by Edward Lee
The train of Sary’s thoughts snapped like a heavy bough. “Oh, Wilbur! I’ud jest love that, I would! I will pump babies aout fer yew as many as I can muster if it be watch’a want!”
Wilbur, with this, saw the lengths of his misinterpretation; and the resultant embarrassment easily showed on his face. “Dang, Sary. I was only goin’ ta say that ye needn’t worry ‘baout me gettin’ ya pregnant on accaount that I carn’t.”
“Yew carn’t?”
“Naw, I’se ‘fraid not. See, jess as, uh, sarten parts’a me is different from fellas hereabaouts, so’s my seed. Way my seed is, is, wal, it en’t possible fer it to make a gull have a baby.”
Sary’s eyes thinned to slits. “Haow yew know?”
“That big book on my table say so, fer one thing, and from what my Grandfather tell me back when I was jess comin’ ta be a man. The word he use—wal, it’s likely a word that en’t known ta ye—the word he use was incompatible. See, my seed be incompatible with the wombs of women hereabaouts. Means it wun’t work—-my seed, that is.”
Sary tried to recite the unusual word to herself, but soon gave up.
Wilbur went on a bit of a ramble. “Ee-yuh, Grandsire tell me, all right, he say ‘Willy, onct ye stert carryin’ on with gulls—and ye can bet yew will—ye en’t gonna be able to make any of ‘em big in the belly with your child,’” but from this point Wilbur curtailed what remained of his grandfather’s earthy monologue, which continued, Yes, sar, boy, ye can whip aout thet big dick’a yers and ye can fuck all these heer Dunwich jism buckets up one side’a taown and daown the next but ye en’t NEVER gonna knock ‘em up. Um-hmm, ye can fill ‘em with your nut like a baker fill a blammed CANNOLI with cream and theer en’t no more chance’a yew puttin’ a baby up her cunt as theer be a ANT haulin’ a bale’a cotton! It be on accaount thet your cum’s INCOMPATIBLE with gulls hereababouts... Hence, the origin of Wilbur’s discovery of the word. “Hope ye en’t disappointed, Sary. That jess the way it be with me. Chances’a me makin’ a baby with yew...wal, thar en’t a chance in a quintillion yeers ta the tenth power.”
“How many yeers?”
“Quintillion ta—er, wal, jess means a long time.”
“Wilbur, whether yew make a baby with me or not, I dun’t keer,” she beamed, “long as I git ta be with yew!”
So much for that interstitial bit of information.
Upon the languishing of the sun on July’s final day, however, Sary seemed to sense a figurative cloud spreading over their personal realm, which threatened to overwhelm her joy unutterably, but why she would muse upon this she could not put a finger on. Wilbur spent more time earlier in the day at his desk, writing, and also consulting other arcane papers in his bureau, as well as some books so antiquated that their very bindings were no longer extant. De Vermis Mysteriis, she vaguely made out on one title page, and another: Le Mot est la Vie. Wilbur regarded these crumbling tomes as though he were viewing a sick loved one. Yet no decrease was observed in the vibrancy of his attitude toward her—if anything there was an increase—but betwixt the layers of his undivided attention, Sary very much perceived the afore remarked cloud—a cloud, for sure, of worry. During an earlier segment of the evening, he’d been seen pacing back and forth outside before the big house, wringing his overlarge hands, and once he’d unfastened the door’s antique locks and gone inside. Had Sary heard a muffled but gargantuan snort, and then something like a plaintive mewl? Of this she felt sure as she watched through the tiny window, and then she could declare that the mewl reminded her of a domesticated beast in the throes of suffering, so sadly did this aural emission emanate. Then Wilbur had come out, relocked the door, only to turn with what may have been tears in his eyes and an even more intense cast of concern upon his facial aspect. It was, indeed, an unbridled concern, as of one far steeped in a misery of inner-calamity. Sary said not a word when he returned to the tool-house but instead efforted to relieve his unspoken distraint by ministering to his genitals with her mouth. The gesture assuaged him a good deal, but then he regretted that he must leave “fer a spell” to tend to some unspoken-of onus, after which he exited the shed, insisted she lock the door behind him—“None ta worry, but jess a precaution, mind ye”—and loped off in the direction of Sentinel Hill. By now, the man’s anguish left Sary quite consternated herself, but though she subdued some of this by—unable now to resist, of course—picking up the odd, palish column of Wilbur’s spent seed where she’d left it on the floor, and inserting it into her private channel. This affected another half-hour of sheer, carnal bliss, whose impact required yet another half-hour from which to recover her sensibilities and motor skills alike.
