The Doom That Came to Dunwich Page 2

  Opposite Osborne’s Store stood a steepled, greystone building. Cordelia tried to make out the device that topped the steeple. In the darkness she could not be certain, but she thought it was the same ensign she had seen on the uniforms of the guards at the Dunwich Research Project. Lights flickered inside the building, and the sound of chanting could be heard.

  She located the Dunwich Institute and stood before its Spartan exterior, searching for a means of admittance. The Institute was located in a building of Colonial architecture, but rather than serving as a source of elegance and charm, the frame construction with its chipped and faded whitewash and its black front door surmounted by a dust-shrouded fanlight, caused a shudder to pass through her body.

  Beside the door a rectangular brass plate, once gleaming but now covered with a patina of dullness, still bore the legend, Dunwich Institute — founded 1928 — Henry Armitage, Ph.D. President. Cordelia Whateley searched for a doorbell, and, failing to locate one, instead reached for the brass knocker bolted to the wooden door. The knocker, covered with the same dull patina as the plate, was shaped like a creature differing from any Cordelia Whateley had ever before seen. It bore many tentacles, and great staring eyes, and from it there seemed to seep a miasma of pure evil such as she had never in her life encountered.

  Cordelia Whateley had taken her large, well-filled purse with her when she left her automobile. Now, having retrieved the purse and clutching it with one hand, she drew a breath, grasped the brass creature, raised it and let it fall. It struck with a loud, metallic sound of unpleasant nature. Cordelia Whateley found herself staring from her hand to the knocker, and then to her hand once again. Surely the knocker was of brass: of old, tarnished brass. Why, then, did her hand feel as if her fingers had grasped the rubbery, slimy, moist tentacles of a living creature? And why, when she released the door-knocker, had it seemed to cling stubbornly to her fingers so that she had to pull them away to gain her release?

  She had not long to ponder the problem, for the door drew back noisily on rusted hinges and she stood face to face with an aged individual who blinked at her with faded, rheumy eyes. He stood well over six feet in height. His sparse hair was pure white and his face bore an expression of despair overlaid with chronic fear.

  “I am Henry Armitage,” the old man said. “Who are you, young woman, and what do you want of me?”

  Cordelia Whateley was taken aback by the old man’s appearance but she had rehearsed for this moment and she delivered the lines she had prepared. “I — I am Cordelia Whateley. From McGill University. I — I wrote to you about my work, and you sent me this reply.” She held Armitage’s own letter so he could see it in the yellow light filtering from behind him. Was it possible? Yes, the Institute building was illuminated by oil-lamp and candle. With a chilling shock she realized that she had not seen an electric appliance or even a gaslight in Dunwich.

  Although Cordelia Whateley had arrived in Dunwich Country at an hour when the afternoon sunlight was still fairly bright, here in the narrow streets of the town itself a darkness had descended that was not the comforting, pleasant darkness of a New England evening. Involuntarily, Cordelia Whateley looked behind her. The streets of Dunwich seemed abnormally empty of pedestrian traffic, and the few canvas-covered vehicles that moved on the old streets seemed almost to huddle within themselves as they passed.

  Armitage extended a thin hand covered with pale, wrinkled skin. “Come in. You are late. Almost too late. I receive very few visitors. I expected you earlier in the day.”

  Cordelia Whateley followed Armitage into the ancient building. An almost palpable miasma of age and decay seemed to arise from the heavy furnishings and threadbare carpet. Armitage indicated an overstuffed chair covered in faded velvet. Cordelia Whateley lowered herself carefully into it.

  “I would have been here earlier,” she tried to explain, “but — ”

  “But you went to Sentinel Hill, didn’t you?” Armitage cut her off.

  “Yes, I — ”

  “You tried to get into the Project. The Dunwich Research Project. I was afraid of that. You’re very lucky indeed.”

  “Lucky? I don’t understand. I — ” Cordelia Whateley put her hand to her forehead. “I’m so sorry. Could I have a glass of water? I’m afraid I’m feeling faint.”

