiling window electricity flashed. The sky boomed as the deluge broke.
II.
Once alone, Enoch sat on the bed for a little while and listened to the storm. He found his host an enigma. Xavier was much younger than expected, and when Enoch reached into his knapsack for his own copy of the boy’s privately printed chapbook of macabre prose-poems and vignettes he saw that there was no personal information concerning the lad except that he resided on a family homestead in the town of Dunwich—no age or other biographical tidbits were offered. How could such a simple-minded fellow write such strange and mature work? The artist rose and walked into the other room, the “library,” and sat at the larger of the two tables, the surface of which was littered was piles of books and holograph manuscripts. Nearest him was a tea tin filled with pens and pencils, and next to it were old hardcover editions of the prose-poems of Charles Baudelaire and Clark Ashton Smith. Atop one pile of manuscripts was a chapbook edition of the prose-poems of Oscar Wilde, the cover of which was smudged with dirty fingerprints. Moving that, he reached for the topmost sheet of paper and squinted his eyes in an attempt to read its minute handwriting. The sheet was covered with crossed out words and eliminated lines, but with effort Enoch could make out a cohesive text, which he recited in his soft low voice.
“I am the voice of wind and rain through leaves that move beneath one black abyss. The limbs of trees bend to my song and shape themselves with new design, forming sigils to the haunted sky in which I originate. I taste the husks of mutant trees that are rooted in the tainted soil, and I whisper within the sigils that have been etched into that shell of wood, the Logos that awakened me as mortal pleas. I am the voice of tempest spilled from depths of black abyss. Awakened, I sing so as to arouse that which is Elder than my immortal self.”
Outside the small house, the rain stopped and all was still except for an occasional chattering of night birds. Enoch stepped down the ladder stairs so as to bid his host goodnight, but the lower regions of the abode were vacant of inhabitant. Shrugging to himself, the artist climbed back up the steps and undressed. The bed was comfortable and its blankets kept him warm in the cool room. He was almost asleep when he thought he heard movement within the room and imagined warm breath on his handsome face. Strangely, Enoch did not dream as was his wont, and it seemed that very little time had passed before he awakened to the smells of breakfast food from below. Slipping into shirt and trousers, he stepped barefoot to the lower room and saw movement in the small kitchenette at back. Xavier smiled as Enoch entered the room and skillfully placed eggs, sunny-side up, onto two slices of soda bread that sat on a plate next to sausage and bacon.
“Mother got used to soda bread durin’ her months in Ireland, when she went back to attend some family burial. I’ve changed the recipe a wee bit by usin’ buttermilk instead of stout. Help yourself to fresh coffee and we’ll eat in the front there.”
Enoch poured himself a cup of coffee, which he drank black with heaps of sugar, and accepted the plate of food offered him. Walking into the main room, he fell into a comfortable chair and placed his plate on the small stand beside it, then cursed when he saw that he had forgotten eating utensils. Xavier joined him in the room and set a fork onto the artist’s plate, and then he sat at a small table, moving away a bunch of books to make room for his dish. The dog lay before the hearth, its paws next to a food bowl.
“It’s kind of incredible.”
Enoch looked at the poet. “What’s that?”
“That Rick would send you here to—what?—get a handle on me and have me collaborate with your illustrations for the book. You don’t find it insultin’?”
“Not at all.”
The boy shrugged. “Art is personal, right? Individual. My things come from these weird places inside me. But your stuff will be your interpretation of my stuff, you know, triggered by the pictures it puts inside your noggin. I don’t want to explain my stuff to you—I want you to find the parts of it that I don’t see so clearly. When I write, it’s like I go into a trance and become somethin’ . . . someone else. Sometimes I’ll read over a thing and say, ‘Where the hell did that come from?’ It’s like seein’ a photo of yourself for the first time, when before all you knew was your reflection in the mirror. You’re all different and you don’t even recognize yourself.”
