I
Bear
in mind closely that I did not see any actual visual horror at the end.
To say that a mental shock was the cause of what I inferred - that last
straw which sent me racing out of the lonely Akeley farmhouse and through
the wild domed hills of Vermont in a commandeered motor at night - is to
ignore the plainest facts of my final experience. Notwithstanding the deep
things I saw and heard, and the admitted vividness the impression produced
on me by these things, I cannot prove even now whether I was right or wrong
in my hideous inference. For after all Akeley's disappearance establishes
nothing. People found nothing amiss in his house despite the bullet-marks
on the outside and inside. It was just as though he had walked out casually
for a ramble in the hills and failed to return. There was not even a sign
that a guest had been there, or that those horrible cylinders and machines
had been stored in the study. That he had mortally feared the crowded green
hills and endless trickle of brooks among which he had been born and reared,
means nothing at all, either; for thousands are subject to just such morbid
fears. Eccentricity, moreover, could easily account for his strange acts
and apprehensions toward the last.
The whole matter began, so far as I am concerned, with the historic
and unprecedented Vermont floods of November 3, 1927. I was then, as now,
an instructor of literature at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts,
and an enthusiastic amateur student of New England folklore. Shortly after
the flood, amidst the varied reports of hardship, suffering, and organized
relief which filled the press, there appeared certain odd stories of things
found floating in some of the swollen rivers; so that many of my friends
embarked on curious discussions and appealed to me to shed what light I
could on the subject. I felt flattered at having my folklore study taken
so seriously, and did what I could to belittle the wild, vague tales which
seemed so clearly an outgrowth of old rustic superstitions. It amused me
to find several persons of education who insisted that some stratum of
obscure, distorted fact might underlie the rumors.
The tales thus brought to my notice came mostly through newspaper
cuttings; though one yarn had an oral source and was repeated to a friend
of mine in a letter from his mother in Hardwick, Vermont. The type of thing
described was essentially the same in all cases, though there seemed to
be three separate instances involved - one connected with the Winooski
River near Montpelier, another attached to the West River in Windham County
beyond Newfane, and a third centering in the Passumpsic in Caledonia County
above Lyndonville. Of course many of the stray items mentioned other instances,
but on analysis they all seemed to boil down to these three. In each case
country folk reported seeing one or more very bizarre and disturbing objects
in the surging waters that poured down from the unfrequented hills, and
there was a widespread tendency to connect these sights with a primitive,
half-forgotten cycle of whispered legend which old people resurrected for
the occasion.
What people thought they saw were organic shapes not quite like any
they had ever seen before. Naturally, there were many human bodies washed
along by the streams in that tragic period; but those who described these
strange shapes felt quite sure that they were not human, despite some superficial
resemblances in size and general outline. Nor, said the witnesses, could
they have been any kind of animal known to Vermont. They were pinkish things
about five feet long; with crustaceous bodies bearing vast pairs of dorsal
fins or membranous wings and several sets of articulated limbs, and with
a sort of convoluted ellipsoid, covered with multitudes of very short antennae,
where a head would ordinarily be. It was really remarkable how closely
the reports from different sources tended to coincide; though the wonder
was lessened by the fact that the old legends, shared at one time throughout
the hill country, furnished a morbidly vivid picture which might well have
coloured the imaginations of all the witnesses concerned. It was my conclusion
that such witnesses - in every case naive and simple backwoods folk - had
glimpsed the battered and bloated bodies of human beings or farm animals
in the whirling currents; and had allowed the half-remembered folklore
to invest these pitiful objects with fantastic attributes.
The ancient folklore, while cloudy, evasive, and largely forgotten
by the present generation, was of a highly singular character, and obviously
reflected the influence of still earlier Indian tales. I knew it well,
though I had never been in Vermont, through the exceedingly rare monograph
of Eli Davenport, which embraces material orally obtained prior to 1839
among the oldest people of the state. This material, moreover, closely
coincided with tales which I had personally heard from elderly rustics
in the mountains of New Hampshire. Briefly summarized, it hinted at a hidden
race of monstrous beings which lurked somewhere among the remoter hills
- in the deep woods of the highest peaks, and the dark valleys where streams
trickle from unknown sources. These beings were seldom glimpsed, but evidences
of their presence were reported by those who had ventured farther than
usual up the slopes of certain mountains or into certain deep, steep-sided
gorges that even the wolves shunned.
There were queer footprints or claw-prints in the mud of brook-margins
and barren patches, and curious circles of stones, with the grass around
them worn away, which did not seem to have been placed or entirely shaped
by Nature. There were, too, certain caves of problematical depth in the
sides of the hills; with mouths closed by boulders in a manner scarcely
accidental, and with more than an average quota of the queer prints leading
both toward and away from them - if indeed the direction of these prints
could be justly estimated. And worst of all, there were the things which
adventurous people had seen very rarely in the twilight of the remotest
valleys and the dense perpendicular woods above the limits of normal hill-climbing.
It would have been less uncomfortable if the stray accounts of these
things had not agreed so well. As it was, nearly all the rumors had several
points in common; averring that the creatures were a sort of huge, light-red
crab with many pairs of legs and with two great batlike wings in the middle
of the back. They sometimes walked on all their legs, and sometimes on
the hindmost pair only, using the others to convey large objects of indeterminate
nature. On one occasion they were spied in considerable numbers, a detachment
of them wading along a shallow woodland watercourse three abreast in evidently
disciplined formation. Once a specimen was seen flying - launching itself
from the top of a bald, lonely hill at night and vanishing in the sky after
its great flapping wings had been silhouetted an instant against the full
moon
These things seemed content, on the whole, to let mankind alone;
though they were at times held responsible for the disappearance of venturesome
individuals - especially persons who built houses too close to certain
valleys or too high up on certain mountains. Many localities came to be
known as inadvisable to settle in, the feeling persisting long after the
cause was forgotten. People would look up at some of the neighbouring mountain-precipices
with a shudder, even when not recalling how many settlers had been lost,
and how many farmhouses burnt to ashes, on the lower slopes of those grim,
green sentinels.
But while according to the earliest legends the creatures would appear
to have harmed only those trespassing on their privacy; there were later
accounts of their curiosity respecting men, and of their attempts to establish
secret outposts in the human world. There were tales of the queer claw-prints
seen around farmhouse windows in the morning, and of occasional disappearances
in regions outside the obviously haunted areas. Tales, besides, of buzzing
voices in imitation of human speech which made surprising offers to lone
travelers on roads and cart-paths in the deep woods, and of children frightened
out of their wits by things seen or heard where the primal forest pressed
close upon their door-yards. In the final layer of legends - the layer
just preceding the decline of superstition and the abandonment of close
contact with the dreaded places - there are shocked references to hermits
and remote farmers who at some period of life appeared to have undergone
a repellent mental change, and who were shunned and whispered about as
mortals who had sold themselves to the strange beings. In one of the northeastern
counties it seemed to be a fashion about 1800 to accuse eccentric and unpopular
recluses of being allies or representatives of the abhorred things.
As to what the things were - explanations naturally varied. The common
name applied to them was "those ones," or "the old ones," though other
terms had a local and transient use. Perhaps the bulk of the Puritan settlers
set them down bluntly as familiars of the devil, and made them a basis
of awed theological speculation. Those with Celtic legendry in their heritage
- mainly the Scotch-Irish element of New Hampshire, and their kindred who
had settled in Vermont on Governor Wentworth's colonial grants - linked
them vaguely with the malign fairies and "little people" of the bogs and
raths, and protected themselves with scraps of incantation handed down
through many generations. But the Indians had the most fantastic theories
of all. While different tribal legends differed, there was a marked consensus
of belief in certain vital particulars; it being unanimously agreed that
the creatures were not native to this earth.
The Pennacook myths, which were the most consistent and picturesque,
taught that the Winged Ones came from the Great Bear in the sky, and had
mines in our earthly hills whence they took a kind of stone they could
not get on any other world. They did not live here, said the myths, but
merely maintained outposts and flew back with vast cargoes of stone to
their own stars in the north. They harmed only those earth-people who got
too near them or spied upon them. Animals shunned them through instinctive
hatred, not because of being hunted. They could not eat the things and
animals of earth, but brought their own food from the stars. It was bad
to get near them, and sometimes young hunters who went into their hills
never came back. It was not good, either, to listen to what they whispered
at night in the forest with voices like a bee's that tried to be like the
voices of men. They knew the speech of all kinds of men - Pennacooks, Hurons,
men of the Five Nations - but did not seem to have or need any speech of
their own. They talked with their heads, which changed colour in different
ways to mean different things.
All the legendry, of course, white and Indian alike, died down during
the nineteenth century, except for occasional atavistical flareups. The
ways of the Vermonters became settled; and once their habitual paths and
dwellings were established according to a certain fixed plan, they remembered
less and less what fears and avoidances had determined that plan, and even
that there had been any fears or avoidances. Most people simply knew that
certain hilly regions were considered as highly unhealthy, unprofitable,
and generally unlucky to live in, and that the farther one kept from them
the better off one usually was. In time the ruts of custom and economic
interest became so deeply cut in approved places that there was no longer
any reason for going outside them, and the haunted hills were left deserted
by accident rather than by design. Save during infrequent local scares,
only wonder-loving grandmothers and retrospective nonagenarians ever whispered
of beings dwelling in those hills; and even such whispers admitted that
there was not much to fear from those things now that they were used to
the presence of houses and settlements, and now that human beings let their
chosen territory severely alone.
All this I had long known from my reading, and from certain folk
tales picked up in New Hampshire; hence when the flood-time rumours began
to appear, I could easily guess what imaginative background had evolved
them. I took great pains to explain this to my friends, and was correspondingly
amused when several contentious souls continued to insist on a possible
element of truth in the reports. Such persons tried to point out that the
early legends had a significant persistence and uniformity, and that the
virtually unexplored nature of the Vermont hills made it unwise to be dogmatic
about what might or might not dwell among them; nor could they be silenced
by my assurance that all the myths were of a well-known pattern common
to most of mankind and determined by early phases of imaginative experience
which always produced the same type of delusion.
It was of no use to demonstrate to such opponents that the Vermont
myths differed but little in essence from those universal legends of natural
personification which filled the ancient world with fauns and dryads and
satyrs, suggested the kallikanzarai of modern Greece, and gave to
wild Wales and Ireland their dark hints of strange, small, and terrible
hidden races of troglodytes and burrowers. No use, either, to point out
the even more startlingly similar belief of the Nepalese hill tribes in
the dreaded Mi-Go or "Abominable Snow-Men" who lurk hideously amidst
the ice and rock pinnacles of the Himalayan summits. When I brought up
this evidence, my opponents turned it against me by claiming that it must
imply some actual historicity for the ancient tales; that it must argue
the real existence of some queer elder earth-race, driven to hiding after
the advent and dominance of mankind, which might very conceivably have
survived in reduced numbers to relatively recent times - or even to the
present.
The more I laughed at such theories, the more these stubborn friends
asseverated them; adding that even without the heritage of legend the recent
reports were too clear, consistent, detailed, and sanely prosaic in manner
of telling, to be completely ignored. Two or three fanatical extremists
went so far as to hint at possible meanings in the ancient Indian tales
which gave the hidden beings a nonterrestrial origin; citing the extravagant
books of Charles Fort with their claims that voyagers from other worlds
and outer space have often visited the earth. Most of my foes, however,
were merely romanticists who insisted on trying to transfer to real life
the fantastic lore of lurking "little people" made popular by the magnificent
horror-fiction of Arthur Machen.
II
As was only natural under the circumstances, this piquant debating finally
got into print in the form of letters to the Arkham Advertiser; some
of which were copied in the press of those Vermont regions whence the flood-stories
came. The Rutland Herald gave half a page of extracts from the letters
on both sides, while the Brattleboro Reformer reprinted one of my
long historical and mythological summaries in full, with some accompanying
comments in "The Pendrifter's" thoughtful column which supported and applauded
my skeptical conclusions. By the spring of 1928 I was almost a well-known
figure in Vermont, notwithstanding the fact that I had never set foot in
the state. Then came the challenging letters from Henry Akeley which impressed
me so profoundly, and which took me for the first and last time to that
fascinating realm of crowded green precipices and muttering forest streams.
Most of what I know of Henry Wentworth Akeley was gathered by correspondence
with his neighbours, and with his only son in California, after my experience
in his lonely farmhouse. He was, I discovered, the last representative
on his home soil of a long, locally distinguished line of jurists, administrators,
and gentlemen-agriculturists. In him, however, the family mentally had
veered away from practical affairs to pure scholarship; so that he had
been a notable student of mathematics, astronomy, biology, anthropology,
and folklore at the University of Vermont. I had never previously heard
of him, and he did not give many autobiographical details in his communications;
but from the first I saw he was a man of character, education, and intelligence,
albeit a recluse with very little worldly sophistication.
Despite the incredible nature of what he claimed, I could not help
at once taking Akeley more seriously than I had taken any of the other
challengers of my views. For one thing, he was really close to the actual
phenomena - visible and tangible - that he speculated so grotesquely about;
and for another thing, he was amazingly willing to leave his conclusions
in a tenative state like a true man of science. He had no personal preferences
to advance, and was always guided by what he took to be solid evidence.
Of course I began by considering him mistaken, but gave him credit for
being intelligently mistaken; and at no time did I emulate some of his
friends in attributing his ideas, and his fear of the lonely green hills,
to insanity. I could see that there was a great deal to the man, and knew
that what he reported must surely come from strange circumstance deserving
investigation, however little it might have to do with the fantastic causes
he assigned. Later on I received from him certain material proofs which
placed the matter on a somewhat different and bewilderingly bizarre basis.
I cannot do better than transcribe in full, so far as is possible,
the long letter in which Akeley introduced himself, and which formed such
an important landmark in my own intellectual history. It is no longer in
my possession, but my memory holds almost every word of its portentous
message; and again I affirm my confidence in the sanity of the man who
wrote it. Here is the text - a text which reached me in the cramped, archaic-looking
scrawl of one who had obviously not mingled much with the world during
his sedate, scholarly life.
R.F.D. #2,
Townshend, Windham Co., Vermont.
May 5,1928
Albert N. Wilmarth, Esq.,
118 Saltonstall St.,
Arkham, Mass.
My Dear Sir:
I have read with great interest the Brattleboro Reformer's
reprint (Apr. 23, '28) of your letter on the recent stories of strange
bodies seen floating in our flooded streams last fall, and on the curious
folklore they so well agree with. It is easy to see why an outlander would
take the position you take, and even why "Pendrifter" agrees with you.
That is the attitude generally taken by educated persons both in and out
of Vermont, and was my own attitude as a young man (I am now 57) before
my studies, both general and in Davenport's book, led me to do some exploring
in parts of the hills hereabouts not usually visited.
I was directed toward such studies by the queer old tales I used
to hear from elderly farmers of the more ignorant sort, but now I wish
I had let the whole matter alone. I might say, with all proper modesty,
that the subject of anthropology and folklore is by no means strange to
me. I took a good deal of it at college, and am familiar with most of the
standard authorities such as Tylor, Lubbock, Frazer, Quatrefages, Murray,
Osborn, Keith, Boule, G. Elliott Smith, and so on. It is no news to me
that tales of hidden races are as old as all mankind. I have seen the reprints
of letters from you, and those agreeing with you, in the Rutland Herald,
and
guess I know about where your controversy stands at the present time.
What I desire to say now is, that I am afraid your adversaries are
nearer right than yourself, even though all reason seems to be on your
side. They are nearer right than they realise themselves - for of course
they go only by theory, and cannot know what I know. If I knew as little
of the matter as they, I would feel justified in believing as they do.
I would be wholly on your side.
You can see that I am having a hard time getting to the point, probably
because I really dread getting to the point; but the upshot of the matter
is that I have certain evidence that monstrous things do indeed live
in the woods on the high hills which nobody visits. I have not seen
any of the things floating in the rivers, as reported, but I have seen
things like them under circumstances I dread to repeat. I have seen footprints,
and of late have seen them nearer my own home (I live in the old Akeley
place south of Townshend Village, on the side of Dark Mountain) than I
dare tell you now. And I have overheard voices in the woods at certain
points that I will not even begin to describe on paper.
At one place I heard them so much that I took a phonograph therewith
a dictaphone attachment and wax blank - and I shall try to arrange to have
you hear the record I got. I have run it on the machine for some of the
old people up here, and one of the voices had nearly scared them paralysed
by reason of its likeness to a certain voice (that buzzing voice in the
woods which Davenport mentions) that their grandmothers have told about
and mimicked for them. I know what most people think of a man who tells
about "hearing voices" - but before you draw conclusions just listen to
this record and ask some of the older backwoods people what they think
of it. If you can account for it normally, very well; but there must be
something behind it. Ex nihilo nihil fit, you know.
Now my object in writing you is not to start an argument but to give
you information which I think a man of your tastes will find deeply interesting.
This
is private. Publicly I am on your side, for certain things show me
that it does not do for people to know too much about these matters. My
own studies are now wholly private, and I would not think of saying anything
to attract people's attention and cause them to visit the places I have
explored. It is true - terribly true - that there are non-human creatures
watching us all the time; with spies among us gathering information.
It is from a wretched man who, if he was sane (as I think he was) was
one of those spies, that I got a large part of my clues to the matter.
He later killed himself, but I have reason to think there are others now.
The things come from another planet, being able to live in interstellar
space and fly through it on clumsy, powerful wings which have a way
of resisting the aether but which are too poor at steering to be of much
use in helping them about on earth. I will tell you about this later if
you do not dismiss me at once as a madman. They come here to get metals
from mines that go deep under the hills, and I think I know where they
come from. They will not hurt us if we let them alone, but no one can
say what will happen if we get too curious about them. Of course a good
army of men could wipe out their mining colony. That is what they are afraid
of. But if that happened, more would come from outside - any number
of them. They could easily conquer the earth, but have not tried so far
because they have not needed to. They would rather leave things as they
are to save bother.
I think they mean to get rid of me because of what I have discovered.
There is a great black stone with unknown hieroglyphics half worn away
which I found in the woods on Round Hill, east of here; and after I took
it home everything became different. If they think I suspect too much they
will either kill me or take me off the earth to where they come from.
They
like to take away men of learning once in a while, to keep informed on
the state of things in the human world.
This leads me to my secondary purpose in addressing you - namely,
to urge you to hush up the present debate rather than give it more publicity.
People
must be kept away from these hills, and in order to effect this, their
curiosity ought not to be aroused any further. Heaven knows there is peril
enough anyway, with promoters and real estate men flooding Vermont with
herds of summer people to overrun the wild places and cover the hills with
cheap bungalows.
I shall welcome further communication with you, and shall try to
send you that phonograph record and black stone (which is so worn that
photographs don't show much) by express if you are willing. I say "try"
because I think those creatures have a way of tampering with things around
here. There is a sullen furtive fellow named Brown, on a farm near the
village, who I think is their spy. Little by little they are trying to
cut me off from our world because I know too much about their world.
They have the most amazing way of finding out what I do. You may
not even get this letter. I think I shall have to leave this part of the
country and go live with my son in San Diego, Cal., if things get any worse,
but it is not easy to give up the place you were born in, and where your
family has lived for six generations. Also, I would hardly dare sell this
house to anybody now that the creatures have taken notice of it. They seem
to be trying to get the black stone back and destroy the phonograph record,
but I shall not let them if I can help it. My great police dogs always
hold them back, for there are very few here as yet, and they are clumsy
in getting about. As I have said, their wings are not much use for short
flights on earth. I am on the very brink of deciphering that stone - in
a very terrible way - and with your knowledge of folklore you may be able
to supply the missing links enough to help me. I suppose you know all about
the fearful myths antedating the coming of man to the earth - the Yog-Sothoth
and Cthulhu cycles - which are hinted at in the Necronomicon. I
had access to a copy of that once, and hear that you have one in your college
library under lock and key.
To conclude, Mr. Wilmarth, I think that with our respective studies
we can be very useful to each other. I don't wish to put you in any peril,
and suppose I ought to warn you that possession of the stone and the record
won't be very safe; but I think you will find any risks worth running for
the sake of knowledge. I will drive down to Newfane or Brattleboro to send
whatever you authorize me to send, for the express offices there are more
to be trusted. I might say that I live quite alone now, since I can't keep
hired help any more. They won't stay because of the things that try to
get near the house at night, and that keep the dogs barking continually.
I am glad I didn't get as deep as this into the business while my wife
was alive, for it would have driven her mad.
Hoping that I am not bothering you unduly, and that you will decide
to get in touch with me rather than throw this letter into the waste basket
as a madman's raving, I am
Yrs. very truly,
Henry W. Akeley
P.S. I am making some extra prints of certain photographs taken by me,
which I think will help to prove a number of the points I have touched
on. The old people think they are monstrously true. I shall send you these
very soon if you are interested.
H. W. A.
It would be difficult to describe my sentiments upon reading this strange
document for the first time. By all ordinary rules, I ought to have laughed
more loudly at these extravagances than at the far milder theories which
had previously moved me to mirth; yet something in the tone of the letter
made me take it with paradoxical seriousness. Not that I believed for a
moment in the hidden race from the stars which my correspondent spoke of;
but that, after some grave preliminary doubts, I grew to feel oddly sure
of his sanity and sincerity, and of his confrontation by some genuine though
singular and abnormal phenomenon which he could not explain except in this
imaginative way. It could not be as he thought it, I reflected, yet on
the other hand, it could not be otherwise than worthy of investigation.
The man seemed unduly excited and alarmed about something, but it was hard
to think that all cause was lacking. He was so specific and logical in
certain ways - and after all, his yarn did fit in so perplexingly well
with some of the old myths - even the wildest Indian legends.
That he had really overheard disturbing voices in the hills, and
had really found the black stone he spoke about, was wholly possible despite
the crazy inferences he had made - inferences probably suggested by the
man who had claimed to be a spy of the outer beings and had later killed
himself. It was easy to deduce that this man must have been wholly insane,
but that he probably had a streak of perverse outward logic which made
the naive Akeley - already prepared for such things by his folklore studies
- believe his tale. As for the latest developments - it appeared from his
inability to keep hired help that Akeley's humbler rustic neighbours were
as convinced as he that his house was besieged by uncanny things at night.
The dogs really barked, too.
And then the matter of that phonograph record, which I could not
but believe he had obtained in the way he said. It must mean something;
whether animal noises deceptively like human speech, or the speech of some
hidden, night-haunting human being decayed to a state not much above that
of lower animals. From this my thoughts went back to the black hieroglyphed
stone, and to speculations upon what it might mean. Then, too, what of
the photographs which Akeley said he was about to send, and which the old
people had found so convincingly terrible?
As I re-read the cramped handwriting I felt as never before that
my credulous opponents might have more on their side than I had conceded.
After all, there might be some queer and perhaps hereditarily misshapen
outcasts in those shunned hills, even though no such race of star-born
monsters as folklore claimed. And if there were, then the presence of strange
bodies in the flooded streams would not be wholly beyond belief. Was it
too presumptuous to suppose that both the old legends and the recent reports
had this much of reality behind them? But even as I harboured these doubts
I felt ashamed that so fantastic a piece of bizarrerie as Henry Akeley's
wild letter had brought them up.
In the end I answered Akeley's letter, adopting a tone of friendly
interest and soliciting further particulars. His reply came almost by return
mail; and contained, true to promise, a number of Kodak views of scenes
and objects illustrating what he had to tell. Glancing at these pictures
as I took them from the envelope, I felt a curious sense of fright and
nearness to forbidden things; for in spite of the vagueness of most of
them, they had a damnably suggestive power which was intensified by the
fact of their being genuine photographs - actual optical links with what
they portrayed, and the product of an impersonal transmitting process without
prejudice, fallibility, or mendacity.
The more I looked at them, the more I saw that my senous estimate
of Akeley and his story had not been unjustified. Certainly, these pictures
carried conclusive evidence of something in the Vermont hills which was
at least vastly outside the radius of our common knowledge and belief.
The worst thing of all was the footprint - a view taken where the sun shone
on a mud patch somewhere in a deserted upland. This was no cheaply counterfeited
thing, I could see at a glance; for the sharply defined pebbles and grassblades
in the field of vision gave a clear index of scale and left no possibility
of a tricky double exposure. I have called the thing a "footprint," but
"claw-print" would be a better term. Even now I can scarcely describe it
save to say that it was hideously crablike, and that there seemed to be
some ambiguity about its direction. It was not a very deep or fresh print,
but seemed to be about the size of an average man's foot. From a central
pad, pairs of saw-toothed nippers projected in opposite directions - quite
baffling as to function, if indeed the whole object were exclusively an
organ of locomotion.
Another photograph - evidently a time-exposure taken in deep shadow
- was of the mouth of a woodland cave, with a boulder of, rounded regularity
choking the aperture. On the bare ground in front of, it one could just
discern a dense network of curious tracks, and when I studied the picture
with a magnifier I felt uneasily sure that the tracks were like the one
in the other view. A third pictured showed a druid-like circle of standing
stones on the summit of a wild hill. Around the cryptic circle the grass
was very much beaten down and worn away, though I could not detect any
footprints even with the glass. The extreme remoteness of the place was
apparent from the veritable sea of tenantless: mountains which formed the
background and stretched away toward a. misty horizon.
But if the most disturbing of all the views was that of the footprint,
the' most curiously suggestive was that of the great black stone found
in the Round Hill woods. Akeley had photographed it on what was evidently
his study table, for I could see rows of books and a bust of Milton in
the background. The thing, as nearly as one might guess, had faced the
camera vertically with a somewhat irregularly curved surface of one by
two feet; but to say anything definite about that surface, or about the
general shape of the whole mass, almost defies the power of language. What
outlandish geometrical principles had guided its cutting - for artificially
cut it surely was - I could not even begin to guess; and never before had
I seen anything which struck me as so strangely and unmistakably alien
to this world. Of the hieroglyphics on the surface I could discern very
few, but one or two that I did see gave rather a shock. Of course they
might be fraudulent, for others besides myself had read the monstrous and
abhorred Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; but it nevertheless
made me shiver to recognise certain ideographs which study had taught me
to link with the most blood-curdling and blasphemous whispers of things
that had had a kind of mad half-existence before the earth and the other
inner worlds of the solar system were made.
Of the five remaining pictures, three were of swamp and hill scenes
which seemed to bear traces of hidden and unwholesome tenancy. Another
was of a queer mark in the ground very near Akeley's house, which he said
he had photographed the morning after a night on which the dogs had barked
more violently than usual. It was very blurred, and one could really draw
no certain conclusions from it; but it did seem fiendishly like that other
mark or claw-print photographed on the deserted upland. The final picture
was of the Akeley place itself; a trim white house of two stories and attic,
about a century and a quarter old, and with a well-kept lawn and stone-bordered
path leading up to a tastefully carved Georgian doorway. There were several
huge police dogs on the lawn, squatting near a pleasant-faced man with
a close-cropped grey beard whom I took to be Akeley himself - his own photographer,
one might infer from the tube-connected bulb in his right hand.
From the pictures I turned to the bulky, closely-written letter itself;
and for the next three hours was immersed in a gulf of unutterable horror.
Where Akeley had given only outlines before, he now entered into minute
details; presenting long transcripts of words overheard in the woods at
night, long accounts of monstrous pinkish forms spied in thickets at twilight
on the hills, and a terrible cosmic narrative derived from the application
of profound and varied scholarship to the endless bygone discourses of
the mad self-styled spy who had killed himself. I found myself faced by
names and terms that I had heard elsewhere in the most hideous of connections
- Yuggoth, Great Cthulhu, Tsathoggua, YogSothoth, R'lyeh, Nyarlathotep,
Azathoth, Hastur, Yian, Leng, the Lake of Hali, Bethmoora, the Yellow Sign,
L'mur-Kathulos, Bran, and the Magnum Innominandum - and was drawn back
through nameless aeons and inconceivable dimensions to worlds of elder,
outer entity at which the crazed author of the Necronomicon had only guessed
in the vaguest way. I was told of the pits of primal life, and of the streams
that had trickled down therefrom; and finally, of the tiny rivulets from
one of those streams which had become entangled with the destinies of our
own earth.
My brain whirled; and where before I had attempted to explain things
away, I now began to believe in the most abnormal and incredible wonders.
The array of vital evidence was damnably vast and overwhelming; and the
cool, scientific attitude of Akeley - an attitude removed as far as imaginable
from the demented, the fanatical, the hysterical, or even the. extravagantly
speculative - had a tremendous effect on my thought and judgment. By the
time I laid the frightful letter aside I could understand the fears he
had come to entertain, and was ready to do anything in my power to keep
people away from those wild, haunted hills. Even now, when time has dulled
the impression and made me half-question my own experience and horrible
doubts, there are things in that letter of Akeley's which I would not quote,
or even form into words on paper. I am almost glad that the letter and
record and photographs are gone now - and I wish, for reasons I shall soon
make clear, that the new planet beyond Neptune had not been discovered.
With the reading of that letter my public debating about the Vermont
horror permanently ended. Arguments from opponents remained unanswered
or put off with promises, and eventually the controversy petered out into
oblivion. During late May and June I was in constant correspondence with
Akeley; though once in a while a letter would be lost, so that we would
have to retrace our ground and perform considerable laborious copying.
What we were trying to do, as a whole, was to compare notes in matters
of obscure mythological scholarship and arrive at a clearer correlation
of the Vermont horrors with the general body of primitive world legend.
For one thing, we virtually decided that these morbidities and the
hellish Himalayan Mi-Go were one and the same order of incarnated nightmare.
There was also absorbing zoological conjectures, which I would have referred
to Professor Dexter in my own college but for Akeley's imperative command
to tell no one of the matter before us. If I seem to disobey that command
now, it is only because I think that at this stage a warning about those
farther Vermont hills - and about those Himalayan peaks which bold explorers
are more and more determined to ascend - is more conducive to public safety
than silence would be. One specific thing we were leading up to was a deciphering
of the hieroglyphics on that infamous black stone - a deciphering which
might well place us in possession of secrets deeper and more dizzying than
any formerly known to man.
III
Toward the end of June the phonograph record came - shipped from Brattleboro,
since Akeley was unwilling to trust conditions on the branch line north
of there. He had begun to feel an increased sense of espionage, aggravated
by the loss of some of our letters; and said much about the insidious deeds
of certain men whom he considered tools and agents of the hidden beings.
Most of all he suspected the surly farmer Walter Brown, who lived alone
on a run-down hillside place near the deep woods, and who was often seen
loafing around corners in Brattleboro, Bellows Falls, Newfane, and South
Londonderry in the most inexplicable and seemingly unmotivated way. Brown's
voice, he felt convinced, was one of those he had overheard on a certain
occasion in a very terrible conversation; and he had once found a footprint
or clawprint near Brown's house which might possess the most ominous significance.
It had been curiously near some of Brown's own footprints - footprints
that faced toward it.
So the record was shipped from Brattleboro, whither Akeley drove
in his Ford car along the lonely Vermont back roads. He confessed in an
accompanying note that he was beginning to be afraid of those roads, and
that he would not even go into Townshend for supplies now except in broad
daylight. It did not pay, he repeated again and again, to know too much
unless one were very remote from those silent and problematical hills.
He would be going to California pretty soon to live with his son, though
it was hard to leave a place where all one's memories and ancestral feelings
centered.
Before trying the record on the commercial machine which I borrowed
from the college administration building I carefully went over all the
explanatory matter in Akeley's various letters. This record, he had said,
was obtained about 1 A.M. on the 1st of May, 1915, near the closed mouth
of a cave where the wooded west slope of Dark Mountain rises out of Lee's
swamp. The place had always been unusually plagued with strange voices,
this being the reason he had brought the phonograph, dictaphone, and blank
in expectation of results. Former experience had told him that May Eve
- the hideous Sabbat-night of underground European legend - would probably
be more fruitful than any other date, and he was not disappointed. It was
noteworthy, though, that he never again heard voices at that particular
spot.
Unlike most of the overheard forest voices, the substance of the
record was quasi-ritualistic, and included one palpably human voice which
Akeley had never been able to place. It was not Brown's, but seemed to
be that of a man of greater cultivation. The second voice, however, was
the real crux of the thing - for this was the accursed buzzing which had
no likeness to humanity despite the human words which it uttered in good
English grammar and a scholarly accent.
The recording phonograph and dictaphone had not worked uniformly
well, and had of course been at a great disadvantage because of the remote
and muffled nature of the overheard ritual; so that the actual speech secured
was very fragmentary. Akeley had given me a transcript of what he believed
the spoken words to be, and I glanced through this again as I prepared
the machine for action. The text was darkly mysterious rather than openly
horrible, though a knowledge of its origin and manner of gathering gave
it all the associative horror which any words could well possess. I will
present it here in full as I remember it - and I am fairly confident that
I know it correctly by heart, not only from reading the transcript, but
from playing the record itself over and over again. It is not a thing which
one might readily forget!
(Indistinguishable Sounds)
(A Cultivated Male Human Voice)
...is the Lord of the Wood, even to... and the gifts of the men of
Leng... so from the wells of night to the gulfs of space, and from the
gulfs of space to the wells of night, ever the praises of Great Cthulhu,
of Tsathoggua, and of Him Who is not to be Named. Ever Their praises, and
abundance to the Black Goat of the Woods. Ia! Shub-Niggurath! The Goat
with a Thousand Young!
(A Buzzing Imitation of Human Speech)
Ia! Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand
Young!
(Human Voice)
And it has come to pass that the Lord of the Woods, being... seven
and nine, down the onyx steps . . . (tri)butes to Him in the Gulf, Azathoth,
He of Whom Thou has taught us marv(els). . . on the wings of night out
beyond space, out beyond th... to That whereof Yuggoth is the youngest
child, rolling alone in black aether at the rim...
(Buzzing Voice)
...go out among men and find the ways thereof, that He in the Gulf
may know. To Nyarlathotep, Mighty Messenger, must all things be told. And
He shall put on the semblance of men, the waxen mask and the robe that
hides, and come down from the world of Seven Suns to mock...
(Human Voice)
(Nyarl)athotep, Great Messenger, bringer of strange joy to Yuggoth
through the void, Father of the Million Favoured Ones, Stalker among...
(Speech Cut Off by End of Record)
Such were the words for which I was to listen when I started the phonograph.
It was with a trace of genuine dread and reluctance that I pressed the
lever and heard the preliminary scratching of the sapphire point, and I
was glad that the first faint, fragmentary words were in a human voice
- a mellow, educated voice which seemed vaguely Bostonian in accent, and
which was certainly not that of any native of the Vermont hills. As I listened
to the tantalisingly feeble rendering, I seemed to find the speech identical
with Akeley's carefully prepared transcript. On it chanted, in that mellow
Bostonian voice. . . "Ia! Shub-Niggurath! The Goat with a Thousand Young!..."
And then I heard the other voice. To this hour I shudder retrospectively
when I think of how it struck me, prepared though I was by Akeley's accounts.
Those to whom I have since described the record profess to find nothing
but cheap imposture or madness in it; but could they have the accursed
thing itself, or read the bulk of Akeley's correspondence, (especially
that terrible and encyclopaedic second letter), I know they would think
differently. It is, after all, a tremendous pity that I did not disobey
Akeley and play the record for others - a tremendous pity, too, that all
of his letters were lost. To me, with my first-hand impression of the actual
sounds, and with my knowledge of the background and surrounding circumstances,
the voice was a monstrous thing. It swiftly followed the human voice in
ritualistic response, but in my imagination it was a morbid echo winging
its way across unimaginable abysses from unimaginable outer hells. It is
more than two years now since I last ran off that blasphemous waxen cylinder;
but at this moment, and at all other moments, I can still hear that feeble,
fiendish buzzing as it reached me for the first time.
"Ia! Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand
Young!"
But though the voice is always in my ears, I have not even yet been
able to analyse it well enough for a graphic description. It was like the
drone of some loathsome, gigantic insect ponderously shaped into the articulate
speech of an alien species, and I am perfectly certain that the organs
producing it can have no resemblance to the vocal organs of man, or indeed
to those of any of the mammalia. There were singularities in timbre, range,
and overtones which placed this phenomenon wholly outside the sphere of
humanity and earth-life. Its sudden advent that first time almost stunned
me, and I heard the rest of the record through in a sort of abstracted
daze. When the longer passage of buzzing came, there was a sharp intensification
of that feeling of blasphemous infinity which had struck me during the
shorter and earlier passage. At last the record ended abruptly, during
an unusually clear speech of the human and Bostonian voice; but I sat stupidly
staring long after the machine had automatically stopped.
I hardly need say that I gave that shocking record many another playing,
and that I made exhaustive attempts at analysis and comment in comparing
notes with Akeley. It would be both useless and disturbing to repeat here
all that we concluded; but I may hint that we agreed in believing we had
secured a clue to the source of some of the most repulsive primordial customs
in the cryptic elder religions of mankind. It seemed plain to us, also,
that there were ancient and elaborate alliance; between the hidden outer
creatures and certain members of the human race. How extensive these alliances
were, and how their state today might compare with their state in earlier
ages, we had no means of guessing; yet at best there was room for a limitless
amount of horrified speculation. There seemed to be an awful, immemorial
linkage in several definite stages betwixt man and nameless infinity. The
blasphemies which appeared on earth, it was hinted, came from the dark
planet Yuggoth, at the rim of the solar system; but this was itself merely
the populous outpost of a frightful interstellar race whose ultimate source
must lie far outside even the Einsteinian space-time continuum or greatest
known cosmos.
Meanwhile we continued to discuss the black stone and the best way
of getting it to Arkham - Akeley deeming it inadvisable to have me visit
him at the scene of his nightmare studies. For some reason or other, Akeley
was afraid to trust the thing to any ordinary or expected transportation
route. His final idea was to take it across country to Bellows Falls and
ship it on the Boston and Maine system through Keene and Winchendon and
Fitchburg, even though this would necessitate his driving along somewhat
lonelier and more forest-traversing hill roads than the main highway to
Brattleboro. He said he had noticed a man around the express office at
Brattleboro when he had sent the phonograph record, whose actions and expression
had been far from reassuring. This man had seemed too anxious to talk with
the clerks, and had taken the train on which the record was shipped. Akeley
confessed that he had not felt strictly at ease about that record until
he heard from me of its safe receipt.
About this time - the second week in July - another letter of mine
went astray, as I learned through an anxious communication from Akeley.
After that he told me to address him no more at Townshend, but to send
all mail in care of the General Delivery at Brattleboro; whither he would
make frequent trips either in his car or on the motor-coach line which
had lately replaced passenger service on the lagging branch railway. I
could see that he was getting more and more anxious, for he went into much
detail about the increased barking of the dogs on moonless nights, and
about the fresh claw-prints he sometimes found in the road and in the mud
at the back of his farmyard when morning came. Once he told about a veritable
army of prints drawn up in a line facing an equally thick and resolute
line of dog-tracks, and sent a loathsomely disturbing Kodak picture to
prove it. That was after a night on which the dogs had outdone themselves
in barking and howling.
On the morning of Wednesday, July 18, I received a telegram from
Bellows Falls, in which Akeley said he was expressing the black stone over
the B. & M. on Train No. 5508, leaving Bellows Falls at 12:15 P.M.,
standard time, and due at the North Station in Boston at 4:12 P.M. It ought,
I calculated, to get up to Arkham at least by the next noon; and accordingly
I stayed in all Thursday morning to receive it. But noon came and went
without its advent, and when I telephoned down to the express office I
was informed that no shipment for me had arrived. My next act, performed
amidst a growing alarm, was to give a long-distance call to the express
agent at the Boston North Station; and I was scarcely surprised to learn
that my consignment had not appeared. Train No. 5508 had pulled in only
35 minutes late on the day before, but had contained no box addressed to
me. The agent promised, however, to institute a searching inquiry; and
I ended the day by sending Akeley a night-letter outlining the situation.
With commendable promptness a report came from the Boston office
on the following afternoon, the agent telephoning as soon as he learned
the facts. It seemed that the railway express clerk on No. 5508 had been
able to recall an incident which might have much bearing on my loss - an
argument with a very curious-voiced man, lean, sandy, and rustic-looking,
when the train was waiting at Keene, N. H., shortly after one o'clock standard
time. The man, he said, was greatly excited about a heavy box which he
claimed to expect, but which was neither on the train nor entered on the
company's books. He had given the name of Stanley Adams, and had had such
a queerly thick droning voice, that it made the clerk abnormally dizzy
and sleepy to listen to him. The clerk could not remember quite how the
conversation had ended, but recalled starting into a fuller awakeness when
the train began to move. The Boston agent added that this clerk was a young
man of wholly unquestioned veracity and reliability, of known antecedents
and long with the company.
That evening I went to Boston to interview the clerk in person, having
obtained his name and address from the office. He was a frank, prepossessing
fellow, but I saw that he could add nothing to his original account. Oddly,
he was scarcely sure that he could even recognise the strange inquirer
again. Realising that he had no more to tell, I returned to Arkham and
sat up till morning writing letters to Akeley, to the express company and
to the police department and station agent in Keene. I felt that the strange-voiced
man who had so queerly affected the clerk must have a pivotal place in
the ominous business, and hoped that Keene station employees and telegraph-office
records might tell something about him and about how he happened to make
his inquiry when and where he did.
I must admit, however, that all my investigations came to nothing.
The queer-voiced man had indeed been noticed around the Keene station in
the early afternoon of July 18, and one lounger seemed to couple him vaguely
with a heavy box; but he was altogether unknown, and had not been seen
before or since. He had not visited the telegraph office or received any
message so far as could be learned, nor had any message which might justly
be considered a notice of the black stone's presence on No. 5508 come through
the office for anyone. Naturally Akeley joined with me in conducting these
inquiries, and even made a personal trip to Keene to question the people
around the station; but his attitude toward the matter was more fatalistic
than mine. He seemed to find the loss of the box a portentous and menacing
fulfillment of inevitable tendencies, and had no real hope at all of its
recovery. He spoke of the undoubted telepathic and hypnotic powers of the
hill creatures and their agents, and in one letter hinted that he did not
believe the stone was on this earth any longer. For my part, I was duly
enraged, for I had felt there was at least a chance of learning profound
and astonishing things from the old, blurred hieroglyphs. The matter would
have rankled bitterly in my mind had not Akeley's immediately subsequent
letters brought up a new phase of the whole horrible hill problem which
at once seized all my attention.
IV
The unknown things, Akeley wrote in a script grown pitifully tremulous,
had begun to close in on him with a wholly new degree of determination.
The nocturnal barking of the dogs whenever the moon. was dim or absent
was hideous now, and there had been attempts to molest him on the lonely
roads he had to traverse by day. On the second of August, while bound for
the village in his car, he had found a tree-trunk laid in his path at a
point where the highway ran through a deep patch of woods; while the savage
barking of the two great dogs he had with him told all too well of the
things which must have been lurking near. What would have happened had
the dogs not been there, he did not dare guess - but he never went out
now without at least two of his faithful and powerful pack. Other road
experiences had occurred on August fifth and sixth; a shot grazing his
car on one occasion, and the barking of the dogs telling of unholy woodland
presences on the other.
On August fifteenth I received a frantic letter which disturbed me
greatly, and which made me wish Akeley could put aside his lonely reticence
and call in the aid of the law. There had been frightful happening on the
night of the 12-13th, bullets flying outside the farmhouse, and three of
the twelve great dogs being found shot dead in the morning. There were
myriads of claw-prints in the road, with the human prints of Walter Brown
among them. Akeley had started to telephone to Brattleboro for more dogs,
but the wire had gone dead before he had a chance to say much. Later he
went to Brattleboro in his car, and learned there that linemen had found
the main cable neatly cut at a point where it ran through the deserted
hills north of Newfane. But he was about to start home with four fine new
dogs, and several cases of ammunition for his big-game repeating rifle.
The letter was written at the post office in Brattleboro, and came through
to me without delay.
My attitude toward the matter was by this time quickly slipping from
a scientific to an alarmedly personal one. I was afraid for Akeley in his
remote, lonely farmhouse, and half afraid for myself because of my now
definite connection with the strange hill problem. The thing was reaching
out so. Would it suck me in and engulf me? In replying to his letter
I urged him to seek help, and hinted that I might take action myself if
he did not. I spoke of visiting Vermont in person in spite of his wishes,
and of helping him explain the situation to the proper authorities. In
return, however, I received only a telegram from Bellows Falls which read
thus:
APPRECIATE YOUR POSITION BUT CAN DO NOTHING TAKE NO ACTION
YOURSELF FOR IT COULD ONLY HARM BOTH WAIT FOR EXPLANATION
HENRY AKELY
But the affair was steadily deepening. Upon my replying to the telegram
I received a shaky note from Akeley with the astonishing news that he had
not only never sent the wire, but had not received the letter from me to
which it was an obvious reply. Hasty inquiries by him at Bellows Falls
had brought out that the message was deposited by a strange sandy-haired
man with a curiously thick, droning voice, though more than this he could
not learn. The clerk showed him the original text as scrawled in pencil
by the sender, but the handwriting was wholly unfamiliar. It was noticeable
that the signature was misspelled - A-K-E-L-Y, without the second "E."
Certain conjectures were inevitable, but amidst the obvious crisis he did
not stop to elaborate upon them,
He spoke of the death of more dogs and the purchase of still others,
and of the exchange of gunfire which had become a settled feature each
moonless night. Brown's prints, and the prints of at least one or two more
shod human figures, were now found regularly among the claw-prints in the
road, and at the back of the farmyard. It was, Akeley admitted, a pretty
bad business; and before long he would probably have to go to live with
his California son whether or not he could sell the old place. But it was
not easy to leave the only spot one could really think of as home. He must
try to hang on a little longer; perhaps he could scare off the intruders
- especially if he openly gave up all further attempts to penetrate their
secrets.
Writing Akeley at once, I renewed my offers of aid, and spoke again
of visiting him and helping him convince the authorities of his dire peril.
In his reply he seemed less set against that plan than his past attitude
would have led one to predict, but said he would like to hold off a little
while longer - long enough to get his things in order and reconcile himself
to the idea of leaving an almost morbidly cherished birthplace. People
looked askance at his studies and speculations and it would be better to
get quietly off without setting the countryside in a turmoil and creating
widespread doubts of his own sanity. He had had enough, he admitted, but
he. wanted to make a dignified exit if he could.
This letter reached me on the 28th of August, and I prepared and
mailed as encouraging a reply as I could. Apparently the encouragement
had effect, for Akeley had fewer terrors to report when he acknowledged
my note. He was not very optimistic, though, and expressed the belief that
it was only the full moon season which was holding the creatures off. He
hoped there would not be many densely cloudy nights, and talked vaguely
of boarding in Brattleboro when the moon waned. Again I wrote him encouragingly
but on September 5th there came a fresh communication which had obviously
crossed my letter in the mails; and to this I could not give any such hopeful
response. In view of its importance I believe I had better give it in full
- as best I can do from memory of the shaky script. It ran substantially
as follows:
Monday
Dear Wilmarth
A rather discouraging P. S. to my last. Last night was thickly cloudy
- though no rain - and not a bit of moonlight got through. Things were
pretty bad, and I think the end is getting near, in spite of all we have
hoped. After midnight something landed on the roof of the house, and the
dogs all rushed up to see what it was. I could hear them snapping and tearing
around, and then one managed to get on the roof by jumping from the low
ell. There was a terrible fight up there, and I heard a frightful buzzing
which I'll never forget. And then there was a shocking smell. About the
same time bullets came through the window and nearly grazed me. I think
the main line of the hill creatures had got close to the house when the
dogs divided because of the roof business. What was up there I don't know
yet, but I'm afraid the creatures are learning to steer better with their
space wings. I put out the light and used the windows for loopholes, and
raked all around the house with rifle fire aimed just high enough not to
hit the dogs. That seemed to end the business, but in the morning I found
great pools of blood in the yard, besides pools of a green sticky stuff
that had the worst odour I have ever smelled. I climbed up on the roof
and found more of the sticky stuff there. Five of the dogs were killed
- I'm afraid I hit one myself by aiming too low, for he was shot in the
back. Now I am setting the panes the shots broke, and am going to Brattleboro
for more dogs. I guess the men at the kennels think I am crazy. Will drop
another note later. Suppose I'll be ready for moving in a week or two,
though it nearly kills me to think of it.
Hastily - Akeley
But this was not the only letter from Akeley to cross mine. On the next
morning - September 6th - still another came; this time a frantic scrawl
which utterly unnerved me and put me at a loss what to say or do next.
Again I cannot do better than quote the text as faithfully as memory will
let me.
Tuesday
Clouds didn't break, so no moon again - and going into the wane anyhow.
I'd have the house wired for electricity and put in a searchlight if I
didn't know they'd cut the cables as fast as they could be mended.
I think I am going crazy. It may be that all I have ever written
you is a dream or madness. It was bad enough before, but this time it is
too much. They talked to me last night - talked in that cursed buzzing
voice and told me things that I dare not repeat to you. I heard
them plainly above the barking of the dogs, and once when they were drowned
out a human voice helped them. Keep out of this, Wilmarth - it is
worse than either you or I ever suspected. They don't mean to let me
get to California now - they want to take me off alive, or what theoretically
and mentally amounts to alive - not only to Yuggoth, but beyond that
- away outside the galaxy and possibly beyond the last curved rim of
space. I told them I wouldn't go where they wish, or in the terrible
way they propose to take me, but I'm afraid it will be no use. My place
is so far out that they may come by day as well as by night before long.
Six more dogs killed, and I felt presences all along the wooded parts of
the road when I drove to Brattleboro today. It was a mistake for me to
try to send you that phonograph record and black stone. Better smash the
record before it's too late. Will drop you another line tomorrow if I'm
still here. Wish I could arrange to get my books and things to Brattleboro
and board there. I would run off without anything if I could but something
inside my mind holds me back. I can slip out to Brattleboro, where I ought
to be safe, but I feel just as much a prisoner there as at the house. And
I seem to know that I couldn't get much farther even if I dropped everything
and tried. It is horrible - don't get mixed up in this.
Yrs - Akeley
I did not sleep at all the night after receiving this terrible thing,
and was utterly baffled as to Akeley's remaining degree of sanity. The
substance of the note was wholly insane, yet the manner of expression -
in view of all that had gone before - had a grimly potent quality of convincingness.
I made no attempt to answer it, thinking it better to wait until Akeley
might have time to reply to my latest communication. Such a reply indeed
came on the following day, though the fresh material in it quite overshadowed
any of the points brought up by the letter nominally answered. Here is
what I recall of the text, scrawled and blotted as it was in the course
of a plainly frantic and hurried composition.
Wednesday
W -
Your letter came, but it's no use to discuss anything any more. I
am fully resigned. Wonder that I have even enough will power left to fight
them off. Can't escape even if I were willing to give up everything and
run. They'll get me.
Had a letter from them yesterday - R.F.D. man brought it while
I was at Brattleboro. Typed and postmarked Bellows Falls. Tells what they
want to do with me - I can't repeat it. Look out for yourself, too! Smash
that record. Cloudy nights keep up, and moon waning all the time. Wish
I dared to get help - it might brace up my will power - but everyone who
would dare to come at all would call me crazy unless there happened to
be some proof. Couldn't ask people to come for no reason at all - am all
out of touch with everybody and have been for years.
But I haven't told you the worst, Wilmarth. Brace up to read this,
for it will give you a shock. I am telling the truth, though. It is this
- I have seen and touched one of the things, or part of one of the things.
God, man, but it's awful! It was dead, of course. One of the dogs had it,
and I found it near the kennel this morning. I tried to save it in the
woodshed to convince people of the whole thing, but it all evaporated in
a few hours. Nothing left. You know, all those things in the rivers were
seen only on the first morning after the flood. And here's the worst. I
tried to photograph it for you, but when I developed the film there
wasn't anything visible except the woodshed. What can the thing have
been made of? I saw it and felt it, and they all leave footprints. It was
surely made of matter - but what kind of matter? The shape can't be described.
It was a great crab with a lot of pyramided fleshy rings or knots of thick,
ropy stuff covered with feelers where a man's head would be. That green
sticky stuff is its blood or juice. And there are more of them due on earth
any minute.
Walter Brown is missing - hasn't been seen loafing around any of
his usual corners in the villages hereabouts. I must have got him with
one of my shots, though the creatures always seem to try to take their
dead and wounded away.
Got into town this afternoon without any trouble, but am afraid they're
beginning to hold off because they're sure of me. Am writing this in Brattleboro
P. 0. This may be goodbye - if it is, write my son George Goodenough Akeley,
176 Pleasant St., San Diego, Cal., but don't come up here. Write
the boy if you don't hear from me in a week, and watch the papers for news.
I'm going to play my last two cards now - if I have the will power
left. First to try poison gas on the things (I've got the right chemicals
and have fixed up masks for myself and the dogs) and then if that doesn't
work, tell the sheriff. They can lock me in a madhouse if they want to
- it'll be better than what the other creatures would do. Perhaps I can
get them to pay attention to the prints around the house - they are faint,
but I can find them every morning. Suppose, though, police would say I
faked them somehow; for they all think I'm a queer character.
Must try to have a state policeman spend a night here and see for
himself - though it would be just like the creatures to learn about it
and hold off that night. They cut my wires whenever I try to telephone
in the night - the linemen think it is very queer, and may testify for
me if they don't go and imagine I cut them myself. I haven't tried to keep
them repaired for over a week now.
I could get some of the ignorant people to testify for me about the
reality of the horrors, but everybody laughs at what they say, and anyway,
they have shunned my place for so long that they don't know any of the
new events. You couldn't get one of those rundown farmers to come within
a mile of my house for love or money. The mail-carrier hears what they
say and jokes me about it - God! If I only dared tell him how real it is!
I think I'll try to get him to notice the prints, but he comes in the afternoon
and they're usually about gone by that time. If I kept one by setting a
box or pan over it, he'd think surely it was a fake or joke.
Wish I hadn't gotten to be such a hermit, so folks don't drop around
as they used to. I've never dared show the black stone or the Kodak pictures,
or play that record, to anybody but the ignorant people. The others would
say I faked the whole business and do nothing but laugh. But I may yet
try showing the pictures. They give those claw-prints clearly, even if
the things that made them can't be photographed. What a shame nobody else
saw that thing this morning before it went to nothing!
But I don't know as I care. After what I've been through, a madhouse
is as good a place as any. The doctors can help me make up my mind to get
away from this house, and that is all that will save me.
Write my son George if you don't hear soon. Goodbye, smash that record,
and don't mix up in this.
Yrs - Akeley
This letter frankly plunged me into the blackest of terror. I did not
know what to say in answer, but scratched off some incoherent words of
advice and encouragement and sent them by registered mail. I recall urging
Akeley to move to Brattleboro at once, and place himself under the protection
of the authorities; adding that I would come to that town with the phonograph
record and help convince the courts of his sanity. It was time, too, I
think I wrote, to alarm the people generally against this thing in their
midst. It will be observed that at this moment of stress my own belief
in all Akeley had told and claimed was virtually complete, though I did
think his failure to get a picture of the dead monster was due not to any
freak of Nature but to some excited slip of his own.
Go to next part.....
