.
VIII.
In the meantime a quieter yet even more spiritually poignant
phase of the horror had been blackly unwinding itself behind the closed
door of a shelf-lined room in Arkham. The curious manuscript record or
diary of Wilbur Whateley, delivered to Miskatonic University for translation
had caused much worry and bafflement among the experts in language both
ancient and modern; its very alphabet, notwithstanding a general resemblance
to the heavily-shaded Arabic used in Mesopotamia, being absolutely unknown
to any available authority. The final conclusion of the linguists was that
the text represented an artificial alphabet, giving the effect of a cipher;
though none of the usual methods of cryptographic solution seemed to furnish
any clue, even when applied on the basis of every tongue the writer might
conceivably have used. The ancient books taken from Whateley's quarters,
while absorbingly interesting and in several cases promising to open up
new and terrible lines of research among philosophers and men of science,
were of no assistance whatever in this matter. One of them, a heavy tome
with an iron clasp, was in another unknown alphabet - this one of a very
different cast, and resembling Sanskrit more than anything else. The old
ledger was at length given wholly into the charge of Dr Armitage, both
because of his peculiar interest in the Whateley matter, and because of
his wide linguistic learning and skill in the mystical formulae of antiquity
and the middle ages.
Armitage had an idea that the alphabet might be something
esoterically used by certain forbidden cults which have come down from
old times, and which have inherited many forms and traditions from the
wizards of the Saracenic world. That question, however, he did not deem
vital; since it would be unnecessary to know the origin of the symbols
if, as he suspected, they were used as a cipher in a modern language. It
was his belief that, considering the great amount of text involved, the
writer would scarcely have wished the trouble of using another speech than
his own, save perhaps in certain special formulae and incantations. Accordingly
he attacked the manuscript with the preliminary assumption that the bulk
of it was in English.
Dr Armitage knew, from the repeated failures of his colleagues,
that the riddle was a deep and complex one; and that no simple mode of
solution could merit even a trial. All through late August he fortified
himself with the mass lore of cryptography; drawing upon the fullest resources
of his own library, and wading night after night amidst the arcana of Trithemius'
Poligraphia,
Giambattista Porta's De Furtivis Literarum Notis, De Vigenere's
Traite
des Chiffres, Falconer's Cryptomenysis Patefacta, Davys' and
Thicknesse's eighteenth-century treatises, and such fairly modern authorities
as Blair, van Marten and Kluber's script itself, and in time became convinced
that he had to deal with one of those subtlest and most ingenious of cryptograms,
in which many separate lists of corresponding letters are arranged like
the multiplication table, and the message built up with arbitrary key-words
known only to the initiated. The older authorities seemed rather more helpful
than the newer ones, and Armitage concluded that the code of the manuscript
was one of great antiquity, no doubt handed down through a long line of
mystical experimenters. Several times he seemed near daylight, only to
be set back by some unforeseen obstacle. Then, as September approached,
the clouds began to clear. Certain letters, as used in certain parts of
the manuscript, emerged definitely and unmistakably; and it became obvious
that the text was indeed in English.
On the evening of September second the last major barrier
gave way, and Dr Armitage read for the first time a continuous passage
of Wilbur Whateley's annals. It was in truth a diary, as all had thought;
and it was couched in a style clearly showing the mixed occult erudition
and general illiteracy of the strange being who wrote it. Almost the first
long passage that Armitage deciphered, an entry dated November 26, 1916,
proved highly startling and disquieting. It was written,he remembered,
by a child of three and a half who looked like a lad of twelve or thirteen.
Today learned the Aklo for the Sabaoth (it ran),
which did not like, it being answerable from the hill and not from the
air. That upstairs more ahead of me than I had thought it would be, and
is not like to have much earth brain. Shot Elam Hutchins's collie Jack
when he went to bite me, and Elam says he would kill me if he dast. I guess
he won't. Grandfather kept me saying the Dho formula last night, and I
think I saw the inner city at the 2 magnetic poles. I shall go to those
poles when the earth is cleared off, if I can't break through with the
Dho-Hna formula when I commit it. They from the air told me at Sabbat that
it will be years before I can clear off the earth, and I guess grandfather
will be dead then, so I shall have to learn all the angles of the planes
and all the formulas between the Yr and the Nhhngr. They from outside will
help, but they cannot take body without human blood. That upstairs looks
it will have the right cast. I can see it a little when I make the Voorish
sign or blow the powder of Ibn Ghazi at it, and it is near like them at
May Eve on the Hill. The other face may wear off some. I wonder how I shall
look when the earth is cleared and there are no earth beings on it. He
that came with the Aklo Sabaoth said I may be transfigured there being
much of outside to work on.
