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Notebook Found in a Deserted HouseFirst off, I want to write that I never did anything wrong. Not to nobody. They got no call to shut me up here, whoever they are. They got no reason to do what I’m afraid they’re going to do, either. I think they’re coming pretty soon, because they’ve been gone outside a long time. Digging, I guess, in that old well. Looking for a gate, I heard. Not a regular gate, of course, but something else. Got a notion what they mean, and I’m scared. I’d look out the windows but of course they are boarded up so I can’t see. But I turned on the lamp, and I found this here notebook so I want to put it all down. Then if I get a chance maybe I can send it to somebody who can help me. Or maybe somebody will find it. Anyway, it’s better to write it out as best I can instead of just sitting here and waiting. Waiting for them to come and get me. I better start by telling my name, which is Willie Osborne, and that I am 12 years old last July. I don’t know where I was born. First thing I can remember is living out Roodsford way, out in what folks call the back hill country. It’s real lonesome out there, with deep woods all around and lots of mountains and hills that nobody ever climbs. Grandma use to tell me about it when I was just a little shaver. That’s who I lived with, just Grandma on account of my real folks being dead. Grandma was the one who taught me how to read and write. I never been to a regular school. Grandma knew all kinds of things about the hills and the woods and she told me some mighty queer stories. That’s what I thought they was, anyway, when I was little and living all alone with her. Just stories, like the ones in books. Like stories about them ones hiding in the swamps, that was here before the settlers and the Indians both and how there was circles in swamps and big stones called alters where them ones use to make sacrefices to what they worshiped. Grandma got some of the stories from her Grandma she said—about how them ones hid in the woods and swamps because they couldn’t stand sunshine, and how the Indians kept out of their way. She said sometimes the Indians would leave some of their young people tied to trees in the forest as a sacrefice, so as to keep them contented and peacefull. Indians knew all about them, and they tried to keep white folks from noticing too much or settling too close to the hills. Them ones didn’t cause much trouble, but they might if they was crowded. So the Indians give excuses not for settling, saying there weren’t enough hunting and no trails and it was too far off from the coast. Grandma told me that was why not many places was settled even today. Nothing but a few farmhouses here and there. She told me them ones was still alive and sometimes on certain nights in the Spring and Fall you could see lights and hear noises far off on the tops of the hills. Grandma said I had an Aunt Lucy and a Uncle Fred who lived out there right smack in the middle of the hills. Said my Pa used to visit them before he got married and once he heard them beating on a tree drum one night along about Halloween time. That was before he met Ma and they got married and she died when I come and he went away. I heard all kinds of stories. About witches and devils and bat men that sucked your blood and haunts. About Salem and Arkham because I never been to a city and I wanted to hear tell how they were. About a place called Innsmouth with old rotten houses where people hid awful things away in the cellars and the attics. She told me bout the way graves was dug deep under Arkham. Made it sound like the whole country was full of haunts. She use to scare me, telling about how some of these things looked and all but she never would tell me how them ones looked no matter how much I asked. Said she didn’t want me to have any truck with such things—bad enough she and her kin knew as much as they did—allmost too much for decent God fearing people. It was lucky for me I didn’t have to bother with such ideas, like my own ancestor on my father’s side, Mehitabel Osborne, who got hanged for a witch back in the Salem days. So they was just stories to me until last year when Grandma died and Judge Crubinthorp put me on the train and I went out to live with Aunt Lucy and Uncle Fred in the very same hills that Grandma use to tell about so often. You can bet I was pretty excited, and the conductor let me ride with him all the way and told me about the towns and everything. Uncle Fred met me at the station. He was a tall thin man with a long beard. We drove off in a buggy from the little deepo—no houses around there or nothing—right into the woods. Funny thing about those woods. They was so still and quiet. Gave me the creeps they was so dark and lonesome. Seemed like nobody had ever shouted or laughed or even smiled in them. Couldn’t imagine anyone saying anything there excep in whispers. Trees and all was so old, too. No animals around or birds. Path kind of overgrown like nobody used it much ever. Uncle Fred drove along right fast, he didn’t hardly talk to me at all but just made that old horse hump it. Pretty soon we struck into some hills, they was awfully high ones. They was woods on them, too, and sometimes a brook come running down, but I