Mysteries of the Worm

by Robert Bloch

  And that’s how I heard one of the things. It was early October, I was in the glen right by the big boulder. Then the noise started. I got behind that rock fast.

  You see, like I say, there isn’t any animals in the woods. Nor people. Excep perhaps old Cap Pritchett the mailman who only comes through on Thursday afternoons.

  So when I heard a sound that wasn’t Uncle Fred or Aunt Lucy calling to me, I knew I better hide.

  About that sound. It was far-away at first, kind of a dropping noise. Sounded like the blood falling in little spurts on the bottom of the bucket when Uncle Fred hung up a butchered hog.

  I looked around but I couldn’t make out nothing, and I couldn’t figure out the direction the noise was from either. The noise sort of stopped for a minute and they was only twilight and trees, still as death. Then the noise started again, nearer and louder.

  Sounded like a lot of people running or walking all at once, moving this way. Twigs busting under feet and scrabbling in the bushes all mixed up in the noise. I scrunched down behind that boulder and kep real quiet.

  I can tell that whatever makes the noise, it’s real close now, right in the glen. I want to look up but dassn’t because the sound is so loud and mean. And also there is an awful smell like something that was dead and buried being uncovered again in the sun.

  All at once the noise stops again and I can tell that whatever makes it is real close by. For a minute the woods are creepy-still. Then comes the sound.

  It’s a voice and it’s not a voice. That is, it doesn’t sound like a voice but more like a buzzing or croaking, deep and droning. But it has to be a voice because it is saying words.

  Not words I could understand, but words. Words that made me keep my head down, half afraid I might be seen and half afraid I might see something. I stayed there sweating and shaking. The smell was making me pretty sick, but that awful, deep droning voice was worse. Saying over and over something like

  “E hu shub nigger ath ngaa ryla neb shoggoth.”

  I can’t hope to spell it out the way it sounded, but I heard it enough times to remember. I was still listening when the smell got awful thick and I guess I must have fainted because when I woke up the voice was gone and it was getting dark.

  I ran all the way home that night, but not before I saw where the thing had stood when it talked—and it was a thing.

  No human being can leave tracks in the mud like goat’s hoofs all green with slime that smell awful—not four or eight, but a couple hundred!

  I didn’t tell Aunt Lucy or Uncle Fred. But that night when I went to bed I had terrible dreams. I thought I was back in the glen, only this time I could see the thing. It was real tall and all inky-black, without any particular shape except a lot of black ropes with ends like hoofs on it. I mean, it had a shape but it kep changing—all bulgy and squirming into different sizes. They was a lot of mouths all over the thing like puckered up leaves on branches.

  That’s as close as I can come. The mouths was like leaves and the whole thing was like a tree in the wind, a black tree with lots of branches trailing the ground, and a whole lot of roots ending in hoofs. And that green slime dribbling out of the mouths and down the legs was like sap!

  Next day I remembered to look in a book Aunt Lucy had downstairs. It was called a mythology. This book told about some people who lived over in England and France in the old days and was called Druids. They worshipped trees and thought they was alive. Maybe this thing was like what they worshipped—called a nature-spirit.

  But these Druids lived across the ocean, so how could it be? I did a lot of thinking about it the next couple of days, and you can bet I didn’t go out to play in those woods again.

  At last I figgered it out something like this.

  Maybe those Druids got chased out of the forests over in England and France and some of them was smart enough to build boats and come across the ocean like old Leaf Erikson is supposed to have. Then they could maybe settle in the woods back here and frighten away the Indians with their magic spells.

  They would know how to hide themselves away in the swamps and go right on with their heathen worshiping and call up these spirits out of the ground or wherever they come from.

  Indians use to believe that white gods come from out of the sea a long time ago. What if that was just another way of telling how the Druids got here? Some real civilized Indians down in Mexico or South America—Aztecs or Inkas, I guess—said a white god come over in a boat and taught them all kinds of magic. Couldn’t he of been a Druid?

  That would explain Grandma’s stories about them ones, too.

  Those Druids hiding in the swamps would be the ones who did the drumming and pounding and lit the fires on the hills. And they would be calling up them ones, the tree spirits or whatever, out of the earth. Then they would make sacrefices. Those Druids always made sacrefices with blood, just like the old witches. And didn’t Grandma tell about people who lived too near the hills disappearing and never being found again?

  We lived in a spot just exactly like that.

  And it was getting close to Halloween. That was the big time, Grandma always said.

  I began to wonder—how soon now?

  Got so scared I didn’t go out of the house. Aunt Lucy made me take a tonic, said I looked peaked. Guess I did. All I know is one afternoon when I heard a buggy coming through the woods I ran and hid under the bed.

  But it was only Cap Pritchett with the mail. Uncle Fred got it and come in all excited with a letter.

  Cousin Osborne was coming to stay with us. He was kin to Aunt Lucy and he had a vacation and he wanted to stay a week. He’d get here on the same train I did—the only train they was passing through these parts—on noon, October 25th.

  For the next few days we was all so excited that I forgot all my crazy notions for a spell. Uncle Fred fixed up the back room for Cousin Osborne to sleep in and I helped him with the carpenter parts of the job.

  Days got shorter right along, and the nights was all cold with big winds. It was pretty brisk the morning of the 25th and Uncle Fred bundled up warm to drive through the woods. He meant to fetch Cousin Osborne at noon, and it was seven mile to the station. He wouldn’t take me, and I didn’t beg. Them woods was too full of creaking and rustling sounds from the wind—sounds that might be something else, too.

  Well, he left, and Aunt Lucy and I stayed in the house. She was putting up preserves now—plums—for over the winter season. I washed out jars from the well.

  Seems like I should have told about them having two wells. A new one with a big shiny pump, close to the house. Then an old stone one out by the barn, with the pump gone. It never had been any good, Uncle Fred said, it was there when they bought the place. Water was all slimy. Something funny about it, because even without a pump, sometimes it seemed to back up. Uncle Fred couldn’t figure it out, but some mornings water would be running out over the sides—green, slimy water that smelled terrible.

  We kep away from it and I was by the new well, till along about noon when it started in to cloud up. Aunt Lucy fixed lunch, and it started to rain hard with thunder rolling in off the big hills in the west.

  Seemed to me Uncle Fred and Cousin Osborne was going to have troubles getting home in the storm, but Aunt Lucy didn’t fret about it—just made me help her put up the stock.

  Come five o’clock, getting dark, and still no Uncle Fred. Then we begun to worry. Maybe the train was late, or something happened to the horse or buggy.

  Six o’clock and still no Uncle Fred. The rain stopped, but you could still hear the thunder sort of growling off in the hills, and the wet branches kep dripping down in the woods, making a sound like women laughing.

  Maybe the road was too bad for them to get through. Buggy might bog down in the mud. Perhaps they decided to stay in the deepo over night.

  Seven o’clock and it was pitch dark outside. No rain sounds any more. Aunt Lucy was awful worried. She said for us to go out and post a lantern on the fence rail by the
road.

  We went down the path to the fence. It was dark and the wind had died down. Everything was still, like in the deep part of the woods. I felt kind of scared just walking down the path with Aunt Lucy—like something was out there in the quiet dark, someplace, waiting to grab me.

  We lit a lantern and stood there looking down the dark road and, “What’s that?” said Aunt Lucy, real sharp. I listened and heard a drumming sound far away.

  “Horse and buggy,” I said. Aunt Lucy perked up.

  “You’re right,” she says, all at once. And it is, because we see it. The horse is running fast and the buggy lurches behind it, crazy-like. It don’t even take a second look to see something has happened, because the buggy don’t stop by the gate but keep going up the barn with Aunt Lucy and me running through the mud after the horse. The horse is all full of lather and foam, and when it stops it can’t stand still. Aunt Lucy and I wait for Uncle Fred and Cousin Osborne to step out, but nothing happens. We look inside.

