That Ain't Right: Historical Accounts of the Miskatonic Valley (Mad Scientist Journal Presents Book 1)

by Emily C. Skaftun

  According to our GPS, Dunwich was an hour's drive from the motel, but the road the device indicated either did not exist or had vanished under the encroaching growth. At Dean's Corners, a sleepy backwater dominated by the black bulk of a pulp and paper mill, we asked for directions and ended up following an eroded dirt track that wound up the steep hillside and back into the valley. It was past noon when we rounded a narrow curve and saw a covered bridge across a stream in the valley below, and beyond the bridge a huddle of gambrel roofs in the shadow of a soaring mountain.

  The houses across the bridge lined up on either side of a wide, unpaved street. They bore the marks of great age and neglect: collapsed roofs, rotting outer walls, moldy clapboards. Many doors and windows were boarded shut. But there were signs of life: shadows darted into doorways and figures moved behind dusty panes as we drove through what passed for the center of the village, past the sprawling ruin of a church whose fallen steeple jutted into the sky like the broken horn of a mythical beast. The ground floor of the church had been converted into a sort of general store: sacks of flour or feed and shelves stocked with canned goods could be glimpsed in the darkness within. A group of men, dour-faced and unkempt, sat on the steps and wooden boxes passing around a bottle. They fell silent at the sight of the van, their lined faces blank and unreadable.

  The county registry showed the land behind which the spring was located to be the property of a Harlan Whateley of Dunwich, Massachusetts. But our attempts to determine the whereabouts of the Whateley farm were met with averted gazes and terrified silence. It was clear that the village folk didn't trust us and that they wanted us gone, clearer still that Whateley's name evoked in them a mix of hatred and superstitious fear. Finally an old drunk we'd bribed with a bottle of liquor pointed us to a logging track that led into the hills on the other side of Dunwich.

  The van struggled up the rutted path, gears straining and engine whining. Harlan Whateley's place, an ancient farmhouse falling apart at the corners, sat in the middle of a clearing beneath the dark, steep rise of Sentinel Hill. Save for an old truck parked by the crooked timber porch, there were no signs of human presence about the place. Farther up the incline, an immense building of stone and wood leaned against a rocky outcrop--a vast barn-like structure with no visible windows or doors, its foundations elevated on pillars. A small stream flowed beneath it and trickled into a muddy ditch at the side of the road. The sight of that monolithic hulk in the silent wilderness filled me with foreboding; it evoked the grim image of a temple of some dark deity, waiting for a sacrifice to approach the long-abandoned altar. By the look on the others' faces, I could see that they shared my sentiment. None of us spoke much--the unnatural silence of the place grated on the nerves, and the shadows that grew longer as the day waned played strange tricks on the eyes.

  The logging track weaved along a precarious ledge, then ended abruptly at the edge of a forest. We parked the van and hiked the rest of the way, carrying our equipment with us. The spring was a pool of dark, still water, cupped between rocky knolls; by the time we climbed down and got what we came for, the sun was already sinking behind the hills. Nielsen was at the wheel as we made our way down, eager to be far from Dunwich by nightfall.

  I never saw what flitted across our path from the gathering shadows--there was a vague impression of something large and flesh-colored, moving with a sort of leaping gait, flailing its membranous appendages in the lights of the van. Nielsen swore and swerved to avoid it; the van veered to the side, narrowly missing a huge pine tree. The wheels struck a rut and for a terrifying moment the heavy vehicle threatened to roll. It came down with a crash that drove the breath from my lungs and careened down a slope, branches and small trees scouring its sides. My head slammed into something hard; stars exploded in my vision. Then all was darkness.

  #

  By some miracle, none of us was seriously hurt--I had a nasty gash above my temple and Nielsen a broken nose, but Yeung and Bentham had gotten away with no more than bruises and scratches. Luck was on our side--a gnarled bole had stopped the van's progress at the edge of a yawning precipice. Apart from a litter of broken glass and a shattered monitor screen, the lab equipment seemed to have survived the crash; most importantly, the vials with the samples were intact.