Enoch laughed. “Well, Richard wants your first hardcover edition to be rather special, limited though the edition will be. He produces beautiful books. I have those weird places inside me, too, and thus I know their feeling and can reproduce them with my art. The outré is my forte, Mr. Aboth.”
The poet cringed. “I hate being called that. Xavier, please. Well, I don’t really know what you and Rick are expectin’ of me, cos I don’t know fuck-all about art technique and all of that. How is this gonna work?”
“All right, here’s what’s expected. We have been brought together because we are alchemists, as is our publisher. Our art is predicated . . . ” The poet frowned. “It’s established on a foundation of love for arcane things and our knack for evoking mysteries beyond corporeal time and space.”
“I’m gonna let you down if that’s what you think. I’m not ashamed of my witch-blood and all, but it doesn’t guide the way I live.”
Enoch finished the food and set his plate down roughly. “How can you say that when you’ve written the prose you have? Your language is skilled and gorgeous, and it sings of alchemy.”
“But that ain’t me—or, it’s a part of me and a part of somethin’ else, my Muse. It’s the thing I conjure when I put my mind to workin’.”
“And where does it come from, this something else, if not from a place inside you?”
“Nah, it’s the part of me that leaves and joins the others in that secret place, and they dance with me and make me dream, and then I’m still kinda dreamin’ when I sit up there and scratch my words out. It’s ritual, sure.”
“And where do you go, when you ‘leave’ and mingle with these others?”
Xavier turned to gaze out the window. “To the hills, and under them, to the secret places that we know in Dunwich.” Enoch watched as the boy’s eyes began to darken. “And they sing to us, as our mamas sang when we were babes. We hear them there, beneath the hills and in the clouds. We smell them atop the rounded summits among the standing stones and skulls. The storm is their kiss, with which they claim us.” The poet sat dead still for some few moments, and then he blinked and smiled. “I can show you, if you like. You’ll need to draw the hills for the book, they’re important. Bishop Mountain is real close.”
Without finishing his breakfast, the boy stood up and snatched a shoulder bag from a peg on the wall by the front door, and then he opened the door and vacated the house as Spider trotted behind him. Cursing, Enoch rushed up the stepway and got into socks and shoes, and then he joined the poet outside. The boy led Enoch toward a hill that rose behind the house, and as they walked toward the back area Enoch noticed three low mounds in the ground, two of which were topped by boulders on which curious symbols had been etched.
“That’s Mother, and that’s Grandpa,” Xavier said as he pointed to the two graves.
“And the other?”
The lad shrugged. “Just some body we found atop Sentinel Hill. Didn’t feel right to leave him up there, with his hide all melted onto his bones and all, so I brought him down here and gave him ceremony. Felt right. People go up there to open the Gate without really knowin’ what the hell they’re aimin’ it. Usually they just get scared and scat, but this un had a bit of success. That was a noisy night,” he concluded, laughing. He pointed to the hill. “It’s a bit of a trek, but it feels good climbin’ up there, and the view is mighty nice. Let’s go. You comin’, Spider? He doesn’t always like to join. Dogs are super sensitive.” Enoch watched the beast tilt its head at them and watch as they moved toward the hill, and then he walked in a circle and settled on the ground, his head on his paws.
They walked toward the hill and began to ascend it, wandering into its growth of woodland. Xavier’s stride was steady and rather jaunty, and this walk was obviously a favorite activity. Enoch glanced at his wristwatch now and then, and after a forty-minute hike they were out of the woods and approaching the round flat apex of the hill. They followed a footpath that led them to the place where a circle of rough standing stones formed a circle.
“Come on to the other side, you can see better there. Watch your step, there’s a bunch of stones that’s easy to stumble over, and some of their edges are kinda sharp. There, that’s the Devil’s Hop Yard that we passed, and there’s my place. It used to be where the Seth Bishop house stood, that was destroyed during the Horror, and Grandpa was able to buy the land and build our stead. Farm never was much and I hated that kind of work anyway, so I’ve found work in the Village. Won’t never make much livelihood writin’ my stuff, but that’s more a hobby anyways. Nice clear mornin’ after last night. Did the storm keep you awake?”
