The Lurker at the Threshold: Posthumous Collaborations

by August Derleth

  Though these were but speculations, nevertheless, Dewart occupied himself with them all the way back to the house in the woods, arriving at which, he sought out again the papers he had read on the previous night and pored over them for some time, trying by some means to effect a relationship between the Richard Billington of the document and the feared Alijah—not a relationship of kin, for he had no doubt that they were of one and the same line, several generations apart; but rather a connection in substance between the incredible events chronicled in the document, and the accounts in the Arkham weeklies, for it seemed inescapable to him, after some careful consideration, that such a connection existed, if it were only in the coincidence that in both accounts, separated by more than a century in time, and by some miles in space, the one having occurred at “New Dunnich” which was presumably now Dunwich (unless the entire region had been once so named), and the other at Billington’s Woods, there was mention of a “circle of stones,” which undeniably brought to mind the Druidic fragments roughly circling the stone tower in the bed of that dried-up tributary to the Miskatonic.

  Dewart prepared himself several sandwiches, slipped an orange and a flashlight into the pockets of his jacket, and set out in the late afternoon sunlight to skirt the swamp and make his way to the tower, which he entered, and which he began immediately to examine anew. There was on the interior, spiraling up along the side, an extremely narrow and crude stairway of stone, and, with some misgivings, Dewart mounted it, observing all along the way, a kind of primitive but impressive decoration in the nature of bas-relief, which he soon saw was a single design repeated as a chain for the entire length of the stair, which ended finally in a little platform so close to the roof of the tower that Dewart could scarcely crouch upon it. The light in his hand showed him that the bas-relief which was carved into the stones along the stairs also appeared on the platform, and he bent to scrutinize it more closely, thus discovering it to be an intricate pattern of concentric circles and radiating lines, which, the more attentively it was gazed at, offered a perplexing maze to the eye in that it seemed at one moment to be of such an appearance, and in the next appeared to change inexplicably. Dewart directed his light upward.

  It had been apparent to him in his previous examination of the tower, that some carving had been made in that portion of the roof which had seemed of manifestly more recent origin, but he now saw that but one stone bore a decoration, and that this was a large flat block of what seemed to be limestone, corresponding almost exactly in size with the platform on which he crouched. Its decoration, however, did not follow the motif of the bas-relief figures, but was, rather, in the rough shape of a star, in the center of which there appeared to be a caricature of a single giant eye; but it was not an eye, rather a broken lozenge in shape with certain lines suggestive of flames or perhaps a solitary pillar of flame.

  This design meant no more to Dewart than the pattern of the bas-relief, but what did interest him was the observation that the cement holding this block in place had succumbed in large part to the ravages of the weather, and it occurred to him that a little adroit and skillful chipping away of what cement remained might free the stone, and afford an opening in the side of the conical roof.

  Indeed, as he played his light over the ceiling, it was apparent that the tower had originally been constructed with an opening, which had been later closed by the addition of this flat stone, which was singular in that it was less rough than the other stones in the building, and had a greyish cast, though this might well be due to its newness as well as in part to the darkness inside the tower.

  As he crouched there, Dewart was convinced that the tower should be restored to its original structure; indeed, the more he contemplated this restoration, the more obsessed he became, until he was determined beyond question to effect the desired change, and remove the block above the platform, and thus afford himself enough room to stand up. He swept the earth below with his light, and, seeing there a fragment of stone which might be utilized as a chipping tool, he descended carefully and got it, testing the feel of it. Then he returned to the platform and considered how best he might effect his purpose without danger to himself; the stone was not so large that he could not at least direct it past the platform when it was ready to fall, but it was heavy enough so that he could not hope to sustain its full weight. He braced himself against the wall there, and began carefully to chip away, the light stuck awkwardly in his pocket, and in a short while it was evident to him that he would succeed in loosening and dislodging the stone. He saw that he would first have to chip away that portion nearest him, so that the block, in falling, would tend to fall away from the wall and him, and off the edge of the platform to the earthen floor below.

  He bent assiduously to his task, and in half an hour, the stone fell away, as he had planned it, and, guided by him, slipped past the platform to the floor below. Dewart stood up and found himself looking out across the marsh to eastward, and so for the first time saw that the tower was in line with the house, for, directly across the open space of the marsh and the trees beyond, the sunlight glinted on a window of his home. Which window this could be he wondered briefly; he had not caught sight of the tower from any opening, but then, he had not sought it; and the window, judging by its expanse, could be none other than the window of colored glass in the study, through which he had never looked.