  While Armitage was out of the room, Cordelia Whateley studied its contents as best she could without leaving her chair. The walls were covered with glass-fronted bookcases, all of them filled to their limits. Many were locked. The books themselves, for the most part, looked ancient. The bindings were tattered; such lettering as Cordelia Whateley could make out was faded. In size, the volumes ranged from huge tomes that would cover a desktop if opened, to tiny items little larger than a common postage stamp.

  Her eye was caught in particular by a small book, little more than a pamphlet, in fact, with an illustration on its cover. The illustration, barely visible in the yellow light of the dark, musty room, seemed a crude representation of the door-knocker that Cordelia Whateley had handled at this very building. The slim book was bound in black leather, and its title, embossed in gold lettering in an obsolete typeface, read simply, De Obéissance à les Maîtres Vieux .

  Henry Armitage’s hand on her shoulder startled Cordelia Whateley. She gasped and turned. He extended a glass toward her. It might once have been part of a set of fine crystal but its rim now showed a jagged chip, its sides were streaked and the water it contained was of a vaguely unpleasant color and odor. Cordelia Whateley accepted the vessel and took one reluctant sip of its contents before placing it on a dust-coated table.

  “You asked why I thought you lucky,” Armitage said. “Visitors to the Project sometimes disappear. Young Selena Bishop went up there last spring and hasn’t been heard of since. In Dunwich Town, people don’t like to receive an invitation to visit the Project.”

  “But then,” Cordelia Whateley frowned, “why do they go? Why don’t they just refuse to go?”

  “When you’re summoned to the Project, you go. That’s the way it is in Dunwich Town.”

  “But people could just move away, couldn’t they? Don’t the buses run? And the Aylesbury Pike is nearby. It’s only an hour or two to Boston by automobile.”

  “You don’t leave Dunwich Country as easily as you might think, young miss. No, not if they want you to stay here. Rice and Morgan thought they could leave. They learned better. I’m the only one left now, of the three of us. I was the oldest, and you’d think I’d be long gone by now. But Rice was buried at sea and Morgan was cremated. They’d both left instructions that, whatever happened, they were not to be interred in Dunwich Country.”

  He clapped his hands, and the sound was like an exclamation mark at the end of his sentence. Then he resumed. “The undertaker, Hopkins, respected their wishes. I made him do that. He wanted to bury ’em, he wanted to bury ’em in the town graveyard out near Jacob’s Pond, but I wouldn’t let him. We had a terrible battle, believe me, young miss. But if I ever see Rice and Morgan again — I don’t expect to, I don’t think we get to go on once our flesh is finished, but I could be wrong, and if I am, and if I ever see Rice and Morgan again, I’m sure they’ll thank me for making that fool Hopkins do what they wanted him to do.”

  He stopped, short of breath after his long statement. But before Cordelia Whateley could speak, he put a question to her. “How old do you think I am, young miss?”

  She looked at him appraisingly. Her own great-grandfather, Cain Whateley, had lived to 109, and Armitage looked every bit as old as Cain had in his last days. “I’ve read what I can find about the horror, and it says that you had a white beard in 1928. If you are the same Dr. Armitage …”

  He gave her a sly grin. “You’ve done your homework. I’d expect as much of an undecayed Whateley. I think I see a tinge of the Wizard himself in your face. Yes, I’m the same Henry Armitage. Shaved off my beard in ’42. Hoped to get into the army then, and get out of Dunwich Country. They were onto me, though. Said
I was too old, but I’d shaved it off by then so I kept it off.”

  “But if you’re the same Henry Armitage — ” Cordelia Whateley looked longingly at the chipped goblet of water but could not bring herself to take another sip. “You were an old man in 1928, and that was nearly seventy years ago. That’s impossible. You’d have to be — ”

  “Yes,” he nodded, “I was almost eighty in 1928. I’m afraid I’ve given up on ever leaving Dunwich, but if the town is still here in a few years, I hope you’ll come to my 150th birthday party.”

  He stood over her, reached down and patted her on the knee. Could this incredibly old man be — Cordelia Whateley shook her head. She must have misread the look in his eye. What she thought for a moment she had seen there was impossible.

  She said, “I don’t mean to keep you up. I could come back in the morning. I mean,” she made a show of looking at the battery-powered watch on her wrist. She frowned and held it closer to the nearest oil-lamp. “I just put a new battery in,” she muttered.