“No.”
“I can’t never sleep during a storm. I like to listen to it talk, all soothin’ like. We get plenty of storms in Dunwich. That’s Sentinel Hill to our right.”
“Where you found the stranger’s corpse.”
“Yeah. He was probably some kid from Miskatonic who got in good with the librarian and read the old books and had ideas. Tried to open the Gate, most like, not understandin’ it needs to be done durin’ the Festivals and all. I can’t be bothered with none of that. Grandpa knew a lot about it and tried to get me interested. Dunwich heritage and all of that. You were wrong, Mr. Coffin—okay, Enoch; I’m not really an alchemist, not the sort you probably think me to be. I know enough about the signs and callin’ to the hills, and I tend the Hop Yard and a few other sites cos I’m part of the land and its people. But I use my weird skill for my writin’. I conjure words, language. Whoa, words are powerful little devils. Poetry is just as potent as some passage outta the Necronomicon. And not so lethal to them as don’t know what the hell they’re doin’. Bad poetry just makes you look like a damn fool. Bad raisin’ up can leave you a dead fool.” He turned to stare at Enoch. “Is your art your alchemy, Enoch?”
“Not really—it is my art, and therein lays its potency. But I paint the esoteric things without explicating them.”
“There you go again—big words. But I think I know what you mean. You peel back the shroud without explainin’ the rotten mess beneath it. Do you always understand your vision?”
The artist laughed. “Almost never. I allow the secret things to keep their mysteries, few of which I fully comprehend. I don’t want to kill mystique—I want to suggest the secret things that may be found within fabulous darkness and let them have their aesthetic effect. I want to conjure art as it seduces my brain and enhances vision. Do you understand that?”
“Hell yeah. That’s what I do. I hear the others in my head and let them fuck my brain, and then I write the visions they leave beneath my eyes. That’s what it is—vision, seeing somethin’ old and secret, and tryin’ to explain how it feels inside your soul, where it plants all kind of roots. Hell yeah.”
Enoch walked away from his new friend and went to touch a hand to one of the standing stones. “Were these erected by aborigines of the land?”
“What, by Indians? Nope, they wouldn’t never climb up the hills of Dunwich. These stones were probably here afore any of them squeezed outta their mammas. Too bad there ain’t no wind, it sounds awesome when it dances around these stones.”
“Wind is easily conjured.” Enoch smiled slyly at the lad.
“I know. Grandpa used to call it when he was feeling lonely for his kindred.” Xavier’s face grew slightly sad. “Mama used to call the wind now and then, when she couldn’t sleep. I think that’s what she was doing, singin’ real low and weird, and then outside you’d hear the wind arisin’.”
“Something like this?” Enoch placed his other hand onto the pillar and began to whisper to it, and then he rested his ear against the surface of stone and shut his eyes. When he heard the song beneath the stone, he pressed his mouth against the pillar and repeated the ancient cry. Xavier shuddered as an element entered into the air around them, and then the tears began to blur his vision as Enoch sang the ancient song that the boy remembered from childhood when it was murmured by his dam. He tried to speak the arcane words but found that his voice choked with sudden sobbing. Reaching for him, Enoch brought the young man into his embrace and pressed their moist lips together with what was almost a kiss. He raised his mouth to Xavier’s eyes and warbled the primordial melody onto them, and he smiled as the boy panted onto his own face, a sensation that he remembered from the previous night, when someone watched him closely as he sank toward slumber. Enoch moved his face away and peered into the boy’s eyes, and then he smiled and kissed the fellow’s streaming tears as, around them, an alien wind began to hum between the spaces of the standing stones. Enoch raised his eyes skyward and watched the shapes that formed as sigils of shadow far above them. He then took Xavier fully into his arms and sang the song of tempest at the youth’s ear, clasping the lad’s quivering form in his strong unyielding arms.
III.