didn’t see no houses and it was always dark like at twilight, wherever you looked. Lastly we got to the farmhouse—a little place, old frame house and barn in a clear space and trees all around kind of gloomy-like. Aunt Lucy come out to meet us, she was a nice sort of little middle-aged lady who hugged me and took my stuff in back. But all this don’t hold with what I’m supposed to write down here. It don’t matter that all this last year I was living in the house here with them, eating off the stuff Uncle Fred farmed without ever going into town. No other farms around here for almost four mile and no school—so evenings Aunt Lucy would help me with my reading. I never played much. At first I was scared of going into the woods on account of what Grandma had told me. Besides, I could tell as Aunt Lucy and Uncle Fred was scared of something from the way they locked the doors at night and never went into the woods after dark, even in summer. But after a while, I got used to the idea of living in the woods and they didn’t seem so scarey. I did chores for Uncle Fred, of course, but sometimes in afternoons when he was busy, I’d go off by myself. Particular by the time it was fall. And that’s how I heard one of the things. It was early October, I was in the glen right by the big boulder. Then the noise started. I got behind that rock fast. You see, like I say, there isn’t any animals in the woods. Nor people. Excep perhaps old Cap Pritchett the mailman who only comes through on Thursday afternoons. So when I heard a sound that wasn’t Uncle Fred or Aunt Lucy calling to me, I knew I better hide. About that sound. It was far-away at first, kind of a dropping noise. Sounded like the blood falling in little spurts on the bottom of the bucket when Uncle Fred hung up a butchered hog. I looked around but I couldn’t make out nothing, and I couldn’t figure out the direction the noise was from either. The noise sort of stopped for a minute and they was only twilight and trees, still as death. Then the noise started again, nearer and louder. Sounded like a lot of people running or walking all at once, moving this way. Twigs busting under feet and scrabbling in the bushes all mixed up in the noise. I scrunched down behind that boulder and kept real quiet. I can tell that whatever makes the noise, it’s real close now, right in the glen. I want to look up but dassn’t because the sound is so loud and mean. And also there is an awful smell like something that was dead and buried being uncovered again in the sun. All at once the noise stops again and I can tell that whatever makes it is real close by. For a minute the woods are creepy-still. Then comes the sound. It’s a voice and it’s not a voice. That is, it doesn’t sound like a voice but more like a buzzing or croaking, deep and droning. But it has to be a voice because it is saying words. Not words I could understand, but words. Words that made me keep my head down, half afraid I might be seen and half afraid I might see something. I stayed there sweating and shaking. The smell was making me pretty sick, but that awful, deep droning voice was worse. Saying over and over something like “E uh shub nigger ath ngaa ryla neb shoggoth.” I can’t hope to spell it out the way it sounded, but I heard it enough times to remember. I was still listening when the smell got awful thick and I guess I must have fainted because when I woke up the voice was gone and it was getting quite dark. I ran all the way home that night, but not before I saw where the thing had stood when it talked—and it was a thing. No human being can leave tracks in the mud like goat’s hoofs all green with slime that smell awful—not four or eight, but a couple hundred! I didn’t tell Aunt Lucy or Uncle Fred. But that night when I went to bed I had terrible dreams. I thought I was back in the glen, only this time I could see the thing. It was real tall and all inky-black, without any particular shape except a lot of black ropes with ends like hoofs on it. I mean, it had a shape but it kep changing—all bulgy and squirming into different sizes. They was a lot of mouths all over the thing like puckered up leaves on branches. That’s as close as I can come. The mouths was like leaves and the whole thing was like a tree in the wind, a black tree with lots of branches trailing the ground, and a whole lot of roots ending in hoofs. And that green slime dribbling out of the mouths and down the legs was like sap! Next day I remembered to look in a book Aunt Lucy had downstairs. It was called a mythology. This book told about some people who lived over in England and France in the old days and was called Druids. They worshiped trees and thought they was alive. Maybe this thing was like what they worshiped—called a nature-spirit. But these Druids lived across the ocean, so how could it be? I did a lot of thinking about it the next couple days, and you can bet I didn’t go out to play in those woods again. At last I figgered it out something like this. Maybe those Druids got chased out of the forests over in England and France and some of them was smart enough to build boats and come across the ocean like old Leaf Erikson is supposed to have. Then they could maybe settle in the woods back here and frighten away the Indians with their magic spells. They