  Dewart could not imagine to what use the tower had been put. As he stood there now, he could support his hands on the frame of that opening; for he stood out in part over the roof of the tower, even above the peak of it, and his view was best of the heavens. It might have been constructed by some early astronomer; assuredly it was ideal for use in watching the heavenly bodies wheeling overhead. The stones of the conical roof, Dewart noticed, were fully as thick as those of the walls, something over a foot—possibly fifteen inches; and the fact that the roof had stood unshaken through all these years gave testimony of the skill of that early architect who had built this tower and perhaps other buildings and gone unsung into history. Yet, an astronomical explanation for the tower’s existence was not wholly satisfactory; for the fact was that the tower rose up not on a hill, or even on a knoll of any proportion, but only on an island, or what had once been an island, a slight rise in the earth, and the land sloped down toward it from three sides, sloping away from it only on the gentle declivity which descended very gradually to the Miskatonic some distance through the woods, and it was only by accident that the tower commanded the heavens, for no trees grew in the immediate proximity, nor indeed did much brush or grass of any kind. Even so, the horizon was contained by the trees of the encroaching slopes, so that the stars were not at their best visibility until some time past the hour of their rising, and were again not visible for a brief time before their setting, which was not a condition ideally conducive to star-study.

  After a while, Dewart descended the stairs once more, busied himself briefly in moving the stone off to one side, and made his way out of the arched doorway, which offered no barrier of any kind to shut out wind and weather, a circumstance which made the closing of the roof-opening all the more curious.

  He did not ponder this long, however, for the sunlight was drawing away as the sun descended behind the belt of trees, but, munching his remaining sandwich, set out along the way he had come, again walking along the edge of the marsh and up the rise to his house, the four great frontal pillars, squarely built into the walls of the house, showing whitely in the gathering twilight. He was somewhat exhilarated, as he always was at progress in any kind of research he undertook; however little he had this day discovered that was concrete and capable of but one interpretation, he had uncovered many speculations, and much of interest about native lore and legend as well as about his ancestor, the foresighted Alijah, who had set Arkham by the ears, so to speak, and left such a mystery behind him that few since his time remained to equal it. He had actually amassed a great many details, and could not be sure that they represented different
parts of the same pattern, or parts of different designs.

  Arriving at the house, he was tired. He resisted the temptation to delve further into his great-great-grandfather’s books, knowing he must consider his eyes, and instead set about methodically to plot his further researches, quite as if these hundreds of ancient books were not available to him. Comfortably ensconced in the study, with a fire again going on the hearth, Dewart went over in his mind all the aspects of the research in progress with a view to determining which of them offered the most ready avenue of further discovery. He thought several times of the missing servant, Quamis, and presently realized that there existed also a kind of parallel between the name of this servant and the name of the Wonder-Worker of the older document—Misquamacus. Quamis or Quamus—the boy had written it both ways—included in the latter spelling actually two of the four syllables of the Indian wise man’s name, and, while it was true that many Indian names were similar, it was quite likely that family resemblances in nomenclature were reasonably consistent.

  This train of thought presently suggested to him that there might still be alive in the back country in the hills around Dunwich relatives or descendants of Quamis; that he had been disavowed by his own people a century ago and more did not trouble Dewart. A man put out of mind a hundred years ago might well fare more honestly remembered now than some other over whom the gloss of time and the romance of years had fallen to becloud the individual and his character. He might well pursue this line of investigation, weather permitting, on the morrow; and, having decided this, Dewart took himself off to bed.

  He slept well, though on two occasions during the night he stirred restlessly and woke and was again conscious of the conviction that the very walls watched him where he lay.

  In mid-morning, after he had taken time to answer a few letters which had lain waiting his leisure for several days, he set out for Dunwich. The sky was overcast, and a light east wind blew, presaging rain; as a result of this change in the weather, the wooded hills and their stone-crowned tops which were indigenous to the Dunwich country seemed dark and sinister. In that region, little traveled because it was somewhat away from the beaten track, and because there was to those who knew of it a lurking suggestion of decay about the deserted houses, the roads often narrowed to mere ruts, with the weeds and brambles and grasses, luxuriant and wild, pressing over the stone walls close upon the byways. Dewart had not gone far, before he was keenly conscious of the strangeness of this country, differing sharply from even the ancient gambrel-roofed town of Arkham; for, in contrast to the rolling hills of the country along the Aylesbury Pike out of Arkham, the Dunwich hills were broken by strangely deep ravines and gorges, crossed by rickety bridges, which had the aspect of centuried age, and the hills themselves were curiously crowned with stones which, though much overgrown, offered certain suggestive evidence that the crowning formations were the work of men, perhaps of decades, perhaps even of centuries past. Seen now against the louring clouds, the hills more than once presented oddly malign faces to the lone traveller in his car creeping carefully along the rutted roads and across the rickety bridges.

  Dewart observed with a queer tightening of his scalp that the very foliage seemed to flourish unnaturally, and, though he interpreted this as evidence of nature’s reclaiming of the land so evidently abandoned by those who owned it, it was nevertheless strange that the vines should be so much longer, the scrub growth so much sturdier—even as they were in some of the remoter slopes of his own land. Moreover, the Miskatonic, winding serpent-like through the country, though Dewart had driven away from it, now rose up before him, its dark waters doubly dark in this region, and offered strange vistas of rocky meadows and lush marshes, where the bullfrogs still piped, despite the season.