The men sat in silence and lamp light in the main room of the small house. Enoch had just read aloud some few pieces from the manuscript of Xavier’s forthcoming collection, and the young man was curiously moved by the sound of his work read by another. The artist sipped at his cup of coffee and gazed at the fellow near him. How old was the poet? Was he even twenty? He looked, in the soft light, like a little lost boy as he scanned the sheets that Enoch had read out loud.
“Your prose is beautiful, Xavier. The prose-poem is, I think, the perfect form for the macabre. One can express anything and everything, concisely yet with force. These are finer than those in your chapbook, your language is more mature.”
The boy laughed. “The instructors at school were always tryin’ to correct my speech. ‘Stop talkin’ like a Dunwich farmer,’ they’d yell. Like I was supposed to be ashamed of where I come from. They’ve had a thing against Dunwich at Miskatonic for ages, and I was glad to leave early cos of Mother’s illness. Didn’t want to go to damn University anyway, but she wanted it and it made her happy. She thought they could learn me how to write ‘with more distinction’ was how she’d phrase it. But I didn’t want to be molded by their ways. My talent is mine own, a gift from them outside. Don’t need no mollycoddlin’ old fool in spectacles fussin’ over me and tellin’ me how to write and pretendin’ to care so much about my ‘gift,’ their eyes all shinin’ and stupid.” His laughter had a bitter ring. “Anyway, had to come home and tend Mother as was dyin’. She went a little witless near the end and used to sing with the whippoorwills. But she’d get all quiet when I conjured the others and spoke to her all elegant-like; and she’d put her soft hands on my face and call me her lovely boy.”
Not knowing what to say, Enoch glanced around the room and let his eyes settle on a round wall hanging that was composed of connected sticks. “I saw those totemic sigils on some of the bridges that I crossed. You were attending one when I first saw you.”
“Oh, the river signs are different from the Whateley charm.”
“No one has cleared the Whateley wreckage and claimed their land.”
“Nope. The memory of the Horror runs deep with some. Grandpa was thought crazy for buildin’ on this spot, but ain’t nothin’ wrong with it.”
“And the Whateley land?”
“Best left undisturbed. There’s just a few of us visit it and tend the charm and the lair and all. Ah, I see that look in your eye. Ain’t too late yet. We’ll take my jalopy. Nah, Spider don’t venture out after dark. Good boy, Spider,” he said, patting the beast’s head. “No, you won’t need a jacket, it’s a warm night.” Exiting the house, they boarded the lad’s old car and drove through darkness. “You remind me of Grandpa, the way your eyes shine when there’s magick brewin’. I’ve never felt the thrill, and Mother was kind of blasé about it all. I think the Horror scared most folk more than they’d ever admit, cos it weren’t never figured out what the Whateley’s were up to. We just know it was somethin’ awesome, somethin’ for a special season. But the season has passed, and now there’s just what was left behind.”
“An aftermath of Horror?”
The boy chuckled. “You’re kinda a poet yourself, when you speak sometimes.”
The rough road took them to the Whateley ruins, and Xavier turned to reach down behind the driver seat and pulled out what looked like an antique oil lantern. Stepping out of the car, the boy motioned for Enoch to follow him as he pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit the lantern’s wick. Silently, they walked to the ruins, and the artist was aware of an alteration in atmosphere, and of a peculiar smell that permeated the place. Something untoward had had its origin here, of that there was no doubt. He stopped to gaze to the flat apex of Sentinel Hill and felt a thrill of horror course through his flesh. What else had trod this unholy ground, on what grotesque gargantuan hoofs? It had left its aftermath absolutely, an eidolon that tried to spill its shapelessness into one’s skull and teach one’s lips to shriek its name. Finally, Xavier stopped and bent to move some planks away that covered double doors built into the ground. The lad pulled open one door and descended, his shadow playing weirdly on the stone steps and walls of dirt as he stopped to flick his lighter to a torch that protruded from one surface. The underground chamber was revealed. Enoch noticed that the hideous stench was not so strong in this lair beneath the house. He breathed quietly as his anxious eyes scanned the entered realm, and when he passed a small antique chest filled with ancient gold coins he let his hand bury itself therein.