  We climbed up to the road and tried our phones, but there was no reception. Dusk was falling fast, the horizon outlined in a red glow. In the failing light I saw something I hadn't noticed before: patches of bare grass on the forested hilltops, with strange stone formations perched in their midst. One such formation crowned the hill above the Whateley farm. For no apparent reason, the sight sent a chill up my spine.

  There was no chance of us making it back to Dunwich before dark, and the thought of spending the night in these hills was too terrifying to contemplate. No one had gotten a good look at the thing that had leapt in front of the van--Nielsen turned very pale at the question and shook his head insistently--but the images from the autopsy of the Arkham specimen were fresh in our minds. Bentham suggested that we go down to the Whateley farm and ask for help--whoever lived there had to have a landline, or could give us a ride into the village in the truck we saw parked outside. I didn't like the idea of returning to the rundown farm and the foreboding structure perched on the hillside, but there was no other choice. We retrieved what equipment we could carry and started downhill, through the dark and silent woodland, our footsteps loud in the stillness.

  There was light in the farmhouse windows, and I offered silent thanks for our luck. Bentham went up the porch steps and hammered on the door. Nothing happened, but Bentham would not be dissuaded. The second round of knocking brought a response, not from the old house but from the dark building on the hill--a low, deep rumble that shook the ground beneath our feet. We glanced at each other wide-eyed.

  "What the hell was that?" asked Yeung.

  "Sounds like a herd of elephants in there," Nielsen said. Bentham took a cautious step back. The roaring noise came again, louder this time, accompanied by a heavy thump against the side of the structure, something trying to break out. I felt a lead ball drop into my stomach; my legs felt rooted to the spot. If there was something moving in the barn, it had to be bigger than an elephant. Much bigger.

  "Maybe we better--"

  There was a creaking noise and the door opened as far as the thick safety chain would allow. A man peered at us from inside--thin and sunken-cheeked, lank black hair curling around his ears; he looked to be anywhere between thirty and fifty. His dark eyes scanned us with a flat, cold gaze.

  "Mister, eh- Whateley?" Bentham extended a hand in greeting. Seeing it ignored, he made an awkward attempt to turn it into a vague gesture at the darkening slope. "We ran into some trouble with our van up there. Sure could use some help."

  "If you have a phone we can--" Yeung began, but the noise from the barn drowned out the rest of the sentence. It was like no sound I'd heard before, like the tread of colossal feet across an unseen horizon. It was followed by a series of sharp cracks, the wooden walls of the structure creaking and breaking. In the dull glow from the windows, I saw the blank look in Whateley's eyes change to terror.

  "Shouldn't have gone out there." He jerked his head toward the hillside, staring somewhere past us. "You need to leave. The time ain't right. Not yet."

  The door slammed shut, leaving Bentham with his mouth open. I couldn't say why, but suddenly I knew we had to get out of there, and right away. Nielsen had gone into some sort of daze, and Yeung was as white as a ghost, his eyes riveted to the bulk of the barn.

  "Hey!" Bentham's confusion had worn off; anger rose in its place. He kicked at the door, but it remained closed. A stirring rustle reached us from the immense structure, hundreds of sharp-taloned feet scraping across a stone floor; Nielsen clapped his hands to his ears and whimpered.

  "Come on," I said to Bentham. "If we have to spend the night out here, we do. We'll walk back to town in the morning."

  "That bastard." Bentham's fists w
ere clenched. I'd known him for years and never saw him lose his temper before. But there was something about the place that set your teeth on edge, worked on your nerves. "He's got animals in the barn, and I'll bet he's dumping manure straight into that stream. Let's see how he likes it when we slap him with a fine."

  Before I could stop him, he took off up the hillside, his tall, lanky figure disappearing into the gloom. We followed him to the side of the structure. Up close, the resemblance to a temple was even stronger--the foundation was hewn from massive stone blocks, the walls made from heavy timber sections. It towered above us like some battlemented castle of the gods. Bentham waded through the water and clambered up one of the huge joists to a grid-covered hole. When he turned toward us, his face bore a grin I didn't much care for.

