by Edward Lee
At the moment of this verbal revelation, the looming house seemed to emit a series of hefty creaks, a thunk! and then—
Sary flinched in Wilbur’s arms.
—a sound that could best be detailed as a phlegmatic snuffle, akin to that of swine, only of incredible sonic proportions, something almost elephantine.
“Wilbur, yew say ya use yer haouse for storage?” Sary felt predisposed to ask. “Is it animals yew’re storin’ in thar?”
“Uh, ee-yuh...” He kept his gaze straight ahead. “Of a kind.”
Due to his extraordinary height, Wilbur had to bend over in order to enter the tool shed. Sary found the structure commodious indeed, yet strangely lacking in the implements of its namesake. Bookshelves, instead, hung where one would surely expect tool boards to be evidenced. Only the most diminutive windows emitted the light of day, while candles sat perched abundantly about. A woodstove, cold now due to the season, sat bulkily erected in one dim corner, and another corner was occupied by a vast, intricately carved writing desk full of letter slots and tiny drawers. The desk stood nearly as tall as the man who attested to live here.
Wilbur gently put Sary down on her feet. “Knees still a-wobblin’?”
“Naw, I feel much better naow—thanks! My, ‘tis a big place, as yew said,” Sary remarked, reveling in a mental luxury of having an abode similarly sized and equipped to sleep in. “En’t never seed a woodstove so big neither. But...what’s ‘hind that cartin theer?”
The wood floor creaked as Wilbur stepped toward the indicated curtain, which he withdrew. “Warshin’ cove, see?”
“Waow!” exclaimed Sary, for she’d never seen an apparatus so extensive, which consisted of a wide tin tub to stand in, surrounded by an oak frame of some craft. A length of sisal rope, serving in the function of a cable, rose from a wooden lever to a watering can on an axle mounted between two studs of the frame. Another lever, lower, sprouted from a hand-pump, servicing a narrow rubber hose which conveyed water from a large barrel all the way up to the watering can.
“A shower’s what it’s called,” Wilbur reported, then stooped to demonstrate. “Fust ye work this pump till the can up top sturt a-tricklin’ doawn. ‘Tis a real spring barrel we gots so dun’t worry none ‘baout usin’ water—in the winter we’se jess heat the water up fust. Then when ye’re ready”—his hand indicated the higher lever—“jess pull this so’s the water’ll come daown on ye.”
“I en’t never got to warsh so fancified!” Sary celebrated. “Jess ponds or warsh tubs.”
“Ee-yuh. ‘T’were my grandsire built it, fer me mainly, on accaount I’se got ta warsh three times daily.”
“Three times!”
“Ee-yuh. See...wal, suthin’ ‘baout me that give me a smell stronger’n most folks. Grandfather say I’se”—the giant paused to deliberate upon a word—“he say I best be...inconspicuous, which mean I shouldn’t be obvious ta folks hereabouts. The smell’s even wuss abaout the house—I’se surprised ye didn’t make no mention of it. Hope it en’t botherin’ ye.”
“What? Smell?” replied Sary inattentively, for she remained rapt upon the elaborate washing instrument. “I carn’t smell. Don’t really even know what smell is ‘cept what my ma ‘splain to me. ‘Tis like tastin’ and hearin’ and seein’ only through yew’re nose. But I en’t got it ‘cos of a ‘fection when I was little.”
Wilbur peered down. “Got ye no sense of smell, you say?”
“Naw, none.”
Was the tall man shivering in place, his stout lower lip trembling? Near as Sary could ascertain, the paltry information regarding her lack of an olfactory sense had left Wilbur shocked in the best of ways. Eventually he recovered from his silent jubilation. Now his hand offered a grayish lump. “Oh, and heer’s some soap—”
“Soap!” she squealed.
“Ee-yuh. My grandsire larn’t me haow tew make it—simple, really. Jess boil animal fat with ashes from burnt leaves, then ye cook it daown till this is left. It work fine.”
Sary perceived the bizarre washing erection as an object of enthrallment, and the soap a delicacy.
“Hot day like this I figger ye might have a hanker for a shower.” Wilbur’s unusual eyes seemed to sense the young woman’s intrigue. His large, long-fingered hand pulled back the curtain. “Go on, step on in, then I’ll close the cartin for yer privacery, and ye can get yourself aout’a that dress so’s I can sew it fer ye.”