would know how to hide themselves away in the swamps and go right on with their heathen worshiping and call up these spirits out of the ground or wherever they come from. Indians use to believe that white gods come from out of the sea a long time ago. What if that was just another way of telling how the Druids got here? Some real civilized Indians down in Mexico or South America—Aztecs or Inkas, I guess—said a white god come over in a boat and taught them all kinds of magic. Couldn’t he of been a Druid? That would explain Grandma’s stories about them ones, too. Those Druids hiding in the swamps would be the ones who did the drumming and pounding and lit the fires on the hills. And they would be calling up them ones, the tree spirits or whatever, out of the earth. Then they would make sacrefices. Those Druids always made sacrefices with blood, just like the old witches. And didn’t Grandma tell about people who lived too near the hills disappearing and never being found again? We lived in a spot just exactly like that. And it was getting close to Halloween. That was the big time, Grandma always said. I began to wonder—how soon now? Got so scared I didn’t go out of the house. Aunt Lucy made me take a tonic, said I looked peaked. Guess I did. All I know is one afternoon when I heard a buggy coming through the woods I ran and hid under the bed. But it was only Cap Pritchett with the mail. Uncle Fred got it and come in all excited with a letter. Cousin Osborne was coming to stay with us. He was kin to Aunt Lucy and he had a vacation and he wanted to stay a week. He’d get here on the same train I did—the only train they was passing through these parts—on noon, October 25th. For the next few days we was all so excited that I forgot all my crazy notions for a spell. Uncle Fred fixed up the back room for Cousin Osborne to sleep in and I helped him with the carpenter parts of the job. Days got shorter right along, and the nights was all cold with big winds. It was pretty brisk the morning of the 25th and Uncle Fred bundled up warm to drive through the woods. He meant to fetch Cousin Osborne at noon, and it was seven mile to the station. He wouldn’t take me, and I didn’t beg. Them woods was too full of creaking and rustling sounds from the wind—sounds that might be something else, too. Well, he left, and Aunt Lucy and I stayed in the house. She was putting up preserves now—plums—for over the winter season. I washed out jars from the well. Seems like I should have told about them having two wells. A new one with a big shiny pump, close to the house. Then an old stone one out by the barn, with the pump gone. It never had been any good, Uncle Fred said, it was there when they bought the place. Water was all slimy. Something funny about it, because even without a pump, sometimes it seemed to back up. Uncle Fred couldn’t figure it out, but some mornings water would be running out over the sides—green, slimy water that smelled terrible. We kep away from it and I was by the new well, till along about noon when it started in to cloud up. Aunt Lucy fixed lunch, and it started to rain hard with thunder rolling in off the big hills in the west. Seemed to me Uncle Fred and Cousin Osborne was going to have troubles getting home in the storm, but Aunt Lucy didn’t fret about it—just made me help her put up the stock. Come five o’clock, getting dark, and still no Uncle Fred. Then we begun to worry. Maybe the train was late, or something happened to the horse or buggy. Six o’clock and still no Uncle Fred. The rain stopped, but you could still hear the thunder sort of growling off in the hills, and the wet branches kep dripping down in the woods, making a sound like women laughing. Maybe the road was too bad for them to get through. Buggy might bog down in the mud. Perhaps they decided to stay in the deepo over night. Seven o’clock and it was pitch dark outside. No rain sounds any more. Aunt Lucy was awful worried. She said for us to go out and post a lantern on the fence rail by the road. We went down the path to the fence. It was dark and the wind had died down. Everything was still, like in the deep part of the woods. I felt kind of scared just walking down the path with Aunt Lucy—like something was out there in the quiet dark, someplace, waiting to grab me. We lit the lantern and stood there looking down the dark road and, “What’s that?” said Aunt Lucy, real sharp. I listened and heard a drumming sound far away. “Horse and buggy,” I said. Aunt Lucy perked up. “You’re right,” she says, all at once. And it is, because we see it. The horse is running fast and the buggy lurches behind it, crazy-like. It don’t even take a second look to see something has happened, because the buggy don’t stop by the gate but keeps going up to the barn with Aunt Lucy and me running through the mud after the horse. The horse is all full of lather and foam, and when it stops it can’t stand still. Aunt Lucy and I wait for Uncle Fred and Cousin Osborne to step out, but nothing happens. We look inside. There isn’t anybody in the buggy at all. Aunt Lucy says, “Oh!” in a real loud voice and then faints. I had to carry her back to the house and get her into bed. I waited almost all night by the window, but Uncle Fred and Cousin Osborne never showed up. Never. The next few days