by Edward Lee
Armitage would spend the rest of his life investigating the horrific affair, yet would receive no reward for his effort. This failure would actually haunt the academician, such that he’d often feel he had lost some abstract battle with the dead giant he’d once sent out of his library. The doctor would have wagered his life that Wilbur Whateley had indeed copied Page 751 of the Latin edition and relayed it to someone else. So the question reared with some significance, even to the point of the doctor’s own death: who had absconded with these transcriptions?
And why?
***
After wakening from the Languor Spell, Sary slept not at all for the entire night. Instead, she paced, worried, and looked repeatedly out the shed’s door in the dim hope that Wilbur might return early.
But she could not wrest away from the conviction that he would not.
At day-break, having no familiarity with the timetable for the Arkham bus route, she straggled morosely to the crude bus-stop post, and waited.
She waited some time, until past the noon-hour, in fact. Her heart gave an excited thump at sight of the rattletrap vehicle; then she jittered on her feet, hands clasped in prayer, when the smoke-belching motor slowed and stopped. The door flapped open, but the sinking feeling had already afflicted her—either a premonition or an umbra of pessimism—for she’d felt begloomed since she’d last seen Wilbur yesterday, and this feeling had worsened since a nervous nauseousness had struck her past sun-up, such that she’d reeled from a sudden, persistent headache and had even vomited. Had she been more mindful of symbolism, it might be said that she now awaited a somatic vacua, the very personification of her feelings.
Only a lone passenger alighted from the bus, and it was not Wilbur.
Over a minute was required to permit of Kyler’s safe descent from the bus step, but once his cane was properly planted, and his feet on the ground, he stepped forward toward Sary, dark of countenance but bizarrely fulgent of eye. At once he said, “Aye, fair gull, ‘tis to the gods we be all subjected, and with every shadow they may drop afore us, there come a grace ef we be so desarvin’. Of this, I believe, ye already have a bit’a mind.”
The verbiage affected Sary with confusion and even agitation. Her spirit demanded that she immediately ask where Wilbur was; however...
The words became like a mass of logs clogging a river’s course.
The bus blundered away, leaving a wake of dust which, once cleared, left the black-clad soothsayer standing at Sary’s other side. Finally, the portent which so darkened her psyche allowed for speech. She said bluntly, “He’s dead, ain’t he?”
The strange bald man did not hesitate, nor did he mince the words of his reply. “Aye, Wilbur Whateley, ye’re devot’d mate, be no more’a this airth, but who’s ta say this airth here be the only ’un? ‘Twas a dog of a most vicious sart which spell the tall man’s end—”
Sary exclaimed with some adamance: “Then where be the grace that’s s’posed ta come too! With Wilbur dead, I might’s wal be dead myself!”
“Nay, gull, for what ye feel be the end’a ye jess really be the stert.” This was idealism and foolish rhetoric which, even if Sary knew what such words meant, she suspected at once that Kyler was only attempting to dull the blade-like pain that cut into her. No condolence could appease her now, nor any mode of rationalization. Wilbur was dead, and a reversion to her previous life was the only substitute. She would resort to self-annihilation before allowing such a consequence. No more intercourse for money, no more penises in her mouth. No more ingesting semen, laving horrific anuses with her tongue, or submitting to any further manner of carnal degradation.
No more.
“Take heart, gull,” the fortune-teller offered, and into her hand he placed a sheet of paper tied in a roll. Then he began to walk away, his cane scuffing the dirt road’s surface.
“What’s this?” Sary demanded in a clap of a voice.
“‘Tis Wilbur’s legacy, thet is. And ye’re new life.”
“What?” she bellowed at the departing figure, but each time she blinked, the lame man’s progress away from her seemed to double in an impossible amount of time. Indeed, he appeared to have traversed a mile in just minutes.
Crushed, outraged, and forlorn, Sary looked at the roll in her hand, then trod in her shiny black garment back to the tool-house. It was here she sat for hours, her eyes blank upon the old wooden walls. Certainly, the roll would prove a letter from Wilbur to her which, no matter how affectionate, she could not bear to read. A final letter was nothing but the inscription upon a grave-stone. Sary did not want to be reminded that she’d never see Wilbur again, for the missive would only verify that and, hence, distill her misery. She even considered killing herself without ever opening the note but...
Some unknown force countermanded the notion.