Sary’s molested face turned up with a smile of excitement; she stepped right in the tub, holding the piece of soap as if it were an exotic bauble. It had slipped her mind to close the curtain as per Wilbur’s suggestion; instead she pulled the torn gown up over her head and off, then turned obliviously naked and handed it to him.
The giant man seemed to flinch—did he even close his eyes? She placed the gown in his hand. He bashful ‘baout seein’ a gal with no clothes on? came the curiosity. Nevertheless, she closed the curtain. Most men reveled to espy her nude; again, here was an example of his previous gentlemanliness of which most male Dunwichers had not a trace. “‘Preciate ya lettin’ me do this,” she said behind the crude curtain. “And mendin’ my gaown.”
“‘Tis a pleasure...”
Sary eyed the shower’s pump and lever, trying to renovate in her mind the odd, tall man’s operating instructions. The pump, she recalled. Her breasts dipped as she bent to go through the proper motions, listening to the modest gush as the sprinkling can filled over her head. Yes, it would be nice to be clean, a condition she rarely got to enjoy. Next, she eyed the lever. What he say? Pull that, then the water come daown on me? But as she reached to do so, she at once became aware of...
Trailing down her bare shoulders and upper chest she couldn’t help but notice the countless minuscule black dots, like someone had sprinkled flecks of pepper on her. Only...
The black “flecks” were moving.
Indeed, as if in a mass exodus, these flecks (which only now did she realize were the legion of fleas and lice that took up constant residence in her scalp) were making a prompt departure from their abode. Lice and various other body vermin brought her no shame simply due to the universal fact that nearly everyone had them, and so Sary had for as long as her mind enabled her to recall. The itching one grew used to quite quickly. Yet, now, with an analogous quickness, the vermin were retreating from her. A similar exodus, then, was noticed trailing down her thighs: the multitudinous pubic mites she’d grown so equally accustomed to. It proved the strangest observation, while at the same time one she was quite pleased with.
“Havin’ yew’reself a muddle in thar?” resonated Wilbur’s voice. “Forget haow ta work the shower?”
“Aw, no, no, Wilbur. I ‘member naow,” and then she eased the lever back and shot to tiptoes as the joyously refreshing torrent sprinkled down on her head and ran down her body.
Her fascination with the soap grew childlike when she glided the fragrant gray lump about, first, skin, then her hair. The smear turned to lovely suds the more she agitated them with her hands. When she was scratching the suds into her recently deloused scalp, Wilbur’s heavy and oddly vibrating voice resounded yet again from behind, “I done ment yer gaown, so’s naow I’ll warsh it fer ye. I got suthin’ for ya to whar whiles it’s dryin’. I hope ye like it.”
“Oh, I’m sure I will, Wilbur. Thanks!”
When nearly the entirety of her body became a suit of suds, Sary caught her hands returning to her breasts to suds them further, then her furred sex as well. A dense tingling rarely felt in her caused her already pump nipples to plump up more, and she felt a strange warmth fill her breasts themselves. More and more, then, she caught her fingers delving as deep as their length would permit into the soft channel of her vagina. The sensations intoxicated her. Inconscient of any forethought, then, she meekly called out, “Wilbur?”
“Ee-yuh?”
“Only place on me I carn’t warsh is my back. Could yew do it for me?”
A long pause ensued, then Wilbur’s
large frame was heard rising, his unduly sizable feet thumping toward the curtain. “Sure, if ye like. I’ll just put my hand in so’s ye dun’t have to open the—” but Sary had already drawn the curtain open, standing naked and suds-encloaked with her back to him. Wilbur released something akin to a pleased sigh. Her small hand reached rearward until his much larger hand took the lump of ash soap. Another pause ensued: she guessed either reluctance or more likely another example of his bashfulness, then she suddenly sucked in a breath between her tongue touching the roof of her mouth when she felt her uncharacteristic rescuer begin to glide the soap up and down over her back.
“That feels soooo nice,” she uttered.
He withheld any response, just kept gliding the ash soap up and down.
Then, unable to control herself, “Lower please, if ya dun’t mind.”
“Yuh-yuh-yuh...ya mean ye’re backside too?”
Sary nodded. Of course, she’d already cleansed this region, but the feel of his strong and unusually long fingers beguiled her to make the redundant request. She leaned forward now, bracing the wood beam which supported the sprinkling can. She parted her legs.
Two long fingers of Wilbur’s hand now ran up and down through the groove of Sary’s buttocks; and in response, her buttocks repeatedly clenched and released. So long those fingers were—the middle one seven inches long at least, she’d previously noticed, and their companions not much shorter—and this fact only forced a consideration of fantasy: how potent a joy it would be for her to feel one of those fingers slip unhesitantly into her anus, while another slipped up into her sex. Thinking of this, in fact, caused her vaginal muscles to pulse in pre-orgasm. The fantasy turned so dense now that Sary felt not quite in her proper awareness, and she was even about to ask him to do this, but—
His huge, sudsy hand withdrew. “Thar. All nice’n clean naow?”
Sary could’ve toppled over. Heart drumming, and the nerves of her breasts and sex asquirm, she replied. “Thuh...thank yew, yes...”
Her lust-gauzed vision glimpsed Wilbur’s hand hanging a plush white towel on a peg. “Ye rinse off naow and dry yourself,” and then he closed the curtain behind her.
An actual orgasm was an experience so far removed from her that she couldn’t even contemplate the last time she’d had one. The rampant sexual abuse from her father as well as the suitors of her trade delivered no such delights. But...Wilbur..., she mused. His unnaturally large hands on her, and those impossible fingers running between her legs... The sensation left her desperate as a weasel cornered with a pitchfork, to bring her own hands to her sex right this moment and make herself climax.
The gums of her missing front teeth clasped down on her lip; her sex continued to beat. Sary knew that if she masturbated even behind the curtain, she’d generate enough noise to alarm Wilbur.
She slumped in a tingling frustration, pulled the can-lever, and rinsed all the suds off.
After drying herself, she wrapped the towel about her body and stepped out of the metal tub. Wilbur now stood nearly stooped over, hanging up Sary’s stitched-back-to-rights gown up on a window peg.
“Wow,” she said, “yew fixed’n warshed my dress that fast?”
“Warn’t no trouble. Hope ye liked your shower.”
“I sure did!” she couldn’t have replied with more enthusiasm. “I en’t felt this squeaky clean since I was real little, when my ma’d scrub me in the tub.” The remembrance of her mother brought a great smile to her mauled face, but in a moment more, the smile corroded.
“But now that I think back, lot’a them times my ma were warshing me? My father’d come in then, and...” She felt like some flimsy building about to collapse. “Aw, never mind.”
“Wun’t a good man, I take it?”
Sary shook her head quickly then sat down on a handmade footstool and began to rub her hair dry. She didn’t notice; however, after her brief reference to her father, the look in Wilbur’s eyes turned to an aspect of perfect disdain. The sour moment bothered her; she struggled to change topics. “Aw, yew know what? ‘T’were the funniest thing. Once I step in the shower all my body bugs run off me and go daown the drain, even afore I started warshin myself. Top’a my head dun’t itch no more.”
Wilbur rummaged in a storage crate set on end, which sufficed for a closet. “Ee-yuh. The bugs most folks got dun’t afflict us heer. Likely, ye noticed theer en’t no trace of maouse droppin’s or rat holes, neither, and ye’ll never see no spiders and such araound.” He seemed to hunt with deliberation for something in the make-shift closet. “No critters outside, neither, not fer hunnerts of ells; ‘tis why I gotta set my traps ways on aout in the woods.”
“No critters outside?” she asked with emphasis.
Wilbur’s big crinkly-haired head shook to indicate the negative. “No bugs, no critters, no worms—nuthin’. Nuthin’ like that come on the property, and ‘tis been that way sinct me and—” but here Wilbur’s speculation held in momentary check, as if he were considering a more desirable choice of words. “Not sinct I were born, my grandsire say. He say it jess might be on acaount of, wal, haow I got me a more powerful smell than folks hereabaouts.”
“What abaout that big haouse’a yours that yew use for storage naow? Any varmints in thar?”