Morning found Dr Armitage in a cold sweat of terror and a
frenzy of wakeful concentration. He had not left the manuscript all night,
but sat at his table under the electric light turning page after page with
shaking hands as fast as he could decipher the cryptic text. He had nervously
telephoned his wife he would not be home, and when she brought him a breakfast
from the house he could scarcely dispose of a mouthful. All that day he
read on, now and then halted maddeningly as a reapplication of the complex
key became necessary. Lunch and dinner were brought him, but he ate only
the smallest fraction of either. Toward the middle of the next night he
drowsed off in his chair, but soon woke out of a tangle of nightmares almost
as hideous as the truths and menaces to man's existence that he had uncovered.
On the morning of September fourth Professor Rice and
Dr Morgan insisted on seeing him for a while, and departed trembling and
ashen-grey. That evening he went to bed, but slept only fitfully. Wednesday
- the next day - he was back at the manuscript, and began to take copious
notes both from the current sections and from those he had already deciphered.
In the small hours of that night he slept a little in a easy chair in his
office, but was at the manuscript again before dawn. Some time before noon
his physician, Dr Hartwell, called to see him and insisted that he cease
work. He refused; intimating that it was of the most vital importance for
him to complete the reading of the diary and promising an explanation in
due course of time. That evening, just as twilight fell, he finished his
terrible perusal and sank back exhausted. His wife, bringing his dinner,
found him in a half-comatose state; but he was conscious enough to warn
her off with a sharp cry when he saw her eyes wander toward the notes he
had taken. Weakly rising, he gathered up the scribbled papers and sealed
them all in a great envelope, which he immediately placed in his inside
coat pocket. He had sufficient strength to get home, but was so clearly
in need of medical aid that Dr Hartwell was summoned at once. As the doctor
put him to bed he could only mutter over and over again, 'But what,
in God's name, can we do?'
Dr Armitage slept, but was partly delirious the next day.
He made no explanations to Hartwell, but in his calmer moments spoke of
the imperative need of a long conference with Rice and Morgan. His wilder
wanderings were very startling indeed, including frantic appeals that something
in a boarded-up farmhouse be destroyed, and fantastic references to some
plan for the extirpation of the entire human race and all animal and vegetable
life from the earth by some terrible elder race of beings from another
dimension. He would shout that the world was in danger, since the Elder
Things wished to strip it and drag it away from the solar system and cosmos
of matter into some other plane or phase of entity from which it had once
fallen, vigintillions of aeons ago. At other times he would call for the
dreaded Necronomicon and the Daemonolatreia of Remigius,
in which he seemed hopeful of finding some formula to check the peril he
conjured up.
'Stop them, stop theml' he would shout. 'Those Whateleys
meant to let them in, and the worst of all is left! Tell Rice and Morgan
we must do something - it's a blind business, but I know how to make the
powder... It hasn't been fed since the second of August, when Wilbur came
here to his death, and at that rate...'
But Armitage had a sound physique despite his seventy-three
years, and slept off his disorder that night without developing any real
fever. He woke late Friday, clear of head, though sober with a gnawing
fear and tremendous sense of responsibility. Saturday afternoon he felt
able to go over to the library and summon Rice and Morgan for a conference,
and the rest of that day and evening the three men tortured their brains
in the wildest speculation and the most desperate debate. Strange and terrible
books were drawn voluminously from the stack shelves and from secure places
of storage; and diagrams and formulae were copied with feverish haste and
in bewildering abundance. Of scepticism there was none. All three had seen
the body of Wilbur Whateley as it lay on the floor in a room of that very
building, and after that not one of them could feel even slightly inclined
to treat the diary as a madman's raving.
Opinions were divided as to notifying the Massachusetts
State Police, and the negative finally won. There were things involved
which simply could not be believed by those who had not seen a sample,
as indeed was made clear during certain subsequent investigations. Late
at night the conference disbanded without having developed a definite plan,
but all day Sunday Armitage was busy comparing formulae and mixing chemicals
obtained from the college laboratory. The more he reflected on the hellish
diary, the more he was inclined to doubt the efficacy of any material agent
in stamping out the entity which Wilbur Whateley had left behind him -
the earth threatening entity which, unknown to him, was to burst forth
in a few hours and become the memorable Dunwich horror.
Monday was a repetition of Sunday with Dr Armitage, for
the task in hand required an infinity of research and experiment. Further
consultations of the monstrous diary brought about various changes of plan,
and he knew that even in the end a large amount of uncertainty must remain.
By Tuesday he had a definite line of action mapped out, and believed he
would try a trip to Dunwich within a week. Then, on Wednesday, the great
shock came. Tucked obscurely away in a corner of the Arkham Advertiser
was a facetious little item from the Associated Press, telling what a record-breaking
monster the bootleg whisky of Dunwich had raised up. Armitage, half stunned,
could only telephone for Rice and Morgan. Far into the night they discussed,
and the next day was a whirlwind of preparation on the part of them all.
Armitage knew he would be meddling with terrible powers, yet saw that there
was no other way to annul the deeper and more malign meddling which others
had done before him.
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