“Wizard’s booty,” Xavier whispered. “Best left alone.”
The artist raised his hand out of the pile and surreptitiously pocketed one gold coin, and then he moseyed toward the unearthly lattice structures that hung on one wall. What they were he could not fathom. They seemed composed of bleached sticks from trees and thin lengths of board that had been fastened together in weird display, although he couldn’t tell in the poor light with what they had been conjoined. He couldn’t bring himself to touch them, for something in their outré nature confused him. He backed away and was amazed at how bizarre the sticks seemed, more phantom-like than physical, like the fossils of spectral things.
“I’ve never seen their like,” he whispered.
“Nope, Wizard Whateley was unique. Some old journals of folk that had visited this place before his death said that these things were fastened on some sealed doors in the house and on the old clapboarded tool-house. If you look at them too steadily they find you in dreamin’. Had a shared dream with those folks you met t’other day, and from it we built the one afore the house. Keeping somethin’ out, or somethin’ in, I guess. The hill noises get loud here on the Sabaoths. It’s Roodmas on Tuesday. If you’re interested we can light a fire on Sentinel Hill and such.” The young man looked around and frowned. “Kinda grim in here, ain’t it? Let’s get.”
Without waiting the lad walked to the wall torch and snuffed it out on the dirt floor, and then held his lantern before him as he ascended the stone steps. Enoch waited for a moment in rich darkness, the one illumination in which came from the lattice designs on the wall. Enoch studied them in fascination, and it came to him that they resembled doors on a fence. He wondered what he would find, should he push one open and peer onto the other side. Then the artist cautiously found his way to the steps and climbed toward outer aether.
IV.
Enoch, alone in his rooms, sat at the smaller table and sketched onto a pad, trying to recreate the lattice designs that he had seen in the Whateley underground lair. He found it curious how his vision blurred as his mind tried to recall the exact shapes of the designs he had beheld, and how cold his brain felt when he concentrated too fully on remembering. Finally, he gave up and, rising, stretched his arms until his palms touched the low ceiling. Glancing through the ceiling window, he saw many points of light in the black sky. He was restless and a little bored, and so he slipped into his jacket and quietly walked down the steps to the lower room, where Xavier was sleeping soundly on the sofa with one lowered hand resting on his dog’s head. The animal did not move as it watched Enoch go to the door and step outside. His truck sounded loud when he switched on the ignition and drove slowly down the rutted road to Devil’s Hop Yard. The artist stopped his vehicle and stepped onto the road, sneering at the odorous Dunwich air as it crept into his nostrils and tainted the taste in his mouth. The desolate field was acres long and absolutely barren, and he hesitated for some few moments before finding the nerve to step onto its precinct. Bishop Mountain loomed above him, beneath moving clouds that were lit up by soft moonlight. Yes, this was cursed sod, and Enoch muttered protective spells as he trod its wasted demesne. Finally, he knelt and placed his hands on the surface, flatly, trying to sense what, if anything, was held beneath the ground.
“Perhaps a drop of witch blood will awaken you,” he whispered as he took his switchblade out of his pocket and opened it. Holding the steel blade to moonlight, he made signals to the sphere’s dead light, and then he quickly sliced the blade through an index finger and watched the dark liquid spill onto the dirt. A sound arose from beneath him, a faint rumbling that grew into a kind of cracking or quaking; and then a current of chilly air poured down the great round hill, to him, air that babbled senselessly at his ears. The earth below him trembled as from other distant hills came a response of other rumblings. “Gawd, what visions would you plant if I slumbered on your sod?” He then reached into another pocket and brought forth the ancient golden coin that he had pilfered from the Whateley warren, the metal of which felt weirdly hot in his hand. He raised the coin to his mouth and kissed it, and then he used one side of it to etch a diagram into the dirt. Chanting, he dug into the earth with the hand that held the coin, burying it as deep as he could burrow. All around him, the noises silenced. Enoch spat into the small dark area of his bloodstain and then staggered to his feet. How heavy were his limbs, as if some force below were trying to coax him underground. Like a clumsy drunk, he lurched from the Hop Yard to the road and his truck. He frowned as the blurriness of his vision and drove extremely slowly to the Aboth homestead. Entering the house, he found the living room vacant of man and beast. Heavily, he climbed up the steps and sat on his bed.