  "Just taking a look inside," he said, and peered through the grate.

  A shifting, slithering sound came from the other side of the wall as whatever was in the structure moved with a hideous eagerness to meet him. Bentham gave a strangled half-cry and lost his footing; the grate, bearing his full weight, tore off its frame and he splashed into the shallow stream. Yeung went to help him up, grabbed one arm, and let go with a shriek. Bentham was dead, his lips pulled back from his teeth, his face twisted in a grimace of absolute horror.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the dim interior, lit by a wan, pale light; there was a vague notion of something immense rearing on many legs--as tall as a cliff, but without constant shape, an amalgamation of all the nightmares dreamt up by humanity. Beneath the sound of its roar I could hear the flapping of leathery wings and saw the raw, flesh-colored things leaping and fluttering between its colossal legs. I felt the sight claw at the back of my skull, offering insanity. I tore my gaze from it and staggered away from the barn, only to see Whateley--or whoever the man in the house was--walking up the slope with a shotgun pointed in our direction.

  The shot rang out, loud as thunder between the cliffs. Yeung's hands went up in front of him, a half-hearted attempt to ward off a blow; a pink cloud blossomed at the back of his head and he pitched into the stream, next to Bentham's corpse. Whateley raised his weapon again, slowly. His lips moved as if forming words, but all I could hear was a low, inane mutter. Nielsen was kneeling, face turned up to the dark, windowless monolith; his mind was gone. I yelled at him to run and tried to tug him to his feet, but he outweighed me by a good thirty pounds.

  "Time ain't right," the madman said, and pulled the trigger. The bullet dug into the ground, inches from my right ankle. I let go of Nielsen and ran for a tangle of bushes, thorns and brambles scraping my face and hands. There was another shot, but the darkness had already hidden me. I lay flat on the ground, cheek pressed into the dirt, paralyzed with fear, as all hell broke loose around me.

  The walls of the great structure groaned and burst apart, showering splinters into the stream and the bushes. The thing inside had crushed it like a box of matchsticks. For a moment, its vast, inconstant bulk was outlined against the starry sky--it was invisible, flickering in and out of existence like the image from a broken projector, but its presence seemed to bend light and space. I only glimpsed it for a moment before I averted my eyes. It was insanity become flesh--towering, walking insanity that had frightened Bentham to death and stricken poor Nielsen from his wits.

  I felt a rush of air rustle through the bushes, as if from the stirring of something immense, and heard the shrubs and trees on the hillside crack and flatten as if trampled by a tremendous weight. The night filled with a leathery flapping as the winged creatures scampered away from the ruin of the barn. One crashed through the bushes beside me and I screamed at the touch of its slimy, rubbery flesh; it scrambled through the undergrowth, emitting an odd, high-pitched piping.

  Up the hillside the unseen horror shambled, leaving a wide swath of destruction in its wake, the ground trembling and trees snapping like toothpicks. Nielsen cried out; rising to his feet, he ran straight toward those Cyclopean tracks, arms open in rapture, and flung himself in the path of the lumbering horror. There was a sickening crack as the unseen feet trod him to a bloody mass. But this I didn't see--both the man and the tracks had passed beyond my field of vision, toward the top of the hill, where a pale light leaked into the night sky.

  This was where the shambling obscenity was heading, following some unheard call from the circle of stones. For a moment I saw a great shadow squatting in the middle of the circle, and the stars above me seemed to gather in weird constellations. Reality teetered on the brink of a black gulf.

  The sequence becomes garbled at this point. I remember seeing Whateley fling the shotgun away and run after the monstrosity, chanting strange words in a shrill, inhuman tongue. I remember the unearthly roar that rent the night, part agony, part unfulfilled rage; for a moment the thing's grotesque shape was limned against the pale light--seething, writhing, gibbering, unraveling with every shrieked syllable. Then a flash of blinding light seared awful images into the backs of my eyelids; I buried my face in my hands, my fingers twisting with a will of their own. It took every shred of self-control not to claw my eyes out to stop the visions from coming. A great tumult swept down the hillside, tearing trees from their roots, slamming me against the ground.

  When I crawled out of the bushes, shivering and bleeding, Whateley was gone and not a trace of the horror from the barn remained, save for a trail of absolute devastation that led up the hill. The decrepit farmhouse and the barn had been reduced to a heap of splintered planks. Whatever unclean secret Whateley had called upon to summon and bind the shambling monstrosity was buried under the ruins.

  #

  They found me wandering the barren fields around Dunwich two days later. I was almost catatonic, near death with exposure. Of what I'd seen up at the farm I refused to speak. Which was just fine, for the villagers were in no hurry to ask questions; they had seen the weird lights and heard the distant rumble from the forbidden place on the hill. They fed me and gave me blankets and kept their distance until the police arrived from Dean's Corners. The policemen--two elderly part-timers who were as eager to leave the village as the silent, sullen crowd was to be rid of them--took my babbling statement in the musty general store, their eyes dancing uneasily between the half-effaced symbols on the walls behind the shelves and the brick partition that walled off the former chancel. From Dunwich I was taken to the sheriff's office in Lowell, and from there to Boston.

  A big investigation followed--the FBI got involved, as did the police departments of several counties. I was brought in for questioning several times, but my account of events was dismissed as raving and unreliable. For a while I was the chief suspect, but the discovery of Whateley's shotgun exonerated me from Yeung's murder, and the coroner's office found no evidence of foul play in the bizarre deaths of Bentham and Nielsen. An APB was issued for Harlan Whateley's arrest, but that was six months ago, and nothing has come of it. The same can be said for the Agency's probe into the dumping of waste into the Miskatonic, which has been placed on hold indefinitely. I took a few weeks of mandatory R&R and still see a shrink twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It's not helping--at this point, nothing can--but it makes me feel like I'm putting up a fight, and one has to hang onto one's delusions, right? All the way to the bitter end.

  There's something in those hills--a doorway, an opening into some dark and unknowable place--and the inhabitants of the valley know about it. The knowledge of the old ways, knowledge that was ancient before man walked the earth, is still alive. Sooner or later, another will come in Whateley's place and bring something through that opening, some unnamable denizen of the other side. Something vast and hungry, born of insane dimensions and weird planes of existence. Something that feeds on those tainted waters, fetid with offal and blood.

  It can afford to be patient. Time and space as we know them mean nothing in the universe it inhabits. There are others--trapped in the nighted chasms between worlds, dreaming madness and chaos. But this one is the first, t
he opener of the way. It that waits on the other side of the breach, on the other side of those silent, brooding hills, watching, waiting.

  My mind is a gate that keeps the insanity from spilling through into this world. I know that, and the thing from the other side knows it too. Sooner or later I'll have to close the gate forever.

  * * *

  Paul C. Bowen was a senior analyst with the EPA's National Headquarters in Washington, D.C., and the prime suspect in the deaths of three EPA personnel and the disappearance of a local farmer in Dunwich, Mass., in February 2013. A joint investigation by the FBI and Massachusetts State Police found no evidence connecting Bowen to the crime. In the months that followed, Bowen was diagnosed with sudden-onset schizophrenia and paranoid delusions; all attempts to obtain a coherent statement from him about the events in Dunwich proved fruitless. He was found dead in his home in June 2013. His death was ruled a suicide.

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  Damir is an aficionado of weird and macabre tales, presently residing in Arlington, Virginia. His reading interests range from horror and fantasy to pulp and science fiction. His short stories have been published on the Tales to Terrify podcast, in the Schlock! Bimonthly magazine and in anthologies by Schlock! Webzine, Source Point Press, Parasomnia Press, Apokrupha, Villipede Publications, Miskatonic Press, and the Black Library Bolthole. He earns his living as an accountant, a profession that lends itself well to nightmares and harrowing visions.

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