by Pete Rawlik
The Senior Physician of the Whitmarsh Institute was a Doctor M. B. Willett, who at first seemed unwilling to discuss much of anything with me, but when I suggested that I could always return with an army of local investigators to paw through his records his tune changed. Dr. Willett informed me that Barrass had been employed at the institute as an orderly for several years and most recently had overwintered at the hospital during a particularly violent snowstorm. During the storm Barrass had been attacked by a patient, a man who himself later escaped from the institute. A search of the island had proved fruitless, and it was assumed that he had tried to swim across the bay to the mainland. Dr. Willett seemed adamant that the man was no longer a threat, and had made the same overtures to staff. Most took him at his word, but Barrass seemed more shaken than the others, particularly over the fact that one of the staff physicians had disappeared as well. A day after the search ended Barrass resigned, and he left the island almost immediately after. A week later he sent a note supplying Corvin Farm as his new address. Beyond these few things, the only information Willett could provide was that Barrass was from Manchester, but his parents were dead. He had a sister in Aylesbury, but he didn’t have an address for the woman. He dismissed me after less than half an hour.
On my way out I made a pretense to stop by the kitchen, hoping for a Dewar flask of coffee. There I received not only the coffee, but information as well, for the old cook, Mrs. Davis, was in a talkative mood. She showed me a staff photo which included Barrass, a stout, rough-looking fellow, and I wondered how anyone had ever gotten the drop on him. Mrs. Davis confirmed everything that Willett had told me, but then also provided details he had conveniently left out. Barrass had indeed overwintered through a terrible storm, and a patient had attacked him. They called the man Mr. Pulver, though it was obviously an alias, and he had been a difficult patient, with a specialized diet consisting of raw meat. This requirement was met by a local supply of wild rabbits, though I suspected that in this she was holding something back, but I did not press.
The missing doctor was named Wilson, and he vanished a few days before Mr. Pulver escaped. Barrass had reported that he had seen Wilson intoxicated and wandering about on the beach. It was assumed he passed out and drowned in the bay. As for Pulver, in the days that followed his escape Conanicut Island found itself in disarray, still desperately trying to recover from the storm. Doctor Willett organized a search party, but could only rally three men. The storm and its aftermath had brought enough troubles to the residents of the island. The docks had been damaged by ice, and downed trees had blocked some of the roads. The roof on Bill Goodfellow’s workshop had collapsed, and the Fulton farm was missing a half dozen cows. As the villagers were occupied with more pressing matters, Willett’s attempts to find Pulver were quickly abandoned. The hospital itself was only slightly upset by the escape of their charge. Pulver had made a mess of his room, and it had taken the junior orderly, Barrass, nearly an hour to sweep up the strange blue powder that coated the floors. Doctor Willett had ordered the material disposed of, but not in the incinerator as normal—rather, it was to be thrown into the bay, scattered from the beach just down the hill from the institute.
Returning back to the mainland, I stared out into Narragansett Bay and wondered what had truly happened in this place. The dark waters churned as the old boat plowed through them, and they seemed too often a convenient way for inconvenient men to vanish; first Dr. Wilson and then Pulver. I had no reason to suspect that their disappearance was linked to whatever happened at Corvin Farm, but in my experience such conclusions were not only easy to reach, they usually proved themselves valid. Once on the mainland I made my way back to Providence and then took the train back to Arkham. I mulled over the possibilities, and found the rhythmic pace of the car conducive to my thoughts. When we finally reached Arkham the conductor loaded me into a cab, and once at home I retreated into a sound and dreamless sleep—but I couldn’t help but wonder who Willet’s patient truly was, and why he felt the need to hide his identity from me.
II. What Wilbur Dunlock Saw
The next morning I spent at the office reading the reports and going through the documents submitted by the investigating officers. It seems that the involvement of the police was a result of the weather. June had been an unseasonably warm month and that more than anything was likely what caused the residents of Witches’ Hollow to plead with authorities to do something concerning the stench that had begun to emanate from the old Corvin farm. The place had been abandoned for as long as anyone could remember, and despite the fact that it had been well maintained it had an odd reputation. Certainly the occupation of Corvin Farm brought out the gossips in the community, but besides some rather cordial words between Barrass and the local merchants, none made the effort to befriend the man. The area was an insular community and had little use for outsiders. There were still whispers about that damned Potter boy and his family, and the cows that had died a few years back. Few locals wanted those events repeated. Consequently, Mr. Barrass and his companions were left to their own devices, at least until the stench had become unbearable and action was demanded. Afterward, after the health department and the State Police descended on the place en masse, the locals admitted that Mr. Barrass had not been the most desirable of neighbors.
Now that the police were involved, his nearest neighbors, the Scotts, complained vociferously about strange noises, particularly a kind of lamentable howling that was not a dog, and which would often disturb the night for hours on end. Much also was said about the strangers who would be seen at the farm, sometimes dozens at a time, but with no evidence of any vehicle that had brought or taken them away. Barrass and his enigmatic guests were apparently great consumers of livestock from the surrounding farms, including cows, sheep, goats, and pigs. Likewise, one of the local boys often found himself employed to travel into Arkham to bring back crates from specialty shops in Boston, the contents of which were always very vague but seemed to involve obscure cooking implements and rare spices. Indeed, the boy often overheard Barrass and one of his regular guests, a man who identified himself as Dr. Asche, speaking of the need for a variety of minerals, “essential salts” they would say, and then chuckle. The relationship between Barrass and Asche as well as their conversation made young Matt Carpenter uncomfortable, but his family was poor and the money was good so he kept his mouth shut and did as he was asked.
It was the testimony, if one could call it that, of the town drunk, a man in his twenties by the name of Wilbur Dunlock, that most intrigued me. Dunlock had no home of his own, the family farm having been lost to a fire a few years earlier, and as a result had taken to sleeping in unlocked barns. One of his regular haunts was a shed that sat on the Corvin farm, not far from the main house. It was here on that first night after Barrass had arrived that Dunlock was resting. Barrass had brought to the farm a fattened ewe, and Dunlock thought for a moment that he was caught, but instead of leading the animal into the shed, the stranger took the beast into the house. Intrigued, Dunlock crept from his hiding spot and peered through a window into the house.
Dunlock watched and listened as Barrass began chanting in a loud and powerful voice, and with it came a cold wind that blew the door open and set the oil lamps sputtering. A strange gloom seemed to devour the light, and through the window a noxious cloud of dark green vapor seemed to grow. It filled the room and gave off a kind of dim phosphorescence. Dunlock watched as Barrass repeated those strange words, words that burned themselves into Dunlock’s memory. He wrote them down for the investigating officer:
EYAH ENG ENGAH
YOG-SOTHOTH
HAH HALGEB
EFAY THRODOG
EWAAAH
Dunlock saw Barrass stagger back toward the open door. Whatever strength he had once had, whatever had held back the fear, it left him and he fell to the floor whimpering and unable to flee. Within the fumes a thickening began to occur; the gas began to coalesce and resolve itself into a kind of disjointed
shape. There was something recognizable to it that reminded Dunlock of something he had seen years earlier. It coalesced in that misty gloom, and while it bore the general outline of a man, it was not a strong and upright shape. Instead, it was a broken parody of a man, a thing with uneven legs, a twisted spine, and hunched shoulders. As it solidified into something less than human it let loose the most unearthly of screams, terrifying the ewe into a panic.
The thing in the mist leaped toward the terrified animal and wrapped itself around the beast’s body. The hands clawed at the animal’s mouth, grabbed the jaws and wrenched them apart. Blood flowed from the broken mouth of the poor animal, propelled by the thing’s still-beating heart. The monstrous thing lifted the struggling body above its head and let the hot life of the sheep run down over its body, swallowing what it could and reveling in the sticky, wet warmth of it.
When it was over, when the blood finally stopped flowing, it tossed the drained creature to the side and roared into the air. Dunlock watched as Barrass gasped and then threw himself prostrate onto the floor as the thing that was now at least recognizable as a man screamed out, I live! Twice men have sent me to the grave, and twice I have returned!
Whatever had happened next Dunlock couldn’t say, for terror finally overcame his drunkenness and he ran from Corvin Farm into the depths of the night. He ran in silence and hid himself within the confines of the local church. Father Strazynski found the man the next day, babbling to himself, reciting the Lord’s Prayer over and over again. It took two strong men to drag Dunlock out of the pews and into the churchyard, where he once more ran, though this time it was during the day, and it definitely was not in silence.
III. The Thing In The Crypt, And What Became Of It
It was just before noon on my second day back, the fourth day of the investigation, when Chief Nichols came to me. He called me Robert, not Peaslee or Detective, just Robert. He always calls me Robert when things are particularly bad, when he needs me to take care of something; to do something that others haven’t the stomach for; to ask me to do something he has no right to. This is my task, my job. A natural result of what happened to my father, to my family, and the enmity that has built up in me over the years. I do these things because I can, because no one else can, because no one else should have to. Nichols knows I can’t say no, for it is not in my nature to shirk from such things.
Within the hour I was out of Arkham and racing across the country roads that led to Witches’ Hollow. It is wild country, though not at all like that which surrounds Aylesbury Pike. The hills are flatter, the forest thinner, and the scrub thicker. It is a sad, lonely place, and it reflects the people who choose to live there. The town itself is little more than a crossroads surrounded by a cluster of gray clapboard buildings that have all but succumbed to the ravages of time. The Corvin farm was a few miles west of the crossroads, and as I approached I was greeted by two armed officers who cleared me to go up to the house. As I drove on, they drove off and I realized I was to be alone to do what must be done.
The farmhouse itself was nothing unusual, although perhaps a poor example of the surviving colonial architecture of the region. The inside was little better and were it not for the multitude of oil lamps the place would have been more gloomy than I would have thought possible. How the officers had found the courage to come up to the house and keep the lamps full I cannot say. It had been two days since the bodies had been found. A full day since those corpses had burned. The stench still lingered. The report had said that all the bodies had been animals— sheep, dogs, cats, calves, even goats. All of them had been desiccated, exsanguinated the doctor had said, drained of all blood, and then tossed aside. There were hundreds of the things buried in a shallow grave. If the weather had stayed cooler they might have gone unnoticed, and simply rotted away beneath the earth, and we would never have known about the things that had gone on in that place, and I would not have had to do the thing I did.
I found the passageway down where Nichols said it was, and the ancient steps of worn granite were as treacherous as I was led to believe. They went down, down deep into the damp earth, into chthonic darkness, into that stygian night that dwells beneath our feet. It was as dark and as cold as the grave, and my lamp did little to pierce that all but tangible pitch. With the darkness came a kind of silence, an absence of sound that filled me with dread and amplified the sound of my own heart into a titanic drum that only I could hear. A lesser man would have turned and fled, but I, who was long ago inured to such terrors, I descended without pause.
A spark broke the darkness and as I made my way forward it grew. It grew until I no longer needed my lamp. The chamber into which I entered was a colossal space, an arched, cavernous catacomb that captured the sound of my heavy footsteps and echoed them back to me from a dozen different directions. The place was scattered with massive rocky monoliths that served as furniture for some strange alchemical laboratory. Bizarre equipment, glassware, and electrics were scattered about the place. For the life of me I thought that I had stumbled into some kind of film set, perhaps for a remake of Edison’s Frankenstein. A great scroll hung from a column; on it were inscribed words in two columns. One column I recognized as a variation on the words that Wilbur Dunlock had heard chanted by Barrass. The other column bore a similar though different passage. It was a surreal sensation to be in that place, surrounded by the darkness and the earth and the madness of science and sorcery. There was nothing missing from that setting, not even the obligatory monster.
It stumbled out of the darkness, and once more I recognized it from Dunlock’s description. It was a simian thing, a parody of a man with misshapen arms and mismatched legs that forced it to limp and slouch toward me. It was a broken thing, hunched and twisted. Its breathing was labored and it wheezed phlegmatically. As it approached I nodded politely and spoke in a calm and rational manner. “My name is Peaslee, Detective Robert Peaslee. I’m with the State Police. At the Whitmarsh Institute they called you Pulver. Can I call you that, or do you prefer something else?” The thing stopped, and turned its head in a strange, animal kind of way. “You are Pulver, are you not?”
The thing chortled in a sad, solemn manner. “Pulver,” he wheezed, and seemed to pause. “Yes, I suppose that name could be put to me, at least in part.”
It was then that the thing stepped into the light and I could see it for what it truly was. There was a kind of dichotomy in his construction. The legs, the torso, the arms were all twisted, monstrous things with waxy skin with striations of blue and purple and green. That body was a cadaverous thing, fiendish, the product of a diseased and inhuman creator. Yet the horror that chilled me was not that body, but the head that crowned it. For that head was as human as my own. The flesh was white and clear, smooth and unblemished. It was the head of a man, not a monster, and it bore a face that I recognized from the pictures I had seen back on Conanicut Island.
Suddenly things fell into place and I understood, and I knew what had happened, and what had to be done.
The thing in the crypt told me what he could. How Pulver had taught Barrass the incantation that would bring him back from the dead. How he had created documents that would provide access to Corvin Farm and the accounts that went with it. Pulver had dozens of such properties and accounts scattered throughout New England. He promised one to Barrass as long as the man brought him back, restored him to life after he was destroyed. Willett had paid Barrass to throw Pulver’s ashes into the bay, but Pulver had promised so much more just to chant a few words over some strange ashes.
It was all too easy, and it all went horribly wrong.
Barrass had failed to sweep up properly, had left some of Pulver’s ashes behind, had left impurities in the ashes, had said the words wrong, and Pulver came back as a broken shell of a thing that demanded blood to survive. More blood than Barrass had thought possible, so much blood.
In the laboratory beneath the house Pulver had kept the ashes, the “essential salts” of others, and these
he raised to help with his work, to find a way to restore Pulver to his former, more complete form. They worked day and night, experimented with animals and incantations. Graves were robbed and the bodies reduced to powder and then brought back, and then reduced once more. The grains were sifted, sorted, rearranged, and mixed, in the hopes that a composite creature could be created, an amalgam that would return Pulver to his former glory. Yet try as they did, there was nothing but disaster. The resurrected, it seems, were too locked into their patterns, too rigid, unable to accept a blending of bodies and souls. The dead, it seemed, were immutable. They could be brought back from the dead, but they couldn’t be transmogrified into anything new. That conclusion brought the breakthrough and the end. To hear that thing in the crypt tell it in that matter-of-fact manner makes it almost seem acceptable, routine, logical, and not the horrific assault on a man that it actually was.
After it was over they brought him back and left him to suffer in the catacombs. His usefulness was at an end. Llewelyn Barrass was no more, only Doctor Asche and his case full of strange powders remained. Asche could have left him that way, but there was something vengeful in the man. He blamed Barrass for the time he had spent in that twisted form, and wanted him to suffer, so he brought him back. He used the formula to raise the dead and brought him back. Barrass knew instantly what had been done. The dead are immutable but the living, to live is to change, and that trait had been taken advantage of.