Dunwich was dead silent, and he was sleepy. He reached down so as to remove his shoes, and as he held the heel of one his hand was littered with the debris that clung to it—the particles of soil from Devil’s Hop Yard that he had carried with him. Mumbling incoherently, he removed the other shoe with his other hand, onto which other particles of dirt adhered. Enoch clapped his hands but the soil would not fall from them, and so he cursed and ran his fingers through his hair and over his face. Granular fragments fell onto his eyes, which he rubbed wearily, thus pushing the substance into the choroid. Something beneath his face tickled him, and the artist laughed as he pulled off his shirt and reclined on the bed.
The artist raised his face to eerie amber moonlight as he danced upon a gravesite. Below him, the rumbling from some deep place underground kept rhythm to his movement, and when he bent his head so as to watch his happy feet, he saw that he was frolicking upon the grave of the stranger whose dissolved corpse had been found atop Sentinel Hill. What a lonely little grave, the artist thought, and how wretched must be the solitude within the pit of death. He knelt and moved his hands into soft earth, and when his hands found the flimsy object he pulled it up and out of earth. The skeletal mouth was open, and some dried fleshy substance still covered one eye socket. The artist reached into his pocket for the golden coin, with which he would cover the other socket, and he was mystified to find the coin missing. No matter, he could still entertain his captive; and so he lifted the thing in moonlight and wondered at the way some of the bones had been deformed with melting, as if kissed by acidic lips. He brought the creature’s skull close to his face and tried to imagine the countenance that had once covered it. They pirouetted among the other gravesites until he heard the baying of a winged thing that sallied to him through the mist of moonlight. The hound-like thing was familiar, for he had seen its likeness in the Necronomicon. He did not like the way the beast leered at his partner’s skull as heavy liquid slipped from bestial tongue, and so the artist placed his hand protectively over the cranium. Yet the beast was not to be deprived, and it bayed again as it stretched its liquid tongue to the artist’s hand and licked it; and as the rough member lapped at his flesh, the artist saw that skin slip from his appendage and cover the skull, which took on fleshy form in which boiling black liquid, churning inside sockets, formed new orbs that blinked and laughed, and new mouth that breathed upon him.
Enoch groaned in slumber and pushed away the canine head that nuzzled his hand as the young human mouth so near to his breathed language onto his eyelids.
V.
He awakened to find Spider reclined on the floor next to the bed and studying him with poignant eyes. Smiling, Enoch called to the dog and clapped his hands, to which the animal responded by leaping onto the bed and licking one hand happily. “Your tongue is smooth, not rough like the feline variety,” the artist said, to which the beast tilted its head as if attempting to contemplate the spoken sound. Now fully awake, Enoch pushed out of bed, slipped into clothes, and then he was preceded by Spider down the steps to the living room where Xavier and the girl Alma Bishop smiled at him. Enoch thought he could detect the tang of new-shed orgasm in the air, but it may have been mere fancy. Smiling at the couple, he sat at a small table at which Xavier had been working and on which sat two piles of paper. In the shorter pile, the paper was filled with the poet’s minute handwriting, and in the other pile the paper was blank. Unable to resist, Enoch slipped a blank sheet near him and picked up a pen, and then he began to sketch. The youngsters did not move as they watched the artist work, aware that they were posing. After twenty minutes, Enoch smiled and stood, handing the sheet to Alma, who murmured appreciatively as she saw the drawing in which she and Xavier were expertly portrayed.