  Armitage smiled. “Electrical implements don’t always work well in Dunwich. You did drive here, did you not, young miss?”

  Cordelia Whateley nodded.

  “You may have trouble starting your car in the morning.”

  “But — ”

  “Never mind. We can dine at the inn. Then we can return here and I will assist you with your work as best I can. I have always felt a certain sense of — well, obligation is not exactly the word, but it will do — toward the Whateleys.”

  Cordelia Whateley was flustered. “You’re very kind, Professor. But you need your sleep. A man your age — ”

  “I do not sleep,” Armitage replied. “Come, let us go to the inn. We can walk from here.”

  They walked from the Dunwich Institute back past Osborne’s Store. The inn to which Armitage referred was not the restaurant Cordelia Whateley had seen, but another, located in a building that must have existed since the days of King George III and Governor Winthrop. They were waited on by a young woman — she could hardly have been into her teens, Cordelia Whateley realized — who seemed terrified of Henry Armitage. Armitage whispered a few words to the waitress, who nodded and disappeared into the kitchen, her long skirts brushing the floor behind her. Apparently Armitage had ordered for both of them, a custom that had gone out of fashion in Cordelia Whateley’s world long ago.

  Cordelia Whateley looked around the room. Dour New Englanders of past centuries frowned down from framed canvases that lined the old wood-paneled walls. A small fire struggled fitfully to survive on a gray stone hearth. The only other illumination was furnished by oil-lamps. Beside the hearth a musician sat upon a high stool, picking out a tune on a stringed instrument that Cordelia Whateley did not recognize. The tune, however, seemed vaguely familiar: it was a transcription of a piano composition by the mad Russian composer Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin.

  The musician was a woman. At first glance she appeared to be aged, perhaps as much so as Henry Armitage himself, but as Cordelia Whateley studied the woman she realized that her hair was that of the albino rather than the crone. In her features, Cordelia Whateley suspected that she could detect a hint of the legendary Lavinia Whateley or — perhaps — of herself.

  Without ceasing to play, the woman raised her eyes from the fingerboard of her instrument and focused them upon Cordelia Whateley. Even in the faint light of wood flame and oil-lamp, it was clear that those eyes were hopelessly clouded by milk-white cataracts, cataracts the color of the woman’s wild albino hair.

  The only customers aside from Cordelia Whateley and Henry Armitage were a group of dark-clad persons wearing the uniform and insignia of the Dunwich Research Project.

  After a few minutes one of them, a gray-haired, severe-visaged woman, approached their table. “Professor Armitage,” she said sharply, “I didn’t know that you had invited a guest to visit you.”

  Armitage said, “I didn’t invite her. She wrote and said she was coming from Canada. I couldn’t prevent.”

  I couldn’t prevent, Cordelia mused. What an odd expression.

  The uniformed woman nodded angrily and returned to her own table. Henry Armitage had not introduced Cordelia Whateley to her.

  The waitress reappeared with a tray of dishes and glasses. A dust-coated bottle stood on the tray as well. The waitress set the dishes and bottle on the table. Cordelia Whateley’s dish held a slab of very rare meat — she assumed that it was beef. It was set off by a portion of broccoli and several very small roasted potatoes. Henry Armitage’s dish was empty save for a sprig of parsley.

  “Is that all you’re going to eat?” Cordelia Whateley asked.

  Armitage shook his head. “I have had my nourishment.”

  “But — I could have come here alone for dinner. You didn’t need to — ”

  “It is not good to be alone on the streets of Dunwich after dark, young miss.” Armitage reached across the table and took Cordelia Whateley by the wrist. He held her briefly, then dropped his own hand to his lap. He wore a threadbare black suit, a white shirt with a frayed collar, and a bow tie in an abstract print that Cordelia Whateley found almost hypnotic in the flickering yellow light of the oil-lamp on their table.

  “Why not? Is Dunwich unsafe? We have muggers in Montreal, too, you know. I think I can protect myself.”

  “Muggers?” A tiny laugh escaped Armitage’s lips, but even so Cordelia Whateley noticed a reaction among the uniformed men and women at the other table. “There are no muggers in Dunwich,” Armitage said. “No, young miss. There are no muggers.”