was awful. They was nothing in the buggy for a clue like to what happened, and Aunt Lucy wouldn’t let me go along the road into town or even to the station through the woods. The next morning the horse was dead in the barn, and of course we would of had to walk to the deepo or all those miles to Warren’s farm. Aunt Lucy was scared to go and scared to stay and she allowed as how when Cap Pritchett comes by we had best go with him over to town and make a report and then stay there until we found out what happened. Me, I had my own ideas what happened. Halloween was only a few days away now, and maybe them ones had snatched Uncle Fred and Cousin Osborne for sacrefice. Them ones or the Druids. The mythology book said Druids could even raise storms if they wanted to with their spells. No sense talking to Aunt Lucy, though. She was like out of her head with worry, anyway, just rocking back and forth and mumbling over and over, “They’re gone” and “Fred always warned me” and “No use, no use.” I had to get the meals and tend to stock myself. And nights it was hard to sleep, because I kep listening for drums. I never heard any, though, but still it was better than sleeping and having those dreams. Dreams about the black thing like a tree, walking through the woods and sort of rooting itself to one particular spot so it could pray with all those mouths—pray down to that old god in the ground below. I don’t know where I got the idea that was how it prayed—by sort of attaching its mouths to the ground. Maybe it was on account of seeing the green slime. Or had I really seen it? I’d never gone back to look. Maybe it was all in my head—the Druid story and about them ones and the voice that said “shoggoth” and all the rest. But then, where was Cousin Osborne and Uncle Fred? And what scared the horse so it up and died the next day? Thoughts kep going round and round in my head, chasing each other, but all I knew was we’d be out of here by Halloween night. Because Halloween was on a Thursday, and Cap Pritchett would come and we could ride to town with him. Night before I made Aunt Lucy pack and we got all ready, and then I settled down to sleep. There was no noises, and for the first time I felt a little better. Only the dreams come again. I dreamed a bunch of men come in the night and crawled through the parlor bedroom window where Aunt Lucy slept and got her. They tied her up and took her away, all quiet, in the dark, because they had cat-eyes and didn’t need light to see. The dream scared me so I woke up while it was just breaking into dawn. I went down the hall to Aunt Lucy right away. She was gone. The window was wide open like in my dream, and some of the blankets was torn. Ground was hard outside the window and I didn’t see footprints or anything. But she was gone. I guess I cried then. It’s hard to remember what I did next. Didn’t want breakfast. Went out hollering “Aunt Lucy” and not expecting any answer. I walked to the barn and the door was open and the cows were gone. Saw one or two prints going out the yard and up the road, but I didn’t think it was safe to follow them. Some time later I went over to the well and then I cried again because the water was all slimy green in the new one, just like the old. When I saw that I knew I was right. Them ones must of come in the night and they wasn’t even trying to hide their doings any more. Like they was sure of things. Tonight was Halloween. I had to get out of here. If them ones was watching and waiting, I couldn’t depend on Cap Pritchett showing up this afternoon. I’d have to chance it down the road and I’d better start walking now, in the morning, while it was still light enough to make town. So I rummaged around and found a little money in Uncle Fred’s drawer of the bureau and Cousin Osborne’s letter with the address in Kingsport he wrote it from. That’s where I’d have to go after I told folks in town what happened. I’d have some kin there. I wondered if they’d believe me in town when I told them about the way Uncle Fred had disappeared and Aunt Lucy, and about them stealing the cattle for a sacrefice and about the green slime in the well where something had stopped to drink. I wondered if they would know about the drums and the lights on the hills tonight and if they was going to get up a party and come back this evening to try and catch them ones and what they meant to call up rumbling out of the earth. I wondered if they knew what a “shoggoth” was. Well, whether they did or not, I couldn’t stay and find out for myself. So I packed up my satchel and got ready to leave. Must of been around noon and everything was still. I went to the door and stepped outside, not bothering to lock it behind me. Why should I with nobody around for miles? Then I heard the noise down the road. Footsteps. Somebody walking along the road, just around the bend. I stood still for a minute, waiting to see, waiting to run. Then he come along. He was tall and thin, and looked something like Uncle Fred only a lot younger and without a beard, and he was wearing a nice city kind of suit and a crush hat. He smiled when he saw me and come marching up like he knowed who I was. “Hello, Willie,” he said. I didn’t say nothing, I was so confuzed. “Don’t you know me?” he said. “I’m Cousin Osborne. Your Cousin Frank.” He held out his hand to shake. “But then I guess you wouldn’t remember, would you? Last time I saw you, you were only a baby.” “But I thought you were suppose to come last week,” I said. “We expected you on the 25th.” “Didn’t you get my telegram?” he asked. “I had business.” I shook my head. “We never get nothing here unless the mail delivers it on Thursdays. Maybe it’s at the station.” Cousin Osborne grinned. “You are pretty well off the beaten track at that. Nobody at the station this noon. I was hoping Fred would come along with the buggy so I wouldn’t have to walk, but no luck.” “You walked all the way?” I asked. “That’s right.” “And you come on the train?” Cousin Osborne nodded. “Then where’s your suitcase?” “I left it at the deepo,” he told me. “Too far to fetch it along. I thought Fred would drive me back there in the buggy to pick it up.” He noticed my luggage for the first time. “But wait a minute—where are you going with a suitcase, son?” Well, there was nothing else for me to do but tell him everything that happened. So I said for him to come into the house and set down and I’d explain. We went back in and he fixed some coffee and I made a couple sanwiches and we ate, and then I told him about Uncle Fred going to the deepo and not coming back, and about the horse and then what happened to Aunt Lucy. I left out the part about me in the woods, of course, and I didn’t even hint at them ones. But I told him I was scared and figgered on walking to town today before dark. Cousin Osborne he listened to me, nodding and not saying much or interrupting. “Now you can see why we got to go, right away,” I said. “Whatever come after them will be coming after us, and I don’t want to spend another night here.” Cousin Osborne stood up. “You may be right, Willie,” he said. “But don’t let your imagination run away with you, son. Try to separate fact from fancy. Your Aunt and Uncle have disappeared. That’s fact. But this other nonsense about things in the woods coming after you—that’s fancy. Reminds me of all that silly talk I heard back home, in Arkham. And for some reason there seems to be more of it around this time of year, at Halloween. Why, when I left—” “Excuse me, Cousin Osborne,” I said. “But don’t you live in Kingsport?” “Why to be sure,” he told me. “But I did live in Arkham once, and I know the people around here. It’s no wonder you were so frightened in the woods and got to imagining things. As it is, I admire your bravery. For a 12 year old, you’ve acted very sensibly.” “Then let’s start walking,” I said. “Here it is almost 2 and we better get moving if we want to make town before sundown.” “Not just yet, son,” Cousin Osborne said. “I wouldn’t feel right about leaving without looking around and seeing what we can discover about this mystery. After all, you must understand that we can’t just march into town and tell the sheriff some wild nonsense about strange creatures in the woods making off with your Aunt and Uncle. Sensible folks just won’t believe such things. They might think I was lying and laugh at me. Why they might even think you had something to do with your Aunt and Uncle’s—well, leaving.” “Please,” I said. “We got to go, right now.” He shook his head. I didn’t say any more. I might of told him a lot, about what I dreamed and heard and saw and knew—but I figgered it was no use. Besides, there was some things I didn’t want to say to him now that I had talked to him. I was feeling scared again. First he said he was from Arkham and then when I asked him he said he was from Kingsport but it sounded like a lie to me. Then he said something about me being scared in the woods and how could he know that? I never told him that part at all. If you want to know what I really thought, I thought maybe he wasn’t really Cousin Osborne at all. And if he wasn’t, then—who was he? I stood up and walked back into the hall. “Where you going, son?” he asked. “Outside.” “I’ll come with you.” Sure enough, he was watching me. He wasn’t going to let me out of his sight. He came over and took my arm, real friendly—but I couldn’t break loose. No, he hung on to me. He knew I meant to run for it. What could I do? All alone in the house in the woods with this man, with night coming on, Halloween night, and them ones out there waiting. We went outside and I noticed it was getting darker already, even in afternoon. Clouds had covered up the sun, and the wind was moving the trees so they stretched out their branches, like they was trying to hold me back. They made a rustling noise, just as if they were whispering things about me, and he sort of looked up at them and listened. Maybe he understood what they were saying. Maybe they were giving him orders. Then I almost laughed, because he was listening to something and now I heard it, too. It was a drumming sound, on the road. “Cap Pritchett,” I said. “He’s the mailman. Now we can ride to town with him in the buggy.” “Let me talk to him,” he says. “About your Aunt and Uncle. No sense in alarming him, and we don’t want any scandal, do we? You just run along inside.” “But Cousin Osborne,” I said. “We got to tell the truth.” “Of course, son. But this is a matter for adults. Now run along. I’ll call you.” He was real polite about it and even smiled, but all the same he dragged me back up the porch and into the house and slammed the door. I stood there in the dark hall and I could hear Cap Pritchett slow down and call out to him, and him going up to the buggy and talking, and then all I heard was a lot of mumbling, real low. I peeked out through a crack in the door and saw them. Cap Pritchett was talking to him friendly, all right, and nothing was wrong. Except that in a minute or so, Cap Pritchett waved and then he grabbed the reins and the buggy started off again! Then I knew I’d have to do it, no matter what happened. I opened the door and ran out, suitcase and all, down the path and up the road after the buggy. Cousin Osborne he tried to grab me when I went by, but I ducked around him and yelled, “Wait for me, Cap—I’m coming—take me to town!” Cap slowed down and stared back, real puzzled. “Willie!” he says. “Why I thought you was gone. He said you went away with Fred and Lucy—” “Pay no attention,” I said. “He didn’t want me to go. Take me to town. I’ll tell you what really happened. Please, Cap, you got to take me.” “Sure I’ll take you, Willie. Hop right up here.” I hopped. Cousin Osborne come right up to the buggy. “Here, now,” he said, real sharp. “You can’t leave like this. I forbid it. You’re in my custody.” “Don’t listen to him,” I yelled. “Take me, Cap. Please!” “Very well,” said Cousin Osborne. “If you insist on being unreasonable. We’ll all go. I cannot permit you to leave alone.” He smiled at Cap. “You can see the boy is unstrung,” he said. “And I trust you will not be disturbed by his imaginings. Living out here like this—well, you understand—he’s not quite himself. I’ll explain everything on the way to town.” He sort of shrugged at Cap and made signs of tapping his head. Then he smiled again and made to climb up next to us in the buggy seat. But Cap didn’t smile back. “No, you don’t,” he said. “This boy Willie is a good boy. I know him. I don’t know you. Looks as if you done enough explaining already, Mister, when you said Willie had gone away.” “But I merely wanted to avoid talk—you see, I’ve been called in to doctor the boy—he’s mentally unstable—” “Stables be damned!” Cap spit out some tobacco juice right at Cousin Osborne’s feet. “We’re going.” Cousin Osborne stopped smiling. “Then I insist you take me with you,” he said. And he tried to climb into the buggy. Cap reached into his jacket and when he pulled his hand out again he had a big pistol in it. “Git down!” he yelled. “Mister, you’re talking to the United States Mail and you don’t tell the Government nothing, understand? Now git down before I mess your brains all over this road.” Cousin Osborne scowled, but he got away from the buggy, fast. He looked at me and shrugged. “You’re making a big mistake, Willie,” he said. I didn’t even look at him. Cap said, “Gee up,” and we went off down the road. The buggy wheels turned faster and faster and pretty soon the farmhouse was out of sight and Cap put his pistol away, and patted me on the shoulder. “Stop that trembling, Willie,” he said. “You’re safe now. Nothing to worry about. Be in town little over an hour or so. Now you just set back and tell old Cap all about it.” So I told him. It took a long time. We kep going through the woods, and before I knew it, it was almost dark. The sun sneaked down and hid behind the hills. The dark began to creep out of the woods on each side of the road, and the trees started to rustle, whispering to the big shadows that followed us. The horse was clipping and clopping along, and pretty soon they were other noises from far away. Might have been thunder and might have been something else. But it was getting night-time for sure, and it was the night of Halloween. The road cut off through the hills now, and you could hardly see where the next turn would take you. Besides, it was getting dark awful fast. “Guess we’re in for a spell of rain,” Cap said, looking up. “That’s thunder, I reckon.” “Drums,” I said. “Drums?” “At night in the hills you can hear them,” I told him. “I heard them all this month. It’s them ones, getting ready for the Sabbath.” “Sabbath?” Cap looked at me. “Where you hear tell about a Sabbath?” Then I told him some more about what had happened. I told him all the rest. He didn’t say anything, and before long he couldn’t of answered me anyway, because the thunder was all around us, and the rain was lashing down on the buggy, on the road, everywhere. It was pitch-black outside now, and the only time we could see was when lightning flashed. I had to yell to make him hear me—yell about the things that caught Uncle Fred and come for Aunt Lucy, the things that took our cattle and then sent Cousin Osborne back to fetch me. I hollered out about what I heard in the wood, too. In the lightning flashes I could see Cap’s face. He wasn’t smiling or scowling—he just looked like he believed me. And I noticed he had his pistol out again and was holding the reins with one hand even though we were racing along. The horse was so scared he didn’t need the whip to keep him running. The old buggy was lurching and bouncing, and the rain was whistling down in the wind and it was all like an awful dream but it was real. It was real when I hollered out to Cap Pritchett about that time in the woods. “Shoggoth,” I yelled. “What’s a shoggoth?” Cap grabbed my arm, and then the lightning come and I could see his face, with his mouth open. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the road and what was ahead of us. The trees sort of come together, hanging over the next turn, and in the black it looked as if they were alive—moving and bending and twisting to block our way. Lightning flickered up again and I could see them plain, and also something else. Something black in the road, something that wasn’t a tree. Something big and black, just squatting there, waiting, with ropy arms squirming and reaching. “Shoggoth!” Cap yelled. But I could scarcely hear him because the thunder was roaring and now the horse let out a scream and I felt the buggy jerk to one side and the horse reared up and we was almost into the black stuff. I could smell an awful smell, and Cap was pointing his pistol and it went off with a bang that was almost as loud as the thunder and almost as loud as the sound we made when we hit the black thing. Then everything happened at once. The thunder, the horse falling, the shot, and us hitting as the buggy went over. Cap must of had the reins wrapped around his arm, because when the horse fell and the buggy turned over, he went right over the dashboard head first and down into the squirming mess that was the horse—and the black thing that grabbed it. I felt myself falling in the dark, then landing in the mud and gravel of the road. There was thunder and screaming and another sound which I had heard only once before in the woods—a droning sound like a voice. That’s why I never looked back. That’s why I didn’t even think about being hurt when I landed—just got up and started to run down the road, fast as I could, run down the road in the storm and the dark with the trees squirming and twisting and shaking their heads while they pointed at me with their branches and laughed. Over the thunder I heard the horse scream and I heard Cap scream, too, but I still didn’t look back. The lightning winked on and off, and I ran through the trees now because the road was nothing but mud that dragged me down and sucked at my legs. After a while I began to scream, too, but I couldn’t even hear myself for thunder. And more than thunder. I heard drums. All at once I busted clear of the woods and got to the hills. I ran up, and the drumming got louder, and pretty soon I could see regular, not just when they was lightning. Because they was fires burning on the hill, and the booming of the drums come from there. I got lost in the noise; the wind shrieking and the trees laughing and the drums pounding. But I stopped in time. I stopped when I saw the fires plain; red and green fires burning in all that rain. I saw a big white stone in the center of a cleared-off space on top of the hill. The red and green fires was around and behind it, so everything stood out clear against the flames. They was men around the alter, men with long gray beards and wrinkled-up faces, men throwing awful-smelling stuff on the fires to make them blaze red and green. And they had knives in their hands and I could hear them howling over the storm. In back, squatting on the ground, more men pounded on drums. Pretty soon something else come up the hill—two men driving cattle. I could tell it was our cows they drove, drove them right up to the alter and then the men with the knives cut their throats for a sacrefice. All this I could see in lightning flashes and in the fire lights, and I sort of scooched down so I couldn’t get spotted by anyone. But pretty soon I couldn’t see very good any more, on account of the way they threw stuff on the fire. It set up a real thick black smoke. When this smoke come up, the men began to chant and pray louder. I couldn’t hear words, but the sounds was like what I heard back in the woods. I couldn’t see too good, but I knew what was going to happen. Two men who had led the cattle went back down the other side of the hill and when they come up again they had new sacrefices. The smoke kep me from seeing plain, but these was two-legged sacrefices, not four. I might of seen better at that, only now I hid my face when they dragged them up to the white alter and used the knives, and the fire and smoke flared up and the drums boomed and they all chanted and called in a loud voice to something waiting over on the other side of the hill. The ground began to shake. It was storming, they was thunder and lightning and fire and smoke and chanting and I was scared half out of my wits, but one thing I’ll swear to—the ground began to shake. It shook and shivered and they called out to something, and in a minute something came. It came crawling up the hillside to the alter and the sacrefice, and it was the black thing of my dreams—that black, ropy, slimy jelly tree-thing out of the woods. It crawled up and it flowed up on its hoofs and mouths and snaky arms. And the men bowed and stood back and then it got to the alter where they was something squirming on top, squirming and screaming. The black thing sort of bent over the alter and then I heard droning sounds over the screaming as it come down. I only watched a minute, but while I watched the black thing began to swell and grow. That finished me. I didn’t care any more. I had to run. I got up and I run and run and run, screaming at the top of my lungs