Outside, Enoch raised his face to the sun and felt its welcome warmth as he ran his hands through his hair, in which he still felt particles of Hop Yard grime. He moseyed to the small well and, yanking it rope, raised a sunken wooden bucket out of semi-clear water; then he set the bucket on the well’s stone ridge, cupped his hands into the liquid and raised those expressive hands so that the water spilled over his hair. He dipped his hands into the bucket again and lowered his face into the cupped water. Wiping his eyes, he caught sight of his battered pickup truck, which he had seldom seen in daylight. The pickup had belonged to an artist chum who had committed suicide, and it was usually kept hidden in a rented garage—Enoch preferred the keen pleasure of riding on trains to that of driving the vehicle. Yet he confessed to himself that he had enjoyed driving it around Dunwich, had enjoyed a sense of freedom of movement that it had given him.
The young couple came outside and the girl kissed Xavier goodbye, then turned to smile at Enoch. She held the sketch in her hand as she wandered from them down the road. Xavier strolled to where Enoch stood, dipped one hand into the bucket and brought water to his mouth.
“You did a strange thing last night.”
“No I didn’t. Your work is about the land, the land I need to become intimate with. I need to eat it with my eyes and taste it with my hands, get the feel of it underneath my skin and in my blood. Such a rich mythic land, darkly fertile.” He stepped nearer to the boy. “I appreciate it. I like its inhabitants. I’m going to start working on your portrait tonight, per your request that an illustration portray you rather than a photograph.” His hands lifted so as to explore the young man’s visage. “I like your face, with its length of nose and compressed lips. You keep your mouth so tightly clamped, as if afraid of spilling secrets.”
“We’ll have to do that project before nightfall. It’s Roodmas. I’ve got somethin’ to do atop Sentinel Hill.”
“I can sketch ye up thar.”
The boy laughed. “Nah, I don’t think so. Your hands will be occupied with—other things.”
They parted, and Enoch, feeling restless, took his sketchpad as he walked for hours to investigate some bridges. He enjoyed drawing the ancient structures, which were becoming rarer in New England as they were replaced with modern structures. On one bridge he found a particularly enticing lattice diagram that had been worked into the structure with newer wood than that with which the bridge had been constructed, yet as the artist tried to draw the graph he experienced an aching behind the eyes. He rubbed his eyes with his fingers, and then worked those fingers in an attempt to ape the diagram on the bridge; but as he did this his hands became sharply chilled, kissed with occult frigidity, his witch-blood advised him to desist.
The sun was sinking behind the hills by the time he returned to the house, and he was surprised to find Alma there again, sitting at the hearth with her arms around Spider’s neck.
“Ah, good,” the poet told him. “I thought you’d miss it. Do you want to drive? Okay, hang on a tic.” Xavier went into the kitchen and opened a cupboard, from which he took a small jar that was filled with pale powder. He signaled with his eyes that he was ready, and together the men walked out and into the pickup. They drove through the decadent Massachusetts countryside as sunset deepened into dusk, and the silent boy scanned heaven in search of birth of starlight. Enoch parked his truck just in front of the large lattice diagram that had been erected before the ruins of the Whateley farmhouse, and getting out of the truck the artist went to handle the joined sticks.
“This is a bit different from the others on the bridges, a bit simpler in motif. Is this your work?”
“Hell no. We learned it from that worn by Wizard Whateley. The others are inspired by dreams and all, and they’re true as far as they go; but they’re mostly for water and what it calls with flowin’. This one is more—cosmic.” The lad smiled at the use of what he considered a sophisticated word.
“And where is Wizard Whateley, Xavier?”
Coyly, the lad smiled and nudged his head toward Sentinel Hill. “Up thar.” Holding tightly to the jar of powder, he moved toward the incline, and Enoch followed silently. Strangely, as they walked over stones and high grass that led into woodland, the boy began to sing
“An’ un day soon ye day’ll come
When heav’n an’ airth’ll drone as un,
An’ chillen o’ Dunnich hear ye cry
O’ eld Father Whateley from all sky.”