  After a long day’s journey from her home in Montreal, Cordelia Whateley experienced a combination of hunger and fatigue. She lifted her knife and fork and prepared to slice the rare meat on her plate. Her usual preference was for meat more thoroughly roasted than this, but appetite and reluctance to provoke any disagreement in the inn caused her to plunge the tines of her fork into the roast, and then the sharp point of her knife.

  Perhaps it was the dim and unsteady illumination in the inn coupled with the effects of fatigue and several sips of wine that created an illusion, but the meat appeared to writhe away from Cordelia Whateley’s implements. An involuntary gasp escaped her. The uniformed diners and even the blind musician turned their eyes toward her. She whispered, “Doctor Armitage, I’m — I’m afraid I’ve lost my appetite. If we could leave now, and we’ll start our work in the morning …”

  The ancient man shook his head negatingly. “You must not put off. We will return to the Institute.”

  Half fainting from fatigue and wine, yet equally eager to be at her work, Cordelia Whateley agreed. Upon returning to the Institute, Professor Armitage produced a ring of keys from the pocket of his shabby black suit and unlocked the glass-fronted bookcase containing the largest of the volumes Cordelia Whateley had previously seen.

  He selected one and carried it to a heavy deal table beside which a wooden reading-chair had already been placed, and laid it carefully upon the table. “You will find useful information here, young miss.” Having said this he retired to a far corner and folded himself into a chair. To Cordelia Whateley he seemed to disappear.

  She examined the volume Armitage had laid out. It was a bound collection of large news pages, the paper yellowing and flaking away at the edges. “I thought everybody was transferring newspaper files to microfilm,” Cordelia Whateley said.

  From his darkened corner, Henry Armitage replied, “Many in Dunwich Town like things as they were.”

  Cordelia Whateley, examining the masthead of the bound newspaper, read aloud, “The Dunwich Daily Dispatch.”

  “Only called it a daily,” Armitage commented. “You could never tell when there’d be an issue. The editor, Ephraim Clay, used to say it was a daily, came out once a day, just not every day. I think that was some kind of joke. Never understood Ephraim very well. A strange man. But look at those issues for 1928. You’ll learn all you need to know.”

  Cordelia Whateley fumbled in her
large purse and brought out a small tape recorder. She pressed a switch and began dictating segments from various 1928 issues of the Dunwich Daily Dispatch .

  One of them, reprinted from a Boston newspaper, reported the death of Cordelia’s distant cousin, Wilbur Whateley. The article bore no byline, but it described the youthful, dying giant in shuddersome detail. Cordelia’s voice quavered and shook as she spoke, but she managed to continue to the end of the article.

  Above the waist it was semi-anthropomorphic (the dispatch ran ) though its chest, where the dog’s rending paws still rested watchfully, had the leathery, reticulated hide of a crocodile or alligator. The back was piebald with yellow and black, and dimly suggested the squamous covering of certain snakes. Below the waist, though, it was the worst; for here all human resemblance left off and sheer phantasy began. The skin was thickly covered with coarse black fur, and from the abdomen a score of long greenish-grey tentacles with red sucking mouths protruded limply. Their arrangement was odd, and seemed to follow the symmetries of some cosmic geometry unknown to earth or the solar system. On each of the hips, deep set in a kind of pinkish, ciliated orbit, was what seemed to be a rudimentary eye; whilst in lieu of a tail there depended a kind of trunk or feeler with purple annular markings, and with many evidences of being an undeveloped mouth or throat. The limbs, save for their black fur, roughly resembled the hind legs of prehistoric earth’s giant saurians; and terminated in ridgy-veined pads that were neither hooves nor claws. When the thing breathed, its tail and tentacles rhythmically changed colour, as if from some circulatory cause normal to the non-human side of its ancestry. In the tentacles this was observable as a deepening of the greenish tinge, whilst in the tail it was manifest as a yellowish appearance which alternated with a sickly greyish-white in the spaces between the purple rings. Of genuine blood there was none; only the foetid greenish-yellow ichor which trickled along the painted floor beyond the radius of the stickiness, and left a curious discolouration behind it.