By midnight, Wilbur had not returned.
Nor by two a.m.
The deepness of the night sky lent grim assurance that the carriage clock was to be believed and, therefore, Sary was unable to engage her self-restraint further. Frantic, she dressed, opened the shed-door, and prepared at once to begin a search for Wilbur. But no sooner had she stepped without the confines of the abode...
Her eyes stung ever-so-modestly.
Due to Sary’s lack of olfactory reception, she did not smell the smoke which had permeated the property like fog; but even in the moon’s luminescence, her eyes could very well detect the haze which informed her that a fire blazed not far off. Then she looked west—
She screeched high and piercingly as a steam-train whistle.
A fire burned indeed, from what appeared to be the very spot she suspected was Wilbur’s destination: Sentinel Hill. She could even envision the plume of flame wavering behind those queer columns of standing stones where sat the antediluvian slab whispered of by her late mother. An uproarious fire this was not, yet the nexus of its light seemed more intense than any common forest fire should be; while at times, its crackling radiance very definitely gave off flares of the oddest green, akin to tarnished bronze. An academic with an intricate imagination and a proclivity for metaphor might describe this hue as lucifesque.
However, the entity of Lucifer had no connexion whatsoever. And next?
The sounds came.
It was as though the pandemonium of Babylon’s demise, the din of the Mongol Horde, and the cacophony of Tartarus entwined and released at once. Had the earth let loose an a capella of screams? Was the ground beneath Sary’s feet actually muttering? From the black sky’s void came a CRACK! so chaotic and ear-splinting, she would’ve not believed such a sound possible; she could only, in her terror, assume that the heavens had ruptured. The wake of the infernal crack was filled with a sound, though not as deafening, possessed of an even worse consignment of aberration, yet she would later realize it was, though less amplified, a sound that carried some familiarity. It could be likened to the resonance of a massive rock-slide, only a rock-slide that was somehow taking place underground; and in conjunction, there came an even more abominable sonic accompaniment, something similar to the sound she recalled when she’d heard one of the Grangus bulls dying at Bowen’s farm; they’d said that a bovine grippe afflicted the miserable beast, which Sary took to mean something was amiss with its lungs. What she heard this moment—yet from beneath the ground she stood on—was a phlegmatic basso flutter, with a repugnant wetness to it, but yet also what seemed to be a pattern of structure. She grew sick in place, for she had indeed discerned a less profound version of the same when happening by Sentinel Hill in the past.
It was as though some hellish subterranean entity were endeavoring to form words, though they be words from no language she could contemplate. If such an utterance might be illustrated, it would be as thus: “NGH’NAAAAAA-EEEE-BRLUB-H’YUH-D’NAH-YOGSOTHOTH...”
Then the sky CRACKED! once more. A windless gust slammed Sary flat upon her back, and as still another CRACK! rocked the firmament, she screamed, presuming that the event her mother had once whispered of, the Day of Dissolution, was at hand.
In the margin of a blink, however—
Sary sat up, staring.
—a per
fection of silence held dominion over all.
Sary rose, boggled. Surely an experience of such impact could not have been the product of imagination. But her perplexity was not long to last, as the urgence of her mission returned to her mind: Wilbur.
Her eyes flicked back and upward. Atop Sentinel Hill the fire still burned. She leapt ahead with the dread alarm in her heart, and a prayer in her mind exploded forth: Please, Gawd! Let it be that Wilbur en’t up thar in them flames!
Sary broke into a hard run—
Only to come to a complete halt.
The figure in the smoke-tinged moonlight coming along the trail was Wilbur.
When previously her screech had been one of fright, she now screeched in exultance. She ran ahead and fully jumped into Wilbur’s arms, to hug and kiss him, to latch hold onto him for dear life—indeed, the celebrate the fact that he’d come off the fiery hill unharmed.
The giant seemed awestruck by the surprise. “Wal, naow—calm ye daown! Why ye be all a-tremble?”
Still hugging him in utmost desperation, she could only reply in pants, gasps, and fits. “I see the flames burnin’ up on Sentinel Hill, and had the awfulest notion that’s whar yew went off to!” She burst into outright sobs. “Aw, Wilbur! I was so afeared yew be burnin’ right along with them flames!”
“Thar, thar, hon.” He let his embrace sooth her. “I be jess perfectly fine, as ye can see. ‘Tis true I was up Sentinel Hill, but I made it be that the fire I set couldn’t spread nowhere.”
“The fire...yew set?”
“Eee-yuh,” he said in a softer intonation. He gently turned her about, to head back to the tool-house. A perceptive person might’ve noted a shift in his character as if to mollify any trepidation that Sary entertained. Pronouncing the word “worship” as waship, he said, “See, fires be the way some folks worship the gods they’se believe in.”
Sary’s expression suggested cogitation. “Wal, when my ma took me to church sometimes, they inside all dressed up in theer vestments’d light candles afore the sarvice. Is that like what yew mean?”
After a pause, Wilbur replied, “Ee-yuh. Same thing in a manner. And, see, I go up Sentinel Hill on accaount that be to me what charch be for most folks—just that it’s a different sort of place to pay tribute to what ye believe in. Not ever-one worship the same, nor on the same days neither.” He walked slowly with his arm about her shoulder, and he seemed to take considerable care in the words he selected, as if about to divulge to her some manner of deep, intricate tractate. “Jess as most go to charch on Sunday, and on especial days like Christmas and Easter, there’s others, like me, who got a different religion, that calls on ‘em to worship a different god, but mind ye, it en’t on Sundays, nor on Easter or Christmas but at night mostly, durin’ special times like Lammas, fer instance, which be right naow—”
A familiarity sparked in Sary, which gave her reason to make an active remark. “Oh, I know of Lammas ‘cos my ma and me heerd the minister talk abaout it onct, back before my father forbid us to go to church. We’d take a loaf’ve bread and say prayers over it, then burn it so’s the smoke float all the way up to God. If I ‘member proper, Lammas was haow we thank God for givin’ us the fust harvest.”
Wilbur nodded resolutely. “‘Tis quite true that Lammas fount its way into Christian thinkin’ way back, but actually it be much older’n all that. Same goes fur Candlemas which be knowed as Roodmas ‘raound heer, and ‘tis the day I was borned, matter’a fact. And the same for Beltane Eve, also called the Walpurgis Night, and then also for Eve’a All Saints which used to be called Samhain back in olden days they called Pagan times, but naow most think of as Hallowe’en. ‘Tis funny haow almost all religions on the airth got some link ta them there special days, but what most dun’t cal’clate is there be a reason they got ketched up with special power that dun’t in no way connect to the Christian God nor the Jewish one, nor what folks far off believe in, Gods knowed as Buddha and Allah and such.”
Sary was squinting through the information, which she found interesting in spite of her deficit of understanding. “Yew say there be a reason them days is special?”
Another determined nod from Wilbur. “There is, surely, and the reason be this: them days is special ‘cos of haow the stars be arranged.”
Sary stared and blinked. “The stars?”
“Ee-yuh,” Wilbur’s inscrutable voice assured. “The way the stars show theerselfs”—he pronounced the next word with much attentiveness—“cosmologically, which I dun’t ‘spect ye know abaout. Stars like Aldebaran, and Procyon, and Betelgeuse. Has all ta dew with the angles and the planes of their configgerations. S’where the power come from, see? Aw, wal, ye probably dun’t, ‘cos it be quite taxin’ on one’s brain and require yeers of study. Took me quite a spell to have a fair understandin’.”
At this point, Sary became utterly dispossessed of any hope of comprehension. She recalled none of such things from the church sermons; but then again, she’d always been subject to a less-than-formidable attention span.
Her pace slowed, and she asked the only thing that then occurred to her: “So...what it be yew got is a god different from the Christian God an’ the man named Jesus?”
“That’s right. Different from all that.”
“Wal...what be your God’s name?”
Wilbur’s hesitation seemed to grow more complex through each stride, and when he spoke to answer, the reply sounded more akin to regurgitation than speaking:
“Yog-Sothoth.”
Sary looked at him. Had she heard something queerly similar just minutes ago, not via Wilbur’s voice, but pronounced via the impossible mumbling which seemed sourced underground? As she wondered over this, though, she winced, for something, perhaps a natural spasm, or then again perhaps something more foreboding, supplanted in her head an ache that was brief yet pin-point. “Ain’t never heard’a him,” she said in a shorter breath. “Yew sure he’s a real god and not juss make-believe?”
“He be real, all right. I know it. He answers my prayers... Do your god answer yer prayers?”
“Oh, yeah!” came Sary’s enthusiastic reply. “He did jess naow as a matter’a fact!”
Wilbur’s cast of face indicated intense interest. “Jess naow?”
“Um-hmm. I prayed to Him that He make it be yew warn’t burnin’ up in that fire, and...heer yew is!”
“Ye dun’t say?”
“Oh, yeah,” she continued, “and ‘member that day jest a few days ago, when Rufus Hutchins was puttin’ up quite a hurtin’ ta me? I prayed for Jesus to save me, and”—Sary squeezed Wilbur’s hand—“and lookit what happen! Jesus sent me yew!”
Wilbur nodded via a pretense to appear convinced. In his own mind, however, the colossal man was thinking, I got me a funny feelin’ it ‘tweren’t Jesus...
Fourteen
August 1, 1928 late morning
Came down from Lammas late lass night, and Sary see me. All out of sorts she wuz, thinkin I got burnt up in the Fires. Its funny how things can go so everlivin good and be so bollixed up at the same tyme. Never heard Them speak so clear to me in the passt, and never afore has the manner of my chants work so perfect. I know it be over all this time that the doodads up in my throat that makes for speaking have got well-prackticed and can reech out to the Old Ones far better than any man who be full human and know the same Rites as me. Grandsire tolt me this wud happen, and durn if he warnt right. But of corse with good news there offen be bad, and this be—as Grandfather used to say, I think—“No ‘ception to the rool.” Earlier I open the house door and go and see that One inside after making the Voorish, and it has got so big it can’t barely fit all the way in there. It know now it be eating too mutch, which be why it got too big, but I know it is my fault this happened. I shud’ve payd more attention, I didnt calclate things right. I felt so bad looking in there and seeing it so starving and misserable. Makes me think bak to that fella Kyler none too long ago, the soothsayer, n how he said somethin like I’ll get
whut I want but not in the manner I most hope for. Guess he reely is a soothsayer.
Because I know now I will not be able to open the Gate to Yog-Sothoth.
That One in there know it too.
But there stil be plenty to do. Just cuz I cant open to Yog-Sothoth don’t mean someone else can’t. Why else wuold the Voices on the Hill say what they said?
So anywaye when I come down last nite and got Sary calmed down, she start askin about what I was doing up there, and I was serious on the spot for a answer. So when I tolt her the Fires and all just be another way of worship, she got to talkin about religion, and askin still more. Hope what I sed made sence to her. Least I can tell she not be like most everyone else round here, harborin hate for someone who look diffrent and have different beleefs.
But now that I think about things deeper, I see all is not lost. Just got to be smart and make the Old Ones proud of me. THAT be how I prove to them I am worthy of the privilige they offer me and my exhalted heritage.
Yes. I will prove it all to them.
Sary seem to beleeve in the Christian God, like so many othurs round here claim to. All my life I hear a saying they got and the saying be this: “God works in missterious ways.”
So does Yog-Sothoth.
Fifteen
Indeed, in a dearth for phraseology more definitive, Wilbur had been well-afforded not only the situation’s seriousness but also its fact: that this phase of his life would soon be at an end. Yet the example of his existence had hitherto apprized him equally of this: With every end, there came a beginning. This knowledge—for he was certain of it—gladdened him to no small measure.
The remainder of the afternoon of the first of August he thrilled to spend with Sary. They ambled the wild brush near Ten Acre Meadows, crossed through fields of stunning flowers, and kissed in the old lattice-work which fronted the abandoned Hyde Mansion. During the entirety of their walk together, only very few moments transpired when they were not holding hands or touching in some endearing way. Wilbur’s consciousness, whenever he was in Sary’s proximity, felt expanded as if some arcane and impalpable aspect her life-force allowed for him to experience a mode of happiness that exceeded the limit of his brain’s qualification to feel it. He was bursting with joy—