  He had driven perhaps an hour over terrain which was utterly alien to that he had come to know as typically eastern American, when he arrived at that cluster of houses which was Dunwich, though no sign survived to identify it, most of the dwellings being deserted and in various stages of ruin. The broken-steepled church offered what appeared to Dewart, after a quick scrutiny, the only mercantile establishment in the settlement, and he accordingly drove toward it and parked alongside the walk. Two shabby old men leaned up against the building, and, taking in their appearance of mental and physical degeneracy and inbreeding, Dewart addressed himself to them.

  “Does either of you men know any Indian stock left around here?”

  One of the old men detached himself from the building and came shambling over toward the car. He had narrowed eyes, sunk deeply in leathery skin, and his hands, Dewart noted, were almost claw-like. Dewart assumed that he had come to answer his question, and a little impatiently, leaned forward, so that his inquiring face was thrust clear of the shadow of the roof.

  He was disagreeably surprised when his would-be informant started and fell back.

  “Luther!” he called in a quavering voice to the oldster behind him. “Luther!

  Come hyar!” And, the other scuffling up to peer over his shoulder, he pointed to Dewart. “Ye ’member thet picter Mis’ Giles shown us thet day,” he continued excitedly. “It’s him, sure es tarnation! He looks more’n haff like thet picter naow, dun’t he? It’s the time, Luther, it’s the time they tell abaout—when he comes back, thet other’n ’ll come back, too.”

  The other oldster tugged at his jacket. “Wait naow, Seth. Dun’t ye be too hasty. Ask him fer the sign.”

  “The sign!” exclaimed Seth. “Hev ye got the sign, Stranger?”

  Dewart, who had never in his existence encountered creatures like these, was repelled. It required a conscious effort to prevent himself from showing distaste; he could not keep himself from betraying stiffness.

  “I’m looking for traces of the old Indian families,” he said shortly.

  “Hain’t no Injuns left,” said the man Luther.

  Dewart ventured a brief explanation. He had not expected to find Indians.

  But he thought that he might discover a family or two which had come down from intermarriage. He explained in the simplest words he could find, and was uneasily conscious of the fixed stare of Seth.

  “What were thet feller’s name again, Luther?” he asked suddenly.

  “It were Billington, thet’s what.”

  “Yore name Billington?” asked Seth boldly.

  “My great-great-grandfather was Alijah Billington,” answered Dewart.

  “Now, about those families ...”

  He had no sooner identified himself than both the old men underwent a complete change in manner; from simply curious individuals, they became almost fawning and subservient.

  “Ye take the Glen rud, and ye stop at the first haouse this side o’ Spring Glen—name o’ Bishop—the Bishops got Injun blood and maybe suthin’ more ye ain’t axed abaout. An’ ye’d better git away from there afore the whipperwills start a-talkin’ an’ the frogs begin to call, er ye’ll be settin’ lost somew’eres an’ ye’ll hear strange things a-rushin’ an’ a-talkin’ in the air. Bein’ o’ Billington blood, maybe ye wun’t mind, but I’m baound to tell ye’s if ye axed me.”

  “Which is the Spring Glen road?” asked Dewart.

  “Ye take the secunt turn, an’ ye take accaount o’ whar the rud leads tew, an’ dun’t go tew far. It’s the first haouse ye come tew this side o’ Spring Glen. If Mis’ Bishop’s to hum, she’ll likely tell ye whut ye wunt to know.”

  Dewart was desirous of driving away at once; he was disturbed by the uncouthness of these oldsters, who were not only physically unclean, but bore the stigmata of inbreeding, with queer, malformed ears and eye-sockets; yet he was struck by increasing curiosity as to where these old men had come upon the name of Billington.

  “You mentioned Alijah Billington,” he said. “What is it they say about him?”

  “No offense meant, no offense a-tall,” said Luther hastily. “Yew jist set on fer the rud to the Glen.”

  Dewart showed some impatience.

  Set
h inched forward a little and explained apologetically. “Yew see, yer great-great-grandfather was high-thought-of araound hyar, an’ Mis’ Giles had a picter uv him drawed by somebody she knew, an’ ye look suthin’ like him, thet ye dew. They allus sed Billington blood’d be back tew thet haouse in the woods.”

  With this Dewart had to be content; he felt that these oldsters did not trust him, but he was not apprehensive about the directions they had given him. He made the turn into the Spring Glen road without trouble, and, driving up into the hills under the ever darkening sky, he came ultimately to the spring which gave the glen its name, and there turned, knowing he had come to the turn for the Bishop house. After a little trouble, he found a low house with faded white siding; he thought it at first to be of Greek revival architecture, but realized that it was far older when he came close to it. This was the Bishop house, for on one of the gate-posts, only half-legible for weather wear, the name Bishop was crudely scrawled. He made his way up a weed-grown path, walking gingerly over a low porch, much worn and weathered, and knocked on the door, filled with misgivings, for the place wore such an air of desertion that it did not seem that anyone could be living in it. But a voice answered him—the old, cracked voice of a woman—and bade him enter and make his business known.