“No,” Wilbur said in a dry croak as though some inner monitor signaled a sign of dissembled distress. But then he turned, seeming not distressed in the least, and held out on a hanger a long diaphanous black gown that shined unlike any fabric Sary had ever beheld.
A breath lodged in her chest. “That en’t fer me ta whar, is it?”
“It sure enough is. ‘Twas my mother’s... Yew’d do it service ta wear it.”
Sary was awestruck; never in her life had she seen much less worn such a beautiful garment.
“And it en’t yours jess to wear, mind ya. It’s fer ye to have.”
Calculating his words took time. This she could not believe. “Wilbur, I could never take this fine dress as a gift.”
“‘Tis yours naow.” He smiled crookedly but veritably, then placed the shimmering gown across her arms. “Why dun’t ye put it on while’s I go fetch our supper aout the smoker?” and with that, he thunked out of the shed and closed the door.
A corner of Sary’s eye effused a single tear. No doubt existed. This was the nicest day she’d ever been blessed enough to live.
Five
At the finish of a meal she might refer to as sumptuous (had the word existed in her vocabulary), Wilbur had tended to her remaining ear with some manner of poultice saturated with a mucilaginous medicine that he’d owned, “‘Tis’ll take the pain right off, and heal them bitemarks up. My grandsire tell me he get this from his grandsire, so’s ye can bet it’s old. Old-time medicine’s better’n new.”
The pain, indeed, dissipated immediately. “It’s workin’, all right—thanks!” Sary said.
Wilbur applied some tape to hold the poultice in place, and promised, “Ye’ll be fine in a jiffy. If ye’re wonderin’, this be nothin’ scarcely more than some mashed up tar root.”
“That’s all?” Sary questioned.
“Wal, plus mixed in is a bit’a this and a dab’a that,” and he pointed to a glass cabinet full of small old-style medicine bottles. “Locust juice, snake heart, blue iris petals. It wucks, it does. Jess ye wait.”
Sary wasn’t sure but she thought she glimpsed a few bottles of preserved toads, salamanders, and bats as well.
With Wilbur’s first aid complete, the two of them engaged in further discourse, then, more full-bellied than she’d been in distant memory, Sary yawned. The day still shined brightly beyond the small, high windows, yet Wilbur needed no further clue to sense that she was whelmed by fatigue. He pointed to a mattressed cot beside the high desk. This was obviously where Wilbur slept, for the crude but precisely constructed low table at the cot’s end demonstrated the extra length needed for his abnormally long legs. “You’re bushed, Sary, I’se kin tell, so jess ye go on’n have yerself
a nap while I run some errands.”
The idea of a nap, after the luxuriant shower and then huge helpings of exquisitely seasoned smoked meats, sounded lovely to her, but— “Aw, no, that’d be rude after all yew done fer me. I’ll help ya with your errands.”
Wilbur’s head shook in a manner that was not dominating at all but insistent just the same. “Git ye some rest. I wun’t lollygag so’s ta leave ye alone too long.”
Sary yawned again, bringing one fist to her puff-lipped mouth, then stretching her arms in the extravagant black dress. “Wal, okay. Thanks. I am tired all’s a suddent.”
Pleased, Wilbur took his leave of the shed. Even behind the heavy wood door, his enormous booted feet could be heard thudding the ground. But just as Sary would venture to the long, appended cot, her fatigue was instantly superimposed by an irresistible inquisitiveness. Her feet took her timidly about the structure’s cramped interior. She glimpsed some sheets of handwriting in a binder on the desk, and though Sary did have some reading skills, thanks to her mother’s diligence, she could make nothing of the unintelligible scribblings. They were more than simply words she’d never seen, but instead unlike words at all.
Rows of hoary books filled a handmade shelf, and atop a table of heavy oak, amid some scatterings of papers, sat a thick, iron-hinged tome that looked ancient. If there’d been a title on the cover, age and considerable wear had removed all vestige. Although Sary knew she shouldn’t—the book was not hers, nor any of her business—she gently lifted the stout cover, hearing its hinges grind, and, with some difficulty, read this:
NECRONOMICON
Ye Booke of Laws of ye Dead
As record’d by Abdul Al-Hazred,
Mad Arab of Damascus
Translat’d from the Latin of Olaus Wormius