  There isn’t anybody in the buggy at all.

  Aunt Lucy says, “Oh!” in a real loud voice and then faints. I had to carry her back to the house and get her into bed.

  I waited almost all night by the window, but Uncle Fred and Cousin Osborne never showed up. Never.

  The next few days was awful. They was nothing in the buggy for a clue like to what happened, and Aunt Lucy wouldn’t let me go along the road or into town or even to the station through the woods.

  The next morning the horse was dead in the barn, and of course we would have had to walk to the deepo or all those miles to Warren’s farm. Aunt Lucy was scared to go and scared to stay and she allowed as how when Cap Pritchett comes by we had best go with him over to town and make a report and then stay there until we found out what happened.

  Me, I had my own ideas what happened. Halloween was only a few days away now, and maybe “them ones” had snatched Uncle Fred and Cousin Osborne for sacrefice. “Them ones” or the Druids. The mythology book said Druids could even raise storms if they wanted to with their spells.

  No sense talking to Aunt Lucy, though. She was like out of her head with worry, anyway, just rocking back and forth and mumbling over and over, “They’re gone” and “Fred always warned me” and “No use, no use.” I had to get the meals and tend to stock myself. And nights it was hard to sleep, because I kep listening for drums. I never heard any, though, but still it was better than sleeping and having those dreams.

  Dreams about the black thing like a tree, walking through the woods and sort of rooting itself to one particular spot so it could pray with all those mouths—pray down to that old god in the ground below.

  I don’t know where I got the idea that was how it prayed—by sort of attaching its mouths to the ground. Maybe it was on account of seeing the green slime. Or had I really seen it? I’d never gone back to look. Maybe it was all in my head—the Druid story and about them ones and the voice that said “shoggoth” and all the rest.

  But then, where was Cousin Osborne and Uncle Fred? And what scared the horse so it up and died the next day?

  Thoughts kep going round and round in my head, chasing each other, but all I knew was we’d be out of here by Halloween night.

  Because Halloween was on a Thursday, and Cap Pritchett would come and we could ride to town with him.

  Night before I made Aunt Lucy pack and we got all ready, and then I settled down to sleep. There was no noises, and for the first time I felt a little better.

  Only the dreams came again. I dreamed a bunch of men come in the night and crawled through the parlor bedroom window where Aunt Lucy slept and got her. They tied her up and took her away, all quiet, in the dark, because they had cat-eyes and didn’t need light to see.

  The dream scared me so I woke up while it was just breaking into dawn. I went down the hall to Aunt Lucy right away.

  She was gone.

  The window was wide open like in my dream, and some of the blankets was torn.

  Ground was hard outside the window and I didn’t see footprints or anything. But she was gone.

  I guess I cried then.

  It’s hard to remember what I did next. Didn’t want breakfast. Went out hollering “Aunt Lucy” and not expecting any answer. I walked to the barn and the door was open and the cows were gone. Saw one or two prints going out the yard and up the road, but I didn’t think it was safe to follow them.

  Some time later I went over to the well and then I cried again because the water was all slimy green in the new one, just like the old.

  When I saw that I knew I was right, them ones must of come in the night and they wasn’t even trying to hide their doings any more. Like they was sure of things.

  Tonight was Halloween. I had to get out of here. If them ones was watching and waiting, I couldn’t depend on Cap Pritchett showing up this afternoon. I’d have to chance it down the road and I’d better start walking now, in the morning, while it was still light enough to make town.

  So I rummaged around and found a little money in Uncle Fred’s drawer of the bureau and Cousin Osborne’s letter with the address in Kingsport he wrote it from. That’s where I’d have to go after I told folks in town what happened. I’d have some kin there.

  I wondered if they’d believe me in town when I told them about the way Uncle Fred had disappeared and Aunt Lucy, and about them stealing the cattle for a sacrefice and about the green slime in the well where something had stopped to drink. I wondered if they would know about the drums and the lights on the hills tonight and if they was going to get up a party and come back this evening to try to catch them ones and what they meant to call up rumbling out of the earth. I wondered if they knew what a “shoggoth” was.

  Well, whether they did or not, I couldn’t stay and find out for myself. So I packed up my satchel and got ready to leave. Must of been around noon and everything was still.

  I went to the door and stepped outside, not bothering to lock it behind me. Why should I with nobody around for miles?

  Then I heard the noise down the road.

  Footsteps.

  Somebody walking along the road, just around the bend.

  I stood for a minute, waiting to see, waiting to run.

  Then he come along.

  He was tall and thin, and looked something like Uncle Fred only a lot younger and without a beard, and he was wearing a nice city kind of suit and a crush hat. He smiled when he saw me and come marching up like he knowed who I was.

  “Hello, Willie,” he said.

  I didn’t say nothing. I was so confuzed.

  “Don’t you know me?” he said. “I’m Cousin Osborne. Your cousin, Frank.” He held out his hand to shake. “But then I guess you wouldn’t remember, would you? Last time I saw you, you were only a baby.”

  “But I thought you were suppose to come last week,” I said. “We expected you on the 25th.”

  “Didn’t you get my telegram?” he asked. “I had business.”

  I shook my head. “We never get nothing here unless the mail delivers it on Thursdays. Maybe it’s at the station.”

  Cousin Osborne grinned. “You are pretty well off the beaten track at that. Nobody at the station this noon. I was hoping Fred would come along with the buggy so I wouldn’t have to walk, but no luck.”

  “You walked all the way?” I asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “And you come on the train?”

  Cousin Osborne nodded.

  “Then where’s your suitcase?”

  “I left it at the deepo,” he told me. “Too far to fetch it along. I thought Fred would drive me back there in the buggy to pick it up.” He noticed my luggage for the first time. “But wait a minute—where are you going with a suitcase, son?”

  Well, there was nothing else for me to do but tell him everything that happened.

  So I said for him to come into the house and set down and I’d explain.

  We went back in and he fixed some coffee and I made a couple sanw
iches and we ate, and then I told him about Uncle Fred going to the deepo and not coming back, and about the horse and then what happened to Aunt Lucy. I left out the part about me in the woods, of course, and I didn’t even hint at them ones. But I told him I was scared and figgered on walking to town today before dark.

  Cousin Osborne he listened to me, nodding and not saying much or interrupting.

  “Now you can see why we got to go, right away,” I said. “Whatever come after them will be coming after us, and I don’t want to spend another night here.”

  Cousin Osborne stood up. “You may be right, Willie,” he said. “But dont let your imagination run away with you, son. Try to separate fact from fancy. Your Aunt and Uncle have disappeared. That’s fact. But this other nonsense about things in the woods coming after you—that’s fancy. Reminds me of all that silly talk I heard back home, in Arkham. And for some reason there seems to be more of it around this time of year, at Halloween. Why, when I left—”

  “Excuse me, Cousin Osborne,” I said. “But dont you live in Kingsport?”

  “Why to be sure,” he told me. “But I did live in Arkham once, and I know the people around here. It’s no wonder you were so frightened in the woods and got to imagining things. As it is, I admire your bravery. For a 12 year old, you’ve acted very sensibly.”

  “Then lets get walking,” I said. “Here it is almost 2 and we better get moving if we want to make town before sundown.”

  “Not just yet, son,” Cousin Osborne said. “I wouldn’t feel right about leaving without looking around and seeing what we can discover about this mystery. After all, you must understand that we can’t just march into town and tell the sheriff some wild nonsense about strange creatures in the woods making off with your Aunt and Uncle. Sensible folks just won’t believe such things. They might think I was lying and laugh at me. Why they might even think that you had something to do with your Aunt and Uncle’s—well, leaving.”