They tramped through the woodland, and out of it, toward a twilit sky, toward the round apex of Sentinel Hill and its rough-hewn stone columns, its large table-like altar, its tumuli of human bone. Enoch knelt beside one pile of reeking remains and noted how some of them were oddly deformed, seemingly melted at places—and this reminded him of something he could not quite recall, a dream perhaps. As he was hunkered by the bones, Xavier stepped to a brazier and took a box of wooden matches from an inner coat pocket. One struck match was tossed into the brazier, which exploded into soaring flame. Enoch arose.
“Over here,” the boy called as he moved over the coarse ground to a place where a length of oblong stone lay flatly on the earth. Had it been composed of wood the object might have served as lid for a small coffin. Enoch looked over the symbols that had been etched into it, most of which he recognized from having studied them in tomes of antique lore. “Help me shove it a bit,” the boy instructed. “I could do it alone, but it’s best to have an assembly. Just this top part here, yeah, there ya go. Phew, you never get used to the stink. Funny that he should smell still, havin’ been gone so long; although, of course, it ain’t all him that’s reekin’.”
The huddled skeletal remains were of a small lean fellow, and although most of the flesh had long erased, one patch of dry hide clung to the skull and formed a kind of face to which a growth of beard still clung. The thing was naked of clothing except for a thick robe of purple thread. What really captured Enoch’s attention was the design of latticed wood attached to a cord that wound around the throat. This small item was far more similar to the designs in the underground Whateley lair than any of the others Enoch had seen. He stared at it as the boy next to him sprinkled a little of the powder from the jar over the dead thing’s face and uttered whispered words. Below them, sounds issued from the beneath the hill, and the flames in the brazier soared as if they had found new fuel. Enoch stood and sniffed the dark air.
“Storm’s brewing,” he informed the lad.
Xavier rose to a standing position and stared at stars. “Nah, it’s them.”
“Them?”
“The others—them old ones. They smell o’ thunder. They loom among the stars, and between them.” His eyes grew odd and shadowed. “They sing of deceased glory and show the silhouette of what has gone before, as they bubble between dimensions and weep the antique cry. Let us sing with them now, my brother, as they split the veil and show the thing that was, the thing that is, the thing that will be. They walk supernal among the smoldering sparks above us, craving the scent of mortal blood, which nourishes them weirdly. They form themselves with blood and debris of starlight so as to gibber in the mortal plane. Cthulhu is their kindred, yet Cthulhu sees them dimly. They pulse between the planets and kiss the palms of the Strange Dark One, Avatar of Chaos. We sing for them to unlatch the Gate, so as to usher forth the time of Yog-Sothoth. We see it there, the Gate and Threshold, between dimensions. We call it with our tongues, our hands.”
The poet raised his hands and latched his fingers together, his digits impossibly aping the design of the dead wizard’s icon. The hill noises escalated, and with each new pulse of sound the brazier flames expanded. Enoch watched what looked like smoke coil among the stars, which extinguished one by one. Xavier stood upright, an elect messenger who held his fleshy signal to the flowing obscurity of the sky. He bleated arcane language to the dark cosmic abyss, and in answer to his cry a pale form began to reveal itself. It was the esoteric lattice design, perfectly formed, fluid and sentient. It was the awesome Gate of Yog-Sothoth, a thing that trembled as it sensually divided itself so as to reveal the eidolons beyond it, the ghosts of they who lived brief mortal lives. There was the frail white-haired woman of fearsome and foolish countenance, and there was one offspring of her loins, a dark and goatish beast. And there—there was the awesome one, the one of such abbreviated promise, with its gigantic face that stretched across the sky, that face of which one half replicated the suggested visage of the interred wizard.
Enoch watched this display of lost glory and future promise, and knew that he was naught. Shaking uncontrollably, he flung himself before the Messenger with pleading in his liquid eyes. But the Messenger merely glanced for one moment at the frail and puny freak before him; and then in contempt he struck the artist’s head.