no matter who heard. I kep running and I kep screaming forever, through the woods and the storm, away from that hill and that alter, and then all at once I knew where I was and I was back here at the farmhouse. Yes, that’s what I’d done—run in a circle and come back. But I couldn’t go any further, I couldn’t stand the night and the storm. So I run inside here. At first after I locked the door I just lay right down on the floor, all tuckered out from running and crying. But in a little while I got up and hunted me some nails and a hammer and some of Uncle Fred’s boards that wasn’t split up into kindling. I nailed up the door first and then boarded up all the windows. Every last one of them. Guess I worked for hours, tired as I was. When it was all done, the storm died down and it got quiet. Quiet enough for me to lie down on the couch and go to sleep. Woke up a couple of hours ago. It was daylight. I could see it shining through the cracks. From the way the sun come in, I knew it was afternoon already. I’d slept through the whole morning, and nothing had come. I figured now maybe I could let myself out and make town on foot, like I’d planned yesterday. But I figgered wrong. Before I got started taking out the nails, I heard him. It was Cousin Osborne, of course. The man who said he was Cousin Osborne, I mean. He come into the yard, calling “Willie!” but I didn’t answer. Then he tried the door and then the windows. I could hear him pounding and cussing. That was bad. But then he began mumbling, and that was worse. Because it meant he wasn’t out there alone. I sneaked a look through the crack, but he already went around to the back of the house so I didn’t see him or who was with him. Guess that’s just as well, because if I’m right, I wouldn’t want to see. Hearing’s bad enough. Hearing that deep croaking, and then him talking, and then that croaking again. Smelling that awful smell, like the green slime from the woods and around the well. The well—they went over to the well in back. And I heard Cousin Osborne say something about, “Wait until dark. We can use the well if you find the gate. Look for the gate.” I know what that means now. The well must be a sort of entrance to the underground place—that’s where those Druid men live. And the black thing. They’re out in back now, looking. I been writing for quite a spell and already the afternoon is going. Peeking through the cracks I can see it’s getting dark again. That’s when they’ll come for me—when it’s dark. They’ll break down the doors or the windows and come and take me. They’ll take me down into the well, into the black places where the shoggoths are. There must be a whole world down under the hills, a world where they hide and wait to come out for more sacrefices, more blood. They don’t want any humans around, except for sacrefices. I saw what the black thing did on the alter. I know what’s going to happen to me. Maybe they’ll miss the real Cousin Osborne back home and send somebody to find out what become of him. Maybe folks in town will miss Cap Pritchett and go on a search. Maybe they’ll come here and find me. But if they don’t come soon it will be too late. That’s why I wrote this. It’s true, cross my heart, every word of it. And if anyone finds this notebook where I hide it, come and look down the well. The old well, out in back. Remember what I told about them ones. Block up the well and clean out them swamps. No sense looking for me—if I’m not here. I wish I wasn’t so scared. I’m not even scared so much for myself, but for other folks. The ones who might come after and live around here and have the same thing happen—or worse. You just got to believe me. Go to the woods if you don’t. Go to the hill. The hill where they had the sacrefice. Maybe the stains are gone and the rain washed the footprints away. Maybe they got rid of the traces of the fire. But the alter stone must be there. And if it is, you’ll know the truth. There should be some big round spots on that stone. Round spots about two feet wide. I didn’t tell about that. At the last, I did look back. I looked back at the big black thing that was a shoggoth. I looked back as it kep swelling and growing. I guess I told about how it could change shape, and how big it got. But you can’t hardly imagine how big or what shape and I still dassn’t tell. All I say is look. Look and you’ll see what’s hiding under the earth in these hills, waiting to creep out and feast and kill some more. Wait. They’re coming now. Getting twilight and I can hear footsteps. And other sounds. Voices. And other sounds. They’re banging on the door. And sure enough—they must have a tree or a plank to use for battering it down. The whole place is shaking. I can hear Cousin Osborne yelling, and that droning. The smell is awful, I’m getting sick, and in a minute— Look at the alter. Then you’ll understand what I’m trying to tell. Look at the big round marks, two feet wide, on each side. That’s where the big black thing grabbed hold. Look for the marks and you’ll know what I saw, what I’m afraid of, what’s waiting to grab you unless you shut it up forever under the earth. Black marks two feet wide, but they aren’t just marks. What they really are is fingerprints! The door is busting o—— |
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