Not till sundown did Sary rise from her glum seat on the cot. She struck flint and steel, lit the lamp, then arranged herself at Wilbur’s great desk. Some minutes more were expended before she untied the tube of paper.
One sheet was all she expected; what she found instead were several, the top three of which contained unintelligible scrawl arranged in numbered passages, seven in all. The writing seemed different from that of the various sheets she’d seen on his desk. No, this scrawl was penned with a seemingly greater care, as if to afford her a sharper possibility of interpretation; while the strange words were interspersed often with hyphens. She scanned a random line: 6) Guh-narl-ebb, eye shub- negg add-uk zynn nem-blud nie-ar-lat-hotep.
Sary maintained a glum stare at the sheets. What possible reason could exist for having the bald man deliver to her such bizarre lines of writing?
The fourth and fifth sheet appeared as she’d expected: lines she could read, and tightly composed as if their author we heeding space. Sary steeled herself, then began to read:
Deer Sary: I writ this ahead uv time in case things turn out less’n the way I wud prefer, which means if yew be reading this, I be dead. I take Kyler to the collige with me so’s I’d have someone to bring back this message in case I got hurt or kilt. By now, especially after using the Voorish ta see my brother, ye know well I am not from hereabouts. My father come from a place far off from the Earth, way on up in the stars. It all be part of a plan that is importint, and of which ye be a strong part if ye chooze.
First thing I got to tell you mite not like but I hope yew do. I warn’t speakin no lies when I tell yew severul days past that you need not wurry bout gettin pregnant by me on account my seed not be compatible with yor womb. This be true, but, well, it all change after lass night when you went to the winder that them men busted out and then got ye reel close to my brother. See, theres things in my brothers skin and breth that when he get too close to someone hereabout WORK INTA that personz blood and change em, and what it done was it change YOU, it change yer WOMB so’s my seed become whut’s called POTENT.
This means, Sary, you be pregnant this very second, pregnant from our lovemakin. Hope ye dont be mad, but it just be the way it is. Tis whut the gods want. It be best that we foller what they want cuz they know what is best for us. Acorse if this don’t be to your liking, tis yore right ta git a abortion which is what that man ye know Doc Houghton know how to do.
I hope ye do not do this thogh, on account uv what be in yew now is somethin we make together, and be a expreshion of how I feel for ye.
Sary may have stared at the passage for a solid hour, but from the second after she’d read the passage, her misery had been banished, to be refilled by a joy which felt brighter than the sun. Now she knew the root of this morning’s unbidden headache and bout of vomiting—morning sickness.
I’m gonna have a baby! WILBUR’S baby!
When she regained control of her emotions, she read on:
What ye need to know rite off is I’m leevin all the Whateley gold to ye. It’ll provide for you always and make it so ye never have to get with fellas again for money. It be hid in the liddle fenced cemetary out back, under
the slab marked Silas Ephriam Whateley. Ye’ll need a pry bar to git up the slab and a rope ta slide it back and fourth on account it is very heavy, but what ya got to do ferst is cover the wood plank hangin on the nearest ash tree. It got things wrote on it that make all who look in the grave see nothing but a skeletin, however that coffin really be fulla gold. It’s like a spell, called a Imperceptibility Conjuration.
Sary could not conceive of such an endowment. Her destitution had changed to incredible affluence in a single moment...
What also be hid in the coffin is a metal box what got in it all the most valuble pages from the books I got in the shed, mostly from the hinged book but also from other books. The payges was all copied by me so to keep em safe. Soon ye will need to start readin these pages so’s to lern em. Lotta things in those pages that’ll give ye powers like ye never dreemed, and I mean MAGICK powers.
Of this, Sary could scarcely maintain her equanimity. Was Wilbur crazy to say such things? Was there really such a thing as magic?
Then she recollected the Voorish Sign, and what she’d seen...
Of course there was magic!
And now it seemed that Wilbur had bestowed it unto her...
My darling, if ye choose to be a part uv all this I am talkin bout, then first chance ye get, you take the biggest chunk of gold in Great Uncle Silas’ grave, which be werth a thousand dollars eezy, and ye give it to Prudence Naller so to buy her big fancy barn which be up four sale now. Ye need that barn on account it will be big enough for all ye need. Don’t mention none to Prudence Naller bout how ye know me, just give her that bloon of gold and that ole fussbudget will be happy to sell ye the barn.
The information, of course, left Sary rather fuddled. A barn? Why would Wilbur want her to buy a barn, when his own livestock was barely existent now?
Buy the barn tomorow, then move right in, on account ye gotta get out of that tool shed an away from my house soon. My brother is fixing to bust quarters shortly and ye can’t be anyweer near him when that happenz. Move all ye need from the shed to the barn but leave the big book with hinges and other papers there. There be no need to bother with em on account all you need is already in the copies in Great Uncle Silass grave. That man I told ye about, Armitage, he know I got that big book and if it is not there after I die, he will know someone else got their hands on it. So jest leeve it. The papers I copy give ya all the power ye need for the future. Once ye read those papers in the grave, ye’ll understand why you is importint, and why our BABY be importint.
At this, Sary determined herself. No, she did not understand, but she received the distinct impression that once she read the material he’d referred to, she would. The baby, now, was most crucial to her.
Ye’ll understant more and more as time go on, by what ya learn from the papers and by what ye lern from even the air, once ye come into their graces...
Sary continued to stare and stare.
The rest uv the sheets that Kyler give will look amighty strange ta ye but that be becuz I translated the words from the good copy they got at Miskatonic which replace the mussed up words in mine. This be the rite way of the words from Page 751. They are chants, what ye say aloud three times apiece on the special days up on Sentinel Hill. Roodmas, the Walpurgis, Hallowe’en. See, I wrote the chants down in a manner that be called PHONETIC, which mean it allow you to READ the words the way they is supposed to SOUND.
These words uv the chants be the most importint words ever knowed in all the world.
Sary felt an excitement buzzing in her veins. Somehow, crazy as all this sounded, she knew it was true, as if there were some component of the very air around her which imparted conviction and trust...
Yes. The very air around her.
And there is other things on them sheets which be spells, incantations, hexes, and wards which ye’ll learn how ta do. These are things thatll help ye along the way, and protect ye from bad folks and such. It is a tremendiss power ye will have, Sary. Though I be ded in body I am not in spirit. Soon ye will even be able to see me when ya do the Voorish. It will be not my ghost but what’s calt my eidolon, and I’ll be able to help guide ye. Don’t be confused, my sweethart, just do all what I say, and ye will see! Grate things be comin!
I’ll be able to see Wilbur again! her thoughts rejoiced. The same way she saw the old man, and that pale-skinned women earlier, after she’d done the sign! Wilbur would still be with her in a sense!
And what I need to explane now is this: that baby ye got in yer belly? It really be TWO babies, twins. One will be like me, and one like that One in the house, my brother. You will grow to love em both once ye find out what this be all about...
Twins? Sary’s eyes bloomed. One like Wilbur and one...
Like that gigantic, tentacled monster inside the house...
Sary rubbed her belly through the diaphanous gown.
I don’t matter none that it be like that thing. All that matter is it be from Wilbur...
More and more, she was beginning to understand.
One more thing, then I be off. Once all be done by us that our god need to be done, the world will change for the better, back to the way it is supost to be, and I will get a new body by means of what’s called Transfiguration. Yew will too, and we will be together again. Once the earth is cleared off.
Until this time come, pleese know I love you, Sary, with all my hart, and I always will. Forever.
Love,
Wilbur
Yes.
Once the earth is cleared off.
Sary learned quickly, from the papers in the metal box in Silas Whateley’s grave, and from the density of the air in special places where the Words had been uttered, and from the muttering underneath the ground at Special Times.
And from Wilbur’s momentary presences when she made the Voorish.
She had bought the Naller barn the very next day, just as Wilbur had posthumously requested. It was a great spacious barn, well large enough for what she now understood would begin to occupy it after nine months had passed. It also possessed several smaller rooms for herself and the other things she’d brought along. She read and re-read every day now, and would continue to, and would practice all the things she was learning constantly. Wilbur’s death had given Sary a new life to live while not merely waiting for the time she would be with him again, but also to be a fine, resplendent mother for the two children she would soon give birth to. This she knew, for all she was worth.
She knew something else as well.
When she did indeed give birth to the twins, she would name the human baby Wilbur.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edward Lee has authored close to 50 books in the field of horror; he specializes in hardcore fare. His most recent novels are LUCIFER’S LOTTERY and the Lovecraftian THE HAUNTER OF THE THRESHOLD. His movie HEADER was released on DVD by Synapse Film in June, 2009. Lee lives in Largo, Florida.
Table of Contents
Author's Note
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen