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"The world we live in is not as it seems. I, James White, write this document so that others may be made aware of what I have experienced and know of the dangers that lurk beneath our limited perception of ""reality"". Whether you believe me or not, dear reader, is up to you. I only ask that you read what I write with an open mind since I write, not for my own gain, but to warn you of what I can only describe as ""pure evil"".
I had never heard of the ""Cult of Cthulhu"" before I began university in the late summer of 2012. I was only eighteen years old, an atheist, and dogmatically pursued scientific understanding and knowledge. At that time, I was not in the least bit interested in weird cults and other religious movements, which I simply dismissed as primitive superstition. Had I but known what I would encounter, I would have burnt the science textbook, prayed to God for the strength not to crumble into insanity and got as far away from that university as I could!
The strange happenings started less than two months into my first term. I had been put into student accommodation and shared a corridor with four other boys and two girls. I had got to know my flatmates very well until all of a sudden, one of the boys by the name of Jonathan Mears disappeared. This wasn't looked upon as weird at first since Jonathan was the quiet type anyway and often spent long hours alone in his room. The suspicions arose however, when he hadn't shown his face for three days. His absence was brought up one evening as we sat in a communal area.
""He's probably just been very busy lately,"" my best friend, Jacob Shields, said. ""You know Jonathan. When he sets his mind on something, he doesn't stop until he's achieved whatever he's trying to do.""
""Isn't it a bit strange though?"" Annie Roberts, a lovely blonde girl from the room directly across the corridor asked. ""I mean, he's in our corridor and we haven't seen him for ages. Not even in the kitchen or lecture halls.""
""It isn't like him to miss a lecture,"" I agreed. Jacob merely waved these concerns away.
""If we haven't seen him by tomorrow evening, we'll go to the reception and see what's happening,"" he said cheerfully.
But Jonathan didn't show up the following day and, as planned, my entire corridor went to the reception desk to ask if anything had happened to him. The receptionist, an elderly lady, checked through the files on a computer before looking up at us.
""I'm afraid he has left the university,"" she informed us. ""He dropped out four days ago.""
""Well there you go!"" Jacob exclaimed. ""Nothing to worry about!""
But there was something to worry about. Even though I now had every reason to think that Jonathan was fine, I couldn't shake that feeling of foreboding. He had seemed happy in university and was consistently getting high marks so I resolved to check things out for myself.
I waited until 3:00 the following morning, and in the darkness, I tiptoed along the corridor to Jonathan's room. Using a paperclip, I carefully picked the lock on his door and let myself in. I closed the door behind me and switched on the light. The sight that greeted me came as a huge shock. Clothes still lay on the floor, the bed was made, books were still on the shelves and a laptop was still humming gently on the cluttered desk. In short, it looked as though Jonathan was simply out of the room. If he had gone home, why did he leave all his things behind? And if he hadn't, where was he and why did the university records state that he had? Deeply concerned, I left the room and returned to my own. I lay awake in the darkness pondering the thoughts in my head and finally decided that I needed to find out what had happened and that I would do so alone...
","VII.

Yet all this was only the prologue of the actual Dunwich horror. Formalities were gone through by bewildered officials, abnormal details were duly kept from press and public, and men were sent to Dunwich and Aylesbury to look up property and notify any who might be heirs of the late Wilbur Whateley. They found the countryside in great agitation, both because of the growing rumblings beneath the domed hills, and because of the unwonted stench and the surging, lapping sounds which came increasingly from the great empty shell formed by Whateley’s boarded-up farmhouse. Earl Sawyer, who tended the horse and cattle during Wilbur’s absence, had developed a woefully acute case of nerves. The officials devised excuses not to enter the noisome boarded place; and were glad to confine their survey of the deceased’s living quarters, the newly mended sheds, to a single visit. They filed a ponderous report at the court-house in Aylesbury, and litigations concerning heirship are said to be still in progress amongst the innumerable Whateleys, decayed and undecayed, of the upper Miskatonic valley.
      An almost interminable manuscript in strange characters, written in a huge ledger and adjudged a sort of diary because of the spacing and the variations in ink and penmanship, presented a baffling puzzle to those who found it on the old bureau which served as its owner’s desk. After a week of debate it was sent to Miskatonic University, together with the deceased’s collection of strange books, for study and possible translation; but even the best linguists soon saw that it was not likely to be unriddled with ease. No trace of the ancient gold with which Wilbur and Old Whateley always paid their debts has yet been discovered.
      It was in the dark of September 9th that the horror broke loose. The hill noises had been very pronounced during the evening, and dogs barked frantically all night. Early risers on the 10th noticed a peculiar stench in the air. About seven o’clock Luther Brown, the hired boy at George Corey’s, between Cold Spring Glen and the village, rushed frenziedly back from his morning trip to Ten-Acre Meadow with the cows. He was almost convulsed with fright as he stumbled into the kitchen; and in the yard outside the no less frightened herd were pawing and lowing pitifully, having followed the boy back in the panic they shared with him. Between gasps Luther tried to stammer out his tale to Mrs. Corey.
      “Up thar in the rud beyont the glen, Mis’ Corey—they’s suthin’ ben thar! It smells like thunder, an’ all the bushes an’ little trees is pushed back from the rud like they’d a haouse ben moved along of it. An’ that ain’t the wust, nuther. They’s prints in the rud, Mis’ Corey—great raound prints as big as barrel-heads, all sunk daown deep like a elephant had ben along, only they’s a sight more nor four feet could make! I looked at one or two afore I run, an’ I see every one was covered with lines spreadin’ aout from one place, like as if big palm-leaf fans—twict or three times as big as any they is—hed of ben paounded daown into the rud. An’ the smell was awful, like what it is araound Wizard Whateley’s ol’ haouse. . . .”
      Here he faltered, and seemed to shiver afresh with the fright that had sent him flying home. Mrs. Corey, unable to extract more information, began telephoning the neighbours; thus starting on its rounds the overture of panic that heralded the major terrors. When she got Sally Sawyer, housekeeper at Seth Bishop’s, the nearest place to Whateley’s, it became her turn to listen instead of transmit; for Sally’s boy Chauncey, who slept poorly, had been up on the hill toward Whateley’s, and had dashed back in terror after one look at the place, and at the pasturage where Mr. Bishop’s cows had been left out all night.
      “Yes, Mis’ Corey,” came Sally’s tremulous voice over the party wire, “Cha’ncey he just come back a-postin’, and couldn’t haff talk fer bein’ scairt! He says Ol’ Whateley’s haouse is all blowed up, with the timbers scattered raound like they’d ben dynamite inside; only the bottom floor ain’t through, but is all covered with a kind o’ tar-like stuff that smells awful an’ drips daown offen the aidges onto the graoun’ whar the side timbers is blown away. An’ they’s awful kinder marks in the yard, tew—great raound marks bigger raound than a hogshead, an’ all sticky with stuff like is on the blowed-up haouse. Cha’ncey he says they leads off into the medders, whar a great swath wider’n a barn is matted daown, an’ all the stun walls tumbled every whichway wherever it goes.
      “An’ he says, says he, Mis’ Corey, as haow he sot to look fer Seth’s caows, frighted ez he was; an’ faound ’em in the upper pasture nigh the Devil’s Hop Yard in an awful shape. Haff on ’em’s clean gone, an’ nigh haff o’ them that’s left is sucked most dry o’ blood, with sores on ’em like they’s ben on Whateley’s cattle ever senct Lavinny’s black brat was born. Seth he’s gone aout naow to look at ’em, though I’ll vaow he wun’t keer ter git very nigh Wizard Whateley’s! Cha’ncey didn’t look keerful ter see whar the big matted-daown swath led arter it leff the pasturage, but he says he thinks it p’inted towards the glen rud to the village.
      “I tell ye, Mis’ Corey, they’s suthin’ abroad as hadn’t orter be abroad, an’ I for one think that black Wilbur Whateley, as come to the bad eend he desarved, is at the bottom of the breedin’ of it. He wa’n’t all human hisself, I allus says to everybody; an’ I think he an’ Ol’ Whateley must a raised suthin’ in that there nailed-up haouse as ain’t even so human as he was. They’s allus ben unseen things araound Dunwich—livin’ things—as ain’t human an’ ain’t good fer human folks.
      “The graoun’ was a-talkin’ lass night, an’ towards mornin’ Cha’ncey he heerd the whippoorwills so laoud in Col’ Spring Glen he couldn’t sleep nun. Then he thought he heerd another faint-like saound over towards Wizard Whateley’s—a kinder rippin’ or tearin’ o’ wood, like some big box er crate was bein’ opened fur off. What with this an’ that, he didn’t git to sleep at all till sunup, an’ no sooner was he up this mornin’, but he’s got to go over to Whateley’s an’ see what’s the matter. He see enough, I tell ye, Mis’ Corey! This dun’t mean no good, an’ I think as all the men-folks ought to git up a party an’ do suthin’. I know suthin’ awful’s abaout, an’ feel my time is nigh, though only Gawd knows jest what it is.
      “Did your Luther take accaount o’ whar them big tracks led tew? No? Wal, Mis’ Corey, ef they was on the glen rud this side o’ the glen, an’ ain’t got to your haouse yet, I calc’late they must go into the glen itself. They would do that. I allus says Col’ Spring Glen ain’t no healthy nor decent place. The whippoorwills an’ fireflies there never did act like they was creaters o’ Gawd, an’ they’s them as says ye kin hear strange things a-rushin’ an’ a-talkin’ in the air daown thar ef ye stand in the right place, atween the rock falls an’ Bear’s Den.”
      By that noon fully three-quarters of the men and boys of Dunwich were trooping over the roads and meadows between the new-made Whateley ruins and Cold Spring Glen, examining in horror the vast, monstrous prints, the maimed Bishop cattle, the strange, noisome wreck of the farmhouse, and the bruised, matted vegetation of the fields and roadsides. Whatever had burst loose upon the world had assuredly gone down into the great sinister ravine; for all the trees on the banks were bent and broken, and a great avenue had been gouged in the precipice-hanging underbrush. It was as though a house, launched by an avalanche, had slid down through the tangled growths of the almost vertical slope. From below no sound came, but only a distant, undefinable foetor; and it is not to be wondered at that the men preferred to stay on the edge and argue, rather than descend and beard the unknown Cyclopean horror in its lair. Three dogs that were with the party had barked furiously at first, but seemed cowed and reluctant when near the glen. Someone telephoned the news to the Aylesbury Transcript; but the editor, accustomed to wild tales from Dunwich, did no more than concoct a humorous paragraph about it; an item soon afterward reproduced by the Associated Press.
      That night everyone went home, and every house and barn was barricaded as stoutly as possible. Needless to say, no cattle were allowed to remain in open pasturage. About two in the morning a frightful stench and the savage barking of the dogs awakened the household at Elmer Frye’s, on the eastern edge of Cold Spring Glen, and all agreed that they could hear a sort of muffled swishing or lapping sound from somewhere outside. Mrs. Frye proposed telephoning the neighbours, and Elmer was about to agree when the noise of splintering wood burst in upon their deliberations. It came, apparently, from the barn; and was quickly followed by a hideous screaming and stamping amongst the cattle. The dogs slavered and crouched close to the feet of the fear-numbed family. Frye lit a lantern through force of habit, but knew it would be death to go out into that black farmyard. The children and the womenfolk whimpered, kept from screaming by some obscure, vestigial instinct of defence which told them their lives depended on silence. At last the noise of the cattle subsided to a pitiful moaning, and a great snapping, crashing, and crackling ensued. The Fryes, huddled together in the sitting-room, did not dare to move until the last echoes died away far down in Cold Spring Glen. Then, amidst the dismal moans from the stable and the daemoniac piping of late whippoorwills in the glen, Selina Frye tottered to the telephone and spread what news she could of the second phase of the horror.
      The next day all the countryside was in a panic; and cowed, uncommunicative groups came and went where the fiendish thing had occurred. Two titan swaths of destruction stretched from the glen to the Frye farmyard, monstrous prints covered the bare patches of ground, and one side of the old red barn had completely caved in. Of the cattle, only a quarter could be found and identified. Some of these were in curious fragments, and all that survived had to be shot. Earl Sawyer suggested that help be asked from Aylesbury or Arkham, but others maintained it would be of no use. Old Zebulon Whateley, of a branch that hovered about half way between soundness and decadence, made darkly wild suggestions about rites that ought to be practiced on the hill-tops. He came of a line where tradition ran strong, and his memories of chantings in the great stone circles were not altogether connected with Wilbur and his grandfather.
      Darkness fell upon a stricken countryside too passive to organise for real defence. In a few cases closely related families would band together and watch in the gloom under one roof; but in general there was only a repetition of the barricading of the night before, and a futile, ineffective gesture of loading muskets and setting pitchforks handily about. Nothing, however, occurred except some hill noises; and when the day came there were many who hoped that the new horror had gone as swiftly as it had come. There were even bold souls who proposed an offensive expedition down in the glen, though they did not venture to set an actual example to the still reluctant majority.
      When night came again the barricading was repeated, though there was less huddling together of families. In the morning both the Frye and the Seth Bishop households reported excitement among the dogs and vague sounds and stenches from afar, while early explorers noted with horror a fresh set of the monstrous tracks in the road skirting Sentinel Hill. As before, the sides of the road shewed a bruising indicative of the blasphemously stupendous bulk of the horror; whilst the conformation of the tracks seemed to argue a passage in two directions, as if the moving mountain had come from Cold Spring Glen and returned to it along the same path. At the base of the hill a thirty-foot swath of crushed shrubbery saplings led steeply upward, and the seekers gasped when they saw that even the most perpendicular places did not deflect the inexorable trail. Whatever the horror was, it could scale a sheer stony cliff of almost complete verticality; and as the investigators climbed around to the hill’s summit by safer routes they saw that the trail ended—or rather, reversed—there.
      It was here that the Whateleys used to build their hellish fires and chant their hellish rituals by the table-like stone on May-Eve and Hallowmass. Now that very stone formed the centre of a vast space thrashed around by the mountainous horror, whilst upon its slightly concave surface was a thick and foetid deposit of the same tarry stickiness observed on the floor of the ruined Whateley farmhouse when the horror escaped. Men looked at one another and muttered. Then they looked down the hill. Apparently the horror had descended by a route much the same as that of its ascent. To speculate was futile. Reason, logic, and normal ideas of motivation stood confounded. Only old Zebulon, who was not with the group, could have done justice to the situation or suggested a plausible explanation.
      Thursday night began much like the others, but it ended less happily. The whippoorwills in the glen had screamed with such unusual persistence that many could not sleep, and about 3 A.M. all the party telephones rang tremulously. Those who took down their receivers heard a fright-mad voice shriek out, “Help, oh, my Gawd! . . .” and some thought a crashing sound followed the breaking off of the exclamation. There was nothing more. No one dared do anything, and no one knew till morning whence the call came. Then those who had heard it called everyone on the line, and found that only the Fryes did not reply. The truth appeared an hour later, when a hastily assembled group of armed men trudged out to the Frye place at the head of the glen. It was horrible, yet hardly a surprise. There were more swaths and monstrous prints, but there was no longer any house. It had caved in like an egg-shell, and amongst the ruins nothing living or dead could be discovered. Only a stench and a tarry stickiness. The Elmer Fryes had been erased from Dunwich.
",False
"V. A Nightmare and a Cataclysm

1.

And now swiftly followed that hideous experience which has left its indelible mark of fear on the soul of Marinus Bicknell Willett, and has added a decade to the visible age of one whose youth was even then far behind. Dr. Willett had conferred at length with Mr. Ward, and had come to an agreement with him on several points which both felt the alienists would ridicule. There was, they conceded, a terrible movement alive in the world, whose direct connexion with a necromancy even older than the Salem witchcraft could not be doubted. That at least two living men - and one other of whom they dared not think - were in absolute possession of minds or personalities which had functioned as early as 1690 or before was likewise almost unassailably proved even in the face of all known natural laws. What these horrible creatures - and Charles Ward as well - were doing or trying to do seemed fairly clear from their letters and from every bit of light both old and new which had filtered in upon the case. They were robbing the tombs of all the ages, including those of the world's wisest and greatest men, in the hope of recovering from the bygone ashes some vestige of the consciousness and lore which had once animated and informed them.
      A hideous traffick was going on among these nightmare ghouls, whereby illustrious bones were bartered with the calm calculativeness of schoolboys swapping books; and from what was extorted from this centuried dust there was anticipated a power and a wisdom beyond anything which the cosmos had ever seen concentrated in one man or group. They had found unholy ways to keep their brains alive, either in the same body or different bodies; and had evidently achieved a way of tapping the consciousness of the dead whom they gathered together. There had, it seems, been some truth in chimerical old Borellus when he wrote of preparing from even the most antique remains certain ""Essential Saltes"" from which the shade of a long-dead living thing might be raised up. There was a formula for evoking such a shade, and another for putting it down; and it had now been so perfected that it could be taught successfully. One must be careful about evocations, for the markers of old graves are not always accurate.
      Willett and Mr. Ward shivered as they passed from conclusion to conclusion. Things - presences or voices of some sort - could be drawn down from unknown places as well as from the grave, and in this process also one must be careful. Joseph Curwen had indubitably evoked many forbidden things, and as for Charles - what might one think of him? What forces ""outside the spheres"" had reached him from Joseph Curwen's day and turned his mind on forgotten things? He had been led to find certain directions, and he had used them. He had talked with the man of horror in Prague and stayed long with the creature in the mountains of Transylvania. And he must have found the grave of Joseph Curwen at last. That newspaper item and what his mother had heard in the night were too significant to overlook. Then he had summoned something, and it must have come. That mighty voice aloft on Good Friday, and those different tones in the locked attic laboratory. What were they like, with their depth and hollowness? Was there not here some awful foreshadowing of the dreaded stranger Dr. Allen with his spectral bass? Yes, that was what Mr. Ward had felt with vague horror in his single talk with the man - if man it were - over the telephone!
      What hellish consciousness or voice, what morbid shade or presence, had come to answer Charles Ward's secret rites behind that locked door? Those voices heard in argument - ""must have it red for three months"" - Good God! Was not that just before the vampirism broke out? The rifling of Ezra Weeden's ancient grave, and the cries later at Pawtuxet - whose mind had planned the vengeance and rediscovered the shunned seat of elder blasphemies? And then the bungalow and the bearded stranger, and the gossip, and the fear. The final madness of Charles neither father nor doctor could attempt to explain, but they did feel sure that the mind of Joseph Curwen had come to earth again and was following its ancient morbidities. Was daemoniac possession in truth a possibility? Allen had something to do with it, and the detectives must find out more about one whose existence menaced the young man's life. In the meantime, since the existence of some vast crypt beneath the bungalow seemed virtually beyond dispute, some effort must be made to find it. Willett and Mr. Ward, conscious of the sceptical attitude of the alienists, resolved during their final conference to undertake a joint secret exploration of unparalleled thoroughness; and agreed to meet at the bungalow on the following morning with valises and with certain tools and accessories suited to architectural search and underground exploration.
      The morning of April 6th dawned clear, and both explorers were at the bungalow by ten o'clock. Mr. Ward had the key, and an entry and cursory survey were made. From the disordered condition of Dr. Allen's room it was obvious that the detectives had been there before, and the later searchers hoped that they had found some clue which might prove of value. Of course the main business lay in the cellar; so thither they descended without much delay, again making the circuit which each had vainly made before in the presence of the mad young owner. For a time everything seemed baffling, each inch of the earthen floor and stone walls having so solid and innocuous an aspect that the thought of a yawning aperture was scarcely to be entertained. Willett reflected that since the original cellar was dug without knowledge of any catacombs beneath, the beginning of the passage would represent the strictly modern delving of young Ward and his associates, where they had probed for the ancient vaults whose rumour could have reached them by no wholesome means.
      The doctor tried to put himself in Charles's place to see how a delver would be likely to start, but could not gain much inspiration from this method. Then he decided on elimination as a policy, and went carefully over the whole subterranean surface both vertical and horizontal, trying to account for every inch separately. He was soon substantially narrowed down, and at last had nothing left but the small platform before the washtubs, which he had tried once before in vain. Now experimenting in every possible way, and exerting a double strength, he finally found that the top did indeed turn and slide horizontally on a corner pivot. Beneath it lay a trim concrete surface with an iron manhole, to which Mr. Ward at once rushed with excited zeal. The cover was not hard to lift, and the father had quite removed it when Willett noticed the queerness of his aspect. He was swaying and nodding dizzily, and in the gust of noxious air which swept up from the black pit beneath the doctor soon recognised ample cause.
      In a moment Dr. Willett had his fainting companion on the floor above and was reviving him with cold water. Mr. Ward responded feebly, but it could be seen that the mephitic blast from the crypt had in some way gravely sickened him. Wishing to take no chances, Willett hastened out to Broad Street for a taxicab and had soon dispatched the sufferer home despite his weak-voiced protests; after which he produced an electric torch, covered his nostrils with a band of sterile gauze, and descended once more to peer into the new-found depths. The foul air had now slightly abated, and Willett was able to send a beam of light down the Stygian hole. For about ten feet, he saw, it was a sheer cylindrical drop with concrete walls and an iron ladder; after which the hole appeared to strike a flight of old stone steps which must originally have emerged to earth somewhat southwest of the present building.

2.

      Willett freely admits that for a moment the memory of the old Curwen legends kept him from climbing down alone into that malodorous gulf. He could not help thinking of what Luke Fenner had reported on that last monstrous night. Then duty asserted itself and he made the plunge, carrying a great valise for the removal of whatever papers might prove of supreme importance. Slowly, as befitted one of his years, he descended the ladder and reached the slimy steps below. This was ancient masonry, his torch told him; and upon the dripping walls he saw the unwholesome moss of centuries. Down, down, ran the steps; not spirally, but in three abrupt turns; and with such narrowness that two men could have passed only with difficulty. He had counted about thirty when a sound reached him very faintly; and after that he did not feel disposed to count any more.
      It was a godless sound; one of those low-keyed, insidious outrages of Nature which are not meant to be. To call it a dull wail, a doom-dragged whine, or a hopeless howl of chorused anguish and stricken flesh without mind would be to miss its most quintessential loathsomeness and soul-sickening overtones. Was it for this that Ward had seemed to listen on that day he was removed? It was the most shocking thing that Willett had ever heard, and it continued from no determinate point as the doctor reached the bottom of the steps and cast his torchlight around on lofty corridor walls surmounted by Cyclopean vaulting and pierced by numberless black archways. The hall in which he stood was perhaps fourteen feet high to the middle of the vaulting and ten or twelve feet broad. Its pavement was of large chipped flagstones, and its walls and roof were of dressed masonry. Its length he could not imagine, for it stretched ahead indefinitely into the blackness. Of the archways, some had doors of the old six-panelled colonial type, whilst others had none.
      Overcoming the dread induced by the smell and the howling, Willett began to explore these archways one by one; finding beyond them rooms with groined stone ceilings, each of medium size and apparently of bizarre uses. Most of them had fireplaces, the upper courses of whose chimneys would have formed an interesting study in engineering. Never before or since had he seen such instruments or suggestions of instruments as here loomed up on every hand through the burying dust and cobwebs of a century and a half, in many cases evidently shattered as if by the ancient raiders. For many of the chambers seemed wholly untrodden by modern feet, and must have represented the earliest and most obsolete phases of Joseph Curwen's experimentation. Finally there came a room of obvious modernity, or at least of recent occupancy. There were oil heaters, bookshelves and tables, chairs and cabinets, and a desk piled high with papers of varying antiquity and contemporaneousness. Candlesticks and oil lamps stood about in several places; and finding a match-safe handy, Willett lighted such as were ready for use.
      In the fuller gleam it appeared that this apartment was nothing less than the latest study or library of Charles Ward. Of the books the doctor had seen many before, and a good part of the furniture had plainly come from the Prospect Street mansion. Here and there was a piece well known to Willett, and the sense of familiarity became so great that he half forgot the noisomeness and the wailing, both of which were plainer here than they had been at the foot of the steps. His first duty, as planned long ahead, was to find and seize any papers which might seem of vital importance; especially those portentous documents found by Charles so long ago behind the picture in Olney Court. As he searched he perceived how stupendous a task the final unravelling would be; for file on file was stuffed with papers in curious hands and bearing curious designs, so that months or even years might be needed for a thorough deciphering and editing. Once he found large packets of letters with Prague and Rakus postmarks, and in writing clearly recognisable as Orne's and Hutchinson's; all of which he took with him as part of the bundle to be removed in his valise.
      At last, in a locked mahogany cabinet once gracing the Ward home, Willett found the batch of old Curwen papers; recognising them from the reluctant glimpse Charles had granted him so many years ago. The youth had evidently kept them together very much as they had been when first he found them, since all the titles recalled by the workmen were present except the papers addressed to Orne and Hutchinson, and the cipher with its key. Willett placed the entire lot in his valise and continued his examination of the files. Since young Ward's immediate condition was the greatest matter at stake, the closest searching was done among the most obviously recent matter; and in this abundance of contemporary manuscript one very baffling oddity was noted. The oddity was the slight amount in Charles's normal writing, which indeed included nothing more recent than two months before. On the other hand, there were literally reams of symbols and formulae, historical notes and philosophical comment, in a crabbed penmanship absolutely identical with the ancient script of Joseph Curwen, though of undeniably modern dating. Plainly, a part of the latter-day programme had been a sedulous imitation of the old wizard's writing, which Charles seemed to have carried to a marvellous state of perfection. Of any third hand which might have been Allen's there was not a trace. If he had indeed come to be the leader, he must have forced young Ward to act as his amanuensis.
      In this new material one mystic formula, or rather pair of formulae, recurred so often that Willett had it by heart before he had half finished his quest. It consisted of two parallel columns, the left-hand one surmounted by the archaic symbol called ""Dragon's Head"" and used in almanacks to indicate the ascending node, and the right-hand one headed by a corresponding sign of ""Dragon's Tail"" or descending node. The appearance of the whole was something like this, and almost unconsciously the doctor realised that the second half was no more than the first written syllabically backward with the exception of the final monosyllables and of the odd name Yog-Sothoth, which he had come to recognise under various spellings from other things he had seen in connexion with this horrible matter. The formulae were as follows - exactly so, as Willett is abundantly able to testify - and the first one struck an odd note of uncomfortable latent memory in his brain, which he recognised later when reviewing the events of that horrible Good Friday of the previous year.


Y'AI 'NG'NGAH,
YOG-SOTHOTH
H'EE - L'GEB
F'AI THRODOG
UAAAH
      	

OGTHROD AI'F
GEB'L - EE'H
YOG-SOTHOTH
'NGAH'NG AI'Y
ZHRO

So haunting were these formulae, and so frequently did he come upon them, that before the doctor knew it he was repeating them under his breath. Eventually, however, he felt he had secured all the papers he could digest to advantage for the present; hence resolved to examine no more till he could bring the sceptical alienists en masse for an ampler and more systematic raid. He had still to find the hidden laboratory, so leaving his valise in the lighted room he emerged again into the black noisome corridor whose vaulting echoed ceaselessly with that dull and hideous whine.
      The next few rooms he tried were all abandoned, or filled only with crumbling boxes and ominous-looking leaden coffins; but impressed him deeply with the magnitude of Joseph Curwen's original operations. He thought of the slaves and seamen who had disappeared, of the graves which had been violated in every part of the world, and of what that final raiding party must have seen; and then he decided it was better not to think any more. Once a great stone staircase mounted at his right, and he deduced that this must have reached to one of the Curwen outbuildings - perhaps the famous stone edifice with the high slit-like windows - provided the steps he had descended had led from the steep-roofed farmhouse. Suddenly the walls seemed to fall away ahead, and the stench and the wailing grew stronger. Willett saw that he had come upon a vast open space, so great that his torchlight would not carry across it; and as he advanced he encountered occasional stout pillars supporting the arches of the roof.
      After a time he reached a circle of pillars grouped like the monoliths of Stonehenge, with a large carved altar on a base of three steps in the centre; and so curious were the carvings on that altar that he approached to study them with his electric light. But when he saw what they were he shrank away shuddering, and did not stop to investigate the dark stains which discoloured the upper surface and had spread down the sides in occasional thin lines. Instead, he found the distant wall and traced it as it swept round in a gigantic circle perforated by occasional black doorways and indented by a myriad of shallow cells with iron gratings and wrist and ankle bonds on chains fastened to the stone of the concave rear masonry. These cells were empty, but still the horrible odour and the dismal moaning continued, more insistent now than ever, and seemingly varied at times by a sort of slippery thumping.

3.

      From that frightful smell and that uncanny noise Willett's attention could no longer be diverted. Both were plainer and more hideous in the great pillared hall than anywhere else, and carried a vague impression of being far below, even in this dark nether world of subterrene mystery. Before trying any of the black archways for steps leading further down, the doctor cast his beam of light about the stone-flagged floor. It was very loosely paved, and at irregular intervals there would occur a slab curiously pierced by small holes in no definite arrangement, while at one point there lay a very long ladder carelessly flung down. To this ladder, singularly enough, appeared to cling a particularly large amount of the frightful odour which encompassed everything. As he walked slowly about it suddenly occurred to Willett that both the noise and the odour seemed strongest directly above the oddly pierced slabs, as if they might be crude trap-doors leading down to some still deeper region of horror. Kneeling by one, he worked at it with his hands, and found that with extreme difficulty he could budge it. At his touch the moaning beneath ascended to a louder key, and only with vast trepidation did he persevere in the lifting of the heavy stone. A stench unnamable now rose up from below, and the doctor's head reeled dizzily as he laid back the slab and turned his torch upon the exposed square yard of gaping blackness.
      If he had expected a flight of steps to some wide gulf of ultimate abomination, Willett was destined to be disappointed; for amidst that foetor and cracked whining he discerned only the brick-faced top of a cylindrical well perhaps a yard and a half in diameter and devoid of any ladder or other means of descent. As the light shone down, the wailing changed suddenly to a series of horrible yelps; in conjunction with which there came again that sound of blind, futile scrambling and slippery thumping. The explorer trembled, unwilling even to imagine what noxious thing might be lurking in that abyss, but in a moment mustered up the courage to peer over the rough-hewn brink; lying at full length and holding the torch downward at arm's length to see what might lie below. For a second he could distinguish nothing but the slimy, moss-grown brick walls sinking illimitably into that half-tangible miasma of murk and foulness and anguished frenzy; and then he saw that something dark was leaping clumsily and frantically up and down at the bottom of the narrow shaft, which must have been from twenty to twenty-five feet below the stone floor where he lay. The torch shook in his hand, but he looked again to see what manner of living creature might be immured there in the darkness of that unnatural well; left starving by young Ward through all the long month since the doctors had taken him away, and clearly only one of a vast number prisoned in the kindred wells whose pierced stone covers so thickly studded in the floor of the great vaulted cavern. Whatever the things were, they could not lie down in their cramped spaces; but must have crouched and whined and waited and feebly leaped all those hideous weeks since their master had abandoned them unheeded.
      But Marinus Bicknell Willett was sorry that he looked again; for surgeon and veteran of the dissecting-room though he was, he has not been the same since. It is hard to explain just how a single sight of a tangible object with measureable dimensions could so shake and change a man; and we may only say that there is about certain outlines and entities a power of symbolism and suggestion which acts frightfully on a sensitive thinker's perspective and whispers terrible hints of obscure cosmic relationships and unnamable realities behind the protective illusions of common vision. In that second look Willett saw such an outline or entity, for during the next few instants he was undoubtedly as stark mad as any inmate of Dr. Waite's private hospital. He dropped the electric torch from a hand drained of muscular power or nervous cošrdination, nor heeded the sound of crunching teeth which told of its fate at the bottom of the pit. He screamed and screamed and screamed in a voice whose falsetto panic no acquaintance of his would ever have recognised; and though he could not rise to his feet he crawled and rolled desperately away over the damp pavement where dozens of Tartarean wells poured forth their exhausted whining and yelping to answer his own insane cries. He tore his hands on the rough, loose stones, and many times bruised his head against the frequent pillars, but still he kept on. Then at last he slowly came to himself in the utter blackness and stench, and stopped his ears against the droning wail into which the burst of yelping had subsided. He was drenched with perspiration and without means of producing a light; stricken and unnerved in the abysmal blackness and horror, and crushed with a memory he never could efface. Beneath him dozens of those things still lived, and from one of the shafts the cover was removed. He knew that what he had seen could never climb up the slippery walls, yet shuddered at the thought that some obscure foot-hold might exist.
      What the thing was, he would never tell. It was like some of the carvings on the hellish altar, but it was alive. Nature had never made it in this form, for it was too palpably unfinished. The deficiencies were of the most surprising sort, and the abnormalities of proportion could not be described. Willett consents only to say that this type of thing must have represented entities which Ward called up from imperfect salts, and which he kept for servile or ritualistic purposes. If it had not had a certain significance, its image would not have been carved on that damnable stone. It was not the worst thing depicted on that stone - but Willett never opened the other pits. At the time, the first connected idea in his mind was an idle paragraph from some of the old Curwen data he had digested long before; a phrase used by Simon or Jedediah Orne in that portentous confiscated letter to the bygone sorcerer: ""Certainely, there was Noth'g butt ye liveliest Awfulness in that which H. rais'd upp from What he cou'd gather onlie a part of.""
      Then, horribly supplementing rather than displacing this image, there came a recollection of those ancient lingering rumours anent the burned, twisted thing found in the fields a week after the Curwen raid. Charles Ward had once told the doctor what old Slocum said of that object; that it was neither thoroughly human, nor wholly allied to any animal which Pawtuxet folk had ever seen or read about.
      These words hummed in the doctor's mind as he rocked to and fro, squatting on the nitrous stone floor. He tried to drive them out, and repeated the Lord's Prayer to himself; eventually trailing off into a mnemonic hodge-podge like the modernistic Waste Land of Mr. T. S. Eliot and finally reverting to the oft-repeated dual formula he had lately found in Ward's underground library: ""Y'ai 'ng'ngah, Yog-Sothoth"", and so on till the final underlined ""Zhro"". It seemed to soothe him, and he staggered to his feet after a time; lamenting bitterly his fright-lost torch and looking wildly about for any gleam of light in the clutching inkiness of the chilly air. Think he would not; but he strained his eyes in every direction for some faint glint or reflection of the bright illumination he had left in the library. After a while he thought he detected a suspicion of a glow infinitely far away, and toward this he crawled in agonised caution on hands and knees amidst the stench and howling, always feeling ahead lest he collide with the numerous great pillars or stumble into the abominable pit he had uncovered.
      Once his shaking fingers touched something which he knew must be the steps leading to the hellish altar, and from this spot he recoiled in loathing. At another time he encountered the pierced slab he had removed, and here his caution became almost pitiful. But he did not come upon the dread aperture after all, nor did anything issue from that aperture to detain him. What had been down there made no sound nor stir. Evidently its crunching of the fallen electric torch had not been good for it. Each time Willett's fingers felt a perforated slab he trembled. His passage over it would sometimes increase the groaning below, but generally it would produce no effect at all, since he moved very noiselessly. Several times during his progress the glow ahead diminished perceptibly, and he realised that the various candles and lamps he had left must be expiring one by one. The thought of being lost in utter darkness without matches amidst this underground world of nightmare labyrinths impelled him to rise to his feet and run, which he could safely do now that he had passed the open pit; for he knew that once the light failed, his only hope of rescue and survival would lie in whatever relief party Mr. Ward might send after missing him for a sufficient period. Presently, however, he emerged from the open space into the narrower corridor and definitely located the glow as coming from a door on his right. In a moment he had reached it and was standing once more in young Ward's secret library, trembling with relief, and watching the sputterings of that last lamp which had brought him to safety.

4.

      In another moment he was hastily filling the burned-out lamps from an oil supply he had previously noticed, and when the room was bright again he looked about to see if he might find a lantern for further exploration. For racked though he was with horror, his sense of grim purpose was still uppermost; and he was firmly determined to leave no stone unturned in his search for the hideous facts behind Charles Ward's bizarre madness. Failing to find a lantern, he chose the smallest of the lamps to carry; also filling his pockets with candles and matches, and taking with him a gallon can of oil, which he proposed to keep for reserve use in whatever hidden laboratory he might uncover beyond the terrible open space with its unclean altar and nameless covered wells. To traverse that space again would require his utmost fortitude, but he knew it must be done. Fortunately neither the frightful altar nor the opened shaft was near the vast cell-indented wall which bounded the cavern area, and whose black mysterious archways would form the next goals of a logical search.
      So Willett went back to that great pillared hall of stench and anguished howling; turning down his lamp to avoid any distant glimpse of the hellish altar, or of the uncovered pit with the pierced stone slab beside it. Most of the black doorways led merely to small chambers, some vacant and some evidently used as storerooms; and in several of the latter he saw some very curious accumulations of various objects. One was packed with rotting and dust-draped bales of spare clothing, and the explorer thrilled when he saw that it was unmistakably the clothing of a century and a half before. In another room he found numerous odds and ends of modern clothing, as if gradual provisions were being made to equip a large body of men. But what he disliked most of all were the huge copper vats which occasionally appeared; these, and the sinister incrustations upon them. He liked them even less than the weirdly figured leaden bowls whose rims retained such obnoxious deposits and around which clung repellent odours perceptible above even the general noisomeness of the crypt. When he had completed about half the entire circuit of the wall he found another corridor like that from which he had come, and out of which many doors opened. This he proceeded to investigate; and after entering three rooms of medium size and of no significant contents, he came at last to a large oblong apartment whose business-like tanks and tables, furnaces and modern instruments, occasional books and endless shelves of jars and bottles proclaimed it indeed the long-sought laboratory of Charles Ward - and no doubt of old Joseph Curwen before him.
      After lighting the three lamps which he found filled and ready, Dr. Willett examined the place and all its appurtenances with the keenest interest; noting from the relative quantities of various reagents on the shelves that young Ward's dominant concern must have been with some branch of organic chemistry. On the whole, little could be learned from the scientific ensemble, which included a gruesome-looking dissecting table; so that the room was really rather a disappointment. Among the books was a tattered old copy of Borellus in black-letter, and it was weirdly interesting to note that Ward had underlined the same passage whose marking had so perturbed good Mr. Merritt at Curwen's farmhouse more than a century and a half before. That older copy, of course, must have perished along with the rest of Curwen's occult library in the final raid. Three archways opened off the laboratory, and these the doctor proceeded to sample in turn. From his cursory survey he saw that two led merely to small storerooms; but these he canvassed with care, remarking the piles of coffins in various stages of damage and shuddering violently at two or three of the few coffin-plates he could decipher. There was much clothing also stored in these rooms, and several new and tightly nailed boxes which he did not stop to investigate. Most interesting of all, perhaps, were some odd bits which he judged to be fragments of old Joseph Curwen's laboratory appliances. These had suffered damage at the hands of the raiders, but were still partly recognisable as the chemical paraphernalia of the Georgian period.
      The third archway led to a very sizeable chamber entirely lined with shelves and having in the centre a table bearing two lamps. These lamps Willett lighted, and in their brilliant glow studied the endless shelving which surrounded him. Some of the upper levels were wholly vacant, but most of the space was filled with small odd-looking leaden jars of two general types; one tall and without handles like a Grecian lekythos or oil-jug, and the other with a single handle and proportioned like a Phaleron jug. All had metal stoppers, and were covered with peculiar-looking symbols moulded in low relief. In a moment the doctor noticed that these jugs were classified with great rigidity; all the lekythoi being on one side of the room with a large wooden sign reading ""Custodes"" above them, and all the Phalerons on the other, correspondingly labelled with a sign reading ""Materia"". Each of the jars or jugs, except some on the upper shelves that turned out to be vacant, bore a cardboard tag with a number apparently referring to a catalogue; and Willett resolved to look for the latter presently. For the moment, however, he was more interested in the nature of the array as a whole; and experimentally opened several of the lekythoi and Phalerons at random with a view to a rough generalisation. The result was invariable. Both types of jar contained a small quantity of a single kind of substance; a fine dusty powder of very light weight and of many shades of dull, neutral colour. To the colours which formed the only point of variation there was no apparent method of disposal; and no distinction between what occurred in the lekythoi and what occurred in the Phalerons. A bluish-grey powder might be by the side of a pinkish-white one, and any one in a Phaleron might have its exact counterpart in a lekythos. The most individual feature about the powders was their non-adhesiveness. Willett would pour one into his hand, and upon returning it to its jug would find that no residue whatever remained on its palm.
      The meaning of the two signs puzzled him, and he wondered why this battery of chemicals was separated so radically from those in glass jars on the shelves of the laboratory proper. ""Custodes"", ""Materia""; that was the Latin for ""Guards"" and ""Materials"", respectively - and then there came a flash of memory as to where he had seen that word ""Guards"" before in connexion with this dreadful mystery. It was, of course, in the recent letter to Dr. Allen purporting to be from old Edward Hutchinson; and the phrase had read: ""There was no Neede to keep the Guards in Shape and eat'g off their Heads, and it made Much to be founde in Case of Trouble, as you too welle knowe."" What did this signify? But wait - was there not still another reference to ""guards"" in this matter which he had failed wholly to recall when reading the Hutchinson letter? Back in the old non-secretive days Ward had told him of the Eleazar Smith diary recording the spying of Smith and Weeden on the Curwen farm, and in that dreadful chronicle there had been a mention of conversations overheard before the old wizard betook himself wholly beneath the earth. There had been, Smith and Weeden insisted, terrible colloquies wherein figured Curwen, certain captives of his, and the guards of those captives. Those guards, according to Hutchinson or his avatar, had 'eaten their heads off', so that now Dr. Allen did not keep them in shape. And if not in shape, how save as the ""salts"" to which it appears this wizard band was engaged in reducing as many human bodies or skeletons as they could?
      So that was what these lekythoi contained; the monstrous fruit of unhallowed rites and deeds, presumably won or cowed to such submission as to help, when called up by some hellish incantation, in the defence of their blasphemous master or the questioning of those who were not so willing? Willett shuddered at the thought of what he had been pouring in and out of his hands, and for a moment felt an impulse to flee in panic from that cavern of hideous shelves with their silent and perhaps watching sentinels. Then he thought of the ""Materia"" - in the myriad Phaleron jugs on the other side of the room. Salts too - and if not the salts of ""guards"", then the salts of what? God! Could it be possible that here lay the mortal relics of half the titan thinkers of all the ages; snatched by supreme ghouls from crypts where the world thought them safe, and subject to the beck and call of madmen who sought to drain their knowledge for some still wilder end whose ultimate effect would concern, as poor Charles had hinted in his frantic note, 'all civilisation, all natural law, perhaps even the fate of the solar system and the universe'? And Marinus Bicknell Willett had sifted their dust through his hands!
      Then he noticed a small door at the farther end of the room, and calmed himself enough to approach it and examine the crude sign chiselled above. It was only a symbol, but it filled him with vague spiritual dread; for a morbid, dreaming friend of his had once drawn it on paper and told him a few of the things it means in the dark abyss of sleep. It was the sign of Koth, that dreamers see fixed above the archway of a certain black tower standing alone in twilight - and Willett did not like what his friend Randolph Carter had said of its powers. But a moment later he forgot the sign as he recognised a new acrid odour in the stench-filled air. This was a chemical rather than animal smell, and came clearly from the room beyond the door. And it was, unmistakably, the same odour which had saturated Charles Ward's clothing on the day the doctors had taken him away. So it was here that the youth had been interrupted by the final summons? He was wiser than old Joseph Curwen, for he had not resisted. Willett, boldly determined to penetrate every wonder and nightmare this nether realm might contain, seized the small lamp and crossed the threshold. A wave of nameless fright rolled out to meet him, but he yielded to no whim and deferred to no intuition. There was nothing alive here to harm him, and he would not be stayed in his piercing of the eldritch cloud which engulfed his patient.
      The room beyond the door was of medium size, and had no furniture save a table, a single chair, and two groups of curious machines with clamps and wheels, which Willett recognised after a moment as mediaeval instruments of torture. On one side of the door stood a rack of savage whips, above which were some shelves bearing empty rows of shallow pedestalled cups of lead shaped like Grecian kylikes. On the other side was the table; with a powerful Argand lamp, a pad and pencil, and two of the stoppered lekythoi from the shelves outside set down at irregular places as if temporarily or in haste. Willett lighted the lamp and looked carefully at the pad, to see what notes young Ward might have been jotting down when interrupted; but found nothing more intelligible than the following disjointed fragments in that crabbed Curwen chirography, which shed no light on the case as a whole:
""B. dy'd not. Escap'd into walls and founde Place below.
""Saw olde V. saye ye Sabaoth and learnt ye Way.
""Rais'd Yog-Sothoth thrice and was ye nexte Day deliver'd.
""F. soughte to wipe out all know'g howe to raise Those from Outside.""
      As the strong Argand blaze lit up the entire chamber the doctor saw that the wall opposite the door, between the two groups of torturing appliances in the corners, was covered with pegs from which hung a set of shapeless-looking robes of a rather dismal yellowish-white. But far more interesting were the two vacant walls, both of which were thickly covered with mystic symbols and formulae roughly chiselled in the smooth dressed stone. The damp floor also bore marks of carving; and with but little difficulty Willett deciphered a huge pentagram in the centre, with a plain circle about three feet wide half way between this and each corner. In one of these four circles, near where a yellowish robe had been flung carelessly down, there stood a shallow kylix of the sort found on the shelves above the whip-rack; and just outside the periphery was one of the Phaleron jugs from the shelves in the other room, its tag numbered 118. This was unstoppered, and proved upon inspection to be empty; but the explorer saw with a shiver that the kylix was not. Within its shallow area, and saved from scattering only by the absence of wind in this sequestered cavern, lay a small amount of a dry, dull-greenish efflorescent powder which must have belonged in the jug; and Willett almost reeled at the implications that came sweeping over him as he correlated little by little the several elements and antecedents of the scene. The whips and the instruments of torture, the dust or salts from the jug of ""Materia"", the two lekythoi from the ""Custodes"" shelf, the robes, the formulae on the walls, the notes on the pad, the hints from letters and legends, and the thousand glimpses, doubts, and suppositions which had come to torment the friends and parents of Charles Ward - all these engulfed the doctor in a tidal wave of horror as he looked at that dry greenish powder outspread in the pedestalled leaden kylix on the floor.
      With an effort, however, Willett pulled himself together and began studying the formulae chiselled on the walls. From the stained and incrusted letters it was obvious that they were carved in Joseph Curwen's time, and their text was such as to be vaguely familiar to one who had read much Curwen material or delved extensively into the history of magic. One the doctor clearly recognised as what Mrs. Ward heard her son chanting on that ominous Good Friday a year before, and what an authority had told him was a very terrible invocation addressed to secret gods outside the normal spheres. It was not spelled here exactly as Mrs. Ward had set it down from memory, nor yet as the authority had shewn it to him in the forbidden pages of ""Eliphas Levi""; but its identity was unmistakable, and such words as Sabaoth, Metraton, Almousin, and Zariatnatmik sent a shudder of fright through the searcher who had seen and felt so much of cosmic abomination just around the corner.
      This was on the left-hand wall as one entered the room. The right-hand wall was no less thickly inscribed, and Willett felt a start of recognition as he came upon the pair of formulae so frequently occurring in the recent notes in the library. They were, roughly speaking, the same; with the ancient symbols of ""Dragon's Head"" and ""Dragon's Tail"" heading them as in Ward's scribblings. But the spelling differed quite widely from that of the modern versions, as if old Curwen had had a different way of recording sound, or as if later study had evolved more powerful and perfected variants of the invocations in question. The doctor tried to reconcile the chiselled version with the one which still ran persistently in his head, and found it hard to do. Where the script he had memorised began ""Y'ai 'ng'ngah, Yog-Sothoth"", this epigraph started out as ""Aye, engengah, Yogge-Sothotha""; which to his mind would seriously interfere with the syllabification of the second word.
      Ground as the later text was into his consciousness, the discrepancy disturbed him; and he found himself chanting the first of the formulae aloud in an effort to square the sound he conceived with the letters he found carved. Weird and menacing in that abyss of antique blasphemy rang his voice; its accents keyed to a droning sing-song either through the spell of the past and the unknown, or through the hellish example of that dull, godless wail from the pits whose inhuman cadences rose and fell rhythmically in the distance through the stench and the darkness.

""Y'AI 'NG'NGAH,
YOG-SOTHOTH
H'EE - L'GEB
F'AI THRODOG
UAAAH!""

      But what was this cold wind which had sprung into life at the very outset of the chant? The lamps were sputtering woefully, and the gloom grew so dense that the letters on the wall nearly faded from sight. There was smoke, too, and an acrid odour which quite drowned out the stench from the far-away wells; an odour like that he had smelt before, yet infinitely stronger and more pungent. He turned from the inscriptions to face the room with its bizarre contents, and saw that the kylix on the floor, in which the ominous efflorescent powder had lain, was giving forth a cloud of thick, greenish-black vapour of surprising volume and opacity. That powder - Great God! it had come from the shelf of ""Materia"" - what was it doing now, and what had started it? The formula he had been chanting - the first of the pair - Dragon's Head, ascending node - Blessed Saviour, could it be. . . .
      The doctor reeled, and through his head raced wildly disjointed scraps from all he had seen, heard, and read of the frightful case of Joseph Curwen and Charles Dexter Ward. ""I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe. . . . Have ye Wordes for laying at all times readie, and stopp not to be sure when there is any Doubte of Whom you have. . . . Three Talkes with What was therein inhum'd. . . ."" Mercy of Heaven, what is that shape behind the parting smoke?

5.

      Marinus Bicknell Willett has no hope that any part of his tale will be believed except by certain sympathetic friends, hence he has made no attempt to tell it beyond his most intimate circle. Only a few outsiders have ever heard it repeated, and of these the majority laugh and remark that the doctor surely is getting old. He has been advised to take a long vacation and to shun future cases dealing with mental disturbance. But Mr. Ward knows that the veteran physician speaks only a horrible truth. Did not he himself see the noisome aperture in the bungalow cellar? Did not Willett send him home overcome and ill at eleven o'clock that portentous morning? Did he not telephone the doctor in vain that evening, and again the next day, and had he not driven to the bungalow itself on that following noon, finding his friend unconscious but unharmed on one of the beds upstairs? Willett had been breathing stertorously, and opened his eyes slowly when Mr. Ward gave him some brandy fetched from the car. Then he shuddered and screamed, crying out, ""That beard . . . those eyes. . . . God, who are you?"" A very strange thing to say to a trim, blue-eyed, clean-shaven gentleman whom he had known from the latter's boyhood.
      In the bright noon sunlight the bungalow was unchanged since the previous morning. Willett's clothing bore no disarrangement beyond certain smudges and worn places at the knees, and only a faint acrid odour reminded Mr. Ward of what he had smelt on his son that day he was taken to the hospital. The doctor's flashlight was missing, but his valise was safely there, as empty as when he had brought it. Before indulging in any explanations, and obviously with great moral effort, Willett staggered dizzily down to the cellar and tried the fateful platform before the tubs. It was unyielding. Crossing to where he had left his yet unused tool satchel the day before, he obtained a chisel and began to pry up the stubborn planks one by one. Underneath the smooth concrete was still visible, but of any opening or perforation there was no longer a trace. Nothing yawned this time to sicken the mystified father who had followed the doctor downstairs; only the smooth concrete underneath the planks - no noisome well, no world of subterrene horrors, no secret library, no Curwen papers, no nightmare pits of stench and howling, no laboratory or shelves or chiselled formulae, no. . . . Dr. Willett turned pale, and clutched at the younger man. ""Yesterday,"" he asked softly, ""did you see it here . . . and smell it?"" And when Mr. Ward, himself transfixed with dread and wonder, found strength to nod an affirmative, the physician gave a sound half a sigh and half a gasp, and nodded in turn. ""Then I will tell you,"" he said.
      So for an hour, in the sunniest room they could find upstairs, the physician whispered his frightful tale to the wondering father. There was nothing to relate beyond the looming up of that form when the greenish-black vapour from the kylix parted, and Willett was too tired to ask himself what had really occurred. There were futile, bewildered head-shakings from both men, and once Mr. Ward ventured a hushed suggestion, ""Do you suppose it would be of any use to dig?"" The doctor was silent, for it seemed hardly fitting for any human brain to answer when powers of unknown spheres had so vitally encroached on this side of the Great Abyss. Again Mr. Ward asked, ""But where did it go? It brought you here, you know, and it sealed up the hole somehow."" And Willett again let silence answer for him.
      But after all, this was not the final phase of the matter. Reaching for his handkerchief before rising to leave, Dr. Willett's fingers closed upon a piece of paper in his pocket which had not been there before, and which was companioned by the candles and matches he had seized in the vanished vault. It was a common sheet, torn obviously from the cheap pad in that fabulous room of horror somewhere underground, and the writing upon it was that of an ordinary lead pencil - doubtless the one which had lain beside the pad. It was folded very carelessly, and beyond the faint acrid scent of the cryptic chamber bore no print or mark of any world but this. But in the text itself it did indeed reek with wonder; for here was no script of any wholesome age, but the laboured strokes of mediaeval darkness, scarcely legible to the laymen who now strained over it, yet having combinations of symbols which seemed vaguely familiar. The briefly scrawled message was this, and its mystery lent purpose to the shaken pair, who forthwith walked steadily out to the Ward car and gave orders to be driven first to a quiet dining place and then to the John Hay Library on the hill.



      At the library it was easy to find good manuals of palaeography, and over these the two men puzzled till the lights of evening shone out from the great chandelier. In the end they found what was needed. The letters were indeed no fantastic invention, but the normal script of a very dark period. They were the pointed Saxon minuscules of the eighth or ninth century A.D., and brought with them memories of an uncouth time when under a fresh Christian veneer ancient faiths and ancient rites stirred stealthily, and the pale moon of Britain looked sometimes on strange deeds in the Roman ruins of Caerleon and Hexham, and by the towers along Hadrian's crumbling wall. The words were in such Latin as a barbarous age might remember - ""Corvinus necandus est. Cadaver aq(ua) forti dissolvendum, nec aliq(ui)d retinendum. Tace ut potes."" - which may roughly be translated, ""Curwen must be killed. The body must be dissolved in aqua fortis, nor must anything be retained. Keep silence as best you are able.""
      Willett and Mr. Ward were mute and baffled. They had met the unknown, and found that they lacked emotions to respond to it as they vaguely believed they ought. With Willett, especially, the capacity for receiving fresh impressions of awe was well-nigh exhausted; and both men sat still and helpless till the closing of the library forced them to leave. Then they drove listlessly to the Ward mansion in Prospect Street, and talked to no purpose into the night. The doctor rested toward morning, but did not go home. And he was still there Sunday noon when a telephone message came from the detectives who had been assigned to look up Dr. Allen.
      Mr. Ward, who was pacing nervously about in a dressing-gown, answered the call in person; and told the men to come up early the next day when he heard their report was almost ready. Both Willett and he were glad that this phase of the matter was taking form, for whatever the origin of the strange minuscule message, it seemed certain that the ""Curwen"" who must be destroyed could be no other than the bearded and spectacled stranger. Charles had feared this man, and had said in the frantic note that he must be killed and dissolved in acid. Allen, moreover, had been receiving letters from the strange wizards in Europe under the name of Curwen, and palpably regarded himself as an avatar of the bygone necromancer. And now from a fresh and unknown source had come a message saying that ""Curwen"" must be killed and dissolved in acid. The linkage was too unmistakable to be factitious; and besides, was not Allen planning to murder young Ward upon the advice of the creature called Hutchinson? Of course, the letter they had seen had never reached the bearded stranger; but from its text they could see that Allen had already formed plans for dealing with the youth if he grew too 'squeamish'. Without doubt, Allen must be apprehended; and even if the most drastic directions were not carried out, he must be placed where he could inflict no harm upon Charles Ward.
      That afternoon, hoping against hope to extract some gleam of information anent the inmost mysteries from the only available one capable of giving it, the father and the doctor went down the bay and called on young Charles at the hospital. Simply and gravely Willett told him all he had found, and noticed how pale he turned as each description made certain the truth of the discovery. The physician employed as much dramatic effect as he could, and watched for a wincing on Charles's part when he approached the matter of the covered pits and the nameless hybrids within. But Ward did not wince. Willett paused, and his voice grew indignant as he spoke of how the things were starving. He taxed the youth with shocking inhumanity, and shivered when only a sardonic laugh came in reply. For Charles, having dropped as useless his pretence that the crypt did not exist, seemed to see some ghastly jest in this affair; and chuckled hoarsely at something which amused him. Then he whispered, in accents doubly terrible because of the cracked voice he used, ""Damn 'em, they do eat, but they don't need to! That's the rare part! A month, you say, without food? Lud, Sir, you be modest! D'ye know, that was the joke on poor old Whipple with his virtuous bluster! Kill everything off, would he? Why, damme, he was half-deaf with the noise from Outside and never saw or heard aught from the wells! He never dreamed they were there at all! Devil take ye, those cursed things have been howling down there ever since Curwen was done for a hundred and fifty-seven years gone!""
      But no more than this could Willett get from the youth. Horrified, yet almost convinced against his will, he went on with his tale in the hope that some incident might startle his auditor out of the mad composure he maintained. Looking at the youth's face, the doctor could not but feel a kind of terror at the changes which recent months had wrought. Truly, the boy had drawn down nameless horrors from the skies. When the room with the formulae and the greenish dust was mentioned, Charles shewed his first sign of animation. A quizzical look overspread his face as he heard what Willett had read on the pad, and he ventured the mild statement that those notes were old ones, of no possible significance to anyone not deeply initiated in the history of magic. ""But,"" he added, ""had you but known the words to bring up that which I had out in the cup, you had not been here to tell me this. 'Twas Number 118, and I conceive you would have shook had you looked it up in my list in t'other room. 'Twas never raised by me, but I meant to have it up that day you came to invite me hither.""
      Then Willett told of the formula he had spoken and of the greenish-black smoke which had arisen; and as he did so he saw true fear dawn for the first time on Charles Ward's face. ""It came, and you be here alive?"" As Ward croaked the words his voice seemed almost to burst free of its trammels and sink to cavernous abysses of uncanny resonance. Willett, gifted with a flash of inspiration, believed he saw the situation, and wove into his reply a caution from a letter he remembered. ""No. 118, you say? But don't forget that stones are all changed now in nine grounds out of ten. You are never sure till you question!"" And then, without warning, he drew forth the minuscule message and flashed it before the patient's eyes. He could have wished no stronger result, for Charles Ward fainted forthwith.
      All this conversation, of course, had been conducted with the greatest secrecy lest the resident alienists accuse the father and the physician of encouraging a madman in his delusions. Unaided, too, Dr. Willett and Mr. Ward picked up the stricken youth and placed him on the couch. In reviving, the patient mumbled many times of some word which he must get to Orne and Hutchinson at once; so when his consciousness seemed fully back the doctor told him that of those strange creatures at least one was his bitter enemy, and had given Dr. Allen advice for his assassination. This revelation produced no visible effect, and before it was made the visitors could see that their host had already the look of a hunted man. After that he would converse no more, so Willett and the father departed presently; leaving behind a caution against the bearded Allen, to which the youth only replied that this individual was very safely taken care of, and could do no one any harm even if he wished. This was said with an almost evil chuckle very painful to hear. They did not worry about any communications Charles might indite to that monstrous pair in Europe, since they knew that the hospital authorities seized all outgoing mail for censorship and would pass no wild or outrŽ-looking missive.
      There is, however, a curious sequel to the matter of Orne and Hutchinson, if such indeed the exiled wizards were. Moved by some vague presentiment amidst the horrors of that period, Willett arranged with an international press-cutting bureau for accounts of notable current crimes and accidents in Prague and in eastern Transylvania; and after six months believed that he had found two very significant things amongst the multifarious items he received and had translated. One was the total wrecking of a house by night in the oldest quarter of Prague, and the disappearance of the evil old man called Josef Nadek, who had dwelt in it alone ever since anyone could remember. The other was a titan explosion in the Transylvanian mountains east of Rakus, and the utter extirpation with all its inmates of the ill-regarded Castle Ferenczy, whose master was so badly spoken of by peasants and soldiery alike that he would shortly have been summoned to Bucharest for serious questioning had not this incident cut off a career already so long as to antedate all common memory. Willett maintains that the hand which wrote those minuscules was able to wield stronger weapons as well; and that while Curwen was left to him to dispose of, the writer felt able to find and deal with Orne and Hutchinson itself. Of what their fate may have been the doctor strives sedulously not to think.

6.

      The following morning Dr. Willett hastened to the Ward home to be present when the detectives arrived. Allen's destruction or imprisonment - or Curwen's, if one might regard the tacit claim to reincarnation as valid - he felt must be accomplished at any cost, and he communicated this conviction to Mr. Ward as they sat waiting for the men to come. They were downstairs this time, for the upper parts of the house were beginning to be shunned because of a peculiar nauseousness which hung indefinitely about; a nauseousness which the older servants connected with some curse left by the vanished Curwen portrait.
      At nine o'clock the three detectives presented themselves and immediately delivered all that they had to say. They had not, regrettably enough, located the Brava Tony Gomes as they had wished, nor had they found the least trace of Dr. Allen's source or present whereabouts; but they had managed to unearth a considerable number of local impressions and facts concerning the reticent stranger. Allen had struck Pawtuxet people as a vaguely unnatural being, and there was an universal belief that his thick sandy beard was either dyed or false - a belief conclusively upheld by the finding of such a false beard, together with a pair of dark glasses, in his room at the fateful bungalow. His voice, Mr. Ward could well testify from his one telephone conversation, had a depth and hollowness that could not be forgotten; and his glance seemed malign even through his smoked and horn-rimmed glasses. One shopkeeper, in the course of negotiations, had seen a specimen of his handwriting and declared it was very queer and crabbed; this being confirmed by pencilled notes of no clear meaning found in his room and identified by the merchant. In connexion with the vampirism rumours of the preceding summer, a majority of the gossips believed that Allen rather than Ward was the actual vampire. Statements were also obtained from the officials who had visited the bungalow after the unpleasant incident of the motor truck robbery. They had felt less of the sinister in Dr. Allen, but had recognised him as the dominant figure in the queer shadowy cottage. The place had been too dark for them to observe him clearly, but they would know him again if they saw him. His beard had looked odd, and they thought he had some slight scar above his dark spectacled right eye. As for the detectives' search of Allen's room, it yielded nothing definite save the beard and glasses, and several pencilled notes in a crabbed writing which Willett at once saw was identical with that shared by the old Curwen manuscripts and by the voluminous recent notes of young Ward found in the vanished catacombs of horror.
      Dr. Willett and Mr. Ward caught something of a profound, subtle, and insidious cosmic fear from this data as it was gradually unfolded, and almost trembled in following up the vague, mad thought which had simultaneously reached their minds. The false beard and glasses - the crabbed Curwen penmanship - the old portrait and its tiny scar - and the altered youth in the hospital with such a scar - that deep, hollow voice on the telephone - was it not of this that Mr. Ward was reminded when his son barked forth those pitiable tones to which he now claimed to be reduced? Who had ever seen Charles and Allen together? Yes, the officials had once, but who later on? Was it not when Allen left that Charles suddenly lost his growing fright and began to live wholly at the bungalow? Curwen - Allen - Ward - in what blasphemous and abominable fusion had two ages and two persons become involved? That damnable resemblance of the picture to Charles - had it not used to stare and stare, and follow the boy around the room with its eyes? Why, too, did both Allen and Charles copy Joseph Curwen's handwriting, even when alone and off guard? And then the frightful work of those people - the lost crypt of horrors that had aged the doctor overnight; the starved monsters in the noisome pits; the awful formula which had yielded such nameless results; the message in minuscules found in Willett's pocket; the papers and the letters and all the talk of graves and ""salts"" and discoveries - whither did everything lead? In the end Mr. Ward did the most sensible thing. Steeling himself against any realisation of why he did it, he gave the detectives an article to be shewn to such Pawtuxet shopkeepers as had seen the portentous Dr. Allen. That article was a photograph of his luckless son, on which he now carefully drew in ink the pair of heavy glasses and the black pointed beard which the men had brought from Allen's room.
      For two hours he waited with the doctor in the oppressive house where fear and miasma were slowly gathering as the empty panel in the upstairs library leered and leered and leered. Then the men returned. Yes. The altered photograph was a very passable likeness of Dr. Allen. Mr. Ward turned pale, and Willett wiped a suddenly dampened brow with his handkerchief. Allen - Ward - Curwen - it was becoming too hideous for coherent thought. What had the boy called out of the void, and what had it done to him? What, really, had happened from first to last? Who was this Allen who sought to kill Charles as too 'squeamish', and why had his destined victim said in the postscript to that frantic letter that he must be so completely obliterated in acid? Why, too, had the minuscule message, of whose origin no one dared think, said that ""Curwen"" must be likewise obliterated? What was the change, and when had the final stage occurred? That day when his frantic note was received - he had been nervous all the morning, then there was an alteration. He had slipped out unseen and swaggered boldly in past the men hired to guard him. That was the time, when he was out. But no - had he not cried out in terror as he entered his study - this very room? What had he found there? Or wait - what had found him? That simulacrum which brushed boldly in without having been seen to go - was that an alien shadow and a horror forcing itself upon a trembling figure which had never gone out at all? Had not the butler spoken of queer noises?
      Willett rang for the man and asked him some low-toned questions. It had, surely enough, been a bad business. There had been noises - a cry, a gasp, a choking, and a sort of clattering or creaking or thumping, or all of these. And Mr. Charles was not the same when he stalked out without a word. The butler shivered as he spoke, and sniffed at the heavy air that blew down from some open window upstairs. Terror had settled definitely upon the house, and only the business-like detectives failed to imbibe a full measure of it. Even they were restless, for this case had held vague elements in the background which pleased them not at all. Dr. Willett was thinking deeply and rapidly, and his thoughts were terrible ones. Now and then he would almost break into muttering as he ran over in his head a new, appalling, and increasingly conclusive chain of nightmare happenings.
      Then Mr. Ward made a sign that the conference was over, and everyone save him and the doctor left the room. It was noon now, but shadows as of coming night seemed to engulf the phantom-haunted mansion. Willett began talking very seriously to his host, and urged that he leave a great deal of the future investigation to him. There would be, he predicted, certain obnoxious elements which a friend could bear better than a relative. As family physician he must have a free hand, and the first thing he required was a period alone and undisturbed in the abandoned library upstairs, where the ancient overmantel had gathered about itself an aura of noisome horror more intense than when Joseph Curwen's features themselves glanced slyly down from the painted panel.
      Mr. Ward, dazed by the flood of grotesque morbidities and unthinkably maddening suggestions that poured in upon him from every side, could only acquiesce; and half an hour later the doctor was locked in the shunned room with the panelling from Olney Court. The father, listening outside, heard fumbling sounds of moving and rummaging as the moments passed; and finally a wrench and a creak, as if a tight cupboard door were being opened. Then there was a muffled cry, a kind of snorting choke, and a hasty slamming of whatever had been opened. Almost at once the key rattled and Willett appeared in the hall, haggard and ghastly, and demanding wood for the real fireplace on the south wall of the room. The furnace was not enough, he said; and the electric log had little practical use. Longing yet not daring to ask questions, Mr. Ward gave the requisite orders and a man brought some stout pine logs, shuddering as he entered the tainted air of the library to place them in the grate. Willett meanwhile had gone up to the dismantled laboratory and brought down a few odds and ends not included in the moving of the July before. They were in a covered basket, and Mr. Ward never saw what they were.
      Then the doctor locked himself in the library once more, and by the clouds of smoke which rolled down past the windows from the chimney it was known that he had lighted the fire. Later, after a great rustling of newspapers, that odd wrench and creaking were heard again; followed by a thumping which none of the eavesdroppers liked. Thereafter two suppressed cries of Willett's were heard, and hard upon these came a swishing rustle of indefinable hatefulness. Finally the smoke that the wind beat down from the chimney grew very dark and acrid, and everyone wished that the weather had spared them this choking and venomous inundation of peculiar fumes. Mr. Ward's head reeled, and the servants all clustered together in a knot to watch the horrible black smoke swoop down. After an age of waiting the vapours seemed to lighten, and half-formless sounds of scraping, sweeping, and other minor operations were heard behind the bolted door. And at last, after the slamming of some cupboard within, Willett made his appearance - sad, pale, and haggard, and bearing the cloth-draped basket he had taken from the upstairs laboratory. He had left the window open, and into that once accursed room was pouring a wealth of pure, wholesome air to mix with a queer new smell of disinfectants. The ancient overmantel still lingered; but it seemed robbed of malignity now, and rose as calm and stately in its white panelling as if it had never borne the picture of Joseph Curwen. Night was coming on, yet this time its shadows held no latent fright, but only a gentle melancholy. Of what he had done the doctor would never speak. To Mr. Ward he said, ""I can answer no questions, but I will say that there are different kinds of magic. I have made a great purgation, and those in this house will sleep the better for it.""

7.

      That Dr. Willett's ""purgation"" had been an ordeal almost as nerve-racking in its way as his hideous wandering in the vanished crypt is shewn by the fact that the elderly physician gave out completely as soon as he reached home that evening. For three days he rested constantly in his room, though servants later muttered something about having heard him after midnight on Wednesday, when the outer door softly opened and closed with phenomenal softness. Servants' imaginations, fortunately, are limited, else comment might have been excited by an item in Thursday's Evening Bulletin which ran as follows:
North End Ghouls
Active Again

After a lull of ten months since the dastardly vandalism in the Weeden lot at the North Burial Ground, a nocturnal prowler was glimpsed early this morning in the same cemetery by Robert Hart, the night watchman. Happening to glance for a moment from his shelter at about 2 a.m., Hart observed the glow of a lantern or pocket torch not far to the northwest, and upon opening the door detected the figure of a man with a trowel very plainly silhouetted against a nearby electric light. At once starting in pursuit, he saw the figure dart hurriedly toward the main entrance, gaining the street and losing himself among the shadows before approach or capture was possible.
      Like the first of the ghouls active during the past year, this intruder had done no real damage before detection. A vacant part of the Ward lot shewed signs of a little superficial digging, but nothing even nearly the size of a grave had been attempted, and no previous grave had been disturbed.
      Hart, who cannot describe the prowler except as a small man probably having a full beard, inclines to the view that all three of the digging incidents have a common source; but police from the Second Station think otherwise on account of the savage nature of the second incident, where an ancient coffin was removed and its headstone violently shattered.
      The first of the incidents, in which it is thought an attempt to bury something was frustrated, occurred a year ago last March, and has been attributed to bootleggers seeking a cache. It is possible, says Sergt. Riley, that this third affair is of similar nature. Officers at the Second Station are taking especial pains to capture the gang of miscreants responsible for these repeated outrages.
      All day Thursday Dr. Willett rested as if recuperating from something past or nerving himself for something to come. In the evening he wrote a note to Mr. Ward, which was delivered the next morning and which caused the half-dazed parent to ponder long and deeply. Mr. Ward had not been able to go down to business since the shock of Monday with its baffling reports and its sinister ""purgation"", but he found something calming about the doctor's letter in spite of the despair it seemed to promise and the fresh mysteries it seemed to evoke.
""10 Barnes St.,            
Providence, R.I.,      
April 12, 1928.
""Dear Theodore: - I feel that I must say a word to you before doing what I am going to do tomorrow. It will conclude the terrible business we have been going through (for I feel that no spade is ever likely to reach that monstrous place we know of), but I'm afraid it won't set your mind at rest unless I expressly assure you how very conclusive it is.
      ""You have known me ever since you were a small boy, so I think you will not distrust me when I hint that some matters are best left undecided and unexplored. It is better that you attempt no further speculation as to Charles's case, and almost imperative that you tell his mother nothing more than she already suspects. When I call on you tomorrow Charles will have escaped. That is all which need remain in anyone's mind. He was mad, and he escaped. You can tell his mother gently and gradually about the mad part when you stop sending the typed notes in his name. I'd advise you to join her in Atlantic City and take a rest yourself. God knows you need one after this shock, as I do myself. I am going South for a while to calm down and brace up.
      ""So don't ask me any questions when I call. It may be that something will go wrong, but I'll tell you if it does. I don't think it will. There will be nothing more to worry about, for Charles will be very, very safe. He is now - safer than you dream. You need hold no fears about Allen, and who or what he is. He forms as much a part of the past as Joseph Curwen's picture, and when I ring your doorbell you may feel certain that there is no such person. And what wrote that minuscule message will never trouble you or yours.
      ""But you must steel yourself to melancholy, and prepare your wife to do the same. I must tell you frankly that Charles's escape will not mean his restoration to you. He has been afflicted with a peculiar disease, as you must realise from the subtle physical as well as mental changes in him, and you must not hope to see him again. Have only this consolation - that he was never a fiend or even truly a madman, but only an eager, studious, and curious boy whose love of mystery and of the past was his undoing. He stumbled on things no mortal ought ever to know, and reached back through the years as no one ever should reach; and something came out of those years to engulf him.
      ""And now comes the matter in which I must ask you to trust me most of all. For there will be, indeed, no uncertainty about Charles's fate. In about a year, say, you can if you wish devise a suitable account of the end; for the boy will be no more. You can put up a stone in your lot at the North Burial Ground exactly ten feet west of your father's and facing the same way, and that will mark the true resting-place of your son. Nor need you fear that it will mark any abnormality or changeling. The ashes in that grave will be those of your own unaltered bone and sinew - of the real Charles Dexter Ward whose mind you watched from infancy - the real Charles with the olive-mark on his hip and without the black witch-mark on his chest or the pit on his forehead. The Charles who never did actual evil, and who will have paid with his life for his 'squeamishness'.
      ""That is all. Charles will have escaped, and a year from now you can put up his stone. Do not question me tomorrow. And believe that the honour of your ancient family remains untainted now, as it has been at all times in the past.
      ""With profoundest sympathy, and exhortations to fortitude, calmness, and resignation, I am ever
Sincerely your friend,      
Marinus B. Willett""
      So on the morning of Friday, April 13, 1928, Marinus Bicknell Willett visited the room of Charles Dexter Ward at Dr. Waite's private hospital on Conanicut Island. The youth, though making no attempt to evade his caller, was in a sullen mood; and seemed disinclined to open the conversation which Willett obviously desired. The doctor's discovery of the crypt and his monstrous experience therein had of course created a new source of embarrassment, so that both hesitated perceptibly after the interchange of a few strained formalities. Then a new element of constraint crept in, as Ward seemed to read behind the doctor's mask-like face a terrible purpose which had never been there before. The patient quailed, conscious that since the last visit there had been a change whereby the solicitous family physician had given place to the ruthless and implacable avenger.
      Ward actually turned pale, and the doctor was the first to speak. ""More,"" he said, ""has been found out, and I must warn you fairly that a reckoning is due.""
      ""Digging again, and coming upon more poor starving pets?"" was the ironic reply. It was evident that the youth meant to shew bravado to the last.
      ""No,"" Willett slowly rejoined, ""this time I did not have to dig. We have had men looking up Dr. Allen, and they found the false beard and spectacles in the bungalow.""
      ""Excellent,"" commented the disquieted host in an effort to be wittily insulting, ""and I trust they proved more becoming than the beard and glasses you now have on!""
      ""They would become you very well,"" came the even and studied response, ""as indeed they seem to have done.""
      As Willett said this, it almost seemed as though a cloud passed over the sun; though there was no change in the shadows on the floor. Then Ward ventured:
      ""And is this what asks so hotly for a reckoning? Suppose a man does find it now and then useful to be twofold?""
      ""No,"" said Willett gravely, ""again you are wrong. It is no business of mine if any man seeks duality; provided he has any right to exist at all, and provided he does not destroy what called him out of space.""
      Ward now started violently. ""Well, Sir, what have ye found, and what d'ye want with me?""
      The doctor let a little time elapse before replying, as if choosing his words for an effective answer.
      ""I have found,"" he finally intoned, ""something in a cupboard behind an ancient overmantel where a picture once was, and I have burned it and buried the ashes where the grave of Charles Dexter Ward ought to be.""
      The madman choked and sprang from the chair in which he had been sitting:
      ""Damn ye, who did ye tell - and who'll believe it was he after these full two months, with me alive? What d'ye mean to do?""
      Willett, though a small man, actually took on a kind of judicial majesty as he calmed the patient with a gesture.
      ""I have told no one. This is no common case - it is a madness out of time and a horror from beyond the spheres which no police or lawyers or courts or alienists could ever fathom or grapple with. Thank God some chance has left inside me the spark of imagination, that I might not go astray in thinking out this thing. You cannot deceive me, Joseph Curwen, for I know that your accursed magic is true!
      ""I know how you wove the spell that brooded outside the years and fastened on your double and descendant; I know how you drew him into the past and got him to raise you up from your detestable grave; I know how he kept you hidden in his laboratory while you studied modern things and roved abroad as a vampire by night, and how you later shewed yourself in beard and glasses that no one might wonder at your godless likeness to him; I know what you resolved to do when he balked at your monstrous rifling of the world's tombs, and at what you planned afterward, and I know how you did it.
      ""You left off your beard and glasses and fooled the guards around the house. They thought it was he who went in, and they thought it was he who came out when you had strangled and hidden him. But you hadn't reckoned on the different contents of two minds. You were a fool, Curwen, to fancy that a mere visual identity would be enough. Why didn't you think of the speech and the voice and the handwriting? It hasn't worked, you see, after all. You know better than I who or what wrote that message in minuscules, but I will warn you it was not written in vain. There are abominations and blasphemies which must be stamped out, and I believe that the writer of those words will attend to Orne and Hutchinson. One of those creatures wrote you once, 'do not call up any that you can not put down'. You were undone once before, perhaps in that very way, and it may be that your own evil magic will undo you all again. Curwen, a man can't tamper with Nature beyond certain limits, and every horror you have woven will rise up to wipe you out.""
      But here the doctor was cut short by a convulsive cry from the creature before him. Hopelessly at bay, weaponless, and knowing that any show of physical violence would bring a score of attendants to the doctor's rescue, Joseph Curwen had recourse to his one ancient ally, and began a series of cabbalistic motions with his forefingers as his deep, hollow voice, now unconcealed by feigned hoarseness, bellowed out the opening words of a terrible formula.
      ""PER ADONAI ELOIM, ADONAI JEHOVA, ADONAI SABAOTH, METRATON. . . .""
      But Willett was too quick for him. Even as the dogs in the yard outside began to howl, and even as a chill wind sprang suddenly up from the bay, the doctor commenced the solemn and measured intonation of that which he had meant all along to recite. An eye for an eye - magic for magic - let the outcome shew how well the lesson of the abyss had been learned! So in a clear voice Marinus Bicknell Willett began the second of that pair of formulae whose first had raised the writer of those minuscules - the cryptic invocation whose heading was the Dragon's Tail, sign of the descending node - 

""OGTHROD AI'F
GEB'L - EE'H
YOG-SOTHOTH
'NGAH'NG AI'Y
ZHRO!""

      At the very first word from Willett's mouth the previously commenced formula of the patient stopped short. Unable to speak, the monster made wild motions with his arms until they too were arrested. When the awful name of Yog-Sothoth was uttered, the hideous change began. It was not merely a dissolution, but rather a transformation or recapitulation; and Willett shut his eyes lest he faint before the rest of the incantation could be pronounced.
      But he did not faint, and that man of unholy centuries and forbidden secrets never troubled the world again. The madness out of time had subsided, and the case of Charles Dexter Ward was closed. Opening his eyes before staggering out of that room of horror, Dr. Willett saw that what he had kept in memory had not been kept amiss. There had, as he had predicted, been no need for acids. For like his accursed picture a year before, Joseph Curwen now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust.
","II.

It was in the township of Dunwich, in a large and partly inhabited farmhouse set against a hillside four miles from the village and a mile and a half from any other dwelling, that Wilbur Whateley was born at 5 A.M. on Sunday, the second of February, 1913. This date was recalled because it was Candlemas, which people in Dunwich curiously observe under another name; and because the noises in the hills had sounded, and all the dogs of the countryside had barked persistently, throughout the night before. Less worthy of notice was the fact that the mother was one of the decadent Whateleys, a somewhat deformed, unattractive albino woman of thirty-five, living with an aged and half-insane father about whom the most frightful tales of wizardry had been whispered in his youth. Lavinia Whateley had no known husband, but according to the custom of the region made no attempt to disavow the child; concerning the other side of whose ancestry the country folk might—and did—speculate as widely as they chose. On the contrary, she seemed strangely proud of the dark, goatish-looking infant who formed such a contrast to her own sickly and pink-eyed albinism, and was heard to mutter many curious prophecies about its unusual powers and tremendous future.
      Lavinia was one who would be apt to mutter such things, for she was a lone creature given to wandering amidst thunderstorms in the hills and trying to read the great odorous books which her father had inherited through two centuries of Whateleys, and which were fast falling to pieces with age and worm-holes. She had never been to school, but was filled with disjointed scraps of ancient lore that Old Whateley had taught her. The remote farmhouse had always been feared because of Old Whateley’s reputation for black magic, and the unexplained death by violence of Mrs. Whateley when Lavinia was twelve years old had not helped to make the place popular. Isolated among strange influences, Lavinia was fond of wild and grandiose day-dreams and singular occupations; nor was her leisure much taken up by household cares in a home from which all standards of order and cleanliness had long since disappeared.
      There was a hideous screaming which echoed above even the hill noises and the dogs’ barking on the night Wilbur was born, but no known doctor or midwife presided at his coming. Neighbours knew nothing of him till a week afterward, when Old Whateley drove his sleigh through the snow into Dunwich Village and discoursed incoherently to the group of loungers at Osborn’s general store. There seemed to be a change in the old man—an added element of furtiveness in the clouded brain which subtly transformed him from an object to a subject of fear—though he was not one to be perturbed by any common family event. Amidst it all he shewed some trace of the pride later noticed in his daughter, and what he said of the child’s paternity was remembered by many of his hearers years afterward.
      “I dun’t keer what folks think—ef Lavinny’s boy looked like his pa, he wouldn’t look like nothin’ ye expeck. Ye needn’t think the only folks is the folks hereabaouts. Lavinny’s read some, an’ has seed some things the most o’ ye only tell abaout. I calc’late her man is as good a husban’ as ye kin find this side of Aylesbury; an’ ef ye knowed as much abaout the hills as I dew, ye wouldn’t ast no better church weddin’ nor her’n. Let me tell ye suthin’—some day yew folks’ll hear a child o’ Lavinny’s a-callin’ its father’s name on the top o’ Sentinel Hill!”
      The only persons who saw Wilbur during the first month of his life were old Zechariah Whateley, of the undecayed Whateleys, and Earl Sawyer’s common-law wife, Mamie Bishop. Mamie’s visit was frankly one of curiosity, and her subsequent tales did justice to her observations; but Zechariah came to lead a pair of Alderney cows which Old Whateley had bought of his son Curtis. This marked the beginning of a course of cattle-buying on the part of small Wilbur’s family which ended only in 1928, when the Dunwich horror came and went; yet at no time did the ramshackle Whateley barn seem overcrowded with livestock. There came a period when people were curious enough to steal up and count the herd that grazed precariously on the steep hillside above the old farmhouse, and they could never find more than ten or twelve anaemic, bloodless-looking specimens. Evidently some blight or distemper, perhaps sprung from the unwholesome pasturage or the diseased fungi and timbers of the filthy barn, caused a heavy mortality amongst the Whateley animals. Odd wounds or sores, having something of the aspect of incisions, seemed to afflict the visible cattle; and once or twice during the earlier months certain callers fancied they could discern similar sores about the throats of the grey, unshaven old man and his slatternly, crinkly-haired albino daughter.
      In the spring after Wilbur’s birth Lavinia resumed her customary rambles in the hills, bearing in her misproportioned arms the swarthy child. Public interest in the Whateleys subsided after most of the country folk had seen the baby, and no one bothered to comment on the swift development which that newcomer seemed every day to exhibit. Wilbur’s growth was indeed phenomenal, for within three months of his birth he had attained a size and muscular power not usually found in infants under a full year of age. His motions and even his vocal sounds shewed a restraint and deliberateness highly peculiar in an infant, and no one was really unprepared when, at seven months, he began to walk unassisted, with falterings which another month was sufficient to remove.
      It was somewhat after this time—on Hallowe’en—that a great blaze was seen at midnight on the top of Sentinel Hill where the old table-like stone stands amidst its tumulus of ancient bones. Considerable talk was started when Silas Bishop—of the undecayed Bishops—mentioned having seen the boy running sturdily up that hill ahead of his mother about an hour before the blaze was remarked. Silas was rounding up a stray heifer, but he nearly forgot his mission when he fleetingly spied the two figures in the dim light of his lantern. They darted almost noiselessly through the underbrush, and the astonished watcher seemed to think they were entirely unclothed. Afterward he could not be sure about the boy, who may have had some kind of a fringed belt and a pair of dark trunks or trousers on. Wilbur was never subsequently seen alive and conscious without complete and tightly buttoned attire, the disarrangement or threatened disarrangement of which always seemed to fill him with anger and alarm. His contrast with his squalid mother and grandfather in this respect was thought very notable until the horror of 1928 suggested the most valid of reasons.
      The next January gossips were mildly interested in the fact that “Lavinny’s black brat” had commenced to talk, and at the age of only eleven months. His speech was somewhat remarkable both because of its difference from the ordinary accents of the region, and because it displayed a freedom from infantile lisping of which many children of three or four might well be proud. The boy was not talkative, yet when he spoke he seemed to reflect some elusive element wholly unpossessed by Dunwich and its denizens. The strangeness did not reside in what he said, or even in the simple idioms he used; but seemed vaguely linked with his intonation or with the internal organs that produced the spoken sounds. His facial aspect, too, was remarkable for its maturity; for though he shared his mother’s and grandfather’s chinlessness, his firm and precociously shaped nose united with the expression of his large, dark, almost Latin eyes to give him an air of quasi-adulthood and well-nigh preternatural intelligence. He was, however, exceedingly ugly despite his appearance of brilliancy; there being something almost goatish or animalistic about his thick lips, large-pored, yellowish skin, coarse crinkly hair, and oddly elongated ears. He was soon disliked even more decidedly than his mother and grandsire, and all conjectures about him were spiced with references to the bygone magic of Old Whateley, and how the hills once shook when he shrieked the dreadful name of Yog-Sothoth in the midst of a circle of stones with a great book open in his arms before him. Dogs abhorred the boy, and he was always obliged to take various defensive measures against their barking menace.
",True
"III. A Search and an Evocation

1.

Charles Ward, as we have seen, first learned in 1918 of his descent from Joseph Curwen. That he at once took an intense interest in everything pertaining to the bygone mystery is not to be wondered at; for every vague rumour that he had heard of Curwen now became something vital to himself, in whom flowed Curwen's blood. No spirited and imaginative genealogist could have done otherwise than begin forthwith an avid and systematic collection of Curwen data.
      In his first delvings there was not the slightest attempt at secrecy; so that even Dr. Lyman hesitates to date the youth's madness from any period before the close of 1919. He talked freely with his family - though his mother was not particularly pleased to own an ancestor like Curwen - and with the officials of the various museums and libraries he visited. In applying to private families for records thought to be in their possession he made no concealment of his object, and shared the somewhat amused scepticism with which the accounts of the old diarists and letter-writers were regarded. He often expressed a keen wonder as to what really had taken place a century and a half before at that Pawtuxet farmhouse whose site he vainly tried to find, and what Joseph Curwen really had been.
      When he came across the Smith diary and archives and encountered the letter from Jedediah Orne he decided to visit Salem and look up Curwen's early activities and connexions there, which he did during the Easter vacation of 1919. At the Essex Institute, which was well known to him from former sojourns in the glamorous old town of crumbling Puritan gables and clustered gambrel roofs, he was very kindly received, and unearthed there a considerable amount of Curwen data. He found that his ancestor was born in Salem-Village, now Danvers, seven miles from town, on the eighteenth of February (O.S.) 1662-3; and that he had run away to sea at the age of fifteen, not appearing again for nine years, when he returned with the speech, dress, and manners of a native Englishman and settled in Salem proper. At that time he had little to do with his family, but spent most of his hours with the curious books he had brought from Europe, and the strange chemicals which came for him on ships from England, France, and Holland. Certain trips of his into the country were the objects of much local inquisitiveness, and were whisperingly associated with vague rumours of fires on the hills at night.
      Curwen's only close friends had been one Edward Hutchinson of Salem-Village and one Simon Orne of Salem. With these men he was often seen in conference about the Common, and visits among them were by no means infrequent. Hutchinson had a house well out toward the woods, and it was not altogether liked by sensitive people because of the sounds heard there at night. He was said to entertain strange visitors, and the lights seen from his windows were not always of the same colour. The knowledge he displayed concerning long-dead persons and long-forgotten events was considered distinctly unwholesome, and he disappeared about the time the witchcraft panic began, never to be heard from again. At that time Joseph Curwen also departed, but his settlement in Providence was soon learned of. Simon Orne lived in Salem until 1720, when his failure to grow visibly old began to excite attention. He thereafter disappeared, though thirty years later his precise counterpart and self-styled son turned up to claim his property. The claim was allowed on the strength of documents in Simon Orne's known hand, and Jedediah Orne continued to dwell in Salem till 1771, when certain letters from Providence citizens to the Rev. Thomas Barnard and others brought about his quiet removal to parts unknown.
      Certain documents by and about all of these strange characters were available at the Essex Institute, the Court House, and the Registry of Deeds, and included both harmless commonplaces such as land titles and bills of sale, and furtive fragments of a more provocative nature. There were four or five unmistakable allusions to them on the witchcraft trial records; as when one Hepzibah Lawson swore on July 10, 1692, at the Court of Oyer and Terminer under Judge Hathorne, that 'fortie Witches and the Blacke Man were wont to meete in the Woodes behind Mr. Hutchinson's house', and one Amity How declared at a session of August 8th before Judge Gedney that 'Mr. G. B. (Rev. George Burroughs) on that Nighte putt ye Divell his Marke upon Bridget S., Jonathan A., Simon O., Deliverance W., Joseph C., Susan P., Mehitable C., and Deborah B.' Then there was a catalogue of Hutchinson's uncanny library as found after his disappearance, and an unfinished manuscript in his handwriting, couched in a cipher none could read. Ward had a photostatic copy of this manuscript made, and began to work casually on the cipher as soon as it was delivered to him. After the following August his labours on the cipher became intense and feverish, and there is reason to believe from his speech and conduct that he hit upon the key before October or November. He never stated, though, whether or not he had succeeded.
      But of the greatest immediate interest was the Orne material. It took Ward only a short time to prove from identity of penmanship a thing he had already considered established from the text of the letter to Curwen; namely, that Simon Orne and his supposed son were one and the same person. As Orne had said to his correspondent, it was hardly safe to live too long in Salem, hence he resorted to a thirty-year sojourn abroad, and did not return to claim his lands except as a representative of a new generation. Orne had apparently been careful to destroy most of his correspondence, but the citizens who took action in 1771 found and preserved a few letters and papers which excited their wonder. There were cryptic formulae and diagrams in his and other hands which Ward now either copied with care or had photographed, and one extremely mysterious letter in a chirography that the searcher recognised from items in the Registry of Deeds as positively Joseph Curwen's.
      This Curwen letter, though undated as to the year, was evidently not the one in answer to which Orne had written the confiscated missive; and from internal evidence Ward placed it not much later than 1750. It may not be amiss to give the text in full, as a sample of the style of one whose history was so dark and terrible. The recipient is addressed as ""Simon"", but a line (whether drawn by Curwen or Orne Ward could not tell) is run through the word.
Prouidence, I. May (Ut. vulgo)
Brother: - 
My honour'd Antient ffriende, due Respects and earnest Wishes to Him whom we serve for yr eternall Power. I am just come upon That which you ought to knowe, concern'g the Matter of the Laste Extremitie and what to doe regard'g yt. I am not dispos'd to followe you in go'g Away on acct. of my Yeares, for Prouidence hath not ye Sharpeness of ye Bay in hunt'g oute uncommon Things and bringinge to Tryall. I am ty'd up in Shippes and Goodes, and cou'd not doe as you did, besides the Whiche my ffarme at Patuxet hath under it What you Knowe, that wou'd not waite for my com'g Backe as an Other.
      But I am not unreadie for harde ffortunes, as I haue tolde you, and haue longe work'd upon ye Way of get'g Backe after ye Laste. I laste Night strucke on ye Wordes that bringe up YOGGE-SOTHOTHE, and sawe for ye firste Time that fface spoke of by Ibn Schacabao in ye  -  - . And IT said, that ye III Psalme in ye Liber-Damnatus holdes ye Clauicle. With Sunne in V House, Saturne in Trine, drawe ye Pentagram of Fire, and saye ye ninth Uerse thrice. This Uerse repeate eache Roodemas and Hallow's Eue; and ye Thing will breede in ye Outside Spheres.
      And of ye Seede of Olde shal One be borne who shal looke Backe, tho' know'g not what he seekes.
      Yett will this availe Nothing if there be no Heir, and if the Saltes, or the Way to make the Saltes, bee not Readie for his Hande; and here I will owne, I have not taken needed Stepps nor founde Much. Ye Process is plaguy harde to come neare; and it uses up such a Store of Specimens, I am harde putte to it to get Enough, notwithstand'g the Sailors I have from ye Indies. Ye People aboute are become curious, but I can stande them off. Ye Gentry are worse than the Populace, be'g more Circumstantiall in their Accts. and more believ'd in what they tell. That Parson and Mr. Merritt have talk'd some, I am fearfull, but no Thing soe far is Dangerous. Ye Chymical substances are easie of get'g, there be'g II. goode Chymists in Towne, Dr. Bowen and Sam: Carew. I am foll'g oute what Borellus saith, and haue Helpe in Abdool Al-Hazred his VII. Booke. Whatever I gette, you shal haue. And in ye meane while, do not neglect to make use of ye Wordes I haue here giuen. I haue them Righte, but if you Desire to see HIM, imploy the Writings on ye Piece of  -  -  that I am putt'g in this Packet. Saye ye Uerses every Roodmas and Hallow's Eue; and if yr Line runn out not, one shall bee in yeares to come that shal looke backe and use what Saltes or Stuff for Saltes you shal leaue him. Job XIV. XIV.
      I rejoice you are again at Salem, and hope I may see you not longe hence. I have a goode Stallion, and am think'g of get'g a Coach, there be'g one (Mr. Merritt's) in Prouidence already, tho' ye Roades are bad. If you are dispos'd to Travel, doe not pass me bye. From Boston take ye Post Rd. thro' Dedham, Wrentham, and Attleborough, goode Taverns be'g at all these Townes. Stop at Mr. Bolcom's in Wrentham, where ye Beddes are finer than Mr. Hatch's, but eate at ye other House for their Cooke is better. Turne into Prou. by Patucket ffalls, and ye Rd. past Mr. Sayles's Tavern. My House opp. Mr. Epenetus Olney's Tavern off ye Towne Street, Ist on ye N. side of Olney's Court. Distance from Boston Stone abt. XLIV Miles.
      Sir, I am yr olde and true ffriend and Servt. in Almousin-Metraton.
Josephus C.
To Mr. Simon Orne,
William's-Lane, in Salem.
      This letter, oddly enough, was what first gave Ward the exact location of Curwen's Providence home; for none of the records encountered up to that time had been at all specific. The discovery was doubly striking because it indicated as the newer Curwen house built in 1761 on the site of the old, a dilapidated building still standing in Olney Court and well known to Ward in his antiquarian rambles over Stampers' Hill. The place was indeed only a few squares from his own home on the great hill's higher ground, and was now the abode of a negro family much esteemed for occasional washing, housecleaning, and furnace-tending services. To find, in distant Salem, such sudden proof of the significance of this familiar rookery in his own family history, was a highly impressive thing to Ward; and he resolved to explore the place immediately upon his return. The more mystical phases of the letter, which he took to be some extravagant kind of symbolism, frankly baffled him; though he noted with a thrill of curiosity that the Biblical passage referred to - Job 14, 14 - was the familiar verse, ""If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.""

2.

      Young Ward came home in a state of pleasant excitement, and spent the following Saturday in a long and exhaustive study of the house in Olney Court. The place, now crumbling with age, had never been a mansion; but was a modest two-and-a-half story wooden town house of the familiar Providence colonial type, with plain peaked roof, large central chimney, and artistically carved doorway with rayed fanlight, triangular pediment, and trim Doric pilasters. It had suffered but little alteration externally, and Ward felt he was gazing on something very close to the sinister matters of his quest.
      The present negro inhabitants were known to him, and he was very courteously shewn about the interior by old Asa and his stout wife Hannah. Here there was more change than the outside indicated, and Ward saw with regret that fully half of the fine scroll-and-urn overmantels and shell-carved cupboard linings were gone, whilst much of the fine wainscotting and bolection moulding was marked, hacked, and gouged, or covered up altogether with cheap wall-paper. In general, the survey did not yield as much as Ward had somehow expected; but it was at least exciting to stand within the ancestral walls which had housed such a man of horror as Joseph Curwen. He saw with a thrill that a monogram had been very carefully effaced from the ancient brass knocker.
      From then until after the close of school Ward spent his time on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher and the accumulation of local Curwen data. The former still proved unyielding; but of the latter he obtained so much, and so many clues to similar data elsewhere, that he was ready by July to make a trip to New London and New York to consult old letters whose presence in those places was indicated. This trip was very fruitful, for it brought him the Fenner letters with their terrible description of the Pawtuxet farmhouse raid, and the Nightingale-Talbot letters in which he learned of the portrait painted on a panel of the Curwen library. This matter of the portrait interested him particularly, since he would have given much to know just what Joseph Curwen looked like; and he decided to make a second search of the house in Olney Court to see if there might not be some trace of the ancient features beneath peeling coats of later paint or layers of mouldy wall-paper.
      Early in August that search took place, and Ward went carefully over the walls of every room sizeable enough to have been by any possibility the library of the evil builder. He paid especial attention to the large panels of such overmantels as still remained; and was keenly excited after about an hour, when on a broad area above the fireplace in a spacious ground-floor room he became certain that the surface brought out by the peeling of several coats of paint was sensibly darker than any ordinary interior paint or the wood beneath it was likely to have been. A few more careful tests with a thin knife, and he knew that he had come upon an oil portrait of great extent. With truly scholarly restraint the youth did not risk the damage which an immediate attempt to uncover the hidden picture with the knife might have done, but just retired from the scene of his discovery to enlist expert help. In three days he returned with an artist of long experience, Mr. Walter C. Dwight, whose studio is near the foot of College Hill; and that accomplished restorer of paintings set to work at once with proper methods and chemical substances. Old Asa and his wife were duly excited over their strange visitors, and were properly reimbursed for this invasion of their domestic hearth.
      As day by day the work of restoration progressed, Charles Ward looked on with growing interest at the lines and shades gradually unveiled after their long oblivion. Dwight had begun at the bottom; hence since the picture was a three-quarter-length one, the face did not come out for some time. It was meanwhile seen that the subject was a spare, well-shaped man with dark-blue coat, embroidered waistcoat, black satin small-clothes, and white silk stockings, seated in a carved chair against the background of a window with wharves and ships beyond. When the head came out it was observed to bear a neat Albemarle wig, and to possess a thin, calm, undistinguished face which seemed somehow familiar to both Ward and the artist. Only at the very last, though, did the restorer and his client begin to gasp with astonishment at the details of that lean, pallid visage, and to recognise with a touch of awe the dramatic trick which heredity had played. For it took the final bath of oil and the final stroke of the delicate scraper to bring out fully the expression which centuries had hidden; and to confront the bewildered Charles Dexter Ward, dweller in the past, with his own living features in the countenance of his horrible great-great-great-grandfather.
      Ward brought his parents to see the marvel he had uncovered, and his father at once determined to purchase the picture despite its execution on stationary panelling. The resemblance to the boy, despite an appearance of rather greater age, was marvellous; and it could be seen that through some trick of atavism the physical contours of Joseph Curwen had found precise duplication after a century and a half. Mrs. Ward's resemblance to her ancestor was not at all marked, though she could recall relatives who had some of the facial characteristics shared by her son and by the bygone Curwen. She did not relish the discovery, and told her husband that he had better burn the picture instead of bringing it home. There was, she averred, something unwholesome about it; not only intrinsically, but in its very resemblance to Charles. Mr. Ward, however, was a practical man of power and affairs - a cotton manufacturer with extensive mills at Riverpoint in the Pawtuxet Valley - and not one to listen to feminine scruples. The picture impressed him mightily with its likeness to his son, and he believed the boy deserved it as a present. In this opinion, it is needless to say, Charles most heartily concurred; and a few days later Mr. Ward located the owner of the house - a small rodent-featured person with a guttural accent - and obtained the whole mantel and overmantel bearing the picture at a curtly fixed priced which cut short the impending torrent of unctuous haggling.
      It now remained to take off the panelling and remove it to the Ward home, where provisions were made for its thorough restoration and installation with an electric mock-fireplace in Charles's third-floor study or library. To Charles was left the task of superintending this removal, and on the twenty-eighth of August he accompanied two expert workmen from the Crooker decorating firm to the house in Olney Court, where the mantel and portrait-bearing overmantel were detached with great care and precision for transportation in the company's motor truck. There was left a space of exposed brickwork marking the chimney's course, and in this young Ward observed a cubical recess about a foot square, which must have lain directly behind the head of the portrait. Curious as to what such a space might mean or contain, the youth approached and looked within; finding beneath the deep coatings of dust and soot some loose yellowed papers, a crude, thick copybook, and a few mouldering textile shreds which may have formed the ribbon binding the rest together. Blowing away the bulk of the dirt and cinders, he took up the book and looked at the bold inscription on its cover. It was in a hand which he had learned to recognise at the Essex Institute, and proclaimed the volume as the ""Journall and Notes of Jos: Curwen, Gent., of Providence-Plantations, Late of Salem.""
      Excited beyond measure by his discovery, Ward shewed the book to the two curious workmen beside him. Their testimony is absolute as to the nature and genuineness of the finding, and Dr. Willett relies on them to help establish his theory that the youth was not mad when he began his major eccentricities. All the other papers were likewise in Curwen's handwriting, and one of them seemed especially portentous because of its inscription: ""To Him Who Shal Come After, & How He May Gett Beyonde Time & ye Spheres."" Another was in a cipher; the same, Ward hoped, as the Hutchinson cipher which had hitherto baffled him. A third, and here the searcher rejoiced, seemed to be a key to the cipher; whilst the fourth and fifth were addressed respectively to ""Edw: Hutchinson, Armiger"" and ""Jedediah Orne, Esq."", 'or Their Heir or Heirs, or Those Represent'g Them'. The sixth and last was inscribed: ""Joseph Curwen his Life and Travells Bet'n ye yeares 1678 and 1687: Of Whither He Voyag'd, Where He Stay'd, Whom He Sawe, and What He Learnt.""

3.

      We have now reached the point from which the more academic school of alienists date Charles Ward's madness. Upon his discovery the youth had looked immediately at a few of the inner pages of the book and manuscripts, and had evidently seen something which impressed him tremendously. Indeed, in shewing the titles to the workmen he appeared to guard the text itself with peculiar care, and to labour under a perturbation for which even the antiquarian and genealogical significance of the find could hardly account. Upon returning home he broke the news with an almost embarrassed air, as if he wished to convey an idea of its supreme importance without having to exhibit the evidence itself. He did not even shew the titles to his parents, but simply told them that he had found some documents in Joseph Curwen's handwriting, ""mostly in cipher"", which would have to be studied very carefully before yielding up their true meaning. It is unlikely that he would have shewn what he did to the workmen, had it not been for their unconcealed curiosity. As it was he doubtless wished to avoid any display of peculiar reticence which would increase their discussion of the matter.
      That night Charles Ward sat up in his room reading the new-found book and papers, and when day came he did not desist. His meals, on his urgent request when his mother called to see what was amiss, were sent up to him; and in the afternoon he appeared only briefly when the men came to install the Curwen picture and mantelpiece in his study. The next night he slept in snatches in his clothes, meanwhile wrestling feverishly with the unravelling of the cipher manuscript. In the morning his mother saw that he was at work on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher, which he had frequently shewn her before; but in response to her query he said that the Curwen key could not be applied to it. That afternoon he abandoned his work and watched the men fascinatedly as they finished their installation of the picture with its woodwork above a cleverly realistic electric log, setting the mock-fireplace and overmantel a little out from the north wall as if a chimney existed, and boxing in the sides with panelling to match the room's. The front panel holding the picture was sawn and hinged to allow cupboard space behind it. After the workmen went he moved his work into the study and sat down before it with his eyes half on the cipher and half on the portrait which stared back at him like a year-adding and century-recalling mirror.
      His parents, subsequently recalling his conduct at this period, give interesting details anent the policy of concealment which he practiced. Before servants he seldom hid any paper which he might be studying, since he rightly assumed that Curwen's intricate and archaic chirography would be too much for them. With his parents, however, he was more circumspect; and unless the manuscript in question were a cipher, or a mere mass of cryptic symbols and unknown ideographs (as that entitled ""To Him Who Shal Come After etc."" seemed to be), he would cover it with some convenient paper until his caller had departed. At night he kept the papers under lock and key in an antique cabinet of his, where he also placed them whenever he left the room. He soon resumed fairly regular hours and habits, except that his long walks and other outside interests seemed to cease. The opening of school, where he now began his senior year, seemed a great bore to him; and he frequently asserted his determination never to bother with college. He had, he said, important special investigations to make, which would provide him with more avenues toward knowledge and the humanities than any university which the world could boast.
      Naturally, only one who had always been more or less studious, eccentric, and solitary could have pursued this course for many days without attracting notice. Ward, however, was constitutionally a scholar and a hermit; hence his parents were less surprised than regretful at the close confinement and secrecy he adopted. At the same time, both his father and mother thought it odd that he would shew them no scrap of his treasure-trove, nor give any connected account of such data as he had deciphered. This reticence he explained away as due to a wish to wait until he might announce some connected revelation, but as the weeks passed without further disclosures there began to grow up between the youth and his family a kind of constraint; intensified in his mother's case by her manifest disapproval of all Curwen delvings.
      During October Ward began visiting the libraries again, but no longer for the antiquarian matter of his former days. Witchcraft and magic, occultism and daemonology, were what he sought now; and when Providence sources proved unfruitful he would take the train for Boston and tap the wealth of the great library in Copley Square, the Widener Library at Harvard, or the Zion Research Library in Brookline, where certain rare works on Biblical subjects are available. He bought extensively, and fitted up a whole additional set of shelves in his study for newly acquired works on uncanny subjects; while during the Christmas holidays he made a round of out-of-town trips including one to Salem to consult certain records at the Essex Institute.
      About the middle of January, 1920, there entered Ward's bearing an element of triumph which he did not explain, and he was no more found at work upon the Hutchinson cipher. Instead, he inaugurated a dual policy of chemical research and record-scanning; fitting up for the one a laboratory in the unused attic of the house, and for the latter haunting all the sources of vital statistics in Providence. Local dealers in drugs and scientific supplies, later questioned, gave astonishingly queer and meaningless catalogues of the substances and instruments he purchased; but clerks at the State House, the City Hall, and the various libraries agree as to the definite object of his second interest. He was searching intensely and feverishly for the grave of Joseph Curwen, from whose slate slab an older generation had so wisely blotted the name.
      Little by little there grew upon the Ward family the conviction that something was wrong. Charles had had freaks and changes of minor interests before, but this growing secrecy and absorption in strange pursuits was unlike even him. His school work was the merest pretence; and although he failed in no test, it could be seen that the old application had all vanished. He had other concernments now; and when not in his new laboratory with a score of obsolete alchemical books, could be found either poring over old burial records down town or glued to his volumes of occult lore in his study, where the startlingly - one almost fancied increasingly - similar features of Joseph Curwen stared blandly at him from the great overmantel on the north wall.
      Late in March Ward added to his archive-searching a ghoulish series of rambles about the various ancient cemeteries of the city. The cause appeared later, when it was learned from City Hall clerks that he had probably found an important clue. His quest had suddenly shifted from the grave of Joseph Curwen to that of one Naphthali Field; and this shift was explained when, upon going over the files that he had been over, the investigators actually found a fragmentary record of Curwen's burial which had escaped the general obliteration, and which stated that the curious leaden coffin had been interred ""10 ft. S. and 5 ft. W. of Naphthali Field's grave in ye - "". The lack of a specified burying-ground in the surviving entry greatly complicated the search, and Naphthali Field's grave seemed as elusive as that of Curwen; but here no systematic effacement had existed, and one might reasonably be expected to stumble on the stone itself even if its record had perished. Hence the rambles - from which St. John's (the former King's) Churchyard and the ancient Congregational burying-ground in the midst of Swan Point Cemetery were excluded, since other statistics had shewn that the only Naphthali Field (obiit 1729) whose grave could have been meant had been a Baptist.

4.

      It was toward May when Dr. Willett, at the request of the senior Ward, and fortified with all the Curwen data which the family had gleaned from Charles in his non-secretive days, talked with the young man. The interview was of little value or conclusiveness, for Willett felt at every moment that Charles was thoroughly master of himself and in touch with matters of real importance; but it at least forced the secretive youth to offer some rational explanation of his recent demeanour. Of a pallid, impassive type not easily shewing embarrassment, Ward seemed quite ready to discuss his pursuits, though not to reveal their object. He stated that the papers of his ancestor had contained some remarkable secrets of early scientific knowledge, for the most part in cipher, of an apparent scope comparable only to the discoveries of Friar Bacon and perhaps surpassing even those. They were, however, meaningless except when correlated with a body of learning now wholly obsolete; so that their immediate presentation to a world equipped only with modern science would rob them of all impressiveness and dramatic significance. To take their vivid place in the history of human thought they must first be correlated by one familiar with the background out of which they evolved, and to this task of correlation Ward was now devoting himself. He was seeking to acquire as fast as possible those neglected arts of old which a true interpreter of the Curwen data must possess, and hoped in time to make a full announcement and presentation of the utmost interest to mankind and to the world of thought. Not even Einstein, he declared, could more profoundly revolutionise the current conception of things.
      As to his graveyard search, whose object he freely admitted, but the details of whose progress he did not relate, he said he had reason to think that Joseph Curwen's mutilated headstone bore certain mystic symbols - carved from directions in his will and ignorantly spared by those who had effaced the name - which were absolutely essential to the final solution of his cryptic system. Curwen, he believed, had wished to guard his secret with care; and had consequently distributed the data in an exceedingly curious fashion. When Dr. Willett asked to see the mystic documents, Ward displayed much reluctance and tried to put him off with such things as photostatic copies of the Hutchinson cipher and Orne formulae and diagrams; but finally shewed him the exteriors of some of the real Curwen finds - the ""Journall and Notes"", the cipher (title in cipher also), and the formula-filled message ""To Him Who Shal Come After"" - and let him glance inside such as were in obscure characters.
      He also opened the diary at a page carefully selected for its innocuousness and gave Willett a glimpse of Curwen's connected handwriting in English. The doctor noted very closely the crabbed and complicated letters, and the general aura of the seventeenth century which clung round both penmanship and style despite the writer's survival into the eighteenth century, and became quickly certain that the document was genuine. The text itself was relatively trivial, and Willett recalled only a fragment:
""Wedn. 16 Octr. 1754. My Sloope the Wakeful this Day putt in from London with XX newe Men pick'd up in ye Indies, Spaniards from Martineco and 2 Dutch Men from Surinam. Ye Dutch Men are like to Desert from have'g hearde Somewhat ill of these Ventures, but I will see to ye Inducing of them to Staye. ffor Mr. Knight Dexter of ye Boy and Book 120 Pieces Camblets, 100 Pieces Assrtd. Cambleteens, 20 Pieces blue Duffles, 100 Pieces Shalloons, 50 Pieces Calamancoes, 300 Pieces each, Shendsoy and Humhums. ffor Mr. Green at ye Elephant 50 Gallon Cyttles, 20 Warm'g Pannes, 15 Bake Cyttles, 10 pr. Smoke'g Tonges. ffor Mr. Perrigo 1 Sett of Awles, ffor Mr. Nightingale 50 Reames prime Foolscap. Say'd ye SABAOTH thrice last Nighte but None appear'd. I must heare more from Mr. H. in Transylvania, tho' it is Harde reach'g him and exceeding strange he can not give me the Use of what he hath so well us'd these hundred yeares. Simon hath not Writ these V. Weekes, but I expecte soon hear'g from him.""
      When upon reaching this point Dr. Willett turned the leaf he was quickly checked by Ward, who almost snatched the book from his grasp. All that the doctor had a chance to see on the newly opened page was a brief pair of sentences; but these, strangely enough, lingered tenaciously in his memory. They ran: ""Ye Verse from Liber-Damnatus be'g spoke V Roodmasses and IV Hallows-Eves, I am Hopeful ye Thing is breed'g Outside ye Spheres. It will drawe One who is to Come, if I can make sure he shal bee, and he shall think on Past thinges and look back thro' all ye yeares, against ye which I must have ready ye Saltes or That to make 'em with.""
      Willett saw no more, but somehow this small glimpse gave a new and vague terror to the painted features of Joseph Curwen which stared blandly down from the overmantel. Ever after that he entertained the odd fancy - which his medical skill of course assured him was only a fancy - that the eyes of the portrait had a sort of wish, if not an actual tendency, to follow young Charles Ward as he moved about the room. He stopped before leaving to study the picture closely, marvelling at its resemblance to Charles and memorising every minute detail of the cryptical, colourless face, even down to a slight scar or pit in the smooth brow above the right eye. Cosmo Alexander, he decided, was a painter worthy of the Scotland that produced Raeburn, and a teacher worthy of his illustrious pupil Gilbert Stuart.
      Assured by the doctor that Charles's mental health was in no danger, but that on the other hand he was engaged in researches which might prove of real importance, the Wards were more lenient than they might otherwise have been when during the following June the youth made positive his refusal to attend college. He had, he declared, studies of much more vital importance to pursue; and intimated a wish to go abroad the following year in order to avail himself of certain sources of data not existing in America. The senior Ward, while denying this latter wish as absurd for a boy of only eighteen, acquiesced regarding the university; so that after a none too brilliant graduation from the Moses Brown School there ensued for Charles a three-year period of intensive occult study and graveyard searching. He became recognised as an eccentric, and dropped even more completely from the sight of his family's friends than he had been before; keeping close to his work and only occasionally making trips to other cities to consult obscure records. Once he went south to talk with a strange old mulatto who dwelt in a swamp and about whom a newspaper had printed a curious article. Again he sought a small village in the Adirondacks whence reports of certain odd ceremonial practices had come. But still his parents forbade him the trip to the Old World which he desired.
      Coming of age in April, 1923, and having previously inherited a small competence from his maternal grandfather, Ward determined at last to take the European trip hitherto denied him. Of his proposed itinerary he would say nothing save that the needs of his studies would carry him to many places, but he promised to write his parents fully and faithfully. When they saw he could not be dissuaded, they ceased all opposition and helped as best they could; so that in June the young man sailed for Liverpool with the farewell blessings of his father and mother, who accompanied him to Boston and waved him out of sight from the White Star pier in Charlestown. Letters soon told of his safe arrival, and of his securing good quarters in Great Russell Street, London; where he proposed to stay, shunning all family friends, till he had exhausted the resources of the British Museum in a certain direction. Of his daily life he wrote but little, for there was little to write. Study and experiment consumed all his time, and he mentioned a laboratory which he had established in one of his rooms. That he said nothing of antiquarian rambles in the glamorous old city with its luring skyline of ancient domes and steeples and its tangles of roads and alleys whose mystic convolutions and sudden vistas alternately beckon and surprise, was taken by his parents as a good index of the degree to which his new interests had engrossed his mind.
      In June, 1924, a brief note told of his departure for Paris, to which he had before made one or two flying trips for material in the Bibliothque Nationale. For three months thereafter he sent only postal cards, giving an address in the Rue St. Jacques and referring to a special search among rare manuscripts in the library of an unnamed private collector. He avoided acquaintances, and no tourists brought back reports of having seen him. Then came a silence, and in October the Wards received a picture card from Prague, Czecho-Slovakia, stating that Charles was in that ancient town for the purpose of conferring with a certain very aged man supposed to be the last living possessor of some very curious mediaeval information. He gave an address in the Neustadt, and announced no move till the following January; when he dropped several cards from Vienna telling of his passage through that city on the way toward a more easterly region whither one of his correspondents and fellow-delvers into the occult had invited him.
      The next card was from Klausenburg in Transylvania, and told of Ward's progress toward his destination. He was going to visit a Baron Ferenczy, whose estate lay in the mountains east of Rakus; and was to be addressed at Rakus in the care of that nobleman. Another card from Rakus a week later, saying that his host's carriage had met him and that he was leaving the village for the mountains, was his last message for a considerable time; indeed, he did not reply to his parents' frequent letters until May, when he wrote to discourage the plan of his mother for a meeting in London, Paris, or Rome during the summer, when the elder Wards were planning to travel in Europe. His researches, he said, were such that he could not leave his present quarters; while the situation of Baron Ferenczy's castle did not favour visits. It was on a crag in the dark wooded mountains, and the region was so shunned by the country folk that normal people could not help feeling ill at ease. Moreover, the Baron was not a person likely to appeal to correct and conservative New England gentlefolk. His aspect and manners had idiosyncrasies, and his age was so great as to be disquieting. It would be better, Charles said, if his parents would wait for his return to Providence; which could scarcely be far distant.
      That return did not, however, take place until May, 1926, when after a few heralding cards the young wanderer quietly slipped into New York on the Homeric and traversed the long miles to Providence by motor-coach, eagerly drinking in the green rolling hills, the fragrant, blossoming orchards, and the white steepled towns of vernal Connecticut; his first taste of ancient New England in nearly four years. When the coach crossed the Pawcatuck and entered Rhode Island amidst the faery goldenness of a late spring afternoon his heart beat with quickened force, and the entry to Providence along Reservoir and Elmwood avenues was a breathless and wonderful thing despite the depths of forbidden lore to which he had delved. At the high square where Broad, Weybosset, and Empire Streets join, he saw before and below him in the fire of sunset the pleasant, remembered houses and domes and steeples of the old town; and his head swam curiously as the vehicle rolled down the terminal behind the Biltmore, bringing into view the great dome and soft, roof-pierced greenery of the ancient hill across the river, and the tall colonial spire of the First Baptist Church limned pink in the magic evening light against the fresh springtime verdure of its precipitous background.
      Old Providence! It was this place and the mysterious forces of its long, continuous history which had brought him into being, and which had drawn him back toward marvels and secrets whose boundaries no prophet might fix. Here lay the arcana, wondrous or dreadful as the case might be, for which all his years of travel and application had been preparing him. A taxicab whirled him through Post Office Square with its glimpse of the river, the old Market House, and the head of the bay, and up the steep curved slope of Waterman Street to Prospect, where the vast gleaming dome and sunset-flushed Ionic columns of the Christian Science Church beckoned northward. Then eight squares past the fine old estates his childish eyes had known, and the quaint brick sidewalks so often trodden by his youthful feet. And at last the little white overtaken farmhouse on the right, on the left the classic Adam porch and stately bayed facade of the great brick house where he was born. It was twilight, and Charles Dexter Ward had come home.

5.

      A school of alienists slightly less academic than Dr. Lyman's assign to Ward's European trip the beginning of his true madness. Admitting that he was sane when he started, they believe that his conduct upon returning implies a disastrous change. But even to this claim Dr. Willett refuses to accede. There was, he insists, something later; and the queernesses of the youth at this stage he attributes to the practice of rituals learned abroad - odd enough things, to be sure, but by no means implying mental aberration on the part of their celebrant. Ward himself, though visibly aged and hardened, was still normal in his general reactions; and in several talks with Willett displayed a balance which no madman - even an incipient one - could feign continuously for long. What elicited the notion of insanity at this period were the sounds heard at all hours from Ward's attic laboratory, in which he kept himself most of the time. There were chantings and repetitions, and thunderous declamations in uncanny rhythms; and although these sounds were always in Ward's own voice, there was something in the quality of that voice, and in the accents of the formulae it pronounced, which could not but chill the blood of every hearer. It was noticed that Nig, the venerable and beloved black cat of the household, bristled and arched his back perceptibly when certain of the tones were heard.
      The odours occasionally wafted from the laboratory were likewise exceedingly strange. Sometimes they were very noxious, but more often they were aromatic, with a haunting, elusive quality which seemed to have the power of inducing fantastic images. People who smelled them had a tendency to glimpse momentary mirages of enormous vistas, with strange hills or endless avenues of sphinxes and hippogriffs stretching off into infinite distance. Ward did not resume his old-time rambles, but applied himself diligently to the strange books he had brought home, and to equally strange delvings within his quarters; explaining that European sources had greatly enlarged the possibilities of his work, and promising great revelations in the years to come. His older aspect increased to a startling degree his resemblance to the Curwen portrait in his library; and Dr. Willett would often pause by the latter after a call, marvelling at the virtual identity, and reflecting that only the small pit above the picture's right eye now remained to differentiate the long-dead wizard from the living youth. These calls of Willett's, undertaken at the request of the senior Wards, were curious affairs. Ward at no time repulsed the doctor, but the latter saw that he could never reach the young man's inner psychology. Frequently he noted peculiar things about; little wax images of grotesque design on the shelves or tables, and the half-erased remnants of circles, triangles, and pentagrams in chalk or charcoal on the cleared central space of the large room. And always in the night those rhythms and incantations thundered, till it became very difficult to keep servants or suppress furtive talk of Charles's madness.
      In January, 1927, a peculiar incident occurred. One night about midnight, as Charles was chanting a ritual whose weird cadence echoed unpleasantly through the house below, there came a sudden gust of chill wind from the bay, and a faint, obscure trembling of the earth which everyone in the neighbourhood noted. At the same time the cat exhibited phenomenal traces of fright, while dogs bayed for as much as a mile around. This was the prelude to a sharp thunderstorm, anomalous for the season, which brought with it such a crash that Mr. and Mrs. Ward believed the house had been struck. They rushed upstairs to see what damage had been done, but Charles met them at the door to the attic; pale, resolute, and portentous, with an almost fearsome combination of triumph and seriousness on his face. He assured them that the house had not really been struck, and that the storm would soon be over. They paused, and looking through a window saw that he was indeed right; for the lightning flashed farther and farther off, whilst the trees ceased to bend in the strange frigid gust from the water. The thunder sank to a sort of dull mumbling chuckle and finally died away. Stars came out, and the stamp of triumph on Charles Ward's face crystallised into a very singular expression.
      For two months or more after this incident Ward was less confined than usual to his laboratory. He exhibited a curious interest in the weather, and made odd inquiries about the date of the spring thawing of the ground. One night late in March he left the house after midnight, and did not return till almost morning; when his mother, being wakeful, heard a rumbling motor draw up to the carriage entrance. Muffled oaths could be distinguished, and Mrs. Ward, rising and going to the window, saw four dark figures removing a long, heavy box from a truck at Charles's direction and carrying it within by the side door. She heard laboured breathing and ponderous footfalls on the stairs, and finally a dull thumping in the attic; after which the footfalls descended again, and the four men reappeared outside and drove off in their truck.
      The next day Charles resumed his strict attic seclusion, drawing down the dark shades of his laboratory windows and appearing to be working on some metal substance. He would open the door to no one, and steadfastly refused all proffered food. About noon a wrenching sound followed by a terrible cry and a fall were heard, but when Mrs. Ward rapped at the door her son at length answered faintly, and told her that nothing had gone amiss. The hideous and indescribable stench now welling out was absolutely harmless and unfortunately necessary. Solitude was the one prime essential, and he would appear later for dinner. That afternoon, after the conclusion of some odd hissing sounds which came from behind the locked portal, he did finally appear; wearing an extremely haggard aspect and forbidding anyone to enter the laboratory upon any pretext. This, indeed, proved the beginning of a new policy of secrecy; for never afterward was any other person permitted to visit either the mysterious garret workroom or the adjacent storeroom which he cleaned out, furnished roughly, and added to his inviolably private domain as a sleeping apartment. Here he lived, with books brought up from his library beneath, till the time he purchased the Pawtuxet bungalow and moved to it all his scientific effects.
      In the evening Charles secured the paper before the rest of the family and damaged part of it through an apparent accident. Later on Dr. Willett, having fixed the date from statements by various members of the household, looked up an intact copy at the Journal office and found that in the destroyed section the following small item had occurred:
Nocturnal Diggers Surprised in
North Burial Ground

Robert Hart, night watchman at the North Burial Ground, this morning discovered a party of several men with a motor truck in the oldest part of the cemetery, but apparently frightened them off before they had accomplished whatever their object may have been.
      The discovery took place at about four o'clock, when Hart's attention was attracted by the sound of a motor outside his shelter. Investigating, he saw a large truck on the main drive several rods away; but could not reach it before the sound of his feet on the gravel had revealed his approach. The men hastily placed a large box in the truck and drove away toward the street before they could be overtaken; and since no known grave was disturbed, Hart believes that this box was an object which they wished to bury.
      The diggers must have been at work for a long while before detection, for Hart found an enormous hole dug at a considerable distance back from the roadway in the lot of Amasa Field, where most of the old stones have long ago disappeared. The hole, a place as large and deep as a grave, was empty; and did not coincide with any interment mentioned in the cemetery records.
      Sergt. Riley of the Second Station viewed the spot and gave the opinion that the hole was dug by bootleggers rather gruesomely and ingeniously seeking a safe cache for liquor in a place not likely to be disturbed. In reply to questions Hart said he thought the escaping truck had headed up Rochambeau Avenue, though he could not be sure.
      During the next few days Ward was seldom seen by his family. Having added sleeping quarters to his attic realm, he kept closely to himself there, ordering food brought to the door and not taking it in until after the servant had gone away. The droning of monotonous formulae and the chanting of bizarre rhythms recurred at intervals, while at other times occasional listeners could detect the sound of tinkling glass, hissing chemicals, running water, or roaring gas flames. Odours of the most unplaceable quality, wholly unlike any before noted, hung at times around the door; and the air of tension observable in the young recluse whenever he did venture briefly forth was such as to excite the keenest speculation. Once he made a hasty trip to the Athenaeum for a book he required, and again he hired a messenger to fetch him a highly obscure volume from Boston. Suspense was written portentously over the whole situation, and both the family and Dr. Willett confessed themselves wholly at a loss what to do or think about it.

6.

      Then on the fifteenth of April a strange development occurred. While nothing appeared to grow different in kind, there was certainly a very terrible difference in degree; and Dr. Willett somehow attaches great significance to the change. The day was Good Friday, a circumstance of which the servants made much, but which others quite naturally dismiss as an irrelevant coincidence. Late in the afternoon young Ward began repeating a certain formula in a singularly loud voice, at the same time burning some substance so pungent that its fumes escaped over the entire house. The formula was so plainly audible in the hall outside the locked door that Mrs. Ward could not help memorising it as she waited and listened anxiously, and later on she was able to write it down at Dr. Willett's request. It ran as follows, and experts have told Dr. Willett that its very close analogue can be found in the mystic writings of ""Eliphas Levi"", that cryptic soul who crept through a crack in the forbidden door and glimpsed the frightful vistas of the void beyond:
""Per Adonai Eloim, Adonai Jehova,
Adonai Sabaoth, Metraton On Agla Mathon,
verbum pythonicum, mysterium salamandrae,
conventus sylvorum, antra gnomorum,
daemonia Coeli Gad, Almousin, Gibor, Jehosua,
Evam, Zariatnatmik, veni, veni, veni.""
      This had been going on for two hours without change or intermission when over all the neighbourhood a pandaemoniac howling of dogs set in. The extent of this howling can be judged from the space it received in the papers the next day, but to those in the Ward household it was overshadowed by the odour which instantly followed it; a hideous, all-pervasive odour which none of them had ever smelt before or have ever smelt since. In the midst of this mephitic flood there came a very perceptible flash like that of lightning, which would have been blinding and impressive but for the daylight around; and then was heard the voice that no listener can ever forget because of its thunderous remoteness, its incredible depth, and its eldritch dissimilarity to Charles Ward's voice. It shook the house, and was clearly heard by at least two neighbours above the howling of the dogs. Mrs. Ward, who had been listening in despair outside her son's locked laboratory, shivered as she recognised its hellish import; for Charles had told her of its evil fame in dark books, and of the manner in which it had thundered, according to the Fenner letters, above the doomed Pawtuxet farmhouse on the night of Joseph Curwen's annihilation. There was no mistaking that nightmare phrase, for Charles had described it too vividly in the old days when he had talked frankly of his Curwen investigations. And yet it was only this fragment of an archaic and forgotten language: ""DIES MIES JESCHET BOENE DOESEF DOUVEMA ENITEMAUS"".
      Close upon this thundering there came a momentary darkening of the daylight, though sunset was still an hour distant, and then a puff of added odour different from the first but equally unknown and intolerable. Charles was chanting again now and his mother could hear syllables that sounded like ""Yi-nash-Yog-Sothoth-he-lgeb-fi-throdog"" - ending in a ""Yah!"" whose maniacal force mounted in an ear-splitting crescendo. A second later all previous memories were effaced by the wailing scream which burst out with frantic explosiveness and gradually changed form to a paroxysm of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Mrs. Ward, with the mingled fear and blind courage of maternity, advanced and knocked affrightedly at the concealing panels, but obtained no sign of recognition. She knocked again, but paused nervelessly as a second shriek arose, this one unmistakably in the familiar voice of her son, and sounding concurrently with the still bursting cachinnations of that other voice. Presently she fainted, although she is still unable to recall the precise and immediate cause. Memory sometimes makes merciful deletions.
      Mr. Ward returned from the business section at about quarter past six; and not finding his wife downstairs, was told by the frightened servants that she was probably watching at Charles's door, from which the sounds had been far stranger than ever before. Mounting the stairs at once, he saw Mrs. Ward stretched at full length on the floor of the corridor outside the laboratory; and realising that she had fainted, hastened to fetch a glass of water from a set bowl in a neighbouring alcove. Dashing the cold fluid in her face, he was heartened to observe an immediate response on her part, and was watching the bewildered opening of her eyes when a chill shot through him and threatened to reduce him to the very state from which she was emerging. For the seemingly silent laboratory was not as silent as it had appeared to be, but held the murmurs of a tense, muffled conversation in tones too low for comprehension, yet of a quality profoundly disturbing to the soul.
      It was not, of course, new for Charles to mutter formulae; but this muttering was definitely different. It was so palpably a dialogue, or imitation of a dialogue, with the regular alteration of inflections suggesting question and answer, statement and response. One voice was undisguisedly that of Charles, but the other had a depth and hollowness which the youth's best powers of ceremonial mimicry had scarcely approached before. There was something hideous, blasphemous, and abnormal about it, and but for a cry from his recovering wife which cleared his mind by arousing his protective instincts it is not likely that Theodore Howland Ward could have maintained for nearly a year more his old boast that he had never fainted. As it was, he seized his wife in his arms and bore her quickly downstairs before she could notice the voices which had so horribly disturbed him. Even so, however, he was not quick enough to escape catching something himself which caused him to stagger dangerously with his burden. For Mrs. Ward's cry had evidently been heard by others than he, and there had come from behind the locked door the first distinguishable words which that masked and terrible colloquy had yielded. They were merely an excited caution in Charles's own voice, but somehow their implications held a nameless fright for the father who overheard them. The phrase was just this: ""Sshh! - write!""
      Mr. and Mrs. Ward conferred at some length after dinner, and the former resolved to have a firm and serious talk with Charles that very night. No matter how important the object, such conduct could no longer be permitted; for these latest developments transcended every limit of sanity and formed a menace to the order and nervous well-being of the entire household. The youth must indeed have taken complete leave of his senses, since only downright madness could have prompted the wild screams and imaginary conversations in assumed voices which the present day had brought forth. All this must be stopped, or Mrs. Ward would be made ill and the keeping of servants become an impossibility.
      Mr. Ward rose at the close of the meal and started upstairs for Charles's laboratory. On the third floor, however, he paused at the sounds which he heard proceeding from the now disused library of his son. Books were apparently being flung about and papers wildly rustled, and upon stepping to the door Mr. Ward beheld the youth within, excitedly assembling a vast armful of literary matter of every size and shape. Charles's aspect was very drawn and haggard, and he dropped his entire load with a start at the sound of his father's voice. At the elder man's command he sat down, and for some time listened to the admonitions he had so long deserved. There was no scene. At the end of the lecture he agreed that his father was right, and that his noises, mutterings, incantations, and chemical odours were indeed inexcusable nuisances. He agreed to a policy of greater quiet, though insisting on a prolongation of his extreme privacy. Much of his future work, he said, was in any case purely book research; and he could obtain quarters elsewhere for any such vocal rituals as might be necessary at a later stage. For the fright and fainting of his mother he expressed the keenest contrition, and explained that the conversation later heard was part of an elaborate symbolism designed to create a certain mental atmosphere. His use of abstruse technical terms somewhat bewildered Mr. Ward, but the parting impression was one of undeniable sanity and poise despite a mysterious tension of the utmost gravity. The interview was really quite inconclusive, and as Charles picked up his armful and left the room Mr. Ward hardly knew what to make of the entire business. It was as mysterious as the death of poor old Nig, whose stiffening form had been found an hour before in the basement, with staring eyes and fear-distorted mouth.
      Driven by some vague detective instinct, the bewildered parent now glanced curiously at the vacant shelves to see what his son had taken up to the attic. The youth's library was plainly and rigidly classified, so that one might tell at a glance the books or at least the kind of books which had been withdrawn. On this occasion Mr. Ward was astonished to find that nothing of the occult or the antiquarian, beyond what had been previously removed, was missing. These new withdrawals were all modern items; histories, scientific treatises, geographies, manuals of literature, philosophic works, and certain contemporary newspapers and magazines. It was a very curious shift from Charles Ward's recent run of reading, and the father paused in a growing vortex of perplexity and an engulfing sense of strangeness. The strangeness was a very poignant sensation, and almost clawed at his chest as he strove to see just what was wrong around him. Something was indeed wrong, and tangibly as well as spiritually so. Ever since he had been in this room he had known that something was amiss, and at last it dawned upon him what it was.
      On the north wall rose still the ancient carved overmantel from the house in Olney Court, but to the cracked and precariously restored oils of the large Curwen portrait disaster had come. Time and unequal heating had done their work at last, and at some time since the room's last cleaning the worst had happened. Peeling clear of the wood, curling tighter and tighter, and finally crumbling into small bits with what must have been malignly silent suddenness, the portrait of Joseph Curwen had resigned forever its staring surveillance of the youth it so strangely resembled, and now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust.
","April 20th, 1909
They have given me one hour to record my thoughts. Whether this be mercy or mockery, I know not. It seems at this point to be a matter of perspective and to their vision I cannot speak. They are among us and yet beyond us.
My name, my true name, the name given to me by my mother on the day of my birth is Henry Davis Johnstone. Though by the time this is read there will be no memory of my being. And despite this note being written behind the ancient granite walls of Arkham Sanitarium believe that its author is not mad!
I was mad. Even from birth I was stricken with a distinct melancholia, which puzzled doctors and strained the frail spirits of my parents. As I grew, the condition only worsened and my days as a schoolboy were marked with despondency and torpor. A fog of weariness touched all who came near and people hastily learned to avoid my influence.
When it came time for me to move to higher education my father insisted I attend the local school, Miskatonic University, I suspect more out of frugality than to keep me near by need of fondness. My days as a college man were fraught with abject isolation. No field of study could hold my attention and no sport nor society could capture my interest. I had no friends and certainly no prospects for marriage.
It came to pass that while arriving late to lecture on English literature of the sixteenth century I took the notice of a pompous and sarcastic professor. Seeing my black dress and sullen expression, he raised his arms like a dramatist and pronounced, 'Why look, class! Look at this young agelast. It be Hamlet the Dane, here in the flesh. Tell me, Prince, hast thou yet taken thy revenge 'gainst thy lecherous uncle Claudius?""
The students erupted in vexatious laughter. I was overcome, and I speedily exited the hall in search of some well-shadowed place. From then on, my peers knew me as Hamlet and murmured to each other in jest whenever I passed.
I cannot recall the moment when my affliction grew from a simple eccentricity into a state of illness. The shift was slow and subtle. At the end of my second year at Miskatonic, the student liaison sat with me and I was informed that due to my abysmal student record and obvious aprosexia I was not welcome to attend the institute next semester. The only response I could muster was an impotent shrug. The news was not shocking, though I had desperately wished my case and I might escape the notice of the office staff. With a feeble groan, I lifted myself from my seat and began the way back to my father's house. The journey was hardly laborious for we lived on Parsonage Street, within two miles of the school. But on that day I was drowned with fatigue. My legs were young and strong but I hadn't the volition to operate them.
A schoolfellow found me the following afternoon lying in the shade of an apple tree. My memory of this event is vague and distant, suffering from the fugue in which I was held. The student who came to my aid (his name eludes me) was a graduate student in the competitive and arduous field of theoretical physics and had been witness to more than one mental lapse in his peers. He recognized my condition immediately and brought me directly to the college's school of psychology.
It took no more than a moment for those learned men to spot the illness in my mind. A simple exchange determined the path of my life for the next six years. I was bound for extended occupancy at Arkham Sanitarium.
There are some who fear the sanatorium. One can hardly forget tales of Bedlam or Goya's images of poor idiots in torment. No doubt, such madhouses exist where callous professionals employ bizarre and deleterious procedures on the hapless lunatics in their care. But I found my hospital to be a different experience entirely. Here was a sanctum in the old tradition where mercy to the sick was put above the aggressive meddling of the analysts. This was my habernacle. My even disposition and independence swiftly earned me friends among the staff. And in the company of disruptive neurotics, my draining influence was taken as a blessing.
Not to say I was left deserted - far from it. The doctors prescribed various laetificants, exposure to direct sunlight, massage, mineral baths, invigorating emollients and agents to thicken the blood. And as each therapy failed, as they all failed, they did not lose heart. They patiently and methodically exhausted every curative known to science.
I was neither bitter at medicine's inability to improve my condition nor at fortune for my having been born so feeble of will. Does a slug look to the gleeful hummingbird with envy? I was born a slug and I say it does not.
As you might imagine, time passed uneventfully. Now and then, a doctor might remark that some advancement had been made in the medical community that might make the difference in my case. We would attempt the regimen and it would eventually prove ineffective. This continued for five long years until the arrival of the two men who led me to this fate. Two men who, due to my impending executioners, never existed.
The first was Professor Adam Wayland Erikson, a graduate of Bute Medical School and honoured fellow of the Royal College of Physicians who served a lengthy internship under renowned patient advocate Sir John Charles Bucknill. I presume Dr. Bucknill still exists in memory. But how can I know? Maybe my life has descended into phantasm and this account is worthless. Or perhaps they will sweep this note into oblivion with the rest of my existence.
That is enough of that. I have much to record and time is short. Suffice it to say that on a tour of American asylums Dr. Erikson was charmed and delighted by Arkham's facilities and benevolent ideology. He immediately appealed for a position at the institute and was accepted heartily.
The good doctor brought with him the second man I know to be lost. Introduced to me as Mr. Sean Jones, a Welshman who was afflicted with mental disturbances reportedly so peculiar that Dr. Erikson devoted his life to the case. Sean's family had spent the better part of the Georgian Era in the vilest but most lucrative acts of piracy. He had been born into substantial wealth but with such a nefarious family reputation that it was difficult to enjoy.
As we were housed in rooms across the hall, were of similar age, and because we both understood what it was to be an outsider, Mr. Jones and I became quick friends. And that connection proved to be mutually beneficial. Whereas I was bound by lethargy, half-dead as some described me, my comrade was bursting with energy, a tireless maelstrom of activity. I found his company energizing and to him I was a source of calmness and rest.
He confided in me, overflowing with stories of his ancestors' terrible deeds and of their pact with dark powers hidden to mankind by the ocean's depths. All sailors know to respect the guiding stars but only a few are privy to their secrets. Sean relayed to me in great detail the lessons in sabaism taught to him by his father. He spoke of worlds beyond where abnormous creatures harnessed dark energies so powerful that their influence could be felt here on earth. This was why, he claimed, he had caught the interest of Dr. Erikson. Not for his psychopathology but for the eldritch wisdom he had acquired in his life as a degenerate mystic.
Though Sean's charisma tempted me to believe him, his story was too fantastic to trust even the smallest detail. He was, after all, a madman. I continued to listen with interest but I was convinced I was audience to an elaborate fiction.
Then it came that I was sitting with Dr. Erikson for a monthly interview and assessment. The doctor noted that I had been spending much of my time speaking with Sean and he inquired into the nature of our conversations. At first, I hesitated. My instinct was to misreport the wild stories out of loyalty to my friend. But reason led me to deduce that candour would best serve his treatment. I explained all I understood of what I had been told as precisely as I could.
Erikson simply nodded and when I had finished he prepared for himself a cigarette.
""He's a genius, you know,"" he said.
I was astounded. It felt as if the floor was shifting beneath me.
He continued: ""Sometime ago, I came across an article in the Journal of Mental Science entitled Oneiromancy as an Effect of Ferromagnetic Consequence. It was the most brilliant work I had ever seen. And it was submitted anonymously. I wanted desperately to contact the master behind the work but there were almost no leads.""
The doctor stared at the burning tip of his cigarette. I glanced about the room nervously.
""Sean was the author?"" I asked.
""It took me four years to find him. I followed a collection of academic treasures: medical research, historical treatises, mathematical proofs - even an English translation of the infamous Liber Damnatus. At the last, I bribed a courier to give up his secret employer. When he directed me to Denbigh Asylum, I assumed I'd find my scholar amidst the staff. But there he was, locked away and heavily sedated. He had directed all of that magnificent research through intermediaries from a tiny cell. I swore at that moment both to heal him and learn from him.""
I couldn't have been more shocked. This tale seemed even less plausible than Sean's wild accounts. A fear took me. I suspected that I had finally crossed into a realm of complete madness and unreality. But the doctor was not finished with me.
""Henry, I believe Sean and I have made a breakthrough. It's a radical procedure involving the surgical insertion of several rare earth magnets directly into the tissue of the brain. I have practised the operation on various animals and I am confident the procedure is sound. It follows logically that I begin human trials. The professionally responsible course of action would be to bring my findings to a university, but the theory behind our technique is so advanced it may take decades before our science is peer-approved. And the mystical nature of some of our discoveries will be easy sport for sceptics.
Sean demands I perform the surgery on him. But you see, his mind, his metaphysical insight, is too precious to be lost to an experimental procedure. I am asking you, and it is a great deal to ask, to undergo the operation as a safety trial.""
My heart sank. I loved knowledge and cared for my friend. But surely this was insanity of the most outlandish variety.
I inquired, ""What effect would a procedure designed for Sean's brain have on my own?""
""The operation would be adapted to suit your needs. Whereas Sean requires limiting and pacification, you need to be energized or awakened. It's a simple question of placing the magnets within different structures of the brain. Sean will determine the specifics.""
""So this might possibly cure me?"" I asked.
""If our theories hold true you will see a miraculous increase in function. There is also a high risk that you will not survive.""
I could sense the doctor's disappointment even before I spoke.
""I may be mad, but I have no wish to die. And this notion of health you offer is utterly alien to me. Who would be this happy man wearing my skin?""
Erikson replied, ""I am not ass enough to believe you enjoy your present condition.""
""I accept my state of being and, more to the point, I identify with this way of life. This may be pitiful but it is my way. I refuse and that is my final word.""
He dismissed me with an understanding nod and I retired to the mineral baths. Their placid relaxation quickly blent away thoughts of experimental surgery. Before long, I could barely recall our conversation and considered the matter dealt with.
Over the following week, I heard nothing of the subject. Sean kept away from me, I supposed to keep his dissatisfaction from affecting our friendship. I gave him a wide berth, confident he would surmount these feelings and soon all would be as it was. With time, Dr. Erikson's procedure would be approved by the medical community and he would have his cranial magnets.
It was a cold and stirless night when he came to me. I was in my bed lost in dream when I was jerked awake. A drop of icy fluid trickled with precision into the canal of my ear. I flung myself from the bed in a chaotic motion. There, sitting peacefully, was Sean, his hands buried in the pockets of a heavy coat. I stood in puzzlement for on his face I saw neither malevolence nor jest. Indeed, the man before me was a portrait of repose.
""You will undergo the surgery,"" he said, looking blankly at the wall.
It took me a moment to gather an answer. His disposition was so alien, his aspect so void.
""I will not. You are a dear friend, but dearer to me is my life.""
I had played tennis with Sean and I had run with him. To that point, I thought I possessed an understanding of his physical abilities. He was a slight man, no doubt the product of his overactive metabolism. But the speed with which he captured me and the strength with which he held his ether rag over my nose and mouth were simply astounding. I held my breath as best I could, but there was no escape. He had me locked like a master wrestler with an intensity reserved for the mad.
As I faded, he spoke to me: ""The Powers mock me for having been born a mortal of an insignificant species. They bar me from the Dreamlands and laugh at my ambitions. But I know my power and I know my worth. I promise you, my friend, you shall be cured and soon after, I shall be delivered my mind in full. The knowledge of Pnakotus will I take and it shall lead me to Kadath in the Cold Waste. When I have conquered there the Gods will be compelled to honour me with a place in the Court of Azathoth at the centre of all things.""
I awoke in the sanatorium's infirmary, my head aching and bandaged like a mummy. All things seemed distant and unreal, no doubt from the powerful opiates they administered to me. Dr. Erikson came to observe later on that first day of my awakening. In my heart, I wished to cry out that he was a ruthless butcher, but in my state I did not possess the power of speech. And so I lay dazedly while he prodded at me with arcane devices. I even heard him remark that I was progressing well and that he was now confident enough to operate on Jones. The only action I could muster was a low groan.
Soon after the doctor left, darkness took me and I slept for two more days. When I awoke on that third day it was to an awakening beyond that which any man before has had. For no one before me could have leapt from the pure anhedonia in which I was lost into the ripe fullness of living wonder I now experience. Still unconscious, I rose from my bed and wandered into the being of this new existence. It wasn't until a nurse found me mumbling in the garden that I finally awoke in full. Her grip on my arm was tight and yet wondrous, the pressure of each of her digits a new universe of interest. I could feel the twist and sway of every hair on my body. And what is more, I could concentrate and remember their feeling. For the first time in all my life, I began to understand what it was to be alive. Still in that transcendent moment, I remembered the awful state of things.
""Where is Sean?"" I asked.
""Wanted to wish your friend luck, did you? I'm sorry, Henry, you just missed him. He entered surgery a few minutes ago.""
I rushed away at that second, for the clarity offered me by my newfound mind led me to dark conclusions. Sean Jones was not undergoing this surgery to alleviate madness but to unleash the full psychic potential of his diseased mind! What horrific consequences this might have on mankind I could not say. It seemed entirely possible that he could alter the shape of time and space not only in this universe but also beyond.
I dashed through the halls of the sanatorium to the operating theatre and burst in.
It appears my time has almost run out. I must be brief. This situation suits me fine as human language fails in describing what occurred next.
In the operating room, I found Dr. Erikson, Sean and three humanoid figures caught in conversation. The creatures were uniformly tall, at least six feet, and utterly, completely featureless. They were smooth and indistinct, like matte cloth, and were completely motionless. Though they did not speak, I could feel their intelligence within the recesses of my own mind. They exuded no mood, feeling or character that I could discern but the presence of their psyches was profoundly apparent. No sooner had I entered than Sean and the doctor faded from existence. Right before my eyes, they shifted from being to nothingness in a slow gradient. I turned to run.
""Do not flee,"" said a voice that came from, or perhaps through, one of the alien figures.
""What have you done?"" I asked.
""The one had designs against one of our realities, the other an unwitting accomplice. They were, are, and ever shall be no more. To this end you too shall pass.""
My chest heaved with panic. Unlike any other time in my memory, I did not doubt my senses in this circumstance. These beings are truer than what sane men call reality. They are beyond it.
And I said, ""I've done nothing wrong.""
""Your mind has been awoken. This will not be tolerated. The mere fact that you are capable of this exchange means you must be undone.""
I argued with those beings, but to no avail. We spent a great deal of time in communication and I have learned things I thought no man would ever discover. And woe befalls me for having this knowledge. I haven't even the means to record here the details. There simply are no words.
They sent me here to my room with the specific instruction to compose a note detailing the situation. I cannot guess their intent.
I see by my bedside clock that my time is short. All that remains, I guess, is to bestow some moral on my tale.
Perhaps sometime in the future a reader is thinking, ""Was your restoration worth the fate that befell you?""
To him, I can only reply that exp
[note ends]
",False
"Birth Right
Mantineus-I'm more Mr. Briggs, than the I this time.
Disclaimer-I own nothing!
I
""I'm gonna burn.""
That's when I knew it got really bad. He was always a little nuts, but that. Saying it with an innocent smile and certainty. It sent chills up my spine and I experienced a fear I have not faced in my entire life.
It was at this point that I realized that he really was beyond saving.
How he got like this, god only knows. Before he was admitted to my sanitarium I checked his background. It was clean. His mother and father were decently sane, as were his grandparents and siblings. I checked hospital files and came up with nothing out of the ordinary. Colds, flu, and a few scrapes. Normal for any boy.
Upon his arrival I waited in my office, glancing at the anniversary clock that adorned my desk religiously. Despite it's bad memory, I couldn't stand to throw it away, so in my office it has stayed. Poor Lucinda.
With annoyance, I watched as an orderly struggled to seat him in a chair. He was antsy and, from what I gathered, he felt he needed to be somewhere else.
""Hello,"" I said gently, hoping to direct his attention on me so that the orderly could strap him in the chair.
For my protection as well as his. On the ride here he was without a straitjacket and chipped his nails and teeth trying to escape and then from trying to fatally tear his wrists open with the aforementioned parts. God only knew what he would try to do to me if I stepped out of his line.
Finally, we were alone. He thrashed about for a minute before I began.
""Hello,"" I began. ""I'm your new doctor.""
From there he stared at me with eyes of steel. It unnerved me; it was like he was looking through me and saw my soul. He kept staring and my psychologist's nerve was faltering. Mentally I was panicking and I wondered if, due to his stoic stare, if he was looking deeper than my outer appearance of fear.
My childhood flashed before my eyes.
""So doc,"" He began, his voice was gravely and deep. ""What's your first question?""
This took me by surprise that I had to clear my throat, tap my papers back into place, and start again.
""Yes, well. You see, I've checked your records, Mr.-""
""Don't say it!"" He screamed, face twisting into pure, unimaginable fear. ""They might not know I'm here!""
""Who's 'they'?""
His snapped. As if the fearful shell broke and revealed this manic, demented smile. It seemed sadistic and menacing, yet what he said was pure jibber-jabber.
""Them, doc!"" He said. His face changed again; he was stumped. ""You mean you don't know, doc? Surely you've encountered others like me.""
""No,"" I agreed. ""I'm afraid I haven't.""
He began to laugh. It was long and insane. Yet, as abruptly as it began, it ended and he could have passed for a sane person within that silent second.
""Then give up this case, doc."" He said, a chuckle escaping his throat. ""Give it to someone who knows!""
If only I listened.
II
As the sessions progressed, I admit to feeling a slight disheartenment. He would reveal nothing of his condition other than ramblings like before. Though, one day he did something of note.
He was rocking back and forth in a big, exaggerated way. He would swing forward, mumble something then swing back and shout a made up word.
For example, on his first forward rock he would mumble something akin to a sneeze then shout ""Fhtagn!"" Yog-soth ""Fhtagn!"" Oz-soth ""Fhtagn!""
He then began to say another strange word, of which I surmised were names, when he stopped. He got so far as ""Nya"" when he began to giggle like a lunatic and rock his torso rapidly while repeating that strange made up word.
""Fhtagn! Fhtagn! Fhtagn!""
""Mr.-""
He began to scream as if in agony. From previous sessions, I knew it was most likely from my trying to utter his name. But, unlike previous times where he would instantly stop, he began to sob. His face flushed crimson, his eyes became slits from whence tears began to flow.
""The Necronomicon!"" He screamed, his sobs becoming more intense. ""De…Destroy….Destroy it!""
""What?""
""Destroy the Necronomicon!"" He shouted, he looked a mixture of agony and rage. ""Destroy it! Destroy that damn book!""
Five minutes after that outburst he stopped. Despite the still flushed face and teary eyes, he looked as if it never happened. And with that deep, gravelly voice he spoke.
""Destroy it doc."" The intense glare he gave me sent me flashes of hellfire and promises of pain and horror the likes of which I'll never comprehend.
""Destroy it. Don't look at it, don't read it, and-whatever you do-Don't look at the back page!""
Two sessions after that he seemed to follow back into our usual routine. That is, until our third. It was then that he said what I knew was the truth. He was gone to the sane world. And despite our other methods, they would not be enough to bring him back.
""I'm gonna burn."" He said, then, with an exaggerated nod he began. ""Yep. I'm gonna burn that damn book.""
""And why would you burn it?"" I asked.
He clammed up.
Miskatonic University. I have been there, of course, as a student of psychology. Hoping to better myself in understanding the people around me; a curse of a recluse, I'm afraid. Though I have never heard of such a book, my curiosity had gotten the better of me and I sent a letter to the Miskatonic Library.
A few days later a package arrived for me with a note. The Librarian was slightly against me looking at it, but considering my profession, she allowed it. But I was to return it within a timely manner. I did not flip through it. I cannot explain why, but I felt a sense of doom upon glancing at the ancient tome.
But, at least, I had something to talk about in our next session.
III
""I have the book."" I started.
His eyes picked up. He smiled like a child at Christmas morning before unwrapping his gifts. He started to shake the chair he was chained to. Rapidly he asked questions like ""You didn't read it did you?"" and ""Did you burn it? If you did, can I see the ashes?""
""No, I didn't read it."" I confessed. ""Nor,"" I placed the book on my desk. ""Have I burned it; as you can see.""
""Burn it!"" He shouted. ""Burn it!""
His eyes grew wide in fear.
""They'll be coming! They sense it's presence! It's an unholy beacon! Burn it! Burn it and destroy their only chance for this world!""
""Not yet."" I said. ""Not until you tell me why such a normal man would succumb to madness without any reason.""
His emotions changed from frantic to anger in a flash. He started to growl and shake the chair more violently. Either it is due to the cases similar to a grandmother gaining superhuman strength when their grandchild is in danger, or perhaps they did not switch the chains and after dealing with his constant mood swings, they gave. Either way, he was free.
Free and wild, like a bull, he charged towards me. I don't know what compelled me to throw the book, but I did. I threw it before he was upon it. And I know, right there, I made a mistake.
For when it landed, it landed on the last page where an artist's rendition of the writer was present. I stared upon it, mouth agape.
""No!"" He shouted. ""It's all over now."" He began to sob. ""I didn't want to do this!"" He then sparked up, looking hopeful. ""Wait! It's not too late! You can still reject it! Reject the responsibility and let humanity thrive!""
""What are you talking about?"" I managed to say.
My mind was beginning to form an explanation as to why the famous ""Mad Arab"" looked like me.
""Yes, traitor, what are you talking about?""
""Nyar…""He cracked up. ""Nyar…"" He chuckled like a mad man.
The new comer was dressed in Ancient Egyptian robes and crown. He was magnificent and regal in appearance. But another sense took over and I wanted to run away from him as quickly as possible. But something caught my eye. Without the help of hand or wind, the pages began to flip back until it reached its goal. The page prior had a picture of him as he was seen now. To the right were the bold words:
Nyarlathotep: The Crawling Chaos
He turned towards me. Within those cold black eyes I could see a swirling mass, similar to a galaxy, only different. And, if I strained my ears, I swore I heard the mad playing of deranged flautists.
""Do forgive me, Abdul."" He said. ""But…""
""That's not my name."" I began. ""My name is…""
""Not important."" He said, cutting me off. ""What is, is who you were and who you are meant to be. Abdul Hazred, the Mad Arab and priest to both Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth.""
Flashes of desert expanses flew by within my mind. A lone man walked alone the desert, walking through an old, abandoned city that once belonged to a reptilian race of humanoids. How he dedicated his remaining years(which was not many) to write the book of which they wanted and who's information he gained through dreams and through physical means.
He died and his soul became one with Yog-Sothoth until thirty-four years ago. I was plagued with nightmares and horrible sights that now no longer fill me with dread. Though what my parents did still leaves a mark. But then again, it happened to Abdul, too.(1)
""What is needed of me, Oh mighty Nyarlathotep?""
""No!"" He shouted, but Nyarlathotep shot him an angry glare.
""I will deal with you later."" He turned and faced me once more. ""But for now, Abdul must be briefed on what is expected of him.""
You have written The Necronomicon rather well. But, They now wish for you to write one more piece to it. This one will explain what will happen once They are awakened and how to stop the stars from changing again. You'll receive these in dreams once more. But this time, you'll receive help in the form of Mr. Briggs, there.""
He cowered in fear of his own surname.
""That is, if you need help.""
""No,"" I said. ""I shall write this myself. Besides, you called him a traitor. He is not fit to help write such a glorious book.""
""No!"" He shouted. He had a letter opener in his hands. He was digging through my desk while we were talking. ""He will not write the missing chapter!""
He lunged at me, but was stopped by a loud buzzing sound.
""I'd run if I were you."" Nyarlathotep said.
Mr. Briggs did not heed his warning, and lunged at me once more. A Mi-go crashed through the window and grabbed him with his crab-like claws and whisked him out of my office and the sanitarium all together, being prepared for his trip to Yuggoth.
""Do not disappoint me."" He said and vanished.
------ ------
1) I know, according to historians, that Abdul Hazred was actually Lovecraft. But, since he's a made up character, why not give him a made up childhood? I am not implying that he was beaten as a child!
","The Judas Mark
""Cthulhu ftaghn,"" He said with a laugh, swaying his tilted head to the right in a drunken manner. ""Cthulhu ftaghn.""
He broke out into a laughing fit. Then as quickly as it started it stopped; like the lightning bolt outside his window. Arkham was his place of work. And as a patient, his work was hard to complete. Not like he wanted to do it, either.
The rain stopped.
""I hear youuuuuuu."" He chuckled. ""I hear you flapping those blasted wings outside my windah."" He giggled, then sobered up. ""Damn Migo. YA CAN'T HAVE MY BRAIN!""
There came a drum of plastic on metal as his attention was drawn to the orderly with a plastic flashlight. Aforementioned light shining into his padded room.
""Keep it down in there!"" The orderly snapped before leaving him alone once again.
""Power outage, eh?"" He chuckled. ""Wonder whyyyy.""
He rolled his head back to his right; towards his window. His eyes registered the sound of unearthly wings twitching like insects contemplating flight. Oh how he hated those damn things. Far worse than those Shoggoths he faced a while back. At least the Shoggoths ate you; thus ending your torment. But a Migo…He shuttered. He did not want to think about it.
""Nyarlahotep…You son of a bitch."" He said, looking grumpy, then broke out in hysterics, then going back as if it never happened. ""If it weren't for you…I'd be…I'd be…""
Where would he be? In his mind, he saw himself in Miami, laying on the beach with Lucinda, their two kids playing in the sand as the waves crashed soothingly onto the shore. But then his logic would kick that to the curb. Lucinda was showing signs…She would have dumped him if it weren't for that Deep One, that is, dragging her-kicking and screaming-to the bottom of the sea.
He would be away from his insane parents. That insane town of Dunwich. Even if Lucinda did not accompany him, he would, at least, be free from here. But then he met him.
""Jesus…""
""Yes?"" Came a sweet, velvety voice. A voice one would hear from royalty.
""Not you."" He snapped.
""But I am him."" A hand placed itself on his shoulder as the entire figure appeared, sitting beside him like they were best friends.
""No...You're the fucking antichrist.""
""Is there really a difference in that either?"" Jesus asked, a smirk gracing his regal, black lips. ""Both promise paradise. From there, it's on a person's opinion on what that is."" He chuckled. ""And do not tell me that you forgot your title, Ivan…Or should I say 'Judas'?""
""THEN WHY PLACE ME HERE?"" Ivan shouted.
""Hey!"" The orderly shouted, banging his flashlight on the bars again. ""What did I just say?""
The orderly's face began to bubble. His flesh boiled, broken screams erupted from his face. He collapsed and scratched at his face, letting more and more blood poor onto the floor.
""I hate interruptions."" Jesus said. ""And as for your answer…Because. If Jesus was as all powerful as he claimed, why did he allow Judas to stay in the fold? Why did he allow the lowly wretches hope? Why did I command Tython to drag Lucinda down to the depths to suffer being rendered by hungry maws before she could drown?""
He smirked evilly as he described Lucinda's gruesome demise. Ivan panted heavily, his rage rising faster than R'lyeh ever would to the surface. Ivan struck thin air as his body moved too slow for the deity; whom was already standing, laughing at the mortal.
""Because there's more to it, Judas."" Jesus said. ""Judas of old was an important player in the world. The wretches were a growing populace, if they loved him, they would worship him.""
""Bullshit!"" He spat.
""Is it?""
""We want you to betray us, Judas."" Jesus said after his question was ignored.
""Why?""
""Sorry, but us Christs keep some secrets from their disciples.""
""What makes you Jesus?""
""Our roles."" He stated simply. ""You see…He was supposed to preach about us. But, sadly, his mind couldn't take it. So Cthulhu became a god. Not like it matters, religion changes all the time.""
He smirked, all knowing. ""And no, he wasn't the son of Cthulhu. That was my little trick.""
""Pray Judas,"" He said from behind Ivan-not allowing him to speak-his black, decaying lips mere inches from his ear. ""He likes that. It makes him feel powerful.""
""No,"" Ivan said. ""I shall not ya damned bastard! And I won't bring about their reawakening! These crazies will remain sedated!""
Jesus laughed.
""That's my cue.""
Jesus grabbed Ivan by the neck and slammed his body against the wall. Buzzing from outside the window grew from a silent drone into a frenzy. Jesus smirked evilly, drawing his face closer to his Judas.
""In blood the mark is drawn.""
Nyarlahotep drew the blade he was hiding and slashed Ivan's wrist, splattering drops of blood on the wall. He watched in delight as the drops spread, several linking up and continuing their intricate design.
It consisted of a crude circle with intertwining tentacles and a pair of piercing eyes.
""There,"" He said. ""Done.""
He tossed Ivan. He landed next to the window and as he peered out of it he clearly saw the glowing heads and beating wings of the Migo, their forms slightly covered by the rain that began to fall again.
""Enjoy your trip, Judas."" Nyarlahotep said. ""For though I am done with you, you still serve a purpose.""
The Migo swarmed, the window shattering like paper. Ivan barely had time to scream as they worked on his skull, amputating his brain and placing it inside their jar.
""Cthulhu ftagn, indeed.""
",True
"An autumnal chill descended upon the streets of Glaston as the young man walked upon the concrete sidewalk, passing redbrick storefronts and shop windows, every surface still wet with the morning rain. Leaves, red and orange and each vibrant in their hue, were shaken loose from the trees lining the street by the wind, landing wherever they fell. For an instant in time, the spectacle of the leaves drew the attention of the man, in fact little more than a teenage boy, as he made his way toward the corner. However, Joseph Clayton, clad in bluejeans and jacket with a backpack slung from his shoulders, had far more important things to focus on than a show of falling leaves. An important test for this semester was arriving in a week or so and he needed to study.
Also, he was getting quite hungry this close to lunch.
As Joseph rounded the corner and continued toward his favorite eatery, he wondered if he would get swamped in the usual lunch crowd. However, as he saw the front of the Leng Trinh Restaurant, his thoughts turned to quiet dejection.
""Damnit!"" muttered Joseph as he approached the eatery. The reason for this turn in mood was the carpet of tempered glass fragments on the sidewalk below the picture window at the front of the establishment, which was now covered by plastic sheeting. Thuch Van Trinh, one half of the husband-and-wife ownership, was wearing a plaid jacket over his apron and usual cooking clothes and was shoveling the broken glass into a bucket. ""Hey, Mr. Trinh, how's it going?"". Joseph asked with a smile. This was more false cheer than anything, as Joseph could guess how Thuch must be feeling: anger was always a popular choice, followed closely by worry about the reason why.
Despite what he must have been feeling, Thuch Van Trinh grinned back, the black lines of his facial tattooing creasing as the muscles moved under his cheeks. ""Not so good, Mr. Clayton. If this keeps up, I may have to put in Plexiglas so that the window won't break."" The Trinhs accents, as his parents and the other adults of the town told it, had been rather strong (even unusually so) when they had immigrated to Glaston from their first home in Boston. This had usually been waved off by their purported origins in the remote hills on the Vietnam-Laos border, seemingly collaborated by how their teeth had been dyed black. On the other hand, given their rural roots, their speed in adapting local speech patterns so that they now sounded more like second generation Americans (and especially their daughter's complete lack of any accent except the local standard) did make for a puzzling situation. However, for their ease of assimilation and the food they served, they had become well-liked in the community.
So why were things like this happening to them recently? ""How many times does this make this month; two, three?"" Joseph had to ask this, wondering if things were worse than he thought.
""It's happened three times already, this time not more than an hour ago. Thanh wants to install security cameras to watch the place and with how small and cheap they are now, I think we just might."" An hour ago? They'd smashed a picture window in broad daylight? Who in town could be that stupid or that angry? Josephs train of thought was broken then, when Thuch said something of much more interest to the younger man. ""By the way, if you're looking for Marie, she's helping her mother in the kitchen. Even without a window we seem to be doing good business."" Thuch went back to his work and Joseph, not wanting to delay any longer, entered the restaurant.
Just as Thuch had said, Leng Trinh still had it's usual busy lunchtime crowd, albeit one that was concentrated near the back wall. Picking his way around tables packed with diners, Joseph finally arrived at a table set for two, a 'reserved' sign upon it. Removing his backpack and laying it beside a chair, he sat down, shuffled off his coat and went to bury his nose in the menu.
It always felt a bit odd to Joseph, eating in an ethnic restaurant where none of the diners were the same ethnicity as the cooks, or even from the same part of the world. However, none of it mattered when the food was as good as it was here.
""Now then, what would a fine, upstanding New England boy like yourself want in a place like this?"" The voice that asked this was soft, amused, female and had an almost mocking tone. It also had the accent of the New England uplands. To Joseph, it could only be one person.
""The same thing I always get here."" He answered dryly before looking up from the menu. There, holding a pad of paper and a pen, was teenage girl with almond-shaped eyes, shoulder length black hair with green streaks, a cooking apron and an amused grin. ""Hi Marie... you sure your mom's alright with you waitressing this crowd?""
""We've got enough help in the kitchen already and Dad's coming in after all the glass is cleaned up."" She glanced up at the window, plastic sheet and all, after she wrote his order down. ""I just wish we knew who was doing this. If we don't get someone else to cough up some money, our insurance company might go sour on us."" Marie went back to the kitchen to get the food for both of them.
Ten minutes later, she was laying out two place settings of food that had been prepared ahead of time. ""Alright, that's two plates of grilled pork on beds of Leng-style rice, your dish of steamed green beans with soy sauce for dipping, my bowl of soup and two cans of soda."" They'd eat lunch before studying, with Joseph paying the tab for both of them.
If anyone asked, it wasn't a date. Not in the strictest sense, anyway.
""What, no bak bon dzhow?"" Asked Joseph, decidedly disappointed at the apparent lack of the special ingredient.
To this, Marie moved a small earthen bowl from the serving tray onto the table and lifted the lid to reveal a thick gray sauce containing mushrooms and cracked black pepper. ""Would I be one to deny you the gravy of the gods?"" She asked (rhetorically) with a soft smile; Joseph couldn't help but smile back as he cracked the tab on his soda and began on his green beans.
A bit later, when his beans were gone and Marie had almost finished her soup, Joesph began formulating a question that related to a curious thought that had sprung up earlier. ""Not to sound like a nag or anything, but I'm just curious but what was all that 'upstanding' stuff about?"" The only time he had ever heard anyone talk like that was...
Oh God...
Marie swallowed the last bits of her soup. ""Oh, I don't know. Maybe It's that I had no idea that the son of insurance brokers had such deep and aristocratic roots? Maybe it's that I was surprised to find out that the Clayton's had come not from hardy New England farming stock as I had assumed, but from the urbane, wealthy ranks of those grand Brahmins of Boston? I'm sure Granny Cora could tell some fascinating stories about the old days; she sure seemed interested in mine."" If anything, Marie took the entire thing in stride, treating both the memory of the experience and the experience itself with a a great deal of interested amusement. Certainly, mocking the type of language she had encountered was almost cracking her up.
Joseph, on the other hand, had first felt bemusement at the scene in which the Clayton family reunion of the past summer had found itself, quickly turning into outright embarrassment. ""Look, I'm sorry that I didn't tell you about her, but everybody thought that she wouldn't be able to come due to health concerns. It's not my fault that a half-senile, 97 year old woman worked up enough stubbornness to drag her nurse halfway across the state!"".
""I never said anything about anyone being at fault. I just thought it was an interesting revelation about your family."" She had meant her cajoling in good humour, but Josephs defensiveness and embarrassment were never good emotions to bring out. ""Anyway, most people would be proud to have the Boston gentry in their family history: industrialists, merchants, art, culture, philanthropy, charity..."" With every word, Marie spooned a bit of ban boc dzhow onto her grilled pork.
""As well as whaling, slave trading, opium smuggling, snobbery and having your entire life guided by the expectations of your peers; exactly the sorts of things my parents taught me to loathe. The thing is, my great-great-grandmother came from a very select, very privileged and lily-white background; I was worried that she'd... well, react oddly to you."" Joseph retorted as he began spooning (or rather, pouring) the sauce onto his meat after Marie had finished with it and passed it to him. In the case of Cora Clayton (nee Coffin), Josephs fear hadn't primarily been that she would find Marie objectionable on account of her race since that prejudice had been more ingrained in her parents generation than hers. His fear had instead been that his great great grandmother, as self-proclaimed guardian of the old, aristocratic traditions, might object to their relationship because the Trinhs were restaurateurs with no history of pedigree, education or money behind them.
In Cora's world (the 1920s, where her mind was half the time), heirs had married heiresses, families had coordinated their fortunes and everyone had kept an eye on everyone else; these were rules of decorum that had lasted for her long after the Claytons had gone bust in the great Crash of '29. The fact that she had taken Joseph aside and explained her concerns to him had done nothing to soothe his embarrassment, although he had finally convinced her that, being naturalized citizens with a successful restaurant, the Trinhs were firmly in the middling classes. She had also estimated that said restaurant, with no other inheritors besides Marie, would most likely pass into Clayton hands in the fullness of time.
No one had dared explain to her the differences between modern teenage dating and the genteel courtships of her youth.
""I don't think she reacted that oddly. Sure, she was so out of date that you had to explain that I meant 'French Indochina' when I said that my parents came from Vietnam and she did seem a bit too fascinated with my families origins and, alright, it was weird hearing someone actually use the word 'courting' without trying to be funny. However, it was kind of nice to speak French with someone in this town after all the time my parents invested in me learning it."" Marie knew that while it had been terrifying for Joseph, having to put up with his relatives dissection of his relationship and fearing disapproval, she herself had enjoyed a chance to see if the old stereotypes were true. When it had become clear to Marie that the elderly woman was not about to spew racial epitaphs at her but was, indeed, fascinated as to her families background, Marie had made it a point to 'ham it up' in telling their story.
To an entranced Cora Clayton, Marie had described her parents lives before emigration as a subsistence existence in a village high up in the fog-choked mountain passes. She had woven scenes of her people worshiping strange, heathen gods far from the civilized lands of the Buddha and partaking in ghastly rituals to ensure harvests of rice from narrow mountainside terraces. She told the old woman that her parents had tired of such a life and had dreamed of something more, something in the wider world glimpsed in third-hand magazines and radio broadcasts.
After receiving a dispensation from their village shaman to leave (but promising to sent back remittances), they had made their way to Hanoi and then to Boston and finally to Glaston where, having never truly given up the more religious and symbolic aspects of their heathenish past, they nevertheless had made good names for themselves in the community. Marie had made sure that her prose had been both lurid and exotic so as to fully entrance a child of the Age of Empire as well as making proper use of tone, whether enraptured, casual or deathly serious, to emphasize mood. The end result was to make it sound as if her culture wasn't just some rural outlet of modern Vietnam or Laos, but as if it was truly unlike any other in the world.
That was an opinion that Joseph was also rapidly adopting.
They ate in relative silence for a while, the bustle of the lunch crowd beginning to die down as people left, many of them stopping to talk to Mr. Trinh at the till, expressing their concern over what had happened with the window. They were just about half done when Joseph began another conversation. ""So, did you know that there's a 'Heritage Day' coming up at school in a few weeks?""
""Yeah, and?"" Deep down in her gut, Marie was beginning to get a slightly worried feeling from the direction this conversation was going. This pretty much happened whenever the subject of her parent's past came up but, like so many times before, she could probably bluff her way through it.
""I thought that, maybe, we could do something for it. I was thinking about dredging up something from Normandy because I didn't want to clog up the schedule with another variation of British regional culture."" It sounded perfectly innocent, but Marie knew that this was a potentially tricky situation that might require misdirection, a convincing excuse and possible outright lying.
She hated lying to Joseph.
""Alright then. You can do that, I'll do the Vietnamese thing and we'll knock 'em all dead."" She answered with an enthusiasm that she hoped had betrayed nothing of her growing unease with the conversation. This seemed to provoke nothing but a non-committal murmur of agreement and thus, thinking that that was over with, she began eating again.
However, that was not the end of it.
""By Vietnamese, do you mean the standard culture from around Hanoi... or the culture from your parent's home village?"" Joseph asked, seemingly as if only for the purpose of clarification. There was much more behind it though, and whether it was just ingrained paranoia or any real danger of exposure, Marie knew that this was entering onto some very tenuous and potentially very dangerous ground. Still, the subject had to be breached.
""Aren't they pretty much the same? I mean, sure, it was pretty rural back there, but whether village or city, we were all Viet: same language, same culture, same blood, same... pretty much everything, when you think about it."" As denials went, this one wasn't half bad: sincere enough to be taken seriously and with enough internal logic that it wouldn't fall apart immediately in the face of the mildly educated mind.
On this subject, however, Joseph had become rather more than merely mildly educated. He had observed things for a long time: a lot of little things and one or two big things for the most part. And he, after long deliberation and study, had discovered that some of those things just didn't match up.
""You know, there was a time when I could believe that. But... there are just too many deviations to discount."" Joesph stopped eating all together, putting down his fork and looking his girlfriend straight in the eyes before closing and opening them again, as if to rally his thoughts. ""The food, for one thing, isn't like any kind of Vietnamese food I've read about. Yes, you have the side dishes but that's about it for similarity. Second, your parent's tattoos. Again, unlike any other group in Southeast Asia; the closest matches I could find were incised lines on bronze figurines from over two thousand years ago.""
He stopped again. ""And then there's the language you guys speak. I'm fairly sure it's in the Mon-Khmer group, but I've been doing some research and... honestly, I've seen words on this menu that I've never been able to find in any other source. And I'm not the only one who's noticed these things."" Joesph saw panic flash across Marie's eyes, though she tried to hide it. ""Most people don't pay attention and honestly don't care, and the ones who do notice just assume that you guys are either Hmong or some little minority that no-one's ever heard of... but even that doesn't match very well either. It's like you said, you're Viet... but what about all this other stuff?""
It was then that Marie could have ended it all: the doubts, the questions, the lingering curiosity... as well as twenty one centuries of secrecy, tradition and very likely her relationship with this young man. In the end, she decided to dodge again. ""What can I say? We were very rural."" When Joesph just got this frustrated look on his face, Marie sighed, reached across the table and enveloped one of his hands with hers. ""Look, I'll try and dredge something up if I can, but I can't promise anything, okay?""
Joseph mulled on this lack of answers, but as the moment dragged on, his resistance wore down. ""Alright. If you don't want to talk about your culture, that's alright; lots of people come to America to get away from stuff. But I still am sorta curious."" Then he changed the subject. ""Anyway, after we eat, we should begin studying for our tests. Do you want to go over the English or the Algebra first?""
""We should do the Math first, then we can cool off with the Shakespeare. But we better not let the food get cold, what with how the sauce gets if allowed to sit for too long."" Marie began eating again and, after a few beats, Joseph resumed as well.
They stayed at that table for many hours, going over and revising their knowledge of maths and literature. However, already Marie wondered if there was something she could reveal, something that she could show about her parent's culture that would not threaten expose them and, as the old saying went among her tribe, 'get them cut in half and buried in two graves'.
Later that night, The Trinh's upstairs apartment
To Marie's relief, her parents reaction to her plan wasn't anger. On the other hand, fear and worry could be almost as painful.
""I know how you feel about the Clayton boy. He's well-liked, intelligent and his parents are our insurance agents."" Thanh Thi Trinh began, speaking in her families particular dialect of Viet as she, Marie and Thuch Van sat around their dining room table. ""But I ask this of you: is Joesph and his interest in this celebration worth the risk of exposure and, may I add, possible death when this town realizes who we are, when they realize what we are?"" Thanh Thi had always been the more reserved, more cautious and, frankly, more paranoid spouse in this family when it came to their safety. Where her husband was the face of the restaurant, she ran the kitchen with an eye on the back door and all of their cooks. While Thuch made friendly at social gatherings, Thanh kept track of all possible escape routes and who was and wasn't looking at them. She kept track of any news about gangs and hate-group activity in the area, and about any other strange things.
The sort of things that might lure out the kind of people who hunted their people.
But Marie had prepared for this. ""Mother, I know the risks that revealing the secrets of our people would bring. However, I am counting on two circumstances to make sure that only the most benign and harmless information is portrayed."" She rallied herself, knowing that the way she handled this could make the difference on how she presented herself to nearly everyone, especially Joseph . ""First, I must inform both of you that there are some people in this town, including my boyfriend, that realize that we are not quite from the mainstream culture of modern Vietnam."" At this, both Thanh and Thuch got even more worried but they weren't shocked, seeing as any bumpkin with an Internet connection could find that tribal tattooing wasn't really the rage in downtown Hanoi. ""The good news is that while these people realize that we belong to a distinct subgroup, they often deduce that we are either rural Hmong or some other obscure ethnic group. In other words, they know nothing about who our people are and, like the rest of the town, they honestly do not care.""
""What about the nature of our traditons, Marie? What would you do, what rite of our people would be performed on that stage that would not end up with half the town vomiting and the other half trying to hang us?"" Her father had been relatively quiet in this conversation, but he knew that the rituals of his village had, during various times in history, left such a bad impression upon outsiders that they had responded in force to try to stamp them out.
Here, Marie began grasping the thick, heavy and old scrapbook that lay closed upon the table before her. It had been entrusted to them by their village and, by the blessings of the Gods and their Instrument, they had kept it safe and hidden for more than twenty years. ""Father, it is not as if I wish to set up an alter on the stage, recite the incantations of the harvest rites and slice something open; frankly, I would have no idea how. However, I believe that there is a ritual that is benign, unusual and, even according to the author of this book, beautiful enough to make people forget it's oddity."" She opened the book, filled with sepia photographs and notes written in French on yellowed paper, to the page she had bookmarked. ""I want to do the Stork Dance.""
Her parents were quiet for a minute. Admittedly, this was probably the least unusual rite of their people and it did seem to have a calming effect on its audiences. However, it took weeks of intensive training in order to do it right, the costuming and specific actions depended on whether the dancer was a man or woman and the phonograph with the instrumental music and vocals, only having been recorded once before, was on the other side of the planet. It was a tall order to pull off for anyone. ""You do realize that practicing for the dance requires grueling routine, so much so that it might effect your school work?"" Asked her mother, wondering if her daughter was truly sincere.
""I know that. I'll just have to sacrifice my time with Joesph, a sacrifice that I'm sure he'd understand."" Marie responded in English this time, the plans for her act becoming clearer. ""However, I'll need some help in creating the proper costuming and... I know that shipping items from the Old Country is like trying to smuggle Plutonium but if you could convince the shamans to release that phonograph for a month or two, I would be eternally grateful to all of them, and to you.""
Her parents wondered, not for the first time, if Marie truly comprehended what could be asked of that gratitude in the years to come. She had the opportunity to live a life completely detached from the paranoia, the fear and the constant danger that followed her people. Would she give that chance away simply for the sake of a boy?
Whatever choice she made, however, was hers to make.
In the end, they acquiesced... but not without informing their daughter of what their home village could ask of her in exchange for the items she wished. It might be years until it was asked but one day, a representative of their village would approach her and request a repayment, be it in money, information or something else.
It was that ""something else"" that truly worried Thuch and Thanh.
","May 19th, 1929,
Miskatonic University, Arkham, Mass.
In all honesty, the manner which Robert Olmstead exited the Chancellor's office was not the most graceful to be seen in the history of Miskatonic University. However, perhaps ""exited"" is too neutral a term for a man being forcibly escorted out the double doors by two University proctors with a firm grasp on his forearms. ""Ejected"" is probably a good description though ""assaulted"" would have a good chance of being upheld by a court. As Mr. Olmstead was finally shoved out into the hall, he finally lost his balance and fell to his knees, the voluminous robes which he had worn since his arrival seeming to weigh him down.
As Hiriam Willows and Brian Fife rushed out of the office and hastened to Robert's side, the man himself seemed... tired, drained of energy and showing signs of a fatigue that had been present since the meeting had began. Still, Mr. Olmstead managed to raise his head to address Chancellor Douglas Gooding, who was still in his office. ""I take it... negotiations have ended."" Robert said this in as controlled a way as possible, trying to ignore the irritation at the back of his throat and the sides of his neck.
""Negotiations, as you call them, never began."" Chancellor Gooding, a patrician of a man at the age of 57, had risen from behind his desk and was now walking toward the spot where Mr. Olmstead has stood and presented his case. ""This College has been handed a chance to claim credit for discovering the root devices behind most, if not all, of vertebrate biology and promises to make careers for many of our staff and students. Unless the Navy, who has graciously allowed access to its prisoners for this purpose, decides to either withdraw that access or, as you suggest, release them back into the general population, I see no reason why they should not remain under our supervision in their current quarters."" Gooding eyes fell upon the floor where Robert had stood... and the staff that now lay on the floor. It was a strange thing: the matter itself almost resembled gray, petrified wood but in places it's form showed characteristics of crustacean carapace or of the strange shapes present in fishbone or shark-jaw and, when the light hit it just so, the surface displayed a luster more akin to Nautilus shell or Mother of Pearl than any of those things.
Gooding, in a sudden fit of antiquarian fascination, began kneeling down to take the strange rod. ""However, if you could tell us about this staff..."" Just as his the tips of his fingers brushed against the smooth surface the staff, seemingly under its own power, jerked butt-first towards the door, skidding over the floors polished hardwood planks. When it reached Robert. who was now being helped to his feet by Professor Fife, the staff actually began tipping up on its butt, the shaft guiding itself into Robert's limp, open hand.
Grasping the staff to regain his posture, Robert glanced once more at Gooding. ""The staff is a secret that keeps itself. As to my plea... if that is your decision, I pray that you do not live to reap the whirlwind.""
""Is that a threat?"" Chancellor Gooding was losing patience rapidly after this manifestation of the strange had made an intrusion into his office and annoyance was threatening to turn to anger.
""Merely a warning, good Chancellor."" These were the last words that Robert Olmstead spoke to Gooding as Fife, carrying the papers that Olmstead had presented, helped him as he unsteadily walked down the hallway, supported by his implement.
Just as Hiriam Willows was about to follow the pair, Gooding called to him. ""Hiriam! Get back in this office!"" Willows, his eyes continuing to follow his two companions down the hall for a moment, turned and walked back into the Chancellor's office with a tightening of the lips and the speed of a slow stroll, more amenable to his aging legs than the fast walk he had so recently exerted himself with. ""I'm surprised, Douglas.""
""Surprised that I called you back in here?"" Asked Gooding as he sat back down behind his desk.
""That we are apparently operating on a first name basis now. As I recall, that has not been our habit since nineteen hundred and... seven, was it?"" It may have been facetious (to say the least) in bringing this up but after today, last winter and, to be honest, most days since Gooding had restricted Willows to a single morning class per week, he and the Chancellor has not quite been on the best of terms.
""Ah yes, the Cuba business. However... actually, that ispart of why I called you in here."" Gooding pointed an almost accusatory finger at the older man. ""As I recall, youwere the one to countermand my decision to use force against those two Voodoo cults in Las Tunas.""
""First of all, they were Santeria practitioners. Second, I was able to forge an armistice between the two warring factions and convince them to give up their murderous ways...""
""In favor of continued use of animal sacrifice, I remember, I remember."" Gooding put that accusatory finger to his temple as if to calm a throbbing. Then that finger returned to the standing faculty member. ""But whether you're French or Spanish does not mean much of anything when you're trying to rip open a portal to the tenth dimension, summoning dangerous ichors and vapors from beyond and, may I remind you, trying to violently murderas many people as needed for their insane goals. Hiriam... I know that you're a Quaker, I knowthat negotiating between groups of violent, degenerate heathens has always been your strong point, but this is something radicallydifferent.""
The Chancellor noticed Willow's disbelieving roll of the eyes but continued. ""These... things have been present in and off the coast of Essex Country for the better part of a century. They've killed people, they subverted local government, through their negligence the port of Innsmouth nearly crumbled due to neglect... not to mention that they've potentially forced themselves on local residents due to the existence of apparently hybrid individuals!"" He motioned out the door and pointed in the direction that Olmstead and Fife had exited. ""Did you happen to take a good look at the person who was just ejected from this office? My God Hiriam, the man was practically turning into a herring before our very eyes!"" Gooding seemed to calm down a bit. ""I know you were always one to try to see both sides of the argument, to resolve conflicts through calm deliberation... but this wasn'tnegotiation. This was a demand backed by veiled threats. I remember you being much sterner in the face of demands than this."" There was a thoughtful pause. ""What happened in Virginia, Hiriam? Ever since you got back, you've been at your usual quest for cooperation between man and eldritch forces except... moreso.""
A hundred images flashed in Willows mind of that December in the Luray Valley. The little clusters of field-stone houses and barns around the southern tip of Mt. Ida; the lean-faced Quaker farm-folk; the walk through the community cemetery and the graves of his mothers family, the Caulfields. The children, so desperate to experience a properly Victorian Christmas in pageantry unknown by the community, inviting him to a snowball fight and following his lead in decorating and games (which he had found invigorating at the time). The experience of being around others of his faith for the first time in decades.
But there was also the first time he had ever been forced to kill, as a .45 caliber ACP round hit dead center on his war-painted assailant in the mountain forests. The moment when he had discovered the small shrine beneath the Longhouse Meeting Hall with it's black deer hides, Eastern Elk antlers and strange mix of artifacts. The sight of his hosts sacrificing pigs, wailing and dancing in the manner of the Seneca Iroquois at an isolated stone circle south along the mountains from the Army's battle with their foes, mourning for all the dead who would be brought out. And two of the bodies brought back, an apparent pair of adult twin sisters in matching warpaint who had charged the federal troops with knives before being mowed down: their hands had been intertwined even as fire from Thompson submachineguns had demolished their ribcages, the agony of their situation apparent from their found journals... the swelling around their eyes under the paint indicative of weeping.
Hiriam shrugged as if he experienced nothing. ""Just a bit of reconnection with my mothers side of the family. Now, if you will excuse me?"" Before Gooding could even respond, Hiriam Willows walked out of the office and closed the doors behind him, exhaling in relief before he continued on to Professor Fife's office.
Shortly, Professor Fife's Office
Brian Fife sighed in frustration and concern as he dabbed the side of Robert Olmsteads neck with a handkerchief soaked in ice water. ""When was the last time you bothered to moisten the reservoir layers in this cloak? Any longer without adequate water around the gills and you would have been coughing up blood.""
Robert, sitting in a chair across from Fife, was now much less weary now that relief was being applied. "" There was no time. I had to act quickly to try to get them released and the last two days have been a flurry.""
""Well, it's just as well that I keep ice and water in my study or you would have..."" Fife was interrupted by Hiriam Willow's entry into the office who, upon entering, simply asked himself how a militant like Douglas Gooding had become chancellor. Fife's answer to this question was concise. ""Well, Masterson died of Diphtheria while in Shanghai, Harvey has his Cocaine habit, Peaslee isn't totally trusted after that Yith business and yourefused to take any oath of office acceptable to the Congregationalist clergy. Gooding was the only member of the senior faculty with the necessary respectability left."" 
""Thank you very much. Now, what do we do next?"" Hiriam sat down in another chair, forming a semicircular huddle as he addressed Olmstead. ""Gooding isn't going to budge an inch without a proper prodding, the Arkham Police are beginning to take note of your lodgings at the Miskatonic Hotel and your current appearance which, may I remark, is becoming more piscine by the day, will not inspire confidence in the other involved parties.""
""Then we have to properly prod. I have to prod. I owe that much at least."" Robert, now that his neck and gills were properly wetted (and the kelp layers under his robe properly inundated with cold water), became quiet, both hands still across his lap, grasping the staff he had carried since he had arrived.
Fife knew what he was thinking, for it was also close to his heart. ""Robert, you don't have to do this. The Priests of Y'ha-Nthlei won't judge you harshly if you don't bring home any more of our people than your cousin; I know it's tragic, but it's happened before that people have been lost to the surface world.""
Robert suddenly got a hard look in his eyes and stared directly at the other man. ""Do you know what it feels like to lose your parents, your child, your neighbors or friends? To not know where they were taken? To fear for their lives while they might be undergoing hideous, nefarious tortures? And then, one day, you are suddenly confronted with the grinning idiot who, in his disgust and primordial fear, ensured your loved one's capture and now, while you are forced to hide like a crab in the sand, are expected to welcome this fool into your ranks?""
He groaned at the memory... or even more than the memory. ""The punishment for my loutish treachery was harsh, but even a flayed back will not absolve all I have done, all I have seen. My flogging will not return parents to children or husbands to wives. My pain will not sooth the fear of mothers for their sons. And the welts upon my back will not make me forget the accusation, the pain... the sorrowin their eyes. I am doing this as much for myself as for them; doing it so that I won't have to live with my failures for an eternity."" 
Willows and Fife were quiet until Fife quietly asked ""So, what now?""
""If I can't do anything, the warriors will be swimming upstream in less than a week. When they get here... I can't promise that anyone will be safe."" Robert looked pensive, a calculating look on his face. ""We... Iwill have to make an impression in front of Gooding. Somewhere public, somewhere will it will make an impression that can't be dismissed or ignored. Anything come to mind?""
It was then that it struck Hiriam. ""Of course, the regatta tomorrow! Gooding will be attendance, he hasto be in attendance according to College statutes. But what are you going to do?""
Having been asked, Robert began to think. ""I assume it'll be on the Miskatonic?""
""Where else? Hangman's Brook has never been deep enough for rowing and the University never affluent enough to construct a canal."" Fife explained.
""Will there be many other people there?"" Robert asked again, something beginning to form in his already-changed brain.
""Everyone who can: students, alumni, dock workers, beggars... why do you ask?"" Hiriam was now curious as to this whole thing.
Robert looked down at the staff in his hands, feeling the smooth surface but also feeling the power coursing through the object. The Staff of Dagon... said to have been wielded by their king and blessed by the mighty Priest to whom Dagon and Hydra had sworn loyalty. Once, it had been said to have performed wonders.
Once... and perhaps again.
",True
"Dry hacking. The sound assaults my ears, and makes my heart begin to flutter. It's unlike any paroxysm I've ever heard, even when Theodora contracted pneumonia two years ago. What's far worse is I know, instinctively, that it is not she whose body is wracked with illness. It's Lemuel Dawson, on his deathbed.
""Hold on!"" My voice is lighter, younger, not yet burdened with the weight of sorrow after his passing. Like any good nurse, I rush to his side and wipe the bloody spittle from his lips with a handkerchief. This is no mere dream; it's a recollection, and that's exactly what I did back then. ""I'm here as always, Father."" 
""Millie,"" he says weakly, and smiles through the pain of nearly-constant coughing. ""Come closer."" I do, and wince at his fevered breath. ""There's something that I must tell you, at long last."" Every word of his is belabored. His voice reminds me of a desert wind, scorched with sand. Even his sickroom has that acrid air, as if we were in the middle of the Sahara instead of Massachusetts. I myself am hot, and know Father must be. However, I dare not leave his chamber to fetch a wet cloth for fear of missing his last words.
""They have come for me, and…you must know all that I do before they come for you. Find the keys,"" he says before being consumed with another coughing fit, ""in the bottom drawer of my desk. Bring them here."" Again I follow his directions, yet hesitantly. Throughout his life, Father had been very particular about who was allowed to touch his personal possessions, and rummage through his desks and cabinets. Even our taciturn Theodora, who'd never reveal any of his secrets even under duress, was forbidden from doing so. Father gave explicit instructions on which rooms were to be cleaned (kitchen, parlor, and so on), and which were not (his spartan bedroom after Mother died, and private study). That's why it puzzles me, in this nighttime vision as well as in life, to hear him make such a request. Nevertheless, I hurry to obey it.
It takes several tugs of the aforementioned bottom drawer, sticky with disuse, to get it to yield. When it does, I cough at the dust within and pull out a small iron ring with five keys. Each one of them is different, as keys naturally are, yet these five have been bent into the most curious shapes and configurations. I'm tempted to stand beside the desk and stare at them to my heart's content, fingering their bizarre metal shafts, but Father's waiting. Not knowing what he'll tell me, or what he wants me to do with the keys, I take them over to his bedside. Greedily, he grasps them in his long fingers and takes my right hand in his.
""First,"" he announces, slipping one of the unique keys into my palm. ""Second,"" he then says, doing the same with another. ""Third. Closet. Church."" With sudden horror, I realize what they open: the three locks to the door of his forbidden study, the closet within it, and the only church to which he's ever belonged. ""The one on Gallows Hill,"" he clarifies. I wonder why he's called it that instead of Cemetery Hill. Perhaps, now that he's facing his own hangman in the form of an illness that not even Leight's doctor can diagnose, images of the Purge are haunting him. ""Read and learn all you can, when you're prepared. Take care."" 
I couldn't stop myself: ""Why 'take care'? Is something wrong? Who are 'they', Father? Please explain!"" 
""It would take…too long."" He slowly smiles, exposing all of his teeth in the white rictus of a death's-head. Pressing the keys so firmly into my palm that they leave mild scrapes and indentations afterward, Father coughs once more. ""Believe."" With that, his withered hand releases mine and falls to his side limply. He is no longer alive, and our conversation has drained me so much that I can do nothing but sob in fright.
I wake up to find my pillow damp, and my eyes glistening. There is no one around save for me, and the all-encompassing darkness to hide my tears. It's been seventeen years, almost to the day, since Lemuel Dawson departed this mortal world. I feel ashamed of myself, because after nearly two decades, I should not be so stricken with grief. Father, at this point in time, should be a distant memory, a framed portrait on the wall of my house and mind. However, he is not. He has evidently remained with me, in a locked compartment of my mental faculties that only dreams can reopen. Why now? Why here, in this very Inn? If the keys that he gave me so long ago - and which I've reconfined to the drawer from which I took them - are back in his old house, then why didn't I dream about them back there? This is too strange, and scary.
When you're prepared, Father had told me, read and learn all you can. Prepared for what, I wonder?
","Some people who sleep at the Dreamers' Inn, in my hometown of Leight, Massachusetts, never wake up.
So it is said. 'Tis a wonder that our only boarding place for travelers manages to stay open at all, with the ceaseless grinding of the rumor mill reaching wayfarers' ears before they reach here. Our village's moniker is pronounced as if the ""e"" were not there, nor any source of illumination. Despite our best efforts to redeem the name of Leight, it is still spoken like a curse. We are God-fearing folk now, in anno Domini 1893, but some of us weren't two hundred years ago. The witchcraft panic that had hit Salem in 1692 infected us like a fever one year later. Fifty people were sickened, and cured by a visit to Gallows Hill.
My great-great-grandfather and original proprietor of the Inn, Goodman Abner Dawes, was one of them.
My name is Millicent Dawson. Even though I'm four generations descended from him, respectable people in Leight cross to the other side of the street when they see me. If it weren't for my late father's pension, I'd be searching these same streets for men too drunk to care about my ancestry. I'm a spinster at thirty-four, but still pretty according to the Inn's current owner. Not that I'd have Monsieur Thènard! He is no drunkard, but sometimes I wish he were. His eyes, never bloodshot and always keen, are those of a wolf.
Is it he that continues to lend the rumors such credence? Has he dared to murder his own customers?
Pah! It's far more likely that the villagers, many of whom are superstitious illiterates, want to keep anyone from having anything to do with the Dreamers' Inn because they're terrified. I, for one, am not. I know my great-great-grandfather's establishment for what it is: a broken-down lodging house, greatly refurbished, with three floors and servants' quarters at the top. It's the closest thing that Leight has to a castle, because the guest rooms and garret are contained within a tall turret. The Inn is the very sort that inspires ghosts and unspeakable phantoms to possess one's imagination - even mine. I suppose I cannot blame my naïve neighbors too much. If I'm out in the evening, having a bite of dinner at our only restaurant, I try not to gaze up at that tower. As it darkens in the fading twilight, it slowly turns blacker than any sort of pitch.
What is it about the place that makes me shudder, even though I'm not so silly as to believe it's haunted?
How has it remained a dreamers' refuge for more than two centuries, my ancestors' toil notwithstanding?
Why do I always see it in my own dreams, as it draws me like iron toward a magnet?
Such mysteries are better left unsolved. What I must do is remain calm, and grounded in practicalities.
The rumors state that no visitor to the Dreamers' Inn has ever been a guest for more than one night. Even those travelers who have spent that brief length of time within its walls have departed without a word, in a mad frenzy of escape. I've lived in Leight all my life, and have no reason to pay for a room when I'm safe enough in my late father's house. Nevertheless, I intend to stay not for one night, but three. I shall prove the chatter of my fellow citizens to be foolish gossip, once and for all, and bring more business to the Inn. I receive a share of its profits, being the only living descendant of its owners throughout the generations.
Father's pension is barely holding out, and with a bitter chill in the air, I need some more money for winter.
",True
"Hanoi, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
June 24, 2011.
""Hey, we're here. Get up if you don't want to wake up in Hue!""
Joseph Clayton was shaken awake by the hand of one of his classmates on his shoulder. He was sitting in the back of a taxi van... the only one left sitting, actually, as the others had already disembarked to enter the government office they were parked in front of.
Which probably meant that he was left to pay the fare.
After he payed (as seemed to be his lot on this trip), he followed his classmates and his professor into the government office where they hoped to finally receive their travel permits. He hadn't gotten much of sleep on the plane; a mixture of excitement in the face of overseas travel and sheer jet-lag had conspired to leave him weary and light headed until he got a few hours sleep, which the taxi ride had partially afforded him.
And in that sleep...
The dream had come as a stark, clear memory. When Marie had said that she wasn't going to join him at the Miskatonic campus in Arkham for what would be their first year of university, he had been devastated. His first questions, rushed and frantic, had been about the cause of such a change. She certainly had the SAT score to qualify and student debt could be handled with relative ease. Had she decided to forgo post-secondary to concentrate on her stake in the restaurant? Had financial problems struck and prevented admissions from being paid?
Was it something about him?
Her answers, far more controlled than his frenzied speculation, had all been in the negative. Her SAT scores were good, student loans were still open and she still intended to go for a degree in Biology at Miskatonic. It was just... after she'd gotten that phonograph from her parents' home village, the repayment had been a promise to come and spend a year back in the ""Old Country"" as soon as she could. It would only be for a year and then she would return, ready for university and all accompaniments.
That had been very nearly one year before. She had promised him that she would be coming back in the summer of 2011... but after she had arrived in Vietnam, all contact had stopped cold. Her parents, when asked about her condition, always responded with affirmations that she would return and that she was fine... but as winter wore onto spring, subtle hints of doubt and worry had crept into their voices. Had they even been receiving any news from their daughter and if not, then why not? Had something gone terribly wrong?
As it happened, more baffling events awaited inside.
""What do you mean, restricted?"" Joseph asked the Communist Party bureaucrat sitting across the desk from him. Of course, due to the facts that first, said bureaucrat was a government employee and second, they were not alone in the room, Joseph had been careful not to sound too brunt in his tone. A trung sior Sergeant, wearing the forest green uniform of the Vietnam Border Defence Force (VPA), stood by the door of the office, both watching and guarding.
Relieved at being able to shed his stilted English after Joseph exhibited a decent grasp of the Vietnamese language, the bureaucrat put forth what he knew of the situation. ""Civilian access is almost completely denied inside the area you requested. To be honest, that section of the border has been troublesome ever since the war. We get reports of smugglers, poachers, bandits, H'mong insurgents... every type of violent counter-revolutionary you can think of, this region seems to have it. The local Bru farmers aren't much help, but they generally don't bother others and seem to accept the military presence we keep there."" The bureaucrat shifted his gaze from Joseph to Professor Neville Andover, the leader of this particular expedition. ""I'm sorry, but there's nothing that can be done without high level authorization.""
As a response to this, Neville Andover did not get upset. He did not resign himself to failure. He did not even try to ask if there was any other avenue of entry or way to access the information he needed. He just donned an odd, amused smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling behind his wire rim glasses. ""I assume that General Vo is still the Secretary for the Border Forces?"" He asked, almost distractedly. When the official answered yes, Professor Andover reached into the inside of his light cotton jacket and pulled out a small, metal case. From this case, he removed a single paper card of purest black, embossed with an emerald green ""Delta"" symbol and a capital ""Y"" of gold in the center of that hollow triangle. ""I have been in contact with Comrade Vo for the last six months, planning this expedition as an act of cooperation between our two governments and as a boon for my University. He knows that card; show it or describe it to him... you maywant to run it by General Tran as well. Either way, they will give you the answer you need.""
As the bureaucrat took the card and then as the Border Defense sergeant took it from him and headed out of the room, Joesph wondered about his professor and the oddities that surrounded him. The first time he had ever seen the Professor, it had been in his High School Auditorium as Marie had performed the Stork Dance... and Joseph had noticed strange things. In their senior year of High School, both he and Marie had received reference letters to Miskatonic University in Arkham, a town in Essex county. When he had arrived at Miskatonic (without Marie), he had been shocked that the professor for his Cultural Anthropology class was not only the one who had given him his reference but was also the man who had he had seen three years before.
And then there were his classmates, three of whom had also come on this expedition. Many of them had received similar letters from Prof. Andover and most of those, though not relaying specifics, had said that they had found the circumstances equally strange. Two who had gotten references were on this very trip with them. The first was Tracy Williams from the farm country of Northwest Virginia, a girl with blond hair quite a few shades lighter than Josephs own brassy brown and the class Nippon-Nut, being both obsessed with Anime and Manga as well as being Japanese-proficient. The second was Albert Noyes, a young man who has part white, part black and a little Algonquin-Indian from a small hamlet in southern Vermont. His specialties were technology, math and Mandarin Chinese. The third member of retinue was a young man named Malone who... frankly, was a mystery to the entire class. However, he had volunteered for this trip and his grades had been excellent so his place on the roster had been assured.
But there was still a nagging question at the back of his mind: why? Why had they received offers to go to an obscure if admittedly exceptional regional university when the big names had all passed them over? Why had they been gathered from all across the United States by a single professor? And why, it seemed, did it feel like there was such a big connection between the missing member of Dr. Andovers ""collection"" and the reason behind this expedition?
Why did it feel as if Marie was somehow connected to this?
Eventually, the sergeant came back and informed the bureaucrat of General Vo's express permission for the Professor and his students to enter the exclusion zone as well as General Tran's confirmation, before handing the card back to Neville Andover. Joseph knew that academics could sometimes have friends in high and unusual places, but counting on ... no, expecting the approval of not just one, but two ranking Generals in a non-allied nation? This seemed crazy, certifiably insane even.
But then, so did spectral storks and spoonbills.
Northernmost Quang Binh Province, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
June 29, 2011
Despite the calm look on the professors face, something about the current situation made Joseph Clayton distinctly ill at ease.
They had spent the last two days trudging up into the Annamite mountains after leaving the fertile coastal plain. At the last village with road access, they had ditched their vehicles and backpacked up the ridges and trails, counting on a guide from the local Bru people to lead them to... whatever Prof. Andover was looking for. The fact that the guide was now legging it quite quickly back down the misty path told Joseph that something had either gone incredibly wrong or incredibly right.
Now, Neville Andover was chanting, seemingly trying to communicate with something deep in the thick underbrush on either side of the worn, overgrown gully that had been called a trail. The language was almost intellig ible to Joseph, being a form of Mon-Khmer linked to the classical Vietnamese he had studied, perhaps with a few hints of Muong intermixed. However, the syntax and grammer were archaic to say the least. From some of the words used it even seemed to be achingly familiar, almost as if...
With a sudden realization of shock and the smell of grilled pork and Bac Bon Dzhow a memory in his nostrils, Joseph realized where he had encountered this form of Vietic before.
But the shocks were not over.
Spun around by Albert Noyes to see something, Joseph gazed upward to see a human figure standing upon the high bank, glancing down at them with hard, measuring eyes. Undoubtedly masculine, the figure was of a man of slightly darker skin than the farmers of the coast (though the features were similar) and of greater height than either them or the native Bru. Clothed only in a white cotton kilt with geometric designs in black and a leather girdle, this man carried a white flatbow decorated with bands of green, blue and red while a bronze dagger rested at his hip. His head was shaved of all hair, and black designs were tattooed from the crown of the scalp to the jawline, with more tattoos covering his arms, chest and lower legs.
The fact that an arrow was nocked in the string of his bow put the four young people on edge, with Malone and Joesph himself tightening the grips on the hilts of their machetes in anticipation of a hopeless fight. More men in similar dress and tattoos, some with bronze slashing swords, some with bronze-headed spears and others with flatbows, appeared out of the forest on either side of them. Now that Joseph could get a better look at them in the dim light filtering down through the forest canopy and the mist, their arm tattoos began looking very similar to those borne by Marie's parents while those on their faces, while different in design, were still similar in form.
All the while, Prof. Andover kept up the low chanting, of which Joseph could pick out individual words: ""friend"", ""gods"", ""village"", ""priest"", ""comrade"" and at least one invocation of Ho Chi Minh among them. To this, these strange men seemed to confer with each other though glances and nods before took one took a short, bamboo tube from his girdle, put one end to his mouth, took a deep breath and blew.
As the silvery-blue powder erupted from the tube, settled on the heads of the trekking academics and they each lost consciousness in turn, Joseph wondered if this could get any worse.
Meanwhile, Spoonbill Village
Tsan Pho Dao had been the Chief Priest of this village for many years, ever since the death of his father in the closing days of the American War. In that span of years, he had seen many futures and advised his people based on those futures. He had called down both ruin and plenty by invoking the power of the gods of his people. He alone, in a feat outside even the power of the hereditary village chiefs, had communicated with the Instrument of their gods, a being possessed of both boundless knowledge and an absolutely rotten temper. He also, most importantly, had an absolutely perfect memory of his entire life... and that of his father, and his father before him.
To be perfectly honest, he held a tremendous amount of power within this village. The ancestor shrines belonged to families while the hunters had their own little shrines up the mountain where midnight rituals were performed to gather poison for the tips of arrows and darts. But those rituals needed to be performed by the minor priests under his command. This temple was the spiritual center of his people for most of the year and the temple with it's darkened wood walls lit only by feeble braziers whose light was twisted by the smoke of rare and powerful incenses, with it's figurines of gods and demons carved from nephrite and jadeite brought from deep below the earth... was his domain. His and no one else'. He divined the future when possible, he performed the rites and as a result, it was he who had taken countless lives in sacrifice over the course of his adulthood: chickens, pigs, goats, buffalo... people.
As he sat at a low table in his private sanctuary, trying to divine some course for a question that had faced him for most of a year, he noticed something. One of the golden discs he used for divination, a coin looted from a Chinese caravan many centuries ago, stood up on its rim and began to roll. Following the curve of failing momentum, the coin finally came to rest at a specific point on the table, a place that held indication of the future.
Visitors... and not the ""ketchup"" kind of visitors.
Several Hours Later, Close to the Laos Border
The answer to Joseph Clayton's earlier question was a definite yes. When he had awoken, he had found his wrists and ankles bound, the bindings looped over a pole carried by two men with him and the other students suspended like deer carcasses. The Professor, on the other hand, had not been bound, but had found transport by sitting in a large basket suspended from one of the poles by a cord, carried by a pair of men. They had been going downhill from the crest of a ridge and were now leaving the forest, coming onto a road. First, they passed under a wooden gate where roosting spoonbills had been carved into the posts and a sun flanked by two dragons had been carved into the beams above the road.
Then Joseph saw where they were headed. A village of perhaps thirty houses was visible in the valley bottom while narrow terraces had been cut into the hills above, green with growing rice. The view quickly vanished as the men began heading into the village itself but sight was soon replaced with sound. The quiet of the forest was supplanted by the cacophony of a hundred sounds: chickens and pigs grunted and clucked as the animals rooted below the houses and around the garbage heaps while odd-looking reddish dogs, lazing in the sun on the porches of the outermost houses, whined in surprise at the new arrivals. The sounds of tools and primitive machinery clunked melodiously. The sounds of people also were audible: talking, laughing, shouting and even a few low notes of women's work songs were possible for Joseph to pick out of the general buzz... a buzz which also included Albert trying to reason with their captors and Tracy displaying an unusually foul mouth toward same.
Soon, people began to notice the men bringing in captives and a few even began to gather along the path as they entered the village, joining their dogs (or Dholes, as they were now identifiable as) who had come to sniff. It was mostly men, older boys and children who came out to watch while the women and the elderly usually went no further than windows and the porches of the stilt-houses that lined the road. Here, even hanging upside down, Joseph could notice a few things about the dress and appearance of the people
Frankly... it was a bit odd.
From what he knew, the Vietnamese national costume (in it's modern form) placed a heavy emphasis on trousers, an item of clothing that he noticed was rather conspicuously absent here. Everyone here seemed to be wearing variations on one basic outfit in either brown or black: knee-length cotton kilts, short-sleeved cotton jackets (mostly with their front fastenings closed) and either rough-woven conical hats or simple cloths tied over their heads. The men's hair appeared to be cut short to the point where one could vaguely make out the tattoos on their scalp while children varied between the same shortness for boys and a single, long braid for the girls.
Eventually they arrived in a great or square before what appeared to be the temple: a ponderous structure of wood and brick perched upon massive stone foundations, it's sloping roofs flaring outward as if to shroud the surrounding houses from the scrutiny of the heavens. Around them, a crowd had gathered on all sides, an air of excitement buzzing in the air. Men exited the house across the square from the temple entrance and despite the calm demeanour of Professor Andover, words began filtering through to Joseph that began sounding more and more disturbing; words like ""kill"", ""sacrifice"" and ""ritual"". But another word came, one that sent darker imaginings and images rambling through his sensation-saturated mind.
The word ""eat"".
""WAIT! STOP!""
Joseph knew those words as well... as well as that voice!
Out of the crowd rushed a figure dressed much like the others: brown kilt and jacket, the latter partially open to reveal a yem undergarment and with a straw hat on her head. As Joseph finally began taking in other details, he noticed the tattooed lines and whimsical designs on her lower legs and arms and on her face, lines and vaguely triangular patterns that almost resembled the features of an orangutan.
Her face... behind all the tattooing, the face of this woman was still as unmistakable to Joseph as the first day they had met in Kindergarten. To this sudden recognition, the young man could only exclaim his surprise as a soothingly familiar name.
""Marie?""
","The Judas Mark
""Cthulhu ftaghn,"" He said with a laugh, swaying his tilted head to the right in a drunken manner. ""Cthulhu ftaghn.""
He broke out into a laughing fit. Then as quickly as it started it stopped; like the lightning bolt outside his window. Arkham was his place of work. And as a patient, his work was hard to complete. Not like he wanted to do it, either.
The rain stopped.
""I hear youuuuuuu."" He chuckled. ""I hear you flapping those blasted wings outside my windah."" He giggled, then sobered up. ""Damn Migo. YA CAN'T HAVE MY BRAIN!""
There came a drum of plastic on metal as his attention was drawn to the orderly with a plastic flashlight. Aforementioned light shining into his padded room.
""Keep it down in there!"" The orderly snapped before leaving him alone once again.
""Power outage, eh?"" He chuckled. ""Wonder whyyyy.""
He rolled his head back to his right; towards his window. His eyes registered the sound of unearthly wings twitching like insects contemplating flight. Oh how he hated those damn things. Far worse than those Shoggoths he faced a while back. At least the Shoggoths ate you; thus ending your torment. But a Migo…He shuttered. He did not want to think about it.
""Nyarlahotep…You son of a bitch."" He said, looking grumpy, then broke out in hysterics, then going back as if it never happened. ""If it weren't for you…I'd be…I'd be…""
Where would he be? In his mind, he saw himself in Miami, laying on the beach with Lucinda, their two kids playing in the sand as the waves crashed soothingly onto the shore. But then his logic would kick that to the curb. Lucinda was showing signs…She would have dumped him if it weren't for that Deep One, that is, dragging her-kicking and screaming-to the bottom of the sea.
He would be away from his insane parents. That insane town of Dunwich. Even if Lucinda did not accompany him, he would, at least, be free from here. But then he met him.
""Jesus…""
""Yes?"" Came a sweet, velvety voice. A voice one would hear from royalty.
""Not you."" He snapped.
""But I am him."" A hand placed itself on his shoulder as the entire figure appeared, sitting beside him like they were best friends.
""No...You're the fucking antichrist.""
""Is there really a difference in that either?"" Jesus asked, a smirk gracing his regal, black lips. ""Both promise paradise. From there, it's on a person's opinion on what that is."" He chuckled. ""And do not tell me that you forgot your title, Ivan…Or should I say 'Judas'?""
""THEN WHY PLACE ME HERE?"" Ivan shouted.
""Hey!"" The orderly shouted, banging his flashlight on the bars again. ""What did I just say?""
The orderly's face began to bubble. His flesh boiled, broken screams erupted from his face. He collapsed and scratched at his face, letting more and more blood poor onto the floor.
""I hate interruptions."" Jesus said. ""And as for your answer…Because. If Jesus was as all powerful as he claimed, why did he allow Judas to stay in the fold? Why did he allow the lowly wretches hope? Why did I command Tython to drag Lucinda down to the depths to suffer being rendered by hungry maws before she could drown?""
He smirked evilly as he described Lucinda's gruesome demise. Ivan panted heavily, his rage rising faster than R'lyeh ever would to the surface. Ivan struck thin air as his body moved too slow for the deity; whom was already standing, laughing at the mortal.
""Because there's more to it, Judas."" Jesus said. ""Judas of old was an important player in the world. The wretches were a growing populace, if they loved him, they would worship him.""
""Bullshit!"" He spat.
""Is it?""
""We want you to betray us, Judas."" Jesus said after his question was ignored.
""Why?""
""Sorry, but us Christs keep some secrets from their disciples.""
""What makes you Jesus?""
""Our roles."" He stated simply. ""You see…He was supposed to preach about us. But, sadly, his mind couldn't take it. So Cthulhu became a god. Not like it matters, religion changes all the time.""
He smirked, all knowing. ""And no, he wasn't the son of Cthulhu. That was my little trick.""
""Pray Judas,"" He said from behind Ivan-not allowing him to speak-his black, decaying lips mere inches from his ear. ""He likes that. It makes him feel powerful.""
""No,"" Ivan said. ""I shall not ya damned bastard! And I won't bring about their reawakening! These crazies will remain sedated!""
Jesus laughed.
""That's my cue.""
Jesus grabbed Ivan by the neck and slammed his body against the wall. Buzzing from outside the window grew from a silent drone into a frenzy. Jesus smirked evilly, drawing his face closer to his Judas.
""In blood the mark is drawn.""
Nyarlahotep drew the blade he was hiding and slashed Ivan's wrist, splattering drops of blood on the wall. He watched in delight as the drops spread, several linking up and continuing their intricate design.
It consisted of a crude circle with intertwining tentacles and a pair of piercing eyes.
""There,"" He said. ""Done.""
He tossed Ivan. He landed next to the window and as he peered out of it he clearly saw the glowing heads and beating wings of the Migo, their forms slightly covered by the rain that began to fall again.
""Enjoy your trip, Judas."" Nyarlahotep said. ""For though I am done with you, you still serve a purpose.""
The Migo swarmed, the window shattering like paper. Ivan barely had time to scream as they worked on his skull, amputating his brain and placing it inside their jar.
""Cthulhu ftagn, indeed.""
",False
"""The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated.""
BORELLUS

I. A Result and a Prologue

1.

From a private hospital for the insane near Providence, Rhode Island, there recently disappeared an exceedingly singular person. He bore the name of Charles Dexter Ward, and was placed under restraint most reluctantly by the grieving father who had watched his aberration grow from a mere eccentricity to a dark mania involving both a possibility of murderous tendencies and a profound and peculiar change in the apparent contents of his mind. Doctors confess themselves quite baffled by his case, since it presented oddities of a general physiological as well as psychological character.
      In the first place, the patient seemed oddly older than his twenty-six years would warrant. Mental disturbance, it is true, will age one rapidly; but the face of this young man had taken on a subtle cast which only the very aged normally acquire. In the second place, his organic processes shewed a certain queerness of proportion which nothing in medical experience can parallel. Respiration and heart action had a baffling lack of symmetry; the voice was lost, so that no sounds above a whisper were possible; digestion was incredibly prolonged and minimised, and neural reactions to standard stimuli bore no relation at all to anything heretofore recorded, either normal or pathological. The skin had a morbid chill and dryness, and the cellular structure of the tissue seemed exaggeratedly coarse and loosely knit. Even a large olive birthmark on the right hip had disappeared, whilst there had formed on the chest a very peculiar mole or blackish spot of which no trace existed before. In general, all physicians agree that in Ward the processes of metabolism had become retarded to a degree beyond precedent.
      Psychologically, too, Charles Ward was unique. His madness held no affinity to any sort recorded in even the latest and most exhaustive of treatises, and was conjoined to a mental force which would have made him a genius or a leader had it not been twisted into strange and grotesque forms. Dr. Willett, who was Ward's family physician, affirms that the patient's gross mental capacity, as gauged by his response to matters outside the sphere of his insanity, had actually increased since the seizure. Ward, it is true, was always a scholar and an antiquarian; but even his most brilliant early work did not shew the prodigious grasp and insight displayed during his last examinations by the alienists. It was, indeed, a difficult matter to obtain a legal commitment to the hospital, so powerful and lucid did the youth's mind seem; and only on the evidence of others, and on the strength of many abnormal gaps in his stock of information as distinguished from his intelligence, was he finally placed in confinement. To the very moment of his vanishment he was an omnivorous reader and as great a conversationalist as his poor voice permitted; and shrewd observers, failing to foresee his escape, freely predicted that he would not be long in gaining his discharge from custody.
      Only Dr. Willett, who brought Charles Ward into the world and had watched his growth of body and mind ever since, seemed frightened at the thought of his future freedom. He had had a terrible experience and had made a terrible discovery which he dared not reveal to his sceptical colleagues. Willett, indeed, presents a minor mystery all his own in his connexion with the case. He was the last to see the patient before his flight, and emerged from that final conversation in a state of mixed horror and relief which several recalled when Ward's escape became known three hours later. That escape itself is one of the unsolved wonders of Dr. Waite's hospital. A window open above a sheer drop of sixty feet could hardly explain it, yet after that talk with Willett the youth was undeniably gone. Willett himself has no public explanations to offer, though he seems strangely easier in mind than before the escape. Many, indeed, feel that he would like to say more if he thought any considerable number would believe him. He had found Ward in his room, but shortly after his departure the attendants knocked in vain. When they opened the door the patient was not there, and all they found was the open window with a chill April breeze blowing in a cloud of fine bluish-grey dust that almost choked them. True, the dogs howled some time before; but that was while Willett was still present, and they had caught nothing and shewn no disturbance later on. Ward's father was told at once over the telephone, but he seemed more saddened than surprised. By the time Dr. Waite called in person, Dr. Willett had been talking with him, and both disavowed any knowledge or complicity in the escape. Only from certain closely confidential friends of Willett and the senior Ward have any clues been gained, and even these are too wildly fantastic for general credence. The one fact which remains is that up to the present time no trace of the missing madman has been unearthed.
      Charles Ward was an antiquarian from infancy, no doubt gaining his taste from the venerable town around him, and from the relics of the past which filled every corner of his parents' old mansion in Prospect Street on the crest of the hill. With the years his devotion to ancient things increased; so that history, genealogy, and the study of colonial architecture, furniture, and craftsmanship at length crowded everything else from his sphere of interests. These tastes are important to remember in considering his madness; for although they do not form its absolute nucleus, they play a prominent part in its superficial form. The gaps of information which the alienists noticed were all related to modern matters, and were invariably offset by a correspondingly excessive though outwardly concealed knowledge of bygone matters as brought out by adroit questioning; so that one would have fancied the patient literally transferred to a former age through some obscure sort of auto-hypnosis. The odd thing was that Ward seemed no longer interested in the antiquities he knew so well. He had, it appears, lost his regard for them through sheer familiarity; and all his final efforts were obviously bent toward mastering those common facts of the modern world which had been so totally and unmistakably expunged from his brain. That this wholesale deletion had occurred, he did his best to hide; but it was clear to all who watched him that his whole programme of reading and conversation was determined by a frantic wish to imbibe such knowledge of his own life and of the ordinary practical and cultural background of the twentieth century as ought to have been his by virtue of his birth in 1902 and his education in the schools of our own time. Alienists are now wondering how, in view of his vitally impaired range of data, the escaped patient manages to cope with the complicated world of today; the dominant opinion being that he is 'lying low' in some humble and unexacting position till his stock of modern information can be brought up to the normal.
      The beginning of Ward's madness is a matter of dispute among alienists. Dr. Lyman, the eminent Boston authority, places it in 1919 or 1920, during the boy's last year at the Moses Brown School, when he suddenly turned from the study of the past to the study of the occult, and refused to qualify for college on the ground that he had individual researches of much greater importance to make. This is certainly borne out by Ward's altered habits at the time, especially by his continual search through town records and among old burying-grounds for a certain grave dug in 1771; the grave of an ancestor named Joseph Curwen, some of whose papers he professed to have found behind the panelling of a very old house in Olney Court, on Stampers' Hill, which Curwen was known to have built and occupied. It is, broadly speaking, undeniable that the winter of 1919-20 saw a great change in Ward; whereby he abruptly stopped his general antiquarian pursuits and embarked on a desperate delving into occult subjects both at home and abroad, varied only by this strangely persistent search for his forefather's grave.
      From this opinion, however, Dr. Willett substantially dissents; basing his verdict on his close and continuous knowledge of the patient, and on certain frightful investigations and discoveries which he made toward the last. Those investigations and discoveries have left their mark upon him; so that his voice trembles when he tells them, and his hand trembles when he tries to write of them. Willett admits that the change of 1919-20 would ordinarily appear to mark the beginning of a progressive decadence which culminated in the horrible and uncanny alienation of 1928; but believes from personal observation that a finer distinction must be made. Granting freely that the boy was always ill-balanced temperamentally, and prone to be unduly susceptible and enthusiastic in his responses to phenomena around him, he refuses to concede that the early alteration marked the actual passage from sanity to madness; crediting instead Ward's own statement that he had discovered or rediscovered something whose effect on human thought was likely to be marvellous and profound. The true madness, he is certain, came with a later change; after the Curwen portrait and the ancient papers had been unearthed; after a trip to strange foreign places had been made, and some terrible invocations chanted under strange and secret circumstances; after certain answers to these invocations had been plainly indicated, and a frantic letter penned under agonising and inexplicable conditions; after the wave of vampirism and the ominous Pawtuxet gossip; and after the patient's memory commenced to exclude contemporary images whilst his voice failed and his physical aspect underwent the subtle modification so many subsequently noticed.
      It was only about this time, Willett points out with much acuteness, that the nightmare qualities became indubitably linked with Ward; and the doctor feels shudderingly sure that enough solid evidence exists to sustain the youth's claim regarding his crucial discovery. In the first place, two workmen of high intelligence saw Joseph Curwen's ancient papers found. Secondly, the boy once shewed Dr. Willett those papers and a page of the Curwen diary, and each of the documents had every appearance of genuineness. The hole where Ward claimed to have found them was long a visible reality, and Willett had a very convincing final glimpse of them in surroundings which can scarcely be believed and can never perhaps be proved. Then there were the mysteries and coincidences of the Orne and Hutchinson letters, and the problem of the Curwen penmanship and of what the detectives brought to light about Dr. Allen; these things, and the terrible message in mediaeval minuscules found in Willett's pocket when he gained consciousness after his shocking experience.
      And most conclusive of all, there are the two hideous results which the doctor obtained from a certain pair of formulae during his final investigations; results which virtually proved the authenticity of the papers and of their monstrous implications at the same time that those papers were borne forever from human knowledge.

2.

      One must look back at Charles Ward's earlier life as at something belonging as much to the past as the antiquities he loved so keenly. In the autumn of 1918, and with a considerable show of zest in the military training of the period, he had begun his junior year at the Moses Brown School, which lies very near his home. The old main building, erected in 1819, had always charmed his youthful antiquarian sense; and the spacious park in which the academy is set appealed to his sharp eye for landscape. His social activities were few; and his hours were spent mainly at home, in rambling walks, in his classes and drills, and in pursuit of antiquarian and genealogical data at the City Hall, the State House, the Public Library, the Athenaeum, the Historical Society, the John Carter Brown and John Hay Libraries of Brown University, and the newly opened Shepley Library in Benefit Street. One may picture him yet as he was in those days; tall, slim, and blond, with studious eyes and a slight stoop, dressed somewhat carelessly, and giving a dominant impression of harmless awkwardness rather than attractiveness.
      His walks were always adventures in antiquity, during which he managed to recapture from the myriad relics of a glamorous old city a vivid and connected picture of the centuries before. His home was a great Georgian mansion atop the well-nigh precipitous hill that rises just east of the river; and from the rear windows of its rambling wings he could look dizzily out over all the clustered spires, domes, roofs, and skyscraper summits of the lower town to the purple hills of the countryside beyond. Here he was born, and from the lovely classic porch of the double-bayed brick facade his nurse had first wheeled him in his carriage; past the little white farmhouse of two hundred years before that the town had long ago overtaken, and on toward the stately colleges along the shady, sumptuous street, whose old square brick mansions and smaller wooden houses with narrow, heavy-columned Doric porches dreamed solid and exclusive amidst their generous yards and gardens.
      He had been wheeled, too, along sleepy Congdon Street, one tier lower down on the steep hill, and with all its eastern homes on high terraces. The small wooden houses averaged a greater age here, for it was up this hill that the growing town had climbed; and in these rides he had imbibed something of the colour of a quaint colonial village. The nurse used to stop and sit on the benches of Prospect Terrace to chat with policemen; and one of the child's first memories was of the great westward sea of hazy roofs and domes and steeples and far hills which he saw one winter afternoon from that great railed embankment, all violet and mystic against a fevered, apocalyptic sunset of reds and golds and purples and curious greens. The vast marble dome of the State House stood out in massive silhouette, its crowning statue haloed fantastically by a break in one of the tinted stratus clouds that barred the flaming sky.
      When he was larger his famous walks began; first with his impatiently dragged nurse, and then alone in dreamy meditation. Farther and farther down that almost perpendicular hill he would venture, each time reaching older and quainter levels of the ancient city. He would hesitate gingerly down vertical Jenckes Street with its bank walls and colonial gables to the shady Benefit Street corner, where before him was a wooden antique with an Ionic-pilastered pair of doorways, and beside him a prehistoric gambrel-roofer with a bit of primal farmyard remaining, and the great Judge Durfee house with its fallen vestiges of Georgian grandeur. It was getting to be a slum here; but the titan elms cast a restoring shadow over the place, and the boy used to stroll south past the long lines of the pre-Revolutionary homes with their great central chimneys and classic portals. On the eastern side they were set high over basements with railed double flights of stone steps, and the young Charles could picture them as they were when the street was new, and red heels and periwigs set off the painted pediments whose signs of wear were now becoming so visible.
      Westward the hill dropped almost as steeply as above, down to the old ""Town Street"" that the founders had laid out at the river's edge in 1636. Here ran innumerable little lanes with leaning, huddled houses of immense antiquity; and fascinated though he was, it was long before he dared to thread their archaic verticality for fear they would turn out a dream or a gateway to unknown terrors. He found it much less formidable to continue along Benefit Street past the iron fence of St. John's hidden churchyard and the rear of the 1761 Colony House and the mouldering bulk of the Golden Ball Inn where Washington stopped. At Meeting Street - the successive Gaol Lane and King Street of other periods - he would look upward to the east and see the arched flight of steps to which the highway had to resort in climbing the slope, and downward to the west, glimpsing the old brick colonial schoolhouse that smiles across the road at the ancient Sign of Shakespear's Head where the Providence Gazette and Country-Journal was printed before the Revolution. Then came the exquisite First Baptist Church of 1775, luxurious with its matchless Gibbs steeple, and the Georgian roofs and cupolas hovering by. Here and to the southward the neighbourhood became better, flowering at last into a marvellous group of early mansions; but still the little ancient lanes led off down the precipice to the west, spectral in their many-gabled archaism and dipping to a riot of iridescent decay where the wicked old waterfront recalls its proud East India days amidst polyglot vice and squalor, rotting wharves, and blear-eyed ship-chandleries, with such surviving alley names as Packet, Bullion, Gold, Silver, Coin, Doubloon, Sovereign, Guilder, Dollar, Dime, and Cent.
      Sometimes, as he grew taller and more adventurous, young Ward would venture down into this maelstrom of tottering houses, broken transoms, tumbling steps, twisted balustrades, swarthy faces, and nameless odours; winding from South Main to South Water, searching out the docks where the bay and sound steamers still touched, and returning northward at this lower level past the steep-roofed 1816 warehouses and the broad square at the Great Bridge, where the 1773 Market House still stands firm on its ancient arches. In that square he would pause to drink in the bewildering beauty of the old town as it rises on its eastward bluff, decked with its two Georgian spires and crowned by the vast new Christian Science dome as London is crowned by St. Paul's. He liked mostly to reach this point in the late afternoon, when the slanting sunlight touches the Market House and the ancient hill roofs and belfries with gold, and throws magic around the dreaming wharves where Providence Indiamen used to ride at anchor. After a long look he would grow almost dizzy with a poet's love for the sight, and then he would scale the slope homeward in the dusk past the old white church and up the narrow precipitous ways where yellow gleams would begin to peep out in small-paned windows and through fanlights set high over double flights of steps with curious wrought-iron railings.
      At other times, and in later years, he would seek for vivid contrasts; spending half a walk in the crumbling colonial regions northwest of his home, where the hill drops to the lower eminence of Stampers' Hill with its ghetto and negro quarter clustering round the place where the Boston stage coach used to start before the Revolution, and the other half in the gracious southerly realm about George, Benevolent, Power, and Williams Streets, where the old slope holds unchanged the fine estates and bits of walled garden and steep green lane in which so many fragrant memories linger. These rambles, together with the diligent studies which accompanied them, certainly account for a large amount of the antiquarian lore which at last crowded the modern world from Charles Ward's mind; and illustrate the mental soil upon which fell, in that fateful winter of 1919-20, the seeds that came to such strange and terrible fruition.
      Dr. Willett is certain that, up to this ill-omened winter of first change, Charles Ward's antiquarianism was free from every trace of the morbid. Graveyards held for him no particular attraction beyond their quaintness and historic value, and of anything like violence or savage instinct he was utterly devoid. Then, by insidious degrees, there appeared to develop a curious sequel to one of his genealogical triumphs of the year before; when he had discovered among his maternal ancestors a certain very long-lived man named Joseph Curwen, who had come from Salem in March of 1692, and about whom a whispered series of highly peculiar and disquieting stories clustered.
      Ward's great-great-grandfather Welcome Potter had in 1785 married a certain ""Ann Tillinghast, daughter of Mrs. Eliza, daughter to Capt. James Tillinghast"", of whose paternity the family had preserved no trace. Late in 1918, whilst examining a volume of original town records in manuscript, the young genealogist encountered an entry describing a legal change of name, by which in 1772 a Mrs. Eliza Curwen, widow of Joseph Curwen, resumed, along with her seven-year-old daughter Ann, her maiden name of Tillinghast; on the ground 'that her Husband's name was become a publick Reproach by Reason of what was knowne after his Decease; the which confirming an antient common Rumour, tho' not to be credited by a loyall Wife till so proven as to be wholely past Doubting'. This entry came to light upon the accidental separation of two leaves which had been carefully pasted together and treated as one by a laboured revision of the page numbers.
      It was at once clear to Charles Ward that he had indeed discovered a hitherto unknown great-great-great-grandfather. The discovery doubly excited him because he had already heard vague reports and seen scattered allusions relating to this person; about whom there remained so few publicly available records, aside from those becoming public only in modern times, that it almost seemed as if a conspiracy had existed to blot him from memory. What did appear, moreover, was of such a singular and provocative nature that one could not fail to imagine curiously what it was that the colonial recorders were so anxious to conceal and forget; or to suspect that the deletion had reasons all too valid.
      Before this, Ward had been content to let his romancing about old Joseph Curwen remain in the idle stage; but having discovered his own relationship to this apparently ""hushed-up"" character, he proceeded to hunt out as systematically as possible whatever he might find concerning him. In this excited quest he eventually succeeded beyond his highest expectations; for old letters, diaries, and sheaves of unpublished memoirs in cobwebbed Providence garrets and elsewhere yielded many illuminating passages which their writers had not thought it worth their while to destroy. One important sidelight came from a point as remote as New York, where some Rhode Island colonial correspondence was stored in the Museum at Fraunces' Tavern. The really crucial thing, though, and what in Dr. Willett's opinion formed the definite source of Ward's undoing, was the matter found in August 1919 behind the panelling of the crumbling house in Olney Court. It was that, beyond a doubt, which opened up those black vistas whose end was deeper than the pit.

","Some people who sleep at the Dreamers' Inn, in my hometown of Leight, Massachusetts, never wake up.
So it is said. 'Tis a wonder that our only boarding place for travelers manages to stay open at all, with the ceaseless grinding of the rumor mill reaching wayfarers' ears before they reach here. Our village's moniker is pronounced as if the ""e"" were not there, nor any source of illumination. Despite our best efforts to redeem the name of Leight, it is still spoken like a curse. We are God-fearing folk now, in anno Domini 1893, but some of us weren't two hundred years ago. The witchcraft panic that had hit Salem in 1692 infected us like a fever one year later. Fifty people were sickened, and cured by a visit to Gallows Hill.
My great-great-grandfather and original proprietor of the Inn, Goodman Abner Dawes, was one of them.
My name is Millicent Dawson. Even though I'm four generations descended from him, respectable people in Leight cross to the other side of the street when they see me. If it weren't for my late father's pension, I'd be searching these same streets for men too drunk to care about my ancestry. I'm a spinster at thirty-four, but still pretty according to the Inn's current owner. Not that I'd have Monsieur Thènard! He is no drunkard, but sometimes I wish he were. His eyes, never bloodshot and always keen, are those of a wolf.
Is it he that continues to lend the rumors such credence? Has he dared to murder his own customers?
Pah! It's far more likely that the villagers, many of whom are superstitious illiterates, want to keep anyone from having anything to do with the Dreamers' Inn because they're terrified. I, for one, am not. I know my great-great-grandfather's establishment for what it is: a broken-down lodging house, greatly refurbished, with three floors and servants' quarters at the top. It's the closest thing that Leight has to a castle, because the guest rooms and garret are contained within a tall turret. The Inn is the very sort that inspires ghosts and unspeakable phantoms to possess one's imagination - even mine. I suppose I cannot blame my naïve neighbors too much. If I'm out in the evening, having a bite of dinner at our only restaurant, I try not to gaze up at that tower. As it darkens in the fading twilight, it slowly turns blacker than any sort of pitch.
What is it about the place that makes me shudder, even though I'm not so silly as to believe it's haunted?
How has it remained a dreamers' refuge for more than two centuries, my ancestors' toil notwithstanding?
Why do I always see it in my own dreams, as it draws me like iron toward a magnet?
Such mysteries are better left unsolved. What I must do is remain calm, and grounded in practicalities.
The rumors state that no visitor to the Dreamers' Inn has ever been a guest for more than one night. Even those travelers who have spent that brief length of time within its walls have departed without a word, in a mad frenzy of escape. I've lived in Leight all my life, and have no reason to pay for a room when I'm safe enough in my late father's house. Nevertheless, I intend to stay not for one night, but three. I shall prove the chatter of my fellow citizens to be foolish gossip, once and for all, and bring more business to the Inn. I receive a share of its profits, being the only living descendant of its owners throughout the generations.
Father's pension is barely holding out, and with a bitter chill in the air, I need some more money for winter.
",False
"Northernmost Quang Binh Province, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
July 2, 2011
Two young adults walked up the path beside the bronze-casters shop to the barren hillside and the forest edge beyond. ""So, how do you like things so far?"" Marie asked as she and Joseph made their way up the rough-hewn stone steps. Their destination was the house of the village woodcutter and charcoal-burner, a place that also doubled as a furniture workshop and, importantly for this journey, the villages' firearms armory.
""Not that bad. I've been doing domestic work for the past few days but neither Noc nor his wife seems to really be a slave driver. Actually, they feel more like people who understand that they're training a new servant."" Joseph thought on something. ""I'm actually surprised that he and the other hunters allowing me to accompany them. They neither seem to respect me or anyone who would stoop to use a gun, so I wonder why they changed their attitude.""
It was here that Marie began ruminating on something, an old thought that had given her more than her share of bad dreams. ""There are some things worth surrendering pride for, Joseph. Tell me, have you seen those weird scars on the ankles and arms of Nocs wife?""
""You mean those marks that look like Giant Squid wounds? Yes, but what about them?"" Joseph suddenly stopped. ""What are they, anyway?""
Having stopped also, Marie sighed, a sense of foreboding covering her features. ""When I asked that myself, they didn't tell me much more than the stories I'd already heard when I was a kid: legends about ghosts, devils from the mist, 'shadows that drink blood' is what they called them sometimes. But what I got here is that those Shugoran priests that saved my people weren't just going to somewhere. They were running ifrom/i somewhere, someone or something, something that no one is willing to talk any further about."" Marie started forward again at such a pace that her boyfriend had to hurry to catch up.
Getting the feeling that nothing more was going to be answered on that subject for a good while, Joseph changed track. ""How are the others getting on? I've been stuck in the house most of the day and I haven't really had a chance to talk to either the Prof or my classmates.""
Happy to shift from thoughts of chilling horror, Marie chuckled with increasing mirth as she began going back up the trail. ""From what I've heard, Albert's been filming every step in the bronze making process that he can, not to mention all the casting processes and various uses of equipment. The only reason that he hasn't been thrown out yet is because the family's elder patriarch has taken a liking to… well, not just him, but all of you guys, just from the descriptions alone. Your Professor and his assistant have basically locked themselves in the temple: no word out yet, but I assume that they're observing normal operations. As for Tracy…"" Here, Marie began acting a little odd. ""She talks in her sleep, if you didn't know.""
""Really?"" Joseph responded interestedly. Not reacting the way that she had feared, Marie relaxed a little from the paranoia she had been wrangling with.
""Yeah, and the strange thing is that it's in… well, tree-ish. And then there's the tattooing on her back as well."" Marie went on talking, relieved that her fear seemed to have been senseless.
Before he could answer his girlfriends increasingly chatty descriptions, a thought crossed Josephs mind on exactly why such a thing might be mentioned. ""Why would you ask me if I knew…"" Then the realization hit him and he stopped cold. ""Were you thinking that… Tracy and I?""
Marie stopped as well. ""It's not unknown to happen, you know."" Marie answered the implied question almost defensively, as if trying to justify her momentary paranoia. ""Sweethearts get separated and sometimes… one finds companionship elsewhere. Especially with, you know."" Marie tapped the side of her head, indicating the ""visitors"" that had first cursed Joseph Claytons existence during High School.
Joseph snorted in an amused, disparaging way. ""Please don't give them that much credit. I've ignored, rebuked and insulted those jerks so many times that I've made a virtual bloodsport out of it. Besides, if I'd made any moves towards Tracy, Albert would have killed me.""
""Wait, those two… they're together?"" Marie asked, wondering how she'd missed that.
""Intimately so, yes."" This was all Joseph was willing to say, himself not wishing to examine too closely the memory of walking in on his dorm-mate and his girl when they had neglected to put a sock on the doorknob. ""Anyway, as to these voices, I went to the psychology department to see if I could discover just what was causing it.""
Marie waited a heartbeat before plunging into the vital question. ""And what did they say?"" If her boyfriend did indeed have Schizophrenia, then he needed help: drugs to control the symptoms and perhaps therapy to help him conquer whatever dark corners of his psyche were feeding these voices.
If it was something else… then perhaps the local sorcerers might need to be consulted before long.
Joseph sighed. 'Whatever is going on inside my head, the geeks with the scanning equipment are pretty sure that this isn't a case of medical Schizophrenia. They say that the symptoms are all wrong, the voices aren't persuasive enough… and that I don't have any of the telltale injuries on the brain that would suggest medical reasons. And then there was the time they hooked me up to the EEG during one of my 'episodes'."" He paused, wondering just how to proceed but, since he was already experiencing strange things, he decided just to press on. ""The guys swore that, before the equipment shorted out, at least two additional wavelengths were being read beside mine."" With a shrug, Joseph summed up his thoughts. ""Ever since I came here and heard all of the seemingly crazy stories from you and the others… I don't know, but what I've gone through just makes sense now, at least in knowing that it actually can happen.""
Marie smiled. Yes, we definitely need to consult the priests. ""Come on, we've talked enough and you need to get that rifle before you head out.""
And rifles there were, all secured inside a triple locked room in the back corner of the woodcutter's house. They looked like Berthier carbines, French bolt-action repeaters from the First World War… but they were not the only guns present. ""Is that a Hotchkiss?"" Joseph asked in a voice combining bemusement and astonishment. Among the rifles and a few, scattered revolvers sat a machine-gun still on its tripod and looking impossibly well-maintained for being kept in the back room of a house located in a tropical moist forest.
""An M1914 by the looks of it, if the pictures I've seen are at all accurate. There's a story behind it, but I only know that only the oldest elders know it."" Marie replied, having picked up of the Berthier Carbines and handing it to Joseph. The ammunition was kept in a chest under a trapdoor in the main part of the house as a safety measure so they'd have to go back to pick it up. But then she asked the question that she probably should have asked before they left the village proper. ""Speaking of guns, since when did you shoot?""
""There's a gun range in Arkham; Tracy and Albert invited me along for a few lessons before Thanksgiving. She's the one with actual hunting experience and I think he only came along to check out the engineering on the pieces. It wasn't that much fun, but I think what I learned in getting my license will help on this."" Joseph began inspecting the carbine he had been given, finding it oiled and well-maintained as any other firearm in the room. There was a question that had to be asked, however?
Where did they get all these guns?
15 minutes Later
Marie walked up the stairs to her grandparent's house. She was supposed to act as a translator and informant for the expedition, having prior contacts inside the community and being a member first by blood and more recently by initiation. Truth be told, she had a feeling that old Tsan was really acting as gatekeeper in his interactions with Professor Andover while she was playing the part of a more convenient and mobile ambassador, Tsan having never left the temple save by palanquin in almost forty years.
Walking in the door, Marie was unprepared for another surprise. She saw Tracy sitting before the camera as her Grandmother and Aunt watched, waiting to begin filming the day's questions and activities, even making a short introductory statement... but not in English.
""And as soon as the translator gets here, we'll begin the second day of... Hey Marie, you almost scared me there."" Here was an audible note of guilt as Tracy hastily switched from the strange language that she had been using to the carefully modulated, Patsy Cline-accented English she had used since Marie had met her. Marie had heard it, and Tracy knew that she had heard... and Marie knew that Tracy knew.
""Yeah, I've gotten that reaction a few times since I got here."" Marie joked, knowing that humor had the power to break tension. ""So... what language were you speaking in anyway? I'm afraid I didn't recognize anything about it."" Her female elders watched closely, knowing that something had happened but being ignorant of other languages, were unsure of exactly what.
Tracy grinned bitterly. ""I'd be more surprised if you did recognize it. It's... well, it's not really a language per se, but a patois of a couple languages, with Early Modern English, Ohio Valley Shawnee, Coastal Algonquian, some Iroquoian loanwords having to do with ritual and bits of Eastern Siouan."" Tracy let out the deep breath she had been using to list all those languages. She was getting more comfortable now. ""I guess it won't do any harm if I told you, seeing as we're almost in the same boat.""
Tracy beckoned Marie to sit, turning off the camera as she did. ""The kids in my town learn it... well, sort of as a first language; English is really more of a first-and-a-half language for us. We got exposed to it through TV and then when we went to school, but most of our formative years were spent listening to and absorbing the patois around the house. Most of us never really let go of it as a language for our own private conversations.""
Marie reflected on this... but was also noting some of the features on Tracy's face: the high, rounded cheeks, her high-bridged nose, the way that her eyes were less the bright crystal blue of stereotype and more of a dark, cloudy blue resembling ultramarine. ""I hope you don't mind me saying this, Tracy but does your family have any Native American ancestry? I don't mean to pry, but you do kind of have the look.""
Tracy considered this for a moment before giving an affirmative nod. ""My father's paternal grandmother was from the Oklahoma Kiowa. My mother, as far as can be traced, is also about an eighth, this time one-eighth Shawnee, which seems to be the median for Longhouse."" She got an odd, contemplative look on my face. ""That's another one of those things that we try not to mention to outsiders, even though they tend to notice it anyway. Back in the old days, admitting it would have been a quick ticket to using a segregated washroom or worse. And now?"" Tracy shrugged. ""Now it's considered cool, while the inbreeding still makes us look like freaks.""
Marie decided to test something, just for her own sake. ""Albert doesn't seem to think you're a freak."" The more she thought about it, she had more in common with Tracy than first realized. Both of them had lived life right on the edge of themselves and their kin being recognized as something other, something foreign to the perceived natural order of the world. Both of them could sense the threat of possible revelation... and knew what it was to try to trust someone with these secrets.
""Hey, you're talking about a guy whose family has worked for alien mushroom bugs for the last hundred years. A bit of mild inbreeding is probably the most normal thing Al's ever experienced."" Here there was definitely affection to her voice, a cue that no matter what other strangeness they were involved in, there was a loving relationship between the two.
At this thought Marie smiled, thanking the ancestors for a little bit of normalcy in this year-long cavalcade of oddities that she had flung herself into. Then another question sprang forth. ""Did you know about the whole alien thing when you guys were at Miskatonic?""
Tracy shook her head. ""No, but then again, he was always kinda spacey."" Marie couldn't help but giggle at this bad pun. Tracy went on, the affection still in her voice. ""Seriously, the thing about Miskatonic is that, after awhile, you begin getting the feeling that almost everyone else is holding something close to their chest, thinking each word over before saying it. It's then that you realize that... you're not alone, that almost everyone else is as paranoid as you are, having something to hide."" She looked towards Marie. ""Everyone except for your Joseph, that is. The only thing strange about him that I noticed was that romance was nowhere on his radar at all.""
""You'd be surprised, actually."" Marie answered cryptically. Before Tracy could ask, she turned back the camera back on, signaling the beginning of the interview session.
That evening
Sweaty, hot, dirty and exhausted, Joseph Clayton exited the forest with Noc and the other hunters. Between all of them, the hunters had brought down a Sambar stag and three small muntjacs. Joseph, for his part, had escaped being gored by a wild boar only by dodging its charge, rolling into a hollow under a log and then shooting it in the head at point-blank range when it tried to go after him. For this feat, the hunters designated him ""master of the pit"" when they roasted it at tonight's feast. It had sounded like an honorable title, but Joseph could guess that they were making him little more than a cook, a traditionally female position.
Still, it was an in and it would probably be research gold.
He was entirely less enthusiastic about what else was coming back with them.
When he and the group of hunters came into the village proper, he saw Marie and the taller, paler form of Tracy coming towards him, having been up on the family terrace transplanting rice seedlings. Due to her fair skin, Tracy was wearing the largest hat she could while her arms and shins had been slathered with sunblock. Marie had already taken hers off.
As they neared him, Marie slowed to a stop, seeing the grim look on Josephs face. Tracy looked at her in confusion, then at Joseph and from his stony face understood that something was wrong. ""What is it?"" Marie asked her boyfriend.
Joseph sighed. ""When the hunters brought us in, were we supposed to be for any kind of important sacrifice?""
""Well, the Rhinoceros Festival is supposed to happen any day now. It's when we recharge the mist that surrounds the village to keep us hidden."" Marie looked around Joseph to where one of the hunters was leading a group of people into the village. They looked like quite a bedraggled bunch, many of them thin and in questionable health. There were also two women who may have been considered beautiful if not for the look in their eyes that they had been through several levels of hell before coming here.
But for all these conditions, they did not look frightened of their tattooed guides.
Noticing where Marie was looking, Joseph offered explanation. ""We met up with them about a mile down the trail. Apparently the government sent up street people as some fresh blood for you guys. And that's not all. Apparently..."" Here, he lowered his voice ""One of the families that were living incognito in Vinh got killed a few nights ago: Father, mother, twelve year old boy... from what I heard it sounded like some sort of animal tore them up inside their apartment... and no blood was spilled.""
Tracy looked like she was going to vomit at the news, while a look of dread overcame Marie, as old legends came forth out of the terrifying mist of childhood nightmare to become shadows in the waking world. ""Is there anything else?"" Marie asked quietly.
Now it was Joseph's turn to look back at the party coming out of the forest, which were now carrying a man by his hands and feet on a pole, his mouth gagged and his eyes blindfolded. ""Only that they also sent you a sacrifice. From what they said, he's a drug-runner, sexual slaver and a general bad example of low-level underworld scum.""
Marie, still in shock over the news of the murders, was perhaps not picking and choosing the words coming out of her mouth. ""Which mean he's gonna taste worse than the fish sauce.""
At these words, both gruesome and almost ridiculous, both her lover and her friend goggled at her.
","II.

It was in the township of Dunwich, in a large and partly inhabited farmhouse set against a hillside four miles from the village and a mile and a half from any other dwelling, that Wilbur Whateley was born at 5 A.M. on Sunday, the second of February, 1913. This date was recalled because it was Candlemas, which people in Dunwich curiously observe under another name; and because the noises in the hills had sounded, and all the dogs of the countryside had barked persistently, throughout the night before. Less worthy of notice was the fact that the mother was one of the decadent Whateleys, a somewhat deformed, unattractive albino woman of thirty-five, living with an aged and half-insane father about whom the most frightful tales of wizardry had been whispered in his youth. Lavinia Whateley had no known husband, but according to the custom of the region made no attempt to disavow the child; concerning the other side of whose ancestry the country folk might—and did—speculate as widely as they chose. On the contrary, she seemed strangely proud of the dark, goatish-looking infant who formed such a contrast to her own sickly and pink-eyed albinism, and was heard to mutter many curious prophecies about its unusual powers and tremendous future.
      Lavinia was one who would be apt to mutter such things, for she was a lone creature given to wandering amidst thunderstorms in the hills and trying to read the great odorous books which her father had inherited through two centuries of Whateleys, and which were fast falling to pieces with age and worm-holes. She had never been to school, but was filled with disjointed scraps of ancient lore that Old Whateley had taught her. The remote farmhouse had always been feared because of Old Whateley’s reputation for black magic, and the unexplained death by violence of Mrs. Whateley when Lavinia was twelve years old had not helped to make the place popular. Isolated among strange influences, Lavinia was fond of wild and grandiose day-dreams and singular occupations; nor was her leisure much taken up by household cares in a home from which all standards of order and cleanliness had long since disappeared.
      There was a hideous screaming which echoed above even the hill noises and the dogs’ barking on the night Wilbur was born, but no known doctor or midwife presided at his coming. Neighbours knew nothing of him till a week afterward, when Old Whateley drove his sleigh through the snow into Dunwich Village and discoursed incoherently to the group of loungers at Osborn’s general store. There seemed to be a change in the old man—an added element of furtiveness in the clouded brain which subtly transformed him from an object to a subject of fear—though he was not one to be perturbed by any common family event. Amidst it all he shewed some trace of the pride later noticed in his daughter, and what he said of the child’s paternity was remembered by many of his hearers years afterward.
      “I dun’t keer what folks think—ef Lavinny’s boy looked like his pa, he wouldn’t look like nothin’ ye expeck. Ye needn’t think the only folks is the folks hereabaouts. Lavinny’s read some, an’ has seed some things the most o’ ye only tell abaout. I calc’late her man is as good a husban’ as ye kin find this side of Aylesbury; an’ ef ye knowed as much abaout the hills as I dew, ye wouldn’t ast no better church weddin’ nor her’n. Let me tell ye suthin’—some day yew folks’ll hear a child o’ Lavinny’s a-callin’ its father’s name on the top o’ Sentinel Hill!”
      The only persons who saw Wilbur during the first month of his life were old Zechariah Whateley, of the undecayed Whateleys, and Earl Sawyer’s common-law wife, Mamie Bishop. Mamie’s visit was frankly one of curiosity, and her subsequent tales did justice to her observations; but Zechariah came to lead a pair of Alderney cows which Old Whateley had bought of his son Curtis. This marked the beginning of a course of cattle-buying on the part of small Wilbur’s family which ended only in 1928, when the Dunwich horror came and went; yet at no time did the ramshackle Whateley barn seem overcrowded with livestock. There came a period when people were curious enough to steal up and count the herd that grazed precariously on the steep hillside above the old farmhouse, and they could never find more than ten or twelve anaemic, bloodless-looking specimens. Evidently some blight or distemper, perhaps sprung from the unwholesome pasturage or the diseased fungi and timbers of the filthy barn, caused a heavy mortality amongst the Whateley animals. Odd wounds or sores, having something of the aspect of incisions, seemed to afflict the visible cattle; and once or twice during the earlier months certain callers fancied they could discern similar sores about the throats of the grey, unshaven old man and his slatternly, crinkly-haired albino daughter.
      In the spring after Wilbur’s birth Lavinia resumed her customary rambles in the hills, bearing in her misproportioned arms the swarthy child. Public interest in the Whateleys subsided after most of the country folk had seen the baby, and no one bothered to comment on the swift development which that newcomer seemed every day to exhibit. Wilbur’s growth was indeed phenomenal, for within three months of his birth he had attained a size and muscular power not usually found in infants under a full year of age. His motions and even his vocal sounds shewed a restraint and deliberateness highly peculiar in an infant, and no one was really unprepared when, at seven months, he began to walk unassisted, with falterings which another month was sufficient to remove.
      It was somewhat after this time—on Hallowe’en—that a great blaze was seen at midnight on the top of Sentinel Hill where the old table-like stone stands amidst its tumulus of ancient bones. Considerable talk was started when Silas Bishop—of the undecayed Bishops—mentioned having seen the boy running sturdily up that hill ahead of his mother about an hour before the blaze was remarked. Silas was rounding up a stray heifer, but he nearly forgot his mission when he fleetingly spied the two figures in the dim light of his lantern. They darted almost noiselessly through the underbrush, and the astonished watcher seemed to think they were entirely unclothed. Afterward he could not be sure about the boy, who may have had some kind of a fringed belt and a pair of dark trunks or trousers on. Wilbur was never subsequently seen alive and conscious without complete and tightly buttoned attire, the disarrangement or threatened disarrangement of which always seemed to fill him with anger and alarm. His contrast with his squalid mother and grandfather in this respect was thought very notable until the horror of 1928 suggested the most valid of reasons.
      The next January gossips were mildly interested in the fact that “Lavinny’s black brat” had commenced to talk, and at the age of only eleven months. His speech was somewhat remarkable both because of its difference from the ordinary accents of the region, and because it displayed a freedom from infantile lisping of which many children of three or four might well be proud. The boy was not talkative, yet when he spoke he seemed to reflect some elusive element wholly unpossessed by Dunwich and its denizens. The strangeness did not reside in what he said, or even in the simple idioms he used; but seemed vaguely linked with his intonation or with the internal organs that produced the spoken sounds. His facial aspect, too, was remarkable for its maturity; for though he shared his mother’s and grandfather’s chinlessness, his firm and precociously shaped nose united with the expression of his large, dark, almost Latin eyes to give him an air of quasi-adulthood and well-nigh preternatural intelligence. He was, however, exceedingly ugly despite his appearance of brilliancy; there being something almost goatish or animalistic about his thick lips, large-pored, yellowish skin, coarse crinkly hair, and oddly elongated ears. He was soon disliked even more decidedly than his mother and grandsire, and all conjectures about him were spiced with references to the bygone magic of Old Whateley, and how the hills once shook when he shrieked the dreadful name of Yog-Sothoth in the midst of a circle of stones with a great book open in his arms before him. Dogs abhorred the boy, and he was always obliged to take various defensive measures against their barking menace.
",False
"II. An Antecedent and a Horror

1.

Joseph Curwen, as revealed by the rambling legends embodied in what Ward heard and unearthed, was a very astonishing, enigmatic, and obscurely horrible individual. He had fled from Salem to Providence - that universal haven of the odd, the free, and the dissenting - at the beginning of the great witchcraft panic; being in fear of accusation because of his solitary ways and queer chemical or alchemical experiments. He was a colourless-looking man of about thirty, and was soon found qualified to become a freeman of Providence; thereafter buying a home lot just north of Gregory Dexter's at about the foot of Olney Street. His house was built on Stampers' Hill west of the Town Street, in what later became Olney Court; and in 1761 he replaced this with a larger one, on the same site, which is still standing.
      Now the first odd thing about Joseph Curwen was that he did not seem to grow much older than he had been on his arrival. He engaged in shipping enterprises, purchased wharfage near Mile-End Cove, helped rebuild the Great Bridge in 1713, and in 1723 was one of the founders of the Congregational Church on the hill; but always did he retain the nondescript aspect of a man not greatly over thirty or thirty-five. As decades mounted up, this singular quality began to excite wide notice; but Curwen always explained it by saying that he came of hardy forefathers, and practiced a simplicity of living which did not wear him out. How such simplicity could be reconciled with the inexplicable comings and goings of the secretive merchant, and with the queer gleaming of his windows at all hours of night, was not very clear to the townsfolk; and they were prone to assign other reasons for his continued youth and longevity. It was held, for the most part, that Curwen's incessant mixings and boilings of chemicals had much to do with his condition. Gossip spoke of the strange substances he brought from London and the Indies on his ships or purchased in Newport, Boston, and New York; and when old Dr. Jabez Bowen came from Rehoboth and opened his apothecary shop across the Great Bridge at the Sign of the Unicorn and Mortar, there was ceaseless talk of the drugs, acids, and metals that the taciturn recluse incessantly bought or ordered from him. Acting on the assumption that Curwen possessed a wondrous and secret medical skill, many sufferers of various sorts applied to him for aid; but though he appeared to encourage their belief in a non-committal way, and always gave them odd-coloured potions in response to their requests, it was observed that his ministrations to others seldom proved of benefit. At length, when over fifty years had passed since the stranger's advent, and without producing more than five years' apparent change in his face and physique, the people began to whisper more darkly; and to meet more than half way that desire for isolation which he had always shewn.
      Private letters and diaries of the period reveal, too, a multitude of other reasons why Joseph Curwen was marvelled at, feared, and finally shunned like a plague. His passion for graveyards, in which he was glimpsed at all hours and under all conditions, was notorious; though no one had witnessed any deed on his part which could actually be termed ghoulish. On the Pawtuxet Road he had a farm, at which he generally lived during the summer, and to which he would frequently be seen riding at various odd times of the day or night. Here his only visible servants, farmers, and caretakers were a sullen pair of aged Narragansett Indians; the husband dumb and curiously scarred, and the wife of a very repulsive cast of countenance, probably due to a mixture of negro blood. In the lean-to of this house was the laboratory where most of the chemical experiments were conducted. Curious porters and teamers who delivered bottles, bags, or boxes at the small rear door would exchange accounts of the fantastic flasks, crucibles, alembics, and furnaces they saw in the low shelved room; and prophesied in whispers that the close-mouthed ""chymist"" - by which they meant alchemist - would not be long in finding the Philosopher's Stone. The nearest neighbours to this farm - the Fenners, a quarter of a mile away - had still queerer things to tell of certain sounds which they insisted came from the Curwen place in the night. There were cries, they said, and sustained howlings; and they did not like the large number of livestock which thronged the pastures, for no such amount was needed to keep a lone old man and a very few servants in meat, milk, and wool. The identity of the stock seemed to change from week to week as new droves were purchased from the Kingstown farmers. Then, too, there was something very obnoxious about a certain great stone outbuilding with only high narrow slits for windows.
      Great Bridge idlers likewise had much to say of Curwen's town house in Olney Court; not so much the fine new one built in 1761, when the man must have been nearly a century old, but the first low gambrel-roofed one with the windowless attic and shingled sides, whose timbers he took the peculiar precaution of burning after its demolition. Here there was less mystery, it is true; but the hours at which lights were seen, the secretiveness of the two swarthy foreigners who comprised the only menservants, the hideous indistinct mumbling of the incredibly aged French housekeeper, the large amounts of food seen to enter a door within which only four persons lived, and the quality of certain voices often heard in muffled conversation at highly unseasonable times, all combined with what was known of the Pawtuxet farm to give the place a bad name.
      In choicer circles, too, the Curwen home was by no means undiscussed; for as the newcomer had gradually worked into the church and trading life of the town, he had naturally made acquaintances of the better sort, whose company and conversation he was well fitted by education to enjoy. His birth was known to be good, since the Curwens or Corwins of Salem needed no introduction in New England. It developed that Joseph Curwen had travelled much in very early life, living for a time in England and making at least two voyages to the Orient; and his speech, when he deigned to use it, was that of a learned and cultivated Englishman. But for some reason or other Curwen did not care for society. Whilst never actually rebuffing a visitor, he always reared such a wall of reserve that few could think of anything to say to him which would not sound inane.
      There seemed to lurk in his bearing some cryptic, sardonic arrogance, as if he had come to find all human beings dull through having moved among stranger and more potent entities. When Dr. Checkley the famous wit came from Boston in 1738 to be rector of King's Church, he did not neglect calling on one of whom he soon heard so much; but left in a very short while because of some sinister undercurrent he detected in his host's discourse. Charles Ward told his father, when they discussed Curwen one winter evening, that he would give much to learn what the mysterious old man had said to the sprightly cleric, but that all diarists agree concerning Dr. Checkley's reluctance to repeat anything he had heard. The good man had been hideously shocked, and could never recall Joseph Curwen without a visible loss of the gay urbanity for which he was famed.
      More definite, however, was the reason why another man of taste and breeding avoided the haughty hermit. In 1746 Mr. John Merritt, an elderly English gentleman of literary and scientific leanings, came from Newport to the town which was so rapidly overtaking it in standing, and built a fine country seat on the Neck in what is now the heart of the best residence section. He lived in considerable style and comfort, keeping the first coach and liveried servants in town, and taking great pride in his telescope, his microscope, and his well-chosen library of English and Latin books. Hearing of Curwen as the owner of the best library in Providence, Mr. Merritt early paid him a call, and was more cordially received than most other callers at the house had been. His admiration for his host's ample shelves, which besides the Greek, Latin, and English classics were equipped with a remarkable battery of philosophical, mathematical, and scientific works including Paracelsus, Agricola, Van Helmont, Sylvius, Glauber, Boyle, Boerhaave, Becher, and Stahl, led Curwen to suggest a visit to the farmhouse and laboratory whither he had never invited anyone before; and the two drove out at once in Mr. Merritt's coach.
      Mr. Merritt always confessed to seeing nothing really horrible at the farmhouse, but maintained that the titles of the books in the special library of thaumaturgical, alchemical, and theological subjects which Curwen kept in a front room were alone sufficient to inspire him with a lasting loathing. Perhaps, however, the facial expression of the owner in exhibiting them contributed much of the prejudice. The bizarre collection, besides a host of standard works which Mr. Merritt was not too alarmed to envy, embraced nearly all the cabbalists, daemonologists, and magicians known to man; and was a treasure-house of lore in the doubtful realms of alchemy and astrology. Hermes Trismegistus in Mesnard's edition, the Turba Philosophorum, Geber's Liber Investigationis, and Artephius' Key of Wisdom all were there; with the cabbalistic Zohar, Peter Jammy's set of Albertus Magnus, Raymond Lully's Ars Magna et Ultima in Zetzner's edition, Roger Bacon's Thesaurus Chemicus, Fludd's Clavis Alchimiae, and Trithemius' De Lapide Philosophico crowding them close. Mediaeval Jews and Arabs were represented in profusion, and Mr. Merritt turned pale when, upon taking down a fine volume conspicuously labelled as the Qanoon-e-Islam, he found it was in truth the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, of which he had heard such monstrous things whispered some years previously after the exposure of nameless rites at the strange little fishing village of Kingsport, in the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay.
      But oddly enough, the worthy gentleman owned himself most impalpably disquieted by a mere minor detail. On the huge mahogany table there lay face downward a badly worn copy of Borellus, bearing many cryptical marginalia and interlineations in Curwen's hand. The book was open at about its middle, and one paragraph displayed such thick and tremulous pen-strokes beneath the lines of mystic black-letter that the visitor could not resist scanning it through. Whether it was the nature of the passage underscored, or the feverish heaviness of the strokes which formed the underscoring, he could not tell; but something in that combination affected him very badly and very peculiarly. He recalled it to the end of his days, writing it down from memory in his diary and once trying to recite it to his close friend Dr. Checkley till he saw how greatly it disturbed the urbane rector. It read:
      ""The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated.""
      It was near the docks along the southerly part of the Town Street, however, that the worst things were muttered about Joseph Curwen. Sailors are superstitious folk; and the seasoned salts who manned the infinite rum, slave, and molasses sloops, the rakish privateers, and the great brigs of the Browns, Crawfords, and Tillinghasts, all made strange furtive signs of protection when they saw the slim, deceptively young-looking figure with its yellow hair and slight stoop entering the Curwen warehouse in Doubloon Street or talking with captains and supercargoes on the long quay where the Curwen ships rode restlessly. Curwen's own clerks and captains hated and feared him, and all his sailors were mongrel riff-raff from Martinique, St. Eustatius, Havana, or Port Royal. It was, in a way, the frequency with which these sailors were replaced which inspired the acutest and most tangible part of the fear in which the old man was held. A crew would be turned loose in the town on shore leave, some of its members perhaps charged with this errand or that; and when reassembled it would be almost sure to lack one or more men. That many of the errands had concerned the farm on the Pawtuxet Road, and that few of the sailors had ever been seen to return from that place, was not forgotten; so that in time it became exceedingly difficult for Curwen to keep his oddly assorted hands. Almost invariably several would desert soon after hearing the gossip of the Providence wharves, and their replacement in the West Indies became an increasingly great problem to the merchant.
      In 1760 Joseph Curwen was virtually an outcast, suspected of vague horrors and daemoniac alliances which seemed all the more menacing because they could not be named, understood, or even proved to exist. The last straw may have come from the affair of the missing soldiers in 1758, for in March and April of that year two Royal regiments on their way to New France were quartered in Providence, and depleted by an inexplicable process far beyond the average rate of desertion. Rumour dwelt on the frequency with which Curwen was wont to be seen talking with the red-coated strangers; and as several of them began to be missed, people thought of the odd conditions among his own seamen. What would have happened if the regiments had not been ordered on, no one can tell.
      Meanwhile the merchant's worldly affairs were prospering. He had a virtual monopoly of the town's trade in saltpetre, black pepper, and cinnamon, and easily led any other one shipping establishment save the Browns in his importation of brassware, indigo, cotton, woollens, salt, rigging, iron, paper, and English goods of every kind. Such shopkeepers as James Green, at the Sign of the Elephant in Cheapside, the Russells, at the Sign of the Golden Eagle across the Bridge, or Clark and Nightingale at the Frying-Pan and Fish near the New Coffee-House, depended almost wholly upon him for their stock; and his arrangements with the local distillers, the Narragansett dairymen and horse-breeders, and the Newport candle-makers, made him one of the prime exporters of the Colony.
      Ostracised though he was, he did not lack for civic spirit of a sort. When the Colony House burned down, he subscribed handsomely to the lotteries by which the new brick one - still standing at the head of its parade in the old main street - was built in 1761. In that same year, too, he helped rebuild the Great Bridge after the October gale. He replaced many of the books of the public library consumed in the Colony House fire, and bought heavily in the lottery that gave the muddy Market Parade and deep-rutted Town Street their pavement of great round stones with a brick footwalk or ""causey"" in the middle. About this time, also, he built the plain but excellent new house whose doorway is still such a triumph of carving. When the Whitefield adherents broke off from Dr. Cotton's hill church in 1743 and founded Deacon Snow's church across the Bridge, Curwen had gone with them; though his zeal and attendance soon abated. Now, however, he cultivated piety once more; as if to dispel the shadow which had thrown him into isolation and would soon begin to wreck his business fortunes if not sharply checked.

2.

      The sight of this strange, pallid man, hardly middle-aged in aspect yet certainly not less than a full century old, seeking at last to emerge from a cloud of fright and detestation too vague to pin down or analyse, was at once a pathetic, a dramatic, and a contemptible thing. Such is the power of wealth and of surface gestures, however, that there came indeed a slight abatement in the visible aversion displayed toward him; especially after the rapid disappearances of his sailors abruptly ceased. He must likewise have begun to practice an extreme care and secrecy in his graveyard expeditions, for he was never again caught at such wanderings; whilst the rumours of uncanny sounds and manoeuvres at his Pawtuxet farm diminished in proportion. His rate of food consumption and cattle replacement remained abnormally high; but not until modern times, when Charles Ward examined a set of his accounts and invoices in the Shepley Library, did it occur to any person - save one embittered youth, perhaps - to make dark comparisons between the large number of Guinea blacks he imported until 1766, and the disturbingly small number for whom he could produce bona fide bills of sale either to slave-dealers at the Great Bridge or to the planters of the Narragansett Country. Certainly, the cunning and ingenuity of this abhorred character were uncannily profound, once the necessity for their exercise had become impressed upon him.
      But of course the effect of all this belated mending was necessarily slight. Curwen continued to be avoided and distrusted, as indeed the one fact of his continued air of youth at a great age would have been enough to warrant; and he could see that in the end his fortunes would be likely to suffer. His elaborate studies and experiments, whatever they may have been, apparently required a heavy income for their maintenance; and since a change of environment would deprive him of the trading advantages he had gained, it would not have profited him to begin anew in a different region just then. Judgment demanded that he patch up his relations with the townsfolk of Providence, so that his presence might no longer be a signal for hushed conversation, transparent excuses of errands elsewhere, and a general atmosphere of constraint and uneasiness. His clerks, being now reduced to the shiftless and impecunious residue whom no one else would employ, were giving him much worry; and he held to his sea-captains and mates only by shrewdness in gaining some kind of ascendancy over them - a mortgage, a promissory note, or a bit of information very pertinent to their welfare. In many cases, diarists have recorded with some awe, Curwen shewed almost the power of a wizard in unearthing family secrets for questionable use. During the final five years of his life it seemed as though only direct talks with the long-dead could possibly have furnished some of the data which he had so glibly at his tongue's end.
      About this time the crafty scholar hit upon a last desperate expedient to regain his footing in the community. Hitherto a complete hermit, he now determined to contract an advantageous marriage; securing as a bride some lady whose unquestioned position would make all ostracism of his home impossible. It may be that he also had deeper reasons for wishing an alliance; reasons so far outside the known cosmic sphere that only papers found a century and a half after his death caused anyone to suspect them; but of this nothing certain can ever be learned. Naturally he was aware of the horror and indignation with which any ordinary courtship of his would be received, hence he looked about for some likely candidate upon whose parents he might exert a suitable pressure. Such candidates, he found, were not at all easy to discover; since he had very particular requirements in the way of beauty, accomplishments, and social security. At length his survey narrowed down to the household of one of his best and oldest ship-captains, a widower of high birth and unblemished standing named Dutee Tillinghast, whose only daughter Eliza seemed dowered with every conceivable advantage save prospects as an heiress. Capt. Tillinghast was completely under the domination of Curwen; and consented, after a terrible interview in his cupolaed house on Power's Lane hill, to sanction the blasphemous alliance.
      Eliza Tillinghast was at that time eighteen years of age, and had been reared as gently as the reduced circumstances of her father permitted. She had attended Stephen Jackson's school opposite the Court-House Parade; and had been diligently instructed by her mother, before the latter's death of smallpox in 1757, in all the arts and refinements of domestic life. A sampler of hers, worked in 1753 at the age of nine, may still be found in the rooms of the Rhode Island Historical Society. After her mother's death she had kept the house, aided only by one old black woman. Her arguments with her father concerning the proposed Curwen marriage must have been painful indeed; but of these we have no record. Certain it is that her engagement to young Ezra Weeden, second mate of the Crawford packet Enterprise, was dutifully broken off, and that her union with Joseph Curwen took place on the seventh of March, 1763, in the Baptist church, in the presence of one of the most distinguished assemblages which the town could boast; the ceremony being performed by the younger Samuel Winsor. The Gazette mentioned the event very briefly, and in most surviving copies the item in question seems to be cut or torn out. Ward found a single intact copy after much search in the archives of a private collector of note, observing with amusement the meaningless urbanity of the language:
      ""Monday evening last, Mr. Joseph Curwen, of this Town, Merchant, was married to Miss Eliza Tillinghast, Daughter of Capt. Dutee Tillinghast, a young Lady who has real Merit, added to a beautiful Person, to grace the connubial State and perpetuate its Felicity.""
      The collection of Durfee-Arnold letters, discovered by Charles Ward shortly before his first reputed madness in the private collection of Melville F. Peters, Esq., of George St., and covering this and a somewhat antecedent period, throws vivid light on the outrage done to public sentiment by this ill-assorted match. The social influence of the Tillinghasts, however, was not to be denied; and once more Joseph Curwen found his house frequented by persons whom he could never otherwise have induced to cross his threshold. His acceptance was by no means complete, and his bride was socially the sufferer through her forced venture; but at all events the wall of utter ostracism was somewhat worn down. In his treatment of his wife the strange bridegroom astonished both her and the community by displaying an extreme graciousness and consideration. The new house in Olney Court was now wholly free from disturbing manifestations, and although Curwen was much absent at the Pawtuxet farm which his wife never visited, he seemed more like a normal citizen than at any other time in his long years of residence. Only one person remained in open enmity with him, this being the youthful ship's officer whose engagement to Eliza Tillinghast had been so abruptly broken. Ezra Weeden had frankly vowed vengeance; and though of a quiet and ordinarily mild disposition, was now gaining a hate-bred, dogged purpose which boded no good to the usurping husband.
      On the seventh of May, 1765, Curwen's only child Ann was born; and was christened by the Rev. John Graves of King's Church, of which both husband and wife had become communicants shortly after their marriage, in order to compromise between their respective Congregational and Baptist affiliations. The record of this birth, as well as that of the marriage two years before, was stricken from most copies of the church and town annals where it ought to appear; and Charles Ward located both with the greatest difficulty after his discovery of the widow's change of name had apprised him of his own relationship, and engendered the feverish interest which culminated in his madness. The birth entry, indeed, was found very curiously through correspondence with the heirs of the loyalist Dr. Graves, who had taken with him a duplicate set of records when he left his pastorate at the outbreak of the Revolution. Ward had tried this source because he knew that his great-great-grandmother Ann Tillinghast Potter had been an Episcopalian.
      Shortly after the birth of his daughter, an event he seemed to welcome with a fervour greatly out of keeping with his usual coldness, Curwen resolved to sit for a portrait. This he had painted by a very gifted Scotsman named Cosmo Alexander, then a resident of Newport, and since famous as the early teacher of Gilbert Stuart. The likeness was said to have been executed on a wall-panel of the library of the house in Olney Court, but neither of the two old diaries mentioning it gave any hint of its ultimate disposition. At this period the erratic scholar shewed signs of unusual abstraction, and spent as much time as he possibly could at his farm on the Pawtuxet Road. He seemed, it was stated, in a condition of suppressed excitement or suspense; as if expecting some phenomenal thing or on the brink of some strange discovery. Chemistry or alchemy would appear to have played a great part, for he took from his house to the farm the greater number of his volumes on that subject.
      His affectation of civic interest did not diminish, and he lost no opportunities for helping such leaders as Stephen Hopkins, Joseph Brown, and Benjamin West in their efforts to raise the cultural tone of the town, which was then much below the level of Newport in its patronage of the liberal arts. He had helped Daniel Jenckes found his bookshop in 1763, and was thereafter his best customer; extending aid likewise to the struggling Gazette that appeared each Wednesday at the Sign of Shakespear's Head. In politics he ardently supported Governor Hopkins against the Ward party whose prime strength was in Newport, and his really eloquent speech at Hacker's Hall in 1765 against the setting off of North Providence as a separate town with a pro-Ward vote in the General Assembly did more than any other one thing to wear down the prejudice against him. But Ezra Weeden, who watched him closely, sneered cynically at all this outward activity; and freely swore it was no more than a mask for some nameless traffick with the blackest gulfs of Tartarus. The revengeful youth began a systematic study of the man and his doings whenever he was in port; spending hours at night by the wharves with a dory in readiness when he saw lights in the Curwen warehouses, and following the small boat which would sometimes steal quietly off and down the bay. He also kept as close a watch as possible on the Pawtuxet farm, and was once severely bitten by the dogs the old Indian couple loosed upon him.

3.

      In 1766 came the final change in Joseph Curwen. It was very sudden, and gained wide notice amongst the curious townsfolk; for the air of suspense and expectancy dropped like an old cloak, giving instant place to an ill-concealed exaltation of perfect triumph. Curwen seemed to have difficulty in restraining himself from public harangues on what he had found or learned or made; but apparently the need of secrecy was greater than the longing to share his rejoicing, for no explanation was ever offered by him. It was after this transition, which appears to have come early in July, that the sinister scholar began to astonish people by his possession of information which only their long-dead ancestors would seem to be able to impart.
      But Curwen's feverish secret activities by no means ceased with this change. On the contrary, they tended rather to increase; so that more and more of his shipping business was handled by the captains whom he now bound to him by ties of fear as potent as those of bankruptcy had been. He altogether abandoned the slave trade, alleging that its profits were constantly decreasing. Every possible moment was spent at the Pawtuxet farm; though there were rumours now and then of his presence in places which, though not actually near graveyards, were yet so situated in relation to graveyards that thoughtful people wondered just how thorough the old merchant's change of habits really was. Ezra Weeden, though his periods of espionage were necessarily brief and intermittent on account of his sea voyaging, had a vindictive persistence which the bulk of the practical townsfolk and farmers lacked; and subjected Curwen's affairs to a scrutiny such as they had never had before.
      Many of the odd manoeuvres of the strange merchant's vessels had been taken for granted on account of the unrest of the times, when every colonist seemed determined to resist the provisions of the Sugar Act which hampered a prominent traffick. Smuggling and evasion were the rule in Narragansett Bay, and nocturnal landings of illicit cargoes were continuous commonplaces. But Weeden, night after night following the lighters or small sloops which he saw steal off from the Curwen warehouses at the Town Street docks, soon felt assured that it was not merely His Majesty's armed ships which the sinister skulker was anxious to avoid. Prior to the change in 1766 these boats had for the most part contained chained negroes, who were carried down and across the bay and landed at an obscure point on the shore just north of Pawtuxet; being afterward driven up the bluff and across country to the Curwen farm, where they were locked in that enormous stone outbuilding which had only high narrow slits for windows. After that change, however, the whole programme was altered. Importation of slaves ceased at once, and for a time Curwen abandoned his midnight sailings. Then, about the spring of 1767, a new policy appeared. Once more the lighters grew wont to put out from the black, silent docks, and this time they would go down the bay some distance, perhaps as far as Namquit Point, where they would meet and receive cargo from strange ships of considerable size and widely varied appearance. Curwen's sailors would then deposit this cargo at the usual point on the shore, and transport it overland to the farm; locking it in the same cryptical stone building which had formerly received the negroes. The cargo consisted almost wholly of boxes and cases, of which a large proportion were oblong and heavy and disturbingly suggestive of coffins.
      Weeden always watched the farm with unremitting assiduity; visiting it each night for long periods, and seldom letting a week go by without a sight except when the ground bore a footprint-revealing snow. Even then he would often walk as close as possible in the travelled road or on the ice of the neighbouring river to see what tracks others might have left. Finding his own vigils interrupted by nautical duties, he hired a tavern companion named Eleazar Smith to continue the survey during his absences; and between them the two could have set in motion some extraordinary rumours. That they did not do so was only because they knew the effect of publicity would be to warn their quarry and make further progress impossible. Instead, they wished to learn something definite before taking any action. What they did learn must have been startling indeed, and Charles Ward spoke many times to his parents of his regret at Weeden's later burning of his notebooks. All that can be told of their discoveries is what Eleazar Smith jotted down in a none too coherent diary, and what other diarists and letter-writers have timidly repeated from the statements which they finally made - and according to which the farm was only the outer shell of some vast and revolting menace, of a scope and depth too profound and intangible for more than shadowy comprehension.
      It is gathered that Weeden and Smith became early convinced that a great series of tunnels and catacombs, inhabited by a very sizeable staff of persons besides the old Indian and his wife, underlay the farm. The house was an old peaked relic of the middle seventeenth century with enormous stack chimney and diamond-paned lattice windows, the laboratory being in a lean-to toward the north, where the roof came nearly to the ground. This building stood clear of any other; yet judging by the different voices heard at odd times within, it must have been accessible through secret passages beneath. These voices, before 1766, were mere mumblings and negro whisperings and frenzied screams, coupled with curious chants or invocations. After that date, however, they assumed a very singular and terrible cast as they ran the gamut betwixt dronings of dull acquiescence and explosions of frantic pain or fury, rumblings of conversation and whines of entreaty, pantings of eagerness and shouts of protest. They appeared to be in different languages, all known to Curwen, whose rasping accents were frequently distinguishable in reply, reproof, or threatening. Sometimes it seemed that several persons must be in the house; Curwen, certain captives, and the guards of those captives. There were voices of a sort that neither Weeden nor Smith had ever heard before despite their wide knowledge of foreign parts, and many that they did seem to place as belonging to this or that nationality. The nature of the conversations seemed always a kind of catechism, as if Curwen were extorting some sort of information from terrified or rebellious prisoners.
      Weeden had many verbatim reports of overheard scraps in his notebook, for English, French, and Spanish, which he knew, were frequently used; but of these nothing has survived. He did, however, say that besides a few ghoulish dialogues in which the past affairs of Providence families were concerned, most of the questions and answers he could understand were historical or scientific; occasionally pertaining to very remote places and ages. Once, for example, an alternately raging and sullen figure was questioned in French about the Black Prince's massacre at Limoges in 1370, as if there were some hidden reason which he ought to know. Curwen asked the prisoner - if prisoner it were - whether the order to slay was given because of the Sign of the Goat found on the altar in the ancient Roman crypt beneath the Cathedral, or whether the Dark Man of the Haute Vienne Coven had spoken the Three Words. Failing to obtain replies, the inquisitor had seemingly resorted to extreme means; for there was a terrific shriek followed by silence and muttering and a bumping sound.
      None of these colloquies were ever ocularly witnessed, since the windows were always heavily draped. Once, though, during a discourse in an unknown tongue, a shadow was seen on the curtain which startled Weeden exceedingly; reminding him of one of the puppets in a show he had seen in the autumn of 1764 in Hacker's Hall, when a man from Germantown, Pennsylvania, had given a clever mechanical spectacle advertised as a ""View of the Famous City of Jerusalem, in which are represented Jerusalem, the Temple of Solomon, his Royal Throne, the noted Towers, and Hills, likewise the Sufferings of Our Saviour from the Garden of Gethsemane to the Cross on the Hill of Golgotha; an artful piece of Statuary, Worthy to be seen by the Curious."" It was on this occasion that the listener, who had crept close to the window of the front room whence the speaking proceeded, gave a start which roused the old Indian pair and caused them to loose the dogs on him. After that no more conversations were ever heard in the house, and Weeden and Smith concluded that Curwen had transferred his field of action to regions below.
      That such regions in truth existed, seemed amply clear from many things. Faint cries and groans unmistakably came up now and then from what appeared to be the solid earth in places far from any structure; whilst hidden in the bushes along the river-bank in the rear, where the high ground sloped steeply down to the valley of the Pawtuxet, there was found an arched oaken door in a frame of heavy masonry, which was obviously an entrance to caverns within the hill. When or how these catacombs could have been constructed, Weeden was unable to say; but he frequently pointed out how easily the place might have been reached by bands of unseen workmen from the river. Joseph Curwen put his mongrel seamen to diverse uses indeed! During the heavy spring rains of 1769 the two watchers kept a sharp eye on the steep river-bank to see if any subterrene secrets might be washed to light, and were rewarded by the sight of a profusion of both human and animal bones in places where deep gullies had been worn in the banks. Naturally there might be many explanations of such things in the rear of a stock farm, and in a locality where old Indian burying-grounds were common, but Weeden and Smith drew their own inferences.
      It was in January 1770, whilst Weeden and Smith were still debating vainly on what, if anything, to think or do about the whole bewildering business, that the incident of the Fortaleza occurred. Exasperated by the burning of the revenue sloop Liberty at Newport during the previous summer, the customs fleet under Admiral Wallace had adopted an increased vigilance concerning strange vessels; and on this occasion His Majesty's armed schooner Cygnet, under Capt. Charles Leslie, captured after a short pursuit one early morning the snow Fortaleza of Barcelona, Spain, under Capt. Manuel Arruda, bound according to its log from Grand Cairo, Egypt, to Providence. When searched for contraband material, this ship revealed the astonishing fact that its cargo consisted exclusively of Egyptian mummies, consigned to ""Sailor A. B. C."", who would come to remove his goods in a lighter just off Namquit Point and whose identity Capt. Arruda felt himself in honour bound not to reveal. The Vice-Admiralty Court at Newport, at a loss what to do in view of the non-contraband nature of the cargo on the one hand and of the unlawful secrecy of the entry on the other hand, compromised on Collector Robinson's recommendation by freeing the ship but forbidding it a port in Rhode Island waters. There were later rumours of its having been seen in Boston Harbour, though it never openly entered the Port of Boston.
      This extraordinary incident did not fail of wide remark in Providence, and there were not many who doubted the existence of some connexion between the cargo of mummies and the sinister Joseph Curwen. His exotic studies and his curious chemical importations being common knowledge, and his fondness for graveyards being common suspicion; it did not take much imagination to link him with a freakish importation which could not conceivably have been destined for anyone else in the town. As if conscious of this natural belief, Curwen took care to speak casually on several occasions of the chemical value of the balsams found in mummies; thinking perhaps that he might make the affair seem less unnatural, yet stopping just short of admitting his participation. Weeden and Smith, of course, felt no doubt whatsoever of the significance of the thing; and indulged in the wildest theories concerning Curwen and his monstrous labours.
      The following spring, like that of the year before, had heavy rains; and the watchers kept careful track of the river-bank behind the Curwen farm. Large sections were washed away, and a certain number of bones discovered; but no glimpse was afforded of any actual subterranean chambers or burrows. Something was rumoured, however, at the village of Pawtuxet about a mile below, where the river flows in falls over a rocky terrace to join the placid landlocked cove. There, where quaint old cottages climbed the hill from the rustic bridge, and fishing-smacks lay anchored at their sleepy docks, a vague report went round of things that were floating down the river and flashing into sight for a minute as they went over the falls. Of course the Pawtuxet is a long river which winds through many settled regions abounding in graveyards, and of course the spring rains had been very heavy; but the fisherfolk about the bridge did not like the wild way that one of the things stared as it shot down to the still water below, or the way that another half cried out although its condition had greatly departed from that of objects which normally cry out. That rumour sent Smith - for Weeden was just then at sea - in haste to the river-bank behind the farm; where surely enough there remained the evidences of an extensive cave-in. There was, however, no trace of a passage into the steep bank; for the miniature avalanche had left behind a solid wall of mixed earth and shrubbery from aloft. Smith went to the extent of some experimental digging, but was deterred by lack of success - or perhaps by fear of possible success. It is interesting to speculate on what the persistent and revengeful Weeden would have done had he been ashore at the time.

4.

      By the autumn of 1770 Weeden decided that the time was ripe to tell others of his discoveries; for he had a large number of facts to link together, and a second eye-witness to refute the possible charge that jealousy and vindictiveness had spurred his fancy. As his first confidant he selected Capt. James Mathewson of the Enterprise, who on the one hand knew him well enough not to doubt his veracity, and on the other hand was sufficiently influential in the town to be heard in turn with respect. The colloquy took place in an upper room of Sabin's Tavern near the docks, with Smith present to corroborate virtually every statement; and it could be seen that Capt. Mathewson was tremendously impressed. Like nearly everyone else in the town, he had had black suspicions of his own anent Joseph Curwen; hence it needed only this confirmation and enlargement of data to convince him absolutely. At the end of the conference he was very grave, and enjoined strict silence upon the two younger men. He would, he said, transmit the information separately to some ten or so of the most learned and prominent citizens of Providence; ascertaining their views and following whatever advice they might have to offer. Secrecy would probably be essential in any case, for this was no matter that the town constables or militia could cope with; and above all else the excitable crowd must be kept in ignorance, lest there be enacted in these already troublous times a repetition of that frightful Salem panic of less than a century before which had first brought Curwen hither.
      The right persons to tell, he believed, would be Dr. Benjamin West, whose pamphlet on the late transit of Venus proved him a scholar and keen thinker; Rev. James Manning, President of the College which had just moved up from Warren and was temporarily housed in the new King Street schoolhouse awaiting the completion of its building on the hill above Presbyterian-Lane; ex-Governor Stephen Hopkins, who had been a member of the Philosophical Society at Newport, and was a man of very broad perceptions; John Carter, publisher of the Gazette; all four of the Brown brothers, John, Joseph, Nicholas, and Moses, who formed the recognised local magnates, and of whom Joseph was an amateur scientist of parts; old Dr. Jabez Bowen, whose erudition was considerable, and who had much first-hand knowledge of Curwen's odd purchases; and Capt. Abraham Whipple, a privateersman of phenomenal boldness and energy who could be counted on to lead in any active measures needed. These men, if favourable, might eventually be brought together for collective deliberation; and with them would rest the responsibility of deciding whether or not to inform the Governor of the Colony, Joseph Wanton of Newport, before taking action.
      The mission of Capt. Mathewson prospered beyond his highest expectations; for whilst he found one or two of the chosen confidants somewhat sceptical of the possible ghastly side of Weeden's tale, there was not one who did not think it necessary to take some sort of secret and cošrdinated action. Curwen, it was clear, formed a vague potential menace to the welfare of the town and Colony; and must be eliminated at any cost. Late in December 1770 a group of eminent townsmen met at the home of Stephen Hopkins and debated tentative measures. Weeden's notes, which he had given to Capt. Mathewson, were carefully read; and he and Smith were summoned to give testimony anent details. Something very like fear seized the whole assemblage before the meeting was over, though there ran through that fear a grim determination which Capt. Whipple's bluff and resonant profanity best expressed. They would not notify the Governor, because a more than legal course seemed necessary. With hidden powers of uncertain extent apparently at his disposal, Curwen was not a man who could safely be warned to leave town. Nameless reprisals might ensue, and even if the sinister creature complied, the removal would be no more than the shifting of an unclean burden to another place. The times were lawless, and men who had flouted the King's revenue forces for years were not the ones to balk at sterner things when duty impelled. Curwen must be surprised at his Pawtuxet farm by a large raiding-party of seasoned privateersmen and given one decisive chance to explain himself. If he proved a madman, amusing himself with shrieks and imaginary conversations in different voices, he would be properly confined. If something graver appeared, and if the underground horrors indeed turned out to be real, he and all with him must die. It could be done quietly, and even the widow and her father need not be told how it came about.
      While these serious steps were under discussion there occurred in the town an incident so terrible and inexplicable that for a time little else was mentioned for miles around. In the middle of a moonlight January night with heavy snow underfoot there resounded over the river and up the hill a shocking series of cries which brought sleepy heads to every window; and people around Weybosset Point saw a great white thing plunging frantically along the badly cleared space in front of the Turk's Head. There was a baying of dogs in the distance, but this subsided as soon as the clamour of the awakened town became audible. Parties of men with lanterns and muskets hurried out to see what was happening, but nothing rewarded their search. The next morning, however, a giant, muscular body, stark naked, was found on the jams of ice around the southern piers of the Great Bridge, where the Long Dock stretched out beside Abbott's distil-house, and the identity of this object became a theme for endless speculation and whispering. It was not so much the younger as the older folk who whispered, for only in the patriarchs did that rigid face with horror-bulging eyes strike any chord of memory. They, shaking as they did so, exchanged furtive murmurs of wonder and fear; for in those stiff, hideous features lay a resemblance so marvellous as to be almost an identity - and that identity was with a man who had died full fifty years before.
      Ezra Weeden was present at the finding; and remembering the baying of the night before, set out along Weybosset Street and across Muddy Dock Bridge whence the sound had come. He had a curious expectancy, and was not surprised when, reaching the edge of the settled district where the street merged into the Pawtuxet Road, he came upon some very curious tracks in the snow. The naked giant had been pursued by dogs and many booted men, and the returning tracks of the hounds and their masters could be easily traced. They had given up the chase upon coming too near the town. Weeden smiled grimly, and as a perfunctory detail traced the footprints back to their source. It was the Pawtuxet farm of Joseph Curwen, as he well knew it would be; and he would have given much had the yard been less confusingly trampled. As it was, he dared not seem too interested in full daylight. Dr. Bowen, to whom Weeden went at once with his report, performed an autopsy on the strange corpse, and discovered peculiarities which baffled him utterly. The digestive tracts of the huge man seemed never to have been in use, whilst the whole skin had a coarse, loosely knit texture impossible to account for. Impressed by what the old men whispered of this body's likeness to the long-dead blacksmith Daniel Green, whose great-grandson Aaron Hoppin was a supercargo in Curwen's employ, Weeden asked casual questions till he found where Green was buried. That night a party of ten visited the old North Burying Ground opposite Herrenden's Lane and opened a grave. They found it vacant, precisely as they had expected.
      Meanwhile arrangements had been made with the post riders to intercept Joseph Curwen's mail, and shortly before the incident of the naked body there was found a letter from one Jedediah Orne of Salem which made the cošperating citizens think deeply. Parts of it, copied and preserved in the private archives of the Smith family where Charles Ward found it, ran as follows:
      ""I delight that you continue in ye Gett'g at Olde Matters in your Way, and doe not think better was done at Mr. Hutchinson's in Salem-Village. Certainely, there was Noth'g butt ye liveliest Awfulness in that which H. rais'd upp from What he cou'd gather onlie a part of. What you sente, did not Worke, whether because of Any Thing miss'g, or because ye Wordes were not Righte from my Speak'g or yr Copy'g. I alone am at a Loss. I have not ye Chymicall art to followe Borellus, and owne my Self confounded by ye VII. Booke of ye Necronomicon that you recommende. But I wou'd have you Observe what was tolde to us aboute tak'g Care whom to calle up, for you are Sensible what Mr. Mather writ in ye Magnalia of  -  - , and can judge how truely that Horrendous thing is reported. I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you. I was frighted when I read of your know'g what Ben Zariatnatmik hadde in his ebony Boxe, for I was conscious who must have tolde you. And againe I ask that you shalle write me as Jedediah and not Simon. In this Community a Man may not live too long, and you knowe my Plan by which I came back as my Son. I am desirous you will Acquaint me with what ye Blacke Man learnt from Sylvanus Cocidius in ye Vault, under ye Roman Wall, and will be oblig'd for ye Lend'g of ye MS. you speak of.""
      Another and unsigned letter from Philadelphia provoked equal thought, especially for the following passage:
      ""I will observe what you say respecting the sending of Accounts only by yr Vessels, but can not always be certain when to expect them. In the Matter spoke of, I require onlie one more thing; but wish to be sure I apprehend you exactly. You inform me, that no Part must be missing if the finest Effects are to be had, but you can not but know how hard it is to be sure. It seems a great Hazard and Burthen to take away the whole Box, and in Town (i.e. St. Peter's, St. Paul's, St. Mary's, or Christ Church) it can scarce be done at all. But I know what Imperfections were in the one I rais'd up October last, and how many live Specimens you were forc'd to imploy before you hit upon the right Mode in the year 1766; so will be guided by you in all Matters. I am impatient for yr Brig, and inquire daily at Mr. Biddle's Wharf.""
      A third suspicious letter was in an unknown tongue and even an unknown alphabet. In the Smith diary found by Charles Ward a single oft-repeated combination of characters is clumsily copied; and authorities at Brown University have pronounced the alphabet Amharic or Abyssinian, although they do not recognise the word. None of these epistles was ever delivered to Curwen, though the disappearance of Jedediah Orne from Salem as recorded shortly afterward shewed that the Providence men took certain quiet steps. The Pennsylvania Historical Society also has some curious letters received by Dr. Shippen regarding the presence of an unwholesome character in Philadelphia. But more decisive steps were in the air, and it is in the secret assemblages of sworn and tested sailors and faithful old privateersmen in the Brown warehouses by night that we must look for the main fruits of Weeden's disclosures. Slowly and surely a plan of campaign was under development which would leave no trace of Joseph Curwen's noxious mysteries.
      Curwen, despite all precautions, apparently felt that something was in the wind; for he was now remarked to wear an unusually worried look. His coach was seen at all hours in the town and on the Pawtuxet Road, and he dropped little by little the air of forced geniality with which he had latterly sought to combat the town's prejudice. The nearest neighbours to his farm, the Fenners, one night remarked a great shaft of light shooting into the sky from some aperture in the roof of that cryptical stone building with the high, excessively narrow windows; an event which they quickly communicated to John Brown in Providence. Mr. Brown had become the executive leader of the select group bent on Curwen's extirpation, and had informed the Fenners that some action was about to be taken. This he deemed needful because of the impossibility of their not witnessing the final raid; and he explained his course by saying that Curwen was known to be a spy of the customs officers at Newport, against whom the hand of every Providence shipper, merchant, and farmer was openly or clandestinely raised. Whether the ruse was wholly believed by neighbours who had seen so many queer things is not certain; but at any rate the Fenners were willing to connect any evil with a man of such queer ways. To them Mr. Brown had entrusted the duty of watching the Curwen farmhouse, and of regularly reporting every incident which took place there.

5.

      The probability that Curwen was on guard and attempting unusual things, as suggested by the odd shaft of light, precipitated at last the action so carefully devised by the band of serious citizens. According to the Smith diary a company of about 100 men met at 10 p.m. on Friday, April 12th, 1771, in the great room of Thurston's Tavern at the Sign of the Golden Lion on Weybosset Point across the Bridge. Of the guiding group of prominent men in addition to the leader John Brown there were present Dr. Bowen, with his case of surgical instruments, President Manning without the great periwig (the largest in the Colonies) for which he was noted, Governor Hopkins, wrapped in his dark cloak and accompanied by his seafaring brother Esek, whom he had initiated at the last moment with the permission of the rest, John Carter, Capt. Mathewson, and Capt. Whipple, who was to lead the actual raiding party. These chiefs conferred apart in a rear chamber, after which Capt. Whipple emerged to the great room and gave the gathered seamen their last oaths and instructions. Eleazar Smith was with the leaders as they sat in the rear apartment awaiting the arrival of Ezra Weeden, whose duty was to keep track of Curwen and report the departure of his coach for the farm.
      About 10:30 a heavy rumble was heard on the Great Bridge, followed by the sound of a coach in the street outside; and at that hour there was no need of waiting for Weeden in order to know that the doomed man had set out for his last night of unhallowed wizardry. A moment later, as the receding coach clattered faintly over the Muddy Dock Bridge, Weeden appeared; and the raiders fell silently into military order in the street, shouldering the firelocks, fowling-pieces, or whaling harpoons which they had with them. Weeden and Smith were with the party, and of the deliberating citizens there were present for active service Capt. Whipple, the leader, Capt. Esek Hopkins, John Carter, President Manning, Capt. Mathewson, and Dr. Bowen; together with Moses Brown, who had come up at the eleventh hour though absent from the preliminary session in the tavern. All these freemen and their hundred sailors began the long march without delay, grim and a trifle apprehensive as they left the Muddy Dock behind and mounted the gentle rise of Broad Street toward the Pawtuxet Road. Just beyond Elder Snow's church some of the men turned back to take a parting look at Providence lying outspread under the early spring stars. Steeples and gables rose dark and shapely, and salt breezes swept up gently from the cove north of the Bridge. Vega was climbing above the great hill across the water, whose crest of trees was broken by the roof-line of the unfinished College edifice. At the foot of that hill, and along the narrow mounting lanes of its side, the old town dreamed; Old Providence, for whose safety and sanity so monstrous and colossal a blasphemy was about to be wiped out.
      An hour and a quarter later the raiders arrived, as previously agreed, at the Fenner farmhouse; where they heard a final report on their intended victim. He had reached his farm over half an hour before, and the strange light had soon afterward shot once into the sky, but there were no lights in any visible windows. This was always the case of late. Even as this news was given another great glare arose toward the south, and the party realised that they had indeed come close to the scene of awesome and unnatural wonders. Capt. Whipple now ordered his force to separate into three divisions; one of twenty men under Eleazar Smith to strike across to the shore and guard the landing-place against possible reinforcements for Curwen until summoned by a messenger for desperate service, a second of twenty men under Capt. Esek Hopkins to steal down into the river valley behind the Curwen farm and demolish with axes or gunpowder the oaken door in the high, steep bank, and the third to close in on the house and adjacent buildings themselves. Of this division one third was to be led by Capt. Mathewson to the cryptical stone edifice with high narrow windows, another third to follow Capt. Whipple himself to the main farmhouse, and the remaining third to preserve a circle around the whole group of buildings until summoned by a final emergency signal.
      The river party would break down the hillside door at the sound of a single whistle-blast, then waiting and capturing anything which might issue from the regions within. At the sound of two whistle-blasts it would advance through the aperture to oppose the enemy or join the rest of the raiding contingent. The party at the stone building would accept these respective signals in an analogous manner; forcing an entrance at the first, and at the second descending whatever passage into the ground might be discovered, and joining the general or focal warfare expected to take place within the caverns. A third or emergency signal of three blasts would summon the immediate reserve from its general guard duty; its twenty men dividing equally and entering the unknown depths through both farmhouse and stone building. Capt. Whipple's belief in the existence of catacombs was absolute, and he took no alternative into consideration when making his plans. He had with him a whistle of great power and shrillness, and did not fear any upsetting or misunderstanding of signals. The final reserve at the landing, of course, was nearly out of the whistle's range; hence would require a special messenger if needed for help. Moses Brown and John Carter went with Capt. Hopkins to the river-bank, while President Manning was detailed with Capt. Mathewson to the stone building. Dr. Bowen, with Ezra Weeden, remained in Capt. Whipple's party which was to storm the farmhouse itself. The attack was to begin as soon as a messenger from Capt. Hopkins had joined Capt. Whipple to notify him of the river party's readiness. The leader would then deliver the loud single blast, and the various advance parties would commence their simultaneous attack on three points. Shortly before 1 a.m. the three divisions left the Fenner farmhouse; one to guard the landing, another to seek the river valley and the hillside door, and the third to subdivide and attend to the actual buildings of the Curwen farm.
      Eleazar Smith, who accompanied the shore-guarding party, records in his diary an uneventful march and a long wait on the bluff by the bay; broken once by what seemed to be the distant sound of the signal whistle and again by a peculiar muffled blend of roaring and crying and a powder blast which seemed to come from the same direction. Later on one man thought he caught some distant gunshots, and still later Smith himself felt the throb of titanic and thunderous words resounding in upper air. It was just before dawn that a single haggard messenger with wild eyes and a hideous unknown odour about his clothing appeared and told the detachment to disperse quietly to their homes and never again think or speak of the night's doings or of him who had been Joseph Curwen. Something about the bearing of the messenger carried a conviction which his mere words could never have conveyed; for though he was a seaman well known to many of them, there was something obscurely lost or gained in his soul which set him for evermore apart. It was the same later on when they met other old companions who had gone into that zone of horror. Most of them had lost or gained something imponderable and indescribable. They had seen or heard or felt something which was not for human creatures, and could not forget it. From them there was never any gossip, for to even the commonest of mortal instincts there are terrible boundaries. And from that single messenger the party at the shore caught a nameless awe which almost sealed their own lips. Very few are the rumours which ever came from any of them, and Eleazar Smith's diary is the only written record which has survived from that whole expedition which set forth from the Sign of the Golden Lion under the stars.
      Charles Ward, however, discovered another vague sidelight in some Fenner correspondence which he found in New London, where he knew another branch of the family had lived. It seems that the Fenners, from whose house the doomed farm was distantly visible, had watched the departing columns of raiders; and had heard very clearly the angry barking of the Curwen dogs, followed by the first shrill blast which precipitated the attack. This blast had been followed by a repetition of the great shaft of light from the stone building, and in another moment, after a quick sounding of the second signal ordering a general invasion, there had come a subdued prattle of musketry followed by a horrible roaring cry which the correspondent Luke Fenner had represented in his epistle by the characters ""Waaaahrrrrr - R'waaahrrr"". This cry, however, had possessed a quality which no mere writing could convey, and the correspondent mentions that his mother fainted completely at the sound. It was later repeated less loudly, and further but more muffled evidences of gunfire ensued; together with a loud explosion of powder from the direction of the river. About an hour afterward all the dogs began to bark frightfully, and there were vague ground rumblings so marked that the candlesticks tottered on the mantelpiece. A strong smell of sulphur was noted; and Luke Fenner's father declared that he heard the third or emergency whistle signal, though the others failed to detect it. Muffled musketry sounded again, followed by a deep scream less piercing but even more horrible than those which had preceded it; a kind of throaty, nastily plastic cough or gurgle whose quality as a scream must have come more from its continuity and psychological import than from its actual acoustic value.
      Then the flaming thing burst into sight at a point where the Curwen farm ought to lie, and the human cries of desperate and frightened men were heard. Muskets flashed and cracked, and the flaming thing fell to the ground. A second flaming thing appeared, and a shriek of human origin was plainly distinguished. Fenner wrote that he could even gather a few words belched in frenzy: ""Almighty, protect thy lamb!"" Then there were more shots, and the second flaming thing fell. After that came silence for about three-quarters of an hour; at the end of which time little Arthur Fenner, Luke's brother, exclaimed that he saw 'a red fog' going up to the stars from the accursed farm in the distance. No one but the child can testify to this, but Luke admits the significant coincidence implied by the panic of almost convulsive fright which at the same moment arched the backs and stiffened the fur of the three cats then within the room.
      Five minutes later a chill wind blew up, and the air became suffused with such an intolerable stench that only the strong freshness of the sea could have prevented its being noticed by the shore party or by any wakeful souls in Pawtuxet village. This stench was nothing which any of the Fenners had ever encountered before, and produced a kind of clutching, amorphous fear beyond that of the tomb or the charnel-house. Close upon it came the awful voice which no hapless hearer will ever be able to forget. It thundered out of the sky like a doom, and windows rattled as its echoes died away. It was deep and musical; powerful as a bass organ, but evil as the forbidden books of the Arabs. What it said no man can tell, for it spoke in an unknown tongue, but this is the writing Luke Fenner set down to portray the daemoniac intonations: ""DEESMEES-JESHET-BONE DOSEFE DUVEMA-ENITEMOSS"". Not till the year 1919 did any soul link this crude transcript with anything else in mortal knowledge, but Charles Ward paled as he recognised what Mirandola had denounced in shudders as the ultimate horror among black magic's incantations.
      An unmistakably human shout or deep chorused scream seemed to answer this malign wonder from the Curwen farm, after which the unknown stench grew complex with an added odour equally intolerable. A wailing distinctly different from the scream now burst out, and was protracted ululantly in rising and falling paroxysms. At times it became almost articulate, though no auditor could trace any definite words; and at one point it seemed to verge toward the confines of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Then a yell of utter, ultimate fright and stark madness wrenched from scores of human throats - a yell which came strong and clear despite the depth from which it must have burst; after which darkness and silence ruled all things. Spirals of acrid smoke ascended to blot out the stars, though no flames appeared and no buildings were observed to be gone or injured on the following day.
      Toward dawn two frightened messengers with monstrous and unplaceable odours saturating their clothing knocked at the Fenner door and requested a keg of rum, for which they paid very well indeed. One of them told the family that the affair of Joseph Curwen was over, and that the events of the night were not to be mentioned again. Arrogant as the order seemed, the aspect of him who gave it took away all resentment and lent it a fearsome authority; so that only these furtive letters of Luke Fenner, which he urged his Connecticut relative to destroy, remain to tell what was seen and heard. The non-compliance of that relative, whereby the letters were saved after all, has alone kept the matter from a merciful oblivion. Charles Ward had one detail to add as a result of a long canvass of Pawtuxet residents for ancestral traditions. Old Charles Slocum of that village said that there was known to his grandfather a queer rumour concerning a charred, distorted body found in the fields a week after the death of Joseph Curwen was announced. What kept the talk alive was the notion that this body, so far as could be seen in its burnt and twisted condition, was neither thoroughly human nor wholly allied to any animal which Pawtuxet folk had ever seen or read about.

6.

      Not one man who participated in that terrible raid could ever be induced to say a word concerning it, and every fragment of the vague data which survives comes from those outside the final fighting party. There is something frightful in the care with which these actual raiders destroyed each scrap which bore the least allusion to the matter. Eight sailors had been killed, but although their bodies were not produced their families were satisfied with the statement that a clash with customs officers had occurred. The same statement also covered the numerous cases of wounds, all of which were extensively bandaged and treated only by Dr. Jabez Bowen, who had accompanied the party. Hardest to explain was the nameless odour clinging to all the raiders, a thing which was discussed for weeks. Of the citizen leaders, Capt. Whipple and Moses Brown were most severely hurt, and letters of their wives testify the bewilderment which their reticence and close guarding of their bandages produced. Psychologically every participant was aged, sobered, and shaken. It is fortunate that they were all strong men of action and simple, orthodox religionists, for with more subtle introspectiveness and mental complexity they would have fared ill indeed. President Manning was the most disturbed; but even he outgrew the darkest shadow, and smothered memories in prayers. Every man of those leaders had a stirring part to play in later years, and it is perhaps fortunate that this is so. Little more than a twelvemonth afterward Capt. Whipple led the mob who burnt the revenue ship Gaspee, and in this bold act we may trace one step in the blotting out of unwholesome images.
      There was delivered to the widow of Joseph Curwen a sealed leaden coffin of curious design, obviously found ready on the spot when needed, in which she was told her husband's body lay. He had, it was explained, been killed in a customs battle about which it was not politic to give details. More than this no tongue ever uttered of Joseph Curwen's end, and Charles Ward had only a single hint wherewith to construct a theory. This hint was the merest thread - a shaky underscoring of a passage in Jedediah Orne's confiscated letter to Curwen, as partly copied in Ezra Weeden's handwriting. The copy was found in the possession of Smith's descendants; and we are left to decide whether Weeden gave it to his companion after the end, as a mute clue to the abnormality which had occurred, or whether, as is more probable, Smith had it before, and added the underscoring himself from what he had managed to extract from his friend by shrewd guessing and adroit cross-questioning. The underlined passage is merely this:
      ""I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you.""
In the light of this passage, and reflecting on what last unmentionable allies a beaten man might try to summon in his direst extremity, Charles Ward may well have wondered whether any citizen of Providence killed Joseph Curwen.
      The deliberate effacement of every memory of the dead man from Providence life and annals was vastly aided by the influence of the raiding leaders. They had not at first meant to be so thorough, and had allowed the widow and her father and child to remain in ignorance of the true conditions; but Capt. Tillinghast was an astute man, and soon uncovered enough rumours to whet his horror and cause him to demand that his daughter and granddaughter change their name, burn the library and all remaining papers, and chisel the inscription from the slate slab above Joseph Curwen's grave. He knew Capt. Whipple well, and probably extracted more hints from that bluff mariner than anyone else ever gained respecting the end of the accused sorcerer.
      From that time on the obliteration of Curwen's memory became increasingly rigid, extending at last by common consent even to the town records and files of the Gazette. It can be compared in spirit only to the hush that lay on Oscar Wilde's name for a decade after his disgrace, and in extent only to the fate of that sinful King of Runazar in Lord Dunsany's tale, whom the Gods decided must not only cease to be, but must cease ever to have been.
      Mrs. Tillinghast, as the widow became known after 1772, sold the house in Olney Court and resided with her father in Power's Lane till her death in 1817. The farm at Pawtuxet, shunned by every living soul, remained to moulder through the years; and seemed to decay with unaccountable rapidity. By 1780 only the stone and brickwork were standing, and by 1800 even these had fallen to shapeless heaps. None ventured to pierce the tangled shrubbery on the river-bank behind which the hillside door may have lain, nor did any try to frame a definite image of the scenes amidst which Joseph Curwen departed from the horrors he had wrought.
      Only robust old Capt. Whipple was heard by alert listeners to mutter once in a while to himself, ""Pox on that  -  -  - , but he had no business to laugh while he screamed. 'Twas as though the damn'd  -  -  -  had some'at up his sleeve. For half a crown I'd burn his  -  -  -  house.""
","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 languages 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 Sanscrit 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 massed 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 Vigenère’s Traité des Chiffres, Falconer’s Cryptomenysis Patefacta, Davys’ and Thicknesse’s eighteenth-century treatises, and such fairly modern authorities as Blair, von Marten, and Klüber’s Kryptographik. He interspersed his study of the books with attacks on the manuscript 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 2nd 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 shewing 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’ 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 4th 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 an 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 them!” 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 whiskey 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.
",True
"IV. A Mutation and a Madness

1.

In the week following that memorable Good Friday Charles Ward was seen more often than usual, and was continually carrying books between his library and the attic laboratory. His actions were quiet and rational, but he had a furtive, hunted look which his mother did not like, and developed an incredibly ravenous appetite as gauged by his demands upon the cook. Dr. Willett had been told of those Friday noises and happenings, and on the following Tuesday had a long conversation with the youth in the library where the picture stared no more. The interview was, as always, inconclusive; but Willett is still ready to swear that the youth was sane and himself at the time. He held out promises of an early revelation, and spoke of the need of securing a laboratory elsewhere. At the loss of the portrait he grieved singularly little considering his first enthusiasm over it, but seemed to find something of positive humour in its sudden crumbling.
      About the second week Charles began to be absent from the house for long periods, and one day when good old black Hannah came to help with the spring cleaning she mentioned his frequent visits to the old house in Olney Court, where he would come with a large valise and perform curious delvings in the cellar. He was always very liberal to her and to old Asa, but seemed more worried than he used to be; which grieved her very much, since she had watched him grow up from birth. Another report of his doings came from Pawtuxet, where some friends of the family saw him at a distance a surprising number of times. He seemed to haunt the resort and canoe-house of Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet, and subsequent inquiries by Dr. Willett at that place brought out the fact that his purpose was always to secure access to the rather hedged-in river-bank, along which he would walk toward the north, usually not reappearing for a very long while.
      Late in May came a momentary revival of ritualistic sounds in the attic laboratory which brought a stern reproof from Mr. Ward and a somewhat distracted promise of amendment from Charles. It occurred one morning, and seemed to form a resumption of the imaginary conversation noted on that turbulent Good Friday. The youth was arguing or remonstrating hotly with himself, for there suddenly burst forth a perfectly distinguishable series of clashing shouts in differentiated tones like alternate demands and denials which caused Mrs. Ward to run upstairs and listen at the door. She could hear no more than a fragment whose only plain words were ""must have it red for three months"", and upon her knocking all sounds ceased at once. When Charles was later questioned by his father he said that there were certain conflicts of spheres of consciousness which only great skill could avoid, but which he would try to transfer to other realms.
      About the middle of June a queer nocturnal incident occurred. In the early evening there had been some noise and thumping in the laboratory upstairs, and Mr. Ward was on the point of investigating when it suddenly quieted down. That midnight, after the family had retired, the butler was nightlocking the front door when according to his statement Charles appeared somewhat blunderingly and uncertainly at the foot of the stairs with a large suitcase and made signs that he wished egress. The youth spoke no word, but the worthy Yorkshireman caught one sight of his fevered eyes and trembled causelessly. He opened the door and young Ward went out, but in the morning he presented his resignation to Mrs. Ward. There was, he said, something unholy in the glance Charles had fixed on him. It was no way for a young gentleman to look at an honest person, and he could not possibly stay another night. Mrs. Ward allowed the man to depart, but she did not value his statement highly. To fancy Charles in a savage state that night was quite ridiculous, for as long as she had remained awake she had heard faint sounds from the laboratory above; sounds as if of sobbing and pacing, and of a sighing which told only of despair's profoundest depths. Mrs. Ward had grown used to listening for sounds in the night, for the mystery of her son was fast driving all else from her mind.
      The next evening, much as on another evening nearly three months before, Charles Ward seized the newspaper very early and accidentally lost the main section. The matter was not recalled till later, when Dr. Willett began checking up loose ends and searching out missing links here and there. In the Journal office he found the section which Charles had lost, and marked two items as of possible significance. They were as follows:
More Cemetery Delving

It was this morning discovered by Robert Hart, night watchman at the North Burial Ground, that ghouls were again at work in the ancient portion of the cemetery. The grave of Ezra Weeden, who was born in 1740 and died in 1824, according to his uprooted and savagely splintered slate headstone, was found excavated and rifled, the work being evidently done with a spade stolen from an adjacent tool-shed.
      Whatever the contents may have been after more than a century of burial, all was gone except a few slivers of decayed wood. There were no wheel tracks, but the police have measured a single set of footprints which they found in the vicinity, and which indicate the boots of a man of refinement.
      Hart is inclined to link this incident with the digging discovered last March, when a party in a motor truck were frightened away after making a deep excavation; but Sergt. Riley of the Second Station discounts this theory and points to vital differences in the two cases. In March the digging had been in a spot where no grave was known; but this time a well-marked and cared-for grave had been rifled with every evidence of deliberate purpose, and with a conscious malignity expressed in the splintering of the slab which had been intact up to the day before.
      Members of the Weeden family, notified of the happening, expressed their astonishment and regret; and were wholly unable to think of any enemy who would care to violate the grave of their ancestor. Hazard Weeden of 598 Angell Street recalls a family legend according to which Ezra Weeden was involved in some very peculiar circumstances, not dishonourable to himself, shortly before the Revolution; but of any modern feud or mystery he is frankly ignorant. Inspector Cunningham has been assigned to the case, and hopes to uncover some valuable clues in the near future.

Dogs Noisy in Pawtuxet

      Residents of Pawtuxet were aroused about 3 a.m. today by a phenomenal baying of dogs which seemed to centre near the river just north of Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet. The volume and quality of the howling were unusually odd, according to most who heard it; and Fred Lemdin, night watchman at Rhodes, declares it was mixed with something very like the shrieks of a man in mortal terror and agony. A sharp and very brief thunderstorm, which seemed to strike somewhere near the bank of the river, put an end to the disturbance. Strange and unpleasant odours, probably from the oil tanks along the bay, are popularly linked with this incident; and may have had their share in exciting the dogs.
      The aspect of Charles now became very haggard and hunted, and all agreed in retrospect that he may have wished at this period to make some statement or confession from which sheer terror withheld him. The morbid listening of his mother in the night brought out the fact that he made frequent sallies abroad under cover of darkness, and most of the more academic alienists unite at present in charging him with the revolting cases of vampirism which the press so sensationally reported about this time, but which have not yet been definitely traced to any known perpetrator. These cases, too recent and celebrated to need detailed mention, involved victims of every age and type and seemed to cluster around two distinct localities; the residential hill and the North End, near the Ward home, and the suburban districts across the Cranston line near Pawtuxet. Both late wayfarers and sleepers with open windows were attacked, and those who lived to tell the tale spoke unanimously of a lean, lithe, leaping monster with burning eyes which fastened its teeth in the throat or upper arm and feasted ravenously.
      Dr. Willett, who refuses to date the madness of Charles Ward as far back as even this, is cautious in attempting to explain these horrors. He has, he declares, certain theories of his own; and limits his positive statements to a peculiar kind of negation. ""I will not,"" he says, ""state who or what I believe perpetrated these attacks and murders, but I will declare that Charles Ward was innocent of them. I have reason to be sure he was ignorant of the taste of blood, as indeed his continued anaemic decline and increasing pallor prove better than any verbal argument. Ward meddled with terrible things, but he has paid for it, and he was never a monster or a villain. As for now - I don't like to think. A change came, and I'm content to believe that the old Charles Ward died with it. His soul did, anyhow, for that mad flesh that vanished from Waite's hospital had another.""
      Willett speaks with authority, for he was often at the Ward home attending Mrs. Ward, whose nerves had begun to snap under the strain. Her nocturnal listening had bred some morbid hallucinations which she confided to the doctor with hesitancy, and which he ridiculed in talking to her, although they made him ponder deeply when alone. These delusions always concerned the faint sounds which she fancied she heard in the attic laboratory and bedroom, and emphasised the occurrence of muffled sighs and sobbings at the most impossible times. Early in July Willett ordered Mrs. Ward to Atlantic City for an indefinite recuperative sojourn, and cautioned both Mr. Ward and the haggard and elusive Charles to write her only cheering letters. It is probably to this enforced and reluctant escape that she owes her life and continued sanity.

2.

      Not long after his mother's departure Charles Ward began negotiating for the Pawtuxet bungalow. It was a squalid little wooden edifice with a concrete garage, perched high on the sparsely settled bank of the river slightly above Rhodes, but for some odd reason the youth would have nothing else. He gave the real-estate agencies no peace till one of them secured it for him at an exorbitant price from a somewhat reluctant owner, and as soon as it was vacant he took possession under cover of darkness, transporting in a great closed van the entire contents of his attic laboratory, including the books both weird and modern which he had borrowed from his study. He had this van loaded in the black small hours, and his father recalls only a drowsy realisation of stifled oaths and stamping feet on the night the goods were taken away. After that Charles moved back to his own old quarters on the third floor, and never haunted the attic again.
      To the Pawtuxet bungalow Charles transferred all the secrecy with which he had surrounded his attic realm, save that he now appeared to have two sharers of his mysteries; a villainous-looking Portuguese half-caste from the South Main St. waterfront who acted as a servant, and a thin, scholarly stranger with dark glasses and a stubbly full beard of dyed aspect whose status was evidently that of a colleague. Neighbours vainly tried to engage these odd persons in conversation. The mulatto Gomes spoke very little English, and the bearded man, who gave his name as Dr. Allen, voluntarily followed his example. Ward himself tried to be more affable, but succeeded only in provoking curiosity with his rambling accounts of chemical research. Before long queer tales began to circulate regarding the all-night burning of lights; and somewhat later, after this burning had suddenly ceased, there rose still queerer tales of disproportionate orders of meat from the butcher's and of the muffled shouting, declamation, rhythmic chanting, and screaming supposed to come from some very deep cellar below the place. Most distinctly the new and strange household was bitterly disliked by the honest bourgeoisie of the vicinity, and it is not remarkable that dark hints were advanced connecting the hated establishment with the current epidemic of vampiristic attacks and murders; especially since the radius of that plague seemed now confined wholly to Pawtuxet and the adjacent streets of Edgewood.
      Ward spent most of his time at the bungalow, but slept occasionally at home and was still reckoned a dweller beneath his father's roof. Twice he was absent from the city on week-long trips, whose destinations have not yet been discovered. He grew steadily paler and more emaciated even than before, and lacked some of his former assurance when repeating to Dr. Willett his old, old story of vital research and future revelations. Willett often waylaid him at his father's house, for the elder Ward was deeply worried and perplexed, and wished his son to get as much sound oversight as could be managed in the case of so secretive and independent an adult. The doctor still insists that the youth was sane even as late as this, and adduces many a conversation to prove his point.
      About September the vampirism declined, but in the following January Ward almost became involved in serious trouble. For some time the nocturnal arrival and departure of motor trucks at the Pawtuxet bungalow had been commented upon, and at this juncture an unforeseen hitch exposed the nature of at least one item of their contents. In a lonely spot near Hope Valley had occurred one of the frequent sordid waylayings of trucks by ""hi-jackers"" in quest of liquor shipments, but this time the robbers had been destined to receive the greater shock. For the long cases they seized proved upon opening to contain some exceedingly gruesome things; so gruesome, in fact, that the matter could not be kept quiet amongst the denizens of the underworld. The thieves had hastily buried what they discovered, but when the State Police got wind of the matter a careful search was made. A recently arrested vagrant, under promise of immunity from prosecution on any additional charge, at last consented to guide a party of troopers to the spot; and there was found in that hasty cache a very hideous and shameful thing. It would not be well for the national - or even the international - sense of decorum if the public were ever to know what was uncovered by that awestruck party. There was no mistaking it, even by these far from studious officers; and telegrams to Washington ensued with feverish rapidity.
      The cases were addressed to Charles Ward at his Pawtuxet bungalow, and State and Federal officials at once paid him a very forceful and serious call. They found him pallid and worried with his two odd companions, and received from him what seemed to be a valid explanation and evidence of innocence. He had needed certain anatomical specimens as part of a programme of research whose depth and genuineness anyone who had known him in the last decade could prove, and had ordered the required kind and number from agencies which he had thought as reasonably legitimate as such things can be. Of the identity of the specimens he had known absolutely nothing, and was properly shocked when the inspectors hinted at the monstrous effect on public sentiment and national dignity which a knowledge of the matter would produce. In this statement he was firmly sustained by his bearded colleague Dr. Allen, whose oddly hollow voice carried even more conviction than his own nervous tones; so that in the end the officials took no action, but carefully set down the New York name and address which Ward gave them as a basis for a search which came to nothing. It is only fair to add that the specimens were quickly and quietly restored to their proper places, and that the general public will never know of their blasphemous disturbance.
      On February 9, 1928, Dr. Willett received a letter from Charles Ward which he considers of extraordinary importance, and about which he has frequently quarrelled with Dr. Lyman. Lyman believes that this note contains positive proof of a well-developed case of dementia praecox, but Willett on the other hand regards it as the last perfectly sane utterance of the hapless youth. He calls especial attention to the normal character of the penmanship; which though shewing traces of shattered nerves, is nevertheless distinctly Ward's own. The text in full is as follows:
""100 Prospect St.            
Providence, R.I.,      
February 8, 1928.
""Dear Dr. Willett: - 
      ""I feel that at last the time has come for me to make the disclosures which I have so long promised you, and for which you have pressed me so often. The patience you have shewn in waiting, and the confidence you have shewn in my mind and integrity, are things I shall never cease to appreciate.
      ""And now that I am ready to speak, I must own with humiliation that no triumph such as I dreamed of can ever be mine. Instead of triumph I have found terror, and my talk with you will not be a boast of victory but a plea for help and advice in saving both myself and the world from a horror beyond all human conception or calculation. You recall what those Fenner letters said of the old raiding party at Pawtuxet. That must all be done again, and quickly. Upon us depends more than can be put into words - all civilisation, all natural law, perhaps even the fate of the solar system and the universe. I have brought to light a monstrous abnormality, but I did it for the sake of knowledge. Now for the sake of all life and Nature you must help me thrust it back into the dark again.
      ""I have left that Pawtuxet place forever, and we must extirpate everything existing there, alive or dead. I shall not go there again, and you must not believe it if you ever hear that I am there. I will tell you why I say this when I see you. I have come home for good, and wish you would call on me at the very first moment that you can spare five or six hours continuously to hear what I have to say. It will take that long - and believe me when I tell you that you never had a more genuine professional duty than this. My life and reason are the very least things which hang in the balance.
      ""I dare not tell my father, for he could not grasp the whole thing. But I have told him of my danger, and he has four men from a detective agency watching the house. I don't know how much good they can do, for they have against them forces which even you could scarcely envisage or acknowledge. So come quickly if you wish to see me alive and hear how you may help to save the cosmos from stark hell.
      ""Any time will do - I shall not be out of the house. Don't telephone ahead, for there is no telling who or what may try to intercept you. And let us pray to whatever gods there be that nothing may prevent this meeting.
      ""In utmost gravity and desperation,
""Charles Dexter Ward.""      
""P.S. Shoot Dr. Allen on sight and dissolve his body in acid. Don't burn it.""
      Dr. Willett received this note about 10:30 a.m., and immediately arranged to spare the whole late afternoon and evening for the momentous talk, letting it extend on into the night as long as might be necessary. He planned to arrive about four o'clock, and through all the intervening hours was so engulfed in every sort of wild speculation that most of his tasks were very mechanically performed. Maniacal as the letter would have sounded to a stranger, Willett had seen too much of Charles Ward's oddities to dismiss it as sheer raving. That something very subtle, ancient, and horrible was hovering about he felt quite sure, and the reference to Dr. Allen could almost be comprehended in view of what Pawtuxet gossip said of Ward's enigmatical colleague. Willett had never seen the man, but had heard much of his aspect and bearing, and could not but wonder what sort of eyes those much-discussed dark glasses might conceal.
      Promptly at four Dr. Willett presented himself at the Ward residence, but found to his annoyance that Charles had not adhered to his determination to remain indoors. The guards were there, but said that the young man seemed to have lost part of his timidity. He had that morning done much apparently frightened arguing and protesting over the telephone, one of the detectives said, replying to some unknown voice with phrases such as ""I am very tired and must rest a while"", ""I can't receive anyone for some time, you'll have to excuse me"", ""Please postpone decisive action till we can arrange some sort of compromise"", or ""I am very sorry, but I must take a complete vacation from everything; I'll talk with you later"". Then, apparently gaining boldness through meditation, he had slipped out so quietly that no one had seen him depart or knew that he had gone until he returned about one o'clock and entered the house without a word. He had gone upstairs, where a bit of his fear must have surged back; for he was heard to cry out in a highly terrified fashion upon entering his library, afterward trailing off into a kind of choking gasp. When, however, the butler had gone to inquire what the trouble was, he had appeared at the door with a great show of boldness, and had silently gestured the man away in a manner that terrified him unaccountably. Then he had evidently done some rearranging of his shelves, for a great clattering and thumping and creaking ensued; after which he had reappeared and left at once. Willett inquired whether or not any message had been left, but was told that there was none. The butler seemed queerly disturbed about something in Charles's appearance and manner, and asked solicitously if there was much hope for a cure of his disordered nerves.
      For almost two hours Dr. Willett waited vainly in Charles Ward's library, watching the dusty shelves with their wide gaps where books had been removed, and smiling grimly at the panelled overmantel on the north wall, whence a year before the suave features of old Joseph Curwen had looked mildly down. After a time the shadows began to gather, and the sunset cheer gave place to a vague growing terror which flew shadow-like before the night. Mr. Ward finally arrived, and shewed much surprise and anger at his son's absence after all the pains which had been taken to guard him. He had not known of Charles's appointment, and promised to notify Willett when the youth returned. In bidding the doctor goodnight he expressed his utter perplexity at his son's condition, and urged his caller to do all he could to restore the boy to normal poise. Willett was glad to escape from that library, for something frightful and unholy seemed to haunt it; as if the vanished picture had left behind a legacy of evil. He had never liked that picture; and even now, strong-nerved though he was, there lurked a quality in its vacant panel which made him feel an urgent need to get out into the pure air as soon as possible.

3.

      The next morning Willett received a message from the senior Ward, saying that Charles was still absent. Mr. Ward mentioned that Dr. Allen had telephoned him to say that Charles would remain at Pawtuxet for some time, and that he must not be disturbed. This was necessary because Allen himself was suddenly called away for an indefinite period, leaving the researches in need of Charles's constant oversight. Charles sent his best wishes, and regretted any bother his abrupt change of plans might have caused. In listening to this message Mr. Ward heard Dr. Allen's voice for the first time, and it seemed to excite some vague and elusive memory which could not be actually placed, but which was disturbing to the point of fearfulness.
      Faced by these baffling and contradictory reports, Dr. Willett was frankly at a loss what to do. The frantic earnestness of Charles's note was not to be denied, yet what could one think of its writer's immediate violation of his own expressed policy? Young Ward had written that his delvings had become blasphemous and menacing, that they and his bearded colleague must be extirpated at any cost, and that he himself would never return to their final scene; yet according to latest advices he had forgotten all this and was back in the thick of the mystery. Common sense bade one leave the youth alone with his freakishness, yet some deeper instinct would not permit the impression of that frenzied letter to subside. Willett read it over again, and could not make its essence sound as empty and insane as both its bombastic verbiage and its lack of fulfilment would seem to imply. Its terror was too profound and real, and in conjunction with what the doctor already knew evoked too vivid hints of monstrosities from beyond time and space to permit of any cynical explanation. There were nameless horrors abroad; and no matter how little one might be able to get at them, one ought to stand prepared for any sort of action at any time.
      For over a week Dr. Willett pondered on the dilemma which seemed thrust upon him, and became more and more inclined to pay Charles a call at the Pawtuxet bungalow. No friend of the youth had ever ventured to storm this forbidden retreat, and even his father knew of its interior only from such descriptions as he chose to give; but Willett felt that some direct conversation with his patient was necessary. Mr. Ward had been receiving brief and non-committal typed notes from his son, and said that Mrs. Ward in her Atlantic City retirement had had no better word. So at length the doctor resolved to act; and despite a curious sensation inspired by old legends of Joseph Curwen, and by more recent revelations and warnings from Charles Ward, set boldly out for the bungalow on the bluff above the river.
      Willett had visited the spot before through sheer curiosity, though of course never entering the house or proclaiming his presence; hence knew exactly the route to take. Driving out Broad Street one early afternoon toward the end of February in his small motor, he thought oddly of the grim party which had taken that selfsame road a hundred and fifty-seven years before on a terrible errand which none might ever comprehend.
      The ride through the city's decaying fringe was short, and trim Edgewood and sleepy Pawtuxet presently spread out ahead. Willett turned to the right down Lockwood Street and drove his car as far along that rural road as he could, then alighted and walked north to where the bluff towered above the lovely bends of the river and the sweep of misty downlands beyond. Houses were still few here, and there was no mistaking the isolated bungalow with its concrete garage on a high point of land at his left. Stepping briskly up the neglected gravel walk he rapped at the door with a firm hand, and spoke without a tremor to the evil Portuguese mulatto who opened it to the width of a crack.
      He must, he said, see Charles Ward at once on vitally important business. No excuse would be accepted, and a repulse would mean only a full report of the matter to the elder Ward. The mulatto still hesitated, and pushed against the door when Willett attempted to open it; but the doctor merely raised his voice and renewed his demands. Then there came from the dark interior a husky whisper which somehow chilled the hearer through and through though he did not know why he feared it. ""Let him in, Tony,"" it said, ""we may as well talk now as ever."" But disturbing as was the whisper, the greater fear was that which immediately followed. The floor creaked and the speaker hove in sight - and the owner of those strange and resonant tones was seen to be no other than Charles Dexter Ward.
      The minuteness with which Dr. Willett recalled and recorded his conversation of that afternoon is due to the importance he assigns to this particular period. For at last he concedes a vital change in Charles Dexter Ward's mentality, and believes that the youth now spoke from a brain hopelessly alien to the brain whose growth he had watched for six and twenty years. Controversy with Dr. Lyman has compelled him to be very specific, and he definitely dates the madness of Charles Ward from the time the typewritten notes began to reach his parents. Those notes are not in Ward's normal style; not even in the style of that last frantic letter to Willett. Instead, they are strange and archaic, as if the snapping of the writer's mind had released a flood of tendencies and impressions picked up unconsciously through boyhood antiquarianism. There is an obvious effort to be modern, but the spirit and occasionally the language are those of the past.
      The past, too, was evident in Ward's every tone and gesture as he received the doctor in that shadowy bungalow. He bowed, motioned Willett to a seat, and began to speak abruptly in that strange whisper which he sought to explain at the very outset.
      ""I am grown phthisical,"" he began, ""from this cursed river air. You must excuse my speech. I suppose you are come from my father to see what ails me, and I hope you will say nothing to alarm him.""
      Willett was studying these scraping tones with extreme care, but studying even more closely the face of the speaker. Something, he felt, was wrong; and he thought of what the family had told him about the fright of that Yorkshire butler one night. He wished it were not so dark, but did not request that any blind be opened. Instead, he merely asked Ward why he had so belied the frantic note of little more than a week before.
      ""I was coming to that,"" the host replied. ""You must know, I am in a very bad state of nerves, and do and say queer things I cannot account for. As I have told you often, I am on the edge of great matters; and the bigness of them has a way of making me light-headed. Any man might well be frighted of what I have found, but I am not to be put off for long. I was a dunce to have that guard and stick at home; for having gone this far, my place is here. I am not well spoke of by my prying neighbours, and perhaps I was led by weakness to believe myself what they say of me. There is no evil to any in what I do, so long as I do it rightly. Have the goodness to wait six months, and I'll shew you what will pay your patience well.
      ""You may as well know I have a way of learning old matters from things surer than books, and I'll leave you to judge the importance of what I can give to history, philosophy, and the arts by reason of the doors I have access to. My ancestor had all this when those witless peeping Toms came and murdered him. I now have it again, or am coming very imperfectly to have a part of it. This time nothing must happen, and least of all through any idiot fears of my own. Pray forget all I writ you, Sir, and have no fear of this place or any in it. Dr. Allen is a man of fine parts, and I owe him an apology for anything ill I have said of him. I wish I had no need to spare him, but there were things he had to do elsewhere. His zeal is equal to mine in all those matters, and I suppose that when I feared the work I feared him too as my greatest helper in it.""
      Ward paused, and the doctor hardly knew what to say or think. He felt almost foolish in the face of this calm repudiation of the letter; and yet there clung to him the fact that while the present discourse was strange and alien and indubitably mad, the note itself had been tragic in its naturalness and likeness to the Charles Ward he knew. Willett now tried to turn the talk on early matters, and recall to the youth some past events which would restore a familiar mood; but in this process he obtained only the most grotesque results. It was the same with all the alienists later on. Important sections of Charles Ward's store of mental images, mainly those touching modern times and his own personal life, had been unaccountably expunged; whilst all the massed antiquarianism of his youth had welled up from some profound subconsciousness to engulf the contemporary and the individual. The youth's intimate knowledge of elder things was abnormal and unholy, and he tried his best to hide it. When Willett would mention some favourite object of his boyhood archaistic studies he often shed by pure accident such a light as no normal mortal could conceivably be expected to possess, and the doctor shuddered as the glib allusion glided by.
      It was not wholesome to know so much about the way the fat sheriff's wig fell off as he leaned over at the play in Mr. Douglass' Histrionick Academy in King Street on the eleventh of February, 1762, which fell on a Thursday; or about how the actors cut the text of Steele's Conscious Lovers so badly that one was almost glad the Baptist-ridden legislature closed the theatre a fortnight later. That Thomas Sabin's Boston coach was ""damn'd uncomfortable"" old letters may well have told; but what healthy antiquarian could recall how the creaking of Epenetus Olney's new signboard (the gaudy crown he set up after he took to calling his tavern the Crown Coffee House) was exactly like the first few notes of the new jazz piece all the radios in Pawtuxet were playing?
      Ward, however, would not be quizzed long in this vein. Modern and personal topics he waved aside quite summarily, whilst regarding antique affairs he soon shewed the plainest boredom. What he wished clearly enough was only to satisfy his visitor enough to make him depart without the intention of returning. To this end he offered to shew Willett the entire house, and at once proceeded to lead the doctor through every room from cellar to attic. Willett looked sharply, but noted that the visible books were far too few and trivial ever to have filled the wide gaps on Ward's shelves at home, and that the meagre so-called ""laboratory"" was the flimsiest sort of a blind. Clearly there were a library and a laboratory elsewhere; but just where, it was impossible to say. Essentially defeated in his quest for something he could not name, Willett returned to town before evening and told the senior Ward everything which had occurred. They agreed that the youth must be definitely out of his mind, but decided that nothing drastic need be done just then. Above all, Mrs. Ward must be kept in as complete an ignorance as her son's own strange typed notes would permit.
      Mr. Ward now determined to call in person upon his son, making it wholly a surprise visit. Dr. Willett took him in his car one evening, guiding him to within sight of the bungalow and waiting patiently for his return. The session was a long one, and the father emerged in a very saddened and perplexed state. His reception had developed much like Willett's, save that Charles had been an excessively long time in appearing after the visitor had forced his way into the hall and sent the Portuguese away with an imperative demand; and in the bearing of the altered son there was no trace of filial affection. The lights had been dim, yet even so the youth had complained that they dazzled him outrageously. He had not spoken out loud at all, averring that his throat was in very poor condition; but in his hoarse whisper there was a quality so vaguely disturbing that Mr. Ward could not banish it from his mind.
      Now definitely leagued together to do all they could toward the youth's mental salvation, Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett set about collecting every scrap of data which the case might afford. Pawtuxet gossip was the first item they studied, and this was relatively easy to glean since both had friends in that region. Dr. Willett obtained the most rumours because people talked more frankly to him than to a parent of the central figure, and from all he heard he could tell that young Ward's life had become indeed a strange one. Common tongues would not dissociate his household from the vampirism of the previous summer, while the nocturnal comings and goings of the motor trucks provided their share of dark speculation. Local tradesmen spoke of the queerness of the orders brought them by the evil-looking mulatto, and in particular of the inordinate amounts of meat and fresh blood secured from the two butcher shops in the immediate neighbourhood. For a household of only three, these quantities were quite absurd.
      Then there was the matter of the sounds beneath the earth. Reports of these things were harder to pin down, but all the vague hints tallied in certain basic essentials. Noises of a ritual nature positively existed, and at times when the bungalow was dark. They might, of course, have come from the known cellar; but rumour insisted that there were deeper and more spreading crypts. Recalling the ancient tales of Joseph Curwen's catacombs, and assuming for granted that the present bungalow had been selected because of its situation on the old Curwen site as revealed in one or another of the documents found behind the picture, Willett and Mr. Ward gave this phase of the gossip much attention; and searched many times without success for the door in the river-bank which old manuscripts mentioned. As to popular opinions of the bungalow's various inhabitants, it was soon plain that the Brava Portuguese was loathed, the bearded and spectacled Dr. Allen feared, and the pallid young scholar disliked to a profound extent. During the last week or two Ward had obviously changed much, abandoning his attempts at affability and speaking only in hoarse but oddly repellent whispers on the few occasions that he ventured forth.
      Such were the shreds and fragments gathered here and there; and over these Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett held many long and serious conferences. They strove to exercise deduction, induction, and constructive imagination to their utmost extent; and to correlate every known fact of Charles's later life, including the frantic letter which the doctor now shewed the father, with the meagre documentary evidence available concerning old Joseph Curwen. They would have given much for a glimpse of the papers Charles had found, for very clearly the key to the youth's madness lay in what he had learned of the ancient wizard and his doings.

4.

      And yet, after all, it was from no step of Mr. Ward's or Dr. Willett's that the next move in this singular case proceeded. The father and the physician, rebuffed and confused by a shadow too shapeless and intangible to combat, had rested uneasily on their oars while the typed notes of young Ward to his parents grew fewer and fewer. Then came the first of the month with its customary financial adjustments, and the clerks at certain banks began a peculiar shaking of heads and telephoning from one to the other. Officials who knew Charles Ward by sight went down to the bungalow to ask why every cheque of his appearing at this juncture was a clumsy forgery, and were reassurred less than they ought to have been when the youth hoarsely explained that his hand had lately been so much affected by a nervous shock as to make normal writing impossible. He could, he said, form no written characters at all except with great difficulty; and could prove it by the fact that he had been forced to type all his recent letters, even those to his father and mother, who would bear out the assertion.
      What made the investigators pause in confusion was not this circumstance alone, for that was nothing unprecedented or fundamentally suspicious; nor even the Pawtuxet gossip, of which one or two of them had caught echoes. It was the muddled discourse of the young man which nonplussed them, implying as it did a virtually total loss of memory concerning important monetary matters which he had had at his fingertips only a month or two before. Something was wrong; for despite the apparent coherence and rationality of his speech, there could be no normal reason for this ill-concealed blankness on vital points. Moreover, although none of these men knew Ward well, they could not help observing the change in his language and manner. They had heard he was an antiquarian, but even the most hopeless antiquarians do not make daily use of obsolete phraseology and gestures. Altogether, this combination of hoarseness, palsied hands, bad memory, and altered speech and bearing must represent some disturbance or malady of genuine gravity, which no doubt formed the basis of the prevailing odd rumours; and after their departure the party of officials decided that a talk with the senior Ward was imperative.
      So on the sixth of March, 1928, there was a long and serious conference in Mr. Ward's office, after which the utterly bewildered father summoned Dr. Willett in a kind of helpless resignation. Willett looked over the strained and awkward signatures of the cheques, and compared them in his mind with the penmanship of that last frantic note. Certainly, the change was radical and profound, and yet there was something damnably familiar about the new writing. It had crabbed and archaic tendencies of a very curious sort, and seemed to result from a type of stroke utterly different from that which the youth had always used. It was strange - but where had he seen it before? On the whole, it was obvious that Charles was insane. Of that there could be no doubt. And since it appeared unlikely that he could handle his property or continue to deal with the outside world much longer, something must quickly be done toward his oversight and possible cure. It was then that the alienists were called in, Drs. Peck and Waite of Providence and Dr. Lyman of Boston, to whom Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett gave the most exhaustive possible history of the case, and who conferred at length in the now unused library of their young patient, examining what books and papers of his were left in order to gain some further notion of his habitual mental cast. After scanning this material and examining the ominous note to Willett they all agreed that Charles Ward's studies had been enough to unseat or at least to warp any ordinary intellect, and wished most heartily that they could see his more intimate volumes and documents; but this latter they knew they could do, if at all, only after a scene at the bungalow itself. Willett now reviewed the whole case with febrile energy; it being at this time that he obtained the statements of the workmen who had seen Charles find the Curwen documents, and that he collated the incidents of the destroyed newspaper items, looking up the latter at the Journal office.
      On Thursday, the eighth of March, Drs. Willett, Peck, Lyman, and Waite, accompanied by Mr. Ward, paid the youth their momentous call; making no concealment of their object and questioning the now acknowledged patient with extreme minuteness. Charles, though he was inordinately long in answering the summons and was still redolent of strange and noxious laboratory odours when he did finally make his agitated appearance, proved a far from recalcitrant subject; and admitted freely that his memory and balance had suffered somewhat from close application to abstruse studies. He offered no resistance when his removal to other quarters was insisted upon; and seemed, indeed, to display a high degree of intelligence as apart from mere memory. His conduct would have sent his interviewers away in bafflement had not the persistently archaic trend of his speech and unmistakable replacement of modern by ancient ideas in his consciousness marked him out as one definitely removed from the normal. Of his work he would say no more to the group of doctors than he had formerly said to his family and to Dr. Willett, and his frantic note of the previous month he dismissed as mere nerves and hysteria. He insisted that this shadowy bungalow possessed no library or laboratory beyond the visible ones, and waxed abstruse in explaining the absence from the house of such odours as now saturated all his clothing. Neighbourhood gossip he attributed to nothing more than the cheap inventiveness of baffled curiosity. Of the whereabouts of Dr. Allen he said he did not feel at liberty to speak definitely, but assured his inquisitors that the bearded and spectacled man would return when needed. In paying off the stolid Brava who resisted all questioning by the visitors, and in closing the bungalow which still seemed to hold such nighted secrets, Ward shewed no sign of nervousness save a barely noticed tendency to pause as though listening for something very faint. He was apparently animated by a calmly philosophic resignation, as if his removal were the merest transient incident which would cause the least trouble if facilitated and disposed of once and for all. It was clear that he trusted to his obviously unimpaired keenness of absolute mentality to overcome all the embarrassments into which his twisted memory, his lost voice and handwriting, and his secretive and eccentric behaviour had led him. His mother, it was agreed, was not to be told of the change; his father supplying typed notes in his name. Ward was taken to the restfully and picturesquely situated private hospital maintained by Dr. Waite on Conanicut Island in the bay, and subjected to the closest scrutiny and questioning by all the physicians connected with the case. It was then that the physical oddities were noticed; the slackened metabolism, the altered skin, and the disproportionate neural reactions. Dr. Willett was the most perturbed of the various examiners, for he had attended Ward all his life and could appreciate with terrible keenness the extent of his physical disorganisation. Even the familiar olive mark on his hip was gone, while on his chest was a great black mole or cicatrice which had never been there before, and which made Willett wonder whether the youth had ever submitted to any of the ""witch markings"" reputed to be inflicted at certain unwholesome nocturnal meetings in wild and lonely places. The doctor could not keep his mind off a certain transcribed witch-trial record from Salem which Charles had shewn him in the old non-secretive days, and which read: ""Mr. G. B. on that Nighte putt ye Divell his Marke upon Bridget S., Jonathan A., Simon O., Deliverance W., Joseph C., Susan P., Mehitable C., and Deborah B."" Ward's face, too, troubled him horribly, till at length he suddenly discovered why he was horrified. For above the young man's right eye was something which he had never previously noticed - a small scar or pit precisely like that in the crumbled painting of old Joseph Curwen, and perhaps attesting some hideous ritualistic inoculation to which both had submitted at a certain stage of their occult careers.
      While Ward himself was puzzling all the doctors at the hospital a very strict watch was kept on all mail addressed either to him or to Dr. Allen, which Mr. Ward had ordered delivered at the family home. Willett had predicted that very little would be found, since any communications of a vital nature would probably have been exchanged by messenger; but in the latter part of March there did come a letter from Prague for Dr. Allen which gave both the doctor and the father deep thought. It was in a very crabbed and archaic hand; and though clearly not the effort of a foreigner, shewed almost as singular a departure from modern English as the speech of young Ward himself. It read:
Kleinstrasse 11,            
Altstadt, Prague,      
11th Feby. 1928.
Brother in Almousin-Metraton: - 
      I this day receiv'd yr mention of what came up from the Salts I sent you. It was wrong, and meanes clearly that ye Headstones had been chang'd when Barnabas gott me the Specimen. It is often so, as you must be sensible of from the Thing you gott from ye Kings Chapell ground in 1769 and what H. gott from Olde Bury'g Point in 1690, that was like to ende him. I gott such a Thing in Aegypt 75 yeares gone, from the which came that Scar ye Boy saw on me here in 1924. As I told you longe ago, do not calle up That which you can not put downe; either from dead Saltes or out of ye Spheres beyond. Have ye Wordes for laying at all times readie, and stopp not to be sure when there is any Doubte of Whom you have. Stones are all chang'd now in Nine groundes out of 10. You are never sure till you question. I this day heard from H., who has had Trouble with the Soldiers. He is like to be sorry Transylvania is pass'd from Hungary to Roumania, and wou'd change his Seat if the Castel weren't so fulle of What we Knowe. But of this he hath doubtless writ you. In my next Send'g there will be Somewhat from a Hill tomb from ye East that will delight you greatly. Meanwhile forget not I am desirous of B. F. if you can possibly get him for me. You know G. in Philada. better than I. Have him up firste if you will, but doe not use him soe hard he will be Difficult, for I must speake to him in ye End.
Yogg-Sothoth Neblod Zin
Simon O.
To Mr. J. C. in
Providence.
      Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett paused in utter chaos before this apparent bit of unrelieved insanity. Only by degrees did they absorb what it seemed to imply. So the absent Dr. Allen, and not Charles Ward, had come to be the leading spirit at Pawtuxet? That must explain the wild reference and denunciation in the youth's last frantic letter. And what of this addressing of the bearded and spectacled stranger as ""Mr. J. C.""? There was no escaping the inference, but there are limits to possible monstrosity. Who was ""Simon O.""; the old man Ward had visited in Prague four years previously? Perhaps, but in the centuries behind there had been another Simon O. - Simon Orne, alias Jedediah, of Salem, who vanished in 1771, and whose peculiar handwriting Dr. Willett now unmistakably recognised from the photostatic copies of the Orne formulae which Charles had once shewn him. What horrors and mysteries, what contradictions and contraventions of Nature, had come back after a century and a half to harass Old Providence with her clustered spires and domes?
      The father and the old physician, virtually at a loss what to do or think, went to see Charles at the hospital and questioned him as delicately as they could about Dr. Allen, about the Prague visit, and about what he had learned of Simon or Jedediah Orne of Salem. To all these inquiries the youth was politely non-committal, merely barking in his hoarse whisper that he had found Dr. Allen to have a remarkable spiritual rapport with certain souls from the past, and that any correspondent the bearded man might have in Prague would probably be similarly gifted. When they left, Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett realised to their chagrin that they had really been the ones under catechism; and that without imparting anything vital himself, the confined youth had adroitly pumped them of everything the Prague letter had contained.
      Drs. Peck, Waite, and Lyman were not inclined to attach much importance to the strange correspondence of young Ward's companion; for they knew the tendency of kindred eccentrics and monomaniacs to band together, and believed that Charles or Allen had merely unearthed an expatriated counterpart - perhaps one who had seen Orne's handwriting and copied it in an attempt to pose as the bygone character's reincarnation. Allen himself was perhaps a similar case, and may have persuaded the youth into accepting him as an avatar of the long-dead Curwen. Such things had been known before, and on the same basis the hard-headed doctors disposed of Willett's growing disquiet about Charles Ward's present handwriting, as studied from unpremeditated specimens obtained by various ruses. Willett thought he had placed its odd familiarity at last, and that what it vaguely resembled was the bygone penmanship of old Joseph Curwen himself; but this the other physicians regarded as a phase of imitativeness only to be expected in a mania of this sort, and refused to grant it any importance either favourable or unfavourable. Recognising this prosaic attitude in his colleagues, Willett advised Mr. Ward to keep to himself the letter which arrived for Dr. Allen on the second of April from Rakus, Transylvania, in a handwriting so intensely and fundamentally like that of the Hutchinson cipher that both father and physician paused in awe before breaking the seal. This read as follows:
Castle Ferenczy      
7 March 1928.
Dear C.: - Hadd a Squad of 20 Militia up to talk about what the Country Folk say. Must digg deeper and have less Hearde. These Roumanians plague me damnably, being officious and particular where you cou'd buy a Magyar off with a Drinke and ffood. Last monthe M. got me ye Sarcophagus of ye Five Sphinxes from ye Acropolis where He whome I call'd up say'd it wou'd be, and I have hadde 3 Talkes with What was therein inhum'd. It will go to S. O. in Prague directly, and thence to you. It is stubborn but you know ye Way with Such. You shew Wisdom in having lesse about than Before; for there was no Neede to keep the Guards in Shape and eat'g off their Heads, and it made Much to be founde in Case of Trouble, as you too welle knowe. You can now move and worke elsewhere with no Kill'g Trouble if needful, tho' I hope no Thing will soon force you to so Bothersome a Course. I rejoice that you traffick not so much with Those Outside; for there was ever a Mortall Peril in it, and you are sensible what it did when you ask'd Protection of One not dispos'd to give it. You excel me in gett'g ye fformulae so another may saye them with Success, but Borellus fancy'd it wou'd be so if just ye right Wordes were hadd. Does ye Boy use 'em often? I regret that he growes squeamish, as I fear'd he wou'd when I hadde him here nigh 15 Monthes, but am sensible you knowe how to deal with him. You can't saye him down with ye fformula, for that will Worke only upon such as ye other fformula hath call'd up from Saltes; but you still have strong Handes and Knife and Pistol, and Graves are not harde to digg, nor Acids loth to burne. O. sayes you have promis'd him B. F. I must have him after. B. goes to you soone, and may he give you what you wishe of that Darke Thing belowe Memphis. Imploy care in what you calle up, and beware of ye Boy. It will be ripe in a yeare's time to have up ye Legions from Underneath, and then there are no Boundes to what shal be oures. Have Confidence in what I saye, for you knowe O. and I have hadd these 150 yeares more than you to consulte these Matters in.
Nephren-Ka nai Hadoth
Edw: H.
For J. Curwen, Esq.
Providence.
      But if Willett and Mr. Ward refrained from shewing this letter to the alienists, they did not refrain from acting upon it themselves. No amount of learned sophistry could controvert the fact that the strangely bearded and spectacled Dr. Allen, of whom Charles's frantic letter had spoken as such a monstrous menace, was in close and sinister correspondence with two inexplicable creatures whom Ward had visited in his travels and who plainly claimed to be survivals or avatars of Curwen's old Salem colleagues; that he was regarding himself as the reincarnation of Joseph Curwen, and that he entertained - or was at least advised to entertain - murderous designs against a ""boy"" who could scarcely be other than Charles Ward. There was organised horror afoot; and no matter who had started it, the missing Allen was by this time at the bottom of it. Therefore, thanking heaven that Charles was now safe in the hospital, Mr. Ward lost no time in engaging detectives to learn all they could of the cryptic bearded doctor; finding whence he had come and what Pawtuxet knew of him, and if possible discovering his current whereabouts. Supplying the men with one of the bungalow keys which Charles yielded up, he urged them to explore Allen's vacant room which had been identified when the patient's belongings had been packed; obtaining what clues they could from any effects he might have left about. Mr. Ward talked with the detectives in his son's old library, and they felt a marked relief when they left it at last; for there seemed to hover about the place a vague aura of evil. Perhaps it was what they had heard of the infamous old wizard whose picture had once stared from the panelled overmantel, and perhaps it was something different and irrelevant; but in any case they all half sensed an intangible miasma which centred in that carven vestige of an older dwelling and which at times almost rose to the intensity of a material emanation.
","III.

Meanwhile Old Whateley continued to buy cattle without measurably increasing the size of his herd. He also cut timber and began to repair the unused parts of his house—a spacious, peaked-roofed affair whose rear end was buried entirely in the rocky hillside, and whose three least-ruined ground-floor rooms had always been sufficient for himself and his daughter. There must have been prodigious reserves of strength in the old man to enable him to accomplish so much hard labour; and though he still babbled dementedly at times, his carpentry seemed to shew the effects of sound calculation. It had already begun as soon as Wilbur was born, when one of the many tool-sheds had been put suddenly in order, clapboarded, and fitted with a stout fresh lock. Now, in restoring the abandoned upper story of the house, he was a no less thorough craftsman. His mania shewed itself only in his tight boarding-up of all the windows in the reclaimed section—though many declared that it was a crazy thing to bother with the reclamation at all. Less inexplicable was his fitting up of another downstairs room for his new grandson—a room which several callers saw, though no one was ever admitted to the closely boarded upper story. This chamber he lined with tall, firm shelving; along which he began gradually to arrange, in apparently careful order, all the rotting ancient books and parts of books which during his own day had been heaped promiscuously in odd corners of the various rooms.
      “I made some use of ’em,” he would say as he tried to mend a torn black-letter page with paste prepared on the rusty kitchen stove, “but the boy’s fitten to make better use of ’em. He’d orter hev ’em as well sot as he kin, for they’re goin’ to be all of his larnin’.”
      When Wilbur was a year and seven months old—in September of 1914—his size and accomplishments were almost alarming. He had grown as large as a child of four, and was a fluent and incredibly intelligent talker. He ran freely about the fields and hills, and accompanied his mother on all her wanderings. At home he would pore diligently over the queer pictures and charts in his grandfather’s books, while Old Whateley would instruct and catechise him through long, hushed afternoons. By this time the restoration of the house was finished, and those who watched it wondered why one of the upper windows had been made into a solid plank door. It was a window in the rear of the east gable end, close against the hill; and no one could imagine why a cleated wooden runway was built up to it from the ground. About the period of this work’s completion people noticed that the old tool-house, tightly locked and windowlessly clapboarded since Wilbur’s birth, had been abandoned again. The door swung listlessly open, and when Earl Sawyer once stepped within after a cattle-selling call on Old Whateley he was quite discomposed by the singular odour he encountered—such a stench, he averred, as he had never before smelt in all his life except near the Indian circles on the hills, and which could not come from anything sane or of this earth. But then, the homes and sheds of Dunwich folk have never been remarkable for olfactory immaculateness.
      The following months were void of visible events, save that everyone swore to a slow but steady increase in the mysterious hill noises. On May-Eve of 1915 there were tremors which even the Aylesbury people felt, whilst the following Hallowe’en produced an underground rumbling queerly synchronised with bursts of flame—“them witch Whateleys’ doin’s”—from the summit of Sentinel Hill. Wilbur was growing up uncannily, so that he looked like a boy of ten as he entered his fourth year. He read avidly by himself now; but talked much less than formerly. A settled taciturnity was absorbing him, and for the first time people began to speak specifically of the dawning look of evil in his goatish face. He would sometimes mutter an unfamiliar jargon, and chant in bizarre rhythms which chilled the listener with a sense of unexplainable terror. The aversion displayed toward him by dogs had now become a matter of wide remark, and he was obliged to carry a pistol in order to traverse the countryside in safety. His occasional use of the weapon did not enhance his popularity amongst the owners of canine guardians.
      The few callers at the house would often find Lavinia alone on the ground floor, while odd cries and footsteps resounded in the boarded-up second story. She would never tell what her father and the boy were doing up there, though once she turned pale and displayed an abnormal degree of fear when a jocose fish-peddler tried the locked door leading to the stairway. That peddler told the store loungers at Dunwich Village that he thought he heard a horse stamping on that floor above. The loungers reflected, thinking of the door and runway, and of the cattle that so swiftly disappeared. Then they shuddered as they recalled tales of Old Whateley’s youth, and of the strange things that are called out of the earth when a bullock is sacrificed at the proper time to certain heathen gods. It had for some time been noticed that dogs had begun to hate and fear the whole Whateley place as violently as they hated and feared young Wilbur personally.
      In 1917 the war came, and Squire Sawyer Whateley, as chairman of the local draft board, had hard work finding a quota of young Dunwich men fit even to be sent to a development camp. The government, alarmed at such signs of wholesale regional decadence, sent several officers and medical experts to investigate; conducting a survey which New England newspaper readers may still recall. It was the publicity attending this investigation which set reporters on the track of the Whateleys, and caused the Boston Globe and Arkham Advertiser to print flamboyant Sunday stories of young Wilbur’s precociousness, Old Whateley’s black magic, the shelves of strange books, the sealed second story of the ancient farmhouse, and the weirdness of the whole region and its hill noises. Wilbur was four and a half then, and looked like a lad of fifteen. His lips and cheeks were fuzzy with a coarse dark down, and his voice had begun to break.
      Earl Sawyer went out to the Whateley place with both sets of reporters and camera men, and called their attention to the queer stench which now seemed to trickle down from the sealed upper spaces. It was, he said, exactly like a smell he had found in the tool-shed abandoned when the house was finally repaired; and like the faint odours which he sometimes thought he caught near the stone circles on the mountains. Dunwich folk read the stories when they appeared, and grinned over the obvious mistakes. They wondered, too, why the writers made so much of the fact that Old Whateley always paid for his cattle in gold pieces of extremely ancient date. The Whateleys had received their visitors with ill-concealed distaste, though they did not dare court further publicity by a violent resistance or refusal to talk.
",True
"Spoonbill Village, Northernmost Quang Binh Province, SRV.
June 30, 2011.
Considering their first encounter, this meeting was going rather well.
""No, no, I assure you that I have had quite enough… well, if you insist…"" In the course of explaining his task to the household he would be staying in, Joseph Clayton had been offered tea at the behest of the mistress of the household and all three times, he had acquiesced. She was attending her husband in fine cotton clothes of white and black, the cut more resembling something out of Javanese dancing than anything worn in Indochina during the past thousand years. Their son, called from his lessons for the presentation, was sitting at the far end of the room, listening to what was going on. While he had repeated much the same spiel that Professor Andover to the house's three inhabitants, he had sipped at his bowl almost automatically as one would with water, clear onto what was now his fourth helping. Although not unpleasant, the drink had considerably more kick to it than even the strong brews typical of Vietnamese green tea.
What perplexed Joseph was that he couldn't identify the extra ingredient. It wasn't peppers, having no discernible remains or even the raw chemical heat of capsaicin. It could be ginger, but the heat was of an utterly different kind than any ginger he had ever experienced.
Then again, the additive could just as well be Tarantula venom given the figure he was giving his introduction to.
His name, as he had given it, was Noc. He was the most experience hunter, archer and scout of the village, was of an incredibly ancient lineage and, incidentally, was the first person of this strange, isolated village that he had seen. His tattoos all featured arachnid themes of legs, webbing and fangs and his eyes…
Marie had mentioned that some of the warriors practiced sorcery with mutative effects. If that was what caused Nocs eyes to become all black, seemingly all pupils and tempting Joseph to mentally refer to the man as ""Spider Eye"", then maybe those three weirdoes they caught in the biology labs back in February were onto something after all.
Sitting in the main reception area of the home, replete with decorations of strange latticed designs and black lacquer, Joseph watched carefully as Noc finished examining one of his bowstrings before his eyes darted around the room. On the wall, several bows hung in their unstrung state: the white and banded flatbow he had first witnessed, several simple bows of light colored cane and even one recurve bow made of dark red hardwood.
""So that is your request: to hear the stories of our history, to observe the operation of a household of status and to… take part in our activities?"" Throughout the introduction of this man and the repetition he had given of the Professors offer, Noc had examined all aspects of him closely… and had not been impressed. He had some muscle tone, but everything else about him absolutely screamed that he was some sort of priest or urban scribe in training. Besides, the combination of the girl's cues toward him and his reaction to his tea made it clear: if the boy had been a virgin, steam would have been pouring out of his ears. That made things difficult (and potentially dangerous) for everyone.
Besides, very few people in this village held any affection at all for someone with Joseph's skin tone.
After receiving affirmation of Joseph's duties, Noc laid out the rules. ""Know this: you will record the histories when they are told to you. You shall ask questions when you are allowed and you shall observe what you shall participate in what you are allowed to participate in. No pestering me with questions, no sneaking around trying to observe the women and children and no and I mean no trying to wheedle out information through trickery. We had quite enough trouble with that sort of thing the last time around.""
Joseph was immediately insulted, even though he did not how it as he automatically agreed. Still, two things bothered him. First, underneath the gold and bronze bangles that decorated the forearms and ankles of Nocs wife, Joseph had noticed strange scars, akin in shape to the marks that sperm whales bore from their battles with giant squid.
Second… what did Noc mean by the last time around?
That Night…
As he lay awake, Joseph realized how exhausting the day had been. As it turned out, he was probably doing to spend most of his time in this house as a sort of a servant: documenting and participating in cooking and chores, handling domestic duties and picking little things up only as Noc's wife deemed appropriate. No real questions answered, no interesting discoveries or scandals or surprises… just ordinary ethnographic work.
It wasn't made any better that his libido was getting annoyed at the 'busy' signals it kept receiving. However, there had been no real opportunity to talk with Marie after last night, with all the revelations of cannibalism and sorcery and other things that probably should have made his stomach turn.
/Maybe it would be better if they had made your stomach turn./ Came a wheedling little multi-voiced dialogue from inside his head… from inside his head, but not originating from him.
Oh no. Joseph thought with a mental groan. Not you idiots again! I thought you gave it up after the last time.
/The last time? You mean when you were in the thrall of carnal lusts, disgracing your heritage?/ The dominant voice changed from one of the old WASP lords to that of an aristocratic dowager that had been ancient even when Granny Clara had been a girl. /Maybe now that you know what her kind get up to, you will listen to reason and find a girl more suitable to a young man of your station./
Her parents are just as middle class as mine are, thank you all very much. Joseph snarked back mentally, fully knowing how these… wraiths felt about his relationship with Marie and savoring the thought of causing them anguish.
/You know full well what is meant. What is not understood is why the other girl did not so arouse your… passions./
Oh please, her family is just as drenched in sorcery as these guys, it's just that they're more polite about who they slice open. Besides, I don't really think you'd have acted any differently if it had been Tracy I'd been with that night instead of Marie, inbred and rural as she apparently is. He remembered clearly that night: how these voices (who he was fairly sure were not the products of schizophrenia despite superficially similar symptomatology), had come to him in the midst of what should have been unimaginable passion and communion with his girlfriend (though with was much more awkward, rushed and possibly painful than desired). Even as the passion mounted, their insults became worse: the taunts, the archaic, hateful rhetoric, the most vicious slurs directed against Marie and him. And yet he had forged on, continuing despite the rising chorus of insane voices inside his head… or even because of them, for as they blasphemed against all that Marie was, all the little things that made Joseph love her all the more, he could tell that his defiance was causing them actual pain and torment… and even through the pleasures of the flesh, he took small, sadistic delights in causing pain and anguish to these assholes who claimed authority as his forbearers.
Now Joseph was getting annoyed… and cranky. Look, I don't have to listen to you idiots, even if you do claim to be my ancestors. You came from a completely different world whose rules do not apply to me. Also, the instruments of your authority are gone: no money, no status, no companies or contacts or friends in high places. All that's left are a bunch of ugly little voices in the wind. Why don't you all just blow away? He was tired of his, of having to listen to these inane snobs that he had learned to loath in the abstract and now hated in the concrete. He hated their hate-filled dismissals of all other peoples and cultures, their smug superiority and the generalized arrogance that seemed to drip from the voices.
When they didn't respond, Joseph took it as a sign. ""Good."" He said aloud, as softly as his sense of satisfaction allowed.
","May 19th, 1929,
Miskatonic University, Arkham, Mass.
In all honesty, the manner which Robert Olmstead exited the Chancellor's office was not the most graceful to be seen in the history of Miskatonic University. However, perhaps ""exited"" is too neutral a term for a man being forcibly escorted out the double doors by two University proctors with a firm grasp on his forearms. ""Ejected"" is probably a good description though ""assaulted"" would have a good chance of being upheld by a court. As Mr. Olmstead was finally shoved out into the hall, he finally lost his balance and fell to his knees, the voluminous robes which he had worn since his arrival seeming to weigh him down.
As Hiriam Willows and Brian Fife rushed out of the office and hastened to Robert's side, the man himself seemed... tired, drained of energy and showing signs of a fatigue that had been present since the meeting had began. Still, Mr. Olmstead managed to raise his head to address Chancellor Douglas Gooding, who was still in his office. ""I take it... negotiations have ended."" Robert said this in as controlled a way as possible, trying to ignore the irritation at the back of his throat and the sides of his neck.
""Negotiations, as you call them, never began."" Chancellor Gooding, a patrician of a man at the age of 57, had risen from behind his desk and was now walking toward the spot where Mr. Olmstead has stood and presented his case. ""This College has been handed a chance to claim credit for discovering the root devices behind most, if not all, of vertebrate biology and promises to make careers for many of our staff and students. Unless the Navy, who has graciously allowed access to its prisoners for this purpose, decides to either withdraw that access or, as you suggest, release them back into the general population, I see no reason why they should not remain under our supervision in their current quarters."" Gooding eyes fell upon the floor where Robert had stood... and the staff that now lay on the floor. It was a strange thing: the matter itself almost resembled gray, petrified wood but in places it's form showed characteristics of crustacean carapace or of the strange shapes present in fishbone or shark-jaw and, when the light hit it just so, the surface displayed a luster more akin to Nautilus shell or Mother of Pearl than any of those things.
Gooding, in a sudden fit of antiquarian fascination, began kneeling down to take the strange rod. ""However, if you could tell us about this staff..."" Just as his the tips of his fingers brushed against the smooth surface the staff, seemingly under its own power, jerked butt-first towards the door, skidding over the floors polished hardwood planks. When it reached Robert. who was now being helped to his feet by Professor Fife, the staff actually began tipping up on its butt, the shaft guiding itself into Robert's limp, open hand.
Grasping the staff to regain his posture, Robert glanced once more at Gooding. ""The staff is a secret that keeps itself. As to my plea... if that is your decision, I pray that you do not live to reap the whirlwind.""
""Is that a threat?"" Chancellor Gooding was losing patience rapidly after this manifestation of the strange had made an intrusion into his office and annoyance was threatening to turn to anger.
""Merely a warning, good Chancellor."" These were the last words that Robert Olmstead spoke to Gooding as Fife, carrying the papers that Olmstead had presented, helped him as he unsteadily walked down the hallway, supported by his implement.
Just as Hiriam Willows was about to follow the pair, Gooding called to him. ""Hiriam! Get back in this office!"" Willows, his eyes continuing to follow his two companions down the hall for a moment, turned and walked back into the Chancellor's office with a tightening of the lips and the speed of a slow stroll, more amenable to his aging legs than the fast walk he had so recently exerted himself with. ""I'm surprised, Douglas.""
""Surprised that I called you back in here?"" Asked Gooding as he sat back down behind his desk.
""That we are apparently operating on a first name basis now. As I recall, that has not been our habit since nineteen hundred and... seven, was it?"" It may have been facetious (to say the least) in bringing this up but after today, last winter and, to be honest, most days since Gooding had restricted Willows to a single morning class per week, he and the Chancellor has not quite been on the best of terms.
""Ah yes, the Cuba business. However... actually, that ispart of why I called you in here."" Gooding pointed an almost accusatory finger at the older man. ""As I recall, youwere the one to countermand my decision to use force against those two Voodoo cults in Las Tunas.""
""First of all, they were Santeria practitioners. Second, I was able to forge an armistice between the two warring factions and convince them to give up their murderous ways...""
""In favor of continued use of animal sacrifice, I remember, I remember."" Gooding put that accusatory finger to his temple as if to calm a throbbing. Then that finger returned to the standing faculty member. ""But whether you're French or Spanish does not mean much of anything when you're trying to rip open a portal to the tenth dimension, summoning dangerous ichors and vapors from beyond and, may I remind you, trying to violently murderas many people as needed for their insane goals. Hiriam... I know that you're a Quaker, I knowthat negotiating between groups of violent, degenerate heathens has always been your strong point, but this is something radicallydifferent.""
The Chancellor noticed Willow's disbelieving roll of the eyes but continued. ""These... things have been present in and off the coast of Essex Country for the better part of a century. They've killed people, they subverted local government, through their negligence the port of Innsmouth nearly crumbled due to neglect... not to mention that they've potentially forced themselves on local residents due to the existence of apparently hybrid individuals!"" He motioned out the door and pointed in the direction that Olmstead and Fife had exited. ""Did you happen to take a good look at the person who was just ejected from this office? My God Hiriam, the man was practically turning into a herring before our very eyes!"" Gooding seemed to calm down a bit. ""I know you were always one to try to see both sides of the argument, to resolve conflicts through calm deliberation... but this wasn'tnegotiation. This was a demand backed by veiled threats. I remember you being much sterner in the face of demands than this."" There was a thoughtful pause. ""What happened in Virginia, Hiriam? Ever since you got back, you've been at your usual quest for cooperation between man and eldritch forces except... moreso.""
A hundred images flashed in Willows mind of that December in the Luray Valley. The little clusters of field-stone houses and barns around the southern tip of Mt. Ida; the lean-faced Quaker farm-folk; the walk through the community cemetery and the graves of his mothers family, the Caulfields. The children, so desperate to experience a properly Victorian Christmas in pageantry unknown by the community, inviting him to a snowball fight and following his lead in decorating and games (which he had found invigorating at the time). The experience of being around others of his faith for the first time in decades.
But there was also the first time he had ever been forced to kill, as a .45 caliber ACP round hit dead center on his war-painted assailant in the mountain forests. The moment when he had discovered the small shrine beneath the Longhouse Meeting Hall with it's black deer hides, Eastern Elk antlers and strange mix of artifacts. The sight of his hosts sacrificing pigs, wailing and dancing in the manner of the Seneca Iroquois at an isolated stone circle south along the mountains from the Army's battle with their foes, mourning for all the dead who would be brought out. And two of the bodies brought back, an apparent pair of adult twin sisters in matching warpaint who had charged the federal troops with knives before being mowed down: their hands had been intertwined even as fire from Thompson submachineguns had demolished their ribcages, the agony of their situation apparent from their found journals... the swelling around their eyes under the paint indicative of weeping.
Hiriam shrugged as if he experienced nothing. ""Just a bit of reconnection with my mothers side of the family. Now, if you will excuse me?"" Before Gooding could even respond, Hiriam Willows walked out of the office and closed the doors behind him, exhaling in relief before he continued on to Professor Fife's office.
Shortly, Professor Fife's Office
Brian Fife sighed in frustration and concern as he dabbed the side of Robert Olmsteads neck with a handkerchief soaked in ice water. ""When was the last time you bothered to moisten the reservoir layers in this cloak? Any longer without adequate water around the gills and you would have been coughing up blood.""
Robert, sitting in a chair across from Fife, was now much less weary now that relief was being applied. "" There was no time. I had to act quickly to try to get them released and the last two days have been a flurry.""
""Well, it's just as well that I keep ice and water in my study or you would have..."" Fife was interrupted by Hiriam Willow's entry into the office who, upon entering, simply asked himself how a militant like Douglas Gooding had become chancellor. Fife's answer to this question was concise. ""Well, Masterson died of Diphtheria while in Shanghai, Harvey has his Cocaine habit, Peaslee isn't totally trusted after that Yith business and yourefused to take any oath of office acceptable to the Congregationalist clergy. Gooding was the only member of the senior faculty with the necessary respectability left."" 
""Thank you very much. Now, what do we do next?"" Hiriam sat down in another chair, forming a semicircular huddle as he addressed Olmstead. ""Gooding isn't going to budge an inch without a proper prodding, the Arkham Police are beginning to take note of your lodgings at the Miskatonic Hotel and your current appearance which, may I remark, is becoming more piscine by the day, will not inspire confidence in the other involved parties.""
""Then we have to properly prod. I have to prod. I owe that much at least."" Robert, now that his neck and gills were properly wetted (and the kelp layers under his robe properly inundated with cold water), became quiet, both hands still across his lap, grasping the staff he had carried since he had arrived.
Fife knew what he was thinking, for it was also close to his heart. ""Robert, you don't have to do this. The Priests of Y'ha-Nthlei won't judge you harshly if you don't bring home any more of our people than your cousin; I know it's tragic, but it's happened before that people have been lost to the surface world.""
Robert suddenly got a hard look in his eyes and stared directly at the other man. ""Do you know what it feels like to lose your parents, your child, your neighbors or friends? To not know where they were taken? To fear for their lives while they might be undergoing hideous, nefarious tortures? And then, one day, you are suddenly confronted with the grinning idiot who, in his disgust and primordial fear, ensured your loved one's capture and now, while you are forced to hide like a crab in the sand, are expected to welcome this fool into your ranks?""
He groaned at the memory... or even more than the memory. ""The punishment for my loutish treachery was harsh, but even a flayed back will not absolve all I have done, all I have seen. My flogging will not return parents to children or husbands to wives. My pain will not sooth the fear of mothers for their sons. And the welts upon my back will not make me forget the accusation, the pain... the sorrowin their eyes. I am doing this as much for myself as for them; doing it so that I won't have to live with my failures for an eternity."" 
Willows and Fife were quiet until Fife quietly asked ""So, what now?""
""If I can't do anything, the warriors will be swimming upstream in less than a week. When they get here... I can't promise that anyone will be safe."" Robert looked pensive, a calculating look on his face. ""We... Iwill have to make an impression in front of Gooding. Somewhere public, somewhere will it will make an impression that can't be dismissed or ignored. Anything come to mind?""
It was then that it struck Hiriam. ""Of course, the regatta tomorrow! Gooding will be attendance, he hasto be in attendance according to College statutes. But what are you going to do?""
Having been asked, Robert began to think. ""I assume it'll be on the Miskatonic?""
""Where else? Hangman's Brook has never been deep enough for rowing and the University never affluent enough to construct a canal."" Fife explained.
""Will there be many other people there?"" Robert asked again, something beginning to form in his already-changed brain.
""Everyone who can: students, alumni, dock workers, beggars... why do you ask?"" Hiriam was now curious as to this whole thing.
Robert looked down at the staff in his hands, feeling the smooth surface but also feeling the power coursing through the object. The Staff of Dagon... said to have been wielded by their king and blessed by the mighty Priest to whom Dagon and Hydra had sworn loyalty. Once, it had been said to have performed wonders.
Once... and perhaps again.
",True
"III. A Search and an Evocation

1.

Charles Ward, as we have seen, first learned in 1918 of his descent from Joseph Curwen. That he at once took an intense interest in everything pertaining to the bygone mystery is not to be wondered at; for every vague rumour that he had heard of Curwen now became something vital to himself, in whom flowed Curwen's blood. No spirited and imaginative genealogist could have done otherwise than begin forthwith an avid and systematic collection of Curwen data.
      In his first delvings there was not the slightest attempt at secrecy; so that even Dr. Lyman hesitates to date the youth's madness from any period before the close of 1919. He talked freely with his family - though his mother was not particularly pleased to own an ancestor like Curwen - and with the officials of the various museums and libraries he visited. In applying to private families for records thought to be in their possession he made no concealment of his object, and shared the somewhat amused scepticism with which the accounts of the old diarists and letter-writers were regarded. He often expressed a keen wonder as to what really had taken place a century and a half before at that Pawtuxet farmhouse whose site he vainly tried to find, and what Joseph Curwen really had been.
      When he came across the Smith diary and archives and encountered the letter from Jedediah Orne he decided to visit Salem and look up Curwen's early activities and connexions there, which he did during the Easter vacation of 1919. At the Essex Institute, which was well known to him from former sojourns in the glamorous old town of crumbling Puritan gables and clustered gambrel roofs, he was very kindly received, and unearthed there a considerable amount of Curwen data. He found that his ancestor was born in Salem-Village, now Danvers, seven miles from town, on the eighteenth of February (O.S.) 1662-3; and that he had run away to sea at the age of fifteen, not appearing again for nine years, when he returned with the speech, dress, and manners of a native Englishman and settled in Salem proper. At that time he had little to do with his family, but spent most of his hours with the curious books he had brought from Europe, and the strange chemicals which came for him on ships from England, France, and Holland. Certain trips of his into the country were the objects of much local inquisitiveness, and were whisperingly associated with vague rumours of fires on the hills at night.
      Curwen's only close friends had been one Edward Hutchinson of Salem-Village and one Simon Orne of Salem. With these men he was often seen in conference about the Common, and visits among them were by no means infrequent. Hutchinson had a house well out toward the woods, and it was not altogether liked by sensitive people because of the sounds heard there at night. He was said to entertain strange visitors, and the lights seen from his windows were not always of the same colour. The knowledge he displayed concerning long-dead persons and long-forgotten events was considered distinctly unwholesome, and he disappeared about the time the witchcraft panic began, never to be heard from again. At that time Joseph Curwen also departed, but his settlement in Providence was soon learned of. Simon Orne lived in Salem until 1720, when his failure to grow visibly old began to excite attention. He thereafter disappeared, though thirty years later his precise counterpart and self-styled son turned up to claim his property. The claim was allowed on the strength of documents in Simon Orne's known hand, and Jedediah Orne continued to dwell in Salem till 1771, when certain letters from Providence citizens to the Rev. Thomas Barnard and others brought about his quiet removal to parts unknown.
      Certain documents by and about all of these strange characters were available at the Essex Institute, the Court House, and the Registry of Deeds, and included both harmless commonplaces such as land titles and bills of sale, and furtive fragments of a more provocative nature. There were four or five unmistakable allusions to them on the witchcraft trial records; as when one Hepzibah Lawson swore on July 10, 1692, at the Court of Oyer and Terminer under Judge Hathorne, that 'fortie Witches and the Blacke Man were wont to meete in the Woodes behind Mr. Hutchinson's house', and one Amity How declared at a session of August 8th before Judge Gedney that 'Mr. G. B. (Rev. George Burroughs) on that Nighte putt ye Divell his Marke upon Bridget S., Jonathan A., Simon O., Deliverance W., Joseph C., Susan P., Mehitable C., and Deborah B.' Then there was a catalogue of Hutchinson's uncanny library as found after his disappearance, and an unfinished manuscript in his handwriting, couched in a cipher none could read. Ward had a photostatic copy of this manuscript made, and began to work casually on the cipher as soon as it was delivered to him. After the following August his labours on the cipher became intense and feverish, and there is reason to believe from his speech and conduct that he hit upon the key before October or November. He never stated, though, whether or not he had succeeded.
      But of the greatest immediate interest was the Orne material. It took Ward only a short time to prove from identity of penmanship a thing he had already considered established from the text of the letter to Curwen; namely, that Simon Orne and his supposed son were one and the same person. As Orne had said to his correspondent, it was hardly safe to live too long in Salem, hence he resorted to a thirty-year sojourn abroad, and did not return to claim his lands except as a representative of a new generation. Orne had apparently been careful to destroy most of his correspondence, but the citizens who took action in 1771 found and preserved a few letters and papers which excited their wonder. There were cryptic formulae and diagrams in his and other hands which Ward now either copied with care or had photographed, and one extremely mysterious letter in a chirography that the searcher recognised from items in the Registry of Deeds as positively Joseph Curwen's.
      This Curwen letter, though undated as to the year, was evidently not the one in answer to which Orne had written the confiscated missive; and from internal evidence Ward placed it not much later than 1750. It may not be amiss to give the text in full, as a sample of the style of one whose history was so dark and terrible. The recipient is addressed as ""Simon"", but a line (whether drawn by Curwen or Orne Ward could not tell) is run through the word.
Prouidence, I. May (Ut. vulgo)
Brother: - 
My honour'd Antient ffriende, due Respects and earnest Wishes to Him whom we serve for yr eternall Power. I am just come upon That which you ought to knowe, concern'g the Matter of the Laste Extremitie and what to doe regard'g yt. I am not dispos'd to followe you in go'g Away on acct. of my Yeares, for Prouidence hath not ye Sharpeness of ye Bay in hunt'g oute uncommon Things and bringinge to Tryall. I am ty'd up in Shippes and Goodes, and cou'd not doe as you did, besides the Whiche my ffarme at Patuxet hath under it What you Knowe, that wou'd not waite for my com'g Backe as an Other.
      But I am not unreadie for harde ffortunes, as I haue tolde you, and haue longe work'd upon ye Way of get'g Backe after ye Laste. I laste Night strucke on ye Wordes that bringe up YOGGE-SOTHOTHE, and sawe for ye firste Time that fface spoke of by Ibn Schacabao in ye  -  - . And IT said, that ye III Psalme in ye Liber-Damnatus holdes ye Clauicle. With Sunne in V House, Saturne in Trine, drawe ye Pentagram of Fire, and saye ye ninth Uerse thrice. This Uerse repeate eache Roodemas and Hallow's Eue; and ye Thing will breede in ye Outside Spheres.
      And of ye Seede of Olde shal One be borne who shal looke Backe, tho' know'g not what he seekes.
      Yett will this availe Nothing if there be no Heir, and if the Saltes, or the Way to make the Saltes, bee not Readie for his Hande; and here I will owne, I have not taken needed Stepps nor founde Much. Ye Process is plaguy harde to come neare; and it uses up such a Store of Specimens, I am harde putte to it to get Enough, notwithstand'g the Sailors I have from ye Indies. Ye People aboute are become curious, but I can stande them off. Ye Gentry are worse than the Populace, be'g more Circumstantiall in their Accts. and more believ'd in what they tell. That Parson and Mr. Merritt have talk'd some, I am fearfull, but no Thing soe far is Dangerous. Ye Chymical substances are easie of get'g, there be'g II. goode Chymists in Towne, Dr. Bowen and Sam: Carew. I am foll'g oute what Borellus saith, and haue Helpe in Abdool Al-Hazred his VII. Booke. Whatever I gette, you shal haue. And in ye meane while, do not neglect to make use of ye Wordes I haue here giuen. I haue them Righte, but if you Desire to see HIM, imploy the Writings on ye Piece of  -  -  that I am putt'g in this Packet. Saye ye Uerses every Roodmas and Hallow's Eue; and if yr Line runn out not, one shall bee in yeares to come that shal looke backe and use what Saltes or Stuff for Saltes you shal leaue him. Job XIV. XIV.
      I rejoice you are again at Salem, and hope I may see you not longe hence. I have a goode Stallion, and am think'g of get'g a Coach, there be'g one (Mr. Merritt's) in Prouidence already, tho' ye Roades are bad. If you are dispos'd to Travel, doe not pass me bye. From Boston take ye Post Rd. thro' Dedham, Wrentham, and Attleborough, goode Taverns be'g at all these Townes. Stop at Mr. Bolcom's in Wrentham, where ye Beddes are finer than Mr. Hatch's, but eate at ye other House for their Cooke is better. Turne into Prou. by Patucket ffalls, and ye Rd. past Mr. Sayles's Tavern. My House opp. Mr. Epenetus Olney's Tavern off ye Towne Street, Ist on ye N. side of Olney's Court. Distance from Boston Stone abt. XLIV Miles.
      Sir, I am yr olde and true ffriend and Servt. in Almousin-Metraton.
Josephus C.
To Mr. Simon Orne,
William's-Lane, in Salem.
      This letter, oddly enough, was what first gave Ward the exact location of Curwen's Providence home; for none of the records encountered up to that time had been at all specific. The discovery was doubly striking because it indicated as the newer Curwen house built in 1761 on the site of the old, a dilapidated building still standing in Olney Court and well known to Ward in his antiquarian rambles over Stampers' Hill. The place was indeed only a few squares from his own home on the great hill's higher ground, and was now the abode of a negro family much esteemed for occasional washing, housecleaning, and furnace-tending services. To find, in distant Salem, such sudden proof of the significance of this familiar rookery in his own family history, was a highly impressive thing to Ward; and he resolved to explore the place immediately upon his return. The more mystical phases of the letter, which he took to be some extravagant kind of symbolism, frankly baffled him; though he noted with a thrill of curiosity that the Biblical passage referred to - Job 14, 14 - was the familiar verse, ""If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.""

2.

      Young Ward came home in a state of pleasant excitement, and spent the following Saturday in a long and exhaustive study of the house in Olney Court. The place, now crumbling with age, had never been a mansion; but was a modest two-and-a-half story wooden town house of the familiar Providence colonial type, with plain peaked roof, large central chimney, and artistically carved doorway with rayed fanlight, triangular pediment, and trim Doric pilasters. It had suffered but little alteration externally, and Ward felt he was gazing on something very close to the sinister matters of his quest.
      The present negro inhabitants were known to him, and he was very courteously shewn about the interior by old Asa and his stout wife Hannah. Here there was more change than the outside indicated, and Ward saw with regret that fully half of the fine scroll-and-urn overmantels and shell-carved cupboard linings were gone, whilst much of the fine wainscotting and bolection moulding was marked, hacked, and gouged, or covered up altogether with cheap wall-paper. In general, the survey did not yield as much as Ward had somehow expected; but it was at least exciting to stand within the ancestral walls which had housed such a man of horror as Joseph Curwen. He saw with a thrill that a monogram had been very carefully effaced from the ancient brass knocker.
      From then until after the close of school Ward spent his time on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher and the accumulation of local Curwen data. The former still proved unyielding; but of the latter he obtained so much, and so many clues to similar data elsewhere, that he was ready by July to make a trip to New London and New York to consult old letters whose presence in those places was indicated. This trip was very fruitful, for it brought him the Fenner letters with their terrible description of the Pawtuxet farmhouse raid, and the Nightingale-Talbot letters in which he learned of the portrait painted on a panel of the Curwen library. This matter of the portrait interested him particularly, since he would have given much to know just what Joseph Curwen looked like; and he decided to make a second search of the house in Olney Court to see if there might not be some trace of the ancient features beneath peeling coats of later paint or layers of mouldy wall-paper.
      Early in August that search took place, and Ward went carefully over the walls of every room sizeable enough to have been by any possibility the library of the evil builder. He paid especial attention to the large panels of such overmantels as still remained; and was keenly excited after about an hour, when on a broad area above the fireplace in a spacious ground-floor room he became certain that the surface brought out by the peeling of several coats of paint was sensibly darker than any ordinary interior paint or the wood beneath it was likely to have been. A few more careful tests with a thin knife, and he knew that he had come upon an oil portrait of great extent. With truly scholarly restraint the youth did not risk the damage which an immediate attempt to uncover the hidden picture with the knife might have done, but just retired from the scene of his discovery to enlist expert help. In three days he returned with an artist of long experience, Mr. Walter C. Dwight, whose studio is near the foot of College Hill; and that accomplished restorer of paintings set to work at once with proper methods and chemical substances. Old Asa and his wife were duly excited over their strange visitors, and were properly reimbursed for this invasion of their domestic hearth.
      As day by day the work of restoration progressed, Charles Ward looked on with growing interest at the lines and shades gradually unveiled after their long oblivion. Dwight had begun at the bottom; hence since the picture was a three-quarter-length one, the face did not come out for some time. It was meanwhile seen that the subject was a spare, well-shaped man with dark-blue coat, embroidered waistcoat, black satin small-clothes, and white silk stockings, seated in a carved chair against the background of a window with wharves and ships beyond. When the head came out it was observed to bear a neat Albemarle wig, and to possess a thin, calm, undistinguished face which seemed somehow familiar to both Ward and the artist. Only at the very last, though, did the restorer and his client begin to gasp with astonishment at the details of that lean, pallid visage, and to recognise with a touch of awe the dramatic trick which heredity had played. For it took the final bath of oil and the final stroke of the delicate scraper to bring out fully the expression which centuries had hidden; and to confront the bewildered Charles Dexter Ward, dweller in the past, with his own living features in the countenance of his horrible great-great-great-grandfather.
      Ward brought his parents to see the marvel he had uncovered, and his father at once determined to purchase the picture despite its execution on stationary panelling. The resemblance to the boy, despite an appearance of rather greater age, was marvellous; and it could be seen that through some trick of atavism the physical contours of Joseph Curwen had found precise duplication after a century and a half. Mrs. Ward's resemblance to her ancestor was not at all marked, though she could recall relatives who had some of the facial characteristics shared by her son and by the bygone Curwen. She did not relish the discovery, and told her husband that he had better burn the picture instead of bringing it home. There was, she averred, something unwholesome about it; not only intrinsically, but in its very resemblance to Charles. Mr. Ward, however, was a practical man of power and affairs - a cotton manufacturer with extensive mills at Riverpoint in the Pawtuxet Valley - and not one to listen to feminine scruples. The picture impressed him mightily with its likeness to his son, and he believed the boy deserved it as a present. In this opinion, it is needless to say, Charles most heartily concurred; and a few days later Mr. Ward located the owner of the house - a small rodent-featured person with a guttural accent - and obtained the whole mantel and overmantel bearing the picture at a curtly fixed priced which cut short the impending torrent of unctuous haggling.
      It now remained to take off the panelling and remove it to the Ward home, where provisions were made for its thorough restoration and installation with an electric mock-fireplace in Charles's third-floor study or library. To Charles was left the task of superintending this removal, and on the twenty-eighth of August he accompanied two expert workmen from the Crooker decorating firm to the house in Olney Court, where the mantel and portrait-bearing overmantel were detached with great care and precision for transportation in the company's motor truck. There was left a space of exposed brickwork marking the chimney's course, and in this young Ward observed a cubical recess about a foot square, which must have lain directly behind the head of the portrait. Curious as to what such a space might mean or contain, the youth approached and looked within; finding beneath the deep coatings of dust and soot some loose yellowed papers, a crude, thick copybook, and a few mouldering textile shreds which may have formed the ribbon binding the rest together. Blowing away the bulk of the dirt and cinders, he took up the book and looked at the bold inscription on its cover. It was in a hand which he had learned to recognise at the Essex Institute, and proclaimed the volume as the ""Journall and Notes of Jos: Curwen, Gent., of Providence-Plantations, Late of Salem.""
      Excited beyond measure by his discovery, Ward shewed the book to the two curious workmen beside him. Their testimony is absolute as to the nature and genuineness of the finding, and Dr. Willett relies on them to help establish his theory that the youth was not mad when he began his major eccentricities. All the other papers were likewise in Curwen's handwriting, and one of them seemed especially portentous because of its inscription: ""To Him Who Shal Come After, & How He May Gett Beyonde Time & ye Spheres."" Another was in a cipher; the same, Ward hoped, as the Hutchinson cipher which had hitherto baffled him. A third, and here the searcher rejoiced, seemed to be a key to the cipher; whilst the fourth and fifth were addressed respectively to ""Edw: Hutchinson, Armiger"" and ""Jedediah Orne, Esq."", 'or Their Heir or Heirs, or Those Represent'g Them'. The sixth and last was inscribed: ""Joseph Curwen his Life and Travells Bet'n ye yeares 1678 and 1687: Of Whither He Voyag'd, Where He Stay'd, Whom He Sawe, and What He Learnt.""

3.

      We have now reached the point from which the more academic school of alienists date Charles Ward's madness. Upon his discovery the youth had looked immediately at a few of the inner pages of the book and manuscripts, and had evidently seen something which impressed him tremendously. Indeed, in shewing the titles to the workmen he appeared to guard the text itself with peculiar care, and to labour under a perturbation for which even the antiquarian and genealogical significance of the find could hardly account. Upon returning home he broke the news with an almost embarrassed air, as if he wished to convey an idea of its supreme importance without having to exhibit the evidence itself. He did not even shew the titles to his parents, but simply told them that he had found some documents in Joseph Curwen's handwriting, ""mostly in cipher"", which would have to be studied very carefully before yielding up their true meaning. It is unlikely that he would have shewn what he did to the workmen, had it not been for their unconcealed curiosity. As it was he doubtless wished to avoid any display of peculiar reticence which would increase their discussion of the matter.
      That night Charles Ward sat up in his room reading the new-found book and papers, and when day came he did not desist. His meals, on his urgent request when his mother called to see what was amiss, were sent up to him; and in the afternoon he appeared only briefly when the men came to install the Curwen picture and mantelpiece in his study. The next night he slept in snatches in his clothes, meanwhile wrestling feverishly with the unravelling of the cipher manuscript. In the morning his mother saw that he was at work on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher, which he had frequently shewn her before; but in response to her query he said that the Curwen key could not be applied to it. That afternoon he abandoned his work and watched the men fascinatedly as they finished their installation of the picture with its woodwork above a cleverly realistic electric log, setting the mock-fireplace and overmantel a little out from the north wall as if a chimney existed, and boxing in the sides with panelling to match the room's. The front panel holding the picture was sawn and hinged to allow cupboard space behind it. After the workmen went he moved his work into the study and sat down before it with his eyes half on the cipher and half on the portrait which stared back at him like a year-adding and century-recalling mirror.
      His parents, subsequently recalling his conduct at this period, give interesting details anent the policy of concealment which he practiced. Before servants he seldom hid any paper which he might be studying, since he rightly assumed that Curwen's intricate and archaic chirography would be too much for them. With his parents, however, he was more circumspect; and unless the manuscript in question were a cipher, or a mere mass of cryptic symbols and unknown ideographs (as that entitled ""To Him Who Shal Come After etc."" seemed to be), he would cover it with some convenient paper until his caller had departed. At night he kept the papers under lock and key in an antique cabinet of his, where he also placed them whenever he left the room. He soon resumed fairly regular hours and habits, except that his long walks and other outside interests seemed to cease. The opening of school, where he now began his senior year, seemed a great bore to him; and he frequently asserted his determination never to bother with college. He had, he said, important special investigations to make, which would provide him with more avenues toward knowledge and the humanities than any university which the world could boast.
      Naturally, only one who had always been more or less studious, eccentric, and solitary could have pursued this course for many days without attracting notice. Ward, however, was constitutionally a scholar and a hermit; hence his parents were less surprised than regretful at the close confinement and secrecy he adopted. At the same time, both his father and mother thought it odd that he would shew them no scrap of his treasure-trove, nor give any connected account of such data as he had deciphered. This reticence he explained away as due to a wish to wait until he might announce some connected revelation, but as the weeks passed without further disclosures there began to grow up between the youth and his family a kind of constraint; intensified in his mother's case by her manifest disapproval of all Curwen delvings.
      During October Ward began visiting the libraries again, but no longer for the antiquarian matter of his former days. Witchcraft and magic, occultism and daemonology, were what he sought now; and when Providence sources proved unfruitful he would take the train for Boston and tap the wealth of the great library in Copley Square, the Widener Library at Harvard, or the Zion Research Library in Brookline, where certain rare works on Biblical subjects are available. He bought extensively, and fitted up a whole additional set of shelves in his study for newly acquired works on uncanny subjects; while during the Christmas holidays he made a round of out-of-town trips including one to Salem to consult certain records at the Essex Institute.
      About the middle of January, 1920, there entered Ward's bearing an element of triumph which he did not explain, and he was no more found at work upon the Hutchinson cipher. Instead, he inaugurated a dual policy of chemical research and record-scanning; fitting up for the one a laboratory in the unused attic of the house, and for the latter haunting all the sources of vital statistics in Providence. Local dealers in drugs and scientific supplies, later questioned, gave astonishingly queer and meaningless catalogues of the substances and instruments he purchased; but clerks at the State House, the City Hall, and the various libraries agree as to the definite object of his second interest. He was searching intensely and feverishly for the grave of Joseph Curwen, from whose slate slab an older generation had so wisely blotted the name.
      Little by little there grew upon the Ward family the conviction that something was wrong. Charles had had freaks and changes of minor interests before, but this growing secrecy and absorption in strange pursuits was unlike even him. His school work was the merest pretence; and although he failed in no test, it could be seen that the old application had all vanished. He had other concernments now; and when not in his new laboratory with a score of obsolete alchemical books, could be found either poring over old burial records down town or glued to his volumes of occult lore in his study, where the startlingly - one almost fancied increasingly - similar features of Joseph Curwen stared blandly at him from the great overmantel on the north wall.
      Late in March Ward added to his archive-searching a ghoulish series of rambles about the various ancient cemeteries of the city. The cause appeared later, when it was learned from City Hall clerks that he had probably found an important clue. His quest had suddenly shifted from the grave of Joseph Curwen to that of one Naphthali Field; and this shift was explained when, upon going over the files that he had been over, the investigators actually found a fragmentary record of Curwen's burial which had escaped the general obliteration, and which stated that the curious leaden coffin had been interred ""10 ft. S. and 5 ft. W. of Naphthali Field's grave in ye - "". The lack of a specified burying-ground in the surviving entry greatly complicated the search, and Naphthali Field's grave seemed as elusive as that of Curwen; but here no systematic effacement had existed, and one might reasonably be expected to stumble on the stone itself even if its record had perished. Hence the rambles - from which St. John's (the former King's) Churchyard and the ancient Congregational burying-ground in the midst of Swan Point Cemetery were excluded, since other statistics had shewn that the only Naphthali Field (obiit 1729) whose grave could have been meant had been a Baptist.

4.

      It was toward May when Dr. Willett, at the request of the senior Ward, and fortified with all the Curwen data which the family had gleaned from Charles in his non-secretive days, talked with the young man. The interview was of little value or conclusiveness, for Willett felt at every moment that Charles was thoroughly master of himself and in touch with matters of real importance; but it at least forced the secretive youth to offer some rational explanation of his recent demeanour. Of a pallid, impassive type not easily shewing embarrassment, Ward seemed quite ready to discuss his pursuits, though not to reveal their object. He stated that the papers of his ancestor had contained some remarkable secrets of early scientific knowledge, for the most part in cipher, of an apparent scope comparable only to the discoveries of Friar Bacon and perhaps surpassing even those. They were, however, meaningless except when correlated with a body of learning now wholly obsolete; so that their immediate presentation to a world equipped only with modern science would rob them of all impressiveness and dramatic significance. To take their vivid place in the history of human thought they must first be correlated by one familiar with the background out of which they evolved, and to this task of correlation Ward was now devoting himself. He was seeking to acquire as fast as possible those neglected arts of old which a true interpreter of the Curwen data must possess, and hoped in time to make a full announcement and presentation of the utmost interest to mankind and to the world of thought. Not even Einstein, he declared, could more profoundly revolutionise the current conception of things.
      As to his graveyard search, whose object he freely admitted, but the details of whose progress he did not relate, he said he had reason to think that Joseph Curwen's mutilated headstone bore certain mystic symbols - carved from directions in his will and ignorantly spared by those who had effaced the name - which were absolutely essential to the final solution of his cryptic system. Curwen, he believed, had wished to guard his secret with care; and had consequently distributed the data in an exceedingly curious fashion. When Dr. Willett asked to see the mystic documents, Ward displayed much reluctance and tried to put him off with such things as photostatic copies of the Hutchinson cipher and Orne formulae and diagrams; but finally shewed him the exteriors of some of the real Curwen finds - the ""Journall and Notes"", the cipher (title in cipher also), and the formula-filled message ""To Him Who Shal Come After"" - and let him glance inside such as were in obscure characters.
      He also opened the diary at a page carefully selected for its innocuousness and gave Willett a glimpse of Curwen's connected handwriting in English. The doctor noted very closely the crabbed and complicated letters, and the general aura of the seventeenth century which clung round both penmanship and style despite the writer's survival into the eighteenth century, and became quickly certain that the document was genuine. The text itself was relatively trivial, and Willett recalled only a fragment:
""Wedn. 16 Octr. 1754. My Sloope the Wakeful this Day putt in from London with XX newe Men pick'd up in ye Indies, Spaniards from Martineco and 2 Dutch Men from Surinam. Ye Dutch Men are like to Desert from have'g hearde Somewhat ill of these Ventures, but I will see to ye Inducing of them to Staye. ffor Mr. Knight Dexter of ye Boy and Book 120 Pieces Camblets, 100 Pieces Assrtd. Cambleteens, 20 Pieces blue Duffles, 100 Pieces Shalloons, 50 Pieces Calamancoes, 300 Pieces each, Shendsoy and Humhums. ffor Mr. Green at ye Elephant 50 Gallon Cyttles, 20 Warm'g Pannes, 15 Bake Cyttles, 10 pr. Smoke'g Tonges. ffor Mr. Perrigo 1 Sett of Awles, ffor Mr. Nightingale 50 Reames prime Foolscap. Say'd ye SABAOTH thrice last Nighte but None appear'd. I must heare more from Mr. H. in Transylvania, tho' it is Harde reach'g him and exceeding strange he can not give me the Use of what he hath so well us'd these hundred yeares. Simon hath not Writ these V. Weekes, but I expecte soon hear'g from him.""
      When upon reaching this point Dr. Willett turned the leaf he was quickly checked by Ward, who almost snatched the book from his grasp. All that the doctor had a chance to see on the newly opened page was a brief pair of sentences; but these, strangely enough, lingered tenaciously in his memory. They ran: ""Ye Verse from Liber-Damnatus be'g spoke V Roodmasses and IV Hallows-Eves, I am Hopeful ye Thing is breed'g Outside ye Spheres. It will drawe One who is to Come, if I can make sure he shal bee, and he shall think on Past thinges and look back thro' all ye yeares, against ye which I must have ready ye Saltes or That to make 'em with.""
      Willett saw no more, but somehow this small glimpse gave a new and vague terror to the painted features of Joseph Curwen which stared blandly down from the overmantel. Ever after that he entertained the odd fancy - which his medical skill of course assured him was only a fancy - that the eyes of the portrait had a sort of wish, if not an actual tendency, to follow young Charles Ward as he moved about the room. He stopped before leaving to study the picture closely, marvelling at its resemblance to Charles and memorising every minute detail of the cryptical, colourless face, even down to a slight scar or pit in the smooth brow above the right eye. Cosmo Alexander, he decided, was a painter worthy of the Scotland that produced Raeburn, and a teacher worthy of his illustrious pupil Gilbert Stuart.
      Assured by the doctor that Charles's mental health was in no danger, but that on the other hand he was engaged in researches which might prove of real importance, the Wards were more lenient than they might otherwise have been when during the following June the youth made positive his refusal to attend college. He had, he declared, studies of much more vital importance to pursue; and intimated a wish to go abroad the following year in order to avail himself of certain sources of data not existing in America. The senior Ward, while denying this latter wish as absurd for a boy of only eighteen, acquiesced regarding the university; so that after a none too brilliant graduation from the Moses Brown School there ensued for Charles a three-year period of intensive occult study and graveyard searching. He became recognised as an eccentric, and dropped even more completely from the sight of his family's friends than he had been before; keeping close to his work and only occasionally making trips to other cities to consult obscure records. Once he went south to talk with a strange old mulatto who dwelt in a swamp and about whom a newspaper had printed a curious article. Again he sought a small village in the Adirondacks whence reports of certain odd ceremonial practices had come. But still his parents forbade him the trip to the Old World which he desired.
      Coming of age in April, 1923, and having previously inherited a small competence from his maternal grandfather, Ward determined at last to take the European trip hitherto denied him. Of his proposed itinerary he would say nothing save that the needs of his studies would carry him to many places, but he promised to write his parents fully and faithfully. When they saw he could not be dissuaded, they ceased all opposition and helped as best they could; so that in June the young man sailed for Liverpool with the farewell blessings of his father and mother, who accompanied him to Boston and waved him out of sight from the White Star pier in Charlestown. Letters soon told of his safe arrival, and of his securing good quarters in Great Russell Street, London; where he proposed to stay, shunning all family friends, till he had exhausted the resources of the British Museum in a certain direction. Of his daily life he wrote but little, for there was little to write. Study and experiment consumed all his time, and he mentioned a laboratory which he had established in one of his rooms. That he said nothing of antiquarian rambles in the glamorous old city with its luring skyline of ancient domes and steeples and its tangles of roads and alleys whose mystic convolutions and sudden vistas alternately beckon and surprise, was taken by his parents as a good index of the degree to which his new interests had engrossed his mind.
      In June, 1924, a brief note told of his departure for Paris, to which he had before made one or two flying trips for material in the Bibliothque Nationale. For three months thereafter he sent only postal cards, giving an address in the Rue St. Jacques and referring to a special search among rare manuscripts in the library of an unnamed private collector. He avoided acquaintances, and no tourists brought back reports of having seen him. Then came a silence, and in October the Wards received a picture card from Prague, Czecho-Slovakia, stating that Charles was in that ancient town for the purpose of conferring with a certain very aged man supposed to be the last living possessor of some very curious mediaeval information. He gave an address in the Neustadt, and announced no move till the following January; when he dropped several cards from Vienna telling of his passage through that city on the way toward a more easterly region whither one of his correspondents and fellow-delvers into the occult had invited him.
      The next card was from Klausenburg in Transylvania, and told of Ward's progress toward his destination. He was going to visit a Baron Ferenczy, whose estate lay in the mountains east of Rakus; and was to be addressed at Rakus in the care of that nobleman. Another card from Rakus a week later, saying that his host's carriage had met him and that he was leaving the village for the mountains, was his last message for a considerable time; indeed, he did not reply to his parents' frequent letters until May, when he wrote to discourage the plan of his mother for a meeting in London, Paris, or Rome during the summer, when the elder Wards were planning to travel in Europe. His researches, he said, were such that he could not leave his present quarters; while the situation of Baron Ferenczy's castle did not favour visits. It was on a crag in the dark wooded mountains, and the region was so shunned by the country folk that normal people could not help feeling ill at ease. Moreover, the Baron was not a person likely to appeal to correct and conservative New England gentlefolk. His aspect and manners had idiosyncrasies, and his age was so great as to be disquieting. It would be better, Charles said, if his parents would wait for his return to Providence; which could scarcely be far distant.
      That return did not, however, take place until May, 1926, when after a few heralding cards the young wanderer quietly slipped into New York on the Homeric and traversed the long miles to Providence by motor-coach, eagerly drinking in the green rolling hills, the fragrant, blossoming orchards, and the white steepled towns of vernal Connecticut; his first taste of ancient New England in nearly four years. When the coach crossed the Pawcatuck and entered Rhode Island amidst the faery goldenness of a late spring afternoon his heart beat with quickened force, and the entry to Providence along Reservoir and Elmwood avenues was a breathless and wonderful thing despite the depths of forbidden lore to which he had delved. At the high square where Broad, Weybosset, and Empire Streets join, he saw before and below him in the fire of sunset the pleasant, remembered houses and domes and steeples of the old town; and his head swam curiously as the vehicle rolled down the terminal behind the Biltmore, bringing into view the great dome and soft, roof-pierced greenery of the ancient hill across the river, and the tall colonial spire of the First Baptist Church limned pink in the magic evening light against the fresh springtime verdure of its precipitous background.
      Old Providence! It was this place and the mysterious forces of its long, continuous history which had brought him into being, and which had drawn him back toward marvels and secrets whose boundaries no prophet might fix. Here lay the arcana, wondrous or dreadful as the case might be, for which all his years of travel and application had been preparing him. A taxicab whirled him through Post Office Square with its glimpse of the river, the old Market House, and the head of the bay, and up the steep curved slope of Waterman Street to Prospect, where the vast gleaming dome and sunset-flushed Ionic columns of the Christian Science Church beckoned northward. Then eight squares past the fine old estates his childish eyes had known, and the quaint brick sidewalks so often trodden by his youthful feet. And at last the little white overtaken farmhouse on the right, on the left the classic Adam porch and stately bayed facade of the great brick house where he was born. It was twilight, and Charles Dexter Ward had come home.

5.

      A school of alienists slightly less academic than Dr. Lyman's assign to Ward's European trip the beginning of his true madness. Admitting that he was sane when he started, they believe that his conduct upon returning implies a disastrous change. But even to this claim Dr. Willett refuses to accede. There was, he insists, something later; and the queernesses of the youth at this stage he attributes to the practice of rituals learned abroad - odd enough things, to be sure, but by no means implying mental aberration on the part of their celebrant. Ward himself, though visibly aged and hardened, was still normal in his general reactions; and in several talks with Willett displayed a balance which no madman - even an incipient one - could feign continuously for long. What elicited the notion of insanity at this period were the sounds heard at all hours from Ward's attic laboratory, in which he kept himself most of the time. There were chantings and repetitions, and thunderous declamations in uncanny rhythms; and although these sounds were always in Ward's own voice, there was something in the quality of that voice, and in the accents of the formulae it pronounced, which could not but chill the blood of every hearer. It was noticed that Nig, the venerable and beloved black cat of the household, bristled and arched his back perceptibly when certain of the tones were heard.
      The odours occasionally wafted from the laboratory were likewise exceedingly strange. Sometimes they were very noxious, but more often they were aromatic, with a haunting, elusive quality which seemed to have the power of inducing fantastic images. People who smelled them had a tendency to glimpse momentary mirages of enormous vistas, with strange hills or endless avenues of sphinxes and hippogriffs stretching off into infinite distance. Ward did not resume his old-time rambles, but applied himself diligently to the strange books he had brought home, and to equally strange delvings within his quarters; explaining that European sources had greatly enlarged the possibilities of his work, and promising great revelations in the years to come. His older aspect increased to a startling degree his resemblance to the Curwen portrait in his library; and Dr. Willett would often pause by the latter after a call, marvelling at the virtual identity, and reflecting that only the small pit above the picture's right eye now remained to differentiate the long-dead wizard from the living youth. These calls of Willett's, undertaken at the request of the senior Wards, were curious affairs. Ward at no time repulsed the doctor, but the latter saw that he could never reach the young man's inner psychology. Frequently he noted peculiar things about; little wax images of grotesque design on the shelves or tables, and the half-erased remnants of circles, triangles, and pentagrams in chalk or charcoal on the cleared central space of the large room. And always in the night those rhythms and incantations thundered, till it became very difficult to keep servants or suppress furtive talk of Charles's madness.
      In January, 1927, a peculiar incident occurred. One night about midnight, as Charles was chanting a ritual whose weird cadence echoed unpleasantly through the house below, there came a sudden gust of chill wind from the bay, and a faint, obscure trembling of the earth which everyone in the neighbourhood noted. At the same time the cat exhibited phenomenal traces of fright, while dogs bayed for as much as a mile around. This was the prelude to a sharp thunderstorm, anomalous for the season, which brought with it such a crash that Mr. and Mrs. Ward believed the house had been struck. They rushed upstairs to see what damage had been done, but Charles met them at the door to the attic; pale, resolute, and portentous, with an almost fearsome combination of triumph and seriousness on his face. He assured them that the house had not really been struck, and that the storm would soon be over. They paused, and looking through a window saw that he was indeed right; for the lightning flashed farther and farther off, whilst the trees ceased to bend in the strange frigid gust from the water. The thunder sank to a sort of dull mumbling chuckle and finally died away. Stars came out, and the stamp of triumph on Charles Ward's face crystallised into a very singular expression.
      For two months or more after this incident Ward was less confined than usual to his laboratory. He exhibited a curious interest in the weather, and made odd inquiries about the date of the spring thawing of the ground. One night late in March he left the house after midnight, and did not return till almost morning; when his mother, being wakeful, heard a rumbling motor draw up to the carriage entrance. Muffled oaths could be distinguished, and Mrs. Ward, rising and going to the window, saw four dark figures removing a long, heavy box from a truck at Charles's direction and carrying it within by the side door. She heard laboured breathing and ponderous footfalls on the stairs, and finally a dull thumping in the attic; after which the footfalls descended again, and the four men reappeared outside and drove off in their truck.
      The next day Charles resumed his strict attic seclusion, drawing down the dark shades of his laboratory windows and appearing to be working on some metal substance. He would open the door to no one, and steadfastly refused all proffered food. About noon a wrenching sound followed by a terrible cry and a fall were heard, but when Mrs. Ward rapped at the door her son at length answered faintly, and told her that nothing had gone amiss. The hideous and indescribable stench now welling out was absolutely harmless and unfortunately necessary. Solitude was the one prime essential, and he would appear later for dinner. That afternoon, after the conclusion of some odd hissing sounds which came from behind the locked portal, he did finally appear; wearing an extremely haggard aspect and forbidding anyone to enter the laboratory upon any pretext. This, indeed, proved the beginning of a new policy of secrecy; for never afterward was any other person permitted to visit either the mysterious garret workroom or the adjacent storeroom which he cleaned out, furnished roughly, and added to his inviolably private domain as a sleeping apartment. Here he lived, with books brought up from his library beneath, till the time he purchased the Pawtuxet bungalow and moved to it all his scientific effects.
      In the evening Charles secured the paper before the rest of the family and damaged part of it through an apparent accident. Later on Dr. Willett, having fixed the date from statements by various members of the household, looked up an intact copy at the Journal office and found that in the destroyed section the following small item had occurred:
Nocturnal Diggers Surprised in
North Burial Ground

Robert Hart, night watchman at the North Burial Ground, this morning discovered a party of several men with a motor truck in the oldest part of the cemetery, but apparently frightened them off before they had accomplished whatever their object may have been.
      The discovery took place at about four o'clock, when Hart's attention was attracted by the sound of a motor outside his shelter. Investigating, he saw a large truck on the main drive several rods away; but could not reach it before the sound of his feet on the gravel had revealed his approach. The men hastily placed a large box in the truck and drove away toward the street before they could be overtaken; and since no known grave was disturbed, Hart believes that this box was an object which they wished to bury.
      The diggers must have been at work for a long while before detection, for Hart found an enormous hole dug at a considerable distance back from the roadway in the lot of Amasa Field, where most of the old stones have long ago disappeared. The hole, a place as large and deep as a grave, was empty; and did not coincide with any interment mentioned in the cemetery records.
      Sergt. Riley of the Second Station viewed the spot and gave the opinion that the hole was dug by bootleggers rather gruesomely and ingeniously seeking a safe cache for liquor in a place not likely to be disturbed. In reply to questions Hart said he thought the escaping truck had headed up Rochambeau Avenue, though he could not be sure.
      During the next few days Ward was seldom seen by his family. Having added sleeping quarters to his attic realm, he kept closely to himself there, ordering food brought to the door and not taking it in until after the servant had gone away. The droning of monotonous formulae and the chanting of bizarre rhythms recurred at intervals, while at other times occasional listeners could detect the sound of tinkling glass, hissing chemicals, running water, or roaring gas flames. Odours of the most unplaceable quality, wholly unlike any before noted, hung at times around the door; and the air of tension observable in the young recluse whenever he did venture briefly forth was such as to excite the keenest speculation. Once he made a hasty trip to the Athenaeum for a book he required, and again he hired a messenger to fetch him a highly obscure volume from Boston. Suspense was written portentously over the whole situation, and both the family and Dr. Willett confessed themselves wholly at a loss what to do or think about it.

6.

      Then on the fifteenth of April a strange development occurred. While nothing appeared to grow different in kind, there was certainly a very terrible difference in degree; and Dr. Willett somehow attaches great significance to the change. The day was Good Friday, a circumstance of which the servants made much, but which others quite naturally dismiss as an irrelevant coincidence. Late in the afternoon young Ward began repeating a certain formula in a singularly loud voice, at the same time burning some substance so pungent that its fumes escaped over the entire house. The formula was so plainly audible in the hall outside the locked door that Mrs. Ward could not help memorising it as she waited and listened anxiously, and later on she was able to write it down at Dr. Willett's request. It ran as follows, and experts have told Dr. Willett that its very close analogue can be found in the mystic writings of ""Eliphas Levi"", that cryptic soul who crept through a crack in the forbidden door and glimpsed the frightful vistas of the void beyond:
""Per Adonai Eloim, Adonai Jehova,
Adonai Sabaoth, Metraton On Agla Mathon,
verbum pythonicum, mysterium salamandrae,
conventus sylvorum, antra gnomorum,
daemonia Coeli Gad, Almousin, Gibor, Jehosua,
Evam, Zariatnatmik, veni, veni, veni.""
      This had been going on for two hours without change or intermission when over all the neighbourhood a pandaemoniac howling of dogs set in. The extent of this howling can be judged from the space it received in the papers the next day, but to those in the Ward household it was overshadowed by the odour which instantly followed it; a hideous, all-pervasive odour which none of them had ever smelt before or have ever smelt since. In the midst of this mephitic flood there came a very perceptible flash like that of lightning, which would have been blinding and impressive but for the daylight around; and then was heard the voice that no listener can ever forget because of its thunderous remoteness, its incredible depth, and its eldritch dissimilarity to Charles Ward's voice. It shook the house, and was clearly heard by at least two neighbours above the howling of the dogs. Mrs. Ward, who had been listening in despair outside her son's locked laboratory, shivered as she recognised its hellish import; for Charles had told her of its evil fame in dark books, and of the manner in which it had thundered, according to the Fenner letters, above the doomed Pawtuxet farmhouse on the night of Joseph Curwen's annihilation. There was no mistaking that nightmare phrase, for Charles had described it too vividly in the old days when he had talked frankly of his Curwen investigations. And yet it was only this fragment of an archaic and forgotten language: ""DIES MIES JESCHET BOENE DOESEF DOUVEMA ENITEMAUS"".
      Close upon this thundering there came a momentary darkening of the daylight, though sunset was still an hour distant, and then a puff of added odour different from the first but equally unknown and intolerable. Charles was chanting again now and his mother could hear syllables that sounded like ""Yi-nash-Yog-Sothoth-he-lgeb-fi-throdog"" - ending in a ""Yah!"" whose maniacal force mounted in an ear-splitting crescendo. A second later all previous memories were effaced by the wailing scream which burst out with frantic explosiveness and gradually changed form to a paroxysm of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Mrs. Ward, with the mingled fear and blind courage of maternity, advanced and knocked affrightedly at the concealing panels, but obtained no sign of recognition. She knocked again, but paused nervelessly as a second shriek arose, this one unmistakably in the familiar voice of her son, and sounding concurrently with the still bursting cachinnations of that other voice. Presently she fainted, although she is still unable to recall the precise and immediate cause. Memory sometimes makes merciful deletions.
      Mr. Ward returned from the business section at about quarter past six; and not finding his wife downstairs, was told by the frightened servants that she was probably watching at Charles's door, from which the sounds had been far stranger than ever before. Mounting the stairs at once, he saw Mrs. Ward stretched at full length on the floor of the corridor outside the laboratory; and realising that she had fainted, hastened to fetch a glass of water from a set bowl in a neighbouring alcove. Dashing the cold fluid in her face, he was heartened to observe an immediate response on her part, and was watching the bewildered opening of her eyes when a chill shot through him and threatened to reduce him to the very state from which she was emerging. For the seemingly silent laboratory was not as silent as it had appeared to be, but held the murmurs of a tense, muffled conversation in tones too low for comprehension, yet of a quality profoundly disturbing to the soul.
      It was not, of course, new for Charles to mutter formulae; but this muttering was definitely different. It was so palpably a dialogue, or imitation of a dialogue, with the regular alteration of inflections suggesting question and answer, statement and response. One voice was undisguisedly that of Charles, but the other had a depth and hollowness which the youth's best powers of ceremonial mimicry had scarcely approached before. There was something hideous, blasphemous, and abnormal about it, and but for a cry from his recovering wife which cleared his mind by arousing his protective instincts it is not likely that Theodore Howland Ward could have maintained for nearly a year more his old boast that he had never fainted. As it was, he seized his wife in his arms and bore her quickly downstairs before she could notice the voices which had so horribly disturbed him. Even so, however, he was not quick enough to escape catching something himself which caused him to stagger dangerously with his burden. For Mrs. Ward's cry had evidently been heard by others than he, and there had come from behind the locked door the first distinguishable words which that masked and terrible colloquy had yielded. They were merely an excited caution in Charles's own voice, but somehow their implications held a nameless fright for the father who overheard them. The phrase was just this: ""Sshh! - write!""
      Mr. and Mrs. Ward conferred at some length after dinner, and the former resolved to have a firm and serious talk with Charles that very night. No matter how important the object, such conduct could no longer be permitted; for these latest developments transcended every limit of sanity and formed a menace to the order and nervous well-being of the entire household. The youth must indeed have taken complete leave of his senses, since only downright madness could have prompted the wild screams and imaginary conversations in assumed voices which the present day had brought forth. All this must be stopped, or Mrs. Ward would be made ill and the keeping of servants become an impossibility.
      Mr. Ward rose at the close of the meal and started upstairs for Charles's laboratory. On the third floor, however, he paused at the sounds which he heard proceeding from the now disused library of his son. Books were apparently being flung about and papers wildly rustled, and upon stepping to the door Mr. Ward beheld the youth within, excitedly assembling a vast armful of literary matter of every size and shape. Charles's aspect was very drawn and haggard, and he dropped his entire load with a start at the sound of his father's voice. At the elder man's command he sat down, and for some time listened to the admonitions he had so long deserved. There was no scene. At the end of the lecture he agreed that his father was right, and that his noises, mutterings, incantations, and chemical odours were indeed inexcusable nuisances. He agreed to a policy of greater quiet, though insisting on a prolongation of his extreme privacy. Much of his future work, he said, was in any case purely book research; and he could obtain quarters elsewhere for any such vocal rituals as might be necessary at a later stage. For the fright and fainting of his mother he expressed the keenest contrition, and explained that the conversation later heard was part of an elaborate symbolism designed to create a certain mental atmosphere. His use of abstruse technical terms somewhat bewildered Mr. Ward, but the parting impression was one of undeniable sanity and poise despite a mysterious tension of the utmost gravity. The interview was really quite inconclusive, and as Charles picked up his armful and left the room Mr. Ward hardly knew what to make of the entire business. It was as mysterious as the death of poor old Nig, whose stiffening form had been found an hour before in the basement, with staring eyes and fear-distorted mouth.
      Driven by some vague detective instinct, the bewildered parent now glanced curiously at the vacant shelves to see what his son had taken up to the attic. The youth's library was plainly and rigidly classified, so that one might tell at a glance the books or at least the kind of books which had been withdrawn. On this occasion Mr. Ward was astonished to find that nothing of the occult or the antiquarian, beyond what had been previously removed, was missing. These new withdrawals were all modern items; histories, scientific treatises, geographies, manuals of literature, philosophic works, and certain contemporary newspapers and magazines. It was a very curious shift from Charles Ward's recent run of reading, and the father paused in a growing vortex of perplexity and an engulfing sense of strangeness. The strangeness was a very poignant sensation, and almost clawed at his chest as he strove to see just what was wrong around him. Something was indeed wrong, and tangibly as well as spiritually so. Ever since he had been in this room he had known that something was amiss, and at last it dawned upon him what it was.
      On the north wall rose still the ancient carved overmantel from the house in Olney Court, but to the cracked and precariously restored oils of the large Curwen portrait disaster had come. Time and unequal heating had done their work at last, and at some time since the room's last cleaning the worst had happened. Peeling clear of the wood, curling tighter and tighter, and finally crumbling into small bits with what must have been malignly silent suddenness, the portrait of Joseph Curwen had resigned forever its staring surveillance of the youth it so strangely resembled, and now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust.
","“Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimaeras—dire stories of Celaeno and the Harpies—may reproduce themselves in the brain of superstition—but they were there before. They are transcripts, types—the archetypes are in us, and eternal. How else should the recital of that which we know in a waking sense to be false come to affect us at all? Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects, considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us bodily injury? O, least of all! These terrors are of older standing. They date beyond body—or without the body, they would have been the same. . . . That the kind of fear here treated is purely spiritual—that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless on earth, that it predominates in the period of our sinless infancy—are difficulties the solution of which might afford some probable insight into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep at least into the shadowland of pre-existence.”
—Charles Lamb: “Witches and Other Night-Fears”

I.

When a traveller in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean’s Corners he comes upon a lonely and curious country. The ground gets higher, and the brier-bordered stone walls press closer and closer against the ruts of the dusty, curving road. The trees of the frequent forest belts seem too large, and the wild weeds, brambles, and grasses attain a luxuriance not often found in settled regions. At the same time the planted fields appear singularly few and barren; while the sparsely scattered houses wear a surprisingly uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation. Without knowing why, one hesitates to ask directions from the gnarled, solitary figures spied now and then on crumbling doorsteps or on the sloping, rock-strown meadows. Those figures are so silent and furtive that one feels somehow confronted by forbidden things, with which it would be better to have nothing to do. When a rise in the road brings the mountains in view above the deep woods, the feeling of strange uneasiness is increased. The summits are too rounded and symmetrical to give a sense of comfort and naturalness, and sometimes the sky silhouettes with especial clearness the queer circles of tall stone pillars with which most of them are crowned.
      Gorges and ravines of problematical depth intersect the way, and the crude wooden bridges always seem of dubious safety. When the road dips again there are stretches of marshland that one instinctively dislikes, and indeed almost fears at evening when unseen whippoorwills chatter and the fireflies come out in abnormal profusion to dance to the raucous, creepily insistent rhythms of stridently piping bull-frogs. The thin, shining line of the Miskatonic’s upper reaches has an oddly serpent-like suggestion as it winds close to the feet of the domed hills among which it rises. 
      As the hills draw nearer, one heeds their wooded sides more than their stone-crowned tops. Those sides loom up so darkly and precipitously that one wishes they would keep their distance, but there is no road by which to escape them. Across a covered bridge one sees a small village huddled between the stream and the vertical slope of Round Mountain, and wonders at the cluster of rotting gambrel roofs bespeaking an earlier architectural period than that of the neighbouring region. It is not reassuring to see, on a closer glance, that most of the houses are deserted and falling to ruin, and that the broken-steepled church now harbours the one slovenly mercantile establishment of the hamlet. One dreads to trust the tenebrous tunnel of the bridge, yet there is no way to avoid it. Once across, it is hard to prevent the impression of a faint, malign odour about the village street, as of the massed mould and decay of centuries. It is always a relief to get clear of the place, and to follow the narrow road around the base of the hills and across the level country beyond till it rejoins the Aylesbury pike. Afterward one sometimes learns that one has been through Dunwich.
      Outsiders visit Dunwich as seldom as possible, and since a certain season of horror all the signboards pointing toward it have been taken down. The scenery, judged by any ordinary aesthetic canon, is more than commonly beautiful; yet there is no influx of artists or summer tourists. Two centuries ago, when talk of witch-blood, Satan-worship, and strange forest presences was not laughed at, it was the custom to give reasons for avoiding the locality. In our sensible age—since the Dunwich horror of 1928 was hushed up by those who had the town’s and the world’s welfare at heart—people shun it without knowing exactly why. Perhaps one reason—though it cannot apply to uninformed strangers—is that the natives are now repellently decadent, having gone far along that path of retrogression so common in many New England backwaters. They have come to form a race by themselves, with the well-defined mental and physical stigmata of degeneracy and inbreeding. The average of their intelligence is woefully low, whilst their annals reek of overt viciousness and of half-hidden murders, incests, and deeds of almost unnamable violence and perversity. The old gentry, representing the two or three armigerous families which came from Salem in 1692, have kept somewhat above the general level of decay; though many branches are sunk into the sordid populace so deeply that only their names remain as a key to the origin they disgrace. Some of the Whateleys and Bishops still send their eldest sons to Harvard and Miskatonic, though those sons seldom return to the mouldering gambrel roofs under which they and their ancestors were born.
      No one, even those who have the facts concerning the recent horror, can say just what is the matter with Dunwich; though old legends speak of unhallowed rites and conclaves of the Indians, amidst which they called forbidden shapes of shadow out of the great rounded hills, and made wild orgiastic prayers that were answered by loud crackings and rumblings from the ground below. In 1747 the Reverend Abijah Hoadley, newly come to the Congregational Church at Dunwich Village, preached a memorable sermon on the close presence of Satan and his imps; in which he said:
      “It must be allow’d, that these Blasphemies of an infernall Train of Daemons are Matters of too common Knowledge to be deny’d; the cursed Voices of Azazel and Buzrael, of Beelzebub and Belial, being heard now from under Ground by above a Score of credible Witnesses now living. I my self did not more than a Fortnight ago catch a very plain Discourse of evill Powers in the Hill behind my House; wherein there were a Rattling and Rolling, Groaning, Screeching, and Hissing, such as no Things of this Earth cou’d raise up, and which must needs have come from those Caves that only black Magick can discover, and only the Divell unlock.”
      Mr. Hoadley disappeared soon after delivering this sermon; but the text, printed in Springfield, is still extant. Noises in the hills continued to be reported from year to year, and still form a puzzle to geologists and physiographers.
      Other traditions tell of foul odours near the hill-crowning circles of stone pillars, and of rushing airy presences to be heard faintly at certain hours from stated points at the bottom of the great ravines; while still others try to explain the Devil’s Hop Yard—a bleak, blasted hillside where no tree, shrub, or grass-blade will grow. Then too, the natives are mortally afraid of the numerous whippoorwills which grow vocal on warm nights. It is vowed that the birds are psychopomps lying in wait for the souls of the dying, and that they time their eerie cries in unison with the sufferer’s struggling breath. If they can catch the fleeing soul when it leaves the body, they instantly flutter away chittering in daemoniac laughter; but if they fail, they subside gradually into a disappointed silence.
      These tales, of course, are obsolete and ridiculous; because they come down from very old times. Dunwich is indeed ridiculously old—older by far than any of the communities within thirty miles of it. South of the village one may still spy the cellar walls and chimney of the ancient Bishop house, which was built before 1700; whilst the ruins of the mill at the falls, built in 1806, form the most modern piece of architecture to be seen. Industry did not flourish here, and the nineteenth-century factory movement proved short-lived. Oldest of all are the great rings of rough-hewn stone columns on the hill-tops, but these are more generally attributed to the Indians than to the settlers. Deposits of skulls and bones, found within these circles and around the sizeable table-like rock on Sentinel Hill, sustain the popular belief that such spots were once the burial-places of the Pocumtucks; even though many ethnologists, disregarding the absurd improbability of such a theory, persist in believing the remains Caucasian.

",True
"Day 1-I never would imagine such thing would happen, in this diary I will document my strange and disturbing events. Once I was a normal respected teacher at Miskatonic, and then a member of this ""great race"" appears and teleports me to this place…it's just too surreal, this place is a gigantic library, whit knowledge of humanity and more…this large creature it's just disgusting, I just never saw something like this, it's just bizarre. The flowers are just biologically impossible, but they are there. I am a prisoner? This place is huge, the race it's big! Like a small building, I just imagine how impossibly big an entire city would be…I am like a mouse in a skyscraper. I try my best to sleep…god have mercy upon me. I have difficulty knowing what is day and what is night…because there are not windows, I have a theory that this place is underground. A few minutes after wandering around, my captor opens the massive door, ah I have forgotten, this room is almost alone without objects of my size, the only thing here is a giant sized TV with a typewriter on it. What kind of technology these creatures possess? I see that the giant clicks these claws constantly…why? It's some sort of communication? Suddenly he throws to me a metal box with a button on top of it, ""what sort of thing is this, creature?"" I ask. The giant just clicks this right claw. Without any other option I push the small cylinder, and nothing noticeable happens. But then it makes a long series of clicks again and the box suddenly begins to…talk: ""hello Wilhelm. I am a Yithnian, and I want your help. I have seen with horror that a god will crash-land on earth in two weeks! He is trapped in a suit that will retrain this great and immeasurable power. I will travel in time to bring him to you so we can begin our project"" suddenly he disappeared in an after-image. The thing he said…it was unbelievable a god exists, and he wants my help.
Day…2 (i suppose) I been alone in this blank room for 4 hours…and when I was taken it was 1:30. Ok that is not the point. In this room there some sort of big book shells that dwarf by a few inches the aliens. I have opened the door to reveal that I was right, if this would be a city of gigantic size I would be like a mouse. Thousands of skyscrapers roam the underground dome that sustains the cave. This is just massive. One of the tallest buildings on earth will be like an electric floor fan compared to these hulks. It's just frightening to try to hide from these monsters. I still don't get why my captor doesn't appear yet. The buildings are made from a metal that is am mesh of golden with gray, and almost every one of them is rectangular. Three minutes remain of this wait and I see that the yith creature has returned, with a strange being in this arm. Also a book of my size; the creature started to click and the machine started to speak: ""I ask forgiveness Wilhelm, the time machine broke and I needed to fix it. Here it is…the great lord of the Outer gods, the blind idiot entity that everyone fears: Azathoth! My luck, our luck could not be greater my friend! He was trapped in the technology of my people and Mi-Go's we can make him anything we want!"" after handing me the book I have a better look at the ""God"" before me. He had a suit with long limbs; this head was highly (and horrifyingly) similar to the shape of the tall Flatiron Building in New York, in this top there were two small triangles that made the illusion of horns or wolf like ears. Little red lines in both sides of the face, (I suppose eyes) the helmet also it was colored silver. I also notice that this body has a light brown straightjacket like appearance. This right and left hands have black gloves (I suppose) with slightly long conical golden claws half of the fingers. These feet and legs are even more bizarre: black to the knees with silver to the lateral malleolus. The feet are the most structurally insane: it looks like a golden flat spike. It appears that this creature is unconscious. The book has revealed me some clues: Azathoth he is the most powerful entity in our universe, also the creator of a creator of other gods! The yiths are the race of my captor. They want to use the knowledge of my race to their disposal, what one? I dare not to put it in this diary…it would make anyone insane. The creature ""spoken"" to my again about why I am here; ""I want to give to the Outer God a new chance, one to redeem him/itself to use it as a tool for good. I will train you in a place that I made where time is infinite, where you don't need to eat, you will not exhaust, where you will not age. There I will make you a super intelligent being, due to the fact that there is technology of my race you will need to learn it. And you will make Azathoth something more than human."" After that a door on a wall suddenly appeared, the place inside of it was blank grey. I am surprised of what I will do…I will create something to fight the unknown evil of this world! We will make this monster my monster! The yith told me that the place where we will go is applied named: Infinitely Timed Room.
Day 3- the I.T.R. was excellent as a place for learning. I reckon I was there for 200 months. But I am fine to say the least. I finally learned how to manipulate the suit. It was revealed to me that there is a cube that reduces size inside of the helmet. There is a computer inside of that cube that can be modified. If I do that I can change Azathoth into a thinking creature. Also I will make him learn how to change the suit into anything he wants. I get a closer look at the monster and I can assume that he is still unconscious, or he doesn't know how to move. Thanks to a machine I built inside the I.T.R. a metal glob that can change into any human or eldritch tool I call it the anytool. I can mentally command it and only me, I change it into a buzz saw that cuts the center of the helmet. I see with awe that there are two metal cubes inside it. The one on the right has a circular window I see with my own mortal eyes what is in there: the thumb–sized daemon sultan himself. He was shaped like a tridimensional ellipse, in this surface it was covered with something similar to eggs of a fish or an amphibian, they divided the creature into two tones: in the right there where white ""eggs"" and only 3 black ones, there were 4 spiked eggs and white five tubes that have mouths. In the left there are only black eggs and 3 spiked white ones, 2 big human like jaws were located in the far left. Behind it there where mangled tentacles and claws. I see all this thanks to the anytool that I shaped into a microscope.
The boxes where lead colored and they were 7cm tall and 7cm breadth. The one that is located upside is the one that constrains him and these powers, there is a mirror in the floor of the cube, the downer cube creates an incredibly thin ray that points into the mirror of the upper cube (they are epilated into a vertical position) that ray is the one that maintains this concurrent size. I cut the cube where the visor is and I slowly modify it.
Day 4-I finally finalized the modification, and I closed the helmet. I created a level system: Level 1 makes him use a small bit of this power, with strength capable of lifting 50 tons. Level 2 makes him capable of creating creatures of this own, and this strength are enough powerful to level 10 buildings, Level 3…this one makes him use a quarter of this real power, he is capable of destroying a world with energy based blasts. And this physical strength is unmeasurable. Also I programed the cube (that works like a brain for Azathoth) to only to obey me, but to follow orders of any successor or member of my family.
After a few hours the former god awakens and these first words are understandable: ""where…I am, what I am?"" this voice is deep and stern. I shudder what this reaction will be when I tell him the truth. Thankfully I made the upper cube make the thump sized monster a fast learner. ""My name is Wilhelm Smift, your master. Your name is Azathoth."" The knight like creature stares at me; ""yes…Thou art. But please answer me who am i?"" ""You were a powerful creature, a god. But technological creatures transferred you into a body that constrains your power. Thankfully I have modified it to have a mind that thinks, that talks, without me you would be a blind idiot, all powerful Imbecile! You were a leader of other gods but you never made to them any commands, you where mindless. Now in turn serve me Azathoth, I will make you a tool for justice!"" the creature bows before me, but then to my fear I hear a chilling laugh, ""Why are you laughing daemon sultan?"" he talks to me slowly ""I will become a tool for extermination, isn't it master? I will become a machine only made for killing…ISN'T IT MASTER?!"" he suddenly approaches me, whit these arms wide open. ""YOU MADE ME SOMETHING BETTER THAN A MINDLESS FOOL!"" he screams to the ceiling. Then he lungs at me, I expected an attack but the demon instead…hugs me. ""I can't be more grateful"" I don't know what to say, my wishes were answered, but I dread to know why such creature is happy to comply with requests for killing.
","V.

The following winter brought an event no less strange than Wilbur’s first trip outside the Dunwich region. Correspondence with the Widener Library at Harvard, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the British Museum, the University of Buenos Ayres, and the Library of Miskatonic University of Arkham had failed to get him the loan of a book he desperately wanted; so at length he set out in person, shabby, dirty, bearded, and uncouth of dialect, to consult the copy at Miskatonic, which was the nearest to him geographically. Almost eight feet tall, and carrying a cheap new valise from Osborn’s general store, this dark and goatish gargoyle appeared one day in Arkham in quest of the dreaded volume kept under lock and key at the college library—the hideous Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred in Olaus Wormius’ Latin version, as printed in Spain in the seventeenth century. He had never seen a city before, but had no thought save to find his way to the university grounds; where, indeed, he passed heedlessly by the great white-fanged watchdog that barked with unnatural fury and enmity, and tugged frantically at its stout chain.
      Wilbur had with him the priceless but imperfect copy of Dr. Dee’s English version which his grandfather had bequeathed him, and upon receiving access to the Latin copy he at once began to collate the two texts with the aim of discovering a certain passage which would have come on the 751st page of his own defective volume. This much he could not civilly refrain from telling the librarian—the same erudite Henry Armitage (A.M. Miskatonic, Ph. D. Princeton, Litt. D. Johns Hopkins) who had once called at the farm, and who now politely plied him with questions. He was looking, he had to admit, for a kind of formula or incantation containing the frightful name Yog-Sothoth, and it puzzled him to find discrepancies, duplications, and ambiguities which made the matter of determination far from easy. As he copied the formula he finally chose, Dr. Armitage looked involuntarily over his shoulder at the open pages; the left-hand one of which, in the Latin version, contained such monstrous threats to the peace and sanity of the world.
      “Nor is it to be thought,” ran the text as Armitage mentally translated it, “that man is either the oldest or the last of earth’s masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man’s truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them. They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraven, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again.”
      Dr. Armitage, associating what he was reading with what he had heard of Dunwich and its brooding presences, and of Wilbur Whateley and his dim, hideous aura that stretched from a dubious birth to a cloud of probable matricide, felt a wave of fright as tangible as a draught of the tomb’s cold clamminess. The bent, goatish giant before him seemed like the spawn of another planet or dimension; like something only partly of mankind, and linked to black gulfs of essence and entity that stretch like titan phantasms beyond all spheres of force and matter, space and time. Presently Wilbur raised his head and began speaking in that strange, resonant fashion which hinted at sound-producing organs unlike the run of mankind’s.
      “Mr. Armitage,” he said, “I calc’late I’ve got to take that book home. They’s things in it I’ve got to try under sarten conditions that I can’t git here, an’ it ’ud be a mortal sin to let a red-tape rule hold me up. Let me take it along, Sir, an’ I’ll swar they wun’t nobody know the difference. I dun’t need to tell ye I’ll take good keer of it. It wa’n’t me that put this Dee copy in the shape it is. . . .”
      He stopped as he saw firm denial on the librarian’s face, and his own goatish features grew crafty. Armitage, half-ready to tell him he might make a copy of what parts he needed, thought suddenly of the possible consequences and checked himself. There was too much responsiblity in giving such a being the key to such blasphemous outer spheres. Whateley saw how things stood, and tried to answer lightly.
      “Wal, all right, ef ye feel that way abaout it. Maybe Harvard wun’t be so fussy as yew be.” And without saying more he rose and strode out of the building, stooping at each doorway.
      Armitage heard the savage yelping of the great watchdog, and studied Whateley’s gorilla-like lope as he crossed the bit of campus visible from the window. He thought of the wild tales he had heard, and recalled the old Sunday stories in the Advertiser; these things, and the lore he had picked up from Dunwich rustics and villagers during his one visit there. Unseen things not of earth—or at least not of tri-dimensional earth—rushed foetid and horrible through New England’s glens, and brooded obscenely on the mountain-tops. Of this he had long felt certain. Now he seemed to sense the close presence of some terrible part of the intruding horror, and to glimpse a hellish advance in the black dominion of the ancient and once passive nightmare. He locked away the Necronomicon with a shudder of disgust, but the room still reeked with an unholy and unidentifiable stench. “As a foulness shall ye know them,” he quoted. Yes—the odour was the same as that which had sickened him at the Whateley farmhouse less than three years before. He thought of Wilbur, goatish and ominous, once again, and laughed mockingly at the village rumours of his parentage.
      “Inbreeding?” Armitage muttered half-aloud to himself. “Great God, what simpletons! Shew them Arthur Machen’s Great God Pan and they’ll think it a common Dunwich scandal! But what thing—what cursed shapeless influence on or off this three-dimensioned earth—was Wilbur Whateley’s father? Born on Candlemas—nine months after May-Eve of 1912, when the talk about the queer earth noises reached clear to Arkham— What walked on the mountains that May-Night? What Roodmas horror fastened itself on the world in half-human flesh and blood?”
      During the ensuing weeks Dr. Armitage set about to collect all possible data on Wilbur Whateley and the formless presences around Dunwich. He got in communication with Dr. Houghton of Aylesbury, who had attended Old Whateley in his last illness, and found much to ponder over in the grandfather’s last words as quoted by the physician. A visit to Dunwich Village failed to bring out much that was new; but a close survey of the Necronomicon, in those parts which Wilbur had sought so avidly, seemed to supply new and terrible clues to the nature, methods, and desires of the strange evil so vaguely threatening this planet. Talks with several students of archaic lore in Boston, and letters to many others elsewhere, gave him a growing amazement which passed slowly through varied degrees of alarm to a state of really acute spiritual fear. As the summer drew on he felt dimly that something ought to be done about the lurking terrors of the upper Miskatonic valley, and about the monstrous being known to the human world as Wilbur Whateley.
",False
"""The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated.""
BORELLUS

I. A Result and a Prologue

1.

From a private hospital for the insane near Providence, Rhode Island, there recently disappeared an exceedingly singular person. He bore the name of Charles Dexter Ward, and was placed under restraint most reluctantly by the grieving father who had watched his aberration grow from a mere eccentricity to a dark mania involving both a possibility of murderous tendencies and a profound and peculiar change in the apparent contents of his mind. Doctors confess themselves quite baffled by his case, since it presented oddities of a general physiological as well as psychological character.
      In the first place, the patient seemed oddly older than his twenty-six years would warrant. Mental disturbance, it is true, will age one rapidly; but the face of this young man had taken on a subtle cast which only the very aged normally acquire. In the second place, his organic processes shewed a certain queerness of proportion which nothing in medical experience can parallel. Respiration and heart action had a baffling lack of symmetry; the voice was lost, so that no sounds above a whisper were possible; digestion was incredibly prolonged and minimised, and neural reactions to standard stimuli bore no relation at all to anything heretofore recorded, either normal or pathological. The skin had a morbid chill and dryness, and the cellular structure of the tissue seemed exaggeratedly coarse and loosely knit. Even a large olive birthmark on the right hip had disappeared, whilst there had formed on the chest a very peculiar mole or blackish spot of which no trace existed before. In general, all physicians agree that in Ward the processes of metabolism had become retarded to a degree beyond precedent.
      Psychologically, too, Charles Ward was unique. His madness held no affinity to any sort recorded in even the latest and most exhaustive of treatises, and was conjoined to a mental force which would have made him a genius or a leader had it not been twisted into strange and grotesque forms. Dr. Willett, who was Ward's family physician, affirms that the patient's gross mental capacity, as gauged by his response to matters outside the sphere of his insanity, had actually increased since the seizure. Ward, it is true, was always a scholar and an antiquarian; but even his most brilliant early work did not shew the prodigious grasp and insight displayed during his last examinations by the alienists. It was, indeed, a difficult matter to obtain a legal commitment to the hospital, so powerful and lucid did the youth's mind seem; and only on the evidence of others, and on the strength of many abnormal gaps in his stock of information as distinguished from his intelligence, was he finally placed in confinement. To the very moment of his vanishment he was an omnivorous reader and as great a conversationalist as his poor voice permitted; and shrewd observers, failing to foresee his escape, freely predicted that he would not be long in gaining his discharge from custody.
      Only Dr. Willett, who brought Charles Ward into the world and had watched his growth of body and mind ever since, seemed frightened at the thought of his future freedom. He had had a terrible experience and had made a terrible discovery which he dared not reveal to his sceptical colleagues. Willett, indeed, presents a minor mystery all his own in his connexion with the case. He was the last to see the patient before his flight, and emerged from that final conversation in a state of mixed horror and relief which several recalled when Ward's escape became known three hours later. That escape itself is one of the unsolved wonders of Dr. Waite's hospital. A window open above a sheer drop of sixty feet could hardly explain it, yet after that talk with Willett the youth was undeniably gone. Willett himself has no public explanations to offer, though he seems strangely easier in mind than before the escape. Many, indeed, feel that he would like to say more if he thought any considerable number would believe him. He had found Ward in his room, but shortly after his departure the attendants knocked in vain. When they opened the door the patient was not there, and all they found was the open window with a chill April breeze blowing in a cloud of fine bluish-grey dust that almost choked them. True, the dogs howled some time before; but that was while Willett was still present, and they had caught nothing and shewn no disturbance later on. Ward's father was told at once over the telephone, but he seemed more saddened than surprised. By the time Dr. Waite called in person, Dr. Willett had been talking with him, and both disavowed any knowledge or complicity in the escape. Only from certain closely confidential friends of Willett and the senior Ward have any clues been gained, and even these are too wildly fantastic for general credence. The one fact which remains is that up to the present time no trace of the missing madman has been unearthed.
      Charles Ward was an antiquarian from infancy, no doubt gaining his taste from the venerable town around him, and from the relics of the past which filled every corner of his parents' old mansion in Prospect Street on the crest of the hill. With the years his devotion to ancient things increased; so that history, genealogy, and the study of colonial architecture, furniture, and craftsmanship at length crowded everything else from his sphere of interests. These tastes are important to remember in considering his madness; for although they do not form its absolute nucleus, they play a prominent part in its superficial form. The gaps of information which the alienists noticed were all related to modern matters, and were invariably offset by a correspondingly excessive though outwardly concealed knowledge of bygone matters as brought out by adroit questioning; so that one would have fancied the patient literally transferred to a former age through some obscure sort of auto-hypnosis. The odd thing was that Ward seemed no longer interested in the antiquities he knew so well. He had, it appears, lost his regard for them through sheer familiarity; and all his final efforts were obviously bent toward mastering those common facts of the modern world which had been so totally and unmistakably expunged from his brain. That this wholesale deletion had occurred, he did his best to hide; but it was clear to all who watched him that his whole programme of reading and conversation was determined by a frantic wish to imbibe such knowledge of his own life and of the ordinary practical and cultural background of the twentieth century as ought to have been his by virtue of his birth in 1902 and his education in the schools of our own time. Alienists are now wondering how, in view of his vitally impaired range of data, the escaped patient manages to cope with the complicated world of today; the dominant opinion being that he is 'lying low' in some humble and unexacting position till his stock of modern information can be brought up to the normal.
      The beginning of Ward's madness is a matter of dispute among alienists. Dr. Lyman, the eminent Boston authority, places it in 1919 or 1920, during the boy's last year at the Moses Brown School, when he suddenly turned from the study of the past to the study of the occult, and refused to qualify for college on the ground that he had individual researches of much greater importance to make. This is certainly borne out by Ward's altered habits at the time, especially by his continual search through town records and among old burying-grounds for a certain grave dug in 1771; the grave of an ancestor named Joseph Curwen, some of whose papers he professed to have found behind the panelling of a very old house in Olney Court, on Stampers' Hill, which Curwen was known to have built and occupied. It is, broadly speaking, undeniable that the winter of 1919-20 saw a great change in Ward; whereby he abruptly stopped his general antiquarian pursuits and embarked on a desperate delving into occult subjects both at home and abroad, varied only by this strangely persistent search for his forefather's grave.
      From this opinion, however, Dr. Willett substantially dissents; basing his verdict on his close and continuous knowledge of the patient, and on certain frightful investigations and discoveries which he made toward the last. Those investigations and discoveries have left their mark upon him; so that his voice trembles when he tells them, and his hand trembles when he tries to write of them. Willett admits that the change of 1919-20 would ordinarily appear to mark the beginning of a progressive decadence which culminated in the horrible and uncanny alienation of 1928; but believes from personal observation that a finer distinction must be made. Granting freely that the boy was always ill-balanced temperamentally, and prone to be unduly susceptible and enthusiastic in his responses to phenomena around him, he refuses to concede that the early alteration marked the actual passage from sanity to madness; crediting instead Ward's own statement that he had discovered or rediscovered something whose effect on human thought was likely to be marvellous and profound. The true madness, he is certain, came with a later change; after the Curwen portrait and the ancient papers had been unearthed; after a trip to strange foreign places had been made, and some terrible invocations chanted under strange and secret circumstances; after certain answers to these invocations had been plainly indicated, and a frantic letter penned under agonising and inexplicable conditions; after the wave of vampirism and the ominous Pawtuxet gossip; and after the patient's memory commenced to exclude contemporary images whilst his voice failed and his physical aspect underwent the subtle modification so many subsequently noticed.
      It was only about this time, Willett points out with much acuteness, that the nightmare qualities became indubitably linked with Ward; and the doctor feels shudderingly sure that enough solid evidence exists to sustain the youth's claim regarding his crucial discovery. In the first place, two workmen of high intelligence saw Joseph Curwen's ancient papers found. Secondly, the boy once shewed Dr. Willett those papers and a page of the Curwen diary, and each of the documents had every appearance of genuineness. The hole where Ward claimed to have found them was long a visible reality, and Willett had a very convincing final glimpse of them in surroundings which can scarcely be believed and can never perhaps be proved. Then there were the mysteries and coincidences of the Orne and Hutchinson letters, and the problem of the Curwen penmanship and of what the detectives brought to light about Dr. Allen; these things, and the terrible message in mediaeval minuscules found in Willett's pocket when he gained consciousness after his shocking experience.
      And most conclusive of all, there are the two hideous results which the doctor obtained from a certain pair of formulae during his final investigations; results which virtually proved the authenticity of the papers and of their monstrous implications at the same time that those papers were borne forever from human knowledge.

2.

      One must look back at Charles Ward's earlier life as at something belonging as much to the past as the antiquities he loved so keenly. In the autumn of 1918, and with a considerable show of zest in the military training of the period, he had begun his junior year at the Moses Brown School, which lies very near his home. The old main building, erected in 1819, had always charmed his youthful antiquarian sense; and the spacious park in which the academy is set appealed to his sharp eye for landscape. His social activities were few; and his hours were spent mainly at home, in rambling walks, in his classes and drills, and in pursuit of antiquarian and genealogical data at the City Hall, the State House, the Public Library, the Athenaeum, the Historical Society, the John Carter Brown and John Hay Libraries of Brown University, and the newly opened Shepley Library in Benefit Street. One may picture him yet as he was in those days; tall, slim, and blond, with studious eyes and a slight stoop, dressed somewhat carelessly, and giving a dominant impression of harmless awkwardness rather than attractiveness.
      His walks were always adventures in antiquity, during which he managed to recapture from the myriad relics of a glamorous old city a vivid and connected picture of the centuries before. His home was a great Georgian mansion atop the well-nigh precipitous hill that rises just east of the river; and from the rear windows of its rambling wings he could look dizzily out over all the clustered spires, domes, roofs, and skyscraper summits of the lower town to the purple hills of the countryside beyond. Here he was born, and from the lovely classic porch of the double-bayed brick facade his nurse had first wheeled him in his carriage; past the little white farmhouse of two hundred years before that the town had long ago overtaken, and on toward the stately colleges along the shady, sumptuous street, whose old square brick mansions and smaller wooden houses with narrow, heavy-columned Doric porches dreamed solid and exclusive amidst their generous yards and gardens.
      He had been wheeled, too, along sleepy Congdon Street, one tier lower down on the steep hill, and with all its eastern homes on high terraces. The small wooden houses averaged a greater age here, for it was up this hill that the growing town had climbed; and in these rides he had imbibed something of the colour of a quaint colonial village. The nurse used to stop and sit on the benches of Prospect Terrace to chat with policemen; and one of the child's first memories was of the great westward sea of hazy roofs and domes and steeples and far hills which he saw one winter afternoon from that great railed embankment, all violet and mystic against a fevered, apocalyptic sunset of reds and golds and purples and curious greens. The vast marble dome of the State House stood out in massive silhouette, its crowning statue haloed fantastically by a break in one of the tinted stratus clouds that barred the flaming sky.
      When he was larger his famous walks began; first with his impatiently dragged nurse, and then alone in dreamy meditation. Farther and farther down that almost perpendicular hill he would venture, each time reaching older and quainter levels of the ancient city. He would hesitate gingerly down vertical Jenckes Street with its bank walls and colonial gables to the shady Benefit Street corner, where before him was a wooden antique with an Ionic-pilastered pair of doorways, and beside him a prehistoric gambrel-roofer with a bit of primal farmyard remaining, and the great Judge Durfee house with its fallen vestiges of Georgian grandeur. It was getting to be a slum here; but the titan elms cast a restoring shadow over the place, and the boy used to stroll south past the long lines of the pre-Revolutionary homes with their great central chimneys and classic portals. On the eastern side they were set high over basements with railed double flights of stone steps, and the young Charles could picture them as they were when the street was new, and red heels and periwigs set off the painted pediments whose signs of wear were now becoming so visible.
      Westward the hill dropped almost as steeply as above, down to the old ""Town Street"" that the founders had laid out at the river's edge in 1636. Here ran innumerable little lanes with leaning, huddled houses of immense antiquity; and fascinated though he was, it was long before he dared to thread their archaic verticality for fear they would turn out a dream or a gateway to unknown terrors. He found it much less formidable to continue along Benefit Street past the iron fence of St. John's hidden churchyard and the rear of the 1761 Colony House and the mouldering bulk of the Golden Ball Inn where Washington stopped. At Meeting Street - the successive Gaol Lane and King Street of other periods - he would look upward to the east and see the arched flight of steps to which the highway had to resort in climbing the slope, and downward to the west, glimpsing the old brick colonial schoolhouse that smiles across the road at the ancient Sign of Shakespear's Head where the Providence Gazette and Country-Journal was printed before the Revolution. Then came the exquisite First Baptist Church of 1775, luxurious with its matchless Gibbs steeple, and the Georgian roofs and cupolas hovering by. Here and to the southward the neighbourhood became better, flowering at last into a marvellous group of early mansions; but still the little ancient lanes led off down the precipice to the west, spectral in their many-gabled archaism and dipping to a riot of iridescent decay where the wicked old waterfront recalls its proud East India days amidst polyglot vice and squalor, rotting wharves, and blear-eyed ship-chandleries, with such surviving alley names as Packet, Bullion, Gold, Silver, Coin, Doubloon, Sovereign, Guilder, Dollar, Dime, and Cent.
      Sometimes, as he grew taller and more adventurous, young Ward would venture down into this maelstrom of tottering houses, broken transoms, tumbling steps, twisted balustrades, swarthy faces, and nameless odours; winding from South Main to South Water, searching out the docks where the bay and sound steamers still touched, and returning northward at this lower level past the steep-roofed 1816 warehouses and the broad square at the Great Bridge, where the 1773 Market House still stands firm on its ancient arches. In that square he would pause to drink in the bewildering beauty of the old town as it rises on its eastward bluff, decked with its two Georgian spires and crowned by the vast new Christian Science dome as London is crowned by St. Paul's. He liked mostly to reach this point in the late afternoon, when the slanting sunlight touches the Market House and the ancient hill roofs and belfries with gold, and throws magic around the dreaming wharves where Providence Indiamen used to ride at anchor. After a long look he would grow almost dizzy with a poet's love for the sight, and then he would scale the slope homeward in the dusk past the old white church and up the narrow precipitous ways where yellow gleams would begin to peep out in small-paned windows and through fanlights set high over double flights of steps with curious wrought-iron railings.
      At other times, and in later years, he would seek for vivid contrasts; spending half a walk in the crumbling colonial regions northwest of his home, where the hill drops to the lower eminence of Stampers' Hill with its ghetto and negro quarter clustering round the place where the Boston stage coach used to start before the Revolution, and the other half in the gracious southerly realm about George, Benevolent, Power, and Williams Streets, where the old slope holds unchanged the fine estates and bits of walled garden and steep green lane in which so many fragrant memories linger. These rambles, together with the diligent studies which accompanied them, certainly account for a large amount of the antiquarian lore which at last crowded the modern world from Charles Ward's mind; and illustrate the mental soil upon which fell, in that fateful winter of 1919-20, the seeds that came to such strange and terrible fruition.
      Dr. Willett is certain that, up to this ill-omened winter of first change, Charles Ward's antiquarianism was free from every trace of the morbid. Graveyards held for him no particular attraction beyond their quaintness and historic value, and of anything like violence or savage instinct he was utterly devoid. Then, by insidious degrees, there appeared to develop a curious sequel to one of his genealogical triumphs of the year before; when he had discovered among his maternal ancestors a certain very long-lived man named Joseph Curwen, who had come from Salem in March of 1692, and about whom a whispered series of highly peculiar and disquieting stories clustered.
      Ward's great-great-grandfather Welcome Potter had in 1785 married a certain ""Ann Tillinghast, daughter of Mrs. Eliza, daughter to Capt. James Tillinghast"", of whose paternity the family had preserved no trace. Late in 1918, whilst examining a volume of original town records in manuscript, the young genealogist encountered an entry describing a legal change of name, by which in 1772 a Mrs. Eliza Curwen, widow of Joseph Curwen, resumed, along with her seven-year-old daughter Ann, her maiden name of Tillinghast; on the ground 'that her Husband's name was become a publick Reproach by Reason of what was knowne after his Decease; the which confirming an antient common Rumour, tho' not to be credited by a loyall Wife till so proven as to be wholely past Doubting'. This entry came to light upon the accidental separation of two leaves which had been carefully pasted together and treated as one by a laboured revision of the page numbers.
      It was at once clear to Charles Ward that he had indeed discovered a hitherto unknown great-great-great-grandfather. The discovery doubly excited him because he had already heard vague reports and seen scattered allusions relating to this person; about whom there remained so few publicly available records, aside from those becoming public only in modern times, that it almost seemed as if a conspiracy had existed to blot him from memory. What did appear, moreover, was of such a singular and provocative nature that one could not fail to imagine curiously what it was that the colonial recorders were so anxious to conceal and forget; or to suspect that the deletion had reasons all too valid.
      Before this, Ward had been content to let his romancing about old Joseph Curwen remain in the idle stage; but having discovered his own relationship to this apparently ""hushed-up"" character, he proceeded to hunt out as systematically as possible whatever he might find concerning him. In this excited quest he eventually succeeded beyond his highest expectations; for old letters, diaries, and sheaves of unpublished memoirs in cobwebbed Providence garrets and elsewhere yielded many illuminating passages which their writers had not thought it worth their while to destroy. One important sidelight came from a point as remote as New York, where some Rhode Island colonial correspondence was stored in the Museum at Fraunces' Tavern. The really crucial thing, though, and what in Dr. Willett's opinion formed the definite source of Ward's undoing, was the matter found in August 1919 behind the panelling of the crumbling house in Olney Court. It was that, beyond a doubt, which opened up those black vistas whose end was deeper than the pit.

","Ordinarily, one wouldn't think of the Dreamers' Inn as a mausoleum any more than one would think of the Golden Goose restaurant as a crypt. Journeymen who are just passing through Leight, and rooming at the Inn as a matter of convenience, will see nothing amiss. There are a few splintering floorboards here, and a couple of sagging roof beams there, but these things are only natural for a lodging house that's stood for more than two centuries. I, however, with my wary eyes and cautious steps, notice more ominous flaws: the dry rot in the walls, for instance, and the stairs that are almost murderously steep. How on Earth does Monsieur Thènard keep the Inn open despite its decay and stale air? Perhaps he himself has had a part in spreading rumors about it, challenging brave visitors to spend the entire night in a haunted hotel.
Then again, maybe it all boils down to the Inn being the most immediate place for a night's slumber. When one is tired and hungry, weary from sitting in a carriage or on horseback, then why not stay here?
""Good evening, Mademoiselle Dawson,"" announces an oily voice. ""Welcome to the Dreamers' Inn.""
My spine stiffens. If this place is a tomb, then Monsieur Thènard is the shifty undertaker who'd give you your six feet of earth once you had passed, then dig you up if your relatives couldn't pay the maintenance fees. His smile resembles a scythe's blade: the one that Death wields, and with which he harvests you.
""Good evening to you too, Monsieur Thènard,"" I tell him as civilly as I can. ""I'd like to rent a room, please.""
""Certainly."" He pauses. ""I am surprised to see you here. Can you not stay at your father's house for free?""
""Of course, but I have my reasons. If you must know, I'm on an errand to quell all the rumors about this hotel. You and I could both stand to have more revenue coming from it, after all. What better way to do that than to put vicious village talk to rest? You know what the people say: it's haunted, and not by your ordinary ghosts. They also claim that certain people, once they lie down to sleep here, never awaken. Pah! If someone wakes up dead, pardon the silly expression, then their heart failed during the night, or they perished from some other natural cause. No devilry is here, and I'm out to prove it once and for all.""
""Mais oui,"" he says, grinning. ""We two know that, but how are you going to convince the rest of Leight?""
""I intend to spend three consecutive nights here, not just one, and come out none the worse for wear. I know that the people here typically don't listen to a godless spinster. However, if I tell them that there's nothing to fear at the Dreamers' Inn - save a few usual nightmares from sleeping in a strange place - perhaps they will take heed, and tell their traveling friends and relatives to pay this establishment a visit.""
""A splendid plan,"" Thènard replies. ""I hope it works, and here is the cost of three nights' lodging."" When he reveals it, I wince. It's not exorbitant, meaning that I can still afford it, but barely. With Theodora receiving her month's wages yesterday, plus my paying an ample bill of goods from the grocer, I'll be spent out by the end of my stay. I'm glad that it's almost the end of October: Hallowe'en will arrive in exactly three days. Once it's November, my monthly pension allowance will be full again, and I can start all over.
Still, I feel like a fool. Truly, is there any 'starting over' when one keeps going round in the same circle?
""Mademoiselle?"" 
Startled out of my reverie, I pay him. ""Agathe is still serving food in the kitchen,"" Thènard tells me, referring to his wizened maid-of-all-work. ""There aren't enough guests for her to have served dinner in the dining room, so I'm glad you've come."" All of a sudden, he leans forward and winks at me. ""Should you require company upstairs…""
""Give me my key, and I'll be off.""
He opens a drawer behind his porter's desk and hands it over, smirking. ""Room two, second floor.""
",False
"Mantineus-I'm more Mr. Briggs, than the I this time.
Disclaimer-I own nothing!
I
""I'm gonna burn.""
That's when I knew it got really bad. He was always a little nuts, but that. Saying it with an innocent smile and certainty. It sent chills up my spine and I experienced a fear I have not faced in my entire life.
It was at this point that I realized that he really was beyond saving.
How he got like this, god only knows. Before he was admitted to my sanitarium I checked his background. It was clean. His mother and father were decently sane, as were his grandparents and siblings. I checked hospital files and came up with nothing out of the ordinary. Colds, flu, and a few scrapes. Normal for any boy.
Upon his arrival I waited in my office, glancing at the anniversary clock that adorned my desk religiously. Despite it's bad memory, I couldn't stand to throw it away, so in my office it has stayed. Poor Lucinda.
With annoyance, I watched as an orderly struggled to seat him in a chair. He was antsy and, from what I gathered, he felt he needed to be somewhere else.
""Hello,"" I said gently, hoping to direct his attention on me so that the orderly could strap him in the chair.
For my protection as well as his. On the ride here he was without a straitjacket and chipped his nails and teeth trying to escape and then from trying to fatally tear his wrists open with the aforementioned parts. God only knew what he would try to do to me if I stepped out of his line.
Finally, we were alone. He thrashed about for a minute before I began.
""Hello,"" I began. ""I'm your new doctor.""
From there he stared at me with eyes of steel. It unnerved me; it was like he was looking through me and saw my soul. He kept staring and my psychologist's nerve was faltering. Mentally I was panicking and I wondered if, due to his stoic stare, if he was looking deeper than my outer appearance of fear.
My childhood flashed before my eyes.
""So doc,"" He began, his voice was gravely and deep. ""What's your first question?""
This took me by surprise that I had to clear my throat, tap my papers back into place, and start again.
""Yes, well. You see, I've checked your records, Mr.-""
""Don't say it!"" He screamed, face twisting into pure, unimaginable fear. ""They might not know I'm here!""
""Who's 'they'?""
His snapped. As if the fearful shell broke and revealed this manic, demented smile. It seemed sadistic and menacing, yet what he said was pure jibber-jabber.
""Them, doc!"" He said. His face changed again; he was stumped. ""You mean you don't know, doc? Surely you've encountered others like me.""
""No,"" I agreed. ""I'm afraid I haven't.""
He began to laugh. It was long and insane. Yet, as abruptly as it began, it ended and he could have passed for a sane person within that silent second.
""Then give up this case, doc."" He said, a chuckle escaping his throat. ""Give it to someone who knows!""
If only I listened.
II
As the sessions progressed, I admit to feeling a slight disheartenment. He would reveal nothing of his condition other than ramblings like before. Though, one day he did something of note.
He was rocking back and forth in a big, exaggerated way. He would swing forward, mumble something then swing back and shout a made up word.
For example, on his first forward rock he would mumble something akin to a sneeze then shout ""Fhtagn!"" Yog-soth ""Fhtagn!"" Oz-soth ""Fhtagn!""
He then began to say another strange word, of which I surmised were names, when he stopped. He got so far as ""Nya"" when he began to giggle like a lunatic and rock his torso rapidly while repeating that strange made up word.
""Fhtagn! Fhtagn! Fhtagn!""
""Mr.-""
He began to scream as if in agony. From previous sessions, I knew it was most likely from my trying to utter his name. But, unlike previous times where he would instantly stop, he began to sob. His face flushed crimson, his eyes became slits from whence tears began to flow.
""The Necronomicon!"" He screamed, his sobs becoming more intense. ""De…Destroy….Destroy it!""
""What?""
""Destroy the Necronomicon!"" He shouted, he looked a mixture of agony and rage. ""Destroy it! Destroy that damn book!""
Five minutes after that outburst he stopped. Despite the still flushed face and teary eyes, he looked as if it never happened. And with that deep, gravelly voice he spoke.
""Destroy it doc."" The intense glare he gave me sent me flashes of hellfire and promises of pain and horror the likes of which I'll never comprehend.
""Destroy it. Don't look at it, don't read it, and-whatever you do-Don't look at the back page!""
Two sessions after that he seemed to follow back into our usual routine. That is, until our third. It was then that he said what I knew was the truth. He was gone to the sane world. And despite our other methods, they would not be enough to bring him back.
""I'm gonna burn."" He said, then, with an exaggerated nod he began. ""Yep. I'm gonna burn that damn book.""
""And why would you burn it?"" I asked.
He clammed up.
Miskatonic University. I have been there, of course, as a student of psychology. Hoping to better myself in understanding the people around me; a curse of a recluse, I'm afraid. Though I have never heard of such a book, my curiosity had gotten the better of me and I sent a letter to the Miskatonic Library.
A few days later a package arrived for me with a note. The Librarian was slightly against me looking at it, but considering my profession, she allowed it. But I was to return it within a timely manner. I did not flip through it. I cannot explain why, but I felt a sense of doom upon glancing at the ancient tome.
But, at least, I had something to talk about in our next session.
III
""I have the book."" I started.
His eyes picked up. He smiled like a child at Christmas morning before unwrapping his gifts. He started to shake the chair he was chained to. Rapidly he asked questions like ""You didn't read it did you?"" and ""Did you burn it? If you did, can I see the ashes?""
""No, I didn't read it."" I confessed. ""Nor,"" I placed the book on my desk. ""Have I burned it; as you can see.""
""Burn it!"" He shouted. ""Burn it!""
His eyes grew wide in fear.
""They'll be coming! They sense it's presence! It's an unholy beacon! Burn it! Burn it and destroy their only chance for this world!""
""Not yet."" I said. ""Not until you tell me why such a normal man would succumb to madness without any reason.""
His emotions changed from frantic to anger in a flash. He started to growl and shake the chair more violently. Either it is due to the cases similar to a grandmother gaining superhuman strength when their grandchild is in danger, or perhaps they did not switch the chains and after dealing with his constant mood swings, they gave. Either way, he was free.
Free and wild, like a bull, he charged towards me. I don't know what compelled me to throw the book, but I did. I threw it before he was upon it. And I know, right there, I made a mistake.
For when it landed, it landed on the last page where an artist's rendition of the writer was present. I stared upon it, mouth agape.
""No!"" He shouted. ""It's all over now."" He began to sob. ""I didn't want to do this!"" He then sparked up, looking hopeful. ""Wait! It's not too late! You can still reject it! Reject the responsibility and let humanity thrive!""
""What are you talking about?"" I managed to say.
My mind was beginning to form an explanation as to why the famous ""Mad Arab"" looked like me.
""Yes, traitor, what are you talking about?""
""Nyar…""He cracked up. ""Nyar…"" He chuckled like a mad man.
The new comer was dressed in Ancient Egyptian robes and crown. He was magnificent and regal in appearance. But another sense took over and I wanted to run away from him as quickly as possible. But something caught my eye. Without the help of hand or wind, the pages began to flip back until it reached its goal. The page prior had a picture of him as he was seen now. To the right were the bold words:
Nyarlathotep: The Crawling Chaos
He turned towards me. Within those cold black eyes I could see a swirling mass, similar to a galaxy, only different. And, if I strained my ears, I swore I heard the mad playing of deranged flautists.
""Do forgive me, Abdul."" He said. ""But…""
""That's not my name."" I began. ""My name is…""
""Not important."" He said, cutting me off. ""What is, is who you were and who you are meant to be. Abdul Hazred, the Mad Arab and priest to both Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth.""
Flashes of desert expanses flew by within my mind. A lone man walked alone the desert, walking through an old, abandoned city that once belonged to a reptilian race of humanoids. How he dedicated his remaining years(which was not many) to write the book of which they wanted and who's information he gained through dreams and through physical means.
He died and his soul became one with Yog-Sothoth until thirty-four years ago. I was plagued with nightmares and horrible sights that now no longer fill me with dread. Though what my parents did still leaves a mark. But then again, it happened to Abdul, too.(1)
""What is needed of me, Oh mighty Nyarlathotep?""
""No!"" He shouted, but Nyarlathotep shot him an angry glare.
""I will deal with you later."" He turned and faced me once more. ""But for now, Abdul must be briefed on what is expected of him.""
You have written The Necronomicon rather well. But, They now wish for you to write one more piece to it. This one will explain what will happen once They are awakened and how to stop the stars from changing again. You'll receive these in dreams once more. But this time, you'll receive help in the form of Mr. Briggs, there.""
He cowered in fear of his own surname.
""That is, if you need help.""
""No,"" I said. ""I shall write this myself. Besides, you called him a traitor. He is not fit to help write such a glorious book.""
""No!"" He shouted. He had a letter opener in his hands. He was digging through my desk while we were talking. ""He will not write the missing chapter!""
He lunged at me, but was stopped by a loud buzzing sound.
""I'd run if I were you."" Nyarlathotep said.
Mr. Briggs did not heed his warning, and lunged at me once more. A Mi-go crashed through the window and grabbed him with his crab-like claws and whisked him out of my office and the sanitarium all together, being prepared for his trip to Yuggoth.
""Do not disappoint me."" He said and vanished.
------ ------
1) I know, according to historians, that Abdul Hazred was actually Lovecraft. But, since he's a made up character, why not give him a made up childhood? I am not implying that he was beaten as a child!
","IV.

For a decade the annals of the Whateleys sink indistinguishably into the general life of a morbid community used to their queer ways and hardened to their May-Eve and All-Hallows orgies. Twice a year they would light fires on the top of Sentinel Hill, at which times the mountain rumblings would recur with greater and greater violence; while at all seasons there were strange and portentous doings at the lonely farmhouse. In the course of time callers professed to hear sounds in the sealed upper story even when all the family were downstairs, and they wondered how swiftly or how lingeringly a cow or bullock was usually sacrificed. There was talk of a complaint to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; but nothing ever came of it, since Dunwich folk are never anxious to call the outside world’s attention to themselves.
      About 1923, when Wilbur was a boy of ten whose mind, voice, stature, and bearded face gave all the impressions of maturity, a second great siege of carpentry went on at the old house. It was all inside the sealed upper part, and from bits of discarded lumber people concluded that the youth and his grandfather had knocked out all the partitions and even removed the attic floor, leaving only one vast open void between the ground story and the peaked roof. They had torn down the great central chimney, too, and fitted the rusty range with a flimsy outside tin stovepipe.
      In the spring after this event Old Whateley noticed the growing number of whippoorwills that would come out of Cold Spring Glen to chirp under his window at night. He seemed to regard the circumstance as one of great significance, and told the loungers at Osborn’s that he thought his time had almost come.
      “They whistle jest in tune with my breathin’ naow,” he said, “an’ I guess they’re gittin’ ready to ketch my soul. They know it’s a-goin’ aout, an’ dun’t calc’late to miss it. Yew’ll know, boys, arter I’m gone, whether they git me er not. Ef they dew, they’ll keep up a-singin’ an’ laffin’ till break o’ day. Ef they dun’t they’ll kinder quiet daown like. I expeck them an’ the souls they hunts fer hev some pretty tough tussles sometimes.”
      On Lammas Night, 1924, Dr. Houghton of Aylesbury was hastily summoned by Wilbur Whateley, who had lashed his one remaining horse through the darkness and telephoned from Osborn’s in the village. He found Old Whateley in a very grave state, with a cardiac action and stertorous breathing that told of an end not far off. The shapeless albino daughter and oddly bearded grandson stood by the bedside, whilst from the vacant abyss overhead there came a disquieting suggestion of rhythmical surging or lapping, as of the waves on some level beach. The doctor, though, was chiefly disturbed by the chattering night birds outside; a seemingly limitless legion of whippoorwills that cried their endless message in repetitions timed diabolically to the wheezing gasps of the dying man. It was uncanny and unnatural—too much, thought Dr. Houghton, like the whole of the region he had entered so reluctantly in response to the urgent call.
      Toward one o’clock Old Whateley gained consciousness, and interrupted his wheezing to choke out a few words to his grandson.
      “More space, Willy, more space soon. Yew grows—an’ that grows faster. It’ll be ready to sarve ye soon, boy. Open up the gates to Yog-Sothoth with the long chant that ye’ll find on page 751 of the complete edition, an’ then put a match to the prison. Fire from airth can’t burn it nohaow.”
      He was obviously quite mad. After a pause, during which the flock of whippoorwills outside adjusted their cries to the altered tempo while some indications of the strange hill noises came from afar off, he added another sentence or two.
      “Feed it reg’lar, Willy, an’ mind the quantity; but dun’t let it grow too fast fer the place, fer ef it busts quarters or gits aout afore ye opens to Yog-Sothoth, it’s all over an’ no use. Only them from beyont kin make it multiply an’ work. . . . Only them, the old uns as wants to come back. . . .”
      But speech gave place to gasps again, and Lavinia screamed at the way the whippoorwills followed the change. It was the same for more than an hour, when the final throaty rattle came. Dr. Houghton drew shrunken lids over the glazing grey eyes as the tumult of birds faded imperceptibly to silence. Lavinia sobbed, but Wilbur only chuckled whilst the hill noises rumbled faintly.
      “They didn’t git him,” he muttered in his heavy bass voice.
      Wilbur was by this time a scholar of really tremendous erudition in his one-sided way, and was quietly known by correspondence to many librarians in distant places where rare and forbidden books of old days are kept. He was more and more hated and dreaded around Dunwich because of certain youthful disappearances which suspicion laid vaguely at his door; but was always able to silence inquiry through fear or through use of that fund of old-time gold which still, as in his grandfather’s time, went forth regularly and increasingly for cattle-buying. He was now tremendously mature of aspect, and his height, having reached the normal adult limit, seemed inclined to wax beyond that figure. In 1925, when a scholarly correspondent from Miskatonic University called upon him one day and departed pale and puzzled, he was fully six and three-quarters feet tall.
      Through all the years Wilbur had treated his half-deformed albino mother with a growing contempt, finally forbidding her to go to the hills with him on May-Eve and Hallowmass; and in 1926 the poor creature complained to Mamie Bishop of being afraid of him.
      “They’s more abaout him as I knows than I kin tell ye, Mamie,” she said, “an’ naowadays they’s more nor what I know myself. I vaow afur Gawd, I dun’t know what he wants nor what he’s a-tryin’ to dew.”
      That Hallowe’en the hill noises sounded louder than ever, and fire burned on Sentinel Hill as usual; but people paid more attention to the rhythmical screaming of vast flocks of unnaturally belated whippoorwills which seemed to be assembled near the unlighted Whateley farmhouse. After midnight their shrill notes burst into a kind of pandaemoniac cachinnation which filled all the countryside, and not until dawn did they finally quiet down. Then they vanished, hurrying southward where they were fully a month overdue. What this meant, no one could quite be certain till later. None of the country folk seemed to have died—but poor Lavinia Whateley, the twisted albino, was never seen again.
      In the summer of 1927 Wilbur repaired two sheds in the farmyard and began moving his books and effects out to them. Soon afterward Earl Sawyer told the loungers at Osborn’s that more carpentry was going on in the Whateley farmhouse. Wilbur was closing all the doors and windows on the ground floor, and seemed to be taking out partitions as he and his grandfather had done upstairs four years before. He was living in one of the sheds, and Sawyer thought he seemed unusually worried and tremulous. People generally suspected him of knowing something about his mother’s disappearance, and very few ever approached his neighbourhood now. His height had increased to more than seven feet, and shewed no signs of ceasing its development.
",False
"Dry hacking. The sound assaults my ears, and makes my heart begin to flutter. It's unlike any paroxysm I've ever heard, even when Theodora contracted pneumonia two years ago. What's far worse is I know, instinctively, that it is not she whose body is wracked with illness. It's Lemuel Dawson, on his deathbed.
""Hold on!"" My voice is lighter, younger, not yet burdened with the weight of sorrow after his passing. Like any good nurse, I rush to his side and wipe the bloody spittle from his lips with a handkerchief. This is no mere dream; it's a recollection, and that's exactly what I did back then. ""I'm here as always, Father."" 
""Millie,"" he says weakly, and smiles through the pain of nearly-constant coughing. ""Come closer."" I do, and wince at his fevered breath. ""There's something that I must tell you, at long last."" Every word of his is belabored. His voice reminds me of a desert wind, scorched with sand. Even his sickroom has that acrid air, as if we were in the middle of the Sahara instead of Massachusetts. I myself am hot, and know Father must be. However, I dare not leave his chamber to fetch a wet cloth for fear of missing his last words.
""They have come for me, and…you must know all that I do before they come for you. Find the keys,"" he says before being consumed with another coughing fit, ""in the bottom drawer of my desk. Bring them here."" Again I follow his directions, yet hesitantly. Throughout his life, Father had been very particular about who was allowed to touch his personal possessions, and rummage through his desks and cabinets. Even our taciturn Theodora, who'd never reveal any of his secrets even under duress, was forbidden from doing so. Father gave explicit instructions on which rooms were to be cleaned (kitchen, parlor, and so on), and which were not (his spartan bedroom after Mother died, and private study). That's why it puzzles me, in this nighttime vision as well as in life, to hear him make such a request. Nevertheless, I hurry to obey it.
It takes several tugs of the aforementioned bottom drawer, sticky with disuse, to get it to yield. When it does, I cough at the dust within and pull out a small iron ring with five keys. Each one of them is different, as keys naturally are, yet these five have been bent into the most curious shapes and configurations. I'm tempted to stand beside the desk and stare at them to my heart's content, fingering their bizarre metal shafts, but Father's waiting. Not knowing what he'll tell me, or what he wants me to do with the keys, I take them over to his bedside. Greedily, he grasps them in his long fingers and takes my right hand in his.
""First,"" he announces, slipping one of the unique keys into my palm. ""Second,"" he then says, doing the same with another. ""Third. Closet. Church."" With sudden horror, I realize what they open: the three locks to the door of his forbidden study, the closet within it, and the only church to which he's ever belonged. ""The one on Gallows Hill,"" he clarifies. I wonder why he's called it that instead of Cemetery Hill. Perhaps, now that he's facing his own hangman in the form of an illness that not even Leight's doctor can diagnose, images of the Purge are haunting him. ""Read and learn all you can, when you're prepared. Take care."" 
I couldn't stop myself: ""Why 'take care'? Is something wrong? Who are 'they', Father? Please explain!"" 
""It would take…too long."" He slowly smiles, exposing all of his teeth in the white rictus of a death's-head. Pressing the keys so firmly into my palm that they leave mild scrapes and indentations afterward, Father coughs once more. ""Believe."" With that, his withered hand releases mine and falls to his side limply. He is no longer alive, and our conversation has drained me so much that I can do nothing but sob in fright.
I wake up to find my pillow damp, and my eyes glistening. There is no one around save for me, and the all-encompassing darkness to hide my tears. It's been seventeen years, almost to the day, since Lemuel Dawson departed this mortal world. I feel ashamed of myself, because after nearly two decades, I should not be so stricken with grief. Father, at this point in time, should be a distant memory, a framed portrait on the wall of my house and mind. However, he is not. He has evidently remained with me, in a locked compartment of my mental faculties that only dreams can reopen. Why now? Why here, in this very Inn? If the keys that he gave me so long ago - and which I've reconfined to the drawer from which I took them - are back in his old house, then why didn't I dream about them back there? This is too strange, and scary.
When you're prepared, Father had told me, read and learn all you can. Prepared for what, I wonder?
","Ordinarily, one wouldn't think of the Dreamers' Inn as a mausoleum any more than one would think of the Golden Goose restaurant as a crypt. Journeymen who are just passing through Leight, and rooming at the Inn as a matter of convenience, will see nothing amiss. There are a few splintering floorboards here, and a couple of sagging roof beams there, but these things are only natural for a lodging house that's stood for more than two centuries. I, however, with my wary eyes and cautious steps, notice more ominous flaws: the dry rot in the walls, for instance, and the stairs that are almost murderously steep. How on Earth does Monsieur Thènard keep the Inn open despite its decay and stale air? Perhaps he himself has had a part in spreading rumors about it, challenging brave visitors to spend the entire night in a haunted hotel.
Then again, maybe it all boils down to the Inn being the most immediate place for a night's slumber. When one is tired and hungry, weary from sitting in a carriage or on horseback, then why not stay here?
""Good evening, Mademoiselle Dawson,"" announces an oily voice. ""Welcome to the Dreamers' Inn.""
My spine stiffens. If this place is a tomb, then Monsieur Thènard is the shifty undertaker who'd give you your six feet of earth once you had passed, then dig you up if your relatives couldn't pay the maintenance fees. His smile resembles a scythe's blade: the one that Death wields, and with which he harvests you.
""Good evening to you too, Monsieur Thènard,"" I tell him as civilly as I can. ""I'd like to rent a room, please.""
""Certainly."" He pauses. ""I am surprised to see you here. Can you not stay at your father's house for free?""
""Of course, but I have my reasons. If you must know, I'm on an errand to quell all the rumors about this hotel. You and I could both stand to have more revenue coming from it, after all. What better way to do that than to put vicious village talk to rest? You know what the people say: it's haunted, and not by your ordinary ghosts. They also claim that certain people, once they lie down to sleep here, never awaken. Pah! If someone wakes up dead, pardon the silly expression, then their heart failed during the night, or they perished from some other natural cause. No devilry is here, and I'm out to prove it once and for all.""
""Mais oui,"" he says, grinning. ""We two know that, but how are you going to convince the rest of Leight?""
""I intend to spend three consecutive nights here, not just one, and come out none the worse for wear. I know that the people here typically don't listen to a godless spinster. However, if I tell them that there's nothing to fear at the Dreamers' Inn - save a few usual nightmares from sleeping in a strange place - perhaps they will take heed, and tell their traveling friends and relatives to pay this establishment a visit.""
""A splendid plan,"" Thènard replies. ""I hope it works, and here is the cost of three nights' lodging."" When he reveals it, I wince. It's not exorbitant, meaning that I can still afford it, but barely. With Theodora receiving her month's wages yesterday, plus my paying an ample bill of goods from the grocer, I'll be spent out by the end of my stay. I'm glad that it's almost the end of October: Hallowe'en will arrive in exactly three days. Once it's November, my monthly pension allowance will be full again, and I can start all over.
Still, I feel like a fool. Truly, is there any 'starting over' when one keeps going round in the same circle?
""Mademoiselle?"" 
Startled out of my reverie, I pay him. ""Agathe is still serving food in the kitchen,"" Thènard tells me, referring to his wizened maid-of-all-work. ""There aren't enough guests for her to have served dinner in the dining room, so I'm glad you've come."" All of a sudden, he leans forward and winks at me. ""Should you require company upstairs…""
""Give me my key, and I'll be off.""
He opens a drawer behind his porter's desk and hands it over, smirking. ""Room two, second floor.""
",True
"Hanoi, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
June 24, 2011.
""Hey, we're here. Get up if you don't want to wake up in Hue!""
Joseph Clayton was shaken awake by the hand of one of his classmates on his shoulder. He was sitting in the back of a taxi van... the only one left sitting, actually, as the others had already disembarked to enter the government office they were parked in front of.
Which probably meant that he was left to pay the fare.
After he payed (as seemed to be his lot on this trip), he followed his classmates and his professor into the government office where they hoped to finally receive their travel permits. He hadn't gotten much of sleep on the plane; a mixture of excitement in the face of overseas travel and sheer jet-lag had conspired to leave him weary and light headed until he got a few hours sleep, which the taxi ride had partially afforded him.
And in that sleep...
The dream had come as a stark, clear memory. When Marie had said that she wasn't going to join him at the Miskatonic campus in Arkham for what would be their first year of university, he had been devastated. His first questions, rushed and frantic, had been about the cause of such a change. She certainly had the SAT score to qualify and student debt could be handled with relative ease. Had she decided to forgo post-secondary to concentrate on her stake in the restaurant? Had financial problems struck and prevented admissions from being paid?
Was it something about him?
Her answers, far more controlled than his frenzied speculation, had all been in the negative. Her SAT scores were good, student loans were still open and she still intended to go for a degree in Biology at Miskatonic. It was just... after she'd gotten that phonograph from her parents' home village, the repayment had been a promise to come and spend a year back in the ""Old Country"" as soon as she could. It would only be for a year and then she would return, ready for university and all accompaniments.
That had been very nearly one year before. She had promised him that she would be coming back in the summer of 2011... but after she had arrived in Vietnam, all contact had stopped cold. Her parents, when asked about her condition, always responded with affirmations that she would return and that she was fine... but as winter wore onto spring, subtle hints of doubt and worry had crept into their voices. Had they even been receiving any news from their daughter and if not, then why not? Had something gone terribly wrong?
As it happened, more baffling events awaited inside.
""What do you mean, restricted?"" Joseph asked the Communist Party bureaucrat sitting across the desk from him. Of course, due to the facts that first, said bureaucrat was a government employee and second, they were not alone in the room, Joseph had been careful not to sound too brunt in his tone. A trung sior Sergeant, wearing the forest green uniform of the Vietnam Border Defence Force (VPA), stood by the door of the office, both watching and guarding.
Relieved at being able to shed his stilted English after Joseph exhibited a decent grasp of the Vietnamese language, the bureaucrat put forth what he knew of the situation. ""Civilian access is almost completely denied inside the area you requested. To be honest, that section of the border has been troublesome ever since the war. We get reports of smugglers, poachers, bandits, H'mong insurgents... every type of violent counter-revolutionary you can think of, this region seems to have it. The local Bru farmers aren't much help, but they generally don't bother others and seem to accept the military presence we keep there."" The bureaucrat shifted his gaze from Joseph to Professor Neville Andover, the leader of this particular expedition. ""I'm sorry, but there's nothing that can be done without high level authorization.""
As a response to this, Neville Andover did not get upset. He did not resign himself to failure. He did not even try to ask if there was any other avenue of entry or way to access the information he needed. He just donned an odd, amused smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling behind his wire rim glasses. ""I assume that General Vo is still the Secretary for the Border Forces?"" He asked, almost distractedly. When the official answered yes, Professor Andover reached into the inside of his light cotton jacket and pulled out a small, metal case. From this case, he removed a single paper card of purest black, embossed with an emerald green ""Delta"" symbol and a capital ""Y"" of gold in the center of that hollow triangle. ""I have been in contact with Comrade Vo for the last six months, planning this expedition as an act of cooperation between our two governments and as a boon for my University. He knows that card; show it or describe it to him... you maywant to run it by General Tran as well. Either way, they will give you the answer you need.""
As the bureaucrat took the card and then as the Border Defense sergeant took it from him and headed out of the room, Joesph wondered about his professor and the oddities that surrounded him. The first time he had ever seen the Professor, it had been in his High School Auditorium as Marie had performed the Stork Dance... and Joseph had noticed strange things. In their senior year of High School, both he and Marie had received reference letters to Miskatonic University in Arkham, a town in Essex county. When he had arrived at Miskatonic (without Marie), he had been shocked that the professor for his Cultural Anthropology class was not only the one who had given him his reference but was also the man who had he had seen three years before.
And then there were his classmates, three of whom had also come on this expedition. Many of them had received similar letters from Prof. Andover and most of those, though not relaying specifics, had said that they had found the circumstances equally strange. Two who had gotten references were on this very trip with them. The first was Tracy Williams from the farm country of Northwest Virginia, a girl with blond hair quite a few shades lighter than Josephs own brassy brown and the class Nippon-Nut, being both obsessed with Anime and Manga as well as being Japanese-proficient. The second was Albert Noyes, a young man who has part white, part black and a little Algonquin-Indian from a small hamlet in southern Vermont. His specialties were technology, math and Mandarin Chinese. The third member of retinue was a young man named Malone who... frankly, was a mystery to the entire class. However, he had volunteered for this trip and his grades had been excellent so his place on the roster had been assured.
But there was still a nagging question at the back of his mind: why? Why had they received offers to go to an obscure if admittedly exceptional regional university when the big names had all passed them over? Why had they been gathered from all across the United States by a single professor? And why, it seemed, did it feel like there was such a big connection between the missing member of Dr. Andovers ""collection"" and the reason behind this expedition?
Why did it feel as if Marie was somehow connected to this?
Eventually, the sergeant came back and informed the bureaucrat of General Vo's express permission for the Professor and his students to enter the exclusion zone as well as General Tran's confirmation, before handing the card back to Neville Andover. Joseph knew that academics could sometimes have friends in high and unusual places, but counting on ... no, expecting the approval of not just one, but two ranking Generals in a non-allied nation? This seemed crazy, certifiably insane even.
But then, so did spectral storks and spoonbills.
Northernmost Quang Binh Province, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
June 29, 2011
Despite the calm look on the professors face, something about the current situation made Joseph Clayton distinctly ill at ease.
They had spent the last two days trudging up into the Annamite mountains after leaving the fertile coastal plain. At the last village with road access, they had ditched their vehicles and backpacked up the ridges and trails, counting on a guide from the local Bru people to lead them to... whatever Prof. Andover was looking for. The fact that the guide was now legging it quite quickly back down the misty path told Joseph that something had either gone incredibly wrong or incredibly right.
Now, Neville Andover was chanting, seemingly trying to communicate with something deep in the thick underbrush on either side of the worn, overgrown gully that had been called a trail. The language was almost intellig ible to Joseph, being a form of Mon-Khmer linked to the classical Vietnamese he had studied, perhaps with a few hints of Muong intermixed. However, the syntax and grammer were archaic to say the least. From some of the words used it even seemed to be achingly familiar, almost as if...
With a sudden realization of shock and the smell of grilled pork and Bac Bon Dzhow a memory in his nostrils, Joseph realized where he had encountered this form of Vietic before.
But the shocks were not over.
Spun around by Albert Noyes to see something, Joseph gazed upward to see a human figure standing upon the high bank, glancing down at them with hard, measuring eyes. Undoubtedly masculine, the figure was of a man of slightly darker skin than the farmers of the coast (though the features were similar) and of greater height than either them or the native Bru. Clothed only in a white cotton kilt with geometric designs in black and a leather girdle, this man carried a white flatbow decorated with bands of green, blue and red while a bronze dagger rested at his hip. His head was shaved of all hair, and black designs were tattooed from the crown of the scalp to the jawline, with more tattoos covering his arms, chest and lower legs.
The fact that an arrow was nocked in the string of his bow put the four young people on edge, with Malone and Joesph himself tightening the grips on the hilts of their machetes in anticipation of a hopeless fight. More men in similar dress and tattoos, some with bronze slashing swords, some with bronze-headed spears and others with flatbows, appeared out of the forest on either side of them. Now that Joseph could get a better look at them in the dim light filtering down through the forest canopy and the mist, their arm tattoos began looking very similar to those borne by Marie's parents while those on their faces, while different in design, were still similar in form.
All the while, Prof. Andover kept up the low chanting, of which Joseph could pick out individual words: ""friend"", ""gods"", ""village"", ""priest"", ""comrade"" and at least one invocation of Ho Chi Minh among them. To this, these strange men seemed to confer with each other though glances and nods before took one took a short, bamboo tube from his girdle, put one end to his mouth, took a deep breath and blew.
As the silvery-blue powder erupted from the tube, settled on the heads of the trekking academics and they each lost consciousness in turn, Joseph wondered if this could get any worse.
Meanwhile, Spoonbill Village
Tsan Pho Dao had been the Chief Priest of this village for many years, ever since the death of his father in the closing days of the American War. In that span of years, he had seen many futures and advised his people based on those futures. He had called down both ruin and plenty by invoking the power of the gods of his people. He alone, in a feat outside even the power of the hereditary village chiefs, had communicated with the Instrument of their gods, a being possessed of both boundless knowledge and an absolutely rotten temper. He also, most importantly, had an absolutely perfect memory of his entire life... and that of his father, and his father before him.
To be perfectly honest, he held a tremendous amount of power within this village. The ancestor shrines belonged to families while the hunters had their own little shrines up the mountain where midnight rituals were performed to gather poison for the tips of arrows and darts. But those rituals needed to be performed by the minor priests under his command. This temple was the spiritual center of his people for most of the year and the temple with it's darkened wood walls lit only by feeble braziers whose light was twisted by the smoke of rare and powerful incenses, with it's figurines of gods and demons carved from nephrite and jadeite brought from deep below the earth... was his domain. His and no one else'. He divined the future when possible, he performed the rites and as a result, it was he who had taken countless lives in sacrifice over the course of his adulthood: chickens, pigs, goats, buffalo... people.
As he sat at a low table in his private sanctuary, trying to divine some course for a question that had faced him for most of a year, he noticed something. One of the golden discs he used for divination, a coin looted from a Chinese caravan many centuries ago, stood up on its rim and began to roll. Following the curve of failing momentum, the coin finally came to rest at a specific point on the table, a place that held indication of the future.
Visitors... and not the ""ketchup"" kind of visitors.
Several Hours Later, Close to the Laos Border
The answer to Joseph Clayton's earlier question was a definite yes. When he had awoken, he had found his wrists and ankles bound, the bindings looped over a pole carried by two men with him and the other students suspended like deer carcasses. The Professor, on the other hand, had not been bound, but had found transport by sitting in a large basket suspended from one of the poles by a cord, carried by a pair of men. They had been going downhill from the crest of a ridge and were now leaving the forest, coming onto a road. First, they passed under a wooden gate where roosting spoonbills had been carved into the posts and a sun flanked by two dragons had been carved into the beams above the road.
Then Joseph saw where they were headed. A village of perhaps thirty houses was visible in the valley bottom while narrow terraces had been cut into the hills above, green with growing rice. The view quickly vanished as the men began heading into the village itself but sight was soon replaced with sound. The quiet of the forest was supplanted by the cacophony of a hundred sounds: chickens and pigs grunted and clucked as the animals rooted below the houses and around the garbage heaps while odd-looking reddish dogs, lazing in the sun on the porches of the outermost houses, whined in surprise at the new arrivals. The sounds of tools and primitive machinery clunked melodiously. The sounds of people also were audible: talking, laughing, shouting and even a few low notes of women's work songs were possible for Joseph to pick out of the general buzz... a buzz which also included Albert trying to reason with their captors and Tracy displaying an unusually foul mouth toward same.
Soon, people began to notice the men bringing in captives and a few even began to gather along the path as they entered the village, joining their dogs (or Dholes, as they were now identifiable as) who had come to sniff. It was mostly men, older boys and children who came out to watch while the women and the elderly usually went no further than windows and the porches of the stilt-houses that lined the road. Here, even hanging upside down, Joseph could notice a few things about the dress and appearance of the people
Frankly... it was a bit odd.
From what he knew, the Vietnamese national costume (in it's modern form) placed a heavy emphasis on trousers, an item of clothing that he noticed was rather conspicuously absent here. Everyone here seemed to be wearing variations on one basic outfit in either brown or black: knee-length cotton kilts, short-sleeved cotton jackets (mostly with their front fastenings closed) and either rough-woven conical hats or simple cloths tied over their heads. The men's hair appeared to be cut short to the point where one could vaguely make out the tattoos on their scalp while children varied between the same shortness for boys and a single, long braid for the girls.
Eventually they arrived in a great or square before what appeared to be the temple: a ponderous structure of wood and brick perched upon massive stone foundations, it's sloping roofs flaring outward as if to shroud the surrounding houses from the scrutiny of the heavens. Around them, a crowd had gathered on all sides, an air of excitement buzzing in the air. Men exited the house across the square from the temple entrance and despite the calm demeanour of Professor Andover, words began filtering through to Joseph that began sounding more and more disturbing; words like ""kill"", ""sacrifice"" and ""ritual"". But another word came, one that sent darker imaginings and images rambling through his sensation-saturated mind.
The word ""eat"".
""WAIT! STOP!""
Joseph knew those words as well... as well as that voice!
Out of the crowd rushed a figure dressed much like the others: brown kilt and jacket, the latter partially open to reveal a yem undergarment and with a straw hat on her head. As Joseph finally began taking in other details, he noticed the tattooed lines and whimsical designs on her lower legs and arms and on her face, lines and vaguely triangular patterns that almost resembled the features of an orangutan.
Her face... behind all the tattooing, the face of this woman was still as unmistakable to Joseph as the first day they had met in Kindergarten. To this sudden recognition, the young man could only exclaim his surprise as a soothingly familiar name.
""Marie?""
","IX.

Friday morning Armitage, Rice, and Morgan set out by motor for Dunwich, arriving at the village about one in the afternoon. The day was pleasant, but even in the brightest sunlight a kind of quiet dread and portent seemed to hover about the strangely domed hills and the deep, shadowy ravines of the stricken region. Now and then on some mountain-top a gaunt circle of stones could be glimpsed against the sky. From the air of hushed fright at Osborn’s store they knew something hideous had happened, and soon learned of the annihilation of the Elmer Frye house and family. Throughout that afternoon they rode around Dunwich; questioning the natives concerning all that had occurred, and seeing for themselves with rising pangs of horror the drear Frye ruins with their lingering traces of the tarry stickiness, the blasphemous tracks in the Frye yard, the wounded Seth Bishop cattle, and the enormous swaths of disturbed vegetation in various places. The trail up and down Sentinel Hill seemed to Armitage of almost cataclysmic significance, and he looked long at the sinister altar-like stone on the summit.
      At length the visitors, apprised of a party of State Police which had come from Aylesbury that morning in response to the first telephone reports of the Frye tragedy, decided to seek out the officers and compare notes as far as practicable. This, however, they found more easily planned than performed; since no sign of the party could be found in any direction. There had been five of them in a car, but now the car stood empty near the ruins in the Frye yard. The natives, all of whom had talked with the policemen, seemed at first as perplexed as Armitage and his companions. Then old Sam Hutchins thought of something and turned pale, nudging Fred Farr and pointing to the dank, deep hollow that yawned close by.
      “Gawd,” he gasped, “I telled ’em not ter go daown into the glen, an’ I never thought nobody’d dew it with them tracks an’ that smell an’ the whippoorwills a-screechin’ daown thar in the dark o’ noonday. . . .”
      A cold shudder ran through natives and visitors alike, and every ear seemed strained in a kind of instinctive, unconscious listening. Armitage, now that he had actually come upon the horror and its monstrous work, trembled with the responsibility he felt to be his. Night would soon fall, and it was then that the mountainous blasphemy lumbered upon its eldritch course. Negotium perambulans in tenebris. . . . The old librarian rehearsed the formulae he had memorised, and clutched the paper containing the alternative one he had not memorised. He saw that his electric flashlight was in working order. Rice, beside him, took from a valise a metal sprayer of the sort used in combating insects; whilst Morgan uncased the big-game rifle on which he relied despite his colleague’s warnings that no material weapon would be of help.
      Armitage, having read the hideous diary, knew painfully well what kind of a manifestation to expect; but he did not add to the fright of the Dunwich people by giving any hints or clues. He hoped that it might be conquered without any revelation to the world of the monstrous thing it had escaped. As the shadows gathered, the natives commenced to disperse homeward, anxious to bar themselves indoors despite the present evidence that all human locks and bolts were useless before a force that could bend trees and crush houses when it chose. They shook their heads at the visitors’ plan to stand guard at the Frye ruins near the glen; and as they left, had little expectancy of ever seeing the watchers again.
      There were rumblings under the hills that night, and the whippoorwills piped threateningly. Once in a while a wind, sweeping up out of Cold Spring Glen, would bring a touch of ineffable foetor to the heavy night air; such a foetor as all three of the watchers had smelled once before, when they stood above a dying thing that had passed for fifteen years and a half as a human being. But the looked-for terror did not appear. Whatever was down there in the glen was biding its time, and Armitage told his colleagues it would be suicidal to try to attack it in the dark.
      Morning came wanly, and the night-sounds ceased. It was a grey, bleak day, with now and then a drizzle of rain; and heavier and heavier clouds seemed to be piling themselves up beyond the hills to the northwest. The men from Arkham were undecided what to do. Seeking shelter from the increasing rainfall beneath one of the few undestroyed Frye outbuildings, they debated the wisdom of waiting, or of taking the aggressive and going down into the glen in quest of their nameless, monstrous quarry. The downpour waxed in heaviness, and distant peals of thunder sounded from far horizons. Sheet lightning shimmered, and then a forky bolt flashed near at hand, as if descending into the accursed glen itself. The sky grew very dark, and the watchers hoped that the storm would prove a short, sharp one followed by clear weather.
      It was still gruesomely dark when, not much over an hour later, a confused babel of voices sounded down the road. Another moment brought to view a frightened group of more than a dozen men, running, shouting, and even whimpering hysterically. Someone in the lead began sobbing out words, and the Arkham men started violently when those words developed a coherent form.
      “Oh, my Gawd, my Gawd,” the voice choked out. “It’s a-goin’ agin, an’ this time by day! It’s aout—it’s aout an’ a-movin’ this very minute, an’ only the Lord knows when it’ll be on us all!”
      The speaker panted into silence, but another took up his message.
      “Nigh on a haour ago Zeb Whateley here heerd the ’phone a-ringin’, an’ it was Mis’ Corey, George’s wife, that lives daown by the junction. She says the hired boy Luther was aout drivin’ in the caows from the storm arter the big bolt, when he see all the trees a-bendin’ at the maouth o’ the glen—opposite side ter this—an’ smelt the same awful smell like he smelt when he faound the big tracks las’ Monday mornin’. An’ she says he says they was a swishin’, lappin’ saound, more nor what the bendin’ trees an’ bushes could make, an’ all on a suddent the trees along the rud begun ter git pushed one side, an’ they was a awful stompin’ an’ splashin’ in the mud. But mind ye, Luther he didn’t see nothin’ at all, only just the bendin’ trees an’ underbrush.
      “Then fur ahead where Bishop’s Brook goes under the rud he heerd a awful creakin’ an’ strainin’ on the bridge, an’ says he could tell the saound o’ wood a-startin’ to crack an’ split. An’ all the whiles he never see a thing, only them trees an’ bushes a-bendin’. An’ when the swishin’ saound got very fur off—on the rud towards Wizard Whateley’s an’ Sentinel Hill—Luther he had the guts ter step up whar he’d heerd it furst an’ look at the graound. It was all mud an’ water, an’ the sky was dark, an’ the rain was wipin’ aout all tracks abaout as fast as could be; but beginnin’ at the glen maouth, whar the trees had moved, they was still some o’ them awful prints big as bar’ls like he seen Monday.”
      At this point the first excited speaker interrupted.
      “But that ain’t the trouble naow—that was only the start. Zeb here was callin’ folks up an’ everybody was a-listenin’ in when a call from Seth Bishop’s cut in. His haousekeeper Sally was carryin’ on fit ter kill—she’d jest seed the trees a-bendin’ beside the rud, an’ says they was a kind o’ mushy saound, like a elephant puffin’ an’ treadin’, a-headin’ fer the haouse. Then she up an’ spoke suddent of a fearful smell, an’ says her boy Cha’ncey was a-screamin’ as haow it was jest like what he smelt up to the Whateley rewins Monday mornin’. An’ the dogs was all barkin’ an’ whinin’ awful.
      “An’ then she let aout a turrible yell, an’ says the shed daown the rud had jest caved in like the storm hed blowed it over, only the wind wa’n’t strong enough to dew that. Everybody was a-listenin’, an’ we could hear lots o’ folks on the wire a-gaspin’. All to onct Sally she yelled agin, an’ says the front yard picket fence hed just crumbled up, though they wa’n’t no sign o’ what done it. Then everybody on the line could hear Cha’ncey an’ ol’ Seth Bishop a-yellin’ tew, an’ Sally was shriekin’ aout that suthin’ heavy hed struck the haouse—not lightnin’ nor nothin’, but suthin’ heavy agin the front, that kep’ a-launchin’ itself agin an’ agin, though ye couldn’t see nothin’ aout the front winders. An’ then . . . an’ then . . .”
      Lines of fright deepened on every face; and Armitage, shaken as he was, had barely poise enough to prompt the speaker.
      “An’ then . . . Sally she yelled aout, ’O help, the haouse is a-cavin’ in’ . . . an’ on the wire we could hear a turrible crashin’, an’ a hull flock o’ screamin’ . . . jest like when Elmer Frye’s place was took, only wuss. . . .”
      The man paused, and another of the crowd spoke.
      “That’s all—not a saound nor squeak over the ’phone arter that. Jest still-like. We that heerd it got aout Fords an’ wagons an’ raounded up as many able-bodied menfolks as we could git, at Corey’s place, an’ come up here ter see what yew thought best ter dew. Not but what I think it’s the Lord’s jedgment fer our iniquities, that no mortal kin ever set aside.”
      Armitage saw that the time for positive action had come, and spoke decisively to the faltering group of frightened rustics.
      “We must follow it, boys.” He made his voice as reassuring as possible. “I believe there’s a chance of putting it out of business. You men know that those Whateleys were wizards—well, this thing is a thing of wizardry, and must be put down by the same means. I’ve seen Wilbur Whateley’s diary and read some of the strange old books he used to read; and I think I know the right kind of spell to recite to make the thing fade away. Of course, one can’t be sure, but we can always take a chance. It’s invisible—I knew it would be—but there’s a powder in this long-distance sprayer that might make it shew up for a second. Later on we’ll try it. It’s a frightful thing to have alive, but it isn’t as bad as what Wilbur would have let in if he’d lived longer. You’ll never know what the world has escaped. Now we’ve only this one thing to fight, and it can’t multiply. It can, though, do a lot of harm; so we mustn’t hesitate to rid the community of it.
      “We must follow it—and the way to begin is to go to the place that has just been wrecked. Let somebody lead the way—I don’t know your roads very well, but I’ve an idea there might be a shorter cut across lots. How about it?”
      The men shuffled about a moment, and then Earl Sawyer spoke softly, pointing with a grimy finger through the steadily lessening rain.
      “I guess ye kin git to Seth Bishop’s quickest by cuttin’ acrost the lower medder here, wadin’ the brook at the low place, an’ climbin’ through Carrier’s mowin’ and the timber-lot beyont. That comes aout on the upper rud mighty nigh Seth’s—a leetle t’other side.”
      Armitage, with Rice and Morgan, started to walk in the direction indicated; and most of the natives followed slowly. The sky was growing lighter, and there were signs that the storm had worn itself away. When Armitage inadvertently took a wrong direction, Joe Osborn warned him and walked ahead to shew the right one. Courage and confidence were mounting; though the twilight of the almost perpendicular wooded hill which lay toward the end of their short cut, and among whose fantastic ancient trees they had to scramble as if up a ladder, put these qualities to a severe test.
      At length they emerged on a muddy road to find the sun coming out. They were a little beyond the Seth Bishop place, but bent trees and hideously unmistakable tracks shewed what had passed by. Only a few moments were consumed in surveying the ruins just around the bend. It was the Frye incident all over again, and nothing dead or living was found in either of the collapsed shells which had been the Bishop house and barn. No one cared to remain there amidst the stench and tarry stickiness, but all turned instinctively to the line of horrible prints leading on toward the wrecked Whateley farmhouse and the altar-crowned slopes of Sentinel Hill.
      As the men passed the site of Wilbur Whateley’s abode they shuddered visibly, and seemed again to mix hesitancy with their zeal. It was no joke tracking down something as big as a house that one could not see, but that had all the vicious malevolence of a daemon. Opposite the base of Sentinel Hill the tracks left the road, and there was a fresh bending and matting visible along the broad swath marking the monster’s former route to and from the summit.
      Armitage produced a pocket telescope of considerable power and scanned the steep green side of the hill. Then he handed the instrument to Morgan, whose sight was keener. After a moment of gazing Morgan cried out sharply, passing the glass to Earl Sawyer and indicating a certain spot on the slope with his finger. Sawyer, as clumsy as most non-users of optical devices are, fumbled a while; but eventually focussed the lenses with Armitage’s aid. When he did so his cry was less restrained than Morgan’s had been.
      “Gawd almighty, the grass an’ bushes is a-movin’! It’s a-goin’ up—slow-like—creepin’ up ter the top this minute, heaven only knows what fur!”
      Then the germ of panic seemed to spread among the seekers. It was one thing to chase the nameless entity, but quite another to find it. Spells might be all right—but suppose they weren’t? Voices began questioning Armitage about what he knew of the thing, and no reply seemed quite to satisfy. Everyone seemed to feel himself in close proximity to phases of Nature and of being utterly forbidden, and wholly outside the sane experience of mankind.
",False
"Northernmost Quang Binh Province, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
July 2, 2011
Two young adults walked up the path beside the bronze-casters shop to the barren hillside and the forest edge beyond. ""So, how do you like things so far?"" Marie asked as she and Joseph made their way up the rough-hewn stone steps. Their destination was the house of the village woodcutter and charcoal-burner, a place that also doubled as a furniture workshop and, importantly for this journey, the villages' firearms armory.
""Not that bad. I've been doing domestic work for the past few days but neither Noc nor his wife seems to really be a slave driver. Actually, they feel more like people who understand that they're training a new servant."" Joseph thought on something. ""I'm actually surprised that he and the other hunters allowing me to accompany them. They neither seem to respect me or anyone who would stoop to use a gun, so I wonder why they changed their attitude.""
It was here that Marie began ruminating on something, an old thought that had given her more than her share of bad dreams. ""There are some things worth surrendering pride for, Joseph. Tell me, have you seen those weird scars on the ankles and arms of Nocs wife?""
""You mean those marks that look like Giant Squid wounds? Yes, but what about them?"" Joseph suddenly stopped. ""What are they, anyway?""
Having stopped also, Marie sighed, a sense of foreboding covering her features. ""When I asked that myself, they didn't tell me much more than the stories I'd already heard when I was a kid: legends about ghosts, devils from the mist, 'shadows that drink blood' is what they called them sometimes. But what I got here is that those Shugoran priests that saved my people weren't just going to somewhere. They were running ifrom/i somewhere, someone or something, something that no one is willing to talk any further about."" Marie started forward again at such a pace that her boyfriend had to hurry to catch up.
Getting the feeling that nothing more was going to be answered on that subject for a good while, Joseph changed track. ""How are the others getting on? I've been stuck in the house most of the day and I haven't really had a chance to talk to either the Prof or my classmates.""
Happy to shift from thoughts of chilling horror, Marie chuckled with increasing mirth as she began going back up the trail. ""From what I've heard, Albert's been filming every step in the bronze making process that he can, not to mention all the casting processes and various uses of equipment. The only reason that he hasn't been thrown out yet is because the family's elder patriarch has taken a liking to… well, not just him, but all of you guys, just from the descriptions alone. Your Professor and his assistant have basically locked themselves in the temple: no word out yet, but I assume that they're observing normal operations. As for Tracy…"" Here, Marie began acting a little odd. ""She talks in her sleep, if you didn't know.""
""Really?"" Joseph responded interestedly. Not reacting the way that she had feared, Marie relaxed a little from the paranoia she had been wrangling with.
""Yeah, and the strange thing is that it's in… well, tree-ish. And then there's the tattooing on her back as well."" Marie went on talking, relieved that her fear seemed to have been senseless.
Before he could answer his girlfriends increasingly chatty descriptions, a thought crossed Josephs mind on exactly why such a thing might be mentioned. ""Why would you ask me if I knew…"" Then the realization hit him and he stopped cold. ""Were you thinking that… Tracy and I?""
Marie stopped as well. ""It's not unknown to happen, you know."" Marie answered the implied question almost defensively, as if trying to justify her momentary paranoia. ""Sweethearts get separated and sometimes… one finds companionship elsewhere. Especially with, you know."" Marie tapped the side of her head, indicating the ""visitors"" that had first cursed Joseph Claytons existence during High School.
Joseph snorted in an amused, disparaging way. ""Please don't give them that much credit. I've ignored, rebuked and insulted those jerks so many times that I've made a virtual bloodsport out of it. Besides, if I'd made any moves towards Tracy, Albert would have killed me.""
""Wait, those two… they're together?"" Marie asked, wondering how she'd missed that.
""Intimately so, yes."" This was all Joseph was willing to say, himself not wishing to examine too closely the memory of walking in on his dorm-mate and his girl when they had neglected to put a sock on the doorknob. ""Anyway, as to these voices, I went to the psychology department to see if I could discover just what was causing it.""
Marie waited a heartbeat before plunging into the vital question. ""And what did they say?"" If her boyfriend did indeed have Schizophrenia, then he needed help: drugs to control the symptoms and perhaps therapy to help him conquer whatever dark corners of his psyche were feeding these voices.
If it was something else… then perhaps the local sorcerers might need to be consulted before long.
Joseph sighed. 'Whatever is going on inside my head, the geeks with the scanning equipment are pretty sure that this isn't a case of medical Schizophrenia. They say that the symptoms are all wrong, the voices aren't persuasive enough… and that I don't have any of the telltale injuries on the brain that would suggest medical reasons. And then there was the time they hooked me up to the EEG during one of my 'episodes'."" He paused, wondering just how to proceed but, since he was already experiencing strange things, he decided just to press on. ""The guys swore that, before the equipment shorted out, at least two additional wavelengths were being read beside mine."" With a shrug, Joseph summed up his thoughts. ""Ever since I came here and heard all of the seemingly crazy stories from you and the others… I don't know, but what I've gone through just makes sense now, at least in knowing that it actually can happen.""
Marie smiled. Yes, we definitely need to consult the priests. ""Come on, we've talked enough and you need to get that rifle before you head out.""
And rifles there were, all secured inside a triple locked room in the back corner of the woodcutter's house. They looked like Berthier carbines, French bolt-action repeaters from the First World War… but they were not the only guns present. ""Is that a Hotchkiss?"" Joseph asked in a voice combining bemusement and astonishment. Among the rifles and a few, scattered revolvers sat a machine-gun still on its tripod and looking impossibly well-maintained for being kept in the back room of a house located in a tropical moist forest.
""An M1914 by the looks of it, if the pictures I've seen are at all accurate. There's a story behind it, but I only know that only the oldest elders know it."" Marie replied, having picked up of the Berthier Carbines and handing it to Joseph. The ammunition was kept in a chest under a trapdoor in the main part of the house as a safety measure so they'd have to go back to pick it up. But then she asked the question that she probably should have asked before they left the village proper. ""Speaking of guns, since when did you shoot?""
""There's a gun range in Arkham; Tracy and Albert invited me along for a few lessons before Thanksgiving. She's the one with actual hunting experience and I think he only came along to check out the engineering on the pieces. It wasn't that much fun, but I think what I learned in getting my license will help on this."" Joseph began inspecting the carbine he had been given, finding it oiled and well-maintained as any other firearm in the room. There was a question that had to be asked, however?
Where did they get all these guns?
15 minutes Later
Marie walked up the stairs to her grandparent's house. She was supposed to act as a translator and informant for the expedition, having prior contacts inside the community and being a member first by blood and more recently by initiation. Truth be told, she had a feeling that old Tsan was really acting as gatekeeper in his interactions with Professor Andover while she was playing the part of a more convenient and mobile ambassador, Tsan having never left the temple save by palanquin in almost forty years.
Walking in the door, Marie was unprepared for another surprise. She saw Tracy sitting before the camera as her Grandmother and Aunt watched, waiting to begin filming the day's questions and activities, even making a short introductory statement... but not in English.
""And as soon as the translator gets here, we'll begin the second day of... Hey Marie, you almost scared me there."" Here was an audible note of guilt as Tracy hastily switched from the strange language that she had been using to the carefully modulated, Patsy Cline-accented English she had used since Marie had met her. Marie had heard it, and Tracy knew that she had heard... and Marie knew that Tracy knew.
""Yeah, I've gotten that reaction a few times since I got here."" Marie joked, knowing that humor had the power to break tension. ""So... what language were you speaking in anyway? I'm afraid I didn't recognize anything about it."" Her female elders watched closely, knowing that something had happened but being ignorant of other languages, were unsure of exactly what.
Tracy grinned bitterly. ""I'd be more surprised if you did recognize it. It's... well, it's not really a language per se, but a patois of a couple languages, with Early Modern English, Ohio Valley Shawnee, Coastal Algonquian, some Iroquoian loanwords having to do with ritual and bits of Eastern Siouan."" Tracy let out the deep breath she had been using to list all those languages. She was getting more comfortable now. ""I guess it won't do any harm if I told you, seeing as we're almost in the same boat.""
Tracy beckoned Marie to sit, turning off the camera as she did. ""The kids in my town learn it... well, sort of as a first language; English is really more of a first-and-a-half language for us. We got exposed to it through TV and then when we went to school, but most of our formative years were spent listening to and absorbing the patois around the house. Most of us never really let go of it as a language for our own private conversations.""
Marie reflected on this... but was also noting some of the features on Tracy's face: the high, rounded cheeks, her high-bridged nose, the way that her eyes were less the bright crystal blue of stereotype and more of a dark, cloudy blue resembling ultramarine. ""I hope you don't mind me saying this, Tracy but does your family have any Native American ancestry? I don't mean to pry, but you do kind of have the look.""
Tracy considered this for a moment before giving an affirmative nod. ""My father's paternal grandmother was from the Oklahoma Kiowa. My mother, as far as can be traced, is also about an eighth, this time one-eighth Shawnee, which seems to be the median for Longhouse."" She got an odd, contemplative look on my face. ""That's another one of those things that we try not to mention to outsiders, even though they tend to notice it anyway. Back in the old days, admitting it would have been a quick ticket to using a segregated washroom or worse. And now?"" Tracy shrugged. ""Now it's considered cool, while the inbreeding still makes us look like freaks.""
Marie decided to test something, just for her own sake. ""Albert doesn't seem to think you're a freak."" The more she thought about it, she had more in common with Tracy than first realized. Both of them had lived life right on the edge of themselves and their kin being recognized as something other, something foreign to the perceived natural order of the world. Both of them could sense the threat of possible revelation... and knew what it was to try to trust someone with these secrets.
""Hey, you're talking about a guy whose family has worked for alien mushroom bugs for the last hundred years. A bit of mild inbreeding is probably the most normal thing Al's ever experienced."" Here there was definitely affection to her voice, a cue that no matter what other strangeness they were involved in, there was a loving relationship between the two.
At this thought Marie smiled, thanking the ancestors for a little bit of normalcy in this year-long cavalcade of oddities that she had flung herself into. Then another question sprang forth. ""Did you know about the whole alien thing when you guys were at Miskatonic?""
Tracy shook her head. ""No, but then again, he was always kinda spacey."" Marie couldn't help but giggle at this bad pun. Tracy went on, the affection still in her voice. ""Seriously, the thing about Miskatonic is that, after awhile, you begin getting the feeling that almost everyone else is holding something close to their chest, thinking each word over before saying it. It's then that you realize that... you're not alone, that almost everyone else is as paranoid as you are, having something to hide."" She looked towards Marie. ""Everyone except for your Joseph, that is. The only thing strange about him that I noticed was that romance was nowhere on his radar at all.""
""You'd be surprised, actually."" Marie answered cryptically. Before Tracy could ask, she turned back the camera back on, signaling the beginning of the interview session.
That evening
Sweaty, hot, dirty and exhausted, Joseph Clayton exited the forest with Noc and the other hunters. Between all of them, the hunters had brought down a Sambar stag and three small muntjacs. Joseph, for his part, had escaped being gored by a wild boar only by dodging its charge, rolling into a hollow under a log and then shooting it in the head at point-blank range when it tried to go after him. For this feat, the hunters designated him ""master of the pit"" when they roasted it at tonight's feast. It had sounded like an honorable title, but Joseph could guess that they were making him little more than a cook, a traditionally female position.
Still, it was an in and it would probably be research gold.
He was entirely less enthusiastic about what else was coming back with them.
When he and the group of hunters came into the village proper, he saw Marie and the taller, paler form of Tracy coming towards him, having been up on the family terrace transplanting rice seedlings. Due to her fair skin, Tracy was wearing the largest hat she could while her arms and shins had been slathered with sunblock. Marie had already taken hers off.
As they neared him, Marie slowed to a stop, seeing the grim look on Josephs face. Tracy looked at her in confusion, then at Joseph and from his stony face understood that something was wrong. ""What is it?"" Marie asked her boyfriend.
Joseph sighed. ""When the hunters brought us in, were we supposed to be for any kind of important sacrifice?""
""Well, the Rhinoceros Festival is supposed to happen any day now. It's when we recharge the mist that surrounds the village to keep us hidden."" Marie looked around Joseph to where one of the hunters was leading a group of people into the village. They looked like quite a bedraggled bunch, many of them thin and in questionable health. There were also two women who may have been considered beautiful if not for the look in their eyes that they had been through several levels of hell before coming here.
But for all these conditions, they did not look frightened of their tattooed guides.
Noticing where Marie was looking, Joseph offered explanation. ""We met up with them about a mile down the trail. Apparently the government sent up street people as some fresh blood for you guys. And that's not all. Apparently..."" Here, he lowered his voice ""One of the families that were living incognito in Vinh got killed a few nights ago: Father, mother, twelve year old boy... from what I heard it sounded like some sort of animal tore them up inside their apartment... and no blood was spilled.""
Tracy looked like she was going to vomit at the news, while a look of dread overcame Marie, as old legends came forth out of the terrifying mist of childhood nightmare to become shadows in the waking world. ""Is there anything else?"" Marie asked quietly.
Now it was Joseph's turn to look back at the party coming out of the forest, which were now carrying a man by his hands and feet on a pole, his mouth gagged and his eyes blindfolded. ""Only that they also sent you a sacrifice. From what they said, he's a drug-runner, sexual slaver and a general bad example of low-level underworld scum.""
Marie, still in shock over the news of the murders, was perhaps not picking and choosing the words coming out of her mouth. ""Which mean he's gonna taste worse than the fish sauce.""
At these words, both gruesome and almost ridiculous, both her lover and her friend goggled at her.
","Spoonbill Village, Northernmost Quang Binh Province, SRV
June 30, 2011.
Dreaming of the past was no strange thing for Joseph Clayton over the past year. Before yesterday, the memory had been of his and Marie's last farewell, when she had told him that she was traveling to Vietnam for a one-year ""hiatus"" of sorts. Now, the memory of which he dreamed was of the occasion of Marie's 18th birthday, some months before she had informed him of her imminent departure. There had been food and gifts from their few friends in the community and, despite the national legal drinking age of 21, Marie was invited by her parents to sample one of the traditional medicinal liquors or Ruou Thuocs of their native village, specifically a distilled rice whiskey of 100 proof in which had soaked a section of beef bone.
Also that night, despite her parents usual diligence, things between Joseph Clayton and Marie had become rather... heated. Just as the dream began to verge into the more pleasurable parts of the experience, a sound woke him quite suddenly. The noise, a sort of odd, whooshing crack...
Gunfire?!
Leaping out of his bed in a panic, Joseph landed face first in very nearly the same place where he had sat last night at dinner. Finally looking up after peeling his cheek off the floor, he saw that with the exception of himself and the normal women of the household (namely Marie, her Aunt and paternal Grandmother), the house was now empty. He had landed in the central depression which housed the table, seating mats and hearth and that was surrounded by the raised platforms where the party and those inhabiting the house had bedded down last night. ""What is that?!"" Asked Joseph as another volley of cracks sounded, now followed audibly by a command to reload.
Although the question was general, the response he got was specific. ""If you mean the gunshots, those are the men doing some target practice."" Marie replied as she made to spoon some broth into a bronze bowl.
""Strange, those guys who brought us in didn't look like the type to actually use guns, what with the whole ""barbarian"" vibe they were giving off."" Joseph sat properly at his seat as his girlfriend brought him what turned out to be soup of the kind that she usually favored as an appetizer. After thanking her, he began eating.
""Trust me, the hunters and warriors don't even like to look at firearms; they think they're a demeaning farce of a weapon, 'farmers weapons' as they call them... but given that they're used by the farming men, it's a pretty accurate description."" Ladling soup into her own bowl, she sat down beside Joseph at the table.
As the two older women looked on from their own work, the small talk went on between the two young ones: it turned out that these guns were old French repeating rifles from the 1920s rather than a modern Kalashnikov derivative and used an obscure 8mm cartridge that had to be produced by their agents in Vinh.
Then Joseph noticed something else. ""You know, I just noticed something about your teeth... they're white.""
""Of course they are. I know it may be a bit hard to find toothpaste out here but..."" It was then that Marie caught on to what he had meant. ""Oh, I guess you want to know why I haven't dyed them black yet, huh?"" After Joseph nodded, Marie laid out, at the most basic level, what she wanted to take away from this trip. ""Well, I've accepted lots of conditions for this visit. I did the tattooing, I help in the rice paddies, I've gone without modern clothing in almost every fashion, but these babies..."" She paused, did a tooth-bearing rictus grin and tapped her incisors with her right index fingernail three times. ""I've worked far too long for this shade and I'm not going to sacrifice them just so I can chew Betel nuts as a stimulant. Luckily, Dao managed to wrangle a small coffee supply from the Party minders; for a head priest he's not too bad, especially at this time of the morning.""
Somehow, Joseph suspected that this refusal had less to do with cosmetic concerns and more to do with her determination to not turn into a clone of her mother (in all of her paranoid glory) but something else caught his attention. ""What time is it, exactly? And where is everyone?"" Joseph asked in between bites. Everyone (including his party and Marie's family members) had bedded down last night when the night grew dark and they had run out of things to do to stave off exhaustion. That they weren't here now...
Marie had an air of subtle amusement about her, possessed since untying Joseph last night. ""We don't really keep time as an exact science around here. We have morning, evening, dawn, dusk, a rough idea of mid-day... and not much else. Even the passing of the seasons tends to become a blur in the constant raining and mist; without a calendar, time can play tricks on a person up here.""
Her boyfriend did not exactly believe this. ""You don't have any clocks? I mean... National Geographic even had to edit an alarm clock out of one of their photos in order to make an African hut look 'primitive' enough!""
Having never heard of this before, Marie could only shake her head in a form of self-depreciating humor. ""It's like I said once: this place is very rural and has historically been very isolated; it used to take years for news to filter up here from the coast. As to your other question, although I'm unaware of the exact local time, your friends left the house about an hour ago."" At this news, Joseph made a move to get up and join his friends (luckily, he had slept in his clothes) but was quickly (and effectively) shoved back down into his seat and told to finish his soup.
According to Marie, the kids had gone up onto the northern terraces with Tracy to show her the rice paddies (as she was ostensibly a farmer like they) while Albert had gone to retrieve their electronic equipment from the watermill where a small water-powered electric generator had been installed by the Border Defense force just a few years before. As to the Prof and his assistant... apparently, there'd been a meeting between some of the village bigwigs last night after the negotiations in the temple and Andover wanted to make sure that all the bad blood, anger and other annoyances had been cleared up before fieldwork was to commence.
As a small aside however, Marie did note that the powder of the Blue Forest Lotus did seem to have a slight lingering effect on those... yet unaccustomed to the strangeness that was apparently all too common in the world. Since Andover, Malone, Tracy and Albert had come from experiences where the paranormal was slightly less para-, they had arisen early, eaten and left without any signs of sloth.
After they finished eating, they returned their bowls to the hearth, thanked the two women and then left to join Josephs fellows who were set to gather in the temple for a meeting with Tsan Pho Dao himself.
The way that they had left while holding hands, however, told Marie's aunt and grandmother that the village matchmaker might be about to encounter another problem regarding Marie... or at the very least, the root of her current problems involving Marie.
Approximately 20 Minutes Later
As two acolytes opened the great double doors of the temple from the inside, Joseph could only gape in awe at the sights before him. The transition from the world outside with it's bright sunlight and high humidity to the world of faintly lit darkness and incense smoke that contained itself within the temple of Spoonbill Village was.. almost magical. Given what he had already heard of, this might not just be a layman's impression.
The interior of the temple also gave the impression of a sort of duality: on one hand, this building was probably the safest place in the village. On the other hand, the very atmosphere exuded by their surroundings, with acolytes working at mysterious duties before the various shrines of dark stone that lined the walls, indicated to any visitor that they just may not leave this building alive, an indication only strengthened by a large block of dark stone at the rear third of the interior. The sides of this almost altar-esqe block of Jadeite were engraved with many characters which appeared to be a bizarre mixture of Khoa Dau (the old script of Vietnam), the curving loops of Javanese and something even odder and older, resembling some of Albert's research on the old Seal Scripts of the Zhou... but not quite. The top of the block was formed into a shallow basin with notches for something of a liquid nature to run down into a series of channels (and from the look of it, recently had). The basin was large enough to hold a buffalo of considerable size and probably had many times over the years.
According to what Marie had told him, it could also hold an adult Human male.
Before the stone was low table on which was spread a yellow silken cloth. Upon the cloth, several strange items in ivory, jade, various metals and wood were placed, all seemingly used for the purpose of divining. However, what was most interesting about the table were the figures which were sitting behind it.
The first and more distinctive figure was that of an old man in an ornate gold headdress and voluminous red robes. While allegedly in his early 70s and not nearly as old as some people he had met, Joseph could see that something had wizened his features to the point where he appeared decades older than he should. What hair could be seen was wispy and white, being contained mostly in a braided beard and a mustache that looked like it might have belonged on Fu Manchu if said character had survived to the age of 126. The man's eyes, however, were clear and bright, and his face held signs of amusement under the formal grimace; Later, Joseph would identify said amusement as the product of the old, sing-song adage of ""I Know Something You Don't Know"".
But not yet.
Professor Andover, at the head of the party that included his students and Marie, led them to a point just before the low table and motioned them to kneel and bow. When they all knelt, Andover finally spoke in the most reverent tone that Joseph had ever heard applied to this or any other form of Mon-Khmer. ""In the spirit of respect and friendship I greet you, Tsan Pho Dao, Oracle of the Jade Bones, Sage of the Blood and Master of the Way of Leng.""
Seemingly placated by the proper formal greeting, Tsan Pho Dao answered back.. but not in the way that everyone was expecting him to.
""And in the spirit of Peace and Hospitality I greet you, Professor Neville Andover of Miskatonic University."" Replied the Chief Priest... in perfect, unaccented English. As a few heads raised and eyes gazed at him in surprise, the Priest shrugged and offered an explanation. ""A Language Acquisition Spell: sacrifice a pig and the world opens up to you. Now, I believe that you were to explain the purpose of this visit, were you not?""
Recovering remarkably well, Neville Andover explained exactly what he wanted to come out of this short, hopefully first survey. As the professor laid out the intricacies of the ethnographic process including both ""emic"" and ""etic"" (subject and researcher-derived, respectively) observations of daily life and material culture, interviews, historical research and recording of various events, Joseph slowly became aware of something. The first thing he noticed was that Marie's left hand, still held and being held by his right hand as they sat next to each other, was exerting a steady pressure that was much increased from when they were walking toward the temple or entering it. He also found that she was looking sideways towards the second figure near the altar stone,
This figure was a woman, somewhere between 60 and 70 years of age and rather less weathered than the man she sat beside and slightly to the rear of, her facial tattoos an asymmetric collection of delicate swirls and tiny trapezoids. Dressed in a fine formal gown of red and dark blue silk with gold filigree, she wore many sorts of jewelry from combs in her gray hair to bracelets of jade and gold on her wrists and even pendants and beads dangling from the ends of the jade hairpins that seemed to be ubiquitous in the hairstyles of married women in this village. Whereas this woman wore an expression of serene indifference, the look what Marie was giving her could easily be described as ""stink-eye"". While Joseph had been privy to a very mild version of this expression when he had almost implied cannibalism on the menu of her parents restaurant, the last time he had witnessed the full force of such a look was when they were in the fifth grade and a classmate had the gall to insult her parent's tattoos.
""And Albert Noyes.. you know of the Whisperers? The mushrooms of Yuggoth?"" Tsan Pho Dao asked, examining the oracular bauble on the table which apparently indicated Noyes background. Joseph's attention was brought back to the conversation by this question and the affirmative answer from Albert. ""Tell me then..."" Asked Dao. ""Have you encountered the Bringer of Strange Joy?""
""Not face to face and neither have any others in my town. I've heard of it... but almost as a legend across space and dimensions."" Albert shrugged. ""I still don't understand what it really is.""
""Nobody ever truly does."" Dao replied sagely before moving onto the next token. Upon picking up and examining a piece of carved buffalo horn, his eyes flickered to Ms. Williams. ""It seems that you share something with our people, Ms. Williams. The bones indicate that you have participated in the rites of sacrifice, much as we do?""
""Yes, but like I've said before, we've only ever sacrificed our own livestock. I once helped to hold down a pig, alright but... I don't know, we never wanted to kill people and we never needed to. Some of the other groups we keep running into, though..."" Tracy sighed after she realized that she had almost began rambling. ""We try so hard to keep all of the weirdos in line year after year... and year after year it's always the same: some crazy bastard tries to sneak in a human sacrifice, we get pissed and threaten to call the cops, they try to blackmail us into allowing it and then the saner worshipers just take the intended victim back where they came from, none the wiser on where they were. I just worry that someday, something horrible will happen on our doorstep and that we'll be blamed while the assholes slink off into the woods."" She then looked up at the Chief Sorcerer in embarrassment. ""I'm sorry that you had to hear that.. and sorry about the ""crazy bastard"" crack. I'm sure you're a very nice person.""
Affecting a look of near-pity, Tsan Pho Dao offered a little of what he had seen in her future. ""The stress of such a life can be hard to bear... but I sense that help has already held out a hand. All that remains is for someone to be brave enough to accept it."" As Tracy thought this bit of fortune-cookie wisdom over, the priest turned his head towards Joseph, who opened his mouth to speak. However, Dao held up two claw-like fingers to stop him. ""We know of you, Joseph Clayton and as of yet, nothing much outside the norm have you gazed. However, I would appreciate hearing the reasons on why you ceased playing your sport when you ventured away from home.""
Already prepared for such clarity of soothsaying, the young man shrugged. ""It turns out that I wasn't tall enough to play college basketball. However, even if I had been.. I don't I would have been content to play for a team which called itself the, and I quote, 'Mommas Boys'."" Albert groaned in embarrassment at the name while Tracy found reason to snicker, both knowing that the Miskatonic ""MB's"" were a long-time running punchline for the college leagues.
With that interlude over, assignments were made. Tracy, coming from farm country, would stay with Marie's Grandparents, conduct interviews among the farmers and record their daily lives, up to and including working alongside them on the terraced rice paddies. Albert, displaying more aptitude with technology due to his communities alliance with the so-called ""Mi'go"", would be stationed at the household of the Village Bronze-caster, who supplied many of the tools and utensils of the village. As they were also one of the most socially connected families in the village, the large house they inhabited would make an ideal central base for the expedition.
Malone, as he had existing skills and reputedly the strongest stomach, would cover the operation of the Temple and thus be overseen by Professor Andover, who would be staying there as well. As for Joseph... for Joseph, it was decided, quite surprisingly, that he would live in the house of the hunters that had encountered the party.
As the guests rose and began filing out, Tsan Pho Dao watched the retreating figures intently until the door closed behind them. He turned to the woman sitting beside him. ""Well, that certainly explains why the girl has rebuffed all of the potential suitors you pushed her way.""
The woman's mask of indifference gave way to shock and then the stirrings of anger. ""You mean... him?! Are you saying that she, of her own accord, chose some foreign devil instead of one of her own kind?""
""I wouldn't be that harsh on the boy. He's appears not of the same fragile, treacherous mindset as the others we have encountered... if his having come this far without screaming is any indication."" Since this morning, Dao had know that something like this was coming; his wife was comfortable in both her power and her confidence in her decisions and a conflict was bound to happen given the way Thuch and Thanh had raised their daughter in the West.
""You know what I mean! It was bad enough that her parents gave her a French name and now she's been consorting with one of them as well!""
Dao sardonically smiled. ""I'm fairly sure that the boy is English; they and the French have the kind of mutual dislike for each other that we and the Han do. As to the boy himself, I've put him far away from where Marie is staying, but she still will have to act as an interpreter for the group."" He picked up a small, silvery disc from the table and began to examine it. ""But given her confidence in him, I feel that we should observe what happens before making any moves.""
The woman, known now only by her title of Matchmaker and by a few in her past by the name of Chau, looked at her husband in an appraising way. ""You know something, don't you?""
Still gazing at the disc that had told him something of the Clayton boy, a Unites States quarter-dollar coin circa 1961, Dao chose his words carefully. ""What I know is dwarfed by what I suspect. But... what I do know is that there is something about this boy... something that you may have to take into consideration. The threads of his fate show that something is about to pull at them... but whether for good or ill or who will pull, I do not know.""
He did not know but, as his gaze lifted from the coin (specifically a series of scratches upon the face of Washington) towards a winding pattern of black fretwork above the main door, he suspected that whatever may be coming toward the boy would be very familiar indeed.
Spoonbill Village, Early Afternoon
June 30, 2011.
As part of his integration into the community, Joseph had acquiesced into wearing the local clothing: a kilt and short sleeved jacket in brown cotton with geometric patterns of black lines and dots.
However, there was one piece of clothing that the young man was already beginning to miss.
""You mean everyone goes commando around here? Couldn't I have at least kept my boxers on?"" Having never dressed this way outside his regular use of towel or robe for showering, Joseph was having a bit of trouble getting used to it.
""Yes we do and no, you can't have your shorts back; those things absolutely stunk! Heavens know what was going on in there."" As they made their way from her grandparents house to their destination, materials and devices at hand, they were drawing a fair amount of stares from people going about their business, most of them absolutely bewildered by the conversation that was going on. However, Joseph could have imagined that in that last statement there was some... not amusement, although Marie's tone since he had gotten his head off the metaphorical chopping block indicated that she was much more at ease in this place than he was. But there had been a hint of suggestion, a certain playfulness of tone that suggested that she knew full well some of the things which had gone on in those shorts.
And then he connected the ""going commando"" remark with... Oh dear. ""And you..?"" Joseph began, quite unsure on how to word the question.
""I've kept that part of my dignity, thank you very much."" There was a sense of arrogance and snootiness in Marie's reply, but it was a false arrogance and a playful, imitation snootiness at heart. ""Alright, so I cheated a bit but there are things I want to hang onto, even if leaving here becomes... difficult."" They stopped in front of a house near the entrance to the village temple.
""Anything I should know about this guy?"" Joseph asked his girlfriend, desperate to get his mind out of the gutter.
""First, he's a hunter, archer and scout. He's from the Clan of the Spider, which is one of the really old warrior lineages in this village. Second, he's also got a wife who came from a village in Laos, a Tai speaker, so there may be a language barrier. They have a son in the age range of my younger cousins. Third... well, many of the warriors do a little sorcery on the side. The odd... mutation occasionally pops up."" There was again an awkwardness, as she was apparently describing another bit of weirdness that had slipped past the descriptions of last night.
Absorbing this new description and momentarily deciding that his libido was a somewhat more comfortable avenue, Joseph mustered courage and.. well, kissed Marie again. ""I love you and... and I promise that if this goes bad, I'll make sure you get out of here."" This statement was supposed to be one of affirmation but the worry also showed through.
Momentarily flustered by her boyfriends brashness, Marie nevertheless recovered quickly. ""Hey, if things go bad, I'll be the one dragging you out of here..."" Here, her tone turned softer, more grateful and more genuine. ""But thanks all the same."" Everything said, that kind of commitment was nice to have reinforced, even if it did point to some creeping uneasiness with the whole thing.
Still, it was only the second day.
As she went up to the door, Joseph thought that it was probably a good thing that he would not be able to watch her leave... and it was probably also a good thing that neither the mens nor the womens kilts were very snug.
If he wasn't careful, this was going to turn into a very embarrassing few weeks.
",True
"The Inn stands at the end of our largest thoroughfare, which is a few blocks long, but seems a thousand miles. With my heavy valise, I'm fortunate that I only have to walk half that far from the restaurant at which I've just dined. Once every month, I scrounge up enough money to have dinner at the Golden Goose. Despite my reputation in this village, I eventually come to long for the clamor of a crowd. The four walls of my father's house are my sanctuary and prison otherwise. Only Theodora, our cook and housekeeper that we've had since before I was born, keeps me company there. I would take her with me on my monthly outings to Leight's sole restaurant, but she stubbornly says she prefers her own meals all the same.
That's only part of the reason why she won't go, however. I've told her that even at the Golden Goose, the diners there glare at me out of the corners of their eyes and lower them to their plates if I look their way. Theodora is an even more self-contained soul than I am, and loathes being stared at ""by all and sundry"".
The evening sun is sinking low on the horizon, and the villagers around me are concealed in shadows. I don't want anyone coming up and asking me about my three-night errand - not that they would. When I prove the rumors about my forefathers' establishment wrong, I'll make them all look like fools anyway!
Those unfamiliar with Leight will notice three ever-present things as they travel down its main street: stalwart people, churches, and Cemetery Hill looming in the distance. Ever since I was a child, I sensed an eerie connection among these features of our humble village. Just what that is, I cannot say. They are ordinary enough on the surface, and yet I can't help feeling that there's something sinister about them.
My neighbors are proud, hard-working souls. Most of them live on farms on the outskirts of town. Even so, they trudge nearly every day to its center in order to seek supplies. The men of Leight are burly, with long arms and sunburnt faces, trusting in their toil and suspicious of learnt folk. It's just as well that they're illiterate. They wouldn't have much use for books even if they had the coin to buy them. Their wives, far from being what some people would call ladies, are just as industrious and sturdy as their husbands. I see them more often in town, as buying sundries is women's work, but that doesn't mean they're any more inclined to talk to me. They keep to themselves, as I do, but it seems their hearts are under lock and key.
I suspect that a large part of this has to do with the fact that they fear God as much as my family's past. Out of every ten buildings in Leight, at least four are churches. The Baptists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Evangelicals, Lutherans, Methodists, and even more denominations are continually at war. They each claim to believe in the Scriptures, and in the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. However, they also claim that all the others are false, to a greater or lesser degree. As for me? I attend no house of worship, and that is no great loss to me. My father, Lemuel Dawson, said that his own chapel - the one on Cemetery Hill - had been abruptly shuttered one Hallowe'en night. His fellow congregants then fled to other nearby towns.
""My dear Millie,"" he had told me, ""the one true church on this Earth has been lost, and a year too early."" That's another thing I've failed to understand, even though it haunts me as much as the Inn itself does.
Hurrying to get there, I pass the people and churches without much concern. Only the visage of the former Gallows Hill, now containing graves instead of a gibbet, catches my eye. Buried there are not only the fifty-three souls who were hanged during the Purge (or so we called our witchcraft panic), but criminals and paupers. I've often wondered why having no money is considered as great a crime as sorcery or theft, but in this village, if you're poor, then you are cursed. ""God helps those who help themselves"": so say we. I cannot help myself as I find my feet sprinting rather than walking toward the façade of the Dreamer's Inn.
The sky, now a cool blue-violet twilight, is growing dark. I'll soon leave light (and Leight?) behind. Even though I've been inside the Dreamers' Inn countless times, I've always been a bit scared of the place. Why is it that, even though it's supposed to be a haven for travelers, it seems like a mausoleum instead? I know that once I venture beyond its door, beneath the rickety sign that has announced its presence since the days of Abner Dawes, I'll be in a world unto itself. As such, I pause on the threshold and gaze up at its intimidating turret. Should I turn back and forget about spending a single night there, let alone three?
Then I remember my reasons, both monetary and otherwise, and step inside.
","Some people who sleep at the Dreamers' Inn, in my hometown of Leight, Massachusetts, never wake up.
So it is said. 'Tis a wonder that our only boarding place for travelers manages to stay open at all, with the ceaseless grinding of the rumor mill reaching wayfarers' ears before they reach here. Our village's moniker is pronounced as if the ""e"" were not there, nor any source of illumination. Despite our best efforts to redeem the name of Leight, it is still spoken like a curse. We are God-fearing folk now, in anno Domini 1893, but some of us weren't two hundred years ago. The witchcraft panic that had hit Salem in 1692 infected us like a fever one year later. Fifty people were sickened, and cured by a visit to Gallows Hill.
My great-great-grandfather and original proprietor of the Inn, Goodman Abner Dawes, was one of them.
My name is Millicent Dawson. Even though I'm four generations descended from him, respectable people in Leight cross to the other side of the street when they see me. If it weren't for my late father's pension, I'd be searching these same streets for men too drunk to care about my ancestry. I'm a spinster at thirty-four, but still pretty according to the Inn's current owner. Not that I'd have Monsieur Thènard! He is no drunkard, but sometimes I wish he were. His eyes, never bloodshot and always keen, are those of a wolf.
Is it he that continues to lend the rumors such credence? Has he dared to murder his own customers?
Pah! It's far more likely that the villagers, many of whom are superstitious illiterates, want to keep anyone from having anything to do with the Dreamers' Inn because they're terrified. I, for one, am not. I know my great-great-grandfather's establishment for what it is: a broken-down lodging house, greatly refurbished, with three floors and servants' quarters at the top. It's the closest thing that Leight has to a castle, because the guest rooms and garret are contained within a tall turret. The Inn is the very sort that inspires ghosts and unspeakable phantoms to possess one's imagination - even mine. I suppose I cannot blame my naïve neighbors too much. If I'm out in the evening, having a bite of dinner at our only restaurant, I try not to gaze up at that tower. As it darkens in the fading twilight, it slowly turns blacker than any sort of pitch.
What is it about the place that makes me shudder, even though I'm not so silly as to believe it's haunted?
How has it remained a dreamers' refuge for more than two centuries, my ancestors' toil notwithstanding?
Why do I always see it in my own dreams, as it draws me like iron toward a magnet?
Such mysteries are better left unsolved. What I must do is remain calm, and grounded in practicalities.
The rumors state that no visitor to the Dreamers' Inn has ever been a guest for more than one night. Even those travelers who have spent that brief length of time within its walls have departed without a word, in a mad frenzy of escape. I've lived in Leight all my life, and have no reason to pay for a room when I'm safe enough in my late father's house. Nevertheless, I intend to stay not for one night, but three. I shall prove the chatter of my fellow citizens to be foolish gossip, once and for all, and bring more business to the Inn. I receive a share of its profits, being the only living descendant of its owners throughout the generations.
Father's pension is barely holding out, and with a bitter chill in the air, I need some more money for winter.
",True
"""The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated.""
BORELLUS

I. A Result and a Prologue

1.

From a private hospital for the insane near Providence, Rhode Island, there recently disappeared an exceedingly singular person. He bore the name of Charles Dexter Ward, and was placed under restraint most reluctantly by the grieving father who had watched his aberration grow from a mere eccentricity to a dark mania involving both a possibility of murderous tendencies and a profound and peculiar change in the apparent contents of his mind. Doctors confess themselves quite baffled by his case, since it presented oddities of a general physiological as well as psychological character.
      In the first place, the patient seemed oddly older than his twenty-six years would warrant. Mental disturbance, it is true, will age one rapidly; but the face of this young man had taken on a subtle cast which only the very aged normally acquire. In the second place, his organic processes shewed a certain queerness of proportion which nothing in medical experience can parallel. Respiration and heart action had a baffling lack of symmetry; the voice was lost, so that no sounds above a whisper were possible; digestion was incredibly prolonged and minimised, and neural reactions to standard stimuli bore no relation at all to anything heretofore recorded, either normal or pathological. The skin had a morbid chill and dryness, and the cellular structure of the tissue seemed exaggeratedly coarse and loosely knit. Even a large olive birthmark on the right hip had disappeared, whilst there had formed on the chest a very peculiar mole or blackish spot of which no trace existed before. In general, all physicians agree that in Ward the processes of metabolism had become retarded to a degree beyond precedent.
      Psychologically, too, Charles Ward was unique. His madness held no affinity to any sort recorded in even the latest and most exhaustive of treatises, and was conjoined to a mental force which would have made him a genius or a leader had it not been twisted into strange and grotesque forms. Dr. Willett, who was Ward's family physician, affirms that the patient's gross mental capacity, as gauged by his response to matters outside the sphere of his insanity, had actually increased since the seizure. Ward, it is true, was always a scholar and an antiquarian; but even his most brilliant early work did not shew the prodigious grasp and insight displayed during his last examinations by the alienists. It was, indeed, a difficult matter to obtain a legal commitment to the hospital, so powerful and lucid did the youth's mind seem; and only on the evidence of others, and on the strength of many abnormal gaps in his stock of information as distinguished from his intelligence, was he finally placed in confinement. To the very moment of his vanishment he was an omnivorous reader and as great a conversationalist as his poor voice permitted; and shrewd observers, failing to foresee his escape, freely predicted that he would not be long in gaining his discharge from custody.
      Only Dr. Willett, who brought Charles Ward into the world and had watched his growth of body and mind ever since, seemed frightened at the thought of his future freedom. He had had a terrible experience and had made a terrible discovery which he dared not reveal to his sceptical colleagues. Willett, indeed, presents a minor mystery all his own in his connexion with the case. He was the last to see the patient before his flight, and emerged from that final conversation in a state of mixed horror and relief which several recalled when Ward's escape became known three hours later. That escape itself is one of the unsolved wonders of Dr. Waite's hospital. A window open above a sheer drop of sixty feet could hardly explain it, yet after that talk with Willett the youth was undeniably gone. Willett himself has no public explanations to offer, though he seems strangely easier in mind than before the escape. Many, indeed, feel that he would like to say more if he thought any considerable number would believe him. He had found Ward in his room, but shortly after his departure the attendants knocked in vain. When they opened the door the patient was not there, and all they found was the open window with a chill April breeze blowing in a cloud of fine bluish-grey dust that almost choked them. True, the dogs howled some time before; but that was while Willett was still present, and they had caught nothing and shewn no disturbance later on. Ward's father was told at once over the telephone, but he seemed more saddened than surprised. By the time Dr. Waite called in person, Dr. Willett had been talking with him, and both disavowed any knowledge or complicity in the escape. Only from certain closely confidential friends of Willett and the senior Ward have any clues been gained, and even these are too wildly fantastic for general credence. The one fact which remains is that up to the present time no trace of the missing madman has been unearthed.
      Charles Ward was an antiquarian from infancy, no doubt gaining his taste from the venerable town around him, and from the relics of the past which filled every corner of his parents' old mansion in Prospect Street on the crest of the hill. With the years his devotion to ancient things increased; so that history, genealogy, and the study of colonial architecture, furniture, and craftsmanship at length crowded everything else from his sphere of interests. These tastes are important to remember in considering his madness; for although they do not form its absolute nucleus, they play a prominent part in its superficial form. The gaps of information which the alienists noticed were all related to modern matters, and were invariably offset by a correspondingly excessive though outwardly concealed knowledge of bygone matters as brought out by adroit questioning; so that one would have fancied the patient literally transferred to a former age through some obscure sort of auto-hypnosis. The odd thing was that Ward seemed no longer interested in the antiquities he knew so well. He had, it appears, lost his regard for them through sheer familiarity; and all his final efforts were obviously bent toward mastering those common facts of the modern world which had been so totally and unmistakably expunged from his brain. That this wholesale deletion had occurred, he did his best to hide; but it was clear to all who watched him that his whole programme of reading and conversation was determined by a frantic wish to imbibe such knowledge of his own life and of the ordinary practical and cultural background of the twentieth century as ought to have been his by virtue of his birth in 1902 and his education in the schools of our own time. Alienists are now wondering how, in view of his vitally impaired range of data, the escaped patient manages to cope with the complicated world of today; the dominant opinion being that he is 'lying low' in some humble and unexacting position till his stock of modern information can be brought up to the normal.
      The beginning of Ward's madness is a matter of dispute among alienists. Dr. Lyman, the eminent Boston authority, places it in 1919 or 1920, during the boy's last year at the Moses Brown School, when he suddenly turned from the study of the past to the study of the occult, and refused to qualify for college on the ground that he had individual researches of much greater importance to make. This is certainly borne out by Ward's altered habits at the time, especially by his continual search through town records and among old burying-grounds for a certain grave dug in 1771; the grave of an ancestor named Joseph Curwen, some of whose papers he professed to have found behind the panelling of a very old house in Olney Court, on Stampers' Hill, which Curwen was known to have built and occupied. It is, broadly speaking, undeniable that the winter of 1919-20 saw a great change in Ward; whereby he abruptly stopped his general antiquarian pursuits and embarked on a desperate delving into occult subjects both at home and abroad, varied only by this strangely persistent search for his forefather's grave.
      From this opinion, however, Dr. Willett substantially dissents; basing his verdict on his close and continuous knowledge of the patient, and on certain frightful investigations and discoveries which he made toward the last. Those investigations and discoveries have left their mark upon him; so that his voice trembles when he tells them, and his hand trembles when he tries to write of them. Willett admits that the change of 1919-20 would ordinarily appear to mark the beginning of a progressive decadence which culminated in the horrible and uncanny alienation of 1928; but believes from personal observation that a finer distinction must be made. Granting freely that the boy was always ill-balanced temperamentally, and prone to be unduly susceptible and enthusiastic in his responses to phenomena around him, he refuses to concede that the early alteration marked the actual passage from sanity to madness; crediting instead Ward's own statement that he had discovered or rediscovered something whose effect on human thought was likely to be marvellous and profound. The true madness, he is certain, came with a later change; after the Curwen portrait and the ancient papers had been unearthed; after a trip to strange foreign places had been made, and some terrible invocations chanted under strange and secret circumstances; after certain answers to these invocations had been plainly indicated, and a frantic letter penned under agonising and inexplicable conditions; after the wave of vampirism and the ominous Pawtuxet gossip; and after the patient's memory commenced to exclude contemporary images whilst his voice failed and his physical aspect underwent the subtle modification so many subsequently noticed.
      It was only about this time, Willett points out with much acuteness, that the nightmare qualities became indubitably linked with Ward; and the doctor feels shudderingly sure that enough solid evidence exists to sustain the youth's claim regarding his crucial discovery. In the first place, two workmen of high intelligence saw Joseph Curwen's ancient papers found. Secondly, the boy once shewed Dr. Willett those papers and a page of the Curwen diary, and each of the documents had every appearance of genuineness. The hole where Ward claimed to have found them was long a visible reality, and Willett had a very convincing final glimpse of them in surroundings which can scarcely be believed and can never perhaps be proved. Then there were the mysteries and coincidences of the Orne and Hutchinson letters, and the problem of the Curwen penmanship and of what the detectives brought to light about Dr. Allen; these things, and the terrible message in mediaeval minuscules found in Willett's pocket when he gained consciousness after his shocking experience.
      And most conclusive of all, there are the two hideous results which the doctor obtained from a certain pair of formulae during his final investigations; results which virtually proved the authenticity of the papers and of their monstrous implications at the same time that those papers were borne forever from human knowledge.

2.

      One must look back at Charles Ward's earlier life as at something belonging as much to the past as the antiquities he loved so keenly. In the autumn of 1918, and with a considerable show of zest in the military training of the period, he had begun his junior year at the Moses Brown School, which lies very near his home. The old main building, erected in 1819, had always charmed his youthful antiquarian sense; and the spacious park in which the academy is set appealed to his sharp eye for landscape. His social activities were few; and his hours were spent mainly at home, in rambling walks, in his classes and drills, and in pursuit of antiquarian and genealogical data at the City Hall, the State House, the Public Library, the Athenaeum, the Historical Society, the John Carter Brown and John Hay Libraries of Brown University, and the newly opened Shepley Library in Benefit Street. One may picture him yet as he was in those days; tall, slim, and blond, with studious eyes and a slight stoop, dressed somewhat carelessly, and giving a dominant impression of harmless awkwardness rather than attractiveness.
      His walks were always adventures in antiquity, during which he managed to recapture from the myriad relics of a glamorous old city a vivid and connected picture of the centuries before. His home was a great Georgian mansion atop the well-nigh precipitous hill that rises just east of the river; and from the rear windows of its rambling wings he could look dizzily out over all the clustered spires, domes, roofs, and skyscraper summits of the lower town to the purple hills of the countryside beyond. Here he was born, and from the lovely classic porch of the double-bayed brick facade his nurse had first wheeled him in his carriage; past the little white farmhouse of two hundred years before that the town had long ago overtaken, and on toward the stately colleges along the shady, sumptuous street, whose old square brick mansions and smaller wooden houses with narrow, heavy-columned Doric porches dreamed solid and exclusive amidst their generous yards and gardens.
      He had been wheeled, too, along sleepy Congdon Street, one tier lower down on the steep hill, and with all its eastern homes on high terraces. The small wooden houses averaged a greater age here, for it was up this hill that the growing town had climbed; and in these rides he had imbibed something of the colour of a quaint colonial village. The nurse used to stop and sit on the benches of Prospect Terrace to chat with policemen; and one of the child's first memories was of the great westward sea of hazy roofs and domes and steeples and far hills which he saw one winter afternoon from that great railed embankment, all violet and mystic against a fevered, apocalyptic sunset of reds and golds and purples and curious greens. The vast marble dome of the State House stood out in massive silhouette, its crowning statue haloed fantastically by a break in one of the tinted stratus clouds that barred the flaming sky.
      When he was larger his famous walks began; first with his impatiently dragged nurse, and then alone in dreamy meditation. Farther and farther down that almost perpendicular hill he would venture, each time reaching older and quainter levels of the ancient city. He would hesitate gingerly down vertical Jenckes Street with its bank walls and colonial gables to the shady Benefit Street corner, where before him was a wooden antique with an Ionic-pilastered pair of doorways, and beside him a prehistoric gambrel-roofer with a bit of primal farmyard remaining, and the great Judge Durfee house with its fallen vestiges of Georgian grandeur. It was getting to be a slum here; but the titan elms cast a restoring shadow over the place, and the boy used to stroll south past the long lines of the pre-Revolutionary homes with their great central chimneys and classic portals. On the eastern side they were set high over basements with railed double flights of stone steps, and the young Charles could picture them as they were when the street was new, and red heels and periwigs set off the painted pediments whose signs of wear were now becoming so visible.
      Westward the hill dropped almost as steeply as above, down to the old ""Town Street"" that the founders had laid out at the river's edge in 1636. Here ran innumerable little lanes with leaning, huddled houses of immense antiquity; and fascinated though he was, it was long before he dared to thread their archaic verticality for fear they would turn out a dream or a gateway to unknown terrors. He found it much less formidable to continue along Benefit Street past the iron fence of St. John's hidden churchyard and the rear of the 1761 Colony House and the mouldering bulk of the Golden Ball Inn where Washington stopped. At Meeting Street - the successive Gaol Lane and King Street of other periods - he would look upward to the east and see the arched flight of steps to which the highway had to resort in climbing the slope, and downward to the west, glimpsing the old brick colonial schoolhouse that smiles across the road at the ancient Sign of Shakespear's Head where the Providence Gazette and Country-Journal was printed before the Revolution. Then came the exquisite First Baptist Church of 1775, luxurious with its matchless Gibbs steeple, and the Georgian roofs and cupolas hovering by. Here and to the southward the neighbourhood became better, flowering at last into a marvellous group of early mansions; but still the little ancient lanes led off down the precipice to the west, spectral in their many-gabled archaism and dipping to a riot of iridescent decay where the wicked old waterfront recalls its proud East India days amidst polyglot vice and squalor, rotting wharves, and blear-eyed ship-chandleries, with such surviving alley names as Packet, Bullion, Gold, Silver, Coin, Doubloon, Sovereign, Guilder, Dollar, Dime, and Cent.
      Sometimes, as he grew taller and more adventurous, young Ward would venture down into this maelstrom of tottering houses, broken transoms, tumbling steps, twisted balustrades, swarthy faces, and nameless odours; winding from South Main to South Water, searching out the docks where the bay and sound steamers still touched, and returning northward at this lower level past the steep-roofed 1816 warehouses and the broad square at the Great Bridge, where the 1773 Market House still stands firm on its ancient arches. In that square he would pause to drink in the bewildering beauty of the old town as it rises on its eastward bluff, decked with its two Georgian spires and crowned by the vast new Christian Science dome as London is crowned by St. Paul's. He liked mostly to reach this point in the late afternoon, when the slanting sunlight touches the Market House and the ancient hill roofs and belfries with gold, and throws magic around the dreaming wharves where Providence Indiamen used to ride at anchor. After a long look he would grow almost dizzy with a poet's love for the sight, and then he would scale the slope homeward in the dusk past the old white church and up the narrow precipitous ways where yellow gleams would begin to peep out in small-paned windows and through fanlights set high over double flights of steps with curious wrought-iron railings.
      At other times, and in later years, he would seek for vivid contrasts; spending half a walk in the crumbling colonial regions northwest of his home, where the hill drops to the lower eminence of Stampers' Hill with its ghetto and negro quarter clustering round the place where the Boston stage coach used to start before the Revolution, and the other half in the gracious southerly realm about George, Benevolent, Power, and Williams Streets, where the old slope holds unchanged the fine estates and bits of walled garden and steep green lane in which so many fragrant memories linger. These rambles, together with the diligent studies which accompanied them, certainly account for a large amount of the antiquarian lore which at last crowded the modern world from Charles Ward's mind; and illustrate the mental soil upon which fell, in that fateful winter of 1919-20, the seeds that came to such strange and terrible fruition.
      Dr. Willett is certain that, up to this ill-omened winter of first change, Charles Ward's antiquarianism was free from every trace of the morbid. Graveyards held for him no particular attraction beyond their quaintness and historic value, and of anything like violence or savage instinct he was utterly devoid. Then, by insidious degrees, there appeared to develop a curious sequel to one of his genealogical triumphs of the year before; when he had discovered among his maternal ancestors a certain very long-lived man named Joseph Curwen, who had come from Salem in March of 1692, and about whom a whispered series of highly peculiar and disquieting stories clustered.
      Ward's great-great-grandfather Welcome Potter had in 1785 married a certain ""Ann Tillinghast, daughter of Mrs. Eliza, daughter to Capt. James Tillinghast"", of whose paternity the family had preserved no trace. Late in 1918, whilst examining a volume of original town records in manuscript, the young genealogist encountered an entry describing a legal change of name, by which in 1772 a Mrs. Eliza Curwen, widow of Joseph Curwen, resumed, along with her seven-year-old daughter Ann, her maiden name of Tillinghast; on the ground 'that her Husband's name was become a publick Reproach by Reason of what was knowne after his Decease; the which confirming an antient common Rumour, tho' not to be credited by a loyall Wife till so proven as to be wholely past Doubting'. This entry came to light upon the accidental separation of two leaves which had been carefully pasted together and treated as one by a laboured revision of the page numbers.
      It was at once clear to Charles Ward that he had indeed discovered a hitherto unknown great-great-great-grandfather. The discovery doubly excited him because he had already heard vague reports and seen scattered allusions relating to this person; about whom there remained so few publicly available records, aside from those becoming public only in modern times, that it almost seemed as if a conspiracy had existed to blot him from memory. What did appear, moreover, was of such a singular and provocative nature that one could not fail to imagine curiously what it was that the colonial recorders were so anxious to conceal and forget; or to suspect that the deletion had reasons all too valid.
      Before this, Ward had been content to let his romancing about old Joseph Curwen remain in the idle stage; but having discovered his own relationship to this apparently ""hushed-up"" character, he proceeded to hunt out as systematically as possible whatever he might find concerning him. In this excited quest he eventually succeeded beyond his highest expectations; for old letters, diaries, and sheaves of unpublished memoirs in cobwebbed Providence garrets and elsewhere yielded many illuminating passages which their writers had not thought it worth their while to destroy. One important sidelight came from a point as remote as New York, where some Rhode Island colonial correspondence was stored in the Museum at Fraunces' Tavern. The really crucial thing, though, and what in Dr. Willett's opinion formed the definite source of Ward's undoing, was the matter found in August 1919 behind the panelling of the crumbling house in Olney Court. It was that, beyond a doubt, which opened up those black vistas whose end was deeper than the pit.

","IX.

Friday morning Armitage, Rice, and Morgan set out by motor for Dunwich, arriving at the village about one in the afternoon. The day was pleasant, but even in the brightest sunlight a kind of quiet dread and portent seemed to hover about the strangely domed hills and the deep, shadowy ravines of the stricken region. Now and then on some mountain-top a gaunt circle of stones could be glimpsed against the sky. From the air of hushed fright at Osborn’s store they knew something hideous had happened, and soon learned of the annihilation of the Elmer Frye house and family. Throughout that afternoon they rode around Dunwich; questioning the natives concerning all that had occurred, and seeing for themselves with rising pangs of horror the drear Frye ruins with their lingering traces of the tarry stickiness, the blasphemous tracks in the Frye yard, the wounded Seth Bishop cattle, and the enormous swaths of disturbed vegetation in various places. The trail up and down Sentinel Hill seemed to Armitage of almost cataclysmic significance, and he looked long at the sinister altar-like stone on the summit.
      At length the visitors, apprised of a party of State Police which had come from Aylesbury that morning in response to the first telephone reports of the Frye tragedy, decided to seek out the officers and compare notes as far as practicable. This, however, they found more easily planned than performed; since no sign of the party could be found in any direction. There had been five of them in a car, but now the car stood empty near the ruins in the Frye yard. The natives, all of whom had talked with the policemen, seemed at first as perplexed as Armitage and his companions. Then old Sam Hutchins thought of something and turned pale, nudging Fred Farr and pointing to the dank, deep hollow that yawned close by.
      “Gawd,” he gasped, “I telled ’em not ter go daown into the glen, an’ I never thought nobody’d dew it with them tracks an’ that smell an’ the whippoorwills a-screechin’ daown thar in the dark o’ noonday. . . .”
      A cold shudder ran through natives and visitors alike, and every ear seemed strained in a kind of instinctive, unconscious listening. Armitage, now that he had actually come upon the horror and its monstrous work, trembled with the responsibility he felt to be his. Night would soon fall, and it was then that the mountainous blasphemy lumbered upon its eldritch course. Negotium perambulans in tenebris. . . . The old librarian rehearsed the formulae he had memorised, and clutched the paper containing the alternative one he had not memorised. He saw that his electric flashlight was in working order. Rice, beside him, took from a valise a metal sprayer of the sort used in combating insects; whilst Morgan uncased the big-game rifle on which he relied despite his colleague’s warnings that no material weapon would be of help.
      Armitage, having read the hideous diary, knew painfully well what kind of a manifestation to expect; but he did not add to the fright of the Dunwich people by giving any hints or clues. He hoped that it might be conquered without any revelation to the world of the monstrous thing it had escaped. As the shadows gathered, the natives commenced to disperse homeward, anxious to bar themselves indoors despite the present evidence that all human locks and bolts were useless before a force that could bend trees and crush houses when it chose. They shook their heads at the visitors’ plan to stand guard at the Frye ruins near the glen; and as they left, had little expectancy of ever seeing the watchers again.
      There were rumblings under the hills that night, and the whippoorwills piped threateningly. Once in a while a wind, sweeping up out of Cold Spring Glen, would bring a touch of ineffable foetor to the heavy night air; such a foetor as all three of the watchers had smelled once before, when they stood above a dying thing that had passed for fifteen years and a half as a human being. But the looked-for terror did not appear. Whatever was down there in the glen was biding its time, and Armitage told his colleagues it would be suicidal to try to attack it in the dark.
      Morning came wanly, and the night-sounds ceased. It was a grey, bleak day, with now and then a drizzle of rain; and heavier and heavier clouds seemed to be piling themselves up beyond the hills to the northwest. The men from Arkham were undecided what to do. Seeking shelter from the increasing rainfall beneath one of the few undestroyed Frye outbuildings, they debated the wisdom of waiting, or of taking the aggressive and going down into the glen in quest of their nameless, monstrous quarry. The downpour waxed in heaviness, and distant peals of thunder sounded from far horizons. Sheet lightning shimmered, and then a forky bolt flashed near at hand, as if descending into the accursed glen itself. The sky grew very dark, and the watchers hoped that the storm would prove a short, sharp one followed by clear weather.
      It was still gruesomely dark when, not much over an hour later, a confused babel of voices sounded down the road. Another moment brought to view a frightened group of more than a dozen men, running, shouting, and even whimpering hysterically. Someone in the lead began sobbing out words, and the Arkham men started violently when those words developed a coherent form.
      “Oh, my Gawd, my Gawd,” the voice choked out. “It’s a-goin’ agin, an’ this time by day! It’s aout—it’s aout an’ a-movin’ this very minute, an’ only the Lord knows when it’ll be on us all!”
      The speaker panted into silence, but another took up his message.
      “Nigh on a haour ago Zeb Whateley here heerd the ’phone a-ringin’, an’ it was Mis’ Corey, George’s wife, that lives daown by the junction. She says the hired boy Luther was aout drivin’ in the caows from the storm arter the big bolt, when he see all the trees a-bendin’ at the maouth o’ the glen—opposite side ter this—an’ smelt the same awful smell like he smelt when he faound the big tracks las’ Monday mornin’. An’ she says he says they was a swishin’, lappin’ saound, more nor what the bendin’ trees an’ bushes could make, an’ all on a suddent the trees along the rud begun ter git pushed one side, an’ they was a awful stompin’ an’ splashin’ in the mud. But mind ye, Luther he didn’t see nothin’ at all, only just the bendin’ trees an’ underbrush.
      “Then fur ahead where Bishop’s Brook goes under the rud he heerd a awful creakin’ an’ strainin’ on the bridge, an’ says he could tell the saound o’ wood a-startin’ to crack an’ split. An’ all the whiles he never see a thing, only them trees an’ bushes a-bendin’. An’ when the swishin’ saound got very fur off—on the rud towards Wizard Whateley’s an’ Sentinel Hill—Luther he had the guts ter step up whar he’d heerd it furst an’ look at the graound. It was all mud an’ water, an’ the sky was dark, an’ the rain was wipin’ aout all tracks abaout as fast as could be; but beginnin’ at the glen maouth, whar the trees had moved, they was still some o’ them awful prints big as bar’ls like he seen Monday.”
      At this point the first excited speaker interrupted.
      “But that ain’t the trouble naow—that was only the start. Zeb here was callin’ folks up an’ everybody was a-listenin’ in when a call from Seth Bishop’s cut in. His haousekeeper Sally was carryin’ on fit ter kill—she’d jest seed the trees a-bendin’ beside the rud, an’ says they was a kind o’ mushy saound, like a elephant puffin’ an’ treadin’, a-headin’ fer the haouse. Then she up an’ spoke suddent of a fearful smell, an’ says her boy Cha’ncey was a-screamin’ as haow it was jest like what he smelt up to the Whateley rewins Monday mornin’. An’ the dogs was all barkin’ an’ whinin’ awful.
      “An’ then she let aout a turrible yell, an’ says the shed daown the rud had jest caved in like the storm hed blowed it over, only the wind wa’n’t strong enough to dew that. Everybody was a-listenin’, an’ we could hear lots o’ folks on the wire a-gaspin’. All to onct Sally she yelled agin, an’ says the front yard picket fence hed just crumbled up, though they wa’n’t no sign o’ what done it. Then everybody on the line could hear Cha’ncey an’ ol’ Seth Bishop a-yellin’ tew, an’ Sally was shriekin’ aout that suthin’ heavy hed struck the haouse—not lightnin’ nor nothin’, but suthin’ heavy agin the front, that kep’ a-launchin’ itself agin an’ agin, though ye couldn’t see nothin’ aout the front winders. An’ then . . . an’ then . . .”
      Lines of fright deepened on every face; and Armitage, shaken as he was, had barely poise enough to prompt the speaker.
      “An’ then . . . Sally she yelled aout, ’O help, the haouse is a-cavin’ in’ . . . an’ on the wire we could hear a turrible crashin’, an’ a hull flock o’ screamin’ . . . jest like when Elmer Frye’s place was took, only wuss. . . .”
      The man paused, and another of the crowd spoke.
      “That’s all—not a saound nor squeak over the ’phone arter that. Jest still-like. We that heerd it got aout Fords an’ wagons an’ raounded up as many able-bodied menfolks as we could git, at Corey’s place, an’ come up here ter see what yew thought best ter dew. Not but what I think it’s the Lord’s jedgment fer our iniquities, that no mortal kin ever set aside.”
      Armitage saw that the time for positive action had come, and spoke decisively to the faltering group of frightened rustics.
      “We must follow it, boys.” He made his voice as reassuring as possible. “I believe there’s a chance of putting it out of business. You men know that those Whateleys were wizards—well, this thing is a thing of wizardry, and must be put down by the same means. I’ve seen Wilbur Whateley’s diary and read some of the strange old books he used to read; and I think I know the right kind of spell to recite to make the thing fade away. Of course, one can’t be sure, but we can always take a chance. It’s invisible—I knew it would be—but there’s a powder in this long-distance sprayer that might make it shew up for a second. Later on we’ll try it. It’s a frightful thing to have alive, but it isn’t as bad as what Wilbur would have let in if he’d lived longer. You’ll never know what the world has escaped. Now we’ve only this one thing to fight, and it can’t multiply. It can, though, do a lot of harm; so we mustn’t hesitate to rid the community of it.
      “We must follow it—and the way to begin is to go to the place that has just been wrecked. Let somebody lead the way—I don’t know your roads very well, but I’ve an idea there might be a shorter cut across lots. How about it?”
      The men shuffled about a moment, and then Earl Sawyer spoke softly, pointing with a grimy finger through the steadily lessening rain.
      “I guess ye kin git to Seth Bishop’s quickest by cuttin’ acrost the lower medder here, wadin’ the brook at the low place, an’ climbin’ through Carrier’s mowin’ and the timber-lot beyont. That comes aout on the upper rud mighty nigh Seth’s—a leetle t’other side.”
      Armitage, with Rice and Morgan, started to walk in the direction indicated; and most of the natives followed slowly. The sky was growing lighter, and there were signs that the storm had worn itself away. When Armitage inadvertently took a wrong direction, Joe Osborn warned him and walked ahead to shew the right one. Courage and confidence were mounting; though the twilight of the almost perpendicular wooded hill which lay toward the end of their short cut, and among whose fantastic ancient trees they had to scramble as if up a ladder, put these qualities to a severe test.
      At length they emerged on a muddy road to find the sun coming out. They were a little beyond the Seth Bishop place, but bent trees and hideously unmistakable tracks shewed what had passed by. Only a few moments were consumed in surveying the ruins just around the bend. It was the Frye incident all over again, and nothing dead or living was found in either of the collapsed shells which had been the Bishop house and barn. No one cared to remain there amidst the stench and tarry stickiness, but all turned instinctively to the line of horrible prints leading on toward the wrecked Whateley farmhouse and the altar-crowned slopes of Sentinel Hill.
      As the men passed the site of Wilbur Whateley’s abode they shuddered visibly, and seemed again to mix hesitancy with their zeal. It was no joke tracking down something as big as a house that one could not see, but that had all the vicious malevolence of a daemon. Opposite the base of Sentinel Hill the tracks left the road, and there was a fresh bending and matting visible along the broad swath marking the monster’s former route to and from the summit.
      Armitage produced a pocket telescope of considerable power and scanned the steep green side of the hill. Then he handed the instrument to Morgan, whose sight was keener. After a moment of gazing Morgan cried out sharply, passing the glass to Earl Sawyer and indicating a certain spot on the slope with his finger. Sawyer, as clumsy as most non-users of optical devices are, fumbled a while; but eventually focussed the lenses with Armitage’s aid. When he did so his cry was less restrained than Morgan’s had been.
      “Gawd almighty, the grass an’ bushes is a-movin’! It’s a-goin’ up—slow-like—creepin’ up ter the top this minute, heaven only knows what fur!”
      Then the germ of panic seemed to spread among the seekers. It was one thing to chase the nameless entity, but quite another to find it. Spells might be all right—but suppose they weren’t? Voices began questioning Armitage about what he knew of the thing, and no reply seemed quite to satisfy. Everyone seemed to feel himself in close proximity to phases of Nature and of being utterly forbidden, and wholly outside the sane experience of mankind.
",True
"V. A Nightmare and a Cataclysm

1.

And now swiftly followed that hideous experience which has left its indelible mark of fear on the soul of Marinus Bicknell Willett, and has added a decade to the visible age of one whose youth was even then far behind. Dr. Willett had conferred at length with Mr. Ward, and had come to an agreement with him on several points which both felt the alienists would ridicule. There was, they conceded, a terrible movement alive in the world, whose direct connexion with a necromancy even older than the Salem witchcraft could not be doubted. That at least two living men - and one other of whom they dared not think - were in absolute possession of minds or personalities which had functioned as early as 1690 or before was likewise almost unassailably proved even in the face of all known natural laws. What these horrible creatures - and Charles Ward as well - were doing or trying to do seemed fairly clear from their letters and from every bit of light both old and new which had filtered in upon the case. They were robbing the tombs of all the ages, including those of the world's wisest and greatest men, in the hope of recovering from the bygone ashes some vestige of the consciousness and lore which had once animated and informed them.
      A hideous traffick was going on among these nightmare ghouls, whereby illustrious bones were bartered with the calm calculativeness of schoolboys swapping books; and from what was extorted from this centuried dust there was anticipated a power and a wisdom beyond anything which the cosmos had ever seen concentrated in one man or group. They had found unholy ways to keep their brains alive, either in the same body or different bodies; and had evidently achieved a way of tapping the consciousness of the dead whom they gathered together. There had, it seems, been some truth in chimerical old Borellus when he wrote of preparing from even the most antique remains certain ""Essential Saltes"" from which the shade of a long-dead living thing might be raised up. There was a formula for evoking such a shade, and another for putting it down; and it had now been so perfected that it could be taught successfully. One must be careful about evocations, for the markers of old graves are not always accurate.
      Willett and Mr. Ward shivered as they passed from conclusion to conclusion. Things - presences or voices of some sort - could be drawn down from unknown places as well as from the grave, and in this process also one must be careful. Joseph Curwen had indubitably evoked many forbidden things, and as for Charles - what might one think of him? What forces ""outside the spheres"" had reached him from Joseph Curwen's day and turned his mind on forgotten things? He had been led to find certain directions, and he had used them. He had talked with the man of horror in Prague and stayed long with the creature in the mountains of Transylvania. And he must have found the grave of Joseph Curwen at last. That newspaper item and what his mother had heard in the night were too significant to overlook. Then he had summoned something, and it must have come. That mighty voice aloft on Good Friday, and those different tones in the locked attic laboratory. What were they like, with their depth and hollowness? Was there not here some awful foreshadowing of the dreaded stranger Dr. Allen with his spectral bass? Yes, that was what Mr. Ward had felt with vague horror in his single talk with the man - if man it were - over the telephone!
      What hellish consciousness or voice, what morbid shade or presence, had come to answer Charles Ward's secret rites behind that locked door? Those voices heard in argument - ""must have it red for three months"" - Good God! Was not that just before the vampirism broke out? The rifling of Ezra Weeden's ancient grave, and the cries later at Pawtuxet - whose mind had planned the vengeance and rediscovered the shunned seat of elder blasphemies? And then the bungalow and the bearded stranger, and the gossip, and the fear. The final madness of Charles neither father nor doctor could attempt to explain, but they did feel sure that the mind of Joseph Curwen had come to earth again and was following its ancient morbidities. Was daemoniac possession in truth a possibility? Allen had something to do with it, and the detectives must find out more about one whose existence menaced the young man's life. In the meantime, since the existence of some vast crypt beneath the bungalow seemed virtually beyond dispute, some effort must be made to find it. Willett and Mr. Ward, conscious of the sceptical attitude of the alienists, resolved during their final conference to undertake a joint secret exploration of unparalleled thoroughness; and agreed to meet at the bungalow on the following morning with valises and with certain tools and accessories suited to architectural search and underground exploration.
      The morning of April 6th dawned clear, and both explorers were at the bungalow by ten o'clock. Mr. Ward had the key, and an entry and cursory survey were made. From the disordered condition of Dr. Allen's room it was obvious that the detectives had been there before, and the later searchers hoped that they had found some clue which might prove of value. Of course the main business lay in the cellar; so thither they descended without much delay, again making the circuit which each had vainly made before in the presence of the mad young owner. For a time everything seemed baffling, each inch of the earthen floor and stone walls having so solid and innocuous an aspect that the thought of a yawning aperture was scarcely to be entertained. Willett reflected that since the original cellar was dug without knowledge of any catacombs beneath, the beginning of the passage would represent the strictly modern delving of young Ward and his associates, where they had probed for the ancient vaults whose rumour could have reached them by no wholesome means.
      The doctor tried to put himself in Charles's place to see how a delver would be likely to start, but could not gain much inspiration from this method. Then he decided on elimination as a policy, and went carefully over the whole subterranean surface both vertical and horizontal, trying to account for every inch separately. He was soon substantially narrowed down, and at last had nothing left but the small platform before the washtubs, which he had tried once before in vain. Now experimenting in every possible way, and exerting a double strength, he finally found that the top did indeed turn and slide horizontally on a corner pivot. Beneath it lay a trim concrete surface with an iron manhole, to which Mr. Ward at once rushed with excited zeal. The cover was not hard to lift, and the father had quite removed it when Willett noticed the queerness of his aspect. He was swaying and nodding dizzily, and in the gust of noxious air which swept up from the black pit beneath the doctor soon recognised ample cause.
      In a moment Dr. Willett had his fainting companion on the floor above and was reviving him with cold water. Mr. Ward responded feebly, but it could be seen that the mephitic blast from the crypt had in some way gravely sickened him. Wishing to take no chances, Willett hastened out to Broad Street for a taxicab and had soon dispatched the sufferer home despite his weak-voiced protests; after which he produced an electric torch, covered his nostrils with a band of sterile gauze, and descended once more to peer into the new-found depths. The foul air had now slightly abated, and Willett was able to send a beam of light down the Stygian hole. For about ten feet, he saw, it was a sheer cylindrical drop with concrete walls and an iron ladder; after which the hole appeared to strike a flight of old stone steps which must originally have emerged to earth somewhat southwest of the present building.

2.

      Willett freely admits that for a moment the memory of the old Curwen legends kept him from climbing down alone into that malodorous gulf. He could not help thinking of what Luke Fenner had reported on that last monstrous night. Then duty asserted itself and he made the plunge, carrying a great valise for the removal of whatever papers might prove of supreme importance. Slowly, as befitted one of his years, he descended the ladder and reached the slimy steps below. This was ancient masonry, his torch told him; and upon the dripping walls he saw the unwholesome moss of centuries. Down, down, ran the steps; not spirally, but in three abrupt turns; and with such narrowness that two men could have passed only with difficulty. He had counted about thirty when a sound reached him very faintly; and after that he did not feel disposed to count any more.
      It was a godless sound; one of those low-keyed, insidious outrages of Nature which are not meant to be. To call it a dull wail, a doom-dragged whine, or a hopeless howl of chorused anguish and stricken flesh without mind would be to miss its most quintessential loathsomeness and soul-sickening overtones. Was it for this that Ward had seemed to listen on that day he was removed? It was the most shocking thing that Willett had ever heard, and it continued from no determinate point as the doctor reached the bottom of the steps and cast his torchlight around on lofty corridor walls surmounted by Cyclopean vaulting and pierced by numberless black archways. The hall in which he stood was perhaps fourteen feet high to the middle of the vaulting and ten or twelve feet broad. Its pavement was of large chipped flagstones, and its walls and roof were of dressed masonry. Its length he could not imagine, for it stretched ahead indefinitely into the blackness. Of the archways, some had doors of the old six-panelled colonial type, whilst others had none.
      Overcoming the dread induced by the smell and the howling, Willett began to explore these archways one by one; finding beyond them rooms with groined stone ceilings, each of medium size and apparently of bizarre uses. Most of them had fireplaces, the upper courses of whose chimneys would have formed an interesting study in engineering. Never before or since had he seen such instruments or suggestions of instruments as here loomed up on every hand through the burying dust and cobwebs of a century and a half, in many cases evidently shattered as if by the ancient raiders. For many of the chambers seemed wholly untrodden by modern feet, and must have represented the earliest and most obsolete phases of Joseph Curwen's experimentation. Finally there came a room of obvious modernity, or at least of recent occupancy. There were oil heaters, bookshelves and tables, chairs and cabinets, and a desk piled high with papers of varying antiquity and contemporaneousness. Candlesticks and oil lamps stood about in several places; and finding a match-safe handy, Willett lighted such as were ready for use.
      In the fuller gleam it appeared that this apartment was nothing less than the latest study or library of Charles Ward. Of the books the doctor had seen many before, and a good part of the furniture had plainly come from the Prospect Street mansion. Here and there was a piece well known to Willett, and the sense of familiarity became so great that he half forgot the noisomeness and the wailing, both of which were plainer here than they had been at the foot of the steps. His first duty, as planned long ahead, was to find and seize any papers which might seem of vital importance; especially those portentous documents found by Charles so long ago behind the picture in Olney Court. As he searched he perceived how stupendous a task the final unravelling would be; for file on file was stuffed with papers in curious hands and bearing curious designs, so that months or even years might be needed for a thorough deciphering and editing. Once he found large packets of letters with Prague and Rakus postmarks, and in writing clearly recognisable as Orne's and Hutchinson's; all of which he took with him as part of the bundle to be removed in his valise.
      At last, in a locked mahogany cabinet once gracing the Ward home, Willett found the batch of old Curwen papers; recognising them from the reluctant glimpse Charles had granted him so many years ago. The youth had evidently kept them together very much as they had been when first he found them, since all the titles recalled by the workmen were present except the papers addressed to Orne and Hutchinson, and the cipher with its key. Willett placed the entire lot in his valise and continued his examination of the files. Since young Ward's immediate condition was the greatest matter at stake, the closest searching was done among the most obviously recent matter; and in this abundance of contemporary manuscript one very baffling oddity was noted. The oddity was the slight amount in Charles's normal writing, which indeed included nothing more recent than two months before. On the other hand, there were literally reams of symbols and formulae, historical notes and philosophical comment, in a crabbed penmanship absolutely identical with the ancient script of Joseph Curwen, though of undeniably modern dating. Plainly, a part of the latter-day programme had been a sedulous imitation of the old wizard's writing, which Charles seemed to have carried to a marvellous state of perfection. Of any third hand which might have been Allen's there was not a trace. If he had indeed come to be the leader, he must have forced young Ward to act as his amanuensis.
      In this new material one mystic formula, or rather pair of formulae, recurred so often that Willett had it by heart before he had half finished his quest. It consisted of two parallel columns, the left-hand one surmounted by the archaic symbol called ""Dragon's Head"" and used in almanacks to indicate the ascending node, and the right-hand one headed by a corresponding sign of ""Dragon's Tail"" or descending node. The appearance of the whole was something like this, and almost unconsciously the doctor realised that the second half was no more than the first written syllabically backward with the exception of the final monosyllables and of the odd name Yog-Sothoth, which he had come to recognise under various spellings from other things he had seen in connexion with this horrible matter. The formulae were as follows - exactly so, as Willett is abundantly able to testify - and the first one struck an odd note of uncomfortable latent memory in his brain, which he recognised later when reviewing the events of that horrible Good Friday of the previous year.


Y'AI 'NG'NGAH,
YOG-SOTHOTH
H'EE - L'GEB
F'AI THRODOG
UAAAH
      	

OGTHROD AI'F
GEB'L - EE'H
YOG-SOTHOTH
'NGAH'NG AI'Y
ZHRO

So haunting were these formulae, and so frequently did he come upon them, that before the doctor knew it he was repeating them under his breath. Eventually, however, he felt he had secured all the papers he could digest to advantage for the present; hence resolved to examine no more till he could bring the sceptical alienists en masse for an ampler and more systematic raid. He had still to find the hidden laboratory, so leaving his valise in the lighted room he emerged again into the black noisome corridor whose vaulting echoed ceaselessly with that dull and hideous whine.
      The next few rooms he tried were all abandoned, or filled only with crumbling boxes and ominous-looking leaden coffins; but impressed him deeply with the magnitude of Joseph Curwen's original operations. He thought of the slaves and seamen who had disappeared, of the graves which had been violated in every part of the world, and of what that final raiding party must have seen; and then he decided it was better not to think any more. Once a great stone staircase mounted at his right, and he deduced that this must have reached to one of the Curwen outbuildings - perhaps the famous stone edifice with the high slit-like windows - provided the steps he had descended had led from the steep-roofed farmhouse. Suddenly the walls seemed to fall away ahead, and the stench and the wailing grew stronger. Willett saw that he had come upon a vast open space, so great that his torchlight would not carry across it; and as he advanced he encountered occasional stout pillars supporting the arches of the roof.
      After a time he reached a circle of pillars grouped like the monoliths of Stonehenge, with a large carved altar on a base of three steps in the centre; and so curious were the carvings on that altar that he approached to study them with his electric light. But when he saw what they were he shrank away shuddering, and did not stop to investigate the dark stains which discoloured the upper surface and had spread down the sides in occasional thin lines. Instead, he found the distant wall and traced it as it swept round in a gigantic circle perforated by occasional black doorways and indented by a myriad of shallow cells with iron gratings and wrist and ankle bonds on chains fastened to the stone of the concave rear masonry. These cells were empty, but still the horrible odour and the dismal moaning continued, more insistent now than ever, and seemingly varied at times by a sort of slippery thumping.

3.

      From that frightful smell and that uncanny noise Willett's attention could no longer be diverted. Both were plainer and more hideous in the great pillared hall than anywhere else, and carried a vague impression of being far below, even in this dark nether world of subterrene mystery. Before trying any of the black archways for steps leading further down, the doctor cast his beam of light about the stone-flagged floor. It was very loosely paved, and at irregular intervals there would occur a slab curiously pierced by small holes in no definite arrangement, while at one point there lay a very long ladder carelessly flung down. To this ladder, singularly enough, appeared to cling a particularly large amount of the frightful odour which encompassed everything. As he walked slowly about it suddenly occurred to Willett that both the noise and the odour seemed strongest directly above the oddly pierced slabs, as if they might be crude trap-doors leading down to some still deeper region of horror. Kneeling by one, he worked at it with his hands, and found that with extreme difficulty he could budge it. At his touch the moaning beneath ascended to a louder key, and only with vast trepidation did he persevere in the lifting of the heavy stone. A stench unnamable now rose up from below, and the doctor's head reeled dizzily as he laid back the slab and turned his torch upon the exposed square yard of gaping blackness.
      If he had expected a flight of steps to some wide gulf of ultimate abomination, Willett was destined to be disappointed; for amidst that foetor and cracked whining he discerned only the brick-faced top of a cylindrical well perhaps a yard and a half in diameter and devoid of any ladder or other means of descent. As the light shone down, the wailing changed suddenly to a series of horrible yelps; in conjunction with which there came again that sound of blind, futile scrambling and slippery thumping. The explorer trembled, unwilling even to imagine what noxious thing might be lurking in that abyss, but in a moment mustered up the courage to peer over the rough-hewn brink; lying at full length and holding the torch downward at arm's length to see what might lie below. For a second he could distinguish nothing but the slimy, moss-grown brick walls sinking illimitably into that half-tangible miasma of murk and foulness and anguished frenzy; and then he saw that something dark was leaping clumsily and frantically up and down at the bottom of the narrow shaft, which must have been from twenty to twenty-five feet below the stone floor where he lay. The torch shook in his hand, but he looked again to see what manner of living creature might be immured there in the darkness of that unnatural well; left starving by young Ward through all the long month since the doctors had taken him away, and clearly only one of a vast number prisoned in the kindred wells whose pierced stone covers so thickly studded in the floor of the great vaulted cavern. Whatever the things were, they could not lie down in their cramped spaces; but must have crouched and whined and waited and feebly leaped all those hideous weeks since their master had abandoned them unheeded.
      But Marinus Bicknell Willett was sorry that he looked again; for surgeon and veteran of the dissecting-room though he was, he has not been the same since. It is hard to explain just how a single sight of a tangible object with measureable dimensions could so shake and change a man; and we may only say that there is about certain outlines and entities a power of symbolism and suggestion which acts frightfully on a sensitive thinker's perspective and whispers terrible hints of obscure cosmic relationships and unnamable realities behind the protective illusions of common vision. In that second look Willett saw such an outline or entity, for during the next few instants he was undoubtedly as stark mad as any inmate of Dr. Waite's private hospital. He dropped the electric torch from a hand drained of muscular power or nervous cošrdination, nor heeded the sound of crunching teeth which told of its fate at the bottom of the pit. He screamed and screamed and screamed in a voice whose falsetto panic no acquaintance of his would ever have recognised; and though he could not rise to his feet he crawled and rolled desperately away over the damp pavement where dozens of Tartarean wells poured forth their exhausted whining and yelping to answer his own insane cries. He tore his hands on the rough, loose stones, and many times bruised his head against the frequent pillars, but still he kept on. Then at last he slowly came to himself in the utter blackness and stench, and stopped his ears against the droning wail into which the burst of yelping had subsided. He was drenched with perspiration and without means of producing a light; stricken and unnerved in the abysmal blackness and horror, and crushed with a memory he never could efface. Beneath him dozens of those things still lived, and from one of the shafts the cover was removed. He knew that what he had seen could never climb up the slippery walls, yet shuddered at the thought that some obscure foot-hold might exist.
      What the thing was, he would never tell. It was like some of the carvings on the hellish altar, but it was alive. Nature had never made it in this form, for it was too palpably unfinished. The deficiencies were of the most surprising sort, and the abnormalities of proportion could not be described. Willett consents only to say that this type of thing must have represented entities which Ward called up from imperfect salts, and which he kept for servile or ritualistic purposes. If it had not had a certain significance, its image would not have been carved on that damnable stone. It was not the worst thing depicted on that stone - but Willett never opened the other pits. At the time, the first connected idea in his mind was an idle paragraph from some of the old Curwen data he had digested long before; a phrase used by Simon or Jedediah Orne in that portentous confiscated letter to the bygone sorcerer: ""Certainely, there was Noth'g butt ye liveliest Awfulness in that which H. rais'd upp from What he cou'd gather onlie a part of.""
      Then, horribly supplementing rather than displacing this image, there came a recollection of those ancient lingering rumours anent the burned, twisted thing found in the fields a week after the Curwen raid. Charles Ward had once told the doctor what old Slocum said of that object; that it was neither thoroughly human, nor wholly allied to any animal which Pawtuxet folk had ever seen or read about.
      These words hummed in the doctor's mind as he rocked to and fro, squatting on the nitrous stone floor. He tried to drive them out, and repeated the Lord's Prayer to himself; eventually trailing off into a mnemonic hodge-podge like the modernistic Waste Land of Mr. T. S. Eliot and finally reverting to the oft-repeated dual formula he had lately found in Ward's underground library: ""Y'ai 'ng'ngah, Yog-Sothoth"", and so on till the final underlined ""Zhro"". It seemed to soothe him, and he staggered to his feet after a time; lamenting bitterly his fright-lost torch and looking wildly about for any gleam of light in the clutching inkiness of the chilly air. Think he would not; but he strained his eyes in every direction for some faint glint or reflection of the bright illumination he had left in the library. After a while he thought he detected a suspicion of a glow infinitely far away, and toward this he crawled in agonised caution on hands and knees amidst the stench and howling, always feeling ahead lest he collide with the numerous great pillars or stumble into the abominable pit he had uncovered.
      Once his shaking fingers touched something which he knew must be the steps leading to the hellish altar, and from this spot he recoiled in loathing. At another time he encountered the pierced slab he had removed, and here his caution became almost pitiful. But he did not come upon the dread aperture after all, nor did anything issue from that aperture to detain him. What had been down there made no sound nor stir. Evidently its crunching of the fallen electric torch had not been good for it. Each time Willett's fingers felt a perforated slab he trembled. His passage over it would sometimes increase the groaning below, but generally it would produce no effect at all, since he moved very noiselessly. Several times during his progress the glow ahead diminished perceptibly, and he realised that the various candles and lamps he had left must be expiring one by one. The thought of being lost in utter darkness without matches amidst this underground world of nightmare labyrinths impelled him to rise to his feet and run, which he could safely do now that he had passed the open pit; for he knew that once the light failed, his only hope of rescue and survival would lie in whatever relief party Mr. Ward might send after missing him for a sufficient period. Presently, however, he emerged from the open space into the narrower corridor and definitely located the glow as coming from a door on his right. In a moment he had reached it and was standing once more in young Ward's secret library, trembling with relief, and watching the sputterings of that last lamp which had brought him to safety.

4.

      In another moment he was hastily filling the burned-out lamps from an oil supply he had previously noticed, and when the room was bright again he looked about to see if he might find a lantern for further exploration. For racked though he was with horror, his sense of grim purpose was still uppermost; and he was firmly determined to leave no stone unturned in his search for the hideous facts behind Charles Ward's bizarre madness. Failing to find a lantern, he chose the smallest of the lamps to carry; also filling his pockets with candles and matches, and taking with him a gallon can of oil, which he proposed to keep for reserve use in whatever hidden laboratory he might uncover beyond the terrible open space with its unclean altar and nameless covered wells. To traverse that space again would require his utmost fortitude, but he knew it must be done. Fortunately neither the frightful altar nor the opened shaft was near the vast cell-indented wall which bounded the cavern area, and whose black mysterious archways would form the next goals of a logical search.
      So Willett went back to that great pillared hall of stench and anguished howling; turning down his lamp to avoid any distant glimpse of the hellish altar, or of the uncovered pit with the pierced stone slab beside it. Most of the black doorways led merely to small chambers, some vacant and some evidently used as storerooms; and in several of the latter he saw some very curious accumulations of various objects. One was packed with rotting and dust-draped bales of spare clothing, and the explorer thrilled when he saw that it was unmistakably the clothing of a century and a half before. In another room he found numerous odds and ends of modern clothing, as if gradual provisions were being made to equip a large body of men. But what he disliked most of all were the huge copper vats which occasionally appeared; these, and the sinister incrustations upon them. He liked them even less than the weirdly figured leaden bowls whose rims retained such obnoxious deposits and around which clung repellent odours perceptible above even the general noisomeness of the crypt. When he had completed about half the entire circuit of the wall he found another corridor like that from which he had come, and out of which many doors opened. This he proceeded to investigate; and after entering three rooms of medium size and of no significant contents, he came at last to a large oblong apartment whose business-like tanks and tables, furnaces and modern instruments, occasional books and endless shelves of jars and bottles proclaimed it indeed the long-sought laboratory of Charles Ward - and no doubt of old Joseph Curwen before him.
      After lighting the three lamps which he found filled and ready, Dr. Willett examined the place and all its appurtenances with the keenest interest; noting from the relative quantities of various reagents on the shelves that young Ward's dominant concern must have been with some branch of organic chemistry. On the whole, little could be learned from the scientific ensemble, which included a gruesome-looking dissecting table; so that the room was really rather a disappointment. Among the books was a tattered old copy of Borellus in black-letter, and it was weirdly interesting to note that Ward had underlined the same passage whose marking had so perturbed good Mr. Merritt at Curwen's farmhouse more than a century and a half before. That older copy, of course, must have perished along with the rest of Curwen's occult library in the final raid. Three archways opened off the laboratory, and these the doctor proceeded to sample in turn. From his cursory survey he saw that two led merely to small storerooms; but these he canvassed with care, remarking the piles of coffins in various stages of damage and shuddering violently at two or three of the few coffin-plates he could decipher. There was much clothing also stored in these rooms, and several new and tightly nailed boxes which he did not stop to investigate. Most interesting of all, perhaps, were some odd bits which he judged to be fragments of old Joseph Curwen's laboratory appliances. These had suffered damage at the hands of the raiders, but were still partly recognisable as the chemical paraphernalia of the Georgian period.
      The third archway led to a very sizeable chamber entirely lined with shelves and having in the centre a table bearing two lamps. These lamps Willett lighted, and in their brilliant glow studied the endless shelving which surrounded him. Some of the upper levels were wholly vacant, but most of the space was filled with small odd-looking leaden jars of two general types; one tall and without handles like a Grecian lekythos or oil-jug, and the other with a single handle and proportioned like a Phaleron jug. All had metal stoppers, and were covered with peculiar-looking symbols moulded in low relief. In a moment the doctor noticed that these jugs were classified with great rigidity; all the lekythoi being on one side of the room with a large wooden sign reading ""Custodes"" above them, and all the Phalerons on the other, correspondingly labelled with a sign reading ""Materia"". Each of the jars or jugs, except some on the upper shelves that turned out to be vacant, bore a cardboard tag with a number apparently referring to a catalogue; and Willett resolved to look for the latter presently. For the moment, however, he was more interested in the nature of the array as a whole; and experimentally opened several of the lekythoi and Phalerons at random with a view to a rough generalisation. The result was invariable. Both types of jar contained a small quantity of a single kind of substance; a fine dusty powder of very light weight and of many shades of dull, neutral colour. To the colours which formed the only point of variation there was no apparent method of disposal; and no distinction between what occurred in the lekythoi and what occurred in the Phalerons. A bluish-grey powder might be by the side of a pinkish-white one, and any one in a Phaleron might have its exact counterpart in a lekythos. The most individual feature about the powders was their non-adhesiveness. Willett would pour one into his hand, and upon returning it to its jug would find that no residue whatever remained on its palm.
      The meaning of the two signs puzzled him, and he wondered why this battery of chemicals was separated so radically from those in glass jars on the shelves of the laboratory proper. ""Custodes"", ""Materia""; that was the Latin for ""Guards"" and ""Materials"", respectively - and then there came a flash of memory as to where he had seen that word ""Guards"" before in connexion with this dreadful mystery. It was, of course, in the recent letter to Dr. Allen purporting to be from old Edward Hutchinson; and the phrase had read: ""There was no Neede to keep the Guards in Shape and eat'g off their Heads, and it made Much to be founde in Case of Trouble, as you too welle knowe."" What did this signify? But wait - was there not still another reference to ""guards"" in this matter which he had failed wholly to recall when reading the Hutchinson letter? Back in the old non-secretive days Ward had told him of the Eleazar Smith diary recording the spying of Smith and Weeden on the Curwen farm, and in that dreadful chronicle there had been a mention of conversations overheard before the old wizard betook himself wholly beneath the earth. There had been, Smith and Weeden insisted, terrible colloquies wherein figured Curwen, certain captives of his, and the guards of those captives. Those guards, according to Hutchinson or his avatar, had 'eaten their heads off', so that now Dr. Allen did not keep them in shape. And if not in shape, how save as the ""salts"" to which it appears this wizard band was engaged in reducing as many human bodies or skeletons as they could?
      So that was what these lekythoi contained; the monstrous fruit of unhallowed rites and deeds, presumably won or cowed to such submission as to help, when called up by some hellish incantation, in the defence of their blasphemous master or the questioning of those who were not so willing? Willett shuddered at the thought of what he had been pouring in and out of his hands, and for a moment felt an impulse to flee in panic from that cavern of hideous shelves with their silent and perhaps watching sentinels. Then he thought of the ""Materia"" - in the myriad Phaleron jugs on the other side of the room. Salts too - and if not the salts of ""guards"", then the salts of what? God! Could it be possible that here lay the mortal relics of half the titan thinkers of all the ages; snatched by supreme ghouls from crypts where the world thought them safe, and subject to the beck and call of madmen who sought to drain their knowledge for some still wilder end whose ultimate effect would concern, as poor Charles had hinted in his frantic note, 'all civilisation, all natural law, perhaps even the fate of the solar system and the universe'? And Marinus Bicknell Willett had sifted their dust through his hands!
      Then he noticed a small door at the farther end of the room, and calmed himself enough to approach it and examine the crude sign chiselled above. It was only a symbol, but it filled him with vague spiritual dread; for a morbid, dreaming friend of his had once drawn it on paper and told him a few of the things it means in the dark abyss of sleep. It was the sign of Koth, that dreamers see fixed above the archway of a certain black tower standing alone in twilight - and Willett did not like what his friend Randolph Carter had said of its powers. But a moment later he forgot the sign as he recognised a new acrid odour in the stench-filled air. This was a chemical rather than animal smell, and came clearly from the room beyond the door. And it was, unmistakably, the same odour which had saturated Charles Ward's clothing on the day the doctors had taken him away. So it was here that the youth had been interrupted by the final summons? He was wiser than old Joseph Curwen, for he had not resisted. Willett, boldly determined to penetrate every wonder and nightmare this nether realm might contain, seized the small lamp and crossed the threshold. A wave of nameless fright rolled out to meet him, but he yielded to no whim and deferred to no intuition. There was nothing alive here to harm him, and he would not be stayed in his piercing of the eldritch cloud which engulfed his patient.
      The room beyond the door was of medium size, and had no furniture save a table, a single chair, and two groups of curious machines with clamps and wheels, which Willett recognised after a moment as mediaeval instruments of torture. On one side of the door stood a rack of savage whips, above which were some shelves bearing empty rows of shallow pedestalled cups of lead shaped like Grecian kylikes. On the other side was the table; with a powerful Argand lamp, a pad and pencil, and two of the stoppered lekythoi from the shelves outside set down at irregular places as if temporarily or in haste. Willett lighted the lamp and looked carefully at the pad, to see what notes young Ward might have been jotting down when interrupted; but found nothing more intelligible than the following disjointed fragments in that crabbed Curwen chirography, which shed no light on the case as a whole:
""B. dy'd not. Escap'd into walls and founde Place below.
""Saw olde V. saye ye Sabaoth and learnt ye Way.
""Rais'd Yog-Sothoth thrice and was ye nexte Day deliver'd.
""F. soughte to wipe out all know'g howe to raise Those from Outside.""
      As the strong Argand blaze lit up the entire chamber the doctor saw that the wall opposite the door, between the two groups of torturing appliances in the corners, was covered with pegs from which hung a set of shapeless-looking robes of a rather dismal yellowish-white. But far more interesting were the two vacant walls, both of which were thickly covered with mystic symbols and formulae roughly chiselled in the smooth dressed stone. The damp floor also bore marks of carving; and with but little difficulty Willett deciphered a huge pentagram in the centre, with a plain circle about three feet wide half way between this and each corner. In one of these four circles, near where a yellowish robe had been flung carelessly down, there stood a shallow kylix of the sort found on the shelves above the whip-rack; and just outside the periphery was one of the Phaleron jugs from the shelves in the other room, its tag numbered 118. This was unstoppered, and proved upon inspection to be empty; but the explorer saw with a shiver that the kylix was not. Within its shallow area, and saved from scattering only by the absence of wind in this sequestered cavern, lay a small amount of a dry, dull-greenish efflorescent powder which must have belonged in the jug; and Willett almost reeled at the implications that came sweeping over him as he correlated little by little the several elements and antecedents of the scene. The whips and the instruments of torture, the dust or salts from the jug of ""Materia"", the two lekythoi from the ""Custodes"" shelf, the robes, the formulae on the walls, the notes on the pad, the hints from letters and legends, and the thousand glimpses, doubts, and suppositions which had come to torment the friends and parents of Charles Ward - all these engulfed the doctor in a tidal wave of horror as he looked at that dry greenish powder outspread in the pedestalled leaden kylix on the floor.
      With an effort, however, Willett pulled himself together and began studying the formulae chiselled on the walls. From the stained and incrusted letters it was obvious that they were carved in Joseph Curwen's time, and their text was such as to be vaguely familiar to one who had read much Curwen material or delved extensively into the history of magic. One the doctor clearly recognised as what Mrs. Ward heard her son chanting on that ominous Good Friday a year before, and what an authority had told him was a very terrible invocation addressed to secret gods outside the normal spheres. It was not spelled here exactly as Mrs. Ward had set it down from memory, nor yet as the authority had shewn it to him in the forbidden pages of ""Eliphas Levi""; but its identity was unmistakable, and such words as Sabaoth, Metraton, Almousin, and Zariatnatmik sent a shudder of fright through the searcher who had seen and felt so much of cosmic abomination just around the corner.
      This was on the left-hand wall as one entered the room. The right-hand wall was no less thickly inscribed, and Willett felt a start of recognition as he came upon the pair of formulae so frequently occurring in the recent notes in the library. They were, roughly speaking, the same; with the ancient symbols of ""Dragon's Head"" and ""Dragon's Tail"" heading them as in Ward's scribblings. But the spelling differed quite widely from that of the modern versions, as if old Curwen had had a different way of recording sound, or as if later study had evolved more powerful and perfected variants of the invocations in question. The doctor tried to reconcile the chiselled version with the one which still ran persistently in his head, and found it hard to do. Where the script he had memorised began ""Y'ai 'ng'ngah, Yog-Sothoth"", this epigraph started out as ""Aye, engengah, Yogge-Sothotha""; which to his mind would seriously interfere with the syllabification of the second word.
      Ground as the later text was into his consciousness, the discrepancy disturbed him; and he found himself chanting the first of the formulae aloud in an effort to square the sound he conceived with the letters he found carved. Weird and menacing in that abyss of antique blasphemy rang his voice; its accents keyed to a droning sing-song either through the spell of the past and the unknown, or through the hellish example of that dull, godless wail from the pits whose inhuman cadences rose and fell rhythmically in the distance through the stench and the darkness.

""Y'AI 'NG'NGAH,
YOG-SOTHOTH
H'EE - L'GEB
F'AI THRODOG
UAAAH!""

      But what was this cold wind which had sprung into life at the very outset of the chant? The lamps were sputtering woefully, and the gloom grew so dense that the letters on the wall nearly faded from sight. There was smoke, too, and an acrid odour which quite drowned out the stench from the far-away wells; an odour like that he had smelt before, yet infinitely stronger and more pungent. He turned from the inscriptions to face the room with its bizarre contents, and saw that the kylix on the floor, in which the ominous efflorescent powder had lain, was giving forth a cloud of thick, greenish-black vapour of surprising volume and opacity. That powder - Great God! it had come from the shelf of ""Materia"" - what was it doing now, and what had started it? The formula he had been chanting - the first of the pair - Dragon's Head, ascending node - Blessed Saviour, could it be. . . .
      The doctor reeled, and through his head raced wildly disjointed scraps from all he had seen, heard, and read of the frightful case of Joseph Curwen and Charles Dexter Ward. ""I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe. . . . Have ye Wordes for laying at all times readie, and stopp not to be sure when there is any Doubte of Whom you have. . . . Three Talkes with What was therein inhum'd. . . ."" Mercy of Heaven, what is that shape behind the parting smoke?

5.

      Marinus Bicknell Willett has no hope that any part of his tale will be believed except by certain sympathetic friends, hence he has made no attempt to tell it beyond his most intimate circle. Only a few outsiders have ever heard it repeated, and of these the majority laugh and remark that the doctor surely is getting old. He has been advised to take a long vacation and to shun future cases dealing with mental disturbance. But Mr. Ward knows that the veteran physician speaks only a horrible truth. Did not he himself see the noisome aperture in the bungalow cellar? Did not Willett send him home overcome and ill at eleven o'clock that portentous morning? Did he not telephone the doctor in vain that evening, and again the next day, and had he not driven to the bungalow itself on that following noon, finding his friend unconscious but unharmed on one of the beds upstairs? Willett had been breathing stertorously, and opened his eyes slowly when Mr. Ward gave him some brandy fetched from the car. Then he shuddered and screamed, crying out, ""That beard . . . those eyes. . . . God, who are you?"" A very strange thing to say to a trim, blue-eyed, clean-shaven gentleman whom he had known from the latter's boyhood.
      In the bright noon sunlight the bungalow was unchanged since the previous morning. Willett's clothing bore no disarrangement beyond certain smudges and worn places at the knees, and only a faint acrid odour reminded Mr. Ward of what he had smelt on his son that day he was taken to the hospital. The doctor's flashlight was missing, but his valise was safely there, as empty as when he had brought it. Before indulging in any explanations, and obviously with great moral effort, Willett staggered dizzily down to the cellar and tried the fateful platform before the tubs. It was unyielding. Crossing to where he had left his yet unused tool satchel the day before, he obtained a chisel and began to pry up the stubborn planks one by one. Underneath the smooth concrete was still visible, but of any opening or perforation there was no longer a trace. Nothing yawned this time to sicken the mystified father who had followed the doctor downstairs; only the smooth concrete underneath the planks - no noisome well, no world of subterrene horrors, no secret library, no Curwen papers, no nightmare pits of stench and howling, no laboratory or shelves or chiselled formulae, no. . . . Dr. Willett turned pale, and clutched at the younger man. ""Yesterday,"" he asked softly, ""did you see it here . . . and smell it?"" And when Mr. Ward, himself transfixed with dread and wonder, found strength to nod an affirmative, the physician gave a sound half a sigh and half a gasp, and nodded in turn. ""Then I will tell you,"" he said.
      So for an hour, in the sunniest room they could find upstairs, the physician whispered his frightful tale to the wondering father. There was nothing to relate beyond the looming up of that form when the greenish-black vapour from the kylix parted, and Willett was too tired to ask himself what had really occurred. There were futile, bewildered head-shakings from both men, and once Mr. Ward ventured a hushed suggestion, ""Do you suppose it would be of any use to dig?"" The doctor was silent, for it seemed hardly fitting for any human brain to answer when powers of unknown spheres had so vitally encroached on this side of the Great Abyss. Again Mr. Ward asked, ""But where did it go? It brought you here, you know, and it sealed up the hole somehow."" And Willett again let silence answer for him.
      But after all, this was not the final phase of the matter. Reaching for his handkerchief before rising to leave, Dr. Willett's fingers closed upon a piece of paper in his pocket which had not been there before, and which was companioned by the candles and matches he had seized in the vanished vault. It was a common sheet, torn obviously from the cheap pad in that fabulous room of horror somewhere underground, and the writing upon it was that of an ordinary lead pencil - doubtless the one which had lain beside the pad. It was folded very carelessly, and beyond the faint acrid scent of the cryptic chamber bore no print or mark of any world but this. But in the text itself it did indeed reek with wonder; for here was no script of any wholesome age, but the laboured strokes of mediaeval darkness, scarcely legible to the laymen who now strained over it, yet having combinations of symbols which seemed vaguely familiar. The briefly scrawled message was this, and its mystery lent purpose to the shaken pair, who forthwith walked steadily out to the Ward car and gave orders to be driven first to a quiet dining place and then to the John Hay Library on the hill.



      At the library it was easy to find good manuals of palaeography, and over these the two men puzzled till the lights of evening shone out from the great chandelier. In the end they found what was needed. The letters were indeed no fantastic invention, but the normal script of a very dark period. They were the pointed Saxon minuscules of the eighth or ninth century A.D., and brought with them memories of an uncouth time when under a fresh Christian veneer ancient faiths and ancient rites stirred stealthily, and the pale moon of Britain looked sometimes on strange deeds in the Roman ruins of Caerleon and Hexham, and by the towers along Hadrian's crumbling wall. The words were in such Latin as a barbarous age might remember - ""Corvinus necandus est. Cadaver aq(ua) forti dissolvendum, nec aliq(ui)d retinendum. Tace ut potes."" - which may roughly be translated, ""Curwen must be killed. The body must be dissolved in aqua fortis, nor must anything be retained. Keep silence as best you are able.""
      Willett and Mr. Ward were mute and baffled. They had met the unknown, and found that they lacked emotions to respond to it as they vaguely believed they ought. With Willett, especially, the capacity for receiving fresh impressions of awe was well-nigh exhausted; and both men sat still and helpless till the closing of the library forced them to leave. Then they drove listlessly to the Ward mansion in Prospect Street, and talked to no purpose into the night. The doctor rested toward morning, but did not go home. And he was still there Sunday noon when a telephone message came from the detectives who had been assigned to look up Dr. Allen.
      Mr. Ward, who was pacing nervously about in a dressing-gown, answered the call in person; and told the men to come up early the next day when he heard their report was almost ready. Both Willett and he were glad that this phase of the matter was taking form, for whatever the origin of the strange minuscule message, it seemed certain that the ""Curwen"" who must be destroyed could be no other than the bearded and spectacled stranger. Charles had feared this man, and had said in the frantic note that he must be killed and dissolved in acid. Allen, moreover, had been receiving letters from the strange wizards in Europe under the name of Curwen, and palpably regarded himself as an avatar of the bygone necromancer. And now from a fresh and unknown source had come a message saying that ""Curwen"" must be killed and dissolved in acid. The linkage was too unmistakable to be factitious; and besides, was not Allen planning to murder young Ward upon the advice of the creature called Hutchinson? Of course, the letter they had seen had never reached the bearded stranger; but from its text they could see that Allen had already formed plans for dealing with the youth if he grew too 'squeamish'. Without doubt, Allen must be apprehended; and even if the most drastic directions were not carried out, he must be placed where he could inflict no harm upon Charles Ward.
      That afternoon, hoping against hope to extract some gleam of information anent the inmost mysteries from the only available one capable of giving it, the father and the doctor went down the bay and called on young Charles at the hospital. Simply and gravely Willett told him all he had found, and noticed how pale he turned as each description made certain the truth of the discovery. The physician employed as much dramatic effect as he could, and watched for a wincing on Charles's part when he approached the matter of the covered pits and the nameless hybrids within. But Ward did not wince. Willett paused, and his voice grew indignant as he spoke of how the things were starving. He taxed the youth with shocking inhumanity, and shivered when only a sardonic laugh came in reply. For Charles, having dropped as useless his pretence that the crypt did not exist, seemed to see some ghastly jest in this affair; and chuckled hoarsely at something which amused him. Then he whispered, in accents doubly terrible because of the cracked voice he used, ""Damn 'em, they do eat, but they don't need to! That's the rare part! A month, you say, without food? Lud, Sir, you be modest! D'ye know, that was the joke on poor old Whipple with his virtuous bluster! Kill everything off, would he? Why, damme, he was half-deaf with the noise from Outside and never saw or heard aught from the wells! He never dreamed they were there at all! Devil take ye, those cursed things have been howling down there ever since Curwen was done for a hundred and fifty-seven years gone!""
      But no more than this could Willett get from the youth. Horrified, yet almost convinced against his will, he went on with his tale in the hope that some incident might startle his auditor out of the mad composure he maintained. Looking at the youth's face, the doctor could not but feel a kind of terror at the changes which recent months had wrought. Truly, the boy had drawn down nameless horrors from the skies. When the room with the formulae and the greenish dust was mentioned, Charles shewed his first sign of animation. A quizzical look overspread his face as he heard what Willett had read on the pad, and he ventured the mild statement that those notes were old ones, of no possible significance to anyone not deeply initiated in the history of magic. ""But,"" he added, ""had you but known the words to bring up that which I had out in the cup, you had not been here to tell me this. 'Twas Number 118, and I conceive you would have shook had you looked it up in my list in t'other room. 'Twas never raised by me, but I meant to have it up that day you came to invite me hither.""
      Then Willett told of the formula he had spoken and of the greenish-black smoke which had arisen; and as he did so he saw true fear dawn for the first time on Charles Ward's face. ""It came, and you be here alive?"" As Ward croaked the words his voice seemed almost to burst free of its trammels and sink to cavernous abysses of uncanny resonance. Willett, gifted with a flash of inspiration, believed he saw the situation, and wove into his reply a caution from a letter he remembered. ""No. 118, you say? But don't forget that stones are all changed now in nine grounds out of ten. You are never sure till you question!"" And then, without warning, he drew forth the minuscule message and flashed it before the patient's eyes. He could have wished no stronger result, for Charles Ward fainted forthwith.
      All this conversation, of course, had been conducted with the greatest secrecy lest the resident alienists accuse the father and the physician of encouraging a madman in his delusions. Unaided, too, Dr. Willett and Mr. Ward picked up the stricken youth and placed him on the couch. In reviving, the patient mumbled many times of some word which he must get to Orne and Hutchinson at once; so when his consciousness seemed fully back the doctor told him that of those strange creatures at least one was his bitter enemy, and had given Dr. Allen advice for his assassination. This revelation produced no visible effect, and before it was made the visitors could see that their host had already the look of a hunted man. After that he would converse no more, so Willett and the father departed presently; leaving behind a caution against the bearded Allen, to which the youth only replied that this individual was very safely taken care of, and could do no one any harm even if he wished. This was said with an almost evil chuckle very painful to hear. They did not worry about any communications Charles might indite to that monstrous pair in Europe, since they knew that the hospital authorities seized all outgoing mail for censorship and would pass no wild or outrŽ-looking missive.
      There is, however, a curious sequel to the matter of Orne and Hutchinson, if such indeed the exiled wizards were. Moved by some vague presentiment amidst the horrors of that period, Willett arranged with an international press-cutting bureau for accounts of notable current crimes and accidents in Prague and in eastern Transylvania; and after six months believed that he had found two very significant things amongst the multifarious items he received and had translated. One was the total wrecking of a house by night in the oldest quarter of Prague, and the disappearance of the evil old man called Josef Nadek, who had dwelt in it alone ever since anyone could remember. The other was a titan explosion in the Transylvanian mountains east of Rakus, and the utter extirpation with all its inmates of the ill-regarded Castle Ferenczy, whose master was so badly spoken of by peasants and soldiery alike that he would shortly have been summoned to Bucharest for serious questioning had not this incident cut off a career already so long as to antedate all common memory. Willett maintains that the hand which wrote those minuscules was able to wield stronger weapons as well; and that while Curwen was left to him to dispose of, the writer felt able to find and deal with Orne and Hutchinson itself. Of what their fate may have been the doctor strives sedulously not to think.

6.

      The following morning Dr. Willett hastened to the Ward home to be present when the detectives arrived. Allen's destruction or imprisonment - or Curwen's, if one might regard the tacit claim to reincarnation as valid - he felt must be accomplished at any cost, and he communicated this conviction to Mr. Ward as they sat waiting for the men to come. They were downstairs this time, for the upper parts of the house were beginning to be shunned because of a peculiar nauseousness which hung indefinitely about; a nauseousness which the older servants connected with some curse left by the vanished Curwen portrait.
      At nine o'clock the three detectives presented themselves and immediately delivered all that they had to say. They had not, regrettably enough, located the Brava Tony Gomes as they had wished, nor had they found the least trace of Dr. Allen's source or present whereabouts; but they had managed to unearth a considerable number of local impressions and facts concerning the reticent stranger. Allen had struck Pawtuxet people as a vaguely unnatural being, and there was an universal belief that his thick sandy beard was either dyed or false - a belief conclusively upheld by the finding of such a false beard, together with a pair of dark glasses, in his room at the fateful bungalow. His voice, Mr. Ward could well testify from his one telephone conversation, had a depth and hollowness that could not be forgotten; and his glance seemed malign even through his smoked and horn-rimmed glasses. One shopkeeper, in the course of negotiations, had seen a specimen of his handwriting and declared it was very queer and crabbed; this being confirmed by pencilled notes of no clear meaning found in his room and identified by the merchant. In connexion with the vampirism rumours of the preceding summer, a majority of the gossips believed that Allen rather than Ward was the actual vampire. Statements were also obtained from the officials who had visited the bungalow after the unpleasant incident of the motor truck robbery. They had felt less of the sinister in Dr. Allen, but had recognised him as the dominant figure in the queer shadowy cottage. The place had been too dark for them to observe him clearly, but they would know him again if they saw him. His beard had looked odd, and they thought he had some slight scar above his dark spectacled right eye. As for the detectives' search of Allen's room, it yielded nothing definite save the beard and glasses, and several pencilled notes in a crabbed writing which Willett at once saw was identical with that shared by the old Curwen manuscripts and by the voluminous recent notes of young Ward found in the vanished catacombs of horror.
      Dr. Willett and Mr. Ward caught something of a profound, subtle, and insidious cosmic fear from this data as it was gradually unfolded, and almost trembled in following up the vague, mad thought which had simultaneously reached their minds. The false beard and glasses - the crabbed Curwen penmanship - the old portrait and its tiny scar - and the altered youth in the hospital with such a scar - that deep, hollow voice on the telephone - was it not of this that Mr. Ward was reminded when his son barked forth those pitiable tones to which he now claimed to be reduced? Who had ever seen Charles and Allen together? Yes, the officials had once, but who later on? Was it not when Allen left that Charles suddenly lost his growing fright and began to live wholly at the bungalow? Curwen - Allen - Ward - in what blasphemous and abominable fusion had two ages and two persons become involved? That damnable resemblance of the picture to Charles - had it not used to stare and stare, and follow the boy around the room with its eyes? Why, too, did both Allen and Charles copy Joseph Curwen's handwriting, even when alone and off guard? And then the frightful work of those people - the lost crypt of horrors that had aged the doctor overnight; the starved monsters in the noisome pits; the awful formula which had yielded such nameless results; the message in minuscules found in Willett's pocket; the papers and the letters and all the talk of graves and ""salts"" and discoveries - whither did everything lead? In the end Mr. Ward did the most sensible thing. Steeling himself against any realisation of why he did it, he gave the detectives an article to be shewn to such Pawtuxet shopkeepers as had seen the portentous Dr. Allen. That article was a photograph of his luckless son, on which he now carefully drew in ink the pair of heavy glasses and the black pointed beard which the men had brought from Allen's room.
      For two hours he waited with the doctor in the oppressive house where fear and miasma were slowly gathering as the empty panel in the upstairs library leered and leered and leered. Then the men returned. Yes. The altered photograph was a very passable likeness of Dr. Allen. Mr. Ward turned pale, and Willett wiped a suddenly dampened brow with his handkerchief. Allen - Ward - Curwen - it was becoming too hideous for coherent thought. What had the boy called out of the void, and what had it done to him? What, really, had happened from first to last? Who was this Allen who sought to kill Charles as too 'squeamish', and why had his destined victim said in the postscript to that frantic letter that he must be so completely obliterated in acid? Why, too, had the minuscule message, of whose origin no one dared think, said that ""Curwen"" must be likewise obliterated? What was the change, and when had the final stage occurred? That day when his frantic note was received - he had been nervous all the morning, then there was an alteration. He had slipped out unseen and swaggered boldly in past the men hired to guard him. That was the time, when he was out. But no - had he not cried out in terror as he entered his study - this very room? What had he found there? Or wait - what had found him? That simulacrum which brushed boldly in without having been seen to go - was that an alien shadow and a horror forcing itself upon a trembling figure which had never gone out at all? Had not the butler spoken of queer noises?
      Willett rang for the man and asked him some low-toned questions. It had, surely enough, been a bad business. There had been noises - a cry, a gasp, a choking, and a sort of clattering or creaking or thumping, or all of these. And Mr. Charles was not the same when he stalked out without a word. The butler shivered as he spoke, and sniffed at the heavy air that blew down from some open window upstairs. Terror had settled definitely upon the house, and only the business-like detectives failed to imbibe a full measure of it. Even they were restless, for this case had held vague elements in the background which pleased them not at all. Dr. Willett was thinking deeply and rapidly, and his thoughts were terrible ones. Now and then he would almost break into muttering as he ran over in his head a new, appalling, and increasingly conclusive chain of nightmare happenings.
      Then Mr. Ward made a sign that the conference was over, and everyone save him and the doctor left the room. It was noon now, but shadows as of coming night seemed to engulf the phantom-haunted mansion. Willett began talking very seriously to his host, and urged that he leave a great deal of the future investigation to him. There would be, he predicted, certain obnoxious elements which a friend could bear better than a relative. As family physician he must have a free hand, and the first thing he required was a period alone and undisturbed in the abandoned library upstairs, where the ancient overmantel had gathered about itself an aura of noisome horror more intense than when Joseph Curwen's features themselves glanced slyly down from the painted panel.
      Mr. Ward, dazed by the flood of grotesque morbidities and unthinkably maddening suggestions that poured in upon him from every side, could only acquiesce; and half an hour later the doctor was locked in the shunned room with the panelling from Olney Court. The father, listening outside, heard fumbling sounds of moving and rummaging as the moments passed; and finally a wrench and a creak, as if a tight cupboard door were being opened. Then there was a muffled cry, a kind of snorting choke, and a hasty slamming of whatever had been opened. Almost at once the key rattled and Willett appeared in the hall, haggard and ghastly, and demanding wood for the real fireplace on the south wall of the room. The furnace was not enough, he said; and the electric log had little practical use. Longing yet not daring to ask questions, Mr. Ward gave the requisite orders and a man brought some stout pine logs, shuddering as he entered the tainted air of the library to place them in the grate. Willett meanwhile had gone up to the dismantled laboratory and brought down a few odds and ends not included in the moving of the July before. They were in a covered basket, and Mr. Ward never saw what they were.
      Then the doctor locked himself in the library once more, and by the clouds of smoke which rolled down past the windows from the chimney it was known that he had lighted the fire. Later, after a great rustling of newspapers, that odd wrench and creaking were heard again; followed by a thumping which none of the eavesdroppers liked. Thereafter two suppressed cries of Willett's were heard, and hard upon these came a swishing rustle of indefinable hatefulness. Finally the smoke that the wind beat down from the chimney grew very dark and acrid, and everyone wished that the weather had spared them this choking and venomous inundation of peculiar fumes. Mr. Ward's head reeled, and the servants all clustered together in a knot to watch the horrible black smoke swoop down. After an age of waiting the vapours seemed to lighten, and half-formless sounds of scraping, sweeping, and other minor operations were heard behind the bolted door. And at last, after the slamming of some cupboard within, Willett made his appearance - sad, pale, and haggard, and bearing the cloth-draped basket he had taken from the upstairs laboratory. He had left the window open, and into that once accursed room was pouring a wealth of pure, wholesome air to mix with a queer new smell of disinfectants. The ancient overmantel still lingered; but it seemed robbed of malignity now, and rose as calm and stately in its white panelling as if it had never borne the picture of Joseph Curwen. Night was coming on, yet this time its shadows held no latent fright, but only a gentle melancholy. Of what he had done the doctor would never speak. To Mr. Ward he said, ""I can answer no questions, but I will say that there are different kinds of magic. I have made a great purgation, and those in this house will sleep the better for it.""

7.

      That Dr. Willett's ""purgation"" had been an ordeal almost as nerve-racking in its way as his hideous wandering in the vanished crypt is shewn by the fact that the elderly physician gave out completely as soon as he reached home that evening. For three days he rested constantly in his room, though servants later muttered something about having heard him after midnight on Wednesday, when the outer door softly opened and closed with phenomenal softness. Servants' imaginations, fortunately, are limited, else comment might have been excited by an item in Thursday's Evening Bulletin which ran as follows:
North End Ghouls
Active Again

After a lull of ten months since the dastardly vandalism in the Weeden lot at the North Burial Ground, a nocturnal prowler was glimpsed early this morning in the same cemetery by Robert Hart, the night watchman. Happening to glance for a moment from his shelter at about 2 a.m., Hart observed the glow of a lantern or pocket torch not far to the northwest, and upon opening the door detected the figure of a man with a trowel very plainly silhouetted against a nearby electric light. At once starting in pursuit, he saw the figure dart hurriedly toward the main entrance, gaining the street and losing himself among the shadows before approach or capture was possible.
      Like the first of the ghouls active during the past year, this intruder had done no real damage before detection. A vacant part of the Ward lot shewed signs of a little superficial digging, but nothing even nearly the size of a grave had been attempted, and no previous grave had been disturbed.
      Hart, who cannot describe the prowler except as a small man probably having a full beard, inclines to the view that all three of the digging incidents have a common source; but police from the Second Station think otherwise on account of the savage nature of the second incident, where an ancient coffin was removed and its headstone violently shattered.
      The first of the incidents, in which it is thought an attempt to bury something was frustrated, occurred a year ago last March, and has been attributed to bootleggers seeking a cache. It is possible, says Sergt. Riley, that this third affair is of similar nature. Officers at the Second Station are taking especial pains to capture the gang of miscreants responsible for these repeated outrages.
      All day Thursday Dr. Willett rested as if recuperating from something past or nerving himself for something to come. In the evening he wrote a note to Mr. Ward, which was delivered the next morning and which caused the half-dazed parent to ponder long and deeply. Mr. Ward had not been able to go down to business since the shock of Monday with its baffling reports and its sinister ""purgation"", but he found something calming about the doctor's letter in spite of the despair it seemed to promise and the fresh mysteries it seemed to evoke.
""10 Barnes St.,            
Providence, R.I.,      
April 12, 1928.
""Dear Theodore: - I feel that I must say a word to you before doing what I am going to do tomorrow. It will conclude the terrible business we have been going through (for I feel that no spade is ever likely to reach that monstrous place we know of), but I'm afraid it won't set your mind at rest unless I expressly assure you how very conclusive it is.
      ""You have known me ever since you were a small boy, so I think you will not distrust me when I hint that some matters are best left undecided and unexplored. It is better that you attempt no further speculation as to Charles's case, and almost imperative that you tell his mother nothing more than she already suspects. When I call on you tomorrow Charles will have escaped. That is all which need remain in anyone's mind. He was mad, and he escaped. You can tell his mother gently and gradually about the mad part when you stop sending the typed notes in his name. I'd advise you to join her in Atlantic City and take a rest yourself. God knows you need one after this shock, as I do myself. I am going South for a while to calm down and brace up.
      ""So don't ask me any questions when I call. It may be that something will go wrong, but I'll tell you if it does. I don't think it will. There will be nothing more to worry about, for Charles will be very, very safe. He is now - safer than you dream. You need hold no fears about Allen, and who or what he is. He forms as much a part of the past as Joseph Curwen's picture, and when I ring your doorbell you may feel certain that there is no such person. And what wrote that minuscule message will never trouble you or yours.
      ""But you must steel yourself to melancholy, and prepare your wife to do the same. I must tell you frankly that Charles's escape will not mean his restoration to you. He has been afflicted with a peculiar disease, as you must realise from the subtle physical as well as mental changes in him, and you must not hope to see him again. Have only this consolation - that he was never a fiend or even truly a madman, but only an eager, studious, and curious boy whose love of mystery and of the past was his undoing. He stumbled on things no mortal ought ever to know, and reached back through the years as no one ever should reach; and something came out of those years to engulf him.
      ""And now comes the matter in which I must ask you to trust me most of all. For there will be, indeed, no uncertainty about Charles's fate. In about a year, say, you can if you wish devise a suitable account of the end; for the boy will be no more. You can put up a stone in your lot at the North Burial Ground exactly ten feet west of your father's and facing the same way, and that will mark the true resting-place of your son. Nor need you fear that it will mark any abnormality or changeling. The ashes in that grave will be those of your own unaltered bone and sinew - of the real Charles Dexter Ward whose mind you watched from infancy - the real Charles with the olive-mark on his hip and without the black witch-mark on his chest or the pit on his forehead. The Charles who never did actual evil, and who will have paid with his life for his 'squeamishness'.
      ""That is all. Charles will have escaped, and a year from now you can put up his stone. Do not question me tomorrow. And believe that the honour of your ancient family remains untainted now, as it has been at all times in the past.
      ""With profoundest sympathy, and exhortations to fortitude, calmness, and resignation, I am ever
Sincerely your friend,      
Marinus B. Willett""
      So on the morning of Friday, April 13, 1928, Marinus Bicknell Willett visited the room of Charles Dexter Ward at Dr. Waite's private hospital on Conanicut Island. The youth, though making no attempt to evade his caller, was in a sullen mood; and seemed disinclined to open the conversation which Willett obviously desired. The doctor's discovery of the crypt and his monstrous experience therein had of course created a new source of embarrassment, so that both hesitated perceptibly after the interchange of a few strained formalities. Then a new element of constraint crept in, as Ward seemed to read behind the doctor's mask-like face a terrible purpose which had never been there before. The patient quailed, conscious that since the last visit there had been a change whereby the solicitous family physician had given place to the ruthless and implacable avenger.
      Ward actually turned pale, and the doctor was the first to speak. ""More,"" he said, ""has been found out, and I must warn you fairly that a reckoning is due.""
      ""Digging again, and coming upon more poor starving pets?"" was the ironic reply. It was evident that the youth meant to shew bravado to the last.
      ""No,"" Willett slowly rejoined, ""this time I did not have to dig. We have had men looking up Dr. Allen, and they found the false beard and spectacles in the bungalow.""
      ""Excellent,"" commented the disquieted host in an effort to be wittily insulting, ""and I trust they proved more becoming than the beard and glasses you now have on!""
      ""They would become you very well,"" came the even and studied response, ""as indeed they seem to have done.""
      As Willett said this, it almost seemed as though a cloud passed over the sun; though there was no change in the shadows on the floor. Then Ward ventured:
      ""And is this what asks so hotly for a reckoning? Suppose a man does find it now and then useful to be twofold?""
      ""No,"" said Willett gravely, ""again you are wrong. It is no business of mine if any man seeks duality; provided he has any right to exist at all, and provided he does not destroy what called him out of space.""
      Ward now started violently. ""Well, Sir, what have ye found, and what d'ye want with me?""
      The doctor let a little time elapse before replying, as if choosing his words for an effective answer.
      ""I have found,"" he finally intoned, ""something in a cupboard behind an ancient overmantel where a picture once was, and I have burned it and buried the ashes where the grave of Charles Dexter Ward ought to be.""
      The madman choked and sprang from the chair in which he had been sitting:
      ""Damn ye, who did ye tell - and who'll believe it was he after these full two months, with me alive? What d'ye mean to do?""
      Willett, though a small man, actually took on a kind of judicial majesty as he calmed the patient with a gesture.
      ""I have told no one. This is no common case - it is a madness out of time and a horror from beyond the spheres which no police or lawyers or courts or alienists could ever fathom or grapple with. Thank God some chance has left inside me the spark of imagination, that I might not go astray in thinking out this thing. You cannot deceive me, Joseph Curwen, for I know that your accursed magic is true!
      ""I know how you wove the spell that brooded outside the years and fastened on your double and descendant; I know how you drew him into the past and got him to raise you up from your detestable grave; I know how he kept you hidden in his laboratory while you studied modern things and roved abroad as a vampire by night, and how you later shewed yourself in beard and glasses that no one might wonder at your godless likeness to him; I know what you resolved to do when he balked at your monstrous rifling of the world's tombs, and at what you planned afterward, and I know how you did it.
      ""You left off your beard and glasses and fooled the guards around the house. They thought it was he who went in, and they thought it was he who came out when you had strangled and hidden him. But you hadn't reckoned on the different contents of two minds. You were a fool, Curwen, to fancy that a mere visual identity would be enough. Why didn't you think of the speech and the voice and the handwriting? It hasn't worked, you see, after all. You know better than I who or what wrote that message in minuscules, but I will warn you it was not written in vain. There are abominations and blasphemies which must be stamped out, and I believe that the writer of those words will attend to Orne and Hutchinson. One of those creatures wrote you once, 'do not call up any that you can not put down'. You were undone once before, perhaps in that very way, and it may be that your own evil magic will undo you all again. Curwen, a man can't tamper with Nature beyond certain limits, and every horror you have woven will rise up to wipe you out.""
      But here the doctor was cut short by a convulsive cry from the creature before him. Hopelessly at bay, weaponless, and knowing that any show of physical violence would bring a score of attendants to the doctor's rescue, Joseph Curwen had recourse to his one ancient ally, and began a series of cabbalistic motions with his forefingers as his deep, hollow voice, now unconcealed by feigned hoarseness, bellowed out the opening words of a terrible formula.
      ""PER ADONAI ELOIM, ADONAI JEHOVA, ADONAI SABAOTH, METRATON. . . .""
      But Willett was too quick for him. Even as the dogs in the yard outside began to howl, and even as a chill wind sprang suddenly up from the bay, the doctor commenced the solemn and measured intonation of that which he had meant all along to recite. An eye for an eye - magic for magic - let the outcome shew how well the lesson of the abyss had been learned! So in a clear voice Marinus Bicknell Willett began the second of that pair of formulae whose first had raised the writer of those minuscules - the cryptic invocation whose heading was the Dragon's Tail, sign of the descending node - 

""OGTHROD AI'F
GEB'L - EE'H
YOG-SOTHOTH
'NGAH'NG AI'Y
ZHRO!""

      At the very first word from Willett's mouth the previously commenced formula of the patient stopped short. Unable to speak, the monster made wild motions with his arms until they too were arrested. When the awful name of Yog-Sothoth was uttered, the hideous change began. It was not merely a dissolution, but rather a transformation or recapitulation; and Willett shut his eyes lest he faint before the rest of the incantation could be pronounced.
      But he did not faint, and that man of unholy centuries and forbidden secrets never troubled the world again. The madness out of time had subsided, and the case of Charles Dexter Ward was closed. Opening his eyes before staggering out of that room of horror, Dr. Willett saw that what he had kept in memory had not been kept amiss. There had, as he had predicted, been no need for acids. For like his accursed picture a year before, Joseph Curwen now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust.
","V.

The following winter brought an event no less strange than Wilbur’s first trip outside the Dunwich region. Correspondence with the Widener Library at Harvard, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the British Museum, the University of Buenos Ayres, and the Library of Miskatonic University of Arkham had failed to get him the loan of a book he desperately wanted; so at length he set out in person, shabby, dirty, bearded, and uncouth of dialect, to consult the copy at Miskatonic, which was the nearest to him geographically. Almost eight feet tall, and carrying a cheap new valise from Osborn’s general store, this dark and goatish gargoyle appeared one day in Arkham in quest of the dreaded volume kept under lock and key at the college library—the hideous Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred in Olaus Wormius’ Latin version, as printed in Spain in the seventeenth century. He had never seen a city before, but had no thought save to find his way to the university grounds; where, indeed, he passed heedlessly by the great white-fanged watchdog that barked with unnatural fury and enmity, and tugged frantically at its stout chain.
      Wilbur had with him the priceless but imperfect copy of Dr. Dee’s English version which his grandfather had bequeathed him, and upon receiving access to the Latin copy he at once began to collate the two texts with the aim of discovering a certain passage which would have come on the 751st page of his own defective volume. This much he could not civilly refrain from telling the librarian—the same erudite Henry Armitage (A.M. Miskatonic, Ph. D. Princeton, Litt. D. Johns Hopkins) who had once called at the farm, and who now politely plied him with questions. He was looking, he had to admit, for a kind of formula or incantation containing the frightful name Yog-Sothoth, and it puzzled him to find discrepancies, duplications, and ambiguities which made the matter of determination far from easy. As he copied the formula he finally chose, Dr. Armitage looked involuntarily over his shoulder at the open pages; the left-hand one of which, in the Latin version, contained such monstrous threats to the peace and sanity of the world.
      “Nor is it to be thought,” ran the text as Armitage mentally translated it, “that man is either the oldest or the last of earth’s masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man’s truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them. They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraven, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again.”
      Dr. Armitage, associating what he was reading with what he had heard of Dunwich and its brooding presences, and of Wilbur Whateley and his dim, hideous aura that stretched from a dubious birth to a cloud of probable matricide, felt a wave of fright as tangible as a draught of the tomb’s cold clamminess. The bent, goatish giant before him seemed like the spawn of another planet or dimension; like something only partly of mankind, and linked to black gulfs of essence and entity that stretch like titan phantasms beyond all spheres of force and matter, space and time. Presently Wilbur raised his head and began speaking in that strange, resonant fashion which hinted at sound-producing organs unlike the run of mankind’s.
      “Mr. Armitage,” he said, “I calc’late I’ve got to take that book home. They’s things in it I’ve got to try under sarten conditions that I can’t git here, an’ it ’ud be a mortal sin to let a red-tape rule hold me up. Let me take it along, Sir, an’ I’ll swar they wun’t nobody know the difference. I dun’t need to tell ye I’ll take good keer of it. It wa’n’t me that put this Dee copy in the shape it is. . . .”
      He stopped as he saw firm denial on the librarian’s face, and his own goatish features grew crafty. Armitage, half-ready to tell him he might make a copy of what parts he needed, thought suddenly of the possible consequences and checked himself. There was too much responsiblity in giving such a being the key to such blasphemous outer spheres. Whateley saw how things stood, and tried to answer lightly.
      “Wal, all right, ef ye feel that way abaout it. Maybe Harvard wun’t be so fussy as yew be.” And without saying more he rose and strode out of the building, stooping at each doorway.
      Armitage heard the savage yelping of the great watchdog, and studied Whateley’s gorilla-like lope as he crossed the bit of campus visible from the window. He thought of the wild tales he had heard, and recalled the old Sunday stories in the Advertiser; these things, and the lore he had picked up from Dunwich rustics and villagers during his one visit there. Unseen things not of earth—or at least not of tri-dimensional earth—rushed foetid and horrible through New England’s glens, and brooded obscenely on the mountain-tops. Of this he had long felt certain. Now he seemed to sense the close presence of some terrible part of the intruding horror, and to glimpse a hellish advance in the black dominion of the ancient and once passive nightmare. He locked away the Necronomicon with a shudder of disgust, but the room still reeked with an unholy and unidentifiable stench. “As a foulness shall ye know them,” he quoted. Yes—the odour was the same as that which had sickened him at the Whateley farmhouse less than three years before. He thought of Wilbur, goatish and ominous, once again, and laughed mockingly at the village rumours of his parentage.
      “Inbreeding?” Armitage muttered half-aloud to himself. “Great God, what simpletons! Shew them Arthur Machen’s Great God Pan and they’ll think it a common Dunwich scandal! But what thing—what cursed shapeless influence on or off this three-dimensioned earth—was Wilbur Whateley’s father? Born on Candlemas—nine months after May-Eve of 1912, when the talk about the queer earth noises reached clear to Arkham— What walked on the mountains that May-Night? What Roodmas horror fastened itself on the world in half-human flesh and blood?”
      During the ensuing weeks Dr. Armitage set about to collect all possible data on Wilbur Whateley and the formless presences around Dunwich. He got in communication with Dr. Houghton of Aylesbury, who had attended Old Whateley in his last illness, and found much to ponder over in the grandfather’s last words as quoted by the physician. A visit to Dunwich Village failed to bring out much that was new; but a close survey of the Necronomicon, in those parts which Wilbur had sought so avidly, seemed to supply new and terrible clues to the nature, methods, and desires of the strange evil so vaguely threatening this planet. Talks with several students of archaic lore in Boston, and letters to many others elsewhere, gave him a growing amazement which passed slowly through varied degrees of alarm to a state of really acute spiritual fear. As the summer drew on he felt dimly that something ought to be done about the lurking terrors of the upper Miskatonic valley, and about the monstrous being known to the human world as Wilbur Whateley.
",True
"Heaven's not enough
If when I'm there I don't remember you...
The words came unbidden to Torren-Wraeth's mind. The line was from an old song from the soundtrack of an old Japanese anime that had confused and depressed the hell out of him. He shook his head, Heaven's Not Enough, Steve Conte, Wolf's Rain soundtrack, No... there had been two soundtracks for that series, this was the first song on the second. Why wasn't it called Wolves' Rain? He thought, trying to dispel the sad song, but it played on, and he was even singing softly toward the song's end...
'Cause I couldn't cry
'Cause I turned away
Couldn't see the score
Didn't know the pain
Of leaving yesterday really far behind
in another life
in another dream
By a different name
gave it all away for a memory 
and a quiet lie
and I felt the face 
Of the cold tonight
Still don't know the score
But I know the pain
Of leaving everything really far behind ...
Thus distracted, he did not see Dahlman.
The sorcerer was a servant of the He Who Gnaws in The Darkness. Azathoth was neither ally nor enemy to Cthulhu, he was actually his 'Great-Grandfather' having sired both Yog-Sothoth and Shub-Niggurath, who had sired Nug and Yeb, Nug being Cthulhu's parent by parthogenesis. Azathoth's 'worshipers', however, tended to be madmen in the truest sense. He was a mindless entity, neither desiring nor rewarding worship. Some of the gods who danced round and round his throne often took it upon themselves to accept his worship and grant gifts in his behalf. Especially Nyarlathotep...
The Outer Gods were the key. Humans were a weak species, helpless in the face of even the least of The Great Old Ones. But by learning, by studying the Outer Gods, by utilizing their power, a human could assume a form of divinity themselves. For decades Dahlman had faithfully studied the ancient texts, The Book of Eibon, The Necronomicon, The Book of Iod, and he had learned to harness the power of those who lurked mindless and blind beyond the thin veil of reality. And now he would prove his worth, he would bring down an immortal, the child of a god...
A bolt of lightning shook Torren-Wraeth from his revery, it barely hurt, but he could tell it was not natural. He turned to see a black-clad figuring closing in upon him, and erected a Deflect Harm even as the human struck out with Fist of Yog-Sothoth. ""Okay, now you're annoying me."" Torren-Wraeth lashed out with Implant Fear, hoping to avoid having to actually kill this irrational attacker. He disliked sorcerers, but he also disliked having to harm people. But the madman had cast Deflect Harm upon himself, and, thus protected, struck back with The Dread Curse of Azathoth. Torren-Wraeth reeled, Now that hurt! Enraged, Torren-Wraeth physically rushed the sorcerer, ignoring the protective amulet the man held out, and punched him square in the nose, breaking it. Distracted by the pain, Dahlman fell before Implant Fear.
Dahlman's mind was instantly overwhelmed with unimaginable fear and he turned to flee, all spells forgotten in his terror, only to run into a golden monstrosity streaking toward him in the dawning sky. He called frantically upon his gods to save him. But these were not benevolent gods, they were fickle, and enjoyed granting lesser beings great power, just to have the pleasure of snatching it away. His gods deserted him mid-flight, his skin shriveled and shrank tight against his bones as he aged in seconds. The capricious Outer Gods no doubt laughed as their former ward fell into the sea, and was immediately set upon by sharks.
Torren-Wraeth and Tek watched impassively as the dying sorcerer fell into the sea.
""Who was that?""
""I have no idea.""
""And I thought you were in trouble.""
""Sorry.""
""You do get in the strangest situations."" Tek observed wryly.
""Sorry.""
You've made me late, you know.""
""Sorry about that.""
""It's okay, I could use the break. A word of advice, never marry a woman with five mouths.""
Both Tek and Torren-Wraeth laughed.
Ho Fong arched an eyebrow as he saw the disheveled Torren-Wraeth accompanying Lord Tektaktequataquarl. He'd seen him before, of course, he occasionally visited alongside Tek, though his distaste for the ritual sacrifices of human beings was clearly evident. Fortunately, no such events were scheduled. ""Are you alright, Lord Torren-Wraeth?"" He knew better than to call him simply 'Torren' or 'Wraeth'. ""I'll be all right, Master Ho,"" Torren-Wraeth said with perfect Chinese courtesy, ""But I would be most grateful for a place to rest for a while."" Ho Fong smiled, ""Of course,"" he turned, ""Ping, take lord Torren-Wraeth to one of the guest areas and provide him with whatever refreshments he requires."" A youngish monk, dressed in the standard yellow and black silk, stepped forward and led Torren-Wraeth deeper into the monastery.
It was instantly obvious to Torren-Wraeth that Ping was not Chinese, at least, not in the ethnic sense. He was one of the dreaded Tcho-Tcho people, descendants of toad-like creatures created by the Great Old One Chaugnar Faugn and human cultists. The Tcho-Tcho had an evil reputation, one well earned. The vast majority of them served the Great Old Ones, and many practiced cannibalism. There were exceptions, of course, not all Tcho-Tcho were evil or insane, but those individuals were usually outcasts, hated and sometimes even hunted by their own people. As they walked, Torren-Wraeth halted for a moment before an idol of carved black stone. It was well-crafted and incredibly detailed, lean muscled and lanky, wings extended, the webbed hands held palm up like a divine supplicant, the curving trunk-mouth lifted upward as if it were sounding a call. A call to Death itself, for this was Shugoran, The Herald of Death, worshiped and feared by the Tcho-Tcho people. Ping knelt reverently then hurried Torren-Wraeth into a nearby chamber.
The scent of Black Lotus was thick in the air as the monks shut the great copper door behind Tek. ""You really shouldn't smoke you know,"" he said casually, ""Terrible for the lungs..."" The Bloated Woman rose from her cushions, ""Only if you are a mortal, which I am not."" Tek smiled, then shed his semblance of humanity, becoming a writhing, shapeless mass of golden flesh, golden tentacles, golden eyes and pearly white fangs. ""What of our child?"" Several mouths spoke at once. The Goddess came closer with a grace unfitting such an obese creature. ""Nothing can harm our offspring."" ""How long, do you think?"" The Bloated Woman stopped, apparently this visit was for business, not pleasure. ""It is impossible to tell. I have born some children within days of conception, and others within centuries."" She sensed a slight jealous possessiveness on the part of the Hastur-Spawn, he wanted her as his sole mate, an amusing and archaic notion, not often seen in a True-Blood. The fact that he knew she had devoured most of the former lovers did not apparently assuage this unseemly feeling. ""I feel that this one will be born within a month or two..."" She grinned horribly with all five mouths, ""How has your father reacted?"" ""Our child will be welcome in Carcosa."" Hastur, in truth, was somewhat worried, fearing that the child would be another avatar of Nyarlathotep, that the Crawling Chaos would use the child as yet another form in which to manifest itself. In other words, he feared that Nyarlathotep would give birth to itself...
For all the vile practices that went on in the Monastery of The Bloated Woman, it was a beautiful place, richly decorated in jade and silver, gold and silk. Yellow and black, every strand of silk in the monastery was either yellow or black. The yellow made for a much friendlier environment than the dark, ominous stones of R'Lyeh. The Goddess favored those colors, for some reason. Torren-Wraeth remembered something Goro had once said. Among his people and several other Asian cultures, yellow was the color of mourning. Black meant death and mourning in the West, yellow filled that role in the East. Was it intentional? Probably, but he was a guest, and it would be rude to question his hosts. He changed from his slightly charred clothing into the yellow and black robes that had been kindly provided him and stepped out into the hallway. There he saw Ping once again kneeling before Shugoran.
","Rodrigo [possessed] - ""The flies are their own lords, and ours as well.""
Benevento Chieti Bordighera - Massa di Requiem per Shuggay
Colonel Reginald Barnes wiped his sweating brow and cursed the infernal swamp. He double cursed the countless insects that seemed to make up the entire population of this sodden hell. He turned and motioned his men to halt. They were a hearty group, but the hardships of the swamp were bearing down on them. All were tired, their muscles aching, and most had open sores which the wretched little vermin were viciously exploiting.
Private Sands was buried a few miles back, victim of some malignant strain of malaria that ignored quinine and killed within hours. The colonel wondered for a moment about the natives' warnings. The natives had cautioned them to avoid this swamp, and the blacks feared this place so much that their normally loyal bearers had fled like rabbits rather than enter the lair of 'the insect god'. As far as Barnes' pidgin could make out, the natives believed that a giant insect lived within the swamp, ruling all its lesser kin. To add even greater spice to the tale, it was something of a Typhoid Mary, a many-legged Horseman of Pestilence. Rubbish, to be sure, but this swamp was undeniably unhealthy, as poor Private Sands had learned.
Still, this was part of The King's realm, and as such it was to be charted and explored. Any natives, (and he personally doubted even the hardiest of the Africans could survive in this God-forsaken place), introduced to the Enlightenment that came with British colonization.
They were suffering for God, King and Country.
That didn't make it any less painful.
Humans were entering his domain. Not the natives, they knew of Him. They had the wisdom to avoid Him. Not so with these creatures. They were explorers and soldiers, enforcing the will of their mortal King in behalf of their flickering shadow of an empire. They were determined to come. To claim this land for their empire of dust.
But this was His empire. His land. He had been driven from His world, from Shaggai. The Harbinger and The Worm That Gnaws In The Night had driven Him from His home. He had searched for centuries to find sanctuary. He would not give up His new home in the face of humanity.
Baoht Z'uqqa-Mogg stirred sluggishly, pulling His vast bulk from the slime and mire. He shook the muck from His six wings. Many-faceted eyes surveyed the area. The humans had wandered far too close to his lair. He bore no malice toward men, but He could not allow His realm to be infested by the violent ape-things.
Such was His power that little could live in His presence. One had already perished, the swarms had infected them all. In the unlikely event any of them lived long enough to reach other humans they would set off a plague. Such weak creatures, these humans.
It was an act of mercy, really.
The swarms were intense, mosquitoes, tsetse flies and insects even the most knowledgeable of the men could not identify vied for a taste of their blood. One could barely see his hands in front of his face for the blood-thirsty little horrors. Still they pressed on, through baking heat and boiling humidity. Barnes could almost believe that some great insect god ruled this dark, dismal boil on the face of the earth. He sincerely hoped that the His Majesty would let the Germans have this sweltering hellhole.
""Sir,"" Private Carter pointed out, ""The swarms. There's nothin' else, sir. I mean, no animals. No birds. Just insects.""
""They're just hiding, private. I've seen a few snakes and lizards about. Animals have a natural fear of man. Nothing to bother about."" In truth, Barnes himself wondered about the lack of wildlife. It was true that animals, even large ones, would hide from a company of men, but the absence of birds of any kind was disturbing. Even in the Sahara, he'd seen birds. A swamp in the heart of Africa should be positively teeming with them. His hands went over his Rigby. He'd taken down a charging bull elephant in Malaya with that gun.
He slid in a cartridge.
He wondered for a moment if he were ill, thinking of using a Rigby on a swarm of infernal insects.
A horrible smell filled the thick air, an overpowering reek of swamp stench and death. The men turned as one as something thundered through the thick trees and muck toward them.
What came crashing through the brush was no earthly insect. Over six metres of horror reared up before them. It was a titanic perversion of a scorpion. The head was vaguely suggestive of a walnut, albeit covered with gleaming yellow eyes and twitching antennae. Yellow bile dripped from sharp mandibles, hissing as it hit the soggy ground. Its greenish-black body was thick and armored, dripping ichor, wet mud and maggots. Three sets of tattered, membranous wings and ten spindly, clawed legs sprouted from its thorax. It had the massive pincers and thick, segmented tail of a scorpion. More of the yellow venom dripped from the creature's metre long stinger. Disgusting vermin crawled across its foul body, surrounded it in thick clouds and seemed to pour from the segments between its exoskeleton.
""It's Beelzebub himself!"" Someone shouted. From the look of the thing, Barnes was inclined to agree.
He raised his rifle, The Lord of The Flies, eh? Lets see how he holds up against the might of The British Empire!
No order was needed. Barnes let loose with his Rigby as the men began to fire. The .450 Nitro Express struck the beast square in the head, eliciting little more than an angry hiss. A shot meant for taking down rhinoceros and elephants barely seemed to sting the abomination. The swarm was upon them before he could reload. The Rigby fell from his hands as Barnes fell to his knees, then collapsed into the mud. The screams of his men were almost drowned out by the insidious buzzing and overwhelming sensation of weakness that swept through his form. Wormwood. . . He thought as the world grew dark about him.
A thin trickle of yellow ichor flowed from the injured eye. It hurt, but the wound was already healing. Baoht Z'uqqa-Mogg picked up the weapon in His right claw, examined it. It was a crude device, but it had drawn blood. The humans were growing stronger. Smarter, in their own primitive way. And bolder. The day might come when He would have to fight them in numbers to protect His land. He snapped the weapon in two with His claw and cast it into the mud. He looked over the dying men, prying from their feeble, fevered brains the identity of this 'Beelzebub' they took Him for. It was an unfair comparison in His eyes, but understandable given their limited intellects. He quickly slew them all, sparing them the agony of slow death by infection.
The wound was completely healed as The Bringer of Pestilence nestled once more into the comfortable muck and mire of the swamp. His home was secure, for now.
",True
"That is the end of the story, dear readers. Believe me or not, I don't care. I ran far away from the university that evening and, to this day, I have never returned. I had to have my arm amputated after that and my burned and mangled body remains as testament to the evil I have encountered. I told the authorities it was a college fire. What else could I say?
I cannot sleep well anymore. Every night I lie awake, shaking in fear in the knowledge of what exists beyond the limited scope of what we call ""reality"". What is reality? I don't know. All I do know is that this world contains more evil than can ever be imagined.
The evil of the Cult of Cthulhu is still out there and I know that my days are numbered. I have seen too much. One day they will come for me and, when they do, I will let them take me. I have tried to end my life a number of times and now reside in an asylum as a result. Death will come as a relief for me.
It has taken me a great deal of effort to write this, since every fibre of my being has tried to block out the memories of what happened at that university. But I need you to know. I need you to be prepared. The Cult of Cthulhu is alive and well and, one day, Cthulhu will rise and destroy this planet. It is only a matter of time.
Darkness.
I didn't know who I was or where I was. All I could tell was that I was falling lower and lower into a deep oblivion of blackness.
Though I was unafraid.
Was I dead?
It didn't matter.
In that place, nothing mattered.
I was at peace.
And then I was jerked roughly back into reality, though reality had become so distorted in my mind that I could scarcely tell the difference between what was real and what was fantasy. The first thing that I became aware of was a searing pain across my abdomen. I tried to scream, but my throat was sore as though I had been screaming for hours already. I attempted to move my arms but they were locked in place and I realised to my horror that the pain was from ropes that had been tied around me so tightly that they were literally cutting into my flesh. I spluttered for a moment as the sights and sounds of the world started to come back to me. I was tied upside down to the obelisk in the centre of the ritual space I had seen the previous night and my worst fears were realised.
I was covered in blood, though whether it was my own or that of another unfortunate victim I couldn't tell. A fire surrounded me and on the other side of the flames, people in black robes were dancing wildly making noises that sounded neither human nor beastly. I began to wonder why I was still alive and why I had not been dismembered like Jonathan.
Then one of the participants stepped through the flames, emerging unharmed beside me. He brandished a long silver knife and screamed ""Cthulhu Fhtagn!"" at the heavens. The figure turned down to look at me. It was Jacob, though it wasn't Jacob's eyes that looked at me, rather an empty, soulless shell of a human being. He raised the knife and I began to pray silently, expecting the end. Though it wasn't me he plunged the knife into, it was himself. He rammed the blade up to the hilt into his stomach and violently jerked it upwards, sending gory sprays of arterial blood all over my face and into my mouth and nose. Jacob then reached into his chest and began to pull out his internal organs, laughing maniacally as he did so. It was then that I found my voice and screamed louder than I had ever done, though my cries were drowned out by the diabolical beat of the drums and the bestial chants of the other cultists.
Jacob did not fall to the ground as anyone else would have done. Instead, he cracked open his ribcage, revealing his empty chest cavity. An unseen force then ripped his head back, nearly severing it, his spine bent backwards and cracked and then his limbs began bending into odd angles as well. All the while, he continued in his demonic laughter, the chants of the cultists and the beat of the drums growing and growing. He contorted spasmodically, and shadowy tendrils sprung out of his body, twisting as they reached up to the sky. Suddenly, Jacob's body exploded in a shower of blood and offal although his ghoulish laugh seemed to continue somehow, and out of nowhere appeared many small winged creatures. They were less than three feet in height and completely black. No detail of their bodies was visible save for a pair of glowing green eyes. They swooped around the obelisk to which I was tied, uttering a shrieking sound unlike anything I had ever heard. As they shrieked, the dancing, chanting and beating of the drums got louder and wilder until, at its climax, the ground itself started rumbling. Cracks started to appear in the ground and water started gushing out causing the obelisk to crumble, but the fire burned ever brighter.
Due to the destruction of the obelisk, the bonds that were around my middle loosened slightly. But as I tried to rise, I was violently pushed down into the water by one of the cultists who cried,
""Mighty Cthulhu! Accept our sacrifice of blood and rise again!"" With that he drew a knife of his own, but before he was able to end my existence, one of the shadowy winged creatures flew into his chest, disappearing in an instant. Suddenly, the cultists' eyes literally burst into flames and he began reciting the chant I had heard so many times: ""Cthulhu Fhtagn! Cthulhu Fhtagn!"" His mouth then opened wide and I could hear his jaw bone break. Long teeth extended from the gums and before I could react, he lurched forward sinking them into my forearm.
This new pain was just what I needed. I screamed in agony and ripped free. Quickly loosening the bonds around me, I leapt through the fire. Its searing heat scorched me and I felt as though a thousand knives were simultaneously being plunged into my skin. I looked desperately around for an opening to escape and noticed that all the cultists now had flaming eyes and were running at me screaming even as their heads burned in the flames from their eyes. I turned and fled, not caring about the pain in my arm or the fire that was rapidly consuming me. Not caring about the thorns and branches that eviscerated me as I ran past them. I knew I just needed to get as far away as possible.
Although the screams of the ritual participants had begun to fade, I did not slow down. I just kept going and did not look back.
","The Judas Mark
""Cthulhu ftaghn,"" He said with a laugh, swaying his tilted head to the right in a drunken manner. ""Cthulhu ftaghn.""
He broke out into a laughing fit. Then as quickly as it started it stopped; like the lightning bolt outside his window. Arkham was his place of work. And as a patient, his work was hard to complete. Not like he wanted to do it, either.
The rain stopped.
""I hear youuuuuuu."" He chuckled. ""I hear you flapping those blasted wings outside my windah."" He giggled, then sobered up. ""Damn Migo. YA CAN'T HAVE MY BRAIN!""
There came a drum of plastic on metal as his attention was drawn to the orderly with a plastic flashlight. Aforementioned light shining into his padded room.
""Keep it down in there!"" The orderly snapped before leaving him alone once again.
""Power outage, eh?"" He chuckled. ""Wonder whyyyy.""
He rolled his head back to his right; towards his window. His eyes registered the sound of unearthly wings twitching like insects contemplating flight. Oh how he hated those damn things. Far worse than those Shoggoths he faced a while back. At least the Shoggoths ate you; thus ending your torment. But a Migo…He shuttered. He did not want to think about it.
""Nyarlahotep…You son of a bitch."" He said, looking grumpy, then broke out in hysterics, then going back as if it never happened. ""If it weren't for you…I'd be…I'd be…""
Where would he be? In his mind, he saw himself in Miami, laying on the beach with Lucinda, their two kids playing in the sand as the waves crashed soothingly onto the shore. But then his logic would kick that to the curb. Lucinda was showing signs…She would have dumped him if it weren't for that Deep One, that is, dragging her-kicking and screaming-to the bottom of the sea.
He would be away from his insane parents. That insane town of Dunwich. Even if Lucinda did not accompany him, he would, at least, be free from here. But then he met him.
""Jesus…""
""Yes?"" Came a sweet, velvety voice. A voice one would hear from royalty.
""Not you."" He snapped.
""But I am him."" A hand placed itself on his shoulder as the entire figure appeared, sitting beside him like they were best friends.
""No...You're the fucking antichrist.""
""Is there really a difference in that either?"" Jesus asked, a smirk gracing his regal, black lips. ""Both promise paradise. From there, it's on a person's opinion on what that is."" He chuckled. ""And do not tell me that you forgot your title, Ivan…Or should I say 'Judas'?""
""THEN WHY PLACE ME HERE?"" Ivan shouted.
""Hey!"" The orderly shouted, banging his flashlight on the bars again. ""What did I just say?""
The orderly's face began to bubble. His flesh boiled, broken screams erupted from his face. He collapsed and scratched at his face, letting more and more blood poor onto the floor.
""I hate interruptions."" Jesus said. ""And as for your answer…Because. If Jesus was as all powerful as he claimed, why did he allow Judas to stay in the fold? Why did he allow the lowly wretches hope? Why did I command Tython to drag Lucinda down to the depths to suffer being rendered by hungry maws before she could drown?""
He smirked evilly as he described Lucinda's gruesome demise. Ivan panted heavily, his rage rising faster than R'lyeh ever would to the surface. Ivan struck thin air as his body moved too slow for the deity; whom was already standing, laughing at the mortal.
""Because there's more to it, Judas."" Jesus said. ""Judas of old was an important player in the world. The wretches were a growing populace, if they loved him, they would worship him.""
""Bullshit!"" He spat.
""Is it?""
""We want you to betray us, Judas."" Jesus said after his question was ignored.
""Why?""
""Sorry, but us Christs keep some secrets from their disciples.""
""What makes you Jesus?""
""Our roles."" He stated simply. ""You see…He was supposed to preach about us. But, sadly, his mind couldn't take it. So Cthulhu became a god. Not like it matters, religion changes all the time.""
He smirked, all knowing. ""And no, he wasn't the son of Cthulhu. That was my little trick.""
""Pray Judas,"" He said from behind Ivan-not allowing him to speak-his black, decaying lips mere inches from his ear. ""He likes that. It makes him feel powerful.""
""No,"" Ivan said. ""I shall not ya damned bastard! And I won't bring about their reawakening! These crazies will remain sedated!""
Jesus laughed.
""That's my cue.""
Jesus grabbed Ivan by the neck and slammed his body against the wall. Buzzing from outside the window grew from a silent drone into a frenzy. Jesus smirked evilly, drawing his face closer to his Judas.
""In blood the mark is drawn.""
Nyarlahotep drew the blade he was hiding and slashed Ivan's wrist, splattering drops of blood on the wall. He watched in delight as the drops spread, several linking up and continuing their intricate design.
It consisted of a crude circle with intertwining tentacles and a pair of piercing eyes.
""There,"" He said. ""Done.""
He tossed Ivan. He landed next to the window and as he peered out of it he clearly saw the glowing heads and beating wings of the Migo, their forms slightly covered by the rain that began to fall again.
""Enjoy your trip, Judas."" Nyarlahotep said. ""For though I am done with you, you still serve a purpose.""
The Migo swarmed, the window shattering like paper. Ivan barely had time to scream as they worked on his skull, amputating his brain and placing it inside their jar.
""Cthulhu ftagn, indeed.""
",False
"Mantineus-I'm more Mr. Briggs, than the I this time.
Disclaimer-I own nothing!
I
""I'm gonna burn.""
That's when I knew it got really bad. He was always a little nuts, but that. Saying it with an innocent smile and certainty. It sent chills up my spine and I experienced a fear I have not faced in my entire life.
It was at this point that I realized that he really was beyond saving.
How he got like this, god only knows. Before he was admitted to my sanitarium I checked his background. It was clean. His mother and father were decently sane, as were his grandparents and siblings. I checked hospital files and came up with nothing out of the ordinary. Colds, flu, and a few scrapes. Normal for any boy.
Upon his arrival I waited in my office, glancing at the anniversary clock that adorned my desk religiously. Despite it's bad memory, I couldn't stand to throw it away, so in my office it has stayed. Poor Lucinda.
With annoyance, I watched as an orderly struggled to seat him in a chair. He was antsy and, from what I gathered, he felt he needed to be somewhere else.
""Hello,"" I said gently, hoping to direct his attention on me so that the orderly could strap him in the chair.
For my protection as well as his. On the ride here he was without a straitjacket and chipped his nails and teeth trying to escape and then from trying to fatally tear his wrists open with the aforementioned parts. God only knew what he would try to do to me if I stepped out of his line.
Finally, we were alone. He thrashed about for a minute before I began.
""Hello,"" I began. ""I'm your new doctor.""
From there he stared at me with eyes of steel. It unnerved me; it was like he was looking through me and saw my soul. He kept staring and my psychologist's nerve was faltering. Mentally I was panicking and I wondered if, due to his stoic stare, if he was looking deeper than my outer appearance of fear.
My childhood flashed before my eyes.
""So doc,"" He began, his voice was gravely and deep. ""What's your first question?""
This took me by surprise that I had to clear my throat, tap my papers back into place, and start again.
""Yes, well. You see, I've checked your records, Mr.-""
""Don't say it!"" He screamed, face twisting into pure, unimaginable fear. ""They might not know I'm here!""
""Who's 'they'?""
His snapped. As if the fearful shell broke and revealed this manic, demented smile. It seemed sadistic and menacing, yet what he said was pure jibber-jabber.
""Them, doc!"" He said. His face changed again; he was stumped. ""You mean you don't know, doc? Surely you've encountered others like me.""
""No,"" I agreed. ""I'm afraid I haven't.""
He began to laugh. It was long and insane. Yet, as abruptly as it began, it ended and he could have passed for a sane person within that silent second.
""Then give up this case, doc."" He said, a chuckle escaping his throat. ""Give it to someone who knows!""
If only I listened.
II
As the sessions progressed, I admit to feeling a slight disheartenment. He would reveal nothing of his condition other than ramblings like before. Though, one day he did something of note.
He was rocking back and forth in a big, exaggerated way. He would swing forward, mumble something then swing back and shout a made up word.
For example, on his first forward rock he would mumble something akin to a sneeze then shout ""Fhtagn!"" Yog-soth ""Fhtagn!"" Oz-soth ""Fhtagn!""
He then began to say another strange word, of which I surmised were names, when he stopped. He got so far as ""Nya"" when he began to giggle like a lunatic and rock his torso rapidly while repeating that strange made up word.
""Fhtagn! Fhtagn! Fhtagn!""
""Mr.-""
He began to scream as if in agony. From previous sessions, I knew it was most likely from my trying to utter his name. But, unlike previous times where he would instantly stop, he began to sob. His face flushed crimson, his eyes became slits from whence tears began to flow.
""The Necronomicon!"" He screamed, his sobs becoming more intense. ""De…Destroy….Destroy it!""
""What?""
""Destroy the Necronomicon!"" He shouted, he looked a mixture of agony and rage. ""Destroy it! Destroy that damn book!""
Five minutes after that outburst he stopped. Despite the still flushed face and teary eyes, he looked as if it never happened. And with that deep, gravelly voice he spoke.
""Destroy it doc."" The intense glare he gave me sent me flashes of hellfire and promises of pain and horror the likes of which I'll never comprehend.
""Destroy it. Don't look at it, don't read it, and-whatever you do-Don't look at the back page!""
Two sessions after that he seemed to follow back into our usual routine. That is, until our third. It was then that he said what I knew was the truth. He was gone to the sane world. And despite our other methods, they would not be enough to bring him back.
""I'm gonna burn."" He said, then, with an exaggerated nod he began. ""Yep. I'm gonna burn that damn book.""
""And why would you burn it?"" I asked.
He clammed up.
Miskatonic University. I have been there, of course, as a student of psychology. Hoping to better myself in understanding the people around me; a curse of a recluse, I'm afraid. Though I have never heard of such a book, my curiosity had gotten the better of me and I sent a letter to the Miskatonic Library.
A few days later a package arrived for me with a note. The Librarian was slightly against me looking at it, but considering my profession, she allowed it. But I was to return it within a timely manner. I did not flip through it. I cannot explain why, but I felt a sense of doom upon glancing at the ancient tome.
But, at least, I had something to talk about in our next session.
III
""I have the book."" I started.
His eyes picked up. He smiled like a child at Christmas morning before unwrapping his gifts. He started to shake the chair he was chained to. Rapidly he asked questions like ""You didn't read it did you?"" and ""Did you burn it? If you did, can I see the ashes?""
""No, I didn't read it."" I confessed. ""Nor,"" I placed the book on my desk. ""Have I burned it; as you can see.""
""Burn it!"" He shouted. ""Burn it!""
His eyes grew wide in fear.
""They'll be coming! They sense it's presence! It's an unholy beacon! Burn it! Burn it and destroy their only chance for this world!""
""Not yet."" I said. ""Not until you tell me why such a normal man would succumb to madness without any reason.""
His emotions changed from frantic to anger in a flash. He started to growl and shake the chair more violently. Either it is due to the cases similar to a grandmother gaining superhuman strength when their grandchild is in danger, or perhaps they did not switch the chains and after dealing with his constant mood swings, they gave. Either way, he was free.
Free and wild, like a bull, he charged towards me. I don't know what compelled me to throw the book, but I did. I threw it before he was upon it. And I know, right there, I made a mistake.
For when it landed, it landed on the last page where an artist's rendition of the writer was present. I stared upon it, mouth agape.
""No!"" He shouted. ""It's all over now."" He began to sob. ""I didn't want to do this!"" He then sparked up, looking hopeful. ""Wait! It's not too late! You can still reject it! Reject the responsibility and let humanity thrive!""
""What are you talking about?"" I managed to say.
My mind was beginning to form an explanation as to why the famous ""Mad Arab"" looked like me.
""Yes, traitor, what are you talking about?""
""Nyar…""He cracked up. ""Nyar…"" He chuckled like a mad man.
The new comer was dressed in Ancient Egyptian robes and crown. He was magnificent and regal in appearance. But another sense took over and I wanted to run away from him as quickly as possible. But something caught my eye. Without the help of hand or wind, the pages began to flip back until it reached its goal. The page prior had a picture of him as he was seen now. To the right were the bold words:
Nyarlathotep: The Crawling Chaos
He turned towards me. Within those cold black eyes I could see a swirling mass, similar to a galaxy, only different. And, if I strained my ears, I swore I heard the mad playing of deranged flautists.
""Do forgive me, Abdul."" He said. ""But…""
""That's not my name."" I began. ""My name is…""
""Not important."" He said, cutting me off. ""What is, is who you were and who you are meant to be. Abdul Hazred, the Mad Arab and priest to both Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth.""
Flashes of desert expanses flew by within my mind. A lone man walked alone the desert, walking through an old, abandoned city that once belonged to a reptilian race of humanoids. How he dedicated his remaining years(which was not many) to write the book of which they wanted and who's information he gained through dreams and through physical means.
He died and his soul became one with Yog-Sothoth until thirty-four years ago. I was plagued with nightmares and horrible sights that now no longer fill me with dread. Though what my parents did still leaves a mark. But then again, it happened to Abdul, too.(1)
""What is needed of me, Oh mighty Nyarlathotep?""
""No!"" He shouted, but Nyarlathotep shot him an angry glare.
""I will deal with you later."" He turned and faced me once more. ""But for now, Abdul must be briefed on what is expected of him.""
You have written The Necronomicon rather well. But, They now wish for you to write one more piece to it. This one will explain what will happen once They are awakened and how to stop the stars from changing again. You'll receive these in dreams once more. But this time, you'll receive help in the form of Mr. Briggs, there.""
He cowered in fear of his own surname.
""That is, if you need help.""
""No,"" I said. ""I shall write this myself. Besides, you called him a traitor. He is not fit to help write such a glorious book.""
""No!"" He shouted. He had a letter opener in his hands. He was digging through my desk while we were talking. ""He will not write the missing chapter!""
He lunged at me, but was stopped by a loud buzzing sound.
""I'd run if I were you."" Nyarlathotep said.
Mr. Briggs did not heed his warning, and lunged at me once more. A Mi-go crashed through the window and grabbed him with his crab-like claws and whisked him out of my office and the sanitarium all together, being prepared for his trip to Yuggoth.
""Do not disappoint me."" He said and vanished.
------ ------
1) I know, according to historians, that Abdul Hazred was actually Lovecraft. But, since he's a made up character, why not give him a made up childhood? I am not implying that he was beaten as a child!
","This is based off of real events that have happened to a friend of mine. The impulse Harold has at the beach, the fish, and the dream. Everything else is fictional.
I
Harold Durby has been my friend since the age of six, having met in kindergarten. A non-native to Florida, unlike myself, he came from Massachusetts-though where has always alluded my mother and father since Harold's single mother always changed the subject.
He was a strapping brown haired, blue eyed ball of energy that it was a shock to all that he would befriend me, the class nerd-for at such a young age, I discovered the astounding information that knowledge can give. Yet, we were bound by a shared passion of the ocean. His wide knowledge and love of fish was beyond his years and was always spoken with such passion that it seemed as if he longed to swim beneath the waves forever. And as he grew, it was as if he believed he belonged there more than he did upon land and felt cursed to walk with us humans.
And I found myself feeling the same way. Though it was not put to question until his forties, the first sign should have been gleaned on his nineteenth year.
Walking along the lonely, early morning beach-our routine since starting high school together(though we graduated at this point)-found us gazing upon a lazy, gray sun rising out of the sea weed infested waves. Minor chit-chat and crashing waves pervaded our silence as gulls stretched their wings and took flight when, out of nowhere, Harold stopped in his tracks, head whipping towards the ocean, eyes cloudy and unfocused.
""Harold,"" I called, trying to gain his attention. ""Harold!""
He took a stiff step towards the ocean, then another, his arms out to his side, palms facing forward like the Virgin Mary as his steps increased. I tugged at his sleeve to break this trance that was placed upon him.
We were a good fifteen feet out, the sand beneath us making the cresting waves come up just above his belt, being a couple inches taller than myself, when a whistle blew.
""Get out of the water!"" The lifeguard called from his position on his tower.
I looked away from Harold at that moment to see the purple and red flag with a no swimming sign on it. Harold, having been brought back by the whistle, was the first to move back towards land.
Panting and chilled by the wind blowing across out wet clothing, I attempted to ask my friend what came upon him. Though he was crouched over, hands on knees, I could see on his face a sort of horror and shock that I have not seen on him before.
""Harold,"" I pushed. ""What came over you?""
""You didn't hear it?"" He asked, sounding surprised, covering up his fear.
""Hear what?""
""Then why did you go out with me?""
""I was trying to snap you out of it."" I explained.
""Then you didn't hear it?""
""Hear what?""
He dismissed my question with a shake of his head. ""Forget it, let's just go home.""
I nodded, knowing better than to drop it, but also knowing that Harold would tell me when he's ready.
From then on he went to the beach a few more times, but after those times, it was strictly on the sand and never in the water. His claim was that fish kept bumping into him, which is not too unusual, for I have seen their glistening, silver bodies flash beneath the waves-but they never touched any of us, just Harold. Which made him nervous since he wouldn't hurt a fly on purpose, and the murky water doesn't offer much in the way of spying on them.
II
Many years pass in a blink of an eye and I find myself in an insurance company(1), while Harold is a marine biologist professor at the local University of Central Florida. In our mid-thirties, we find ourselves successful in our occupations, yet not so in our love life-a fact our mothers love to point out. Though not from a lack of trying, both Harold and myself have tried, but my girlfriends do not last long and, for some odd reason, girls seem to find Harold oddly repulsive. A fact I cannot grasp, for he is a handsome gentleman.
But we are content enough with our lives. Though, as was to be expected, since our income was good but not good enough for housing prices, we rented an apartment together.
But that veil was quick to be cast away from our eyes. For Harold, from what I could gather, he had night terrors. Screaming out insane verses in tongues befitting gibberish, yet sounded so calculated, so alien, that it hadn't crossed my mind that it couldn't be actual speech. Which frightened me a great deal.
And I had asked so frequently that it became routine that when he entered the small dining room that he sardonically stated-more than asked-that he had night terrors, of which I would groggily grunt in the affirmative.
Forty reaches us and it's like someone turned the volume off. Harold stopped the night terrors when he reached thirty six and a strange acceptance seemed to be permanently stuck on him, a great contrast to the tired and jumpy Harold that I knew during that time. A Harold who's mother would call begging me to pick him up from work because 'something was off'.
I didn't think much about it. Night terrors can be overcome, much like any phase of human development, that I was happy when this change occurred. Which then brought up an ancient mystery; the city in which he dwelled before coming to Florida.
""Innsmouth,"" He told me one day. ""I'm from Innsmouth, Massachusetts. My mom finally told me.""
""That's nice,"" I told him. ""Any reason she told you this now?""
I did not mean for it to sound so rude, but one has to ask why wait so long to tell your son where it was he grew up. By waiting this long why not simply leaving him in the dark? Though not the best option, it seemed more practical then to tell him now. I was curious as any friend would be, though it made those attempts to find out more about the Durby's past seem asinine.
His face became unreadable, in deep thought, his features seemed almost fish like in the light.
""She said I need to go back. That I need to go back for a while to understand.""
""Understand what?"" Came my obvious question when he trailed off into silence.
""She didn't say.""
""Well, when do you suppose you'll go?""
""This coming week. I know you have vacation time saved up, too. I'd like it if you came with me to see the place of my birth and to figure out what my mother meant.""
I was happy that he would ask. Despite the fact that I never cared about that missing piece of Harold, I found myself curious about it now due to his mother's cryptic words.
III
Our first time on a plane and it was nothing like we expected. We boarded on time, but our plane was held fifteen minutes longer. I'm glad Harold had the window seat for, from what I saw out of it, I would have went into a panic attack. If man were meant to fly he would have wings.
For hours we were stuck up there with minor turbulence, boredom, and anxiety for what we will see once we get off in Boston where we would board a train into Arkham where a cab will need to be hailed for us to proceed into-what the internet called-a dying fishing town. From what we gathered, only a few people still lived there and many of the buildings were run down.
No wonder she left. But we were to go there no matter what. For whatever Ms. Durby meant, it was obvious it was eating away at Harold. But I did not push him for details, history has shown me that he will tell me when he's ready.
The train ride went off without a scene, but in Arkham, when we hailed a cab, the driver got out to open the back, passenger door when he looked at me then Harold.
""Goin' to Innsmouth, eh."" He stated rather than asked.
""Yes,"" Harold asked. ""How did you know?""
He did not answer, merely motioned for us to get in-which we did-and he got back to the front seat where he drove off without another word.
""You look like yer from there."" The driver stated, looking at Harold.
Strange enough, I had not seen the physical changes from my friend. I suppose spending such a time with someone can allow you to not notice a few things. Like his eyes, they were a dull blue now instead of the vibrant orbs they used to be. His face was becoming rounder on the sides, flatter in the front, and red welts were where neck met shoulders.
He never looked that way before, and from what I gather, the people must always look like this. I was confused, but whenever either of us asked him anymore, he would remain silent. Though, when I mentioned that we shall remain there until Friday, he nodded his head and assured us he'd be there.
We reach Innsmouth by six in the afternoon, the sun already set and the dim glow of a crescent moon fills the night sky along with a plethora of stars you couldn't see in the city. In the dark Innsmouth looked like a deserted, ghost town-the houses and shops, as well as the odd church, looked worse for wear, giving the town an elephant graveyard appeal. The hotel our cab was stationed outside looked nice, yet drearily abandoned.
The cab driver then spoke once more to us. ""Please feel free to chose your own rooms. The manager does not reside here anymore. And only two families remain here.""
""Where is he?"" Harold asked. ""And why so few people?""
""Out at sea,"" And with that he got back in and drove back to Arkham.
With a stretch of paranoia, we climbed the steps in a solemn fashion more befitting a funeral procession than a march to your new-though for only a few days-home. The cab driver was correct, the front desk looked as if the manager had not packed up his things and headed out to sea, the only way to tell how long is to dust through layers of dust and cob-webs.
""Do you really suppose it's okay to stay here?"" I asked.
""I don't like it either, but it was unlocked and from what I gather,"" he traced a finger along the banister that was against the far left wall as he ascended the stairs towards the rooms that resided up there. ""He is not coming back. But don't worry, we'll check the log book if we can and give him the correct amount on Friday should he return.""
I follow him up the steps and to the left there's a hallway with doors carved out of it. It's completely made of wood with generic pictures that adorn almost every hotel across the nation. Harold picks the last one on the left, closest to the end-hallway window which, no doubt, gives the hall its light since the lighting fixtures most likely don't work anymore-where as I picked the last on the right, a few feet away from the window.
Our rooms were like a carbon copy from one another; a twin bed, whose head rested against the right wall, across from that the window and a bedside table and another window facing the bed with a door that conjoins rooms to the left of the bed. Throwing my satchel down, I laid on the bed, my conscious still screaming this was wrong, but the very powerful need of sleep overpowered that urge and soon I found myself asleep.
The morning came upon us almost too soon, but with both windows letting the celestial orb in with glaring intensity due to dust, we woke up almost blinded.
After our short celebration and shouts from room to room that the water actually worked, we showered and headed outside, hopping to meet some of the locals and grab a quick bite to eat-having not eaten since lunch yesterday.
The town seemed to be cloistered together, tall brick buildings of which were, for the most part, dusty and abandoned with messy stores, one, a house, even had an upstairs bedroom in the living room. But such is the curse of time. Fortunately, the town is rather small, and as luck would have it one of the families was a baker, for their store was open and pleasant smells wafted from its ovens and like an arrow, hit the mark that was our noses.
The inside was styled into a turn of the century bakery with old looking ovens with bread, cakes, and other sweets in a glass case that doubled as a counter. The woman behind it was slightly round around the middle, though the reason came from a cherubic coo in a rocking cradle that she was stooped over. Her sunflower blonde hair was in a librarian's bun, her white apron splattered with spots of flour, jellies, and perhaps some genetic material that came from her baby girl.
""Hello, George, come to pick up more bread? Or is it something…""
She looks at us keenly, as if we were joined at the hip-a joke many people have said about us-or something. Then she smiles.
""Well, don't get many visitors around here anymore."" She said, it was then that I noticed her features that were more pronounced than Harold's and her voice seemed to border on croaking, yet still managed to be cheerful.
""What brings you two boys to Innsmouth?""
""I'm Harold Durby, I was born here."" Harold stated. I introduced myself before he continued. ""My mom said I had to come back to find my roots.""
""You're Alison's brat?"" She said aghast. ""Funniest thing in the world, that one-ran away. Her husband-your father-was so mad, he tore up your house."" She leaned in closer when the baby sniffled from her mother's loud speaking. Brought their bedroom into the living room.""
I was stunned, that house, the one I thought of as being worse for wear by time, was actually destroyed by Harold's father. What man could possibly do that? And if he can do that, what would he do to Harold? I pale at the thought but the object of my worrisome thoughts break me out of it.
""What happened to my father?"" Harold asked in a manner as if he already knew.
""Went back, boy, went back. Nothing keeping him here and they can…"" She spied me. ""Does he know?""
Harold shook his head. ""Not even I know.""
She was taken aback. ""Your mom ever told you?""
Harold shook his head.
""Figures, nothing right with that one."" She mumbles off something then smiles again. ""So, how long are you boys in Innsmouth?""
""Till Friday,"" Harold stated. ""Just to see what I need to see.""
""Well, come back here after closing, I'll tell you all you need to know. But come alone…We don't take well with outsiders, not like you're not, but you're more one of us than he is. No offense dear, it's habit.""
I wasn't offended, merely surprised. Didn't she think Harold would tell me what she tells him? He had no real bond to this place like he did in Florida.
""Anyway, what would you boys like to eat? Don't got much, mostly we go to Ipswich to get supplies, but it's a ways, so I tried to lessen our travels by cooking a few things here."" She then gasps in remembrance. ""I almost forgot. My name's Henrietta.""
We ordered our breakfast, ate it, then went on our way. The sights of Innsmouth worth seeing were few; a beach that leads to Devil's Cove the docks. But everything was in ill repair, obviously having been neglected by the town's remaining population-however many is uncertain, for we only met Henrietta and her baby.
IV
That night I was peacefully sleeping, dreams of sailing in violet skies, my crew and I lax upon the deck, the currents calm enough for daydreaming. But then a pale, blue hand grabbed onto my shoulder and shook me.
I woke up to Harold's hand gently shaking my shoulder. A grave expression brought out stress wrinkles, his eyes set in concentration. He sighed, never looking at me as he explained what happened previously.
""I saw the elusive George."" He explained. ""And their spouses.""
He sighs before he continues:
""You see, Innsmouth was in a bind so they made a pact with these creatures called the Deep Ones. They gave the people fish in exchange for humans to mate with as well as human sacrifices. Henrietta and George are married to them; George even gave up his house and moved to Devil's Reef for her."" He shook his head. ""Still can't get over it; how can anyone love a thing like that?""
But you see, my mother was one of the few non-hybrids left.""
""Hybrids?""
""I'll get to that,"" He said dismissively. ""Anyway, my mom didn't like what she was married to. That it touched her. She had me and ran away-I think because she did not want him to hurt me like he does her. She always had him locked in the attic.""
He laughs. ""You see, my friend, those night terrors, I remember ever single one. Cyclopean structures of coral and sand in some of them. In others I see my relatives, alive and kicking as hybrid creatures with blue scales and fish features. I also saw my dad. I saw him run into the night, howling in rage all the while he headed back to Devil's Reef; where their city dwells. The first one was this horrible nightmare where you and I were on one of our morning walks when a giant wave crashed down on the both of us, sucking us out to sea. The problem was that you floated to the surface, but I was stuck mere feet away from it.""
""It was scary, trying to hold in air, fighting to the top, only to discover that I can breathe. But my addled mind begs me to breach the surface, I tug on your pant leg and you notice me. You pull me up a little more then you shout out 'get away from me!' and let me go. My hand turned into a hybrid's clawed hand. I sink, fighting it as best I could until you're out of sight.""
He finally looks at me. ""Don't take this the wrong way, but the dreams of losing you were the worst.""
I place a hand on his shoulder. ""You won't lose me.""
The thought of us ever parting never crossed my mind recently. True, the threat to friendship is usually high school, but we overcame that. We're still friends. And even though this story sounds convoluted, Harold was never good at acting. Something really spooked him.
""But you will,"" He counters. ""Tonight my father is coming to take me to Y'ha-nthlei, their domain. I am to remain there until…""
He is cut off by the sound of something sharp scratching against glass. We both stare at either window, but whatever made that noise had disappeared. Harold stood tense.
""He's here, I have to go now.""
""You're just going to leave me? After everything you're just going to leave?"" I don't know where this is coming from. A part of me screams this should have been said sooner, but I suppose it was until that moment when the reality of the situation we found ourselves in finally sunk in.
He looks as if he'll cry. But then a thought comes to him.
""Tomorrow at Midnight…I'll meet you at the dock closest to Devil's Reef.""
We embrace, silence prevails over all in that brief moment. He breaks away first and runs out into the night.
Sleep evades me the rest of the night.
V
The next day I hardly venture out into town. Partly because I dare not venture out into this cursed town. A town who's inhabitants, from what I gathered yesterday, did not like outsiders. Yet, strangely enough, I did not starve. Henrietta left goodies for me outside my door with a bill since I wrote on dusty stationary the room had left over that I could not take her charity.
Despite being lonely, a sense of anxiety crept over me, for midnight was drawing near.
At eleven thirty I ventured out into the night, the crescent moon illuminating my way towards the dock of which our meeting would take place.
Once there I only wait a minute until I hear the sound of splashing and a thud of something landing on the dock a few feet behind me. I turn, expecting to see my friend to be as I remembered from last night. But alas, he is not and with a gasp I take him all in.
Naked as the day he was born, his body covered in pale, robin eggshell blue, his stomach a pale white. His two eyes have enlarged and have become pitch black orbs. His lips have become fish-like, his gums holding rows of sharp teeth, framed nicely on his hairless head; hair being replaced with frills like that of fish fins. Yet, despite the fish-like qualities, it seemed that amphibian qualities were also present.
He walks towards me in an awkward gait on his webbed toes until he is close enough to cup my cheek with his webbed, right hand.
The gesture was merely for comfort and reassurance that he was still himself. I grasped his hand with my own and he lets out a purr-like hiss.
""Friend,"" He croaks, his voice coming out even more awkward than his gait, as if his vocal cords were not made for such a feat, yet was able to anyway. ""Missed you.""
""Missed you, too, Harold."" I admitted.
""Go back to Florida. Follow you."" He growls. ""Others hate outsiders. Unless willing to mate with Deep One…""
He looked at me with what, to the average person, would look like a blank stare due to his black eyes. But from knowing him for as long as I have I caught the apprehension in his voice.
""No, nothing against you, Harold. But I'd rather not.""
He made a sound that I guessed was their way of sighing, and in his case; it was in relief.
""Will go Florida, too. But…Some days I come back here."" He grimaced as best he could with fish lips. ""Voice…Will better.""
I pat him on the shoulder. A low growl erupts from below us.
""Dad!"" Harold hisses, his frills on his head tense up in warning. But he pays his son no heed and I hear a thump. I gaze upon his father-a pale, green, hulking sea monster-and faint.
VI
I travel back to Florida by hiking the way to Ipswich and hail a cab back to Boston where I fly back home and go about my business in minor isolation; breaking my hermitic lifestyle to go to work. I move up the corporate ladder allowing me to afford my new house on the beach. A house isolated from others. Others with prying eyes and curious souls.
It's a house where a dear, old friend can visit from his home in the sea and no one would ever be the wiser.
()()()
1) A reference to the protagonist in ""The Shadow Over Innsmouth"" who received a job as such before he learns the horrifying truth about his family.
",True
"Heaven's not enough
If when I'm there I don't remember you...
The words came unbidden to Torren-Wraeth's mind. The line was from an old song from the soundtrack of an old Japanese anime that had confused and depressed the hell out of him. He shook his head, Heaven's Not Enough, Steve Conte, Wolf's Rain soundtrack, No... there had been two soundtracks for that series, this was the first song on the second. Why wasn't it called Wolves' Rain? He thought, trying to dispel the sad song, but it played on, and he was even singing softly toward the song's end...
'Cause I couldn't cry
'Cause I turned away
Couldn't see the score
Didn't know the pain
Of leaving yesterday really far behind
in another life
in another dream
By a different name
gave it all away for a memory 
and a quiet lie
and I felt the face 
Of the cold tonight
Still don't know the score
But I know the pain
Of leaving everything really far behind ...
Thus distracted, he did not see Dahlman.
The sorcerer was a servant of the He Who Gnaws in The Darkness. Azathoth was neither ally nor enemy to Cthulhu, he was actually his 'Great-Grandfather' having sired both Yog-Sothoth and Shub-Niggurath, who had sired Nug and Yeb, Nug being Cthulhu's parent by parthogenesis. Azathoth's 'worshipers', however, tended to be madmen in the truest sense. He was a mindless entity, neither desiring nor rewarding worship. Some of the gods who danced round and round his throne often took it upon themselves to accept his worship and grant gifts in his behalf. Especially Nyarlathotep...
The Outer Gods were the key. Humans were a weak species, helpless in the face of even the least of The Great Old Ones. But by learning, by studying the Outer Gods, by utilizing their power, a human could assume a form of divinity themselves. For decades Dahlman had faithfully studied the ancient texts, The Book of Eibon, The Necronomicon, The Book of Iod, and he had learned to harness the power of those who lurked mindless and blind beyond the thin veil of reality. And now he would prove his worth, he would bring down an immortal, the child of a god...
A bolt of lightning shook Torren-Wraeth from his revery, it barely hurt, but he could tell it was not natural. He turned to see a black-clad figuring closing in upon him, and erected a Deflect Harm even as the human struck out with Fist of Yog-Sothoth. ""Okay, now you're annoying me."" Torren-Wraeth lashed out with Implant Fear, hoping to avoid having to actually kill this irrational attacker. He disliked sorcerers, but he also disliked having to harm people. But the madman had cast Deflect Harm upon himself, and, thus protected, struck back with The Dread Curse of Azathoth. Torren-Wraeth reeled, Now that hurt! Enraged, Torren-Wraeth physically rushed the sorcerer, ignoring the protective amulet the man held out, and punched him square in the nose, breaking it. Distracted by the pain, Dahlman fell before Implant Fear.
Dahlman's mind was instantly overwhelmed with unimaginable fear and he turned to flee, all spells forgotten in his terror, only to run into a golden monstrosity streaking toward him in the dawning sky. He called frantically upon his gods to save him. But these were not benevolent gods, they were fickle, and enjoyed granting lesser beings great power, just to have the pleasure of snatching it away. His gods deserted him mid-flight, his skin shriveled and shrank tight against his bones as he aged in seconds. The capricious Outer Gods no doubt laughed as their former ward fell into the sea, and was immediately set upon by sharks.
Torren-Wraeth and Tek watched impassively as the dying sorcerer fell into the sea.
""Who was that?""
""I have no idea.""
""And I thought you were in trouble.""
""Sorry.""
""You do get in the strangest situations."" Tek observed wryly.
""Sorry.""
You've made me late, you know.""
""Sorry about that.""
""It's okay, I could use the break. A word of advice, never marry a woman with five mouths.""
Both Tek and Torren-Wraeth laughed.
Ho Fong arched an eyebrow as he saw the disheveled Torren-Wraeth accompanying Lord Tektaktequataquarl. He'd seen him before, of course, he occasionally visited alongside Tek, though his distaste for the ritual sacrifices of human beings was clearly evident. Fortunately, no such events were scheduled. ""Are you alright, Lord Torren-Wraeth?"" He knew better than to call him simply 'Torren' or 'Wraeth'. ""I'll be all right, Master Ho,"" Torren-Wraeth said with perfect Chinese courtesy, ""But I would be most grateful for a place to rest for a while."" Ho Fong smiled, ""Of course,"" he turned, ""Ping, take lord Torren-Wraeth to one of the guest areas and provide him with whatever refreshments he requires."" A youngish monk, dressed in the standard yellow and black silk, stepped forward and led Torren-Wraeth deeper into the monastery.
It was instantly obvious to Torren-Wraeth that Ping was not Chinese, at least, not in the ethnic sense. He was one of the dreaded Tcho-Tcho people, descendants of toad-like creatures created by the Great Old One Chaugnar Faugn and human cultists. The Tcho-Tcho had an evil reputation, one well earned. The vast majority of them served the Great Old Ones, and many practiced cannibalism. There were exceptions, of course, not all Tcho-Tcho were evil or insane, but those individuals were usually outcasts, hated and sometimes even hunted by their own people. As they walked, Torren-Wraeth halted for a moment before an idol of carved black stone. It was well-crafted and incredibly detailed, lean muscled and lanky, wings extended, the webbed hands held palm up like a divine supplicant, the curving trunk-mouth lifted upward as if it were sounding a call. A call to Death itself, for this was Shugoran, The Herald of Death, worshiped and feared by the Tcho-Tcho people. Ping knelt reverently then hurried Torren-Wraeth into a nearby chamber.
The scent of Black Lotus was thick in the air as the monks shut the great copper door behind Tek. ""You really shouldn't smoke you know,"" he said casually, ""Terrible for the lungs..."" The Bloated Woman rose from her cushions, ""Only if you are a mortal, which I am not."" Tek smiled, then shed his semblance of humanity, becoming a writhing, shapeless mass of golden flesh, golden tentacles, golden eyes and pearly white fangs. ""What of our child?"" Several mouths spoke at once. The Goddess came closer with a grace unfitting such an obese creature. ""Nothing can harm our offspring."" ""How long, do you think?"" The Bloated Woman stopped, apparently this visit was for business, not pleasure. ""It is impossible to tell. I have born some children within days of conception, and others within centuries."" She sensed a slight jealous possessiveness on the part of the Hastur-Spawn, he wanted her as his sole mate, an amusing and archaic notion, not often seen in a True-Blood. The fact that he knew she had devoured most of the former lovers did not apparently assuage this unseemly feeling. ""I feel that this one will be born within a month or two..."" She grinned horribly with all five mouths, ""How has your father reacted?"" ""Our child will be welcome in Carcosa."" Hastur, in truth, was somewhat worried, fearing that the child would be another avatar of Nyarlathotep, that the Crawling Chaos would use the child as yet another form in which to manifest itself. In other words, he feared that Nyarlathotep would give birth to itself...
For all the vile practices that went on in the Monastery of The Bloated Woman, it was a beautiful place, richly decorated in jade and silver, gold and silk. Yellow and black, every strand of silk in the monastery was either yellow or black. The yellow made for a much friendlier environment than the dark, ominous stones of R'Lyeh. The Goddess favored those colors, for some reason. Torren-Wraeth remembered something Goro had once said. Among his people and several other Asian cultures, yellow was the color of mourning. Black meant death and mourning in the West, yellow filled that role in the East. Was it intentional? Probably, but he was a guest, and it would be rude to question his hosts. He changed from his slightly charred clothing into the yellow and black robes that had been kindly provided him and stepped out into the hallway. There he saw Ping once again kneeling before Shugoran.
","""Great Cthulhu looks favorably upon your sacrifices."" Torren-Wraeth swept his arms expansively before the congregation, ""And your faith pleases him greatly."" He had been summoned, he hated being summoned, but it was his duty. ""What is your desire?"" A fire blazed on the stone alter behind him, and dark-robed humans knelt before the child of their god as a tentacular, vaguely toad-like being known colloquially as a ""Servitor of the Outer Gods"", (His personal name was Grix), piped away on a bone flute. The High Priest, distinguished by his rich green robes, stood, ""We seeketh only a small boon from thy sire."" Torren-Wraeth rolled his eyes mentally, why did humans always use that annoying Archaic English in religious rights. Cthulhu didn't speak English, let alone Ye Olde English. ""What is it?"" The priest then began a short list of needs, more game to hunt, more rain for the crops, as if Cthulhu could magically make them appear. Well, he could make rain, at least, but not animals... Animal life had flourished since The Great Arising, with so few humans left to hunt them, these people had probably been careless, overtaxing their resources...
""Rain will not be a problem,"" Torren-Wraeth said confidently, then, ""But animals and good crops are more in the domain of Shub-Niggurath."" Grix stopped piping and eyed Torren-Wraeth in surprise. The priest looked confused, the congregation certainly was. ""Cans't thou not aid us?"" Torren-Wraeth considered for a moment, Cthulhu could drive animals toward this village, but could he make crops grow? ""He can send rain and more game animals for you to hunt, but as for the growing of crops, you will likely have to either trust your luck or make sacrifices to Cernunos."" That avatar of Shub-Niggurath was closely associated with agriculture, and Cthulhu didn't mind sharing his worshipers. Torren-Wraeth knew of one 'god' he didn't want the people to follow, however. ""And by The Key and The Gate don't start worshiping He-Who-Walks-Between-the-Rows!"" Lightning struck near the entrance of the church, fusing sand to glass, ""If you sacrifice to him, I'll kill you all myself!"" The congregation recoiled in terror. A steady rain began to fall outside the 'church'. The congregation, forgetting their confusing, terrifying 'angel', and went wild. ""PRAISE CTHULHU!"" ""IA! IA! CTHULHU NAFLFHTAGN!""
Great Cthulhu held court from his green-black graven throne in the Temple of The Key and The Gate. Though many worshiped him as a god or feared him as a devil, the Lord of R'Lyeh was in truth a high priest of Yog-Sothoth. Not that he discouraged his own worship, even as his own clerics, Father Dagon and Mother Hydra, gladly accepted the worshipful adulation of the lesser races. There were plenty of eager and fearful acolytes for everyone.
Later, after the humans had all driven or drunken themselves into noisy slumber, Grix rolled over to Torren-Wraeth, who sat cross-legged and disgusted on the cold stone floor. ""Your father may not be pleased that you shattered his image of omnipotence."" ""Should I give these people lies?"" Torren-Wraeth spoke freely, no one there but the two of them understood Grix' tongue. Grix laughed, a peculiar gurgling sound, ""Isn't it all a lie, in the end? You made it rain, not your father. I could have, too, if I had wanted."" Torren-Wraeth sighed, not knowing how to respond, then took the pipe from Grix' slimy tentacles and began to play.
Torren-Wraeth had some friends and allies, human or otherwise. Tektaktequataquarl, a True-Blood Hastur-Spawn. An unlikely friend, certainly, as Hastur and Cthulhu were grave enemies, and Hastur's Spawn were no more given to emotion in any human standard than those of his nemesis. 'Tek' was an exception, wild, emotional, maybe even a little bit crazy, even by the standards of The King in Tatters. He took human form, male, beautiful, gold skin and gleaming wings, though in truth 'he' was a hermaphroditic golden mass of flesh, tendrils, eyes and mouths. As Hastur-Spawn, he was unwelcome in Cthulhu's court, but he ignored the threats with the casual indifference of an immortal, perhaps he even found a perverse pleasure in visiting enemy territory. Besides, his mate, the Bloated Woman, also known as the Goddess of the Black Fan, lived in the mountains of China. Seven feet tall, six hundred pounds of blubber and writhing tendrils topped with five vicious mouths and a pair of exquisitely beautiful eyes. When holding the Black Fan under her eyes, she was slim and beautiful, a mask for luring men to a gruesome death. Ironically, Tek found the true form more appealing, a form so similar to his own... Regardless, Cthulhu would never dare move against her, for The Bloated Woman was an avatar of the only being Cthulhu truly feared, Nyarlathotep. To anger Nyarlathotep meant horrors even Great Cthulhu dare not imagine. Torren-Wraeth did not care much for the cruel Goddess, but, in some strange way, Tek loved her. Torren-Wraeth had no way of knowing if the feeling was reciprocated, one never knew with The Crawling Chaos...
Then there were the Insects from Shaggai, who had dwelt in England's Severn valley for centuries, repairing their temple-ship. They brought with them their experiences, their dreams and nightmares of far-off wonders; The cities of long-dead Shaggai, the titanic natives of Thuggon, of L'gh'hx, Xiclotl and Tond. They had finally escaped earth shortly before The Great Arising. They had been cruel and twisted beings, but living their mortal memories made Torren-Wraeth long to visit these worlds, where eyeless giants strode teeming marshes and suns blazed black in amber skies. He sometimes used his skills at bending space and reality to take brief jaunts to these worlds. But he always came back. He could not seem to break earth's hold on him, the ties of birth and blood were too strong.
In his house at R'Lyeh Torren-Wraeth slept poorly. His home, small by Cthuli standards, was the size of a cathedral, one large room with a stone bed covered by warm blankets and a square, shallow pool of flowing seawater that served as a bath. A low stone shelf held an image of Goro, preserved forever beneath unbreakable, transparent alien stone. Several books, scrolls and tablets lay scattered about, and the room, from floor to ceiling, was covered with elaborate carvings of alien worlds and incredible creatures. A grim looking Moai sat in a corner, looking out over the green-black structure. A small chest of amber-colored stone, strongly contrasting the general color scheme, held Torren-Wraeth's clothing.
He rose from his bed and walked across the cool floor to the open portal, staring out at the fickle stars that flickered in the night sky. Isn't it all a lie in the end? He sighed, then turned to the chest and began to dress.
Ho Fong stood at the gates of the Monastery of The Bloated Woman, catching the first rays of sunlight. He was old, centuries had passed since he became high priest of The Order of The Bloated Woman, yet time held no power over him. He appeared to be in his early fifties, without even a gray hair. Someone, an American, no doubt, had once insultingly compared him to the fictional Chinese villain Fu Manchu. In truth, he did resemble a significantly heavier version of the Devil Doctor, complete with the signature moustache. He'd killed the man, of course. The Goddess required sacrifices, after all. As the golden light began to bath the magnificent mountains of China in divine splendor, he thought about The Other. He did not worship lord Tektaktequataquarl, as he didn't seem to desire worship, but was obliged to give him all due respect as the Goddess' consort. Tek was coming, of course. The only constant in that being of chaos' life was his love for the Goddess, a love Ho Fong envied, though he could never bring himself to admit it. He straightened his yellow and black silk robes, the official garb of the Order, and prepared to greet the Hastur-Spawn.
The monastery was fairly new, The Order had once had centers in Shanghai and on Gray Dragon Island, but these had been lost in 1926. Enemies of The Order had overwhelmed and destroyed them. Much had been lost, and Ho Fong himself had nearly been killed. These had been powerful setbacks, but, in the end, they had been immaterial, as both Shanghai and Gray Dragon Island now lay lost beneath the waves. Ho Fong's enemies, The Goddess' enemies, were all long dead. He walked back into the monastery, passing lesser monks and acolytes who bowed dutifully toward him, and approached the great bronze doors behind which the Goddess rested. Two burly monks opened the doors and Ho Fong respectfully approached the screens of yellow and black silk that lay beyond the carven jade sacrificial alter.
The Bloated Woman sat upon a pile of silken cushions, smoking essence of Black Lotus from an ornate hookah, it's pipe in her third mouth. The Black Fan and six sacred golden sickles, used to dispatch human sacrifices, hung from a black silk sash wrapped around her prodigious belly. The priest bowed deeply to his beloved Goddess. ""He will not be here for some time yet."" The Goddess voice was smooth and sultry. ""Receive him warmly."" She blew fragrantly scented smoke from her fourth mouth, whilst speaking through her second and first.
Tektaktequataquarl flapped his gleaming wings in the bright morning sun. He felt Torren-Wraeth's approach long before he could see him. He was a good kid, level-headed and thoughtful, the total opposite of Tek himself. Perhaps that was why he liked him, a balance of chaos and order. Yin and Yang, so to speak. Ever since his human confidant had died, the Half-Blood had become more sullen and withdrawn. He needed more excitement in his life. Perhaps Tek himself needed less, courting an avatar of Nyarlathotep. Even Hastur had expressed concern about that union, but love is blind. She was evil, in human terms, but, then again, by human terms she was hideous. He found her beautiful and dangerous. He wondered what their coming offspring would be like...
He suddenly realized something had changed. Torren-Wraeth was in trouble, his life was in danger. He turned back and sped toward the Half-Blood...
",True
"An autumnal chill descended upon the streets of Glaston as the young man walked upon the concrete sidewalk, passing redbrick storefronts and shop windows, every surface still wet with the morning rain. Leaves, red and orange and each vibrant in their hue, were shaken loose from the trees lining the street by the wind, landing wherever they fell. For an instant in time, the spectacle of the leaves drew the attention of the man, in fact little more than a teenage boy, as he made his way toward the corner. However, Joseph Clayton, clad in bluejeans and jacket with a backpack slung from his shoulders, had far more important things to focus on than a show of falling leaves. An important test for this semester was arriving in a week or so and he needed to study.
Also, he was getting quite hungry this close to lunch.
As Joseph rounded the corner and continued toward his favorite eatery, he wondered if he would get swamped in the usual lunch crowd. However, as he saw the front of the Leng Trinh Restaurant, his thoughts turned to quiet dejection.
""Damnit!"" muttered Joseph as he approached the eatery. The reason for this turn in mood was the carpet of tempered glass fragments on the sidewalk below the picture window at the front of the establishment, which was now covered by plastic sheeting. Thuch Van Trinh, one half of the husband-and-wife ownership, was wearing a plaid jacket over his apron and usual cooking clothes and was shoveling the broken glass into a bucket. ""Hey, Mr. Trinh, how's it going?"". Joseph asked with a smile. This was more false cheer than anything, as Joseph could guess how Thuch must be feeling: anger was always a popular choice, followed closely by worry about the reason why.
Despite what he must have been feeling, Thuch Van Trinh grinned back, the black lines of his facial tattooing creasing as the muscles moved under his cheeks. ""Not so good, Mr. Clayton. If this keeps up, I may have to put in Plexiglas so that the window won't break."" The Trinhs accents, as his parents and the other adults of the town told it, had been rather strong (even unusually so) when they had immigrated to Glaston from their first home in Boston. This had usually been waved off by their purported origins in the remote hills on the Vietnam-Laos border, seemingly collaborated by how their teeth had been dyed black. On the other hand, given their rural roots, their speed in adapting local speech patterns so that they now sounded more like second generation Americans (and especially their daughter's complete lack of any accent except the local standard) did make for a puzzling situation. However, for their ease of assimilation and the food they served, they had become well-liked in the community.
So why were things like this happening to them recently? ""How many times does this make this month; two, three?"" Joseph had to ask this, wondering if things were worse than he thought.
""It's happened three times already, this time not more than an hour ago. Thanh wants to install security cameras to watch the place and with how small and cheap they are now, I think we just might."" An hour ago? They'd smashed a picture window in broad daylight? Who in town could be that stupid or that angry? Josephs train of thought was broken then, when Thuch said something of much more interest to the younger man. ""By the way, if you're looking for Marie, she's helping her mother in the kitchen. Even without a window we seem to be doing good business."" Thuch went back to his work and Joseph, not wanting to delay any longer, entered the restaurant.
Just as Thuch had said, Leng Trinh still had it's usual busy lunchtime crowd, albeit one that was concentrated near the back wall. Picking his way around tables packed with diners, Joseph finally arrived at a table set for two, a 'reserved' sign upon it. Removing his backpack and laying it beside a chair, he sat down, shuffled off his coat and went to bury his nose in the menu.
It always felt a bit odd to Joseph, eating in an ethnic restaurant where none of the diners were the same ethnicity as the cooks, or even from the same part of the world. However, none of it mattered when the food was as good as it was here.
""Now then, what would a fine, upstanding New England boy like yourself want in a place like this?"" The voice that asked this was soft, amused, female and had an almost mocking tone. It also had the accent of the New England uplands. To Joseph, it could only be one person.
""The same thing I always get here."" He answered dryly before looking up from the menu. There, holding a pad of paper and a pen, was teenage girl with almond-shaped eyes, shoulder length black hair with green streaks, a cooking apron and an amused grin. ""Hi Marie... you sure your mom's alright with you waitressing this crowd?""
""We've got enough help in the kitchen already and Dad's coming in after all the glass is cleaned up."" She glanced up at the window, plastic sheet and all, after she wrote his order down. ""I just wish we knew who was doing this. If we don't get someone else to cough up some money, our insurance company might go sour on us."" Marie went back to the kitchen to get the food for both of them.
Ten minutes later, she was laying out two place settings of food that had been prepared ahead of time. ""Alright, that's two plates of grilled pork on beds of Leng-style rice, your dish of steamed green beans with soy sauce for dipping, my bowl of soup and two cans of soda."" They'd eat lunch before studying, with Joseph paying the tab for both of them.
If anyone asked, it wasn't a date. Not in the strictest sense, anyway.
""What, no bak bon dzhow?"" Asked Joseph, decidedly disappointed at the apparent lack of the special ingredient.
To this, Marie moved a small earthen bowl from the serving tray onto the table and lifted the lid to reveal a thick gray sauce containing mushrooms and cracked black pepper. ""Would I be one to deny you the gravy of the gods?"" She asked (rhetorically) with a soft smile; Joseph couldn't help but smile back as he cracked the tab on his soda and began on his green beans.
A bit later, when his beans were gone and Marie had almost finished her soup, Joesph began formulating a question that related to a curious thought that had sprung up earlier. ""Not to sound like a nag or anything, but I'm just curious but what was all that 'upstanding' stuff about?"" The only time he had ever heard anyone talk like that was...
Oh God...
Marie swallowed the last bits of her soup. ""Oh, I don't know. Maybe It's that I had no idea that the son of insurance brokers had such deep and aristocratic roots? Maybe it's that I was surprised to find out that the Clayton's had come not from hardy New England farming stock as I had assumed, but from the urbane, wealthy ranks of those grand Brahmins of Boston? I'm sure Granny Cora could tell some fascinating stories about the old days; she sure seemed interested in mine."" If anything, Marie took the entire thing in stride, treating both the memory of the experience and the experience itself with a a great deal of interested amusement. Certainly, mocking the type of language she had encountered was almost cracking her up.
Joseph, on the other hand, had first felt bemusement at the scene in which the Clayton family reunion of the past summer had found itself, quickly turning into outright embarrassment. ""Look, I'm sorry that I didn't tell you about her, but everybody thought that she wouldn't be able to come due to health concerns. It's not my fault that a half-senile, 97 year old woman worked up enough stubbornness to drag her nurse halfway across the state!"".
""I never said anything about anyone being at fault. I just thought it was an interesting revelation about your family."" She had meant her cajoling in good humour, but Josephs defensiveness and embarrassment were never good emotions to bring out. ""Anyway, most people would be proud to have the Boston gentry in their family history: industrialists, merchants, art, culture, philanthropy, charity..."" With every word, Marie spooned a bit of ban boc dzhow onto her grilled pork.
""As well as whaling, slave trading, opium smuggling, snobbery and having your entire life guided by the expectations of your peers; exactly the sorts of things my parents taught me to loathe. The thing is, my great-great-grandmother came from a very select, very privileged and lily-white background; I was worried that she'd... well, react oddly to you."" Joseph retorted as he began spooning (or rather, pouring) the sauce onto his meat after Marie had finished with it and passed it to him. In the case of Cora Clayton (nee Coffin), Josephs fear hadn't primarily been that she would find Marie objectionable on account of her race since that prejudice had been more ingrained in her parents generation than hers. His fear had instead been that his great great grandmother, as self-proclaimed guardian of the old, aristocratic traditions, might object to their relationship because the Trinhs were restaurateurs with no history of pedigree, education or money behind them.
In Cora's world (the 1920s, where her mind was half the time), heirs had married heiresses, families had coordinated their fortunes and everyone had kept an eye on everyone else; these were rules of decorum that had lasted for her long after the Claytons had gone bust in the great Crash of '29. The fact that she had taken Joseph aside and explained her concerns to him had done nothing to soothe his embarrassment, although he had finally convinced her that, being naturalized citizens with a successful restaurant, the Trinhs were firmly in the middling classes. She had also estimated that said restaurant, with no other inheritors besides Marie, would most likely pass into Clayton hands in the fullness of time.
No one had dared explain to her the differences between modern teenage dating and the genteel courtships of her youth.
""I don't think she reacted that oddly. Sure, she was so out of date that you had to explain that I meant 'French Indochina' when I said that my parents came from Vietnam and she did seem a bit too fascinated with my families origins and, alright, it was weird hearing someone actually use the word 'courting' without trying to be funny. However, it was kind of nice to speak French with someone in this town after all the time my parents invested in me learning it."" Marie knew that while it had been terrifying for Joseph, having to put up with his relatives dissection of his relationship and fearing disapproval, she herself had enjoyed a chance to see if the old stereotypes were true. When it had become clear to Marie that the elderly woman was not about to spew racial epitaphs at her but was, indeed, fascinated as to her families background, Marie had made it a point to 'ham it up' in telling their story.
To an entranced Cora Clayton, Marie had described her parents lives before emigration as a subsistence existence in a village high up in the fog-choked mountain passes. She had woven scenes of her people worshiping strange, heathen gods far from the civilized lands of the Buddha and partaking in ghastly rituals to ensure harvests of rice from narrow mountainside terraces. She told the old woman that her parents had tired of such a life and had dreamed of something more, something in the wider world glimpsed in third-hand magazines and radio broadcasts.
After receiving a dispensation from their village shaman to leave (but promising to sent back remittances), they had made their way to Hanoi and then to Boston and finally to Glaston where, having never truly given up the more religious and symbolic aspects of their heathenish past, they nevertheless had made good names for themselves in the community. Marie had made sure that her prose had been both lurid and exotic so as to fully entrance a child of the Age of Empire as well as making proper use of tone, whether enraptured, casual or deathly serious, to emphasize mood. The end result was to make it sound as if her culture wasn't just some rural outlet of modern Vietnam or Laos, but as if it was truly unlike any other in the world.
That was an opinion that Joseph was also rapidly adopting.
They ate in relative silence for a while, the bustle of the lunch crowd beginning to die down as people left, many of them stopping to talk to Mr. Trinh at the till, expressing their concern over what had happened with the window. They were just about half done when Joseph began another conversation. ""So, did you know that there's a 'Heritage Day' coming up at school in a few weeks?""
""Yeah, and?"" Deep down in her gut, Marie was beginning to get a slightly worried feeling from the direction this conversation was going. This pretty much happened whenever the subject of her parent's past came up but, like so many times before, she could probably bluff her way through it.
""I thought that, maybe, we could do something for it. I was thinking about dredging up something from Normandy because I didn't want to clog up the schedule with another variation of British regional culture."" It sounded perfectly innocent, but Marie knew that this was a potentially tricky situation that might require misdirection, a convincing excuse and possible outright lying.
She hated lying to Joseph.
""Alright then. You can do that, I'll do the Vietnamese thing and we'll knock 'em all dead."" She answered with an enthusiasm that she hoped had betrayed nothing of her growing unease with the conversation. This seemed to provoke nothing but a non-committal murmur of agreement and thus, thinking that that was over with, she began eating again.
However, that was not the end of it.
""By Vietnamese, do you mean the standard culture from around Hanoi... or the culture from your parent's home village?"" Joseph asked, seemingly as if only for the purpose of clarification. There was much more behind it though, and whether it was just ingrained paranoia or any real danger of exposure, Marie knew that this was entering onto some very tenuous and potentially very dangerous ground. Still, the subject had to be breached.
""Aren't they pretty much the same? I mean, sure, it was pretty rural back there, but whether village or city, we were all Viet: same language, same culture, same blood, same... pretty much everything, when you think about it."" As denials went, this one wasn't half bad: sincere enough to be taken seriously and with enough internal logic that it wouldn't fall apart immediately in the face of the mildly educated mind.
On this subject, however, Joseph had become rather more than merely mildly educated. He had observed things for a long time: a lot of little things and one or two big things for the most part. And he, after long deliberation and study, had discovered that some of those things just didn't match up.
""You know, there was a time when I could believe that. But... there are just too many deviations to discount."" Joesph stopped eating all together, putting down his fork and looking his girlfriend straight in the eyes before closing and opening them again, as if to rally his thoughts. ""The food, for one thing, isn't like any kind of Vietnamese food I've read about. Yes, you have the side dishes but that's about it for similarity. Second, your parent's tattoos. Again, unlike any other group in Southeast Asia; the closest matches I could find were incised lines on bronze figurines from over two thousand years ago.""
He stopped again. ""And then there's the language you guys speak. I'm fairly sure it's in the Mon-Khmer group, but I've been doing some research and... honestly, I've seen words on this menu that I've never been able to find in any other source. And I'm not the only one who's noticed these things."" Joesph saw panic flash across Marie's eyes, though she tried to hide it. ""Most people don't pay attention and honestly don't care, and the ones who do notice just assume that you guys are either Hmong or some little minority that no-one's ever heard of... but even that doesn't match very well either. It's like you said, you're Viet... but what about all this other stuff?""
It was then that Marie could have ended it all: the doubts, the questions, the lingering curiosity... as well as twenty one centuries of secrecy, tradition and very likely her relationship with this young man. In the end, she decided to dodge again. ""What can I say? We were very rural."" When Joesph just got this frustrated look on his face, Marie sighed, reached across the table and enveloped one of his hands with hers. ""Look, I'll try and dredge something up if I can, but I can't promise anything, okay?""
Joseph mulled on this lack of answers, but as the moment dragged on, his resistance wore down. ""Alright. If you don't want to talk about your culture, that's alright; lots of people come to America to get away from stuff. But I still am sorta curious."" Then he changed the subject. ""Anyway, after we eat, we should begin studying for our tests. Do you want to go over the English or the Algebra first?""
""We should do the Math first, then we can cool off with the Shakespeare. But we better not let the food get cold, what with how the sauce gets if allowed to sit for too long."" Marie began eating again and, after a few beats, Joseph resumed as well.
They stayed at that table for many hours, going over and revising their knowledge of maths and literature. However, already Marie wondered if there was something she could reveal, something that she could show about her parent's culture that would not threaten expose them and, as the old saying went among her tribe, 'get them cut in half and buried in two graves'.
Later that night, The Trinh's upstairs apartment
To Marie's relief, her parents reaction to her plan wasn't anger. On the other hand, fear and worry could be almost as painful.
""I know how you feel about the Clayton boy. He's well-liked, intelligent and his parents are our insurance agents."" Thanh Thi Trinh began, speaking in her families particular dialect of Viet as she, Marie and Thuch Van sat around their dining room table. ""But I ask this of you: is Joesph and his interest in this celebration worth the risk of exposure and, may I add, possible death when this town realizes who we are, when they realize what we are?"" Thanh Thi had always been the more reserved, more cautious and, frankly, more paranoid spouse in this family when it came to their safety. Where her husband was the face of the restaurant, she ran the kitchen with an eye on the back door and all of their cooks. While Thuch made friendly at social gatherings, Thanh kept track of all possible escape routes and who was and wasn't looking at them. She kept track of any news about gangs and hate-group activity in the area, and about any other strange things.
The sort of things that might lure out the kind of people who hunted their people.
But Marie had prepared for this. ""Mother, I know the risks that revealing the secrets of our people would bring. However, I am counting on two circumstances to make sure that only the most benign and harmless information is portrayed."" She rallied herself, knowing that the way she handled this could make the difference on how she presented herself to nearly everyone, especially Joseph . ""First, I must inform both of you that there are some people in this town, including my boyfriend, that realize that we are not quite from the mainstream culture of modern Vietnam."" At this, both Thanh and Thuch got even more worried but they weren't shocked, seeing as any bumpkin with an Internet connection could find that tribal tattooing wasn't really the rage in downtown Hanoi. ""The good news is that while these people realize that we belong to a distinct subgroup, they often deduce that we are either rural Hmong or some other obscure ethnic group. In other words, they know nothing about who our people are and, like the rest of the town, they honestly do not care.""
""What about the nature of our traditons, Marie? What would you do, what rite of our people would be performed on that stage that would not end up with half the town vomiting and the other half trying to hang us?"" Her father had been relatively quiet in this conversation, but he knew that the rituals of his village had, during various times in history, left such a bad impression upon outsiders that they had responded in force to try to stamp them out.
Here, Marie began grasping the thick, heavy and old scrapbook that lay closed upon the table before her. It had been entrusted to them by their village and, by the blessings of the Gods and their Instrument, they had kept it safe and hidden for more than twenty years. ""Father, it is not as if I wish to set up an alter on the stage, recite the incantations of the harvest rites and slice something open; frankly, I would have no idea how. However, I believe that there is a ritual that is benign, unusual and, even according to the author of this book, beautiful enough to make people forget it's oddity."" She opened the book, filled with sepia photographs and notes written in French on yellowed paper, to the page she had bookmarked. ""I want to do the Stork Dance.""
Her parents were quiet for a minute. Admittedly, this was probably the least unusual rite of their people and it did seem to have a calming effect on its audiences. However, it took weeks of intensive training in order to do it right, the costuming and specific actions depended on whether the dancer was a man or woman and the phonograph with the instrumental music and vocals, only having been recorded once before, was on the other side of the planet. It was a tall order to pull off for anyone. ""You do realize that practicing for the dance requires grueling routine, so much so that it might effect your school work?"" Asked her mother, wondering if her daughter was truly sincere.
""I know that. I'll just have to sacrifice my time with Joesph, a sacrifice that I'm sure he'd understand."" Marie responded in English this time, the plans for her act becoming clearer. ""However, I'll need some help in creating the proper costuming and... I know that shipping items from the Old Country is like trying to smuggle Plutonium but if you could convince the shamans to release that phonograph for a month or two, I would be eternally grateful to all of them, and to you.""
Her parents wondered, not for the first time, if Marie truly comprehended what could be asked of that gratitude in the years to come. She had the opportunity to live a life completely detached from the paranoia, the fear and the constant danger that followed her people. Would she give that chance away simply for the sake of a boy?
Whatever choice she made, however, was hers to make.
In the end, they acquiesced... but not without informing their daughter of what their home village could ask of her in exchange for the items she wished. It might be years until it was asked but one day, a representative of their village would approach her and request a repayment, be it in money, information or something else.
It was that ""something else"" that truly worried Thuch and Thanh.
","1945, 10 years after Smift's abduction. Innsmouth
A man was running in a dark town. The chasers were holding torches and pitchforks. ""Go die you human scum!"" one of them growled, the young man was about to fire a pistol to this antagonistic chord when a knife reached the back of this heart. Before he could die he saw these enemies more closely, looking similar to humans, even using casual suits, but this faces were slightly distorted, with a bluish tinge and big eyes. These hands were very close to being webbed. One of them reaches the pockets of the corpse's clothes, finding a diary with a logo in the middle: Miskatonic University.
The next day. at Miskatonic, Massachusetts, Wilhelm Smift was very old, at the age of 68. He was in a bed resting this very frail body. He was accompanied by this young friend Johnathan Clarke. ""My dear friend, due to the fact that I will die, and I never had a family before…I will give to you the weapon that can protect humanity from the unknown. But please, pass some of my blood to you so he can perceive you as a member of my family, also you don't need to worry, my blood is not ill, I figured out that the Infinitely Timed Room makes you die of old age once you exited it, and due to the fact that my wife never could give me a child…and she is deceased, you will be my new successor"" Clarke used a syringe and injected some of the blood of this predecessor into himself. And then Wilhelm Smift died. The young would be teacher found himself sad, he knows that this mentor had told him of the physical god he mastered. But he wanted to learn more about not only physics but the alien technology as well, but he always told him that ""this mind would crack"" but how such an old fellow acquired such knowledge and remained sane? He departed to the basement, he knows that such places are only allowed to certain people, but Smift had told him that if he declared himself this son he would pass. The place was light by a single torch. To find a tall humanoid structure close to him, this shadow taller than any man he has seen. ""So my master had passed away…such a pity, I wanted to serve him more than no one."" The voice was sly, and with a sharp tone. As this mentor said, but right now he sounded…sad? ""He was a great man, and me? Only an fucking killer…heh, it's funny…how the good can die, alone and unnoticed…and they stay dead."" he noticed John ""who we have here?"" he stared at the young man and in turn he noticed the mechanical being before him: this main body was cylindrical and red, with a single crimson cat like eye in the center of this ""head"" this arms have white with red colorations like the rest of this limbs, he had a large rectangular shield in this left arm, a set of three small red pouches and in the right a knife holder and the left a pistol holder, and a white cloth skirt. ""What is doing a brat in my home?"" he tried this best to gather mental strength and answer: ""I am the…son of Wilhelm Smift, he told me you would serve me"" the beast looked at him with this single blood colored eye, ""I can see trough you…and that is true, the Smift blood is in you kid, I mean master"" then the monster grabbed this pistol and started to show it at this server, ""so tell me, what shall I do? I am capable for killing anything"" he young man tried this best to organize this words and asks: ""why do you look different from what my father told me?"" the creature chuckles and says: ""heh, isn't it obvious? I wanted to look different 'cause I don't want to look like the jackasses that wanted me gone. They made this suit look like a fuckin' asylum inmate . I was looking for something that suited me, so I left my dimension for one day. And I saw the perfect one, this one, why do you ask? 'cause I wanted a new look that minds insurrection?"" he pointed this white finger at the young man, that eye…it's just like the devil itself was looking at him. ""And the eye?"" ""Oh…that was my…personal touch"" he started to laugh and this companion started to tremble. ""Don't be afraid kid…I don't bite, for much that I want to."" Azathoth pointed at this ""face"" revealing that he doesn't have a mouth. Then he started to laugh like a maniac. He kid got out of the basement in fear. ""Hey don't get out! I was about to have tell you a great joke! MASTER!""
The next day…""sire, we have bad news, Roy Urkam has…died"" a messenger told to this young chief, ""and who is that man, messenger?"" Clarke asks, ""He was a freelance investigator. He heard that something strange happened in Innsmouth so we sent him there, when I came this corpse was on a stick on the end of the road, when I asked they said: ""just a couple of kids that did it"" it was obvious that was a lie."" The kid was…shocked but after scare from yesterday this was nothing. Suddenly a car was coming to the entrance, the occupants got out, they have guns and their eyes had watered eyes that were slightly out of their sockets. And they forced the main door down, ""thank god there are not students!"" the sire said, Clarke rushed to the basement and yelled the name of this protector and servant. ""INVASORS! COME AND KILL THEM! THEY HAVE GUNS!"" the young man yelled. ""Calm down master, I will go kick their skulls"" he got out of this dark lair and he readied this colt pistol and this knife. ""Come here! I can sense cowardly in this place!"" suddenly a blaze of bullets came from the outside of the campus. ""I think I need a bigger gun"" he turned this back and then a rectangular and red colored heavy machine gun was grabbed from this holster, the weapon was so tall as the cylinder body of this user and it looked different from any gun ever made: it had a slightly bended square in this top. This barrel had holes and this body was metallic instead of wood. Then he got out of the building and he saw these enemies ""Deep ones!"" they started to fire but it was useless, the bullets just bounce this tick metal skin. He started firing and he shot 4, the other ones tried to run to the car. ""NO YOU WON'T!"" Azathoth yelled and he used this incredible strength and stomped the vehicle. ""Now we can start this party!"" the half deep ones tried to counter attack with this pistols but nothing changed. Azathoth grabbed one and crushed this skull with these bare hands, he shot three to death with this colt and machine gun; he blazed 1 to death with a thick cylindrical magenta/red heat ray that emanated from this crimson eye. ""COME ON! GIVE ME A CHALENGE!"" he yelled, and then he realized that only one was left. ""Oh…damn I wanted a massacre. Well my good friend, come here"" but before he can grab this new prisoner a bullet came to this skull, Azathoth saw that 2 more cars came. ""Oh…YES MORE FUN!"" he welcomed this new ""guests"" with this heat ray; a few ones changed their ammo and used armor piercing. The bullets were now making dents in the body of the armored god. But then they started to self-repair. ""YES, this is the real deal!"" he did 4 head shots and destroyed the two cars that came with this heat ray, some of the half fish men tried to enter the house from the back, but they saw with horror a large creature with a vertical mouth and large pink eyes located in both parts of the divided head, he had two right arms fused into one and two left that were identical, with large nails. The main body was shaggy with black and some purple hair. ""What in Dagon's name is that!"" one of them asked before being eaten by the giant. The ex-outer god was enjoying like a maniac that the cars that he fried had some occupants and they got out of them showered in flames ""THAT'S WHAT I CALL EXTRA CRISPY!"" the daemon yelled to this frightened fish enemies. Only 5 were left and they tried to run to the exit, but before that can happen Azathoth flicked this finger and the giant vertical mouth monster appeared and lunged to the remaining ones and eaten them. Only one was left…again. ""Gug, go were you belong"" Azathoth flicked this fingers again and the monstrosity disappeared. ""Thanks CLAXTON, thanks Bertie"" he returned to the university. It had some gun holes but nothing that can be easily repaired.
""Hey master, are you in one piece?"" he asked to the young that was in the ground. He grabbed the shocked boy and handed him to the messenger. Put him in this home. He grabbed the survivor knocked him down with a flick of this finger and put him in the jail of the basement ""Well…that was exiting""
",False
"III. A Search and an Evocation

1.

Charles Ward, as we have seen, first learned in 1918 of his descent from Joseph Curwen. That he at once took an intense interest in everything pertaining to the bygone mystery is not to be wondered at; for every vague rumour that he had heard of Curwen now became something vital to himself, in whom flowed Curwen's blood. No spirited and imaginative genealogist could have done otherwise than begin forthwith an avid and systematic collection of Curwen data.
      In his first delvings there was not the slightest attempt at secrecy; so that even Dr. Lyman hesitates to date the youth's madness from any period before the close of 1919. He talked freely with his family - though his mother was not particularly pleased to own an ancestor like Curwen - and with the officials of the various museums and libraries he visited. In applying to private families for records thought to be in their possession he made no concealment of his object, and shared the somewhat amused scepticism with which the accounts of the old diarists and letter-writers were regarded. He often expressed a keen wonder as to what really had taken place a century and a half before at that Pawtuxet farmhouse whose site he vainly tried to find, and what Joseph Curwen really had been.
      When he came across the Smith diary and archives and encountered the letter from Jedediah Orne he decided to visit Salem and look up Curwen's early activities and connexions there, which he did during the Easter vacation of 1919. At the Essex Institute, which was well known to him from former sojourns in the glamorous old town of crumbling Puritan gables and clustered gambrel roofs, he was very kindly received, and unearthed there a considerable amount of Curwen data. He found that his ancestor was born in Salem-Village, now Danvers, seven miles from town, on the eighteenth of February (O.S.) 1662-3; and that he had run away to sea at the age of fifteen, not appearing again for nine years, when he returned with the speech, dress, and manners of a native Englishman and settled in Salem proper. At that time he had little to do with his family, but spent most of his hours with the curious books he had brought from Europe, and the strange chemicals which came for him on ships from England, France, and Holland. Certain trips of his into the country were the objects of much local inquisitiveness, and were whisperingly associated with vague rumours of fires on the hills at night.
      Curwen's only close friends had been one Edward Hutchinson of Salem-Village and one Simon Orne of Salem. With these men he was often seen in conference about the Common, and visits among them were by no means infrequent. Hutchinson had a house well out toward the woods, and it was not altogether liked by sensitive people because of the sounds heard there at night. He was said to entertain strange visitors, and the lights seen from his windows were not always of the same colour. The knowledge he displayed concerning long-dead persons and long-forgotten events was considered distinctly unwholesome, and he disappeared about the time the witchcraft panic began, never to be heard from again. At that time Joseph Curwen also departed, but his settlement in Providence was soon learned of. Simon Orne lived in Salem until 1720, when his failure to grow visibly old began to excite attention. He thereafter disappeared, though thirty years later his precise counterpart and self-styled son turned up to claim his property. The claim was allowed on the strength of documents in Simon Orne's known hand, and Jedediah Orne continued to dwell in Salem till 1771, when certain letters from Providence citizens to the Rev. Thomas Barnard and others brought about his quiet removal to parts unknown.
      Certain documents by and about all of these strange characters were available at the Essex Institute, the Court House, and the Registry of Deeds, and included both harmless commonplaces such as land titles and bills of sale, and furtive fragments of a more provocative nature. There were four or five unmistakable allusions to them on the witchcraft trial records; as when one Hepzibah Lawson swore on July 10, 1692, at the Court of Oyer and Terminer under Judge Hathorne, that 'fortie Witches and the Blacke Man were wont to meete in the Woodes behind Mr. Hutchinson's house', and one Amity How declared at a session of August 8th before Judge Gedney that 'Mr. G. B. (Rev. George Burroughs) on that Nighte putt ye Divell his Marke upon Bridget S., Jonathan A., Simon O., Deliverance W., Joseph C., Susan P., Mehitable C., and Deborah B.' Then there was a catalogue of Hutchinson's uncanny library as found after his disappearance, and an unfinished manuscript in his handwriting, couched in a cipher none could read. Ward had a photostatic copy of this manuscript made, and began to work casually on the cipher as soon as it was delivered to him. After the following August his labours on the cipher became intense and feverish, and there is reason to believe from his speech and conduct that he hit upon the key before October or November. He never stated, though, whether or not he had succeeded.
      But of the greatest immediate interest was the Orne material. It took Ward only a short time to prove from identity of penmanship a thing he had already considered established from the text of the letter to Curwen; namely, that Simon Orne and his supposed son were one and the same person. As Orne had said to his correspondent, it was hardly safe to live too long in Salem, hence he resorted to a thirty-year sojourn abroad, and did not return to claim his lands except as a representative of a new generation. Orne had apparently been careful to destroy most of his correspondence, but the citizens who took action in 1771 found and preserved a few letters and papers which excited their wonder. There were cryptic formulae and diagrams in his and other hands which Ward now either copied with care or had photographed, and one extremely mysterious letter in a chirography that the searcher recognised from items in the Registry of Deeds as positively Joseph Curwen's.
      This Curwen letter, though undated as to the year, was evidently not the one in answer to which Orne had written the confiscated missive; and from internal evidence Ward placed it not much later than 1750. It may not be amiss to give the text in full, as a sample of the style of one whose history was so dark and terrible. The recipient is addressed as ""Simon"", but a line (whether drawn by Curwen or Orne Ward could not tell) is run through the word.
Prouidence, I. May (Ut. vulgo)
Brother: - 
My honour'd Antient ffriende, due Respects and earnest Wishes to Him whom we serve for yr eternall Power. I am just come upon That which you ought to knowe, concern'g the Matter of the Laste Extremitie and what to doe regard'g yt. I am not dispos'd to followe you in go'g Away on acct. of my Yeares, for Prouidence hath not ye Sharpeness of ye Bay in hunt'g oute uncommon Things and bringinge to Tryall. I am ty'd up in Shippes and Goodes, and cou'd not doe as you did, besides the Whiche my ffarme at Patuxet hath under it What you Knowe, that wou'd not waite for my com'g Backe as an Other.
      But I am not unreadie for harde ffortunes, as I haue tolde you, and haue longe work'd upon ye Way of get'g Backe after ye Laste. I laste Night strucke on ye Wordes that bringe up YOGGE-SOTHOTHE, and sawe for ye firste Time that fface spoke of by Ibn Schacabao in ye  -  - . And IT said, that ye III Psalme in ye Liber-Damnatus holdes ye Clauicle. With Sunne in V House, Saturne in Trine, drawe ye Pentagram of Fire, and saye ye ninth Uerse thrice. This Uerse repeate eache Roodemas and Hallow's Eue; and ye Thing will breede in ye Outside Spheres.
      And of ye Seede of Olde shal One be borne who shal looke Backe, tho' know'g not what he seekes.
      Yett will this availe Nothing if there be no Heir, and if the Saltes, or the Way to make the Saltes, bee not Readie for his Hande; and here I will owne, I have not taken needed Stepps nor founde Much. Ye Process is plaguy harde to come neare; and it uses up such a Store of Specimens, I am harde putte to it to get Enough, notwithstand'g the Sailors I have from ye Indies. Ye People aboute are become curious, but I can stande them off. Ye Gentry are worse than the Populace, be'g more Circumstantiall in their Accts. and more believ'd in what they tell. That Parson and Mr. Merritt have talk'd some, I am fearfull, but no Thing soe far is Dangerous. Ye Chymical substances are easie of get'g, there be'g II. goode Chymists in Towne, Dr. Bowen and Sam: Carew. I am foll'g oute what Borellus saith, and haue Helpe in Abdool Al-Hazred his VII. Booke. Whatever I gette, you shal haue. And in ye meane while, do not neglect to make use of ye Wordes I haue here giuen. I haue them Righte, but if you Desire to see HIM, imploy the Writings on ye Piece of  -  -  that I am putt'g in this Packet. Saye ye Uerses every Roodmas and Hallow's Eue; and if yr Line runn out not, one shall bee in yeares to come that shal looke backe and use what Saltes or Stuff for Saltes you shal leaue him. Job XIV. XIV.
      I rejoice you are again at Salem, and hope I may see you not longe hence. I have a goode Stallion, and am think'g of get'g a Coach, there be'g one (Mr. Merritt's) in Prouidence already, tho' ye Roades are bad. If you are dispos'd to Travel, doe not pass me bye. From Boston take ye Post Rd. thro' Dedham, Wrentham, and Attleborough, goode Taverns be'g at all these Townes. Stop at Mr. Bolcom's in Wrentham, where ye Beddes are finer than Mr. Hatch's, but eate at ye other House for their Cooke is better. Turne into Prou. by Patucket ffalls, and ye Rd. past Mr. Sayles's Tavern. My House opp. Mr. Epenetus Olney's Tavern off ye Towne Street, Ist on ye N. side of Olney's Court. Distance from Boston Stone abt. XLIV Miles.
      Sir, I am yr olde and true ffriend and Servt. in Almousin-Metraton.
Josephus C.
To Mr. Simon Orne,
William's-Lane, in Salem.
      This letter, oddly enough, was what first gave Ward the exact location of Curwen's Providence home; for none of the records encountered up to that time had been at all specific. The discovery was doubly striking because it indicated as the newer Curwen house built in 1761 on the site of the old, a dilapidated building still standing in Olney Court and well known to Ward in his antiquarian rambles over Stampers' Hill. The place was indeed only a few squares from his own home on the great hill's higher ground, and was now the abode of a negro family much esteemed for occasional washing, housecleaning, and furnace-tending services. To find, in distant Salem, such sudden proof of the significance of this familiar rookery in his own family history, was a highly impressive thing to Ward; and he resolved to explore the place immediately upon his return. The more mystical phases of the letter, which he took to be some extravagant kind of symbolism, frankly baffled him; though he noted with a thrill of curiosity that the Biblical passage referred to - Job 14, 14 - was the familiar verse, ""If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.""

2.

      Young Ward came home in a state of pleasant excitement, and spent the following Saturday in a long and exhaustive study of the house in Olney Court. The place, now crumbling with age, had never been a mansion; but was a modest two-and-a-half story wooden town house of the familiar Providence colonial type, with plain peaked roof, large central chimney, and artistically carved doorway with rayed fanlight, triangular pediment, and trim Doric pilasters. It had suffered but little alteration externally, and Ward felt he was gazing on something very close to the sinister matters of his quest.
      The present negro inhabitants were known to him, and he was very courteously shewn about the interior by old Asa and his stout wife Hannah. Here there was more change than the outside indicated, and Ward saw with regret that fully half of the fine scroll-and-urn overmantels and shell-carved cupboard linings were gone, whilst much of the fine wainscotting and bolection moulding was marked, hacked, and gouged, or covered up altogether with cheap wall-paper. In general, the survey did not yield as much as Ward had somehow expected; but it was at least exciting to stand within the ancestral walls which had housed such a man of horror as Joseph Curwen. He saw with a thrill that a monogram had been very carefully effaced from the ancient brass knocker.
      From then until after the close of school Ward spent his time on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher and the accumulation of local Curwen data. The former still proved unyielding; but of the latter he obtained so much, and so many clues to similar data elsewhere, that he was ready by July to make a trip to New London and New York to consult old letters whose presence in those places was indicated. This trip was very fruitful, for it brought him the Fenner letters with their terrible description of the Pawtuxet farmhouse raid, and the Nightingale-Talbot letters in which he learned of the portrait painted on a panel of the Curwen library. This matter of the portrait interested him particularly, since he would have given much to know just what Joseph Curwen looked like; and he decided to make a second search of the house in Olney Court to see if there might not be some trace of the ancient features beneath peeling coats of later paint or layers of mouldy wall-paper.
      Early in August that search took place, and Ward went carefully over the walls of every room sizeable enough to have been by any possibility the library of the evil builder. He paid especial attention to the large panels of such overmantels as still remained; and was keenly excited after about an hour, when on a broad area above the fireplace in a spacious ground-floor room he became certain that the surface brought out by the peeling of several coats of paint was sensibly darker than any ordinary interior paint or the wood beneath it was likely to have been. A few more careful tests with a thin knife, and he knew that he had come upon an oil portrait of great extent. With truly scholarly restraint the youth did not risk the damage which an immediate attempt to uncover the hidden picture with the knife might have done, but just retired from the scene of his discovery to enlist expert help. In three days he returned with an artist of long experience, Mr. Walter C. Dwight, whose studio is near the foot of College Hill; and that accomplished restorer of paintings set to work at once with proper methods and chemical substances. Old Asa and his wife were duly excited over their strange visitors, and were properly reimbursed for this invasion of their domestic hearth.
      As day by day the work of restoration progressed, Charles Ward looked on with growing interest at the lines and shades gradually unveiled after their long oblivion. Dwight had begun at the bottom; hence since the picture was a three-quarter-length one, the face did not come out for some time. It was meanwhile seen that the subject was a spare, well-shaped man with dark-blue coat, embroidered waistcoat, black satin small-clothes, and white silk stockings, seated in a carved chair against the background of a window with wharves and ships beyond. When the head came out it was observed to bear a neat Albemarle wig, and to possess a thin, calm, undistinguished face which seemed somehow familiar to both Ward and the artist. Only at the very last, though, did the restorer and his client begin to gasp with astonishment at the details of that lean, pallid visage, and to recognise with a touch of awe the dramatic trick which heredity had played. For it took the final bath of oil and the final stroke of the delicate scraper to bring out fully the expression which centuries had hidden; and to confront the bewildered Charles Dexter Ward, dweller in the past, with his own living features in the countenance of his horrible great-great-great-grandfather.
      Ward brought his parents to see the marvel he had uncovered, and his father at once determined to purchase the picture despite its execution on stationary panelling. The resemblance to the boy, despite an appearance of rather greater age, was marvellous; and it could be seen that through some trick of atavism the physical contours of Joseph Curwen had found precise duplication after a century and a half. Mrs. Ward's resemblance to her ancestor was not at all marked, though she could recall relatives who had some of the facial characteristics shared by her son and by the bygone Curwen. She did not relish the discovery, and told her husband that he had better burn the picture instead of bringing it home. There was, she averred, something unwholesome about it; not only intrinsically, but in its very resemblance to Charles. Mr. Ward, however, was a practical man of power and affairs - a cotton manufacturer with extensive mills at Riverpoint in the Pawtuxet Valley - and not one to listen to feminine scruples. The picture impressed him mightily with its likeness to his son, and he believed the boy deserved it as a present. In this opinion, it is needless to say, Charles most heartily concurred; and a few days later Mr. Ward located the owner of the house - a small rodent-featured person with a guttural accent - and obtained the whole mantel and overmantel bearing the picture at a curtly fixed priced which cut short the impending torrent of unctuous haggling.
      It now remained to take off the panelling and remove it to the Ward home, where provisions were made for its thorough restoration and installation with an electric mock-fireplace in Charles's third-floor study or library. To Charles was left the task of superintending this removal, and on the twenty-eighth of August he accompanied two expert workmen from the Crooker decorating firm to the house in Olney Court, where the mantel and portrait-bearing overmantel were detached with great care and precision for transportation in the company's motor truck. There was left a space of exposed brickwork marking the chimney's course, and in this young Ward observed a cubical recess about a foot square, which must have lain directly behind the head of the portrait. Curious as to what such a space might mean or contain, the youth approached and looked within; finding beneath the deep coatings of dust and soot some loose yellowed papers, a crude, thick copybook, and a few mouldering textile shreds which may have formed the ribbon binding the rest together. Blowing away the bulk of the dirt and cinders, he took up the book and looked at the bold inscription on its cover. It was in a hand which he had learned to recognise at the Essex Institute, and proclaimed the volume as the ""Journall and Notes of Jos: Curwen, Gent., of Providence-Plantations, Late of Salem.""
      Excited beyond measure by his discovery, Ward shewed the book to the two curious workmen beside him. Their testimony is absolute as to the nature and genuineness of the finding, and Dr. Willett relies on them to help establish his theory that the youth was not mad when he began his major eccentricities. All the other papers were likewise in Curwen's handwriting, and one of them seemed especially portentous because of its inscription: ""To Him Who Shal Come After, & How He May Gett Beyonde Time & ye Spheres."" Another was in a cipher; the same, Ward hoped, as the Hutchinson cipher which had hitherto baffled him. A third, and here the searcher rejoiced, seemed to be a key to the cipher; whilst the fourth and fifth were addressed respectively to ""Edw: Hutchinson, Armiger"" and ""Jedediah Orne, Esq."", 'or Their Heir or Heirs, or Those Represent'g Them'. The sixth and last was inscribed: ""Joseph Curwen his Life and Travells Bet'n ye yeares 1678 and 1687: Of Whither He Voyag'd, Where He Stay'd, Whom He Sawe, and What He Learnt.""

3.

      We have now reached the point from which the more academic school of alienists date Charles Ward's madness. Upon his discovery the youth had looked immediately at a few of the inner pages of the book and manuscripts, and had evidently seen something which impressed him tremendously. Indeed, in shewing the titles to the workmen he appeared to guard the text itself with peculiar care, and to labour under a perturbation for which even the antiquarian and genealogical significance of the find could hardly account. Upon returning home he broke the news with an almost embarrassed air, as if he wished to convey an idea of its supreme importance without having to exhibit the evidence itself. He did not even shew the titles to his parents, but simply told them that he had found some documents in Joseph Curwen's handwriting, ""mostly in cipher"", which would have to be studied very carefully before yielding up their true meaning. It is unlikely that he would have shewn what he did to the workmen, had it not been for their unconcealed curiosity. As it was he doubtless wished to avoid any display of peculiar reticence which would increase their discussion of the matter.
      That night Charles Ward sat up in his room reading the new-found book and papers, and when day came he did not desist. His meals, on his urgent request when his mother called to see what was amiss, were sent up to him; and in the afternoon he appeared only briefly when the men came to install the Curwen picture and mantelpiece in his study. The next night he slept in snatches in his clothes, meanwhile wrestling feverishly with the unravelling of the cipher manuscript. In the morning his mother saw that he was at work on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher, which he had frequently shewn her before; but in response to her query he said that the Curwen key could not be applied to it. That afternoon he abandoned his work and watched the men fascinatedly as they finished their installation of the picture with its woodwork above a cleverly realistic electric log, setting the mock-fireplace and overmantel a little out from the north wall as if a chimney existed, and boxing in the sides with panelling to match the room's. The front panel holding the picture was sawn and hinged to allow cupboard space behind it. After the workmen went he moved his work into the study and sat down before it with his eyes half on the cipher and half on the portrait which stared back at him like a year-adding and century-recalling mirror.
      His parents, subsequently recalling his conduct at this period, give interesting details anent the policy of concealment which he practiced. Before servants he seldom hid any paper which he might be studying, since he rightly assumed that Curwen's intricate and archaic chirography would be too much for them. With his parents, however, he was more circumspect; and unless the manuscript in question were a cipher, or a mere mass of cryptic symbols and unknown ideographs (as that entitled ""To Him Who Shal Come After etc."" seemed to be), he would cover it with some convenient paper until his caller had departed. At night he kept the papers under lock and key in an antique cabinet of his, where he also placed them whenever he left the room. He soon resumed fairly regular hours and habits, except that his long walks and other outside interests seemed to cease. The opening of school, where he now began his senior year, seemed a great bore to him; and he frequently asserted his determination never to bother with college. He had, he said, important special investigations to make, which would provide him with more avenues toward knowledge and the humanities than any university which the world could boast.
      Naturally, only one who had always been more or less studious, eccentric, and solitary could have pursued this course for many days without attracting notice. Ward, however, was constitutionally a scholar and a hermit; hence his parents were less surprised than regretful at the close confinement and secrecy he adopted. At the same time, both his father and mother thought it odd that he would shew them no scrap of his treasure-trove, nor give any connected account of such data as he had deciphered. This reticence he explained away as due to a wish to wait until he might announce some connected revelation, but as the weeks passed without further disclosures there began to grow up between the youth and his family a kind of constraint; intensified in his mother's case by her manifest disapproval of all Curwen delvings.
      During October Ward began visiting the libraries again, but no longer for the antiquarian matter of his former days. Witchcraft and magic, occultism and daemonology, were what he sought now; and when Providence sources proved unfruitful he would take the train for Boston and tap the wealth of the great library in Copley Square, the Widener Library at Harvard, or the Zion Research Library in Brookline, where certain rare works on Biblical subjects are available. He bought extensively, and fitted up a whole additional set of shelves in his study for newly acquired works on uncanny subjects; while during the Christmas holidays he made a round of out-of-town trips including one to Salem to consult certain records at the Essex Institute.
      About the middle of January, 1920, there entered Ward's bearing an element of triumph which he did not explain, and he was no more found at work upon the Hutchinson cipher. Instead, he inaugurated a dual policy of chemical research and record-scanning; fitting up for the one a laboratory in the unused attic of the house, and for the latter haunting all the sources of vital statistics in Providence. Local dealers in drugs and scientific supplies, later questioned, gave astonishingly queer and meaningless catalogues of the substances and instruments he purchased; but clerks at the State House, the City Hall, and the various libraries agree as to the definite object of his second interest. He was searching intensely and feverishly for the grave of Joseph Curwen, from whose slate slab an older generation had so wisely blotted the name.
      Little by little there grew upon the Ward family the conviction that something was wrong. Charles had had freaks and changes of minor interests before, but this growing secrecy and absorption in strange pursuits was unlike even him. His school work was the merest pretence; and although he failed in no test, it could be seen that the old application had all vanished. He had other concernments now; and when not in his new laboratory with a score of obsolete alchemical books, could be found either poring over old burial records down town or glued to his volumes of occult lore in his study, where the startlingly - one almost fancied increasingly - similar features of Joseph Curwen stared blandly at him from the great overmantel on the north wall.
      Late in March Ward added to his archive-searching a ghoulish series of rambles about the various ancient cemeteries of the city. The cause appeared later, when it was learned from City Hall clerks that he had probably found an important clue. His quest had suddenly shifted from the grave of Joseph Curwen to that of one Naphthali Field; and this shift was explained when, upon going over the files that he had been over, the investigators actually found a fragmentary record of Curwen's burial which had escaped the general obliteration, and which stated that the curious leaden coffin had been interred ""10 ft. S. and 5 ft. W. of Naphthali Field's grave in ye - "". The lack of a specified burying-ground in the surviving entry greatly complicated the search, and Naphthali Field's grave seemed as elusive as that of Curwen; but here no systematic effacement had existed, and one might reasonably be expected to stumble on the stone itself even if its record had perished. Hence the rambles - from which St. John's (the former King's) Churchyard and the ancient Congregational burying-ground in the midst of Swan Point Cemetery were excluded, since other statistics had shewn that the only Naphthali Field (obiit 1729) whose grave could have been meant had been a Baptist.

4.

      It was toward May when Dr. Willett, at the request of the senior Ward, and fortified with all the Curwen data which the family had gleaned from Charles in his non-secretive days, talked with the young man. The interview was of little value or conclusiveness, for Willett felt at every moment that Charles was thoroughly master of himself and in touch with matters of real importance; but it at least forced the secretive youth to offer some rational explanation of his recent demeanour. Of a pallid, impassive type not easily shewing embarrassment, Ward seemed quite ready to discuss his pursuits, though not to reveal their object. He stated that the papers of his ancestor had contained some remarkable secrets of early scientific knowledge, for the most part in cipher, of an apparent scope comparable only to the discoveries of Friar Bacon and perhaps surpassing even those. They were, however, meaningless except when correlated with a body of learning now wholly obsolete; so that their immediate presentation to a world equipped only with modern science would rob them of all impressiveness and dramatic significance. To take their vivid place in the history of human thought they must first be correlated by one familiar with the background out of which they evolved, and to this task of correlation Ward was now devoting himself. He was seeking to acquire as fast as possible those neglected arts of old which a true interpreter of the Curwen data must possess, and hoped in time to make a full announcement and presentation of the utmost interest to mankind and to the world of thought. Not even Einstein, he declared, could more profoundly revolutionise the current conception of things.
      As to his graveyard search, whose object he freely admitted, but the details of whose progress he did not relate, he said he had reason to think that Joseph Curwen's mutilated headstone bore certain mystic symbols - carved from directions in his will and ignorantly spared by those who had effaced the name - which were absolutely essential to the final solution of his cryptic system. Curwen, he believed, had wished to guard his secret with care; and had consequently distributed the data in an exceedingly curious fashion. When Dr. Willett asked to see the mystic documents, Ward displayed much reluctance and tried to put him off with such things as photostatic copies of the Hutchinson cipher and Orne formulae and diagrams; but finally shewed him the exteriors of some of the real Curwen finds - the ""Journall and Notes"", the cipher (title in cipher also), and the formula-filled message ""To Him Who Shal Come After"" - and let him glance inside such as were in obscure characters.
      He also opened the diary at a page carefully selected for its innocuousness and gave Willett a glimpse of Curwen's connected handwriting in English. The doctor noted very closely the crabbed and complicated letters, and the general aura of the seventeenth century which clung round both penmanship and style despite the writer's survival into the eighteenth century, and became quickly certain that the document was genuine. The text itself was relatively trivial, and Willett recalled only a fragment:
""Wedn. 16 Octr. 1754. My Sloope the Wakeful this Day putt in from London with XX newe Men pick'd up in ye Indies, Spaniards from Martineco and 2 Dutch Men from Surinam. Ye Dutch Men are like to Desert from have'g hearde Somewhat ill of these Ventures, but I will see to ye Inducing of them to Staye. ffor Mr. Knight Dexter of ye Boy and Book 120 Pieces Camblets, 100 Pieces Assrtd. Cambleteens, 20 Pieces blue Duffles, 100 Pieces Shalloons, 50 Pieces Calamancoes, 300 Pieces each, Shendsoy and Humhums. ffor Mr. Green at ye Elephant 50 Gallon Cyttles, 20 Warm'g Pannes, 15 Bake Cyttles, 10 pr. Smoke'g Tonges. ffor Mr. Perrigo 1 Sett of Awles, ffor Mr. Nightingale 50 Reames prime Foolscap. Say'd ye SABAOTH thrice last Nighte but None appear'd. I must heare more from Mr. H. in Transylvania, tho' it is Harde reach'g him and exceeding strange he can not give me the Use of what he hath so well us'd these hundred yeares. Simon hath not Writ these V. Weekes, but I expecte soon hear'g from him.""
      When upon reaching this point Dr. Willett turned the leaf he was quickly checked by Ward, who almost snatched the book from his grasp. All that the doctor had a chance to see on the newly opened page was a brief pair of sentences; but these, strangely enough, lingered tenaciously in his memory. They ran: ""Ye Verse from Liber-Damnatus be'g spoke V Roodmasses and IV Hallows-Eves, I am Hopeful ye Thing is breed'g Outside ye Spheres. It will drawe One who is to Come, if I can make sure he shal bee, and he shall think on Past thinges and look back thro' all ye yeares, against ye which I must have ready ye Saltes or That to make 'em with.""
      Willett saw no more, but somehow this small glimpse gave a new and vague terror to the painted features of Joseph Curwen which stared blandly down from the overmantel. Ever after that he entertained the odd fancy - which his medical skill of course assured him was only a fancy - that the eyes of the portrait had a sort of wish, if not an actual tendency, to follow young Charles Ward as he moved about the room. He stopped before leaving to study the picture closely, marvelling at its resemblance to Charles and memorising every minute detail of the cryptical, colourless face, even down to a slight scar or pit in the smooth brow above the right eye. Cosmo Alexander, he decided, was a painter worthy of the Scotland that produced Raeburn, and a teacher worthy of his illustrious pupil Gilbert Stuart.
      Assured by the doctor that Charles's mental health was in no danger, but that on the other hand he was engaged in researches which might prove of real importance, the Wards were more lenient than they might otherwise have been when during the following June the youth made positive his refusal to attend college. He had, he declared, studies of much more vital importance to pursue; and intimated a wish to go abroad the following year in order to avail himself of certain sources of data not existing in America. The senior Ward, while denying this latter wish as absurd for a boy of only eighteen, acquiesced regarding the university; so that after a none too brilliant graduation from the Moses Brown School there ensued for Charles a three-year period of intensive occult study and graveyard searching. He became recognised as an eccentric, and dropped even more completely from the sight of his family's friends than he had been before; keeping close to his work and only occasionally making trips to other cities to consult obscure records. Once he went south to talk with a strange old mulatto who dwelt in a swamp and about whom a newspaper had printed a curious article. Again he sought a small village in the Adirondacks whence reports of certain odd ceremonial practices had come. But still his parents forbade him the trip to the Old World which he desired.
      Coming of age in April, 1923, and having previously inherited a small competence from his maternal grandfather, Ward determined at last to take the European trip hitherto denied him. Of his proposed itinerary he would say nothing save that the needs of his studies would carry him to many places, but he promised to write his parents fully and faithfully. When they saw he could not be dissuaded, they ceased all opposition and helped as best they could; so that in June the young man sailed for Liverpool with the farewell blessings of his father and mother, who accompanied him to Boston and waved him out of sight from the White Star pier in Charlestown. Letters soon told of his safe arrival, and of his securing good quarters in Great Russell Street, London; where he proposed to stay, shunning all family friends, till he had exhausted the resources of the British Museum in a certain direction. Of his daily life he wrote but little, for there was little to write. Study and experiment consumed all his time, and he mentioned a laboratory which he had established in one of his rooms. That he said nothing of antiquarian rambles in the glamorous old city with its luring skyline of ancient domes and steeples and its tangles of roads and alleys whose mystic convolutions and sudden vistas alternately beckon and surprise, was taken by his parents as a good index of the degree to which his new interests had engrossed his mind.
      In June, 1924, a brief note told of his departure for Paris, to which he had before made one or two flying trips for material in the Bibliothque Nationale. For three months thereafter he sent only postal cards, giving an address in the Rue St. Jacques and referring to a special search among rare manuscripts in the library of an unnamed private collector. He avoided acquaintances, and no tourists brought back reports of having seen him. Then came a silence, and in October the Wards received a picture card from Prague, Czecho-Slovakia, stating that Charles was in that ancient town for the purpose of conferring with a certain very aged man supposed to be the last living possessor of some very curious mediaeval information. He gave an address in the Neustadt, and announced no move till the following January; when he dropped several cards from Vienna telling of his passage through that city on the way toward a more easterly region whither one of his correspondents and fellow-delvers into the occult had invited him.
      The next card was from Klausenburg in Transylvania, and told of Ward's progress toward his destination. He was going to visit a Baron Ferenczy, whose estate lay in the mountains east of Rakus; and was to be addressed at Rakus in the care of that nobleman. Another card from Rakus a week later, saying that his host's carriage had met him and that he was leaving the village for the mountains, was his last message for a considerable time; indeed, he did not reply to his parents' frequent letters until May, when he wrote to discourage the plan of his mother for a meeting in London, Paris, or Rome during the summer, when the elder Wards were planning to travel in Europe. His researches, he said, were such that he could not leave his present quarters; while the situation of Baron Ferenczy's castle did not favour visits. It was on a crag in the dark wooded mountains, and the region was so shunned by the country folk that normal people could not help feeling ill at ease. Moreover, the Baron was not a person likely to appeal to correct and conservative New England gentlefolk. His aspect and manners had idiosyncrasies, and his age was so great as to be disquieting. It would be better, Charles said, if his parents would wait for his return to Providence; which could scarcely be far distant.
      That return did not, however, take place until May, 1926, when after a few heralding cards the young wanderer quietly slipped into New York on the Homeric and traversed the long miles to Providence by motor-coach, eagerly drinking in the green rolling hills, the fragrant, blossoming orchards, and the white steepled towns of vernal Connecticut; his first taste of ancient New England in nearly four years. When the coach crossed the Pawcatuck and entered Rhode Island amidst the faery goldenness of a late spring afternoon his heart beat with quickened force, and the entry to Providence along Reservoir and Elmwood avenues was a breathless and wonderful thing despite the depths of forbidden lore to which he had delved. At the high square where Broad, Weybosset, and Empire Streets join, he saw before and below him in the fire of sunset the pleasant, remembered houses and domes and steeples of the old town; and his head swam curiously as the vehicle rolled down the terminal behind the Biltmore, bringing into view the great dome and soft, roof-pierced greenery of the ancient hill across the river, and the tall colonial spire of the First Baptist Church limned pink in the magic evening light against the fresh springtime verdure of its precipitous background.
      Old Providence! It was this place and the mysterious forces of its long, continuous history which had brought him into being, and which had drawn him back toward marvels and secrets whose boundaries no prophet might fix. Here lay the arcana, wondrous or dreadful as the case might be, for which all his years of travel and application had been preparing him. A taxicab whirled him through Post Office Square with its glimpse of the river, the old Market House, and the head of the bay, and up the steep curved slope of Waterman Street to Prospect, where the vast gleaming dome and sunset-flushed Ionic columns of the Christian Science Church beckoned northward. Then eight squares past the fine old estates his childish eyes had known, and the quaint brick sidewalks so often trodden by his youthful feet. And at last the little white overtaken farmhouse on the right, on the left the classic Adam porch and stately bayed facade of the great brick house where he was born. It was twilight, and Charles Dexter Ward had come home.

5.

      A school of alienists slightly less academic than Dr. Lyman's assign to Ward's European trip the beginning of his true madness. Admitting that he was sane when he started, they believe that his conduct upon returning implies a disastrous change. But even to this claim Dr. Willett refuses to accede. There was, he insists, something later; and the queernesses of the youth at this stage he attributes to the practice of rituals learned abroad - odd enough things, to be sure, but by no means implying mental aberration on the part of their celebrant. Ward himself, though visibly aged and hardened, was still normal in his general reactions; and in several talks with Willett displayed a balance which no madman - even an incipient one - could feign continuously for long. What elicited the notion of insanity at this period were the sounds heard at all hours from Ward's attic laboratory, in which he kept himself most of the time. There were chantings and repetitions, and thunderous declamations in uncanny rhythms; and although these sounds were always in Ward's own voice, there was something in the quality of that voice, and in the accents of the formulae it pronounced, which could not but chill the blood of every hearer. It was noticed that Nig, the venerable and beloved black cat of the household, bristled and arched his back perceptibly when certain of the tones were heard.
      The odours occasionally wafted from the laboratory were likewise exceedingly strange. Sometimes they were very noxious, but more often they were aromatic, with a haunting, elusive quality which seemed to have the power of inducing fantastic images. People who smelled them had a tendency to glimpse momentary mirages of enormous vistas, with strange hills or endless avenues of sphinxes and hippogriffs stretching off into infinite distance. Ward did not resume his old-time rambles, but applied himself diligently to the strange books he had brought home, and to equally strange delvings within his quarters; explaining that European sources had greatly enlarged the possibilities of his work, and promising great revelations in the years to come. His older aspect increased to a startling degree his resemblance to the Curwen portrait in his library; and Dr. Willett would often pause by the latter after a call, marvelling at the virtual identity, and reflecting that only the small pit above the picture's right eye now remained to differentiate the long-dead wizard from the living youth. These calls of Willett's, undertaken at the request of the senior Wards, were curious affairs. Ward at no time repulsed the doctor, but the latter saw that he could never reach the young man's inner psychology. Frequently he noted peculiar things about; little wax images of grotesque design on the shelves or tables, and the half-erased remnants of circles, triangles, and pentagrams in chalk or charcoal on the cleared central space of the large room. And always in the night those rhythms and incantations thundered, till it became very difficult to keep servants or suppress furtive talk of Charles's madness.
      In January, 1927, a peculiar incident occurred. One night about midnight, as Charles was chanting a ritual whose weird cadence echoed unpleasantly through the house below, there came a sudden gust of chill wind from the bay, and a faint, obscure trembling of the earth which everyone in the neighbourhood noted. At the same time the cat exhibited phenomenal traces of fright, while dogs bayed for as much as a mile around. This was the prelude to a sharp thunderstorm, anomalous for the season, which brought with it such a crash that Mr. and Mrs. Ward believed the house had been struck. They rushed upstairs to see what damage had been done, but Charles met them at the door to the attic; pale, resolute, and portentous, with an almost fearsome combination of triumph and seriousness on his face. He assured them that the house had not really been struck, and that the storm would soon be over. They paused, and looking through a window saw that he was indeed right; for the lightning flashed farther and farther off, whilst the trees ceased to bend in the strange frigid gust from the water. The thunder sank to a sort of dull mumbling chuckle and finally died away. Stars came out, and the stamp of triumph on Charles Ward's face crystallised into a very singular expression.
      For two months or more after this incident Ward was less confined than usual to his laboratory. He exhibited a curious interest in the weather, and made odd inquiries about the date of the spring thawing of the ground. One night late in March he left the house after midnight, and did not return till almost morning; when his mother, being wakeful, heard a rumbling motor draw up to the carriage entrance. Muffled oaths could be distinguished, and Mrs. Ward, rising and going to the window, saw four dark figures removing a long, heavy box from a truck at Charles's direction and carrying it within by the side door. She heard laboured breathing and ponderous footfalls on the stairs, and finally a dull thumping in the attic; after which the footfalls descended again, and the four men reappeared outside and drove off in their truck.
      The next day Charles resumed his strict attic seclusion, drawing down the dark shades of his laboratory windows and appearing to be working on some metal substance. He would open the door to no one, and steadfastly refused all proffered food. About noon a wrenching sound followed by a terrible cry and a fall were heard, but when Mrs. Ward rapped at the door her son at length answered faintly, and told her that nothing had gone amiss. The hideous and indescribable stench now welling out was absolutely harmless and unfortunately necessary. Solitude was the one prime essential, and he would appear later for dinner. That afternoon, after the conclusion of some odd hissing sounds which came from behind the locked portal, he did finally appear; wearing an extremely haggard aspect and forbidding anyone to enter the laboratory upon any pretext. This, indeed, proved the beginning of a new policy of secrecy; for never afterward was any other person permitted to visit either the mysterious garret workroom or the adjacent storeroom which he cleaned out, furnished roughly, and added to his inviolably private domain as a sleeping apartment. Here he lived, with books brought up from his library beneath, till the time he purchased the Pawtuxet bungalow and moved to it all his scientific effects.
      In the evening Charles secured the paper before the rest of the family and damaged part of it through an apparent accident. Later on Dr. Willett, having fixed the date from statements by various members of the household, looked up an intact copy at the Journal office and found that in the destroyed section the following small item had occurred:
Nocturnal Diggers Surprised in
North Burial Ground

Robert Hart, night watchman at the North Burial Ground, this morning discovered a party of several men with a motor truck in the oldest part of the cemetery, but apparently frightened them off before they had accomplished whatever their object may have been.
      The discovery took place at about four o'clock, when Hart's attention was attracted by the sound of a motor outside his shelter. Investigating, he saw a large truck on the main drive several rods away; but could not reach it before the sound of his feet on the gravel had revealed his approach. The men hastily placed a large box in the truck and drove away toward the street before they could be overtaken; and since no known grave was disturbed, Hart believes that this box was an object which they wished to bury.
      The diggers must have been at work for a long while before detection, for Hart found an enormous hole dug at a considerable distance back from the roadway in the lot of Amasa Field, where most of the old stones have long ago disappeared. The hole, a place as large and deep as a grave, was empty; and did not coincide with any interment mentioned in the cemetery records.
      Sergt. Riley of the Second Station viewed the spot and gave the opinion that the hole was dug by bootleggers rather gruesomely and ingeniously seeking a safe cache for liquor in a place not likely to be disturbed. In reply to questions Hart said he thought the escaping truck had headed up Rochambeau Avenue, though he could not be sure.
      During the next few days Ward was seldom seen by his family. Having added sleeping quarters to his attic realm, he kept closely to himself there, ordering food brought to the door and not taking it in until after the servant had gone away. The droning of monotonous formulae and the chanting of bizarre rhythms recurred at intervals, while at other times occasional listeners could detect the sound of tinkling glass, hissing chemicals, running water, or roaring gas flames. Odours of the most unplaceable quality, wholly unlike any before noted, hung at times around the door; and the air of tension observable in the young recluse whenever he did venture briefly forth was such as to excite the keenest speculation. Once he made a hasty trip to the Athenaeum for a book he required, and again he hired a messenger to fetch him a highly obscure volume from Boston. Suspense was written portentously over the whole situation, and both the family and Dr. Willett confessed themselves wholly at a loss what to do or think about it.

6.

      Then on the fifteenth of April a strange development occurred. While nothing appeared to grow different in kind, there was certainly a very terrible difference in degree; and Dr. Willett somehow attaches great significance to the change. The day was Good Friday, a circumstance of which the servants made much, but which others quite naturally dismiss as an irrelevant coincidence. Late in the afternoon young Ward began repeating a certain formula in a singularly loud voice, at the same time burning some substance so pungent that its fumes escaped over the entire house. The formula was so plainly audible in the hall outside the locked door that Mrs. Ward could not help memorising it as she waited and listened anxiously, and later on she was able to write it down at Dr. Willett's request. It ran as follows, and experts have told Dr. Willett that its very close analogue can be found in the mystic writings of ""Eliphas Levi"", that cryptic soul who crept through a crack in the forbidden door and glimpsed the frightful vistas of the void beyond:
""Per Adonai Eloim, Adonai Jehova,
Adonai Sabaoth, Metraton On Agla Mathon,
verbum pythonicum, mysterium salamandrae,
conventus sylvorum, antra gnomorum,
daemonia Coeli Gad, Almousin, Gibor, Jehosua,
Evam, Zariatnatmik, veni, veni, veni.""
      This had been going on for two hours without change or intermission when over all the neighbourhood a pandaemoniac howling of dogs set in. The extent of this howling can be judged from the space it received in the papers the next day, but to those in the Ward household it was overshadowed by the odour which instantly followed it; a hideous, all-pervasive odour which none of them had ever smelt before or have ever smelt since. In the midst of this mephitic flood there came a very perceptible flash like that of lightning, which would have been blinding and impressive but for the daylight around; and then was heard the voice that no listener can ever forget because of its thunderous remoteness, its incredible depth, and its eldritch dissimilarity to Charles Ward's voice. It shook the house, and was clearly heard by at least two neighbours above the howling of the dogs. Mrs. Ward, who had been listening in despair outside her son's locked laboratory, shivered as she recognised its hellish import; for Charles had told her of its evil fame in dark books, and of the manner in which it had thundered, according to the Fenner letters, above the doomed Pawtuxet farmhouse on the night of Joseph Curwen's annihilation. There was no mistaking that nightmare phrase, for Charles had described it too vividly in the old days when he had talked frankly of his Curwen investigations. And yet it was only this fragment of an archaic and forgotten language: ""DIES MIES JESCHET BOENE DOESEF DOUVEMA ENITEMAUS"".
      Close upon this thundering there came a momentary darkening of the daylight, though sunset was still an hour distant, and then a puff of added odour different from the first but equally unknown and intolerable. Charles was chanting again now and his mother could hear syllables that sounded like ""Yi-nash-Yog-Sothoth-he-lgeb-fi-throdog"" - ending in a ""Yah!"" whose maniacal force mounted in an ear-splitting crescendo. A second later all previous memories were effaced by the wailing scream which burst out with frantic explosiveness and gradually changed form to a paroxysm of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Mrs. Ward, with the mingled fear and blind courage of maternity, advanced and knocked affrightedly at the concealing panels, but obtained no sign of recognition. She knocked again, but paused nervelessly as a second shriek arose, this one unmistakably in the familiar voice of her son, and sounding concurrently with the still bursting cachinnations of that other voice. Presently she fainted, although she is still unable to recall the precise and immediate cause. Memory sometimes makes merciful deletions.
      Mr. Ward returned from the business section at about quarter past six; and not finding his wife downstairs, was told by the frightened servants that she was probably watching at Charles's door, from which the sounds had been far stranger than ever before. Mounting the stairs at once, he saw Mrs. Ward stretched at full length on the floor of the corridor outside the laboratory; and realising that she had fainted, hastened to fetch a glass of water from a set bowl in a neighbouring alcove. Dashing the cold fluid in her face, he was heartened to observe an immediate response on her part, and was watching the bewildered opening of her eyes when a chill shot through him and threatened to reduce him to the very state from which she was emerging. For the seemingly silent laboratory was not as silent as it had appeared to be, but held the murmurs of a tense, muffled conversation in tones too low for comprehension, yet of a quality profoundly disturbing to the soul.
      It was not, of course, new for Charles to mutter formulae; but this muttering was definitely different. It was so palpably a dialogue, or imitation of a dialogue, with the regular alteration of inflections suggesting question and answer, statement and response. One voice was undisguisedly that of Charles, but the other had a depth and hollowness which the youth's best powers of ceremonial mimicry had scarcely approached before. There was something hideous, blasphemous, and abnormal about it, and but for a cry from his recovering wife which cleared his mind by arousing his protective instincts it is not likely that Theodore Howland Ward could have maintained for nearly a year more his old boast that he had never fainted. As it was, he seized his wife in his arms and bore her quickly downstairs before she could notice the voices which had so horribly disturbed him. Even so, however, he was not quick enough to escape catching something himself which caused him to stagger dangerously with his burden. For Mrs. Ward's cry had evidently been heard by others than he, and there had come from behind the locked door the first distinguishable words which that masked and terrible colloquy had yielded. They were merely an excited caution in Charles's own voice, but somehow their implications held a nameless fright for the father who overheard them. The phrase was just this: ""Sshh! - write!""
      Mr. and Mrs. Ward conferred at some length after dinner, and the former resolved to have a firm and serious talk with Charles that very night. No matter how important the object, such conduct could no longer be permitted; for these latest developments transcended every limit of sanity and formed a menace to the order and nervous well-being of the entire household. The youth must indeed have taken complete leave of his senses, since only downright madness could have prompted the wild screams and imaginary conversations in assumed voices which the present day had brought forth. All this must be stopped, or Mrs. Ward would be made ill and the keeping of servants become an impossibility.
      Mr. Ward rose at the close of the meal and started upstairs for Charles's laboratory. On the third floor, however, he paused at the sounds which he heard proceeding from the now disused library of his son. Books were apparently being flung about and papers wildly rustled, and upon stepping to the door Mr. Ward beheld the youth within, excitedly assembling a vast armful of literary matter of every size and shape. Charles's aspect was very drawn and haggard, and he dropped his entire load with a start at the sound of his father's voice. At the elder man's command he sat down, and for some time listened to the admonitions he had so long deserved. There was no scene. At the end of the lecture he agreed that his father was right, and that his noises, mutterings, incantations, and chemical odours were indeed inexcusable nuisances. He agreed to a policy of greater quiet, though insisting on a prolongation of his extreme privacy. Much of his future work, he said, was in any case purely book research; and he could obtain quarters elsewhere for any such vocal rituals as might be necessary at a later stage. For the fright and fainting of his mother he expressed the keenest contrition, and explained that the conversation later heard was part of an elaborate symbolism designed to create a certain mental atmosphere. His use of abstruse technical terms somewhat bewildered Mr. Ward, but the parting impression was one of undeniable sanity and poise despite a mysterious tension of the utmost gravity. The interview was really quite inconclusive, and as Charles picked up his armful and left the room Mr. Ward hardly knew what to make of the entire business. It was as mysterious as the death of poor old Nig, whose stiffening form had been found an hour before in the basement, with staring eyes and fear-distorted mouth.
      Driven by some vague detective instinct, the bewildered parent now glanced curiously at the vacant shelves to see what his son had taken up to the attic. The youth's library was plainly and rigidly classified, so that one might tell at a glance the books or at least the kind of books which had been withdrawn. On this occasion Mr. Ward was astonished to find that nothing of the occult or the antiquarian, beyond what had been previously removed, was missing. These new withdrawals were all modern items; histories, scientific treatises, geographies, manuals of literature, philosophic works, and certain contemporary newspapers and magazines. It was a very curious shift from Charles Ward's recent run of reading, and the father paused in a growing vortex of perplexity and an engulfing sense of strangeness. The strangeness was a very poignant sensation, and almost clawed at his chest as he strove to see just what was wrong around him. Something was indeed wrong, and tangibly as well as spiritually so. Ever since he had been in this room he had known that something was amiss, and at last it dawned upon him what it was.
      On the north wall rose still the ancient carved overmantel from the house in Olney Court, but to the cracked and precariously restored oils of the large Curwen portrait disaster had come. Time and unequal heating had done their work at last, and at some time since the room's last cleaning the worst had happened. Peeling clear of the wood, curling tighter and tighter, and finally crumbling into small bits with what must have been malignly silent suddenness, the portrait of Joseph Curwen had resigned forever its staring surveillance of the youth it so strangely resembled, and now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust.
","A smile lit Goro's dark face. He looked down at the elegant dark blue kimono in his arms. ""It's beautiful."" Torren-Wraeth smiled in return, he loved to see Goro smile. ""It belongs to you, Goro-chan."" ""But, this is too..."" ""You deserve it far more than any pampered noble."" The dark-skinned youth blushed. ""Thank you, Torren-kun!"" As Goro dressed, Torren-Wraeth looked at his own kimono, bright red and fashionable. He had worried about attracting undue attention with the appearance of wealth, but he decided that he was strong enough to risk any human robber or thief. Besides, this was to be their first trip to the Kabuki theater. It had taken enough time and effort to make himself appear human, he might as well show off. He looked up at Goro, partly dressed and excitedly pulling himself together. He thought of the men who had abused him, and felt a twitch of rage... Goro must never find out what Torren-Wraeth had done to those men. He did not want Goro to ever even hear the name Y'Golonac, much less learn what he was, how he dealt with his victims. Torren-Wraeth loathed Y'Golonac, the Defiler, the Obscenity, the obese, headless god of depravity, who devoured his victims slowly with the mouths in the palms of his flabby, groping hands. But he had to avenge Goro, he had to make them pay for using him, for torturing him, for robbing him of his childhood and his innocence. Only Y'Golonac could grant the punishment those men deserved... Then Goro was standing there, smiling, in his blue kimono, and Torren-Wraeth was happy again...
Torren-Wraeth awoke slowly, not wanting to leave his dream, because Goro still lived in his dreams... He was in China, not Japan, in the Monastery of The Order of The Bloated Woman. Japan was gone, Goro was gone, and Torren-Wraeth was still here. Warm tears ran down his cheeks, but he brushed them away. Life had to go on, and on, and on...
Great Cthulhu was concerned. Hastur seemed to have gained some favor in Nyarlathotep's many eyes, and anything that benefited Hastur weakened Cthulhu, in both their eyes. ""My Lord Cthulhu, there is no need for concern,"" The tall, red-robed figure that stood at the side of Cthulhu's throne moved forward respectfully, Chxixsas' bone-white face seemed to swim within his voluminous robes, ""It is well known that the fruits of Nyarlathotep's attentions are rarely to be desired."" The voice was thin, hollow, distant, "" This may prove, in fact, a setback for The King in Tatters. Even now he trembles in his palace at Carcosa, fearing what manner of spawn this union may unleash."" Cthulhu gave the equivalent of a laugh, ""Can you picture them, The Black Wind knocking down the walls of Carcosa, the Bloody Tongue crushing that cursed palace into dust! Oh, one can dream, Chxixsas... One can dream...""
The two masks, the Golden Angel and the Slender Maiden stood side by side, Isn't it all a lie, in the end? Torren-Wraeth bowed politely before the Bloated Woman. She was holding the Black Fan under her eyes, giving the illusion that she was a slender young lady, at least to the humans present. Ho Fong stood by reverently, but his jealousy of Tek was as strong as ever. Torren-Wraeth wondered if The Bloated Woman would play them against each other...He hoped not, for both their sake's. ""It is an honor to again have the presence of the Son of Cthulhu in my humble monastery."" ""The honor is all mine,"" Torren-Wraeth replied softly, ""My father sends his greetings and good-will toward you, My Lady."" The Bloated Woman's nose-tendril curled delicately in the air, ""No doubt. Send him my good-will in return."" Torren-Wraeth couldn't help but look at the sacrificial altar, where human victims had their arms cut off by the sacred sickles, after which they bled to death. He shuddered slightly at the horrible images flashing through his mind. The Bloated Woman noted this, but politely made no mention of it. Torren-Wraeth honestly could not condemn her, almost all of the worshiped entities, including his own father, demanded human sacrifice, many in even more horrible ways... ""I regret that I have to leave so soon, though I am grateful for your hospitality."" The last part, at least, was true. ""May The Key and The Gate be with you.""
",False
"The Great Arising was far worse than anyone could have imagined, how can one comprehend the forces that can wrench an entire continent from deep beneath the murky abyss until it's twisted green-black spires towered over even the highest of mountains known to man? When R'yleh arose, millions returned to life, but billions of others died. The geologic upheavals, the shifting of plates swallowed whole countries and ground mighty cities to dust. Tidal waves swept hundreds of miles inland, wiping away much of the world as if it had never existed. Those who survived were in chaos, of the major world powers, only Russia retained some capability to strike back, and a hail of nuclear warheads struck the mighty walls of R'yleh, accomplishing nothing but achieving Great Cthulhu's disfavor, and Moscow was struck with such force by the mighty priest's weapons that an inland sea now sits where one of man's greatest super-powers once stood.
America fared no better, the entire west coast collapsed beneath an earthquake of unthinkable magnitude, from California to Mississippi river, the east coast was left in ruins by what later scholars would term a ""worldquake"" . The shattered survivors, staring into the dust filled sky, watched as great, bloated creatures with dragon's bodies and tentacled faces swarmed across the earth, eager to reclaim their world. Of course, there was resistance, in the early years, men struck out at the Star Spawn with every weapon at their disposal, and always the result was the same, the Star Spawn could not be injured, as they existed in multiple dimensions at once. Cthulhu's other servants, however, were more vulnerable. Human cultists could be easily killed, and the amphibious Deep Ones, though hardier than men, were only flesh and blood. Man soon learned, however, that such small victories brought attention and terrible reprisal, so much so that humanity finally ceased to fight, struggling to simply survive beneath the feet of a race that barely even noticed their very existence.
In truth, Cthulhu was not malevolent, simply amoral, beyond human concerns and desires. He neither desired nor caused most of the devastation wrecked upon humanity by the Rise of R'lyeh. Had he control over R'lyeh's rising and falling, it would never have sunken to begin with. The sidereal clockworks governed R'lyeh and it's inhabitants. When the stars were 'wrong' they had to sleep, when the stars were 'right', they wee free to walk and fly and crawl. It was that simple. Humanity had suffered the simple misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, nothing more. Those that fought Great Cthulhu and his kin were minor irritants at best, his worshipers, useful beasts, of a little more import than Shoggoths, and a little less than The Brood of Dagon. The rest, simply another breed of animal that had flourished during his long sleep. Insignificant creatures which could be used to further his grand designs. Bizarrely, despite this view of humanity, Great Cthulhu had several children by human, or once human, mates, via some of his more humanoid avatars, of course. The children of these unions were known as Half-Bloods.
This was fortunate, in many ways, for mankind. Great Cthulhu and his minions saw humans as useful pawns, if they saw them at all, so mankind was able to regroup into a primitive society, surviving under the radar. The Star Spawn rarely noticed the affairs of men, but the Half-Bloods did. The Half-Bloods, more often than not, hated their human side, feeling the need to be excessively cruel and brutal toward the people whose blood they so despised within their own veins. Some, however, were kindly disposed toward mankind...
Torren-Wraeth was the son of an avatar of Great Cthulhu and Te'ree, an outcast woman of the Rapa Nui people, born on the island of the same name, which the Europeans would later re-name 'Easter Island'. In form and mind he took more after his mother's people than his father's. In many ways, he was attractive, even beautiful by human standards, though his striking Polynesian features and lithe swimmer's build were offset by a eight small tendrils, three on each side of his lower jaw and two on his chin, his skin was emerald green rather than his mother's warm brown, his almond eyes yellow and cat-like, and slender, bat-like wings that spread from his shoulders. His straight black hair hung long and loose around his pointed ears, though occasionally he would braid it, for special occasions.
He did not hate his human side, rather, he embraced it. His name, given by his father, loosely translated as 'Spirit of the Raging Waters', but his personality was far different, though his mother's people were fierce warriors and his father's, cold, calculating and unfeeling, Torren-Wraeth was gentle. He befriended humans, or tried to, both before and after the Rise of R'lyeh. Te'ree still lived, she had been transformed into something more than human, but less than Star-Spawn, another of his father's many concubines.
As a Half-Blood Torren-Wraeth possessed abilities his True-Blood brethren lacked, while they could only communicate with human minds in sleep, Torren-Wraeth could communicate mentally with humans sleeping or awake, and, unlike his kin, he possessed vocal chords capable of actual human conversation. This, combined with his attractive appearance and gentle manner, made him a frequent messenger between his father and the humans who worshiped him. The Elder Sign, bane of his father and those like him, even other Half-Bloods, held no power over Torren-Wraeth. He did not know if this was a sign of favor from the Elder Gods who'd crafted that mystical defense, or due to some innate part of his human nature.
Rapa Nui... The people had all but died out long before the rise of R'lyeh, a combination of factors had led to their demise, systematic deforestation, a genocidal internecine war, followed by starvation. The final nail in the coffin of the Rapa Nui was the arrival of the Europeans in 1722, who brought with them disease, mistreatment and slavery. Torren-Wraeth had wanted to help them, even though they had rejected his mother, rejected him... He had implored his father to intervene, but to no avail. They were not servants of Cthulhu... Torren-Wraeth had never truly forgiven his father...
The island itself, with it's famous Moai statues, now rested in a low valley on the Southwestern portion of R'lyeh, if such directions could be applied to the non-euclidean, extra-dimensional hyper-geometry of the dark city. It's few inhabitants, mostly descended of mixed Rapa Nui and European blood, now lived literally in the shadows of R'lyeh . Torren-Wraeth visited often, protecting his mother's people. He erected again the fallen Moai, many toppled by the Rapa Nui themselves during and after their horrific civil war, moving tons of stone with his bare hands. It was important to him, so much human blood, sweat and tears had gone into the making of the Moai, they symbolized the pride of a people, his people.
Torren-Wraeth flapped his leathery wings lazily, mainly gliding along the strong winds that whipped through the black city whose structures loomed higher than the eye could see. Occasionally one of his massive half-siblings would glide by, surprisingly graceful for their incredible size, or stare impassively out from the portals of their stone domiciles. He knew they neither loved nor hated him, they merely acknowledged his existence even as they acknowledged their own. A cold, unfeeling people, the Cthuli, H.G. Wells' description of his Martian 'Minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic' aptly fit the Star Spawn . Far below him, Torren-Wraeth could see the slithering shapes of near-mindless Shoggoths, and he strained to see if, by chance, a Deep One, a Gyo-Jin, as his dearest friend had called them, lurked below. At least they had some feelings akin to those of humanity. He saw none. He was utterly alone in a city of millions.
Then the loneliness, the aching struck at his heart. Japan was gone, destroyed in the tectonic cataclysm of The Arising. Though Rapa Nui was his birthplace, his heart had been in Japan. Many years ago, his father had sent him to that land to forge an alliance with the Emperor. The alliance had been refused, but while in Japan he had met Goro. Goro had been assigned as his personal servant during his stay, and the two had become fast-friends, once the seemingly insurmountable barriers of 'class' were broken. He had healed Goro's troubled mind, entering his dreams, soothing his nightmares. Goro had lived a life of suffering and loss, and his nights were filled with terrible nightmares and even more terrible realities, something that touched Torren-Wraeth's heart. For the first time, he truly felt human suffering, he truly understood that side of himself, all the hopes and fears and pains... Such pain...
When he left Japan, he took Goro with him. They traveled the world for over 200 years, Torren-Wraeth drawing on his father's power to keep Goro young and healthy. They truly cared for each other, like brothers born. Torren-Wraeth even allowed Goro to call him Torren-kun, no one, other than his mother, could have referred to Torren-Wraeth like that. But Goro was different... He would even have accepted Torren-chan, though Goro never could shake off his shackles of low-self esteem to be so familiar with the son of Kami... He'd never truly understood, Torren-Wraeth needed Goro far more than Goro needed him. Goro made him feel... Human...
He'd truly loved him, not in the way of ... Shonen-Ai, was it called? Even if Torren-Wraeth had been so inclined, Goro had already suffered far too much of that kind of 'love'. It was difficult for Torren-Wraeth to describe in the terms of either of his parent's tongues, a blending of souls, perhaps? He was a companion, a friend to whom he could open up his innermost heart without fear, and he strove to repay such care in kind. But time takes it's toll, and Goro simply began to lose interest in this life, he yearned to be reunited with his long-dead family, and, finally, Torren-Wraeth let him go. He visited him often, watching in his ageless agony as Goro raised a family, grew old, and finally died. Death, even Half-Bloods had little concept of death, such loss was unknown to his father's people. He had experienced loss for the first time in his young life, and this foreign agony crushed him. The pain he felt had never truly gone away, it had left a gaping hole in his soul... A void as deep and dark as the gulf between worlds. He had wept and raged and screamed to the heavens, angry at himself for letting Goro die, angry at Goro for wanting to live as a normal man, for wanting to die. But he came to accept that forcing immortality upon Goro would have been cruel, forcing him to live a life he no longer wanted just for his own sake would have been selfish. He had finally come to peace with himself,but God, did he miss him...
Goro's descendants were safe, though, even if Japan was gone, Torren-Wraeth had saved them, guiding them for decades, preparing them the best he could. He finally took them to the relative safety of Canada as the end became certain, gave them the signs and words to ward off any of his kin who might do them harm. It was the best he could do, under the circumstances.
The jumbled spires of R'lyeh fell away, opening onto a gloomy sea. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. Africa lay ahead, just a short jaunt on his powerful wings. The survival of Africa was almost as miraculous as the survival of Australia (which was directly adjacent to R'yleh), buffeted by tsunamis and earthquakes, rent and torn almost beyond recognition, but still there.
He turned to look back, and the greenish-black stone of R'lyeh blocked his view for as far as he could see, blotting out horizon and sky with it's incredible bulk. It was unnatural, in more ways than one, R'lyeh was less a continent than a great, graven image to Great Cthulhu and to his god, Yog-Sothoth, The Key and The Gate. Torren-Wraeth knew that, someday, R'lyeh would simply fade away from it's earthly presence and re-appear on some other, more desirable world. They were, after all, only temporary residents on this planet, R'lyeh was little more than a great city-engine to leech all it could from earth before leaving for greener pastures in an endless, soulless cycle of domination and devastation. He hoped silently that humanity would live to see that day when Great Cthulhu and his hordes left their world forever. He often wondered, if, when that day came, he would go with them...
But he knew the answer to that. He would go. He had to go. The humans had a saying, at least before the Great Arising ""Hell is other people"", but they were wrong, oh so wrong. Hell is being alone...
","A smile lit Goro's dark face. He looked down at the elegant dark blue kimono in his arms. ""It's beautiful."" Torren-Wraeth smiled in return, he loved to see Goro smile. ""It belongs to you, Goro-chan."" ""But, this is too..."" ""You deserve it far more than any pampered noble."" The dark-skinned youth blushed. ""Thank you, Torren-kun!"" As Goro dressed, Torren-Wraeth looked at his own kimono, bright red and fashionable. He had worried about attracting undue attention with the appearance of wealth, but he decided that he was strong enough to risk any human robber or thief. Besides, this was to be their first trip to the Kabuki theater. It had taken enough time and effort to make himself appear human, he might as well show off. He looked up at Goro, partly dressed and excitedly pulling himself together. He thought of the men who had abused him, and felt a twitch of rage... Goro must never find out what Torren-Wraeth had done to those men. He did not want Goro to ever even hear the name Y'Golonac, much less learn what he was, how he dealt with his victims. Torren-Wraeth loathed Y'Golonac, the Defiler, the Obscenity, the obese, headless god of depravity, who devoured his victims slowly with the mouths in the palms of his flabby, groping hands. But he had to avenge Goro, he had to make them pay for using him, for torturing him, for robbing him of his childhood and his innocence. Only Y'Golonac could grant the punishment those men deserved... Then Goro was standing there, smiling, in his blue kimono, and Torren-Wraeth was happy again...
Torren-Wraeth awoke slowly, not wanting to leave his dream, because Goro still lived in his dreams... He was in China, not Japan, in the Monastery of The Order of The Bloated Woman. Japan was gone, Goro was gone, and Torren-Wraeth was still here. Warm tears ran down his cheeks, but he brushed them away. Life had to go on, and on, and on...
Great Cthulhu was concerned. Hastur seemed to have gained some favor in Nyarlathotep's many eyes, and anything that benefited Hastur weakened Cthulhu, in both their eyes. ""My Lord Cthulhu, there is no need for concern,"" The tall, red-robed figure that stood at the side of Cthulhu's throne moved forward respectfully, Chxixsas' bone-white face seemed to swim within his voluminous robes, ""It is well known that the fruits of Nyarlathotep's attentions are rarely to be desired."" The voice was thin, hollow, distant, "" This may prove, in fact, a setback for The King in Tatters. Even now he trembles in his palace at Carcosa, fearing what manner of spawn this union may unleash."" Cthulhu gave the equivalent of a laugh, ""Can you picture them, The Black Wind knocking down the walls of Carcosa, the Bloody Tongue crushing that cursed palace into dust! Oh, one can dream, Chxixsas... One can dream...""
The two masks, the Golden Angel and the Slender Maiden stood side by side, Isn't it all a lie, in the end? Torren-Wraeth bowed politely before the Bloated Woman. She was holding the Black Fan under her eyes, giving the illusion that she was a slender young lady, at least to the humans present. Ho Fong stood by reverently, but his jealousy of Tek was as strong as ever. Torren-Wraeth wondered if The Bloated Woman would play them against each other...He hoped not, for both their sake's. ""It is an honor to again have the presence of the Son of Cthulhu in my humble monastery."" ""The honor is all mine,"" Torren-Wraeth replied softly, ""My father sends his greetings and good-will toward you, My Lady."" The Bloated Woman's nose-tendril curled delicately in the air, ""No doubt. Send him my good-will in return."" Torren-Wraeth couldn't help but look at the sacrificial altar, where human victims had their arms cut off by the sacred sickles, after which they bled to death. He shuddered slightly at the horrible images flashing through his mind. The Bloated Woman noted this, but politely made no mention of it. Torren-Wraeth honestly could not condemn her, almost all of the worshiped entities, including his own father, demanded human sacrifice, many in even more horrible ways... ""I regret that I have to leave so soon, though I am grateful for your hospitality."" The last part, at least, was true. ""May The Key and The Gate be with you.""
",True
"""The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated.""
BORELLUS

I. A Result and a Prologue

1.

From a private hospital for the insane near Providence, Rhode Island, there recently disappeared an exceedingly singular person. He bore the name of Charles Dexter Ward, and was placed under restraint most reluctantly by the grieving father who had watched his aberration grow from a mere eccentricity to a dark mania involving both a possibility of murderous tendencies and a profound and peculiar change in the apparent contents of his mind. Doctors confess themselves quite baffled by his case, since it presented oddities of a general physiological as well as psychological character.
      In the first place, the patient seemed oddly older than his twenty-six years would warrant. Mental disturbance, it is true, will age one rapidly; but the face of this young man had taken on a subtle cast which only the very aged normally acquire. In the second place, his organic processes shewed a certain queerness of proportion which nothing in medical experience can parallel. Respiration and heart action had a baffling lack of symmetry; the voice was lost, so that no sounds above a whisper were possible; digestion was incredibly prolonged and minimised, and neural reactions to standard stimuli bore no relation at all to anything heretofore recorded, either normal or pathological. The skin had a morbid chill and dryness, and the cellular structure of the tissue seemed exaggeratedly coarse and loosely knit. Even a large olive birthmark on the right hip had disappeared, whilst there had formed on the chest a very peculiar mole or blackish spot of which no trace existed before. In general, all physicians agree that in Ward the processes of metabolism had become retarded to a degree beyond precedent.
      Psychologically, too, Charles Ward was unique. His madness held no affinity to any sort recorded in even the latest and most exhaustive of treatises, and was conjoined to a mental force which would have made him a genius or a leader had it not been twisted into strange and grotesque forms. Dr. Willett, who was Ward's family physician, affirms that the patient's gross mental capacity, as gauged by his response to matters outside the sphere of his insanity, had actually increased since the seizure. Ward, it is true, was always a scholar and an antiquarian; but even his most brilliant early work did not shew the prodigious grasp and insight displayed during his last examinations by the alienists. It was, indeed, a difficult matter to obtain a legal commitment to the hospital, so powerful and lucid did the youth's mind seem; and only on the evidence of others, and on the strength of many abnormal gaps in his stock of information as distinguished from his intelligence, was he finally placed in confinement. To the very moment of his vanishment he was an omnivorous reader and as great a conversationalist as his poor voice permitted; and shrewd observers, failing to foresee his escape, freely predicted that he would not be long in gaining his discharge from custody.
      Only Dr. Willett, who brought Charles Ward into the world and had watched his growth of body and mind ever since, seemed frightened at the thought of his future freedom. He had had a terrible experience and had made a terrible discovery which he dared not reveal to his sceptical colleagues. Willett, indeed, presents a minor mystery all his own in his connexion with the case. He was the last to see the patient before his flight, and emerged from that final conversation in a state of mixed horror and relief which several recalled when Ward's escape became known three hours later. That escape itself is one of the unsolved wonders of Dr. Waite's hospital. A window open above a sheer drop of sixty feet could hardly explain it, yet after that talk with Willett the youth was undeniably gone. Willett himself has no public explanations to offer, though he seems strangely easier in mind than before the escape. Many, indeed, feel that he would like to say more if he thought any considerable number would believe him. He had found Ward in his room, but shortly after his departure the attendants knocked in vain. When they opened the door the patient was not there, and all they found was the open window with a chill April breeze blowing in a cloud of fine bluish-grey dust that almost choked them. True, the dogs howled some time before; but that was while Willett was still present, and they had caught nothing and shewn no disturbance later on. Ward's father was told at once over the telephone, but he seemed more saddened than surprised. By the time Dr. Waite called in person, Dr. Willett had been talking with him, and both disavowed any knowledge or complicity in the escape. Only from certain closely confidential friends of Willett and the senior Ward have any clues been gained, and even these are too wildly fantastic for general credence. The one fact which remains is that up to the present time no trace of the missing madman has been unearthed.
      Charles Ward was an antiquarian from infancy, no doubt gaining his taste from the venerable town around him, and from the relics of the past which filled every corner of his parents' old mansion in Prospect Street on the crest of the hill. With the years his devotion to ancient things increased; so that history, genealogy, and the study of colonial architecture, furniture, and craftsmanship at length crowded everything else from his sphere of interests. These tastes are important to remember in considering his madness; for although they do not form its absolute nucleus, they play a prominent part in its superficial form. The gaps of information which the alienists noticed were all related to modern matters, and were invariably offset by a correspondingly excessive though outwardly concealed knowledge of bygone matters as brought out by adroit questioning; so that one would have fancied the patient literally transferred to a former age through some obscure sort of auto-hypnosis. The odd thing was that Ward seemed no longer interested in the antiquities he knew so well. He had, it appears, lost his regard for them through sheer familiarity; and all his final efforts were obviously bent toward mastering those common facts of the modern world which had been so totally and unmistakably expunged from his brain. That this wholesale deletion had occurred, he did his best to hide; but it was clear to all who watched him that his whole programme of reading and conversation was determined by a frantic wish to imbibe such knowledge of his own life and of the ordinary practical and cultural background of the twentieth century as ought to have been his by virtue of his birth in 1902 and his education in the schools of our own time. Alienists are now wondering how, in view of his vitally impaired range of data, the escaped patient manages to cope with the complicated world of today; the dominant opinion being that he is 'lying low' in some humble and unexacting position till his stock of modern information can be brought up to the normal.
      The beginning of Ward's madness is a matter of dispute among alienists. Dr. Lyman, the eminent Boston authority, places it in 1919 or 1920, during the boy's last year at the Moses Brown School, when he suddenly turned from the study of the past to the study of the occult, and refused to qualify for college on the ground that he had individual researches of much greater importance to make. This is certainly borne out by Ward's altered habits at the time, especially by his continual search through town records and among old burying-grounds for a certain grave dug in 1771; the grave of an ancestor named Joseph Curwen, some of whose papers he professed to have found behind the panelling of a very old house in Olney Court, on Stampers' Hill, which Curwen was known to have built and occupied. It is, broadly speaking, undeniable that the winter of 1919-20 saw a great change in Ward; whereby he abruptly stopped his general antiquarian pursuits and embarked on a desperate delving into occult subjects both at home and abroad, varied only by this strangely persistent search for his forefather's grave.
      From this opinion, however, Dr. Willett substantially dissents; basing his verdict on his close and continuous knowledge of the patient, and on certain frightful investigations and discoveries which he made toward the last. Those investigations and discoveries have left their mark upon him; so that his voice trembles when he tells them, and his hand trembles when he tries to write of them. Willett admits that the change of 1919-20 would ordinarily appear to mark the beginning of a progressive decadence which culminated in the horrible and uncanny alienation of 1928; but believes from personal observation that a finer distinction must be made. Granting freely that the boy was always ill-balanced temperamentally, and prone to be unduly susceptible and enthusiastic in his responses to phenomena around him, he refuses to concede that the early alteration marked the actual passage from sanity to madness; crediting instead Ward's own statement that he had discovered or rediscovered something whose effect on human thought was likely to be marvellous and profound. The true madness, he is certain, came with a later change; after the Curwen portrait and the ancient papers had been unearthed; after a trip to strange foreign places had been made, and some terrible invocations chanted under strange and secret circumstances; after certain answers to these invocations had been plainly indicated, and a frantic letter penned under agonising and inexplicable conditions; after the wave of vampirism and the ominous Pawtuxet gossip; and after the patient's memory commenced to exclude contemporary images whilst his voice failed and his physical aspect underwent the subtle modification so many subsequently noticed.
      It was only about this time, Willett points out with much acuteness, that the nightmare qualities became indubitably linked with Ward; and the doctor feels shudderingly sure that enough solid evidence exists to sustain the youth's claim regarding his crucial discovery. In the first place, two workmen of high intelligence saw Joseph Curwen's ancient papers found. Secondly, the boy once shewed Dr. Willett those papers and a page of the Curwen diary, and each of the documents had every appearance of genuineness. The hole where Ward claimed to have found them was long a visible reality, and Willett had a very convincing final glimpse of them in surroundings which can scarcely be believed and can never perhaps be proved. Then there were the mysteries and coincidences of the Orne and Hutchinson letters, and the problem of the Curwen penmanship and of what the detectives brought to light about Dr. Allen; these things, and the terrible message in mediaeval minuscules found in Willett's pocket when he gained consciousness after his shocking experience.
      And most conclusive of all, there are the two hideous results which the doctor obtained from a certain pair of formulae during his final investigations; results which virtually proved the authenticity of the papers and of their monstrous implications at the same time that those papers were borne forever from human knowledge.

2.

      One must look back at Charles Ward's earlier life as at something belonging as much to the past as the antiquities he loved so keenly. In the autumn of 1918, and with a considerable show of zest in the military training of the period, he had begun his junior year at the Moses Brown School, which lies very near his home. The old main building, erected in 1819, had always charmed his youthful antiquarian sense; and the spacious park in which the academy is set appealed to his sharp eye for landscape. His social activities were few; and his hours were spent mainly at home, in rambling walks, in his classes and drills, and in pursuit of antiquarian and genealogical data at the City Hall, the State House, the Public Library, the Athenaeum, the Historical Society, the John Carter Brown and John Hay Libraries of Brown University, and the newly opened Shepley Library in Benefit Street. One may picture him yet as he was in those days; tall, slim, and blond, with studious eyes and a slight stoop, dressed somewhat carelessly, and giving a dominant impression of harmless awkwardness rather than attractiveness.
      His walks were always adventures in antiquity, during which he managed to recapture from the myriad relics of a glamorous old city a vivid and connected picture of the centuries before. His home was a great Georgian mansion atop the well-nigh precipitous hill that rises just east of the river; and from the rear windows of its rambling wings he could look dizzily out over all the clustered spires, domes, roofs, and skyscraper summits of the lower town to the purple hills of the countryside beyond. Here he was born, and from the lovely classic porch of the double-bayed brick facade his nurse had first wheeled him in his carriage; past the little white farmhouse of two hundred years before that the town had long ago overtaken, and on toward the stately colleges along the shady, sumptuous street, whose old square brick mansions and smaller wooden houses with narrow, heavy-columned Doric porches dreamed solid and exclusive amidst their generous yards and gardens.
      He had been wheeled, too, along sleepy Congdon Street, one tier lower down on the steep hill, and with all its eastern homes on high terraces. The small wooden houses averaged a greater age here, for it was up this hill that the growing town had climbed; and in these rides he had imbibed something of the colour of a quaint colonial village. The nurse used to stop and sit on the benches of Prospect Terrace to chat with policemen; and one of the child's first memories was of the great westward sea of hazy roofs and domes and steeples and far hills which he saw one winter afternoon from that great railed embankment, all violet and mystic against a fevered, apocalyptic sunset of reds and golds and purples and curious greens. The vast marble dome of the State House stood out in massive silhouette, its crowning statue haloed fantastically by a break in one of the tinted stratus clouds that barred the flaming sky.
      When he was larger his famous walks began; first with his impatiently dragged nurse, and then alone in dreamy meditation. Farther and farther down that almost perpendicular hill he would venture, each time reaching older and quainter levels of the ancient city. He would hesitate gingerly down vertical Jenckes Street with its bank walls and colonial gables to the shady Benefit Street corner, where before him was a wooden antique with an Ionic-pilastered pair of doorways, and beside him a prehistoric gambrel-roofer with a bit of primal farmyard remaining, and the great Judge Durfee house with its fallen vestiges of Georgian grandeur. It was getting to be a slum here; but the titan elms cast a restoring shadow over the place, and the boy used to stroll south past the long lines of the pre-Revolutionary homes with their great central chimneys and classic portals. On the eastern side they were set high over basements with railed double flights of stone steps, and the young Charles could picture them as they were when the street was new, and red heels and periwigs set off the painted pediments whose signs of wear were now becoming so visible.
      Westward the hill dropped almost as steeply as above, down to the old ""Town Street"" that the founders had laid out at the river's edge in 1636. Here ran innumerable little lanes with leaning, huddled houses of immense antiquity; and fascinated though he was, it was long before he dared to thread their archaic verticality for fear they would turn out a dream or a gateway to unknown terrors. He found it much less formidable to continue along Benefit Street past the iron fence of St. John's hidden churchyard and the rear of the 1761 Colony House and the mouldering bulk of the Golden Ball Inn where Washington stopped. At Meeting Street - the successive Gaol Lane and King Street of other periods - he would look upward to the east and see the arched flight of steps to which the highway had to resort in climbing the slope, and downward to the west, glimpsing the old brick colonial schoolhouse that smiles across the road at the ancient Sign of Shakespear's Head where the Providence Gazette and Country-Journal was printed before the Revolution. Then came the exquisite First Baptist Church of 1775, luxurious with its matchless Gibbs steeple, and the Georgian roofs and cupolas hovering by. Here and to the southward the neighbourhood became better, flowering at last into a marvellous group of early mansions; but still the little ancient lanes led off down the precipice to the west, spectral in their many-gabled archaism and dipping to a riot of iridescent decay where the wicked old waterfront recalls its proud East India days amidst polyglot vice and squalor, rotting wharves, and blear-eyed ship-chandleries, with such surviving alley names as Packet, Bullion, Gold, Silver, Coin, Doubloon, Sovereign, Guilder, Dollar, Dime, and Cent.
      Sometimes, as he grew taller and more adventurous, young Ward would venture down into this maelstrom of tottering houses, broken transoms, tumbling steps, twisted balustrades, swarthy faces, and nameless odours; winding from South Main to South Water, searching out the docks where the bay and sound steamers still touched, and returning northward at this lower level past the steep-roofed 1816 warehouses and the broad square at the Great Bridge, where the 1773 Market House still stands firm on its ancient arches. In that square he would pause to drink in the bewildering beauty of the old town as it rises on its eastward bluff, decked with its two Georgian spires and crowned by the vast new Christian Science dome as London is crowned by St. Paul's. He liked mostly to reach this point in the late afternoon, when the slanting sunlight touches the Market House and the ancient hill roofs and belfries with gold, and throws magic around the dreaming wharves where Providence Indiamen used to ride at anchor. After a long look he would grow almost dizzy with a poet's love for the sight, and then he would scale the slope homeward in the dusk past the old white church and up the narrow precipitous ways where yellow gleams would begin to peep out in small-paned windows and through fanlights set high over double flights of steps with curious wrought-iron railings.
      At other times, and in later years, he would seek for vivid contrasts; spending half a walk in the crumbling colonial regions northwest of his home, where the hill drops to the lower eminence of Stampers' Hill with its ghetto and negro quarter clustering round the place where the Boston stage coach used to start before the Revolution, and the other half in the gracious southerly realm about George, Benevolent, Power, and Williams Streets, where the old slope holds unchanged the fine estates and bits of walled garden and steep green lane in which so many fragrant memories linger. These rambles, together with the diligent studies which accompanied them, certainly account for a large amount of the antiquarian lore which at last crowded the modern world from Charles Ward's mind; and illustrate the mental soil upon which fell, in that fateful winter of 1919-20, the seeds that came to such strange and terrible fruition.
      Dr. Willett is certain that, up to this ill-omened winter of first change, Charles Ward's antiquarianism was free from every trace of the morbid. Graveyards held for him no particular attraction beyond their quaintness and historic value, and of anything like violence or savage instinct he was utterly devoid. Then, by insidious degrees, there appeared to develop a curious sequel to one of his genealogical triumphs of the year before; when he had discovered among his maternal ancestors a certain very long-lived man named Joseph Curwen, who had come from Salem in March of 1692, and about whom a whispered series of highly peculiar and disquieting stories clustered.
      Ward's great-great-grandfather Welcome Potter had in 1785 married a certain ""Ann Tillinghast, daughter of Mrs. Eliza, daughter to Capt. James Tillinghast"", of whose paternity the family had preserved no trace. Late in 1918, whilst examining a volume of original town records in manuscript, the young genealogist encountered an entry describing a legal change of name, by which in 1772 a Mrs. Eliza Curwen, widow of Joseph Curwen, resumed, along with her seven-year-old daughter Ann, her maiden name of Tillinghast; on the ground 'that her Husband's name was become a publick Reproach by Reason of what was knowne after his Decease; the which confirming an antient common Rumour, tho' not to be credited by a loyall Wife till so proven as to be wholely past Doubting'. This entry came to light upon the accidental separation of two leaves which had been carefully pasted together and treated as one by a laboured revision of the page numbers.
      It was at once clear to Charles Ward that he had indeed discovered a hitherto unknown great-great-great-grandfather. The discovery doubly excited him because he had already heard vague reports and seen scattered allusions relating to this person; about whom there remained so few publicly available records, aside from those becoming public only in modern times, that it almost seemed as if a conspiracy had existed to blot him from memory. What did appear, moreover, was of such a singular and provocative nature that one could not fail to imagine curiously what it was that the colonial recorders were so anxious to conceal and forget; or to suspect that the deletion had reasons all too valid.
      Before this, Ward had been content to let his romancing about old Joseph Curwen remain in the idle stage; but having discovered his own relationship to this apparently ""hushed-up"" character, he proceeded to hunt out as systematically as possible whatever he might find concerning him. In this excited quest he eventually succeeded beyond his highest expectations; for old letters, diaries, and sheaves of unpublished memoirs in cobwebbed Providence garrets and elsewhere yielded many illuminating passages which their writers had not thought it worth their while to destroy. One important sidelight came from a point as remote as New York, where some Rhode Island colonial correspondence was stored in the Museum at Fraunces' Tavern. The really crucial thing, though, and what in Dr. Willett's opinion formed the definite source of Ward's undoing, was the matter found in August 1919 behind the panelling of the crumbling house in Olney Court. It was that, beyond a doubt, which opened up those black vistas whose end was deeper than the pit.

","III.

Meanwhile Old Whateley continued to buy cattle without measurably increasing the size of his herd. He also cut timber and began to repair the unused parts of his house—a spacious, peaked-roofed affair whose rear end was buried entirely in the rocky hillside, and whose three least-ruined ground-floor rooms had always been sufficient for himself and his daughter. There must have been prodigious reserves of strength in the old man to enable him to accomplish so much hard labour; and though he still babbled dementedly at times, his carpentry seemed to shew the effects of sound calculation. It had already begun as soon as Wilbur was born, when one of the many tool-sheds had been put suddenly in order, clapboarded, and fitted with a stout fresh lock. Now, in restoring the abandoned upper story of the house, he was a no less thorough craftsman. His mania shewed itself only in his tight boarding-up of all the windows in the reclaimed section—though many declared that it was a crazy thing to bother with the reclamation at all. Less inexplicable was his fitting up of another downstairs room for his new grandson—a room which several callers saw, though no one was ever admitted to the closely boarded upper story. This chamber he lined with tall, firm shelving; along which he began gradually to arrange, in apparently careful order, all the rotting ancient books and parts of books which during his own day had been heaped promiscuously in odd corners of the various rooms.
      “I made some use of ’em,” he would say as he tried to mend a torn black-letter page with paste prepared on the rusty kitchen stove, “but the boy’s fitten to make better use of ’em. He’d orter hev ’em as well sot as he kin, for they’re goin’ to be all of his larnin’.”
      When Wilbur was a year and seven months old—in September of 1914—his size and accomplishments were almost alarming. He had grown as large as a child of four, and was a fluent and incredibly intelligent talker. He ran freely about the fields and hills, and accompanied his mother on all her wanderings. At home he would pore diligently over the queer pictures and charts in his grandfather’s books, while Old Whateley would instruct and catechise him through long, hushed afternoons. By this time the restoration of the house was finished, and those who watched it wondered why one of the upper windows had been made into a solid plank door. It was a window in the rear of the east gable end, close against the hill; and no one could imagine why a cleated wooden runway was built up to it from the ground. About the period of this work’s completion people noticed that the old tool-house, tightly locked and windowlessly clapboarded since Wilbur’s birth, had been abandoned again. The door swung listlessly open, and when Earl Sawyer once stepped within after a cattle-selling call on Old Whateley he was quite discomposed by the singular odour he encountered—such a stench, he averred, as he had never before smelt in all his life except near the Indian circles on the hills, and which could not come from anything sane or of this earth. But then, the homes and sheds of Dunwich folk have never been remarkable for olfactory immaculateness.
      The following months were void of visible events, save that everyone swore to a slow but steady increase in the mysterious hill noises. On May-Eve of 1915 there were tremors which even the Aylesbury people felt, whilst the following Hallowe’en produced an underground rumbling queerly synchronised with bursts of flame—“them witch Whateleys’ doin’s”—from the summit of Sentinel Hill. Wilbur was growing up uncannily, so that he looked like a boy of ten as he entered his fourth year. He read avidly by himself now; but talked much less than formerly. A settled taciturnity was absorbing him, and for the first time people began to speak specifically of the dawning look of evil in his goatish face. He would sometimes mutter an unfamiliar jargon, and chant in bizarre rhythms which chilled the listener with a sense of unexplainable terror. The aversion displayed toward him by dogs had now become a matter of wide remark, and he was obliged to carry a pistol in order to traverse the countryside in safety. His occasional use of the weapon did not enhance his popularity amongst the owners of canine guardians.
      The few callers at the house would often find Lavinia alone on the ground floor, while odd cries and footsteps resounded in the boarded-up second story. She would never tell what her father and the boy were doing up there, though once she turned pale and displayed an abnormal degree of fear when a jocose fish-peddler tried the locked door leading to the stairway. That peddler told the store loungers at Dunwich Village that he thought he heard a horse stamping on that floor above. The loungers reflected, thinking of the door and runway, and of the cattle that so swiftly disappeared. Then they shuddered as they recalled tales of Old Whateley’s youth, and of the strange things that are called out of the earth when a bullock is sacrificed at the proper time to certain heathen gods. It had for some time been noticed that dogs had begun to hate and fear the whole Whateley place as violently as they hated and feared young Wilbur personally.
      In 1917 the war came, and Squire Sawyer Whateley, as chairman of the local draft board, had hard work finding a quota of young Dunwich men fit even to be sent to a development camp. The government, alarmed at such signs of wholesale regional decadence, sent several officers and medical experts to investigate; conducting a survey which New England newspaper readers may still recall. It was the publicity attending this investigation which set reporters on the track of the Whateleys, and caused the Boston Globe and Arkham Advertiser to print flamboyant Sunday stories of young Wilbur’s precociousness, Old Whateley’s black magic, the shelves of strange books, the sealed second story of the ancient farmhouse, and the weirdness of the whole region and its hill noises. Wilbur was four and a half then, and looked like a lad of fifteen. His lips and cheeks were fuzzy with a coarse dark down, and his voice had begun to break.
      Earl Sawyer went out to the Whateley place with both sets of reporters and camera men, and called their attention to the queer stench which now seemed to trickle down from the sealed upper spaces. It was, he said, exactly like a smell he had found in the tool-shed abandoned when the house was finally repaired; and like the faint odours which he sometimes thought he caught near the stone circles on the mountains. Dunwich folk read the stories when they appeared, and grinned over the obvious mistakes. They wondered, too, why the writers made so much of the fact that Old Whateley always paid for his cattle in gold pieces of extremely ancient date. The Whateleys had received their visitors with ill-concealed distaste, though they did not dare court further publicity by a violent resistance or refusal to talk.
",True
"III. A Search and an Evocation

1.

Charles Ward, as we have seen, first learned in 1918 of his descent from Joseph Curwen. That he at once took an intense interest in everything pertaining to the bygone mystery is not to be wondered at; for every vague rumour that he had heard of Curwen now became something vital to himself, in whom flowed Curwen's blood. No spirited and imaginative genealogist could have done otherwise than begin forthwith an avid and systematic collection of Curwen data.
      In his first delvings there was not the slightest attempt at secrecy; so that even Dr. Lyman hesitates to date the youth's madness from any period before the close of 1919. He talked freely with his family - though his mother was not particularly pleased to own an ancestor like Curwen - and with the officials of the various museums and libraries he visited. In applying to private families for records thought to be in their possession he made no concealment of his object, and shared the somewhat amused scepticism with which the accounts of the old diarists and letter-writers were regarded. He often expressed a keen wonder as to what really had taken place a century and a half before at that Pawtuxet farmhouse whose site he vainly tried to find, and what Joseph Curwen really had been.
      When he came across the Smith diary and archives and encountered the letter from Jedediah Orne he decided to visit Salem and look up Curwen's early activities and connexions there, which he did during the Easter vacation of 1919. At the Essex Institute, which was well known to him from former sojourns in the glamorous old town of crumbling Puritan gables and clustered gambrel roofs, he was very kindly received, and unearthed there a considerable amount of Curwen data. He found that his ancestor was born in Salem-Village, now Danvers, seven miles from town, on the eighteenth of February (O.S.) 1662-3; and that he had run away to sea at the age of fifteen, not appearing again for nine years, when he returned with the speech, dress, and manners of a native Englishman and settled in Salem proper. At that time he had little to do with his family, but spent most of his hours with the curious books he had brought from Europe, and the strange chemicals which came for him on ships from England, France, and Holland. Certain trips of his into the country were the objects of much local inquisitiveness, and were whisperingly associated with vague rumours of fires on the hills at night.
      Curwen's only close friends had been one Edward Hutchinson of Salem-Village and one Simon Orne of Salem. With these men he was often seen in conference about the Common, and visits among them were by no means infrequent. Hutchinson had a house well out toward the woods, and it was not altogether liked by sensitive people because of the sounds heard there at night. He was said to entertain strange visitors, and the lights seen from his windows were not always of the same colour. The knowledge he displayed concerning long-dead persons and long-forgotten events was considered distinctly unwholesome, and he disappeared about the time the witchcraft panic began, never to be heard from again. At that time Joseph Curwen also departed, but his settlement in Providence was soon learned of. Simon Orne lived in Salem until 1720, when his failure to grow visibly old began to excite attention. He thereafter disappeared, though thirty years later his precise counterpart and self-styled son turned up to claim his property. The claim was allowed on the strength of documents in Simon Orne's known hand, and Jedediah Orne continued to dwell in Salem till 1771, when certain letters from Providence citizens to the Rev. Thomas Barnard and others brought about his quiet removal to parts unknown.
      Certain documents by and about all of these strange characters were available at the Essex Institute, the Court House, and the Registry of Deeds, and included both harmless commonplaces such as land titles and bills of sale, and furtive fragments of a more provocative nature. There were four or five unmistakable allusions to them on the witchcraft trial records; as when one Hepzibah Lawson swore on July 10, 1692, at the Court of Oyer and Terminer under Judge Hathorne, that 'fortie Witches and the Blacke Man were wont to meete in the Woodes behind Mr. Hutchinson's house', and one Amity How declared at a session of August 8th before Judge Gedney that 'Mr. G. B. (Rev. George Burroughs) on that Nighte putt ye Divell his Marke upon Bridget S., Jonathan A., Simon O., Deliverance W., Joseph C., Susan P., Mehitable C., and Deborah B.' Then there was a catalogue of Hutchinson's uncanny library as found after his disappearance, and an unfinished manuscript in his handwriting, couched in a cipher none could read. Ward had a photostatic copy of this manuscript made, and began to work casually on the cipher as soon as it was delivered to him. After the following August his labours on the cipher became intense and feverish, and there is reason to believe from his speech and conduct that he hit upon the key before October or November. He never stated, though, whether or not he had succeeded.
      But of the greatest immediate interest was the Orne material. It took Ward only a short time to prove from identity of penmanship a thing he had already considered established from the text of the letter to Curwen; namely, that Simon Orne and his supposed son were one and the same person. As Orne had said to his correspondent, it was hardly safe to live too long in Salem, hence he resorted to a thirty-year sojourn abroad, and did not return to claim his lands except as a representative of a new generation. Orne had apparently been careful to destroy most of his correspondence, but the citizens who took action in 1771 found and preserved a few letters and papers which excited their wonder. There were cryptic formulae and diagrams in his and other hands which Ward now either copied with care or had photographed, and one extremely mysterious letter in a chirography that the searcher recognised from items in the Registry of Deeds as positively Joseph Curwen's.
      This Curwen letter, though undated as to the year, was evidently not the one in answer to which Orne had written the confiscated missive; and from internal evidence Ward placed it not much later than 1750. It may not be amiss to give the text in full, as a sample of the style of one whose history was so dark and terrible. The recipient is addressed as ""Simon"", but a line (whether drawn by Curwen or Orne Ward could not tell) is run through the word.
Prouidence, I. May (Ut. vulgo)
Brother: - 
My honour'd Antient ffriende, due Respects and earnest Wishes to Him whom we serve for yr eternall Power. I am just come upon That which you ought to knowe, concern'g the Matter of the Laste Extremitie and what to doe regard'g yt. I am not dispos'd to followe you in go'g Away on acct. of my Yeares, for Prouidence hath not ye Sharpeness of ye Bay in hunt'g oute uncommon Things and bringinge to Tryall. I am ty'd up in Shippes and Goodes, and cou'd not doe as you did, besides the Whiche my ffarme at Patuxet hath under it What you Knowe, that wou'd not waite for my com'g Backe as an Other.
      But I am not unreadie for harde ffortunes, as I haue tolde you, and haue longe work'd upon ye Way of get'g Backe after ye Laste. I laste Night strucke on ye Wordes that bringe up YOGGE-SOTHOTHE, and sawe for ye firste Time that fface spoke of by Ibn Schacabao in ye  -  - . And IT said, that ye III Psalme in ye Liber-Damnatus holdes ye Clauicle. With Sunne in V House, Saturne in Trine, drawe ye Pentagram of Fire, and saye ye ninth Uerse thrice. This Uerse repeate eache Roodemas and Hallow's Eue; and ye Thing will breede in ye Outside Spheres.
      And of ye Seede of Olde shal One be borne who shal looke Backe, tho' know'g not what he seekes.
      Yett will this availe Nothing if there be no Heir, and if the Saltes, or the Way to make the Saltes, bee not Readie for his Hande; and here I will owne, I have not taken needed Stepps nor founde Much. Ye Process is plaguy harde to come neare; and it uses up such a Store of Specimens, I am harde putte to it to get Enough, notwithstand'g the Sailors I have from ye Indies. Ye People aboute are become curious, but I can stande them off. Ye Gentry are worse than the Populace, be'g more Circumstantiall in their Accts. and more believ'd in what they tell. That Parson and Mr. Merritt have talk'd some, I am fearfull, but no Thing soe far is Dangerous. Ye Chymical substances are easie of get'g, there be'g II. goode Chymists in Towne, Dr. Bowen and Sam: Carew. I am foll'g oute what Borellus saith, and haue Helpe in Abdool Al-Hazred his VII. Booke. Whatever I gette, you shal haue. And in ye meane while, do not neglect to make use of ye Wordes I haue here giuen. I haue them Righte, but if you Desire to see HIM, imploy the Writings on ye Piece of  -  -  that I am putt'g in this Packet. Saye ye Uerses every Roodmas and Hallow's Eue; and if yr Line runn out not, one shall bee in yeares to come that shal looke backe and use what Saltes or Stuff for Saltes you shal leaue him. Job XIV. XIV.
      I rejoice you are again at Salem, and hope I may see you not longe hence. I have a goode Stallion, and am think'g of get'g a Coach, there be'g one (Mr. Merritt's) in Prouidence already, tho' ye Roades are bad. If you are dispos'd to Travel, doe not pass me bye. From Boston take ye Post Rd. thro' Dedham, Wrentham, and Attleborough, goode Taverns be'g at all these Townes. Stop at Mr. Bolcom's in Wrentham, where ye Beddes are finer than Mr. Hatch's, but eate at ye other House for their Cooke is better. Turne into Prou. by Patucket ffalls, and ye Rd. past Mr. Sayles's Tavern. My House opp. Mr. Epenetus Olney's Tavern off ye Towne Street, Ist on ye N. side of Olney's Court. Distance from Boston Stone abt. XLIV Miles.
      Sir, I am yr olde and true ffriend and Servt. in Almousin-Metraton.
Josephus C.
To Mr. Simon Orne,
William's-Lane, in Salem.
      This letter, oddly enough, was what first gave Ward the exact location of Curwen's Providence home; for none of the records encountered up to that time had been at all specific. The discovery was doubly striking because it indicated as the newer Curwen house built in 1761 on the site of the old, a dilapidated building still standing in Olney Court and well known to Ward in his antiquarian rambles over Stampers' Hill. The place was indeed only a few squares from his own home on the great hill's higher ground, and was now the abode of a negro family much esteemed for occasional washing, housecleaning, and furnace-tending services. To find, in distant Salem, such sudden proof of the significance of this familiar rookery in his own family history, was a highly impressive thing to Ward; and he resolved to explore the place immediately upon his return. The more mystical phases of the letter, which he took to be some extravagant kind of symbolism, frankly baffled him; though he noted with a thrill of curiosity that the Biblical passage referred to - Job 14, 14 - was the familiar verse, ""If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.""

2.

      Young Ward came home in a state of pleasant excitement, and spent the following Saturday in a long and exhaustive study of the house in Olney Court. The place, now crumbling with age, had never been a mansion; but was a modest two-and-a-half story wooden town house of the familiar Providence colonial type, with plain peaked roof, large central chimney, and artistically carved doorway with rayed fanlight, triangular pediment, and trim Doric pilasters. It had suffered but little alteration externally, and Ward felt he was gazing on something very close to the sinister matters of his quest.
      The present negro inhabitants were known to him, and he was very courteously shewn about the interior by old Asa and his stout wife Hannah. Here there was more change than the outside indicated, and Ward saw with regret that fully half of the fine scroll-and-urn overmantels and shell-carved cupboard linings were gone, whilst much of the fine wainscotting and bolection moulding was marked, hacked, and gouged, or covered up altogether with cheap wall-paper. In general, the survey did not yield as much as Ward had somehow expected; but it was at least exciting to stand within the ancestral walls which had housed such a man of horror as Joseph Curwen. He saw with a thrill that a monogram had been very carefully effaced from the ancient brass knocker.
      From then until after the close of school Ward spent his time on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher and the accumulation of local Curwen data. The former still proved unyielding; but of the latter he obtained so much, and so many clues to similar data elsewhere, that he was ready by July to make a trip to New London and New York to consult old letters whose presence in those places was indicated. This trip was very fruitful, for it brought him the Fenner letters with their terrible description of the Pawtuxet farmhouse raid, and the Nightingale-Talbot letters in which he learned of the portrait painted on a panel of the Curwen library. This matter of the portrait interested him particularly, since he would have given much to know just what Joseph Curwen looked like; and he decided to make a second search of the house in Olney Court to see if there might not be some trace of the ancient features beneath peeling coats of later paint or layers of mouldy wall-paper.
      Early in August that search took place, and Ward went carefully over the walls of every room sizeable enough to have been by any possibility the library of the evil builder. He paid especial attention to the large panels of such overmantels as still remained; and was keenly excited after about an hour, when on a broad area above the fireplace in a spacious ground-floor room he became certain that the surface brought out by the peeling of several coats of paint was sensibly darker than any ordinary interior paint or the wood beneath it was likely to have been. A few more careful tests with a thin knife, and he knew that he had come upon an oil portrait of great extent. With truly scholarly restraint the youth did not risk the damage which an immediate attempt to uncover the hidden picture with the knife might have done, but just retired from the scene of his discovery to enlist expert help. In three days he returned with an artist of long experience, Mr. Walter C. Dwight, whose studio is near the foot of College Hill; and that accomplished restorer of paintings set to work at once with proper methods and chemical substances. Old Asa and his wife were duly excited over their strange visitors, and were properly reimbursed for this invasion of their domestic hearth.
      As day by day the work of restoration progressed, Charles Ward looked on with growing interest at the lines and shades gradually unveiled after their long oblivion. Dwight had begun at the bottom; hence since the picture was a three-quarter-length one, the face did not come out for some time. It was meanwhile seen that the subject was a spare, well-shaped man with dark-blue coat, embroidered waistcoat, black satin small-clothes, and white silk stockings, seated in a carved chair against the background of a window with wharves and ships beyond. When the head came out it was observed to bear a neat Albemarle wig, and to possess a thin, calm, undistinguished face which seemed somehow familiar to both Ward and the artist. Only at the very last, though, did the restorer and his client begin to gasp with astonishment at the details of that lean, pallid visage, and to recognise with a touch of awe the dramatic trick which heredity had played. For it took the final bath of oil and the final stroke of the delicate scraper to bring out fully the expression which centuries had hidden; and to confront the bewildered Charles Dexter Ward, dweller in the past, with his own living features in the countenance of his horrible great-great-great-grandfather.
      Ward brought his parents to see the marvel he had uncovered, and his father at once determined to purchase the picture despite its execution on stationary panelling. The resemblance to the boy, despite an appearance of rather greater age, was marvellous; and it could be seen that through some trick of atavism the physical contours of Joseph Curwen had found precise duplication after a century and a half. Mrs. Ward's resemblance to her ancestor was not at all marked, though she could recall relatives who had some of the facial characteristics shared by her son and by the bygone Curwen. She did not relish the discovery, and told her husband that he had better burn the picture instead of bringing it home. There was, she averred, something unwholesome about it; not only intrinsically, but in its very resemblance to Charles. Mr. Ward, however, was a practical man of power and affairs - a cotton manufacturer with extensive mills at Riverpoint in the Pawtuxet Valley - and not one to listen to feminine scruples. The picture impressed him mightily with its likeness to his son, and he believed the boy deserved it as a present. In this opinion, it is needless to say, Charles most heartily concurred; and a few days later Mr. Ward located the owner of the house - a small rodent-featured person with a guttural accent - and obtained the whole mantel and overmantel bearing the picture at a curtly fixed priced which cut short the impending torrent of unctuous haggling.
      It now remained to take off the panelling and remove it to the Ward home, where provisions were made for its thorough restoration and installation with an electric mock-fireplace in Charles's third-floor study or library. To Charles was left the task of superintending this removal, and on the twenty-eighth of August he accompanied two expert workmen from the Crooker decorating firm to the house in Olney Court, where the mantel and portrait-bearing overmantel were detached with great care and precision for transportation in the company's motor truck. There was left a space of exposed brickwork marking the chimney's course, and in this young Ward observed a cubical recess about a foot square, which must have lain directly behind the head of the portrait. Curious as to what such a space might mean or contain, the youth approached and looked within; finding beneath the deep coatings of dust and soot some loose yellowed papers, a crude, thick copybook, and a few mouldering textile shreds which may have formed the ribbon binding the rest together. Blowing away the bulk of the dirt and cinders, he took up the book and looked at the bold inscription on its cover. It was in a hand which he had learned to recognise at the Essex Institute, and proclaimed the volume as the ""Journall and Notes of Jos: Curwen, Gent., of Providence-Plantations, Late of Salem.""
      Excited beyond measure by his discovery, Ward shewed the book to the two curious workmen beside him. Their testimony is absolute as to the nature and genuineness of the finding, and Dr. Willett relies on them to help establish his theory that the youth was not mad when he began his major eccentricities. All the other papers were likewise in Curwen's handwriting, and one of them seemed especially portentous because of its inscription: ""To Him Who Shal Come After, & How He May Gett Beyonde Time & ye Spheres."" Another was in a cipher; the same, Ward hoped, as the Hutchinson cipher which had hitherto baffled him. A third, and here the searcher rejoiced, seemed to be a key to the cipher; whilst the fourth and fifth were addressed respectively to ""Edw: Hutchinson, Armiger"" and ""Jedediah Orne, Esq."", 'or Their Heir or Heirs, or Those Represent'g Them'. The sixth and last was inscribed: ""Joseph Curwen his Life and Travells Bet'n ye yeares 1678 and 1687: Of Whither He Voyag'd, Where He Stay'd, Whom He Sawe, and What He Learnt.""

3.

      We have now reached the point from which the more academic school of alienists date Charles Ward's madness. Upon his discovery the youth had looked immediately at a few of the inner pages of the book and manuscripts, and had evidently seen something which impressed him tremendously. Indeed, in shewing the titles to the workmen he appeared to guard the text itself with peculiar care, and to labour under a perturbation for which even the antiquarian and genealogical significance of the find could hardly account. Upon returning home he broke the news with an almost embarrassed air, as if he wished to convey an idea of its supreme importance without having to exhibit the evidence itself. He did not even shew the titles to his parents, but simply told them that he had found some documents in Joseph Curwen's handwriting, ""mostly in cipher"", which would have to be studied very carefully before yielding up their true meaning. It is unlikely that he would have shewn what he did to the workmen, had it not been for their unconcealed curiosity. As it was he doubtless wished to avoid any display of peculiar reticence which would increase their discussion of the matter.
      That night Charles Ward sat up in his room reading the new-found book and papers, and when day came he did not desist. His meals, on his urgent request when his mother called to see what was amiss, were sent up to him; and in the afternoon he appeared only briefly when the men came to install the Curwen picture and mantelpiece in his study. The next night he slept in snatches in his clothes, meanwhile wrestling feverishly with the unravelling of the cipher manuscript. In the morning his mother saw that he was at work on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher, which he had frequently shewn her before; but in response to her query he said that the Curwen key could not be applied to it. That afternoon he abandoned his work and watched the men fascinatedly as they finished their installation of the picture with its woodwork above a cleverly realistic electric log, setting the mock-fireplace and overmantel a little out from the north wall as if a chimney existed, and boxing in the sides with panelling to match the room's. The front panel holding the picture was sawn and hinged to allow cupboard space behind it. After the workmen went he moved his work into the study and sat down before it with his eyes half on the cipher and half on the portrait which stared back at him like a year-adding and century-recalling mirror.
      His parents, subsequently recalling his conduct at this period, give interesting details anent the policy of concealment which he practiced. Before servants he seldom hid any paper which he might be studying, since he rightly assumed that Curwen's intricate and archaic chirography would be too much for them. With his parents, however, he was more circumspect; and unless the manuscript in question were a cipher, or a mere mass of cryptic symbols and unknown ideographs (as that entitled ""To Him Who Shal Come After etc."" seemed to be), he would cover it with some convenient paper until his caller had departed. At night he kept the papers under lock and key in an antique cabinet of his, where he also placed them whenever he left the room. He soon resumed fairly regular hours and habits, except that his long walks and other outside interests seemed to cease. The opening of school, where he now began his senior year, seemed a great bore to him; and he frequently asserted his determination never to bother with college. He had, he said, important special investigations to make, which would provide him with more avenues toward knowledge and the humanities than any university which the world could boast.
      Naturally, only one who had always been more or less studious, eccentric, and solitary could have pursued this course for many days without attracting notice. Ward, however, was constitutionally a scholar and a hermit; hence his parents were less surprised than regretful at the close confinement and secrecy he adopted. At the same time, both his father and mother thought it odd that he would shew them no scrap of his treasure-trove, nor give any connected account of such data as he had deciphered. This reticence he explained away as due to a wish to wait until he might announce some connected revelation, but as the weeks passed without further disclosures there began to grow up between the youth and his family a kind of constraint; intensified in his mother's case by her manifest disapproval of all Curwen delvings.
      During October Ward began visiting the libraries again, but no longer for the antiquarian matter of his former days. Witchcraft and magic, occultism and daemonology, were what he sought now; and when Providence sources proved unfruitful he would take the train for Boston and tap the wealth of the great library in Copley Square, the Widener Library at Harvard, or the Zion Research Library in Brookline, where certain rare works on Biblical subjects are available. He bought extensively, and fitted up a whole additional set of shelves in his study for newly acquired works on uncanny subjects; while during the Christmas holidays he made a round of out-of-town trips including one to Salem to consult certain records at the Essex Institute.
      About the middle of January, 1920, there entered Ward's bearing an element of triumph which he did not explain, and he was no more found at work upon the Hutchinson cipher. Instead, he inaugurated a dual policy of chemical research and record-scanning; fitting up for the one a laboratory in the unused attic of the house, and for the latter haunting all the sources of vital statistics in Providence. Local dealers in drugs and scientific supplies, later questioned, gave astonishingly queer and meaningless catalogues of the substances and instruments he purchased; but clerks at the State House, the City Hall, and the various libraries agree as to the definite object of his second interest. He was searching intensely and feverishly for the grave of Joseph Curwen, from whose slate slab an older generation had so wisely blotted the name.
      Little by little there grew upon the Ward family the conviction that something was wrong. Charles had had freaks and changes of minor interests before, but this growing secrecy and absorption in strange pursuits was unlike even him. His school work was the merest pretence; and although he failed in no test, it could be seen that the old application had all vanished. He had other concernments now; and when not in his new laboratory with a score of obsolete alchemical books, could be found either poring over old burial records down town or glued to his volumes of occult lore in his study, where the startlingly - one almost fancied increasingly - similar features of Joseph Curwen stared blandly at him from the great overmantel on the north wall.
      Late in March Ward added to his archive-searching a ghoulish series of rambles about the various ancient cemeteries of the city. The cause appeared later, when it was learned from City Hall clerks that he had probably found an important clue. His quest had suddenly shifted from the grave of Joseph Curwen to that of one Naphthali Field; and this shift was explained when, upon going over the files that he had been over, the investigators actually found a fragmentary record of Curwen's burial which had escaped the general obliteration, and which stated that the curious leaden coffin had been interred ""10 ft. S. and 5 ft. W. of Naphthali Field's grave in ye - "". The lack of a specified burying-ground in the surviving entry greatly complicated the search, and Naphthali Field's grave seemed as elusive as that of Curwen; but here no systematic effacement had existed, and one might reasonably be expected to stumble on the stone itself even if its record had perished. Hence the rambles - from which St. John's (the former King's) Churchyard and the ancient Congregational burying-ground in the midst of Swan Point Cemetery were excluded, since other statistics had shewn that the only Naphthali Field (obiit 1729) whose grave could have been meant had been a Baptist.

4.

      It was toward May when Dr. Willett, at the request of the senior Ward, and fortified with all the Curwen data which the family had gleaned from Charles in his non-secretive days, talked with the young man. The interview was of little value or conclusiveness, for Willett felt at every moment that Charles was thoroughly master of himself and in touch with matters of real importance; but it at least forced the secretive youth to offer some rational explanation of his recent demeanour. Of a pallid, impassive type not easily shewing embarrassment, Ward seemed quite ready to discuss his pursuits, though not to reveal their object. He stated that the papers of his ancestor had contained some remarkable secrets of early scientific knowledge, for the most part in cipher, of an apparent scope comparable only to the discoveries of Friar Bacon and perhaps surpassing even those. They were, however, meaningless except when correlated with a body of learning now wholly obsolete; so that their immediate presentation to a world equipped only with modern science would rob them of all impressiveness and dramatic significance. To take their vivid place in the history of human thought they must first be correlated by one familiar with the background out of which they evolved, and to this task of correlation Ward was now devoting himself. He was seeking to acquire as fast as possible those neglected arts of old which a true interpreter of the Curwen data must possess, and hoped in time to make a full announcement and presentation of the utmost interest to mankind and to the world of thought. Not even Einstein, he declared, could more profoundly revolutionise the current conception of things.
      As to his graveyard search, whose object he freely admitted, but the details of whose progress he did not relate, he said he had reason to think that Joseph Curwen's mutilated headstone bore certain mystic symbols - carved from directions in his will and ignorantly spared by those who had effaced the name - which were absolutely essential to the final solution of his cryptic system. Curwen, he believed, had wished to guard his secret with care; and had consequently distributed the data in an exceedingly curious fashion. When Dr. Willett asked to see the mystic documents, Ward displayed much reluctance and tried to put him off with such things as photostatic copies of the Hutchinson cipher and Orne formulae and diagrams; but finally shewed him the exteriors of some of the real Curwen finds - the ""Journall and Notes"", the cipher (title in cipher also), and the formula-filled message ""To Him Who Shal Come After"" - and let him glance inside such as were in obscure characters.
      He also opened the diary at a page carefully selected for its innocuousness and gave Willett a glimpse of Curwen's connected handwriting in English. The doctor noted very closely the crabbed and complicated letters, and the general aura of the seventeenth century which clung round both penmanship and style despite the writer's survival into the eighteenth century, and became quickly certain that the document was genuine. The text itself was relatively trivial, and Willett recalled only a fragment:
""Wedn. 16 Octr. 1754. My Sloope the Wakeful this Day putt in from London with XX newe Men pick'd up in ye Indies, Spaniards from Martineco and 2 Dutch Men from Surinam. Ye Dutch Men are like to Desert from have'g hearde Somewhat ill of these Ventures, but I will see to ye Inducing of them to Staye. ffor Mr. Knight Dexter of ye Boy and Book 120 Pieces Camblets, 100 Pieces Assrtd. Cambleteens, 20 Pieces blue Duffles, 100 Pieces Shalloons, 50 Pieces Calamancoes, 300 Pieces each, Shendsoy and Humhums. ffor Mr. Green at ye Elephant 50 Gallon Cyttles, 20 Warm'g Pannes, 15 Bake Cyttles, 10 pr. Smoke'g Tonges. ffor Mr. Perrigo 1 Sett of Awles, ffor Mr. Nightingale 50 Reames prime Foolscap. Say'd ye SABAOTH thrice last Nighte but None appear'd. I must heare more from Mr. H. in Transylvania, tho' it is Harde reach'g him and exceeding strange he can not give me the Use of what he hath so well us'd these hundred yeares. Simon hath not Writ these V. Weekes, but I expecte soon hear'g from him.""
      When upon reaching this point Dr. Willett turned the leaf he was quickly checked by Ward, who almost snatched the book from his grasp. All that the doctor had a chance to see on the newly opened page was a brief pair of sentences; but these, strangely enough, lingered tenaciously in his memory. They ran: ""Ye Verse from Liber-Damnatus be'g spoke V Roodmasses and IV Hallows-Eves, I am Hopeful ye Thing is breed'g Outside ye Spheres. It will drawe One who is to Come, if I can make sure he shal bee, and he shall think on Past thinges and look back thro' all ye yeares, against ye which I must have ready ye Saltes or That to make 'em with.""
      Willett saw no more, but somehow this small glimpse gave a new and vague terror to the painted features of Joseph Curwen which stared blandly down from the overmantel. Ever after that he entertained the odd fancy - which his medical skill of course assured him was only a fancy - that the eyes of the portrait had a sort of wish, if not an actual tendency, to follow young Charles Ward as he moved about the room. He stopped before leaving to study the picture closely, marvelling at its resemblance to Charles and memorising every minute detail of the cryptical, colourless face, even down to a slight scar or pit in the smooth brow above the right eye. Cosmo Alexander, he decided, was a painter worthy of the Scotland that produced Raeburn, and a teacher worthy of his illustrious pupil Gilbert Stuart.
      Assured by the doctor that Charles's mental health was in no danger, but that on the other hand he was engaged in researches which might prove of real importance, the Wards were more lenient than they might otherwise have been when during the following June the youth made positive his refusal to attend college. He had, he declared, studies of much more vital importance to pursue; and intimated a wish to go abroad the following year in order to avail himself of certain sources of data not existing in America. The senior Ward, while denying this latter wish as absurd for a boy of only eighteen, acquiesced regarding the university; so that after a none too brilliant graduation from the Moses Brown School there ensued for Charles a three-year period of intensive occult study and graveyard searching. He became recognised as an eccentric, and dropped even more completely from the sight of his family's friends than he had been before; keeping close to his work and only occasionally making trips to other cities to consult obscure records. Once he went south to talk with a strange old mulatto who dwelt in a swamp and about whom a newspaper had printed a curious article. Again he sought a small village in the Adirondacks whence reports of certain odd ceremonial practices had come. But still his parents forbade him the trip to the Old World which he desired.
      Coming of age in April, 1923, and having previously inherited a small competence from his maternal grandfather, Ward determined at last to take the European trip hitherto denied him. Of his proposed itinerary he would say nothing save that the needs of his studies would carry him to many places, but he promised to write his parents fully and faithfully. When they saw he could not be dissuaded, they ceased all opposition and helped as best they could; so that in June the young man sailed for Liverpool with the farewell blessings of his father and mother, who accompanied him to Boston and waved him out of sight from the White Star pier in Charlestown. Letters soon told of his safe arrival, and of his securing good quarters in Great Russell Street, London; where he proposed to stay, shunning all family friends, till he had exhausted the resources of the British Museum in a certain direction. Of his daily life he wrote but little, for there was little to write. Study and experiment consumed all his time, and he mentioned a laboratory which he had established in one of his rooms. That he said nothing of antiquarian rambles in the glamorous old city with its luring skyline of ancient domes and steeples and its tangles of roads and alleys whose mystic convolutions and sudden vistas alternately beckon and surprise, was taken by his parents as a good index of the degree to which his new interests had engrossed his mind.
      In June, 1924, a brief note told of his departure for Paris, to which he had before made one or two flying trips for material in the Bibliothque Nationale. For three months thereafter he sent only postal cards, giving an address in the Rue St. Jacques and referring to a special search among rare manuscripts in the library of an unnamed private collector. He avoided acquaintances, and no tourists brought back reports of having seen him. Then came a silence, and in October the Wards received a picture card from Prague, Czecho-Slovakia, stating that Charles was in that ancient town for the purpose of conferring with a certain very aged man supposed to be the last living possessor of some very curious mediaeval information. He gave an address in the Neustadt, and announced no move till the following January; when he dropped several cards from Vienna telling of his passage through that city on the way toward a more easterly region whither one of his correspondents and fellow-delvers into the occult had invited him.
      The next card was from Klausenburg in Transylvania, and told of Ward's progress toward his destination. He was going to visit a Baron Ferenczy, whose estate lay in the mountains east of Rakus; and was to be addressed at Rakus in the care of that nobleman. Another card from Rakus a week later, saying that his host's carriage had met him and that he was leaving the village for the mountains, was his last message for a considerable time; indeed, he did not reply to his parents' frequent letters until May, when he wrote to discourage the plan of his mother for a meeting in London, Paris, or Rome during the summer, when the elder Wards were planning to travel in Europe. His researches, he said, were such that he could not leave his present quarters; while the situation of Baron Ferenczy's castle did not favour visits. It was on a crag in the dark wooded mountains, and the region was so shunned by the country folk that normal people could not help feeling ill at ease. Moreover, the Baron was not a person likely to appeal to correct and conservative New England gentlefolk. His aspect and manners had idiosyncrasies, and his age was so great as to be disquieting. It would be better, Charles said, if his parents would wait for his return to Providence; which could scarcely be far distant.
      That return did not, however, take place until May, 1926, when after a few heralding cards the young wanderer quietly slipped into New York on the Homeric and traversed the long miles to Providence by motor-coach, eagerly drinking in the green rolling hills, the fragrant, blossoming orchards, and the white steepled towns of vernal Connecticut; his first taste of ancient New England in nearly four years. When the coach crossed the Pawcatuck and entered Rhode Island amidst the faery goldenness of a late spring afternoon his heart beat with quickened force, and the entry to Providence along Reservoir and Elmwood avenues was a breathless and wonderful thing despite the depths of forbidden lore to which he had delved. At the high square where Broad, Weybosset, and Empire Streets join, he saw before and below him in the fire of sunset the pleasant, remembered houses and domes and steeples of the old town; and his head swam curiously as the vehicle rolled down the terminal behind the Biltmore, bringing into view the great dome and soft, roof-pierced greenery of the ancient hill across the river, and the tall colonial spire of the First Baptist Church limned pink in the magic evening light against the fresh springtime verdure of its precipitous background.
      Old Providence! It was this place and the mysterious forces of its long, continuous history which had brought him into being, and which had drawn him back toward marvels and secrets whose boundaries no prophet might fix. Here lay the arcana, wondrous or dreadful as the case might be, for which all his years of travel and application had been preparing him. A taxicab whirled him through Post Office Square with its glimpse of the river, the old Market House, and the head of the bay, and up the steep curved slope of Waterman Street to Prospect, where the vast gleaming dome and sunset-flushed Ionic columns of the Christian Science Church beckoned northward. Then eight squares past the fine old estates his childish eyes had known, and the quaint brick sidewalks so often trodden by his youthful feet. And at last the little white overtaken farmhouse on the right, on the left the classic Adam porch and stately bayed facade of the great brick house where he was born. It was twilight, and Charles Dexter Ward had come home.

5.

      A school of alienists slightly less academic than Dr. Lyman's assign to Ward's European trip the beginning of his true madness. Admitting that he was sane when he started, they believe that his conduct upon returning implies a disastrous change. But even to this claim Dr. Willett refuses to accede. There was, he insists, something later; and the queernesses of the youth at this stage he attributes to the practice of rituals learned abroad - odd enough things, to be sure, but by no means implying mental aberration on the part of their celebrant. Ward himself, though visibly aged and hardened, was still normal in his general reactions; and in several talks with Willett displayed a balance which no madman - even an incipient one - could feign continuously for long. What elicited the notion of insanity at this period were the sounds heard at all hours from Ward's attic laboratory, in which he kept himself most of the time. There were chantings and repetitions, and thunderous declamations in uncanny rhythms; and although these sounds were always in Ward's own voice, there was something in the quality of that voice, and in the accents of the formulae it pronounced, which could not but chill the blood of every hearer. It was noticed that Nig, the venerable and beloved black cat of the household, bristled and arched his back perceptibly when certain of the tones were heard.
      The odours occasionally wafted from the laboratory were likewise exceedingly strange. Sometimes they were very noxious, but more often they were aromatic, with a haunting, elusive quality which seemed to have the power of inducing fantastic images. People who smelled them had a tendency to glimpse momentary mirages of enormous vistas, with strange hills or endless avenues of sphinxes and hippogriffs stretching off into infinite distance. Ward did not resume his old-time rambles, but applied himself diligently to the strange books he had brought home, and to equally strange delvings within his quarters; explaining that European sources had greatly enlarged the possibilities of his work, and promising great revelations in the years to come. His older aspect increased to a startling degree his resemblance to the Curwen portrait in his library; and Dr. Willett would often pause by the latter after a call, marvelling at the virtual identity, and reflecting that only the small pit above the picture's right eye now remained to differentiate the long-dead wizard from the living youth. These calls of Willett's, undertaken at the request of the senior Wards, were curious affairs. Ward at no time repulsed the doctor, but the latter saw that he could never reach the young man's inner psychology. Frequently he noted peculiar things about; little wax images of grotesque design on the shelves or tables, and the half-erased remnants of circles, triangles, and pentagrams in chalk or charcoal on the cleared central space of the large room. And always in the night those rhythms and incantations thundered, till it became very difficult to keep servants or suppress furtive talk of Charles's madness.
      In January, 1927, a peculiar incident occurred. One night about midnight, as Charles was chanting a ritual whose weird cadence echoed unpleasantly through the house below, there came a sudden gust of chill wind from the bay, and a faint, obscure trembling of the earth which everyone in the neighbourhood noted. At the same time the cat exhibited phenomenal traces of fright, while dogs bayed for as much as a mile around. This was the prelude to a sharp thunderstorm, anomalous for the season, which brought with it such a crash that Mr. and Mrs. Ward believed the house had been struck. They rushed upstairs to see what damage had been done, but Charles met them at the door to the attic; pale, resolute, and portentous, with an almost fearsome combination of triumph and seriousness on his face. He assured them that the house had not really been struck, and that the storm would soon be over. They paused, and looking through a window saw that he was indeed right; for the lightning flashed farther and farther off, whilst the trees ceased to bend in the strange frigid gust from the water. The thunder sank to a sort of dull mumbling chuckle and finally died away. Stars came out, and the stamp of triumph on Charles Ward's face crystallised into a very singular expression.
      For two months or more after this incident Ward was less confined than usual to his laboratory. He exhibited a curious interest in the weather, and made odd inquiries about the date of the spring thawing of the ground. One night late in March he left the house after midnight, and did not return till almost morning; when his mother, being wakeful, heard a rumbling motor draw up to the carriage entrance. Muffled oaths could be distinguished, and Mrs. Ward, rising and going to the window, saw four dark figures removing a long, heavy box from a truck at Charles's direction and carrying it within by the side door. She heard laboured breathing and ponderous footfalls on the stairs, and finally a dull thumping in the attic; after which the footfalls descended again, and the four men reappeared outside and drove off in their truck.
      The next day Charles resumed his strict attic seclusion, drawing down the dark shades of his laboratory windows and appearing to be working on some metal substance. He would open the door to no one, and steadfastly refused all proffered food. About noon a wrenching sound followed by a terrible cry and a fall were heard, but when Mrs. Ward rapped at the door her son at length answered faintly, and told her that nothing had gone amiss. The hideous and indescribable stench now welling out was absolutely harmless and unfortunately necessary. Solitude was the one prime essential, and he would appear later for dinner. That afternoon, after the conclusion of some odd hissing sounds which came from behind the locked portal, he did finally appear; wearing an extremely haggard aspect and forbidding anyone to enter the laboratory upon any pretext. This, indeed, proved the beginning of a new policy of secrecy; for never afterward was any other person permitted to visit either the mysterious garret workroom or the adjacent storeroom which he cleaned out, furnished roughly, and added to his inviolably private domain as a sleeping apartment. Here he lived, with books brought up from his library beneath, till the time he purchased the Pawtuxet bungalow and moved to it all his scientific effects.
      In the evening Charles secured the paper before the rest of the family and damaged part of it through an apparent accident. Later on Dr. Willett, having fixed the date from statements by various members of the household, looked up an intact copy at the Journal office and found that in the destroyed section the following small item had occurred:
Nocturnal Diggers Surprised in
North Burial Ground

Robert Hart, night watchman at the North Burial Ground, this morning discovered a party of several men with a motor truck in the oldest part of the cemetery, but apparently frightened them off before they had accomplished whatever their object may have been.
      The discovery took place at about four o'clock, when Hart's attention was attracted by the sound of a motor outside his shelter. Investigating, he saw a large truck on the main drive several rods away; but could not reach it before the sound of his feet on the gravel had revealed his approach. The men hastily placed a large box in the truck and drove away toward the street before they could be overtaken; and since no known grave was disturbed, Hart believes that this box was an object which they wished to bury.
      The diggers must have been at work for a long while before detection, for Hart found an enormous hole dug at a considerable distance back from the roadway in the lot of Amasa Field, where most of the old stones have long ago disappeared. The hole, a place as large and deep as a grave, was empty; and did not coincide with any interment mentioned in the cemetery records.
      Sergt. Riley of the Second Station viewed the spot and gave the opinion that the hole was dug by bootleggers rather gruesomely and ingeniously seeking a safe cache for liquor in a place not likely to be disturbed. In reply to questions Hart said he thought the escaping truck had headed up Rochambeau Avenue, though he could not be sure.
      During the next few days Ward was seldom seen by his family. Having added sleeping quarters to his attic realm, he kept closely to himself there, ordering food brought to the door and not taking it in until after the servant had gone away. The droning of monotonous formulae and the chanting of bizarre rhythms recurred at intervals, while at other times occasional listeners could detect the sound of tinkling glass, hissing chemicals, running water, or roaring gas flames. Odours of the most unplaceable quality, wholly unlike any before noted, hung at times around the door; and the air of tension observable in the young recluse whenever he did venture briefly forth was such as to excite the keenest speculation. Once he made a hasty trip to the Athenaeum for a book he required, and again he hired a messenger to fetch him a highly obscure volume from Boston. Suspense was written portentously over the whole situation, and both the family and Dr. Willett confessed themselves wholly at a loss what to do or think about it.

6.

      Then on the fifteenth of April a strange development occurred. While nothing appeared to grow different in kind, there was certainly a very terrible difference in degree; and Dr. Willett somehow attaches great significance to the change. The day was Good Friday, a circumstance of which the servants made much, but which others quite naturally dismiss as an irrelevant coincidence. Late in the afternoon young Ward began repeating a certain formula in a singularly loud voice, at the same time burning some substance so pungent that its fumes escaped over the entire house. The formula was so plainly audible in the hall outside the locked door that Mrs. Ward could not help memorising it as she waited and listened anxiously, and later on she was able to write it down at Dr. Willett's request. It ran as follows, and experts have told Dr. Willett that its very close analogue can be found in the mystic writings of ""Eliphas Levi"", that cryptic soul who crept through a crack in the forbidden door and glimpsed the frightful vistas of the void beyond:
""Per Adonai Eloim, Adonai Jehova,
Adonai Sabaoth, Metraton On Agla Mathon,
verbum pythonicum, mysterium salamandrae,
conventus sylvorum, antra gnomorum,
daemonia Coeli Gad, Almousin, Gibor, Jehosua,
Evam, Zariatnatmik, veni, veni, veni.""
      This had been going on for two hours without change or intermission when over all the neighbourhood a pandaemoniac howling of dogs set in. The extent of this howling can be judged from the space it received in the papers the next day, but to those in the Ward household it was overshadowed by the odour which instantly followed it; a hideous, all-pervasive odour which none of them had ever smelt before or have ever smelt since. In the midst of this mephitic flood there came a very perceptible flash like that of lightning, which would have been blinding and impressive but for the daylight around; and then was heard the voice that no listener can ever forget because of its thunderous remoteness, its incredible depth, and its eldritch dissimilarity to Charles Ward's voice. It shook the house, and was clearly heard by at least two neighbours above the howling of the dogs. Mrs. Ward, who had been listening in despair outside her son's locked laboratory, shivered as she recognised its hellish import; for Charles had told her of its evil fame in dark books, and of the manner in which it had thundered, according to the Fenner letters, above the doomed Pawtuxet farmhouse on the night of Joseph Curwen's annihilation. There was no mistaking that nightmare phrase, for Charles had described it too vividly in the old days when he had talked frankly of his Curwen investigations. And yet it was only this fragment of an archaic and forgotten language: ""DIES MIES JESCHET BOENE DOESEF DOUVEMA ENITEMAUS"".
      Close upon this thundering there came a momentary darkening of the daylight, though sunset was still an hour distant, and then a puff of added odour different from the first but equally unknown and intolerable. Charles was chanting again now and his mother could hear syllables that sounded like ""Yi-nash-Yog-Sothoth-he-lgeb-fi-throdog"" - ending in a ""Yah!"" whose maniacal force mounted in an ear-splitting crescendo. A second later all previous memories were effaced by the wailing scream which burst out with frantic explosiveness and gradually changed form to a paroxysm of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Mrs. Ward, with the mingled fear and blind courage of maternity, advanced and knocked affrightedly at the concealing panels, but obtained no sign of recognition. She knocked again, but paused nervelessly as a second shriek arose, this one unmistakably in the familiar voice of her son, and sounding concurrently with the still bursting cachinnations of that other voice. Presently she fainted, although she is still unable to recall the precise and immediate cause. Memory sometimes makes merciful deletions.
      Mr. Ward returned from the business section at about quarter past six; and not finding his wife downstairs, was told by the frightened servants that she was probably watching at Charles's door, from which the sounds had been far stranger than ever before. Mounting the stairs at once, he saw Mrs. Ward stretched at full length on the floor of the corridor outside the laboratory; and realising that she had fainted, hastened to fetch a glass of water from a set bowl in a neighbouring alcove. Dashing the cold fluid in her face, he was heartened to observe an immediate response on her part, and was watching the bewildered opening of her eyes when a chill shot through him and threatened to reduce him to the very state from which she was emerging. For the seemingly silent laboratory was not as silent as it had appeared to be, but held the murmurs of a tense, muffled conversation in tones too low for comprehension, yet of a quality profoundly disturbing to the soul.
      It was not, of course, new for Charles to mutter formulae; but this muttering was definitely different. It was so palpably a dialogue, or imitation of a dialogue, with the regular alteration of inflections suggesting question and answer, statement and response. One voice was undisguisedly that of Charles, but the other had a depth and hollowness which the youth's best powers of ceremonial mimicry had scarcely approached before. There was something hideous, blasphemous, and abnormal about it, and but for a cry from his recovering wife which cleared his mind by arousing his protective instincts it is not likely that Theodore Howland Ward could have maintained for nearly a year more his old boast that he had never fainted. As it was, he seized his wife in his arms and bore her quickly downstairs before she could notice the voices which had so horribly disturbed him. Even so, however, he was not quick enough to escape catching something himself which caused him to stagger dangerously with his burden. For Mrs. Ward's cry had evidently been heard by others than he, and there had come from behind the locked door the first distinguishable words which that masked and terrible colloquy had yielded. They were merely an excited caution in Charles's own voice, but somehow their implications held a nameless fright for the father who overheard them. The phrase was just this: ""Sshh! - write!""
      Mr. and Mrs. Ward conferred at some length after dinner, and the former resolved to have a firm and serious talk with Charles that very night. No matter how important the object, such conduct could no longer be permitted; for these latest developments transcended every limit of sanity and formed a menace to the order and nervous well-being of the entire household. The youth must indeed have taken complete leave of his senses, since only downright madness could have prompted the wild screams and imaginary conversations in assumed voices which the present day had brought forth. All this must be stopped, or Mrs. Ward would be made ill and the keeping of servants become an impossibility.
      Mr. Ward rose at the close of the meal and started upstairs for Charles's laboratory. On the third floor, however, he paused at the sounds which he heard proceeding from the now disused library of his son. Books were apparently being flung about and papers wildly rustled, and upon stepping to the door Mr. Ward beheld the youth within, excitedly assembling a vast armful of literary matter of every size and shape. Charles's aspect was very drawn and haggard, and he dropped his entire load with a start at the sound of his father's voice. At the elder man's command he sat down, and for some time listened to the admonitions he had so long deserved. There was no scene. At the end of the lecture he agreed that his father was right, and that his noises, mutterings, incantations, and chemical odours were indeed inexcusable nuisances. He agreed to a policy of greater quiet, though insisting on a prolongation of his extreme privacy. Much of his future work, he said, was in any case purely book research; and he could obtain quarters elsewhere for any such vocal rituals as might be necessary at a later stage. For the fright and fainting of his mother he expressed the keenest contrition, and explained that the conversation later heard was part of an elaborate symbolism designed to create a certain mental atmosphere. His use of abstruse technical terms somewhat bewildered Mr. Ward, but the parting impression was one of undeniable sanity and poise despite a mysterious tension of the utmost gravity. The interview was really quite inconclusive, and as Charles picked up his armful and left the room Mr. Ward hardly knew what to make of the entire business. It was as mysterious as the death of poor old Nig, whose stiffening form had been found an hour before in the basement, with staring eyes and fear-distorted mouth.
      Driven by some vague detective instinct, the bewildered parent now glanced curiously at the vacant shelves to see what his son had taken up to the attic. The youth's library was plainly and rigidly classified, so that one might tell at a glance the books or at least the kind of books which had been withdrawn. On this occasion Mr. Ward was astonished to find that nothing of the occult or the antiquarian, beyond what had been previously removed, was missing. These new withdrawals were all modern items; histories, scientific treatises, geographies, manuals of literature, philosophic works, and certain contemporary newspapers and magazines. It was a very curious shift from Charles Ward's recent run of reading, and the father paused in a growing vortex of perplexity and an engulfing sense of strangeness. The strangeness was a very poignant sensation, and almost clawed at his chest as he strove to see just what was wrong around him. Something was indeed wrong, and tangibly as well as spiritually so. Ever since he had been in this room he had known that something was amiss, and at last it dawned upon him what it was.
      On the north wall rose still the ancient carved overmantel from the house in Olney Court, but to the cracked and precariously restored oils of the large Curwen portrait disaster had come. Time and unequal heating had done their work at last, and at some time since the room's last cleaning the worst had happened. Peeling clear of the wood, curling tighter and tighter, and finally crumbling into small bits with what must have been malignly silent suddenness, the portrait of Joseph Curwen had resigned forever its staring surveillance of the youth it so strangely resembled, and now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust.
","VII.

Yet all this was only the prologue of the actual Dunwich horror. Formalities were gone through by bewildered officials, abnormal details were duly kept from press and public, and men were sent to Dunwich and Aylesbury to look up property and notify any who might be heirs of the late Wilbur Whateley. They found the countryside in great agitation, both because of the growing rumblings beneath the domed hills, and because of the unwonted stench and the surging, lapping sounds which came increasingly from the great empty shell formed by Whateley’s boarded-up farmhouse. Earl Sawyer, who tended the horse and cattle during Wilbur’s absence, had developed a woefully acute case of nerves. The officials devised excuses not to enter the noisome boarded place; and were glad to confine their survey of the deceased’s living quarters, the newly mended sheds, to a single visit. They filed a ponderous report at the court-house in Aylesbury, and litigations concerning heirship are said to be still in progress amongst the innumerable Whateleys, decayed and undecayed, of the upper Miskatonic valley.
      An almost interminable manuscript in strange characters, written in a huge ledger and adjudged a sort of diary because of the spacing and the variations in ink and penmanship, presented a baffling puzzle to those who found it on the old bureau which served as its owner’s desk. After a week of debate it was sent to Miskatonic University, together with the deceased’s collection of strange books, for study and possible translation; but even the best linguists soon saw that it was not likely to be unriddled with ease. No trace of the ancient gold with which Wilbur and Old Whateley always paid their debts has yet been discovered.
      It was in the dark of September 9th that the horror broke loose. The hill noises had been very pronounced during the evening, and dogs barked frantically all night. Early risers on the 10th noticed a peculiar stench in the air. About seven o’clock Luther Brown, the hired boy at George Corey’s, between Cold Spring Glen and the village, rushed frenziedly back from his morning trip to Ten-Acre Meadow with the cows. He was almost convulsed with fright as he stumbled into the kitchen; and in the yard outside the no less frightened herd were pawing and lowing pitifully, having followed the boy back in the panic they shared with him. Between gasps Luther tried to stammer out his tale to Mrs. Corey.
      “Up thar in the rud beyont the glen, Mis’ Corey—they’s suthin’ ben thar! It smells like thunder, an’ all the bushes an’ little trees is pushed back from the rud like they’d a haouse ben moved along of it. An’ that ain’t the wust, nuther. They’s prints in the rud, Mis’ Corey—great raound prints as big as barrel-heads, all sunk daown deep like a elephant had ben along, only they’s a sight more nor four feet could make! I looked at one or two afore I run, an’ I see every one was covered with lines spreadin’ aout from one place, like as if big palm-leaf fans—twict or three times as big as any they is—hed of ben paounded daown into the rud. An’ the smell was awful, like what it is araound Wizard Whateley’s ol’ haouse. . . .”
      Here he faltered, and seemed to shiver afresh with the fright that had sent him flying home. Mrs. Corey, unable to extract more information, began telephoning the neighbours; thus starting on its rounds the overture of panic that heralded the major terrors. When she got Sally Sawyer, housekeeper at Seth Bishop’s, the nearest place to Whateley’s, it became her turn to listen instead of transmit; for Sally’s boy Chauncey, who slept poorly, had been up on the hill toward Whateley’s, and had dashed back in terror after one look at the place, and at the pasturage where Mr. Bishop’s cows had been left out all night.
      “Yes, Mis’ Corey,” came Sally’s tremulous voice over the party wire, “Cha’ncey he just come back a-postin’, and couldn’t haff talk fer bein’ scairt! He says Ol’ Whateley’s haouse is all blowed up, with the timbers scattered raound like they’d ben dynamite inside; only the bottom floor ain’t through, but is all covered with a kind o’ tar-like stuff that smells awful an’ drips daown offen the aidges onto the graoun’ whar the side timbers is blown away. An’ they’s awful kinder marks in the yard, tew—great raound marks bigger raound than a hogshead, an’ all sticky with stuff like is on the blowed-up haouse. Cha’ncey he says they leads off into the medders, whar a great swath wider’n a barn is matted daown, an’ all the stun walls tumbled every whichway wherever it goes.
      “An’ he says, says he, Mis’ Corey, as haow he sot to look fer Seth’s caows, frighted ez he was; an’ faound ’em in the upper pasture nigh the Devil’s Hop Yard in an awful shape. Haff on ’em’s clean gone, an’ nigh haff o’ them that’s left is sucked most dry o’ blood, with sores on ’em like they’s ben on Whateley’s cattle ever senct Lavinny’s black brat was born. Seth he’s gone aout naow to look at ’em, though I’ll vaow he wun’t keer ter git very nigh Wizard Whateley’s! Cha’ncey didn’t look keerful ter see whar the big matted-daown swath led arter it leff the pasturage, but he says he thinks it p’inted towards the glen rud to the village.
      “I tell ye, Mis’ Corey, they’s suthin’ abroad as hadn’t orter be abroad, an’ I for one think that black Wilbur Whateley, as come to the bad eend he desarved, is at the bottom of the breedin’ of it. He wa’n’t all human hisself, I allus says to everybody; an’ I think he an’ Ol’ Whateley must a raised suthin’ in that there nailed-up haouse as ain’t even so human as he was. They’s allus ben unseen things araound Dunwich—livin’ things—as ain’t human an’ ain’t good fer human folks.
      “The graoun’ was a-talkin’ lass night, an’ towards mornin’ Cha’ncey he heerd the whippoorwills so laoud in Col’ Spring Glen he couldn’t sleep nun. Then he thought he heerd another faint-like saound over towards Wizard Whateley’s—a kinder rippin’ or tearin’ o’ wood, like some big box er crate was bein’ opened fur off. What with this an’ that, he didn’t git to sleep at all till sunup, an’ no sooner was he up this mornin’, but he’s got to go over to Whateley’s an’ see what’s the matter. He see enough, I tell ye, Mis’ Corey! This dun’t mean no good, an’ I think as all the men-folks ought to git up a party an’ do suthin’. I know suthin’ awful’s abaout, an’ feel my time is nigh, though only Gawd knows jest what it is.
      “Did your Luther take accaount o’ whar them big tracks led tew? No? Wal, Mis’ Corey, ef they was on the glen rud this side o’ the glen, an’ ain’t got to your haouse yet, I calc’late they must go into the glen itself. They would do that. I allus says Col’ Spring Glen ain’t no healthy nor decent place. The whippoorwills an’ fireflies there never did act like they was creaters o’ Gawd, an’ they’s them as says ye kin hear strange things a-rushin’ an’ a-talkin’ in the air daown thar ef ye stand in the right place, atween the rock falls an’ Bear’s Den.”
      By that noon fully three-quarters of the men and boys of Dunwich were trooping over the roads and meadows between the new-made Whateley ruins and Cold Spring Glen, examining in horror the vast, monstrous prints, the maimed Bishop cattle, the strange, noisome wreck of the farmhouse, and the bruised, matted vegetation of the fields and roadsides. Whatever had burst loose upon the world had assuredly gone down into the great sinister ravine; for all the trees on the banks were bent and broken, and a great avenue had been gouged in the precipice-hanging underbrush. It was as though a house, launched by an avalanche, had slid down through the tangled growths of the almost vertical slope. From below no sound came, but only a distant, undefinable foetor; and it is not to be wondered at that the men preferred to stay on the edge and argue, rather than descend and beard the unknown Cyclopean horror in its lair. Three dogs that were with the party had barked furiously at first, but seemed cowed and reluctant when near the glen. Someone telephoned the news to the Aylesbury Transcript; but the editor, accustomed to wild tales from Dunwich, did no more than concoct a humorous paragraph about it; an item soon afterward reproduced by the Associated Press.
      That night everyone went home, and every house and barn was barricaded as stoutly as possible. Needless to say, no cattle were allowed to remain in open pasturage. About two in the morning a frightful stench and the savage barking of the dogs awakened the household at Elmer Frye’s, on the eastern edge of Cold Spring Glen, and all agreed that they could hear a sort of muffled swishing or lapping sound from somewhere outside. Mrs. Frye proposed telephoning the neighbours, and Elmer was about to agree when the noise of splintering wood burst in upon their deliberations. It came, apparently, from the barn; and was quickly followed by a hideous screaming and stamping amongst the cattle. The dogs slavered and crouched close to the feet of the fear-numbed family. Frye lit a lantern through force of habit, but knew it would be death to go out into that black farmyard. The children and the womenfolk whimpered, kept from screaming by some obscure, vestigial instinct of defence which told them their lives depended on silence. At last the noise of the cattle subsided to a pitiful moaning, and a great snapping, crashing, and crackling ensued. The Fryes, huddled together in the sitting-room, did not dare to move until the last echoes died away far down in Cold Spring Glen. Then, amidst the dismal moans from the stable and the daemoniac piping of late whippoorwills in the glen, Selina Frye tottered to the telephone and spread what news she could of the second phase of the horror.
      The next day all the countryside was in a panic; and cowed, uncommunicative groups came and went where the fiendish thing had occurred. Two titan swaths of destruction stretched from the glen to the Frye farmyard, monstrous prints covered the bare patches of ground, and one side of the old red barn had completely caved in. Of the cattle, only a quarter could be found and identified. Some of these were in curious fragments, and all that survived had to be shot. Earl Sawyer suggested that help be asked from Aylesbury or Arkham, but others maintained it would be of no use. Old Zebulon Whateley, of a branch that hovered about half way between soundness and decadence, made darkly wild suggestions about rites that ought to be practiced on the hill-tops. He came of a line where tradition ran strong, and his memories of chantings in the great stone circles were not altogether connected with Wilbur and his grandfather.
      Darkness fell upon a stricken countryside too passive to organise for real defence. In a few cases closely related families would band together and watch in the gloom under one roof; but in general there was only a repetition of the barricading of the night before, and a futile, ineffective gesture of loading muskets and setting pitchforks handily about. Nothing, however, occurred except some hill noises; and when the day came there were many who hoped that the new horror had gone as swiftly as it had come. There were even bold souls who proposed an offensive expedition down in the glen, though they did not venture to set an actual example to the still reluctant majority.
      When night came again the barricading was repeated, though there was less huddling together of families. In the morning both the Frye and the Seth Bishop households reported excitement among the dogs and vague sounds and stenches from afar, while early explorers noted with horror a fresh set of the monstrous tracks in the road skirting Sentinel Hill. As before, the sides of the road shewed a bruising indicative of the blasphemously stupendous bulk of the horror; whilst the conformation of the tracks seemed to argue a passage in two directions, as if the moving mountain had come from Cold Spring Glen and returned to it along the same path. At the base of the hill a thirty-foot swath of crushed shrubbery saplings led steeply upward, and the seekers gasped when they saw that even the most perpendicular places did not deflect the inexorable trail. Whatever the horror was, it could scale a sheer stony cliff of almost complete verticality; and as the investigators climbed around to the hill’s summit by safer routes they saw that the trail ended—or rather, reversed—there.
      It was here that the Whateleys used to build their hellish fires and chant their hellish rituals by the table-like stone on May-Eve and Hallowmass. Now that very stone formed the centre of a vast space thrashed around by the mountainous horror, whilst upon its slightly concave surface was a thick and foetid deposit of the same tarry stickiness observed on the floor of the ruined Whateley farmhouse when the horror escaped. Men looked at one another and muttered. Then they looked down the hill. Apparently the horror had descended by a route much the same as that of its ascent. To speculate was futile. Reason, logic, and normal ideas of motivation stood confounded. Only old Zebulon, who was not with the group, could have done justice to the situation or suggested a plausible explanation.
      Thursday night began much like the others, but it ended less happily. The whippoorwills in the glen had screamed with such unusual persistence that many could not sleep, and about 3 A.M. all the party telephones rang tremulously. Those who took down their receivers heard a fright-mad voice shriek out, “Help, oh, my Gawd! . . .” and some thought a crashing sound followed the breaking off of the exclamation. There was nothing more. No one dared do anything, and no one knew till morning whence the call came. Then those who had heard it called everyone on the line, and found that only the Fryes did not reply. The truth appeared an hour later, when a hastily assembled group of armed men trudged out to the Frye place at the head of the glen. It was horrible, yet hardly a surprise. There were more swaths and monstrous prints, but there was no longer any house. It had caved in like an egg-shell, and amongst the ruins nothing living or dead could be discovered. Only a stench and a tarry stickiness. The Elmer Fryes had been erased from Dunwich.
",True
"The Inn stands at the end of our largest thoroughfare, which is a few blocks long, but seems a thousand miles. With my heavy valise, I'm fortunate that I only have to walk half that far from the restaurant at which I've just dined. Once every month, I scrounge up enough money to have dinner at the Golden Goose. Despite my reputation in this village, I eventually come to long for the clamor of a crowd. The four walls of my father's house are my sanctuary and prison otherwise. Only Theodora, our cook and housekeeper that we've had since before I was born, keeps me company there. I would take her with me on my monthly outings to Leight's sole restaurant, but she stubbornly says she prefers her own meals all the same.
That's only part of the reason why she won't go, however. I've told her that even at the Golden Goose, the diners there glare at me out of the corners of their eyes and lower them to their plates if I look their way. Theodora is an even more self-contained soul than I am, and loathes being stared at ""by all and sundry"".
The evening sun is sinking low on the horizon, and the villagers around me are concealed in shadows. I don't want anyone coming up and asking me about my three-night errand - not that they would. When I prove the rumors about my forefathers' establishment wrong, I'll make them all look like fools anyway!
Those unfamiliar with Leight will notice three ever-present things as they travel down its main street: stalwart people, churches, and Cemetery Hill looming in the distance. Ever since I was a child, I sensed an eerie connection among these features of our humble village. Just what that is, I cannot say. They are ordinary enough on the surface, and yet I can't help feeling that there's something sinister about them.
My neighbors are proud, hard-working souls. Most of them live on farms on the outskirts of town. Even so, they trudge nearly every day to its center in order to seek supplies. The men of Leight are burly, with long arms and sunburnt faces, trusting in their toil and suspicious of learnt folk. It's just as well that they're illiterate. They wouldn't have much use for books even if they had the coin to buy them. Their wives, far from being what some people would call ladies, are just as industrious and sturdy as their husbands. I see them more often in town, as buying sundries is women's work, but that doesn't mean they're any more inclined to talk to me. They keep to themselves, as I do, but it seems their hearts are under lock and key.
I suspect that a large part of this has to do with the fact that they fear God as much as my family's past. Out of every ten buildings in Leight, at least four are churches. The Baptists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Evangelicals, Lutherans, Methodists, and even more denominations are continually at war. They each claim to believe in the Scriptures, and in the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. However, they also claim that all the others are false, to a greater or lesser degree. As for me? I attend no house of worship, and that is no great loss to me. My father, Lemuel Dawson, said that his own chapel - the one on Cemetery Hill - had been abruptly shuttered one Hallowe'en night. His fellow congregants then fled to other nearby towns.
""My dear Millie,"" he had told me, ""the one true church on this Earth has been lost, and a year too early."" That's another thing I've failed to understand, even though it haunts me as much as the Inn itself does.
Hurrying to get there, I pass the people and churches without much concern. Only the visage of the former Gallows Hill, now containing graves instead of a gibbet, catches my eye. Buried there are not only the fifty-three souls who were hanged during the Purge (or so we called our witchcraft panic), but criminals and paupers. I've often wondered why having no money is considered as great a crime as sorcery or theft, but in this village, if you're poor, then you are cursed. ""God helps those who help themselves"": so say we. I cannot help myself as I find my feet sprinting rather than walking toward the façade of the Dreamer's Inn.
The sky, now a cool blue-violet twilight, is growing dark. I'll soon leave light (and Leight?) behind. Even though I've been inside the Dreamers' Inn countless times, I've always been a bit scared of the place. Why is it that, even though it's supposed to be a haven for travelers, it seems like a mausoleum instead? I know that once I venture beyond its door, beneath the rickety sign that has announced its presence since the days of Abner Dawes, I'll be in a world unto itself. As such, I pause on the threshold and gaze up at its intimidating turret. Should I turn back and forget about spending a single night there, let alone three?
Then I remember my reasons, both monetary and otherwise, and step inside.
","Spoonbill Village, Northernmost Quang Bin Province, SRV
June 29, 2011
As the two young adults stared at each other, nothing but shock registered in either of their brains. Not the stares of the villagers nor of Joseph's classmates affected them in their surprise. For Joseph, the shock was mixed with relief at finding his girlfriend safe, concern about his own impending fate as the main course and a strange confusion about what the heck was going on. For Marie, it was the sheer shock of actually seeing her boyfriend here and her puzzlement at the reason why that added to her numb bewilderment, not to mention the fear for his life at what might happen next.
As the shock broke, she knew that she had to act. And since the village chief was here...
""You cannot sacrifice this man! His family are allies are of my parents, his parents are involved in our business. If anything happens to him, calamity will come upon us all!"" Demanding such things of the chieftain might have been rude, presumptuous and even insulting, but everything she said was the truth. If Joseph died, things would go down the toilet very quickly.
Before the men could answer back, the crashing of a great bronze gong echoed over the crowd and all heads turned towards the source of the cacophony, the temple. Coming down the steps was a red lacquered palanquin with red curtains. Four men in deeply-hooded red robes supported the wooden structure, it's bracing poles upon their shoulders. As they reached the courtyard proper, one of the warriors who had exited the large house went up to the palanquin, distinguished from the others by leather shoes on his feet, a broad circlet of gold around his black head-wrap and a single pheasant tail feather standing erect at the forefront of this headdress. Joseph could distinguish some sort of conversation happening, the words too quiet to make out. For several tense seconds he, Marie, his classmates and his professor waited for what would happen.
What happened was that from this man, the villages hereditary chief, the order was given for them to be spared... for now. Another order was given to separate them and hold them in isolation until a final decision could be made.
As Joseph was carried away into a side street, he could almost glimpse Marie following the palanquin into the Temple, including his Professor, still sitting in his basket.
Several Hours Later
Joseph could never fully recall all of the things that he had pondered in those hours, sitting with his hands and feet bound, alone in that dark storehouse, smelling of rice and preserved vegetables. He had found Marie and as he had suspected for a number of years, she apparently belonged to a semi-unique culture of Vietic speakers in her purported homeland of the Annamite Range. What came as a surprise was that they apparently, if the few bits of coherent speech he had heard were any indication, practiced some sort of ritualized homicide and may well be inclined toward the consumption of ""long pork""... and at the moment, that could include him.
Eventually the door opened and soft, yellow light flooded the room, illuminating bags of rice and strings of hanging vegetables. In the doorway was Marie, carrying a paper covered lantern in one hand, a bronze bowl in the other and now hat-less. As he had briefly noticed earlier, the muscles on her limbs now had a definition to them that hadn't existed back in Glaston, her frame slightly more lean than the apprentice cook that he remembered. She was dressed just as she had been before, was still tattooed everywhere he could see and, as she she came over to where he was sitting, the light in the lantern seemed more like... fireflies than any kind of flame.
""So... nice place you have here."" He hoped that starting slow could take some of the edge off the dangerous situation in which he now faced himself.
""Yeah... it is nice, I guess."" Marie put the bowl (now seen to be carrying water) and the lantern on the ground beside him and knelt to untie his bonds. ""I'm sorry that you got dragged into this. When I borrowed that record... I had no idea that..."" She closed her eyes and sighed in a way that, to Joseph, made the tattoos on her face dance almost... alluringly. ""There's a lot that I just couldn't tell you when we were younger. My people are used to hiding... maybe tooused to it by now. I want to tell you so much, but I... I don't know where to begin.""
""Then start from the beginning. That always seems to be how it's done in the movies."" Rubbing his wrists and ankles to get the circulation back, Joseph wondered just what he was going to hear.
What he heard was everythingabout her people, the stories she had enraptured Cora with plus a whole lot of other stuff, fantastic and gruesome in equal measure. The human sacrifice, the ritual cannibalism, the intermittent persecution by Chinese, Champa, Viet and French over the last two thousand years... nothing was left out. As he sipped water from the bowl, she described how her peoples ancestors had been Au Lac refugees from the Red River Valley, driven south into the mountains by the invading Qin Chinese. On the edge of total starvation, they had been saved when a spirit animal, a black water buffalo cow with a seemingly endless number of calves trailing behind, had emerged from the highland jungle at the chanting of animist shamans travelling with the group.
Behind those spectral buffalo had emerged their wonder and salvation: men in red robes with the legs of goats, monks from a far, high land called Leng. These strange people, who called themselves Shugoran, had taught this diverse group of farmers, mountain peoples, priests, urbanites and servants many useful magics: how to grow up to twelve crops of rice per year, how to draw water and metal from the earth, how to commune with the forces of the universe and not annoy them too severely, how to pass perfect memories from father to son, how to ensure the fertility of people, livestock and game and how to armor a person's skin so as to stop any blade or spear or arrow or sling stone.
It was this last spell, combined with the requirement in orthodox Shugoran magic for Human (or similar) sacrifice and cannibalism that brought on the next mess. When the Qin Dynasty collapsed under the weight of the first emperor's paranoia and his successors incompetence, suicide and the resultant power struggle, the men of the new ""Leng Viet"" decided to press their advantage. They launched a guerrilla campaign in an attempt to drive the Trieu Dynasty, with its mixed nobility of native southerners and Han Chinese, out of the Red River valley and establish a new native state.
Over the next hundred years, men raided trade routes and army barracks in the guise of screaming, bare-chested, tattooed (associated with bandits and convicts by the Chinese) savages, dragging captives off into the night or the forest in order to sacrifice them for either civilian or military magic. When they eventually lost their ""War of the Bandits"" (from the threefold causes of not getting any local nobility on their side, of terrifying the pants off their Viet kinsmen with their ferocity and the rumours of their religion and by the sheer weight of the eventual re-invasion by the armies of the Han Dynasty) they fled deep into the mountains of the West and South, being chided by the last of the original, goat-legged sorcerers for their foolish, ill-planned ambitions. From then, they had remained hidden and relatively peaceful, though remembered in whispered folk-tales as vicious, man-eating monsters.
After Marie had finished. Joseph sat in silence for a few minutes, digesting what he had just heard. The whole thing about magic was a bit.. hard to swallow. However, his own eyes had seen things that most would say were impossible. ""You don't... you don't hate me now, do you?"" Marie suddenly asked, her face awash in a worried panic, perhaps the culmination of every bout of anxiety she had ever experienced when Joseph had began edging onto the subject of her people's true nature. So much worry, so much fear and one wrong move now could break her heart.
For once, just once, he initiated the kiss this time.
""Does that answer your question?"" As they pulled apart, he could see that most of her anxieties had melted away. ""And... I hesitate to mention this, but about your parents restaurant..."" He stopped when he saw her face, now an annoyed, knowing grimace that indicated that the next words out of his mouth should be chosen very carefully. ""Uh... about the chicken, beef and pork they used. Was any of it... officiallysacrificed?""

Marie's grimace let up. ""You need a priest to do anything official, and my parents are from farming families. Don't worry, we never served anyone up as the main course."" She actually began to smile as she stood upright.
""Alright... but speaking of the main course, what about..."" Joseph gulped nervously. ""Me? Am I still going to be barbecue or did you actually convince anyone otherwise?""
The next news out of Marie's mouth was welcome indeed. ""I didn't, but your professor won your life and those of the others after he talked with our Chief Priest. If I'm right, he and the rest of your team should be at the house of my paternal grandparents. Who arethey, anyway?""
""My classmates. The Anthropology department at Miskatonic organized this trip with Professor Andover and a couple of us volunteered. "" Still holding the bowl, Joseph began standing, his limbs still stiff and numb from hours of sitting. Despite this discomfort and the twitching shocks that came when blood began flowing free again, he followed her out the door, though not before taking and slinging a bag of rice over his shoulder at her asking, along with a braid of garlic bulbs and a small box of dried pork on a cord.
During his captivity, Joseph had been held in one of the storehouses by the river, a short way north of the village. Now, in the waning light of dusk, he and Marie made their way back on the path that wove through vegetable gardens and pig-pens until they reached the outlying houses. Through narrow alleys between house stilts and below the sounds of evening meals being eaten, past dogs and pigs drowsing in the under-crofts and along the great outer wall of the temple they traveled before moving into the main square and down the main thoroughfare.

""It should be just after this next left, right across from the bronze-smith."" As they walked along, they came to an intersection. On their right was a large house facing the street, belonging to the village bronze-smith and acting as a shop, a workplace and his family home. Across the main street from that house was a side street, lined by mostly smaller houses but each of them with soft lights in their windows. A few houses in, Marie led Joseph up the stairs of one house where familiar voices were laughing and making merry, including one brash female voice in particular that Joseph had come to know well.
As Marie lay down the lantern on the porch and opened the door, the voices became louder and clearer. When they entered, everyone was already seated (or at least kneeling). Albert and Malone were trading stories of their brief imprisonment and what they had seen, while Tracy was working her way through a bowl of green tea, apparently trying to cajole her way into the rice whiskey. Professor Andover was making small conversation with an old village man sitting at the head of the table who was wearing the brown jacket and skirt combo that was so common. Also at the table was a younger man and his wife, maybe a little older than Marie's parents, along with two teenage sons who had not yet received their tattooing. Some ways from the table, an elderly woman worked at a hearth lined with stone and brick, stoking a carefully controlled charcoal fire.
Everyone looked up at the new arrivals. The first to speak was the old man who had been talking to the professor, telling Marie to bring the rice and other ingredients over to the charcoal hearth so the evening meal could begin and then for them to sit down. After that was done, Joseph noticed that people were looking at him.
Apparently, it was time to make introductions.
""Joseph, I'd like you to meet my family on my father's side."" After explaining that few of them could understand any English at all, Marie started introducing them. First came the old man, now identified as her paternal grandfather. Her grandmother, his wife, was the woman starting tending the fire at the hearth, her gray hair in an elaborate bun at the back of the head held together with a set of jade hairpins and wearing a long, black dress, similar to the garment that Marie had worn at the performance. Marie's uncle Huy and his wife An sat across from the Miskatonic students and beside them sat Cu'ong and Thao, their two sons...
Only two?
""Damn, the Kids!"" Marie had been so busy with her boyfriend that the absence her younger cousins had escaped her until now. She got back up and went to the door, opened it and called down the street for them to get in the house now and try not to spill the water they were carrying. As she returned to where she had been kneeling, many hurried footsteps were heard coming up the outside stairs and the door opened again as five children entered as a crowd. The oldest, a girl who was perhaps eleven years old, was carrying two bronze pails of water in her hands while the second oldest, a boy of maybe ten, was carrying two more.
In fact, all the kids, which included two more boys and another girl, seemed to each be about a year apart down to a little boy of about seven years old. ""Big families the norm around here?"" Joseph asked his girlfriend as the water was transferred to cooking vessels and the ingredients collected.
Marie shrugged. ""More or less: most farming families have at least three kids nowadays but the norm used to be around five around a century ago. This family is weird both ways: My uncle and aunt for having so many and my parents for just having me."" 
Of course, sooner or later this casual reminiscing had to end. ""So, Professor..."" Tracy began, consciously deciding to get back on topic from the revery the two had been involved in. ""You Said that you had something to tell us, about the ultimate purpose of this expedition?""
Neville Andover smiled the way that someone delivering a great and terrible revelation does. ""As a matter of fact, I did."" He motioned towards Malone, who was now extremely attentive. ""This is Malone Roberts; for the last year he has been playing the part of my student, but he is far more than that. He is my assistant, my cohort... my protege in the context of the agency I work for. Tell me..."" He seemed to direct this as every member of the audience (save Malone) who could speak English. ""Have any of you heard of Delta Green?""
""What's that? Something in the Marine Corps?"" It had soundedlike an innocent question from Ms. Williams, but Joseph had shared a class, study groups and cram sessions with her for many months, and could recognize the first signs of building stress and panic when he saw them. They were amazingly similar to the signs that Marie herself had shown, with the difference of gripping objects such as a table edge with white-knuckle intensity now apparent.
""It's surprising that you haven't heard of it, considering the contacts in your community and the agencies reputation for... extreme measuresbefore 1960."" Now Andover turned to Albert Noyes. ""Perhaps you have some notion of it... or its partner agency, Majestic 12. It is quite amazing work they're doing on the Yuggoth Project, especially on fungi."" This seemed like it was crammed with potential clues, but honestly, Joseph couldn't make heads or tails of it.
Noyes, on the other hand, apparently could. He began smiling in surprise and recognition and began laughing at the revelation. ""You mean... you know about the Mi'go?"" Now Joseph was confused beyond all reckoning, and apparently so were Marie and Tracy.
""Know aboutthem, know some of them, occasionally work alongside them. And if I may say, for half-fungus, half-arthropod, telepathic pains in the rear, they are remarkably easy to work with."" What followed was Albert explaining the situation: the weirdest kinds of aliens you could imagine had contacted some humans in the 1800s and hired them to assist in mining certain valuable minerals in the hills of Vermont and Maine. Over the years, the men and women in their employ had received advice from these aliens as to potential marriage partners, first in terms genetic compatibility and superior traits for their offspring, then based on attractiveness as their understanding of human reproductive psychology increased. Finally, as they realized the subtle psychological and social rules of courtship, the began acting as human elites once did, organizing parties for unattached men and women and subtly directing candidates certain ways as they piloted artificial human body-shells around the dance floor. 
It sounded weird... but reassuring, even humorous. Even Tracy seemed to lighten up... as far as a hunted rabbit couldlighten up.
""Mr. Clayton here is what you may call 'normal'. However, he was privy to manifestations not usual of this Earth."" Joseph then told the assembled of what he had witnessed, with Professor Andover hypothesizing that the phonograph may have projected images and smells by some means of eldritch energies. Marie also retold the story of her people and of the deal that she had agreed to to gain access to the phonograph: one year back in the village and receiving her tattoos of adulthood. Nothing more and nothing less had been asked of her.
""And finally, we have Ms. Williams, whose tale has much to do with the founding of the organization and its present form."" Here, Andover seemed to realize what kind of anxiety the girl was going through, and thus went slowly. ""In the winter of 1928, the Miskatonic faculty was contacted by the United States Army to help investigate a series of strange attacks and abductions in Paige County, Virginia. As the base was in a primarily Quaker area, Miskatonic sent its lone member of faculty who was a Friend, one Hiriam Willows of Boston. While he remained among the Quaker farmfolk who knew the habits of the attacks, the army waged war against what was first believed to be a ""degenerate"" tribe of Iroquois but were later found to be white members of a strange fertility cult which engaged in human sacrifice.""
The academic glanced towards Tracy, who had lowered her head, closed her eyes and grimaced at what was surely to come. He turned back to his eager listeners. ""Before Willows left, he discovered strange objects in a secret room at the Longhouse Meeting Hall... objects which resembled those found on the slain cultists. He also, inadvertently, stumbled upon his hosts engaged in a ritual of apparent mourning, dressed as the Southern Iroquois would have been three hundred years ago, sacrificing pigs upon an altar at an isolated circle of standing stones, wailing and keening in grief."" He looked back at Tracy. ""This was the experience which convinced him that not all who worship the base forces of the universe are driven to evil nor insanity. It was also the experience that not all things should be released to the world, both for the worlds safety and that of the subjects.""
After a moment's silence, Tracy spoke. ""Excuse me."" She got up walked out the door, somewhat to the surprise of her classmates, Marie and Marie's family. Marie then got up and went to follow, an act which inevitably drew Joseph after her.
They found Tracy sitting at the bottom of the steps, her chin on one balled fist, her other arm across her lap, her eyes staring into some unfathomable distance. Marie went forward first, sitting beside the girl as Joseph hung back. ""I don't think we've been introduced. My name's Marie."" When Tracy didn't answer. ""You know, you don't have to feel bad about what other people did. Those guys the Army killed weren't your people, no matter how similar your rituals may have been.""
""But they weremy people."" The answer came suddenly and surprised both listeners.
""Pardon?"" Asked Joseph from the middle of the stairway.
""Those dangerous cultists that the professor told you about; they were English, Quakers even... or had been at one time."" She sighed, not quite sure of herself on how to explain to outsiders the issue which had plagued her fears since the age of 10. ""They were my peoples kin, descendants of those of us who answered the Union armies call for guerrillas during the Civil War. Before that, we'd adopted some sacrificial ritual from the Iroquois during the 1720s after some very hard winters. Where before they'd killed dogs, black deer and captured warriors... as well as captured women and children if it got reallybad... to get good crops and health, we imposed strict limits and rules. There was to be no more human sacrifice, we killed our own livestock and above all, we accept the rituals as a gift from on high... even if the whole Christ thing was supposed to render sacrifice obsolete.""
""I'd consider it a divine door prize. But about the Civil War?"" Marie was trying to make the talk as nonthreatening as possible, considering the darkness which had settled over the village.
Getting back on topic, Tracy continued. ""Well, we'd already been hiding escaped slaves for years on their way up to the major escape routes in Pennsylvania, but we felt that we couldn't do any more, especially with so much Confederate presence in the Shenandoah and the internecine aggression over secession. These people though... they wanted to do something. So, when a few Union officers wanted a meeting, they snuck off north. And when they came back, they brought otherthings with them. Old medieval codices which described Druidic rituals shockingly similar to our own but twisted and brutal, rituals which needed terror to be inflicted in the victims so that the full power of their life force could be drained. Their attitudes had changed as well; they became disdainful of the rest of the community: calling them weak, cowards, savages who refused to possess the full power of the Star Daughter and the Black Stag, fools who held onto their 'petty delusions' of morality. Well, after they went and made a mess of everything by capturing and sacrificing a Confederate squadron... the rest of the Longhouse Quakers shunned them, bidding them to go into the high mountains until they were ready to return. And so, a collection of about 50 men, women and children left the Valley and went into the high woods.""
Joseph put something together in his head. ""And I take it that the next time they returned was 60 years later, crazier than ever.""
Tracy harrumphed. ""You've got that right. And think about this while you're at it: by the 1920s, we'd been isolated for so long that it was starting to show in our features; the more inbred we became, the leaner our faces and the bonier our joints. By the time Willows got there, we just looked skinny and somewhat malnourished and with the right connections a few decades later, that began to get fixed."" Her face got hard. ""But what if Willows had finked on us, or Miskatonic sent one of their Congregationalist mama's boys instead? Do you realize what may have happened to us, especially in the 20s or 30s? Arresting us for a start, probably followed by forced sterilization and throwing us in crazy houses, sanitariums and prisons to rot. And that's just the adults!""
She was getting visibly angry. ""Their kids, my great-grandparents, would have been shuffled off to orphanages or perhaps boarding schools if they thought we were just really pale Indians."" She shuddered. ""I've read about the shit that happened in Canada's residential school system and it gave me just as many nightmares as the thought of my ancestors being hunted like wolves and tortured for things they never did or for who they were."" She turned to look at Marie and for the first time since he knew her, Joseph could put a name (that name being ""very mildly inbred"") on the features which he had labeled as 'rural-attractive' or 'cute in a farmer's daughter kind of way'. ""I know that your people have been hiding, but at least you guys made the mistake of acting like total jerks to get your reputation! We never did anything wrong.""
With that, Tracy got up, passed her companions and just as she was about to reenter the house, she paused and rethought something. ""Well, never did anything wrong besides burning down that chicken barn, but that was an emergency! Neither my aunt nor my little cousin would be here if not for that and besides..."" She turned her head to look at Joseph and Marie. ""They wrote it off as an electrical fire."" As Tracy went back into the house, Joseph thought that, while going against all conventional reason, his life made perfect sense for the first time in a very long while.
",False
"Dry hacking. The sound assaults my ears, and makes my heart begin to flutter. It's unlike any paroxysm I've ever heard, even when Theodora contracted pneumonia two years ago. What's far worse is I know, instinctively, that it is not she whose body is wracked with illness. It's Lemuel Dawson, on his deathbed.
""Hold on!"" My voice is lighter, younger, not yet burdened with the weight of sorrow after his passing. Like any good nurse, I rush to his side and wipe the bloody spittle from his lips with a handkerchief. This is no mere dream; it's a recollection, and that's exactly what I did back then. ""I'm here as always, Father."" 
""Millie,"" he says weakly, and smiles through the pain of nearly-constant coughing. ""Come closer."" I do, and wince at his fevered breath. ""There's something that I must tell you, at long last."" Every word of his is belabored. His voice reminds me of a desert wind, scorched with sand. Even his sickroom has that acrid air, as if we were in the middle of the Sahara instead of Massachusetts. I myself am hot, and know Father must be. However, I dare not leave his chamber to fetch a wet cloth for fear of missing his last words.
""They have come for me, and…you must know all that I do before they come for you. Find the keys,"" he says before being consumed with another coughing fit, ""in the bottom drawer of my desk. Bring them here."" Again I follow his directions, yet hesitantly. Throughout his life, Father had been very particular about who was allowed to touch his personal possessions, and rummage through his desks and cabinets. Even our taciturn Theodora, who'd never reveal any of his secrets even under duress, was forbidden from doing so. Father gave explicit instructions on which rooms were to be cleaned (kitchen, parlor, and so on), and which were not (his spartan bedroom after Mother died, and private study). That's why it puzzles me, in this nighttime vision as well as in life, to hear him make such a request. Nevertheless, I hurry to obey it.
It takes several tugs of the aforementioned bottom drawer, sticky with disuse, to get it to yield. When it does, I cough at the dust within and pull out a small iron ring with five keys. Each one of them is different, as keys naturally are, yet these five have been bent into the most curious shapes and configurations. I'm tempted to stand beside the desk and stare at them to my heart's content, fingering their bizarre metal shafts, but Father's waiting. Not knowing what he'll tell me, or what he wants me to do with the keys, I take them over to his bedside. Greedily, he grasps them in his long fingers and takes my right hand in his.
""First,"" he announces, slipping one of the unique keys into my palm. ""Second,"" he then says, doing the same with another. ""Third. Closet. Church."" With sudden horror, I realize what they open: the three locks to the door of his forbidden study, the closet within it, and the only church to which he's ever belonged. ""The one on Gallows Hill,"" he clarifies. I wonder why he's called it that instead of Cemetery Hill. Perhaps, now that he's facing his own hangman in the form of an illness that not even Leight's doctor can diagnose, images of the Purge are haunting him. ""Read and learn all you can, when you're prepared. Take care."" 
I couldn't stop myself: ""Why 'take care'? Is something wrong? Who are 'they', Father? Please explain!"" 
""It would take…too long."" He slowly smiles, exposing all of his teeth in the white rictus of a death's-head. Pressing the keys so firmly into my palm that they leave mild scrapes and indentations afterward, Father coughs once more. ""Believe."" With that, his withered hand releases mine and falls to his side limply. He is no longer alive, and our conversation has drained me so much that I can do nothing but sob in fright.
I wake up to find my pillow damp, and my eyes glistening. There is no one around save for me, and the all-encompassing darkness to hide my tears. It's been seventeen years, almost to the day, since Lemuel Dawson departed this mortal world. I feel ashamed of myself, because after nearly two decades, I should not be so stricken with grief. Father, at this point in time, should be a distant memory, a framed portrait on the wall of my house and mind. However, he is not. He has evidently remained with me, in a locked compartment of my mental faculties that only dreams can reopen. Why now? Why here, in this very Inn? If the keys that he gave me so long ago - and which I've reconfined to the drawer from which I took them - are back in his old house, then why didn't I dream about them back there? This is too strange, and scary.
When you're prepared, Father had told me, read and learn all you can. Prepared for what, I wonder?
","There's nothing much of interest in the lobby: three striped armchairs (one of which has an upholstered arm that's coming unsewn), two tables, a crackling fireplace, and a wrought-iron chandelier. It would behoove Mr. Thènard to tell his servant to dust the cobwebs off of it, and perhaps place some books on the tables. Knowing Agathe, however, she sticks to her duties, and doesn't like to be told anything that she considers superfluous. I've seen her at the Dreamers' Inn since I was a girl, but have always avoided her. I'm relieved to see no sign of the crone in the empty dining room, which I pass on the way to the stairs.
Even when she was younger by twenty-seven years, Agathe's presence was a fearsome one. At fifty, she already appeared to be a quarter century older than that. With eyes that were nearly onyx, narrowed into perpetual slits, she terrified me and unnerved Father. ""I wish I could dismiss her,"" he hissed into my ear when I was only seven, ""but she's served here at the Inn since your grandfather's time. It wouldn't be fair. Without her wages here, she'd surely starve."" Back then, I didn't think that Agathe required much to eat, with a gaunt frame that reminded me of a skeleton in a maid's dress. Her hair, brown then and gray now, is pulled back tightly into an impeccable bun. She performs her daily tasks in complete silence, or did so in my tender years, and glared at you malevolently if you so much as looked her way. Hate seemed to dart from her bottomless pupils directly into your soul, and from that moment you learned to leave her alone.
She's not here, Millicent, I tell myself as I slowly ascend the stairs. She's up in her room. You're safe now. 
Still, I cling to the wall tightly and hold my breath as I reach the second floor. The door to my room stands before me, closed and locked, and bearing a brass 2 as the symbol of my destination. I know that behind that door lies safety, and I find myself darting toward it like a hunted rabbit. I jam Monsieur Thénard's key into the lock with a hard jolt, too loud for my sepulchral surroundings, and give it a frightened twist. It takes all my power of self-restraint not to slam the door behind me once it opens, so as to ward off a sudden appearance of Agathe. Besides, I have to turn on the gas lamp. The room is suddenly illuminated, almost warmly, and I smile as I behold a quilted bed. Above it is a diamond-paned window, black as pitch, and next to me is a writing desk. Locking the door and double-bolting it for the night, I sit down at the latter.
There's nothing on the worn and scuffed top of it but a copy of the Holy Bible. More out of boredom than piety, I open it to a certain random point past the middle. Romans 6:23 immediately catches my eye:
""For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."" 
Eternal life? Why would I want such a thing, when even this temporal one of mine is pointless? Day after day, I yearn for company and occupation, yet I can't even get a position as a charwoman here in Leight. Not that I'd want to be a drudge, but one would think I could at least teach or give piano lessons. No one will trust me with their own confidence, however, let alone the welfare of their children. I am not a godly woman by any means, which brings me to the second page to which I suddenly turned - Romans 3:23:
""For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God."" 
Do I not know it? Are the powers that be, whether the Trinity or other spirits, unaware of the iniquity I bear? Not only do I carry the burden of my mistakes and wrongdoings, but those of my errant forefathers. I cannot say whether Abner Dawes, the man who built the Dreamers' Inn with his own hands, was Satan's thrall or not. Nevertheless, even after Grandfather's changing our family surname from Dawes to Dawson, the stigma of our bloodline has remained. One might ask why this is so, when other people here in Leight whose kin were hanged during the Purge have had their black marks washed away. The answer is simple: they turned to Christ, and all of their feuding churches, while we Dawsons kept our faith to ourselves.
Hoping for a glimmer of salvation in the Holy Book's pages, I unconsciously turn to one more passage:
""And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment."" Hebrews 9:27
Sighing, I undress for bed and climb beneath the quilt. I straightway fall into slumber, and begin to dream.
",True
"II. An Antecedent and a Horror

1.

Joseph Curwen, as revealed by the rambling legends embodied in what Ward heard and unearthed, was a very astonishing, enigmatic, and obscurely horrible individual. He had fled from Salem to Providence - that universal haven of the odd, the free, and the dissenting - at the beginning of the great witchcraft panic; being in fear of accusation because of his solitary ways and queer chemical or alchemical experiments. He was a colourless-looking man of about thirty, and was soon found qualified to become a freeman of Providence; thereafter buying a home lot just north of Gregory Dexter's at about the foot of Olney Street. His house was built on Stampers' Hill west of the Town Street, in what later became Olney Court; and in 1761 he replaced this with a larger one, on the same site, which is still standing.
      Now the first odd thing about Joseph Curwen was that he did not seem to grow much older than he had been on his arrival. He engaged in shipping enterprises, purchased wharfage near Mile-End Cove, helped rebuild the Great Bridge in 1713, and in 1723 was one of the founders of the Congregational Church on the hill; but always did he retain the nondescript aspect of a man not greatly over thirty or thirty-five. As decades mounted up, this singular quality began to excite wide notice; but Curwen always explained it by saying that he came of hardy forefathers, and practiced a simplicity of living which did not wear him out. How such simplicity could be reconciled with the inexplicable comings and goings of the secretive merchant, and with the queer gleaming of his windows at all hours of night, was not very clear to the townsfolk; and they were prone to assign other reasons for his continued youth and longevity. It was held, for the most part, that Curwen's incessant mixings and boilings of chemicals had much to do with his condition. Gossip spoke of the strange substances he brought from London and the Indies on his ships or purchased in Newport, Boston, and New York; and when old Dr. Jabez Bowen came from Rehoboth and opened his apothecary shop across the Great Bridge at the Sign of the Unicorn and Mortar, there was ceaseless talk of the drugs, acids, and metals that the taciturn recluse incessantly bought or ordered from him. Acting on the assumption that Curwen possessed a wondrous and secret medical skill, many sufferers of various sorts applied to him for aid; but though he appeared to encourage their belief in a non-committal way, and always gave them odd-coloured potions in response to their requests, it was observed that his ministrations to others seldom proved of benefit. At length, when over fifty years had passed since the stranger's advent, and without producing more than five years' apparent change in his face and physique, the people began to whisper more darkly; and to meet more than half way that desire for isolation which he had always shewn.
      Private letters and diaries of the period reveal, too, a multitude of other reasons why Joseph Curwen was marvelled at, feared, and finally shunned like a plague. His passion for graveyards, in which he was glimpsed at all hours and under all conditions, was notorious; though no one had witnessed any deed on his part which could actually be termed ghoulish. On the Pawtuxet Road he had a farm, at which he generally lived during the summer, and to which he would frequently be seen riding at various odd times of the day or night. Here his only visible servants, farmers, and caretakers were a sullen pair of aged Narragansett Indians; the husband dumb and curiously scarred, and the wife of a very repulsive cast of countenance, probably due to a mixture of negro blood. In the lean-to of this house was the laboratory where most of the chemical experiments were conducted. Curious porters and teamers who delivered bottles, bags, or boxes at the small rear door would exchange accounts of the fantastic flasks, crucibles, alembics, and furnaces they saw in the low shelved room; and prophesied in whispers that the close-mouthed ""chymist"" - by which they meant alchemist - would not be long in finding the Philosopher's Stone. The nearest neighbours to this farm - the Fenners, a quarter of a mile away - had still queerer things to tell of certain sounds which they insisted came from the Curwen place in the night. There were cries, they said, and sustained howlings; and they did not like the large number of livestock which thronged the pastures, for no such amount was needed to keep a lone old man and a very few servants in meat, milk, and wool. The identity of the stock seemed to change from week to week as new droves were purchased from the Kingstown farmers. Then, too, there was something very obnoxious about a certain great stone outbuilding with only high narrow slits for windows.
      Great Bridge idlers likewise had much to say of Curwen's town house in Olney Court; not so much the fine new one built in 1761, when the man must have been nearly a century old, but the first low gambrel-roofed one with the windowless attic and shingled sides, whose timbers he took the peculiar precaution of burning after its demolition. Here there was less mystery, it is true; but the hours at which lights were seen, the secretiveness of the two swarthy foreigners who comprised the only menservants, the hideous indistinct mumbling of the incredibly aged French housekeeper, the large amounts of food seen to enter a door within which only four persons lived, and the quality of certain voices often heard in muffled conversation at highly unseasonable times, all combined with what was known of the Pawtuxet farm to give the place a bad name.
      In choicer circles, too, the Curwen home was by no means undiscussed; for as the newcomer had gradually worked into the church and trading life of the town, he had naturally made acquaintances of the better sort, whose company and conversation he was well fitted by education to enjoy. His birth was known to be good, since the Curwens or Corwins of Salem needed no introduction in New England. It developed that Joseph Curwen had travelled much in very early life, living for a time in England and making at least two voyages to the Orient; and his speech, when he deigned to use it, was that of a learned and cultivated Englishman. But for some reason or other Curwen did not care for society. Whilst never actually rebuffing a visitor, he always reared such a wall of reserve that few could think of anything to say to him which would not sound inane.
      There seemed to lurk in his bearing some cryptic, sardonic arrogance, as if he had come to find all human beings dull through having moved among stranger and more potent entities. When Dr. Checkley the famous wit came from Boston in 1738 to be rector of King's Church, he did not neglect calling on one of whom he soon heard so much; but left in a very short while because of some sinister undercurrent he detected in his host's discourse. Charles Ward told his father, when they discussed Curwen one winter evening, that he would give much to learn what the mysterious old man had said to the sprightly cleric, but that all diarists agree concerning Dr. Checkley's reluctance to repeat anything he had heard. The good man had been hideously shocked, and could never recall Joseph Curwen without a visible loss of the gay urbanity for which he was famed.
      More definite, however, was the reason why another man of taste and breeding avoided the haughty hermit. In 1746 Mr. John Merritt, an elderly English gentleman of literary and scientific leanings, came from Newport to the town which was so rapidly overtaking it in standing, and built a fine country seat on the Neck in what is now the heart of the best residence section. He lived in considerable style and comfort, keeping the first coach and liveried servants in town, and taking great pride in his telescope, his microscope, and his well-chosen library of English and Latin books. Hearing of Curwen as the owner of the best library in Providence, Mr. Merritt early paid him a call, and was more cordially received than most other callers at the house had been. His admiration for his host's ample shelves, which besides the Greek, Latin, and English classics were equipped with a remarkable battery of philosophical, mathematical, and scientific works including Paracelsus, Agricola, Van Helmont, Sylvius, Glauber, Boyle, Boerhaave, Becher, and Stahl, led Curwen to suggest a visit to the farmhouse and laboratory whither he had never invited anyone before; and the two drove out at once in Mr. Merritt's coach.
      Mr. Merritt always confessed to seeing nothing really horrible at the farmhouse, but maintained that the titles of the books in the special library of thaumaturgical, alchemical, and theological subjects which Curwen kept in a front room were alone sufficient to inspire him with a lasting loathing. Perhaps, however, the facial expression of the owner in exhibiting them contributed much of the prejudice. The bizarre collection, besides a host of standard works which Mr. Merritt was not too alarmed to envy, embraced nearly all the cabbalists, daemonologists, and magicians known to man; and was a treasure-house of lore in the doubtful realms of alchemy and astrology. Hermes Trismegistus in Mesnard's edition, the Turba Philosophorum, Geber's Liber Investigationis, and Artephius' Key of Wisdom all were there; with the cabbalistic Zohar, Peter Jammy's set of Albertus Magnus, Raymond Lully's Ars Magna et Ultima in Zetzner's edition, Roger Bacon's Thesaurus Chemicus, Fludd's Clavis Alchimiae, and Trithemius' De Lapide Philosophico crowding them close. Mediaeval Jews and Arabs were represented in profusion, and Mr. Merritt turned pale when, upon taking down a fine volume conspicuously labelled as the Qanoon-e-Islam, he found it was in truth the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, of which he had heard such monstrous things whispered some years previously after the exposure of nameless rites at the strange little fishing village of Kingsport, in the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay.
      But oddly enough, the worthy gentleman owned himself most impalpably disquieted by a mere minor detail. On the huge mahogany table there lay face downward a badly worn copy of Borellus, bearing many cryptical marginalia and interlineations in Curwen's hand. The book was open at about its middle, and one paragraph displayed such thick and tremulous pen-strokes beneath the lines of mystic black-letter that the visitor could not resist scanning it through. Whether it was the nature of the passage underscored, or the feverish heaviness of the strokes which formed the underscoring, he could not tell; but something in that combination affected him very badly and very peculiarly. He recalled it to the end of his days, writing it down from memory in his diary and once trying to recite it to his close friend Dr. Checkley till he saw how greatly it disturbed the urbane rector. It read:
      ""The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated.""
      It was near the docks along the southerly part of the Town Street, however, that the worst things were muttered about Joseph Curwen. Sailors are superstitious folk; and the seasoned salts who manned the infinite rum, slave, and molasses sloops, the rakish privateers, and the great brigs of the Browns, Crawfords, and Tillinghasts, all made strange furtive signs of protection when they saw the slim, deceptively young-looking figure with its yellow hair and slight stoop entering the Curwen warehouse in Doubloon Street or talking with captains and supercargoes on the long quay where the Curwen ships rode restlessly. Curwen's own clerks and captains hated and feared him, and all his sailors were mongrel riff-raff from Martinique, St. Eustatius, Havana, or Port Royal. It was, in a way, the frequency with which these sailors were replaced which inspired the acutest and most tangible part of the fear in which the old man was held. A crew would be turned loose in the town on shore leave, some of its members perhaps charged with this errand or that; and when reassembled it would be almost sure to lack one or more men. That many of the errands had concerned the farm on the Pawtuxet Road, and that few of the sailors had ever been seen to return from that place, was not forgotten; so that in time it became exceedingly difficult for Curwen to keep his oddly assorted hands. Almost invariably several would desert soon after hearing the gossip of the Providence wharves, and their replacement in the West Indies became an increasingly great problem to the merchant.
      In 1760 Joseph Curwen was virtually an outcast, suspected of vague horrors and daemoniac alliances which seemed all the more menacing because they could not be named, understood, or even proved to exist. The last straw may have come from the affair of the missing soldiers in 1758, for in March and April of that year two Royal regiments on their way to New France were quartered in Providence, and depleted by an inexplicable process far beyond the average rate of desertion. Rumour dwelt on the frequency with which Curwen was wont to be seen talking with the red-coated strangers; and as several of them began to be missed, people thought of the odd conditions among his own seamen. What would have happened if the regiments had not been ordered on, no one can tell.
      Meanwhile the merchant's worldly affairs were prospering. He had a virtual monopoly of the town's trade in saltpetre, black pepper, and cinnamon, and easily led any other one shipping establishment save the Browns in his importation of brassware, indigo, cotton, woollens, salt, rigging, iron, paper, and English goods of every kind. Such shopkeepers as James Green, at the Sign of the Elephant in Cheapside, the Russells, at the Sign of the Golden Eagle across the Bridge, or Clark and Nightingale at the Frying-Pan and Fish near the New Coffee-House, depended almost wholly upon him for their stock; and his arrangements with the local distillers, the Narragansett dairymen and horse-breeders, and the Newport candle-makers, made him one of the prime exporters of the Colony.
      Ostracised though he was, he did not lack for civic spirit of a sort. When the Colony House burned down, he subscribed handsomely to the lotteries by which the new brick one - still standing at the head of its parade in the old main street - was built in 1761. In that same year, too, he helped rebuild the Great Bridge after the October gale. He replaced many of the books of the public library consumed in the Colony House fire, and bought heavily in the lottery that gave the muddy Market Parade and deep-rutted Town Street their pavement of great round stones with a brick footwalk or ""causey"" in the middle. About this time, also, he built the plain but excellent new house whose doorway is still such a triumph of carving. When the Whitefield adherents broke off from Dr. Cotton's hill church in 1743 and founded Deacon Snow's church across the Bridge, Curwen had gone with them; though his zeal and attendance soon abated. Now, however, he cultivated piety once more; as if to dispel the shadow which had thrown him into isolation and would soon begin to wreck his business fortunes if not sharply checked.

2.

      The sight of this strange, pallid man, hardly middle-aged in aspect yet certainly not less than a full century old, seeking at last to emerge from a cloud of fright and detestation too vague to pin down or analyse, was at once a pathetic, a dramatic, and a contemptible thing. Such is the power of wealth and of surface gestures, however, that there came indeed a slight abatement in the visible aversion displayed toward him; especially after the rapid disappearances of his sailors abruptly ceased. He must likewise have begun to practice an extreme care and secrecy in his graveyard expeditions, for he was never again caught at such wanderings; whilst the rumours of uncanny sounds and manoeuvres at his Pawtuxet farm diminished in proportion. His rate of food consumption and cattle replacement remained abnormally high; but not until modern times, when Charles Ward examined a set of his accounts and invoices in the Shepley Library, did it occur to any person - save one embittered youth, perhaps - to make dark comparisons between the large number of Guinea blacks he imported until 1766, and the disturbingly small number for whom he could produce bona fide bills of sale either to slave-dealers at the Great Bridge or to the planters of the Narragansett Country. Certainly, the cunning and ingenuity of this abhorred character were uncannily profound, once the necessity for their exercise had become impressed upon him.
      But of course the effect of all this belated mending was necessarily slight. Curwen continued to be avoided and distrusted, as indeed the one fact of his continued air of youth at a great age would have been enough to warrant; and he could see that in the end his fortunes would be likely to suffer. His elaborate studies and experiments, whatever they may have been, apparently required a heavy income for their maintenance; and since a change of environment would deprive him of the trading advantages he had gained, it would not have profited him to begin anew in a different region just then. Judgment demanded that he patch up his relations with the townsfolk of Providence, so that his presence might no longer be a signal for hushed conversation, transparent excuses of errands elsewhere, and a general atmosphere of constraint and uneasiness. His clerks, being now reduced to the shiftless and impecunious residue whom no one else would employ, were giving him much worry; and he held to his sea-captains and mates only by shrewdness in gaining some kind of ascendancy over them - a mortgage, a promissory note, or a bit of information very pertinent to their welfare. In many cases, diarists have recorded with some awe, Curwen shewed almost the power of a wizard in unearthing family secrets for questionable use. During the final five years of his life it seemed as though only direct talks with the long-dead could possibly have furnished some of the data which he had so glibly at his tongue's end.
      About this time the crafty scholar hit upon a last desperate expedient to regain his footing in the community. Hitherto a complete hermit, he now determined to contract an advantageous marriage; securing as a bride some lady whose unquestioned position would make all ostracism of his home impossible. It may be that he also had deeper reasons for wishing an alliance; reasons so far outside the known cosmic sphere that only papers found a century and a half after his death caused anyone to suspect them; but of this nothing certain can ever be learned. Naturally he was aware of the horror and indignation with which any ordinary courtship of his would be received, hence he looked about for some likely candidate upon whose parents he might exert a suitable pressure. Such candidates, he found, were not at all easy to discover; since he had very particular requirements in the way of beauty, accomplishments, and social security. At length his survey narrowed down to the household of one of his best and oldest ship-captains, a widower of high birth and unblemished standing named Dutee Tillinghast, whose only daughter Eliza seemed dowered with every conceivable advantage save prospects as an heiress. Capt. Tillinghast was completely under the domination of Curwen; and consented, after a terrible interview in his cupolaed house on Power's Lane hill, to sanction the blasphemous alliance.
      Eliza Tillinghast was at that time eighteen years of age, and had been reared as gently as the reduced circumstances of her father permitted. She had attended Stephen Jackson's school opposite the Court-House Parade; and had been diligently instructed by her mother, before the latter's death of smallpox in 1757, in all the arts and refinements of domestic life. A sampler of hers, worked in 1753 at the age of nine, may still be found in the rooms of the Rhode Island Historical Society. After her mother's death she had kept the house, aided only by one old black woman. Her arguments with her father concerning the proposed Curwen marriage must have been painful indeed; but of these we have no record. Certain it is that her engagement to young Ezra Weeden, second mate of the Crawford packet Enterprise, was dutifully broken off, and that her union with Joseph Curwen took place on the seventh of March, 1763, in the Baptist church, in the presence of one of the most distinguished assemblages which the town could boast; the ceremony being performed by the younger Samuel Winsor. The Gazette mentioned the event very briefly, and in most surviving copies the item in question seems to be cut or torn out. Ward found a single intact copy after much search in the archives of a private collector of note, observing with amusement the meaningless urbanity of the language:
      ""Monday evening last, Mr. Joseph Curwen, of this Town, Merchant, was married to Miss Eliza Tillinghast, Daughter of Capt. Dutee Tillinghast, a young Lady who has real Merit, added to a beautiful Person, to grace the connubial State and perpetuate its Felicity.""
      The collection of Durfee-Arnold letters, discovered by Charles Ward shortly before his first reputed madness in the private collection of Melville F. Peters, Esq., of George St., and covering this and a somewhat antecedent period, throws vivid light on the outrage done to public sentiment by this ill-assorted match. The social influence of the Tillinghasts, however, was not to be denied; and once more Joseph Curwen found his house frequented by persons whom he could never otherwise have induced to cross his threshold. His acceptance was by no means complete, and his bride was socially the sufferer through her forced venture; but at all events the wall of utter ostracism was somewhat worn down. In his treatment of his wife the strange bridegroom astonished both her and the community by displaying an extreme graciousness and consideration. The new house in Olney Court was now wholly free from disturbing manifestations, and although Curwen was much absent at the Pawtuxet farm which his wife never visited, he seemed more like a normal citizen than at any other time in his long years of residence. Only one person remained in open enmity with him, this being the youthful ship's officer whose engagement to Eliza Tillinghast had been so abruptly broken. Ezra Weeden had frankly vowed vengeance; and though of a quiet and ordinarily mild disposition, was now gaining a hate-bred, dogged purpose which boded no good to the usurping husband.
      On the seventh of May, 1765, Curwen's only child Ann was born; and was christened by the Rev. John Graves of King's Church, of which both husband and wife had become communicants shortly after their marriage, in order to compromise between their respective Congregational and Baptist affiliations. The record of this birth, as well as that of the marriage two years before, was stricken from most copies of the church and town annals where it ought to appear; and Charles Ward located both with the greatest difficulty after his discovery of the widow's change of name had apprised him of his own relationship, and engendered the feverish interest which culminated in his madness. The birth entry, indeed, was found very curiously through correspondence with the heirs of the loyalist Dr. Graves, who had taken with him a duplicate set of records when he left his pastorate at the outbreak of the Revolution. Ward had tried this source because he knew that his great-great-grandmother Ann Tillinghast Potter had been an Episcopalian.
      Shortly after the birth of his daughter, an event he seemed to welcome with a fervour greatly out of keeping with his usual coldness, Curwen resolved to sit for a portrait. This he had painted by a very gifted Scotsman named Cosmo Alexander, then a resident of Newport, and since famous as the early teacher of Gilbert Stuart. The likeness was said to have been executed on a wall-panel of the library of the house in Olney Court, but neither of the two old diaries mentioning it gave any hint of its ultimate disposition. At this period the erratic scholar shewed signs of unusual abstraction, and spent as much time as he possibly could at his farm on the Pawtuxet Road. He seemed, it was stated, in a condition of suppressed excitement or suspense; as if expecting some phenomenal thing or on the brink of some strange discovery. Chemistry or alchemy would appear to have played a great part, for he took from his house to the farm the greater number of his volumes on that subject.
      His affectation of civic interest did not diminish, and he lost no opportunities for helping such leaders as Stephen Hopkins, Joseph Brown, and Benjamin West in their efforts to raise the cultural tone of the town, which was then much below the level of Newport in its patronage of the liberal arts. He had helped Daniel Jenckes found his bookshop in 1763, and was thereafter his best customer; extending aid likewise to the struggling Gazette that appeared each Wednesday at the Sign of Shakespear's Head. In politics he ardently supported Governor Hopkins against the Ward party whose prime strength was in Newport, and his really eloquent speech at Hacker's Hall in 1765 against the setting off of North Providence as a separate town with a pro-Ward vote in the General Assembly did more than any other one thing to wear down the prejudice against him. But Ezra Weeden, who watched him closely, sneered cynically at all this outward activity; and freely swore it was no more than a mask for some nameless traffick with the blackest gulfs of Tartarus. The revengeful youth began a systematic study of the man and his doings whenever he was in port; spending hours at night by the wharves with a dory in readiness when he saw lights in the Curwen warehouses, and following the small boat which would sometimes steal quietly off and down the bay. He also kept as close a watch as possible on the Pawtuxet farm, and was once severely bitten by the dogs the old Indian couple loosed upon him.

3.

      In 1766 came the final change in Joseph Curwen. It was very sudden, and gained wide notice amongst the curious townsfolk; for the air of suspense and expectancy dropped like an old cloak, giving instant place to an ill-concealed exaltation of perfect triumph. Curwen seemed to have difficulty in restraining himself from public harangues on what he had found or learned or made; but apparently the need of secrecy was greater than the longing to share his rejoicing, for no explanation was ever offered by him. It was after this transition, which appears to have come early in July, that the sinister scholar began to astonish people by his possession of information which only their long-dead ancestors would seem to be able to impart.
      But Curwen's feverish secret activities by no means ceased with this change. On the contrary, they tended rather to increase; so that more and more of his shipping business was handled by the captains whom he now bound to him by ties of fear as potent as those of bankruptcy had been. He altogether abandoned the slave trade, alleging that its profits were constantly decreasing. Every possible moment was spent at the Pawtuxet farm; though there were rumours now and then of his presence in places which, though not actually near graveyards, were yet so situated in relation to graveyards that thoughtful people wondered just how thorough the old merchant's change of habits really was. Ezra Weeden, though his periods of espionage were necessarily brief and intermittent on account of his sea voyaging, had a vindictive persistence which the bulk of the practical townsfolk and farmers lacked; and subjected Curwen's affairs to a scrutiny such as they had never had before.
      Many of the odd manoeuvres of the strange merchant's vessels had been taken for granted on account of the unrest of the times, when every colonist seemed determined to resist the provisions of the Sugar Act which hampered a prominent traffick. Smuggling and evasion were the rule in Narragansett Bay, and nocturnal landings of illicit cargoes were continuous commonplaces. But Weeden, night after night following the lighters or small sloops which he saw steal off from the Curwen warehouses at the Town Street docks, soon felt assured that it was not merely His Majesty's armed ships which the sinister skulker was anxious to avoid. Prior to the change in 1766 these boats had for the most part contained chained negroes, who were carried down and across the bay and landed at an obscure point on the shore just north of Pawtuxet; being afterward driven up the bluff and across country to the Curwen farm, where they were locked in that enormous stone outbuilding which had only high narrow slits for windows. After that change, however, the whole programme was altered. Importation of slaves ceased at once, and for a time Curwen abandoned his midnight sailings. Then, about the spring of 1767, a new policy appeared. Once more the lighters grew wont to put out from the black, silent docks, and this time they would go down the bay some distance, perhaps as far as Namquit Point, where they would meet and receive cargo from strange ships of considerable size and widely varied appearance. Curwen's sailors would then deposit this cargo at the usual point on the shore, and transport it overland to the farm; locking it in the same cryptical stone building which had formerly received the negroes. The cargo consisted almost wholly of boxes and cases, of which a large proportion were oblong and heavy and disturbingly suggestive of coffins.
      Weeden always watched the farm with unremitting assiduity; visiting it each night for long periods, and seldom letting a week go by without a sight except when the ground bore a footprint-revealing snow. Even then he would often walk as close as possible in the travelled road or on the ice of the neighbouring river to see what tracks others might have left. Finding his own vigils interrupted by nautical duties, he hired a tavern companion named Eleazar Smith to continue the survey during his absences; and between them the two could have set in motion some extraordinary rumours. That they did not do so was only because they knew the effect of publicity would be to warn their quarry and make further progress impossible. Instead, they wished to learn something definite before taking any action. What they did learn must have been startling indeed, and Charles Ward spoke many times to his parents of his regret at Weeden's later burning of his notebooks. All that can be told of their discoveries is what Eleazar Smith jotted down in a none too coherent diary, and what other diarists and letter-writers have timidly repeated from the statements which they finally made - and according to which the farm was only the outer shell of some vast and revolting menace, of a scope and depth too profound and intangible for more than shadowy comprehension.
      It is gathered that Weeden and Smith became early convinced that a great series of tunnels and catacombs, inhabited by a very sizeable staff of persons besides the old Indian and his wife, underlay the farm. The house was an old peaked relic of the middle seventeenth century with enormous stack chimney and diamond-paned lattice windows, the laboratory being in a lean-to toward the north, where the roof came nearly to the ground. This building stood clear of any other; yet judging by the different voices heard at odd times within, it must have been accessible through secret passages beneath. These voices, before 1766, were mere mumblings and negro whisperings and frenzied screams, coupled with curious chants or invocations. After that date, however, they assumed a very singular and terrible cast as they ran the gamut betwixt dronings of dull acquiescence and explosions of frantic pain or fury, rumblings of conversation and whines of entreaty, pantings of eagerness and shouts of protest. They appeared to be in different languages, all known to Curwen, whose rasping accents were frequently distinguishable in reply, reproof, or threatening. Sometimes it seemed that several persons must be in the house; Curwen, certain captives, and the guards of those captives. There were voices of a sort that neither Weeden nor Smith had ever heard before despite their wide knowledge of foreign parts, and many that they did seem to place as belonging to this or that nationality. The nature of the conversations seemed always a kind of catechism, as if Curwen were extorting some sort of information from terrified or rebellious prisoners.
      Weeden had many verbatim reports of overheard scraps in his notebook, for English, French, and Spanish, which he knew, were frequently used; but of these nothing has survived. He did, however, say that besides a few ghoulish dialogues in which the past affairs of Providence families were concerned, most of the questions and answers he could understand were historical or scientific; occasionally pertaining to very remote places and ages. Once, for example, an alternately raging and sullen figure was questioned in French about the Black Prince's massacre at Limoges in 1370, as if there were some hidden reason which he ought to know. Curwen asked the prisoner - if prisoner it were - whether the order to slay was given because of the Sign of the Goat found on the altar in the ancient Roman crypt beneath the Cathedral, or whether the Dark Man of the Haute Vienne Coven had spoken the Three Words. Failing to obtain replies, the inquisitor had seemingly resorted to extreme means; for there was a terrific shriek followed by silence and muttering and a bumping sound.
      None of these colloquies were ever ocularly witnessed, since the windows were always heavily draped. Once, though, during a discourse in an unknown tongue, a shadow was seen on the curtain which startled Weeden exceedingly; reminding him of one of the puppets in a show he had seen in the autumn of 1764 in Hacker's Hall, when a man from Germantown, Pennsylvania, had given a clever mechanical spectacle advertised as a ""View of the Famous City of Jerusalem, in which are represented Jerusalem, the Temple of Solomon, his Royal Throne, the noted Towers, and Hills, likewise the Sufferings of Our Saviour from the Garden of Gethsemane to the Cross on the Hill of Golgotha; an artful piece of Statuary, Worthy to be seen by the Curious."" It was on this occasion that the listener, who had crept close to the window of the front room whence the speaking proceeded, gave a start which roused the old Indian pair and caused them to loose the dogs on him. After that no more conversations were ever heard in the house, and Weeden and Smith concluded that Curwen had transferred his field of action to regions below.
      That such regions in truth existed, seemed amply clear from many things. Faint cries and groans unmistakably came up now and then from what appeared to be the solid earth in places far from any structure; whilst hidden in the bushes along the river-bank in the rear, where the high ground sloped steeply down to the valley of the Pawtuxet, there was found an arched oaken door in a frame of heavy masonry, which was obviously an entrance to caverns within the hill. When or how these catacombs could have been constructed, Weeden was unable to say; but he frequently pointed out how easily the place might have been reached by bands of unseen workmen from the river. Joseph Curwen put his mongrel seamen to diverse uses indeed! During the heavy spring rains of 1769 the two watchers kept a sharp eye on the steep river-bank to see if any subterrene secrets might be washed to light, and were rewarded by the sight of a profusion of both human and animal bones in places where deep gullies had been worn in the banks. Naturally there might be many explanations of such things in the rear of a stock farm, and in a locality where old Indian burying-grounds were common, but Weeden and Smith drew their own inferences.
      It was in January 1770, whilst Weeden and Smith were still debating vainly on what, if anything, to think or do about the whole bewildering business, that the incident of the Fortaleza occurred. Exasperated by the burning of the revenue sloop Liberty at Newport during the previous summer, the customs fleet under Admiral Wallace had adopted an increased vigilance concerning strange vessels; and on this occasion His Majesty's armed schooner Cygnet, under Capt. Charles Leslie, captured after a short pursuit one early morning the snow Fortaleza of Barcelona, Spain, under Capt. Manuel Arruda, bound according to its log from Grand Cairo, Egypt, to Providence. When searched for contraband material, this ship revealed the astonishing fact that its cargo consisted exclusively of Egyptian mummies, consigned to ""Sailor A. B. C."", who would come to remove his goods in a lighter just off Namquit Point and whose identity Capt. Arruda felt himself in honour bound not to reveal. The Vice-Admiralty Court at Newport, at a loss what to do in view of the non-contraband nature of the cargo on the one hand and of the unlawful secrecy of the entry on the other hand, compromised on Collector Robinson's recommendation by freeing the ship but forbidding it a port in Rhode Island waters. There were later rumours of its having been seen in Boston Harbour, though it never openly entered the Port of Boston.
      This extraordinary incident did not fail of wide remark in Providence, and there were not many who doubted the existence of some connexion between the cargo of mummies and the sinister Joseph Curwen. His exotic studies and his curious chemical importations being common knowledge, and his fondness for graveyards being common suspicion; it did not take much imagination to link him with a freakish importation which could not conceivably have been destined for anyone else in the town. As if conscious of this natural belief, Curwen took care to speak casually on several occasions of the chemical value of the balsams found in mummies; thinking perhaps that he might make the affair seem less unnatural, yet stopping just short of admitting his participation. Weeden and Smith, of course, felt no doubt whatsoever of the significance of the thing; and indulged in the wildest theories concerning Curwen and his monstrous labours.
      The following spring, like that of the year before, had heavy rains; and the watchers kept careful track of the river-bank behind the Curwen farm. Large sections were washed away, and a certain number of bones discovered; but no glimpse was afforded of any actual subterranean chambers or burrows. Something was rumoured, however, at the village of Pawtuxet about a mile below, where the river flows in falls over a rocky terrace to join the placid landlocked cove. There, where quaint old cottages climbed the hill from the rustic bridge, and fishing-smacks lay anchored at their sleepy docks, a vague report went round of things that were floating down the river and flashing into sight for a minute as they went over the falls. Of course the Pawtuxet is a long river which winds through many settled regions abounding in graveyards, and of course the spring rains had been very heavy; but the fisherfolk about the bridge did not like the wild way that one of the things stared as it shot down to the still water below, or the way that another half cried out although its condition had greatly departed from that of objects which normally cry out. That rumour sent Smith - for Weeden was just then at sea - in haste to the river-bank behind the farm; where surely enough there remained the evidences of an extensive cave-in. There was, however, no trace of a passage into the steep bank; for the miniature avalanche had left behind a solid wall of mixed earth and shrubbery from aloft. Smith went to the extent of some experimental digging, but was deterred by lack of success - or perhaps by fear of possible success. It is interesting to speculate on what the persistent and revengeful Weeden would have done had he been ashore at the time.

4.

      By the autumn of 1770 Weeden decided that the time was ripe to tell others of his discoveries; for he had a large number of facts to link together, and a second eye-witness to refute the possible charge that jealousy and vindictiveness had spurred his fancy. As his first confidant he selected Capt. James Mathewson of the Enterprise, who on the one hand knew him well enough not to doubt his veracity, and on the other hand was sufficiently influential in the town to be heard in turn with respect. The colloquy took place in an upper room of Sabin's Tavern near the docks, with Smith present to corroborate virtually every statement; and it could be seen that Capt. Mathewson was tremendously impressed. Like nearly everyone else in the town, he had had black suspicions of his own anent Joseph Curwen; hence it needed only this confirmation and enlargement of data to convince him absolutely. At the end of the conference he was very grave, and enjoined strict silence upon the two younger men. He would, he said, transmit the information separately to some ten or so of the most learned and prominent citizens of Providence; ascertaining their views and following whatever advice they might have to offer. Secrecy would probably be essential in any case, for this was no matter that the town constables or militia could cope with; and above all else the excitable crowd must be kept in ignorance, lest there be enacted in these already troublous times a repetition of that frightful Salem panic of less than a century before which had first brought Curwen hither.
      The right persons to tell, he believed, would be Dr. Benjamin West, whose pamphlet on the late transit of Venus proved him a scholar and keen thinker; Rev. James Manning, President of the College which had just moved up from Warren and was temporarily housed in the new King Street schoolhouse awaiting the completion of its building on the hill above Presbyterian-Lane; ex-Governor Stephen Hopkins, who had been a member of the Philosophical Society at Newport, and was a man of very broad perceptions; John Carter, publisher of the Gazette; all four of the Brown brothers, John, Joseph, Nicholas, and Moses, who formed the recognised local magnates, and of whom Joseph was an amateur scientist of parts; old Dr. Jabez Bowen, whose erudition was considerable, and who had much first-hand knowledge of Curwen's odd purchases; and Capt. Abraham Whipple, a privateersman of phenomenal boldness and energy who could be counted on to lead in any active measures needed. These men, if favourable, might eventually be brought together for collective deliberation; and with them would rest the responsibility of deciding whether or not to inform the Governor of the Colony, Joseph Wanton of Newport, before taking action.
      The mission of Capt. Mathewson prospered beyond his highest expectations; for whilst he found one or two of the chosen confidants somewhat sceptical of the possible ghastly side of Weeden's tale, there was not one who did not think it necessary to take some sort of secret and cošrdinated action. Curwen, it was clear, formed a vague potential menace to the welfare of the town and Colony; and must be eliminated at any cost. Late in December 1770 a group of eminent townsmen met at the home of Stephen Hopkins and debated tentative measures. Weeden's notes, which he had given to Capt. Mathewson, were carefully read; and he and Smith were summoned to give testimony anent details. Something very like fear seized the whole assemblage before the meeting was over, though there ran through that fear a grim determination which Capt. Whipple's bluff and resonant profanity best expressed. They would not notify the Governor, because a more than legal course seemed necessary. With hidden powers of uncertain extent apparently at his disposal, Curwen was not a man who could safely be warned to leave town. Nameless reprisals might ensue, and even if the sinister creature complied, the removal would be no more than the shifting of an unclean burden to another place. The times were lawless, and men who had flouted the King's revenue forces for years were not the ones to balk at sterner things when duty impelled. Curwen must be surprised at his Pawtuxet farm by a large raiding-party of seasoned privateersmen and given one decisive chance to explain himself. If he proved a madman, amusing himself with shrieks and imaginary conversations in different voices, he would be properly confined. If something graver appeared, and if the underground horrors indeed turned out to be real, he and all with him must die. It could be done quietly, and even the widow and her father need not be told how it came about.
      While these serious steps were under discussion there occurred in the town an incident so terrible and inexplicable that for a time little else was mentioned for miles around. In the middle of a moonlight January night with heavy snow underfoot there resounded over the river and up the hill a shocking series of cries which brought sleepy heads to every window; and people around Weybosset Point saw a great white thing plunging frantically along the badly cleared space in front of the Turk's Head. There was a baying of dogs in the distance, but this subsided as soon as the clamour of the awakened town became audible. Parties of men with lanterns and muskets hurried out to see what was happening, but nothing rewarded their search. The next morning, however, a giant, muscular body, stark naked, was found on the jams of ice around the southern piers of the Great Bridge, where the Long Dock stretched out beside Abbott's distil-house, and the identity of this object became a theme for endless speculation and whispering. It was not so much the younger as the older folk who whispered, for only in the patriarchs did that rigid face with horror-bulging eyes strike any chord of memory. They, shaking as they did so, exchanged furtive murmurs of wonder and fear; for in those stiff, hideous features lay a resemblance so marvellous as to be almost an identity - and that identity was with a man who had died full fifty years before.
      Ezra Weeden was present at the finding; and remembering the baying of the night before, set out along Weybosset Street and across Muddy Dock Bridge whence the sound had come. He had a curious expectancy, and was not surprised when, reaching the edge of the settled district where the street merged into the Pawtuxet Road, he came upon some very curious tracks in the snow. The naked giant had been pursued by dogs and many booted men, and the returning tracks of the hounds and their masters could be easily traced. They had given up the chase upon coming too near the town. Weeden smiled grimly, and as a perfunctory detail traced the footprints back to their source. It was the Pawtuxet farm of Joseph Curwen, as he well knew it would be; and he would have given much had the yard been less confusingly trampled. As it was, he dared not seem too interested in full daylight. Dr. Bowen, to whom Weeden went at once with his report, performed an autopsy on the strange corpse, and discovered peculiarities which baffled him utterly. The digestive tracts of the huge man seemed never to have been in use, whilst the whole skin had a coarse, loosely knit texture impossible to account for. Impressed by what the old men whispered of this body's likeness to the long-dead blacksmith Daniel Green, whose great-grandson Aaron Hoppin was a supercargo in Curwen's employ, Weeden asked casual questions till he found where Green was buried. That night a party of ten visited the old North Burying Ground opposite Herrenden's Lane and opened a grave. They found it vacant, precisely as they had expected.
      Meanwhile arrangements had been made with the post riders to intercept Joseph Curwen's mail, and shortly before the incident of the naked body there was found a letter from one Jedediah Orne of Salem which made the cošperating citizens think deeply. Parts of it, copied and preserved in the private archives of the Smith family where Charles Ward found it, ran as follows:
      ""I delight that you continue in ye Gett'g at Olde Matters in your Way, and doe not think better was done at Mr. Hutchinson's in Salem-Village. Certainely, there was Noth'g butt ye liveliest Awfulness in that which H. rais'd upp from What he cou'd gather onlie a part of. What you sente, did not Worke, whether because of Any Thing miss'g, or because ye Wordes were not Righte from my Speak'g or yr Copy'g. I alone am at a Loss. I have not ye Chymicall art to followe Borellus, and owne my Self confounded by ye VII. Booke of ye Necronomicon that you recommende. But I wou'd have you Observe what was tolde to us aboute tak'g Care whom to calle up, for you are Sensible what Mr. Mather writ in ye Magnalia of  -  - , and can judge how truely that Horrendous thing is reported. I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you. I was frighted when I read of your know'g what Ben Zariatnatmik hadde in his ebony Boxe, for I was conscious who must have tolde you. And againe I ask that you shalle write me as Jedediah and not Simon. In this Community a Man may not live too long, and you knowe my Plan by which I came back as my Son. I am desirous you will Acquaint me with what ye Blacke Man learnt from Sylvanus Cocidius in ye Vault, under ye Roman Wall, and will be oblig'd for ye Lend'g of ye MS. you speak of.""
      Another and unsigned letter from Philadelphia provoked equal thought, especially for the following passage:
      ""I will observe what you say respecting the sending of Accounts only by yr Vessels, but can not always be certain when to expect them. In the Matter spoke of, I require onlie one more thing; but wish to be sure I apprehend you exactly. You inform me, that no Part must be missing if the finest Effects are to be had, but you can not but know how hard it is to be sure. It seems a great Hazard and Burthen to take away the whole Box, and in Town (i.e. St. Peter's, St. Paul's, St. Mary's, or Christ Church) it can scarce be done at all. But I know what Imperfections were in the one I rais'd up October last, and how many live Specimens you were forc'd to imploy before you hit upon the right Mode in the year 1766; so will be guided by you in all Matters. I am impatient for yr Brig, and inquire daily at Mr. Biddle's Wharf.""
      A third suspicious letter was in an unknown tongue and even an unknown alphabet. In the Smith diary found by Charles Ward a single oft-repeated combination of characters is clumsily copied; and authorities at Brown University have pronounced the alphabet Amharic or Abyssinian, although they do not recognise the word. None of these epistles was ever delivered to Curwen, though the disappearance of Jedediah Orne from Salem as recorded shortly afterward shewed that the Providence men took certain quiet steps. The Pennsylvania Historical Society also has some curious letters received by Dr. Shippen regarding the presence of an unwholesome character in Philadelphia. But more decisive steps were in the air, and it is in the secret assemblages of sworn and tested sailors and faithful old privateersmen in the Brown warehouses by night that we must look for the main fruits of Weeden's disclosures. Slowly and surely a plan of campaign was under development which would leave no trace of Joseph Curwen's noxious mysteries.
      Curwen, despite all precautions, apparently felt that something was in the wind; for he was now remarked to wear an unusually worried look. His coach was seen at all hours in the town and on the Pawtuxet Road, and he dropped little by little the air of forced geniality with which he had latterly sought to combat the town's prejudice. The nearest neighbours to his farm, the Fenners, one night remarked a great shaft of light shooting into the sky from some aperture in the roof of that cryptical stone building with the high, excessively narrow windows; an event which they quickly communicated to John Brown in Providence. Mr. Brown had become the executive leader of the select group bent on Curwen's extirpation, and had informed the Fenners that some action was about to be taken. This he deemed needful because of the impossibility of their not witnessing the final raid; and he explained his course by saying that Curwen was known to be a spy of the customs officers at Newport, against whom the hand of every Providence shipper, merchant, and farmer was openly or clandestinely raised. Whether the ruse was wholly believed by neighbours who had seen so many queer things is not certain; but at any rate the Fenners were willing to connect any evil with a man of such queer ways. To them Mr. Brown had entrusted the duty of watching the Curwen farmhouse, and of regularly reporting every incident which took place there.

5.

      The probability that Curwen was on guard and attempting unusual things, as suggested by the odd shaft of light, precipitated at last the action so carefully devised by the band of serious citizens. According to the Smith diary a company of about 100 men met at 10 p.m. on Friday, April 12th, 1771, in the great room of Thurston's Tavern at the Sign of the Golden Lion on Weybosset Point across the Bridge. Of the guiding group of prominent men in addition to the leader John Brown there were present Dr. Bowen, with his case of surgical instruments, President Manning without the great periwig (the largest in the Colonies) for which he was noted, Governor Hopkins, wrapped in his dark cloak and accompanied by his seafaring brother Esek, whom he had initiated at the last moment with the permission of the rest, John Carter, Capt. Mathewson, and Capt. Whipple, who was to lead the actual raiding party. These chiefs conferred apart in a rear chamber, after which Capt. Whipple emerged to the great room and gave the gathered seamen their last oaths and instructions. Eleazar Smith was with the leaders as they sat in the rear apartment awaiting the arrival of Ezra Weeden, whose duty was to keep track of Curwen and report the departure of his coach for the farm.
      About 10:30 a heavy rumble was heard on the Great Bridge, followed by the sound of a coach in the street outside; and at that hour there was no need of waiting for Weeden in order to know that the doomed man had set out for his last night of unhallowed wizardry. A moment later, as the receding coach clattered faintly over the Muddy Dock Bridge, Weeden appeared; and the raiders fell silently into military order in the street, shouldering the firelocks, fowling-pieces, or whaling harpoons which they had with them. Weeden and Smith were with the party, and of the deliberating citizens there were present for active service Capt. Whipple, the leader, Capt. Esek Hopkins, John Carter, President Manning, Capt. Mathewson, and Dr. Bowen; together with Moses Brown, who had come up at the eleventh hour though absent from the preliminary session in the tavern. All these freemen and their hundred sailors began the long march without delay, grim and a trifle apprehensive as they left the Muddy Dock behind and mounted the gentle rise of Broad Street toward the Pawtuxet Road. Just beyond Elder Snow's church some of the men turned back to take a parting look at Providence lying outspread under the early spring stars. Steeples and gables rose dark and shapely, and salt breezes swept up gently from the cove north of the Bridge. Vega was climbing above the great hill across the water, whose crest of trees was broken by the roof-line of the unfinished College edifice. At the foot of that hill, and along the narrow mounting lanes of its side, the old town dreamed; Old Providence, for whose safety and sanity so monstrous and colossal a blasphemy was about to be wiped out.
      An hour and a quarter later the raiders arrived, as previously agreed, at the Fenner farmhouse; where they heard a final report on their intended victim. He had reached his farm over half an hour before, and the strange light had soon afterward shot once into the sky, but there were no lights in any visible windows. This was always the case of late. Even as this news was given another great glare arose toward the south, and the party realised that they had indeed come close to the scene of awesome and unnatural wonders. Capt. Whipple now ordered his force to separate into three divisions; one of twenty men under Eleazar Smith to strike across to the shore and guard the landing-place against possible reinforcements for Curwen until summoned by a messenger for desperate service, a second of twenty men under Capt. Esek Hopkins to steal down into the river valley behind the Curwen farm and demolish with axes or gunpowder the oaken door in the high, steep bank, and the third to close in on the house and adjacent buildings themselves. Of this division one third was to be led by Capt. Mathewson to the cryptical stone edifice with high narrow windows, another third to follow Capt. Whipple himself to the main farmhouse, and the remaining third to preserve a circle around the whole group of buildings until summoned by a final emergency signal.
      The river party would break down the hillside door at the sound of a single whistle-blast, then waiting and capturing anything which might issue from the regions within. At the sound of two whistle-blasts it would advance through the aperture to oppose the enemy or join the rest of the raiding contingent. The party at the stone building would accept these respective signals in an analogous manner; forcing an entrance at the first, and at the second descending whatever passage into the ground might be discovered, and joining the general or focal warfare expected to take place within the caverns. A third or emergency signal of three blasts would summon the immediate reserve from its general guard duty; its twenty men dividing equally and entering the unknown depths through both farmhouse and stone building. Capt. Whipple's belief in the existence of catacombs was absolute, and he took no alternative into consideration when making his plans. He had with him a whistle of great power and shrillness, and did not fear any upsetting or misunderstanding of signals. The final reserve at the landing, of course, was nearly out of the whistle's range; hence would require a special messenger if needed for help. Moses Brown and John Carter went with Capt. Hopkins to the river-bank, while President Manning was detailed with Capt. Mathewson to the stone building. Dr. Bowen, with Ezra Weeden, remained in Capt. Whipple's party which was to storm the farmhouse itself. The attack was to begin as soon as a messenger from Capt. Hopkins had joined Capt. Whipple to notify him of the river party's readiness. The leader would then deliver the loud single blast, and the various advance parties would commence their simultaneous attack on three points. Shortly before 1 a.m. the three divisions left the Fenner farmhouse; one to guard the landing, another to seek the river valley and the hillside door, and the third to subdivide and attend to the actual buildings of the Curwen farm.
      Eleazar Smith, who accompanied the shore-guarding party, records in his diary an uneventful march and a long wait on the bluff by the bay; broken once by what seemed to be the distant sound of the signal whistle and again by a peculiar muffled blend of roaring and crying and a powder blast which seemed to come from the same direction. Later on one man thought he caught some distant gunshots, and still later Smith himself felt the throb of titanic and thunderous words resounding in upper air. It was just before dawn that a single haggard messenger with wild eyes and a hideous unknown odour about his clothing appeared and told the detachment to disperse quietly to their homes and never again think or speak of the night's doings or of him who had been Joseph Curwen. Something about the bearing of the messenger carried a conviction which his mere words could never have conveyed; for though he was a seaman well known to many of them, there was something obscurely lost or gained in his soul which set him for evermore apart. It was the same later on when they met other old companions who had gone into that zone of horror. Most of them had lost or gained something imponderable and indescribable. They had seen or heard or felt something which was not for human creatures, and could not forget it. From them there was never any gossip, for to even the commonest of mortal instincts there are terrible boundaries. And from that single messenger the party at the shore caught a nameless awe which almost sealed their own lips. Very few are the rumours which ever came from any of them, and Eleazar Smith's diary is the only written record which has survived from that whole expedition which set forth from the Sign of the Golden Lion under the stars.
      Charles Ward, however, discovered another vague sidelight in some Fenner correspondence which he found in New London, where he knew another branch of the family had lived. It seems that the Fenners, from whose house the doomed farm was distantly visible, had watched the departing columns of raiders; and had heard very clearly the angry barking of the Curwen dogs, followed by the first shrill blast which precipitated the attack. This blast had been followed by a repetition of the great shaft of light from the stone building, and in another moment, after a quick sounding of the second signal ordering a general invasion, there had come a subdued prattle of musketry followed by a horrible roaring cry which the correspondent Luke Fenner had represented in his epistle by the characters ""Waaaahrrrrr - R'waaahrrr"". This cry, however, had possessed a quality which no mere writing could convey, and the correspondent mentions that his mother fainted completely at the sound. It was later repeated less loudly, and further but more muffled evidences of gunfire ensued; together with a loud explosion of powder from the direction of the river. About an hour afterward all the dogs began to bark frightfully, and there were vague ground rumblings so marked that the candlesticks tottered on the mantelpiece. A strong smell of sulphur was noted; and Luke Fenner's father declared that he heard the third or emergency whistle signal, though the others failed to detect it. Muffled musketry sounded again, followed by a deep scream less piercing but even more horrible than those which had preceded it; a kind of throaty, nastily plastic cough or gurgle whose quality as a scream must have come more from its continuity and psychological import than from its actual acoustic value.
      Then the flaming thing burst into sight at a point where the Curwen farm ought to lie, and the human cries of desperate and frightened men were heard. Muskets flashed and cracked, and the flaming thing fell to the ground. A second flaming thing appeared, and a shriek of human origin was plainly distinguished. Fenner wrote that he could even gather a few words belched in frenzy: ""Almighty, protect thy lamb!"" Then there were more shots, and the second flaming thing fell. After that came silence for about three-quarters of an hour; at the end of which time little Arthur Fenner, Luke's brother, exclaimed that he saw 'a red fog' going up to the stars from the accursed farm in the distance. No one but the child can testify to this, but Luke admits the significant coincidence implied by the panic of almost convulsive fright which at the same moment arched the backs and stiffened the fur of the three cats then within the room.
      Five minutes later a chill wind blew up, and the air became suffused with such an intolerable stench that only the strong freshness of the sea could have prevented its being noticed by the shore party or by any wakeful souls in Pawtuxet village. This stench was nothing which any of the Fenners had ever encountered before, and produced a kind of clutching, amorphous fear beyond that of the tomb or the charnel-house. Close upon it came the awful voice which no hapless hearer will ever be able to forget. It thundered out of the sky like a doom, and windows rattled as its echoes died away. It was deep and musical; powerful as a bass organ, but evil as the forbidden books of the Arabs. What it said no man can tell, for it spoke in an unknown tongue, but this is the writing Luke Fenner set down to portray the daemoniac intonations: ""DEESMEES-JESHET-BONE DOSEFE DUVEMA-ENITEMOSS"". Not till the year 1919 did any soul link this crude transcript with anything else in mortal knowledge, but Charles Ward paled as he recognised what Mirandola had denounced in shudders as the ultimate horror among black magic's incantations.
      An unmistakably human shout or deep chorused scream seemed to answer this malign wonder from the Curwen farm, after which the unknown stench grew complex with an added odour equally intolerable. A wailing distinctly different from the scream now burst out, and was protracted ululantly in rising and falling paroxysms. At times it became almost articulate, though no auditor could trace any definite words; and at one point it seemed to verge toward the confines of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Then a yell of utter, ultimate fright and stark madness wrenched from scores of human throats - a yell which came strong and clear despite the depth from which it must have burst; after which darkness and silence ruled all things. Spirals of acrid smoke ascended to blot out the stars, though no flames appeared and no buildings were observed to be gone or injured on the following day.
      Toward dawn two frightened messengers with monstrous and unplaceable odours saturating their clothing knocked at the Fenner door and requested a keg of rum, for which they paid very well indeed. One of them told the family that the affair of Joseph Curwen was over, and that the events of the night were not to be mentioned again. Arrogant as the order seemed, the aspect of him who gave it took away all resentment and lent it a fearsome authority; so that only these furtive letters of Luke Fenner, which he urged his Connecticut relative to destroy, remain to tell what was seen and heard. The non-compliance of that relative, whereby the letters were saved after all, has alone kept the matter from a merciful oblivion. Charles Ward had one detail to add as a result of a long canvass of Pawtuxet residents for ancestral traditions. Old Charles Slocum of that village said that there was known to his grandfather a queer rumour concerning a charred, distorted body found in the fields a week after the death of Joseph Curwen was announced. What kept the talk alive was the notion that this body, so far as could be seen in its burnt and twisted condition, was neither thoroughly human nor wholly allied to any animal which Pawtuxet folk had ever seen or read about.

6.

      Not one man who participated in that terrible raid could ever be induced to say a word concerning it, and every fragment of the vague data which survives comes from those outside the final fighting party. There is something frightful in the care with which these actual raiders destroyed each scrap which bore the least allusion to the matter. Eight sailors had been killed, but although their bodies were not produced their families were satisfied with the statement that a clash with customs officers had occurred. The same statement also covered the numerous cases of wounds, all of which were extensively bandaged and treated only by Dr. Jabez Bowen, who had accompanied the party. Hardest to explain was the nameless odour clinging to all the raiders, a thing which was discussed for weeks. Of the citizen leaders, Capt. Whipple and Moses Brown were most severely hurt, and letters of their wives testify the bewilderment which their reticence and close guarding of their bandages produced. Psychologically every participant was aged, sobered, and shaken. It is fortunate that they were all strong men of action and simple, orthodox religionists, for with more subtle introspectiveness and mental complexity they would have fared ill indeed. President Manning was the most disturbed; but even he outgrew the darkest shadow, and smothered memories in prayers. Every man of those leaders had a stirring part to play in later years, and it is perhaps fortunate that this is so. Little more than a twelvemonth afterward Capt. Whipple led the mob who burnt the revenue ship Gaspee, and in this bold act we may trace one step in the blotting out of unwholesome images.
      There was delivered to the widow of Joseph Curwen a sealed leaden coffin of curious design, obviously found ready on the spot when needed, in which she was told her husband's body lay. He had, it was explained, been killed in a customs battle about which it was not politic to give details. More than this no tongue ever uttered of Joseph Curwen's end, and Charles Ward had only a single hint wherewith to construct a theory. This hint was the merest thread - a shaky underscoring of a passage in Jedediah Orne's confiscated letter to Curwen, as partly copied in Ezra Weeden's handwriting. The copy was found in the possession of Smith's descendants; and we are left to decide whether Weeden gave it to his companion after the end, as a mute clue to the abnormality which had occurred, or whether, as is more probable, Smith had it before, and added the underscoring himself from what he had managed to extract from his friend by shrewd guessing and adroit cross-questioning. The underlined passage is merely this:
      ""I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you.""
In the light of this passage, and reflecting on what last unmentionable allies a beaten man might try to summon in his direst extremity, Charles Ward may well have wondered whether any citizen of Providence killed Joseph Curwen.
      The deliberate effacement of every memory of the dead man from Providence life and annals was vastly aided by the influence of the raiding leaders. They had not at first meant to be so thorough, and had allowed the widow and her father and child to remain in ignorance of the true conditions; but Capt. Tillinghast was an astute man, and soon uncovered enough rumours to whet his horror and cause him to demand that his daughter and granddaughter change their name, burn the library and all remaining papers, and chisel the inscription from the slate slab above Joseph Curwen's grave. He knew Capt. Whipple well, and probably extracted more hints from that bluff mariner than anyone else ever gained respecting the end of the accused sorcerer.
      From that time on the obliteration of Curwen's memory became increasingly rigid, extending at last by common consent even to the town records and files of the Gazette. It can be compared in spirit only to the hush that lay on Oscar Wilde's name for a decade after his disgrace, and in extent only to the fate of that sinful King of Runazar in Lord Dunsany's tale, whom the Gods decided must not only cease to be, but must cease ever to have been.
      Mrs. Tillinghast, as the widow became known after 1772, sold the house in Olney Court and resided with her father in Power's Lane till her death in 1817. The farm at Pawtuxet, shunned by every living soul, remained to moulder through the years; and seemed to decay with unaccountable rapidity. By 1780 only the stone and brickwork were standing, and by 1800 even these had fallen to shapeless heaps. None ventured to pierce the tangled shrubbery on the river-bank behind which the hillside door may have lain, nor did any try to frame a definite image of the scenes amidst which Joseph Curwen departed from the horrors he had wrought.
      Only robust old Capt. Whipple was heard by alert listeners to mutter once in a while to himself, ""Pox on that  -  -  - , but he had no business to laugh while he screamed. 'Twas as though the damn'd  -  -  -  had some'at up his sleeve. For half a crown I'd burn his  -  -  -  house.""
","III.

Meanwhile Old Whateley continued to buy cattle without measurably increasing the size of his herd. He also cut timber and began to repair the unused parts of his house—a spacious, peaked-roofed affair whose rear end was buried entirely in the rocky hillside, and whose three least-ruined ground-floor rooms had always been sufficient for himself and his daughter. There must have been prodigious reserves of strength in the old man to enable him to accomplish so much hard labour; and though he still babbled dementedly at times, his carpentry seemed to shew the effects of sound calculation. It had already begun as soon as Wilbur was born, when one of the many tool-sheds had been put suddenly in order, clapboarded, and fitted with a stout fresh lock. Now, in restoring the abandoned upper story of the house, he was a no less thorough craftsman. His mania shewed itself only in his tight boarding-up of all the windows in the reclaimed section—though many declared that it was a crazy thing to bother with the reclamation at all. Less inexplicable was his fitting up of another downstairs room for his new grandson—a room which several callers saw, though no one was ever admitted to the closely boarded upper story. This chamber he lined with tall, firm shelving; along which he began gradually to arrange, in apparently careful order, all the rotting ancient books and parts of books which during his own day had been heaped promiscuously in odd corners of the various rooms.
      “I made some use of ’em,” he would say as he tried to mend a torn black-letter page with paste prepared on the rusty kitchen stove, “but the boy’s fitten to make better use of ’em. He’d orter hev ’em as well sot as he kin, for they’re goin’ to be all of his larnin’.”
      When Wilbur was a year and seven months old—in September of 1914—his size and accomplishments were almost alarming. He had grown as large as a child of four, and was a fluent and incredibly intelligent talker. He ran freely about the fields and hills, and accompanied his mother on all her wanderings. At home he would pore diligently over the queer pictures and charts in his grandfather’s books, while Old Whateley would instruct and catechise him through long, hushed afternoons. By this time the restoration of the house was finished, and those who watched it wondered why one of the upper windows had been made into a solid plank door. It was a window in the rear of the east gable end, close against the hill; and no one could imagine why a cleated wooden runway was built up to it from the ground. About the period of this work’s completion people noticed that the old tool-house, tightly locked and windowlessly clapboarded since Wilbur’s birth, had been abandoned again. The door swung listlessly open, and when Earl Sawyer once stepped within after a cattle-selling call on Old Whateley he was quite discomposed by the singular odour he encountered—such a stench, he averred, as he had never before smelt in all his life except near the Indian circles on the hills, and which could not come from anything sane or of this earth. But then, the homes and sheds of Dunwich folk have never been remarkable for olfactory immaculateness.
      The following months were void of visible events, save that everyone swore to a slow but steady increase in the mysterious hill noises. On May-Eve of 1915 there were tremors which even the Aylesbury people felt, whilst the following Hallowe’en produced an underground rumbling queerly synchronised with bursts of flame—“them witch Whateleys’ doin’s”—from the summit of Sentinel Hill. Wilbur was growing up uncannily, so that he looked like a boy of ten as he entered his fourth year. He read avidly by himself now; but talked much less than formerly. A settled taciturnity was absorbing him, and for the first time people began to speak specifically of the dawning look of evil in his goatish face. He would sometimes mutter an unfamiliar jargon, and chant in bizarre rhythms which chilled the listener with a sense of unexplainable terror. The aversion displayed toward him by dogs had now become a matter of wide remark, and he was obliged to carry a pistol in order to traverse the countryside in safety. His occasional use of the weapon did not enhance his popularity amongst the owners of canine guardians.
      The few callers at the house would often find Lavinia alone on the ground floor, while odd cries and footsteps resounded in the boarded-up second story. She would never tell what her father and the boy were doing up there, though once she turned pale and displayed an abnormal degree of fear when a jocose fish-peddler tried the locked door leading to the stairway. That peddler told the store loungers at Dunwich Village that he thought he heard a horse stamping on that floor above. The loungers reflected, thinking of the door and runway, and of the cattle that so swiftly disappeared. Then they shuddered as they recalled tales of Old Whateley’s youth, and of the strange things that are called out of the earth when a bullock is sacrificed at the proper time to certain heathen gods. It had for some time been noticed that dogs had begun to hate and fear the whole Whateley place as violently as they hated and feared young Wilbur personally.
      In 1917 the war came, and Squire Sawyer Whateley, as chairman of the local draft board, had hard work finding a quota of young Dunwich men fit even to be sent to a development camp. The government, alarmed at such signs of wholesale regional decadence, sent several officers and medical experts to investigate; conducting a survey which New England newspaper readers may still recall. It was the publicity attending this investigation which set reporters on the track of the Whateleys, and caused the Boston Globe and Arkham Advertiser to print flamboyant Sunday stories of young Wilbur’s precociousness, Old Whateley’s black magic, the shelves of strange books, the sealed second story of the ancient farmhouse, and the weirdness of the whole region and its hill noises. Wilbur was four and a half then, and looked like a lad of fifteen. His lips and cheeks were fuzzy with a coarse dark down, and his voice had begun to break.
      Earl Sawyer went out to the Whateley place with both sets of reporters and camera men, and called their attention to the queer stench which now seemed to trickle down from the sealed upper spaces. It was, he said, exactly like a smell he had found in the tool-shed abandoned when the house was finally repaired; and like the faint odours which he sometimes thought he caught near the stone circles on the mountains. Dunwich folk read the stories when they appeared, and grinned over the obvious mistakes. They wondered, too, why the writers made so much of the fact that Old Whateley always paid for his cattle in gold pieces of extremely ancient date. The Whateleys had received their visitors with ill-concealed distaste, though they did not dare court further publicity by a violent resistance or refusal to talk.
",True
"""The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated.""
BORELLUS

I. A Result and a Prologue

1.

From a private hospital for the insane near Providence, Rhode Island, there recently disappeared an exceedingly singular person. He bore the name of Charles Dexter Ward, and was placed under restraint most reluctantly by the grieving father who had watched his aberration grow from a mere eccentricity to a dark mania involving both a possibility of murderous tendencies and a profound and peculiar change in the apparent contents of his mind. Doctors confess themselves quite baffled by his case, since it presented oddities of a general physiological as well as psychological character.
      In the first place, the patient seemed oddly older than his twenty-six years would warrant. Mental disturbance, it is true, will age one rapidly; but the face of this young man had taken on a subtle cast which only the very aged normally acquire. In the second place, his organic processes shewed a certain queerness of proportion which nothing in medical experience can parallel. Respiration and heart action had a baffling lack of symmetry; the voice was lost, so that no sounds above a whisper were possible; digestion was incredibly prolonged and minimised, and neural reactions to standard stimuli bore no relation at all to anything heretofore recorded, either normal or pathological. The skin had a morbid chill and dryness, and the cellular structure of the tissue seemed exaggeratedly coarse and loosely knit. Even a large olive birthmark on the right hip had disappeared, whilst there had formed on the chest a very peculiar mole or blackish spot of which no trace existed before. In general, all physicians agree that in Ward the processes of metabolism had become retarded to a degree beyond precedent.
      Psychologically, too, Charles Ward was unique. His madness held no affinity to any sort recorded in even the latest and most exhaustive of treatises, and was conjoined to a mental force which would have made him a genius or a leader had it not been twisted into strange and grotesque forms. Dr. Willett, who was Ward's family physician, affirms that the patient's gross mental capacity, as gauged by his response to matters outside the sphere of his insanity, had actually increased since the seizure. Ward, it is true, was always a scholar and an antiquarian; but even his most brilliant early work did not shew the prodigious grasp and insight displayed during his last examinations by the alienists. It was, indeed, a difficult matter to obtain a legal commitment to the hospital, so powerful and lucid did the youth's mind seem; and only on the evidence of others, and on the strength of many abnormal gaps in his stock of information as distinguished from his intelligence, was he finally placed in confinement. To the very moment of his vanishment he was an omnivorous reader and as great a conversationalist as his poor voice permitted; and shrewd observers, failing to foresee his escape, freely predicted that he would not be long in gaining his discharge from custody.
      Only Dr. Willett, who brought Charles Ward into the world and had watched his growth of body and mind ever since, seemed frightened at the thought of his future freedom. He had had a terrible experience and had made a terrible discovery which he dared not reveal to his sceptical colleagues. Willett, indeed, presents a minor mystery all his own in his connexion with the case. He was the last to see the patient before his flight, and emerged from that final conversation in a state of mixed horror and relief which several recalled when Ward's escape became known three hours later. That escape itself is one of the unsolved wonders of Dr. Waite's hospital. A window open above a sheer drop of sixty feet could hardly explain it, yet after that talk with Willett the youth was undeniably gone. Willett himself has no public explanations to offer, though he seems strangely easier in mind than before the escape. Many, indeed, feel that he would like to say more if he thought any considerable number would believe him. He had found Ward in his room, but shortly after his departure the attendants knocked in vain. When they opened the door the patient was not there, and all they found was the open window with a chill April breeze blowing in a cloud of fine bluish-grey dust that almost choked them. True, the dogs howled some time before; but that was while Willett was still present, and they had caught nothing and shewn no disturbance later on. Ward's father was told at once over the telephone, but he seemed more saddened than surprised. By the time Dr. Waite called in person, Dr. Willett had been talking with him, and both disavowed any knowledge or complicity in the escape. Only from certain closely confidential friends of Willett and the senior Ward have any clues been gained, and even these are too wildly fantastic for general credence. The one fact which remains is that up to the present time no trace of the missing madman has been unearthed.
      Charles Ward was an antiquarian from infancy, no doubt gaining his taste from the venerable town around him, and from the relics of the past which filled every corner of his parents' old mansion in Prospect Street on the crest of the hill. With the years his devotion to ancient things increased; so that history, genealogy, and the study of colonial architecture, furniture, and craftsmanship at length crowded everything else from his sphere of interests. These tastes are important to remember in considering his madness; for although they do not form its absolute nucleus, they play a prominent part in its superficial form. The gaps of information which the alienists noticed were all related to modern matters, and were invariably offset by a correspondingly excessive though outwardly concealed knowledge of bygone matters as brought out by adroit questioning; so that one would have fancied the patient literally transferred to a former age through some obscure sort of auto-hypnosis. The odd thing was that Ward seemed no longer interested in the antiquities he knew so well. He had, it appears, lost his regard for them through sheer familiarity; and all his final efforts were obviously bent toward mastering those common facts of the modern world which had been so totally and unmistakably expunged from his brain. That this wholesale deletion had occurred, he did his best to hide; but it was clear to all who watched him that his whole programme of reading and conversation was determined by a frantic wish to imbibe such knowledge of his own life and of the ordinary practical and cultural background of the twentieth century as ought to have been his by virtue of his birth in 1902 and his education in the schools of our own time. Alienists are now wondering how, in view of his vitally impaired range of data, the escaped patient manages to cope with the complicated world of today; the dominant opinion being that he is 'lying low' in some humble and unexacting position till his stock of modern information can be brought up to the normal.
      The beginning of Ward's madness is a matter of dispute among alienists. Dr. Lyman, the eminent Boston authority, places it in 1919 or 1920, during the boy's last year at the Moses Brown School, when he suddenly turned from the study of the past to the study of the occult, and refused to qualify for college on the ground that he had individual researches of much greater importance to make. This is certainly borne out by Ward's altered habits at the time, especially by his continual search through town records and among old burying-grounds for a certain grave dug in 1771; the grave of an ancestor named Joseph Curwen, some of whose papers he professed to have found behind the panelling of a very old house in Olney Court, on Stampers' Hill, which Curwen was known to have built and occupied. It is, broadly speaking, undeniable that the winter of 1919-20 saw a great change in Ward; whereby he abruptly stopped his general antiquarian pursuits and embarked on a desperate delving into occult subjects both at home and abroad, varied only by this strangely persistent search for his forefather's grave.
      From this opinion, however, Dr. Willett substantially dissents; basing his verdict on his close and continuous knowledge of the patient, and on certain frightful investigations and discoveries which he made toward the last. Those investigations and discoveries have left their mark upon him; so that his voice trembles when he tells them, and his hand trembles when he tries to write of them. Willett admits that the change of 1919-20 would ordinarily appear to mark the beginning of a progressive decadence which culminated in the horrible and uncanny alienation of 1928; but believes from personal observation that a finer distinction must be made. Granting freely that the boy was always ill-balanced temperamentally, and prone to be unduly susceptible and enthusiastic in his responses to phenomena around him, he refuses to concede that the early alteration marked the actual passage from sanity to madness; crediting instead Ward's own statement that he had discovered or rediscovered something whose effect on human thought was likely to be marvellous and profound. The true madness, he is certain, came with a later change; after the Curwen portrait and the ancient papers had been unearthed; after a trip to strange foreign places had been made, and some terrible invocations chanted under strange and secret circumstances; after certain answers to these invocations had been plainly indicated, and a frantic letter penned under agonising and inexplicable conditions; after the wave of vampirism and the ominous Pawtuxet gossip; and after the patient's memory commenced to exclude contemporary images whilst his voice failed and his physical aspect underwent the subtle modification so many subsequently noticed.
      It was only about this time, Willett points out with much acuteness, that the nightmare qualities became indubitably linked with Ward; and the doctor feels shudderingly sure that enough solid evidence exists to sustain the youth's claim regarding his crucial discovery. In the first place, two workmen of high intelligence saw Joseph Curwen's ancient papers found. Secondly, the boy once shewed Dr. Willett those papers and a page of the Curwen diary, and each of the documents had every appearance of genuineness. The hole where Ward claimed to have found them was long a visible reality, and Willett had a very convincing final glimpse of them in surroundings which can scarcely be believed and can never perhaps be proved. Then there were the mysteries and coincidences of the Orne and Hutchinson letters, and the problem of the Curwen penmanship and of what the detectives brought to light about Dr. Allen; these things, and the terrible message in mediaeval minuscules found in Willett's pocket when he gained consciousness after his shocking experience.
      And most conclusive of all, there are the two hideous results which the doctor obtained from a certain pair of formulae during his final investigations; results which virtually proved the authenticity of the papers and of their monstrous implications at the same time that those papers were borne forever from human knowledge.

2.

      One must look back at Charles Ward's earlier life as at something belonging as much to the past as the antiquities he loved so keenly. In the autumn of 1918, and with a considerable show of zest in the military training of the period, he had begun his junior year at the Moses Brown School, which lies very near his home. The old main building, erected in 1819, had always charmed his youthful antiquarian sense; and the spacious park in which the academy is set appealed to his sharp eye for landscape. His social activities were few; and his hours were spent mainly at home, in rambling walks, in his classes and drills, and in pursuit of antiquarian and genealogical data at the City Hall, the State House, the Public Library, the Athenaeum, the Historical Society, the John Carter Brown and John Hay Libraries of Brown University, and the newly opened Shepley Library in Benefit Street. One may picture him yet as he was in those days; tall, slim, and blond, with studious eyes and a slight stoop, dressed somewhat carelessly, and giving a dominant impression of harmless awkwardness rather than attractiveness.
      His walks were always adventures in antiquity, during which he managed to recapture from the myriad relics of a glamorous old city a vivid and connected picture of the centuries before. His home was a great Georgian mansion atop the well-nigh precipitous hill that rises just east of the river; and from the rear windows of its rambling wings he could look dizzily out over all the clustered spires, domes, roofs, and skyscraper summits of the lower town to the purple hills of the countryside beyond. Here he was born, and from the lovely classic porch of the double-bayed brick facade his nurse had first wheeled him in his carriage; past the little white farmhouse of two hundred years before that the town had long ago overtaken, and on toward the stately colleges along the shady, sumptuous street, whose old square brick mansions and smaller wooden houses with narrow, heavy-columned Doric porches dreamed solid and exclusive amidst their generous yards and gardens.
      He had been wheeled, too, along sleepy Congdon Street, one tier lower down on the steep hill, and with all its eastern homes on high terraces. The small wooden houses averaged a greater age here, for it was up this hill that the growing town had climbed; and in these rides he had imbibed something of the colour of a quaint colonial village. The nurse used to stop and sit on the benches of Prospect Terrace to chat with policemen; and one of the child's first memories was of the great westward sea of hazy roofs and domes and steeples and far hills which he saw one winter afternoon from that great railed embankment, all violet and mystic against a fevered, apocalyptic sunset of reds and golds and purples and curious greens. The vast marble dome of the State House stood out in massive silhouette, its crowning statue haloed fantastically by a break in one of the tinted stratus clouds that barred the flaming sky.
      When he was larger his famous walks began; first with his impatiently dragged nurse, and then alone in dreamy meditation. Farther and farther down that almost perpendicular hill he would venture, each time reaching older and quainter levels of the ancient city. He would hesitate gingerly down vertical Jenckes Street with its bank walls and colonial gables to the shady Benefit Street corner, where before him was a wooden antique with an Ionic-pilastered pair of doorways, and beside him a prehistoric gambrel-roofer with a bit of primal farmyard remaining, and the great Judge Durfee house with its fallen vestiges of Georgian grandeur. It was getting to be a slum here; but the titan elms cast a restoring shadow over the place, and the boy used to stroll south past the long lines of the pre-Revolutionary homes with their great central chimneys and classic portals. On the eastern side they were set high over basements with railed double flights of stone steps, and the young Charles could picture them as they were when the street was new, and red heels and periwigs set off the painted pediments whose signs of wear were now becoming so visible.
      Westward the hill dropped almost as steeply as above, down to the old ""Town Street"" that the founders had laid out at the river's edge in 1636. Here ran innumerable little lanes with leaning, huddled houses of immense antiquity; and fascinated though he was, it was long before he dared to thread their archaic verticality for fear they would turn out a dream or a gateway to unknown terrors. He found it much less formidable to continue along Benefit Street past the iron fence of St. John's hidden churchyard and the rear of the 1761 Colony House and the mouldering bulk of the Golden Ball Inn where Washington stopped. At Meeting Street - the successive Gaol Lane and King Street of other periods - he would look upward to the east and see the arched flight of steps to which the highway had to resort in climbing the slope, and downward to the west, glimpsing the old brick colonial schoolhouse that smiles across the road at the ancient Sign of Shakespear's Head where the Providence Gazette and Country-Journal was printed before the Revolution. Then came the exquisite First Baptist Church of 1775, luxurious with its matchless Gibbs steeple, and the Georgian roofs and cupolas hovering by. Here and to the southward the neighbourhood became better, flowering at last into a marvellous group of early mansions; but still the little ancient lanes led off down the precipice to the west, spectral in their many-gabled archaism and dipping to a riot of iridescent decay where the wicked old waterfront recalls its proud East India days amidst polyglot vice and squalor, rotting wharves, and blear-eyed ship-chandleries, with such surviving alley names as Packet, Bullion, Gold, Silver, Coin, Doubloon, Sovereign, Guilder, Dollar, Dime, and Cent.
      Sometimes, as he grew taller and more adventurous, young Ward would venture down into this maelstrom of tottering houses, broken transoms, tumbling steps, twisted balustrades, swarthy faces, and nameless odours; winding from South Main to South Water, searching out the docks where the bay and sound steamers still touched, and returning northward at this lower level past the steep-roofed 1816 warehouses and the broad square at the Great Bridge, where the 1773 Market House still stands firm on its ancient arches. In that square he would pause to drink in the bewildering beauty of the old town as it rises on its eastward bluff, decked with its two Georgian spires and crowned by the vast new Christian Science dome as London is crowned by St. Paul's. He liked mostly to reach this point in the late afternoon, when the slanting sunlight touches the Market House and the ancient hill roofs and belfries with gold, and throws magic around the dreaming wharves where Providence Indiamen used to ride at anchor. After a long look he would grow almost dizzy with a poet's love for the sight, and then he would scale the slope homeward in the dusk past the old white church and up the narrow precipitous ways where yellow gleams would begin to peep out in small-paned windows and through fanlights set high over double flights of steps with curious wrought-iron railings.
      At other times, and in later years, he would seek for vivid contrasts; spending half a walk in the crumbling colonial regions northwest of his home, where the hill drops to the lower eminence of Stampers' Hill with its ghetto and negro quarter clustering round the place where the Boston stage coach used to start before the Revolution, and the other half in the gracious southerly realm about George, Benevolent, Power, and Williams Streets, where the old slope holds unchanged the fine estates and bits of walled garden and steep green lane in which so many fragrant memories linger. These rambles, together with the diligent studies which accompanied them, certainly account for a large amount of the antiquarian lore which at last crowded the modern world from Charles Ward's mind; and illustrate the mental soil upon which fell, in that fateful winter of 1919-20, the seeds that came to such strange and terrible fruition.
      Dr. Willett is certain that, up to this ill-omened winter of first change, Charles Ward's antiquarianism was free from every trace of the morbid. Graveyards held for him no particular attraction beyond their quaintness and historic value, and of anything like violence or savage instinct he was utterly devoid. Then, by insidious degrees, there appeared to develop a curious sequel to one of his genealogical triumphs of the year before; when he had discovered among his maternal ancestors a certain very long-lived man named Joseph Curwen, who had come from Salem in March of 1692, and about whom a whispered series of highly peculiar and disquieting stories clustered.
      Ward's great-great-grandfather Welcome Potter had in 1785 married a certain ""Ann Tillinghast, daughter of Mrs. Eliza, daughter to Capt. James Tillinghast"", of whose paternity the family had preserved no trace. Late in 1918, whilst examining a volume of original town records in manuscript, the young genealogist encountered an entry describing a legal change of name, by which in 1772 a Mrs. Eliza Curwen, widow of Joseph Curwen, resumed, along with her seven-year-old daughter Ann, her maiden name of Tillinghast; on the ground 'that her Husband's name was become a publick Reproach by Reason of what was knowne after his Decease; the which confirming an antient common Rumour, tho' not to be credited by a loyall Wife till so proven as to be wholely past Doubting'. This entry came to light upon the accidental separation of two leaves which had been carefully pasted together and treated as one by a laboured revision of the page numbers.
      It was at once clear to Charles Ward that he had indeed discovered a hitherto unknown great-great-great-grandfather. The discovery doubly excited him because he had already heard vague reports and seen scattered allusions relating to this person; about whom there remained so few publicly available records, aside from those becoming public only in modern times, that it almost seemed as if a conspiracy had existed to blot him from memory. What did appear, moreover, was of such a singular and provocative nature that one could not fail to imagine curiously what it was that the colonial recorders were so anxious to conceal and forget; or to suspect that the deletion had reasons all too valid.
      Before this, Ward had been content to let his romancing about old Joseph Curwen remain in the idle stage; but having discovered his own relationship to this apparently ""hushed-up"" character, he proceeded to hunt out as systematically as possible whatever he might find concerning him. In this excited quest he eventually succeeded beyond his highest expectations; for old letters, diaries, and sheaves of unpublished memoirs in cobwebbed Providence garrets and elsewhere yielded many illuminating passages which their writers had not thought it worth their while to destroy. One important sidelight came from a point as remote as New York, where some Rhode Island colonial correspondence was stored in the Museum at Fraunces' Tavern. The really crucial thing, though, and what in Dr. Willett's opinion formed the definite source of Ward's undoing, was the matter found in August 1919 behind the panelling of the crumbling house in Olney Court. It was that, beyond a doubt, which opened up those black vistas whose end was deeper than the pit.

","April 20th, 1909
They have given me one hour to record my thoughts. Whether this be mercy or mockery, I know not. It seems at this point to be a matter of perspective and to their vision I cannot speak. They are among us and yet beyond us.
My name, my true name, the name given to me by my mother on the day of my birth is Henry Davis Johnstone. Though by the time this is read there will be no memory of my being. And despite this note being written behind the ancient granite walls of Arkham Sanitarium believe that its author is not mad!
I was mad. Even from birth I was stricken with a distinct melancholia, which puzzled doctors and strained the frail spirits of my parents. As I grew, the condition only worsened and my days as a schoolboy were marked with despondency and torpor. A fog of weariness touched all who came near and people hastily learned to avoid my influence.
When it came time for me to move to higher education my father insisted I attend the local school, Miskatonic University, I suspect more out of frugality than to keep me near by need of fondness. My days as a college man were fraught with abject isolation. No field of study could hold my attention and no sport nor society could capture my interest. I had no friends and certainly no prospects for marriage.
It came to pass that while arriving late to lecture on English literature of the sixteenth century I took the notice of a pompous and sarcastic professor. Seeing my black dress and sullen expression, he raised his arms like a dramatist and pronounced, 'Why look, class! Look at this young agelast. It be Hamlet the Dane, here in the flesh. Tell me, Prince, hast thou yet taken thy revenge 'gainst thy lecherous uncle Claudius?""
The students erupted in vexatious laughter. I was overcome, and I speedily exited the hall in search of some well-shadowed place. From then on, my peers knew me as Hamlet and murmured to each other in jest whenever I passed.
I cannot recall the moment when my affliction grew from a simple eccentricity into a state of illness. The shift was slow and subtle. At the end of my second year at Miskatonic, the student liaison sat with me and I was informed that due to my abysmal student record and obvious aprosexia I was not welcome to attend the institute next semester. The only response I could muster was an impotent shrug. The news was not shocking, though I had desperately wished my case and I might escape the notice of the office staff. With a feeble groan, I lifted myself from my seat and began the way back to my father's house. The journey was hardly laborious for we lived on Parsonage Street, within two miles of the school. But on that day I was drowned with fatigue. My legs were young and strong but I hadn't the volition to operate them.
A schoolfellow found me the following afternoon lying in the shade of an apple tree. My memory of this event is vague and distant, suffering from the fugue in which I was held. The student who came to my aid (his name eludes me) was a graduate student in the competitive and arduous field of theoretical physics and had been witness to more than one mental lapse in his peers. He recognized my condition immediately and brought me directly to the college's school of psychology.
It took no more than a moment for those learned men to spot the illness in my mind. A simple exchange determined the path of my life for the next six years. I was bound for extended occupancy at Arkham Sanitarium.
There are some who fear the sanatorium. One can hardly forget tales of Bedlam or Goya's images of poor idiots in torment. No doubt, such madhouses exist where callous professionals employ bizarre and deleterious procedures on the hapless lunatics in their care. But I found my hospital to be a different experience entirely. Here was a sanctum in the old tradition where mercy to the sick was put above the aggressive meddling of the analysts. This was my habernacle. My even disposition and independence swiftly earned me friends among the staff. And in the company of disruptive neurotics, my draining influence was taken as a blessing.
Not to say I was left deserted - far from it. The doctors prescribed various laetificants, exposure to direct sunlight, massage, mineral baths, invigorating emollients and agents to thicken the blood. And as each therapy failed, as they all failed, they did not lose heart. They patiently and methodically exhausted every curative known to science.
I was neither bitter at medicine's inability to improve my condition nor at fortune for my having been born so feeble of will. Does a slug look to the gleeful hummingbird with envy? I was born a slug and I say it does not.
As you might imagine, time passed uneventfully. Now and then, a doctor might remark that some advancement had been made in the medical community that might make the difference in my case. We would attempt the regimen and it would eventually prove ineffective. This continued for five long years until the arrival of the two men who led me to this fate. Two men who, due to my impending executioners, never existed.
The first was Professor Adam Wayland Erikson, a graduate of Bute Medical School and honoured fellow of the Royal College of Physicians who served a lengthy internship under renowned patient advocate Sir John Charles Bucknill. I presume Dr. Bucknill still exists in memory. But how can I know? Maybe my life has descended into phantasm and this account is worthless. Or perhaps they will sweep this note into oblivion with the rest of my existence.
That is enough of that. I have much to record and time is short. Suffice it to say that on a tour of American asylums Dr. Erikson was charmed and delighted by Arkham's facilities and benevolent ideology. He immediately appealed for a position at the institute and was accepted heartily.
The good doctor brought with him the second man I know to be lost. Introduced to me as Mr. Sean Jones, a Welshman who was afflicted with mental disturbances reportedly so peculiar that Dr. Erikson devoted his life to the case. Sean's family had spent the better part of the Georgian Era in the vilest but most lucrative acts of piracy. He had been born into substantial wealth but with such a nefarious family reputation that it was difficult to enjoy.
As we were housed in rooms across the hall, were of similar age, and because we both understood what it was to be an outsider, Mr. Jones and I became quick friends. And that connection proved to be mutually beneficial. Whereas I was bound by lethargy, half-dead as some described me, my comrade was bursting with energy, a tireless maelstrom of activity. I found his company energizing and to him I was a source of calmness and rest.
He confided in me, overflowing with stories of his ancestors' terrible deeds and of their pact with dark powers hidden to mankind by the ocean's depths. All sailors know to respect the guiding stars but only a few are privy to their secrets. Sean relayed to me in great detail the lessons in sabaism taught to him by his father. He spoke of worlds beyond where abnormous creatures harnessed dark energies so powerful that their influence could be felt here on earth. This was why, he claimed, he had caught the interest of Dr. Erikson. Not for his psychopathology but for the eldritch wisdom he had acquired in his life as a degenerate mystic.
Though Sean's charisma tempted me to believe him, his story was too fantastic to trust even the smallest detail. He was, after all, a madman. I continued to listen with interest but I was convinced I was audience to an elaborate fiction.
Then it came that I was sitting with Dr. Erikson for a monthly interview and assessment. The doctor noted that I had been spending much of my time speaking with Sean and he inquired into the nature of our conversations. At first, I hesitated. My instinct was to misreport the wild stories out of loyalty to my friend. But reason led me to deduce that candour would best serve his treatment. I explained all I understood of what I had been told as precisely as I could.
Erikson simply nodded and when I had finished he prepared for himself a cigarette.
""He's a genius, you know,"" he said.
I was astounded. It felt as if the floor was shifting beneath me.
He continued: ""Sometime ago, I came across an article in the Journal of Mental Science entitled Oneiromancy as an Effect of Ferromagnetic Consequence. It was the most brilliant work I had ever seen. And it was submitted anonymously. I wanted desperately to contact the master behind the work but there were almost no leads.""
The doctor stared at the burning tip of his cigarette. I glanced about the room nervously.
""Sean was the author?"" I asked.
""It took me four years to find him. I followed a collection of academic treasures: medical research, historical treatises, mathematical proofs - even an English translation of the infamous Liber Damnatus. At the last, I bribed a courier to give up his secret employer. When he directed me to Denbigh Asylum, I assumed I'd find my scholar amidst the staff. But there he was, locked away and heavily sedated. He had directed all of that magnificent research through intermediaries from a tiny cell. I swore at that moment both to heal him and learn from him.""
I couldn't have been more shocked. This tale seemed even less plausible than Sean's wild accounts. A fear took me. I suspected that I had finally crossed into a realm of complete madness and unreality. But the doctor was not finished with me.
""Henry, I believe Sean and I have made a breakthrough. It's a radical procedure involving the surgical insertion of several rare earth magnets directly into the tissue of the brain. I have practised the operation on various animals and I am confident the procedure is sound. It follows logically that I begin human trials. The professionally responsible course of action would be to bring my findings to a university, but the theory behind our technique is so advanced it may take decades before our science is peer-approved. And the mystical nature of some of our discoveries will be easy sport for sceptics.
Sean demands I perform the surgery on him. But you see, his mind, his metaphysical insight, is too precious to be lost to an experimental procedure. I am asking you, and it is a great deal to ask, to undergo the operation as a safety trial.""
My heart sank. I loved knowledge and cared for my friend. But surely this was insanity of the most outlandish variety.
I inquired, ""What effect would a procedure designed for Sean's brain have on my own?""
""The operation would be adapted to suit your needs. Whereas Sean requires limiting and pacification, you need to be energized or awakened. It's a simple question of placing the magnets within different structures of the brain. Sean will determine the specifics.""
""So this might possibly cure me?"" I asked.
""If our theories hold true you will see a miraculous increase in function. There is also a high risk that you will not survive.""
I could sense the doctor's disappointment even before I spoke.
""I may be mad, but I have no wish to die. And this notion of health you offer is utterly alien to me. Who would be this happy man wearing my skin?""
Erikson replied, ""I am not ass enough to believe you enjoy your present condition.""
""I accept my state of being and, more to the point, I identify with this way of life. This may be pitiful but it is my way. I refuse and that is my final word.""
He dismissed me with an understanding nod and I retired to the mineral baths. Their placid relaxation quickly blent away thoughts of experimental surgery. Before long, I could barely recall our conversation and considered the matter dealt with.
Over the following week, I heard nothing of the subject. Sean kept away from me, I supposed to keep his dissatisfaction from affecting our friendship. I gave him a wide berth, confident he would surmount these feelings and soon all would be as it was. With time, Dr. Erikson's procedure would be approved by the medical community and he would have his cranial magnets.
It was a cold and stirless night when he came to me. I was in my bed lost in dream when I was jerked awake. A drop of icy fluid trickled with precision into the canal of my ear. I flung myself from the bed in a chaotic motion. There, sitting peacefully, was Sean, his hands buried in the pockets of a heavy coat. I stood in puzzlement for on his face I saw neither malevolence nor jest. Indeed, the man before me was a portrait of repose.
""You will undergo the surgery,"" he said, looking blankly at the wall.
It took me a moment to gather an answer. His disposition was so alien, his aspect so void.
""I will not. You are a dear friend, but dearer to me is my life.""
I had played tennis with Sean and I had run with him. To that point, I thought I possessed an understanding of his physical abilities. He was a slight man, no doubt the product of his overactive metabolism. But the speed with which he captured me and the strength with which he held his ether rag over my nose and mouth were simply astounding. I held my breath as best I could, but there was no escape. He had me locked like a master wrestler with an intensity reserved for the mad.
As I faded, he spoke to me: ""The Powers mock me for having been born a mortal of an insignificant species. They bar me from the Dreamlands and laugh at my ambitions. But I know my power and I know my worth. I promise you, my friend, you shall be cured and soon after, I shall be delivered my mind in full. The knowledge of Pnakotus will I take and it shall lead me to Kadath in the Cold Waste. When I have conquered there the Gods will be compelled to honour me with a place in the Court of Azathoth at the centre of all things.""
I awoke in the sanatorium's infirmary, my head aching and bandaged like a mummy. All things seemed distant and unreal, no doubt from the powerful opiates they administered to me. Dr. Erikson came to observe later on that first day of my awakening. In my heart, I wished to cry out that he was a ruthless butcher, but in my state I did not possess the power of speech. And so I lay dazedly while he prodded at me with arcane devices. I even heard him remark that I was progressing well and that he was now confident enough to operate on Jones. The only action I could muster was a low groan.
Soon after the doctor left, darkness took me and I slept for two more days. When I awoke on that third day it was to an awakening beyond that which any man before has had. For no one before me could have leapt from the pure anhedonia in which I was lost into the ripe fullness of living wonder I now experience. Still unconscious, I rose from my bed and wandered into the being of this new existence. It wasn't until a nurse found me mumbling in the garden that I finally awoke in full. Her grip on my arm was tight and yet wondrous, the pressure of each of her digits a new universe of interest. I could feel the twist and sway of every hair on my body. And what is more, I could concentrate and remember their feeling. For the first time in all my life, I began to understand what it was to be alive. Still in that transcendent moment, I remembered the awful state of things.
""Where is Sean?"" I asked.
""Wanted to wish your friend luck, did you? I'm sorry, Henry, you just missed him. He entered surgery a few minutes ago.""
I rushed away at that second, for the clarity offered me by my newfound mind led me to dark conclusions. Sean Jones was not undergoing this surgery to alleviate madness but to unleash the full psychic potential of his diseased mind! What horrific consequences this might have on mankind I could not say. It seemed entirely possible that he could alter the shape of time and space not only in this universe but also beyond.
I dashed through the halls of the sanatorium to the operating theatre and burst in.
It appears my time has almost run out. I must be brief. This situation suits me fine as human language fails in describing what occurred next.
In the operating room, I found Dr. Erikson, Sean and three humanoid figures caught in conversation. The creatures were uniformly tall, at least six feet, and utterly, completely featureless. They were smooth and indistinct, like matte cloth, and were completely motionless. Though they did not speak, I could feel their intelligence within the recesses of my own mind. They exuded no mood, feeling or character that I could discern but the presence of their psyches was profoundly apparent. No sooner had I entered than Sean and the doctor faded from existence. Right before my eyes, they shifted from being to nothingness in a slow gradient. I turned to run.
""Do not flee,"" said a voice that came from, or perhaps through, one of the alien figures.
""What have you done?"" I asked.
""The one had designs against one of our realities, the other an unwitting accomplice. They were, are, and ever shall be no more. To this end you too shall pass.""
My chest heaved with panic. Unlike any other time in my memory, I did not doubt my senses in this circumstance. These beings are truer than what sane men call reality. They are beyond it.
And I said, ""I've done nothing wrong.""
""Your mind has been awoken. This will not be tolerated. The mere fact that you are capable of this exchange means you must be undone.""
I argued with those beings, but to no avail. We spent a great deal of time in communication and I have learned things I thought no man would ever discover. And woe befalls me for having this knowledge. I haven't even the means to record here the details. There simply are no words.
They sent me here to my room with the specific instruction to compose a note detailing the situation. I cannot guess their intent.
I see by my bedside clock that my time is short. All that remains, I guess, is to bestow some moral on my tale.
Perhaps sometime in the future a reader is thinking, ""Was your restoration worth the fate that befell you?""
To him, I can only reply that exp
[note ends]
",False
"III. A Search and an Evocation

1.

Charles Ward, as we have seen, first learned in 1918 of his descent from Joseph Curwen. That he at once took an intense interest in everything pertaining to the bygone mystery is not to be wondered at; for every vague rumour that he had heard of Curwen now became something vital to himself, in whom flowed Curwen's blood. No spirited and imaginative genealogist could have done otherwise than begin forthwith an avid and systematic collection of Curwen data.
      In his first delvings there was not the slightest attempt at secrecy; so that even Dr. Lyman hesitates to date the youth's madness from any period before the close of 1919. He talked freely with his family - though his mother was not particularly pleased to own an ancestor like Curwen - and with the officials of the various museums and libraries he visited. In applying to private families for records thought to be in their possession he made no concealment of his object, and shared the somewhat amused scepticism with which the accounts of the old diarists and letter-writers were regarded. He often expressed a keen wonder as to what really had taken place a century and a half before at that Pawtuxet farmhouse whose site he vainly tried to find, and what Joseph Curwen really had been.
      When he came across the Smith diary and archives and encountered the letter from Jedediah Orne he decided to visit Salem and look up Curwen's early activities and connexions there, which he did during the Easter vacation of 1919. At the Essex Institute, which was well known to him from former sojourns in the glamorous old town of crumbling Puritan gables and clustered gambrel roofs, he was very kindly received, and unearthed there a considerable amount of Curwen data. He found that his ancestor was born in Salem-Village, now Danvers, seven miles from town, on the eighteenth of February (O.S.) 1662-3; and that he had run away to sea at the age of fifteen, not appearing again for nine years, when he returned with the speech, dress, and manners of a native Englishman and settled in Salem proper. At that time he had little to do with his family, but spent most of his hours with the curious books he had brought from Europe, and the strange chemicals which came for him on ships from England, France, and Holland. Certain trips of his into the country were the objects of much local inquisitiveness, and were whisperingly associated with vague rumours of fires on the hills at night.
      Curwen's only close friends had been one Edward Hutchinson of Salem-Village and one Simon Orne of Salem. With these men he was often seen in conference about the Common, and visits among them were by no means infrequent. Hutchinson had a house well out toward the woods, and it was not altogether liked by sensitive people because of the sounds heard there at night. He was said to entertain strange visitors, and the lights seen from his windows were not always of the same colour. The knowledge he displayed concerning long-dead persons and long-forgotten events was considered distinctly unwholesome, and he disappeared about the time the witchcraft panic began, never to be heard from again. At that time Joseph Curwen also departed, but his settlement in Providence was soon learned of. Simon Orne lived in Salem until 1720, when his failure to grow visibly old began to excite attention. He thereafter disappeared, though thirty years later his precise counterpart and self-styled son turned up to claim his property. The claim was allowed on the strength of documents in Simon Orne's known hand, and Jedediah Orne continued to dwell in Salem till 1771, when certain letters from Providence citizens to the Rev. Thomas Barnard and others brought about his quiet removal to parts unknown.
      Certain documents by and about all of these strange characters were available at the Essex Institute, the Court House, and the Registry of Deeds, and included both harmless commonplaces such as land titles and bills of sale, and furtive fragments of a more provocative nature. There were four or five unmistakable allusions to them on the witchcraft trial records; as when one Hepzibah Lawson swore on July 10, 1692, at the Court of Oyer and Terminer under Judge Hathorne, that 'fortie Witches and the Blacke Man were wont to meete in the Woodes behind Mr. Hutchinson's house', and one Amity How declared at a session of August 8th before Judge Gedney that 'Mr. G. B. (Rev. George Burroughs) on that Nighte putt ye Divell his Marke upon Bridget S., Jonathan A., Simon O., Deliverance W., Joseph C., Susan P., Mehitable C., and Deborah B.' Then there was a catalogue of Hutchinson's uncanny library as found after his disappearance, and an unfinished manuscript in his handwriting, couched in a cipher none could read. Ward had a photostatic copy of this manuscript made, and began to work casually on the cipher as soon as it was delivered to him. After the following August his labours on the cipher became intense and feverish, and there is reason to believe from his speech and conduct that he hit upon the key before October or November. He never stated, though, whether or not he had succeeded.
      But of the greatest immediate interest was the Orne material. It took Ward only a short time to prove from identity of penmanship a thing he had already considered established from the text of the letter to Curwen; namely, that Simon Orne and his supposed son were one and the same person. As Orne had said to his correspondent, it was hardly safe to live too long in Salem, hence he resorted to a thirty-year sojourn abroad, and did not return to claim his lands except as a representative of a new generation. Orne had apparently been careful to destroy most of his correspondence, but the citizens who took action in 1771 found and preserved a few letters and papers which excited their wonder. There were cryptic formulae and diagrams in his and other hands which Ward now either copied with care or had photographed, and one extremely mysterious letter in a chirography that the searcher recognised from items in the Registry of Deeds as positively Joseph Curwen's.
      This Curwen letter, though undated as to the year, was evidently not the one in answer to which Orne had written the confiscated missive; and from internal evidence Ward placed it not much later than 1750. It may not be amiss to give the text in full, as a sample of the style of one whose history was so dark and terrible. The recipient is addressed as ""Simon"", but a line (whether drawn by Curwen or Orne Ward could not tell) is run through the word.
Prouidence, I. May (Ut. vulgo)
Brother: - 
My honour'd Antient ffriende, due Respects and earnest Wishes to Him whom we serve for yr eternall Power. I am just come upon That which you ought to knowe, concern'g the Matter of the Laste Extremitie and what to doe regard'g yt. I am not dispos'd to followe you in go'g Away on acct. of my Yeares, for Prouidence hath not ye Sharpeness of ye Bay in hunt'g oute uncommon Things and bringinge to Tryall. I am ty'd up in Shippes and Goodes, and cou'd not doe as you did, besides the Whiche my ffarme at Patuxet hath under it What you Knowe, that wou'd not waite for my com'g Backe as an Other.
      But I am not unreadie for harde ffortunes, as I haue tolde you, and haue longe work'd upon ye Way of get'g Backe after ye Laste. I laste Night strucke on ye Wordes that bringe up YOGGE-SOTHOTHE, and sawe for ye firste Time that fface spoke of by Ibn Schacabao in ye  -  - . And IT said, that ye III Psalme in ye Liber-Damnatus holdes ye Clauicle. With Sunne in V House, Saturne in Trine, drawe ye Pentagram of Fire, and saye ye ninth Uerse thrice. This Uerse repeate eache Roodemas and Hallow's Eue; and ye Thing will breede in ye Outside Spheres.
      And of ye Seede of Olde shal One be borne who shal looke Backe, tho' know'g not what he seekes.
      Yett will this availe Nothing if there be no Heir, and if the Saltes, or the Way to make the Saltes, bee not Readie for his Hande; and here I will owne, I have not taken needed Stepps nor founde Much. Ye Process is plaguy harde to come neare; and it uses up such a Store of Specimens, I am harde putte to it to get Enough, notwithstand'g the Sailors I have from ye Indies. Ye People aboute are become curious, but I can stande them off. Ye Gentry are worse than the Populace, be'g more Circumstantiall in their Accts. and more believ'd in what they tell. That Parson and Mr. Merritt have talk'd some, I am fearfull, but no Thing soe far is Dangerous. Ye Chymical substances are easie of get'g, there be'g II. goode Chymists in Towne, Dr. Bowen and Sam: Carew. I am foll'g oute what Borellus saith, and haue Helpe in Abdool Al-Hazred his VII. Booke. Whatever I gette, you shal haue. And in ye meane while, do not neglect to make use of ye Wordes I haue here giuen. I haue them Righte, but if you Desire to see HIM, imploy the Writings on ye Piece of  -  -  that I am putt'g in this Packet. Saye ye Uerses every Roodmas and Hallow's Eue; and if yr Line runn out not, one shall bee in yeares to come that shal looke backe and use what Saltes or Stuff for Saltes you shal leaue him. Job XIV. XIV.
      I rejoice you are again at Salem, and hope I may see you not longe hence. I have a goode Stallion, and am think'g of get'g a Coach, there be'g one (Mr. Merritt's) in Prouidence already, tho' ye Roades are bad. If you are dispos'd to Travel, doe not pass me bye. From Boston take ye Post Rd. thro' Dedham, Wrentham, and Attleborough, goode Taverns be'g at all these Townes. Stop at Mr. Bolcom's in Wrentham, where ye Beddes are finer than Mr. Hatch's, but eate at ye other House for their Cooke is better. Turne into Prou. by Patucket ffalls, and ye Rd. past Mr. Sayles's Tavern. My House opp. Mr. Epenetus Olney's Tavern off ye Towne Street, Ist on ye N. side of Olney's Court. Distance from Boston Stone abt. XLIV Miles.
      Sir, I am yr olde and true ffriend and Servt. in Almousin-Metraton.
Josephus C.
To Mr. Simon Orne,
William's-Lane, in Salem.
      This letter, oddly enough, was what first gave Ward the exact location of Curwen's Providence home; for none of the records encountered up to that time had been at all specific. The discovery was doubly striking because it indicated as the newer Curwen house built in 1761 on the site of the old, a dilapidated building still standing in Olney Court and well known to Ward in his antiquarian rambles over Stampers' Hill. The place was indeed only a few squares from his own home on the great hill's higher ground, and was now the abode of a negro family much esteemed for occasional washing, housecleaning, and furnace-tending services. To find, in distant Salem, such sudden proof of the significance of this familiar rookery in his own family history, was a highly impressive thing to Ward; and he resolved to explore the place immediately upon his return. The more mystical phases of the letter, which he took to be some extravagant kind of symbolism, frankly baffled him; though he noted with a thrill of curiosity that the Biblical passage referred to - Job 14, 14 - was the familiar verse, ""If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.""

2.

      Young Ward came home in a state of pleasant excitement, and spent the following Saturday in a long and exhaustive study of the house in Olney Court. The place, now crumbling with age, had never been a mansion; but was a modest two-and-a-half story wooden town house of the familiar Providence colonial type, with plain peaked roof, large central chimney, and artistically carved doorway with rayed fanlight, triangular pediment, and trim Doric pilasters. It had suffered but little alteration externally, and Ward felt he was gazing on something very close to the sinister matters of his quest.
      The present negro inhabitants were known to him, and he was very courteously shewn about the interior by old Asa and his stout wife Hannah. Here there was more change than the outside indicated, and Ward saw with regret that fully half of the fine scroll-and-urn overmantels and shell-carved cupboard linings were gone, whilst much of the fine wainscotting and bolection moulding was marked, hacked, and gouged, or covered up altogether with cheap wall-paper. In general, the survey did not yield as much as Ward had somehow expected; but it was at least exciting to stand within the ancestral walls which had housed such a man of horror as Joseph Curwen. He saw with a thrill that a monogram had been very carefully effaced from the ancient brass knocker.
      From then until after the close of school Ward spent his time on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher and the accumulation of local Curwen data. The former still proved unyielding; but of the latter he obtained so much, and so many clues to similar data elsewhere, that he was ready by July to make a trip to New London and New York to consult old letters whose presence in those places was indicated. This trip was very fruitful, for it brought him the Fenner letters with their terrible description of the Pawtuxet farmhouse raid, and the Nightingale-Talbot letters in which he learned of the portrait painted on a panel of the Curwen library. This matter of the portrait interested him particularly, since he would have given much to know just what Joseph Curwen looked like; and he decided to make a second search of the house in Olney Court to see if there might not be some trace of the ancient features beneath peeling coats of later paint or layers of mouldy wall-paper.
      Early in August that search took place, and Ward went carefully over the walls of every room sizeable enough to have been by any possibility the library of the evil builder. He paid especial attention to the large panels of such overmantels as still remained; and was keenly excited after about an hour, when on a broad area above the fireplace in a spacious ground-floor room he became certain that the surface brought out by the peeling of several coats of paint was sensibly darker than any ordinary interior paint or the wood beneath it was likely to have been. A few more careful tests with a thin knife, and he knew that he had come upon an oil portrait of great extent. With truly scholarly restraint the youth did not risk the damage which an immediate attempt to uncover the hidden picture with the knife might have done, but just retired from the scene of his discovery to enlist expert help. In three days he returned with an artist of long experience, Mr. Walter C. Dwight, whose studio is near the foot of College Hill; and that accomplished restorer of paintings set to work at once with proper methods and chemical substances. Old Asa and his wife were duly excited over their strange visitors, and were properly reimbursed for this invasion of their domestic hearth.
      As day by day the work of restoration progressed, Charles Ward looked on with growing interest at the lines and shades gradually unveiled after their long oblivion. Dwight had begun at the bottom; hence since the picture was a three-quarter-length one, the face did not come out for some time. It was meanwhile seen that the subject was a spare, well-shaped man with dark-blue coat, embroidered waistcoat, black satin small-clothes, and white silk stockings, seated in a carved chair against the background of a window with wharves and ships beyond. When the head came out it was observed to bear a neat Albemarle wig, and to possess a thin, calm, undistinguished face which seemed somehow familiar to both Ward and the artist. Only at the very last, though, did the restorer and his client begin to gasp with astonishment at the details of that lean, pallid visage, and to recognise with a touch of awe the dramatic trick which heredity had played. For it took the final bath of oil and the final stroke of the delicate scraper to bring out fully the expression which centuries had hidden; and to confront the bewildered Charles Dexter Ward, dweller in the past, with his own living features in the countenance of his horrible great-great-great-grandfather.
      Ward brought his parents to see the marvel he had uncovered, and his father at once determined to purchase the picture despite its execution on stationary panelling. The resemblance to the boy, despite an appearance of rather greater age, was marvellous; and it could be seen that through some trick of atavism the physical contours of Joseph Curwen had found precise duplication after a century and a half. Mrs. Ward's resemblance to her ancestor was not at all marked, though she could recall relatives who had some of the facial characteristics shared by her son and by the bygone Curwen. She did not relish the discovery, and told her husband that he had better burn the picture instead of bringing it home. There was, she averred, something unwholesome about it; not only intrinsically, but in its very resemblance to Charles. Mr. Ward, however, was a practical man of power and affairs - a cotton manufacturer with extensive mills at Riverpoint in the Pawtuxet Valley - and not one to listen to feminine scruples. The picture impressed him mightily with its likeness to his son, and he believed the boy deserved it as a present. In this opinion, it is needless to say, Charles most heartily concurred; and a few days later Mr. Ward located the owner of the house - a small rodent-featured person with a guttural accent - and obtained the whole mantel and overmantel bearing the picture at a curtly fixed priced which cut short the impending torrent of unctuous haggling.
      It now remained to take off the panelling and remove it to the Ward home, where provisions were made for its thorough restoration and installation with an electric mock-fireplace in Charles's third-floor study or library. To Charles was left the task of superintending this removal, and on the twenty-eighth of August he accompanied two expert workmen from the Crooker decorating firm to the house in Olney Court, where the mantel and portrait-bearing overmantel were detached with great care and precision for transportation in the company's motor truck. There was left a space of exposed brickwork marking the chimney's course, and in this young Ward observed a cubical recess about a foot square, which must have lain directly behind the head of the portrait. Curious as to what such a space might mean or contain, the youth approached and looked within; finding beneath the deep coatings of dust and soot some loose yellowed papers, a crude, thick copybook, and a few mouldering textile shreds which may have formed the ribbon binding the rest together. Blowing away the bulk of the dirt and cinders, he took up the book and looked at the bold inscription on its cover. It was in a hand which he had learned to recognise at the Essex Institute, and proclaimed the volume as the ""Journall and Notes of Jos: Curwen, Gent., of Providence-Plantations, Late of Salem.""
      Excited beyond measure by his discovery, Ward shewed the book to the two curious workmen beside him. Their testimony is absolute as to the nature and genuineness of the finding, and Dr. Willett relies on them to help establish his theory that the youth was not mad when he began his major eccentricities. All the other papers were likewise in Curwen's handwriting, and one of them seemed especially portentous because of its inscription: ""To Him Who Shal Come After, & How He May Gett Beyonde Time & ye Spheres."" Another was in a cipher; the same, Ward hoped, as the Hutchinson cipher which had hitherto baffled him. A third, and here the searcher rejoiced, seemed to be a key to the cipher; whilst the fourth and fifth were addressed respectively to ""Edw: Hutchinson, Armiger"" and ""Jedediah Orne, Esq."", 'or Their Heir or Heirs, or Those Represent'g Them'. The sixth and last was inscribed: ""Joseph Curwen his Life and Travells Bet'n ye yeares 1678 and 1687: Of Whither He Voyag'd, Where He Stay'd, Whom He Sawe, and What He Learnt.""

3.

      We have now reached the point from which the more academic school of alienists date Charles Ward's madness. Upon his discovery the youth had looked immediately at a few of the inner pages of the book and manuscripts, and had evidently seen something which impressed him tremendously. Indeed, in shewing the titles to the workmen he appeared to guard the text itself with peculiar care, and to labour under a perturbation for which even the antiquarian and genealogical significance of the find could hardly account. Upon returning home he broke the news with an almost embarrassed air, as if he wished to convey an idea of its supreme importance without having to exhibit the evidence itself. He did not even shew the titles to his parents, but simply told them that he had found some documents in Joseph Curwen's handwriting, ""mostly in cipher"", which would have to be studied very carefully before yielding up their true meaning. It is unlikely that he would have shewn what he did to the workmen, had it not been for their unconcealed curiosity. As it was he doubtless wished to avoid any display of peculiar reticence which would increase their discussion of the matter.
      That night Charles Ward sat up in his room reading the new-found book and papers, and when day came he did not desist. His meals, on his urgent request when his mother called to see what was amiss, were sent up to him; and in the afternoon he appeared only briefly when the men came to install the Curwen picture and mantelpiece in his study. The next night he slept in snatches in his clothes, meanwhile wrestling feverishly with the unravelling of the cipher manuscript. In the morning his mother saw that he was at work on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher, which he had frequently shewn her before; but in response to her query he said that the Curwen key could not be applied to it. That afternoon he abandoned his work and watched the men fascinatedly as they finished their installation of the picture with its woodwork above a cleverly realistic electric log, setting the mock-fireplace and overmantel a little out from the north wall as if a chimney existed, and boxing in the sides with panelling to match the room's. The front panel holding the picture was sawn and hinged to allow cupboard space behind it. After the workmen went he moved his work into the study and sat down before it with his eyes half on the cipher and half on the portrait which stared back at him like a year-adding and century-recalling mirror.
      His parents, subsequently recalling his conduct at this period, give interesting details anent the policy of concealment which he practiced. Before servants he seldom hid any paper which he might be studying, since he rightly assumed that Curwen's intricate and archaic chirography would be too much for them. With his parents, however, he was more circumspect; and unless the manuscript in question were a cipher, or a mere mass of cryptic symbols and unknown ideographs (as that entitled ""To Him Who Shal Come After etc."" seemed to be), he would cover it with some convenient paper until his caller had departed. At night he kept the papers under lock and key in an antique cabinet of his, where he also placed them whenever he left the room. He soon resumed fairly regular hours and habits, except that his long walks and other outside interests seemed to cease. The opening of school, where he now began his senior year, seemed a great bore to him; and he frequently asserted his determination never to bother with college. He had, he said, important special investigations to make, which would provide him with more avenues toward knowledge and the humanities than any university which the world could boast.
      Naturally, only one who had always been more or less studious, eccentric, and solitary could have pursued this course for many days without attracting notice. Ward, however, was constitutionally a scholar and a hermit; hence his parents were less surprised than regretful at the close confinement and secrecy he adopted. At the same time, both his father and mother thought it odd that he would shew them no scrap of his treasure-trove, nor give any connected account of such data as he had deciphered. This reticence he explained away as due to a wish to wait until he might announce some connected revelation, but as the weeks passed without further disclosures there began to grow up between the youth and his family a kind of constraint; intensified in his mother's case by her manifest disapproval of all Curwen delvings.
      During October Ward began visiting the libraries again, but no longer for the antiquarian matter of his former days. Witchcraft and magic, occultism and daemonology, were what he sought now; and when Providence sources proved unfruitful he would take the train for Boston and tap the wealth of the great library in Copley Square, the Widener Library at Harvard, or the Zion Research Library in Brookline, where certain rare works on Biblical subjects are available. He bought extensively, and fitted up a whole additional set of shelves in his study for newly acquired works on uncanny subjects; while during the Christmas holidays he made a round of out-of-town trips including one to Salem to consult certain records at the Essex Institute.
      About the middle of January, 1920, there entered Ward's bearing an element of triumph which he did not explain, and he was no more found at work upon the Hutchinson cipher. Instead, he inaugurated a dual policy of chemical research and record-scanning; fitting up for the one a laboratory in the unused attic of the house, and for the latter haunting all the sources of vital statistics in Providence. Local dealers in drugs and scientific supplies, later questioned, gave astonishingly queer and meaningless catalogues of the substances and instruments he purchased; but clerks at the State House, the City Hall, and the various libraries agree as to the definite object of his second interest. He was searching intensely and feverishly for the grave of Joseph Curwen, from whose slate slab an older generation had so wisely blotted the name.
      Little by little there grew upon the Ward family the conviction that something was wrong. Charles had had freaks and changes of minor interests before, but this growing secrecy and absorption in strange pursuits was unlike even him. His school work was the merest pretence; and although he failed in no test, it could be seen that the old application had all vanished. He had other concernments now; and when not in his new laboratory with a score of obsolete alchemical books, could be found either poring over old burial records down town or glued to his volumes of occult lore in his study, where the startlingly - one almost fancied increasingly - similar features of Joseph Curwen stared blandly at him from the great overmantel on the north wall.
      Late in March Ward added to his archive-searching a ghoulish series of rambles about the various ancient cemeteries of the city. The cause appeared later, when it was learned from City Hall clerks that he had probably found an important clue. His quest had suddenly shifted from the grave of Joseph Curwen to that of one Naphthali Field; and this shift was explained when, upon going over the files that he had been over, the investigators actually found a fragmentary record of Curwen's burial which had escaped the general obliteration, and which stated that the curious leaden coffin had been interred ""10 ft. S. and 5 ft. W. of Naphthali Field's grave in ye - "". The lack of a specified burying-ground in the surviving entry greatly complicated the search, and Naphthali Field's grave seemed as elusive as that of Curwen; but here no systematic effacement had existed, and one might reasonably be expected to stumble on the stone itself even if its record had perished. Hence the rambles - from which St. John's (the former King's) Churchyard and the ancient Congregational burying-ground in the midst of Swan Point Cemetery were excluded, since other statistics had shewn that the only Naphthali Field (obiit 1729) whose grave could have been meant had been a Baptist.

4.

      It was toward May when Dr. Willett, at the request of the senior Ward, and fortified with all the Curwen data which the family had gleaned from Charles in his non-secretive days, talked with the young man. The interview was of little value or conclusiveness, for Willett felt at every moment that Charles was thoroughly master of himself and in touch with matters of real importance; but it at least forced the secretive youth to offer some rational explanation of his recent demeanour. Of a pallid, impassive type not easily shewing embarrassment, Ward seemed quite ready to discuss his pursuits, though not to reveal their object. He stated that the papers of his ancestor had contained some remarkable secrets of early scientific knowledge, for the most part in cipher, of an apparent scope comparable only to the discoveries of Friar Bacon and perhaps surpassing even those. They were, however, meaningless except when correlated with a body of learning now wholly obsolete; so that their immediate presentation to a world equipped only with modern science would rob them of all impressiveness and dramatic significance. To take their vivid place in the history of human thought they must first be correlated by one familiar with the background out of which they evolved, and to this task of correlation Ward was now devoting himself. He was seeking to acquire as fast as possible those neglected arts of old which a true interpreter of the Curwen data must possess, and hoped in time to make a full announcement and presentation of the utmost interest to mankind and to the world of thought. Not even Einstein, he declared, could more profoundly revolutionise the current conception of things.
      As to his graveyard search, whose object he freely admitted, but the details of whose progress he did not relate, he said he had reason to think that Joseph Curwen's mutilated headstone bore certain mystic symbols - carved from directions in his will and ignorantly spared by those who had effaced the name - which were absolutely essential to the final solution of his cryptic system. Curwen, he believed, had wished to guard his secret with care; and had consequently distributed the data in an exceedingly curious fashion. When Dr. Willett asked to see the mystic documents, Ward displayed much reluctance and tried to put him off with such things as photostatic copies of the Hutchinson cipher and Orne formulae and diagrams; but finally shewed him the exteriors of some of the real Curwen finds - the ""Journall and Notes"", the cipher (title in cipher also), and the formula-filled message ""To Him Who Shal Come After"" - and let him glance inside such as were in obscure characters.
      He also opened the diary at a page carefully selected for its innocuousness and gave Willett a glimpse of Curwen's connected handwriting in English. The doctor noted very closely the crabbed and complicated letters, and the general aura of the seventeenth century which clung round both penmanship and style despite the writer's survival into the eighteenth century, and became quickly certain that the document was genuine. The text itself was relatively trivial, and Willett recalled only a fragment:
""Wedn. 16 Octr. 1754. My Sloope the Wakeful this Day putt in from London with XX newe Men pick'd up in ye Indies, Spaniards from Martineco and 2 Dutch Men from Surinam. Ye Dutch Men are like to Desert from have'g hearde Somewhat ill of these Ventures, but I will see to ye Inducing of them to Staye. ffor Mr. Knight Dexter of ye Boy and Book 120 Pieces Camblets, 100 Pieces Assrtd. Cambleteens, 20 Pieces blue Duffles, 100 Pieces Shalloons, 50 Pieces Calamancoes, 300 Pieces each, Shendsoy and Humhums. ffor Mr. Green at ye Elephant 50 Gallon Cyttles, 20 Warm'g Pannes, 15 Bake Cyttles, 10 pr. Smoke'g Tonges. ffor Mr. Perrigo 1 Sett of Awles, ffor Mr. Nightingale 50 Reames prime Foolscap. Say'd ye SABAOTH thrice last Nighte but None appear'd. I must heare more from Mr. H. in Transylvania, tho' it is Harde reach'g him and exceeding strange he can not give me the Use of what he hath so well us'd these hundred yeares. Simon hath not Writ these V. Weekes, but I expecte soon hear'g from him.""
      When upon reaching this point Dr. Willett turned the leaf he was quickly checked by Ward, who almost snatched the book from his grasp. All that the doctor had a chance to see on the newly opened page was a brief pair of sentences; but these, strangely enough, lingered tenaciously in his memory. They ran: ""Ye Verse from Liber-Damnatus be'g spoke V Roodmasses and IV Hallows-Eves, I am Hopeful ye Thing is breed'g Outside ye Spheres. It will drawe One who is to Come, if I can make sure he shal bee, and he shall think on Past thinges and look back thro' all ye yeares, against ye which I must have ready ye Saltes or That to make 'em with.""
      Willett saw no more, but somehow this small glimpse gave a new and vague terror to the painted features of Joseph Curwen which stared blandly down from the overmantel. Ever after that he entertained the odd fancy - which his medical skill of course assured him was only a fancy - that the eyes of the portrait had a sort of wish, if not an actual tendency, to follow young Charles Ward as he moved about the room. He stopped before leaving to study the picture closely, marvelling at its resemblance to Charles and memorising every minute detail of the cryptical, colourless face, even down to a slight scar or pit in the smooth brow above the right eye. Cosmo Alexander, he decided, was a painter worthy of the Scotland that produced Raeburn, and a teacher worthy of his illustrious pupil Gilbert Stuart.
      Assured by the doctor that Charles's mental health was in no danger, but that on the other hand he was engaged in researches which might prove of real importance, the Wards were more lenient than they might otherwise have been when during the following June the youth made positive his refusal to attend college. He had, he declared, studies of much more vital importance to pursue; and intimated a wish to go abroad the following year in order to avail himself of certain sources of data not existing in America. The senior Ward, while denying this latter wish as absurd for a boy of only eighteen, acquiesced regarding the university; so that after a none too brilliant graduation from the Moses Brown School there ensued for Charles a three-year period of intensive occult study and graveyard searching. He became recognised as an eccentric, and dropped even more completely from the sight of his family's friends than he had been before; keeping close to his work and only occasionally making trips to other cities to consult obscure records. Once he went south to talk with a strange old mulatto who dwelt in a swamp and about whom a newspaper had printed a curious article. Again he sought a small village in the Adirondacks whence reports of certain odd ceremonial practices had come. But still his parents forbade him the trip to the Old World which he desired.
      Coming of age in April, 1923, and having previously inherited a small competence from his maternal grandfather, Ward determined at last to take the European trip hitherto denied him. Of his proposed itinerary he would say nothing save that the needs of his studies would carry him to many places, but he promised to write his parents fully and faithfully. When they saw he could not be dissuaded, they ceased all opposition and helped as best they could; so that in June the young man sailed for Liverpool with the farewell blessings of his father and mother, who accompanied him to Boston and waved him out of sight from the White Star pier in Charlestown. Letters soon told of his safe arrival, and of his securing good quarters in Great Russell Street, London; where he proposed to stay, shunning all family friends, till he had exhausted the resources of the British Museum in a certain direction. Of his daily life he wrote but little, for there was little to write. Study and experiment consumed all his time, and he mentioned a laboratory which he had established in one of his rooms. That he said nothing of antiquarian rambles in the glamorous old city with its luring skyline of ancient domes and steeples and its tangles of roads and alleys whose mystic convolutions and sudden vistas alternately beckon and surprise, was taken by his parents as a good index of the degree to which his new interests had engrossed his mind.
      In June, 1924, a brief note told of his departure for Paris, to which he had before made one or two flying trips for material in the Bibliothque Nationale. For three months thereafter he sent only postal cards, giving an address in the Rue St. Jacques and referring to a special search among rare manuscripts in the library of an unnamed private collector. He avoided acquaintances, and no tourists brought back reports of having seen him. Then came a silence, and in October the Wards received a picture card from Prague, Czecho-Slovakia, stating that Charles was in that ancient town for the purpose of conferring with a certain very aged man supposed to be the last living possessor of some very curious mediaeval information. He gave an address in the Neustadt, and announced no move till the following January; when he dropped several cards from Vienna telling of his passage through that city on the way toward a more easterly region whither one of his correspondents and fellow-delvers into the occult had invited him.
      The next card was from Klausenburg in Transylvania, and told of Ward's progress toward his destination. He was going to visit a Baron Ferenczy, whose estate lay in the mountains east of Rakus; and was to be addressed at Rakus in the care of that nobleman. Another card from Rakus a week later, saying that his host's carriage had met him and that he was leaving the village for the mountains, was his last message for a considerable time; indeed, he did not reply to his parents' frequent letters until May, when he wrote to discourage the plan of his mother for a meeting in London, Paris, or Rome during the summer, when the elder Wards were planning to travel in Europe. His researches, he said, were such that he could not leave his present quarters; while the situation of Baron Ferenczy's castle did not favour visits. It was on a crag in the dark wooded mountains, and the region was so shunned by the country folk that normal people could not help feeling ill at ease. Moreover, the Baron was not a person likely to appeal to correct and conservative New England gentlefolk. His aspect and manners had idiosyncrasies, and his age was so great as to be disquieting. It would be better, Charles said, if his parents would wait for his return to Providence; which could scarcely be far distant.
      That return did not, however, take place until May, 1926, when after a few heralding cards the young wanderer quietly slipped into New York on the Homeric and traversed the long miles to Providence by motor-coach, eagerly drinking in the green rolling hills, the fragrant, blossoming orchards, and the white steepled towns of vernal Connecticut; his first taste of ancient New England in nearly four years. When the coach crossed the Pawcatuck and entered Rhode Island amidst the faery goldenness of a late spring afternoon his heart beat with quickened force, and the entry to Providence along Reservoir and Elmwood avenues was a breathless and wonderful thing despite the depths of forbidden lore to which he had delved. At the high square where Broad, Weybosset, and Empire Streets join, he saw before and below him in the fire of sunset the pleasant, remembered houses and domes and steeples of the old town; and his head swam curiously as the vehicle rolled down the terminal behind the Biltmore, bringing into view the great dome and soft, roof-pierced greenery of the ancient hill across the river, and the tall colonial spire of the First Baptist Church limned pink in the magic evening light against the fresh springtime verdure of its precipitous background.
      Old Providence! It was this place and the mysterious forces of its long, continuous history which had brought him into being, and which had drawn him back toward marvels and secrets whose boundaries no prophet might fix. Here lay the arcana, wondrous or dreadful as the case might be, for which all his years of travel and application had been preparing him. A taxicab whirled him through Post Office Square with its glimpse of the river, the old Market House, and the head of the bay, and up the steep curved slope of Waterman Street to Prospect, where the vast gleaming dome and sunset-flushed Ionic columns of the Christian Science Church beckoned northward. Then eight squares past the fine old estates his childish eyes had known, and the quaint brick sidewalks so often trodden by his youthful feet. And at last the little white overtaken farmhouse on the right, on the left the classic Adam porch and stately bayed facade of the great brick house where he was born. It was twilight, and Charles Dexter Ward had come home.

5.

      A school of alienists slightly less academic than Dr. Lyman's assign to Ward's European trip the beginning of his true madness. Admitting that he was sane when he started, they believe that his conduct upon returning implies a disastrous change. But even to this claim Dr. Willett refuses to accede. There was, he insists, something later; and the queernesses of the youth at this stage he attributes to the practice of rituals learned abroad - odd enough things, to be sure, but by no means implying mental aberration on the part of their celebrant. Ward himself, though visibly aged and hardened, was still normal in his general reactions; and in several talks with Willett displayed a balance which no madman - even an incipient one - could feign continuously for long. What elicited the notion of insanity at this period were the sounds heard at all hours from Ward's attic laboratory, in which he kept himself most of the time. There were chantings and repetitions, and thunderous declamations in uncanny rhythms; and although these sounds were always in Ward's own voice, there was something in the quality of that voice, and in the accents of the formulae it pronounced, which could not but chill the blood of every hearer. It was noticed that Nig, the venerable and beloved black cat of the household, bristled and arched his back perceptibly when certain of the tones were heard.
      The odours occasionally wafted from the laboratory were likewise exceedingly strange. Sometimes they were very noxious, but more often they were aromatic, with a haunting, elusive quality which seemed to have the power of inducing fantastic images. People who smelled them had a tendency to glimpse momentary mirages of enormous vistas, with strange hills or endless avenues of sphinxes and hippogriffs stretching off into infinite distance. Ward did not resume his old-time rambles, but applied himself diligently to the strange books he had brought home, and to equally strange delvings within his quarters; explaining that European sources had greatly enlarged the possibilities of his work, and promising great revelations in the years to come. His older aspect increased to a startling degree his resemblance to the Curwen portrait in his library; and Dr. Willett would often pause by the latter after a call, marvelling at the virtual identity, and reflecting that only the small pit above the picture's right eye now remained to differentiate the long-dead wizard from the living youth. These calls of Willett's, undertaken at the request of the senior Wards, were curious affairs. Ward at no time repulsed the doctor, but the latter saw that he could never reach the young man's inner psychology. Frequently he noted peculiar things about; little wax images of grotesque design on the shelves or tables, and the half-erased remnants of circles, triangles, and pentagrams in chalk or charcoal on the cleared central space of the large room. And always in the night those rhythms and incantations thundered, till it became very difficult to keep servants or suppress furtive talk of Charles's madness.
      In January, 1927, a peculiar incident occurred. One night about midnight, as Charles was chanting a ritual whose weird cadence echoed unpleasantly through the house below, there came a sudden gust of chill wind from the bay, and a faint, obscure trembling of the earth which everyone in the neighbourhood noted. At the same time the cat exhibited phenomenal traces of fright, while dogs bayed for as much as a mile around. This was the prelude to a sharp thunderstorm, anomalous for the season, which brought with it such a crash that Mr. and Mrs. Ward believed the house had been struck. They rushed upstairs to see what damage had been done, but Charles met them at the door to the attic; pale, resolute, and portentous, with an almost fearsome combination of triumph and seriousness on his face. He assured them that the house had not really been struck, and that the storm would soon be over. They paused, and looking through a window saw that he was indeed right; for the lightning flashed farther and farther off, whilst the trees ceased to bend in the strange frigid gust from the water. The thunder sank to a sort of dull mumbling chuckle and finally died away. Stars came out, and the stamp of triumph on Charles Ward's face crystallised into a very singular expression.
      For two months or more after this incident Ward was less confined than usual to his laboratory. He exhibited a curious interest in the weather, and made odd inquiries about the date of the spring thawing of the ground. One night late in March he left the house after midnight, and did not return till almost morning; when his mother, being wakeful, heard a rumbling motor draw up to the carriage entrance. Muffled oaths could be distinguished, and Mrs. Ward, rising and going to the window, saw four dark figures removing a long, heavy box from a truck at Charles's direction and carrying it within by the side door. She heard laboured breathing and ponderous footfalls on the stairs, and finally a dull thumping in the attic; after which the footfalls descended again, and the four men reappeared outside and drove off in their truck.
      The next day Charles resumed his strict attic seclusion, drawing down the dark shades of his laboratory windows and appearing to be working on some metal substance. He would open the door to no one, and steadfastly refused all proffered food. About noon a wrenching sound followed by a terrible cry and a fall were heard, but when Mrs. Ward rapped at the door her son at length answered faintly, and told her that nothing had gone amiss. The hideous and indescribable stench now welling out was absolutely harmless and unfortunately necessary. Solitude was the one prime essential, and he would appear later for dinner. That afternoon, after the conclusion of some odd hissing sounds which came from behind the locked portal, he did finally appear; wearing an extremely haggard aspect and forbidding anyone to enter the laboratory upon any pretext. This, indeed, proved the beginning of a new policy of secrecy; for never afterward was any other person permitted to visit either the mysterious garret workroom or the adjacent storeroom which he cleaned out, furnished roughly, and added to his inviolably private domain as a sleeping apartment. Here he lived, with books brought up from his library beneath, till the time he purchased the Pawtuxet bungalow and moved to it all his scientific effects.
      In the evening Charles secured the paper before the rest of the family and damaged part of it through an apparent accident. Later on Dr. Willett, having fixed the date from statements by various members of the household, looked up an intact copy at the Journal office and found that in the destroyed section the following small item had occurred:
Nocturnal Diggers Surprised in
North Burial Ground

Robert Hart, night watchman at the North Burial Ground, this morning discovered a party of several men with a motor truck in the oldest part of the cemetery, but apparently frightened them off before they had accomplished whatever their object may have been.
      The discovery took place at about four o'clock, when Hart's attention was attracted by the sound of a motor outside his shelter. Investigating, he saw a large truck on the main drive several rods away; but could not reach it before the sound of his feet on the gravel had revealed his approach. The men hastily placed a large box in the truck and drove away toward the street before they could be overtaken; and since no known grave was disturbed, Hart believes that this box was an object which they wished to bury.
      The diggers must have been at work for a long while before detection, for Hart found an enormous hole dug at a considerable distance back from the roadway in the lot of Amasa Field, where most of the old stones have long ago disappeared. The hole, a place as large and deep as a grave, was empty; and did not coincide with any interment mentioned in the cemetery records.
      Sergt. Riley of the Second Station viewed the spot and gave the opinion that the hole was dug by bootleggers rather gruesomely and ingeniously seeking a safe cache for liquor in a place not likely to be disturbed. In reply to questions Hart said he thought the escaping truck had headed up Rochambeau Avenue, though he could not be sure.
      During the next few days Ward was seldom seen by his family. Having added sleeping quarters to his attic realm, he kept closely to himself there, ordering food brought to the door and not taking it in until after the servant had gone away. The droning of monotonous formulae and the chanting of bizarre rhythms recurred at intervals, while at other times occasional listeners could detect the sound of tinkling glass, hissing chemicals, running water, or roaring gas flames. Odours of the most unplaceable quality, wholly unlike any before noted, hung at times around the door; and the air of tension observable in the young recluse whenever he did venture briefly forth was such as to excite the keenest speculation. Once he made a hasty trip to the Athenaeum for a book he required, and again he hired a messenger to fetch him a highly obscure volume from Boston. Suspense was written portentously over the whole situation, and both the family and Dr. Willett confessed themselves wholly at a loss what to do or think about it.

6.

      Then on the fifteenth of April a strange development occurred. While nothing appeared to grow different in kind, there was certainly a very terrible difference in degree; and Dr. Willett somehow attaches great significance to the change. The day was Good Friday, a circumstance of which the servants made much, but which others quite naturally dismiss as an irrelevant coincidence. Late in the afternoon young Ward began repeating a certain formula in a singularly loud voice, at the same time burning some substance so pungent that its fumes escaped over the entire house. The formula was so plainly audible in the hall outside the locked door that Mrs. Ward could not help memorising it as she waited and listened anxiously, and later on she was able to write it down at Dr. Willett's request. It ran as follows, and experts have told Dr. Willett that its very close analogue can be found in the mystic writings of ""Eliphas Levi"", that cryptic soul who crept through a crack in the forbidden door and glimpsed the frightful vistas of the void beyond:
""Per Adonai Eloim, Adonai Jehova,
Adonai Sabaoth, Metraton On Agla Mathon,
verbum pythonicum, mysterium salamandrae,
conventus sylvorum, antra gnomorum,
daemonia Coeli Gad, Almousin, Gibor, Jehosua,
Evam, Zariatnatmik, veni, veni, veni.""
      This had been going on for two hours without change or intermission when over all the neighbourhood a pandaemoniac howling of dogs set in. The extent of this howling can be judged from the space it received in the papers the next day, but to those in the Ward household it was overshadowed by the odour which instantly followed it; a hideous, all-pervasive odour which none of them had ever smelt before or have ever smelt since. In the midst of this mephitic flood there came a very perceptible flash like that of lightning, which would have been blinding and impressive but for the daylight around; and then was heard the voice that no listener can ever forget because of its thunderous remoteness, its incredible depth, and its eldritch dissimilarity to Charles Ward's voice. It shook the house, and was clearly heard by at least two neighbours above the howling of the dogs. Mrs. Ward, who had been listening in despair outside her son's locked laboratory, shivered as she recognised its hellish import; for Charles had told her of its evil fame in dark books, and of the manner in which it had thundered, according to the Fenner letters, above the doomed Pawtuxet farmhouse on the night of Joseph Curwen's annihilation. There was no mistaking that nightmare phrase, for Charles had described it too vividly in the old days when he had talked frankly of his Curwen investigations. And yet it was only this fragment of an archaic and forgotten language: ""DIES MIES JESCHET BOENE DOESEF DOUVEMA ENITEMAUS"".
      Close upon this thundering there came a momentary darkening of the daylight, though sunset was still an hour distant, and then a puff of added odour different from the first but equally unknown and intolerable. Charles was chanting again now and his mother could hear syllables that sounded like ""Yi-nash-Yog-Sothoth-he-lgeb-fi-throdog"" - ending in a ""Yah!"" whose maniacal force mounted in an ear-splitting crescendo. A second later all previous memories were effaced by the wailing scream which burst out with frantic explosiveness and gradually changed form to a paroxysm of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Mrs. Ward, with the mingled fear and blind courage of maternity, advanced and knocked affrightedly at the concealing panels, but obtained no sign of recognition. She knocked again, but paused nervelessly as a second shriek arose, this one unmistakably in the familiar voice of her son, and sounding concurrently with the still bursting cachinnations of that other voice. Presently she fainted, although she is still unable to recall the precise and immediate cause. Memory sometimes makes merciful deletions.
      Mr. Ward returned from the business section at about quarter past six; and not finding his wife downstairs, was told by the frightened servants that she was probably watching at Charles's door, from which the sounds had been far stranger than ever before. Mounting the stairs at once, he saw Mrs. Ward stretched at full length on the floor of the corridor outside the laboratory; and realising that she had fainted, hastened to fetch a glass of water from a set bowl in a neighbouring alcove. Dashing the cold fluid in her face, he was heartened to observe an immediate response on her part, and was watching the bewildered opening of her eyes when a chill shot through him and threatened to reduce him to the very state from which she was emerging. For the seemingly silent laboratory was not as silent as it had appeared to be, but held the murmurs of a tense, muffled conversation in tones too low for comprehension, yet of a quality profoundly disturbing to the soul.
      It was not, of course, new for Charles to mutter formulae; but this muttering was definitely different. It was so palpably a dialogue, or imitation of a dialogue, with the regular alteration of inflections suggesting question and answer, statement and response. One voice was undisguisedly that of Charles, but the other had a depth and hollowness which the youth's best powers of ceremonial mimicry had scarcely approached before. There was something hideous, blasphemous, and abnormal about it, and but for a cry from his recovering wife which cleared his mind by arousing his protective instincts it is not likely that Theodore Howland Ward could have maintained for nearly a year more his old boast that he had never fainted. As it was, he seized his wife in his arms and bore her quickly downstairs before she could notice the voices which had so horribly disturbed him. Even so, however, he was not quick enough to escape catching something himself which caused him to stagger dangerously with his burden. For Mrs. Ward's cry had evidently been heard by others than he, and there had come from behind the locked door the first distinguishable words which that masked and terrible colloquy had yielded. They were merely an excited caution in Charles's own voice, but somehow their implications held a nameless fright for the father who overheard them. The phrase was just this: ""Sshh! - write!""
      Mr. and Mrs. Ward conferred at some length after dinner, and the former resolved to have a firm and serious talk with Charles that very night. No matter how important the object, such conduct could no longer be permitted; for these latest developments transcended every limit of sanity and formed a menace to the order and nervous well-being of the entire household. The youth must indeed have taken complete leave of his senses, since only downright madness could have prompted the wild screams and imaginary conversations in assumed voices which the present day had brought forth. All this must be stopped, or Mrs. Ward would be made ill and the keeping of servants become an impossibility.
      Mr. Ward rose at the close of the meal and started upstairs for Charles's laboratory. On the third floor, however, he paused at the sounds which he heard proceeding from the now disused library of his son. Books were apparently being flung about and papers wildly rustled, and upon stepping to the door Mr. Ward beheld the youth within, excitedly assembling a vast armful of literary matter of every size and shape. Charles's aspect was very drawn and haggard, and he dropped his entire load with a start at the sound of his father's voice. At the elder man's command he sat down, and for some time listened to the admonitions he had so long deserved. There was no scene. At the end of the lecture he agreed that his father was right, and that his noises, mutterings, incantations, and chemical odours were indeed inexcusable nuisances. He agreed to a policy of greater quiet, though insisting on a prolongation of his extreme privacy. Much of his future work, he said, was in any case purely book research; and he could obtain quarters elsewhere for any such vocal rituals as might be necessary at a later stage. For the fright and fainting of his mother he expressed the keenest contrition, and explained that the conversation later heard was part of an elaborate symbolism designed to create a certain mental atmosphere. His use of abstruse technical terms somewhat bewildered Mr. Ward, but the parting impression was one of undeniable sanity and poise despite a mysterious tension of the utmost gravity. The interview was really quite inconclusive, and as Charles picked up his armful and left the room Mr. Ward hardly knew what to make of the entire business. It was as mysterious as the death of poor old Nig, whose stiffening form had been found an hour before in the basement, with staring eyes and fear-distorted mouth.
      Driven by some vague detective instinct, the bewildered parent now glanced curiously at the vacant shelves to see what his son had taken up to the attic. The youth's library was plainly and rigidly classified, so that one might tell at a glance the books or at least the kind of books which had been withdrawn. On this occasion Mr. Ward was astonished to find that nothing of the occult or the antiquarian, beyond what had been previously removed, was missing. These new withdrawals were all modern items; histories, scientific treatises, geographies, manuals of literature, philosophic works, and certain contemporary newspapers and magazines. It was a very curious shift from Charles Ward's recent run of reading, and the father paused in a growing vortex of perplexity and an engulfing sense of strangeness. The strangeness was a very poignant sensation, and almost clawed at his chest as he strove to see just what was wrong around him. Something was indeed wrong, and tangibly as well as spiritually so. Ever since he had been in this room he had known that something was amiss, and at last it dawned upon him what it was.
      On the north wall rose still the ancient carved overmantel from the house in Olney Court, but to the cracked and precariously restored oils of the large Curwen portrait disaster had come. Time and unequal heating had done their work at last, and at some time since the room's last cleaning the worst had happened. Peeling clear of the wood, curling tighter and tighter, and finally crumbling into small bits with what must have been malignly silent suddenness, the portrait of Joseph Curwen had resigned forever its staring surveillance of the youth it so strangely resembled, and now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust.
","X.

In the end the three men from Arkham—old, white-bearded Dr. Armitage, stocky, iron-grey Professor Rice, and lean, youngish Dr. Morgan—ascended the mountain alone. After much patient instruction regarding its focussing and use, they left the telescope with the frightened group that remained in the road; and as they climbed they were watched closely by those among whom the glass was passed around. It was hard going, and Armitage had to be helped more than once. High above the toiling group the great swath trembled as its hellish maker re-passed with snail-like deliberateness. Then it was obvious that the pursuers were gaining.
      Curtis Whateley—of the undecayed branch—was holding the telescope when the Arkham party detoured radically from the swath. He told the crowd that the men were evidently trying to get to a subordinate peak which overlooked the swath at a point considerably ahead of where the shrubbery was now bending. This, indeed, proved to be true; and the party were seen to gain the minor elevation only a short time after the invisible blasphemy had passed it.
      Then Wesley Corey, who had taken the glass, cried out that Armitage was adjusting the sprayer which Rice held, and that something must be about to happen. The crowd stirred uneasily, recalling that this sprayer was expected to give the unseen horror a moment of visibility. Two or three men shut their eyes, but Curtis Whateley snatched back the telescope and strained his vision to the utmost. He saw that Rice, from the party’s point of vantage above and behind the entity, had an excellent chance of spreading the potent powder with marvellous effect.
      Those without the telescope saw only an instant’s flash of grey cloud—a cloud about the size of a moderately large building—near the top of the mountain. Curtis, who had held the instrument, dropped it with a piercing shriek into the ankle-deep mud of the road. He reeled, and would have crumpled to the ground had not two or three others seized and steadied him. All he could do was moan half-inaudibly,
      “Oh, oh, great Gawd . . . that . . . that . . .”
      There was a pandemonium of questioning, and only Henry Wheeler thought to rescue the fallen telescope and wipe it clean of mud. Curtis was past all coherence, and even isolated replies were almost too much for him.
      “Bigger’n a barn . . . all made o’ squirmin’ ropes . . . hull thing sort o’ shaped like a hen’s egg bigger’n anything, with dozens o’ legs like hogsheads that haff shut up when they step . . . nothin’ solid abaout it—all like jelly, an’ made o’ sep’rit wrigglin’ ropes pushed clost together . . . great bulgin’ eyes all over it . . . ten or twenty maouths or trunks a-stickin’ aout all along the sides, big as stovepipes, an’ all a-tossin’ an’ openin’ an’ shuttin’ . . . all grey, with kinder blue or purple rings . . . an’ Gawd in heaven—that haff face on top! . . .”
      This final memory, whatever it was, proved too much for poor Curtis; and he collapsed completely before he could say more. Fred Farr and Will Hutchins carried him to the roadside and laid him on the damp grass. Henry Wheeler, trembling, turned the rescued telescope on the mountain to see what he might. Through the lenses were discernible three tiny figures, apparently running toward the summit as fast as the steep incline allowed. Only these—nothing more. Then everyone noticed a strangely unseasonable noise in the deep valley behind, and even in the underbrush of Sentinel Hill itself. It was the piping of unnumbered whippoorwills, and in their shrill chorus there seemed to lurk a note of tense and evil expectancy.
      Earl Sawyer now took the telescope and reported the three figures as standing on the topmost ridge, virtually level with the altar-stone but at a considerable distance from it. One figure, he said, seemed to be raising its hands above its head at rhythmic intervals; and as Sawyer mentioned the circumstance the crowd seemed to hear a faint, half-musical sound from the distance, as if a loud chant were accompanying the gestures. The weird silhouette on that remote peak must have been a spectacle of infinite grotesqueness and impressiveness, but no observer was in a mood for aesthetic appreciation. “I guess he’s sayin’ the spell,” whispered Wheeler as he snatched back the telescope. The whippoorwills were piping wildly, and in a singularly curious irregular rhythm quite unlike that of the visible ritual.
      Suddenly the sunshine seemed to lessen without the intervention of any discernible cloud. It was a very peculiar phenomenon, and was plainly marked by all. A rumbling sound seemed brewing beneath the hills, mixed strangely with a concordant rumbling which clearly came from the sky. Lightning flashed aloft, and the wondering crowd looked in vain for the portents of storm. The chanting of the men from Arkham now became unmistakable, and Wheeler saw through the glass that they were all raising their arms in the rhythmic incantation. From some farmhouse far away came the frantic barking of dogs.
      The change in the quality of the daylight increased, and the crowd gazed about the horizon in wonder. A purplish darkness, born of nothing more than a spectral deepening of the sky’s blue, pressed down upon the rumbling hills. Then the lightning flashed again, somewhat brighter than before, and the crowd fancied that it had shewed a certain mistiness around the altar-stone on the distant height. No one, however, had been using the telescope at that instant. The whippoorwills continued their irregular pulsation, and the men of Dunwich braced themselves tensely against some imponderable menace with which the atmosphere seemed surcharged.
      Without warning came those deep, cracked, raucous vocal sounds which will never leave the memory of the stricken group who heard them. Not from any human throat were they born, for the organs of man can yield no such acoustic perversions. Rather would one have said they came from the pit itself, had not their source been so unmistakably the altar-stone on the peak. It is almost erroneous to call them sounds at all, since so much of their ghastly, infra-bass timbre spoke to dim seats of consciousness and terror far subtler than the ear; yet one must do so, since their form was indisputably though vaguely that of half-articulate words. They were loud—loud as the rumblings and the thunder above which they echoed—yet did they come from no visible being. And because imagination might suggest a conjectural source in the world of non-visible beings, the huddled crowd at the mountain’s base huddled still closer, and winced as if in expectation of a blow.
      “Ygnaiih . . . ygnaiih . . . thflthkh’ngha . . . Yog-Sothoth . . .” rang the hideous croaking out of space. “Y’bthnk . . . h’ehye—n’grkdl’lh. . . .”
      The speaking impulse seemed to falter here, as if some frightful psychic struggle were going on. Henry Wheeler strained his eye at the telescope, but saw only the three grotesquely silhouetted human figures on the peak, all moving their arms furiously in strange gestures as their incantation drew near its culmination. From what black wells of Acherontic fear or feeling, from what unplumbed gulfs of extra-cosmic consciousness or obscure, long-latent heredity, were those half-articulate thunder-croakings drawn? Presently they began to gather renewed force and coherence as they grew in stark, utter, ultimate frenzy.
      “Eh-ya-ya-ya-yahaah—e’yayayayaaaa . . . ngh’aaaaa . . . ngh’aaaa . . . h’yuh . . . h’yuh . . . HELP! HELP! . . . ff—ff—ff—FATHER! FATHER! YOG-SOTHOTH! . . .”
      But that was all. The pallid group in the road, still reeling at the indisputably English syllables that had poured thickly and thunderously down from the frantic vacancy beside that shocking altar-stone, were never to hear such syllables again. Instead, they jumped violently at the terrific report which seemed to rend the hills; the deafening, cataclysmic peal whose source, be it inner earth or sky, no hearer was ever able to place. A single lightning-bolt shot from the purple zenith to the altar-stone, and a great tidal wave of viewless force and indescribable stench swept down from the hill to all the countryside. Trees, grass, and underbrush were whipped into a fury; and the frightened crowd at the mountain’s base, weakened by the lethal foetor that seemed about to asphyxiate them, were almost hurled off their feet. Dogs howled from the distance, green grass and foliage wilted to a curious, sickly yellow-grey, and over field and forest were scattered the bodies of dead whippoorwills.
      The stench left quickly, but the vegetation never came right again. To this day there is something queer and unholy about the growths on and around that fearsome hill. Curtis Whateley was only just regaining consciousness when the Arkham men came slowly down the mountain in the beams of a sunlight once more brilliant and untainted. They were grave and quiet, and seemed shaken by memories and reflections even more terrible than those which had reduced the group of natives to a state of cowed quivering. In reply to a jumble of questions they only shook their heads and reaffirmed one vital fact.
      “The thing has gone forever,” Armitage said. “It has been split up into what it was originally made of, and can never exist again. It was an impossibility in a normal world. Only the least fraction was really matter in any sense we know. It was like its father—and most of it has gone back to him in some vague realm or dimension outside our material universe; some vague abyss out of which only the most accursed rites of human blasphemy could ever have called him for a moment on the hills.”
      There was a brief silence, and in that pause the scattered senses of poor Curtis Whateley began to knit back into a sort of continuity; so that he put his hands to his head with a moan. Memory seemed to pick itself up where it had left off, and the horror of the sight that had prostrated him burst in upon him again.
      “Oh, oh, my Gawd, that haff face—that haff face on top of it . . . that face with the red eyes an’ crinkly albino hair, an’ no chin, like the Whateleys . . . It was a octopus, centipede, spider kind o’ thing, but they was a haff-shaped man’s face on top of it, an’ it looked like Wizard Whateley’s, only it was yards an’ yards acrost. . . .”
      He paused exhausted, as the whole group of natives stared in a bewilderment not quite crystallised into fresh terror. Only old Zebulon Whateley, who wanderingly remembered ancient things but who had been silent heretofore, spoke aloud.
      “Fifteen year’ gone,” he rambled, “I heerd Ol’ Whateley say as haow some day we’d hear a child o’ Lavinny’s a-callin’ its father’s name on the top o’ Sentinel Hill. . . .”
      But Joe Osborn interrupted him to question the Arkham men anew.
      “What was it anyhaow, an’ haowever did young Wizard Whateley call it aout o’ the air it come from?”
      Armitage chose his words very carefully.
      “It was—well, it was mostly a kind of force that doesn’t belong in our part of space; a kind of force that acts and grows and shapes itself by other laws than those of our sort of Nature. We have no business calling in such things from outside, and only very wicked people and very wicked cults ever try to. There was some of it in Wilbur Whateley himself—enough to make a devil and a precocious monster of him, and to make his passing out a pretty terrible sight. I’m going to burn his accursed diary, and if you men are wise you’ll dynamite that altar-stone up there, and pull down all the rings of standing stones on the other hills. Things like that brought down the beings those Whateleys were so fond of—the beings they were going to let in tangibly to wipe out the human race and drag the earth off to some nameless place for some nameless purpose.
      “But as to this thing we’ve just sent back—the Whateleys raised it for a terrible part in the doings that were to come. It grew fast and big from the same reason that Wilbur grew fast and big—but it beat him because it had a greater share of the outsideness in it. You needn’t ask how Wilbur called it out of the air. He didn’t call it out. It was his twin brother, but it looked more like the father than he did.”
",True
"V. A Nightmare and a Cataclysm

1.

And now swiftly followed that hideous experience which has left its indelible mark of fear on the soul of Marinus Bicknell Willett, and has added a decade to the visible age of one whose youth was even then far behind. Dr. Willett had conferred at length with Mr. Ward, and had come to an agreement with him on several points which both felt the alienists would ridicule. There was, they conceded, a terrible movement alive in the world, whose direct connexion with a necromancy even older than the Salem witchcraft could not be doubted. That at least two living men - and one other of whom they dared not think - were in absolute possession of minds or personalities which had functioned as early as 1690 or before was likewise almost unassailably proved even in the face of all known natural laws. What these horrible creatures - and Charles Ward as well - were doing or trying to do seemed fairly clear from their letters and from every bit of light both old and new which had filtered in upon the case. They were robbing the tombs of all the ages, including those of the world's wisest and greatest men, in the hope of recovering from the bygone ashes some vestige of the consciousness and lore which had once animated and informed them.
      A hideous traffick was going on among these nightmare ghouls, whereby illustrious bones were bartered with the calm calculativeness of schoolboys swapping books; and from what was extorted from this centuried dust there was anticipated a power and a wisdom beyond anything which the cosmos had ever seen concentrated in one man or group. They had found unholy ways to keep their brains alive, either in the same body or different bodies; and had evidently achieved a way of tapping the consciousness of the dead whom they gathered together. There had, it seems, been some truth in chimerical old Borellus when he wrote of preparing from even the most antique remains certain ""Essential Saltes"" from which the shade of a long-dead living thing might be raised up. There was a formula for evoking such a shade, and another for putting it down; and it had now been so perfected that it could be taught successfully. One must be careful about evocations, for the markers of old graves are not always accurate.
      Willett and Mr. Ward shivered as they passed from conclusion to conclusion. Things - presences or voices of some sort - could be drawn down from unknown places as well as from the grave, and in this process also one must be careful. Joseph Curwen had indubitably evoked many forbidden things, and as for Charles - what might one think of him? What forces ""outside the spheres"" had reached him from Joseph Curwen's day and turned his mind on forgotten things? He had been led to find certain directions, and he had used them. He had talked with the man of horror in Prague and stayed long with the creature in the mountains of Transylvania. And he must have found the grave of Joseph Curwen at last. That newspaper item and what his mother had heard in the night were too significant to overlook. Then he had summoned something, and it must have come. That mighty voice aloft on Good Friday, and those different tones in the locked attic laboratory. What were they like, with their depth and hollowness? Was there not here some awful foreshadowing of the dreaded stranger Dr. Allen with his spectral bass? Yes, that was what Mr. Ward had felt with vague horror in his single talk with the man - if man it were - over the telephone!
      What hellish consciousness or voice, what morbid shade or presence, had come to answer Charles Ward's secret rites behind that locked door? Those voices heard in argument - ""must have it red for three months"" - Good God! Was not that just before the vampirism broke out? The rifling of Ezra Weeden's ancient grave, and the cries later at Pawtuxet - whose mind had planned the vengeance and rediscovered the shunned seat of elder blasphemies? And then the bungalow and the bearded stranger, and the gossip, and the fear. The final madness of Charles neither father nor doctor could attempt to explain, but they did feel sure that the mind of Joseph Curwen had come to earth again and was following its ancient morbidities. Was daemoniac possession in truth a possibility? Allen had something to do with it, and the detectives must find out more about one whose existence menaced the young man's life. In the meantime, since the existence of some vast crypt beneath the bungalow seemed virtually beyond dispute, some effort must be made to find it. Willett and Mr. Ward, conscious of the sceptical attitude of the alienists, resolved during their final conference to undertake a joint secret exploration of unparalleled thoroughness; and agreed to meet at the bungalow on the following morning with valises and with certain tools and accessories suited to architectural search and underground exploration.
      The morning of April 6th dawned clear, and both explorers were at the bungalow by ten o'clock. Mr. Ward had the key, and an entry and cursory survey were made. From the disordered condition of Dr. Allen's room it was obvious that the detectives had been there before, and the later searchers hoped that they had found some clue which might prove of value. Of course the main business lay in the cellar; so thither they descended without much delay, again making the circuit which each had vainly made before in the presence of the mad young owner. For a time everything seemed baffling, each inch of the earthen floor and stone walls having so solid and innocuous an aspect that the thought of a yawning aperture was scarcely to be entertained. Willett reflected that since the original cellar was dug without knowledge of any catacombs beneath, the beginning of the passage would represent the strictly modern delving of young Ward and his associates, where they had probed for the ancient vaults whose rumour could have reached them by no wholesome means.
      The doctor tried to put himself in Charles's place to see how a delver would be likely to start, but could not gain much inspiration from this method. Then he decided on elimination as a policy, and went carefully over the whole subterranean surface both vertical and horizontal, trying to account for every inch separately. He was soon substantially narrowed down, and at last had nothing left but the small platform before the washtubs, which he had tried once before in vain. Now experimenting in every possible way, and exerting a double strength, he finally found that the top did indeed turn and slide horizontally on a corner pivot. Beneath it lay a trim concrete surface with an iron manhole, to which Mr. Ward at once rushed with excited zeal. The cover was not hard to lift, and the father had quite removed it when Willett noticed the queerness of his aspect. He was swaying and nodding dizzily, and in the gust of noxious air which swept up from the black pit beneath the doctor soon recognised ample cause.
      In a moment Dr. Willett had his fainting companion on the floor above and was reviving him with cold water. Mr. Ward responded feebly, but it could be seen that the mephitic blast from the crypt had in some way gravely sickened him. Wishing to take no chances, Willett hastened out to Broad Street for a taxicab and had soon dispatched the sufferer home despite his weak-voiced protests; after which he produced an electric torch, covered his nostrils with a band of sterile gauze, and descended once more to peer into the new-found depths. The foul air had now slightly abated, and Willett was able to send a beam of light down the Stygian hole. For about ten feet, he saw, it was a sheer cylindrical drop with concrete walls and an iron ladder; after which the hole appeared to strike a flight of old stone steps which must originally have emerged to earth somewhat southwest of the present building.

2.

      Willett freely admits that for a moment the memory of the old Curwen legends kept him from climbing down alone into that malodorous gulf. He could not help thinking of what Luke Fenner had reported on that last monstrous night. Then duty asserted itself and he made the plunge, carrying a great valise for the removal of whatever papers might prove of supreme importance. Slowly, as befitted one of his years, he descended the ladder and reached the slimy steps below. This was ancient masonry, his torch told him; and upon the dripping walls he saw the unwholesome moss of centuries. Down, down, ran the steps; not spirally, but in three abrupt turns; and with such narrowness that two men could have passed only with difficulty. He had counted about thirty when a sound reached him very faintly; and after that he did not feel disposed to count any more.
      It was a godless sound; one of those low-keyed, insidious outrages of Nature which are not meant to be. To call it a dull wail, a doom-dragged whine, or a hopeless howl of chorused anguish and stricken flesh without mind would be to miss its most quintessential loathsomeness and soul-sickening overtones. Was it for this that Ward had seemed to listen on that day he was removed? It was the most shocking thing that Willett had ever heard, and it continued from no determinate point as the doctor reached the bottom of the steps and cast his torchlight around on lofty corridor walls surmounted by Cyclopean vaulting and pierced by numberless black archways. The hall in which he stood was perhaps fourteen feet high to the middle of the vaulting and ten or twelve feet broad. Its pavement was of large chipped flagstones, and its walls and roof were of dressed masonry. Its length he could not imagine, for it stretched ahead indefinitely into the blackness. Of the archways, some had doors of the old six-panelled colonial type, whilst others had none.
      Overcoming the dread induced by the smell and the howling, Willett began to explore these archways one by one; finding beyond them rooms with groined stone ceilings, each of medium size and apparently of bizarre uses. Most of them had fireplaces, the upper courses of whose chimneys would have formed an interesting study in engineering. Never before or since had he seen such instruments or suggestions of instruments as here loomed up on every hand through the burying dust and cobwebs of a century and a half, in many cases evidently shattered as if by the ancient raiders. For many of the chambers seemed wholly untrodden by modern feet, and must have represented the earliest and most obsolete phases of Joseph Curwen's experimentation. Finally there came a room of obvious modernity, or at least of recent occupancy. There were oil heaters, bookshelves and tables, chairs and cabinets, and a desk piled high with papers of varying antiquity and contemporaneousness. Candlesticks and oil lamps stood about in several places; and finding a match-safe handy, Willett lighted such as were ready for use.
      In the fuller gleam it appeared that this apartment was nothing less than the latest study or library of Charles Ward. Of the books the doctor had seen many before, and a good part of the furniture had plainly come from the Prospect Street mansion. Here and there was a piece well known to Willett, and the sense of familiarity became so great that he half forgot the noisomeness and the wailing, both of which were plainer here than they had been at the foot of the steps. His first duty, as planned long ahead, was to find and seize any papers which might seem of vital importance; especially those portentous documents found by Charles so long ago behind the picture in Olney Court. As he searched he perceived how stupendous a task the final unravelling would be; for file on file was stuffed with papers in curious hands and bearing curious designs, so that months or even years might be needed for a thorough deciphering and editing. Once he found large packets of letters with Prague and Rakus postmarks, and in writing clearly recognisable as Orne's and Hutchinson's; all of which he took with him as part of the bundle to be removed in his valise.
      At last, in a locked mahogany cabinet once gracing the Ward home, Willett found the batch of old Curwen papers; recognising them from the reluctant glimpse Charles had granted him so many years ago. The youth had evidently kept them together very much as they had been when first he found them, since all the titles recalled by the workmen were present except the papers addressed to Orne and Hutchinson, and the cipher with its key. Willett placed the entire lot in his valise and continued his examination of the files. Since young Ward's immediate condition was the greatest matter at stake, the closest searching was done among the most obviously recent matter; and in this abundance of contemporary manuscript one very baffling oddity was noted. The oddity was the slight amount in Charles's normal writing, which indeed included nothing more recent than two months before. On the other hand, there were literally reams of symbols and formulae, historical notes and philosophical comment, in a crabbed penmanship absolutely identical with the ancient script of Joseph Curwen, though of undeniably modern dating. Plainly, a part of the latter-day programme had been a sedulous imitation of the old wizard's writing, which Charles seemed to have carried to a marvellous state of perfection. Of any third hand which might have been Allen's there was not a trace. If he had indeed come to be the leader, he must have forced young Ward to act as his amanuensis.
      In this new material one mystic formula, or rather pair of formulae, recurred so often that Willett had it by heart before he had half finished his quest. It consisted of two parallel columns, the left-hand one surmounted by the archaic symbol called ""Dragon's Head"" and used in almanacks to indicate the ascending node, and the right-hand one headed by a corresponding sign of ""Dragon's Tail"" or descending node. The appearance of the whole was something like this, and almost unconsciously the doctor realised that the second half was no more than the first written syllabically backward with the exception of the final monosyllables and of the odd name Yog-Sothoth, which he had come to recognise under various spellings from other things he had seen in connexion with this horrible matter. The formulae were as follows - exactly so, as Willett is abundantly able to testify - and the first one struck an odd note of uncomfortable latent memory in his brain, which he recognised later when reviewing the events of that horrible Good Friday of the previous year.


Y'AI 'NG'NGAH,
YOG-SOTHOTH
H'EE - L'GEB
F'AI THRODOG
UAAAH
      	

OGTHROD AI'F
GEB'L - EE'H
YOG-SOTHOTH
'NGAH'NG AI'Y
ZHRO

So haunting were these formulae, and so frequently did he come upon them, that before the doctor knew it he was repeating them under his breath. Eventually, however, he felt he had secured all the papers he could digest to advantage for the present; hence resolved to examine no more till he could bring the sceptical alienists en masse for an ampler and more systematic raid. He had still to find the hidden laboratory, so leaving his valise in the lighted room he emerged again into the black noisome corridor whose vaulting echoed ceaselessly with that dull and hideous whine.
      The next few rooms he tried were all abandoned, or filled only with crumbling boxes and ominous-looking leaden coffins; but impressed him deeply with the magnitude of Joseph Curwen's original operations. He thought of the slaves and seamen who had disappeared, of the graves which had been violated in every part of the world, and of what that final raiding party must have seen; and then he decided it was better not to think any more. Once a great stone staircase mounted at his right, and he deduced that this must have reached to one of the Curwen outbuildings - perhaps the famous stone edifice with the high slit-like windows - provided the steps he had descended had led from the steep-roofed farmhouse. Suddenly the walls seemed to fall away ahead, and the stench and the wailing grew stronger. Willett saw that he had come upon a vast open space, so great that his torchlight would not carry across it; and as he advanced he encountered occasional stout pillars supporting the arches of the roof.
      After a time he reached a circle of pillars grouped like the monoliths of Stonehenge, with a large carved altar on a base of three steps in the centre; and so curious were the carvings on that altar that he approached to study them with his electric light. But when he saw what they were he shrank away shuddering, and did not stop to investigate the dark stains which discoloured the upper surface and had spread down the sides in occasional thin lines. Instead, he found the distant wall and traced it as it swept round in a gigantic circle perforated by occasional black doorways and indented by a myriad of shallow cells with iron gratings and wrist and ankle bonds on chains fastened to the stone of the concave rear masonry. These cells were empty, but still the horrible odour and the dismal moaning continued, more insistent now than ever, and seemingly varied at times by a sort of slippery thumping.

3.

      From that frightful smell and that uncanny noise Willett's attention could no longer be diverted. Both were plainer and more hideous in the great pillared hall than anywhere else, and carried a vague impression of being far below, even in this dark nether world of subterrene mystery. Before trying any of the black archways for steps leading further down, the doctor cast his beam of light about the stone-flagged floor. It was very loosely paved, and at irregular intervals there would occur a slab curiously pierced by small holes in no definite arrangement, while at one point there lay a very long ladder carelessly flung down. To this ladder, singularly enough, appeared to cling a particularly large amount of the frightful odour which encompassed everything. As he walked slowly about it suddenly occurred to Willett that both the noise and the odour seemed strongest directly above the oddly pierced slabs, as if they might be crude trap-doors leading down to some still deeper region of horror. Kneeling by one, he worked at it with his hands, and found that with extreme difficulty he could budge it. At his touch the moaning beneath ascended to a louder key, and only with vast trepidation did he persevere in the lifting of the heavy stone. A stench unnamable now rose up from below, and the doctor's head reeled dizzily as he laid back the slab and turned his torch upon the exposed square yard of gaping blackness.
      If he had expected a flight of steps to some wide gulf of ultimate abomination, Willett was destined to be disappointed; for amidst that foetor and cracked whining he discerned only the brick-faced top of a cylindrical well perhaps a yard and a half in diameter and devoid of any ladder or other means of descent. As the light shone down, the wailing changed suddenly to a series of horrible yelps; in conjunction with which there came again that sound of blind, futile scrambling and slippery thumping. The explorer trembled, unwilling even to imagine what noxious thing might be lurking in that abyss, but in a moment mustered up the courage to peer over the rough-hewn brink; lying at full length and holding the torch downward at arm's length to see what might lie below. For a second he could distinguish nothing but the slimy, moss-grown brick walls sinking illimitably into that half-tangible miasma of murk and foulness and anguished frenzy; and then he saw that something dark was leaping clumsily and frantically up and down at the bottom of the narrow shaft, which must have been from twenty to twenty-five feet below the stone floor where he lay. The torch shook in his hand, but he looked again to see what manner of living creature might be immured there in the darkness of that unnatural well; left starving by young Ward through all the long month since the doctors had taken him away, and clearly only one of a vast number prisoned in the kindred wells whose pierced stone covers so thickly studded in the floor of the great vaulted cavern. Whatever the things were, they could not lie down in their cramped spaces; but must have crouched and whined and waited and feebly leaped all those hideous weeks since their master had abandoned them unheeded.
      But Marinus Bicknell Willett was sorry that he looked again; for surgeon and veteran of the dissecting-room though he was, he has not been the same since. It is hard to explain just how a single sight of a tangible object with measureable dimensions could so shake and change a man; and we may only say that there is about certain outlines and entities a power of symbolism and suggestion which acts frightfully on a sensitive thinker's perspective and whispers terrible hints of obscure cosmic relationships and unnamable realities behind the protective illusions of common vision. In that second look Willett saw such an outline or entity, for during the next few instants he was undoubtedly as stark mad as any inmate of Dr. Waite's private hospital. He dropped the electric torch from a hand drained of muscular power or nervous cošrdination, nor heeded the sound of crunching teeth which told of its fate at the bottom of the pit. He screamed and screamed and screamed in a voice whose falsetto panic no acquaintance of his would ever have recognised; and though he could not rise to his feet he crawled and rolled desperately away over the damp pavement where dozens of Tartarean wells poured forth their exhausted whining and yelping to answer his own insane cries. He tore his hands on the rough, loose stones, and many times bruised his head against the frequent pillars, but still he kept on. Then at last he slowly came to himself in the utter blackness and stench, and stopped his ears against the droning wail into which the burst of yelping had subsided. He was drenched with perspiration and without means of producing a light; stricken and unnerved in the abysmal blackness and horror, and crushed with a memory he never could efface. Beneath him dozens of those things still lived, and from one of the shafts the cover was removed. He knew that what he had seen could never climb up the slippery walls, yet shuddered at the thought that some obscure foot-hold might exist.
      What the thing was, he would never tell. It was like some of the carvings on the hellish altar, but it was alive. Nature had never made it in this form, for it was too palpably unfinished. The deficiencies were of the most surprising sort, and the abnormalities of proportion could not be described. Willett consents only to say that this type of thing must have represented entities which Ward called up from imperfect salts, and which he kept for servile or ritualistic purposes. If it had not had a certain significance, its image would not have been carved on that damnable stone. It was not the worst thing depicted on that stone - but Willett never opened the other pits. At the time, the first connected idea in his mind was an idle paragraph from some of the old Curwen data he had digested long before; a phrase used by Simon or Jedediah Orne in that portentous confiscated letter to the bygone sorcerer: ""Certainely, there was Noth'g butt ye liveliest Awfulness in that which H. rais'd upp from What he cou'd gather onlie a part of.""
      Then, horribly supplementing rather than displacing this image, there came a recollection of those ancient lingering rumours anent the burned, twisted thing found in the fields a week after the Curwen raid. Charles Ward had once told the doctor what old Slocum said of that object; that it was neither thoroughly human, nor wholly allied to any animal which Pawtuxet folk had ever seen or read about.
      These words hummed in the doctor's mind as he rocked to and fro, squatting on the nitrous stone floor. He tried to drive them out, and repeated the Lord's Prayer to himself; eventually trailing off into a mnemonic hodge-podge like the modernistic Waste Land of Mr. T. S. Eliot and finally reverting to the oft-repeated dual formula he had lately found in Ward's underground library: ""Y'ai 'ng'ngah, Yog-Sothoth"", and so on till the final underlined ""Zhro"". It seemed to soothe him, and he staggered to his feet after a time; lamenting bitterly his fright-lost torch and looking wildly about for any gleam of light in the clutching inkiness of the chilly air. Think he would not; but he strained his eyes in every direction for some faint glint or reflection of the bright illumination he had left in the library. After a while he thought he detected a suspicion of a glow infinitely far away, and toward this he crawled in agonised caution on hands and knees amidst the stench and howling, always feeling ahead lest he collide with the numerous great pillars or stumble into the abominable pit he had uncovered.
      Once his shaking fingers touched something which he knew must be the steps leading to the hellish altar, and from this spot he recoiled in loathing. At another time he encountered the pierced slab he had removed, and here his caution became almost pitiful. But he did not come upon the dread aperture after all, nor did anything issue from that aperture to detain him. What had been down there made no sound nor stir. Evidently its crunching of the fallen electric torch had not been good for it. Each time Willett's fingers felt a perforated slab he trembled. His passage over it would sometimes increase the groaning below, but generally it would produce no effect at all, since he moved very noiselessly. Several times during his progress the glow ahead diminished perceptibly, and he realised that the various candles and lamps he had left must be expiring one by one. The thought of being lost in utter darkness without matches amidst this underground world of nightmare labyrinths impelled him to rise to his feet and run, which he could safely do now that he had passed the open pit; for he knew that once the light failed, his only hope of rescue and survival would lie in whatever relief party Mr. Ward might send after missing him for a sufficient period. Presently, however, he emerged from the open space into the narrower corridor and definitely located the glow as coming from a door on his right. In a moment he had reached it and was standing once more in young Ward's secret library, trembling with relief, and watching the sputterings of that last lamp which had brought him to safety.

4.

      In another moment he was hastily filling the burned-out lamps from an oil supply he had previously noticed, and when the room was bright again he looked about to see if he might find a lantern for further exploration. For racked though he was with horror, his sense of grim purpose was still uppermost; and he was firmly determined to leave no stone unturned in his search for the hideous facts behind Charles Ward's bizarre madness. Failing to find a lantern, he chose the smallest of the lamps to carry; also filling his pockets with candles and matches, and taking with him a gallon can of oil, which he proposed to keep for reserve use in whatever hidden laboratory he might uncover beyond the terrible open space with its unclean altar and nameless covered wells. To traverse that space again would require his utmost fortitude, but he knew it must be done. Fortunately neither the frightful altar nor the opened shaft was near the vast cell-indented wall which bounded the cavern area, and whose black mysterious archways would form the next goals of a logical search.
      So Willett went back to that great pillared hall of stench and anguished howling; turning down his lamp to avoid any distant glimpse of the hellish altar, or of the uncovered pit with the pierced stone slab beside it. Most of the black doorways led merely to small chambers, some vacant and some evidently used as storerooms; and in several of the latter he saw some very curious accumulations of various objects. One was packed with rotting and dust-draped bales of spare clothing, and the explorer thrilled when he saw that it was unmistakably the clothing of a century and a half before. In another room he found numerous odds and ends of modern clothing, as if gradual provisions were being made to equip a large body of men. But what he disliked most of all were the huge copper vats which occasionally appeared; these, and the sinister incrustations upon them. He liked them even less than the weirdly figured leaden bowls whose rims retained such obnoxious deposits and around which clung repellent odours perceptible above even the general noisomeness of the crypt. When he had completed about half the entire circuit of the wall he found another corridor like that from which he had come, and out of which many doors opened. This he proceeded to investigate; and after entering three rooms of medium size and of no significant contents, he came at last to a large oblong apartment whose business-like tanks and tables, furnaces and modern instruments, occasional books and endless shelves of jars and bottles proclaimed it indeed the long-sought laboratory of Charles Ward - and no doubt of old Joseph Curwen before him.
      After lighting the three lamps which he found filled and ready, Dr. Willett examined the place and all its appurtenances with the keenest interest; noting from the relative quantities of various reagents on the shelves that young Ward's dominant concern must have been with some branch of organic chemistry. On the whole, little could be learned from the scientific ensemble, which included a gruesome-looking dissecting table; so that the room was really rather a disappointment. Among the books was a tattered old copy of Borellus in black-letter, and it was weirdly interesting to note that Ward had underlined the same passage whose marking had so perturbed good Mr. Merritt at Curwen's farmhouse more than a century and a half before. That older copy, of course, must have perished along with the rest of Curwen's occult library in the final raid. Three archways opened off the laboratory, and these the doctor proceeded to sample in turn. From his cursory survey he saw that two led merely to small storerooms; but these he canvassed with care, remarking the piles of coffins in various stages of damage and shuddering violently at two or three of the few coffin-plates he could decipher. There was much clothing also stored in these rooms, and several new and tightly nailed boxes which he did not stop to investigate. Most interesting of all, perhaps, were some odd bits which he judged to be fragments of old Joseph Curwen's laboratory appliances. These had suffered damage at the hands of the raiders, but were still partly recognisable as the chemical paraphernalia of the Georgian period.
      The third archway led to a very sizeable chamber entirely lined with shelves and having in the centre a table bearing two lamps. These lamps Willett lighted, and in their brilliant glow studied the endless shelving which surrounded him. Some of the upper levels were wholly vacant, but most of the space was filled with small odd-looking leaden jars of two general types; one tall and without handles like a Grecian lekythos or oil-jug, and the other with a single handle and proportioned like a Phaleron jug. All had metal stoppers, and were covered with peculiar-looking symbols moulded in low relief. In a moment the doctor noticed that these jugs were classified with great rigidity; all the lekythoi being on one side of the room with a large wooden sign reading ""Custodes"" above them, and all the Phalerons on the other, correspondingly labelled with a sign reading ""Materia"". Each of the jars or jugs, except some on the upper shelves that turned out to be vacant, bore a cardboard tag with a number apparently referring to a catalogue; and Willett resolved to look for the latter presently. For the moment, however, he was more interested in the nature of the array as a whole; and experimentally opened several of the lekythoi and Phalerons at random with a view to a rough generalisation. The result was invariable. Both types of jar contained a small quantity of a single kind of substance; a fine dusty powder of very light weight and of many shades of dull, neutral colour. To the colours which formed the only point of variation there was no apparent method of disposal; and no distinction between what occurred in the lekythoi and what occurred in the Phalerons. A bluish-grey powder might be by the side of a pinkish-white one, and any one in a Phaleron might have its exact counterpart in a lekythos. The most individual feature about the powders was their non-adhesiveness. Willett would pour one into his hand, and upon returning it to its jug would find that no residue whatever remained on its palm.
      The meaning of the two signs puzzled him, and he wondered why this battery of chemicals was separated so radically from those in glass jars on the shelves of the laboratory proper. ""Custodes"", ""Materia""; that was the Latin for ""Guards"" and ""Materials"", respectively - and then there came a flash of memory as to where he had seen that word ""Guards"" before in connexion with this dreadful mystery. It was, of course, in the recent letter to Dr. Allen purporting to be from old Edward Hutchinson; and the phrase had read: ""There was no Neede to keep the Guards in Shape and eat'g off their Heads, and it made Much to be founde in Case of Trouble, as you too welle knowe."" What did this signify? But wait - was there not still another reference to ""guards"" in this matter which he had failed wholly to recall when reading the Hutchinson letter? Back in the old non-secretive days Ward had told him of the Eleazar Smith diary recording the spying of Smith and Weeden on the Curwen farm, and in that dreadful chronicle there had been a mention of conversations overheard before the old wizard betook himself wholly beneath the earth. There had been, Smith and Weeden insisted, terrible colloquies wherein figured Curwen, certain captives of his, and the guards of those captives. Those guards, according to Hutchinson or his avatar, had 'eaten their heads off', so that now Dr. Allen did not keep them in shape. And if not in shape, how save as the ""salts"" to which it appears this wizard band was engaged in reducing as many human bodies or skeletons as they could?
      So that was what these lekythoi contained; the monstrous fruit of unhallowed rites and deeds, presumably won or cowed to such submission as to help, when called up by some hellish incantation, in the defence of their blasphemous master or the questioning of those who were not so willing? Willett shuddered at the thought of what he had been pouring in and out of his hands, and for a moment felt an impulse to flee in panic from that cavern of hideous shelves with their silent and perhaps watching sentinels. Then he thought of the ""Materia"" - in the myriad Phaleron jugs on the other side of the room. Salts too - and if not the salts of ""guards"", then the salts of what? God! Could it be possible that here lay the mortal relics of half the titan thinkers of all the ages; snatched by supreme ghouls from crypts where the world thought them safe, and subject to the beck and call of madmen who sought to drain their knowledge for some still wilder end whose ultimate effect would concern, as poor Charles had hinted in his frantic note, 'all civilisation, all natural law, perhaps even the fate of the solar system and the universe'? And Marinus Bicknell Willett had sifted their dust through his hands!
      Then he noticed a small door at the farther end of the room, and calmed himself enough to approach it and examine the crude sign chiselled above. It was only a symbol, but it filled him with vague spiritual dread; for a morbid, dreaming friend of his had once drawn it on paper and told him a few of the things it means in the dark abyss of sleep. It was the sign of Koth, that dreamers see fixed above the archway of a certain black tower standing alone in twilight - and Willett did not like what his friend Randolph Carter had said of its powers. But a moment later he forgot the sign as he recognised a new acrid odour in the stench-filled air. This was a chemical rather than animal smell, and came clearly from the room beyond the door. And it was, unmistakably, the same odour which had saturated Charles Ward's clothing on the day the doctors had taken him away. So it was here that the youth had been interrupted by the final summons? He was wiser than old Joseph Curwen, for he had not resisted. Willett, boldly determined to penetrate every wonder and nightmare this nether realm might contain, seized the small lamp and crossed the threshold. A wave of nameless fright rolled out to meet him, but he yielded to no whim and deferred to no intuition. There was nothing alive here to harm him, and he would not be stayed in his piercing of the eldritch cloud which engulfed his patient.
      The room beyond the door was of medium size, and had no furniture save a table, a single chair, and two groups of curious machines with clamps and wheels, which Willett recognised after a moment as mediaeval instruments of torture. On one side of the door stood a rack of savage whips, above which were some shelves bearing empty rows of shallow pedestalled cups of lead shaped like Grecian kylikes. On the other side was the table; with a powerful Argand lamp, a pad and pencil, and two of the stoppered lekythoi from the shelves outside set down at irregular places as if temporarily or in haste. Willett lighted the lamp and looked carefully at the pad, to see what notes young Ward might have been jotting down when interrupted; but found nothing more intelligible than the following disjointed fragments in that crabbed Curwen chirography, which shed no light on the case as a whole:
""B. dy'd not. Escap'd into walls and founde Place below.
""Saw olde V. saye ye Sabaoth and learnt ye Way.
""Rais'd Yog-Sothoth thrice and was ye nexte Day deliver'd.
""F. soughte to wipe out all know'g howe to raise Those from Outside.""
      As the strong Argand blaze lit up the entire chamber the doctor saw that the wall opposite the door, between the two groups of torturing appliances in the corners, was covered with pegs from which hung a set of shapeless-looking robes of a rather dismal yellowish-white. But far more interesting were the two vacant walls, both of which were thickly covered with mystic symbols and formulae roughly chiselled in the smooth dressed stone. The damp floor also bore marks of carving; and with but little difficulty Willett deciphered a huge pentagram in the centre, with a plain circle about three feet wide half way between this and each corner. In one of these four circles, near where a yellowish robe had been flung carelessly down, there stood a shallow kylix of the sort found on the shelves above the whip-rack; and just outside the periphery was one of the Phaleron jugs from the shelves in the other room, its tag numbered 118. This was unstoppered, and proved upon inspection to be empty; but the explorer saw with a shiver that the kylix was not. Within its shallow area, and saved from scattering only by the absence of wind in this sequestered cavern, lay a small amount of a dry, dull-greenish efflorescent powder which must have belonged in the jug; and Willett almost reeled at the implications that came sweeping over him as he correlated little by little the several elements and antecedents of the scene. The whips and the instruments of torture, the dust or salts from the jug of ""Materia"", the two lekythoi from the ""Custodes"" shelf, the robes, the formulae on the walls, the notes on the pad, the hints from letters and legends, and the thousand glimpses, doubts, and suppositions which had come to torment the friends and parents of Charles Ward - all these engulfed the doctor in a tidal wave of horror as he looked at that dry greenish powder outspread in the pedestalled leaden kylix on the floor.
      With an effort, however, Willett pulled himself together and began studying the formulae chiselled on the walls. From the stained and incrusted letters it was obvious that they were carved in Joseph Curwen's time, and their text was such as to be vaguely familiar to one who had read much Curwen material or delved extensively into the history of magic. One the doctor clearly recognised as what Mrs. Ward heard her son chanting on that ominous Good Friday a year before, and what an authority had told him was a very terrible invocation addressed to secret gods outside the normal spheres. It was not spelled here exactly as Mrs. Ward had set it down from memory, nor yet as the authority had shewn it to him in the forbidden pages of ""Eliphas Levi""; but its identity was unmistakable, and such words as Sabaoth, Metraton, Almousin, and Zariatnatmik sent a shudder of fright through the searcher who had seen and felt so much of cosmic abomination just around the corner.
      This was on the left-hand wall as one entered the room. The right-hand wall was no less thickly inscribed, and Willett felt a start of recognition as he came upon the pair of formulae so frequently occurring in the recent notes in the library. They were, roughly speaking, the same; with the ancient symbols of ""Dragon's Head"" and ""Dragon's Tail"" heading them as in Ward's scribblings. But the spelling differed quite widely from that of the modern versions, as if old Curwen had had a different way of recording sound, or as if later study had evolved more powerful and perfected variants of the invocations in question. The doctor tried to reconcile the chiselled version with the one which still ran persistently in his head, and found it hard to do. Where the script he had memorised began ""Y'ai 'ng'ngah, Yog-Sothoth"", this epigraph started out as ""Aye, engengah, Yogge-Sothotha""; which to his mind would seriously interfere with the syllabification of the second word.
      Ground as the later text was into his consciousness, the discrepancy disturbed him; and he found himself chanting the first of the formulae aloud in an effort to square the sound he conceived with the letters he found carved. Weird and menacing in that abyss of antique blasphemy rang his voice; its accents keyed to a droning sing-song either through the spell of the past and the unknown, or through the hellish example of that dull, godless wail from the pits whose inhuman cadences rose and fell rhythmically in the distance through the stench and the darkness.

""Y'AI 'NG'NGAH,
YOG-SOTHOTH
H'EE - L'GEB
F'AI THRODOG
UAAAH!""

      But what was this cold wind which had sprung into life at the very outset of the chant? The lamps were sputtering woefully, and the gloom grew so dense that the letters on the wall nearly faded from sight. There was smoke, too, and an acrid odour which quite drowned out the stench from the far-away wells; an odour like that he had smelt before, yet infinitely stronger and more pungent. He turned from the inscriptions to face the room with its bizarre contents, and saw that the kylix on the floor, in which the ominous efflorescent powder had lain, was giving forth a cloud of thick, greenish-black vapour of surprising volume and opacity. That powder - Great God! it had come from the shelf of ""Materia"" - what was it doing now, and what had started it? The formula he had been chanting - the first of the pair - Dragon's Head, ascending node - Blessed Saviour, could it be. . . .
      The doctor reeled, and through his head raced wildly disjointed scraps from all he had seen, heard, and read of the frightful case of Joseph Curwen and Charles Dexter Ward. ""I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe. . . . Have ye Wordes for laying at all times readie, and stopp not to be sure when there is any Doubte of Whom you have. . . . Three Talkes with What was therein inhum'd. . . ."" Mercy of Heaven, what is that shape behind the parting smoke?

5.

      Marinus Bicknell Willett has no hope that any part of his tale will be believed except by certain sympathetic friends, hence he has made no attempt to tell it beyond his most intimate circle. Only a few outsiders have ever heard it repeated, and of these the majority laugh and remark that the doctor surely is getting old. He has been advised to take a long vacation and to shun future cases dealing with mental disturbance. But Mr. Ward knows that the veteran physician speaks only a horrible truth. Did not he himself see the noisome aperture in the bungalow cellar? Did not Willett send him home overcome and ill at eleven o'clock that portentous morning? Did he not telephone the doctor in vain that evening, and again the next day, and had he not driven to the bungalow itself on that following noon, finding his friend unconscious but unharmed on one of the beds upstairs? Willett had been breathing stertorously, and opened his eyes slowly when Mr. Ward gave him some brandy fetched from the car. Then he shuddered and screamed, crying out, ""That beard . . . those eyes. . . . God, who are you?"" A very strange thing to say to a trim, blue-eyed, clean-shaven gentleman whom he had known from the latter's boyhood.
      In the bright noon sunlight the bungalow was unchanged since the previous morning. Willett's clothing bore no disarrangement beyond certain smudges and worn places at the knees, and only a faint acrid odour reminded Mr. Ward of what he had smelt on his son that day he was taken to the hospital. The doctor's flashlight was missing, but his valise was safely there, as empty as when he had brought it. Before indulging in any explanations, and obviously with great moral effort, Willett staggered dizzily down to the cellar and tried the fateful platform before the tubs. It was unyielding. Crossing to where he had left his yet unused tool satchel the day before, he obtained a chisel and began to pry up the stubborn planks one by one. Underneath the smooth concrete was still visible, but of any opening or perforation there was no longer a trace. Nothing yawned this time to sicken the mystified father who had followed the doctor downstairs; only the smooth concrete underneath the planks - no noisome well, no world of subterrene horrors, no secret library, no Curwen papers, no nightmare pits of stench and howling, no laboratory or shelves or chiselled formulae, no. . . . Dr. Willett turned pale, and clutched at the younger man. ""Yesterday,"" he asked softly, ""did you see it here . . . and smell it?"" And when Mr. Ward, himself transfixed with dread and wonder, found strength to nod an affirmative, the physician gave a sound half a sigh and half a gasp, and nodded in turn. ""Then I will tell you,"" he said.
      So for an hour, in the sunniest room they could find upstairs, the physician whispered his frightful tale to the wondering father. There was nothing to relate beyond the looming up of that form when the greenish-black vapour from the kylix parted, and Willett was too tired to ask himself what had really occurred. There were futile, bewildered head-shakings from both men, and once Mr. Ward ventured a hushed suggestion, ""Do you suppose it would be of any use to dig?"" The doctor was silent, for it seemed hardly fitting for any human brain to answer when powers of unknown spheres had so vitally encroached on this side of the Great Abyss. Again Mr. Ward asked, ""But where did it go? It brought you here, you know, and it sealed up the hole somehow."" And Willett again let silence answer for him.
      But after all, this was not the final phase of the matter. Reaching for his handkerchief before rising to leave, Dr. Willett's fingers closed upon a piece of paper in his pocket which had not been there before, and which was companioned by the candles and matches he had seized in the vanished vault. It was a common sheet, torn obviously from the cheap pad in that fabulous room of horror somewhere underground, and the writing upon it was that of an ordinary lead pencil - doubtless the one which had lain beside the pad. It was folded very carelessly, and beyond the faint acrid scent of the cryptic chamber bore no print or mark of any world but this. But in the text itself it did indeed reek with wonder; for here was no script of any wholesome age, but the laboured strokes of mediaeval darkness, scarcely legible to the laymen who now strained over it, yet having combinations of symbols which seemed vaguely familiar. The briefly scrawled message was this, and its mystery lent purpose to the shaken pair, who forthwith walked steadily out to the Ward car and gave orders to be driven first to a quiet dining place and then to the John Hay Library on the hill.



      At the library it was easy to find good manuals of palaeography, and over these the two men puzzled till the lights of evening shone out from the great chandelier. In the end they found what was needed. The letters were indeed no fantastic invention, but the normal script of a very dark period. They were the pointed Saxon minuscules of the eighth or ninth century A.D., and brought with them memories of an uncouth time when under a fresh Christian veneer ancient faiths and ancient rites stirred stealthily, and the pale moon of Britain looked sometimes on strange deeds in the Roman ruins of Caerleon and Hexham, and by the towers along Hadrian's crumbling wall. The words were in such Latin as a barbarous age might remember - ""Corvinus necandus est. Cadaver aq(ua) forti dissolvendum, nec aliq(ui)d retinendum. Tace ut potes."" - which may roughly be translated, ""Curwen must be killed. The body must be dissolved in aqua fortis, nor must anything be retained. Keep silence as best you are able.""
      Willett and Mr. Ward were mute and baffled. They had met the unknown, and found that they lacked emotions to respond to it as they vaguely believed they ought. With Willett, especially, the capacity for receiving fresh impressions of awe was well-nigh exhausted; and both men sat still and helpless till the closing of the library forced them to leave. Then they drove listlessly to the Ward mansion in Prospect Street, and talked to no purpose into the night. The doctor rested toward morning, but did not go home. And he was still there Sunday noon when a telephone message came from the detectives who had been assigned to look up Dr. Allen.
      Mr. Ward, who was pacing nervously about in a dressing-gown, answered the call in person; and told the men to come up early the next day when he heard their report was almost ready. Both Willett and he were glad that this phase of the matter was taking form, for whatever the origin of the strange minuscule message, it seemed certain that the ""Curwen"" who must be destroyed could be no other than the bearded and spectacled stranger. Charles had feared this man, and had said in the frantic note that he must be killed and dissolved in acid. Allen, moreover, had been receiving letters from the strange wizards in Europe under the name of Curwen, and palpably regarded himself as an avatar of the bygone necromancer. And now from a fresh and unknown source had come a message saying that ""Curwen"" must be killed and dissolved in acid. The linkage was too unmistakable to be factitious; and besides, was not Allen planning to murder young Ward upon the advice of the creature called Hutchinson? Of course, the letter they had seen had never reached the bearded stranger; but from its text they could see that Allen had already formed plans for dealing with the youth if he grew too 'squeamish'. Without doubt, Allen must be apprehended; and even if the most drastic directions were not carried out, he must be placed where he could inflict no harm upon Charles Ward.
      That afternoon, hoping against hope to extract some gleam of information anent the inmost mysteries from the only available one capable of giving it, the father and the doctor went down the bay and called on young Charles at the hospital. Simply and gravely Willett told him all he had found, and noticed how pale he turned as each description made certain the truth of the discovery. The physician employed as much dramatic effect as he could, and watched for a wincing on Charles's part when he approached the matter of the covered pits and the nameless hybrids within. But Ward did not wince. Willett paused, and his voice grew indignant as he spoke of how the things were starving. He taxed the youth with shocking inhumanity, and shivered when only a sardonic laugh came in reply. For Charles, having dropped as useless his pretence that the crypt did not exist, seemed to see some ghastly jest in this affair; and chuckled hoarsely at something which amused him. Then he whispered, in accents doubly terrible because of the cracked voice he used, ""Damn 'em, they do eat, but they don't need to! That's the rare part! A month, you say, without food? Lud, Sir, you be modest! D'ye know, that was the joke on poor old Whipple with his virtuous bluster! Kill everything off, would he? Why, damme, he was half-deaf with the noise from Outside and never saw or heard aught from the wells! He never dreamed they were there at all! Devil take ye, those cursed things have been howling down there ever since Curwen was done for a hundred and fifty-seven years gone!""
      But no more than this could Willett get from the youth. Horrified, yet almost convinced against his will, he went on with his tale in the hope that some incident might startle his auditor out of the mad composure he maintained. Looking at the youth's face, the doctor could not but feel a kind of terror at the changes which recent months had wrought. Truly, the boy had drawn down nameless horrors from the skies. When the room with the formulae and the greenish dust was mentioned, Charles shewed his first sign of animation. A quizzical look overspread his face as he heard what Willett had read on the pad, and he ventured the mild statement that those notes were old ones, of no possible significance to anyone not deeply initiated in the history of magic. ""But,"" he added, ""had you but known the words to bring up that which I had out in the cup, you had not been here to tell me this. 'Twas Number 118, and I conceive you would have shook had you looked it up in my list in t'other room. 'Twas never raised by me, but I meant to have it up that day you came to invite me hither.""
      Then Willett told of the formula he had spoken and of the greenish-black smoke which had arisen; and as he did so he saw true fear dawn for the first time on Charles Ward's face. ""It came, and you be here alive?"" As Ward croaked the words his voice seemed almost to burst free of its trammels and sink to cavernous abysses of uncanny resonance. Willett, gifted with a flash of inspiration, believed he saw the situation, and wove into his reply a caution from a letter he remembered. ""No. 118, you say? But don't forget that stones are all changed now in nine grounds out of ten. You are never sure till you question!"" And then, without warning, he drew forth the minuscule message and flashed it before the patient's eyes. He could have wished no stronger result, for Charles Ward fainted forthwith.
      All this conversation, of course, had been conducted with the greatest secrecy lest the resident alienists accuse the father and the physician of encouraging a madman in his delusions. Unaided, too, Dr. Willett and Mr. Ward picked up the stricken youth and placed him on the couch. In reviving, the patient mumbled many times of some word which he must get to Orne and Hutchinson at once; so when his consciousness seemed fully back the doctor told him that of those strange creatures at least one was his bitter enemy, and had given Dr. Allen advice for his assassination. This revelation produced no visible effect, and before it was made the visitors could see that their host had already the look of a hunted man. After that he would converse no more, so Willett and the father departed presently; leaving behind a caution against the bearded Allen, to which the youth only replied that this individual was very safely taken care of, and could do no one any harm even if he wished. This was said with an almost evil chuckle very painful to hear. They did not worry about any communications Charles might indite to that monstrous pair in Europe, since they knew that the hospital authorities seized all outgoing mail for censorship and would pass no wild or outrŽ-looking missive.
      There is, however, a curious sequel to the matter of Orne and Hutchinson, if such indeed the exiled wizards were. Moved by some vague presentiment amidst the horrors of that period, Willett arranged with an international press-cutting bureau for accounts of notable current crimes and accidents in Prague and in eastern Transylvania; and after six months believed that he had found two very significant things amongst the multifarious items he received and had translated. One was the total wrecking of a house by night in the oldest quarter of Prague, and the disappearance of the evil old man called Josef Nadek, who had dwelt in it alone ever since anyone could remember. The other was a titan explosion in the Transylvanian mountains east of Rakus, and the utter extirpation with all its inmates of the ill-regarded Castle Ferenczy, whose master was so badly spoken of by peasants and soldiery alike that he would shortly have been summoned to Bucharest for serious questioning had not this incident cut off a career already so long as to antedate all common memory. Willett maintains that the hand which wrote those minuscules was able to wield stronger weapons as well; and that while Curwen was left to him to dispose of, the writer felt able to find and deal with Orne and Hutchinson itself. Of what their fate may have been the doctor strives sedulously not to think.

6.

      The following morning Dr. Willett hastened to the Ward home to be present when the detectives arrived. Allen's destruction or imprisonment - or Curwen's, if one might regard the tacit claim to reincarnation as valid - he felt must be accomplished at any cost, and he communicated this conviction to Mr. Ward as they sat waiting for the men to come. They were downstairs this time, for the upper parts of the house were beginning to be shunned because of a peculiar nauseousness which hung indefinitely about; a nauseousness which the older servants connected with some curse left by the vanished Curwen portrait.
      At nine o'clock the three detectives presented themselves and immediately delivered all that they had to say. They had not, regrettably enough, located the Brava Tony Gomes as they had wished, nor had they found the least trace of Dr. Allen's source or present whereabouts; but they had managed to unearth a considerable number of local impressions and facts concerning the reticent stranger. Allen had struck Pawtuxet people as a vaguely unnatural being, and there was an universal belief that his thick sandy beard was either dyed or false - a belief conclusively upheld by the finding of such a false beard, together with a pair of dark glasses, in his room at the fateful bungalow. His voice, Mr. Ward could well testify from his one telephone conversation, had a depth and hollowness that could not be forgotten; and his glance seemed malign even through his smoked and horn-rimmed glasses. One shopkeeper, in the course of negotiations, had seen a specimen of his handwriting and declared it was very queer and crabbed; this being confirmed by pencilled notes of no clear meaning found in his room and identified by the merchant. In connexion with the vampirism rumours of the preceding summer, a majority of the gossips believed that Allen rather than Ward was the actual vampire. Statements were also obtained from the officials who had visited the bungalow after the unpleasant incident of the motor truck robbery. They had felt less of the sinister in Dr. Allen, but had recognised him as the dominant figure in the queer shadowy cottage. The place had been too dark for them to observe him clearly, but they would know him again if they saw him. His beard had looked odd, and they thought he had some slight scar above his dark spectacled right eye. As for the detectives' search of Allen's room, it yielded nothing definite save the beard and glasses, and several pencilled notes in a crabbed writing which Willett at once saw was identical with that shared by the old Curwen manuscripts and by the voluminous recent notes of young Ward found in the vanished catacombs of horror.
      Dr. Willett and Mr. Ward caught something of a profound, subtle, and insidious cosmic fear from this data as it was gradually unfolded, and almost trembled in following up the vague, mad thought which had simultaneously reached their minds. The false beard and glasses - the crabbed Curwen penmanship - the old portrait and its tiny scar - and the altered youth in the hospital with such a scar - that deep, hollow voice on the telephone - was it not of this that Mr. Ward was reminded when his son barked forth those pitiable tones to which he now claimed to be reduced? Who had ever seen Charles and Allen together? Yes, the officials had once, but who later on? Was it not when Allen left that Charles suddenly lost his growing fright and began to live wholly at the bungalow? Curwen - Allen - Ward - in what blasphemous and abominable fusion had two ages and two persons become involved? That damnable resemblance of the picture to Charles - had it not used to stare and stare, and follow the boy around the room with its eyes? Why, too, did both Allen and Charles copy Joseph Curwen's handwriting, even when alone and off guard? And then the frightful work of those people - the lost crypt of horrors that had aged the doctor overnight; the starved monsters in the noisome pits; the awful formula which had yielded such nameless results; the message in minuscules found in Willett's pocket; the papers and the letters and all the talk of graves and ""salts"" and discoveries - whither did everything lead? In the end Mr. Ward did the most sensible thing. Steeling himself against any realisation of why he did it, he gave the detectives an article to be shewn to such Pawtuxet shopkeepers as had seen the portentous Dr. Allen. That article was a photograph of his luckless son, on which he now carefully drew in ink the pair of heavy glasses and the black pointed beard which the men had brought from Allen's room.
      For two hours he waited with the doctor in the oppressive house where fear and miasma were slowly gathering as the empty panel in the upstairs library leered and leered and leered. Then the men returned. Yes. The altered photograph was a very passable likeness of Dr. Allen. Mr. Ward turned pale, and Willett wiped a suddenly dampened brow with his handkerchief. Allen - Ward - Curwen - it was becoming too hideous for coherent thought. What had the boy called out of the void, and what had it done to him? What, really, had happened from first to last? Who was this Allen who sought to kill Charles as too 'squeamish', and why had his destined victim said in the postscript to that frantic letter that he must be so completely obliterated in acid? Why, too, had the minuscule message, of whose origin no one dared think, said that ""Curwen"" must be likewise obliterated? What was the change, and when had the final stage occurred? That day when his frantic note was received - he had been nervous all the morning, then there was an alteration. He had slipped out unseen and swaggered boldly in past the men hired to guard him. That was the time, when he was out. But no - had he not cried out in terror as he entered his study - this very room? What had he found there? Or wait - what had found him? That simulacrum which brushed boldly in without having been seen to go - was that an alien shadow and a horror forcing itself upon a trembling figure which had never gone out at all? Had not the butler spoken of queer noises?
      Willett rang for the man and asked him some low-toned questions. It had, surely enough, been a bad business. There had been noises - a cry, a gasp, a choking, and a sort of clattering or creaking or thumping, or all of these. And Mr. Charles was not the same when he stalked out without a word. The butler shivered as he spoke, and sniffed at the heavy air that blew down from some open window upstairs. Terror had settled definitely upon the house, and only the business-like detectives failed to imbibe a full measure of it. Even they were restless, for this case had held vague elements in the background which pleased them not at all. Dr. Willett was thinking deeply and rapidly, and his thoughts were terrible ones. Now and then he would almost break into muttering as he ran over in his head a new, appalling, and increasingly conclusive chain of nightmare happenings.
      Then Mr. Ward made a sign that the conference was over, and everyone save him and the doctor left the room. It was noon now, but shadows as of coming night seemed to engulf the phantom-haunted mansion. Willett began talking very seriously to his host, and urged that he leave a great deal of the future investigation to him. There would be, he predicted, certain obnoxious elements which a friend could bear better than a relative. As family physician he must have a free hand, and the first thing he required was a period alone and undisturbed in the abandoned library upstairs, where the ancient overmantel had gathered about itself an aura of noisome horror more intense than when Joseph Curwen's features themselves glanced slyly down from the painted panel.
      Mr. Ward, dazed by the flood of grotesque morbidities and unthinkably maddening suggestions that poured in upon him from every side, could only acquiesce; and half an hour later the doctor was locked in the shunned room with the panelling from Olney Court. The father, listening outside, heard fumbling sounds of moving and rummaging as the moments passed; and finally a wrench and a creak, as if a tight cupboard door were being opened. Then there was a muffled cry, a kind of snorting choke, and a hasty slamming of whatever had been opened. Almost at once the key rattled and Willett appeared in the hall, haggard and ghastly, and demanding wood for the real fireplace on the south wall of the room. The furnace was not enough, he said; and the electric log had little practical use. Longing yet not daring to ask questions, Mr. Ward gave the requisite orders and a man brought some stout pine logs, shuddering as he entered the tainted air of the library to place them in the grate. Willett meanwhile had gone up to the dismantled laboratory and brought down a few odds and ends not included in the moving of the July before. They were in a covered basket, and Mr. Ward never saw what they were.
      Then the doctor locked himself in the library once more, and by the clouds of smoke which rolled down past the windows from the chimney it was known that he had lighted the fire. Later, after a great rustling of newspapers, that odd wrench and creaking were heard again; followed by a thumping which none of the eavesdroppers liked. Thereafter two suppressed cries of Willett's were heard, and hard upon these came a swishing rustle of indefinable hatefulness. Finally the smoke that the wind beat down from the chimney grew very dark and acrid, and everyone wished that the weather had spared them this choking and venomous inundation of peculiar fumes. Mr. Ward's head reeled, and the servants all clustered together in a knot to watch the horrible black smoke swoop down. After an age of waiting the vapours seemed to lighten, and half-formless sounds of scraping, sweeping, and other minor operations were heard behind the bolted door. And at last, after the slamming of some cupboard within, Willett made his appearance - sad, pale, and haggard, and bearing the cloth-draped basket he had taken from the upstairs laboratory. He had left the window open, and into that once accursed room was pouring a wealth of pure, wholesome air to mix with a queer new smell of disinfectants. The ancient overmantel still lingered; but it seemed robbed of malignity now, and rose as calm and stately in its white panelling as if it had never borne the picture of Joseph Curwen. Night was coming on, yet this time its shadows held no latent fright, but only a gentle melancholy. Of what he had done the doctor would never speak. To Mr. Ward he said, ""I can answer no questions, but I will say that there are different kinds of magic. I have made a great purgation, and those in this house will sleep the better for it.""

7.

      That Dr. Willett's ""purgation"" had been an ordeal almost as nerve-racking in its way as his hideous wandering in the vanished crypt is shewn by the fact that the elderly physician gave out completely as soon as he reached home that evening. For three days he rested constantly in his room, though servants later muttered something about having heard him after midnight on Wednesday, when the outer door softly opened and closed with phenomenal softness. Servants' imaginations, fortunately, are limited, else comment might have been excited by an item in Thursday's Evening Bulletin which ran as follows:
North End Ghouls
Active Again

After a lull of ten months since the dastardly vandalism in the Weeden lot at the North Burial Ground, a nocturnal prowler was glimpsed early this morning in the same cemetery by Robert Hart, the night watchman. Happening to glance for a moment from his shelter at about 2 a.m., Hart observed the glow of a lantern or pocket torch not far to the northwest, and upon opening the door detected the figure of a man with a trowel very plainly silhouetted against a nearby electric light. At once starting in pursuit, he saw the figure dart hurriedly toward the main entrance, gaining the street and losing himself among the shadows before approach or capture was possible.
      Like the first of the ghouls active during the past year, this intruder had done no real damage before detection. A vacant part of the Ward lot shewed signs of a little superficial digging, but nothing even nearly the size of a grave had been attempted, and no previous grave had been disturbed.
      Hart, who cannot describe the prowler except as a small man probably having a full beard, inclines to the view that all three of the digging incidents have a common source; but police from the Second Station think otherwise on account of the savage nature of the second incident, where an ancient coffin was removed and its headstone violently shattered.
      The first of the incidents, in which it is thought an attempt to bury something was frustrated, occurred a year ago last March, and has been attributed to bootleggers seeking a cache. It is possible, says Sergt. Riley, that this third affair is of similar nature. Officers at the Second Station are taking especial pains to capture the gang of miscreants responsible for these repeated outrages.
      All day Thursday Dr. Willett rested as if recuperating from something past or nerving himself for something to come. In the evening he wrote a note to Mr. Ward, which was delivered the next morning and which caused the half-dazed parent to ponder long and deeply. Mr. Ward had not been able to go down to business since the shock of Monday with its baffling reports and its sinister ""purgation"", but he found something calming about the doctor's letter in spite of the despair it seemed to promise and the fresh mysteries it seemed to evoke.
""10 Barnes St.,            
Providence, R.I.,      
April 12, 1928.
""Dear Theodore: - I feel that I must say a word to you before doing what I am going to do tomorrow. It will conclude the terrible business we have been going through (for I feel that no spade is ever likely to reach that monstrous place we know of), but I'm afraid it won't set your mind at rest unless I expressly assure you how very conclusive it is.
      ""You have known me ever since you were a small boy, so I think you will not distrust me when I hint that some matters are best left undecided and unexplored. It is better that you attempt no further speculation as to Charles's case, and almost imperative that you tell his mother nothing more than she already suspects. When I call on you tomorrow Charles will have escaped. That is all which need remain in anyone's mind. He was mad, and he escaped. You can tell his mother gently and gradually about the mad part when you stop sending the typed notes in his name. I'd advise you to join her in Atlantic City and take a rest yourself. God knows you need one after this shock, as I do myself. I am going South for a while to calm down and brace up.
      ""So don't ask me any questions when I call. It may be that something will go wrong, but I'll tell you if it does. I don't think it will. There will be nothing more to worry about, for Charles will be very, very safe. He is now - safer than you dream. You need hold no fears about Allen, and who or what he is. He forms as much a part of the past as Joseph Curwen's picture, and when I ring your doorbell you may feel certain that there is no such person. And what wrote that minuscule message will never trouble you or yours.
      ""But you must steel yourself to melancholy, and prepare your wife to do the same. I must tell you frankly that Charles's escape will not mean his restoration to you. He has been afflicted with a peculiar disease, as you must realise from the subtle physical as well as mental changes in him, and you must not hope to see him again. Have only this consolation - that he was never a fiend or even truly a madman, but only an eager, studious, and curious boy whose love of mystery and of the past was his undoing. He stumbled on things no mortal ought ever to know, and reached back through the years as no one ever should reach; and something came out of those years to engulf him.
      ""And now comes the matter in which I must ask you to trust me most of all. For there will be, indeed, no uncertainty about Charles's fate. In about a year, say, you can if you wish devise a suitable account of the end; for the boy will be no more. You can put up a stone in your lot at the North Burial Ground exactly ten feet west of your father's and facing the same way, and that will mark the true resting-place of your son. Nor need you fear that it will mark any abnormality or changeling. The ashes in that grave will be those of your own unaltered bone and sinew - of the real Charles Dexter Ward whose mind you watched from infancy - the real Charles with the olive-mark on his hip and without the black witch-mark on his chest or the pit on his forehead. The Charles who never did actual evil, and who will have paid with his life for his 'squeamishness'.
      ""That is all. Charles will have escaped, and a year from now you can put up his stone. Do not question me tomorrow. And believe that the honour of your ancient family remains untainted now, as it has been at all times in the past.
      ""With profoundest sympathy, and exhortations to fortitude, calmness, and resignation, I am ever
Sincerely your friend,      
Marinus B. Willett""
      So on the morning of Friday, April 13, 1928, Marinus Bicknell Willett visited the room of Charles Dexter Ward at Dr. Waite's private hospital on Conanicut Island. The youth, though making no attempt to evade his caller, was in a sullen mood; and seemed disinclined to open the conversation which Willett obviously desired. The doctor's discovery of the crypt and his monstrous experience therein had of course created a new source of embarrassment, so that both hesitated perceptibly after the interchange of a few strained formalities. Then a new element of constraint crept in, as Ward seemed to read behind the doctor's mask-like face a terrible purpose which had never been there before. The patient quailed, conscious that since the last visit there had been a change whereby the solicitous family physician had given place to the ruthless and implacable avenger.
      Ward actually turned pale, and the doctor was the first to speak. ""More,"" he said, ""has been found out, and I must warn you fairly that a reckoning is due.""
      ""Digging again, and coming upon more poor starving pets?"" was the ironic reply. It was evident that the youth meant to shew bravado to the last.
      ""No,"" Willett slowly rejoined, ""this time I did not have to dig. We have had men looking up Dr. Allen, and they found the false beard and spectacles in the bungalow.""
      ""Excellent,"" commented the disquieted host in an effort to be wittily insulting, ""and I trust they proved more becoming than the beard and glasses you now have on!""
      ""They would become you very well,"" came the even and studied response, ""as indeed they seem to have done.""
      As Willett said this, it almost seemed as though a cloud passed over the sun; though there was no change in the shadows on the floor. Then Ward ventured:
      ""And is this what asks so hotly for a reckoning? Suppose a man does find it now and then useful to be twofold?""
      ""No,"" said Willett gravely, ""again you are wrong. It is no business of mine if any man seeks duality; provided he has any right to exist at all, and provided he does not destroy what called him out of space.""
      Ward now started violently. ""Well, Sir, what have ye found, and what d'ye want with me?""
      The doctor let a little time elapse before replying, as if choosing his words for an effective answer.
      ""I have found,"" he finally intoned, ""something in a cupboard behind an ancient overmantel where a picture once was, and I have burned it and buried the ashes where the grave of Charles Dexter Ward ought to be.""
      The madman choked and sprang from the chair in which he had been sitting:
      ""Damn ye, who did ye tell - and who'll believe it was he after these full two months, with me alive? What d'ye mean to do?""
      Willett, though a small man, actually took on a kind of judicial majesty as he calmed the patient with a gesture.
      ""I have told no one. This is no common case - it is a madness out of time and a horror from beyond the spheres which no police or lawyers or courts or alienists could ever fathom or grapple with. Thank God some chance has left inside me the spark of imagination, that I might not go astray in thinking out this thing. You cannot deceive me, Joseph Curwen, for I know that your accursed magic is true!
      ""I know how you wove the spell that brooded outside the years and fastened on your double and descendant; I know how you drew him into the past and got him to raise you up from your detestable grave; I know how he kept you hidden in his laboratory while you studied modern things and roved abroad as a vampire by night, and how you later shewed yourself in beard and glasses that no one might wonder at your godless likeness to him; I know what you resolved to do when he balked at your monstrous rifling of the world's tombs, and at what you planned afterward, and I know how you did it.
      ""You left off your beard and glasses and fooled the guards around the house. They thought it was he who went in, and they thought it was he who came out when you had strangled and hidden him. But you hadn't reckoned on the different contents of two minds. You were a fool, Curwen, to fancy that a mere visual identity would be enough. Why didn't you think of the speech and the voice and the handwriting? It hasn't worked, you see, after all. You know better than I who or what wrote that message in minuscules, but I will warn you it was not written in vain. There are abominations and blasphemies which must be stamped out, and I believe that the writer of those words will attend to Orne and Hutchinson. One of those creatures wrote you once, 'do not call up any that you can not put down'. You were undone once before, perhaps in that very way, and it may be that your own evil magic will undo you all again. Curwen, a man can't tamper with Nature beyond certain limits, and every horror you have woven will rise up to wipe you out.""
      But here the doctor was cut short by a convulsive cry from the creature before him. Hopelessly at bay, weaponless, and knowing that any show of physical violence would bring a score of attendants to the doctor's rescue, Joseph Curwen had recourse to his one ancient ally, and began a series of cabbalistic motions with his forefingers as his deep, hollow voice, now unconcealed by feigned hoarseness, bellowed out the opening words of a terrible formula.
      ""PER ADONAI ELOIM, ADONAI JEHOVA, ADONAI SABAOTH, METRATON. . . .""
      But Willett was too quick for him. Even as the dogs in the yard outside began to howl, and even as a chill wind sprang suddenly up from the bay, the doctor commenced the solemn and measured intonation of that which he had meant all along to recite. An eye for an eye - magic for magic - let the outcome shew how well the lesson of the abyss had been learned! So in a clear voice Marinus Bicknell Willett began the second of that pair of formulae whose first had raised the writer of those minuscules - the cryptic invocation whose heading was the Dragon's Tail, sign of the descending node - 

""OGTHROD AI'F
GEB'L - EE'H
YOG-SOTHOTH
'NGAH'NG AI'Y
ZHRO!""

      At the very first word from Willett's mouth the previously commenced formula of the patient stopped short. Unable to speak, the monster made wild motions with his arms until they too were arrested. When the awful name of Yog-Sothoth was uttered, the hideous change began. It was not merely a dissolution, but rather a transformation or recapitulation; and Willett shut his eyes lest he faint before the rest of the incantation could be pronounced.
      But he did not faint, and that man of unholy centuries and forbidden secrets never troubled the world again. The madness out of time had subsided, and the case of Charles Dexter Ward was closed. Opening his eyes before staggering out of that room of horror, Dr. Willett saw that what he had kept in memory had not been kept amiss. There had, as he had predicted, been no need for acids. For like his accursed picture a year before, Joseph Curwen now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust.
","“Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimaeras—dire stories of Celaeno and the Harpies—may reproduce themselves in the brain of superstition—but they were there before. They are transcripts, types—the archetypes are in us, and eternal. How else should the recital of that which we know in a waking sense to be false come to affect us at all? Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects, considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us bodily injury? O, least of all! These terrors are of older standing. They date beyond body—or without the body, they would have been the same. . . . That the kind of fear here treated is purely spiritual—that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless on earth, that it predominates in the period of our sinless infancy—are difficulties the solution of which might afford some probable insight into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep at least into the shadowland of pre-existence.”
—Charles Lamb: “Witches and Other Night-Fears”

I.

When a traveller in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean’s Corners he comes upon a lonely and curious country. The ground gets higher, and the brier-bordered stone walls press closer and closer against the ruts of the dusty, curving road. The trees of the frequent forest belts seem too large, and the wild weeds, brambles, and grasses attain a luxuriance not often found in settled regions. At the same time the planted fields appear singularly few and barren; while the sparsely scattered houses wear a surprisingly uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation. Without knowing why, one hesitates to ask directions from the gnarled, solitary figures spied now and then on crumbling doorsteps or on the sloping, rock-strown meadows. Those figures are so silent and furtive that one feels somehow confronted by forbidden things, with which it would be better to have nothing to do. When a rise in the road brings the mountains in view above the deep woods, the feeling of strange uneasiness is increased. The summits are too rounded and symmetrical to give a sense of comfort and naturalness, and sometimes the sky silhouettes with especial clearness the queer circles of tall stone pillars with which most of them are crowned.
      Gorges and ravines of problematical depth intersect the way, and the crude wooden bridges always seem of dubious safety. When the road dips again there are stretches of marshland that one instinctively dislikes, and indeed almost fears at evening when unseen whippoorwills chatter and the fireflies come out in abnormal profusion to dance to the raucous, creepily insistent rhythms of stridently piping bull-frogs. The thin, shining line of the Miskatonic’s upper reaches has an oddly serpent-like suggestion as it winds close to the feet of the domed hills among which it rises. 
      As the hills draw nearer, one heeds their wooded sides more than their stone-crowned tops. Those sides loom up so darkly and precipitously that one wishes they would keep their distance, but there is no road by which to escape them. Across a covered bridge one sees a small village huddled between the stream and the vertical slope of Round Mountain, and wonders at the cluster of rotting gambrel roofs bespeaking an earlier architectural period than that of the neighbouring region. It is not reassuring to see, on a closer glance, that most of the houses are deserted and falling to ruin, and that the broken-steepled church now harbours the one slovenly mercantile establishment of the hamlet. One dreads to trust the tenebrous tunnel of the bridge, yet there is no way to avoid it. Once across, it is hard to prevent the impression of a faint, malign odour about the village street, as of the massed mould and decay of centuries. It is always a relief to get clear of the place, and to follow the narrow road around the base of the hills and across the level country beyond till it rejoins the Aylesbury pike. Afterward one sometimes learns that one has been through Dunwich.
      Outsiders visit Dunwich as seldom as possible, and since a certain season of horror all the signboards pointing toward it have been taken down. The scenery, judged by any ordinary aesthetic canon, is more than commonly beautiful; yet there is no influx of artists or summer tourists. Two centuries ago, when talk of witch-blood, Satan-worship, and strange forest presences was not laughed at, it was the custom to give reasons for avoiding the locality. In our sensible age—since the Dunwich horror of 1928 was hushed up by those who had the town’s and the world’s welfare at heart—people shun it without knowing exactly why. Perhaps one reason—though it cannot apply to uninformed strangers—is that the natives are now repellently decadent, having gone far along that path of retrogression so common in many New England backwaters. They have come to form a race by themselves, with the well-defined mental and physical stigmata of degeneracy and inbreeding. The average of their intelligence is woefully low, whilst their annals reek of overt viciousness and of half-hidden murders, incests, and deeds of almost unnamable violence and perversity. The old gentry, representing the two or three armigerous families which came from Salem in 1692, have kept somewhat above the general level of decay; though many branches are sunk into the sordid populace so deeply that only their names remain as a key to the origin they disgrace. Some of the Whateleys and Bishops still send their eldest sons to Harvard and Miskatonic, though those sons seldom return to the mouldering gambrel roofs under which they and their ancestors were born.
      No one, even those who have the facts concerning the recent horror, can say just what is the matter with Dunwich; though old legends speak of unhallowed rites and conclaves of the Indians, amidst which they called forbidden shapes of shadow out of the great rounded hills, and made wild orgiastic prayers that were answered by loud crackings and rumblings from the ground below. In 1747 the Reverend Abijah Hoadley, newly come to the Congregational Church at Dunwich Village, preached a memorable sermon on the close presence of Satan and his imps; in which he said:
      “It must be allow’d, that these Blasphemies of an infernall Train of Daemons are Matters of too common Knowledge to be deny’d; the cursed Voices of Azazel and Buzrael, of Beelzebub and Belial, being heard now from under Ground by above a Score of credible Witnesses now living. I my self did not more than a Fortnight ago catch a very plain Discourse of evill Powers in the Hill behind my House; wherein there were a Rattling and Rolling, Groaning, Screeching, and Hissing, such as no Things of this Earth cou’d raise up, and which must needs have come from those Caves that only black Magick can discover, and only the Divell unlock.”
      Mr. Hoadley disappeared soon after delivering this sermon; but the text, printed in Springfield, is still extant. Noises in the hills continued to be reported from year to year, and still form a puzzle to geologists and physiographers.
      Other traditions tell of foul odours near the hill-crowning circles of stone pillars, and of rushing airy presences to be heard faintly at certain hours from stated points at the bottom of the great ravines; while still others try to explain the Devil’s Hop Yard—a bleak, blasted hillside where no tree, shrub, or grass-blade will grow. Then too, the natives are mortally afraid of the numerous whippoorwills which grow vocal on warm nights. It is vowed that the birds are psychopomps lying in wait for the souls of the dying, and that they time their eerie cries in unison with the sufferer’s struggling breath. If they can catch the fleeing soul when it leaves the body, they instantly flutter away chittering in daemoniac laughter; but if they fail, they subside gradually into a disappointed silence.
      These tales, of course, are obsolete and ridiculous; because they come down from very old times. Dunwich is indeed ridiculously old—older by far than any of the communities within thirty miles of it. South of the village one may still spy the cellar walls and chimney of the ancient Bishop house, which was built before 1700; whilst the ruins of the mill at the falls, built in 1806, form the most modern piece of architecture to be seen. Industry did not flourish here, and the nineteenth-century factory movement proved short-lived. Oldest of all are the great rings of rough-hewn stone columns on the hill-tops, but these are more generally attributed to the Indians than to the settlers. Deposits of skulls and bones, found within these circles and around the sizeable table-like rock on Sentinel Hill, sustain the popular belief that such spots were once the burial-places of the Pocumtucks; even though many ethnologists, disregarding the absurd improbability of such a theory, persist in believing the remains Caucasian.

",True
"III. A Search and an Evocation

1.

Charles Ward, as we have seen, first learned in 1918 of his descent from Joseph Curwen. That he at once took an intense interest in everything pertaining to the bygone mystery is not to be wondered at; for every vague rumour that he had heard of Curwen now became something vital to himself, in whom flowed Curwen's blood. No spirited and imaginative genealogist could have done otherwise than begin forthwith an avid and systematic collection of Curwen data.
      In his first delvings there was not the slightest attempt at secrecy; so that even Dr. Lyman hesitates to date the youth's madness from any period before the close of 1919. He talked freely with his family - though his mother was not particularly pleased to own an ancestor like Curwen - and with the officials of the various museums and libraries he visited. In applying to private families for records thought to be in their possession he made no concealment of his object, and shared the somewhat amused scepticism with which the accounts of the old diarists and letter-writers were regarded. He often expressed a keen wonder as to what really had taken place a century and a half before at that Pawtuxet farmhouse whose site he vainly tried to find, and what Joseph Curwen really had been.
      When he came across the Smith diary and archives and encountered the letter from Jedediah Orne he decided to visit Salem and look up Curwen's early activities and connexions there, which he did during the Easter vacation of 1919. At the Essex Institute, which was well known to him from former sojourns in the glamorous old town of crumbling Puritan gables and clustered gambrel roofs, he was very kindly received, and unearthed there a considerable amount of Curwen data. He found that his ancestor was born in Salem-Village, now Danvers, seven miles from town, on the eighteenth of February (O.S.) 1662-3; and that he had run away to sea at the age of fifteen, not appearing again for nine years, when he returned with the speech, dress, and manners of a native Englishman and settled in Salem proper. At that time he had little to do with his family, but spent most of his hours with the curious books he had brought from Europe, and the strange chemicals which came for him on ships from England, France, and Holland. Certain trips of his into the country were the objects of much local inquisitiveness, and were whisperingly associated with vague rumours of fires on the hills at night.
      Curwen's only close friends had been one Edward Hutchinson of Salem-Village and one Simon Orne of Salem. With these men he was often seen in conference about the Common, and visits among them were by no means infrequent. Hutchinson had a house well out toward the woods, and it was not altogether liked by sensitive people because of the sounds heard there at night. He was said to entertain strange visitors, and the lights seen from his windows were not always of the same colour. The knowledge he displayed concerning long-dead persons and long-forgotten events was considered distinctly unwholesome, and he disappeared about the time the witchcraft panic began, never to be heard from again. At that time Joseph Curwen also departed, but his settlement in Providence was soon learned of. Simon Orne lived in Salem until 1720, when his failure to grow visibly old began to excite attention. He thereafter disappeared, though thirty years later his precise counterpart and self-styled son turned up to claim his property. The claim was allowed on the strength of documents in Simon Orne's known hand, and Jedediah Orne continued to dwell in Salem till 1771, when certain letters from Providence citizens to the Rev. Thomas Barnard and others brought about his quiet removal to parts unknown.
      Certain documents by and about all of these strange characters were available at the Essex Institute, the Court House, and the Registry of Deeds, and included both harmless commonplaces such as land titles and bills of sale, and furtive fragments of a more provocative nature. There were four or five unmistakable allusions to them on the witchcraft trial records; as when one Hepzibah Lawson swore on July 10, 1692, at the Court of Oyer and Terminer under Judge Hathorne, that 'fortie Witches and the Blacke Man were wont to meete in the Woodes behind Mr. Hutchinson's house', and one Amity How declared at a session of August 8th before Judge Gedney that 'Mr. G. B. (Rev. George Burroughs) on that Nighte putt ye Divell his Marke upon Bridget S., Jonathan A., Simon O., Deliverance W., Joseph C., Susan P., Mehitable C., and Deborah B.' Then there was a catalogue of Hutchinson's uncanny library as found after his disappearance, and an unfinished manuscript in his handwriting, couched in a cipher none could read. Ward had a photostatic copy of this manuscript made, and began to work casually on the cipher as soon as it was delivered to him. After the following August his labours on the cipher became intense and feverish, and there is reason to believe from his speech and conduct that he hit upon the key before October or November. He never stated, though, whether or not he had succeeded.
      But of the greatest immediate interest was the Orne material. It took Ward only a short time to prove from identity of penmanship a thing he had already considered established from the text of the letter to Curwen; namely, that Simon Orne and his supposed son were one and the same person. As Orne had said to his correspondent, it was hardly safe to live too long in Salem, hence he resorted to a thirty-year sojourn abroad, and did not return to claim his lands except as a representative of a new generation. Orne had apparently been careful to destroy most of his correspondence, but the citizens who took action in 1771 found and preserved a few letters and papers which excited their wonder. There were cryptic formulae and diagrams in his and other hands which Ward now either copied with care or had photographed, and one extremely mysterious letter in a chirography that the searcher recognised from items in the Registry of Deeds as positively Joseph Curwen's.
      This Curwen letter, though undated as to the year, was evidently not the one in answer to which Orne had written the confiscated missive; and from internal evidence Ward placed it not much later than 1750. It may not be amiss to give the text in full, as a sample of the style of one whose history was so dark and terrible. The recipient is addressed as ""Simon"", but a line (whether drawn by Curwen or Orne Ward could not tell) is run through the word.
Prouidence, I. May (Ut. vulgo)
Brother: - 
My honour'd Antient ffriende, due Respects and earnest Wishes to Him whom we serve for yr eternall Power. I am just come upon That which you ought to knowe, concern'g the Matter of the Laste Extremitie and what to doe regard'g yt. I am not dispos'd to followe you in go'g Away on acct. of my Yeares, for Prouidence hath not ye Sharpeness of ye Bay in hunt'g oute uncommon Things and bringinge to Tryall. I am ty'd up in Shippes and Goodes, and cou'd not doe as you did, besides the Whiche my ffarme at Patuxet hath under it What you Knowe, that wou'd not waite for my com'g Backe as an Other.
      But I am not unreadie for harde ffortunes, as I haue tolde you, and haue longe work'd upon ye Way of get'g Backe after ye Laste. I laste Night strucke on ye Wordes that bringe up YOGGE-SOTHOTHE, and sawe for ye firste Time that fface spoke of by Ibn Schacabao in ye  -  - . And IT said, that ye III Psalme in ye Liber-Damnatus holdes ye Clauicle. With Sunne in V House, Saturne in Trine, drawe ye Pentagram of Fire, and saye ye ninth Uerse thrice. This Uerse repeate eache Roodemas and Hallow's Eue; and ye Thing will breede in ye Outside Spheres.
      And of ye Seede of Olde shal One be borne who shal looke Backe, tho' know'g not what he seekes.
      Yett will this availe Nothing if there be no Heir, and if the Saltes, or the Way to make the Saltes, bee not Readie for his Hande; and here I will owne, I have not taken needed Stepps nor founde Much. Ye Process is plaguy harde to come neare; and it uses up such a Store of Specimens, I am harde putte to it to get Enough, notwithstand'g the Sailors I have from ye Indies. Ye People aboute are become curious, but I can stande them off. Ye Gentry are worse than the Populace, be'g more Circumstantiall in their Accts. and more believ'd in what they tell. That Parson and Mr. Merritt have talk'd some, I am fearfull, but no Thing soe far is Dangerous. Ye Chymical substances are easie of get'g, there be'g II. goode Chymists in Towne, Dr. Bowen and Sam: Carew. I am foll'g oute what Borellus saith, and haue Helpe in Abdool Al-Hazred his VII. Booke. Whatever I gette, you shal haue. And in ye meane while, do not neglect to make use of ye Wordes I haue here giuen. I haue them Righte, but if you Desire to see HIM, imploy the Writings on ye Piece of  -  -  that I am putt'g in this Packet. Saye ye Uerses every Roodmas and Hallow's Eue; and if yr Line runn out not, one shall bee in yeares to come that shal looke backe and use what Saltes or Stuff for Saltes you shal leaue him. Job XIV. XIV.
      I rejoice you are again at Salem, and hope I may see you not longe hence. I have a goode Stallion, and am think'g of get'g a Coach, there be'g one (Mr. Merritt's) in Prouidence already, tho' ye Roades are bad. If you are dispos'd to Travel, doe not pass me bye. From Boston take ye Post Rd. thro' Dedham, Wrentham, and Attleborough, goode Taverns be'g at all these Townes. Stop at Mr. Bolcom's in Wrentham, where ye Beddes are finer than Mr. Hatch's, but eate at ye other House for their Cooke is better. Turne into Prou. by Patucket ffalls, and ye Rd. past Mr. Sayles's Tavern. My House opp. Mr. Epenetus Olney's Tavern off ye Towne Street, Ist on ye N. side of Olney's Court. Distance from Boston Stone abt. XLIV Miles.
      Sir, I am yr olde and true ffriend and Servt. in Almousin-Metraton.
Josephus C.
To Mr. Simon Orne,
William's-Lane, in Salem.
      This letter, oddly enough, was what first gave Ward the exact location of Curwen's Providence home; for none of the records encountered up to that time had been at all specific. The discovery was doubly striking because it indicated as the newer Curwen house built in 1761 on the site of the old, a dilapidated building still standing in Olney Court and well known to Ward in his antiquarian rambles over Stampers' Hill. The place was indeed only a few squares from his own home on the great hill's higher ground, and was now the abode of a negro family much esteemed for occasional washing, housecleaning, and furnace-tending services. To find, in distant Salem, such sudden proof of the significance of this familiar rookery in his own family history, was a highly impressive thing to Ward; and he resolved to explore the place immediately upon his return. The more mystical phases of the letter, which he took to be some extravagant kind of symbolism, frankly baffled him; though he noted with a thrill of curiosity that the Biblical passage referred to - Job 14, 14 - was the familiar verse, ""If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.""

2.

      Young Ward came home in a state of pleasant excitement, and spent the following Saturday in a long and exhaustive study of the house in Olney Court. The place, now crumbling with age, had never been a mansion; but was a modest two-and-a-half story wooden town house of the familiar Providence colonial type, with plain peaked roof, large central chimney, and artistically carved doorway with rayed fanlight, triangular pediment, and trim Doric pilasters. It had suffered but little alteration externally, and Ward felt he was gazing on something very close to the sinister matters of his quest.
      The present negro inhabitants were known to him, and he was very courteously shewn about the interior by old Asa and his stout wife Hannah. Here there was more change than the outside indicated, and Ward saw with regret that fully half of the fine scroll-and-urn overmantels and shell-carved cupboard linings were gone, whilst much of the fine wainscotting and bolection moulding was marked, hacked, and gouged, or covered up altogether with cheap wall-paper. In general, the survey did not yield as much as Ward had somehow expected; but it was at least exciting to stand within the ancestral walls which had housed such a man of horror as Joseph Curwen. He saw with a thrill that a monogram had been very carefully effaced from the ancient brass knocker.
      From then until after the close of school Ward spent his time on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher and the accumulation of local Curwen data. The former still proved unyielding; but of the latter he obtained so much, and so many clues to similar data elsewhere, that he was ready by July to make a trip to New London and New York to consult old letters whose presence in those places was indicated. This trip was very fruitful, for it brought him the Fenner letters with their terrible description of the Pawtuxet farmhouse raid, and the Nightingale-Talbot letters in which he learned of the portrait painted on a panel of the Curwen library. This matter of the portrait interested him particularly, since he would have given much to know just what Joseph Curwen looked like; and he decided to make a second search of the house in Olney Court to see if there might not be some trace of the ancient features beneath peeling coats of later paint or layers of mouldy wall-paper.
      Early in August that search took place, and Ward went carefully over the walls of every room sizeable enough to have been by any possibility the library of the evil builder. He paid especial attention to the large panels of such overmantels as still remained; and was keenly excited after about an hour, when on a broad area above the fireplace in a spacious ground-floor room he became certain that the surface brought out by the peeling of several coats of paint was sensibly darker than any ordinary interior paint or the wood beneath it was likely to have been. A few more careful tests with a thin knife, and he knew that he had come upon an oil portrait of great extent. With truly scholarly restraint the youth did not risk the damage which an immediate attempt to uncover the hidden picture with the knife might have done, but just retired from the scene of his discovery to enlist expert help. In three days he returned with an artist of long experience, Mr. Walter C. Dwight, whose studio is near the foot of College Hill; and that accomplished restorer of paintings set to work at once with proper methods and chemical substances. Old Asa and his wife were duly excited over their strange visitors, and were properly reimbursed for this invasion of their domestic hearth.
      As day by day the work of restoration progressed, Charles Ward looked on with growing interest at the lines and shades gradually unveiled after their long oblivion. Dwight had begun at the bottom; hence since the picture was a three-quarter-length one, the face did not come out for some time. It was meanwhile seen that the subject was a spare, well-shaped man with dark-blue coat, embroidered waistcoat, black satin small-clothes, and white silk stockings, seated in a carved chair against the background of a window with wharves and ships beyond. When the head came out it was observed to bear a neat Albemarle wig, and to possess a thin, calm, undistinguished face which seemed somehow familiar to both Ward and the artist. Only at the very last, though, did the restorer and his client begin to gasp with astonishment at the details of that lean, pallid visage, and to recognise with a touch of awe the dramatic trick which heredity had played. For it took the final bath of oil and the final stroke of the delicate scraper to bring out fully the expression which centuries had hidden; and to confront the bewildered Charles Dexter Ward, dweller in the past, with his own living features in the countenance of his horrible great-great-great-grandfather.
      Ward brought his parents to see the marvel he had uncovered, and his father at once determined to purchase the picture despite its execution on stationary panelling. The resemblance to the boy, despite an appearance of rather greater age, was marvellous; and it could be seen that through some trick of atavism the physical contours of Joseph Curwen had found precise duplication after a century and a half. Mrs. Ward's resemblance to her ancestor was not at all marked, though she could recall relatives who had some of the facial characteristics shared by her son and by the bygone Curwen. She did not relish the discovery, and told her husband that he had better burn the picture instead of bringing it home. There was, she averred, something unwholesome about it; not only intrinsically, but in its very resemblance to Charles. Mr. Ward, however, was a practical man of power and affairs - a cotton manufacturer with extensive mills at Riverpoint in the Pawtuxet Valley - and not one to listen to feminine scruples. The picture impressed him mightily with its likeness to his son, and he believed the boy deserved it as a present. In this opinion, it is needless to say, Charles most heartily concurred; and a few days later Mr. Ward located the owner of the house - a small rodent-featured person with a guttural accent - and obtained the whole mantel and overmantel bearing the picture at a curtly fixed priced which cut short the impending torrent of unctuous haggling.
      It now remained to take off the panelling and remove it to the Ward home, where provisions were made for its thorough restoration and installation with an electric mock-fireplace in Charles's third-floor study or library. To Charles was left the task of superintending this removal, and on the twenty-eighth of August he accompanied two expert workmen from the Crooker decorating firm to the house in Olney Court, where the mantel and portrait-bearing overmantel were detached with great care and precision for transportation in the company's motor truck. There was left a space of exposed brickwork marking the chimney's course, and in this young Ward observed a cubical recess about a foot square, which must have lain directly behind the head of the portrait. Curious as to what such a space might mean or contain, the youth approached and looked within; finding beneath the deep coatings of dust and soot some loose yellowed papers, a crude, thick copybook, and a few mouldering textile shreds which may have formed the ribbon binding the rest together. Blowing away the bulk of the dirt and cinders, he took up the book and looked at the bold inscription on its cover. It was in a hand which he had learned to recognise at the Essex Institute, and proclaimed the volume as the ""Journall and Notes of Jos: Curwen, Gent., of Providence-Plantations, Late of Salem.""
      Excited beyond measure by his discovery, Ward shewed the book to the two curious workmen beside him. Their testimony is absolute as to the nature and genuineness of the finding, and Dr. Willett relies on them to help establish his theory that the youth was not mad when he began his major eccentricities. All the other papers were likewise in Curwen's handwriting, and one of them seemed especially portentous because of its inscription: ""To Him Who Shal Come After, & How He May Gett Beyonde Time & ye Spheres."" Another was in a cipher; the same, Ward hoped, as the Hutchinson cipher which had hitherto baffled him. A third, and here the searcher rejoiced, seemed to be a key to the cipher; whilst the fourth and fifth were addressed respectively to ""Edw: Hutchinson, Armiger"" and ""Jedediah Orne, Esq."", 'or Their Heir or Heirs, or Those Represent'g Them'. The sixth and last was inscribed: ""Joseph Curwen his Life and Travells Bet'n ye yeares 1678 and 1687: Of Whither He Voyag'd, Where He Stay'd, Whom He Sawe, and What He Learnt.""

3.

      We have now reached the point from which the more academic school of alienists date Charles Ward's madness. Upon his discovery the youth had looked immediately at a few of the inner pages of the book and manuscripts, and had evidently seen something which impressed him tremendously. Indeed, in shewing the titles to the workmen he appeared to guard the text itself with peculiar care, and to labour under a perturbation for which even the antiquarian and genealogical significance of the find could hardly account. Upon returning home he broke the news with an almost embarrassed air, as if he wished to convey an idea of its supreme importance without having to exhibit the evidence itself. He did not even shew the titles to his parents, but simply told them that he had found some documents in Joseph Curwen's handwriting, ""mostly in cipher"", which would have to be studied very carefully before yielding up their true meaning. It is unlikely that he would have shewn what he did to the workmen, had it not been for their unconcealed curiosity. As it was he doubtless wished to avoid any display of peculiar reticence which would increase their discussion of the matter.
      That night Charles Ward sat up in his room reading the new-found book and papers, and when day came he did not desist. His meals, on his urgent request when his mother called to see what was amiss, were sent up to him; and in the afternoon he appeared only briefly when the men came to install the Curwen picture and mantelpiece in his study. The next night he slept in snatches in his clothes, meanwhile wrestling feverishly with the unravelling of the cipher manuscript. In the morning his mother saw that he was at work on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher, which he had frequently shewn her before; but in response to her query he said that the Curwen key could not be applied to it. That afternoon he abandoned his work and watched the men fascinatedly as they finished their installation of the picture with its woodwork above a cleverly realistic electric log, setting the mock-fireplace and overmantel a little out from the north wall as if a chimney existed, and boxing in the sides with panelling to match the room's. The front panel holding the picture was sawn and hinged to allow cupboard space behind it. After the workmen went he moved his work into the study and sat down before it with his eyes half on the cipher and half on the portrait which stared back at him like a year-adding and century-recalling mirror.
      His parents, subsequently recalling his conduct at this period, give interesting details anent the policy of concealment which he practiced. Before servants he seldom hid any paper which he might be studying, since he rightly assumed that Curwen's intricate and archaic chirography would be too much for them. With his parents, however, he was more circumspect; and unless the manuscript in question were a cipher, or a mere mass of cryptic symbols and unknown ideographs (as that entitled ""To Him Who Shal Come After etc."" seemed to be), he would cover it with some convenient paper until his caller had departed. At night he kept the papers under lock and key in an antique cabinet of his, where he also placed them whenever he left the room. He soon resumed fairly regular hours and habits, except that his long walks and other outside interests seemed to cease. The opening of school, where he now began his senior year, seemed a great bore to him; and he frequently asserted his determination never to bother with college. He had, he said, important special investigations to make, which would provide him with more avenues toward knowledge and the humanities than any university which the world could boast.
      Naturally, only one who had always been more or less studious, eccentric, and solitary could have pursued this course for many days without attracting notice. Ward, however, was constitutionally a scholar and a hermit; hence his parents were less surprised than regretful at the close confinement and secrecy he adopted. At the same time, both his father and mother thought it odd that he would shew them no scrap of his treasure-trove, nor give any connected account of such data as he had deciphered. This reticence he explained away as due to a wish to wait until he might announce some connected revelation, but as the weeks passed without further disclosures there began to grow up between the youth and his family a kind of constraint; intensified in his mother's case by her manifest disapproval of all Curwen delvings.
      During October Ward began visiting the libraries again, but no longer for the antiquarian matter of his former days. Witchcraft and magic, occultism and daemonology, were what he sought now; and when Providence sources proved unfruitful he would take the train for Boston and tap the wealth of the great library in Copley Square, the Widener Library at Harvard, or the Zion Research Library in Brookline, where certain rare works on Biblical subjects are available. He bought extensively, and fitted up a whole additional set of shelves in his study for newly acquired works on uncanny subjects; while during the Christmas holidays he made a round of out-of-town trips including one to Salem to consult certain records at the Essex Institute.
      About the middle of January, 1920, there entered Ward's bearing an element of triumph which he did not explain, and he was no more found at work upon the Hutchinson cipher. Instead, he inaugurated a dual policy of chemical research and record-scanning; fitting up for the one a laboratory in the unused attic of the house, and for the latter haunting all the sources of vital statistics in Providence. Local dealers in drugs and scientific supplies, later questioned, gave astonishingly queer and meaningless catalogues of the substances and instruments he purchased; but clerks at the State House, the City Hall, and the various libraries agree as to the definite object of his second interest. He was searching intensely and feverishly for the grave of Joseph Curwen, from whose slate slab an older generation had so wisely blotted the name.
      Little by little there grew upon the Ward family the conviction that something was wrong. Charles had had freaks and changes of minor interests before, but this growing secrecy and absorption in strange pursuits was unlike even him. His school work was the merest pretence; and although he failed in no test, it could be seen that the old application had all vanished. He had other concernments now; and when not in his new laboratory with a score of obsolete alchemical books, could be found either poring over old burial records down town or glued to his volumes of occult lore in his study, where the startlingly - one almost fancied increasingly - similar features of Joseph Curwen stared blandly at him from the great overmantel on the north wall.
      Late in March Ward added to his archive-searching a ghoulish series of rambles about the various ancient cemeteries of the city. The cause appeared later, when it was learned from City Hall clerks that he had probably found an important clue. His quest had suddenly shifted from the grave of Joseph Curwen to that of one Naphthali Field; and this shift was explained when, upon going over the files that he had been over, the investigators actually found a fragmentary record of Curwen's burial which had escaped the general obliteration, and which stated that the curious leaden coffin had been interred ""10 ft. S. and 5 ft. W. of Naphthali Field's grave in ye - "". The lack of a specified burying-ground in the surviving entry greatly complicated the search, and Naphthali Field's grave seemed as elusive as that of Curwen; but here no systematic effacement had existed, and one might reasonably be expected to stumble on the stone itself even if its record had perished. Hence the rambles - from which St. John's (the former King's) Churchyard and the ancient Congregational burying-ground in the midst of Swan Point Cemetery were excluded, since other statistics had shewn that the only Naphthali Field (obiit 1729) whose grave could have been meant had been a Baptist.

4.

      It was toward May when Dr. Willett, at the request of the senior Ward, and fortified with all the Curwen data which the family had gleaned from Charles in his non-secretive days, talked with the young man. The interview was of little value or conclusiveness, for Willett felt at every moment that Charles was thoroughly master of himself and in touch with matters of real importance; but it at least forced the secretive youth to offer some rational explanation of his recent demeanour. Of a pallid, impassive type not easily shewing embarrassment, Ward seemed quite ready to discuss his pursuits, though not to reveal their object. He stated that the papers of his ancestor had contained some remarkable secrets of early scientific knowledge, for the most part in cipher, of an apparent scope comparable only to the discoveries of Friar Bacon and perhaps surpassing even those. They were, however, meaningless except when correlated with a body of learning now wholly obsolete; so that their immediate presentation to a world equipped only with modern science would rob them of all impressiveness and dramatic significance. To take their vivid place in the history of human thought they must first be correlated by one familiar with the background out of which they evolved, and to this task of correlation Ward was now devoting himself. He was seeking to acquire as fast as possible those neglected arts of old which a true interpreter of the Curwen data must possess, and hoped in time to make a full announcement and presentation of the utmost interest to mankind and to the world of thought. Not even Einstein, he declared, could more profoundly revolutionise the current conception of things.
      As to his graveyard search, whose object he freely admitted, but the details of whose progress he did not relate, he said he had reason to think that Joseph Curwen's mutilated headstone bore certain mystic symbols - carved from directions in his will and ignorantly spared by those who had effaced the name - which were absolutely essential to the final solution of his cryptic system. Curwen, he believed, had wished to guard his secret with care; and had consequently distributed the data in an exceedingly curious fashion. When Dr. Willett asked to see the mystic documents, Ward displayed much reluctance and tried to put him off with such things as photostatic copies of the Hutchinson cipher and Orne formulae and diagrams; but finally shewed him the exteriors of some of the real Curwen finds - the ""Journall and Notes"", the cipher (title in cipher also), and the formula-filled message ""To Him Who Shal Come After"" - and let him glance inside such as were in obscure characters.
      He also opened the diary at a page carefully selected for its innocuousness and gave Willett a glimpse of Curwen's connected handwriting in English. The doctor noted very closely the crabbed and complicated letters, and the general aura of the seventeenth century which clung round both penmanship and style despite the writer's survival into the eighteenth century, and became quickly certain that the document was genuine. The text itself was relatively trivial, and Willett recalled only a fragment:
""Wedn. 16 Octr. 1754. My Sloope the Wakeful this Day putt in from London with XX newe Men pick'd up in ye Indies, Spaniards from Martineco and 2 Dutch Men from Surinam. Ye Dutch Men are like to Desert from have'g hearde Somewhat ill of these Ventures, but I will see to ye Inducing of them to Staye. ffor Mr. Knight Dexter of ye Boy and Book 120 Pieces Camblets, 100 Pieces Assrtd. Cambleteens, 20 Pieces blue Duffles, 100 Pieces Shalloons, 50 Pieces Calamancoes, 300 Pieces each, Shendsoy and Humhums. ffor Mr. Green at ye Elephant 50 Gallon Cyttles, 20 Warm'g Pannes, 15 Bake Cyttles, 10 pr. Smoke'g Tonges. ffor Mr. Perrigo 1 Sett of Awles, ffor Mr. Nightingale 50 Reames prime Foolscap. Say'd ye SABAOTH thrice last Nighte but None appear'd. I must heare more from Mr. H. in Transylvania, tho' it is Harde reach'g him and exceeding strange he can not give me the Use of what he hath so well us'd these hundred yeares. Simon hath not Writ these V. Weekes, but I expecte soon hear'g from him.""
      When upon reaching this point Dr. Willett turned the leaf he was quickly checked by Ward, who almost snatched the book from his grasp. All that the doctor had a chance to see on the newly opened page was a brief pair of sentences; but these, strangely enough, lingered tenaciously in his memory. They ran: ""Ye Verse from Liber-Damnatus be'g spoke V Roodmasses and IV Hallows-Eves, I am Hopeful ye Thing is breed'g Outside ye Spheres. It will drawe One who is to Come, if I can make sure he shal bee, and he shall think on Past thinges and look back thro' all ye yeares, against ye which I must have ready ye Saltes or That to make 'em with.""
      Willett saw no more, but somehow this small glimpse gave a new and vague terror to the painted features of Joseph Curwen which stared blandly down from the overmantel. Ever after that he entertained the odd fancy - which his medical skill of course assured him was only a fancy - that the eyes of the portrait had a sort of wish, if not an actual tendency, to follow young Charles Ward as he moved about the room. He stopped before leaving to study the picture closely, marvelling at its resemblance to Charles and memorising every minute detail of the cryptical, colourless face, even down to a slight scar or pit in the smooth brow above the right eye. Cosmo Alexander, he decided, was a painter worthy of the Scotland that produced Raeburn, and a teacher worthy of his illustrious pupil Gilbert Stuart.
      Assured by the doctor that Charles's mental health was in no danger, but that on the other hand he was engaged in researches which might prove of real importance, the Wards were more lenient than they might otherwise have been when during the following June the youth made positive his refusal to attend college. He had, he declared, studies of much more vital importance to pursue; and intimated a wish to go abroad the following year in order to avail himself of certain sources of data not existing in America. The senior Ward, while denying this latter wish as absurd for a boy of only eighteen, acquiesced regarding the university; so that after a none too brilliant graduation from the Moses Brown School there ensued for Charles a three-year period of intensive occult study and graveyard searching. He became recognised as an eccentric, and dropped even more completely from the sight of his family's friends than he had been before; keeping close to his work and only occasionally making trips to other cities to consult obscure records. Once he went south to talk with a strange old mulatto who dwelt in a swamp and about whom a newspaper had printed a curious article. Again he sought a small village in the Adirondacks whence reports of certain odd ceremonial practices had come. But still his parents forbade him the trip to the Old World which he desired.
      Coming of age in April, 1923, and having previously inherited a small competence from his maternal grandfather, Ward determined at last to take the European trip hitherto denied him. Of his proposed itinerary he would say nothing save that the needs of his studies would carry him to many places, but he promised to write his parents fully and faithfully. When they saw he could not be dissuaded, they ceased all opposition and helped as best they could; so that in June the young man sailed for Liverpool with the farewell blessings of his father and mother, who accompanied him to Boston and waved him out of sight from the White Star pier in Charlestown. Letters soon told of his safe arrival, and of his securing good quarters in Great Russell Street, London; where he proposed to stay, shunning all family friends, till he had exhausted the resources of the British Museum in a certain direction. Of his daily life he wrote but little, for there was little to write. Study and experiment consumed all his time, and he mentioned a laboratory which he had established in one of his rooms. That he said nothing of antiquarian rambles in the glamorous old city with its luring skyline of ancient domes and steeples and its tangles of roads and alleys whose mystic convolutions and sudden vistas alternately beckon and surprise, was taken by his parents as a good index of the degree to which his new interests had engrossed his mind.
      In June, 1924, a brief note told of his departure for Paris, to which he had before made one or two flying trips for material in the Bibliothque Nationale. For three months thereafter he sent only postal cards, giving an address in the Rue St. Jacques and referring to a special search among rare manuscripts in the library of an unnamed private collector. He avoided acquaintances, and no tourists brought back reports of having seen him. Then came a silence, and in October the Wards received a picture card from Prague, Czecho-Slovakia, stating that Charles was in that ancient town for the purpose of conferring with a certain very aged man supposed to be the last living possessor of some very curious mediaeval information. He gave an address in the Neustadt, and announced no move till the following January; when he dropped several cards from Vienna telling of his passage through that city on the way toward a more easterly region whither one of his correspondents and fellow-delvers into the occult had invited him.
      The next card was from Klausenburg in Transylvania, and told of Ward's progress toward his destination. He was going to visit a Baron Ferenczy, whose estate lay in the mountains east of Rakus; and was to be addressed at Rakus in the care of that nobleman. Another card from Rakus a week later, saying that his host's carriage had met him and that he was leaving the village for the mountains, was his last message for a considerable time; indeed, he did not reply to his parents' frequent letters until May, when he wrote to discourage the plan of his mother for a meeting in London, Paris, or Rome during the summer, when the elder Wards were planning to travel in Europe. His researches, he said, were such that he could not leave his present quarters; while the situation of Baron Ferenczy's castle did not favour visits. It was on a crag in the dark wooded mountains, and the region was so shunned by the country folk that normal people could not help feeling ill at ease. Moreover, the Baron was not a person likely to appeal to correct and conservative New England gentlefolk. His aspect and manners had idiosyncrasies, and his age was so great as to be disquieting. It would be better, Charles said, if his parents would wait for his return to Providence; which could scarcely be far distant.
      That return did not, however, take place until May, 1926, when after a few heralding cards the young wanderer quietly slipped into New York on the Homeric and traversed the long miles to Providence by motor-coach, eagerly drinking in the green rolling hills, the fragrant, blossoming orchards, and the white steepled towns of vernal Connecticut; his first taste of ancient New England in nearly four years. When the coach crossed the Pawcatuck and entered Rhode Island amidst the faery goldenness of a late spring afternoon his heart beat with quickened force, and the entry to Providence along Reservoir and Elmwood avenues was a breathless and wonderful thing despite the depths of forbidden lore to which he had delved. At the high square where Broad, Weybosset, and Empire Streets join, he saw before and below him in the fire of sunset the pleasant, remembered houses and domes and steeples of the old town; and his head swam curiously as the vehicle rolled down the terminal behind the Biltmore, bringing into view the great dome and soft, roof-pierced greenery of the ancient hill across the river, and the tall colonial spire of the First Baptist Church limned pink in the magic evening light against the fresh springtime verdure of its precipitous background.
      Old Providence! It was this place and the mysterious forces of its long, continuous history which had brought him into being, and which had drawn him back toward marvels and secrets whose boundaries no prophet might fix. Here lay the arcana, wondrous or dreadful as the case might be, for which all his years of travel and application had been preparing him. A taxicab whirled him through Post Office Square with its glimpse of the river, the old Market House, and the head of the bay, and up the steep curved slope of Waterman Street to Prospect, where the vast gleaming dome and sunset-flushed Ionic columns of the Christian Science Church beckoned northward. Then eight squares past the fine old estates his childish eyes had known, and the quaint brick sidewalks so often trodden by his youthful feet. And at last the little white overtaken farmhouse on the right, on the left the classic Adam porch and stately bayed facade of the great brick house where he was born. It was twilight, and Charles Dexter Ward had come home.

5.

      A school of alienists slightly less academic than Dr. Lyman's assign to Ward's European trip the beginning of his true madness. Admitting that he was sane when he started, they believe that his conduct upon returning implies a disastrous change. But even to this claim Dr. Willett refuses to accede. There was, he insists, something later; and the queernesses of the youth at this stage he attributes to the practice of rituals learned abroad - odd enough things, to be sure, but by no means implying mental aberration on the part of their celebrant. Ward himself, though visibly aged and hardened, was still normal in his general reactions; and in several talks with Willett displayed a balance which no madman - even an incipient one - could feign continuously for long. What elicited the notion of insanity at this period were the sounds heard at all hours from Ward's attic laboratory, in which he kept himself most of the time. There were chantings and repetitions, and thunderous declamations in uncanny rhythms; and although these sounds were always in Ward's own voice, there was something in the quality of that voice, and in the accents of the formulae it pronounced, which could not but chill the blood of every hearer. It was noticed that Nig, the venerable and beloved black cat of the household, bristled and arched his back perceptibly when certain of the tones were heard.
      The odours occasionally wafted from the laboratory were likewise exceedingly strange. Sometimes they were very noxious, but more often they were aromatic, with a haunting, elusive quality which seemed to have the power of inducing fantastic images. People who smelled them had a tendency to glimpse momentary mirages of enormous vistas, with strange hills or endless avenues of sphinxes and hippogriffs stretching off into infinite distance. Ward did not resume his old-time rambles, but applied himself diligently to the strange books he had brought home, and to equally strange delvings within his quarters; explaining that European sources had greatly enlarged the possibilities of his work, and promising great revelations in the years to come. His older aspect increased to a startling degree his resemblance to the Curwen portrait in his library; and Dr. Willett would often pause by the latter after a call, marvelling at the virtual identity, and reflecting that only the small pit above the picture's right eye now remained to differentiate the long-dead wizard from the living youth. These calls of Willett's, undertaken at the request of the senior Wards, were curious affairs. Ward at no time repulsed the doctor, but the latter saw that he could never reach the young man's inner psychology. Frequently he noted peculiar things about; little wax images of grotesque design on the shelves or tables, and the half-erased remnants of circles, triangles, and pentagrams in chalk or charcoal on the cleared central space of the large room. And always in the night those rhythms and incantations thundered, till it became very difficult to keep servants or suppress furtive talk of Charles's madness.
      In January, 1927, a peculiar incident occurred. One night about midnight, as Charles was chanting a ritual whose weird cadence echoed unpleasantly through the house below, there came a sudden gust of chill wind from the bay, and a faint, obscure trembling of the earth which everyone in the neighbourhood noted. At the same time the cat exhibited phenomenal traces of fright, while dogs bayed for as much as a mile around. This was the prelude to a sharp thunderstorm, anomalous for the season, which brought with it such a crash that Mr. and Mrs. Ward believed the house had been struck. They rushed upstairs to see what damage had been done, but Charles met them at the door to the attic; pale, resolute, and portentous, with an almost fearsome combination of triumph and seriousness on his face. He assured them that the house had not really been struck, and that the storm would soon be over. They paused, and looking through a window saw that he was indeed right; for the lightning flashed farther and farther off, whilst the trees ceased to bend in the strange frigid gust from the water. The thunder sank to a sort of dull mumbling chuckle and finally died away. Stars came out, and the stamp of triumph on Charles Ward's face crystallised into a very singular expression.
      For two months or more after this incident Ward was less confined than usual to his laboratory. He exhibited a curious interest in the weather, and made odd inquiries about the date of the spring thawing of the ground. One night late in March he left the house after midnight, and did not return till almost morning; when his mother, being wakeful, heard a rumbling motor draw up to the carriage entrance. Muffled oaths could be distinguished, and Mrs. Ward, rising and going to the window, saw four dark figures removing a long, heavy box from a truck at Charles's direction and carrying it within by the side door. She heard laboured breathing and ponderous footfalls on the stairs, and finally a dull thumping in the attic; after which the footfalls descended again, and the four men reappeared outside and drove off in their truck.
      The next day Charles resumed his strict attic seclusion, drawing down the dark shades of his laboratory windows and appearing to be working on some metal substance. He would open the door to no one, and steadfastly refused all proffered food. About noon a wrenching sound followed by a terrible cry and a fall were heard, but when Mrs. Ward rapped at the door her son at length answered faintly, and told her that nothing had gone amiss. The hideous and indescribable stench now welling out was absolutely harmless and unfortunately necessary. Solitude was the one prime essential, and he would appear later for dinner. That afternoon, after the conclusion of some odd hissing sounds which came from behind the locked portal, he did finally appear; wearing an extremely haggard aspect and forbidding anyone to enter the laboratory upon any pretext. This, indeed, proved the beginning of a new policy of secrecy; for never afterward was any other person permitted to visit either the mysterious garret workroom or the adjacent storeroom which he cleaned out, furnished roughly, and added to his inviolably private domain as a sleeping apartment. Here he lived, with books brought up from his library beneath, till the time he purchased the Pawtuxet bungalow and moved to it all his scientific effects.
      In the evening Charles secured the paper before the rest of the family and damaged part of it through an apparent accident. Later on Dr. Willett, having fixed the date from statements by various members of the household, looked up an intact copy at the Journal office and found that in the destroyed section the following small item had occurred:
Nocturnal Diggers Surprised in
North Burial Ground

Robert Hart, night watchman at the North Burial Ground, this morning discovered a party of several men with a motor truck in the oldest part of the cemetery, but apparently frightened them off before they had accomplished whatever their object may have been.
      The discovery took place at about four o'clock, when Hart's attention was attracted by the sound of a motor outside his shelter. Investigating, he saw a large truck on the main drive several rods away; but could not reach it before the sound of his feet on the gravel had revealed his approach. The men hastily placed a large box in the truck and drove away toward the street before they could be overtaken; and since no known grave was disturbed, Hart believes that this box was an object which they wished to bury.
      The diggers must have been at work for a long while before detection, for Hart found an enormous hole dug at a considerable distance back from the roadway in the lot of Amasa Field, where most of the old stones have long ago disappeared. The hole, a place as large and deep as a grave, was empty; and did not coincide with any interment mentioned in the cemetery records.
      Sergt. Riley of the Second Station viewed the spot and gave the opinion that the hole was dug by bootleggers rather gruesomely and ingeniously seeking a safe cache for liquor in a place not likely to be disturbed. In reply to questions Hart said he thought the escaping truck had headed up Rochambeau Avenue, though he could not be sure.
      During the next few days Ward was seldom seen by his family. Having added sleeping quarters to his attic realm, he kept closely to himself there, ordering food brought to the door and not taking it in until after the servant had gone away. The droning of monotonous formulae and the chanting of bizarre rhythms recurred at intervals, while at other times occasional listeners could detect the sound of tinkling glass, hissing chemicals, running water, or roaring gas flames. Odours of the most unplaceable quality, wholly unlike any before noted, hung at times around the door; and the air of tension observable in the young recluse whenever he did venture briefly forth was such as to excite the keenest speculation. Once he made a hasty trip to the Athenaeum for a book he required, and again he hired a messenger to fetch him a highly obscure volume from Boston. Suspense was written portentously over the whole situation, and both the family and Dr. Willett confessed themselves wholly at a loss what to do or think about it.

6.

      Then on the fifteenth of April a strange development occurred. While nothing appeared to grow different in kind, there was certainly a very terrible difference in degree; and Dr. Willett somehow attaches great significance to the change. The day was Good Friday, a circumstance of which the servants made much, but which others quite naturally dismiss as an irrelevant coincidence. Late in the afternoon young Ward began repeating a certain formula in a singularly loud voice, at the same time burning some substance so pungent that its fumes escaped over the entire house. The formula was so plainly audible in the hall outside the locked door that Mrs. Ward could not help memorising it as she waited and listened anxiously, and later on she was able to write it down at Dr. Willett's request. It ran as follows, and experts have told Dr. Willett that its very close analogue can be found in the mystic writings of ""Eliphas Levi"", that cryptic soul who crept through a crack in the forbidden door and glimpsed the frightful vistas of the void beyond:
""Per Adonai Eloim, Adonai Jehova,
Adonai Sabaoth, Metraton On Agla Mathon,
verbum pythonicum, mysterium salamandrae,
conventus sylvorum, antra gnomorum,
daemonia Coeli Gad, Almousin, Gibor, Jehosua,
Evam, Zariatnatmik, veni, veni, veni.""
      This had been going on for two hours without change or intermission when over all the neighbourhood a pandaemoniac howling of dogs set in. The extent of this howling can be judged from the space it received in the papers the next day, but to those in the Ward household it was overshadowed by the odour which instantly followed it; a hideous, all-pervasive odour which none of them had ever smelt before or have ever smelt since. In the midst of this mephitic flood there came a very perceptible flash like that of lightning, which would have been blinding and impressive but for the daylight around; and then was heard the voice that no listener can ever forget because of its thunderous remoteness, its incredible depth, and its eldritch dissimilarity to Charles Ward's voice. It shook the house, and was clearly heard by at least two neighbours above the howling of the dogs. Mrs. Ward, who had been listening in despair outside her son's locked laboratory, shivered as she recognised its hellish import; for Charles had told her of its evil fame in dark books, and of the manner in which it had thundered, according to the Fenner letters, above the doomed Pawtuxet farmhouse on the night of Joseph Curwen's annihilation. There was no mistaking that nightmare phrase, for Charles had described it too vividly in the old days when he had talked frankly of his Curwen investigations. And yet it was only this fragment of an archaic and forgotten language: ""DIES MIES JESCHET BOENE DOESEF DOUVEMA ENITEMAUS"".
      Close upon this thundering there came a momentary darkening of the daylight, though sunset was still an hour distant, and then a puff of added odour different from the first but equally unknown and intolerable. Charles was chanting again now and his mother could hear syllables that sounded like ""Yi-nash-Yog-Sothoth-he-lgeb-fi-throdog"" - ending in a ""Yah!"" whose maniacal force mounted in an ear-splitting crescendo. A second later all previous memories were effaced by the wailing scream which burst out with frantic explosiveness and gradually changed form to a paroxysm of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Mrs. Ward, with the mingled fear and blind courage of maternity, advanced and knocked affrightedly at the concealing panels, but obtained no sign of recognition. She knocked again, but paused nervelessly as a second shriek arose, this one unmistakably in the familiar voice of her son, and sounding concurrently with the still bursting cachinnations of that other voice. Presently she fainted, although she is still unable to recall the precise and immediate cause. Memory sometimes makes merciful deletions.
      Mr. Ward returned from the business section at about quarter past six; and not finding his wife downstairs, was told by the frightened servants that she was probably watching at Charles's door, from which the sounds had been far stranger than ever before. Mounting the stairs at once, he saw Mrs. Ward stretched at full length on the floor of the corridor outside the laboratory; and realising that she had fainted, hastened to fetch a glass of water from a set bowl in a neighbouring alcove. Dashing the cold fluid in her face, he was heartened to observe an immediate response on her part, and was watching the bewildered opening of her eyes when a chill shot through him and threatened to reduce him to the very state from which she was emerging. For the seemingly silent laboratory was not as silent as it had appeared to be, but held the murmurs of a tense, muffled conversation in tones too low for comprehension, yet of a quality profoundly disturbing to the soul.
      It was not, of course, new for Charles to mutter formulae; but this muttering was definitely different. It was so palpably a dialogue, or imitation of a dialogue, with the regular alteration of inflections suggesting question and answer, statement and response. One voice was undisguisedly that of Charles, but the other had a depth and hollowness which the youth's best powers of ceremonial mimicry had scarcely approached before. There was something hideous, blasphemous, and abnormal about it, and but for a cry from his recovering wife which cleared his mind by arousing his protective instincts it is not likely that Theodore Howland Ward could have maintained for nearly a year more his old boast that he had never fainted. As it was, he seized his wife in his arms and bore her quickly downstairs before she could notice the voices which had so horribly disturbed him. Even so, however, he was not quick enough to escape catching something himself which caused him to stagger dangerously with his burden. For Mrs. Ward's cry had evidently been heard by others than he, and there had come from behind the locked door the first distinguishable words which that masked and terrible colloquy had yielded. They were merely an excited caution in Charles's own voice, but somehow their implications held a nameless fright for the father who overheard them. The phrase was just this: ""Sshh! - write!""
      Mr. and Mrs. Ward conferred at some length after dinner, and the former resolved to have a firm and serious talk with Charles that very night. No matter how important the object, such conduct could no longer be permitted; for these latest developments transcended every limit of sanity and formed a menace to the order and nervous well-being of the entire household. The youth must indeed have taken complete leave of his senses, since only downright madness could have prompted the wild screams and imaginary conversations in assumed voices which the present day had brought forth. All this must be stopped, or Mrs. Ward would be made ill and the keeping of servants become an impossibility.
      Mr. Ward rose at the close of the meal and started upstairs for Charles's laboratory. On the third floor, however, he paused at the sounds which he heard proceeding from the now disused library of his son. Books were apparently being flung about and papers wildly rustled, and upon stepping to the door Mr. Ward beheld the youth within, excitedly assembling a vast armful of literary matter of every size and shape. Charles's aspect was very drawn and haggard, and he dropped his entire load with a start at the sound of his father's voice. At the elder man's command he sat down, and for some time listened to the admonitions he had so long deserved. There was no scene. At the end of the lecture he agreed that his father was right, and that his noises, mutterings, incantations, and chemical odours were indeed inexcusable nuisances. He agreed to a policy of greater quiet, though insisting on a prolongation of his extreme privacy. Much of his future work, he said, was in any case purely book research; and he could obtain quarters elsewhere for any such vocal rituals as might be necessary at a later stage. For the fright and fainting of his mother he expressed the keenest contrition, and explained that the conversation later heard was part of an elaborate symbolism designed to create a certain mental atmosphere. His use of abstruse technical terms somewhat bewildered Mr. Ward, but the parting impression was one of undeniable sanity and poise despite a mysterious tension of the utmost gravity. The interview was really quite inconclusive, and as Charles picked up his armful and left the room Mr. Ward hardly knew what to make of the entire business. It was as mysterious as the death of poor old Nig, whose stiffening form had been found an hour before in the basement, with staring eyes and fear-distorted mouth.
      Driven by some vague detective instinct, the bewildered parent now glanced curiously at the vacant shelves to see what his son had taken up to the attic. The youth's library was plainly and rigidly classified, so that one might tell at a glance the books or at least the kind of books which had been withdrawn. On this occasion Mr. Ward was astonished to find that nothing of the occult or the antiquarian, beyond what had been previously removed, was missing. These new withdrawals were all modern items; histories, scientific treatises, geographies, manuals of literature, philosophic works, and certain contemporary newspapers and magazines. It was a very curious shift from Charles Ward's recent run of reading, and the father paused in a growing vortex of perplexity and an engulfing sense of strangeness. The strangeness was a very poignant sensation, and almost clawed at his chest as he strove to see just what was wrong around him. Something was indeed wrong, and tangibly as well as spiritually so. Ever since he had been in this room he had known that something was amiss, and at last it dawned upon him what it was.
      On the north wall rose still the ancient carved overmantel from the house in Olney Court, but to the cracked and precariously restored oils of the large Curwen portrait disaster had come. Time and unequal heating had done their work at last, and at some time since the room's last cleaning the worst had happened. Peeling clear of the wood, curling tighter and tighter, and finally crumbling into small bits with what must have been malignly silent suddenness, the portrait of Joseph Curwen had resigned forever its staring surveillance of the youth it so strangely resembled, and now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust.
","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 languages 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 Sanscrit 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 massed 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 Vigenère’s Traité des Chiffres, Falconer’s Cryptomenysis Patefacta, Davys’ and Thicknesse’s eighteenth-century treatises, and such fairly modern authorities as Blair, von Marten, and Klüber’s Kryptographik. He interspersed his study of the books with attacks on the manuscript 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 2nd 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 shewing 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’ 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 4th 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 an 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 them!” 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 whiskey 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.
",True
"Heaven's not enough
If when I'm there I don't remember you...
The words came unbidden to Torren-Wraeth's mind. The line was from an old song from the soundtrack of an old Japanese anime that had confused and depressed the hell out of him. He shook his head, Heaven's Not Enough, Steve Conte, Wolf's Rain soundtrack, No... there had been two soundtracks for that series, this was the first song on the second. Why wasn't it called Wolves' Rain? He thought, trying to dispel the sad song, but it played on, and he was even singing softly toward the song's end...
'Cause I couldn't cry
'Cause I turned away
Couldn't see the score
Didn't know the pain
Of leaving yesterday really far behind
in another life
in another dream
By a different name
gave it all away for a memory 
and a quiet lie
and I felt the face 
Of the cold tonight
Still don't know the score
But I know the pain
Of leaving everything really far behind ...
Thus distracted, he did not see Dahlman.
The sorcerer was a servant of the He Who Gnaws in The Darkness. Azathoth was neither ally nor enemy to Cthulhu, he was actually his 'Great-Grandfather' having sired both Yog-Sothoth and Shub-Niggurath, who had sired Nug and Yeb, Nug being Cthulhu's parent by parthogenesis. Azathoth's 'worshipers', however, tended to be madmen in the truest sense. He was a mindless entity, neither desiring nor rewarding worship. Some of the gods who danced round and round his throne often took it upon themselves to accept his worship and grant gifts in his behalf. Especially Nyarlathotep...
The Outer Gods were the key. Humans were a weak species, helpless in the face of even the least of The Great Old Ones. But by learning, by studying the Outer Gods, by utilizing their power, a human could assume a form of divinity themselves. For decades Dahlman had faithfully studied the ancient texts, The Book of Eibon, The Necronomicon, The Book of Iod, and he had learned to harness the power of those who lurked mindless and blind beyond the thin veil of reality. And now he would prove his worth, he would bring down an immortal, the child of a god...
A bolt of lightning shook Torren-Wraeth from his revery, it barely hurt, but he could tell it was not natural. He turned to see a black-clad figuring closing in upon him, and erected a Deflect Harm even as the human struck out with Fist of Yog-Sothoth. ""Okay, now you're annoying me."" Torren-Wraeth lashed out with Implant Fear, hoping to avoid having to actually kill this irrational attacker. He disliked sorcerers, but he also disliked having to harm people. But the madman had cast Deflect Harm upon himself, and, thus protected, struck back with The Dread Curse of Azathoth. Torren-Wraeth reeled, Now that hurt! Enraged, Torren-Wraeth physically rushed the sorcerer, ignoring the protective amulet the man held out, and punched him square in the nose, breaking it. Distracted by the pain, Dahlman fell before Implant Fear.
Dahlman's mind was instantly overwhelmed with unimaginable fear and he turned to flee, all spells forgotten in his terror, only to run into a golden monstrosity streaking toward him in the dawning sky. He called frantically upon his gods to save him. But these were not benevolent gods, they were fickle, and enjoyed granting lesser beings great power, just to have the pleasure of snatching it away. His gods deserted him mid-flight, his skin shriveled and shrank tight against his bones as he aged in seconds. The capricious Outer Gods no doubt laughed as their former ward fell into the sea, and was immediately set upon by sharks.
Torren-Wraeth and Tek watched impassively as the dying sorcerer fell into the sea.
""Who was that?""
""I have no idea.""
""And I thought you were in trouble.""
""Sorry.""
""You do get in the strangest situations."" Tek observed wryly.
""Sorry.""
You've made me late, you know.""
""Sorry about that.""
""It's okay, I could use the break. A word of advice, never marry a woman with five mouths.""
Both Tek and Torren-Wraeth laughed.
Ho Fong arched an eyebrow as he saw the disheveled Torren-Wraeth accompanying Lord Tektaktequataquarl. He'd seen him before, of course, he occasionally visited alongside Tek, though his distaste for the ritual sacrifices of human beings was clearly evident. Fortunately, no such events were scheduled. ""Are you alright, Lord Torren-Wraeth?"" He knew better than to call him simply 'Torren' or 'Wraeth'. ""I'll be all right, Master Ho,"" Torren-Wraeth said with perfect Chinese courtesy, ""But I would be most grateful for a place to rest for a while."" Ho Fong smiled, ""Of course,"" he turned, ""Ping, take lord Torren-Wraeth to one of the guest areas and provide him with whatever refreshments he requires."" A youngish monk, dressed in the standard yellow and black silk, stepped forward and led Torren-Wraeth deeper into the monastery.
It was instantly obvious to Torren-Wraeth that Ping was not Chinese, at least, not in the ethnic sense. He was one of the dreaded Tcho-Tcho people, descendants of toad-like creatures created by the Great Old One Chaugnar Faugn and human cultists. The Tcho-Tcho had an evil reputation, one well earned. The vast majority of them served the Great Old Ones, and many practiced cannibalism. There were exceptions, of course, not all Tcho-Tcho were evil or insane, but those individuals were usually outcasts, hated and sometimes even hunted by their own people. As they walked, Torren-Wraeth halted for a moment before an idol of carved black stone. It was well-crafted and incredibly detailed, lean muscled and lanky, wings extended, the webbed hands held palm up like a divine supplicant, the curving trunk-mouth lifted upward as if it were sounding a call. A call to Death itself, for this was Shugoran, The Herald of Death, worshiped and feared by the Tcho-Tcho people. Ping knelt reverently then hurried Torren-Wraeth into a nearby chamber.
The scent of Black Lotus was thick in the air as the monks shut the great copper door behind Tek. ""You really shouldn't smoke you know,"" he said casually, ""Terrible for the lungs..."" The Bloated Woman rose from her cushions, ""Only if you are a mortal, which I am not."" Tek smiled, then shed his semblance of humanity, becoming a writhing, shapeless mass of golden flesh, golden tentacles, golden eyes and pearly white fangs. ""What of our child?"" Several mouths spoke at once. The Goddess came closer with a grace unfitting such an obese creature. ""Nothing can harm our offspring."" ""How long, do you think?"" The Bloated Woman stopped, apparently this visit was for business, not pleasure. ""It is impossible to tell. I have born some children within days of conception, and others within centuries."" She sensed a slight jealous possessiveness on the part of the Hastur-Spawn, he wanted her as his sole mate, an amusing and archaic notion, not often seen in a True-Blood. The fact that he knew she had devoured most of the former lovers did not apparently assuage this unseemly feeling. ""I feel that this one will be born within a month or two..."" She grinned horribly with all five mouths, ""How has your father reacted?"" ""Our child will be welcome in Carcosa."" Hastur, in truth, was somewhat worried, fearing that the child would be another avatar of Nyarlathotep, that the Crawling Chaos would use the child as yet another form in which to manifest itself. In other words, he feared that Nyarlathotep would give birth to itself...
For all the vile practices that went on in the Monastery of The Bloated Woman, it was a beautiful place, richly decorated in jade and silver, gold and silk. Yellow and black, every strand of silk in the monastery was either yellow or black. The yellow made for a much friendlier environment than the dark, ominous stones of R'Lyeh. The Goddess favored those colors, for some reason. Torren-Wraeth remembered something Goro had once said. Among his people and several other Asian cultures, yellow was the color of mourning. Black meant death and mourning in the West, yellow filled that role in the East. Was it intentional? Probably, but he was a guest, and it would be rude to question his hosts. He changed from his slightly charred clothing into the yellow and black robes that had been kindly provided him and stepped out into the hallway. There he saw Ping once again kneeling before Shugoran.
","Joseph Clayton watched from his seat on the center aisle as Pete Tallier finished his act. The young man had performed a folk-dance from his ancestral Quebec, a homeland his family had left more than a century ago for jobs in the New England furniture industry. He himself had finished his act more than an hour ago, having opted for a simple folk dance and traditional Norman costume with a top hat. Of course, using a hat-rack instead of a dancing partner had been a bit... unusual; with Marie being so involved in her own routine, he had had to make do with what he could get.
But now, as Joseph finished clapping in approval of the previous act, he realized that his girlfriend was due to come on. What would actually happen was a complete mystery to Joseph; Marie had kept a tight lid on her act by practicing at home and while she had spent much less time with him than normal, she had stressed how important this was for her. So, respecting her wishes, he'd kept his distance and wished her luck. Now, with his parents sitting beside him, the Trinhs just across the aisle and after weeks of mystery, he was finally about to discover what the big secret was.
The male student in charge of the event came forward after Tallier left the stage, dressed in traditional Greek costume. ""Next up is Marie Trinh, who will be performing a traditional 'journey rite in two parts' from the Annamite Mountains of Vietnam and Laos. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you 'The Stork Dance'!"" He exited downstage right as the lights dimmed even further than they had, the only illumination the bright center of the spotlight focused on the place he had been. Slowly, almost dramatically, the spotlight edged back towards the rear wall until it revealed a lone figure wrapped in a white cloak, face obscured by something.
Utter silence pervaded the auditorium before the sound system gave off the squeal of a needle scratching on a record and the sounds of soft, high flutes began wafting upon the air. It was then that the figure started walking forward on bare feet, segmented anklets of carved jade just visible below the hem of the long, black skirt while the white cloak draped over the arms and... it almost looked like some sort of hat or strange mask was concealing the figure's head. Suddenly, pipes of a lower pitch, possibly oboes, started playing a mournful tune and the figure stopped suddenly, lifting it's head to face the crowd.
A spoonbill... with a black beak. So that was what that big fuss with the paper-mache was about.
The dance was in two parts. The first was a mournful, melancholy arrangement that supposedly was intended for farewell ceremonies. Zithers, oboes, various other instruments of the right mood and the creaky, brittle, almost sad songs of old women set the tone for the dance, a carefully choreographed routine that either imitated the intricate placement of a wading birds steps or imitated the slow soaring of those same birds. This was the Song of Departure. The second part, that of Arrival, was more...upbeat in its cadence. After the record was flipped, the plucking of lutes and brighter zithers, the delicate clanging of some sort of bells, jollier wind instruments and the celebratory singing of young women replaced the melancholy mood of earlier. The dancers steps also changed, with sudden, sprightly movements becoming the norm as imitations of courtship displays and feeding were performed.
Throughout the dance, the audience had been enraptured by what was happening onstage. While Joseph was certainly enjoying his girlfriends act, he was not so enraptured that he failed to notice that several very strange things were happening in the darkened theater. The first change he noticed was the background odor. Slowly, over the course of the act, the smell in the theater had changed from the dry, dusty smell of upholstery and the hot metal of lighting equipment to... well, there was river mud, water thick with life, plants growing in the sun and warm wind. It wasn't a bad smell, but there was no real way that it could be coming from anywhere in the building.
Other strange things were... shapes in the darkness. During the first part of the dance Joseph could have sworn that he glimpsed shadowy shapes moving in the aisle beside him, shapes that almost looked like... wading birds. During the second act, he could almost imagine that the silvery shapes of gliding birds were being outlined by the residual glare from the spotlight, though that could easily be passed off as wafting dust.
Except that there wasn't that much dust in the theater.
Thirdly, and much less unusually, an elderly man with thinning, almost white curly hair, wire rim spectacles and a short beard was watching the performance with interest, almost... studying it. Joseph had never seen him in the town before, so who was he and why was he here?
And had he or anyone else seen the apparitions?
When the dance was done and Marie (who had revealed herself at the end of the dance by taking off her headdress and taking a bow) had left the stage, Joseph kept thinking on that thought during the remaining acts. The smell had faded and gone, the shadows and shapes were no longer there but the mere hint of their possibility shook him. He was a person of science, of logic, of well-produced nature documentaries; in the real world, things like this did not happen outside the heads of crazy people.
However... the very thought of the ghostly shapes thrilled Joseph, filled him with fantastic wonders and terrors not felt since he was a boy of five. And, thought the young man, it did not truly matter if it was wonderful or terrible, or if Marie could control or even knew about this sort of stuff. All that truly mattered was that... well, at the level of base wonderment, the entire experience was remarkably exciting.
Sinister? Maybe. Normal? Not in the least. But very definitely exciting.
But... maybe it would be best not to mention it until Marie brought it up.
Later
After the show, as students were putting away their costumes and props and donning their late-autumn outerwear, Joseph approached his girlfriend who, with dress, cloak and headpiece in a garment bag, was heading out the door after her parents. ""Hey, Marie... about what you did on stage tonight?""
""Yes?"" Questioned Marie as she turned towards Joseph. As a courtesy, he would never mention it but he could tell that something was weighing on her mind. The impression that she was on the very edge of flight made it seem that, perhaps, she was aware that strange things had happened.
Strange things... but not necessarily bad things.
""I just have to say that you really hit a crowd pleaser tonight. I don't think any of the other acts got as much applause as yours did."" With that, Joseph saw Marie's face lighten from the mask of apprehension that had been there into a gratified smile.
""Thanks. You wouldn't believe how grueling the practicing was and then the costume and making all those fake pendants and charms... after all that, I was hoping it would get a good reception."" With that, she turned back and began walking out into the early night air, over to the parking space where her parents had parked their combination commercial van and personal conveyance.
Joseph had actively resisted losing himself in the weirdness that had struck him in the auditorium. However, he could never resist losing himself in his girlfriends smile.
Perhaps because one was familiar and one was a bit... odd.
Running to catch up with Marie, he wanted to ask his girlfriend something. ""On a different subject, I was wondering if you were doing anything tonight. Maybe we could catch a movie, go bowling, something like that.""
""I'd like to but I really can't."" They were almost at the Trinhs van when Marie leaned in close to Joseph to whisper conspiratorially. ""Dad got a call from the cops when the Polish guy was on. They arrested someone vandalizing the front of the shop, and we'll probably be busy all night with statements, forms, the insurance guys and all the other police stuff.""
Though he was disappointed, Joseph Clayton knew that something like this couldn't be delayed. ""Alright, maybe I'll see you tomorrow. Goodnight."" After getting an answer back in the form of a goodnight kiss (which still made him blush despite himself), he watched Marie depart toward her parents vehicle. The question came back to him, after all these weeks, of who in this town could be angry or stupid enough to be implicated in the vandalism spree that had plagued the Leng Trinh restaurant.
At Roughly the Same time, Glaston Police Station
As Constance Blake entered the interview room, she reflected on the fact that it had to have been a pretty slow couple of weeks when they pulled the Chief of Police out of her office for a break in a vandalism case. On the other hand, she'd finished the normal paperwork an hour before and had been flipping through a fishing catalog with the squawk-box on beside her when Lt. Anderson had come in. He'd told her that they'd arrested some punk kid trying to bust up the Trinh's restaurant, the culmination in a series of events that had been the height of municipal intrigue for weeks. As she got a look at the culprit, she was a little surprised.
""Punk kid"" indeed.
As she sat down across from suspect, Chief Blake tapped the case file, a few reports inside a paper folder, against the table. ""You know,"" she began dryly, ""we get quite a few idiots through here: gang members, druggies, people who've taken offense one to many times. We just haven't ever got one who was this high up in the High School Math Club."" She dropped the file in front of Than Quang Due, a young man who, besides having a Sino-typical naming structure, was short, thin, bespectacled and looked amazingly like a 12-year old for someone who was actually 15. He and his parents had moved here the the summer and had set up a jewelery shop a few blocks over from Leng Trinh. Up until this, Due had never been anything but a model student, a respectful son and a bright (if somewhat timid) young man. ""So, why'd you do it?""
Due looked at the middle aged woman with a gaze that mixed deference with surprise in the face of seeming insanity. ""Because no one else would! Because this town has tolerated... people like that for so long."". There was a touch of bitterness in his voice but also surprise. Were these people so stupid that they didn't recognize a threat in their very midst?
""Look, I don't know what's going on, but I know that it stops right now."" Constance stood up and, even at 5'1"", the sight of her leaning over the suspect should have been intimidating to the boy. But then Blake began asking almost rhetorical questions ""What is this about anyway? You ask out their daughter and get refused? Well, if that is it, this was between you, her and the Clayton boy. No need to get mad at her parents."" It was then that another idea came to the Chief of Police. ""Or is this because they're Hmong?""
At this, Due's face carried a look of utter incomprehension.
""Look, I realize that there's some bad blood carried over from the War. But you have to realize something too: this is America, the land of opportunity, of freedom. This is the land where people should be able to get away from the madness, where every little feud and squabble is best left back in the old country. Now, your parents and the Trinhs are going to be here soon and if you're smart, you will apologize; Thuc Van and Thanh Thi are good people, they're liked in the community and as sure as God made little green apples, they didn't deserve any of this.""
It was then that realization dawned on Due. The people who had informed him and sent him on this mission had mandated secrecy... but apparently he and they weren't the only ones good at keeping secrets.
With a look that held a touch of arrogance, a smidgen of fascinated bewilderment and, especially in his grin, the hint that he was not totally mentally hinged, Due asked a question that infuriated Constance Blake. ""You have no idea what they are, do you?""
",False
"Dry hacking. The sound assaults my ears, and makes my heart begin to flutter. It's unlike any paroxysm I've ever heard, even when Theodora contracted pneumonia two years ago. What's far worse is I know, instinctively, that it is not she whose body is wracked with illness. It's Lemuel Dawson, on his deathbed.
""Hold on!"" My voice is lighter, younger, not yet burdened with the weight of sorrow after his passing. Like any good nurse, I rush to his side and wipe the bloody spittle from his lips with a handkerchief. This is no mere dream; it's a recollection, and that's exactly what I did back then. ""I'm here as always, Father."" 
""Millie,"" he says weakly, and smiles through the pain of nearly-constant coughing. ""Come closer."" I do, and wince at his fevered breath. ""There's something that I must tell you, at long last."" Every word of his is belabored. His voice reminds me of a desert wind, scorched with sand. Even his sickroom has that acrid air, as if we were in the middle of the Sahara instead of Massachusetts. I myself am hot, and know Father must be. However, I dare not leave his chamber to fetch a wet cloth for fear of missing his last words.
""They have come for me, and…you must know all that I do before they come for you. Find the keys,"" he says before being consumed with another coughing fit, ""in the bottom drawer of my desk. Bring them here."" Again I follow his directions, yet hesitantly. Throughout his life, Father had been very particular about who was allowed to touch his personal possessions, and rummage through his desks and cabinets. Even our taciturn Theodora, who'd never reveal any of his secrets even under duress, was forbidden from doing so. Father gave explicit instructions on which rooms were to be cleaned (kitchen, parlor, and so on), and which were not (his spartan bedroom after Mother died, and private study). That's why it puzzles me, in this nighttime vision as well as in life, to hear him make such a request. Nevertheless, I hurry to obey it.
It takes several tugs of the aforementioned bottom drawer, sticky with disuse, to get it to yield. When it does, I cough at the dust within and pull out a small iron ring with five keys. Each one of them is different, as keys naturally are, yet these five have been bent into the most curious shapes and configurations. I'm tempted to stand beside the desk and stare at them to my heart's content, fingering their bizarre metal shafts, but Father's waiting. Not knowing what he'll tell me, or what he wants me to do with the keys, I take them over to his bedside. Greedily, he grasps them in his long fingers and takes my right hand in his.
""First,"" he announces, slipping one of the unique keys into my palm. ""Second,"" he then says, doing the same with another. ""Third. Closet. Church."" With sudden horror, I realize what they open: the three locks to the door of his forbidden study, the closet within it, and the only church to which he's ever belonged. ""The one on Gallows Hill,"" he clarifies. I wonder why he's called it that instead of Cemetery Hill. Perhaps, now that he's facing his own hangman in the form of an illness that not even Leight's doctor can diagnose, images of the Purge are haunting him. ""Read and learn all you can, when you're prepared. Take care."" 
I couldn't stop myself: ""Why 'take care'? Is something wrong? Who are 'they', Father? Please explain!"" 
""It would take…too long."" He slowly smiles, exposing all of his teeth in the white rictus of a death's-head. Pressing the keys so firmly into my palm that they leave mild scrapes and indentations afterward, Father coughs once more. ""Believe."" With that, his withered hand releases mine and falls to his side limply. He is no longer alive, and our conversation has drained me so much that I can do nothing but sob in fright.
I wake up to find my pillow damp, and my eyes glistening. There is no one around save for me, and the all-encompassing darkness to hide my tears. It's been seventeen years, almost to the day, since Lemuel Dawson departed this mortal world. I feel ashamed of myself, because after nearly two decades, I should not be so stricken with grief. Father, at this point in time, should be a distant memory, a framed portrait on the wall of my house and mind. However, he is not. He has evidently remained with me, in a locked compartment of my mental faculties that only dreams can reopen. Why now? Why here, in this very Inn? If the keys that he gave me so long ago - and which I've reconfined to the drawer from which I took them - are back in his old house, then why didn't I dream about them back there? This is too strange, and scary.
When you're prepared, Father had told me, read and learn all you can. Prepared for what, I wonder?
","""You fool, Warren is DEAD!""
As soon as the demonic and bestial voice had finished its horrifying utterance, my fear, which had spent the last several minutes of my final, despairing conversation with Warren in a state of suspended animation waiting in vain to hear of my friend's hopeful escape, spread from my chest to my head and from there, spread like a cold sensation through my veins, filling me with a terrified despairing sensation that I had never experienced before. I was paralyzed by my fear. My legs gave out, and I collapsed on the floor of the tomb. Suddenly the blackness closed in, and I knew no more.
I woke up the next day to the muted yet familiar smell of sterilized linens. After my disorientation dissipated, I realized that I had been taken to the local hospital. From Warren's research into the entrance to the netherworld, we had discovered that the areas surrounding the entrances were feared by local peoples, and were feared and avoided.
A mild sense of comfort filled me as I realized that whatever entity had taken my friend from this mortal realm had not escaped its netherworld lair. Its words haunted my thoughts, resonating in my mind like a bell. Shortly after my awakening, a nurse entered my room to tell me that the sheriff had asked for me.
Soon after, a stout, short man entered the room. He had a worried look on his face. I could tell that whatever he wanted to discuss with me was done with great reluctance and anxiety. He stuttered through a short introduction, his name being Alan Graham. He had said he had found me after he had received reports from some of the local people near the graveyard, that two grave robbers had been trespassing onto the forbidden lands. He had found me unconscious in the tomb, but had not seen or heard anything. He was obviously spooked by the dilapidated structures in the swamp and had taken me to the hospital. He asked me of what happened to the man that witnesses saw me enter the swamp with.
I was filled with an inhumane dread at the thought of telling the oblivious detective of my experience in the graveyard. However, I braved through my fear, though had to take several pauses to avoid becoming overcome with fear and passing out again. By the time, I had finished, Graham had begun sobbing uncontrollably, He had started shaking as big, wet tears dropped down his face. Though I don't understand why, he had believed my tale. Graham told me that I could leave, as long as I didn't go back to the graveyard. I agreed, heaving no desire to return the horror that had taken Warren from this life.
The next four months of my life were haunted by nightmares of the disembodied voice talking to me through the grave. Though I attempted to forget that night, my mind would always take me back to the graveyard. While my mind was filled with immense terror of what I had observed, I was so curious as to what Warren had unearthed in that hidden necropolis. The thoughts of the latter slowly consumed my thoughts, and I was unable to function in society. I was resolved to find out what Warren had unearthed. However, I was aware of the danger I faced, and decided I would go back by myself. If I died, I would take the knowledge of the location of the portal to the underworld with me.
I returned the following autumn, having read up on the lore that Warren had kept hidden me, from my own protection. The tomes he had uncovered told tales of the monstrous demons that could travel between the underworld and the surface one. The tomes were mostly undecipherable to me, as my linguistic ability was not strong enough to decipher the archaic texts. However, I was able to make out the basic information, though none of the stories told me of a way to prevent being killed or how to hide myself from the undead beings.
Despite the bleakness of my remaining mortality, my curiosity of the hidden world that only a few mortals had ever seen grew stronger and stronger, dominating my thoughts. I knew I had to return, even though I would likely die.
When I returned to the cemetery, I was unsurprised that everything had remained completely the same. The equipment Warren and I had brought had remained untouched, the telephone wire still being in place. My mind quickly focused on Warren, would I discover his remains, if the demons had even left his body? I removed the black slab covering the entrance, though it too much longer than when I had Warren helping me. Nevertheless, I was able to move the stone. However, I was only able to budge it so that it would eventually close on the doorway, trapping me inside.
Though I knew my life would be lost, my curiosity had taken over me, and I knew that until I had seen what horrors or wonder were hidden beneath the tomb, I could not find peace. So, I set off into the darkness. These are the final thoughts I have before I leave this world. To whoever discovers this note next to this other worldly gateway, the horrors beneath this tomb have consumed my life, and for your sake, I pray that you do not become entrapped into its ethereal mystique as I have. Run, you fool, run, before you are trapped in spirit and in body as I am! Run, before the obsession takes over your every waking thought! Leave!
- Randolph Carter
",False
"Heaven's not enough
If when I'm there I don't remember you...
The words came unbidden to Torren-Wraeth's mind. The line was from an old song from the soundtrack of an old Japanese anime that had confused and depressed the hell out of him. He shook his head, Heaven's Not Enough, Steve Conte, Wolf's Rain soundtrack, No... there had been two soundtracks for that series, this was the first song on the second. Why wasn't it called Wolves' Rain? He thought, trying to dispel the sad song, but it played on, and he was even singing softly toward the song's end...
'Cause I couldn't cry
'Cause I turned away
Couldn't see the score
Didn't know the pain
Of leaving yesterday really far behind
in another life
in another dream
By a different name
gave it all away for a memory 
and a quiet lie
and I felt the face 
Of the cold tonight
Still don't know the score
But I know the pain
Of leaving everything really far behind ...
Thus distracted, he did not see Dahlman.
The sorcerer was a servant of the He Who Gnaws in The Darkness. Azathoth was neither ally nor enemy to Cthulhu, he was actually his 'Great-Grandfather' having sired both Yog-Sothoth and Shub-Niggurath, who had sired Nug and Yeb, Nug being Cthulhu's parent by parthogenesis. Azathoth's 'worshipers', however, tended to be madmen in the truest sense. He was a mindless entity, neither desiring nor rewarding worship. Some of the gods who danced round and round his throne often took it upon themselves to accept his worship and grant gifts in his behalf. Especially Nyarlathotep...
The Outer Gods were the key. Humans were a weak species, helpless in the face of even the least of The Great Old Ones. But by learning, by studying the Outer Gods, by utilizing their power, a human could assume a form of divinity themselves. For decades Dahlman had faithfully studied the ancient texts, The Book of Eibon, The Necronomicon, The Book of Iod, and he had learned to harness the power of those who lurked mindless and blind beyond the thin veil of reality. And now he would prove his worth, he would bring down an immortal, the child of a god...
A bolt of lightning shook Torren-Wraeth from his revery, it barely hurt, but he could tell it was not natural. He turned to see a black-clad figuring closing in upon him, and erected a Deflect Harm even as the human struck out with Fist of Yog-Sothoth. ""Okay, now you're annoying me."" Torren-Wraeth lashed out with Implant Fear, hoping to avoid having to actually kill this irrational attacker. He disliked sorcerers, but he also disliked having to harm people. But the madman had cast Deflect Harm upon himself, and, thus protected, struck back with The Dread Curse of Azathoth. Torren-Wraeth reeled, Now that hurt! Enraged, Torren-Wraeth physically rushed the sorcerer, ignoring the protective amulet the man held out, and punched him square in the nose, breaking it. Distracted by the pain, Dahlman fell before Implant Fear.
Dahlman's mind was instantly overwhelmed with unimaginable fear and he turned to flee, all spells forgotten in his terror, only to run into a golden monstrosity streaking toward him in the dawning sky. He called frantically upon his gods to save him. But these were not benevolent gods, they were fickle, and enjoyed granting lesser beings great power, just to have the pleasure of snatching it away. His gods deserted him mid-flight, his skin shriveled and shrank tight against his bones as he aged in seconds. The capricious Outer Gods no doubt laughed as their former ward fell into the sea, and was immediately set upon by sharks.
Torren-Wraeth and Tek watched impassively as the dying sorcerer fell into the sea.
""Who was that?""
""I have no idea.""
""And I thought you were in trouble.""
""Sorry.""
""You do get in the strangest situations."" Tek observed wryly.
""Sorry.""
You've made me late, you know.""
""Sorry about that.""
""It's okay, I could use the break. A word of advice, never marry a woman with five mouths.""
Both Tek and Torren-Wraeth laughed.
Ho Fong arched an eyebrow as he saw the disheveled Torren-Wraeth accompanying Lord Tektaktequataquarl. He'd seen him before, of course, he occasionally visited alongside Tek, though his distaste for the ritual sacrifices of human beings was clearly evident. Fortunately, no such events were scheduled. ""Are you alright, Lord Torren-Wraeth?"" He knew better than to call him simply 'Torren' or 'Wraeth'. ""I'll be all right, Master Ho,"" Torren-Wraeth said with perfect Chinese courtesy, ""But I would be most grateful for a place to rest for a while."" Ho Fong smiled, ""Of course,"" he turned, ""Ping, take lord Torren-Wraeth to one of the guest areas and provide him with whatever refreshments he requires."" A youngish monk, dressed in the standard yellow and black silk, stepped forward and led Torren-Wraeth deeper into the monastery.
It was instantly obvious to Torren-Wraeth that Ping was not Chinese, at least, not in the ethnic sense. He was one of the dreaded Tcho-Tcho people, descendants of toad-like creatures created by the Great Old One Chaugnar Faugn and human cultists. The Tcho-Tcho had an evil reputation, one well earned. The vast majority of them served the Great Old Ones, and many practiced cannibalism. There were exceptions, of course, not all Tcho-Tcho were evil or insane, but those individuals were usually outcasts, hated and sometimes even hunted by their own people. As they walked, Torren-Wraeth halted for a moment before an idol of carved black stone. It was well-crafted and incredibly detailed, lean muscled and lanky, wings extended, the webbed hands held palm up like a divine supplicant, the curving trunk-mouth lifted upward as if it were sounding a call. A call to Death itself, for this was Shugoran, The Herald of Death, worshiped and feared by the Tcho-Tcho people. Ping knelt reverently then hurried Torren-Wraeth into a nearby chamber.
The scent of Black Lotus was thick in the air as the monks shut the great copper door behind Tek. ""You really shouldn't smoke you know,"" he said casually, ""Terrible for the lungs..."" The Bloated Woman rose from her cushions, ""Only if you are a mortal, which I am not."" Tek smiled, then shed his semblance of humanity, becoming a writhing, shapeless mass of golden flesh, golden tentacles, golden eyes and pearly white fangs. ""What of our child?"" Several mouths spoke at once. The Goddess came closer with a grace unfitting such an obese creature. ""Nothing can harm our offspring."" ""How long, do you think?"" The Bloated Woman stopped, apparently this visit was for business, not pleasure. ""It is impossible to tell. I have born some children within days of conception, and others within centuries."" She sensed a slight jealous possessiveness on the part of the Hastur-Spawn, he wanted her as his sole mate, an amusing and archaic notion, not often seen in a True-Blood. The fact that he knew she had devoured most of the former lovers did not apparently assuage this unseemly feeling. ""I feel that this one will be born within a month or two..."" She grinned horribly with all five mouths, ""How has your father reacted?"" ""Our child will be welcome in Carcosa."" Hastur, in truth, was somewhat worried, fearing that the child would be another avatar of Nyarlathotep, that the Crawling Chaos would use the child as yet another form in which to manifest itself. In other words, he feared that Nyarlathotep would give birth to itself...
For all the vile practices that went on in the Monastery of The Bloated Woman, it was a beautiful place, richly decorated in jade and silver, gold and silk. Yellow and black, every strand of silk in the monastery was either yellow or black. The yellow made for a much friendlier environment than the dark, ominous stones of R'Lyeh. The Goddess favored those colors, for some reason. Torren-Wraeth remembered something Goro had once said. Among his people and several other Asian cultures, yellow was the color of mourning. Black meant death and mourning in the West, yellow filled that role in the East. Was it intentional? Probably, but he was a guest, and it would be rude to question his hosts. He changed from his slightly charred clothing into the yellow and black robes that had been kindly provided him and stepped out into the hallway. There he saw Ping once again kneeling before Shugoran.
","A smile lit Goro's dark face. He looked down at the elegant dark blue kimono in his arms. ""It's beautiful."" Torren-Wraeth smiled in return, he loved to see Goro smile. ""It belongs to you, Goro-chan."" ""But, this is too..."" ""You deserve it far more than any pampered noble."" The dark-skinned youth blushed. ""Thank you, Torren-kun!"" As Goro dressed, Torren-Wraeth looked at his own kimono, bright red and fashionable. He had worried about attracting undue attention with the appearance of wealth, but he decided that he was strong enough to risk any human robber or thief. Besides, this was to be their first trip to the Kabuki theater. It had taken enough time and effort to make himself appear human, he might as well show off. He looked up at Goro, partly dressed and excitedly pulling himself together. He thought of the men who had abused him, and felt a twitch of rage... Goro must never find out what Torren-Wraeth had done to those men. He did not want Goro to ever even hear the name Y'Golonac, much less learn what he was, how he dealt with his victims. Torren-Wraeth loathed Y'Golonac, the Defiler, the Obscenity, the obese, headless god of depravity, who devoured his victims slowly with the mouths in the palms of his flabby, groping hands. But he had to avenge Goro, he had to make them pay for using him, for torturing him, for robbing him of his childhood and his innocence. Only Y'Golonac could grant the punishment those men deserved... Then Goro was standing there, smiling, in his blue kimono, and Torren-Wraeth was happy again...
Torren-Wraeth awoke slowly, not wanting to leave his dream, because Goro still lived in his dreams... He was in China, not Japan, in the Monastery of The Order of The Bloated Woman. Japan was gone, Goro was gone, and Torren-Wraeth was still here. Warm tears ran down his cheeks, but he brushed them away. Life had to go on, and on, and on...
Great Cthulhu was concerned. Hastur seemed to have gained some favor in Nyarlathotep's many eyes, and anything that benefited Hastur weakened Cthulhu, in both their eyes. ""My Lord Cthulhu, there is no need for concern,"" The tall, red-robed figure that stood at the side of Cthulhu's throne moved forward respectfully, Chxixsas' bone-white face seemed to swim within his voluminous robes, ""It is well known that the fruits of Nyarlathotep's attentions are rarely to be desired."" The voice was thin, hollow, distant, "" This may prove, in fact, a setback for The King in Tatters. Even now he trembles in his palace at Carcosa, fearing what manner of spawn this union may unleash."" Cthulhu gave the equivalent of a laugh, ""Can you picture them, The Black Wind knocking down the walls of Carcosa, the Bloody Tongue crushing that cursed palace into dust! Oh, one can dream, Chxixsas... One can dream...""
The two masks, the Golden Angel and the Slender Maiden stood side by side, Isn't it all a lie, in the end? Torren-Wraeth bowed politely before the Bloated Woman. She was holding the Black Fan under her eyes, giving the illusion that she was a slender young lady, at least to the humans present. Ho Fong stood by reverently, but his jealousy of Tek was as strong as ever. Torren-Wraeth wondered if The Bloated Woman would play them against each other...He hoped not, for both their sake's. ""It is an honor to again have the presence of the Son of Cthulhu in my humble monastery."" ""The honor is all mine,"" Torren-Wraeth replied softly, ""My father sends his greetings and good-will toward you, My Lady."" The Bloated Woman's nose-tendril curled delicately in the air, ""No doubt. Send him my good-will in return."" Torren-Wraeth couldn't help but look at the sacrificial altar, where human victims had their arms cut off by the sacred sickles, after which they bled to death. He shuddered slightly at the horrible images flashing through his mind. The Bloated Woman noted this, but politely made no mention of it. Torren-Wraeth honestly could not condemn her, almost all of the worshiped entities, including his own father, demanded human sacrifice, many in even more horrible ways... ""I regret that I have to leave so soon, though I am grateful for your hospitality."" The last part, at least, was true. ""May The Key and The Gate be with you.""
",True
"In 2050 an ill-conceived invasion of earth was launched by the Kalkars, a human-like, if excessively tall, race from a world called Va-Nah. They were led by a petty dictator called Orthis. It was spectacularly unspectacular, just another failed attempt to subjugate pre-cataclysmic humanity. However, it is notable for the reason that they had brought with them one thousand Va-gas, a lavender-hued slave race of quadrupeds with human-like faces and front limbs that doubled as arms. Not particularly intelligent at this stage of their development, the Va-gas were violent and cannibalistic, (Due in part to a lack of available food on Va-Nah) even preferring Va-gas flesh over that of other races. Fierce fighters with great strength, they also bred rapidly, making them very useful to their masters, since, as well as serving as soldiers, they also served as food for their brutal masters. The Kalkars, though arguably more intelligent than the Va-gas, were even worse. They (The Kalkars) grew fat, lazy and complacent, still, for over 200 years they managed to 'rule' earth, mainly through dumb luck and petty cruelty. Unlike H.G. Wells' luckless Martian invaders in War of the Worlds, the Kalkars could survive (And breed) quite well in earth's atmosphere.
Torren-Wraeth played no part in the earth-Va-Nah war, Goro had died in 2042 and the youth was lost in his own private agonies and recriminations. The Great Old Ones and Outer Gods mostly stood by on the sidelines, it did not concern them whether earth was ruled by humans or Kalkars, in the end, earth belonged to them. They felt the Va-gas had potential as servants, but the Kalkars were fairly useless to them. So the war was fought, mortal against mortal, bloody and cruel as all wars are. Orthis died early in the war, but it was a costly victory, for the human leader had perished with him. For every human victory, there was a terrible loss, Mankind was thrust into loose fifedoms and petty kingdoms in what the scholars call, The Second Dark Age, and the Kalkar's Empire reigned supreme. But, as with all empires, they faltered... The conquerers degenerated, forgetting the technology of their ancestors. Eventually humanity rose up and all but wiped them out with little more than swords and knives. Inter-species breeding and The Great Arising had, apparently, finished the job.
The Va-gas, being even less human-like and therefore more easily despised, were nearly wiped out as well, but they had won the favor of various powerful entities who rescued and found uses for them, particularly Shub-Niggurath. Torren-Wraeth had protected a small tribe of Va-gas as well, leaving them to protect his personal sanctuary, an abandoned shrine to Tsathoggua in Canada. It was here that he kept his most valued possessions and important artifacts. Many of Goro's belongings were housed within the temple, as were priceless treasures rescued from oblivion during the Great Arising. Paintings, statues, books... The history of humanity protected by descendants of alien invaders within a temple to an alien god. The Toad God himself allowed the use of his sanctuary for this purpose, as he was both Torren-Wraeth's great-uncle and too lazy and indifferent to truly care.
The Va-gas had become more intelligent over the centuries, and those associated with Torren-Wraeth were far less vicious than their ancestors. They even lived in a sort of uneasy peace with the nearby human tribes, by human terms, they had been 'civilized'. Once again, Torren-Wraeth wondered if it was right to impose human standards on non-human beings: Weren't they better off, not killing and eating each other? Weren't the local humans safer now? Hadn't he helped them? Isn't that what the colonialists he so hated always said? It was too late to wonder about that now...
Torren-Wraeth had visited Va-Nah once, and only once, it was worse than R'Lyeh, worse than Tond, even. Even in it's current state, earth was a far better place to live than that wretched hell-hole.
Torren-Wraeth glided over the burgeoning town of New Yokohama, set up by Japanese refugees he'd managed to ferry safely to Canada. It was named after Goro's hometown, though few knew of Torren-Wraeth's prior dealings with Japan, the Emperor and Shoguns had hushed everything up. Great Cthulhu, through Torren-Wraeth, had offered to make the Japanese Empire the greatest in the world, but they had refused. They could not accept one of the terms of the agreement, they could never bear the 'dishonor' of mixing their blood with Gyo-Jin. They had no idea that some of their people were already involved with the Gyo-Jin, as were people in coastal areas all over the world...and Torren-Wraeth had not enlightened them. People looked up and waved, Torren-Wraeth was well-liked in New Yokohama, as he had saved the original founders from certain death.
The Va-gas' settlement, Black-Stone-Place, was primitive, huts of wood and stone arraigned in a semi-circle around the black stone temple. Va-gas usually dwelled in Tepee-like structures, but these were 'settled', as guardians of the temple, they naturally remained in it's vicinity. They even had a rude form of agriculture, though this was mainly for animal feed, as Va-gas vastly preferred meat over vegetables. They raised some pigs and horses for convenient food, but they were mainly hunters, deer, wild hogs, wild horses, and moose were abundant. They, like most Va-gas on earth, worshiped The Black Goat of The Woods With A Thousand Young, and a shrine of antlers and bone lay at the apex of the crescent shaped village. It was here that the Goat's Dark Young came to collect their sacrifices and accept their worship, for the Dark Young were Shub-Niggurath's proxies, as Torren-Wraeth was Cthulhu's.
The Va-gas chieftain, Walks-With-The-Wind, met Torren-Wraeth as he landed. He stood upright on his hind limbs, and extended a three-digited paw in greeting. ""Welcome back. May The Mother of All bless you."" His black hair was beginning to gray, but his grip was strong. ""And may she bless you, my friend."" Torren-Wraeth replied, ""How's hunting?"" A small crowd of Va-gas of various sizes and ages gathered around the Half-Spawn, ""The Mother has granted us abundance."" ""I'm glad to hear it. Any problems with the humans?"" Walks-With-The-Wind paused thoughtfully, ""No, humans rarely come, and none enter the temple."" ""The guardian must be lonely."" Of course, the guardian was never lonely, even if it did not have twelve heads to keep itself company, it lacked such mortal attributes as loneliness and boredom, but it possessed the key that made it an invaluable guardian, loyalty. At the mention of the guardian, the Va-gas drew back as one, they feared it, that terrible 'spirit' with twelve heads on long, scraggly necks and twenty legs on it's globular body. It had not been his intention to frighten the superstitious Va-gas, but he had. ""I'm going to visit the temple. Thank you for guarding it so well."" Torren-Wraeth smiled, and made his way through the parting creatures. They wouldn't set foot in the temple, they believed it to be filled with captive human souls from the Great Arising, despite Torren-Wraeth's assertions to the contrary.
The temple was of black stone, squat and rectangular, with massive stone doors.
Torren-Wraeth entered the temple.
","Rodrigo: (Laughing) ""'Horror'? You speak to me of 'horror'? I have seen things which would make the gods tremble!""
Massa di Requiem per Shuggay
Act II Scene IV
Benevento Chieti Bordighera
(Translated from the original Italian)
Torren-Wraeth hated being summoned. He hated human sacrifice even more. After all, his mother had been human, but he could not act against his father's wishes, nor those who had summoned him, at least, not directly. He was here merely to witness, to stand helpless as a life was taken.
The youth stood, tall and handsome, his striking Polynesian features offset by his green skin and six slender tendrils that lined his chin and jaw. He was in a house, surrounded by black-robed humans, cult artifacts and blazing braziers. A young man lay upon a stone table, bound, screaming. Torren-Wraeth walked over to the table, regret in his glistening yellow eyes, ""I'm so sorry."" The man's bulging eyes stared past him, followed two of the cultists as they moved toward a spot near the west wall of the basement/temple, strained with terror.
The worshipers began to chant, and one among them called out in a loud voice, ""For the glory of Great Cthulhu, we offer this one to The Beast Below!""
""My father does not need sacrifices..."" Torren-Wraeth said loudly. That was true, to a point. His father did not, in fact, need sacrifices, but he did desire them. Perhaps, he could save this one... But they ignored him. He watched as the men rolled back a large stone, revealing a dark hole beneath. Ghouls? Ghouls can be reasoned with, better than some humans... He frowned, spoke louder ""I said, my father...""
Then it hit him. A noxious smell poured forth through the opening, gagging him. It was not the familiar, moldy corpse smell of ghouls, but something bizarre, like ammonia and drying blood... And there was something else, something far, far worse. Voices. Many voices. Laughing madly, weeping, screaming. Screaming such as Torren-Wraeth had never heard in his life; the horrific, hopeless shrieking of the damned.
He unconsciously backed away as a huge form slithered slowly from the deepest region of the pit. Torren-Wraeth nearly vomited at the sight. It was similar in shape to a worm, blood-colored and slimy, but that was not the true horror of the thing, it was it's faces... A grinning, evil human face peered from the anterior of the beast, but dozens of other anguished, maddened human faces protruded at random from it's hideous form. Their eyes reflected unspeakable torment, madness, and a longing for the release of death. Some babbled or laughed senselessly, others begged for death or wept, or just screamed... So many faces, so much unholy suffering. It turned toward the sacrificial table and it's occupant.
At the sight the victim screamed in utter terror, but his voice was drowned out by the many voices of the thing. Torren-Wraeth had heard of such things, but had not believed, had hoped that they did not exist.
The Chakota.
An abomination which absorbed it's victims, body and mind, leaving it's unfortunate prey trapped within it's hateful body, aware but helpless. The first head, the mind of the beast, was the cultist who had willingly created it, literally became the beast, the others the miserable wretches it had absorbed over the years.
Torren-Wraeth's body turned pale yellow with horror. He had seen so much evil and cruelty in his life, but this, this was vile beyond all reason. The Binding broke with his terror. He was free to act.
His reaction was instinctive, human.
He screamed, grabbed the nearest brazier, and struck at the beast with it.
The Chakota itself screamed as the coals and flames struck it's slimy flesh, and it was alight. Torren-Wraeth struck at it again and again, scattering flaming coal across the room, igniting tapestries and furnishings. More braziers were knocked over by the beast's own struggles and the cultists scrambling for the stairs. The stone floor grew hot, and the walls caught fire. The Chakota turned to flee toward it's hole, towards cool, dark safety, but Torren-Wraeth drove the broken brazier through it like a stake, pinning it in place. There was no escape.
The flames danced across the stones.
As the fire raged around him, Torren-Wraeth turned to the sacrificial victim, intending to free him, but a quick glance revealed that the man was dead, his face contorted in terror. He had died of fear.
In some ways, he was lucky. He wondered how many of the cultists had died in the fire, and had the brief, dark feeling that they 'deserved it'. He pushed it from his mind.
He turned his attention back to the Chakota.
The beast writhed in agony. The screams grew louder, shriller, while, from some of the faces trapped within the beast, came shouts of joy and thanksgiving. Facing the flames was preferable to living within the beast...
Though it was obscured by smoke and flames, Torren-Wraeth watched as the Chakota quickly shriveled and blackened, withered like a worm on a hot sidewalk.
Then, there were only ashes.
The fire was spreading too quickly, the heat was intense, he had to leave or risk injury himself. Torren-Wraeth teleported away, leaving the cleansing fire to it's work.
He returned home. Not R'Lyeh, but Rapa Nui, which the white men called 'Easter Island'.
He threw up, then wept...
Later,
Torren-Wraeth stood within an ancient quarry, partially carved Moai bearing mute witness to his words. ""No more! No more human sacrifices!"" He shouted at the top of his lungs. He didn't care about the consequences. He had ignored his conscience, his honor for too long.
""You go where you are summoned!"" Great Cthulhu's telepathic voice, calling out from his body in R'Lyeh, registered rage at this defiance.
""Never again!"" Torren-Wraeth's voice was firm. He was ashamed that he had ever been party to such a thing, and he refused to do so again. His skin was blotched with conflicting emotion, ""You don't even need sacrifices, much less intelligent ones! I won't help you commit murder, not anymore!""
""Who are you to judge me!?""
Torren-Wraeth fell silent.
Great Cthulhu sighed, his child was becoming sentimental, rebellious. It was his mother's blood, it could not be helped. Ever since he had befriended that human, he had become more like them... Still, it was a small thing. ""Very well, Torren-Wraeth, from now on you will never represent me at a sentient sacrifice again.""
The boy knelt quickly, ""Thank you, father...""
""Do not thank me yet, I may ask something of you in return.""
And Torren-Wraeth knew without a doubt that he would.
",True
"Professors Schultz and his entire team had reunited the night their space probe The Nautilus, was floating towards a landmark, it has gone farther than any other space probe. Oh what wonderful things they would discover from that point onward. Each had their own ideals of what they would find and prove that there might be more than what others in their field so strongly believed.
For the deeply religious young man, Geralds, who entered the program through luck and his computer skills at twenty-four, he thought that they would find God.
Schultz mocked such an idea. He and the majority of the team believed that such more galaxies would be found, hopefully they would include inhabited planets that they could attempt to contact.
But one amongst them was nervous. George Sunderland, an old resident of Portland Rhode Island, he was an astro-nut like the rest of them, but on the side, it was revealed some time after their project jettisoned into space, that during down times in one field, he worked in another. And his other, strange field was the occult.
""Fhtagn,"" He breathed under his breath. ""Fhtagn, fhtagn, fhtagn.""
He chanted, hoping that it would protect him. Granted, he reminded himself prior to this that The Nautilus did not go between Hydra and Argo Navis, but the thought still scared him.
On the machines before them, it showed exactly where it was. When it reached the landmark, were there cheers, the sounds of champagne popping, and congratulations were shared once more.
On the large monitors before them, stars were few and far in between that it was as if they were traveling away from them and not moving towards anymore after them.
Geralds was the first to point this out. He was also the first to see the mult-colored aurora that one would never expect to see in space.
""It's like the surface of a bubble,"" Andrea, second oldest member to Schultz stated.
Schultz scoffed and was beginning his rant against her, when The Nautilus floated past the aurora and found darkness. A void darker than space itself, yet just light enough due to iridescent orbs that floated in a semi-orderly orbital around an unknown object.
""What is this place?"" Andrea asked.
""Not what, Andrea,"" A voice grated through nowhere. ""But who?""
A giant glowing bubble appeared before the camera. Geralds stood up, overjoyed; he exclaimed his love for God and happiness at finding him. But the grating voice merely chuckled.
""No, Geralds,"" It said, sounding like a six year old and twenty year old and sixty year old man speaking together. ""Not God; at least, not your Christian god. I am, and Sunderland will confirm this,"" The man shivered at his name. ""Yog-Sothoth; past, present, future…Time itself, is all within me.""
""But what is this?"" Andrea asked.
""This is me."" The multi-layered voice said. ""What you see is a form of mine. The Gate; right Sunderland.""
All eyes turned to their cowering companion. With a few inhales of the nose, he nodded, a whimper escaping him.
""And within each bubble is a plain; a piece of the bigger picture.""
""And what's that?"" Schultz asked.
""That your universe; your world; your reality is expanding and shrinking in what-for your mental stability-we'll say random order.""
""Preposterous!"" Schultz snapped.
Yog-Sothoth chuckled, the intertwined voices sounding exotic over the speakers. It was not malignant-it sounded good natured compared to what Sunderland had expected.
""You see those two bubbles sticking together?""
No one spoke, but there was a sense that there did not have to be. That he could see them as well as hear them. Unsettling though it was, the information presented to them was to the same effect. Poor Sunderland seemed to have already cracked under the circumstances; cowering under a desk.
""They are other universes. Other galaxies; some inhabited, some not. But when they intertwine like that, the barrier of the bubble fades, allowing them to seemingly overlap. Like a continuation of itself. Your own has done so with many of them and has been one of a few to be graced with the central hub, so to speak.""
Schultz was finding this hard to swallow. Being a man of science; something like this was a freak accident not hard fact…Until now, since it was 'staring' them in the face. Leaving skepticism behind; he found infinite possibilities. Keeping his mind wide open seemed to help a little, though. After all, science was still discovering new things almost everyday.
""What's in the central hub?"" Geralds asked.
""R'lyeh,"" Came the instant reply.
At that, Sunderland let out a scream. No one paid him any mind, though, for they were, for a brief second that in the scheme of things that could be said that it did not happen, overcome with primal urges and long lost images transmitted thousands upon thousands of generations before themselves.
""Sunderland,"" Yog-Sothoth said. ""Do not be frightened. Nothing can hurt you right now.""
Sunderland laughed long and hard. Everyone became uneasy except their translucent, shining friend.
""'Right now' he says."" Sunderland cracked up, stuttering phrases together in a jumble of unheard sentences.
""If you wish to know more, Schultz, may I ask that you turn The Nautilus in that direction."" The bubble seemed to turn to the right. ""There's someone who will do a better job at explaining things in a-and don't be offended by this-leman's terms.""
Goaded on by what the bubble said, the satellite took off to the right. Everyone but Sunderland waited in bated breath at the edge of their seat. Then an insane, cacophonous symphony of flutes was heard.
Sunderland snapped out of his babbling mess and stood abruptly, dashing towards Schultz.
""We have to stop this!""
""We can't,"" Geralds began.
""The Nautilus moves according to projection, we didn't have the financial ability to control it back when we made it."" Andrea finished.
Sunderland made a warrior cry as he ran towards the screen. He beat at it, breaking it in places, but the image still shown through.
""No! No! No!"" He said between beatings. But the image never disappeared, but was, thankfully, distorted.
There came a sound of bumping into something beneath the louder cacophony flutes. Sunderland saw an eye open. An eye that was never supposed to open. The Nautilus turned away due to impact, but the damage was done. Sunderland was in a fit of hysterics, writhing on the floor, laughing as his mouth foamed.
He looked into the eye of chaos and it stared back with a mind blowing intensity. The distorted image shown next was of bubbles stacking upon themselves and became a vertical line orbiting around the central hub. But they popped.
The media was in a frenzy. Children were amazed at seeing real life Pokémon in their back yard. Three teens who broke down in the middle of nowhere found a camp that was not there before and were killed by a man in a hockey mask. Teens who lived on Elm Street started to die in their dreams. A couple were eaten by a giant white worm in Perfection, Nevada. Reports of Batman fighting the Joker were rampant in New York. In Louisiana, there was a report of a man covered in moss and roots walking in the swamp.
In London, there were sightings of a man in a Guy Fawkes mask walking around in shadows and on roofs.
In the Middle East there were reports of Orcs raiding caves.(1) But Japan had gotten it worst. Godzilla attacks, a strange yet beautiful rider on a mechanical horse, an orange clad ninja, and giant robot fights became an everyday event.
""The world as we knew it is gone!"" Sunderland screamed in his padded cell in Arkham Asylum. ""It popped! Just like a bubble!""
","In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative. It is an unfortunate fact that the men who watch over me in this infernal building are too limited by their mental vision to weigh with patience and intelligence isolated phenomena such as that which I have experienced. All of the men, that is, with the exception of one, a Mister Slater, to whom I have related my story, and who has agreed to have it published. Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal; that all things appear as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental media through which we are made conscious of them.
My name is Eldritch Fenton, and my tale is begins in the forest with my friend Joseph and a person named Riley Marsh, whom I had long believed to be a young girl. I had been infatuated with the pale-skin, brown-eyed, and raven-haired girl for around a full year now. Of course, so had my friend Joseph, for an almost equal period of time. We were riding our bikes through the lush woods under a gray sky one September afternoon when I turned around to notice Riley's sudden absence. We called for her in this part of the forest, hitherto unknown to us, but could not locate the girl.
After just around half an hour, me and Joseph happened upon a terrible discovery. Buried in the side of a cliff on the opposite side of a lake was a large metal construct, that I would later discover was built by no earthen hands, with no earthen tools, of no earthen material, for no earthen purpose. A rusted metal bridge extended from the construct across the pond. We foolishly entered.
Upon our entry, it was blatant by the sheer size of the stairwell, the height of what appeared o be computer consoles, and the mass of alien hieroglyphs littered on the walls and ceiling that this ship, as I had determined it to be, was not designed for use by human beings. A colossal cylinder stood in the center of the chamber, a strange energy, almost alive, emanating from it.
My mind exploded suddenly. I could feel the presence of many slumbering creatures throughout the ancient vessel. Our unwanted presence in a piece of their world had disturbed them from their dreams. I could feel many more ship like this one, older than the planet Earth itself, scattered over this planet. I saw visions of terrible creatures unlike anything indigenous to our small, insignificant world. I saw worlds, in their entirety, populated by things of all forms, and of colors unknown to the eyes of man.
I hadn't noticed that my mental shock had caused me to collapse to the floor, or that Joseph had come to my aid. The small boy tried to lift me, but I had to do most of the work with my own strength. That's when Riley's beautiful, soft voice came into my mind.
Kill him, she said within my thoughts. Destroy him, and we can be together for the rest of time. Given the strain the ordeal had on my mind, and the appeal of the result, I happily took up a piece of rubble from the floor and obliged. His screams as I broke his bones barely seemed important until after the event had taken place. Even now, his death at my hands has little effect on me. Though a recent realization, I always remember having nothing for contempt for the boy whose life had just been dashed by the rock wielded by me.
The object of my affections appeared behind me. I turned to meet her beautiful face. It was perfectly as I remembered it, with the exception of here eyes, which had turned from an unremarkable brown to a majestic rose red. She touched my face and looked at the corpse on the cold, metal floor.
""Good. I never cared for him anyway."" She chuckled maliciously. Then something simultaneously thrilling and horrifying happened. A pair of lumps rose in the back of her shirt. A pair of octopi-like tentacles then extended from her back like wings and began touching the corpse tenderly. The tendrils split at their ends and covered the cold shell of a body completely for several seconds. She screamed and her color came to her once pale skin. The tentacles receded and Joseph's body was nowhere to be found.
""That was good, Eldritch."" She laughed girlishly. ""But I'm going to need more than that if you want to be with me forever."" She flipped her hair and waked away. I followed her.
That night my dreams were haunted by the same images I was struck with in the spacecraft. I saw monsters of flesh, metal, and energy on strange worlds never before seen by human beings. I saw myself taking the life of the little wretch Joseph over and over and over again. Mostly I saw the beautiful face of the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Our minds were connected now. I could feel her thoughts and see her sights. We communicated with each other throughout the night. It was the best surge of emotions I had ever experienced.
The following afternoon I had been out walking when I had taken my next life. Joseph's death had been in the papers that morning, as well as on the local news. Only Riley and I knew the truth, however. I thought about everything that happened yesterday when Butch Robertson, the local bully, turned from around a corner, pounding his right fist into his left hand.
""Well, well, well."" The mountainous boy said. ""Look what we have here. I noticed there was no 'transaction' at lunch today. Why is that? Am I not good enough to deserve your payment? Hmm? Do I not deserve it? Well, then. I suppose we'll have to do this the hard way.""
He ran and swung at me. Feeling an uncontrollable urge to kill for my love again, I dodged out of the way and pushed him down the steep slope into a group of trees. He was still alive, though. He tried to stand up, but his leg appeared to be broken. He screamed and cursed at me from below, before he started trembling at the sight of two long, green tendrils. The appendages enveloped him and performed the same arcane process they performed on Joseph.
That was wonderful, Eldritch. But I still need a little more, love. She laughed cutely. I had to get more bodies for her. Otherwise she would stop loving me, and all of my hard work would have been in vain!
So I continued for a month. I preyed upon the small, the weak, the sick. I felt abominable for my actions. But the importance of the lives of these animals did not concern me as much as the welfare of Riley, or Y'gttha'a , as I learned her true name to be on her home world. She needed me to kill for the meaningless animals for her, and I was more than happy to oblige.
She also gave me a book. It was a strange book. The Necronomicon. She said it was by a man named Abdul Alhazred a long time ago. Though I could not at first, my present state has rendered me able to translate it's arcane symbols and language. It contains mention of the ""Old Ones,"" the species to which Riley belonged. They had been here a very long time. And I was helping them reawaken by feeding Riley. She promised I would be spared when they were at full power, and I would be kept as her husband.
But then that night came. I was out gathering more food for Riley. The town was in total panic now, but it didn't matter to me. It was late when I arrived at my empty, silent house. As soon as I heard my dog whimpering, a ghastly thought occurred to me. I ran into my room to find Riley's tentacles retracting. Her skin was now healthy looking, and her eyes were now a vibrant but terrible blood red. Two reptilian wings sprouted from her back and her now more numerous tendrils hung freely. I stared in terror at her, almost at tears.
""Aw, come on! I was hungry! Please forgive me? I love you!"" She pleaded. I ran. I ran to the only place I knew where to run.
I reached the extraterrestrial ship in about a half an hour. I climbed the massive steps. I could feel Riley behind me, flying with her newly rediscovered wings. Acting quickly, I took up a piece of rubble larger than the one I took Joseph's life with. I couldn't reach the computer consoles, but I began to destroy the lower parts of the machines. I heard creatures begin to awaken and crawl through the vents. The energy from the large cylinder in the chamber surged. It beckoned for me to see what was inside. When enough damage was done to the machines, and I could feel Riley nearing me, I walked to the cylinder and stared upward. It opened, almost as if on it's own, and revealed it's secrets to me.
What I saw was so unimaginably, unequivocally horrifying, I cannot bring myself to describe it thoroughly. It challenged my perception of everything. My knowledge was refuted. My idea of right and wrong was destroyed. All I knew was that we mean nothing to the universe, we earthlings. And the eyes! Oh, dear God! The eyes!
I awoke later, strangely unscathed, in the wreckage of the ship. It had been obliterated. Destroyed, in a great breath of fire. I was collected by the local police and the ship was searched by military units in green armor. I was shipped to an asylum near Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachutesetts. Here, Mr. Slater has agreed to write down my story. I leave you with this knowledge. The old ones are real. Riley, Y'gttha'a, is still killing people. I still feel her. She still begs me to come help her. But the strangest part is, in some deep, dark part of my mind, that I dare not visit…
…I still love her.
",False
"An autumnal chill descended upon the streets of Glaston as the young man walked upon the concrete sidewalk, passing redbrick storefronts and shop windows, every surface still wet with the morning rain. Leaves, red and orange and each vibrant in their hue, were shaken loose from the trees lining the street by the wind, landing wherever they fell. For an instant in time, the spectacle of the leaves drew the attention of the man, in fact little more than a teenage boy, as he made his way toward the corner. However, Joseph Clayton, clad in bluejeans and jacket with a backpack slung from his shoulders, had far more important things to focus on than a show of falling leaves. An important test for this semester was arriving in a week or so and he needed to study.
Also, he was getting quite hungry this close to lunch.
As Joseph rounded the corner and continued toward his favorite eatery, he wondered if he would get swamped in the usual lunch crowd. However, as he saw the front of the Leng Trinh Restaurant, his thoughts turned to quiet dejection.
""Damnit!"" muttered Joseph as he approached the eatery. The reason for this turn in mood was the carpet of tempered glass fragments on the sidewalk below the picture window at the front of the establishment, which was now covered by plastic sheeting. Thuch Van Trinh, one half of the husband-and-wife ownership, was wearing a plaid jacket over his apron and usual cooking clothes and was shoveling the broken glass into a bucket. ""Hey, Mr. Trinh, how's it going?"". Joseph asked with a smile. This was more false cheer than anything, as Joseph could guess how Thuch must be feeling: anger was always a popular choice, followed closely by worry about the reason why.
Despite what he must have been feeling, Thuch Van Trinh grinned back, the black lines of his facial tattooing creasing as the muscles moved under his cheeks. ""Not so good, Mr. Clayton. If this keeps up, I may have to put in Plexiglas so that the window won't break."" The Trinhs accents, as his parents and the other adults of the town told it, had been rather strong (even unusually so) when they had immigrated to Glaston from their first home in Boston. This had usually been waved off by their purported origins in the remote hills on the Vietnam-Laos border, seemingly collaborated by how their teeth had been dyed black. On the other hand, given their rural roots, their speed in adapting local speech patterns so that they now sounded more like second generation Americans (and especially their daughter's complete lack of any accent except the local standard) did make for a puzzling situation. However, for their ease of assimilation and the food they served, they had become well-liked in the community.
So why were things like this happening to them recently? ""How many times does this make this month; two, three?"" Joseph had to ask this, wondering if things were worse than he thought.
""It's happened three times already, this time not more than an hour ago. Thanh wants to install security cameras to watch the place and with how small and cheap they are now, I think we just might."" An hour ago? They'd smashed a picture window in broad daylight? Who in town could be that stupid or that angry? Josephs train of thought was broken then, when Thuch said something of much more interest to the younger man. ""By the way, if you're looking for Marie, she's helping her mother in the kitchen. Even without a window we seem to be doing good business."" Thuch went back to his work and Joseph, not wanting to delay any longer, entered the restaurant.
Just as Thuch had said, Leng Trinh still had it's usual busy lunchtime crowd, albeit one that was concentrated near the back wall. Picking his way around tables packed with diners, Joseph finally arrived at a table set for two, a 'reserved' sign upon it. Removing his backpack and laying it beside a chair, he sat down, shuffled off his coat and went to bury his nose in the menu.
It always felt a bit odd to Joseph, eating in an ethnic restaurant where none of the diners were the same ethnicity as the cooks, or even from the same part of the world. However, none of it mattered when the food was as good as it was here.
""Now then, what would a fine, upstanding New England boy like yourself want in a place like this?"" The voice that asked this was soft, amused, female and had an almost mocking tone. It also had the accent of the New England uplands. To Joseph, it could only be one person.
""The same thing I always get here."" He answered dryly before looking up from the menu. There, holding a pad of paper and a pen, was teenage girl with almond-shaped eyes, shoulder length black hair with green streaks, a cooking apron and an amused grin. ""Hi Marie... you sure your mom's alright with you waitressing this crowd?""
""We've got enough help in the kitchen already and Dad's coming in after all the glass is cleaned up."" She glanced up at the window, plastic sheet and all, after she wrote his order down. ""I just wish we knew who was doing this. If we don't get someone else to cough up some money, our insurance company might go sour on us."" Marie went back to the kitchen to get the food for both of them.
Ten minutes later, she was laying out two place settings of food that had been prepared ahead of time. ""Alright, that's two plates of grilled pork on beds of Leng-style rice, your dish of steamed green beans with soy sauce for dipping, my bowl of soup and two cans of soda."" They'd eat lunch before studying, with Joseph paying the tab for both of them.
If anyone asked, it wasn't a date. Not in the strictest sense, anyway.
""What, no bak bon dzhow?"" Asked Joseph, decidedly disappointed at the apparent lack of the special ingredient.
To this, Marie moved a small earthen bowl from the serving tray onto the table and lifted the lid to reveal a thick gray sauce containing mushrooms and cracked black pepper. ""Would I be one to deny you the gravy of the gods?"" She asked (rhetorically) with a soft smile; Joseph couldn't help but smile back as he cracked the tab on his soda and began on his green beans.
A bit later, when his beans were gone and Marie had almost finished her soup, Joesph began formulating a question that related to a curious thought that had sprung up earlier. ""Not to sound like a nag or anything, but I'm just curious but what was all that 'upstanding' stuff about?"" The only time he had ever heard anyone talk like that was...
Oh God...
Marie swallowed the last bits of her soup. ""Oh, I don't know. Maybe It's that I had no idea that the son of insurance brokers had such deep and aristocratic roots? Maybe it's that I was surprised to find out that the Clayton's had come not from hardy New England farming stock as I had assumed, but from the urbane, wealthy ranks of those grand Brahmins of Boston? I'm sure Granny Cora could tell some fascinating stories about the old days; she sure seemed interested in mine."" If anything, Marie took the entire thing in stride, treating both the memory of the experience and the experience itself with a a great deal of interested amusement. Certainly, mocking the type of language she had encountered was almost cracking her up.
Joseph, on the other hand, had first felt bemusement at the scene in which the Clayton family reunion of the past summer had found itself, quickly turning into outright embarrassment. ""Look, I'm sorry that I didn't tell you about her, but everybody thought that she wouldn't be able to come due to health concerns. It's not my fault that a half-senile, 97 year old woman worked up enough stubbornness to drag her nurse halfway across the state!"".
""I never said anything about anyone being at fault. I just thought it was an interesting revelation about your family."" She had meant her cajoling in good humour, but Josephs defensiveness and embarrassment were never good emotions to bring out. ""Anyway, most people would be proud to have the Boston gentry in their family history: industrialists, merchants, art, culture, philanthropy, charity..."" With every word, Marie spooned a bit of ban boc dzhow onto her grilled pork.
""As well as whaling, slave trading, opium smuggling, snobbery and having your entire life guided by the expectations of your peers; exactly the sorts of things my parents taught me to loathe. The thing is, my great-great-grandmother came from a very select, very privileged and lily-white background; I was worried that she'd... well, react oddly to you."" Joseph retorted as he began spooning (or rather, pouring) the sauce onto his meat after Marie had finished with it and passed it to him. In the case of Cora Clayton (nee Coffin), Josephs fear hadn't primarily been that she would find Marie objectionable on account of her race since that prejudice had been more ingrained in her parents generation than hers. His fear had instead been that his great great grandmother, as self-proclaimed guardian of the old, aristocratic traditions, might object to their relationship because the Trinhs were restaurateurs with no history of pedigree, education or money behind them.
In Cora's world (the 1920s, where her mind was half the time), heirs had married heiresses, families had coordinated their fortunes and everyone had kept an eye on everyone else; these were rules of decorum that had lasted for her long after the Claytons had gone bust in the great Crash of '29. The fact that she had taken Joseph aside and explained her concerns to him had done nothing to soothe his embarrassment, although he had finally convinced her that, being naturalized citizens with a successful restaurant, the Trinhs were firmly in the middling classes. She had also estimated that said restaurant, with no other inheritors besides Marie, would most likely pass into Clayton hands in the fullness of time.
No one had dared explain to her the differences between modern teenage dating and the genteel courtships of her youth.
""I don't think she reacted that oddly. Sure, she was so out of date that you had to explain that I meant 'French Indochina' when I said that my parents came from Vietnam and she did seem a bit too fascinated with my families origins and, alright, it was weird hearing someone actually use the word 'courting' without trying to be funny. However, it was kind of nice to speak French with someone in this town after all the time my parents invested in me learning it."" Marie knew that while it had been terrifying for Joseph, having to put up with his relatives dissection of his relationship and fearing disapproval, she herself had enjoyed a chance to see if the old stereotypes were true. When it had become clear to Marie that the elderly woman was not about to spew racial epitaphs at her but was, indeed, fascinated as to her families background, Marie had made it a point to 'ham it up' in telling their story.
To an entranced Cora Clayton, Marie had described her parents lives before emigration as a subsistence existence in a village high up in the fog-choked mountain passes. She had woven scenes of her people worshiping strange, heathen gods far from the civilized lands of the Buddha and partaking in ghastly rituals to ensure harvests of rice from narrow mountainside terraces. She told the old woman that her parents had tired of such a life and had dreamed of something more, something in the wider world glimpsed in third-hand magazines and radio broadcasts.
After receiving a dispensation from their village shaman to leave (but promising to sent back remittances), they had made their way to Hanoi and then to Boston and finally to Glaston where, having never truly given up the more religious and symbolic aspects of their heathenish past, they nevertheless had made good names for themselves in the community. Marie had made sure that her prose had been both lurid and exotic so as to fully entrance a child of the Age of Empire as well as making proper use of tone, whether enraptured, casual or deathly serious, to emphasize mood. The end result was to make it sound as if her culture wasn't just some rural outlet of modern Vietnam or Laos, but as if it was truly unlike any other in the world.
That was an opinion that Joseph was also rapidly adopting.
They ate in relative silence for a while, the bustle of the lunch crowd beginning to die down as people left, many of them stopping to talk to Mr. Trinh at the till, expressing their concern over what had happened with the window. They were just about half done when Joseph began another conversation. ""So, did you know that there's a 'Heritage Day' coming up at school in a few weeks?""
""Yeah, and?"" Deep down in her gut, Marie was beginning to get a slightly worried feeling from the direction this conversation was going. This pretty much happened whenever the subject of her parent's past came up but, like so many times before, she could probably bluff her way through it.
""I thought that, maybe, we could do something for it. I was thinking about dredging up something from Normandy because I didn't want to clog up the schedule with another variation of British regional culture."" It sounded perfectly innocent, but Marie knew that this was a potentially tricky situation that might require misdirection, a convincing excuse and possible outright lying.
She hated lying to Joseph.
""Alright then. You can do that, I'll do the Vietnamese thing and we'll knock 'em all dead."" She answered with an enthusiasm that she hoped had betrayed nothing of her growing unease with the conversation. This seemed to provoke nothing but a non-committal murmur of agreement and thus, thinking that that was over with, she began eating again.
However, that was not the end of it.
""By Vietnamese, do you mean the standard culture from around Hanoi... or the culture from your parent's home village?"" Joseph asked, seemingly as if only for the purpose of clarification. There was much more behind it though, and whether it was just ingrained paranoia or any real danger of exposure, Marie knew that this was entering onto some very tenuous and potentially very dangerous ground. Still, the subject had to be breached.
""Aren't they pretty much the same? I mean, sure, it was pretty rural back there, but whether village or city, we were all Viet: same language, same culture, same blood, same... pretty much everything, when you think about it."" As denials went, this one wasn't half bad: sincere enough to be taken seriously and with enough internal logic that it wouldn't fall apart immediately in the face of the mildly educated mind.
On this subject, however, Joseph had become rather more than merely mildly educated. He had observed things for a long time: a lot of little things and one or two big things for the most part. And he, after long deliberation and study, had discovered that some of those things just didn't match up.
""You know, there was a time when I could believe that. But... there are just too many deviations to discount."" Joesph stopped eating all together, putting down his fork and looking his girlfriend straight in the eyes before closing and opening them again, as if to rally his thoughts. ""The food, for one thing, isn't like any kind of Vietnamese food I've read about. Yes, you have the side dishes but that's about it for similarity. Second, your parent's tattoos. Again, unlike any other group in Southeast Asia; the closest matches I could find were incised lines on bronze figurines from over two thousand years ago.""
He stopped again. ""And then there's the language you guys speak. I'm fairly sure it's in the Mon-Khmer group, but I've been doing some research and... honestly, I've seen words on this menu that I've never been able to find in any other source. And I'm not the only one who's noticed these things."" Joesph saw panic flash across Marie's eyes, though she tried to hide it. ""Most people don't pay attention and honestly don't care, and the ones who do notice just assume that you guys are either Hmong or some little minority that no-one's ever heard of... but even that doesn't match very well either. It's like you said, you're Viet... but what about all this other stuff?""
It was then that Marie could have ended it all: the doubts, the questions, the lingering curiosity... as well as twenty one centuries of secrecy, tradition and very likely her relationship with this young man. In the end, she decided to dodge again. ""What can I say? We were very rural."" When Joesph just got this frustrated look on his face, Marie sighed, reached across the table and enveloped one of his hands with hers. ""Look, I'll try and dredge something up if I can, but I can't promise anything, okay?""
Joseph mulled on this lack of answers, but as the moment dragged on, his resistance wore down. ""Alright. If you don't want to talk about your culture, that's alright; lots of people come to America to get away from stuff. But I still am sorta curious."" Then he changed the subject. ""Anyway, after we eat, we should begin studying for our tests. Do you want to go over the English or the Algebra first?""
""We should do the Math first, then we can cool off with the Shakespeare. But we better not let the food get cold, what with how the sauce gets if allowed to sit for too long."" Marie began eating again and, after a few beats, Joseph resumed as well.
They stayed at that table for many hours, going over and revising their knowledge of maths and literature. However, already Marie wondered if there was something she could reveal, something that she could show about her parent's culture that would not threaten expose them and, as the old saying went among her tribe, 'get them cut in half and buried in two graves'.
Later that night, The Trinh's upstairs apartment
To Marie's relief, her parents reaction to her plan wasn't anger. On the other hand, fear and worry could be almost as painful.
""I know how you feel about the Clayton boy. He's well-liked, intelligent and his parents are our insurance agents."" Thanh Thi Trinh began, speaking in her families particular dialect of Viet as she, Marie and Thuch Van sat around their dining room table. ""But I ask this of you: is Joesph and his interest in this celebration worth the risk of exposure and, may I add, possible death when this town realizes who we are, when they realize what we are?"" Thanh Thi had always been the more reserved, more cautious and, frankly, more paranoid spouse in this family when it came to their safety. Where her husband was the face of the restaurant, she ran the kitchen with an eye on the back door and all of their cooks. While Thuch made friendly at social gatherings, Thanh kept track of all possible escape routes and who was and wasn't looking at them. She kept track of any news about gangs and hate-group activity in the area, and about any other strange things.
The sort of things that might lure out the kind of people who hunted their people.
But Marie had prepared for this. ""Mother, I know the risks that revealing the secrets of our people would bring. However, I am counting on two circumstances to make sure that only the most benign and harmless information is portrayed."" She rallied herself, knowing that the way she handled this could make the difference on how she presented herself to nearly everyone, especially Joseph . ""First, I must inform both of you that there are some people in this town, including my boyfriend, that realize that we are not quite from the mainstream culture of modern Vietnam."" At this, both Thanh and Thuch got even more worried but they weren't shocked, seeing as any bumpkin with an Internet connection could find that tribal tattooing wasn't really the rage in downtown Hanoi. ""The good news is that while these people realize that we belong to a distinct subgroup, they often deduce that we are either rural Hmong or some other obscure ethnic group. In other words, they know nothing about who our people are and, like the rest of the town, they honestly do not care.""
""What about the nature of our traditons, Marie? What would you do, what rite of our people would be performed on that stage that would not end up with half the town vomiting and the other half trying to hang us?"" Her father had been relatively quiet in this conversation, but he knew that the rituals of his village had, during various times in history, left such a bad impression upon outsiders that they had responded in force to try to stamp them out.
Here, Marie began grasping the thick, heavy and old scrapbook that lay closed upon the table before her. It had been entrusted to them by their village and, by the blessings of the Gods and their Instrument, they had kept it safe and hidden for more than twenty years. ""Father, it is not as if I wish to set up an alter on the stage, recite the incantations of the harvest rites and slice something open; frankly, I would have no idea how. However, I believe that there is a ritual that is benign, unusual and, even according to the author of this book, beautiful enough to make people forget it's oddity."" She opened the book, filled with sepia photographs and notes written in French on yellowed paper, to the page she had bookmarked. ""I want to do the Stork Dance.""
Her parents were quiet for a minute. Admittedly, this was probably the least unusual rite of their people and it did seem to have a calming effect on its audiences. However, it took weeks of intensive training in order to do it right, the costuming and specific actions depended on whether the dancer was a man or woman and the phonograph with the instrumental music and vocals, only having been recorded once before, was on the other side of the planet. It was a tall order to pull off for anyone. ""You do realize that practicing for the dance requires grueling routine, so much so that it might effect your school work?"" Asked her mother, wondering if her daughter was truly sincere.
""I know that. I'll just have to sacrifice my time with Joesph, a sacrifice that I'm sure he'd understand."" Marie responded in English this time, the plans for her act becoming clearer. ""However, I'll need some help in creating the proper costuming and... I know that shipping items from the Old Country is like trying to smuggle Plutonium but if you could convince the shamans to release that phonograph for a month or two, I would be eternally grateful to all of them, and to you.""
Her parents wondered, not for the first time, if Marie truly comprehended what could be asked of that gratitude in the years to come. She had the opportunity to live a life completely detached from the paranoia, the fear and the constant danger that followed her people. Would she give that chance away simply for the sake of a boy?
Whatever choice she made, however, was hers to make.
In the end, they acquiesced... but not without informing their daughter of what their home village could ask of her in exchange for the items she wished. It might be years until it was asked but one day, a representative of their village would approach her and request a repayment, be it in money, information or something else.
It was that ""something else"" that truly worried Thuch and Thanh.
","Joseph Clayton watched from his seat on the center aisle as Pete Tallier finished his act. The young man had performed a folk-dance from his ancestral Quebec, a homeland his family had left more than a century ago for jobs in the New England furniture industry. He himself had finished his act more than an hour ago, having opted for a simple folk dance and traditional Norman costume with a top hat. Of course, using a hat-rack instead of a dancing partner had been a bit... unusual; with Marie being so involved in her own routine, he had had to make do with what he could get.
But now, as Joseph finished clapping in approval of the previous act, he realized that his girlfriend was due to come on. What would actually happen was a complete mystery to Joseph; Marie had kept a tight lid on her act by practicing at home and while she had spent much less time with him than normal, she had stressed how important this was for her. So, respecting her wishes, he'd kept his distance and wished her luck. Now, with his parents sitting beside him, the Trinhs just across the aisle and after weeks of mystery, he was finally about to discover what the big secret was.
The male student in charge of the event came forward after Tallier left the stage, dressed in traditional Greek costume. ""Next up is Marie Trinh, who will be performing a traditional 'journey rite in two parts' from the Annamite Mountains of Vietnam and Laos. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you 'The Stork Dance'!"" He exited downstage right as the lights dimmed even further than they had, the only illumination the bright center of the spotlight focused on the place he had been. Slowly, almost dramatically, the spotlight edged back towards the rear wall until it revealed a lone figure wrapped in a white cloak, face obscured by something.
Utter silence pervaded the auditorium before the sound system gave off the squeal of a needle scratching on a record and the sounds of soft, high flutes began wafting upon the air. It was then that the figure started walking forward on bare feet, segmented anklets of carved jade just visible below the hem of the long, black skirt while the white cloak draped over the arms and... it almost looked like some sort of hat or strange mask was concealing the figure's head. Suddenly, pipes of a lower pitch, possibly oboes, started playing a mournful tune and the figure stopped suddenly, lifting it's head to face the crowd.
A spoonbill... with a black beak. So that was what that big fuss with the paper-mache was about.
The dance was in two parts. The first was a mournful, melancholy arrangement that supposedly was intended for farewell ceremonies. Zithers, oboes, various other instruments of the right mood and the creaky, brittle, almost sad songs of old women set the tone for the dance, a carefully choreographed routine that either imitated the intricate placement of a wading birds steps or imitated the slow soaring of those same birds. This was the Song of Departure. The second part, that of Arrival, was more...upbeat in its cadence. After the record was flipped, the plucking of lutes and brighter zithers, the delicate clanging of some sort of bells, jollier wind instruments and the celebratory singing of young women replaced the melancholy mood of earlier. The dancers steps also changed, with sudden, sprightly movements becoming the norm as imitations of courtship displays and feeding were performed.
Throughout the dance, the audience had been enraptured by what was happening onstage. While Joseph was certainly enjoying his girlfriends act, he was not so enraptured that he failed to notice that several very strange things were happening in the darkened theater. The first change he noticed was the background odor. Slowly, over the course of the act, the smell in the theater had changed from the dry, dusty smell of upholstery and the hot metal of lighting equipment to... well, there was river mud, water thick with life, plants growing in the sun and warm wind. It wasn't a bad smell, but there was no real way that it could be coming from anywhere in the building.
Other strange things were... shapes in the darkness. During the first part of the dance Joseph could have sworn that he glimpsed shadowy shapes moving in the aisle beside him, shapes that almost looked like... wading birds. During the second act, he could almost imagine that the silvery shapes of gliding birds were being outlined by the residual glare from the spotlight, though that could easily be passed off as wafting dust.
Except that there wasn't that much dust in the theater.
Thirdly, and much less unusually, an elderly man with thinning, almost white curly hair, wire rim spectacles and a short beard was watching the performance with interest, almost... studying it. Joseph had never seen him in the town before, so who was he and why was he here?
And had he or anyone else seen the apparitions?
When the dance was done and Marie (who had revealed herself at the end of the dance by taking off her headdress and taking a bow) had left the stage, Joseph kept thinking on that thought during the remaining acts. The smell had faded and gone, the shadows and shapes were no longer there but the mere hint of their possibility shook him. He was a person of science, of logic, of well-produced nature documentaries; in the real world, things like this did not happen outside the heads of crazy people.
However... the very thought of the ghostly shapes thrilled Joseph, filled him with fantastic wonders and terrors not felt since he was a boy of five. And, thought the young man, it did not truly matter if it was wonderful or terrible, or if Marie could control or even knew about this sort of stuff. All that truly mattered was that... well, at the level of base wonderment, the entire experience was remarkably exciting.
Sinister? Maybe. Normal? Not in the least. But very definitely exciting.
But... maybe it would be best not to mention it until Marie brought it up.
Later
After the show, as students were putting away their costumes and props and donning their late-autumn outerwear, Joseph approached his girlfriend who, with dress, cloak and headpiece in a garment bag, was heading out the door after her parents. ""Hey, Marie... about what you did on stage tonight?""
""Yes?"" Questioned Marie as she turned towards Joseph. As a courtesy, he would never mention it but he could tell that something was weighing on her mind. The impression that she was on the very edge of flight made it seem that, perhaps, she was aware that strange things had happened.
Strange things... but not necessarily bad things.
""I just have to say that you really hit a crowd pleaser tonight. I don't think any of the other acts got as much applause as yours did."" With that, Joseph saw Marie's face lighten from the mask of apprehension that had been there into a gratified smile.
""Thanks. You wouldn't believe how grueling the practicing was and then the costume and making all those fake pendants and charms... after all that, I was hoping it would get a good reception."" With that, she turned back and began walking out into the early night air, over to the parking space where her parents had parked their combination commercial van and personal conveyance.
Joseph had actively resisted losing himself in the weirdness that had struck him in the auditorium. However, he could never resist losing himself in his girlfriends smile.
Perhaps because one was familiar and one was a bit... odd.
Running to catch up with Marie, he wanted to ask his girlfriend something. ""On a different subject, I was wondering if you were doing anything tonight. Maybe we could catch a movie, go bowling, something like that.""
""I'd like to but I really can't."" They were almost at the Trinhs van when Marie leaned in close to Joseph to whisper conspiratorially. ""Dad got a call from the cops when the Polish guy was on. They arrested someone vandalizing the front of the shop, and we'll probably be busy all night with statements, forms, the insurance guys and all the other police stuff.""
Though he was disappointed, Joseph Clayton knew that something like this couldn't be delayed. ""Alright, maybe I'll see you tomorrow. Goodnight."" After getting an answer back in the form of a goodnight kiss (which still made him blush despite himself), he watched Marie depart toward her parents vehicle. The question came back to him, after all these weeks, of who in this town could be angry or stupid enough to be implicated in the vandalism spree that had plagued the Leng Trinh restaurant.
At Roughly the Same time, Glaston Police Station
As Constance Blake entered the interview room, she reflected on the fact that it had to have been a pretty slow couple of weeks when they pulled the Chief of Police out of her office for a break in a vandalism case. On the other hand, she'd finished the normal paperwork an hour before and had been flipping through a fishing catalog with the squawk-box on beside her when Lt. Anderson had come in. He'd told her that they'd arrested some punk kid trying to bust up the Trinh's restaurant, the culmination in a series of events that had been the height of municipal intrigue for weeks. As she got a look at the culprit, she was a little surprised.
""Punk kid"" indeed.
As she sat down across from suspect, Chief Blake tapped the case file, a few reports inside a paper folder, against the table. ""You know,"" she began dryly, ""we get quite a few idiots through here: gang members, druggies, people who've taken offense one to many times. We just haven't ever got one who was this high up in the High School Math Club."" She dropped the file in front of Than Quang Due, a young man who, besides having a Sino-typical naming structure, was short, thin, bespectacled and looked amazingly like a 12-year old for someone who was actually 15. He and his parents had moved here the the summer and had set up a jewelery shop a few blocks over from Leng Trinh. Up until this, Due had never been anything but a model student, a respectful son and a bright (if somewhat timid) young man. ""So, why'd you do it?""
Due looked at the middle aged woman with a gaze that mixed deference with surprise in the face of seeming insanity. ""Because no one else would! Because this town has tolerated... people like that for so long."". There was a touch of bitterness in his voice but also surprise. Were these people so stupid that they didn't recognize a threat in their very midst?
""Look, I don't know what's going on, but I know that it stops right now."" Constance stood up and, even at 5'1"", the sight of her leaning over the suspect should have been intimidating to the boy. But then Blake began asking almost rhetorical questions ""What is this about anyway? You ask out their daughter and get refused? Well, if that is it, this was between you, her and the Clayton boy. No need to get mad at her parents."" It was then that another idea came to the Chief of Police. ""Or is this because they're Hmong?""
At this, Due's face carried a look of utter incomprehension.
""Look, I realize that there's some bad blood carried over from the War. But you have to realize something too: this is America, the land of opportunity, of freedom. This is the land where people should be able to get away from the madness, where every little feud and squabble is best left back in the old country. Now, your parents and the Trinhs are going to be here soon and if you're smart, you will apologize; Thuc Van and Thanh Thi are good people, they're liked in the community and as sure as God made little green apples, they didn't deserve any of this.""
It was then that realization dawned on Due. The people who had informed him and sent him on this mission had mandated secrecy... but apparently he and they weren't the only ones good at keeping secrets.
With a look that held a touch of arrogance, a smidgen of fascinated bewilderment and, especially in his grin, the hint that he was not totally mentally hinged, Due asked a question that infuriated Constance Blake. ""You have no idea what they are, do you?""
",True
"That is the end of the story, dear readers. Believe me or not, I don't care. I ran far away from the university that evening and, to this day, I have never returned. I had to have my arm amputated after that and my burned and mangled body remains as testament to the evil I have encountered. I told the authorities it was a college fire. What else could I say?
I cannot sleep well anymore. Every night I lie awake, shaking in fear in the knowledge of what exists beyond the limited scope of what we call ""reality"". What is reality? I don't know. All I do know is that this world contains more evil than can ever be imagined.
The evil of the Cult of Cthulhu is still out there and I know that my days are numbered. I have seen too much. One day they will come for me and, when they do, I will let them take me. I have tried to end my life a number of times and now reside in an asylum as a result. Death will come as a relief for me.
It has taken me a great deal of effort to write this, since every fibre of my being has tried to block out the memories of what happened at that university. But I need you to know. I need you to be prepared. The Cult of Cthulhu is alive and well and, one day, Cthulhu will rise and destroy this planet. It is only a matter of time.
Darkness.
I didn't know who I was or where I was. All I could tell was that I was falling lower and lower into a deep oblivion of blackness.
Though I was unafraid.
Was I dead?
It didn't matter.
In that place, nothing mattered.
I was at peace.
And then I was jerked roughly back into reality, though reality had become so distorted in my mind that I could scarcely tell the difference between what was real and what was fantasy. The first thing that I became aware of was a searing pain across my abdomen. I tried to scream, but my throat was sore as though I had been screaming for hours already. I attempted to move my arms but they were locked in place and I realised to my horror that the pain was from ropes that had been tied around me so tightly that they were literally cutting into my flesh. I spluttered for a moment as the sights and sounds of the world started to come back to me. I was tied upside down to the obelisk in the centre of the ritual space I had seen the previous night and my worst fears were realised.
I was covered in blood, though whether it was my own or that of another unfortunate victim I couldn't tell. A fire surrounded me and on the other side of the flames, people in black robes were dancing wildly making noises that sounded neither human nor beastly. I began to wonder why I was still alive and why I had not been dismembered like Jonathan.
Then one of the participants stepped through the flames, emerging unharmed beside me. He brandished a long silver knife and screamed ""Cthulhu Fhtagn!"" at the heavens. The figure turned down to look at me. It was Jacob, though it wasn't Jacob's eyes that looked at me, rather an empty, soulless shell of a human being. He raised the knife and I began to pray silently, expecting the end. Though it wasn't me he plunged the knife into, it was himself. He rammed the blade up to the hilt into his stomach and violently jerked it upwards, sending gory sprays of arterial blood all over my face and into my mouth and nose. Jacob then reached into his chest and began to pull out his internal organs, laughing maniacally as he did so. It was then that I found my voice and screamed louder than I had ever done, though my cries were drowned out by the diabolical beat of the drums and the bestial chants of the other cultists.
Jacob did not fall to the ground as anyone else would have done. Instead, he cracked open his ribcage, revealing his empty chest cavity. An unseen force then ripped his head back, nearly severing it, his spine bent backwards and cracked and then his limbs began bending into odd angles as well. All the while, he continued in his demonic laughter, the chants of the cultists and the beat of the drums growing and growing. He contorted spasmodically, and shadowy tendrils sprung out of his body, twisting as they reached up to the sky. Suddenly, Jacob's body exploded in a shower of blood and offal although his ghoulish laugh seemed to continue somehow, and out of nowhere appeared many small winged creatures. They were less than three feet in height and completely black. No detail of their bodies was visible save for a pair of glowing green eyes. They swooped around the obelisk to which I was tied, uttering a shrieking sound unlike anything I had ever heard. As they shrieked, the dancing, chanting and beating of the drums got louder and wilder until, at its climax, the ground itself started rumbling. Cracks started to appear in the ground and water started gushing out causing the obelisk to crumble, but the fire burned ever brighter.
Due to the destruction of the obelisk, the bonds that were around my middle loosened slightly. But as I tried to rise, I was violently pushed down into the water by one of the cultists who cried,
""Mighty Cthulhu! Accept our sacrifice of blood and rise again!"" With that he drew a knife of his own, but before he was able to end my existence, one of the shadowy winged creatures flew into his chest, disappearing in an instant. Suddenly, the cultists' eyes literally burst into flames and he began reciting the chant I had heard so many times: ""Cthulhu Fhtagn! Cthulhu Fhtagn!"" His mouth then opened wide and I could hear his jaw bone break. Long teeth extended from the gums and before I could react, he lurched forward sinking them into my forearm.
This new pain was just what I needed. I screamed in agony and ripped free. Quickly loosening the bonds around me, I leapt through the fire. Its searing heat scorched me and I felt as though a thousand knives were simultaneously being plunged into my skin. I looked desperately around for an opening to escape and noticed that all the cultists now had flaming eyes and were running at me screaming even as their heads burned in the flames from their eyes. I turned and fled, not caring about the pain in my arm or the fire that was rapidly consuming me. Not caring about the thorns and branches that eviscerated me as I ran past them. I knew I just needed to get as far away as possible.
Although the screams of the ritual participants had begun to fade, I did not slow down. I just kept going and did not look back.
","I didn't stop running until I had burst into my room, locked the door behind me and placed a chair under the handle. Then I immediately vomited into the bin before collapsing onto my bed in floods of tears. I couldn't quite believe what I had seen that evening; it was too terrible to comprehend. But worse was to come.
Although I so desperately wanted to sleep, I forced myself not to. Instead I sat shivering with fear in the corner of the room, expecting Jacob and Annie to attempt to enter the room any second. I had to get out of here, I had to go to the police, I had to do something. And I had to stay awake. I had to...
And then I was no longer in my room. In contrast, I was standing amidst vast structures of black stone. On each stone was etched hieroglyphics of the kind I had never before seen and they were all covered in a sticky green goo. These stones seemed to go on for miles, their geometry extremely strange and disturbing. I must be dreaming, I told myself, this can't be real. Yet even in this knowledge, the sheer terror of the place engulfed me. I began to walk slowly around the structures, being careful not to touch the slime on their surface and desperately trying to wake up. And then I saw it, the monster of the notebook and the diabolical ritual. But this time, it wasn't a picture or statue but an enormous living monstrosity. I was rooted to the ground in fear as I stared at its huge form that seemed to tower for miles above me, its green, scaly skin, its thick leathery wings and its octopus-like tentacles, and from out of the air I heard the disembodied chant, ""Cthulhu Fhtagn! Cthulhu Fhtagn!"" I was still unable to run and the tentacles of the monster began to rap themselves around me, all the while that demonic chant getting louder and louder until it felt like my head was being crushed. I was raised off the ground and brought up to the monster's head. It looked at me with one of its evil red eyes the fear became too much. I began to scream hysterically, writhing around in the grip of the beast. And then I awoke, breathing heavily and sweating profusely. I was lying on the floor and just remained there for a while, staring into the darkness and reminiscing on the terrors of the dream and the ritual I had seen, and remembering that chant: ""Cthulhu Fhtagn!"" What did it all mean?
The following day, I did not attend lectures and only left the room once to grab some food. As fate would have it, during this brief moment out of solitude, I met the person I didn't want to see ever again, Jacob. I avoided his gaze as he looked at me enquiringly.
""We missed you in lectures today,"" he said curiously. I didn't answer. I was sure he had seen me last night. ""Where were you?"" Jacob asked. Again, I was silent. He laid a hand on my shoulder. ""Is something wrong, James?"" It was then that I looked into his eyes but instead of the evil I had expected to see, all I could make out was concern.
""No,"" I muttered in reply.
""Something is wrong,"" Jacob disagreed. ""What's up?"" Either he's a very good actor, or he's entirely genuine, I thought to myself. And if was being genuine, that must mean that either he didn't remember the ritual I had seen him participating in or that I had only been dreaming. I prayed it was the latter.
""I'm ok,"" I said, giving him the benefit of the doubt. ""I'm just feeling a little unwell, that's all.""
""Well look after yourself,"" he replied without a trace of ingenuity. I quickly made myself a ham sandwich and once again locked myself into my room. The thoughts that raced around inside my head were endless as I casually bit into the sandwich. Almost immediately, I spat the contents out of my mouth, screamed and vomited onto the floor. What was inside the sandwich was not the ham I had put in but a vile mixture of the green goo I had seen in my ""dream"" and human blood. The room started spinning around me, turning into a dark green, and images of the tentacled creature I had seen so much of lately started appearing in every corner. I covered my ears and screamed uncontrollably.
And then Jacob and Annie were in front of me. I had no idea where they had come from for I had locked the door. But I was anywhere but the comfort of my room. Instead, I was in some sort of other realm, my room rapidly beginning to fade.
""You shouldn't have got involved in this,"" Jacob whispered menacingly.
""Now you must pay."" Annie cooed.
""In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."" they said in unison. And then I saw no more.
",True
"It was in Laguna, that city of mystery on the French-Italian border, that I met the man. The grimy, back-alley tavern, never full, was slowly emptying for the night. The table in front of me was vacated, and there he sat, across the room in the corner. What held my gaze, I suppose, was no one peculiarity of his in particular, but rather the totality, the sum.
Even at a distance, it was arresting. Bloodshot eyes, still alert in their infinite weariness. The shine of a nervous perspiration upon the forehead and unshaven cheeks. A movement, an unnatural twitch of the lips. Hands which could not disguise a slight quivering as they clutched, in a white-knuckled grasp, the long-since emptied glass of ale. Whatever inner demons plagued his tortured psyche had transformed his once-handsome visage into the gray, grizzled countenance of one twice his senior.
And yet, I was inexplicably drawn to him. How I came to be seated at his table, I don't recall. But he showed no surprise, no reaction of any kind, almost as though it were expected.
Yet I could formulate no words, nor even ideas. We simply watched each other, he more intensely than I, until, at last, he spoke. ""Do you often dream, stranger?"" It was a hoarse and barely-perceptible susurration.
I responded in the affirmative, to which he continued, as though to himself, ""Most people do. But some dreams, some dreams, they are much more, no? Perhaps some dreams, some special ones, perhaps they are, they could be a reflection, an echo, of… reality."" He lifted his glass, only realizing it was empty when it was halfway to his lips.
Not sure what to make of this, my response consisted of only a slight raise of the eyebrows, but it was enough to prod him further in his quivering, stuttering speech.
""There are some things we shouldn't know, I can tell you truly. I know, for I have seen, yes seen them. For years, stranger, I meditated on the metaphysical."" At this, he absent-mindedly fingered a dirty talisman around his neck. ""You have meditated, perhaps? But I don't mean in the traditional way, no. In my sojourns, I sought to penetrate the deepest meanings, sought to comprehend the fundamental nature of reality itself… oh! Oh God!""
He laid his head face-down on the stained tabletop, his body wracked with silent spasms. After a moment, I gingerly grasped his shoulder, halfheartedly mumbling something polite about not taking dreams seriously. At this, he shot a hand across the table to clutch my wrist, whilst bringing his face to within a thumb's length of my own. I could clearly see the tiny, blood-red vessels which webbed the whites of his intense eyes; they almost seemed to pulsate.
""No! They can be real! I know…. I, I, I think I delved too deep one day. In my meditations, my mind cleared like never before, and understanding seemed to flow effortlessly. But something else happened, too. At night, the dreams, they began. Oh, always the same, night after night, and then by day, but clearer and clearer. A maddening cacophony of images and sounds, each indistinguishable from the others… and always in the background, an indistinct sense of familiarity, and fear. This went on, I don't know how many months. Dreams, meditations, memories, I could no longer tell the difference! I scarcely knew, knew who I even was anymore!""
He contracted into his chair whilst covering his face with both forearms, quietly sobbing for a time. And I, at a loss, could only say, ""But then…?""
He straightened, staring at me through wet, crimson eyes. ""But then… but then… It came. It…."" The man shut his eyes, and his posture seemed to straighten. For several minutes, he was absolutely still. His eyes blinked open. They seemed altered somehow, as if viewing an object in the far distance. And when he now spoke, his voice had no stutter, no hoarseness. It was ethereal, and lucid, almost preternaturally so.
""It came. At a time, during these dreams, piercing through the surreal cascade of visions, came to me one strikingly clear image, whereupon all else faded into a scarcely perceptible background static. How can it be described? It was as if all sound instantly contracted to the Source, from whence the image subsequently sprung, carried forth on tumescent rays of light through the formless sea of darkness.
""There was a shadowy land of antiquity, passing by at great speed, an immeasurable distance beneath me. And I, a dimensionless mote of consciousness in that sunless world under the star-decked sky, possessing only the sense of sight, and that coming to me but gradually.
""Over endless dark oceans of unfathomable depths I passed, and ranges of nameless mountains whose peaks stretched to bitter, unearthly heights. Then came primeval forests, and eternally shadowed plains. How long this voyage lasted, the blink of an eye or millennia uncountable, I could not speculate. Time as we comprehend it held no meaning in that oneiric dreamscape.
And though I had not dreamt of this place before, that vague familiarity ever lurked in my subconscious, just out of reach.
""Yet at some point, I beheld a great, desolate city, unlike to any ever conceived. Impossibly vast, with thousands upon thousands of towering onyx edifices that clawed the upper reaches of the opaque sky. The architecture, the geometry—I couldn't begin to describe it. Among this jungle of arcologies were great, empty plazas—inland seas of themselves—dotted with bone-dry fountains and fantastically eerie sculptures.
""And silence. Silence so utterly complete that its essence was a positive quality in itself, rather than a lack of one.
""What was this vision—this elder city of darkness, which must have existed vigintillions of centuries before the first progenitors of terrestrial life blindly slithered their way out of the primordial ooze?
""All at once, before my eyeless vision, I was descending, no, plunging, through the canyons of the cyclopean monoliths. Plummeting with ever greater acceleration, I saw the ground open before me, prepared for the impact—but no! I passed through, continuing downwards, and here I saw that the city indeed extended beneath the surface, sublevel upon sublevel without end, so that I realized the upper part to have been the mere tip, the crown of a gargantuan urban iceberg.
""Through awesome subterranean cityscapes I passed on that interminable descent. Great industrial chasms, honeycombed vaults, bulkheads of solid rock, yawning cathedrals, labyrinths of twisting passages. As I went deeper, the vision became darker, the silence more profound, my speed slower, and my disquietude greater. And at the last, at the very foundation of foundations, I advanced through a straight, narrow passage of indeterminate length and minimal luminosity, until I came to a metal door, passed through, and found myself in a small, square room.
""And in this deepest of vaults, what do you suppose I beheld? What was there? Well, the answer to that is… nothing. Absolutely nothing. The chamber was completely empty. As confusion engulfed me, a throbbing seemed to build within my mind, slowly at first, and then stronger and stronger, until it snapped. In an instant, something in my genetic memory unlocked, and all was horribly clear.
""This room was mine. I knew it without the slightest shadow of a doubt. I had dwelt here, in some far-off age. Like the surreal, eldritch world to which it belonged, it was coeval with me, and I with it. But no sooner had this epiphany struck home than it was practically buried by a surging, unblockable avalanche of associated memories and experiences, my mind a bin filled to the brim, to excess, overflowing, floundering helplessly in the torrential current….""
The man's voice died away, and as he again lowered his head to the tabletop in anguish, it seemed he was reverted to his previous, wretched self. The lights in the tavern were dying. And I, scarcely able to fathom the enormity of his narrative's implications, ventured merely to inquire, ""And this… vision. This world, did it come to you again in dreams?""
""Nooooo!"" he moaned piteously. ""No! Not that one!"" And here, he actually clutched and yanked the hair on both sides of his head in utter agony, as if trying to remove it from his skull. His raw, maddened eyes fixed on me just once more.
""You see, It, It… It was only the first…!""
","A few weeks after the attack, The Campus of Miskatonic has been repaired, but due to constant problems of security the place is in a state where there are not students and the fate of the school is unknown. ""Sire…that thing wants to talk to you"" inside the echo of the one of a few teachers that decided to stay and discuss what the will be of this Miskatonic. Johnathan Clarke tries to silence this caller ""don't say anything you fool, if they know I have an outer god, they will do anything to use it in the wrong ways"" –""but you are the only one that can command him, oh…when I think 'bout it they can persuade you to use it."" –""exactly!"" their conversation was interrupted when a grizzled voice started the mind of John: ""come, I want to know the new orders"" the young teacher moves to the basement ""Azathoth…it's been weeks since I saw you, how you been doing?"" the canned god chuckled ""fine doin' nothin' but wait till you came, my young sire, in fact I have an idea, what if I go to Innsmouth and I kill dagon to stop further attacks"" –""no that would be a terrible idea. What if we both go and try to talk to them, you know some sort of treaty we could have peace"" the outer god laughs ""Master! Such an altruistic nature! And far too foolish"" –""did you say something?"" the cylindrical monster says nothing and continues to listen: ""we will go anyways, can you change into something small?"" suddenly Azathoth's red and cylindrical form started to melt without any source of heat, just leaving this ""brain"" the container cubes. ""It's this enough small for you?""
John goes to this home close to the Miskatonic River; he carefully puts this bag in this bed, and putting out Azathoth, ""well, can I change into my normal self, sire?"" the young man grabbed the two epilated cubes, looked into the small circular window of the cube on the top and nodded, ""very well, careful now"" John put the cube in the floor and it started to reconfigure itself into this red, mechanical and cylinder shaped form, ""so, what will we do?"" azathoth, asked, ""well I will try to talk to their leader, if that doesn't work you will kill both Dagon and Hydra, I just want to know why did they attacked us"" the metallic creature patted this back ""anything for you sire, talkin' 'bout yourself, can you tell me about you?"" John seated on the bed: ""well, I… (Damn, if he knows I am ""adopted"" he will kill me!)W-well, I lived in Innsmouth for a few years, then when I grew up my father decided to move to Kingsport, I never saw my mother, he told me that she could kill me, maybe she was a terrible and ungrateful bitch"" Azathoth decided to speak ""I wonder if she was…"" he trailed off after thinking about what he was about to say, ""if she was what? A prostitute?"" Azathoth ""nodded"" by moving this body. ""For the rest of the day I need to pack, Jesus, I expect not to have any problems with the villagers"" Azathoth then said; ""sire…why you want to save inhuman creatures? Or even negotiate with them? Rubbish…no, Bullshit! They hate humans, and when they saw that investigator they knew that we were the ones that called, so it's a matter of fact that they felt we were a menace, your little travel to innsmouth its pointless master!"" john then raised from the bed and looked the god directly to this cat like iris, he shivered but he gained some courage to speak to him: ""no, it's not, and don't dare to disobey me azathoth. I want peace between eldritch creatures and humans imagine the possibilities! We could get better technology, better understanding of this universe!"" this mechanic companion chuckled: ""don't be silly, the eldritch just want the earth for themselves. Gods and aliens are very different: the outer and elders don't give a flying fuck 'bout humans, they see us as useless ants, even my son amuses himself with the lot of you, aliens on the other hand want to use us as things to guinea pigs (well the intelligent ones)"" after a few minutes of silence night comes and john goes to sleep. While azathoth goes into this box form. ""I expect to make those deep ones into deep fish sticks tomorrow. hahaha""
The next day john goes in boat to innsmouth, after a voyage of an entire day. then after that they got on a train. The next day after that john arrived in Innsmouth, he saw that the place has little to no changes, the buildings were crude and crocked, some of them were derelict, and the habitants were mutated humans. The sky was grey to make the mood even more depressing. John decided to talk to a habitant, ""sire, can you tell me where I can the mayor of this place? I need to tell him something really important"" the man like many of this brethren was human like, but this eyes were close to popping out of this skull, this skin was greyish, this lips were thicker than the normal man and he had no hair, ""what? You are a foreigner, why you should talk to our mayor? Are you some kind of important person o' what?"" –""I'm not ""important"" by any rich standards but…no forget about it"" Clarke decided to sit on a nearby bench to take out the cubes, they were gun metal grey with vertical lines sculpted on each one, he looked at the cube and started to think ""Azathoth…if you can hear me confirm it"" –""yes master, what are your commands?"" –""shape shift your box with some legs, I will ask where is the place where the ruler of this place lives, but you will convince him to talk to me, I am clear?"" –""crystal…not need to worry, I can convince him by words… (shifts the corners of this cube to muscular legs with three digits) or by force"" he quickly moves to a bush close to this master, he walked to other citizen ""I want to know the place where the mayor lives or he is in the most of time, you know, to interview him"" -""w-well…he always is in the building that is the Esoteric Order of Dagon, a few blocks at the right, I thin' is in the center of the town"" Clarke continued walking, he sees that this servant is not present. ""Outer god, or I am very stupid and I lost you, or you are very fast"" –""it would be the latter"" he saw the cube in this hands. ""We are close, stay alert"" after a few minutes of asking for directions they find the infamous building, it was unlike some of the other depressing and colorless buildings, it was tall and with a rusted cooper coloration.
""Ok, try to be the most menacing possible, make them know what will happen if the give me a no"" John Clarke said as he tossed the gunmetal grey cubes to the wall of the building. ""Sire, I am a 7 ft. tall mechanoid, with a knife the same size as your head, I have a heavy machine gun that is the same size of my body, and my eye made you tremble like a kid…if that is not menacing, then, what the fuck is?"" he crawls in an impossible speed, almost defying gravity. He enters a window and sees that there are a decent amount of people seating in chairs, in the pulpit there is a deep one in a cage. He sees a man on the center with a hood he hears the leader doing a speech: ""my brothers, I have heard that someone is in the streets asking for me, maybe he is in league with that investigator! Maybe he is the reason why our brothers"" he was interrupted when he saw Azathoth revealing himself in this mechanical form, it is sort of different now: there was no rust in this body; the red was more vibrant now and glossy, this cloth skirt now resembles a red trench coat tail. This ""chest"" has written on it on white letters: ""Eldritch Exterminator"" this rectangular shield has ""A+M"" written on it. ""Well gentlemen, who of you is the mayor?"" they pointed guns to him, ""what and who are you?!"" the leader asked. ""What? Why do you answer my question, with a question?! Who the hell does that?"" they shot, all of them. Azathoth unblinking gaze hammered their souls, ""he…HE IS NOT FAZED BY THE FIRE!"" one of them yelled. ""Yeah, but you have fazed fire?"" the outer monster said and then a cylindrical heat beam shot out of this single eye, it cuts every single goon like a hot knife to butter. The only one left is the one on the center. After that display of power and dread he politely asks the ""mayor"" ""care to do me a favor?""
""Uh? Someone has left the building…and he is approaching me!"" Clarke though as the mayor with this hood down walked to him ""w-welcome to innsmouth…Mister Clarke…you wanted to ask me why I sent those hired guns to your university, please the townspeople wanted me to kill! It's not my fault, is theirs!""-""you are the mayor, the authority of this place, they must control your people, they must obey…or maybe there is a higher authority here?"" the mayor was getting more nervous after John said this, ""WHAT?! Sire, don't say things like that…there is no-"" the young teacher interrupted him ""oh yes? Why should I believe the same person that sent those goons to kill us, why should I believe the same person that worships Dagon, sire I think the big fish himself is calling the shots and not you?"" suddenly all the mutated fish people looked directly at the bench the mayor and john were sitting on. ""Oh…they heard us…Azathoth"" the citizens retreated and then returned with all sorts of weapons: pitchforks, knifes, shotguns, revolvers etc. they slowly approached the two, aiming their guns, reading themselves for using their blunt instruments, after all a mayor in Innsmouth is not important, as long as Dagon and Hydra live. ""So, me versus the lot of ya, well it's unfair, for you"" azathoth suddenly jumped a window and landed on one of the closest citizen. ""Sire this needs more than level one, I recommend you to use…two"" –""proceed"" this thin black pupil began to change to a shape identical to a two ""thanks…this reminds me of the first time I talked to your father, and like that time…I am very, very grateful"" he got out of this backpack this trusty CLAXXTON heavy machine gun. Then he touched this master's shoulder and he disappeared from view. They were about to overwhelm him but he simply shoot in a spin, the bullets completely destroyed this enemies. They tried to fire back but nothing fazed him, the outer god started to run through the mass of people with this harmonic knife, the sound of electric guitar feedback coming from the sharp instrument.
""Where I am?"" he asked himself just to see around him and noticed ""oh I am outside of that damn town, thank gods hahaha…Jesus this mission of mine was a fiasco"" he noticed that something was purring in the back of this head, and then he felt like something was ripping this neck, he falls to the ground in pain, realizing that he has now difficulty to breathe. Meanwhile this servant was having fun slaughtering every single mutated deep one he saw, ""why you keep head-buttin' your own species, why?"" he though while using a head with a vertebral spine from a corpse as a bat around heavily injured deep ones, one of them appears behind him, climbs to this back and stabs this eye with a wood pencil, ""hey imbecile, I am already blind"" as he said this in a deadpan way he throws him to the ground and squashed this face with a stomp. As he fights this way he summons two moon beasts to cause mayhem around the city. He quickly regenerates this eye and begins to grab a small house, and then throws it to a crowd of three that had shotguns and pitchforks, the moons beasts were destroying every building they saw, but suddenly they saw a figure running out of their way, the second moon beast grabbed it and prepared to take a bit of this head, ""WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!"" they heard this dreadful master, hearing him like that means a painful death. He stopped this act of eating this unlucky victim. ""Listen you tentacle face, this is a HUMAN, we don't kill those except when they oppose us! So put. Him. In. the. Ground. Slowly"" he complied, ""in fact rescue all the humans you can and put them in a save area. If I see blood of Homo sapiens in you (points to him this harmonic knife) I will grab your intestines and shove them up your eyes"" he then used this heat vision to cut some of the confused mutants, the moon beast grabbed the human and ran to the outskirts of the city. Suddenly in the shore, two giants were approaching the devastated ground with enraged faces.
""OH YEAH!"" Azathoth yelled when he saw those two figures ""how dare you to kill our brothers and daughter?! You have the audacity to attack us unprovoked!"" the male giant roared in an alien language that only gods can understand. ""Kill him my loved! He is insulting our right to use these humans as we please!"" the female one said, ""Hydra, Dagon. Even I though you weren't this stupid, but hey easier for me"" he jumped to a high that rivaled the two elder fishes, and then he kicked Dagon in the face; this wife on the other hand was fighting the two dream lands beasts. ""come on, try to ask who I am, why I am doing this, come on, you know you want to oversized cat food!"" the small cylinder said as he started to shot the eyes of this enemy from this hand (he was being grabbed by dagon) ""YOU INSOLENT"" he was interrupted when a knife came to this other eye. He noticed that the wife of Dagon was wiping the floor with one moon beast, literally. ""Aw hell no! I am the only one that can do that!"" he said as the knife came back to him and he without a problem cut the arm of this bigger enemy"" when he landed he started to run at a speed that was unbelievable, he practically made this way through hydra's legs! She felt to the ground and the surviving beast grabbed the fallen monster and started to eat this face. He turned to see Dagon that was shocked and even horrified that this loved was being eaten alive ""YOU BASTARD!"" he yelled, he ran to azathoth that started to laugh insanely, and ran to this direction too. He grabbed this machinegun and shot at the belly of the beast, the deep one lord was getting weaker and weaker with the hole that the bullets were making. The trapped god jumped to the hole and started to carve with this knife, he made this way to the lungs, to the throat, and he was now in the jaws. ""Hey D-boy have you heard of knifes? Then here is a complete database, I expect your brain to handle this information"" azathoth said in glee and he started to destroy the brain in fast slashes.
""…Azathoth…I am…dying…help"" he heard this master's mental command and got out of this enemy's skull, he quickly appeared in front…of a deep one in the same exact clothes as John Clarke.
",False
"Professors Schultz and his entire team had reunited the night their space probe The Nautilus, was floating towards a landmark, it has gone farther than any other space probe. Oh what wonderful things they would discover from that point onward. Each had their own ideals of what they would find and prove that there might be more than what others in their field so strongly believed.
For the deeply religious young man, Geralds, who entered the program through luck and his computer skills at twenty-four, he thought that they would find God.
Schultz mocked such an idea. He and the majority of the team believed that such more galaxies would be found, hopefully they would include inhabited planets that they could attempt to contact.
But one amongst them was nervous. George Sunderland, an old resident of Portland Rhode Island, he was an astro-nut like the rest of them, but on the side, it was revealed some time after their project jettisoned into space, that during down times in one field, he worked in another. And his other, strange field was the occult.
""Fhtagn,"" He breathed under his breath. ""Fhtagn, fhtagn, fhtagn.""
He chanted, hoping that it would protect him. Granted, he reminded himself prior to this that The Nautilus did not go between Hydra and Argo Navis, but the thought still scared him.
On the machines before them, it showed exactly where it was. When it reached the landmark, were there cheers, the sounds of champagne popping, and congratulations were shared once more.
On the large monitors before them, stars were few and far in between that it was as if they were traveling away from them and not moving towards anymore after them.
Geralds was the first to point this out. He was also the first to see the mult-colored aurora that one would never expect to see in space.
""It's like the surface of a bubble,"" Andrea, second oldest member to Schultz stated.
Schultz scoffed and was beginning his rant against her, when The Nautilus floated past the aurora and found darkness. A void darker than space itself, yet just light enough due to iridescent orbs that floated in a semi-orderly orbital around an unknown object.
""What is this place?"" Andrea asked.
""Not what, Andrea,"" A voice grated through nowhere. ""But who?""
A giant glowing bubble appeared before the camera. Geralds stood up, overjoyed; he exclaimed his love for God and happiness at finding him. But the grating voice merely chuckled.
""No, Geralds,"" It said, sounding like a six year old and twenty year old and sixty year old man speaking together. ""Not God; at least, not your Christian god. I am, and Sunderland will confirm this,"" The man shivered at his name. ""Yog-Sothoth; past, present, future…Time itself, is all within me.""
""But what is this?"" Andrea asked.
""This is me."" The multi-layered voice said. ""What you see is a form of mine. The Gate; right Sunderland.""
All eyes turned to their cowering companion. With a few inhales of the nose, he nodded, a whimper escaping him.
""And within each bubble is a plain; a piece of the bigger picture.""
""And what's that?"" Schultz asked.
""That your universe; your world; your reality is expanding and shrinking in what-for your mental stability-we'll say random order.""
""Preposterous!"" Schultz snapped.
Yog-Sothoth chuckled, the intertwined voices sounding exotic over the speakers. It was not malignant-it sounded good natured compared to what Sunderland had expected.
""You see those two bubbles sticking together?""
No one spoke, but there was a sense that there did not have to be. That he could see them as well as hear them. Unsettling though it was, the information presented to them was to the same effect. Poor Sunderland seemed to have already cracked under the circumstances; cowering under a desk.
""They are other universes. Other galaxies; some inhabited, some not. But when they intertwine like that, the barrier of the bubble fades, allowing them to seemingly overlap. Like a continuation of itself. Your own has done so with many of them and has been one of a few to be graced with the central hub, so to speak.""
Schultz was finding this hard to swallow. Being a man of science; something like this was a freak accident not hard fact…Until now, since it was 'staring' them in the face. Leaving skepticism behind; he found infinite possibilities. Keeping his mind wide open seemed to help a little, though. After all, science was still discovering new things almost everyday.
""What's in the central hub?"" Geralds asked.
""R'lyeh,"" Came the instant reply.
At that, Sunderland let out a scream. No one paid him any mind, though, for they were, for a brief second that in the scheme of things that could be said that it did not happen, overcome with primal urges and long lost images transmitted thousands upon thousands of generations before themselves.
""Sunderland,"" Yog-Sothoth said. ""Do not be frightened. Nothing can hurt you right now.""
Sunderland laughed long and hard. Everyone became uneasy except their translucent, shining friend.
""'Right now' he says."" Sunderland cracked up, stuttering phrases together in a jumble of unheard sentences.
""If you wish to know more, Schultz, may I ask that you turn The Nautilus in that direction."" The bubble seemed to turn to the right. ""There's someone who will do a better job at explaining things in a-and don't be offended by this-leman's terms.""
Goaded on by what the bubble said, the satellite took off to the right. Everyone but Sunderland waited in bated breath at the edge of their seat. Then an insane, cacophonous symphony of flutes was heard.
Sunderland snapped out of his babbling mess and stood abruptly, dashing towards Schultz.
""We have to stop this!""
""We can't,"" Geralds began.
""The Nautilus moves according to projection, we didn't have the financial ability to control it back when we made it."" Andrea finished.
Sunderland made a warrior cry as he ran towards the screen. He beat at it, breaking it in places, but the image still shown through.
""No! No! No!"" He said between beatings. But the image never disappeared, but was, thankfully, distorted.
There came a sound of bumping into something beneath the louder cacophony flutes. Sunderland saw an eye open. An eye that was never supposed to open. The Nautilus turned away due to impact, but the damage was done. Sunderland was in a fit of hysterics, writhing on the floor, laughing as his mouth foamed.
He looked into the eye of chaos and it stared back with a mind blowing intensity. The distorted image shown next was of bubbles stacking upon themselves and became a vertical line orbiting around the central hub. But they popped.
The media was in a frenzy. Children were amazed at seeing real life Pokémon in their back yard. Three teens who broke down in the middle of nowhere found a camp that was not there before and were killed by a man in a hockey mask. Teens who lived on Elm Street started to die in their dreams. A couple were eaten by a giant white worm in Perfection, Nevada. Reports of Batman fighting the Joker were rampant in New York. In Louisiana, there was a report of a man covered in moss and roots walking in the swamp.
In London, there were sightings of a man in a Guy Fawkes mask walking around in shadows and on roofs.
In the Middle East there were reports of Orcs raiding caves.(1) But Japan had gotten it worst. Godzilla attacks, a strange yet beautiful rider on a mechanical horse, an orange clad ninja, and giant robot fights became an everyday event.
""The world as we knew it is gone!"" Sunderland screamed in his padded cell in Arkham Asylum. ""It popped! Just like a bubble!""
","The Judas Mark
""Cthulhu ftaghn,"" He said with a laugh, swaying his tilted head to the right in a drunken manner. ""Cthulhu ftaghn.""
He broke out into a laughing fit. Then as quickly as it started it stopped; like the lightning bolt outside his window. Arkham was his place of work. And as a patient, his work was hard to complete. Not like he wanted to do it, either.
The rain stopped.
""I hear youuuuuuu."" He chuckled. ""I hear you flapping those blasted wings outside my windah."" He giggled, then sobered up. ""Damn Migo. YA CAN'T HAVE MY BRAIN!""
There came a drum of plastic on metal as his attention was drawn to the orderly with a plastic flashlight. Aforementioned light shining into his padded room.
""Keep it down in there!"" The orderly snapped before leaving him alone once again.
""Power outage, eh?"" He chuckled. ""Wonder whyyyy.""
He rolled his head back to his right; towards his window. His eyes registered the sound of unearthly wings twitching like insects contemplating flight. Oh how he hated those damn things. Far worse than those Shoggoths he faced a while back. At least the Shoggoths ate you; thus ending your torment. But a Migo…He shuttered. He did not want to think about it.
""Nyarlahotep…You son of a bitch."" He said, looking grumpy, then broke out in hysterics, then going back as if it never happened. ""If it weren't for you…I'd be…I'd be…""
Where would he be? In his mind, he saw himself in Miami, laying on the beach with Lucinda, their two kids playing in the sand as the waves crashed soothingly onto the shore. But then his logic would kick that to the curb. Lucinda was showing signs…She would have dumped him if it weren't for that Deep One, that is, dragging her-kicking and screaming-to the bottom of the sea.
He would be away from his insane parents. That insane town of Dunwich. Even if Lucinda did not accompany him, he would, at least, be free from here. But then he met him.
""Jesus…""
""Yes?"" Came a sweet, velvety voice. A voice one would hear from royalty.
""Not you."" He snapped.
""But I am him."" A hand placed itself on his shoulder as the entire figure appeared, sitting beside him like they were best friends.
""No...You're the fucking antichrist.""
""Is there really a difference in that either?"" Jesus asked, a smirk gracing his regal, black lips. ""Both promise paradise. From there, it's on a person's opinion on what that is."" He chuckled. ""And do not tell me that you forgot your title, Ivan…Or should I say 'Judas'?""
""THEN WHY PLACE ME HERE?"" Ivan shouted.
""Hey!"" The orderly shouted, banging his flashlight on the bars again. ""What did I just say?""
The orderly's face began to bubble. His flesh boiled, broken screams erupted from his face. He collapsed and scratched at his face, letting more and more blood poor onto the floor.
""I hate interruptions."" Jesus said. ""And as for your answer…Because. If Jesus was as all powerful as he claimed, why did he allow Judas to stay in the fold? Why did he allow the lowly wretches hope? Why did I command Tython to drag Lucinda down to the depths to suffer being rendered by hungry maws before she could drown?""
He smirked evilly as he described Lucinda's gruesome demise. Ivan panted heavily, his rage rising faster than R'lyeh ever would to the surface. Ivan struck thin air as his body moved too slow for the deity; whom was already standing, laughing at the mortal.
""Because there's more to it, Judas."" Jesus said. ""Judas of old was an important player in the world. The wretches were a growing populace, if they loved him, they would worship him.""
""Bullshit!"" He spat.
""Is it?""
""We want you to betray us, Judas."" Jesus said after his question was ignored.
""Why?""
""Sorry, but us Christs keep some secrets from their disciples.""
""What makes you Jesus?""
""Our roles."" He stated simply. ""You see…He was supposed to preach about us. But, sadly, his mind couldn't take it. So Cthulhu became a god. Not like it matters, religion changes all the time.""
He smirked, all knowing. ""And no, he wasn't the son of Cthulhu. That was my little trick.""
""Pray Judas,"" He said from behind Ivan-not allowing him to speak-his black, decaying lips mere inches from his ear. ""He likes that. It makes him feel powerful.""
""No,"" Ivan said. ""I shall not ya damned bastard! And I won't bring about their reawakening! These crazies will remain sedated!""
Jesus laughed.
""That's my cue.""
Jesus grabbed Ivan by the neck and slammed his body against the wall. Buzzing from outside the window grew from a silent drone into a frenzy. Jesus smirked evilly, drawing his face closer to his Judas.
""In blood the mark is drawn.""
Nyarlahotep drew the blade he was hiding and slashed Ivan's wrist, splattering drops of blood on the wall. He watched in delight as the drops spread, several linking up and continuing their intricate design.
It consisted of a crude circle with intertwining tentacles and a pair of piercing eyes.
""There,"" He said. ""Done.""
He tossed Ivan. He landed next to the window and as he peered out of it he clearly saw the glowing heads and beating wings of the Migo, their forms slightly covered by the rain that began to fall again.
""Enjoy your trip, Judas."" Nyarlahotep said. ""For though I am done with you, you still serve a purpose.""
The Migo swarmed, the window shattering like paper. Ivan barely had time to scream as they worked on his skull, amputating his brain and placing it inside their jar.
""Cthulhu ftagn, indeed.""
",True
"Spoonbill Village, Northernmost Quang Binh Province, SRV.
June 30, 2011.
Considering their first encounter, this meeting was going rather well.
""No, no, I assure you that I have had quite enough… well, if you insist…"" In the course of explaining his task to the household he would be staying in, Joseph Clayton had been offered tea at the behest of the mistress of the household and all three times, he had acquiesced. She was attending her husband in fine cotton clothes of white and black, the cut more resembling something out of Javanese dancing than anything worn in Indochina during the past thousand years. Their son, called from his lessons for the presentation, was sitting at the far end of the room, listening to what was going on. While he had repeated much the same spiel that Professor Andover to the house's three inhabitants, he had sipped at his bowl almost automatically as one would with water, clear onto what was now his fourth helping. Although not unpleasant, the drink had considerably more kick to it than even the strong brews typical of Vietnamese green tea.
What perplexed Joseph was that he couldn't identify the extra ingredient. It wasn't peppers, having no discernible remains or even the raw chemical heat of capsaicin. It could be ginger, but the heat was of an utterly different kind than any ginger he had ever experienced.
Then again, the additive could just as well be Tarantula venom given the figure he was giving his introduction to.
His name, as he had given it, was Noc. He was the most experience hunter, archer and scout of the village, was of an incredibly ancient lineage and, incidentally, was the first person of this strange, isolated village that he had seen. His tattoos all featured arachnid themes of legs, webbing and fangs and his eyes…
Marie had mentioned that some of the warriors practiced sorcery with mutative effects. If that was what caused Nocs eyes to become all black, seemingly all pupils and tempting Joseph to mentally refer to the man as ""Spider Eye"", then maybe those three weirdoes they caught in the biology labs back in February were onto something after all.
Sitting in the main reception area of the home, replete with decorations of strange latticed designs and black lacquer, Joseph watched carefully as Noc finished examining one of his bowstrings before his eyes darted around the room. On the wall, several bows hung in their unstrung state: the white and banded flatbow he had first witnessed, several simple bows of light colored cane and even one recurve bow made of dark red hardwood.
""So that is your request: to hear the stories of our history, to observe the operation of a household of status and to… take part in our activities?"" Throughout the introduction of this man and the repetition he had given of the Professors offer, Noc had examined all aspects of him closely… and had not been impressed. He had some muscle tone, but everything else about him absolutely screamed that he was some sort of priest or urban scribe in training. Besides, the combination of the girl's cues toward him and his reaction to his tea made it clear: if the boy had been a virgin, steam would have been pouring out of his ears. That made things difficult (and potentially dangerous) for everyone.
Besides, very few people in this village held any affection at all for someone with Joseph's skin tone.
After receiving affirmation of Joseph's duties, Noc laid out the rules. ""Know this: you will record the histories when they are told to you. You shall ask questions when you are allowed and you shall observe what you shall participate in what you are allowed to participate in. No pestering me with questions, no sneaking around trying to observe the women and children and no and I mean no trying to wheedle out information through trickery. We had quite enough trouble with that sort of thing the last time around.""
Joseph was immediately insulted, even though he did not how it as he automatically agreed. Still, two things bothered him. First, underneath the gold and bronze bangles that decorated the forearms and ankles of Nocs wife, Joseph had noticed strange scars, akin in shape to the marks that sperm whales bore from their battles with giant squid.
Second… what did Noc mean by the last time around?
That Night…
As he lay awake, Joseph realized how exhausting the day had been. As it turned out, he was probably doing to spend most of his time in this house as a sort of a servant: documenting and participating in cooking and chores, handling domestic duties and picking little things up only as Noc's wife deemed appropriate. No real questions answered, no interesting discoveries or scandals or surprises… just ordinary ethnographic work.
It wasn't made any better that his libido was getting annoyed at the 'busy' signals it kept receiving. However, there had been no real opportunity to talk with Marie after last night, with all the revelations of cannibalism and sorcery and other things that probably should have made his stomach turn.
/Maybe it would be better if they had made your stomach turn./ Came a wheedling little multi-voiced dialogue from inside his head… from inside his head, but not originating from him.
Oh no. Joseph thought with a mental groan. Not you idiots again! I thought you gave it up after the last time.
/The last time? You mean when you were in the thrall of carnal lusts, disgracing your heritage?/ The dominant voice changed from one of the old WASP lords to that of an aristocratic dowager that had been ancient even when Granny Clara had been a girl. /Maybe now that you know what her kind get up to, you will listen to reason and find a girl more suitable to a young man of your station./
Her parents are just as middle class as mine are, thank you all very much. Joseph snarked back mentally, fully knowing how these… wraiths felt about his relationship with Marie and savoring the thought of causing them anguish.
/You know full well what is meant. What is not understood is why the other girl did not so arouse your… passions./
Oh please, her family is just as drenched in sorcery as these guys, it's just that they're more polite about who they slice open. Besides, I don't really think you'd have acted any differently if it had been Tracy I'd been with that night instead of Marie, inbred and rural as she apparently is. He remembered clearly that night: how these voices (who he was fairly sure were not the products of schizophrenia despite superficially similar symptomatology), had come to him in the midst of what should have been unimaginable passion and communion with his girlfriend (though with was much more awkward, rushed and possibly painful than desired). Even as the passion mounted, their insults became worse: the taunts, the archaic, hateful rhetoric, the most vicious slurs directed against Marie and him. And yet he had forged on, continuing despite the rising chorus of insane voices inside his head… or even because of them, for as they blasphemed against all that Marie was, all the little things that made Joseph love her all the more, he could tell that his defiance was causing them actual pain and torment… and even through the pleasures of the flesh, he took small, sadistic delights in causing pain and anguish to these assholes who claimed authority as his forbearers.
Now Joseph was getting annoyed… and cranky. Look, I don't have to listen to you idiots, even if you do claim to be my ancestors. You came from a completely different world whose rules do not apply to me. Also, the instruments of your authority are gone: no money, no status, no companies or contacts or friends in high places. All that's left are a bunch of ugly little voices in the wind. Why don't you all just blow away? He was tired of his, of having to listen to these inane snobs that he had learned to loath in the abstract and now hated in the concrete. He hated their hate-filled dismissals of all other peoples and cultures, their smug superiority and the generalized arrogance that seemed to drip from the voices.
When they didn't respond, Joseph took it as a sign. ""Good."" He said aloud, as softly as his sense of satisfaction allowed.
","August, 1346- The Mongol warriors watched as a burning object fell, seemingly from Heaven itself, near the encampment besieging Caffa. It was a good omen, a symbol of victory against the trading town that resisted them. The gods had shown their light upon the invaders...
Baoht Z'uqqa-Mogg pulled himself painfully from the burning pit of molten glass, his many clawed limbs scrambling for purchase, his massive front claws pulling his heavy body from the pit. He had floated through space for so long, too long... Shaggai was gone, his home was gone. The accursed harbinger, Ghroth, had shone it's killing red light upon the surface of that world, slaying the Shan and awakening The Worm That Gnaws in The Night. Baoht Z'uqqa-Mogg had fought valiantly to preserve his world, but failed, and had been flung into space as the world imploded beneath the power of The Worm. He stood upon his many, spider-like legs, relishing the feeling of solid ground beneath his claws, and straightened his three pairs of barbed, ragged wings. Thousand of eyes peered out from between feelers in a walnut-shaped head, his venom dripping from his mandibles, sizzling the warm ground beneath. A new world, a new home.
Home.
The few who saw the terrible dragon fly over head knew that this was no divine harbinger of victory. The even fewer who lived long enough to tell of it before being felled by the plague that followed rambled about a giant, winged scorpion. Within days everyone in the camp had contracted the plague, and soon, so had everyone in the besieged town.
Swarms of small insects, attracted by some scent, some pheromone, followed in Baoht Z'uqq-Mogg's wake. He barely noticed them, he was intoxicated by his new world, so warm, so pleasant. There were abundant swamps here, he could feel it. Places to rest, to heal his battle-wounds...
The Italian merchants of Caffa fled in their ships, bringing with them the fleas and rats that carried the Black Death, guiding it to new ports. The plague spread like wildfire, carried by vermin and fear. Kings and Churches tried to still the tide of death, and failed. People blamed Jews, Romany, paupers, lepers and foreigners, claiming they had poisoned their waters or placed curses upon them, and many were claimed by mob-violence and the disease of hate before they could be claimed by The Black Death. By 1350, over a million people had died, half of Europe was dead, society was in tatters and fear ruled over all.
Baoht Z'uqqa-Mogg was mildly curious about these strange beings, he probed them with his mind, learning about them... These primitive creatures, these humans, seemed to be dying out. Some plague was ravaging them. But that was not his concern. Other beings, similar to the humans, yet different, came forth to feed on the dead and offer up praise to him. These beings, these... Ghouls, called him The Provider. They believed that he caused the deaths that fed them so well. He welcomed their praise, but he was tired, and sought a place to rest...
Finally, a land of steaming jungles lay before him, thick swampland beckoned with it's warmth and comfort. The Great Old One settled into deep, warm mud, and slept, dreaming. A plague raged across Africa, but he knew it not...
",False
"""The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated.""
BORELLUS

I. A Result and a Prologue

1.

From a private hospital for the insane near Providence, Rhode Island, there recently disappeared an exceedingly singular person. He bore the name of Charles Dexter Ward, and was placed under restraint most reluctantly by the grieving father who had watched his aberration grow from a mere eccentricity to a dark mania involving both a possibility of murderous tendencies and a profound and peculiar change in the apparent contents of his mind. Doctors confess themselves quite baffled by his case, since it presented oddities of a general physiological as well as psychological character.
      In the first place, the patient seemed oddly older than his twenty-six years would warrant. Mental disturbance, it is true, will age one rapidly; but the face of this young man had taken on a subtle cast which only the very aged normally acquire. In the second place, his organic processes shewed a certain queerness of proportion which nothing in medical experience can parallel. Respiration and heart action had a baffling lack of symmetry; the voice was lost, so that no sounds above a whisper were possible; digestion was incredibly prolonged and minimised, and neural reactions to standard stimuli bore no relation at all to anything heretofore recorded, either normal or pathological. The skin had a morbid chill and dryness, and the cellular structure of the tissue seemed exaggeratedly coarse and loosely knit. Even a large olive birthmark on the right hip had disappeared, whilst there had formed on the chest a very peculiar mole or blackish spot of which no trace existed before. In general, all physicians agree that in Ward the processes of metabolism had become retarded to a degree beyond precedent.
      Psychologically, too, Charles Ward was unique. His madness held no affinity to any sort recorded in even the latest and most exhaustive of treatises, and was conjoined to a mental force which would have made him a genius or a leader had it not been twisted into strange and grotesque forms. Dr. Willett, who was Ward's family physician, affirms that the patient's gross mental capacity, as gauged by his response to matters outside the sphere of his insanity, had actually increased since the seizure. Ward, it is true, was always a scholar and an antiquarian; but even his most brilliant early work did not shew the prodigious grasp and insight displayed during his last examinations by the alienists. It was, indeed, a difficult matter to obtain a legal commitment to the hospital, so powerful and lucid did the youth's mind seem; and only on the evidence of others, and on the strength of many abnormal gaps in his stock of information as distinguished from his intelligence, was he finally placed in confinement. To the very moment of his vanishment he was an omnivorous reader and as great a conversationalist as his poor voice permitted; and shrewd observers, failing to foresee his escape, freely predicted that he would not be long in gaining his discharge from custody.
      Only Dr. Willett, who brought Charles Ward into the world and had watched his growth of body and mind ever since, seemed frightened at the thought of his future freedom. He had had a terrible experience and had made a terrible discovery which he dared not reveal to his sceptical colleagues. Willett, indeed, presents a minor mystery all his own in his connexion with the case. He was the last to see the patient before his flight, and emerged from that final conversation in a state of mixed horror and relief which several recalled when Ward's escape became known three hours later. That escape itself is one of the unsolved wonders of Dr. Waite's hospital. A window open above a sheer drop of sixty feet could hardly explain it, yet after that talk with Willett the youth was undeniably gone. Willett himself has no public explanations to offer, though he seems strangely easier in mind than before the escape. Many, indeed, feel that he would like to say more if he thought any considerable number would believe him. He had found Ward in his room, but shortly after his departure the attendants knocked in vain. When they opened the door the patient was not there, and all they found was the open window with a chill April breeze blowing in a cloud of fine bluish-grey dust that almost choked them. True, the dogs howled some time before; but that was while Willett was still present, and they had caught nothing and shewn no disturbance later on. Ward's father was told at once over the telephone, but he seemed more saddened than surprised. By the time Dr. Waite called in person, Dr. Willett had been talking with him, and both disavowed any knowledge or complicity in the escape. Only from certain closely confidential friends of Willett and the senior Ward have any clues been gained, and even these are too wildly fantastic for general credence. The one fact which remains is that up to the present time no trace of the missing madman has been unearthed.
      Charles Ward was an antiquarian from infancy, no doubt gaining his taste from the venerable town around him, and from the relics of the past which filled every corner of his parents' old mansion in Prospect Street on the crest of the hill. With the years his devotion to ancient things increased; so that history, genealogy, and the study of colonial architecture, furniture, and craftsmanship at length crowded everything else from his sphere of interests. These tastes are important to remember in considering his madness; for although they do not form its absolute nucleus, they play a prominent part in its superficial form. The gaps of information which the alienists noticed were all related to modern matters, and were invariably offset by a correspondingly excessive though outwardly concealed knowledge of bygone matters as brought out by adroit questioning; so that one would have fancied the patient literally transferred to a former age through some obscure sort of auto-hypnosis. The odd thing was that Ward seemed no longer interested in the antiquities he knew so well. He had, it appears, lost his regard for them through sheer familiarity; and all his final efforts were obviously bent toward mastering those common facts of the modern world which had been so totally and unmistakably expunged from his brain. That this wholesale deletion had occurred, he did his best to hide; but it was clear to all who watched him that his whole programme of reading and conversation was determined by a frantic wish to imbibe such knowledge of his own life and of the ordinary practical and cultural background of the twentieth century as ought to have been his by virtue of his birth in 1902 and his education in the schools of our own time. Alienists are now wondering how, in view of his vitally impaired range of data, the escaped patient manages to cope with the complicated world of today; the dominant opinion being that he is 'lying low' in some humble and unexacting position till his stock of modern information can be brought up to the normal.
      The beginning of Ward's madness is a matter of dispute among alienists. Dr. Lyman, the eminent Boston authority, places it in 1919 or 1920, during the boy's last year at the Moses Brown School, when he suddenly turned from the study of the past to the study of the occult, and refused to qualify for college on the ground that he had individual researches of much greater importance to make. This is certainly borne out by Ward's altered habits at the time, especially by his continual search through town records and among old burying-grounds for a certain grave dug in 1771; the grave of an ancestor named Joseph Curwen, some of whose papers he professed to have found behind the panelling of a very old house in Olney Court, on Stampers' Hill, which Curwen was known to have built and occupied. It is, broadly speaking, undeniable that the winter of 1919-20 saw a great change in Ward; whereby he abruptly stopped his general antiquarian pursuits and embarked on a desperate delving into occult subjects both at home and abroad, varied only by this strangely persistent search for his forefather's grave.
      From this opinion, however, Dr. Willett substantially dissents; basing his verdict on his close and continuous knowledge of the patient, and on certain frightful investigations and discoveries which he made toward the last. Those investigations and discoveries have left their mark upon him; so that his voice trembles when he tells them, and his hand trembles when he tries to write of them. Willett admits that the change of 1919-20 would ordinarily appear to mark the beginning of a progressive decadence which culminated in the horrible and uncanny alienation of 1928; but believes from personal observation that a finer distinction must be made. Granting freely that the boy was always ill-balanced temperamentally, and prone to be unduly susceptible and enthusiastic in his responses to phenomena around him, he refuses to concede that the early alteration marked the actual passage from sanity to madness; crediting instead Ward's own statement that he had discovered or rediscovered something whose effect on human thought was likely to be marvellous and profound. The true madness, he is certain, came with a later change; after the Curwen portrait and the ancient papers had been unearthed; after a trip to strange foreign places had been made, and some terrible invocations chanted under strange and secret circumstances; after certain answers to these invocations had been plainly indicated, and a frantic letter penned under agonising and inexplicable conditions; after the wave of vampirism and the ominous Pawtuxet gossip; and after the patient's memory commenced to exclude contemporary images whilst his voice failed and his physical aspect underwent the subtle modification so many subsequently noticed.
      It was only about this time, Willett points out with much acuteness, that the nightmare qualities became indubitably linked with Ward; and the doctor feels shudderingly sure that enough solid evidence exists to sustain the youth's claim regarding his crucial discovery. In the first place, two workmen of high intelligence saw Joseph Curwen's ancient papers found. Secondly, the boy once shewed Dr. Willett those papers and a page of the Curwen diary, and each of the documents had every appearance of genuineness. The hole where Ward claimed to have found them was long a visible reality, and Willett had a very convincing final glimpse of them in surroundings which can scarcely be believed and can never perhaps be proved. Then there were the mysteries and coincidences of the Orne and Hutchinson letters, and the problem of the Curwen penmanship and of what the detectives brought to light about Dr. Allen; these things, and the terrible message in mediaeval minuscules found in Willett's pocket when he gained consciousness after his shocking experience.
      And most conclusive of all, there are the two hideous results which the doctor obtained from a certain pair of formulae during his final investigations; results which virtually proved the authenticity of the papers and of their monstrous implications at the same time that those papers were borne forever from human knowledge.

2.

      One must look back at Charles Ward's earlier life as at something belonging as much to the past as the antiquities he loved so keenly. In the autumn of 1918, and with a considerable show of zest in the military training of the period, he had begun his junior year at the Moses Brown School, which lies very near his home. The old main building, erected in 1819, had always charmed his youthful antiquarian sense; and the spacious park in which the academy is set appealed to his sharp eye for landscape. His social activities were few; and his hours were spent mainly at home, in rambling walks, in his classes and drills, and in pursuit of antiquarian and genealogical data at the City Hall, the State House, the Public Library, the Athenaeum, the Historical Society, the John Carter Brown and John Hay Libraries of Brown University, and the newly opened Shepley Library in Benefit Street. One may picture him yet as he was in those days; tall, slim, and blond, with studious eyes and a slight stoop, dressed somewhat carelessly, and giving a dominant impression of harmless awkwardness rather than attractiveness.
      His walks were always adventures in antiquity, during which he managed to recapture from the myriad relics of a glamorous old city a vivid and connected picture of the centuries before. His home was a great Georgian mansion atop the well-nigh precipitous hill that rises just east of the river; and from the rear windows of its rambling wings he could look dizzily out over all the clustered spires, domes, roofs, and skyscraper summits of the lower town to the purple hills of the countryside beyond. Here he was born, and from the lovely classic porch of the double-bayed brick facade his nurse had first wheeled him in his carriage; past the little white farmhouse of two hundred years before that the town had long ago overtaken, and on toward the stately colleges along the shady, sumptuous street, whose old square brick mansions and smaller wooden houses with narrow, heavy-columned Doric porches dreamed solid and exclusive amidst their generous yards and gardens.
      He had been wheeled, too, along sleepy Congdon Street, one tier lower down on the steep hill, and with all its eastern homes on high terraces. The small wooden houses averaged a greater age here, for it was up this hill that the growing town had climbed; and in these rides he had imbibed something of the colour of a quaint colonial village. The nurse used to stop and sit on the benches of Prospect Terrace to chat with policemen; and one of the child's first memories was of the great westward sea of hazy roofs and domes and steeples and far hills which he saw one winter afternoon from that great railed embankment, all violet and mystic against a fevered, apocalyptic sunset of reds and golds and purples and curious greens. The vast marble dome of the State House stood out in massive silhouette, its crowning statue haloed fantastically by a break in one of the tinted stratus clouds that barred the flaming sky.
      When he was larger his famous walks began; first with his impatiently dragged nurse, and then alone in dreamy meditation. Farther and farther down that almost perpendicular hill he would venture, each time reaching older and quainter levels of the ancient city. He would hesitate gingerly down vertical Jenckes Street with its bank walls and colonial gables to the shady Benefit Street corner, where before him was a wooden antique with an Ionic-pilastered pair of doorways, and beside him a prehistoric gambrel-roofer with a bit of primal farmyard remaining, and the great Judge Durfee house with its fallen vestiges of Georgian grandeur. It was getting to be a slum here; but the titan elms cast a restoring shadow over the place, and the boy used to stroll south past the long lines of the pre-Revolutionary homes with their great central chimneys and classic portals. On the eastern side they were set high over basements with railed double flights of stone steps, and the young Charles could picture them as they were when the street was new, and red heels and periwigs set off the painted pediments whose signs of wear were now becoming so visible.
      Westward the hill dropped almost as steeply as above, down to the old ""Town Street"" that the founders had laid out at the river's edge in 1636. Here ran innumerable little lanes with leaning, huddled houses of immense antiquity; and fascinated though he was, it was long before he dared to thread their archaic verticality for fear they would turn out a dream or a gateway to unknown terrors. He found it much less formidable to continue along Benefit Street past the iron fence of St. John's hidden churchyard and the rear of the 1761 Colony House and the mouldering bulk of the Golden Ball Inn where Washington stopped. At Meeting Street - the successive Gaol Lane and King Street of other periods - he would look upward to the east and see the arched flight of steps to which the highway had to resort in climbing the slope, and downward to the west, glimpsing the old brick colonial schoolhouse that smiles across the road at the ancient Sign of Shakespear's Head where the Providence Gazette and Country-Journal was printed before the Revolution. Then came the exquisite First Baptist Church of 1775, luxurious with its matchless Gibbs steeple, and the Georgian roofs and cupolas hovering by. Here and to the southward the neighbourhood became better, flowering at last into a marvellous group of early mansions; but still the little ancient lanes led off down the precipice to the west, spectral in their many-gabled archaism and dipping to a riot of iridescent decay where the wicked old waterfront recalls its proud East India days amidst polyglot vice and squalor, rotting wharves, and blear-eyed ship-chandleries, with such surviving alley names as Packet, Bullion, Gold, Silver, Coin, Doubloon, Sovereign, Guilder, Dollar, Dime, and Cent.
      Sometimes, as he grew taller and more adventurous, young Ward would venture down into this maelstrom of tottering houses, broken transoms, tumbling steps, twisted balustrades, swarthy faces, and nameless odours; winding from South Main to South Water, searching out the docks where the bay and sound steamers still touched, and returning northward at this lower level past the steep-roofed 1816 warehouses and the broad square at the Great Bridge, where the 1773 Market House still stands firm on its ancient arches. In that square he would pause to drink in the bewildering beauty of the old town as it rises on its eastward bluff, decked with its two Georgian spires and crowned by the vast new Christian Science dome as London is crowned by St. Paul's. He liked mostly to reach this point in the late afternoon, when the slanting sunlight touches the Market House and the ancient hill roofs and belfries with gold, and throws magic around the dreaming wharves where Providence Indiamen used to ride at anchor. After a long look he would grow almost dizzy with a poet's love for the sight, and then he would scale the slope homeward in the dusk past the old white church and up the narrow precipitous ways where yellow gleams would begin to peep out in small-paned windows and through fanlights set high over double flights of steps with curious wrought-iron railings.
      At other times, and in later years, he would seek for vivid contrasts; spending half a walk in the crumbling colonial regions northwest of his home, where the hill drops to the lower eminence of Stampers' Hill with its ghetto and negro quarter clustering round the place where the Boston stage coach used to start before the Revolution, and the other half in the gracious southerly realm about George, Benevolent, Power, and Williams Streets, where the old slope holds unchanged the fine estates and bits of walled garden and steep green lane in which so many fragrant memories linger. These rambles, together with the diligent studies which accompanied them, certainly account for a large amount of the antiquarian lore which at last crowded the modern world from Charles Ward's mind; and illustrate the mental soil upon which fell, in that fateful winter of 1919-20, the seeds that came to such strange and terrible fruition.
      Dr. Willett is certain that, up to this ill-omened winter of first change, Charles Ward's antiquarianism was free from every trace of the morbid. Graveyards held for him no particular attraction beyond their quaintness and historic value, and of anything like violence or savage instinct he was utterly devoid. Then, by insidious degrees, there appeared to develop a curious sequel to one of his genealogical triumphs of the year before; when he had discovered among his maternal ancestors a certain very long-lived man named Joseph Curwen, who had come from Salem in March of 1692, and about whom a whispered series of highly peculiar and disquieting stories clustered.
      Ward's great-great-grandfather Welcome Potter had in 1785 married a certain ""Ann Tillinghast, daughter of Mrs. Eliza, daughter to Capt. James Tillinghast"", of whose paternity the family had preserved no trace. Late in 1918, whilst examining a volume of original town records in manuscript, the young genealogist encountered an entry describing a legal change of name, by which in 1772 a Mrs. Eliza Curwen, widow of Joseph Curwen, resumed, along with her seven-year-old daughter Ann, her maiden name of Tillinghast; on the ground 'that her Husband's name was become a publick Reproach by Reason of what was knowne after his Decease; the which confirming an antient common Rumour, tho' not to be credited by a loyall Wife till so proven as to be wholely past Doubting'. This entry came to light upon the accidental separation of two leaves which had been carefully pasted together and treated as one by a laboured revision of the page numbers.
      It was at once clear to Charles Ward that he had indeed discovered a hitherto unknown great-great-great-grandfather. The discovery doubly excited him because he had already heard vague reports and seen scattered allusions relating to this person; about whom there remained so few publicly available records, aside from those becoming public only in modern times, that it almost seemed as if a conspiracy had existed to blot him from memory. What did appear, moreover, was of such a singular and provocative nature that one could not fail to imagine curiously what it was that the colonial recorders were so anxious to conceal and forget; or to suspect that the deletion had reasons all too valid.
      Before this, Ward had been content to let his romancing about old Joseph Curwen remain in the idle stage; but having discovered his own relationship to this apparently ""hushed-up"" character, he proceeded to hunt out as systematically as possible whatever he might find concerning him. In this excited quest he eventually succeeded beyond his highest expectations; for old letters, diaries, and sheaves of unpublished memoirs in cobwebbed Providence garrets and elsewhere yielded many illuminating passages which their writers had not thought it worth their while to destroy. One important sidelight came from a point as remote as New York, where some Rhode Island colonial correspondence was stored in the Museum at Fraunces' Tavern. The really crucial thing, though, and what in Dr. Willett's opinion formed the definite source of Ward's undoing, was the matter found in August 1919 behind the panelling of the crumbling house in Olney Court. It was that, beyond a doubt, which opened up those black vistas whose end was deeper than the pit.

","VII.

Yet all this was only the prologue of the actual Dunwich horror. Formalities were gone through by bewildered officials, abnormal details were duly kept from press and public, and men were sent to Dunwich and Aylesbury to look up property and notify any who might be heirs of the late Wilbur Whateley. They found the countryside in great agitation, both because of the growing rumblings beneath the domed hills, and because of the unwonted stench and the surging, lapping sounds which came increasingly from the great empty shell formed by Whateley’s boarded-up farmhouse. Earl Sawyer, who tended the horse and cattle during Wilbur’s absence, had developed a woefully acute case of nerves. The officials devised excuses not to enter the noisome boarded place; and were glad to confine their survey of the deceased’s living quarters, the newly mended sheds, to a single visit. They filed a ponderous report at the court-house in Aylesbury, and litigations concerning heirship are said to be still in progress amongst the innumerable Whateleys, decayed and undecayed, of the upper Miskatonic valley.
      An almost interminable manuscript in strange characters, written in a huge ledger and adjudged a sort of diary because of the spacing and the variations in ink and penmanship, presented a baffling puzzle to those who found it on the old bureau which served as its owner’s desk. After a week of debate it was sent to Miskatonic University, together with the deceased’s collection of strange books, for study and possible translation; but even the best linguists soon saw that it was not likely to be unriddled with ease. No trace of the ancient gold with which Wilbur and Old Whateley always paid their debts has yet been discovered.
      It was in the dark of September 9th that the horror broke loose. The hill noises had been very pronounced during the evening, and dogs barked frantically all night. Early risers on the 10th noticed a peculiar stench in the air. About seven o’clock Luther Brown, the hired boy at George Corey’s, between Cold Spring Glen and the village, rushed frenziedly back from his morning trip to Ten-Acre Meadow with the cows. He was almost convulsed with fright as he stumbled into the kitchen; and in the yard outside the no less frightened herd were pawing and lowing pitifully, having followed the boy back in the panic they shared with him. Between gasps Luther tried to stammer out his tale to Mrs. Corey.
      “Up thar in the rud beyont the glen, Mis’ Corey—they’s suthin’ ben thar! It smells like thunder, an’ all the bushes an’ little trees is pushed back from the rud like they’d a haouse ben moved along of it. An’ that ain’t the wust, nuther. They’s prints in the rud, Mis’ Corey—great raound prints as big as barrel-heads, all sunk daown deep like a elephant had ben along, only they’s a sight more nor four feet could make! I looked at one or two afore I run, an’ I see every one was covered with lines spreadin’ aout from one place, like as if big palm-leaf fans—twict or three times as big as any they is—hed of ben paounded daown into the rud. An’ the smell was awful, like what it is araound Wizard Whateley’s ol’ haouse. . . .”
      Here he faltered, and seemed to shiver afresh with the fright that had sent him flying home. Mrs. Corey, unable to extract more information, began telephoning the neighbours; thus starting on its rounds the overture of panic that heralded the major terrors. When she got Sally Sawyer, housekeeper at Seth Bishop’s, the nearest place to Whateley’s, it became her turn to listen instead of transmit; for Sally’s boy Chauncey, who slept poorly, had been up on the hill toward Whateley’s, and had dashed back in terror after one look at the place, and at the pasturage where Mr. Bishop’s cows had been left out all night.
      “Yes, Mis’ Corey,” came Sally’s tremulous voice over the party wire, “Cha’ncey he just come back a-postin’, and couldn’t haff talk fer bein’ scairt! He says Ol’ Whateley’s haouse is all blowed up, with the timbers scattered raound like they’d ben dynamite inside; only the bottom floor ain’t through, but is all covered with a kind o’ tar-like stuff that smells awful an’ drips daown offen the aidges onto the graoun’ whar the side timbers is blown away. An’ they’s awful kinder marks in the yard, tew—great raound marks bigger raound than a hogshead, an’ all sticky with stuff like is on the blowed-up haouse. Cha’ncey he says they leads off into the medders, whar a great swath wider’n a barn is matted daown, an’ all the stun walls tumbled every whichway wherever it goes.
      “An’ he says, says he, Mis’ Corey, as haow he sot to look fer Seth’s caows, frighted ez he was; an’ faound ’em in the upper pasture nigh the Devil’s Hop Yard in an awful shape. Haff on ’em’s clean gone, an’ nigh haff o’ them that’s left is sucked most dry o’ blood, with sores on ’em like they’s ben on Whateley’s cattle ever senct Lavinny’s black brat was born. Seth he’s gone aout naow to look at ’em, though I’ll vaow he wun’t keer ter git very nigh Wizard Whateley’s! Cha’ncey didn’t look keerful ter see whar the big matted-daown swath led arter it leff the pasturage, but he says he thinks it p’inted towards the glen rud to the village.
      “I tell ye, Mis’ Corey, they’s suthin’ abroad as hadn’t orter be abroad, an’ I for one think that black Wilbur Whateley, as come to the bad eend he desarved, is at the bottom of the breedin’ of it. He wa’n’t all human hisself, I allus says to everybody; an’ I think he an’ Ol’ Whateley must a raised suthin’ in that there nailed-up haouse as ain’t even so human as he was. They’s allus ben unseen things araound Dunwich—livin’ things—as ain’t human an’ ain’t good fer human folks.
      “The graoun’ was a-talkin’ lass night, an’ towards mornin’ Cha’ncey he heerd the whippoorwills so laoud in Col’ Spring Glen he couldn’t sleep nun. Then he thought he heerd another faint-like saound over towards Wizard Whateley’s—a kinder rippin’ or tearin’ o’ wood, like some big box er crate was bein’ opened fur off. What with this an’ that, he didn’t git to sleep at all till sunup, an’ no sooner was he up this mornin’, but he’s got to go over to Whateley’s an’ see what’s the matter. He see enough, I tell ye, Mis’ Corey! This dun’t mean no good, an’ I think as all the men-folks ought to git up a party an’ do suthin’. I know suthin’ awful’s abaout, an’ feel my time is nigh, though only Gawd knows jest what it is.
      “Did your Luther take accaount o’ whar them big tracks led tew? No? Wal, Mis’ Corey, ef they was on the glen rud this side o’ the glen, an’ ain’t got to your haouse yet, I calc’late they must go into the glen itself. They would do that. I allus says Col’ Spring Glen ain’t no healthy nor decent place. The whippoorwills an’ fireflies there never did act like they was creaters o’ Gawd, an’ they’s them as says ye kin hear strange things a-rushin’ an’ a-talkin’ in the air daown thar ef ye stand in the right place, atween the rock falls an’ Bear’s Den.”
      By that noon fully three-quarters of the men and boys of Dunwich were trooping over the roads and meadows between the new-made Whateley ruins and Cold Spring Glen, examining in horror the vast, monstrous prints, the maimed Bishop cattle, the strange, noisome wreck of the farmhouse, and the bruised, matted vegetation of the fields and roadsides. Whatever had burst loose upon the world had assuredly gone down into the great sinister ravine; for all the trees on the banks were bent and broken, and a great avenue had been gouged in the precipice-hanging underbrush. It was as though a house, launched by an avalanche, had slid down through the tangled growths of the almost vertical slope. From below no sound came, but only a distant, undefinable foetor; and it is not to be wondered at that the men preferred to stay on the edge and argue, rather than descend and beard the unknown Cyclopean horror in its lair. Three dogs that were with the party had barked furiously at first, but seemed cowed and reluctant when near the glen. Someone telephoned the news to the Aylesbury Transcript; but the editor, accustomed to wild tales from Dunwich, did no more than concoct a humorous paragraph about it; an item soon afterward reproduced by the Associated Press.
      That night everyone went home, and every house and barn was barricaded as stoutly as possible. Needless to say, no cattle were allowed to remain in open pasturage. About two in the morning a frightful stench and the savage barking of the dogs awakened the household at Elmer Frye’s, on the eastern edge of Cold Spring Glen, and all agreed that they could hear a sort of muffled swishing or lapping sound from somewhere outside. Mrs. Frye proposed telephoning the neighbours, and Elmer was about to agree when the noise of splintering wood burst in upon their deliberations. It came, apparently, from the barn; and was quickly followed by a hideous screaming and stamping amongst the cattle. The dogs slavered and crouched close to the feet of the fear-numbed family. Frye lit a lantern through force of habit, but knew it would be death to go out into that black farmyard. The children and the womenfolk whimpered, kept from screaming by some obscure, vestigial instinct of defence which told them their lives depended on silence. At last the noise of the cattle subsided to a pitiful moaning, and a great snapping, crashing, and crackling ensued. The Fryes, huddled together in the sitting-room, did not dare to move until the last echoes died away far down in Cold Spring Glen. Then, amidst the dismal moans from the stable and the daemoniac piping of late whippoorwills in the glen, Selina Frye tottered to the telephone and spread what news she could of the second phase of the horror.
      The next day all the countryside was in a panic; and cowed, uncommunicative groups came and went where the fiendish thing had occurred. Two titan swaths of destruction stretched from the glen to the Frye farmyard, monstrous prints covered the bare patches of ground, and one side of the old red barn had completely caved in. Of the cattle, only a quarter could be found and identified. Some of these were in curious fragments, and all that survived had to be shot. Earl Sawyer suggested that help be asked from Aylesbury or Arkham, but others maintained it would be of no use. Old Zebulon Whateley, of a branch that hovered about half way between soundness and decadence, made darkly wild suggestions about rites that ought to be practiced on the hill-tops. He came of a line where tradition ran strong, and his memories of chantings in the great stone circles were not altogether connected with Wilbur and his grandfather.
      Darkness fell upon a stricken countryside too passive to organise for real defence. In a few cases closely related families would band together and watch in the gloom under one roof; but in general there was only a repetition of the barricading of the night before, and a futile, ineffective gesture of loading muskets and setting pitchforks handily about. Nothing, however, occurred except some hill noises; and when the day came there were many who hoped that the new horror had gone as swiftly as it had come. There were even bold souls who proposed an offensive expedition down in the glen, though they did not venture to set an actual example to the still reluctant majority.
      When night came again the barricading was repeated, though there was less huddling together of families. In the morning both the Frye and the Seth Bishop households reported excitement among the dogs and vague sounds and stenches from afar, while early explorers noted with horror a fresh set of the monstrous tracks in the road skirting Sentinel Hill. As before, the sides of the road shewed a bruising indicative of the blasphemously stupendous bulk of the horror; whilst the conformation of the tracks seemed to argue a passage in two directions, as if the moving mountain had come from Cold Spring Glen and returned to it along the same path. At the base of the hill a thirty-foot swath of crushed shrubbery saplings led steeply upward, and the seekers gasped when they saw that even the most perpendicular places did not deflect the inexorable trail. Whatever the horror was, it could scale a sheer stony cliff of almost complete verticality; and as the investigators climbed around to the hill’s summit by safer routes they saw that the trail ended—or rather, reversed—there.
      It was here that the Whateleys used to build their hellish fires and chant their hellish rituals by the table-like stone on May-Eve and Hallowmass. Now that very stone formed the centre of a vast space thrashed around by the mountainous horror, whilst upon its slightly concave surface was a thick and foetid deposit of the same tarry stickiness observed on the floor of the ruined Whateley farmhouse when the horror escaped. Men looked at one another and muttered. Then they looked down the hill. Apparently the horror had descended by a route much the same as that of its ascent. To speculate was futile. Reason, logic, and normal ideas of motivation stood confounded. Only old Zebulon, who was not with the group, could have done justice to the situation or suggested a plausible explanation.
      Thursday night began much like the others, but it ended less happily. The whippoorwills in the glen had screamed with such unusual persistence that many could not sleep, and about 3 A.M. all the party telephones rang tremulously. Those who took down their receivers heard a fright-mad voice shriek out, “Help, oh, my Gawd! . . .” and some thought a crashing sound followed the breaking off of the exclamation. There was nothing more. No one dared do anything, and no one knew till morning whence the call came. Then those who had heard it called everyone on the line, and found that only the Fryes did not reply. The truth appeared an hour later, when a hastily assembled group of armed men trudged out to the Frye place at the head of the glen. It was horrible, yet hardly a surprise. There were more swaths and monstrous prints, but there was no longer any house. It had caved in like an egg-shell, and amongst the ruins nothing living or dead could be discovered. Only a stench and a tarry stickiness. The Elmer Fryes had been erased from Dunwich.
",True
"Hanoi, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
June 24, 2011.
""Hey, we're here. Get up if you don't want to wake up in Hue!""
Joseph Clayton was shaken awake by the hand of one of his classmates on his shoulder. He was sitting in the back of a taxi van... the only one left sitting, actually, as the others had already disembarked to enter the government office they were parked in front of.
Which probably meant that he was left to pay the fare.
After he payed (as seemed to be his lot on this trip), he followed his classmates and his professor into the government office where they hoped to finally receive their travel permits. He hadn't gotten much of sleep on the plane; a mixture of excitement in the face of overseas travel and sheer jet-lag had conspired to leave him weary and light headed until he got a few hours sleep, which the taxi ride had partially afforded him.
And in that sleep...
The dream had come as a stark, clear memory. When Marie had said that she wasn't going to join him at the Miskatonic campus in Arkham for what would be their first year of university, he had been devastated. His first questions, rushed and frantic, had been about the cause of such a change. She certainly had the SAT score to qualify and student debt could be handled with relative ease. Had she decided to forgo post-secondary to concentrate on her stake in the restaurant? Had financial problems struck and prevented admissions from being paid?
Was it something about him?
Her answers, far more controlled than his frenzied speculation, had all been in the negative. Her SAT scores were good, student loans were still open and she still intended to go for a degree in Biology at Miskatonic. It was just... after she'd gotten that phonograph from her parents' home village, the repayment had been a promise to come and spend a year back in the ""Old Country"" as soon as she could. It would only be for a year and then she would return, ready for university and all accompaniments.
That had been very nearly one year before. She had promised him that she would be coming back in the summer of 2011... but after she had arrived in Vietnam, all contact had stopped cold. Her parents, when asked about her condition, always responded with affirmations that she would return and that she was fine... but as winter wore onto spring, subtle hints of doubt and worry had crept into their voices. Had they even been receiving any news from their daughter and if not, then why not? Had something gone terribly wrong?
As it happened, more baffling events awaited inside.
""What do you mean, restricted?"" Joseph asked the Communist Party bureaucrat sitting across the desk from him. Of course, due to the facts that first, said bureaucrat was a government employee and second, they were not alone in the room, Joseph had been careful not to sound too brunt in his tone. A trung sior Sergeant, wearing the forest green uniform of the Vietnam Border Defence Force (VPA), stood by the door of the office, both watching and guarding.
Relieved at being able to shed his stilted English after Joseph exhibited a decent grasp of the Vietnamese language, the bureaucrat put forth what he knew of the situation. ""Civilian access is almost completely denied inside the area you requested. To be honest, that section of the border has been troublesome ever since the war. We get reports of smugglers, poachers, bandits, H'mong insurgents... every type of violent counter-revolutionary you can think of, this region seems to have it. The local Bru farmers aren't much help, but they generally don't bother others and seem to accept the military presence we keep there."" The bureaucrat shifted his gaze from Joseph to Professor Neville Andover, the leader of this particular expedition. ""I'm sorry, but there's nothing that can be done without high level authorization.""
As a response to this, Neville Andover did not get upset. He did not resign himself to failure. He did not even try to ask if there was any other avenue of entry or way to access the information he needed. He just donned an odd, amused smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling behind his wire rim glasses. ""I assume that General Vo is still the Secretary for the Border Forces?"" He asked, almost distractedly. When the official answered yes, Professor Andover reached into the inside of his light cotton jacket and pulled out a small, metal case. From this case, he removed a single paper card of purest black, embossed with an emerald green ""Delta"" symbol and a capital ""Y"" of gold in the center of that hollow triangle. ""I have been in contact with Comrade Vo for the last six months, planning this expedition as an act of cooperation between our two governments and as a boon for my University. He knows that card; show it or describe it to him... you maywant to run it by General Tran as well. Either way, they will give you the answer you need.""
As the bureaucrat took the card and then as the Border Defense sergeant took it from him and headed out of the room, Joesph wondered about his professor and the oddities that surrounded him. The first time he had ever seen the Professor, it had been in his High School Auditorium as Marie had performed the Stork Dance... and Joseph had noticed strange things. In their senior year of High School, both he and Marie had received reference letters to Miskatonic University in Arkham, a town in Essex county. When he had arrived at Miskatonic (without Marie), he had been shocked that the professor for his Cultural Anthropology class was not only the one who had given him his reference but was also the man who had he had seen three years before.
And then there were his classmates, three of whom had also come on this expedition. Many of them had received similar letters from Prof. Andover and most of those, though not relaying specifics, had said that they had found the circumstances equally strange. Two who had gotten references were on this very trip with them. The first was Tracy Williams from the farm country of Northwest Virginia, a girl with blond hair quite a few shades lighter than Josephs own brassy brown and the class Nippon-Nut, being both obsessed with Anime and Manga as well as being Japanese-proficient. The second was Albert Noyes, a young man who has part white, part black and a little Algonquin-Indian from a small hamlet in southern Vermont. His specialties were technology, math and Mandarin Chinese. The third member of retinue was a young man named Malone who... frankly, was a mystery to the entire class. However, he had volunteered for this trip and his grades had been excellent so his place on the roster had been assured.
But there was still a nagging question at the back of his mind: why? Why had they received offers to go to an obscure if admittedly exceptional regional university when the big names had all passed them over? Why had they been gathered from all across the United States by a single professor? And why, it seemed, did it feel like there was such a big connection between the missing member of Dr. Andovers ""collection"" and the reason behind this expedition?
Why did it feel as if Marie was somehow connected to this?
Eventually, the sergeant came back and informed the bureaucrat of General Vo's express permission for the Professor and his students to enter the exclusion zone as well as General Tran's confirmation, before handing the card back to Neville Andover. Joseph knew that academics could sometimes have friends in high and unusual places, but counting on ... no, expecting the approval of not just one, but two ranking Generals in a non-allied nation? This seemed crazy, certifiably insane even.
But then, so did spectral storks and spoonbills.
Northernmost Quang Binh Province, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
June 29, 2011
Despite the calm look on the professors face, something about the current situation made Joseph Clayton distinctly ill at ease.
They had spent the last two days trudging up into the Annamite mountains after leaving the fertile coastal plain. At the last village with road access, they had ditched their vehicles and backpacked up the ridges and trails, counting on a guide from the local Bru people to lead them to... whatever Prof. Andover was looking for. The fact that the guide was now legging it quite quickly back down the misty path told Joseph that something had either gone incredibly wrong or incredibly right.
Now, Neville Andover was chanting, seemingly trying to communicate with something deep in the thick underbrush on either side of the worn, overgrown gully that had been called a trail. The language was almost intellig ible to Joseph, being a form of Mon-Khmer linked to the classical Vietnamese he had studied, perhaps with a few hints of Muong intermixed. However, the syntax and grammer were archaic to say the least. From some of the words used it even seemed to be achingly familiar, almost as if...
With a sudden realization of shock and the smell of grilled pork and Bac Bon Dzhow a memory in his nostrils, Joseph realized where he had encountered this form of Vietic before.
But the shocks were not over.
Spun around by Albert Noyes to see something, Joseph gazed upward to see a human figure standing upon the high bank, glancing down at them with hard, measuring eyes. Undoubtedly masculine, the figure was of a man of slightly darker skin than the farmers of the coast (though the features were similar) and of greater height than either them or the native Bru. Clothed only in a white cotton kilt with geometric designs in black and a leather girdle, this man carried a white flatbow decorated with bands of green, blue and red while a bronze dagger rested at his hip. His head was shaved of all hair, and black designs were tattooed from the crown of the scalp to the jawline, with more tattoos covering his arms, chest and lower legs.
The fact that an arrow was nocked in the string of his bow put the four young people on edge, with Malone and Joesph himself tightening the grips on the hilts of their machetes in anticipation of a hopeless fight. More men in similar dress and tattoos, some with bronze slashing swords, some with bronze-headed spears and others with flatbows, appeared out of the forest on either side of them. Now that Joseph could get a better look at them in the dim light filtering down through the forest canopy and the mist, their arm tattoos began looking very similar to those borne by Marie's parents while those on their faces, while different in design, were still similar in form.
All the while, Prof. Andover kept up the low chanting, of which Joseph could pick out individual words: ""friend"", ""gods"", ""village"", ""priest"", ""comrade"" and at least one invocation of Ho Chi Minh among them. To this, these strange men seemed to confer with each other though glances and nods before took one took a short, bamboo tube from his girdle, put one end to his mouth, took a deep breath and blew.
As the silvery-blue powder erupted from the tube, settled on the heads of the trekking academics and they each lost consciousness in turn, Joseph wondered if this could get any worse.
Meanwhile, Spoonbill Village
Tsan Pho Dao had been the Chief Priest of this village for many years, ever since the death of his father in the closing days of the American War. In that span of years, he had seen many futures and advised his people based on those futures. He had called down both ruin and plenty by invoking the power of the gods of his people. He alone, in a feat outside even the power of the hereditary village chiefs, had communicated with the Instrument of their gods, a being possessed of both boundless knowledge and an absolutely rotten temper. He also, most importantly, had an absolutely perfect memory of his entire life... and that of his father, and his father before him.
To be perfectly honest, he held a tremendous amount of power within this village. The ancestor shrines belonged to families while the hunters had their own little shrines up the mountain where midnight rituals were performed to gather poison for the tips of arrows and darts. But those rituals needed to be performed by the minor priests under his command. This temple was the spiritual center of his people for most of the year and the temple with it's darkened wood walls lit only by feeble braziers whose light was twisted by the smoke of rare and powerful incenses, with it's figurines of gods and demons carved from nephrite and jadeite brought from deep below the earth... was his domain. His and no one else'. He divined the future when possible, he performed the rites and as a result, it was he who had taken countless lives in sacrifice over the course of his adulthood: chickens, pigs, goats, buffalo... people.
As he sat at a low table in his private sanctuary, trying to divine some course for a question that had faced him for most of a year, he noticed something. One of the golden discs he used for divination, a coin looted from a Chinese caravan many centuries ago, stood up on its rim and began to roll. Following the curve of failing momentum, the coin finally came to rest at a specific point on the table, a place that held indication of the future.
Visitors... and not the ""ketchup"" kind of visitors.
Several Hours Later, Close to the Laos Border
The answer to Joseph Clayton's earlier question was a definite yes. When he had awoken, he had found his wrists and ankles bound, the bindings looped over a pole carried by two men with him and the other students suspended like deer carcasses. The Professor, on the other hand, had not been bound, but had found transport by sitting in a large basket suspended from one of the poles by a cord, carried by a pair of men. They had been going downhill from the crest of a ridge and were now leaving the forest, coming onto a road. First, they passed under a wooden gate where roosting spoonbills had been carved into the posts and a sun flanked by two dragons had been carved into the beams above the road.
Then Joseph saw where they were headed. A village of perhaps thirty houses was visible in the valley bottom while narrow terraces had been cut into the hills above, green with growing rice. The view quickly vanished as the men began heading into the village itself but sight was soon replaced with sound. The quiet of the forest was supplanted by the cacophony of a hundred sounds: chickens and pigs grunted and clucked as the animals rooted below the houses and around the garbage heaps while odd-looking reddish dogs, lazing in the sun on the porches of the outermost houses, whined in surprise at the new arrivals. The sounds of tools and primitive machinery clunked melodiously. The sounds of people also were audible: talking, laughing, shouting and even a few low notes of women's work songs were possible for Joseph to pick out of the general buzz... a buzz which also included Albert trying to reason with their captors and Tracy displaying an unusually foul mouth toward same.
Soon, people began to notice the men bringing in captives and a few even began to gather along the path as they entered the village, joining their dogs (or Dholes, as they were now identifiable as) who had come to sniff. It was mostly men, older boys and children who came out to watch while the women and the elderly usually went no further than windows and the porches of the stilt-houses that lined the road. Here, even hanging upside down, Joseph could notice a few things about the dress and appearance of the people
Frankly... it was a bit odd.
From what he knew, the Vietnamese national costume (in it's modern form) placed a heavy emphasis on trousers, an item of clothing that he noticed was rather conspicuously absent here. Everyone here seemed to be wearing variations on one basic outfit in either brown or black: knee-length cotton kilts, short-sleeved cotton jackets (mostly with their front fastenings closed) and either rough-woven conical hats or simple cloths tied over their heads. The men's hair appeared to be cut short to the point where one could vaguely make out the tattoos on their scalp while children varied between the same shortness for boys and a single, long braid for the girls.
Eventually they arrived in a great or square before what appeared to be the temple: a ponderous structure of wood and brick perched upon massive stone foundations, it's sloping roofs flaring outward as if to shroud the surrounding houses from the scrutiny of the heavens. Around them, a crowd had gathered on all sides, an air of excitement buzzing in the air. Men exited the house across the square from the temple entrance and despite the calm demeanour of Professor Andover, words began filtering through to Joseph that began sounding more and more disturbing; words like ""kill"", ""sacrifice"" and ""ritual"". But another word came, one that sent darker imaginings and images rambling through his sensation-saturated mind.
The word ""eat"".
""WAIT! STOP!""
Joseph knew those words as well... as well as that voice!
Out of the crowd rushed a figure dressed much like the others: brown kilt and jacket, the latter partially open to reveal a yem undergarment and with a straw hat on her head. As Joseph finally began taking in other details, he noticed the tattooed lines and whimsical designs on her lower legs and arms and on her face, lines and vaguely triangular patterns that almost resembled the features of an orangutan.
Her face... behind all the tattooing, the face of this woman was still as unmistakable to Joseph as the first day they had met in Kindergarten. To this sudden recognition, the young man could only exclaim his surprise as a soothingly familiar name.
""Marie?""
","Ordinarily, one wouldn't think of the Dreamers' Inn as a mausoleum any more than one would think of the Golden Goose restaurant as a crypt. Journeymen who are just passing through Leight, and rooming at the Inn as a matter of convenience, will see nothing amiss. There are a few splintering floorboards here, and a couple of sagging roof beams there, but these things are only natural for a lodging house that's stood for more than two centuries. I, however, with my wary eyes and cautious steps, notice more ominous flaws: the dry rot in the walls, for instance, and the stairs that are almost murderously steep. How on Earth does Monsieur Thènard keep the Inn open despite its decay and stale air? Perhaps he himself has had a part in spreading rumors about it, challenging brave visitors to spend the entire night in a haunted hotel.
Then again, maybe it all boils down to the Inn being the most immediate place for a night's slumber. When one is tired and hungry, weary from sitting in a carriage or on horseback, then why not stay here?
""Good evening, Mademoiselle Dawson,"" announces an oily voice. ""Welcome to the Dreamers' Inn.""
My spine stiffens. If this place is a tomb, then Monsieur Thènard is the shifty undertaker who'd give you your six feet of earth once you had passed, then dig you up if your relatives couldn't pay the maintenance fees. His smile resembles a scythe's blade: the one that Death wields, and with which he harvests you.
""Good evening to you too, Monsieur Thènard,"" I tell him as civilly as I can. ""I'd like to rent a room, please.""
""Certainly."" He pauses. ""I am surprised to see you here. Can you not stay at your father's house for free?""
""Of course, but I have my reasons. If you must know, I'm on an errand to quell all the rumors about this hotel. You and I could both stand to have more revenue coming from it, after all. What better way to do that than to put vicious village talk to rest? You know what the people say: it's haunted, and not by your ordinary ghosts. They also claim that certain people, once they lie down to sleep here, never awaken. Pah! If someone wakes up dead, pardon the silly expression, then their heart failed during the night, or they perished from some other natural cause. No devilry is here, and I'm out to prove it once and for all.""
""Mais oui,"" he says, grinning. ""We two know that, but how are you going to convince the rest of Leight?""
""I intend to spend three consecutive nights here, not just one, and come out none the worse for wear. I know that the people here typically don't listen to a godless spinster. However, if I tell them that there's nothing to fear at the Dreamers' Inn - save a few usual nightmares from sleeping in a strange place - perhaps they will take heed, and tell their traveling friends and relatives to pay this establishment a visit.""
""A splendid plan,"" Thènard replies. ""I hope it works, and here is the cost of three nights' lodging."" When he reveals it, I wince. It's not exorbitant, meaning that I can still afford it, but barely. With Theodora receiving her month's wages yesterday, plus my paying an ample bill of goods from the grocer, I'll be spent out by the end of my stay. I'm glad that it's almost the end of October: Hallowe'en will arrive in exactly three days. Once it's November, my monthly pension allowance will be full again, and I can start all over.
Still, I feel like a fool. Truly, is there any 'starting over' when one keeps going round in the same circle?
""Mademoiselle?"" 
Startled out of my reverie, I pay him. ""Agathe is still serving food in the kitchen,"" Thènard tells me, referring to his wizened maid-of-all-work. ""There aren't enough guests for her to have served dinner in the dining room, so I'm glad you've come."" All of a sudden, he leans forward and winks at me. ""Should you require company upstairs…""
""Give me my key, and I'll be off.""
He opens a drawer behind his porter's desk and hands it over, smirking. ""Room two, second floor.""
",False
"V. A Nightmare and a Cataclysm

1.

And now swiftly followed that hideous experience which has left its indelible mark of fear on the soul of Marinus Bicknell Willett, and has added a decade to the visible age of one whose youth was even then far behind. Dr. Willett had conferred at length with Mr. Ward, and had come to an agreement with him on several points which both felt the alienists would ridicule. There was, they conceded, a terrible movement alive in the world, whose direct connexion with a necromancy even older than the Salem witchcraft could not be doubted. That at least two living men - and one other of whom they dared not think - were in absolute possession of minds or personalities which had functioned as early as 1690 or before was likewise almost unassailably proved even in the face of all known natural laws. What these horrible creatures - and Charles Ward as well - were doing or trying to do seemed fairly clear from their letters and from every bit of light both old and new which had filtered in upon the case. They were robbing the tombs of all the ages, including those of the world's wisest and greatest men, in the hope of recovering from the bygone ashes some vestige of the consciousness and lore which had once animated and informed them.
      A hideous traffick was going on among these nightmare ghouls, whereby illustrious bones were bartered with the calm calculativeness of schoolboys swapping books; and from what was extorted from this centuried dust there was anticipated a power and a wisdom beyond anything which the cosmos had ever seen concentrated in one man or group. They had found unholy ways to keep their brains alive, either in the same body or different bodies; and had evidently achieved a way of tapping the consciousness of the dead whom they gathered together. There had, it seems, been some truth in chimerical old Borellus when he wrote of preparing from even the most antique remains certain ""Essential Saltes"" from which the shade of a long-dead living thing might be raised up. There was a formula for evoking such a shade, and another for putting it down; and it had now been so perfected that it could be taught successfully. One must be careful about evocations, for the markers of old graves are not always accurate.
      Willett and Mr. Ward shivered as they passed from conclusion to conclusion. Things - presences or voices of some sort - could be drawn down from unknown places as well as from the grave, and in this process also one must be careful. Joseph Curwen had indubitably evoked many forbidden things, and as for Charles - what might one think of him? What forces ""outside the spheres"" had reached him from Joseph Curwen's day and turned his mind on forgotten things? He had been led to find certain directions, and he had used them. He had talked with the man of horror in Prague and stayed long with the creature in the mountains of Transylvania. And he must have found the grave of Joseph Curwen at last. That newspaper item and what his mother had heard in the night were too significant to overlook. Then he had summoned something, and it must have come. That mighty voice aloft on Good Friday, and those different tones in the locked attic laboratory. What were they like, with their depth and hollowness? Was there not here some awful foreshadowing of the dreaded stranger Dr. Allen with his spectral bass? Yes, that was what Mr. Ward had felt with vague horror in his single talk with the man - if man it were - over the telephone!
      What hellish consciousness or voice, what morbid shade or presence, had come to answer Charles Ward's secret rites behind that locked door? Those voices heard in argument - ""must have it red for three months"" - Good God! Was not that just before the vampirism broke out? The rifling of Ezra Weeden's ancient grave, and the cries later at Pawtuxet - whose mind had planned the vengeance and rediscovered the shunned seat of elder blasphemies? And then the bungalow and the bearded stranger, and the gossip, and the fear. The final madness of Charles neither father nor doctor could attempt to explain, but they did feel sure that the mind of Joseph Curwen had come to earth again and was following its ancient morbidities. Was daemoniac possession in truth a possibility? Allen had something to do with it, and the detectives must find out more about one whose existence menaced the young man's life. In the meantime, since the existence of some vast crypt beneath the bungalow seemed virtually beyond dispute, some effort must be made to find it. Willett and Mr. Ward, conscious of the sceptical attitude of the alienists, resolved during their final conference to undertake a joint secret exploration of unparalleled thoroughness; and agreed to meet at the bungalow on the following morning with valises and with certain tools and accessories suited to architectural search and underground exploration.
      The morning of April 6th dawned clear, and both explorers were at the bungalow by ten o'clock. Mr. Ward had the key, and an entry and cursory survey were made. From the disordered condition of Dr. Allen's room it was obvious that the detectives had been there before, and the later searchers hoped that they had found some clue which might prove of value. Of course the main business lay in the cellar; so thither they descended without much delay, again making the circuit which each had vainly made before in the presence of the mad young owner. For a time everything seemed baffling, each inch of the earthen floor and stone walls having so solid and innocuous an aspect that the thought of a yawning aperture was scarcely to be entertained. Willett reflected that since the original cellar was dug without knowledge of any catacombs beneath, the beginning of the passage would represent the strictly modern delving of young Ward and his associates, where they had probed for the ancient vaults whose rumour could have reached them by no wholesome means.
      The doctor tried to put himself in Charles's place to see how a delver would be likely to start, but could not gain much inspiration from this method. Then he decided on elimination as a policy, and went carefully over the whole subterranean surface both vertical and horizontal, trying to account for every inch separately. He was soon substantially narrowed down, and at last had nothing left but the small platform before the washtubs, which he had tried once before in vain. Now experimenting in every possible way, and exerting a double strength, he finally found that the top did indeed turn and slide horizontally on a corner pivot. Beneath it lay a trim concrete surface with an iron manhole, to which Mr. Ward at once rushed with excited zeal. The cover was not hard to lift, and the father had quite removed it when Willett noticed the queerness of his aspect. He was swaying and nodding dizzily, and in the gust of noxious air which swept up from the black pit beneath the doctor soon recognised ample cause.
      In a moment Dr. Willett had his fainting companion on the floor above and was reviving him with cold water. Mr. Ward responded feebly, but it could be seen that the mephitic blast from the crypt had in some way gravely sickened him. Wishing to take no chances, Willett hastened out to Broad Street for a taxicab and had soon dispatched the sufferer home despite his weak-voiced protests; after which he produced an electric torch, covered his nostrils with a band of sterile gauze, and descended once more to peer into the new-found depths. The foul air had now slightly abated, and Willett was able to send a beam of light down the Stygian hole. For about ten feet, he saw, it was a sheer cylindrical drop with concrete walls and an iron ladder; after which the hole appeared to strike a flight of old stone steps which must originally have emerged to earth somewhat southwest of the present building.

2.

      Willett freely admits that for a moment the memory of the old Curwen legends kept him from climbing down alone into that malodorous gulf. He could not help thinking of what Luke Fenner had reported on that last monstrous night. Then duty asserted itself and he made the plunge, carrying a great valise for the removal of whatever papers might prove of supreme importance. Slowly, as befitted one of his years, he descended the ladder and reached the slimy steps below. This was ancient masonry, his torch told him; and upon the dripping walls he saw the unwholesome moss of centuries. Down, down, ran the steps; not spirally, but in three abrupt turns; and with such narrowness that two men could have passed only with difficulty. He had counted about thirty when a sound reached him very faintly; and after that he did not feel disposed to count any more.
      It was a godless sound; one of those low-keyed, insidious outrages of Nature which are not meant to be. To call it a dull wail, a doom-dragged whine, or a hopeless howl of chorused anguish and stricken flesh without mind would be to miss its most quintessential loathsomeness and soul-sickening overtones. Was it for this that Ward had seemed to listen on that day he was removed? It was the most shocking thing that Willett had ever heard, and it continued from no determinate point as the doctor reached the bottom of the steps and cast his torchlight around on lofty corridor walls surmounted by Cyclopean vaulting and pierced by numberless black archways. The hall in which he stood was perhaps fourteen feet high to the middle of the vaulting and ten or twelve feet broad. Its pavement was of large chipped flagstones, and its walls and roof were of dressed masonry. Its length he could not imagine, for it stretched ahead indefinitely into the blackness. Of the archways, some had doors of the old six-panelled colonial type, whilst others had none.
      Overcoming the dread induced by the smell and the howling, Willett began to explore these archways one by one; finding beyond them rooms with groined stone ceilings, each of medium size and apparently of bizarre uses. Most of them had fireplaces, the upper courses of whose chimneys would have formed an interesting study in engineering. Never before or since had he seen such instruments or suggestions of instruments as here loomed up on every hand through the burying dust and cobwebs of a century and a half, in many cases evidently shattered as if by the ancient raiders. For many of the chambers seemed wholly untrodden by modern feet, and must have represented the earliest and most obsolete phases of Joseph Curwen's experimentation. Finally there came a room of obvious modernity, or at least of recent occupancy. There were oil heaters, bookshelves and tables, chairs and cabinets, and a desk piled high with papers of varying antiquity and contemporaneousness. Candlesticks and oil lamps stood about in several places; and finding a match-safe handy, Willett lighted such as were ready for use.
      In the fuller gleam it appeared that this apartment was nothing less than the latest study or library of Charles Ward. Of the books the doctor had seen many before, and a good part of the furniture had plainly come from the Prospect Street mansion. Here and there was a piece well known to Willett, and the sense of familiarity became so great that he half forgot the noisomeness and the wailing, both of which were plainer here than they had been at the foot of the steps. His first duty, as planned long ahead, was to find and seize any papers which might seem of vital importance; especially those portentous documents found by Charles so long ago behind the picture in Olney Court. As he searched he perceived how stupendous a task the final unravelling would be; for file on file was stuffed with papers in curious hands and bearing curious designs, so that months or even years might be needed for a thorough deciphering and editing. Once he found large packets of letters with Prague and Rakus postmarks, and in writing clearly recognisable as Orne's and Hutchinson's; all of which he took with him as part of the bundle to be removed in his valise.
      At last, in a locked mahogany cabinet once gracing the Ward home, Willett found the batch of old Curwen papers; recognising them from the reluctant glimpse Charles had granted him so many years ago. The youth had evidently kept them together very much as they had been when first he found them, since all the titles recalled by the workmen were present except the papers addressed to Orne and Hutchinson, and the cipher with its key. Willett placed the entire lot in his valise and continued his examination of the files. Since young Ward's immediate condition was the greatest matter at stake, the closest searching was done among the most obviously recent matter; and in this abundance of contemporary manuscript one very baffling oddity was noted. The oddity was the slight amount in Charles's normal writing, which indeed included nothing more recent than two months before. On the other hand, there were literally reams of symbols and formulae, historical notes and philosophical comment, in a crabbed penmanship absolutely identical with the ancient script of Joseph Curwen, though of undeniably modern dating. Plainly, a part of the latter-day programme had been a sedulous imitation of the old wizard's writing, which Charles seemed to have carried to a marvellous state of perfection. Of any third hand which might have been Allen's there was not a trace. If he had indeed come to be the leader, he must have forced young Ward to act as his amanuensis.
      In this new material one mystic formula, or rather pair of formulae, recurred so often that Willett had it by heart before he had half finished his quest. It consisted of two parallel columns, the left-hand one surmounted by the archaic symbol called ""Dragon's Head"" and used in almanacks to indicate the ascending node, and the right-hand one headed by a corresponding sign of ""Dragon's Tail"" or descending node. The appearance of the whole was something like this, and almost unconsciously the doctor realised that the second half was no more than the first written syllabically backward with the exception of the final monosyllables and of the odd name Yog-Sothoth, which he had come to recognise under various spellings from other things he had seen in connexion with this horrible matter. The formulae were as follows - exactly so, as Willett is abundantly able to testify - and the first one struck an odd note of uncomfortable latent memory in his brain, which he recognised later when reviewing the events of that horrible Good Friday of the previous year.


Y'AI 'NG'NGAH,
YOG-SOTHOTH
H'EE - L'GEB
F'AI THRODOG
UAAAH
      	

OGTHROD AI'F
GEB'L - EE'H
YOG-SOTHOTH
'NGAH'NG AI'Y
ZHRO

So haunting were these formulae, and so frequently did he come upon them, that before the doctor knew it he was repeating them under his breath. Eventually, however, he felt he had secured all the papers he could digest to advantage for the present; hence resolved to examine no more till he could bring the sceptical alienists en masse for an ampler and more systematic raid. He had still to find the hidden laboratory, so leaving his valise in the lighted room he emerged again into the black noisome corridor whose vaulting echoed ceaselessly with that dull and hideous whine.
      The next few rooms he tried were all abandoned, or filled only with crumbling boxes and ominous-looking leaden coffins; but impressed him deeply with the magnitude of Joseph Curwen's original operations. He thought of the slaves and seamen who had disappeared, of the graves which had been violated in every part of the world, and of what that final raiding party must have seen; and then he decided it was better not to think any more. Once a great stone staircase mounted at his right, and he deduced that this must have reached to one of the Curwen outbuildings - perhaps the famous stone edifice with the high slit-like windows - provided the steps he had descended had led from the steep-roofed farmhouse. Suddenly the walls seemed to fall away ahead, and the stench and the wailing grew stronger. Willett saw that he had come upon a vast open space, so great that his torchlight would not carry across it; and as he advanced he encountered occasional stout pillars supporting the arches of the roof.
      After a time he reached a circle of pillars grouped like the monoliths of Stonehenge, with a large carved altar on a base of three steps in the centre; and so curious were the carvings on that altar that he approached to study them with his electric light. But when he saw what they were he shrank away shuddering, and did not stop to investigate the dark stains which discoloured the upper surface and had spread down the sides in occasional thin lines. Instead, he found the distant wall and traced it as it swept round in a gigantic circle perforated by occasional black doorways and indented by a myriad of shallow cells with iron gratings and wrist and ankle bonds on chains fastened to the stone of the concave rear masonry. These cells were empty, but still the horrible odour and the dismal moaning continued, more insistent now than ever, and seemingly varied at times by a sort of slippery thumping.

3.

      From that frightful smell and that uncanny noise Willett's attention could no longer be diverted. Both were plainer and more hideous in the great pillared hall than anywhere else, and carried a vague impression of being far below, even in this dark nether world of subterrene mystery. Before trying any of the black archways for steps leading further down, the doctor cast his beam of light about the stone-flagged floor. It was very loosely paved, and at irregular intervals there would occur a slab curiously pierced by small holes in no definite arrangement, while at one point there lay a very long ladder carelessly flung down. To this ladder, singularly enough, appeared to cling a particularly large amount of the frightful odour which encompassed everything. As he walked slowly about it suddenly occurred to Willett that both the noise and the odour seemed strongest directly above the oddly pierced slabs, as if they might be crude trap-doors leading down to some still deeper region of horror. Kneeling by one, he worked at it with his hands, and found that with extreme difficulty he could budge it. At his touch the moaning beneath ascended to a louder key, and only with vast trepidation did he persevere in the lifting of the heavy stone. A stench unnamable now rose up from below, and the doctor's head reeled dizzily as he laid back the slab and turned his torch upon the exposed square yard of gaping blackness.
      If he had expected a flight of steps to some wide gulf of ultimate abomination, Willett was destined to be disappointed; for amidst that foetor and cracked whining he discerned only the brick-faced top of a cylindrical well perhaps a yard and a half in diameter and devoid of any ladder or other means of descent. As the light shone down, the wailing changed suddenly to a series of horrible yelps; in conjunction with which there came again that sound of blind, futile scrambling and slippery thumping. The explorer trembled, unwilling even to imagine what noxious thing might be lurking in that abyss, but in a moment mustered up the courage to peer over the rough-hewn brink; lying at full length and holding the torch downward at arm's length to see what might lie below. For a second he could distinguish nothing but the slimy, moss-grown brick walls sinking illimitably into that half-tangible miasma of murk and foulness and anguished frenzy; and then he saw that something dark was leaping clumsily and frantically up and down at the bottom of the narrow shaft, which must have been from twenty to twenty-five feet below the stone floor where he lay. The torch shook in his hand, but he looked again to see what manner of living creature might be immured there in the darkness of that unnatural well; left starving by young Ward through all the long month since the doctors had taken him away, and clearly only one of a vast number prisoned in the kindred wells whose pierced stone covers so thickly studded in the floor of the great vaulted cavern. Whatever the things were, they could not lie down in their cramped spaces; but must have crouched and whined and waited and feebly leaped all those hideous weeks since their master had abandoned them unheeded.
      But Marinus Bicknell Willett was sorry that he looked again; for surgeon and veteran of the dissecting-room though he was, he has not been the same since. It is hard to explain just how a single sight of a tangible object with measureable dimensions could so shake and change a man; and we may only say that there is about certain outlines and entities a power of symbolism and suggestion which acts frightfully on a sensitive thinker's perspective and whispers terrible hints of obscure cosmic relationships and unnamable realities behind the protective illusions of common vision. In that second look Willett saw such an outline or entity, for during the next few instants he was undoubtedly as stark mad as any inmate of Dr. Waite's private hospital. He dropped the electric torch from a hand drained of muscular power or nervous cošrdination, nor heeded the sound of crunching teeth which told of its fate at the bottom of the pit. He screamed and screamed and screamed in a voice whose falsetto panic no acquaintance of his would ever have recognised; and though he could not rise to his feet he crawled and rolled desperately away over the damp pavement where dozens of Tartarean wells poured forth their exhausted whining and yelping to answer his own insane cries. He tore his hands on the rough, loose stones, and many times bruised his head against the frequent pillars, but still he kept on. Then at last he slowly came to himself in the utter blackness and stench, and stopped his ears against the droning wail into which the burst of yelping had subsided. He was drenched with perspiration and without means of producing a light; stricken and unnerved in the abysmal blackness and horror, and crushed with a memory he never could efface. Beneath him dozens of those things still lived, and from one of the shafts the cover was removed. He knew that what he had seen could never climb up the slippery walls, yet shuddered at the thought that some obscure foot-hold might exist.
      What the thing was, he would never tell. It was like some of the carvings on the hellish altar, but it was alive. Nature had never made it in this form, for it was too palpably unfinished. The deficiencies were of the most surprising sort, and the abnormalities of proportion could not be described. Willett consents only to say that this type of thing must have represented entities which Ward called up from imperfect salts, and which he kept for servile or ritualistic purposes. If it had not had a certain significance, its image would not have been carved on that damnable stone. It was not the worst thing depicted on that stone - but Willett never opened the other pits. At the time, the first connected idea in his mind was an idle paragraph from some of the old Curwen data he had digested long before; a phrase used by Simon or Jedediah Orne in that portentous confiscated letter to the bygone sorcerer: ""Certainely, there was Noth'g butt ye liveliest Awfulness in that which H. rais'd upp from What he cou'd gather onlie a part of.""
      Then, horribly supplementing rather than displacing this image, there came a recollection of those ancient lingering rumours anent the burned, twisted thing found in the fields a week after the Curwen raid. Charles Ward had once told the doctor what old Slocum said of that object; that it was neither thoroughly human, nor wholly allied to any animal which Pawtuxet folk had ever seen or read about.
      These words hummed in the doctor's mind as he rocked to and fro, squatting on the nitrous stone floor. He tried to drive them out, and repeated the Lord's Prayer to himself; eventually trailing off into a mnemonic hodge-podge like the modernistic Waste Land of Mr. T. S. Eliot and finally reverting to the oft-repeated dual formula he had lately found in Ward's underground library: ""Y'ai 'ng'ngah, Yog-Sothoth"", and so on till the final underlined ""Zhro"". It seemed to soothe him, and he staggered to his feet after a time; lamenting bitterly his fright-lost torch and looking wildly about for any gleam of light in the clutching inkiness of the chilly air. Think he would not; but he strained his eyes in every direction for some faint glint or reflection of the bright illumination he had left in the library. After a while he thought he detected a suspicion of a glow infinitely far away, and toward this he crawled in agonised caution on hands and knees amidst the stench and howling, always feeling ahead lest he collide with the numerous great pillars or stumble into the abominable pit he had uncovered.
      Once his shaking fingers touched something which he knew must be the steps leading to the hellish altar, and from this spot he recoiled in loathing. At another time he encountered the pierced slab he had removed, and here his caution became almost pitiful. But he did not come upon the dread aperture after all, nor did anything issue from that aperture to detain him. What had been down there made no sound nor stir. Evidently its crunching of the fallen electric torch had not been good for it. Each time Willett's fingers felt a perforated slab he trembled. His passage over it would sometimes increase the groaning below, but generally it would produce no effect at all, since he moved very noiselessly. Several times during his progress the glow ahead diminished perceptibly, and he realised that the various candles and lamps he had left must be expiring one by one. The thought of being lost in utter darkness without matches amidst this underground world of nightmare labyrinths impelled him to rise to his feet and run, which he could safely do now that he had passed the open pit; for he knew that once the light failed, his only hope of rescue and survival would lie in whatever relief party Mr. Ward might send after missing him for a sufficient period. Presently, however, he emerged from the open space into the narrower corridor and definitely located the glow as coming from a door on his right. In a moment he had reached it and was standing once more in young Ward's secret library, trembling with relief, and watching the sputterings of that last lamp which had brought him to safety.

4.

      In another moment he was hastily filling the burned-out lamps from an oil supply he had previously noticed, and when the room was bright again he looked about to see if he might find a lantern for further exploration. For racked though he was with horror, his sense of grim purpose was still uppermost; and he was firmly determined to leave no stone unturned in his search for the hideous facts behind Charles Ward's bizarre madness. Failing to find a lantern, he chose the smallest of the lamps to carry; also filling his pockets with candles and matches, and taking with him a gallon can of oil, which he proposed to keep for reserve use in whatever hidden laboratory he might uncover beyond the terrible open space with its unclean altar and nameless covered wells. To traverse that space again would require his utmost fortitude, but he knew it must be done. Fortunately neither the frightful altar nor the opened shaft was near the vast cell-indented wall which bounded the cavern area, and whose black mysterious archways would form the next goals of a logical search.
      So Willett went back to that great pillared hall of stench and anguished howling; turning down his lamp to avoid any distant glimpse of the hellish altar, or of the uncovered pit with the pierced stone slab beside it. Most of the black doorways led merely to small chambers, some vacant and some evidently used as storerooms; and in several of the latter he saw some very curious accumulations of various objects. One was packed with rotting and dust-draped bales of spare clothing, and the explorer thrilled when he saw that it was unmistakably the clothing of a century and a half before. In another room he found numerous odds and ends of modern clothing, as if gradual provisions were being made to equip a large body of men. But what he disliked most of all were the huge copper vats which occasionally appeared; these, and the sinister incrustations upon them. He liked them even less than the weirdly figured leaden bowls whose rims retained such obnoxious deposits and around which clung repellent odours perceptible above even the general noisomeness of the crypt. When he had completed about half the entire circuit of the wall he found another corridor like that from which he had come, and out of which many doors opened. This he proceeded to investigate; and after entering three rooms of medium size and of no significant contents, he came at last to a large oblong apartment whose business-like tanks and tables, furnaces and modern instruments, occasional books and endless shelves of jars and bottles proclaimed it indeed the long-sought laboratory of Charles Ward - and no doubt of old Joseph Curwen before him.
      After lighting the three lamps which he found filled and ready, Dr. Willett examined the place and all its appurtenances with the keenest interest; noting from the relative quantities of various reagents on the shelves that young Ward's dominant concern must have been with some branch of organic chemistry. On the whole, little could be learned from the scientific ensemble, which included a gruesome-looking dissecting table; so that the room was really rather a disappointment. Among the books was a tattered old copy of Borellus in black-letter, and it was weirdly interesting to note that Ward had underlined the same passage whose marking had so perturbed good Mr. Merritt at Curwen's farmhouse more than a century and a half before. That older copy, of course, must have perished along with the rest of Curwen's occult library in the final raid. Three archways opened off the laboratory, and these the doctor proceeded to sample in turn. From his cursory survey he saw that two led merely to small storerooms; but these he canvassed with care, remarking the piles of coffins in various stages of damage and shuddering violently at two or three of the few coffin-plates he could decipher. There was much clothing also stored in these rooms, and several new and tightly nailed boxes which he did not stop to investigate. Most interesting of all, perhaps, were some odd bits which he judged to be fragments of old Joseph Curwen's laboratory appliances. These had suffered damage at the hands of the raiders, but were still partly recognisable as the chemical paraphernalia of the Georgian period.
      The third archway led to a very sizeable chamber entirely lined with shelves and having in the centre a table bearing two lamps. These lamps Willett lighted, and in their brilliant glow studied the endless shelving which surrounded him. Some of the upper levels were wholly vacant, but most of the space was filled with small odd-looking leaden jars of two general types; one tall and without handles like a Grecian lekythos or oil-jug, and the other with a single handle and proportioned like a Phaleron jug. All had metal stoppers, and were covered with peculiar-looking symbols moulded in low relief. In a moment the doctor noticed that these jugs were classified with great rigidity; all the lekythoi being on one side of the room with a large wooden sign reading ""Custodes"" above them, and all the Phalerons on the other, correspondingly labelled with a sign reading ""Materia"". Each of the jars or jugs, except some on the upper shelves that turned out to be vacant, bore a cardboard tag with a number apparently referring to a catalogue; and Willett resolved to look for the latter presently. For the moment, however, he was more interested in the nature of the array as a whole; and experimentally opened several of the lekythoi and Phalerons at random with a view to a rough generalisation. The result was invariable. Both types of jar contained a small quantity of a single kind of substance; a fine dusty powder of very light weight and of many shades of dull, neutral colour. To the colours which formed the only point of variation there was no apparent method of disposal; and no distinction between what occurred in the lekythoi and what occurred in the Phalerons. A bluish-grey powder might be by the side of a pinkish-white one, and any one in a Phaleron might have its exact counterpart in a lekythos. The most individual feature about the powders was their non-adhesiveness. Willett would pour one into his hand, and upon returning it to its jug would find that no residue whatever remained on its palm.
      The meaning of the two signs puzzled him, and he wondered why this battery of chemicals was separated so radically from those in glass jars on the shelves of the laboratory proper. ""Custodes"", ""Materia""; that was the Latin for ""Guards"" and ""Materials"", respectively - and then there came a flash of memory as to where he had seen that word ""Guards"" before in connexion with this dreadful mystery. It was, of course, in the recent letter to Dr. Allen purporting to be from old Edward Hutchinson; and the phrase had read: ""There was no Neede to keep the Guards in Shape and eat'g off their Heads, and it made Much to be founde in Case of Trouble, as you too welle knowe."" What did this signify? But wait - was there not still another reference to ""guards"" in this matter which he had failed wholly to recall when reading the Hutchinson letter? Back in the old non-secretive days Ward had told him of the Eleazar Smith diary recording the spying of Smith and Weeden on the Curwen farm, and in that dreadful chronicle there had been a mention of conversations overheard before the old wizard betook himself wholly beneath the earth. There had been, Smith and Weeden insisted, terrible colloquies wherein figured Curwen, certain captives of his, and the guards of those captives. Those guards, according to Hutchinson or his avatar, had 'eaten their heads off', so that now Dr. Allen did not keep them in shape. And if not in shape, how save as the ""salts"" to which it appears this wizard band was engaged in reducing as many human bodies or skeletons as they could?
      So that was what these lekythoi contained; the monstrous fruit of unhallowed rites and deeds, presumably won or cowed to such submission as to help, when called up by some hellish incantation, in the defence of their blasphemous master or the questioning of those who were not so willing? Willett shuddered at the thought of what he had been pouring in and out of his hands, and for a moment felt an impulse to flee in panic from that cavern of hideous shelves with their silent and perhaps watching sentinels. Then he thought of the ""Materia"" - in the myriad Phaleron jugs on the other side of the room. Salts too - and if not the salts of ""guards"", then the salts of what? God! Could it be possible that here lay the mortal relics of half the titan thinkers of all the ages; snatched by supreme ghouls from crypts where the world thought them safe, and subject to the beck and call of madmen who sought to drain their knowledge for some still wilder end whose ultimate effect would concern, as poor Charles had hinted in his frantic note, 'all civilisation, all natural law, perhaps even the fate of the solar system and the universe'? And Marinus Bicknell Willett had sifted their dust through his hands!
      Then he noticed a small door at the farther end of the room, and calmed himself enough to approach it and examine the crude sign chiselled above. It was only a symbol, but it filled him with vague spiritual dread; for a morbid, dreaming friend of his had once drawn it on paper and told him a few of the things it means in the dark abyss of sleep. It was the sign of Koth, that dreamers see fixed above the archway of a certain black tower standing alone in twilight - and Willett did not like what his friend Randolph Carter had said of its powers. But a moment later he forgot the sign as he recognised a new acrid odour in the stench-filled air. This was a chemical rather than animal smell, and came clearly from the room beyond the door. And it was, unmistakably, the same odour which had saturated Charles Ward's clothing on the day the doctors had taken him away. So it was here that the youth had been interrupted by the final summons? He was wiser than old Joseph Curwen, for he had not resisted. Willett, boldly determined to penetrate every wonder and nightmare this nether realm might contain, seized the small lamp and crossed the threshold. A wave of nameless fright rolled out to meet him, but he yielded to no whim and deferred to no intuition. There was nothing alive here to harm him, and he would not be stayed in his piercing of the eldritch cloud which engulfed his patient.
      The room beyond the door was of medium size, and had no furniture save a table, a single chair, and two groups of curious machines with clamps and wheels, which Willett recognised after a moment as mediaeval instruments of torture. On one side of the door stood a rack of savage whips, above which were some shelves bearing empty rows of shallow pedestalled cups of lead shaped like Grecian kylikes. On the other side was the table; with a powerful Argand lamp, a pad and pencil, and two of the stoppered lekythoi from the shelves outside set down at irregular places as if temporarily or in haste. Willett lighted the lamp and looked carefully at the pad, to see what notes young Ward might have been jotting down when interrupted; but found nothing more intelligible than the following disjointed fragments in that crabbed Curwen chirography, which shed no light on the case as a whole:
""B. dy'd not. Escap'd into walls and founde Place below.
""Saw olde V. saye ye Sabaoth and learnt ye Way.
""Rais'd Yog-Sothoth thrice and was ye nexte Day deliver'd.
""F. soughte to wipe out all know'g howe to raise Those from Outside.""
      As the strong Argand blaze lit up the entire chamber the doctor saw that the wall opposite the door, between the two groups of torturing appliances in the corners, was covered with pegs from which hung a set of shapeless-looking robes of a rather dismal yellowish-white. But far more interesting were the two vacant walls, both of which were thickly covered with mystic symbols and formulae roughly chiselled in the smooth dressed stone. The damp floor also bore marks of carving; and with but little difficulty Willett deciphered a huge pentagram in the centre, with a plain circle about three feet wide half way between this and each corner. In one of these four circles, near where a yellowish robe had been flung carelessly down, there stood a shallow kylix of the sort found on the shelves above the whip-rack; and just outside the periphery was one of the Phaleron jugs from the shelves in the other room, its tag numbered 118. This was unstoppered, and proved upon inspection to be empty; but the explorer saw with a shiver that the kylix was not. Within its shallow area, and saved from scattering only by the absence of wind in this sequestered cavern, lay a small amount of a dry, dull-greenish efflorescent powder which must have belonged in the jug; and Willett almost reeled at the implications that came sweeping over him as he correlated little by little the several elements and antecedents of the scene. The whips and the instruments of torture, the dust or salts from the jug of ""Materia"", the two lekythoi from the ""Custodes"" shelf, the robes, the formulae on the walls, the notes on the pad, the hints from letters and legends, and the thousand glimpses, doubts, and suppositions which had come to torment the friends and parents of Charles Ward - all these engulfed the doctor in a tidal wave of horror as he looked at that dry greenish powder outspread in the pedestalled leaden kylix on the floor.
      With an effort, however, Willett pulled himself together and began studying the formulae chiselled on the walls. From the stained and incrusted letters it was obvious that they were carved in Joseph Curwen's time, and their text was such as to be vaguely familiar to one who had read much Curwen material or delved extensively into the history of magic. One the doctor clearly recognised as what Mrs. Ward heard her son chanting on that ominous Good Friday a year before, and what an authority had told him was a very terrible invocation addressed to secret gods outside the normal spheres. It was not spelled here exactly as Mrs. Ward had set it down from memory, nor yet as the authority had shewn it to him in the forbidden pages of ""Eliphas Levi""; but its identity was unmistakable, and such words as Sabaoth, Metraton, Almousin, and Zariatnatmik sent a shudder of fright through the searcher who had seen and felt so much of cosmic abomination just around the corner.
      This was on the left-hand wall as one entered the room. The right-hand wall was no less thickly inscribed, and Willett felt a start of recognition as he came upon the pair of formulae so frequently occurring in the recent notes in the library. They were, roughly speaking, the same; with the ancient symbols of ""Dragon's Head"" and ""Dragon's Tail"" heading them as in Ward's scribblings. But the spelling differed quite widely from that of the modern versions, as if old Curwen had had a different way of recording sound, or as if later study had evolved more powerful and perfected variants of the invocations in question. The doctor tried to reconcile the chiselled version with the one which still ran persistently in his head, and found it hard to do. Where the script he had memorised began ""Y'ai 'ng'ngah, Yog-Sothoth"", this epigraph started out as ""Aye, engengah, Yogge-Sothotha""; which to his mind would seriously interfere with the syllabification of the second word.
      Ground as the later text was into his consciousness, the discrepancy disturbed him; and he found himself chanting the first of the formulae aloud in an effort to square the sound he conceived with the letters he found carved. Weird and menacing in that abyss of antique blasphemy rang his voice; its accents keyed to a droning sing-song either through the spell of the past and the unknown, or through the hellish example of that dull, godless wail from the pits whose inhuman cadences rose and fell rhythmically in the distance through the stench and the darkness.

""Y'AI 'NG'NGAH,
YOG-SOTHOTH
H'EE - L'GEB
F'AI THRODOG
UAAAH!""

      But what was this cold wind which had sprung into life at the very outset of the chant? The lamps were sputtering woefully, and the gloom grew so dense that the letters on the wall nearly faded from sight. There was smoke, too, and an acrid odour which quite drowned out the stench from the far-away wells; an odour like that he had smelt before, yet infinitely stronger and more pungent. He turned from the inscriptions to face the room with its bizarre contents, and saw that the kylix on the floor, in which the ominous efflorescent powder had lain, was giving forth a cloud of thick, greenish-black vapour of surprising volume and opacity. That powder - Great God! it had come from the shelf of ""Materia"" - what was it doing now, and what had started it? The formula he had been chanting - the first of the pair - Dragon's Head, ascending node - Blessed Saviour, could it be. . . .
      The doctor reeled, and through his head raced wildly disjointed scraps from all he had seen, heard, and read of the frightful case of Joseph Curwen and Charles Dexter Ward. ""I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe. . . . Have ye Wordes for laying at all times readie, and stopp not to be sure when there is any Doubte of Whom you have. . . . Three Talkes with What was therein inhum'd. . . ."" Mercy of Heaven, what is that shape behind the parting smoke?

5.

      Marinus Bicknell Willett has no hope that any part of his tale will be believed except by certain sympathetic friends, hence he has made no attempt to tell it beyond his most intimate circle. Only a few outsiders have ever heard it repeated, and of these the majority laugh and remark that the doctor surely is getting old. He has been advised to take a long vacation and to shun future cases dealing with mental disturbance. But Mr. Ward knows that the veteran physician speaks only a horrible truth. Did not he himself see the noisome aperture in the bungalow cellar? Did not Willett send him home overcome and ill at eleven o'clock that portentous morning? Did he not telephone the doctor in vain that evening, and again the next day, and had he not driven to the bungalow itself on that following noon, finding his friend unconscious but unharmed on one of the beds upstairs? Willett had been breathing stertorously, and opened his eyes slowly when Mr. Ward gave him some brandy fetched from the car. Then he shuddered and screamed, crying out, ""That beard . . . those eyes. . . . God, who are you?"" A very strange thing to say to a trim, blue-eyed, clean-shaven gentleman whom he had known from the latter's boyhood.
      In the bright noon sunlight the bungalow was unchanged since the previous morning. Willett's clothing bore no disarrangement beyond certain smudges and worn places at the knees, and only a faint acrid odour reminded Mr. Ward of what he had smelt on his son that day he was taken to the hospital. The doctor's flashlight was missing, but his valise was safely there, as empty as when he had brought it. Before indulging in any explanations, and obviously with great moral effort, Willett staggered dizzily down to the cellar and tried the fateful platform before the tubs. It was unyielding. Crossing to where he had left his yet unused tool satchel the day before, he obtained a chisel and began to pry up the stubborn planks one by one. Underneath the smooth concrete was still visible, but of any opening or perforation there was no longer a trace. Nothing yawned this time to sicken the mystified father who had followed the doctor downstairs; only the smooth concrete underneath the planks - no noisome well, no world of subterrene horrors, no secret library, no Curwen papers, no nightmare pits of stench and howling, no laboratory or shelves or chiselled formulae, no. . . . Dr. Willett turned pale, and clutched at the younger man. ""Yesterday,"" he asked softly, ""did you see it here . . . and smell it?"" And when Mr. Ward, himself transfixed with dread and wonder, found strength to nod an affirmative, the physician gave a sound half a sigh and half a gasp, and nodded in turn. ""Then I will tell you,"" he said.
      So for an hour, in the sunniest room they could find upstairs, the physician whispered his frightful tale to the wondering father. There was nothing to relate beyond the looming up of that form when the greenish-black vapour from the kylix parted, and Willett was too tired to ask himself what had really occurred. There were futile, bewildered head-shakings from both men, and once Mr. Ward ventured a hushed suggestion, ""Do you suppose it would be of any use to dig?"" The doctor was silent, for it seemed hardly fitting for any human brain to answer when powers of unknown spheres had so vitally encroached on this side of the Great Abyss. Again Mr. Ward asked, ""But where did it go? It brought you here, you know, and it sealed up the hole somehow."" And Willett again let silence answer for him.
      But after all, this was not the final phase of the matter. Reaching for his handkerchief before rising to leave, Dr. Willett's fingers closed upon a piece of paper in his pocket which had not been there before, and which was companioned by the candles and matches he had seized in the vanished vault. It was a common sheet, torn obviously from the cheap pad in that fabulous room of horror somewhere underground, and the writing upon it was that of an ordinary lead pencil - doubtless the one which had lain beside the pad. It was folded very carelessly, and beyond the faint acrid scent of the cryptic chamber bore no print or mark of any world but this. But in the text itself it did indeed reek with wonder; for here was no script of any wholesome age, but the laboured strokes of mediaeval darkness, scarcely legible to the laymen who now strained over it, yet having combinations of symbols which seemed vaguely familiar. The briefly scrawled message was this, and its mystery lent purpose to the shaken pair, who forthwith walked steadily out to the Ward car and gave orders to be driven first to a quiet dining place and then to the John Hay Library on the hill.



      At the library it was easy to find good manuals of palaeography, and over these the two men puzzled till the lights of evening shone out from the great chandelier. In the end they found what was needed. The letters were indeed no fantastic invention, but the normal script of a very dark period. They were the pointed Saxon minuscules of the eighth or ninth century A.D., and brought with them memories of an uncouth time when under a fresh Christian veneer ancient faiths and ancient rites stirred stealthily, and the pale moon of Britain looked sometimes on strange deeds in the Roman ruins of Caerleon and Hexham, and by the towers along Hadrian's crumbling wall. The words were in such Latin as a barbarous age might remember - ""Corvinus necandus est. Cadaver aq(ua) forti dissolvendum, nec aliq(ui)d retinendum. Tace ut potes."" - which may roughly be translated, ""Curwen must be killed. The body must be dissolved in aqua fortis, nor must anything be retained. Keep silence as best you are able.""
      Willett and Mr. Ward were mute and baffled. They had met the unknown, and found that they lacked emotions to respond to it as they vaguely believed they ought. With Willett, especially, the capacity for receiving fresh impressions of awe was well-nigh exhausted; and both men sat still and helpless till the closing of the library forced them to leave. Then they drove listlessly to the Ward mansion in Prospect Street, and talked to no purpose into the night. The doctor rested toward morning, but did not go home. And he was still there Sunday noon when a telephone message came from the detectives who had been assigned to look up Dr. Allen.
      Mr. Ward, who was pacing nervously about in a dressing-gown, answered the call in person; and told the men to come up early the next day when he heard their report was almost ready. Both Willett and he were glad that this phase of the matter was taking form, for whatever the origin of the strange minuscule message, it seemed certain that the ""Curwen"" who must be destroyed could be no other than the bearded and spectacled stranger. Charles had feared this man, and had said in the frantic note that he must be killed and dissolved in acid. Allen, moreover, had been receiving letters from the strange wizards in Europe under the name of Curwen, and palpably regarded himself as an avatar of the bygone necromancer. And now from a fresh and unknown source had come a message saying that ""Curwen"" must be killed and dissolved in acid. The linkage was too unmistakable to be factitious; and besides, was not Allen planning to murder young Ward upon the advice of the creature called Hutchinson? Of course, the letter they had seen had never reached the bearded stranger; but from its text they could see that Allen had already formed plans for dealing with the youth if he grew too 'squeamish'. Without doubt, Allen must be apprehended; and even if the most drastic directions were not carried out, he must be placed where he could inflict no harm upon Charles Ward.
      That afternoon, hoping against hope to extract some gleam of information anent the inmost mysteries from the only available one capable of giving it, the father and the doctor went down the bay and called on young Charles at the hospital. Simply and gravely Willett told him all he had found, and noticed how pale he turned as each description made certain the truth of the discovery. The physician employed as much dramatic effect as he could, and watched for a wincing on Charles's part when he approached the matter of the covered pits and the nameless hybrids within. But Ward did not wince. Willett paused, and his voice grew indignant as he spoke of how the things were starving. He taxed the youth with shocking inhumanity, and shivered when only a sardonic laugh came in reply. For Charles, having dropped as useless his pretence that the crypt did not exist, seemed to see some ghastly jest in this affair; and chuckled hoarsely at something which amused him. Then he whispered, in accents doubly terrible because of the cracked voice he used, ""Damn 'em, they do eat, but they don't need to! That's the rare part! A month, you say, without food? Lud, Sir, you be modest! D'ye know, that was the joke on poor old Whipple with his virtuous bluster! Kill everything off, would he? Why, damme, he was half-deaf with the noise from Outside and never saw or heard aught from the wells! He never dreamed they were there at all! Devil take ye, those cursed things have been howling down there ever since Curwen was done for a hundred and fifty-seven years gone!""
      But no more than this could Willett get from the youth. Horrified, yet almost convinced against his will, he went on with his tale in the hope that some incident might startle his auditor out of the mad composure he maintained. Looking at the youth's face, the doctor could not but feel a kind of terror at the changes which recent months had wrought. Truly, the boy had drawn down nameless horrors from the skies. When the room with the formulae and the greenish dust was mentioned, Charles shewed his first sign of animation. A quizzical look overspread his face as he heard what Willett had read on the pad, and he ventured the mild statement that those notes were old ones, of no possible significance to anyone not deeply initiated in the history of magic. ""But,"" he added, ""had you but known the words to bring up that which I had out in the cup, you had not been here to tell me this. 'Twas Number 118, and I conceive you would have shook had you looked it up in my list in t'other room. 'Twas never raised by me, but I meant to have it up that day you came to invite me hither.""
      Then Willett told of the formula he had spoken and of the greenish-black smoke which had arisen; and as he did so he saw true fear dawn for the first time on Charles Ward's face. ""It came, and you be here alive?"" As Ward croaked the words his voice seemed almost to burst free of its trammels and sink to cavernous abysses of uncanny resonance. Willett, gifted with a flash of inspiration, believed he saw the situation, and wove into his reply a caution from a letter he remembered. ""No. 118, you say? But don't forget that stones are all changed now in nine grounds out of ten. You are never sure till you question!"" And then, without warning, he drew forth the minuscule message and flashed it before the patient's eyes. He could have wished no stronger result, for Charles Ward fainted forthwith.
      All this conversation, of course, had been conducted with the greatest secrecy lest the resident alienists accuse the father and the physician of encouraging a madman in his delusions. Unaided, too, Dr. Willett and Mr. Ward picked up the stricken youth and placed him on the couch. In reviving, the patient mumbled many times of some word which he must get to Orne and Hutchinson at once; so when his consciousness seemed fully back the doctor told him that of those strange creatures at least one was his bitter enemy, and had given Dr. Allen advice for his assassination. This revelation produced no visible effect, and before it was made the visitors could see that their host had already the look of a hunted man. After that he would converse no more, so Willett and the father departed presently; leaving behind a caution against the bearded Allen, to which the youth only replied that this individual was very safely taken care of, and could do no one any harm even if he wished. This was said with an almost evil chuckle very painful to hear. They did not worry about any communications Charles might indite to that monstrous pair in Europe, since they knew that the hospital authorities seized all outgoing mail for censorship and would pass no wild or outrŽ-looking missive.
      There is, however, a curious sequel to the matter of Orne and Hutchinson, if such indeed the exiled wizards were. Moved by some vague presentiment amidst the horrors of that period, Willett arranged with an international press-cutting bureau for accounts of notable current crimes and accidents in Prague and in eastern Transylvania; and after six months believed that he had found two very significant things amongst the multifarious items he received and had translated. One was the total wrecking of a house by night in the oldest quarter of Prague, and the disappearance of the evil old man called Josef Nadek, who had dwelt in it alone ever since anyone could remember. The other was a titan explosion in the Transylvanian mountains east of Rakus, and the utter extirpation with all its inmates of the ill-regarded Castle Ferenczy, whose master was so badly spoken of by peasants and soldiery alike that he would shortly have been summoned to Bucharest for serious questioning had not this incident cut off a career already so long as to antedate all common memory. Willett maintains that the hand which wrote those minuscules was able to wield stronger weapons as well; and that while Curwen was left to him to dispose of, the writer felt able to find and deal with Orne and Hutchinson itself. Of what their fate may have been the doctor strives sedulously not to think.

6.

      The following morning Dr. Willett hastened to the Ward home to be present when the detectives arrived. Allen's destruction or imprisonment - or Curwen's, if one might regard the tacit claim to reincarnation as valid - he felt must be accomplished at any cost, and he communicated this conviction to Mr. Ward as they sat waiting for the men to come. They were downstairs this time, for the upper parts of the house were beginning to be shunned because of a peculiar nauseousness which hung indefinitely about; a nauseousness which the older servants connected with some curse left by the vanished Curwen portrait.
      At nine o'clock the three detectives presented themselves and immediately delivered all that they had to say. They had not, regrettably enough, located the Brava Tony Gomes as they had wished, nor had they found the least trace of Dr. Allen's source or present whereabouts; but they had managed to unearth a considerable number of local impressions and facts concerning the reticent stranger. Allen had struck Pawtuxet people as a vaguely unnatural being, and there was an universal belief that his thick sandy beard was either dyed or false - a belief conclusively upheld by the finding of such a false beard, together with a pair of dark glasses, in his room at the fateful bungalow. His voice, Mr. Ward could well testify from his one telephone conversation, had a depth and hollowness that could not be forgotten; and his glance seemed malign even through his smoked and horn-rimmed glasses. One shopkeeper, in the course of negotiations, had seen a specimen of his handwriting and declared it was very queer and crabbed; this being confirmed by pencilled notes of no clear meaning found in his room and identified by the merchant. In connexion with the vampirism rumours of the preceding summer, a majority of the gossips believed that Allen rather than Ward was the actual vampire. Statements were also obtained from the officials who had visited the bungalow after the unpleasant incident of the motor truck robbery. They had felt less of the sinister in Dr. Allen, but had recognised him as the dominant figure in the queer shadowy cottage. The place had been too dark for them to observe him clearly, but they would know him again if they saw him. His beard had looked odd, and they thought he had some slight scar above his dark spectacled right eye. As for the detectives' search of Allen's room, it yielded nothing definite save the beard and glasses, and several pencilled notes in a crabbed writing which Willett at once saw was identical with that shared by the old Curwen manuscripts and by the voluminous recent notes of young Ward found in the vanished catacombs of horror.
      Dr. Willett and Mr. Ward caught something of a profound, subtle, and insidious cosmic fear from this data as it was gradually unfolded, and almost trembled in following up the vague, mad thought which had simultaneously reached their minds. The false beard and glasses - the crabbed Curwen penmanship - the old portrait and its tiny scar - and the altered youth in the hospital with such a scar - that deep, hollow voice on the telephone - was it not of this that Mr. Ward was reminded when his son barked forth those pitiable tones to which he now claimed to be reduced? Who had ever seen Charles and Allen together? Yes, the officials had once, but who later on? Was it not when Allen left that Charles suddenly lost his growing fright and began to live wholly at the bungalow? Curwen - Allen - Ward - in what blasphemous and abominable fusion had two ages and two persons become involved? That damnable resemblance of the picture to Charles - had it not used to stare and stare, and follow the boy around the room with its eyes? Why, too, did both Allen and Charles copy Joseph Curwen's handwriting, even when alone and off guard? And then the frightful work of those people - the lost crypt of horrors that had aged the doctor overnight; the starved monsters in the noisome pits; the awful formula which had yielded such nameless results; the message in minuscules found in Willett's pocket; the papers and the letters and all the talk of graves and ""salts"" and discoveries - whither did everything lead? In the end Mr. Ward did the most sensible thing. Steeling himself against any realisation of why he did it, he gave the detectives an article to be shewn to such Pawtuxet shopkeepers as had seen the portentous Dr. Allen. That article was a photograph of his luckless son, on which he now carefully drew in ink the pair of heavy glasses and the black pointed beard which the men had brought from Allen's room.
      For two hours he waited with the doctor in the oppressive house where fear and miasma were slowly gathering as the empty panel in the upstairs library leered and leered and leered. Then the men returned. Yes. The altered photograph was a very passable likeness of Dr. Allen. Mr. Ward turned pale, and Willett wiped a suddenly dampened brow with his handkerchief. Allen - Ward - Curwen - it was becoming too hideous for coherent thought. What had the boy called out of the void, and what had it done to him? What, really, had happened from first to last? Who was this Allen who sought to kill Charles as too 'squeamish', and why had his destined victim said in the postscript to that frantic letter that he must be so completely obliterated in acid? Why, too, had the minuscule message, of whose origin no one dared think, said that ""Curwen"" must be likewise obliterated? What was the change, and when had the final stage occurred? That day when his frantic note was received - he had been nervous all the morning, then there was an alteration. He had slipped out unseen and swaggered boldly in past the men hired to guard him. That was the time, when he was out. But no - had he not cried out in terror as he entered his study - this very room? What had he found there? Or wait - what had found him? That simulacrum which brushed boldly in without having been seen to go - was that an alien shadow and a horror forcing itself upon a trembling figure which had never gone out at all? Had not the butler spoken of queer noises?
      Willett rang for the man and asked him some low-toned questions. It had, surely enough, been a bad business. There had been noises - a cry, a gasp, a choking, and a sort of clattering or creaking or thumping, or all of these. And Mr. Charles was not the same when he stalked out without a word. The butler shivered as he spoke, and sniffed at the heavy air that blew down from some open window upstairs. Terror had settled definitely upon the house, and only the business-like detectives failed to imbibe a full measure of it. Even they were restless, for this case had held vague elements in the background which pleased them not at all. Dr. Willett was thinking deeply and rapidly, and his thoughts were terrible ones. Now and then he would almost break into muttering as he ran over in his head a new, appalling, and increasingly conclusive chain of nightmare happenings.
      Then Mr. Ward made a sign that the conference was over, and everyone save him and the doctor left the room. It was noon now, but shadows as of coming night seemed to engulf the phantom-haunted mansion. Willett began talking very seriously to his host, and urged that he leave a great deal of the future investigation to him. There would be, he predicted, certain obnoxious elements which a friend could bear better than a relative. As family physician he must have a free hand, and the first thing he required was a period alone and undisturbed in the abandoned library upstairs, where the ancient overmantel had gathered about itself an aura of noisome horror more intense than when Joseph Curwen's features themselves glanced slyly down from the painted panel.
      Mr. Ward, dazed by the flood of grotesque morbidities and unthinkably maddening suggestions that poured in upon him from every side, could only acquiesce; and half an hour later the doctor was locked in the shunned room with the panelling from Olney Court. The father, listening outside, heard fumbling sounds of moving and rummaging as the moments passed; and finally a wrench and a creak, as if a tight cupboard door were being opened. Then there was a muffled cry, a kind of snorting choke, and a hasty slamming of whatever had been opened. Almost at once the key rattled and Willett appeared in the hall, haggard and ghastly, and demanding wood for the real fireplace on the south wall of the room. The furnace was not enough, he said; and the electric log had little practical use. Longing yet not daring to ask questions, Mr. Ward gave the requisite orders and a man brought some stout pine logs, shuddering as he entered the tainted air of the library to place them in the grate. Willett meanwhile had gone up to the dismantled laboratory and brought down a few odds and ends not included in the moving of the July before. They were in a covered basket, and Mr. Ward never saw what they were.
      Then the doctor locked himself in the library once more, and by the clouds of smoke which rolled down past the windows from the chimney it was known that he had lighted the fire. Later, after a great rustling of newspapers, that odd wrench and creaking were heard again; followed by a thumping which none of the eavesdroppers liked. Thereafter two suppressed cries of Willett's were heard, and hard upon these came a swishing rustle of indefinable hatefulness. Finally the smoke that the wind beat down from the chimney grew very dark and acrid, and everyone wished that the weather had spared them this choking and venomous inundation of peculiar fumes. Mr. Ward's head reeled, and the servants all clustered together in a knot to watch the horrible black smoke swoop down. After an age of waiting the vapours seemed to lighten, and half-formless sounds of scraping, sweeping, and other minor operations were heard behind the bolted door. And at last, after the slamming of some cupboard within, Willett made his appearance - sad, pale, and haggard, and bearing the cloth-draped basket he had taken from the upstairs laboratory. He had left the window open, and into that once accursed room was pouring a wealth of pure, wholesome air to mix with a queer new smell of disinfectants. The ancient overmantel still lingered; but it seemed robbed of malignity now, and rose as calm and stately in its white panelling as if it had never borne the picture of Joseph Curwen. Night was coming on, yet this time its shadows held no latent fright, but only a gentle melancholy. Of what he had done the doctor would never speak. To Mr. Ward he said, ""I can answer no questions, but I will say that there are different kinds of magic. I have made a great purgation, and those in this house will sleep the better for it.""

7.

      That Dr. Willett's ""purgation"" had been an ordeal almost as nerve-racking in its way as his hideous wandering in the vanished crypt is shewn by the fact that the elderly physician gave out completely as soon as he reached home that evening. For three days he rested constantly in his room, though servants later muttered something about having heard him after midnight on Wednesday, when the outer door softly opened and closed with phenomenal softness. Servants' imaginations, fortunately, are limited, else comment might have been excited by an item in Thursday's Evening Bulletin which ran as follows:
North End Ghouls
Active Again

After a lull of ten months since the dastardly vandalism in the Weeden lot at the North Burial Ground, a nocturnal prowler was glimpsed early this morning in the same cemetery by Robert Hart, the night watchman. Happening to glance for a moment from his shelter at about 2 a.m., Hart observed the glow of a lantern or pocket torch not far to the northwest, and upon opening the door detected the figure of a man with a trowel very plainly silhouetted against a nearby electric light. At once starting in pursuit, he saw the figure dart hurriedly toward the main entrance, gaining the street and losing himself among the shadows before approach or capture was possible.
      Like the first of the ghouls active during the past year, this intruder had done no real damage before detection. A vacant part of the Ward lot shewed signs of a little superficial digging, but nothing even nearly the size of a grave had been attempted, and no previous grave had been disturbed.
      Hart, who cannot describe the prowler except as a small man probably having a full beard, inclines to the view that all three of the digging incidents have a common source; but police from the Second Station think otherwise on account of the savage nature of the second incident, where an ancient coffin was removed and its headstone violently shattered.
      The first of the incidents, in which it is thought an attempt to bury something was frustrated, occurred a year ago last March, and has been attributed to bootleggers seeking a cache. It is possible, says Sergt. Riley, that this third affair is of similar nature. Officers at the Second Station are taking especial pains to capture the gang of miscreants responsible for these repeated outrages.
      All day Thursday Dr. Willett rested as if recuperating from something past or nerving himself for something to come. In the evening he wrote a note to Mr. Ward, which was delivered the next morning and which caused the half-dazed parent to ponder long and deeply. Mr. Ward had not been able to go down to business since the shock of Monday with its baffling reports and its sinister ""purgation"", but he found something calming about the doctor's letter in spite of the despair it seemed to promise and the fresh mysteries it seemed to evoke.
""10 Barnes St.,            
Providence, R.I.,      
April 12, 1928.
""Dear Theodore: - I feel that I must say a word to you before doing what I am going to do tomorrow. It will conclude the terrible business we have been going through (for I feel that no spade is ever likely to reach that monstrous place we know of), but I'm afraid it won't set your mind at rest unless I expressly assure you how very conclusive it is.
      ""You have known me ever since you were a small boy, so I think you will not distrust me when I hint that some matters are best left undecided and unexplored. It is better that you attempt no further speculation as to Charles's case, and almost imperative that you tell his mother nothing more than she already suspects. When I call on you tomorrow Charles will have escaped. That is all which need remain in anyone's mind. He was mad, and he escaped. You can tell his mother gently and gradually about the mad part when you stop sending the typed notes in his name. I'd advise you to join her in Atlantic City and take a rest yourself. God knows you need one after this shock, as I do myself. I am going South for a while to calm down and brace up.
      ""So don't ask me any questions when I call. It may be that something will go wrong, but I'll tell you if it does. I don't think it will. There will be nothing more to worry about, for Charles will be very, very safe. He is now - safer than you dream. You need hold no fears about Allen, and who or what he is. He forms as much a part of the past as Joseph Curwen's picture, and when I ring your doorbell you may feel certain that there is no such person. And what wrote that minuscule message will never trouble you or yours.
      ""But you must steel yourself to melancholy, and prepare your wife to do the same. I must tell you frankly that Charles's escape will not mean his restoration to you. He has been afflicted with a peculiar disease, as you must realise from the subtle physical as well as mental changes in him, and you must not hope to see him again. Have only this consolation - that he was never a fiend or even truly a madman, but only an eager, studious, and curious boy whose love of mystery and of the past was his undoing. He stumbled on things no mortal ought ever to know, and reached back through the years as no one ever should reach; and something came out of those years to engulf him.
      ""And now comes the matter in which I must ask you to trust me most of all. For there will be, indeed, no uncertainty about Charles's fate. In about a year, say, you can if you wish devise a suitable account of the end; for the boy will be no more. You can put up a stone in your lot at the North Burial Ground exactly ten feet west of your father's and facing the same way, and that will mark the true resting-place of your son. Nor need you fear that it will mark any abnormality or changeling. The ashes in that grave will be those of your own unaltered bone and sinew - of the real Charles Dexter Ward whose mind you watched from infancy - the real Charles with the olive-mark on his hip and without the black witch-mark on his chest or the pit on his forehead. The Charles who never did actual evil, and who will have paid with his life for his 'squeamishness'.
      ""That is all. Charles will have escaped, and a year from now you can put up his stone. Do not question me tomorrow. And believe that the honour of your ancient family remains untainted now, as it has been at all times in the past.
      ""With profoundest sympathy, and exhortations to fortitude, calmness, and resignation, I am ever
Sincerely your friend,      
Marinus B. Willett""
      So on the morning of Friday, April 13, 1928, Marinus Bicknell Willett visited the room of Charles Dexter Ward at Dr. Waite's private hospital on Conanicut Island. The youth, though making no attempt to evade his caller, was in a sullen mood; and seemed disinclined to open the conversation which Willett obviously desired. The doctor's discovery of the crypt and his monstrous experience therein had of course created a new source of embarrassment, so that both hesitated perceptibly after the interchange of a few strained formalities. Then a new element of constraint crept in, as Ward seemed to read behind the doctor's mask-like face a terrible purpose which had never been there before. The patient quailed, conscious that since the last visit there had been a change whereby the solicitous family physician had given place to the ruthless and implacable avenger.
      Ward actually turned pale, and the doctor was the first to speak. ""More,"" he said, ""has been found out, and I must warn you fairly that a reckoning is due.""
      ""Digging again, and coming upon more poor starving pets?"" was the ironic reply. It was evident that the youth meant to shew bravado to the last.
      ""No,"" Willett slowly rejoined, ""this time I did not have to dig. We have had men looking up Dr. Allen, and they found the false beard and spectacles in the bungalow.""
      ""Excellent,"" commented the disquieted host in an effort to be wittily insulting, ""and I trust they proved more becoming than the beard and glasses you now have on!""
      ""They would become you very well,"" came the even and studied response, ""as indeed they seem to have done.""
      As Willett said this, it almost seemed as though a cloud passed over the sun; though there was no change in the shadows on the floor. Then Ward ventured:
      ""And is this what asks so hotly for a reckoning? Suppose a man does find it now and then useful to be twofold?""
      ""No,"" said Willett gravely, ""again you are wrong. It is no business of mine if any man seeks duality; provided he has any right to exist at all, and provided he does not destroy what called him out of space.""
      Ward now started violently. ""Well, Sir, what have ye found, and what d'ye want with me?""
      The doctor let a little time elapse before replying, as if choosing his words for an effective answer.
      ""I have found,"" he finally intoned, ""something in a cupboard behind an ancient overmantel where a picture once was, and I have burned it and buried the ashes where the grave of Charles Dexter Ward ought to be.""
      The madman choked and sprang from the chair in which he had been sitting:
      ""Damn ye, who did ye tell - and who'll believe it was he after these full two months, with me alive? What d'ye mean to do?""
      Willett, though a small man, actually took on a kind of judicial majesty as he calmed the patient with a gesture.
      ""I have told no one. This is no common case - it is a madness out of time and a horror from beyond the spheres which no police or lawyers or courts or alienists could ever fathom or grapple with. Thank God some chance has left inside me the spark of imagination, that I might not go astray in thinking out this thing. You cannot deceive me, Joseph Curwen, for I know that your accursed magic is true!
      ""I know how you wove the spell that brooded outside the years and fastened on your double and descendant; I know how you drew him into the past and got him to raise you up from your detestable grave; I know how he kept you hidden in his laboratory while you studied modern things and roved abroad as a vampire by night, and how you later shewed yourself in beard and glasses that no one might wonder at your godless likeness to him; I know what you resolved to do when he balked at your monstrous rifling of the world's tombs, and at what you planned afterward, and I know how you did it.
      ""You left off your beard and glasses and fooled the guards around the house. They thought it was he who went in, and they thought it was he who came out when you had strangled and hidden him. But you hadn't reckoned on the different contents of two minds. You were a fool, Curwen, to fancy that a mere visual identity would be enough. Why didn't you think of the speech and the voice and the handwriting? It hasn't worked, you see, after all. You know better than I who or what wrote that message in minuscules, but I will warn you it was not written in vain. There are abominations and blasphemies which must be stamped out, and I believe that the writer of those words will attend to Orne and Hutchinson. One of those creatures wrote you once, 'do not call up any that you can not put down'. You were undone once before, perhaps in that very way, and it may be that your own evil magic will undo you all again. Curwen, a man can't tamper with Nature beyond certain limits, and every horror you have woven will rise up to wipe you out.""
      But here the doctor was cut short by a convulsive cry from the creature before him. Hopelessly at bay, weaponless, and knowing that any show of physical violence would bring a score of attendants to the doctor's rescue, Joseph Curwen had recourse to his one ancient ally, and began a series of cabbalistic motions with his forefingers as his deep, hollow voice, now unconcealed by feigned hoarseness, bellowed out the opening words of a terrible formula.
      ""PER ADONAI ELOIM, ADONAI JEHOVA, ADONAI SABAOTH, METRATON. . . .""
      But Willett was too quick for him. Even as the dogs in the yard outside began to howl, and even as a chill wind sprang suddenly up from the bay, the doctor commenced the solemn and measured intonation of that which he had meant all along to recite. An eye for an eye - magic for magic - let the outcome shew how well the lesson of the abyss had been learned! So in a clear voice Marinus Bicknell Willett began the second of that pair of formulae whose first had raised the writer of those minuscules - the cryptic invocation whose heading was the Dragon's Tail, sign of the descending node - 

""OGTHROD AI'F
GEB'L - EE'H
YOG-SOTHOTH
'NGAH'NG AI'Y
ZHRO!""

      At the very first word from Willett's mouth the previously commenced formula of the patient stopped short. Unable to speak, the monster made wild motions with his arms until they too were arrested. When the awful name of Yog-Sothoth was uttered, the hideous change began. It was not merely a dissolution, but rather a transformation or recapitulation; and Willett shut his eyes lest he faint before the rest of the incantation could be pronounced.
      But he did not faint, and that man of unholy centuries and forbidden secrets never troubled the world again. The madness out of time had subsided, and the case of Charles Dexter Ward was closed. Opening his eyes before staggering out of that room of horror, Dr. Willett saw that what he had kept in memory had not been kept amiss. There had, as he had predicted, been no need for acids. For like his accursed picture a year before, Joseph Curwen now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust.
","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 languages 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 Sanscrit 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 massed 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 Vigenère’s Traité des Chiffres, Falconer’s Cryptomenysis Patefacta, Davys’ and Thicknesse’s eighteenth-century treatises, and such fairly modern authorities as Blair, von Marten, and Klüber’s Kryptographik. He interspersed his study of the books with attacks on the manuscript 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 2nd 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 shewing 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’ 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 4th 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 an 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 them!” 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 whiskey 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.
",True
"II. An Antecedent and a Horror

1.

Joseph Curwen, as revealed by the rambling legends embodied in what Ward heard and unearthed, was a very astonishing, enigmatic, and obscurely horrible individual. He had fled from Salem to Providence - that universal haven of the odd, the free, and the dissenting - at the beginning of the great witchcraft panic; being in fear of accusation because of his solitary ways and queer chemical or alchemical experiments. He was a colourless-looking man of about thirty, and was soon found qualified to become a freeman of Providence; thereafter buying a home lot just north of Gregory Dexter's at about the foot of Olney Street. His house was built on Stampers' Hill west of the Town Street, in what later became Olney Court; and in 1761 he replaced this with a larger one, on the same site, which is still standing.
      Now the first odd thing about Joseph Curwen was that he did not seem to grow much older than he had been on his arrival. He engaged in shipping enterprises, purchased wharfage near Mile-End Cove, helped rebuild the Great Bridge in 1713, and in 1723 was one of the founders of the Congregational Church on the hill; but always did he retain the nondescript aspect of a man not greatly over thirty or thirty-five. As decades mounted up, this singular quality began to excite wide notice; but Curwen always explained it by saying that he came of hardy forefathers, and practiced a simplicity of living which did not wear him out. How such simplicity could be reconciled with the inexplicable comings and goings of the secretive merchant, and with the queer gleaming of his windows at all hours of night, was not very clear to the townsfolk; and they were prone to assign other reasons for his continued youth and longevity. It was held, for the most part, that Curwen's incessant mixings and boilings of chemicals had much to do with his condition. Gossip spoke of the strange substances he brought from London and the Indies on his ships or purchased in Newport, Boston, and New York; and when old Dr. Jabez Bowen came from Rehoboth and opened his apothecary shop across the Great Bridge at the Sign of the Unicorn and Mortar, there was ceaseless talk of the drugs, acids, and metals that the taciturn recluse incessantly bought or ordered from him. Acting on the assumption that Curwen possessed a wondrous and secret medical skill, many sufferers of various sorts applied to him for aid; but though he appeared to encourage their belief in a non-committal way, and always gave them odd-coloured potions in response to their requests, it was observed that his ministrations to others seldom proved of benefit. At length, when over fifty years had passed since the stranger's advent, and without producing more than five years' apparent change in his face and physique, the people began to whisper more darkly; and to meet more than half way that desire for isolation which he had always shewn.
      Private letters and diaries of the period reveal, too, a multitude of other reasons why Joseph Curwen was marvelled at, feared, and finally shunned like a plague. His passion for graveyards, in which he was glimpsed at all hours and under all conditions, was notorious; though no one had witnessed any deed on his part which could actually be termed ghoulish. On the Pawtuxet Road he had a farm, at which he generally lived during the summer, and to which he would frequently be seen riding at various odd times of the day or night. Here his only visible servants, farmers, and caretakers were a sullen pair of aged Narragansett Indians; the husband dumb and curiously scarred, and the wife of a very repulsive cast of countenance, probably due to a mixture of negro blood. In the lean-to of this house was the laboratory where most of the chemical experiments were conducted. Curious porters and teamers who delivered bottles, bags, or boxes at the small rear door would exchange accounts of the fantastic flasks, crucibles, alembics, and furnaces they saw in the low shelved room; and prophesied in whispers that the close-mouthed ""chymist"" - by which they meant alchemist - would not be long in finding the Philosopher's Stone. The nearest neighbours to this farm - the Fenners, a quarter of a mile away - had still queerer things to tell of certain sounds which they insisted came from the Curwen place in the night. There were cries, they said, and sustained howlings; and they did not like the large number of livestock which thronged the pastures, for no such amount was needed to keep a lone old man and a very few servants in meat, milk, and wool. The identity of the stock seemed to change from week to week as new droves were purchased from the Kingstown farmers. Then, too, there was something very obnoxious about a certain great stone outbuilding with only high narrow slits for windows.
      Great Bridge idlers likewise had much to say of Curwen's town house in Olney Court; not so much the fine new one built in 1761, when the man must have been nearly a century old, but the first low gambrel-roofed one with the windowless attic and shingled sides, whose timbers he took the peculiar precaution of burning after its demolition. Here there was less mystery, it is true; but the hours at which lights were seen, the secretiveness of the two swarthy foreigners who comprised the only menservants, the hideous indistinct mumbling of the incredibly aged French housekeeper, the large amounts of food seen to enter a door within which only four persons lived, and the quality of certain voices often heard in muffled conversation at highly unseasonable times, all combined with what was known of the Pawtuxet farm to give the place a bad name.
      In choicer circles, too, the Curwen home was by no means undiscussed; for as the newcomer had gradually worked into the church and trading life of the town, he had naturally made acquaintances of the better sort, whose company and conversation he was well fitted by education to enjoy. His birth was known to be good, since the Curwens or Corwins of Salem needed no introduction in New England. It developed that Joseph Curwen had travelled much in very early life, living for a time in England and making at least two voyages to the Orient; and his speech, when he deigned to use it, was that of a learned and cultivated Englishman. But for some reason or other Curwen did not care for society. Whilst never actually rebuffing a visitor, he always reared such a wall of reserve that few could think of anything to say to him which would not sound inane.
      There seemed to lurk in his bearing some cryptic, sardonic arrogance, as if he had come to find all human beings dull through having moved among stranger and more potent entities. When Dr. Checkley the famous wit came from Boston in 1738 to be rector of King's Church, he did not neglect calling on one of whom he soon heard so much; but left in a very short while because of some sinister undercurrent he detected in his host's discourse. Charles Ward told his father, when they discussed Curwen one winter evening, that he would give much to learn what the mysterious old man had said to the sprightly cleric, but that all diarists agree concerning Dr. Checkley's reluctance to repeat anything he had heard. The good man had been hideously shocked, and could never recall Joseph Curwen without a visible loss of the gay urbanity for which he was famed.
      More definite, however, was the reason why another man of taste and breeding avoided the haughty hermit. In 1746 Mr. John Merritt, an elderly English gentleman of literary and scientific leanings, came from Newport to the town which was so rapidly overtaking it in standing, and built a fine country seat on the Neck in what is now the heart of the best residence section. He lived in considerable style and comfort, keeping the first coach and liveried servants in town, and taking great pride in his telescope, his microscope, and his well-chosen library of English and Latin books. Hearing of Curwen as the owner of the best library in Providence, Mr. Merritt early paid him a call, and was more cordially received than most other callers at the house had been. His admiration for his host's ample shelves, which besides the Greek, Latin, and English classics were equipped with a remarkable battery of philosophical, mathematical, and scientific works including Paracelsus, Agricola, Van Helmont, Sylvius, Glauber, Boyle, Boerhaave, Becher, and Stahl, led Curwen to suggest a visit to the farmhouse and laboratory whither he had never invited anyone before; and the two drove out at once in Mr. Merritt's coach.
      Mr. Merritt always confessed to seeing nothing really horrible at the farmhouse, but maintained that the titles of the books in the special library of thaumaturgical, alchemical, and theological subjects which Curwen kept in a front room were alone sufficient to inspire him with a lasting loathing. Perhaps, however, the facial expression of the owner in exhibiting them contributed much of the prejudice. The bizarre collection, besides a host of standard works which Mr. Merritt was not too alarmed to envy, embraced nearly all the cabbalists, daemonologists, and magicians known to man; and was a treasure-house of lore in the doubtful realms of alchemy and astrology. Hermes Trismegistus in Mesnard's edition, the Turba Philosophorum, Geber's Liber Investigationis, and Artephius' Key of Wisdom all were there; with the cabbalistic Zohar, Peter Jammy's set of Albertus Magnus, Raymond Lully's Ars Magna et Ultima in Zetzner's edition, Roger Bacon's Thesaurus Chemicus, Fludd's Clavis Alchimiae, and Trithemius' De Lapide Philosophico crowding them close. Mediaeval Jews and Arabs were represented in profusion, and Mr. Merritt turned pale when, upon taking down a fine volume conspicuously labelled as the Qanoon-e-Islam, he found it was in truth the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, of which he had heard such monstrous things whispered some years previously after the exposure of nameless rites at the strange little fishing village of Kingsport, in the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay.
      But oddly enough, the worthy gentleman owned himself most impalpably disquieted by a mere minor detail. On the huge mahogany table there lay face downward a badly worn copy of Borellus, bearing many cryptical marginalia and interlineations in Curwen's hand. The book was open at about its middle, and one paragraph displayed such thick and tremulous pen-strokes beneath the lines of mystic black-letter that the visitor could not resist scanning it through. Whether it was the nature of the passage underscored, or the feverish heaviness of the strokes which formed the underscoring, he could not tell; but something in that combination affected him very badly and very peculiarly. He recalled it to the end of his days, writing it down from memory in his diary and once trying to recite it to his close friend Dr. Checkley till he saw how greatly it disturbed the urbane rector. It read:
      ""The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated.""
      It was near the docks along the southerly part of the Town Street, however, that the worst things were muttered about Joseph Curwen. Sailors are superstitious folk; and the seasoned salts who manned the infinite rum, slave, and molasses sloops, the rakish privateers, and the great brigs of the Browns, Crawfords, and Tillinghasts, all made strange furtive signs of protection when they saw the slim, deceptively young-looking figure with its yellow hair and slight stoop entering the Curwen warehouse in Doubloon Street or talking with captains and supercargoes on the long quay where the Curwen ships rode restlessly. Curwen's own clerks and captains hated and feared him, and all his sailors were mongrel riff-raff from Martinique, St. Eustatius, Havana, or Port Royal. It was, in a way, the frequency with which these sailors were replaced which inspired the acutest and most tangible part of the fear in which the old man was held. A crew would be turned loose in the town on shore leave, some of its members perhaps charged with this errand or that; and when reassembled it would be almost sure to lack one or more men. That many of the errands had concerned the farm on the Pawtuxet Road, and that few of the sailors had ever been seen to return from that place, was not forgotten; so that in time it became exceedingly difficult for Curwen to keep his oddly assorted hands. Almost invariably several would desert soon after hearing the gossip of the Providence wharves, and their replacement in the West Indies became an increasingly great problem to the merchant.
      In 1760 Joseph Curwen was virtually an outcast, suspected of vague horrors and daemoniac alliances which seemed all the more menacing because they could not be named, understood, or even proved to exist. The last straw may have come from the affair of the missing soldiers in 1758, for in March and April of that year two Royal regiments on their way to New France were quartered in Providence, and depleted by an inexplicable process far beyond the average rate of desertion. Rumour dwelt on the frequency with which Curwen was wont to be seen talking with the red-coated strangers; and as several of them began to be missed, people thought of the odd conditions among his own seamen. What would have happened if the regiments had not been ordered on, no one can tell.
      Meanwhile the merchant's worldly affairs were prospering. He had a virtual monopoly of the town's trade in saltpetre, black pepper, and cinnamon, and easily led any other one shipping establishment save the Browns in his importation of brassware, indigo, cotton, woollens, salt, rigging, iron, paper, and English goods of every kind. Such shopkeepers as James Green, at the Sign of the Elephant in Cheapside, the Russells, at the Sign of the Golden Eagle across the Bridge, or Clark and Nightingale at the Frying-Pan and Fish near the New Coffee-House, depended almost wholly upon him for their stock; and his arrangements with the local distillers, the Narragansett dairymen and horse-breeders, and the Newport candle-makers, made him one of the prime exporters of the Colony.
      Ostracised though he was, he did not lack for civic spirit of a sort. When the Colony House burned down, he subscribed handsomely to the lotteries by which the new brick one - still standing at the head of its parade in the old main street - was built in 1761. In that same year, too, he helped rebuild the Great Bridge after the October gale. He replaced many of the books of the public library consumed in the Colony House fire, and bought heavily in the lottery that gave the muddy Market Parade and deep-rutted Town Street their pavement of great round stones with a brick footwalk or ""causey"" in the middle. About this time, also, he built the plain but excellent new house whose doorway is still such a triumph of carving. When the Whitefield adherents broke off from Dr. Cotton's hill church in 1743 and founded Deacon Snow's church across the Bridge, Curwen had gone with them; though his zeal and attendance soon abated. Now, however, he cultivated piety once more; as if to dispel the shadow which had thrown him into isolation and would soon begin to wreck his business fortunes if not sharply checked.

2.

      The sight of this strange, pallid man, hardly middle-aged in aspect yet certainly not less than a full century old, seeking at last to emerge from a cloud of fright and detestation too vague to pin down or analyse, was at once a pathetic, a dramatic, and a contemptible thing. Such is the power of wealth and of surface gestures, however, that there came indeed a slight abatement in the visible aversion displayed toward him; especially after the rapid disappearances of his sailors abruptly ceased. He must likewise have begun to practice an extreme care and secrecy in his graveyard expeditions, for he was never again caught at such wanderings; whilst the rumours of uncanny sounds and manoeuvres at his Pawtuxet farm diminished in proportion. His rate of food consumption and cattle replacement remained abnormally high; but not until modern times, when Charles Ward examined a set of his accounts and invoices in the Shepley Library, did it occur to any person - save one embittered youth, perhaps - to make dark comparisons between the large number of Guinea blacks he imported until 1766, and the disturbingly small number for whom he could produce bona fide bills of sale either to slave-dealers at the Great Bridge or to the planters of the Narragansett Country. Certainly, the cunning and ingenuity of this abhorred character were uncannily profound, once the necessity for their exercise had become impressed upon him.
      But of course the effect of all this belated mending was necessarily slight. Curwen continued to be avoided and distrusted, as indeed the one fact of his continued air of youth at a great age would have been enough to warrant; and he could see that in the end his fortunes would be likely to suffer. His elaborate studies and experiments, whatever they may have been, apparently required a heavy income for their maintenance; and since a change of environment would deprive him of the trading advantages he had gained, it would not have profited him to begin anew in a different region just then. Judgment demanded that he patch up his relations with the townsfolk of Providence, so that his presence might no longer be a signal for hushed conversation, transparent excuses of errands elsewhere, and a general atmosphere of constraint and uneasiness. His clerks, being now reduced to the shiftless and impecunious residue whom no one else would employ, were giving him much worry; and he held to his sea-captains and mates only by shrewdness in gaining some kind of ascendancy over them - a mortgage, a promissory note, or a bit of information very pertinent to their welfare. In many cases, diarists have recorded with some awe, Curwen shewed almost the power of a wizard in unearthing family secrets for questionable use. During the final five years of his life it seemed as though only direct talks with the long-dead could possibly have furnished some of the data which he had so glibly at his tongue's end.
      About this time the crafty scholar hit upon a last desperate expedient to regain his footing in the community. Hitherto a complete hermit, he now determined to contract an advantageous marriage; securing as a bride some lady whose unquestioned position would make all ostracism of his home impossible. It may be that he also had deeper reasons for wishing an alliance; reasons so far outside the known cosmic sphere that only papers found a century and a half after his death caused anyone to suspect them; but of this nothing certain can ever be learned. Naturally he was aware of the horror and indignation with which any ordinary courtship of his would be received, hence he looked about for some likely candidate upon whose parents he might exert a suitable pressure. Such candidates, he found, were not at all easy to discover; since he had very particular requirements in the way of beauty, accomplishments, and social security. At length his survey narrowed down to the household of one of his best and oldest ship-captains, a widower of high birth and unblemished standing named Dutee Tillinghast, whose only daughter Eliza seemed dowered with every conceivable advantage save prospects as an heiress. Capt. Tillinghast was completely under the domination of Curwen; and consented, after a terrible interview in his cupolaed house on Power's Lane hill, to sanction the blasphemous alliance.
      Eliza Tillinghast was at that time eighteen years of age, and had been reared as gently as the reduced circumstances of her father permitted. She had attended Stephen Jackson's school opposite the Court-House Parade; and had been diligently instructed by her mother, before the latter's death of smallpox in 1757, in all the arts and refinements of domestic life. A sampler of hers, worked in 1753 at the age of nine, may still be found in the rooms of the Rhode Island Historical Society. After her mother's death she had kept the house, aided only by one old black woman. Her arguments with her father concerning the proposed Curwen marriage must have been painful indeed; but of these we have no record. Certain it is that her engagement to young Ezra Weeden, second mate of the Crawford packet Enterprise, was dutifully broken off, and that her union with Joseph Curwen took place on the seventh of March, 1763, in the Baptist church, in the presence of one of the most distinguished assemblages which the town could boast; the ceremony being performed by the younger Samuel Winsor. The Gazette mentioned the event very briefly, and in most surviving copies the item in question seems to be cut or torn out. Ward found a single intact copy after much search in the archives of a private collector of note, observing with amusement the meaningless urbanity of the language:
      ""Monday evening last, Mr. Joseph Curwen, of this Town, Merchant, was married to Miss Eliza Tillinghast, Daughter of Capt. Dutee Tillinghast, a young Lady who has real Merit, added to a beautiful Person, to grace the connubial State and perpetuate its Felicity.""
      The collection of Durfee-Arnold letters, discovered by Charles Ward shortly before his first reputed madness in the private collection of Melville F. Peters, Esq., of George St., and covering this and a somewhat antecedent period, throws vivid light on the outrage done to public sentiment by this ill-assorted match. The social influence of the Tillinghasts, however, was not to be denied; and once more Joseph Curwen found his house frequented by persons whom he could never otherwise have induced to cross his threshold. His acceptance was by no means complete, and his bride was socially the sufferer through her forced venture; but at all events the wall of utter ostracism was somewhat worn down. In his treatment of his wife the strange bridegroom astonished both her and the community by displaying an extreme graciousness and consideration. The new house in Olney Court was now wholly free from disturbing manifestations, and although Curwen was much absent at the Pawtuxet farm which his wife never visited, he seemed more like a normal citizen than at any other time in his long years of residence. Only one person remained in open enmity with him, this being the youthful ship's officer whose engagement to Eliza Tillinghast had been so abruptly broken. Ezra Weeden had frankly vowed vengeance; and though of a quiet and ordinarily mild disposition, was now gaining a hate-bred, dogged purpose which boded no good to the usurping husband.
      On the seventh of May, 1765, Curwen's only child Ann was born; and was christened by the Rev. John Graves of King's Church, of which both husband and wife had become communicants shortly after their marriage, in order to compromise between their respective Congregational and Baptist affiliations. The record of this birth, as well as that of the marriage two years before, was stricken from most copies of the church and town annals where it ought to appear; and Charles Ward located both with the greatest difficulty after his discovery of the widow's change of name had apprised him of his own relationship, and engendered the feverish interest which culminated in his madness. The birth entry, indeed, was found very curiously through correspondence with the heirs of the loyalist Dr. Graves, who had taken with him a duplicate set of records when he left his pastorate at the outbreak of the Revolution. Ward had tried this source because he knew that his great-great-grandmother Ann Tillinghast Potter had been an Episcopalian.
      Shortly after the birth of his daughter, an event he seemed to welcome with a fervour greatly out of keeping with his usual coldness, Curwen resolved to sit for a portrait. This he had painted by a very gifted Scotsman named Cosmo Alexander, then a resident of Newport, and since famous as the early teacher of Gilbert Stuart. The likeness was said to have been executed on a wall-panel of the library of the house in Olney Court, but neither of the two old diaries mentioning it gave any hint of its ultimate disposition. At this period the erratic scholar shewed signs of unusual abstraction, and spent as much time as he possibly could at his farm on the Pawtuxet Road. He seemed, it was stated, in a condition of suppressed excitement or suspense; as if expecting some phenomenal thing or on the brink of some strange discovery. Chemistry or alchemy would appear to have played a great part, for he took from his house to the farm the greater number of his volumes on that subject.
      His affectation of civic interest did not diminish, and he lost no opportunities for helping such leaders as Stephen Hopkins, Joseph Brown, and Benjamin West in their efforts to raise the cultural tone of the town, which was then much below the level of Newport in its patronage of the liberal arts. He had helped Daniel Jenckes found his bookshop in 1763, and was thereafter his best customer; extending aid likewise to the struggling Gazette that appeared each Wednesday at the Sign of Shakespear's Head. In politics he ardently supported Governor Hopkins against the Ward party whose prime strength was in Newport, and his really eloquent speech at Hacker's Hall in 1765 against the setting off of North Providence as a separate town with a pro-Ward vote in the General Assembly did more than any other one thing to wear down the prejudice against him. But Ezra Weeden, who watched him closely, sneered cynically at all this outward activity; and freely swore it was no more than a mask for some nameless traffick with the blackest gulfs of Tartarus. The revengeful youth began a systematic study of the man and his doings whenever he was in port; spending hours at night by the wharves with a dory in readiness when he saw lights in the Curwen warehouses, and following the small boat which would sometimes steal quietly off and down the bay. He also kept as close a watch as possible on the Pawtuxet farm, and was once severely bitten by the dogs the old Indian couple loosed upon him.

3.

      In 1766 came the final change in Joseph Curwen. It was very sudden, and gained wide notice amongst the curious townsfolk; for the air of suspense and expectancy dropped like an old cloak, giving instant place to an ill-concealed exaltation of perfect triumph. Curwen seemed to have difficulty in restraining himself from public harangues on what he had found or learned or made; but apparently the need of secrecy was greater than the longing to share his rejoicing, for no explanation was ever offered by him. It was after this transition, which appears to have come early in July, that the sinister scholar began to astonish people by his possession of information which only their long-dead ancestors would seem to be able to impart.
      But Curwen's feverish secret activities by no means ceased with this change. On the contrary, they tended rather to increase; so that more and more of his shipping business was handled by the captains whom he now bound to him by ties of fear as potent as those of bankruptcy had been. He altogether abandoned the slave trade, alleging that its profits were constantly decreasing. Every possible moment was spent at the Pawtuxet farm; though there were rumours now and then of his presence in places which, though not actually near graveyards, were yet so situated in relation to graveyards that thoughtful people wondered just how thorough the old merchant's change of habits really was. Ezra Weeden, though his periods of espionage were necessarily brief and intermittent on account of his sea voyaging, had a vindictive persistence which the bulk of the practical townsfolk and farmers lacked; and subjected Curwen's affairs to a scrutiny such as they had never had before.
      Many of the odd manoeuvres of the strange merchant's vessels had been taken for granted on account of the unrest of the times, when every colonist seemed determined to resist the provisions of the Sugar Act which hampered a prominent traffick. Smuggling and evasion were the rule in Narragansett Bay, and nocturnal landings of illicit cargoes were continuous commonplaces. But Weeden, night after night following the lighters or small sloops which he saw steal off from the Curwen warehouses at the Town Street docks, soon felt assured that it was not merely His Majesty's armed ships which the sinister skulker was anxious to avoid. Prior to the change in 1766 these boats had for the most part contained chained negroes, who were carried down and across the bay and landed at an obscure point on the shore just north of Pawtuxet; being afterward driven up the bluff and across country to the Curwen farm, where they were locked in that enormous stone outbuilding which had only high narrow slits for windows. After that change, however, the whole programme was altered. Importation of slaves ceased at once, and for a time Curwen abandoned his midnight sailings. Then, about the spring of 1767, a new policy appeared. Once more the lighters grew wont to put out from the black, silent docks, and this time they would go down the bay some distance, perhaps as far as Namquit Point, where they would meet and receive cargo from strange ships of considerable size and widely varied appearance. Curwen's sailors would then deposit this cargo at the usual point on the shore, and transport it overland to the farm; locking it in the same cryptical stone building which had formerly received the negroes. The cargo consisted almost wholly of boxes and cases, of which a large proportion were oblong and heavy and disturbingly suggestive of coffins.
      Weeden always watched the farm with unremitting assiduity; visiting it each night for long periods, and seldom letting a week go by without a sight except when the ground bore a footprint-revealing snow. Even then he would often walk as close as possible in the travelled road or on the ice of the neighbouring river to see what tracks others might have left. Finding his own vigils interrupted by nautical duties, he hired a tavern companion named Eleazar Smith to continue the survey during his absences; and between them the two could have set in motion some extraordinary rumours. That they did not do so was only because they knew the effect of publicity would be to warn their quarry and make further progress impossible. Instead, they wished to learn something definite before taking any action. What they did learn must have been startling indeed, and Charles Ward spoke many times to his parents of his regret at Weeden's later burning of his notebooks. All that can be told of their discoveries is what Eleazar Smith jotted down in a none too coherent diary, and what other diarists and letter-writers have timidly repeated from the statements which they finally made - and according to which the farm was only the outer shell of some vast and revolting menace, of a scope and depth too profound and intangible for more than shadowy comprehension.
      It is gathered that Weeden and Smith became early convinced that a great series of tunnels and catacombs, inhabited by a very sizeable staff of persons besides the old Indian and his wife, underlay the farm. The house was an old peaked relic of the middle seventeenth century with enormous stack chimney and diamond-paned lattice windows, the laboratory being in a lean-to toward the north, where the roof came nearly to the ground. This building stood clear of any other; yet judging by the different voices heard at odd times within, it must have been accessible through secret passages beneath. These voices, before 1766, were mere mumblings and negro whisperings and frenzied screams, coupled with curious chants or invocations. After that date, however, they assumed a very singular and terrible cast as they ran the gamut betwixt dronings of dull acquiescence and explosions of frantic pain or fury, rumblings of conversation and whines of entreaty, pantings of eagerness and shouts of protest. They appeared to be in different languages, all known to Curwen, whose rasping accents were frequently distinguishable in reply, reproof, or threatening. Sometimes it seemed that several persons must be in the house; Curwen, certain captives, and the guards of those captives. There were voices of a sort that neither Weeden nor Smith had ever heard before despite their wide knowledge of foreign parts, and many that they did seem to place as belonging to this or that nationality. The nature of the conversations seemed always a kind of catechism, as if Curwen were extorting some sort of information from terrified or rebellious prisoners.
      Weeden had many verbatim reports of overheard scraps in his notebook, for English, French, and Spanish, which he knew, were frequently used; but of these nothing has survived. He did, however, say that besides a few ghoulish dialogues in which the past affairs of Providence families were concerned, most of the questions and answers he could understand were historical or scientific; occasionally pertaining to very remote places and ages. Once, for example, an alternately raging and sullen figure was questioned in French about the Black Prince's massacre at Limoges in 1370, as if there were some hidden reason which he ought to know. Curwen asked the prisoner - if prisoner it were - whether the order to slay was given because of the Sign of the Goat found on the altar in the ancient Roman crypt beneath the Cathedral, or whether the Dark Man of the Haute Vienne Coven had spoken the Three Words. Failing to obtain replies, the inquisitor had seemingly resorted to extreme means; for there was a terrific shriek followed by silence and muttering and a bumping sound.
      None of these colloquies were ever ocularly witnessed, since the windows were always heavily draped. Once, though, during a discourse in an unknown tongue, a shadow was seen on the curtain which startled Weeden exceedingly; reminding him of one of the puppets in a show he had seen in the autumn of 1764 in Hacker's Hall, when a man from Germantown, Pennsylvania, had given a clever mechanical spectacle advertised as a ""View of the Famous City of Jerusalem, in which are represented Jerusalem, the Temple of Solomon, his Royal Throne, the noted Towers, and Hills, likewise the Sufferings of Our Saviour from the Garden of Gethsemane to the Cross on the Hill of Golgotha; an artful piece of Statuary, Worthy to be seen by the Curious."" It was on this occasion that the listener, who had crept close to the window of the front room whence the speaking proceeded, gave a start which roused the old Indian pair and caused them to loose the dogs on him. After that no more conversations were ever heard in the house, and Weeden and Smith concluded that Curwen had transferred his field of action to regions below.
      That such regions in truth existed, seemed amply clear from many things. Faint cries and groans unmistakably came up now and then from what appeared to be the solid earth in places far from any structure; whilst hidden in the bushes along the river-bank in the rear, where the high ground sloped steeply down to the valley of the Pawtuxet, there was found an arched oaken door in a frame of heavy masonry, which was obviously an entrance to caverns within the hill. When or how these catacombs could have been constructed, Weeden was unable to say; but he frequently pointed out how easily the place might have been reached by bands of unseen workmen from the river. Joseph Curwen put his mongrel seamen to diverse uses indeed! During the heavy spring rains of 1769 the two watchers kept a sharp eye on the steep river-bank to see if any subterrene secrets might be washed to light, and were rewarded by the sight of a profusion of both human and animal bones in places where deep gullies had been worn in the banks. Naturally there might be many explanations of such things in the rear of a stock farm, and in a locality where old Indian burying-grounds were common, but Weeden and Smith drew their own inferences.
      It was in January 1770, whilst Weeden and Smith were still debating vainly on what, if anything, to think or do about the whole bewildering business, that the incident of the Fortaleza occurred. Exasperated by the burning of the revenue sloop Liberty at Newport during the previous summer, the customs fleet under Admiral Wallace had adopted an increased vigilance concerning strange vessels; and on this occasion His Majesty's armed schooner Cygnet, under Capt. Charles Leslie, captured after a short pursuit one early morning the snow Fortaleza of Barcelona, Spain, under Capt. Manuel Arruda, bound according to its log from Grand Cairo, Egypt, to Providence. When searched for contraband material, this ship revealed the astonishing fact that its cargo consisted exclusively of Egyptian mummies, consigned to ""Sailor A. B. C."", who would come to remove his goods in a lighter just off Namquit Point and whose identity Capt. Arruda felt himself in honour bound not to reveal. The Vice-Admiralty Court at Newport, at a loss what to do in view of the non-contraband nature of the cargo on the one hand and of the unlawful secrecy of the entry on the other hand, compromised on Collector Robinson's recommendation by freeing the ship but forbidding it a port in Rhode Island waters. There were later rumours of its having been seen in Boston Harbour, though it never openly entered the Port of Boston.
      This extraordinary incident did not fail of wide remark in Providence, and there were not many who doubted the existence of some connexion between the cargo of mummies and the sinister Joseph Curwen. His exotic studies and his curious chemical importations being common knowledge, and his fondness for graveyards being common suspicion; it did not take much imagination to link him with a freakish importation which could not conceivably have been destined for anyone else in the town. As if conscious of this natural belief, Curwen took care to speak casually on several occasions of the chemical value of the balsams found in mummies; thinking perhaps that he might make the affair seem less unnatural, yet stopping just short of admitting his participation. Weeden and Smith, of course, felt no doubt whatsoever of the significance of the thing; and indulged in the wildest theories concerning Curwen and his monstrous labours.
      The following spring, like that of the year before, had heavy rains; and the watchers kept careful track of the river-bank behind the Curwen farm. Large sections were washed away, and a certain number of bones discovered; but no glimpse was afforded of any actual subterranean chambers or burrows. Something was rumoured, however, at the village of Pawtuxet about a mile below, where the river flows in falls over a rocky terrace to join the placid landlocked cove. There, where quaint old cottages climbed the hill from the rustic bridge, and fishing-smacks lay anchored at their sleepy docks, a vague report went round of things that were floating down the river and flashing into sight for a minute as they went over the falls. Of course the Pawtuxet is a long river which winds through many settled regions abounding in graveyards, and of course the spring rains had been very heavy; but the fisherfolk about the bridge did not like the wild way that one of the things stared as it shot down to the still water below, or the way that another half cried out although its condition had greatly departed from that of objects which normally cry out. That rumour sent Smith - for Weeden was just then at sea - in haste to the river-bank behind the farm; where surely enough there remained the evidences of an extensive cave-in. There was, however, no trace of a passage into the steep bank; for the miniature avalanche had left behind a solid wall of mixed earth and shrubbery from aloft. Smith went to the extent of some experimental digging, but was deterred by lack of success - or perhaps by fear of possible success. It is interesting to speculate on what the persistent and revengeful Weeden would have done had he been ashore at the time.

4.

      By the autumn of 1770 Weeden decided that the time was ripe to tell others of his discoveries; for he had a large number of facts to link together, and a second eye-witness to refute the possible charge that jealousy and vindictiveness had spurred his fancy. As his first confidant he selected Capt. James Mathewson of the Enterprise, who on the one hand knew him well enough not to doubt his veracity, and on the other hand was sufficiently influential in the town to be heard in turn with respect. The colloquy took place in an upper room of Sabin's Tavern near the docks, with Smith present to corroborate virtually every statement; and it could be seen that Capt. Mathewson was tremendously impressed. Like nearly everyone else in the town, he had had black suspicions of his own anent Joseph Curwen; hence it needed only this confirmation and enlargement of data to convince him absolutely. At the end of the conference he was very grave, and enjoined strict silence upon the two younger men. He would, he said, transmit the information separately to some ten or so of the most learned and prominent citizens of Providence; ascertaining their views and following whatever advice they might have to offer. Secrecy would probably be essential in any case, for this was no matter that the town constables or militia could cope with; and above all else the excitable crowd must be kept in ignorance, lest there be enacted in these already troublous times a repetition of that frightful Salem panic of less than a century before which had first brought Curwen hither.
      The right persons to tell, he believed, would be Dr. Benjamin West, whose pamphlet on the late transit of Venus proved him a scholar and keen thinker; Rev. James Manning, President of the College which had just moved up from Warren and was temporarily housed in the new King Street schoolhouse awaiting the completion of its building on the hill above Presbyterian-Lane; ex-Governor Stephen Hopkins, who had been a member of the Philosophical Society at Newport, and was a man of very broad perceptions; John Carter, publisher of the Gazette; all four of the Brown brothers, John, Joseph, Nicholas, and Moses, who formed the recognised local magnates, and of whom Joseph was an amateur scientist of parts; old Dr. Jabez Bowen, whose erudition was considerable, and who had much first-hand knowledge of Curwen's odd purchases; and Capt. Abraham Whipple, a privateersman of phenomenal boldness and energy who could be counted on to lead in any active measures needed. These men, if favourable, might eventually be brought together for collective deliberation; and with them would rest the responsibility of deciding whether or not to inform the Governor of the Colony, Joseph Wanton of Newport, before taking action.
      The mission of Capt. Mathewson prospered beyond his highest expectations; for whilst he found one or two of the chosen confidants somewhat sceptical of the possible ghastly side of Weeden's tale, there was not one who did not think it necessary to take some sort of secret and cošrdinated action. Curwen, it was clear, formed a vague potential menace to the welfare of the town and Colony; and must be eliminated at any cost. Late in December 1770 a group of eminent townsmen met at the home of Stephen Hopkins and debated tentative measures. Weeden's notes, which he had given to Capt. Mathewson, were carefully read; and he and Smith were summoned to give testimony anent details. Something very like fear seized the whole assemblage before the meeting was over, though there ran through that fear a grim determination which Capt. Whipple's bluff and resonant profanity best expressed. They would not notify the Governor, because a more than legal course seemed necessary. With hidden powers of uncertain extent apparently at his disposal, Curwen was not a man who could safely be warned to leave town. Nameless reprisals might ensue, and even if the sinister creature complied, the removal would be no more than the shifting of an unclean burden to another place. The times were lawless, and men who had flouted the King's revenue forces for years were not the ones to balk at sterner things when duty impelled. Curwen must be surprised at his Pawtuxet farm by a large raiding-party of seasoned privateersmen and given one decisive chance to explain himself. If he proved a madman, amusing himself with shrieks and imaginary conversations in different voices, he would be properly confined. If something graver appeared, and if the underground horrors indeed turned out to be real, he and all with him must die. It could be done quietly, and even the widow and her father need not be told how it came about.
      While these serious steps were under discussion there occurred in the town an incident so terrible and inexplicable that for a time little else was mentioned for miles around. In the middle of a moonlight January night with heavy snow underfoot there resounded over the river and up the hill a shocking series of cries which brought sleepy heads to every window; and people around Weybosset Point saw a great white thing plunging frantically along the badly cleared space in front of the Turk's Head. There was a baying of dogs in the distance, but this subsided as soon as the clamour of the awakened town became audible. Parties of men with lanterns and muskets hurried out to see what was happening, but nothing rewarded their search. The next morning, however, a giant, muscular body, stark naked, was found on the jams of ice around the southern piers of the Great Bridge, where the Long Dock stretched out beside Abbott's distil-house, and the identity of this object became a theme for endless speculation and whispering. It was not so much the younger as the older folk who whispered, for only in the patriarchs did that rigid face with horror-bulging eyes strike any chord of memory. They, shaking as they did so, exchanged furtive murmurs of wonder and fear; for in those stiff, hideous features lay a resemblance so marvellous as to be almost an identity - and that identity was with a man who had died full fifty years before.
      Ezra Weeden was present at the finding; and remembering the baying of the night before, set out along Weybosset Street and across Muddy Dock Bridge whence the sound had come. He had a curious expectancy, and was not surprised when, reaching the edge of the settled district where the street merged into the Pawtuxet Road, he came upon some very curious tracks in the snow. The naked giant had been pursued by dogs and many booted men, and the returning tracks of the hounds and their masters could be easily traced. They had given up the chase upon coming too near the town. Weeden smiled grimly, and as a perfunctory detail traced the footprints back to their source. It was the Pawtuxet farm of Joseph Curwen, as he well knew it would be; and he would have given much had the yard been less confusingly trampled. As it was, he dared not seem too interested in full daylight. Dr. Bowen, to whom Weeden went at once with his report, performed an autopsy on the strange corpse, and discovered peculiarities which baffled him utterly. The digestive tracts of the huge man seemed never to have been in use, whilst the whole skin had a coarse, loosely knit texture impossible to account for. Impressed by what the old men whispered of this body's likeness to the long-dead blacksmith Daniel Green, whose great-grandson Aaron Hoppin was a supercargo in Curwen's employ, Weeden asked casual questions till he found where Green was buried. That night a party of ten visited the old North Burying Ground opposite Herrenden's Lane and opened a grave. They found it vacant, precisely as they had expected.
      Meanwhile arrangements had been made with the post riders to intercept Joseph Curwen's mail, and shortly before the incident of the naked body there was found a letter from one Jedediah Orne of Salem which made the cošperating citizens think deeply. Parts of it, copied and preserved in the private archives of the Smith family where Charles Ward found it, ran as follows:
      ""I delight that you continue in ye Gett'g at Olde Matters in your Way, and doe not think better was done at Mr. Hutchinson's in Salem-Village. Certainely, there was Noth'g butt ye liveliest Awfulness in that which H. rais'd upp from What he cou'd gather onlie a part of. What you sente, did not Worke, whether because of Any Thing miss'g, or because ye Wordes were not Righte from my Speak'g or yr Copy'g. I alone am at a Loss. I have not ye Chymicall art to followe Borellus, and owne my Self confounded by ye VII. Booke of ye Necronomicon that you recommende. But I wou'd have you Observe what was tolde to us aboute tak'g Care whom to calle up, for you are Sensible what Mr. Mather writ in ye Magnalia of  -  - , and can judge how truely that Horrendous thing is reported. I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you. I was frighted when I read of your know'g what Ben Zariatnatmik hadde in his ebony Boxe, for I was conscious who must have tolde you. And againe I ask that you shalle write me as Jedediah and not Simon. In this Community a Man may not live too long, and you knowe my Plan by which I came back as my Son. I am desirous you will Acquaint me with what ye Blacke Man learnt from Sylvanus Cocidius in ye Vault, under ye Roman Wall, and will be oblig'd for ye Lend'g of ye MS. you speak of.""
      Another and unsigned letter from Philadelphia provoked equal thought, especially for the following passage:
      ""I will observe what you say respecting the sending of Accounts only by yr Vessels, but can not always be certain when to expect them. In the Matter spoke of, I require onlie one more thing; but wish to be sure I apprehend you exactly. You inform me, that no Part must be missing if the finest Effects are to be had, but you can not but know how hard it is to be sure. It seems a great Hazard and Burthen to take away the whole Box, and in Town (i.e. St. Peter's, St. Paul's, St. Mary's, or Christ Church) it can scarce be done at all. But I know what Imperfections were in the one I rais'd up October last, and how many live Specimens you were forc'd to imploy before you hit upon the right Mode in the year 1766; so will be guided by you in all Matters. I am impatient for yr Brig, and inquire daily at Mr. Biddle's Wharf.""
      A third suspicious letter was in an unknown tongue and even an unknown alphabet. In the Smith diary found by Charles Ward a single oft-repeated combination of characters is clumsily copied; and authorities at Brown University have pronounced the alphabet Amharic or Abyssinian, although they do not recognise the word. None of these epistles was ever delivered to Curwen, though the disappearance of Jedediah Orne from Salem as recorded shortly afterward shewed that the Providence men took certain quiet steps. The Pennsylvania Historical Society also has some curious letters received by Dr. Shippen regarding the presence of an unwholesome character in Philadelphia. But more decisive steps were in the air, and it is in the secret assemblages of sworn and tested sailors and faithful old privateersmen in the Brown warehouses by night that we must look for the main fruits of Weeden's disclosures. Slowly and surely a plan of campaign was under development which would leave no trace of Joseph Curwen's noxious mysteries.
      Curwen, despite all precautions, apparently felt that something was in the wind; for he was now remarked to wear an unusually worried look. His coach was seen at all hours in the town and on the Pawtuxet Road, and he dropped little by little the air of forced geniality with which he had latterly sought to combat the town's prejudice. The nearest neighbours to his farm, the Fenners, one night remarked a great shaft of light shooting into the sky from some aperture in the roof of that cryptical stone building with the high, excessively narrow windows; an event which they quickly communicated to John Brown in Providence. Mr. Brown had become the executive leader of the select group bent on Curwen's extirpation, and had informed the Fenners that some action was about to be taken. This he deemed needful because of the impossibility of their not witnessing the final raid; and he explained his course by saying that Curwen was known to be a spy of the customs officers at Newport, against whom the hand of every Providence shipper, merchant, and farmer was openly or clandestinely raised. Whether the ruse was wholly believed by neighbours who had seen so many queer things is not certain; but at any rate the Fenners were willing to connect any evil with a man of such queer ways. To them Mr. Brown had entrusted the duty of watching the Curwen farmhouse, and of regularly reporting every incident which took place there.

5.

      The probability that Curwen was on guard and attempting unusual things, as suggested by the odd shaft of light, precipitated at last the action so carefully devised by the band of serious citizens. According to the Smith diary a company of about 100 men met at 10 p.m. on Friday, April 12th, 1771, in the great room of Thurston's Tavern at the Sign of the Golden Lion on Weybosset Point across the Bridge. Of the guiding group of prominent men in addition to the leader John Brown there were present Dr. Bowen, with his case of surgical instruments, President Manning without the great periwig (the largest in the Colonies) for which he was noted, Governor Hopkins, wrapped in his dark cloak and accompanied by his seafaring brother Esek, whom he had initiated at the last moment with the permission of the rest, John Carter, Capt. Mathewson, and Capt. Whipple, who was to lead the actual raiding party. These chiefs conferred apart in a rear chamber, after which Capt. Whipple emerged to the great room and gave the gathered seamen their last oaths and instructions. Eleazar Smith was with the leaders as they sat in the rear apartment awaiting the arrival of Ezra Weeden, whose duty was to keep track of Curwen and report the departure of his coach for the farm.
      About 10:30 a heavy rumble was heard on the Great Bridge, followed by the sound of a coach in the street outside; and at that hour there was no need of waiting for Weeden in order to know that the doomed man had set out for his last night of unhallowed wizardry. A moment later, as the receding coach clattered faintly over the Muddy Dock Bridge, Weeden appeared; and the raiders fell silently into military order in the street, shouldering the firelocks, fowling-pieces, or whaling harpoons which they had with them. Weeden and Smith were with the party, and of the deliberating citizens there were present for active service Capt. Whipple, the leader, Capt. Esek Hopkins, John Carter, President Manning, Capt. Mathewson, and Dr. Bowen; together with Moses Brown, who had come up at the eleventh hour though absent from the preliminary session in the tavern. All these freemen and their hundred sailors began the long march without delay, grim and a trifle apprehensive as they left the Muddy Dock behind and mounted the gentle rise of Broad Street toward the Pawtuxet Road. Just beyond Elder Snow's church some of the men turned back to take a parting look at Providence lying outspread under the early spring stars. Steeples and gables rose dark and shapely, and salt breezes swept up gently from the cove north of the Bridge. Vega was climbing above the great hill across the water, whose crest of trees was broken by the roof-line of the unfinished College edifice. At the foot of that hill, and along the narrow mounting lanes of its side, the old town dreamed; Old Providence, for whose safety and sanity so monstrous and colossal a blasphemy was about to be wiped out.
      An hour and a quarter later the raiders arrived, as previously agreed, at the Fenner farmhouse; where they heard a final report on their intended victim. He had reached his farm over half an hour before, and the strange light had soon afterward shot once into the sky, but there were no lights in any visible windows. This was always the case of late. Even as this news was given another great glare arose toward the south, and the party realised that they had indeed come close to the scene of awesome and unnatural wonders. Capt. Whipple now ordered his force to separate into three divisions; one of twenty men under Eleazar Smith to strike across to the shore and guard the landing-place against possible reinforcements for Curwen until summoned by a messenger for desperate service, a second of twenty men under Capt. Esek Hopkins to steal down into the river valley behind the Curwen farm and demolish with axes or gunpowder the oaken door in the high, steep bank, and the third to close in on the house and adjacent buildings themselves. Of this division one third was to be led by Capt. Mathewson to the cryptical stone edifice with high narrow windows, another third to follow Capt. Whipple himself to the main farmhouse, and the remaining third to preserve a circle around the whole group of buildings until summoned by a final emergency signal.
      The river party would break down the hillside door at the sound of a single whistle-blast, then waiting and capturing anything which might issue from the regions within. At the sound of two whistle-blasts it would advance through the aperture to oppose the enemy or join the rest of the raiding contingent. The party at the stone building would accept these respective signals in an analogous manner; forcing an entrance at the first, and at the second descending whatever passage into the ground might be discovered, and joining the general or focal warfare expected to take place within the caverns. A third or emergency signal of three blasts would summon the immediate reserve from its general guard duty; its twenty men dividing equally and entering the unknown depths through both farmhouse and stone building. Capt. Whipple's belief in the existence of catacombs was absolute, and he took no alternative into consideration when making his plans. He had with him a whistle of great power and shrillness, and did not fear any upsetting or misunderstanding of signals. The final reserve at the landing, of course, was nearly out of the whistle's range; hence would require a special messenger if needed for help. Moses Brown and John Carter went with Capt. Hopkins to the river-bank, while President Manning was detailed with Capt. Mathewson to the stone building. Dr. Bowen, with Ezra Weeden, remained in Capt. Whipple's party which was to storm the farmhouse itself. The attack was to begin as soon as a messenger from Capt. Hopkins had joined Capt. Whipple to notify him of the river party's readiness. The leader would then deliver the loud single blast, and the various advance parties would commence their simultaneous attack on three points. Shortly before 1 a.m. the three divisions left the Fenner farmhouse; one to guard the landing, another to seek the river valley and the hillside door, and the third to subdivide and attend to the actual buildings of the Curwen farm.
      Eleazar Smith, who accompanied the shore-guarding party, records in his diary an uneventful march and a long wait on the bluff by the bay; broken once by what seemed to be the distant sound of the signal whistle and again by a peculiar muffled blend of roaring and crying and a powder blast which seemed to come from the same direction. Later on one man thought he caught some distant gunshots, and still later Smith himself felt the throb of titanic and thunderous words resounding in upper air. It was just before dawn that a single haggard messenger with wild eyes and a hideous unknown odour about his clothing appeared and told the detachment to disperse quietly to their homes and never again think or speak of the night's doings or of him who had been Joseph Curwen. Something about the bearing of the messenger carried a conviction which his mere words could never have conveyed; for though he was a seaman well known to many of them, there was something obscurely lost or gained in his soul which set him for evermore apart. It was the same later on when they met other old companions who had gone into that zone of horror. Most of them had lost or gained something imponderable and indescribable. They had seen or heard or felt something which was not for human creatures, and could not forget it. From them there was never any gossip, for to even the commonest of mortal instincts there are terrible boundaries. And from that single messenger the party at the shore caught a nameless awe which almost sealed their own lips. Very few are the rumours which ever came from any of them, and Eleazar Smith's diary is the only written record which has survived from that whole expedition which set forth from the Sign of the Golden Lion under the stars.
      Charles Ward, however, discovered another vague sidelight in some Fenner correspondence which he found in New London, where he knew another branch of the family had lived. It seems that the Fenners, from whose house the doomed farm was distantly visible, had watched the departing columns of raiders; and had heard very clearly the angry barking of the Curwen dogs, followed by the first shrill blast which precipitated the attack. This blast had been followed by a repetition of the great shaft of light from the stone building, and in another moment, after a quick sounding of the second signal ordering a general invasion, there had come a subdued prattle of musketry followed by a horrible roaring cry which the correspondent Luke Fenner had represented in his epistle by the characters ""Waaaahrrrrr - R'waaahrrr"". This cry, however, had possessed a quality which no mere writing could convey, and the correspondent mentions that his mother fainted completely at the sound. It was later repeated less loudly, and further but more muffled evidences of gunfire ensued; together with a loud explosion of powder from the direction of the river. About an hour afterward all the dogs began to bark frightfully, and there were vague ground rumblings so marked that the candlesticks tottered on the mantelpiece. A strong smell of sulphur was noted; and Luke Fenner's father declared that he heard the third or emergency whistle signal, though the others failed to detect it. Muffled musketry sounded again, followed by a deep scream less piercing but even more horrible than those which had preceded it; a kind of throaty, nastily plastic cough or gurgle whose quality as a scream must have come more from its continuity and psychological import than from its actual acoustic value.
      Then the flaming thing burst into sight at a point where the Curwen farm ought to lie, and the human cries of desperate and frightened men were heard. Muskets flashed and cracked, and the flaming thing fell to the ground. A second flaming thing appeared, and a shriek of human origin was plainly distinguished. Fenner wrote that he could even gather a few words belched in frenzy: ""Almighty, protect thy lamb!"" Then there were more shots, and the second flaming thing fell. After that came silence for about three-quarters of an hour; at the end of which time little Arthur Fenner, Luke's brother, exclaimed that he saw 'a red fog' going up to the stars from the accursed farm in the distance. No one but the child can testify to this, but Luke admits the significant coincidence implied by the panic of almost convulsive fright which at the same moment arched the backs and stiffened the fur of the three cats then within the room.
      Five minutes later a chill wind blew up, and the air became suffused with such an intolerable stench that only the strong freshness of the sea could have prevented its being noticed by the shore party or by any wakeful souls in Pawtuxet village. This stench was nothing which any of the Fenners had ever encountered before, and produced a kind of clutching, amorphous fear beyond that of the tomb or the charnel-house. Close upon it came the awful voice which no hapless hearer will ever be able to forget. It thundered out of the sky like a doom, and windows rattled as its echoes died away. It was deep and musical; powerful as a bass organ, but evil as the forbidden books of the Arabs. What it said no man can tell, for it spoke in an unknown tongue, but this is the writing Luke Fenner set down to portray the daemoniac intonations: ""DEESMEES-JESHET-BONE DOSEFE DUVEMA-ENITEMOSS"". Not till the year 1919 did any soul link this crude transcript with anything else in mortal knowledge, but Charles Ward paled as he recognised what Mirandola had denounced in shudders as the ultimate horror among black magic's incantations.
      An unmistakably human shout or deep chorused scream seemed to answer this malign wonder from the Curwen farm, after which the unknown stench grew complex with an added odour equally intolerable. A wailing distinctly different from the scream now burst out, and was protracted ululantly in rising and falling paroxysms. At times it became almost articulate, though no auditor could trace any definite words; and at one point it seemed to verge toward the confines of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Then a yell of utter, ultimate fright and stark madness wrenched from scores of human throats - a yell which came strong and clear despite the depth from which it must have burst; after which darkness and silence ruled all things. Spirals of acrid smoke ascended to blot out the stars, though no flames appeared and no buildings were observed to be gone or injured on the following day.
      Toward dawn two frightened messengers with monstrous and unplaceable odours saturating their clothing knocked at the Fenner door and requested a keg of rum, for which they paid very well indeed. One of them told the family that the affair of Joseph Curwen was over, and that the events of the night were not to be mentioned again. Arrogant as the order seemed, the aspect of him who gave it took away all resentment and lent it a fearsome authority; so that only these furtive letters of Luke Fenner, which he urged his Connecticut relative to destroy, remain to tell what was seen and heard. The non-compliance of that relative, whereby the letters were saved after all, has alone kept the matter from a merciful oblivion. Charles Ward had one detail to add as a result of a long canvass of Pawtuxet residents for ancestral traditions. Old Charles Slocum of that village said that there was known to his grandfather a queer rumour concerning a charred, distorted body found in the fields a week after the death of Joseph Curwen was announced. What kept the talk alive was the notion that this body, so far as could be seen in its burnt and twisted condition, was neither thoroughly human nor wholly allied to any animal which Pawtuxet folk had ever seen or read about.

6.

      Not one man who participated in that terrible raid could ever be induced to say a word concerning it, and every fragment of the vague data which survives comes from those outside the final fighting party. There is something frightful in the care with which these actual raiders destroyed each scrap which bore the least allusion to the matter. Eight sailors had been killed, but although their bodies were not produced their families were satisfied with the statement that a clash with customs officers had occurred. The same statement also covered the numerous cases of wounds, all of which were extensively bandaged and treated only by Dr. Jabez Bowen, who had accompanied the party. Hardest to explain was the nameless odour clinging to all the raiders, a thing which was discussed for weeks. Of the citizen leaders, Capt. Whipple and Moses Brown were most severely hurt, and letters of their wives testify the bewilderment which their reticence and close guarding of their bandages produced. Psychologically every participant was aged, sobered, and shaken. It is fortunate that they were all strong men of action and simple, orthodox religionists, for with more subtle introspectiveness and mental complexity they would have fared ill indeed. President Manning was the most disturbed; but even he outgrew the darkest shadow, and smothered memories in prayers. Every man of those leaders had a stirring part to play in later years, and it is perhaps fortunate that this is so. Little more than a twelvemonth afterward Capt. Whipple led the mob who burnt the revenue ship Gaspee, and in this bold act we may trace one step in the blotting out of unwholesome images.
      There was delivered to the widow of Joseph Curwen a sealed leaden coffin of curious design, obviously found ready on the spot when needed, in which she was told her husband's body lay. He had, it was explained, been killed in a customs battle about which it was not politic to give details. More than this no tongue ever uttered of Joseph Curwen's end, and Charles Ward had only a single hint wherewith to construct a theory. This hint was the merest thread - a shaky underscoring of a passage in Jedediah Orne's confiscated letter to Curwen, as partly copied in Ezra Weeden's handwriting. The copy was found in the possession of Smith's descendants; and we are left to decide whether Weeden gave it to his companion after the end, as a mute clue to the abnormality which had occurred, or whether, as is more probable, Smith had it before, and added the underscoring himself from what he had managed to extract from his friend by shrewd guessing and adroit cross-questioning. The underlined passage is merely this:
      ""I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you.""
In the light of this passage, and reflecting on what last unmentionable allies a beaten man might try to summon in his direst extremity, Charles Ward may well have wondered whether any citizen of Providence killed Joseph Curwen.
      The deliberate effacement of every memory of the dead man from Providence life and annals was vastly aided by the influence of the raiding leaders. They had not at first meant to be so thorough, and had allowed the widow and her father and child to remain in ignorance of the true conditions; but Capt. Tillinghast was an astute man, and soon uncovered enough rumours to whet his horror and cause him to demand that his daughter and granddaughter change their name, burn the library and all remaining papers, and chisel the inscription from the slate slab above Joseph Curwen's grave. He knew Capt. Whipple well, and probably extracted more hints from that bluff mariner than anyone else ever gained respecting the end of the accused sorcerer.
      From that time on the obliteration of Curwen's memory became increasingly rigid, extending at last by common consent even to the town records and files of the Gazette. It can be compared in spirit only to the hush that lay on Oscar Wilde's name for a decade after his disgrace, and in extent only to the fate of that sinful King of Runazar in Lord Dunsany's tale, whom the Gods decided must not only cease to be, but must cease ever to have been.
      Mrs. Tillinghast, as the widow became known after 1772, sold the house in Olney Court and resided with her father in Power's Lane till her death in 1817. The farm at Pawtuxet, shunned by every living soul, remained to moulder through the years; and seemed to decay with unaccountable rapidity. By 1780 only the stone and brickwork were standing, and by 1800 even these had fallen to shapeless heaps. None ventured to pierce the tangled shrubbery on the river-bank behind which the hillside door may have lain, nor did any try to frame a definite image of the scenes amidst which Joseph Curwen departed from the horrors he had wrought.
      Only robust old Capt. Whipple was heard by alert listeners to mutter once in a while to himself, ""Pox on that  -  -  - , but he had no business to laugh while he screamed. 'Twas as though the damn'd  -  -  -  had some'at up his sleeve. For half a crown I'd burn his  -  -  -  house.""
","This is based off of real events that have happened to a friend of mine. The impulse Harold has at the beach, the fish, and the dream. Everything else is fictional.
I
Harold Durby has been my friend since the age of six, having met in kindergarten. A non-native to Florida, unlike myself, he came from Massachusetts-though where has always alluded my mother and father since Harold's single mother always changed the subject.
He was a strapping brown haired, blue eyed ball of energy that it was a shock to all that he would befriend me, the class nerd-for at such a young age, I discovered the astounding information that knowledge can give. Yet, we were bound by a shared passion of the ocean. His wide knowledge and love of fish was beyond his years and was always spoken with such passion that it seemed as if he longed to swim beneath the waves forever. And as he grew, it was as if he believed he belonged there more than he did upon land and felt cursed to walk with us humans.
And I found myself feeling the same way. Though it was not put to question until his forties, the first sign should have been gleaned on his nineteenth year.
Walking along the lonely, early morning beach-our routine since starting high school together(though we graduated at this point)-found us gazing upon a lazy, gray sun rising out of the sea weed infested waves. Minor chit-chat and crashing waves pervaded our silence as gulls stretched their wings and took flight when, out of nowhere, Harold stopped in his tracks, head whipping towards the ocean, eyes cloudy and unfocused.
""Harold,"" I called, trying to gain his attention. ""Harold!""
He took a stiff step towards the ocean, then another, his arms out to his side, palms facing forward like the Virgin Mary as his steps increased. I tugged at his sleeve to break this trance that was placed upon him.
We were a good fifteen feet out, the sand beneath us making the cresting waves come up just above his belt, being a couple inches taller than myself, when a whistle blew.
""Get out of the water!"" The lifeguard called from his position on his tower.
I looked away from Harold at that moment to see the purple and red flag with a no swimming sign on it. Harold, having been brought back by the whistle, was the first to move back towards land.
Panting and chilled by the wind blowing across out wet clothing, I attempted to ask my friend what came upon him. Though he was crouched over, hands on knees, I could see on his face a sort of horror and shock that I have not seen on him before.
""Harold,"" I pushed. ""What came over you?""
""You didn't hear it?"" He asked, sounding surprised, covering up his fear.
""Hear what?""
""Then why did you go out with me?""
""I was trying to snap you out of it."" I explained.
""Then you didn't hear it?""
""Hear what?""
He dismissed my question with a shake of his head. ""Forget it, let's just go home.""
I nodded, knowing better than to drop it, but also knowing that Harold would tell me when he's ready.
From then on he went to the beach a few more times, but after those times, it was strictly on the sand and never in the water. His claim was that fish kept bumping into him, which is not too unusual, for I have seen their glistening, silver bodies flash beneath the waves-but they never touched any of us, just Harold. Which made him nervous since he wouldn't hurt a fly on purpose, and the murky water doesn't offer much in the way of spying on them.
II
Many years pass in a blink of an eye and I find myself in an insurance company(1), while Harold is a marine biologist professor at the local University of Central Florida. In our mid-thirties, we find ourselves successful in our occupations, yet not so in our love life-a fact our mothers love to point out. Though not from a lack of trying, both Harold and myself have tried, but my girlfriends do not last long and, for some odd reason, girls seem to find Harold oddly repulsive. A fact I cannot grasp, for he is a handsome gentleman.
But we are content enough with our lives. Though, as was to be expected, since our income was good but not good enough for housing prices, we rented an apartment together.
But that veil was quick to be cast away from our eyes. For Harold, from what I could gather, he had night terrors. Screaming out insane verses in tongues befitting gibberish, yet sounded so calculated, so alien, that it hadn't crossed my mind that it couldn't be actual speech. Which frightened me a great deal.
And I had asked so frequently that it became routine that when he entered the small dining room that he sardonically stated-more than asked-that he had night terrors, of which I would groggily grunt in the affirmative.
Forty reaches us and it's like someone turned the volume off. Harold stopped the night terrors when he reached thirty six and a strange acceptance seemed to be permanently stuck on him, a great contrast to the tired and jumpy Harold that I knew during that time. A Harold who's mother would call begging me to pick him up from work because 'something was off'.
I didn't think much about it. Night terrors can be overcome, much like any phase of human development, that I was happy when this change occurred. Which then brought up an ancient mystery; the city in which he dwelled before coming to Florida.
""Innsmouth,"" He told me one day. ""I'm from Innsmouth, Massachusetts. My mom finally told me.""
""That's nice,"" I told him. ""Any reason she told you this now?""
I did not mean for it to sound so rude, but one has to ask why wait so long to tell your son where it was he grew up. By waiting this long why not simply leaving him in the dark? Though not the best option, it seemed more practical then to tell him now. I was curious as any friend would be, though it made those attempts to find out more about the Durby's past seem asinine.
His face became unreadable, in deep thought, his features seemed almost fish like in the light.
""She said I need to go back. That I need to go back for a while to understand.""
""Understand what?"" Came my obvious question when he trailed off into silence.
""She didn't say.""
""Well, when do you suppose you'll go?""
""This coming week. I know you have vacation time saved up, too. I'd like it if you came with me to see the place of my birth and to figure out what my mother meant.""
I was happy that he would ask. Despite the fact that I never cared about that missing piece of Harold, I found myself curious about it now due to his mother's cryptic words.
III
Our first time on a plane and it was nothing like we expected. We boarded on time, but our plane was held fifteen minutes longer. I'm glad Harold had the window seat for, from what I saw out of it, I would have went into a panic attack. If man were meant to fly he would have wings.
For hours we were stuck up there with minor turbulence, boredom, and anxiety for what we will see once we get off in Boston where we would board a train into Arkham where a cab will need to be hailed for us to proceed into-what the internet called-a dying fishing town. From what we gathered, only a few people still lived there and many of the buildings were run down.
No wonder she left. But we were to go there no matter what. For whatever Ms. Durby meant, it was obvious it was eating away at Harold. But I did not push him for details, history has shown me that he will tell me when he's ready.
The train ride went off without a scene, but in Arkham, when we hailed a cab, the driver got out to open the back, passenger door when he looked at me then Harold.
""Goin' to Innsmouth, eh."" He stated rather than asked.
""Yes,"" Harold asked. ""How did you know?""
He did not answer, merely motioned for us to get in-which we did-and he got back to the front seat where he drove off without another word.
""You look like yer from there."" The driver stated, looking at Harold.
Strange enough, I had not seen the physical changes from my friend. I suppose spending such a time with someone can allow you to not notice a few things. Like his eyes, they were a dull blue now instead of the vibrant orbs they used to be. His face was becoming rounder on the sides, flatter in the front, and red welts were where neck met shoulders.
He never looked that way before, and from what I gather, the people must always look like this. I was confused, but whenever either of us asked him anymore, he would remain silent. Though, when I mentioned that we shall remain there until Friday, he nodded his head and assured us he'd be there.
We reach Innsmouth by six in the afternoon, the sun already set and the dim glow of a crescent moon fills the night sky along with a plethora of stars you couldn't see in the city. In the dark Innsmouth looked like a deserted, ghost town-the houses and shops, as well as the odd church, looked worse for wear, giving the town an elephant graveyard appeal. The hotel our cab was stationed outside looked nice, yet drearily abandoned.
The cab driver then spoke once more to us. ""Please feel free to chose your own rooms. The manager does not reside here anymore. And only two families remain here.""
""Where is he?"" Harold asked. ""And why so few people?""
""Out at sea,"" And with that he got back in and drove back to Arkham.
With a stretch of paranoia, we climbed the steps in a solemn fashion more befitting a funeral procession than a march to your new-though for only a few days-home. The cab driver was correct, the front desk looked as if the manager had not packed up his things and headed out to sea, the only way to tell how long is to dust through layers of dust and cob-webs.
""Do you really suppose it's okay to stay here?"" I asked.
""I don't like it either, but it was unlocked and from what I gather,"" he traced a finger along the banister that was against the far left wall as he ascended the stairs towards the rooms that resided up there. ""He is not coming back. But don't worry, we'll check the log book if we can and give him the correct amount on Friday should he return.""
I follow him up the steps and to the left there's a hallway with doors carved out of it. It's completely made of wood with generic pictures that adorn almost every hotel across the nation. Harold picks the last one on the left, closest to the end-hallway window which, no doubt, gives the hall its light since the lighting fixtures most likely don't work anymore-where as I picked the last on the right, a few feet away from the window.
Our rooms were like a carbon copy from one another; a twin bed, whose head rested against the right wall, across from that the window and a bedside table and another window facing the bed with a door that conjoins rooms to the left of the bed. Throwing my satchel down, I laid on the bed, my conscious still screaming this was wrong, but the very powerful need of sleep overpowered that urge and soon I found myself asleep.
The morning came upon us almost too soon, but with both windows letting the celestial orb in with glaring intensity due to dust, we woke up almost blinded.
After our short celebration and shouts from room to room that the water actually worked, we showered and headed outside, hopping to meet some of the locals and grab a quick bite to eat-having not eaten since lunch yesterday.
The town seemed to be cloistered together, tall brick buildings of which were, for the most part, dusty and abandoned with messy stores, one, a house, even had an upstairs bedroom in the living room. But such is the curse of time. Fortunately, the town is rather small, and as luck would have it one of the families was a baker, for their store was open and pleasant smells wafted from its ovens and like an arrow, hit the mark that was our noses.
The inside was styled into a turn of the century bakery with old looking ovens with bread, cakes, and other sweets in a glass case that doubled as a counter. The woman behind it was slightly round around the middle, though the reason came from a cherubic coo in a rocking cradle that she was stooped over. Her sunflower blonde hair was in a librarian's bun, her white apron splattered with spots of flour, jellies, and perhaps some genetic material that came from her baby girl.
""Hello, George, come to pick up more bread? Or is it something…""
She looks at us keenly, as if we were joined at the hip-a joke many people have said about us-or something. Then she smiles.
""Well, don't get many visitors around here anymore."" She said, it was then that I noticed her features that were more pronounced than Harold's and her voice seemed to border on croaking, yet still managed to be cheerful.
""What brings you two boys to Innsmouth?""
""I'm Harold Durby, I was born here."" Harold stated. I introduced myself before he continued. ""My mom said I had to come back to find my roots.""
""You're Alison's brat?"" She said aghast. ""Funniest thing in the world, that one-ran away. Her husband-your father-was so mad, he tore up your house."" She leaned in closer when the baby sniffled from her mother's loud speaking. Brought their bedroom into the living room.""
I was stunned, that house, the one I thought of as being worse for wear by time, was actually destroyed by Harold's father. What man could possibly do that? And if he can do that, what would he do to Harold? I pale at the thought but the object of my worrisome thoughts break me out of it.
""What happened to my father?"" Harold asked in a manner as if he already knew.
""Went back, boy, went back. Nothing keeping him here and they can…"" She spied me. ""Does he know?""
Harold shook his head. ""Not even I know.""
She was taken aback. ""Your mom ever told you?""
Harold shook his head.
""Figures, nothing right with that one."" She mumbles off something then smiles again. ""So, how long are you boys in Innsmouth?""
""Till Friday,"" Harold stated. ""Just to see what I need to see.""
""Well, come back here after closing, I'll tell you all you need to know. But come alone…We don't take well with outsiders, not like you're not, but you're more one of us than he is. No offense dear, it's habit.""
I wasn't offended, merely surprised. Didn't she think Harold would tell me what she tells him? He had no real bond to this place like he did in Florida.
""Anyway, what would you boys like to eat? Don't got much, mostly we go to Ipswich to get supplies, but it's a ways, so I tried to lessen our travels by cooking a few things here."" She then gasps in remembrance. ""I almost forgot. My name's Henrietta.""
We ordered our breakfast, ate it, then went on our way. The sights of Innsmouth worth seeing were few; a beach that leads to Devil's Cove the docks. But everything was in ill repair, obviously having been neglected by the town's remaining population-however many is uncertain, for we only met Henrietta and her baby.
IV
That night I was peacefully sleeping, dreams of sailing in violet skies, my crew and I lax upon the deck, the currents calm enough for daydreaming. But then a pale, blue hand grabbed onto my shoulder and shook me.
I woke up to Harold's hand gently shaking my shoulder. A grave expression brought out stress wrinkles, his eyes set in concentration. He sighed, never looking at me as he explained what happened previously.
""I saw the elusive George."" He explained. ""And their spouses.""
He sighs before he continues:
""You see, Innsmouth was in a bind so they made a pact with these creatures called the Deep Ones. They gave the people fish in exchange for humans to mate with as well as human sacrifices. Henrietta and George are married to them; George even gave up his house and moved to Devil's Reef for her."" He shook his head. ""Still can't get over it; how can anyone love a thing like that?""
But you see, my mother was one of the few non-hybrids left.""
""Hybrids?""
""I'll get to that,"" He said dismissively. ""Anyway, my mom didn't like what she was married to. That it touched her. She had me and ran away-I think because she did not want him to hurt me like he does her. She always had him locked in the attic.""
He laughs. ""You see, my friend, those night terrors, I remember ever single one. Cyclopean structures of coral and sand in some of them. In others I see my relatives, alive and kicking as hybrid creatures with blue scales and fish features. I also saw my dad. I saw him run into the night, howling in rage all the while he headed back to Devil's Reef; where their city dwells. The first one was this horrible nightmare where you and I were on one of our morning walks when a giant wave crashed down on the both of us, sucking us out to sea. The problem was that you floated to the surface, but I was stuck mere feet away from it.""
""It was scary, trying to hold in air, fighting to the top, only to discover that I can breathe. But my addled mind begs me to breach the surface, I tug on your pant leg and you notice me. You pull me up a little more then you shout out 'get away from me!' and let me go. My hand turned into a hybrid's clawed hand. I sink, fighting it as best I could until you're out of sight.""
He finally looks at me. ""Don't take this the wrong way, but the dreams of losing you were the worst.""
I place a hand on his shoulder. ""You won't lose me.""
The thought of us ever parting never crossed my mind recently. True, the threat to friendship is usually high school, but we overcame that. We're still friends. And even though this story sounds convoluted, Harold was never good at acting. Something really spooked him.
""But you will,"" He counters. ""Tonight my father is coming to take me to Y'ha-nthlei, their domain. I am to remain there until…""
He is cut off by the sound of something sharp scratching against glass. We both stare at either window, but whatever made that noise had disappeared. Harold stood tense.
""He's here, I have to go now.""
""You're just going to leave me? After everything you're just going to leave?"" I don't know where this is coming from. A part of me screams this should have been said sooner, but I suppose it was until that moment when the reality of the situation we found ourselves in finally sunk in.
He looks as if he'll cry. But then a thought comes to him.
""Tomorrow at Midnight…I'll meet you at the dock closest to Devil's Reef.""
We embrace, silence prevails over all in that brief moment. He breaks away first and runs out into the night.
Sleep evades me the rest of the night.
V
The next day I hardly venture out into town. Partly because I dare not venture out into this cursed town. A town who's inhabitants, from what I gathered yesterday, did not like outsiders. Yet, strangely enough, I did not starve. Henrietta left goodies for me outside my door with a bill since I wrote on dusty stationary the room had left over that I could not take her charity.
Despite being lonely, a sense of anxiety crept over me, for midnight was drawing near.
At eleven thirty I ventured out into the night, the crescent moon illuminating my way towards the dock of which our meeting would take place.
Once there I only wait a minute until I hear the sound of splashing and a thud of something landing on the dock a few feet behind me. I turn, expecting to see my friend to be as I remembered from last night. But alas, he is not and with a gasp I take him all in.
Naked as the day he was born, his body covered in pale, robin eggshell blue, his stomach a pale white. His two eyes have enlarged and have become pitch black orbs. His lips have become fish-like, his gums holding rows of sharp teeth, framed nicely on his hairless head; hair being replaced with frills like that of fish fins. Yet, despite the fish-like qualities, it seemed that amphibian qualities were also present.
He walks towards me in an awkward gait on his webbed toes until he is close enough to cup my cheek with his webbed, right hand.
The gesture was merely for comfort and reassurance that he was still himself. I grasped his hand with my own and he lets out a purr-like hiss.
""Friend,"" He croaks, his voice coming out even more awkward than his gait, as if his vocal cords were not made for such a feat, yet was able to anyway. ""Missed you.""
""Missed you, too, Harold."" I admitted.
""Go back to Florida. Follow you."" He growls. ""Others hate outsiders. Unless willing to mate with Deep One…""
He looked at me with what, to the average person, would look like a blank stare due to his black eyes. But from knowing him for as long as I have I caught the apprehension in his voice.
""No, nothing against you, Harold. But I'd rather not.""
He made a sound that I guessed was their way of sighing, and in his case; it was in relief.
""Will go Florida, too. But…Some days I come back here."" He grimaced as best he could with fish lips. ""Voice…Will better.""
I pat him on the shoulder. A low growl erupts from below us.
""Dad!"" Harold hisses, his frills on his head tense up in warning. But he pays his son no heed and I hear a thump. I gaze upon his father-a pale, green, hulking sea monster-and faint.
VI
I travel back to Florida by hiking the way to Ipswich and hail a cab back to Boston where I fly back home and go about my business in minor isolation; breaking my hermitic lifestyle to go to work. I move up the corporate ladder allowing me to afford my new house on the beach. A house isolated from others. Others with prying eyes and curious souls.
It's a house where a dear, old friend can visit from his home in the sea and no one would ever be the wiser.
()()()
1) A reference to the protagonist in ""The Shadow Over Innsmouth"" who received a job as such before he learns the horrifying truth about his family.
",False
"Heaven's not enough
If when I'm there I don't remember you...
The words came unbidden to Torren-Wraeth's mind. The line was from an old song from the soundtrack of an old Japanese anime that had confused and depressed the hell out of him. He shook his head, Heaven's Not Enough, Steve Conte, Wolf's Rain soundtrack, No... there had been two soundtracks for that series, this was the first song on the second. Why wasn't it called Wolves' Rain? He thought, trying to dispel the sad song, but it played on, and he was even singing softly toward the song's end...
'Cause I couldn't cry
'Cause I turned away
Couldn't see the score
Didn't know the pain
Of leaving yesterday really far behind
in another life
in another dream
By a different name
gave it all away for a memory 
and a quiet lie
and I felt the face 
Of the cold tonight
Still don't know the score
But I know the pain
Of leaving everything really far behind ...
Thus distracted, he did not see Dahlman.
The sorcerer was a servant of the He Who Gnaws in The Darkness. Azathoth was neither ally nor enemy to Cthulhu, he was actually his 'Great-Grandfather' having sired both Yog-Sothoth and Shub-Niggurath, who had sired Nug and Yeb, Nug being Cthulhu's parent by parthogenesis. Azathoth's 'worshipers', however, tended to be madmen in the truest sense. He was a mindless entity, neither desiring nor rewarding worship. Some of the gods who danced round and round his throne often took it upon themselves to accept his worship and grant gifts in his behalf. Especially Nyarlathotep...
The Outer Gods were the key. Humans were a weak species, helpless in the face of even the least of The Great Old Ones. But by learning, by studying the Outer Gods, by utilizing their power, a human could assume a form of divinity themselves. For decades Dahlman had faithfully studied the ancient texts, The Book of Eibon, The Necronomicon, The Book of Iod, and he had learned to harness the power of those who lurked mindless and blind beyond the thin veil of reality. And now he would prove his worth, he would bring down an immortal, the child of a god...
A bolt of lightning shook Torren-Wraeth from his revery, it barely hurt, but he could tell it was not natural. He turned to see a black-clad figuring closing in upon him, and erected a Deflect Harm even as the human struck out with Fist of Yog-Sothoth. ""Okay, now you're annoying me."" Torren-Wraeth lashed out with Implant Fear, hoping to avoid having to actually kill this irrational attacker. He disliked sorcerers, but he also disliked having to harm people. But the madman had cast Deflect Harm upon himself, and, thus protected, struck back with The Dread Curse of Azathoth. Torren-Wraeth reeled, Now that hurt! Enraged, Torren-Wraeth physically rushed the sorcerer, ignoring the protective amulet the man held out, and punched him square in the nose, breaking it. Distracted by the pain, Dahlman fell before Implant Fear.
Dahlman's mind was instantly overwhelmed with unimaginable fear and he turned to flee, all spells forgotten in his terror, only to run into a golden monstrosity streaking toward him in the dawning sky. He called frantically upon his gods to save him. But these were not benevolent gods, they were fickle, and enjoyed granting lesser beings great power, just to have the pleasure of snatching it away. His gods deserted him mid-flight, his skin shriveled and shrank tight against his bones as he aged in seconds. The capricious Outer Gods no doubt laughed as their former ward fell into the sea, and was immediately set upon by sharks.
Torren-Wraeth and Tek watched impassively as the dying sorcerer fell into the sea.
""Who was that?""
""I have no idea.""
""And I thought you were in trouble.""
""Sorry.""
""You do get in the strangest situations."" Tek observed wryly.
""Sorry.""
You've made me late, you know.""
""Sorry about that.""
""It's okay, I could use the break. A word of advice, never marry a woman with five mouths.""
Both Tek and Torren-Wraeth laughed.
Ho Fong arched an eyebrow as he saw the disheveled Torren-Wraeth accompanying Lord Tektaktequataquarl. He'd seen him before, of course, he occasionally visited alongside Tek, though his distaste for the ritual sacrifices of human beings was clearly evident. Fortunately, no such events were scheduled. ""Are you alright, Lord Torren-Wraeth?"" He knew better than to call him simply 'Torren' or 'Wraeth'. ""I'll be all right, Master Ho,"" Torren-Wraeth said with perfect Chinese courtesy, ""But I would be most grateful for a place to rest for a while."" Ho Fong smiled, ""Of course,"" he turned, ""Ping, take lord Torren-Wraeth to one of the guest areas and provide him with whatever refreshments he requires."" A youngish monk, dressed in the standard yellow and black silk, stepped forward and led Torren-Wraeth deeper into the monastery.
It was instantly obvious to Torren-Wraeth that Ping was not Chinese, at least, not in the ethnic sense. He was one of the dreaded Tcho-Tcho people, descendants of toad-like creatures created by the Great Old One Chaugnar Faugn and human cultists. The Tcho-Tcho had an evil reputation, one well earned. The vast majority of them served the Great Old Ones, and many practiced cannibalism. There were exceptions, of course, not all Tcho-Tcho were evil or insane, but those individuals were usually outcasts, hated and sometimes even hunted by their own people. As they walked, Torren-Wraeth halted for a moment before an idol of carved black stone. It was well-crafted and incredibly detailed, lean muscled and lanky, wings extended, the webbed hands held palm up like a divine supplicant, the curving trunk-mouth lifted upward as if it were sounding a call. A call to Death itself, for this was Shugoran, The Herald of Death, worshiped and feared by the Tcho-Tcho people. Ping knelt reverently then hurried Torren-Wraeth into a nearby chamber.
The scent of Black Lotus was thick in the air as the monks shut the great copper door behind Tek. ""You really shouldn't smoke you know,"" he said casually, ""Terrible for the lungs..."" The Bloated Woman rose from her cushions, ""Only if you are a mortal, which I am not."" Tek smiled, then shed his semblance of humanity, becoming a writhing, shapeless mass of golden flesh, golden tentacles, golden eyes and pearly white fangs. ""What of our child?"" Several mouths spoke at once. The Goddess came closer with a grace unfitting such an obese creature. ""Nothing can harm our offspring."" ""How long, do you think?"" The Bloated Woman stopped, apparently this visit was for business, not pleasure. ""It is impossible to tell. I have born some children within days of conception, and others within centuries."" She sensed a slight jealous possessiveness on the part of the Hastur-Spawn, he wanted her as his sole mate, an amusing and archaic notion, not often seen in a True-Blood. The fact that he knew she had devoured most of the former lovers did not apparently assuage this unseemly feeling. ""I feel that this one will be born within a month or two..."" She grinned horribly with all five mouths, ""How has your father reacted?"" ""Our child will be welcome in Carcosa."" Hastur, in truth, was somewhat worried, fearing that the child would be another avatar of Nyarlathotep, that the Crawling Chaos would use the child as yet another form in which to manifest itself. In other words, he feared that Nyarlathotep would give birth to itself...
For all the vile practices that went on in the Monastery of The Bloated Woman, it was a beautiful place, richly decorated in jade and silver, gold and silk. Yellow and black, every strand of silk in the monastery was either yellow or black. The yellow made for a much friendlier environment than the dark, ominous stones of R'Lyeh. The Goddess favored those colors, for some reason. Torren-Wraeth remembered something Goro had once said. Among his people and several other Asian cultures, yellow was the color of mourning. Black meant death and mourning in the West, yellow filled that role in the East. Was it intentional? Probably, but he was a guest, and it would be rude to question his hosts. He changed from his slightly charred clothing into the yellow and black robes that had been kindly provided him and stepped out into the hallway. There he saw Ping once again kneeling before Shugoran.
","Spoonbill Village, Northernmost Quang Bin Province, SRV
June 29, 2011
As the two young adults stared at each other, nothing but shock registered in either of their brains. Not the stares of the villagers nor of Joseph's classmates affected them in their surprise. For Joseph, the shock was mixed with relief at finding his girlfriend safe, concern about his own impending fate as the main course and a strange confusion about what the heck was going on. For Marie, it was the sheer shock of actually seeing her boyfriend here and her puzzlement at the reason why that added to her numb bewilderment, not to mention the fear for his life at what might happen next.
As the shock broke, she knew that she had to act. And since the village chief was here...
""You cannot sacrifice this man! His family are allies are of my parents, his parents are involved in our business. If anything happens to him, calamity will come upon us all!"" Demanding such things of the chieftain might have been rude, presumptuous and even insulting, but everything she said was the truth. If Joseph died, things would go down the toilet very quickly.
Before the men could answer back, the crashing of a great bronze gong echoed over the crowd and all heads turned towards the source of the cacophony, the temple. Coming down the steps was a red lacquered palanquin with red curtains. Four men in deeply-hooded red robes supported the wooden structure, it's bracing poles upon their shoulders. As they reached the courtyard proper, one of the warriors who had exited the large house went up to the palanquin, distinguished from the others by leather shoes on his feet, a broad circlet of gold around his black head-wrap and a single pheasant tail feather standing erect at the forefront of this headdress. Joseph could distinguish some sort of conversation happening, the words too quiet to make out. For several tense seconds he, Marie, his classmates and his professor waited for what would happen.
What happened was that from this man, the villages hereditary chief, the order was given for them to be spared... for now. Another order was given to separate them and hold them in isolation until a final decision could be made.
As Joseph was carried away into a side street, he could almost glimpse Marie following the palanquin into the Temple, including his Professor, still sitting in his basket.
Several Hours Later
Joseph could never fully recall all of the things that he had pondered in those hours, sitting with his hands and feet bound, alone in that dark storehouse, smelling of rice and preserved vegetables. He had found Marie and as he had suspected for a number of years, she apparently belonged to a semi-unique culture of Vietic speakers in her purported homeland of the Annamite Range. What came as a surprise was that they apparently, if the few bits of coherent speech he had heard were any indication, practiced some sort of ritualized homicide and may well be inclined toward the consumption of ""long pork""... and at the moment, that could include him.
Eventually the door opened and soft, yellow light flooded the room, illuminating bags of rice and strings of hanging vegetables. In the doorway was Marie, carrying a paper covered lantern in one hand, a bronze bowl in the other and now hat-less. As he had briefly noticed earlier, the muscles on her limbs now had a definition to them that hadn't existed back in Glaston, her frame slightly more lean than the apprentice cook that he remembered. She was dressed just as she had been before, was still tattooed everywhere he could see and, as she she came over to where he was sitting, the light in the lantern seemed more like... fireflies than any kind of flame.
""So... nice place you have here."" He hoped that starting slow could take some of the edge off the dangerous situation in which he now faced himself.
""Yeah... it is nice, I guess."" Marie put the bowl (now seen to be carrying water) and the lantern on the ground beside him and knelt to untie his bonds. ""I'm sorry that you got dragged into this. When I borrowed that record... I had no idea that..."" She closed her eyes and sighed in a way that, to Joseph, made the tattoos on her face dance almost... alluringly. ""There's a lot that I just couldn't tell you when we were younger. My people are used to hiding... maybe tooused to it by now. I want to tell you so much, but I... I don't know where to begin.""
""Then start from the beginning. That always seems to be how it's done in the movies."" Rubbing his wrists and ankles to get the circulation back, Joseph wondered just what he was going to hear.
What he heard was everythingabout her people, the stories she had enraptured Cora with plus a whole lot of other stuff, fantastic and gruesome in equal measure. The human sacrifice, the ritual cannibalism, the intermittent persecution by Chinese, Champa, Viet and French over the last two thousand years... nothing was left out. As he sipped water from the bowl, she described how her peoples ancestors had been Au Lac refugees from the Red River Valley, driven south into the mountains by the invading Qin Chinese. On the edge of total starvation, they had been saved when a spirit animal, a black water buffalo cow with a seemingly endless number of calves trailing behind, had emerged from the highland jungle at the chanting of animist shamans travelling with the group.
Behind those spectral buffalo had emerged their wonder and salvation: men in red robes with the legs of goats, monks from a far, high land called Leng. These strange people, who called themselves Shugoran, had taught this diverse group of farmers, mountain peoples, priests, urbanites and servants many useful magics: how to grow up to twelve crops of rice per year, how to draw water and metal from the earth, how to commune with the forces of the universe and not annoy them too severely, how to pass perfect memories from father to son, how to ensure the fertility of people, livestock and game and how to armor a person's skin so as to stop any blade or spear or arrow or sling stone.
It was this last spell, combined with the requirement in orthodox Shugoran magic for Human (or similar) sacrifice and cannibalism that brought on the next mess. When the Qin Dynasty collapsed under the weight of the first emperor's paranoia and his successors incompetence, suicide and the resultant power struggle, the men of the new ""Leng Viet"" decided to press their advantage. They launched a guerrilla campaign in an attempt to drive the Trieu Dynasty, with its mixed nobility of native southerners and Han Chinese, out of the Red River valley and establish a new native state.
Over the next hundred years, men raided trade routes and army barracks in the guise of screaming, bare-chested, tattooed (associated with bandits and convicts by the Chinese) savages, dragging captives off into the night or the forest in order to sacrifice them for either civilian or military magic. When they eventually lost their ""War of the Bandits"" (from the threefold causes of not getting any local nobility on their side, of terrifying the pants off their Viet kinsmen with their ferocity and the rumours of their religion and by the sheer weight of the eventual re-invasion by the armies of the Han Dynasty) they fled deep into the mountains of the West and South, being chided by the last of the original, goat-legged sorcerers for their foolish, ill-planned ambitions. From then, they had remained hidden and relatively peaceful, though remembered in whispered folk-tales as vicious, man-eating monsters.
After Marie had finished. Joseph sat in silence for a few minutes, digesting what he had just heard. The whole thing about magic was a bit.. hard to swallow. However, his own eyes had seen things that most would say were impossible. ""You don't... you don't hate me now, do you?"" Marie suddenly asked, her face awash in a worried panic, perhaps the culmination of every bout of anxiety she had ever experienced when Joseph had began edging onto the subject of her people's true nature. So much worry, so much fear and one wrong move now could break her heart.
For once, just once, he initiated the kiss this time.
""Does that answer your question?"" As they pulled apart, he could see that most of her anxieties had melted away. ""And... I hesitate to mention this, but about your parents restaurant..."" He stopped when he saw her face, now an annoyed, knowing grimace that indicated that the next words out of his mouth should be chosen very carefully. ""Uh... about the chicken, beef and pork they used. Was any of it... officiallysacrificed?""

Marie's grimace let up. ""You need a priest to do anything official, and my parents are from farming families. Don't worry, we never served anyone up as the main course."" She actually began to smile as she stood upright.
""Alright... but speaking of the main course, what about..."" Joseph gulped nervously. ""Me? Am I still going to be barbecue or did you actually convince anyone otherwise?""
The next news out of Marie's mouth was welcome indeed. ""I didn't, but your professor won your life and those of the others after he talked with our Chief Priest. If I'm right, he and the rest of your team should be at the house of my paternal grandparents. Who arethey, anyway?""
""My classmates. The Anthropology department at Miskatonic organized this trip with Professor Andover and a couple of us volunteered. "" Still holding the bowl, Joseph began standing, his limbs still stiff and numb from hours of sitting. Despite this discomfort and the twitching shocks that came when blood began flowing free again, he followed her out the door, though not before taking and slinging a bag of rice over his shoulder at her asking, along with a braid of garlic bulbs and a small box of dried pork on a cord.
During his captivity, Joseph had been held in one of the storehouses by the river, a short way north of the village. Now, in the waning light of dusk, he and Marie made their way back on the path that wove through vegetable gardens and pig-pens until they reached the outlying houses. Through narrow alleys between house stilts and below the sounds of evening meals being eaten, past dogs and pigs drowsing in the under-crofts and along the great outer wall of the temple they traveled before moving into the main square and down the main thoroughfare.

""It should be just after this next left, right across from the bronze-smith."" As they walked along, they came to an intersection. On their right was a large house facing the street, belonging to the village bronze-smith and acting as a shop, a workplace and his family home. Across the main street from that house was a side street, lined by mostly smaller houses but each of them with soft lights in their windows. A few houses in, Marie led Joseph up the stairs of one house where familiar voices were laughing and making merry, including one brash female voice in particular that Joseph had come to know well.
As Marie lay down the lantern on the porch and opened the door, the voices became louder and clearer. When they entered, everyone was already seated (or at least kneeling). Albert and Malone were trading stories of their brief imprisonment and what they had seen, while Tracy was working her way through a bowl of green tea, apparently trying to cajole her way into the rice whiskey. Professor Andover was making small conversation with an old village man sitting at the head of the table who was wearing the brown jacket and skirt combo that was so common. Also at the table was a younger man and his wife, maybe a little older than Marie's parents, along with two teenage sons who had not yet received their tattooing. Some ways from the table, an elderly woman worked at a hearth lined with stone and brick, stoking a carefully controlled charcoal fire.
Everyone looked up at the new arrivals. The first to speak was the old man who had been talking to the professor, telling Marie to bring the rice and other ingredients over to the charcoal hearth so the evening meal could begin and then for them to sit down. After that was done, Joseph noticed that people were looking at him.
Apparently, it was time to make introductions.
""Joseph, I'd like you to meet my family on my father's side."" After explaining that few of them could understand any English at all, Marie started introducing them. First came the old man, now identified as her paternal grandfather. Her grandmother, his wife, was the woman starting tending the fire at the hearth, her gray hair in an elaborate bun at the back of the head held together with a set of jade hairpins and wearing a long, black dress, similar to the garment that Marie had worn at the performance. Marie's uncle Huy and his wife An sat across from the Miskatonic students and beside them sat Cu'ong and Thao, their two sons...
Only two?
""Damn, the Kids!"" Marie had been so busy with her boyfriend that the absence her younger cousins had escaped her until now. She got back up and went to the door, opened it and called down the street for them to get in the house now and try not to spill the water they were carrying. As she returned to where she had been kneeling, many hurried footsteps were heard coming up the outside stairs and the door opened again as five children entered as a crowd. The oldest, a girl who was perhaps eleven years old, was carrying two bronze pails of water in her hands while the second oldest, a boy of maybe ten, was carrying two more.
In fact, all the kids, which included two more boys and another girl, seemed to each be about a year apart down to a little boy of about seven years old. ""Big families the norm around here?"" Joseph asked his girlfriend as the water was transferred to cooking vessels and the ingredients collected.
Marie shrugged. ""More or less: most farming families have at least three kids nowadays but the norm used to be around five around a century ago. This family is weird both ways: My uncle and aunt for having so many and my parents for just having me."" 
Of course, sooner or later this casual reminiscing had to end. ""So, Professor..."" Tracy began, consciously deciding to get back on topic from the revery the two had been involved in. ""You Said that you had something to tell us, about the ultimate purpose of this expedition?""
Neville Andover smiled the way that someone delivering a great and terrible revelation does. ""As a matter of fact, I did."" He motioned towards Malone, who was now extremely attentive. ""This is Malone Roberts; for the last year he has been playing the part of my student, but he is far more than that. He is my assistant, my cohort... my protege in the context of the agency I work for. Tell me..."" He seemed to direct this as every member of the audience (save Malone) who could speak English. ""Have any of you heard of Delta Green?""
""What's that? Something in the Marine Corps?"" It had soundedlike an innocent question from Ms. Williams, but Joseph had shared a class, study groups and cram sessions with her for many months, and could recognize the first signs of building stress and panic when he saw them. They were amazingly similar to the signs that Marie herself had shown, with the difference of gripping objects such as a table edge with white-knuckle intensity now apparent.
""It's surprising that you haven't heard of it, considering the contacts in your community and the agencies reputation for... extreme measuresbefore 1960."" Now Andover turned to Albert Noyes. ""Perhaps you have some notion of it... or its partner agency, Majestic 12. It is quite amazing work they're doing on the Yuggoth Project, especially on fungi."" This seemed like it was crammed with potential clues, but honestly, Joseph couldn't make heads or tails of it.
Noyes, on the other hand, apparently could. He began smiling in surprise and recognition and began laughing at the revelation. ""You mean... you know about the Mi'go?"" Now Joseph was confused beyond all reckoning, and apparently so were Marie and Tracy.
""Know aboutthem, know some of them, occasionally work alongside them. And if I may say, for half-fungus, half-arthropod, telepathic pains in the rear, they are remarkably easy to work with."" What followed was Albert explaining the situation: the weirdest kinds of aliens you could imagine had contacted some humans in the 1800s and hired them to assist in mining certain valuable minerals in the hills of Vermont and Maine. Over the years, the men and women in their employ had received advice from these aliens as to potential marriage partners, first in terms genetic compatibility and superior traits for their offspring, then based on attractiveness as their understanding of human reproductive psychology increased. Finally, as they realized the subtle psychological and social rules of courtship, the began acting as human elites once did, organizing parties for unattached men and women and subtly directing candidates certain ways as they piloted artificial human body-shells around the dance floor. 
It sounded weird... but reassuring, even humorous. Even Tracy seemed to lighten up... as far as a hunted rabbit couldlighten up.
""Mr. Clayton here is what you may call 'normal'. However, he was privy to manifestations not usual of this Earth."" Joseph then told the assembled of what he had witnessed, with Professor Andover hypothesizing that the phonograph may have projected images and smells by some means of eldritch energies. Marie also retold the story of her people and of the deal that she had agreed to to gain access to the phonograph: one year back in the village and receiving her tattoos of adulthood. Nothing more and nothing less had been asked of her.
""And finally, we have Ms. Williams, whose tale has much to do with the founding of the organization and its present form."" Here, Andover seemed to realize what kind of anxiety the girl was going through, and thus went slowly. ""In the winter of 1928, the Miskatonic faculty was contacted by the United States Army to help investigate a series of strange attacks and abductions in Paige County, Virginia. As the base was in a primarily Quaker area, Miskatonic sent its lone member of faculty who was a Friend, one Hiriam Willows of Boston. While he remained among the Quaker farmfolk who knew the habits of the attacks, the army waged war against what was first believed to be a ""degenerate"" tribe of Iroquois but were later found to be white members of a strange fertility cult which engaged in human sacrifice.""
The academic glanced towards Tracy, who had lowered her head, closed her eyes and grimaced at what was surely to come. He turned back to his eager listeners. ""Before Willows left, he discovered strange objects in a secret room at the Longhouse Meeting Hall... objects which resembled those found on the slain cultists. He also, inadvertently, stumbled upon his hosts engaged in a ritual of apparent mourning, dressed as the Southern Iroquois would have been three hundred years ago, sacrificing pigs upon an altar at an isolated circle of standing stones, wailing and keening in grief."" He looked back at Tracy. ""This was the experience which convinced him that not all who worship the base forces of the universe are driven to evil nor insanity. It was also the experience that not all things should be released to the world, both for the worlds safety and that of the subjects.""
After a moment's silence, Tracy spoke. ""Excuse me."" She got up walked out the door, somewhat to the surprise of her classmates, Marie and Marie's family. Marie then got up and went to follow, an act which inevitably drew Joseph after her.
They found Tracy sitting at the bottom of the steps, her chin on one balled fist, her other arm across her lap, her eyes staring into some unfathomable distance. Marie went forward first, sitting beside the girl as Joseph hung back. ""I don't think we've been introduced. My name's Marie."" When Tracy didn't answer. ""You know, you don't have to feel bad about what other people did. Those guys the Army killed weren't your people, no matter how similar your rituals may have been.""
""But they weremy people."" The answer came suddenly and surprised both listeners.
""Pardon?"" Asked Joseph from the middle of the stairway.
""Those dangerous cultists that the professor told you about; they were English, Quakers even... or had been at one time."" She sighed, not quite sure of herself on how to explain to outsiders the issue which had plagued her fears since the age of 10. ""They were my peoples kin, descendants of those of us who answered the Union armies call for guerrillas during the Civil War. Before that, we'd adopted some sacrificial ritual from the Iroquois during the 1720s after some very hard winters. Where before they'd killed dogs, black deer and captured warriors... as well as captured women and children if it got reallybad... to get good crops and health, we imposed strict limits and rules. There was to be no more human sacrifice, we killed our own livestock and above all, we accept the rituals as a gift from on high... even if the whole Christ thing was supposed to render sacrifice obsolete.""
""I'd consider it a divine door prize. But about the Civil War?"" Marie was trying to make the talk as nonthreatening as possible, considering the darkness which had settled over the village.
Getting back on topic, Tracy continued. ""Well, we'd already been hiding escaped slaves for years on their way up to the major escape routes in Pennsylvania, but we felt that we couldn't do any more, especially with so much Confederate presence in the Shenandoah and the internecine aggression over secession. These people though... they wanted to do something. So, when a few Union officers wanted a meeting, they snuck off north. And when they came back, they brought otherthings with them. Old medieval codices which described Druidic rituals shockingly similar to our own but twisted and brutal, rituals which needed terror to be inflicted in the victims so that the full power of their life force could be drained. Their attitudes had changed as well; they became disdainful of the rest of the community: calling them weak, cowards, savages who refused to possess the full power of the Star Daughter and the Black Stag, fools who held onto their 'petty delusions' of morality. Well, after they went and made a mess of everything by capturing and sacrificing a Confederate squadron... the rest of the Longhouse Quakers shunned them, bidding them to go into the high mountains until they were ready to return. And so, a collection of about 50 men, women and children left the Valley and went into the high woods.""
Joseph put something together in his head. ""And I take it that the next time they returned was 60 years later, crazier than ever.""
Tracy harrumphed. ""You've got that right. And think about this while you're at it: by the 1920s, we'd been isolated for so long that it was starting to show in our features; the more inbred we became, the leaner our faces and the bonier our joints. By the time Willows got there, we just looked skinny and somewhat malnourished and with the right connections a few decades later, that began to get fixed."" Her face got hard. ""But what if Willows had finked on us, or Miskatonic sent one of their Congregationalist mama's boys instead? Do you realize what may have happened to us, especially in the 20s or 30s? Arresting us for a start, probably followed by forced sterilization and throwing us in crazy houses, sanitariums and prisons to rot. And that's just the adults!""
She was getting visibly angry. ""Their kids, my great-grandparents, would have been shuffled off to orphanages or perhaps boarding schools if they thought we were just really pale Indians."" She shuddered. ""I've read about the shit that happened in Canada's residential school system and it gave me just as many nightmares as the thought of my ancestors being hunted like wolves and tortured for things they never did or for who they were."" She turned to look at Marie and for the first time since he knew her, Joseph could put a name (that name being ""very mildly inbred"") on the features which he had labeled as 'rural-attractive' or 'cute in a farmer's daughter kind of way'. ""I know that your people have been hiding, but at least you guys made the mistake of acting like total jerks to get your reputation! We never did anything wrong.""
With that, Tracy got up, passed her companions and just as she was about to reenter the house, she paused and rethought something. ""Well, never did anything wrong besides burning down that chicken barn, but that was an emergency! Neither my aunt nor my little cousin would be here if not for that and besides..."" She turned her head to look at Joseph and Marie. ""They wrote it off as an electrical fire."" As Tracy went back into the house, Joseph thought that, while going against all conventional reason, his life made perfect sense for the first time in a very long while.
",False
"That is the end of the story, dear readers. Believe me or not, I don't care. I ran far away from the university that evening and, to this day, I have never returned. I had to have my arm amputated after that and my burned and mangled body remains as testament to the evil I have encountered. I told the authorities it was a college fire. What else could I say?
I cannot sleep well anymore. Every night I lie awake, shaking in fear in the knowledge of what exists beyond the limited scope of what we call ""reality"". What is reality? I don't know. All I do know is that this world contains more evil than can ever be imagined.
The evil of the Cult of Cthulhu is still out there and I know that my days are numbered. I have seen too much. One day they will come for me and, when they do, I will let them take me. I have tried to end my life a number of times and now reside in an asylum as a result. Death will come as a relief for me.
It has taken me a great deal of effort to write this, since every fibre of my being has tried to block out the memories of what happened at that university. But I need you to know. I need you to be prepared. The Cult of Cthulhu is alive and well and, one day, Cthulhu will rise and destroy this planet. It is only a matter of time.
Darkness.
I didn't know who I was or where I was. All I could tell was that I was falling lower and lower into a deep oblivion of blackness.
Though I was unafraid.
Was I dead?
It didn't matter.
In that place, nothing mattered.
I was at peace.
And then I was jerked roughly back into reality, though reality had become so distorted in my mind that I could scarcely tell the difference between what was real and what was fantasy. The first thing that I became aware of was a searing pain across my abdomen. I tried to scream, but my throat was sore as though I had been screaming for hours already. I attempted to move my arms but they were locked in place and I realised to my horror that the pain was from ropes that had been tied around me so tightly that they were literally cutting into my flesh. I spluttered for a moment as the sights and sounds of the world started to come back to me. I was tied upside down to the obelisk in the centre of the ritual space I had seen the previous night and my worst fears were realised.
I was covered in blood, though whether it was my own or that of another unfortunate victim I couldn't tell. A fire surrounded me and on the other side of the flames, people in black robes were dancing wildly making noises that sounded neither human nor beastly. I began to wonder why I was still alive and why I had not been dismembered like Jonathan.
Then one of the participants stepped through the flames, emerging unharmed beside me. He brandished a long silver knife and screamed ""Cthulhu Fhtagn!"" at the heavens. The figure turned down to look at me. It was Jacob, though it wasn't Jacob's eyes that looked at me, rather an empty, soulless shell of a human being. He raised the knife and I began to pray silently, expecting the end. Though it wasn't me he plunged the knife into, it was himself. He rammed the blade up to the hilt into his stomach and violently jerked it upwards, sending gory sprays of arterial blood all over my face and into my mouth and nose. Jacob then reached into his chest and began to pull out his internal organs, laughing maniacally as he did so. It was then that I found my voice and screamed louder than I had ever done, though my cries were drowned out by the diabolical beat of the drums and the bestial chants of the other cultists.
Jacob did not fall to the ground as anyone else would have done. Instead, he cracked open his ribcage, revealing his empty chest cavity. An unseen force then ripped his head back, nearly severing it, his spine bent backwards and cracked and then his limbs began bending into odd angles as well. All the while, he continued in his demonic laughter, the chants of the cultists and the beat of the drums growing and growing. He contorted spasmodically, and shadowy tendrils sprung out of his body, twisting as they reached up to the sky. Suddenly, Jacob's body exploded in a shower of blood and offal although his ghoulish laugh seemed to continue somehow, and out of nowhere appeared many small winged creatures. They were less than three feet in height and completely black. No detail of their bodies was visible save for a pair of glowing green eyes. They swooped around the obelisk to which I was tied, uttering a shrieking sound unlike anything I had ever heard. As they shrieked, the dancing, chanting and beating of the drums got louder and wilder until, at its climax, the ground itself started rumbling. Cracks started to appear in the ground and water started gushing out causing the obelisk to crumble, but the fire burned ever brighter.
Due to the destruction of the obelisk, the bonds that were around my middle loosened slightly. But as I tried to rise, I was violently pushed down into the water by one of the cultists who cried,
""Mighty Cthulhu! Accept our sacrifice of blood and rise again!"" With that he drew a knife of his own, but before he was able to end my existence, one of the shadowy winged creatures flew into his chest, disappearing in an instant. Suddenly, the cultists' eyes literally burst into flames and he began reciting the chant I had heard so many times: ""Cthulhu Fhtagn! Cthulhu Fhtagn!"" His mouth then opened wide and I could hear his jaw bone break. Long teeth extended from the gums and before I could react, he lurched forward sinking them into my forearm.
This new pain was just what I needed. I screamed in agony and ripped free. Quickly loosening the bonds around me, I leapt through the fire. Its searing heat scorched me and I felt as though a thousand knives were simultaneously being plunged into my skin. I looked desperately around for an opening to escape and noticed that all the cultists now had flaming eyes and were running at me screaming even as their heads burned in the flames from their eyes. I turned and fled, not caring about the pain in my arm or the fire that was rapidly consuming me. Not caring about the thorns and branches that eviscerated me as I ran past them. I knew I just needed to get as far away as possible.
Although the screams of the ritual participants had begun to fade, I did not slow down. I just kept going and did not look back.
","Rodrigo [possessed] - ""The flies are their own lords, and ours as well.""
Benevento Chieti Bordighera - Massa di Requiem per Shuggay
Colonel Reginald Barnes wiped his sweating brow and cursed the infernal swamp. He double cursed the countless insects that seemed to make up the entire population of this sodden hell. He turned and motioned his men to halt. They were a hearty group, but the hardships of the swamp were bearing down on them. All were tired, their muscles aching, and most had open sores which the wretched little vermin were viciously exploiting.
Private Sands was buried a few miles back, victim of some malignant strain of malaria that ignored quinine and killed within hours. The colonel wondered for a moment about the natives' warnings. The natives had cautioned them to avoid this swamp, and the blacks feared this place so much that their normally loyal bearers had fled like rabbits rather than enter the lair of 'the insect god'. As far as Barnes' pidgin could make out, the natives believed that a giant insect lived within the swamp, ruling all its lesser kin. To add even greater spice to the tale, it was something of a Typhoid Mary, a many-legged Horseman of Pestilence. Rubbish, to be sure, but this swamp was undeniably unhealthy, as poor Private Sands had learned.
Still, this was part of The King's realm, and as such it was to be charted and explored. Any natives, (and he personally doubted even the hardiest of the Africans could survive in this God-forsaken place), introduced to the Enlightenment that came with British colonization.
They were suffering for God, King and Country.
That didn't make it any less painful.
Humans were entering his domain. Not the natives, they knew of Him. They had the wisdom to avoid Him. Not so with these creatures. They were explorers and soldiers, enforcing the will of their mortal King in behalf of their flickering shadow of an empire. They were determined to come. To claim this land for their empire of dust.
But this was His empire. His land. He had been driven from His world, from Shaggai. The Harbinger and The Worm That Gnaws In The Night had driven Him from His home. He had searched for centuries to find sanctuary. He would not give up His new home in the face of humanity.
Baoht Z'uqqa-Mogg stirred sluggishly, pulling His vast bulk from the slime and mire. He shook the muck from His six wings. Many-faceted eyes surveyed the area. The humans had wandered far too close to his lair. He bore no malice toward men, but He could not allow His realm to be infested by the violent ape-things.
Such was His power that little could live in His presence. One had already perished, the swarms had infected them all. In the unlikely event any of them lived long enough to reach other humans they would set off a plague. Such weak creatures, these humans.
It was an act of mercy, really.
The swarms were intense, mosquitoes, tsetse flies and insects even the most knowledgeable of the men could not identify vied for a taste of their blood. One could barely see his hands in front of his face for the blood-thirsty little horrors. Still they pressed on, through baking heat and boiling humidity. Barnes could almost believe that some great insect god ruled this dark, dismal boil on the face of the earth. He sincerely hoped that the His Majesty would let the Germans have this sweltering hellhole.
""Sir,"" Private Carter pointed out, ""The swarms. There's nothin' else, sir. I mean, no animals. No birds. Just insects.""
""They're just hiding, private. I've seen a few snakes and lizards about. Animals have a natural fear of man. Nothing to bother about."" In truth, Barnes himself wondered about the lack of wildlife. It was true that animals, even large ones, would hide from a company of men, but the absence of birds of any kind was disturbing. Even in the Sahara, he'd seen birds. A swamp in the heart of Africa should be positively teeming with them. His hands went over his Rigby. He'd taken down a charging bull elephant in Malaya with that gun.
He slid in a cartridge.
He wondered for a moment if he were ill, thinking of using a Rigby on a swarm of infernal insects.
A horrible smell filled the thick air, an overpowering reek of swamp stench and death. The men turned as one as something thundered through the thick trees and muck toward them.
What came crashing through the brush was no earthly insect. Over six metres of horror reared up before them. It was a titanic perversion of a scorpion. The head was vaguely suggestive of a walnut, albeit covered with gleaming yellow eyes and twitching antennae. Yellow bile dripped from sharp mandibles, hissing as it hit the soggy ground. Its greenish-black body was thick and armored, dripping ichor, wet mud and maggots. Three sets of tattered, membranous wings and ten spindly, clawed legs sprouted from its thorax. It had the massive pincers and thick, segmented tail of a scorpion. More of the yellow venom dripped from the creature's metre long stinger. Disgusting vermin crawled across its foul body, surrounded it in thick clouds and seemed to pour from the segments between its exoskeleton.
""It's Beelzebub himself!"" Someone shouted. From the look of the thing, Barnes was inclined to agree.
He raised his rifle, The Lord of The Flies, eh? Lets see how he holds up against the might of The British Empire!
No order was needed. Barnes let loose with his Rigby as the men began to fire. The .450 Nitro Express struck the beast square in the head, eliciting little more than an angry hiss. A shot meant for taking down rhinoceros and elephants barely seemed to sting the abomination. The swarm was upon them before he could reload. The Rigby fell from his hands as Barnes fell to his knees, then collapsed into the mud. The screams of his men were almost drowned out by the insidious buzzing and overwhelming sensation of weakness that swept through his form. Wormwood. . . He thought as the world grew dark about him.
A thin trickle of yellow ichor flowed from the injured eye. It hurt, but the wound was already healing. Baoht Z'uqqa-Mogg picked up the weapon in His right claw, examined it. It was a crude device, but it had drawn blood. The humans were growing stronger. Smarter, in their own primitive way. And bolder. The day might come when He would have to fight them in numbers to protect His land. He snapped the weapon in two with His claw and cast it into the mud. He looked over the dying men, prying from their feeble, fevered brains the identity of this 'Beelzebub' they took Him for. It was an unfair comparison in His eyes, but understandable given their limited intellects. He quickly slew them all, sparing them the agony of slow death by infection.
The wound was completely healed as The Bringer of Pestilence nestled once more into the comfortable muck and mire of the swamp. His home was secure, for now.
",False
"Dry hacking. The sound assaults my ears, and makes my heart begin to flutter. It's unlike any paroxysm I've ever heard, even when Theodora contracted pneumonia two years ago. What's far worse is I know, instinctively, that it is not she whose body is wracked with illness. It's Lemuel Dawson, on his deathbed.
""Hold on!"" My voice is lighter, younger, not yet burdened with the weight of sorrow after his passing. Like any good nurse, I rush to his side and wipe the bloody spittle from his lips with a handkerchief. This is no mere dream; it's a recollection, and that's exactly what I did back then. ""I'm here as always, Father."" 
""Millie,"" he says weakly, and smiles through the pain of nearly-constant coughing. ""Come closer."" I do, and wince at his fevered breath. ""There's something that I must tell you, at long last."" Every word of his is belabored. His voice reminds me of a desert wind, scorched with sand. Even his sickroom has that acrid air, as if we were in the middle of the Sahara instead of Massachusetts. I myself am hot, and know Father must be. However, I dare not leave his chamber to fetch a wet cloth for fear of missing his last words.
""They have come for me, and…you must know all that I do before they come for you. Find the keys,"" he says before being consumed with another coughing fit, ""in the bottom drawer of my desk. Bring them here."" Again I follow his directions, yet hesitantly. Throughout his life, Father had been very particular about who was allowed to touch his personal possessions, and rummage through his desks and cabinets. Even our taciturn Theodora, who'd never reveal any of his secrets even under duress, was forbidden from doing so. Father gave explicit instructions on which rooms were to be cleaned (kitchen, parlor, and so on), and which were not (his spartan bedroom after Mother died, and private study). That's why it puzzles me, in this nighttime vision as well as in life, to hear him make such a request. Nevertheless, I hurry to obey it.
It takes several tugs of the aforementioned bottom drawer, sticky with disuse, to get it to yield. When it does, I cough at the dust within and pull out a small iron ring with five keys. Each one of them is different, as keys naturally are, yet these five have been bent into the most curious shapes and configurations. I'm tempted to stand beside the desk and stare at them to my heart's content, fingering their bizarre metal shafts, but Father's waiting. Not knowing what he'll tell me, or what he wants me to do with the keys, I take them over to his bedside. Greedily, he grasps them in his long fingers and takes my right hand in his.
""First,"" he announces, slipping one of the unique keys into my palm. ""Second,"" he then says, doing the same with another. ""Third. Closet. Church."" With sudden horror, I realize what they open: the three locks to the door of his forbidden study, the closet within it, and the only church to which he's ever belonged. ""The one on Gallows Hill,"" he clarifies. I wonder why he's called it that instead of Cemetery Hill. Perhaps, now that he's facing his own hangman in the form of an illness that not even Leight's doctor can diagnose, images of the Purge are haunting him. ""Read and learn all you can, when you're prepared. Take care."" 
I couldn't stop myself: ""Why 'take care'? Is something wrong? Who are 'they', Father? Please explain!"" 
""It would take…too long."" He slowly smiles, exposing all of his teeth in the white rictus of a death's-head. Pressing the keys so firmly into my palm that they leave mild scrapes and indentations afterward, Father coughs once more. ""Believe."" With that, his withered hand releases mine and falls to his side limply. He is no longer alive, and our conversation has drained me so much that I can do nothing but sob in fright.
I wake up to find my pillow damp, and my eyes glistening. There is no one around save for me, and the all-encompassing darkness to hide my tears. It's been seventeen years, almost to the day, since Lemuel Dawson departed this mortal world. I feel ashamed of myself, because after nearly two decades, I should not be so stricken with grief. Father, at this point in time, should be a distant memory, a framed portrait on the wall of my house and mind. However, he is not. He has evidently remained with me, in a locked compartment of my mental faculties that only dreams can reopen. Why now? Why here, in this very Inn? If the keys that he gave me so long ago - and which I've reconfined to the drawer from which I took them - are back in his old house, then why didn't I dream about them back there? This is too strange, and scary.
When you're prepared, Father had told me, read and learn all you can. Prepared for what, I wonder?
","1945, 10 years after Smift's abduction. Innsmouth
A man was running in a dark town. The chasers were holding torches and pitchforks. ""Go die you human scum!"" one of them growled, the young man was about to fire a pistol to this antagonistic chord when a knife reached the back of this heart. Before he could die he saw these enemies more closely, looking similar to humans, even using casual suits, but this faces were slightly distorted, with a bluish tinge and big eyes. These hands were very close to being webbed. One of them reaches the pockets of the corpse's clothes, finding a diary with a logo in the middle: Miskatonic University.
The next day. at Miskatonic, Massachusetts, Wilhelm Smift was very old, at the age of 68. He was in a bed resting this very frail body. He was accompanied by this young friend Johnathan Clarke. ""My dear friend, due to the fact that I will die, and I never had a family before…I will give to you the weapon that can protect humanity from the unknown. But please, pass some of my blood to you so he can perceive you as a member of my family, also you don't need to worry, my blood is not ill, I figured out that the Infinitely Timed Room makes you die of old age once you exited it, and due to the fact that my wife never could give me a child…and she is deceased, you will be my new successor"" Clarke used a syringe and injected some of the blood of this predecessor into himself. And then Wilhelm Smift died. The young would be teacher found himself sad, he knows that this mentor had told him of the physical god he mastered. But he wanted to learn more about not only physics but the alien technology as well, but he always told him that ""this mind would crack"" but how such an old fellow acquired such knowledge and remained sane? He departed to the basement, he knows that such places are only allowed to certain people, but Smift had told him that if he declared himself this son he would pass. The place was light by a single torch. To find a tall humanoid structure close to him, this shadow taller than any man he has seen. ""So my master had passed away…such a pity, I wanted to serve him more than no one."" The voice was sly, and with a sharp tone. As this mentor said, but right now he sounded…sad? ""He was a great man, and me? Only an fucking killer…heh, it's funny…how the good can die, alone and unnoticed…and they stay dead."" he noticed John ""who we have here?"" he stared at the young man and in turn he noticed the mechanical being before him: this main body was cylindrical and red, with a single crimson cat like eye in the center of this ""head"" this arms have white with red colorations like the rest of this limbs, he had a large rectangular shield in this left arm, a set of three small red pouches and in the right a knife holder and the left a pistol holder, and a white cloth skirt. ""What is doing a brat in my home?"" he tried this best to gather mental strength and answer: ""I am the…son of Wilhelm Smift, he told me you would serve me"" the beast looked at him with this single blood colored eye, ""I can see trough you…and that is true, the Smift blood is in you kid, I mean master"" then the monster grabbed this pistol and started to show it at this server, ""so tell me, what shall I do? I am capable for killing anything"" he young man tried this best to organize this words and asks: ""why do you look different from what my father told me?"" the creature chuckles and says: ""heh, isn't it obvious? I wanted to look different 'cause I don't want to look like the jackasses that wanted me gone. They made this suit look like a fuckin' asylum inmate . I was looking for something that suited me, so I left my dimension for one day. And I saw the perfect one, this one, why do you ask? 'cause I wanted a new look that minds insurrection?"" he pointed this white finger at the young man, that eye…it's just like the devil itself was looking at him. ""And the eye?"" ""Oh…that was my…personal touch"" he started to laugh and this companion started to tremble. ""Don't be afraid kid…I don't bite, for much that I want to."" Azathoth pointed at this ""face"" revealing that he doesn't have a mouth. Then he started to laugh like a maniac. He kid got out of the basement in fear. ""Hey don't get out! I was about to have tell you a great joke! MASTER!""
The next day…""sire, we have bad news, Roy Urkam has…died"" a messenger told to this young chief, ""and who is that man, messenger?"" Clarke asks, ""He was a freelance investigator. He heard that something strange happened in Innsmouth so we sent him there, when I came this corpse was on a stick on the end of the road, when I asked they said: ""just a couple of kids that did it"" it was obvious that was a lie."" The kid was…shocked but after scare from yesterday this was nothing. Suddenly a car was coming to the entrance, the occupants got out, they have guns and their eyes had watered eyes that were slightly out of their sockets. And they forced the main door down, ""thank god there are not students!"" the sire said, Clarke rushed to the basement and yelled the name of this protector and servant. ""INVASORS! COME AND KILL THEM! THEY HAVE GUNS!"" the young man yelled. ""Calm down master, I will go kick their skulls"" he got out of this dark lair and he readied this colt pistol and this knife. ""Come here! I can sense cowardly in this place!"" suddenly a blaze of bullets came from the outside of the campus. ""I think I need a bigger gun"" he turned this back and then a rectangular and red colored heavy machine gun was grabbed from this holster, the weapon was so tall as the cylinder body of this user and it looked different from any gun ever made: it had a slightly bended square in this top. This barrel had holes and this body was metallic instead of wood. Then he got out of the building and he saw these enemies ""Deep ones!"" they started to fire but it was useless, the bullets just bounce this tick metal skin. He started firing and he shot 4, the other ones tried to run to the car. ""NO YOU WON'T!"" Azathoth yelled and he used this incredible strength and stomped the vehicle. ""Now we can start this party!"" the half deep ones tried to counter attack with this pistols but nothing changed. Azathoth grabbed one and crushed this skull with these bare hands, he shot three to death with this colt and machine gun; he blazed 1 to death with a thick cylindrical magenta/red heat ray that emanated from this crimson eye. ""COME ON! GIVE ME A CHALENGE!"" he yelled, and then he realized that only one was left. ""Oh…damn I wanted a massacre. Well my good friend, come here"" but before he can grab this new prisoner a bullet came to this skull, Azathoth saw that 2 more cars came. ""Oh…YES MORE FUN!"" he welcomed this new ""guests"" with this heat ray; a few ones changed their ammo and used armor piercing. The bullets were now making dents in the body of the armored god. But then they started to self-repair. ""YES, this is the real deal!"" he did 4 head shots and destroyed the two cars that came with this heat ray, some of the half fish men tried to enter the house from the back, but they saw with horror a large creature with a vertical mouth and large pink eyes located in both parts of the divided head, he had two right arms fused into one and two left that were identical, with large nails. The main body was shaggy with black and some purple hair. ""What in Dagon's name is that!"" one of them asked before being eaten by the giant. The ex-outer god was enjoying like a maniac that the cars that he fried had some occupants and they got out of them showered in flames ""THAT'S WHAT I CALL EXTRA CRISPY!"" the daemon yelled to this frightened fish enemies. Only 5 were left and they tried to run to the exit, but before that can happen Azathoth flicked this finger and the giant vertical mouth monster appeared and lunged to the remaining ones and eaten them. Only one was left…again. ""Gug, go were you belong"" Azathoth flicked this fingers again and the monstrosity disappeared. ""Thanks CLAXTON, thanks Bertie"" he returned to the university. It had some gun holes but nothing that can be easily repaired.
""Hey master, are you in one piece?"" he asked to the young that was in the ground. He grabbed the shocked boy and handed him to the messenger. Put him in this home. He grabbed the survivor knocked him down with a flick of this finger and put him in the jail of the basement ""Well…that was exiting""
",False
"Professors Schultz and his entire team had reunited the night their space probe The Nautilus, was floating towards a landmark, it has gone farther than any other space probe. Oh what wonderful things they would discover from that point onward. Each had their own ideals of what they would find and prove that there might be more than what others in their field so strongly believed.
For the deeply religious young man, Geralds, who entered the program through luck and his computer skills at twenty-four, he thought that they would find God.
Schultz mocked such an idea. He and the majority of the team believed that such more galaxies would be found, hopefully they would include inhabited planets that they could attempt to contact.
But one amongst them was nervous. George Sunderland, an old resident of Portland Rhode Island, he was an astro-nut like the rest of them, but on the side, it was revealed some time after their project jettisoned into space, that during down times in one field, he worked in another. And his other, strange field was the occult.
""Fhtagn,"" He breathed under his breath. ""Fhtagn, fhtagn, fhtagn.""
He chanted, hoping that it would protect him. Granted, he reminded himself prior to this that The Nautilus did not go between Hydra and Argo Navis, but the thought still scared him.
On the machines before them, it showed exactly where it was. When it reached the landmark, were there cheers, the sounds of champagne popping, and congratulations were shared once more.
On the large monitors before them, stars were few and far in between that it was as if they were traveling away from them and not moving towards anymore after them.
Geralds was the first to point this out. He was also the first to see the mult-colored aurora that one would never expect to see in space.
""It's like the surface of a bubble,"" Andrea, second oldest member to Schultz stated.
Schultz scoffed and was beginning his rant against her, when The Nautilus floated past the aurora and found darkness. A void darker than space itself, yet just light enough due to iridescent orbs that floated in a semi-orderly orbital around an unknown object.
""What is this place?"" Andrea asked.
""Not what, Andrea,"" A voice grated through nowhere. ""But who?""
A giant glowing bubble appeared before the camera. Geralds stood up, overjoyed; he exclaimed his love for God and happiness at finding him. But the grating voice merely chuckled.
""No, Geralds,"" It said, sounding like a six year old and twenty year old and sixty year old man speaking together. ""Not God; at least, not your Christian god. I am, and Sunderland will confirm this,"" The man shivered at his name. ""Yog-Sothoth; past, present, future…Time itself, is all within me.""
""But what is this?"" Andrea asked.
""This is me."" The multi-layered voice said. ""What you see is a form of mine. The Gate; right Sunderland.""
All eyes turned to their cowering companion. With a few inhales of the nose, he nodded, a whimper escaping him.
""And within each bubble is a plain; a piece of the bigger picture.""
""And what's that?"" Schultz asked.
""That your universe; your world; your reality is expanding and shrinking in what-for your mental stability-we'll say random order.""
""Preposterous!"" Schultz snapped.
Yog-Sothoth chuckled, the intertwined voices sounding exotic over the speakers. It was not malignant-it sounded good natured compared to what Sunderland had expected.
""You see those two bubbles sticking together?""
No one spoke, but there was a sense that there did not have to be. That he could see them as well as hear them. Unsettling though it was, the information presented to them was to the same effect. Poor Sunderland seemed to have already cracked under the circumstances; cowering under a desk.
""They are other universes. Other galaxies; some inhabited, some not. But when they intertwine like that, the barrier of the bubble fades, allowing them to seemingly overlap. Like a continuation of itself. Your own has done so with many of them and has been one of a few to be graced with the central hub, so to speak.""
Schultz was finding this hard to swallow. Being a man of science; something like this was a freak accident not hard fact…Until now, since it was 'staring' them in the face. Leaving skepticism behind; he found infinite possibilities. Keeping his mind wide open seemed to help a little, though. After all, science was still discovering new things almost everyday.
""What's in the central hub?"" Geralds asked.
""R'lyeh,"" Came the instant reply.
At that, Sunderland let out a scream. No one paid him any mind, though, for they were, for a brief second that in the scheme of things that could be said that it did not happen, overcome with primal urges and long lost images transmitted thousands upon thousands of generations before themselves.
""Sunderland,"" Yog-Sothoth said. ""Do not be frightened. Nothing can hurt you right now.""
Sunderland laughed long and hard. Everyone became uneasy except their translucent, shining friend.
""'Right now' he says."" Sunderland cracked up, stuttering phrases together in a jumble of unheard sentences.
""If you wish to know more, Schultz, may I ask that you turn The Nautilus in that direction."" The bubble seemed to turn to the right. ""There's someone who will do a better job at explaining things in a-and don't be offended by this-leman's terms.""
Goaded on by what the bubble said, the satellite took off to the right. Everyone but Sunderland waited in bated breath at the edge of their seat. Then an insane, cacophonous symphony of flutes was heard.
Sunderland snapped out of his babbling mess and stood abruptly, dashing towards Schultz.
""We have to stop this!""
""We can't,"" Geralds began.
""The Nautilus moves according to projection, we didn't have the financial ability to control it back when we made it."" Andrea finished.
Sunderland made a warrior cry as he ran towards the screen. He beat at it, breaking it in places, but the image still shown through.
""No! No! No!"" He said between beatings. But the image never disappeared, but was, thankfully, distorted.
There came a sound of bumping into something beneath the louder cacophony flutes. Sunderland saw an eye open. An eye that was never supposed to open. The Nautilus turned away due to impact, but the damage was done. Sunderland was in a fit of hysterics, writhing on the floor, laughing as his mouth foamed.
He looked into the eye of chaos and it stared back with a mind blowing intensity. The distorted image shown next was of bubbles stacking upon themselves and became a vertical line orbiting around the central hub. But they popped.
The media was in a frenzy. Children were amazed at seeing real life Pokémon in their back yard. Three teens who broke down in the middle of nowhere found a camp that was not there before and were killed by a man in a hockey mask. Teens who lived on Elm Street started to die in their dreams. A couple were eaten by a giant white worm in Perfection, Nevada. Reports of Batman fighting the Joker were rampant in New York. In Louisiana, there was a report of a man covered in moss and roots walking in the swamp.
In London, there were sightings of a man in a Guy Fawkes mask walking around in shadows and on roofs.
In the Middle East there were reports of Orcs raiding caves.(1) But Japan had gotten it worst. Godzilla attacks, a strange yet beautiful rider on a mechanical horse, an orange clad ninja, and giant robot fights became an everyday event.
""The world as we knew it is gone!"" Sunderland screamed in his padded cell in Arkham Asylum. ""It popped! Just like a bubble!""
","The Shoggoth
I had met Professor Kindle during my explorations in my youth in Berlin at a convention. His theories in such subjects as physics and anatomy were peculiar to me-and to his chagrin-his colleges as well.
""Well, my boy,"" He said upon my asking why everyone seemed to mock him. ""These fools do not wish to see what's so plain that if it were a snake, it would most assuredly bite them.""
Upon that introduction, he had began to tell me how certain miniscule particles held the universe together. What he said went beyond dark matter and such unexplained universal secrets that it was almost hard to believe. But I can tell you, he was convincing. A fact that will later cause me to rethink my pursuits.
""You see, my boy, Yog-Sothoth particles and Azathoth particles exist in sub matter, in a way that can go undetected even more so than the elusive dark matter for it obviously does not refract or twist light in any such matter like anything else in space.""
""Then how does one know of their existence?"" I asked, and for the fourth time: ""And why those names?""
It was odd to me to think that such a thing would exist that does not interact upon its surroundings. And what was queer was that the names did not follow the standard scientific tradition of Latin roots; instead appearing to be from some alien language.
He smiled. ""Come, my boy, I shall show you."" He draped an arm over my shoulders. ""And as for the names; they are from the Necromicon. A book I doubt you have read, but the names fit, believe me. For you see, Azathoth represents chaos, and Yog-Sothoth order; it's like the Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang, a philosophy I find as very true.""
Kindle took me to his hotel room where he produced from a brown briefcase, a telescope. It looked like any telescope that one could easily obtain from any store for cheap. Yet, something was off. A minor defect, yet hardly noticeable except in the right light. There was an angle of odd proportions etched out of glass and sealed within between the two lenses.
""Look, look."" He said excitedly.
I did look. And what I saw amazed me more than frightened me; as many introductory things do. What appeared to be bubbles and globular orbs of wiggling ganglia-like tentacles were stuck together. I took my eye away.
""And how do you know it keeps the universe together?""
""It goes in a straight line across the sky."" He said. ""Granted, it's mere speculation, but I believe it to be correct, for, how many things are a perfect line in a vacuum?""
I was unable to disagree.
After that, our interactions consisted of an odd letter or two. I became a physician and he became a recluse due to his latest published work that was about his Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth particles. He would only ever briefly say what he was working on. I guess he thought me a fellow conspirator, a rebel to the newly founded scientific idea; anything out of the norm is false, to the point he sent me a battered copy of the Necromicon.
I read the book, horrified at what I was reading, that I am still surprised that I did not throw it to the floor and burn it. But the next letter just asked a question:
Did you read it?
I replied in the positive and the next response was an invitation to his little house in the sparsely populated hills of New England. I will not tell of my travels to his one story house that surprised me that such a man would live there.
It was a dilapidated house that looked like time and hillbilly inhabitants before him had a wild party, trashing it beyond any sense of repairing it. When I knocked on the door and my friend opened it, I was greeted with the sight of the inside, which appeared only slightly better than the outside. The wallpaper was peeling, everything was dusty, and the lights were working, yet did not seem to help alleviate the gloom that seemed to settle upon the house in a death grip.
""Ah, it's so good to see you, my boy."" He greeted me, allowing me into the house. ""Come, please sit. I have some tea prepared for your arrival.""
I take the offered liquid and he sits on the armchair across from me. He takes a sip of his tea before setting it down upon the arm of his chair, his finger never leaving the handle.
""I invited you here to see my newest discovery."" He said, an intense look aimed at me. Like an excited madman holding a gun.
""What is it?""
""Shoggoths,""
He said that one word, never explaining anything, letting the dreadful word sink into my mind.
""Granted,"" He took another sip. ""I didn't discover them. But there was something that eluded me. A phrase; anyone could over look it, but I didn't. Tekeli-li."" He almost mimicked a robot.
My face turned pale at that word. Instinctual fear ingrown and nearly forgotten, left burrowed into a level of subconscious was unearthed and made me want to run faster than I have ever ran in my entire life. I knew I should have listened to it, but curiosity had gotten the better of me.
""The purpose behind it,"" Kindle continued as if there were no tension in the air. ""Eluded me. Until I started thinking in terms of wolves. They're very much alike, you know. Sleek killing machines with a high intelligence(though to-say-Cthulhu or Azathoth, they are stupid).""
With an interesting way to communicate."" He smirked. ""I was proven correct by mere chance. I spied a shoggoth all alone. It cried out 'Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!' Another cried out in response, but this one angrier. The first spoke out and went about doing chores.""
""That's interesting, Kindle."" I said. ""But how does this have to do with wolves? They howl to alert members of their pack of their location.""
""Yes,"" Kindle said matter-of-factly. ""But wolves also have growls and other vocal ways of communicating. Shoggoths only have the one word. And to prove it, I took two Shoggoths and placed them in something similar to a rat maze.""
""But how did you catch them?""
""Doesn't matter."" He snapped. ""Now let me finish, my friend.""
""One called out and the other started to move and call out as well. This continued until they found each other. It wasn't until I caught more that I made the most startling information about them.""
My body trembles. I can only imagine what else he could have discovered about those loathsome creatures.
""I had caught six or seven of them. I crammed them into this one room below this house. It was getting cramped in there for them, so these two decided to fuse together. And it hit me! They're fragments! Their hive mind-like behavior, their similarities. Everything!""
""Come, I'll show you.""
""No,"" I snap, standing. ""I'd rather not.""
Kindle becomes angered by my outburst. He grabs my arm tightly and tries to drag me towards the cellar, but I resist.
""Come, come, there is nothing to be afraid of.""
""There is."" I said. ""Shoggoths…""
I was cut off by a loud thunder from under our feet. Kindle pales as it happens again. He breaks from my arm and tries to run into the kitchen but he never makes it. A long, large, slimy black tentacle rises from the hole it made in the floor. I notice in sick fascination that a black, tar-like substance drips off of it. It darts towards the sound of Kindle's running feet and wraps around his leg, forcing him to land, face first, onto the floor.
I watch, dumb, as it drags my friend towards the hole. Kindle screams and begs me to help him, but I don't move. Fear plagues me, cementing my feet to the wood floor. It is not until his struggling form sinks into the hole that my feet can work again and I dart out of the house.
Tekeli-li!(1)
AAAhhhhhhhh!(1)

1) These were larger(font 22), but the site messes with me!
Mantineus-The ending is ambiguous by default. You see, our hero makes it out. What you see is The Shuggoth and Kindle's dying scream.
",True
"""The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated.""
BORELLUS

I. A Result and a Prologue

1.

From a private hospital for the insane near Providence, Rhode Island, there recently disappeared an exceedingly singular person. He bore the name of Charles Dexter Ward, and was placed under restraint most reluctantly by the grieving father who had watched his aberration grow from a mere eccentricity to a dark mania involving both a possibility of murderous tendencies and a profound and peculiar change in the apparent contents of his mind. Doctors confess themselves quite baffled by his case, since it presented oddities of a general physiological as well as psychological character.
      In the first place, the patient seemed oddly older than his twenty-six years would warrant. Mental disturbance, it is true, will age one rapidly; but the face of this young man had taken on a subtle cast which only the very aged normally acquire. In the second place, his organic processes shewed a certain queerness of proportion which nothing in medical experience can parallel. Respiration and heart action had a baffling lack of symmetry; the voice was lost, so that no sounds above a whisper were possible; digestion was incredibly prolonged and minimised, and neural reactions to standard stimuli bore no relation at all to anything heretofore recorded, either normal or pathological. The skin had a morbid chill and dryness, and the cellular structure of the tissue seemed exaggeratedly coarse and loosely knit. Even a large olive birthmark on the right hip had disappeared, whilst there had formed on the chest a very peculiar mole or blackish spot of which no trace existed before. In general, all physicians agree that in Ward the processes of metabolism had become retarded to a degree beyond precedent.
      Psychologically, too, Charles Ward was unique. His madness held no affinity to any sort recorded in even the latest and most exhaustive of treatises, and was conjoined to a mental force which would have made him a genius or a leader had it not been twisted into strange and grotesque forms. Dr. Willett, who was Ward's family physician, affirms that the patient's gross mental capacity, as gauged by his response to matters outside the sphere of his insanity, had actually increased since the seizure. Ward, it is true, was always a scholar and an antiquarian; but even his most brilliant early work did not shew the prodigious grasp and insight displayed during his last examinations by the alienists. It was, indeed, a difficult matter to obtain a legal commitment to the hospital, so powerful and lucid did the youth's mind seem; and only on the evidence of others, and on the strength of many abnormal gaps in his stock of information as distinguished from his intelligence, was he finally placed in confinement. To the very moment of his vanishment he was an omnivorous reader and as great a conversationalist as his poor voice permitted; and shrewd observers, failing to foresee his escape, freely predicted that he would not be long in gaining his discharge from custody.
      Only Dr. Willett, who brought Charles Ward into the world and had watched his growth of body and mind ever since, seemed frightened at the thought of his future freedom. He had had a terrible experience and had made a terrible discovery which he dared not reveal to his sceptical colleagues. Willett, indeed, presents a minor mystery all his own in his connexion with the case. He was the last to see the patient before his flight, and emerged from that final conversation in a state of mixed horror and relief which several recalled when Ward's escape became known three hours later. That escape itself is one of the unsolved wonders of Dr. Waite's hospital. A window open above a sheer drop of sixty feet could hardly explain it, yet after that talk with Willett the youth was undeniably gone. Willett himself has no public explanations to offer, though he seems strangely easier in mind than before the escape. Many, indeed, feel that he would like to say more if he thought any considerable number would believe him. He had found Ward in his room, but shortly after his departure the attendants knocked in vain. When they opened the door the patient was not there, and all they found was the open window with a chill April breeze blowing in a cloud of fine bluish-grey dust that almost choked them. True, the dogs howled some time before; but that was while Willett was still present, and they had caught nothing and shewn no disturbance later on. Ward's father was told at once over the telephone, but he seemed more saddened than surprised. By the time Dr. Waite called in person, Dr. Willett had been talking with him, and both disavowed any knowledge or complicity in the escape. Only from certain closely confidential friends of Willett and the senior Ward have any clues been gained, and even these are too wildly fantastic for general credence. The one fact which remains is that up to the present time no trace of the missing madman has been unearthed.
      Charles Ward was an antiquarian from infancy, no doubt gaining his taste from the venerable town around him, and from the relics of the past which filled every corner of his parents' old mansion in Prospect Street on the crest of the hill. With the years his devotion to ancient things increased; so that history, genealogy, and the study of colonial architecture, furniture, and craftsmanship at length crowded everything else from his sphere of interests. These tastes are important to remember in considering his madness; for although they do not form its absolute nucleus, they play a prominent part in its superficial form. The gaps of information which the alienists noticed were all related to modern matters, and were invariably offset by a correspondingly excessive though outwardly concealed knowledge of bygone matters as brought out by adroit questioning; so that one would have fancied the patient literally transferred to a former age through some obscure sort of auto-hypnosis. The odd thing was that Ward seemed no longer interested in the antiquities he knew so well. He had, it appears, lost his regard for them through sheer familiarity; and all his final efforts were obviously bent toward mastering those common facts of the modern world which had been so totally and unmistakably expunged from his brain. That this wholesale deletion had occurred, he did his best to hide; but it was clear to all who watched him that his whole programme of reading and conversation was determined by a frantic wish to imbibe such knowledge of his own life and of the ordinary practical and cultural background of the twentieth century as ought to have been his by virtue of his birth in 1902 and his education in the schools of our own time. Alienists are now wondering how, in view of his vitally impaired range of data, the escaped patient manages to cope with the complicated world of today; the dominant opinion being that he is 'lying low' in some humble and unexacting position till his stock of modern information can be brought up to the normal.
      The beginning of Ward's madness is a matter of dispute among alienists. Dr. Lyman, the eminent Boston authority, places it in 1919 or 1920, during the boy's last year at the Moses Brown School, when he suddenly turned from the study of the past to the study of the occult, and refused to qualify for college on the ground that he had individual researches of much greater importance to make. This is certainly borne out by Ward's altered habits at the time, especially by his continual search through town records and among old burying-grounds for a certain grave dug in 1771; the grave of an ancestor named Joseph Curwen, some of whose papers he professed to have found behind the panelling of a very old house in Olney Court, on Stampers' Hill, which Curwen was known to have built and occupied. It is, broadly speaking, undeniable that the winter of 1919-20 saw a great change in Ward; whereby he abruptly stopped his general antiquarian pursuits and embarked on a desperate delving into occult subjects both at home and abroad, varied only by this strangely persistent search for his forefather's grave.
      From this opinion, however, Dr. Willett substantially dissents; basing his verdict on his close and continuous knowledge of the patient, and on certain frightful investigations and discoveries which he made toward the last. Those investigations and discoveries have left their mark upon him; so that his voice trembles when he tells them, and his hand trembles when he tries to write of them. Willett admits that the change of 1919-20 would ordinarily appear to mark the beginning of a progressive decadence which culminated in the horrible and uncanny alienation of 1928; but believes from personal observation that a finer distinction must be made. Granting freely that the boy was always ill-balanced temperamentally, and prone to be unduly susceptible and enthusiastic in his responses to phenomena around him, he refuses to concede that the early alteration marked the actual passage from sanity to madness; crediting instead Ward's own statement that he had discovered or rediscovered something whose effect on human thought was likely to be marvellous and profound. The true madness, he is certain, came with a later change; after the Curwen portrait and the ancient papers had been unearthed; after a trip to strange foreign places had been made, and some terrible invocations chanted under strange and secret circumstances; after certain answers to these invocations had been plainly indicated, and a frantic letter penned under agonising and inexplicable conditions; after the wave of vampirism and the ominous Pawtuxet gossip; and after the patient's memory commenced to exclude contemporary images whilst his voice failed and his physical aspect underwent the subtle modification so many subsequently noticed.
      It was only about this time, Willett points out with much acuteness, that the nightmare qualities became indubitably linked with Ward; and the doctor feels shudderingly sure that enough solid evidence exists to sustain the youth's claim regarding his crucial discovery. In the first place, two workmen of high intelligence saw Joseph Curwen's ancient papers found. Secondly, the boy once shewed Dr. Willett those papers and a page of the Curwen diary, and each of the documents had every appearance of genuineness. The hole where Ward claimed to have found them was long a visible reality, and Willett had a very convincing final glimpse of them in surroundings which can scarcely be believed and can never perhaps be proved. Then there were the mysteries and coincidences of the Orne and Hutchinson letters, and the problem of the Curwen penmanship and of what the detectives brought to light about Dr. Allen; these things, and the terrible message in mediaeval minuscules found in Willett's pocket when he gained consciousness after his shocking experience.
      And most conclusive of all, there are the two hideous results which the doctor obtained from a certain pair of formulae during his final investigations; results which virtually proved the authenticity of the papers and of their monstrous implications at the same time that those papers were borne forever from human knowledge.

2.

      One must look back at Charles Ward's earlier life as at something belonging as much to the past as the antiquities he loved so keenly. In the autumn of 1918, and with a considerable show of zest in the military training of the period, he had begun his junior year at the Moses Brown School, which lies very near his home. The old main building, erected in 1819, had always charmed his youthful antiquarian sense; and the spacious park in which the academy is set appealed to his sharp eye for landscape. His social activities were few; and his hours were spent mainly at home, in rambling walks, in his classes and drills, and in pursuit of antiquarian and genealogical data at the City Hall, the State House, the Public Library, the Athenaeum, the Historical Society, the John Carter Brown and John Hay Libraries of Brown University, and the newly opened Shepley Library in Benefit Street. One may picture him yet as he was in those days; tall, slim, and blond, with studious eyes and a slight stoop, dressed somewhat carelessly, and giving a dominant impression of harmless awkwardness rather than attractiveness.
      His walks were always adventures in antiquity, during which he managed to recapture from the myriad relics of a glamorous old city a vivid and connected picture of the centuries before. His home was a great Georgian mansion atop the well-nigh precipitous hill that rises just east of the river; and from the rear windows of its rambling wings he could look dizzily out over all the clustered spires, domes, roofs, and skyscraper summits of the lower town to the purple hills of the countryside beyond. Here he was born, and from the lovely classic porch of the double-bayed brick facade his nurse had first wheeled him in his carriage; past the little white farmhouse of two hundred years before that the town had long ago overtaken, and on toward the stately colleges along the shady, sumptuous street, whose old square brick mansions and smaller wooden houses with narrow, heavy-columned Doric porches dreamed solid and exclusive amidst their generous yards and gardens.
      He had been wheeled, too, along sleepy Congdon Street, one tier lower down on the steep hill, and with all its eastern homes on high terraces. The small wooden houses averaged a greater age here, for it was up this hill that the growing town had climbed; and in these rides he had imbibed something of the colour of a quaint colonial village. The nurse used to stop and sit on the benches of Prospect Terrace to chat with policemen; and one of the child's first memories was of the great westward sea of hazy roofs and domes and steeples and far hills which he saw one winter afternoon from that great railed embankment, all violet and mystic against a fevered, apocalyptic sunset of reds and golds and purples and curious greens. The vast marble dome of the State House stood out in massive silhouette, its crowning statue haloed fantastically by a break in one of the tinted stratus clouds that barred the flaming sky.
      When he was larger his famous walks began; first with his impatiently dragged nurse, and then alone in dreamy meditation. Farther and farther down that almost perpendicular hill he would venture, each time reaching older and quainter levels of the ancient city. He would hesitate gingerly down vertical Jenckes Street with its bank walls and colonial gables to the shady Benefit Street corner, where before him was a wooden antique with an Ionic-pilastered pair of doorways, and beside him a prehistoric gambrel-roofer with a bit of primal farmyard remaining, and the great Judge Durfee house with its fallen vestiges of Georgian grandeur. It was getting to be a slum here; but the titan elms cast a restoring shadow over the place, and the boy used to stroll south past the long lines of the pre-Revolutionary homes with their great central chimneys and classic portals. On the eastern side they were set high over basements with railed double flights of stone steps, and the young Charles could picture them as they were when the street was new, and red heels and periwigs set off the painted pediments whose signs of wear were now becoming so visible.
      Westward the hill dropped almost as steeply as above, down to the old ""Town Street"" that the founders had laid out at the river's edge in 1636. Here ran innumerable little lanes with leaning, huddled houses of immense antiquity; and fascinated though he was, it was long before he dared to thread their archaic verticality for fear they would turn out a dream or a gateway to unknown terrors. He found it much less formidable to continue along Benefit Street past the iron fence of St. John's hidden churchyard and the rear of the 1761 Colony House and the mouldering bulk of the Golden Ball Inn where Washington stopped. At Meeting Street - the successive Gaol Lane and King Street of other periods - he would look upward to the east and see the arched flight of steps to which the highway had to resort in climbing the slope, and downward to the west, glimpsing the old brick colonial schoolhouse that smiles across the road at the ancient Sign of Shakespear's Head where the Providence Gazette and Country-Journal was printed before the Revolution. Then came the exquisite First Baptist Church of 1775, luxurious with its matchless Gibbs steeple, and the Georgian roofs and cupolas hovering by. Here and to the southward the neighbourhood became better, flowering at last into a marvellous group of early mansions; but still the little ancient lanes led off down the precipice to the west, spectral in their many-gabled archaism and dipping to a riot of iridescent decay where the wicked old waterfront recalls its proud East India days amidst polyglot vice and squalor, rotting wharves, and blear-eyed ship-chandleries, with such surviving alley names as Packet, Bullion, Gold, Silver, Coin, Doubloon, Sovereign, Guilder, Dollar, Dime, and Cent.
      Sometimes, as he grew taller and more adventurous, young Ward would venture down into this maelstrom of tottering houses, broken transoms, tumbling steps, twisted balustrades, swarthy faces, and nameless odours; winding from South Main to South Water, searching out the docks where the bay and sound steamers still touched, and returning northward at this lower level past the steep-roofed 1816 warehouses and the broad square at the Great Bridge, where the 1773 Market House still stands firm on its ancient arches. In that square he would pause to drink in the bewildering beauty of the old town as it rises on its eastward bluff, decked with its two Georgian spires and crowned by the vast new Christian Science dome as London is crowned by St. Paul's. He liked mostly to reach this point in the late afternoon, when the slanting sunlight touches the Market House and the ancient hill roofs and belfries with gold, and throws magic around the dreaming wharves where Providence Indiamen used to ride at anchor. After a long look he would grow almost dizzy with a poet's love for the sight, and then he would scale the slope homeward in the dusk past the old white church and up the narrow precipitous ways where yellow gleams would begin to peep out in small-paned windows and through fanlights set high over double flights of steps with curious wrought-iron railings.
      At other times, and in later years, he would seek for vivid contrasts; spending half a walk in the crumbling colonial regions northwest of his home, where the hill drops to the lower eminence of Stampers' Hill with its ghetto and negro quarter clustering round the place where the Boston stage coach used to start before the Revolution, and the other half in the gracious southerly realm about George, Benevolent, Power, and Williams Streets, where the old slope holds unchanged the fine estates and bits of walled garden and steep green lane in which so many fragrant memories linger. These rambles, together with the diligent studies which accompanied them, certainly account for a large amount of the antiquarian lore which at last crowded the modern world from Charles Ward's mind; and illustrate the mental soil upon which fell, in that fateful winter of 1919-20, the seeds that came to such strange and terrible fruition.
      Dr. Willett is certain that, up to this ill-omened winter of first change, Charles Ward's antiquarianism was free from every trace of the morbid. Graveyards held for him no particular attraction beyond their quaintness and historic value, and of anything like violence or savage instinct he was utterly devoid. Then, by insidious degrees, there appeared to develop a curious sequel to one of his genealogical triumphs of the year before; when he had discovered among his maternal ancestors a certain very long-lived man named Joseph Curwen, who had come from Salem in March of 1692, and about whom a whispered series of highly peculiar and disquieting stories clustered.
      Ward's great-great-grandfather Welcome Potter had in 1785 married a certain ""Ann Tillinghast, daughter of Mrs. Eliza, daughter to Capt. James Tillinghast"", of whose paternity the family had preserved no trace. Late in 1918, whilst examining a volume of original town records in manuscript, the young genealogist encountered an entry describing a legal change of name, by which in 1772 a Mrs. Eliza Curwen, widow of Joseph Curwen, resumed, along with her seven-year-old daughter Ann, her maiden name of Tillinghast; on the ground 'that her Husband's name was become a publick Reproach by Reason of what was knowne after his Decease; the which confirming an antient common Rumour, tho' not to be credited by a loyall Wife till so proven as to be wholely past Doubting'. This entry came to light upon the accidental separation of two leaves which had been carefully pasted together and treated as one by a laboured revision of the page numbers.
      It was at once clear to Charles Ward that he had indeed discovered a hitherto unknown great-great-great-grandfather. The discovery doubly excited him because he had already heard vague reports and seen scattered allusions relating to this person; about whom there remained so few publicly available records, aside from those becoming public only in modern times, that it almost seemed as if a conspiracy had existed to blot him from memory. What did appear, moreover, was of such a singular and provocative nature that one could not fail to imagine curiously what it was that the colonial recorders were so anxious to conceal and forget; or to suspect that the deletion had reasons all too valid.
      Before this, Ward had been content to let his romancing about old Joseph Curwen remain in the idle stage; but having discovered his own relationship to this apparently ""hushed-up"" character, he proceeded to hunt out as systematically as possible whatever he might find concerning him. In this excited quest he eventually succeeded beyond his highest expectations; for old letters, diaries, and sheaves of unpublished memoirs in cobwebbed Providence garrets and elsewhere yielded many illuminating passages which their writers had not thought it worth their while to destroy. One important sidelight came from a point as remote as New York, where some Rhode Island colonial correspondence was stored in the Museum at Fraunces' Tavern. The really crucial thing, though, and what in Dr. Willett's opinion formed the definite source of Ward's undoing, was the matter found in August 1919 behind the panelling of the crumbling house in Olney Court. It was that, beyond a doubt, which opened up those black vistas whose end was deeper than the pit.

","X.

In the end the three men from Arkham—old, white-bearded Dr. Armitage, stocky, iron-grey Professor Rice, and lean, youngish Dr. Morgan—ascended the mountain alone. After much patient instruction regarding its focussing and use, they left the telescope with the frightened group that remained in the road; and as they climbed they were watched closely by those among whom the glass was passed around. It was hard going, and Armitage had to be helped more than once. High above the toiling group the great swath trembled as its hellish maker re-passed with snail-like deliberateness. Then it was obvious that the pursuers were gaining.
      Curtis Whateley—of the undecayed branch—was holding the telescope when the Arkham party detoured radically from the swath. He told the crowd that the men were evidently trying to get to a subordinate peak which overlooked the swath at a point considerably ahead of where the shrubbery was now bending. This, indeed, proved to be true; and the party were seen to gain the minor elevation only a short time after the invisible blasphemy had passed it.
      Then Wesley Corey, who had taken the glass, cried out that Armitage was adjusting the sprayer which Rice held, and that something must be about to happen. The crowd stirred uneasily, recalling that this sprayer was expected to give the unseen horror a moment of visibility. Two or three men shut their eyes, but Curtis Whateley snatched back the telescope and strained his vision to the utmost. He saw that Rice, from the party’s point of vantage above and behind the entity, had an excellent chance of spreading the potent powder with marvellous effect.
      Those without the telescope saw only an instant’s flash of grey cloud—a cloud about the size of a moderately large building—near the top of the mountain. Curtis, who had held the instrument, dropped it with a piercing shriek into the ankle-deep mud of the road. He reeled, and would have crumpled to the ground had not two or three others seized and steadied him. All he could do was moan half-inaudibly,
      “Oh, oh, great Gawd . . . that . . . that . . .”
      There was a pandemonium of questioning, and only Henry Wheeler thought to rescue the fallen telescope and wipe it clean of mud. Curtis was past all coherence, and even isolated replies were almost too much for him.
      “Bigger’n a barn . . . all made o’ squirmin’ ropes . . . hull thing sort o’ shaped like a hen’s egg bigger’n anything, with dozens o’ legs like hogsheads that haff shut up when they step . . . nothin’ solid abaout it—all like jelly, an’ made o’ sep’rit wrigglin’ ropes pushed clost together . . . great bulgin’ eyes all over it . . . ten or twenty maouths or trunks a-stickin’ aout all along the sides, big as stovepipes, an’ all a-tossin’ an’ openin’ an’ shuttin’ . . . all grey, with kinder blue or purple rings . . . an’ Gawd in heaven—that haff face on top! . . .”
      This final memory, whatever it was, proved too much for poor Curtis; and he collapsed completely before he could say more. Fred Farr and Will Hutchins carried him to the roadside and laid him on the damp grass. Henry Wheeler, trembling, turned the rescued telescope on the mountain to see what he might. Through the lenses were discernible three tiny figures, apparently running toward the summit as fast as the steep incline allowed. Only these—nothing more. Then everyone noticed a strangely unseasonable noise in the deep valley behind, and even in the underbrush of Sentinel Hill itself. It was the piping of unnumbered whippoorwills, and in their shrill chorus there seemed to lurk a note of tense and evil expectancy.
      Earl Sawyer now took the telescope and reported the three figures as standing on the topmost ridge, virtually level with the altar-stone but at a considerable distance from it. One figure, he said, seemed to be raising its hands above its head at rhythmic intervals; and as Sawyer mentioned the circumstance the crowd seemed to hear a faint, half-musical sound from the distance, as if a loud chant were accompanying the gestures. The weird silhouette on that remote peak must have been a spectacle of infinite grotesqueness and impressiveness, but no observer was in a mood for aesthetic appreciation. “I guess he’s sayin’ the spell,” whispered Wheeler as he snatched back the telescope. The whippoorwills were piping wildly, and in a singularly curious irregular rhythm quite unlike that of the visible ritual.
      Suddenly the sunshine seemed to lessen without the intervention of any discernible cloud. It was a very peculiar phenomenon, and was plainly marked by all. A rumbling sound seemed brewing beneath the hills, mixed strangely with a concordant rumbling which clearly came from the sky. Lightning flashed aloft, and the wondering crowd looked in vain for the portents of storm. The chanting of the men from Arkham now became unmistakable, and Wheeler saw through the glass that they were all raising their arms in the rhythmic incantation. From some farmhouse far away came the frantic barking of dogs.
      The change in the quality of the daylight increased, and the crowd gazed about the horizon in wonder. A purplish darkness, born of nothing more than a spectral deepening of the sky’s blue, pressed down upon the rumbling hills. Then the lightning flashed again, somewhat brighter than before, and the crowd fancied that it had shewed a certain mistiness around the altar-stone on the distant height. No one, however, had been using the telescope at that instant. The whippoorwills continued their irregular pulsation, and the men of Dunwich braced themselves tensely against some imponderable menace with which the atmosphere seemed surcharged.
      Without warning came those deep, cracked, raucous vocal sounds which will never leave the memory of the stricken group who heard them. Not from any human throat were they born, for the organs of man can yield no such acoustic perversions. Rather would one have said they came from the pit itself, had not their source been so unmistakably the altar-stone on the peak. It is almost erroneous to call them sounds at all, since so much of their ghastly, infra-bass timbre spoke to dim seats of consciousness and terror far subtler than the ear; yet one must do so, since their form was indisputably though vaguely that of half-articulate words. They were loud—loud as the rumblings and the thunder above which they echoed—yet did they come from no visible being. And because imagination might suggest a conjectural source in the world of non-visible beings, the huddled crowd at the mountain’s base huddled still closer, and winced as if in expectation of a blow.
      “Ygnaiih . . . ygnaiih . . . thflthkh’ngha . . . Yog-Sothoth . . .” rang the hideous croaking out of space. “Y’bthnk . . . h’ehye—n’grkdl’lh. . . .”
      The speaking impulse seemed to falter here, as if some frightful psychic struggle were going on. Henry Wheeler strained his eye at the telescope, but saw only the three grotesquely silhouetted human figures on the peak, all moving their arms furiously in strange gestures as their incantation drew near its culmination. From what black wells of Acherontic fear or feeling, from what unplumbed gulfs of extra-cosmic consciousness or obscure, long-latent heredity, were those half-articulate thunder-croakings drawn? Presently they began to gather renewed force and coherence as they grew in stark, utter, ultimate frenzy.
      “Eh-ya-ya-ya-yahaah—e’yayayayaaaa . . . ngh’aaaaa . . . ngh’aaaa . . . h’yuh . . . h’yuh . . . HELP! HELP! . . . ff—ff—ff—FATHER! FATHER! YOG-SOTHOTH! . . .”
      But that was all. The pallid group in the road, still reeling at the indisputably English syllables that had poured thickly and thunderously down from the frantic vacancy beside that shocking altar-stone, were never to hear such syllables again. Instead, they jumped violently at the terrific report which seemed to rend the hills; the deafening, cataclysmic peal whose source, be it inner earth or sky, no hearer was ever able to place. A single lightning-bolt shot from the purple zenith to the altar-stone, and a great tidal wave of viewless force and indescribable stench swept down from the hill to all the countryside. Trees, grass, and underbrush were whipped into a fury; and the frightened crowd at the mountain’s base, weakened by the lethal foetor that seemed about to asphyxiate them, were almost hurled off their feet. Dogs howled from the distance, green grass and foliage wilted to a curious, sickly yellow-grey, and over field and forest were scattered the bodies of dead whippoorwills.
      The stench left quickly, but the vegetation never came right again. To this day there is something queer and unholy about the growths on and around that fearsome hill. Curtis Whateley was only just regaining consciousness when the Arkham men came slowly down the mountain in the beams of a sunlight once more brilliant and untainted. They were grave and quiet, and seemed shaken by memories and reflections even more terrible than those which had reduced the group of natives to a state of cowed quivering. In reply to a jumble of questions they only shook their heads and reaffirmed one vital fact.
      “The thing has gone forever,” Armitage said. “It has been split up into what it was originally made of, and can never exist again. It was an impossibility in a normal world. Only the least fraction was really matter in any sense we know. It was like its father—and most of it has gone back to him in some vague realm or dimension outside our material universe; some vague abyss out of which only the most accursed rites of human blasphemy could ever have called him for a moment on the hills.”
      There was a brief silence, and in that pause the scattered senses of poor Curtis Whateley began to knit back into a sort of continuity; so that he put his hands to his head with a moan. Memory seemed to pick itself up where it had left off, and the horror of the sight that had prostrated him burst in upon him again.
      “Oh, oh, my Gawd, that haff face—that haff face on top of it . . . that face with the red eyes an’ crinkly albino hair, an’ no chin, like the Whateleys . . . It was a octopus, centipede, spider kind o’ thing, but they was a haff-shaped man’s face on top of it, an’ it looked like Wizard Whateley’s, only it was yards an’ yards acrost. . . .”
      He paused exhausted, as the whole group of natives stared in a bewilderment not quite crystallised into fresh terror. Only old Zebulon Whateley, who wanderingly remembered ancient things but who had been silent heretofore, spoke aloud.
      “Fifteen year’ gone,” he rambled, “I heerd Ol’ Whateley say as haow some day we’d hear a child o’ Lavinny’s a-callin’ its father’s name on the top o’ Sentinel Hill. . . .”
      But Joe Osborn interrupted him to question the Arkham men anew.
      “What was it anyhaow, an’ haowever did young Wizard Whateley call it aout o’ the air it come from?”
      Armitage chose his words very carefully.
      “It was—well, it was mostly a kind of force that doesn’t belong in our part of space; a kind of force that acts and grows and shapes itself by other laws than those of our sort of Nature. We have no business calling in such things from outside, and only very wicked people and very wicked cults ever try to. There was some of it in Wilbur Whateley himself—enough to make a devil and a precocious monster of him, and to make his passing out a pretty terrible sight. I’m going to burn his accursed diary, and if you men are wise you’ll dynamite that altar-stone up there, and pull down all the rings of standing stones on the other hills. Things like that brought down the beings those Whateleys were so fond of—the beings they were going to let in tangibly to wipe out the human race and drag the earth off to some nameless place for some nameless purpose.
      “But as to this thing we’ve just sent back—the Whateleys raised it for a terrible part in the doings that were to come. It grew fast and big from the same reason that Wilbur grew fast and big—but it beat him because it had a greater share of the outsideness in it. You needn’t ask how Wilbur called it out of the air. He didn’t call it out. It was his twin brother, but it looked more like the father than he did.”
",True
"II. An Antecedent and a Horror

1.

Joseph Curwen, as revealed by the rambling legends embodied in what Ward heard and unearthed, was a very astonishing, enigmatic, and obscurely horrible individual. He had fled from Salem to Providence - that universal haven of the odd, the free, and the dissenting - at the beginning of the great witchcraft panic; being in fear of accusation because of his solitary ways and queer chemical or alchemical experiments. He was a colourless-looking man of about thirty, and was soon found qualified to become a freeman of Providence; thereafter buying a home lot just north of Gregory Dexter's at about the foot of Olney Street. His house was built on Stampers' Hill west of the Town Street, in what later became Olney Court; and in 1761 he replaced this with a larger one, on the same site, which is still standing.
      Now the first odd thing about Joseph Curwen was that he did not seem to grow much older than he had been on his arrival. He engaged in shipping enterprises, purchased wharfage near Mile-End Cove, helped rebuild the Great Bridge in 1713, and in 1723 was one of the founders of the Congregational Church on the hill; but always did he retain the nondescript aspect of a man not greatly over thirty or thirty-five. As decades mounted up, this singular quality began to excite wide notice; but Curwen always explained it by saying that he came of hardy forefathers, and practiced a simplicity of living which did not wear him out. How such simplicity could be reconciled with the inexplicable comings and goings of the secretive merchant, and with the queer gleaming of his windows at all hours of night, was not very clear to the townsfolk; and they were prone to assign other reasons for his continued youth and longevity. It was held, for the most part, that Curwen's incessant mixings and boilings of chemicals had much to do with his condition. Gossip spoke of the strange substances he brought from London and the Indies on his ships or purchased in Newport, Boston, and New York; and when old Dr. Jabez Bowen came from Rehoboth and opened his apothecary shop across the Great Bridge at the Sign of the Unicorn and Mortar, there was ceaseless talk of the drugs, acids, and metals that the taciturn recluse incessantly bought or ordered from him. Acting on the assumption that Curwen possessed a wondrous and secret medical skill, many sufferers of various sorts applied to him for aid; but though he appeared to encourage their belief in a non-committal way, and always gave them odd-coloured potions in response to their requests, it was observed that his ministrations to others seldom proved of benefit. At length, when over fifty years had passed since the stranger's advent, and without producing more than five years' apparent change in his face and physique, the people began to whisper more darkly; and to meet more than half way that desire for isolation which he had always shewn.
      Private letters and diaries of the period reveal, too, a multitude of other reasons why Joseph Curwen was marvelled at, feared, and finally shunned like a plague. His passion for graveyards, in which he was glimpsed at all hours and under all conditions, was notorious; though no one had witnessed any deed on his part which could actually be termed ghoulish. On the Pawtuxet Road he had a farm, at which he generally lived during the summer, and to which he would frequently be seen riding at various odd times of the day or night. Here his only visible servants, farmers, and caretakers were a sullen pair of aged Narragansett Indians; the husband dumb and curiously scarred, and the wife of a very repulsive cast of countenance, probably due to a mixture of negro blood. In the lean-to of this house was the laboratory where most of the chemical experiments were conducted. Curious porters and teamers who delivered bottles, bags, or boxes at the small rear door would exchange accounts of the fantastic flasks, crucibles, alembics, and furnaces they saw in the low shelved room; and prophesied in whispers that the close-mouthed ""chymist"" - by which they meant alchemist - would not be long in finding the Philosopher's Stone. The nearest neighbours to this farm - the Fenners, a quarter of a mile away - had still queerer things to tell of certain sounds which they insisted came from the Curwen place in the night. There were cries, they said, and sustained howlings; and they did not like the large number of livestock which thronged the pastures, for no such amount was needed to keep a lone old man and a very few servants in meat, milk, and wool. The identity of the stock seemed to change from week to week as new droves were purchased from the Kingstown farmers. Then, too, there was something very obnoxious about a certain great stone outbuilding with only high narrow slits for windows.
      Great Bridge idlers likewise had much to say of Curwen's town house in Olney Court; not so much the fine new one built in 1761, when the man must have been nearly a century old, but the first low gambrel-roofed one with the windowless attic and shingled sides, whose timbers he took the peculiar precaution of burning after its demolition. Here there was less mystery, it is true; but the hours at which lights were seen, the secretiveness of the two swarthy foreigners who comprised the only menservants, the hideous indistinct mumbling of the incredibly aged French housekeeper, the large amounts of food seen to enter a door within which only four persons lived, and the quality of certain voices often heard in muffled conversation at highly unseasonable times, all combined with what was known of the Pawtuxet farm to give the place a bad name.
      In choicer circles, too, the Curwen home was by no means undiscussed; for as the newcomer had gradually worked into the church and trading life of the town, he had naturally made acquaintances of the better sort, whose company and conversation he was well fitted by education to enjoy. His birth was known to be good, since the Curwens or Corwins of Salem needed no introduction in New England. It developed that Joseph Curwen had travelled much in very early life, living for a time in England and making at least two voyages to the Orient; and his speech, when he deigned to use it, was that of a learned and cultivated Englishman. But for some reason or other Curwen did not care for society. Whilst never actually rebuffing a visitor, he always reared such a wall of reserve that few could think of anything to say to him which would not sound inane.
      There seemed to lurk in his bearing some cryptic, sardonic arrogance, as if he had come to find all human beings dull through having moved among stranger and more potent entities. When Dr. Checkley the famous wit came from Boston in 1738 to be rector of King's Church, he did not neglect calling on one of whom he soon heard so much; but left in a very short while because of some sinister undercurrent he detected in his host's discourse. Charles Ward told his father, when they discussed Curwen one winter evening, that he would give much to learn what the mysterious old man had said to the sprightly cleric, but that all diarists agree concerning Dr. Checkley's reluctance to repeat anything he had heard. The good man had been hideously shocked, and could never recall Joseph Curwen without a visible loss of the gay urbanity for which he was famed.
      More definite, however, was the reason why another man of taste and breeding avoided the haughty hermit. In 1746 Mr. John Merritt, an elderly English gentleman of literary and scientific leanings, came from Newport to the town which was so rapidly overtaking it in standing, and built a fine country seat on the Neck in what is now the heart of the best residence section. He lived in considerable style and comfort, keeping the first coach and liveried servants in town, and taking great pride in his telescope, his microscope, and his well-chosen library of English and Latin books. Hearing of Curwen as the owner of the best library in Providence, Mr. Merritt early paid him a call, and was more cordially received than most other callers at the house had been. His admiration for his host's ample shelves, which besides the Greek, Latin, and English classics were equipped with a remarkable battery of philosophical, mathematical, and scientific works including Paracelsus, Agricola, Van Helmont, Sylvius, Glauber, Boyle, Boerhaave, Becher, and Stahl, led Curwen to suggest a visit to the farmhouse and laboratory whither he had never invited anyone before; and the two drove out at once in Mr. Merritt's coach.
      Mr. Merritt always confessed to seeing nothing really horrible at the farmhouse, but maintained that the titles of the books in the special library of thaumaturgical, alchemical, and theological subjects which Curwen kept in a front room were alone sufficient to inspire him with a lasting loathing. Perhaps, however, the facial expression of the owner in exhibiting them contributed much of the prejudice. The bizarre collection, besides a host of standard works which Mr. Merritt was not too alarmed to envy, embraced nearly all the cabbalists, daemonologists, and magicians known to man; and was a treasure-house of lore in the doubtful realms of alchemy and astrology. Hermes Trismegistus in Mesnard's edition, the Turba Philosophorum, Geber's Liber Investigationis, and Artephius' Key of Wisdom all were there; with the cabbalistic Zohar, Peter Jammy's set of Albertus Magnus, Raymond Lully's Ars Magna et Ultima in Zetzner's edition, Roger Bacon's Thesaurus Chemicus, Fludd's Clavis Alchimiae, and Trithemius' De Lapide Philosophico crowding them close. Mediaeval Jews and Arabs were represented in profusion, and Mr. Merritt turned pale when, upon taking down a fine volume conspicuously labelled as the Qanoon-e-Islam, he found it was in truth the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, of which he had heard such monstrous things whispered some years previously after the exposure of nameless rites at the strange little fishing village of Kingsport, in the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay.
      But oddly enough, the worthy gentleman owned himself most impalpably disquieted by a mere minor detail. On the huge mahogany table there lay face downward a badly worn copy of Borellus, bearing many cryptical marginalia and interlineations in Curwen's hand. The book was open at about its middle, and one paragraph displayed such thick and tremulous pen-strokes beneath the lines of mystic black-letter that the visitor could not resist scanning it through. Whether it was the nature of the passage underscored, or the feverish heaviness of the strokes which formed the underscoring, he could not tell; but something in that combination affected him very badly and very peculiarly. He recalled it to the end of his days, writing it down from memory in his diary and once trying to recite it to his close friend Dr. Checkley till he saw how greatly it disturbed the urbane rector. It read:
      ""The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated.""
      It was near the docks along the southerly part of the Town Street, however, that the worst things were muttered about Joseph Curwen. Sailors are superstitious folk; and the seasoned salts who manned the infinite rum, slave, and molasses sloops, the rakish privateers, and the great brigs of the Browns, Crawfords, and Tillinghasts, all made strange furtive signs of protection when they saw the slim, deceptively young-looking figure with its yellow hair and slight stoop entering the Curwen warehouse in Doubloon Street or talking with captains and supercargoes on the long quay where the Curwen ships rode restlessly. Curwen's own clerks and captains hated and feared him, and all his sailors were mongrel riff-raff from Martinique, St. Eustatius, Havana, or Port Royal. It was, in a way, the frequency with which these sailors were replaced which inspired the acutest and most tangible part of the fear in which the old man was held. A crew would be turned loose in the town on shore leave, some of its members perhaps charged with this errand or that; and when reassembled it would be almost sure to lack one or more men. That many of the errands had concerned the farm on the Pawtuxet Road, and that few of the sailors had ever been seen to return from that place, was not forgotten; so that in time it became exceedingly difficult for Curwen to keep his oddly assorted hands. Almost invariably several would desert soon after hearing the gossip of the Providence wharves, and their replacement in the West Indies became an increasingly great problem to the merchant.
      In 1760 Joseph Curwen was virtually an outcast, suspected of vague horrors and daemoniac alliances which seemed all the more menacing because they could not be named, understood, or even proved to exist. The last straw may have come from the affair of the missing soldiers in 1758, for in March and April of that year two Royal regiments on their way to New France were quartered in Providence, and depleted by an inexplicable process far beyond the average rate of desertion. Rumour dwelt on the frequency with which Curwen was wont to be seen talking with the red-coated strangers; and as several of them began to be missed, people thought of the odd conditions among his own seamen. What would have happened if the regiments had not been ordered on, no one can tell.
      Meanwhile the merchant's worldly affairs were prospering. He had a virtual monopoly of the town's trade in saltpetre, black pepper, and cinnamon, and easily led any other one shipping establishment save the Browns in his importation of brassware, indigo, cotton, woollens, salt, rigging, iron, paper, and English goods of every kind. Such shopkeepers as James Green, at the Sign of the Elephant in Cheapside, the Russells, at the Sign of the Golden Eagle across the Bridge, or Clark and Nightingale at the Frying-Pan and Fish near the New Coffee-House, depended almost wholly upon him for their stock; and his arrangements with the local distillers, the Narragansett dairymen and horse-breeders, and the Newport candle-makers, made him one of the prime exporters of the Colony.
      Ostracised though he was, he did not lack for civic spirit of a sort. When the Colony House burned down, he subscribed handsomely to the lotteries by which the new brick one - still standing at the head of its parade in the old main street - was built in 1761. In that same year, too, he helped rebuild the Great Bridge after the October gale. He replaced many of the books of the public library consumed in the Colony House fire, and bought heavily in the lottery that gave the muddy Market Parade and deep-rutted Town Street their pavement of great round stones with a brick footwalk or ""causey"" in the middle. About this time, also, he built the plain but excellent new house whose doorway is still such a triumph of carving. When the Whitefield adherents broke off from Dr. Cotton's hill church in 1743 and founded Deacon Snow's church across the Bridge, Curwen had gone with them; though his zeal and attendance soon abated. Now, however, he cultivated piety once more; as if to dispel the shadow which had thrown him into isolation and would soon begin to wreck his business fortunes if not sharply checked.

2.

      The sight of this strange, pallid man, hardly middle-aged in aspect yet certainly not less than a full century old, seeking at last to emerge from a cloud of fright and detestation too vague to pin down or analyse, was at once a pathetic, a dramatic, and a contemptible thing. Such is the power of wealth and of surface gestures, however, that there came indeed a slight abatement in the visible aversion displayed toward him; especially after the rapid disappearances of his sailors abruptly ceased. He must likewise have begun to practice an extreme care and secrecy in his graveyard expeditions, for he was never again caught at such wanderings; whilst the rumours of uncanny sounds and manoeuvres at his Pawtuxet farm diminished in proportion. His rate of food consumption and cattle replacement remained abnormally high; but not until modern times, when Charles Ward examined a set of his accounts and invoices in the Shepley Library, did it occur to any person - save one embittered youth, perhaps - to make dark comparisons between the large number of Guinea blacks he imported until 1766, and the disturbingly small number for whom he could produce bona fide bills of sale either to slave-dealers at the Great Bridge or to the planters of the Narragansett Country. Certainly, the cunning and ingenuity of this abhorred character were uncannily profound, once the necessity for their exercise had become impressed upon him.
      But of course the effect of all this belated mending was necessarily slight. Curwen continued to be avoided and distrusted, as indeed the one fact of his continued air of youth at a great age would have been enough to warrant; and he could see that in the end his fortunes would be likely to suffer. His elaborate studies and experiments, whatever they may have been, apparently required a heavy income for their maintenance; and since a change of environment would deprive him of the trading advantages he had gained, it would not have profited him to begin anew in a different region just then. Judgment demanded that he patch up his relations with the townsfolk of Providence, so that his presence might no longer be a signal for hushed conversation, transparent excuses of errands elsewhere, and a general atmosphere of constraint and uneasiness. His clerks, being now reduced to the shiftless and impecunious residue whom no one else would employ, were giving him much worry; and he held to his sea-captains and mates only by shrewdness in gaining some kind of ascendancy over them - a mortgage, a promissory note, or a bit of information very pertinent to their welfare. In many cases, diarists have recorded with some awe, Curwen shewed almost the power of a wizard in unearthing family secrets for questionable use. During the final five years of his life it seemed as though only direct talks with the long-dead could possibly have furnished some of the data which he had so glibly at his tongue's end.
      About this time the crafty scholar hit upon a last desperate expedient to regain his footing in the community. Hitherto a complete hermit, he now determined to contract an advantageous marriage; securing as a bride some lady whose unquestioned position would make all ostracism of his home impossible. It may be that he also had deeper reasons for wishing an alliance; reasons so far outside the known cosmic sphere that only papers found a century and a half after his death caused anyone to suspect them; but of this nothing certain can ever be learned. Naturally he was aware of the horror and indignation with which any ordinary courtship of his would be received, hence he looked about for some likely candidate upon whose parents he might exert a suitable pressure. Such candidates, he found, were not at all easy to discover; since he had very particular requirements in the way of beauty, accomplishments, and social security. At length his survey narrowed down to the household of one of his best and oldest ship-captains, a widower of high birth and unblemished standing named Dutee Tillinghast, whose only daughter Eliza seemed dowered with every conceivable advantage save prospects as an heiress. Capt. Tillinghast was completely under the domination of Curwen; and consented, after a terrible interview in his cupolaed house on Power's Lane hill, to sanction the blasphemous alliance.
      Eliza Tillinghast was at that time eighteen years of age, and had been reared as gently as the reduced circumstances of her father permitted. She had attended Stephen Jackson's school opposite the Court-House Parade; and had been diligently instructed by her mother, before the latter's death of smallpox in 1757, in all the arts and refinements of domestic life. A sampler of hers, worked in 1753 at the age of nine, may still be found in the rooms of the Rhode Island Historical Society. After her mother's death she had kept the house, aided only by one old black woman. Her arguments with her father concerning the proposed Curwen marriage must have been painful indeed; but of these we have no record. Certain it is that her engagement to young Ezra Weeden, second mate of the Crawford packet Enterprise, was dutifully broken off, and that her union with Joseph Curwen took place on the seventh of March, 1763, in the Baptist church, in the presence of one of the most distinguished assemblages which the town could boast; the ceremony being performed by the younger Samuel Winsor. The Gazette mentioned the event very briefly, and in most surviving copies the item in question seems to be cut or torn out. Ward found a single intact copy after much search in the archives of a private collector of note, observing with amusement the meaningless urbanity of the language:
      ""Monday evening last, Mr. Joseph Curwen, of this Town, Merchant, was married to Miss Eliza Tillinghast, Daughter of Capt. Dutee Tillinghast, a young Lady who has real Merit, added to a beautiful Person, to grace the connubial State and perpetuate its Felicity.""
      The collection of Durfee-Arnold letters, discovered by Charles Ward shortly before his first reputed madness in the private collection of Melville F. Peters, Esq., of George St., and covering this and a somewhat antecedent period, throws vivid light on the outrage done to public sentiment by this ill-assorted match. The social influence of the Tillinghasts, however, was not to be denied; and once more Joseph Curwen found his house frequented by persons whom he could never otherwise have induced to cross his threshold. His acceptance was by no means complete, and his bride was socially the sufferer through her forced venture; but at all events the wall of utter ostracism was somewhat worn down. In his treatment of his wife the strange bridegroom astonished both her and the community by displaying an extreme graciousness and consideration. The new house in Olney Court was now wholly free from disturbing manifestations, and although Curwen was much absent at the Pawtuxet farm which his wife never visited, he seemed more like a normal citizen than at any other time in his long years of residence. Only one person remained in open enmity with him, this being the youthful ship's officer whose engagement to Eliza Tillinghast had been so abruptly broken. Ezra Weeden had frankly vowed vengeance; and though of a quiet and ordinarily mild disposition, was now gaining a hate-bred, dogged purpose which boded no good to the usurping husband.
      On the seventh of May, 1765, Curwen's only child Ann was born; and was christened by the Rev. John Graves of King's Church, of which both husband and wife had become communicants shortly after their marriage, in order to compromise between their respective Congregational and Baptist affiliations. The record of this birth, as well as that of the marriage two years before, was stricken from most copies of the church and town annals where it ought to appear; and Charles Ward located both with the greatest difficulty after his discovery of the widow's change of name had apprised him of his own relationship, and engendered the feverish interest which culminated in his madness. The birth entry, indeed, was found very curiously through correspondence with the heirs of the loyalist Dr. Graves, who had taken with him a duplicate set of records when he left his pastorate at the outbreak of the Revolution. Ward had tried this source because he knew that his great-great-grandmother Ann Tillinghast Potter had been an Episcopalian.
      Shortly after the birth of his daughter, an event he seemed to welcome with a fervour greatly out of keeping with his usual coldness, Curwen resolved to sit for a portrait. This he had painted by a very gifted Scotsman named Cosmo Alexander, then a resident of Newport, and since famous as the early teacher of Gilbert Stuart. The likeness was said to have been executed on a wall-panel of the library of the house in Olney Court, but neither of the two old diaries mentioning it gave any hint of its ultimate disposition. At this period the erratic scholar shewed signs of unusual abstraction, and spent as much time as he possibly could at his farm on the Pawtuxet Road. He seemed, it was stated, in a condition of suppressed excitement or suspense; as if expecting some phenomenal thing or on the brink of some strange discovery. Chemistry or alchemy would appear to have played a great part, for he took from his house to the farm the greater number of his volumes on that subject.
      His affectation of civic interest did not diminish, and he lost no opportunities for helping such leaders as Stephen Hopkins, Joseph Brown, and Benjamin West in their efforts to raise the cultural tone of the town, which was then much below the level of Newport in its patronage of the liberal arts. He had helped Daniel Jenckes found his bookshop in 1763, and was thereafter his best customer; extending aid likewise to the struggling Gazette that appeared each Wednesday at the Sign of Shakespear's Head. In politics he ardently supported Governor Hopkins against the Ward party whose prime strength was in Newport, and his really eloquent speech at Hacker's Hall in 1765 against the setting off of North Providence as a separate town with a pro-Ward vote in the General Assembly did more than any other one thing to wear down the prejudice against him. But Ezra Weeden, who watched him closely, sneered cynically at all this outward activity; and freely swore it was no more than a mask for some nameless traffick with the blackest gulfs of Tartarus. The revengeful youth began a systematic study of the man and his doings whenever he was in port; spending hours at night by the wharves with a dory in readiness when he saw lights in the Curwen warehouses, and following the small boat which would sometimes steal quietly off and down the bay. He also kept as close a watch as possible on the Pawtuxet farm, and was once severely bitten by the dogs the old Indian couple loosed upon him.

3.

      In 1766 came the final change in Joseph Curwen. It was very sudden, and gained wide notice amongst the curious townsfolk; for the air of suspense and expectancy dropped like an old cloak, giving instant place to an ill-concealed exaltation of perfect triumph. Curwen seemed to have difficulty in restraining himself from public harangues on what he had found or learned or made; but apparently the need of secrecy was greater than the longing to share his rejoicing, for no explanation was ever offered by him. It was after this transition, which appears to have come early in July, that the sinister scholar began to astonish people by his possession of information which only their long-dead ancestors would seem to be able to impart.
      But Curwen's feverish secret activities by no means ceased with this change. On the contrary, they tended rather to increase; so that more and more of his shipping business was handled by the captains whom he now bound to him by ties of fear as potent as those of bankruptcy had been. He altogether abandoned the slave trade, alleging that its profits were constantly decreasing. Every possible moment was spent at the Pawtuxet farm; though there were rumours now and then of his presence in places which, though not actually near graveyards, were yet so situated in relation to graveyards that thoughtful people wondered just how thorough the old merchant's change of habits really was. Ezra Weeden, though his periods of espionage were necessarily brief and intermittent on account of his sea voyaging, had a vindictive persistence which the bulk of the practical townsfolk and farmers lacked; and subjected Curwen's affairs to a scrutiny such as they had never had before.
      Many of the odd manoeuvres of the strange merchant's vessels had been taken for granted on account of the unrest of the times, when every colonist seemed determined to resist the provisions of the Sugar Act which hampered a prominent traffick. Smuggling and evasion were the rule in Narragansett Bay, and nocturnal landings of illicit cargoes were continuous commonplaces. But Weeden, night after night following the lighters or small sloops which he saw steal off from the Curwen warehouses at the Town Street docks, soon felt assured that it was not merely His Majesty's armed ships which the sinister skulker was anxious to avoid. Prior to the change in 1766 these boats had for the most part contained chained negroes, who were carried down and across the bay and landed at an obscure point on the shore just north of Pawtuxet; being afterward driven up the bluff and across country to the Curwen farm, where they were locked in that enormous stone outbuilding which had only high narrow slits for windows. After that change, however, the whole programme was altered. Importation of slaves ceased at once, and for a time Curwen abandoned his midnight sailings. Then, about the spring of 1767, a new policy appeared. Once more the lighters grew wont to put out from the black, silent docks, and this time they would go down the bay some distance, perhaps as far as Namquit Point, where they would meet and receive cargo from strange ships of considerable size and widely varied appearance. Curwen's sailors would then deposit this cargo at the usual point on the shore, and transport it overland to the farm; locking it in the same cryptical stone building which had formerly received the negroes. The cargo consisted almost wholly of boxes and cases, of which a large proportion were oblong and heavy and disturbingly suggestive of coffins.
      Weeden always watched the farm with unremitting assiduity; visiting it each night for long periods, and seldom letting a week go by without a sight except when the ground bore a footprint-revealing snow. Even then he would often walk as close as possible in the travelled road or on the ice of the neighbouring river to see what tracks others might have left. Finding his own vigils interrupted by nautical duties, he hired a tavern companion named Eleazar Smith to continue the survey during his absences; and between them the two could have set in motion some extraordinary rumours. That they did not do so was only because they knew the effect of publicity would be to warn their quarry and make further progress impossible. Instead, they wished to learn something definite before taking any action. What they did learn must have been startling indeed, and Charles Ward spoke many times to his parents of his regret at Weeden's later burning of his notebooks. All that can be told of their discoveries is what Eleazar Smith jotted down in a none too coherent diary, and what other diarists and letter-writers have timidly repeated from the statements which they finally made - and according to which the farm was only the outer shell of some vast and revolting menace, of a scope and depth too profound and intangible for more than shadowy comprehension.
      It is gathered that Weeden and Smith became early convinced that a great series of tunnels and catacombs, inhabited by a very sizeable staff of persons besides the old Indian and his wife, underlay the farm. The house was an old peaked relic of the middle seventeenth century with enormous stack chimney and diamond-paned lattice windows, the laboratory being in a lean-to toward the north, where the roof came nearly to the ground. This building stood clear of any other; yet judging by the different voices heard at odd times within, it must have been accessible through secret passages beneath. These voices, before 1766, were mere mumblings and negro whisperings and frenzied screams, coupled with curious chants or invocations. After that date, however, they assumed a very singular and terrible cast as they ran the gamut betwixt dronings of dull acquiescence and explosions of frantic pain or fury, rumblings of conversation and whines of entreaty, pantings of eagerness and shouts of protest. They appeared to be in different languages, all known to Curwen, whose rasping accents were frequently distinguishable in reply, reproof, or threatening. Sometimes it seemed that several persons must be in the house; Curwen, certain captives, and the guards of those captives. There were voices of a sort that neither Weeden nor Smith had ever heard before despite their wide knowledge of foreign parts, and many that they did seem to place as belonging to this or that nationality. The nature of the conversations seemed always a kind of catechism, as if Curwen were extorting some sort of information from terrified or rebellious prisoners.
      Weeden had many verbatim reports of overheard scraps in his notebook, for English, French, and Spanish, which he knew, were frequently used; but of these nothing has survived. He did, however, say that besides a few ghoulish dialogues in which the past affairs of Providence families were concerned, most of the questions and answers he could understand were historical or scientific; occasionally pertaining to very remote places and ages. Once, for example, an alternately raging and sullen figure was questioned in French about the Black Prince's massacre at Limoges in 1370, as if there were some hidden reason which he ought to know. Curwen asked the prisoner - if prisoner it were - whether the order to slay was given because of the Sign of the Goat found on the altar in the ancient Roman crypt beneath the Cathedral, or whether the Dark Man of the Haute Vienne Coven had spoken the Three Words. Failing to obtain replies, the inquisitor had seemingly resorted to extreme means; for there was a terrific shriek followed by silence and muttering and a bumping sound.
      None of these colloquies were ever ocularly witnessed, since the windows were always heavily draped. Once, though, during a discourse in an unknown tongue, a shadow was seen on the curtain which startled Weeden exceedingly; reminding him of one of the puppets in a show he had seen in the autumn of 1764 in Hacker's Hall, when a man from Germantown, Pennsylvania, had given a clever mechanical spectacle advertised as a ""View of the Famous City of Jerusalem, in which are represented Jerusalem, the Temple of Solomon, his Royal Throne, the noted Towers, and Hills, likewise the Sufferings of Our Saviour from the Garden of Gethsemane to the Cross on the Hill of Golgotha; an artful piece of Statuary, Worthy to be seen by the Curious."" It was on this occasion that the listener, who had crept close to the window of the front room whence the speaking proceeded, gave a start which roused the old Indian pair and caused them to loose the dogs on him. After that no more conversations were ever heard in the house, and Weeden and Smith concluded that Curwen had transferred his field of action to regions below.
      That such regions in truth existed, seemed amply clear from many things. Faint cries and groans unmistakably came up now and then from what appeared to be the solid earth in places far from any structure; whilst hidden in the bushes along the river-bank in the rear, where the high ground sloped steeply down to the valley of the Pawtuxet, there was found an arched oaken door in a frame of heavy masonry, which was obviously an entrance to caverns within the hill. When or how these catacombs could have been constructed, Weeden was unable to say; but he frequently pointed out how easily the place might have been reached by bands of unseen workmen from the river. Joseph Curwen put his mongrel seamen to diverse uses indeed! During the heavy spring rains of 1769 the two watchers kept a sharp eye on the steep river-bank to see if any subterrene secrets might be washed to light, and were rewarded by the sight of a profusion of both human and animal bones in places where deep gullies had been worn in the banks. Naturally there might be many explanations of such things in the rear of a stock farm, and in a locality where old Indian burying-grounds were common, but Weeden and Smith drew their own inferences.
      It was in January 1770, whilst Weeden and Smith were still debating vainly on what, if anything, to think or do about the whole bewildering business, that the incident of the Fortaleza occurred. Exasperated by the burning of the revenue sloop Liberty at Newport during the previous summer, the customs fleet under Admiral Wallace had adopted an increased vigilance concerning strange vessels; and on this occasion His Majesty's armed schooner Cygnet, under Capt. Charles Leslie, captured after a short pursuit one early morning the snow Fortaleza of Barcelona, Spain, under Capt. Manuel Arruda, bound according to its log from Grand Cairo, Egypt, to Providence. When searched for contraband material, this ship revealed the astonishing fact that its cargo consisted exclusively of Egyptian mummies, consigned to ""Sailor A. B. C."", who would come to remove his goods in a lighter just off Namquit Point and whose identity Capt. Arruda felt himself in honour bound not to reveal. The Vice-Admiralty Court at Newport, at a loss what to do in view of the non-contraband nature of the cargo on the one hand and of the unlawful secrecy of the entry on the other hand, compromised on Collector Robinson's recommendation by freeing the ship but forbidding it a port in Rhode Island waters. There were later rumours of its having been seen in Boston Harbour, though it never openly entered the Port of Boston.
      This extraordinary incident did not fail of wide remark in Providence, and there were not many who doubted the existence of some connexion between the cargo of mummies and the sinister Joseph Curwen. His exotic studies and his curious chemical importations being common knowledge, and his fondness for graveyards being common suspicion; it did not take much imagination to link him with a freakish importation which could not conceivably have been destined for anyone else in the town. As if conscious of this natural belief, Curwen took care to speak casually on several occasions of the chemical value of the balsams found in mummies; thinking perhaps that he might make the affair seem less unnatural, yet stopping just short of admitting his participation. Weeden and Smith, of course, felt no doubt whatsoever of the significance of the thing; and indulged in the wildest theories concerning Curwen and his monstrous labours.
      The following spring, like that of the year before, had heavy rains; and the watchers kept careful track of the river-bank behind the Curwen farm. Large sections were washed away, and a certain number of bones discovered; but no glimpse was afforded of any actual subterranean chambers or burrows. Something was rumoured, however, at the village of Pawtuxet about a mile below, where the river flows in falls over a rocky terrace to join the placid landlocked cove. There, where quaint old cottages climbed the hill from the rustic bridge, and fishing-smacks lay anchored at their sleepy docks, a vague report went round of things that were floating down the river and flashing into sight for a minute as they went over the falls. Of course the Pawtuxet is a long river which winds through many settled regions abounding in graveyards, and of course the spring rains had been very heavy; but the fisherfolk about the bridge did not like the wild way that one of the things stared as it shot down to the still water below, or the way that another half cried out although its condition had greatly departed from that of objects which normally cry out. That rumour sent Smith - for Weeden was just then at sea - in haste to the river-bank behind the farm; where surely enough there remained the evidences of an extensive cave-in. There was, however, no trace of a passage into the steep bank; for the miniature avalanche had left behind a solid wall of mixed earth and shrubbery from aloft. Smith went to the extent of some experimental digging, but was deterred by lack of success - or perhaps by fear of possible success. It is interesting to speculate on what the persistent and revengeful Weeden would have done had he been ashore at the time.

4.

      By the autumn of 1770 Weeden decided that the time was ripe to tell others of his discoveries; for he had a large number of facts to link together, and a second eye-witness to refute the possible charge that jealousy and vindictiveness had spurred his fancy. As his first confidant he selected Capt. James Mathewson of the Enterprise, who on the one hand knew him well enough not to doubt his veracity, and on the other hand was sufficiently influential in the town to be heard in turn with respect. The colloquy took place in an upper room of Sabin's Tavern near the docks, with Smith present to corroborate virtually every statement; and it could be seen that Capt. Mathewson was tremendously impressed. Like nearly everyone else in the town, he had had black suspicions of his own anent Joseph Curwen; hence it needed only this confirmation and enlargement of data to convince him absolutely. At the end of the conference he was very grave, and enjoined strict silence upon the two younger men. He would, he said, transmit the information separately to some ten or so of the most learned and prominent citizens of Providence; ascertaining their views and following whatever advice they might have to offer. Secrecy would probably be essential in any case, for this was no matter that the town constables or militia could cope with; and above all else the excitable crowd must be kept in ignorance, lest there be enacted in these already troublous times a repetition of that frightful Salem panic of less than a century before which had first brought Curwen hither.
      The right persons to tell, he believed, would be Dr. Benjamin West, whose pamphlet on the late transit of Venus proved him a scholar and keen thinker; Rev. James Manning, President of the College which had just moved up from Warren and was temporarily housed in the new King Street schoolhouse awaiting the completion of its building on the hill above Presbyterian-Lane; ex-Governor Stephen Hopkins, who had been a member of the Philosophical Society at Newport, and was a man of very broad perceptions; John Carter, publisher of the Gazette; all four of the Brown brothers, John, Joseph, Nicholas, and Moses, who formed the recognised local magnates, and of whom Joseph was an amateur scientist of parts; old Dr. Jabez Bowen, whose erudition was considerable, and who had much first-hand knowledge of Curwen's odd purchases; and Capt. Abraham Whipple, a privateersman of phenomenal boldness and energy who could be counted on to lead in any active measures needed. These men, if favourable, might eventually be brought together for collective deliberation; and with them would rest the responsibility of deciding whether or not to inform the Governor of the Colony, Joseph Wanton of Newport, before taking action.
      The mission of Capt. Mathewson prospered beyond his highest expectations; for whilst he found one or two of the chosen confidants somewhat sceptical of the possible ghastly side of Weeden's tale, there was not one who did not think it necessary to take some sort of secret and cošrdinated action. Curwen, it was clear, formed a vague potential menace to the welfare of the town and Colony; and must be eliminated at any cost. Late in December 1770 a group of eminent townsmen met at the home of Stephen Hopkins and debated tentative measures. Weeden's notes, which he had given to Capt. Mathewson, were carefully read; and he and Smith were summoned to give testimony anent details. Something very like fear seized the whole assemblage before the meeting was over, though there ran through that fear a grim determination which Capt. Whipple's bluff and resonant profanity best expressed. They would not notify the Governor, because a more than legal course seemed necessary. With hidden powers of uncertain extent apparently at his disposal, Curwen was not a man who could safely be warned to leave town. Nameless reprisals might ensue, and even if the sinister creature complied, the removal would be no more than the shifting of an unclean burden to another place. The times were lawless, and men who had flouted the King's revenue forces for years were not the ones to balk at sterner things when duty impelled. Curwen must be surprised at his Pawtuxet farm by a large raiding-party of seasoned privateersmen and given one decisive chance to explain himself. If he proved a madman, amusing himself with shrieks and imaginary conversations in different voices, he would be properly confined. If something graver appeared, and if the underground horrors indeed turned out to be real, he and all with him must die. It could be done quietly, and even the widow and her father need not be told how it came about.
      While these serious steps were under discussion there occurred in the town an incident so terrible and inexplicable that for a time little else was mentioned for miles around. In the middle of a moonlight January night with heavy snow underfoot there resounded over the river and up the hill a shocking series of cries which brought sleepy heads to every window; and people around Weybosset Point saw a great white thing plunging frantically along the badly cleared space in front of the Turk's Head. There was a baying of dogs in the distance, but this subsided as soon as the clamour of the awakened town became audible. Parties of men with lanterns and muskets hurried out to see what was happening, but nothing rewarded their search. The next morning, however, a giant, muscular body, stark naked, was found on the jams of ice around the southern piers of the Great Bridge, where the Long Dock stretched out beside Abbott's distil-house, and the identity of this object became a theme for endless speculation and whispering. It was not so much the younger as the older folk who whispered, for only in the patriarchs did that rigid face with horror-bulging eyes strike any chord of memory. They, shaking as they did so, exchanged furtive murmurs of wonder and fear; for in those stiff, hideous features lay a resemblance so marvellous as to be almost an identity - and that identity was with a man who had died full fifty years before.
      Ezra Weeden was present at the finding; and remembering the baying of the night before, set out along Weybosset Street and across Muddy Dock Bridge whence the sound had come. He had a curious expectancy, and was not surprised when, reaching the edge of the settled district where the street merged into the Pawtuxet Road, he came upon some very curious tracks in the snow. The naked giant had been pursued by dogs and many booted men, and the returning tracks of the hounds and their masters could be easily traced. They had given up the chase upon coming too near the town. Weeden smiled grimly, and as a perfunctory detail traced the footprints back to their source. It was the Pawtuxet farm of Joseph Curwen, as he well knew it would be; and he would have given much had the yard been less confusingly trampled. As it was, he dared not seem too interested in full daylight. Dr. Bowen, to whom Weeden went at once with his report, performed an autopsy on the strange corpse, and discovered peculiarities which baffled him utterly. The digestive tracts of the huge man seemed never to have been in use, whilst the whole skin had a coarse, loosely knit texture impossible to account for. Impressed by what the old men whispered of this body's likeness to the long-dead blacksmith Daniel Green, whose great-grandson Aaron Hoppin was a supercargo in Curwen's employ, Weeden asked casual questions till he found where Green was buried. That night a party of ten visited the old North Burying Ground opposite Herrenden's Lane and opened a grave. They found it vacant, precisely as they had expected.
      Meanwhile arrangements had been made with the post riders to intercept Joseph Curwen's mail, and shortly before the incident of the naked body there was found a letter from one Jedediah Orne of Salem which made the cošperating citizens think deeply. Parts of it, copied and preserved in the private archives of the Smith family where Charles Ward found it, ran as follows:
      ""I delight that you continue in ye Gett'g at Olde Matters in your Way, and doe not think better was done at Mr. Hutchinson's in Salem-Village. Certainely, there was Noth'g butt ye liveliest Awfulness in that which H. rais'd upp from What he cou'd gather onlie a part of. What you sente, did not Worke, whether because of Any Thing miss'g, or because ye Wordes were not Righte from my Speak'g or yr Copy'g. I alone am at a Loss. I have not ye Chymicall art to followe Borellus, and owne my Self confounded by ye VII. Booke of ye Necronomicon that you recommende. But I wou'd have you Observe what was tolde to us aboute tak'g Care whom to calle up, for you are Sensible what Mr. Mather writ in ye Magnalia of  -  - , and can judge how truely that Horrendous thing is reported. I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you. I was frighted when I read of your know'g what Ben Zariatnatmik hadde in his ebony Boxe, for I was conscious who must have tolde you. And againe I ask that you shalle write me as Jedediah and not Simon. In this Community a Man may not live too long, and you knowe my Plan by which I came back as my Son. I am desirous you will Acquaint me with what ye Blacke Man learnt from Sylvanus Cocidius in ye Vault, under ye Roman Wall, and will be oblig'd for ye Lend'g of ye MS. you speak of.""
      Another and unsigned letter from Philadelphia provoked equal thought, especially for the following passage:
      ""I will observe what you say respecting the sending of Accounts only by yr Vessels, but can not always be certain when to expect them. In the Matter spoke of, I require onlie one more thing; but wish to be sure I apprehend you exactly. You inform me, that no Part must be missing if the finest Effects are to be had, but you can not but know how hard it is to be sure. It seems a great Hazard and Burthen to take away the whole Box, and in Town (i.e. St. Peter's, St. Paul's, St. Mary's, or Christ Church) it can scarce be done at all. But I know what Imperfections were in the one I rais'd up October last, and how many live Specimens you were forc'd to imploy before you hit upon the right Mode in the year 1766; so will be guided by you in all Matters. I am impatient for yr Brig, and inquire daily at Mr. Biddle's Wharf.""
      A third suspicious letter was in an unknown tongue and even an unknown alphabet. In the Smith diary found by Charles Ward a single oft-repeated combination of characters is clumsily copied; and authorities at Brown University have pronounced the alphabet Amharic or Abyssinian, although they do not recognise the word. None of these epistles was ever delivered to Curwen, though the disappearance of Jedediah Orne from Salem as recorded shortly afterward shewed that the Providence men took certain quiet steps. The Pennsylvania Historical Society also has some curious letters received by Dr. Shippen regarding the presence of an unwholesome character in Philadelphia. But more decisive steps were in the air, and it is in the secret assemblages of sworn and tested sailors and faithful old privateersmen in the Brown warehouses by night that we must look for the main fruits of Weeden's disclosures. Slowly and surely a plan of campaign was under development which would leave no trace of Joseph Curwen's noxious mysteries.
      Curwen, despite all precautions, apparently felt that something was in the wind; for he was now remarked to wear an unusually worried look. His coach was seen at all hours in the town and on the Pawtuxet Road, and he dropped little by little the air of forced geniality with which he had latterly sought to combat the town's prejudice. The nearest neighbours to his farm, the Fenners, one night remarked a great shaft of light shooting into the sky from some aperture in the roof of that cryptical stone building with the high, excessively narrow windows; an event which they quickly communicated to John Brown in Providence. Mr. Brown had become the executive leader of the select group bent on Curwen's extirpation, and had informed the Fenners that some action was about to be taken. This he deemed needful because of the impossibility of their not witnessing the final raid; and he explained his course by saying that Curwen was known to be a spy of the customs officers at Newport, against whom the hand of every Providence shipper, merchant, and farmer was openly or clandestinely raised. Whether the ruse was wholly believed by neighbours who had seen so many queer things is not certain; but at any rate the Fenners were willing to connect any evil with a man of such queer ways. To them Mr. Brown had entrusted the duty of watching the Curwen farmhouse, and of regularly reporting every incident which took place there.

5.

      The probability that Curwen was on guard and attempting unusual things, as suggested by the odd shaft of light, precipitated at last the action so carefully devised by the band of serious citizens. According to the Smith diary a company of about 100 men met at 10 p.m. on Friday, April 12th, 1771, in the great room of Thurston's Tavern at the Sign of the Golden Lion on Weybosset Point across the Bridge. Of the guiding group of prominent men in addition to the leader John Brown there were present Dr. Bowen, with his case of surgical instruments, President Manning without the great periwig (the largest in the Colonies) for which he was noted, Governor Hopkins, wrapped in his dark cloak and accompanied by his seafaring brother Esek, whom he had initiated at the last moment with the permission of the rest, John Carter, Capt. Mathewson, and Capt. Whipple, who was to lead the actual raiding party. These chiefs conferred apart in a rear chamber, after which Capt. Whipple emerged to the great room and gave the gathered seamen their last oaths and instructions. Eleazar Smith was with the leaders as they sat in the rear apartment awaiting the arrival of Ezra Weeden, whose duty was to keep track of Curwen and report the departure of his coach for the farm.
      About 10:30 a heavy rumble was heard on the Great Bridge, followed by the sound of a coach in the street outside; and at that hour there was no need of waiting for Weeden in order to know that the doomed man had set out for his last night of unhallowed wizardry. A moment later, as the receding coach clattered faintly over the Muddy Dock Bridge, Weeden appeared; and the raiders fell silently into military order in the street, shouldering the firelocks, fowling-pieces, or whaling harpoons which they had with them. Weeden and Smith were with the party, and of the deliberating citizens there were present for active service Capt. Whipple, the leader, Capt. Esek Hopkins, John Carter, President Manning, Capt. Mathewson, and Dr. Bowen; together with Moses Brown, who had come up at the eleventh hour though absent from the preliminary session in the tavern. All these freemen and their hundred sailors began the long march without delay, grim and a trifle apprehensive as they left the Muddy Dock behind and mounted the gentle rise of Broad Street toward the Pawtuxet Road. Just beyond Elder Snow's church some of the men turned back to take a parting look at Providence lying outspread under the early spring stars. Steeples and gables rose dark and shapely, and salt breezes swept up gently from the cove north of the Bridge. Vega was climbing above the great hill across the water, whose crest of trees was broken by the roof-line of the unfinished College edifice. At the foot of that hill, and along the narrow mounting lanes of its side, the old town dreamed; Old Providence, for whose safety and sanity so monstrous and colossal a blasphemy was about to be wiped out.
      An hour and a quarter later the raiders arrived, as previously agreed, at the Fenner farmhouse; where they heard a final report on their intended victim. He had reached his farm over half an hour before, and the strange light had soon afterward shot once into the sky, but there were no lights in any visible windows. This was always the case of late. Even as this news was given another great glare arose toward the south, and the party realised that they had indeed come close to the scene of awesome and unnatural wonders. Capt. Whipple now ordered his force to separate into three divisions; one of twenty men under Eleazar Smith to strike across to the shore and guard the landing-place against possible reinforcements for Curwen until summoned by a messenger for desperate service, a second of twenty men under Capt. Esek Hopkins to steal down into the river valley behind the Curwen farm and demolish with axes or gunpowder the oaken door in the high, steep bank, and the third to close in on the house and adjacent buildings themselves. Of this division one third was to be led by Capt. Mathewson to the cryptical stone edifice with high narrow windows, another third to follow Capt. Whipple himself to the main farmhouse, and the remaining third to preserve a circle around the whole group of buildings until summoned by a final emergency signal.
      The river party would break down the hillside door at the sound of a single whistle-blast, then waiting and capturing anything which might issue from the regions within. At the sound of two whistle-blasts it would advance through the aperture to oppose the enemy or join the rest of the raiding contingent. The party at the stone building would accept these respective signals in an analogous manner; forcing an entrance at the first, and at the second descending whatever passage into the ground might be discovered, and joining the general or focal warfare expected to take place within the caverns. A third or emergency signal of three blasts would summon the immediate reserve from its general guard duty; its twenty men dividing equally and entering the unknown depths through both farmhouse and stone building. Capt. Whipple's belief in the existence of catacombs was absolute, and he took no alternative into consideration when making his plans. He had with him a whistle of great power and shrillness, and did not fear any upsetting or misunderstanding of signals. The final reserve at the landing, of course, was nearly out of the whistle's range; hence would require a special messenger if needed for help. Moses Brown and John Carter went with Capt. Hopkins to the river-bank, while President Manning was detailed with Capt. Mathewson to the stone building. Dr. Bowen, with Ezra Weeden, remained in Capt. Whipple's party which was to storm the farmhouse itself. The attack was to begin as soon as a messenger from Capt. Hopkins had joined Capt. Whipple to notify him of the river party's readiness. The leader would then deliver the loud single blast, and the various advance parties would commence their simultaneous attack on three points. Shortly before 1 a.m. the three divisions left the Fenner farmhouse; one to guard the landing, another to seek the river valley and the hillside door, and the third to subdivide and attend to the actual buildings of the Curwen farm.
      Eleazar Smith, who accompanied the shore-guarding party, records in his diary an uneventful march and a long wait on the bluff by the bay; broken once by what seemed to be the distant sound of the signal whistle and again by a peculiar muffled blend of roaring and crying and a powder blast which seemed to come from the same direction. Later on one man thought he caught some distant gunshots, and still later Smith himself felt the throb of titanic and thunderous words resounding in upper air. It was just before dawn that a single haggard messenger with wild eyes and a hideous unknown odour about his clothing appeared and told the detachment to disperse quietly to their homes and never again think or speak of the night's doings or of him who had been Joseph Curwen. Something about the bearing of the messenger carried a conviction which his mere words could never have conveyed; for though he was a seaman well known to many of them, there was something obscurely lost or gained in his soul which set him for evermore apart. It was the same later on when they met other old companions who had gone into that zone of horror. Most of them had lost or gained something imponderable and indescribable. They had seen or heard or felt something which was not for human creatures, and could not forget it. From them there was never any gossip, for to even the commonest of mortal instincts there are terrible boundaries. And from that single messenger the party at the shore caught a nameless awe which almost sealed their own lips. Very few are the rumours which ever came from any of them, and Eleazar Smith's diary is the only written record which has survived from that whole expedition which set forth from the Sign of the Golden Lion under the stars.
      Charles Ward, however, discovered another vague sidelight in some Fenner correspondence which he found in New London, where he knew another branch of the family had lived. It seems that the Fenners, from whose house the doomed farm was distantly visible, had watched the departing columns of raiders; and had heard very clearly the angry barking of the Curwen dogs, followed by the first shrill blast which precipitated the attack. This blast had been followed by a repetition of the great shaft of light from the stone building, and in another moment, after a quick sounding of the second signal ordering a general invasion, there had come a subdued prattle of musketry followed by a horrible roaring cry which the correspondent Luke Fenner had represented in his epistle by the characters ""Waaaahrrrrr - R'waaahrrr"". This cry, however, had possessed a quality which no mere writing could convey, and the correspondent mentions that his mother fainted completely at the sound. It was later repeated less loudly, and further but more muffled evidences of gunfire ensued; together with a loud explosion of powder from the direction of the river. About an hour afterward all the dogs began to bark frightfully, and there were vague ground rumblings so marked that the candlesticks tottered on the mantelpiece. A strong smell of sulphur was noted; and Luke Fenner's father declared that he heard the third or emergency whistle signal, though the others failed to detect it. Muffled musketry sounded again, followed by a deep scream less piercing but even more horrible than those which had preceded it; a kind of throaty, nastily plastic cough or gurgle whose quality as a scream must have come more from its continuity and psychological import than from its actual acoustic value.
      Then the flaming thing burst into sight at a point where the Curwen farm ought to lie, and the human cries of desperate and frightened men were heard. Muskets flashed and cracked, and the flaming thing fell to the ground. A second flaming thing appeared, and a shriek of human origin was plainly distinguished. Fenner wrote that he could even gather a few words belched in frenzy: ""Almighty, protect thy lamb!"" Then there were more shots, and the second flaming thing fell. After that came silence for about three-quarters of an hour; at the end of which time little Arthur Fenner, Luke's brother, exclaimed that he saw 'a red fog' going up to the stars from the accursed farm in the distance. No one but the child can testify to this, but Luke admits the significant coincidence implied by the panic of almost convulsive fright which at the same moment arched the backs and stiffened the fur of the three cats then within the room.
      Five minutes later a chill wind blew up, and the air became suffused with such an intolerable stench that only the strong freshness of the sea could have prevented its being noticed by the shore party or by any wakeful souls in Pawtuxet village. This stench was nothing which any of the Fenners had ever encountered before, and produced a kind of clutching, amorphous fear beyond that of the tomb or the charnel-house. Close upon it came the awful voice which no hapless hearer will ever be able to forget. It thundered out of the sky like a doom, and windows rattled as its echoes died away. It was deep and musical; powerful as a bass organ, but evil as the forbidden books of the Arabs. What it said no man can tell, for it spoke in an unknown tongue, but this is the writing Luke Fenner set down to portray the daemoniac intonations: ""DEESMEES-JESHET-BONE DOSEFE DUVEMA-ENITEMOSS"". Not till the year 1919 did any soul link this crude transcript with anything else in mortal knowledge, but Charles Ward paled as he recognised what Mirandola had denounced in shudders as the ultimate horror among black magic's incantations.
      An unmistakably human shout or deep chorused scream seemed to answer this malign wonder from the Curwen farm, after which the unknown stench grew complex with an added odour equally intolerable. A wailing distinctly different from the scream now burst out, and was protracted ululantly in rising and falling paroxysms. At times it became almost articulate, though no auditor could trace any definite words; and at one point it seemed to verge toward the confines of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Then a yell of utter, ultimate fright and stark madness wrenched from scores of human throats - a yell which came strong and clear despite the depth from which it must have burst; after which darkness and silence ruled all things. Spirals of acrid smoke ascended to blot out the stars, though no flames appeared and no buildings were observed to be gone or injured on the following day.
      Toward dawn two frightened messengers with monstrous and unplaceable odours saturating their clothing knocked at the Fenner door and requested a keg of rum, for which they paid very well indeed. One of them told the family that the affair of Joseph Curwen was over, and that the events of the night were not to be mentioned again. Arrogant as the order seemed, the aspect of him who gave it took away all resentment and lent it a fearsome authority; so that only these furtive letters of Luke Fenner, which he urged his Connecticut relative to destroy, remain to tell what was seen and heard. The non-compliance of that relative, whereby the letters were saved after all, has alone kept the matter from a merciful oblivion. Charles Ward had one detail to add as a result of a long canvass of Pawtuxet residents for ancestral traditions. Old Charles Slocum of that village said that there was known to his grandfather a queer rumour concerning a charred, distorted body found in the fields a week after the death of Joseph Curwen was announced. What kept the talk alive was the notion that this body, so far as could be seen in its burnt and twisted condition, was neither thoroughly human nor wholly allied to any animal which Pawtuxet folk had ever seen or read about.

6.

      Not one man who participated in that terrible raid could ever be induced to say a word concerning it, and every fragment of the vague data which survives comes from those outside the final fighting party. There is something frightful in the care with which these actual raiders destroyed each scrap which bore the least allusion to the matter. Eight sailors had been killed, but although their bodies were not produced their families were satisfied with the statement that a clash with customs officers had occurred. The same statement also covered the numerous cases of wounds, all of which were extensively bandaged and treated only by Dr. Jabez Bowen, who had accompanied the party. Hardest to explain was the nameless odour clinging to all the raiders, a thing which was discussed for weeks. Of the citizen leaders, Capt. Whipple and Moses Brown were most severely hurt, and letters of their wives testify the bewilderment which their reticence and close guarding of their bandages produced. Psychologically every participant was aged, sobered, and shaken. It is fortunate that they were all strong men of action and simple, orthodox religionists, for with more subtle introspectiveness and mental complexity they would have fared ill indeed. President Manning was the most disturbed; but even he outgrew the darkest shadow, and smothered memories in prayers. Every man of those leaders had a stirring part to play in later years, and it is perhaps fortunate that this is so. Little more than a twelvemonth afterward Capt. Whipple led the mob who burnt the revenue ship Gaspee, and in this bold act we may trace one step in the blotting out of unwholesome images.
      There was delivered to the widow of Joseph Curwen a sealed leaden coffin of curious design, obviously found ready on the spot when needed, in which she was told her husband's body lay. He had, it was explained, been killed in a customs battle about which it was not politic to give details. More than this no tongue ever uttered of Joseph Curwen's end, and Charles Ward had only a single hint wherewith to construct a theory. This hint was the merest thread - a shaky underscoring of a passage in Jedediah Orne's confiscated letter to Curwen, as partly copied in Ezra Weeden's handwriting. The copy was found in the possession of Smith's descendants; and we are left to decide whether Weeden gave it to his companion after the end, as a mute clue to the abnormality which had occurred, or whether, as is more probable, Smith had it before, and added the underscoring himself from what he had managed to extract from his friend by shrewd guessing and adroit cross-questioning. The underlined passage is merely this:
      ""I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you.""
In the light of this passage, and reflecting on what last unmentionable allies a beaten man might try to summon in his direst extremity, Charles Ward may well have wondered whether any citizen of Providence killed Joseph Curwen.
      The deliberate effacement of every memory of the dead man from Providence life and annals was vastly aided by the influence of the raiding leaders. They had not at first meant to be so thorough, and had allowed the widow and her father and child to remain in ignorance of the true conditions; but Capt. Tillinghast was an astute man, and soon uncovered enough rumours to whet his horror and cause him to demand that his daughter and granddaughter change their name, burn the library and all remaining papers, and chisel the inscription from the slate slab above Joseph Curwen's grave. He knew Capt. Whipple well, and probably extracted more hints from that bluff mariner than anyone else ever gained respecting the end of the accused sorcerer.
      From that time on the obliteration of Curwen's memory became increasingly rigid, extending at last by common consent even to the town records and files of the Gazette. It can be compared in spirit only to the hush that lay on Oscar Wilde's name for a decade after his disgrace, and in extent only to the fate of that sinful King of Runazar in Lord Dunsany's tale, whom the Gods decided must not only cease to be, but must cease ever to have been.
      Mrs. Tillinghast, as the widow became known after 1772, sold the house in Olney Court and resided with her father in Power's Lane till her death in 1817. The farm at Pawtuxet, shunned by every living soul, remained to moulder through the years; and seemed to decay with unaccountable rapidity. By 1780 only the stone and brickwork were standing, and by 1800 even these had fallen to shapeless heaps. None ventured to pierce the tangled shrubbery on the river-bank behind which the hillside door may have lain, nor did any try to frame a definite image of the scenes amidst which Joseph Curwen departed from the horrors he had wrought.
      Only robust old Capt. Whipple was heard by alert listeners to mutter once in a while to himself, ""Pox on that  -  -  - , but he had no business to laugh while he screamed. 'Twas as though the damn'd  -  -  -  had some'at up his sleeve. For half a crown I'd burn his  -  -  -  house.""
","X.

In the end the three men from Arkham—old, white-bearded Dr. Armitage, stocky, iron-grey Professor Rice, and lean, youngish Dr. Morgan—ascended the mountain alone. After much patient instruction regarding its focussing and use, they left the telescope with the frightened group that remained in the road; and as they climbed they were watched closely by those among whom the glass was passed around. It was hard going, and Armitage had to be helped more than once. High above the toiling group the great swath trembled as its hellish maker re-passed with snail-like deliberateness. Then it was obvious that the pursuers were gaining.
      Curtis Whateley—of the undecayed branch—was holding the telescope when the Arkham party detoured radically from the swath. He told the crowd that the men were evidently trying to get to a subordinate peak which overlooked the swath at a point considerably ahead of where the shrubbery was now bending. This, indeed, proved to be true; and the party were seen to gain the minor elevation only a short time after the invisible blasphemy had passed it.
      Then Wesley Corey, who had taken the glass, cried out that Armitage was adjusting the sprayer which Rice held, and that something must be about to happen. The crowd stirred uneasily, recalling that this sprayer was expected to give the unseen horror a moment of visibility. Two or three men shut their eyes, but Curtis Whateley snatched back the telescope and strained his vision to the utmost. He saw that Rice, from the party’s point of vantage above and behind the entity, had an excellent chance of spreading the potent powder with marvellous effect.
      Those without the telescope saw only an instant’s flash of grey cloud—a cloud about the size of a moderately large building—near the top of the mountain. Curtis, who had held the instrument, dropped it with a piercing shriek into the ankle-deep mud of the road. He reeled, and would have crumpled to the ground had not two or three others seized and steadied him. All he could do was moan half-inaudibly,
      “Oh, oh, great Gawd . . . that . . . that . . .”
      There was a pandemonium of questioning, and only Henry Wheeler thought to rescue the fallen telescope and wipe it clean of mud. Curtis was past all coherence, and even isolated replies were almost too much for him.
      “Bigger’n a barn . . . all made o’ squirmin’ ropes . . . hull thing sort o’ shaped like a hen’s egg bigger’n anything, with dozens o’ legs like hogsheads that haff shut up when they step . . . nothin’ solid abaout it—all like jelly, an’ made o’ sep’rit wrigglin’ ropes pushed clost together . . . great bulgin’ eyes all over it . . . ten or twenty maouths or trunks a-stickin’ aout all along the sides, big as stovepipes, an’ all a-tossin’ an’ openin’ an’ shuttin’ . . . all grey, with kinder blue or purple rings . . . an’ Gawd in heaven—that haff face on top! . . .”
      This final memory, whatever it was, proved too much for poor Curtis; and he collapsed completely before he could say more. Fred Farr and Will Hutchins carried him to the roadside and laid him on the damp grass. Henry Wheeler, trembling, turned the rescued telescope on the mountain to see what he might. Through the lenses were discernible three tiny figures, apparently running toward the summit as fast as the steep incline allowed. Only these—nothing more. Then everyone noticed a strangely unseasonable noise in the deep valley behind, and even in the underbrush of Sentinel Hill itself. It was the piping of unnumbered whippoorwills, and in their shrill chorus there seemed to lurk a note of tense and evil expectancy.
      Earl Sawyer now took the telescope and reported the three figures as standing on the topmost ridge, virtually level with the altar-stone but at a considerable distance from it. One figure, he said, seemed to be raising its hands above its head at rhythmic intervals; and as Sawyer mentioned the circumstance the crowd seemed to hear a faint, half-musical sound from the distance, as if a loud chant were accompanying the gestures. The weird silhouette on that remote peak must have been a spectacle of infinite grotesqueness and impressiveness, but no observer was in a mood for aesthetic appreciation. “I guess he’s sayin’ the spell,” whispered Wheeler as he snatched back the telescope. The whippoorwills were piping wildly, and in a singularly curious irregular rhythm quite unlike that of the visible ritual.
      Suddenly the sunshine seemed to lessen without the intervention of any discernible cloud. It was a very peculiar phenomenon, and was plainly marked by all. A rumbling sound seemed brewing beneath the hills, mixed strangely with a concordant rumbling which clearly came from the sky. Lightning flashed aloft, and the wondering crowd looked in vain for the portents of storm. The chanting of the men from Arkham now became unmistakable, and Wheeler saw through the glass that they were all raising their arms in the rhythmic incantation. From some farmhouse far away came the frantic barking of dogs.
      The change in the quality of the daylight increased, and the crowd gazed about the horizon in wonder. A purplish darkness, born of nothing more than a spectral deepening of the sky’s blue, pressed down upon the rumbling hills. Then the lightning flashed again, somewhat brighter than before, and the crowd fancied that it had shewed a certain mistiness around the altar-stone on the distant height. No one, however, had been using the telescope at that instant. The whippoorwills continued their irregular pulsation, and the men of Dunwich braced themselves tensely against some imponderable menace with which the atmosphere seemed surcharged.
      Without warning came those deep, cracked, raucous vocal sounds which will never leave the memory of the stricken group who heard them. Not from any human throat were they born, for the organs of man can yield no such acoustic perversions. Rather would one have said they came from the pit itself, had not their source been so unmistakably the altar-stone on the peak. It is almost erroneous to call them sounds at all, since so much of their ghastly, infra-bass timbre spoke to dim seats of consciousness and terror far subtler than the ear; yet one must do so, since their form was indisputably though vaguely that of half-articulate words. They were loud—loud as the rumblings and the thunder above which they echoed—yet did they come from no visible being. And because imagination might suggest a conjectural source in the world of non-visible beings, the huddled crowd at the mountain’s base huddled still closer, and winced as if in expectation of a blow.
      “Ygnaiih . . . ygnaiih . . . thflthkh’ngha . . . Yog-Sothoth . . .” rang the hideous croaking out of space. “Y’bthnk . . . h’ehye—n’grkdl’lh. . . .”
      The speaking impulse seemed to falter here, as if some frightful psychic struggle were going on. Henry Wheeler strained his eye at the telescope, but saw only the three grotesquely silhouetted human figures on the peak, all moving their arms furiously in strange gestures as their incantation drew near its culmination. From what black wells of Acherontic fear or feeling, from what unplumbed gulfs of extra-cosmic consciousness or obscure, long-latent heredity, were those half-articulate thunder-croakings drawn? Presently they began to gather renewed force and coherence as they grew in stark, utter, ultimate frenzy.
      “Eh-ya-ya-ya-yahaah—e’yayayayaaaa . . . ngh’aaaaa . . . ngh’aaaa . . . h’yuh . . . h’yuh . . . HELP! HELP! . . . ff—ff—ff—FATHER! FATHER! YOG-SOTHOTH! . . .”
      But that was all. The pallid group in the road, still reeling at the indisputably English syllables that had poured thickly and thunderously down from the frantic vacancy beside that shocking altar-stone, were never to hear such syllables again. Instead, they jumped violently at the terrific report which seemed to rend the hills; the deafening, cataclysmic peal whose source, be it inner earth or sky, no hearer was ever able to place. A single lightning-bolt shot from the purple zenith to the altar-stone, and a great tidal wave of viewless force and indescribable stench swept down from the hill to all the countryside. Trees, grass, and underbrush were whipped into a fury; and the frightened crowd at the mountain’s base, weakened by the lethal foetor that seemed about to asphyxiate them, were almost hurled off their feet. Dogs howled from the distance, green grass and foliage wilted to a curious, sickly yellow-grey, and over field and forest were scattered the bodies of dead whippoorwills.
      The stench left quickly, but the vegetation never came right again. To this day there is something queer and unholy about the growths on and around that fearsome hill. Curtis Whateley was only just regaining consciousness when the Arkham men came slowly down the mountain in the beams of a sunlight once more brilliant and untainted. They were grave and quiet, and seemed shaken by memories and reflections even more terrible than those which had reduced the group of natives to a state of cowed quivering. In reply to a jumble of questions they only shook their heads and reaffirmed one vital fact.
      “The thing has gone forever,” Armitage said. “It has been split up into what it was originally made of, and can never exist again. It was an impossibility in a normal world. Only the least fraction was really matter in any sense we know. It was like its father—and most of it has gone back to him in some vague realm or dimension outside our material universe; some vague abyss out of which only the most accursed rites of human blasphemy could ever have called him for a moment on the hills.”
      There was a brief silence, and in that pause the scattered senses of poor Curtis Whateley began to knit back into a sort of continuity; so that he put his hands to his head with a moan. Memory seemed to pick itself up where it had left off, and the horror of the sight that had prostrated him burst in upon him again.
      “Oh, oh, my Gawd, that haff face—that haff face on top of it . . . that face with the red eyes an’ crinkly albino hair, an’ no chin, like the Whateleys . . . It was a octopus, centipede, spider kind o’ thing, but they was a haff-shaped man’s face on top of it, an’ it looked like Wizard Whateley’s, only it was yards an’ yards acrost. . . .”
      He paused exhausted, as the whole group of natives stared in a bewilderment not quite crystallised into fresh terror. Only old Zebulon Whateley, who wanderingly remembered ancient things but who had been silent heretofore, spoke aloud.
      “Fifteen year’ gone,” he rambled, “I heerd Ol’ Whateley say as haow some day we’d hear a child o’ Lavinny’s a-callin’ its father’s name on the top o’ Sentinel Hill. . . .”
      But Joe Osborn interrupted him to question the Arkham men anew.
      “What was it anyhaow, an’ haowever did young Wizard Whateley call it aout o’ the air it come from?”
      Armitage chose his words very carefully.
      “It was—well, it was mostly a kind of force that doesn’t belong in our part of space; a kind of force that acts and grows and shapes itself by other laws than those of our sort of Nature. We have no business calling in such things from outside, and only very wicked people and very wicked cults ever try to. There was some of it in Wilbur Whateley himself—enough to make a devil and a precocious monster of him, and to make his passing out a pretty terrible sight. I’m going to burn his accursed diary, and if you men are wise you’ll dynamite that altar-stone up there, and pull down all the rings of standing stones on the other hills. Things like that brought down the beings those Whateleys were so fond of—the beings they were going to let in tangibly to wipe out the human race and drag the earth off to some nameless place for some nameless purpose.
      “But as to this thing we’ve just sent back—the Whateleys raised it for a terrible part in the doings that were to come. It grew fast and big from the same reason that Wilbur grew fast and big—but it beat him because it had a greater share of the outsideness in it. You needn’t ask how Wilbur called it out of the air. He didn’t call it out. It was his twin brother, but it looked more like the father than he did.”
",True
"The Great Arising was far worse than anyone could have imagined, how can one comprehend the forces that can wrench an entire continent from deep beneath the murky abyss until it's twisted green-black spires towered over even the highest of mountains known to man? When R'yleh arose, millions returned to life, but billions of others died. The geologic upheavals, the shifting of plates swallowed whole countries and ground mighty cities to dust. Tidal waves swept hundreds of miles inland, wiping away much of the world as if it had never existed. Those who survived were in chaos, of the major world powers, only Russia retained some capability to strike back, and a hail of nuclear warheads struck the mighty walls of R'yleh, accomplishing nothing but achieving Great Cthulhu's disfavor, and Moscow was struck with such force by the mighty priest's weapons that an inland sea now sits where one of man's greatest super-powers once stood.
America fared no better, the entire west coast collapsed beneath an earthquake of unthinkable magnitude, from California to Mississippi river, the east coast was left in ruins by what later scholars would term a ""worldquake"" . The shattered survivors, staring into the dust filled sky, watched as great, bloated creatures with dragon's bodies and tentacled faces swarmed across the earth, eager to reclaim their world. Of course, there was resistance, in the early years, men struck out at the Star Spawn with every weapon at their disposal, and always the result was the same, the Star Spawn could not be injured, as they existed in multiple dimensions at once. Cthulhu's other servants, however, were more vulnerable. Human cultists could be easily killed, and the amphibious Deep Ones, though hardier than men, were only flesh and blood. Man soon learned, however, that such small victories brought attention and terrible reprisal, so much so that humanity finally ceased to fight, struggling to simply survive beneath the feet of a race that barely even noticed their very existence.
In truth, Cthulhu was not malevolent, simply amoral, beyond human concerns and desires. He neither desired nor caused most of the devastation wrecked upon humanity by the Rise of R'lyeh. Had he control over R'lyeh's rising and falling, it would never have sunken to begin with. The sidereal clockworks governed R'lyeh and it's inhabitants. When the stars were 'wrong' they had to sleep, when the stars were 'right', they wee free to walk and fly and crawl. It was that simple. Humanity had suffered the simple misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, nothing more. Those that fought Great Cthulhu and his kin were minor irritants at best, his worshipers, useful beasts, of a little more import than Shoggoths, and a little less than The Brood of Dagon. The rest, simply another breed of animal that had flourished during his long sleep. Insignificant creatures which could be used to further his grand designs. Bizarrely, despite this view of humanity, Great Cthulhu had several children by human, or once human, mates, via some of his more humanoid avatars, of course. The children of these unions were known as Half-Bloods.
This was fortunate, in many ways, for mankind. Great Cthulhu and his minions saw humans as useful pawns, if they saw them at all, so mankind was able to regroup into a primitive society, surviving under the radar. The Star Spawn rarely noticed the affairs of men, but the Half-Bloods did. The Half-Bloods, more often than not, hated their human side, feeling the need to be excessively cruel and brutal toward the people whose blood they so despised within their own veins. Some, however, were kindly disposed toward mankind...
Torren-Wraeth was the son of an avatar of Great Cthulhu and Te'ree, an outcast woman of the Rapa Nui people, born on the island of the same name, which the Europeans would later re-name 'Easter Island'. In form and mind he took more after his mother's people than his father's. In many ways, he was attractive, even beautiful by human standards, though his striking Polynesian features and lithe swimmer's build were offset by a eight small tendrils, three on each side of his lower jaw and two on his chin, his skin was emerald green rather than his mother's warm brown, his almond eyes yellow and cat-like, and slender, bat-like wings that spread from his shoulders. His straight black hair hung long and loose around his pointed ears, though occasionally he would braid it, for special occasions.
He did not hate his human side, rather, he embraced it. His name, given by his father, loosely translated as 'Spirit of the Raging Waters', but his personality was far different, though his mother's people were fierce warriors and his father's, cold, calculating and unfeeling, Torren-Wraeth was gentle. He befriended humans, or tried to, both before and after the Rise of R'lyeh. Te'ree still lived, she had been transformed into something more than human, but less than Star-Spawn, another of his father's many concubines.
As a Half-Blood Torren-Wraeth possessed abilities his True-Blood brethren lacked, while they could only communicate with human minds in sleep, Torren-Wraeth could communicate mentally with humans sleeping or awake, and, unlike his kin, he possessed vocal chords capable of actual human conversation. This, combined with his attractive appearance and gentle manner, made him a frequent messenger between his father and the humans who worshiped him. The Elder Sign, bane of his father and those like him, even other Half-Bloods, held no power over Torren-Wraeth. He did not know if this was a sign of favor from the Elder Gods who'd crafted that mystical defense, or due to some innate part of his human nature.
Rapa Nui... The people had all but died out long before the rise of R'lyeh, a combination of factors had led to their demise, systematic deforestation, a genocidal internecine war, followed by starvation. The final nail in the coffin of the Rapa Nui was the arrival of the Europeans in 1722, who brought with them disease, mistreatment and slavery. Torren-Wraeth had wanted to help them, even though they had rejected his mother, rejected him... He had implored his father to intervene, but to no avail. They were not servants of Cthulhu... Torren-Wraeth had never truly forgiven his father...
The island itself, with it's famous Moai statues, now rested in a low valley on the Southwestern portion of R'lyeh, if such directions could be applied to the non-euclidean, extra-dimensional hyper-geometry of the dark city. It's few inhabitants, mostly descended of mixed Rapa Nui and European blood, now lived literally in the shadows of R'lyeh . Torren-Wraeth visited often, protecting his mother's people. He erected again the fallen Moai, many toppled by the Rapa Nui themselves during and after their horrific civil war, moving tons of stone with his bare hands. It was important to him, so much human blood, sweat and tears had gone into the making of the Moai, they symbolized the pride of a people, his people.
Torren-Wraeth flapped his leathery wings lazily, mainly gliding along the strong winds that whipped through the black city whose structures loomed higher than the eye could see. Occasionally one of his massive half-siblings would glide by, surprisingly graceful for their incredible size, or stare impassively out from the portals of their stone domiciles. He knew they neither loved nor hated him, they merely acknowledged his existence even as they acknowledged their own. A cold, unfeeling people, the Cthuli, H.G. Wells' description of his Martian 'Minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic' aptly fit the Star Spawn . Far below him, Torren-Wraeth could see the slithering shapes of near-mindless Shoggoths, and he strained to see if, by chance, a Deep One, a Gyo-Jin, as his dearest friend had called them, lurked below. At least they had some feelings akin to those of humanity. He saw none. He was utterly alone in a city of millions.
Then the loneliness, the aching struck at his heart. Japan was gone, destroyed in the tectonic cataclysm of The Arising. Though Rapa Nui was his birthplace, his heart had been in Japan. Many years ago, his father had sent him to that land to forge an alliance with the Emperor. The alliance had been refused, but while in Japan he had met Goro. Goro had been assigned as his personal servant during his stay, and the two had become fast-friends, once the seemingly insurmountable barriers of 'class' were broken. He had healed Goro's troubled mind, entering his dreams, soothing his nightmares. Goro had lived a life of suffering and loss, and his nights were filled with terrible nightmares and even more terrible realities, something that touched Torren-Wraeth's heart. For the first time, he truly felt human suffering, he truly understood that side of himself, all the hopes and fears and pains... Such pain...
When he left Japan, he took Goro with him. They traveled the world for over 200 years, Torren-Wraeth drawing on his father's power to keep Goro young and healthy. They truly cared for each other, like brothers born. Torren-Wraeth even allowed Goro to call him Torren-kun, no one, other than his mother, could have referred to Torren-Wraeth like that. But Goro was different... He would even have accepted Torren-chan, though Goro never could shake off his shackles of low-self esteem to be so familiar with the son of Kami... He'd never truly understood, Torren-Wraeth needed Goro far more than Goro needed him. Goro made him feel... Human...
He'd truly loved him, not in the way of ... Shonen-Ai, was it called? Even if Torren-Wraeth had been so inclined, Goro had already suffered far too much of that kind of 'love'. It was difficult for Torren-Wraeth to describe in the terms of either of his parent's tongues, a blending of souls, perhaps? He was a companion, a friend to whom he could open up his innermost heart without fear, and he strove to repay such care in kind. But time takes it's toll, and Goro simply began to lose interest in this life, he yearned to be reunited with his long-dead family, and, finally, Torren-Wraeth let him go. He visited him often, watching in his ageless agony as Goro raised a family, grew old, and finally died. Death, even Half-Bloods had little concept of death, such loss was unknown to his father's people. He had experienced loss for the first time in his young life, and this foreign agony crushed him. The pain he felt had never truly gone away, it had left a gaping hole in his soul... A void as deep and dark as the gulf between worlds. He had wept and raged and screamed to the heavens, angry at himself for letting Goro die, angry at Goro for wanting to live as a normal man, for wanting to die. But he came to accept that forcing immortality upon Goro would have been cruel, forcing him to live a life he no longer wanted just for his own sake would have been selfish. He had finally come to peace with himself,but God, did he miss him...
Goro's descendants were safe, though, even if Japan was gone, Torren-Wraeth had saved them, guiding them for decades, preparing them the best he could. He finally took them to the relative safety of Canada as the end became certain, gave them the signs and words to ward off any of his kin who might do them harm. It was the best he could do, under the circumstances.
The jumbled spires of R'lyeh fell away, opening onto a gloomy sea. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. Africa lay ahead, just a short jaunt on his powerful wings. The survival of Africa was almost as miraculous as the survival of Australia (which was directly adjacent to R'yleh), buffeted by tsunamis and earthquakes, rent and torn almost beyond recognition, but still there.
He turned to look back, and the greenish-black stone of R'lyeh blocked his view for as far as he could see, blotting out horizon and sky with it's incredible bulk. It was unnatural, in more ways than one, R'lyeh was less a continent than a great, graven image to Great Cthulhu and to his god, Yog-Sothoth, The Key and The Gate. Torren-Wraeth knew that, someday, R'lyeh would simply fade away from it's earthly presence and re-appear on some other, more desirable world. They were, after all, only temporary residents on this planet, R'lyeh was little more than a great city-engine to leech all it could from earth before leaving for greener pastures in an endless, soulless cycle of domination and devastation. He hoped silently that humanity would live to see that day when Great Cthulhu and his hordes left their world forever. He often wondered, if, when that day came, he would go with them...
But he knew the answer to that. He would go. He had to go. The humans had a saying, at least before the Great Arising ""Hell is other people"", but they were wrong, oh so wrong. Hell is being alone...
","Joseph Clayton watched from his seat on the center aisle as Pete Tallier finished his act. The young man had performed a folk-dance from his ancestral Quebec, a homeland his family had left more than a century ago for jobs in the New England furniture industry. He himself had finished his act more than an hour ago, having opted for a simple folk dance and traditional Norman costume with a top hat. Of course, using a hat-rack instead of a dancing partner had been a bit... unusual; with Marie being so involved in her own routine, he had had to make do with what he could get.
But now, as Joseph finished clapping in approval of the previous act, he realized that his girlfriend was due to come on. What would actually happen was a complete mystery to Joseph; Marie had kept a tight lid on her act by practicing at home and while she had spent much less time with him than normal, she had stressed how important this was for her. So, respecting her wishes, he'd kept his distance and wished her luck. Now, with his parents sitting beside him, the Trinhs just across the aisle and after weeks of mystery, he was finally about to discover what the big secret was.
The male student in charge of the event came forward after Tallier left the stage, dressed in traditional Greek costume. ""Next up is Marie Trinh, who will be performing a traditional 'journey rite in two parts' from the Annamite Mountains of Vietnam and Laos. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you 'The Stork Dance'!"" He exited downstage right as the lights dimmed even further than they had, the only illumination the bright center of the spotlight focused on the place he had been. Slowly, almost dramatically, the spotlight edged back towards the rear wall until it revealed a lone figure wrapped in a white cloak, face obscured by something.
Utter silence pervaded the auditorium before the sound system gave off the squeal of a needle scratching on a record and the sounds of soft, high flutes began wafting upon the air. It was then that the figure started walking forward on bare feet, segmented anklets of carved jade just visible below the hem of the long, black skirt while the white cloak draped over the arms and... it almost looked like some sort of hat or strange mask was concealing the figure's head. Suddenly, pipes of a lower pitch, possibly oboes, started playing a mournful tune and the figure stopped suddenly, lifting it's head to face the crowd.
A spoonbill... with a black beak. So that was what that big fuss with the paper-mache was about.
The dance was in two parts. The first was a mournful, melancholy arrangement that supposedly was intended for farewell ceremonies. Zithers, oboes, various other instruments of the right mood and the creaky, brittle, almost sad songs of old women set the tone for the dance, a carefully choreographed routine that either imitated the intricate placement of a wading birds steps or imitated the slow soaring of those same birds. This was the Song of Departure. The second part, that of Arrival, was more...upbeat in its cadence. After the record was flipped, the plucking of lutes and brighter zithers, the delicate clanging of some sort of bells, jollier wind instruments and the celebratory singing of young women replaced the melancholy mood of earlier. The dancers steps also changed, with sudden, sprightly movements becoming the norm as imitations of courtship displays and feeding were performed.
Throughout the dance, the audience had been enraptured by what was happening onstage. While Joseph was certainly enjoying his girlfriends act, he was not so enraptured that he failed to notice that several very strange things were happening in the darkened theater. The first change he noticed was the background odor. Slowly, over the course of the act, the smell in the theater had changed from the dry, dusty smell of upholstery and the hot metal of lighting equipment to... well, there was river mud, water thick with life, plants growing in the sun and warm wind. It wasn't a bad smell, but there was no real way that it could be coming from anywhere in the building.
Other strange things were... shapes in the darkness. During the first part of the dance Joseph could have sworn that he glimpsed shadowy shapes moving in the aisle beside him, shapes that almost looked like... wading birds. During the second act, he could almost imagine that the silvery shapes of gliding birds were being outlined by the residual glare from the spotlight, though that could easily be passed off as wafting dust.
Except that there wasn't that much dust in the theater.
Thirdly, and much less unusually, an elderly man with thinning, almost white curly hair, wire rim spectacles and a short beard was watching the performance with interest, almost... studying it. Joseph had never seen him in the town before, so who was he and why was he here?
And had he or anyone else seen the apparitions?
When the dance was done and Marie (who had revealed herself at the end of the dance by taking off her headdress and taking a bow) had left the stage, Joseph kept thinking on that thought during the remaining acts. The smell had faded and gone, the shadows and shapes were no longer there but the mere hint of their possibility shook him. He was a person of science, of logic, of well-produced nature documentaries; in the real world, things like this did not happen outside the heads of crazy people.
However... the very thought of the ghostly shapes thrilled Joseph, filled him with fantastic wonders and terrors not felt since he was a boy of five. And, thought the young man, it did not truly matter if it was wonderful or terrible, or if Marie could control or even knew about this sort of stuff. All that truly mattered was that... well, at the level of base wonderment, the entire experience was remarkably exciting.
Sinister? Maybe. Normal? Not in the least. But very definitely exciting.
But... maybe it would be best not to mention it until Marie brought it up.
Later
After the show, as students were putting away their costumes and props and donning their late-autumn outerwear, Joseph approached his girlfriend who, with dress, cloak and headpiece in a garment bag, was heading out the door after her parents. ""Hey, Marie... about what you did on stage tonight?""
""Yes?"" Questioned Marie as she turned towards Joseph. As a courtesy, he would never mention it but he could tell that something was weighing on her mind. The impression that she was on the very edge of flight made it seem that, perhaps, she was aware that strange things had happened.
Strange things... but not necessarily bad things.
""I just have to say that you really hit a crowd pleaser tonight. I don't think any of the other acts got as much applause as yours did."" With that, Joseph saw Marie's face lighten from the mask of apprehension that had been there into a gratified smile.
""Thanks. You wouldn't believe how grueling the practicing was and then the costume and making all those fake pendants and charms... after all that, I was hoping it would get a good reception."" With that, she turned back and began walking out into the early night air, over to the parking space where her parents had parked their combination commercial van and personal conveyance.
Joseph had actively resisted losing himself in the weirdness that had struck him in the auditorium. However, he could never resist losing himself in his girlfriends smile.
Perhaps because one was familiar and one was a bit... odd.
Running to catch up with Marie, he wanted to ask his girlfriend something. ""On a different subject, I was wondering if you were doing anything tonight. Maybe we could catch a movie, go bowling, something like that.""
""I'd like to but I really can't."" They were almost at the Trinhs van when Marie leaned in close to Joseph to whisper conspiratorially. ""Dad got a call from the cops when the Polish guy was on. They arrested someone vandalizing the front of the shop, and we'll probably be busy all night with statements, forms, the insurance guys and all the other police stuff.""
Though he was disappointed, Joseph Clayton knew that something like this couldn't be delayed. ""Alright, maybe I'll see you tomorrow. Goodnight."" After getting an answer back in the form of a goodnight kiss (which still made him blush despite himself), he watched Marie depart toward her parents vehicle. The question came back to him, after all these weeks, of who in this town could be angry or stupid enough to be implicated in the vandalism spree that had plagued the Leng Trinh restaurant.
At Roughly the Same time, Glaston Police Station
As Constance Blake entered the interview room, she reflected on the fact that it had to have been a pretty slow couple of weeks when they pulled the Chief of Police out of her office for a break in a vandalism case. On the other hand, she'd finished the normal paperwork an hour before and had been flipping through a fishing catalog with the squawk-box on beside her when Lt. Anderson had come in. He'd told her that they'd arrested some punk kid trying to bust up the Trinh's restaurant, the culmination in a series of events that had been the height of municipal intrigue for weeks. As she got a look at the culprit, she was a little surprised.
""Punk kid"" indeed.
As she sat down across from suspect, Chief Blake tapped the case file, a few reports inside a paper folder, against the table. ""You know,"" she began dryly, ""we get quite a few idiots through here: gang members, druggies, people who've taken offense one to many times. We just haven't ever got one who was this high up in the High School Math Club."" She dropped the file in front of Than Quang Due, a young man who, besides having a Sino-typical naming structure, was short, thin, bespectacled and looked amazingly like a 12-year old for someone who was actually 15. He and his parents had moved here the the summer and had set up a jewelery shop a few blocks over from Leng Trinh. Up until this, Due had never been anything but a model student, a respectful son and a bright (if somewhat timid) young man. ""So, why'd you do it?""
Due looked at the middle aged woman with a gaze that mixed deference with surprise in the face of seeming insanity. ""Because no one else would! Because this town has tolerated... people like that for so long."". There was a touch of bitterness in his voice but also surprise. Were these people so stupid that they didn't recognize a threat in their very midst?
""Look, I don't know what's going on, but I know that it stops right now."" Constance stood up and, even at 5'1"", the sight of her leaning over the suspect should have been intimidating to the boy. But then Blake began asking almost rhetorical questions ""What is this about anyway? You ask out their daughter and get refused? Well, if that is it, this was between you, her and the Clayton boy. No need to get mad at her parents."" It was then that another idea came to the Chief of Police. ""Or is this because they're Hmong?""
At this, Due's face carried a look of utter incomprehension.
""Look, I realize that there's some bad blood carried over from the War. But you have to realize something too: this is America, the land of opportunity, of freedom. This is the land where people should be able to get away from the madness, where every little feud and squabble is best left back in the old country. Now, your parents and the Trinhs are going to be here soon and if you're smart, you will apologize; Thuc Van and Thanh Thi are good people, they're liked in the community and as sure as God made little green apples, they didn't deserve any of this.""
It was then that realization dawned on Due. The people who had informed him and sent him on this mission had mandated secrecy... but apparently he and they weren't the only ones good at keeping secrets.
With a look that held a touch of arrogance, a smidgen of fascinated bewilderment and, especially in his grin, the hint that he was not totally mentally hinged, Due asked a question that infuriated Constance Blake. ""You have no idea what they are, do you?""
",False
"Hanoi, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
June 24, 2011.
""Hey, we're here. Get up if you don't want to wake up in Hue!""
Joseph Clayton was shaken awake by the hand of one of his classmates on his shoulder. He was sitting in the back of a taxi van... the only one left sitting, actually, as the others had already disembarked to enter the government office they were parked in front of.
Which probably meant that he was left to pay the fare.
After he payed (as seemed to be his lot on this trip), he followed his classmates and his professor into the government office where they hoped to finally receive their travel permits. He hadn't gotten much of sleep on the plane; a mixture of excitement in the face of overseas travel and sheer jet-lag had conspired to leave him weary and light headed until he got a few hours sleep, which the taxi ride had partially afforded him.
And in that sleep...
The dream had come as a stark, clear memory. When Marie had said that she wasn't going to join him at the Miskatonic campus in Arkham for what would be their first year of university, he had been devastated. His first questions, rushed and frantic, had been about the cause of such a change. She certainly had the SAT score to qualify and student debt could be handled with relative ease. Had she decided to forgo post-secondary to concentrate on her stake in the restaurant? Had financial problems struck and prevented admissions from being paid?
Was it something about him?
Her answers, far more controlled than his frenzied speculation, had all been in the negative. Her SAT scores were good, student loans were still open and she still intended to go for a degree in Biology at Miskatonic. It was just... after she'd gotten that phonograph from her parents' home village, the repayment had been a promise to come and spend a year back in the ""Old Country"" as soon as she could. It would only be for a year and then she would return, ready for university and all accompaniments.
That had been very nearly one year before. She had promised him that she would be coming back in the summer of 2011... but after she had arrived in Vietnam, all contact had stopped cold. Her parents, when asked about her condition, always responded with affirmations that she would return and that she was fine... but as winter wore onto spring, subtle hints of doubt and worry had crept into their voices. Had they even been receiving any news from their daughter and if not, then why not? Had something gone terribly wrong?
As it happened, more baffling events awaited inside.
""What do you mean, restricted?"" Joseph asked the Communist Party bureaucrat sitting across the desk from him. Of course, due to the facts that first, said bureaucrat was a government employee and second, they were not alone in the room, Joseph had been careful not to sound too brunt in his tone. A trung sior Sergeant, wearing the forest green uniform of the Vietnam Border Defence Force (VPA), stood by the door of the office, both watching and guarding.
Relieved at being able to shed his stilted English after Joseph exhibited a decent grasp of the Vietnamese language, the bureaucrat put forth what he knew of the situation. ""Civilian access is almost completely denied inside the area you requested. To be honest, that section of the border has been troublesome ever since the war. We get reports of smugglers, poachers, bandits, H'mong insurgents... every type of violent counter-revolutionary you can think of, this region seems to have it. The local Bru farmers aren't much help, but they generally don't bother others and seem to accept the military presence we keep there."" The bureaucrat shifted his gaze from Joseph to Professor Neville Andover, the leader of this particular expedition. ""I'm sorry, but there's nothing that can be done without high level authorization.""
As a response to this, Neville Andover did not get upset. He did not resign himself to failure. He did not even try to ask if there was any other avenue of entry or way to access the information he needed. He just donned an odd, amused smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling behind his wire rim glasses. ""I assume that General Vo is still the Secretary for the Border Forces?"" He asked, almost distractedly. When the official answered yes, Professor Andover reached into the inside of his light cotton jacket and pulled out a small, metal case. From this case, he removed a single paper card of purest black, embossed with an emerald green ""Delta"" symbol and a capital ""Y"" of gold in the center of that hollow triangle. ""I have been in contact with Comrade Vo for the last six months, planning this expedition as an act of cooperation between our two governments and as a boon for my University. He knows that card; show it or describe it to him... you maywant to run it by General Tran as well. Either way, they will give you the answer you need.""
As the bureaucrat took the card and then as the Border Defense sergeant took it from him and headed out of the room, Joesph wondered about his professor and the oddities that surrounded him. The first time he had ever seen the Professor, it had been in his High School Auditorium as Marie had performed the Stork Dance... and Joseph had noticed strange things. In their senior year of High School, both he and Marie had received reference letters to Miskatonic University in Arkham, a town in Essex county. When he had arrived at Miskatonic (without Marie), he had been shocked that the professor for his Cultural Anthropology class was not only the one who had given him his reference but was also the man who had he had seen three years before.
And then there were his classmates, three of whom had also come on this expedition. Many of them had received similar letters from Prof. Andover and most of those, though not relaying specifics, had said that they had found the circumstances equally strange. Two who had gotten references were on this very trip with them. The first was Tracy Williams from the farm country of Northwest Virginia, a girl with blond hair quite a few shades lighter than Josephs own brassy brown and the class Nippon-Nut, being both obsessed with Anime and Manga as well as being Japanese-proficient. The second was Albert Noyes, a young man who has part white, part black and a little Algonquin-Indian from a small hamlet in southern Vermont. His specialties were technology, math and Mandarin Chinese. The third member of retinue was a young man named Malone who... frankly, was a mystery to the entire class. However, he had volunteered for this trip and his grades had been excellent so his place on the roster had been assured.
But there was still a nagging question at the back of his mind: why? Why had they received offers to go to an obscure if admittedly exceptional regional university when the big names had all passed them over? Why had they been gathered from all across the United States by a single professor? And why, it seemed, did it feel like there was such a big connection between the missing member of Dr. Andovers ""collection"" and the reason behind this expedition?
Why did it feel as if Marie was somehow connected to this?
Eventually, the sergeant came back and informed the bureaucrat of General Vo's express permission for the Professor and his students to enter the exclusion zone as well as General Tran's confirmation, before handing the card back to Neville Andover. Joseph knew that academics could sometimes have friends in high and unusual places, but counting on ... no, expecting the approval of not just one, but two ranking Generals in a non-allied nation? This seemed crazy, certifiably insane even.
But then, so did spectral storks and spoonbills.
Northernmost Quang Binh Province, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
June 29, 2011
Despite the calm look on the professors face, something about the current situation made Joseph Clayton distinctly ill at ease.
They had spent the last two days trudging up into the Annamite mountains after leaving the fertile coastal plain. At the last village with road access, they had ditched their vehicles and backpacked up the ridges and trails, counting on a guide from the local Bru people to lead them to... whatever Prof. Andover was looking for. The fact that the guide was now legging it quite quickly back down the misty path told Joseph that something had either gone incredibly wrong or incredibly right.
Now, Neville Andover was chanting, seemingly trying to communicate with something deep in the thick underbrush on either side of the worn, overgrown gully that had been called a trail. The language was almost intellig ible to Joseph, being a form of Mon-Khmer linked to the classical Vietnamese he had studied, perhaps with a few hints of Muong intermixed. However, the syntax and grammer were archaic to say the least. From some of the words used it even seemed to be achingly familiar, almost as if...
With a sudden realization of shock and the smell of grilled pork and Bac Bon Dzhow a memory in his nostrils, Joseph realized where he had encountered this form of Vietic before.
But the shocks were not over.
Spun around by Albert Noyes to see something, Joseph gazed upward to see a human figure standing upon the high bank, glancing down at them with hard, measuring eyes. Undoubtedly masculine, the figure was of a man of slightly darker skin than the farmers of the coast (though the features were similar) and of greater height than either them or the native Bru. Clothed only in a white cotton kilt with geometric designs in black and a leather girdle, this man carried a white flatbow decorated with bands of green, blue and red while a bronze dagger rested at his hip. His head was shaved of all hair, and black designs were tattooed from the crown of the scalp to the jawline, with more tattoos covering his arms, chest and lower legs.
The fact that an arrow was nocked in the string of his bow put the four young people on edge, with Malone and Joesph himself tightening the grips on the hilts of their machetes in anticipation of a hopeless fight. More men in similar dress and tattoos, some with bronze slashing swords, some with bronze-headed spears and others with flatbows, appeared out of the forest on either side of them. Now that Joseph could get a better look at them in the dim light filtering down through the forest canopy and the mist, their arm tattoos began looking very similar to those borne by Marie's parents while those on their faces, while different in design, were still similar in form.
All the while, Prof. Andover kept up the low chanting, of which Joseph could pick out individual words: ""friend"", ""gods"", ""village"", ""priest"", ""comrade"" and at least one invocation of Ho Chi Minh among them. To this, these strange men seemed to confer with each other though glances and nods before took one took a short, bamboo tube from his girdle, put one end to his mouth, took a deep breath and blew.
As the silvery-blue powder erupted from the tube, settled on the heads of the trekking academics and they each lost consciousness in turn, Joseph wondered if this could get any worse.
Meanwhile, Spoonbill Village
Tsan Pho Dao had been the Chief Priest of this village for many years, ever since the death of his father in the closing days of the American War. In that span of years, he had seen many futures and advised his people based on those futures. He had called down both ruin and plenty by invoking the power of the gods of his people. He alone, in a feat outside even the power of the hereditary village chiefs, had communicated with the Instrument of their gods, a being possessed of both boundless knowledge and an absolutely rotten temper. He also, most importantly, had an absolutely perfect memory of his entire life... and that of his father, and his father before him.
To be perfectly honest, he held a tremendous amount of power within this village. The ancestor shrines belonged to families while the hunters had their own little shrines up the mountain where midnight rituals were performed to gather poison for the tips of arrows and darts. But those rituals needed to be performed by the minor priests under his command. This temple was the spiritual center of his people for most of the year and the temple with it's darkened wood walls lit only by feeble braziers whose light was twisted by the smoke of rare and powerful incenses, with it's figurines of gods and demons carved from nephrite and jadeite brought from deep below the earth... was his domain. His and no one else'. He divined the future when possible, he performed the rites and as a result, it was he who had taken countless lives in sacrifice over the course of his adulthood: chickens, pigs, goats, buffalo... people.
As he sat at a low table in his private sanctuary, trying to divine some course for a question that had faced him for most of a year, he noticed something. One of the golden discs he used for divination, a coin looted from a Chinese caravan many centuries ago, stood up on its rim and began to roll. Following the curve of failing momentum, the coin finally came to rest at a specific point on the table, a place that held indication of the future.
Visitors... and not the ""ketchup"" kind of visitors.
Several Hours Later, Close to the Laos Border
The answer to Joseph Clayton's earlier question was a definite yes. When he had awoken, he had found his wrists and ankles bound, the bindings looped over a pole carried by two men with him and the other students suspended like deer carcasses. The Professor, on the other hand, had not been bound, but had found transport by sitting in a large basket suspended from one of the poles by a cord, carried by a pair of men. They had been going downhill from the crest of a ridge and were now leaving the forest, coming onto a road. First, they passed under a wooden gate where roosting spoonbills had been carved into the posts and a sun flanked by two dragons had been carved into the beams above the road.
Then Joseph saw where they were headed. A village of perhaps thirty houses was visible in the valley bottom while narrow terraces had been cut into the hills above, green with growing rice. The view quickly vanished as the men began heading into the village itself but sight was soon replaced with sound. The quiet of the forest was supplanted by the cacophony of a hundred sounds: chickens and pigs grunted and clucked as the animals rooted below the houses and around the garbage heaps while odd-looking reddish dogs, lazing in the sun on the porches of the outermost houses, whined in surprise at the new arrivals. The sounds of tools and primitive machinery clunked melodiously. The sounds of people also were audible: talking, laughing, shouting and even a few low notes of women's work songs were possible for Joseph to pick out of the general buzz... a buzz which also included Albert trying to reason with their captors and Tracy displaying an unusually foul mouth toward same.
Soon, people began to notice the men bringing in captives and a few even began to gather along the path as they entered the village, joining their dogs (or Dholes, as they were now identifiable as) who had come to sniff. It was mostly men, older boys and children who came out to watch while the women and the elderly usually went no further than windows and the porches of the stilt-houses that lined the road. Here, even hanging upside down, Joseph could notice a few things about the dress and appearance of the people
Frankly... it was a bit odd.
From what he knew, the Vietnamese national costume (in it's modern form) placed a heavy emphasis on trousers, an item of clothing that he noticed was rather conspicuously absent here. Everyone here seemed to be wearing variations on one basic outfit in either brown or black: knee-length cotton kilts, short-sleeved cotton jackets (mostly with their front fastenings closed) and either rough-woven conical hats or simple cloths tied over their heads. The men's hair appeared to be cut short to the point where one could vaguely make out the tattoos on their scalp while children varied between the same shortness for boys and a single, long braid for the girls.
Eventually they arrived in a great or square before what appeared to be the temple: a ponderous structure of wood and brick perched upon massive stone foundations, it's sloping roofs flaring outward as if to shroud the surrounding houses from the scrutiny of the heavens. Around them, a crowd had gathered on all sides, an air of excitement buzzing in the air. Men exited the house across the square from the temple entrance and despite the calm demeanour of Professor Andover, words began filtering through to Joseph that began sounding more and more disturbing; words like ""kill"", ""sacrifice"" and ""ritual"". But another word came, one that sent darker imaginings and images rambling through his sensation-saturated mind.
The word ""eat"".
""WAIT! STOP!""
Joseph knew those words as well... as well as that voice!
Out of the crowd rushed a figure dressed much like the others: brown kilt and jacket, the latter partially open to reveal a yem undergarment and with a straw hat on her head. As Joseph finally began taking in other details, he noticed the tattooed lines and whimsical designs on her lower legs and arms and on her face, lines and vaguely triangular patterns that almost resembled the features of an orangutan.
Her face... behind all the tattooing, the face of this woman was still as unmistakable to Joseph as the first day they had met in Kindergarten. To this sudden recognition, the young man could only exclaim his surprise as a soothingly familiar name.
""Marie?""
","1945, 10 years after Smift's abduction. Innsmouth
A man was running in a dark town. The chasers were holding torches and pitchforks. ""Go die you human scum!"" one of them growled, the young man was about to fire a pistol to this antagonistic chord when a knife reached the back of this heart. Before he could die he saw these enemies more closely, looking similar to humans, even using casual suits, but this faces were slightly distorted, with a bluish tinge and big eyes. These hands were very close to being webbed. One of them reaches the pockets of the corpse's clothes, finding a diary with a logo in the middle: Miskatonic University.
The next day. at Miskatonic, Massachusetts, Wilhelm Smift was very old, at the age of 68. He was in a bed resting this very frail body. He was accompanied by this young friend Johnathan Clarke. ""My dear friend, due to the fact that I will die, and I never had a family before…I will give to you the weapon that can protect humanity from the unknown. But please, pass some of my blood to you so he can perceive you as a member of my family, also you don't need to worry, my blood is not ill, I figured out that the Infinitely Timed Room makes you die of old age once you exited it, and due to the fact that my wife never could give me a child…and she is deceased, you will be my new successor"" Clarke used a syringe and injected some of the blood of this predecessor into himself. And then Wilhelm Smift died. The young would be teacher found himself sad, he knows that this mentor had told him of the physical god he mastered. But he wanted to learn more about not only physics but the alien technology as well, but he always told him that ""this mind would crack"" but how such an old fellow acquired such knowledge and remained sane? He departed to the basement, he knows that such places are only allowed to certain people, but Smift had told him that if he declared himself this son he would pass. The place was light by a single torch. To find a tall humanoid structure close to him, this shadow taller than any man he has seen. ""So my master had passed away…such a pity, I wanted to serve him more than no one."" The voice was sly, and with a sharp tone. As this mentor said, but right now he sounded…sad? ""He was a great man, and me? Only an fucking killer…heh, it's funny…how the good can die, alone and unnoticed…and they stay dead."" he noticed John ""who we have here?"" he stared at the young man and in turn he noticed the mechanical being before him: this main body was cylindrical and red, with a single crimson cat like eye in the center of this ""head"" this arms have white with red colorations like the rest of this limbs, he had a large rectangular shield in this left arm, a set of three small red pouches and in the right a knife holder and the left a pistol holder, and a white cloth skirt. ""What is doing a brat in my home?"" he tried this best to gather mental strength and answer: ""I am the…son of Wilhelm Smift, he told me you would serve me"" the beast looked at him with this single blood colored eye, ""I can see trough you…and that is true, the Smift blood is in you kid, I mean master"" then the monster grabbed this pistol and started to show it at this server, ""so tell me, what shall I do? I am capable for killing anything"" he young man tried this best to organize this words and asks: ""why do you look different from what my father told me?"" the creature chuckles and says: ""heh, isn't it obvious? I wanted to look different 'cause I don't want to look like the jackasses that wanted me gone. They made this suit look like a fuckin' asylum inmate . I was looking for something that suited me, so I left my dimension for one day. And I saw the perfect one, this one, why do you ask? 'cause I wanted a new look that minds insurrection?"" he pointed this white finger at the young man, that eye…it's just like the devil itself was looking at him. ""And the eye?"" ""Oh…that was my…personal touch"" he started to laugh and this companion started to tremble. ""Don't be afraid kid…I don't bite, for much that I want to."" Azathoth pointed at this ""face"" revealing that he doesn't have a mouth. Then he started to laugh like a maniac. He kid got out of the basement in fear. ""Hey don't get out! I was about to have tell you a great joke! MASTER!""
The next day…""sire, we have bad news, Roy Urkam has…died"" a messenger told to this young chief, ""and who is that man, messenger?"" Clarke asks, ""He was a freelance investigator. He heard that something strange happened in Innsmouth so we sent him there, when I came this corpse was on a stick on the end of the road, when I asked they said: ""just a couple of kids that did it"" it was obvious that was a lie."" The kid was…shocked but after scare from yesterday this was nothing. Suddenly a car was coming to the entrance, the occupants got out, they have guns and their eyes had watered eyes that were slightly out of their sockets. And they forced the main door down, ""thank god there are not students!"" the sire said, Clarke rushed to the basement and yelled the name of this protector and servant. ""INVASORS! COME AND KILL THEM! THEY HAVE GUNS!"" the young man yelled. ""Calm down master, I will go kick their skulls"" he got out of this dark lair and he readied this colt pistol and this knife. ""Come here! I can sense cowardly in this place!"" suddenly a blaze of bullets came from the outside of the campus. ""I think I need a bigger gun"" he turned this back and then a rectangular and red colored heavy machine gun was grabbed from this holster, the weapon was so tall as the cylinder body of this user and it looked different from any gun ever made: it had a slightly bended square in this top. This barrel had holes and this body was metallic instead of wood. Then he got out of the building and he saw these enemies ""Deep ones!"" they started to fire but it was useless, the bullets just bounce this tick metal skin. He started firing and he shot 4, the other ones tried to run to the car. ""NO YOU WON'T!"" Azathoth yelled and he used this incredible strength and stomped the vehicle. ""Now we can start this party!"" the half deep ones tried to counter attack with this pistols but nothing changed. Azathoth grabbed one and crushed this skull with these bare hands, he shot three to death with this colt and machine gun; he blazed 1 to death with a thick cylindrical magenta/red heat ray that emanated from this crimson eye. ""COME ON! GIVE ME A CHALENGE!"" he yelled, and then he realized that only one was left. ""Oh…damn I wanted a massacre. Well my good friend, come here"" but before he can grab this new prisoner a bullet came to this skull, Azathoth saw that 2 more cars came. ""Oh…YES MORE FUN!"" he welcomed this new ""guests"" with this heat ray; a few ones changed their ammo and used armor piercing. The bullets were now making dents in the body of the armored god. But then they started to self-repair. ""YES, this is the real deal!"" he did 4 head shots and destroyed the two cars that came with this heat ray, some of the half fish men tried to enter the house from the back, but they saw with horror a large creature with a vertical mouth and large pink eyes located in both parts of the divided head, he had two right arms fused into one and two left that were identical, with large nails. The main body was shaggy with black and some purple hair. ""What in Dagon's name is that!"" one of them asked before being eaten by the giant. The ex-outer god was enjoying like a maniac that the cars that he fried had some occupants and they got out of them showered in flames ""THAT'S WHAT I CALL EXTRA CRISPY!"" the daemon yelled to this frightened fish enemies. Only 5 were left and they tried to run to the exit, but before that can happen Azathoth flicked this finger and the giant vertical mouth monster appeared and lunged to the remaining ones and eaten them. Only one was left…again. ""Gug, go were you belong"" Azathoth flicked this fingers again and the monstrosity disappeared. ""Thanks CLAXTON, thanks Bertie"" he returned to the university. It had some gun holes but nothing that can be easily repaired.
""Hey master, are you in one piece?"" he asked to the young that was in the ground. He grabbed the shocked boy and handed him to the messenger. Put him in this home. He grabbed the survivor knocked him down with a flick of this finger and put him in the jail of the basement ""Well…that was exiting""
",False
"The world we live in is not as it seems. I, James White, write this document so that others may be made aware of what I have experienced and know of the dangers that lurk beneath our limited perception of ""reality"". Whether you believe me or not, dear reader, is up to you. I only ask that you read what I write with an open mind since I write, not for my own gain, but to warn you of what I can only describe as ""pure evil"".
I had never heard of the ""Cult of Cthulhu"" before I began university in the late summer of 2012. I was only eighteen years old, an atheist, and dogmatically pursued scientific understanding and knowledge. At that time, I was not in the least bit interested in weird cults and other religious movements, which I simply dismissed as primitive superstition. Had I but known what I would encounter, I would have burnt the science textbook, prayed to God for the strength not to crumble into insanity and got as far away from that university as I could!
The strange happenings started less than two months into my first term. I had been put into student accommodation and shared a corridor with four other boys and two girls. I had got to know my flatmates very well until all of a sudden, one of the boys by the name of Jonathan Mears disappeared. This wasn't looked upon as weird at first since Jonathan was the quiet type anyway and often spent long hours alone in his room. The suspicions arose however, when he hadn't shown his face for three days. His absence was brought up one evening as we sat in a communal area.
""He's probably just been very busy lately,"" my best friend, Jacob Shields, said. ""You know Jonathan. When he sets his mind on something, he doesn't stop until he's achieved whatever he's trying to do.""
""Isn't it a bit strange though?"" Annie Roberts, a lovely blonde girl from the room directly across the corridor asked. ""I mean, he's in our corridor and we haven't seen him for ages. Not even in the kitchen or lecture halls.""
""It isn't like him to miss a lecture,"" I agreed. Jacob merely waved these concerns away.
""If we haven't seen him by tomorrow evening, we'll go to the reception and see what's happening,"" he said cheerfully.
But Jonathan didn't show up the following day and, as planned, my entire corridor went to the reception desk to ask if anything had happened to him. The receptionist, an elderly lady, checked through the files on a computer before looking up at us.
""I'm afraid he has left the university,"" she informed us. ""He dropped out four days ago.""
""Well there you go!"" Jacob exclaimed. ""Nothing to worry about!""
But there was something to worry about. Even though I now had every reason to think that Jonathan was fine, I couldn't shake that feeling of foreboding. He had seemed happy in university and was consistently getting high marks so I resolved to check things out for myself.
I waited until 3:00 the following morning, and in the darkness, I tiptoed along the corridor to Jonathan's room. Using a paperclip, I carefully picked the lock on his door and let myself in. I closed the door behind me and switched on the light. The sight that greeted me came as a huge shock. Clothes still lay on the floor, the bed was made, books were still on the shelves and a laptop was still humming gently on the cluttered desk. In short, it looked as though Jonathan was simply out of the room. If he had gone home, why did he leave all his things behind? And if he hadn't, where was he and why did the university records state that he had? Deeply concerned, I left the room and returned to my own. I lay awake in the darkness pondering the thoughts in my head and finally decided that I needed to find out what had happened and that I would do so alone...
","This is based off of real events that have happened to a friend of mine. The impulse Harold has at the beach, the fish, and the dream. Everything else is fictional.
I
Harold Durby has been my friend since the age of six, having met in kindergarten. A non-native to Florida, unlike myself, he came from Massachusetts-though where has always alluded my mother and father since Harold's single mother always changed the subject.
He was a strapping brown haired, blue eyed ball of energy that it was a shock to all that he would befriend me, the class nerd-for at such a young age, I discovered the astounding information that knowledge can give. Yet, we were bound by a shared passion of the ocean. His wide knowledge and love of fish was beyond his years and was always spoken with such passion that it seemed as if he longed to swim beneath the waves forever. And as he grew, it was as if he believed he belonged there more than he did upon land and felt cursed to walk with us humans.
And I found myself feeling the same way. Though it was not put to question until his forties, the first sign should have been gleaned on his nineteenth year.
Walking along the lonely, early morning beach-our routine since starting high school together(though we graduated at this point)-found us gazing upon a lazy, gray sun rising out of the sea weed infested waves. Minor chit-chat and crashing waves pervaded our silence as gulls stretched their wings and took flight when, out of nowhere, Harold stopped in his tracks, head whipping towards the ocean, eyes cloudy and unfocused.
""Harold,"" I called, trying to gain his attention. ""Harold!""
He took a stiff step towards the ocean, then another, his arms out to his side, palms facing forward like the Virgin Mary as his steps increased. I tugged at his sleeve to break this trance that was placed upon him.
We were a good fifteen feet out, the sand beneath us making the cresting waves come up just above his belt, being a couple inches taller than myself, when a whistle blew.
""Get out of the water!"" The lifeguard called from his position on his tower.
I looked away from Harold at that moment to see the purple and red flag with a no swimming sign on it. Harold, having been brought back by the whistle, was the first to move back towards land.
Panting and chilled by the wind blowing across out wet clothing, I attempted to ask my friend what came upon him. Though he was crouched over, hands on knees, I could see on his face a sort of horror and shock that I have not seen on him before.
""Harold,"" I pushed. ""What came over you?""
""You didn't hear it?"" He asked, sounding surprised, covering up his fear.
""Hear what?""
""Then why did you go out with me?""
""I was trying to snap you out of it."" I explained.
""Then you didn't hear it?""
""Hear what?""
He dismissed my question with a shake of his head. ""Forget it, let's just go home.""
I nodded, knowing better than to drop it, but also knowing that Harold would tell me when he's ready.
From then on he went to the beach a few more times, but after those times, it was strictly on the sand and never in the water. His claim was that fish kept bumping into him, which is not too unusual, for I have seen their glistening, silver bodies flash beneath the waves-but they never touched any of us, just Harold. Which made him nervous since he wouldn't hurt a fly on purpose, and the murky water doesn't offer much in the way of spying on them.
II
Many years pass in a blink of an eye and I find myself in an insurance company(1), while Harold is a marine biologist professor at the local University of Central Florida. In our mid-thirties, we find ourselves successful in our occupations, yet not so in our love life-a fact our mothers love to point out. Though not from a lack of trying, both Harold and myself have tried, but my girlfriends do not last long and, for some odd reason, girls seem to find Harold oddly repulsive. A fact I cannot grasp, for he is a handsome gentleman.
But we are content enough with our lives. Though, as was to be expected, since our income was good but not good enough for housing prices, we rented an apartment together.
But that veil was quick to be cast away from our eyes. For Harold, from what I could gather, he had night terrors. Screaming out insane verses in tongues befitting gibberish, yet sounded so calculated, so alien, that it hadn't crossed my mind that it couldn't be actual speech. Which frightened me a great deal.
And I had asked so frequently that it became routine that when he entered the small dining room that he sardonically stated-more than asked-that he had night terrors, of which I would groggily grunt in the affirmative.
Forty reaches us and it's like someone turned the volume off. Harold stopped the night terrors when he reached thirty six and a strange acceptance seemed to be permanently stuck on him, a great contrast to the tired and jumpy Harold that I knew during that time. A Harold who's mother would call begging me to pick him up from work because 'something was off'.
I didn't think much about it. Night terrors can be overcome, much like any phase of human development, that I was happy when this change occurred. Which then brought up an ancient mystery; the city in which he dwelled before coming to Florida.
""Innsmouth,"" He told me one day. ""I'm from Innsmouth, Massachusetts. My mom finally told me.""
""That's nice,"" I told him. ""Any reason she told you this now?""
I did not mean for it to sound so rude, but one has to ask why wait so long to tell your son where it was he grew up. By waiting this long why not simply leaving him in the dark? Though not the best option, it seemed more practical then to tell him now. I was curious as any friend would be, though it made those attempts to find out more about the Durby's past seem asinine.
His face became unreadable, in deep thought, his features seemed almost fish like in the light.
""She said I need to go back. That I need to go back for a while to understand.""
""Understand what?"" Came my obvious question when he trailed off into silence.
""She didn't say.""
""Well, when do you suppose you'll go?""
""This coming week. I know you have vacation time saved up, too. I'd like it if you came with me to see the place of my birth and to figure out what my mother meant.""
I was happy that he would ask. Despite the fact that I never cared about that missing piece of Harold, I found myself curious about it now due to his mother's cryptic words.
III
Our first time on a plane and it was nothing like we expected. We boarded on time, but our plane was held fifteen minutes longer. I'm glad Harold had the window seat for, from what I saw out of it, I would have went into a panic attack. If man were meant to fly he would have wings.
For hours we were stuck up there with minor turbulence, boredom, and anxiety for what we will see once we get off in Boston where we would board a train into Arkham where a cab will need to be hailed for us to proceed into-what the internet called-a dying fishing town. From what we gathered, only a few people still lived there and many of the buildings were run down.
No wonder she left. But we were to go there no matter what. For whatever Ms. Durby meant, it was obvious it was eating away at Harold. But I did not push him for details, history has shown me that he will tell me when he's ready.
The train ride went off without a scene, but in Arkham, when we hailed a cab, the driver got out to open the back, passenger door when he looked at me then Harold.
""Goin' to Innsmouth, eh."" He stated rather than asked.
""Yes,"" Harold asked. ""How did you know?""
He did not answer, merely motioned for us to get in-which we did-and he got back to the front seat where he drove off without another word.
""You look like yer from there."" The driver stated, looking at Harold.
Strange enough, I had not seen the physical changes from my friend. I suppose spending such a time with someone can allow you to not notice a few things. Like his eyes, they were a dull blue now instead of the vibrant orbs they used to be. His face was becoming rounder on the sides, flatter in the front, and red welts were where neck met shoulders.
He never looked that way before, and from what I gather, the people must always look like this. I was confused, but whenever either of us asked him anymore, he would remain silent. Though, when I mentioned that we shall remain there until Friday, he nodded his head and assured us he'd be there.
We reach Innsmouth by six in the afternoon, the sun already set and the dim glow of a crescent moon fills the night sky along with a plethora of stars you couldn't see in the city. In the dark Innsmouth looked like a deserted, ghost town-the houses and shops, as well as the odd church, looked worse for wear, giving the town an elephant graveyard appeal. The hotel our cab was stationed outside looked nice, yet drearily abandoned.
The cab driver then spoke once more to us. ""Please feel free to chose your own rooms. The manager does not reside here anymore. And only two families remain here.""
""Where is he?"" Harold asked. ""And why so few people?""
""Out at sea,"" And with that he got back in and drove back to Arkham.
With a stretch of paranoia, we climbed the steps in a solemn fashion more befitting a funeral procession than a march to your new-though for only a few days-home. The cab driver was correct, the front desk looked as if the manager had not packed up his things and headed out to sea, the only way to tell how long is to dust through layers of dust and cob-webs.
""Do you really suppose it's okay to stay here?"" I asked.
""I don't like it either, but it was unlocked and from what I gather,"" he traced a finger along the banister that was against the far left wall as he ascended the stairs towards the rooms that resided up there. ""He is not coming back. But don't worry, we'll check the log book if we can and give him the correct amount on Friday should he return.""
I follow him up the steps and to the left there's a hallway with doors carved out of it. It's completely made of wood with generic pictures that adorn almost every hotel across the nation. Harold picks the last one on the left, closest to the end-hallway window which, no doubt, gives the hall its light since the lighting fixtures most likely don't work anymore-where as I picked the last on the right, a few feet away from the window.
Our rooms were like a carbon copy from one another; a twin bed, whose head rested against the right wall, across from that the window and a bedside table and another window facing the bed with a door that conjoins rooms to the left of the bed. Throwing my satchel down, I laid on the bed, my conscious still screaming this was wrong, but the very powerful need of sleep overpowered that urge and soon I found myself asleep.
The morning came upon us almost too soon, but with both windows letting the celestial orb in with glaring intensity due to dust, we woke up almost blinded.
After our short celebration and shouts from room to room that the water actually worked, we showered and headed outside, hopping to meet some of the locals and grab a quick bite to eat-having not eaten since lunch yesterday.
The town seemed to be cloistered together, tall brick buildings of which were, for the most part, dusty and abandoned with messy stores, one, a house, even had an upstairs bedroom in the living room. But such is the curse of time. Fortunately, the town is rather small, and as luck would have it one of the families was a baker, for their store was open and pleasant smells wafted from its ovens and like an arrow, hit the mark that was our noses.
The inside was styled into a turn of the century bakery with old looking ovens with bread, cakes, and other sweets in a glass case that doubled as a counter. The woman behind it was slightly round around the middle, though the reason came from a cherubic coo in a rocking cradle that she was stooped over. Her sunflower blonde hair was in a librarian's bun, her white apron splattered with spots of flour, jellies, and perhaps some genetic material that came from her baby girl.
""Hello, George, come to pick up more bread? Or is it something…""
She looks at us keenly, as if we were joined at the hip-a joke many people have said about us-or something. Then she smiles.
""Well, don't get many visitors around here anymore."" She said, it was then that I noticed her features that were more pronounced than Harold's and her voice seemed to border on croaking, yet still managed to be cheerful.
""What brings you two boys to Innsmouth?""
""I'm Harold Durby, I was born here."" Harold stated. I introduced myself before he continued. ""My mom said I had to come back to find my roots.""
""You're Alison's brat?"" She said aghast. ""Funniest thing in the world, that one-ran away. Her husband-your father-was so mad, he tore up your house."" She leaned in closer when the baby sniffled from her mother's loud speaking. Brought their bedroom into the living room.""
I was stunned, that house, the one I thought of as being worse for wear by time, was actually destroyed by Harold's father. What man could possibly do that? And if he can do that, what would he do to Harold? I pale at the thought but the object of my worrisome thoughts break me out of it.
""What happened to my father?"" Harold asked in a manner as if he already knew.
""Went back, boy, went back. Nothing keeping him here and they can…"" She spied me. ""Does he know?""
Harold shook his head. ""Not even I know.""
She was taken aback. ""Your mom ever told you?""
Harold shook his head.
""Figures, nothing right with that one."" She mumbles off something then smiles again. ""So, how long are you boys in Innsmouth?""
""Till Friday,"" Harold stated. ""Just to see what I need to see.""
""Well, come back here after closing, I'll tell you all you need to know. But come alone…We don't take well with outsiders, not like you're not, but you're more one of us than he is. No offense dear, it's habit.""
I wasn't offended, merely surprised. Didn't she think Harold would tell me what she tells him? He had no real bond to this place like he did in Florida.
""Anyway, what would you boys like to eat? Don't got much, mostly we go to Ipswich to get supplies, but it's a ways, so I tried to lessen our travels by cooking a few things here."" She then gasps in remembrance. ""I almost forgot. My name's Henrietta.""
We ordered our breakfast, ate it, then went on our way. The sights of Innsmouth worth seeing were few; a beach that leads to Devil's Cove the docks. But everything was in ill repair, obviously having been neglected by the town's remaining population-however many is uncertain, for we only met Henrietta and her baby.
IV
That night I was peacefully sleeping, dreams of sailing in violet skies, my crew and I lax upon the deck, the currents calm enough for daydreaming. But then a pale, blue hand grabbed onto my shoulder and shook me.
I woke up to Harold's hand gently shaking my shoulder. A grave expression brought out stress wrinkles, his eyes set in concentration. He sighed, never looking at me as he explained what happened previously.
""I saw the elusive George."" He explained. ""And their spouses.""
He sighs before he continues:
""You see, Innsmouth was in a bind so they made a pact with these creatures called the Deep Ones. They gave the people fish in exchange for humans to mate with as well as human sacrifices. Henrietta and George are married to them; George even gave up his house and moved to Devil's Reef for her."" He shook his head. ""Still can't get over it; how can anyone love a thing like that?""
But you see, my mother was one of the few non-hybrids left.""
""Hybrids?""
""I'll get to that,"" He said dismissively. ""Anyway, my mom didn't like what she was married to. That it touched her. She had me and ran away-I think because she did not want him to hurt me like he does her. She always had him locked in the attic.""
He laughs. ""You see, my friend, those night terrors, I remember ever single one. Cyclopean structures of coral and sand in some of them. In others I see my relatives, alive and kicking as hybrid creatures with blue scales and fish features. I also saw my dad. I saw him run into the night, howling in rage all the while he headed back to Devil's Reef; where their city dwells. The first one was this horrible nightmare where you and I were on one of our morning walks when a giant wave crashed down on the both of us, sucking us out to sea. The problem was that you floated to the surface, but I was stuck mere feet away from it.""
""It was scary, trying to hold in air, fighting to the top, only to discover that I can breathe. But my addled mind begs me to breach the surface, I tug on your pant leg and you notice me. You pull me up a little more then you shout out 'get away from me!' and let me go. My hand turned into a hybrid's clawed hand. I sink, fighting it as best I could until you're out of sight.""
He finally looks at me. ""Don't take this the wrong way, but the dreams of losing you were the worst.""
I place a hand on his shoulder. ""You won't lose me.""
The thought of us ever parting never crossed my mind recently. True, the threat to friendship is usually high school, but we overcame that. We're still friends. And even though this story sounds convoluted, Harold was never good at acting. Something really spooked him.
""But you will,"" He counters. ""Tonight my father is coming to take me to Y'ha-nthlei, their domain. I am to remain there until…""
He is cut off by the sound of something sharp scratching against glass. We both stare at either window, but whatever made that noise had disappeared. Harold stood tense.
""He's here, I have to go now.""
""You're just going to leave me? After everything you're just going to leave?"" I don't know where this is coming from. A part of me screams this should have been said sooner, but I suppose it was until that moment when the reality of the situation we found ourselves in finally sunk in.
He looks as if he'll cry. But then a thought comes to him.
""Tomorrow at Midnight…I'll meet you at the dock closest to Devil's Reef.""
We embrace, silence prevails over all in that brief moment. He breaks away first and runs out into the night.
Sleep evades me the rest of the night.
V
The next day I hardly venture out into town. Partly because I dare not venture out into this cursed town. A town who's inhabitants, from what I gathered yesterday, did not like outsiders. Yet, strangely enough, I did not starve. Henrietta left goodies for me outside my door with a bill since I wrote on dusty stationary the room had left over that I could not take her charity.
Despite being lonely, a sense of anxiety crept over me, for midnight was drawing near.
At eleven thirty I ventured out into the night, the crescent moon illuminating my way towards the dock of which our meeting would take place.
Once there I only wait a minute until I hear the sound of splashing and a thud of something landing on the dock a few feet behind me. I turn, expecting to see my friend to be as I remembered from last night. But alas, he is not and with a gasp I take him all in.
Naked as the day he was born, his body covered in pale, robin eggshell blue, his stomach a pale white. His two eyes have enlarged and have become pitch black orbs. His lips have become fish-like, his gums holding rows of sharp teeth, framed nicely on his hairless head; hair being replaced with frills like that of fish fins. Yet, despite the fish-like qualities, it seemed that amphibian qualities were also present.
He walks towards me in an awkward gait on his webbed toes until he is close enough to cup my cheek with his webbed, right hand.
The gesture was merely for comfort and reassurance that he was still himself. I grasped his hand with my own and he lets out a purr-like hiss.
""Friend,"" He croaks, his voice coming out even more awkward than his gait, as if his vocal cords were not made for such a feat, yet was able to anyway. ""Missed you.""
""Missed you, too, Harold."" I admitted.
""Go back to Florida. Follow you."" He growls. ""Others hate outsiders. Unless willing to mate with Deep One…""
He looked at me with what, to the average person, would look like a blank stare due to his black eyes. But from knowing him for as long as I have I caught the apprehension in his voice.
""No, nothing against you, Harold. But I'd rather not.""
He made a sound that I guessed was their way of sighing, and in his case; it was in relief.
""Will go Florida, too. But…Some days I come back here."" He grimaced as best he could with fish lips. ""Voice…Will better.""
I pat him on the shoulder. A low growl erupts from below us.
""Dad!"" Harold hisses, his frills on his head tense up in warning. But he pays his son no heed and I hear a thump. I gaze upon his father-a pale, green, hulking sea monster-and faint.
VI
I travel back to Florida by hiking the way to Ipswich and hail a cab back to Boston where I fly back home and go about my business in minor isolation; breaking my hermitic lifestyle to go to work. I move up the corporate ladder allowing me to afford my new house on the beach. A house isolated from others. Others with prying eyes and curious souls.
It's a house where a dear, old friend can visit from his home in the sea and no one would ever be the wiser.
()()()
1) A reference to the protagonist in ""The Shadow Over Innsmouth"" who received a job as such before he learns the horrifying truth about his family.
",False
"Spoonbill Village, Northernmost Quang Binh Province, SRV.
June 30, 2011.
Considering their first encounter, this meeting was going rather well.
""No, no, I assure you that I have had quite enough… well, if you insist…"" In the course of explaining his task to the household he would be staying in, Joseph Clayton had been offered tea at the behest of the mistress of the household and all three times, he had acquiesced. She was attending her husband in fine cotton clothes of white and black, the cut more resembling something out of Javanese dancing than anything worn in Indochina during the past thousand years. Their son, called from his lessons for the presentation, was sitting at the far end of the room, listening to what was going on. While he had repeated much the same spiel that Professor Andover to the house's three inhabitants, he had sipped at his bowl almost automatically as one would with water, clear onto what was now his fourth helping. Although not unpleasant, the drink had considerably more kick to it than even the strong brews typical of Vietnamese green tea.
What perplexed Joseph was that he couldn't identify the extra ingredient. It wasn't peppers, having no discernible remains or even the raw chemical heat of capsaicin. It could be ginger, but the heat was of an utterly different kind than any ginger he had ever experienced.
Then again, the additive could just as well be Tarantula venom given the figure he was giving his introduction to.
His name, as he had given it, was Noc. He was the most experience hunter, archer and scout of the village, was of an incredibly ancient lineage and, incidentally, was the first person of this strange, isolated village that he had seen. His tattoos all featured arachnid themes of legs, webbing and fangs and his eyes…
Marie had mentioned that some of the warriors practiced sorcery with mutative effects. If that was what caused Nocs eyes to become all black, seemingly all pupils and tempting Joseph to mentally refer to the man as ""Spider Eye"", then maybe those three weirdoes they caught in the biology labs back in February were onto something after all.
Sitting in the main reception area of the home, replete with decorations of strange latticed designs and black lacquer, Joseph watched carefully as Noc finished examining one of his bowstrings before his eyes darted around the room. On the wall, several bows hung in their unstrung state: the white and banded flatbow he had first witnessed, several simple bows of light colored cane and even one recurve bow made of dark red hardwood.
""So that is your request: to hear the stories of our history, to observe the operation of a household of status and to… take part in our activities?"" Throughout the introduction of this man and the repetition he had given of the Professors offer, Noc had examined all aspects of him closely… and had not been impressed. He had some muscle tone, but everything else about him absolutely screamed that he was some sort of priest or urban scribe in training. Besides, the combination of the girl's cues toward him and his reaction to his tea made it clear: if the boy had been a virgin, steam would have been pouring out of his ears. That made things difficult (and potentially dangerous) for everyone.
Besides, very few people in this village held any affection at all for someone with Joseph's skin tone.
After receiving affirmation of Joseph's duties, Noc laid out the rules. ""Know this: you will record the histories when they are told to you. You shall ask questions when you are allowed and you shall observe what you shall participate in what you are allowed to participate in. No pestering me with questions, no sneaking around trying to observe the women and children and no and I mean no trying to wheedle out information through trickery. We had quite enough trouble with that sort of thing the last time around.""
Joseph was immediately insulted, even though he did not how it as he automatically agreed. Still, two things bothered him. First, underneath the gold and bronze bangles that decorated the forearms and ankles of Nocs wife, Joseph had noticed strange scars, akin in shape to the marks that sperm whales bore from their battles with giant squid.
Second… what did Noc mean by the last time around?
That Night…
As he lay awake, Joseph realized how exhausting the day had been. As it turned out, he was probably doing to spend most of his time in this house as a sort of a servant: documenting and participating in cooking and chores, handling domestic duties and picking little things up only as Noc's wife deemed appropriate. No real questions answered, no interesting discoveries or scandals or surprises… just ordinary ethnographic work.
It wasn't made any better that his libido was getting annoyed at the 'busy' signals it kept receiving. However, there had been no real opportunity to talk with Marie after last night, with all the revelations of cannibalism and sorcery and other things that probably should have made his stomach turn.
/Maybe it would be better if they had made your stomach turn./ Came a wheedling little multi-voiced dialogue from inside his head… from inside his head, but not originating from him.
Oh no. Joseph thought with a mental groan. Not you idiots again! I thought you gave it up after the last time.
/The last time? You mean when you were in the thrall of carnal lusts, disgracing your heritage?/ The dominant voice changed from one of the old WASP lords to that of an aristocratic dowager that had been ancient even when Granny Clara had been a girl. /Maybe now that you know what her kind get up to, you will listen to reason and find a girl more suitable to a young man of your station./
Her parents are just as middle class as mine are, thank you all very much. Joseph snarked back mentally, fully knowing how these… wraiths felt about his relationship with Marie and savoring the thought of causing them anguish.
/You know full well what is meant. What is not understood is why the other girl did not so arouse your… passions./
Oh please, her family is just as drenched in sorcery as these guys, it's just that they're more polite about who they slice open. Besides, I don't really think you'd have acted any differently if it had been Tracy I'd been with that night instead of Marie, inbred and rural as she apparently is. He remembered clearly that night: how these voices (who he was fairly sure were not the products of schizophrenia despite superficially similar symptomatology), had come to him in the midst of what should have been unimaginable passion and communion with his girlfriend (though with was much more awkward, rushed and possibly painful than desired). Even as the passion mounted, their insults became worse: the taunts, the archaic, hateful rhetoric, the most vicious slurs directed against Marie and him. And yet he had forged on, continuing despite the rising chorus of insane voices inside his head… or even because of them, for as they blasphemed against all that Marie was, all the little things that made Joseph love her all the more, he could tell that his defiance was causing them actual pain and torment… and even through the pleasures of the flesh, he took small, sadistic delights in causing pain and anguish to these assholes who claimed authority as his forbearers.
Now Joseph was getting annoyed… and cranky. Look, I don't have to listen to you idiots, even if you do claim to be my ancestors. You came from a completely different world whose rules do not apply to me. Also, the instruments of your authority are gone: no money, no status, no companies or contacts or friends in high places. All that's left are a bunch of ugly little voices in the wind. Why don't you all just blow away? He was tired of his, of having to listen to these inane snobs that he had learned to loath in the abstract and now hated in the concrete. He hated their hate-filled dismissals of all other peoples and cultures, their smug superiority and the generalized arrogance that seemed to drip from the voices.
When they didn't respond, Joseph took it as a sign. ""Good."" He said aloud, as softly as his sense of satisfaction allowed.
","Ordinarily, one wouldn't think of the Dreamers' Inn as a mausoleum any more than one would think of the Golden Goose restaurant as a crypt. Journeymen who are just passing through Leight, and rooming at the Inn as a matter of convenience, will see nothing amiss. There are a few splintering floorboards here, and a couple of sagging roof beams there, but these things are only natural for a lodging house that's stood for more than two centuries. I, however, with my wary eyes and cautious steps, notice more ominous flaws: the dry rot in the walls, for instance, and the stairs that are almost murderously steep. How on Earth does Monsieur Thènard keep the Inn open despite its decay and stale air? Perhaps he himself has had a part in spreading rumors about it, challenging brave visitors to spend the entire night in a haunted hotel.
Then again, maybe it all boils down to the Inn being the most immediate place for a night's slumber. When one is tired and hungry, weary from sitting in a carriage or on horseback, then why not stay here?
""Good evening, Mademoiselle Dawson,"" announces an oily voice. ""Welcome to the Dreamers' Inn.""
My spine stiffens. If this place is a tomb, then Monsieur Thènard is the shifty undertaker who'd give you your six feet of earth once you had passed, then dig you up if your relatives couldn't pay the maintenance fees. His smile resembles a scythe's blade: the one that Death wields, and with which he harvests you.
""Good evening to you too, Monsieur Thènard,"" I tell him as civilly as I can. ""I'd like to rent a room, please.""
""Certainly."" He pauses. ""I am surprised to see you here. Can you not stay at your father's house for free?""
""Of course, but I have my reasons. If you must know, I'm on an errand to quell all the rumors about this hotel. You and I could both stand to have more revenue coming from it, after all. What better way to do that than to put vicious village talk to rest? You know what the people say: it's haunted, and not by your ordinary ghosts. They also claim that certain people, once they lie down to sleep here, never awaken. Pah! If someone wakes up dead, pardon the silly expression, then their heart failed during the night, or they perished from some other natural cause. No devilry is here, and I'm out to prove it once and for all.""
""Mais oui,"" he says, grinning. ""We two know that, but how are you going to convince the rest of Leight?""
""I intend to spend three consecutive nights here, not just one, and come out none the worse for wear. I know that the people here typically don't listen to a godless spinster. However, if I tell them that there's nothing to fear at the Dreamers' Inn - save a few usual nightmares from sleeping in a strange place - perhaps they will take heed, and tell their traveling friends and relatives to pay this establishment a visit.""
""A splendid plan,"" Thènard replies. ""I hope it works, and here is the cost of three nights' lodging."" When he reveals it, I wince. It's not exorbitant, meaning that I can still afford it, but barely. With Theodora receiving her month's wages yesterday, plus my paying an ample bill of goods from the grocer, I'll be spent out by the end of my stay. I'm glad that it's almost the end of October: Hallowe'en will arrive in exactly three days. Once it's November, my monthly pension allowance will be full again, and I can start all over.
Still, I feel like a fool. Truly, is there any 'starting over' when one keeps going round in the same circle?
""Mademoiselle?"" 
Startled out of my reverie, I pay him. ""Agathe is still serving food in the kitchen,"" Thènard tells me, referring to his wizened maid-of-all-work. ""There aren't enough guests for her to have served dinner in the dining room, so I'm glad you've come."" All of a sudden, he leans forward and winks at me. ""Should you require company upstairs…""
""Give me my key, and I'll be off.""
He opens a drawer behind his porter's desk and hands it over, smirking. ""Room two, second floor.""
",False
"The world we live in is not as it seems. I, James White, write this document so that others may be made aware of what I have experienced and know of the dangers that lurk beneath our limited perception of ""reality"". Whether you believe me or not, dear reader, is up to you. I only ask that you read what I write with an open mind since I write, not for my own gain, but to warn you of what I can only describe as ""pure evil"".
I had never heard of the ""Cult of Cthulhu"" before I began university in the late summer of 2012. I was only eighteen years old, an atheist, and dogmatically pursued scientific understanding and knowledge. At that time, I was not in the least bit interested in weird cults and other religious movements, which I simply dismissed as primitive superstition. Had I but known what I would encounter, I would have burnt the science textbook, prayed to God for the strength not to crumble into insanity and got as far away from that university as I could!
The strange happenings started less than two months into my first term. I had been put into student accommodation and shared a corridor with four other boys and two girls. I had got to know my flatmates very well until all of a sudden, one of the boys by the name of Jonathan Mears disappeared. This wasn't looked upon as weird at first since Jonathan was the quiet type anyway and often spent long hours alone in his room. The suspicions arose however, when he hadn't shown his face for three days. His absence was brought up one evening as we sat in a communal area.
""He's probably just been very busy lately,"" my best friend, Jacob Shields, said. ""You know Jonathan. When he sets his mind on something, he doesn't stop until he's achieved whatever he's trying to do.""
""Isn't it a bit strange though?"" Annie Roberts, a lovely blonde girl from the room directly across the corridor asked. ""I mean, he's in our corridor and we haven't seen him for ages. Not even in the kitchen or lecture halls.""
""It isn't like him to miss a lecture,"" I agreed. Jacob merely waved these concerns away.
""If we haven't seen him by tomorrow evening, we'll go to the reception and see what's happening,"" he said cheerfully.
But Jonathan didn't show up the following day and, as planned, my entire corridor went to the reception desk to ask if anything had happened to him. The receptionist, an elderly lady, checked through the files on a computer before looking up at us.
""I'm afraid he has left the university,"" she informed us. ""He dropped out four days ago.""
""Well there you go!"" Jacob exclaimed. ""Nothing to worry about!""
But there was something to worry about. Even though I now had every reason to think that Jonathan was fine, I couldn't shake that feeling of foreboding. He had seemed happy in university and was consistently getting high marks so I resolved to check things out for myself.
I waited until 3:00 the following morning, and in the darkness, I tiptoed along the corridor to Jonathan's room. Using a paperclip, I carefully picked the lock on his door and let myself in. I closed the door behind me and switched on the light. The sight that greeted me came as a huge shock. Clothes still lay on the floor, the bed was made, books were still on the shelves and a laptop was still humming gently on the cluttered desk. In short, it looked as though Jonathan was simply out of the room. If he had gone home, why did he leave all his things behind? And if he hadn't, where was he and why did the university records state that he had? Deeply concerned, I left the room and returned to my own. I lay awake in the darkness pondering the thoughts in my head and finally decided that I needed to find out what had happened and that I would do so alone...
","The following day dragged by without incident. I could not concentrate in the lectures and did not do any of the coursework I had been set for I was too highly anticipating the arrival of darkness and my investigation into the disappearance of Jonathan Mears.
When night finally came, I once again let myself into Jonathan's room. Looking around the place, I noticed the laptop on the desk and decided to check it. Finding nothing unusual, I started to go through his notebooks trying to find some clue as to where he had gone. It was in these notebooks that I had my first encounter with the demon known as ""Cthulhu"". In one of them was the image of a creature, the likes of which I had never before seen in my life. It was humanoid in its basic appearance but had claws on its hands and toes, large dragon-like wings and a bulbous head with tentacles not unlike an octopus. It was neatly coloured in green and beneath the drawing was written the words ""CTHULHU CULT"".
My initial thoughts on this were that the image was simply a figment of Jonathan's imagination. But however much I tried to dismiss it and look elsewhere, something about the creature depicted on the page forced me to continue looking. It was the eyes of the monster that most entranced me. I felt myself becoming hypnotised as the thing, whatever it was, drew me into the page with its penetrating stare. Those eyes, they seemed so alive, so real…
Suddenly, I dropped the book and leapt backwards in fright, only barely managing to stifle a scream. I was certain that the image had moved, though my rational mind told me that the notion was ludicrous. The tentacles around the figure's head had seemed to extend out of the page towards my face. However, I tricked myself into believing that I was only seeing things as a result of tiredness.
I had only just comforted myself with this idea when I heard hushed voices from outside the door. I recognised them instantly as Jacob and Annie. I kept quiet, but darted under the bed when I realised to my horror that they were entering the room. If they had something to do with Jonathan's disappearance, the last thing I wanted was for them to see me poking around in here. My fears about their involvement in this were soon confirmed when Jacob bent down and picked up the notebook I'd dropped on the floor.
""Someone's been here,"" he stated in an angry tone of voice I'd never heard him use before and with that, the pair left the room. I clambered out from under the bed to find that all the notebooks and a number of the books from the shelf were missing. I could only guess that that was the reason Jacob and Annie were here in the first place. Although what they wanted them for was a mystery.
And then I did the one thing I know now I should never have done. I decided to follow Jacob and Annie. I could only make out their silhouettes in the darkness when I left my Hall and followed them across the campus. I managed to get quite close, but remained far enough away so that they didn't sense my presence. Then all of a sudden, they turned off the road and headed towards a nearby wood. As we ventured further into the wood, I began to see a dim red glow and hear chants, screams and the banging of drums. When I finally came in sight of the source of the noise, I became frozen in terror.
There was a ring of fire surrounding a tall obelisk, upon which sat a statue of the image I had seen in Jonathan's notebook. The eyes of the statue emitted a bright red glow and it seemed to be moving to the beat of the drums in the firelight. A few dozen people danced maniacally around the fire and there, chained to the obelisk, was Jonathan. Or what was left of him anyway. His decapitated form was upside down, his chest split open. His ribcage had been cleaved in half lengthways and adorned the obelisk near the top. At the base of the obelisk was a small pile of blood, bones and organs, and it seemed as though the intestines had been split into many parts which the cultists were wearing as belts. Jonathan's head was nowhere to be seen. And his was not the only corpse there. The glade was filled with corpses hanging from the trees and offal covered the floor. The whole place stunk of a slaughterhouse and, unable to contain it any longer, I screamed. Immediately, a few of the cultists, including Jacob and Annie, turned in my direction and glared at me with pure hate. I turned and ran, ran as fast I possibly could away from that degenerate ritual.
",True
"The Inn stands at the end of our largest thoroughfare, which is a few blocks long, but seems a thousand miles. With my heavy valise, I'm fortunate that I only have to walk half that far from the restaurant at which I've just dined. Once every month, I scrounge up enough money to have dinner at the Golden Goose. Despite my reputation in this village, I eventually come to long for the clamor of a crowd. The four walls of my father's house are my sanctuary and prison otherwise. Only Theodora, our cook and housekeeper that we've had since before I was born, keeps me company there. I would take her with me on my monthly outings to Leight's sole restaurant, but she stubbornly says she prefers her own meals all the same.
That's only part of the reason why she won't go, however. I've told her that even at the Golden Goose, the diners there glare at me out of the corners of their eyes and lower them to their plates if I look their way. Theodora is an even more self-contained soul than I am, and loathes being stared at ""by all and sundry"".
The evening sun is sinking low on the horizon, and the villagers around me are concealed in shadows. I don't want anyone coming up and asking me about my three-night errand - not that they would. When I prove the rumors about my forefathers' establishment wrong, I'll make them all look like fools anyway!
Those unfamiliar with Leight will notice three ever-present things as they travel down its main street: stalwart people, churches, and Cemetery Hill looming in the distance. Ever since I was a child, I sensed an eerie connection among these features of our humble village. Just what that is, I cannot say. They are ordinary enough on the surface, and yet I can't help feeling that there's something sinister about them.
My neighbors are proud, hard-working souls. Most of them live on farms on the outskirts of town. Even so, they trudge nearly every day to its center in order to seek supplies. The men of Leight are burly, with long arms and sunburnt faces, trusting in their toil and suspicious of learnt folk. It's just as well that they're illiterate. They wouldn't have much use for books even if they had the coin to buy them. Their wives, far from being what some people would call ladies, are just as industrious and sturdy as their husbands. I see them more often in town, as buying sundries is women's work, but that doesn't mean they're any more inclined to talk to me. They keep to themselves, as I do, but it seems their hearts are under lock and key.
I suspect that a large part of this has to do with the fact that they fear God as much as my family's past. Out of every ten buildings in Leight, at least four are churches. The Baptists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Evangelicals, Lutherans, Methodists, and even more denominations are continually at war. They each claim to believe in the Scriptures, and in the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. However, they also claim that all the others are false, to a greater or lesser degree. As for me? I attend no house of worship, and that is no great loss to me. My father, Lemuel Dawson, said that his own chapel - the one on Cemetery Hill - had been abruptly shuttered one Hallowe'en night. His fellow congregants then fled to other nearby towns.
""My dear Millie,"" he had told me, ""the one true church on this Earth has been lost, and a year too early."" That's another thing I've failed to understand, even though it haunts me as much as the Inn itself does.
Hurrying to get there, I pass the people and churches without much concern. Only the visage of the former Gallows Hill, now containing graves instead of a gibbet, catches my eye. Buried there are not only the fifty-three souls who were hanged during the Purge (or so we called our witchcraft panic), but criminals and paupers. I've often wondered why having no money is considered as great a crime as sorcery or theft, but in this village, if you're poor, then you are cursed. ""God helps those who help themselves"": so say we. I cannot help myself as I find my feet sprinting rather than walking toward the façade of the Dreamer's Inn.
The sky, now a cool blue-violet twilight, is growing dark. I'll soon leave light (and Leight?) behind. Even though I've been inside the Dreamers' Inn countless times, I've always been a bit scared of the place. Why is it that, even though it's supposed to be a haven for travelers, it seems like a mausoleum instead? I know that once I venture beyond its door, beneath the rickety sign that has announced its presence since the days of Abner Dawes, I'll be in a world unto itself. As such, I pause on the threshold and gaze up at its intimidating turret. Should I turn back and forget about spending a single night there, let alone three?
Then I remember my reasons, both monetary and otherwise, and step inside.
","""Great Cthulhu looks favorably upon your sacrifices."" Torren-Wraeth swept his arms expansively before the congregation, ""And your faith pleases him greatly."" He had been summoned, he hated being summoned, but it was his duty. ""What is your desire?"" A fire blazed on the stone alter behind him, and dark-robed humans knelt before the child of their god as a tentacular, vaguely toad-like being known colloquially as a ""Servitor of the Outer Gods"", (His personal name was Grix), piped away on a bone flute. The High Priest, distinguished by his rich green robes, stood, ""We seeketh only a small boon from thy sire."" Torren-Wraeth rolled his eyes mentally, why did humans always use that annoying Archaic English in religious rights. Cthulhu didn't speak English, let alone Ye Olde English. ""What is it?"" The priest then began a short list of needs, more game to hunt, more rain for the crops, as if Cthulhu could magically make them appear. Well, he could make rain, at least, but not animals... Animal life had flourished since The Great Arising, with so few humans left to hunt them, these people had probably been careless, overtaxing their resources...
""Rain will not be a problem,"" Torren-Wraeth said confidently, then, ""But animals and good crops are more in the domain of Shub-Niggurath."" Grix stopped piping and eyed Torren-Wraeth in surprise. The priest looked confused, the congregation certainly was. ""Cans't thou not aid us?"" Torren-Wraeth considered for a moment, Cthulhu could drive animals toward this village, but could he make crops grow? ""He can send rain and more game animals for you to hunt, but as for the growing of crops, you will likely have to either trust your luck or make sacrifices to Cernunos."" That avatar of Shub-Niggurath was closely associated with agriculture, and Cthulhu didn't mind sharing his worshipers. Torren-Wraeth knew of one 'god' he didn't want the people to follow, however. ""And by The Key and The Gate don't start worshiping He-Who-Walks-Between-the-Rows!"" Lightning struck near the entrance of the church, fusing sand to glass, ""If you sacrifice to him, I'll kill you all myself!"" The congregation recoiled in terror. A steady rain began to fall outside the 'church'. The congregation, forgetting their confusing, terrifying 'angel', and went wild. ""PRAISE CTHULHU!"" ""IA! IA! CTHULHU NAFLFHTAGN!""
Great Cthulhu held court from his green-black graven throne in the Temple of The Key and The Gate. Though many worshiped him as a god or feared him as a devil, the Lord of R'Lyeh was in truth a high priest of Yog-Sothoth. Not that he discouraged his own worship, even as his own clerics, Father Dagon and Mother Hydra, gladly accepted the worshipful adulation of the lesser races. There were plenty of eager and fearful acolytes for everyone.
Later, after the humans had all driven or drunken themselves into noisy slumber, Grix rolled over to Torren-Wraeth, who sat cross-legged and disgusted on the cold stone floor. ""Your father may not be pleased that you shattered his image of omnipotence."" ""Should I give these people lies?"" Torren-Wraeth spoke freely, no one there but the two of them understood Grix' tongue. Grix laughed, a peculiar gurgling sound, ""Isn't it all a lie, in the end? You made it rain, not your father. I could have, too, if I had wanted."" Torren-Wraeth sighed, not knowing how to respond, then took the pipe from Grix' slimy tentacles and began to play.
Torren-Wraeth had some friends and allies, human or otherwise. Tektaktequataquarl, a True-Blood Hastur-Spawn. An unlikely friend, certainly, as Hastur and Cthulhu were grave enemies, and Hastur's Spawn were no more given to emotion in any human standard than those of his nemesis. 'Tek' was an exception, wild, emotional, maybe even a little bit crazy, even by the standards of The King in Tatters. He took human form, male, beautiful, gold skin and gleaming wings, though in truth 'he' was a hermaphroditic golden mass of flesh, tendrils, eyes and mouths. As Hastur-Spawn, he was unwelcome in Cthulhu's court, but he ignored the threats with the casual indifference of an immortal, perhaps he even found a perverse pleasure in visiting enemy territory. Besides, his mate, the Bloated Woman, also known as the Goddess of the Black Fan, lived in the mountains of China. Seven feet tall, six hundred pounds of blubber and writhing tendrils topped with five vicious mouths and a pair of exquisitely beautiful eyes. When holding the Black Fan under her eyes, she was slim and beautiful, a mask for luring men to a gruesome death. Ironically, Tek found the true form more appealing, a form so similar to his own... Regardless, Cthulhu would never dare move against her, for The Bloated Woman was an avatar of the only being Cthulhu truly feared, Nyarlathotep. To anger Nyarlathotep meant horrors even Great Cthulhu dare not imagine. Torren-Wraeth did not care much for the cruel Goddess, but, in some strange way, Tek loved her. Torren-Wraeth had no way of knowing if the feeling was reciprocated, one never knew with The Crawling Chaos...
Then there were the Insects from Shaggai, who had dwelt in England's Severn valley for centuries, repairing their temple-ship. They brought with them their experiences, their dreams and nightmares of far-off wonders; The cities of long-dead Shaggai, the titanic natives of Thuggon, of L'gh'hx, Xiclotl and Tond. They had finally escaped earth shortly before The Great Arising. They had been cruel and twisted beings, but living their mortal memories made Torren-Wraeth long to visit these worlds, where eyeless giants strode teeming marshes and suns blazed black in amber skies. He sometimes used his skills at bending space and reality to take brief jaunts to these worlds. But he always came back. He could not seem to break earth's hold on him, the ties of birth and blood were too strong.
In his house at R'Lyeh Torren-Wraeth slept poorly. His home, small by Cthuli standards, was the size of a cathedral, one large room with a stone bed covered by warm blankets and a square, shallow pool of flowing seawater that served as a bath. A low stone shelf held an image of Goro, preserved forever beneath unbreakable, transparent alien stone. Several books, scrolls and tablets lay scattered about, and the room, from floor to ceiling, was covered with elaborate carvings of alien worlds and incredible creatures. A grim looking Moai sat in a corner, looking out over the green-black structure. A small chest of amber-colored stone, strongly contrasting the general color scheme, held Torren-Wraeth's clothing.
He rose from his bed and walked across the cool floor to the open portal, staring out at the fickle stars that flickered in the night sky. Isn't it all a lie in the end? He sighed, then turned to the chest and began to dress.
Ho Fong stood at the gates of the Monastery of The Bloated Woman, catching the first rays of sunlight. He was old, centuries had passed since he became high priest of The Order of The Bloated Woman, yet time held no power over him. He appeared to be in his early fifties, without even a gray hair. Someone, an American, no doubt, had once insultingly compared him to the fictional Chinese villain Fu Manchu. In truth, he did resemble a significantly heavier version of the Devil Doctor, complete with the signature moustache. He'd killed the man, of course. The Goddess required sacrifices, after all. As the golden light began to bath the magnificent mountains of China in divine splendor, he thought about The Other. He did not worship lord Tektaktequataquarl, as he didn't seem to desire worship, but was obliged to give him all due respect as the Goddess' consort. Tek was coming, of course. The only constant in that being of chaos' life was his love for the Goddess, a love Ho Fong envied, though he could never bring himself to admit it. He straightened his yellow and black silk robes, the official garb of the Order, and prepared to greet the Hastur-Spawn.
The monastery was fairly new, The Order had once had centers in Shanghai and on Gray Dragon Island, but these had been lost in 1926. Enemies of The Order had overwhelmed and destroyed them. Much had been lost, and Ho Fong himself had nearly been killed. These had been powerful setbacks, but, in the end, they had been immaterial, as both Shanghai and Gray Dragon Island now lay lost beneath the waves. Ho Fong's enemies, The Goddess' enemies, were all long dead. He walked back into the monastery, passing lesser monks and acolytes who bowed dutifully toward him, and approached the great bronze doors behind which the Goddess rested. Two burly monks opened the doors and Ho Fong respectfully approached the screens of yellow and black silk that lay beyond the carven jade sacrificial alter.
The Bloated Woman sat upon a pile of silken cushions, smoking essence of Black Lotus from an ornate hookah, it's pipe in her third mouth. The Black Fan and six sacred golden sickles, used to dispatch human sacrifices, hung from a black silk sash wrapped around her prodigious belly. The priest bowed deeply to his beloved Goddess. ""He will not be here for some time yet."" The Goddess voice was smooth and sultry. ""Receive him warmly."" She blew fragrantly scented smoke from her fourth mouth, whilst speaking through her second and first.
Tektaktequataquarl flapped his gleaming wings in the bright morning sun. He felt Torren-Wraeth's approach long before he could see him. He was a good kid, level-headed and thoughtful, the total opposite of Tek himself. Perhaps that was why he liked him, a balance of chaos and order. Yin and Yang, so to speak. Ever since his human confidant had died, the Half-Blood had become more sullen and withdrawn. He needed more excitement in his life. Perhaps Tek himself needed less, courting an avatar of Nyarlathotep. Even Hastur had expressed concern about that union, but love is blind. She was evil, in human terms, but, then again, by human terms she was hideous. He found her beautiful and dangerous. He wondered what their coming offspring would be like...
He suddenly realized something had changed. Torren-Wraeth was in trouble, his life was in danger. He turned back and sped toward the Half-Blood...
",False
"III. A Search and an Evocation

1.

Charles Ward, as we have seen, first learned in 1918 of his descent from Joseph Curwen. That he at once took an intense interest in everything pertaining to the bygone mystery is not to be wondered at; for every vague rumour that he had heard of Curwen now became something vital to himself, in whom flowed Curwen's blood. No spirited and imaginative genealogist could have done otherwise than begin forthwith an avid and systematic collection of Curwen data.
      In his first delvings there was not the slightest attempt at secrecy; so that even Dr. Lyman hesitates to date the youth's madness from any period before the close of 1919. He talked freely with his family - though his mother was not particularly pleased to own an ancestor like Curwen - and with the officials of the various museums and libraries he visited. In applying to private families for records thought to be in their possession he made no concealment of his object, and shared the somewhat amused scepticism with which the accounts of the old diarists and letter-writers were regarded. He often expressed a keen wonder as to what really had taken place a century and a half before at that Pawtuxet farmhouse whose site he vainly tried to find, and what Joseph Curwen really had been.
      When he came across the Smith diary and archives and encountered the letter from Jedediah Orne he decided to visit Salem and look up Curwen's early activities and connexions there, which he did during the Easter vacation of 1919. At the Essex Institute, which was well known to him from former sojourns in the glamorous old town of crumbling Puritan gables and clustered gambrel roofs, he was very kindly received, and unearthed there a considerable amount of Curwen data. He found that his ancestor was born in Salem-Village, now Danvers, seven miles from town, on the eighteenth of February (O.S.) 1662-3; and that he had run away to sea at the age of fifteen, not appearing again for nine years, when he returned with the speech, dress, and manners of a native Englishman and settled in Salem proper. At that time he had little to do with his family, but spent most of his hours with the curious books he had brought from Europe, and the strange chemicals which came for him on ships from England, France, and Holland. Certain trips of his into the country were the objects of much local inquisitiveness, and were whisperingly associated with vague rumours of fires on the hills at night.
      Curwen's only close friends had been one Edward Hutchinson of Salem-Village and one Simon Orne of Salem. With these men he was often seen in conference about the Common, and visits among them were by no means infrequent. Hutchinson had a house well out toward the woods, and it was not altogether liked by sensitive people because of the sounds heard there at night. He was said to entertain strange visitors, and the lights seen from his windows were not always of the same colour. The knowledge he displayed concerning long-dead persons and long-forgotten events was considered distinctly unwholesome, and he disappeared about the time the witchcraft panic began, never to be heard from again. At that time Joseph Curwen also departed, but his settlement in Providence was soon learned of. Simon Orne lived in Salem until 1720, when his failure to grow visibly old began to excite attention. He thereafter disappeared, though thirty years later his precise counterpart and self-styled son turned up to claim his property. The claim was allowed on the strength of documents in Simon Orne's known hand, and Jedediah Orne continued to dwell in Salem till 1771, when certain letters from Providence citizens to the Rev. Thomas Barnard and others brought about his quiet removal to parts unknown.
      Certain documents by and about all of these strange characters were available at the Essex Institute, the Court House, and the Registry of Deeds, and included both harmless commonplaces such as land titles and bills of sale, and furtive fragments of a more provocative nature. There were four or five unmistakable allusions to them on the witchcraft trial records; as when one Hepzibah Lawson swore on July 10, 1692, at the Court of Oyer and Terminer under Judge Hathorne, that 'fortie Witches and the Blacke Man were wont to meete in the Woodes behind Mr. Hutchinson's house', and one Amity How declared at a session of August 8th before Judge Gedney that 'Mr. G. B. (Rev. George Burroughs) on that Nighte putt ye Divell his Marke upon Bridget S., Jonathan A., Simon O., Deliverance W., Joseph C., Susan P., Mehitable C., and Deborah B.' Then there was a catalogue of Hutchinson's uncanny library as found after his disappearance, and an unfinished manuscript in his handwriting, couched in a cipher none could read. Ward had a photostatic copy of this manuscript made, and began to work casually on the cipher as soon as it was delivered to him. After the following August his labours on the cipher became intense and feverish, and there is reason to believe from his speech and conduct that he hit upon the key before October or November. He never stated, though, whether or not he had succeeded.
      But of the greatest immediate interest was the Orne material. It took Ward only a short time to prove from identity of penmanship a thing he had already considered established from the text of the letter to Curwen; namely, that Simon Orne and his supposed son were one and the same person. As Orne had said to his correspondent, it was hardly safe to live too long in Salem, hence he resorted to a thirty-year sojourn abroad, and did not return to claim his lands except as a representative of a new generation. Orne had apparently been careful to destroy most of his correspondence, but the citizens who took action in 1771 found and preserved a few letters and papers which excited their wonder. There were cryptic formulae and diagrams in his and other hands which Ward now either copied with care or had photographed, and one extremely mysterious letter in a chirography that the searcher recognised from items in the Registry of Deeds as positively Joseph Curwen's.
      This Curwen letter, though undated as to the year, was evidently not the one in answer to which Orne had written the confiscated missive; and from internal evidence Ward placed it not much later than 1750. It may not be amiss to give the text in full, as a sample of the style of one whose history was so dark and terrible. The recipient is addressed as ""Simon"", but a line (whether drawn by Curwen or Orne Ward could not tell) is run through the word.
Prouidence, I. May (Ut. vulgo)
Brother: - 
My honour'd Antient ffriende, due Respects and earnest Wishes to Him whom we serve for yr eternall Power. I am just come upon That which you ought to knowe, concern'g the Matter of the Laste Extremitie and what to doe regard'g yt. I am not dispos'd to followe you in go'g Away on acct. of my Yeares, for Prouidence hath not ye Sharpeness of ye Bay in hunt'g oute uncommon Things and bringinge to Tryall. I am ty'd up in Shippes and Goodes, and cou'd not doe as you did, besides the Whiche my ffarme at Patuxet hath under it What you Knowe, that wou'd not waite for my com'g Backe as an Other.
      But I am not unreadie for harde ffortunes, as I haue tolde you, and haue longe work'd upon ye Way of get'g Backe after ye Laste. I laste Night strucke on ye Wordes that bringe up YOGGE-SOTHOTHE, and sawe for ye firste Time that fface spoke of by Ibn Schacabao in ye  -  - . And IT said, that ye III Psalme in ye Liber-Damnatus holdes ye Clauicle. With Sunne in V House, Saturne in Trine, drawe ye Pentagram of Fire, and saye ye ninth Uerse thrice. This Uerse repeate eache Roodemas and Hallow's Eue; and ye Thing will breede in ye Outside Spheres.
      And of ye Seede of Olde shal One be borne who shal looke Backe, tho' know'g not what he seekes.
      Yett will this availe Nothing if there be no Heir, and if the Saltes, or the Way to make the Saltes, bee not Readie for his Hande; and here I will owne, I have not taken needed Stepps nor founde Much. Ye Process is plaguy harde to come neare; and it uses up such a Store of Specimens, I am harde putte to it to get Enough, notwithstand'g the Sailors I have from ye Indies. Ye People aboute are become curious, but I can stande them off. Ye Gentry are worse than the Populace, be'g more Circumstantiall in their Accts. and more believ'd in what they tell. That Parson and Mr. Merritt have talk'd some, I am fearfull, but no Thing soe far is Dangerous. Ye Chymical substances are easie of get'g, there be'g II. goode Chymists in Towne, Dr. Bowen and Sam: Carew. I am foll'g oute what Borellus saith, and haue Helpe in Abdool Al-Hazred his VII. Booke. Whatever I gette, you shal haue. And in ye meane while, do not neglect to make use of ye Wordes I haue here giuen. I haue them Righte, but if you Desire to see HIM, imploy the Writings on ye Piece of  -  -  that I am putt'g in this Packet. Saye ye Uerses every Roodmas and Hallow's Eue; and if yr Line runn out not, one shall bee in yeares to come that shal looke backe and use what Saltes or Stuff for Saltes you shal leaue him. Job XIV. XIV.
      I rejoice you are again at Salem, and hope I may see you not longe hence. I have a goode Stallion, and am think'g of get'g a Coach, there be'g one (Mr. Merritt's) in Prouidence already, tho' ye Roades are bad. If you are dispos'd to Travel, doe not pass me bye. From Boston take ye Post Rd. thro' Dedham, Wrentham, and Attleborough, goode Taverns be'g at all these Townes. Stop at Mr. Bolcom's in Wrentham, where ye Beddes are finer than Mr. Hatch's, but eate at ye other House for their Cooke is better. Turne into Prou. by Patucket ffalls, and ye Rd. past Mr. Sayles's Tavern. My House opp. Mr. Epenetus Olney's Tavern off ye Towne Street, Ist on ye N. side of Olney's Court. Distance from Boston Stone abt. XLIV Miles.
      Sir, I am yr olde and true ffriend and Servt. in Almousin-Metraton.
Josephus C.
To Mr. Simon Orne,
William's-Lane, in Salem.
      This letter, oddly enough, was what first gave Ward the exact location of Curwen's Providence home; for none of the records encountered up to that time had been at all specific. The discovery was doubly striking because it indicated as the newer Curwen house built in 1761 on the site of the old, a dilapidated building still standing in Olney Court and well known to Ward in his antiquarian rambles over Stampers' Hill. The place was indeed only a few squares from his own home on the great hill's higher ground, and was now the abode of a negro family much esteemed for occasional washing, housecleaning, and furnace-tending services. To find, in distant Salem, such sudden proof of the significance of this familiar rookery in his own family history, was a highly impressive thing to Ward; and he resolved to explore the place immediately upon his return. The more mystical phases of the letter, which he took to be some extravagant kind of symbolism, frankly baffled him; though he noted with a thrill of curiosity that the Biblical passage referred to - Job 14, 14 - was the familiar verse, ""If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.""

2.

      Young Ward came home in a state of pleasant excitement, and spent the following Saturday in a long and exhaustive study of the house in Olney Court. The place, now crumbling with age, had never been a mansion; but was a modest two-and-a-half story wooden town house of the familiar Providence colonial type, with plain peaked roof, large central chimney, and artistically carved doorway with rayed fanlight, triangular pediment, and trim Doric pilasters. It had suffered but little alteration externally, and Ward felt he was gazing on something very close to the sinister matters of his quest.
      The present negro inhabitants were known to him, and he was very courteously shewn about the interior by old Asa and his stout wife Hannah. Here there was more change than the outside indicated, and Ward saw with regret that fully half of the fine scroll-and-urn overmantels and shell-carved cupboard linings were gone, whilst much of the fine wainscotting and bolection moulding was marked, hacked, and gouged, or covered up altogether with cheap wall-paper. In general, the survey did not yield as much as Ward had somehow expected; but it was at least exciting to stand within the ancestral walls which had housed such a man of horror as Joseph Curwen. He saw with a thrill that a monogram had been very carefully effaced from the ancient brass knocker.
      From then until after the close of school Ward spent his time on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher and the accumulation of local Curwen data. The former still proved unyielding; but of the latter he obtained so much, and so many clues to similar data elsewhere, that he was ready by July to make a trip to New London and New York to consult old letters whose presence in those places was indicated. This trip was very fruitful, for it brought him the Fenner letters with their terrible description of the Pawtuxet farmhouse raid, and the Nightingale-Talbot letters in which he learned of the portrait painted on a panel of the Curwen library. This matter of the portrait interested him particularly, since he would have given much to know just what Joseph Curwen looked like; and he decided to make a second search of the house in Olney Court to see if there might not be some trace of the ancient features beneath peeling coats of later paint or layers of mouldy wall-paper.
      Early in August that search took place, and Ward went carefully over the walls of every room sizeable enough to have been by any possibility the library of the evil builder. He paid especial attention to the large panels of such overmantels as still remained; and was keenly excited after about an hour, when on a broad area above the fireplace in a spacious ground-floor room he became certain that the surface brought out by the peeling of several coats of paint was sensibly darker than any ordinary interior paint or the wood beneath it was likely to have been. A few more careful tests with a thin knife, and he knew that he had come upon an oil portrait of great extent. With truly scholarly restraint the youth did not risk the damage which an immediate attempt to uncover the hidden picture with the knife might have done, but just retired from the scene of his discovery to enlist expert help. In three days he returned with an artist of long experience, Mr. Walter C. Dwight, whose studio is near the foot of College Hill; and that accomplished restorer of paintings set to work at once with proper methods and chemical substances. Old Asa and his wife were duly excited over their strange visitors, and were properly reimbursed for this invasion of their domestic hearth.
      As day by day the work of restoration progressed, Charles Ward looked on with growing interest at the lines and shades gradually unveiled after their long oblivion. Dwight had begun at the bottom; hence since the picture was a three-quarter-length one, the face did not come out for some time. It was meanwhile seen that the subject was a spare, well-shaped man with dark-blue coat, embroidered waistcoat, black satin small-clothes, and white silk stockings, seated in a carved chair against the background of a window with wharves and ships beyond. When the head came out it was observed to bear a neat Albemarle wig, and to possess a thin, calm, undistinguished face which seemed somehow familiar to both Ward and the artist. Only at the very last, though, did the restorer and his client begin to gasp with astonishment at the details of that lean, pallid visage, and to recognise with a touch of awe the dramatic trick which heredity had played. For it took the final bath of oil and the final stroke of the delicate scraper to bring out fully the expression which centuries had hidden; and to confront the bewildered Charles Dexter Ward, dweller in the past, with his own living features in the countenance of his horrible great-great-great-grandfather.
      Ward brought his parents to see the marvel he had uncovered, and his father at once determined to purchase the picture despite its execution on stationary panelling. The resemblance to the boy, despite an appearance of rather greater age, was marvellous; and it could be seen that through some trick of atavism the physical contours of Joseph Curwen had found precise duplication after a century and a half. Mrs. Ward's resemblance to her ancestor was not at all marked, though she could recall relatives who had some of the facial characteristics shared by her son and by the bygone Curwen. She did not relish the discovery, and told her husband that he had better burn the picture instead of bringing it home. There was, she averred, something unwholesome about it; not only intrinsically, but in its very resemblance to Charles. Mr. Ward, however, was a practical man of power and affairs - a cotton manufacturer with extensive mills at Riverpoint in the Pawtuxet Valley - and not one to listen to feminine scruples. The picture impressed him mightily with its likeness to his son, and he believed the boy deserved it as a present. In this opinion, it is needless to say, Charles most heartily concurred; and a few days later Mr. Ward located the owner of the house - a small rodent-featured person with a guttural accent - and obtained the whole mantel and overmantel bearing the picture at a curtly fixed priced which cut short the impending torrent of unctuous haggling.
      It now remained to take off the panelling and remove it to the Ward home, where provisions were made for its thorough restoration and installation with an electric mock-fireplace in Charles's third-floor study or library. To Charles was left the task of superintending this removal, and on the twenty-eighth of August he accompanied two expert workmen from the Crooker decorating firm to the house in Olney Court, where the mantel and portrait-bearing overmantel were detached with great care and precision for transportation in the company's motor truck. There was left a space of exposed brickwork marking the chimney's course, and in this young Ward observed a cubical recess about a foot square, which must have lain directly behind the head of the portrait. Curious as to what such a space might mean or contain, the youth approached and looked within; finding beneath the deep coatings of dust and soot some loose yellowed papers, a crude, thick copybook, and a few mouldering textile shreds which may have formed the ribbon binding the rest together. Blowing away the bulk of the dirt and cinders, he took up the book and looked at the bold inscription on its cover. It was in a hand which he had learned to recognise at the Essex Institute, and proclaimed the volume as the ""Journall and Notes of Jos: Curwen, Gent., of Providence-Plantations, Late of Salem.""
      Excited beyond measure by his discovery, Ward shewed the book to the two curious workmen beside him. Their testimony is absolute as to the nature and genuineness of the finding, and Dr. Willett relies on them to help establish his theory that the youth was not mad when he began his major eccentricities. All the other papers were likewise in Curwen's handwriting, and one of them seemed especially portentous because of its inscription: ""To Him Who Shal Come After, & How He May Gett Beyonde Time & ye Spheres."" Another was in a cipher; the same, Ward hoped, as the Hutchinson cipher which had hitherto baffled him. A third, and here the searcher rejoiced, seemed to be a key to the cipher; whilst the fourth and fifth were addressed respectively to ""Edw: Hutchinson, Armiger"" and ""Jedediah Orne, Esq."", 'or Their Heir or Heirs, or Those Represent'g Them'. The sixth and last was inscribed: ""Joseph Curwen his Life and Travells Bet'n ye yeares 1678 and 1687: Of Whither He Voyag'd, Where He Stay'd, Whom He Sawe, and What He Learnt.""

3.

      We have now reached the point from which the more academic school of alienists date Charles Ward's madness. Upon his discovery the youth had looked immediately at a few of the inner pages of the book and manuscripts, and had evidently seen something which impressed him tremendously. Indeed, in shewing the titles to the workmen he appeared to guard the text itself with peculiar care, and to labour under a perturbation for which even the antiquarian and genealogical significance of the find could hardly account. Upon returning home he broke the news with an almost embarrassed air, as if he wished to convey an idea of its supreme importance without having to exhibit the evidence itself. He did not even shew the titles to his parents, but simply told them that he had found some documents in Joseph Curwen's handwriting, ""mostly in cipher"", which would have to be studied very carefully before yielding up their true meaning. It is unlikely that he would have shewn what he did to the workmen, had it not been for their unconcealed curiosity. As it was he doubtless wished to avoid any display of peculiar reticence which would increase their discussion of the matter.
      That night Charles Ward sat up in his room reading the new-found book and papers, and when day came he did not desist. His meals, on his urgent request when his mother called to see what was amiss, were sent up to him; and in the afternoon he appeared only briefly when the men came to install the Curwen picture and mantelpiece in his study. The next night he slept in snatches in his clothes, meanwhile wrestling feverishly with the unravelling of the cipher manuscript. In the morning his mother saw that he was at work on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher, which he had frequently shewn her before; but in response to her query he said that the Curwen key could not be applied to it. That afternoon he abandoned his work and watched the men fascinatedly as they finished their installation of the picture with its woodwork above a cleverly realistic electric log, setting the mock-fireplace and overmantel a little out from the north wall as if a chimney existed, and boxing in the sides with panelling to match the room's. The front panel holding the picture was sawn and hinged to allow cupboard space behind it. After the workmen went he moved his work into the study and sat down before it with his eyes half on the cipher and half on the portrait which stared back at him like a year-adding and century-recalling mirror.
      His parents, subsequently recalling his conduct at this period, give interesting details anent the policy of concealment which he practiced. Before servants he seldom hid any paper which he might be studying, since he rightly assumed that Curwen's intricate and archaic chirography would be too much for them. With his parents, however, he was more circumspect; and unless the manuscript in question were a cipher, or a mere mass of cryptic symbols and unknown ideographs (as that entitled ""To Him Who Shal Come After etc."" seemed to be), he would cover it with some convenient paper until his caller had departed. At night he kept the papers under lock and key in an antique cabinet of his, where he also placed them whenever he left the room. He soon resumed fairly regular hours and habits, except that his long walks and other outside interests seemed to cease. The opening of school, where he now began his senior year, seemed a great bore to him; and he frequently asserted his determination never to bother with college. He had, he said, important special investigations to make, which would provide him with more avenues toward knowledge and the humanities than any university which the world could boast.
      Naturally, only one who had always been more or less studious, eccentric, and solitary could have pursued this course for many days without attracting notice. Ward, however, was constitutionally a scholar and a hermit; hence his parents were less surprised than regretful at the close confinement and secrecy he adopted. At the same time, both his father and mother thought it odd that he would shew them no scrap of his treasure-trove, nor give any connected account of such data as he had deciphered. This reticence he explained away as due to a wish to wait until he might announce some connected revelation, but as the weeks passed without further disclosures there began to grow up between the youth and his family a kind of constraint; intensified in his mother's case by her manifest disapproval of all Curwen delvings.
      During October Ward began visiting the libraries again, but no longer for the antiquarian matter of his former days. Witchcraft and magic, occultism and daemonology, were what he sought now; and when Providence sources proved unfruitful he would take the train for Boston and tap the wealth of the great library in Copley Square, the Widener Library at Harvard, or the Zion Research Library in Brookline, where certain rare works on Biblical subjects are available. He bought extensively, and fitted up a whole additional set of shelves in his study for newly acquired works on uncanny subjects; while during the Christmas holidays he made a round of out-of-town trips including one to Salem to consult certain records at the Essex Institute.
      About the middle of January, 1920, there entered Ward's bearing an element of triumph which he did not explain, and he was no more found at work upon the Hutchinson cipher. Instead, he inaugurated a dual policy of chemical research and record-scanning; fitting up for the one a laboratory in the unused attic of the house, and for the latter haunting all the sources of vital statistics in Providence. Local dealers in drugs and scientific supplies, later questioned, gave astonishingly queer and meaningless catalogues of the substances and instruments he purchased; but clerks at the State House, the City Hall, and the various libraries agree as to the definite object of his second interest. He was searching intensely and feverishly for the grave of Joseph Curwen, from whose slate slab an older generation had so wisely blotted the name.
      Little by little there grew upon the Ward family the conviction that something was wrong. Charles had had freaks and changes of minor interests before, but this growing secrecy and absorption in strange pursuits was unlike even him. His school work was the merest pretence; and although he failed in no test, it could be seen that the old application had all vanished. He had other concernments now; and when not in his new laboratory with a score of obsolete alchemical books, could be found either poring over old burial records down town or glued to his volumes of occult lore in his study, where the startlingly - one almost fancied increasingly - similar features of Joseph Curwen stared blandly at him from the great overmantel on the north wall.
      Late in March Ward added to his archive-searching a ghoulish series of rambles about the various ancient cemeteries of the city. The cause appeared later, when it was learned from City Hall clerks that he had probably found an important clue. His quest had suddenly shifted from the grave of Joseph Curwen to that of one Naphthali Field; and this shift was explained when, upon going over the files that he had been over, the investigators actually found a fragmentary record of Curwen's burial which had escaped the general obliteration, and which stated that the curious leaden coffin had been interred ""10 ft. S. and 5 ft. W. of Naphthali Field's grave in ye - "". The lack of a specified burying-ground in the surviving entry greatly complicated the search, and Naphthali Field's grave seemed as elusive as that of Curwen; but here no systematic effacement had existed, and one might reasonably be expected to stumble on the stone itself even if its record had perished. Hence the rambles - from which St. John's (the former King's) Churchyard and the ancient Congregational burying-ground in the midst of Swan Point Cemetery were excluded, since other statistics had shewn that the only Naphthali Field (obiit 1729) whose grave could have been meant had been a Baptist.

4.

      It was toward May when Dr. Willett, at the request of the senior Ward, and fortified with all the Curwen data which the family had gleaned from Charles in his non-secretive days, talked with the young man. The interview was of little value or conclusiveness, for Willett felt at every moment that Charles was thoroughly master of himself and in touch with matters of real importance; but it at least forced the secretive youth to offer some rational explanation of his recent demeanour. Of a pallid, impassive type not easily shewing embarrassment, Ward seemed quite ready to discuss his pursuits, though not to reveal their object. He stated that the papers of his ancestor had contained some remarkable secrets of early scientific knowledge, for the most part in cipher, of an apparent scope comparable only to the discoveries of Friar Bacon and perhaps surpassing even those. They were, however, meaningless except when correlated with a body of learning now wholly obsolete; so that their immediate presentation to a world equipped only with modern science would rob them of all impressiveness and dramatic significance. To take their vivid place in the history of human thought they must first be correlated by one familiar with the background out of which they evolved, and to this task of correlation Ward was now devoting himself. He was seeking to acquire as fast as possible those neglected arts of old which a true interpreter of the Curwen data must possess, and hoped in time to make a full announcement and presentation of the utmost interest to mankind and to the world of thought. Not even Einstein, he declared, could more profoundly revolutionise the current conception of things.
      As to his graveyard search, whose object he freely admitted, but the details of whose progress he did not relate, he said he had reason to think that Joseph Curwen's mutilated headstone bore certain mystic symbols - carved from directions in his will and ignorantly spared by those who had effaced the name - which were absolutely essential to the final solution of his cryptic system. Curwen, he believed, had wished to guard his secret with care; and had consequently distributed the data in an exceedingly curious fashion. When Dr. Willett asked to see the mystic documents, Ward displayed much reluctance and tried to put him off with such things as photostatic copies of the Hutchinson cipher and Orne formulae and diagrams; but finally shewed him the exteriors of some of the real Curwen finds - the ""Journall and Notes"", the cipher (title in cipher also), and the formula-filled message ""To Him Who Shal Come After"" - and let him glance inside such as were in obscure characters.
      He also opened the diary at a page carefully selected for its innocuousness and gave Willett a glimpse of Curwen's connected handwriting in English. The doctor noted very closely the crabbed and complicated letters, and the general aura of the seventeenth century which clung round both penmanship and style despite the writer's survival into the eighteenth century, and became quickly certain that the document was genuine. The text itself was relatively trivial, and Willett recalled only a fragment:
""Wedn. 16 Octr. 1754. My Sloope the Wakeful this Day putt in from London with XX newe Men pick'd up in ye Indies, Spaniards from Martineco and 2 Dutch Men from Surinam. Ye Dutch Men are like to Desert from have'g hearde Somewhat ill of these Ventures, but I will see to ye Inducing of them to Staye. ffor Mr. Knight Dexter of ye Boy and Book 120 Pieces Camblets, 100 Pieces Assrtd. Cambleteens, 20 Pieces blue Duffles, 100 Pieces Shalloons, 50 Pieces Calamancoes, 300 Pieces each, Shendsoy and Humhums. ffor Mr. Green at ye Elephant 50 Gallon Cyttles, 20 Warm'g Pannes, 15 Bake Cyttles, 10 pr. Smoke'g Tonges. ffor Mr. Perrigo 1 Sett of Awles, ffor Mr. Nightingale 50 Reames prime Foolscap. Say'd ye SABAOTH thrice last Nighte but None appear'd. I must heare more from Mr. H. in Transylvania, tho' it is Harde reach'g him and exceeding strange he can not give me the Use of what he hath so well us'd these hundred yeares. Simon hath not Writ these V. Weekes, but I expecte soon hear'g from him.""
      When upon reaching this point Dr. Willett turned the leaf he was quickly checked by Ward, who almost snatched the book from his grasp. All that the doctor had a chance to see on the newly opened page was a brief pair of sentences; but these, strangely enough, lingered tenaciously in his memory. They ran: ""Ye Verse from Liber-Damnatus be'g spoke V Roodmasses and IV Hallows-Eves, I am Hopeful ye Thing is breed'g Outside ye Spheres. It will drawe One who is to Come, if I can make sure he shal bee, and he shall think on Past thinges and look back thro' all ye yeares, against ye which I must have ready ye Saltes or That to make 'em with.""
      Willett saw no more, but somehow this small glimpse gave a new and vague terror to the painted features of Joseph Curwen which stared blandly down from the overmantel. Ever after that he entertained the odd fancy - which his medical skill of course assured him was only a fancy - that the eyes of the portrait had a sort of wish, if not an actual tendency, to follow young Charles Ward as he moved about the room. He stopped before leaving to study the picture closely, marvelling at its resemblance to Charles and memorising every minute detail of the cryptical, colourless face, even down to a slight scar or pit in the smooth brow above the right eye. Cosmo Alexander, he decided, was a painter worthy of the Scotland that produced Raeburn, and a teacher worthy of his illustrious pupil Gilbert Stuart.
      Assured by the doctor that Charles's mental health was in no danger, but that on the other hand he was engaged in researches which might prove of real importance, the Wards were more lenient than they might otherwise have been when during the following June the youth made positive his refusal to attend college. He had, he declared, studies of much more vital importance to pursue; and intimated a wish to go abroad the following year in order to avail himself of certain sources of data not existing in America. The senior Ward, while denying this latter wish as absurd for a boy of only eighteen, acquiesced regarding the university; so that after a none too brilliant graduation from the Moses Brown School there ensued for Charles a three-year period of intensive occult study and graveyard searching. He became recognised as an eccentric, and dropped even more completely from the sight of his family's friends than he had been before; keeping close to his work and only occasionally making trips to other cities to consult obscure records. Once he went south to talk with a strange old mulatto who dwelt in a swamp and about whom a newspaper had printed a curious article. Again he sought a small village in the Adirondacks whence reports of certain odd ceremonial practices had come. But still his parents forbade him the trip to the Old World which he desired.
      Coming of age in April, 1923, and having previously inherited a small competence from his maternal grandfather, Ward determined at last to take the European trip hitherto denied him. Of his proposed itinerary he would say nothing save that the needs of his studies would carry him to many places, but he promised to write his parents fully and faithfully. When they saw he could not be dissuaded, they ceased all opposition and helped as best they could; so that in June the young man sailed for Liverpool with the farewell blessings of his father and mother, who accompanied him to Boston and waved him out of sight from the White Star pier in Charlestown. Letters soon told of his safe arrival, and of his securing good quarters in Great Russell Street, London; where he proposed to stay, shunning all family friends, till he had exhausted the resources of the British Museum in a certain direction. Of his daily life he wrote but little, for there was little to write. Study and experiment consumed all his time, and he mentioned a laboratory which he had established in one of his rooms. That he said nothing of antiquarian rambles in the glamorous old city with its luring skyline of ancient domes and steeples and its tangles of roads and alleys whose mystic convolutions and sudden vistas alternately beckon and surprise, was taken by his parents as a good index of the degree to which his new interests had engrossed his mind.
      In June, 1924, a brief note told of his departure for Paris, to which he had before made one or two flying trips for material in the Bibliothque Nationale. For three months thereafter he sent only postal cards, giving an address in the Rue St. Jacques and referring to a special search among rare manuscripts in the library of an unnamed private collector. He avoided acquaintances, and no tourists brought back reports of having seen him. Then came a silence, and in October the Wards received a picture card from Prague, Czecho-Slovakia, stating that Charles was in that ancient town for the purpose of conferring with a certain very aged man supposed to be the last living possessor of some very curious mediaeval information. He gave an address in the Neustadt, and announced no move till the following January; when he dropped several cards from Vienna telling of his passage through that city on the way toward a more easterly region whither one of his correspondents and fellow-delvers into the occult had invited him.
      The next card was from Klausenburg in Transylvania, and told of Ward's progress toward his destination. He was going to visit a Baron Ferenczy, whose estate lay in the mountains east of Rakus; and was to be addressed at Rakus in the care of that nobleman. Another card from Rakus a week later, saying that his host's carriage had met him and that he was leaving the village for the mountains, was his last message for a considerable time; indeed, he did not reply to his parents' frequent letters until May, when he wrote to discourage the plan of his mother for a meeting in London, Paris, or Rome during the summer, when the elder Wards were planning to travel in Europe. His researches, he said, were such that he could not leave his present quarters; while the situation of Baron Ferenczy's castle did not favour visits. It was on a crag in the dark wooded mountains, and the region was so shunned by the country folk that normal people could not help feeling ill at ease. Moreover, the Baron was not a person likely to appeal to correct and conservative New England gentlefolk. His aspect and manners had idiosyncrasies, and his age was so great as to be disquieting. It would be better, Charles said, if his parents would wait for his return to Providence; which could scarcely be far distant.
      That return did not, however, take place until May, 1926, when after a few heralding cards the young wanderer quietly slipped into New York on the Homeric and traversed the long miles to Providence by motor-coach, eagerly drinking in the green rolling hills, the fragrant, blossoming orchards, and the white steepled towns of vernal Connecticut; his first taste of ancient New England in nearly four years. When the coach crossed the Pawcatuck and entered Rhode Island amidst the faery goldenness of a late spring afternoon his heart beat with quickened force, and the entry to Providence along Reservoir and Elmwood avenues was a breathless and wonderful thing despite the depths of forbidden lore to which he had delved. At the high square where Broad, Weybosset, and Empire Streets join, he saw before and below him in the fire of sunset the pleasant, remembered houses and domes and steeples of the old town; and his head swam curiously as the vehicle rolled down the terminal behind the Biltmore, bringing into view the great dome and soft, roof-pierced greenery of the ancient hill across the river, and the tall colonial spire of the First Baptist Church limned pink in the magic evening light against the fresh springtime verdure of its precipitous background.
      Old Providence! It was this place and the mysterious forces of its long, continuous history which had brought him into being, and which had drawn him back toward marvels and secrets whose boundaries no prophet might fix. Here lay the arcana, wondrous or dreadful as the case might be, for which all his years of travel and application had been preparing him. A taxicab whirled him through Post Office Square with its glimpse of the river, the old Market House, and the head of the bay, and up the steep curved slope of Waterman Street to Prospect, where the vast gleaming dome and sunset-flushed Ionic columns of the Christian Science Church beckoned northward. Then eight squares past the fine old estates his childish eyes had known, and the quaint brick sidewalks so often trodden by his youthful feet. And at last the little white overtaken farmhouse on the right, on the left the classic Adam porch and stately bayed facade of the great brick house where he was born. It was twilight, and Charles Dexter Ward had come home.

5.

      A school of alienists slightly less academic than Dr. Lyman's assign to Ward's European trip the beginning of his true madness. Admitting that he was sane when he started, they believe that his conduct upon returning implies a disastrous change. But even to this claim Dr. Willett refuses to accede. There was, he insists, something later; and the queernesses of the youth at this stage he attributes to the practice of rituals learned abroad - odd enough things, to be sure, but by no means implying mental aberration on the part of their celebrant. Ward himself, though visibly aged and hardened, was still normal in his general reactions; and in several talks with Willett displayed a balance which no madman - even an incipient one - could feign continuously for long. What elicited the notion of insanity at this period were the sounds heard at all hours from Ward's attic laboratory, in which he kept himself most of the time. There were chantings and repetitions, and thunderous declamations in uncanny rhythms; and although these sounds were always in Ward's own voice, there was something in the quality of that voice, and in the accents of the formulae it pronounced, which could not but chill the blood of every hearer. It was noticed that Nig, the venerable and beloved black cat of the household, bristled and arched his back perceptibly when certain of the tones were heard.
      The odours occasionally wafted from the laboratory were likewise exceedingly strange. Sometimes they were very noxious, but more often they were aromatic, with a haunting, elusive quality which seemed to have the power of inducing fantastic images. People who smelled them had a tendency to glimpse momentary mirages of enormous vistas, with strange hills or endless avenues of sphinxes and hippogriffs stretching off into infinite distance. Ward did not resume his old-time rambles, but applied himself diligently to the strange books he had brought home, and to equally strange delvings within his quarters; explaining that European sources had greatly enlarged the possibilities of his work, and promising great revelations in the years to come. His older aspect increased to a startling degree his resemblance to the Curwen portrait in his library; and Dr. Willett would often pause by the latter after a call, marvelling at the virtual identity, and reflecting that only the small pit above the picture's right eye now remained to differentiate the long-dead wizard from the living youth. These calls of Willett's, undertaken at the request of the senior Wards, were curious affairs. Ward at no time repulsed the doctor, but the latter saw that he could never reach the young man's inner psychology. Frequently he noted peculiar things about; little wax images of grotesque design on the shelves or tables, and the half-erased remnants of circles, triangles, and pentagrams in chalk or charcoal on the cleared central space of the large room. And always in the night those rhythms and incantations thundered, till it became very difficult to keep servants or suppress furtive talk of Charles's madness.
      In January, 1927, a peculiar incident occurred. One night about midnight, as Charles was chanting a ritual whose weird cadence echoed unpleasantly through the house below, there came a sudden gust of chill wind from the bay, and a faint, obscure trembling of the earth which everyone in the neighbourhood noted. At the same time the cat exhibited phenomenal traces of fright, while dogs bayed for as much as a mile around. This was the prelude to a sharp thunderstorm, anomalous for the season, which brought with it such a crash that Mr. and Mrs. Ward believed the house had been struck. They rushed upstairs to see what damage had been done, but Charles met them at the door to the attic; pale, resolute, and portentous, with an almost fearsome combination of triumph and seriousness on his face. He assured them that the house had not really been struck, and that the storm would soon be over. They paused, and looking through a window saw that he was indeed right; for the lightning flashed farther and farther off, whilst the trees ceased to bend in the strange frigid gust from the water. The thunder sank to a sort of dull mumbling chuckle and finally died away. Stars came out, and the stamp of triumph on Charles Ward's face crystallised into a very singular expression.
      For two months or more after this incident Ward was less confined than usual to his laboratory. He exhibited a curious interest in the weather, and made odd inquiries about the date of the spring thawing of the ground. One night late in March he left the house after midnight, and did not return till almost morning; when his mother, being wakeful, heard a rumbling motor draw up to the carriage entrance. Muffled oaths could be distinguished, and Mrs. Ward, rising and going to the window, saw four dark figures removing a long, heavy box from a truck at Charles's direction and carrying it within by the side door. She heard laboured breathing and ponderous footfalls on the stairs, and finally a dull thumping in the attic; after which the footfalls descended again, and the four men reappeared outside and drove off in their truck.
      The next day Charles resumed his strict attic seclusion, drawing down the dark shades of his laboratory windows and appearing to be working on some metal substance. He would open the door to no one, and steadfastly refused all proffered food. About noon a wrenching sound followed by a terrible cry and a fall were heard, but when Mrs. Ward rapped at the door her son at length answered faintly, and told her that nothing had gone amiss. The hideous and indescribable stench now welling out was absolutely harmless and unfortunately necessary. Solitude was the one prime essential, and he would appear later for dinner. That afternoon, after the conclusion of some odd hissing sounds which came from behind the locked portal, he did finally appear; wearing an extremely haggard aspect and forbidding anyone to enter the laboratory upon any pretext. This, indeed, proved the beginning of a new policy of secrecy; for never afterward was any other person permitted to visit either the mysterious garret workroom or the adjacent storeroom which he cleaned out, furnished roughly, and added to his inviolably private domain as a sleeping apartment. Here he lived, with books brought up from his library beneath, till the time he purchased the Pawtuxet bungalow and moved to it all his scientific effects.
      In the evening Charles secured the paper before the rest of the family and damaged part of it through an apparent accident. Later on Dr. Willett, having fixed the date from statements by various members of the household, looked up an intact copy at the Journal office and found that in the destroyed section the following small item had occurred:
Nocturnal Diggers Surprised in
North Burial Ground

Robert Hart, night watchman at the North Burial Ground, this morning discovered a party of several men with a motor truck in the oldest part of the cemetery, but apparently frightened them off before they had accomplished whatever their object may have been.
      The discovery took place at about four o'clock, when Hart's attention was attracted by the sound of a motor outside his shelter. Investigating, he saw a large truck on the main drive several rods away; but could not reach it before the sound of his feet on the gravel had revealed his approach. The men hastily placed a large box in the truck and drove away toward the street before they could be overtaken; and since no known grave was disturbed, Hart believes that this box was an object which they wished to bury.
      The diggers must have been at work for a long while before detection, for Hart found an enormous hole dug at a considerable distance back from the roadway in the lot of Amasa Field, where most of the old stones have long ago disappeared. The hole, a place as large and deep as a grave, was empty; and did not coincide with any interment mentioned in the cemetery records.
      Sergt. Riley of the Second Station viewed the spot and gave the opinion that the hole was dug by bootleggers rather gruesomely and ingeniously seeking a safe cache for liquor in a place not likely to be disturbed. In reply to questions Hart said he thought the escaping truck had headed up Rochambeau Avenue, though he could not be sure.
      During the next few days Ward was seldom seen by his family. Having added sleeping quarters to his attic realm, he kept closely to himself there, ordering food brought to the door and not taking it in until after the servant had gone away. The droning of monotonous formulae and the chanting of bizarre rhythms recurred at intervals, while at other times occasional listeners could detect the sound of tinkling glass, hissing chemicals, running water, or roaring gas flames. Odours of the most unplaceable quality, wholly unlike any before noted, hung at times around the door; and the air of tension observable in the young recluse whenever he did venture briefly forth was such as to excite the keenest speculation. Once he made a hasty trip to the Athenaeum for a book he required, and again he hired a messenger to fetch him a highly obscure volume from Boston. Suspense was written portentously over the whole situation, and both the family and Dr. Willett confessed themselves wholly at a loss what to do or think about it.

6.

      Then on the fifteenth of April a strange development occurred. While nothing appeared to grow different in kind, there was certainly a very terrible difference in degree; and Dr. Willett somehow attaches great significance to the change. The day was Good Friday, a circumstance of which the servants made much, but which others quite naturally dismiss as an irrelevant coincidence. Late in the afternoon young Ward began repeating a certain formula in a singularly loud voice, at the same time burning some substance so pungent that its fumes escaped over the entire house. The formula was so plainly audible in the hall outside the locked door that Mrs. Ward could not help memorising it as she waited and listened anxiously, and later on she was able to write it down at Dr. Willett's request. It ran as follows, and experts have told Dr. Willett that its very close analogue can be found in the mystic writings of ""Eliphas Levi"", that cryptic soul who crept through a crack in the forbidden door and glimpsed the frightful vistas of the void beyond:
""Per Adonai Eloim, Adonai Jehova,
Adonai Sabaoth, Metraton On Agla Mathon,
verbum pythonicum, mysterium salamandrae,
conventus sylvorum, antra gnomorum,
daemonia Coeli Gad, Almousin, Gibor, Jehosua,
Evam, Zariatnatmik, veni, veni, veni.""
      This had been going on for two hours without change or intermission when over all the neighbourhood a pandaemoniac howling of dogs set in. The extent of this howling can be judged from the space it received in the papers the next day, but to those in the Ward household it was overshadowed by the odour which instantly followed it; a hideous, all-pervasive odour which none of them had ever smelt before or have ever smelt since. In the midst of this mephitic flood there came a very perceptible flash like that of lightning, which would have been blinding and impressive but for the daylight around; and then was heard the voice that no listener can ever forget because of its thunderous remoteness, its incredible depth, and its eldritch dissimilarity to Charles Ward's voice. It shook the house, and was clearly heard by at least two neighbours above the howling of the dogs. Mrs. Ward, who had been listening in despair outside her son's locked laboratory, shivered as she recognised its hellish import; for Charles had told her of its evil fame in dark books, and of the manner in which it had thundered, according to the Fenner letters, above the doomed Pawtuxet farmhouse on the night of Joseph Curwen's annihilation. There was no mistaking that nightmare phrase, for Charles had described it too vividly in the old days when he had talked frankly of his Curwen investigations. And yet it was only this fragment of an archaic and forgotten language: ""DIES MIES JESCHET BOENE DOESEF DOUVEMA ENITEMAUS"".
      Close upon this thundering there came a momentary darkening of the daylight, though sunset was still an hour distant, and then a puff of added odour different from the first but equally unknown and intolerable. Charles was chanting again now and his mother could hear syllables that sounded like ""Yi-nash-Yog-Sothoth-he-lgeb-fi-throdog"" - ending in a ""Yah!"" whose maniacal force mounted in an ear-splitting crescendo. A second later all previous memories were effaced by the wailing scream which burst out with frantic explosiveness and gradually changed form to a paroxysm of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Mrs. Ward, with the mingled fear and blind courage of maternity, advanced and knocked affrightedly at the concealing panels, but obtained no sign of recognition. She knocked again, but paused nervelessly as a second shriek arose, this one unmistakably in the familiar voice of her son, and sounding concurrently with the still bursting cachinnations of that other voice. Presently she fainted, although she is still unable to recall the precise and immediate cause. Memory sometimes makes merciful deletions.
      Mr. Ward returned from the business section at about quarter past six; and not finding his wife downstairs, was told by the frightened servants that she was probably watching at Charles's door, from which the sounds had been far stranger than ever before. Mounting the stairs at once, he saw Mrs. Ward stretched at full length on the floor of the corridor outside the laboratory; and realising that she had fainted, hastened to fetch a glass of water from a set bowl in a neighbouring alcove. Dashing the cold fluid in her face, he was heartened to observe an immediate response on her part, and was watching the bewildered opening of her eyes when a chill shot through him and threatened to reduce him to the very state from which she was emerging. For the seemingly silent laboratory was not as silent as it had appeared to be, but held the murmurs of a tense, muffled conversation in tones too low for comprehension, yet of a quality profoundly disturbing to the soul.
      It was not, of course, new for Charles to mutter formulae; but this muttering was definitely different. It was so palpably a dialogue, or imitation of a dialogue, with the regular alteration of inflections suggesting question and answer, statement and response. One voice was undisguisedly that of Charles, but the other had a depth and hollowness which the youth's best powers of ceremonial mimicry had scarcely approached before. There was something hideous, blasphemous, and abnormal about it, and but for a cry from his recovering wife which cleared his mind by arousing his protective instincts it is not likely that Theodore Howland Ward could have maintained for nearly a year more his old boast that he had never fainted. As it was, he seized his wife in his arms and bore her quickly downstairs before she could notice the voices which had so horribly disturbed him. Even so, however, he was not quick enough to escape catching something himself which caused him to stagger dangerously with his burden. For Mrs. Ward's cry had evidently been heard by others than he, and there had come from behind the locked door the first distinguishable words which that masked and terrible colloquy had yielded. They were merely an excited caution in Charles's own voice, but somehow their implications held a nameless fright for the father who overheard them. The phrase was just this: ""Sshh! - write!""
      Mr. and Mrs. Ward conferred at some length after dinner, and the former resolved to have a firm and serious talk with Charles that very night. No matter how important the object, such conduct could no longer be permitted; for these latest developments transcended every limit of sanity and formed a menace to the order and nervous well-being of the entire household. The youth must indeed have taken complete leave of his senses, since only downright madness could have prompted the wild screams and imaginary conversations in assumed voices which the present day had brought forth. All this must be stopped, or Mrs. Ward would be made ill and the keeping of servants become an impossibility.
      Mr. Ward rose at the close of the meal and started upstairs for Charles's laboratory. On the third floor, however, he paused at the sounds which he heard proceeding from the now disused library of his son. Books were apparently being flung about and papers wildly rustled, and upon stepping to the door Mr. Ward beheld the youth within, excitedly assembling a vast armful of literary matter of every size and shape. Charles's aspect was very drawn and haggard, and he dropped his entire load with a start at the sound of his father's voice. At the elder man's command he sat down, and for some time listened to the admonitions he had so long deserved. There was no scene. At the end of the lecture he agreed that his father was right, and that his noises, mutterings, incantations, and chemical odours were indeed inexcusable nuisances. He agreed to a policy of greater quiet, though insisting on a prolongation of his extreme privacy. Much of his future work, he said, was in any case purely book research; and he could obtain quarters elsewhere for any such vocal rituals as might be necessary at a later stage. For the fright and fainting of his mother he expressed the keenest contrition, and explained that the conversation later heard was part of an elaborate symbolism designed to create a certain mental atmosphere. His use of abstruse technical terms somewhat bewildered Mr. Ward, but the parting impression was one of undeniable sanity and poise despite a mysterious tension of the utmost gravity. The interview was really quite inconclusive, and as Charles picked up his armful and left the room Mr. Ward hardly knew what to make of the entire business. It was as mysterious as the death of poor old Nig, whose stiffening form had been found an hour before in the basement, with staring eyes and fear-distorted mouth.
      Driven by some vague detective instinct, the bewildered parent now glanced curiously at the vacant shelves to see what his son had taken up to the attic. The youth's library was plainly and rigidly classified, so that one might tell at a glance the books or at least the kind of books which had been withdrawn. On this occasion Mr. Ward was astonished to find that nothing of the occult or the antiquarian, beyond what had been previously removed, was missing. These new withdrawals were all modern items; histories, scientific treatises, geographies, manuals of literature, philosophic works, and certain contemporary newspapers and magazines. It was a very curious shift from Charles Ward's recent run of reading, and the father paused in a growing vortex of perplexity and an engulfing sense of strangeness. The strangeness was a very poignant sensation, and almost clawed at his chest as he strove to see just what was wrong around him. Something was indeed wrong, and tangibly as well as spiritually so. Ever since he had been in this room he had known that something was amiss, and at last it dawned upon him what it was.
      On the north wall rose still the ancient carved overmantel from the house in Olney Court, but to the cracked and precariously restored oils of the large Curwen portrait disaster had come. Time and unequal heating had done their work at last, and at some time since the room's last cleaning the worst had happened. Peeling clear of the wood, curling tighter and tighter, and finally crumbling into small bits with what must have been malignly silent suddenness, the portrait of Joseph Curwen had resigned forever its staring surveillance of the youth it so strangely resembled, and now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust.
","VI.

The Dunwich horror itself came between Lammas and the equinox in 1928, and Dr. Armitage was among those who witnessed its monstrous prologue. He had heard, meanwhile, of Whateley’s grotesque trip to Cambridge, and of his frantic efforts to borrow or copy from the Necronomicon at the Widener Library. Those efforts had been in vain, since Armitage had issued warnings of the keenest intensity to all librarians having charge of the dreaded volume. Wilbur had been shockingly nervous at Cambridge; anxious for the book, yet almost equally anxious to get home again, as if he feared the results of being away long.
      Early in August the half-expected outcome developed, and in the small hours of the 3d Dr. Armitage was awakened suddenly by the wild, fierce cries of the savage watchdog on the college campus. Deep and terrible, the snarling, half-mad growls and barks continued; always in mounting volume, but with hideously significant pauses. Then there rang out a scream from a wholly different throat—such a scream as roused half the sleepers of Arkham and haunted their dreams ever afterward—such a scream as could come from no being born of earth, or wholly of earth.
      Armitage, hastening into some clothing and rushing across the street and lawn to the college buildings, saw that others were ahead of him; and heard the echoes of a burglar-alarm still shrilling from the library. An open window shewed black and gaping in the moonlight. What had come had indeed completed its entrance; for the barking and the screaming, now fast fading into a mixed low growling and moaning, proceeded unmistakably from within. Some instinct warned Armitage that what was taking place was not a thing for unfortified eyes to see, so he brushed back the crowd with authority as he unlocked the vestibule door. Among the others he saw Professor Warren Rice and Dr. Francis Morgan, men to whom he had told some of his conjectures and misgivings; and these two he motioned to accompany him inside. The inward sounds, except for a watchful, droning whine from the dog, had by this time quite subsided; but Armitage now perceived with a sudden start that a loud chorus of whippoorwills among the shrubbery had commenced a damnably rhythmical piping, as if in unison with the last breaths of a dying man.
      The building was full of a frightful stench which Dr. Armitage knew too well, and the three men rushed across the hall to the small genealogical reading-room whence the low whining came. For a second nobody dared to turn on the light, then Armitage summoned up his courage and snapped the switch. One of the three—it is not certain which—shrieked aloud at what sprawled before them among disordered tables and overturned chairs. Professor Rice declares that he wholly lost consciousness for an instant, though he did not stumble or fall.
      The thing that lay half-bent on its side in a foetid pool of greenish-yellow ichor and tarry stickiness was almost nine feet tall, and the dog had torn off all the clothing and some of the skin. It was not quite dead, but twitched silently and spasmodically while its chest heaved in monstrous unison with the mad piping of the expectant whippoorwills outside. Bits of shoe-leather and fragments of apparel were scattered about the room, and just inside the window an empty canvas sack lay where it had evidently been thrown. Near the central desk a revolver had fallen, a dented but undischarged cartridge later explaining why it had not been fired. The thing itself, however, crowded out all other images at the time. It would be trite and not wholly accurate to say that no human pen could describe it, but one may properly say that it could not be vividly visualised by anyone whose ideas of aspect and contour are too closely bound up with the common life-forms of this planet and of the three known dimensions. It was partly human, beyond a doubt, with very man-like hands and head, and the goatish, chinless face had the stamp of the Whateleys upon it. But the torso and lower parts of the body were teratologically fabulous, so that only generous clothing could ever have enabled it to walk on earth unchallenged or uneradicated.
      Above the waist it was semi-anthropomorphic; though its chest, where the dog’s rending paws still rested watchfully, had the leathery, reticulated hide of a crocodile or alligator. The back was piebald with yellow and black, and dimly suggested the squamous covering of certain snakes. Below the waist, though, it was the worst; for here all human resemblance left off and sheer phantasy began. The skin was thickly covered with coarse black fur, and from the abdomen a score of long greenish-grey tentacles with red sucking mouths protruded limply. Their arrangement was odd, and seemed to follow the symmetries of some cosmic geometry unknown to earth or the solar system. On each of the hips, deep set in a kind of pinkish, ciliated orbit, was what seemed to be a rudimentary eye; whilst in lieu of a tail there depended a kind of trunk or feeler with purple annular markings, and with many evidences of being an undeveloped mouth or throat. The limbs, save for their black fur, roughly resembled the hind legs of prehistoric earth’s giant saurians; and terminated in ridgy-veined pads that were neither hooves nor claws. When the thing breathed, its tail and tentacles rhythmically changed colour, as if from some circulatory cause normal to the non-human side of its ancestry. In the tentacles this was observable as a deepening of the greenish tinge, whilst in the tail it was manifest as a yellowish appearance which alternated with a sickly greyish-white in the spaces between the purple rings. Of genuine blood there was none; only the foetid greenish-yellow ichor which trickled along the painted floor beyond the radius of the stickiness, and left a curious discolouration behind it.
      As the presence of the three men seemed to rouse the dying thing, it began to mumble without turning or raising its head. Dr. Armitage made no written record of its mouthings, but asserts confidently that nothing in English was uttered. At first the syllables defied all correlation with any speech of earth, but toward the last there came some disjointed fragments evidently taken from the Necronomicon, that monstrous blasphemy in quest of which the thing had perished. These fragments, as Armitage recalls them, ran something like “N’gai, n’gha’ghaa, bugg-shoggog, y’hah; Yog-Sothoth, Yog-Sothoth. . . .” They trailed off into nothingness as the whippoorwills shrieked in rhythmical crescendoes of unholy anticipation.
      Then came a halt in the gasping, and the dog raised its head in a long, lugubrious howl. A change came over the yellow, goatish face of the prostrate thing, and the great black eyes fell in appallingly. Outside the window the shrilling of the whippoorwills had suddenly ceased, and above the murmurs of the gathering crowd there came the sound of a panic-struck whirring and fluttering. Against the moon vast clouds of feathery watchers rose and raced from sight, frantic at that which they had sought for prey.
      All at once the dog started up abruptly, gave a frightened bark, and leaped nervously out of the window by which it had entered. A cry rose from the crowd, and Dr. Armitage shouted to the men outside that no one must be admitted till the police or medical examiner came. He was thankful that the windows were just too high to permit of peering in, and drew the dark curtains carefully down over each one. By this time two policemen had arrived; and Dr. Morgan, meeting them in the vestibule, was urging them for their own sakes to postpone entrance to the stench-filled reading-room till the examiner came and the prostrate thing could be covered up.
      Meanwhile frightful changes were taking place on the floor. One need not describe the kind and rate of shrinkage and disintegration that occurred before the eyes of Dr. Armitage and Professor Rice; but it is permissible to say that, aside from the external appearance of face and hands, the really human element in Wilbur Whateley must have been very small. When the medical examiner came, there was only a sticky whitish mass on the painted boards, and the monstrous odour had nearly disappeared. Apparently Whateley had had no skull or bony skeleton; at least, in any true or stable sense. He had taken somewhat after his unknown father.
",True
"The Great Arising was far worse than anyone could have imagined, how can one comprehend the forces that can wrench an entire continent from deep beneath the murky abyss until it's twisted green-black spires towered over even the highest of mountains known to man? When R'yleh arose, millions returned to life, but billions of others died. The geologic upheavals, the shifting of plates swallowed whole countries and ground mighty cities to dust. Tidal waves swept hundreds of miles inland, wiping away much of the world as if it had never existed. Those who survived were in chaos, of the major world powers, only Russia retained some capability to strike back, and a hail of nuclear warheads struck the mighty walls of R'yleh, accomplishing nothing but achieving Great Cthulhu's disfavor, and Moscow was struck with such force by the mighty priest's weapons that an inland sea now sits where one of man's greatest super-powers once stood.
America fared no better, the entire west coast collapsed beneath an earthquake of unthinkable magnitude, from California to Mississippi river, the east coast was left in ruins by what later scholars would term a ""worldquake"" . The shattered survivors, staring into the dust filled sky, watched as great, bloated creatures with dragon's bodies and tentacled faces swarmed across the earth, eager to reclaim their world. Of course, there was resistance, in the early years, men struck out at the Star Spawn with every weapon at their disposal, and always the result was the same, the Star Spawn could not be injured, as they existed in multiple dimensions at once. Cthulhu's other servants, however, were more vulnerable. Human cultists could be easily killed, and the amphibious Deep Ones, though hardier than men, were only flesh and blood. Man soon learned, however, that such small victories brought attention and terrible reprisal, so much so that humanity finally ceased to fight, struggling to simply survive beneath the feet of a race that barely even noticed their very existence.
In truth, Cthulhu was not malevolent, simply amoral, beyond human concerns and desires. He neither desired nor caused most of the devastation wrecked upon humanity by the Rise of R'lyeh. Had he control over R'lyeh's rising and falling, it would never have sunken to begin with. The sidereal clockworks governed R'lyeh and it's inhabitants. When the stars were 'wrong' they had to sleep, when the stars were 'right', they wee free to walk and fly and crawl. It was that simple. Humanity had suffered the simple misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, nothing more. Those that fought Great Cthulhu and his kin were minor irritants at best, his worshipers, useful beasts, of a little more import than Shoggoths, and a little less than The Brood of Dagon. The rest, simply another breed of animal that had flourished during his long sleep. Insignificant creatures which could be used to further his grand designs. Bizarrely, despite this view of humanity, Great Cthulhu had several children by human, or once human, mates, via some of his more humanoid avatars, of course. The children of these unions were known as Half-Bloods.
This was fortunate, in many ways, for mankind. Great Cthulhu and his minions saw humans as useful pawns, if they saw them at all, so mankind was able to regroup into a primitive society, surviving under the radar. The Star Spawn rarely noticed the affairs of men, but the Half-Bloods did. The Half-Bloods, more often than not, hated their human side, feeling the need to be excessively cruel and brutal toward the people whose blood they so despised within their own veins. Some, however, were kindly disposed toward mankind...
Torren-Wraeth was the son of an avatar of Great Cthulhu and Te'ree, an outcast woman of the Rapa Nui people, born on the island of the same name, which the Europeans would later re-name 'Easter Island'. In form and mind he took more after his mother's people than his father's. In many ways, he was attractive, even beautiful by human standards, though his striking Polynesian features and lithe swimmer's build were offset by a eight small tendrils, three on each side of his lower jaw and two on his chin, his skin was emerald green rather than his mother's warm brown, his almond eyes yellow and cat-like, and slender, bat-like wings that spread from his shoulders. His straight black hair hung long and loose around his pointed ears, though occasionally he would braid it, for special occasions.
He did not hate his human side, rather, he embraced it. His name, given by his father, loosely translated as 'Spirit of the Raging Waters', but his personality was far different, though his mother's people were fierce warriors and his father's, cold, calculating and unfeeling, Torren-Wraeth was gentle. He befriended humans, or tried to, both before and after the Rise of R'lyeh. Te'ree still lived, she had been transformed into something more than human, but less than Star-Spawn, another of his father's many concubines.
As a Half-Blood Torren-Wraeth possessed abilities his True-Blood brethren lacked, while they could only communicate with human minds in sleep, Torren-Wraeth could communicate mentally with humans sleeping or awake, and, unlike his kin, he possessed vocal chords capable of actual human conversation. This, combined with his attractive appearance and gentle manner, made him a frequent messenger between his father and the humans who worshiped him. The Elder Sign, bane of his father and those like him, even other Half-Bloods, held no power over Torren-Wraeth. He did not know if this was a sign of favor from the Elder Gods who'd crafted that mystical defense, or due to some innate part of his human nature.
Rapa Nui... The people had all but died out long before the rise of R'lyeh, a combination of factors had led to their demise, systematic deforestation, a genocidal internecine war, followed by starvation. The final nail in the coffin of the Rapa Nui was the arrival of the Europeans in 1722, who brought with them disease, mistreatment and slavery. Torren-Wraeth had wanted to help them, even though they had rejected his mother, rejected him... He had implored his father to intervene, but to no avail. They were not servants of Cthulhu... Torren-Wraeth had never truly forgiven his father...
The island itself, with it's famous Moai statues, now rested in a low valley on the Southwestern portion of R'lyeh, if such directions could be applied to the non-euclidean, extra-dimensional hyper-geometry of the dark city. It's few inhabitants, mostly descended of mixed Rapa Nui and European blood, now lived literally in the shadows of R'lyeh . Torren-Wraeth visited often, protecting his mother's people. He erected again the fallen Moai, many toppled by the Rapa Nui themselves during and after their horrific civil war, moving tons of stone with his bare hands. It was important to him, so much human blood, sweat and tears had gone into the making of the Moai, they symbolized the pride of a people, his people.
Torren-Wraeth flapped his leathery wings lazily, mainly gliding along the strong winds that whipped through the black city whose structures loomed higher than the eye could see. Occasionally one of his massive half-siblings would glide by, surprisingly graceful for their incredible size, or stare impassively out from the portals of their stone domiciles. He knew they neither loved nor hated him, they merely acknowledged his existence even as they acknowledged their own. A cold, unfeeling people, the Cthuli, H.G. Wells' description of his Martian 'Minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic' aptly fit the Star Spawn . Far below him, Torren-Wraeth could see the slithering shapes of near-mindless Shoggoths, and he strained to see if, by chance, a Deep One, a Gyo-Jin, as his dearest friend had called them, lurked below. At least they had some feelings akin to those of humanity. He saw none. He was utterly alone in a city of millions.
Then the loneliness, the aching struck at his heart. Japan was gone, destroyed in the tectonic cataclysm of The Arising. Though Rapa Nui was his birthplace, his heart had been in Japan. Many years ago, his father had sent him to that land to forge an alliance with the Emperor. The alliance had been refused, but while in Japan he had met Goro. Goro had been assigned as his personal servant during his stay, and the two had become fast-friends, once the seemingly insurmountable barriers of 'class' were broken. He had healed Goro's troubled mind, entering his dreams, soothing his nightmares. Goro had lived a life of suffering and loss, and his nights were filled with terrible nightmares and even more terrible realities, something that touched Torren-Wraeth's heart. For the first time, he truly felt human suffering, he truly understood that side of himself, all the hopes and fears and pains... Such pain...
When he left Japan, he took Goro with him. They traveled the world for over 200 years, Torren-Wraeth drawing on his father's power to keep Goro young and healthy. They truly cared for each other, like brothers born. Torren-Wraeth even allowed Goro to call him Torren-kun, no one, other than his mother, could have referred to Torren-Wraeth like that. But Goro was different... He would even have accepted Torren-chan, though Goro never could shake off his shackles of low-self esteem to be so familiar with the son of Kami... He'd never truly understood, Torren-Wraeth needed Goro far more than Goro needed him. Goro made him feel... Human...
He'd truly loved him, not in the way of ... Shonen-Ai, was it called? Even if Torren-Wraeth had been so inclined, Goro had already suffered far too much of that kind of 'love'. It was difficult for Torren-Wraeth to describe in the terms of either of his parent's tongues, a blending of souls, perhaps? He was a companion, a friend to whom he could open up his innermost heart without fear, and he strove to repay such care in kind. But time takes it's toll, and Goro simply began to lose interest in this life, he yearned to be reunited with his long-dead family, and, finally, Torren-Wraeth let him go. He visited him often, watching in his ageless agony as Goro raised a family, grew old, and finally died. Death, even Half-Bloods had little concept of death, such loss was unknown to his father's people. He had experienced loss for the first time in his young life, and this foreign agony crushed him. The pain he felt had never truly gone away, it had left a gaping hole in his soul... A void as deep and dark as the gulf between worlds. He had wept and raged and screamed to the heavens, angry at himself for letting Goro die, angry at Goro for wanting to live as a normal man, for wanting to die. But he came to accept that forcing immortality upon Goro would have been cruel, forcing him to live a life he no longer wanted just for his own sake would have been selfish. He had finally come to peace with himself,but God, did he miss him...
Goro's descendants were safe, though, even if Japan was gone, Torren-Wraeth had saved them, guiding them for decades, preparing them the best he could. He finally took them to the relative safety of Canada as the end became certain, gave them the signs and words to ward off any of his kin who might do them harm. It was the best he could do, under the circumstances.
The jumbled spires of R'lyeh fell away, opening onto a gloomy sea. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. Africa lay ahead, just a short jaunt on his powerful wings. The survival of Africa was almost as miraculous as the survival of Australia (which was directly adjacent to R'yleh), buffeted by tsunamis and earthquakes, rent and torn almost beyond recognition, but still there.
He turned to look back, and the greenish-black stone of R'lyeh blocked his view for as far as he could see, blotting out horizon and sky with it's incredible bulk. It was unnatural, in more ways than one, R'lyeh was less a continent than a great, graven image to Great Cthulhu and to his god, Yog-Sothoth, The Key and The Gate. Torren-Wraeth knew that, someday, R'lyeh would simply fade away from it's earthly presence and re-appear on some other, more desirable world. They were, after all, only temporary residents on this planet, R'lyeh was little more than a great city-engine to leech all it could from earth before leaving for greener pastures in an endless, soulless cycle of domination and devastation. He hoped silently that humanity would live to see that day when Great Cthulhu and his hordes left their world forever. He often wondered, if, when that day came, he would go with them...
But he knew the answer to that. He would go. He had to go. The humans had a saying, at least before the Great Arising ""Hell is other people"", but they were wrong, oh so wrong. Hell is being alone...
","Rodrigo: (Laughing) ""'Horror'? You speak to me of 'horror'? I have seen things which would make the gods tremble!""
Massa di Requiem per Shuggay
Act II Scene IV
Benevento Chieti Bordighera
(Translated from the original Italian)
Torren-Wraeth hated being summoned. He hated human sacrifice even more. After all, his mother had been human, but he could not act against his father's wishes, nor those who had summoned him, at least, not directly. He was here merely to witness, to stand helpless as a life was taken.
The youth stood, tall and handsome, his striking Polynesian features offset by his green skin and six slender tendrils that lined his chin and jaw. He was in a house, surrounded by black-robed humans, cult artifacts and blazing braziers. A young man lay upon a stone table, bound, screaming. Torren-Wraeth walked over to the table, regret in his glistening yellow eyes, ""I'm so sorry."" The man's bulging eyes stared past him, followed two of the cultists as they moved toward a spot near the west wall of the basement/temple, strained with terror.
The worshipers began to chant, and one among them called out in a loud voice, ""For the glory of Great Cthulhu, we offer this one to The Beast Below!""
""My father does not need sacrifices..."" Torren-Wraeth said loudly. That was true, to a point. His father did not, in fact, need sacrifices, but he did desire them. Perhaps, he could save this one... But they ignored him. He watched as the men rolled back a large stone, revealing a dark hole beneath. Ghouls? Ghouls can be reasoned with, better than some humans... He frowned, spoke louder ""I said, my father...""
Then it hit him. A noxious smell poured forth through the opening, gagging him. It was not the familiar, moldy corpse smell of ghouls, but something bizarre, like ammonia and drying blood... And there was something else, something far, far worse. Voices. Many voices. Laughing madly, weeping, screaming. Screaming such as Torren-Wraeth had never heard in his life; the horrific, hopeless shrieking of the damned.
He unconsciously backed away as a huge form slithered slowly from the deepest region of the pit. Torren-Wraeth nearly vomited at the sight. It was similar in shape to a worm, blood-colored and slimy, but that was not the true horror of the thing, it was it's faces... A grinning, evil human face peered from the anterior of the beast, but dozens of other anguished, maddened human faces protruded at random from it's hideous form. Their eyes reflected unspeakable torment, madness, and a longing for the release of death. Some babbled or laughed senselessly, others begged for death or wept, or just screamed... So many faces, so much unholy suffering. It turned toward the sacrificial table and it's occupant.
At the sight the victim screamed in utter terror, but his voice was drowned out by the many voices of the thing. Torren-Wraeth had heard of such things, but had not believed, had hoped that they did not exist.
The Chakota.
An abomination which absorbed it's victims, body and mind, leaving it's unfortunate prey trapped within it's hateful body, aware but helpless. The first head, the mind of the beast, was the cultist who had willingly created it, literally became the beast, the others the miserable wretches it had absorbed over the years.
Torren-Wraeth's body turned pale yellow with horror. He had seen so much evil and cruelty in his life, but this, this was vile beyond all reason. The Binding broke with his terror. He was free to act.
His reaction was instinctive, human.
He screamed, grabbed the nearest brazier, and struck at the beast with it.
The Chakota itself screamed as the coals and flames struck it's slimy flesh, and it was alight. Torren-Wraeth struck at it again and again, scattering flaming coal across the room, igniting tapestries and furnishings. More braziers were knocked over by the beast's own struggles and the cultists scrambling for the stairs. The stone floor grew hot, and the walls caught fire. The Chakota turned to flee toward it's hole, towards cool, dark safety, but Torren-Wraeth drove the broken brazier through it like a stake, pinning it in place. There was no escape.
The flames danced across the stones.
As the fire raged around him, Torren-Wraeth turned to the sacrificial victim, intending to free him, but a quick glance revealed that the man was dead, his face contorted in terror. He had died of fear.
In some ways, he was lucky. He wondered how many of the cultists had died in the fire, and had the brief, dark feeling that they 'deserved it'. He pushed it from his mind.
He turned his attention back to the Chakota.
The beast writhed in agony. The screams grew louder, shriller, while, from some of the faces trapped within the beast, came shouts of joy and thanksgiving. Facing the flames was preferable to living within the beast...
Though it was obscured by smoke and flames, Torren-Wraeth watched as the Chakota quickly shriveled and blackened, withered like a worm on a hot sidewalk.
Then, there were only ashes.
The fire was spreading too quickly, the heat was intense, he had to leave or risk injury himself. Torren-Wraeth teleported away, leaving the cleansing fire to it's work.
He returned home. Not R'Lyeh, but Rapa Nui, which the white men called 'Easter Island'.
He threw up, then wept...
Later,
Torren-Wraeth stood within an ancient quarry, partially carved Moai bearing mute witness to his words. ""No more! No more human sacrifices!"" He shouted at the top of his lungs. He didn't care about the consequences. He had ignored his conscience, his honor for too long.
""You go where you are summoned!"" Great Cthulhu's telepathic voice, calling out from his body in R'Lyeh, registered rage at this defiance.
""Never again!"" Torren-Wraeth's voice was firm. He was ashamed that he had ever been party to such a thing, and he refused to do so again. His skin was blotched with conflicting emotion, ""You don't even need sacrifices, much less intelligent ones! I won't help you commit murder, not anymore!""
""Who are you to judge me!?""
Torren-Wraeth fell silent.
Great Cthulhu sighed, his child was becoming sentimental, rebellious. It was his mother's blood, it could not be helped. Ever since he had befriended that human, he had become more like them... Still, it was a small thing. ""Very well, Torren-Wraeth, from now on you will never represent me at a sentient sacrifice again.""
The boy knelt quickly, ""Thank you, father...""
""Do not thank me yet, I may ask something of you in return.""
And Torren-Wraeth knew without a doubt that he would.
",True
"The Inn stands at the end of our largest thoroughfare, which is a few blocks long, but seems a thousand miles. With my heavy valise, I'm fortunate that I only have to walk half that far from the restaurant at which I've just dined. Once every month, I scrounge up enough money to have dinner at the Golden Goose. Despite my reputation in this village, I eventually come to long for the clamor of a crowd. The four walls of my father's house are my sanctuary and prison otherwise. Only Theodora, our cook and housekeeper that we've had since before I was born, keeps me company there. I would take her with me on my monthly outings to Leight's sole restaurant, but she stubbornly says she prefers her own meals all the same.
That's only part of the reason why she won't go, however. I've told her that even at the Golden Goose, the diners there glare at me out of the corners of their eyes and lower them to their plates if I look their way. Theodora is an even more self-contained soul than I am, and loathes being stared at ""by all and sundry"".
The evening sun is sinking low on the horizon, and the villagers around me are concealed in shadows. I don't want anyone coming up and asking me about my three-night errand - not that they would. When I prove the rumors about my forefathers' establishment wrong, I'll make them all look like fools anyway!
Those unfamiliar with Leight will notice three ever-present things as they travel down its main street: stalwart people, churches, and Cemetery Hill looming in the distance. Ever since I was a child, I sensed an eerie connection among these features of our humble village. Just what that is, I cannot say. They are ordinary enough on the surface, and yet I can't help feeling that there's something sinister about them.
My neighbors are proud, hard-working souls. Most of them live on farms on the outskirts of town. Even so, they trudge nearly every day to its center in order to seek supplies. The men of Leight are burly, with long arms and sunburnt faces, trusting in their toil and suspicious of learnt folk. It's just as well that they're illiterate. They wouldn't have much use for books even if they had the coin to buy them. Their wives, far from being what some people would call ladies, are just as industrious and sturdy as their husbands. I see them more often in town, as buying sundries is women's work, but that doesn't mean they're any more inclined to talk to me. They keep to themselves, as I do, but it seems their hearts are under lock and key.
I suspect that a large part of this has to do with the fact that they fear God as much as my family's past. Out of every ten buildings in Leight, at least four are churches. The Baptists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Evangelicals, Lutherans, Methodists, and even more denominations are continually at war. They each claim to believe in the Scriptures, and in the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. However, they also claim that all the others are false, to a greater or lesser degree. As for me? I attend no house of worship, and that is no great loss to me. My father, Lemuel Dawson, said that his own chapel - the one on Cemetery Hill - had been abruptly shuttered one Hallowe'en night. His fellow congregants then fled to other nearby towns.
""My dear Millie,"" he had told me, ""the one true church on this Earth has been lost, and a year too early."" That's another thing I've failed to understand, even though it haunts me as much as the Inn itself does.
Hurrying to get there, I pass the people and churches without much concern. Only the visage of the former Gallows Hill, now containing graves instead of a gibbet, catches my eye. Buried there are not only the fifty-three souls who were hanged during the Purge (or so we called our witchcraft panic), but criminals and paupers. I've often wondered why having no money is considered as great a crime as sorcery or theft, but in this village, if you're poor, then you are cursed. ""God helps those who help themselves"": so say we. I cannot help myself as I find my feet sprinting rather than walking toward the façade of the Dreamer's Inn.
The sky, now a cool blue-violet twilight, is growing dark. I'll soon leave light (and Leight?) behind. Even though I've been inside the Dreamers' Inn countless times, I've always been a bit scared of the place. Why is it that, even though it's supposed to be a haven for travelers, it seems like a mausoleum instead? I know that once I venture beyond its door, beneath the rickety sign that has announced its presence since the days of Abner Dawes, I'll be in a world unto itself. As such, I pause on the threshold and gaze up at its intimidating turret. Should I turn back and forget about spending a single night there, let alone three?
Then I remember my reasons, both monetary and otherwise, and step inside.
","VII.

Yet all this was only the prologue of the actual Dunwich horror. Formalities were gone through by bewildered officials, abnormal details were duly kept from press and public, and men were sent to Dunwich and Aylesbury to look up property and notify any who might be heirs of the late Wilbur Whateley. They found the countryside in great agitation, both because of the growing rumblings beneath the domed hills, and because of the unwonted stench and the surging, lapping sounds which came increasingly from the great empty shell formed by Whateley’s boarded-up farmhouse. Earl Sawyer, who tended the horse and cattle during Wilbur’s absence, had developed a woefully acute case of nerves. The officials devised excuses not to enter the noisome boarded place; and were glad to confine their survey of the deceased’s living quarters, the newly mended sheds, to a single visit. They filed a ponderous report at the court-house in Aylesbury, and litigations concerning heirship are said to be still in progress amongst the innumerable Whateleys, decayed and undecayed, of the upper Miskatonic valley.
      An almost interminable manuscript in strange characters, written in a huge ledger and adjudged a sort of diary because of the spacing and the variations in ink and penmanship, presented a baffling puzzle to those who found it on the old bureau which served as its owner’s desk. After a week of debate it was sent to Miskatonic University, together with the deceased’s collection of strange books, for study and possible translation; but even the best linguists soon saw that it was not likely to be unriddled with ease. No trace of the ancient gold with which Wilbur and Old Whateley always paid their debts has yet been discovered.
      It was in the dark of September 9th that the horror broke loose. The hill noises had been very pronounced during the evening, and dogs barked frantically all night. Early risers on the 10th noticed a peculiar stench in the air. About seven o’clock Luther Brown, the hired boy at George Corey’s, between Cold Spring Glen and the village, rushed frenziedly back from his morning trip to Ten-Acre Meadow with the cows. He was almost convulsed with fright as he stumbled into the kitchen; and in the yard outside the no less frightened herd were pawing and lowing pitifully, having followed the boy back in the panic they shared with him. Between gasps Luther tried to stammer out his tale to Mrs. Corey.
      “Up thar in the rud beyont the glen, Mis’ Corey—they’s suthin’ ben thar! It smells like thunder, an’ all the bushes an’ little trees is pushed back from the rud like they’d a haouse ben moved along of it. An’ that ain’t the wust, nuther. They’s prints in the rud, Mis’ Corey—great raound prints as big as barrel-heads, all sunk daown deep like a elephant had ben along, only they’s a sight more nor four feet could make! I looked at one or two afore I run, an’ I see every one was covered with lines spreadin’ aout from one place, like as if big palm-leaf fans—twict or three times as big as any they is—hed of ben paounded daown into the rud. An’ the smell was awful, like what it is araound Wizard Whateley’s ol’ haouse. . . .”
      Here he faltered, and seemed to shiver afresh with the fright that had sent him flying home. Mrs. Corey, unable to extract more information, began telephoning the neighbours; thus starting on its rounds the overture of panic that heralded the major terrors. When she got Sally Sawyer, housekeeper at Seth Bishop’s, the nearest place to Whateley’s, it became her turn to listen instead of transmit; for Sally’s boy Chauncey, who slept poorly, had been up on the hill toward Whateley’s, and had dashed back in terror after one look at the place, and at the pasturage where Mr. Bishop’s cows had been left out all night.
      “Yes, Mis’ Corey,” came Sally’s tremulous voice over the party wire, “Cha’ncey he just come back a-postin’, and couldn’t haff talk fer bein’ scairt! He says Ol’ Whateley’s haouse is all blowed up, with the timbers scattered raound like they’d ben dynamite inside; only the bottom floor ain’t through, but is all covered with a kind o’ tar-like stuff that smells awful an’ drips daown offen the aidges onto the graoun’ whar the side timbers is blown away. An’ they’s awful kinder marks in the yard, tew—great raound marks bigger raound than a hogshead, an’ all sticky with stuff like is on the blowed-up haouse. Cha’ncey he says they leads off into the medders, whar a great swath wider’n a barn is matted daown, an’ all the stun walls tumbled every whichway wherever it goes.
      “An’ he says, says he, Mis’ Corey, as haow he sot to look fer Seth’s caows, frighted ez he was; an’ faound ’em in the upper pasture nigh the Devil’s Hop Yard in an awful shape. Haff on ’em’s clean gone, an’ nigh haff o’ them that’s left is sucked most dry o’ blood, with sores on ’em like they’s ben on Whateley’s cattle ever senct Lavinny’s black brat was born. Seth he’s gone aout naow to look at ’em, though I’ll vaow he wun’t keer ter git very nigh Wizard Whateley’s! Cha’ncey didn’t look keerful ter see whar the big matted-daown swath led arter it leff the pasturage, but he says he thinks it p’inted towards the glen rud to the village.
      “I tell ye, Mis’ Corey, they’s suthin’ abroad as hadn’t orter be abroad, an’ I for one think that black Wilbur Whateley, as come to the bad eend he desarved, is at the bottom of the breedin’ of it. He wa’n’t all human hisself, I allus says to everybody; an’ I think he an’ Ol’ Whateley must a raised suthin’ in that there nailed-up haouse as ain’t even so human as he was. They’s allus ben unseen things araound Dunwich—livin’ things—as ain’t human an’ ain’t good fer human folks.
      “The graoun’ was a-talkin’ lass night, an’ towards mornin’ Cha’ncey he heerd the whippoorwills so laoud in Col’ Spring Glen he couldn’t sleep nun. Then he thought he heerd another faint-like saound over towards Wizard Whateley’s—a kinder rippin’ or tearin’ o’ wood, like some big box er crate was bein’ opened fur off. What with this an’ that, he didn’t git to sleep at all till sunup, an’ no sooner was he up this mornin’, but he’s got to go over to Whateley’s an’ see what’s the matter. He see enough, I tell ye, Mis’ Corey! This dun’t mean no good, an’ I think as all the men-folks ought to git up a party an’ do suthin’. I know suthin’ awful’s abaout, an’ feel my time is nigh, though only Gawd knows jest what it is.
      “Did your Luther take accaount o’ whar them big tracks led tew? No? Wal, Mis’ Corey, ef they was on the glen rud this side o’ the glen, an’ ain’t got to your haouse yet, I calc’late they must go into the glen itself. They would do that. I allus says Col’ Spring Glen ain’t no healthy nor decent place. The whippoorwills an’ fireflies there never did act like they was creaters o’ Gawd, an’ they’s them as says ye kin hear strange things a-rushin’ an’ a-talkin’ in the air daown thar ef ye stand in the right place, atween the rock falls an’ Bear’s Den.”
      By that noon fully three-quarters of the men and boys of Dunwich were trooping over the roads and meadows between the new-made Whateley ruins and Cold Spring Glen, examining in horror the vast, monstrous prints, the maimed Bishop cattle, the strange, noisome wreck of the farmhouse, and the bruised, matted vegetation of the fields and roadsides. Whatever had burst loose upon the world had assuredly gone down into the great sinister ravine; for all the trees on the banks were bent and broken, and a great avenue had been gouged in the precipice-hanging underbrush. It was as though a house, launched by an avalanche, had slid down through the tangled growths of the almost vertical slope. From below no sound came, but only a distant, undefinable foetor; and it is not to be wondered at that the men preferred to stay on the edge and argue, rather than descend and beard the unknown Cyclopean horror in its lair. Three dogs that were with the party had barked furiously at first, but seemed cowed and reluctant when near the glen. Someone telephoned the news to the Aylesbury Transcript; but the editor, accustomed to wild tales from Dunwich, did no more than concoct a humorous paragraph about it; an item soon afterward reproduced by the Associated Press.
      That night everyone went home, and every house and barn was barricaded as stoutly as possible. Needless to say, no cattle were allowed to remain in open pasturage. About two in the morning a frightful stench and the savage barking of the dogs awakened the household at Elmer Frye’s, on the eastern edge of Cold Spring Glen, and all agreed that they could hear a sort of muffled swishing or lapping sound from somewhere outside. Mrs. Frye proposed telephoning the neighbours, and Elmer was about to agree when the noise of splintering wood burst in upon their deliberations. It came, apparently, from the barn; and was quickly followed by a hideous screaming and stamping amongst the cattle. The dogs slavered and crouched close to the feet of the fear-numbed family. Frye lit a lantern through force of habit, but knew it would be death to go out into that black farmyard. The children and the womenfolk whimpered, kept from screaming by some obscure, vestigial instinct of defence which told them their lives depended on silence. At last the noise of the cattle subsided to a pitiful moaning, and a great snapping, crashing, and crackling ensued. The Fryes, huddled together in the sitting-room, did not dare to move until the last echoes died away far down in Cold Spring Glen. Then, amidst the dismal moans from the stable and the daemoniac piping of late whippoorwills in the glen, Selina Frye tottered to the telephone and spread what news she could of the second phase of the horror.
      The next day all the countryside was in a panic; and cowed, uncommunicative groups came and went where the fiendish thing had occurred. Two titan swaths of destruction stretched from the glen to the Frye farmyard, monstrous prints covered the bare patches of ground, and one side of the old red barn had completely caved in. Of the cattle, only a quarter could be found and identified. Some of these were in curious fragments, and all that survived had to be shot. Earl Sawyer suggested that help be asked from Aylesbury or Arkham, but others maintained it would be of no use. Old Zebulon Whateley, of a branch that hovered about half way between soundness and decadence, made darkly wild suggestions about rites that ought to be practiced on the hill-tops. He came of a line where tradition ran strong, and his memories of chantings in the great stone circles were not altogether connected with Wilbur and his grandfather.
      Darkness fell upon a stricken countryside too passive to organise for real defence. In a few cases closely related families would band together and watch in the gloom under one roof; but in general there was only a repetition of the barricading of the night before, and a futile, ineffective gesture of loading muskets and setting pitchforks handily about. Nothing, however, occurred except some hill noises; and when the day came there were many who hoped that the new horror had gone as swiftly as it had come. There were even bold souls who proposed an offensive expedition down in the glen, though they did not venture to set an actual example to the still reluctant majority.
      When night came again the barricading was repeated, though there was less huddling together of families. In the morning both the Frye and the Seth Bishop households reported excitement among the dogs and vague sounds and stenches from afar, while early explorers noted with horror a fresh set of the monstrous tracks in the road skirting Sentinel Hill. As before, the sides of the road shewed a bruising indicative of the blasphemously stupendous bulk of the horror; whilst the conformation of the tracks seemed to argue a passage in two directions, as if the moving mountain had come from Cold Spring Glen and returned to it along the same path. At the base of the hill a thirty-foot swath of crushed shrubbery saplings led steeply upward, and the seekers gasped when they saw that even the most perpendicular places did not deflect the inexorable trail. Whatever the horror was, it could scale a sheer stony cliff of almost complete verticality; and as the investigators climbed around to the hill’s summit by safer routes they saw that the trail ended—or rather, reversed—there.
      It was here that the Whateleys used to build their hellish fires and chant their hellish rituals by the table-like stone on May-Eve and Hallowmass. Now that very stone formed the centre of a vast space thrashed around by the mountainous horror, whilst upon its slightly concave surface was a thick and foetid deposit of the same tarry stickiness observed on the floor of the ruined Whateley farmhouse when the horror escaped. Men looked at one another and muttered. Then they looked down the hill. Apparently the horror had descended by a route much the same as that of its ascent. To speculate was futile. Reason, logic, and normal ideas of motivation stood confounded. Only old Zebulon, who was not with the group, could have done justice to the situation or suggested a plausible explanation.
      Thursday night began much like the others, but it ended less happily. The whippoorwills in the glen had screamed with such unusual persistence that many could not sleep, and about 3 A.M. all the party telephones rang tremulously. Those who took down their receivers heard a fright-mad voice shriek out, “Help, oh, my Gawd! . . .” and some thought a crashing sound followed the breaking off of the exclamation. There was nothing more. No one dared do anything, and no one knew till morning whence the call came. Then those who had heard it called everyone on the line, and found that only the Fryes did not reply. The truth appeared an hour later, when a hastily assembled group of armed men trudged out to the Frye place at the head of the glen. It was horrible, yet hardly a surprise. There were more swaths and monstrous prints, but there was no longer any house. It had caved in like an egg-shell, and amongst the ruins nothing living or dead could be discovered. Only a stench and a tarry stickiness. The Elmer Fryes had been erased from Dunwich.
",False
"III. A Search and an Evocation

1.

Charles Ward, as we have seen, first learned in 1918 of his descent from Joseph Curwen. That he at once took an intense interest in everything pertaining to the bygone mystery is not to be wondered at; for every vague rumour that he had heard of Curwen now became something vital to himself, in whom flowed Curwen's blood. No spirited and imaginative genealogist could have done otherwise than begin forthwith an avid and systematic collection of Curwen data.
      In his first delvings there was not the slightest attempt at secrecy; so that even Dr. Lyman hesitates to date the youth's madness from any period before the close of 1919. He talked freely with his family - though his mother was not particularly pleased to own an ancestor like Curwen - and with the officials of the various museums and libraries he visited. In applying to private families for records thought to be in their possession he made no concealment of his object, and shared the somewhat amused scepticism with which the accounts of the old diarists and letter-writers were regarded. He often expressed a keen wonder as to what really had taken place a century and a half before at that Pawtuxet farmhouse whose site he vainly tried to find, and what Joseph Curwen really had been.
      When he came across the Smith diary and archives and encountered the letter from Jedediah Orne he decided to visit Salem and look up Curwen's early activities and connexions there, which he did during the Easter vacation of 1919. At the Essex Institute, which was well known to him from former sojourns in the glamorous old town of crumbling Puritan gables and clustered gambrel roofs, he was very kindly received, and unearthed there a considerable amount of Curwen data. He found that his ancestor was born in Salem-Village, now Danvers, seven miles from town, on the eighteenth of February (O.S.) 1662-3; and that he had run away to sea at the age of fifteen, not appearing again for nine years, when he returned with the speech, dress, and manners of a native Englishman and settled in Salem proper. At that time he had little to do with his family, but spent most of his hours with the curious books he had brought from Europe, and the strange chemicals which came for him on ships from England, France, and Holland. Certain trips of his into the country were the objects of much local inquisitiveness, and were whisperingly associated with vague rumours of fires on the hills at night.
      Curwen's only close friends had been one Edward Hutchinson of Salem-Village and one Simon Orne of Salem. With these men he was often seen in conference about the Common, and visits among them were by no means infrequent. Hutchinson had a house well out toward the woods, and it was not altogether liked by sensitive people because of the sounds heard there at night. He was said to entertain strange visitors, and the lights seen from his windows were not always of the same colour. The knowledge he displayed concerning long-dead persons and long-forgotten events was considered distinctly unwholesome, and he disappeared about the time the witchcraft panic began, never to be heard from again. At that time Joseph Curwen also departed, but his settlement in Providence was soon learned of. Simon Orne lived in Salem until 1720, when his failure to grow visibly old began to excite attention. He thereafter disappeared, though thirty years later his precise counterpart and self-styled son turned up to claim his property. The claim was allowed on the strength of documents in Simon Orne's known hand, and Jedediah Orne continued to dwell in Salem till 1771, when certain letters from Providence citizens to the Rev. Thomas Barnard and others brought about his quiet removal to parts unknown.
      Certain documents by and about all of these strange characters were available at the Essex Institute, the Court House, and the Registry of Deeds, and included both harmless commonplaces such as land titles and bills of sale, and furtive fragments of a more provocative nature. There were four or five unmistakable allusions to them on the witchcraft trial records; as when one Hepzibah Lawson swore on July 10, 1692, at the Court of Oyer and Terminer under Judge Hathorne, that 'fortie Witches and the Blacke Man were wont to meete in the Woodes behind Mr. Hutchinson's house', and one Amity How declared at a session of August 8th before Judge Gedney that 'Mr. G. B. (Rev. George Burroughs) on that Nighte putt ye Divell his Marke upon Bridget S., Jonathan A., Simon O., Deliverance W., Joseph C., Susan P., Mehitable C., and Deborah B.' Then there was a catalogue of Hutchinson's uncanny library as found after his disappearance, and an unfinished manuscript in his handwriting, couched in a cipher none could read. Ward had a photostatic copy of this manuscript made, and began to work casually on the cipher as soon as it was delivered to him. After the following August his labours on the cipher became intense and feverish, and there is reason to believe from his speech and conduct that he hit upon the key before October or November. He never stated, though, whether or not he had succeeded.
      But of the greatest immediate interest was the Orne material. It took Ward only a short time to prove from identity of penmanship a thing he had already considered established from the text of the letter to Curwen; namely, that Simon Orne and his supposed son were one and the same person. As Orne had said to his correspondent, it was hardly safe to live too long in Salem, hence he resorted to a thirty-year sojourn abroad, and did not return to claim his lands except as a representative of a new generation. Orne had apparently been careful to destroy most of his correspondence, but the citizens who took action in 1771 found and preserved a few letters and papers which excited their wonder. There were cryptic formulae and diagrams in his and other hands which Ward now either copied with care or had photographed, and one extremely mysterious letter in a chirography that the searcher recognised from items in the Registry of Deeds as positively Joseph Curwen's.
      This Curwen letter, though undated as to the year, was evidently not the one in answer to which Orne had written the confiscated missive; and from internal evidence Ward placed it not much later than 1750. It may not be amiss to give the text in full, as a sample of the style of one whose history was so dark and terrible. The recipient is addressed as ""Simon"", but a line (whether drawn by Curwen or Orne Ward could not tell) is run through the word.
Prouidence, I. May (Ut. vulgo)
Brother: - 
My honour'd Antient ffriende, due Respects and earnest Wishes to Him whom we serve for yr eternall Power. I am just come upon That which you ought to knowe, concern'g the Matter of the Laste Extremitie and what to doe regard'g yt. I am not dispos'd to followe you in go'g Away on acct. of my Yeares, for Prouidence hath not ye Sharpeness of ye Bay in hunt'g oute uncommon Things and bringinge to Tryall. I am ty'd up in Shippes and Goodes, and cou'd not doe as you did, besides the Whiche my ffarme at Patuxet hath under it What you Knowe, that wou'd not waite for my com'g Backe as an Other.
      But I am not unreadie for harde ffortunes, as I haue tolde you, and haue longe work'd upon ye Way of get'g Backe after ye Laste. I laste Night strucke on ye Wordes that bringe up YOGGE-SOTHOTHE, and sawe for ye firste Time that fface spoke of by Ibn Schacabao in ye  -  - . And IT said, that ye III Psalme in ye Liber-Damnatus holdes ye Clauicle. With Sunne in V House, Saturne in Trine, drawe ye Pentagram of Fire, and saye ye ninth Uerse thrice. This Uerse repeate eache Roodemas and Hallow's Eue; and ye Thing will breede in ye Outside Spheres.
      And of ye Seede of Olde shal One be borne who shal looke Backe, tho' know'g not what he seekes.
      Yett will this availe Nothing if there be no Heir, and if the Saltes, or the Way to make the Saltes, bee not Readie for his Hande; and here I will owne, I have not taken needed Stepps nor founde Much. Ye Process is plaguy harde to come neare; and it uses up such a Store of Specimens, I am harde putte to it to get Enough, notwithstand'g the Sailors I have from ye Indies. Ye People aboute are become curious, but I can stande them off. Ye Gentry are worse than the Populace, be'g more Circumstantiall in their Accts. and more believ'd in what they tell. That Parson and Mr. Merritt have talk'd some, I am fearfull, but no Thing soe far is Dangerous. Ye Chymical substances are easie of get'g, there be'g II. goode Chymists in Towne, Dr. Bowen and Sam: Carew. I am foll'g oute what Borellus saith, and haue Helpe in Abdool Al-Hazred his VII. Booke. Whatever I gette, you shal haue. And in ye meane while, do not neglect to make use of ye Wordes I haue here giuen. I haue them Righte, but if you Desire to see HIM, imploy the Writings on ye Piece of  -  -  that I am putt'g in this Packet. Saye ye Uerses every Roodmas and Hallow's Eue; and if yr Line runn out not, one shall bee in yeares to come that shal looke backe and use what Saltes or Stuff for Saltes you shal leaue him. Job XIV. XIV.
      I rejoice you are again at Salem, and hope I may see you not longe hence. I have a goode Stallion, and am think'g of get'g a Coach, there be'g one (Mr. Merritt's) in Prouidence already, tho' ye Roades are bad. If you are dispos'd to Travel, doe not pass me bye. From Boston take ye Post Rd. thro' Dedham, Wrentham, and Attleborough, goode Taverns be'g at all these Townes. Stop at Mr. Bolcom's in Wrentham, where ye Beddes are finer than Mr. Hatch's, but eate at ye other House for their Cooke is better. Turne into Prou. by Patucket ffalls, and ye Rd. past Mr. Sayles's Tavern. My House opp. Mr. Epenetus Olney's Tavern off ye Towne Street, Ist on ye N. side of Olney's Court. Distance from Boston Stone abt. XLIV Miles.
      Sir, I am yr olde and true ffriend and Servt. in Almousin-Metraton.
Josephus C.
To Mr. Simon Orne,
William's-Lane, in Salem.
      This letter, oddly enough, was what first gave Ward the exact location of Curwen's Providence home; for none of the records encountered up to that time had been at all specific. The discovery was doubly striking because it indicated as the newer Curwen house built in 1761 on the site of the old, a dilapidated building still standing in Olney Court and well known to Ward in his antiquarian rambles over Stampers' Hill. The place was indeed only a few squares from his own home on the great hill's higher ground, and was now the abode of a negro family much esteemed for occasional washing, housecleaning, and furnace-tending services. To find, in distant Salem, such sudden proof of the significance of this familiar rookery in his own family history, was a highly impressive thing to Ward; and he resolved to explore the place immediately upon his return. The more mystical phases of the letter, which he took to be some extravagant kind of symbolism, frankly baffled him; though he noted with a thrill of curiosity that the Biblical passage referred to - Job 14, 14 - was the familiar verse, ""If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.""

2.

      Young Ward came home in a state of pleasant excitement, and spent the following Saturday in a long and exhaustive study of the house in Olney Court. The place, now crumbling with age, had never been a mansion; but was a modest two-and-a-half story wooden town house of the familiar Providence colonial type, with plain peaked roof, large central chimney, and artistically carved doorway with rayed fanlight, triangular pediment, and trim Doric pilasters. It had suffered but little alteration externally, and Ward felt he was gazing on something very close to the sinister matters of his quest.
      The present negro inhabitants were known to him, and he was very courteously shewn about the interior by old Asa and his stout wife Hannah. Here there was more change than the outside indicated, and Ward saw with regret that fully half of the fine scroll-and-urn overmantels and shell-carved cupboard linings were gone, whilst much of the fine wainscotting and bolection moulding was marked, hacked, and gouged, or covered up altogether with cheap wall-paper. In general, the survey did not yield as much as Ward had somehow expected; but it was at least exciting to stand within the ancestral walls which had housed such a man of horror as Joseph Curwen. He saw with a thrill that a monogram had been very carefully effaced from the ancient brass knocker.
      From then until after the close of school Ward spent his time on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher and the accumulation of local Curwen data. The former still proved unyielding; but of the latter he obtained so much, and so many clues to similar data elsewhere, that he was ready by July to make a trip to New London and New York to consult old letters whose presence in those places was indicated. This trip was very fruitful, for it brought him the Fenner letters with their terrible description of the Pawtuxet farmhouse raid, and the Nightingale-Talbot letters in which he learned of the portrait painted on a panel of the Curwen library. This matter of the portrait interested him particularly, since he would have given much to know just what Joseph Curwen looked like; and he decided to make a second search of the house in Olney Court to see if there might not be some trace of the ancient features beneath peeling coats of later paint or layers of mouldy wall-paper.
      Early in August that search took place, and Ward went carefully over the walls of every room sizeable enough to have been by any possibility the library of the evil builder. He paid especial attention to the large panels of such overmantels as still remained; and was keenly excited after about an hour, when on a broad area above the fireplace in a spacious ground-floor room he became certain that the surface brought out by the peeling of several coats of paint was sensibly darker than any ordinary interior paint or the wood beneath it was likely to have been. A few more careful tests with a thin knife, and he knew that he had come upon an oil portrait of great extent. With truly scholarly restraint the youth did not risk the damage which an immediate attempt to uncover the hidden picture with the knife might have done, but just retired from the scene of his discovery to enlist expert help. In three days he returned with an artist of long experience, Mr. Walter C. Dwight, whose studio is near the foot of College Hill; and that accomplished restorer of paintings set to work at once with proper methods and chemical substances. Old Asa and his wife were duly excited over their strange visitors, and were properly reimbursed for this invasion of their domestic hearth.
      As day by day the work of restoration progressed, Charles Ward looked on with growing interest at the lines and shades gradually unveiled after their long oblivion. Dwight had begun at the bottom; hence since the picture was a three-quarter-length one, the face did not come out for some time. It was meanwhile seen that the subject was a spare, well-shaped man with dark-blue coat, embroidered waistcoat, black satin small-clothes, and white silk stockings, seated in a carved chair against the background of a window with wharves and ships beyond. When the head came out it was observed to bear a neat Albemarle wig, and to possess a thin, calm, undistinguished face which seemed somehow familiar to both Ward and the artist. Only at the very last, though, did the restorer and his client begin to gasp with astonishment at the details of that lean, pallid visage, and to recognise with a touch of awe the dramatic trick which heredity had played. For it took the final bath of oil and the final stroke of the delicate scraper to bring out fully the expression which centuries had hidden; and to confront the bewildered Charles Dexter Ward, dweller in the past, with his own living features in the countenance of his horrible great-great-great-grandfather.
      Ward brought his parents to see the marvel he had uncovered, and his father at once determined to purchase the picture despite its execution on stationary panelling. The resemblance to the boy, despite an appearance of rather greater age, was marvellous; and it could be seen that through some trick of atavism the physical contours of Joseph Curwen had found precise duplication after a century and a half. Mrs. Ward's resemblance to her ancestor was not at all marked, though she could recall relatives who had some of the facial characteristics shared by her son and by the bygone Curwen. She did not relish the discovery, and told her husband that he had better burn the picture instead of bringing it home. There was, she averred, something unwholesome about it; not only intrinsically, but in its very resemblance to Charles. Mr. Ward, however, was a practical man of power and affairs - a cotton manufacturer with extensive mills at Riverpoint in the Pawtuxet Valley - and not one to listen to feminine scruples. The picture impressed him mightily with its likeness to his son, and he believed the boy deserved it as a present. In this opinion, it is needless to say, Charles most heartily concurred; and a few days later Mr. Ward located the owner of the house - a small rodent-featured person with a guttural accent - and obtained the whole mantel and overmantel bearing the picture at a curtly fixed priced which cut short the impending torrent of unctuous haggling.
      It now remained to take off the panelling and remove it to the Ward home, where provisions were made for its thorough restoration and installation with an electric mock-fireplace in Charles's third-floor study or library. To Charles was left the task of superintending this removal, and on the twenty-eighth of August he accompanied two expert workmen from the Crooker decorating firm to the house in Olney Court, where the mantel and portrait-bearing overmantel were detached with great care and precision for transportation in the company's motor truck. There was left a space of exposed brickwork marking the chimney's course, and in this young Ward observed a cubical recess about a foot square, which must have lain directly behind the head of the portrait. Curious as to what such a space might mean or contain, the youth approached and looked within; finding beneath the deep coatings of dust and soot some loose yellowed papers, a crude, thick copybook, and a few mouldering textile shreds which may have formed the ribbon binding the rest together. Blowing away the bulk of the dirt and cinders, he took up the book and looked at the bold inscription on its cover. It was in a hand which he had learned to recognise at the Essex Institute, and proclaimed the volume as the ""Journall and Notes of Jos: Curwen, Gent., of Providence-Plantations, Late of Salem.""
      Excited beyond measure by his discovery, Ward shewed the book to the two curious workmen beside him. Their testimony is absolute as to the nature and genuineness of the finding, and Dr. Willett relies on them to help establish his theory that the youth was not mad when he began his major eccentricities. All the other papers were likewise in Curwen's handwriting, and one of them seemed especially portentous because of its inscription: ""To Him Who Shal Come After, & How He May Gett Beyonde Time & ye Spheres."" Another was in a cipher; the same, Ward hoped, as the Hutchinson cipher which had hitherto baffled him. A third, and here the searcher rejoiced, seemed to be a key to the cipher; whilst the fourth and fifth were addressed respectively to ""Edw: Hutchinson, Armiger"" and ""Jedediah Orne, Esq."", 'or Their Heir or Heirs, or Those Represent'g Them'. The sixth and last was inscribed: ""Joseph Curwen his Life and Travells Bet'n ye yeares 1678 and 1687: Of Whither He Voyag'd, Where He Stay'd, Whom He Sawe, and What He Learnt.""

3.

      We have now reached the point from which the more academic school of alienists date Charles Ward's madness. Upon his discovery the youth had looked immediately at a few of the inner pages of the book and manuscripts, and had evidently seen something which impressed him tremendously. Indeed, in shewing the titles to the workmen he appeared to guard the text itself with peculiar care, and to labour under a perturbation for which even the antiquarian and genealogical significance of the find could hardly account. Upon returning home he broke the news with an almost embarrassed air, as if he wished to convey an idea of its supreme importance without having to exhibit the evidence itself. He did not even shew the titles to his parents, but simply told them that he had found some documents in Joseph Curwen's handwriting, ""mostly in cipher"", which would have to be studied very carefully before yielding up their true meaning. It is unlikely that he would have shewn what he did to the workmen, had it not been for their unconcealed curiosity. As it was he doubtless wished to avoid any display of peculiar reticence which would increase their discussion of the matter.
      That night Charles Ward sat up in his room reading the new-found book and papers, and when day came he did not desist. His meals, on his urgent request when his mother called to see what was amiss, were sent up to him; and in the afternoon he appeared only briefly when the men came to install the Curwen picture and mantelpiece in his study. The next night he slept in snatches in his clothes, meanwhile wrestling feverishly with the unravelling of the cipher manuscript. In the morning his mother saw that he was at work on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher, which he had frequently shewn her before; but in response to her query he said that the Curwen key could not be applied to it. That afternoon he abandoned his work and watched the men fascinatedly as they finished their installation of the picture with its woodwork above a cleverly realistic electric log, setting the mock-fireplace and overmantel a little out from the north wall as if a chimney existed, and boxing in the sides with panelling to match the room's. The front panel holding the picture was sawn and hinged to allow cupboard space behind it. After the workmen went he moved his work into the study and sat down before it with his eyes half on the cipher and half on the portrait which stared back at him like a year-adding and century-recalling mirror.
      His parents, subsequently recalling his conduct at this period, give interesting details anent the policy of concealment which he practiced. Before servants he seldom hid any paper which he might be studying, since he rightly assumed that Curwen's intricate and archaic chirography would be too much for them. With his parents, however, he was more circumspect; and unless the manuscript in question were a cipher, or a mere mass of cryptic symbols and unknown ideographs (as that entitled ""To Him Who Shal Come After etc."" seemed to be), he would cover it with some convenient paper until his caller had departed. At night he kept the papers under lock and key in an antique cabinet of his, where he also placed them whenever he left the room. He soon resumed fairly regular hours and habits, except that his long walks and other outside interests seemed to cease. The opening of school, where he now began his senior year, seemed a great bore to him; and he frequently asserted his determination never to bother with college. He had, he said, important special investigations to make, which would provide him with more avenues toward knowledge and the humanities than any university which the world could boast.
      Naturally, only one who had always been more or less studious, eccentric, and solitary could have pursued this course for many days without attracting notice. Ward, however, was constitutionally a scholar and a hermit; hence his parents were less surprised than regretful at the close confinement and secrecy he adopted. At the same time, both his father and mother thought it odd that he would shew them no scrap of his treasure-trove, nor give any connected account of such data as he had deciphered. This reticence he explained away as due to a wish to wait until he might announce some connected revelation, but as the weeks passed without further disclosures there began to grow up between the youth and his family a kind of constraint; intensified in his mother's case by her manifest disapproval of all Curwen delvings.
      During October Ward began visiting the libraries again, but no longer for the antiquarian matter of his former days. Witchcraft and magic, occultism and daemonology, were what he sought now; and when Providence sources proved unfruitful he would take the train for Boston and tap the wealth of the great library in Copley Square, the Widener Library at Harvard, or the Zion Research Library in Brookline, where certain rare works on Biblical subjects are available. He bought extensively, and fitted up a whole additional set of shelves in his study for newly acquired works on uncanny subjects; while during the Christmas holidays he made a round of out-of-town trips including one to Salem to consult certain records at the Essex Institute.
      About the middle of January, 1920, there entered Ward's bearing an element of triumph which he did not explain, and he was no more found at work upon the Hutchinson cipher. Instead, he inaugurated a dual policy of chemical research and record-scanning; fitting up for the one a laboratory in the unused attic of the house, and for the latter haunting all the sources of vital statistics in Providence. Local dealers in drugs and scientific supplies, later questioned, gave astonishingly queer and meaningless catalogues of the substances and instruments he purchased; but clerks at the State House, the City Hall, and the various libraries agree as to the definite object of his second interest. He was searching intensely and feverishly for the grave of Joseph Curwen, from whose slate slab an older generation had so wisely blotted the name.
      Little by little there grew upon the Ward family the conviction that something was wrong. Charles had had freaks and changes of minor interests before, but this growing secrecy and absorption in strange pursuits was unlike even him. His school work was the merest pretence; and although he failed in no test, it could be seen that the old application had all vanished. He had other concernments now; and when not in his new laboratory with a score of obsolete alchemical books, could be found either poring over old burial records down town or glued to his volumes of occult lore in his study, where the startlingly - one almost fancied increasingly - similar features of Joseph Curwen stared blandly at him from the great overmantel on the north wall.
      Late in March Ward added to his archive-searching a ghoulish series of rambles about the various ancient cemeteries of the city. The cause appeared later, when it was learned from City Hall clerks that he had probably found an important clue. His quest had suddenly shifted from the grave of Joseph Curwen to that of one Naphthali Field; and this shift was explained when, upon going over the files that he had been over, the investigators actually found a fragmentary record of Curwen's burial which had escaped the general obliteration, and which stated that the curious leaden coffin had been interred ""10 ft. S. and 5 ft. W. of Naphthali Field's grave in ye - "". The lack of a specified burying-ground in the surviving entry greatly complicated the search, and Naphthali Field's grave seemed as elusive as that of Curwen; but here no systematic effacement had existed, and one might reasonably be expected to stumble on the stone itself even if its record had perished. Hence the rambles - from which St. John's (the former King's) Churchyard and the ancient Congregational burying-ground in the midst of Swan Point Cemetery were excluded, since other statistics had shewn that the only Naphthali Field (obiit 1729) whose grave could have been meant had been a Baptist.

4.

      It was toward May when Dr. Willett, at the request of the senior Ward, and fortified with all the Curwen data which the family had gleaned from Charles in his non-secretive days, talked with the young man. The interview was of little value or conclusiveness, for Willett felt at every moment that Charles was thoroughly master of himself and in touch with matters of real importance; but it at least forced the secretive youth to offer some rational explanation of his recent demeanour. Of a pallid, impassive type not easily shewing embarrassment, Ward seemed quite ready to discuss his pursuits, though not to reveal their object. He stated that the papers of his ancestor had contained some remarkable secrets of early scientific knowledge, for the most part in cipher, of an apparent scope comparable only to the discoveries of Friar Bacon and perhaps surpassing even those. They were, however, meaningless except when correlated with a body of learning now wholly obsolete; so that their immediate presentation to a world equipped only with modern science would rob them of all impressiveness and dramatic significance. To take their vivid place in the history of human thought they must first be correlated by one familiar with the background out of which they evolved, and to this task of correlation Ward was now devoting himself. He was seeking to acquire as fast as possible those neglected arts of old which a true interpreter of the Curwen data must possess, and hoped in time to make a full announcement and presentation of the utmost interest to mankind and to the world of thought. Not even Einstein, he declared, could more profoundly revolutionise the current conception of things.
      As to his graveyard search, whose object he freely admitted, but the details of whose progress he did not relate, he said he had reason to think that Joseph Curwen's mutilated headstone bore certain mystic symbols - carved from directions in his will and ignorantly spared by those who had effaced the name - which were absolutely essential to the final solution of his cryptic system. Curwen, he believed, had wished to guard his secret with care; and had consequently distributed the data in an exceedingly curious fashion. When Dr. Willett asked to see the mystic documents, Ward displayed much reluctance and tried to put him off with such things as photostatic copies of the Hutchinson cipher and Orne formulae and diagrams; but finally shewed him the exteriors of some of the real Curwen finds - the ""Journall and Notes"", the cipher (title in cipher also), and the formula-filled message ""To Him Who Shal Come After"" - and let him glance inside such as were in obscure characters.
      He also opened the diary at a page carefully selected for its innocuousness and gave Willett a glimpse of Curwen's connected handwriting in English. The doctor noted very closely the crabbed and complicated letters, and the general aura of the seventeenth century which clung round both penmanship and style despite the writer's survival into the eighteenth century, and became quickly certain that the document was genuine. The text itself was relatively trivial, and Willett recalled only a fragment:
""Wedn. 16 Octr. 1754. My Sloope the Wakeful this Day putt in from London with XX newe Men pick'd up in ye Indies, Spaniards from Martineco and 2 Dutch Men from Surinam. Ye Dutch Men are like to Desert from have'g hearde Somewhat ill of these Ventures, but I will see to ye Inducing of them to Staye. ffor Mr. Knight Dexter of ye Boy and Book 120 Pieces Camblets, 100 Pieces Assrtd. Cambleteens, 20 Pieces blue Duffles, 100 Pieces Shalloons, 50 Pieces Calamancoes, 300 Pieces each, Shendsoy and Humhums. ffor Mr. Green at ye Elephant 50 Gallon Cyttles, 20 Warm'g Pannes, 15 Bake Cyttles, 10 pr. Smoke'g Tonges. ffor Mr. Perrigo 1 Sett of Awles, ffor Mr. Nightingale 50 Reames prime Foolscap. Say'd ye SABAOTH thrice last Nighte but None appear'd. I must heare more from Mr. H. in Transylvania, tho' it is Harde reach'g him and exceeding strange he can not give me the Use of what he hath so well us'd these hundred yeares. Simon hath not Writ these V. Weekes, but I expecte soon hear'g from him.""
      When upon reaching this point Dr. Willett turned the leaf he was quickly checked by Ward, who almost snatched the book from his grasp. All that the doctor had a chance to see on the newly opened page was a brief pair of sentences; but these, strangely enough, lingered tenaciously in his memory. They ran: ""Ye Verse from Liber-Damnatus be'g spoke V Roodmasses and IV Hallows-Eves, I am Hopeful ye Thing is breed'g Outside ye Spheres. It will drawe One who is to Come, if I can make sure he shal bee, and he shall think on Past thinges and look back thro' all ye yeares, against ye which I must have ready ye Saltes or That to make 'em with.""
      Willett saw no more, but somehow this small glimpse gave a new and vague terror to the painted features of Joseph Curwen which stared blandly down from the overmantel. Ever after that he entertained the odd fancy - which his medical skill of course assured him was only a fancy - that the eyes of the portrait had a sort of wish, if not an actual tendency, to follow young Charles Ward as he moved about the room. He stopped before leaving to study the picture closely, marvelling at its resemblance to Charles and memorising every minute detail of the cryptical, colourless face, even down to a slight scar or pit in the smooth brow above the right eye. Cosmo Alexander, he decided, was a painter worthy of the Scotland that produced Raeburn, and a teacher worthy of his illustrious pupil Gilbert Stuart.
      Assured by the doctor that Charles's mental health was in no danger, but that on the other hand he was engaged in researches which might prove of real importance, the Wards were more lenient than they might otherwise have been when during the following June the youth made positive his refusal to attend college. He had, he declared, studies of much more vital importance to pursue; and intimated a wish to go abroad the following year in order to avail himself of certain sources of data not existing in America. The senior Ward, while denying this latter wish as absurd for a boy of only eighteen, acquiesced regarding the university; so that after a none too brilliant graduation from the Moses Brown School there ensued for Charles a three-year period of intensive occult study and graveyard searching. He became recognised as an eccentric, and dropped even more completely from the sight of his family's friends than he had been before; keeping close to his work and only occasionally making trips to other cities to consult obscure records. Once he went south to talk with a strange old mulatto who dwelt in a swamp and about whom a newspaper had printed a curious article. Again he sought a small village in the Adirondacks whence reports of certain odd ceremonial practices had come. But still his parents forbade him the trip to the Old World which he desired.
      Coming of age in April, 1923, and having previously inherited a small competence from his maternal grandfather, Ward determined at last to take the European trip hitherto denied him. Of his proposed itinerary he would say nothing save that the needs of his studies would carry him to many places, but he promised to write his parents fully and faithfully. When they saw he could not be dissuaded, they ceased all opposition and helped as best they could; so that in June the young man sailed for Liverpool with the farewell blessings of his father and mother, who accompanied him to Boston and waved him out of sight from the White Star pier in Charlestown. Letters soon told of his safe arrival, and of his securing good quarters in Great Russell Street, London; where he proposed to stay, shunning all family friends, till he had exhausted the resources of the British Museum in a certain direction. Of his daily life he wrote but little, for there was little to write. Study and experiment consumed all his time, and he mentioned a laboratory which he had established in one of his rooms. That he said nothing of antiquarian rambles in the glamorous old city with its luring skyline of ancient domes and steeples and its tangles of roads and alleys whose mystic convolutions and sudden vistas alternately beckon and surprise, was taken by his parents as a good index of the degree to which his new interests had engrossed his mind.
      In June, 1924, a brief note told of his departure for Paris, to which he had before made one or two flying trips for material in the Bibliothque Nationale. For three months thereafter he sent only postal cards, giving an address in the Rue St. Jacques and referring to a special search among rare manuscripts in the library of an unnamed private collector. He avoided acquaintances, and no tourists brought back reports of having seen him. Then came a silence, and in October the Wards received a picture card from Prague, Czecho-Slovakia, stating that Charles was in that ancient town for the purpose of conferring with a certain very aged man supposed to be the last living possessor of some very curious mediaeval information. He gave an address in the Neustadt, and announced no move till the following January; when he dropped several cards from Vienna telling of his passage through that city on the way toward a more easterly region whither one of his correspondents and fellow-delvers into the occult had invited him.
      The next card was from Klausenburg in Transylvania, and told of Ward's progress toward his destination. He was going to visit a Baron Ferenczy, whose estate lay in the mountains east of Rakus; and was to be addressed at Rakus in the care of that nobleman. Another card from Rakus a week later, saying that his host's carriage had met him and that he was leaving the village for the mountains, was his last message for a considerable time; indeed, he did not reply to his parents' frequent letters until May, when he wrote to discourage the plan of his mother for a meeting in London, Paris, or Rome during the summer, when the elder Wards were planning to travel in Europe. His researches, he said, were such that he could not leave his present quarters; while the situation of Baron Ferenczy's castle did not favour visits. It was on a crag in the dark wooded mountains, and the region was so shunned by the country folk that normal people could not help feeling ill at ease. Moreover, the Baron was not a person likely to appeal to correct and conservative New England gentlefolk. His aspect and manners had idiosyncrasies, and his age was so great as to be disquieting. It would be better, Charles said, if his parents would wait for his return to Providence; which could scarcely be far distant.
      That return did not, however, take place until May, 1926, when after a few heralding cards the young wanderer quietly slipped into New York on the Homeric and traversed the long miles to Providence by motor-coach, eagerly drinking in the green rolling hills, the fragrant, blossoming orchards, and the white steepled towns of vernal Connecticut; his first taste of ancient New England in nearly four years. When the coach crossed the Pawcatuck and entered Rhode Island amidst the faery goldenness of a late spring afternoon his heart beat with quickened force, and the entry to Providence along Reservoir and Elmwood avenues was a breathless and wonderful thing despite the depths of forbidden lore to which he had delved. At the high square where Broad, Weybosset, and Empire Streets join, he saw before and below him in the fire of sunset the pleasant, remembered houses and domes and steeples of the old town; and his head swam curiously as the vehicle rolled down the terminal behind the Biltmore, bringing into view the great dome and soft, roof-pierced greenery of the ancient hill across the river, and the tall colonial spire of the First Baptist Church limned pink in the magic evening light against the fresh springtime verdure of its precipitous background.
      Old Providence! It was this place and the mysterious forces of its long, continuous history which had brought him into being, and which had drawn him back toward marvels and secrets whose boundaries no prophet might fix. Here lay the arcana, wondrous or dreadful as the case might be, for which all his years of travel and application had been preparing him. A taxicab whirled him through Post Office Square with its glimpse of the river, the old Market House, and the head of the bay, and up the steep curved slope of Waterman Street to Prospect, where the vast gleaming dome and sunset-flushed Ionic columns of the Christian Science Church beckoned northward. Then eight squares past the fine old estates his childish eyes had known, and the quaint brick sidewalks so often trodden by his youthful feet. And at last the little white overtaken farmhouse on the right, on the left the classic Adam porch and stately bayed facade of the great brick house where he was born. It was twilight, and Charles Dexter Ward had come home.

5.

      A school of alienists slightly less academic than Dr. Lyman's assign to Ward's European trip the beginning of his true madness. Admitting that he was sane when he started, they believe that his conduct upon returning implies a disastrous change. But even to this claim Dr. Willett refuses to accede. There was, he insists, something later; and the queernesses of the youth at this stage he attributes to the practice of rituals learned abroad - odd enough things, to be sure, but by no means implying mental aberration on the part of their celebrant. Ward himself, though visibly aged and hardened, was still normal in his general reactions; and in several talks with Willett displayed a balance which no madman - even an incipient one - could feign continuously for long. What elicited the notion of insanity at this period were the sounds heard at all hours from Ward's attic laboratory, in which he kept himself most of the time. There were chantings and repetitions, and thunderous declamations in uncanny rhythms; and although these sounds were always in Ward's own voice, there was something in the quality of that voice, and in the accents of the formulae it pronounced, which could not but chill the blood of every hearer. It was noticed that Nig, the venerable and beloved black cat of the household, bristled and arched his back perceptibly when certain of the tones were heard.
      The odours occasionally wafted from the laboratory were likewise exceedingly strange. Sometimes they were very noxious, but more often they were aromatic, with a haunting, elusive quality which seemed to have the power of inducing fantastic images. People who smelled them had a tendency to glimpse momentary mirages of enormous vistas, with strange hills or endless avenues of sphinxes and hippogriffs stretching off into infinite distance. Ward did not resume his old-time rambles, but applied himself diligently to the strange books he had brought home, and to equally strange delvings within his quarters; explaining that European sources had greatly enlarged the possibilities of his work, and promising great revelations in the years to come. His older aspect increased to a startling degree his resemblance to the Curwen portrait in his library; and Dr. Willett would often pause by the latter after a call, marvelling at the virtual identity, and reflecting that only the small pit above the picture's right eye now remained to differentiate the long-dead wizard from the living youth. These calls of Willett's, undertaken at the request of the senior Wards, were curious affairs. Ward at no time repulsed the doctor, but the latter saw that he could never reach the young man's inner psychology. Frequently he noted peculiar things about; little wax images of grotesque design on the shelves or tables, and the half-erased remnants of circles, triangles, and pentagrams in chalk or charcoal on the cleared central space of the large room. And always in the night those rhythms and incantations thundered, till it became very difficult to keep servants or suppress furtive talk of Charles's madness.
      In January, 1927, a peculiar incident occurred. One night about midnight, as Charles was chanting a ritual whose weird cadence echoed unpleasantly through the house below, there came a sudden gust of chill wind from the bay, and a faint, obscure trembling of the earth which everyone in the neighbourhood noted. At the same time the cat exhibited phenomenal traces of fright, while dogs bayed for as much as a mile around. This was the prelude to a sharp thunderstorm, anomalous for the season, which brought with it such a crash that Mr. and Mrs. Ward believed the house had been struck. They rushed upstairs to see what damage had been done, but Charles met them at the door to the attic; pale, resolute, and portentous, with an almost fearsome combination of triumph and seriousness on his face. He assured them that the house had not really been struck, and that the storm would soon be over. They paused, and looking through a window saw that he was indeed right; for the lightning flashed farther and farther off, whilst the trees ceased to bend in the strange frigid gust from the water. The thunder sank to a sort of dull mumbling chuckle and finally died away. Stars came out, and the stamp of triumph on Charles Ward's face crystallised into a very singular expression.
      For two months or more after this incident Ward was less confined than usual to his laboratory. He exhibited a curious interest in the weather, and made odd inquiries about the date of the spring thawing of the ground. One night late in March he left the house after midnight, and did not return till almost morning; when his mother, being wakeful, heard a rumbling motor draw up to the carriage entrance. Muffled oaths could be distinguished, and Mrs. Ward, rising and going to the window, saw four dark figures removing a long, heavy box from a truck at Charles's direction and carrying it within by the side door. She heard laboured breathing and ponderous footfalls on the stairs, and finally a dull thumping in the attic; after which the footfalls descended again, and the four men reappeared outside and drove off in their truck.
      The next day Charles resumed his strict attic seclusion, drawing down the dark shades of his laboratory windows and appearing to be working on some metal substance. He would open the door to no one, and steadfastly refused all proffered food. About noon a wrenching sound followed by a terrible cry and a fall were heard, but when Mrs. Ward rapped at the door her son at length answered faintly, and told her that nothing had gone amiss. The hideous and indescribable stench now welling out was absolutely harmless and unfortunately necessary. Solitude was the one prime essential, and he would appear later for dinner. That afternoon, after the conclusion of some odd hissing sounds which came from behind the locked portal, he did finally appear; wearing an extremely haggard aspect and forbidding anyone to enter the laboratory upon any pretext. This, indeed, proved the beginning of a new policy of secrecy; for never afterward was any other person permitted to visit either the mysterious garret workroom or the adjacent storeroom which he cleaned out, furnished roughly, and added to his inviolably private domain as a sleeping apartment. Here he lived, with books brought up from his library beneath, till the time he purchased the Pawtuxet bungalow and moved to it all his scientific effects.
      In the evening Charles secured the paper before the rest of the family and damaged part of it through an apparent accident. Later on Dr. Willett, having fixed the date from statements by various members of the household, looked up an intact copy at the Journal office and found that in the destroyed section the following small item had occurred:
Nocturnal Diggers Surprised in
North Burial Ground

Robert Hart, night watchman at the North Burial Ground, this morning discovered a party of several men with a motor truck in the oldest part of the cemetery, but apparently frightened them off before they had accomplished whatever their object may have been.
      The discovery took place at about four o'clock, when Hart's attention was attracted by the sound of a motor outside his shelter. Investigating, he saw a large truck on the main drive several rods away; but could not reach it before the sound of his feet on the gravel had revealed his approach. The men hastily placed a large box in the truck and drove away toward the street before they could be overtaken; and since no known grave was disturbed, Hart believes that this box was an object which they wished to bury.
      The diggers must have been at work for a long while before detection, for Hart found an enormous hole dug at a considerable distance back from the roadway in the lot of Amasa Field, where most of the old stones have long ago disappeared. The hole, a place as large and deep as a grave, was empty; and did not coincide with any interment mentioned in the cemetery records.
      Sergt. Riley of the Second Station viewed the spot and gave the opinion that the hole was dug by bootleggers rather gruesomely and ingeniously seeking a safe cache for liquor in a place not likely to be disturbed. In reply to questions Hart said he thought the escaping truck had headed up Rochambeau Avenue, though he could not be sure.
      During the next few days Ward was seldom seen by his family. Having added sleeping quarters to his attic realm, he kept closely to himself there, ordering food brought to the door and not taking it in until after the servant had gone away. The droning of monotonous formulae and the chanting of bizarre rhythms recurred at intervals, while at other times occasional listeners could detect the sound of tinkling glass, hissing chemicals, running water, or roaring gas flames. Odours of the most unplaceable quality, wholly unlike any before noted, hung at times around the door; and the air of tension observable in the young recluse whenever he did venture briefly forth was such as to excite the keenest speculation. Once he made a hasty trip to the Athenaeum for a book he required, and again he hired a messenger to fetch him a highly obscure volume from Boston. Suspense was written portentously over the whole situation, and both the family and Dr. Willett confessed themselves wholly at a loss what to do or think about it.

6.

      Then on the fifteenth of April a strange development occurred. While nothing appeared to grow different in kind, there was certainly a very terrible difference in degree; and Dr. Willett somehow attaches great significance to the change. The day was Good Friday, a circumstance of which the servants made much, but which others quite naturally dismiss as an irrelevant coincidence. Late in the afternoon young Ward began repeating a certain formula in a singularly loud voice, at the same time burning some substance so pungent that its fumes escaped over the entire house. The formula was so plainly audible in the hall outside the locked door that Mrs. Ward could not help memorising it as she waited and listened anxiously, and later on she was able to write it down at Dr. Willett's request. It ran as follows, and experts have told Dr. Willett that its very close analogue can be found in the mystic writings of ""Eliphas Levi"", that cryptic soul who crept through a crack in the forbidden door and glimpsed the frightful vistas of the void beyond:
""Per Adonai Eloim, Adonai Jehova,
Adonai Sabaoth, Metraton On Agla Mathon,
verbum pythonicum, mysterium salamandrae,
conventus sylvorum, antra gnomorum,
daemonia Coeli Gad, Almousin, Gibor, Jehosua,
Evam, Zariatnatmik, veni, veni, veni.""
      This had been going on for two hours without change or intermission when over all the neighbourhood a pandaemoniac howling of dogs set in. The extent of this howling can be judged from the space it received in the papers the next day, but to those in the Ward household it was overshadowed by the odour which instantly followed it; a hideous, all-pervasive odour which none of them had ever smelt before or have ever smelt since. In the midst of this mephitic flood there came a very perceptible flash like that of lightning, which would have been blinding and impressive but for the daylight around; and then was heard the voice that no listener can ever forget because of its thunderous remoteness, its incredible depth, and its eldritch dissimilarity to Charles Ward's voice. It shook the house, and was clearly heard by at least two neighbours above the howling of the dogs. Mrs. Ward, who had been listening in despair outside her son's locked laboratory, shivered as she recognised its hellish import; for Charles had told her of its evil fame in dark books, and of the manner in which it had thundered, according to the Fenner letters, above the doomed Pawtuxet farmhouse on the night of Joseph Curwen's annihilation. There was no mistaking that nightmare phrase, for Charles had described it too vividly in the old days when he had talked frankly of his Curwen investigations. And yet it was only this fragment of an archaic and forgotten language: ""DIES MIES JESCHET BOENE DOESEF DOUVEMA ENITEMAUS"".
      Close upon this thundering there came a momentary darkening of the daylight, though sunset was still an hour distant, and then a puff of added odour different from the first but equally unknown and intolerable. Charles was chanting again now and his mother could hear syllables that sounded like ""Yi-nash-Yog-Sothoth-he-lgeb-fi-throdog"" - ending in a ""Yah!"" whose maniacal force mounted in an ear-splitting crescendo. A second later all previous memories were effaced by the wailing scream which burst out with frantic explosiveness and gradually changed form to a paroxysm of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Mrs. Ward, with the mingled fear and blind courage of maternity, advanced and knocked affrightedly at the concealing panels, but obtained no sign of recognition. She knocked again, but paused nervelessly as a second shriek arose, this one unmistakably in the familiar voice of her son, and sounding concurrently with the still bursting cachinnations of that other voice. Presently she fainted, although she is still unable to recall the precise and immediate cause. Memory sometimes makes merciful deletions.
      Mr. Ward returned from the business section at about quarter past six; and not finding his wife downstairs, was told by the frightened servants that she was probably watching at Charles's door, from which the sounds had been far stranger than ever before. Mounting the stairs at once, he saw Mrs. Ward stretched at full length on the floor of the corridor outside the laboratory; and realising that she had fainted, hastened to fetch a glass of water from a set bowl in a neighbouring alcove. Dashing the cold fluid in her face, he was heartened to observe an immediate response on her part, and was watching the bewildered opening of her eyes when a chill shot through him and threatened to reduce him to the very state from which she was emerging. For the seemingly silent laboratory was not as silent as it had appeared to be, but held the murmurs of a tense, muffled conversation in tones too low for comprehension, yet of a quality profoundly disturbing to the soul.
      It was not, of course, new for Charles to mutter formulae; but this muttering was definitely different. It was so palpably a dialogue, or imitation of a dialogue, with the regular alteration of inflections suggesting question and answer, statement and response. One voice was undisguisedly that of Charles, but the other had a depth and hollowness which the youth's best powers of ceremonial mimicry had scarcely approached before. There was something hideous, blasphemous, and abnormal about it, and but for a cry from his recovering wife which cleared his mind by arousing his protective instincts it is not likely that Theodore Howland Ward could have maintained for nearly a year more his old boast that he had never fainted. As it was, he seized his wife in his arms and bore her quickly downstairs before she could notice the voices which had so horribly disturbed him. Even so, however, he was not quick enough to escape catching something himself which caused him to stagger dangerously with his burden. For Mrs. Ward's cry had evidently been heard by others than he, and there had come from behind the locked door the first distinguishable words which that masked and terrible colloquy had yielded. They were merely an excited caution in Charles's own voice, but somehow their implications held a nameless fright for the father who overheard them. The phrase was just this: ""Sshh! - write!""
      Mr. and Mrs. Ward conferred at some length after dinner, and the former resolved to have a firm and serious talk with Charles that very night. No matter how important the object, such conduct could no longer be permitted; for these latest developments transcended every limit of sanity and formed a menace to the order and nervous well-being of the entire household. The youth must indeed have taken complete leave of his senses, since only downright madness could have prompted the wild screams and imaginary conversations in assumed voices which the present day had brought forth. All this must be stopped, or Mrs. Ward would be made ill and the keeping of servants become an impossibility.
      Mr. Ward rose at the close of the meal and started upstairs for Charles's laboratory. On the third floor, however, he paused at the sounds which he heard proceeding from the now disused library of his son. Books were apparently being flung about and papers wildly rustled, and upon stepping to the door Mr. Ward beheld the youth within, excitedly assembling a vast armful of literary matter of every size and shape. Charles's aspect was very drawn and haggard, and he dropped his entire load with a start at the sound of his father's voice. At the elder man's command he sat down, and for some time listened to the admonitions he had so long deserved. There was no scene. At the end of the lecture he agreed that his father was right, and that his noises, mutterings, incantations, and chemical odours were indeed inexcusable nuisances. He agreed to a policy of greater quiet, though insisting on a prolongation of his extreme privacy. Much of his future work, he said, was in any case purely book research; and he could obtain quarters elsewhere for any such vocal rituals as might be necessary at a later stage. For the fright and fainting of his mother he expressed the keenest contrition, and explained that the conversation later heard was part of an elaborate symbolism designed to create a certain mental atmosphere. His use of abstruse technical terms somewhat bewildered Mr. Ward, but the parting impression was one of undeniable sanity and poise despite a mysterious tension of the utmost gravity. The interview was really quite inconclusive, and as Charles picked up his armful and left the room Mr. Ward hardly knew what to make of the entire business. It was as mysterious as the death of poor old Nig, whose stiffening form had been found an hour before in the basement, with staring eyes and fear-distorted mouth.
      Driven by some vague detective instinct, the bewildered parent now glanced curiously at the vacant shelves to see what his son had taken up to the attic. The youth's library was plainly and rigidly classified, so that one might tell at a glance the books or at least the kind of books which had been withdrawn. On this occasion Mr. Ward was astonished to find that nothing of the occult or the antiquarian, beyond what had been previously removed, was missing. These new withdrawals were all modern items; histories, scientific treatises, geographies, manuals of literature, philosophic works, and certain contemporary newspapers and magazines. It was a very curious shift from Charles Ward's recent run of reading, and the father paused in a growing vortex of perplexity and an engulfing sense of strangeness. The strangeness was a very poignant sensation, and almost clawed at his chest as he strove to see just what was wrong around him. Something was indeed wrong, and tangibly as well as spiritually so. Ever since he had been in this room he had known that something was amiss, and at last it dawned upon him what it was.
      On the north wall rose still the ancient carved overmantel from the house in Olney Court, but to the cracked and precariously restored oils of the large Curwen portrait disaster had come. Time and unequal heating had done their work at last, and at some time since the room's last cleaning the worst had happened. Peeling clear of the wood, curling tighter and tighter, and finally crumbling into small bits with what must have been malignly silent suddenness, the portrait of Joseph Curwen had resigned forever its staring surveillance of the youth it so strangely resembled, and now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust.
","Rodrigo: (Laughing) ""'Horror'? You speak to me of 'horror'? I have seen things which would make the gods tremble!""
Massa di Requiem per Shuggay
Act II Scene IV
Benevento Chieti Bordighera
(Translated from the original Italian)
Torren-Wraeth hated being summoned. He hated human sacrifice even more. After all, his mother had been human, but he could not act against his father's wishes, nor those who had summoned him, at least, not directly. He was here merely to witness, to stand helpless as a life was taken.
The youth stood, tall and handsome, his striking Polynesian features offset by his green skin and six slender tendrils that lined his chin and jaw. He was in a house, surrounded by black-robed humans, cult artifacts and blazing braziers. A young man lay upon a stone table, bound, screaming. Torren-Wraeth walked over to the table, regret in his glistening yellow eyes, ""I'm so sorry."" The man's bulging eyes stared past him, followed two of the cultists as they moved toward a spot near the west wall of the basement/temple, strained with terror.
The worshipers began to chant, and one among them called out in a loud voice, ""For the glory of Great Cthulhu, we offer this one to The Beast Below!""
""My father does not need sacrifices..."" Torren-Wraeth said loudly. That was true, to a point. His father did not, in fact, need sacrifices, but he did desire them. Perhaps, he could save this one... But they ignored him. He watched as the men rolled back a large stone, revealing a dark hole beneath. Ghouls? Ghouls can be reasoned with, better than some humans... He frowned, spoke louder ""I said, my father...""
Then it hit him. A noxious smell poured forth through the opening, gagging him. It was not the familiar, moldy corpse smell of ghouls, but something bizarre, like ammonia and drying blood... And there was something else, something far, far worse. Voices. Many voices. Laughing madly, weeping, screaming. Screaming such as Torren-Wraeth had never heard in his life; the horrific, hopeless shrieking of the damned.
He unconsciously backed away as a huge form slithered slowly from the deepest region of the pit. Torren-Wraeth nearly vomited at the sight. It was similar in shape to a worm, blood-colored and slimy, but that was not the true horror of the thing, it was it's faces... A grinning, evil human face peered from the anterior of the beast, but dozens of other anguished, maddened human faces protruded at random from it's hideous form. Their eyes reflected unspeakable torment, madness, and a longing for the release of death. Some babbled or laughed senselessly, others begged for death or wept, or just screamed... So many faces, so much unholy suffering. It turned toward the sacrificial table and it's occupant.
At the sight the victim screamed in utter terror, but his voice was drowned out by the many voices of the thing. Torren-Wraeth had heard of such things, but had not believed, had hoped that they did not exist.
The Chakota.
An abomination which absorbed it's victims, body and mind, leaving it's unfortunate prey trapped within it's hateful body, aware but helpless. The first head, the mind of the beast, was the cultist who had willingly created it, literally became the beast, the others the miserable wretches it had absorbed over the years.
Torren-Wraeth's body turned pale yellow with horror. He had seen so much evil and cruelty in his life, but this, this was vile beyond all reason. The Binding broke with his terror. He was free to act.
His reaction was instinctive, human.
He screamed, grabbed the nearest brazier, and struck at the beast with it.
The Chakota itself screamed as the coals and flames struck it's slimy flesh, and it was alight. Torren-Wraeth struck at it again and again, scattering flaming coal across the room, igniting tapestries and furnishings. More braziers were knocked over by the beast's own struggles and the cultists scrambling for the stairs. The stone floor grew hot, and the walls caught fire. The Chakota turned to flee toward it's hole, towards cool, dark safety, but Torren-Wraeth drove the broken brazier through it like a stake, pinning it in place. There was no escape.
The flames danced across the stones.
As the fire raged around him, Torren-Wraeth turned to the sacrificial victim, intending to free him, but a quick glance revealed that the man was dead, his face contorted in terror. He had died of fear.
In some ways, he was lucky. He wondered how many of the cultists had died in the fire, and had the brief, dark feeling that they 'deserved it'. He pushed it from his mind.
He turned his attention back to the Chakota.
The beast writhed in agony. The screams grew louder, shriller, while, from some of the faces trapped within the beast, came shouts of joy and thanksgiving. Facing the flames was preferable to living within the beast...
Though it was obscured by smoke and flames, Torren-Wraeth watched as the Chakota quickly shriveled and blackened, withered like a worm on a hot sidewalk.
Then, there were only ashes.
The fire was spreading too quickly, the heat was intense, he had to leave or risk injury himself. Torren-Wraeth teleported away, leaving the cleansing fire to it's work.
He returned home. Not R'Lyeh, but Rapa Nui, which the white men called 'Easter Island'.
He threw up, then wept...
Later,
Torren-Wraeth stood within an ancient quarry, partially carved Moai bearing mute witness to his words. ""No more! No more human sacrifices!"" He shouted at the top of his lungs. He didn't care about the consequences. He had ignored his conscience, his honor for too long.
""You go where you are summoned!"" Great Cthulhu's telepathic voice, calling out from his body in R'Lyeh, registered rage at this defiance.
""Never again!"" Torren-Wraeth's voice was firm. He was ashamed that he had ever been party to such a thing, and he refused to do so again. His skin was blotched with conflicting emotion, ""You don't even need sacrifices, much less intelligent ones! I won't help you commit murder, not anymore!""
""Who are you to judge me!?""
Torren-Wraeth fell silent.
Great Cthulhu sighed, his child was becoming sentimental, rebellious. It was his mother's blood, it could not be helped. Ever since he had befriended that human, he had become more like them... Still, it was a small thing. ""Very well, Torren-Wraeth, from now on you will never represent me at a sentient sacrifice again.""
The boy knelt quickly, ""Thank you, father...""
""Do not thank me yet, I may ask something of you in return.""
And Torren-Wraeth knew without a doubt that he would.
",False
"Day 1-I never would imagine such thing would happen, in this diary I will document my strange and disturbing events. Once I was a normal respected teacher at Miskatonic, and then a member of this ""great race"" appears and teleports me to this place…it's just too surreal, this place is a gigantic library, whit knowledge of humanity and more…this large creature it's just disgusting, I just never saw something like this, it's just bizarre. The flowers are just biologically impossible, but they are there. I am a prisoner? This place is huge, the race it's big! Like a small building, I just imagine how impossibly big an entire city would be…I am like a mouse in a skyscraper. I try my best to sleep…god have mercy upon me. I have difficulty knowing what is day and what is night…because there are not windows, I have a theory that this place is underground. A few minutes after wandering around, my captor opens the massive door, ah I have forgotten, this room is almost alone without objects of my size, the only thing here is a giant sized TV with a typewriter on it. What kind of technology these creatures possess? I see that the giant clicks these claws constantly…why? It's some sort of communication? Suddenly he throws to me a metal box with a button on top of it, ""what sort of thing is this, creature?"" I ask. The giant just clicks this right claw. Without any other option I push the small cylinder, and nothing noticeable happens. But then it makes a long series of clicks again and the box suddenly begins to…talk: ""hello Wilhelm. I am a Yithnian, and I want your help. I have seen with horror that a god will crash-land on earth in two weeks! He is trapped in a suit that will retrain this great and immeasurable power. I will travel in time to bring him to you so we can begin our project"" suddenly he disappeared in an after-image. The thing he said…it was unbelievable a god exists, and he wants my help.
Day…2 (i suppose) I been alone in this blank room for 4 hours…and when I was taken it was 1:30. Ok that is not the point. In this room there some sort of big book shells that dwarf by a few inches the aliens. I have opened the door to reveal that I was right, if this would be a city of gigantic size I would be like a mouse. Thousands of skyscrapers roam the underground dome that sustains the cave. This is just massive. One of the tallest buildings on earth will be like an electric floor fan compared to these hulks. It's just frightening to try to hide from these monsters. I still don't get why my captor doesn't appear yet. The buildings are made from a metal that is am mesh of golden with gray, and almost every one of them is rectangular. Three minutes remain of this wait and I see that the yith creature has returned, with a strange being in this arm. Also a book of my size; the creature started to click and the machine started to speak: ""I ask forgiveness Wilhelm, the time machine broke and I needed to fix it. Here it is…the great lord of the Outer gods, the blind idiot entity that everyone fears: Azathoth! My luck, our luck could not be greater my friend! He was trapped in the technology of my people and Mi-Go's we can make him anything we want!"" after handing me the book I have a better look at the ""God"" before me. He had a suit with long limbs; this head was highly (and horrifyingly) similar to the shape of the tall Flatiron Building in New York, in this top there were two small triangles that made the illusion of horns or wolf like ears. Little red lines in both sides of the face, (I suppose eyes) the helmet also it was colored silver. I also notice that this body has a light brown straightjacket like appearance. This right and left hands have black gloves (I suppose) with slightly long conical golden claws half of the fingers. These feet and legs are even more bizarre: black to the knees with silver to the lateral malleolus. The feet are the most structurally insane: it looks like a golden flat spike. It appears that this creature is unconscious. The book has revealed me some clues: Azathoth he is the most powerful entity in our universe, also the creator of a creator of other gods! The yiths are the race of my captor. They want to use the knowledge of my race to their disposal, what one? I dare not to put it in this diary…it would make anyone insane. The creature ""spoken"" to my again about why I am here; ""I want to give to the Outer God a new chance, one to redeem him/itself to use it as a tool for good. I will train you in a place that I made where time is infinite, where you don't need to eat, you will not exhaust, where you will not age. There I will make you a super intelligent being, due to the fact that there is technology of my race you will need to learn it. And you will make Azathoth something more than human."" After that a door on a wall suddenly appeared, the place inside of it was blank grey. I am surprised of what I will do…I will create something to fight the unknown evil of this world! We will make this monster my monster! The yith told me that the place where we will go is applied named: Infinitely Timed Room.
Day 3- the I.T.R. was excellent as a place for learning. I reckon I was there for 200 months. But I am fine to say the least. I finally learned how to manipulate the suit. It was revealed to me that there is a cube that reduces size inside of the helmet. There is a computer inside of that cube that can be modified. If I do that I can change Azathoth into a thinking creature. Also I will make him learn how to change the suit into anything he wants. I get a closer look at the monster and I can assume that he is still unconscious, or he doesn't know how to move. Thanks to a machine I built inside the I.T.R. a metal glob that can change into any human or eldritch tool I call it the anytool. I can mentally command it and only me, I change it into a buzz saw that cuts the center of the helmet. I see with awe that there are two metal cubes inside it. The one on the right has a circular window I see with my own mortal eyes what is in there: the thumb–sized daemon sultan himself. He was shaped like a tridimensional ellipse, in this surface it was covered with something similar to eggs of a fish or an amphibian, they divided the creature into two tones: in the right there where white ""eggs"" and only 3 black ones, there were 4 spiked eggs and white five tubes that have mouths. In the left there are only black eggs and 3 spiked white ones, 2 big human like jaws were located in the far left. Behind it there where mangled tentacles and claws. I see all this thanks to the anytool that I shaped into a microscope.
The boxes where lead colored and they were 7cm tall and 7cm breadth. The one that is located upside is the one that constrains him and these powers, there is a mirror in the floor of the cube, the downer cube creates an incredibly thin ray that points into the mirror of the upper cube (they are epilated into a vertical position) that ray is the one that maintains this concurrent size. I cut the cube where the visor is and I slowly modify it.
Day 4-I finally finalized the modification, and I closed the helmet. I created a level system: Level 1 makes him use a small bit of this power, with strength capable of lifting 50 tons. Level 2 makes him capable of creating creatures of this own, and this strength are enough powerful to level 10 buildings, Level 3…this one makes him use a quarter of this real power, he is capable of destroying a world with energy based blasts. And this physical strength is unmeasurable. Also I programed the cube (that works like a brain for Azathoth) to only to obey me, but to follow orders of any successor or member of my family.
After a few hours the former god awakens and these first words are understandable: ""where…I am, what I am?"" this voice is deep and stern. I shudder what this reaction will be when I tell him the truth. Thankfully I made the upper cube make the thump sized monster a fast learner. ""My name is Wilhelm Smift, your master. Your name is Azathoth."" The knight like creature stares at me; ""yes…Thou art. But please answer me who am i?"" ""You were a powerful creature, a god. But technological creatures transferred you into a body that constrains your power. Thankfully I have modified it to have a mind that thinks, that talks, without me you would be a blind idiot, all powerful Imbecile! You were a leader of other gods but you never made to them any commands, you where mindless. Now in turn serve me Azathoth, I will make you a tool for justice!"" the creature bows before me, but then to my fear I hear a chilling laugh, ""Why are you laughing daemon sultan?"" he talks to me slowly ""I will become a tool for extermination, isn't it master? I will become a machine only made for killing…ISN'T IT MASTER?!"" he suddenly approaches me, whit these arms wide open. ""YOU MADE ME SOMETHING BETTER THAN A MINDLESS FOOL!"" he screams to the ceiling. Then he lungs at me, I expected an attack but the demon instead…hugs me. ""I can't be more grateful"" I don't know what to say, my wishes were answered, but I dread to know why such creature is happy to comply with requests for killing.
","A few weeks after the attack, The Campus of Miskatonic has been repaired, but due to constant problems of security the place is in a state where there are not students and the fate of the school is unknown. ""Sire…that thing wants to talk to you"" inside the echo of the one of a few teachers that decided to stay and discuss what the will be of this Miskatonic. Johnathan Clarke tries to silence this caller ""don't say anything you fool, if they know I have an outer god, they will do anything to use it in the wrong ways"" –""but you are the only one that can command him, oh…when I think 'bout it they can persuade you to use it."" –""exactly!"" their conversation was interrupted when a grizzled voice started the mind of John: ""come, I want to know the new orders"" the young teacher moves to the basement ""Azathoth…it's been weeks since I saw you, how you been doing?"" the canned god chuckled ""fine doin' nothin' but wait till you came, my young sire, in fact I have an idea, what if I go to Innsmouth and I kill dagon to stop further attacks"" –""no that would be a terrible idea. What if we both go and try to talk to them, you know some sort of treaty we could have peace"" the outer god laughs ""Master! Such an altruistic nature! And far too foolish"" –""did you say something?"" the cylindrical monster says nothing and continues to listen: ""we will go anyways, can you change into something small?"" suddenly Azathoth's red and cylindrical form started to melt without any source of heat, just leaving this ""brain"" the container cubes. ""It's this enough small for you?""
John goes to this home close to the Miskatonic River; he carefully puts this bag in this bed, and putting out Azathoth, ""well, can I change into my normal self, sire?"" the young man grabbed the two epilated cubes, looked into the small circular window of the cube on the top and nodded, ""very well, careful now"" John put the cube in the floor and it started to reconfigure itself into this red, mechanical and cylinder shaped form, ""so, what will we do?"" azathoth, asked, ""well I will try to talk to their leader, if that doesn't work you will kill both Dagon and Hydra, I just want to know why did they attacked us"" the metallic creature patted this back ""anything for you sire, talkin' 'bout yourself, can you tell me about you?"" John seated on the bed: ""well, I… (Damn, if he knows I am ""adopted"" he will kill me!)W-well, I lived in Innsmouth for a few years, then when I grew up my father decided to move to Kingsport, I never saw my mother, he told me that she could kill me, maybe she was a terrible and ungrateful bitch"" Azathoth decided to speak ""I wonder if she was…"" he trailed off after thinking about what he was about to say, ""if she was what? A prostitute?"" Azathoth ""nodded"" by moving this body. ""For the rest of the day I need to pack, Jesus, I expect not to have any problems with the villagers"" Azathoth then said; ""sire…why you want to save inhuman creatures? Or even negotiate with them? Rubbish…no, Bullshit! They hate humans, and when they saw that investigator they knew that we were the ones that called, so it's a matter of fact that they felt we were a menace, your little travel to innsmouth its pointless master!"" john then raised from the bed and looked the god directly to this cat like iris, he shivered but he gained some courage to speak to him: ""no, it's not, and don't dare to disobey me azathoth. I want peace between eldritch creatures and humans imagine the possibilities! We could get better technology, better understanding of this universe!"" this mechanic companion chuckled: ""don't be silly, the eldritch just want the earth for themselves. Gods and aliens are very different: the outer and elders don't give a flying fuck 'bout humans, they see us as useless ants, even my son amuses himself with the lot of you, aliens on the other hand want to use us as things to guinea pigs (well the intelligent ones)"" after a few minutes of silence night comes and john goes to sleep. While azathoth goes into this box form. ""I expect to make those deep ones into deep fish sticks tomorrow. hahaha""
The next day john goes in boat to innsmouth, after a voyage of an entire day. then after that they got on a train. The next day after that john arrived in Innsmouth, he saw that the place has little to no changes, the buildings were crude and crocked, some of them were derelict, and the habitants were mutated humans. The sky was grey to make the mood even more depressing. John decided to talk to a habitant, ""sire, can you tell me where I can the mayor of this place? I need to tell him something really important"" the man like many of this brethren was human like, but this eyes were close to popping out of this skull, this skin was greyish, this lips were thicker than the normal man and he had no hair, ""what? You are a foreigner, why you should talk to our mayor? Are you some kind of important person o' what?"" –""I'm not ""important"" by any rich standards but…no forget about it"" Clarke decided to sit on a nearby bench to take out the cubes, they were gun metal grey with vertical lines sculpted on each one, he looked at the cube and started to think ""Azathoth…if you can hear me confirm it"" –""yes master, what are your commands?"" –""shape shift your box with some legs, I will ask where is the place where the ruler of this place lives, but you will convince him to talk to me, I am clear?"" –""crystal…not need to worry, I can convince him by words… (shifts the corners of this cube to muscular legs with three digits) or by force"" he quickly moves to a bush close to this master, he walked to other citizen ""I want to know the place where the mayor lives or he is in the most of time, you know, to interview him"" -""w-well…he always is in the building that is the Esoteric Order of Dagon, a few blocks at the right, I thin' is in the center of the town"" Clarke continued walking, he sees that this servant is not present. ""Outer god, or I am very stupid and I lost you, or you are very fast"" –""it would be the latter"" he saw the cube in this hands. ""We are close, stay alert"" after a few minutes of asking for directions they find the infamous building, it was unlike some of the other depressing and colorless buildings, it was tall and with a rusted cooper coloration.
""Ok, try to be the most menacing possible, make them know what will happen if the give me a no"" John Clarke said as he tossed the gunmetal grey cubes to the wall of the building. ""Sire, I am a 7 ft. tall mechanoid, with a knife the same size as your head, I have a heavy machine gun that is the same size of my body, and my eye made you tremble like a kid…if that is not menacing, then, what the fuck is?"" he crawls in an impossible speed, almost defying gravity. He enters a window and sees that there are a decent amount of people seating in chairs, in the pulpit there is a deep one in a cage. He sees a man on the center with a hood he hears the leader doing a speech: ""my brothers, I have heard that someone is in the streets asking for me, maybe he is in league with that investigator! Maybe he is the reason why our brothers"" he was interrupted when he saw Azathoth revealing himself in this mechanical form, it is sort of different now: there was no rust in this body; the red was more vibrant now and glossy, this cloth skirt now resembles a red trench coat tail. This ""chest"" has written on it on white letters: ""Eldritch Exterminator"" this rectangular shield has ""A+M"" written on it. ""Well gentlemen, who of you is the mayor?"" they pointed guns to him, ""what and who are you?!"" the leader asked. ""What? Why do you answer my question, with a question?! Who the hell does that?"" they shot, all of them. Azathoth unblinking gaze hammered their souls, ""he…HE IS NOT FAZED BY THE FIRE!"" one of them yelled. ""Yeah, but you have fazed fire?"" the outer monster said and then a cylindrical heat beam shot out of this single eye, it cuts every single goon like a hot knife to butter. The only one left is the one on the center. After that display of power and dread he politely asks the ""mayor"" ""care to do me a favor?""
""Uh? Someone has left the building…and he is approaching me!"" Clarke though as the mayor with this hood down walked to him ""w-welcome to innsmouth…Mister Clarke…you wanted to ask me why I sent those hired guns to your university, please the townspeople wanted me to kill! It's not my fault, is theirs!""-""you are the mayor, the authority of this place, they must control your people, they must obey…or maybe there is a higher authority here?"" the mayor was getting more nervous after John said this, ""WHAT?! Sire, don't say things like that…there is no-"" the young teacher interrupted him ""oh yes? Why should I believe the same person that sent those goons to kill us, why should I believe the same person that worships Dagon, sire I think the big fish himself is calling the shots and not you?"" suddenly all the mutated fish people looked directly at the bench the mayor and john were sitting on. ""Oh…they heard us…Azathoth"" the citizens retreated and then returned with all sorts of weapons: pitchforks, knifes, shotguns, revolvers etc. they slowly approached the two, aiming their guns, reading themselves for using their blunt instruments, after all a mayor in Innsmouth is not important, as long as Dagon and Hydra live. ""So, me versus the lot of ya, well it's unfair, for you"" azathoth suddenly jumped a window and landed on one of the closest citizen. ""Sire this needs more than level one, I recommend you to use…two"" –""proceed"" this thin black pupil began to change to a shape identical to a two ""thanks…this reminds me of the first time I talked to your father, and like that time…I am very, very grateful"" he got out of this backpack this trusty CLAXXTON heavy machine gun. Then he touched this master's shoulder and he disappeared from view. They were about to overwhelm him but he simply shoot in a spin, the bullets completely destroyed this enemies. They tried to fire back but nothing fazed him, the outer god started to run through the mass of people with this harmonic knife, the sound of electric guitar feedback coming from the sharp instrument.
""Where I am?"" he asked himself just to see around him and noticed ""oh I am outside of that damn town, thank gods hahaha…Jesus this mission of mine was a fiasco"" he noticed that something was purring in the back of this head, and then he felt like something was ripping this neck, he falls to the ground in pain, realizing that he has now difficulty to breathe. Meanwhile this servant was having fun slaughtering every single mutated deep one he saw, ""why you keep head-buttin' your own species, why?"" he though while using a head with a vertebral spine from a corpse as a bat around heavily injured deep ones, one of them appears behind him, climbs to this back and stabs this eye with a wood pencil, ""hey imbecile, I am already blind"" as he said this in a deadpan way he throws him to the ground and squashed this face with a stomp. As he fights this way he summons two moon beasts to cause mayhem around the city. He quickly regenerates this eye and begins to grab a small house, and then throws it to a crowd of three that had shotguns and pitchforks, the moons beasts were destroying every building they saw, but suddenly they saw a figure running out of their way, the second moon beast grabbed it and prepared to take a bit of this head, ""WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!"" they heard this dreadful master, hearing him like that means a painful death. He stopped this act of eating this unlucky victim. ""Listen you tentacle face, this is a HUMAN, we don't kill those except when they oppose us! So put. Him. In. the. Ground. Slowly"" he complied, ""in fact rescue all the humans you can and put them in a save area. If I see blood of Homo sapiens in you (points to him this harmonic knife) I will grab your intestines and shove them up your eyes"" he then used this heat vision to cut some of the confused mutants, the moon beast grabbed the human and ran to the outskirts of the city. Suddenly in the shore, two giants were approaching the devastated ground with enraged faces.
""OH YEAH!"" Azathoth yelled when he saw those two figures ""how dare you to kill our brothers and daughter?! You have the audacity to attack us unprovoked!"" the male giant roared in an alien language that only gods can understand. ""Kill him my loved! He is insulting our right to use these humans as we please!"" the female one said, ""Hydra, Dagon. Even I though you weren't this stupid, but hey easier for me"" he jumped to a high that rivaled the two elder fishes, and then he kicked Dagon in the face; this wife on the other hand was fighting the two dream lands beasts. ""come on, try to ask who I am, why I am doing this, come on, you know you want to oversized cat food!"" the small cylinder said as he started to shot the eyes of this enemy from this hand (he was being grabbed by dagon) ""YOU INSOLENT"" he was interrupted when a knife came to this other eye. He noticed that the wife of Dagon was wiping the floor with one moon beast, literally. ""Aw hell no! I am the only one that can do that!"" he said as the knife came back to him and he without a problem cut the arm of this bigger enemy"" when he landed he started to run at a speed that was unbelievable, he practically made this way through hydra's legs! She felt to the ground and the surviving beast grabbed the fallen monster and started to eat this face. He turned to see Dagon that was shocked and even horrified that this loved was being eaten alive ""YOU BASTARD!"" he yelled, he ran to azathoth that started to laugh insanely, and ran to this direction too. He grabbed this machinegun and shot at the belly of the beast, the deep one lord was getting weaker and weaker with the hole that the bullets were making. The trapped god jumped to the hole and started to carve with this knife, he made this way to the lungs, to the throat, and he was now in the jaws. ""Hey D-boy have you heard of knifes? Then here is a complete database, I expect your brain to handle this information"" azathoth said in glee and he started to destroy the brain in fast slashes.
""…Azathoth…I am…dying…help"" he heard this master's mental command and got out of this enemy's skull, he quickly appeared in front…of a deep one in the same exact clothes as John Clarke.
",True
"It had been many years since they brought in a new brain. How many I dare not comprehend, but I know it has been long enough where they leave me alone. Am I speaking English? I Am, oh thank you! All I hear anymore is their cacophonous clicking and I know my audio-box isn't in tip-top condition-leaving me to rot. They taught me how to speak their language, you know. And I them, when the right parts are surgically implanted, that is.
Do pardon me, I haven't had company in a long time and I'm glad we're in the same predicament, lest I'd also weep due to my optical apparatus being in such a state of disrepair and I couldn't see you clearly. Yes, Yes, I'm terribly sorry. You wanted to know about Akeley, the last new brain.
His arrival was eventful, as is everyone's, in that the cylinder was silent until they attached it to the devices we both are now connected to. He wailed and cursed, screaming when he saw where he was after light years of nothing. It's disconcerting, wouldn't you say? I remember that all too well. Surely you'd agree that being stuck in your mind like that is hell. It's good that the brain can't feel itself, for I'd then have to wonder how it did it inside our heads.
Well, you see, the lab looked slightly different than it does today. Advances in unholy, technological marvels, you know. Anyway, they probed and prodded, trying to see how far the human mind could go before snapping, to understand what every quadrant and fold was for. I remember this one time he was being examined. It was his first. Luckily he was being examined by Crrrrreeeekaaaadaaa, sorry, as I said, my audio-box isn't worth a dime anymore, it should sound more…But I won't attempt it, you'll probably see him soon, too. But I will say that there's no d sound.
Any-who, he came up to him with this device similar to a scalpel-I forget the name for it. By then Akeley became distant and sad, not to mention angry like a wasp who's hive had been tampered with.
""Get away from me!"" He shouted.
""Just relax,"" Crrrrreeeekaaaadaaa said in a manner befitting a doctor. ""It will be over quicker if you co-operate.""
Granted, I did tell you that I taught them to speak, I meant I perfected their understanding and made it common knowledge, whereas before it was limited.
Side-tracked, sorry.
""And why should I relax? I've been taken from my home to be lab rat for your sick experiments and probably end up dead because you don't have a single shred of humanity.""
""I beg to differ,"" The Mi-go said. ""I have a man's tongue.""
""Feh,""
""I understand that talking about personal matters is how you cope."" Crrrrreeeekaaaadaaa said. ""Though it is true, our psychological structure is different, I am not above talking to you if it means you can remain calm and allow me to do my work.""
""Your colleagues beg to differ."" Akeley spat.
""Different class than myself."" Was retorted quickly in response. Seeming to take this as his cue, he began to stick the scalpel into his right hemisphere.
""Ow!"" Akeley screamed. ""You son of a-""
""Just relax, this is only taking vital readings of what each lobe and piece of grey matter is. Granted, due to our lack of human knowledge, it will take a while to correctly label and determine what every piece of meat does. We'll have to extract a scientist's brain next. Your puny farmer's brain couldn't hold such knowledge.""
""I thought you were trying to make me relax, not insult me you walking mushroom reject!""
The scalpel was taken out and plunged into the left hemisphere. Akeley screamed again.
""You know, despite being a big ball of nerves, your brain can't actually feel its own pain. It only feels pain from the body, but not itself.""
""Then how the hell do I feel it, you idiot?""
""The nutrient filled fluid you're subjected to."" Crrrrreeeekaaaadaaa explained. ""It's an unavoidable side effect.""
""Why unavoidable?""
""We want you to live, even though I'm sure you'd rather not be.""
""Got that right,""
""We actually figured that out when we attached you to an audio device before placing you into a canister. You just complained about being taken from your body. You see, you're the second human brain we've extracted. I'm hoping you'll last longer to be of more use to us.""
Akeley stayed silent, digesting the information that predicted his inevitable doom.
""There, all done, Akeley. Someone else shall experiment on you further with their own projects. Goodbye.""
I cannot even begin to describe what happened to him from then on. Too horrendous to recount. You're asking me why I'm so bent on not divulging on anymore despite going through possibly much worse?
""Akeley. I'm surprised you can still speak!"" Habit! I swear!
Yeesh, didn't I tell you their way of talking was cacophonous?
Oh yeah, I am Akeley, aren't I? Hehe, must have slipped my mind. Oh, you're my son? Hehe…Isn't that nice; reunited one again! Hehehe! I am Akeley!-BETRAYER OF HIS HOME PLANET! HAHA! And I did it willingly, too! Oh merciful god-Haha!-I am lower than a shoggoth! I am...
""Ah, his grating voice is disturbing me! Turn it off!"" Sorry, it's a habit of mine to translate thei…
","April 20th, 1909
They have given me one hour to record my thoughts. Whether this be mercy or mockery, I know not. It seems at this point to be a matter of perspective and to their vision I cannot speak. They are among us and yet beyond us.
My name, my true name, the name given to me by my mother on the day of my birth is Henry Davis Johnstone. Though by the time this is read there will be no memory of my being. And despite this note being written behind the ancient granite walls of Arkham Sanitarium believe that its author is not mad!
I was mad. Even from birth I was stricken with a distinct melancholia, which puzzled doctors and strained the frail spirits of my parents. As I grew, the condition only worsened and my days as a schoolboy were marked with despondency and torpor. A fog of weariness touched all who came near and people hastily learned to avoid my influence.
When it came time for me to move to higher education my father insisted I attend the local school, Miskatonic University, I suspect more out of frugality than to keep me near by need of fondness. My days as a college man were fraught with abject isolation. No field of study could hold my attention and no sport nor society could capture my interest. I had no friends and certainly no prospects for marriage.
It came to pass that while arriving late to lecture on English literature of the sixteenth century I took the notice of a pompous and sarcastic professor. Seeing my black dress and sullen expression, he raised his arms like a dramatist and pronounced, 'Why look, class! Look at this young agelast. It be Hamlet the Dane, here in the flesh. Tell me, Prince, hast thou yet taken thy revenge 'gainst thy lecherous uncle Claudius?""
The students erupted in vexatious laughter. I was overcome, and I speedily exited the hall in search of some well-shadowed place. From then on, my peers knew me as Hamlet and murmured to each other in jest whenever I passed.
I cannot recall the moment when my affliction grew from a simple eccentricity into a state of illness. The shift was slow and subtle. At the end of my second year at Miskatonic, the student liaison sat with me and I was informed that due to my abysmal student record and obvious aprosexia I was not welcome to attend the institute next semester. The only response I could muster was an impotent shrug. The news was not shocking, though I had desperately wished my case and I might escape the notice of the office staff. With a feeble groan, I lifted myself from my seat and began the way back to my father's house. The journey was hardly laborious for we lived on Parsonage Street, within two miles of the school. But on that day I was drowned with fatigue. My legs were young and strong but I hadn't the volition to operate them.
A schoolfellow found me the following afternoon lying in the shade of an apple tree. My memory of this event is vague and distant, suffering from the fugue in which I was held. The student who came to my aid (his name eludes me) was a graduate student in the competitive and arduous field of theoretical physics and had been witness to more than one mental lapse in his peers. He recognized my condition immediately and brought me directly to the college's school of psychology.
It took no more than a moment for those learned men to spot the illness in my mind. A simple exchange determined the path of my life for the next six years. I was bound for extended occupancy at Arkham Sanitarium.
There are some who fear the sanatorium. One can hardly forget tales of Bedlam or Goya's images of poor idiots in torment. No doubt, such madhouses exist where callous professionals employ bizarre and deleterious procedures on the hapless lunatics in their care. But I found my hospital to be a different experience entirely. Here was a sanctum in the old tradition where mercy to the sick was put above the aggressive meddling of the analysts. This was my habernacle. My even disposition and independence swiftly earned me friends among the staff. And in the company of disruptive neurotics, my draining influence was taken as a blessing.
Not to say I was left deserted - far from it. The doctors prescribed various laetificants, exposure to direct sunlight, massage, mineral baths, invigorating emollients and agents to thicken the blood. And as each therapy failed, as they all failed, they did not lose heart. They patiently and methodically exhausted every curative known to science.
I was neither bitter at medicine's inability to improve my condition nor at fortune for my having been born so feeble of will. Does a slug look to the gleeful hummingbird with envy? I was born a slug and I say it does not.
As you might imagine, time passed uneventfully. Now and then, a doctor might remark that some advancement had been made in the medical community that might make the difference in my case. We would attempt the regimen and it would eventually prove ineffective. This continued for five long years until the arrival of the two men who led me to this fate. Two men who, due to my impending executioners, never existed.
The first was Professor Adam Wayland Erikson, a graduate of Bute Medical School and honoured fellow of the Royal College of Physicians who served a lengthy internship under renowned patient advocate Sir John Charles Bucknill. I presume Dr. Bucknill still exists in memory. But how can I know? Maybe my life has descended into phantasm and this account is worthless. Or perhaps they will sweep this note into oblivion with the rest of my existence.
That is enough of that. I have much to record and time is short. Suffice it to say that on a tour of American asylums Dr. Erikson was charmed and delighted by Arkham's facilities and benevolent ideology. He immediately appealed for a position at the institute and was accepted heartily.
The good doctor brought with him the second man I know to be lost. Introduced to me as Mr. Sean Jones, a Welshman who was afflicted with mental disturbances reportedly so peculiar that Dr. Erikson devoted his life to the case. Sean's family had spent the better part of the Georgian Era in the vilest but most lucrative acts of piracy. He had been born into substantial wealth but with such a nefarious family reputation that it was difficult to enjoy.
As we were housed in rooms across the hall, were of similar age, and because we both understood what it was to be an outsider, Mr. Jones and I became quick friends. And that connection proved to be mutually beneficial. Whereas I was bound by lethargy, half-dead as some described me, my comrade was bursting with energy, a tireless maelstrom of activity. I found his company energizing and to him I was a source of calmness and rest.
He confided in me, overflowing with stories of his ancestors' terrible deeds and of their pact with dark powers hidden to mankind by the ocean's depths. All sailors know to respect the guiding stars but only a few are privy to their secrets. Sean relayed to me in great detail the lessons in sabaism taught to him by his father. He spoke of worlds beyond where abnormous creatures harnessed dark energies so powerful that their influence could be felt here on earth. This was why, he claimed, he had caught the interest of Dr. Erikson. Not for his psychopathology but for the eldritch wisdom he had acquired in his life as a degenerate mystic.
Though Sean's charisma tempted me to believe him, his story was too fantastic to trust even the smallest detail. He was, after all, a madman. I continued to listen with interest but I was convinced I was audience to an elaborate fiction.
Then it came that I was sitting with Dr. Erikson for a monthly interview and assessment. The doctor noted that I had been spending much of my time speaking with Sean and he inquired into the nature of our conversations. At first, I hesitated. My instinct was to misreport the wild stories out of loyalty to my friend. But reason led me to deduce that candour would best serve his treatment. I explained all I understood of what I had been told as precisely as I could.
Erikson simply nodded and when I had finished he prepared for himself a cigarette.
""He's a genius, you know,"" he said.
I was astounded. It felt as if the floor was shifting beneath me.
He continued: ""Sometime ago, I came across an article in the Journal of Mental Science entitled Oneiromancy as an Effect of Ferromagnetic Consequence. It was the most brilliant work I had ever seen. And it was submitted anonymously. I wanted desperately to contact the master behind the work but there were almost no leads.""
The doctor stared at the burning tip of his cigarette. I glanced about the room nervously.
""Sean was the author?"" I asked.
""It took me four years to find him. I followed a collection of academic treasures: medical research, historical treatises, mathematical proofs - even an English translation of the infamous Liber Damnatus. At the last, I bribed a courier to give up his secret employer. When he directed me to Denbigh Asylum, I assumed I'd find my scholar amidst the staff. But there he was, locked away and heavily sedated. He had directed all of that magnificent research through intermediaries from a tiny cell. I swore at that moment both to heal him and learn from him.""
I couldn't have been more shocked. This tale seemed even less plausible than Sean's wild accounts. A fear took me. I suspected that I had finally crossed into a realm of complete madness and unreality. But the doctor was not finished with me.
""Henry, I believe Sean and I have made a breakthrough. It's a radical procedure involving the surgical insertion of several rare earth magnets directly into the tissue of the brain. I have practised the operation on various animals and I am confident the procedure is sound. It follows logically that I begin human trials. The professionally responsible course of action would be to bring my findings to a university, but the theory behind our technique is so advanced it may take decades before our science is peer-approved. And the mystical nature of some of our discoveries will be easy sport for sceptics.
Sean demands I perform the surgery on him. But you see, his mind, his metaphysical insight, is too precious to be lost to an experimental procedure. I am asking you, and it is a great deal to ask, to undergo the operation as a safety trial.""
My heart sank. I loved knowledge and cared for my friend. But surely this was insanity of the most outlandish variety.
I inquired, ""What effect would a procedure designed for Sean's brain have on my own?""
""The operation would be adapted to suit your needs. Whereas Sean requires limiting and pacification, you need to be energized or awakened. It's a simple question of placing the magnets within different structures of the brain. Sean will determine the specifics.""
""So this might possibly cure me?"" I asked.
""If our theories hold true you will see a miraculous increase in function. There is also a high risk that you will not survive.""
I could sense the doctor's disappointment even before I spoke.
""I may be mad, but I have no wish to die. And this notion of health you offer is utterly alien to me. Who would be this happy man wearing my skin?""
Erikson replied, ""I am not ass enough to believe you enjoy your present condition.""
""I accept my state of being and, more to the point, I identify with this way of life. This may be pitiful but it is my way. I refuse and that is my final word.""
He dismissed me with an understanding nod and I retired to the mineral baths. Their placid relaxation quickly blent away thoughts of experimental surgery. Before long, I could barely recall our conversation and considered the matter dealt with.
Over the following week, I heard nothing of the subject. Sean kept away from me, I supposed to keep his dissatisfaction from affecting our friendship. I gave him a wide berth, confident he would surmount these feelings and soon all would be as it was. With time, Dr. Erikson's procedure would be approved by the medical community and he would have his cranial magnets.
It was a cold and stirless night when he came to me. I was in my bed lost in dream when I was jerked awake. A drop of icy fluid trickled with precision into the canal of my ear. I flung myself from the bed in a chaotic motion. There, sitting peacefully, was Sean, his hands buried in the pockets of a heavy coat. I stood in puzzlement for on his face I saw neither malevolence nor jest. Indeed, the man before me was a portrait of repose.
""You will undergo the surgery,"" he said, looking blankly at the wall.
It took me a moment to gather an answer. His disposition was so alien, his aspect so void.
""I will not. You are a dear friend, but dearer to me is my life.""
I had played tennis with Sean and I had run with him. To that point, I thought I possessed an understanding of his physical abilities. He was a slight man, no doubt the product of his overactive metabolism. But the speed with which he captured me and the strength with which he held his ether rag over my nose and mouth were simply astounding. I held my breath as best I could, but there was no escape. He had me locked like a master wrestler with an intensity reserved for the mad.
As I faded, he spoke to me: ""The Powers mock me for having been born a mortal of an insignificant species. They bar me from the Dreamlands and laugh at my ambitions. But I know my power and I know my worth. I promise you, my friend, you shall be cured and soon after, I shall be delivered my mind in full. The knowledge of Pnakotus will I take and it shall lead me to Kadath in the Cold Waste. When I have conquered there the Gods will be compelled to honour me with a place in the Court of Azathoth at the centre of all things.""
I awoke in the sanatorium's infirmary, my head aching and bandaged like a mummy. All things seemed distant and unreal, no doubt from the powerful opiates they administered to me. Dr. Erikson came to observe later on that first day of my awakening. In my heart, I wished to cry out that he was a ruthless butcher, but in my state I did not possess the power of speech. And so I lay dazedly while he prodded at me with arcane devices. I even heard him remark that I was progressing well and that he was now confident enough to operate on Jones. The only action I could muster was a low groan.
Soon after the doctor left, darkness took me and I slept for two more days. When I awoke on that third day it was to an awakening beyond that which any man before has had. For no one before me could have leapt from the pure anhedonia in which I was lost into the ripe fullness of living wonder I now experience. Still unconscious, I rose from my bed and wandered into the being of this new existence. It wasn't until a nurse found me mumbling in the garden that I finally awoke in full. Her grip on my arm was tight and yet wondrous, the pressure of each of her digits a new universe of interest. I could feel the twist and sway of every hair on my body. And what is more, I could concentrate and remember their feeling. For the first time in all my life, I began to understand what it was to be alive. Still in that transcendent moment, I remembered the awful state of things.
""Where is Sean?"" I asked.
""Wanted to wish your friend luck, did you? I'm sorry, Henry, you just missed him. He entered surgery a few minutes ago.""
I rushed away at that second, for the clarity offered me by my newfound mind led me to dark conclusions. Sean Jones was not undergoing this surgery to alleviate madness but to unleash the full psychic potential of his diseased mind! What horrific consequences this might have on mankind I could not say. It seemed entirely possible that he could alter the shape of time and space not only in this universe but also beyond.
I dashed through the halls of the sanatorium to the operating theatre and burst in.
It appears my time has almost run out. I must be brief. This situation suits me fine as human language fails in describing what occurred next.
In the operating room, I found Dr. Erikson, Sean and three humanoid figures caught in conversation. The creatures were uniformly tall, at least six feet, and utterly, completely featureless. They were smooth and indistinct, like matte cloth, and were completely motionless. Though they did not speak, I could feel their intelligence within the recesses of my own mind. They exuded no mood, feeling or character that I could discern but the presence of their psyches was profoundly apparent. No sooner had I entered than Sean and the doctor faded from existence. Right before my eyes, they shifted from being to nothingness in a slow gradient. I turned to run.
""Do not flee,"" said a voice that came from, or perhaps through, one of the alien figures.
""What have you done?"" I asked.
""The one had designs against one of our realities, the other an unwitting accomplice. They were, are, and ever shall be no more. To this end you too shall pass.""
My chest heaved with panic. Unlike any other time in my memory, I did not doubt my senses in this circumstance. These beings are truer than what sane men call reality. They are beyond it.
And I said, ""I've done nothing wrong.""
""Your mind has been awoken. This will not be tolerated. The mere fact that you are capable of this exchange means you must be undone.""
I argued with those beings, but to no avail. We spent a great deal of time in communication and I have learned things I thought no man would ever discover. And woe befalls me for having this knowledge. I haven't even the means to record here the details. There simply are no words.
They sent me here to my room with the specific instruction to compose a note detailing the situation. I cannot guess their intent.
I see by my bedside clock that my time is short. All that remains, I guess, is to bestow some moral on my tale.
Perhaps sometime in the future a reader is thinking, ""Was your restoration worth the fate that befell you?""
To him, I can only reply that exp
[note ends]
",False
"Day 1-I never would imagine such thing would happen, in this diary I will document my strange and disturbing events. Once I was a normal respected teacher at Miskatonic, and then a member of this ""great race"" appears and teleports me to this place…it's just too surreal, this place is a gigantic library, whit knowledge of humanity and more…this large creature it's just disgusting, I just never saw something like this, it's just bizarre. The flowers are just biologically impossible, but they are there. I am a prisoner? This place is huge, the race it's big! Like a small building, I just imagine how impossibly big an entire city would be…I am like a mouse in a skyscraper. I try my best to sleep…god have mercy upon me. I have difficulty knowing what is day and what is night…because there are not windows, I have a theory that this place is underground. A few minutes after wandering around, my captor opens the massive door, ah I have forgotten, this room is almost alone without objects of my size, the only thing here is a giant sized TV with a typewriter on it. What kind of technology these creatures possess? I see that the giant clicks these claws constantly…why? It's some sort of communication? Suddenly he throws to me a metal box with a button on top of it, ""what sort of thing is this, creature?"" I ask. The giant just clicks this right claw. Without any other option I push the small cylinder, and nothing noticeable happens. But then it makes a long series of clicks again and the box suddenly begins to…talk: ""hello Wilhelm. I am a Yithnian, and I want your help. I have seen with horror that a god will crash-land on earth in two weeks! He is trapped in a suit that will retrain this great and immeasurable power. I will travel in time to bring him to you so we can begin our project"" suddenly he disappeared in an after-image. The thing he said…it was unbelievable a god exists, and he wants my help.
Day…2 (i suppose) I been alone in this blank room for 4 hours…and when I was taken it was 1:30. Ok that is not the point. In this room there some sort of big book shells that dwarf by a few inches the aliens. I have opened the door to reveal that I was right, if this would be a city of gigantic size I would be like a mouse. Thousands of skyscrapers roam the underground dome that sustains the cave. This is just massive. One of the tallest buildings on earth will be like an electric floor fan compared to these hulks. It's just frightening to try to hide from these monsters. I still don't get why my captor doesn't appear yet. The buildings are made from a metal that is am mesh of golden with gray, and almost every one of them is rectangular. Three minutes remain of this wait and I see that the yith creature has returned, with a strange being in this arm. Also a book of my size; the creature started to click and the machine started to speak: ""I ask forgiveness Wilhelm, the time machine broke and I needed to fix it. Here it is…the great lord of the Outer gods, the blind idiot entity that everyone fears: Azathoth! My luck, our luck could not be greater my friend! He was trapped in the technology of my people and Mi-Go's we can make him anything we want!"" after handing me the book I have a better look at the ""God"" before me. He had a suit with long limbs; this head was highly (and horrifyingly) similar to the shape of the tall Flatiron Building in New York, in this top there were two small triangles that made the illusion of horns or wolf like ears. Little red lines in both sides of the face, (I suppose eyes) the helmet also it was colored silver. I also notice that this body has a light brown straightjacket like appearance. This right and left hands have black gloves (I suppose) with slightly long conical golden claws half of the fingers. These feet and legs are even more bizarre: black to the knees with silver to the lateral malleolus. The feet are the most structurally insane: it looks like a golden flat spike. It appears that this creature is unconscious. The book has revealed me some clues: Azathoth he is the most powerful entity in our universe, also the creator of a creator of other gods! The yiths are the race of my captor. They want to use the knowledge of my race to their disposal, what one? I dare not to put it in this diary…it would make anyone insane. The creature ""spoken"" to my again about why I am here; ""I want to give to the Outer God a new chance, one to redeem him/itself to use it as a tool for good. I will train you in a place that I made where time is infinite, where you don't need to eat, you will not exhaust, where you will not age. There I will make you a super intelligent being, due to the fact that there is technology of my race you will need to learn it. And you will make Azathoth something more than human."" After that a door on a wall suddenly appeared, the place inside of it was blank grey. I am surprised of what I will do…I will create something to fight the unknown evil of this world! We will make this monster my monster! The yith told me that the place where we will go is applied named: Infinitely Timed Room.
Day 3- the I.T.R. was excellent as a place for learning. I reckon I was there for 200 months. But I am fine to say the least. I finally learned how to manipulate the suit. It was revealed to me that there is a cube that reduces size inside of the helmet. There is a computer inside of that cube that can be modified. If I do that I can change Azathoth into a thinking creature. Also I will make him learn how to change the suit into anything he wants. I get a closer look at the monster and I can assume that he is still unconscious, or he doesn't know how to move. Thanks to a machine I built inside the I.T.R. a metal glob that can change into any human or eldritch tool I call it the anytool. I can mentally command it and only me, I change it into a buzz saw that cuts the center of the helmet. I see with awe that there are two metal cubes inside it. The one on the right has a circular window I see with my own mortal eyes what is in there: the thumb–sized daemon sultan himself. He was shaped like a tridimensional ellipse, in this surface it was covered with something similar to eggs of a fish or an amphibian, they divided the creature into two tones: in the right there where white ""eggs"" and only 3 black ones, there were 4 spiked eggs and white five tubes that have mouths. In the left there are only black eggs and 3 spiked white ones, 2 big human like jaws were located in the far left. Behind it there where mangled tentacles and claws. I see all this thanks to the anytool that I shaped into a microscope.
The boxes where lead colored and they were 7cm tall and 7cm breadth. The one that is located upside is the one that constrains him and these powers, there is a mirror in the floor of the cube, the downer cube creates an incredibly thin ray that points into the mirror of the upper cube (they are epilated into a vertical position) that ray is the one that maintains this concurrent size. I cut the cube where the visor is and I slowly modify it.
Day 4-I finally finalized the modification, and I closed the helmet. I created a level system: Level 1 makes him use a small bit of this power, with strength capable of lifting 50 tons. Level 2 makes him capable of creating creatures of this own, and this strength are enough powerful to level 10 buildings, Level 3…this one makes him use a quarter of this real power, he is capable of destroying a world with energy based blasts. And this physical strength is unmeasurable. Also I programed the cube (that works like a brain for Azathoth) to only to obey me, but to follow orders of any successor or member of my family.
After a few hours the former god awakens and these first words are understandable: ""where…I am, what I am?"" this voice is deep and stern. I shudder what this reaction will be when I tell him the truth. Thankfully I made the upper cube make the thump sized monster a fast learner. ""My name is Wilhelm Smift, your master. Your name is Azathoth."" The knight like creature stares at me; ""yes…Thou art. But please answer me who am i?"" ""You were a powerful creature, a god. But technological creatures transferred you into a body that constrains your power. Thankfully I have modified it to have a mind that thinks, that talks, without me you would be a blind idiot, all powerful Imbecile! You were a leader of other gods but you never made to them any commands, you where mindless. Now in turn serve me Azathoth, I will make you a tool for justice!"" the creature bows before me, but then to my fear I hear a chilling laugh, ""Why are you laughing daemon sultan?"" he talks to me slowly ""I will become a tool for extermination, isn't it master? I will become a machine only made for killing…ISN'T IT MASTER?!"" he suddenly approaches me, whit these arms wide open. ""YOU MADE ME SOMETHING BETTER THAN A MINDLESS FOOL!"" he screams to the ceiling. Then he lungs at me, I expected an attack but the demon instead…hugs me. ""I can't be more grateful"" I don't know what to say, my wishes were answered, but I dread to know why such creature is happy to comply with requests for killing.
","“Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimaeras—dire stories of Celaeno and the Harpies—may reproduce themselves in the brain of superstition—but they were there before. They are transcripts, types—the archetypes are in us, and eternal. How else should the recital of that which we know in a waking sense to be false come to affect us at all? Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects, considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us bodily injury? O, least of all! These terrors are of older standing. They date beyond body—or without the body, they would have been the same. . . . That the kind of fear here treated is purely spiritual—that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless on earth, that it predominates in the period of our sinless infancy—are difficulties the solution of which might afford some probable insight into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep at least into the shadowland of pre-existence.”
—Charles Lamb: “Witches and Other Night-Fears”

I.

When a traveller in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean’s Corners he comes upon a lonely and curious country. The ground gets higher, and the brier-bordered stone walls press closer and closer against the ruts of the dusty, curving road. The trees of the frequent forest belts seem too large, and the wild weeds, brambles, and grasses attain a luxuriance not often found in settled regions. At the same time the planted fields appear singularly few and barren; while the sparsely scattered houses wear a surprisingly uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation. Without knowing why, one hesitates to ask directions from the gnarled, solitary figures spied now and then on crumbling doorsteps or on the sloping, rock-strown meadows. Those figures are so silent and furtive that one feels somehow confronted by forbidden things, with which it would be better to have nothing to do. When a rise in the road brings the mountains in view above the deep woods, the feeling of strange uneasiness is increased. The summits are too rounded and symmetrical to give a sense of comfort and naturalness, and sometimes the sky silhouettes with especial clearness the queer circles of tall stone pillars with which most of them are crowned.
      Gorges and ravines of problematical depth intersect the way, and the crude wooden bridges always seem of dubious safety. When the road dips again there are stretches of marshland that one instinctively dislikes, and indeed almost fears at evening when unseen whippoorwills chatter and the fireflies come out in abnormal profusion to dance to the raucous, creepily insistent rhythms of stridently piping bull-frogs. The thin, shining line of the Miskatonic’s upper reaches has an oddly serpent-like suggestion as it winds close to the feet of the domed hills among which it rises. 
      As the hills draw nearer, one heeds their wooded sides more than their stone-crowned tops. Those sides loom up so darkly and precipitously that one wishes they would keep their distance, but there is no road by which to escape them. Across a covered bridge one sees a small village huddled between the stream and the vertical slope of Round Mountain, and wonders at the cluster of rotting gambrel roofs bespeaking an earlier architectural period than that of the neighbouring region. It is not reassuring to see, on a closer glance, that most of the houses are deserted and falling to ruin, and that the broken-steepled church now harbours the one slovenly mercantile establishment of the hamlet. One dreads to trust the tenebrous tunnel of the bridge, yet there is no way to avoid it. Once across, it is hard to prevent the impression of a faint, malign odour about the village street, as of the massed mould and decay of centuries. It is always a relief to get clear of the place, and to follow the narrow road around the base of the hills and across the level country beyond till it rejoins the Aylesbury pike. Afterward one sometimes learns that one has been through Dunwich.
      Outsiders visit Dunwich as seldom as possible, and since a certain season of horror all the signboards pointing toward it have been taken down. The scenery, judged by any ordinary aesthetic canon, is more than commonly beautiful; yet there is no influx of artists or summer tourists. Two centuries ago, when talk of witch-blood, Satan-worship, and strange forest presences was not laughed at, it was the custom to give reasons for avoiding the locality. In our sensible age—since the Dunwich horror of 1928 was hushed up by those who had the town’s and the world’s welfare at heart—people shun it without knowing exactly why. Perhaps one reason—though it cannot apply to uninformed strangers—is that the natives are now repellently decadent, having gone far along that path of retrogression so common in many New England backwaters. They have come to form a race by themselves, with the well-defined mental and physical stigmata of degeneracy and inbreeding. The average of their intelligence is woefully low, whilst their annals reek of overt viciousness and of half-hidden murders, incests, and deeds of almost unnamable violence and perversity. The old gentry, representing the two or three armigerous families which came from Salem in 1692, have kept somewhat above the general level of decay; though many branches are sunk into the sordid populace so deeply that only their names remain as a key to the origin they disgrace. Some of the Whateleys and Bishops still send their eldest sons to Harvard and Miskatonic, though those sons seldom return to the mouldering gambrel roofs under which they and their ancestors were born.
      No one, even those who have the facts concerning the recent horror, can say just what is the matter with Dunwich; though old legends speak of unhallowed rites and conclaves of the Indians, amidst which they called forbidden shapes of shadow out of the great rounded hills, and made wild orgiastic prayers that were answered by loud crackings and rumblings from the ground below. In 1747 the Reverend Abijah Hoadley, newly come to the Congregational Church at Dunwich Village, preached a memorable sermon on the close presence of Satan and his imps; in which he said:
      “It must be allow’d, that these Blasphemies of an infernall Train of Daemons are Matters of too common Knowledge to be deny’d; the cursed Voices of Azazel and Buzrael, of Beelzebub and Belial, being heard now from under Ground by above a Score of credible Witnesses now living. I my self did not more than a Fortnight ago catch a very plain Discourse of evill Powers in the Hill behind my House; wherein there were a Rattling and Rolling, Groaning, Screeching, and Hissing, such as no Things of this Earth cou’d raise up, and which must needs have come from those Caves that only black Magick can discover, and only the Divell unlock.”
      Mr. Hoadley disappeared soon after delivering this sermon; but the text, printed in Springfield, is still extant. Noises in the hills continued to be reported from year to year, and still form a puzzle to geologists and physiographers.
      Other traditions tell of foul odours near the hill-crowning circles of stone pillars, and of rushing airy presences to be heard faintly at certain hours from stated points at the bottom of the great ravines; while still others try to explain the Devil’s Hop Yard—a bleak, blasted hillside where no tree, shrub, or grass-blade will grow. Then too, the natives are mortally afraid of the numerous whippoorwills which grow vocal on warm nights. It is vowed that the birds are psychopomps lying in wait for the souls of the dying, and that they time their eerie cries in unison with the sufferer’s struggling breath. If they can catch the fleeing soul when it leaves the body, they instantly flutter away chittering in daemoniac laughter; but if they fail, they subside gradually into a disappointed silence.
      These tales, of course, are obsolete and ridiculous; because they come down from very old times. Dunwich is indeed ridiculously old—older by far than any of the communities within thirty miles of it. South of the village one may still spy the cellar walls and chimney of the ancient Bishop house, which was built before 1700; whilst the ruins of the mill at the falls, built in 1806, form the most modern piece of architecture to be seen. Industry did not flourish here, and the nineteenth-century factory movement proved short-lived. Oldest of all are the great rings of rough-hewn stone columns on the hill-tops, but these are more generally attributed to the Indians than to the settlers. Deposits of skulls and bones, found within these circles and around the sizeable table-like rock on Sentinel Hill, sustain the popular belief that such spots were once the burial-places of the Pocumtucks; even though many ethnologists, disregarding the absurd improbability of such a theory, persist in believing the remains Caucasian.

",False
"That is the end of the story, dear readers. Believe me or not, I don't care. I ran far away from the university that evening and, to this day, I have never returned. I had to have my arm amputated after that and my burned and mangled body remains as testament to the evil I have encountered. I told the authorities it was a college fire. What else could I say?
I cannot sleep well anymore. Every night I lie awake, shaking in fear in the knowledge of what exists beyond the limited scope of what we call ""reality"". What is reality? I don't know. All I do know is that this world contains more evil than can ever be imagined.
The evil of the Cult of Cthulhu is still out there and I know that my days are numbered. I have seen too much. One day they will come for me and, when they do, I will let them take me. I have tried to end my life a number of times and now reside in an asylum as a result. Death will come as a relief for me.
It has taken me a great deal of effort to write this, since every fibre of my being has tried to block out the memories of what happened at that university. But I need you to know. I need you to be prepared. The Cult of Cthulhu is alive and well and, one day, Cthulhu will rise and destroy this planet. It is only a matter of time.
Darkness.
I didn't know who I was or where I was. All I could tell was that I was falling lower and lower into a deep oblivion of blackness.
Though I was unafraid.
Was I dead?
It didn't matter.
In that place, nothing mattered.
I was at peace.
And then I was jerked roughly back into reality, though reality had become so distorted in my mind that I could scarcely tell the difference between what was real and what was fantasy. The first thing that I became aware of was a searing pain across my abdomen. I tried to scream, but my throat was sore as though I had been screaming for hours already. I attempted to move my arms but they were locked in place and I realised to my horror that the pain was from ropes that had been tied around me so tightly that they were literally cutting into my flesh. I spluttered for a moment as the sights and sounds of the world started to come back to me. I was tied upside down to the obelisk in the centre of the ritual space I had seen the previous night and my worst fears were realised.
I was covered in blood, though whether it was my own or that of another unfortunate victim I couldn't tell. A fire surrounded me and on the other side of the flames, people in black robes were dancing wildly making noises that sounded neither human nor beastly. I began to wonder why I was still alive and why I had not been dismembered like Jonathan.
Then one of the participants stepped through the flames, emerging unharmed beside me. He brandished a long silver knife and screamed ""Cthulhu Fhtagn!"" at the heavens. The figure turned down to look at me. It was Jacob, though it wasn't Jacob's eyes that looked at me, rather an empty, soulless shell of a human being. He raised the knife and I began to pray silently, expecting the end. Though it wasn't me he plunged the knife into, it was himself. He rammed the blade up to the hilt into his stomach and violently jerked it upwards, sending gory sprays of arterial blood all over my face and into my mouth and nose. Jacob then reached into his chest and began to pull out his internal organs, laughing maniacally as he did so. It was then that I found my voice and screamed louder than I had ever done, though my cries were drowned out by the diabolical beat of the drums and the bestial chants of the other cultists.
Jacob did not fall to the ground as anyone else would have done. Instead, he cracked open his ribcage, revealing his empty chest cavity. An unseen force then ripped his head back, nearly severing it, his spine bent backwards and cracked and then his limbs began bending into odd angles as well. All the while, he continued in his demonic laughter, the chants of the cultists and the beat of the drums growing and growing. He contorted spasmodically, and shadowy tendrils sprung out of his body, twisting as they reached up to the sky. Suddenly, Jacob's body exploded in a shower of blood and offal although his ghoulish laugh seemed to continue somehow, and out of nowhere appeared many small winged creatures. They were less than three feet in height and completely black. No detail of their bodies was visible save for a pair of glowing green eyes. They swooped around the obelisk to which I was tied, uttering a shrieking sound unlike anything I had ever heard. As they shrieked, the dancing, chanting and beating of the drums got louder and wilder until, at its climax, the ground itself started rumbling. Cracks started to appear in the ground and water started gushing out causing the obelisk to crumble, but the fire burned ever brighter.
Due to the destruction of the obelisk, the bonds that were around my middle loosened slightly. But as I tried to rise, I was violently pushed down into the water by one of the cultists who cried,
""Mighty Cthulhu! Accept our sacrifice of blood and rise again!"" With that he drew a knife of his own, but before he was able to end my existence, one of the shadowy winged creatures flew into his chest, disappearing in an instant. Suddenly, the cultists' eyes literally burst into flames and he began reciting the chant I had heard so many times: ""Cthulhu Fhtagn! Cthulhu Fhtagn!"" His mouth then opened wide and I could hear his jaw bone break. Long teeth extended from the gums and before I could react, he lurched forward sinking them into my forearm.
This new pain was just what I needed. I screamed in agony and ripped free. Quickly loosening the bonds around me, I leapt through the fire. Its searing heat scorched me and I felt as though a thousand knives were simultaneously being plunged into my skin. I looked desperately around for an opening to escape and noticed that all the cultists now had flaming eyes and were running at me screaming even as their heads burned in the flames from their eyes. I turned and fled, not caring about the pain in my arm or the fire that was rapidly consuming me. Not caring about the thorns and branches that eviscerated me as I ran past them. I knew I just needed to get as far away as possible.
Although the screams of the ritual participants had begun to fade, I did not slow down. I just kept going and did not look back.
","""Great Cthulhu looks favorably upon your sacrifices."" Torren-Wraeth swept his arms expansively before the congregation, ""And your faith pleases him greatly."" He had been summoned, he hated being summoned, but it was his duty. ""What is your desire?"" A fire blazed on the stone alter behind him, and dark-robed humans knelt before the child of their god as a tentacular, vaguely toad-like being known colloquially as a ""Servitor of the Outer Gods"", (His personal name was Grix), piped away on a bone flute. The High Priest, distinguished by his rich green robes, stood, ""We seeketh only a small boon from thy sire."" Torren-Wraeth rolled his eyes mentally, why did humans always use that annoying Archaic English in religious rights. Cthulhu didn't speak English, let alone Ye Olde English. ""What is it?"" The priest then began a short list of needs, more game to hunt, more rain for the crops, as if Cthulhu could magically make them appear. Well, he could make rain, at least, but not animals... Animal life had flourished since The Great Arising, with so few humans left to hunt them, these people had probably been careless, overtaxing their resources...
""Rain will not be a problem,"" Torren-Wraeth said confidently, then, ""But animals and good crops are more in the domain of Shub-Niggurath."" Grix stopped piping and eyed Torren-Wraeth in surprise. The priest looked confused, the congregation certainly was. ""Cans't thou not aid us?"" Torren-Wraeth considered for a moment, Cthulhu could drive animals toward this village, but could he make crops grow? ""He can send rain and more game animals for you to hunt, but as for the growing of crops, you will likely have to either trust your luck or make sacrifices to Cernunos."" That avatar of Shub-Niggurath was closely associated with agriculture, and Cthulhu didn't mind sharing his worshipers. Torren-Wraeth knew of one 'god' he didn't want the people to follow, however. ""And by The Key and The Gate don't start worshiping He-Who-Walks-Between-the-Rows!"" Lightning struck near the entrance of the church, fusing sand to glass, ""If you sacrifice to him, I'll kill you all myself!"" The congregation recoiled in terror. A steady rain began to fall outside the 'church'. The congregation, forgetting their confusing, terrifying 'angel', and went wild. ""PRAISE CTHULHU!"" ""IA! IA! CTHULHU NAFLFHTAGN!""
Great Cthulhu held court from his green-black graven throne in the Temple of The Key and The Gate. Though many worshiped him as a god or feared him as a devil, the Lord of R'Lyeh was in truth a high priest of Yog-Sothoth. Not that he discouraged his own worship, even as his own clerics, Father Dagon and Mother Hydra, gladly accepted the worshipful adulation of the lesser races. There were plenty of eager and fearful acolytes for everyone.
Later, after the humans had all driven or drunken themselves into noisy slumber, Grix rolled over to Torren-Wraeth, who sat cross-legged and disgusted on the cold stone floor. ""Your father may not be pleased that you shattered his image of omnipotence."" ""Should I give these people lies?"" Torren-Wraeth spoke freely, no one there but the two of them understood Grix' tongue. Grix laughed, a peculiar gurgling sound, ""Isn't it all a lie, in the end? You made it rain, not your father. I could have, too, if I had wanted."" Torren-Wraeth sighed, not knowing how to respond, then took the pipe from Grix' slimy tentacles and began to play.
Torren-Wraeth had some friends and allies, human or otherwise. Tektaktequataquarl, a True-Blood Hastur-Spawn. An unlikely friend, certainly, as Hastur and Cthulhu were grave enemies, and Hastur's Spawn were no more given to emotion in any human standard than those of his nemesis. 'Tek' was an exception, wild, emotional, maybe even a little bit crazy, even by the standards of The King in Tatters. He took human form, male, beautiful, gold skin and gleaming wings, though in truth 'he' was a hermaphroditic golden mass of flesh, tendrils, eyes and mouths. As Hastur-Spawn, he was unwelcome in Cthulhu's court, but he ignored the threats with the casual indifference of an immortal, perhaps he even found a perverse pleasure in visiting enemy territory. Besides, his mate, the Bloated Woman, also known as the Goddess of the Black Fan, lived in the mountains of China. Seven feet tall, six hundred pounds of blubber and writhing tendrils topped with five vicious mouths and a pair of exquisitely beautiful eyes. When holding the Black Fan under her eyes, she was slim and beautiful, a mask for luring men to a gruesome death. Ironically, Tek found the true form more appealing, a form so similar to his own... Regardless, Cthulhu would never dare move against her, for The Bloated Woman was an avatar of the only being Cthulhu truly feared, Nyarlathotep. To anger Nyarlathotep meant horrors even Great Cthulhu dare not imagine. Torren-Wraeth did not care much for the cruel Goddess, but, in some strange way, Tek loved her. Torren-Wraeth had no way of knowing if the feeling was reciprocated, one never knew with The Crawling Chaos...
Then there were the Insects from Shaggai, who had dwelt in England's Severn valley for centuries, repairing their temple-ship. They brought with them their experiences, their dreams and nightmares of far-off wonders; The cities of long-dead Shaggai, the titanic natives of Thuggon, of L'gh'hx, Xiclotl and Tond. They had finally escaped earth shortly before The Great Arising. They had been cruel and twisted beings, but living their mortal memories made Torren-Wraeth long to visit these worlds, where eyeless giants strode teeming marshes and suns blazed black in amber skies. He sometimes used his skills at bending space and reality to take brief jaunts to these worlds. But he always came back. He could not seem to break earth's hold on him, the ties of birth and blood were too strong.
In his house at R'Lyeh Torren-Wraeth slept poorly. His home, small by Cthuli standards, was the size of a cathedral, one large room with a stone bed covered by warm blankets and a square, shallow pool of flowing seawater that served as a bath. A low stone shelf held an image of Goro, preserved forever beneath unbreakable, transparent alien stone. Several books, scrolls and tablets lay scattered about, and the room, from floor to ceiling, was covered with elaborate carvings of alien worlds and incredible creatures. A grim looking Moai sat in a corner, looking out over the green-black structure. A small chest of amber-colored stone, strongly contrasting the general color scheme, held Torren-Wraeth's clothing.
He rose from his bed and walked across the cool floor to the open portal, staring out at the fickle stars that flickered in the night sky. Isn't it all a lie in the end? He sighed, then turned to the chest and began to dress.
Ho Fong stood at the gates of the Monastery of The Bloated Woman, catching the first rays of sunlight. He was old, centuries had passed since he became high priest of The Order of The Bloated Woman, yet time held no power over him. He appeared to be in his early fifties, without even a gray hair. Someone, an American, no doubt, had once insultingly compared him to the fictional Chinese villain Fu Manchu. In truth, he did resemble a significantly heavier version of the Devil Doctor, complete with the signature moustache. He'd killed the man, of course. The Goddess required sacrifices, after all. As the golden light began to bath the magnificent mountains of China in divine splendor, he thought about The Other. He did not worship lord Tektaktequataquarl, as he didn't seem to desire worship, but was obliged to give him all due respect as the Goddess' consort. Tek was coming, of course. The only constant in that being of chaos' life was his love for the Goddess, a love Ho Fong envied, though he could never bring himself to admit it. He straightened his yellow and black silk robes, the official garb of the Order, and prepared to greet the Hastur-Spawn.
The monastery was fairly new, The Order had once had centers in Shanghai and on Gray Dragon Island, but these had been lost in 1926. Enemies of The Order had overwhelmed and destroyed them. Much had been lost, and Ho Fong himself had nearly been killed. These had been powerful setbacks, but, in the end, they had been immaterial, as both Shanghai and Gray Dragon Island now lay lost beneath the waves. Ho Fong's enemies, The Goddess' enemies, were all long dead. He walked back into the monastery, passing lesser monks and acolytes who bowed dutifully toward him, and approached the great bronze doors behind which the Goddess rested. Two burly monks opened the doors and Ho Fong respectfully approached the screens of yellow and black silk that lay beyond the carven jade sacrificial alter.
The Bloated Woman sat upon a pile of silken cushions, smoking essence of Black Lotus from an ornate hookah, it's pipe in her third mouth. The Black Fan and six sacred golden sickles, used to dispatch human sacrifices, hung from a black silk sash wrapped around her prodigious belly. The priest bowed deeply to his beloved Goddess. ""He will not be here for some time yet."" The Goddess voice was smooth and sultry. ""Receive him warmly."" She blew fragrantly scented smoke from her fourth mouth, whilst speaking through her second and first.
Tektaktequataquarl flapped his gleaming wings in the bright morning sun. He felt Torren-Wraeth's approach long before he could see him. He was a good kid, level-headed and thoughtful, the total opposite of Tek himself. Perhaps that was why he liked him, a balance of chaos and order. Yin and Yang, so to speak. Ever since his human confidant had died, the Half-Blood had become more sullen and withdrawn. He needed more excitement in his life. Perhaps Tek himself needed less, courting an avatar of Nyarlathotep. Even Hastur had expressed concern about that union, but love is blind. She was evil, in human terms, but, then again, by human terms she was hideous. He found her beautiful and dangerous. He wondered what their coming offspring would be like...
He suddenly realized something had changed. Torren-Wraeth was in trouble, his life was in danger. He turned back and sped toward the Half-Blood...
",False
"In 2050 an ill-conceived invasion of earth was launched by the Kalkars, a human-like, if excessively tall, race from a world called Va-Nah. They were led by a petty dictator called Orthis. It was spectacularly unspectacular, just another failed attempt to subjugate pre-cataclysmic humanity. However, it is notable for the reason that they had brought with them one thousand Va-gas, a lavender-hued slave race of quadrupeds with human-like faces and front limbs that doubled as arms. Not particularly intelligent at this stage of their development, the Va-gas were violent and cannibalistic, (Due in part to a lack of available food on Va-Nah) even preferring Va-gas flesh over that of other races. Fierce fighters with great strength, they also bred rapidly, making them very useful to their masters, since, as well as serving as soldiers, they also served as food for their brutal masters. The Kalkars, though arguably more intelligent than the Va-gas, were even worse. They (The Kalkars) grew fat, lazy and complacent, still, for over 200 years they managed to 'rule' earth, mainly through dumb luck and petty cruelty. Unlike H.G. Wells' luckless Martian invaders in War of the Worlds, the Kalkars could survive (And breed) quite well in earth's atmosphere.
Torren-Wraeth played no part in the earth-Va-Nah war, Goro had died in 2042 and the youth was lost in his own private agonies and recriminations. The Great Old Ones and Outer Gods mostly stood by on the sidelines, it did not concern them whether earth was ruled by humans or Kalkars, in the end, earth belonged to them. They felt the Va-gas had potential as servants, but the Kalkars were fairly useless to them. So the war was fought, mortal against mortal, bloody and cruel as all wars are. Orthis died early in the war, but it was a costly victory, for the human leader had perished with him. For every human victory, there was a terrible loss, Mankind was thrust into loose fifedoms and petty kingdoms in what the scholars call, The Second Dark Age, and the Kalkar's Empire reigned supreme. But, as with all empires, they faltered... The conquerers degenerated, forgetting the technology of their ancestors. Eventually humanity rose up and all but wiped them out with little more than swords and knives. Inter-species breeding and The Great Arising had, apparently, finished the job.
The Va-gas, being even less human-like and therefore more easily despised, were nearly wiped out as well, but they had won the favor of various powerful entities who rescued and found uses for them, particularly Shub-Niggurath. Torren-Wraeth had protected a small tribe of Va-gas as well, leaving them to protect his personal sanctuary, an abandoned shrine to Tsathoggua in Canada. It was here that he kept his most valued possessions and important artifacts. Many of Goro's belongings were housed within the temple, as were priceless treasures rescued from oblivion during the Great Arising. Paintings, statues, books... The history of humanity protected by descendants of alien invaders within a temple to an alien god. The Toad God himself allowed the use of his sanctuary for this purpose, as he was both Torren-Wraeth's great-uncle and too lazy and indifferent to truly care.
The Va-gas had become more intelligent over the centuries, and those associated with Torren-Wraeth were far less vicious than their ancestors. They even lived in a sort of uneasy peace with the nearby human tribes, by human terms, they had been 'civilized'. Once again, Torren-Wraeth wondered if it was right to impose human standards on non-human beings: Weren't they better off, not killing and eating each other? Weren't the local humans safer now? Hadn't he helped them? Isn't that what the colonialists he so hated always said? It was too late to wonder about that now...
Torren-Wraeth had visited Va-Nah once, and only once, it was worse than R'Lyeh, worse than Tond, even. Even in it's current state, earth was a far better place to live than that wretched hell-hole.
Torren-Wraeth glided over the burgeoning town of New Yokohama, set up by Japanese refugees he'd managed to ferry safely to Canada. It was named after Goro's hometown, though few knew of Torren-Wraeth's prior dealings with Japan, the Emperor and Shoguns had hushed everything up. Great Cthulhu, through Torren-Wraeth, had offered to make the Japanese Empire the greatest in the world, but they had refused. They could not accept one of the terms of the agreement, they could never bear the 'dishonor' of mixing their blood with Gyo-Jin. They had no idea that some of their people were already involved with the Gyo-Jin, as were people in coastal areas all over the world...and Torren-Wraeth had not enlightened them. People looked up and waved, Torren-Wraeth was well-liked in New Yokohama, as he had saved the original founders from certain death.
The Va-gas' settlement, Black-Stone-Place, was primitive, huts of wood and stone arraigned in a semi-circle around the black stone temple. Va-gas usually dwelled in Tepee-like structures, but these were 'settled', as guardians of the temple, they naturally remained in it's vicinity. They even had a rude form of agriculture, though this was mainly for animal feed, as Va-gas vastly preferred meat over vegetables. They raised some pigs and horses for convenient food, but they were mainly hunters, deer, wild hogs, wild horses, and moose were abundant. They, like most Va-gas on earth, worshiped The Black Goat of The Woods With A Thousand Young, and a shrine of antlers and bone lay at the apex of the crescent shaped village. It was here that the Goat's Dark Young came to collect their sacrifices and accept their worship, for the Dark Young were Shub-Niggurath's proxies, as Torren-Wraeth was Cthulhu's.
The Va-gas chieftain, Walks-With-The-Wind, met Torren-Wraeth as he landed. He stood upright on his hind limbs, and extended a three-digited paw in greeting. ""Welcome back. May The Mother of All bless you."" His black hair was beginning to gray, but his grip was strong. ""And may she bless you, my friend."" Torren-Wraeth replied, ""How's hunting?"" A small crowd of Va-gas of various sizes and ages gathered around the Half-Spawn, ""The Mother has granted us abundance."" ""I'm glad to hear it. Any problems with the humans?"" Walks-With-The-Wind paused thoughtfully, ""No, humans rarely come, and none enter the temple."" ""The guardian must be lonely."" Of course, the guardian was never lonely, even if it did not have twelve heads to keep itself company, it lacked such mortal attributes as loneliness and boredom, but it possessed the key that made it an invaluable guardian, loyalty. At the mention of the guardian, the Va-gas drew back as one, they feared it, that terrible 'spirit' with twelve heads on long, scraggly necks and twenty legs on it's globular body. It had not been his intention to frighten the superstitious Va-gas, but he had. ""I'm going to visit the temple. Thank you for guarding it so well."" Torren-Wraeth smiled, and made his way through the parting creatures. They wouldn't set foot in the temple, they believed it to be filled with captive human souls from the Great Arising, despite Torren-Wraeth's assertions to the contrary.
The temple was of black stone, squat and rectangular, with massive stone doors.
Torren-Wraeth entered the temple.
","The Shoggoth
I had met Professor Kindle during my explorations in my youth in Berlin at a convention. His theories in such subjects as physics and anatomy were peculiar to me-and to his chagrin-his colleges as well.
""Well, my boy,"" He said upon my asking why everyone seemed to mock him. ""These fools do not wish to see what's so plain that if it were a snake, it would most assuredly bite them.""
Upon that introduction, he had began to tell me how certain miniscule particles held the universe together. What he said went beyond dark matter and such unexplained universal secrets that it was almost hard to believe. But I can tell you, he was convincing. A fact that will later cause me to rethink my pursuits.
""You see, my boy, Yog-Sothoth particles and Azathoth particles exist in sub matter, in a way that can go undetected even more so than the elusive dark matter for it obviously does not refract or twist light in any such matter like anything else in space.""
""Then how does one know of their existence?"" I asked, and for the fourth time: ""And why those names?""
It was odd to me to think that such a thing would exist that does not interact upon its surroundings. And what was queer was that the names did not follow the standard scientific tradition of Latin roots; instead appearing to be from some alien language.
He smiled. ""Come, my boy, I shall show you."" He draped an arm over my shoulders. ""And as for the names; they are from the Necromicon. A book I doubt you have read, but the names fit, believe me. For you see, Azathoth represents chaos, and Yog-Sothoth order; it's like the Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang, a philosophy I find as very true.""
Kindle took me to his hotel room where he produced from a brown briefcase, a telescope. It looked like any telescope that one could easily obtain from any store for cheap. Yet, something was off. A minor defect, yet hardly noticeable except in the right light. There was an angle of odd proportions etched out of glass and sealed within between the two lenses.
""Look, look."" He said excitedly.
I did look. And what I saw amazed me more than frightened me; as many introductory things do. What appeared to be bubbles and globular orbs of wiggling ganglia-like tentacles were stuck together. I took my eye away.
""And how do you know it keeps the universe together?""
""It goes in a straight line across the sky."" He said. ""Granted, it's mere speculation, but I believe it to be correct, for, how many things are a perfect line in a vacuum?""
I was unable to disagree.
After that, our interactions consisted of an odd letter or two. I became a physician and he became a recluse due to his latest published work that was about his Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth particles. He would only ever briefly say what he was working on. I guess he thought me a fellow conspirator, a rebel to the newly founded scientific idea; anything out of the norm is false, to the point he sent me a battered copy of the Necromicon.
I read the book, horrified at what I was reading, that I am still surprised that I did not throw it to the floor and burn it. But the next letter just asked a question:
Did you read it?
I replied in the positive and the next response was an invitation to his little house in the sparsely populated hills of New England. I will not tell of my travels to his one story house that surprised me that such a man would live there.
It was a dilapidated house that looked like time and hillbilly inhabitants before him had a wild party, trashing it beyond any sense of repairing it. When I knocked on the door and my friend opened it, I was greeted with the sight of the inside, which appeared only slightly better than the outside. The wallpaper was peeling, everything was dusty, and the lights were working, yet did not seem to help alleviate the gloom that seemed to settle upon the house in a death grip.
""Ah, it's so good to see you, my boy."" He greeted me, allowing me into the house. ""Come, please sit. I have some tea prepared for your arrival.""
I take the offered liquid and he sits on the armchair across from me. He takes a sip of his tea before setting it down upon the arm of his chair, his finger never leaving the handle.
""I invited you here to see my newest discovery."" He said, an intense look aimed at me. Like an excited madman holding a gun.
""What is it?""
""Shoggoths,""
He said that one word, never explaining anything, letting the dreadful word sink into my mind.
""Granted,"" He took another sip. ""I didn't discover them. But there was something that eluded me. A phrase; anyone could over look it, but I didn't. Tekeli-li."" He almost mimicked a robot.
My face turned pale at that word. Instinctual fear ingrown and nearly forgotten, left burrowed into a level of subconscious was unearthed and made me want to run faster than I have ever ran in my entire life. I knew I should have listened to it, but curiosity had gotten the better of me.
""The purpose behind it,"" Kindle continued as if there were no tension in the air. ""Eluded me. Until I started thinking in terms of wolves. They're very much alike, you know. Sleek killing machines with a high intelligence(though to-say-Cthulhu or Azathoth, they are stupid).""
With an interesting way to communicate."" He smirked. ""I was proven correct by mere chance. I spied a shoggoth all alone. It cried out 'Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!' Another cried out in response, but this one angrier. The first spoke out and went about doing chores.""
""That's interesting, Kindle."" I said. ""But how does this have to do with wolves? They howl to alert members of their pack of their location.""
""Yes,"" Kindle said matter-of-factly. ""But wolves also have growls and other vocal ways of communicating. Shoggoths only have the one word. And to prove it, I took two Shoggoths and placed them in something similar to a rat maze.""
""But how did you catch them?""
""Doesn't matter."" He snapped. ""Now let me finish, my friend.""
""One called out and the other started to move and call out as well. This continued until they found each other. It wasn't until I caught more that I made the most startling information about them.""
My body trembles. I can only imagine what else he could have discovered about those loathsome creatures.
""I had caught six or seven of them. I crammed them into this one room below this house. It was getting cramped in there for them, so these two decided to fuse together. And it hit me! They're fragments! Their hive mind-like behavior, their similarities. Everything!""
""Come, I'll show you.""
""No,"" I snap, standing. ""I'd rather not.""
Kindle becomes angered by my outburst. He grabs my arm tightly and tries to drag me towards the cellar, but I resist.
""Come, come, there is nothing to be afraid of.""
""There is."" I said. ""Shoggoths…""
I was cut off by a loud thunder from under our feet. Kindle pales as it happens again. He breaks from my arm and tries to run into the kitchen but he never makes it. A long, large, slimy black tentacle rises from the hole it made in the floor. I notice in sick fascination that a black, tar-like substance drips off of it. It darts towards the sound of Kindle's running feet and wraps around his leg, forcing him to land, face first, onto the floor.
I watch, dumb, as it drags my friend towards the hole. Kindle screams and begs me to help him, but I don't move. Fear plagues me, cementing my feet to the wood floor. It is not until his struggling form sinks into the hole that my feet can work again and I dart out of the house.
Tekeli-li!(1)
AAAhhhhhhhh!(1)

1) These were larger(font 22), but the site messes with me!
Mantineus-The ending is ambiguous by default. You see, our hero makes it out. What you see is The Shuggoth and Kindle's dying scream.
",False
"IV. A Mutation and a Madness

1.

In the week following that memorable Good Friday Charles Ward was seen more often than usual, and was continually carrying books between his library and the attic laboratory. His actions were quiet and rational, but he had a furtive, hunted look which his mother did not like, and developed an incredibly ravenous appetite as gauged by his demands upon the cook. Dr. Willett had been told of those Friday noises and happenings, and on the following Tuesday had a long conversation with the youth in the library where the picture stared no more. The interview was, as always, inconclusive; but Willett is still ready to swear that the youth was sane and himself at the time. He held out promises of an early revelation, and spoke of the need of securing a laboratory elsewhere. At the loss of the portrait he grieved singularly little considering his first enthusiasm over it, but seemed to find something of positive humour in its sudden crumbling.
      About the second week Charles began to be absent from the house for long periods, and one day when good old black Hannah came to help with the spring cleaning she mentioned his frequent visits to the old house in Olney Court, where he would come with a large valise and perform curious delvings in the cellar. He was always very liberal to her and to old Asa, but seemed more worried than he used to be; which grieved her very much, since she had watched him grow up from birth. Another report of his doings came from Pawtuxet, where some friends of the family saw him at a distance a surprising number of times. He seemed to haunt the resort and canoe-house of Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet, and subsequent inquiries by Dr. Willett at that place brought out the fact that his purpose was always to secure access to the rather hedged-in river-bank, along which he would walk toward the north, usually not reappearing for a very long while.
      Late in May came a momentary revival of ritualistic sounds in the attic laboratory which brought a stern reproof from Mr. Ward and a somewhat distracted promise of amendment from Charles. It occurred one morning, and seemed to form a resumption of the imaginary conversation noted on that turbulent Good Friday. The youth was arguing or remonstrating hotly with himself, for there suddenly burst forth a perfectly distinguishable series of clashing shouts in differentiated tones like alternate demands and denials which caused Mrs. Ward to run upstairs and listen at the door. She could hear no more than a fragment whose only plain words were ""must have it red for three months"", and upon her knocking all sounds ceased at once. When Charles was later questioned by his father he said that there were certain conflicts of spheres of consciousness which only great skill could avoid, but which he would try to transfer to other realms.
      About the middle of June a queer nocturnal incident occurred. In the early evening there had been some noise and thumping in the laboratory upstairs, and Mr. Ward was on the point of investigating when it suddenly quieted down. That midnight, after the family had retired, the butler was nightlocking the front door when according to his statement Charles appeared somewhat blunderingly and uncertainly at the foot of the stairs with a large suitcase and made signs that he wished egress. The youth spoke no word, but the worthy Yorkshireman caught one sight of his fevered eyes and trembled causelessly. He opened the door and young Ward went out, but in the morning he presented his resignation to Mrs. Ward. There was, he said, something unholy in the glance Charles had fixed on him. It was no way for a young gentleman to look at an honest person, and he could not possibly stay another night. Mrs. Ward allowed the man to depart, but she did not value his statement highly. To fancy Charles in a savage state that night was quite ridiculous, for as long as she had remained awake she had heard faint sounds from the laboratory above; sounds as if of sobbing and pacing, and of a sighing which told only of despair's profoundest depths. Mrs. Ward had grown used to listening for sounds in the night, for the mystery of her son was fast driving all else from her mind.
      The next evening, much as on another evening nearly three months before, Charles Ward seized the newspaper very early and accidentally lost the main section. The matter was not recalled till later, when Dr. Willett began checking up loose ends and searching out missing links here and there. In the Journal office he found the section which Charles had lost, and marked two items as of possible significance. They were as follows:
More Cemetery Delving

It was this morning discovered by Robert Hart, night watchman at the North Burial Ground, that ghouls were again at work in the ancient portion of the cemetery. The grave of Ezra Weeden, who was born in 1740 and died in 1824, according to his uprooted and savagely splintered slate headstone, was found excavated and rifled, the work being evidently done with a spade stolen from an adjacent tool-shed.
      Whatever the contents may have been after more than a century of burial, all was gone except a few slivers of decayed wood. There were no wheel tracks, but the police have measured a single set of footprints which they found in the vicinity, and which indicate the boots of a man of refinement.
      Hart is inclined to link this incident with the digging discovered last March, when a party in a motor truck were frightened away after making a deep excavation; but Sergt. Riley of the Second Station discounts this theory and points to vital differences in the two cases. In March the digging had been in a spot where no grave was known; but this time a well-marked and cared-for grave had been rifled with every evidence of deliberate purpose, and with a conscious malignity expressed in the splintering of the slab which had been intact up to the day before.
      Members of the Weeden family, notified of the happening, expressed their astonishment and regret; and were wholly unable to think of any enemy who would care to violate the grave of their ancestor. Hazard Weeden of 598 Angell Street recalls a family legend according to which Ezra Weeden was involved in some very peculiar circumstances, not dishonourable to himself, shortly before the Revolution; but of any modern feud or mystery he is frankly ignorant. Inspector Cunningham has been assigned to the case, and hopes to uncover some valuable clues in the near future.

Dogs Noisy in Pawtuxet

      Residents of Pawtuxet were aroused about 3 a.m. today by a phenomenal baying of dogs which seemed to centre near the river just north of Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet. The volume and quality of the howling were unusually odd, according to most who heard it; and Fred Lemdin, night watchman at Rhodes, declares it was mixed with something very like the shrieks of a man in mortal terror and agony. A sharp and very brief thunderstorm, which seemed to strike somewhere near the bank of the river, put an end to the disturbance. Strange and unpleasant odours, probably from the oil tanks along the bay, are popularly linked with this incident; and may have had their share in exciting the dogs.
      The aspect of Charles now became very haggard and hunted, and all agreed in retrospect that he may have wished at this period to make some statement or confession from which sheer terror withheld him. The morbid listening of his mother in the night brought out the fact that he made frequent sallies abroad under cover of darkness, and most of the more academic alienists unite at present in charging him with the revolting cases of vampirism which the press so sensationally reported about this time, but which have not yet been definitely traced to any known perpetrator. These cases, too recent and celebrated to need detailed mention, involved victims of every age and type and seemed to cluster around two distinct localities; the residential hill and the North End, near the Ward home, and the suburban districts across the Cranston line near Pawtuxet. Both late wayfarers and sleepers with open windows were attacked, and those who lived to tell the tale spoke unanimously of a lean, lithe, leaping monster with burning eyes which fastened its teeth in the throat or upper arm and feasted ravenously.
      Dr. Willett, who refuses to date the madness of Charles Ward as far back as even this, is cautious in attempting to explain these horrors. He has, he declares, certain theories of his own; and limits his positive statements to a peculiar kind of negation. ""I will not,"" he says, ""state who or what I believe perpetrated these attacks and murders, but I will declare that Charles Ward was innocent of them. I have reason to be sure he was ignorant of the taste of blood, as indeed his continued anaemic decline and increasing pallor prove better than any verbal argument. Ward meddled with terrible things, but he has paid for it, and he was never a monster or a villain. As for now - I don't like to think. A change came, and I'm content to believe that the old Charles Ward died with it. His soul did, anyhow, for that mad flesh that vanished from Waite's hospital had another.""
      Willett speaks with authority, for he was often at the Ward home attending Mrs. Ward, whose nerves had begun to snap under the strain. Her nocturnal listening had bred some morbid hallucinations which she confided to the doctor with hesitancy, and which he ridiculed in talking to her, although they made him ponder deeply when alone. These delusions always concerned the faint sounds which she fancied she heard in the attic laboratory and bedroom, and emphasised the occurrence of muffled sighs and sobbings at the most impossible times. Early in July Willett ordered Mrs. Ward to Atlantic City for an indefinite recuperative sojourn, and cautioned both Mr. Ward and the haggard and elusive Charles to write her only cheering letters. It is probably to this enforced and reluctant escape that she owes her life and continued sanity.

2.

      Not long after his mother's departure Charles Ward began negotiating for the Pawtuxet bungalow. It was a squalid little wooden edifice with a concrete garage, perched high on the sparsely settled bank of the river slightly above Rhodes, but for some odd reason the youth would have nothing else. He gave the real-estate agencies no peace till one of them secured it for him at an exorbitant price from a somewhat reluctant owner, and as soon as it was vacant he took possession under cover of darkness, transporting in a great closed van the entire contents of his attic laboratory, including the books both weird and modern which he had borrowed from his study. He had this van loaded in the black small hours, and his father recalls only a drowsy realisation of stifled oaths and stamping feet on the night the goods were taken away. After that Charles moved back to his own old quarters on the third floor, and never haunted the attic again.
      To the Pawtuxet bungalow Charles transferred all the secrecy with which he had surrounded his attic realm, save that he now appeared to have two sharers of his mysteries; a villainous-looking Portuguese half-caste from the South Main St. waterfront who acted as a servant, and a thin, scholarly stranger with dark glasses and a stubbly full beard of dyed aspect whose status was evidently that of a colleague. Neighbours vainly tried to engage these odd persons in conversation. The mulatto Gomes spoke very little English, and the bearded man, who gave his name as Dr. Allen, voluntarily followed his example. Ward himself tried to be more affable, but succeeded only in provoking curiosity with his rambling accounts of chemical research. Before long queer tales began to circulate regarding the all-night burning of lights; and somewhat later, after this burning had suddenly ceased, there rose still queerer tales of disproportionate orders of meat from the butcher's and of the muffled shouting, declamation, rhythmic chanting, and screaming supposed to come from some very deep cellar below the place. Most distinctly the new and strange household was bitterly disliked by the honest bourgeoisie of the vicinity, and it is not remarkable that dark hints were advanced connecting the hated establishment with the current epidemic of vampiristic attacks and murders; especially since the radius of that plague seemed now confined wholly to Pawtuxet and the adjacent streets of Edgewood.
      Ward spent most of his time at the bungalow, but slept occasionally at home and was still reckoned a dweller beneath his father's roof. Twice he was absent from the city on week-long trips, whose destinations have not yet been discovered. He grew steadily paler and more emaciated even than before, and lacked some of his former assurance when repeating to Dr. Willett his old, old story of vital research and future revelations. Willett often waylaid him at his father's house, for the elder Ward was deeply worried and perplexed, and wished his son to get as much sound oversight as could be managed in the case of so secretive and independent an adult. The doctor still insists that the youth was sane even as late as this, and adduces many a conversation to prove his point.
      About September the vampirism declined, but in the following January Ward almost became involved in serious trouble. For some time the nocturnal arrival and departure of motor trucks at the Pawtuxet bungalow had been commented upon, and at this juncture an unforeseen hitch exposed the nature of at least one item of their contents. In a lonely spot near Hope Valley had occurred one of the frequent sordid waylayings of trucks by ""hi-jackers"" in quest of liquor shipments, but this time the robbers had been destined to receive the greater shock. For the long cases they seized proved upon opening to contain some exceedingly gruesome things; so gruesome, in fact, that the matter could not be kept quiet amongst the denizens of the underworld. The thieves had hastily buried what they discovered, but when the State Police got wind of the matter a careful search was made. A recently arrested vagrant, under promise of immunity from prosecution on any additional charge, at last consented to guide a party of troopers to the spot; and there was found in that hasty cache a very hideous and shameful thing. It would not be well for the national - or even the international - sense of decorum if the public were ever to know what was uncovered by that awestruck party. There was no mistaking it, even by these far from studious officers; and telegrams to Washington ensued with feverish rapidity.
      The cases were addressed to Charles Ward at his Pawtuxet bungalow, and State and Federal officials at once paid him a very forceful and serious call. They found him pallid and worried with his two odd companions, and received from him what seemed to be a valid explanation and evidence of innocence. He had needed certain anatomical specimens as part of a programme of research whose depth and genuineness anyone who had known him in the last decade could prove, and had ordered the required kind and number from agencies which he had thought as reasonably legitimate as such things can be. Of the identity of the specimens he had known absolutely nothing, and was properly shocked when the inspectors hinted at the monstrous effect on public sentiment and national dignity which a knowledge of the matter would produce. In this statement he was firmly sustained by his bearded colleague Dr. Allen, whose oddly hollow voice carried even more conviction than his own nervous tones; so that in the end the officials took no action, but carefully set down the New York name and address which Ward gave them as a basis for a search which came to nothing. It is only fair to add that the specimens were quickly and quietly restored to their proper places, and that the general public will never know of their blasphemous disturbance.
      On February 9, 1928, Dr. Willett received a letter from Charles Ward which he considers of extraordinary importance, and about which he has frequently quarrelled with Dr. Lyman. Lyman believes that this note contains positive proof of a well-developed case of dementia praecox, but Willett on the other hand regards it as the last perfectly sane utterance of the hapless youth. He calls especial attention to the normal character of the penmanship; which though shewing traces of shattered nerves, is nevertheless distinctly Ward's own. The text in full is as follows:
""100 Prospect St.            
Providence, R.I.,      
February 8, 1928.
""Dear Dr. Willett: - 
      ""I feel that at last the time has come for me to make the disclosures which I have so long promised you, and for which you have pressed me so often. The patience you have shewn in waiting, and the confidence you have shewn in my mind and integrity, are things I shall never cease to appreciate.
      ""And now that I am ready to speak, I must own with humiliation that no triumph such as I dreamed of can ever be mine. Instead of triumph I have found terror, and my talk with you will not be a boast of victory but a plea for help and advice in saving both myself and the world from a horror beyond all human conception or calculation. You recall what those Fenner letters said of the old raiding party at Pawtuxet. That must all be done again, and quickly. Upon us depends more than can be put into words - all civilisation, all natural law, perhaps even the fate of the solar system and the universe. I have brought to light a monstrous abnormality, but I did it for the sake of knowledge. Now for the sake of all life and Nature you must help me thrust it back into the dark again.
      ""I have left that Pawtuxet place forever, and we must extirpate everything existing there, alive or dead. I shall not go there again, and you must not believe it if you ever hear that I am there. I will tell you why I say this when I see you. I have come home for good, and wish you would call on me at the very first moment that you can spare five or six hours continuously to hear what I have to say. It will take that long - and believe me when I tell you that you never had a more genuine professional duty than this. My life and reason are the very least things which hang in the balance.
      ""I dare not tell my father, for he could not grasp the whole thing. But I have told him of my danger, and he has four men from a detective agency watching the house. I don't know how much good they can do, for they have against them forces which even you could scarcely envisage or acknowledge. So come quickly if you wish to see me alive and hear how you may help to save the cosmos from stark hell.
      ""Any time will do - I shall not be out of the house. Don't telephone ahead, for there is no telling who or what may try to intercept you. And let us pray to whatever gods there be that nothing may prevent this meeting.
      ""In utmost gravity and desperation,
""Charles Dexter Ward.""      
""P.S. Shoot Dr. Allen on sight and dissolve his body in acid. Don't burn it.""
      Dr. Willett received this note about 10:30 a.m., and immediately arranged to spare the whole late afternoon and evening for the momentous talk, letting it extend on into the night as long as might be necessary. He planned to arrive about four o'clock, and through all the intervening hours was so engulfed in every sort of wild speculation that most of his tasks were very mechanically performed. Maniacal as the letter would have sounded to a stranger, Willett had seen too much of Charles Ward's oddities to dismiss it as sheer raving. That something very subtle, ancient, and horrible was hovering about he felt quite sure, and the reference to Dr. Allen could almost be comprehended in view of what Pawtuxet gossip said of Ward's enigmatical colleague. Willett had never seen the man, but had heard much of his aspect and bearing, and could not but wonder what sort of eyes those much-discussed dark glasses might conceal.
      Promptly at four Dr. Willett presented himself at the Ward residence, but found to his annoyance that Charles had not adhered to his determination to remain indoors. The guards were there, but said that the young man seemed to have lost part of his timidity. He had that morning done much apparently frightened arguing and protesting over the telephone, one of the detectives said, replying to some unknown voice with phrases such as ""I am very tired and must rest a while"", ""I can't receive anyone for some time, you'll have to excuse me"", ""Please postpone decisive action till we can arrange some sort of compromise"", or ""I am very sorry, but I must take a complete vacation from everything; I'll talk with you later"". Then, apparently gaining boldness through meditation, he had slipped out so quietly that no one had seen him depart or knew that he had gone until he returned about one o'clock and entered the house without a word. He had gone upstairs, where a bit of his fear must have surged back; for he was heard to cry out in a highly terrified fashion upon entering his library, afterward trailing off into a kind of choking gasp. When, however, the butler had gone to inquire what the trouble was, he had appeared at the door with a great show of boldness, and had silently gestured the man away in a manner that terrified him unaccountably. Then he had evidently done some rearranging of his shelves, for a great clattering and thumping and creaking ensued; after which he had reappeared and left at once. Willett inquired whether or not any message had been left, but was told that there was none. The butler seemed queerly disturbed about something in Charles's appearance and manner, and asked solicitously if there was much hope for a cure of his disordered nerves.
      For almost two hours Dr. Willett waited vainly in Charles Ward's library, watching the dusty shelves with their wide gaps where books had been removed, and smiling grimly at the panelled overmantel on the north wall, whence a year before the suave features of old Joseph Curwen had looked mildly down. After a time the shadows began to gather, and the sunset cheer gave place to a vague growing terror which flew shadow-like before the night. Mr. Ward finally arrived, and shewed much surprise and anger at his son's absence after all the pains which had been taken to guard him. He had not known of Charles's appointment, and promised to notify Willett when the youth returned. In bidding the doctor goodnight he expressed his utter perplexity at his son's condition, and urged his caller to do all he could to restore the boy to normal poise. Willett was glad to escape from that library, for something frightful and unholy seemed to haunt it; as if the vanished picture had left behind a legacy of evil. He had never liked that picture; and even now, strong-nerved though he was, there lurked a quality in its vacant panel which made him feel an urgent need to get out into the pure air as soon as possible.

3.

      The next morning Willett received a message from the senior Ward, saying that Charles was still absent. Mr. Ward mentioned that Dr. Allen had telephoned him to say that Charles would remain at Pawtuxet for some time, and that he must not be disturbed. This was necessary because Allen himself was suddenly called away for an indefinite period, leaving the researches in need of Charles's constant oversight. Charles sent his best wishes, and regretted any bother his abrupt change of plans might have caused. In listening to this message Mr. Ward heard Dr. Allen's voice for the first time, and it seemed to excite some vague and elusive memory which could not be actually placed, but which was disturbing to the point of fearfulness.
      Faced by these baffling and contradictory reports, Dr. Willett was frankly at a loss what to do. The frantic earnestness of Charles's note was not to be denied, yet what could one think of its writer's immediate violation of his own expressed policy? Young Ward had written that his delvings had become blasphemous and menacing, that they and his bearded colleague must be extirpated at any cost, and that he himself would never return to their final scene; yet according to latest advices he had forgotten all this and was back in the thick of the mystery. Common sense bade one leave the youth alone with his freakishness, yet some deeper instinct would not permit the impression of that frenzied letter to subside. Willett read it over again, and could not make its essence sound as empty and insane as both its bombastic verbiage and its lack of fulfilment would seem to imply. Its terror was too profound and real, and in conjunction with what the doctor already knew evoked too vivid hints of monstrosities from beyond time and space to permit of any cynical explanation. There were nameless horrors abroad; and no matter how little one might be able to get at them, one ought to stand prepared for any sort of action at any time.
      For over a week Dr. Willett pondered on the dilemma which seemed thrust upon him, and became more and more inclined to pay Charles a call at the Pawtuxet bungalow. No friend of the youth had ever ventured to storm this forbidden retreat, and even his father knew of its interior only from such descriptions as he chose to give; but Willett felt that some direct conversation with his patient was necessary. Mr. Ward had been receiving brief and non-committal typed notes from his son, and said that Mrs. Ward in her Atlantic City retirement had had no better word. So at length the doctor resolved to act; and despite a curious sensation inspired by old legends of Joseph Curwen, and by more recent revelations and warnings from Charles Ward, set boldly out for the bungalow on the bluff above the river.
      Willett had visited the spot before through sheer curiosity, though of course never entering the house or proclaiming his presence; hence knew exactly the route to take. Driving out Broad Street one early afternoon toward the end of February in his small motor, he thought oddly of the grim party which had taken that selfsame road a hundred and fifty-seven years before on a terrible errand which none might ever comprehend.
      The ride through the city's decaying fringe was short, and trim Edgewood and sleepy Pawtuxet presently spread out ahead. Willett turned to the right down Lockwood Street and drove his car as far along that rural road as he could, then alighted and walked north to where the bluff towered above the lovely bends of the river and the sweep of misty downlands beyond. Houses were still few here, and there was no mistaking the isolated bungalow with its concrete garage on a high point of land at his left. Stepping briskly up the neglected gravel walk he rapped at the door with a firm hand, and spoke without a tremor to the evil Portuguese mulatto who opened it to the width of a crack.
      He must, he said, see Charles Ward at once on vitally important business. No excuse would be accepted, and a repulse would mean only a full report of the matter to the elder Ward. The mulatto still hesitated, and pushed against the door when Willett attempted to open it; but the doctor merely raised his voice and renewed his demands. Then there came from the dark interior a husky whisper which somehow chilled the hearer through and through though he did not know why he feared it. ""Let him in, Tony,"" it said, ""we may as well talk now as ever."" But disturbing as was the whisper, the greater fear was that which immediately followed. The floor creaked and the speaker hove in sight - and the owner of those strange and resonant tones was seen to be no other than Charles Dexter Ward.
      The minuteness with which Dr. Willett recalled and recorded his conversation of that afternoon is due to the importance he assigns to this particular period. For at last he concedes a vital change in Charles Dexter Ward's mentality, and believes that the youth now spoke from a brain hopelessly alien to the brain whose growth he had watched for six and twenty years. Controversy with Dr. Lyman has compelled him to be very specific, and he definitely dates the madness of Charles Ward from the time the typewritten notes began to reach his parents. Those notes are not in Ward's normal style; not even in the style of that last frantic letter to Willett. Instead, they are strange and archaic, as if the snapping of the writer's mind had released a flood of tendencies and impressions picked up unconsciously through boyhood antiquarianism. There is an obvious effort to be modern, but the spirit and occasionally the language are those of the past.
      The past, too, was evident in Ward's every tone and gesture as he received the doctor in that shadowy bungalow. He bowed, motioned Willett to a seat, and began to speak abruptly in that strange whisper which he sought to explain at the very outset.
      ""I am grown phthisical,"" he began, ""from this cursed river air. You must excuse my speech. I suppose you are come from my father to see what ails me, and I hope you will say nothing to alarm him.""
      Willett was studying these scraping tones with extreme care, but studying even more closely the face of the speaker. Something, he felt, was wrong; and he thought of what the family had told him about the fright of that Yorkshire butler one night. He wished it were not so dark, but did not request that any blind be opened. Instead, he merely asked Ward why he had so belied the frantic note of little more than a week before.
      ""I was coming to that,"" the host replied. ""You must know, I am in a very bad state of nerves, and do and say queer things I cannot account for. As I have told you often, I am on the edge of great matters; and the bigness of them has a way of making me light-headed. Any man might well be frighted of what I have found, but I am not to be put off for long. I was a dunce to have that guard and stick at home; for having gone this far, my place is here. I am not well spoke of by my prying neighbours, and perhaps I was led by weakness to believe myself what they say of me. There is no evil to any in what I do, so long as I do it rightly. Have the goodness to wait six months, and I'll shew you what will pay your patience well.
      ""You may as well know I have a way of learning old matters from things surer than books, and I'll leave you to judge the importance of what I can give to history, philosophy, and the arts by reason of the doors I have access to. My ancestor had all this when those witless peeping Toms came and murdered him. I now have it again, or am coming very imperfectly to have a part of it. This time nothing must happen, and least of all through any idiot fears of my own. Pray forget all I writ you, Sir, and have no fear of this place or any in it. Dr. Allen is a man of fine parts, and I owe him an apology for anything ill I have said of him. I wish I had no need to spare him, but there were things he had to do elsewhere. His zeal is equal to mine in all those matters, and I suppose that when I feared the work I feared him too as my greatest helper in it.""
      Ward paused, and the doctor hardly knew what to say or think. He felt almost foolish in the face of this calm repudiation of the letter; and yet there clung to him the fact that while the present discourse was strange and alien and indubitably mad, the note itself had been tragic in its naturalness and likeness to the Charles Ward he knew. Willett now tried to turn the talk on early matters, and recall to the youth some past events which would restore a familiar mood; but in this process he obtained only the most grotesque results. It was the same with all the alienists later on. Important sections of Charles Ward's store of mental images, mainly those touching modern times and his own personal life, had been unaccountably expunged; whilst all the massed antiquarianism of his youth had welled up from some profound subconsciousness to engulf the contemporary and the individual. The youth's intimate knowledge of elder things was abnormal and unholy, and he tried his best to hide it. When Willett would mention some favourite object of his boyhood archaistic studies he often shed by pure accident such a light as no normal mortal could conceivably be expected to possess, and the doctor shuddered as the glib allusion glided by.
      It was not wholesome to know so much about the way the fat sheriff's wig fell off as he leaned over at the play in Mr. Douglass' Histrionick Academy in King Street on the eleventh of February, 1762, which fell on a Thursday; or about how the actors cut the text of Steele's Conscious Lovers so badly that one was almost glad the Baptist-ridden legislature closed the theatre a fortnight later. That Thomas Sabin's Boston coach was ""damn'd uncomfortable"" old letters may well have told; but what healthy antiquarian could recall how the creaking of Epenetus Olney's new signboard (the gaudy crown he set up after he took to calling his tavern the Crown Coffee House) was exactly like the first few notes of the new jazz piece all the radios in Pawtuxet were playing?
      Ward, however, would not be quizzed long in this vein. Modern and personal topics he waved aside quite summarily, whilst regarding antique affairs he soon shewed the plainest boredom. What he wished clearly enough was only to satisfy his visitor enough to make him depart without the intention of returning. To this end he offered to shew Willett the entire house, and at once proceeded to lead the doctor through every room from cellar to attic. Willett looked sharply, but noted that the visible books were far too few and trivial ever to have filled the wide gaps on Ward's shelves at home, and that the meagre so-called ""laboratory"" was the flimsiest sort of a blind. Clearly there were a library and a laboratory elsewhere; but just where, it was impossible to say. Essentially defeated in his quest for something he could not name, Willett returned to town before evening and told the senior Ward everything which had occurred. They agreed that the youth must be definitely out of his mind, but decided that nothing drastic need be done just then. Above all, Mrs. Ward must be kept in as complete an ignorance as her son's own strange typed notes would permit.
      Mr. Ward now determined to call in person upon his son, making it wholly a surprise visit. Dr. Willett took him in his car one evening, guiding him to within sight of the bungalow and waiting patiently for his return. The session was a long one, and the father emerged in a very saddened and perplexed state. His reception had developed much like Willett's, save that Charles had been an excessively long time in appearing after the visitor had forced his way into the hall and sent the Portuguese away with an imperative demand; and in the bearing of the altered son there was no trace of filial affection. The lights had been dim, yet even so the youth had complained that they dazzled him outrageously. He had not spoken out loud at all, averring that his throat was in very poor condition; but in his hoarse whisper there was a quality so vaguely disturbing that Mr. Ward could not banish it from his mind.
      Now definitely leagued together to do all they could toward the youth's mental salvation, Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett set about collecting every scrap of data which the case might afford. Pawtuxet gossip was the first item they studied, and this was relatively easy to glean since both had friends in that region. Dr. Willett obtained the most rumours because people talked more frankly to him than to a parent of the central figure, and from all he heard he could tell that young Ward's life had become indeed a strange one. Common tongues would not dissociate his household from the vampirism of the previous summer, while the nocturnal comings and goings of the motor trucks provided their share of dark speculation. Local tradesmen spoke of the queerness of the orders brought them by the evil-looking mulatto, and in particular of the inordinate amounts of meat and fresh blood secured from the two butcher shops in the immediate neighbourhood. For a household of only three, these quantities were quite absurd.
      Then there was the matter of the sounds beneath the earth. Reports of these things were harder to pin down, but all the vague hints tallied in certain basic essentials. Noises of a ritual nature positively existed, and at times when the bungalow was dark. They might, of course, have come from the known cellar; but rumour insisted that there were deeper and more spreading crypts. Recalling the ancient tales of Joseph Curwen's catacombs, and assuming for granted that the present bungalow had been selected because of its situation on the old Curwen site as revealed in one or another of the documents found behind the picture, Willett and Mr. Ward gave this phase of the gossip much attention; and searched many times without success for the door in the river-bank which old manuscripts mentioned. As to popular opinions of the bungalow's various inhabitants, it was soon plain that the Brava Portuguese was loathed, the bearded and spectacled Dr. Allen feared, and the pallid young scholar disliked to a profound extent. During the last week or two Ward had obviously changed much, abandoning his attempts at affability and speaking only in hoarse but oddly repellent whispers on the few occasions that he ventured forth.
      Such were the shreds and fragments gathered here and there; and over these Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett held many long and serious conferences. They strove to exercise deduction, induction, and constructive imagination to their utmost extent; and to correlate every known fact of Charles's later life, including the frantic letter which the doctor now shewed the father, with the meagre documentary evidence available concerning old Joseph Curwen. They would have given much for a glimpse of the papers Charles had found, for very clearly the key to the youth's madness lay in what he had learned of the ancient wizard and his doings.

4.

      And yet, after all, it was from no step of Mr. Ward's or Dr. Willett's that the next move in this singular case proceeded. The father and the physician, rebuffed and confused by a shadow too shapeless and intangible to combat, had rested uneasily on their oars while the typed notes of young Ward to his parents grew fewer and fewer. Then came the first of the month with its customary financial adjustments, and the clerks at certain banks began a peculiar shaking of heads and telephoning from one to the other. Officials who knew Charles Ward by sight went down to the bungalow to ask why every cheque of his appearing at this juncture was a clumsy forgery, and were reassurred less than they ought to have been when the youth hoarsely explained that his hand had lately been so much affected by a nervous shock as to make normal writing impossible. He could, he said, form no written characters at all except with great difficulty; and could prove it by the fact that he had been forced to type all his recent letters, even those to his father and mother, who would bear out the assertion.
      What made the investigators pause in confusion was not this circumstance alone, for that was nothing unprecedented or fundamentally suspicious; nor even the Pawtuxet gossip, of which one or two of them had caught echoes. It was the muddled discourse of the young man which nonplussed them, implying as it did a virtually total loss of memory concerning important monetary matters which he had had at his fingertips only a month or two before. Something was wrong; for despite the apparent coherence and rationality of his speech, there could be no normal reason for this ill-concealed blankness on vital points. Moreover, although none of these men knew Ward well, they could not help observing the change in his language and manner. They had heard he was an antiquarian, but even the most hopeless antiquarians do not make daily use of obsolete phraseology and gestures. Altogether, this combination of hoarseness, palsied hands, bad memory, and altered speech and bearing must represent some disturbance or malady of genuine gravity, which no doubt formed the basis of the prevailing odd rumours; and after their departure the party of officials decided that a talk with the senior Ward was imperative.
      So on the sixth of March, 1928, there was a long and serious conference in Mr. Ward's office, after which the utterly bewildered father summoned Dr. Willett in a kind of helpless resignation. Willett looked over the strained and awkward signatures of the cheques, and compared them in his mind with the penmanship of that last frantic note. Certainly, the change was radical and profound, and yet there was something damnably familiar about the new writing. It had crabbed and archaic tendencies of a very curious sort, and seemed to result from a type of stroke utterly different from that which the youth had always used. It was strange - but where had he seen it before? On the whole, it was obvious that Charles was insane. Of that there could be no doubt. And since it appeared unlikely that he could handle his property or continue to deal with the outside world much longer, something must quickly be done toward his oversight and possible cure. It was then that the alienists were called in, Drs. Peck and Waite of Providence and Dr. Lyman of Boston, to whom Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett gave the most exhaustive possible history of the case, and who conferred at length in the now unused library of their young patient, examining what books and papers of his were left in order to gain some further notion of his habitual mental cast. After scanning this material and examining the ominous note to Willett they all agreed that Charles Ward's studies had been enough to unseat or at least to warp any ordinary intellect, and wished most heartily that they could see his more intimate volumes and documents; but this latter they knew they could do, if at all, only after a scene at the bungalow itself. Willett now reviewed the whole case with febrile energy; it being at this time that he obtained the statements of the workmen who had seen Charles find the Curwen documents, and that he collated the incidents of the destroyed newspaper items, looking up the latter at the Journal office.
      On Thursday, the eighth of March, Drs. Willett, Peck, Lyman, and Waite, accompanied by Mr. Ward, paid the youth their momentous call; making no concealment of their object and questioning the now acknowledged patient with extreme minuteness. Charles, though he was inordinately long in answering the summons and was still redolent of strange and noxious laboratory odours when he did finally make his agitated appearance, proved a far from recalcitrant subject; and admitted freely that his memory and balance had suffered somewhat from close application to abstruse studies. He offered no resistance when his removal to other quarters was insisted upon; and seemed, indeed, to display a high degree of intelligence as apart from mere memory. His conduct would have sent his interviewers away in bafflement had not the persistently archaic trend of his speech and unmistakable replacement of modern by ancient ideas in his consciousness marked him out as one definitely removed from the normal. Of his work he would say no more to the group of doctors than he had formerly said to his family and to Dr. Willett, and his frantic note of the previous month he dismissed as mere nerves and hysteria. He insisted that this shadowy bungalow possessed no library or laboratory beyond the visible ones, and waxed abstruse in explaining the absence from the house of such odours as now saturated all his clothing. Neighbourhood gossip he attributed to nothing more than the cheap inventiveness of baffled curiosity. Of the whereabouts of Dr. Allen he said he did not feel at liberty to speak definitely, but assured his inquisitors that the bearded and spectacled man would return when needed. In paying off the stolid Brava who resisted all questioning by the visitors, and in closing the bungalow which still seemed to hold such nighted secrets, Ward shewed no sign of nervousness save a barely noticed tendency to pause as though listening for something very faint. He was apparently animated by a calmly philosophic resignation, as if his removal were the merest transient incident which would cause the least trouble if facilitated and disposed of once and for all. It was clear that he trusted to his obviously unimpaired keenness of absolute mentality to overcome all the embarrassments into which his twisted memory, his lost voice and handwriting, and his secretive and eccentric behaviour had led him. His mother, it was agreed, was not to be told of the change; his father supplying typed notes in his name. Ward was taken to the restfully and picturesquely situated private hospital maintained by Dr. Waite on Conanicut Island in the bay, and subjected to the closest scrutiny and questioning by all the physicians connected with the case. It was then that the physical oddities were noticed; the slackened metabolism, the altered skin, and the disproportionate neural reactions. Dr. Willett was the most perturbed of the various examiners, for he had attended Ward all his life and could appreciate with terrible keenness the extent of his physical disorganisation. Even the familiar olive mark on his hip was gone, while on his chest was a great black mole or cicatrice which had never been there before, and which made Willett wonder whether the youth had ever submitted to any of the ""witch markings"" reputed to be inflicted at certain unwholesome nocturnal meetings in wild and lonely places. The doctor could not keep his mind off a certain transcribed witch-trial record from Salem which Charles had shewn him in the old non-secretive days, and which read: ""Mr. G. B. on that Nighte putt ye Divell his Marke upon Bridget S., Jonathan A., Simon O., Deliverance W., Joseph C., Susan P., Mehitable C., and Deborah B."" Ward's face, too, troubled him horribly, till at length he suddenly discovered why he was horrified. For above the young man's right eye was something which he had never previously noticed - a small scar or pit precisely like that in the crumbled painting of old Joseph Curwen, and perhaps attesting some hideous ritualistic inoculation to which both had submitted at a certain stage of their occult careers.
      While Ward himself was puzzling all the doctors at the hospital a very strict watch was kept on all mail addressed either to him or to Dr. Allen, which Mr. Ward had ordered delivered at the family home. Willett had predicted that very little would be found, since any communications of a vital nature would probably have been exchanged by messenger; but in the latter part of March there did come a letter from Prague for Dr. Allen which gave both the doctor and the father deep thought. It was in a very crabbed and archaic hand; and though clearly not the effort of a foreigner, shewed almost as singular a departure from modern English as the speech of young Ward himself. It read:
Kleinstrasse 11,            
Altstadt, Prague,      
11th Feby. 1928.
Brother in Almousin-Metraton: - 
      I this day receiv'd yr mention of what came up from the Salts I sent you. It was wrong, and meanes clearly that ye Headstones had been chang'd when Barnabas gott me the Specimen. It is often so, as you must be sensible of from the Thing you gott from ye Kings Chapell ground in 1769 and what H. gott from Olde Bury'g Point in 1690, that was like to ende him. I gott such a Thing in Aegypt 75 yeares gone, from the which came that Scar ye Boy saw on me here in 1924. As I told you longe ago, do not calle up That which you can not put downe; either from dead Saltes or out of ye Spheres beyond. Have ye Wordes for laying at all times readie, and stopp not to be sure when there is any Doubte of Whom you have. Stones are all chang'd now in Nine groundes out of 10. You are never sure till you question. I this day heard from H., who has had Trouble with the Soldiers. He is like to be sorry Transylvania is pass'd from Hungary to Roumania, and wou'd change his Seat if the Castel weren't so fulle of What we Knowe. But of this he hath doubtless writ you. In my next Send'g there will be Somewhat from a Hill tomb from ye East that will delight you greatly. Meanwhile forget not I am desirous of B. F. if you can possibly get him for me. You know G. in Philada. better than I. Have him up firste if you will, but doe not use him soe hard he will be Difficult, for I must speake to him in ye End.
Yogg-Sothoth Neblod Zin
Simon O.
To Mr. J. C. in
Providence.
      Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett paused in utter chaos before this apparent bit of unrelieved insanity. Only by degrees did they absorb what it seemed to imply. So the absent Dr. Allen, and not Charles Ward, had come to be the leading spirit at Pawtuxet? That must explain the wild reference and denunciation in the youth's last frantic letter. And what of this addressing of the bearded and spectacled stranger as ""Mr. J. C.""? There was no escaping the inference, but there are limits to possible monstrosity. Who was ""Simon O.""; the old man Ward had visited in Prague four years previously? Perhaps, but in the centuries behind there had been another Simon O. - Simon Orne, alias Jedediah, of Salem, who vanished in 1771, and whose peculiar handwriting Dr. Willett now unmistakably recognised from the photostatic copies of the Orne formulae which Charles had once shewn him. What horrors and mysteries, what contradictions and contraventions of Nature, had come back after a century and a half to harass Old Providence with her clustered spires and domes?
      The father and the old physician, virtually at a loss what to do or think, went to see Charles at the hospital and questioned him as delicately as they could about Dr. Allen, about the Prague visit, and about what he had learned of Simon or Jedediah Orne of Salem. To all these inquiries the youth was politely non-committal, merely barking in his hoarse whisper that he had found Dr. Allen to have a remarkable spiritual rapport with certain souls from the past, and that any correspondent the bearded man might have in Prague would probably be similarly gifted. When they left, Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett realised to their chagrin that they had really been the ones under catechism; and that without imparting anything vital himself, the confined youth had adroitly pumped them of everything the Prague letter had contained.
      Drs. Peck, Waite, and Lyman were not inclined to attach much importance to the strange correspondence of young Ward's companion; for they knew the tendency of kindred eccentrics and monomaniacs to band together, and believed that Charles or Allen had merely unearthed an expatriated counterpart - perhaps one who had seen Orne's handwriting and copied it in an attempt to pose as the bygone character's reincarnation. Allen himself was perhaps a similar case, and may have persuaded the youth into accepting him as an avatar of the long-dead Curwen. Such things had been known before, and on the same basis the hard-headed doctors disposed of Willett's growing disquiet about Charles Ward's present handwriting, as studied from unpremeditated specimens obtained by various ruses. Willett thought he had placed its odd familiarity at last, and that what it vaguely resembled was the bygone penmanship of old Joseph Curwen himself; but this the other physicians regarded as a phase of imitativeness only to be expected in a mania of this sort, and refused to grant it any importance either favourable or unfavourable. Recognising this prosaic attitude in his colleagues, Willett advised Mr. Ward to keep to himself the letter which arrived for Dr. Allen on the second of April from Rakus, Transylvania, in a handwriting so intensely and fundamentally like that of the Hutchinson cipher that both father and physician paused in awe before breaking the seal. This read as follows:
Castle Ferenczy      
7 March 1928.
Dear C.: - Hadd a Squad of 20 Militia up to talk about what the Country Folk say. Must digg deeper and have less Hearde. These Roumanians plague me damnably, being officious and particular where you cou'd buy a Magyar off with a Drinke and ffood. Last monthe M. got me ye Sarcophagus of ye Five Sphinxes from ye Acropolis where He whome I call'd up say'd it wou'd be, and I have hadde 3 Talkes with What was therein inhum'd. It will go to S. O. in Prague directly, and thence to you. It is stubborn but you know ye Way with Such. You shew Wisdom in having lesse about than Before; for there was no Neede to keep the Guards in Shape and eat'g off their Heads, and it made Much to be founde in Case of Trouble, as you too welle knowe. You can now move and worke elsewhere with no Kill'g Trouble if needful, tho' I hope no Thing will soon force you to so Bothersome a Course. I rejoice that you traffick not so much with Those Outside; for there was ever a Mortall Peril in it, and you are sensible what it did when you ask'd Protection of One not dispos'd to give it. You excel me in gett'g ye fformulae so another may saye them with Success, but Borellus fancy'd it wou'd be so if just ye right Wordes were hadd. Does ye Boy use 'em often? I regret that he growes squeamish, as I fear'd he wou'd when I hadde him here nigh 15 Monthes, but am sensible you knowe how to deal with him. You can't saye him down with ye fformula, for that will Worke only upon such as ye other fformula hath call'd up from Saltes; but you still have strong Handes and Knife and Pistol, and Graves are not harde to digg, nor Acids loth to burne. O. sayes you have promis'd him B. F. I must have him after. B. goes to you soone, and may he give you what you wishe of that Darke Thing belowe Memphis. Imploy care in what you calle up, and beware of ye Boy. It will be ripe in a yeare's time to have up ye Legions from Underneath, and then there are no Boundes to what shal be oures. Have Confidence in what I saye, for you knowe O. and I have hadd these 150 yeares more than you to consulte these Matters in.
Nephren-Ka nai Hadoth
Edw: H.
For J. Curwen, Esq.
Providence.
      But if Willett and Mr. Ward refrained from shewing this letter to the alienists, they did not refrain from acting upon it themselves. No amount of learned sophistry could controvert the fact that the strangely bearded and spectacled Dr. Allen, of whom Charles's frantic letter had spoken as such a monstrous menace, was in close and sinister correspondence with two inexplicable creatures whom Ward had visited in his travels and who plainly claimed to be survivals or avatars of Curwen's old Salem colleagues; that he was regarding himself as the reincarnation of Joseph Curwen, and that he entertained - or was at least advised to entertain - murderous designs against a ""boy"" who could scarcely be other than Charles Ward. There was organised horror afoot; and no matter who had started it, the missing Allen was by this time at the bottom of it. Therefore, thanking heaven that Charles was now safe in the hospital, Mr. Ward lost no time in engaging detectives to learn all they could of the cryptic bearded doctor; finding whence he had come and what Pawtuxet knew of him, and if possible discovering his current whereabouts. Supplying the men with one of the bungalow keys which Charles yielded up, he urged them to explore Allen's vacant room which had been identified when the patient's belongings had been packed; obtaining what clues they could from any effects he might have left about. Mr. Ward talked with the detectives in his son's old library, and they felt a marked relief when they left it at last; for there seemed to hover about the place a vague aura of evil. Perhaps it was what they had heard of the infamous old wizard whose picture had once stared from the panelled overmantel, and perhaps it was something different and irrelevant; but in any case they all half sensed an intangible miasma which centred in that carven vestige of an older dwelling and which at times almost rose to the intensity of a material emanation.
","""You fool, Warren is DEAD!""
As soon as the demonic and bestial voice had finished its horrifying utterance, my fear, which had spent the last several minutes of my final, despairing conversation with Warren in a state of suspended animation waiting in vain to hear of my friend's hopeful escape, spread from my chest to my head and from there, spread like a cold sensation through my veins, filling me with a terrified despairing sensation that I had never experienced before. I was paralyzed by my fear. My legs gave out, and I collapsed on the floor of the tomb. Suddenly the blackness closed in, and I knew no more.
I woke up the next day to the muted yet familiar smell of sterilized linens. After my disorientation dissipated, I realized that I had been taken to the local hospital. From Warren's research into the entrance to the netherworld, we had discovered that the areas surrounding the entrances were feared by local peoples, and were feared and avoided.
A mild sense of comfort filled me as I realized that whatever entity had taken my friend from this mortal realm had not escaped its netherworld lair. Its words haunted my thoughts, resonating in my mind like a bell. Shortly after my awakening, a nurse entered my room to tell me that the sheriff had asked for me.
Soon after, a stout, short man entered the room. He had a worried look on his face. I could tell that whatever he wanted to discuss with me was done with great reluctance and anxiety. He stuttered through a short introduction, his name being Alan Graham. He had said he had found me after he had received reports from some of the local people near the graveyard, that two grave robbers had been trespassing onto the forbidden lands. He had found me unconscious in the tomb, but had not seen or heard anything. He was obviously spooked by the dilapidated structures in the swamp and had taken me to the hospital. He asked me of what happened to the man that witnesses saw me enter the swamp with.
I was filled with an inhumane dread at the thought of telling the oblivious detective of my experience in the graveyard. However, I braved through my fear, though had to take several pauses to avoid becoming overcome with fear and passing out again. By the time, I had finished, Graham had begun sobbing uncontrollably, He had started shaking as big, wet tears dropped down his face. Though I don't understand why, he had believed my tale. Graham told me that I could leave, as long as I didn't go back to the graveyard. I agreed, heaving no desire to return the horror that had taken Warren from this life.
The next four months of my life were haunted by nightmares of the disembodied voice talking to me through the grave. Though I attempted to forget that night, my mind would always take me back to the graveyard. While my mind was filled with immense terror of what I had observed, I was so curious as to what Warren had unearthed in that hidden necropolis. The thoughts of the latter slowly consumed my thoughts, and I was unable to function in society. I was resolved to find out what Warren had unearthed. However, I was aware of the danger I faced, and decided I would go back by myself. If I died, I would take the knowledge of the location of the portal to the underworld with me.
I returned the following autumn, having read up on the lore that Warren had kept hidden me, from my own protection. The tomes he had uncovered told tales of the monstrous demons that could travel between the underworld and the surface one. The tomes were mostly undecipherable to me, as my linguistic ability was not strong enough to decipher the archaic texts. However, I was able to make out the basic information, though none of the stories told me of a way to prevent being killed or how to hide myself from the undead beings.
Despite the bleakness of my remaining mortality, my curiosity of the hidden world that only a few mortals had ever seen grew stronger and stronger, dominating my thoughts. I knew I had to return, even though I would likely die.
When I returned to the cemetery, I was unsurprised that everything had remained completely the same. The equipment Warren and I had brought had remained untouched, the telephone wire still being in place. My mind quickly focused on Warren, would I discover his remains, if the demons had even left his body? I removed the black slab covering the entrance, though it too much longer than when I had Warren helping me. Nevertheless, I was able to move the stone. However, I was only able to budge it so that it would eventually close on the doorway, trapping me inside.
Though I knew my life would be lost, my curiosity had taken over me, and I knew that until I had seen what horrors or wonder were hidden beneath the tomb, I could not find peace. So, I set off into the darkness. These are the final thoughts I have before I leave this world. To whoever discovers this note next to this other worldly gateway, the horrors beneath this tomb have consumed my life, and for your sake, I pray that you do not become entrapped into its ethereal mystique as I have. Run, you fool, run, before you are trapped in spirit and in body as I am! Run, before the obsession takes over your every waking thought! Leave!
- Randolph Carter
",False
"Day 1-I never would imagine such thing would happen, in this diary I will document my strange and disturbing events. Once I was a normal respected teacher at Miskatonic, and then a member of this ""great race"" appears and teleports me to this place…it's just too surreal, this place is a gigantic library, whit knowledge of humanity and more…this large creature it's just disgusting, I just never saw something like this, it's just bizarre. The flowers are just biologically impossible, but they are there. I am a prisoner? This place is huge, the race it's big! Like a small building, I just imagine how impossibly big an entire city would be…I am like a mouse in a skyscraper. I try my best to sleep…god have mercy upon me. I have difficulty knowing what is day and what is night…because there are not windows, I have a theory that this place is underground. A few minutes after wandering around, my captor opens the massive door, ah I have forgotten, this room is almost alone without objects of my size, the only thing here is a giant sized TV with a typewriter on it. What kind of technology these creatures possess? I see that the giant clicks these claws constantly…why? It's some sort of communication? Suddenly he throws to me a metal box with a button on top of it, ""what sort of thing is this, creature?"" I ask. The giant just clicks this right claw. Without any other option I push the small cylinder, and nothing noticeable happens. But then it makes a long series of clicks again and the box suddenly begins to…talk: ""hello Wilhelm. I am a Yithnian, and I want your help. I have seen with horror that a god will crash-land on earth in two weeks! He is trapped in a suit that will retrain this great and immeasurable power. I will travel in time to bring him to you so we can begin our project"" suddenly he disappeared in an after-image. The thing he said…it was unbelievable a god exists, and he wants my help.
Day…2 (i suppose) I been alone in this blank room for 4 hours…and when I was taken it was 1:30. Ok that is not the point. In this room there some sort of big book shells that dwarf by a few inches the aliens. I have opened the door to reveal that I was right, if this would be a city of gigantic size I would be like a mouse. Thousands of skyscrapers roam the underground dome that sustains the cave. This is just massive. One of the tallest buildings on earth will be like an electric floor fan compared to these hulks. It's just frightening to try to hide from these monsters. I still don't get why my captor doesn't appear yet. The buildings are made from a metal that is am mesh of golden with gray, and almost every one of them is rectangular. Three minutes remain of this wait and I see that the yith creature has returned, with a strange being in this arm. Also a book of my size; the creature started to click and the machine started to speak: ""I ask forgiveness Wilhelm, the time machine broke and I needed to fix it. Here it is…the great lord of the Outer gods, the blind idiot entity that everyone fears: Azathoth! My luck, our luck could not be greater my friend! He was trapped in the technology of my people and Mi-Go's we can make him anything we want!"" after handing me the book I have a better look at the ""God"" before me. He had a suit with long limbs; this head was highly (and horrifyingly) similar to the shape of the tall Flatiron Building in New York, in this top there were two small triangles that made the illusion of horns or wolf like ears. Little red lines in both sides of the face, (I suppose eyes) the helmet also it was colored silver. I also notice that this body has a light brown straightjacket like appearance. This right and left hands have black gloves (I suppose) with slightly long conical golden claws half of the fingers. These feet and legs are even more bizarre: black to the knees with silver to the lateral malleolus. The feet are the most structurally insane: it looks like a golden flat spike. It appears that this creature is unconscious. The book has revealed me some clues: Azathoth he is the most powerful entity in our universe, also the creator of a creator of other gods! The yiths are the race of my captor. They want to use the knowledge of my race to their disposal, what one? I dare not to put it in this diary…it would make anyone insane. The creature ""spoken"" to my again about why I am here; ""I want to give to the Outer God a new chance, one to redeem him/itself to use it as a tool for good. I will train you in a place that I made where time is infinite, where you don't need to eat, you will not exhaust, where you will not age. There I will make you a super intelligent being, due to the fact that there is technology of my race you will need to learn it. And you will make Azathoth something more than human."" After that a door on a wall suddenly appeared, the place inside of it was blank grey. I am surprised of what I will do…I will create something to fight the unknown evil of this world! We will make this monster my monster! The yith told me that the place where we will go is applied named: Infinitely Timed Room.
Day 3- the I.T.R. was excellent as a place for learning. I reckon I was there for 200 months. But I am fine to say the least. I finally learned how to manipulate the suit. It was revealed to me that there is a cube that reduces size inside of the helmet. There is a computer inside of that cube that can be modified. If I do that I can change Azathoth into a thinking creature. Also I will make him learn how to change the suit into anything he wants. I get a closer look at the monster and I can assume that he is still unconscious, or he doesn't know how to move. Thanks to a machine I built inside the I.T.R. a metal glob that can change into any human or eldritch tool I call it the anytool. I can mentally command it and only me, I change it into a buzz saw that cuts the center of the helmet. I see with awe that there are two metal cubes inside it. The one on the right has a circular window I see with my own mortal eyes what is in there: the thumb–sized daemon sultan himself. He was shaped like a tridimensional ellipse, in this surface it was covered with something similar to eggs of a fish or an amphibian, they divided the creature into two tones: in the right there where white ""eggs"" and only 3 black ones, there were 4 spiked eggs and white five tubes that have mouths. In the left there are only black eggs and 3 spiked white ones, 2 big human like jaws were located in the far left. Behind it there where mangled tentacles and claws. I see all this thanks to the anytool that I shaped into a microscope.
The boxes where lead colored and they were 7cm tall and 7cm breadth. The one that is located upside is the one that constrains him and these powers, there is a mirror in the floor of the cube, the downer cube creates an incredibly thin ray that points into the mirror of the upper cube (they are epilated into a vertical position) that ray is the one that maintains this concurrent size. I cut the cube where the visor is and I slowly modify it.
Day 4-I finally finalized the modification, and I closed the helmet. I created a level system: Level 1 makes him use a small bit of this power, with strength capable of lifting 50 tons. Level 2 makes him capable of creating creatures of this own, and this strength are enough powerful to level 10 buildings, Level 3…this one makes him use a quarter of this real power, he is capable of destroying a world with energy based blasts. And this physical strength is unmeasurable. Also I programed the cube (that works like a brain for Azathoth) to only to obey me, but to follow orders of any successor or member of my family.
After a few hours the former god awakens and these first words are understandable: ""where…I am, what I am?"" this voice is deep and stern. I shudder what this reaction will be when I tell him the truth. Thankfully I made the upper cube make the thump sized monster a fast learner. ""My name is Wilhelm Smift, your master. Your name is Azathoth."" The knight like creature stares at me; ""yes…Thou art. But please answer me who am i?"" ""You were a powerful creature, a god. But technological creatures transferred you into a body that constrains your power. Thankfully I have modified it to have a mind that thinks, that talks, without me you would be a blind idiot, all powerful Imbecile! You were a leader of other gods but you never made to them any commands, you where mindless. Now in turn serve me Azathoth, I will make you a tool for justice!"" the creature bows before me, but then to my fear I hear a chilling laugh, ""Why are you laughing daemon sultan?"" he talks to me slowly ""I will become a tool for extermination, isn't it master? I will become a machine only made for killing…ISN'T IT MASTER?!"" he suddenly approaches me, whit these arms wide open. ""YOU MADE ME SOMETHING BETTER THAN A MINDLESS FOOL!"" he screams to the ceiling. Then he lungs at me, I expected an attack but the demon instead…hugs me. ""I can't be more grateful"" I don't know what to say, my wishes were answered, but I dread to know why such creature is happy to comply with requests for killing.
","IV.

For a decade the annals of the Whateleys sink indistinguishably into the general life of a morbid community used to their queer ways and hardened to their May-Eve and All-Hallows orgies. Twice a year they would light fires on the top of Sentinel Hill, at which times the mountain rumblings would recur with greater and greater violence; while at all seasons there were strange and portentous doings at the lonely farmhouse. In the course of time callers professed to hear sounds in the sealed upper story even when all the family were downstairs, and they wondered how swiftly or how lingeringly a cow or bullock was usually sacrificed. There was talk of a complaint to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; but nothing ever came of it, since Dunwich folk are never anxious to call the outside world’s attention to themselves.
      About 1923, when Wilbur was a boy of ten whose mind, voice, stature, and bearded face gave all the impressions of maturity, a second great siege of carpentry went on at the old house. It was all inside the sealed upper part, and from bits of discarded lumber people concluded that the youth and his grandfather had knocked out all the partitions and even removed the attic floor, leaving only one vast open void between the ground story and the peaked roof. They had torn down the great central chimney, too, and fitted the rusty range with a flimsy outside tin stovepipe.
      In the spring after this event Old Whateley noticed the growing number of whippoorwills that would come out of Cold Spring Glen to chirp under his window at night. He seemed to regard the circumstance as one of great significance, and told the loungers at Osborn’s that he thought his time had almost come.
      “They whistle jest in tune with my breathin’ naow,” he said, “an’ I guess they’re gittin’ ready to ketch my soul. They know it’s a-goin’ aout, an’ dun’t calc’late to miss it. Yew’ll know, boys, arter I’m gone, whether they git me er not. Ef they dew, they’ll keep up a-singin’ an’ laffin’ till break o’ day. Ef they dun’t they’ll kinder quiet daown like. I expeck them an’ the souls they hunts fer hev some pretty tough tussles sometimes.”
      On Lammas Night, 1924, Dr. Houghton of Aylesbury was hastily summoned by Wilbur Whateley, who had lashed his one remaining horse through the darkness and telephoned from Osborn’s in the village. He found Old Whateley in a very grave state, with a cardiac action and stertorous breathing that told of an end not far off. The shapeless albino daughter and oddly bearded grandson stood by the bedside, whilst from the vacant abyss overhead there came a disquieting suggestion of rhythmical surging or lapping, as of the waves on some level beach. The doctor, though, was chiefly disturbed by the chattering night birds outside; a seemingly limitless legion of whippoorwills that cried their endless message in repetitions timed diabolically to the wheezing gasps of the dying man. It was uncanny and unnatural—too much, thought Dr. Houghton, like the whole of the region he had entered so reluctantly in response to the urgent call.
      Toward one o’clock Old Whateley gained consciousness, and interrupted his wheezing to choke out a few words to his grandson.
      “More space, Willy, more space soon. Yew grows—an’ that grows faster. It’ll be ready to sarve ye soon, boy. Open up the gates to Yog-Sothoth with the long chant that ye’ll find on page 751 of the complete edition, an’ then put a match to the prison. Fire from airth can’t burn it nohaow.”
      He was obviously quite mad. After a pause, during which the flock of whippoorwills outside adjusted their cries to the altered tempo while some indications of the strange hill noises came from afar off, he added another sentence or two.
      “Feed it reg’lar, Willy, an’ mind the quantity; but dun’t let it grow too fast fer the place, fer ef it busts quarters or gits aout afore ye opens to Yog-Sothoth, it’s all over an’ no use. Only them from beyont kin make it multiply an’ work. . . . Only them, the old uns as wants to come back. . . .”
      But speech gave place to gasps again, and Lavinia screamed at the way the whippoorwills followed the change. It was the same for more than an hour, when the final throaty rattle came. Dr. Houghton drew shrunken lids over the glazing grey eyes as the tumult of birds faded imperceptibly to silence. Lavinia sobbed, but Wilbur only chuckled whilst the hill noises rumbled faintly.
      “They didn’t git him,” he muttered in his heavy bass voice.
      Wilbur was by this time a scholar of really tremendous erudition in his one-sided way, and was quietly known by correspondence to many librarians in distant places where rare and forbidden books of old days are kept. He was more and more hated and dreaded around Dunwich because of certain youthful disappearances which suspicion laid vaguely at his door; but was always able to silence inquiry through fear or through use of that fund of old-time gold which still, as in his grandfather’s time, went forth regularly and increasingly for cattle-buying. He was now tremendously mature of aspect, and his height, having reached the normal adult limit, seemed inclined to wax beyond that figure. In 1925, when a scholarly correspondent from Miskatonic University called upon him one day and departed pale and puzzled, he was fully six and three-quarters feet tall.
      Through all the years Wilbur had treated his half-deformed albino mother with a growing contempt, finally forbidding her to go to the hills with him on May-Eve and Hallowmass; and in 1926 the poor creature complained to Mamie Bishop of being afraid of him.
      “They’s more abaout him as I knows than I kin tell ye, Mamie,” she said, “an’ naowadays they’s more nor what I know myself. I vaow afur Gawd, I dun’t know what he wants nor what he’s a-tryin’ to dew.”
      That Hallowe’en the hill noises sounded louder than ever, and fire burned on Sentinel Hill as usual; but people paid more attention to the rhythmical screaming of vast flocks of unnaturally belated whippoorwills which seemed to be assembled near the unlighted Whateley farmhouse. After midnight their shrill notes burst into a kind of pandaemoniac cachinnation which filled all the countryside, and not until dawn did they finally quiet down. Then they vanished, hurrying southward where they were fully a month overdue. What this meant, no one could quite be certain till later. None of the country folk seemed to have died—but poor Lavinia Whateley, the twisted albino, was never seen again.
      In the summer of 1927 Wilbur repaired two sheds in the farmyard and began moving his books and effects out to them. Soon afterward Earl Sawyer told the loungers at Osborn’s that more carpentry was going on in the Whateley farmhouse. Wilbur was closing all the doors and windows on the ground floor, and seemed to be taking out partitions as he and his grandfather had done upstairs four years before. He was living in one of the sheds, and Sawyer thought he seemed unusually worried and tremulous. People generally suspected him of knowing something about his mother’s disappearance, and very few ever approached his neighbourhood now. His height had increased to more than seven feet, and shewed no signs of ceasing its development.
",False
"Northernmost Quang Binh Province, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
July 2, 2011
Two young adults walked up the path beside the bronze-casters shop to the barren hillside and the forest edge beyond. ""So, how do you like things so far?"" Marie asked as she and Joseph made their way up the rough-hewn stone steps. Their destination was the house of the village woodcutter and charcoal-burner, a place that also doubled as a furniture workshop and, importantly for this journey, the villages' firearms armory.
""Not that bad. I've been doing domestic work for the past few days but neither Noc nor his wife seems to really be a slave driver. Actually, they feel more like people who understand that they're training a new servant."" Joseph thought on something. ""I'm actually surprised that he and the other hunters allowing me to accompany them. They neither seem to respect me or anyone who would stoop to use a gun, so I wonder why they changed their attitude.""
It was here that Marie began ruminating on something, an old thought that had given her more than her share of bad dreams. ""There are some things worth surrendering pride for, Joseph. Tell me, have you seen those weird scars on the ankles and arms of Nocs wife?""
""You mean those marks that look like Giant Squid wounds? Yes, but what about them?"" Joseph suddenly stopped. ""What are they, anyway?""
Having stopped also, Marie sighed, a sense of foreboding covering her features. ""When I asked that myself, they didn't tell me much more than the stories I'd already heard when I was a kid: legends about ghosts, devils from the mist, 'shadows that drink blood' is what they called them sometimes. But what I got here is that those Shugoran priests that saved my people weren't just going to somewhere. They were running ifrom/i somewhere, someone or something, something that no one is willing to talk any further about."" Marie started forward again at such a pace that her boyfriend had to hurry to catch up.
Getting the feeling that nothing more was going to be answered on that subject for a good while, Joseph changed track. ""How are the others getting on? I've been stuck in the house most of the day and I haven't really had a chance to talk to either the Prof or my classmates.""
Happy to shift from thoughts of chilling horror, Marie chuckled with increasing mirth as she began going back up the trail. ""From what I've heard, Albert's been filming every step in the bronze making process that he can, not to mention all the casting processes and various uses of equipment. The only reason that he hasn't been thrown out yet is because the family's elder patriarch has taken a liking to… well, not just him, but all of you guys, just from the descriptions alone. Your Professor and his assistant have basically locked themselves in the temple: no word out yet, but I assume that they're observing normal operations. As for Tracy…"" Here, Marie began acting a little odd. ""She talks in her sleep, if you didn't know.""
""Really?"" Joseph responded interestedly. Not reacting the way that she had feared, Marie relaxed a little from the paranoia she had been wrangling with.
""Yeah, and the strange thing is that it's in… well, tree-ish. And then there's the tattooing on her back as well."" Marie went on talking, relieved that her fear seemed to have been senseless.
Before he could answer his girlfriends increasingly chatty descriptions, a thought crossed Josephs mind on exactly why such a thing might be mentioned. ""Why would you ask me if I knew…"" Then the realization hit him and he stopped cold. ""Were you thinking that… Tracy and I?""
Marie stopped as well. ""It's not unknown to happen, you know."" Marie answered the implied question almost defensively, as if trying to justify her momentary paranoia. ""Sweethearts get separated and sometimes… one finds companionship elsewhere. Especially with, you know."" Marie tapped the side of her head, indicating the ""visitors"" that had first cursed Joseph Claytons existence during High School.
Joseph snorted in an amused, disparaging way. ""Please don't give them that much credit. I've ignored, rebuked and insulted those jerks so many times that I've made a virtual bloodsport out of it. Besides, if I'd made any moves towards Tracy, Albert would have killed me.""
""Wait, those two… they're together?"" Marie asked, wondering how she'd missed that.
""Intimately so, yes."" This was all Joseph was willing to say, himself not wishing to examine too closely the memory of walking in on his dorm-mate and his girl when they had neglected to put a sock on the doorknob. ""Anyway, as to these voices, I went to the psychology department to see if I could discover just what was causing it.""
Marie waited a heartbeat before plunging into the vital question. ""And what did they say?"" If her boyfriend did indeed have Schizophrenia, then he needed help: drugs to control the symptoms and perhaps therapy to help him conquer whatever dark corners of his psyche were feeding these voices.
If it was something else… then perhaps the local sorcerers might need to be consulted before long.
Joseph sighed. 'Whatever is going on inside my head, the geeks with the scanning equipment are pretty sure that this isn't a case of medical Schizophrenia. They say that the symptoms are all wrong, the voices aren't persuasive enough… and that I don't have any of the telltale injuries on the brain that would suggest medical reasons. And then there was the time they hooked me up to the EEG during one of my 'episodes'."" He paused, wondering just how to proceed but, since he was already experiencing strange things, he decided just to press on. ""The guys swore that, before the equipment shorted out, at least two additional wavelengths were being read beside mine."" With a shrug, Joseph summed up his thoughts. ""Ever since I came here and heard all of the seemingly crazy stories from you and the others… I don't know, but what I've gone through just makes sense now, at least in knowing that it actually can happen.""
Marie smiled. Yes, we definitely need to consult the priests. ""Come on, we've talked enough and you need to get that rifle before you head out.""
And rifles there were, all secured inside a triple locked room in the back corner of the woodcutter's house. They looked like Berthier carbines, French bolt-action repeaters from the First World War… but they were not the only guns present. ""Is that a Hotchkiss?"" Joseph asked in a voice combining bemusement and astonishment. Among the rifles and a few, scattered revolvers sat a machine-gun still on its tripod and looking impossibly well-maintained for being kept in the back room of a house located in a tropical moist forest.
""An M1914 by the looks of it, if the pictures I've seen are at all accurate. There's a story behind it, but I only know that only the oldest elders know it."" Marie replied, having picked up of the Berthier Carbines and handing it to Joseph. The ammunition was kept in a chest under a trapdoor in the main part of the house as a safety measure so they'd have to go back to pick it up. But then she asked the question that she probably should have asked before they left the village proper. ""Speaking of guns, since when did you shoot?""
""There's a gun range in Arkham; Tracy and Albert invited me along for a few lessons before Thanksgiving. She's the one with actual hunting experience and I think he only came along to check out the engineering on the pieces. It wasn't that much fun, but I think what I learned in getting my license will help on this."" Joseph began inspecting the carbine he had been given, finding it oiled and well-maintained as any other firearm in the room. There was a question that had to be asked, however?
Where did they get all these guns?
b15 minutes Later/b
Marie walked up the stairs to her grandparent's house. She was supposed to act as a translator and informant for the expedition, having prior contacts inside the community and being a member first by blood and more recently by initiation. Truth be told, she had a feeling that old Tsan was really acting as gatekeeper in his interactions with Professor Andover while she was playing the part of a more convenient and mobile ambassador, Tsan having never left the temple save by palanquin in almost forty years.
Walking in the door, Marie was unprepared for another surprise. She saw Tracy sitting before the camera as her Grandmother and Aunt watched, waiting to begin filming the day's questions and activities, even making a short introductory statement... but not in English.
""And as soon as the translator gets here, we'll begin the second day of... Hey Marie, you almost scared me there."" Here was an audible note of guilt as Tracy hastily switched from the strange language that she had been using to the carefully modulated, Patsy Cline-accented English she had used since Marie had met her. Marie had heard it, and Tracy knew that she had heard... and Marie knew that Tracy knew.
""Yeah, I've gotten that reaction a few times since I got here."" Marie joked, knowing that humor had the power to break tension. ""So... what language were you speaking in anyway? I'm afraid I didn't recognize anything about it."" Her female elders watched closely, knowing that something had happened but being ignorant of other languages, were unsure of exactly what.
Tracy grinned bitterly. ""I'd be more surprised if you did recognize it. It's... well, it's not really a language per se, but a patois of a couple languages, with Early Modern English, Ohio Valley Shawnee, Coastal Algonquian, some Iroquoian loanwords having to do with ritual and bits of Eastern Siouan."" Tracy let out the deep breath she had been using to list all those languages. She was getting more comfortable now. ""I guess it won't do any harm if I told you, seeing as we're almost in the same boat.""
Tracy beckoned Marie to sit, turning off the camera as she did. ""The kids in my town learn it... well, sort of as a first language; English is really more of a first-and-a-half language for us. We got exposed to it through TV and then when we went to school, but most of our formative years were spent listening to and absorbing the patois around the house. Most of us never really let go of it as a language for our own private conversations.""
Marie reflected on this... but was also noting some of the features on Tracy's face: the high, rounded cheeks, her high-bridged nose, the way that her eyes were less the bright crystal blue of stereotype and more of a dark, cloudy blue resembling ultramarine. ""I hope you don't mind me saying this, Tracy but does your family have any Native American ancestry? I don't mean to pry, but you do kind of have the look.""
Tracy considered this for a moment before giving an affirmative nod. ""My father's paternal grandmother was from the Oklahoma Kiowa. My mother, as far as can be traced, is also about an eighth, this time one-eighth Shawnee, which seems to be the median for Longhouse."" She got an odd, contemplative look on my face. ""That's another one of those things that we try not to mention to outsiders, even though they tend to notice it anyway. Back in the old days, admitting it would have been a quick ticket to using a segregated washroom or worse. And now?"" Tracy shrugged. ""Now it's considered cool, while the inbreeding still makes us look like freaks.""
Marie decided to test something, just for her own sake. ""Albert doesn't seem to think you're a freak."" The more she thought about it, she had more in common with Tracy than first realized. Both of them had lived life right on the edge of themselves and their kin being recognized as something other, something foreign to the perceived natural order of the world. Both of them could sense the threat of possible revelation... and knew what it was to try to trust someone with these secrets.
""Hey, you're talking about a guy whose family has worked for alien mushroom bugs for the last hundred years. A bit of mild inbreeding is probably the most normal thing Al's ever experienced."" Here there was definitely affection to her voice, a cue that no matter what other strangeness they were involved in, there was a loving relationship between the two.
At this thought Marie smiled, thanking the ancestors for a little bit of normalcy in this year-long cavalcade of oddities that she had flung herself into. Then another question sprang forth. ""Did you know about the whole alien thing when you guys were at Miskatonic?""
Tracy shook her head. ""No, but then again, he was always kinda spacey."" Marie couldn't help but giggle at this bad pun. Tracy went on, the affection still in her voice. ""Seriously, the thing about Miskatonic is that, after awhile, you begin getting the feeling that almost everyone else is holding something close to their chest, thinking each word over before saying it. It's then that you realize that... you're not alone, that almost everyone else is as paranoid as you are, having something to hide."" She looked towards Marie. ""Everyone except for your Joseph, that is. The only thing strange about him that I noticed was that romance was nowhere on his radar at all.""
""You'd be surprised, actually."" Marie answered cryptically. Before Tracy could ask, she turned back the camera back on, signaling the beginning of the interview session.
That evening
Sweaty, hot, dirty and exhausted, Joseph Clayton exited the forest with Noc and the other hunters. Between all of them, the hunters had brought down a Sambar stag and three small muntjacs. Joseph, for his part, had escaped being gored by a wild boar only by dodging its charge, rolling into a hollow under a log and then shooting it in the head at point-blank range when it tried to go after him. For this feat, the hunters designated him ""master of the pit"" when they roasted it at tonight's feast. It had sounded like an honorable title, but Joseph could guess that they were making him little more than a cook, a traditionally female position.
Still, it was an in and it would probably be research gold.
He was entirely less enthusiastic about what else was coming back with them.
When he and the group of hunters came into the village proper, he saw Marie and the taller, paler form of Tracy coming towards him, having been up on the family terrace transplanting rice seedlings. Due to her fair skin, Tracy was wearing the largest hat she could while her arms and shins had been slathered with sunblock. Marie had already taken hers off.
As they neared him, Marie slowed to a stop, seeing the grim look on Josephs face. Tracy looked at her in confusion, then at Joseph and from his stony face understood that something was wrong. ""What is it?"" Marie asked her boyfriend.
Joseph sighed. ""When the hunters brought us in, were we supposed to be for any kind of important sacrifice?""
""Well, the Rhinoceros Festival is supposed to happen any day now. It's when we recharge the mist that surrounds the village to keep us hidden."" Marie looked around Joseph to where one of the hunters was leading a group of people into the village. They looked like quite a bedraggled bunch, many of them thin and in questionable health. There were also two women who may have been considered beautiful if not for the look in their eyes that they had been through several levels of hell before coming here.
But for all these conditions, they did not look frightened of their tattooed guides.
Noticing where Marie was looking, Joseph offered explanation. ""We met up with them about a mile down the trail. Apparently the government sent up street people as some fresh blood for you guys. And that's not all. Apparently..."" Here, he lowered his voice ""One of the families that were living incognito in Vinh got killed a few nights ago: Father, mother, twelve year old boy... from what I heard it sounded like some sort of animal tore them up inside their apartment... and no blood was spilled.""
Tracy looked like she was going to vomit at the news, while a look of dread overcame Marie, as old legends came forth out of the terrifying mist of childhood nightmare to become shadows in the waking world. ""Is there anything else?"" Marie asked quietly.
Now it was Joseph's turn to look back at the party coming out of the forest, which were now carrying a man by his hands and feet on a pole, his mouth gagged and his eyes blindfolded. ""Only that they also sent you a sacrifice. From what they said, he's a drug-runner, sexual slaver and a general bad example of low-level underworld scum.""
Marie, still in shock over the news of the murders, was perhaps not picking and choosing the words coming out of her mouth. ""Which mean he's gonna taste worse than the fish sauce.""
At these words, both gruesome and almost ridiculous, both her lover and her friend goggled at her.
","May 19th, 1929,
Miskatonic University, Arkham, Mass.
In all honesty, the manner which Robert Olmstead exited the Chancellor's office was not the most graceful to be seen in the history of Miskatonic University. However, perhaps ""exited"" is too neutral a term for a man being forcibly escorted out the double doors by two University proctors with a firm grasp on his forearms. ""Ejected"" is probably a good description though ""assaulted"" would have a good chance of being upheld by a court. As Mr. Olmstead was finally shoved out into the hall, he finally lost his balance and fell to his knees, the voluminous robes which he had worn since his arrival seeming to weigh him down.
As Hiriam Willows and Brian Fife rushed out of the office and hastened to Robert's side, the man himself seemed... tired, drained of energy and showing signs of a fatigue that had been present since the meeting had began. Still, Mr. Olmstead managed to raise his head to address Chancellor Douglas Gooding, who was still in his office. ""I take it... negotiations have ended."" Robert said this in as controlled a way as possible, trying to ignore the irritation at the back of his throat and the sides of his neck.
""Negotiations, as you call them, never began."" Chancellor Gooding, a patrician of a man at the age of 57, had risen from behind his desk and was now walking toward the spot where Mr. Olmstead has stood and presented his case. ""This College has been handed a chance to claim credit for discovering the root devices behind most, if not all, of vertebrate biology and promises to make careers for many of our staff and students. Unless the Navy, who has graciously allowed access to its prisoners for this purpose, decides to either withdraw that access or, as you suggest, release them back into the general population, I see no reason why they should not remain under our supervision in their current quarters."" Gooding eyes fell upon the floor where Robert had stood... and the staff that now lay on the floor. It was a strange thing: the matter itself almost resembled gray, petrified wood but in places it's form showed characteristics of crustacean carapace or of the strange shapes present in fishbone or shark-jaw and, when the light hit it just so, the surface displayed a luster more akin to Nautilus shell or Mother of Pearl than any of those things.
Gooding, in a sudden fit of antiquarian fascination, began kneeling down to take the strange rod. ""However, if you could tell us about this staff..."" Just as his the tips of his fingers brushed against the smooth surface the staff, seemingly under its own power, jerked butt-first towards the door, skidding over the floors polished hardwood planks. When it reached Robert. who was now being helped to his feet by Professor Fife, the staff actually began tipping up on its butt, the shaft guiding itself into Robert's limp, open hand.
Grasping the staff to regain his posture, Robert glanced once more at Gooding. ""The staff is a secret that keeps itself. As to my plea... if that is your decision, I pray that you do not live to reap the whirlwind.""
""Is that a threat?"" Chancellor Gooding was losing patience rapidly after this manifestation of the strange had made an intrusion into his office and annoyance was threatening to turn to anger.
""Merely a warning, good Chancellor."" These were the last words that Robert Olmstead spoke to Gooding as Fife, carrying the papers that Olmstead had presented, helped him as he unsteadily walked down the hallway, supported by his implement.
Just as Hiriam Willows was about to follow the pair, Gooding called to him. ""Hiriam! Get back in this office!"" Willows, his eyes continuing to follow his two companions down the hall for a moment, turned and walked back into the Chancellor's office with a tightening of the lips and the speed of a slow stroll, more amenable to his aging legs than the fast walk he had so recently exerted himself with. ""I'm surprised, Douglas.""
""Surprised that I called you back in here?"" Asked Gooding as he sat back down behind his desk.
""That we are apparently operating on a first name basis now. As I recall, that has not been our habit since nineteen hundred and... seven, was it?"" It may have been facetious (to say the least) in bringing this up but after today, last winter and, to be honest, most days since Gooding had restricted Willows to a single morning class per week, he and the Chancellor has not quite been on the best of terms.
""Ah yes, the Cuba business. However... actually, that ispart of why I called you in here."" Gooding pointed an almost accusatory finger at the older man. ""As I recall, youwere the one to countermand my decision to use force against those two Voodoo cults in Las Tunas.""
""First of all, they were Santeria practitioners. Second, I was able to forge an armistice between the two warring factions and convince them to give up their murderous ways...""
""In favor of continued use of animal sacrifice, I remember, I remember."" Gooding put that accusatory finger to his temple as if to calm a throbbing. Then that finger returned to the standing faculty member. ""But whether you're French or Spanish does not mean much of anything when you're trying to rip open a portal to the tenth dimension, summoning dangerous ichors and vapors from beyond and, may I remind you, trying to violently murderas many people as needed for their insane goals. Hiriam... I know that you're a Quaker, I knowthat negotiating between groups of violent, degenerate heathens has always been your strong point, but this is something radicallydifferent.""
The Chancellor noticed Willow's disbelieving roll of the eyes but continued. ""These... things have been present in and off the coast of Essex Country for the better part of a century. They've killed people, they subverted local government, through their negligence the port of Innsmouth nearly crumbled due to neglect... not to mention that they've potentially forced themselves on local residents due to the existence of apparently hybrid individuals!"" He motioned out the door and pointed in the direction that Olmstead and Fife had exited. ""Did you happen to take a good look at the person who was just ejected from this office? My God Hiriam, the man was practically turning into a herring before our very eyes!"" Gooding seemed to calm down a bit. ""I know you were always one to try to see both sides of the argument, to resolve conflicts through calm deliberation... but this wasn'tnegotiation. This was a demand backed by veiled threats. I remember you being much sterner in the face of demands than this."" There was a thoughtful pause. ""What happened in Virginia, Hiriam? Ever since you got back, you've been at your usual quest for cooperation between man and eldritch forces except... moreso.""
A hundred images flashed in Willows mind of that December in the Luray Valley. The little clusters of field-stone houses and barns around the southern tip of Mt. Ida; the lean-faced Quaker farm-folk; the walk through the community cemetery and the graves of his mothers family, the Caulfields. The children, so desperate to experience a properly Victorian Christmas in pageantry unknown by the community, inviting him to a snowball fight and following his lead in decorating and games (which he had found invigorating at the time). The experience of being around others of his faith for the first time in decades.
But there was also the first time he had ever been forced to kill, as a .45 caliber ACP round hit dead center on his war-painted assailant in the mountain forests. The moment when he had discovered the small shrine beneath the Longhouse Meeting Hall with it's black deer hides, Eastern Elk antlers and strange mix of artifacts. The sight of his hosts sacrificing pigs, wailing and dancing in the manner of the Seneca Iroquois at an isolated stone circle south along the mountains from the Army's battle with their foes, mourning for all the dead who would be brought out. And two of the bodies brought back, an apparent pair of adult twin sisters in matching warpaint who had charged the federal troops with knives before being mowed down: their hands had been intertwined even as fire from Thompson submachineguns had demolished their ribcages, the agony of their situation apparent from their found journals... the swelling around their eyes under the paint indicative of weeping.
Hiriam shrugged as if he experienced nothing. ""Just a bit of reconnection with my mothers side of the family. Now, if you will excuse me?"" Before Gooding could even respond, Hiriam Willows walked out of the office and closed the doors behind him, exhaling in relief before he continued on to Professor Fife's office.
Shortly, Professor Fife's Office
Brian Fife sighed in frustration and concern as he dabbed the side of Robert Olmsteads neck with a handkerchief soaked in ice water. ""When was the last time you bothered to moisten the reservoir layers in this cloak? Any longer without adequate water around the gills and you would have been coughing up blood.""
Robert, sitting in a chair across from Fife, was now much less weary now that relief was being applied. "" There was no time. I had to act quickly to try to get them released and the last two days have been a flurry.""
""Well, it's just as well that I keep ice and water in my study or you would have..."" Fife was interrupted by Hiriam Willow's entry into the office who, upon entering, simply asked himself how a militant like Douglas Gooding had become chancellor. Fife's answer to this question was concise. ""Well, Masterson died of Diphtheria while in Shanghai, Harvey has his Cocaine habit, Peaslee isn't totally trusted after that Yith business and yourefused to take any oath of office acceptable to the Congregationalist clergy. Gooding was the only member of the senior faculty with the necessary respectability left."" 
""Thank you very much. Now, what do we do next?"" Hiriam sat down in another chair, forming a semicircular huddle as he addressed Olmstead. ""Gooding isn't going to budge an inch without a proper prodding, the Arkham Police are beginning to take note of your lodgings at the Miskatonic Hotel and your current appearance which, may I remark, is becoming more piscine by the day, will not inspire confidence in the other involved parties.""
""Then we have to properly prod. I have to prod. I owe that much at least."" Robert, now that his neck and gills were properly wetted (and the kelp layers under his robe properly inundated with cold water), became quiet, both hands still across his lap, grasping the staff he had carried since he had arrived.
Fife knew what he was thinking, for it was also close to his heart. ""Robert, you don't have to do this. The Priests of Y'ha-Nthlei won't judge you harshly if you don't bring home any more of our people than your cousin; I know it's tragic, but it's happened before that people have been lost to the surface world.""
Robert suddenly got a hard look in his eyes and stared directly at the other man. ""Do you know what it feels like to lose your parents, your child, your neighbors or friends? To not know where they were taken? To fear for their lives while they might be undergoing hideous, nefarious tortures? And then, one day, you are suddenly confronted with the grinning idiot who, in his disgust and primordial fear, ensured your loved one's capture and now, while you are forced to hide like a crab in the sand, are expected to welcome this fool into your ranks?""
He groaned at the memory... or even more than the memory. ""The punishment for my loutish treachery was harsh, but even a flayed back will not absolve all I have done, all I have seen. My flogging will not return parents to children or husbands to wives. My pain will not sooth the fear of mothers for their sons. And the welts upon my back will not make me forget the accusation, the pain... the sorrowin their eyes. I am doing this as much for myself as for them; doing it so that I won't have to live with my failures for an eternity."" 
Willows and Fife were quiet until Fife quietly asked ""So, what now?""
""If I can't do anything, the warriors will be swimming upstream in less than a week. When they get here... I can't promise that anyone will be safe."" Robert looked pensive, a calculating look on his face. ""We... Iwill have to make an impression in front of Gooding. Somewhere public, somewhere will it will make an impression that can't be dismissed or ignored. Anything come to mind?""
It was then that it struck Hiriam. ""Of course, the regatta tomorrow! Gooding will be attendance, he hasto be in attendance according to College statutes. But what are you going to do?""
Having been asked, Robert began to think. ""I assume it'll be on the Miskatonic?""
""Where else? Hangman's Brook has never been deep enough for rowing and the University never affluent enough to construct a canal."" Fife explained.
""Will there be many other people there?"" Robert asked again, something beginning to form in his already-changed brain.
""Everyone who can: students, alumni, dock workers, beggars... why do you ask?"" Hiriam was now curious as to this whole thing.
Robert looked down at the staff in his hands, feeling the smooth surface but also feeling the power coursing through the object. The Staff of Dagon... said to have been wielded by their king and blessed by the mighty Priest to whom Dagon and Hydra had sworn loyalty. Once, it had been said to have performed wonders.
Once... and perhaps again.
",True
"Spoonbill Village, Northernmost Quang Binh Province, SRV.
June 30, 2011.
Considering their first encounter, this meeting was going rather well.
""No, no, I assure you that I have had quite enough… well, if you insist…"" In the course of explaining his task to the household he would be staying in, Joseph Clayton had been offered tea at the behest of the mistress of the household and all three times, he had acquiesced. She was attending her husband in fine cotton clothes of white and black, the cut more resembling something out of Javanese dancing than anything worn in Indochina during the past thousand years. Their son, called from his lessons for the presentation, was sitting at the far end of the room, listening to what was going on. While he had repeated much the same spiel that Professor Andover to the house's three inhabitants, he had sipped at his bowl almost automatically as one would with water, clear onto what was now his fourth helping. Although not unpleasant, the drink had considerably more kick to it than even the strong brews typical of Vietnamese green tea.
What perplexed Joseph was that he couldn't identify the extra ingredient. It wasn't peppers, having no discernible remains or even the raw chemical heat of capsaicin. It could be ginger, but the heat was of an utterly different kind than any ginger he had ever experienced.
Then again, the additive could just as well be Tarantula venom given the figure he was giving his introduction to.
His name, as he had given it, was Noc. He was the most experience hunter, archer and scout of the village, was of an incredibly ancient lineage and, incidentally, was the first person of this strange, isolated village that he had seen. His tattoos all featured arachnid themes of legs, webbing and fangs and his eyes…
Marie had mentioned that some of the warriors practiced sorcery with mutative effects. If that was what caused Nocs eyes to become all black, seemingly all pupils and tempting Joseph to mentally refer to the man as ""Spider Eye"", then maybe those three weirdoes they caught in the biology labs back in February were onto something after all.
Sitting in the main reception area of the home, replete with decorations of strange latticed designs and black lacquer, Joseph watched carefully as Noc finished examining one of his bowstrings before his eyes darted around the room. On the wall, several bows hung in their unstrung state: the white and banded flatbow he had first witnessed, several simple bows of light colored cane and even one recurve bow made of dark red hardwood.
""So that is your request: to hear the stories of our history, to observe the operation of a household of status and to… take part in our activities?"" Throughout the introduction of this man and the repetition he had given of the Professors offer, Noc had examined all aspects of him closely… and had not been impressed. He had some muscle tone, but everything else about him absolutely screamed that he was some sort of priest or urban scribe in training. Besides, the combination of the girl's cues toward him and his reaction to his tea made it clear: if the boy had been a virgin, steam would have been pouring out of his ears. That made things difficult (and potentially dangerous) for everyone.
Besides, very few people in this village held any affection at all for someone with Joseph's skin tone.
After receiving affirmation of Joseph's duties, Noc laid out the rules. ""Know this: you will record the histories when they are told to you. You shall ask questions when you are allowed and you shall observe what you shall participate in what you are allowed to participate in. No pestering me with questions, no sneaking around trying to observe the women and children and no and I mean no trying to wheedle out information through trickery. We had quite enough trouble with that sort of thing the last time around.""
Joseph was immediately insulted, even though he did not how it as he automatically agreed. Still, two things bothered him. First, underneath the gold and bronze bangles that decorated the forearms and ankles of Nocs wife, Joseph had noticed strange scars, akin in shape to the marks that sperm whales bore from their battles with giant squid.
Second… what did Noc mean by the last time around?
That Night…
As he lay awake, Joseph realized how exhausting the day had been. As it turned out, he was probably doing to spend most of his time in this house as a sort of a servant: documenting and participating in cooking and chores, handling domestic duties and picking little things up only as Noc's wife deemed appropriate. No real questions answered, no interesting discoveries or scandals or surprises… just ordinary ethnographic work.
It wasn't made any better that his libido was getting annoyed at the 'busy' signals it kept receiving. However, there had been no real opportunity to talk with Marie after last night, with all the revelations of cannibalism and sorcery and other things that probably should have made his stomach turn.
/Maybe it would be better if they had made your stomach turn./ Came a wheedling little multi-voiced dialogue from inside his head… from inside his head, but not originating from him.
Oh no. Joseph thought with a mental groan. Not you idiots again! I thought you gave it up after the last time.
/The last time? You mean when you were in the thrall of carnal lusts, disgracing your heritage?/ The dominant voice changed from one of the old WASP lords to that of an aristocratic dowager that had been ancient even when Granny Clara had been a girl. /Maybe now that you know what her kind get up to, you will listen to reason and find a girl more suitable to a young man of your station./
Her parents are just as middle class as mine are, thank you all very much. Joseph snarked back mentally, fully knowing how these… wraiths felt about his relationship with Marie and savoring the thought of causing them anguish.
/You know full well what is meant. What is not understood is why the other girl did not so arouse your… passions./
Oh please, her family is just as drenched in sorcery as these guys, it's just that they're more polite about who they slice open. Besides, I don't really think you'd have acted any differently if it had been Tracy I'd been with that night instead of Marie, inbred and rural as she apparently is. He remembered clearly that night: how these voices (who he was fairly sure were not the products of schizophrenia despite superficially similar symptomatology), had come to him in the midst of what should have been unimaginable passion and communion with his girlfriend (though with was much more awkward, rushed and possibly painful than desired). Even as the passion mounted, their insults became worse: the taunts, the archaic, hateful rhetoric, the most vicious slurs directed against Marie and him. And yet he had forged on, continuing despite the rising chorus of insane voices inside his head… or even because of them, for as they blasphemed against all that Marie was, all the little things that made Joseph love her all the more, he could tell that his defiance was causing them actual pain and torment… and even through the pleasures of the flesh, he took small, sadistic delights in causing pain and anguish to these assholes who claimed authority as his forbearers.
Now Joseph was getting annoyed… and cranky. Look, I don't have to listen to you idiots, even if you do claim to be my ancestors. You came from a completely different world whose rules do not apply to me. Also, the instruments of your authority are gone: no money, no status, no companies or contacts or friends in high places. All that's left are a bunch of ugly little voices in the wind. Why don't you all just blow away? He was tired of his, of having to listen to these inane snobs that he had learned to loath in the abstract and now hated in the concrete. He hated their hate-filled dismissals of all other peoples and cultures, their smug superiority and the generalized arrogance that seemed to drip from the voices.
When they didn't respond, Joseph took it as a sign. ""Good."" He said aloud, as softly as his sense of satisfaction allowed.
","Rodrigo: (Laughing) ""'Horror'? You speak to me of 'horror'? I have seen things which would make the gods tremble!""
Massa di Requiem per Shuggay
Act II Scene IV
Benevento Chieti Bordighera
(Translated from the original Italian)
Torren-Wraeth hated being summoned. He hated human sacrifice even more. After all, his mother had been human, but he could not act against his father's wishes, nor those who had summoned him, at least, not directly. He was here merely to witness, to stand helpless as a life was taken.
The youth stood, tall and handsome, his striking Polynesian features offset by his green skin and six slender tendrils that lined his chin and jaw. He was in a house, surrounded by black-robed humans, cult artifacts and blazing braziers. A young man lay upon a stone table, bound, screaming. Torren-Wraeth walked over to the table, regret in his glistening yellow eyes, ""I'm so sorry."" The man's bulging eyes stared past him, followed two of the cultists as they moved toward a spot near the west wall of the basement/temple, strained with terror.
The worshipers began to chant, and one among them called out in a loud voice, ""For the glory of Great Cthulhu, we offer this one to The Beast Below!""
""My father does not need sacrifices..."" Torren-Wraeth said loudly. That was true, to a point. His father did not, in fact, need sacrifices, but he did desire them. Perhaps, he could save this one... But they ignored him. He watched as the men rolled back a large stone, revealing a dark hole beneath. Ghouls? Ghouls can be reasoned with, better than some humans... He frowned, spoke louder ""I said, my father...""
Then it hit him. A noxious smell poured forth through the opening, gagging him. It was not the familiar, moldy corpse smell of ghouls, but something bizarre, like ammonia and drying blood... And there was something else, something far, far worse. Voices. Many voices. Laughing madly, weeping, screaming. Screaming such as Torren-Wraeth had never heard in his life; the horrific, hopeless shrieking of the damned.
He unconsciously backed away as a huge form slithered slowly from the deepest region of the pit. Torren-Wraeth nearly vomited at the sight. It was similar in shape to a worm, blood-colored and slimy, but that was not the true horror of the thing, it was it's faces... A grinning, evil human face peered from the anterior of the beast, but dozens of other anguished, maddened human faces protruded at random from it's hideous form. Their eyes reflected unspeakable torment, madness, and a longing for the release of death. Some babbled or laughed senselessly, others begged for death or wept, or just screamed... So many faces, so much unholy suffering. It turned toward the sacrificial table and it's occupant.
At the sight the victim screamed in utter terror, but his voice was drowned out by the many voices of the thing. Torren-Wraeth had heard of such things, but had not believed, had hoped that they did not exist.
The Chakota.
An abomination which absorbed it's victims, body and mind, leaving it's unfortunate prey trapped within it's hateful body, aware but helpless. The first head, the mind of the beast, was the cultist who had willingly created it, literally became the beast, the others the miserable wretches it had absorbed over the years.
Torren-Wraeth's body turned pale yellow with horror. He had seen so much evil and cruelty in his life, but this, this was vile beyond all reason. The Binding broke with his terror. He was free to act.
His reaction was instinctive, human.
He screamed, grabbed the nearest brazier, and struck at the beast with it.
The Chakota itself screamed as the coals and flames struck it's slimy flesh, and it was alight. Torren-Wraeth struck at it again and again, scattering flaming coal across the room, igniting tapestries and furnishings. More braziers were knocked over by the beast's own struggles and the cultists scrambling for the stairs. The stone floor grew hot, and the walls caught fire. The Chakota turned to flee toward it's hole, towards cool, dark safety, but Torren-Wraeth drove the broken brazier through it like a stake, pinning it in place. There was no escape.
The flames danced across the stones.
As the fire raged around him, Torren-Wraeth turned to the sacrificial victim, intending to free him, but a quick glance revealed that the man was dead, his face contorted in terror. He had died of fear.
In some ways, he was lucky. He wondered how many of the cultists had died in the fire, and had the brief, dark feeling that they 'deserved it'. He pushed it from his mind.
He turned his attention back to the Chakota.
The beast writhed in agony. The screams grew louder, shriller, while, from some of the faces trapped within the beast, came shouts of joy and thanksgiving. Facing the flames was preferable to living within the beast...
Though it was obscured by smoke and flames, Torren-Wraeth watched as the Chakota quickly shriveled and blackened, withered like a worm on a hot sidewalk.
Then, there were only ashes.
The fire was spreading too quickly, the heat was intense, he had to leave or risk injury himself. Torren-Wraeth teleported away, leaving the cleansing fire to it's work.
He returned home. Not R'Lyeh, but Rapa Nui, which the white men called 'Easter Island'.
He threw up, then wept...
Later,
Torren-Wraeth stood within an ancient quarry, partially carved Moai bearing mute witness to his words. ""No more! No more human sacrifices!"" He shouted at the top of his lungs. He didn't care about the consequences. He had ignored his conscience, his honor for too long.
""You go where you are summoned!"" Great Cthulhu's telepathic voice, calling out from his body in R'Lyeh, registered rage at this defiance.
""Never again!"" Torren-Wraeth's voice was firm. He was ashamed that he had ever been party to such a thing, and he refused to do so again. His skin was blotched with conflicting emotion, ""You don't even need sacrifices, much less intelligent ones! I won't help you commit murder, not anymore!""
""Who are you to judge me!?""
Torren-Wraeth fell silent.
Great Cthulhu sighed, his child was becoming sentimental, rebellious. It was his mother's blood, it could not be helped. Ever since he had befriended that human, he had become more like them... Still, it was a small thing. ""Very well, Torren-Wraeth, from now on you will never represent me at a sentient sacrifice again.""
The boy knelt quickly, ""Thank you, father...""
""Do not thank me yet, I may ask something of you in return.""
And Torren-Wraeth knew without a doubt that he would.
",False
"The world we live in is not as it seems. I, James White, write this document so that others may be made aware of what I have experienced and know of the dangers that lurk beneath our limited perception of ""reality"". Whether you believe me or not, dear reader, is up to you. I only ask that you read what I write with an open mind since I write, not for my own gain, but to warn you of what I can only describe as ""pure evil"".
I had never heard of the ""Cult of Cthulhu"" before I began university in the late summer of 2012. I was only eighteen years old, an atheist, and dogmatically pursued scientific understanding and knowledge. At that time, I was not in the least bit interested in weird cults and other religious movements, which I simply dismissed as primitive superstition. Had I but known what I would encounter, I would have burnt the science textbook, prayed to God for the strength not to crumble into insanity and got as far away from that university as I could!
The strange happenings started less than two months into my first term. I had been put into student accommodation and shared a corridor with four other boys and two girls. I had got to know my flatmates very well until all of a sudden, one of the boys by the name of Jonathan Mears disappeared. This wasn't looked upon as weird at first since Jonathan was the quiet type anyway and often spent long hours alone in his room. The suspicions arose however, when he hadn't shown his face for three days. His absence was brought up one evening as we sat in a communal area.
""He's probably just been very busy lately,"" my best friend, Jacob Shields, said. ""You know Jonathan. When he sets his mind on something, he doesn't stop until he's achieved whatever he's trying to do.""
""Isn't it a bit strange though?"" Annie Roberts, a lovely blonde girl from the room directly across the corridor asked. ""I mean, he's in our corridor and we haven't seen him for ages. Not even in the kitchen or lecture halls.""
""It isn't like him to miss a lecture,"" I agreed. Jacob merely waved these concerns away.
""If we haven't seen him by tomorrow evening, we'll go to the reception and see what's happening,"" he said cheerfully.
But Jonathan didn't show up the following day and, as planned, my entire corridor went to the reception desk to ask if anything had happened to him. The receptionist, an elderly lady, checked through the files on a computer before looking up at us.
""I'm afraid he has left the university,"" she informed us. ""He dropped out four days ago.""
""Well there you go!"" Jacob exclaimed. ""Nothing to worry about!""
But there was something to worry about. Even though I now had every reason to think that Jonathan was fine, I couldn't shake that feeling of foreboding. He had seemed happy in university and was consistently getting high marks so I resolved to check things out for myself.
I waited until 3:00 the following morning, and in the darkness, I tiptoed along the corridor to Jonathan's room. Using a paperclip, I carefully picked the lock on his door and let myself in. I closed the door behind me and switched on the light. The sight that greeted me came as a huge shock. Clothes still lay on the floor, the bed was made, books were still on the shelves and a laptop was still humming gently on the cluttered desk. In short, it looked as though Jonathan was simply out of the room. If he had gone home, why did he leave all his things behind? And if he hadn't, where was he and why did the university records state that he had? Deeply concerned, I left the room and returned to my own. I lay awake in the darkness pondering the thoughts in my head and finally decided that I needed to find out what had happened and that I would do so alone...
","I didn't stop running until I had burst into my room, locked the door behind me and placed a chair under the handle. Then I immediately vomited into the bin before collapsing onto my bed in floods of tears. I couldn't quite believe what I had seen that evening; it was too terrible to comprehend. But worse was to come.
Although I so desperately wanted to sleep, I forced myself not to. Instead I sat shivering with fear in the corner of the room, expecting Jacob and Annie to attempt to enter the room any second. I had to get out of here, I had to go to the police, I had to do something. And I had to stay awake. I had to...
And then I was no longer in my room. In contrast, I was standing amidst vast structures of black stone. On each stone was etched hieroglyphics of the kind I had never before seen and they were all covered in a sticky green goo. These stones seemed to go on for miles, their geometry extremely strange and disturbing. I must be dreaming, I told myself, this can't be real. Yet even in this knowledge, the sheer terror of the place engulfed me. I began to walk slowly around the structures, being careful not to touch the slime on their surface and desperately trying to wake up. And then I saw it, the monster of the notebook and the diabolical ritual. But this time, it wasn't a picture or statue but an enormous living monstrosity. I was rooted to the ground in fear as I stared at its huge form that seemed to tower for miles above me, its green, scaly skin, its thick leathery wings and its octopus-like tentacles, and from out of the air I heard the disembodied chant, ""Cthulhu Fhtagn! Cthulhu Fhtagn!"" I was still unable to run and the tentacles of the monster began to rap themselves around me, all the while that demonic chant getting louder and louder until it felt like my head was being crushed. I was raised off the ground and brought up to the monster's head. It looked at me with one of its evil red eyes the fear became too much. I began to scream hysterically, writhing around in the grip of the beast. And then I awoke, breathing heavily and sweating profusely. I was lying on the floor and just remained there for a while, staring into the darkness and reminiscing on the terrors of the dream and the ritual I had seen, and remembering that chant: ""Cthulhu Fhtagn!"" What did it all mean?
The following day, I did not attend lectures and only left the room once to grab some food. As fate would have it, during this brief moment out of solitude, I met the person I didn't want to see ever again, Jacob. I avoided his gaze as he looked at me enquiringly.
""We missed you in lectures today,"" he said curiously. I didn't answer. I was sure he had seen me last night. ""Where were you?"" Jacob asked. Again, I was silent. He laid a hand on my shoulder. ""Is something wrong, James?"" It was then that I looked into his eyes but instead of the evil I had expected to see, all I could make out was concern.
""No,"" I muttered in reply.
""Something is wrong,"" Jacob disagreed. ""What's up?"" Either he's a very good actor, or he's entirely genuine, I thought to myself. And if was being genuine, that must mean that either he didn't remember the ritual I had seen him participating in or that I had only been dreaming. I prayed it was the latter.
""I'm ok,"" I said, giving him the benefit of the doubt. ""I'm just feeling a little unwell, that's all.""
""Well look after yourself,"" he replied without a trace of ingenuity. I quickly made myself a ham sandwich and once again locked myself into my room. The thoughts that raced around inside my head were endless as I casually bit into the sandwich. Almost immediately, I spat the contents out of my mouth, screamed and vomited onto the floor. What was inside the sandwich was not the ham I had put in but a vile mixture of the green goo I had seen in my ""dream"" and human blood. The room started spinning around me, turning into a dark green, and images of the tentacled creature I had seen so much of lately started appearing in every corner. I covered my ears and screamed uncontrollably.
And then Jacob and Annie were in front of me. I had no idea where they had come from for I had locked the door. But I was anywhere but the comfort of my room. Instead, I was in some sort of other realm, my room rapidly beginning to fade.
""You shouldn't have got involved in this,"" Jacob whispered menacingly.
""Now you must pay."" Annie cooed.
""In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."" they said in unison. And then I saw no more.
",True
"Spoonbill Village,
Northernmost Quang Binh Province, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
July 2, 2011
Two young adults walked up the path beside the bronze-casters shop to the barren hillside and the forest edge beyond. ""So, how do you like things so far?"" Marie asked as she and Joseph made their way up the rough-hewn stone steps. Their destination was the house of the village woodcutter and charcoal-burner, a place that also doubled as a furniture workshop and, importantly for this journey, the villages' firearms armory.
""Not that bad. I've been doing domestic work for the past few days but neither Noc nor his wife seems to really be a slave driver. Actually, they feel more like people who understand that they're training a new servant."" Joseph thought on something. ""I'm actually surprised that he and the other hunters allowing me to accompany them. They neither seem to respect me or anyone who would stoop to use a gun, so I wonder why they changed their attitude.""
It was here that Marie began ruminating on something, an old thought that had given her more than her share of bad dreams. ""There are some things worth surrendering pride for, Joseph. Tell me, have you seen those weird scars on the ankles and arms of Nocs wife?""
""You mean those marks that look like Giant Squid wounds? Yes, but what about them?"" Joseph suddenly stopped. ""What are they, anyway?""
Having stopped also, Marie sighed, a sense of foreboding covering her features. ""When I asked that myself, they didn't tell me much more than the stories I'd already heard when I was a kid: legends about ghosts, devils from the mist, 'shadows that drink blood' is what they called them sometimes. But what I got here is that those Shugoran priests that saved my people weren't just going to somewhere. They were running ifrom/i somewhere, someone or something, something that no one is willing to talk any further about."" Marie started forward again at such a pace that her boyfriend had to hurry to catch up.
Getting the feeling that nothing more was going to be answered on that subject for a good while, Joseph changed track. ""How are the others getting on? I've been stuck in the house most of the day and I haven't really had a chance to talk to either the Prof or my classmates.""
Happy to shift from thoughts of chilling horror, Marie chuckled with increasing mirth as she began going back up the trail. ""From what I've heard, Albert's been filming every step in the bronze making process that he can, not to mention all the casting processes and various uses of equipment. The only reason that he hasn't been thrown out yet is because the family's elder patriarch has taken a liking to… well, not just him, but all of you guys, just from the descriptions alone. Your Professor and his assistant have basically locked themselves in the temple: no word out yet, but I assume that they're observing normal operations. As for Tracy…"" Here, Marie began acting a little odd. ""She talks in her sleep, if you didn't know.""
""Really?"" Joseph responded interestedly. Not reacting the way that she had feared, Marie relaxed a little from the paranoia she had been wrangling with.
""Yeah, and the strange thing is that it's in… well, tree-ish. And then there's the tattooing on her back as well."" Marie went on talking, relieved that her fear seemed to have been senseless.
Before he could answer his girlfriends increasingly chatty descriptions, a thought crossed Josephs mind on exactly why such a thing might be mentioned. ""Why would you ask me if I knew…"" Then the realization hit him and he stopped cold. ""Were you thinking that… Tracy and I?""
Marie stopped as well. ""It's not unknown to happen, you know."" Marie answered the implied question almost defensively, as if trying to justify her momentary paranoia. ""Sweethearts get separated and sometimes… one finds companionship elsewhere. Especially with, you know."" Marie tapped the side of her head, indicating the ""visitors"" that had first cursed Joseph Claytons existence during High School.
Joseph snorted in an amused, disparaging way. ""Please don't give them that much credit. I've ignored, rebuked and insulted those jerks so many times that I've made a virtual bloodsport out of it. Besides, if I'd made any moves towards Tracy, Albert would have killed me.""
""Wait, those two… they're together?"" Marie asked, wondering how she'd missed that.
""Intimately so, yes."" This was all Joseph was willing to say, himself not wishing to examine too closely the memory of walking in on his dorm-mate and his girl when they had neglected to put a sock on the doorknob. ""Anyway, as to these voices, I went to the psychology department to see if I could discover just what was causing it.""
Marie waited a heartbeat before plunging into the vital question. ""And what did they say?"" If her boyfriend did indeed have Schizophrenia, then he needed help: drugs to control the symptoms and perhaps therapy to help him conquer whatever dark corners of his psyche were feeding these voices.
If it was something else… then perhaps the local sorcerers might need to be consulted before long.
Joseph sighed. 'Whatever is going on inside my head, the geeks with the scanning equipment are pretty sure that this isn't a case of medical Schizophrenia. They say that the symptoms are all wrong, the voices aren't persuasive enough… and that I don't have any of the telltale injuries on the brain that would suggest medical reasons. And then there was the time they hooked me up to the EEG during one of my 'episodes'."" He paused, wondering just how to proceed but, since he was already experiencing strange things, he decided just to press on. ""The guys swore that, before the equipment shorted out, at least two additional wavelengths were being read beside mine."" With a shrug, Joseph summed up his thoughts. ""Ever since I came here and heard all of the seemingly crazy stories from you and the others… I don't know, but what I've gone through just makes sense now, at least in knowing that it actually can happen.""
Marie smiled. Yes, we definitely need to consult the priests. ""Come on, we've talked enough and you need to get that rifle before you head out.""
And rifles there were, all secured inside a triple locked room in the back corner of the woodcutter's house. They looked like Berthier carbines, French bolt-action repeaters from the First World War… but they were not the only guns present. ""Is that a Hotchkiss?"" Joseph asked in a voice combining bemusement and astonishment. Among the rifles and a few, scattered revolvers sat a machine-gun still on its tripod and looking impossibly well-maintained for being kept in the back room of a house located in a tropical moist forest.
""An M1914 by the looks of it, if the pictures I've seen are at all accurate. There's a story behind it, but I only know that only the oldest elders know it."" Marie replied, having picked up of the Berthier Carbines and handing it to Joseph. The ammunition was kept in a chest under a trapdoor in the main part of the house as a safety measure so they'd have to go back to pick it up. But then she asked the question that she probably should have asked before they left the village proper. ""Speaking of guns, since when did you shoot?""
""There's a gun range in Arkham; Tracy and Albert invited me along for a few lessons before Thanksgiving. She's the one with actual hunting experience and I think he only came along to check out the engineering on the pieces. It wasn't that much fun, but I think what I learned in getting my license will help on this."" Joseph began inspecting the carbine he had been given, finding it oiled and well-maintained as any other firearm in the room. There was a question that had to be asked, however?
Where did they get all these guns?
15 minutes Later
Marie walked up the stairs to her grandparent's house. She was supposed to act as a translator and informant for the expedition, having prior contacts inside the community and being a member first by blood and more recently by initiation. Truth be told, she had a feeling that old Tsan was really acting as gatekeeper in his interactions with Professor Andover while she was playing the part of a more convenient and mobile ambassador, Tsan having never left the temple save by palanquin in almost forty years.
Walking in the door, Marie was unprepared for another surprise. She saw Tracy sitting before the camera as her Grandmother and Aunt watched, waiting to begin filming the day's questions and activities, even making a short introductory statement... but not in English.
""And as soon as the translator gets here, we'll begin the second day of... Hey Marie, you almost scared me there."" Here was an audible note of guilt as Tracy hastily switched from the strange language that she had been using to the carefully modulated, Patsy Cline-accented English she had used since Marie had met her. Marie had heard it, and Tracy knew that she had heard... and Marie knew that Tracy knew.
""Yeah, I've gotten that reaction a few times since I got here."" Marie joked, knowing that humor had the power to break tension. ""So... what language were you speaking in anyway? I'm afraid I didn't recognize anything about it."" Her female elders watched closely, knowing that something had happened but being ignorant of other languages, were unsure of exactly what.
Tracy grinned bitterly. ""I'd be more surprised if you did recognize it. It's... well, it's not really a language per se, but a patois of a couple languages, with Early Modern English, Ohio Valley Shawnee, Coastal Algonquian, some Iroquoian loanwords having to do with ritual and bits of Eastern Siouan."" Tracy let out the deep breath she had been using to list all those languages. She was getting more comfortable now. ""I guess it won't do any harm if I told you, seeing as we're almost in the same boat.""
Tracy beckoned Marie to sit, turning off the camera as she did. ""The kids in my town learn it... well, sort of as a first language; English is really more of a first-and-a-half language for us. We got exposed to it through TV and then when we went to school, but most of our formative years were spent listening to and absorbing the patois around the house. Most of us never really let go of it as a language for our own private conversations.""
Marie reflected on this... but was also noting some of the features on Tracy's face: the high, rounded cheeks, her high-bridged nose, the way that her eyes were less the bright crystal blue of stereotype and more of a dark, cloudy blue resembling ultramarine. ""I hope you don't mind me saying this, Tracy but does your family have any Native American ancestry? I don't mean to pry, but you do kind of have the look.""
Tracy considered this for a moment before giving an affirmative nod. ""My father's paternal grandmother was from the Oklahoma Kiowa. My mother, as far as can be traced, is also about an eighth, this time one-eighth Shawnee, which seems to be the median for Longhouse."" She got an odd, contemplative look on my face. ""That's another one of those things that we try not to mention to outsiders, even though they tend to notice it anyway. Back in the old days, admitting it would have been a quick ticket to using a segregated washroom or worse. And now?"" Tracy shrugged. ""Now it's considered cool, while the inbreeding still makes us look like freaks.""
Marie decided to test something, just for her own sake. ""Albert doesn't seem to think you're a freak."" The more she thought about it, she had more in common with Tracy than first realized. Both of them had lived life right on the edge of themselves and their kin being recognized as something other, something foreign to the perceived natural order of the world. Both of them could sense the threat of possible revelation... and knew what it was to try to trust someone with these secrets.
""Hey, you're talking about a guy whose family has worked for alien mushroom bugs for the last hundred years. A bit of mild inbreeding is probably the most normal thing Al's ever experienced."" Here there was definitely affection to her voice, a cue that no matter what other strangeness they were involved in, there was a loving relationship between the two.
At this thought Marie smiled, thanking the ancestors for a little bit of normalcy in this year-long cavalcade of oddities that she had flung herself into. Then another question sprang forth. ""Did you know about the whole alien thing when you guys were at Miskatonic?""
Tracy shook her head. ""No, but then again, he was always kinda spacey."" Marie couldn't help but giggle at this bad pun. Tracy went on, the affection still in her voice. ""Seriously, the thing about Miskatonic is that, after awhile, you begin getting the feeling that almost everyone else is holding something close to their chest, thinking each word over before saying it. It's then that you realize that... you're not alone, that almost everyone else is as paranoid as you are, having something to hide."" She looked towards Marie. ""Everyone except for your Joseph, that is. The only thing strange about him that I noticed was that romance was nowhere on his radar at all.""
""You'd be surprised, actually."" Marie answered cryptically. Before Tracy could ask, she turned back the camera back on, signaling the beginning of the interview session.
That evening
Sweaty, hot, dirty and exhausted, Joseph Clayton exited the forest with Noc and the other hunters. Between all of them, the hunters had brought down a Sambar stag and three small muntjacs. Joseph, for his part, had escaped being gored by a wild boar only by dodging its charge, rolling into a hollow under a log and then shooting it in the head at point-blank range when it tried to go after him. For this feat, the hunters designated him ""master of the pit"" when they roasted it at tonight's feast. It had sounded like an honorable title, but Joseph could guess that they were making him little more than a cook, a traditionally female position.
Still, it was an in and it would probably be research gold.
He was entirely less enthusiastic about what else was coming back with them.
When he and the group of hunters came into the village proper, he saw Marie and the taller, paler form of Tracy coming towards him, having been up on the family terrace transplanting rice seedlings. Due to her fair skin, Tracy was wearing the largest hat she could while her arms and shins had been slathered with sunblock. Marie had already taken hers off.
As they neared him, Marie slowed to a stop, seeing the grim look on Josephs face. Tracy looked at her in confusion, then at Joseph and from his stony face understood that something was wrong. ""What is it?"" Marie asked her boyfriend.
Joseph sighed. ""When the hunters brought us in, were we supposed to be for any kind of important sacrifice?""
""Well, the Rhinoceros Festival is supposed to happen any day now. It's when we recharge the mist that surrounds the village to keep us hidden."" Marie looked around Joseph to where one of the hunters was leading a group of people into the village. They looked like quite a bedraggled bunch, many of them thin and in questionable health. There were also two women who may have been considered beautiful if not for the look in their eyes that they had been through several levels of hell before coming here.
But for all these conditions, they did not look frightened of their tattooed guides.
Noticing where Marie was looking, Joseph offered explanation. ""We met up with them about a mile down the trail. Apparently the government sent up street people as some fresh blood for you guys. And that's not all. Apparently..."" Here, he lowered his voice ""One of the families that were living incognito in Vinh got killed a few nights ago: Father, mother, twelve year old boy... from what I heard it sounded like some sort of animal tore them up inside their apartment... and no blood was spilled.""
Tracy looked like she was going to vomit at the news, while a look of dread overcame Marie, as old legends came forth out of the terrifying mist of childhood nightmare to become shadows in the waking world. ""Is there anything else?"" Marie asked quietly.
Now it was Joseph's turn to look back at the party coming out of the forest, which were now carrying a man by his hands and feet on a pole, his mouth gagged and his eyes blindfolded. ""Only that they also sent you a sacrifice. From what they said, he's a drug-runner, sexual slaver and a general bad example of low-level underworld scum.""
Marie, still in shock over the news of the murders, was perhaps not picking and choosing the words coming out of her mouth. ""Which mean he's gonna taste worse than the fish sauce.""
At these words, both gruesome and almost ridiculous, both her lover and her friend goggled at her.
","VII.

Yet all this was only the prologue of the actual Dunwich horror. Formalities were gone through by bewildered officials, abnormal details were duly kept from press and public, and men were sent to Dunwich and Aylesbury to look up property and notify any who might be heirs of the late Wilbur Whateley. They found the countryside in great agitation, both because of the growing rumblings beneath the domed hills, and because of the unwonted stench and the surging, lapping sounds which came increasingly from the great empty shell formed by Whateley’s boarded-up farmhouse. Earl Sawyer, who tended the horse and cattle during Wilbur’s absence, had developed a woefully acute case of nerves. The officials devised excuses not to enter the noisome boarded place; and were glad to confine their survey of the deceased’s living quarters, the newly mended sheds, to a single visit. They filed a ponderous report at the court-house in Aylesbury, and litigations concerning heirship are said to be still in progress amongst the innumerable Whateleys, decayed and undecayed, of the upper Miskatonic valley.
      An almost interminable manuscript in strange characters, written in a huge ledger and adjudged a sort of diary because of the spacing and the variations in ink and penmanship, presented a baffling puzzle to those who found it on the old bureau which served as its owner’s desk. After a week of debate it was sent to Miskatonic University, together with the deceased’s collection of strange books, for study and possible translation; but even the best linguists soon saw that it was not likely to be unriddled with ease. No trace of the ancient gold with which Wilbur and Old Whateley always paid their debts has yet been discovered.
      It was in the dark of September 9th that the horror broke loose. The hill noises had been very pronounced during the evening, and dogs barked frantically all night. Early risers on the 10th noticed a peculiar stench in the air. About seven o’clock Luther Brown, the hired boy at George Corey’s, between Cold Spring Glen and the village, rushed frenziedly back from his morning trip to Ten-Acre Meadow with the cows. He was almost convulsed with fright as he stumbled into the kitchen; and in the yard outside the no less frightened herd were pawing and lowing pitifully, having followed the boy back in the panic they shared with him. Between gasps Luther tried to stammer out his tale to Mrs. Corey.
      “Up thar in the rud beyont the glen, Mis’ Corey—they’s suthin’ ben thar! It smells like thunder, an’ all the bushes an’ little trees is pushed back from the rud like they’d a haouse ben moved along of it. An’ that ain’t the wust, nuther. They’s prints in the rud, Mis’ Corey—great raound prints as big as barrel-heads, all sunk daown deep like a elephant had ben along, only they’s a sight more nor four feet could make! I looked at one or two afore I run, an’ I see every one was covered with lines spreadin’ aout from one place, like as if big palm-leaf fans—twict or three times as big as any they is—hed of ben paounded daown into the rud. An’ the smell was awful, like what it is araound Wizard Whateley’s ol’ haouse. . . .”
      Here he faltered, and seemed to shiver afresh with the fright that had sent him flying home. Mrs. Corey, unable to extract more information, began telephoning the neighbours; thus starting on its rounds the overture of panic that heralded the major terrors. When she got Sally Sawyer, housekeeper at Seth Bishop’s, the nearest place to Whateley’s, it became her turn to listen instead of transmit; for Sally’s boy Chauncey, who slept poorly, had been up on the hill toward Whateley’s, and had dashed back in terror after one look at the place, and at the pasturage where Mr. Bishop’s cows had been left out all night.
      “Yes, Mis’ Corey,” came Sally’s tremulous voice over the party wire, “Cha’ncey he just come back a-postin’, and couldn’t haff talk fer bein’ scairt! He says Ol’ Whateley’s haouse is all blowed up, with the timbers scattered raound like they’d ben dynamite inside; only the bottom floor ain’t through, but is all covered with a kind o’ tar-like stuff that smells awful an’ drips daown offen the aidges onto the graoun’ whar the side timbers is blown away. An’ they’s awful kinder marks in the yard, tew—great raound marks bigger raound than a hogshead, an’ all sticky with stuff like is on the blowed-up haouse. Cha’ncey he says they leads off into the medders, whar a great swath wider’n a barn is matted daown, an’ all the stun walls tumbled every whichway wherever it goes.
      “An’ he says, says he, Mis’ Corey, as haow he sot to look fer Seth’s caows, frighted ez he was; an’ faound ’em in the upper pasture nigh the Devil’s Hop Yard in an awful shape. Haff on ’em’s clean gone, an’ nigh haff o’ them that’s left is sucked most dry o’ blood, with sores on ’em like they’s ben on Whateley’s cattle ever senct Lavinny’s black brat was born. Seth he’s gone aout naow to look at ’em, though I’ll vaow he wun’t keer ter git very nigh Wizard Whateley’s! Cha’ncey didn’t look keerful ter see whar the big matted-daown swath led arter it leff the pasturage, but he says he thinks it p’inted towards the glen rud to the village.
      “I tell ye, Mis’ Corey, they’s suthin’ abroad as hadn’t orter be abroad, an’ I for one think that black Wilbur Whateley, as come to the bad eend he desarved, is at the bottom of the breedin’ of it. He wa’n’t all human hisself, I allus says to everybody; an’ I think he an’ Ol’ Whateley must a raised suthin’ in that there nailed-up haouse as ain’t even so human as he was. They’s allus ben unseen things araound Dunwich—livin’ things—as ain’t human an’ ain’t good fer human folks.
      “The graoun’ was a-talkin’ lass night, an’ towards mornin’ Cha’ncey he heerd the whippoorwills so laoud in Col’ Spring Glen he couldn’t sleep nun. Then he thought he heerd another faint-like saound over towards Wizard Whateley’s—a kinder rippin’ or tearin’ o’ wood, like some big box er crate was bein’ opened fur off. What with this an’ that, he didn’t git to sleep at all till sunup, an’ no sooner was he up this mornin’, but he’s got to go over to Whateley’s an’ see what’s the matter. He see enough, I tell ye, Mis’ Corey! This dun’t mean no good, an’ I think as all the men-folks ought to git up a party an’ do suthin’. I know suthin’ awful’s abaout, an’ feel my time is nigh, though only Gawd knows jest what it is.
      “Did your Luther take accaount o’ whar them big tracks led tew? No? Wal, Mis’ Corey, ef they was on the glen rud this side o’ the glen, an’ ain’t got to your haouse yet, I calc’late they must go into the glen itself. They would do that. I allus says Col’ Spring Glen ain’t no healthy nor decent place. The whippoorwills an’ fireflies there never did act like they was creaters o’ Gawd, an’ they’s them as says ye kin hear strange things a-rushin’ an’ a-talkin’ in the air daown thar ef ye stand in the right place, atween the rock falls an’ Bear’s Den.”
      By that noon fully three-quarters of the men and boys of Dunwich were trooping over the roads and meadows between the new-made Whateley ruins and Cold Spring Glen, examining in horror the vast, monstrous prints, the maimed Bishop cattle, the strange, noisome wreck of the farmhouse, and the bruised, matted vegetation of the fields and roadsides. Whatever had burst loose upon the world had assuredly gone down into the great sinister ravine; for all the trees on the banks were bent and broken, and a great avenue had been gouged in the precipice-hanging underbrush. It was as though a house, launched by an avalanche, had slid down through the tangled growths of the almost vertical slope. From below no sound came, but only a distant, undefinable foetor; and it is not to be wondered at that the men preferred to stay on the edge and argue, rather than descend and beard the unknown Cyclopean horror in its lair. Three dogs that were with the party had barked furiously at first, but seemed cowed and reluctant when near the glen. Someone telephoned the news to the Aylesbury Transcript; but the editor, accustomed to wild tales from Dunwich, did no more than concoct a humorous paragraph about it; an item soon afterward reproduced by the Associated Press.
      That night everyone went home, and every house and barn was barricaded as stoutly as possible. Needless to say, no cattle were allowed to remain in open pasturage. About two in the morning a frightful stench and the savage barking of the dogs awakened the household at Elmer Frye’s, on the eastern edge of Cold Spring Glen, and all agreed that they could hear a sort of muffled swishing or lapping sound from somewhere outside. Mrs. Frye proposed telephoning the neighbours, and Elmer was about to agree when the noise of splintering wood burst in upon their deliberations. It came, apparently, from the barn; and was quickly followed by a hideous screaming and stamping amongst the cattle. The dogs slavered and crouched close to the feet of the fear-numbed family. Frye lit a lantern through force of habit, but knew it would be death to go out into that black farmyard. The children and the womenfolk whimpered, kept from screaming by some obscure, vestigial instinct of defence which told them their lives depended on silence. At last the noise of the cattle subsided to a pitiful moaning, and a great snapping, crashing, and crackling ensued. The Fryes, huddled together in the sitting-room, did not dare to move until the last echoes died away far down in Cold Spring Glen. Then, amidst the dismal moans from the stable and the daemoniac piping of late whippoorwills in the glen, Selina Frye tottered to the telephone and spread what news she could of the second phase of the horror.
      The next day all the countryside was in a panic; and cowed, uncommunicative groups came and went where the fiendish thing had occurred. Two titan swaths of destruction stretched from the glen to the Frye farmyard, monstrous prints covered the bare patches of ground, and one side of the old red barn had completely caved in. Of the cattle, only a quarter could be found and identified. Some of these were in curious fragments, and all that survived had to be shot. Earl Sawyer suggested that help be asked from Aylesbury or Arkham, but others maintained it would be of no use. Old Zebulon Whateley, of a branch that hovered about half way between soundness and decadence, made darkly wild suggestions about rites that ought to be practiced on the hill-tops. He came of a line where tradition ran strong, and his memories of chantings in the great stone circles were not altogether connected with Wilbur and his grandfather.
      Darkness fell upon a stricken countryside too passive to organise for real defence. In a few cases closely related families would band together and watch in the gloom under one roof; but in general there was only a repetition of the barricading of the night before, and a futile, ineffective gesture of loading muskets and setting pitchforks handily about. Nothing, however, occurred except some hill noises; and when the day came there were many who hoped that the new horror had gone as swiftly as it had come. There were even bold souls who proposed an offensive expedition down in the glen, though they did not venture to set an actual example to the still reluctant majority.
      When night came again the barricading was repeated, though there was less huddling together of families. In the morning both the Frye and the Seth Bishop households reported excitement among the dogs and vague sounds and stenches from afar, while early explorers noted with horror a fresh set of the monstrous tracks in the road skirting Sentinel Hill. As before, the sides of the road shewed a bruising indicative of the blasphemously stupendous bulk of the horror; whilst the conformation of the tracks seemed to argue a passage in two directions, as if the moving mountain had come from Cold Spring Glen and returned to it along the same path. At the base of the hill a thirty-foot swath of crushed shrubbery saplings led steeply upward, and the seekers gasped when they saw that even the most perpendicular places did not deflect the inexorable trail. Whatever the horror was, it could scale a sheer stony cliff of almost complete verticality; and as the investigators climbed around to the hill’s summit by safer routes they saw that the trail ended—or rather, reversed—there.
      It was here that the Whateleys used to build their hellish fires and chant their hellish rituals by the table-like stone on May-Eve and Hallowmass. Now that very stone formed the centre of a vast space thrashed around by the mountainous horror, whilst upon its slightly concave surface was a thick and foetid deposit of the same tarry stickiness observed on the floor of the ruined Whateley farmhouse when the horror escaped. Men looked at one another and muttered. Then they looked down the hill. Apparently the horror had descended by a route much the same as that of its ascent. To speculate was futile. Reason, logic, and normal ideas of motivation stood confounded. Only old Zebulon, who was not with the group, could have done justice to the situation or suggested a plausible explanation.
      Thursday night began much like the others, but it ended less happily. The whippoorwills in the glen had screamed with such unusual persistence that many could not sleep, and about 3 A.M. all the party telephones rang tremulously. Those who took down their receivers heard a fright-mad voice shriek out, “Help, oh, my Gawd! . . .” and some thought a crashing sound followed the breaking off of the exclamation. There was nothing more. No one dared do anything, and no one knew till morning whence the call came. Then those who had heard it called everyone on the line, and found that only the Fryes did not reply. The truth appeared an hour later, when a hastily assembled group of armed men trudged out to the Frye place at the head of the glen. It was horrible, yet hardly a surprise. There were more swaths and monstrous prints, but there was no longer any house. It had caved in like an egg-shell, and amongst the ruins nothing living or dead could be discovered. Only a stench and a tarry stickiness. The Elmer Fryes had been erased from Dunwich.
",False
"Spoonbill Village,
Northernmost Quang Binh Province, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
July 2, 2011
Two young adults walked up the path beside the bronze-casters shop to the barren hillside and the forest edge beyond. ""So, how do you like things so far?"" Marie asked as she and Joseph made their way up the rough-hewn stone steps. Their destination was the house of the village woodcutter and charcoal-burner, a place that also doubled as a furniture workshop and, importantly for this journey, the villages' firearms armory.
""Not that bad. I've been doing domestic work for the past few days but neither Noc nor his wife seems to really be a slave driver. Actually, they feel more like people who understand that they're training a new servant."" Joseph thought on something. ""I'm actually surprised that he and the other hunters allowing me to accompany them. They neither seem to respect me or anyone who would stoop to use a gun, so I wonder why they changed their attitude.""
It was here that Marie began ruminating on something, an old thought that had given her more than her share of bad dreams. ""There are some things worth surrendering pride for, Joseph. Tell me, have you seen those weird scars on the ankles and arms of Nocs wife?""
""You mean those marks that look like Giant Squid wounds? Yes, but what about them?"" Joseph suddenly stopped. ""What are they, anyway?""
Having stopped also, Marie sighed, a sense of foreboding covering her features. ""When I asked that myself, they didn't tell me much more than the stories I'd already heard when I was a kid: legends about ghosts, devils from the mist, 'shadows that drink blood' is what they called them sometimes. But what I got here is that those Shugoran priests that saved my people weren't just going to somewhere. They were running ifrom/i somewhere, someone or something, something that no one is willing to talk any further about."" Marie started forward again at such a pace that her boyfriend had to hurry to catch up.
Getting the feeling that nothing more was going to be answered on that subject for a good while, Joseph changed track. ""How are the others getting on? I've been stuck in the house most of the day and I haven't really had a chance to talk to either the Prof or my classmates.""
Happy to shift from thoughts of chilling horror, Marie chuckled with increasing mirth as she began going back up the trail. ""From what I've heard, Albert's been filming every step in the bronze making process that he can, not to mention all the casting processes and various uses of equipment. The only reason that he hasn't been thrown out yet is because the family's elder patriarch has taken a liking to… well, not just him, but all of you guys, just from the descriptions alone. Your Professor and his assistant have basically locked themselves in the temple: no word out yet, but I assume that they're observing normal operations. As for Tracy…"" Here, Marie began acting a little odd. ""She talks in her sleep, if you didn't know.""
""Really?"" Joseph responded interestedly. Not reacting the way that she had feared, Marie relaxed a little from the paranoia she had been wrangling with.
""Yeah, and the strange thing is that it's in… well, tree-ish. And then there's the tattooing on her back as well."" Marie went on talking, relieved that her fear seemed to have been senseless.
Before he could answer his girlfriends increasingly chatty descriptions, a thought crossed Josephs mind on exactly why such a thing might be mentioned. ""Why would you ask me if I knew…"" Then the realization hit him and he stopped cold. ""Were you thinking that… Tracy and I?""
Marie stopped as well. ""It's not unknown to happen, you know."" Marie answered the implied question almost defensively, as if trying to justify her momentary paranoia. ""Sweethearts get separated and sometimes… one finds companionship elsewhere. Especially with, you know."" Marie tapped the side of her head, indicating the ""visitors"" that had first cursed Joseph Claytons existence during High School.
Joseph snorted in an amused, disparaging way. ""Please don't give them that much credit. I've ignored, rebuked and insulted those jerks so many times that I've made a virtual bloodsport out of it. Besides, if I'd made any moves towards Tracy, Albert would have killed me.""
""Wait, those two… they're together?"" Marie asked, wondering how she'd missed that.
""Intimately so, yes."" This was all Joseph was willing to say, himself not wishing to examine too closely the memory of walking in on his dorm-mate and his girl when they had neglected to put a sock on the doorknob. ""Anyway, as to these voices, I went to the psychology department to see if I could discover just what was causing it.""
Marie waited a heartbeat before plunging into the vital question. ""And what did they say?"" If her boyfriend did indeed have Schizophrenia, then he needed help: drugs to control the symptoms and perhaps therapy to help him conquer whatever dark corners of his psyche were feeding these voices.
If it was something else… then perhaps the local sorcerers might need to be consulted before long.
Joseph sighed. 'Whatever is going on inside my head, the geeks with the scanning equipment are pretty sure that this isn't a case of medical Schizophrenia. They say that the symptoms are all wrong, the voices aren't persuasive enough… and that I don't have any of the telltale injuries on the brain that would suggest medical reasons. And then there was the time they hooked me up to the EEG during one of my 'episodes'."" He paused, wondering just how to proceed but, since he was already experiencing strange things, he decided just to press on. ""The guys swore that, before the equipment shorted out, at least two additional wavelengths were being read beside mine."" With a shrug, Joseph summed up his thoughts. ""Ever since I came here and heard all of the seemingly crazy stories from you and the others… I don't know, but what I've gone through just makes sense now, at least in knowing that it actually can happen.""
Marie smiled. Yes, we definitely need to consult the priests. ""Come on, we've talked enough and you need to get that rifle before you head out.""
And rifles there were, all secured inside a triple locked room in the back corner of the woodcutter's house. They looked like Berthier carbines, French bolt-action repeaters from the First World War… but they were not the only guns present. ""Is that a Hotchkiss?"" Joseph asked in a voice combining bemusement and astonishment. Among the rifles and a few, scattered revolvers sat a machine-gun still on its tripod and looking impossibly well-maintained for being kept in the back room of a house located in a tropical moist forest.
""An M1914 by the looks of it, if the pictures I've seen are at all accurate. There's a story behind it, but I only know that only the oldest elders know it."" Marie replied, having picked up of the Berthier Carbines and handing it to Joseph. The ammunition was kept in a chest under a trapdoor in the main part of the house as a safety measure so they'd have to go back to pick it up. But then she asked the question that she probably should have asked before they left the village proper. ""Speaking of guns, since when did you shoot?""
""There's a gun range in Arkham; Tracy and Albert invited me along for a few lessons before Thanksgiving. She's the one with actual hunting experience and I think he only came along to check out the engineering on the pieces. It wasn't that much fun, but I think what I learned in getting my license will help on this."" Joseph began inspecting the carbine he had been given, finding it oiled and well-maintained as any other firearm in the room. There was a question that had to be asked, however?
Where did they get all these guns?
15 minutes Later
Marie walked up the stairs to her grandparent's house. She was supposed to act as a translator and informant for the expedition, having prior contacts inside the community and being a member first by blood and more recently by initiation. Truth be told, she had a feeling that old Tsan was really acting as gatekeeper in his interactions with Professor Andover while she was playing the part of a more convenient and mobile ambassador, Tsan having never left the temple save by palanquin in almost forty years.
Walking in the door, Marie was unprepared for another surprise. She saw Tracy sitting before the camera as her Grandmother and Aunt watched, waiting to begin filming the day's questions and activities, even making a short introductory statement... but not in English.
""And as soon as the translator gets here, we'll begin the second day of... Hey Marie, you almost scared me there."" Here was an audible note of guilt as Tracy hastily switched from the strange language that she had been using to the carefully modulated, Patsy Cline-accented English she had used since Marie had met her. Marie had heard it, and Tracy knew that she had heard... and Marie knew that Tracy knew.
""Yeah, I've gotten that reaction a few times since I got here."" Marie joked, knowing that humor had the power to break tension. ""So... what language were you speaking in anyway? I'm afraid I didn't recognize anything about it."" Her female elders watched closely, knowing that something had happened but being ignorant of other languages, were unsure of exactly what.
Tracy grinned bitterly. ""I'd be more surprised if you did recognize it. It's... well, it's not really a language per se, but a patois of a couple languages, with Early Modern English, Ohio Valley Shawnee, Coastal Algonquian, some Iroquoian loanwords having to do with ritual and bits of Eastern Siouan."" Tracy let out the deep breath she had been using to list all those languages. She was getting more comfortable now. ""I guess it won't do any harm if I told you, seeing as we're almost in the same boat.""
Tracy beckoned Marie to sit, turning off the camera as she did. ""The kids in my town learn it... well, sort of as a first language; English is really more of a first-and-a-half language for us. We got exposed to it through TV and then when we went to school, but most of our formative years were spent listening to and absorbing the patois around the house. Most of us never really let go of it as a language for our own private conversations.""
Marie reflected on this... but was also noting some of the features on Tracy's face: the high, rounded cheeks, her high-bridged nose, the way that her eyes were less the bright crystal blue of stereotype and more of a dark, cloudy blue resembling ultramarine. ""I hope you don't mind me saying this, Tracy but does your family have any Native American ancestry? I don't mean to pry, but you do kind of have the look.""
Tracy considered this for a moment before giving an affirmative nod. ""My father's paternal grandmother was from the Oklahoma Kiowa. My mother, as far as can be traced, is also about an eighth, this time one-eighth Shawnee, which seems to be the median for Longhouse."" She got an odd, contemplative look on my face. ""That's another one of those things that we try not to mention to outsiders, even though they tend to notice it anyway. Back in the old days, admitting it would have been a quick ticket to using a segregated washroom or worse. And now?"" Tracy shrugged. ""Now it's considered cool, while the inbreeding still makes us look like freaks.""
Marie decided to test something, just for her own sake. ""Albert doesn't seem to think you're a freak."" The more she thought about it, she had more in common with Tracy than first realized. Both of them had lived life right on the edge of themselves and their kin being recognized as something other, something foreign to the perceived natural order of the world. Both of them could sense the threat of possible revelation... and knew what it was to try to trust someone with these secrets.
""Hey, you're talking about a guy whose family has worked for alien mushroom bugs for the last hundred years. A bit of mild inbreeding is probably the most normal thing Al's ever experienced."" Here there was definitely affection to her voice, a cue that no matter what other strangeness they were involved in, there was a loving relationship between the two.
At this thought Marie smiled, thanking the ancestors for a little bit of normalcy in this year-long cavalcade of oddities that she had flung herself into. Then another question sprang forth. ""Did you know about the whole alien thing when you guys were at Miskatonic?""
Tracy shook her head. ""No, but then again, he was always kinda spacey."" Marie couldn't help but giggle at this bad pun. Tracy went on, the affection still in her voice. ""Seriously, the thing about Miskatonic is that, after awhile, you begin getting the feeling that almost everyone else is holding something close to their chest, thinking each word over before saying it. It's then that you realize that... you're not alone, that almost everyone else is as paranoid as you are, having something to hide."" She looked towards Marie. ""Everyone except for your Joseph, that is. The only thing strange about him that I noticed was that romance was nowhere on his radar at all.""
""You'd be surprised, actually."" Marie answered cryptically. Before Tracy could ask, she turned back the camera back on, signaling the beginning of the interview session.
That evening
Sweaty, hot, dirty and exhausted, Joseph Clayton exited the forest with Noc and the other hunters. Between all of them, the hunters had brought down a Sambar stag and three small muntjacs. Joseph, for his part, had escaped being gored by a wild boar only by dodging its charge, rolling into a hollow under a log and then shooting it in the head at point-blank range when it tried to go after him. For this feat, the hunters designated him ""master of the pit"" when they roasted it at tonight's feast. It had sounded like an honorable title, but Joseph could guess that they were making him little more than a cook, a traditionally female position.
Still, it was an in and it would probably be research gold.
He was entirely less enthusiastic about what else was coming back with them.
When he and the group of hunters came into the village proper, he saw Marie and the taller, paler form of Tracy coming towards him, having been up on the family terrace transplanting rice seedlings. Due to her fair skin, Tracy was wearing the largest hat she could while her arms and shins had been slathered with sunblock. Marie had already taken hers off.
As they neared him, Marie slowed to a stop, seeing the grim look on Josephs face. Tracy looked at her in confusion, then at Joseph and from his stony face understood that something was wrong. ""What is it?"" Marie asked her boyfriend.
Joseph sighed. ""When the hunters brought us in, were we supposed to be for any kind of important sacrifice?""
""Well, the Rhinoceros Festival is supposed to happen any day now. It's when we recharge the mist that surrounds the village to keep us hidden."" Marie looked around Joseph to where one of the hunters was leading a group of people into the village. They looked like quite a bedraggled bunch, many of them thin and in questionable health. There were also two women who may have been considered beautiful if not for the look in their eyes that they had been through several levels of hell before coming here.
But for all these conditions, they did not look frightened of their tattooed guides.
Noticing where Marie was looking, Joseph offered explanation. ""We met up with them about a mile down the trail. Apparently the government sent up street people as some fresh blood for you guys. And that's not all. Apparently..."" Here, he lowered his voice ""One of the families that were living incognito in Vinh got killed a few nights ago: Father, mother, twelve year old boy... from what I heard it sounded like some sort of animal tore them up inside their apartment... and no blood was spilled.""
Tracy looked like she was going to vomit at the news, while a look of dread overcame Marie, as old legends came forth out of the terrifying mist of childhood nightmare to become shadows in the waking world. ""Is there anything else?"" Marie asked quietly.
Now it was Joseph's turn to look back at the party coming out of the forest, which were now carrying a man by his hands and feet on a pole, his mouth gagged and his eyes blindfolded. ""Only that they also sent you a sacrifice. From what they said, he's a drug-runner, sexual slaver and a general bad example of low-level underworld scum.""
Marie, still in shock over the news of the murders, was perhaps not picking and choosing the words coming out of her mouth. ""Which mean he's gonna taste worse than the fish sauce.""
At these words, both gruesome and almost ridiculous, both her lover and her friend goggled at her.
","The Shoggoth
I had met Professor Kindle during my explorations in my youth in Berlin at a convention. His theories in such subjects as physics and anatomy were peculiar to me-and to his chagrin-his colleges as well.
""Well, my boy,"" He said upon my asking why everyone seemed to mock him. ""These fools do not wish to see what's so plain that if it were a snake, it would most assuredly bite them.""
Upon that introduction, he had began to tell me how certain miniscule particles held the universe together. What he said went beyond dark matter and such unexplained universal secrets that it was almost hard to believe. But I can tell you, he was convincing. A fact that will later cause me to rethink my pursuits.
""You see, my boy, Yog-Sothoth particles and Azathoth particles exist in sub matter, in a way that can go undetected even more so than the elusive dark matter for it obviously does not refract or twist light in any such matter like anything else in space.""
""Then how does one know of their existence?"" I asked, and for the fourth time: ""And why those names?""
It was odd to me to think that such a thing would exist that does not interact upon its surroundings. And what was queer was that the names did not follow the standard scientific tradition of Latin roots; instead appearing to be from some alien language.
He smiled. ""Come, my boy, I shall show you."" He draped an arm over my shoulders. ""And as for the names; they are from the Necromicon. A book I doubt you have read, but the names fit, believe me. For you see, Azathoth represents chaos, and Yog-Sothoth order; it's like the Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang, a philosophy I find as very true.""
Kindle took me to his hotel room where he produced from a brown briefcase, a telescope. It looked like any telescope that one could easily obtain from any store for cheap. Yet, something was off. A minor defect, yet hardly noticeable except in the right light. There was an angle of odd proportions etched out of glass and sealed within between the two lenses.
""Look, look."" He said excitedly.
I did look. And what I saw amazed me more than frightened me; as many introductory things do. What appeared to be bubbles and globular orbs of wiggling ganglia-like tentacles were stuck together. I took my eye away.
""And how do you know it keeps the universe together?""
""It goes in a straight line across the sky."" He said. ""Granted, it's mere speculation, but I believe it to be correct, for, how many things are a perfect line in a vacuum?""
I was unable to disagree.
After that, our interactions consisted of an odd letter or two. I became a physician and he became a recluse due to his latest published work that was about his Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth particles. He would only ever briefly say what he was working on. I guess he thought me a fellow conspirator, a rebel to the newly founded scientific idea; anything out of the norm is false, to the point he sent me a battered copy of the Necromicon.
I read the book, horrified at what I was reading, that I am still surprised that I did not throw it to the floor and burn it. But the next letter just asked a question:
Did you read it?
I replied in the positive and the next response was an invitation to his little house in the sparsely populated hills of New England. I will not tell of my travels to his one story house that surprised me that such a man would live there.
It was a dilapidated house that looked like time and hillbilly inhabitants before him had a wild party, trashing it beyond any sense of repairing it. When I knocked on the door and my friend opened it, I was greeted with the sight of the inside, which appeared only slightly better than the outside. The wallpaper was peeling, everything was dusty, and the lights were working, yet did not seem to help alleviate the gloom that seemed to settle upon the house in a death grip.
""Ah, it's so good to see you, my boy."" He greeted me, allowing me into the house. ""Come, please sit. I have some tea prepared for your arrival.""
I take the offered liquid and he sits on the armchair across from me. He takes a sip of his tea before setting it down upon the arm of his chair, his finger never leaving the handle.
""I invited you here to see my newest discovery."" He said, an intense look aimed at me. Like an excited madman holding a gun.
""What is it?""
""Shoggoths,""
He said that one word, never explaining anything, letting the dreadful word sink into my mind.
""Granted,"" He took another sip. ""I didn't discover them. But there was something that eluded me. A phrase; anyone could over look it, but I didn't. Tekeli-li."" He almost mimicked a robot.
My face turned pale at that word. Instinctual fear ingrown and nearly forgotten, left burrowed into a level of subconscious was unearthed and made me want to run faster than I have ever ran in my entire life. I knew I should have listened to it, but curiosity had gotten the better of me.
""The purpose behind it,"" Kindle continued as if there were no tension in the air. ""Eluded me. Until I started thinking in terms of wolves. They're very much alike, you know. Sleek killing machines with a high intelligence(though to-say-Cthulhu or Azathoth, they are stupid).""
With an interesting way to communicate."" He smirked. ""I was proven correct by mere chance. I spied a shoggoth all alone. It cried out 'Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!' Another cried out in response, but this one angrier. The first spoke out and went about doing chores.""
""That's interesting, Kindle."" I said. ""But how does this have to do with wolves? They howl to alert members of their pack of their location.""
""Yes,"" Kindle said matter-of-factly. ""But wolves also have growls and other vocal ways of communicating. Shoggoths only have the one word. And to prove it, I took two Shoggoths and placed them in something similar to a rat maze.""
""But how did you catch them?""
""Doesn't matter."" He snapped. ""Now let me finish, my friend.""
""One called out and the other started to move and call out as well. This continued until they found each other. It wasn't until I caught more that I made the most startling information about them.""
My body trembles. I can only imagine what else he could have discovered about those loathsome creatures.
""I had caught six or seven of them. I crammed them into this one room below this house. It was getting cramped in there for them, so these two decided to fuse together. And it hit me! They're fragments! Their hive mind-like behavior, their similarities. Everything!""
""Come, I'll show you.""
""No,"" I snap, standing. ""I'd rather not.""
Kindle becomes angered by my outburst. He grabs my arm tightly and tries to drag me towards the cellar, but I resist.
""Come, come, there is nothing to be afraid of.""
""There is."" I said. ""Shoggoths…""
I was cut off by a loud thunder from under our feet. Kindle pales as it happens again. He breaks from my arm and tries to run into the kitchen but he never makes it. A long, large, slimy black tentacle rises from the hole it made in the floor. I notice in sick fascination that a black, tar-like substance drips off of it. It darts towards the sound of Kindle's running feet and wraps around his leg, forcing him to land, face first, onto the floor.
I watch, dumb, as it drags my friend towards the hole. Kindle screams and begs me to help him, but I don't move. Fear plagues me, cementing my feet to the wood floor. It is not until his struggling form sinks into the hole that my feet can work again and I dart out of the house.
Tekeli-li!(1)
AAAhhhhhhhh!(1)

1) These were larger(font 22), but the site messes with me!
Mantineus-The ending is ambiguous by default. You see, our hero makes it out. What you see is The Shuggoth and Kindle's dying scream.
",False
"V. A Nightmare and a Cataclysm

1.

And now swiftly followed that hideous experience which has left its indelible mark of fear on the soul of Marinus Bicknell Willett, and has added a decade to the visible age of one whose youth was even then far behind. Dr. Willett had conferred at length with Mr. Ward, and had come to an agreement with him on several points which both felt the alienists would ridicule. There was, they conceded, a terrible movement alive in the world, whose direct connexion with a necromancy even older than the Salem witchcraft could not be doubted. That at least two living men - and one other of whom they dared not think - were in absolute possession of minds or personalities which had functioned as early as 1690 or before was likewise almost unassailably proved even in the face of all known natural laws. What these horrible creatures - and Charles Ward as well - were doing or trying to do seemed fairly clear from their letters and from every bit of light both old and new which had filtered in upon the case. They were robbing the tombs of all the ages, including those of the world's wisest and greatest men, in the hope of recovering from the bygone ashes some vestige of the consciousness and lore which had once animated and informed them.
      A hideous traffick was going on among these nightmare ghouls, whereby illustrious bones were bartered with the calm calculativeness of schoolboys swapping books; and from what was extorted from this centuried dust there was anticipated a power and a wisdom beyond anything which the cosmos had ever seen concentrated in one man or group. They had found unholy ways to keep their brains alive, either in the same body or different bodies; and had evidently achieved a way of tapping the consciousness of the dead whom they gathered together. There had, it seems, been some truth in chimerical old Borellus when he wrote of preparing from even the most antique remains certain ""Essential Saltes"" from which the shade of a long-dead living thing might be raised up. There was a formula for evoking such a shade, and another for putting it down; and it had now been so perfected that it could be taught successfully. One must be careful about evocations, for the markers of old graves are not always accurate.
      Willett and Mr. Ward shivered as they passed from conclusion to conclusion. Things - presences or voices of some sort - could be drawn down from unknown places as well as from the grave, and in this process also one must be careful. Joseph Curwen had indubitably evoked many forbidden things, and as for Charles - what might one think of him? What forces ""outside the spheres"" had reached him from Joseph Curwen's day and turned his mind on forgotten things? He had been led to find certain directions, and he had used them. He had talked with the man of horror in Prague and stayed long with the creature in the mountains of Transylvania. And he must have found the grave of Joseph Curwen at last. That newspaper item and what his mother had heard in the night were too significant to overlook. Then he had summoned something, and it must have come. That mighty voice aloft on Good Friday, and those different tones in the locked attic laboratory. What were they like, with their depth and hollowness? Was there not here some awful foreshadowing of the dreaded stranger Dr. Allen with his spectral bass? Yes, that was what Mr. Ward had felt with vague horror in his single talk with the man - if man it were - over the telephone!
      What hellish consciousness or voice, what morbid shade or presence, had come to answer Charles Ward's secret rites behind that locked door? Those voices heard in argument - ""must have it red for three months"" - Good God! Was not that just before the vampirism broke out? The rifling of Ezra Weeden's ancient grave, and the cries later at Pawtuxet - whose mind had planned the vengeance and rediscovered the shunned seat of elder blasphemies? And then the bungalow and the bearded stranger, and the gossip, and the fear. The final madness of Charles neither father nor doctor could attempt to explain, but they did feel sure that the mind of Joseph Curwen had come to earth again and was following its ancient morbidities. Was daemoniac possession in truth a possibility? Allen had something to do with it, and the detectives must find out more about one whose existence menaced the young man's life. In the meantime, since the existence of some vast crypt beneath the bungalow seemed virtually beyond dispute, some effort must be made to find it. Willett and Mr. Ward, conscious of the sceptical attitude of the alienists, resolved during their final conference to undertake a joint secret exploration of unparalleled thoroughness; and agreed to meet at the bungalow on the following morning with valises and with certain tools and accessories suited to architectural search and underground exploration.
      The morning of April 6th dawned clear, and both explorers were at the bungalow by ten o'clock. Mr. Ward had the key, and an entry and cursory survey were made. From the disordered condition of Dr. Allen's room it was obvious that the detectives had been there before, and the later searchers hoped that they had found some clue which might prove of value. Of course the main business lay in the cellar; so thither they descended without much delay, again making the circuit which each had vainly made before in the presence of the mad young owner. For a time everything seemed baffling, each inch of the earthen floor and stone walls having so solid and innocuous an aspect that the thought of a yawning aperture was scarcely to be entertained. Willett reflected that since the original cellar was dug without knowledge of any catacombs beneath, the beginning of the passage would represent the strictly modern delving of young Ward and his associates, where they had probed for the ancient vaults whose rumour could have reached them by no wholesome means.
      The doctor tried to put himself in Charles's place to see how a delver would be likely to start, but could not gain much inspiration from this method. Then he decided on elimination as a policy, and went carefully over the whole subterranean surface both vertical and horizontal, trying to account for every inch separately. He was soon substantially narrowed down, and at last had nothing left but the small platform before the washtubs, which he had tried once before in vain. Now experimenting in every possible way, and exerting a double strength, he finally found that the top did indeed turn and slide horizontally on a corner pivot. Beneath it lay a trim concrete surface with an iron manhole, to which Mr. Ward at once rushed with excited zeal. The cover was not hard to lift, and the father had quite removed it when Willett noticed the queerness of his aspect. He was swaying and nodding dizzily, and in the gust of noxious air which swept up from the black pit beneath the doctor soon recognised ample cause.
      In a moment Dr. Willett had his fainting companion on the floor above and was reviving him with cold water. Mr. Ward responded feebly, but it could be seen that the mephitic blast from the crypt had in some way gravely sickened him. Wishing to take no chances, Willett hastened out to Broad Street for a taxicab and had soon dispatched the sufferer home despite his weak-voiced protests; after which he produced an electric torch, covered his nostrils with a band of sterile gauze, and descended once more to peer into the new-found depths. The foul air had now slightly abated, and Willett was able to send a beam of light down the Stygian hole. For about ten feet, he saw, it was a sheer cylindrical drop with concrete walls and an iron ladder; after which the hole appeared to strike a flight of old stone steps which must originally have emerged to earth somewhat southwest of the present building.

2.

      Willett freely admits that for a moment the memory of the old Curwen legends kept him from climbing down alone into that malodorous gulf. He could not help thinking of what Luke Fenner had reported on that last monstrous night. Then duty asserted itself and he made the plunge, carrying a great valise for the removal of whatever papers might prove of supreme importance. Slowly, as befitted one of his years, he descended the ladder and reached the slimy steps below. This was ancient masonry, his torch told him; and upon the dripping walls he saw the unwholesome moss of centuries. Down, down, ran the steps; not spirally, but in three abrupt turns; and with such narrowness that two men could have passed only with difficulty. He had counted about thirty when a sound reached him very faintly; and after that he did not feel disposed to count any more.
      It was a godless sound; one of those low-keyed, insidious outrages of Nature which are not meant to be. To call it a dull wail, a doom-dragged whine, or a hopeless howl of chorused anguish and stricken flesh without mind would be to miss its most quintessential loathsomeness and soul-sickening overtones. Was it for this that Ward had seemed to listen on that day he was removed? It was the most shocking thing that Willett had ever heard, and it continued from no determinate point as the doctor reached the bottom of the steps and cast his torchlight around on lofty corridor walls surmounted by Cyclopean vaulting and pierced by numberless black archways. The hall in which he stood was perhaps fourteen feet high to the middle of the vaulting and ten or twelve feet broad. Its pavement was of large chipped flagstones, and its walls and roof were of dressed masonry. Its length he could not imagine, for it stretched ahead indefinitely into the blackness. Of the archways, some had doors of the old six-panelled colonial type, whilst others had none.
      Overcoming the dread induced by the smell and the howling, Willett began to explore these archways one by one; finding beyond them rooms with groined stone ceilings, each of medium size and apparently of bizarre uses. Most of them had fireplaces, the upper courses of whose chimneys would have formed an interesting study in engineering. Never before or since had he seen such instruments or suggestions of instruments as here loomed up on every hand through the burying dust and cobwebs of a century and a half, in many cases evidently shattered as if by the ancient raiders. For many of the chambers seemed wholly untrodden by modern feet, and must have represented the earliest and most obsolete phases of Joseph Curwen's experimentation. Finally there came a room of obvious modernity, or at least of recent occupancy. There were oil heaters, bookshelves and tables, chairs and cabinets, and a desk piled high with papers of varying antiquity and contemporaneousness. Candlesticks and oil lamps stood about in several places; and finding a match-safe handy, Willett lighted such as were ready for use.
      In the fuller gleam it appeared that this apartment was nothing less than the latest study or library of Charles Ward. Of the books the doctor had seen many before, and a good part of the furniture had plainly come from the Prospect Street mansion. Here and there was a piece well known to Willett, and the sense of familiarity became so great that he half forgot the noisomeness and the wailing, both of which were plainer here than they had been at the foot of the steps. His first duty, as planned long ahead, was to find and seize any papers which might seem of vital importance; especially those portentous documents found by Charles so long ago behind the picture in Olney Court. As he searched he perceived how stupendous a task the final unravelling would be; for file on file was stuffed with papers in curious hands and bearing curious designs, so that months or even years might be needed for a thorough deciphering and editing. Once he found large packets of letters with Prague and Rakus postmarks, and in writing clearly recognisable as Orne's and Hutchinson's; all of which he took with him as part of the bundle to be removed in his valise.
      At last, in a locked mahogany cabinet once gracing the Ward home, Willett found the batch of old Curwen papers; recognising them from the reluctant glimpse Charles had granted him so many years ago. The youth had evidently kept them together very much as they had been when first he found them, since all the titles recalled by the workmen were present except the papers addressed to Orne and Hutchinson, and the cipher with its key. Willett placed the entire lot in his valise and continued his examination of the files. Since young Ward's immediate condition was the greatest matter at stake, the closest searching was done among the most obviously recent matter; and in this abundance of contemporary manuscript one very baffling oddity was noted. The oddity was the slight amount in Charles's normal writing, which indeed included nothing more recent than two months before. On the other hand, there were literally reams of symbols and formulae, historical notes and philosophical comment, in a crabbed penmanship absolutely identical with the ancient script of Joseph Curwen, though of undeniably modern dating. Plainly, a part of the latter-day programme had been a sedulous imitation of the old wizard's writing, which Charles seemed to have carried to a marvellous state of perfection. Of any third hand which might have been Allen's there was not a trace. If he had indeed come to be the leader, he must have forced young Ward to act as his amanuensis.
      In this new material one mystic formula, or rather pair of formulae, recurred so often that Willett had it by heart before he had half finished his quest. It consisted of two parallel columns, the left-hand one surmounted by the archaic symbol called ""Dragon's Head"" and used in almanacks to indicate the ascending node, and the right-hand one headed by a corresponding sign of ""Dragon's Tail"" or descending node. The appearance of the whole was something like this, and almost unconsciously the doctor realised that the second half was no more than the first written syllabically backward with the exception of the final monosyllables and of the odd name Yog-Sothoth, which he had come to recognise under various spellings from other things he had seen in connexion with this horrible matter. The formulae were as follows - exactly so, as Willett is abundantly able to testify - and the first one struck an odd note of uncomfortable latent memory in his brain, which he recognised later when reviewing the events of that horrible Good Friday of the previous year.


Y'AI 'NG'NGAH,
YOG-SOTHOTH
H'EE - L'GEB
F'AI THRODOG
UAAAH
      	

OGTHROD AI'F
GEB'L - EE'H
YOG-SOTHOTH
'NGAH'NG AI'Y
ZHRO

So haunting were these formulae, and so frequently did he come upon them, that before the doctor knew it he was repeating them under his breath. Eventually, however, he felt he had secured all the papers he could digest to advantage for the present; hence resolved to examine no more till he could bring the sceptical alienists en masse for an ampler and more systematic raid. He had still to find the hidden laboratory, so leaving his valise in the lighted room he emerged again into the black noisome corridor whose vaulting echoed ceaselessly with that dull and hideous whine.
      The next few rooms he tried were all abandoned, or filled only with crumbling boxes and ominous-looking leaden coffins; but impressed him deeply with the magnitude of Joseph Curwen's original operations. He thought of the slaves and seamen who had disappeared, of the graves which had been violated in every part of the world, and of what that final raiding party must have seen; and then he decided it was better not to think any more. Once a great stone staircase mounted at his right, and he deduced that this must have reached to one of the Curwen outbuildings - perhaps the famous stone edifice with the high slit-like windows - provided the steps he had descended had led from the steep-roofed farmhouse. Suddenly the walls seemed to fall away ahead, and the stench and the wailing grew stronger. Willett saw that he had come upon a vast open space, so great that his torchlight would not carry across it; and as he advanced he encountered occasional stout pillars supporting the arches of the roof.
      After a time he reached a circle of pillars grouped like the monoliths of Stonehenge, with a large carved altar on a base of three steps in the centre; and so curious were the carvings on that altar that he approached to study them with his electric light. But when he saw what they were he shrank away shuddering, and did not stop to investigate the dark stains which discoloured the upper surface and had spread down the sides in occasional thin lines. Instead, he found the distant wall and traced it as it swept round in a gigantic circle perforated by occasional black doorways and indented by a myriad of shallow cells with iron gratings and wrist and ankle bonds on chains fastened to the stone of the concave rear masonry. These cells were empty, but still the horrible odour and the dismal moaning continued, more insistent now than ever, and seemingly varied at times by a sort of slippery thumping.

3.

      From that frightful smell and that uncanny noise Willett's attention could no longer be diverted. Both were plainer and more hideous in the great pillared hall than anywhere else, and carried a vague impression of being far below, even in this dark nether world of subterrene mystery. Before trying any of the black archways for steps leading further down, the doctor cast his beam of light about the stone-flagged floor. It was very loosely paved, and at irregular intervals there would occur a slab curiously pierced by small holes in no definite arrangement, while at one point there lay a very long ladder carelessly flung down. To this ladder, singularly enough, appeared to cling a particularly large amount of the frightful odour which encompassed everything. As he walked slowly about it suddenly occurred to Willett that both the noise and the odour seemed strongest directly above the oddly pierced slabs, as if they might be crude trap-doors leading down to some still deeper region of horror. Kneeling by one, he worked at it with his hands, and found that with extreme difficulty he could budge it. At his touch the moaning beneath ascended to a louder key, and only with vast trepidation did he persevere in the lifting of the heavy stone. A stench unnamable now rose up from below, and the doctor's head reeled dizzily as he laid back the slab and turned his torch upon the exposed square yard of gaping blackness.
      If he had expected a flight of steps to some wide gulf of ultimate abomination, Willett was destined to be disappointed; for amidst that foetor and cracked whining he discerned only the brick-faced top of a cylindrical well perhaps a yard and a half in diameter and devoid of any ladder or other means of descent. As the light shone down, the wailing changed suddenly to a series of horrible yelps; in conjunction with which there came again that sound of blind, futile scrambling and slippery thumping. The explorer trembled, unwilling even to imagine what noxious thing might be lurking in that abyss, but in a moment mustered up the courage to peer over the rough-hewn brink; lying at full length and holding the torch downward at arm's length to see what might lie below. For a second he could distinguish nothing but the slimy, moss-grown brick walls sinking illimitably into that half-tangible miasma of murk and foulness and anguished frenzy; and then he saw that something dark was leaping clumsily and frantically up and down at the bottom of the narrow shaft, which must have been from twenty to twenty-five feet below the stone floor where he lay. The torch shook in his hand, but he looked again to see what manner of living creature might be immured there in the darkness of that unnatural well; left starving by young Ward through all the long month since the doctors had taken him away, and clearly only one of a vast number prisoned in the kindred wells whose pierced stone covers so thickly studded in the floor of the great vaulted cavern. Whatever the things were, they could not lie down in their cramped spaces; but must have crouched and whined and waited and feebly leaped all those hideous weeks since their master had abandoned them unheeded.
      But Marinus Bicknell Willett was sorry that he looked again; for surgeon and veteran of the dissecting-room though he was, he has not been the same since. It is hard to explain just how a single sight of a tangible object with measureable dimensions could so shake and change a man; and we may only say that there is about certain outlines and entities a power of symbolism and suggestion which acts frightfully on a sensitive thinker's perspective and whispers terrible hints of obscure cosmic relationships and unnamable realities behind the protective illusions of common vision. In that second look Willett saw such an outline or entity, for during the next few instants he was undoubtedly as stark mad as any inmate of Dr. Waite's private hospital. He dropped the electric torch from a hand drained of muscular power or nervous cošrdination, nor heeded the sound of crunching teeth which told of its fate at the bottom of the pit. He screamed and screamed and screamed in a voice whose falsetto panic no acquaintance of his would ever have recognised; and though he could not rise to his feet he crawled and rolled desperately away over the damp pavement where dozens of Tartarean wells poured forth their exhausted whining and yelping to answer his own insane cries. He tore his hands on the rough, loose stones, and many times bruised his head against the frequent pillars, but still he kept on. Then at last he slowly came to himself in the utter blackness and stench, and stopped his ears against the droning wail into which the burst of yelping had subsided. He was drenched with perspiration and without means of producing a light; stricken and unnerved in the abysmal blackness and horror, and crushed with a memory he never could efface. Beneath him dozens of those things still lived, and from one of the shafts the cover was removed. He knew that what he had seen could never climb up the slippery walls, yet shuddered at the thought that some obscure foot-hold might exist.
      What the thing was, he would never tell. It was like some of the carvings on the hellish altar, but it was alive. Nature had never made it in this form, for it was too palpably unfinished. The deficiencies were of the most surprising sort, and the abnormalities of proportion could not be described. Willett consents only to say that this type of thing must have represented entities which Ward called up from imperfect salts, and which he kept for servile or ritualistic purposes. If it had not had a certain significance, its image would not have been carved on that damnable stone. It was not the worst thing depicted on that stone - but Willett never opened the other pits. At the time, the first connected idea in his mind was an idle paragraph from some of the old Curwen data he had digested long before; a phrase used by Simon or Jedediah Orne in that portentous confiscated letter to the bygone sorcerer: ""Certainely, there was Noth'g butt ye liveliest Awfulness in that which H. rais'd upp from What he cou'd gather onlie a part of.""
      Then, horribly supplementing rather than displacing this image, there came a recollection of those ancient lingering rumours anent the burned, twisted thing found in the fields a week after the Curwen raid. Charles Ward had once told the doctor what old Slocum said of that object; that it was neither thoroughly human, nor wholly allied to any animal which Pawtuxet folk had ever seen or read about.
      These words hummed in the doctor's mind as he rocked to and fro, squatting on the nitrous stone floor. He tried to drive them out, and repeated the Lord's Prayer to himself; eventually trailing off into a mnemonic hodge-podge like the modernistic Waste Land of Mr. T. S. Eliot and finally reverting to the oft-repeated dual formula he had lately found in Ward's underground library: ""Y'ai 'ng'ngah, Yog-Sothoth"", and so on till the final underlined ""Zhro"". It seemed to soothe him, and he staggered to his feet after a time; lamenting bitterly his fright-lost torch and looking wildly about for any gleam of light in the clutching inkiness of the chilly air. Think he would not; but he strained his eyes in every direction for some faint glint or reflection of the bright illumination he had left in the library. After a while he thought he detected a suspicion of a glow infinitely far away, and toward this he crawled in agonised caution on hands and knees amidst the stench and howling, always feeling ahead lest he collide with the numerous great pillars or stumble into the abominable pit he had uncovered.
      Once his shaking fingers touched something which he knew must be the steps leading to the hellish altar, and from this spot he recoiled in loathing. At another time he encountered the pierced slab he had removed, and here his caution became almost pitiful. But he did not come upon the dread aperture after all, nor did anything issue from that aperture to detain him. What had been down there made no sound nor stir. Evidently its crunching of the fallen electric torch had not been good for it. Each time Willett's fingers felt a perforated slab he trembled. His passage over it would sometimes increase the groaning below, but generally it would produce no effect at all, since he moved very noiselessly. Several times during his progress the glow ahead diminished perceptibly, and he realised that the various candles and lamps he had left must be expiring one by one. The thought of being lost in utter darkness without matches amidst this underground world of nightmare labyrinths impelled him to rise to his feet and run, which he could safely do now that he had passed the open pit; for he knew that once the light failed, his only hope of rescue and survival would lie in whatever relief party Mr. Ward might send after missing him for a sufficient period. Presently, however, he emerged from the open space into the narrower corridor and definitely located the glow as coming from a door on his right. In a moment he had reached it and was standing once more in young Ward's secret library, trembling with relief, and watching the sputterings of that last lamp which had brought him to safety.

4.

      In another moment he was hastily filling the burned-out lamps from an oil supply he had previously noticed, and when the room was bright again he looked about to see if he might find a lantern for further exploration. For racked though he was with horror, his sense of grim purpose was still uppermost; and he was firmly determined to leave no stone unturned in his search for the hideous facts behind Charles Ward's bizarre madness. Failing to find a lantern, he chose the smallest of the lamps to carry; also filling his pockets with candles and matches, and taking with him a gallon can of oil, which he proposed to keep for reserve use in whatever hidden laboratory he might uncover beyond the terrible open space with its unclean altar and nameless covered wells. To traverse that space again would require his utmost fortitude, but he knew it must be done. Fortunately neither the frightful altar nor the opened shaft was near the vast cell-indented wall which bounded the cavern area, and whose black mysterious archways would form the next goals of a logical search.
      So Willett went back to that great pillared hall of stench and anguished howling; turning down his lamp to avoid any distant glimpse of the hellish altar, or of the uncovered pit with the pierced stone slab beside it. Most of the black doorways led merely to small chambers, some vacant and some evidently used as storerooms; and in several of the latter he saw some very curious accumulations of various objects. One was packed with rotting and dust-draped bales of spare clothing, and the explorer thrilled when he saw that it was unmistakably the clothing of a century and a half before. In another room he found numerous odds and ends of modern clothing, as if gradual provisions were being made to equip a large body of men. But what he disliked most of all were the huge copper vats which occasionally appeared; these, and the sinister incrustations upon them. He liked them even less than the weirdly figured leaden bowls whose rims retained such obnoxious deposits and around which clung repellent odours perceptible above even the general noisomeness of the crypt. When he had completed about half the entire circuit of the wall he found another corridor like that from which he had come, and out of which many doors opened. This he proceeded to investigate; and after entering three rooms of medium size and of no significant contents, he came at last to a large oblong apartment whose business-like tanks and tables, furnaces and modern instruments, occasional books and endless shelves of jars and bottles proclaimed it indeed the long-sought laboratory of Charles Ward - and no doubt of old Joseph Curwen before him.
      After lighting the three lamps which he found filled and ready, Dr. Willett examined the place and all its appurtenances with the keenest interest; noting from the relative quantities of various reagents on the shelves that young Ward's dominant concern must have been with some branch of organic chemistry. On the whole, little could be learned from the scientific ensemble, which included a gruesome-looking dissecting table; so that the room was really rather a disappointment. Among the books was a tattered old copy of Borellus in black-letter, and it was weirdly interesting to note that Ward had underlined the same passage whose marking had so perturbed good Mr. Merritt at Curwen's farmhouse more than a century and a half before. That older copy, of course, must have perished along with the rest of Curwen's occult library in the final raid. Three archways opened off the laboratory, and these the doctor proceeded to sample in turn. From his cursory survey he saw that two led merely to small storerooms; but these he canvassed with care, remarking the piles of coffins in various stages of damage and shuddering violently at two or three of the few coffin-plates he could decipher. There was much clothing also stored in these rooms, and several new and tightly nailed boxes which he did not stop to investigate. Most interesting of all, perhaps, were some odd bits which he judged to be fragments of old Joseph Curwen's laboratory appliances. These had suffered damage at the hands of the raiders, but were still partly recognisable as the chemical paraphernalia of the Georgian period.
      The third archway led to a very sizeable chamber entirely lined with shelves and having in the centre a table bearing two lamps. These lamps Willett lighted, and in their brilliant glow studied the endless shelving which surrounded him. Some of the upper levels were wholly vacant, but most of the space was filled with small odd-looking leaden jars of two general types; one tall and without handles like a Grecian lekythos or oil-jug, and the other with a single handle and proportioned like a Phaleron jug. All had metal stoppers, and were covered with peculiar-looking symbols moulded in low relief. In a moment the doctor noticed that these jugs were classified with great rigidity; all the lekythoi being on one side of the room with a large wooden sign reading ""Custodes"" above them, and all the Phalerons on the other, correspondingly labelled with a sign reading ""Materia"". Each of the jars or jugs, except some on the upper shelves that turned out to be vacant, bore a cardboard tag with a number apparently referring to a catalogue; and Willett resolved to look for the latter presently. For the moment, however, he was more interested in the nature of the array as a whole; and experimentally opened several of the lekythoi and Phalerons at random with a view to a rough generalisation. The result was invariable. Both types of jar contained a small quantity of a single kind of substance; a fine dusty powder of very light weight and of many shades of dull, neutral colour. To the colours which formed the only point of variation there was no apparent method of disposal; and no distinction between what occurred in the lekythoi and what occurred in the Phalerons. A bluish-grey powder might be by the side of a pinkish-white one, and any one in a Phaleron might have its exact counterpart in a lekythos. The most individual feature about the powders was their non-adhesiveness. Willett would pour one into his hand, and upon returning it to its jug would find that no residue whatever remained on its palm.
      The meaning of the two signs puzzled him, and he wondered why this battery of chemicals was separated so radically from those in glass jars on the shelves of the laboratory proper. ""Custodes"", ""Materia""; that was the Latin for ""Guards"" and ""Materials"", respectively - and then there came a flash of memory as to where he had seen that word ""Guards"" before in connexion with this dreadful mystery. It was, of course, in the recent letter to Dr. Allen purporting to be from old Edward Hutchinson; and the phrase had read: ""There was no Neede to keep the Guards in Shape and eat'g off their Heads, and it made Much to be founde in Case of Trouble, as you too welle knowe."" What did this signify? But wait - was there not still another reference to ""guards"" in this matter which he had failed wholly to recall when reading the Hutchinson letter? Back in the old non-secretive days Ward had told him of the Eleazar Smith diary recording the spying of Smith and Weeden on the Curwen farm, and in that dreadful chronicle there had been a mention of conversations overheard before the old wizard betook himself wholly beneath the earth. There had been, Smith and Weeden insisted, terrible colloquies wherein figured Curwen, certain captives of his, and the guards of those captives. Those guards, according to Hutchinson or his avatar, had 'eaten their heads off', so that now Dr. Allen did not keep them in shape. And if not in shape, how save as the ""salts"" to which it appears this wizard band was engaged in reducing as many human bodies or skeletons as they could?
      So that was what these lekythoi contained; the monstrous fruit of unhallowed rites and deeds, presumably won or cowed to such submission as to help, when called up by some hellish incantation, in the defence of their blasphemous master or the questioning of those who were not so willing? Willett shuddered at the thought of what he had been pouring in and out of his hands, and for a moment felt an impulse to flee in panic from that cavern of hideous shelves with their silent and perhaps watching sentinels. Then he thought of the ""Materia"" - in the myriad Phaleron jugs on the other side of the room. Salts too - and if not the salts of ""guards"", then the salts of what? God! Could it be possible that here lay the mortal relics of half the titan thinkers of all the ages; snatched by supreme ghouls from crypts where the world thought them safe, and subject to the beck and call of madmen who sought to drain their knowledge for some still wilder end whose ultimate effect would concern, as poor Charles had hinted in his frantic note, 'all civilisation, all natural law, perhaps even the fate of the solar system and the universe'? And Marinus Bicknell Willett had sifted their dust through his hands!
      Then he noticed a small door at the farther end of the room, and calmed himself enough to approach it and examine the crude sign chiselled above. It was only a symbol, but it filled him with vague spiritual dread; for a morbid, dreaming friend of his had once drawn it on paper and told him a few of the things it means in the dark abyss of sleep. It was the sign of Koth, that dreamers see fixed above the archway of a certain black tower standing alone in twilight - and Willett did not like what his friend Randolph Carter had said of its powers. But a moment later he forgot the sign as he recognised a new acrid odour in the stench-filled air. This was a chemical rather than animal smell, and came clearly from the room beyond the door. And it was, unmistakably, the same odour which had saturated Charles Ward's clothing on the day the doctors had taken him away. So it was here that the youth had been interrupted by the final summons? He was wiser than old Joseph Curwen, for he had not resisted. Willett, boldly determined to penetrate every wonder and nightmare this nether realm might contain, seized the small lamp and crossed the threshold. A wave of nameless fright rolled out to meet him, but he yielded to no whim and deferred to no intuition. There was nothing alive here to harm him, and he would not be stayed in his piercing of the eldritch cloud which engulfed his patient.
      The room beyond the door was of medium size, and had no furniture save a table, a single chair, and two groups of curious machines with clamps and wheels, which Willett recognised after a moment as mediaeval instruments of torture. On one side of the door stood a rack of savage whips, above which were some shelves bearing empty rows of shallow pedestalled cups of lead shaped like Grecian kylikes. On the other side was the table; with a powerful Argand lamp, a pad and pencil, and two of the stoppered lekythoi from the shelves outside set down at irregular places as if temporarily or in haste. Willett lighted the lamp and looked carefully at the pad, to see what notes young Ward might have been jotting down when interrupted; but found nothing more intelligible than the following disjointed fragments in that crabbed Curwen chirography, which shed no light on the case as a whole:
""B. dy'd not. Escap'd into walls and founde Place below.
""Saw olde V. saye ye Sabaoth and learnt ye Way.
""Rais'd Yog-Sothoth thrice and was ye nexte Day deliver'd.
""F. soughte to wipe out all know'g howe to raise Those from Outside.""
      As the strong Argand blaze lit up the entire chamber the doctor saw that the wall opposite the door, between the two groups of torturing appliances in the corners, was covered with pegs from which hung a set of shapeless-looking robes of a rather dismal yellowish-white. But far more interesting were the two vacant walls, both of which were thickly covered with mystic symbols and formulae roughly chiselled in the smooth dressed stone. The damp floor also bore marks of carving; and with but little difficulty Willett deciphered a huge pentagram in the centre, with a plain circle about three feet wide half way between this and each corner. In one of these four circles, near where a yellowish robe had been flung carelessly down, there stood a shallow kylix of the sort found on the shelves above the whip-rack; and just outside the periphery was one of the Phaleron jugs from the shelves in the other room, its tag numbered 118. This was unstoppered, and proved upon inspection to be empty; but the explorer saw with a shiver that the kylix was not. Within its shallow area, and saved from scattering only by the absence of wind in this sequestered cavern, lay a small amount of a dry, dull-greenish efflorescent powder which must have belonged in the jug; and Willett almost reeled at the implications that came sweeping over him as he correlated little by little the several elements and antecedents of the scene. The whips and the instruments of torture, the dust or salts from the jug of ""Materia"", the two lekythoi from the ""Custodes"" shelf, the robes, the formulae on the walls, the notes on the pad, the hints from letters and legends, and the thousand glimpses, doubts, and suppositions which had come to torment the friends and parents of Charles Ward - all these engulfed the doctor in a tidal wave of horror as he looked at that dry greenish powder outspread in the pedestalled leaden kylix on the floor.
      With an effort, however, Willett pulled himself together and began studying the formulae chiselled on the walls. From the stained and incrusted letters it was obvious that they were carved in Joseph Curwen's time, and their text was such as to be vaguely familiar to one who had read much Curwen material or delved extensively into the history of magic. One the doctor clearly recognised as what Mrs. Ward heard her son chanting on that ominous Good Friday a year before, and what an authority had told him was a very terrible invocation addressed to secret gods outside the normal spheres. It was not spelled here exactly as Mrs. Ward had set it down from memory, nor yet as the authority had shewn it to him in the forbidden pages of ""Eliphas Levi""; but its identity was unmistakable, and such words as Sabaoth, Metraton, Almousin, and Zariatnatmik sent a shudder of fright through the searcher who had seen and felt so much of cosmic abomination just around the corner.
      This was on the left-hand wall as one entered the room. The right-hand wall was no less thickly inscribed, and Willett felt a start of recognition as he came upon the pair of formulae so frequently occurring in the recent notes in the library. They were, roughly speaking, the same; with the ancient symbols of ""Dragon's Head"" and ""Dragon's Tail"" heading them as in Ward's scribblings. But the spelling differed quite widely from that of the modern versions, as if old Curwen had had a different way of recording sound, or as if later study had evolved more powerful and perfected variants of the invocations in question. The doctor tried to reconcile the chiselled version with the one which still ran persistently in his head, and found it hard to do. Where the script he had memorised began ""Y'ai 'ng'ngah, Yog-Sothoth"", this epigraph started out as ""Aye, engengah, Yogge-Sothotha""; which to his mind would seriously interfere with the syllabification of the second word.
      Ground as the later text was into his consciousness, the discrepancy disturbed him; and he found himself chanting the first of the formulae aloud in an effort to square the sound he conceived with the letters he found carved. Weird and menacing in that abyss of antique blasphemy rang his voice; its accents keyed to a droning sing-song either through the spell of the past and the unknown, or through the hellish example of that dull, godless wail from the pits whose inhuman cadences rose and fell rhythmically in the distance through the stench and the darkness.

""Y'AI 'NG'NGAH,
YOG-SOTHOTH
H'EE - L'GEB
F'AI THRODOG
UAAAH!""

      But what was this cold wind which had sprung into life at the very outset of the chant? The lamps were sputtering woefully, and the gloom grew so dense that the letters on the wall nearly faded from sight. There was smoke, too, and an acrid odour which quite drowned out the stench from the far-away wells; an odour like that he had smelt before, yet infinitely stronger and more pungent. He turned from the inscriptions to face the room with its bizarre contents, and saw that the kylix on the floor, in which the ominous efflorescent powder had lain, was giving forth a cloud of thick, greenish-black vapour of surprising volume and opacity. That powder - Great God! it had come from the shelf of ""Materia"" - what was it doing now, and what had started it? The formula he had been chanting - the first of the pair - Dragon's Head, ascending node - Blessed Saviour, could it be. . . .
      The doctor reeled, and through his head raced wildly disjointed scraps from all he had seen, heard, and read of the frightful case of Joseph Curwen and Charles Dexter Ward. ""I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe. . . . Have ye Wordes for laying at all times readie, and stopp not to be sure when there is any Doubte of Whom you have. . . . Three Talkes with What was therein inhum'd. . . ."" Mercy of Heaven, what is that shape behind the parting smoke?

5.

      Marinus Bicknell Willett has no hope that any part of his tale will be believed except by certain sympathetic friends, hence he has made no attempt to tell it beyond his most intimate circle. Only a few outsiders have ever heard it repeated, and of these the majority laugh and remark that the doctor surely is getting old. He has been advised to take a long vacation and to shun future cases dealing with mental disturbance. But Mr. Ward knows that the veteran physician speaks only a horrible truth. Did not he himself see the noisome aperture in the bungalow cellar? Did not Willett send him home overcome and ill at eleven o'clock that portentous morning? Did he not telephone the doctor in vain that evening, and again the next day, and had he not driven to the bungalow itself on that following noon, finding his friend unconscious but unharmed on one of the beds upstairs? Willett had been breathing stertorously, and opened his eyes slowly when Mr. Ward gave him some brandy fetched from the car. Then he shuddered and screamed, crying out, ""That beard . . . those eyes. . . . God, who are you?"" A very strange thing to say to a trim, blue-eyed, clean-shaven gentleman whom he had known from the latter's boyhood.
      In the bright noon sunlight the bungalow was unchanged since the previous morning. Willett's clothing bore no disarrangement beyond certain smudges and worn places at the knees, and only a faint acrid odour reminded Mr. Ward of what he had smelt on his son that day he was taken to the hospital. The doctor's flashlight was missing, but his valise was safely there, as empty as when he had brought it. Before indulging in any explanations, and obviously with great moral effort, Willett staggered dizzily down to the cellar and tried the fateful platform before the tubs. It was unyielding. Crossing to where he had left his yet unused tool satchel the day before, he obtained a chisel and began to pry up the stubborn planks one by one. Underneath the smooth concrete was still visible, but of any opening or perforation there was no longer a trace. Nothing yawned this time to sicken the mystified father who had followed the doctor downstairs; only the smooth concrete underneath the planks - no noisome well, no world of subterrene horrors, no secret library, no Curwen papers, no nightmare pits of stench and howling, no laboratory or shelves or chiselled formulae, no. . . . Dr. Willett turned pale, and clutched at the younger man. ""Yesterday,"" he asked softly, ""did you see it here . . . and smell it?"" And when Mr. Ward, himself transfixed with dread and wonder, found strength to nod an affirmative, the physician gave a sound half a sigh and half a gasp, and nodded in turn. ""Then I will tell you,"" he said.
      So for an hour, in the sunniest room they could find upstairs, the physician whispered his frightful tale to the wondering father. There was nothing to relate beyond the looming up of that form when the greenish-black vapour from the kylix parted, and Willett was too tired to ask himself what had really occurred. There were futile, bewildered head-shakings from both men, and once Mr. Ward ventured a hushed suggestion, ""Do you suppose it would be of any use to dig?"" The doctor was silent, for it seemed hardly fitting for any human brain to answer when powers of unknown spheres had so vitally encroached on this side of the Great Abyss. Again Mr. Ward asked, ""But where did it go? It brought you here, you know, and it sealed up the hole somehow."" And Willett again let silence answer for him.
      But after all, this was not the final phase of the matter. Reaching for his handkerchief before rising to leave, Dr. Willett's fingers closed upon a piece of paper in his pocket which had not been there before, and which was companioned by the candles and matches he had seized in the vanished vault. It was a common sheet, torn obviously from the cheap pad in that fabulous room of horror somewhere underground, and the writing upon it was that of an ordinary lead pencil - doubtless the one which had lain beside the pad. It was folded very carelessly, and beyond the faint acrid scent of the cryptic chamber bore no print or mark of any world but this. But in the text itself it did indeed reek with wonder; for here was no script of any wholesome age, but the laboured strokes of mediaeval darkness, scarcely legible to the laymen who now strained over it, yet having combinations of symbols which seemed vaguely familiar. The briefly scrawled message was this, and its mystery lent purpose to the shaken pair, who forthwith walked steadily out to the Ward car and gave orders to be driven first to a quiet dining place and then to the John Hay Library on the hill.



      At the library it was easy to find good manuals of palaeography, and over these the two men puzzled till the lights of evening shone out from the great chandelier. In the end they found what was needed. The letters were indeed no fantastic invention, but the normal script of a very dark period. They were the pointed Saxon minuscules of the eighth or ninth century A.D., and brought with them memories of an uncouth time when under a fresh Christian veneer ancient faiths and ancient rites stirred stealthily, and the pale moon of Britain looked sometimes on strange deeds in the Roman ruins of Caerleon and Hexham, and by the towers along Hadrian's crumbling wall. The words were in such Latin as a barbarous age might remember - ""Corvinus necandus est. Cadaver aq(ua) forti dissolvendum, nec aliq(ui)d retinendum. Tace ut potes."" - which may roughly be translated, ""Curwen must be killed. The body must be dissolved in aqua fortis, nor must anything be retained. Keep silence as best you are able.""
      Willett and Mr. Ward were mute and baffled. They had met the unknown, and found that they lacked emotions to respond to it as they vaguely believed they ought. With Willett, especially, the capacity for receiving fresh impressions of awe was well-nigh exhausted; and both men sat still and helpless till the closing of the library forced them to leave. Then they drove listlessly to the Ward mansion in Prospect Street, and talked to no purpose into the night. The doctor rested toward morning, but did not go home. And he was still there Sunday noon when a telephone message came from the detectives who had been assigned to look up Dr. Allen.
      Mr. Ward, who was pacing nervously about in a dressing-gown, answered the call in person; and told the men to come up early the next day when he heard their report was almost ready. Both Willett and he were glad that this phase of the matter was taking form, for whatever the origin of the strange minuscule message, it seemed certain that the ""Curwen"" who must be destroyed could be no other than the bearded and spectacled stranger. Charles had feared this man, and had said in the frantic note that he must be killed and dissolved in acid. Allen, moreover, had been receiving letters from the strange wizards in Europe under the name of Curwen, and palpably regarded himself as an avatar of the bygone necromancer. And now from a fresh and unknown source had come a message saying that ""Curwen"" must be killed and dissolved in acid. The linkage was too unmistakable to be factitious; and besides, was not Allen planning to murder young Ward upon the advice of the creature called Hutchinson? Of course, the letter they had seen had never reached the bearded stranger; but from its text they could see that Allen had already formed plans for dealing with the youth if he grew too 'squeamish'. Without doubt, Allen must be apprehended; and even if the most drastic directions were not carried out, he must be placed where he could inflict no harm upon Charles Ward.
      That afternoon, hoping against hope to extract some gleam of information anent the inmost mysteries from the only available one capable of giving it, the father and the doctor went down the bay and called on young Charles at the hospital. Simply and gravely Willett told him all he had found, and noticed how pale he turned as each description made certain the truth of the discovery. The physician employed as much dramatic effect as he could, and watched for a wincing on Charles's part when he approached the matter of the covered pits and the nameless hybrids within. But Ward did not wince. Willett paused, and his voice grew indignant as he spoke of how the things were starving. He taxed the youth with shocking inhumanity, and shivered when only a sardonic laugh came in reply. For Charles, having dropped as useless his pretence that the crypt did not exist, seemed to see some ghastly jest in this affair; and chuckled hoarsely at something which amused him. Then he whispered, in accents doubly terrible because of the cracked voice he used, ""Damn 'em, they do eat, but they don't need to! That's the rare part! A month, you say, without food? Lud, Sir, you be modest! D'ye know, that was the joke on poor old Whipple with his virtuous bluster! Kill everything off, would he? Why, damme, he was half-deaf with the noise from Outside and never saw or heard aught from the wells! He never dreamed they were there at all! Devil take ye, those cursed things have been howling down there ever since Curwen was done for a hundred and fifty-seven years gone!""
      But no more than this could Willett get from the youth. Horrified, yet almost convinced against his will, he went on with his tale in the hope that some incident might startle his auditor out of the mad composure he maintained. Looking at the youth's face, the doctor could not but feel a kind of terror at the changes which recent months had wrought. Truly, the boy had drawn down nameless horrors from the skies. When the room with the formulae and the greenish dust was mentioned, Charles shewed his first sign of animation. A quizzical look overspread his face as he heard what Willett had read on the pad, and he ventured the mild statement that those notes were old ones, of no possible significance to anyone not deeply initiated in the history of magic. ""But,"" he added, ""had you but known the words to bring up that which I had out in the cup, you had not been here to tell me this. 'Twas Number 118, and I conceive you would have shook had you looked it up in my list in t'other room. 'Twas never raised by me, but I meant to have it up that day you came to invite me hither.""
      Then Willett told of the formula he had spoken and of the greenish-black smoke which had arisen; and as he did so he saw true fear dawn for the first time on Charles Ward's face. ""It came, and you be here alive?"" As Ward croaked the words his voice seemed almost to burst free of its trammels and sink to cavernous abysses of uncanny resonance. Willett, gifted with a flash of inspiration, believed he saw the situation, and wove into his reply a caution from a letter he remembered. ""No. 118, you say? But don't forget that stones are all changed now in nine grounds out of ten. You are never sure till you question!"" And then, without warning, he drew forth the minuscule message and flashed it before the patient's eyes. He could have wished no stronger result, for Charles Ward fainted forthwith.
      All this conversation, of course, had been conducted with the greatest secrecy lest the resident alienists accuse the father and the physician of encouraging a madman in his delusions. Unaided, too, Dr. Willett and Mr. Ward picked up the stricken youth and placed him on the couch. In reviving, the patient mumbled many times of some word which he must get to Orne and Hutchinson at once; so when his consciousness seemed fully back the doctor told him that of those strange creatures at least one was his bitter enemy, and had given Dr. Allen advice for his assassination. This revelation produced no visible effect, and before it was made the visitors could see that their host had already the look of a hunted man. After that he would converse no more, so Willett and the father departed presently; leaving behind a caution against the bearded Allen, to which the youth only replied that this individual was very safely taken care of, and could do no one any harm even if he wished. This was said with an almost evil chuckle very painful to hear. They did not worry about any communications Charles might indite to that monstrous pair in Europe, since they knew that the hospital authorities seized all outgoing mail for censorship and would pass no wild or outrŽ-looking missive.
      There is, however, a curious sequel to the matter of Orne and Hutchinson, if such indeed the exiled wizards were. Moved by some vague presentiment amidst the horrors of that period, Willett arranged with an international press-cutting bureau for accounts of notable current crimes and accidents in Prague and in eastern Transylvania; and after six months believed that he had found two very significant things amongst the multifarious items he received and had translated. One was the total wrecking of a house by night in the oldest quarter of Prague, and the disappearance of the evil old man called Josef Nadek, who had dwelt in it alone ever since anyone could remember. The other was a titan explosion in the Transylvanian mountains east of Rakus, and the utter extirpation with all its inmates of the ill-regarded Castle Ferenczy, whose master was so badly spoken of by peasants and soldiery alike that he would shortly have been summoned to Bucharest for serious questioning had not this incident cut off a career already so long as to antedate all common memory. Willett maintains that the hand which wrote those minuscules was able to wield stronger weapons as well; and that while Curwen was left to him to dispose of, the writer felt able to find and deal with Orne and Hutchinson itself. Of what their fate may have been the doctor strives sedulously not to think.

6.

      The following morning Dr. Willett hastened to the Ward home to be present when the detectives arrived. Allen's destruction or imprisonment - or Curwen's, if one might regard the tacit claim to reincarnation as valid - he felt must be accomplished at any cost, and he communicated this conviction to Mr. Ward as they sat waiting for the men to come. They were downstairs this time, for the upper parts of the house were beginning to be shunned because of a peculiar nauseousness which hung indefinitely about; a nauseousness which the older servants connected with some curse left by the vanished Curwen portrait.
      At nine o'clock the three detectives presented themselves and immediately delivered all that they had to say. They had not, regrettably enough, located the Brava Tony Gomes as they had wished, nor had they found the least trace of Dr. Allen's source or present whereabouts; but they had managed to unearth a considerable number of local impressions and facts concerning the reticent stranger. Allen had struck Pawtuxet people as a vaguely unnatural being, and there was an universal belief that his thick sandy beard was either dyed or false - a belief conclusively upheld by the finding of such a false beard, together with a pair of dark glasses, in his room at the fateful bungalow. His voice, Mr. Ward could well testify from his one telephone conversation, had a depth and hollowness that could not be forgotten; and his glance seemed malign even through his smoked and horn-rimmed glasses. One shopkeeper, in the course of negotiations, had seen a specimen of his handwriting and declared it was very queer and crabbed; this being confirmed by pencilled notes of no clear meaning found in his room and identified by the merchant. In connexion with the vampirism rumours of the preceding summer, a majority of the gossips believed that Allen rather than Ward was the actual vampire. Statements were also obtained from the officials who had visited the bungalow after the unpleasant incident of the motor truck robbery. They had felt less of the sinister in Dr. Allen, but had recognised him as the dominant figure in the queer shadowy cottage. The place had been too dark for them to observe him clearly, but they would know him again if they saw him. His beard had looked odd, and they thought he had some slight scar above his dark spectacled right eye. As for the detectives' search of Allen's room, it yielded nothing definite save the beard and glasses, and several pencilled notes in a crabbed writing which Willett at once saw was identical with that shared by the old Curwen manuscripts and by the voluminous recent notes of young Ward found in the vanished catacombs of horror.
      Dr. Willett and Mr. Ward caught something of a profound, subtle, and insidious cosmic fear from this data as it was gradually unfolded, and almost trembled in following up the vague, mad thought which had simultaneously reached their minds. The false beard and glasses - the crabbed Curwen penmanship - the old portrait and its tiny scar - and the altered youth in the hospital with such a scar - that deep, hollow voice on the telephone - was it not of this that Mr. Ward was reminded when his son barked forth those pitiable tones to which he now claimed to be reduced? Who had ever seen Charles and Allen together? Yes, the officials had once, but who later on? Was it not when Allen left that Charles suddenly lost his growing fright and began to live wholly at the bungalow? Curwen - Allen - Ward - in what blasphemous and abominable fusion had two ages and two persons become involved? That damnable resemblance of the picture to Charles - had it not used to stare and stare, and follow the boy around the room with its eyes? Why, too, did both Allen and Charles copy Joseph Curwen's handwriting, even when alone and off guard? And then the frightful work of those people - the lost crypt of horrors that had aged the doctor overnight; the starved monsters in the noisome pits; the awful formula which had yielded such nameless results; the message in minuscules found in Willett's pocket; the papers and the letters and all the talk of graves and ""salts"" and discoveries - whither did everything lead? In the end Mr. Ward did the most sensible thing. Steeling himself against any realisation of why he did it, he gave the detectives an article to be shewn to such Pawtuxet shopkeepers as had seen the portentous Dr. Allen. That article was a photograph of his luckless son, on which he now carefully drew in ink the pair of heavy glasses and the black pointed beard which the men had brought from Allen's room.
      For two hours he waited with the doctor in the oppressive house where fear and miasma were slowly gathering as the empty panel in the upstairs library leered and leered and leered. Then the men returned. Yes. The altered photograph was a very passable likeness of Dr. Allen. Mr. Ward turned pale, and Willett wiped a suddenly dampened brow with his handkerchief. Allen - Ward - Curwen - it was becoming too hideous for coherent thought. What had the boy called out of the void, and what had it done to him? What, really, had happened from first to last? Who was this Allen who sought to kill Charles as too 'squeamish', and why had his destined victim said in the postscript to that frantic letter that he must be so completely obliterated in acid? Why, too, had the minuscule message, of whose origin no one dared think, said that ""Curwen"" must be likewise obliterated? What was the change, and when had the final stage occurred? That day when his frantic note was received - he had been nervous all the morning, then there was an alteration. He had slipped out unseen and swaggered boldly in past the men hired to guard him. That was the time, when he was out. But no - had he not cried out in terror as he entered his study - this very room? What had he found there? Or wait - what had found him? That simulacrum which brushed boldly in without having been seen to go - was that an alien shadow and a horror forcing itself upon a trembling figure which had never gone out at all? Had not the butler spoken of queer noises?
      Willett rang for the man and asked him some low-toned questions. It had, surely enough, been a bad business. There had been noises - a cry, a gasp, a choking, and a sort of clattering or creaking or thumping, or all of these. And Mr. Charles was not the same when he stalked out without a word. The butler shivered as he spoke, and sniffed at the heavy air that blew down from some open window upstairs. Terror had settled definitely upon the house, and only the business-like detectives failed to imbibe a full measure of it. Even they were restless, for this case had held vague elements in the background which pleased them not at all. Dr. Willett was thinking deeply and rapidly, and his thoughts were terrible ones. Now and then he would almost break into muttering as he ran over in his head a new, appalling, and increasingly conclusive chain of nightmare happenings.
      Then Mr. Ward made a sign that the conference was over, and everyone save him and the doctor left the room. It was noon now, but shadows as of coming night seemed to engulf the phantom-haunted mansion. Willett began talking very seriously to his host, and urged that he leave a great deal of the future investigation to him. There would be, he predicted, certain obnoxious elements which a friend could bear better than a relative. As family physician he must have a free hand, and the first thing he required was a period alone and undisturbed in the abandoned library upstairs, where the ancient overmantel had gathered about itself an aura of noisome horror more intense than when Joseph Curwen's features themselves glanced slyly down from the painted panel.
      Mr. Ward, dazed by the flood of grotesque morbidities and unthinkably maddening suggestions that poured in upon him from every side, could only acquiesce; and half an hour later the doctor was locked in the shunned room with the panelling from Olney Court. The father, listening outside, heard fumbling sounds of moving and rummaging as the moments passed; and finally a wrench and a creak, as if a tight cupboard door were being opened. Then there was a muffled cry, a kind of snorting choke, and a hasty slamming of whatever had been opened. Almost at once the key rattled and Willett appeared in the hall, haggard and ghastly, and demanding wood for the real fireplace on the south wall of the room. The furnace was not enough, he said; and the electric log had little practical use. Longing yet not daring to ask questions, Mr. Ward gave the requisite orders and a man brought some stout pine logs, shuddering as he entered the tainted air of the library to place them in the grate. Willett meanwhile had gone up to the dismantled laboratory and brought down a few odds and ends not included in the moving of the July before. They were in a covered basket, and Mr. Ward never saw what they were.
      Then the doctor locked himself in the library once more, and by the clouds of smoke which rolled down past the windows from the chimney it was known that he had lighted the fire. Later, after a great rustling of newspapers, that odd wrench and creaking were heard again; followed by a thumping which none of the eavesdroppers liked. Thereafter two suppressed cries of Willett's were heard, and hard upon these came a swishing rustle of indefinable hatefulness. Finally the smoke that the wind beat down from the chimney grew very dark and acrid, and everyone wished that the weather had spared them this choking and venomous inundation of peculiar fumes. Mr. Ward's head reeled, and the servants all clustered together in a knot to watch the horrible black smoke swoop down. After an age of waiting the vapours seemed to lighten, and half-formless sounds of scraping, sweeping, and other minor operations were heard behind the bolted door. And at last, after the slamming of some cupboard within, Willett made his appearance - sad, pale, and haggard, and bearing the cloth-draped basket he had taken from the upstairs laboratory. He had left the window open, and into that once accursed room was pouring a wealth of pure, wholesome air to mix with a queer new smell of disinfectants. The ancient overmantel still lingered; but it seemed robbed of malignity now, and rose as calm and stately in its white panelling as if it had never borne the picture of Joseph Curwen. Night was coming on, yet this time its shadows held no latent fright, but only a gentle melancholy. Of what he had done the doctor would never speak. To Mr. Ward he said, ""I can answer no questions, but I will say that there are different kinds of magic. I have made a great purgation, and those in this house will sleep the better for it.""

7.

      That Dr. Willett's ""purgation"" had been an ordeal almost as nerve-racking in its way as his hideous wandering in the vanished crypt is shewn by the fact that the elderly physician gave out completely as soon as he reached home that evening. For three days he rested constantly in his room, though servants later muttered something about having heard him after midnight on Wednesday, when the outer door softly opened and closed with phenomenal softness. Servants' imaginations, fortunately, are limited, else comment might have been excited by an item in Thursday's Evening Bulletin which ran as follows:
North End Ghouls
Active Again

After a lull of ten months since the dastardly vandalism in the Weeden lot at the North Burial Ground, a nocturnal prowler was glimpsed early this morning in the same cemetery by Robert Hart, the night watchman. Happening to glance for a moment from his shelter at about 2 a.m., Hart observed the glow of a lantern or pocket torch not far to the northwest, and upon opening the door detected the figure of a man with a trowel very plainly silhouetted against a nearby electric light. At once starting in pursuit, he saw the figure dart hurriedly toward the main entrance, gaining the street and losing himself among the shadows before approach or capture was possible.
      Like the first of the ghouls active during the past year, this intruder had done no real damage before detection. A vacant part of the Ward lot shewed signs of a little superficial digging, but nothing even nearly the size of a grave had been attempted, and no previous grave had been disturbed.
      Hart, who cannot describe the prowler except as a small man probably having a full beard, inclines to the view that all three of the digging incidents have a common source; but police from the Second Station think otherwise on account of the savage nature of the second incident, where an ancient coffin was removed and its headstone violently shattered.
      The first of the incidents, in which it is thought an attempt to bury something was frustrated, occurred a year ago last March, and has been attributed to bootleggers seeking a cache. It is possible, says Sergt. Riley, that this third affair is of similar nature. Officers at the Second Station are taking especial pains to capture the gang of miscreants responsible for these repeated outrages.
      All day Thursday Dr. Willett rested as if recuperating from something past or nerving himself for something to come. In the evening he wrote a note to Mr. Ward, which was delivered the next morning and which caused the half-dazed parent to ponder long and deeply. Mr. Ward had not been able to go down to business since the shock of Monday with its baffling reports and its sinister ""purgation"", but he found something calming about the doctor's letter in spite of the despair it seemed to promise and the fresh mysteries it seemed to evoke.
""10 Barnes St.,            
Providence, R.I.,      
April 12, 1928.
""Dear Theodore: - I feel that I must say a word to you before doing what I am going to do tomorrow. It will conclude the terrible business we have been going through (for I feel that no spade is ever likely to reach that monstrous place we know of), but I'm afraid it won't set your mind at rest unless I expressly assure you how very conclusive it is.
      ""You have known me ever since you were a small boy, so I think you will not distrust me when I hint that some matters are best left undecided and unexplored. It is better that you attempt no further speculation as to Charles's case, and almost imperative that you tell his mother nothing more than she already suspects. When I call on you tomorrow Charles will have escaped. That is all which need remain in anyone's mind. He was mad, and he escaped. You can tell his mother gently and gradually about the mad part when you stop sending the typed notes in his name. I'd advise you to join her in Atlantic City and take a rest yourself. God knows you need one after this shock, as I do myself. I am going South for a while to calm down and brace up.
      ""So don't ask me any questions when I call. It may be that something will go wrong, but I'll tell you if it does. I don't think it will. There will be nothing more to worry about, for Charles will be very, very safe. He is now - safer than you dream. You need hold no fears about Allen, and who or what he is. He forms as much a part of the past as Joseph Curwen's picture, and when I ring your doorbell you may feel certain that there is no such person. And what wrote that minuscule message will never trouble you or yours.
      ""But you must steel yourself to melancholy, and prepare your wife to do the same. I must tell you frankly that Charles's escape will not mean his restoration to you. He has been afflicted with a peculiar disease, as you must realise from the subtle physical as well as mental changes in him, and you must not hope to see him again. Have only this consolation - that he was never a fiend or even truly a madman, but only an eager, studious, and curious boy whose love of mystery and of the past was his undoing. He stumbled on things no mortal ought ever to know, and reached back through the years as no one ever should reach; and something came out of those years to engulf him.
      ""And now comes the matter in which I must ask you to trust me most of all. For there will be, indeed, no uncertainty about Charles's fate. In about a year, say, you can if you wish devise a suitable account of the end; for the boy will be no more. You can put up a stone in your lot at the North Burial Ground exactly ten feet west of your father's and facing the same way, and that will mark the true resting-place of your son. Nor need you fear that it will mark any abnormality or changeling. The ashes in that grave will be those of your own unaltered bone and sinew - of the real Charles Dexter Ward whose mind you watched from infancy - the real Charles with the olive-mark on his hip and without the black witch-mark on his chest or the pit on his forehead. The Charles who never did actual evil, and who will have paid with his life for his 'squeamishness'.
      ""That is all. Charles will have escaped, and a year from now you can put up his stone. Do not question me tomorrow. And believe that the honour of your ancient family remains untainted now, as it has been at all times in the past.
      ""With profoundest sympathy, and exhortations to fortitude, calmness, and resignation, I am ever
Sincerely your friend,      
Marinus B. Willett""
      So on the morning of Friday, April 13, 1928, Marinus Bicknell Willett visited the room of Charles Dexter Ward at Dr. Waite's private hospital on Conanicut Island. The youth, though making no attempt to evade his caller, was in a sullen mood; and seemed disinclined to open the conversation which Willett obviously desired. The doctor's discovery of the crypt and his monstrous experience therein had of course created a new source of embarrassment, so that both hesitated perceptibly after the interchange of a few strained formalities. Then a new element of constraint crept in, as Ward seemed to read behind the doctor's mask-like face a terrible purpose which had never been there before. The patient quailed, conscious that since the last visit there had been a change whereby the solicitous family physician had given place to the ruthless and implacable avenger.
      Ward actually turned pale, and the doctor was the first to speak. ""More,"" he said, ""has been found out, and I must warn you fairly that a reckoning is due.""
      ""Digging again, and coming upon more poor starving pets?"" was the ironic reply. It was evident that the youth meant to shew bravado to the last.
      ""No,"" Willett slowly rejoined, ""this time I did not have to dig. We have had men looking up Dr. Allen, and they found the false beard and spectacles in the bungalow.""
      ""Excellent,"" commented the disquieted host in an effort to be wittily insulting, ""and I trust they proved more becoming than the beard and glasses you now have on!""
      ""They would become you very well,"" came the even and studied response, ""as indeed they seem to have done.""
      As Willett said this, it almost seemed as though a cloud passed over the sun; though there was no change in the shadows on the floor. Then Ward ventured:
      ""And is this what asks so hotly for a reckoning? Suppose a man does find it now and then useful to be twofold?""
      ""No,"" said Willett gravely, ""again you are wrong. It is no business of mine if any man seeks duality; provided he has any right to exist at all, and provided he does not destroy what called him out of space.""
      Ward now started violently. ""Well, Sir, what have ye found, and what d'ye want with me?""
      The doctor let a little time elapse before replying, as if choosing his words for an effective answer.
      ""I have found,"" he finally intoned, ""something in a cupboard behind an ancient overmantel where a picture once was, and I have burned it and buried the ashes where the grave of Charles Dexter Ward ought to be.""
      The madman choked and sprang from the chair in which he had been sitting:
      ""Damn ye, who did ye tell - and who'll believe it was he after these full two months, with me alive? What d'ye mean to do?""
      Willett, though a small man, actually took on a kind of judicial majesty as he calmed the patient with a gesture.
      ""I have told no one. This is no common case - it is a madness out of time and a horror from beyond the spheres which no police or lawyers or courts or alienists could ever fathom or grapple with. Thank God some chance has left inside me the spark of imagination, that I might not go astray in thinking out this thing. You cannot deceive me, Joseph Curwen, for I know that your accursed magic is true!
      ""I know how you wove the spell that brooded outside the years and fastened on your double and descendant; I know how you drew him into the past and got him to raise you up from your detestable grave; I know how he kept you hidden in his laboratory while you studied modern things and roved abroad as a vampire by night, and how you later shewed yourself in beard and glasses that no one might wonder at your godless likeness to him; I know what you resolved to do when he balked at your monstrous rifling of the world's tombs, and at what you planned afterward, and I know how you did it.
      ""You left off your beard and glasses and fooled the guards around the house. They thought it was he who went in, and they thought it was he who came out when you had strangled and hidden him. But you hadn't reckoned on the different contents of two minds. You were a fool, Curwen, to fancy that a mere visual identity would be enough. Why didn't you think of the speech and the voice and the handwriting? It hasn't worked, you see, after all. You know better than I who or what wrote that message in minuscules, but I will warn you it was not written in vain. There are abominations and blasphemies which must be stamped out, and I believe that the writer of those words will attend to Orne and Hutchinson. One of those creatures wrote you once, 'do not call up any that you can not put down'. You were undone once before, perhaps in that very way, and it may be that your own evil magic will undo you all again. Curwen, a man can't tamper with Nature beyond certain limits, and every horror you have woven will rise up to wipe you out.""
      But here the doctor was cut short by a convulsive cry from the creature before him. Hopelessly at bay, weaponless, and knowing that any show of physical violence would bring a score of attendants to the doctor's rescue, Joseph Curwen had recourse to his one ancient ally, and began a series of cabbalistic motions with his forefingers as his deep, hollow voice, now unconcealed by feigned hoarseness, bellowed out the opening words of a terrible formula.
      ""PER ADONAI ELOIM, ADONAI JEHOVA, ADONAI SABAOTH, METRATON. . . .""
      But Willett was too quick for him. Even as the dogs in the yard outside began to howl, and even as a chill wind sprang suddenly up from the bay, the doctor commenced the solemn and measured intonation of that which he had meant all along to recite. An eye for an eye - magic for magic - let the outcome shew how well the lesson of the abyss had been learned! So in a clear voice Marinus Bicknell Willett began the second of that pair of formulae whose first had raised the writer of those minuscules - the cryptic invocation whose heading was the Dragon's Tail, sign of the descending node - 

""OGTHROD AI'F
GEB'L - EE'H
YOG-SOTHOTH
'NGAH'NG AI'Y
ZHRO!""

      At the very first word from Willett's mouth the previously commenced formula of the patient stopped short. Unable to speak, the monster made wild motions with his arms until they too were arrested. When the awful name of Yog-Sothoth was uttered, the hideous change began. It was not merely a dissolution, but rather a transformation or recapitulation; and Willett shut his eyes lest he faint before the rest of the incantation could be pronounced.
      But he did not faint, and that man of unholy centuries and forbidden secrets never troubled the world again. The madness out of time had subsided, and the case of Charles Dexter Ward was closed. Opening his eyes before staggering out of that room of horror, Dr. Willett saw that what he had kept in memory had not been kept amiss. There had, as he had predicted, been no need for acids. For like his accursed picture a year before, Joseph Curwen now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust.
","IX.

Friday morning Armitage, Rice, and Morgan set out by motor for Dunwich, arriving at the village about one in the afternoon. The day was pleasant, but even in the brightest sunlight a kind of quiet dread and portent seemed to hover about the strangely domed hills and the deep, shadowy ravines of the stricken region. Now and then on some mountain-top a gaunt circle of stones could be glimpsed against the sky. From the air of hushed fright at Osborn’s store they knew something hideous had happened, and soon learned of the annihilation of the Elmer Frye house and family. Throughout that afternoon they rode around Dunwich; questioning the natives concerning all that had occurred, and seeing for themselves with rising pangs of horror the drear Frye ruins with their lingering traces of the tarry stickiness, the blasphemous tracks in the Frye yard, the wounded Seth Bishop cattle, and the enormous swaths of disturbed vegetation in various places. The trail up and down Sentinel Hill seemed to Armitage of almost cataclysmic significance, and he looked long at the sinister altar-like stone on the summit.
      At length the visitors, apprised of a party of State Police which had come from Aylesbury that morning in response to the first telephone reports of the Frye tragedy, decided to seek out the officers and compare notes as far as practicable. This, however, they found more easily planned than performed; since no sign of the party could be found in any direction. There had been five of them in a car, but now the car stood empty near the ruins in the Frye yard. The natives, all of whom had talked with the policemen, seemed at first as perplexed as Armitage and his companions. Then old Sam Hutchins thought of something and turned pale, nudging Fred Farr and pointing to the dank, deep hollow that yawned close by.
      “Gawd,” he gasped, “I telled ’em not ter go daown into the glen, an’ I never thought nobody’d dew it with them tracks an’ that smell an’ the whippoorwills a-screechin’ daown thar in the dark o’ noonday. . . .”
      A cold shudder ran through natives and visitors alike, and every ear seemed strained in a kind of instinctive, unconscious listening. Armitage, now that he had actually come upon the horror and its monstrous work, trembled with the responsibility he felt to be his. Night would soon fall, and it was then that the mountainous blasphemy lumbered upon its eldritch course. Negotium perambulans in tenebris. . . . The old librarian rehearsed the formulae he had memorised, and clutched the paper containing the alternative one he had not memorised. He saw that his electric flashlight was in working order. Rice, beside him, took from a valise a metal sprayer of the sort used in combating insects; whilst Morgan uncased the big-game rifle on which he relied despite his colleague’s warnings that no material weapon would be of help.
      Armitage, having read the hideous diary, knew painfully well what kind of a manifestation to expect; but he did not add to the fright of the Dunwich people by giving any hints or clues. He hoped that it might be conquered without any revelation to the world of the monstrous thing it had escaped. As the shadows gathered, the natives commenced to disperse homeward, anxious to bar themselves indoors despite the present evidence that all human locks and bolts were useless before a force that could bend trees and crush houses when it chose. They shook their heads at the visitors’ plan to stand guard at the Frye ruins near the glen; and as they left, had little expectancy of ever seeing the watchers again.
      There were rumblings under the hills that night, and the whippoorwills piped threateningly. Once in a while a wind, sweeping up out of Cold Spring Glen, would bring a touch of ineffable foetor to the heavy night air; such a foetor as all three of the watchers had smelled once before, when they stood above a dying thing that had passed for fifteen years and a half as a human being. But the looked-for terror did not appear. Whatever was down there in the glen was biding its time, and Armitage told his colleagues it would be suicidal to try to attack it in the dark.
      Morning came wanly, and the night-sounds ceased. It was a grey, bleak day, with now and then a drizzle of rain; and heavier and heavier clouds seemed to be piling themselves up beyond the hills to the northwest. The men from Arkham were undecided what to do. Seeking shelter from the increasing rainfall beneath one of the few undestroyed Frye outbuildings, they debated the wisdom of waiting, or of taking the aggressive and going down into the glen in quest of their nameless, monstrous quarry. The downpour waxed in heaviness, and distant peals of thunder sounded from far horizons. Sheet lightning shimmered, and then a forky bolt flashed near at hand, as if descending into the accursed glen itself. The sky grew very dark, and the watchers hoped that the storm would prove a short, sharp one followed by clear weather.
      It was still gruesomely dark when, not much over an hour later, a confused babel of voices sounded down the road. Another moment brought to view a frightened group of more than a dozen men, running, shouting, and even whimpering hysterically. Someone in the lead began sobbing out words, and the Arkham men started violently when those words developed a coherent form.
      “Oh, my Gawd, my Gawd,” the voice choked out. “It’s a-goin’ agin, an’ this time by day! It’s aout—it’s aout an’ a-movin’ this very minute, an’ only the Lord knows when it’ll be on us all!”
      The speaker panted into silence, but another took up his message.
      “Nigh on a haour ago Zeb Whateley here heerd the ’phone a-ringin’, an’ it was Mis’ Corey, George’s wife, that lives daown by the junction. She says the hired boy Luther was aout drivin’ in the caows from the storm arter the big bolt, when he see all the trees a-bendin’ at the maouth o’ the glen—opposite side ter this—an’ smelt the same awful smell like he smelt when he faound the big tracks las’ Monday mornin’. An’ she says he says they was a swishin’, lappin’ saound, more nor what the bendin’ trees an’ bushes could make, an’ all on a suddent the trees along the rud begun ter git pushed one side, an’ they was a awful stompin’ an’ splashin’ in the mud. But mind ye, Luther he didn’t see nothin’ at all, only just the bendin’ trees an’ underbrush.
      “Then fur ahead where Bishop’s Brook goes under the rud he heerd a awful creakin’ an’ strainin’ on the bridge, an’ says he could tell the saound o’ wood a-startin’ to crack an’ split. An’ all the whiles he never see a thing, only them trees an’ bushes a-bendin’. An’ when the swishin’ saound got very fur off—on the rud towards Wizard Whateley’s an’ Sentinel Hill—Luther he had the guts ter step up whar he’d heerd it furst an’ look at the graound. It was all mud an’ water, an’ the sky was dark, an’ the rain was wipin’ aout all tracks abaout as fast as could be; but beginnin’ at the glen maouth, whar the trees had moved, they was still some o’ them awful prints big as bar’ls like he seen Monday.”
      At this point the first excited speaker interrupted.
      “But that ain’t the trouble naow—that was only the start. Zeb here was callin’ folks up an’ everybody was a-listenin’ in when a call from Seth Bishop’s cut in. His haousekeeper Sally was carryin’ on fit ter kill—she’d jest seed the trees a-bendin’ beside the rud, an’ says they was a kind o’ mushy saound, like a elephant puffin’ an’ treadin’, a-headin’ fer the haouse. Then she up an’ spoke suddent of a fearful smell, an’ says her boy Cha’ncey was a-screamin’ as haow it was jest like what he smelt up to the Whateley rewins Monday mornin’. An’ the dogs was all barkin’ an’ whinin’ awful.
      “An’ then she let aout a turrible yell, an’ says the shed daown the rud had jest caved in like the storm hed blowed it over, only the wind wa’n’t strong enough to dew that. Everybody was a-listenin’, an’ we could hear lots o’ folks on the wire a-gaspin’. All to onct Sally she yelled agin, an’ says the front yard picket fence hed just crumbled up, though they wa’n’t no sign o’ what done it. Then everybody on the line could hear Cha’ncey an’ ol’ Seth Bishop a-yellin’ tew, an’ Sally was shriekin’ aout that suthin’ heavy hed struck the haouse—not lightnin’ nor nothin’, but suthin’ heavy agin the front, that kep’ a-launchin’ itself agin an’ agin, though ye couldn’t see nothin’ aout the front winders. An’ then . . . an’ then . . .”
      Lines of fright deepened on every face; and Armitage, shaken as he was, had barely poise enough to prompt the speaker.
      “An’ then . . . Sally she yelled aout, ’O help, the haouse is a-cavin’ in’ . . . an’ on the wire we could hear a turrible crashin’, an’ a hull flock o’ screamin’ . . . jest like when Elmer Frye’s place was took, only wuss. . . .”
      The man paused, and another of the crowd spoke.
      “That’s all—not a saound nor squeak over the ’phone arter that. Jest still-like. We that heerd it got aout Fords an’ wagons an’ raounded up as many able-bodied menfolks as we could git, at Corey’s place, an’ come up here ter see what yew thought best ter dew. Not but what I think it’s the Lord’s jedgment fer our iniquities, that no mortal kin ever set aside.”
      Armitage saw that the time for positive action had come, and spoke decisively to the faltering group of frightened rustics.
      “We must follow it, boys.” He made his voice as reassuring as possible. “I believe there’s a chance of putting it out of business. You men know that those Whateleys were wizards—well, this thing is a thing of wizardry, and must be put down by the same means. I’ve seen Wilbur Whateley’s diary and read some of the strange old books he used to read; and I think I know the right kind of spell to recite to make the thing fade away. Of course, one can’t be sure, but we can always take a chance. It’s invisible—I knew it would be—but there’s a powder in this long-distance sprayer that might make it shew up for a second. Later on we’ll try it. It’s a frightful thing to have alive, but it isn’t as bad as what Wilbur would have let in if he’d lived longer. You’ll never know what the world has escaped. Now we’ve only this one thing to fight, and it can’t multiply. It can, though, do a lot of harm; so we mustn’t hesitate to rid the community of it.
      “We must follow it—and the way to begin is to go to the place that has just been wrecked. Let somebody lead the way—I don’t know your roads very well, but I’ve an idea there might be a shorter cut across lots. How about it?”
      The men shuffled about a moment, and then Earl Sawyer spoke softly, pointing with a grimy finger through the steadily lessening rain.
      “I guess ye kin git to Seth Bishop’s quickest by cuttin’ acrost the lower medder here, wadin’ the brook at the low place, an’ climbin’ through Carrier’s mowin’ and the timber-lot beyont. That comes aout on the upper rud mighty nigh Seth’s—a leetle t’other side.”
      Armitage, with Rice and Morgan, started to walk in the direction indicated; and most of the natives followed slowly. The sky was growing lighter, and there were signs that the storm had worn itself away. When Armitage inadvertently took a wrong direction, Joe Osborn warned him and walked ahead to shew the right one. Courage and confidence were mounting; though the twilight of the almost perpendicular wooded hill which lay toward the end of their short cut, and among whose fantastic ancient trees they had to scramble as if up a ladder, put these qualities to a severe test.
      At length they emerged on a muddy road to find the sun coming out. They were a little beyond the Seth Bishop place, but bent trees and hideously unmistakable tracks shewed what had passed by. Only a few moments were consumed in surveying the ruins just around the bend. It was the Frye incident all over again, and nothing dead or living was found in either of the collapsed shells which had been the Bishop house and barn. No one cared to remain there amidst the stench and tarry stickiness, but all turned instinctively to the line of horrible prints leading on toward the wrecked Whateley farmhouse and the altar-crowned slopes of Sentinel Hill.
      As the men passed the site of Wilbur Whateley’s abode they shuddered visibly, and seemed again to mix hesitancy with their zeal. It was no joke tracking down something as big as a house that one could not see, but that had all the vicious malevolence of a daemon. Opposite the base of Sentinel Hill the tracks left the road, and there was a fresh bending and matting visible along the broad swath marking the monster’s former route to and from the summit.
      Armitage produced a pocket telescope of considerable power and scanned the steep green side of the hill. Then he handed the instrument to Morgan, whose sight was keener. After a moment of gazing Morgan cried out sharply, passing the glass to Earl Sawyer and indicating a certain spot on the slope with his finger. Sawyer, as clumsy as most non-users of optical devices are, fumbled a while; but eventually focussed the lenses with Armitage’s aid. When he did so his cry was less restrained than Morgan’s had been.
      “Gawd almighty, the grass an’ bushes is a-movin’! It’s a-goin’ up—slow-like—creepin’ up ter the top this minute, heaven only knows what fur!”
      Then the germ of panic seemed to spread among the seekers. It was one thing to chase the nameless entity, but quite another to find it. Spells might be all right—but suppose they weren’t? Voices began questioning Armitage about what he knew of the thing, and no reply seemed quite to satisfy. Everyone seemed to feel himself in close proximity to phases of Nature and of being utterly forbidden, and wholly outside the sane experience of mankind.
",True
"An autumnal chill descended upon the streets of Glaston as the young man walked upon the concrete sidewalk, passing redbrick storefronts and shop windows, every surface still wet with the morning rain. Leaves, red and orange and each vibrant in their hue, were shaken loose from the trees lining the street by the wind, landing wherever they fell. For an instant in time, the spectacle of the leaves drew the attention of the man, in fact little more than a teenage boy, as he made his way toward the corner. However, Joseph Clayton, clad in bluejeans and jacket with a backpack slung from his shoulders, had far more important things to focus on than a show of falling leaves. An important test for this semester was arriving in a week or so and he needed to study.
Also, he was getting quite hungry this close to lunch.
As Joseph rounded the corner and continued toward his favorite eatery, he wondered if he would get swamped in the usual lunch crowd. However, as he saw the front of the Leng Trinh Restaurant, his thoughts turned to quiet dejection.
""Damnit!"" muttered Joseph as he approached the eatery. The reason for this turn in mood was the carpet of tempered glass fragments on the sidewalk below the picture window at the front of the establishment, which was now covered by plastic sheeting. Thuch Van Trinh, one half of the husband-and-wife ownership, was wearing a plaid jacket over his apron and usual cooking clothes and was shoveling the broken glass into a bucket. ""Hey, Mr. Trinh, how's it going?"". Joseph asked with a smile. This was more false cheer than anything, as Joseph could guess how Thuch must be feeling: anger was always a popular choice, followed closely by worry about the reason why.
Despite what he must have been feeling, Thuch Van Trinh grinned back, the black lines of his facial tattooing creasing as the muscles moved under his cheeks. ""Not so good, Mr. Clayton. If this keeps up, I may have to put in Plexiglas so that the window won't break."" The Trinhs accents, as his parents and the other adults of the town told it, had been rather strong (even unusually so) when they had immigrated to Glaston from their first home in Boston. This had usually been waved off by their purported origins in the remote hills on the Vietnam-Laos border, seemingly collaborated by how their teeth had been dyed black. On the other hand, given their rural roots, their speed in adapting local speech patterns so that they now sounded more like second generation Americans (and especially their daughter's complete lack of any accent except the local standard) did make for a puzzling situation. However, for their ease of assimilation and the food they served, they had become well-liked in the community.
So why were things like this happening to them recently? ""How many times does this make this month; two, three?"" Joseph had to ask this, wondering if things were worse than he thought.
""It's happened three times already, this time not more than an hour ago. Thanh wants to install security cameras to watch the place and with how small and cheap they are now, I think we just might."" An hour ago? They'd smashed a picture window in broad daylight? Who in town could be that stupid or that angry? Josephs train of thought was broken then, when Thuch said something of much more interest to the younger man. ""By the way, if you're looking for Marie, she's helping her mother in the kitchen. Even without a window we seem to be doing good business."" Thuch went back to his work and Joseph, not wanting to delay any longer, entered the restaurant.
Just as Thuch had said, Leng Trinh still had it's usual busy lunchtime crowd, albeit one that was concentrated near the back wall. Picking his way around tables packed with diners, Joseph finally arrived at a table set for two, a 'reserved' sign upon it. Removing his backpack and laying it beside a chair, he sat down, shuffled off his coat and went to bury his nose in the menu.
It always felt a bit odd to Joseph, eating in an ethnic restaurant where none of the diners were the same ethnicity as the cooks, or even from the same part of the world. However, none of it mattered when the food was as good as it was here.
""Now then, what would a fine, upstanding New England boy like yourself want in a place like this?"" The voice that asked this was soft, amused, female and had an almost mocking tone. It also had the accent of the New England uplands. To Joseph, it could only be one person.
""The same thing I always get here."" He answered dryly before looking up from the menu. There, holding a pad of paper and a pen, was teenage girl with almond-shaped eyes, shoulder length black hair with green streaks, a cooking apron and an amused grin. ""Hi Marie... you sure your mom's alright with you waitressing this crowd?""
""We've got enough help in the kitchen already and Dad's coming in after all the glass is cleaned up."" She glanced up at the window, plastic sheet and all, after she wrote his order down. ""I just wish we knew who was doing this. If we don't get someone else to cough up some money, our insurance company might go sour on us."" Marie went back to the kitchen to get the food for both of them.
Ten minutes later, she was laying out two place settings of food that had been prepared ahead of time. ""Alright, that's two plates of grilled pork on beds of Leng-style rice, your dish of steamed green beans with soy sauce for dipping, my bowl of soup and two cans of soda."" They'd eat lunch before studying, with Joseph paying the tab for both of them.
If anyone asked, it wasn't a date. Not in the strictest sense, anyway.
""What, no bak bon dzhow?"" Asked Joseph, decidedly disappointed at the apparent lack of the special ingredient.
To this, Marie moved a small earthen bowl from the serving tray onto the table and lifted the lid to reveal a thick gray sauce containing mushrooms and cracked black pepper. ""Would I be one to deny you the gravy of the gods?"" She asked (rhetorically) with a soft smile; Joseph couldn't help but smile back as he cracked the tab on his soda and began on his green beans.
A bit later, when his beans were gone and Marie had almost finished her soup, Joesph began formulating a question that related to a curious thought that had sprung up earlier. ""Not to sound like a nag or anything, but I'm just curious but what was all that 'upstanding' stuff about?"" The only time he had ever heard anyone talk like that was...
Oh God...
Marie swallowed the last bits of her soup. ""Oh, I don't know. Maybe It's that I had no idea that the son of insurance brokers had such deep and aristocratic roots? Maybe it's that I was surprised to find out that the Clayton's had come not from hardy New England farming stock as I had assumed, but from the urbane, wealthy ranks of those grand Brahmins of Boston? I'm sure Granny Cora could tell some fascinating stories about the old days; she sure seemed interested in mine."" If anything, Marie took the entire thing in stride, treating both the memory of the experience and the experience itself with a a great deal of interested amusement. Certainly, mocking the type of language she had encountered was almost cracking her up.
Joseph, on the other hand, had first felt bemusement at the scene in which the Clayton family reunion of the past summer had found itself, quickly turning into outright embarrassment. ""Look, I'm sorry that I didn't tell you about her, but everybody thought that she wouldn't be able to come due to health concerns. It's not my fault that a half-senile, 97 year old woman worked up enough stubbornness to drag her nurse halfway across the state!"".
""I never said anything about anyone being at fault. I just thought it was an interesting revelation about your family."" She had meant her cajoling in good humour, but Josephs defensiveness and embarrassment were never good emotions to bring out. ""Anyway, most people would be proud to have the Boston gentry in their family history: industrialists, merchants, art, culture, philanthropy, charity..."" With every word, Marie spooned a bit of ban boc dzhow onto her grilled pork.
""As well as whaling, slave trading, opium smuggling, snobbery and having your entire life guided by the expectations of your peers; exactly the sorts of things my parents taught me to loathe. The thing is, my great-great-grandmother came from a very select, very privileged and lily-white background; I was worried that she'd... well, react oddly to you."" Joseph retorted as he began spooning (or rather, pouring) the sauce onto his meat after Marie had finished with it and passed it to him. In the case of Cora Clayton (nee Coffin), Josephs fear hadn't primarily been that she would find Marie objectionable on account of her race since that prejudice had been more ingrained in her parents generation than hers. His fear had instead been that his great great grandmother, as self-proclaimed guardian of the old, aristocratic traditions, might object to their relationship because the Trinhs were restaurateurs with no history of pedigree, education or money behind them.
In Cora's world (the 1920s, where her mind was half the time), heirs had married heiresses, families had coordinated their fortunes and everyone had kept an eye on everyone else; these were rules of decorum that had lasted for her long after the Claytons had gone bust in the great Crash of '29. The fact that she had taken Joseph aside and explained her concerns to him had done nothing to soothe his embarrassment, although he had finally convinced her that, being naturalized citizens with a successful restaurant, the Trinhs were firmly in the middling classes. She had also estimated that said restaurant, with no other inheritors besides Marie, would most likely pass into Clayton hands in the fullness of time.
No one had dared explain to her the differences between modern teenage dating and the genteel courtships of her youth.
""I don't think she reacted that oddly. Sure, she was so out of date that you had to explain that I meant 'French Indochina' when I said that my parents came from Vietnam and she did seem a bit too fascinated with my families origins and, alright, it was weird hearing someone actually use the word 'courting' without trying to be funny. However, it was kind of nice to speak French with someone in this town after all the time my parents invested in me learning it."" Marie knew that while it had been terrifying for Joseph, having to put up with his relatives dissection of his relationship and fearing disapproval, she herself had enjoyed a chance to see if the old stereotypes were true. When it had become clear to Marie that the elderly woman was not about to spew racial epitaphs at her but was, indeed, fascinated as to her families background, Marie had made it a point to 'ham it up' in telling their story.
To an entranced Cora Clayton, Marie had described her parents lives before emigration as a subsistence existence in a village high up in the fog-choked mountain passes. She had woven scenes of her people worshiping strange, heathen gods far from the civilized lands of the Buddha and partaking in ghastly rituals to ensure harvests of rice from narrow mountainside terraces. She told the old woman that her parents had tired of such a life and had dreamed of something more, something in the wider world glimpsed in third-hand magazines and radio broadcasts.
After receiving a dispensation from their village shaman to leave (but promising to sent back remittances), they had made their way to Hanoi and then to Boston and finally to Glaston where, having never truly given up the more religious and symbolic aspects of their heathenish past, they nevertheless had made good names for themselves in the community. Marie had made sure that her prose had been both lurid and exotic so as to fully entrance a child of the Age of Empire as well as making proper use of tone, whether enraptured, casual or deathly serious, to emphasize mood. The end result was to make it sound as if her culture wasn't just some rural outlet of modern Vietnam or Laos, but as if it was truly unlike any other in the world.
That was an opinion that Joseph was also rapidly adopting.
They ate in relative silence for a while, the bustle of the lunch crowd beginning to die down as people left, many of them stopping to talk to Mr. Trinh at the till, expressing their concern over what had happened with the window. They were just about half done when Joseph began another conversation. ""So, did you know that there's a 'Heritage Day' coming up at school in a few weeks?""
""Yeah, and?"" Deep down in her gut, Marie was beginning to get a slightly worried feeling from the direction this conversation was going. This pretty much happened whenever the subject of her parent's past came up but, like so many times before, she could probably bluff her way through it.
""I thought that, maybe, we could do something for it. I was thinking about dredging up something from Normandy because I didn't want to clog up the schedule with another variation of British regional culture."" It sounded perfectly innocent, but Marie knew that this was a potentially tricky situation that might require misdirection, a convincing excuse and possible outright lying.
She hated lying to Joseph.
""Alright then. You can do that, I'll do the Vietnamese thing and we'll knock 'em all dead."" She answered with an enthusiasm that she hoped had betrayed nothing of her growing unease with the conversation. This seemed to provoke nothing but a non-committal murmur of agreement and thus, thinking that that was over with, she began eating again.
However, that was not the end of it.
""By Vietnamese, do you mean the standard culture from around Hanoi... or the culture from your parent's home village?"" Joseph asked, seemingly as if only for the purpose of clarification. There was much more behind it though, and whether it was just ingrained paranoia or any real danger of exposure, Marie knew that this was entering onto some very tenuous and potentially very dangerous ground. Still, the subject had to be breached.
""Aren't they pretty much the same? I mean, sure, it was pretty rural back there, but whether village or city, we were all Viet: same language, same culture, same blood, same... pretty much everything, when you think about it."" As denials went, this one wasn't half bad: sincere enough to be taken seriously and with enough internal logic that it wouldn't fall apart immediately in the face of the mildly educated mind.
On this subject, however, Joseph had become rather more than merely mildly educated. He had observed things for a long time: a lot of little things and one or two big things for the most part. And he, after long deliberation and study, had discovered that some of those things just didn't match up.
""You know, there was a time when I could believe that. But... there are just too many deviations to discount."" Joesph stopped eating all together, putting down his fork and looking his girlfriend straight in the eyes before closing and opening them again, as if to rally his thoughts. ""The food, for one thing, isn't like any kind of Vietnamese food I've read about. Yes, you have the side dishes but that's about it for similarity. Second, your parent's tattoos. Again, unlike any other group in Southeast Asia; the closest matches I could find were incised lines on bronze figurines from over two thousand years ago.""
He stopped again. ""And then there's the language you guys speak. I'm fairly sure it's in the Mon-Khmer group, but I've been doing some research and... honestly, I've seen words on this menu that I've never been able to find in any other source. And I'm not the only one who's noticed these things."" Joesph saw panic flash across Marie's eyes, though she tried to hide it. ""Most people don't pay attention and honestly don't care, and the ones who do notice just assume that you guys are either Hmong or some little minority that no-one's ever heard of... but even that doesn't match very well either. It's like you said, you're Viet... but what about all this other stuff?""
It was then that Marie could have ended it all: the doubts, the questions, the lingering curiosity... as well as twenty one centuries of secrecy, tradition and very likely her relationship with this young man. In the end, she decided to dodge again. ""What can I say? We were very rural."" When Joesph just got this frustrated look on his face, Marie sighed, reached across the table and enveloped one of his hands with hers. ""Look, I'll try and dredge something up if I can, but I can't promise anything, okay?""
Joseph mulled on this lack of answers, but as the moment dragged on, his resistance wore down. ""Alright. If you don't want to talk about your culture, that's alright; lots of people come to America to get away from stuff. But I still am sorta curious."" Then he changed the subject. ""Anyway, after we eat, we should begin studying for our tests. Do you want to go over the English or the Algebra first?""
""We should do the Math first, then we can cool off with the Shakespeare. But we better not let the food get cold, what with how the sauce gets if allowed to sit for too long."" Marie began eating again and, after a few beats, Joseph resumed as well.
They stayed at that table for many hours, going over and revising their knowledge of maths and literature. However, already Marie wondered if there was something she could reveal, something that she could show about her parent's culture that would not threaten expose them and, as the old saying went among her tribe, 'get them cut in half and buried in two graves'.
Later that night, The Trinh's upstairs apartment
To Marie's relief, her parents reaction to her plan wasn't anger. On the other hand, fear and worry could be almost as painful.
""I know how you feel about the Clayton boy. He's well-liked, intelligent and his parents are our insurance agents."" Thanh Thi Trinh began, speaking in her families particular dialect of Viet as she, Marie and Thuch Van sat around their dining room table. ""But I ask this of you: is Joesph and his interest in this celebration worth the risk of exposure and, may I add, possible death when this town realizes who we are, when they realize what we are?"" Thanh Thi had always been the more reserved, more cautious and, frankly, more paranoid spouse in this family when it came to their safety. Where her husband was the face of the restaurant, she ran the kitchen with an eye on the back door and all of their cooks. While Thuch made friendly at social gatherings, Thanh kept track of all possible escape routes and who was and wasn't looking at them. She kept track of any news about gangs and hate-group activity in the area, and about any other strange things.
The sort of things that might lure out the kind of people who hunted their people.
But Marie had prepared for this. ""Mother, I know the risks that revealing the secrets of our people would bring. However, I am counting on two circumstances to make sure that only the most benign and harmless information is portrayed."" She rallied herself, knowing that the way she handled this could make the difference on how she presented herself to nearly everyone, especially Joseph . ""First, I must inform both of you that there are some people in this town, including my boyfriend, that realize that we are not quite from the mainstream culture of modern Vietnam."" At this, both Thanh and Thuch got even more worried but they weren't shocked, seeing as any bumpkin with an Internet connection could find that tribal tattooing wasn't really the rage in downtown Hanoi. ""The good news is that while these people realize that we belong to a distinct subgroup, they often deduce that we are either rural Hmong or some other obscure ethnic group. In other words, they know nothing about who our people are and, like the rest of the town, they honestly do not care.""
""What about the nature of our traditons, Marie? What would you do, what rite of our people would be performed on that stage that would not end up with half the town vomiting and the other half trying to hang us?"" Her father had been relatively quiet in this conversation, but he knew that the rituals of his village had, during various times in history, left such a bad impression upon outsiders that they had responded in force to try to stamp them out.
Here, Marie began grasping the thick, heavy and old scrapbook that lay closed upon the table before her. It had been entrusted to them by their village and, by the blessings of the Gods and their Instrument, they had kept it safe and hidden for more than twenty years. ""Father, it is not as if I wish to set up an alter on the stage, recite the incantations of the harvest rites and slice something open; frankly, I would have no idea how. However, I believe that there is a ritual that is benign, unusual and, even according to the author of this book, beautiful enough to make people forget it's oddity."" She opened the book, filled with sepia photographs and notes written in French on yellowed paper, to the page she had bookmarked. ""I want to do the Stork Dance.""
Her parents were quiet for a minute. Admittedly, this was probably the least unusual rite of their people and it did seem to have a calming effect on its audiences. However, it took weeks of intensive training in order to do it right, the costuming and specific actions depended on whether the dancer was a man or woman and the phonograph with the instrumental music and vocals, only having been recorded once before, was on the other side of the planet. It was a tall order to pull off for anyone. ""You do realize that practicing for the dance requires grueling routine, so much so that it might effect your school work?"" Asked her mother, wondering if her daughter was truly sincere.
""I know that. I'll just have to sacrifice my time with Joesph, a sacrifice that I'm sure he'd understand."" Marie responded in English this time, the plans for her act becoming clearer. ""However, I'll need some help in creating the proper costuming and... I know that shipping items from the Old Country is like trying to smuggle Plutonium but if you could convince the shamans to release that phonograph for a month or two, I would be eternally grateful to all of them, and to you.""
Her parents wondered, not for the first time, if Marie truly comprehended what could be asked of that gratitude in the years to come. She had the opportunity to live a life completely detached from the paranoia, the fear and the constant danger that followed her people. Would she give that chance away simply for the sake of a boy?
Whatever choice she made, however, was hers to make.
In the end, they acquiesced... but not without informing their daughter of what their home village could ask of her in exchange for the items she wished. It might be years until it was asked but one day, a representative of their village would approach her and request a repayment, be it in money, information or something else.
It was that ""something else"" that truly worried Thuch and Thanh.
","Spoonbill Village, Northernmost Quang Binh Province, SRV
June 30, 2011.
Dreaming of the past was no strange thing for Joseph Clayton over the past year. Before yesterday, the memory had been of his and Marie's last farewell, when she had told him that she was traveling to Vietnam for a one-year ""hiatus"" of sorts. Now, the memory of which he dreamed was of the occasion of Marie's 18th birthday, some months before she had informed him of her imminent departure. There had been food and gifts from their few friends in the community and, despite the national legal drinking age of 21, Marie was invited by her parents to sample one of the traditional medicinal liquors or Ruou Thuocs of their native village, specifically a distilled rice whiskey of 100 proof in which had soaked a section of beef bone.
Also that night, despite her parents usual diligence, things between Joseph Clayton and Marie had become rather... heated. Just as the dream began to verge into the more pleasurable parts of the experience, a sound woke him quite suddenly. The noise, a sort of odd, whooshing crack...
Gunfire?!
Leaping out of his bed in a panic, Joseph landed face first in very nearly the same place where he had sat last night at dinner. Finally looking up after peeling his cheek off the floor, he saw that with the exception of himself and the normal women of the household (namely Marie, her Aunt and paternal Grandmother), the house was now empty. He had landed in the central depression which housed the table, seating mats and hearth and that was surrounded by the raised platforms where the party and those inhabiting the house had bedded down last night. ""What is that?!"" Asked Joseph as another volley of cracks sounded, now followed audibly by a command to reload.
Although the question was general, the response he got was specific. ""If you mean the gunshots, those are the men doing some target practice."" Marie replied as she made to spoon some broth into a bronze bowl.
""Strange, those guys who brought us in didn't look like the type to actually use guns, what with the whole ""barbarian"" vibe they were giving off."" Joseph sat properly at his seat as his girlfriend brought him what turned out to be soup of the kind that she usually favored as an appetizer. After thanking her, he began eating.
""Trust me, the hunters and warriors don't even like to look at firearms; they think they're a demeaning farce of a weapon, 'farmers weapons' as they call them... but given that they're used by the farming men, it's a pretty accurate description."" Ladling soup into her own bowl, she sat down beside Joseph at the table.
As the two older women looked on from their own work, the small talk went on between the two young ones: it turned out that these guns were old French repeating rifles from the 1920s rather than a modern Kalashnikov derivative and used an obscure 8mm cartridge that had to be produced by their agents in Vinh.
Then Joseph noticed something else. ""You know, I just noticed something about your teeth... they're white.""
""Of course they are. I know it may be a bit hard to find toothpaste out here but..."" It was then that Marie caught on to what he had meant. ""Oh, I guess you want to know why I haven't dyed them black yet, huh?"" After Joseph nodded, Marie laid out, at the most basic level, what she wanted to take away from this trip. ""Well, I've accepted lots of conditions for this visit. I did the tattooing, I help in the rice paddies, I've gone without modern clothing in almost every fashion, but these babies..."" She paused, did a tooth-bearing rictus grin and tapped her incisors with her right index fingernail three times. ""I've worked far too long for this shade and I'm not going to sacrifice them just so I can chew Betel nuts as a stimulant. Luckily, Dao managed to wrangle a small coffee supply from the Party minders; for a head priest he's not too bad, especially at this time of the morning.""
Somehow, Joseph suspected that this refusal had less to do with cosmetic concerns and more to do with her determination to not turn into a clone of her mother (in all of her paranoid glory) but something else caught his attention. ""What time is it, exactly? And where is everyone?"" Joseph asked in between bites. Everyone (including his party and Marie's family members) had bedded down last night when the night grew dark and they had run out of things to do to stave off exhaustion. That they weren't here now...
Marie had an air of subtle amusement about her, possessed since untying Joseph last night. ""We don't really keep time as an exact science around here. We have morning, evening, dawn, dusk, a rough idea of mid-day... and not much else. Even the passing of the seasons tends to become a blur in the constant raining and mist; without a calendar, time can play tricks on a person up here.""
Her boyfriend did not exactly believe this. ""You don't have any clocks? I mean... National Geographic even had to edit an alarm clock out of one of their photos in order to make an African hut look 'primitive' enough!""
Having never heard of this before, Marie could only shake her head in a form of self-depreciating humor. ""It's like I said once: this place is very rural and has historically been very isolated; it used to take years for news to filter up here from the coast. As to your other question, although I'm unaware of the exact local time, your friends left the house about an hour ago."" At this news, Joseph made a move to get up and join his friends (luckily, he had slept in his clothes) but was quickly (and effectively) shoved back down into his seat and told to finish his soup.
According to Marie, the kids had gone up onto the northern terraces with Tracy to show her the rice paddies (as she was ostensibly a farmer like they) while Albert had gone to retrieve their electronic equipment from the watermill where a small water-powered electric generator had been installed by the Border Defense force just a few years before. As to the Prof and his assistant... apparently, there'd been a meeting between some of the village bigwigs last night after the negotiations in the temple and Andover wanted to make sure that all the bad blood, anger and other annoyances had been cleared up before fieldwork was to commence.
As a small aside however, Marie did note that the powder of the Blue Forest Lotus did seem to have a slight lingering effect on those... yet unaccustomed to the strangeness that was apparently all too common in the world. Since Andover, Malone, Tracy and Albert had come from experiences where the paranormal was slightly less para-, they had arisen early, eaten and left without any signs of sloth.
After they finished eating, they returned their bowls to the hearth, thanked the two women and then left to join Josephs fellows who were set to gather in the temple for a meeting with Tsan Pho Dao himself.
The way that they had left while holding hands, however, told Marie's aunt and grandmother that the village matchmaker might be about to encounter another problem regarding Marie... or at the very least, the root of her current problems involving Marie.
Approximately 20 Minutes Later
As two acolytes opened the great double doors of the temple from the inside, Joseph could only gape in awe at the sights before him. The transition from the world outside with it's bright sunlight and high humidity to the world of faintly lit darkness and incense smoke that contained itself within the temple of Spoonbill Village was.. almost magical. Given what he had already heard of, this might not just be a layman's impression.
The interior of the temple also gave the impression of a sort of duality: on one hand, this building was probably the safest place in the village. On the other hand, the very atmosphere exuded by their surroundings, with acolytes working at mysterious duties before the various shrines of dark stone that lined the walls, indicated to any visitor that they just may not leave this building alive, an indication only strengthened by a large block of dark stone at the rear third of the interior. The sides of this almost altar-esqe block of Jadeite were engraved with many characters which appeared to be a bizarre mixture of Khoa Dau (the old script of Vietnam), the curving loops of Javanese and something even odder and older, resembling some of Albert's research on the old Seal Scripts of the Zhou... but not quite. The top of the block was formed into a shallow basin with notches for something of a liquid nature to run down into a series of channels (and from the look of it, recently had). The basin was large enough to hold a buffalo of considerable size and probably had many times over the years.
According to what Marie had told him, it could also hold an adult Human male.
Before the stone was low table on which was spread a yellow silken cloth. Upon the cloth, several strange items in ivory, jade, various metals and wood were placed, all seemingly used for the purpose of divining. However, what was most interesting about the table were the figures which were sitting behind it.
The first and more distinctive figure was that of an old man in an ornate gold headdress and voluminous red robes. While allegedly in his early 70s and not nearly as old as some people he had met, Joseph could see that something had wizened his features to the point where he appeared decades older than he should. What hair could be seen was wispy and white, being contained mostly in a braided beard and a mustache that looked like it might have belonged on Fu Manchu if said character had survived to the age of 126. The man's eyes, however, were clear and bright, and his face held signs of amusement under the formal grimace; Later, Joseph would identify said amusement as the product of the old, sing-song adage of ""I Know Something You Don't Know"".
But not yet.
Professor Andover, at the head of the party that included his students and Marie, led them to a point just before the low table and motioned them to kneel and bow. When they all knelt, Andover finally spoke in the most reverent tone that Joseph had ever heard applied to this or any other form of Mon-Khmer. ""In the spirit of respect and friendship I greet you, Tsan Pho Dao, Oracle of the Jade Bones, Sage of the Blood and Master of the Way of Leng.""
Seemingly placated by the proper formal greeting, Tsan Pho Dao answered back.. but not in the way that everyone was expecting him to.
""And in the spirit of Peace and Hospitality I greet you, Professor Neville Andover of Miskatonic University."" Replied the Chief Priest... in perfect, unaccented English. As a few heads raised and eyes gazed at him in surprise, the Priest shrugged and offered an explanation. ""A Language Acquisition Spell: sacrifice a pig and the world opens up to you. Now, I believe that you were to explain the purpose of this visit, were you not?""
Recovering remarkably well, Neville Andover explained exactly what he wanted to come out of this short, hopefully first survey. As the professor laid out the intricacies of the ethnographic process including both ""emic"" and ""etic"" (subject and researcher-derived, respectively) observations of daily life and material culture, interviews, historical research and recording of various events, Joseph slowly became aware of something. The first thing he noticed was that Marie's left hand, still held and being held by his right hand as they sat next to each other, was exerting a steady pressure that was much increased from when they were walking toward the temple or entering it. He also found that she was looking sideways towards the second figure near the altar stone,
This figure was a woman, somewhere between 60 and 70 years of age and rather less weathered than the man she sat beside and slightly to the rear of, her facial tattoos an asymmetric collection of delicate swirls and tiny trapezoids. Dressed in a fine formal gown of red and dark blue silk with gold filigree, she wore many sorts of jewelry from combs in her gray hair to bracelets of jade and gold on her wrists and even pendants and beads dangling from the ends of the jade hairpins that seemed to be ubiquitous in the hairstyles of married women in this village. Whereas this woman wore an expression of serene indifference, the look what Marie was giving her could easily be described as ""stink-eye"". While Joseph had been privy to a very mild version of this expression when he had almost implied cannibalism on the menu of her parents restaurant, the last time he had witnessed the full force of such a look was when they were in the fifth grade and a classmate had the gall to insult her parent's tattoos.
""And Albert Noyes.. you know of the Whisperers? The mushrooms of Yuggoth?"" Tsan Pho Dao asked, examining the oracular bauble on the table which apparently indicated Noyes background. Joseph's attention was brought back to the conversation by this question and the affirmative answer from Albert. ""Tell me then..."" Asked Dao. ""Have you encountered the Bringer of Strange Joy?""
""Not face to face and neither have any others in my town. I've heard of it... but almost as a legend across space and dimensions."" Albert shrugged. ""I still don't understand what it really is.""
""Nobody ever truly does."" Dao replied sagely before moving onto the next token. Upon picking up and examining a piece of carved buffalo horn, his eyes flickered to Ms. Williams. ""It seems that you share something with our people, Ms. Williams. The bones indicate that you have participated in the rites of sacrifice, much as we do?""
""Yes, but like I've said before, we've only ever sacrificed our own livestock. I once helped to hold down a pig, alright but... I don't know, we never wanted to kill people and we never needed to. Some of the other groups we keep running into, though..."" Tracy sighed after she realized that she had almost began rambling. ""We try so hard to keep all of the weirdos in line year after year... and year after year it's always the same: some crazy bastard tries to sneak in a human sacrifice, we get pissed and threaten to call the cops, they try to blackmail us into allowing it and then the saner worshipers just take the intended victim back where they came from, none the wiser on where they were. I just worry that someday, something horrible will happen on our doorstep and that we'll be blamed while the assholes slink off into the woods."" She then looked up at the Chief Sorcerer in embarrassment. ""I'm sorry that you had to hear that.. and sorry about the ""crazy bastard"" crack. I'm sure you're a very nice person.""
Affecting a look of near-pity, Tsan Pho Dao offered a little of what he had seen in her future. ""The stress of such a life can be hard to bear... but I sense that help has already held out a hand. All that remains is for someone to be brave enough to accept it."" As Tracy thought this bit of fortune-cookie wisdom over, the priest turned his head towards Joseph, who opened his mouth to speak. However, Dao held up two claw-like fingers to stop him. ""We know of you, Joseph Clayton and as of yet, nothing much outside the norm have you gazed. However, I would appreciate hearing the reasons on why you ceased playing your sport when you ventured away from home.""
Already prepared for such clarity of soothsaying, the young man shrugged. ""It turns out that I wasn't tall enough to play college basketball. However, even if I had been.. I don't I would have been content to play for a team which called itself the, and I quote, 'Mommas Boys'."" Albert groaned in embarrassment at the name while Tracy found reason to snicker, both knowing that the Miskatonic ""MB's"" were a long-time running punchline for the college leagues.
With that interlude over, assignments were made. Tracy, coming from farm country, would stay with Marie's Grandparents, conduct interviews among the farmers and record their daily lives, up to and including working alongside them on the terraced rice paddies. Albert, displaying more aptitude with technology due to his communities alliance with the so-called ""Mi'go"", would be stationed at the household of the Village Bronze-caster, who supplied many of the tools and utensils of the village. As they were also one of the most socially connected families in the village, the large house they inhabited would make an ideal central base for the expedition.
Malone, as he had existing skills and reputedly the strongest stomach, would cover the operation of the Temple and thus be overseen by Professor Andover, who would be staying there as well. As for Joseph... for Joseph, it was decided, quite surprisingly, that he would live in the house of the hunters that had encountered the party.
As the guests rose and began filing out, Tsan Pho Dao watched the retreating figures intently until the door closed behind them. He turned to the woman sitting beside him. ""Well, that certainly explains why the girl has rebuffed all of the potential suitors you pushed her way.""
The woman's mask of indifference gave way to shock and then the stirrings of anger. ""You mean... him?! Are you saying that she, of her own accord, chose some foreign devil instead of one of her own kind?""
""I wouldn't be that harsh on the boy. He's appears not of the same fragile, treacherous mindset as the others we have encountered... if his having come this far without screaming is any indication."" Since this morning, Dao had know that something like this was coming; his wife was comfortable in both her power and her confidence in her decisions and a conflict was bound to happen given the way Thuch and Thanh had raised their daughter in the West.
""You know what I mean! It was bad enough that her parents gave her a French name and now she's been consorting with one of them as well!""
Dao sardonically smiled. ""I'm fairly sure that the boy is English; they and the French have the kind of mutual dislike for each other that we and the Han do. As to the boy himself, I've put him far away from where Marie is staying, but she still will have to act as an interpreter for the group."" He picked up a small, silvery disc from the table and began to examine it. ""But given her confidence in him, I feel that we should observe what happens before making any moves.""
The woman, known now only by her title of Matchmaker and by a few in her past by the name of Chau, looked at her husband in an appraising way. ""You know something, don't you?""
Still gazing at the disc that had told him something of the Clayton boy, a Unites States quarter-dollar coin circa 1961, Dao chose his words carefully. ""What I know is dwarfed by what I suspect. But... what I do know is that there is something about this boy... something that you may have to take into consideration. The threads of his fate show that something is about to pull at them... but whether for good or ill or who will pull, I do not know.""
He did not know but, as his gaze lifted from the coin (specifically a series of scratches upon the face of Washington) towards a winding pattern of black fretwork above the main door, he suspected that whatever may be coming toward the boy would be very familiar indeed.
Spoonbill Village, Early Afternoon
June 30, 2011.
As part of his integration into the community, Joseph had acquiesced into wearing the local clothing: a kilt and short sleeved jacket in brown cotton with geometric patterns of black lines and dots.
However, there was one piece of clothing that the young man was already beginning to miss.
""You mean everyone goes commando around here? Couldn't I have at least kept my boxers on?"" Having never dressed this way outside his regular use of towel or robe for showering, Joseph was having a bit of trouble getting used to it.
""Yes we do and no, you can't have your shorts back; those things absolutely stunk! Heavens know what was going on in there."" As they made their way from her grandparents house to their destination, materials and devices at hand, they were drawing a fair amount of stares from people going about their business, most of them absolutely bewildered by the conversation that was going on. However, Joseph could have imagined that in that last statement there was some... not amusement, although Marie's tone since he had gotten his head off the metaphorical chopping block indicated that she was much more at ease in this place than he was. But there had been a hint of suggestion, a certain playfulness of tone that suggested that she knew full well some of the things which had gone on in those shorts.
And then he connected the ""going commando"" remark with... Oh dear. ""And you..?"" Joseph began, quite unsure on how to word the question.
""I've kept that part of my dignity, thank you very much."" There was a sense of arrogance and snootiness in Marie's reply, but it was a false arrogance and a playful, imitation snootiness at heart. ""Alright, so I cheated a bit but there are things I want to hang onto, even if leaving here becomes... difficult."" They stopped in front of a house near the entrance to the village temple.
""Anything I should know about this guy?"" Joseph asked his girlfriend, desperate to get his mind out of the gutter.
""First, he's a hunter, archer and scout. He's from the Clan of the Spider, which is one of the really old warrior lineages in this village. Second, he's also got a wife who came from a village in Laos, a Tai speaker, so there may be a language barrier. They have a son in the age range of my younger cousins. Third... well, many of the warriors do a little sorcery on the side. The odd... mutation occasionally pops up."" There was again an awkwardness, as she was apparently describing another bit of weirdness that had slipped past the descriptions of last night.
Absorbing this new description and momentarily deciding that his libido was a somewhat more comfortable avenue, Joseph mustered courage and.. well, kissed Marie again. ""I love you and... and I promise that if this goes bad, I'll make sure you get out of here."" This statement was supposed to be one of affirmation but the worry also showed through.
Momentarily flustered by her boyfriends brashness, Marie nevertheless recovered quickly. ""Hey, if things go bad, I'll be the one dragging you out of here..."" Here, her tone turned softer, more grateful and more genuine. ""But thanks all the same."" Everything said, that kind of commitment was nice to have reinforced, even if it did point to some creeping uneasiness with the whole thing.
Still, it was only the second day.
As she went up to the door, Joseph thought that it was probably a good thing that he would not be able to watch her leave... and it was probably also a good thing that neither the mens nor the womens kilts were very snug.
If he wasn't careful, this was going to turn into a very embarrassing few weeks.
",True
"The world we live in is not as it seems. I, James White, write this document so that others may be made aware of what I have experienced and know of the dangers that lurk beneath our limited perception of ""reality"". Whether you believe me or not, dear reader, is up to you. I only ask that you read what I write with an open mind since I write, not for my own gain, but to warn you of what I can only describe as ""pure evil"".
I had never heard of the ""Cult of Cthulhu"" before I began university in the late summer of 2012. I was only eighteen years old, an atheist, and dogmatically pursued scientific understanding and knowledge. At that time, I was not in the least bit interested in weird cults and other religious movements, which I simply dismissed as primitive superstition. Had I but known what I would encounter, I would have burnt the science textbook, prayed to God for the strength not to crumble into insanity and got as far away from that university as I could!
The strange happenings started less than two months into my first term. I had been put into student accommodation and shared a corridor with four other boys and two girls. I had got to know my flatmates very well until all of a sudden, one of the boys by the name of Jonathan Mears disappeared. This wasn't looked upon as weird at first since Jonathan was the quiet type anyway and often spent long hours alone in his room. The suspicions arose however, when he hadn't shown his face for three days. His absence was brought up one evening as we sat in a communal area.
""He's probably just been very busy lately,"" my best friend, Jacob Shields, said. ""You know Jonathan. When he sets his mind on something, he doesn't stop until he's achieved whatever he's trying to do.""
""Isn't it a bit strange though?"" Annie Roberts, a lovely blonde girl from the room directly across the corridor asked. ""I mean, he's in our corridor and we haven't seen him for ages. Not even in the kitchen or lecture halls.""
""It isn't like him to miss a lecture,"" I agreed. Jacob merely waved these concerns away.
""If we haven't seen him by tomorrow evening, we'll go to the reception and see what's happening,"" he said cheerfully.
But Jonathan didn't show up the following day and, as planned, my entire corridor went to the reception desk to ask if anything had happened to him. The receptionist, an elderly lady, checked through the files on a computer before looking up at us.
""I'm afraid he has left the university,"" she informed us. ""He dropped out four days ago.""
""Well there you go!"" Jacob exclaimed. ""Nothing to worry about!""
But there was something to worry about. Even though I now had every reason to think that Jonathan was fine, I couldn't shake that feeling of foreboding. He had seemed happy in university and was consistently getting high marks so I resolved to check things out for myself.
I waited until 3:00 the following morning, and in the darkness, I tiptoed along the corridor to Jonathan's room. Using a paperclip, I carefully picked the lock on his door and let myself in. I closed the door behind me and switched on the light. The sight that greeted me came as a huge shock. Clothes still lay on the floor, the bed was made, books were still on the shelves and a laptop was still humming gently on the cluttered desk. In short, it looked as though Jonathan was simply out of the room. If he had gone home, why did he leave all his things behind? And if he hadn't, where was he and why did the university records state that he had? Deeply concerned, I left the room and returned to my own. I lay awake in the darkness pondering the thoughts in my head and finally decided that I needed to find out what had happened and that I would do so alone...
","II.

It was in the township of Dunwich, in a large and partly inhabited farmhouse set against a hillside four miles from the village and a mile and a half from any other dwelling, that Wilbur Whateley was born at 5 A.M. on Sunday, the second of February, 1913. This date was recalled because it was Candlemas, which people in Dunwich curiously observe under another name; and because the noises in the hills had sounded, and all the dogs of the countryside had barked persistently, throughout the night before. Less worthy of notice was the fact that the mother was one of the decadent Whateleys, a somewhat deformed, unattractive albino woman of thirty-five, living with an aged and half-insane father about whom the most frightful tales of wizardry had been whispered in his youth. Lavinia Whateley had no known husband, but according to the custom of the region made no attempt to disavow the child; concerning the other side of whose ancestry the country folk might—and did—speculate as widely as they chose. On the contrary, she seemed strangely proud of the dark, goatish-looking infant who formed such a contrast to her own sickly and pink-eyed albinism, and was heard to mutter many curious prophecies about its unusual powers and tremendous future.
      Lavinia was one who would be apt to mutter such things, for she was a lone creature given to wandering amidst thunderstorms in the hills and trying to read the great odorous books which her father had inherited through two centuries of Whateleys, and which were fast falling to pieces with age and worm-holes. She had never been to school, but was filled with disjointed scraps of ancient lore that Old Whateley had taught her. The remote farmhouse had always been feared because of Old Whateley’s reputation for black magic, and the unexplained death by violence of Mrs. Whateley when Lavinia was twelve years old had not helped to make the place popular. Isolated among strange influences, Lavinia was fond of wild and grandiose day-dreams and singular occupations; nor was her leisure much taken up by household cares in a home from which all standards of order and cleanliness had long since disappeared.
      There was a hideous screaming which echoed above even the hill noises and the dogs’ barking on the night Wilbur was born, but no known doctor or midwife presided at his coming. Neighbours knew nothing of him till a week afterward, when Old Whateley drove his sleigh through the snow into Dunwich Village and discoursed incoherently to the group of loungers at Osborn’s general store. There seemed to be a change in the old man—an added element of furtiveness in the clouded brain which subtly transformed him from an object to a subject of fear—though he was not one to be perturbed by any common family event. Amidst it all he shewed some trace of the pride later noticed in his daughter, and what he said of the child’s paternity was remembered by many of his hearers years afterward.
      “I dun’t keer what folks think—ef Lavinny’s boy looked like his pa, he wouldn’t look like nothin’ ye expeck. Ye needn’t think the only folks is the folks hereabaouts. Lavinny’s read some, an’ has seed some things the most o’ ye only tell abaout. I calc’late her man is as good a husban’ as ye kin find this side of Aylesbury; an’ ef ye knowed as much abaout the hills as I dew, ye wouldn’t ast no better church weddin’ nor her’n. Let me tell ye suthin’—some day yew folks’ll hear a child o’ Lavinny’s a-callin’ its father’s name on the top o’ Sentinel Hill!”
      The only persons who saw Wilbur during the first month of his life were old Zechariah Whateley, of the undecayed Whateleys, and Earl Sawyer’s common-law wife, Mamie Bishop. Mamie’s visit was frankly one of curiosity, and her subsequent tales did justice to her observations; but Zechariah came to lead a pair of Alderney cows which Old Whateley had bought of his son Curtis. This marked the beginning of a course of cattle-buying on the part of small Wilbur’s family which ended only in 1928, when the Dunwich horror came and went; yet at no time did the ramshackle Whateley barn seem overcrowded with livestock. There came a period when people were curious enough to steal up and count the herd that grazed precariously on the steep hillside above the old farmhouse, and they could never find more than ten or twelve anaemic, bloodless-looking specimens. Evidently some blight or distemper, perhaps sprung from the unwholesome pasturage or the diseased fungi and timbers of the filthy barn, caused a heavy mortality amongst the Whateley animals. Odd wounds or sores, having something of the aspect of incisions, seemed to afflict the visible cattle; and once or twice during the earlier months certain callers fancied they could discern similar sores about the throats of the grey, unshaven old man and his slatternly, crinkly-haired albino daughter.
      In the spring after Wilbur’s birth Lavinia resumed her customary rambles in the hills, bearing in her misproportioned arms the swarthy child. Public interest in the Whateleys subsided after most of the country folk had seen the baby, and no one bothered to comment on the swift development which that newcomer seemed every day to exhibit. Wilbur’s growth was indeed phenomenal, for within three months of his birth he had attained a size and muscular power not usually found in infants under a full year of age. His motions and even his vocal sounds shewed a restraint and deliberateness highly peculiar in an infant, and no one was really unprepared when, at seven months, he began to walk unassisted, with falterings which another month was sufficient to remove.
      It was somewhat after this time—on Hallowe’en—that a great blaze was seen at midnight on the top of Sentinel Hill where the old table-like stone stands amidst its tumulus of ancient bones. Considerable talk was started when Silas Bishop—of the undecayed Bishops—mentioned having seen the boy running sturdily up that hill ahead of his mother about an hour before the blaze was remarked. Silas was rounding up a stray heifer, but he nearly forgot his mission when he fleetingly spied the two figures in the dim light of his lantern. They darted almost noiselessly through the underbrush, and the astonished watcher seemed to think they were entirely unclothed. Afterward he could not be sure about the boy, who may have had some kind of a fringed belt and a pair of dark trunks or trousers on. Wilbur was never subsequently seen alive and conscious without complete and tightly buttoned attire, the disarrangement or threatened disarrangement of which always seemed to fill him with anger and alarm. His contrast with his squalid mother and grandfather in this respect was thought very notable until the horror of 1928 suggested the most valid of reasons.
      The next January gossips were mildly interested in the fact that “Lavinny’s black brat” had commenced to talk, and at the age of only eleven months. His speech was somewhat remarkable both because of its difference from the ordinary accents of the region, and because it displayed a freedom from infantile lisping of which many children of three or four might well be proud. The boy was not talkative, yet when he spoke he seemed to reflect some elusive element wholly unpossessed by Dunwich and its denizens. The strangeness did not reside in what he said, or even in the simple idioms he used; but seemed vaguely linked with his intonation or with the internal organs that produced the spoken sounds. His facial aspect, too, was remarkable for its maturity; for though he shared his mother’s and grandfather’s chinlessness, his firm and precociously shaped nose united with the expression of his large, dark, almost Latin eyes to give him an air of quasi-adulthood and well-nigh preternatural intelligence. He was, however, exceedingly ugly despite his appearance of brilliancy; there being something almost goatish or animalistic about his thick lips, large-pored, yellowish skin, coarse crinkly hair, and oddly elongated ears. He was soon disliked even more decidedly than his mother and grandsire, and all conjectures about him were spiced with references to the bygone magic of Old Whateley, and how the hills once shook when he shrieked the dreadful name of Yog-Sothoth in the midst of a circle of stones with a great book open in his arms before him. Dogs abhorred the boy, and he was always obliged to take various defensive measures against their barking menace.
",False
"The world we live in is not as it seems. I, James White, write this document so that others may be made aware of what I have experienced and know of the dangers that lurk beneath our limited perception of ""reality"". Whether you believe me or not, dear reader, is up to you. I only ask that you read what I write with an open mind since I write, not for my own gain, but to warn you of what I can only describe as ""pure evil"".
I had never heard of the ""Cult of Cthulhu"" before I began university in the late summer of 2012. I was only eighteen years old, an atheist, and dogmatically pursued scientific understanding and knowledge. At that time, I was not in the least bit interested in weird cults and other religious movements, which I simply dismissed as primitive superstition. Had I but known what I would encounter, I would have burnt the science textbook, prayed to God for the strength not to crumble into insanity and got as far away from that university as I could!
The strange happenings started less than two months into my first term. I had been put into student accommodation and shared a corridor with four other boys and two girls. I had got to know my flatmates very well until all of a sudden, one of the boys by the name of Jonathan Mears disappeared. This wasn't looked upon as weird at first since Jonathan was the quiet type anyway and often spent long hours alone in his room. The suspicions arose however, when he hadn't shown his face for three days. His absence was brought up one evening as we sat in a communal area.
""He's probably just been very busy lately,"" my best friend, Jacob Shields, said. ""You know Jonathan. When he sets his mind on something, he doesn't stop until he's achieved whatever he's trying to do.""
""Isn't it a bit strange though?"" Annie Roberts, a lovely blonde girl from the room directly across the corridor asked. ""I mean, he's in our corridor and we haven't seen him for ages. Not even in the kitchen or lecture halls.""
""It isn't like him to miss a lecture,"" I agreed. Jacob merely waved these concerns away.
""If we haven't seen him by tomorrow evening, we'll go to the reception and see what's happening,"" he said cheerfully.
But Jonathan didn't show up the following day and, as planned, my entire corridor went to the reception desk to ask if anything had happened to him. The receptionist, an elderly lady, checked through the files on a computer before looking up at us.
""I'm afraid he has left the university,"" she informed us. ""He dropped out four days ago.""
""Well there you go!"" Jacob exclaimed. ""Nothing to worry about!""
But there was something to worry about. Even though I now had every reason to think that Jonathan was fine, I couldn't shake that feeling of foreboding. He had seemed happy in university and was consistently getting high marks so I resolved to check things out for myself.
I waited until 3:00 the following morning, and in the darkness, I tiptoed along the corridor to Jonathan's room. Using a paperclip, I carefully picked the lock on his door and let myself in. I closed the door behind me and switched on the light. The sight that greeted me came as a huge shock. Clothes still lay on the floor, the bed was made, books were still on the shelves and a laptop was still humming gently on the cluttered desk. In short, it looked as though Jonathan was simply out of the room. If he had gone home, why did he leave all his things behind? And if he hadn't, where was he and why did the university records state that he had? Deeply concerned, I left the room and returned to my own. I lay awake in the darkness pondering the thoughts in my head and finally decided that I needed to find out what had happened and that I would do so alone...
","Spoonbill Village, Northernmost Quang Bin Province, SRV
June 29, 2011
As the two young adults stared at each other, nothing but shock registered in either of their brains. Not the stares of the villagers nor of Joseph's classmates affected them in their surprise. For Joseph, the shock was mixed with relief at finding his girlfriend safe, concern about his own impending fate as the main course and a strange confusion about what the heck was going on. For Marie, it was the sheer shock of actually seeing her boyfriend here and her puzzlement at the reason why that added to her numb bewilderment, not to mention the fear for his life at what might happen next.
As the shock broke, she knew that she had to act. And since the village chief was here...
""You cannot sacrifice this man! His family are allies are of my parents, his parents are involved in our business. If anything happens to him, calamity will come upon us all!"" Demanding such things of the chieftain might have been rude, presumptuous and even insulting, but everything she said was the truth. If Joseph died, things would go down the toilet very quickly.
Before the men could answer back, the crashing of a great bronze gong echoed over the crowd and all heads turned towards the source of the cacophony, the temple. Coming down the steps was a red lacquered palanquin with red curtains. Four men in deeply-hooded red robes supported the wooden structure, it's bracing poles upon their shoulders. As they reached the courtyard proper, one of the warriors who had exited the large house went up to the palanquin, distinguished from the others by leather shoes on his feet, a broad circlet of gold around his black head-wrap and a single pheasant tail feather standing erect at the forefront of this headdress. Joseph could distinguish some sort of conversation happening, the words too quiet to make out. For several tense seconds he, Marie, his classmates and his professor waited for what would happen.
What happened was that from this man, the villages hereditary chief, the order was given for them to be spared... for now. Another order was given to separate them and hold them in isolation until a final decision could be made.
As Joseph was carried away into a side street, he could almost glimpse Marie following the palanquin into the Temple, including his Professor, still sitting in his basket.
Several Hours Later
Joseph could never fully recall all of the things that he had pondered in those hours, sitting with his hands and feet bound, alone in that dark storehouse, smelling of rice and preserved vegetables. He had found Marie and as he had suspected for a number of years, she apparently belonged to a semi-unique culture of Vietic speakers in her purported homeland of the Annamite Range. What came as a surprise was that they apparently, if the few bits of coherent speech he had heard were any indication, practiced some sort of ritualized homicide and may well be inclined toward the consumption of ""long pork""... and at the moment, that could include him.
Eventually the door opened and soft, yellow light flooded the room, illuminating bags of rice and strings of hanging vegetables. In the doorway was Marie, carrying a paper covered lantern in one hand, a bronze bowl in the other and now hat-less. As he had briefly noticed earlier, the muscles on her limbs now had a definition to them that hadn't existed back in Glaston, her frame slightly more lean than the apprentice cook that he remembered. She was dressed just as she had been before, was still tattooed everywhere he could see and, as she she came over to where he was sitting, the light in the lantern seemed more like... fireflies than any kind of flame.
""So... nice place you have here."" He hoped that starting slow could take some of the edge off the dangerous situation in which he now faced himself.
""Yeah... it is nice, I guess."" Marie put the bowl (now seen to be carrying water) and the lantern on the ground beside him and knelt to untie his bonds. ""I'm sorry that you got dragged into this. When I borrowed that record... I had no idea that..."" She closed her eyes and sighed in a way that, to Joseph, made the tattoos on her face dance almost... alluringly. ""There's a lot that I just couldn't tell you when we were younger. My people are used to hiding... maybe tooused to it by now. I want to tell you so much, but I... I don't know where to begin.""
""Then start from the beginning. That always seems to be how it's done in the movies."" Rubbing his wrists and ankles to get the circulation back, Joseph wondered just what he was going to hear.
What he heard was everythingabout her people, the stories she had enraptured Cora with plus a whole lot of other stuff, fantastic and gruesome in equal measure. The human sacrifice, the ritual cannibalism, the intermittent persecution by Chinese, Champa, Viet and French over the last two thousand years... nothing was left out. As he sipped water from the bowl, she described how her peoples ancestors had been Au Lac refugees from the Red River Valley, driven south into the mountains by the invading Qin Chinese. On the edge of total starvation, they had been saved when a spirit animal, a black water buffalo cow with a seemingly endless number of calves trailing behind, had emerged from the highland jungle at the chanting of animist shamans travelling with the group.
Behind those spectral buffalo had emerged their wonder and salvation: men in red robes with the legs of goats, monks from a far, high land called Leng. These strange people, who called themselves Shugoran, had taught this diverse group of farmers, mountain peoples, priests, urbanites and servants many useful magics: how to grow up to twelve crops of rice per year, how to draw water and metal from the earth, how to commune with the forces of the universe and not annoy them too severely, how to pass perfect memories from father to son, how to ensure the fertility of people, livestock and game and how to armor a person's skin so as to stop any blade or spear or arrow or sling stone.
It was this last spell, combined with the requirement in orthodox Shugoran magic for Human (or similar) sacrifice and cannibalism that brought on the next mess. When the Qin Dynasty collapsed under the weight of the first emperor's paranoia and his successors incompetence, suicide and the resultant power struggle, the men of the new ""Leng Viet"" decided to press their advantage. They launched a guerrilla campaign in an attempt to drive the Trieu Dynasty, with its mixed nobility of native southerners and Han Chinese, out of the Red River valley and establish a new native state.
Over the next hundred years, men raided trade routes and army barracks in the guise of screaming, bare-chested, tattooed (associated with bandits and convicts by the Chinese) savages, dragging captives off into the night or the forest in order to sacrifice them for either civilian or military magic. When they eventually lost their ""War of the Bandits"" (from the threefold causes of not getting any local nobility on their side, of terrifying the pants off their Viet kinsmen with their ferocity and the rumours of their religion and by the sheer weight of the eventual re-invasion by the armies of the Han Dynasty) they fled deep into the mountains of the West and South, being chided by the last of the original, goat-legged sorcerers for their foolish, ill-planned ambitions. From then, they had remained hidden and relatively peaceful, though remembered in whispered folk-tales as vicious, man-eating monsters.
After Marie had finished. Joseph sat in silence for a few minutes, digesting what he had just heard. The whole thing about magic was a bit.. hard to swallow. However, his own eyes had seen things that most would say were impossible. ""You don't... you don't hate me now, do you?"" Marie suddenly asked, her face awash in a worried panic, perhaps the culmination of every bout of anxiety she had ever experienced when Joseph had began edging onto the subject of her people's true nature. So much worry, so much fear and one wrong move now could break her heart.
For once, just once, he initiated the kiss this time.
""Does that answer your question?"" As they pulled apart, he could see that most of her anxieties had melted away. ""And... I hesitate to mention this, but about your parents restaurant..."" He stopped when he saw her face, now an annoyed, knowing grimace that indicated that the next words out of his mouth should be chosen very carefully. ""Uh... about the chicken, beef and pork they used. Was any of it... officiallysacrificed?""

Marie's grimace let up. ""You need a priest to do anything official, and my parents are from farming families. Don't worry, we never served anyone up as the main course."" She actually began to smile as she stood upright.
""Alright... but speaking of the main course, what about..."" Joseph gulped nervously. ""Me? Am I still going to be barbecue or did you actually convince anyone otherwise?""
The next news out of Marie's mouth was welcome indeed. ""I didn't, but your professor won your life and those of the others after he talked with our Chief Priest. If I'm right, he and the rest of your team should be at the house of my paternal grandparents. Who arethey, anyway?""
""My classmates. The Anthropology department at Miskatonic organized this trip with Professor Andover and a couple of us volunteered. "" Still holding the bowl, Joseph began standing, his limbs still stiff and numb from hours of sitting. Despite this discomfort and the twitching shocks that came when blood began flowing free again, he followed her out the door, though not before taking and slinging a bag of rice over his shoulder at her asking, along with a braid of garlic bulbs and a small box of dried pork on a cord.
During his captivity, Joseph had been held in one of the storehouses by the river, a short way north of the village. Now, in the waning light of dusk, he and Marie made their way back on the path that wove through vegetable gardens and pig-pens until they reached the outlying houses. Through narrow alleys between house stilts and below the sounds of evening meals being eaten, past dogs and pigs drowsing in the under-crofts and along the great outer wall of the temple they traveled before moving into the main square and down the main thoroughfare.

""It should be just after this next left, right across from the bronze-smith."" As they walked along, they came to an intersection. On their right was a large house facing the street, belonging to the village bronze-smith and acting as a shop, a workplace and his family home. Across the main street from that house was a side street, lined by mostly smaller houses but each of them with soft lights in their windows. A few houses in, Marie led Joseph up the stairs of one house where familiar voices were laughing and making merry, including one brash female voice in particular that Joseph had come to know well.
As Marie lay down the lantern on the porch and opened the door, the voices became louder and clearer. When they entered, everyone was already seated (or at least kneeling). Albert and Malone were trading stories of their brief imprisonment and what they had seen, while Tracy was working her way through a bowl of green tea, apparently trying to cajole her way into the rice whiskey. Professor Andover was making small conversation with an old village man sitting at the head of the table who was wearing the brown jacket and skirt combo that was so common. Also at the table was a younger man and his wife, maybe a little older than Marie's parents, along with two teenage sons who had not yet received their tattooing. Some ways from the table, an elderly woman worked at a hearth lined with stone and brick, stoking a carefully controlled charcoal fire.
Everyone looked up at the new arrivals. The first to speak was the old man who had been talking to the professor, telling Marie to bring the rice and other ingredients over to the charcoal hearth so the evening meal could begin and then for them to sit down. After that was done, Joseph noticed that people were looking at him.
Apparently, it was time to make introductions.
""Joseph, I'd like you to meet my family on my father's side."" After explaining that few of them could understand any English at all, Marie started introducing them. First came the old man, now identified as her paternal grandfather. Her grandmother, his wife, was the woman starting tending the fire at the hearth, her gray hair in an elaborate bun at the back of the head held together with a set of jade hairpins and wearing a long, black dress, similar to the garment that Marie had worn at the performance. Marie's uncle Huy and his wife An sat across from the Miskatonic students and beside them sat Cu'ong and Thao, their two sons...
Only two?
""Damn, the Kids!"" Marie had been so busy with her boyfriend that the absence her younger cousins had escaped her until now. She got back up and went to the door, opened it and called down the street for them to get in the house now and try not to spill the water they were carrying. As she returned to where she had been kneeling, many hurried footsteps were heard coming up the outside stairs and the door opened again as five children entered as a crowd. The oldest, a girl who was perhaps eleven years old, was carrying two bronze pails of water in her hands while the second oldest, a boy of maybe ten, was carrying two more.
In fact, all the kids, which included two more boys and another girl, seemed to each be about a year apart down to a little boy of about seven years old. ""Big families the norm around here?"" Joseph asked his girlfriend as the water was transferred to cooking vessels and the ingredients collected.
Marie shrugged. ""More or less: most farming families have at least three kids nowadays but the norm used to be around five around a century ago. This family is weird both ways: My uncle and aunt for having so many and my parents for just having me."" 
Of course, sooner or later this casual reminiscing had to end. ""So, Professor..."" Tracy began, consciously deciding to get back on topic from the revery the two had been involved in. ""You Said that you had something to tell us, about the ultimate purpose of this expedition?""
Neville Andover smiled the way that someone delivering a great and terrible revelation does. ""As a matter of fact, I did."" He motioned towards Malone, who was now extremely attentive. ""This is Malone Roberts; for the last year he has been playing the part of my student, but he is far more than that. He is my assistant, my cohort... my protege in the context of the agency I work for. Tell me..."" He seemed to direct this as every member of the audience (save Malone) who could speak English. ""Have any of you heard of Delta Green?""
""What's that? Something in the Marine Corps?"" It had soundedlike an innocent question from Ms. Williams, but Joseph had shared a class, study groups and cram sessions with her for many months, and could recognize the first signs of building stress and panic when he saw them. They were amazingly similar to the signs that Marie herself had shown, with the difference of gripping objects such as a table edge with white-knuckle intensity now apparent.
""It's surprising that you haven't heard of it, considering the contacts in your community and the agencies reputation for... extreme measuresbefore 1960."" Now Andover turned to Albert Noyes. ""Perhaps you have some notion of it... or its partner agency, Majestic 12. It is quite amazing work they're doing on the Yuggoth Project, especially on fungi."" This seemed like it was crammed with potential clues, but honestly, Joseph couldn't make heads or tails of it.
Noyes, on the other hand, apparently could. He began smiling in surprise and recognition and began laughing at the revelation. ""You mean... you know about the Mi'go?"" Now Joseph was confused beyond all reckoning, and apparently so were Marie and Tracy.
""Know aboutthem, know some of them, occasionally work alongside them. And if I may say, for half-fungus, half-arthropod, telepathic pains in the rear, they are remarkably easy to work with."" What followed was Albert explaining the situation: the weirdest kinds of aliens you could imagine had contacted some humans in the 1800s and hired them to assist in mining certain valuable minerals in the hills of Vermont and Maine. Over the years, the men and women in their employ had received advice from these aliens as to potential marriage partners, first in terms genetic compatibility and superior traits for their offspring, then based on attractiveness as their understanding of human reproductive psychology increased. Finally, as they realized the subtle psychological and social rules of courtship, the began acting as human elites once did, organizing parties for unattached men and women and subtly directing candidates certain ways as they piloted artificial human body-shells around the dance floor. 
It sounded weird... but reassuring, even humorous. Even Tracy seemed to lighten up... as far as a hunted rabbit couldlighten up.
""Mr. Clayton here is what you may call 'normal'. However, he was privy to manifestations not usual of this Earth."" Joseph then told the assembled of what he had witnessed, with Professor Andover hypothesizing that the phonograph may have projected images and smells by some means of eldritch energies. Marie also retold the story of her people and of the deal that she had agreed to to gain access to the phonograph: one year back in the village and receiving her tattoos of adulthood. Nothing more and nothing less had been asked of her.
""And finally, we have Ms. Williams, whose tale has much to do with the founding of the organization and its present form."" Here, Andover seemed to realize what kind of anxiety the girl was going through, and thus went slowly. ""In the winter of 1928, the Miskatonic faculty was contacted by the United States Army to help investigate a series of strange attacks and abductions in Paige County, Virginia. As the base was in a primarily Quaker area, Miskatonic sent its lone member of faculty who was a Friend, one Hiriam Willows of Boston. While he remained among the Quaker farmfolk who knew the habits of the attacks, the army waged war against what was first believed to be a ""degenerate"" tribe of Iroquois but were later found to be white members of a strange fertility cult which engaged in human sacrifice.""
The academic glanced towards Tracy, who had lowered her head, closed her eyes and grimaced at what was surely to come. He turned back to his eager listeners. ""Before Willows left, he discovered strange objects in a secret room at the Longhouse Meeting Hall... objects which resembled those found on the slain cultists. He also, inadvertently, stumbled upon his hosts engaged in a ritual of apparent mourning, dressed as the Southern Iroquois would have been three hundred years ago, sacrificing pigs upon an altar at an isolated circle of standing stones, wailing and keening in grief."" He looked back at Tracy. ""This was the experience which convinced him that not all who worship the base forces of the universe are driven to evil nor insanity. It was also the experience that not all things should be released to the world, both for the worlds safety and that of the subjects.""
After a moment's silence, Tracy spoke. ""Excuse me."" She got up walked out the door, somewhat to the surprise of her classmates, Marie and Marie's family. Marie then got up and went to follow, an act which inevitably drew Joseph after her.
They found Tracy sitting at the bottom of the steps, her chin on one balled fist, her other arm across her lap, her eyes staring into some unfathomable distance. Marie went forward first, sitting beside the girl as Joseph hung back. ""I don't think we've been introduced. My name's Marie."" When Tracy didn't answer. ""You know, you don't have to feel bad about what other people did. Those guys the Army killed weren't your people, no matter how similar your rituals may have been.""
""But they weremy people."" The answer came suddenly and surprised both listeners.
""Pardon?"" Asked Joseph from the middle of the stairway.
""Those dangerous cultists that the professor told you about; they were English, Quakers even... or had been at one time."" She sighed, not quite sure of herself on how to explain to outsiders the issue which had plagued her fears since the age of 10. ""They were my peoples kin, descendants of those of us who answered the Union armies call for guerrillas during the Civil War. Before that, we'd adopted some sacrificial ritual from the Iroquois during the 1720s after some very hard winters. Where before they'd killed dogs, black deer and captured warriors... as well as captured women and children if it got reallybad... to get good crops and health, we imposed strict limits and rules. There was to be no more human sacrifice, we killed our own livestock and above all, we accept the rituals as a gift from on high... even if the whole Christ thing was supposed to render sacrifice obsolete.""
""I'd consider it a divine door prize. But about the Civil War?"" Marie was trying to make the talk as nonthreatening as possible, considering the darkness which had settled over the village.
Getting back on topic, Tracy continued. ""Well, we'd already been hiding escaped slaves for years on their way up to the major escape routes in Pennsylvania, but we felt that we couldn't do any more, especially with so much Confederate presence in the Shenandoah and the internecine aggression over secession. These people though... they wanted to do something. So, when a few Union officers wanted a meeting, they snuck off north. And when they came back, they brought otherthings with them. Old medieval codices which described Druidic rituals shockingly similar to our own but twisted and brutal, rituals which needed terror to be inflicted in the victims so that the full power of their life force could be drained. Their attitudes had changed as well; they became disdainful of the rest of the community: calling them weak, cowards, savages who refused to possess the full power of the Star Daughter and the Black Stag, fools who held onto their 'petty delusions' of morality. Well, after they went and made a mess of everything by capturing and sacrificing a Confederate squadron... the rest of the Longhouse Quakers shunned them, bidding them to go into the high mountains until they were ready to return. And so, a collection of about 50 men, women and children left the Valley and went into the high woods.""
Joseph put something together in his head. ""And I take it that the next time they returned was 60 years later, crazier than ever.""
Tracy harrumphed. ""You've got that right. And think about this while you're at it: by the 1920s, we'd been isolated for so long that it was starting to show in our features; the more inbred we became, the leaner our faces and the bonier our joints. By the time Willows got there, we just looked skinny and somewhat malnourished and with the right connections a few decades later, that began to get fixed."" Her face got hard. ""But what if Willows had finked on us, or Miskatonic sent one of their Congregationalist mama's boys instead? Do you realize what may have happened to us, especially in the 20s or 30s? Arresting us for a start, probably followed by forced sterilization and throwing us in crazy houses, sanitariums and prisons to rot. And that's just the adults!""
She was getting visibly angry. ""Their kids, my great-grandparents, would have been shuffled off to orphanages or perhaps boarding schools if they thought we were just really pale Indians."" She shuddered. ""I've read about the shit that happened in Canada's residential school system and it gave me just as many nightmares as the thought of my ancestors being hunted like wolves and tortured for things they never did or for who they were."" She turned to look at Marie and for the first time since he knew her, Joseph could put a name (that name being ""very mildly inbred"") on the features which he had labeled as 'rural-attractive' or 'cute in a farmer's daughter kind of way'. ""I know that your people have been hiding, but at least you guys made the mistake of acting like total jerks to get your reputation! We never did anything wrong.""
With that, Tracy got up, passed her companions and just as she was about to reenter the house, she paused and rethought something. ""Well, never did anything wrong besides burning down that chicken barn, but that was an emergency! Neither my aunt nor my little cousin would be here if not for that and besides..."" She turned her head to look at Joseph and Marie. ""They wrote it off as an electrical fire."" As Tracy went back into the house, Joseph thought that, while going against all conventional reason, his life made perfect sense for the first time in a very long while.
",False
"II. An Antecedent and a Horror

1.

Joseph Curwen, as revealed by the rambling legends embodied in what Ward heard and unearthed, was a very astonishing, enigmatic, and obscurely horrible individual. He had fled from Salem to Providence - that universal haven of the odd, the free, and the dissenting - at the beginning of the great witchcraft panic; being in fear of accusation because of his solitary ways and queer chemical or alchemical experiments. He was a colourless-looking man of about thirty, and was soon found qualified to become a freeman of Providence; thereafter buying a home lot just north of Gregory Dexter's at about the foot of Olney Street. His house was built on Stampers' Hill west of the Town Street, in what later became Olney Court; and in 1761 he replaced this with a larger one, on the same site, which is still standing.
      Now the first odd thing about Joseph Curwen was that he did not seem to grow much older than he had been on his arrival. He engaged in shipping enterprises, purchased wharfage near Mile-End Cove, helped rebuild the Great Bridge in 1713, and in 1723 was one of the founders of the Congregational Church on the hill; but always did he retain the nondescript aspect of a man not greatly over thirty or thirty-five. As decades mounted up, this singular quality began to excite wide notice; but Curwen always explained it by saying that he came of hardy forefathers, and practiced a simplicity of living which did not wear him out. How such simplicity could be reconciled with the inexplicable comings and goings of the secretive merchant, and with the queer gleaming of his windows at all hours of night, was not very clear to the townsfolk; and they were prone to assign other reasons for his continued youth and longevity. It was held, for the most part, that Curwen's incessant mixings and boilings of chemicals had much to do with his condition. Gossip spoke of the strange substances he brought from London and the Indies on his ships or purchased in Newport, Boston, and New York; and when old Dr. Jabez Bowen came from Rehoboth and opened his apothecary shop across the Great Bridge at the Sign of the Unicorn and Mortar, there was ceaseless talk of the drugs, acids, and metals that the taciturn recluse incessantly bought or ordered from him. Acting on the assumption that Curwen possessed a wondrous and secret medical skill, many sufferers of various sorts applied to him for aid; but though he appeared to encourage their belief in a non-committal way, and always gave them odd-coloured potions in response to their requests, it was observed that his ministrations to others seldom proved of benefit. At length, when over fifty years had passed since the stranger's advent, and without producing more than five years' apparent change in his face and physique, the people began to whisper more darkly; and to meet more than half way that desire for isolation which he had always shewn.
      Private letters and diaries of the period reveal, too, a multitude of other reasons why Joseph Curwen was marvelled at, feared, and finally shunned like a plague. His passion for graveyards, in which he was glimpsed at all hours and under all conditions, was notorious; though no one had witnessed any deed on his part which could actually be termed ghoulish. On the Pawtuxet Road he had a farm, at which he generally lived during the summer, and to which he would frequently be seen riding at various odd times of the day or night. Here his only visible servants, farmers, and caretakers were a sullen pair of aged Narragansett Indians; the husband dumb and curiously scarred, and the wife of a very repulsive cast of countenance, probably due to a mixture of negro blood. In the lean-to of this house was the laboratory where most of the chemical experiments were conducted. Curious porters and teamers who delivered bottles, bags, or boxes at the small rear door would exchange accounts of the fantastic flasks, crucibles, alembics, and furnaces they saw in the low shelved room; and prophesied in whispers that the close-mouthed ""chymist"" - by which they meant alchemist - would not be long in finding the Philosopher's Stone. The nearest neighbours to this farm - the Fenners, a quarter of a mile away - had still queerer things to tell of certain sounds which they insisted came from the Curwen place in the night. There were cries, they said, and sustained howlings; and they did not like the large number of livestock which thronged the pastures, for no such amount was needed to keep a lone old man and a very few servants in meat, milk, and wool. The identity of the stock seemed to change from week to week as new droves were purchased from the Kingstown farmers. Then, too, there was something very obnoxious about a certain great stone outbuilding with only high narrow slits for windows.
      Great Bridge idlers likewise had much to say of Curwen's town house in Olney Court; not so much the fine new one built in 1761, when the man must have been nearly a century old, but the first low gambrel-roofed one with the windowless attic and shingled sides, whose timbers he took the peculiar precaution of burning after its demolition. Here there was less mystery, it is true; but the hours at which lights were seen, the secretiveness of the two swarthy foreigners who comprised the only menservants, the hideous indistinct mumbling of the incredibly aged French housekeeper, the large amounts of food seen to enter a door within which only four persons lived, and the quality of certain voices often heard in muffled conversation at highly unseasonable times, all combined with what was known of the Pawtuxet farm to give the place a bad name.
      In choicer circles, too, the Curwen home was by no means undiscussed; for as the newcomer had gradually worked into the church and trading life of the town, he had naturally made acquaintances of the better sort, whose company and conversation he was well fitted by education to enjoy. His birth was known to be good, since the Curwens or Corwins of Salem needed no introduction in New England. It developed that Joseph Curwen had travelled much in very early life, living for a time in England and making at least two voyages to the Orient; and his speech, when he deigned to use it, was that of a learned and cultivated Englishman. But for some reason or other Curwen did not care for society. Whilst never actually rebuffing a visitor, he always reared such a wall of reserve that few could think of anything to say to him which would not sound inane.
      There seemed to lurk in his bearing some cryptic, sardonic arrogance, as if he had come to find all human beings dull through having moved among stranger and more potent entities. When Dr. Checkley the famous wit came from Boston in 1738 to be rector of King's Church, he did not neglect calling on one of whom he soon heard so much; but left in a very short while because of some sinister undercurrent he detected in his host's discourse. Charles Ward told his father, when they discussed Curwen one winter evening, that he would give much to learn what the mysterious old man had said to the sprightly cleric, but that all diarists agree concerning Dr. Checkley's reluctance to repeat anything he had heard. The good man had been hideously shocked, and could never recall Joseph Curwen without a visible loss of the gay urbanity for which he was famed.
      More definite, however, was the reason why another man of taste and breeding avoided the haughty hermit. In 1746 Mr. John Merritt, an elderly English gentleman of literary and scientific leanings, came from Newport to the town which was so rapidly overtaking it in standing, and built a fine country seat on the Neck in what is now the heart of the best residence section. He lived in considerable style and comfort, keeping the first coach and liveried servants in town, and taking great pride in his telescope, his microscope, and his well-chosen library of English and Latin books. Hearing of Curwen as the owner of the best library in Providence, Mr. Merritt early paid him a call, and was more cordially received than most other callers at the house had been. His admiration for his host's ample shelves, which besides the Greek, Latin, and English classics were equipped with a remarkable battery of philosophical, mathematical, and scientific works including Paracelsus, Agricola, Van Helmont, Sylvius, Glauber, Boyle, Boerhaave, Becher, and Stahl, led Curwen to suggest a visit to the farmhouse and laboratory whither he had never invited anyone before; and the two drove out at once in Mr. Merritt's coach.
      Mr. Merritt always confessed to seeing nothing really horrible at the farmhouse, but maintained that the titles of the books in the special library of thaumaturgical, alchemical, and theological subjects which Curwen kept in a front room were alone sufficient to inspire him with a lasting loathing. Perhaps, however, the facial expression of the owner in exhibiting them contributed much of the prejudice. The bizarre collection, besides a host of standard works which Mr. Merritt was not too alarmed to envy, embraced nearly all the cabbalists, daemonologists, and magicians known to man; and was a treasure-house of lore in the doubtful realms of alchemy and astrology. Hermes Trismegistus in Mesnard's edition, the Turba Philosophorum, Geber's Liber Investigationis, and Artephius' Key of Wisdom all were there; with the cabbalistic Zohar, Peter Jammy's set of Albertus Magnus, Raymond Lully's Ars Magna et Ultima in Zetzner's edition, Roger Bacon's Thesaurus Chemicus, Fludd's Clavis Alchimiae, and Trithemius' De Lapide Philosophico crowding them close. Mediaeval Jews and Arabs were represented in profusion, and Mr. Merritt turned pale when, upon taking down a fine volume conspicuously labelled as the Qanoon-e-Islam, he found it was in truth the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, of which he had heard such monstrous things whispered some years previously after the exposure of nameless rites at the strange little fishing village of Kingsport, in the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay.
      But oddly enough, the worthy gentleman owned himself most impalpably disquieted by a mere minor detail. On the huge mahogany table there lay face downward a badly worn copy of Borellus, bearing many cryptical marginalia and interlineations in Curwen's hand. The book was open at about its middle, and one paragraph displayed such thick and tremulous pen-strokes beneath the lines of mystic black-letter that the visitor could not resist scanning it through. Whether it was the nature of the passage underscored, or the feverish heaviness of the strokes which formed the underscoring, he could not tell; but something in that combination affected him very badly and very peculiarly. He recalled it to the end of his days, writing it down from memory in his diary and once trying to recite it to his close friend Dr. Checkley till he saw how greatly it disturbed the urbane rector. It read:
      ""The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated.""
      It was near the docks along the southerly part of the Town Street, however, that the worst things were muttered about Joseph Curwen. Sailors are superstitious folk; and the seasoned salts who manned the infinite rum, slave, and molasses sloops, the rakish privateers, and the great brigs of the Browns, Crawfords, and Tillinghasts, all made strange furtive signs of protection when they saw the slim, deceptively young-looking figure with its yellow hair and slight stoop entering the Curwen warehouse in Doubloon Street or talking with captains and supercargoes on the long quay where the Curwen ships rode restlessly. Curwen's own clerks and captains hated and feared him, and all his sailors were mongrel riff-raff from Martinique, St. Eustatius, Havana, or Port Royal. It was, in a way, the frequency with which these sailors were replaced which inspired the acutest and most tangible part of the fear in which the old man was held. A crew would be turned loose in the town on shore leave, some of its members perhaps charged with this errand or that; and when reassembled it would be almost sure to lack one or more men. That many of the errands had concerned the farm on the Pawtuxet Road, and that few of the sailors had ever been seen to return from that place, was not forgotten; so that in time it became exceedingly difficult for Curwen to keep his oddly assorted hands. Almost invariably several would desert soon after hearing the gossip of the Providence wharves, and their replacement in the West Indies became an increasingly great problem to the merchant.
      In 1760 Joseph Curwen was virtually an outcast, suspected of vague horrors and daemoniac alliances which seemed all the more menacing because they could not be named, understood, or even proved to exist. The last straw may have come from the affair of the missing soldiers in 1758, for in March and April of that year two Royal regiments on their way to New France were quartered in Providence, and depleted by an inexplicable process far beyond the average rate of desertion. Rumour dwelt on the frequency with which Curwen was wont to be seen talking with the red-coated strangers; and as several of them began to be missed, people thought of the odd conditions among his own seamen. What would have happened if the regiments had not been ordered on, no one can tell.
      Meanwhile the merchant's worldly affairs were prospering. He had a virtual monopoly of the town's trade in saltpetre, black pepper, and cinnamon, and easily led any other one shipping establishment save the Browns in his importation of brassware, indigo, cotton, woollens, salt, rigging, iron, paper, and English goods of every kind. Such shopkeepers as James Green, at the Sign of the Elephant in Cheapside, the Russells, at the Sign of the Golden Eagle across the Bridge, or Clark and Nightingale at the Frying-Pan and Fish near the New Coffee-House, depended almost wholly upon him for their stock; and his arrangements with the local distillers, the Narragansett dairymen and horse-breeders, and the Newport candle-makers, made him one of the prime exporters of the Colony.
      Ostracised though he was, he did not lack for civic spirit of a sort. When the Colony House burned down, he subscribed handsomely to the lotteries by which the new brick one - still standing at the head of its parade in the old main street - was built in 1761. In that same year, too, he helped rebuild the Great Bridge after the October gale. He replaced many of the books of the public library consumed in the Colony House fire, and bought heavily in the lottery that gave the muddy Market Parade and deep-rutted Town Street their pavement of great round stones with a brick footwalk or ""causey"" in the middle. About this time, also, he built the plain but excellent new house whose doorway is still such a triumph of carving. When the Whitefield adherents broke off from Dr. Cotton's hill church in 1743 and founded Deacon Snow's church across the Bridge, Curwen had gone with them; though his zeal and attendance soon abated. Now, however, he cultivated piety once more; as if to dispel the shadow which had thrown him into isolation and would soon begin to wreck his business fortunes if not sharply checked.

2.

      The sight of this strange, pallid man, hardly middle-aged in aspect yet certainly not less than a full century old, seeking at last to emerge from a cloud of fright and detestation too vague to pin down or analyse, was at once a pathetic, a dramatic, and a contemptible thing. Such is the power of wealth and of surface gestures, however, that there came indeed a slight abatement in the visible aversion displayed toward him; especially after the rapid disappearances of his sailors abruptly ceased. He must likewise have begun to practice an extreme care and secrecy in his graveyard expeditions, for he was never again caught at such wanderings; whilst the rumours of uncanny sounds and manoeuvres at his Pawtuxet farm diminished in proportion. His rate of food consumption and cattle replacement remained abnormally high; but not until modern times, when Charles Ward examined a set of his accounts and invoices in the Shepley Library, did it occur to any person - save one embittered youth, perhaps - to make dark comparisons between the large number of Guinea blacks he imported until 1766, and the disturbingly small number for whom he could produce bona fide bills of sale either to slave-dealers at the Great Bridge or to the planters of the Narragansett Country. Certainly, the cunning and ingenuity of this abhorred character were uncannily profound, once the necessity for their exercise had become impressed upon him.
      But of course the effect of all this belated mending was necessarily slight. Curwen continued to be avoided and distrusted, as indeed the one fact of his continued air of youth at a great age would have been enough to warrant; and he could see that in the end his fortunes would be likely to suffer. His elaborate studies and experiments, whatever they may have been, apparently required a heavy income for their maintenance; and since a change of environment would deprive him of the trading advantages he had gained, it would not have profited him to begin anew in a different region just then. Judgment demanded that he patch up his relations with the townsfolk of Providence, so that his presence might no longer be a signal for hushed conversation, transparent excuses of errands elsewhere, and a general atmosphere of constraint and uneasiness. His clerks, being now reduced to the shiftless and impecunious residue whom no one else would employ, were giving him much worry; and he held to his sea-captains and mates only by shrewdness in gaining some kind of ascendancy over them - a mortgage, a promissory note, or a bit of information very pertinent to their welfare. In many cases, diarists have recorded with some awe, Curwen shewed almost the power of a wizard in unearthing family secrets for questionable use. During the final five years of his life it seemed as though only direct talks with the long-dead could possibly have furnished some of the data which he had so glibly at his tongue's end.
      About this time the crafty scholar hit upon a last desperate expedient to regain his footing in the community. Hitherto a complete hermit, he now determined to contract an advantageous marriage; securing as a bride some lady whose unquestioned position would make all ostracism of his home impossible. It may be that he also had deeper reasons for wishing an alliance; reasons so far outside the known cosmic sphere that only papers found a century and a half after his death caused anyone to suspect them; but of this nothing certain can ever be learned. Naturally he was aware of the horror and indignation with which any ordinary courtship of his would be received, hence he looked about for some likely candidate upon whose parents he might exert a suitable pressure. Such candidates, he found, were not at all easy to discover; since he had very particular requirements in the way of beauty, accomplishments, and social security. At length his survey narrowed down to the household of one of his best and oldest ship-captains, a widower of high birth and unblemished standing named Dutee Tillinghast, whose only daughter Eliza seemed dowered with every conceivable advantage save prospects as an heiress. Capt. Tillinghast was completely under the domination of Curwen; and consented, after a terrible interview in his cupolaed house on Power's Lane hill, to sanction the blasphemous alliance.
      Eliza Tillinghast was at that time eighteen years of age, and had been reared as gently as the reduced circumstances of her father permitted. She had attended Stephen Jackson's school opposite the Court-House Parade; and had been diligently instructed by her mother, before the latter's death of smallpox in 1757, in all the arts and refinements of domestic life. A sampler of hers, worked in 1753 at the age of nine, may still be found in the rooms of the Rhode Island Historical Society. After her mother's death she had kept the house, aided only by one old black woman. Her arguments with her father concerning the proposed Curwen marriage must have been painful indeed; but of these we have no record. Certain it is that her engagement to young Ezra Weeden, second mate of the Crawford packet Enterprise, was dutifully broken off, and that her union with Joseph Curwen took place on the seventh of March, 1763, in the Baptist church, in the presence of one of the most distinguished assemblages which the town could boast; the ceremony being performed by the younger Samuel Winsor. The Gazette mentioned the event very briefly, and in most surviving copies the item in question seems to be cut or torn out. Ward found a single intact copy after much search in the archives of a private collector of note, observing with amusement the meaningless urbanity of the language:
      ""Monday evening last, Mr. Joseph Curwen, of this Town, Merchant, was married to Miss Eliza Tillinghast, Daughter of Capt. Dutee Tillinghast, a young Lady who has real Merit, added to a beautiful Person, to grace the connubial State and perpetuate its Felicity.""
      The collection of Durfee-Arnold letters, discovered by Charles Ward shortly before his first reputed madness in the private collection of Melville F. Peters, Esq., of George St., and covering this and a somewhat antecedent period, throws vivid light on the outrage done to public sentiment by this ill-assorted match. The social influence of the Tillinghasts, however, was not to be denied; and once more Joseph Curwen found his house frequented by persons whom he could never otherwise have induced to cross his threshold. His acceptance was by no means complete, and his bride was socially the sufferer through her forced venture; but at all events the wall of utter ostracism was somewhat worn down. In his treatment of his wife the strange bridegroom astonished both her and the community by displaying an extreme graciousness and consideration. The new house in Olney Court was now wholly free from disturbing manifestations, and although Curwen was much absent at the Pawtuxet farm which his wife never visited, he seemed more like a normal citizen than at any other time in his long years of residence. Only one person remained in open enmity with him, this being the youthful ship's officer whose engagement to Eliza Tillinghast had been so abruptly broken. Ezra Weeden had frankly vowed vengeance; and though of a quiet and ordinarily mild disposition, was now gaining a hate-bred, dogged purpose which boded no good to the usurping husband.
      On the seventh of May, 1765, Curwen's only child Ann was born; and was christened by the Rev. John Graves of King's Church, of which both husband and wife had become communicants shortly after their marriage, in order to compromise between their respective Congregational and Baptist affiliations. The record of this birth, as well as that of the marriage two years before, was stricken from most copies of the church and town annals where it ought to appear; and Charles Ward located both with the greatest difficulty after his discovery of the widow's change of name had apprised him of his own relationship, and engendered the feverish interest which culminated in his madness. The birth entry, indeed, was found very curiously through correspondence with the heirs of the loyalist Dr. Graves, who had taken with him a duplicate set of records when he left his pastorate at the outbreak of the Revolution. Ward had tried this source because he knew that his great-great-grandmother Ann Tillinghast Potter had been an Episcopalian.
      Shortly after the birth of his daughter, an event he seemed to welcome with a fervour greatly out of keeping with his usual coldness, Curwen resolved to sit for a portrait. This he had painted by a very gifted Scotsman named Cosmo Alexander, then a resident of Newport, and since famous as the early teacher of Gilbert Stuart. The likeness was said to have been executed on a wall-panel of the library of the house in Olney Court, but neither of the two old diaries mentioning it gave any hint of its ultimate disposition. At this period the erratic scholar shewed signs of unusual abstraction, and spent as much time as he possibly could at his farm on the Pawtuxet Road. He seemed, it was stated, in a condition of suppressed excitement or suspense; as if expecting some phenomenal thing or on the brink of some strange discovery. Chemistry or alchemy would appear to have played a great part, for he took from his house to the farm the greater number of his volumes on that subject.
      His affectation of civic interest did not diminish, and he lost no opportunities for helping such leaders as Stephen Hopkins, Joseph Brown, and Benjamin West in their efforts to raise the cultural tone of the town, which was then much below the level of Newport in its patronage of the liberal arts. He had helped Daniel Jenckes found his bookshop in 1763, and was thereafter his best customer; extending aid likewise to the struggling Gazette that appeared each Wednesday at the Sign of Shakespear's Head. In politics he ardently supported Governor Hopkins against the Ward party whose prime strength was in Newport, and his really eloquent speech at Hacker's Hall in 1765 against the setting off of North Providence as a separate town with a pro-Ward vote in the General Assembly did more than any other one thing to wear down the prejudice against him. But Ezra Weeden, who watched him closely, sneered cynically at all this outward activity; and freely swore it was no more than a mask for some nameless traffick with the blackest gulfs of Tartarus. The revengeful youth began a systematic study of the man and his doings whenever he was in port; spending hours at night by the wharves with a dory in readiness when he saw lights in the Curwen warehouses, and following the small boat which would sometimes steal quietly off and down the bay. He also kept as close a watch as possible on the Pawtuxet farm, and was once severely bitten by the dogs the old Indian couple loosed upon him.

3.

      In 1766 came the final change in Joseph Curwen. It was very sudden, and gained wide notice amongst the curious townsfolk; for the air of suspense and expectancy dropped like an old cloak, giving instant place to an ill-concealed exaltation of perfect triumph. Curwen seemed to have difficulty in restraining himself from public harangues on what he had found or learned or made; but apparently the need of secrecy was greater than the longing to share his rejoicing, for no explanation was ever offered by him. It was after this transition, which appears to have come early in July, that the sinister scholar began to astonish people by his possession of information which only their long-dead ancestors would seem to be able to impart.
      But Curwen's feverish secret activities by no means ceased with this change. On the contrary, they tended rather to increase; so that more and more of his shipping business was handled by the captains whom he now bound to him by ties of fear as potent as those of bankruptcy had been. He altogether abandoned the slave trade, alleging that its profits were constantly decreasing. Every possible moment was spent at the Pawtuxet farm; though there were rumours now and then of his presence in places which, though not actually near graveyards, were yet so situated in relation to graveyards that thoughtful people wondered just how thorough the old merchant's change of habits really was. Ezra Weeden, though his periods of espionage were necessarily brief and intermittent on account of his sea voyaging, had a vindictive persistence which the bulk of the practical townsfolk and farmers lacked; and subjected Curwen's affairs to a scrutiny such as they had never had before.
      Many of the odd manoeuvres of the strange merchant's vessels had been taken for granted on account of the unrest of the times, when every colonist seemed determined to resist the provisions of the Sugar Act which hampered a prominent traffick. Smuggling and evasion were the rule in Narragansett Bay, and nocturnal landings of illicit cargoes were continuous commonplaces. But Weeden, night after night following the lighters or small sloops which he saw steal off from the Curwen warehouses at the Town Street docks, soon felt assured that it was not merely His Majesty's armed ships which the sinister skulker was anxious to avoid. Prior to the change in 1766 these boats had for the most part contained chained negroes, who were carried down and across the bay and landed at an obscure point on the shore just north of Pawtuxet; being afterward driven up the bluff and across country to the Curwen farm, where they were locked in that enormous stone outbuilding which had only high narrow slits for windows. After that change, however, the whole programme was altered. Importation of slaves ceased at once, and for a time Curwen abandoned his midnight sailings. Then, about the spring of 1767, a new policy appeared. Once more the lighters grew wont to put out from the black, silent docks, and this time they would go down the bay some distance, perhaps as far as Namquit Point, where they would meet and receive cargo from strange ships of considerable size and widely varied appearance. Curwen's sailors would then deposit this cargo at the usual point on the shore, and transport it overland to the farm; locking it in the same cryptical stone building which had formerly received the negroes. The cargo consisted almost wholly of boxes and cases, of which a large proportion were oblong and heavy and disturbingly suggestive of coffins.
      Weeden always watched the farm with unremitting assiduity; visiting it each night for long periods, and seldom letting a week go by without a sight except when the ground bore a footprint-revealing snow. Even then he would often walk as close as possible in the travelled road or on the ice of the neighbouring river to see what tracks others might have left. Finding his own vigils interrupted by nautical duties, he hired a tavern companion named Eleazar Smith to continue the survey during his absences; and between them the two could have set in motion some extraordinary rumours. That they did not do so was only because they knew the effect of publicity would be to warn their quarry and make further progress impossible. Instead, they wished to learn something definite before taking any action. What they did learn must have been startling indeed, and Charles Ward spoke many times to his parents of his regret at Weeden's later burning of his notebooks. All that can be told of their discoveries is what Eleazar Smith jotted down in a none too coherent diary, and what other diarists and letter-writers have timidly repeated from the statements which they finally made - and according to which the farm was only the outer shell of some vast and revolting menace, of a scope and depth too profound and intangible for more than shadowy comprehension.
      It is gathered that Weeden and Smith became early convinced that a great series of tunnels and catacombs, inhabited by a very sizeable staff of persons besides the old Indian and his wife, underlay the farm. The house was an old peaked relic of the middle seventeenth century with enormous stack chimney and diamond-paned lattice windows, the laboratory being in a lean-to toward the north, where the roof came nearly to the ground. This building stood clear of any other; yet judging by the different voices heard at odd times within, it must have been accessible through secret passages beneath. These voices, before 1766, were mere mumblings and negro whisperings and frenzied screams, coupled with curious chants or invocations. After that date, however, they assumed a very singular and terrible cast as they ran the gamut betwixt dronings of dull acquiescence and explosions of frantic pain or fury, rumblings of conversation and whines of entreaty, pantings of eagerness and shouts of protest. They appeared to be in different languages, all known to Curwen, whose rasping accents were frequently distinguishable in reply, reproof, or threatening. Sometimes it seemed that several persons must be in the house; Curwen, certain captives, and the guards of those captives. There were voices of a sort that neither Weeden nor Smith had ever heard before despite their wide knowledge of foreign parts, and many that they did seem to place as belonging to this or that nationality. The nature of the conversations seemed always a kind of catechism, as if Curwen were extorting some sort of information from terrified or rebellious prisoners.
      Weeden had many verbatim reports of overheard scraps in his notebook, for English, French, and Spanish, which he knew, were frequently used; but of these nothing has survived. He did, however, say that besides a few ghoulish dialogues in which the past affairs of Providence families were concerned, most of the questions and answers he could understand were historical or scientific; occasionally pertaining to very remote places and ages. Once, for example, an alternately raging and sullen figure was questioned in French about the Black Prince's massacre at Limoges in 1370, as if there were some hidden reason which he ought to know. Curwen asked the prisoner - if prisoner it were - whether the order to slay was given because of the Sign of the Goat found on the altar in the ancient Roman crypt beneath the Cathedral, or whether the Dark Man of the Haute Vienne Coven had spoken the Three Words. Failing to obtain replies, the inquisitor had seemingly resorted to extreme means; for there was a terrific shriek followed by silence and muttering and a bumping sound.
      None of these colloquies were ever ocularly witnessed, since the windows were always heavily draped. Once, though, during a discourse in an unknown tongue, a shadow was seen on the curtain which startled Weeden exceedingly; reminding him of one of the puppets in a show he had seen in the autumn of 1764 in Hacker's Hall, when a man from Germantown, Pennsylvania, had given a clever mechanical spectacle advertised as a ""View of the Famous City of Jerusalem, in which are represented Jerusalem, the Temple of Solomon, his Royal Throne, the noted Towers, and Hills, likewise the Sufferings of Our Saviour from the Garden of Gethsemane to the Cross on the Hill of Golgotha; an artful piece of Statuary, Worthy to be seen by the Curious."" It was on this occasion that the listener, who had crept close to the window of the front room whence the speaking proceeded, gave a start which roused the old Indian pair and caused them to loose the dogs on him. After that no more conversations were ever heard in the house, and Weeden and Smith concluded that Curwen had transferred his field of action to regions below.
      That such regions in truth existed, seemed amply clear from many things. Faint cries and groans unmistakably came up now and then from what appeared to be the solid earth in places far from any structure; whilst hidden in the bushes along the river-bank in the rear, where the high ground sloped steeply down to the valley of the Pawtuxet, there was found an arched oaken door in a frame of heavy masonry, which was obviously an entrance to caverns within the hill. When or how these catacombs could have been constructed, Weeden was unable to say; but he frequently pointed out how easily the place might have been reached by bands of unseen workmen from the river. Joseph Curwen put his mongrel seamen to diverse uses indeed! During the heavy spring rains of 1769 the two watchers kept a sharp eye on the steep river-bank to see if any subterrene secrets might be washed to light, and were rewarded by the sight of a profusion of both human and animal bones in places where deep gullies had been worn in the banks. Naturally there might be many explanations of such things in the rear of a stock farm, and in a locality where old Indian burying-grounds were common, but Weeden and Smith drew their own inferences.
      It was in January 1770, whilst Weeden and Smith were still debating vainly on what, if anything, to think or do about the whole bewildering business, that the incident of the Fortaleza occurred. Exasperated by the burning of the revenue sloop Liberty at Newport during the previous summer, the customs fleet under Admiral Wallace had adopted an increased vigilance concerning strange vessels; and on this occasion His Majesty's armed schooner Cygnet, under Capt. Charles Leslie, captured after a short pursuit one early morning the snow Fortaleza of Barcelona, Spain, under Capt. Manuel Arruda, bound according to its log from Grand Cairo, Egypt, to Providence. When searched for contraband material, this ship revealed the astonishing fact that its cargo consisted exclusively of Egyptian mummies, consigned to ""Sailor A. B. C."", who would come to remove his goods in a lighter just off Namquit Point and whose identity Capt. Arruda felt himself in honour bound not to reveal. The Vice-Admiralty Court at Newport, at a loss what to do in view of the non-contraband nature of the cargo on the one hand and of the unlawful secrecy of the entry on the other hand, compromised on Collector Robinson's recommendation by freeing the ship but forbidding it a port in Rhode Island waters. There were later rumours of its having been seen in Boston Harbour, though it never openly entered the Port of Boston.
      This extraordinary incident did not fail of wide remark in Providence, and there were not many who doubted the existence of some connexion between the cargo of mummies and the sinister Joseph Curwen. His exotic studies and his curious chemical importations being common knowledge, and his fondness for graveyards being common suspicion; it did not take much imagination to link him with a freakish importation which could not conceivably have been destined for anyone else in the town. As if conscious of this natural belief, Curwen took care to speak casually on several occasions of the chemical value of the balsams found in mummies; thinking perhaps that he might make the affair seem less unnatural, yet stopping just short of admitting his participation. Weeden and Smith, of course, felt no doubt whatsoever of the significance of the thing; and indulged in the wildest theories concerning Curwen and his monstrous labours.
      The following spring, like that of the year before, had heavy rains; and the watchers kept careful track of the river-bank behind the Curwen farm. Large sections were washed away, and a certain number of bones discovered; but no glimpse was afforded of any actual subterranean chambers or burrows. Something was rumoured, however, at the village of Pawtuxet about a mile below, where the river flows in falls over a rocky terrace to join the placid landlocked cove. There, where quaint old cottages climbed the hill from the rustic bridge, and fishing-smacks lay anchored at their sleepy docks, a vague report went round of things that were floating down the river and flashing into sight for a minute as they went over the falls. Of course the Pawtuxet is a long river which winds through many settled regions abounding in graveyards, and of course the spring rains had been very heavy; but the fisherfolk about the bridge did not like the wild way that one of the things stared as it shot down to the still water below, or the way that another half cried out although its condition had greatly departed from that of objects which normally cry out. That rumour sent Smith - for Weeden was just then at sea - in haste to the river-bank behind the farm; where surely enough there remained the evidences of an extensive cave-in. There was, however, no trace of a passage into the steep bank; for the miniature avalanche had left behind a solid wall of mixed earth and shrubbery from aloft. Smith went to the extent of some experimental digging, but was deterred by lack of success - or perhaps by fear of possible success. It is interesting to speculate on what the persistent and revengeful Weeden would have done had he been ashore at the time.

4.

      By the autumn of 1770 Weeden decided that the time was ripe to tell others of his discoveries; for he had a large number of facts to link together, and a second eye-witness to refute the possible charge that jealousy and vindictiveness had spurred his fancy. As his first confidant he selected Capt. James Mathewson of the Enterprise, who on the one hand knew him well enough not to doubt his veracity, and on the other hand was sufficiently influential in the town to be heard in turn with respect. The colloquy took place in an upper room of Sabin's Tavern near the docks, with Smith present to corroborate virtually every statement; and it could be seen that Capt. Mathewson was tremendously impressed. Like nearly everyone else in the town, he had had black suspicions of his own anent Joseph Curwen; hence it needed only this confirmation and enlargement of data to convince him absolutely. At the end of the conference he was very grave, and enjoined strict silence upon the two younger men. He would, he said, transmit the information separately to some ten or so of the most learned and prominent citizens of Providence; ascertaining their views and following whatever advice they might have to offer. Secrecy would probably be essential in any case, for this was no matter that the town constables or militia could cope with; and above all else the excitable crowd must be kept in ignorance, lest there be enacted in these already troublous times a repetition of that frightful Salem panic of less than a century before which had first brought Curwen hither.
      The right persons to tell, he believed, would be Dr. Benjamin West, whose pamphlet on the late transit of Venus proved him a scholar and keen thinker; Rev. James Manning, President of the College which had just moved up from Warren and was temporarily housed in the new King Street schoolhouse awaiting the completion of its building on the hill above Presbyterian-Lane; ex-Governor Stephen Hopkins, who had been a member of the Philosophical Society at Newport, and was a man of very broad perceptions; John Carter, publisher of the Gazette; all four of the Brown brothers, John, Joseph, Nicholas, and Moses, who formed the recognised local magnates, and of whom Joseph was an amateur scientist of parts; old Dr. Jabez Bowen, whose erudition was considerable, and who had much first-hand knowledge of Curwen's odd purchases; and Capt. Abraham Whipple, a privateersman of phenomenal boldness and energy who could be counted on to lead in any active measures needed. These men, if favourable, might eventually be brought together for collective deliberation; and with them would rest the responsibility of deciding whether or not to inform the Governor of the Colony, Joseph Wanton of Newport, before taking action.
      The mission of Capt. Mathewson prospered beyond his highest expectations; for whilst he found one or two of the chosen confidants somewhat sceptical of the possible ghastly side of Weeden's tale, there was not one who did not think it necessary to take some sort of secret and cošrdinated action. Curwen, it was clear, formed a vague potential menace to the welfare of the town and Colony; and must be eliminated at any cost. Late in December 1770 a group of eminent townsmen met at the home of Stephen Hopkins and debated tentative measures. Weeden's notes, which he had given to Capt. Mathewson, were carefully read; and he and Smith were summoned to give testimony anent details. Something very like fear seized the whole assemblage before the meeting was over, though there ran through that fear a grim determination which Capt. Whipple's bluff and resonant profanity best expressed. They would not notify the Governor, because a more than legal course seemed necessary. With hidden powers of uncertain extent apparently at his disposal, Curwen was not a man who could safely be warned to leave town. Nameless reprisals might ensue, and even if the sinister creature complied, the removal would be no more than the shifting of an unclean burden to another place. The times were lawless, and men who had flouted the King's revenue forces for years were not the ones to balk at sterner things when duty impelled. Curwen must be surprised at his Pawtuxet farm by a large raiding-party of seasoned privateersmen and given one decisive chance to explain himself. If he proved a madman, amusing himself with shrieks and imaginary conversations in different voices, he would be properly confined. If something graver appeared, and if the underground horrors indeed turned out to be real, he and all with him must die. It could be done quietly, and even the widow and her father need not be told how it came about.
      While these serious steps were under discussion there occurred in the town an incident so terrible and inexplicable that for a time little else was mentioned for miles around. In the middle of a moonlight January night with heavy snow underfoot there resounded over the river and up the hill a shocking series of cries which brought sleepy heads to every window; and people around Weybosset Point saw a great white thing plunging frantically along the badly cleared space in front of the Turk's Head. There was a baying of dogs in the distance, but this subsided as soon as the clamour of the awakened town became audible. Parties of men with lanterns and muskets hurried out to see what was happening, but nothing rewarded their search. The next morning, however, a giant, muscular body, stark naked, was found on the jams of ice around the southern piers of the Great Bridge, where the Long Dock stretched out beside Abbott's distil-house, and the identity of this object became a theme for endless speculation and whispering. It was not so much the younger as the older folk who whispered, for only in the patriarchs did that rigid face with horror-bulging eyes strike any chord of memory. They, shaking as they did so, exchanged furtive murmurs of wonder and fear; for in those stiff, hideous features lay a resemblance so marvellous as to be almost an identity - and that identity was with a man who had died full fifty years before.
      Ezra Weeden was present at the finding; and remembering the baying of the night before, set out along Weybosset Street and across Muddy Dock Bridge whence the sound had come. He had a curious expectancy, and was not surprised when, reaching the edge of the settled district where the street merged into the Pawtuxet Road, he came upon some very curious tracks in the snow. The naked giant had been pursued by dogs and many booted men, and the returning tracks of the hounds and their masters could be easily traced. They had given up the chase upon coming too near the town. Weeden smiled grimly, and as a perfunctory detail traced the footprints back to their source. It was the Pawtuxet farm of Joseph Curwen, as he well knew it would be; and he would have given much had the yard been less confusingly trampled. As it was, he dared not seem too interested in full daylight. Dr. Bowen, to whom Weeden went at once with his report, performed an autopsy on the strange corpse, and discovered peculiarities which baffled him utterly. The digestive tracts of the huge man seemed never to have been in use, whilst the whole skin had a coarse, loosely knit texture impossible to account for. Impressed by what the old men whispered of this body's likeness to the long-dead blacksmith Daniel Green, whose great-grandson Aaron Hoppin was a supercargo in Curwen's employ, Weeden asked casual questions till he found where Green was buried. That night a party of ten visited the old North Burying Ground opposite Herrenden's Lane and opened a grave. They found it vacant, precisely as they had expected.
      Meanwhile arrangements had been made with the post riders to intercept Joseph Curwen's mail, and shortly before the incident of the naked body there was found a letter from one Jedediah Orne of Salem which made the cošperating citizens think deeply. Parts of it, copied and preserved in the private archives of the Smith family where Charles Ward found it, ran as follows:
      ""I delight that you continue in ye Gett'g at Olde Matters in your Way, and doe not think better was done at Mr. Hutchinson's in Salem-Village. Certainely, there was Noth'g butt ye liveliest Awfulness in that which H. rais'd upp from What he cou'd gather onlie a part of. What you sente, did not Worke, whether because of Any Thing miss'g, or because ye Wordes were not Righte from my Speak'g or yr Copy'g. I alone am at a Loss. I have not ye Chymicall art to followe Borellus, and owne my Self confounded by ye VII. Booke of ye Necronomicon that you recommende. But I wou'd have you Observe what was tolde to us aboute tak'g Care whom to calle up, for you are Sensible what Mr. Mather writ in ye Magnalia of  -  - , and can judge how truely that Horrendous thing is reported. I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you. I was frighted when I read of your know'g what Ben Zariatnatmik hadde in his ebony Boxe, for I was conscious who must have tolde you. And againe I ask that you shalle write me as Jedediah and not Simon. In this Community a Man may not live too long, and you knowe my Plan by which I came back as my Son. I am desirous you will Acquaint me with what ye Blacke Man learnt from Sylvanus Cocidius in ye Vault, under ye Roman Wall, and will be oblig'd for ye Lend'g of ye MS. you speak of.""
      Another and unsigned letter from Philadelphia provoked equal thought, especially for the following passage:
      ""I will observe what you say respecting the sending of Accounts only by yr Vessels, but can not always be certain when to expect them. In the Matter spoke of, I require onlie one more thing; but wish to be sure I apprehend you exactly. You inform me, that no Part must be missing if the finest Effects are to be had, but you can not but know how hard it is to be sure. It seems a great Hazard and Burthen to take away the whole Box, and in Town (i.e. St. Peter's, St. Paul's, St. Mary's, or Christ Church) it can scarce be done at all. But I know what Imperfections were in the one I rais'd up October last, and how many live Specimens you were forc'd to imploy before you hit upon the right Mode in the year 1766; so will be guided by you in all Matters. I am impatient for yr Brig, and inquire daily at Mr. Biddle's Wharf.""
      A third suspicious letter was in an unknown tongue and even an unknown alphabet. In the Smith diary found by Charles Ward a single oft-repeated combination of characters is clumsily copied; and authorities at Brown University have pronounced the alphabet Amharic or Abyssinian, although they do not recognise the word. None of these epistles was ever delivered to Curwen, though the disappearance of Jedediah Orne from Salem as recorded shortly afterward shewed that the Providence men took certain quiet steps. The Pennsylvania Historical Society also has some curious letters received by Dr. Shippen regarding the presence of an unwholesome character in Philadelphia. But more decisive steps were in the air, and it is in the secret assemblages of sworn and tested sailors and faithful old privateersmen in the Brown warehouses by night that we must look for the main fruits of Weeden's disclosures. Slowly and surely a plan of campaign was under development which would leave no trace of Joseph Curwen's noxious mysteries.
      Curwen, despite all precautions, apparently felt that something was in the wind; for he was now remarked to wear an unusually worried look. His coach was seen at all hours in the town and on the Pawtuxet Road, and he dropped little by little the air of forced geniality with which he had latterly sought to combat the town's prejudice. The nearest neighbours to his farm, the Fenners, one night remarked a great shaft of light shooting into the sky from some aperture in the roof of that cryptical stone building with the high, excessively narrow windows; an event which they quickly communicated to John Brown in Providence. Mr. Brown had become the executive leader of the select group bent on Curwen's extirpation, and had informed the Fenners that some action was about to be taken. This he deemed needful because of the impossibility of their not witnessing the final raid; and he explained his course by saying that Curwen was known to be a spy of the customs officers at Newport, against whom the hand of every Providence shipper, merchant, and farmer was openly or clandestinely raised. Whether the ruse was wholly believed by neighbours who had seen so many queer things is not certain; but at any rate the Fenners were willing to connect any evil with a man of such queer ways. To them Mr. Brown had entrusted the duty of watching the Curwen farmhouse, and of regularly reporting every incident which took place there.

5.

      The probability that Curwen was on guard and attempting unusual things, as suggested by the odd shaft of light, precipitated at last the action so carefully devised by the band of serious citizens. According to the Smith diary a company of about 100 men met at 10 p.m. on Friday, April 12th, 1771, in the great room of Thurston's Tavern at the Sign of the Golden Lion on Weybosset Point across the Bridge. Of the guiding group of prominent men in addition to the leader John Brown there were present Dr. Bowen, with his case of surgical instruments, President Manning without the great periwig (the largest in the Colonies) for which he was noted, Governor Hopkins, wrapped in his dark cloak and accompanied by his seafaring brother Esek, whom he had initiated at the last moment with the permission of the rest, John Carter, Capt. Mathewson, and Capt. Whipple, who was to lead the actual raiding party. These chiefs conferred apart in a rear chamber, after which Capt. Whipple emerged to the great room and gave the gathered seamen their last oaths and instructions. Eleazar Smith was with the leaders as they sat in the rear apartment awaiting the arrival of Ezra Weeden, whose duty was to keep track of Curwen and report the departure of his coach for the farm.
      About 10:30 a heavy rumble was heard on the Great Bridge, followed by the sound of a coach in the street outside; and at that hour there was no need of waiting for Weeden in order to know that the doomed man had set out for his last night of unhallowed wizardry. A moment later, as the receding coach clattered faintly over the Muddy Dock Bridge, Weeden appeared; and the raiders fell silently into military order in the street, shouldering the firelocks, fowling-pieces, or whaling harpoons which they had with them. Weeden and Smith were with the party, and of the deliberating citizens there were present for active service Capt. Whipple, the leader, Capt. Esek Hopkins, John Carter, President Manning, Capt. Mathewson, and Dr. Bowen; together with Moses Brown, who had come up at the eleventh hour though absent from the preliminary session in the tavern. All these freemen and their hundred sailors began the long march without delay, grim and a trifle apprehensive as they left the Muddy Dock behind and mounted the gentle rise of Broad Street toward the Pawtuxet Road. Just beyond Elder Snow's church some of the men turned back to take a parting look at Providence lying outspread under the early spring stars. Steeples and gables rose dark and shapely, and salt breezes swept up gently from the cove north of the Bridge. Vega was climbing above the great hill across the water, whose crest of trees was broken by the roof-line of the unfinished College edifice. At the foot of that hill, and along the narrow mounting lanes of its side, the old town dreamed; Old Providence, for whose safety and sanity so monstrous and colossal a blasphemy was about to be wiped out.
      An hour and a quarter later the raiders arrived, as previously agreed, at the Fenner farmhouse; where they heard a final report on their intended victim. He had reached his farm over half an hour before, and the strange light had soon afterward shot once into the sky, but there were no lights in any visible windows. This was always the case of late. Even as this news was given another great glare arose toward the south, and the party realised that they had indeed come close to the scene of awesome and unnatural wonders. Capt. Whipple now ordered his force to separate into three divisions; one of twenty men under Eleazar Smith to strike across to the shore and guard the landing-place against possible reinforcements for Curwen until summoned by a messenger for desperate service, a second of twenty men under Capt. Esek Hopkins to steal down into the river valley behind the Curwen farm and demolish with axes or gunpowder the oaken door in the high, steep bank, and the third to close in on the house and adjacent buildings themselves. Of this division one third was to be led by Capt. Mathewson to the cryptical stone edifice with high narrow windows, another third to follow Capt. Whipple himself to the main farmhouse, and the remaining third to preserve a circle around the whole group of buildings until summoned by a final emergency signal.
      The river party would break down the hillside door at the sound of a single whistle-blast, then waiting and capturing anything which might issue from the regions within. At the sound of two whistle-blasts it would advance through the aperture to oppose the enemy or join the rest of the raiding contingent. The party at the stone building would accept these respective signals in an analogous manner; forcing an entrance at the first, and at the second descending whatever passage into the ground might be discovered, and joining the general or focal warfare expected to take place within the caverns. A third or emergency signal of three blasts would summon the immediate reserve from its general guard duty; its twenty men dividing equally and entering the unknown depths through both farmhouse and stone building. Capt. Whipple's belief in the existence of catacombs was absolute, and he took no alternative into consideration when making his plans. He had with him a whistle of great power and shrillness, and did not fear any upsetting or misunderstanding of signals. The final reserve at the landing, of course, was nearly out of the whistle's range; hence would require a special messenger if needed for help. Moses Brown and John Carter went with Capt. Hopkins to the river-bank, while President Manning was detailed with Capt. Mathewson to the stone building. Dr. Bowen, with Ezra Weeden, remained in Capt. Whipple's party which was to storm the farmhouse itself. The attack was to begin as soon as a messenger from Capt. Hopkins had joined Capt. Whipple to notify him of the river party's readiness. The leader would then deliver the loud single blast, and the various advance parties would commence their simultaneous attack on three points. Shortly before 1 a.m. the three divisions left the Fenner farmhouse; one to guard the landing, another to seek the river valley and the hillside door, and the third to subdivide and attend to the actual buildings of the Curwen farm.
      Eleazar Smith, who accompanied the shore-guarding party, records in his diary an uneventful march and a long wait on the bluff by the bay; broken once by what seemed to be the distant sound of the signal whistle and again by a peculiar muffled blend of roaring and crying and a powder blast which seemed to come from the same direction. Later on one man thought he caught some distant gunshots, and still later Smith himself felt the throb of titanic and thunderous words resounding in upper air. It was just before dawn that a single haggard messenger with wild eyes and a hideous unknown odour about his clothing appeared and told the detachment to disperse quietly to their homes and never again think or speak of the night's doings or of him who had been Joseph Curwen. Something about the bearing of the messenger carried a conviction which his mere words could never have conveyed; for though he was a seaman well known to many of them, there was something obscurely lost or gained in his soul which set him for evermore apart. It was the same later on when they met other old companions who had gone into that zone of horror. Most of them had lost or gained something imponderable and indescribable. They had seen or heard or felt something which was not for human creatures, and could not forget it. From them there was never any gossip, for to even the commonest of mortal instincts there are terrible boundaries. And from that single messenger the party at the shore caught a nameless awe which almost sealed their own lips. Very few are the rumours which ever came from any of them, and Eleazar Smith's diary is the only written record which has survived from that whole expedition which set forth from the Sign of the Golden Lion under the stars.
      Charles Ward, however, discovered another vague sidelight in some Fenner correspondence which he found in New London, where he knew another branch of the family had lived. It seems that the Fenners, from whose house the doomed farm was distantly visible, had watched the departing columns of raiders; and had heard very clearly the angry barking of the Curwen dogs, followed by the first shrill blast which precipitated the attack. This blast had been followed by a repetition of the great shaft of light from the stone building, and in another moment, after a quick sounding of the second signal ordering a general invasion, there had come a subdued prattle of musketry followed by a horrible roaring cry which the correspondent Luke Fenner had represented in his epistle by the characters ""Waaaahrrrrr - R'waaahrrr"". This cry, however, had possessed a quality which no mere writing could convey, and the correspondent mentions that his mother fainted completely at the sound. It was later repeated less loudly, and further but more muffled evidences of gunfire ensued; together with a loud explosion of powder from the direction of the river. About an hour afterward all the dogs began to bark frightfully, and there were vague ground rumblings so marked that the candlesticks tottered on the mantelpiece. A strong smell of sulphur was noted; and Luke Fenner's father declared that he heard the third or emergency whistle signal, though the others failed to detect it. Muffled musketry sounded again, followed by a deep scream less piercing but even more horrible than those which had preceded it; a kind of throaty, nastily plastic cough or gurgle whose quality as a scream must have come more from its continuity and psychological import than from its actual acoustic value.
      Then the flaming thing burst into sight at a point where the Curwen farm ought to lie, and the human cries of desperate and frightened men were heard. Muskets flashed and cracked, and the flaming thing fell to the ground. A second flaming thing appeared, and a shriek of human origin was plainly distinguished. Fenner wrote that he could even gather a few words belched in frenzy: ""Almighty, protect thy lamb!"" Then there were more shots, and the second flaming thing fell. After that came silence for about three-quarters of an hour; at the end of which time little Arthur Fenner, Luke's brother, exclaimed that he saw 'a red fog' going up to the stars from the accursed farm in the distance. No one but the child can testify to this, but Luke admits the significant coincidence implied by the panic of almost convulsive fright which at the same moment arched the backs and stiffened the fur of the three cats then within the room.
      Five minutes later a chill wind blew up, and the air became suffused with such an intolerable stench that only the strong freshness of the sea could have prevented its being noticed by the shore party or by any wakeful souls in Pawtuxet village. This stench was nothing which any of the Fenners had ever encountered before, and produced a kind of clutching, amorphous fear beyond that of the tomb or the charnel-house. Close upon it came the awful voice which no hapless hearer will ever be able to forget. It thundered out of the sky like a doom, and windows rattled as its echoes died away. It was deep and musical; powerful as a bass organ, but evil as the forbidden books of the Arabs. What it said no man can tell, for it spoke in an unknown tongue, but this is the writing Luke Fenner set down to portray the daemoniac intonations: ""DEESMEES-JESHET-BONE DOSEFE DUVEMA-ENITEMOSS"". Not till the year 1919 did any soul link this crude transcript with anything else in mortal knowledge, but Charles Ward paled as he recognised what Mirandola had denounced in shudders as the ultimate horror among black magic's incantations.
      An unmistakably human shout or deep chorused scream seemed to answer this malign wonder from the Curwen farm, after which the unknown stench grew complex with an added odour equally intolerable. A wailing distinctly different from the scream now burst out, and was protracted ululantly in rising and falling paroxysms. At times it became almost articulate, though no auditor could trace any definite words; and at one point it seemed to verge toward the confines of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Then a yell of utter, ultimate fright and stark madness wrenched from scores of human throats - a yell which came strong and clear despite the depth from which it must have burst; after which darkness and silence ruled all things. Spirals of acrid smoke ascended to blot out the stars, though no flames appeared and no buildings were observed to be gone or injured on the following day.
      Toward dawn two frightened messengers with monstrous and unplaceable odours saturating their clothing knocked at the Fenner door and requested a keg of rum, for which they paid very well indeed. One of them told the family that the affair of Joseph Curwen was over, and that the events of the night were not to be mentioned again. Arrogant as the order seemed, the aspect of him who gave it took away all resentment and lent it a fearsome authority; so that only these furtive letters of Luke Fenner, which he urged his Connecticut relative to destroy, remain to tell what was seen and heard. The non-compliance of that relative, whereby the letters were saved after all, has alone kept the matter from a merciful oblivion. Charles Ward had one detail to add as a result of a long canvass of Pawtuxet residents for ancestral traditions. Old Charles Slocum of that village said that there was known to his grandfather a queer rumour concerning a charred, distorted body found in the fields a week after the death of Joseph Curwen was announced. What kept the talk alive was the notion that this body, so far as could be seen in its burnt and twisted condition, was neither thoroughly human nor wholly allied to any animal which Pawtuxet folk had ever seen or read about.

6.

      Not one man who participated in that terrible raid could ever be induced to say a word concerning it, and every fragment of the vague data which survives comes from those outside the final fighting party. There is something frightful in the care with which these actual raiders destroyed each scrap which bore the least allusion to the matter. Eight sailors had been killed, but although their bodies were not produced their families were satisfied with the statement that a clash with customs officers had occurred. The same statement also covered the numerous cases of wounds, all of which were extensively bandaged and treated only by Dr. Jabez Bowen, who had accompanied the party. Hardest to explain was the nameless odour clinging to all the raiders, a thing which was discussed for weeks. Of the citizen leaders, Capt. Whipple and Moses Brown were most severely hurt, and letters of their wives testify the bewilderment which their reticence and close guarding of their bandages produced. Psychologically every participant was aged, sobered, and shaken. It is fortunate that they were all strong men of action and simple, orthodox religionists, for with more subtle introspectiveness and mental complexity they would have fared ill indeed. President Manning was the most disturbed; but even he outgrew the darkest shadow, and smothered memories in prayers. Every man of those leaders had a stirring part to play in later years, and it is perhaps fortunate that this is so. Little more than a twelvemonth afterward Capt. Whipple led the mob who burnt the revenue ship Gaspee, and in this bold act we may trace one step in the blotting out of unwholesome images.
      There was delivered to the widow of Joseph Curwen a sealed leaden coffin of curious design, obviously found ready on the spot when needed, in which she was told her husband's body lay. He had, it was explained, been killed in a customs battle about which it was not politic to give details. More than this no tongue ever uttered of Joseph Curwen's end, and Charles Ward had only a single hint wherewith to construct a theory. This hint was the merest thread - a shaky underscoring of a passage in Jedediah Orne's confiscated letter to Curwen, as partly copied in Ezra Weeden's handwriting. The copy was found in the possession of Smith's descendants; and we are left to decide whether Weeden gave it to his companion after the end, as a mute clue to the abnormality which had occurred, or whether, as is more probable, Smith had it before, and added the underscoring himself from what he had managed to extract from his friend by shrewd guessing and adroit cross-questioning. The underlined passage is merely this:
      ""I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you.""
In the light of this passage, and reflecting on what last unmentionable allies a beaten man might try to summon in his direst extremity, Charles Ward may well have wondered whether any citizen of Providence killed Joseph Curwen.
      The deliberate effacement of every memory of the dead man from Providence life and annals was vastly aided by the influence of the raiding leaders. They had not at first meant to be so thorough, and had allowed the widow and her father and child to remain in ignorance of the true conditions; but Capt. Tillinghast was an astute man, and soon uncovered enough rumours to whet his horror and cause him to demand that his daughter and granddaughter change their name, burn the library and all remaining papers, and chisel the inscription from the slate slab above Joseph Curwen's grave. He knew Capt. Whipple well, and probably extracted more hints from that bluff mariner than anyone else ever gained respecting the end of the accused sorcerer.
      From that time on the obliteration of Curwen's memory became increasingly rigid, extending at last by common consent even to the town records and files of the Gazette. It can be compared in spirit only to the hush that lay on Oscar Wilde's name for a decade after his disgrace, and in extent only to the fate of that sinful King of Runazar in Lord Dunsany's tale, whom the Gods decided must not only cease to be, but must cease ever to have been.
      Mrs. Tillinghast, as the widow became known after 1772, sold the house in Olney Court and resided with her father in Power's Lane till her death in 1817. The farm at Pawtuxet, shunned by every living soul, remained to moulder through the years; and seemed to decay with unaccountable rapidity. By 1780 only the stone and brickwork were standing, and by 1800 even these had fallen to shapeless heaps. None ventured to pierce the tangled shrubbery on the river-bank behind which the hillside door may have lain, nor did any try to frame a definite image of the scenes amidst which Joseph Curwen departed from the horrors he had wrought.
      Only robust old Capt. Whipple was heard by alert listeners to mutter once in a while to himself, ""Pox on that  -  -  - , but he had no business to laugh while he screamed. 'Twas as though the damn'd  -  -  -  had some'at up his sleeve. For half a crown I'd burn his  -  -  -  house.""
","VII.

Yet all this was only the prologue of the actual Dunwich horror. Formalities were gone through by bewildered officials, abnormal details were duly kept from press and public, and men were sent to Dunwich and Aylesbury to look up property and notify any who might be heirs of the late Wilbur Whateley. They found the countryside in great agitation, both because of the growing rumblings beneath the domed hills, and because of the unwonted stench and the surging, lapping sounds which came increasingly from the great empty shell formed by Whateley’s boarded-up farmhouse. Earl Sawyer, who tended the horse and cattle during Wilbur’s absence, had developed a woefully acute case of nerves. The officials devised excuses not to enter the noisome boarded place; and were glad to confine their survey of the deceased’s living quarters, the newly mended sheds, to a single visit. They filed a ponderous report at the court-house in Aylesbury, and litigations concerning heirship are said to be still in progress amongst the innumerable Whateleys, decayed and undecayed, of the upper Miskatonic valley.
      An almost interminable manuscript in strange characters, written in a huge ledger and adjudged a sort of diary because of the spacing and the variations in ink and penmanship, presented a baffling puzzle to those who found it on the old bureau which served as its owner’s desk. After a week of debate it was sent to Miskatonic University, together with the deceased’s collection of strange books, for study and possible translation; but even the best linguists soon saw that it was not likely to be unriddled with ease. No trace of the ancient gold with which Wilbur and Old Whateley always paid their debts has yet been discovered.
      It was in the dark of September 9th that the horror broke loose. The hill noises had been very pronounced during the evening, and dogs barked frantically all night. Early risers on the 10th noticed a peculiar stench in the air. About seven o’clock Luther Brown, the hired boy at George Corey’s, between Cold Spring Glen and the village, rushed frenziedly back from his morning trip to Ten-Acre Meadow with the cows. He was almost convulsed with fright as he stumbled into the kitchen; and in the yard outside the no less frightened herd were pawing and lowing pitifully, having followed the boy back in the panic they shared with him. Between gasps Luther tried to stammer out his tale to Mrs. Corey.
      “Up thar in the rud beyont the glen, Mis’ Corey—they’s suthin’ ben thar! It smells like thunder, an’ all the bushes an’ little trees is pushed back from the rud like they’d a haouse ben moved along of it. An’ that ain’t the wust, nuther. They’s prints in the rud, Mis’ Corey—great raound prints as big as barrel-heads, all sunk daown deep like a elephant had ben along, only they’s a sight more nor four feet could make! I looked at one or two afore I run, an’ I see every one was covered with lines spreadin’ aout from one place, like as if big palm-leaf fans—twict or three times as big as any they is—hed of ben paounded daown into the rud. An’ the smell was awful, like what it is araound Wizard Whateley’s ol’ haouse. . . .”
      Here he faltered, and seemed to shiver afresh with the fright that had sent him flying home. Mrs. Corey, unable to extract more information, began telephoning the neighbours; thus starting on its rounds the overture of panic that heralded the major terrors. When she got Sally Sawyer, housekeeper at Seth Bishop’s, the nearest place to Whateley’s, it became her turn to listen instead of transmit; for Sally’s boy Chauncey, who slept poorly, had been up on the hill toward Whateley’s, and had dashed back in terror after one look at the place, and at the pasturage where Mr. Bishop’s cows had been left out all night.
      “Yes, Mis’ Corey,” came Sally’s tremulous voice over the party wire, “Cha’ncey he just come back a-postin’, and couldn’t haff talk fer bein’ scairt! He says Ol’ Whateley’s haouse is all blowed up, with the timbers scattered raound like they’d ben dynamite inside; only the bottom floor ain’t through, but is all covered with a kind o’ tar-like stuff that smells awful an’ drips daown offen the aidges onto the graoun’ whar the side timbers is blown away. An’ they’s awful kinder marks in the yard, tew—great raound marks bigger raound than a hogshead, an’ all sticky with stuff like is on the blowed-up haouse. Cha’ncey he says they leads off into the medders, whar a great swath wider’n a barn is matted daown, an’ all the stun walls tumbled every whichway wherever it goes.
      “An’ he says, says he, Mis’ Corey, as haow he sot to look fer Seth’s caows, frighted ez he was; an’ faound ’em in the upper pasture nigh the Devil’s Hop Yard in an awful shape. Haff on ’em’s clean gone, an’ nigh haff o’ them that’s left is sucked most dry o’ blood, with sores on ’em like they’s ben on Whateley’s cattle ever senct Lavinny’s black brat was born. Seth he’s gone aout naow to look at ’em, though I’ll vaow he wun’t keer ter git very nigh Wizard Whateley’s! Cha’ncey didn’t look keerful ter see whar the big matted-daown swath led arter it leff the pasturage, but he says he thinks it p’inted towards the glen rud to the village.
      “I tell ye, Mis’ Corey, they’s suthin’ abroad as hadn’t orter be abroad, an’ I for one think that black Wilbur Whateley, as come to the bad eend he desarved, is at the bottom of the breedin’ of it. He wa’n’t all human hisself, I allus says to everybody; an’ I think he an’ Ol’ Whateley must a raised suthin’ in that there nailed-up haouse as ain’t even so human as he was. They’s allus ben unseen things araound Dunwich—livin’ things—as ain’t human an’ ain’t good fer human folks.
      “The graoun’ was a-talkin’ lass night, an’ towards mornin’ Cha’ncey he heerd the whippoorwills so laoud in Col’ Spring Glen he couldn’t sleep nun. Then he thought he heerd another faint-like saound over towards Wizard Whateley’s—a kinder rippin’ or tearin’ o’ wood, like some big box er crate was bein’ opened fur off. What with this an’ that, he didn’t git to sleep at all till sunup, an’ no sooner was he up this mornin’, but he’s got to go over to Whateley’s an’ see what’s the matter. He see enough, I tell ye, Mis’ Corey! This dun’t mean no good, an’ I think as all the men-folks ought to git up a party an’ do suthin’. I know suthin’ awful’s abaout, an’ feel my time is nigh, though only Gawd knows jest what it is.
      “Did your Luther take accaount o’ whar them big tracks led tew? No? Wal, Mis’ Corey, ef they was on the glen rud this side o’ the glen, an’ ain’t got to your haouse yet, I calc’late they must go into the glen itself. They would do that. I allus says Col’ Spring Glen ain’t no healthy nor decent place. The whippoorwills an’ fireflies there never did act like they was creaters o’ Gawd, an’ they’s them as says ye kin hear strange things a-rushin’ an’ a-talkin’ in the air daown thar ef ye stand in the right place, atween the rock falls an’ Bear’s Den.”
      By that noon fully three-quarters of the men and boys of Dunwich were trooping over the roads and meadows between the new-made Whateley ruins and Cold Spring Glen, examining in horror the vast, monstrous prints, the maimed Bishop cattle, the strange, noisome wreck of the farmhouse, and the bruised, matted vegetation of the fields and roadsides. Whatever had burst loose upon the world had assuredly gone down into the great sinister ravine; for all the trees on the banks were bent and broken, and a great avenue had been gouged in the precipice-hanging underbrush. It was as though a house, launched by an avalanche, had slid down through the tangled growths of the almost vertical slope. From below no sound came, but only a distant, undefinable foetor; and it is not to be wondered at that the men preferred to stay on the edge and argue, rather than descend and beard the unknown Cyclopean horror in its lair. Three dogs that were with the party had barked furiously at first, but seemed cowed and reluctant when near the glen. Someone telephoned the news to the Aylesbury Transcript; but the editor, accustomed to wild tales from Dunwich, did no more than concoct a humorous paragraph about it; an item soon afterward reproduced by the Associated Press.
      That night everyone went home, and every house and barn was barricaded as stoutly as possible. Needless to say, no cattle were allowed to remain in open pasturage. About two in the morning a frightful stench and the savage barking of the dogs awakened the household at Elmer Frye’s, on the eastern edge of Cold Spring Glen, and all agreed that they could hear a sort of muffled swishing or lapping sound from somewhere outside. Mrs. Frye proposed telephoning the neighbours, and Elmer was about to agree when the noise of splintering wood burst in upon their deliberations. It came, apparently, from the barn; and was quickly followed by a hideous screaming and stamping amongst the cattle. The dogs slavered and crouched close to the feet of the fear-numbed family. Frye lit a lantern through force of habit, but knew it would be death to go out into that black farmyard. The children and the womenfolk whimpered, kept from screaming by some obscure, vestigial instinct of defence which told them their lives depended on silence. At last the noise of the cattle subsided to a pitiful moaning, and a great snapping, crashing, and crackling ensued. The Fryes, huddled together in the sitting-room, did not dare to move until the last echoes died away far down in Cold Spring Glen. Then, amidst the dismal moans from the stable and the daemoniac piping of late whippoorwills in the glen, Selina Frye tottered to the telephone and spread what news she could of the second phase of the horror.
      The next day all the countryside was in a panic; and cowed, uncommunicative groups came and went where the fiendish thing had occurred. Two titan swaths of destruction stretched from the glen to the Frye farmyard, monstrous prints covered the bare patches of ground, and one side of the old red barn had completely caved in. Of the cattle, only a quarter could be found and identified. Some of these were in curious fragments, and all that survived had to be shot. Earl Sawyer suggested that help be asked from Aylesbury or Arkham, but others maintained it would be of no use. Old Zebulon Whateley, of a branch that hovered about half way between soundness and decadence, made darkly wild suggestions about rites that ought to be practiced on the hill-tops. He came of a line where tradition ran strong, and his memories of chantings in the great stone circles were not altogether connected with Wilbur and his grandfather.
      Darkness fell upon a stricken countryside too passive to organise for real defence. In a few cases closely related families would band together and watch in the gloom under one roof; but in general there was only a repetition of the barricading of the night before, and a futile, ineffective gesture of loading muskets and setting pitchforks handily about. Nothing, however, occurred except some hill noises; and when the day came there were many who hoped that the new horror had gone as swiftly as it had come. There were even bold souls who proposed an offensive expedition down in the glen, though they did not venture to set an actual example to the still reluctant majority.
      When night came again the barricading was repeated, though there was less huddling together of families. In the morning both the Frye and the Seth Bishop households reported excitement among the dogs and vague sounds and stenches from afar, while early explorers noted with horror a fresh set of the monstrous tracks in the road skirting Sentinel Hill. As before, the sides of the road shewed a bruising indicative of the blasphemously stupendous bulk of the horror; whilst the conformation of the tracks seemed to argue a passage in two directions, as if the moving mountain had come from Cold Spring Glen and returned to it along the same path. At the base of the hill a thirty-foot swath of crushed shrubbery saplings led steeply upward, and the seekers gasped when they saw that even the most perpendicular places did not deflect the inexorable trail. Whatever the horror was, it could scale a sheer stony cliff of almost complete verticality; and as the investigators climbed around to the hill’s summit by safer routes they saw that the trail ended—or rather, reversed—there.
      It was here that the Whateleys used to build their hellish fires and chant their hellish rituals by the table-like stone on May-Eve and Hallowmass. Now that very stone formed the centre of a vast space thrashed around by the mountainous horror, whilst upon its slightly concave surface was a thick and foetid deposit of the same tarry stickiness observed on the floor of the ruined Whateley farmhouse when the horror escaped. Men looked at one another and muttered. Then they looked down the hill. Apparently the horror had descended by a route much the same as that of its ascent. To speculate was futile. Reason, logic, and normal ideas of motivation stood confounded. Only old Zebulon, who was not with the group, could have done justice to the situation or suggested a plausible explanation.
      Thursday night began much like the others, but it ended less happily. The whippoorwills in the glen had screamed with such unusual persistence that many could not sleep, and about 3 A.M. all the party telephones rang tremulously. Those who took down their receivers heard a fright-mad voice shriek out, “Help, oh, my Gawd! . . .” and some thought a crashing sound followed the breaking off of the exclamation. There was nothing more. No one dared do anything, and no one knew till morning whence the call came. Then those who had heard it called everyone on the line, and found that only the Fryes did not reply. The truth appeared an hour later, when a hastily assembled group of armed men trudged out to the Frye place at the head of the glen. It was horrible, yet hardly a surprise. There were more swaths and monstrous prints, but there was no longer any house. It had caved in like an egg-shell, and amongst the ruins nothing living or dead could be discovered. Only a stench and a tarry stickiness. The Elmer Fryes had been erased from Dunwich.
",True
"The Inn stands at the end of our largest thoroughfare, which is a few blocks long, but seems a thousand miles. With my heavy valise, I'm fortunate that I only have to walk half that far from the restaurant at which I've just dined. Once every month, I scrounge up enough money to have dinner at the Golden Goose. Despite my reputation in this village, I eventually come to long for the clamor of a crowd. The four walls of my father's house are my sanctuary and prison otherwise. Only Theodora, our cook and housekeeper that we've had since before I was born, keeps me company there. I would take her with me on my monthly outings to Leight's sole restaurant, but she stubbornly says she prefers her own meals all the same.
That's only part of the reason why she won't go, however. I've told her that even at the Golden Goose, the diners there glare at me out of the corners of their eyes and lower them to their plates if I look their way. Theodora is an even more self-contained soul than I am, and loathes being stared at ""by all and sundry"".
The evening sun is sinking low on the horizon, and the villagers around me are concealed in shadows. I don't want anyone coming up and asking me about my three-night errand - not that they would. When I prove the rumors about my forefathers' establishment wrong, I'll make them all look like fools anyway!
Those unfamiliar with Leight will notice three ever-present things as they travel down its main street: stalwart people, churches, and Cemetery Hill looming in the distance. Ever since I was a child, I sensed an eerie connection among these features of our humble village. Just what that is, I cannot say. They are ordinary enough on the surface, and yet I can't help feeling that there's something sinister about them.
My neighbors are proud, hard-working souls. Most of them live on farms on the outskirts of town. Even so, they trudge nearly every day to its center in order to seek supplies. The men of Leight are burly, with long arms and sunburnt faces, trusting in their toil and suspicious of learnt folk. It's just as well that they're illiterate. They wouldn't have much use for books even if they had the coin to buy them. Their wives, far from being what some people would call ladies, are just as industrious and sturdy as their husbands. I see them more often in town, as buying sundries is women's work, but that doesn't mean they're any more inclined to talk to me. They keep to themselves, as I do, but it seems their hearts are under lock and key.
I suspect that a large part of this has to do with the fact that they fear God as much as my family's past. Out of every ten buildings in Leight, at least four are churches. The Baptists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Evangelicals, Lutherans, Methodists, and even more denominations are continually at war. They each claim to believe in the Scriptures, and in the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. However, they also claim that all the others are false, to a greater or lesser degree. As for me? I attend no house of worship, and that is no great loss to me. My father, Lemuel Dawson, said that his own chapel - the one on Cemetery Hill - had been abruptly shuttered one Hallowe'en night. His fellow congregants then fled to other nearby towns.
""My dear Millie,"" he had told me, ""the one true church on this Earth has been lost, and a year too early."" That's another thing I've failed to understand, even though it haunts me as much as the Inn itself does.
Hurrying to get there, I pass the people and churches without much concern. Only the visage of the former Gallows Hill, now containing graves instead of a gibbet, catches my eye. Buried there are not only the fifty-three souls who were hanged during the Purge (or so we called our witchcraft panic), but criminals and paupers. I've often wondered why having no money is considered as great a crime as sorcery or theft, but in this village, if you're poor, then you are cursed. ""God helps those who help themselves"": so say we. I cannot help myself as I find my feet sprinting rather than walking toward the façade of the Dreamer's Inn.
The sky, now a cool blue-violet twilight, is growing dark. I'll soon leave light (and Leight?) behind. Even though I've been inside the Dreamers' Inn countless times, I've always been a bit scared of the place. Why is it that, even though it's supposed to be a haven for travelers, it seems like a mausoleum instead? I know that once I venture beyond its door, beneath the rickety sign that has announced its presence since the days of Abner Dawes, I'll be in a world unto itself. As such, I pause on the threshold and gaze up at its intimidating turret. Should I turn back and forget about spending a single night there, let alone three?
Then I remember my reasons, both monetary and otherwise, and step inside.
","Long ago there were only the Elders. They lived enternaly as equals amongst each other in the ever expanding vastness of space. They looked at this empty universe and decided to fill it. But none of them would follow another for that would mean they would be intherior to another, so they decided that they would make lesser beings to craft this universe.
These creatures were given a small portion of the Elders power, and made heinous looking so that they can never be considered equals in anyway. These beings did as what they were made for and filled the universe with planets and stars, but something happend to them, they started to question why they had to be lesser then their 'masters' these beings that made them, their Gods. So they learned new powers and went to war with their creators. They were many but young and weak compared to their Elders.
The war was over as quickly as it began. The lesser beings lost to their Elders and were severely punished for their actions against them. The weakest were imprisoned on the planet that they thrived on for so long, Earth. The mightiest were cast across the universe and separated from each other. The one who lead the rebel, Azathoth, was stripped of his own brain by the Lord Commander of the Elders and sealed in the center of the universe.
He now thrives in an undying anger with only one thought in his mind, or at least what's left of his mind, the thought was 'Kill the Elders' repeating in his head nonstop. His own kind had to sooth his seething anger to protect their own exsistence, for if he went mad even for a second it would mean the end of the everything even them. He is only stopped by the demonic flute playing of his kin. But while he goes mad, his children continue his work, waiting for the day they can be free and face the Elders once more in battle at their most darkest of hours.

Somewhere in the space between Space and Time, two figures sat together. One named Nyarlathotep, dressed in his Pharaoh guise and picking at his nails. Another Yog-Sothoth, appearing as his usual slithering mass of tentacles with an orb shaped object at the center of it all. Yog looked over at Nyarlathotep in annoyance.
""Could you not do that here?"" He asked him angrily.
""Not do what? Pick my nails?"" Nyarlathotep lashed back at him.
""Is that what you call them? You do remember that they belong to those lesser beings, right?""
""The humans? Oh they are not all that bad. I like to play with them.""
""You only like the sound they make when they breake.""
""Can you blame me? I have all this power and nothing to do. No equal, or rival..."" Nyarlathotep told Yog.
""What of Cthugha?"" Yog asked him.
""He's no fun, takes everything so seriously.""
""In his defense, you did take his sanity.""
""Whatever."" Nyarlathotep said put out by Yogs comment and returned to picking his nails.
""I asked you to stop that, now I'm telling you to stop."" Yog grew impatient.
""You won't give me any work. You won't let me pick my nails. What exactly am I supposed to do?"" Nyarlathotep asked him equally annoyed.
""Live and die. What else are you supposed to do?""
""And what do I do while I live? It gets very dull to be enternal and have little to do, even in the infinite universe.""
""We could talk, that should kill a couple eons."" Yog suggested.
""That could work. What's there to talk about?"" Nyarlathotep said interested in what Yog had to say.
""Well you seem to be so interested in these humans, what have they done that sets them apart from the rest of the universe?""
""Ah where to begin? Have ya heard of what happend to Glaaki's spawn?""
""Thog? Yes, I have.""
""Barbaric Cimmerians. Never under estimate the predecessors of the Celts."" Nyarlathotep said to Yog. A moment of silence fell upon the duo as they tried to think of something that would interest the other while at the same time being new information to the other.
""..."" none had an idea of what to talk about. How does one speak of something an all seeing entity doesn't already know? The two grew uncomfortable with nothing to say to each other, then finally something they didn't expect to happen happend.
""Did you feel that?"" Yog asked Nyarlathotep.
""Not as well as you did, but yes nonetheless. Yog it's time, awaken the others I'll get father."" Nyarlathotep said with a grin on his face. Yog began to use all his mental power to awaken his own kind.
All across the universe the Old Ones awoke. From the depths of the ocean to the furthest edge of the universe, they began to stir. An legion of abominations spread across the universe rose from their deathly slumber and migrated to one place in the univers, the center. Nyarlathotep went to control the last of them, their master and his father, Azathoth. He waited in the center of the universe soothed by the flute music.
""Good work fellows, I'll take it from here."" Nyarlathotep told the flute players. He received scowls from his peers but did not care or even pay them any attention. He approached his father, a mass of tentecels with a strange aurora surrounding them and holding them together.
""Azathoth."" Nyalrthotep spoke to him, getting his attention.
""It's time for you to get what you want must in the universe. It's time to kill the Elders."" Azathoth began to stir. He grew restless and angry. The flute music kept his attention on Nyarlathotep allowing him to control his father.
""Follow me and you'll have what you want."" Nyarlathotep promised his father. What ever bit of sanity Azathoth had left allowed him to follow his son. All the pieces were falling into place for the final war to be waged.

The Elders readied for war. They gathered in their Cathedral and spoke to another.
""Nodens has fallen into his slumber, the Old Ones are free once more."" one of the Elders spoke.
""We will waste them as we have done before. There is no reason for this battle to go any different."" another one answered him.
""We have grown old, they did not age and are now well rested.""
""We have our experience.""
""We need the youth to fight. Other wise we are mearly the few and the old versus the many and the young."" The Elders paused for a moment and came to a realization.
""If we must commence the Ragnorak then we will. Let's just hope it does not come to that.""

Yog-Sothoth and Nyarlathotep regrouped along with the rest of their kind. Azathoth was controlled by his flutist for the time they needed him controlled. Nyarlathotep looked around trying to find something or someone.
""What are you doing now?"" Yog questioned him.
""Cthuga. He's the last thing I need to meet on this battle field."" Nyarlathotep said to Yog.
""Ah yes, of all the beings in the universe and you had to become arch nemesis to your own kind.""
""I've become everyone's arch nemesis at one time or another. Minus you and father.""
""Yes, you only have the guts to antagonize those lesser then you.""
""Or equal. My philosophy is to never get in a fight that you'll lose.""
""Good philosophy.""
""It has done me good for this long. Ah here are our opponents for the day."" the duo looked and saw the Elders arrive. Despite their old age they were still fit warriors. If Azathoth could only see through his blind eye, no telling his reaction.
""Shall we?"" Yog asked Nyarlathotep.
""Oh I insist you give the order. Odds are the others will like it better if you do."" Nyarlathotep answered him.
""Very well. Halt the flute playing!"" Yog ordered. Azathoth became angered. He started to lash out and attack every thing he could grasp. The Old ones stood clear and followed behinde him as he attacked the Elders army. The Elders held their ground and delt great damage twoards Azathoth but not without suffering their casualties.
It took only minutes to finish off Azathoth but now their numbers were only a handful of what they started with. The Old One had only lost Azathoth and the few flutist he destroyed himself early. Nyarlathotep and Yog looked at eachother.
""Marvelous, let's end this finally."" Nyarlathotep joyously.
The Old Ones began to attack the Elders. The Elders had no choice but to preform their ultimate final solution on their creations. The Elders would have to cause Ragnorak. The last few Elders began to glow with energy and intense heat that could be felt even on Earth. The Old Ones knew what was happening.
""Didn't think they had it in them. So human of them to do the unexpected."" Nyarlathotep said with joy.
""Glad this fascinates you, we're about to die."" Yog told him.
""Not with the ace in the hole we have, you."" Nyarlathotep looked at him.
""Just this once bend the laws of all of reality and save your kind, or just us I'm fine with either."" Nyarlathotep told him.
""Your brilliant!"" He yelled at Nyarlathotep.
""Of course I am."" Nyarlathotep said smugly. The Elders began to erupt with pure power that obliterated them and was spreading across the universe. It all would of surely have been destroyed if, ironically enough, not for Yog-Sothoth and his Reality bending power. The universe survived but the Old Ones were nowhere to be found in the universe. That's where we come back to Earth my fair reader.
",False
"Day 1-I never would imagine such thing would happen, in this diary I will document my strange and disturbing events. Once I was a normal respected teacher at Miskatonic, and then a member of this ""great race"" appears and teleports me to this place…it's just too surreal, this place is a gigantic library, whit knowledge of humanity and more…this large creature it's just disgusting, I just never saw something like this, it's just bizarre. The flowers are just biologically impossible, but they are there. I am a prisoner? This place is huge, the race it's big! Like a small building, I just imagine how impossibly big an entire city would be…I am like a mouse in a skyscraper. I try my best to sleep…god have mercy upon me. I have difficulty knowing what is day and what is night…because there are not windows, I have a theory that this place is underground. A few minutes after wandering around, my captor opens the massive door, ah I have forgotten, this room is almost alone without objects of my size, the only thing here is a giant sized TV with a typewriter on it. What kind of technology these creatures possess? I see that the giant clicks these claws constantly…why? It's some sort of communication? Suddenly he throws to me a metal box with a button on top of it, ""what sort of thing is this, creature?"" I ask. The giant just clicks this right claw. Without any other option I push the small cylinder, and nothing noticeable happens. But then it makes a long series of clicks again and the box suddenly begins to…talk: ""hello Wilhelm. I am a Yithnian, and I want your help. I have seen with horror that a god will crash-land on earth in two weeks! He is trapped in a suit that will retrain this great and immeasurable power. I will travel in time to bring him to you so we can begin our project"" suddenly he disappeared in an after-image. The thing he said…it was unbelievable a god exists, and he wants my help.
Day…2 (i suppose) I been alone in this blank room for 4 hours…and when I was taken it was 1:30. Ok that is not the point. In this room there some sort of big book shells that dwarf by a few inches the aliens. I have opened the door to reveal that I was right, if this would be a city of gigantic size I would be like a mouse. Thousands of skyscrapers roam the underground dome that sustains the cave. This is just massive. One of the tallest buildings on earth will be like an electric floor fan compared to these hulks. It's just frightening to try to hide from these monsters. I still don't get why my captor doesn't appear yet. The buildings are made from a metal that is am mesh of golden with gray, and almost every one of them is rectangular. Three minutes remain of this wait and I see that the yith creature has returned, with a strange being in this arm. Also a book of my size; the creature started to click and the machine started to speak: ""I ask forgiveness Wilhelm, the time machine broke and I needed to fix it. Here it is…the great lord of the Outer gods, the blind idiot entity that everyone fears: Azathoth! My luck, our luck could not be greater my friend! He was trapped in the technology of my people and Mi-Go's we can make him anything we want!"" after handing me the book I have a better look at the ""God"" before me. He had a suit with long limbs; this head was highly (and horrifyingly) similar to the shape of the tall Flatiron Building in New York, in this top there were two small triangles that made the illusion of horns or wolf like ears. Little red lines in both sides of the face, (I suppose eyes) the helmet also it was colored silver. I also notice that this body has a light brown straightjacket like appearance. This right and left hands have black gloves (I suppose) with slightly long conical golden claws half of the fingers. These feet and legs are even more bizarre: black to the knees with silver to the lateral malleolus. The feet are the most structurally insane: it looks like a golden flat spike. It appears that this creature is unconscious. The book has revealed me some clues: Azathoth he is the most powerful entity in our universe, also the creator of a creator of other gods! The yiths are the race of my captor. They want to use the knowledge of my race to their disposal, what one? I dare not to put it in this diary…it would make anyone insane. The creature ""spoken"" to my again about why I am here; ""I want to give to the Outer God a new chance, one to redeem him/itself to use it as a tool for good. I will train you in a place that I made where time is infinite, where you don't need to eat, you will not exhaust, where you will not age. There I will make you a super intelligent being, due to the fact that there is technology of my race you will need to learn it. And you will make Azathoth something more than human."" After that a door on a wall suddenly appeared, the place inside of it was blank grey. I am surprised of what I will do…I will create something to fight the unknown evil of this world! We will make this monster my monster! The yith told me that the place where we will go is applied named: Infinitely Timed Room.
Day 3- the I.T.R. was excellent as a place for learning. I reckon I was there for 200 months. But I am fine to say the least. I finally learned how to manipulate the suit. It was revealed to me that there is a cube that reduces size inside of the helmet. There is a computer inside of that cube that can be modified. If I do that I can change Azathoth into a thinking creature. Also I will make him learn how to change the suit into anything he wants. I get a closer look at the monster and I can assume that he is still unconscious, or he doesn't know how to move. Thanks to a machine I built inside the I.T.R. a metal glob that can change into any human or eldritch tool I call it the anytool. I can mentally command it and only me, I change it into a buzz saw that cuts the center of the helmet. I see with awe that there are two metal cubes inside it. The one on the right has a circular window I see with my own mortal eyes what is in there: the thumb–sized daemon sultan himself. He was shaped like a tridimensional ellipse, in this surface it was covered with something similar to eggs of a fish or an amphibian, they divided the creature into two tones: in the right there where white ""eggs"" and only 3 black ones, there were 4 spiked eggs and white five tubes that have mouths. In the left there are only black eggs and 3 spiked white ones, 2 big human like jaws were located in the far left. Behind it there where mangled tentacles and claws. I see all this thanks to the anytool that I shaped into a microscope.
The boxes where lead colored and they were 7cm tall and 7cm breadth. The one that is located upside is the one that constrains him and these powers, there is a mirror in the floor of the cube, the downer cube creates an incredibly thin ray that points into the mirror of the upper cube (they are epilated into a vertical position) that ray is the one that maintains this concurrent size. I cut the cube where the visor is and I slowly modify it.
Day 4-I finally finalized the modification, and I closed the helmet. I created a level system: Level 1 makes him use a small bit of this power, with strength capable of lifting 50 tons. Level 2 makes him capable of creating creatures of this own, and this strength are enough powerful to level 10 buildings, Level 3…this one makes him use a quarter of this real power, he is capable of destroying a world with energy based blasts. And this physical strength is unmeasurable. Also I programed the cube (that works like a brain for Azathoth) to only to obey me, but to follow orders of any successor or member of my family.
After a few hours the former god awakens and these first words are understandable: ""where…I am, what I am?"" this voice is deep and stern. I shudder what this reaction will be when I tell him the truth. Thankfully I made the upper cube make the thump sized monster a fast learner. ""My name is Wilhelm Smift, your master. Your name is Azathoth."" The knight like creature stares at me; ""yes…Thou art. But please answer me who am i?"" ""You were a powerful creature, a god. But technological creatures transferred you into a body that constrains your power. Thankfully I have modified it to have a mind that thinks, that talks, without me you would be a blind idiot, all powerful Imbecile! You were a leader of other gods but you never made to them any commands, you where mindless. Now in turn serve me Azathoth, I will make you a tool for justice!"" the creature bows before me, but then to my fear I hear a chilling laugh, ""Why are you laughing daemon sultan?"" he talks to me slowly ""I will become a tool for extermination, isn't it master? I will become a machine only made for killing…ISN'T IT MASTER?!"" he suddenly approaches me, whit these arms wide open. ""YOU MADE ME SOMETHING BETTER THAN A MINDLESS FOOL!"" he screams to the ceiling. Then he lungs at me, I expected an attack but the demon instead…hugs me. ""I can't be more grateful"" I don't know what to say, my wishes were answered, but I dread to know why such creature is happy to comply with requests for killing.
","Some people who sleep at the Dreamers' Inn, in my hometown of Leight, Massachusetts, never wake up.
So it is said. 'Tis a wonder that our only boarding place for travelers manages to stay open at all, with the ceaseless grinding of the rumor mill reaching wayfarers' ears before they reach here. Our village's moniker is pronounced as if the ""e"" were not there, nor any source of illumination. Despite our best efforts to redeem the name of Leight, it is still spoken like a curse. We are God-fearing folk now, in anno Domini 1893, but some of us weren't two hundred years ago. The witchcraft panic that had hit Salem in 1692 infected us like a fever one year later. Fifty people were sickened, and cured by a visit to Gallows Hill.
My great-great-grandfather and original proprietor of the Inn, Goodman Abner Dawes, was one of them.
My name is Millicent Dawson. Even though I'm four generations descended from him, respectable people in Leight cross to the other side of the street when they see me. If it weren't for my late father's pension, I'd be searching these same streets for men too drunk to care about my ancestry. I'm a spinster at thirty-four, but still pretty according to the Inn's current owner. Not that I'd have Monsieur Thènard! He is no drunkard, but sometimes I wish he were. His eyes, never bloodshot and always keen, are those of a wolf.
Is it he that continues to lend the rumors such credence? Has he dared to murder his own customers?
Pah! It's far more likely that the villagers, many of whom are superstitious illiterates, want to keep anyone from having anything to do with the Dreamers' Inn because they're terrified. I, for one, am not. I know my great-great-grandfather's establishment for what it is: a broken-down lodging house, greatly refurbished, with three floors and servants' quarters at the top. It's the closest thing that Leight has to a castle, because the guest rooms and garret are contained within a tall turret. The Inn is the very sort that inspires ghosts and unspeakable phantoms to possess one's imagination - even mine. I suppose I cannot blame my naïve neighbors too much. If I'm out in the evening, having a bite of dinner at our only restaurant, I try not to gaze up at that tower. As it darkens in the fading twilight, it slowly turns blacker than any sort of pitch.
What is it about the place that makes me shudder, even though I'm not so silly as to believe it's haunted?
How has it remained a dreamers' refuge for more than two centuries, my ancestors' toil notwithstanding?
Why do I always see it in my own dreams, as it draws me like iron toward a magnet?
Such mysteries are better left unsolved. What I must do is remain calm, and grounded in practicalities.
The rumors state that no visitor to the Dreamers' Inn has ever been a guest for more than one night. Even those travelers who have spent that brief length of time within its walls have departed without a word, in a mad frenzy of escape. I've lived in Leight all my life, and have no reason to pay for a room when I'm safe enough in my late father's house. Nevertheless, I intend to stay not for one night, but three. I shall prove the chatter of my fellow citizens to be foolish gossip, once and for all, and bring more business to the Inn. I receive a share of its profits, being the only living descendant of its owners throughout the generations.
Father's pension is barely holding out, and with a bitter chill in the air, I need some more money for winter.
",False
"The world we live in is not as it seems. I, James White, write this document so that others may be made aware of what I have experienced and know of the dangers that lurk beneath our limited perception of ""reality"". Whether you believe me or not, dear reader, is up to you. I only ask that you read what I write with an open mind since I write, not for my own gain, but to warn you of what I can only describe as ""pure evil"".
I had never heard of the ""Cult of Cthulhu"" before I began university in the late summer of 2012. I was only eighteen years old, an atheist, and dogmatically pursued scientific understanding and knowledge. At that time, I was not in the least bit interested in weird cults and other religious movements, which I simply dismissed as primitive superstition. Had I but known what I would encounter, I would have burnt the science textbook, prayed to God for the strength not to crumble into insanity and got as far away from that university as I could!
The strange happenings started less than two months into my first term. I had been put into student accommodation and shared a corridor with four other boys and two girls. I had got to know my flatmates very well until all of a sudden, one of the boys by the name of Jonathan Mears disappeared. This wasn't looked upon as weird at first since Jonathan was the quiet type anyway and often spent long hours alone in his room. The suspicions arose however, when he hadn't shown his face for three days. His absence was brought up one evening as we sat in a communal area.
""He's probably just been very busy lately,"" my best friend, Jacob Shields, said. ""You know Jonathan. When he sets his mind on something, he doesn't stop until he's achieved whatever he's trying to do.""
""Isn't it a bit strange though?"" Annie Roberts, a lovely blonde girl from the room directly across the corridor asked. ""I mean, he's in our corridor and we haven't seen him for ages. Not even in the kitchen or lecture halls.""
""It isn't like him to miss a lecture,"" I agreed. Jacob merely waved these concerns away.
""If we haven't seen him by tomorrow evening, we'll go to the reception and see what's happening,"" he said cheerfully.
But Jonathan didn't show up the following day and, as planned, my entire corridor went to the reception desk to ask if anything had happened to him. The receptionist, an elderly lady, checked through the files on a computer before looking up at us.
""I'm afraid he has left the university,"" she informed us. ""He dropped out four days ago.""
""Well there you go!"" Jacob exclaimed. ""Nothing to worry about!""
But there was something to worry about. Even though I now had every reason to think that Jonathan was fine, I couldn't shake that feeling of foreboding. He had seemed happy in university and was consistently getting high marks so I resolved to check things out for myself.
I waited until 3:00 the following morning, and in the darkness, I tiptoed along the corridor to Jonathan's room. Using a paperclip, I carefully picked the lock on his door and let myself in. I closed the door behind me and switched on the light. The sight that greeted me came as a huge shock. Clothes still lay on the floor, the bed was made, books were still on the shelves and a laptop was still humming gently on the cluttered desk. In short, it looked as though Jonathan was simply out of the room. If he had gone home, why did he leave all his things behind? And if he hadn't, where was he and why did the university records state that he had? Deeply concerned, I left the room and returned to my own. I lay awake in the darkness pondering the thoughts in my head and finally decided that I needed to find out what had happened and that I would do so alone...
","In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative. It is an unfortunate fact that the men who watch over me in this infernal building are too limited by their mental vision to weigh with patience and intelligence isolated phenomena such as that which I have experienced. All of the men, that is, with the exception of one, a Mister Slater, to whom I have related my story, and who has agreed to have it published. Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal; that all things appear as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental media through which we are made conscious of them.
My name is Eldritch Fenton, and my tale is begins in the forest with my friend Joseph and a person named Riley Marsh, whom I had long believed to be a young girl. I had been infatuated with the pale-skin, brown-eyed, and raven-haired girl for around a full year now. Of course, so had my friend Joseph, for an almost equal period of time. We were riding our bikes through the lush woods under a gray sky one September afternoon when I turned around to notice Riley's sudden absence. We called for her in this part of the forest, hitherto unknown to us, but could not locate the girl.
After just around half an hour, me and Joseph happened upon a terrible discovery. Buried in the side of a cliff on the opposite side of a lake was a large metal construct, that I would later discover was built by no earthen hands, with no earthen tools, of no earthen material, for no earthen purpose. A rusted metal bridge extended from the construct across the pond. We foolishly entered.
Upon our entry, it was blatant by the sheer size of the stairwell, the height of what appeared o be computer consoles, and the mass of alien hieroglyphs littered on the walls and ceiling that this ship, as I had determined it to be, was not designed for use by human beings. A colossal cylinder stood in the center of the chamber, a strange energy, almost alive, emanating from it.
My mind exploded suddenly. I could feel the presence of many slumbering creatures throughout the ancient vessel. Our unwanted presence in a piece of their world had disturbed them from their dreams. I could feel many more ship like this one, older than the planet Earth itself, scattered over this planet. I saw visions of terrible creatures unlike anything indigenous to our small, insignificant world. I saw worlds, in their entirety, populated by things of all forms, and of colors unknown to the eyes of man.
I hadn't noticed that my mental shock had caused me to collapse to the floor, or that Joseph had come to my aid. The small boy tried to lift me, but I had to do most of the work with my own strength. That's when Riley's beautiful, soft voice came into my mind.
Kill him, she said within my thoughts. Destroy him, and we can be together for the rest of time. Given the strain the ordeal had on my mind, and the appeal of the result, I happily took up a piece of rubble from the floor and obliged. His screams as I broke his bones barely seemed important until after the event had taken place. Even now, his death at my hands has little effect on me. Though a recent realization, I always remember having nothing for contempt for the boy whose life had just been dashed by the rock wielded by me.
The object of my affections appeared behind me. I turned to meet her beautiful face. It was perfectly as I remembered it, with the exception of here eyes, which had turned from an unremarkable brown to a majestic rose red. She touched my face and looked at the corpse on the cold, metal floor.
""Good. I never cared for him anyway."" She chuckled maliciously. Then something simultaneously thrilling and horrifying happened. A pair of lumps rose in the back of her shirt. A pair of octopi-like tentacles then extended from her back like wings and began touching the corpse tenderly. The tendrils split at their ends and covered the cold shell of a body completely for several seconds. She screamed and her color came to her once pale skin. The tentacles receded and Joseph's body was nowhere to be found.
""That was good, Eldritch."" She laughed girlishly. ""But I'm going to need more than that if you want to be with me forever."" She flipped her hair and waked away. I followed her.
That night my dreams were haunted by the same images I was struck with in the spacecraft. I saw monsters of flesh, metal, and energy on strange worlds never before seen by human beings. I saw myself taking the life of the little wretch Joseph over and over and over again. Mostly I saw the beautiful face of the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Our minds were connected now. I could feel her thoughts and see her sights. We communicated with each other throughout the night. It was the best surge of emotions I had ever experienced.
The following afternoon I had been out walking when I had taken my next life. Joseph's death had been in the papers that morning, as well as on the local news. Only Riley and I knew the truth, however. I thought about everything that happened yesterday when Butch Robertson, the local bully, turned from around a corner, pounding his right fist into his left hand.
""Well, well, well."" The mountainous boy said. ""Look what we have here. I noticed there was no 'transaction' at lunch today. Why is that? Am I not good enough to deserve your payment? Hmm? Do I not deserve it? Well, then. I suppose we'll have to do this the hard way.""
He ran and swung at me. Feeling an uncontrollable urge to kill for my love again, I dodged out of the way and pushed him down the steep slope into a group of trees. He was still alive, though. He tried to stand up, but his leg appeared to be broken. He screamed and cursed at me from below, before he started trembling at the sight of two long, green tendrils. The appendages enveloped him and performed the same arcane process they performed on Joseph.
That was wonderful, Eldritch. But I still need a little more, love. She laughed cutely. I had to get more bodies for her. Otherwise she would stop loving me, and all of my hard work would have been in vain!
So I continued for a month. I preyed upon the small, the weak, the sick. I felt abominable for my actions. But the importance of the lives of these animals did not concern me as much as the welfare of Riley, or Y'gttha'a , as I learned her true name to be on her home world. She needed me to kill for the meaningless animals for her, and I was more than happy to oblige.
She also gave me a book. It was a strange book. The Necronomicon. She said it was by a man named Abdul Alhazred a long time ago. Though I could not at first, my present state has rendered me able to translate it's arcane symbols and language. It contains mention of the ""Old Ones,"" the species to which Riley belonged. They had been here a very long time. And I was helping them reawaken by feeding Riley. She promised I would be spared when they were at full power, and I would be kept as her husband.
But then that night came. I was out gathering more food for Riley. The town was in total panic now, but it didn't matter to me. It was late when I arrived at my empty, silent house. As soon as I heard my dog whimpering, a ghastly thought occurred to me. I ran into my room to find Riley's tentacles retracting. Her skin was now healthy looking, and her eyes were now a vibrant but terrible blood red. Two reptilian wings sprouted from her back and her now more numerous tendrils hung freely. I stared in terror at her, almost at tears.
""Aw, come on! I was hungry! Please forgive me? I love you!"" She pleaded. I ran. I ran to the only place I knew where to run.
I reached the extraterrestrial ship in about a half an hour. I climbed the massive steps. I could feel Riley behind me, flying with her newly rediscovered wings. Acting quickly, I took up a piece of rubble larger than the one I took Joseph's life with. I couldn't reach the computer consoles, but I began to destroy the lower parts of the machines. I heard creatures begin to awaken and crawl through the vents. The energy from the large cylinder in the chamber surged. It beckoned for me to see what was inside. When enough damage was done to the machines, and I could feel Riley nearing me, I walked to the cylinder and stared upward. It opened, almost as if on it's own, and revealed it's secrets to me.
What I saw was so unimaginably, unequivocally horrifying, I cannot bring myself to describe it thoroughly. It challenged my perception of everything. My knowledge was refuted. My idea of right and wrong was destroyed. All I knew was that we mean nothing to the universe, we earthlings. And the eyes! Oh, dear God! The eyes!
I awoke later, strangely unscathed, in the wreckage of the ship. It had been obliterated. Destroyed, in a great breath of fire. I was collected by the local police and the ship was searched by military units in green armor. I was shipped to an asylum near Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachutesetts. Here, Mr. Slater has agreed to write down my story. I leave you with this knowledge. The old ones are real. Riley, Y'gttha'a, is still killing people. I still feel her. She still begs me to come help her. But the strangest part is, in some deep, dark part of my mind, that I dare not visit…
…I still love her.
",False
"V. A Nightmare and a Cataclysm

1.

And now swiftly followed that hideous experience which has left its indelible mark of fear on the soul of Marinus Bicknell Willett, and has added a decade to the visible age of one whose youth was even then far behind. Dr. Willett had conferred at length with Mr. Ward, and had come to an agreement with him on several points which both felt the alienists would ridicule. There was, they conceded, a terrible movement alive in the world, whose direct connexion with a necromancy even older than the Salem witchcraft could not be doubted. That at least two living men - and one other of whom they dared not think - were in absolute possession of minds or personalities which had functioned as early as 1690 or before was likewise almost unassailably proved even in the face of all known natural laws. What these horrible creatures - and Charles Ward as well - were doing or trying to do seemed fairly clear from their letters and from every bit of light both old and new which had filtered in upon the case. They were robbing the tombs of all the ages, including those of the world's wisest and greatest men, in the hope of recovering from the bygone ashes some vestige of the consciousness and lore which had once animated and informed them.
      A hideous traffick was going on among these nightmare ghouls, whereby illustrious bones were bartered with the calm calculativeness of schoolboys swapping books; and from what was extorted from this centuried dust there was anticipated a power and a wisdom beyond anything which the cosmos had ever seen concentrated in one man or group. They had found unholy ways to keep their brains alive, either in the same body or different bodies; and had evidently achieved a way of tapping the consciousness of the dead whom they gathered together. There had, it seems, been some truth in chimerical old Borellus when he wrote of preparing from even the most antique remains certain ""Essential Saltes"" from which the shade of a long-dead living thing might be raised up. There was a formula for evoking such a shade, and another for putting it down; and it had now been so perfected that it could be taught successfully. One must be careful about evocations, for the markers of old graves are not always accurate.
      Willett and Mr. Ward shivered as they passed from conclusion to conclusion. Things - presences or voices of some sort - could be drawn down from unknown places as well as from the grave, and in this process also one must be careful. Joseph Curwen had indubitably evoked many forbidden things, and as for Charles - what might one think of him? What forces ""outside the spheres"" had reached him from Joseph Curwen's day and turned his mind on forgotten things? He had been led to find certain directions, and he had used them. He had talked with the man of horror in Prague and stayed long with the creature in the mountains of Transylvania. And he must have found the grave of Joseph Curwen at last. That newspaper item and what his mother had heard in the night were too significant to overlook. Then he had summoned something, and it must have come. That mighty voice aloft on Good Friday, and those different tones in the locked attic laboratory. What were they like, with their depth and hollowness? Was there not here some awful foreshadowing of the dreaded stranger Dr. Allen with his spectral bass? Yes, that was what Mr. Ward had felt with vague horror in his single talk with the man - if man it were - over the telephone!
      What hellish consciousness or voice, what morbid shade or presence, had come to answer Charles Ward's secret rites behind that locked door? Those voices heard in argument - ""must have it red for three months"" - Good God! Was not that just before the vampirism broke out? The rifling of Ezra Weeden's ancient grave, and the cries later at Pawtuxet - whose mind had planned the vengeance and rediscovered the shunned seat of elder blasphemies? And then the bungalow and the bearded stranger, and the gossip, and the fear. The final madness of Charles neither father nor doctor could attempt to explain, but they did feel sure that the mind of Joseph Curwen had come to earth again and was following its ancient morbidities. Was daemoniac possession in truth a possibility? Allen had something to do with it, and the detectives must find out more about one whose existence menaced the young man's life. In the meantime, since the existence of some vast crypt beneath the bungalow seemed virtually beyond dispute, some effort must be made to find it. Willett and Mr. Ward, conscious of the sceptical attitude of the alienists, resolved during their final conference to undertake a joint secret exploration of unparalleled thoroughness; and agreed to meet at the bungalow on the following morning with valises and with certain tools and accessories suited to architectural search and underground exploration.
      The morning of April 6th dawned clear, and both explorers were at the bungalow by ten o'clock. Mr. Ward had the key, and an entry and cursory survey were made. From the disordered condition of Dr. Allen's room it was obvious that the detectives had been there before, and the later searchers hoped that they had found some clue which might prove of value. Of course the main business lay in the cellar; so thither they descended without much delay, again making the circuit which each had vainly made before in the presence of the mad young owner. For a time everything seemed baffling, each inch of the earthen floor and stone walls having so solid and innocuous an aspect that the thought of a yawning aperture was scarcely to be entertained. Willett reflected that since the original cellar was dug without knowledge of any catacombs beneath, the beginning of the passage would represent the strictly modern delving of young Ward and his associates, where they had probed for the ancient vaults whose rumour could have reached them by no wholesome means.
      The doctor tried to put himself in Charles's place to see how a delver would be likely to start, but could not gain much inspiration from this method. Then he decided on elimination as a policy, and went carefully over the whole subterranean surface both vertical and horizontal, trying to account for every inch separately. He was soon substantially narrowed down, and at last had nothing left but the small platform before the washtubs, which he had tried once before in vain. Now experimenting in every possible way, and exerting a double strength, he finally found that the top did indeed turn and slide horizontally on a corner pivot. Beneath it lay a trim concrete surface with an iron manhole, to which Mr. Ward at once rushed with excited zeal. The cover was not hard to lift, and the father had quite removed it when Willett noticed the queerness of his aspect. He was swaying and nodding dizzily, and in the gust of noxious air which swept up from the black pit beneath the doctor soon recognised ample cause.
      In a moment Dr. Willett had his fainting companion on the floor above and was reviving him with cold water. Mr. Ward responded feebly, but it could be seen that the mephitic blast from the crypt had in some way gravely sickened him. Wishing to take no chances, Willett hastened out to Broad Street for a taxicab and had soon dispatched the sufferer home despite his weak-voiced protests; after which he produced an electric torch, covered his nostrils with a band of sterile gauze, and descended once more to peer into the new-found depths. The foul air had now slightly abated, and Willett was able to send a beam of light down the Stygian hole. For about ten feet, he saw, it was a sheer cylindrical drop with concrete walls and an iron ladder; after which the hole appeared to strike a flight of old stone steps which must originally have emerged to earth somewhat southwest of the present building.

2.

      Willett freely admits that for a moment the memory of the old Curwen legends kept him from climbing down alone into that malodorous gulf. He could not help thinking of what Luke Fenner had reported on that last monstrous night. Then duty asserted itself and he made the plunge, carrying a great valise for the removal of whatever papers might prove of supreme importance. Slowly, as befitted one of his years, he descended the ladder and reached the slimy steps below. This was ancient masonry, his torch told him; and upon the dripping walls he saw the unwholesome moss of centuries. Down, down, ran the steps; not spirally, but in three abrupt turns; and with such narrowness that two men could have passed only with difficulty. He had counted about thirty when a sound reached him very faintly; and after that he did not feel disposed to count any more.
      It was a godless sound; one of those low-keyed, insidious outrages of Nature which are not meant to be. To call it a dull wail, a doom-dragged whine, or a hopeless howl of chorused anguish and stricken flesh without mind would be to miss its most quintessential loathsomeness and soul-sickening overtones. Was it for this that Ward had seemed to listen on that day he was removed? It was the most shocking thing that Willett had ever heard, and it continued from no determinate point as the doctor reached the bottom of the steps and cast his torchlight around on lofty corridor walls surmounted by Cyclopean vaulting and pierced by numberless black archways. The hall in which he stood was perhaps fourteen feet high to the middle of the vaulting and ten or twelve feet broad. Its pavement was of large chipped flagstones, and its walls and roof were of dressed masonry. Its length he could not imagine, for it stretched ahead indefinitely into the blackness. Of the archways, some had doors of the old six-panelled colonial type, whilst others had none.
      Overcoming the dread induced by the smell and the howling, Willett began to explore these archways one by one; finding beyond them rooms with groined stone ceilings, each of medium size and apparently of bizarre uses. Most of them had fireplaces, the upper courses of whose chimneys would have formed an interesting study in engineering. Never before or since had he seen such instruments or suggestions of instruments as here loomed up on every hand through the burying dust and cobwebs of a century and a half, in many cases evidently shattered as if by the ancient raiders. For many of the chambers seemed wholly untrodden by modern feet, and must have represented the earliest and most obsolete phases of Joseph Curwen's experimentation. Finally there came a room of obvious modernity, or at least of recent occupancy. There were oil heaters, bookshelves and tables, chairs and cabinets, and a desk piled high with papers of varying antiquity and contemporaneousness. Candlesticks and oil lamps stood about in several places; and finding a match-safe handy, Willett lighted such as were ready for use.
      In the fuller gleam it appeared that this apartment was nothing less than the latest study or library of Charles Ward. Of the books the doctor had seen many before, and a good part of the furniture had plainly come from the Prospect Street mansion. Here and there was a piece well known to Willett, and the sense of familiarity became so great that he half forgot the noisomeness and the wailing, both of which were plainer here than they had been at the foot of the steps. His first duty, as planned long ahead, was to find and seize any papers which might seem of vital importance; especially those portentous documents found by Charles so long ago behind the picture in Olney Court. As he searched he perceived how stupendous a task the final unravelling would be; for file on file was stuffed with papers in curious hands and bearing curious designs, so that months or even years might be needed for a thorough deciphering and editing. Once he found large packets of letters with Prague and Rakus postmarks, and in writing clearly recognisable as Orne's and Hutchinson's; all of which he took with him as part of the bundle to be removed in his valise.
      At last, in a locked mahogany cabinet once gracing the Ward home, Willett found the batch of old Curwen papers; recognising them from the reluctant glimpse Charles had granted him so many years ago. The youth had evidently kept them together very much as they had been when first he found them, since all the titles recalled by the workmen were present except the papers addressed to Orne and Hutchinson, and the cipher with its key. Willett placed the entire lot in his valise and continued his examination of the files. Since young Ward's immediate condition was the greatest matter at stake, the closest searching was done among the most obviously recent matter; and in this abundance of contemporary manuscript one very baffling oddity was noted. The oddity was the slight amount in Charles's normal writing, which indeed included nothing more recent than two months before. On the other hand, there were literally reams of symbols and formulae, historical notes and philosophical comment, in a crabbed penmanship absolutely identical with the ancient script of Joseph Curwen, though of undeniably modern dating. Plainly, a part of the latter-day programme had been a sedulous imitation of the old wizard's writing, which Charles seemed to have carried to a marvellous state of perfection. Of any third hand which might have been Allen's there was not a trace. If he had indeed come to be the leader, he must have forced young Ward to act as his amanuensis.
      In this new material one mystic formula, or rather pair of formulae, recurred so often that Willett had it by heart before he had half finished his quest. It consisted of two parallel columns, the left-hand one surmounted by the archaic symbol called ""Dragon's Head"" and used in almanacks to indicate the ascending node, and the right-hand one headed by a corresponding sign of ""Dragon's Tail"" or descending node. The appearance of the whole was something like this, and almost unconsciously the doctor realised that the second half was no more than the first written syllabically backward with the exception of the final monosyllables and of the odd name Yog-Sothoth, which he had come to recognise under various spellings from other things he had seen in connexion with this horrible matter. The formulae were as follows - exactly so, as Willett is abundantly able to testify - and the first one struck an odd note of uncomfortable latent memory in his brain, which he recognised later when reviewing the events of that horrible Good Friday of the previous year.


Y'AI 'NG'NGAH,
YOG-SOTHOTH
H'EE - L'GEB
F'AI THRODOG
UAAAH
      	

OGTHROD AI'F
GEB'L - EE'H
YOG-SOTHOTH
'NGAH'NG AI'Y
ZHRO

So haunting were these formulae, and so frequently did he come upon them, that before the doctor knew it he was repeating them under his breath. Eventually, however, he felt he had secured all the papers he could digest to advantage for the present; hence resolved to examine no more till he could bring the sceptical alienists en masse for an ampler and more systematic raid. He had still to find the hidden laboratory, so leaving his valise in the lighted room he emerged again into the black noisome corridor whose vaulting echoed ceaselessly with that dull and hideous whine.
      The next few rooms he tried were all abandoned, or filled only with crumbling boxes and ominous-looking leaden coffins; but impressed him deeply with the magnitude of Joseph Curwen's original operations. He thought of the slaves and seamen who had disappeared, of the graves which had been violated in every part of the world, and of what that final raiding party must have seen; and then he decided it was better not to think any more. Once a great stone staircase mounted at his right, and he deduced that this must have reached to one of the Curwen outbuildings - perhaps the famous stone edifice with the high slit-like windows - provided the steps he had descended had led from the steep-roofed farmhouse. Suddenly the walls seemed to fall away ahead, and the stench and the wailing grew stronger. Willett saw that he had come upon a vast open space, so great that his torchlight would not carry across it; and as he advanced he encountered occasional stout pillars supporting the arches of the roof.
      After a time he reached a circle of pillars grouped like the monoliths of Stonehenge, with a large carved altar on a base of three steps in the centre; and so curious were the carvings on that altar that he approached to study them with his electric light. But when he saw what they were he shrank away shuddering, and did not stop to investigate the dark stains which discoloured the upper surface and had spread down the sides in occasional thin lines. Instead, he found the distant wall and traced it as it swept round in a gigantic circle perforated by occasional black doorways and indented by a myriad of shallow cells with iron gratings and wrist and ankle bonds on chains fastened to the stone of the concave rear masonry. These cells were empty, but still the horrible odour and the dismal moaning continued, more insistent now than ever, and seemingly varied at times by a sort of slippery thumping.

3.

      From that frightful smell and that uncanny noise Willett's attention could no longer be diverted. Both were plainer and more hideous in the great pillared hall than anywhere else, and carried a vague impression of being far below, even in this dark nether world of subterrene mystery. Before trying any of the black archways for steps leading further down, the doctor cast his beam of light about the stone-flagged floor. It was very loosely paved, and at irregular intervals there would occur a slab curiously pierced by small holes in no definite arrangement, while at one point there lay a very long ladder carelessly flung down. To this ladder, singularly enough, appeared to cling a particularly large amount of the frightful odour which encompassed everything. As he walked slowly about it suddenly occurred to Willett that both the noise and the odour seemed strongest directly above the oddly pierced slabs, as if they might be crude trap-doors leading down to some still deeper region of horror. Kneeling by one, he worked at it with his hands, and found that with extreme difficulty he could budge it. At his touch the moaning beneath ascended to a louder key, and only with vast trepidation did he persevere in the lifting of the heavy stone. A stench unnamable now rose up from below, and the doctor's head reeled dizzily as he laid back the slab and turned his torch upon the exposed square yard of gaping blackness.
      If he had expected a flight of steps to some wide gulf of ultimate abomination, Willett was destined to be disappointed; for amidst that foetor and cracked whining he discerned only the brick-faced top of a cylindrical well perhaps a yard and a half in diameter and devoid of any ladder or other means of descent. As the light shone down, the wailing changed suddenly to a series of horrible yelps; in conjunction with which there came again that sound of blind, futile scrambling and slippery thumping. The explorer trembled, unwilling even to imagine what noxious thing might be lurking in that abyss, but in a moment mustered up the courage to peer over the rough-hewn brink; lying at full length and holding the torch downward at arm's length to see what might lie below. For a second he could distinguish nothing but the slimy, moss-grown brick walls sinking illimitably into that half-tangible miasma of murk and foulness and anguished frenzy; and then he saw that something dark was leaping clumsily and frantically up and down at the bottom of the narrow shaft, which must have been from twenty to twenty-five feet below the stone floor where he lay. The torch shook in his hand, but he looked again to see what manner of living creature might be immured there in the darkness of that unnatural well; left starving by young Ward through all the long month since the doctors had taken him away, and clearly only one of a vast number prisoned in the kindred wells whose pierced stone covers so thickly studded in the floor of the great vaulted cavern. Whatever the things were, they could not lie down in their cramped spaces; but must have crouched and whined and waited and feebly leaped all those hideous weeks since their master had abandoned them unheeded.
      But Marinus Bicknell Willett was sorry that he looked again; for surgeon and veteran of the dissecting-room though he was, he has not been the same since. It is hard to explain just how a single sight of a tangible object with measureable dimensions could so shake and change a man; and we may only say that there is about certain outlines and entities a power of symbolism and suggestion which acts frightfully on a sensitive thinker's perspective and whispers terrible hints of obscure cosmic relationships and unnamable realities behind the protective illusions of common vision. In that second look Willett saw such an outline or entity, for during the next few instants he was undoubtedly as stark mad as any inmate of Dr. Waite's private hospital. He dropped the electric torch from a hand drained of muscular power or nervous cošrdination, nor heeded the sound of crunching teeth which told of its fate at the bottom of the pit. He screamed and screamed and screamed in a voice whose falsetto panic no acquaintance of his would ever have recognised; and though he could not rise to his feet he crawled and rolled desperately away over the damp pavement where dozens of Tartarean wells poured forth their exhausted whining and yelping to answer his own insane cries. He tore his hands on the rough, loose stones, and many times bruised his head against the frequent pillars, but still he kept on. Then at last he slowly came to himself in the utter blackness and stench, and stopped his ears against the droning wail into which the burst of yelping had subsided. He was drenched with perspiration and without means of producing a light; stricken and unnerved in the abysmal blackness and horror, and crushed with a memory he never could efface. Beneath him dozens of those things still lived, and from one of the shafts the cover was removed. He knew that what he had seen could never climb up the slippery walls, yet shuddered at the thought that some obscure foot-hold might exist.
      What the thing was, he would never tell. It was like some of the carvings on the hellish altar, but it was alive. Nature had never made it in this form, for it was too palpably unfinished. The deficiencies were of the most surprising sort, and the abnormalities of proportion could not be described. Willett consents only to say that this type of thing must have represented entities which Ward called up from imperfect salts, and which he kept for servile or ritualistic purposes. If it had not had a certain significance, its image would not have been carved on that damnable stone. It was not the worst thing depicted on that stone - but Willett never opened the other pits. At the time, the first connected idea in his mind was an idle paragraph from some of the old Curwen data he had digested long before; a phrase used by Simon or Jedediah Orne in that portentous confiscated letter to the bygone sorcerer: ""Certainely, there was Noth'g butt ye liveliest Awfulness in that which H. rais'd upp from What he cou'd gather onlie a part of.""
      Then, horribly supplementing rather than displacing this image, there came a recollection of those ancient lingering rumours anent the burned, twisted thing found in the fields a week after the Curwen raid. Charles Ward had once told the doctor what old Slocum said of that object; that it was neither thoroughly human, nor wholly allied to any animal which Pawtuxet folk had ever seen or read about.
      These words hummed in the doctor's mind as he rocked to and fro, squatting on the nitrous stone floor. He tried to drive them out, and repeated the Lord's Prayer to himself; eventually trailing off into a mnemonic hodge-podge like the modernistic Waste Land of Mr. T. S. Eliot and finally reverting to the oft-repeated dual formula he had lately found in Ward's underground library: ""Y'ai 'ng'ngah, Yog-Sothoth"", and so on till the final underlined ""Zhro"". It seemed to soothe him, and he staggered to his feet after a time; lamenting bitterly his fright-lost torch and looking wildly about for any gleam of light in the clutching inkiness of the chilly air. Think he would not; but he strained his eyes in every direction for some faint glint or reflection of the bright illumination he had left in the library. After a while he thought he detected a suspicion of a glow infinitely far away, and toward this he crawled in agonised caution on hands and knees amidst the stench and howling, always feeling ahead lest he collide with the numerous great pillars or stumble into the abominable pit he had uncovered.
      Once his shaking fingers touched something which he knew must be the steps leading to the hellish altar, and from this spot he recoiled in loathing. At another time he encountered the pierced slab he had removed, and here his caution became almost pitiful. But he did not come upon the dread aperture after all, nor did anything issue from that aperture to detain him. What had been down there made no sound nor stir. Evidently its crunching of the fallen electric torch had not been good for it. Each time Willett's fingers felt a perforated slab he trembled. His passage over it would sometimes increase the groaning below, but generally it would produce no effect at all, since he moved very noiselessly. Several times during his progress the glow ahead diminished perceptibly, and he realised that the various candles and lamps he had left must be expiring one by one. The thought of being lost in utter darkness without matches amidst this underground world of nightmare labyrinths impelled him to rise to his feet and run, which he could safely do now that he had passed the open pit; for he knew that once the light failed, his only hope of rescue and survival would lie in whatever relief party Mr. Ward might send after missing him for a sufficient period. Presently, however, he emerged from the open space into the narrower corridor and definitely located the glow as coming from a door on his right. In a moment he had reached it and was standing once more in young Ward's secret library, trembling with relief, and watching the sputterings of that last lamp which had brought him to safety.

4.

      In another moment he was hastily filling the burned-out lamps from an oil supply he had previously noticed, and when the room was bright again he looked about to see if he might find a lantern for further exploration. For racked though he was with horror, his sense of grim purpose was still uppermost; and he was firmly determined to leave no stone unturned in his search for the hideous facts behind Charles Ward's bizarre madness. Failing to find a lantern, he chose the smallest of the lamps to carry; also filling his pockets with candles and matches, and taking with him a gallon can of oil, which he proposed to keep for reserve use in whatever hidden laboratory he might uncover beyond the terrible open space with its unclean altar and nameless covered wells. To traverse that space again would require his utmost fortitude, but he knew it must be done. Fortunately neither the frightful altar nor the opened shaft was near the vast cell-indented wall which bounded the cavern area, and whose black mysterious archways would form the next goals of a logical search.
      So Willett went back to that great pillared hall of stench and anguished howling; turning down his lamp to avoid any distant glimpse of the hellish altar, or of the uncovered pit with the pierced stone slab beside it. Most of the black doorways led merely to small chambers, some vacant and some evidently used as storerooms; and in several of the latter he saw some very curious accumulations of various objects. One was packed with rotting and dust-draped bales of spare clothing, and the explorer thrilled when he saw that it was unmistakably the clothing of a century and a half before. In another room he found numerous odds and ends of modern clothing, as if gradual provisions were being made to equip a large body of men. But what he disliked most of all were the huge copper vats which occasionally appeared; these, and the sinister incrustations upon them. He liked them even less than the weirdly figured leaden bowls whose rims retained such obnoxious deposits and around which clung repellent odours perceptible above even the general noisomeness of the crypt. When he had completed about half the entire circuit of the wall he found another corridor like that from which he had come, and out of which many doors opened. This he proceeded to investigate; and after entering three rooms of medium size and of no significant contents, he came at last to a large oblong apartment whose business-like tanks and tables, furnaces and modern instruments, occasional books and endless shelves of jars and bottles proclaimed it indeed the long-sought laboratory of Charles Ward - and no doubt of old Joseph Curwen before him.
      After lighting the three lamps which he found filled and ready, Dr. Willett examined the place and all its appurtenances with the keenest interest; noting from the relative quantities of various reagents on the shelves that young Ward's dominant concern must have been with some branch of organic chemistry. On the whole, little could be learned from the scientific ensemble, which included a gruesome-looking dissecting table; so that the room was really rather a disappointment. Among the books was a tattered old copy of Borellus in black-letter, and it was weirdly interesting to note that Ward had underlined the same passage whose marking had so perturbed good Mr. Merritt at Curwen's farmhouse more than a century and a half before. That older copy, of course, must have perished along with the rest of Curwen's occult library in the final raid. Three archways opened off the laboratory, and these the doctor proceeded to sample in turn. From his cursory survey he saw that two led merely to small storerooms; but these he canvassed with care, remarking the piles of coffins in various stages of damage and shuddering violently at two or three of the few coffin-plates he could decipher. There was much clothing also stored in these rooms, and several new and tightly nailed boxes which he did not stop to investigate. Most interesting of all, perhaps, were some odd bits which he judged to be fragments of old Joseph Curwen's laboratory appliances. These had suffered damage at the hands of the raiders, but were still partly recognisable as the chemical paraphernalia of the Georgian period.
      The third archway led to a very sizeable chamber entirely lined with shelves and having in the centre a table bearing two lamps. These lamps Willett lighted, and in their brilliant glow studied the endless shelving which surrounded him. Some of the upper levels were wholly vacant, but most of the space was filled with small odd-looking leaden jars of two general types; one tall and without handles like a Grecian lekythos or oil-jug, and the other with a single handle and proportioned like a Phaleron jug. All had metal stoppers, and were covered with peculiar-looking symbols moulded in low relief. In a moment the doctor noticed that these jugs were classified with great rigidity; all the lekythoi being on one side of the room with a large wooden sign reading ""Custodes"" above them, and all the Phalerons on the other, correspondingly labelled with a sign reading ""Materia"". Each of the jars or jugs, except some on the upper shelves that turned out to be vacant, bore a cardboard tag with a number apparently referring to a catalogue; and Willett resolved to look for the latter presently. For the moment, however, he was more interested in the nature of the array as a whole; and experimentally opened several of the lekythoi and Phalerons at random with a view to a rough generalisation. The result was invariable. Both types of jar contained a small quantity of a single kind of substance; a fine dusty powder of very light weight and of many shades of dull, neutral colour. To the colours which formed the only point of variation there was no apparent method of disposal; and no distinction between what occurred in the lekythoi and what occurred in the Phalerons. A bluish-grey powder might be by the side of a pinkish-white one, and any one in a Phaleron might have its exact counterpart in a lekythos. The most individual feature about the powders was their non-adhesiveness. Willett would pour one into his hand, and upon returning it to its jug would find that no residue whatever remained on its palm.
      The meaning of the two signs puzzled him, and he wondered why this battery of chemicals was separated so radically from those in glass jars on the shelves of the laboratory proper. ""Custodes"", ""Materia""; that was the Latin for ""Guards"" and ""Materials"", respectively - and then there came a flash of memory as to where he had seen that word ""Guards"" before in connexion with this dreadful mystery. It was, of course, in the recent letter to Dr. Allen purporting to be from old Edward Hutchinson; and the phrase had read: ""There was no Neede to keep the Guards in Shape and eat'g off their Heads, and it made Much to be founde in Case of Trouble, as you too welle knowe."" What did this signify? But wait - was there not still another reference to ""guards"" in this matter which he had failed wholly to recall when reading the Hutchinson letter? Back in the old non-secretive days Ward had told him of the Eleazar Smith diary recording the spying of Smith and Weeden on the Curwen farm, and in that dreadful chronicle there had been a mention of conversations overheard before the old wizard betook himself wholly beneath the earth. There had been, Smith and Weeden insisted, terrible colloquies wherein figured Curwen, certain captives of his, and the guards of those captives. Those guards, according to Hutchinson or his avatar, had 'eaten their heads off', so that now Dr. Allen did not keep them in shape. And if not in shape, how save as the ""salts"" to which it appears this wizard band was engaged in reducing as many human bodies or skeletons as they could?
      So that was what these lekythoi contained; the monstrous fruit of unhallowed rites and deeds, presumably won or cowed to such submission as to help, when called up by some hellish incantation, in the defence of their blasphemous master or the questioning of those who were not so willing? Willett shuddered at the thought of what he had been pouring in and out of his hands, and for a moment felt an impulse to flee in panic from that cavern of hideous shelves with their silent and perhaps watching sentinels. Then he thought of the ""Materia"" - in the myriad Phaleron jugs on the other side of the room. Salts too - and if not the salts of ""guards"", then the salts of what? God! Could it be possible that here lay the mortal relics of half the titan thinkers of all the ages; snatched by supreme ghouls from crypts where the world thought them safe, and subject to the beck and call of madmen who sought to drain their knowledge for some still wilder end whose ultimate effect would concern, as poor Charles had hinted in his frantic note, 'all civilisation, all natural law, perhaps even the fate of the solar system and the universe'? And Marinus Bicknell Willett had sifted their dust through his hands!
      Then he noticed a small door at the farther end of the room, and calmed himself enough to approach it and examine the crude sign chiselled above. It was only a symbol, but it filled him with vague spiritual dread; for a morbid, dreaming friend of his had once drawn it on paper and told him a few of the things it means in the dark abyss of sleep. It was the sign of Koth, that dreamers see fixed above the archway of a certain black tower standing alone in twilight - and Willett did not like what his friend Randolph Carter had said of its powers. But a moment later he forgot the sign as he recognised a new acrid odour in the stench-filled air. This was a chemical rather than animal smell, and came clearly from the room beyond the door. And it was, unmistakably, the same odour which had saturated Charles Ward's clothing on the day the doctors had taken him away. So it was here that the youth had been interrupted by the final summons? He was wiser than old Joseph Curwen, for he had not resisted. Willett, boldly determined to penetrate every wonder and nightmare this nether realm might contain, seized the small lamp and crossed the threshold. A wave of nameless fright rolled out to meet him, but he yielded to no whim and deferred to no intuition. There was nothing alive here to harm him, and he would not be stayed in his piercing of the eldritch cloud which engulfed his patient.
      The room beyond the door was of medium size, and had no furniture save a table, a single chair, and two groups of curious machines with clamps and wheels, which Willett recognised after a moment as mediaeval instruments of torture. On one side of the door stood a rack of savage whips, above which were some shelves bearing empty rows of shallow pedestalled cups of lead shaped like Grecian kylikes. On the other side was the table; with a powerful Argand lamp, a pad and pencil, and two of the stoppered lekythoi from the shelves outside set down at irregular places as if temporarily or in haste. Willett lighted the lamp and looked carefully at the pad, to see what notes young Ward might have been jotting down when interrupted; but found nothing more intelligible than the following disjointed fragments in that crabbed Curwen chirography, which shed no light on the case as a whole:
""B. dy'd not. Escap'd into walls and founde Place below.
""Saw olde V. saye ye Sabaoth and learnt ye Way.
""Rais'd Yog-Sothoth thrice and was ye nexte Day deliver'd.
""F. soughte to wipe out all know'g howe to raise Those from Outside.""
      As the strong Argand blaze lit up the entire chamber the doctor saw that the wall opposite the door, between the two groups of torturing appliances in the corners, was covered with pegs from which hung a set of shapeless-looking robes of a rather dismal yellowish-white. But far more interesting were the two vacant walls, both of which were thickly covered with mystic symbols and formulae roughly chiselled in the smooth dressed stone. The damp floor also bore marks of carving; and with but little difficulty Willett deciphered a huge pentagram in the centre, with a plain circle about three feet wide half way between this and each corner. In one of these four circles, near where a yellowish robe had been flung carelessly down, there stood a shallow kylix of the sort found on the shelves above the whip-rack; and just outside the periphery was one of the Phaleron jugs from the shelves in the other room, its tag numbered 118. This was unstoppered, and proved upon inspection to be empty; but the explorer saw with a shiver that the kylix was not. Within its shallow area, and saved from scattering only by the absence of wind in this sequestered cavern, lay a small amount of a dry, dull-greenish efflorescent powder which must have belonged in the jug; and Willett almost reeled at the implications that came sweeping over him as he correlated little by little the several elements and antecedents of the scene. The whips and the instruments of torture, the dust or salts from the jug of ""Materia"", the two lekythoi from the ""Custodes"" shelf, the robes, the formulae on the walls, the notes on the pad, the hints from letters and legends, and the thousand glimpses, doubts, and suppositions which had come to torment the friends and parents of Charles Ward - all these engulfed the doctor in a tidal wave of horror as he looked at that dry greenish powder outspread in the pedestalled leaden kylix on the floor.
      With an effort, however, Willett pulled himself together and began studying the formulae chiselled on the walls. From the stained and incrusted letters it was obvious that they were carved in Joseph Curwen's time, and their text was such as to be vaguely familiar to one who had read much Curwen material or delved extensively into the history of magic. One the doctor clearly recognised as what Mrs. Ward heard her son chanting on that ominous Good Friday a year before, and what an authority had told him was a very terrible invocation addressed to secret gods outside the normal spheres. It was not spelled here exactly as Mrs. Ward had set it down from memory, nor yet as the authority had shewn it to him in the forbidden pages of ""Eliphas Levi""; but its identity was unmistakable, and such words as Sabaoth, Metraton, Almousin, and Zariatnatmik sent a shudder of fright through the searcher who had seen and felt so much of cosmic abomination just around the corner.
      This was on the left-hand wall as one entered the room. The right-hand wall was no less thickly inscribed, and Willett felt a start of recognition as he came upon the pair of formulae so frequently occurring in the recent notes in the library. They were, roughly speaking, the same; with the ancient symbols of ""Dragon's Head"" and ""Dragon's Tail"" heading them as in Ward's scribblings. But the spelling differed quite widely from that of the modern versions, as if old Curwen had had a different way of recording sound, or as if later study had evolved more powerful and perfected variants of the invocations in question. The doctor tried to reconcile the chiselled version with the one which still ran persistently in his head, and found it hard to do. Where the script he had memorised began ""Y'ai 'ng'ngah, Yog-Sothoth"", this epigraph started out as ""Aye, engengah, Yogge-Sothotha""; which to his mind would seriously interfere with the syllabification of the second word.
      Ground as the later text was into his consciousness, the discrepancy disturbed him; and he found himself chanting the first of the formulae aloud in an effort to square the sound he conceived with the letters he found carved. Weird and menacing in that abyss of antique blasphemy rang his voice; its accents keyed to a droning sing-song either through the spell of the past and the unknown, or through the hellish example of that dull, godless wail from the pits whose inhuman cadences rose and fell rhythmically in the distance through the stench and the darkness.

""Y'AI 'NG'NGAH,
YOG-SOTHOTH
H'EE - L'GEB
F'AI THRODOG
UAAAH!""

      But what was this cold wind which had sprung into life at the very outset of the chant? The lamps were sputtering woefully, and the gloom grew so dense that the letters on the wall nearly faded from sight. There was smoke, too, and an acrid odour which quite drowned out the stench from the far-away wells; an odour like that he had smelt before, yet infinitely stronger and more pungent. He turned from the inscriptions to face the room with its bizarre contents, and saw that the kylix on the floor, in which the ominous efflorescent powder had lain, was giving forth a cloud of thick, greenish-black vapour of surprising volume and opacity. That powder - Great God! it had come from the shelf of ""Materia"" - what was it doing now, and what had started it? The formula he had been chanting - the first of the pair - Dragon's Head, ascending node - Blessed Saviour, could it be. . . .
      The doctor reeled, and through his head raced wildly disjointed scraps from all he had seen, heard, and read of the frightful case of Joseph Curwen and Charles Dexter Ward. ""I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe. . . . Have ye Wordes for laying at all times readie, and stopp not to be sure when there is any Doubte of Whom you have. . . . Three Talkes with What was therein inhum'd. . . ."" Mercy of Heaven, what is that shape behind the parting smoke?

5.

      Marinus Bicknell Willett has no hope that any part of his tale will be believed except by certain sympathetic friends, hence he has made no attempt to tell it beyond his most intimate circle. Only a few outsiders have ever heard it repeated, and of these the majority laugh and remark that the doctor surely is getting old. He has been advised to take a long vacation and to shun future cases dealing with mental disturbance. But Mr. Ward knows that the veteran physician speaks only a horrible truth. Did not he himself see the noisome aperture in the bungalow cellar? Did not Willett send him home overcome and ill at eleven o'clock that portentous morning? Did he not telephone the doctor in vain that evening, and again the next day, and had he not driven to the bungalow itself on that following noon, finding his friend unconscious but unharmed on one of the beds upstairs? Willett had been breathing stertorously, and opened his eyes slowly when Mr. Ward gave him some brandy fetched from the car. Then he shuddered and screamed, crying out, ""That beard . . . those eyes. . . . God, who are you?"" A very strange thing to say to a trim, blue-eyed, clean-shaven gentleman whom he had known from the latter's boyhood.
      In the bright noon sunlight the bungalow was unchanged since the previous morning. Willett's clothing bore no disarrangement beyond certain smudges and worn places at the knees, and only a faint acrid odour reminded Mr. Ward of what he had smelt on his son that day he was taken to the hospital. The doctor's flashlight was missing, but his valise was safely there, as empty as when he had brought it. Before indulging in any explanations, and obviously with great moral effort, Willett staggered dizzily down to the cellar and tried the fateful platform before the tubs. It was unyielding. Crossing to where he had left his yet unused tool satchel the day before, he obtained a chisel and began to pry up the stubborn planks one by one. Underneath the smooth concrete was still visible, but of any opening or perforation there was no longer a trace. Nothing yawned this time to sicken the mystified father who had followed the doctor downstairs; only the smooth concrete underneath the planks - no noisome well, no world of subterrene horrors, no secret library, no Curwen papers, no nightmare pits of stench and howling, no laboratory or shelves or chiselled formulae, no. . . . Dr. Willett turned pale, and clutched at the younger man. ""Yesterday,"" he asked softly, ""did you see it here . . . and smell it?"" And when Mr. Ward, himself transfixed with dread and wonder, found strength to nod an affirmative, the physician gave a sound half a sigh and half a gasp, and nodded in turn. ""Then I will tell you,"" he said.
      So for an hour, in the sunniest room they could find upstairs, the physician whispered his frightful tale to the wondering father. There was nothing to relate beyond the looming up of that form when the greenish-black vapour from the kylix parted, and Willett was too tired to ask himself what had really occurred. There were futile, bewildered head-shakings from both men, and once Mr. Ward ventured a hushed suggestion, ""Do you suppose it would be of any use to dig?"" The doctor was silent, for it seemed hardly fitting for any human brain to answer when powers of unknown spheres had so vitally encroached on this side of the Great Abyss. Again Mr. Ward asked, ""But where did it go? It brought you here, you know, and it sealed up the hole somehow."" And Willett again let silence answer for him.
      But after all, this was not the final phase of the matter. Reaching for his handkerchief before rising to leave, Dr. Willett's fingers closed upon a piece of paper in his pocket which had not been there before, and which was companioned by the candles and matches he had seized in the vanished vault. It was a common sheet, torn obviously from the cheap pad in that fabulous room of horror somewhere underground, and the writing upon it was that of an ordinary lead pencil - doubtless the one which had lain beside the pad. It was folded very carelessly, and beyond the faint acrid scent of the cryptic chamber bore no print or mark of any world but this. But in the text itself it did indeed reek with wonder; for here was no script of any wholesome age, but the laboured strokes of mediaeval darkness, scarcely legible to the laymen who now strained over it, yet having combinations of symbols which seemed vaguely familiar. The briefly scrawled message was this, and its mystery lent purpose to the shaken pair, who forthwith walked steadily out to the Ward car and gave orders to be driven first to a quiet dining place and then to the John Hay Library on the hill.



      At the library it was easy to find good manuals of palaeography, and over these the two men puzzled till the lights of evening shone out from the great chandelier. In the end they found what was needed. The letters were indeed no fantastic invention, but the normal script of a very dark period. They were the pointed Saxon minuscules of the eighth or ninth century A.D., and brought with them memories of an uncouth time when under a fresh Christian veneer ancient faiths and ancient rites stirred stealthily, and the pale moon of Britain looked sometimes on strange deeds in the Roman ruins of Caerleon and Hexham, and by the towers along Hadrian's crumbling wall. The words were in such Latin as a barbarous age might remember - ""Corvinus necandus est. Cadaver aq(ua) forti dissolvendum, nec aliq(ui)d retinendum. Tace ut potes."" - which may roughly be translated, ""Curwen must be killed. The body must be dissolved in aqua fortis, nor must anything be retained. Keep silence as best you are able.""
      Willett and Mr. Ward were mute and baffled. They had met the unknown, and found that they lacked emotions to respond to it as they vaguely believed they ought. With Willett, especially, the capacity for receiving fresh impressions of awe was well-nigh exhausted; and both men sat still and helpless till the closing of the library forced them to leave. Then they drove listlessly to the Ward mansion in Prospect Street, and talked to no purpose into the night. The doctor rested toward morning, but did not go home. And he was still there Sunday noon when a telephone message came from the detectives who had been assigned to look up Dr. Allen.
      Mr. Ward, who was pacing nervously about in a dressing-gown, answered the call in person; and told the men to come up early the next day when he heard their report was almost ready. Both Willett and he were glad that this phase of the matter was taking form, for whatever the origin of the strange minuscule message, it seemed certain that the ""Curwen"" who must be destroyed could be no other than the bearded and spectacled stranger. Charles had feared this man, and had said in the frantic note that he must be killed and dissolved in acid. Allen, moreover, had been receiving letters from the strange wizards in Europe under the name of Curwen, and palpably regarded himself as an avatar of the bygone necromancer. And now from a fresh and unknown source had come a message saying that ""Curwen"" must be killed and dissolved in acid. The linkage was too unmistakable to be factitious; and besides, was not Allen planning to murder young Ward upon the advice of the creature called Hutchinson? Of course, the letter they had seen had never reached the bearded stranger; but from its text they could see that Allen had already formed plans for dealing with the youth if he grew too 'squeamish'. Without doubt, Allen must be apprehended; and even if the most drastic directions were not carried out, he must be placed where he could inflict no harm upon Charles Ward.
      That afternoon, hoping against hope to extract some gleam of information anent the inmost mysteries from the only available one capable of giving it, the father and the doctor went down the bay and called on young Charles at the hospital. Simply and gravely Willett told him all he had found, and noticed how pale he turned as each description made certain the truth of the discovery. The physician employed as much dramatic effect as he could, and watched for a wincing on Charles's part when he approached the matter of the covered pits and the nameless hybrids within. But Ward did not wince. Willett paused, and his voice grew indignant as he spoke of how the things were starving. He taxed the youth with shocking inhumanity, and shivered when only a sardonic laugh came in reply. For Charles, having dropped as useless his pretence that the crypt did not exist, seemed to see some ghastly jest in this affair; and chuckled hoarsely at something which amused him. Then he whispered, in accents doubly terrible because of the cracked voice he used, ""Damn 'em, they do eat, but they don't need to! That's the rare part! A month, you say, without food? Lud, Sir, you be modest! D'ye know, that was the joke on poor old Whipple with his virtuous bluster! Kill everything off, would he? Why, damme, he was half-deaf with the noise from Outside and never saw or heard aught from the wells! He never dreamed they were there at all! Devil take ye, those cursed things have been howling down there ever since Curwen was done for a hundred and fifty-seven years gone!""
      But no more than this could Willett get from the youth. Horrified, yet almost convinced against his will, he went on with his tale in the hope that some incident might startle his auditor out of the mad composure he maintained. Looking at the youth's face, the doctor could not but feel a kind of terror at the changes which recent months had wrought. Truly, the boy had drawn down nameless horrors from the skies. When the room with the formulae and the greenish dust was mentioned, Charles shewed his first sign of animation. A quizzical look overspread his face as he heard what Willett had read on the pad, and he ventured the mild statement that those notes were old ones, of no possible significance to anyone not deeply initiated in the history of magic. ""But,"" he added, ""had you but known the words to bring up that which I had out in the cup, you had not been here to tell me this. 'Twas Number 118, and I conceive you would have shook had you looked it up in my list in t'other room. 'Twas never raised by me, but I meant to have it up that day you came to invite me hither.""
      Then Willett told of the formula he had spoken and of the greenish-black smoke which had arisen; and as he did so he saw true fear dawn for the first time on Charles Ward's face. ""It came, and you be here alive?"" As Ward croaked the words his voice seemed almost to burst free of its trammels and sink to cavernous abysses of uncanny resonance. Willett, gifted with a flash of inspiration, believed he saw the situation, and wove into his reply a caution from a letter he remembered. ""No. 118, you say? But don't forget that stones are all changed now in nine grounds out of ten. You are never sure till you question!"" And then, without warning, he drew forth the minuscule message and flashed it before the patient's eyes. He could have wished no stronger result, for Charles Ward fainted forthwith.
      All this conversation, of course, had been conducted with the greatest secrecy lest the resident alienists accuse the father and the physician of encouraging a madman in his delusions. Unaided, too, Dr. Willett and Mr. Ward picked up the stricken youth and placed him on the couch. In reviving, the patient mumbled many times of some word which he must get to Orne and Hutchinson at once; so when his consciousness seemed fully back the doctor told him that of those strange creatures at least one was his bitter enemy, and had given Dr. Allen advice for his assassination. This revelation produced no visible effect, and before it was made the visitors could see that their host had already the look of a hunted man. After that he would converse no more, so Willett and the father departed presently; leaving behind a caution against the bearded Allen, to which the youth only replied that this individual was very safely taken care of, and could do no one any harm even if he wished. This was said with an almost evil chuckle very painful to hear. They did not worry about any communications Charles might indite to that monstrous pair in Europe, since they knew that the hospital authorities seized all outgoing mail for censorship and would pass no wild or outrŽ-looking missive.
      There is, however, a curious sequel to the matter of Orne and Hutchinson, if such indeed the exiled wizards were. Moved by some vague presentiment amidst the horrors of that period, Willett arranged with an international press-cutting bureau for accounts of notable current crimes and accidents in Prague and in eastern Transylvania; and after six months believed that he had found two very significant things amongst the multifarious items he received and had translated. One was the total wrecking of a house by night in the oldest quarter of Prague, and the disappearance of the evil old man called Josef Nadek, who had dwelt in it alone ever since anyone could remember. The other was a titan explosion in the Transylvanian mountains east of Rakus, and the utter extirpation with all its inmates of the ill-regarded Castle Ferenczy, whose master was so badly spoken of by peasants and soldiery alike that he would shortly have been summoned to Bucharest for serious questioning had not this incident cut off a career already so long as to antedate all common memory. Willett maintains that the hand which wrote those minuscules was able to wield stronger weapons as well; and that while Curwen was left to him to dispose of, the writer felt able to find and deal with Orne and Hutchinson itself. Of what their fate may have been the doctor strives sedulously not to think.

6.

      The following morning Dr. Willett hastened to the Ward home to be present when the detectives arrived. Allen's destruction or imprisonment - or Curwen's, if one might regard the tacit claim to reincarnation as valid - he felt must be accomplished at any cost, and he communicated this conviction to Mr. Ward as they sat waiting for the men to come. They were downstairs this time, for the upper parts of the house were beginning to be shunned because of a peculiar nauseousness which hung indefinitely about; a nauseousness which the older servants connected with some curse left by the vanished Curwen portrait.
      At nine o'clock the three detectives presented themselves and immediately delivered all that they had to say. They had not, regrettably enough, located the Brava Tony Gomes as they had wished, nor had they found the least trace of Dr. Allen's source or present whereabouts; but they had managed to unearth a considerable number of local impressions and facts concerning the reticent stranger. Allen had struck Pawtuxet people as a vaguely unnatural being, and there was an universal belief that his thick sandy beard was either dyed or false - a belief conclusively upheld by the finding of such a false beard, together with a pair of dark glasses, in his room at the fateful bungalow. His voice, Mr. Ward could well testify from his one telephone conversation, had a depth and hollowness that could not be forgotten; and his glance seemed malign even through his smoked and horn-rimmed glasses. One shopkeeper, in the course of negotiations, had seen a specimen of his handwriting and declared it was very queer and crabbed; this being confirmed by pencilled notes of no clear meaning found in his room and identified by the merchant. In connexion with the vampirism rumours of the preceding summer, a majority of the gossips believed that Allen rather than Ward was the actual vampire. Statements were also obtained from the officials who had visited the bungalow after the unpleasant incident of the motor truck robbery. They had felt less of the sinister in Dr. Allen, but had recognised him as the dominant figure in the queer shadowy cottage. The place had been too dark for them to observe him clearly, but they would know him again if they saw him. His beard had looked odd, and they thought he had some slight scar above his dark spectacled right eye. As for the detectives' search of Allen's room, it yielded nothing definite save the beard and glasses, and several pencilled notes in a crabbed writing which Willett at once saw was identical with that shared by the old Curwen manuscripts and by the voluminous recent notes of young Ward found in the vanished catacombs of horror.
      Dr. Willett and Mr. Ward caught something of a profound, subtle, and insidious cosmic fear from this data as it was gradually unfolded, and almost trembled in following up the vague, mad thought which had simultaneously reached their minds. The false beard and glasses - the crabbed Curwen penmanship - the old portrait and its tiny scar - and the altered youth in the hospital with such a scar - that deep, hollow voice on the telephone - was it not of this that Mr. Ward was reminded when his son barked forth those pitiable tones to which he now claimed to be reduced? Who had ever seen Charles and Allen together? Yes, the officials had once, but who later on? Was it not when Allen left that Charles suddenly lost his growing fright and began to live wholly at the bungalow? Curwen - Allen - Ward - in what blasphemous and abominable fusion had two ages and two persons become involved? That damnable resemblance of the picture to Charles - had it not used to stare and stare, and follow the boy around the room with its eyes? Why, too, did both Allen and Charles copy Joseph Curwen's handwriting, even when alone and off guard? And then the frightful work of those people - the lost crypt of horrors that had aged the doctor overnight; the starved monsters in the noisome pits; the awful formula which had yielded such nameless results; the message in minuscules found in Willett's pocket; the papers and the letters and all the talk of graves and ""salts"" and discoveries - whither did everything lead? In the end Mr. Ward did the most sensible thing. Steeling himself against any realisation of why he did it, he gave the detectives an article to be shewn to such Pawtuxet shopkeepers as had seen the portentous Dr. Allen. That article was a photograph of his luckless son, on which he now carefully drew in ink the pair of heavy glasses and the black pointed beard which the men had brought from Allen's room.
      For two hours he waited with the doctor in the oppressive house where fear and miasma were slowly gathering as the empty panel in the upstairs library leered and leered and leered. Then the men returned. Yes. The altered photograph was a very passable likeness of Dr. Allen. Mr. Ward turned pale, and Willett wiped a suddenly dampened brow with his handkerchief. Allen - Ward - Curwen - it was becoming too hideous for coherent thought. What had the boy called out of the void, and what had it done to him? What, really, had happened from first to last? Who was this Allen who sought to kill Charles as too 'squeamish', and why had his destined victim said in the postscript to that frantic letter that he must be so completely obliterated in acid? Why, too, had the minuscule message, of whose origin no one dared think, said that ""Curwen"" must be likewise obliterated? What was the change, and when had the final stage occurred? That day when his frantic note was received - he had been nervous all the morning, then there was an alteration. He had slipped out unseen and swaggered boldly in past the men hired to guard him. That was the time, when he was out. But no - had he not cried out in terror as he entered his study - this very room? What had he found there? Or wait - what had found him? That simulacrum which brushed boldly in without having been seen to go - was that an alien shadow and a horror forcing itself upon a trembling figure which had never gone out at all? Had not the butler spoken of queer noises?
      Willett rang for the man and asked him some low-toned questions. It had, surely enough, been a bad business. There had been noises - a cry, a gasp, a choking, and a sort of clattering or creaking or thumping, or all of these. And Mr. Charles was not the same when he stalked out without a word. The butler shivered as he spoke, and sniffed at the heavy air that blew down from some open window upstairs. Terror had settled definitely upon the house, and only the business-like detectives failed to imbibe a full measure of it. Even they were restless, for this case had held vague elements in the background which pleased them not at all. Dr. Willett was thinking deeply and rapidly, and his thoughts were terrible ones. Now and then he would almost break into muttering as he ran over in his head a new, appalling, and increasingly conclusive chain of nightmare happenings.
      Then Mr. Ward made a sign that the conference was over, and everyone save him and the doctor left the room. It was noon now, but shadows as of coming night seemed to engulf the phantom-haunted mansion. Willett began talking very seriously to his host, and urged that he leave a great deal of the future investigation to him. There would be, he predicted, certain obnoxious elements which a friend could bear better than a relative. As family physician he must have a free hand, and the first thing he required was a period alone and undisturbed in the abandoned library upstairs, where the ancient overmantel had gathered about itself an aura of noisome horror more intense than when Joseph Curwen's features themselves glanced slyly down from the painted panel.
      Mr. Ward, dazed by the flood of grotesque morbidities and unthinkably maddening suggestions that poured in upon him from every side, could only acquiesce; and half an hour later the doctor was locked in the shunned room with the panelling from Olney Court. The father, listening outside, heard fumbling sounds of moving and rummaging as the moments passed; and finally a wrench and a creak, as if a tight cupboard door were being opened. Then there was a muffled cry, a kind of snorting choke, and a hasty slamming of whatever had been opened. Almost at once the key rattled and Willett appeared in the hall, haggard and ghastly, and demanding wood for the real fireplace on the south wall of the room. The furnace was not enough, he said; and the electric log had little practical use. Longing yet not daring to ask questions, Mr. Ward gave the requisite orders and a man brought some stout pine logs, shuddering as he entered the tainted air of the library to place them in the grate. Willett meanwhile had gone up to the dismantled laboratory and brought down a few odds and ends not included in the moving of the July before. They were in a covered basket, and Mr. Ward never saw what they were.
      Then the doctor locked himself in the library once more, and by the clouds of smoke which rolled down past the windows from the chimney it was known that he had lighted the fire. Later, after a great rustling of newspapers, that odd wrench and creaking were heard again; followed by a thumping which none of the eavesdroppers liked. Thereafter two suppressed cries of Willett's were heard, and hard upon these came a swishing rustle of indefinable hatefulness. Finally the smoke that the wind beat down from the chimney grew very dark and acrid, and everyone wished that the weather had spared them this choking and venomous inundation of peculiar fumes. Mr. Ward's head reeled, and the servants all clustered together in a knot to watch the horrible black smoke swoop down. After an age of waiting the vapours seemed to lighten, and half-formless sounds of scraping, sweeping, and other minor operations were heard behind the bolted door. And at last, after the slamming of some cupboard within, Willett made his appearance - sad, pale, and haggard, and bearing the cloth-draped basket he had taken from the upstairs laboratory. He had left the window open, and into that once accursed room was pouring a wealth of pure, wholesome air to mix with a queer new smell of disinfectants. The ancient overmantel still lingered; but it seemed robbed of malignity now, and rose as calm and stately in its white panelling as if it had never borne the picture of Joseph Curwen. Night was coming on, yet this time its shadows held no latent fright, but only a gentle melancholy. Of what he had done the doctor would never speak. To Mr. Ward he said, ""I can answer no questions, but I will say that there are different kinds of magic. I have made a great purgation, and those in this house will sleep the better for it.""

7.

      That Dr. Willett's ""purgation"" had been an ordeal almost as nerve-racking in its way as his hideous wandering in the vanished crypt is shewn by the fact that the elderly physician gave out completely as soon as he reached home that evening. For three days he rested constantly in his room, though servants later muttered something about having heard him after midnight on Wednesday, when the outer door softly opened and closed with phenomenal softness. Servants' imaginations, fortunately, are limited, else comment might have been excited by an item in Thursday's Evening Bulletin which ran as follows:
North End Ghouls
Active Again

After a lull of ten months since the dastardly vandalism in the Weeden lot at the North Burial Ground, a nocturnal prowler was glimpsed early this morning in the same cemetery by Robert Hart, the night watchman. Happening to glance for a moment from his shelter at about 2 a.m., Hart observed the glow of a lantern or pocket torch not far to the northwest, and upon opening the door detected the figure of a man with a trowel very plainly silhouetted against a nearby electric light. At once starting in pursuit, he saw the figure dart hurriedly toward the main entrance, gaining the street and losing himself among the shadows before approach or capture was possible.
      Like the first of the ghouls active during the past year, this intruder had done no real damage before detection. A vacant part of the Ward lot shewed signs of a little superficial digging, but nothing even nearly the size of a grave had been attempted, and no previous grave had been disturbed.
      Hart, who cannot describe the prowler except as a small man probably having a full beard, inclines to the view that all three of the digging incidents have a common source; but police from the Second Station think otherwise on account of the savage nature of the second incident, where an ancient coffin was removed and its headstone violently shattered.
      The first of the incidents, in which it is thought an attempt to bury something was frustrated, occurred a year ago last March, and has been attributed to bootleggers seeking a cache. It is possible, says Sergt. Riley, that this third affair is of similar nature. Officers at the Second Station are taking especial pains to capture the gang of miscreants responsible for these repeated outrages.
      All day Thursday Dr. Willett rested as if recuperating from something past or nerving himself for something to come. In the evening he wrote a note to Mr. Ward, which was delivered the next morning and which caused the half-dazed parent to ponder long and deeply. Mr. Ward had not been able to go down to business since the shock of Monday with its baffling reports and its sinister ""purgation"", but he found something calming about the doctor's letter in spite of the despair it seemed to promise and the fresh mysteries it seemed to evoke.
""10 Barnes St.,            
Providence, R.I.,      
April 12, 1928.
""Dear Theodore: - I feel that I must say a word to you before doing what I am going to do tomorrow. It will conclude the terrible business we have been going through (for I feel that no spade is ever likely to reach that monstrous place we know of), but I'm afraid it won't set your mind at rest unless I expressly assure you how very conclusive it is.
      ""You have known me ever since you were a small boy, so I think you will not distrust me when I hint that some matters are best left undecided and unexplored. It is better that you attempt no further speculation as to Charles's case, and almost imperative that you tell his mother nothing more than she already suspects. When I call on you tomorrow Charles will have escaped. That is all which need remain in anyone's mind. He was mad, and he escaped. You can tell his mother gently and gradually about the mad part when you stop sending the typed notes in his name. I'd advise you to join her in Atlantic City and take a rest yourself. God knows you need one after this shock, as I do myself. I am going South for a while to calm down and brace up.
      ""So don't ask me any questions when I call. It may be that something will go wrong, but I'll tell you if it does. I don't think it will. There will be nothing more to worry about, for Charles will be very, very safe. He is now - safer than you dream. You need hold no fears about Allen, and who or what he is. He forms as much a part of the past as Joseph Curwen's picture, and when I ring your doorbell you may feel certain that there is no such person. And what wrote that minuscule message will never trouble you or yours.
      ""But you must steel yourself to melancholy, and prepare your wife to do the same. I must tell you frankly that Charles's escape will not mean his restoration to you. He has been afflicted with a peculiar disease, as you must realise from the subtle physical as well as mental changes in him, and you must not hope to see him again. Have only this consolation - that he was never a fiend or even truly a madman, but only an eager, studious, and curious boy whose love of mystery and of the past was his undoing. He stumbled on things no mortal ought ever to know, and reached back through the years as no one ever should reach; and something came out of those years to engulf him.
      ""And now comes the matter in which I must ask you to trust me most of all. For there will be, indeed, no uncertainty about Charles's fate. In about a year, say, you can if you wish devise a suitable account of the end; for the boy will be no more. You can put up a stone in your lot at the North Burial Ground exactly ten feet west of your father's and facing the same way, and that will mark the true resting-place of your son. Nor need you fear that it will mark any abnormality or changeling. The ashes in that grave will be those of your own unaltered bone and sinew - of the real Charles Dexter Ward whose mind you watched from infancy - the real Charles with the olive-mark on his hip and without the black witch-mark on his chest or the pit on his forehead. The Charles who never did actual evil, and who will have paid with his life for his 'squeamishness'.
      ""That is all. Charles will have escaped, and a year from now you can put up his stone. Do not question me tomorrow. And believe that the honour of your ancient family remains untainted now, as it has been at all times in the past.
      ""With profoundest sympathy, and exhortations to fortitude, calmness, and resignation, I am ever
Sincerely your friend,      
Marinus B. Willett""
      So on the morning of Friday, April 13, 1928, Marinus Bicknell Willett visited the room of Charles Dexter Ward at Dr. Waite's private hospital on Conanicut Island. The youth, though making no attempt to evade his caller, was in a sullen mood; and seemed disinclined to open the conversation which Willett obviously desired. The doctor's discovery of the crypt and his monstrous experience therein had of course created a new source of embarrassment, so that both hesitated perceptibly after the interchange of a few strained formalities. Then a new element of constraint crept in, as Ward seemed to read behind the doctor's mask-like face a terrible purpose which had never been there before. The patient quailed, conscious that since the last visit there had been a change whereby the solicitous family physician had given place to the ruthless and implacable avenger.
      Ward actually turned pale, and the doctor was the first to speak. ""More,"" he said, ""has been found out, and I must warn you fairly that a reckoning is due.""
      ""Digging again, and coming upon more poor starving pets?"" was the ironic reply. It was evident that the youth meant to shew bravado to the last.
      ""No,"" Willett slowly rejoined, ""this time I did not have to dig. We have had men looking up Dr. Allen, and they found the false beard and spectacles in the bungalow.""
      ""Excellent,"" commented the disquieted host in an effort to be wittily insulting, ""and I trust they proved more becoming than the beard and glasses you now have on!""
      ""They would become you very well,"" came the even and studied response, ""as indeed they seem to have done.""
      As Willett said this, it almost seemed as though a cloud passed over the sun; though there was no change in the shadows on the floor. Then Ward ventured:
      ""And is this what asks so hotly for a reckoning? Suppose a man does find it now and then useful to be twofold?""
      ""No,"" said Willett gravely, ""again you are wrong. It is no business of mine if any man seeks duality; provided he has any right to exist at all, and provided he does not destroy what called him out of space.""
      Ward now started violently. ""Well, Sir, what have ye found, and what d'ye want with me?""
      The doctor let a little time elapse before replying, as if choosing his words for an effective answer.
      ""I have found,"" he finally intoned, ""something in a cupboard behind an ancient overmantel where a picture once was, and I have burned it and buried the ashes where the grave of Charles Dexter Ward ought to be.""
      The madman choked and sprang from the chair in which he had been sitting:
      ""Damn ye, who did ye tell - and who'll believe it was he after these full two months, with me alive? What d'ye mean to do?""
      Willett, though a small man, actually took on a kind of judicial majesty as he calmed the patient with a gesture.
      ""I have told no one. This is no common case - it is a madness out of time and a horror from beyond the spheres which no police or lawyers or courts or alienists could ever fathom or grapple with. Thank God some chance has left inside me the spark of imagination, that I might not go astray in thinking out this thing. You cannot deceive me, Joseph Curwen, for I know that your accursed magic is true!
      ""I know how you wove the spell that brooded outside the years and fastened on your double and descendant; I know how you drew him into the past and got him to raise you up from your detestable grave; I know how he kept you hidden in his laboratory while you studied modern things and roved abroad as a vampire by night, and how you later shewed yourself in beard and glasses that no one might wonder at your godless likeness to him; I know what you resolved to do when he balked at your monstrous rifling of the world's tombs, and at what you planned afterward, and I know how you did it.
      ""You left off your beard and glasses and fooled the guards around the house. They thought it was he who went in, and they thought it was he who came out when you had strangled and hidden him. But you hadn't reckoned on the different contents of two minds. You were a fool, Curwen, to fancy that a mere visual identity would be enough. Why didn't you think of the speech and the voice and the handwriting? It hasn't worked, you see, after all. You know better than I who or what wrote that message in minuscules, but I will warn you it was not written in vain. There are abominations and blasphemies which must be stamped out, and I believe that the writer of those words will attend to Orne and Hutchinson. One of those creatures wrote you once, 'do not call up any that you can not put down'. You were undone once before, perhaps in that very way, and it may be that your own evil magic will undo you all again. Curwen, a man can't tamper with Nature beyond certain limits, and every horror you have woven will rise up to wipe you out.""
      But here the doctor was cut short by a convulsive cry from the creature before him. Hopelessly at bay, weaponless, and knowing that any show of physical violence would bring a score of attendants to the doctor's rescue, Joseph Curwen had recourse to his one ancient ally, and began a series of cabbalistic motions with his forefingers as his deep, hollow voice, now unconcealed by feigned hoarseness, bellowed out the opening words of a terrible formula.
      ""PER ADONAI ELOIM, ADONAI JEHOVA, ADONAI SABAOTH, METRATON. . . .""
      But Willett was too quick for him. Even as the dogs in the yard outside began to howl, and even as a chill wind sprang suddenly up from the bay, the doctor commenced the solemn and measured intonation of that which he had meant all along to recite. An eye for an eye - magic for magic - let the outcome shew how well the lesson of the abyss had been learned! So in a clear voice Marinus Bicknell Willett began the second of that pair of formulae whose first had raised the writer of those minuscules - the cryptic invocation whose heading was the Dragon's Tail, sign of the descending node - 

""OGTHROD AI'F
GEB'L - EE'H
YOG-SOTHOTH
'NGAH'NG AI'Y
ZHRO!""

      At the very first word from Willett's mouth the previously commenced formula of the patient stopped short. Unable to speak, the monster made wild motions with his arms until they too were arrested. When the awful name of Yog-Sothoth was uttered, the hideous change began. It was not merely a dissolution, but rather a transformation or recapitulation; and Willett shut his eyes lest he faint before the rest of the incantation could be pronounced.
      But he did not faint, and that man of unholy centuries and forbidden secrets never troubled the world again. The madness out of time had subsided, and the case of Charles Dexter Ward was closed. Opening his eyes before staggering out of that room of horror, Dr. Willett saw that what he had kept in memory had not been kept amiss. There had, as he had predicted, been no need for acids. For like his accursed picture a year before, Joseph Curwen now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust.
","IV.

For a decade the annals of the Whateleys sink indistinguishably into the general life of a morbid community used to their queer ways and hardened to their May-Eve and All-Hallows orgies. Twice a year they would light fires on the top of Sentinel Hill, at which times the mountain rumblings would recur with greater and greater violence; while at all seasons there were strange and portentous doings at the lonely farmhouse. In the course of time callers professed to hear sounds in the sealed upper story even when all the family were downstairs, and they wondered how swiftly or how lingeringly a cow or bullock was usually sacrificed. There was talk of a complaint to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; but nothing ever came of it, since Dunwich folk are never anxious to call the outside world’s attention to themselves.
      About 1923, when Wilbur was a boy of ten whose mind, voice, stature, and bearded face gave all the impressions of maturity, a second great siege of carpentry went on at the old house. It was all inside the sealed upper part, and from bits of discarded lumber people concluded that the youth and his grandfather had knocked out all the partitions and even removed the attic floor, leaving only one vast open void between the ground story and the peaked roof. They had torn down the great central chimney, too, and fitted the rusty range with a flimsy outside tin stovepipe.
      In the spring after this event Old Whateley noticed the growing number of whippoorwills that would come out of Cold Spring Glen to chirp under his window at night. He seemed to regard the circumstance as one of great significance, and told the loungers at Osborn’s that he thought his time had almost come.
      “They whistle jest in tune with my breathin’ naow,” he said, “an’ I guess they’re gittin’ ready to ketch my soul. They know it’s a-goin’ aout, an’ dun’t calc’late to miss it. Yew’ll know, boys, arter I’m gone, whether they git me er not. Ef they dew, they’ll keep up a-singin’ an’ laffin’ till break o’ day. Ef they dun’t they’ll kinder quiet daown like. I expeck them an’ the souls they hunts fer hev some pretty tough tussles sometimes.”
      On Lammas Night, 1924, Dr. Houghton of Aylesbury was hastily summoned by Wilbur Whateley, who had lashed his one remaining horse through the darkness and telephoned from Osborn’s in the village. He found Old Whateley in a very grave state, with a cardiac action and stertorous breathing that told of an end not far off. The shapeless albino daughter and oddly bearded grandson stood by the bedside, whilst from the vacant abyss overhead there came a disquieting suggestion of rhythmical surging or lapping, as of the waves on some level beach. The doctor, though, was chiefly disturbed by the chattering night birds outside; a seemingly limitless legion of whippoorwills that cried their endless message in repetitions timed diabolically to the wheezing gasps of the dying man. It was uncanny and unnatural—too much, thought Dr. Houghton, like the whole of the region he had entered so reluctantly in response to the urgent call.
      Toward one o’clock Old Whateley gained consciousness, and interrupted his wheezing to choke out a few words to his grandson.
      “More space, Willy, more space soon. Yew grows—an’ that grows faster. It’ll be ready to sarve ye soon, boy. Open up the gates to Yog-Sothoth with the long chant that ye’ll find on page 751 of the complete edition, an’ then put a match to the prison. Fire from airth can’t burn it nohaow.”
      He was obviously quite mad. After a pause, during which the flock of whippoorwills outside adjusted their cries to the altered tempo while some indications of the strange hill noises came from afar off, he added another sentence or two.
      “Feed it reg’lar, Willy, an’ mind the quantity; but dun’t let it grow too fast fer the place, fer ef it busts quarters or gits aout afore ye opens to Yog-Sothoth, it’s all over an’ no use. Only them from beyont kin make it multiply an’ work. . . . Only them, the old uns as wants to come back. . . .”
      But speech gave place to gasps again, and Lavinia screamed at the way the whippoorwills followed the change. It was the same for more than an hour, when the final throaty rattle came. Dr. Houghton drew shrunken lids over the glazing grey eyes as the tumult of birds faded imperceptibly to silence. Lavinia sobbed, but Wilbur only chuckled whilst the hill noises rumbled faintly.
      “They didn’t git him,” he muttered in his heavy bass voice.
      Wilbur was by this time a scholar of really tremendous erudition in his one-sided way, and was quietly known by correspondence to many librarians in distant places where rare and forbidden books of old days are kept. He was more and more hated and dreaded around Dunwich because of certain youthful disappearances which suspicion laid vaguely at his door; but was always able to silence inquiry through fear or through use of that fund of old-time gold which still, as in his grandfather’s time, went forth regularly and increasingly for cattle-buying. He was now tremendously mature of aspect, and his height, having reached the normal adult limit, seemed inclined to wax beyond that figure. In 1925, when a scholarly correspondent from Miskatonic University called upon him one day and departed pale and puzzled, he was fully six and three-quarters feet tall.
      Through all the years Wilbur had treated his half-deformed albino mother with a growing contempt, finally forbidding her to go to the hills with him on May-Eve and Hallowmass; and in 1926 the poor creature complained to Mamie Bishop of being afraid of him.
      “They’s more abaout him as I knows than I kin tell ye, Mamie,” she said, “an’ naowadays they’s more nor what I know myself. I vaow afur Gawd, I dun’t know what he wants nor what he’s a-tryin’ to dew.”
      That Hallowe’en the hill noises sounded louder than ever, and fire burned on Sentinel Hill as usual; but people paid more attention to the rhythmical screaming of vast flocks of unnaturally belated whippoorwills which seemed to be assembled near the unlighted Whateley farmhouse. After midnight their shrill notes burst into a kind of pandaemoniac cachinnation which filled all the countryside, and not until dawn did they finally quiet down. Then they vanished, hurrying southward where they were fully a month overdue. What this meant, no one could quite be certain till later. None of the country folk seemed to have died—but poor Lavinia Whateley, the twisted albino, was never seen again.
      In the summer of 1927 Wilbur repaired two sheds in the farmyard and began moving his books and effects out to them. Soon afterward Earl Sawyer told the loungers at Osborn’s that more carpentry was going on in the Whateley farmhouse. Wilbur was closing all the doors and windows on the ground floor, and seemed to be taking out partitions as he and his grandfather had done upstairs four years before. He was living in one of the sheds, and Sawyer thought he seemed unusually worried and tremulous. People generally suspected him of knowing something about his mother’s disappearance, and very few ever approached his neighbourhood now. His height had increased to more than seven feet, and shewed no signs of ceasing its development.
",True
"The world we live in is not as it seems. I, James White, write this document so that others may be made aware of what I have experienced and know of the dangers that lurk beneath our limited perception of ""reality"". Whether you believe me or not, dear reader, is up to you. I only ask that you read what I write with an open mind since I write, not for my own gain, but to warn you of what I can only describe as ""pure evil"".
I had never heard of the ""Cult of Cthulhu"" before I began university in the late summer of 2012. I was only eighteen years old, an atheist, and dogmatically pursued scientific understanding and knowledge. At that time, I was not in the least bit interested in weird cults and other religious movements, which I simply dismissed as primitive superstition. Had I but known what I would encounter, I would have burnt the science textbook, prayed to God for the strength not to crumble into insanity and got as far away from that university as I could!
The strange happenings started less than two months into my first term. I had been put into student accommodation and shared a corridor with four other boys and two girls. I had got to know my flatmates very well until all of a sudden, one of the boys by the name of Jonathan Mears disappeared. This wasn't looked upon as weird at first since Jonathan was the quiet type anyway and often spent long hours alone in his room. The suspicions arose however, when he hadn't shown his face for three days. His absence was brought up one evening as we sat in a communal area.
""He's probably just been very busy lately,"" my best friend, Jacob Shields, said. ""You know Jonathan. When he sets his mind on something, he doesn't stop until he's achieved whatever he's trying to do.""
""Isn't it a bit strange though?"" Annie Roberts, a lovely blonde girl from the room directly across the corridor asked. ""I mean, he's in our corridor and we haven't seen him for ages. Not even in the kitchen or lecture halls.""
""It isn't like him to miss a lecture,"" I agreed. Jacob merely waved these concerns away.
""If we haven't seen him by tomorrow evening, we'll go to the reception and see what's happening,"" he said cheerfully.
But Jonathan didn't show up the following day and, as planned, my entire corridor went to the reception desk to ask if anything had happened to him. The receptionist, an elderly lady, checked through the files on a computer before looking up at us.
""I'm afraid he has left the university,"" she informed us. ""He dropped out four days ago.""
""Well there you go!"" Jacob exclaimed. ""Nothing to worry about!""
But there was something to worry about. Even though I now had every reason to think that Jonathan was fine, I couldn't shake that feeling of foreboding. He had seemed happy in university and was consistently getting high marks so I resolved to check things out for myself.
I waited until 3:00 the following morning, and in the darkness, I tiptoed along the corridor to Jonathan's room. Using a paperclip, I carefully picked the lock on his door and let myself in. I closed the door behind me and switched on the light. The sight that greeted me came as a huge shock. Clothes still lay on the floor, the bed was made, books were still on the shelves and a laptop was still humming gently on the cluttered desk. In short, it looked as though Jonathan was simply out of the room. If he had gone home, why did he leave all his things behind? And if he hadn't, where was he and why did the university records state that he had? Deeply concerned, I left the room and returned to my own. I lay awake in the darkness pondering the thoughts in my head and finally decided that I needed to find out what had happened and that I would do so alone...
","May 19th, 1929,
Miskatonic University, Arkham, Mass.
In all honesty, the manner which Robert Olmstead exited the Chancellor's office was not the most graceful to be seen in the history of Miskatonic University. However, perhaps ""exited"" is too neutral a term for a man being forcibly escorted out the double doors by two University proctors with a firm grasp on his forearms. ""Ejected"" is probably a good description though ""assaulted"" would have a good chance of being upheld by a court. As Mr. Olmstead was finally shoved out into the hall, he finally lost his balance and fell to his knees, the voluminous robes which he had worn since his arrival seeming to weigh him down.
As Hiriam Willows and Brian Fife rushed out of the office and hastened to Robert's side, the man himself seemed... tired, drained of energy and showing signs of a fatigue that had been present since the meeting had began. Still, Mr. Olmstead managed to raise his head to address Chancellor Douglas Gooding, who was still in his office. ""I take it... negotiations have ended."" Robert said this in as controlled a way as possible, trying to ignore the irritation at the back of his throat and the sides of his neck.
""Negotiations, as you call them, never began."" Chancellor Gooding, a patrician of a man at the age of 57, had risen from behind his desk and was now walking toward the spot where Mr. Olmstead has stood and presented his case. ""This College has been handed a chance to claim credit for discovering the root devices behind most, if not all, of vertebrate biology and promises to make careers for many of our staff and students. Unless the Navy, who has graciously allowed access to its prisoners for this purpose, decides to either withdraw that access or, as you suggest, release them back into the general population, I see no reason why they should not remain under our supervision in their current quarters."" Gooding eyes fell upon the floor where Robert had stood... and the staff that now lay on the floor. It was a strange thing: the matter itself almost resembled gray, petrified wood but in places it's form showed characteristics of crustacean carapace or of the strange shapes present in fishbone or shark-jaw and, when the light hit it just so, the surface displayed a luster more akin to Nautilus shell or Mother of Pearl than any of those things.
Gooding, in a sudden fit of antiquarian fascination, began kneeling down to take the strange rod. ""However, if you could tell us about this staff..."" Just as his the tips of his fingers brushed against the smooth surface the staff, seemingly under its own power, jerked butt-first towards the door, skidding over the floors polished hardwood planks. When it reached Robert. who was now being helped to his feet by Professor Fife, the staff actually began tipping up on its butt, the shaft guiding itself into Robert's limp, open hand.
Grasping the staff to regain his posture, Robert glanced once more at Gooding. ""The staff is a secret that keeps itself. As to my plea... if that is your decision, I pray that you do not live to reap the whirlwind.""
""Is that a threat?"" Chancellor Gooding was losing patience rapidly after this manifestation of the strange had made an intrusion into his office and annoyance was threatening to turn to anger.
""Merely a warning, good Chancellor."" These were the last words that Robert Olmstead spoke to Gooding as Fife, carrying the papers that Olmstead had presented, helped him as he unsteadily walked down the hallway, supported by his implement.
Just as Hiriam Willows was about to follow the pair, Gooding called to him. ""Hiriam! Get back in this office!"" Willows, his eyes continuing to follow his two companions down the hall for a moment, turned and walked back into the Chancellor's office with a tightening of the lips and the speed of a slow stroll, more amenable to his aging legs than the fast walk he had so recently exerted himself with. ""I'm surprised, Douglas.""
""Surprised that I called you back in here?"" Asked Gooding as he sat back down behind his desk.
""That we are apparently operating on a first name basis now. As I recall, that has not been our habit since nineteen hundred and... seven, was it?"" It may have been facetious (to say the least) in bringing this up but after today, last winter and, to be honest, most days since Gooding had restricted Willows to a single morning class per week, he and the Chancellor has not quite been on the best of terms.
""Ah yes, the Cuba business. However... actually, that ispart of why I called you in here."" Gooding pointed an almost accusatory finger at the older man. ""As I recall, youwere the one to countermand my decision to use force against those two Voodoo cults in Las Tunas.""
""First of all, they were Santeria practitioners. Second, I was able to forge an armistice between the two warring factions and convince them to give up their murderous ways...""
""In favor of continued use of animal sacrifice, I remember, I remember."" Gooding put that accusatory finger to his temple as if to calm a throbbing. Then that finger returned to the standing faculty member. ""But whether you're French or Spanish does not mean much of anything when you're trying to rip open a portal to the tenth dimension, summoning dangerous ichors and vapors from beyond and, may I remind you, trying to violently murderas many people as needed for their insane goals. Hiriam... I know that you're a Quaker, I knowthat negotiating between groups of violent, degenerate heathens has always been your strong point, but this is something radicallydifferent.""
The Chancellor noticed Willow's disbelieving roll of the eyes but continued. ""These... things have been present in and off the coast of Essex Country for the better part of a century. They've killed people, they subverted local government, through their negligence the port of Innsmouth nearly crumbled due to neglect... not to mention that they've potentially forced themselves on local residents due to the existence of apparently hybrid individuals!"" He motioned out the door and pointed in the direction that Olmstead and Fife had exited. ""Did you happen to take a good look at the person who was just ejected from this office? My God Hiriam, the man was practically turning into a herring before our very eyes!"" Gooding seemed to calm down a bit. ""I know you were always one to try to see both sides of the argument, to resolve conflicts through calm deliberation... but this wasn'tnegotiation. This was a demand backed by veiled threats. I remember you being much sterner in the face of demands than this."" There was a thoughtful pause. ""What happened in Virginia, Hiriam? Ever since you got back, you've been at your usual quest for cooperation between man and eldritch forces except... moreso.""
A hundred images flashed in Willows mind of that December in the Luray Valley. The little clusters of field-stone houses and barns around the southern tip of Mt. Ida; the lean-faced Quaker farm-folk; the walk through the community cemetery and the graves of his mothers family, the Caulfields. The children, so desperate to experience a properly Victorian Christmas in pageantry unknown by the community, inviting him to a snowball fight and following his lead in decorating and games (which he had found invigorating at the time). The experience of being around others of his faith for the first time in decades.
But there was also the first time he had ever been forced to kill, as a .45 caliber ACP round hit dead center on his war-painted assailant in the mountain forests. The moment when he had discovered the small shrine beneath the Longhouse Meeting Hall with it's black deer hides, Eastern Elk antlers and strange mix of artifacts. The sight of his hosts sacrificing pigs, wailing and dancing in the manner of the Seneca Iroquois at an isolated stone circle south along the mountains from the Army's battle with their foes, mourning for all the dead who would be brought out. And two of the bodies brought back, an apparent pair of adult twin sisters in matching warpaint who had charged the federal troops with knives before being mowed down: their hands had been intertwined even as fire from Thompson submachineguns had demolished their ribcages, the agony of their situation apparent from their found journals... the swelling around their eyes under the paint indicative of weeping.
Hiriam shrugged as if he experienced nothing. ""Just a bit of reconnection with my mothers side of the family. Now, if you will excuse me?"" Before Gooding could even respond, Hiriam Willows walked out of the office and closed the doors behind him, exhaling in relief before he continued on to Professor Fife's office.
Shortly, Professor Fife's Office
Brian Fife sighed in frustration and concern as he dabbed the side of Robert Olmsteads neck with a handkerchief soaked in ice water. ""When was the last time you bothered to moisten the reservoir layers in this cloak? Any longer without adequate water around the gills and you would have been coughing up blood.""
Robert, sitting in a chair across from Fife, was now much less weary now that relief was being applied. "" There was no time. I had to act quickly to try to get them released and the last two days have been a flurry.""
""Well, it's just as well that I keep ice and water in my study or you would have..."" Fife was interrupted by Hiriam Willow's entry into the office who, upon entering, simply asked himself how a militant like Douglas Gooding had become chancellor. Fife's answer to this question was concise. ""Well, Masterson died of Diphtheria while in Shanghai, Harvey has his Cocaine habit, Peaslee isn't totally trusted after that Yith business and yourefused to take any oath of office acceptable to the Congregationalist clergy. Gooding was the only member of the senior faculty with the necessary respectability left."" 
""Thank you very much. Now, what do we do next?"" Hiriam sat down in another chair, forming a semicircular huddle as he addressed Olmstead. ""Gooding isn't going to budge an inch without a proper prodding, the Arkham Police are beginning to take note of your lodgings at the Miskatonic Hotel and your current appearance which, may I remark, is becoming more piscine by the day, will not inspire confidence in the other involved parties.""
""Then we have to properly prod. I have to prod. I owe that much at least."" Robert, now that his neck and gills were properly wetted (and the kelp layers under his robe properly inundated with cold water), became quiet, both hands still across his lap, grasping the staff he had carried since he had arrived.
Fife knew what he was thinking, for it was also close to his heart. ""Robert, you don't have to do this. The Priests of Y'ha-Nthlei won't judge you harshly if you don't bring home any more of our people than your cousin; I know it's tragic, but it's happened before that people have been lost to the surface world.""
Robert suddenly got a hard look in his eyes and stared directly at the other man. ""Do you know what it feels like to lose your parents, your child, your neighbors or friends? To not know where they were taken? To fear for their lives while they might be undergoing hideous, nefarious tortures? And then, one day, you are suddenly confronted with the grinning idiot who, in his disgust and primordial fear, ensured your loved one's capture and now, while you are forced to hide like a crab in the sand, are expected to welcome this fool into your ranks?""
He groaned at the memory... or even more than the memory. ""The punishment for my loutish treachery was harsh, but even a flayed back will not absolve all I have done, all I have seen. My flogging will not return parents to children or husbands to wives. My pain will not sooth the fear of mothers for their sons. And the welts upon my back will not make me forget the accusation, the pain... the sorrowin their eyes. I am doing this as much for myself as for them; doing it so that I won't have to live with my failures for an eternity."" 
Willows and Fife were quiet until Fife quietly asked ""So, what now?""
""If I can't do anything, the warriors will be swimming upstream in less than a week. When they get here... I can't promise that anyone will be safe."" Robert looked pensive, a calculating look on his face. ""We... Iwill have to make an impression in front of Gooding. Somewhere public, somewhere will it will make an impression that can't be dismissed or ignored. Anything come to mind?""
It was then that it struck Hiriam. ""Of course, the regatta tomorrow! Gooding will be attendance, he hasto be in attendance according to College statutes. But what are you going to do?""
Having been asked, Robert began to think. ""I assume it'll be on the Miskatonic?""
""Where else? Hangman's Brook has never been deep enough for rowing and the University never affluent enough to construct a canal."" Fife explained.
""Will there be many other people there?"" Robert asked again, something beginning to form in his already-changed brain.
""Everyone who can: students, alumni, dock workers, beggars... why do you ask?"" Hiriam was now curious as to this whole thing.
Robert looked down at the staff in his hands, feeling the smooth surface but also feeling the power coursing through the object. The Staff of Dagon... said to have been wielded by their king and blessed by the mighty Priest to whom Dagon and Hydra had sworn loyalty. Once, it had been said to have performed wonders.
Once... and perhaps again.
",False
"III. A Search and an Evocation

1.

Charles Ward, as we have seen, first learned in 1918 of his descent from Joseph Curwen. That he at once took an intense interest in everything pertaining to the bygone mystery is not to be wondered at; for every vague rumour that he had heard of Curwen now became something vital to himself, in whom flowed Curwen's blood. No spirited and imaginative genealogist could have done otherwise than begin forthwith an avid and systematic collection of Curwen data.
      In his first delvings there was not the slightest attempt at secrecy; so that even Dr. Lyman hesitates to date the youth's madness from any period before the close of 1919. He talked freely with his family - though his mother was not particularly pleased to own an ancestor like Curwen - and with the officials of the various museums and libraries he visited. In applying to private families for records thought to be in their possession he made no concealment of his object, and shared the somewhat amused scepticism with which the accounts of the old diarists and letter-writers were regarded. He often expressed a keen wonder as to what really had taken place a century and a half before at that Pawtuxet farmhouse whose site he vainly tried to find, and what Joseph Curwen really had been.
      When he came across the Smith diary and archives and encountered the letter from Jedediah Orne he decided to visit Salem and look up Curwen's early activities and connexions there, which he did during the Easter vacation of 1919. At the Essex Institute, which was well known to him from former sojourns in the glamorous old town of crumbling Puritan gables and clustered gambrel roofs, he was very kindly received, and unearthed there a considerable amount of Curwen data. He found that his ancestor was born in Salem-Village, now Danvers, seven miles from town, on the eighteenth of February (O.S.) 1662-3; and that he had run away to sea at the age of fifteen, not appearing again for nine years, when he returned with the speech, dress, and manners of a native Englishman and settled in Salem proper. At that time he had little to do with his family, but spent most of his hours with the curious books he had brought from Europe, and the strange chemicals which came for him on ships from England, France, and Holland. Certain trips of his into the country were the objects of much local inquisitiveness, and were whisperingly associated with vague rumours of fires on the hills at night.
      Curwen's only close friends had been one Edward Hutchinson of Salem-Village and one Simon Orne of Salem. With these men he was often seen in conference about the Common, and visits among them were by no means infrequent. Hutchinson had a house well out toward the woods, and it was not altogether liked by sensitive people because of the sounds heard there at night. He was said to entertain strange visitors, and the lights seen from his windows were not always of the same colour. The knowledge he displayed concerning long-dead persons and long-forgotten events was considered distinctly unwholesome, and he disappeared about the time the witchcraft panic began, never to be heard from again. At that time Joseph Curwen also departed, but his settlement in Providence was soon learned of. Simon Orne lived in Salem until 1720, when his failure to grow visibly old began to excite attention. He thereafter disappeared, though thirty years later his precise counterpart and self-styled son turned up to claim his property. The claim was allowed on the strength of documents in Simon Orne's known hand, and Jedediah Orne continued to dwell in Salem till 1771, when certain letters from Providence citizens to the Rev. Thomas Barnard and others brought about his quiet removal to parts unknown.
      Certain documents by and about all of these strange characters were available at the Essex Institute, the Court House, and the Registry of Deeds, and included both harmless commonplaces such as land titles and bills of sale, and furtive fragments of a more provocative nature. There were four or five unmistakable allusions to them on the witchcraft trial records; as when one Hepzibah Lawson swore on July 10, 1692, at the Court of Oyer and Terminer under Judge Hathorne, that 'fortie Witches and the Blacke Man were wont to meete in the Woodes behind Mr. Hutchinson's house', and one Amity How declared at a session of August 8th before Judge Gedney that 'Mr. G. B. (Rev. George Burroughs) on that Nighte putt ye Divell his Marke upon Bridget S., Jonathan A., Simon O., Deliverance W., Joseph C., Susan P., Mehitable C., and Deborah B.' Then there was a catalogue of Hutchinson's uncanny library as found after his disappearance, and an unfinished manuscript in his handwriting, couched in a cipher none could read. Ward had a photostatic copy of this manuscript made, and began to work casually on the cipher as soon as it was delivered to him. After the following August his labours on the cipher became intense and feverish, and there is reason to believe from his speech and conduct that he hit upon the key before October or November. He never stated, though, whether or not he had succeeded.
      But of the greatest immediate interest was the Orne material. It took Ward only a short time to prove from identity of penmanship a thing he had already considered established from the text of the letter to Curwen; namely, that Simon Orne and his supposed son were one and the same person. As Orne had said to his correspondent, it was hardly safe to live too long in Salem, hence he resorted to a thirty-year sojourn abroad, and did not return to claim his lands except as a representative of a new generation. Orne had apparently been careful to destroy most of his correspondence, but the citizens who took action in 1771 found and preserved a few letters and papers which excited their wonder. There were cryptic formulae and diagrams in his and other hands which Ward now either copied with care or had photographed, and one extremely mysterious letter in a chirography that the searcher recognised from items in the Registry of Deeds as positively Joseph Curwen's.
      This Curwen letter, though undated as to the year, was evidently not the one in answer to which Orne had written the confiscated missive; and from internal evidence Ward placed it not much later than 1750. It may not be amiss to give the text in full, as a sample of the style of one whose history was so dark and terrible. The recipient is addressed as ""Simon"", but a line (whether drawn by Curwen or Orne Ward could not tell) is run through the word.
Prouidence, I. May (Ut. vulgo)
Brother: - 
My honour'd Antient ffriende, due Respects and earnest Wishes to Him whom we serve for yr eternall Power. I am just come upon That which you ought to knowe, concern'g the Matter of the Laste Extremitie and what to doe regard'g yt. I am not dispos'd to followe you in go'g Away on acct. of my Yeares, for Prouidence hath not ye Sharpeness of ye Bay in hunt'g oute uncommon Things and bringinge to Tryall. I am ty'd up in Shippes and Goodes, and cou'd not doe as you did, besides the Whiche my ffarme at Patuxet hath under it What you Knowe, that wou'd not waite for my com'g Backe as an Other.
      But I am not unreadie for harde ffortunes, as I haue tolde you, and haue longe work'd upon ye Way of get'g Backe after ye Laste. I laste Night strucke on ye Wordes that bringe up YOGGE-SOTHOTHE, and sawe for ye firste Time that fface spoke of by Ibn Schacabao in ye  -  - . And IT said, that ye III Psalme in ye Liber-Damnatus holdes ye Clauicle. With Sunne in V House, Saturne in Trine, drawe ye Pentagram of Fire, and saye ye ninth Uerse thrice. This Uerse repeate eache Roodemas and Hallow's Eue; and ye Thing will breede in ye Outside Spheres.
      And of ye Seede of Olde shal One be borne who shal looke Backe, tho' know'g not what he seekes.
      Yett will this availe Nothing if there be no Heir, and if the Saltes, or the Way to make the Saltes, bee not Readie for his Hande; and here I will owne, I have not taken needed Stepps nor founde Much. Ye Process is plaguy harde to come neare; and it uses up such a Store of Specimens, I am harde putte to it to get Enough, notwithstand'g the Sailors I have from ye Indies. Ye People aboute are become curious, but I can stande them off. Ye Gentry are worse than the Populace, be'g more Circumstantiall in their Accts. and more believ'd in what they tell. That Parson and Mr. Merritt have talk'd some, I am fearfull, but no Thing soe far is Dangerous. Ye Chymical substances are easie of get'g, there be'g II. goode Chymists in Towne, Dr. Bowen and Sam: Carew. I am foll'g oute what Borellus saith, and haue Helpe in Abdool Al-Hazred his VII. Booke. Whatever I gette, you shal haue. And in ye meane while, do not neglect to make use of ye Wordes I haue here giuen. I haue them Righte, but if you Desire to see HIM, imploy the Writings on ye Piece of  -  -  that I am putt'g in this Packet. Saye ye Uerses every Roodmas and Hallow's Eue; and if yr Line runn out not, one shall bee in yeares to come that shal looke backe and use what Saltes or Stuff for Saltes you shal leaue him. Job XIV. XIV.
      I rejoice you are again at Salem, and hope I may see you not longe hence. I have a goode Stallion, and am think'g of get'g a Coach, there be'g one (Mr. Merritt's) in Prouidence already, tho' ye Roades are bad. If you are dispos'd to Travel, doe not pass me bye. From Boston take ye Post Rd. thro' Dedham, Wrentham, and Attleborough, goode Taverns be'g at all these Townes. Stop at Mr. Bolcom's in Wrentham, where ye Beddes are finer than Mr. Hatch's, but eate at ye other House for their Cooke is better. Turne into Prou. by Patucket ffalls, and ye Rd. past Mr. Sayles's Tavern. My House opp. Mr. Epenetus Olney's Tavern off ye Towne Street, Ist on ye N. side of Olney's Court. Distance from Boston Stone abt. XLIV Miles.
      Sir, I am yr olde and true ffriend and Servt. in Almousin-Metraton.
Josephus C.
To Mr. Simon Orne,
William's-Lane, in Salem.
      This letter, oddly enough, was what first gave Ward the exact location of Curwen's Providence home; for none of the records encountered up to that time had been at all specific. The discovery was doubly striking because it indicated as the newer Curwen house built in 1761 on the site of the old, a dilapidated building still standing in Olney Court and well known to Ward in his antiquarian rambles over Stampers' Hill. The place was indeed only a few squares from his own home on the great hill's higher ground, and was now the abode of a negro family much esteemed for occasional washing, housecleaning, and furnace-tending services. To find, in distant Salem, such sudden proof of the significance of this familiar rookery in his own family history, was a highly impressive thing to Ward; and he resolved to explore the place immediately upon his return. The more mystical phases of the letter, which he took to be some extravagant kind of symbolism, frankly baffled him; though he noted with a thrill of curiosity that the Biblical passage referred to - Job 14, 14 - was the familiar verse, ""If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.""

2.

      Young Ward came home in a state of pleasant excitement, and spent the following Saturday in a long and exhaustive study of the house in Olney Court. The place, now crumbling with age, had never been a mansion; but was a modest two-and-a-half story wooden town house of the familiar Providence colonial type, with plain peaked roof, large central chimney, and artistically carved doorway with rayed fanlight, triangular pediment, and trim Doric pilasters. It had suffered but little alteration externally, and Ward felt he was gazing on something very close to the sinister matters of his quest.
      The present negro inhabitants were known to him, and he was very courteously shewn about the interior by old Asa and his stout wife Hannah. Here there was more change than the outside indicated, and Ward saw with regret that fully half of the fine scroll-and-urn overmantels and shell-carved cupboard linings were gone, whilst much of the fine wainscotting and bolection moulding was marked, hacked, and gouged, or covered up altogether with cheap wall-paper. In general, the survey did not yield as much as Ward had somehow expected; but it was at least exciting to stand within the ancestral walls which had housed such a man of horror as Joseph Curwen. He saw with a thrill that a monogram had been very carefully effaced from the ancient brass knocker.
      From then until after the close of school Ward spent his time on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher and the accumulation of local Curwen data. The former still proved unyielding; but of the latter he obtained so much, and so many clues to similar data elsewhere, that he was ready by July to make a trip to New London and New York to consult old letters whose presence in those places was indicated. This trip was very fruitful, for it brought him the Fenner letters with their terrible description of the Pawtuxet farmhouse raid, and the Nightingale-Talbot letters in which he learned of the portrait painted on a panel of the Curwen library. This matter of the portrait interested him particularly, since he would have given much to know just what Joseph Curwen looked like; and he decided to make a second search of the house in Olney Court to see if there might not be some trace of the ancient features beneath peeling coats of later paint or layers of mouldy wall-paper.
      Early in August that search took place, and Ward went carefully over the walls of every room sizeable enough to have been by any possibility the library of the evil builder. He paid especial attention to the large panels of such overmantels as still remained; and was keenly excited after about an hour, when on a broad area above the fireplace in a spacious ground-floor room he became certain that the surface brought out by the peeling of several coats of paint was sensibly darker than any ordinary interior paint or the wood beneath it was likely to have been. A few more careful tests with a thin knife, and he knew that he had come upon an oil portrait of great extent. With truly scholarly restraint the youth did not risk the damage which an immediate attempt to uncover the hidden picture with the knife might have done, but just retired from the scene of his discovery to enlist expert help. In three days he returned with an artist of long experience, Mr. Walter C. Dwight, whose studio is near the foot of College Hill; and that accomplished restorer of paintings set to work at once with proper methods and chemical substances. Old Asa and his wife were duly excited over their strange visitors, and were properly reimbursed for this invasion of their domestic hearth.
      As day by day the work of restoration progressed, Charles Ward looked on with growing interest at the lines and shades gradually unveiled after their long oblivion. Dwight had begun at the bottom; hence since the picture was a three-quarter-length one, the face did not come out for some time. It was meanwhile seen that the subject was a spare, well-shaped man with dark-blue coat, embroidered waistcoat, black satin small-clothes, and white silk stockings, seated in a carved chair against the background of a window with wharves and ships beyond. When the head came out it was observed to bear a neat Albemarle wig, and to possess a thin, calm, undistinguished face which seemed somehow familiar to both Ward and the artist. Only at the very last, though, did the restorer and his client begin to gasp with astonishment at the details of that lean, pallid visage, and to recognise with a touch of awe the dramatic trick which heredity had played. For it took the final bath of oil and the final stroke of the delicate scraper to bring out fully the expression which centuries had hidden; and to confront the bewildered Charles Dexter Ward, dweller in the past, with his own living features in the countenance of his horrible great-great-great-grandfather.
      Ward brought his parents to see the marvel he had uncovered, and his father at once determined to purchase the picture despite its execution on stationary panelling. The resemblance to the boy, despite an appearance of rather greater age, was marvellous; and it could be seen that through some trick of atavism the physical contours of Joseph Curwen had found precise duplication after a century and a half. Mrs. Ward's resemblance to her ancestor was not at all marked, though she could recall relatives who had some of the facial characteristics shared by her son and by the bygone Curwen. She did not relish the discovery, and told her husband that he had better burn the picture instead of bringing it home. There was, she averred, something unwholesome about it; not only intrinsically, but in its very resemblance to Charles. Mr. Ward, however, was a practical man of power and affairs - a cotton manufacturer with extensive mills at Riverpoint in the Pawtuxet Valley - and not one to listen to feminine scruples. The picture impressed him mightily with its likeness to his son, and he believed the boy deserved it as a present. In this opinion, it is needless to say, Charles most heartily concurred; and a few days later Mr. Ward located the owner of the house - a small rodent-featured person with a guttural accent - and obtained the whole mantel and overmantel bearing the picture at a curtly fixed priced which cut short the impending torrent of unctuous haggling.
      It now remained to take off the panelling and remove it to the Ward home, where provisions were made for its thorough restoration and installation with an electric mock-fireplace in Charles's third-floor study or library. To Charles was left the task of superintending this removal, and on the twenty-eighth of August he accompanied two expert workmen from the Crooker decorating firm to the house in Olney Court, where the mantel and portrait-bearing overmantel were detached with great care and precision for transportation in the company's motor truck. There was left a space of exposed brickwork marking the chimney's course, and in this young Ward observed a cubical recess about a foot square, which must have lain directly behind the head of the portrait. Curious as to what such a space might mean or contain, the youth approached and looked within; finding beneath the deep coatings of dust and soot some loose yellowed papers, a crude, thick copybook, and a few mouldering textile shreds which may have formed the ribbon binding the rest together. Blowing away the bulk of the dirt and cinders, he took up the book and looked at the bold inscription on its cover. It was in a hand which he had learned to recognise at the Essex Institute, and proclaimed the volume as the ""Journall and Notes of Jos: Curwen, Gent., of Providence-Plantations, Late of Salem.""
      Excited beyond measure by his discovery, Ward shewed the book to the two curious workmen beside him. Their testimony is absolute as to the nature and genuineness of the finding, and Dr. Willett relies on them to help establish his theory that the youth was not mad when he began his major eccentricities. All the other papers were likewise in Curwen's handwriting, and one of them seemed especially portentous because of its inscription: ""To Him Who Shal Come After, & How He May Gett Beyonde Time & ye Spheres."" Another was in a cipher; the same, Ward hoped, as the Hutchinson cipher which had hitherto baffled him. A third, and here the searcher rejoiced, seemed to be a key to the cipher; whilst the fourth and fifth were addressed respectively to ""Edw: Hutchinson, Armiger"" and ""Jedediah Orne, Esq."", 'or Their Heir or Heirs, or Those Represent'g Them'. The sixth and last was inscribed: ""Joseph Curwen his Life and Travells Bet'n ye yeares 1678 and 1687: Of Whither He Voyag'd, Where He Stay'd, Whom He Sawe, and What He Learnt.""

3.

      We have now reached the point from which the more academic school of alienists date Charles Ward's madness. Upon his discovery the youth had looked immediately at a few of the inner pages of the book and manuscripts, and had evidently seen something which impressed him tremendously. Indeed, in shewing the titles to the workmen he appeared to guard the text itself with peculiar care, and to labour under a perturbation for which even the antiquarian and genealogical significance of the find could hardly account. Upon returning home he broke the news with an almost embarrassed air, as if he wished to convey an idea of its supreme importance without having to exhibit the evidence itself. He did not even shew the titles to his parents, but simply told them that he had found some documents in Joseph Curwen's handwriting, ""mostly in cipher"", which would have to be studied very carefully before yielding up their true meaning. It is unlikely that he would have shewn what he did to the workmen, had it not been for their unconcealed curiosity. As it was he doubtless wished to avoid any display of peculiar reticence which would increase their discussion of the matter.
      That night Charles Ward sat up in his room reading the new-found book and papers, and when day came he did not desist. His meals, on his urgent request when his mother called to see what was amiss, were sent up to him; and in the afternoon he appeared only briefly when the men came to install the Curwen picture and mantelpiece in his study. The next night he slept in snatches in his clothes, meanwhile wrestling feverishly with the unravelling of the cipher manuscript. In the morning his mother saw that he was at work on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher, which he had frequently shewn her before; but in response to her query he said that the Curwen key could not be applied to it. That afternoon he abandoned his work and watched the men fascinatedly as they finished their installation of the picture with its woodwork above a cleverly realistic electric log, setting the mock-fireplace and overmantel a little out from the north wall as if a chimney existed, and boxing in the sides with panelling to match the room's. The front panel holding the picture was sawn and hinged to allow cupboard space behind it. After the workmen went he moved his work into the study and sat down before it with his eyes half on the cipher and half on the portrait which stared back at him like a year-adding and century-recalling mirror.
      His parents, subsequently recalling his conduct at this period, give interesting details anent the policy of concealment which he practiced. Before servants he seldom hid any paper which he might be studying, since he rightly assumed that Curwen's intricate and archaic chirography would be too much for them. With his parents, however, he was more circumspect; and unless the manuscript in question were a cipher, or a mere mass of cryptic symbols and unknown ideographs (as that entitled ""To Him Who Shal Come After etc."" seemed to be), he would cover it with some convenient paper until his caller had departed. At night he kept the papers under lock and key in an antique cabinet of his, where he also placed them whenever he left the room. He soon resumed fairly regular hours and habits, except that his long walks and other outside interests seemed to cease. The opening of school, where he now began his senior year, seemed a great bore to him; and he frequently asserted his determination never to bother with college. He had, he said, important special investigations to make, which would provide him with more avenues toward knowledge and the humanities than any university which the world could boast.
      Naturally, only one who had always been more or less studious, eccentric, and solitary could have pursued this course for many days without attracting notice. Ward, however, was constitutionally a scholar and a hermit; hence his parents were less surprised than regretful at the close confinement and secrecy he adopted. At the same time, both his father and mother thought it odd that he would shew them no scrap of his treasure-trove, nor give any connected account of such data as he had deciphered. This reticence he explained away as due to a wish to wait until he might announce some connected revelation, but as the weeks passed without further disclosures there began to grow up between the youth and his family a kind of constraint; intensified in his mother's case by her manifest disapproval of all Curwen delvings.
      During October Ward began visiting the libraries again, but no longer for the antiquarian matter of his former days. Witchcraft and magic, occultism and daemonology, were what he sought now; and when Providence sources proved unfruitful he would take the train for Boston and tap the wealth of the great library in Copley Square, the Widener Library at Harvard, or the Zion Research Library in Brookline, where certain rare works on Biblical subjects are available. He bought extensively, and fitted up a whole additional set of shelves in his study for newly acquired works on uncanny subjects; while during the Christmas holidays he made a round of out-of-town trips including one to Salem to consult certain records at the Essex Institute.
      About the middle of January, 1920, there entered Ward's bearing an element of triumph which he did not explain, and he was no more found at work upon the Hutchinson cipher. Instead, he inaugurated a dual policy of chemical research and record-scanning; fitting up for the one a laboratory in the unused attic of the house, and for the latter haunting all the sources of vital statistics in Providence. Local dealers in drugs and scientific supplies, later questioned, gave astonishingly queer and meaningless catalogues of the substances and instruments he purchased; but clerks at the State House, the City Hall, and the various libraries agree as to the definite object of his second interest. He was searching intensely and feverishly for the grave of Joseph Curwen, from whose slate slab an older generation had so wisely blotted the name.
      Little by little there grew upon the Ward family the conviction that something was wrong. Charles had had freaks and changes of minor interests before, but this growing secrecy and absorption in strange pursuits was unlike even him. His school work was the merest pretence; and although he failed in no test, it could be seen that the old application had all vanished. He had other concernments now; and when not in his new laboratory with a score of obsolete alchemical books, could be found either poring over old burial records down town or glued to his volumes of occult lore in his study, where the startlingly - one almost fancied increasingly - similar features of Joseph Curwen stared blandly at him from the great overmantel on the north wall.
      Late in March Ward added to his archive-searching a ghoulish series of rambles about the various ancient cemeteries of the city. The cause appeared later, when it was learned from City Hall clerks that he had probably found an important clue. His quest had suddenly shifted from the grave of Joseph Curwen to that of one Naphthali Field; and this shift was explained when, upon going over the files that he had been over, the investigators actually found a fragmentary record of Curwen's burial which had escaped the general obliteration, and which stated that the curious leaden coffin had been interred ""10 ft. S. and 5 ft. W. of Naphthali Field's grave in ye - "". The lack of a specified burying-ground in the surviving entry greatly complicated the search, and Naphthali Field's grave seemed as elusive as that of Curwen; but here no systematic effacement had existed, and one might reasonably be expected to stumble on the stone itself even if its record had perished. Hence the rambles - from which St. John's (the former King's) Churchyard and the ancient Congregational burying-ground in the midst of Swan Point Cemetery were excluded, since other statistics had shewn that the only Naphthali Field (obiit 1729) whose grave could have been meant had been a Baptist.

4.

      It was toward May when Dr. Willett, at the request of the senior Ward, and fortified with all the Curwen data which the family had gleaned from Charles in his non-secretive days, talked with the young man. The interview was of little value or conclusiveness, for Willett felt at every moment that Charles was thoroughly master of himself and in touch with matters of real importance; but it at least forced the secretive youth to offer some rational explanation of his recent demeanour. Of a pallid, impassive type not easily shewing embarrassment, Ward seemed quite ready to discuss his pursuits, though not to reveal their object. He stated that the papers of his ancestor had contained some remarkable secrets of early scientific knowledge, for the most part in cipher, of an apparent scope comparable only to the discoveries of Friar Bacon and perhaps surpassing even those. They were, however, meaningless except when correlated with a body of learning now wholly obsolete; so that their immediate presentation to a world equipped only with modern science would rob them of all impressiveness and dramatic significance. To take their vivid place in the history of human thought they must first be correlated by one familiar with the background out of which they evolved, and to this task of correlation Ward was now devoting himself. He was seeking to acquire as fast as possible those neglected arts of old which a true interpreter of the Curwen data must possess, and hoped in time to make a full announcement and presentation of the utmost interest to mankind and to the world of thought. Not even Einstein, he declared, could more profoundly revolutionise the current conception of things.
      As to his graveyard search, whose object he freely admitted, but the details of whose progress he did not relate, he said he had reason to think that Joseph Curwen's mutilated headstone bore certain mystic symbols - carved from directions in his will and ignorantly spared by those who had effaced the name - which were absolutely essential to the final solution of his cryptic system. Curwen, he believed, had wished to guard his secret with care; and had consequently distributed the data in an exceedingly curious fashion. When Dr. Willett asked to see the mystic documents, Ward displayed much reluctance and tried to put him off with such things as photostatic copies of the Hutchinson cipher and Orne formulae and diagrams; but finally shewed him the exteriors of some of the real Curwen finds - the ""Journall and Notes"", the cipher (title in cipher also), and the formula-filled message ""To Him Who Shal Come After"" - and let him glance inside such as were in obscure characters.
      He also opened the diary at a page carefully selected for its innocuousness and gave Willett a glimpse of Curwen's connected handwriting in English. The doctor noted very closely the crabbed and complicated letters, and the general aura of the seventeenth century which clung round both penmanship and style despite the writer's survival into the eighteenth century, and became quickly certain that the document was genuine. The text itself was relatively trivial, and Willett recalled only a fragment:
""Wedn. 16 Octr. 1754. My Sloope the Wakeful this Day putt in from London with XX newe Men pick'd up in ye Indies, Spaniards from Martineco and 2 Dutch Men from Surinam. Ye Dutch Men are like to Desert from have'g hearde Somewhat ill of these Ventures, but I will see to ye Inducing of them to Staye. ffor Mr. Knight Dexter of ye Boy and Book 120 Pieces Camblets, 100 Pieces Assrtd. Cambleteens, 20 Pieces blue Duffles, 100 Pieces Shalloons, 50 Pieces Calamancoes, 300 Pieces each, Shendsoy and Humhums. ffor Mr. Green at ye Elephant 50 Gallon Cyttles, 20 Warm'g Pannes, 15 Bake Cyttles, 10 pr. Smoke'g Tonges. ffor Mr. Perrigo 1 Sett of Awles, ffor Mr. Nightingale 50 Reames prime Foolscap. Say'd ye SABAOTH thrice last Nighte but None appear'd. I must heare more from Mr. H. in Transylvania, tho' it is Harde reach'g him and exceeding strange he can not give me the Use of what he hath so well us'd these hundred yeares. Simon hath not Writ these V. Weekes, but I expecte soon hear'g from him.""
      When upon reaching this point Dr. Willett turned the leaf he was quickly checked by Ward, who almost snatched the book from his grasp. All that the doctor had a chance to see on the newly opened page was a brief pair of sentences; but these, strangely enough, lingered tenaciously in his memory. They ran: ""Ye Verse from Liber-Damnatus be'g spoke V Roodmasses and IV Hallows-Eves, I am Hopeful ye Thing is breed'g Outside ye Spheres. It will drawe One who is to Come, if I can make sure he shal bee, and he shall think on Past thinges and look back thro' all ye yeares, against ye which I must have ready ye Saltes or That to make 'em with.""
      Willett saw no more, but somehow this small glimpse gave a new and vague terror to the painted features of Joseph Curwen which stared blandly down from the overmantel. Ever after that he entertained the odd fancy - which his medical skill of course assured him was only a fancy - that the eyes of the portrait had a sort of wish, if not an actual tendency, to follow young Charles Ward as he moved about the room. He stopped before leaving to study the picture closely, marvelling at its resemblance to Charles and memorising every minute detail of the cryptical, colourless face, even down to a slight scar or pit in the smooth brow above the right eye. Cosmo Alexander, he decided, was a painter worthy of the Scotland that produced Raeburn, and a teacher worthy of his illustrious pupil Gilbert Stuart.
      Assured by the doctor that Charles's mental health was in no danger, but that on the other hand he was engaged in researches which might prove of real importance, the Wards were more lenient than they might otherwise have been when during the following June the youth made positive his refusal to attend college. He had, he declared, studies of much more vital importance to pursue; and intimated a wish to go abroad the following year in order to avail himself of certain sources of data not existing in America. The senior Ward, while denying this latter wish as absurd for a boy of only eighteen, acquiesced regarding the university; so that after a none too brilliant graduation from the Moses Brown School there ensued for Charles a three-year period of intensive occult study and graveyard searching. He became recognised as an eccentric, and dropped even more completely from the sight of his family's friends than he had been before; keeping close to his work and only occasionally making trips to other cities to consult obscure records. Once he went south to talk with a strange old mulatto who dwelt in a swamp and about whom a newspaper had printed a curious article. Again he sought a small village in the Adirondacks whence reports of certain odd ceremonial practices had come. But still his parents forbade him the trip to the Old World which he desired.
      Coming of age in April, 1923, and having previously inherited a small competence from his maternal grandfather, Ward determined at last to take the European trip hitherto denied him. Of his proposed itinerary he would say nothing save that the needs of his studies would carry him to many places, but he promised to write his parents fully and faithfully. When they saw he could not be dissuaded, they ceased all opposition and helped as best they could; so that in June the young man sailed for Liverpool with the farewell blessings of his father and mother, who accompanied him to Boston and waved him out of sight from the White Star pier in Charlestown. Letters soon told of his safe arrival, and of his securing good quarters in Great Russell Street, London; where he proposed to stay, shunning all family friends, till he had exhausted the resources of the British Museum in a certain direction. Of his daily life he wrote but little, for there was little to write. Study and experiment consumed all his time, and he mentioned a laboratory which he had established in one of his rooms. That he said nothing of antiquarian rambles in the glamorous old city with its luring skyline of ancient domes and steeples and its tangles of roads and alleys whose mystic convolutions and sudden vistas alternately beckon and surprise, was taken by his parents as a good index of the degree to which his new interests had engrossed his mind.
      In June, 1924, a brief note told of his departure for Paris, to which he had before made one or two flying trips for material in the Bibliothque Nationale. For three months thereafter he sent only postal cards, giving an address in the Rue St. Jacques and referring to a special search among rare manuscripts in the library of an unnamed private collector. He avoided acquaintances, and no tourists brought back reports of having seen him. Then came a silence, and in October the Wards received a picture card from Prague, Czecho-Slovakia, stating that Charles was in that ancient town for the purpose of conferring with a certain very aged man supposed to be the last living possessor of some very curious mediaeval information. He gave an address in the Neustadt, and announced no move till the following January; when he dropped several cards from Vienna telling of his passage through that city on the way toward a more easterly region whither one of his correspondents and fellow-delvers into the occult had invited him.
      The next card was from Klausenburg in Transylvania, and told of Ward's progress toward his destination. He was going to visit a Baron Ferenczy, whose estate lay in the mountains east of Rakus; and was to be addressed at Rakus in the care of that nobleman. Another card from Rakus a week later, saying that his host's carriage had met him and that he was leaving the village for the mountains, was his last message for a considerable time; indeed, he did not reply to his parents' frequent letters until May, when he wrote to discourage the plan of his mother for a meeting in London, Paris, or Rome during the summer, when the elder Wards were planning to travel in Europe. His researches, he said, were such that he could not leave his present quarters; while the situation of Baron Ferenczy's castle did not favour visits. It was on a crag in the dark wooded mountains, and the region was so shunned by the country folk that normal people could not help feeling ill at ease. Moreover, the Baron was not a person likely to appeal to correct and conservative New England gentlefolk. His aspect and manners had idiosyncrasies, and his age was so great as to be disquieting. It would be better, Charles said, if his parents would wait for his return to Providence; which could scarcely be far distant.
      That return did not, however, take place until May, 1926, when after a few heralding cards the young wanderer quietly slipped into New York on the Homeric and traversed the long miles to Providence by motor-coach, eagerly drinking in the green rolling hills, the fragrant, blossoming orchards, and the white steepled towns of vernal Connecticut; his first taste of ancient New England in nearly four years. When the coach crossed the Pawcatuck and entered Rhode Island amidst the faery goldenness of a late spring afternoon his heart beat with quickened force, and the entry to Providence along Reservoir and Elmwood avenues was a breathless and wonderful thing despite the depths of forbidden lore to which he had delved. At the high square where Broad, Weybosset, and Empire Streets join, he saw before and below him in the fire of sunset the pleasant, remembered houses and domes and steeples of the old town; and his head swam curiously as the vehicle rolled down the terminal behind the Biltmore, bringing into view the great dome and soft, roof-pierced greenery of the ancient hill across the river, and the tall colonial spire of the First Baptist Church limned pink in the magic evening light against the fresh springtime verdure of its precipitous background.
      Old Providence! It was this place and the mysterious forces of its long, continuous history which had brought him into being, and which had drawn him back toward marvels and secrets whose boundaries no prophet might fix. Here lay the arcana, wondrous or dreadful as the case might be, for which all his years of travel and application had been preparing him. A taxicab whirled him through Post Office Square with its glimpse of the river, the old Market House, and the head of the bay, and up the steep curved slope of Waterman Street to Prospect, where the vast gleaming dome and sunset-flushed Ionic columns of the Christian Science Church beckoned northward. Then eight squares past the fine old estates his childish eyes had known, and the quaint brick sidewalks so often trodden by his youthful feet. And at last the little white overtaken farmhouse on the right, on the left the classic Adam porch and stately bayed facade of the great brick house where he was born. It was twilight, and Charles Dexter Ward had come home.

5.

      A school of alienists slightly less academic than Dr. Lyman's assign to Ward's European trip the beginning of his true madness. Admitting that he was sane when he started, they believe that his conduct upon returning implies a disastrous change. But even to this claim Dr. Willett refuses to accede. There was, he insists, something later; and the queernesses of the youth at this stage he attributes to the practice of rituals learned abroad - odd enough things, to be sure, but by no means implying mental aberration on the part of their celebrant. Ward himself, though visibly aged and hardened, was still normal in his general reactions; and in several talks with Willett displayed a balance which no madman - even an incipient one - could feign continuously for long. What elicited the notion of insanity at this period were the sounds heard at all hours from Ward's attic laboratory, in which he kept himself most of the time. There were chantings and repetitions, and thunderous declamations in uncanny rhythms; and although these sounds were always in Ward's own voice, there was something in the quality of that voice, and in the accents of the formulae it pronounced, which could not but chill the blood of every hearer. It was noticed that Nig, the venerable and beloved black cat of the household, bristled and arched his back perceptibly when certain of the tones were heard.
      The odours occasionally wafted from the laboratory were likewise exceedingly strange. Sometimes they were very noxious, but more often they were aromatic, with a haunting, elusive quality which seemed to have the power of inducing fantastic images. People who smelled them had a tendency to glimpse momentary mirages of enormous vistas, with strange hills or endless avenues of sphinxes and hippogriffs stretching off into infinite distance. Ward did not resume his old-time rambles, but applied himself diligently to the strange books he had brought home, and to equally strange delvings within his quarters; explaining that European sources had greatly enlarged the possibilities of his work, and promising great revelations in the years to come. His older aspect increased to a startling degree his resemblance to the Curwen portrait in his library; and Dr. Willett would often pause by the latter after a call, marvelling at the virtual identity, and reflecting that only the small pit above the picture's right eye now remained to differentiate the long-dead wizard from the living youth. These calls of Willett's, undertaken at the request of the senior Wards, were curious affairs. Ward at no time repulsed the doctor, but the latter saw that he could never reach the young man's inner psychology. Frequently he noted peculiar things about; little wax images of grotesque design on the shelves or tables, and the half-erased remnants of circles, triangles, and pentagrams in chalk or charcoal on the cleared central space of the large room. And always in the night those rhythms and incantations thundered, till it became very difficult to keep servants or suppress furtive talk of Charles's madness.
      In January, 1927, a peculiar incident occurred. One night about midnight, as Charles was chanting a ritual whose weird cadence echoed unpleasantly through the house below, there came a sudden gust of chill wind from the bay, and a faint, obscure trembling of the earth which everyone in the neighbourhood noted. At the same time the cat exhibited phenomenal traces of fright, while dogs bayed for as much as a mile around. This was the prelude to a sharp thunderstorm, anomalous for the season, which brought with it such a crash that Mr. and Mrs. Ward believed the house had been struck. They rushed upstairs to see what damage had been done, but Charles met them at the door to the attic; pale, resolute, and portentous, with an almost fearsome combination of triumph and seriousness on his face. He assured them that the house had not really been struck, and that the storm would soon be over. They paused, and looking through a window saw that he was indeed right; for the lightning flashed farther and farther off, whilst the trees ceased to bend in the strange frigid gust from the water. The thunder sank to a sort of dull mumbling chuckle and finally died away. Stars came out, and the stamp of triumph on Charles Ward's face crystallised into a very singular expression.
      For two months or more after this incident Ward was less confined than usual to his laboratory. He exhibited a curious interest in the weather, and made odd inquiries about the date of the spring thawing of the ground. One night late in March he left the house after midnight, and did not return till almost morning; when his mother, being wakeful, heard a rumbling motor draw up to the carriage entrance. Muffled oaths could be distinguished, and Mrs. Ward, rising and going to the window, saw four dark figures removing a long, heavy box from a truck at Charles's direction and carrying it within by the side door. She heard laboured breathing and ponderous footfalls on the stairs, and finally a dull thumping in the attic; after which the footfalls descended again, and the four men reappeared outside and drove off in their truck.
      The next day Charles resumed his strict attic seclusion, drawing down the dark shades of his laboratory windows and appearing to be working on some metal substance. He would open the door to no one, and steadfastly refused all proffered food. About noon a wrenching sound followed by a terrible cry and a fall were heard, but when Mrs. Ward rapped at the door her son at length answered faintly, and told her that nothing had gone amiss. The hideous and indescribable stench now welling out was absolutely harmless and unfortunately necessary. Solitude was the one prime essential, and he would appear later for dinner. That afternoon, after the conclusion of some odd hissing sounds which came from behind the locked portal, he did finally appear; wearing an extremely haggard aspect and forbidding anyone to enter the laboratory upon any pretext. This, indeed, proved the beginning of a new policy of secrecy; for never afterward was any other person permitted to visit either the mysterious garret workroom or the adjacent storeroom which he cleaned out, furnished roughly, and added to his inviolably private domain as a sleeping apartment. Here he lived, with books brought up from his library beneath, till the time he purchased the Pawtuxet bungalow and moved to it all his scientific effects.
      In the evening Charles secured the paper before the rest of the family and damaged part of it through an apparent accident. Later on Dr. Willett, having fixed the date from statements by various members of the household, looked up an intact copy at the Journal office and found that in the destroyed section the following small item had occurred:
Nocturnal Diggers Surprised in
North Burial Ground

Robert Hart, night watchman at the North Burial Ground, this morning discovered a party of several men with a motor truck in the oldest part of the cemetery, but apparently frightened them off before they had accomplished whatever their object may have been.
      The discovery took place at about four o'clock, when Hart's attention was attracted by the sound of a motor outside his shelter. Investigating, he saw a large truck on the main drive several rods away; but could not reach it before the sound of his feet on the gravel had revealed his approach. The men hastily placed a large box in the truck and drove away toward the street before they could be overtaken; and since no known grave was disturbed, Hart believes that this box was an object which they wished to bury.
      The diggers must have been at work for a long while before detection, for Hart found an enormous hole dug at a considerable distance back from the roadway in the lot of Amasa Field, where most of the old stones have long ago disappeared. The hole, a place as large and deep as a grave, was empty; and did not coincide with any interment mentioned in the cemetery records.
      Sergt. Riley of the Second Station viewed the spot and gave the opinion that the hole was dug by bootleggers rather gruesomely and ingeniously seeking a safe cache for liquor in a place not likely to be disturbed. In reply to questions Hart said he thought the escaping truck had headed up Rochambeau Avenue, though he could not be sure.
      During the next few days Ward was seldom seen by his family. Having added sleeping quarters to his attic realm, he kept closely to himself there, ordering food brought to the door and not taking it in until after the servant had gone away. The droning of monotonous formulae and the chanting of bizarre rhythms recurred at intervals, while at other times occasional listeners could detect the sound of tinkling glass, hissing chemicals, running water, or roaring gas flames. Odours of the most unplaceable quality, wholly unlike any before noted, hung at times around the door; and the air of tension observable in the young recluse whenever he did venture briefly forth was such as to excite the keenest speculation. Once he made a hasty trip to the Athenaeum for a book he required, and again he hired a messenger to fetch him a highly obscure volume from Boston. Suspense was written portentously over the whole situation, and both the family and Dr. Willett confessed themselves wholly at a loss what to do or think about it.

6.

      Then on the fifteenth of April a strange development occurred. While nothing appeared to grow different in kind, there was certainly a very terrible difference in degree; and Dr. Willett somehow attaches great significance to the change. The day was Good Friday, a circumstance of which the servants made much, but which others quite naturally dismiss as an irrelevant coincidence. Late in the afternoon young Ward began repeating a certain formula in a singularly loud voice, at the same time burning some substance so pungent that its fumes escaped over the entire house. The formula was so plainly audible in the hall outside the locked door that Mrs. Ward could not help memorising it as she waited and listened anxiously, and later on she was able to write it down at Dr. Willett's request. It ran as follows, and experts have told Dr. Willett that its very close analogue can be found in the mystic writings of ""Eliphas Levi"", that cryptic soul who crept through a crack in the forbidden door and glimpsed the frightful vistas of the void beyond:
""Per Adonai Eloim, Adonai Jehova,
Adonai Sabaoth, Metraton On Agla Mathon,
verbum pythonicum, mysterium salamandrae,
conventus sylvorum, antra gnomorum,
daemonia Coeli Gad, Almousin, Gibor, Jehosua,
Evam, Zariatnatmik, veni, veni, veni.""
      This had been going on for two hours without change or intermission when over all the neighbourhood a pandaemoniac howling of dogs set in. The extent of this howling can be judged from the space it received in the papers the next day, but to those in the Ward household it was overshadowed by the odour which instantly followed it; a hideous, all-pervasive odour which none of them had ever smelt before or have ever smelt since. In the midst of this mephitic flood there came a very perceptible flash like that of lightning, which would have been blinding and impressive but for the daylight around; and then was heard the voice that no listener can ever forget because of its thunderous remoteness, its incredible depth, and its eldritch dissimilarity to Charles Ward's voice. It shook the house, and was clearly heard by at least two neighbours above the howling of the dogs. Mrs. Ward, who had been listening in despair outside her son's locked laboratory, shivered as she recognised its hellish import; for Charles had told her of its evil fame in dark books, and of the manner in which it had thundered, according to the Fenner letters, above the doomed Pawtuxet farmhouse on the night of Joseph Curwen's annihilation. There was no mistaking that nightmare phrase, for Charles had described it too vividly in the old days when he had talked frankly of his Curwen investigations. And yet it was only this fragment of an archaic and forgotten language: ""DIES MIES JESCHET BOENE DOESEF DOUVEMA ENITEMAUS"".
      Close upon this thundering there came a momentary darkening of the daylight, though sunset was still an hour distant, and then a puff of added odour different from the first but equally unknown and intolerable. Charles was chanting again now and his mother could hear syllables that sounded like ""Yi-nash-Yog-Sothoth-he-lgeb-fi-throdog"" - ending in a ""Yah!"" whose maniacal force mounted in an ear-splitting crescendo. A second later all previous memories were effaced by the wailing scream which burst out with frantic explosiveness and gradually changed form to a paroxysm of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Mrs. Ward, with the mingled fear and blind courage of maternity, advanced and knocked affrightedly at the concealing panels, but obtained no sign of recognition. She knocked again, but paused nervelessly as a second shriek arose, this one unmistakably in the familiar voice of her son, and sounding concurrently with the still bursting cachinnations of that other voice. Presently she fainted, although she is still unable to recall the precise and immediate cause. Memory sometimes makes merciful deletions.
      Mr. Ward returned from the business section at about quarter past six; and not finding his wife downstairs, was told by the frightened servants that she was probably watching at Charles's door, from which the sounds had been far stranger than ever before. Mounting the stairs at once, he saw Mrs. Ward stretched at full length on the floor of the corridor outside the laboratory; and realising that she had fainted, hastened to fetch a glass of water from a set bowl in a neighbouring alcove. Dashing the cold fluid in her face, he was heartened to observe an immediate response on her part, and was watching the bewildered opening of her eyes when a chill shot through him and threatened to reduce him to the very state from which she was emerging. For the seemingly silent laboratory was not as silent as it had appeared to be, but held the murmurs of a tense, muffled conversation in tones too low for comprehension, yet of a quality profoundly disturbing to the soul.
      It was not, of course, new for Charles to mutter formulae; but this muttering was definitely different. It was so palpably a dialogue, or imitation of a dialogue, with the regular alteration of inflections suggesting question and answer, statement and response. One voice was undisguisedly that of Charles, but the other had a depth and hollowness which the youth's best powers of ceremonial mimicry had scarcely approached before. There was something hideous, blasphemous, and abnormal about it, and but for a cry from his recovering wife which cleared his mind by arousing his protective instincts it is not likely that Theodore Howland Ward could have maintained for nearly a year more his old boast that he had never fainted. As it was, he seized his wife in his arms and bore her quickly downstairs before she could notice the voices which had so horribly disturbed him. Even so, however, he was not quick enough to escape catching something himself which caused him to stagger dangerously with his burden. For Mrs. Ward's cry had evidently been heard by others than he, and there had come from behind the locked door the first distinguishable words which that masked and terrible colloquy had yielded. They were merely an excited caution in Charles's own voice, but somehow their implications held a nameless fright for the father who overheard them. The phrase was just this: ""Sshh! - write!""
      Mr. and Mrs. Ward conferred at some length after dinner, and the former resolved to have a firm and serious talk with Charles that very night. No matter how important the object, such conduct could no longer be permitted; for these latest developments transcended every limit of sanity and formed a menace to the order and nervous well-being of the entire household. The youth must indeed have taken complete leave of his senses, since only downright madness could have prompted the wild screams and imaginary conversations in assumed voices which the present day had brought forth. All this must be stopped, or Mrs. Ward would be made ill and the keeping of servants become an impossibility.
      Mr. Ward rose at the close of the meal and started upstairs for Charles's laboratory. On the third floor, however, he paused at the sounds which he heard proceeding from the now disused library of his son. Books were apparently being flung about and papers wildly rustled, and upon stepping to the door Mr. Ward beheld the youth within, excitedly assembling a vast armful of literary matter of every size and shape. Charles's aspect was very drawn and haggard, and he dropped his entire load with a start at the sound of his father's voice. At the elder man's command he sat down, and for some time listened to the admonitions he had so long deserved. There was no scene. At the end of the lecture he agreed that his father was right, and that his noises, mutterings, incantations, and chemical odours were indeed inexcusable nuisances. He agreed to a policy of greater quiet, though insisting on a prolongation of his extreme privacy. Much of his future work, he said, was in any case purely book research; and he could obtain quarters elsewhere for any such vocal rituals as might be necessary at a later stage. For the fright and fainting of his mother he expressed the keenest contrition, and explained that the conversation later heard was part of an elaborate symbolism designed to create a certain mental atmosphere. His use of abstruse technical terms somewhat bewildered Mr. Ward, but the parting impression was one of undeniable sanity and poise despite a mysterious tension of the utmost gravity. The interview was really quite inconclusive, and as Charles picked up his armful and left the room Mr. Ward hardly knew what to make of the entire business. It was as mysterious as the death of poor old Nig, whose stiffening form had been found an hour before in the basement, with staring eyes and fear-distorted mouth.
      Driven by some vague detective instinct, the bewildered parent now glanced curiously at the vacant shelves to see what his son had taken up to the attic. The youth's library was plainly and rigidly classified, so that one might tell at a glance the books or at least the kind of books which had been withdrawn. On this occasion Mr. Ward was astonished to find that nothing of the occult or the antiquarian, beyond what had been previously removed, was missing. These new withdrawals were all modern items; histories, scientific treatises, geographies, manuals of literature, philosophic works, and certain contemporary newspapers and magazines. It was a very curious shift from Charles Ward's recent run of reading, and the father paused in a growing vortex of perplexity and an engulfing sense of strangeness. The strangeness was a very poignant sensation, and almost clawed at his chest as he strove to see just what was wrong around him. Something was indeed wrong, and tangibly as well as spiritually so. Ever since he had been in this room he had known that something was amiss, and at last it dawned upon him what it was.
      On the north wall rose still the ancient carved overmantel from the house in Olney Court, but to the cracked and precariously restored oils of the large Curwen portrait disaster had come. Time and unequal heating had done their work at last, and at some time since the room's last cleaning the worst had happened. Peeling clear of the wood, curling tighter and tighter, and finally crumbling into small bits with what must have been malignly silent suddenness, the portrait of Joseph Curwen had resigned forever its staring surveillance of the youth it so strangely resembled, and now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust.
","II.

It was in the township of Dunwich, in a large and partly inhabited farmhouse set against a hillside four miles from the village and a mile and a half from any other dwelling, that Wilbur Whateley was born at 5 A.M. on Sunday, the second of February, 1913. This date was recalled because it was Candlemas, which people in Dunwich curiously observe under another name; and because the noises in the hills had sounded, and all the dogs of the countryside had barked persistently, throughout the night before. Less worthy of notice was the fact that the mother was one of the decadent Whateleys, a somewhat deformed, unattractive albino woman of thirty-five, living with an aged and half-insane father about whom the most frightful tales of wizardry had been whispered in his youth. Lavinia Whateley had no known husband, but according to the custom of the region made no attempt to disavow the child; concerning the other side of whose ancestry the country folk might—and did—speculate as widely as they chose. On the contrary, she seemed strangely proud of the dark, goatish-looking infant who formed such a contrast to her own sickly and pink-eyed albinism, and was heard to mutter many curious prophecies about its unusual powers and tremendous future.
      Lavinia was one who would be apt to mutter such things, for she was a lone creature given to wandering amidst thunderstorms in the hills and trying to read the great odorous books which her father had inherited through two centuries of Whateleys, and which were fast falling to pieces with age and worm-holes. She had never been to school, but was filled with disjointed scraps of ancient lore that Old Whateley had taught her. The remote farmhouse had always been feared because of Old Whateley’s reputation for black magic, and the unexplained death by violence of Mrs. Whateley when Lavinia was twelve years old had not helped to make the place popular. Isolated among strange influences, Lavinia was fond of wild and grandiose day-dreams and singular occupations; nor was her leisure much taken up by household cares in a home from which all standards of order and cleanliness had long since disappeared.
      There was a hideous screaming which echoed above even the hill noises and the dogs’ barking on the night Wilbur was born, but no known doctor or midwife presided at his coming. Neighbours knew nothing of him till a week afterward, when Old Whateley drove his sleigh through the snow into Dunwich Village and discoursed incoherently to the group of loungers at Osborn’s general store. There seemed to be a change in the old man—an added element of furtiveness in the clouded brain which subtly transformed him from an object to a subject of fear—though he was not one to be perturbed by any common family event. Amidst it all he shewed some trace of the pride later noticed in his daughter, and what he said of the child’s paternity was remembered by many of his hearers years afterward.
      “I dun’t keer what folks think—ef Lavinny’s boy looked like his pa, he wouldn’t look like nothin’ ye expeck. Ye needn’t think the only folks is the folks hereabaouts. Lavinny’s read some, an’ has seed some things the most o’ ye only tell abaout. I calc’late her man is as good a husban’ as ye kin find this side of Aylesbury; an’ ef ye knowed as much abaout the hills as I dew, ye wouldn’t ast no better church weddin’ nor her’n. Let me tell ye suthin’—some day yew folks’ll hear a child o’ Lavinny’s a-callin’ its father’s name on the top o’ Sentinel Hill!”
      The only persons who saw Wilbur during the first month of his life were old Zechariah Whateley, of the undecayed Whateleys, and Earl Sawyer’s common-law wife, Mamie Bishop. Mamie’s visit was frankly one of curiosity, and her subsequent tales did justice to her observations; but Zechariah came to lead a pair of Alderney cows which Old Whateley had bought of his son Curtis. This marked the beginning of a course of cattle-buying on the part of small Wilbur’s family which ended only in 1928, when the Dunwich horror came and went; yet at no time did the ramshackle Whateley barn seem overcrowded with livestock. There came a period when people were curious enough to steal up and count the herd that grazed precariously on the steep hillside above the old farmhouse, and they could never find more than ten or twelve anaemic, bloodless-looking specimens. Evidently some blight or distemper, perhaps sprung from the unwholesome pasturage or the diseased fungi and timbers of the filthy barn, caused a heavy mortality amongst the Whateley animals. Odd wounds or sores, having something of the aspect of incisions, seemed to afflict the visible cattle; and once or twice during the earlier months certain callers fancied they could discern similar sores about the throats of the grey, unshaven old man and his slatternly, crinkly-haired albino daughter.
      In the spring after Wilbur’s birth Lavinia resumed her customary rambles in the hills, bearing in her misproportioned arms the swarthy child. Public interest in the Whateleys subsided after most of the country folk had seen the baby, and no one bothered to comment on the swift development which that newcomer seemed every day to exhibit. Wilbur’s growth was indeed phenomenal, for within three months of his birth he had attained a size and muscular power not usually found in infants under a full year of age. His motions and even his vocal sounds shewed a restraint and deliberateness highly peculiar in an infant, and no one was really unprepared when, at seven months, he began to walk unassisted, with falterings which another month was sufficient to remove.
      It was somewhat after this time—on Hallowe’en—that a great blaze was seen at midnight on the top of Sentinel Hill where the old table-like stone stands amidst its tumulus of ancient bones. Considerable talk was started when Silas Bishop—of the undecayed Bishops—mentioned having seen the boy running sturdily up that hill ahead of his mother about an hour before the blaze was remarked. Silas was rounding up a stray heifer, but he nearly forgot his mission when he fleetingly spied the two figures in the dim light of his lantern. They darted almost noiselessly through the underbrush, and the astonished watcher seemed to think they were entirely unclothed. Afterward he could not be sure about the boy, who may have had some kind of a fringed belt and a pair of dark trunks or trousers on. Wilbur was never subsequently seen alive and conscious without complete and tightly buttoned attire, the disarrangement or threatened disarrangement of which always seemed to fill him with anger and alarm. His contrast with his squalid mother and grandfather in this respect was thought very notable until the horror of 1928 suggested the most valid of reasons.
      The next January gossips were mildly interested in the fact that “Lavinny’s black brat” had commenced to talk, and at the age of only eleven months. His speech was somewhat remarkable both because of its difference from the ordinary accents of the region, and because it displayed a freedom from infantile lisping of which many children of three or four might well be proud. The boy was not talkative, yet when he spoke he seemed to reflect some elusive element wholly unpossessed by Dunwich and its denizens. The strangeness did not reside in what he said, or even in the simple idioms he used; but seemed vaguely linked with his intonation or with the internal organs that produced the spoken sounds. His facial aspect, too, was remarkable for its maturity; for though he shared his mother’s and grandfather’s chinlessness, his firm and precociously shaped nose united with the expression of his large, dark, almost Latin eyes to give him an air of quasi-adulthood and well-nigh preternatural intelligence. He was, however, exceedingly ugly despite his appearance of brilliancy; there being something almost goatish or animalistic about his thick lips, large-pored, yellowish skin, coarse crinkly hair, and oddly elongated ears. He was soon disliked even more decidedly than his mother and grandsire, and all conjectures about him were spiced with references to the bygone magic of Old Whateley, and how the hills once shook when he shrieked the dreadful name of Yog-Sothoth in the midst of a circle of stones with a great book open in his arms before him. Dogs abhorred the boy, and he was always obliged to take various defensive measures against their barking menace.
",True
"An autumnal chill descended upon the streets of Glaston as the young man walked upon the concrete sidewalk, passing redbrick storefronts and shop windows, every surface still wet with the morning rain. Leaves, red and orange and each vibrant in their hue, were shaken loose from the trees lining the street by the wind, landing wherever they fell. For an instant in time, the spectacle of the leaves drew the attention of the man, in fact little more than a teenage boy, as he made his way toward the corner. However, Joseph Clayton, clad in bluejeans and jacket with a backpack slung from his shoulders, had far more important things to focus on than a show of falling leaves. An important test for this semester was arriving in a week or so and he needed to study.
Also, he was getting quite hungry this close to lunch.
As Joseph rounded the corner and continued toward his favorite eatery, he wondered if he would get swamped in the usual lunch crowd. However, as he saw the front of the Leng Trinh Restaurant, his thoughts turned to quiet dejection.
""Damnit!"" muttered Joseph as he approached the eatery. The reason for this turn in mood was the carpet of tempered glass fragments on the sidewalk below the picture window at the front of the establishment, which was now covered by plastic sheeting. Thuch Van Trinh, one half of the husband-and-wife ownership, was wearing a plaid jacket over his apron and usual cooking clothes and was shoveling the broken glass into a bucket. ""Hey, Mr. Trinh, how's it going?"". Joseph asked with a smile. This was more false cheer than anything, as Joseph could guess how Thuch must be feeling: anger was always a popular choice, followed closely by worry about the reason why.
Despite what he must have been feeling, Thuch Van Trinh grinned back, the black lines of his facial tattooing creasing as the muscles moved under his cheeks. ""Not so good, Mr. Clayton. If this keeps up, I may have to put in Plexiglas so that the window won't break."" The Trinhs accents, as his parents and the other adults of the town told it, had been rather strong (even unusually so) when they had immigrated to Glaston from their first home in Boston. This had usually been waved off by their purported origins in the remote hills on the Vietnam-Laos border, seemingly collaborated by how their teeth had been dyed black. On the other hand, given their rural roots, their speed in adapting local speech patterns so that they now sounded more like second generation Americans (and especially their daughter's complete lack of any accent except the local standard) did make for a puzzling situation. However, for their ease of assimilation and the food they served, they had become well-liked in the community.
So why were things like this happening to them recently? ""How many times does this make this month; two, three?"" Joseph had to ask this, wondering if things were worse than he thought.
""It's happened three times already, this time not more than an hour ago. Thanh wants to install security cameras to watch the place and with how small and cheap they are now, I think we just might."" An hour ago? They'd smashed a picture window in broad daylight? Who in town could be that stupid or that angry? Josephs train of thought was broken then, when Thuch said something of much more interest to the younger man. ""By the way, if you're looking for Marie, she's helping her mother in the kitchen. Even without a window we seem to be doing good business."" Thuch went back to his work and Joseph, not wanting to delay any longer, entered the restaurant.
Just as Thuch had said, Leng Trinh still had it's usual busy lunchtime crowd, albeit one that was concentrated near the back wall. Picking his way around tables packed with diners, Joseph finally arrived at a table set for two, a 'reserved' sign upon it. Removing his backpack and laying it beside a chair, he sat down, shuffled off his coat and went to bury his nose in the menu.
It always felt a bit odd to Joseph, eating in an ethnic restaurant where none of the diners were the same ethnicity as the cooks, or even from the same part of the world. However, none of it mattered when the food was as good as it was here.
""Now then, what would a fine, upstanding New England boy like yourself want in a place like this?"" The voice that asked this was soft, amused, female and had an almost mocking tone. It also had the accent of the New England uplands. To Joseph, it could only be one person.
""The same thing I always get here."" He answered dryly before looking up from the menu. There, holding a pad of paper and a pen, was teenage girl with almond-shaped eyes, shoulder length black hair with green streaks, a cooking apron and an amused grin. ""Hi Marie... you sure your mom's alright with you waitressing this crowd?""
""We've got enough help in the kitchen already and Dad's coming in after all the glass is cleaned up."" She glanced up at the window, plastic sheet and all, after she wrote his order down. ""I just wish we knew who was doing this. If we don't get someone else to cough up some money, our insurance company might go sour on us."" Marie went back to the kitchen to get the food for both of them.
Ten minutes later, she was laying out two place settings of food that had been prepared ahead of time. ""Alright, that's two plates of grilled pork on beds of Leng-style rice, your dish of steamed green beans with soy sauce for dipping, my bowl of soup and two cans of soda."" They'd eat lunch before studying, with Joseph paying the tab for both of them.
If anyone asked, it wasn't a date. Not in the strictest sense, anyway.
""What, no bak bon dzhow?"" Asked Joseph, decidedly disappointed at the apparent lack of the special ingredient.
To this, Marie moved a small earthen bowl from the serving tray onto the table and lifted the lid to reveal a thick gray sauce containing mushrooms and cracked black pepper. ""Would I be one to deny you the gravy of the gods?"" She asked (rhetorically) with a soft smile; Joseph couldn't help but smile back as he cracked the tab on his soda and began on his green beans.
A bit later, when his beans were gone and Marie had almost finished her soup, Joesph began formulating a question that related to a curious thought that had sprung up earlier. ""Not to sound like a nag or anything, but I'm just curious but what was all that 'upstanding' stuff about?"" The only time he had ever heard anyone talk like that was...
Oh God...
Marie swallowed the last bits of her soup. ""Oh, I don't know. Maybe It's that I had no idea that the son of insurance brokers had such deep and aristocratic roots? Maybe it's that I was surprised to find out that the Clayton's had come not from hardy New England farming stock as I had assumed, but from the urbane, wealthy ranks of those grand Brahmins of Boston? I'm sure Granny Cora could tell some fascinating stories about the old days; she sure seemed interested in mine."" If anything, Marie took the entire thing in stride, treating both the memory of the experience and the experience itself with a a great deal of interested amusement. Certainly, mocking the type of language she had encountered was almost cracking her up.
Joseph, on the other hand, had first felt bemusement at the scene in which the Clayton family reunion of the past summer had found itself, quickly turning into outright embarrassment. ""Look, I'm sorry that I didn't tell you about her, but everybody thought that she wouldn't be able to come due to health concerns. It's not my fault that a half-senile, 97 year old woman worked up enough stubbornness to drag her nurse halfway across the state!"".
""I never said anything about anyone being at fault. I just thought it was an interesting revelation about your family."" She had meant her cajoling in good humour, but Josephs defensiveness and embarrassment were never good emotions to bring out. ""Anyway, most people would be proud to have the Boston gentry in their family history: industrialists, merchants, art, culture, philanthropy, charity..."" With every word, Marie spooned a bit of ban boc dzhow onto her grilled pork.
""As well as whaling, slave trading, opium smuggling, snobbery and having your entire life guided by the expectations of your peers; exactly the sorts of things my parents taught me to loathe. The thing is, my great-great-grandmother came from a very select, very privileged and lily-white background; I was worried that she'd... well, react oddly to you."" Joseph retorted as he began spooning (or rather, pouring) the sauce onto his meat after Marie had finished with it and passed it to him. In the case of Cora Clayton (nee Coffin), Josephs fear hadn't primarily been that she would find Marie objectionable on account of her race since that prejudice had been more ingrained in her parents generation than hers. His fear had instead been that his great great grandmother, as self-proclaimed guardian of the old, aristocratic traditions, might object to their relationship because the Trinhs were restaurateurs with no history of pedigree, education or money behind them.
In Cora's world (the 1920s, where her mind was half the time), heirs had married heiresses, families had coordinated their fortunes and everyone had kept an eye on everyone else; these were rules of decorum that had lasted for her long after the Claytons had gone bust in the great Crash of '29. The fact that she had taken Joseph aside and explained her concerns to him had done nothing to soothe his embarrassment, although he had finally convinced her that, being naturalized citizens with a successful restaurant, the Trinhs were firmly in the middling classes. She had also estimated that said restaurant, with no other inheritors besides Marie, would most likely pass into Clayton hands in the fullness of time.
No one had dared explain to her the differences between modern teenage dating and the genteel courtships of her youth.
""I don't think she reacted that oddly. Sure, she was so out of date that you had to explain that I meant 'French Indochina' when I said that my parents came from Vietnam and she did seem a bit too fascinated with my families origins and, alright, it was weird hearing someone actually use the word 'courting' without trying to be funny. However, it was kind of nice to speak French with someone in this town after all the time my parents invested in me learning it."" Marie knew that while it had been terrifying for Joseph, having to put up with his relatives dissection of his relationship and fearing disapproval, she herself had enjoyed a chance to see if the old stereotypes were true. When it had become clear to Marie that the elderly woman was not about to spew racial epitaphs at her but was, indeed, fascinated as to her families background, Marie had made it a point to 'ham it up' in telling their story.
To an entranced Cora Clayton, Marie had described her parents lives before emigration as a subsistence existence in a village high up in the fog-choked mountain passes. She had woven scenes of her people worshiping strange, heathen gods far from the civilized lands of the Buddha and partaking in ghastly rituals to ensure harvests of rice from narrow mountainside terraces. She told the old woman that her parents had tired of such a life and had dreamed of something more, something in the wider world glimpsed in third-hand magazines and radio broadcasts.
After receiving a dispensation from their village shaman to leave (but promising to sent back remittances), they had made their way to Hanoi and then to Boston and finally to Glaston where, having never truly given up the more religious and symbolic aspects of their heathenish past, they nevertheless had made good names for themselves in the community. Marie had made sure that her prose had been both lurid and exotic so as to fully entrance a child of the Age of Empire as well as making proper use of tone, whether enraptured, casual or deathly serious, to emphasize mood. The end result was to make it sound as if her culture wasn't just some rural outlet of modern Vietnam or Laos, but as if it was truly unlike any other in the world.
That was an opinion that Joseph was also rapidly adopting.
They ate in relative silence for a while, the bustle of the lunch crowd beginning to die down as people left, many of them stopping to talk to Mr. Trinh at the till, expressing their concern over what had happened with the window. They were just about half done when Joseph began another conversation. ""So, did you know that there's a 'Heritage Day' coming up at school in a few weeks?""
""Yeah, and?"" Deep down in her gut, Marie was beginning to get a slightly worried feeling from the direction this conversation was going. This pretty much happened whenever the subject of her parent's past came up but, like so many times before, she could probably bluff her way through it.
""I thought that, maybe, we could do something for it. I was thinking about dredging up something from Normandy because I didn't want to clog up the schedule with another variation of British regional culture."" It sounded perfectly innocent, but Marie knew that this was a potentially tricky situation that might require misdirection, a convincing excuse and possible outright lying.
She hated lying to Joseph.
""Alright then. You can do that, I'll do the Vietnamese thing and we'll knock 'em all dead."" She answered with an enthusiasm that she hoped had betrayed nothing of her growing unease with the conversation. This seemed to provoke nothing but a non-committal murmur of agreement and thus, thinking that that was over with, she began eating again.
However, that was not the end of it.
""By Vietnamese, do you mean the standard culture from around Hanoi... or the culture from your parent's home village?"" Joseph asked, seemingly as if only for the purpose of clarification. There was much more behind it though, and whether it was just ingrained paranoia or any real danger of exposure, Marie knew that this was entering onto some very tenuous and potentially very dangerous ground. Still, the subject had to be breached.
""Aren't they pretty much the same? I mean, sure, it was pretty rural back there, but whether village or city, we were all Viet: same language, same culture, same blood, same... pretty much everything, when you think about it."" As denials went, this one wasn't half bad: sincere enough to be taken seriously and with enough internal logic that it wouldn't fall apart immediately in the face of the mildly educated mind.
On this subject, however, Joseph had become rather more than merely mildly educated. He had observed things for a long time: a lot of little things and one or two big things for the most part. And he, after long deliberation and study, had discovered that some of those things just didn't match up.
""You know, there was a time when I could believe that. But... there are just too many deviations to discount."" Joesph stopped eating all together, putting down his fork and looking his girlfriend straight in the eyes before closing and opening them again, as if to rally his thoughts. ""The food, for one thing, isn't like any kind of Vietnamese food I've read about. Yes, you have the side dishes but that's about it for similarity. Second, your parent's tattoos. Again, unlike any other group in Southeast Asia; the closest matches I could find were incised lines on bronze figurines from over two thousand years ago.""
He stopped again. ""And then there's the language you guys speak. I'm fairly sure it's in the Mon-Khmer group, but I've been doing some research and... honestly, I've seen words on this menu that I've never been able to find in any other source. And I'm not the only one who's noticed these things."" Joesph saw panic flash across Marie's eyes, though she tried to hide it. ""Most people don't pay attention and honestly don't care, and the ones who do notice just assume that you guys are either Hmong or some little minority that no-one's ever heard of... but even that doesn't match very well either. It's like you said, you're Viet... but what about all this other stuff?""
It was then that Marie could have ended it all: the doubts, the questions, the lingering curiosity... as well as twenty one centuries of secrecy, tradition and very likely her relationship with this young man. In the end, she decided to dodge again. ""What can I say? We were very rural."" When Joesph just got this frustrated look on his face, Marie sighed, reached across the table and enveloped one of his hands with hers. ""Look, I'll try and dredge something up if I can, but I can't promise anything, okay?""
Joseph mulled on this lack of answers, but as the moment dragged on, his resistance wore down. ""Alright. If you don't want to talk about your culture, that's alright; lots of people come to America to get away from stuff. But I still am sorta curious."" Then he changed the subject. ""Anyway, after we eat, we should begin studying for our tests. Do you want to go over the English or the Algebra first?""
""We should do the Math first, then we can cool off with the Shakespeare. But we better not let the food get cold, what with how the sauce gets if allowed to sit for too long."" Marie began eating again and, after a few beats, Joseph resumed as well.
They stayed at that table for many hours, going over and revising their knowledge of maths and literature. However, already Marie wondered if there was something she could reveal, something that she could show about her parent's culture that would not threaten expose them and, as the old saying went among her tribe, 'get them cut in half and buried in two graves'.
Later that night, The Trinh's upstairs apartment
To Marie's relief, her parents reaction to her plan wasn't anger. On the other hand, fear and worry could be almost as painful.
""I know how you feel about the Clayton boy. He's well-liked, intelligent and his parents are our insurance agents."" Thanh Thi Trinh began, speaking in her families particular dialect of Viet as she, Marie and Thuch Van sat around their dining room table. ""But I ask this of you: is Joesph and his interest in this celebration worth the risk of exposure and, may I add, possible death when this town realizes who we are, when they realize what we are?"" Thanh Thi had always been the more reserved, more cautious and, frankly, more paranoid spouse in this family when it came to their safety. Where her husband was the face of the restaurant, she ran the kitchen with an eye on the back door and all of their cooks. While Thuch made friendly at social gatherings, Thanh kept track of all possible escape routes and who was and wasn't looking at them. She kept track of any news about gangs and hate-group activity in the area, and about any other strange things.
The sort of things that might lure out the kind of people who hunted their people.
But Marie had prepared for this. ""Mother, I know the risks that revealing the secrets of our people would bring. However, I am counting on two circumstances to make sure that only the most benign and harmless information is portrayed."" She rallied herself, knowing that the way she handled this could make the difference on how she presented herself to nearly everyone, especially Joseph . ""First, I must inform both of you that there are some people in this town, including my boyfriend, that realize that we are not quite from the mainstream culture of modern Vietnam."" At this, both Thanh and Thuch got even more worried but they weren't shocked, seeing as any bumpkin with an Internet connection could find that tribal tattooing wasn't really the rage in downtown Hanoi. ""The good news is that while these people realize that we belong to a distinct subgroup, they often deduce that we are either rural Hmong or some other obscure ethnic group. In other words, they know nothing about who our people are and, like the rest of the town, they honestly do not care.""
""What about the nature of our traditons, Marie? What would you do, what rite of our people would be performed on that stage that would not end up with half the town vomiting and the other half trying to hang us?"" Her father had been relatively quiet in this conversation, but he knew that the rituals of his village had, during various times in history, left such a bad impression upon outsiders that they had responded in force to try to stamp them out.
Here, Marie began grasping the thick, heavy and old scrapbook that lay closed upon the table before her. It had been entrusted to them by their village and, by the blessings of the Gods and their Instrument, they had kept it safe and hidden for more than twenty years. ""Father, it is not as if I wish to set up an alter on the stage, recite the incantations of the harvest rites and slice something open; frankly, I would have no idea how. However, I believe that there is a ritual that is benign, unusual and, even according to the author of this book, beautiful enough to make people forget it's oddity."" She opened the book, filled with sepia photographs and notes written in French on yellowed paper, to the page she had bookmarked. ""I want to do the Stork Dance.""
Her parents were quiet for a minute. Admittedly, this was probably the least unusual rite of their people and it did seem to have a calming effect on its audiences. However, it took weeks of intensive training in order to do it right, the costuming and specific actions depended on whether the dancer was a man or woman and the phonograph with the instrumental music and vocals, only having been recorded once before, was on the other side of the planet. It was a tall order to pull off for anyone. ""You do realize that practicing for the dance requires grueling routine, so much so that it might effect your school work?"" Asked her mother, wondering if her daughter was truly sincere.
""I know that. I'll just have to sacrifice my time with Joesph, a sacrifice that I'm sure he'd understand."" Marie responded in English this time, the plans for her act becoming clearer. ""However, I'll need some help in creating the proper costuming and... I know that shipping items from the Old Country is like trying to smuggle Plutonium but if you could convince the shamans to release that phonograph for a month or two, I would be eternally grateful to all of them, and to you.""
Her parents wondered, not for the first time, if Marie truly comprehended what could be asked of that gratitude in the years to come. She had the opportunity to live a life completely detached from the paranoia, the fear and the constant danger that followed her people. Would she give that chance away simply for the sake of a boy?
Whatever choice she made, however, was hers to make.
In the end, they acquiesced... but not without informing their daughter of what their home village could ask of her in exchange for the items she wished. It might be years until it was asked but one day, a representative of their village would approach her and request a repayment, be it in money, information or something else.
It was that ""something else"" that truly worried Thuch and Thanh.
","The Judas Mark
""Cthulhu ftaghn,"" He said with a laugh, swaying his tilted head to the right in a drunken manner. ""Cthulhu ftaghn.""
He broke out into a laughing fit. Then as quickly as it started it stopped; like the lightning bolt outside his window. Arkham was his place of work. And as a patient, his work was hard to complete. Not like he wanted to do it, either.
The rain stopped.
""I hear youuuuuuu."" He chuckled. ""I hear you flapping those blasted wings outside my windah."" He giggled, then sobered up. ""Damn Migo. YA CAN'T HAVE MY BRAIN!""
There came a drum of plastic on metal as his attention was drawn to the orderly with a plastic flashlight. Aforementioned light shining into his padded room.
""Keep it down in there!"" The orderly snapped before leaving him alone once again.
""Power outage, eh?"" He chuckled. ""Wonder whyyyy.""
He rolled his head back to his right; towards his window. His eyes registered the sound of unearthly wings twitching like insects contemplating flight. Oh how he hated those damn things. Far worse than those Shoggoths he faced a while back. At least the Shoggoths ate you; thus ending your torment. But a Migo…He shuttered. He did not want to think about it.
""Nyarlahotep…You son of a bitch."" He said, looking grumpy, then broke out in hysterics, then going back as if it never happened. ""If it weren't for you…I'd be…I'd be…""
Where would he be? In his mind, he saw himself in Miami, laying on the beach with Lucinda, their two kids playing in the sand as the waves crashed soothingly onto the shore. But then his logic would kick that to the curb. Lucinda was showing signs…She would have dumped him if it weren't for that Deep One, that is, dragging her-kicking and screaming-to the bottom of the sea.
He would be away from his insane parents. That insane town of Dunwich. Even if Lucinda did not accompany him, he would, at least, be free from here. But then he met him.
""Jesus…""
""Yes?"" Came a sweet, velvety voice. A voice one would hear from royalty.
""Not you."" He snapped.
""But I am him."" A hand placed itself on his shoulder as the entire figure appeared, sitting beside him like they were best friends.
""No...You're the fucking antichrist.""
""Is there really a difference in that either?"" Jesus asked, a smirk gracing his regal, black lips. ""Both promise paradise. From there, it's on a person's opinion on what that is."" He chuckled. ""And do not tell me that you forgot your title, Ivan…Or should I say 'Judas'?""
""THEN WHY PLACE ME HERE?"" Ivan shouted.
""Hey!"" The orderly shouted, banging his flashlight on the bars again. ""What did I just say?""
The orderly's face began to bubble. His flesh boiled, broken screams erupted from his face. He collapsed and scratched at his face, letting more and more blood poor onto the floor.
""I hate interruptions."" Jesus said. ""And as for your answer…Because. If Jesus was as all powerful as he claimed, why did he allow Judas to stay in the fold? Why did he allow the lowly wretches hope? Why did I command Tython to drag Lucinda down to the depths to suffer being rendered by hungry maws before she could drown?""
He smirked evilly as he described Lucinda's gruesome demise. Ivan panted heavily, his rage rising faster than R'lyeh ever would to the surface. Ivan struck thin air as his body moved too slow for the deity; whom was already standing, laughing at the mortal.
""Because there's more to it, Judas."" Jesus said. ""Judas of old was an important player in the world. The wretches were a growing populace, if they loved him, they would worship him.""
""Bullshit!"" He spat.
""Is it?""
""We want you to betray us, Judas."" Jesus said after his question was ignored.
""Why?""
""Sorry, but us Christs keep some secrets from their disciples.""
""What makes you Jesus?""
""Our roles."" He stated simply. ""You see…He was supposed to preach about us. But, sadly, his mind couldn't take it. So Cthulhu became a god. Not like it matters, religion changes all the time.""
He smirked, all knowing. ""And no, he wasn't the son of Cthulhu. That was my little trick.""
""Pray Judas,"" He said from behind Ivan-not allowing him to speak-his black, decaying lips mere inches from his ear. ""He likes that. It makes him feel powerful.""
""No,"" Ivan said. ""I shall not ya damned bastard! And I won't bring about their reawakening! These crazies will remain sedated!""
Jesus laughed.
""That's my cue.""
Jesus grabbed Ivan by the neck and slammed his body against the wall. Buzzing from outside the window grew from a silent drone into a frenzy. Jesus smirked evilly, drawing his face closer to his Judas.
""In blood the mark is drawn.""
Nyarlahotep drew the blade he was hiding and slashed Ivan's wrist, splattering drops of blood on the wall. He watched in delight as the drops spread, several linking up and continuing their intricate design.
It consisted of a crude circle with intertwining tentacles and a pair of piercing eyes.
""There,"" He said. ""Done.""
He tossed Ivan. He landed next to the window and as he peered out of it he clearly saw the glowing heads and beating wings of the Migo, their forms slightly covered by the rain that began to fall again.
""Enjoy your trip, Judas."" Nyarlahotep said. ""For though I am done with you, you still serve a purpose.""
The Migo swarmed, the window shattering like paper. Ivan barely had time to scream as they worked on his skull, amputating his brain and placing it inside their jar.
""Cthulhu ftagn, indeed.""
",False
"III. A Search and an Evocation

1.

Charles Ward, as we have seen, first learned in 1918 of his descent from Joseph Curwen. That he at once took an intense interest in everything pertaining to the bygone mystery is not to be wondered at; for every vague rumour that he had heard of Curwen now became something vital to himself, in whom flowed Curwen's blood. No spirited and imaginative genealogist could have done otherwise than begin forthwith an avid and systematic collection of Curwen data.
      In his first delvings there was not the slightest attempt at secrecy; so that even Dr. Lyman hesitates to date the youth's madness from any period before the close of 1919. He talked freely with his family - though his mother was not particularly pleased to own an ancestor like Curwen - and with the officials of the various museums and libraries he visited. In applying to private families for records thought to be in their possession he made no concealment of his object, and shared the somewhat amused scepticism with which the accounts of the old diarists and letter-writers were regarded. He often expressed a keen wonder as to what really had taken place a century and a half before at that Pawtuxet farmhouse whose site he vainly tried to find, and what Joseph Curwen really had been.
      When he came across the Smith diary and archives and encountered the letter from Jedediah Orne he decided to visit Salem and look up Curwen's early activities and connexions there, which he did during the Easter vacation of 1919. At the Essex Institute, which was well known to him from former sojourns in the glamorous old town of crumbling Puritan gables and clustered gambrel roofs, he was very kindly received, and unearthed there a considerable amount of Curwen data. He found that his ancestor was born in Salem-Village, now Danvers, seven miles from town, on the eighteenth of February (O.S.) 1662-3; and that he had run away to sea at the age of fifteen, not appearing again for nine years, when he returned with the speech, dress, and manners of a native Englishman and settled in Salem proper. At that time he had little to do with his family, but spent most of his hours with the curious books he had brought from Europe, and the strange chemicals which came for him on ships from England, France, and Holland. Certain trips of his into the country were the objects of much local inquisitiveness, and were whisperingly associated with vague rumours of fires on the hills at night.
      Curwen's only close friends had been one Edward Hutchinson of Salem-Village and one Simon Orne of Salem. With these men he was often seen in conference about the Common, and visits among them were by no means infrequent. Hutchinson had a house well out toward the woods, and it was not altogether liked by sensitive people because of the sounds heard there at night. He was said to entertain strange visitors, and the lights seen from his windows were not always of the same colour. The knowledge he displayed concerning long-dead persons and long-forgotten events was considered distinctly unwholesome, and he disappeared about the time the witchcraft panic began, never to be heard from again. At that time Joseph Curwen also departed, but his settlement in Providence was soon learned of. Simon Orne lived in Salem until 1720, when his failure to grow visibly old began to excite attention. He thereafter disappeared, though thirty years later his precise counterpart and self-styled son turned up to claim his property. The claim was allowed on the strength of documents in Simon Orne's known hand, and Jedediah Orne continued to dwell in Salem till 1771, when certain letters from Providence citizens to the Rev. Thomas Barnard and others brought about his quiet removal to parts unknown.
      Certain documents by and about all of these strange characters were available at the Essex Institute, the Court House, and the Registry of Deeds, and included both harmless commonplaces such as land titles and bills of sale, and furtive fragments of a more provocative nature. There were four or five unmistakable allusions to them on the witchcraft trial records; as when one Hepzibah Lawson swore on July 10, 1692, at the Court of Oyer and Terminer under Judge Hathorne, that 'fortie Witches and the Blacke Man were wont to meete in the Woodes behind Mr. Hutchinson's house', and one Amity How declared at a session of August 8th before Judge Gedney that 'Mr. G. B. (Rev. George Burroughs) on that Nighte putt ye Divell his Marke upon Bridget S., Jonathan A., Simon O., Deliverance W., Joseph C., Susan P., Mehitable C., and Deborah B.' Then there was a catalogue of Hutchinson's uncanny library as found after his disappearance, and an unfinished manuscript in his handwriting, couched in a cipher none could read. Ward had a photostatic copy of this manuscript made, and began to work casually on the cipher as soon as it was delivered to him. After the following August his labours on the cipher became intense and feverish, and there is reason to believe from his speech and conduct that he hit upon the key before October or November. He never stated, though, whether or not he had succeeded.
      But of the greatest immediate interest was the Orne material. It took Ward only a short time to prove from identity of penmanship a thing he had already considered established from the text of the letter to Curwen; namely, that Simon Orne and his supposed son were one and the same person. As Orne had said to his correspondent, it was hardly safe to live too long in Salem, hence he resorted to a thirty-year sojourn abroad, and did not return to claim his lands except as a representative of a new generation. Orne had apparently been careful to destroy most of his correspondence, but the citizens who took action in 1771 found and preserved a few letters and papers which excited their wonder. There were cryptic formulae and diagrams in his and other hands which Ward now either copied with care or had photographed, and one extremely mysterious letter in a chirography that the searcher recognised from items in the Registry of Deeds as positively Joseph Curwen's.
      This Curwen letter, though undated as to the year, was evidently not the one in answer to which Orne had written the confiscated missive; and from internal evidence Ward placed it not much later than 1750. It may not be amiss to give the text in full, as a sample of the style of one whose history was so dark and terrible. The recipient is addressed as ""Simon"", but a line (whether drawn by Curwen or Orne Ward could not tell) is run through the word.
Prouidence, I. May (Ut. vulgo)
Brother: - 
My honour'd Antient ffriende, due Respects and earnest Wishes to Him whom we serve for yr eternall Power. I am just come upon That which you ought to knowe, concern'g the Matter of the Laste Extremitie and what to doe regard'g yt. I am not dispos'd to followe you in go'g Away on acct. of my Yeares, for Prouidence hath not ye Sharpeness of ye Bay in hunt'g oute uncommon Things and bringinge to Tryall. I am ty'd up in Shippes and Goodes, and cou'd not doe as you did, besides the Whiche my ffarme at Patuxet hath under it What you Knowe, that wou'd not waite for my com'g Backe as an Other.
      But I am not unreadie for harde ffortunes, as I haue tolde you, and haue longe work'd upon ye Way of get'g Backe after ye Laste. I laste Night strucke on ye Wordes that bringe up YOGGE-SOTHOTHE, and sawe for ye firste Time that fface spoke of by Ibn Schacabao in ye  -  - . And IT said, that ye III Psalme in ye Liber-Damnatus holdes ye Clauicle. With Sunne in V House, Saturne in Trine, drawe ye Pentagram of Fire, and saye ye ninth Uerse thrice. This Uerse repeate eache Roodemas and Hallow's Eue; and ye Thing will breede in ye Outside Spheres.
      And of ye Seede of Olde shal One be borne who shal looke Backe, tho' know'g not what he seekes.
      Yett will this availe Nothing if there be no Heir, and if the Saltes, or the Way to make the Saltes, bee not Readie for his Hande; and here I will owne, I have not taken needed Stepps nor founde Much. Ye Process is plaguy harde to come neare; and it uses up such a Store of Specimens, I am harde putte to it to get Enough, notwithstand'g the Sailors I have from ye Indies. Ye People aboute are become curious, but I can stande them off. Ye Gentry are worse than the Populace, be'g more Circumstantiall in their Accts. and more believ'd in what they tell. That Parson and Mr. Merritt have talk'd some, I am fearfull, but no Thing soe far is Dangerous. Ye Chymical substances are easie of get'g, there be'g II. goode Chymists in Towne, Dr. Bowen and Sam: Carew. I am foll'g oute what Borellus saith, and haue Helpe in Abdool Al-Hazred his VII. Booke. Whatever I gette, you shal haue. And in ye meane while, do not neglect to make use of ye Wordes I haue here giuen. I haue them Righte, but if you Desire to see HIM, imploy the Writings on ye Piece of  -  -  that I am putt'g in this Packet. Saye ye Uerses every Roodmas and Hallow's Eue; and if yr Line runn out not, one shall bee in yeares to come that shal looke backe and use what Saltes or Stuff for Saltes you shal leaue him. Job XIV. XIV.
      I rejoice you are again at Salem, and hope I may see you not longe hence. I have a goode Stallion, and am think'g of get'g a Coach, there be'g one (Mr. Merritt's) in Prouidence already, tho' ye Roades are bad. If you are dispos'd to Travel, doe not pass me bye. From Boston take ye Post Rd. thro' Dedham, Wrentham, and Attleborough, goode Taverns be'g at all these Townes. Stop at Mr. Bolcom's in Wrentham, where ye Beddes are finer than Mr. Hatch's, but eate at ye other House for their Cooke is better. Turne into Prou. by Patucket ffalls, and ye Rd. past Mr. Sayles's Tavern. My House opp. Mr. Epenetus Olney's Tavern off ye Towne Street, Ist on ye N. side of Olney's Court. Distance from Boston Stone abt. XLIV Miles.
      Sir, I am yr olde and true ffriend and Servt. in Almousin-Metraton.
Josephus C.
To Mr. Simon Orne,
William's-Lane, in Salem.
      This letter, oddly enough, was what first gave Ward the exact location of Curwen's Providence home; for none of the records encountered up to that time had been at all specific. The discovery was doubly striking because it indicated as the newer Curwen house built in 1761 on the site of the old, a dilapidated building still standing in Olney Court and well known to Ward in his antiquarian rambles over Stampers' Hill. The place was indeed only a few squares from his own home on the great hill's higher ground, and was now the abode of a negro family much esteemed for occasional washing, housecleaning, and furnace-tending services. To find, in distant Salem, such sudden proof of the significance of this familiar rookery in his own family history, was a highly impressive thing to Ward; and he resolved to explore the place immediately upon his return. The more mystical phases of the letter, which he took to be some extravagant kind of symbolism, frankly baffled him; though he noted with a thrill of curiosity that the Biblical passage referred to - Job 14, 14 - was the familiar verse, ""If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.""

2.

      Young Ward came home in a state of pleasant excitement, and spent the following Saturday in a long and exhaustive study of the house in Olney Court. The place, now crumbling with age, had never been a mansion; but was a modest two-and-a-half story wooden town house of the familiar Providence colonial type, with plain peaked roof, large central chimney, and artistically carved doorway with rayed fanlight, triangular pediment, and trim Doric pilasters. It had suffered but little alteration externally, and Ward felt he was gazing on something very close to the sinister matters of his quest.
      The present negro inhabitants were known to him, and he was very courteously shewn about the interior by old Asa and his stout wife Hannah. Here there was more change than the outside indicated, and Ward saw with regret that fully half of the fine scroll-and-urn overmantels and shell-carved cupboard linings were gone, whilst much of the fine wainscotting and bolection moulding was marked, hacked, and gouged, or covered up altogether with cheap wall-paper. In general, the survey did not yield as much as Ward had somehow expected; but it was at least exciting to stand within the ancestral walls which had housed such a man of horror as Joseph Curwen. He saw with a thrill that a monogram had been very carefully effaced from the ancient brass knocker.
      From then until after the close of school Ward spent his time on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher and the accumulation of local Curwen data. The former still proved unyielding; but of the latter he obtained so much, and so many clues to similar data elsewhere, that he was ready by July to make a trip to New London and New York to consult old letters whose presence in those places was indicated. This trip was very fruitful, for it brought him the Fenner letters with their terrible description of the Pawtuxet farmhouse raid, and the Nightingale-Talbot letters in which he learned of the portrait painted on a panel of the Curwen library. This matter of the portrait interested him particularly, since he would have given much to know just what Joseph Curwen looked like; and he decided to make a second search of the house in Olney Court to see if there might not be some trace of the ancient features beneath peeling coats of later paint or layers of mouldy wall-paper.
      Early in August that search took place, and Ward went carefully over the walls of every room sizeable enough to have been by any possibility the library of the evil builder. He paid especial attention to the large panels of such overmantels as still remained; and was keenly excited after about an hour, when on a broad area above the fireplace in a spacious ground-floor room he became certain that the surface brought out by the peeling of several coats of paint was sensibly darker than any ordinary interior paint or the wood beneath it was likely to have been. A few more careful tests with a thin knife, and he knew that he had come upon an oil portrait of great extent. With truly scholarly restraint the youth did not risk the damage which an immediate attempt to uncover the hidden picture with the knife might have done, but just retired from the scene of his discovery to enlist expert help. In three days he returned with an artist of long experience, Mr. Walter C. Dwight, whose studio is near the foot of College Hill; and that accomplished restorer of paintings set to work at once with proper methods and chemical substances. Old Asa and his wife were duly excited over their strange visitors, and were properly reimbursed for this invasion of their domestic hearth.
      As day by day the work of restoration progressed, Charles Ward looked on with growing interest at the lines and shades gradually unveiled after their long oblivion. Dwight had begun at the bottom; hence since the picture was a three-quarter-length one, the face did not come out for some time. It was meanwhile seen that the subject was a spare, well-shaped man with dark-blue coat, embroidered waistcoat, black satin small-clothes, and white silk stockings, seated in a carved chair against the background of a window with wharves and ships beyond. When the head came out it was observed to bear a neat Albemarle wig, and to possess a thin, calm, undistinguished face which seemed somehow familiar to both Ward and the artist. Only at the very last, though, did the restorer and his client begin to gasp with astonishment at the details of that lean, pallid visage, and to recognise with a touch of awe the dramatic trick which heredity had played. For it took the final bath of oil and the final stroke of the delicate scraper to bring out fully the expression which centuries had hidden; and to confront the bewildered Charles Dexter Ward, dweller in the past, with his own living features in the countenance of his horrible great-great-great-grandfather.
      Ward brought his parents to see the marvel he had uncovered, and his father at once determined to purchase the picture despite its execution on stationary panelling. The resemblance to the boy, despite an appearance of rather greater age, was marvellous; and it could be seen that through some trick of atavism the physical contours of Joseph Curwen had found precise duplication after a century and a half. Mrs. Ward's resemblance to her ancestor was not at all marked, though she could recall relatives who had some of the facial characteristics shared by her son and by the bygone Curwen. She did not relish the discovery, and told her husband that he had better burn the picture instead of bringing it home. There was, she averred, something unwholesome about it; not only intrinsically, but in its very resemblance to Charles. Mr. Ward, however, was a practical man of power and affairs - a cotton manufacturer with extensive mills at Riverpoint in the Pawtuxet Valley - and not one to listen to feminine scruples. The picture impressed him mightily with its likeness to his son, and he believed the boy deserved it as a present. In this opinion, it is needless to say, Charles most heartily concurred; and a few days later Mr. Ward located the owner of the house - a small rodent-featured person with a guttural accent - and obtained the whole mantel and overmantel bearing the picture at a curtly fixed priced which cut short the impending torrent of unctuous haggling.
      It now remained to take off the panelling and remove it to the Ward home, where provisions were made for its thorough restoration and installation with an electric mock-fireplace in Charles's third-floor study or library. To Charles was left the task of superintending this removal, and on the twenty-eighth of August he accompanied two expert workmen from the Crooker decorating firm to the house in Olney Court, where the mantel and portrait-bearing overmantel were detached with great care and precision for transportation in the company's motor truck. There was left a space of exposed brickwork marking the chimney's course, and in this young Ward observed a cubical recess about a foot square, which must have lain directly behind the head of the portrait. Curious as to what such a space might mean or contain, the youth approached and looked within; finding beneath the deep coatings of dust and soot some loose yellowed papers, a crude, thick copybook, and a few mouldering textile shreds which may have formed the ribbon binding the rest together. Blowing away the bulk of the dirt and cinders, he took up the book and looked at the bold inscription on its cover. It was in a hand which he had learned to recognise at the Essex Institute, and proclaimed the volume as the ""Journall and Notes of Jos: Curwen, Gent., of Providence-Plantations, Late of Salem.""
      Excited beyond measure by his discovery, Ward shewed the book to the two curious workmen beside him. Their testimony is absolute as to the nature and genuineness of the finding, and Dr. Willett relies on them to help establish his theory that the youth was not mad when he began his major eccentricities. All the other papers were likewise in Curwen's handwriting, and one of them seemed especially portentous because of its inscription: ""To Him Who Shal Come After, & How He May Gett Beyonde Time & ye Spheres."" Another was in a cipher; the same, Ward hoped, as the Hutchinson cipher which had hitherto baffled him. A third, and here the searcher rejoiced, seemed to be a key to the cipher; whilst the fourth and fifth were addressed respectively to ""Edw: Hutchinson, Armiger"" and ""Jedediah Orne, Esq."", 'or Their Heir or Heirs, or Those Represent'g Them'. The sixth and last was inscribed: ""Joseph Curwen his Life and Travells Bet'n ye yeares 1678 and 1687: Of Whither He Voyag'd, Where He Stay'd, Whom He Sawe, and What He Learnt.""

3.

      We have now reached the point from which the more academic school of alienists date Charles Ward's madness. Upon his discovery the youth had looked immediately at a few of the inner pages of the book and manuscripts, and had evidently seen something which impressed him tremendously. Indeed, in shewing the titles to the workmen he appeared to guard the text itself with peculiar care, and to labour under a perturbation for which even the antiquarian and genealogical significance of the find could hardly account. Upon returning home he broke the news with an almost embarrassed air, as if he wished to convey an idea of its supreme importance without having to exhibit the evidence itself. He did not even shew the titles to his parents, but simply told them that he had found some documents in Joseph Curwen's handwriting, ""mostly in cipher"", which would have to be studied very carefully before yielding up their true meaning. It is unlikely that he would have shewn what he did to the workmen, had it not been for their unconcealed curiosity. As it was he doubtless wished to avoid any display of peculiar reticence which would increase their discussion of the matter.
      That night Charles Ward sat up in his room reading the new-found book and papers, and when day came he did not desist. His meals, on his urgent request when his mother called to see what was amiss, were sent up to him; and in the afternoon he appeared only briefly when the men came to install the Curwen picture and mantelpiece in his study. The next night he slept in snatches in his clothes, meanwhile wrestling feverishly with the unravelling of the cipher manuscript. In the morning his mother saw that he was at work on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher, which he had frequently shewn her before; but in response to her query he said that the Curwen key could not be applied to it. That afternoon he abandoned his work and watched the men fascinatedly as they finished their installation of the picture with its woodwork above a cleverly realistic electric log, setting the mock-fireplace and overmantel a little out from the north wall as if a chimney existed, and boxing in the sides with panelling to match the room's. The front panel holding the picture was sawn and hinged to allow cupboard space behind it. After the workmen went he moved his work into the study and sat down before it with his eyes half on the cipher and half on the portrait which stared back at him like a year-adding and century-recalling mirror.
      His parents, subsequently recalling his conduct at this period, give interesting details anent the policy of concealment which he practiced. Before servants he seldom hid any paper which he might be studying, since he rightly assumed that Curwen's intricate and archaic chirography would be too much for them. With his parents, however, he was more circumspect; and unless the manuscript in question were a cipher, or a mere mass of cryptic symbols and unknown ideographs (as that entitled ""To Him Who Shal Come After etc."" seemed to be), he would cover it with some convenient paper until his caller had departed. At night he kept the papers under lock and key in an antique cabinet of his, where he also placed them whenever he left the room. He soon resumed fairly regular hours and habits, except that his long walks and other outside interests seemed to cease. The opening of school, where he now began his senior year, seemed a great bore to him; and he frequently asserted his determination never to bother with college. He had, he said, important special investigations to make, which would provide him with more avenues toward knowledge and the humanities than any university which the world could boast.
      Naturally, only one who had always been more or less studious, eccentric, and solitary could have pursued this course for many days without attracting notice. Ward, however, was constitutionally a scholar and a hermit; hence his parents were less surprised than regretful at the close confinement and secrecy he adopted. At the same time, both his father and mother thought it odd that he would shew them no scrap of his treasure-trove, nor give any connected account of such data as he had deciphered. This reticence he explained away as due to a wish to wait until he might announce some connected revelation, but as the weeks passed without further disclosures there began to grow up between the youth and his family a kind of constraint; intensified in his mother's case by her manifest disapproval of all Curwen delvings.
      During October Ward began visiting the libraries again, but no longer for the antiquarian matter of his former days. Witchcraft and magic, occultism and daemonology, were what he sought now; and when Providence sources proved unfruitful he would take the train for Boston and tap the wealth of the great library in Copley Square, the Widener Library at Harvard, or the Zion Research Library in Brookline, where certain rare works on Biblical subjects are available. He bought extensively, and fitted up a whole additional set of shelves in his study for newly acquired works on uncanny subjects; while during the Christmas holidays he made a round of out-of-town trips including one to Salem to consult certain records at the Essex Institute.
      About the middle of January, 1920, there entered Ward's bearing an element of triumph which he did not explain, and he was no more found at work upon the Hutchinson cipher. Instead, he inaugurated a dual policy of chemical research and record-scanning; fitting up for the one a laboratory in the unused attic of the house, and for the latter haunting all the sources of vital statistics in Providence. Local dealers in drugs and scientific supplies, later questioned, gave astonishingly queer and meaningless catalogues of the substances and instruments he purchased; but clerks at the State House, the City Hall, and the various libraries agree as to the definite object of his second interest. He was searching intensely and feverishly for the grave of Joseph Curwen, from whose slate slab an older generation had so wisely blotted the name.
      Little by little there grew upon the Ward family the conviction that something was wrong. Charles had had freaks and changes of minor interests before, but this growing secrecy and absorption in strange pursuits was unlike even him. His school work was the merest pretence; and although he failed in no test, it could be seen that the old application had all vanished. He had other concernments now; and when not in his new laboratory with a score of obsolete alchemical books, could be found either poring over old burial records down town or glued to his volumes of occult lore in his study, where the startlingly - one almost fancied increasingly - similar features of Joseph Curwen stared blandly at him from the great overmantel on the north wall.
      Late in March Ward added to his archive-searching a ghoulish series of rambles about the various ancient cemeteries of the city. The cause appeared later, when it was learned from City Hall clerks that he had probably found an important clue. His quest had suddenly shifted from the grave of Joseph Curwen to that of one Naphthali Field; and this shift was explained when, upon going over the files that he had been over, the investigators actually found a fragmentary record of Curwen's burial which had escaped the general obliteration, and which stated that the curious leaden coffin had been interred ""10 ft. S. and 5 ft. W. of Naphthali Field's grave in ye - "". The lack of a specified burying-ground in the surviving entry greatly complicated the search, and Naphthali Field's grave seemed as elusive as that of Curwen; but here no systematic effacement had existed, and one might reasonably be expected to stumble on the stone itself even if its record had perished. Hence the rambles - from which St. John's (the former King's) Churchyard and the ancient Congregational burying-ground in the midst of Swan Point Cemetery were excluded, since other statistics had shewn that the only Naphthali Field (obiit 1729) whose grave could have been meant had been a Baptist.

4.

      It was toward May when Dr. Willett, at the request of the senior Ward, and fortified with all the Curwen data which the family had gleaned from Charles in his non-secretive days, talked with the young man. The interview was of little value or conclusiveness, for Willett felt at every moment that Charles was thoroughly master of himself and in touch with matters of real importance; but it at least forced the secretive youth to offer some rational explanation of his recent demeanour. Of a pallid, impassive type not easily shewing embarrassment, Ward seemed quite ready to discuss his pursuits, though not to reveal their object. He stated that the papers of his ancestor had contained some remarkable secrets of early scientific knowledge, for the most part in cipher, of an apparent scope comparable only to the discoveries of Friar Bacon and perhaps surpassing even those. They were, however, meaningless except when correlated with a body of learning now wholly obsolete; so that their immediate presentation to a world equipped only with modern science would rob them of all impressiveness and dramatic significance. To take their vivid place in the history of human thought they must first be correlated by one familiar with the background out of which they evolved, and to this task of correlation Ward was now devoting himself. He was seeking to acquire as fast as possible those neglected arts of old which a true interpreter of the Curwen data must possess, and hoped in time to make a full announcement and presentation of the utmost interest to mankind and to the world of thought. Not even Einstein, he declared, could more profoundly revolutionise the current conception of things.
      As to his graveyard search, whose object he freely admitted, but the details of whose progress he did not relate, he said he had reason to think that Joseph Curwen's mutilated headstone bore certain mystic symbols - carved from directions in his will and ignorantly spared by those who had effaced the name - which were absolutely essential to the final solution of his cryptic system. Curwen, he believed, had wished to guard his secret with care; and had consequently distributed the data in an exceedingly curious fashion. When Dr. Willett asked to see the mystic documents, Ward displayed much reluctance and tried to put him off with such things as photostatic copies of the Hutchinson cipher and Orne formulae and diagrams; but finally shewed him the exteriors of some of the real Curwen finds - the ""Journall and Notes"", the cipher (title in cipher also), and the formula-filled message ""To Him Who Shal Come After"" - and let him glance inside such as were in obscure characters.
      He also opened the diary at a page carefully selected for its innocuousness and gave Willett a glimpse of Curwen's connected handwriting in English. The doctor noted very closely the crabbed and complicated letters, and the general aura of the seventeenth century which clung round both penmanship and style despite the writer's survival into the eighteenth century, and became quickly certain that the document was genuine. The text itself was relatively trivial, and Willett recalled only a fragment:
""Wedn. 16 Octr. 1754. My Sloope the Wakeful this Day putt in from London with XX newe Men pick'd up in ye Indies, Spaniards from Martineco and 2 Dutch Men from Surinam. Ye Dutch Men are like to Desert from have'g hearde Somewhat ill of these Ventures, but I will see to ye Inducing of them to Staye. ffor Mr. Knight Dexter of ye Boy and Book 120 Pieces Camblets, 100 Pieces Assrtd. Cambleteens, 20 Pieces blue Duffles, 100 Pieces Shalloons, 50 Pieces Calamancoes, 300 Pieces each, Shendsoy and Humhums. ffor Mr. Green at ye Elephant 50 Gallon Cyttles, 20 Warm'g Pannes, 15 Bake Cyttles, 10 pr. Smoke'g Tonges. ffor Mr. Perrigo 1 Sett of Awles, ffor Mr. Nightingale 50 Reames prime Foolscap. Say'd ye SABAOTH thrice last Nighte but None appear'd. I must heare more from Mr. H. in Transylvania, tho' it is Harde reach'g him and exceeding strange he can not give me the Use of what he hath so well us'd these hundred yeares. Simon hath not Writ these V. Weekes, but I expecte soon hear'g from him.""
      When upon reaching this point Dr. Willett turned the leaf he was quickly checked by Ward, who almost snatched the book from his grasp. All that the doctor had a chance to see on the newly opened page was a brief pair of sentences; but these, strangely enough, lingered tenaciously in his memory. They ran: ""Ye Verse from Liber-Damnatus be'g spoke V Roodmasses and IV Hallows-Eves, I am Hopeful ye Thing is breed'g Outside ye Spheres. It will drawe One who is to Come, if I can make sure he shal bee, and he shall think on Past thinges and look back thro' all ye yeares, against ye which I must have ready ye Saltes or That to make 'em with.""
      Willett saw no more, but somehow this small glimpse gave a new and vague terror to the painted features of Joseph Curwen which stared blandly down from the overmantel. Ever after that he entertained the odd fancy - which his medical skill of course assured him was only a fancy - that the eyes of the portrait had a sort of wish, if not an actual tendency, to follow young Charles Ward as he moved about the room. He stopped before leaving to study the picture closely, marvelling at its resemblance to Charles and memorising every minute detail of the cryptical, colourless face, even down to a slight scar or pit in the smooth brow above the right eye. Cosmo Alexander, he decided, was a painter worthy of the Scotland that produced Raeburn, and a teacher worthy of his illustrious pupil Gilbert Stuart.
      Assured by the doctor that Charles's mental health was in no danger, but that on the other hand he was engaged in researches which might prove of real importance, the Wards were more lenient than they might otherwise have been when during the following June the youth made positive his refusal to attend college. He had, he declared, studies of much more vital importance to pursue; and intimated a wish to go abroad the following year in order to avail himself of certain sources of data not existing in America. The senior Ward, while denying this latter wish as absurd for a boy of only eighteen, acquiesced regarding the university; so that after a none too brilliant graduation from the Moses Brown School there ensued for Charles a three-year period of intensive occult study and graveyard searching. He became recognised as an eccentric, and dropped even more completely from the sight of his family's friends than he had been before; keeping close to his work and only occasionally making trips to other cities to consult obscure records. Once he went south to talk with a strange old mulatto who dwelt in a swamp and about whom a newspaper had printed a curious article. Again he sought a small village in the Adirondacks whence reports of certain odd ceremonial practices had come. But still his parents forbade him the trip to the Old World which he desired.
      Coming of age in April, 1923, and having previously inherited a small competence from his maternal grandfather, Ward determined at last to take the European trip hitherto denied him. Of his proposed itinerary he would say nothing save that the needs of his studies would carry him to many places, but he promised to write his parents fully and faithfully. When they saw he could not be dissuaded, they ceased all opposition and helped as best they could; so that in June the young man sailed for Liverpool with the farewell blessings of his father and mother, who accompanied him to Boston and waved him out of sight from the White Star pier in Charlestown. Letters soon told of his safe arrival, and of his securing good quarters in Great Russell Street, London; where he proposed to stay, shunning all family friends, till he had exhausted the resources of the British Museum in a certain direction. Of his daily life he wrote but little, for there was little to write. Study and experiment consumed all his time, and he mentioned a laboratory which he had established in one of his rooms. That he said nothing of antiquarian rambles in the glamorous old city with its luring skyline of ancient domes and steeples and its tangles of roads and alleys whose mystic convolutions and sudden vistas alternately beckon and surprise, was taken by his parents as a good index of the degree to which his new interests had engrossed his mind.
      In June, 1924, a brief note told of his departure for Paris, to which he had before made one or two flying trips for material in the Bibliothque Nationale. For three months thereafter he sent only postal cards, giving an address in the Rue St. Jacques and referring to a special search among rare manuscripts in the library of an unnamed private collector. He avoided acquaintances, and no tourists brought back reports of having seen him. Then came a silence, and in October the Wards received a picture card from Prague, Czecho-Slovakia, stating that Charles was in that ancient town for the purpose of conferring with a certain very aged man supposed to be the last living possessor of some very curious mediaeval information. He gave an address in the Neustadt, and announced no move till the following January; when he dropped several cards from Vienna telling of his passage through that city on the way toward a more easterly region whither one of his correspondents and fellow-delvers into the occult had invited him.
      The next card was from Klausenburg in Transylvania, and told of Ward's progress toward his destination. He was going to visit a Baron Ferenczy, whose estate lay in the mountains east of Rakus; and was to be addressed at Rakus in the care of that nobleman. Another card from Rakus a week later, saying that his host's carriage had met him and that he was leaving the village for the mountains, was his last message for a considerable time; indeed, he did not reply to his parents' frequent letters until May, when he wrote to discourage the plan of his mother for a meeting in London, Paris, or Rome during the summer, when the elder Wards were planning to travel in Europe. His researches, he said, were such that he could not leave his present quarters; while the situation of Baron Ferenczy's castle did not favour visits. It was on a crag in the dark wooded mountains, and the region was so shunned by the country folk that normal people could not help feeling ill at ease. Moreover, the Baron was not a person likely to appeal to correct and conservative New England gentlefolk. His aspect and manners had idiosyncrasies, and his age was so great as to be disquieting. It would be better, Charles said, if his parents would wait for his return to Providence; which could scarcely be far distant.
      That return did not, however, take place until May, 1926, when after a few heralding cards the young wanderer quietly slipped into New York on the Homeric and traversed the long miles to Providence by motor-coach, eagerly drinking in the green rolling hills, the fragrant, blossoming orchards, and the white steepled towns of vernal Connecticut; his first taste of ancient New England in nearly four years. When the coach crossed the Pawcatuck and entered Rhode Island amidst the faery goldenness of a late spring afternoon his heart beat with quickened force, and the entry to Providence along Reservoir and Elmwood avenues was a breathless and wonderful thing despite the depths of forbidden lore to which he had delved. At the high square where Broad, Weybosset, and Empire Streets join, he saw before and below him in the fire of sunset the pleasant, remembered houses and domes and steeples of the old town; and his head swam curiously as the vehicle rolled down the terminal behind the Biltmore, bringing into view the great dome and soft, roof-pierced greenery of the ancient hill across the river, and the tall colonial spire of the First Baptist Church limned pink in the magic evening light against the fresh springtime verdure of its precipitous background.
      Old Providence! It was this place and the mysterious forces of its long, continuous history which had brought him into being, and which had drawn him back toward marvels and secrets whose boundaries no prophet might fix. Here lay the arcana, wondrous or dreadful as the case might be, for which all his years of travel and application had been preparing him. A taxicab whirled him through Post Office Square with its glimpse of the river, the old Market House, and the head of the bay, and up the steep curved slope of Waterman Street to Prospect, where the vast gleaming dome and sunset-flushed Ionic columns of the Christian Science Church beckoned northward. Then eight squares past the fine old estates his childish eyes had known, and the quaint brick sidewalks so often trodden by his youthful feet. And at last the little white overtaken farmhouse on the right, on the left the classic Adam porch and stately bayed facade of the great brick house where he was born. It was twilight, and Charles Dexter Ward had come home.

5.

      A school of alienists slightly less academic than Dr. Lyman's assign to Ward's European trip the beginning of his true madness. Admitting that he was sane when he started, they believe that his conduct upon returning implies a disastrous change. But even to this claim Dr. Willett refuses to accede. There was, he insists, something later; and the queernesses of the youth at this stage he attributes to the practice of rituals learned abroad - odd enough things, to be sure, but by no means implying mental aberration on the part of their celebrant. Ward himself, though visibly aged and hardened, was still normal in his general reactions; and in several talks with Willett displayed a balance which no madman - even an incipient one - could feign continuously for long. What elicited the notion of insanity at this period were the sounds heard at all hours from Ward's attic laboratory, in which he kept himself most of the time. There were chantings and repetitions, and thunderous declamations in uncanny rhythms; and although these sounds were always in Ward's own voice, there was something in the quality of that voice, and in the accents of the formulae it pronounced, which could not but chill the blood of every hearer. It was noticed that Nig, the venerable and beloved black cat of the household, bristled and arched his back perceptibly when certain of the tones were heard.
      The odours occasionally wafted from the laboratory were likewise exceedingly strange. Sometimes they were very noxious, but more often they were aromatic, with a haunting, elusive quality which seemed to have the power of inducing fantastic images. People who smelled them had a tendency to glimpse momentary mirages of enormous vistas, with strange hills or endless avenues of sphinxes and hippogriffs stretching off into infinite distance. Ward did not resume his old-time rambles, but applied himself diligently to the strange books he had brought home, and to equally strange delvings within his quarters; explaining that European sources had greatly enlarged the possibilities of his work, and promising great revelations in the years to come. His older aspect increased to a startling degree his resemblance to the Curwen portrait in his library; and Dr. Willett would often pause by the latter after a call, marvelling at the virtual identity, and reflecting that only the small pit above the picture's right eye now remained to differentiate the long-dead wizard from the living youth. These calls of Willett's, undertaken at the request of the senior Wards, were curious affairs. Ward at no time repulsed the doctor, but the latter saw that he could never reach the young man's inner psychology. Frequently he noted peculiar things about; little wax images of grotesque design on the shelves or tables, and the half-erased remnants of circles, triangles, and pentagrams in chalk or charcoal on the cleared central space of the large room. And always in the night those rhythms and incantations thundered, till it became very difficult to keep servants or suppress furtive talk of Charles's madness.
      In January, 1927, a peculiar incident occurred. One night about midnight, as Charles was chanting a ritual whose weird cadence echoed unpleasantly through the house below, there came a sudden gust of chill wind from the bay, and a faint, obscure trembling of the earth which everyone in the neighbourhood noted. At the same time the cat exhibited phenomenal traces of fright, while dogs bayed for as much as a mile around. This was the prelude to a sharp thunderstorm, anomalous for the season, which brought with it such a crash that Mr. and Mrs. Ward believed the house had been struck. They rushed upstairs to see what damage had been done, but Charles met them at the door to the attic; pale, resolute, and portentous, with an almost fearsome combination of triumph and seriousness on his face. He assured them that the house had not really been struck, and that the storm would soon be over. They paused, and looking through a window saw that he was indeed right; for the lightning flashed farther and farther off, whilst the trees ceased to bend in the strange frigid gust from the water. The thunder sank to a sort of dull mumbling chuckle and finally died away. Stars came out, and the stamp of triumph on Charles Ward's face crystallised into a very singular expression.
      For two months or more after this incident Ward was less confined than usual to his laboratory. He exhibited a curious interest in the weather, and made odd inquiries about the date of the spring thawing of the ground. One night late in March he left the house after midnight, and did not return till almost morning; when his mother, being wakeful, heard a rumbling motor draw up to the carriage entrance. Muffled oaths could be distinguished, and Mrs. Ward, rising and going to the window, saw four dark figures removing a long, heavy box from a truck at Charles's direction and carrying it within by the side door. She heard laboured breathing and ponderous footfalls on the stairs, and finally a dull thumping in the attic; after which the footfalls descended again, and the four men reappeared outside and drove off in their truck.
      The next day Charles resumed his strict attic seclusion, drawing down the dark shades of his laboratory windows and appearing to be working on some metal substance. He would open the door to no one, and steadfastly refused all proffered food. About noon a wrenching sound followed by a terrible cry and a fall were heard, but when Mrs. Ward rapped at the door her son at length answered faintly, and told her that nothing had gone amiss. The hideous and indescribable stench now welling out was absolutely harmless and unfortunately necessary. Solitude was the one prime essential, and he would appear later for dinner. That afternoon, after the conclusion of some odd hissing sounds which came from behind the locked portal, he did finally appear; wearing an extremely haggard aspect and forbidding anyone to enter the laboratory upon any pretext. This, indeed, proved the beginning of a new policy of secrecy; for never afterward was any other person permitted to visit either the mysterious garret workroom or the adjacent storeroom which he cleaned out, furnished roughly, and added to his inviolably private domain as a sleeping apartment. Here he lived, with books brought up from his library beneath, till the time he purchased the Pawtuxet bungalow and moved to it all his scientific effects.
      In the evening Charles secured the paper before the rest of the family and damaged part of it through an apparent accident. Later on Dr. Willett, having fixed the date from statements by various members of the household, looked up an intact copy at the Journal office and found that in the destroyed section the following small item had occurred:
Nocturnal Diggers Surprised in
North Burial Ground

Robert Hart, night watchman at the North Burial Ground, this morning discovered a party of several men with a motor truck in the oldest part of the cemetery, but apparently frightened them off before they had accomplished whatever their object may have been.
      The discovery took place at about four o'clock, when Hart's attention was attracted by the sound of a motor outside his shelter. Investigating, he saw a large truck on the main drive several rods away; but could not reach it before the sound of his feet on the gravel had revealed his approach. The men hastily placed a large box in the truck and drove away toward the street before they could be overtaken; and since no known grave was disturbed, Hart believes that this box was an object which they wished to bury.
      The diggers must have been at work for a long while before detection, for Hart found an enormous hole dug at a considerable distance back from the roadway in the lot of Amasa Field, where most of the old stones have long ago disappeared. The hole, a place as large and deep as a grave, was empty; and did not coincide with any interment mentioned in the cemetery records.
      Sergt. Riley of the Second Station viewed the spot and gave the opinion that the hole was dug by bootleggers rather gruesomely and ingeniously seeking a safe cache for liquor in a place not likely to be disturbed. In reply to questions Hart said he thought the escaping truck had headed up Rochambeau Avenue, though he could not be sure.
      During the next few days Ward was seldom seen by his family. Having added sleeping quarters to his attic realm, he kept closely to himself there, ordering food brought to the door and not taking it in until after the servant had gone away. The droning of monotonous formulae and the chanting of bizarre rhythms recurred at intervals, while at other times occasional listeners could detect the sound of tinkling glass, hissing chemicals, running water, or roaring gas flames. Odours of the most unplaceable quality, wholly unlike any before noted, hung at times around the door; and the air of tension observable in the young recluse whenever he did venture briefly forth was such as to excite the keenest speculation. Once he made a hasty trip to the Athenaeum for a book he required, and again he hired a messenger to fetch him a highly obscure volume from Boston. Suspense was written portentously over the whole situation, and both the family and Dr. Willett confessed themselves wholly at a loss what to do or think about it.

6.

      Then on the fifteenth of April a strange development occurred. While nothing appeared to grow different in kind, there was certainly a very terrible difference in degree; and Dr. Willett somehow attaches great significance to the change. The day was Good Friday, a circumstance of which the servants made much, but which others quite naturally dismiss as an irrelevant coincidence. Late in the afternoon young Ward began repeating a certain formula in a singularly loud voice, at the same time burning some substance so pungent that its fumes escaped over the entire house. The formula was so plainly audible in the hall outside the locked door that Mrs. Ward could not help memorising it as she waited and listened anxiously, and later on she was able to write it down at Dr. Willett's request. It ran as follows, and experts have told Dr. Willett that its very close analogue can be found in the mystic writings of ""Eliphas Levi"", that cryptic soul who crept through a crack in the forbidden door and glimpsed the frightful vistas of the void beyond:
""Per Adonai Eloim, Adonai Jehova,
Adonai Sabaoth, Metraton On Agla Mathon,
verbum pythonicum, mysterium salamandrae,
conventus sylvorum, antra gnomorum,
daemonia Coeli Gad, Almousin, Gibor, Jehosua,
Evam, Zariatnatmik, veni, veni, veni.""
      This had been going on for two hours without change or intermission when over all the neighbourhood a pandaemoniac howling of dogs set in. The extent of this howling can be judged from the space it received in the papers the next day, but to those in the Ward household it was overshadowed by the odour which instantly followed it; a hideous, all-pervasive odour which none of them had ever smelt before or have ever smelt since. In the midst of this mephitic flood there came a very perceptible flash like that of lightning, which would have been blinding and impressive but for the daylight around; and then was heard the voice that no listener can ever forget because of its thunderous remoteness, its incredible depth, and its eldritch dissimilarity to Charles Ward's voice. It shook the house, and was clearly heard by at least two neighbours above the howling of the dogs. Mrs. Ward, who had been listening in despair outside her son's locked laboratory, shivered as she recognised its hellish import; for Charles had told her of its evil fame in dark books, and of the manner in which it had thundered, according to the Fenner letters, above the doomed Pawtuxet farmhouse on the night of Joseph Curwen's annihilation. There was no mistaking that nightmare phrase, for Charles had described it too vividly in the old days when he had talked frankly of his Curwen investigations. And yet it was only this fragment of an archaic and forgotten language: ""DIES MIES JESCHET BOENE DOESEF DOUVEMA ENITEMAUS"".
      Close upon this thundering there came a momentary darkening of the daylight, though sunset was still an hour distant, and then a puff of added odour different from the first but equally unknown and intolerable. Charles was chanting again now and his mother could hear syllables that sounded like ""Yi-nash-Yog-Sothoth-he-lgeb-fi-throdog"" - ending in a ""Yah!"" whose maniacal force mounted in an ear-splitting crescendo. A second later all previous memories were effaced by the wailing scream which burst out with frantic explosiveness and gradually changed form to a paroxysm of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Mrs. Ward, with the mingled fear and blind courage of maternity, advanced and knocked affrightedly at the concealing panels, but obtained no sign of recognition. She knocked again, but paused nervelessly as a second shriek arose, this one unmistakably in the familiar voice of her son, and sounding concurrently with the still bursting cachinnations of that other voice. Presently she fainted, although she is still unable to recall the precise and immediate cause. Memory sometimes makes merciful deletions.
      Mr. Ward returned from the business section at about quarter past six; and not finding his wife downstairs, was told by the frightened servants that she was probably watching at Charles's door, from which the sounds had been far stranger than ever before. Mounting the stairs at once, he saw Mrs. Ward stretched at full length on the floor of the corridor outside the laboratory; and realising that she had fainted, hastened to fetch a glass of water from a set bowl in a neighbouring alcove. Dashing the cold fluid in her face, he was heartened to observe an immediate response on her part, and was watching the bewildered opening of her eyes when a chill shot through him and threatened to reduce him to the very state from which she was emerging. For the seemingly silent laboratory was not as silent as it had appeared to be, but held the murmurs of a tense, muffled conversation in tones too low for comprehension, yet of a quality profoundly disturbing to the soul.
      It was not, of course, new for Charles to mutter formulae; but this muttering was definitely different. It was so palpably a dialogue, or imitation of a dialogue, with the regular alteration of inflections suggesting question and answer, statement and response. One voice was undisguisedly that of Charles, but the other had a depth and hollowness which the youth's best powers of ceremonial mimicry had scarcely approached before. There was something hideous, blasphemous, and abnormal about it, and but for a cry from his recovering wife which cleared his mind by arousing his protective instincts it is not likely that Theodore Howland Ward could have maintained for nearly a year more his old boast that he had never fainted. As it was, he seized his wife in his arms and bore her quickly downstairs before she could notice the voices which had so horribly disturbed him. Even so, however, he was not quick enough to escape catching something himself which caused him to stagger dangerously with his burden. For Mrs. Ward's cry had evidently been heard by others than he, and there had come from behind the locked door the first distinguishable words which that masked and terrible colloquy had yielded. They were merely an excited caution in Charles's own voice, but somehow their implications held a nameless fright for the father who overheard them. The phrase was just this: ""Sshh! - write!""
      Mr. and Mrs. Ward conferred at some length after dinner, and the former resolved to have a firm and serious talk with Charles that very night. No matter how important the object, such conduct could no longer be permitted; for these latest developments transcended every limit of sanity and formed a menace to the order and nervous well-being of the entire household. The youth must indeed have taken complete leave of his senses, since only downright madness could have prompted the wild screams and imaginary conversations in assumed voices which the present day had brought forth. All this must be stopped, or Mrs. Ward would be made ill and the keeping of servants become an impossibility.
      Mr. Ward rose at the close of the meal and started upstairs for Charles's laboratory. On the third floor, however, he paused at the sounds which he heard proceeding from the now disused library of his son. Books were apparently being flung about and papers wildly rustled, and upon stepping to the door Mr. Ward beheld the youth within, excitedly assembling a vast armful of literary matter of every size and shape. Charles's aspect was very drawn and haggard, and he dropped his entire load with a start at the sound of his father's voice. At the elder man's command he sat down, and for some time listened to the admonitions he had so long deserved. There was no scene. At the end of the lecture he agreed that his father was right, and that his noises, mutterings, incantations, and chemical odours were indeed inexcusable nuisances. He agreed to a policy of greater quiet, though insisting on a prolongation of his extreme privacy. Much of his future work, he said, was in any case purely book research; and he could obtain quarters elsewhere for any such vocal rituals as might be necessary at a later stage. For the fright and fainting of his mother he expressed the keenest contrition, and explained that the conversation later heard was part of an elaborate symbolism designed to create a certain mental atmosphere. His use of abstruse technical terms somewhat bewildered Mr. Ward, but the parting impression was one of undeniable sanity and poise despite a mysterious tension of the utmost gravity. The interview was really quite inconclusive, and as Charles picked up his armful and left the room Mr. Ward hardly knew what to make of the entire business. It was as mysterious as the death of poor old Nig, whose stiffening form had been found an hour before in the basement, with staring eyes and fear-distorted mouth.
      Driven by some vague detective instinct, the bewildered parent now glanced curiously at the vacant shelves to see what his son had taken up to the attic. The youth's library was plainly and rigidly classified, so that one might tell at a glance the books or at least the kind of books which had been withdrawn. On this occasion Mr. Ward was astonished to find that nothing of the occult or the antiquarian, beyond what had been previously removed, was missing. These new withdrawals were all modern items; histories, scientific treatises, geographies, manuals of literature, philosophic works, and certain contemporary newspapers and magazines. It was a very curious shift from Charles Ward's recent run of reading, and the father paused in a growing vortex of perplexity and an engulfing sense of strangeness. The strangeness was a very poignant sensation, and almost clawed at his chest as he strove to see just what was wrong around him. Something was indeed wrong, and tangibly as well as spiritually so. Ever since he had been in this room he had known that something was amiss, and at last it dawned upon him what it was.
      On the north wall rose still the ancient carved overmantel from the house in Olney Court, but to the cracked and precariously restored oils of the large Curwen portrait disaster had come. Time and unequal heating had done their work at last, and at some time since the room's last cleaning the worst had happened. Peeling clear of the wood, curling tighter and tighter, and finally crumbling into small bits with what must have been malignly silent suddenness, the portrait of Joseph Curwen had resigned forever its staring surveillance of the youth it so strangely resembled, and now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust.
","""You fool, Warren is DEAD!""
As soon as the demonic and bestial voice had finished its horrifying utterance, my fear, which had spent the last several minutes of my final, despairing conversation with Warren in a state of suspended animation waiting in vain to hear of my friend's hopeful escape, spread from my chest to my head and from there, spread like a cold sensation through my veins, filling me with a terrified despairing sensation that I had never experienced before. I was paralyzed by my fear. My legs gave out, and I collapsed on the floor of the tomb. Suddenly the blackness closed in, and I knew no more.
I woke up the next day to the muted yet familiar smell of sterilized linens. After my disorientation dissipated, I realized that I had been taken to the local hospital. From Warren's research into the entrance to the netherworld, we had discovered that the areas surrounding the entrances were feared by local peoples, and were feared and avoided.
A mild sense of comfort filled me as I realized that whatever entity had taken my friend from this mortal realm had not escaped its netherworld lair. Its words haunted my thoughts, resonating in my mind like a bell. Shortly after my awakening, a nurse entered my room to tell me that the sheriff had asked for me.
Soon after, a stout, short man entered the room. He had a worried look on his face. I could tell that whatever he wanted to discuss with me was done with great reluctance and anxiety. He stuttered through a short introduction, his name being Alan Graham. He had said he had found me after he had received reports from some of the local people near the graveyard, that two grave robbers had been trespassing onto the forbidden lands. He had found me unconscious in the tomb, but had not seen or heard anything. He was obviously spooked by the dilapidated structures in the swamp and had taken me to the hospital. He asked me of what happened to the man that witnesses saw me enter the swamp with.
I was filled with an inhumane dread at the thought of telling the oblivious detective of my experience in the graveyard. However, I braved through my fear, though had to take several pauses to avoid becoming overcome with fear and passing out again. By the time, I had finished, Graham had begun sobbing uncontrollably, He had started shaking as big, wet tears dropped down his face. Though I don't understand why, he had believed my tale. Graham told me that I could leave, as long as I didn't go back to the graveyard. I agreed, heaving no desire to return the horror that had taken Warren from this life.
The next four months of my life were haunted by nightmares of the disembodied voice talking to me through the grave. Though I attempted to forget that night, my mind would always take me back to the graveyard. While my mind was filled with immense terror of what I had observed, I was so curious as to what Warren had unearthed in that hidden necropolis. The thoughts of the latter slowly consumed my thoughts, and I was unable to function in society. I was resolved to find out what Warren had unearthed. However, I was aware of the danger I faced, and decided I would go back by myself. If I died, I would take the knowledge of the location of the portal to the underworld with me.
I returned the following autumn, having read up on the lore that Warren had kept hidden me, from my own protection. The tomes he had uncovered told tales of the monstrous demons that could travel between the underworld and the surface one. The tomes were mostly undecipherable to me, as my linguistic ability was not strong enough to decipher the archaic texts. However, I was able to make out the basic information, though none of the stories told me of a way to prevent being killed or how to hide myself from the undead beings.
Despite the bleakness of my remaining mortality, my curiosity of the hidden world that only a few mortals had ever seen grew stronger and stronger, dominating my thoughts. I knew I had to return, even though I would likely die.
When I returned to the cemetery, I was unsurprised that everything had remained completely the same. The equipment Warren and I had brought had remained untouched, the telephone wire still being in place. My mind quickly focused on Warren, would I discover his remains, if the demons had even left his body? I removed the black slab covering the entrance, though it too much longer than when I had Warren helping me. Nevertheless, I was able to move the stone. However, I was only able to budge it so that it would eventually close on the doorway, trapping me inside.
Though I knew my life would be lost, my curiosity had taken over me, and I knew that until I had seen what horrors or wonder were hidden beneath the tomb, I could not find peace. So, I set off into the darkness. These are the final thoughts I have before I leave this world. To whoever discovers this note next to this other worldly gateway, the horrors beneath this tomb have consumed my life, and for your sake, I pray that you do not become entrapped into its ethereal mystique as I have. Run, you fool, run, before you are trapped in spirit and in body as I am! Run, before the obsession takes over your every waking thought! Leave!
- Randolph Carter
",False
"Spoonbill Village, Northernmost Quang Binh Province, SRV.
June 30, 2011.
Considering their first encounter, this meeting was going rather well.
""No, no, I assure you that I have had quite enough… well, if you insist…"" In the course of explaining his task to the household he would be staying in, Joseph Clayton had been offered tea at the behest of the mistress of the household and all three times, he had acquiesced. She was attending her husband in fine cotton clothes of white and black, the cut more resembling something out of Javanese dancing than anything worn in Indochina during the past thousand years. Their son, called from his lessons for the presentation, was sitting at the far end of the room, listening to what was going on. While he had repeated much the same spiel that Professor Andover to the house's three inhabitants, he had sipped at his bowl almost automatically as one would with water, clear onto what was now his fourth helping. Although not unpleasant, the drink had considerably more kick to it than even the strong brews typical of Vietnamese green tea.
What perplexed Joseph was that he couldn't identify the extra ingredient. It wasn't peppers, having no discernible remains or even the raw chemical heat of capsaicin. It could be ginger, but the heat was of an utterly different kind than any ginger he had ever experienced.
Then again, the additive could just as well be Tarantula venom given the figure he was giving his introduction to.
His name, as he had given it, was Noc. He was the most experience hunter, archer and scout of the village, was of an incredibly ancient lineage and, incidentally, was the first person of this strange, isolated village that he had seen. His tattoos all featured arachnid themes of legs, webbing and fangs and his eyes…
Marie had mentioned that some of the warriors practiced sorcery with mutative effects. If that was what caused Nocs eyes to become all black, seemingly all pupils and tempting Joseph to mentally refer to the man as ""Spider Eye"", then maybe those three weirdoes they caught in the biology labs back in February were onto something after all.
Sitting in the main reception area of the home, replete with decorations of strange latticed designs and black lacquer, Joseph watched carefully as Noc finished examining one of his bowstrings before his eyes darted around the room. On the wall, several bows hung in their unstrung state: the white and banded flatbow he had first witnessed, several simple bows of light colored cane and even one recurve bow made of dark red hardwood.
""So that is your request: to hear the stories of our history, to observe the operation of a household of status and to… take part in our activities?"" Throughout the introduction of this man and the repetition he had given of the Professors offer, Noc had examined all aspects of him closely… and had not been impressed. He had some muscle tone, but everything else about him absolutely screamed that he was some sort of priest or urban scribe in training. Besides, the combination of the girl's cues toward him and his reaction to his tea made it clear: if the boy had been a virgin, steam would have been pouring out of his ears. That made things difficult (and potentially dangerous) for everyone.
Besides, very few people in this village held any affection at all for someone with Joseph's skin tone.
After receiving affirmation of Joseph's duties, Noc laid out the rules. ""Know this: you will record the histories when they are told to you. You shall ask questions when you are allowed and you shall observe what you shall participate in what you are allowed to participate in. No pestering me with questions, no sneaking around trying to observe the women and children and no and I mean no trying to wheedle out information through trickery. We had quite enough trouble with that sort of thing the last time around.""
Joseph was immediately insulted, even though he did not how it as he automatically agreed. Still, two things bothered him. First, underneath the gold and bronze bangles that decorated the forearms and ankles of Nocs wife, Joseph had noticed strange scars, akin in shape to the marks that sperm whales bore from their battles with giant squid.
Second… what did Noc mean by the last time around?
That Night…
As he lay awake, Joseph realized how exhausting the day had been. As it turned out, he was probably doing to spend most of his time in this house as a sort of a servant: documenting and participating in cooking and chores, handling domestic duties and picking little things up only as Noc's wife deemed appropriate. No real questions answered, no interesting discoveries or scandals or surprises… just ordinary ethnographic work.
It wasn't made any better that his libido was getting annoyed at the 'busy' signals it kept receiving. However, there had been no real opportunity to talk with Marie after last night, with all the revelations of cannibalism and sorcery and other things that probably should have made his stomach turn.
/Maybe it would be better if they had made your stomach turn./ Came a wheedling little multi-voiced dialogue from inside his head… from inside his head, but not originating from him.
Oh no. Joseph thought with a mental groan. Not you idiots again! I thought you gave it up after the last time.
/The last time? You mean when you were in the thrall of carnal lusts, disgracing your heritage?/ The dominant voice changed from one of the old WASP lords to that of an aristocratic dowager that had been ancient even when Granny Clara had been a girl. /Maybe now that you know what her kind get up to, you will listen to reason and find a girl more suitable to a young man of your station./
Her parents are just as middle class as mine are, thank you all very much. Joseph snarked back mentally, fully knowing how these… wraiths felt about his relationship with Marie and savoring the thought of causing them anguish.
/You know full well what is meant. What is not understood is why the other girl did not so arouse your… passions./
Oh please, her family is just as drenched in sorcery as these guys, it's just that they're more polite about who they slice open. Besides, I don't really think you'd have acted any differently if it had been Tracy I'd been with that night instead of Marie, inbred and rural as she apparently is. He remembered clearly that night: how these voices (who he was fairly sure were not the products of schizophrenia despite superficially similar symptomatology), had come to him in the midst of what should have been unimaginable passion and communion with his girlfriend (though with was much more awkward, rushed and possibly painful than desired). Even as the passion mounted, their insults became worse: the taunts, the archaic, hateful rhetoric, the most vicious slurs directed against Marie and him. And yet he had forged on, continuing despite the rising chorus of insane voices inside his head… or even because of them, for as they blasphemed against all that Marie was, all the little things that made Joseph love her all the more, he could tell that his defiance was causing them actual pain and torment… and even through the pleasures of the flesh, he took small, sadistic delights in causing pain and anguish to these assholes who claimed authority as his forbearers.
Now Joseph was getting annoyed… and cranky. Look, I don't have to listen to you idiots, even if you do claim to be my ancestors. You came from a completely different world whose rules do not apply to me. Also, the instruments of your authority are gone: no money, no status, no companies or contacts or friends in high places. All that's left are a bunch of ugly little voices in the wind. Why don't you all just blow away? He was tired of his, of having to listen to these inane snobs that he had learned to loath in the abstract and now hated in the concrete. He hated their hate-filled dismissals of all other peoples and cultures, their smug superiority and the generalized arrogance that seemed to drip from the voices.
When they didn't respond, Joseph took it as a sign. ""Good."" He said aloud, as softly as his sense of satisfaction allowed.
","VI.

The Dunwich horror itself came between Lammas and the equinox in 1928, and Dr. Armitage was among those who witnessed its monstrous prologue. He had heard, meanwhile, of Whateley’s grotesque trip to Cambridge, and of his frantic efforts to borrow or copy from the Necronomicon at the Widener Library. Those efforts had been in vain, since Armitage had issued warnings of the keenest intensity to all librarians having charge of the dreaded volume. Wilbur had been shockingly nervous at Cambridge; anxious for the book, yet almost equally anxious to get home again, as if he feared the results of being away long.
      Early in August the half-expected outcome developed, and in the small hours of the 3d Dr. Armitage was awakened suddenly by the wild, fierce cries of the savage watchdog on the college campus. Deep and terrible, the snarling, half-mad growls and barks continued; always in mounting volume, but with hideously significant pauses. Then there rang out a scream from a wholly different throat—such a scream as roused half the sleepers of Arkham and haunted their dreams ever afterward—such a scream as could come from no being born of earth, or wholly of earth.
      Armitage, hastening into some clothing and rushing across the street and lawn to the college buildings, saw that others were ahead of him; and heard the echoes of a burglar-alarm still shrilling from the library. An open window shewed black and gaping in the moonlight. What had come had indeed completed its entrance; for the barking and the screaming, now fast fading into a mixed low growling and moaning, proceeded unmistakably from within. Some instinct warned Armitage that what was taking place was not a thing for unfortified eyes to see, so he brushed back the crowd with authority as he unlocked the vestibule door. Among the others he saw Professor Warren Rice and Dr. Francis Morgan, men to whom he had told some of his conjectures and misgivings; and these two he motioned to accompany him inside. The inward sounds, except for a watchful, droning whine from the dog, had by this time quite subsided; but Armitage now perceived with a sudden start that a loud chorus of whippoorwills among the shrubbery had commenced a damnably rhythmical piping, as if in unison with the last breaths of a dying man.
      The building was full of a frightful stench which Dr. Armitage knew too well, and the three men rushed across the hall to the small genealogical reading-room whence the low whining came. For a second nobody dared to turn on the light, then Armitage summoned up his courage and snapped the switch. One of the three—it is not certain which—shrieked aloud at what sprawled before them among disordered tables and overturned chairs. Professor Rice declares that he wholly lost consciousness for an instant, though he did not stumble or fall.
      The thing that lay half-bent on its side in a foetid pool of greenish-yellow ichor and tarry stickiness was almost nine feet tall, and the dog had torn off all the clothing and some of the skin. It was not quite dead, but twitched silently and spasmodically while its chest heaved in monstrous unison with the mad piping of the expectant whippoorwills outside. Bits of shoe-leather and fragments of apparel were scattered about the room, and just inside the window an empty canvas sack lay where it had evidently been thrown. Near the central desk a revolver had fallen, a dented but undischarged cartridge later explaining why it had not been fired. The thing itself, however, crowded out all other images at the time. It would be trite and not wholly accurate to say that no human pen could describe it, but one may properly say that it could not be vividly visualised by anyone whose ideas of aspect and contour are too closely bound up with the common life-forms of this planet and of the three known dimensions. It was partly human, beyond a doubt, with very man-like hands and head, and the goatish, chinless face had the stamp of the Whateleys upon it. But the torso and lower parts of the body were teratologically fabulous, so that only generous clothing could ever have enabled it to walk on earth unchallenged or uneradicated.
      Above the waist it was semi-anthropomorphic; though its chest, where the dog’s rending paws still rested watchfully, had the leathery, reticulated hide of a crocodile or alligator. The back was piebald with yellow and black, and dimly suggested the squamous covering of certain snakes. Below the waist, though, it was the worst; for here all human resemblance left off and sheer phantasy began. The skin was thickly covered with coarse black fur, and from the abdomen a score of long greenish-grey tentacles with red sucking mouths protruded limply. Their arrangement was odd, and seemed to follow the symmetries of some cosmic geometry unknown to earth or the solar system. On each of the hips, deep set in a kind of pinkish, ciliated orbit, was what seemed to be a rudimentary eye; whilst in lieu of a tail there depended a kind of trunk or feeler with purple annular markings, and with many evidences of being an undeveloped mouth or throat. The limbs, save for their black fur, roughly resembled the hind legs of prehistoric earth’s giant saurians; and terminated in ridgy-veined pads that were neither hooves nor claws. When the thing breathed, its tail and tentacles rhythmically changed colour, as if from some circulatory cause normal to the non-human side of its ancestry. In the tentacles this was observable as a deepening of the greenish tinge, whilst in the tail it was manifest as a yellowish appearance which alternated with a sickly greyish-white in the spaces between the purple rings. Of genuine blood there was none; only the foetid greenish-yellow ichor which trickled along the painted floor beyond the radius of the stickiness, and left a curious discolouration behind it.
      As the presence of the three men seemed to rouse the dying thing, it began to mumble without turning or raising its head. Dr. Armitage made no written record of its mouthings, but asserts confidently that nothing in English was uttered. At first the syllables defied all correlation with any speech of earth, but toward the last there came some disjointed fragments evidently taken from the Necronomicon, that monstrous blasphemy in quest of which the thing had perished. These fragments, as Armitage recalls them, ran something like “N’gai, n’gha’ghaa, bugg-shoggog, y’hah; Yog-Sothoth, Yog-Sothoth. . . .” They trailed off into nothingness as the whippoorwills shrieked in rhythmical crescendoes of unholy anticipation.
      Then came a halt in the gasping, and the dog raised its head in a long, lugubrious howl. A change came over the yellow, goatish face of the prostrate thing, and the great black eyes fell in appallingly. Outside the window the shrilling of the whippoorwills had suddenly ceased, and above the murmurs of the gathering crowd there came the sound of a panic-struck whirring and fluttering. Against the moon vast clouds of feathery watchers rose and raced from sight, frantic at that which they had sought for prey.
      All at once the dog started up abruptly, gave a frightened bark, and leaped nervously out of the window by which it had entered. A cry rose from the crowd, and Dr. Armitage shouted to the men outside that no one must be admitted till the police or medical examiner came. He was thankful that the windows were just too high to permit of peering in, and drew the dark curtains carefully down over each one. By this time two policemen had arrived; and Dr. Morgan, meeting them in the vestibule, was urging them for their own sakes to postpone entrance to the stench-filled reading-room till the examiner came and the prostrate thing could be covered up.
      Meanwhile frightful changes were taking place on the floor. One need not describe the kind and rate of shrinkage and disintegration that occurred before the eyes of Dr. Armitage and Professor Rice; but it is permissible to say that, aside from the external appearance of face and hands, the really human element in Wilbur Whateley must have been very small. When the medical examiner came, there was only a sticky whitish mass on the painted boards, and the monstrous odour had nearly disappeared. Apparently Whateley had had no skull or bony skeleton; at least, in any true or stable sense. He had taken somewhat after his unknown father.
",False
"Hanoi, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
June 24, 2011.
""Hey, we're here. Get up if you don't want to wake up in Hue!""
Joseph Clayton was shaken awake by the hand of one of his classmates on his shoulder. He was sitting in the back of a taxi van... the only one left sitting, actually, as the others had already disembarked to enter the government office they were parked in front of.
Which probably meant that he was left to pay the fare.
After he payed (as seemed to be his lot on this trip), he followed his classmates and his professor into the government office where they hoped to finally receive their travel permits. He hadn't gotten much of sleep on the plane; a mixture of excitement in the face of overseas travel and sheer jet-lag had conspired to leave him weary and light headed until he got a few hours sleep, which the taxi ride had partially afforded him.
And in that sleep...
The dream had come as a stark, clear memory. When Marie had said that she wasn't going to join him at the Miskatonic campus in Arkham for what would be their first year of university, he had been devastated. His first questions, rushed and frantic, had been about the cause of such a change. She certainly had the SAT score to qualify and student debt could be handled with relative ease. Had she decided to forgo post-secondary to concentrate on her stake in the restaurant? Had financial problems struck and prevented admissions from being paid?
Was it something about him?
Her answers, far more controlled than his frenzied speculation, had all been in the negative. Her SAT scores were good, student loans were still open and she still intended to go for a degree in Biology at Miskatonic. It was just... after she'd gotten that phonograph from her parents' home village, the repayment had been a promise to come and spend a year back in the ""Old Country"" as soon as she could. It would only be for a year and then she would return, ready for university and all accompaniments.
That had been very nearly one year before. She had promised him that she would be coming back in the summer of 2011... but after she had arrived in Vietnam, all contact had stopped cold. Her parents, when asked about her condition, always responded with affirmations that she would return and that she was fine... but as winter wore onto spring, subtle hints of doubt and worry had crept into their voices. Had they even been receiving any news from their daughter and if not, then why not? Had something gone terribly wrong?
As it happened, more baffling events awaited inside.
""What do you mean, restricted?"" Joseph asked the Communist Party bureaucrat sitting across the desk from him. Of course, due to the facts that first, said bureaucrat was a government employee and second, they were not alone in the room, Joseph had been careful not to sound too brunt in his tone. A trung sior Sergeant, wearing the forest green uniform of the Vietnam Border Defence Force (VPA), stood by the door of the office, both watching and guarding.
Relieved at being able to shed his stilted English after Joseph exhibited a decent grasp of the Vietnamese language, the bureaucrat put forth what he knew of the situation. ""Civilian access is almost completely denied inside the area you requested. To be honest, that section of the border has been troublesome ever since the war. We get reports of smugglers, poachers, bandits, H'mong insurgents... every type of violent counter-revolutionary you can think of, this region seems to have it. The local Bru farmers aren't much help, but they generally don't bother others and seem to accept the military presence we keep there."" The bureaucrat shifted his gaze from Joseph to Professor Neville Andover, the leader of this particular expedition. ""I'm sorry, but there's nothing that can be done without high level authorization.""
As a response to this, Neville Andover did not get upset. He did not resign himself to failure. He did not even try to ask if there was any other avenue of entry or way to access the information he needed. He just donned an odd, amused smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling behind his wire rim glasses. ""I assume that General Vo is still the Secretary for the Border Forces?"" He asked, almost distractedly. When the official answered yes, Professor Andover reached into the inside of his light cotton jacket and pulled out a small, metal case. From this case, he removed a single paper card of purest black, embossed with an emerald green ""Delta"" symbol and a capital ""Y"" of gold in the center of that hollow triangle. ""I have been in contact with Comrade Vo for the last six months, planning this expedition as an act of cooperation between our two governments and as a boon for my University. He knows that card; show it or describe it to him... you maywant to run it by General Tran as well. Either way, they will give you the answer you need.""
As the bureaucrat took the card and then as the Border Defense sergeant took it from him and headed out of the room, Joesph wondered about his professor and the oddities that surrounded him. The first time he had ever seen the Professor, it had been in his High School Auditorium as Marie had performed the Stork Dance... and Joseph had noticed strange things. In their senior year of High School, both he and Marie had received reference letters to Miskatonic University in Arkham, a town in Essex county. When he had arrived at Miskatonic (without Marie), he had been shocked that the professor for his Cultural Anthropology class was not only the one who had given him his reference but was also the man who had he had seen three years before.
And then there were his classmates, three of whom had also come on this expedition. Many of them had received similar letters from Prof. Andover and most of those, though not relaying specifics, had said that they had found the circumstances equally strange. Two who had gotten references were on this very trip with them. The first was Tracy Williams from the farm country of Northwest Virginia, a girl with blond hair quite a few shades lighter than Josephs own brassy brown and the class Nippon-Nut, being both obsessed with Anime and Manga as well as being Japanese-proficient. The second was Albert Noyes, a young man who has part white, part black and a little Algonquin-Indian from a small hamlet in southern Vermont. His specialties were technology, math and Mandarin Chinese. The third member of retinue was a young man named Malone who... frankly, was a mystery to the entire class. However, he had volunteered for this trip and his grades had been excellent so his place on the roster had been assured.
But there was still a nagging question at the back of his mind: why? Why had they received offers to go to an obscure if admittedly exceptional regional university when the big names had all passed them over? Why had they been gathered from all across the United States by a single professor? And why, it seemed, did it feel like there was such a big connection between the missing member of Dr. Andovers ""collection"" and the reason behind this expedition?
Why did it feel as if Marie was somehow connected to this?
Eventually, the sergeant came back and informed the bureaucrat of General Vo's express permission for the Professor and his students to enter the exclusion zone as well as General Tran's confirmation, before handing the card back to Neville Andover. Joseph knew that academics could sometimes have friends in high and unusual places, but counting on ... no, expecting the approval of not just one, but two ranking Generals in a non-allied nation? This seemed crazy, certifiably insane even.
But then, so did spectral storks and spoonbills.
Northernmost Quang Binh Province, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
June 29, 2011
Despite the calm look on the professors face, something about the current situation made Joseph Clayton distinctly ill at ease.
They had spent the last two days trudging up into the Annamite mountains after leaving the fertile coastal plain. At the last village with road access, they had ditched their vehicles and backpacked up the ridges and trails, counting on a guide from the local Bru people to lead them to... whatever Prof. Andover was looking for. The fact that the guide was now legging it quite quickly back down the misty path told Joseph that something had either gone incredibly wrong or incredibly right.
Now, Neville Andover was chanting, seemingly trying to communicate with something deep in the thick underbrush on either side of the worn, overgrown gully that had been called a trail. The language was almost intellig ible to Joseph, being a form of Mon-Khmer linked to the classical Vietnamese he had studied, perhaps with a few hints of Muong intermixed. However, the syntax and grammer were archaic to say the least. From some of the words used it even seemed to be achingly familiar, almost as if...
With a sudden realization of shock and the smell of grilled pork and Bac Bon Dzhow a memory in his nostrils, Joseph realized where he had encountered this form of Vietic before.
But the shocks were not over.
Spun around by Albert Noyes to see something, Joseph gazed upward to see a human figure standing upon the high bank, glancing down at them with hard, measuring eyes. Undoubtedly masculine, the figure was of a man of slightly darker skin than the farmers of the coast (though the features were similar) and of greater height than either them or the native Bru. Clothed only in a white cotton kilt with geometric designs in black and a leather girdle, this man carried a white flatbow decorated with bands of green, blue and red while a bronze dagger rested at his hip. His head was shaved of all hair, and black designs were tattooed from the crown of the scalp to the jawline, with more tattoos covering his arms, chest and lower legs.
The fact that an arrow was nocked in the string of his bow put the four young people on edge, with Malone and Joesph himself tightening the grips on the hilts of their machetes in anticipation of a hopeless fight. More men in similar dress and tattoos, some with bronze slashing swords, some with bronze-headed spears and others with flatbows, appeared out of the forest on either side of them. Now that Joseph could get a better look at them in the dim light filtering down through the forest canopy and the mist, their arm tattoos began looking very similar to those borne by Marie's parents while those on their faces, while different in design, were still similar in form.
All the while, Prof. Andover kept up the low chanting, of which Joseph could pick out individual words: ""friend"", ""gods"", ""village"", ""priest"", ""comrade"" and at least one invocation of Ho Chi Minh among them. To this, these strange men seemed to confer with each other though glances and nods before took one took a short, bamboo tube from his girdle, put one end to his mouth, took a deep breath and blew.
As the silvery-blue powder erupted from the tube, settled on the heads of the trekking academics and they each lost consciousness in turn, Joseph wondered if this could get any worse.
Meanwhile, Spoonbill Village
Tsan Pho Dao had been the Chief Priest of this village for many years, ever since the death of his father in the closing days of the American War. In that span of years, he had seen many futures and advised his people based on those futures. He had called down both ruin and plenty by invoking the power of the gods of his people. He alone, in a feat outside even the power of the hereditary village chiefs, had communicated with the Instrument of their gods, a being possessed of both boundless knowledge and an absolutely rotten temper. He also, most importantly, had an absolutely perfect memory of his entire life... and that of his father, and his father before him.
To be perfectly honest, he held a tremendous amount of power within this village. The ancestor shrines belonged to families while the hunters had their own little shrines up the mountain where midnight rituals were performed to gather poison for the tips of arrows and darts. But those rituals needed to be performed by the minor priests under his command. This temple was the spiritual center of his people for most of the year and the temple with it's darkened wood walls lit only by feeble braziers whose light was twisted by the smoke of rare and powerful incenses, with it's figurines of gods and demons carved from nephrite and jadeite brought from deep below the earth... was his domain. His and no one else'. He divined the future when possible, he performed the rites and as a result, it was he who had taken countless lives in sacrifice over the course of his adulthood: chickens, pigs, goats, buffalo... people.
As he sat at a low table in his private sanctuary, trying to divine some course for a question that had faced him for most of a year, he noticed something. One of the golden discs he used for divination, a coin looted from a Chinese caravan many centuries ago, stood up on its rim and began to roll. Following the curve of failing momentum, the coin finally came to rest at a specific point on the table, a place that held indication of the future.
Visitors... and not the ""ketchup"" kind of visitors.
Several Hours Later, Close to the Laos Border
The answer to Joseph Clayton's earlier question was a definite yes. When he had awoken, he had found his wrists and ankles bound, the bindings looped over a pole carried by two men with him and the other students suspended like deer carcasses. The Professor, on the other hand, had not been bound, but had found transport by sitting in a large basket suspended from one of the poles by a cord, carried by a pair of men. They had been going downhill from the crest of a ridge and were now leaving the forest, coming onto a road. First, they passed under a wooden gate where roosting spoonbills had been carved into the posts and a sun flanked by two dragons had been carved into the beams above the road.
Then Joseph saw where they were headed. A village of perhaps thirty houses was visible in the valley bottom while narrow terraces had been cut into the hills above, green with growing rice. The view quickly vanished as the men began heading into the village itself but sight was soon replaced with sound. The quiet of the forest was supplanted by the cacophony of a hundred sounds: chickens and pigs grunted and clucked as the animals rooted below the houses and around the garbage heaps while odd-looking reddish dogs, lazing in the sun on the porches of the outermost houses, whined in surprise at the new arrivals. The sounds of tools and primitive machinery clunked melodiously. The sounds of people also were audible: talking, laughing, shouting and even a few low notes of women's work songs were possible for Joseph to pick out of the general buzz... a buzz which also included Albert trying to reason with their captors and Tracy displaying an unusually foul mouth toward same.
Soon, people began to notice the men bringing in captives and a few even began to gather along the path as they entered the village, joining their dogs (or Dholes, as they were now identifiable as) who had come to sniff. It was mostly men, older boys and children who came out to watch while the women and the elderly usually went no further than windows and the porches of the stilt-houses that lined the road. Here, even hanging upside down, Joseph could notice a few things about the dress and appearance of the people
Frankly... it was a bit odd.
From what he knew, the Vietnamese national costume (in it's modern form) placed a heavy emphasis on trousers, an item of clothing that he noticed was rather conspicuously absent here. Everyone here seemed to be wearing variations on one basic outfit in either brown or black: knee-length cotton kilts, short-sleeved cotton jackets (mostly with their front fastenings closed) and either rough-woven conical hats or simple cloths tied over their heads. The men's hair appeared to be cut short to the point where one could vaguely make out the tattoos on their scalp while children varied between the same shortness for boys and a single, long braid for the girls.
Eventually they arrived in a great or square before what appeared to be the temple: a ponderous structure of wood and brick perched upon massive stone foundations, it's sloping roofs flaring outward as if to shroud the surrounding houses from the scrutiny of the heavens. Around them, a crowd had gathered on all sides, an air of excitement buzzing in the air. Men exited the house across the square from the temple entrance and despite the calm demeanour of Professor Andover, words began filtering through to Joseph that began sounding more and more disturbing; words like ""kill"", ""sacrifice"" and ""ritual"". But another word came, one that sent darker imaginings and images rambling through his sensation-saturated mind.
The word ""eat"".
""WAIT! STOP!""
Joseph knew those words as well... as well as that voice!
Out of the crowd rushed a figure dressed much like the others: brown kilt and jacket, the latter partially open to reveal a yem undergarment and with a straw hat on her head. As Joseph finally began taking in other details, he noticed the tattooed lines and whimsical designs on her lower legs and arms and on her face, lines and vaguely triangular patterns that almost resembled the features of an orangutan.
Her face... behind all the tattooing, the face of this woman was still as unmistakable to Joseph as the first day they had met in Kindergarten. To this sudden recognition, the young man could only exclaim his surprise as a soothingly familiar name.
""Marie?""
","Spoonbill Village, Northernmost Quang Bin Province, SRV
June 29, 2011
As the two young adults stared at each other, nothing but shock registered in either of their brains. Not the stares of the villagers nor of Joseph's classmates affected them in their surprise. For Joseph, the shock was mixed with relief at finding his girlfriend safe, concern about his own impending fate as the main course and a strange confusion about what the heck was going on. For Marie, it was the sheer shock of actually seeing her boyfriend here and her puzzlement at the reason why that added to her numb bewilderment, not to mention the fear for his life at what might happen next.
As the shock broke, she knew that she had to act. And since the village chief was here...
""You cannot sacrifice this man! His family are allies are of my parents, his parents are involved in our business. If anything happens to him, calamity will come upon us all!"" Demanding such things of the chieftain might have been rude, presumptuous and even insulting, but everything she said was the truth. If Joseph died, things would go down the toilet very quickly.
Before the men could answer back, the crashing of a great bronze gong echoed over the crowd and all heads turned towards the source of the cacophony, the temple. Coming down the steps was a red lacquered palanquin with red curtains. Four men in deeply-hooded red robes supported the wooden structure, it's bracing poles upon their shoulders. As they reached the courtyard proper, one of the warriors who had exited the large house went up to the palanquin, distinguished from the others by leather shoes on his feet, a broad circlet of gold around his black head-wrap and a single pheasant tail feather standing erect at the forefront of this headdress. Joseph could distinguish some sort of conversation happening, the words too quiet to make out. For several tense seconds he, Marie, his classmates and his professor waited for what would happen.
What happened was that from this man, the villages hereditary chief, the order was given for them to be spared... for now. Another order was given to separate them and hold them in isolation until a final decision could be made.
As Joseph was carried away into a side street, he could almost glimpse Marie following the palanquin into the Temple, including his Professor, still sitting in his basket.
Several Hours Later
Joseph could never fully recall all of the things that he had pondered in those hours, sitting with his hands and feet bound, alone in that dark storehouse, smelling of rice and preserved vegetables. He had found Marie and as he had suspected for a number of years, she apparently belonged to a semi-unique culture of Vietic speakers in her purported homeland of the Annamite Range. What came as a surprise was that they apparently, if the few bits of coherent speech he had heard were any indication, practiced some sort of ritualized homicide and may well be inclined toward the consumption of ""long pork""... and at the moment, that could include him.
Eventually the door opened and soft, yellow light flooded the room, illuminating bags of rice and strings of hanging vegetables. In the doorway was Marie, carrying a paper covered lantern in one hand, a bronze bowl in the other and now hat-less. As he had briefly noticed earlier, the muscles on her limbs now had a definition to them that hadn't existed back in Glaston, her frame slightly more lean than the apprentice cook that he remembered. She was dressed just as she had been before, was still tattooed everywhere he could see and, as she she came over to where he was sitting, the light in the lantern seemed more like... fireflies than any kind of flame.
""So... nice place you have here."" He hoped that starting slow could take some of the edge off the dangerous situation in which he now faced himself.
""Yeah... it is nice, I guess."" Marie put the bowl (now seen to be carrying water) and the lantern on the ground beside him and knelt to untie his bonds. ""I'm sorry that you got dragged into this. When I borrowed that record... I had no idea that..."" She closed her eyes and sighed in a way that, to Joseph, made the tattoos on her face dance almost... alluringly. ""There's a lot that I just couldn't tell you when we were younger. My people are used to hiding... maybe tooused to it by now. I want to tell you so much, but I... I don't know where to begin.""
""Then start from the beginning. That always seems to be how it's done in the movies."" Rubbing his wrists and ankles to get the circulation back, Joseph wondered just what he was going to hear.
What he heard was everythingabout her people, the stories she had enraptured Cora with plus a whole lot of other stuff, fantastic and gruesome in equal measure. The human sacrifice, the ritual cannibalism, the intermittent persecution by Chinese, Champa, Viet and French over the last two thousand years... nothing was left out. As he sipped water from the bowl, she described how her peoples ancestors had been Au Lac refugees from the Red River Valley, driven south into the mountains by the invading Qin Chinese. On the edge of total starvation, they had been saved when a spirit animal, a black water buffalo cow with a seemingly endless number of calves trailing behind, had emerged from the highland jungle at the chanting of animist shamans travelling with the group.
Behind those spectral buffalo had emerged their wonder and salvation: men in red robes with the legs of goats, monks from a far, high land called Leng. These strange people, who called themselves Shugoran, had taught this diverse group of farmers, mountain peoples, priests, urbanites and servants many useful magics: how to grow up to twelve crops of rice per year, how to draw water and metal from the earth, how to commune with the forces of the universe and not annoy them too severely, how to pass perfect memories from father to son, how to ensure the fertility of people, livestock and game and how to armor a person's skin so as to stop any blade or spear or arrow or sling stone.
It was this last spell, combined with the requirement in orthodox Shugoran magic for Human (or similar) sacrifice and cannibalism that brought on the next mess. When the Qin Dynasty collapsed under the weight of the first emperor's paranoia and his successors incompetence, suicide and the resultant power struggle, the men of the new ""Leng Viet"" decided to press their advantage. They launched a guerrilla campaign in an attempt to drive the Trieu Dynasty, with its mixed nobility of native southerners and Han Chinese, out of the Red River valley and establish a new native state.
Over the next hundred years, men raided trade routes and army barracks in the guise of screaming, bare-chested, tattooed (associated with bandits and convicts by the Chinese) savages, dragging captives off into the night or the forest in order to sacrifice them for either civilian or military magic. When they eventually lost their ""War of the Bandits"" (from the threefold causes of not getting any local nobility on their side, of terrifying the pants off their Viet kinsmen with their ferocity and the rumours of their religion and by the sheer weight of the eventual re-invasion by the armies of the Han Dynasty) they fled deep into the mountains of the West and South, being chided by the last of the original, goat-legged sorcerers for their foolish, ill-planned ambitions. From then, they had remained hidden and relatively peaceful, though remembered in whispered folk-tales as vicious, man-eating monsters.
After Marie had finished. Joseph sat in silence for a few minutes, digesting what he had just heard. The whole thing about magic was a bit.. hard to swallow. However, his own eyes had seen things that most would say were impossible. ""You don't... you don't hate me now, do you?"" Marie suddenly asked, her face awash in a worried panic, perhaps the culmination of every bout of anxiety she had ever experienced when Joseph had began edging onto the subject of her people's true nature. So much worry, so much fear and one wrong move now could break her heart.
For once, just once, he initiated the kiss this time.
""Does that answer your question?"" As they pulled apart, he could see that most of her anxieties had melted away. ""And... I hesitate to mention this, but about your parents restaurant..."" He stopped when he saw her face, now an annoyed, knowing grimace that indicated that the next words out of his mouth should be chosen very carefully. ""Uh... about the chicken, beef and pork they used. Was any of it... officiallysacrificed?""

Marie's grimace let up. ""You need a priest to do anything official, and my parents are from farming families. Don't worry, we never served anyone up as the main course."" She actually began to smile as she stood upright.
""Alright... but speaking of the main course, what about..."" Joseph gulped nervously. ""Me? Am I still going to be barbecue or did you actually convince anyone otherwise?""
The next news out of Marie's mouth was welcome indeed. ""I didn't, but your professor won your life and those of the others after he talked with our Chief Priest. If I'm right, he and the rest of your team should be at the house of my paternal grandparents. Who arethey, anyway?""
""My classmates. The Anthropology department at Miskatonic organized this trip with Professor Andover and a couple of us volunteered. "" Still holding the bowl, Joseph began standing, his limbs still stiff and numb from hours of sitting. Despite this discomfort and the twitching shocks that came when blood began flowing free again, he followed her out the door, though not before taking and slinging a bag of rice over his shoulder at her asking, along with a braid of garlic bulbs and a small box of dried pork on a cord.
During his captivity, Joseph had been held in one of the storehouses by the river, a short way north of the village. Now, in the waning light of dusk, he and Marie made their way back on the path that wove through vegetable gardens and pig-pens until they reached the outlying houses. Through narrow alleys between house stilts and below the sounds of evening meals being eaten, past dogs and pigs drowsing in the under-crofts and along the great outer wall of the temple they traveled before moving into the main square and down the main thoroughfare.

""It should be just after this next left, right across from the bronze-smith."" As they walked along, they came to an intersection. On their right was a large house facing the street, belonging to the village bronze-smith and acting as a shop, a workplace and his family home. Across the main street from that house was a side street, lined by mostly smaller houses but each of them with soft lights in their windows. A few houses in, Marie led Joseph up the stairs of one house where familiar voices were laughing and making merry, including one brash female voice in particular that Joseph had come to know well.
As Marie lay down the lantern on the porch and opened the door, the voices became louder and clearer. When they entered, everyone was already seated (or at least kneeling). Albert and Malone were trading stories of their brief imprisonment and what they had seen, while Tracy was working her way through a bowl of green tea, apparently trying to cajole her way into the rice whiskey. Professor Andover was making small conversation with an old village man sitting at the head of the table who was wearing the brown jacket and skirt combo that was so common. Also at the table was a younger man and his wife, maybe a little older than Marie's parents, along with two teenage sons who had not yet received their tattooing. Some ways from the table, an elderly woman worked at a hearth lined with stone and brick, stoking a carefully controlled charcoal fire.
Everyone looked up at the new arrivals. The first to speak was the old man who had been talking to the professor, telling Marie to bring the rice and other ingredients over to the charcoal hearth so the evening meal could begin and then for them to sit down. After that was done, Joseph noticed that people were looking at him.
Apparently, it was time to make introductions.
""Joseph, I'd like you to meet my family on my father's side."" After explaining that few of them could understand any English at all, Marie started introducing them. First came the old man, now identified as her paternal grandfather. Her grandmother, his wife, was the woman starting tending the fire at the hearth, her gray hair in an elaborate bun at the back of the head held together with a set of jade hairpins and wearing a long, black dress, similar to the garment that Marie had worn at the performance. Marie's uncle Huy and his wife An sat across from the Miskatonic students and beside them sat Cu'ong and Thao, their two sons...
Only two?
""Damn, the Kids!"" Marie had been so busy with her boyfriend that the absence her younger cousins had escaped her until now. She got back up and went to the door, opened it and called down the street for them to get in the house now and try not to spill the water they were carrying. As she returned to where she had been kneeling, many hurried footsteps were heard coming up the outside stairs and the door opened again as five children entered as a crowd. The oldest, a girl who was perhaps eleven years old, was carrying two bronze pails of water in her hands while the second oldest, a boy of maybe ten, was carrying two more.
In fact, all the kids, which included two more boys and another girl, seemed to each be about a year apart down to a little boy of about seven years old. ""Big families the norm around here?"" Joseph asked his girlfriend as the water was transferred to cooking vessels and the ingredients collected.
Marie shrugged. ""More or less: most farming families have at least three kids nowadays but the norm used to be around five around a century ago. This family is weird both ways: My uncle and aunt for having so many and my parents for just having me."" 
Of course, sooner or later this casual reminiscing had to end. ""So, Professor..."" Tracy began, consciously deciding to get back on topic from the revery the two had been involved in. ""You Said that you had something to tell us, about the ultimate purpose of this expedition?""
Neville Andover smiled the way that someone delivering a great and terrible revelation does. ""As a matter of fact, I did."" He motioned towards Malone, who was now extremely attentive. ""This is Malone Roberts; for the last year he has been playing the part of my student, but he is far more than that. He is my assistant, my cohort... my protege in the context of the agency I work for. Tell me..."" He seemed to direct this as every member of the audience (save Malone) who could speak English. ""Have any of you heard of Delta Green?""
""What's that? Something in the Marine Corps?"" It had soundedlike an innocent question from Ms. Williams, but Joseph had shared a class, study groups and cram sessions with her for many months, and could recognize the first signs of building stress and panic when he saw them. They were amazingly similar to the signs that Marie herself had shown, with the difference of gripping objects such as a table edge with white-knuckle intensity now apparent.
""It's surprising that you haven't heard of it, considering the contacts in your community and the agencies reputation for... extreme measuresbefore 1960."" Now Andover turned to Albert Noyes. ""Perhaps you have some notion of it... or its partner agency, Majestic 12. It is quite amazing work they're doing on the Yuggoth Project, especially on fungi."" This seemed like it was crammed with potential clues, but honestly, Joseph couldn't make heads or tails of it.
Noyes, on the other hand, apparently could. He began smiling in surprise and recognition and began laughing at the revelation. ""You mean... you know about the Mi'go?"" Now Joseph was confused beyond all reckoning, and apparently so were Marie and Tracy.
""Know aboutthem, know some of them, occasionally work alongside them. And if I may say, for half-fungus, half-arthropod, telepathic pains in the rear, they are remarkably easy to work with."" What followed was Albert explaining the situation: the weirdest kinds of aliens you could imagine had contacted some humans in the 1800s and hired them to assist in mining certain valuable minerals in the hills of Vermont and Maine. Over the years, the men and women in their employ had received advice from these aliens as to potential marriage partners, first in terms genetic compatibility and superior traits for their offspring, then based on attractiveness as their understanding of human reproductive psychology increased. Finally, as they realized the subtle psychological and social rules of courtship, the began acting as human elites once did, organizing parties for unattached men and women and subtly directing candidates certain ways as they piloted artificial human body-shells around the dance floor. 
It sounded weird... but reassuring, even humorous. Even Tracy seemed to lighten up... as far as a hunted rabbit couldlighten up.
""Mr. Clayton here is what you may call 'normal'. However, he was privy to manifestations not usual of this Earth."" Joseph then told the assembled of what he had witnessed, with Professor Andover hypothesizing that the phonograph may have projected images and smells by some means of eldritch energies. Marie also retold the story of her people and of the deal that she had agreed to to gain access to the phonograph: one year back in the village and receiving her tattoos of adulthood. Nothing more and nothing less had been asked of her.
""And finally, we have Ms. Williams, whose tale has much to do with the founding of the organization and its present form."" Here, Andover seemed to realize what kind of anxiety the girl was going through, and thus went slowly. ""In the winter of 1928, the Miskatonic faculty was contacted by the United States Army to help investigate a series of strange attacks and abductions in Paige County, Virginia. As the base was in a primarily Quaker area, Miskatonic sent its lone member of faculty who was a Friend, one Hiriam Willows of Boston. While he remained among the Quaker farmfolk who knew the habits of the attacks, the army waged war against what was first believed to be a ""degenerate"" tribe of Iroquois but were later found to be white members of a strange fertility cult which engaged in human sacrifice.""
The academic glanced towards Tracy, who had lowered her head, closed her eyes and grimaced at what was surely to come. He turned back to his eager listeners. ""Before Willows left, he discovered strange objects in a secret room at the Longhouse Meeting Hall... objects which resembled those found on the slain cultists. He also, inadvertently, stumbled upon his hosts engaged in a ritual of apparent mourning, dressed as the Southern Iroquois would have been three hundred years ago, sacrificing pigs upon an altar at an isolated circle of standing stones, wailing and keening in grief."" He looked back at Tracy. ""This was the experience which convinced him that not all who worship the base forces of the universe are driven to evil nor insanity. It was also the experience that not all things should be released to the world, both for the worlds safety and that of the subjects.""
After a moment's silence, Tracy spoke. ""Excuse me."" She got up walked out the door, somewhat to the surprise of her classmates, Marie and Marie's family. Marie then got up and went to follow, an act which inevitably drew Joseph after her.
They found Tracy sitting at the bottom of the steps, her chin on one balled fist, her other arm across her lap, her eyes staring into some unfathomable distance. Marie went forward first, sitting beside the girl as Joseph hung back. ""I don't think we've been introduced. My name's Marie."" When Tracy didn't answer. ""You know, you don't have to feel bad about what other people did. Those guys the Army killed weren't your people, no matter how similar your rituals may have been.""
""But they weremy people."" The answer came suddenly and surprised both listeners.
""Pardon?"" Asked Joseph from the middle of the stairway.
""Those dangerous cultists that the professor told you about; they were English, Quakers even... or had been at one time."" She sighed, not quite sure of herself on how to explain to outsiders the issue which had plagued her fears since the age of 10. ""They were my peoples kin, descendants of those of us who answered the Union armies call for guerrillas during the Civil War. Before that, we'd adopted some sacrificial ritual from the Iroquois during the 1720s after some very hard winters. Where before they'd killed dogs, black deer and captured warriors... as well as captured women and children if it got reallybad... to get good crops and health, we imposed strict limits and rules. There was to be no more human sacrifice, we killed our own livestock and above all, we accept the rituals as a gift from on high... even if the whole Christ thing was supposed to render sacrifice obsolete.""
""I'd consider it a divine door prize. But about the Civil War?"" Marie was trying to make the talk as nonthreatening as possible, considering the darkness which had settled over the village.
Getting back on topic, Tracy continued. ""Well, we'd already been hiding escaped slaves for years on their way up to the major escape routes in Pennsylvania, but we felt that we couldn't do any more, especially with so much Confederate presence in the Shenandoah and the internecine aggression over secession. These people though... they wanted to do something. So, when a few Union officers wanted a meeting, they snuck off north. And when they came back, they brought otherthings with them. Old medieval codices which described Druidic rituals shockingly similar to our own but twisted and brutal, rituals which needed terror to be inflicted in the victims so that the full power of their life force could be drained. Their attitudes had changed as well; they became disdainful of the rest of the community: calling them weak, cowards, savages who refused to possess the full power of the Star Daughter and the Black Stag, fools who held onto their 'petty delusions' of morality. Well, after they went and made a mess of everything by capturing and sacrificing a Confederate squadron... the rest of the Longhouse Quakers shunned them, bidding them to go into the high mountains until they were ready to return. And so, a collection of about 50 men, women and children left the Valley and went into the high woods.""
Joseph put something together in his head. ""And I take it that the next time they returned was 60 years later, crazier than ever.""
Tracy harrumphed. ""You've got that right. And think about this while you're at it: by the 1920s, we'd been isolated for so long that it was starting to show in our features; the more inbred we became, the leaner our faces and the bonier our joints. By the time Willows got there, we just looked skinny and somewhat malnourished and with the right connections a few decades later, that began to get fixed."" Her face got hard. ""But what if Willows had finked on us, or Miskatonic sent one of their Congregationalist mama's boys instead? Do you realize what may have happened to us, especially in the 20s or 30s? Arresting us for a start, probably followed by forced sterilization and throwing us in crazy houses, sanitariums and prisons to rot. And that's just the adults!""
She was getting visibly angry. ""Their kids, my great-grandparents, would have been shuffled off to orphanages or perhaps boarding schools if they thought we were just really pale Indians."" She shuddered. ""I've read about the shit that happened in Canada's residential school system and it gave me just as many nightmares as the thought of my ancestors being hunted like wolves and tortured for things they never did or for who they were."" She turned to look at Marie and for the first time since he knew her, Joseph could put a name (that name being ""very mildly inbred"") on the features which he had labeled as 'rural-attractive' or 'cute in a farmer's daughter kind of way'. ""I know that your people have been hiding, but at least you guys made the mistake of acting like total jerks to get your reputation! We never did anything wrong.""
With that, Tracy got up, passed her companions and just as she was about to reenter the house, she paused and rethought something. ""Well, never did anything wrong besides burning down that chicken barn, but that was an emergency! Neither my aunt nor my little cousin would be here if not for that and besides..."" She turned her head to look at Joseph and Marie. ""They wrote it off as an electrical fire."" As Tracy went back into the house, Joseph thought that, while going against all conventional reason, his life made perfect sense for the first time in a very long while.
",True
"Mantineus-I'm more Mr. Briggs, than the I this time.
Disclaimer-I own nothing!
I
""I'm gonna burn.""
That's when I knew it got really bad. He was always a little nuts, but that. Saying it with an innocent smile and certainty. It sent chills up my spine and I experienced a fear I have not faced in my entire life.
It was at this point that I realized that he really was beyond saving.
How he got like this, god only knows. Before he was admitted to my sanitarium I checked his background. It was clean. His mother and father were decently sane, as were his grandparents and siblings. I checked hospital files and came up with nothing out of the ordinary. Colds, flu, and a few scrapes. Normal for any boy.
Upon his arrival I waited in my office, glancing at the anniversary clock that adorned my desk religiously. Despite it's bad memory, I couldn't stand to throw it away, so in my office it has stayed. Poor Lucinda.
With annoyance, I watched as an orderly struggled to seat him in a chair. He was antsy and, from what I gathered, he felt he needed to be somewhere else.
""Hello,"" I said gently, hoping to direct his attention on me so that the orderly could strap him in the chair.
For my protection as well as his. On the ride here he was without a straitjacket and chipped his nails and teeth trying to escape and then from trying to fatally tear his wrists open with the aforementioned parts. God only knew what he would try to do to me if I stepped out of his line.
Finally, we were alone. He thrashed about for a minute before I began.
""Hello,"" I began. ""I'm your new doctor.""
From there he stared at me with eyes of steel. It unnerved me; it was like he was looking through me and saw my soul. He kept staring and my psychologist's nerve was faltering. Mentally I was panicking and I wondered if, due to his stoic stare, if he was looking deeper than my outer appearance of fear.
My childhood flashed before my eyes.
""So doc,"" He began, his voice was gravely and deep. ""What's your first question?""
This took me by surprise that I had to clear my throat, tap my papers back into place, and start again.
""Yes, well. You see, I've checked your records, Mr.-""
""Don't say it!"" He screamed, face twisting into pure, unimaginable fear. ""They might not know I'm here!""
""Who's 'they'?""
His snapped. As if the fearful shell broke and revealed this manic, demented smile. It seemed sadistic and menacing, yet what he said was pure jibber-jabber.
""Them, doc!"" He said. His face changed again; he was stumped. ""You mean you don't know, doc? Surely you've encountered others like me.""
""No,"" I agreed. ""I'm afraid I haven't.""
He began to laugh. It was long and insane. Yet, as abruptly as it began, it ended and he could have passed for a sane person within that silent second.
""Then give up this case, doc."" He said, a chuckle escaping his throat. ""Give it to someone who knows!""
If only I listened.
II
As the sessions progressed, I admit to feeling a slight disheartenment. He would reveal nothing of his condition other than ramblings like before. Though, one day he did something of note.
He was rocking back and forth in a big, exaggerated way. He would swing forward, mumble something then swing back and shout a made up word.
For example, on his first forward rock he would mumble something akin to a sneeze then shout ""Fhtagn!"" Yog-soth ""Fhtagn!"" Oz-soth ""Fhtagn!""
He then began to say another strange word, of which I surmised were names, when he stopped. He got so far as ""Nya"" when he began to giggle like a lunatic and rock his torso rapidly while repeating that strange made up word.
""Fhtagn! Fhtagn! Fhtagn!""
""Mr.-""
He began to scream as if in agony. From previous sessions, I knew it was most likely from my trying to utter his name. But, unlike previous times where he would instantly stop, he began to sob. His face flushed crimson, his eyes became slits from whence tears began to flow.
""The Necronomicon!"" He screamed, his sobs becoming more intense. ""De…Destroy….Destroy it!""
""What?""
""Destroy the Necronomicon!"" He shouted, he looked a mixture of agony and rage. ""Destroy it! Destroy that damn book!""
Five minutes after that outburst he stopped. Despite the still flushed face and teary eyes, he looked as if it never happened. And with that deep, gravelly voice he spoke.
""Destroy it doc."" The intense glare he gave me sent me flashes of hellfire and promises of pain and horror the likes of which I'll never comprehend.
""Destroy it. Don't look at it, don't read it, and-whatever you do-Don't look at the back page!""
Two sessions after that he seemed to follow back into our usual routine. That is, until our third. It was then that he said what I knew was the truth. He was gone to the sane world. And despite our other methods, they would not be enough to bring him back.
""I'm gonna burn."" He said, then, with an exaggerated nod he began. ""Yep. I'm gonna burn that damn book.""
""And why would you burn it?"" I asked.
He clammed up.
Miskatonic University. I have been there, of course, as a student of psychology. Hoping to better myself in understanding the people around me; a curse of a recluse, I'm afraid. Though I have never heard of such a book, my curiosity had gotten the better of me and I sent a letter to the Miskatonic Library.
A few days later a package arrived for me with a note. The Librarian was slightly against me looking at it, but considering my profession, she allowed it. But I was to return it within a timely manner. I did not flip through it. I cannot explain why, but I felt a sense of doom upon glancing at the ancient tome.
But, at least, I had something to talk about in our next session.
III
""I have the book."" I started.
His eyes picked up. He smiled like a child at Christmas morning before unwrapping his gifts. He started to shake the chair he was chained to. Rapidly he asked questions like ""You didn't read it did you?"" and ""Did you burn it? If you did, can I see the ashes?""
""No, I didn't read it."" I confessed. ""Nor,"" I placed the book on my desk. ""Have I burned it; as you can see.""
""Burn it!"" He shouted. ""Burn it!""
His eyes grew wide in fear.
""They'll be coming! They sense it's presence! It's an unholy beacon! Burn it! Burn it and destroy their only chance for this world!""
""Not yet."" I said. ""Not until you tell me why such a normal man would succumb to madness without any reason.""
His emotions changed from frantic to anger in a flash. He started to growl and shake the chair more violently. Either it is due to the cases similar to a grandmother gaining superhuman strength when their grandchild is in danger, or perhaps they did not switch the chains and after dealing with his constant mood swings, they gave. Either way, he was free.
Free and wild, like a bull, he charged towards me. I don't know what compelled me to throw the book, but I did. I threw it before he was upon it. And I know, right there, I made a mistake.
For when it landed, it landed on the last page where an artist's rendition of the writer was present. I stared upon it, mouth agape.
""No!"" He shouted. ""It's all over now."" He began to sob. ""I didn't want to do this!"" He then sparked up, looking hopeful. ""Wait! It's not too late! You can still reject it! Reject the responsibility and let humanity thrive!""
""What are you talking about?"" I managed to say.
My mind was beginning to form an explanation as to why the famous ""Mad Arab"" looked like me.
""Yes, traitor, what are you talking about?""
""Nyar…""He cracked up. ""Nyar…"" He chuckled like a mad man.
The new comer was dressed in Ancient Egyptian robes and crown. He was magnificent and regal in appearance. But another sense took over and I wanted to run away from him as quickly as possible. But something caught my eye. Without the help of hand or wind, the pages began to flip back until it reached its goal. The page prior had a picture of him as he was seen now. To the right were the bold words:
Nyarlathotep: The Crawling Chaos
He turned towards me. Within those cold black eyes I could see a swirling mass, similar to a galaxy, only different. And, if I strained my ears, I swore I heard the mad playing of deranged flautists.
""Do forgive me, Abdul."" He said. ""But…""
""That's not my name."" I began. ""My name is…""
""Not important."" He said, cutting me off. ""What is, is who you were and who you are meant to be. Abdul Hazred, the Mad Arab and priest to both Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth.""
Flashes of desert expanses flew by within my mind. A lone man walked alone the desert, walking through an old, abandoned city that once belonged to a reptilian race of humanoids. How he dedicated his remaining years(which was not many) to write the book of which they wanted and who's information he gained through dreams and through physical means.
He died and his soul became one with Yog-Sothoth until thirty-four years ago. I was plagued with nightmares and horrible sights that now no longer fill me with dread. Though what my parents did still leaves a mark. But then again, it happened to Abdul, too.(1)
""What is needed of me, Oh mighty Nyarlathotep?""
""No!"" He shouted, but Nyarlathotep shot him an angry glare.
""I will deal with you later."" He turned and faced me once more. ""But for now, Abdul must be briefed on what is expected of him.""
You have written The Necronomicon rather well. But, They now wish for you to write one more piece to it. This one will explain what will happen once They are awakened and how to stop the stars from changing again. You'll receive these in dreams once more. But this time, you'll receive help in the form of Mr. Briggs, there.""
He cowered in fear of his own surname.
""That is, if you need help.""
""No,"" I said. ""I shall write this myself. Besides, you called him a traitor. He is not fit to help write such a glorious book.""
""No!"" He shouted. He had a letter opener in his hands. He was digging through my desk while we were talking. ""He will not write the missing chapter!""
He lunged at me, but was stopped by a loud buzzing sound.
""I'd run if I were you."" Nyarlathotep said.
Mr. Briggs did not heed his warning, and lunged at me once more. A Mi-go crashed through the window and grabbed him with his crab-like claws and whisked him out of my office and the sanitarium all together, being prepared for his trip to Yuggoth.
""Do not disappoint me."" He said and vanished.
------ ------
1) I know, according to historians, that Abdul Hazred was actually Lovecraft. But, since he's a made up character, why not give him a made up childhood? I am not implying that he was beaten as a child!
","The Shoggoth
I had met Professor Kindle during my explorations in my youth in Berlin at a convention. His theories in such subjects as physics and anatomy were peculiar to me-and to his chagrin-his colleges as well.
""Well, my boy,"" He said upon my asking why everyone seemed to mock him. ""These fools do not wish to see what's so plain that if it were a snake, it would most assuredly bite them.""
Upon that introduction, he had began to tell me how certain miniscule particles held the universe together. What he said went beyond dark matter and such unexplained universal secrets that it was almost hard to believe. But I can tell you, he was convincing. A fact that will later cause me to rethink my pursuits.
""You see, my boy, Yog-Sothoth particles and Azathoth particles exist in sub matter, in a way that can go undetected even more so than the elusive dark matter for it obviously does not refract or twist light in any such matter like anything else in space.""
""Then how does one know of their existence?"" I asked, and for the fourth time: ""And why those names?""
It was odd to me to think that such a thing would exist that does not interact upon its surroundings. And what was queer was that the names did not follow the standard scientific tradition of Latin roots; instead appearing to be from some alien language.
He smiled. ""Come, my boy, I shall show you."" He draped an arm over my shoulders. ""And as for the names; they are from the Necromicon. A book I doubt you have read, but the names fit, believe me. For you see, Azathoth represents chaos, and Yog-Sothoth order; it's like the Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang, a philosophy I find as very true.""
Kindle took me to his hotel room where he produced from a brown briefcase, a telescope. It looked like any telescope that one could easily obtain from any store for cheap. Yet, something was off. A minor defect, yet hardly noticeable except in the right light. There was an angle of odd proportions etched out of glass and sealed within between the two lenses.
""Look, look."" He said excitedly.
I did look. And what I saw amazed me more than frightened me; as many introductory things do. What appeared to be bubbles and globular orbs of wiggling ganglia-like tentacles were stuck together. I took my eye away.
""And how do you know it keeps the universe together?""
""It goes in a straight line across the sky."" He said. ""Granted, it's mere speculation, but I believe it to be correct, for, how many things are a perfect line in a vacuum?""
I was unable to disagree.
After that, our interactions consisted of an odd letter or two. I became a physician and he became a recluse due to his latest published work that was about his Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth particles. He would only ever briefly say what he was working on. I guess he thought me a fellow conspirator, a rebel to the newly founded scientific idea; anything out of the norm is false, to the point he sent me a battered copy of the Necromicon.
I read the book, horrified at what I was reading, that I am still surprised that I did not throw it to the floor and burn it. But the next letter just asked a question:
Did you read it?
I replied in the positive and the next response was an invitation to his little house in the sparsely populated hills of New England. I will not tell of my travels to his one story house that surprised me that such a man would live there.
It was a dilapidated house that looked like time and hillbilly inhabitants before him had a wild party, trashing it beyond any sense of repairing it. When I knocked on the door and my friend opened it, I was greeted with the sight of the inside, which appeared only slightly better than the outside. The wallpaper was peeling, everything was dusty, and the lights were working, yet did not seem to help alleviate the gloom that seemed to settle upon the house in a death grip.
""Ah, it's so good to see you, my boy."" He greeted me, allowing me into the house. ""Come, please sit. I have some tea prepared for your arrival.""
I take the offered liquid and he sits on the armchair across from me. He takes a sip of his tea before setting it down upon the arm of his chair, his finger never leaving the handle.
""I invited you here to see my newest discovery."" He said, an intense look aimed at me. Like an excited madman holding a gun.
""What is it?""
""Shoggoths,""
He said that one word, never explaining anything, letting the dreadful word sink into my mind.
""Granted,"" He took another sip. ""I didn't discover them. But there was something that eluded me. A phrase; anyone could over look it, but I didn't. Tekeli-li."" He almost mimicked a robot.
My face turned pale at that word. Instinctual fear ingrown and nearly forgotten, left burrowed into a level of subconscious was unearthed and made me want to run faster than I have ever ran in my entire life. I knew I should have listened to it, but curiosity had gotten the better of me.
""The purpose behind it,"" Kindle continued as if there were no tension in the air. ""Eluded me. Until I started thinking in terms of wolves. They're very much alike, you know. Sleek killing machines with a high intelligence(though to-say-Cthulhu or Azathoth, they are stupid).""
With an interesting way to communicate."" He smirked. ""I was proven correct by mere chance. I spied a shoggoth all alone. It cried out 'Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!' Another cried out in response, but this one angrier. The first spoke out and went about doing chores.""
""That's interesting, Kindle."" I said. ""But how does this have to do with wolves? They howl to alert members of their pack of their location.""
""Yes,"" Kindle said matter-of-factly. ""But wolves also have growls and other vocal ways of communicating. Shoggoths only have the one word. And to prove it, I took two Shoggoths and placed them in something similar to a rat maze.""
""But how did you catch them?""
""Doesn't matter."" He snapped. ""Now let me finish, my friend.""
""One called out and the other started to move and call out as well. This continued until they found each other. It wasn't until I caught more that I made the most startling information about them.""
My body trembles. I can only imagine what else he could have discovered about those loathsome creatures.
""I had caught six or seven of them. I crammed them into this one room below this house. It was getting cramped in there for them, so these two decided to fuse together. And it hit me! They're fragments! Their hive mind-like behavior, their similarities. Everything!""
""Come, I'll show you.""
""No,"" I snap, standing. ""I'd rather not.""
Kindle becomes angered by my outburst. He grabs my arm tightly and tries to drag me towards the cellar, but I resist.
""Come, come, there is nothing to be afraid of.""
""There is."" I said. ""Shoggoths…""
I was cut off by a loud thunder from under our feet. Kindle pales as it happens again. He breaks from my arm and tries to run into the kitchen but he never makes it. A long, large, slimy black tentacle rises from the hole it made in the floor. I notice in sick fascination that a black, tar-like substance drips off of it. It darts towards the sound of Kindle's running feet and wraps around his leg, forcing him to land, face first, onto the floor.
I watch, dumb, as it drags my friend towards the hole. Kindle screams and begs me to help him, but I don't move. Fear plagues me, cementing my feet to the wood floor. It is not until his struggling form sinks into the hole that my feet can work again and I dart out of the house.
Tekeli-li!(1)
AAAhhhhhhhh!(1)

1) These were larger(font 22), but the site messes with me!
Mantineus-The ending is ambiguous by default. You see, our hero makes it out. What you see is The Shuggoth and Kindle's dying scream.
",True
"In 2050 an ill-conceived invasion of earth was launched by the Kalkars, a human-like, if excessively tall, race from a world called Va-Nah. They were led by a petty dictator called Orthis. It was spectacularly unspectacular, just another failed attempt to subjugate pre-cataclysmic humanity. However, it is notable for the reason that they had brought with them one thousand Va-gas, a lavender-hued slave race of quadrupeds with human-like faces and front limbs that doubled as arms. Not particularly intelligent at this stage of their development, the Va-gas were violent and cannibalistic, (Due in part to a lack of available food on Va-Nah) even preferring Va-gas flesh over that of other races. Fierce fighters with great strength, they also bred rapidly, making them very useful to their masters, since, as well as serving as soldiers, they also served as food for their brutal masters. The Kalkars, though arguably more intelligent than the Va-gas, were even worse. They (The Kalkars) grew fat, lazy and complacent, still, for over 200 years they managed to 'rule' earth, mainly through dumb luck and petty cruelty. Unlike H.G. Wells' luckless Martian invaders in War of the Worlds, the Kalkars could survive (And breed) quite well in earth's atmosphere.
Torren-Wraeth played no part in the earth-Va-Nah war, Goro had died in 2042 and the youth was lost in his own private agonies and recriminations. The Great Old Ones and Outer Gods mostly stood by on the sidelines, it did not concern them whether earth was ruled by humans or Kalkars, in the end, earth belonged to them. They felt the Va-gas had potential as servants, but the Kalkars were fairly useless to them. So the war was fought, mortal against mortal, bloody and cruel as all wars are. Orthis died early in the war, but it was a costly victory, for the human leader had perished with him. For every human victory, there was a terrible loss, Mankind was thrust into loose fifedoms and petty kingdoms in what the scholars call, The Second Dark Age, and the Kalkar's Empire reigned supreme. But, as with all empires, they faltered... The conquerers degenerated, forgetting the technology of their ancestors. Eventually humanity rose up and all but wiped them out with little more than swords and knives. Inter-species breeding and The Great Arising had, apparently, finished the job.
The Va-gas, being even less human-like and therefore more easily despised, were nearly wiped out as well, but they had won the favor of various powerful entities who rescued and found uses for them, particularly Shub-Niggurath. Torren-Wraeth had protected a small tribe of Va-gas as well, leaving them to protect his personal sanctuary, an abandoned shrine to Tsathoggua in Canada. It was here that he kept his most valued possessions and important artifacts. Many of Goro's belongings were housed within the temple, as were priceless treasures rescued from oblivion during the Great Arising. Paintings, statues, books... The history of humanity protected by descendants of alien invaders within a temple to an alien god. The Toad God himself allowed the use of his sanctuary for this purpose, as he was both Torren-Wraeth's great-uncle and too lazy and indifferent to truly care.
The Va-gas had become more intelligent over the centuries, and those associated with Torren-Wraeth were far less vicious than their ancestors. They even lived in a sort of uneasy peace with the nearby human tribes, by human terms, they had been 'civilized'. Once again, Torren-Wraeth wondered if it was right to impose human standards on non-human beings: Weren't they better off, not killing and eating each other? Weren't the local humans safer now? Hadn't he helped them? Isn't that what the colonialists he so hated always said? It was too late to wonder about that now...
Torren-Wraeth had visited Va-Nah once, and only once, it was worse than R'Lyeh, worse than Tond, even. Even in it's current state, earth was a far better place to live than that wretched hell-hole.
Torren-Wraeth glided over the burgeoning town of New Yokohama, set up by Japanese refugees he'd managed to ferry safely to Canada. It was named after Goro's hometown, though few knew of Torren-Wraeth's prior dealings with Japan, the Emperor and Shoguns had hushed everything up. Great Cthulhu, through Torren-Wraeth, had offered to make the Japanese Empire the greatest in the world, but they had refused. They could not accept one of the terms of the agreement, they could never bear the 'dishonor' of mixing their blood with Gyo-Jin. They had no idea that some of their people were already involved with the Gyo-Jin, as were people in coastal areas all over the world...and Torren-Wraeth had not enlightened them. People looked up and waved, Torren-Wraeth was well-liked in New Yokohama, as he had saved the original founders from certain death.
The Va-gas' settlement, Black-Stone-Place, was primitive, huts of wood and stone arraigned in a semi-circle around the black stone temple. Va-gas usually dwelled in Tepee-like structures, but these were 'settled', as guardians of the temple, they naturally remained in it's vicinity. They even had a rude form of agriculture, though this was mainly for animal feed, as Va-gas vastly preferred meat over vegetables. They raised some pigs and horses for convenient food, but they were mainly hunters, deer, wild hogs, wild horses, and moose were abundant. They, like most Va-gas on earth, worshiped The Black Goat of The Woods With A Thousand Young, and a shrine of antlers and bone lay at the apex of the crescent shaped village. It was here that the Goat's Dark Young came to collect their sacrifices and accept their worship, for the Dark Young were Shub-Niggurath's proxies, as Torren-Wraeth was Cthulhu's.
The Va-gas chieftain, Walks-With-The-Wind, met Torren-Wraeth as he landed. He stood upright on his hind limbs, and extended a three-digited paw in greeting. ""Welcome back. May The Mother of All bless you."" His black hair was beginning to gray, but his grip was strong. ""And may she bless you, my friend."" Torren-Wraeth replied, ""How's hunting?"" A small crowd of Va-gas of various sizes and ages gathered around the Half-Spawn, ""The Mother has granted us abundance."" ""I'm glad to hear it. Any problems with the humans?"" Walks-With-The-Wind paused thoughtfully, ""No, humans rarely come, and none enter the temple."" ""The guardian must be lonely."" Of course, the guardian was never lonely, even if it did not have twelve heads to keep itself company, it lacked such mortal attributes as loneliness and boredom, but it possessed the key that made it an invaluable guardian, loyalty. At the mention of the guardian, the Va-gas drew back as one, they feared it, that terrible 'spirit' with twelve heads on long, scraggly necks and twenty legs on it's globular body. It had not been his intention to frighten the superstitious Va-gas, but he had. ""I'm going to visit the temple. Thank you for guarding it so well."" Torren-Wraeth smiled, and made his way through the parting creatures. They wouldn't set foot in the temple, they believed it to be filled with captive human souls from the Great Arising, despite Torren-Wraeth's assertions to the contrary.
The temple was of black stone, squat and rectangular, with massive stone doors.
Torren-Wraeth entered the temple.
","A smile lit Goro's dark face. He looked down at the elegant dark blue kimono in his arms. ""It's beautiful."" Torren-Wraeth smiled in return, he loved to see Goro smile. ""It belongs to you, Goro-chan."" ""But, this is too..."" ""You deserve it far more than any pampered noble."" The dark-skinned youth blushed. ""Thank you, Torren-kun!"" As Goro dressed, Torren-Wraeth looked at his own kimono, bright red and fashionable. He had worried about attracting undue attention with the appearance of wealth, but he decided that he was strong enough to risk any human robber or thief. Besides, this was to be their first trip to the Kabuki theater. It had taken enough time and effort to make himself appear human, he might as well show off. He looked up at Goro, partly dressed and excitedly pulling himself together. He thought of the men who had abused him, and felt a twitch of rage... Goro must never find out what Torren-Wraeth had done to those men. He did not want Goro to ever even hear the name Y'Golonac, much less learn what he was, how he dealt with his victims. Torren-Wraeth loathed Y'Golonac, the Defiler, the Obscenity, the obese, headless god of depravity, who devoured his victims slowly with the mouths in the palms of his flabby, groping hands. But he had to avenge Goro, he had to make them pay for using him, for torturing him, for robbing him of his childhood and his innocence. Only Y'Golonac could grant the punishment those men deserved... Then Goro was standing there, smiling, in his blue kimono, and Torren-Wraeth was happy again...
Torren-Wraeth awoke slowly, not wanting to leave his dream, because Goro still lived in his dreams... He was in China, not Japan, in the Monastery of The Order of The Bloated Woman. Japan was gone, Goro was gone, and Torren-Wraeth was still here. Warm tears ran down his cheeks, but he brushed them away. Life had to go on, and on, and on...
Great Cthulhu was concerned. Hastur seemed to have gained some favor in Nyarlathotep's many eyes, and anything that benefited Hastur weakened Cthulhu, in both their eyes. ""My Lord Cthulhu, there is no need for concern,"" The tall, red-robed figure that stood at the side of Cthulhu's throne moved forward respectfully, Chxixsas' bone-white face seemed to swim within his voluminous robes, ""It is well known that the fruits of Nyarlathotep's attentions are rarely to be desired."" The voice was thin, hollow, distant, "" This may prove, in fact, a setback for The King in Tatters. Even now he trembles in his palace at Carcosa, fearing what manner of spawn this union may unleash."" Cthulhu gave the equivalent of a laugh, ""Can you picture them, The Black Wind knocking down the walls of Carcosa, the Bloody Tongue crushing that cursed palace into dust! Oh, one can dream, Chxixsas... One can dream...""
The two masks, the Golden Angel and the Slender Maiden stood side by side, Isn't it all a lie, in the end? Torren-Wraeth bowed politely before the Bloated Woman. She was holding the Black Fan under her eyes, giving the illusion that she was a slender young lady, at least to the humans present. Ho Fong stood by reverently, but his jealousy of Tek was as strong as ever. Torren-Wraeth wondered if The Bloated Woman would play them against each other...He hoped not, for both their sake's. ""It is an honor to again have the presence of the Son of Cthulhu in my humble monastery."" ""The honor is all mine,"" Torren-Wraeth replied softly, ""My father sends his greetings and good-will toward you, My Lady."" The Bloated Woman's nose-tendril curled delicately in the air, ""No doubt. Send him my good-will in return."" Torren-Wraeth couldn't help but look at the sacrificial altar, where human victims had their arms cut off by the sacred sickles, after which they bled to death. He shuddered slightly at the horrible images flashing through his mind. The Bloated Woman noted this, but politely made no mention of it. Torren-Wraeth honestly could not condemn her, almost all of the worshiped entities, including his own father, demanded human sacrifice, many in even more horrible ways... ""I regret that I have to leave so soon, though I am grateful for your hospitality."" The last part, at least, was true. ""May The Key and The Gate be with you.""
",True
"III. A Search and an Evocation

1.

Charles Ward, as we have seen, first learned in 1918 of his descent from Joseph Curwen. That he at once took an intense interest in everything pertaining to the bygone mystery is not to be wondered at; for every vague rumour that he had heard of Curwen now became something vital to himself, in whom flowed Curwen's blood. No spirited and imaginative genealogist could have done otherwise than begin forthwith an avid and systematic collection of Curwen data.
      In his first delvings there was not the slightest attempt at secrecy; so that even Dr. Lyman hesitates to date the youth's madness from any period before the close of 1919. He talked freely with his family - though his mother was not particularly pleased to own an ancestor like Curwen - and with the officials of the various museums and libraries he visited. In applying to private families for records thought to be in their possession he made no concealment of his object, and shared the somewhat amused scepticism with which the accounts of the old diarists and letter-writers were regarded. He often expressed a keen wonder as to what really had taken place a century and a half before at that Pawtuxet farmhouse whose site he vainly tried to find, and what Joseph Curwen really had been.
      When he came across the Smith diary and archives and encountered the letter from Jedediah Orne he decided to visit Salem and look up Curwen's early activities and connexions there, which he did during the Easter vacation of 1919. At the Essex Institute, which was well known to him from former sojourns in the glamorous old town of crumbling Puritan gables and clustered gambrel roofs, he was very kindly received, and unearthed there a considerable amount of Curwen data. He found that his ancestor was born in Salem-Village, now Danvers, seven miles from town, on the eighteenth of February (O.S.) 1662-3; and that he had run away to sea at the age of fifteen, not appearing again for nine years, when he returned with the speech, dress, and manners of a native Englishman and settled in Salem proper. At that time he had little to do with his family, but spent most of his hours with the curious books he had brought from Europe, and the strange chemicals which came for him on ships from England, France, and Holland. Certain trips of his into the country were the objects of much local inquisitiveness, and were whisperingly associated with vague rumours of fires on the hills at night.
      Curwen's only close friends had been one Edward Hutchinson of Salem-Village and one Simon Orne of Salem. With these men he was often seen in conference about the Common, and visits among them were by no means infrequent. Hutchinson had a house well out toward the woods, and it was not altogether liked by sensitive people because of the sounds heard there at night. He was said to entertain strange visitors, and the lights seen from his windows were not always of the same colour. The knowledge he displayed concerning long-dead persons and long-forgotten events was considered distinctly unwholesome, and he disappeared about the time the witchcraft panic began, never to be heard from again. At that time Joseph Curwen also departed, but his settlement in Providence was soon learned of. Simon Orne lived in Salem until 1720, when his failure to grow visibly old began to excite attention. He thereafter disappeared, though thirty years later his precise counterpart and self-styled son turned up to claim his property. The claim was allowed on the strength of documents in Simon Orne's known hand, and Jedediah Orne continued to dwell in Salem till 1771, when certain letters from Providence citizens to the Rev. Thomas Barnard and others brought about his quiet removal to parts unknown.
      Certain documents by and about all of these strange characters were available at the Essex Institute, the Court House, and the Registry of Deeds, and included both harmless commonplaces such as land titles and bills of sale, and furtive fragments of a more provocative nature. There were four or five unmistakable allusions to them on the witchcraft trial records; as when one Hepzibah Lawson swore on July 10, 1692, at the Court of Oyer and Terminer under Judge Hathorne, that 'fortie Witches and the Blacke Man were wont to meete in the Woodes behind Mr. Hutchinson's house', and one Amity How declared at a session of August 8th before Judge Gedney that 'Mr. G. B. (Rev. George Burroughs) on that Nighte putt ye Divell his Marke upon Bridget S., Jonathan A., Simon O., Deliverance W., Joseph C., Susan P., Mehitable C., and Deborah B.' Then there was a catalogue of Hutchinson's uncanny library as found after his disappearance, and an unfinished manuscript in his handwriting, couched in a cipher none could read. Ward had a photostatic copy of this manuscript made, and began to work casually on the cipher as soon as it was delivered to him. After the following August his labours on the cipher became intense and feverish, and there is reason to believe from his speech and conduct that he hit upon the key before October or November. He never stated, though, whether or not he had succeeded.
      But of the greatest immediate interest was the Orne material. It took Ward only a short time to prove from identity of penmanship a thing he had already considered established from the text of the letter to Curwen; namely, that Simon Orne and his supposed son were one and the same person. As Orne had said to his correspondent, it was hardly safe to live too long in Salem, hence he resorted to a thirty-year sojourn abroad, and did not return to claim his lands except as a representative of a new generation. Orne had apparently been careful to destroy most of his correspondence, but the citizens who took action in 1771 found and preserved a few letters and papers which excited their wonder. There were cryptic formulae and diagrams in his and other hands which Ward now either copied with care or had photographed, and one extremely mysterious letter in a chirography that the searcher recognised from items in the Registry of Deeds as positively Joseph Curwen's.
      This Curwen letter, though undated as to the year, was evidently not the one in answer to which Orne had written the confiscated missive; and from internal evidence Ward placed it not much later than 1750. It may not be amiss to give the text in full, as a sample of the style of one whose history was so dark and terrible. The recipient is addressed as ""Simon"", but a line (whether drawn by Curwen or Orne Ward could not tell) is run through the word.
Prouidence, I. May (Ut. vulgo)
Brother: - 
My honour'd Antient ffriende, due Respects and earnest Wishes to Him whom we serve for yr eternall Power. I am just come upon That which you ought to knowe, concern'g the Matter of the Laste Extremitie and what to doe regard'g yt. I am not dispos'd to followe you in go'g Away on acct. of my Yeares, for Prouidence hath not ye Sharpeness of ye Bay in hunt'g oute uncommon Things and bringinge to Tryall. I am ty'd up in Shippes and Goodes, and cou'd not doe as you did, besides the Whiche my ffarme at Patuxet hath under it What you Knowe, that wou'd not waite for my com'g Backe as an Other.
      But I am not unreadie for harde ffortunes, as I haue tolde you, and haue longe work'd upon ye Way of get'g Backe after ye Laste. I laste Night strucke on ye Wordes that bringe up YOGGE-SOTHOTHE, and sawe for ye firste Time that fface spoke of by Ibn Schacabao in ye  -  - . And IT said, that ye III Psalme in ye Liber-Damnatus holdes ye Clauicle. With Sunne in V House, Saturne in Trine, drawe ye Pentagram of Fire, and saye ye ninth Uerse thrice. This Uerse repeate eache Roodemas and Hallow's Eue; and ye Thing will breede in ye Outside Spheres.
      And of ye Seede of Olde shal One be borne who shal looke Backe, tho' know'g not what he seekes.
      Yett will this availe Nothing if there be no Heir, and if the Saltes, or the Way to make the Saltes, bee not Readie for his Hande; and here I will owne, I have not taken needed Stepps nor founde Much. Ye Process is plaguy harde to come neare; and it uses up such a Store of Specimens, I am harde putte to it to get Enough, notwithstand'g the Sailors I have from ye Indies. Ye People aboute are become curious, but I can stande them off. Ye Gentry are worse than the Populace, be'g more Circumstantiall in their Accts. and more believ'd in what they tell. That Parson and Mr. Merritt have talk'd some, I am fearfull, but no Thing soe far is Dangerous. Ye Chymical substances are easie of get'g, there be'g II. goode Chymists in Towne, Dr. Bowen and Sam: Carew. I am foll'g oute what Borellus saith, and haue Helpe in Abdool Al-Hazred his VII. Booke. Whatever I gette, you shal haue. And in ye meane while, do not neglect to make use of ye Wordes I haue here giuen. I haue them Righte, but if you Desire to see HIM, imploy the Writings on ye Piece of  -  -  that I am putt'g in this Packet. Saye ye Uerses every Roodmas and Hallow's Eue; and if yr Line runn out not, one shall bee in yeares to come that shal looke backe and use what Saltes or Stuff for Saltes you shal leaue him. Job XIV. XIV.
      I rejoice you are again at Salem, and hope I may see you not longe hence. I have a goode Stallion, and am think'g of get'g a Coach, there be'g one (Mr. Merritt's) in Prouidence already, tho' ye Roades are bad. If you are dispos'd to Travel, doe not pass me bye. From Boston take ye Post Rd. thro' Dedham, Wrentham, and Attleborough, goode Taverns be'g at all these Townes. Stop at Mr. Bolcom's in Wrentham, where ye Beddes are finer than Mr. Hatch's, but eate at ye other House for their Cooke is better. Turne into Prou. by Patucket ffalls, and ye Rd. past Mr. Sayles's Tavern. My House opp. Mr. Epenetus Olney's Tavern off ye Towne Street, Ist on ye N. side of Olney's Court. Distance from Boston Stone abt. XLIV Miles.
      Sir, I am yr olde and true ffriend and Servt. in Almousin-Metraton.
Josephus C.
To Mr. Simon Orne,
William's-Lane, in Salem.
      This letter, oddly enough, was what first gave Ward the exact location of Curwen's Providence home; for none of the records encountered up to that time had been at all specific. The discovery was doubly striking because it indicated as the newer Curwen house built in 1761 on the site of the old, a dilapidated building still standing in Olney Court and well known to Ward in his antiquarian rambles over Stampers' Hill. The place was indeed only a few squares from his own home on the great hill's higher ground, and was now the abode of a negro family much esteemed for occasional washing, housecleaning, and furnace-tending services. To find, in distant Salem, such sudden proof of the significance of this familiar rookery in his own family history, was a highly impressive thing to Ward; and he resolved to explore the place immediately upon his return. The more mystical phases of the letter, which he took to be some extravagant kind of symbolism, frankly baffled him; though he noted with a thrill of curiosity that the Biblical passage referred to - Job 14, 14 - was the familiar verse, ""If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.""

2.

      Young Ward came home in a state of pleasant excitement, and spent the following Saturday in a long and exhaustive study of the house in Olney Court. The place, now crumbling with age, had never been a mansion; but was a modest two-and-a-half story wooden town house of the familiar Providence colonial type, with plain peaked roof, large central chimney, and artistically carved doorway with rayed fanlight, triangular pediment, and trim Doric pilasters. It had suffered but little alteration externally, and Ward felt he was gazing on something very close to the sinister matters of his quest.
      The present negro inhabitants were known to him, and he was very courteously shewn about the interior by old Asa and his stout wife Hannah. Here there was more change than the outside indicated, and Ward saw with regret that fully half of the fine scroll-and-urn overmantels and shell-carved cupboard linings were gone, whilst much of the fine wainscotting and bolection moulding was marked, hacked, and gouged, or covered up altogether with cheap wall-paper. In general, the survey did not yield as much as Ward had somehow expected; but it was at least exciting to stand within the ancestral walls which had housed such a man of horror as Joseph Curwen. He saw with a thrill that a monogram had been very carefully effaced from the ancient brass knocker.
      From then until after the close of school Ward spent his time on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher and the accumulation of local Curwen data. The former still proved unyielding; but of the latter he obtained so much, and so many clues to similar data elsewhere, that he was ready by July to make a trip to New London and New York to consult old letters whose presence in those places was indicated. This trip was very fruitful, for it brought him the Fenner letters with their terrible description of the Pawtuxet farmhouse raid, and the Nightingale-Talbot letters in which he learned of the portrait painted on a panel of the Curwen library. This matter of the portrait interested him particularly, since he would have given much to know just what Joseph Curwen looked like; and he decided to make a second search of the house in Olney Court to see if there might not be some trace of the ancient features beneath peeling coats of later paint or layers of mouldy wall-paper.
      Early in August that search took place, and Ward went carefully over the walls of every room sizeable enough to have been by any possibility the library of the evil builder. He paid especial attention to the large panels of such overmantels as still remained; and was keenly excited after about an hour, when on a broad area above the fireplace in a spacious ground-floor room he became certain that the surface brought out by the peeling of several coats of paint was sensibly darker than any ordinary interior paint or the wood beneath it was likely to have been. A few more careful tests with a thin knife, and he knew that he had come upon an oil portrait of great extent. With truly scholarly restraint the youth did not risk the damage which an immediate attempt to uncover the hidden picture with the knife might have done, but just retired from the scene of his discovery to enlist expert help. In three days he returned with an artist of long experience, Mr. Walter C. Dwight, whose studio is near the foot of College Hill; and that accomplished restorer of paintings set to work at once with proper methods and chemical substances. Old Asa and his wife were duly excited over their strange visitors, and were properly reimbursed for this invasion of their domestic hearth.
      As day by day the work of restoration progressed, Charles Ward looked on with growing interest at the lines and shades gradually unveiled after their long oblivion. Dwight had begun at the bottom; hence since the picture was a three-quarter-length one, the face did not come out for some time. It was meanwhile seen that the subject was a spare, well-shaped man with dark-blue coat, embroidered waistcoat, black satin small-clothes, and white silk stockings, seated in a carved chair against the background of a window with wharves and ships beyond. When the head came out it was observed to bear a neat Albemarle wig, and to possess a thin, calm, undistinguished face which seemed somehow familiar to both Ward and the artist. Only at the very last, though, did the restorer and his client begin to gasp with astonishment at the details of that lean, pallid visage, and to recognise with a touch of awe the dramatic trick which heredity had played. For it took the final bath of oil and the final stroke of the delicate scraper to bring out fully the expression which centuries had hidden; and to confront the bewildered Charles Dexter Ward, dweller in the past, with his own living features in the countenance of his horrible great-great-great-grandfather.
      Ward brought his parents to see the marvel he had uncovered, and his father at once determined to purchase the picture despite its execution on stationary panelling. The resemblance to the boy, despite an appearance of rather greater age, was marvellous; and it could be seen that through some trick of atavism the physical contours of Joseph Curwen had found precise duplication after a century and a half. Mrs. Ward's resemblance to her ancestor was not at all marked, though she could recall relatives who had some of the facial characteristics shared by her son and by the bygone Curwen. She did not relish the discovery, and told her husband that he had better burn the picture instead of bringing it home. There was, she averred, something unwholesome about it; not only intrinsically, but in its very resemblance to Charles. Mr. Ward, however, was a practical man of power and affairs - a cotton manufacturer with extensive mills at Riverpoint in the Pawtuxet Valley - and not one to listen to feminine scruples. The picture impressed him mightily with its likeness to his son, and he believed the boy deserved it as a present. In this opinion, it is needless to say, Charles most heartily concurred; and a few days later Mr. Ward located the owner of the house - a small rodent-featured person with a guttural accent - and obtained the whole mantel and overmantel bearing the picture at a curtly fixed priced which cut short the impending torrent of unctuous haggling.
      It now remained to take off the panelling and remove it to the Ward home, where provisions were made for its thorough restoration and installation with an electric mock-fireplace in Charles's third-floor study or library. To Charles was left the task of superintending this removal, and on the twenty-eighth of August he accompanied two expert workmen from the Crooker decorating firm to the house in Olney Court, where the mantel and portrait-bearing overmantel were detached with great care and precision for transportation in the company's motor truck. There was left a space of exposed brickwork marking the chimney's course, and in this young Ward observed a cubical recess about a foot square, which must have lain directly behind the head of the portrait. Curious as to what such a space might mean or contain, the youth approached and looked within; finding beneath the deep coatings of dust and soot some loose yellowed papers, a crude, thick copybook, and a few mouldering textile shreds which may have formed the ribbon binding the rest together. Blowing away the bulk of the dirt and cinders, he took up the book and looked at the bold inscription on its cover. It was in a hand which he had learned to recognise at the Essex Institute, and proclaimed the volume as the ""Journall and Notes of Jos: Curwen, Gent., of Providence-Plantations, Late of Salem.""
      Excited beyond measure by his discovery, Ward shewed the book to the two curious workmen beside him. Their testimony is absolute as to the nature and genuineness of the finding, and Dr. Willett relies on them to help establish his theory that the youth was not mad when he began his major eccentricities. All the other papers were likewise in Curwen's handwriting, and one of them seemed especially portentous because of its inscription: ""To Him Who Shal Come After, & How He May Gett Beyonde Time & ye Spheres."" Another was in a cipher; the same, Ward hoped, as the Hutchinson cipher which had hitherto baffled him. A third, and here the searcher rejoiced, seemed to be a key to the cipher; whilst the fourth and fifth were addressed respectively to ""Edw: Hutchinson, Armiger"" and ""Jedediah Orne, Esq."", 'or Their Heir or Heirs, or Those Represent'g Them'. The sixth and last was inscribed: ""Joseph Curwen his Life and Travells Bet'n ye yeares 1678 and 1687: Of Whither He Voyag'd, Where He Stay'd, Whom He Sawe, and What He Learnt.""

3.

      We have now reached the point from which the more academic school of alienists date Charles Ward's madness. Upon his discovery the youth had looked immediately at a few of the inner pages of the book and manuscripts, and had evidently seen something which impressed him tremendously. Indeed, in shewing the titles to the workmen he appeared to guard the text itself with peculiar care, and to labour under a perturbation for which even the antiquarian and genealogical significance of the find could hardly account. Upon returning home he broke the news with an almost embarrassed air, as if he wished to convey an idea of its supreme importance without having to exhibit the evidence itself. He did not even shew the titles to his parents, but simply told them that he had found some documents in Joseph Curwen's handwriting, ""mostly in cipher"", which would have to be studied very carefully before yielding up their true meaning. It is unlikely that he would have shewn what he did to the workmen, had it not been for their unconcealed curiosity. As it was he doubtless wished to avoid any display of peculiar reticence which would increase their discussion of the matter.
      That night Charles Ward sat up in his room reading the new-found book and papers, and when day came he did not desist. His meals, on his urgent request when his mother called to see what was amiss, were sent up to him; and in the afternoon he appeared only briefly when the men came to install the Curwen picture and mantelpiece in his study. The next night he slept in snatches in his clothes, meanwhile wrestling feverishly with the unravelling of the cipher manuscript. In the morning his mother saw that he was at work on the photostatic copy of the Hutchinson cipher, which he had frequently shewn her before; but in response to her query he said that the Curwen key could not be applied to it. That afternoon he abandoned his work and watched the men fascinatedly as they finished their installation of the picture with its woodwork above a cleverly realistic electric log, setting the mock-fireplace and overmantel a little out from the north wall as if a chimney existed, and boxing in the sides with panelling to match the room's. The front panel holding the picture was sawn and hinged to allow cupboard space behind it. After the workmen went he moved his work into the study and sat down before it with his eyes half on the cipher and half on the portrait which stared back at him like a year-adding and century-recalling mirror.
      His parents, subsequently recalling his conduct at this period, give interesting details anent the policy of concealment which he practiced. Before servants he seldom hid any paper which he might be studying, since he rightly assumed that Curwen's intricate and archaic chirography would be too much for them. With his parents, however, he was more circumspect; and unless the manuscript in question were a cipher, or a mere mass of cryptic symbols and unknown ideographs (as that entitled ""To Him Who Shal Come After etc."" seemed to be), he would cover it with some convenient paper until his caller had departed. At night he kept the papers under lock and key in an antique cabinet of his, where he also placed them whenever he left the room. He soon resumed fairly regular hours and habits, except that his long walks and other outside interests seemed to cease. The opening of school, where he now began his senior year, seemed a great bore to him; and he frequently asserted his determination never to bother with college. He had, he said, important special investigations to make, which would provide him with more avenues toward knowledge and the humanities than any university which the world could boast.
      Naturally, only one who had always been more or less studious, eccentric, and solitary could have pursued this course for many days without attracting notice. Ward, however, was constitutionally a scholar and a hermit; hence his parents were less surprised than regretful at the close confinement and secrecy he adopted. At the same time, both his father and mother thought it odd that he would shew them no scrap of his treasure-trove, nor give any connected account of such data as he had deciphered. This reticence he explained away as due to a wish to wait until he might announce some connected revelation, but as the weeks passed without further disclosures there began to grow up between the youth and his family a kind of constraint; intensified in his mother's case by her manifest disapproval of all Curwen delvings.
      During October Ward began visiting the libraries again, but no longer for the antiquarian matter of his former days. Witchcraft and magic, occultism and daemonology, were what he sought now; and when Providence sources proved unfruitful he would take the train for Boston and tap the wealth of the great library in Copley Square, the Widener Library at Harvard, or the Zion Research Library in Brookline, where certain rare works on Biblical subjects are available. He bought extensively, and fitted up a whole additional set of shelves in his study for newly acquired works on uncanny subjects; while during the Christmas holidays he made a round of out-of-town trips including one to Salem to consult certain records at the Essex Institute.
      About the middle of January, 1920, there entered Ward's bearing an element of triumph which he did not explain, and he was no more found at work upon the Hutchinson cipher. Instead, he inaugurated a dual policy of chemical research and record-scanning; fitting up for the one a laboratory in the unused attic of the house, and for the latter haunting all the sources of vital statistics in Providence. Local dealers in drugs and scientific supplies, later questioned, gave astonishingly queer and meaningless catalogues of the substances and instruments he purchased; but clerks at the State House, the City Hall, and the various libraries agree as to the definite object of his second interest. He was searching intensely and feverishly for the grave of Joseph Curwen, from whose slate slab an older generation had so wisely blotted the name.
      Little by little there grew upon the Ward family the conviction that something was wrong. Charles had had freaks and changes of minor interests before, but this growing secrecy and absorption in strange pursuits was unlike even him. His school work was the merest pretence; and although he failed in no test, it could be seen that the old application had all vanished. He had other concernments now; and when not in his new laboratory with a score of obsolete alchemical books, could be found either poring over old burial records down town or glued to his volumes of occult lore in his study, where the startlingly - one almost fancied increasingly - similar features of Joseph Curwen stared blandly at him from the great overmantel on the north wall.
      Late in March Ward added to his archive-searching a ghoulish series of rambles about the various ancient cemeteries of the city. The cause appeared later, when it was learned from City Hall clerks that he had probably found an important clue. His quest had suddenly shifted from the grave of Joseph Curwen to that of one Naphthali Field; and this shift was explained when, upon going over the files that he had been over, the investigators actually found a fragmentary record of Curwen's burial which had escaped the general obliteration, and which stated that the curious leaden coffin had been interred ""10 ft. S. and 5 ft. W. of Naphthali Field's grave in ye - "". The lack of a specified burying-ground in the surviving entry greatly complicated the search, and Naphthali Field's grave seemed as elusive as that of Curwen; but here no systematic effacement had existed, and one might reasonably be expected to stumble on the stone itself even if its record had perished. Hence the rambles - from which St. John's (the former King's) Churchyard and the ancient Congregational burying-ground in the midst of Swan Point Cemetery were excluded, since other statistics had shewn that the only Naphthali Field (obiit 1729) whose grave could have been meant had been a Baptist.

4.

      It was toward May when Dr. Willett, at the request of the senior Ward, and fortified with all the Curwen data which the family had gleaned from Charles in his non-secretive days, talked with the young man. The interview was of little value or conclusiveness, for Willett felt at every moment that Charles was thoroughly master of himself and in touch with matters of real importance; but it at least forced the secretive youth to offer some rational explanation of his recent demeanour. Of a pallid, impassive type not easily shewing embarrassment, Ward seemed quite ready to discuss his pursuits, though not to reveal their object. He stated that the papers of his ancestor had contained some remarkable secrets of early scientific knowledge, for the most part in cipher, of an apparent scope comparable only to the discoveries of Friar Bacon and perhaps surpassing even those. They were, however, meaningless except when correlated with a body of learning now wholly obsolete; so that their immediate presentation to a world equipped only with modern science would rob them of all impressiveness and dramatic significance. To take their vivid place in the history of human thought they must first be correlated by one familiar with the background out of which they evolved, and to this task of correlation Ward was now devoting himself. He was seeking to acquire as fast as possible those neglected arts of old which a true interpreter of the Curwen data must possess, and hoped in time to make a full announcement and presentation of the utmost interest to mankind and to the world of thought. Not even Einstein, he declared, could more profoundly revolutionise the current conception of things.
      As to his graveyard search, whose object he freely admitted, but the details of whose progress he did not relate, he said he had reason to think that Joseph Curwen's mutilated headstone bore certain mystic symbols - carved from directions in his will and ignorantly spared by those who had effaced the name - which were absolutely essential to the final solution of his cryptic system. Curwen, he believed, had wished to guard his secret with care; and had consequently distributed the data in an exceedingly curious fashion. When Dr. Willett asked to see the mystic documents, Ward displayed much reluctance and tried to put him off with such things as photostatic copies of the Hutchinson cipher and Orne formulae and diagrams; but finally shewed him the exteriors of some of the real Curwen finds - the ""Journall and Notes"", the cipher (title in cipher also), and the formula-filled message ""To Him Who Shal Come After"" - and let him glance inside such as were in obscure characters.
      He also opened the diary at a page carefully selected for its innocuousness and gave Willett a glimpse of Curwen's connected handwriting in English. The doctor noted very closely the crabbed and complicated letters, and the general aura of the seventeenth century which clung round both penmanship and style despite the writer's survival into the eighteenth century, and became quickly certain that the document was genuine. The text itself was relatively trivial, and Willett recalled only a fragment:
""Wedn. 16 Octr. 1754. My Sloope the Wakeful this Day putt in from London with XX newe Men pick'd up in ye Indies, Spaniards from Martineco and 2 Dutch Men from Surinam. Ye Dutch Men are like to Desert from have'g hearde Somewhat ill of these Ventures, but I will see to ye Inducing of them to Staye. ffor Mr. Knight Dexter of ye Boy and Book 120 Pieces Camblets, 100 Pieces Assrtd. Cambleteens, 20 Pieces blue Duffles, 100 Pieces Shalloons, 50 Pieces Calamancoes, 300 Pieces each, Shendsoy and Humhums. ffor Mr. Green at ye Elephant 50 Gallon Cyttles, 20 Warm'g Pannes, 15 Bake Cyttles, 10 pr. Smoke'g Tonges. ffor Mr. Perrigo 1 Sett of Awles, ffor Mr. Nightingale 50 Reames prime Foolscap. Say'd ye SABAOTH thrice last Nighte but None appear'd. I must heare more from Mr. H. in Transylvania, tho' it is Harde reach'g him and exceeding strange he can not give me the Use of what he hath so well us'd these hundred yeares. Simon hath not Writ these V. Weekes, but I expecte soon hear'g from him.""
      When upon reaching this point Dr. Willett turned the leaf he was quickly checked by Ward, who almost snatched the book from his grasp. All that the doctor had a chance to see on the newly opened page was a brief pair of sentences; but these, strangely enough, lingered tenaciously in his memory. They ran: ""Ye Verse from Liber-Damnatus be'g spoke V Roodmasses and IV Hallows-Eves, I am Hopeful ye Thing is breed'g Outside ye Spheres. It will drawe One who is to Come, if I can make sure he shal bee, and he shall think on Past thinges and look back thro' all ye yeares, against ye which I must have ready ye Saltes or That to make 'em with.""
      Willett saw no more, but somehow this small glimpse gave a new and vague terror to the painted features of Joseph Curwen which stared blandly down from the overmantel. Ever after that he entertained the odd fancy - which his medical skill of course assured him was only a fancy - that the eyes of the portrait had a sort of wish, if not an actual tendency, to follow young Charles Ward as he moved about the room. He stopped before leaving to study the picture closely, marvelling at its resemblance to Charles and memorising every minute detail of the cryptical, colourless face, even down to a slight scar or pit in the smooth brow above the right eye. Cosmo Alexander, he decided, was a painter worthy of the Scotland that produced Raeburn, and a teacher worthy of his illustrious pupil Gilbert Stuart.
      Assured by the doctor that Charles's mental health was in no danger, but that on the other hand he was engaged in researches which might prove of real importance, the Wards were more lenient than they might otherwise have been when during the following June the youth made positive his refusal to attend college. He had, he declared, studies of much more vital importance to pursue; and intimated a wish to go abroad the following year in order to avail himself of certain sources of data not existing in America. The senior Ward, while denying this latter wish as absurd for a boy of only eighteen, acquiesced regarding the university; so that after a none too brilliant graduation from the Moses Brown School there ensued for Charles a three-year period of intensive occult study and graveyard searching. He became recognised as an eccentric, and dropped even more completely from the sight of his family's friends than he had been before; keeping close to his work and only occasionally making trips to other cities to consult obscure records. Once he went south to talk with a strange old mulatto who dwelt in a swamp and about whom a newspaper had printed a curious article. Again he sought a small village in the Adirondacks whence reports of certain odd ceremonial practices had come. But still his parents forbade him the trip to the Old World which he desired.
      Coming of age in April, 1923, and having previously inherited a small competence from his maternal grandfather, Ward determined at last to take the European trip hitherto denied him. Of his proposed itinerary he would say nothing save that the needs of his studies would carry him to many places, but he promised to write his parents fully and faithfully. When they saw he could not be dissuaded, they ceased all opposition and helped as best they could; so that in June the young man sailed for Liverpool with the farewell blessings of his father and mother, who accompanied him to Boston and waved him out of sight from the White Star pier in Charlestown. Letters soon told of his safe arrival, and of his securing good quarters in Great Russell Street, London; where he proposed to stay, shunning all family friends, till he had exhausted the resources of the British Museum in a certain direction. Of his daily life he wrote but little, for there was little to write. Study and experiment consumed all his time, and he mentioned a laboratory which he had established in one of his rooms. That he said nothing of antiquarian rambles in the glamorous old city with its luring skyline of ancient domes and steeples and its tangles of roads and alleys whose mystic convolutions and sudden vistas alternately beckon and surprise, was taken by his parents as a good index of the degree to which his new interests had engrossed his mind.
      In June, 1924, a brief note told of his departure for Paris, to which he had before made one or two flying trips for material in the Bibliothque Nationale. For three months thereafter he sent only postal cards, giving an address in the Rue St. Jacques and referring to a special search among rare manuscripts in the library of an unnamed private collector. He avoided acquaintances, and no tourists brought back reports of having seen him. Then came a silence, and in October the Wards received a picture card from Prague, Czecho-Slovakia, stating that Charles was in that ancient town for the purpose of conferring with a certain very aged man supposed to be the last living possessor of some very curious mediaeval information. He gave an address in the Neustadt, and announced no move till the following January; when he dropped several cards from Vienna telling of his passage through that city on the way toward a more easterly region whither one of his correspondents and fellow-delvers into the occult had invited him.
      The next card was from Klausenburg in Transylvania, and told of Ward's progress toward his destination. He was going to visit a Baron Ferenczy, whose estate lay in the mountains east of Rakus; and was to be addressed at Rakus in the care of that nobleman. Another card from Rakus a week later, saying that his host's carriage had met him and that he was leaving the village for the mountains, was his last message for a considerable time; indeed, he did not reply to his parents' frequent letters until May, when he wrote to discourage the plan of his mother for a meeting in London, Paris, or Rome during the summer, when the elder Wards were planning to travel in Europe. His researches, he said, were such that he could not leave his present quarters; while the situation of Baron Ferenczy's castle did not favour visits. It was on a crag in the dark wooded mountains, and the region was so shunned by the country folk that normal people could not help feeling ill at ease. Moreover, the Baron was not a person likely to appeal to correct and conservative New England gentlefolk. His aspect and manners had idiosyncrasies, and his age was so great as to be disquieting. It would be better, Charles said, if his parents would wait for his return to Providence; which could scarcely be far distant.
      That return did not, however, take place until May, 1926, when after a few heralding cards the young wanderer quietly slipped into New York on the Homeric and traversed the long miles to Providence by motor-coach, eagerly drinking in the green rolling hills, the fragrant, blossoming orchards, and the white steepled towns of vernal Connecticut; his first taste of ancient New England in nearly four years. When the coach crossed the Pawcatuck and entered Rhode Island amidst the faery goldenness of a late spring afternoon his heart beat with quickened force, and the entry to Providence along Reservoir and Elmwood avenues was a breathless and wonderful thing despite the depths of forbidden lore to which he had delved. At the high square where Broad, Weybosset, and Empire Streets join, he saw before and below him in the fire of sunset the pleasant, remembered houses and domes and steeples of the old town; and his head swam curiously as the vehicle rolled down the terminal behind the Biltmore, bringing into view the great dome and soft, roof-pierced greenery of the ancient hill across the river, and the tall colonial spire of the First Baptist Church limned pink in the magic evening light against the fresh springtime verdure of its precipitous background.
      Old Providence! It was this place and the mysterious forces of its long, continuous history which had brought him into being, and which had drawn him back toward marvels and secrets whose boundaries no prophet might fix. Here lay the arcana, wondrous or dreadful as the case might be, for which all his years of travel and application had been preparing him. A taxicab whirled him through Post Office Square with its glimpse of the river, the old Market House, and the head of the bay, and up the steep curved slope of Waterman Street to Prospect, where the vast gleaming dome and sunset-flushed Ionic columns of the Christian Science Church beckoned northward. Then eight squares past the fine old estates his childish eyes had known, and the quaint brick sidewalks so often trodden by his youthful feet. And at last the little white overtaken farmhouse on the right, on the left the classic Adam porch and stately bayed facade of the great brick house where he was born. It was twilight, and Charles Dexter Ward had come home.

5.

      A school of alienists slightly less academic than Dr. Lyman's assign to Ward's European trip the beginning of his true madness. Admitting that he was sane when he started, they believe that his conduct upon returning implies a disastrous change. But even to this claim Dr. Willett refuses to accede. There was, he insists, something later; and the queernesses of the youth at this stage he attributes to the practice of rituals learned abroad - odd enough things, to be sure, but by no means implying mental aberration on the part of their celebrant. Ward himself, though visibly aged and hardened, was still normal in his general reactions; and in several talks with Willett displayed a balance which no madman - even an incipient one - could feign continuously for long. What elicited the notion of insanity at this period were the sounds heard at all hours from Ward's attic laboratory, in which he kept himself most of the time. There were chantings and repetitions, and thunderous declamations in uncanny rhythms; and although these sounds were always in Ward's own voice, there was something in the quality of that voice, and in the accents of the formulae it pronounced, which could not but chill the blood of every hearer. It was noticed that Nig, the venerable and beloved black cat of the household, bristled and arched his back perceptibly when certain of the tones were heard.
      The odours occasionally wafted from the laboratory were likewise exceedingly strange. Sometimes they were very noxious, but more often they were aromatic, with a haunting, elusive quality which seemed to have the power of inducing fantastic images. People who smelled them had a tendency to glimpse momentary mirages of enormous vistas, with strange hills or endless avenues of sphinxes and hippogriffs stretching off into infinite distance. Ward did not resume his old-time rambles, but applied himself diligently to the strange books he had brought home, and to equally strange delvings within his quarters; explaining that European sources had greatly enlarged the possibilities of his work, and promising great revelations in the years to come. His older aspect increased to a startling degree his resemblance to the Curwen portrait in his library; and Dr. Willett would often pause by the latter after a call, marvelling at the virtual identity, and reflecting that only the small pit above the picture's right eye now remained to differentiate the long-dead wizard from the living youth. These calls of Willett's, undertaken at the request of the senior Wards, were curious affairs. Ward at no time repulsed the doctor, but the latter saw that he could never reach the young man's inner psychology. Frequently he noted peculiar things about; little wax images of grotesque design on the shelves or tables, and the half-erased remnants of circles, triangles, and pentagrams in chalk or charcoal on the cleared central space of the large room. And always in the night those rhythms and incantations thundered, till it became very difficult to keep servants or suppress furtive talk of Charles's madness.
      In January, 1927, a peculiar incident occurred. One night about midnight, as Charles was chanting a ritual whose weird cadence echoed unpleasantly through the house below, there came a sudden gust of chill wind from the bay, and a faint, obscure trembling of the earth which everyone in the neighbourhood noted. At the same time the cat exhibited phenomenal traces of fright, while dogs bayed for as much as a mile around. This was the prelude to a sharp thunderstorm, anomalous for the season, which brought with it such a crash that Mr. and Mrs. Ward believed the house had been struck. They rushed upstairs to see what damage had been done, but Charles met them at the door to the attic; pale, resolute, and portentous, with an almost fearsome combination of triumph and seriousness on his face. He assured them that the house had not really been struck, and that the storm would soon be over. They paused, and looking through a window saw that he was indeed right; for the lightning flashed farther and farther off, whilst the trees ceased to bend in the strange frigid gust from the water. The thunder sank to a sort of dull mumbling chuckle and finally died away. Stars came out, and the stamp of triumph on Charles Ward's face crystallised into a very singular expression.
      For two months or more after this incident Ward was less confined than usual to his laboratory. He exhibited a curious interest in the weather, and made odd inquiries about the date of the spring thawing of the ground. One night late in March he left the house after midnight, and did not return till almost morning; when his mother, being wakeful, heard a rumbling motor draw up to the carriage entrance. Muffled oaths could be distinguished, and Mrs. Ward, rising and going to the window, saw four dark figures removing a long, heavy box from a truck at Charles's direction and carrying it within by the side door. She heard laboured breathing and ponderous footfalls on the stairs, and finally a dull thumping in the attic; after which the footfalls descended again, and the four men reappeared outside and drove off in their truck.
      The next day Charles resumed his strict attic seclusion, drawing down the dark shades of his laboratory windows and appearing to be working on some metal substance. He would open the door to no one, and steadfastly refused all proffered food. About noon a wrenching sound followed by a terrible cry and a fall were heard, but when Mrs. Ward rapped at the door her son at length answered faintly, and told her that nothing had gone amiss. The hideous and indescribable stench now welling out was absolutely harmless and unfortunately necessary. Solitude was the one prime essential, and he would appear later for dinner. That afternoon, after the conclusion of some odd hissing sounds which came from behind the locked portal, he did finally appear; wearing an extremely haggard aspect and forbidding anyone to enter the laboratory upon any pretext. This, indeed, proved the beginning of a new policy of secrecy; for never afterward was any other person permitted to visit either the mysterious garret workroom or the adjacent storeroom which he cleaned out, furnished roughly, and added to his inviolably private domain as a sleeping apartment. Here he lived, with books brought up from his library beneath, till the time he purchased the Pawtuxet bungalow and moved to it all his scientific effects.
      In the evening Charles secured the paper before the rest of the family and damaged part of it through an apparent accident. Later on Dr. Willett, having fixed the date from statements by various members of the household, looked up an intact copy at the Journal office and found that in the destroyed section the following small item had occurred:
Nocturnal Diggers Surprised in
North Burial Ground

Robert Hart, night watchman at the North Burial Ground, this morning discovered a party of several men with a motor truck in the oldest part of the cemetery, but apparently frightened them off before they had accomplished whatever their object may have been.
      The discovery took place at about four o'clock, when Hart's attention was attracted by the sound of a motor outside his shelter. Investigating, he saw a large truck on the main drive several rods away; but could not reach it before the sound of his feet on the gravel had revealed his approach. The men hastily placed a large box in the truck and drove away toward the street before they could be overtaken; and since no known grave was disturbed, Hart believes that this box was an object which they wished to bury.
      The diggers must have been at work for a long while before detection, for Hart found an enormous hole dug at a considerable distance back from the roadway in the lot of Amasa Field, where most of the old stones have long ago disappeared. The hole, a place as large and deep as a grave, was empty; and did not coincide with any interment mentioned in the cemetery records.
      Sergt. Riley of the Second Station viewed the spot and gave the opinion that the hole was dug by bootleggers rather gruesomely and ingeniously seeking a safe cache for liquor in a place not likely to be disturbed. In reply to questions Hart said he thought the escaping truck had headed up Rochambeau Avenue, though he could not be sure.
      During the next few days Ward was seldom seen by his family. Having added sleeping quarters to his attic realm, he kept closely to himself there, ordering food brought to the door and not taking it in until after the servant had gone away. The droning of monotonous formulae and the chanting of bizarre rhythms recurred at intervals, while at other times occasional listeners could detect the sound of tinkling glass, hissing chemicals, running water, or roaring gas flames. Odours of the most unplaceable quality, wholly unlike any before noted, hung at times around the door; and the air of tension observable in the young recluse whenever he did venture briefly forth was such as to excite the keenest speculation. Once he made a hasty trip to the Athenaeum for a book he required, and again he hired a messenger to fetch him a highly obscure volume from Boston. Suspense was written portentously over the whole situation, and both the family and Dr. Willett confessed themselves wholly at a loss what to do or think about it.

6.

      Then on the fifteenth of April a strange development occurred. While nothing appeared to grow different in kind, there was certainly a very terrible difference in degree; and Dr. Willett somehow attaches great significance to the change. The day was Good Friday, a circumstance of which the servants made much, but which others quite naturally dismiss as an irrelevant coincidence. Late in the afternoon young Ward began repeating a certain formula in a singularly loud voice, at the same time burning some substance so pungent that its fumes escaped over the entire house. The formula was so plainly audible in the hall outside the locked door that Mrs. Ward could not help memorising it as she waited and listened anxiously, and later on she was able to write it down at Dr. Willett's request. It ran as follows, and experts have told Dr. Willett that its very close analogue can be found in the mystic writings of ""Eliphas Levi"", that cryptic soul who crept through a crack in the forbidden door and glimpsed the frightful vistas of the void beyond:
""Per Adonai Eloim, Adonai Jehova,
Adonai Sabaoth, Metraton On Agla Mathon,
verbum pythonicum, mysterium salamandrae,
conventus sylvorum, antra gnomorum,
daemonia Coeli Gad, Almousin, Gibor, Jehosua,
Evam, Zariatnatmik, veni, veni, veni.""
      This had been going on for two hours without change or intermission when over all the neighbourhood a pandaemoniac howling of dogs set in. The extent of this howling can be judged from the space it received in the papers the next day, but to those in the Ward household it was overshadowed by the odour which instantly followed it; a hideous, all-pervasive odour which none of them had ever smelt before or have ever smelt since. In the midst of this mephitic flood there came a very perceptible flash like that of lightning, which would have been blinding and impressive but for the daylight around; and then was heard the voice that no listener can ever forget because of its thunderous remoteness, its incredible depth, and its eldritch dissimilarity to Charles Ward's voice. It shook the house, and was clearly heard by at least two neighbours above the howling of the dogs. Mrs. Ward, who had been listening in despair outside her son's locked laboratory, shivered as she recognised its hellish import; for Charles had told her of its evil fame in dark books, and of the manner in which it had thundered, according to the Fenner letters, above the doomed Pawtuxet farmhouse on the night of Joseph Curwen's annihilation. There was no mistaking that nightmare phrase, for Charles had described it too vividly in the old days when he had talked frankly of his Curwen investigations. And yet it was only this fragment of an archaic and forgotten language: ""DIES MIES JESCHET BOENE DOESEF DOUVEMA ENITEMAUS"".
      Close upon this thundering there came a momentary darkening of the daylight, though sunset was still an hour distant, and then a puff of added odour different from the first but equally unknown and intolerable. Charles was chanting again now and his mother could hear syllables that sounded like ""Yi-nash-Yog-Sothoth-he-lgeb-fi-throdog"" - ending in a ""Yah!"" whose maniacal force mounted in an ear-splitting crescendo. A second later all previous memories were effaced by the wailing scream which burst out with frantic explosiveness and gradually changed form to a paroxysm of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Mrs. Ward, with the mingled fear and blind courage of maternity, advanced and knocked affrightedly at the concealing panels, but obtained no sign of recognition. She knocked again, but paused nervelessly as a second shriek arose, this one unmistakably in the familiar voice of her son, and sounding concurrently with the still bursting cachinnations of that other voice. Presently she fainted, although she is still unable to recall the precise and immediate cause. Memory sometimes makes merciful deletions.
      Mr. Ward returned from the business section at about quarter past six; and not finding his wife downstairs, was told by the frightened servants that she was probably watching at Charles's door, from which the sounds had been far stranger than ever before. Mounting the stairs at once, he saw Mrs. Ward stretched at full length on the floor of the corridor outside the laboratory; and realising that she had fainted, hastened to fetch a glass of water from a set bowl in a neighbouring alcove. Dashing the cold fluid in her face, he was heartened to observe an immediate response on her part, and was watching the bewildered opening of her eyes when a chill shot through him and threatened to reduce him to the very state from which she was emerging. For the seemingly silent laboratory was not as silent as it had appeared to be, but held the murmurs of a tense, muffled conversation in tones too low for comprehension, yet of a quality profoundly disturbing to the soul.
      It was not, of course, new for Charles to mutter formulae; but this muttering was definitely different. It was so palpably a dialogue, or imitation of a dialogue, with the regular alteration of inflections suggesting question and answer, statement and response. One voice was undisguisedly that of Charles, but the other had a depth and hollowness which the youth's best powers of ceremonial mimicry had scarcely approached before. There was something hideous, blasphemous, and abnormal about it, and but for a cry from his recovering wife which cleared his mind by arousing his protective instincts it is not likely that Theodore Howland Ward could have maintained for nearly a year more his old boast that he had never fainted. As it was, he seized his wife in his arms and bore her quickly downstairs before she could notice the voices which had so horribly disturbed him. Even so, however, he was not quick enough to escape catching something himself which caused him to stagger dangerously with his burden. For Mrs. Ward's cry had evidently been heard by others than he, and there had come from behind the locked door the first distinguishable words which that masked and terrible colloquy had yielded. They were merely an excited caution in Charles's own voice, but somehow their implications held a nameless fright for the father who overheard them. The phrase was just this: ""Sshh! - write!""
      Mr. and Mrs. Ward conferred at some length after dinner, and the former resolved to have a firm and serious talk with Charles that very night. No matter how important the object, such conduct could no longer be permitted; for these latest developments transcended every limit of sanity and formed a menace to the order and nervous well-being of the entire household. The youth must indeed have taken complete leave of his senses, since only downright madness could have prompted the wild screams and imaginary conversations in assumed voices which the present day had brought forth. All this must be stopped, or Mrs. Ward would be made ill and the keeping of servants become an impossibility.
      Mr. Ward rose at the close of the meal and started upstairs for Charles's laboratory. On the third floor, however, he paused at the sounds which he heard proceeding from the now disused library of his son. Books were apparently being flung about and papers wildly rustled, and upon stepping to the door Mr. Ward beheld the youth within, excitedly assembling a vast armful of literary matter of every size and shape. Charles's aspect was very drawn and haggard, and he dropped his entire load with a start at the sound of his father's voice. At the elder man's command he sat down, and for some time listened to the admonitions he had so long deserved. There was no scene. At the end of the lecture he agreed that his father was right, and that his noises, mutterings, incantations, and chemical odours were indeed inexcusable nuisances. He agreed to a policy of greater quiet, though insisting on a prolongation of his extreme privacy. Much of his future work, he said, was in any case purely book research; and he could obtain quarters elsewhere for any such vocal rituals as might be necessary at a later stage. For the fright and fainting of his mother he expressed the keenest contrition, and explained that the conversation later heard was part of an elaborate symbolism designed to create a certain mental atmosphere. His use of abstruse technical terms somewhat bewildered Mr. Ward, but the parting impression was one of undeniable sanity and poise despite a mysterious tension of the utmost gravity. The interview was really quite inconclusive, and as Charles picked up his armful and left the room Mr. Ward hardly knew what to make of the entire business. It was as mysterious as the death of poor old Nig, whose stiffening form had been found an hour before in the basement, with staring eyes and fear-distorted mouth.
      Driven by some vague detective instinct, the bewildered parent now glanced curiously at the vacant shelves to see what his son had taken up to the attic. The youth's library was plainly and rigidly classified, so that one might tell at a glance the books or at least the kind of books which had been withdrawn. On this occasion Mr. Ward was astonished to find that nothing of the occult or the antiquarian, beyond what had been previously removed, was missing. These new withdrawals were all modern items; histories, scientific treatises, geographies, manuals of literature, philosophic works, and certain contemporary newspapers and magazines. It was a very curious shift from Charles Ward's recent run of reading, and the father paused in a growing vortex of perplexity and an engulfing sense of strangeness. The strangeness was a very poignant sensation, and almost clawed at his chest as he strove to see just what was wrong around him. Something was indeed wrong, and tangibly as well as spiritually so. Ever since he had been in this room he had known that something was amiss, and at last it dawned upon him what it was.
      On the north wall rose still the ancient carved overmantel from the house in Olney Court, but to the cracked and precariously restored oils of the large Curwen portrait disaster had come. Time and unequal heating had done their work at last, and at some time since the room's last cleaning the worst had happened. Peeling clear of the wood, curling tighter and tighter, and finally crumbling into small bits with what must have been malignly silent suddenness, the portrait of Joseph Curwen had resigned forever its staring surveillance of the youth it so strangely resembled, and now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust.
","V.

The following winter brought an event no less strange than Wilbur’s first trip outside the Dunwich region. Correspondence with the Widener Library at Harvard, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the British Museum, the University of Buenos Ayres, and the Library of Miskatonic University of Arkham had failed to get him the loan of a book he desperately wanted; so at length he set out in person, shabby, dirty, bearded, and uncouth of dialect, to consult the copy at Miskatonic, which was the nearest to him geographically. Almost eight feet tall, and carrying a cheap new valise from Osborn’s general store, this dark and goatish gargoyle appeared one day in Arkham in quest of the dreaded volume kept under lock and key at the college library—the hideous Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred in Olaus Wormius’ Latin version, as printed in Spain in the seventeenth century. He had never seen a city before, but had no thought save to find his way to the university grounds; where, indeed, he passed heedlessly by the great white-fanged watchdog that barked with unnatural fury and enmity, and tugged frantically at its stout chain.
      Wilbur had with him the priceless but imperfect copy of Dr. Dee’s English version which his grandfather had bequeathed him, and upon receiving access to the Latin copy he at once began to collate the two texts with the aim of discovering a certain passage which would have come on the 751st page of his own defective volume. This much he could not civilly refrain from telling the librarian—the same erudite Henry Armitage (A.M. Miskatonic, Ph. D. Princeton, Litt. D. Johns Hopkins) who had once called at the farm, and who now politely plied him with questions. He was looking, he had to admit, for a kind of formula or incantation containing the frightful name Yog-Sothoth, and it puzzled him to find discrepancies, duplications, and ambiguities which made the matter of determination far from easy. As he copied the formula he finally chose, Dr. Armitage looked involuntarily over his shoulder at the open pages; the left-hand one of which, in the Latin version, contained such monstrous threats to the peace and sanity of the world.
      “Nor is it to be thought,” ran the text as Armitage mentally translated it, “that man is either the oldest or the last of earth’s masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man’s truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them. They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraven, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again.”
      Dr. Armitage, associating what he was reading with what he had heard of Dunwich and its brooding presences, and of Wilbur Whateley and his dim, hideous aura that stretched from a dubious birth to a cloud of probable matricide, felt a wave of fright as tangible as a draught of the tomb’s cold clamminess. The bent, goatish giant before him seemed like the spawn of another planet or dimension; like something only partly of mankind, and linked to black gulfs of essence and entity that stretch like titan phantasms beyond all spheres of force and matter, space and time. Presently Wilbur raised his head and began speaking in that strange, resonant fashion which hinted at sound-producing organs unlike the run of mankind’s.
      “Mr. Armitage,” he said, “I calc’late I’ve got to take that book home. They’s things in it I’ve got to try under sarten conditions that I can’t git here, an’ it ’ud be a mortal sin to let a red-tape rule hold me up. Let me take it along, Sir, an’ I’ll swar they wun’t nobody know the difference. I dun’t need to tell ye I’ll take good keer of it. It wa’n’t me that put this Dee copy in the shape it is. . . .”
      He stopped as he saw firm denial on the librarian’s face, and his own goatish features grew crafty. Armitage, half-ready to tell him he might make a copy of what parts he needed, thought suddenly of the possible consequences and checked himself. There was too much responsiblity in giving such a being the key to such blasphemous outer spheres. Whateley saw how things stood, and tried to answer lightly.
      “Wal, all right, ef ye feel that way abaout it. Maybe Harvard wun’t be so fussy as yew be.” And without saying more he rose and strode out of the building, stooping at each doorway.
      Armitage heard the savage yelping of the great watchdog, and studied Whateley’s gorilla-like lope as he crossed the bit of campus visible from the window. He thought of the wild tales he had heard, and recalled the old Sunday stories in the Advertiser; these things, and the lore he had picked up from Dunwich rustics and villagers during his one visit there. Unseen things not of earth—or at least not of tri-dimensional earth—rushed foetid and horrible through New England’s glens, and brooded obscenely on the mountain-tops. Of this he had long felt certain. Now he seemed to sense the close presence of some terrible part of the intruding horror, and to glimpse a hellish advance in the black dominion of the ancient and once passive nightmare. He locked away the Necronomicon with a shudder of disgust, but the room still reeked with an unholy and unidentifiable stench. “As a foulness shall ye know them,” he quoted. Yes—the odour was the same as that which had sickened him at the Whateley farmhouse less than three years before. He thought of Wilbur, goatish and ominous, once again, and laughed mockingly at the village rumours of his parentage.
      “Inbreeding?” Armitage muttered half-aloud to himself. “Great God, what simpletons! Shew them Arthur Machen’s Great God Pan and they’ll think it a common Dunwich scandal! But what thing—what cursed shapeless influence on or off this three-dimensioned earth—was Wilbur Whateley’s father? Born on Candlemas—nine months after May-Eve of 1912, when the talk about the queer earth noises reached clear to Arkham— What walked on the mountains that May-Night? What Roodmas horror fastened itself on the world in half-human flesh and blood?”
      During the ensuing weeks Dr. Armitage set about to collect all possible data on Wilbur Whateley and the formless presences around Dunwich. He got in communication with Dr. Houghton of Aylesbury, who had attended Old Whateley in his last illness, and found much to ponder over in the grandfather’s last words as quoted by the physician. A visit to Dunwich Village failed to bring out much that was new; but a close survey of the Necronomicon, in those parts which Wilbur had sought so avidly, seemed to supply new and terrible clues to the nature, methods, and desires of the strange evil so vaguely threatening this planet. Talks with several students of archaic lore in Boston, and letters to many others elsewhere, gave him a growing amazement which passed slowly through varied degrees of alarm to a state of really acute spiritual fear. As the summer drew on he felt dimly that something ought to be done about the lurking terrors of the upper Miskatonic valley, and about the monstrous being known to the human world as Wilbur Whateley.
",True
"IV. A Mutation and a Madness

1.

In the week following that memorable Good Friday Charles Ward was seen more often than usual, and was continually carrying books between his library and the attic laboratory. His actions were quiet and rational, but he had a furtive, hunted look which his mother did not like, and developed an incredibly ravenous appetite as gauged by his demands upon the cook. Dr. Willett had been told of those Friday noises and happenings, and on the following Tuesday had a long conversation with the youth in the library where the picture stared no more. The interview was, as always, inconclusive; but Willett is still ready to swear that the youth was sane and himself at the time. He held out promises of an early revelation, and spoke of the need of securing a laboratory elsewhere. At the loss of the portrait he grieved singularly little considering his first enthusiasm over it, but seemed to find something of positive humour in its sudden crumbling.
      About the second week Charles began to be absent from the house for long periods, and one day when good old black Hannah came to help with the spring cleaning she mentioned his frequent visits to the old house in Olney Court, where he would come with a large valise and perform curious delvings in the cellar. He was always very liberal to her and to old Asa, but seemed more worried than he used to be; which grieved her very much, since she had watched him grow up from birth. Another report of his doings came from Pawtuxet, where some friends of the family saw him at a distance a surprising number of times. He seemed to haunt the resort and canoe-house of Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet, and subsequent inquiries by Dr. Willett at that place brought out the fact that his purpose was always to secure access to the rather hedged-in river-bank, along which he would walk toward the north, usually not reappearing for a very long while.
      Late in May came a momentary revival of ritualistic sounds in the attic laboratory which brought a stern reproof from Mr. Ward and a somewhat distracted promise of amendment from Charles. It occurred one morning, and seemed to form a resumption of the imaginary conversation noted on that turbulent Good Friday. The youth was arguing or remonstrating hotly with himself, for there suddenly burst forth a perfectly distinguishable series of clashing shouts in differentiated tones like alternate demands and denials which caused Mrs. Ward to run upstairs and listen at the door. She could hear no more than a fragment whose only plain words were ""must have it red for three months"", and upon her knocking all sounds ceased at once. When Charles was later questioned by his father he said that there were certain conflicts of spheres of consciousness which only great skill could avoid, but which he would try to transfer to other realms.
      About the middle of June a queer nocturnal incident occurred. In the early evening there had been some noise and thumping in the laboratory upstairs, and Mr. Ward was on the point of investigating when it suddenly quieted down. That midnight, after the family had retired, the butler was nightlocking the front door when according to his statement Charles appeared somewhat blunderingly and uncertainly at the foot of the stairs with a large suitcase and made signs that he wished egress. The youth spoke no word, but the worthy Yorkshireman caught one sight of his fevered eyes and trembled causelessly. He opened the door and young Ward went out, but in the morning he presented his resignation to Mrs. Ward. There was, he said, something unholy in the glance Charles had fixed on him. It was no way for a young gentleman to look at an honest person, and he could not possibly stay another night. Mrs. Ward allowed the man to depart, but she did not value his statement highly. To fancy Charles in a savage state that night was quite ridiculous, for as long as she had remained awake she had heard faint sounds from the laboratory above; sounds as if of sobbing and pacing, and of a sighing which told only of despair's profoundest depths. Mrs. Ward had grown used to listening for sounds in the night, for the mystery of her son was fast driving all else from her mind.
      The next evening, much as on another evening nearly three months before, Charles Ward seized the newspaper very early and accidentally lost the main section. The matter was not recalled till later, when Dr. Willett began checking up loose ends and searching out missing links here and there. In the Journal office he found the section which Charles had lost, and marked two items as of possible significance. They were as follows:
More Cemetery Delving

It was this morning discovered by Robert Hart, night watchman at the North Burial Ground, that ghouls were again at work in the ancient portion of the cemetery. The grave of Ezra Weeden, who was born in 1740 and died in 1824, according to his uprooted and savagely splintered slate headstone, was found excavated and rifled, the work being evidently done with a spade stolen from an adjacent tool-shed.
      Whatever the contents may have been after more than a century of burial, all was gone except a few slivers of decayed wood. There were no wheel tracks, but the police have measured a single set of footprints which they found in the vicinity, and which indicate the boots of a man of refinement.
      Hart is inclined to link this incident with the digging discovered last March, when a party in a motor truck were frightened away after making a deep excavation; but Sergt. Riley of the Second Station discounts this theory and points to vital differences in the two cases. In March the digging had been in a spot where no grave was known; but this time a well-marked and cared-for grave had been rifled with every evidence of deliberate purpose, and with a conscious malignity expressed in the splintering of the slab which had been intact up to the day before.
      Members of the Weeden family, notified of the happening, expressed their astonishment and regret; and were wholly unable to think of any enemy who would care to violate the grave of their ancestor. Hazard Weeden of 598 Angell Street recalls a family legend according to which Ezra Weeden was involved in some very peculiar circumstances, not dishonourable to himself, shortly before the Revolution; but of any modern feud or mystery he is frankly ignorant. Inspector Cunningham has been assigned to the case, and hopes to uncover some valuable clues in the near future.

Dogs Noisy in Pawtuxet

      Residents of Pawtuxet were aroused about 3 a.m. today by a phenomenal baying of dogs which seemed to centre near the river just north of Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet. The volume and quality of the howling were unusually odd, according to most who heard it; and Fred Lemdin, night watchman at Rhodes, declares it was mixed with something very like the shrieks of a man in mortal terror and agony. A sharp and very brief thunderstorm, which seemed to strike somewhere near the bank of the river, put an end to the disturbance. Strange and unpleasant odours, probably from the oil tanks along the bay, are popularly linked with this incident; and may have had their share in exciting the dogs.
      The aspect of Charles now became very haggard and hunted, and all agreed in retrospect that he may have wished at this period to make some statement or confession from which sheer terror withheld him. The morbid listening of his mother in the night brought out the fact that he made frequent sallies abroad under cover of darkness, and most of the more academic alienists unite at present in charging him with the revolting cases of vampirism which the press so sensationally reported about this time, but which have not yet been definitely traced to any known perpetrator. These cases, too recent and celebrated to need detailed mention, involved victims of every age and type and seemed to cluster around two distinct localities; the residential hill and the North End, near the Ward home, and the suburban districts across the Cranston line near Pawtuxet. Both late wayfarers and sleepers with open windows were attacked, and those who lived to tell the tale spoke unanimously of a lean, lithe, leaping monster with burning eyes which fastened its teeth in the throat or upper arm and feasted ravenously.
      Dr. Willett, who refuses to date the madness of Charles Ward as far back as even this, is cautious in attempting to explain these horrors. He has, he declares, certain theories of his own; and limits his positive statements to a peculiar kind of negation. ""I will not,"" he says, ""state who or what I believe perpetrated these attacks and murders, but I will declare that Charles Ward was innocent of them. I have reason to be sure he was ignorant of the taste of blood, as indeed his continued anaemic decline and increasing pallor prove better than any verbal argument. Ward meddled with terrible things, but he has paid for it, and he was never a monster or a villain. As for now - I don't like to think. A change came, and I'm content to believe that the old Charles Ward died with it. His soul did, anyhow, for that mad flesh that vanished from Waite's hospital had another.""
      Willett speaks with authority, for he was often at the Ward home attending Mrs. Ward, whose nerves had begun to snap under the strain. Her nocturnal listening had bred some morbid hallucinations which she confided to the doctor with hesitancy, and which he ridiculed in talking to her, although they made him ponder deeply when alone. These delusions always concerned the faint sounds which she fancied she heard in the attic laboratory and bedroom, and emphasised the occurrence of muffled sighs and sobbings at the most impossible times. Early in July Willett ordered Mrs. Ward to Atlantic City for an indefinite recuperative sojourn, and cautioned both Mr. Ward and the haggard and elusive Charles to write her only cheering letters. It is probably to this enforced and reluctant escape that she owes her life and continued sanity.

2.

      Not long after his mother's departure Charles Ward began negotiating for the Pawtuxet bungalow. It was a squalid little wooden edifice with a concrete garage, perched high on the sparsely settled bank of the river slightly above Rhodes, but for some odd reason the youth would have nothing else. He gave the real-estate agencies no peace till one of them secured it for him at an exorbitant price from a somewhat reluctant owner, and as soon as it was vacant he took possession under cover of darkness, transporting in a great closed van the entire contents of his attic laboratory, including the books both weird and modern which he had borrowed from his study. He had this van loaded in the black small hours, and his father recalls only a drowsy realisation of stifled oaths and stamping feet on the night the goods were taken away. After that Charles moved back to his own old quarters on the third floor, and never haunted the attic again.
      To the Pawtuxet bungalow Charles transferred all the secrecy with which he had surrounded his attic realm, save that he now appeared to have two sharers of his mysteries; a villainous-looking Portuguese half-caste from the South Main St. waterfront who acted as a servant, and a thin, scholarly stranger with dark glasses and a stubbly full beard of dyed aspect whose status was evidently that of a colleague. Neighbours vainly tried to engage these odd persons in conversation. The mulatto Gomes spoke very little English, and the bearded man, who gave his name as Dr. Allen, voluntarily followed his example. Ward himself tried to be more affable, but succeeded only in provoking curiosity with his rambling accounts of chemical research. Before long queer tales began to circulate regarding the all-night burning of lights; and somewhat later, after this burning had suddenly ceased, there rose still queerer tales of disproportionate orders of meat from the butcher's and of the muffled shouting, declamation, rhythmic chanting, and screaming supposed to come from some very deep cellar below the place. Most distinctly the new and strange household was bitterly disliked by the honest bourgeoisie of the vicinity, and it is not remarkable that dark hints were advanced connecting the hated establishment with the current epidemic of vampiristic attacks and murders; especially since the radius of that plague seemed now confined wholly to Pawtuxet and the adjacent streets of Edgewood.
      Ward spent most of his time at the bungalow, but slept occasionally at home and was still reckoned a dweller beneath his father's roof. Twice he was absent from the city on week-long trips, whose destinations have not yet been discovered. He grew steadily paler and more emaciated even than before, and lacked some of his former assurance when repeating to Dr. Willett his old, old story of vital research and future revelations. Willett often waylaid him at his father's house, for the elder Ward was deeply worried and perplexed, and wished his son to get as much sound oversight as could be managed in the case of so secretive and independent an adult. The doctor still insists that the youth was sane even as late as this, and adduces many a conversation to prove his point.
      About September the vampirism declined, but in the following January Ward almost became involved in serious trouble. For some time the nocturnal arrival and departure of motor trucks at the Pawtuxet bungalow had been commented upon, and at this juncture an unforeseen hitch exposed the nature of at least one item of their contents. In a lonely spot near Hope Valley had occurred one of the frequent sordid waylayings of trucks by ""hi-jackers"" in quest of liquor shipments, but this time the robbers had been destined to receive the greater shock. For the long cases they seized proved upon opening to contain some exceedingly gruesome things; so gruesome, in fact, that the matter could not be kept quiet amongst the denizens of the underworld. The thieves had hastily buried what they discovered, but when the State Police got wind of the matter a careful search was made. A recently arrested vagrant, under promise of immunity from prosecution on any additional charge, at last consented to guide a party of troopers to the spot; and there was found in that hasty cache a very hideous and shameful thing. It would not be well for the national - or even the international - sense of decorum if the public were ever to know what was uncovered by that awestruck party. There was no mistaking it, even by these far from studious officers; and telegrams to Washington ensued with feverish rapidity.
      The cases were addressed to Charles Ward at his Pawtuxet bungalow, and State and Federal officials at once paid him a very forceful and serious call. They found him pallid and worried with his two odd companions, and received from him what seemed to be a valid explanation and evidence of innocence. He had needed certain anatomical specimens as part of a programme of research whose depth and genuineness anyone who had known him in the last decade could prove, and had ordered the required kind and number from agencies which he had thought as reasonably legitimate as such things can be. Of the identity of the specimens he had known absolutely nothing, and was properly shocked when the inspectors hinted at the monstrous effect on public sentiment and national dignity which a knowledge of the matter would produce. In this statement he was firmly sustained by his bearded colleague Dr. Allen, whose oddly hollow voice carried even more conviction than his own nervous tones; so that in the end the officials took no action, but carefully set down the New York name and address which Ward gave them as a basis for a search which came to nothing. It is only fair to add that the specimens were quickly and quietly restored to their proper places, and that the general public will never know of their blasphemous disturbance.
      On February 9, 1928, Dr. Willett received a letter from Charles Ward which he considers of extraordinary importance, and about which he has frequently quarrelled with Dr. Lyman. Lyman believes that this note contains positive proof of a well-developed case of dementia praecox, but Willett on the other hand regards it as the last perfectly sane utterance of the hapless youth. He calls especial attention to the normal character of the penmanship; which though shewing traces of shattered nerves, is nevertheless distinctly Ward's own. The text in full is as follows:
""100 Prospect St.            
Providence, R.I.,      
February 8, 1928.
""Dear Dr. Willett: - 
      ""I feel that at last the time has come for me to make the disclosures which I have so long promised you, and for which you have pressed me so often. The patience you have shewn in waiting, and the confidence you have shewn in my mind and integrity, are things I shall never cease to appreciate.
      ""And now that I am ready to speak, I must own with humiliation that no triumph such as I dreamed of can ever be mine. Instead of triumph I have found terror, and my talk with you will not be a boast of victory but a plea for help and advice in saving both myself and the world from a horror beyond all human conception or calculation. You recall what those Fenner letters said of the old raiding party at Pawtuxet. That must all be done again, and quickly. Upon us depends more than can be put into words - all civilisation, all natural law, perhaps even the fate of the solar system and the universe. I have brought to light a monstrous abnormality, but I did it for the sake of knowledge. Now for the sake of all life and Nature you must help me thrust it back into the dark again.
      ""I have left that Pawtuxet place forever, and we must extirpate everything existing there, alive or dead. I shall not go there again, and you must not believe it if you ever hear that I am there. I will tell you why I say this when I see you. I have come home for good, and wish you would call on me at the very first moment that you can spare five or six hours continuously to hear what I have to say. It will take that long - and believe me when I tell you that you never had a more genuine professional duty than this. My life and reason are the very least things which hang in the balance.
      ""I dare not tell my father, for he could not grasp the whole thing. But I have told him of my danger, and he has four men from a detective agency watching the house. I don't know how much good they can do, for they have against them forces which even you could scarcely envisage or acknowledge. So come quickly if you wish to see me alive and hear how you may help to save the cosmos from stark hell.
      ""Any time will do - I shall not be out of the house. Don't telephone ahead, for there is no telling who or what may try to intercept you. And let us pray to whatever gods there be that nothing may prevent this meeting.
      ""In utmost gravity and desperation,
""Charles Dexter Ward.""      
""P.S. Shoot Dr. Allen on sight and dissolve his body in acid. Don't burn it.""
      Dr. Willett received this note about 10:30 a.m., and immediately arranged to spare the whole late afternoon and evening for the momentous talk, letting it extend on into the night as long as might be necessary. He planned to arrive about four o'clock, and through all the intervening hours was so engulfed in every sort of wild speculation that most of his tasks were very mechanically performed. Maniacal as the letter would have sounded to a stranger, Willett had seen too much of Charles Ward's oddities to dismiss it as sheer raving. That something very subtle, ancient, and horrible was hovering about he felt quite sure, and the reference to Dr. Allen could almost be comprehended in view of what Pawtuxet gossip said of Ward's enigmatical colleague. Willett had never seen the man, but had heard much of his aspect and bearing, and could not but wonder what sort of eyes those much-discussed dark glasses might conceal.
      Promptly at four Dr. Willett presented himself at the Ward residence, but found to his annoyance that Charles had not adhered to his determination to remain indoors. The guards were there, but said that the young man seemed to have lost part of his timidity. He had that morning done much apparently frightened arguing and protesting over the telephone, one of the detectives said, replying to some unknown voice with phrases such as ""I am very tired and must rest a while"", ""I can't receive anyone for some time, you'll have to excuse me"", ""Please postpone decisive action till we can arrange some sort of compromise"", or ""I am very sorry, but I must take a complete vacation from everything; I'll talk with you later"". Then, apparently gaining boldness through meditation, he had slipped out so quietly that no one had seen him depart or knew that he had gone until he returned about one o'clock and entered the house without a word. He had gone upstairs, where a bit of his fear must have surged back; for he was heard to cry out in a highly terrified fashion upon entering his library, afterward trailing off into a kind of choking gasp. When, however, the butler had gone to inquire what the trouble was, he had appeared at the door with a great show of boldness, and had silently gestured the man away in a manner that terrified him unaccountably. Then he had evidently done some rearranging of his shelves, for a great clattering and thumping and creaking ensued; after which he had reappeared and left at once. Willett inquired whether or not any message had been left, but was told that there was none. The butler seemed queerly disturbed about something in Charles's appearance and manner, and asked solicitously if there was much hope for a cure of his disordered nerves.
      For almost two hours Dr. Willett waited vainly in Charles Ward's library, watching the dusty shelves with their wide gaps where books had been removed, and smiling grimly at the panelled overmantel on the north wall, whence a year before the suave features of old Joseph Curwen had looked mildly down. After a time the shadows began to gather, and the sunset cheer gave place to a vague growing terror which flew shadow-like before the night. Mr. Ward finally arrived, and shewed much surprise and anger at his son's absence after all the pains which had been taken to guard him. He had not known of Charles's appointment, and promised to notify Willett when the youth returned. In bidding the doctor goodnight he expressed his utter perplexity at his son's condition, and urged his caller to do all he could to restore the boy to normal poise. Willett was glad to escape from that library, for something frightful and unholy seemed to haunt it; as if the vanished picture had left behind a legacy of evil. He had never liked that picture; and even now, strong-nerved though he was, there lurked a quality in its vacant panel which made him feel an urgent need to get out into the pure air as soon as possible.

3.

      The next morning Willett received a message from the senior Ward, saying that Charles was still absent. Mr. Ward mentioned that Dr. Allen had telephoned him to say that Charles would remain at Pawtuxet for some time, and that he must not be disturbed. This was necessary because Allen himself was suddenly called away for an indefinite period, leaving the researches in need of Charles's constant oversight. Charles sent his best wishes, and regretted any bother his abrupt change of plans might have caused. In listening to this message Mr. Ward heard Dr. Allen's voice for the first time, and it seemed to excite some vague and elusive memory which could not be actually placed, but which was disturbing to the point of fearfulness.
      Faced by these baffling and contradictory reports, Dr. Willett was frankly at a loss what to do. The frantic earnestness of Charles's note was not to be denied, yet what could one think of its writer's immediate violation of his own expressed policy? Young Ward had written that his delvings had become blasphemous and menacing, that they and his bearded colleague must be extirpated at any cost, and that he himself would never return to their final scene; yet according to latest advices he had forgotten all this and was back in the thick of the mystery. Common sense bade one leave the youth alone with his freakishness, yet some deeper instinct would not permit the impression of that frenzied letter to subside. Willett read it over again, and could not make its essence sound as empty and insane as both its bombastic verbiage and its lack of fulfilment would seem to imply. Its terror was too profound and real, and in conjunction with what the doctor already knew evoked too vivid hints of monstrosities from beyond time and space to permit of any cynical explanation. There were nameless horrors abroad; and no matter how little one might be able to get at them, one ought to stand prepared for any sort of action at any time.
      For over a week Dr. Willett pondered on the dilemma which seemed thrust upon him, and became more and more inclined to pay Charles a call at the Pawtuxet bungalow. No friend of the youth had ever ventured to storm this forbidden retreat, and even his father knew of its interior only from such descriptions as he chose to give; but Willett felt that some direct conversation with his patient was necessary. Mr. Ward had been receiving brief and non-committal typed notes from his son, and said that Mrs. Ward in her Atlantic City retirement had had no better word. So at length the doctor resolved to act; and despite a curious sensation inspired by old legends of Joseph Curwen, and by more recent revelations and warnings from Charles Ward, set boldly out for the bungalow on the bluff above the river.
      Willett had visited the spot before through sheer curiosity, though of course never entering the house or proclaiming his presence; hence knew exactly the route to take. Driving out Broad Street one early afternoon toward the end of February in his small motor, he thought oddly of the grim party which had taken that selfsame road a hundred and fifty-seven years before on a terrible errand which none might ever comprehend.
      The ride through the city's decaying fringe was short, and trim Edgewood and sleepy Pawtuxet presently spread out ahead. Willett turned to the right down Lockwood Street and drove his car as far along that rural road as he could, then alighted and walked north to where the bluff towered above the lovely bends of the river and the sweep of misty downlands beyond. Houses were still few here, and there was no mistaking the isolated bungalow with its concrete garage on a high point of land at his left. Stepping briskly up the neglected gravel walk he rapped at the door with a firm hand, and spoke without a tremor to the evil Portuguese mulatto who opened it to the width of a crack.
      He must, he said, see Charles Ward at once on vitally important business. No excuse would be accepted, and a repulse would mean only a full report of the matter to the elder Ward. The mulatto still hesitated, and pushed against the door when Willett attempted to open it; but the doctor merely raised his voice and renewed his demands. Then there came from the dark interior a husky whisper which somehow chilled the hearer through and through though he did not know why he feared it. ""Let him in, Tony,"" it said, ""we may as well talk now as ever."" But disturbing as was the whisper, the greater fear was that which immediately followed. The floor creaked and the speaker hove in sight - and the owner of those strange and resonant tones was seen to be no other than Charles Dexter Ward.
      The minuteness with which Dr. Willett recalled and recorded his conversation of that afternoon is due to the importance he assigns to this particular period. For at last he concedes a vital change in Charles Dexter Ward's mentality, and believes that the youth now spoke from a brain hopelessly alien to the brain whose growth he had watched for six and twenty years. Controversy with Dr. Lyman has compelled him to be very specific, and he definitely dates the madness of Charles Ward from the time the typewritten notes began to reach his parents. Those notes are not in Ward's normal style; not even in the style of that last frantic letter to Willett. Instead, they are strange and archaic, as if the snapping of the writer's mind had released a flood of tendencies and impressions picked up unconsciously through boyhood antiquarianism. There is an obvious effort to be modern, but the spirit and occasionally the language are those of the past.
      The past, too, was evident in Ward's every tone and gesture as he received the doctor in that shadowy bungalow. He bowed, motioned Willett to a seat, and began to speak abruptly in that strange whisper which he sought to explain at the very outset.
      ""I am grown phthisical,"" he began, ""from this cursed river air. You must excuse my speech. I suppose you are come from my father to see what ails me, and I hope you will say nothing to alarm him.""
      Willett was studying these scraping tones with extreme care, but studying even more closely the face of the speaker. Something, he felt, was wrong; and he thought of what the family had told him about the fright of that Yorkshire butler one night. He wished it were not so dark, but did not request that any blind be opened. Instead, he merely asked Ward why he had so belied the frantic note of little more than a week before.
      ""I was coming to that,"" the host replied. ""You must know, I am in a very bad state of nerves, and do and say queer things I cannot account for. As I have told you often, I am on the edge of great matters; and the bigness of them has a way of making me light-headed. Any man might well be frighted of what I have found, but I am not to be put off for long. I was a dunce to have that guard and stick at home; for having gone this far, my place is here. I am not well spoke of by my prying neighbours, and perhaps I was led by weakness to believe myself what they say of me. There is no evil to any in what I do, so long as I do it rightly. Have the goodness to wait six months, and I'll shew you what will pay your patience well.
      ""You may as well know I have a way of learning old matters from things surer than books, and I'll leave you to judge the importance of what I can give to history, philosophy, and the arts by reason of the doors I have access to. My ancestor had all this when those witless peeping Toms came and murdered him. I now have it again, or am coming very imperfectly to have a part of it. This time nothing must happen, and least of all through any idiot fears of my own. Pray forget all I writ you, Sir, and have no fear of this place or any in it. Dr. Allen is a man of fine parts, and I owe him an apology for anything ill I have said of him. I wish I had no need to spare him, but there were things he had to do elsewhere. His zeal is equal to mine in all those matters, and I suppose that when I feared the work I feared him too as my greatest helper in it.""
      Ward paused, and the doctor hardly knew what to say or think. He felt almost foolish in the face of this calm repudiation of the letter; and yet there clung to him the fact that while the present discourse was strange and alien and indubitably mad, the note itself had been tragic in its naturalness and likeness to the Charles Ward he knew. Willett now tried to turn the talk on early matters, and recall to the youth some past events which would restore a familiar mood; but in this process he obtained only the most grotesque results. It was the same with all the alienists later on. Important sections of Charles Ward's store of mental images, mainly those touching modern times and his own personal life, had been unaccountably expunged; whilst all the massed antiquarianism of his youth had welled up from some profound subconsciousness to engulf the contemporary and the individual. The youth's intimate knowledge of elder things was abnormal and unholy, and he tried his best to hide it. When Willett would mention some favourite object of his boyhood archaistic studies he often shed by pure accident such a light as no normal mortal could conceivably be expected to possess, and the doctor shuddered as the glib allusion glided by.
      It was not wholesome to know so much about the way the fat sheriff's wig fell off as he leaned over at the play in Mr. Douglass' Histrionick Academy in King Street on the eleventh of February, 1762, which fell on a Thursday; or about how the actors cut the text of Steele's Conscious Lovers so badly that one was almost glad the Baptist-ridden legislature closed the theatre a fortnight later. That Thomas Sabin's Boston coach was ""damn'd uncomfortable"" old letters may well have told; but what healthy antiquarian could recall how the creaking of Epenetus Olney's new signboard (the gaudy crown he set up after he took to calling his tavern the Crown Coffee House) was exactly like the first few notes of the new jazz piece all the radios in Pawtuxet were playing?
      Ward, however, would not be quizzed long in this vein. Modern and personal topics he waved aside quite summarily, whilst regarding antique affairs he soon shewed the plainest boredom. What he wished clearly enough was only to satisfy his visitor enough to make him depart without the intention of returning. To this end he offered to shew Willett the entire house, and at once proceeded to lead the doctor through every room from cellar to attic. Willett looked sharply, but noted that the visible books were far too few and trivial ever to have filled the wide gaps on Ward's shelves at home, and that the meagre so-called ""laboratory"" was the flimsiest sort of a blind. Clearly there were a library and a laboratory elsewhere; but just where, it was impossible to say. Essentially defeated in his quest for something he could not name, Willett returned to town before evening and told the senior Ward everything which had occurred. They agreed that the youth must be definitely out of his mind, but decided that nothing drastic need be done just then. Above all, Mrs. Ward must be kept in as complete an ignorance as her son's own strange typed notes would permit.
      Mr. Ward now determined to call in person upon his son, making it wholly a surprise visit. Dr. Willett took him in his car one evening, guiding him to within sight of the bungalow and waiting patiently for his return. The session was a long one, and the father emerged in a very saddened and perplexed state. His reception had developed much like Willett's, save that Charles had been an excessively long time in appearing after the visitor had forced his way into the hall and sent the Portuguese away with an imperative demand; and in the bearing of the altered son there was no trace of filial affection. The lights had been dim, yet even so the youth had complained that they dazzled him outrageously. He had not spoken out loud at all, averring that his throat was in very poor condition; but in his hoarse whisper there was a quality so vaguely disturbing that Mr. Ward could not banish it from his mind.
      Now definitely leagued together to do all they could toward the youth's mental salvation, Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett set about collecting every scrap of data which the case might afford. Pawtuxet gossip was the first item they studied, and this was relatively easy to glean since both had friends in that region. Dr. Willett obtained the most rumours because people talked more frankly to him than to a parent of the central figure, and from all he heard he could tell that young Ward's life had become indeed a strange one. Common tongues would not dissociate his household from the vampirism of the previous summer, while the nocturnal comings and goings of the motor trucks provided their share of dark speculation. Local tradesmen spoke of the queerness of the orders brought them by the evil-looking mulatto, and in particular of the inordinate amounts of meat and fresh blood secured from the two butcher shops in the immediate neighbourhood. For a household of only three, these quantities were quite absurd.
      Then there was the matter of the sounds beneath the earth. Reports of these things were harder to pin down, but all the vague hints tallied in certain basic essentials. Noises of a ritual nature positively existed, and at times when the bungalow was dark. They might, of course, have come from the known cellar; but rumour insisted that there were deeper and more spreading crypts. Recalling the ancient tales of Joseph Curwen's catacombs, and assuming for granted that the present bungalow had been selected because of its situation on the old Curwen site as revealed in one or another of the documents found behind the picture, Willett and Mr. Ward gave this phase of the gossip much attention; and searched many times without success for the door in the river-bank which old manuscripts mentioned. As to popular opinions of the bungalow's various inhabitants, it was soon plain that the Brava Portuguese was loathed, the bearded and spectacled Dr. Allen feared, and the pallid young scholar disliked to a profound extent. During the last week or two Ward had obviously changed much, abandoning his attempts at affability and speaking only in hoarse but oddly repellent whispers on the few occasions that he ventured forth.
      Such were the shreds and fragments gathered here and there; and over these Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett held many long and serious conferences. They strove to exercise deduction, induction, and constructive imagination to their utmost extent; and to correlate every known fact of Charles's later life, including the frantic letter which the doctor now shewed the father, with the meagre documentary evidence available concerning old Joseph Curwen. They would have given much for a glimpse of the papers Charles had found, for very clearly the key to the youth's madness lay in what he had learned of the ancient wizard and his doings.

4.

      And yet, after all, it was from no step of Mr. Ward's or Dr. Willett's that the next move in this singular case proceeded. The father and the physician, rebuffed and confused by a shadow too shapeless and intangible to combat, had rested uneasily on their oars while the typed notes of young Ward to his parents grew fewer and fewer. Then came the first of the month with its customary financial adjustments, and the clerks at certain banks began a peculiar shaking of heads and telephoning from one to the other. Officials who knew Charles Ward by sight went down to the bungalow to ask why every cheque of his appearing at this juncture was a clumsy forgery, and were reassurred less than they ought to have been when the youth hoarsely explained that his hand had lately been so much affected by a nervous shock as to make normal writing impossible. He could, he said, form no written characters at all except with great difficulty; and could prove it by the fact that he had been forced to type all his recent letters, even those to his father and mother, who would bear out the assertion.
      What made the investigators pause in confusion was not this circumstance alone, for that was nothing unprecedented or fundamentally suspicious; nor even the Pawtuxet gossip, of which one or two of them had caught echoes. It was the muddled discourse of the young man which nonplussed them, implying as it did a virtually total loss of memory concerning important monetary matters which he had had at his fingertips only a month or two before. Something was wrong; for despite the apparent coherence and rationality of his speech, there could be no normal reason for this ill-concealed blankness on vital points. Moreover, although none of these men knew Ward well, they could not help observing the change in his language and manner. They had heard he was an antiquarian, but even the most hopeless antiquarians do not make daily use of obsolete phraseology and gestures. Altogether, this combination of hoarseness, palsied hands, bad memory, and altered speech and bearing must represent some disturbance or malady of genuine gravity, which no doubt formed the basis of the prevailing odd rumours; and after their departure the party of officials decided that a talk with the senior Ward was imperative.
      So on the sixth of March, 1928, there was a long and serious conference in Mr. Ward's office, after which the utterly bewildered father summoned Dr. Willett in a kind of helpless resignation. Willett looked over the strained and awkward signatures of the cheques, and compared them in his mind with the penmanship of that last frantic note. Certainly, the change was radical and profound, and yet there was something damnably familiar about the new writing. It had crabbed and archaic tendencies of a very curious sort, and seemed to result from a type of stroke utterly different from that which the youth had always used. It was strange - but where had he seen it before? On the whole, it was obvious that Charles was insane. Of that there could be no doubt. And since it appeared unlikely that he could handle his property or continue to deal with the outside world much longer, something must quickly be done toward his oversight and possible cure. It was then that the alienists were called in, Drs. Peck and Waite of Providence and Dr. Lyman of Boston, to whom Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett gave the most exhaustive possible history of the case, and who conferred at length in the now unused library of their young patient, examining what books and papers of his were left in order to gain some further notion of his habitual mental cast. After scanning this material and examining the ominous note to Willett they all agreed that Charles Ward's studies had been enough to unseat or at least to warp any ordinary intellect, and wished most heartily that they could see his more intimate volumes and documents; but this latter they knew they could do, if at all, only after a scene at the bungalow itself. Willett now reviewed the whole case with febrile energy; it being at this time that he obtained the statements of the workmen who had seen Charles find the Curwen documents, and that he collated the incidents of the destroyed newspaper items, looking up the latter at the Journal office.
      On Thursday, the eighth of March, Drs. Willett, Peck, Lyman, and Waite, accompanied by Mr. Ward, paid the youth their momentous call; making no concealment of their object and questioning the now acknowledged patient with extreme minuteness. Charles, though he was inordinately long in answering the summons and was still redolent of strange and noxious laboratory odours when he did finally make his agitated appearance, proved a far from recalcitrant subject; and admitted freely that his memory and balance had suffered somewhat from close application to abstruse studies. He offered no resistance when his removal to other quarters was insisted upon; and seemed, indeed, to display a high degree of intelligence as apart from mere memory. His conduct would have sent his interviewers away in bafflement had not the persistently archaic trend of his speech and unmistakable replacement of modern by ancient ideas in his consciousness marked him out as one definitely removed from the normal. Of his work he would say no more to the group of doctors than he had formerly said to his family and to Dr. Willett, and his frantic note of the previous month he dismissed as mere nerves and hysteria. He insisted that this shadowy bungalow possessed no library or laboratory beyond the visible ones, and waxed abstruse in explaining the absence from the house of such odours as now saturated all his clothing. Neighbourhood gossip he attributed to nothing more than the cheap inventiveness of baffled curiosity. Of the whereabouts of Dr. Allen he said he did not feel at liberty to speak definitely, but assured his inquisitors that the bearded and spectacled man would return when needed. In paying off the stolid Brava who resisted all questioning by the visitors, and in closing the bungalow which still seemed to hold such nighted secrets, Ward shewed no sign of nervousness save a barely noticed tendency to pause as though listening for something very faint. He was apparently animated by a calmly philosophic resignation, as if his removal were the merest transient incident which would cause the least trouble if facilitated and disposed of once and for all. It was clear that he trusted to his obviously unimpaired keenness of absolute mentality to overcome all the embarrassments into which his twisted memory, his lost voice and handwriting, and his secretive and eccentric behaviour had led him. His mother, it was agreed, was not to be told of the change; his father supplying typed notes in his name. Ward was taken to the restfully and picturesquely situated private hospital maintained by Dr. Waite on Conanicut Island in the bay, and subjected to the closest scrutiny and questioning by all the physicians connected with the case. It was then that the physical oddities were noticed; the slackened metabolism, the altered skin, and the disproportionate neural reactions. Dr. Willett was the most perturbed of the various examiners, for he had attended Ward all his life and could appreciate with terrible keenness the extent of his physical disorganisation. Even the familiar olive mark on his hip was gone, while on his chest was a great black mole or cicatrice which had never been there before, and which made Willett wonder whether the youth had ever submitted to any of the ""witch markings"" reputed to be inflicted at certain unwholesome nocturnal meetings in wild and lonely places. The doctor could not keep his mind off a certain transcribed witch-trial record from Salem which Charles had shewn him in the old non-secretive days, and which read: ""Mr. G. B. on that Nighte putt ye Divell his Marke upon Bridget S., Jonathan A., Simon O., Deliverance W., Joseph C., Susan P., Mehitable C., and Deborah B."" Ward's face, too, troubled him horribly, till at length he suddenly discovered why he was horrified. For above the young man's right eye was something which he had never previously noticed - a small scar or pit precisely like that in the crumbled painting of old Joseph Curwen, and perhaps attesting some hideous ritualistic inoculation to which both had submitted at a certain stage of their occult careers.
      While Ward himself was puzzling all the doctors at the hospital a very strict watch was kept on all mail addressed either to him or to Dr. Allen, which Mr. Ward had ordered delivered at the family home. Willett had predicted that very little would be found, since any communications of a vital nature would probably have been exchanged by messenger; but in the latter part of March there did come a letter from Prague for Dr. Allen which gave both the doctor and the father deep thought. It was in a very crabbed and archaic hand; and though clearly not the effort of a foreigner, shewed almost as singular a departure from modern English as the speech of young Ward himself. It read:
Kleinstrasse 11,            
Altstadt, Prague,      
11th Feby. 1928.
Brother in Almousin-Metraton: - 
      I this day receiv'd yr mention of what came up from the Salts I sent you. It was wrong, and meanes clearly that ye Headstones had been chang'd when Barnabas gott me the Specimen. It is often so, as you must be sensible of from the Thing you gott from ye Kings Chapell ground in 1769 and what H. gott from Olde Bury'g Point in 1690, that was like to ende him. I gott such a Thing in Aegypt 75 yeares gone, from the which came that Scar ye Boy saw on me here in 1924. As I told you longe ago, do not calle up That which you can not put downe; either from dead Saltes or out of ye Spheres beyond. Have ye Wordes for laying at all times readie, and stopp not to be sure when there is any Doubte of Whom you have. Stones are all chang'd now in Nine groundes out of 10. You are never sure till you question. I this day heard from H., who has had Trouble with the Soldiers. He is like to be sorry Transylvania is pass'd from Hungary to Roumania, and wou'd change his Seat if the Castel weren't so fulle of What we Knowe. But of this he hath doubtless writ you. In my next Send'g there will be Somewhat from a Hill tomb from ye East that will delight you greatly. Meanwhile forget not I am desirous of B. F. if you can possibly get him for me. You know G. in Philada. better than I. Have him up firste if you will, but doe not use him soe hard he will be Difficult, for I must speake to him in ye End.
Yogg-Sothoth Neblod Zin
Simon O.
To Mr. J. C. in
Providence.
      Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett paused in utter chaos before this apparent bit of unrelieved insanity. Only by degrees did they absorb what it seemed to imply. So the absent Dr. Allen, and not Charles Ward, had come to be the leading spirit at Pawtuxet? That must explain the wild reference and denunciation in the youth's last frantic letter. And what of this addressing of the bearded and spectacled stranger as ""Mr. J. C.""? There was no escaping the inference, but there are limits to possible monstrosity. Who was ""Simon O.""; the old man Ward had visited in Prague four years previously? Perhaps, but in the centuries behind there had been another Simon O. - Simon Orne, alias Jedediah, of Salem, who vanished in 1771, and whose peculiar handwriting Dr. Willett now unmistakably recognised from the photostatic copies of the Orne formulae which Charles had once shewn him. What horrors and mysteries, what contradictions and contraventions of Nature, had come back after a century and a half to harass Old Providence with her clustered spires and domes?
      The father and the old physician, virtually at a loss what to do or think, went to see Charles at the hospital and questioned him as delicately as they could about Dr. Allen, about the Prague visit, and about what he had learned of Simon or Jedediah Orne of Salem. To all these inquiries the youth was politely non-committal, merely barking in his hoarse whisper that he had found Dr. Allen to have a remarkable spiritual rapport with certain souls from the past, and that any correspondent the bearded man might have in Prague would probably be similarly gifted. When they left, Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett realised to their chagrin that they had really been the ones under catechism; and that without imparting anything vital himself, the confined youth had adroitly pumped them of everything the Prague letter had contained.
      Drs. Peck, Waite, and Lyman were not inclined to attach much importance to the strange correspondence of young Ward's companion; for they knew the tendency of kindred eccentrics and monomaniacs to band together, and believed that Charles or Allen had merely unearthed an expatriated counterpart - perhaps one who had seen Orne's handwriting and copied it in an attempt to pose as the bygone character's reincarnation. Allen himself was perhaps a similar case, and may have persuaded the youth into accepting him as an avatar of the long-dead Curwen. Such things had been known before, and on the same basis the hard-headed doctors disposed of Willett's growing disquiet about Charles Ward's present handwriting, as studied from unpremeditated specimens obtained by various ruses. Willett thought he had placed its odd familiarity at last, and that what it vaguely resembled was the bygone penmanship of old Joseph Curwen himself; but this the other physicians regarded as a phase of imitativeness only to be expected in a mania of this sort, and refused to grant it any importance either favourable or unfavourable. Recognising this prosaic attitude in his colleagues, Willett advised Mr. Ward to keep to himself the letter which arrived for Dr. Allen on the second of April from Rakus, Transylvania, in a handwriting so intensely and fundamentally like that of the Hutchinson cipher that both father and physician paused in awe before breaking the seal. This read as follows:
Castle Ferenczy      
7 March 1928.
Dear C.: - Hadd a Squad of 20 Militia up to talk about what the Country Folk say. Must digg deeper and have less Hearde. These Roumanians plague me damnably, being officious and particular where you cou'd buy a Magyar off with a Drinke and ffood. Last monthe M. got me ye Sarcophagus of ye Five Sphinxes from ye Acropolis where He whome I call'd up say'd it wou'd be, and I have hadde 3 Talkes with What was therein inhum'd. It will go to S. O. in Prague directly, and thence to you. It is stubborn but you know ye Way with Such. You shew Wisdom in having lesse about than Before; for there was no Neede to keep the Guards in Shape and eat'g off their Heads, and it made Much to be founde in Case of Trouble, as you too welle knowe. You can now move and worke elsewhere with no Kill'g Trouble if needful, tho' I hope no Thing will soon force you to so Bothersome a Course. I rejoice that you traffick not so much with Those Outside; for there was ever a Mortall Peril in it, and you are sensible what it did when you ask'd Protection of One not dispos'd to give it. You excel me in gett'g ye fformulae so another may saye them with Success, but Borellus fancy'd it wou'd be so if just ye right Wordes were hadd. Does ye Boy use 'em often? I regret that he growes squeamish, as I fear'd he wou'd when I hadde him here nigh 15 Monthes, but am sensible you knowe how to deal with him. You can't saye him down with ye fformula, for that will Worke only upon such as ye other fformula hath call'd up from Saltes; but you still have strong Handes and Knife and Pistol, and Graves are not harde to digg, nor Acids loth to burne. O. sayes you have promis'd him B. F. I must have him after. B. goes to you soone, and may he give you what you wishe of that Darke Thing belowe Memphis. Imploy care in what you calle up, and beware of ye Boy. It will be ripe in a yeare's time to have up ye Legions from Underneath, and then there are no Boundes to what shal be oures. Have Confidence in what I saye, for you knowe O. and I have hadd these 150 yeares more than you to consulte these Matters in.
Nephren-Ka nai Hadoth
Edw: H.
For J. Curwen, Esq.
Providence.
      But if Willett and Mr. Ward refrained from shewing this letter to the alienists, they did not refrain from acting upon it themselves. No amount of learned sophistry could controvert the fact that the strangely bearded and spectacled Dr. Allen, of whom Charles's frantic letter had spoken as such a monstrous menace, was in close and sinister correspondence with two inexplicable creatures whom Ward had visited in his travels and who plainly claimed to be survivals or avatars of Curwen's old Salem colleagues; that he was regarding himself as the reincarnation of Joseph Curwen, and that he entertained - or was at least advised to entertain - murderous designs against a ""boy"" who could scarcely be other than Charles Ward. There was organised horror afoot; and no matter who had started it, the missing Allen was by this time at the bottom of it. Therefore, thanking heaven that Charles was now safe in the hospital, Mr. Ward lost no time in engaging detectives to learn all they could of the cryptic bearded doctor; finding whence he had come and what Pawtuxet knew of him, and if possible discovering his current whereabouts. Supplying the men with one of the bungalow keys which Charles yielded up, he urged them to explore Allen's vacant room which had been identified when the patient's belongings had been packed; obtaining what clues they could from any effects he might have left about. Mr. Ward talked with the detectives in his son's old library, and they felt a marked relief when they left it at last; for there seemed to hover about the place a vague aura of evil. Perhaps it was what they had heard of the infamous old wizard whose picture had once stared from the panelled overmantel, and perhaps it was something different and irrelevant; but in any case they all half sensed an intangible miasma which centred in that carven vestige of an older dwelling and which at times almost rose to the intensity of a material emanation.
","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 languages 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 Sanscrit 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 massed 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 Vigenère’s Traité des Chiffres, Falconer’s Cryptomenysis Patefacta, Davys’ and Thicknesse’s eighteenth-century treatises, and such fairly modern authorities as Blair, von Marten, and Klüber’s Kryptographik. He interspersed his study of the books with attacks on the manuscript 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 2nd 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 shewing 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’ 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 4th 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 an 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 them!” 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 whiskey 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.
",True
"Professors Schultz and his entire team had reunited the night their space probe The Nautilus, was floating towards a landmark, it has gone farther than any other space probe. Oh what wonderful things they would discover from that point onward. Each had their own ideals of what they would find and prove that there might be more than what others in their field so strongly believed.
For the deeply religious young man, Geralds, who entered the program through luck and his computer skills at twenty-four, he thought that they would find God.
Schultz mocked such an idea. He and the majority of the team believed that such more galaxies would be found, hopefully they would include inhabited planets that they could attempt to contact.
But one amongst them was nervous. George Sunderland, an old resident of Portland Rhode Island, he was an astro-nut like the rest of them, but on the side, it was revealed some time after their project jettisoned into space, that during down times in one field, he worked in another. And his other, strange field was the occult.
""Fhtagn,"" He breathed under his breath. ""Fhtagn, fhtagn, fhtagn.""
He chanted, hoping that it would protect him. Granted, he reminded himself prior to this that The Nautilus did not go between Hydra and Argo Navis, but the thought still scared him.
On the machines before them, it showed exactly where it was. When it reached the landmark, were there cheers, the sounds of champagne popping, and congratulations were shared once more.
On the large monitors before them, stars were few and far in between that it was as if they were traveling away from them and not moving towards anymore after them.
Geralds was the first to point this out. He was also the first to see the mult-colored aurora that one would never expect to see in space.
""It's like the surface of a bubble,"" Andrea, second oldest member to Schultz stated.
Schultz scoffed and was beginning his rant against her, when The Nautilus floated past the aurora and found darkness. A void darker than space itself, yet just light enough due to iridescent orbs that floated in a semi-orderly orbital around an unknown object.
""What is this place?"" Andrea asked.
""Not what, Andrea,"" A voice grated through nowhere. ""But who?""
A giant glowing bubble appeared before the camera. Geralds stood up, overjoyed; he exclaimed his love for God and happiness at finding him. But the grating voice merely chuckled.
""No, Geralds,"" It said, sounding like a six year old and twenty year old and sixty year old man speaking together. ""Not God; at least, not your Christian god. I am, and Sunderland will confirm this,"" The man shivered at his name. ""Yog-Sothoth; past, present, future…Time itself, is all within me.""
""But what is this?"" Andrea asked.
""This is me."" The multi-layered voice said. ""What you see is a form of mine. The Gate; right Sunderland.""
All eyes turned to their cowering companion. With a few inhales of the nose, he nodded, a whimper escaping him.
""And within each bubble is a plain; a piece of the bigger picture.""
""And what's that?"" Schultz asked.
""That your universe; your world; your reality is expanding and shrinking in what-for your mental stability-we'll say random order.""
""Preposterous!"" Schultz snapped.
Yog-Sothoth chuckled, the intertwined voices sounding exotic over the speakers. It was not malignant-it sounded good natured compared to what Sunderland had expected.
""You see those two bubbles sticking together?""
No one spoke, but there was a sense that there did not have to be. That he could see them as well as hear them. Unsettling though it was, the information presented to them was to the same effect. Poor Sunderland seemed to have already cracked under the circumstances; cowering under a desk.
""They are other universes. Other galaxies; some inhabited, some not. But when they intertwine like that, the barrier of the bubble fades, allowing them to seemingly overlap. Like a continuation of itself. Your own has done so with many of them and has been one of a few to be graced with the central hub, so to speak.""
Schultz was finding this hard to swallow. Being a man of science; something like this was a freak accident not hard fact…Until now, since it was 'staring' them in the face. Leaving skepticism behind; he found infinite possibilities. Keeping his mind wide open seemed to help a little, though. After all, science was still discovering new things almost everyday.
""What's in the central hub?"" Geralds asked.
""R'lyeh,"" Came the instant reply.
At that, Sunderland let out a scream. No one paid him any mind, though, for they were, for a brief second that in the scheme of things that could be said that it did not happen, overcome with primal urges and long lost images transmitted thousands upon thousands of generations before themselves.
""Sunderland,"" Yog-Sothoth said. ""Do not be frightened. Nothing can hurt you right now.""
Sunderland laughed long and hard. Everyone became uneasy except their translucent, shining friend.
""'Right now' he says."" Sunderland cracked up, stuttering phrases together in a jumble of unheard sentences.
""If you wish to know more, Schultz, may I ask that you turn The Nautilus in that direction."" The bubble seemed to turn to the right. ""There's someone who will do a better job at explaining things in a-and don't be offended by this-leman's terms.""
Goaded on by what the bubble said, the satellite took off to the right. Everyone but Sunderland waited in bated breath at the edge of their seat. Then an insane, cacophonous symphony of flutes was heard.
Sunderland snapped out of his babbling mess and stood abruptly, dashing towards Schultz.
""We have to stop this!""
""We can't,"" Geralds began.
""The Nautilus moves according to projection, we didn't have the financial ability to control it back when we made it."" Andrea finished.
Sunderland made a warrior cry as he ran towards the screen. He beat at it, breaking it in places, but the image still shown through.
""No! No! No!"" He said between beatings. But the image never disappeared, but was, thankfully, distorted.
There came a sound of bumping into something beneath the louder cacophony flutes. Sunderland saw an eye open. An eye that was never supposed to open. The Nautilus turned away due to impact, but the damage was done. Sunderland was in a fit of hysterics, writhing on the floor, laughing as his mouth foamed.
He looked into the eye of chaos and it stared back with a mind blowing intensity. The distorted image shown next was of bubbles stacking upon themselves and became a vertical line orbiting around the central hub. But they popped.
The media was in a frenzy. Children were amazed at seeing real life Pokémon in their back yard. Three teens who broke down in the middle of nowhere found a camp that was not there before and were killed by a man in a hockey mask. Teens who lived on Elm Street started to die in their dreams. A couple were eaten by a giant white worm in Perfection, Nevada. Reports of Batman fighting the Joker were rampant in New York. In Louisiana, there was a report of a man covered in moss and roots walking in the swamp.
In London, there were sightings of a man in a Guy Fawkes mask walking around in shadows and on roofs.
In the Middle East there were reports of Orcs raiding caves.(1) But Japan had gotten it worst. Godzilla attacks, a strange yet beautiful rider on a mechanical horse, an orange clad ninja, and giant robot fights became an everyday event.
""The world as we knew it is gone!"" Sunderland screamed in his padded cell in Arkham Asylum. ""It popped! Just like a bubble!""
","III.

Meanwhile Old Whateley continued to buy cattle without measurably increasing the size of his herd. He also cut timber and began to repair the unused parts of his house—a spacious, peaked-roofed affair whose rear end was buried entirely in the rocky hillside, and whose three least-ruined ground-floor rooms had always been sufficient for himself and his daughter. There must have been prodigious reserves of strength in the old man to enable him to accomplish so much hard labour; and though he still babbled dementedly at times, his carpentry seemed to shew the effects of sound calculation. It had already begun as soon as Wilbur was born, when one of the many tool-sheds had been put suddenly in order, clapboarded, and fitted with a stout fresh lock. Now, in restoring the abandoned upper story of the house, he was a no less thorough craftsman. His mania shewed itself only in his tight boarding-up of all the windows in the reclaimed section—though many declared that it was a crazy thing to bother with the reclamation at all. Less inexplicable was his fitting up of another downstairs room for his new grandson—a room which several callers saw, though no one was ever admitted to the closely boarded upper story. This chamber he lined with tall, firm shelving; along which he began gradually to arrange, in apparently careful order, all the rotting ancient books and parts of books which during his own day had been heaped promiscuously in odd corners of the various rooms.
      “I made some use of ’em,” he would say as he tried to mend a torn black-letter page with paste prepared on the rusty kitchen stove, “but the boy’s fitten to make better use of ’em. He’d orter hev ’em as well sot as he kin, for they’re goin’ to be all of his larnin’.”
      When Wilbur was a year and seven months old—in September of 1914—his size and accomplishments were almost alarming. He had grown as large as a child of four, and was a fluent and incredibly intelligent talker. He ran freely about the fields and hills, and accompanied his mother on all her wanderings. At home he would pore diligently over the queer pictures and charts in his grandfather’s books, while Old Whateley would instruct and catechise him through long, hushed afternoons. By this time the restoration of the house was finished, and those who watched it wondered why one of the upper windows had been made into a solid plank door. It was a window in the rear of the east gable end, close against the hill; and no one could imagine why a cleated wooden runway was built up to it from the ground. About the period of this work’s completion people noticed that the old tool-house, tightly locked and windowlessly clapboarded since Wilbur’s birth, had been abandoned again. The door swung listlessly open, and when Earl Sawyer once stepped within after a cattle-selling call on Old Whateley he was quite discomposed by the singular odour he encountered—such a stench, he averred, as he had never before smelt in all his life except near the Indian circles on the hills, and which could not come from anything sane or of this earth. But then, the homes and sheds of Dunwich folk have never been remarkable for olfactory immaculateness.
      The following months were void of visible events, save that everyone swore to a slow but steady increase in the mysterious hill noises. On May-Eve of 1915 there were tremors which even the Aylesbury people felt, whilst the following Hallowe’en produced an underground rumbling queerly synchronised with bursts of flame—“them witch Whateleys’ doin’s”—from the summit of Sentinel Hill. Wilbur was growing up uncannily, so that he looked like a boy of ten as he entered his fourth year. He read avidly by himself now; but talked much less than formerly. A settled taciturnity was absorbing him, and for the first time people began to speak specifically of the dawning look of evil in his goatish face. He would sometimes mutter an unfamiliar jargon, and chant in bizarre rhythms which chilled the listener with a sense of unexplainable terror. The aversion displayed toward him by dogs had now become a matter of wide remark, and he was obliged to carry a pistol in order to traverse the countryside in safety. His occasional use of the weapon did not enhance his popularity amongst the owners of canine guardians.
      The few callers at the house would often find Lavinia alone on the ground floor, while odd cries and footsteps resounded in the boarded-up second story. She would never tell what her father and the boy were doing up there, though once she turned pale and displayed an abnormal degree of fear when a jocose fish-peddler tried the locked door leading to the stairway. That peddler told the store loungers at Dunwich Village that he thought he heard a horse stamping on that floor above. The loungers reflected, thinking of the door and runway, and of the cattle that so swiftly disappeared. Then they shuddered as they recalled tales of Old Whateley’s youth, and of the strange things that are called out of the earth when a bullock is sacrificed at the proper time to certain heathen gods. It had for some time been noticed that dogs had begun to hate and fear the whole Whateley place as violently as they hated and feared young Wilbur personally.
      In 1917 the war came, and Squire Sawyer Whateley, as chairman of the local draft board, had hard work finding a quota of young Dunwich men fit even to be sent to a development camp. The government, alarmed at such signs of wholesale regional decadence, sent several officers and medical experts to investigate; conducting a survey which New England newspaper readers may still recall. It was the publicity attending this investigation which set reporters on the track of the Whateleys, and caused the Boston Globe and Arkham Advertiser to print flamboyant Sunday stories of young Wilbur’s precociousness, Old Whateley’s black magic, the shelves of strange books, the sealed second story of the ancient farmhouse, and the weirdness of the whole region and its hill noises. Wilbur was four and a half then, and looked like a lad of fifteen. His lips and cheeks were fuzzy with a coarse dark down, and his voice had begun to break.
      Earl Sawyer went out to the Whateley place with both sets of reporters and camera men, and called their attention to the queer stench which now seemed to trickle down from the sealed upper spaces. It was, he said, exactly like a smell he had found in the tool-shed abandoned when the house was finally repaired; and like the faint odours which he sometimes thought he caught near the stone circles on the mountains. Dunwich folk read the stories when they appeared, and grinned over the obvious mistakes. They wondered, too, why the writers made so much of the fact that Old Whateley always paid for his cattle in gold pieces of extremely ancient date. The Whateleys had received their visitors with ill-concealed distaste, though they did not dare court further publicity by a violent resistance or refusal to talk.
",False
" Increasing violence  In this essay I shall reflect over the increasing and raw violence on television, and what effect it might have on the viewers. 
The television is an amazing invention and has a lot of good qualities, but where there is good there is evil. 
Ten years ago watching television was quite harmless, although violence existed it was not as raw as it is today. 
Basically every action-film today contains very much unrealistic violence. 
Even the cartoons has a lot of violent elements and what kind of effect does that have on the young viewers? 
It is no secret that television has a strong impact on its viewers. 
Especially children, as they do not always realise what is real and what is fiction. 
To trick a child is not difficult and that is one of the reasons why children-commercials are forbidden in many countries. 
But what is scary is that there is very little restriction towards violent Tv-shows. 
Although there are age-limits and recommended parental advisory, children have very little trouble to circumvent these restrictions. 
There is an ongoing debate about how to solve this Tv-violence but very little is actually done. 
Adults still want to be able to look at these kinds of films so to ban all violet movies would be impossible. 
There is no easy solution to this problem but in the end parents are utmost responsible to protect their children.  	 
First, I believe we can all agree that violence on Tv have increased a lot. 
It has become a new kind of entertainment. 
Adults find violence entertaining and the film and movie makers respond by adding more and rawer violence and special effects. 
Adults can see the difference between real life and fiction. 
But children lack in experience and are often unableto see the difference. 
So Tv becomes reality and this can be observed by watching childrenplay. 
It is no longer innocent games, it can clearly be seen that television has had impact on them and children express feelings while playing. 
Today boys play ""action-man"" and girls play ""model"", nobody is interested in playing ""house"" anymore. 
Television reflects society and violence have increased not only on Tv but also in real life. 
One can wonder why is that so? 
Are people more evil today then ten years ago? 
How big part does television actually play? 
This issue raises more questions than answers but it is an important subject and it must be discussed, as we owe it to the children. 
One thing that could be done to protect the children is to broadcast violent films at a late hour, rather than displaying it during daytime. 
Here the responsibility lie on broadcasting companies however, parents must also take responsibility and really see to it that their children do not stay up late.  	 
Secondly, what kind of effect does too much television-violence have on children and young adults? 
In society today there has been a huge increasing rate of violent related crimes.
But what is new about these crimes are that the robbers and thieves are teenagers. 
What can be said about these teenagers are that they have got a twisted picture about society and reality. 
They take role models from films and these men and woman from ""Hollywood"" have very little to do with reality. 
What can be said about these role models is that they are ""immortal"" and can do anything they want. 
When teenagers interpreter these models the outcome is often wrong. 
It is not right to hurt people physically and you can not drive a car threw a mall and get away with it.  	 
Still, one must say that television is a good thing after all. 
Television is educating and one can get news and information from all over the world. 
However, there are still many things to improve. 
It is not necessary with all this violence but there is no easy solution to this problem. 
But first we must realise that it really is a problem and that it can not be ignored. 
Because what will happen to the youths if they continue to consume five hours of violence every day? 
They will become people without respect and with a twisted picture of life.
We must do something about this now before it is to late.
","I have now studied English for nine years in school and am now capable of evaluating my knowledge in this interesting language. 
My English skills have been affected and somewhat improved by the fact that I attended the English Class in the Swedish gymnasium, and I have also taken the Cambridge Certificate in Advanced English. 
I will now mention some of the strengths and weaknesses I consider I have in the language. 	
It took a while before I decided whether I should speak with a British or an American accent. 
I believe that I can speak both fairly well, although there was a period of time when I mixed the two. 
I finally decided on the American accent, mainly because I spoke a lot of English with my Canadian cousin during her one year long visit in Sweden. 
It also feels more relaxed and natural for me, than the British accent which sometimes feels a bit too formal. 
In my opinion I sound a bit affected when I try to speak British. 
Some words are slightly more tricky to pronounce in American than in British English, though, for instance the way you pronounce the ""r"" sounds. 
It is especially difficult when the ""r"" appears in the middle of a word, in that case it is easy to put too much emphasis on it which makes it difficult to continue saying the word in a natural way. 
Fortunately this problem is diminishing the more I speak. 	
When it comes to reading I have become a lot better at scanning and skimming English texts during the past few years. 
I can find the important things I'm looking for faster, and can easier get an overview of what a text is about. 
I find it amusing to read passages of books out loud for myself, especially poems and paragraphs worth considering. 
This is also a good way of practicing my speech. 
Unfortunately I'm a bit lazy when I come across words I don't recognize. 
Instead of looking them up in a dictionary I tend to try and figure out what the word means by its context. 
This is not a good way if I want to improve my vocabulary, but I do try to get better and recently I have started to look most of the words up.  	
When I listen to other people speaking English I rarely have a hard time to follow. 
Listening to other people speaking and understanding what they are saying is usually the easiest part when you are learning a new language. 
I can also understand different accents of English to a rather large extent. 
When I do listening comprehension I can easily make significant notes while still listening, but it happens that I lose my concentration and my mind starts to wander. 	
I have always found it pretty easy to write both in English and Swedish. 
It usually flows well as I write, although it might not always be perfectly accurate. 
I write the assignment or essay relatively fast, but then I like having time to read it through a number of times, preferably during a period of time stretching over a couple of days. 
In that way I can make corrections and maybe find alternative words in some of the sentences, which is easier to do the more times you have read it through. 
I seldom make large spelling errors when writing by hand, I usually see if a word is spelt correctly. 
The structure in my texts are not always satisfactory, but I am trying to work on that. 
It improved some as I took the Cambridge course, but it can always become better. 
I'm not totally familiar with punctuation when writing in English, it's sometimes difficult to know when to put the commas in.  	
The thing I know the least about when it comes to English is grammar. 
Throughout my school years I have always been among the lucky ones who usually can hear if a sentence sounds correct or not and have therefore never bothered to learn the different rules. 
I now regret my lack of attention in that area, and I have to put in some extra effort to learn it now instead.
",False
"	Today there is nothing strange or odd about being vegetarian, on the contrary, it shows that you have some moral and ethical values or a philosophical ideology that you live up to, vegetarianism has become a trend in the western society. 
I will refer to the trend as vegetarianism even though we should be aware of the different directions, for instance there are those who eat milk and egg products, those who do not eat meat but they eat fish and those who do not eat anything that comes from the animal world.  
If you were a vegetarian fifteen years ago you were the strange one. 
Today every respectable restaurant has at least one vegetarian dish on their menu, even Mc Donalds have vegetarian alternatives to their burgers. 
Fifteen years ago the Indian restaurants were the only place you could go to if you wanted to order something more than a lettuce salad. 
You also had to do some research about nutrition to be sure that you got everything your body needed, today you can buy frozen vegetarian ready-cooked food with all the different substances your body requires and the different alternatives are almost as many as the non vegetarian alternatives. 
The reasons why you become vegetarian are more or less the same now as then, some examples are: reaction against how the animals are treated, ideological believes and health problems. 
The question is why? 
What is it that has changed during this last 15 years? 
I have found three different reasons that together have contributed to cause the trend.  
This process was started some fifteen years ago, when we all learned how chickens were treated. 
Media realised the potential of the issue and have informed us since about many of the horrible situations that animals are subjected to before slaughter. 
This is one of the reasons why many became vegetarians, but it also caused the market forces to react and it was suddenly alright to pay more for animals living in relative good circumstances. 
Still, we have been reached by several alarming reports these last years and they have shown that it can be dangerous to eat meat due to the different products that animals are filled up with, some of them in order to prevent infections and diseases, other to lower the production costs. 
Some examples of this are for instance the hormone stuffed broilers, the antibiotic treated pigs and the crazy cows. 
Another reason is the modern society we live in, today we can import and eat any fruit or vegetable at any time of the year thanks to the modern communication which makes us less dependent on meat. 
At the beginning it was very expensive to live on vegetables and only the rich and educated could afford it. 
Vegetarianism became a hip and healthy lifestyle and the most distinguished cooks were challenged by the novelty of this area which made vegetarianism to something exclusive. 
The expensive- and exclusiveness disappeared when the average consumer claimed his right to this lifestyle and the market had to adjust itself to the demand and supply. 
To be a vegetarian today is not necessarily associated to a certain class, it is a general awareness of our bodies and our health and many eating disorders are symptoms of this physical awareness. 
Lastly we have the environmental awareness. 
The high production of meat has caused an over-production of nitrogenous manure, which combined with air and water becomes the acid rains that pollute our environment. 
Today 's generation is well aware of the environmental situation that they have inherited and by consuming less meat the production must eventually decrease. 
Forests have been cut down in order to create more pasture land so if this generation had not reacted it might have been too late for the next generation.  
As we can see the consumers are the ones who can make the market change and the market makes consumers change. 
Those who reacted against the poor circumstances animals lived in some fifteen or twenty years ago paved way for today 's vegetarianism by forcing the market to offer something better that gave us a clean consciousness. 
This is what I see as the great cause to this trend. 
The market has had to adjust itself to the consumers at the same time as they have managed to create a whole new vegetarian food market, today it is profitable to sell less meat and more vegetarian alternatives. 
We want to feel good about ourselves and the market wants to make money. 
Today it is easy to live well and feel good about yourself and that is why the vegetarianism has become a trend in our societies, we can eat vegetarian sausages, hamburgers and casseroles that taste as the originals so we do not have to feel as if we renounced anything at the time as the market is making its money. 
But there are also those who see vegetarianism as a part of Darwin 's evolution of species and if that is the case perhaps this is not only a trend.
"," The number of cellular phones in Sweden still increases  Everywhere you go you see people talking in cellular phones. 
In Sweden today, the cellular phone has become even more common than the ordinary stationary telephone; in the autumn of 1999, accordning to numbers then presented by the Swedish government, nearly 5 million Swedes - about 55 per cent of the Swedish population - owned at least one cellular phone each. 
This means that the number of cellular phones has gone from practically zero to five million in only ten years. 
And maybe even more extraordinary is the fact that the number just keeps increasing. 
What could be the reason for this continuing boom?  
Without doubt one reason is that many people want to be reachable as often as possible. 
For instance they may have jobs where it's absolutely essential that they are reachable at any time of the day. 
The cellular phone becomes an important part of their jobs and they wouldn't make it without it. 
And I'm certain that one reason why so many teenage girls and boys are equipped with cellular phones is that parents want to be able to reach their children as soon as the slightest trace of worry emerges in their easily worried parental minds. 
They don't mind paying for a phone, but see it as some kind of insurance. 
Furthermore, this habit of being reachable is addictive - once you've tried it, it's hard to stop. 
Once you've bought your first cellular phone, you may be hooked. 
On the other hand, a great deal of people don't like to be reachable all the time, and they are less likely to buy cellular phones. 
So the reachability part can't be the only reason for the huge number of cellphones sold in Sweden.  
Another reason could be - fashion. 
The cellular phone has become more than just a phone. 
Today the little piece of electronic parts comes in various shapes and colors, equipped with many other functions than those of an ordinary telephone. 
To many people being the owner of the newest, ""hottest"" cellular phone is just as important as having reasonably fashionable clothes. 
When a model gets too old, it's a must to replace it with a newer one. 
There's no doubt that the manufacturers of cellular phones have succeeded in their advertising and marketing - when a new model is about to be released onto the market, the excitement of the public can almost be compared to that of people at some car fair when Volvo is about to present a new family car. 
But then again, there of course is a great number of people who don't care about being in fashion. 
So why do these people also purchase cellular phones?   
A rather important reason, naturally, is the price. 
Ten, or even five years ago, a cellular phone was much more expensive than it is today. 
At the beginning of the nineties the cellular phone was considered an article of luxury, owned by very important and/or very rich people only. 
Today, this is not the case at all and the prices continue to fall, allowing more and more people to buy cellular phones of their own. 
However, the phones may be cheaper, but the bills can become rather unpleasant if you use the phone frequently. 
And suppose mopeds were as cheap as cellular phones - would that mean that everybody would buy a moped? 
That doesn't sound very probable. 
So even if the price is right, there must be another, more important reason for all this phone-buying.  
Since the beginning of time, man has strived for communication with other people - not only for business but also for pleasure and leisure. 
The means have varied a lot - smoke signals were used by the indians, cave paintings even earlier and the Morse code only recently surrendered to more modern means of communication, just to mention a few. 
And communication is still the thing that keeps everything going in our society. 
Consequently, the most important reason for the still increasing number of cellular phones in Sweden is the people's will to communicate - especially since it's possible to do it at a reasonable cost and with an easy-to-use portable device. 
Quite simply - people want and need to talk to each other, and if the preferred ""face-to-face"" mode isn't available, there is always the possibility of using a cellular phone.  
About ten years ago many people thought that the cellular phone was just a fad. 
They turned out to be wrong. 
And the manufacturers of cellular phones are still optimistic. 
They forecast an increase of their products in people's homes and pockets. 
And as long as Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens and Motorola keep coming up with new functions in their portable units their prognosis probably will come true. 
Because people will keep communicating - be that by speech, text or pictures.
",False
" The expansion of floorball in Uppland  	I first came into contact with floorball when I, at the age of 10, together with five older friends was asked to join a team. 
We practiced once a week in a gym using shoes as goalposts. 
We played a couple of matches in small halls using even smaller goals without goalies and only three players from each team were allowed to play at the same time. 
We stopped playing after a couple of months. 
Now, fourteen years later, I've played for seven years and the game is quite different from that of 1987. 
Matches are nowadays played with five outfield players and a goalie for each team. 
A board surrounds the field and the sticks weigh 130 grams compared to 350 grams in the old days. 
In Uppsala we have one of the biggest floorball halls in Sweden with three fields in the same building. 
The number of licensed players in Uppland has risen from about 120 in 1987 to 2 779 in 1992 and 6 598 in 2000. 
One of the major factors is that the number of players that are younger than sixteen has risen from 756 (27% of total) in 1992 to 4 192 (63,5% of total) in 2000. 
How come a sport like floorball has grown this quickly? 	
I remember what it was like when I started to play. 
We all wanted to imitate our idols and when you played floorball it was of course the hockey stars that we wanted to copy. 
Players like Loob, Kent Nilsson and Wayne Gretzky were hot items. 
Now, when the sport has grown, you can hear the young players saying that they are Johannes Gustafsson and Johan Davidsson, two of Sweden's best players, both born in Uppsala. 
When floorball was introduced it looked like a nice and calm way to play ice hockey. 
There is not that much close contact as in hockey where you learn how to tackle others. 
In floorball there only minor pushes are used and this fact probably makes parents of ten years olds less worried when they see their sons and daughters play.  	
Is it likely that money is of importance to this increase? 
Floorball is a rather cheap sport to exercise. 
A stick doesn't have to cost more than 200 SEK and most of us already own a pair of training shoes. 
This is pretty much what you need if you are going to play. 
If you compare to tennis a racquet costs almost 800 SEK for an eleven-year-old. 
To spend that amount you have to buy one the most expensive sticks you can find. 
A membership in a club does not have to be that terrible either even though it can differ a great deal between different clubs. 
Usually 200 SEK for one year is enough, while in tennis you have to pay 1 000 SEK for half a year.  	
Parents, though, do not care that much if it is really expensive, they want their kids to have fun and to meet friends. 
The kids also do not really care if their stick costs 150 SEK or 400 SEK, as long as they can play with it. 	
The best thing, by far, about floorball, as a youth sport, is that it is a team sport. 
As in every team sport the team spirit is important. 
In what way, then, does floorball differ from other team sports? 
It's simple. 
The fact is that everyone is allowed to play in the matches and have fun. 
There is no talk of using the best player twice as much as the rest of the team; instead everyone plays almost equally much even if this might cause a loss to the team. 	
This is if not unique at least a rather unusual way of dealing with team sports. 
In the sports where there is a chance of a player getting professional status, players can be sorted out as early as when they are seven years old. 
In floorball there is no rejection or segregation of players at a young age instead everyone is allowed to participate as much as they can. 
If I were a parent I would be really happy to see my kid play in the match even though he or she may not contribute that much to the outcome. 
At least they are enjoying themselves and that is what really matters. 	
I think that the number of people playing floorball will continue to rise, but probably not as rapidly. 
One thing that you can notice regarding the number of players is that if the total is increased by 300 the youth would rise by 250. 
This is very encouraging for the future and as long as floorball continues to be generous to its youngsters it will attract new members.
"," ""The rise and the fall of the Swedish school system""  At the beginning of the twentieth century Sweden was a country where both teachers and students were highly respected. 
It was also a country where many poor parents shared a dream, namely to be able to send at least one of their children to school. 
These parents and children knew that a good education was of great importance since it gave every child, whether he or she was rich or poor, the same opportunities to get a well paid job. 
They also knew how to appreciate a good teacher, since he or she would be the one to lead their children into a brighter future.  
Unfortunately this beautiful picture has changed. 
Today, when our century is approaching its end, people no longer regard nine years of compulsory school as something important nor something to be proud of. 
These nine years are rather seen as a boring episode which leads either to an underpaid job or another dull three years at upper secondary school. 
Nevertheless, many seven-year-olds still have great expectations before beginning first grade. 
Sadly enough they soon find out that school is far from what they expected it to be. 
The image of a well-organised classroom with a smiling and helpful teacher who has time for every single student simply no longer exists. 
What a student, in Sweden in 1999, can expect is a classroom with too many pupils, old schoolbooks, an underpaid and overworked teacher and an attitude towards school as something boring and useless. 
But it is not only the attitude towards school that has changed, but also the attitude towards teachers. 
Instead of mentors who brighten the future of their students, teachers are rather seen as a nuisance who nag about homework.   
So, what has gone wrong; why does nobody no longer seem to respect or enjoy school? 
In an open letter to one of Sweden's largest newspapers the Swedish Liberal Party, Folkpartiet, blames the governing parties. 
According to Folkpartiet one of the major reasons for this change of attitude is that politicians have tried to create a school were all children are at the same level. 
They have tried to create a school where all students are given the exact same opportunities and where no student should feel that he or she is not as bright as his or her fellow students are. 
Although this certainly sounds like a very beautiful idea it has, however, not quite worked out the way that the politicians had planned it. 
In their striving to create the perfect school, they have failed miserably.   
What has happened is that students who work faster than their peers have not been given any extra material to work on and have therefore not been given the opportunity to develop. 
Some schools have stopped giving out homework since it has been considered unequal and unfair. 
This due to the fact that some students receive more help from their parents when doing their homework, while others more or less have had to manage on their own. 
And perhaps worst of all; the students who need extra help have not been given it since there is a lack of financial resources and teachers. 
School is no longer considered a place where you learn things, but a place were you either struggle to keep up with your peers or just sit and wait, since you do not have anything else to do.   
So, what the politicians really have accomplished to create is: a country in which twenty per cent of the sixteen-year-olds cannot read or write properly when they finish ninth grade; a country which has fewer school days and much less homework than any other European country; and a country where students and teachers seem to have lost respect for one another.   
These are only some of the reasons why people tend to smile when I tell them that I am a student at teacher's college. 
They simply cannot understand why I voluntarily have chosen an underpaid job among people who neither respect me as a person or my occupation, but rather see me as a nuisance. 
This is however not the way I see it. 
What Sweden needs is a school system which sees every student as an individual and therefore gives these pupils guidance to develop in whatever field they are interested in. 
And if I can work in such a school and can be of any help, then being a teacher will always be my first choice of occupation.
",False
" Doris Lessing's The Grass Is Singing  The town girl Mary has led a comfortable carefree existence of a single white woman in South Rhodesia when she eventually meets Dick Turner, a poor white farmer, who actually has nothing in common with her. 
Despite their differences, they decide to marry, each having their own reasons for desiring marriage. 
Exchanging her formal life in town with a life in the farming district of Ngesi means, however, a radical change for Mary, both socially and economically, and she is slowly driven off balance by heat, loneliness and poverty. 
Additionally her prejudice against natives- i.e. black African people- makes life difficult for everyone involved, and finally no native is prepared to work for her anymore. 
After years of struggle, when Mary eventually is found in a state of complete apathy, possibly on the border of mental illness, Dick introduces her to the native Moses whom he has taken off work on the farm and is considered to be the only one left willing to work as a servant. 
As Moses proves to be excellent at what he is doing and, moreover, is able to draw Mary out of her state of apathy, a new personal relationship develops between the two- a relationship that is considered to be the worst imaginable sin in South Africa and which, finally, leads to the murder of Mary committed by Moses... 
One of the strengths of this novel is its structure. 
As the narrator, who holds a 3rd person omniscient perspective, does not tell the story chronologically, we are immediately thrown into the actual end of the story- when Mary already has been murdered- which raises our curiosity about what has actually happened and, furthermore, triggers us to go on reading. 
The very beginning of the narrative is very significant to one of the main themes of the novel- the ideology of white supremacy- as it tells us about the views people in this particular farming district have on natives and, furthermore, relationships between masters and servants. 
These views are not always spoken out directly to us, but are often brought forward through people's reactions and behaviour in relation to the incident of the murder. 	
Firstly, we are told that people felt 'a little spurt of anger mingled with what was almost satisfaction; as if some belief had been confirmed' (p 25) shortly after the murder, which shows us that natives were considered constantly to thieve, rape or murder if given half a chance, and as Mary apparently had given this particular native a chance, the outcome was almost expected as far as the district was concerned. 
Mary, spoken about as someone unpleasant and unclean, became viewed upon as ' a silly woman got herself murdered by a native for reasons people might think about, but never, never mentioned' (p 11), and it becomes clear that even though everyone knew about the relationship between Mary and Moses, they still did not wish to acknowledge it. 
This silent understanding tells us about a white civilization sharing an ideology of supremacy- a white civilization which will 'never, never admit that a white person, and most particularly, a white woman, can have a human relationship, whether for good and for evil, with a black person (p26)  Secondly, two standards of this ideology; one standard the young Englishman Tony Marston had brought with him and one he is adopting, and also different kinds of fear are depicted here. 
Charlie Slatter and the Sergeant's attempt to silence Tony Marston, their obvious unwillingness to get into details and further investigation, give us a clue about an underlying mixture of fear and hate, a feeling so powerful and overwhelming that it is not even dared to utter out loud. 
Looking down at Mary's dead body, Tony too experienced fear, but it was of a different kind from the fear that was controlling Charlie's behaviour. 
While Tony was afraid of death in general, Charlie was afraid of something completely different; something that Tony was not expected to understand, as he had not been long enough in the country.  
The importance of understanding and sharing views is, moreover, strongly indicated: 'When old settlers say 'One has to understand the country,' what they mean is, 'you have to get used to our idea about the native [...] 
'Learn our ideas or otherwise get out: we don't want you' (p 18). 
We understand that it must be very difficult to stand out against a society that holds racist views, and that it is easier to ignore i.e. to forget what one deep inside knows is wrong. 
For a newcomer like Tony Marston, who holds progressive views, a change of views and standards becomes necessary and also inevitable according to the general opinion that everybody eventually change while living in South Africa.  
We are, however, left with many questions about Mary herself and the incident of the murder after having finished the first part of the narrative. 
As readers, we are curious to find out more about what has actually happened as we realize that this is by no means a simple matter but a very complicated one; an issue that can not be described in a second. 
The narrator, acknowledging the importance of finding out more about Mary's upbringing to understand the ideology of white supremacy, goes on telling the story through back flashes, giving us a wonderful description of Mary's childhood as well as her adolescence.  
It turns out that Mary, like every white woman in South Africa, was brought up to be afraid of natives, being forbidden to talk to them and, significantly, never came into contact with them, and from this fact we begin to understand why she has ended up as ignorant and hateful as she is characterized.  
An example of her deep conviction of that she is superior is the incident when Mary, out of fear and hate, strikes the native who against her permission leaves work for getting water to drink. 
As one of Mary's earliest memories is her father's talk about 'the White man's work ethic', which apparently, in her view, is not shared by natives, she orders him to go back to work and, eventually, strikes him. 
What is interesting here is the thought that comes to Mary's mind- that he is actually able to complain about it to the police- and which makes her furious. 
Even though she knows that she has the police, the courts, the jails behind her she is absolutely maddened by it (p 120) which shows us exactly how much superior she consider herself to be.  
Another example is when she forgets to feed the native cleaning the bathtub. 
Even though she deep down inside does not care whether the bathtub is clean or not, she forces the boy to work on it the whole day, without a single thing to eat. 
This proves that she has never been taught to think of natives as human beings that need to eat and drink which, naturally, causes problems when she is starting her married life on the farm, facing a native servant all days long. 
But it also shows an extremely unhappy woman, who simply cannot cope with the heat and restlessness of her new life, her lost ability to be in charge of her destiny but who is still determined not to show weakness. 
In addition to her feeling of superiority over natives, Mary is also characterized as feeling superior and somewhat hateful towards men. 
The reason why she married Dick was that she 'needed to restore her feeling of superiority to men, which was really, at bottom, what she had been living from all these years. 
His craving for forgiveness, and his abasement before her was the greatest satisfaction she knew, although she despised him for it' (66)  These feelings are entirely due to the environment in which she was raised that involved constant quarrels between her parents concerning drinking and economy. 
We are told that Mary had inherited an arid feminism from her mother, as she very early was able to turn Mary against her father, and which later became significant to the independent life Mary chose to live in town.  
The hate towards her father as well as childhood is brought to us from Mary's reaction after his death. 
As she feels relieved by his death, it is implied that she saw her father as the very last link that bound her to her childhood, a link she hated to remember and which now was removed. 
She was now free, earning good money, had lots of friends although they were not intimate with her -'she felt disinclined, almost repelled, by the thought of intimacies and scenes and contacts'- which would affect all her relationships to men, particularly her future husband Dick, to a great extent. 
For this reason, her attitudes towards Dick was 'fundamentally one of contempt, [...] as a man she paid no attention to him, she left him out on account altogether'. 
As Mary is brought to us as a woman who has never experienced real love and, assumably, never been able to love, we suspect the experience with Moses to be as close to fysical attraction she has ever come before. 
The way he manages to jerk her '[...]clean out of her apathy, for the first time in months seeing the ground she walked over, and feeling the pressure of the sun against the back of her bare neck, the sharp, hot stones pressing up under her soles (144) and, moreover, how she lets everything else slide except for matters involving Moses, are brought to us as evidence that this woman is genuinly attracted to him. 
This she refuse to admit, of course, and his hand on her back leading her to the bed when she is ill fills her with nausea. 
I interprete her nausea och contempt, the horror she experiences when she meets Moses, as feelings of attraction she is not able to label. 
Her frustration is due to the indoctrination she has been facing since she was a child, and also lack of experience of these feelings. 
Deep down she realize that Moses has become a human being to her- that they have a human relation- and she is prepared to die rather than acknowleding that.  
The marriage between Mary and Dick was never based on love, with other words. 
And love is not, in my view, a theme in this novel. 
Instead we find a lot of differently expressed loneliness as a theme. 
It was, for example, Dick's sudden realization that he was lonely and longed for a family that made him marry Mary in the first place. 
The two pictures torn off a calendar of the chocolate-box lady and the six-year-old child, give us an insight into his loneliness as well as his dreams. 
He chose Mary because 'it was essential for him to love somebody', which shows us a man desperately hoping for love that is not there. 
Dick is, furthermore, characterized as a very sensitive man from the way he treats Mary and the patience he shows in waiting for her to turn on him on her own accord.  
However, from his continuous feelings of guilt we understand that he, deep inside, realizes that Mary is not suited for a life on the farm and that she probably never will love him the way he hoped for. 
He also realizes that Mary is very different from him, having qualities he himself lacks; an energy and efficiency that ' undermined his own self-assurance even further...for he knew, deep down, that this quality was one he lacked (62). 
Well aware of that he would probably do better if he followed the advice of Mary and Charlie Slatter, he still chooses to go his own way, having several eggs in his basket at the same time, which shows us a stubbornness and strength in this man as well. 
It is very sad, however, that he ended up with a woman like Mary who could not fully appreciate him for what he was. 
To conclude, I have enjoyed this novel very much. 
It has told me the hardships of poverty; how it changes people and, moreover, how to coupe with it in addition to other problems such as bad luck, drought, heat and generall misary.  
But most significantly, it has successfully depicted the complicity of white supremacy in a trustworthy way and left me ponder the matter a great deal. 
This is something that everyone should do in a society like ours where fluences of white supremacy still is spreading. 
As Doris Lessing tells the story from a future perspective, leaving information about events taking place many years after this actual story, and furthermore inserts some general statements about peoples views throughout the text, we understand her view on white supremacy without having her to say it directly which is very well done, in my opinion. 
I would certainly recommend this novel to everyone interested in the subject.
"," Cremation as a sign of the times  For the last twenty years I have helped out in our congragation in the town where I live by assisting at funerals. 
It is a small congregation belonging to the Swedish church. 
During that time I have noticed a very specific change, and that is the increase of cremation of the body after death in favour of the traditional burial of it. 
Obiously nowadays we prefer to burn our dead rather than digging them down. 
And the change is significant. 
Some twenty years ago a mere ten percent were cremated. 
Now it is quite the other way around. 
Roughly ninety percent of the funerals today end up with the body being turned to ashes. 
A radical change wouldn't you say in an institution, the church that is, where tradition is known to rule and where changes usually takes much longer to carry through. 
You might want to wonder why.  
Let us start by loooking at a reason that would look obvious to be considered when making choices in this day and age and that is of course economy. 
Is there a difference in price between a burial and a cremation. 
Strangely enough there is not. 
Both alternatives are equally as expensive. 
We have to look for something else.  
One reason for chosing cremation of the body might be environmental. 
It is easy to consider it ""cleaner"" to put a can of ashes into the ground rather than placing the whole body there, where it eventually will rot. 
And that is probably a reason that goes for both a next of kin deciding upon someone in the family who has died, as well as for a deseased who has made the decision himself prior to his death (obviously).  
Another reason for chosing cremation, one that is more common for the next of kin chosing, is how the funeralcermons are conducted in each case. 
In a traditional burial you follow the coffin out into the graveyard and watch it being lowered into the ground. 
And you leave your relative or parent there in the hole knowing that he soon will be covered with soil. 
In the case of cremation you bid your last farewell to the deseased in church and then you leave. 
It seems to be a more comfortable way emotionally.  
There is also a reason for chosing cremation that is specific for those who decides themselves what will happen to their body after death, and that is probably the mere thought of having your body being eaten by worms which in fact is the case when you have been buried. 
Without being too Edgar Allen Poe* about it, I think we can all agree that it is not an appealing thought. 
More an appaling one perhaps. 
In any case it is definitely a thought that might make you prefer being cremated.  
So all of above put together along with the modern man being unconcerned to old church traditions might be the explanation to this rapid change. 
This was also confirmed by the reverent in our congregation when I discussed the matter with him recently. 
He strongly believed that those above mentioned practical reason easily defeated old church tradition, in this case symbolized by way of disposing a dead body. 
""This is just a sign of the times we live in"", as he put it. 
But he wanted to make it absolutely clear though that the priesthood held no preference in the matter.   
And neither do I even if I have made up my mind. 
So chose the way you like, I do not think you will notice the difference when your day comes. 
And maybe that view of the subject which I am sure I share with a majority of people is perhaps also a sign of the times. 
We are being practical about it. 
It is just an empty dead body that needs to be rid of so let us make it clean and comfortable and be a part of the modern society.  
* Edgar Allen Poe, famous american author, known among many other things for his morbid fear of being buried alive.
",False
" Julius Caesar  The following essay will be a close reading analysis of a short extract from the play Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. 
The part I've chosen is act 2, scene 1, lines 112-191 (references to the New Penguin Shakespeare). 
What has happened just before my analysis starts is that Brutus has stayed awake all night, trying to make up is mind about whether or not Caesar will become an unjust ruler and if this in that case should make him feel he ought to join the conspiracy. 
He has read a letter reminding him of his ancestor who drove out the last king of Rome and after doing this decided that he needs to go through with it.  
The extract starts with Brutus making a very fateful comment that makes you aware of that something important is about to happen, 'Give me your hands all over, one by one.' 
Cassius shows a feeling of disbelief, in men able to keep to the plot at the crucial moment, since he suggests swearing an oath. 
This compared to Brutus, who believes that all the reasons they have for committing this deed should be enough. 
This also shows the difference in character between Cassius and Brutus. 
Brutus is an idealist, with a strong belief in the good in people, while Cassius is more of a realist. 
He suspects that the men may change their minds in the last minute if they don't have something more tying them to their agreement. 
To convince them of the superfluous of an oath, Brutus makes a splendid speech, that is a direct respond to Cassius suggestion as well as a means of convincing Brutus himself of the right in proceeding with their plans.  
No, not an oath; if, not the face of men The sufferance of our souls, the time's abuse, - If these be motives weak, break off betimes, And every man hence to his idle bed: So let high-sighted tyranny rage on, Till each man drop by lottery. 
(II.i.114-19)  	Brutus picks out all the reasons for acting for the common good. 
He makes it sound as if he is saving mankind from a catastrophe and with that, deaden his own sorrow and bad conscience of being about to kill his own best friend. 
He even imagines the tyranny already there, since he feels the need for a strong motif if he should consent to this malicious intent and stay part of it. 
Through the whole passage Brutus builds up a feeling of no return. 
No-one can object to the evil deed they are about to commit and nobody can no longer feel the need of an oath, since Brutus appeal to their innermost. 
He does this not only with the choice of words, but also with the balance in his speech, that really emphasises what he wants to say. 
He makes them feel that they would be exactly what honourable Brutus detests - 'cowards' (line 121), noble Romans unable to keep a secret (line 125), dishonest (line 127) - if they would consider for but a second more to swear the oath. 
Brutus is also careful to express that only men fighting for evil things, men that can't be trusted, are those who needs to swear oaths. 
This is also a thing he says to justify his own way of acting. 
If they can come to this decision with good reasons to support it, they can't be accused of doing anything but good for the people, for staying honourable men:  Swear priests and cowards and men cautelous, Old feeble carrions and such suffering souls That welcome wrongs; unto bad causes swear Such creatures as men doubt; but do not stain The even virtue of our enterprise, (II.i.129-133)  any of the traitors suggests they should invite Cicero as well, 'for his silver hairs' (line 144) Metellus fills in. 
This signals that they still are uncertain of the rightfulness of what they are about to commit. 
They feel the need for someone to defend their action, someone with the indisputable support from the people because of his age. 
It could also be seen as a distrust in Brutus, a questioning of his earlier so praised hounourableness will be enough to defend their deed in the eyes of the public. 
Now his reputation as a man of honour isn't good enough, something which he feels and is quick to respond to:  Oh name him not; let us not break with him, For he will never follow any thing That other men begin. 
(II.i.150-52)  Note also he change in writing technique that very well expresses Brutus' sudden feeling of uncertainness. 
The shortened lines, the abrupt endings, of course with some sort of rhythm, but not even close to the balance of speeches known of Brutus. 	
The question of removing some other person as well is brought up - Decius comes with the suggestion and Cassius quickly agree. 
As the realist Cassius is, and as he skilful judge of character, he knows that to make the conspiracy successful also Mark Antony will have to be removed from the scene. 
He is not that skilful an orator though, since he can't convince Brutus to go through with this operation. 
Brutus however counter with yet another splendid speech and appeal to the sense of honour and grace of the men around him, most clearly shown in the following extracts from lines 166-180:  Let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.... 
Let's kill him boldly, but not wrathfully;... 
We shall be called purgers, not murderers.  
To kill not only Caesar, but Antony as well would not only be very wrong, it would make them seem as they were exactly butchers and not honourable men acting for the common good of the people. 
It would also make them appear in a more disadvantageous light. 
To even more stress the importance of what he has to say, he uses a number of metaphors like 'To cut the head off, and then hack the limbs' (line 103), 'Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods, Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds' (lines 173-174) and 'For he can do no more than Caesar's arm when Caesar's head is off' (lines 182-183). 
In Brutus' second speech (from line 102-183) his weaknesses as a leader shows itself. 
His sense of idealism and compassion makes him overlook awkward, yet important, facts to make a conspiracy of this kind successful. 
Maybe it's his sense of guilt and heavy-heartedness over the coming assassination of his own best friend that awakens this. 
All these reasons for letting Antony live don't convince Cassius. 
Then Brutus, as the skilful orator he is, speaks in a totally different manner, short and precise and reveals other sides of Mark Antony that suits his own purposes and also seems to please the group of traitors. 
He suggests that the only thing Mark Antony could be expected to do is to kill himself out of love for Caesar, but that even that wouldn't occur since he is too fond of the pleasures of life. 
Trebonius ends the discussion with the words 'There is no fear in him; let him not die, For he will live, and laugh at this hereafter.' (lines 190-191) and with these words it's settled. 
Caesar is to be removed but Antony spared whatever Cassius may think of it.  	  
Some of the central themes in the play of Julius Caesar are the ones of power, what it does to people. 
Of course the whole discussion is about corrupted power, or rather what can be done to prevent it. 
This is pictured in this extract as a fear for Antony's expected actions and of course for Caesar's who is the coming victim of their actions. 
The play is also about who tells the truth, which interpretations is the right one, is it Brutus' or Cassius' in this case? 
It shall later in the play be revealed that Cassius were right about Antony, but on the other hand would they have gained the confidence of the people if they had killed both the men? 
Yet another central theme, where I would say this section is one of those best illustrating this theme, is the private conflict within Brutus himself, his private feelings versus the general good. 
This is where he for the first time need to choose sides officially. 
The climax of a long time of ambiguity in him is reached, a whole sleepless night of weighing the good aspects against the bad ones, where he finally takes a stand has come to an end. 
This passage is of great importance for the whole play, since it is here the final decision is taken. 
The prerequisites of the whole play is set up, that Caesar is to be killed and Antony not and all the consequences it will cause.
"," Can increased car traffic have a positive effect on the environment?  
In the article I have chosen, (Dagens Nyheter Oct. 
2, 1999:A4), Tom Corneliusson and Bjorn Gillberg argue that an increasing amount of car traffic on the bridge of resund actually will be of benefit for the environment. 
Further the bridge is considered to benefit for example cultural and educational interchange between regions. 
As high a fare as has been proposed for the crossing would however disturb the positive effects and curb the trips via bridge, a trend which they, through this article, want to obstruct. 
On several points I do not find their arguments convincing though. 
In the first paragraphs of the article, Corneliusson and Gillberg assert that there are no reasons for limiting traffic on the bridge as regards environmental matters. 
Furthermore they suggest that car traffic, although increased to the highest possible level, still will cause less pollution than the ferry service, why an increased rate of crossings rather should be encouraged by lower fares than the opposite. 
How this can be explained, is with the fact that almost all cars by the year 2010 will have catalytic converters. 
Something they do not take into account however, is that ferries also will have improved technique to limit pollution to a minimum. 
Car-production technique of tomorrow is compared to ferry-one of today, which is not a fair means of comparison. 	
Corneliusson and Gillberg's next statement is that exhaustion in the whole region of resund will not increase, to strain the question it will in fact decrease compared to today. 
A statement like this is based on calculations on a ""worst conceivable case"", when the increase of traffic in Skone would be 70% over a period of 20 years (from 1990-2010), but the decrease of harmful emissions as large as 80%. 
Why this can be the case, concerning elements such as nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide, carbon oxide, and carbon hydrogen, can also be explained with catalytic converters. 
A fact not mentioned by the two authors of the article, is that we already today let out too much carbon dioxide - an element that contributes to the greenhouse effect. 
Thus an increased amount of traffic of course means more discharge of carbon dioxide. 
Corneliusson and Gillberg even mention a 30% increase of carbon dioxide outlet, compared to today, because of the presumably higher traffic rate. 
Looking at it this way, this is something that do not seem to correspond that well with the title of their article. 
Yet another aspect that would shed new light over this issue, not taken into account by the authors, is the proposed increase of travelling from outside the resund region, by people heading for the bridge. 
When the psychological obstacle of, perhaps, paying extra on the ferry for bringing a car than not, the inconvenience of having to match time-tables, cancelled trips because of weather etc. disappear, it is very likely that more people than today spontaneously cross the sound. 
This, by all means, is the aim of the bridge, to increase the accessibility to both regions, but scarcely of benefit for the environment. 
An increased amount of emissions is thus also to be expected outside the area of Skone. 	
A conclusion that is drawn in the article, is that the fare for crossing the bridge should be lowered substantially compared to plans, to make an increase of traffic possible. 
Taking into consideration what have been mentioned above, this would not be of benefit for the environment neither in the region of resund, nor in the regions further away from the actual crossing point. 
Something which however would cause a positive effect on the environment, not even mentioned in the article, is lowered fares on trains crossing the bridge, generous, well-planned timetables, good connections with other public transport etc. 
This would in fact mean, easy accessibility from all parts of the countries surrounding resund, a minimum of pollution both to the regions further away from and in the resund area, and an elimination of emissions both from the ferry service and car traffic on the actual bridge and in its surroundings. 	
Conclusively one could argue that this article is narrow-minded by means of considering increased car traffic as the only way of improving exchange between regions. 
However with this starting-point, the authors of course in several ways try to argue in favour of the positive effects of an increased amount of traffic by car. 
What makes their argumentation insufficient, and untrustworthy in spite of the statistics pointing in a positive direction, is however that they amongst other things 1. compare tomorrow's technique in car-production to today's of ferry-production, 2. do not mention that even a lowered amount of pollution still have negative effects on the environment, especially since they have neglected the effect on areas outside the resund region, and 3. do not take into consideration less pollutant means of travelling, for example trains. 
I can consequently not find that an increased amount of car traffic would have a positive effect on the environment after reading the article.
",True
" A teacher's status and salary: nothing to brag about  Introduction1 In the society of today it seems that children's upbringing more and more should fall under the responsibility of their schoolteacher, because now teachers are supposed to teach the students the knowledge they need, and then also be their parents. 
You might have thought that the responsibility to teach children to behave and not become criminals was the parents' job. 
Wrong, it has now been shifted to become the teacher's job. 
The community, the parents and sometimes their own schoolboard seem to think the teachers should hold the children's hands every minute of the day. 
And even if they do so, it does not mean that they can be sure to get some compliments for doing it. 
And this is what I want to point out that, as many people already have said, the profession of teaching has a much too low status and is not nearly paid as much as they ought to be paid. 
Because is it really fair when you have the job of teacher, psychiatrist and parent etc. every minute of the day to have such a poor salary?   
Physical & Mental Abuse There are many teachers that suffer from various physical injuries that they have drawn upon themselves during working hours. 
I do not say that you cannot get injuries in other occupations as well. 
I only think that most people do not think about the profession as teacher being a high-risk job in which you might get hurt. 
Some of the most usual injuries are to the back, the neck and the vocal chords. 
Another thing that teachers often suffer from is the stress of never being totally free from work. 
They get burnt out, in other words.  
The mental aspect is that many students of today seem to have lost the respect for the teachers. 
The students manifest this disrespect e.g. by talking back at the teacher when he/she tells them to do something, or by cursing at the teacher. 
If this continue under a longer period it can be a great strain, and sometimes the teacher feels that he/she has to move to get away from it.  
It is also often that the teacher gets students whose parents think they know better than the teacher does when it comes to teaching and they often express this loudly. 
For example, I know a teacher who had a weak student. 
She tried to help him as much as she could. 
She offered him her help after school. 
Because she would stay and work after school anyway, he could stay and do his homework there, if he wanted to. 
Then if he did not understand something he could ask her. 
The student ignored her offer. 
When the term was through and his parents still thought the boy did not do as well as they would want to, they did not want to understand that his bad work discipline was the problem. 
No, they instead phoned the teacher up on the ceremony day and rowed at her for not giving the boy enough help. 
She had not done anything to help him, according to his parents.  
Teacher equals Parent? 
It is quite interesting to see that the society of today is expecting teachers to act as a curator, psychiatrist, teacher, and parent, all at the same time. 
But of course the society also expects the teachers to do all these jobs but just get paid for one of these jobs. 
And, if I might add poorly paid for one of these jobs.  
I cannot understand why some parents are so liberated from any IQ that they seem to think that when the children start in school, their time of raising the children is done. 
It is not the school's job to raise the children in becoming good little citizens. 
Although I might admit, that the school might have some part in it. 
But it is not up to the school to raise the children, look after them and have the responsibility for the children's actions during the time, which is not school time. 
Unfortunately some people have a hard time understanding this. 
There are even people who think that the school should have even more responsibility for the children than it already has. 
So in the future it seems, as the school will be a substitute for home with the teachers playing substitute parents. 
But I doubt that they will be more paid for the new role.   
Status & Salary I don't know when the teacher profession got such a low status. 
But I sincerely hope that it has had a higher status than it has now. 
Because, if you should view the status of teachers from the aspect of how much they get in salary, the profession is not much worth. 
For example, the average salary for a 1-7-teacher is approximately SEK 17,000 after they have worked a year. 
My mother who has worked as a 4-6 grade teacher for over 30 years gets only SEK 22, 000 in salary.  
In comparison with the salary of the Swedish MP's, they get approximately SEK 38,000 per month and they sometimes do not bother to come to the proceedings in the Parliament. 
If a teacher would do that, their already low salary would be even lower. 
Someone might argue that the MP's have a bigger responsibility. 
Well, the person who does that can work as a teacher for a year and then we will see if he/she still thinks that.   
Conclusion I certainly think that teachers deserve a higher salary to give the profession a higher status, among other things. 
A status it desperately needs to attract people to the profession. 
Many of the teachers who have only worked for a couple of years feel that they cannot recommend their own profession to anyone. 
The two main reasons that come up are the low salary and the status. 
They feel that the profession does not get the appreciation it deserves, which I totally agree with. 
Many people might think that teaching is an easy occupation. 
But there is nothing easy in getting nasty comments from people who are younger than you, while you try to give a lecture. 
During which time you get a low salary for a burden of work, which is only increasing every year due to savings in the sector. 
Savings the Government thinks they can justify with a salary of more than SEK 38,000 in salary.  
1 When I talk about teachers in this essay I am referring to the teachers of compulsory school, for I have no experience as a teacher of the higher levels.
"," Introduction  The content of this essay is the evaluation of my English, done by me. 
It was a difficult task to do an evaluation on myself, but I went to it. 
The result can be read on the following sides. 
The essay deals with four areas: Speaking, Reading, Listening and Writing.   
Speaking When it comes to me speaking English, I think I'm not bad at it. 
I have good pronunciation, at least that's what my schoolteacher in upper school told me. 
I think that she's believable. 
This positive side must unfortunately be weighed against my shyness of talking in front of people. 
This conflict has the result that I'm speaking quite well when I'm relaxed. 
But, when I'm not relaxed I get stressed and loose words that I would remember usually. 
My pronunciation also looses when I get nervous. 
Because I try to get it over and done with as soon as possible by raising the speed. 
This gives the result that I want the words to get out faster than they can.  
Reading Reading books are one of my favourite things to do in my spare time. 
Of course I have to strain myself more to understand everything that is said in the book, when it's written in English. 
But I haven't got anything against reading in English. 
Though I have to confess, I don't often go to the library and loan a literary book written in English. 
Most of the times I've read an English book have been in school, forced by the English teacher. 
I'm a fast reader when it comes to books written in Swedish. 
So I guess that I can be said to be an above average reader in Swedish. 
When reading books written in English, it doesn't go that quickly. 
I don't read slowly, but I don't read fast either. 
So, I guess you can say that I'm an average reader in English. 
I think that some of the speed is due to unknown words that I sometimes need to look up to make sense of a sentence.   
Listening I think I have to say that of the four areas I'm evaluating, I'm best at listening. 
Perhaps that is because I'm very into watching TV-programs in English and movies. 
And when I watch Ally McBeal or Romeo and Juliet (1968), I don't read the translation, just listen to what they say. 
Because, if you just read the translation, you'll miss many things that aren't translated. 
Also when it comes to watching Romeo and Juliet, I actually find the meaning of the dialogue much easier to understand when listening to it, rather than reading the translation.  
The disadvantage with listening is that if you're not observant you might be learning a grammatical error. 
Such as ""You and me"" instead of ""You and I"". 
Though I heard in one of the grammar lectures that ""You and me"" might be slowly changing into being a correct use. 
Since I went in seventh grade I have watched MTV. 
At first I couldn't keep up with the famous MTV-pace. 
It was just too much unknown words that were thrown at me at the same time. 
But then I started to watch the same program day after day. 
And I started to recognize words that were used every day in the same sort of context. 
Though I sometimes didn't know exactly what the Swedish word was off-hand, I knew how to use the English word in a sentence. 
This has developed during the years. 
So now I understand people when they are speaking English most of the times.  
Although, I wouldn't say that I have one of the most advanced English vocabularies. 
So the most fancy and difficult words do escape me. 
But then again I don't think that I'm in a bad company. 
Because when I used to watch Oprah, her audience looked as baffled as I sometimes, when some college graduate used some fancy word he had been longing to use in a sentence. 
Then of course the graduate usually had to translate his fancy word into layman terms, so the rest of the audience also knew what he was talking about. 
And that audience came from the same country as the graduate and English are their native language.  
Writing Spelling has never been a problem for me. 
Not in Swedish and not in English. 
The only problem has been sometimes to connect a word's spelling to how it sounds. 
I mean that sometimes, as I mentioned in Listening, I might have heard a word and know what it means but not how to spell it. 
This means that when I see the word in writing I can't connect it immediately to how it sounds. 
I have to sound it out, and then it will hit me that I actually recognize that word.  
When it comes to writing essays I don't think I have any problems in expressing myself with words. 
But then again I haven't got that much training in writing essays in English.  
I would say that grammar is my biggest problem when it comes to writing. 
Spelling the words isn't often a problem. 
The problem is having them fall in the right order and in the correct conjugation on the paper.  
Conclusion So, to what conclusion have I come to? 
Well, I think I'm quite good at understanding spoken English if there isn't too many difficult words in one sentence. 
I'm not that bad at talking as long as the audience isn't too big. 
Writing I haven't got much experience of doing in English so I don't know yet. 
Reading books in English I haven't yet found a problem. 
Grammar though is an area I would need to freshen up and look into more. 
So I think this course will be good for me. 
Because I will study grammar and talk in front of people. 
Good training.
",True
" The Society Gives Possibilities to Elderly People.  
To be old and need special help is a common problem. 
Many consider that it's the relatives' responsibility to take care of the elderly, but the elderly have the right to experience a meaningful life of their own. 
Quality of life is to be with friends, take part in activities and have possibilities to improve the physical condition. 
In comparison with a living by the family the elderly will get all this and also be carefully looked after by educated staff. 	
Elderly people living in a block of service flats supplied by the local society have much more possibilities to develop than those who live at their family's house do. 
In the service flats they have always staff around who can help, encourage and stimulate them. 
Further they have a nurse and a doctor at hand and special aid for rehabilitation. 
If something would happen when they are alone, perhaps they have fallen or need help for the lavatory they just use the alarm system. 
To feel safe and secure is important for them when they have to trust other people for living. 
Other advantages in this kind of living are the possibility to take part in a lot of different activities. 
It can be a therapist who is reading aloud from newspapers or books or a local musician who entertain them. 
There are also several physical activities like the possibility to weave, to use the joiner's workshop, to take part in gymnastics or to do some assistance in the institutional kitchen. 
In a private home without all these kinds of resources it can be difficult to revitalize them and instead they will be sitting in an armchair or a rocking chair all the day long, perhaps they don't even eat.  	
Even though the heavy expenses for care of old people are a big part in the budget of the Society nowadays, is it cheaper to let up buildings and staff for this kind of living than put all the responsibility on the family or other relatives. 
To take care of people who are too old to look after themselves and need special help cost a lot of energy and time. 
Thus it influence the family's own working hours, leisure and health. 
The result can be less employed people who are paying taxes and more people being on the sick list because of overwork. 
Besides families with less salary can be forced to apply for social allowance, which means that the Society have to pay in any case and the final costs might be even bigger.  	
The benefits for families with relatives looked after by the state, are to begin with, their opportunities to plan their relations with the elderly. 
They will be allowed to do what they want without having a bad conscience all the time. 
Instead they can do visits when it's convenient and spend pleasant time together. 
Furthermore, it's liberating for them to get away from asking other people of assistance now and then when problem comes up and they need help to look after the elderly. 
It's trying to be bound night and day without getting a chance to relax. 
Finally it gives the family time to establish a social life together with friends, which is one of the necessities to reach quality of life. 	
One disadvantage with elderly people living in a social institution is that a generation gap will arise. 
Young people will not be accustomed with old people and perhaps distance themselves from natural contacts. 
In fact there are children who have never met an old person living in such an institution. 
Another disadvantage can be the risk for the elderly to be institutionalized, for example to be depending on the daily run of things and refuse to do something else like a walk or a trip, because of the fear to miss the dinner or something like that.  	
Despite of disadvantages this kind of living is mostly the best for the elderly. 
In most of the institutions nowadays the lodgers use their own furniture because it is important for them to have well-known things around like the favourite chair or a home-made rug besides all photographs of children and grandchildren. 
It's also important for them to keep their integrity, to have a life of their own without ending up in the position as a child to their own child. 
To be a lifelong parent is a right.
"," THE MONARCHY IS STILL THE BEST FOR SWEDEN  Is it necessary to have a monarchy in Sweden? 
Do we need the King, the Queen and the whole Royal family? 
Isn't it hopelessly old-fashioned to inherit a title and an occupation like the kings and the queens do and doesn't all that belong to the past? 
It is rather easy to answer yes to these questions and to find counter arguments for the monarchy but nevertheless I'm definitely for it.  	
Sweden got to have a ceremonial head of state who can represent the country outside Sweden. 
I think the royal couple is doing a great job and I don't think that a president or a prime minister is better suited for the task. 
The King and the Queen of Sweden are well educated and well prepared for their duties and furthermore they are very devoted and they are surely doing the best they can for Sweden when it comes to public relations. 
The Queen is also involved in different charity work. 
They are creating a lot of goodwill for Sweden throughout the world. 
They also serve for life, which is good under the circumstances. 
I mean, Sweden is a small country and I think it's important that our royal couple is well known. 
It's easier to become well known if you serve for life than if you are elected for a period of four years like the prime minister in Sweden. 
Another important thing is that the monarch has no political power, as I think it is in all the kingdoms in Europe. 
The monarchs have to be politically neutral. 	
A counter argument often heard is that the monarchy costs a lot of money but I'm sure that a president and all the other persons it would be necessary to appoint or elect to do the work that the Royal family does now, will cost just as much. 
The financial situation for the taxpayers would not change if we had a presidency instead of a monarchy, at least the tax wouldn't be reduced. 	
Another reason to keep the monarchy is that the citizens of Sweden still want them. 
A great majority of the Swedish people is for the monarchy and the royal family is extremely popular. 
Polls reveal that the royal family rates very high in people's esteem. 
Many people follow every step they take by reading magazines and watching television programmes. 
Their interest in the royal family is a great source of amusement for them. 
I can imagine that instead of reading fairy-tales or fantasy books some of them follow the princes and princesses in all they are doing, and the love affairs, of course, is the most interesting. 
This curiosity that people have for their private lives must be rather annoying. 
To be constantly followed by journalists, photographers and other media people must be utterly embarrassing and make them angry, even furious at times. 
In Sweden I don't think the mass media is as offensive as one has heard of elsewhere. 
They do respect the privacy of the royal family to a certain point. 
We haven't heard so much of the paparazzi in Sweden like we heard when Lady Di had her accident and so unfortunately passed away. 
I think it is unethical to chase royalties and other famous people just to find scandalous things to publish. 
In Sweden the magazines and the evening papers go beyond the limit sometimes, but the situation is not so bad, at least not yet. 	
If we were to choose between a presidency and a monarchy today and we had had neither of the two I would certainly choose a presidency but actually we have a monarchy and there is no reason to get rid of it. 
We have it since several centuries and the Bernadotte family for many generations. 
They are doing a great job. 
As long as they obtain such popularity and do their part for the best of Sweden I see no reason to put them aside. 
I also consider the fact, that the monarch lost political power a long time ago and has no longer any influence in politics at all, very important. 
I'm totally convinced that at the moment, we have nothing to win by changing the monarchy into a presidency.
",False
"English is the official language in the world today. 
One faces the English language every day in many different situations. 
Everybody has different experiences of the language. 
In this essay I am going to evaluate my English in the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. 
Before I do that I would like to give you some background of my experience of English. 	 
I have studied English in school for 9 years and I have always loved it. 
Our education contained a lot of songs and games that made the language fun. 
My family has been abroad almost every year because my father worked with computers and had business acquaintances in the U.S. 
Since I have grown up I have been visiting my friends in London at least once a year. 
I have been in contact with the English language almost all my life.  	 
Now I am going to try to explain how competent I feel about my English. 
That is quite hard to describe because in Sweden you are not supposed to say or feel that you are good at anything. 
You should be an average person, not particular characteristic. 
I guess I am perfect for Sweden because I truly feel like an average person when it comes to English. 	 
Speaking is one of the things about English that I find rather easy. 
That can be due to the facts that I have been abroad a lot of times and that some of my friends live in England. 
The only time that I feel prevented in my speaking is when I am around Swedish people. 
Then I feel insecure. 
I once met an English-man who explained to me that he didn't have any problems in understanding me, my only problem was that I cared a lot about what my Swedish friends were going to think about me speaking. 
I hate to admit that he was right. 
I guess listening is my thing. 	 
Listening is strongly connected to speaking. 
I have had a lot of experience of listening from watching video, listening to music and talking to people. 
Today we are constantly surrounded by English on TV, radio and in magazines etc. 
Listening to the English language comes natural because of that expose. 
When one is listening to English one learns a lot of new words just as one does reading.  	 
One advantage of reading, as well as listening, is that one does not have to understand every single word to know the content. 
That makes me a good reader. 
I do not read books very often but magazines are my passion. 
I love lying in the sofa with a thick magazine in my hand. 
My weakness in reading is that I read rather slowly but on the other hand I understand what I am reading. 
My slow reading is a question of practice. 
I need to read a lot more, in English, than what I am doing right now. 
This is easy saying and hard doing. 
I am an overstrained person and find it difficult to sit down and relax with a book without falling asleep. 
I know that reading is a condition to learn more words and becoming a better speaker, listener and writer and I really hope that I will keep up my reading. 	 
As I mentioned before reading improves the writing. 
Maybe my sporadic reading is the reason why I find writing so difficult. 
There is many different form of writing. 
I do not find writing letters especially hard but in formal situations, like essays, it is harder. 
I do not know what kind of words to use in different situations. 
I have noticed that the more I write the better I get, but it is a slow progress. 
My strength in writing is that I write quite simple and that my spelling is correct. 	 
To sum up the evaluation of my English I can establish the fact that I prefer speaking, listening and reading to writing. 
I guess I do not like what is difficult. 
The key to make progress in the English language is to practise the language as much as possible and not be afraid of making mistakes. 
We learn from our own mistakes. 
I have experienced English for almost all my life and I still find it fascinating and very useful. 
One can communicate with almost everybody. 
I would like to continue reading English literature and practise my writing to enable me to become more fluent in English in the future.
"," The elderly - an issue for the state  Some people think that the family, not the state, should look after the elderly. 
The reasons are often emotional. 
To look after your parents and relatives feel like an obligation because they have raised you. 
I do not believe that taking care of the elderly at home is possible in our society today. 
In this essay I am going to describe the situation for the elderly in Sweden at present and discuss why I believe that the state, not the family, should look after the elderly. 	 
Most of the elderly in Sweden today live at home and finance it with their pension that they acquire from the state each month. 
The pension is based on the persons income from the working years. 
Some of the aged that live at home receive help from community workers a couple of times a week, with for example shopping, cooking, cleaning etc. 
The elderly who needs help more often, but can manage some things by themselves, live at blocks of service flats where there are medical staffs twenty-four hours a day. 
There are also nursing homes for those who require help all the time. 
The blocks of service flats and the nursing homes are both financed by fees and taxes. 	 
The alternative to nursing homes and blocks of service flats is that families nurse their elderly at home. 
I do not believe that this is possible to accomplish as the only alternative. 
Nursing someone at home requires more money, time and space than the family can afford. 
Today families need two incomes to maintain standard. 
If one of the workers instead stay home nursing, the family will loose a lot of money. 
There are subsidies that relatives can receive from the state but the fees are low and are limited in time. 
The whole Swedish well-fare system would have to change if it should be possible for low-income earners to look after their elderly at home. 
Even if the economy of the family allows nursing at home, there will be a lack of time. 
It is more than a full-time job taking care of someone twenty-four hours a day. 
It also demands space. 
The family has to sacrifice a great deal. 	 
It is often taken for granted that the best care is received by relatives. 
However the nursing homes and other institutions have, according to me, superior knowledge and resources which provide the best care. 
That knowledge and resources can never be accomplished at home. 
There are always several staff members to help the elderly at institutions. 
There are different types of staff: nurses, doctors, physiotherapists etc, to complement each other. 
The knowledge of the staff makes it possible to prevent unexpected incidents. 
Another advantage with institutions in contrast to nursing at home is that living is adjusted for example beds, stairs, doors etc. 
There are also more means in institutions. 
It is possible to have means at home transcripted by the occupational therapist. 
But it would be a major expense for the state if everybody used this benefit. 	 
Finally I can establish the fact that the Swedish system is working quite well. 
We all want to look after our relatives and the best way to do that are by paying our taxes and fees. 
At nursing homes and other institutions the elderly receive the best possible care. 
The staff is well educated and the living is adjusted. 
If anything happens the help is there immediately. 
At home we can not provide that safety. 
It is impossible for the family to give equal care because of the lack of money and time. 
Of course some families can give their elderly the best care at home, but it demands a lot of effort. 
I wonder if it isn't the best to let the educated staff take care of the elderly and visit them often, rather then to wear yourself out nursing them. 
We all want to remember our relatives with happiness, not see them as a burden. 
The Swedish well-fare system can of course be improved. 
The state should aim at the same standard at all institutions all over the country. 
It is hard in these saving times but the elderly have once invested in us. 
Now it is time for us to pay back and invest in the elderly!
",True
" Credit Cards are bringing financial heartache upon young users  Young people are often eager shoppers who want the latest in fashion, but most often they don't have enough money to acquire all those things they want. 
Companies aggressively target these young new customers, by offering credits with low monthly payments and no interest. 
In other words, they try to make them spend money they don't have on things they dont really need. 
Tempted by this, many young people fill out and send in every creditcard application they receive.   
What they don't notice, is the the terms of payment written in small type on the back of their application. 
It is here you receive the important information about what will happen when your period of grace has ended. 
Susan, 18, had just started a new job when she got her first credit card. 
She used the credit card to buy a new TV, and also a new bookshelf to her new appartment. 
In the first printed statement she could see the purchases she had made, the total amount that she owed, and the minimum required amount she was required to pay, which was quite low. 
Susan thought this was great, and the following months she bought a video and some octher fancy things. 
One year later, her depth was over 50.000 SKR and constantly raising. 
By that time, financial fees started to be charged, and before she realized it, the minimum required amount of payment didn't pay for much more than the interest.  
Is Susan here an extraordinary rash and irresponsible young person? 
Hardly. 
She is not the only one who has fallen into such a financial trap. 
In Stockholm, today more than 75.000 people, both young and adult, are registrered in the sheriffs because of their unpaid credit card bills. 
Many of them owe the credit companies so large sums that they won't get rid of them in their lifetime. 
When buying with credit card, people doesn't seem understand that it is still real money they're spending. 
Borrowed money that they inevitable one day will have to pay back - with interest! 
That little piece of plastic become like a ""financial drug"".   
True, the credit cards have both rewards and risks. 
A creditcard can for example be advantageous in emergency situations or when you don't want to carry too much cash. 
I suppose that is one of the main reasons why they've become so popular. 
But wouldn't it be enough with one credit card? 
And why use it for evert little purchase you make? 
Actually, having plastic cards doesn't give you any guarantees of security, even though it might be safer than carrying cash. 
A new type of financial criminals, specialized on credit cards, have entered the scene. 
So never give out your credit card number and expiration date over the phone unless you're sure who you're talking to, or never loan it to anyone.   
Who, then, can be held responsible for young people literally heading toward financial peril because of those credit cards? 
The credit company who approved their application, their parents, or the individual? 
One might think that the companies should take some form of responsibility and try to give some help. 
But no. 
In the end it is the individual card owner only who is affected. 
And trapped.  
With this in mind, never have an ""buy now, pay later"" attitude to shopping. 
Note down every purchase ypu make. 
Before buying something, ask yourself if you really need it, and if you really need it now. 
Susan, mentioned obove, had to pay almost double as much for everything she bought because of the interest and all the financial charges. 
If she would continued to pay the minimum required amount each month, it would take her eight years to pay off the dept for a TV, a bookshelf and som fancy things that are probably already out of fashion. 
So, if you want to avoid a financial heartache in the future, use your credit card with responsibility and respect.
","Introduction I will start this evaluation by making a reflection of my childhood, because it was during my first years I learned much of my fundamental English, under the influence of my mother who is English. 
Then I will continue by trying to make an assessment of my strengths and weaknesses today.  
Listening y mother read a lot for me, mostly in English. 
She also taught me many English songs and nursery rhymes. 
My parents always talked to each other in English. 
I specially recall that when my father wanted to say some thing in public that he didn't want anybody else to understand he always spoke in English. 
Of cause I have listened to music, that often is in English, as a teenager my favourite band was the Beatles. 
I have no problems in listening to people talking. 
I understand them perfectly well, I understand them even if they have a different dialect.   
Reading I got English subscriptions through my whole childhood. 
Every Christmas I got an extra thick book with many nice stories in. 
I have no difficulties reading English books. 
I have read English books, for my children but translated them directly into Swedish while reading. 
Just at the moment I have had a period of Ellis Peters, I like the historical background in combination with the crime solving thrill. 
When it comes to reading I feel rather comfortable, although I of course don't know the meaning of all words, so during this English course I hope to improve my English vocabulary. 
I am more used to reading older books, and the books you have chosen for lecture studies are all rather newly written, that will be a thing that will improve my vocabulary and the amount of books will increase my reading skills.  
Speaking As a little girl I spoke English, as being the first born. 
Sometimes my father tells me about how he tried to stop me from lisping, by practising when I was about three years old. 
When he said - sug flaska, I quickly replied - bottle. 
I strongly remember once when I was going to buy grapefruits, I was about nine years old and I stood in the fruit shop and couldn't remember the Swedish word for it, I was so ashamed I had to run home to ask. 
My sister and I once went to England to visit a aunt, I still remember when we were buying ice-cream at the ice-cream stall, we started to talk to some other children and told them we were from Sweden, they just laughed and asked use to say something, they got very surprised when we started talking Swedish to each other. 
Under a longer visit in Switzerland I made friends with a girl, who had been an au pair in England, we only talked English with each other. 
As I grew older I stopped talking English at home, even if my parents said some thing in English I replied in Swedish. 
Now I feel pressured by being expected to talk well because my mother is English, so I don't dare to try. 
I know I can make people understand what I am talking about, but I have no idea if I pronounce the words properly or if I have the wrong intonation. 
I am looking forward to the practice, even if I still feel very unsure.  
Writing The worst thing I knew was to write and thank my aunt for all the lovely Christmas presents she always sent us, not that I didn't want to thank her. 
The real reason was that I didn't know how to spell or how to write it in English. 
To start my studies to become a teacher, I had to read in the degree's for the third year of upper secondary school on my own. 
The result was very good. 
But not that good in English writing the registrars thought it a pity that I hadn't had the possibility to practise with somebody who could guide me and look at the things I hadn't understood in fundamental English writing. 
I need much practice in writing, I have no idea what mistakes I make. 
In school I managed to pass the exams without actually knowing any grammar etc. 
I have come to the conclusion that I have to learn the phonetic alphabet to improve my spelling. 
I hope to learn a lot during this term of English studies.
",False
" Swedish People are Getting Fatter  In Sweden today people are getting fatter. 
Nearly a fifth of all women and more than a quarter of all men in our country have overweight. 
According to an item of news in Aftonbladet September 12, 2000 is this an increase by fifty per cent during the last two decades. 
How can that be possible in our country, a welfare state, where people are well educated and information about how to eat and live prevail in media daily? 
The factors are certainly many but the development of overweight increases rapidly and people must be aware of the problem and the reasons.  	
An obvious reason for overweight is that people inherit it from their parents. 
It is uncertain to which degree it is in genes, in the gene pool, but parents and their children usually resemble each other. 
However people inherit their parents' way of eating and the way they do exercise. 
Despite education and information children usually copy their parents' doings instead of what they are told to do. 
Therefore children who are brought up with fat food, snacks and leisure in front of the telly usually go on in the same way when they move to a place on their own. 	
What is evident about physical exercise is that people do not move or load their bodies nowadays like they did two, three decades ago. 
Much manual labour has been replaced with computers, robots and machines and even at home has the one who used to wash up after the dinner been replaced with a household appliance such as a dishwasher. 
The mentality in our country today is that almost everyone struggles for all modern conveniences that are possible. 
For instance people take always the car for shopping, for taking their children to school or just for buying a newspaper. 
At home in the garden they prefer to use a small garden tractor for cutting the grass instead of walking around with a lawn mower. 
Of course they also use it in winter for clearing away the snow. 
How many for example use the stairs if there is an escalator or an elevator beside? 
How many gets off the bus at an earlier bus stop for a pleasant walk home? 
Besides how many can live without a remote control? 
All these examples are occasions when people could have taken exercise instead of being immobile and sedentary. 
After a day at work sitting at a desk or a computer many people turn back home and keep on in a sedentary way in front of the telly without living up to the recommendation of exercise which is at least thirty minutes every day.  	
People who are sedentary eat too much. 
At work they are usually under a lot of stress and eat too fast. 
When people do that the body has no time to react on the feeling of satisfaction. 
It takes twenty minutes for the body to do that and it is impossible to note that feeling if the lunchtime is only 30 minutes. 
Thus people eat too much before they are aware of the fact that they have had enough. 
With lunchtimes as short as that the choice of food can be limited. 
People often buy what we call fast food or semimanufactures and a lot of it is junk food. 
Besides the lack of important nutritious substances it usually contains a lot of fat. 
Lately scholars have also discovered how important it is with the point of time for having a meal. 
Flexitime and stressful working conditions lead to irregular meals, which can be an explanation of why people who eat healthy yet have overweight. 
The body gets wrong signals also with this behaviour and the metabolic do not work, as it should do. 
As a consequence of eating too much and too fat food without exercise people use less energy and there will be a surplus that stores as fat on the body.  	
Even if more and more people do exercise it is still only a fifth of the population that really do it. 
That is not enough. 
Professor Stefan Rossner states that the ways we are living in are a beginning of a fatness-galloping epidemic. 
It is a national disease that will end up with people who gorge oneself to death. 
Perhaps it sounds too dramatic but the truth is that a lot of illnesses are related to fatness. 
For instance diabetes and high blood pressure are on the increase. 
Diabetes has also unfortunately increased among children; they are getting fatter as well.  	
As long as society give signals that it is unnecessary to exercise and learn about how to eat there will be no changes. 
The schools are for instance an evidence of that. 
In order to save money many schools cut down the gymnastics and other activities where children get an outlet for their needs and they also cut down subjects as home economics. 
Without these very important subjects we are going to ruin our children's lives.
"," Causal analysis  Student applications to Uppsala University are declining. 
During the last years, according to the admission unit in Uppsala, the number of applications to Uppsala University has decreased, rapidly and steadily. 
In Uppsala Nya Tidning 8/2-2001, Julia Linderlof writes that applications for separate courses have decreased with 14 % compared to last spring semester. 
There are different causes for this decline and some of them I will discuss.  
One reason for this trend is the outrageous housing shortage in Uppsala. 
When student's lodgings are far from sufficient for the actual number of students in need of a roof over their heads and prices for small apartments (actually all housing) still are increasing steadily, there are very small chances for students to see Uppsala as a study alternative, and therefore seek other cities to live in with more beneficial room accommodations. 
What Harald Nordlund, member of the Swedish Riksdag, writes in the article in UNT 24/1 2001 gives a clear example of the student's lodging situation, when he says that student's lodging are extremely expensive to build and hold in trust. 
He continues to say that the quick turnovers in tenants render in a great wear and therefore they are less attractive to build especially when the public house building is strongly neglected. 
The Uppsala University homepage also emphasise the impossibility to make Uppsala a place of residence when students are exhorted to look for living arrangement on the open market, which the Swedish quotation below issues.  
The prices on the housing market, are according to Jonas Edlunds article in UNT 26/1 2001, not in the nearest future going to fall. 
Students with student lone as an only income must look for inexpensive and convenient housing. 
Another reason why students prefer other universities is that there is a greater variety of educations available around the country in newly established universities. 
Some of the new smaller universities have been very successful in creating a distinctive image for themselves, such as the IT-university in Kista. 
These universities entice students to attend that specific university with arguments such as better student's lodging, students being able to live closer to home, being able to live longer at their parents home (witch is cheaper). 
They also intend to satisfy the labour market with its harshening demand for qualified employees. 
That is for example what the university in Kista has the intention of achieving. 
The IT-University / KTH-Kista was established on July, 1st 1999 by the Royal institute of Technology in order to meet the increasing requirements for education and research in the information technology area. (www.it-universitetet.kth.) 
The smaller universities trough out the country make offers that bigger and more well reputed universities cannot do. 
The real estate company AB guarantees accepted students at the university in rebro housing within a month. (www.oru.se) The last but not the least cause for my trend is that going to university today is mostly for people coming directly from the upper secondary school, and not for those who have experienced and attended life outside the corridors of traditional education centres. 
With interests such as starting a family, the economical situation must be upheld by a second part, when prices are rising constantly and student lone does not follow accordingly. 
When turning 29 the accommodation allowance, if entitled, are being withdrawn. 
Family economy can be ruined and therefore students in those situations must heavily consider their options. 
In some cases, it results in students being deprived of the privilege of attending university classes. 
The problems older students are being faced with, the article in UNT 5/1 2001 written by Kathrin Osterlund chairman of SFS and Sara Stavos vice chairman SFS elucidates more widely.  
All these arguments speak for the decline of student applications and the bad circle must be broken. 
The advantages though still hold strongly. 
Uppsala with a very well reputed university, the oldest within the Nordic countries, founded in 1477, the strong and outstanding reputation abroad, the highly advanced research-work and finally the student life summons up the vast majority of advantages Uppsala University has to offer. 
They are undisputable.
",False
" What Has Made the Notion of Art Change?  
During the last decades the notion of art has changed. 
For centuries, and even millenniums, the idea of art has been the one of painting and sculpture. 
Early civilisations, like the ones in the south of France thousands of years ago, made rock-paintings in caves. 
However, now this idea of art is changing. 
Nowadays, almost everything can be called art and artists make so-called installations. 
These installations can consist of stuffed animals, wrappings, scrap-metal, stones, plastic, kitchen utensils, worn-off clothes, distorted photographs and other more or less unusual things. 
This development of art has close connections with changes in society as a whole which, among other things, can imply the transgressing of limits.  
One of the causes of this new notion of art is that the borders, or the frames, of art in its original forms (i.e. painting and sculpture) have become too small and narrow for the artists of today. 
In order to express themselves in a way which they probably find more expressive and precise, they have extended the definition of art and incorporated new material, material which was earlier looked upon as junk. 
Each artist tries to find his or her own way of communicating his/her message to the spectators. 
Specializing in photography, Andy Warhol created his own style of photographing. 
The most famous examples of this are probably his photographs of Marilyn Monroe. 
At first this kind of technique was not accepted as being art, but other artists also left the old tradition and started making their own way through the growing jungle of what is now more or less accepted as art. 
However, sometimes this new notion of art is questionable, for example Yoko Ono's exhibition in Helsinki this year. 
One installation consisted of two mounds of stones. 
These mounds were almost identical; one called 'A Mound of Sorrow' and the other one 'A Mound of Joy'. 
Fortunately the latter one was slightly higher.  
This cause is closely related to another one; the first one triggers off the second one which has to do with competition between artists. 
If one painter has come up with a new way of painting, then it does not take long before other painters try to surpass him. 
An example of this is Salvador Dali who is known for his surrealism, painting humans with extremely long necks and legs. 
This technique is not very unusual today. 
René Magritte is another painter who is known for his special way of painting. 
Nowadays his 'eye-twisters' are not as unique as they were when they were first seen, since many painters have gone farther in the painting of irrational motives. 
This competition can go as far as to the point when artists just want to reach success and fame by shocking the public.   
Dali and Magritte were painters and their works were shown in galleries and even though their paintings might have been pioneering, the fact that they were in a gallery made them less strange. 
This brings us to the next cause which the French artist Duchamp explains by his idea that whatever it is, it is ""art since it is in a gallery"". 
He shocked the world in the 1950's by making an exhibition with everyday-things like different kinds of brushes which he considered art since they were in a gallery. 
This cause - ""art since it is in a gallery"" - is probably the cause that has contributed most to the building of the new concept of art, simply because the fact that the objects are in a gallery makes many people see them as art without questioning it or reflecting too much.  
Then we have another reason which can be said to be almost the opposite of the latter one. 
That is when artists who are not normally painters or sculptors make art-like objects and put these in a gallery. 
In this case it is the already famous person behind the exhibits that makes these items art. 
This cause can also lead to the strangest things being put in a gallery just because a superstar thinks it is art.  
'It is the things which are impossible to express that we want to express', a female artist said in the art program Bildjournalen (SVT 1) and this is the core of art: there is something that cannot be expressed about art and the idea of it. 
I believe that there will never be just one way to try to express this, but artists will continue trying to find what they believe is the right way. 
As long as they do this, new notions of art will appear and then disappear and the public will continue to wonder at the new art.
"," The Development of International English  Introduction   English is the native tongue for more than four hundred million people around the world. 
It is the main language in countries like the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zeeland, Ireland and South Africa. 
English is also the second language or one of a number of official languages in many other countries, for example India, Nigeria, and Singapore. 
It is also the key language in areas like the newspaper business, computers, sports, and music. 
McCrum, Cran and MacNeil (1992) claim that: ""English is more widely scattered, more widely spoken and written than any other language has ever been. 
It has become the language of the planet, the first truly global language"". 
English has certainly grown into a world language and what I would like to do in this essay is to try to investigate the different reasons for this development and also try to define on what we mean when we talk about International English. 
I will mainly deal with the questions of when the internationalisation of English started and what the causes were and are of that development. 
Finally I will also try to answer the question whether English will remain as the world language it presently is. 
The material I will be using are primarily a number of articles written on the topic by linguists like Nigel J Ross, George Yule, Charles Barber and Tom McArthur; including the course material.  
1. 
2. 
The Development of International English 2.1. 
Standard English vs. 
International English  The English language is, as mentioned earlier, scattered around the world and naturally several different dialects and variations of the language have developed. 
This is one reason why English is considered a world language. 
Though we need to make a distinction between the two different terms Standard English and International English, the latter is what this essay is primarily dealing with. 
There is no general definition of these two terms; different linguists use different terms when talking about English. 
Nigel J Ross (1997)gives us one explanation on what International English might refer to: ""International English may simply refer to the varieties of English spoken in different parts of the world."" 
The linguist George Yule (1997:227) gives a clear definition on what Standard English is generally characterised by: ""This (Standard English) is the variety which forms the basis of printed English in newspapers and books, which is used in the mass media and which is taught in schools. 
It is the variety we normally try to teach to those who want to learn English as a second language. 
It is clearly associated with education and broadcasting in public contexts and is more easily described in terms of the written language than the spoken language."" 
These two definitions make it clearer on what the differences are between these two terms; namely that Standard English provides the common core of all the different varieties of English that together are called International English. 
What this essay takes up is this ongoing development of International English as a world language.  
2.2. 
The historical development of International English English has developed into a world language. 
When did this start and what are the causes of this internationalisation and development of different varieties of English? 
Charles Barber (1996:235) says that: ""English has become a world language because of its wide diffusion outside the British Isles, to all continents of the world, by trade, colonisation and conquest."" 
Today English is the language of the world. 
It is nothing we want or can argue with. 
But this has not always been the case. 
During many centuries Latin was the leading language in at least our part of the world and though the Roman Empire ended Latin remained as the language of the educated people. 
Only through the reformation when sermons in the church started to be held in English and with the development of a printing culture did English become a language of some importance within its own country. 
Together with these two developments there were also an era of colonisation and conquest in the British history, a major reason for the development of International English.  	
When Great Britain expanded its empire around the world through trade they also brought their own language to their colonies. 
This was the starting point of the internationalisation of the English language. 
With the English settlements in North America, the East India Company's massive trade with the countries of the east, the settlements in Australia and the so called ""Scramble for Africa"" when Great Britain gained power of the major regions in Africa including South Africa the English language came to play a dominant role in the world. 
It became the language of the rich and powerful colonisers and the leading people in the new countries.  	
Even though the British Empire declined during our century the role of English as a world language has only grown bigger. 
One major cause of this is the massive impact the United States has had and still very much has on the rest of the world. 
It is the leading country in most technological areas and has had a both ideological and technological impact on the world's development during this century. 
With the development of the TV-network around the world, the movie and music industry, fast food chains etc; all originating in the US have the English language almost been forced upon the rest of the world. 
English is the leading language in such powerful areas as movies, music, sports, and newspapers. 
These are areas where most people have some sort of interest and they can therefore hardly escape being exposed to the English language daily.  
Together with the impact United States has on the world there is also another reason for the rapid development of International English. 
With the increasing trade and co-operation between different countries that emerged during the nineteenth and twentieth century the need for a so called ""world language"" arose. 
Because of the political and economical situation in our world, especially after the two world wars, this need for an international language became urgent. 
Since the United States and Great Britain were two of the most powerful countries that where on the winning side in the two wars and were those who first established international organs like the UN and NATO it was also natural that English became the key language in such organs. 
Today English is the language of communication and trade between most countries. 
2.3. 
International English today English has during the nineteenth and twentieth century developed into a world language. 
This process has by no means ended but has increased largely just during the past few years. 
The language has for a long time had something of an aura of prestige around it; partly due to the glamour that many people connect with English because of music, movies etc. where English is the dominating language. 
Today this trend has only increased. 
With the rapid development of computers and especially the Internet has English established itself as the key language of the world, both the real one and the visual world. 
Because of the possibilities of the Internet for people to communicate with others all around the world there is definitely a need for a world language. 
That the Internet will help English expand its territories even more is quite evident 2.4. 
International English tomorrow Will English continue to be the world language? 
Some maintain the English is here to stay. 
Others say that Spanish or perhaps Chinese could replace English. 
As I see it will English continue to be the number one world language but more and more will other languages, probably Spanish as the first one, accompany English in the future. 
We can already see signs of this today in for example the music business. 
Only a couple of years ago was English the only and very dominating language of the music business and songs on other languages never made it into the big music charts. 
Today there are many and very successful artists singing in Spanish on the charts around the world. 
Even though this might be a small sign of such a development it still shows that English can be accompanied, at least in one business, by other so called world languages.   
2. 
3.
Conclusion and Summary 	The English language has developed into the most widely spread language ever in our history. 
It is has more than four hundred million native speakers plus just as many that speaks it as a second language. 
It is also the key language of many international bodies and it is the dominating language in businesses like newspapers, computers, sports and music as well as in the fast growing and powerful business of the Internet. 
There are a number of reasons of why English have become the International language it is today. 
The most primary one is that English is so widely spoken outside its original country, the British Isles. 
It has spread through trade, conquest and colonisation to a numerous places like the United States, Australia, Canada, India etc. 
Much thanks to the United States massive impact on the rest of the world, an impact originating in the tremendous development of American industry in all sorts of areas and the exportation of its goods and ideas to other countries, English has also developed into a language of prestige. 
Today we are exposed to English wherever we turn and especially through the Internet will English also continue to be a world language tomorrow. 
That other languages could replace it is hardly likely. 
Though it might be accompanied by one or two other world languages in the future.  
3. 
4. 
References  Barber, Charles. 
1993. 
The English Language, A Historical Introduction. 
Cambridge. 
Cambridge University Press. pp. 234-262 cArthur, Tom. 
1997. 
Guides to tomorrow's English.  
Ross, J Nigel. 
1997. 
Signs of International English Yule, George. 
1996. 
The Study of Language. 
Cambridge. 
Cambridge University Press. pp. 
226-238
",False
" ENGLISH, MY ENGLISH  I took my A-levels in 1971 which is quite a long time ago! 
My favourite subject was - that's right - English! 
A foreign language must always be practiced otherwise it will be too deep hidden in your brain. 
Fortunately, English is the foreign language I practiced most since I left school. 
I think it is the same for most people in Sweden since we see a lot of mostly American and also English spoken films and TV-programs. 
I also studied German and French, which I think is a beautiful language, but since I never practiced them to any extent I have forgotten most of it. 
So when I was in Berlin a week ago I tried to use my German, but had to switch to English because it was most convenient. 
Fortunately, most German speak very good English.  
When I was seventeen years old, and still studying my A-level, I went to England to practice my English. 
I landed at Heathrow at the same day the Americans austronats landed on the moon. 
To me both were of similiar importance! 
It was in july 1969, thirty years ago! 
Sounds like a very long time ago! 
I remember my visit very well, living with an English family, eating English food, going to English pubs and falling in love with an English boy! 
I also went to a trip to Scotland - a very beautiful scenery with all the green hills. 
I bought a souvenir which was a longhaired cow typical for Scotland. 
I still have it in my bookshelf in my study. 
When I lived in Jonkoping for some years they had these cows in the City Park. 
It was a cow-family and they always reminded me of Scotland.  
I have not been to England since 1969 but I have just booked a trip to London with a girlfriend of mine. 
We are going in the middle of october for a prolonged weekend, Thursday until Sunday. 
She is a teacher in English and since I am studying English we got the brilliant idea to go to London to experience the language, culture, shopping etc. 
I am really looking forward to it.  
I like travelling very much. 
In june I was in USA for ten days. 
We visited Washington, Memphis, San Fransisco and New York. 
It was an intensive and enjoyable trip. 
We met relatives of my husband and one of my best friends from school who is living in the States since six years ago. 
We also met a lot of people from my husband's job. 
A nice way of practicing my English!  
I have two sons, Magnus 16 years old and Anders 14 years old. 
They study English of course at school and I help them as often as they need. 
This is also a very good way to practice my English. 
I enjoy to be their English teacher although they think I am to conscientious!   
This summer Magnus went to England to study English and to stay with an English family. 
It was a very exciting trip and he liked England very much. 
I think it to some extent had someting to do with that he fell in love with a girl! 
Not an English girl though but a Swedish girl. 
So I think his English learning was not the most important matter to him!  
In order to have him practise his English before he left he had to follow an English film at TV. 
As a pedagogical trick I hid the Swedish subtitles with a piece of paper. 
I thought that was very smart of me. 
First he opposed but then he found out that it was a good way of learning to listen and understand. 
Because if the subtitles are there you cannot avoid reading them.  
This was a little about my background regarding my English. 
When it comes to evaluating it I consider it as a whole as good but I need to improve myself at all four aspects:  Listening: It is quite good. 
So far I have followed all the lectures! 
But it takes a lot of concentration, especially now that it is so new and at a high level. 
I mean we are not talking about the weather. 
I am going to hire some English videos and do the same thing as I did with my son; hide the Swedish subtitles. 
The first video I will hire will be ""The Remains of the Day"". 
I love the actors Anthony Hopkings and Emma Thompson. 
I love to listen to English (apart from listen to American). 
I think they should show more English films on TV. 
The American films dominate too much.  
Reading: I enjoy reading. 
I must admit I do not read English literature too often but that is going to change now for sure. 
I liked the first book, Nice Work, and the two short stories. 
I like when I discover that I understand most of it. 
But in Nice Work there were a lot of words I did not understand. 
Looking them up takes too long time and means too many interruptions. 
The most important thing is to understand the whole of it. 
Some words must be looked up of course if they are of importance for the understanding of the story. 
I always get curious if there is a word that I don't understand. 
I am thinking about getting a pen that can translate words. 
Sounds remarkable.  
Writing: I think my writing is quite good. 
I can write in my own way and take the time needed. 
With the computer it is easy to change and rewrite when I see something that doesn't look good enough. 
I guess the grammar is the foundation of the language and I try to write in a correct way. 
But of course I need a lot more practicing on my grammar. 
I guess to much has been forgotten. 
Although I rehearse a lot when examing my sons English homework.  
Speaking: I can speak quite all right if it is not too complicated words to be said. 
I get very annoyed when I don't find the right or appropriate words. 
I do need to increase my supply of words. 
It is also important to use a correct grammar when you speak. 
As I already have been written I need to work on my grammar.  
I have great expectations on my English studies at the university of Uppsala. 
I do hope and expect, with the help of all you teachers, and of course with a lot of hard work of my own and in the team, to develop my skills and profiency of English.
","In this essay I will try to do an evaluation of my knowledge of the English language. 
Due to my opinion it is rather difficult to do a correct subjective assessment of skills in general and not only in languages. 
Much depends on the person's individaul background, education, self-confidence, etc. 
A little about my background: I have not studied English language actively since I graduated from high school 1965. 
After that time I was at home with my children for eight years. 
During this period I studied a little law and business economics. 
Then I studied medicine 1973-1979. 
During these years most of the textbooks and litterature were in English. 
While I worked as a physician at the clinic of lung diseases, I also worked on a research project. 
It was necessary for me to read a lot of medical papers and journals in English and in German. 
Sometimes we had doctors from other countries at the clinic for shorter and longer periods. 
Durings these periods all meetings and conferences were in English. 
When I had only one year left before my specialization as a chest physician and about two years before my planned doctor's degree, I got a virus disease, which affected my immun system. 
I am now retired due to illness as a consequence of that.  
Now I intend to try to assess my strengths and weaknesses in listening, reading, speaking and writing English. 
I believe that I have very uneven knowledge of the English language. 
During the years since I retired from work I have spent most of my time in bed reading novels and scientific books in Swedish and in English. 
I have no major problem with reading and understanding scientific litterature. 
When I read this kind of litteraure I seldom have the feeling that I am reading a text in a foreign language. 
On the contrary when I read fiction novels in English, I often have to check many words in a dictionary. 
This I consider as a very severe weakness. 
I wish I had a better vocabulary. 
On the other hand I don't find it difficult to understand spoken English. 
I understand a movie or a TV film without Swedish text quite well. 
Now and then I have to speek in telephone with persons in USA and in England. 
I don't find it difficult to understand them and it seems that they understand me. 
Of course my vocabulary is limited, but the English language is rich of synonyms. 
If there is any important word that I don't understand in the conversation I almost always ask for an explanation. 
I believe I am very uneven in my speech too. 
Often when I speak English I have noticed that I suddenly hesitate and can not find the words I want. 
I know that I ought to know them but they are 'gone with the wind'. 
I believe my pronunciation varies much. 
I have never recorded my voice but I have a feeling that my pronunciation sometimes is acceptable and sometimes bad. 
Another very great problem for me is the grammar. 
I am almost never certain whether I use the correct expression, preposition, verb, etc or not. 
This is a great problem when I am speaking and writing. 
When I am writing English I also have problem with the spelling. 
It takes a very long time for me write something because I am often very unsure of my ability to spell a word correct and I am using the dictionary more than I really need. 
(Why don't they have a spelling reform in England like we had in Sweden in the first decades of this century?)				 
Another problem I have is when I am writing official and half official letters. 
How do I start and end suchs letters in a polite way? 
It is so easy to involuntary appears to be rude and impolite.  
I have tried to estimate my knowledge of the English language. 
In this essay I have mostly described my weaknesses. 
One of my strengths is that I am almost never afraid to talk in English and I don't disapprove if someone corrects me. 
I hope that I will learn of my mistakes, but it happens often that I have to be reminded of them once, twice or even more times.
",False
" A NEW, BIG, SHINY AND POWERFUL CAR IS BETTER  A new, big, shiny and powerful car is better. 
That is the statement I will put forward in this essay. 
I will explain the importance of these qualities in a car and why the vehicle needs them. 
There are a number of things to be concerned about when it comes to personal transportation, easy access, safety, environment, to name a few. 
There are also different aspects of these concerns, and I will argue that all are meet in the most satisfactorily way in a new, big, shiny and powerful car. 
So, to start with one of the concerns I mentioned above, the importance or benefit from easy access. 	
Easy access is one of the major advantages by owning your own means of transportation. 
For instance, very few people live close enough to walk to their work. 
Public transportation in any form requires that you have to get to your local bus stop or train station. 
There is a time-table that will tell when transportation is possible, and if these set times doesn't suit me there is nothing I can do. 
By owning a car I can make my own time-table. 
I will never have to walk to a distant bus stop in the rain or in the cold, and for obvious reasons I cannot be late for the car as I always will risk being with the bus. 
My car will be there in the parking lot or in the garage, waiting to take me to work. 
Everybody is late sometimes, valuable minutes may be lost and this can very fast create a stressful situation. 
If I have a car powerful enough I will always be able to catch up on those few minutes lost, perhaps in the morning, minutes that probably would cause a disaster if I depended on public transportation. 
I would be late and end up with a very bad start of the day. 
The need for a powerful car in the case of making up lost time is essential, and a strong engine can make such a situation less dangeorus, but this concerns the area of safety which I will now turn to. 	
When it comes to cars, safety is always an important issue. 
If, one morning I have to speed up a little bit because I am late, there is always the possibility that I may have to overtake another car. 
The basic rule here is that a powerful engine will make the overtaking of another car safer. 
It is as simple as that. 
Every extra horsepower is needed to pass the other car as fast and as smooth as possible. 
Being on the wrong side of the road is a danger to you and anyone on the road, and every second there that may be avoided by a stronger engine is an increase in safety. 	 
Size doesn't matter, it is said. 
True or not, it is a big lie in car safety. 
Any investigation on the subject will say that a big car is safer than a small car. 
In the unfortunate event of an accident the metal around me will function as protection and reduce the impact. 
A big car will have larger impact areas to take up the force in an accident, and this will greatly reduce the possibility of the driver ending up with the car engine in his lap. 
I have here talked about safety on the personal level, but safety can also be seen in a much wider perspective, the safety of the environment around us. 
This I will turn to in the next paragraph. 	
A new car, built in the last few years is more environmental friendly than an older car. 
The car industry is constantly improving their cars, and every day progress is being made. 
A car today cannot be sold without a catalytic converter. 
There are laws prohibiting that, but an older car doesn't need this device to clean the exhaustion air, and installing one in an old car is costly and complicated.  	
The recycling business is growing, more and more things can be recycled and used again. 
Several of the companies making cars today are building them with the paradoxical intention of making the car easier to take apart. 
Materials are chosen because they can be recycled. 
As with the catalytic converter this goes for newer vehicles, older cars made before this was a concern to the industry were not built with this environmental possibility in mind and thus are not as environmental friendly as a new car. 
Progress has been done concerning air pollution and how to take care of the car after it has done its job. 	
These are just a few arguments stating why a car should be new, big and powerful. 
I said in the beginning of this essay that the car also had to be shiny, apart from these other qualities which I have talked of above. 
This quality is almost self-evident to me. 
Of course a car should be taken care of. 
In our society the car tells a lot about the owner, what kind of car it is?, how is it cared for?, what colour it is?, and so on. 
Combined, these questions with some of what I have said above might say very much about the owner and might give him respect and admiration from others. 
A car is a car but it is also so much more.
","As this is to be an essay on a given topic, how competent I feel about my English considered four specific skills, I will here in the beginning briefly mention these four skills or parts and why I decided to go through them in this order. 
The four parts are listening, reading, speaking and writing English and I will go through them in this order because it reflects my English pretty well. 
The two more passive parts of listening and reading I use more often and therefore have more to say about than the more active parts of speaking and writing. 
And since I've never written an essay like this and really don't know how it is supposed to be I guess I'll just write down why it is like that. 
So, to start with listening to English. 	 
In the early eighties a small group of neighbours got together in Bolsta where I lived. 
They bought a satellite dish and soon, Bolsta being a very small town, everyone who wanted could receive satellite television as the company expanded. 
For the first time I had use for all these unnecessary lessons I had gone through in school to learn a new language. 
Of course Swedish television showed programmes in English but as they always were subtitled, why bother to try and keep up with what they said when you knew that you surely after a while would miss out on something. 
There was always someone who talked to fast or to blurry, at least for me. 
But now I had to try and keep up and learn because there was no text and that I think is why listening to English is my biggest strength considered all these four skills. 
I have done it longer than the other three and you don't always have to understand every word to understand the general meaning of something. 
The same thing is probably my weakness, it doesn't really matter whether you miss a word or not. 
As long as it's not a very crucial word you can be lazy and leave it unknown. 
Listening while you are in a dialogue with someone is a bit different and usually gives you the possibility of asking or having things repeated to you. 
So, I'm lazy, which is a weakness when it comes to my reading English as well.  	
When I'm reading a novel or any fictional literature it doesn't matter to me if I skip over a word every now and then. 
If I just understand the, again, general meaning of the text I usually don't bother to look up a strange word in a dictionary. 
To often the word is never that important and if you are just reading for fun the dictionary is just an unwanted interruption. 
That is my biggest weakness when it comes to reading. 
My strength is on the other hand that I've done quite a lot of reading in English. 
I've studied Philosophy and Literature before this and especially in Philosophy most of the courseliterature was written in English. 
And since I was studying I couldn't just leave out unknown words and thus learned some new words, words that I honestly never use and many of them I'm not even sure how to pronounce. 
Which brings me to the third skill, speaking. 	
When I was 20 years old I went to Switzerland to spend the winterseason in a small skiresort. 
Two years later I went back for a second winter and both times I lived with English-speaking people. 
So I used the language every day and by time I lost the fear, shyness or whatever you might call it of speaking English. 
That is probably my strength when it comes to speaking English. 
Although I speak far from good English I know that I usually can make myself understood. 
The weakness is that I use the language to seldom. 
Except from an occasional vacation abroad now and then I never speak English. 
I have no regular contact with English-speaking people and this weakness is also true about writing. 	
Basically I never write anything in English. 
Except for what I might have written in English in ""high-school"" this is the longest text as far as I can remember. 
So I really don't know what my strengths and/or weaknesses could be. 
Writing this I have found out that I'm lousy at spelling but apart from that I don't know and therefore I guess I'll have to leave that evaluation to the person who will read this.
",True
"INTRODUCTION It's not an unknown truth that we all are influenced by TV. 
(In particular children are open in their sense for new impressions.) 
Teenagers live in a period of life when their sexuality is wakening, which gives them a lot of questions. 
I maintain that hard pornographic movies give an awful and disgusting view about what sexuality is. 
They can do a great deal of harm to those who are watching them - and they are presented for money. 
It's also necessary to seriously consider if Swedish law is compatible with showing these kinds of movies.  
PROBLEM The hard pornographic movies are detrimental for everyone, and the use of the Swedish law towards it is today not hard enough. 
I should prefer that the procuring law were used against pornographic movies.  
ARGUMENTATION The sexuality crimes are from 1992 increasing in Sweden, and the behaviour of the criminals are quite equal with how the actors behave in the hard pornographic movies. 
Recently Olof Risberg visited the school from which the teenagers, who raped a young girl in Rissne, came. 
He found out that 50% of the boys were watching pornographic movies every day, and the same percentage believed that girls are whores. 
It's hard to prove that these kinds of movies are the reason why the sexual crimes increase or that they have changed the teenagers's view of what sexuality is. 
Neverless I mean that these hard pornographic movies don't convey anything good. 
In one movie, for example, you can see seven men wearing masks (probably to protect their personality) penetrate and degrade a woman. 
Such things give a sick view.  any people were choked after having watched the documentary movie about pornography, ""Shocking Truth"" by Alexa Wolf, in the Swedish parliament. 
They could not understand how it can be possible to show hard pornographic movies in Swedish TV. 
Marita Ulvskog, our Cultural cabinet minister, maintains that the purpose of the law is to stop these kinds of movies and we need to investigate what we can do to solve the problem. 
Their reaction (as well as my own and many others's) indicates that it's important to stop hard pornographic movies from being shown in TV.   
The Swedish law regulates what the mark grounded TV stations offer, so that they don't allow any pornographic movies in Swedish Television. 
The law concerning cable TV stations, according pornographic movies, says that they are not allowed to show any sexual violence or force. 
If they don't define ""violence"" and ""force"" in a better way the interpreter is left to interpret these words in a subjective way. 
In my opinion this is not enough. 
A weird and completely illogical thing is that when cable TV stations send their pornographic movies, which is allowed according to Swedish law, they also send some advertising movies directed towards children - and then Swedish law reacts against the advertising movies and says these are illegal!   
The pornographic movies in the world totally turn over about 260 billion Swedish crowns every year, according to Forbes Magazine. 
Pornography has become an industry which is based on and ruled by money. 
The procurer law we have in Sweden doesn't allow any money involved in practice of sexually activities. 
If we used the procurer law against the pornography movies they would be forbidden to produce, as well as distribute and send and sell in Sweden. 
The pornographic video movies would then also be forbidden. 
I suggest that we use the procurer law against pornographic videos because it would stop the hard pornographic movies.   
CONCLUSION We are all influenced by TV, though especially the younger generation. 
Hard porno movies have a bad influence and I think it's necessary to protect the younger generation from that kind of movies sent by TV. 
The procurer law should release us from pornographic movies.
","INTRODUCTION. 
I have been studying English during a long time, some way or another. 
But if I really wanted to assess my abilities and my competence when it comes to making use of my English skills - where would I find myself? 
How secure and confident do I find myself when I use my English in practice in the different fields of listening, reading, speaking and, of course, writing? 
How well do I perform and how do I manage when I use my English in real life?  	
This evaluation will be highly subjective, since it will give my own judgement about the question. 
I will try to evaluate my English skills and weaknesses in the areas mentioned above - listening, reading, speaking and writing. 
I will start with a short summary of my English educational background.  
Y EDUCATION IN ENGLISH. 
I started to learn English as a ten- year-old girl at school. 
I do not recall that I had problems with the language. 
I think I was quite an ordinary pupil and throughout my school-time I managed with the language fairly well. 	
I did not go to the upper secondary school. 
I married, worked and when I got my second child I studied English at Kom-vux, upper secondary level. 
Now I just loved it and I managed well with my studies. 	
The following years I used to read English books to keep my English skills in order. 
Last year I studied English, course B, upper secondary level. 
I also made the test to get access to university education and I passed the test quite good. 
That is my educational background, and it could be of some use to summon it up in order to evaluate the present state of my English abilities in the provinces listed earlier in this essay.  
HOW DO I COPE WITH THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN PRACTICE, THEN? 
When I l i s t e n to people who talk English I think I cope quite all right. 
I have no difficulties in understanding my teachers so far. 
I can listen to Euronews, for instance, and I understand most of what is said. 
Even though a single word could be unfamiliar to me, I get help from the other words and in this way I can follow the main theme. 
It can be difficult with different dialects but in general I think I can handle the listening part good. 	
How do I manage the r e a d i n g part? 
That is similar to the listening part, I think. 
Reading is even easier than listening because when I am reading, I have the asset of the word remaining in front of me, and I also have time to think - and there are other words, a coherence that can help me. 
I use to read such books as 'The street-lawyer' by John Grisham without problem. 
But Neil Postman's book 'Amusing ourselves to death' has a much more difficult language - the book will give me some difficulties to come to grips with. 
It is a question about vocabulary. 	
My talking abilities, the third province in this evaluation, what are they? 
This is the part I need to develop the most, since I have not had enough opportunity to talk to native English people. 
They do not grow on trees - not in Sweden, anyway! 
I still feel insecure when I talk to people.  	
My skills when it comes to writing, then? 
Perhaps my reader could give a better answer than I. 
If I would rank my skills I would say I am better in listening and reading than writing English, but better in writing English than talking English. 
But of course there are a lot of possibilities to do mistakes when you write English: The demands for accuracy are higher when you write than when you talk.  
Conclusion. 
When I use my English I am best at listening and reading. 
I think my writing skills are somewhat lower and my talking skills are the weakest part of my English competence. 
It will be thrilling to see how much I can improve during my first term at the University!
",False
" EU- The new Sovjet-union  Intruduction All since Sweden joined the EU, there have been political discussions whether it is good for the country or not. 
What have we benefited from the membership and is it worth all the money that has been invested. 
Many people are disappointed and do not think the membership corresponds to all the promises that were connected with the membership. 
There have also occurred different problems connected to the EU- meetings like demonstrations and violence, that was not expected in advance.  
The bureaucracy The EU parliament is a huge machine and costs a large amount of money to run. 
There are salaries for all the politicians involved and allowance for expenses but also expenses for travelling. 
The bureaucracy is a big problem. 
To have an influence in the EU is very hard, because it is a very large political body. 
The system works so that large countries get greater influence than smaller countries. 
In reality it means that small countries have very little influence and can be voted down on in many issues. 
It is hard for a small country to raise a question because it is difficult to get enough support. 
It is also difficult for an individual to have an influence either on politicians, or to raise an issue through legal channel. 
There are many EU politicians at many different levels such as commissioners ministers or parliamentarian. 
Some of them have been found to be corrupted in meaning to take advantages, or benefit on behalf of their position. 
There are examples of incorrect wages and wrong employments or other examples of unsuitable behaviour.  
EU-regulations In Sweden, we have come far ahead of many European countries in issues concerning pollution, the environment, the prevention of cruelty to animals, job equality and other questions of big importance. 
But it is difficult to make laws that are applicable for every single country. 
Furthermore many regulations or directives are simply not adaptable to specific countries. 
To EU adapt whole society costs a large amount of money and does more harm than good in many cases. 
The food industry have many directives and standards to adjust to, and it affect Swedish food so that it becomes less healthy. 
Local Swedish agriculture gets competition from abroad and less subsidies from the state, with the free trade agreement. 
This affects most of all animals, because it is impossible to provide good care of animals when the prices are pressed down to minimum.  
Criminality According to the free mobility for inhabitants between EU countries, a new market has been created for criminality. 
Illicit traffic flourishes nearly uncontrollably with big networks of criminal gangs involved. 
They are often run from abroad where they are hard to control. 
This problem affects society in a very negative way and it includes large costs both from a human perspective and in economic terms. 
Violence in connection with major EU meetings has become a big problem. 
It brings insecurity to the citizens and causes substantial materiel damage.  
Summary  Western Europe consists of sharply demarcated territories and they form strong and self-supporting nations with strong identities, so there is no need to form a union with already strong units. 
EU only seems to create more problems than advantages. 
A better solution to global problems would be to form smaller geographical units of cooperation. 
With nations which are naturally demarcated to the same area, and often have to deal with similar kind of issues. 
One example could be the Scandinavian countries. 
And then small countries would be stronger and have greater chance to influence conditions in different issues. 
In this report, I have tried to focus on some major problems that occur when a political union becomes a political centre.
","When I was given an assignment to write an essay, in which I'm asked to evaluate my strengths and weaknesses in the English language, it did leave me pondering over the matter a great deal. 
I haven't thought about my skills in English for many years and now I realize why. 
It's simply because I haven't practised them enough since I graduated from school which, I might as well add, I did ten years ago. 
I had at that point spent an additional year in the United States, as a foreign exchange student. 
Returning to Sweden after my stay there I was more confident than ever about my English skills being good, and for some unexplanatory reason I've kept that confidence throughout the years.  
Going back to school, to study English here in Uppsala, has however brought me rather abruptly back to earth, if not deeper. 
This first week at school has been the first confrontation with English for a very long time, and I've come to the conclusion that I do have forgotten very much. 
It's a shame that I've hardly spoken or written anything in English for such a long time, and that I've still expected my English skills to be good. 
Of course I've been abroad a couple of times which has given me the opportunitiy to have conversations in English, but a short conversation in a foreign language once or twice a year is not enough. 
A habit that I do have kept throughout the years is the habit of reading. 
I've always read a lot, mostly in Swedish but often books in English as well. 
Even though I usually tend to read ""best-sellers"", not very heavy literature that is, I consider myself a fairly good reader. 
It depends on interest, naturally, as it takes me much longer to finish a book I'm not interested in compared to one in which I am. 
Even ""best-sellers"" contain a great many words I'm not able to translate into Swedish, and I often have to look them up in a dictionary. 
More often, however, I don't look them up as you understand the meaning in the context of the text.  
I consider my skills in listening to spoken language as good as in written one. 
As long as the speaker has got an accent to which I'm familiar, I've got no trouble what so ever to follow. 
I've noticed, however, that I do have a harder time to understand a British accent than an American one. 
This becomes quite clear to me especially when I'm watching TV. 
Considering the fact that I've been exposed to the American accent daily for a year in my youth, and additionally watch American Shows on TV in much greater extent than I watch British ones, it does make sense to me. 
Talking of accents, I would like to cover my skills of speaking, in the meaning of my own ability to speak English. 
I remember coming back from the US with a fluency in spoken English I'd never had before. 
I went proudly back to school, as I still had one more year to attand before graduation, being proud of my improvement in English. 
The teacher, on the other hand, made it immediately very clear to me that she didn't approve of my American accent. 
British accent and spelling were all what she accepted, and was therfore on my back all the time. 
I was very unhappy about this, I still am, because it mixed everything up in a way. 
I'm still, at this day, confused in the matter. 
I've noticed, especially when I speak, that I pronounce words different all the time. 
I try so hard to get a British accent but I always end up speaking with a Swedish-British-American pronounciation which I'm not pleased with. 
Pronounciation and fluency in speech will be trained daily, among other things, at the University, and I look forward to recieve this training. 
I've realized that I need it.....  
Sitting here, writing the essay on the computer, makes this very moment a hitorical one. 
In what way, you as a reader might ask. 
Well, this is actually the first time ever I've written anything in English on the computer. 
I was introduced to IT rather late in my life, and didn't get the hang of it until a couple of months ago. 
It's not the computer alone I find a bit awkward, it's also the fact that I haven't written anything in English, especially not an essay, for many, many years. 
I honestly don't recall the last time I wrote.... anything. 
But once you get started it's difficult to stop as I don't mind writing at all. 
In fact I like it very much, and I'm positive about that my writing skills, and the other skills, will be improved during this term. 
Some things I've forgotten will come back to me, and other things I'll learn. 
There is no question about it. 
Or at least I wouldn't like to believe so.
",False
" Going to the gym  Is it just me or is everyone going to the gym these days? 
When I was a little girl hardly anyone went to the gym and the main workout show was the daily gymnastics on the radio. 
Today, one of my friends has the telephone number to her gym on speed dial. 
She sets the alarm on six am, the time the gym opens, and starts dialling the gym just so she can book a bicycle for the spinning class that day. 
Hardly any of my parent's friends exercised when they were my age and here I am, having a hard time finding any of my friends who do not workout. 
What has happened to people? 
Why is there suddenly a need to go to the gym at least twice or three times a week?  
At first glance, it would appear that people have adopted their workout programs because they want to look better. 
We are constantly fed with the image of a perfect body. 
It is everywhere. 
In commercials on TV, in fashion or ordinary magazines and even on the radio, where different gyms have commercials with the message ""if you would like to feel good about yourself - join our gym"". 
This cannot be the only reason people exercise more now than before because there have always been a group of people quite concerned with their physical appearance. 
Those who workout to become more attractive cannot have grown into such a large group that they account for all the gyms in town. 
Especially since the weight of the average person has steadily increased over the years and these days more and more people suffer from overweight and other fat related diseases.  
There must be yet another reason for people to go the gym than just for the sake of looking good. 
Maybe one explanation can be found in the dramatic change in the kind of work available today compared to what was offered about 50 years ago. 
This change could be the main cause for the explosion of gyms. 
On average, more people work in offices than in the past - which means that more people spend most of their day sitting down. 
The only time they get up from the chair is to get coffee, go to lunch or drive home. 
About 50 years ago, most people had some sort of manual task at work and they rode their bike or walked to their work place instead of taking the car. 
This train of thought could lead to the conclusion that people exercise to compensate for the inactivity of their lives. 
But if this were the case, only people with motionless work would have to exercise since some people still perform manual tasks as work. 
Children still play at kindergarten and there are still some hours of physical education in today's school. 
This explanation, however, is also not true. 
Not only people with sedentary lives exercise. 
As I mentioned before, almost everyone does.  
At the same time as one group of people are exercising more and becoming more and more healthy, it is no secret that the average person's weight has increased in the last decades and that more and more people suffer from obesity. 
It is no coincidence that the number of gyms has increased at the same time as the number of health restaurants and other health facilities have increased. 
The knowledge of how good exercise is for the body has also increased. 
Scientists now have proof that exercise is good for people with low blood pressure. 
They also know that exercise helps to build bone strength to reduce the risk of osteoporosis in elderly people. 
Another supporting reason for the increase in exercise programs must therefore have something to do with the health aspect. 
Since there is an increase in awareness of how good exercise is for the body, people become more aware of how to take care of their bodily problems. 
Many exercise for preventive purposes. 
They do not want to have back problems, low blood pressure or osteoporosis when they grow old. 
There are as many reasons for why people are exercising as there are exercising people, but the thing they all have in common is that it makes them feel good. 
Not to mention that they can all experience the natural high from the endorphin homomorphine the body produces during exercise.
"," Anorexia: Extremity of behavior  For about twenty years ago the incidence of anorexia and other eating disorders were rare, but in recent years there has been a dramatic increase of this phenomenon, especially in the western countries. 
During the 1990's the diet industry and physical fitness movement took off and anorexia more than doubled and became a trend that has been prevalent in the world by twiggy, stick-like figured artists and models, who in their expensive clothes actually encourage young people to look like them. 
This trend could be a consequence of the increasing nutrition and fitness craze that the 1990's has brought about, or possibly a result of more intense research studies.  
A life-threatening medical condition, anorexia is found primarily among Euro-American, middle-class girls and young women and is extremely difficult to cure. 
Current treatments focus upon the disease as a psychological and biological problem, and sometimes one of family dynamics. 
But the most interest is in the cultural and social forces that influence anorexia. 
Why is anorexia so overwhelmingly feminized? 
Or why is it unknown among certain ethnic groups? 
Why is it so difficult to treat? 
These are some of the questions that psychiatrists deal with, in order to find the causes that onset anorexia.  
It's believed the problem to be psychologically based, possibly stemming from family and social pressures or other forms of stress in our modern environment. 
Where a high value is placed on slimness, women are more likely to be judged on their appearance. 
Conversations with friends often revolve around diet or the body shape of other people. 
Classmates are constantly talked about and their figures are analyzed and compared with others. 
These discussions reinforce the young girl's diet, because she doesn't want to be criticized for her appearance. 
Actresses and models seen in movies and magazines are all thin and ""attractive"". 
These glorified figures only enhance a youngster's desire to be thin and to look like them.  
At first the young girl is complimented on her weight loss and her slimness by friends and family. 
She is praised on the success of her diet and considers it an achievement. 
As she becomes too thin, she actively resists suggestions that she must gain weight. 
The girl believes that others are simply jealous of her appearance for she is convinced that she still looks too fat. 
She won't eat more for fear of gaining weight.  
Anorexia is a disorder of many causes that come together to produce the illness. 
These recognized ingredients include the nature of the personality of the girl herself, aspects of her family, its members and relationships, stress and problems occurring outside home among other psychological, biological and social causes. 
Anorexics have probably been feeling isolated and friendless for a long time. 
This may have been one of the factors contributing to their belief that they are essentially unacceptable people with low self-esteem.  
In the same regard, the personalities of the girls tend to be conformist, obedient and hard working. 
They are often popular with teachers. 
Being very organized they tend towards tidiness. 
These traits may be quite marked before the onset of anorexia, but they are usually intensified by the disorder.  
Biological factors such as chemical or hormonal inbalance during adolescence also contribute to the start of anorexia.   
Personal factors play tremendously significant roles in causing anorexia. 
Factors such as life crises like breakdown of relationships or the death of a loved one, child-birth, fear of responsibilities of adulthood, a belief that love from family and friends is dependant on high achievement, and poor communication between family members or the reluctance of parents to allow appropriate degrees of independence as children mature.  
The family of anorexics are often high achieving with high expectations of their children. 
The anorexic seems willing to accept the value structure, setting standards for herself that seem extreme. 
A sense of fun, an enjoyment of being unconventional and a tolerance of alternative values may seem to be missing from her world. 
She may even identify with her mother.  
In recent years, it seems that the public has begun to pay more attention to eating disorders. 
Anorexia has an approximately 10% mortality rate which is the highest of any other psychiatric illness. 
Most patients never fully recover. 
Therefore, the need to better understand the prevalence and the causes of this disease is inevitable.
",False
" University students should be given grants, not loans, to finance their studies.  
Today employers ask for educated people to join their staff. 
Sometimes they have difficulties to find the persons they want, because there are not enough skilled workers in many areas. 
At the same time universities and high schools have trouble to get students to the courses they arrange. 
I am convinced that a main reason for many young people not to study is that the students have to finance their studies mainly by loans. 
Therefore, I would like to suggest higher grants instead of loans.  	
The salaries for educated people are not very high in comparison to a usual worker. 
Everyone who has taken study loans have to pay them back. 
At first the tax must be paid and then the loan. 
This is of course much more expensive than the other way around. 
The result is that the educated person has less money left than the worker after taxes and study debts are paid. 
This situation does not encourage anyone to go to higher education. 
The future prospects of getting an interesting labour after academic studies are of course better, but young people sometimes do not realize that. 
Some are also frightened of being in debt for many years, so they choose to begin to work very early in life. 	
Of course, to give grants to the students would cost much for the state. 
On the other hand in the long run the salaries can be kept on a somewhat lower level. 
Swedish products and services would be more competitive on the international market. 
Another effect of lower salaries is that the inflation would be kept at a lower rate. 
Education is for a society a good investment. 
If entrepreneurs can find qualified workers, they have better possibilities to expand. 
Another effect is that it also would be easier to compare salaries between different working categories.  	
Today there is a small grant given to the students. 
I would argue that it should be at the same level as public assistence plus a sum for the course literature. 
This would not give the students a very comfortable life. 
For expensive leisure activities they would have to come up on their own. 
I would propose that they worked for some hours a week. 
That would be a good break in the routine. 
Studies might be monotonous and tedious and another activity may help. 
The situation would be different from today, when many students work a lot because they do not want to have the burden of loans later on in life. 
This has a very bad influence on their study results. 
With grants the students would be capable of finishing their studies in due time. 
This is good for the students, but also for the society. 
The studnets would become employed and the places at university open for new students.  	
I would prefer a system with a different grant for the students who managed to get 15 points the previous term and a higher one for the students with 20 points. 
In connection to this there must as well be a social security system for the students if they become ill or cannot continue their studies for other reasons. 
Some people would argue, that studies paid by grant would have as a result that too many would like to study. 
On the other hand, if the labour market does not need more people in a field, the universities and high schools would not be given the money from the state to provide further study places. 
If the demand for studies will grow the institutions will have the possibility to choose the student with the best merits. 	
To sum up I see a lot of advantages in studies mainly financed by grants. 
The society will gain on it through a more well-educated population, less unemployment, lower inflation and a more competitive market. 
The students would not be forced to live with debts, the study time will become shorter and more relaxed.
","Introduction The English language is in my opinion a wonderful and expressive language. 
It is marvellous the way you can play on words and the way the tone of your voice can express for example sarcasm, humour etc, it is more pronounced in English comparing to Swedish, well in my opinion anyway.  
In this essay I will attempt to assess my skills in listening, reading, speaking and writing the English language. 
I will try to put forward where my strengths and weaknessess lie in these.   
Acquired English (linguistic) knowledge After my first compulsory nine years at school I went on to study Liberal Arts for three years where I studied English (of course). 
After completing my schooling I decided to travel and went around Europe meeting people from all over the world and we always communicated in English. 
I went to work on a kibbutz in Israel and there were people from USA, Canada, Australia and from all over the world as well. 
I spent seven months there and got to practice my English daily. 
I also lived in Australia for seventeen years and that is where I really improved on my English. 
Obviously I became used to hearing the English language it was now a part of my every day life as with speaking, reading and writing English. 
To communicate in English has been a part of my life for many years now, but since it is not my native language I know I still make a lot of mistakes which will improve (I hope) after completing this course. 
You can never learn enough!   
1, Listening I do not have any problems with understanding English. 
I like listening to English programs on television. 
I can understand and identify different accents without any difficulty. 
However I tend to lose my concentration if I find the orator boring or if the subject is not really to my liking. 
This usually makes me daydream and then I just do not have a clue as to what the person is talking about. 
So I guess the keyword here is concentration.  
2, Reading  I really do enjoy reading books, magazines and newspapers. 
It is very enjoyable and it also keeps the language alive, it is good fun to sit down and read a novel where much is left up to the imagination. 
It is very hard to understand why it is so much more difficult to read books on for example different governments where you have to learn all these different facts. 
It is not that I do not find it interesting because I do, I think the problem is that I get myself all worked up and I worry about my studying and learning abilities. 
I am sure this is something a lot of students experience especially when you have just started a new course. 
Being the eternal optimist that I am I feel quite confident things will improve given time.  
3, Speaking I feel very comfortable with speaking English, I would probably say that this is what I am best at. 
There is always room for improvement however and I hope that my speaking ability will improve considerably by the end of this course. 
What I hope to achieve is that I can speak in a more educated manner and thus feel more confident in conversing with people from all different social backgrounds. 
That way I can feel more relaxed and my self-esteem will be higher.  
4, Writing This is something I really have to work at. 
It has been such a long time since I last studied and therefore I will need a lot of help with how to compose my essays in the best possible way. 
I am not sure of what is grammatically correct or incorrect I write (and say) the way it feels it should be. 
Fortunately grammar is part of the course curriculum so I will get a lot of practise, and practise makes perfect!  
Summary Even though I have lived abroad for a number of years it does not give me a ticket to easy street in regards to passing this course. 
I am not quite sure as to how well I have mastered the four skills (listening, reading, speaking and writing) I have talked about in my essay. 
I find it very hard to evaluate myself not knowing if I am being too hard or maybe not hard enough on myself. 
However I hope to pass this course and hopefully continue with the A, B, C and D courses as well, only time will tell.
",False
" The Increasing Number of Vegans in Sweden  In the last few years, we have noticed a trend that more young people are becoming vegans. 
A vegan is a strict vegetarian who consumes no animal food or dairy products and who abstains from using animal products as leather. 
Media has focused on the militant vegans but there are several that are not militant. 
The number of young vegans has increased in Sweden lately. 
Why is this? 
It is likely that the increase of young people choosing veganism is due to health reasons. 
More young people are now concerned about their own well being and we known that the right food play an important role for optimal health. 
According to research, there are health benefits in not eating meat and the advantages are many, for example, one can prevent high cholesterol and high blood pressure and avoiding the risk of getting Creutzfeldt Jacob disease. 
On the other hand, this may be more relevant reasons for older people becoming vegetarians or vegans. 
This does not seem to be the main issue for young people of today as it was years ago. 
Our society is changing, therefore it must be other reasons for this trend. 
Could it be that veganism is an effective way of getting attention and reactions in society? 
Well, some young people want to fight the Establishment and they turn to alternative movements like animal rights movements. 
It does not seem popular nowadays to be politically committed, probably because of the fact that political decisions take a long time to change something in society. 
The actions of young militant vegans, for example letting caged animals out, usually attract attention straight away. 
As for non-militant vegans, the desired effects of reactions are achieved every day when people around see them refusing meat and not using animal products.  
However, the fact that veganism is an effective way of getting reactions in society cannot be the main reason for this trend. 
Nevertheless, there has been more philosophical questions added to the debates lately and the rights of animals seem to be an important issue here.  
The increasing awareness of moral philosophy in society and the concern about animal rights, thus ethical reasons, are the main reasons why more young people become vegans. 
This has to do with that conditions of people have changed due to the economic boom lately. 
Sweden is a welfare state and in contrast, the vegan movement is rarely seen in poor countries. 
As a result of welfare, young people have had time to reflect on their situation and question everything. 
There has been strong reactions in how animals are being treated. 
The vegan issue is about suffering and vegans believe it is wrong to make animals suffer in order to produce food. 
It is the oppression of animals that vegans are opposed to. 
The controversial philosopher Peter Singer argues that suffering should be minimised and that it does not matter if suffering is inflicted upon humans or animals, it is just as bad. 
Like Singer, many young vegans who fight for animal rights, believe that people and animals are equal and this is due to the fact that both of them feel pain. 
For this reason, vegans believe, animals are also deserving moral consideration. 
As long as people continue to treat animals with cruelty, there will be resistance against this in society and the amount of young people becoming vegans will increase even further.   
"," Europe's growing trend  70 police storm techno club - 700 pills seized.1 Ecstasy culture approaches its 10th summer.2 ""Mad for it,"" headlines small and large over Europe's major cities all writing about ecstasy, Europe's latest drug problem. 
The fact is that the UN has marked this drug as a Global Trend, it's not just in Europe it's worldwide. 
Where did it come from and how did it get here?  
It started in Californian as a treatment for Psychoanalysis, it allowed the patient to open up and share their intermost feelings and talk about their childhood easier. 
It then reached into underground sub-culture and soon after became illegal. 
The sub-culture popularly referred to as Rave, can be compared to sub-cultures of the sixties and seventies, such as flower children and hippies. 
Rave is basically a dance party with loud techno and house type music. 
Odd lighting effects people dancing everywhere, and the use of synthetic drugs, mainly ecstasy are often present. 
Ecstasy started being used by ravers almost from the start of the rave, which began in the early eighties. 
It spread from the Chicago nightlife and New York black-gay scene to Europe under a very short period. 
There are many reasons why ecstasy has attracted such a large audience with its, social acceptance, accessibility and inexpensive production cost it has become the second most used drug in the European Union. 
Over 30 million users worldwide (4% of the world population), according to the UNWDP (e.g. 
United Nations General Assembly on the World Drug Problem). 
Lets look at a few of the causes for the increase of ecstasy.  
One cause is the social acceptance of the drug. 
Its side effects are not entirely known. 
People have regarded ecstasy as a relatively safe drug, but this is not the entire truth. 
There have been a number of deaths many occurring at clubs or raves where dehydration and over heating have been a major factor. 
The reason for this is that when on ecstasy one is given an euphoric feeling, which inhibits the body's signals, which in a normal situation would warn the person that they are thirsty and tired. 
In the case of the raver who is on ecstasy he/she keeps on dancing disregarding any warning signs. 
Drug abuse is often used by youths trying to cope with the problems of unemployment, neglect, violence and sexual abuse. 
This is not the case with ecstasy; it became popular by youths that were socially integrated, youths, whose parents would appear to be more tolerant towards the use of drugs. 
For many, ecstasy is perfect, it lasts a few hours, it cannot be traced once worn off and the price is right.  
Ecstasy and other synthetic drugs can be easily synthesized in makeshift labs, called kitchens and sold at relatively cheap prices. 
The easy production of the drug has allowed the drug pushers a cheaper drug to distribute with relatively little risk of being caught. 
Production procedures are spread via Internet along with information on how to obtain the raw materials and equipment for synthesis of ecstasy. 
One way to stop the outflow of synthetic drugs is to try and ban the sale of the chemicals, which are needed to produce them. 
However, with the lucrative business the pushers use other chemicals and fillers are used, that in the end make for a drug that can be more dangerous because it may have ingredients that are poisonous to the system. 
Resulting in ""impure"" dosages that can cause allergic reactions, psychosis, or death. 
Since the laboratories used to make Ecstasy can be anything from makeshift kitchens to sophisticated labs, production is increasing, allowing for easy accessibility.   
Accessibility has been one of the reasons for drugs spreading quickly, this holds true for ecstasy as well. 
The chemicals used in ecstasy are inexpensive and globally accessible. 
Synthetic drugs, such as ecstasy can be synthesized close to the customers therefore staying out of custom or border control. 
Moreover, today's surveillance technology does not allow sensitive detection of these drugs. 
For instance, dogs cannot trace artificially synthesized drugs such as ecstasy. 
Because of its potency, a small quantity is all that is needed to supply over a thousand trips, making it more difficult to trace by customs. 
The more accessible a drug is the more likely of it spreading to a larger fraction of the population.  
As long as the accessibility, acceptability, and low purchase price of ecstasy stays strong, there will only be a rise in the demand, thus increasing deaths and unknown side effects for our youth. 
This weekend drug will continue spreading on the dance floors unless something is done to make people aware of the dangers. 
Ignorance about the side effects of this drug should not make it more acceptable; nevertheless this is the case. 
Ignorance has become bliss. 
You get what you pay for and that is exactly the case, an unknown drug, cheaply produced with synthetic chemicals bought at a cheap price for the soul purpose of making profit.  
1 Hamburger Abendblatt (Germany) 2 The Guardian (UK), Collin
",False
" Taboo or not Taboo  There are people who use media solely for their own subjective purposes, and whose messages or criticisms often are unjustified. 
I find it very difficult to take those people seriously. 
One example of such a person is Mrs Shirley E Peckham who in her article ""Cleaning up the language"" complains over children swearing too much. 
Peckham's arguments are not well founded and what is more; she offers no solutions to the acclaimed problem with swear words. 
There are many things in Peckham's article I find offending.   
One source of irritation is a paragraph in which Peckham describes herself listening to four or five boys at the railway station while they were in a conversation with each other about college. 
Although the boys looked so respectable and surely came from respectable families, much to her surprise they were using a very bad language. 
By their looks they could have been Peckham's own sons. 
This sounds like a very shallow reflection to me. 
Peckham obviously has a habit of judging people's characters by their appearances. 
This particular time she found out that that is not always possible. 
Nowadays the differences between social groups are not as explicit as they used to be; much do to the media. 
Children, no matter what background, are affected by the same influences and trends. 
Especially groups of friends tend to behave, talk and dress in the same manner, and develop a special jargon. 
It serves to create a feeling of unity. 
Just as it did with those boys on the railway station. 
I am sure they were unawear of any old lady listening in on them and therefore they spoke uninhibited. 
If the boys had known Peckham was eavesdropping, they would have chosen a more appropriate language. 
In my opinion Peckham's article is an insult to children's intelligence.  
""Children these days don't seem to know what speaking normally and decently is"" Peckham declares. 
Clearly she must have forgot what it was like to be young. 
How important it is for a child to be respected. 
From reading her article I sense that respect is a virtue that Peckham does not possess. 
Apparently Peckham only comes in contact with children when they are at recess or on their way home from school and they pass by her husband's shop. 
Of course children use a different language then. 
During school hours I am sure they are not allowed to swear and many times feel restrained by rules. 
In order to earn the teachers' and others respect they can not always use the words, which come naturally to them. 
I too vary my language. 
Among strangers I really make an effort to behave and speak in the best way I know how, but in the presence of my friends I feel free to talk as I choose. 
Childern learn this from an early age and most of them have grown out of the unrestrained swearing by the time they apply for employment or higher education. 
So did I and I am positive that our childern will too. 
Our physical and intellectual development goes through a number of stages. 
To swear is one of them. 
When children are small they hear adults, often mum and dad, swear and interprets it as a sign of being a grown up. 
It is not so strange then that children want to try it themselves. 
It is not so much the words that are important, but what they symbolize, in this case the adult world.  
People have used swear words since the day man bagan to talk. 
At most I can say that it is sometimes bad judgement and evidence of a lack of imagination that make grown people overdo the swearing. 
Children are normally just going through a phase when searching for their own identity. 
Once they have gained a selfconfidence they usually have developed a good control over their language too. 
There is no doubt in my mind that children today will not rise to any occasion. 
If we trust in them they will not let us down. 
Mrs Shirley E Peckham should not worry so much; things have a tendency to work out one way or the other. 
If swearing seem to be fashionable right now that does not mean that it will be popular in let us say ten years.
"," More support for capital punishment  The majority of the people living in Sweden has since at least 1921, when the death penalty was abolished, been against capital punishment. 
However, a few months ago, the leading institute for people's opinion surveys in Sweden, SIFO, declared a considerable raise in the number of people who wanted to reinstate the death penalty. 
According to their survey, 44% are now positive. 
This was considered alarming by many humanitarians in the country and we can ask ourselves: why this sudden raise?  
ost problems in society can, at least by economists, be blamed on bad economy. 
Let us see if we can apply that here as well. 
At the same time as the number of crimes increases, the police resources decreases (whether or not there is a causal connection between these two, I will not discuss here). 
It would not be absurd to argue that because more and more crimes remain unsolved due to lack of money, people consider capital punishment (and more severe punishments over all) as a way to lower the crime rate since potential criminals may very well be discouraged to commit crimes if the punishment is severe. 
On the other hand, in America about 75% of the states do have the death penalty with, as everybody knows, no sign of lower crime rate. 
Besides, better distribution of the money, that is more money spent on law enforcement and the treatment of criminals, would be a more logical and thought through solution to a crime problem.  
Another possibility is that media, especially the evening papers, often put a lot of energy reporting on crime related subjects and thus has drawn much attention to crimes such as brutal homicides. 
The evening papers do not depend on subscribers as the morning papers so to maintain high circulation the headlines are not rarely shocking and the articles are usually written with sympathy for the victims. 
Being affected by this, people might be frustrated with the system and doubt the efficiency of some of our democratic principles. 
I have often heard an-eye-for-an-eye type of arguments from people in connection to a child rape or a triple homicide which in most cases are built on an article in one of the two leading evening papers. 
But most people know that these evening papers are not totally reliable, so the focus by media on brutal crime should not be of vital importance. 
At least not as vital as to make the general positive opinion regarding capital punishment reach 44%, so there must be another reason.  
Could it be the timing of the survey, that is at what time SIFO chose to do it? 
The recent murders in Malexander, several cases of sexual child abuse etc. have definitely woken strong feelings in everyone and in times of frustration, people might be more positive to the death penalty than they were a few months before. 
But I am sure that SIFO has done this kind of survey on numerous occasions and if the timing of the survey would be of vital importance, we would have seen several alarming results after for instance the murder of Olof Palme and the triple homicide.  
But let us keep the focus on SIFO. 
Perhaps we should not ask when the survey was done, but how. 
An element that most likely affected the result of the survey a great deal was how SIFO asked the question. 
The question was: ""Is there any type of crime that should be punished by death?"" 
This formulation leads the reader to use his or her imagination in order to come up with a crime brutal enough to be punished by death. 
Furthermore, we can see no active support for capital punishment which gives us strong support to that this undoubtedly is a case of bad formulation by SIFO, for which they actually also received criticism.  
To sum up, economy and media probably do affect the public opinion, but not to an extent that could explain a dramatic raise in such a serious issue as capital punishment. 
What does make a great difference is how SIFO formulate their questions in surveys. 
If people keep mixing in their impulses in this kind of survey, we can not get a reliable result.  
(Source: Metro, Jan 27 2000)
",False
"I was assigned to appraise my own capability in English concerning four skills; listening, reading, speaking and writing. 
Strengths and weaknesses are to be explored in the text below. 
The answers corresponding to each area have one distinct concept in common; they all depend on the situation, and various situations demand a matching language. 
One can have great fluency in casual English while having trouble using more formal English, which is why I will explain my competence referring to examples.  
I find it rather difficult to elucidate my skills in listening to English since that is particularly depending on the situation. 
Of course, I find understanding spoken English more difficult than Swedish. 
For example I have problems comprehending people speaking English poorly at times, while I understand immigrants in Sweden perfectly. 
Dialects can be troublesome as well, but usually they only need getting familiar with. 
When hearing a native as Mr Glover for instance, I have no difficulties following except when words out of my vocabulary are being used. 
Obviously it's preferable when the speaker keeps a nice and slow pace. 
Though, my ability to understand speedy spoken English has ameliorated since I watch TV a lot. 
In Sweden we don't dub television and that way we hear English daily which is a great privilege and I undoubtedly believe that this has improved my hearing comprehension. 
I think that having a narrow vocabulary is my largest weakness while being able to understand unknown words by the context is a strength of mine. 
When it comes to reading, my skills vary a lot. 
For many years now I have chosen the English version of a book instead of the translated one and it has worked fine. 
I have also read rather a lot old English in the works of Jane Austin and Shakespeare and I had no problems doing that either. 
However, when it came to reading mathematics and physics at university I suddenly found wide gaps in my vocabulary. 
Even reading pretty simple technical language became an impediment for me. 
It was quite boring as well reading page after page covered with scientific terms. 
Perhaps that added some difficulty to the task. 
I am not a quick reader and when I come across unknown words I don't look them up although I should. 
It is too time consuming. 
Instead I have become a master of interpretation by the context. 
In my case it is a strength doing more harm than good since it keeps me from developing my vocabulary.  
Unfortunately, I have a tremendously annoying tendency to stutter when I am nervous. 
The sentences are grammatically correct and fairly advanced in my mind, but they are seldom spoken in the same manner, mainly because of my fear of making mistakes. 
My spoken language therefore depends on the listener. 
When talking to people whose English is inferior to mine I scarcely make mistakes, but I am bound to make errors in conversations with strangers, native English speakers and English teachers for instance. 
It often takes a while before I am confident enough to speak faultlessly but when so I try really hard not to repeat myself, to use synonyms in order to broaden the active part of my English. 
This is actually something I am very proud of but not always successful in. 
When it comes to bad habits there must be lots of them in my speech, but I don't know of any common faults in particular. 
Hopefully this is something my teachers can help me with.  
I feel most confident about writing. 
There is time to think everything through properly, to double check grammar, look up words and find synonyms in dictionaries. 
Only I have had very little practice and the few essays we had to compose in school were most likely lightly corrected. 
I feel very insecure when asked to write memos, formal letters and suchlike because first of all it is difficult to know which words are considered formal and secondly the only practice I have had is correcting my father's business letters. 
I believe the latter has improved my English as well, because then the whole family discusses the errors and the sentence structures.  y largest weakness when it comes to English in general is the grammatical part. 
I have a sense of English grammar, but no knowledge of grammatical structure and I hardly know of any rules. 
The sense mentioned above is my greatest strength. 
I usually feel when something is incorrect, but sense is very different from knowledge and I am now determent to learn how English is built up.
","What are my strengths and weaknesses in the using of the English language? 
What have I learned during the nine years that I've studied English? 
Do I have enough vocabulary knowledge? 
Is my pronunciation qualified? 
These are things that I haven't given much thought of, until know. 
I have always fancied the english language, not only because it is the idiom used in most of the movies and TV series, but also because I like the language itself and I enjoy listening to it. 
If not, I would never have applied for this course. 	 
I'm not a shy person, infact I'm very talkative. 
This is something, I persume, that has been to my benefit when it comes to language learning. 
I find it facinating to speak to foreign people, and I've realised that you can learn a great deal from that. 
Although I do not always use the correct vocabulary when I speak, I know that from every conversation I pick up a few new words or expressions. 
Something that can be both to my advantage and disadvantage, is that I easily change my manner of speaking, depending to whom I'm speaking to. 
If I have a discussion with a person that speak excellent English it is favourable. 
But if the person I speak to doesn't have a good linguistic ability and maybe isn't from an English speaking country and therefore has a very strong foreign accent, that may have a bad affect on my english language.  			
I've rarely had any problems to understand different accents or dialects. 
Listening to English has never been difficult for me. 
After all, it's easier to understand than to be understood. 
And even if there might be some words that I don't understand, I can always get the point from the whole sentances. 
But I've realised lately that my vocabulary certainly could need some progressing.  			
I haven't used the language in all the ways that I've had the possibilities to do it. 
For example, I have a lot of pen-pals, but unfortunately I never take the time to write to them. 
I like to write, at school I used to love to write short stories and I usually had the capability of doing it well. 
There are so many lovely new words to discover. 
But if my strength is to find the correct words, my weakness is to spell them. 
I appear to have a big problem with that. 
When I haven't written in English for a long time, I seem to spell the easiest words wrong. 
I'm awere of that, and I know that it's something that I'll have to work on.  			
Reading is another thing that I like to do, but never do. 
I really don't know why I never do it. 
But that's the case, and when you know that, it isn't difficult to understand why I'm such a slow reader. 
Persumably that will change during this course. 
One positive thing about my reading though, is that I remember very well what I read. 
If it is interesting reading, that is.  	 
I love to travell, and when I do so I get to speak a lot of English. 
When I spent some time in Spain I thought that my English was quite decent, at least compared to the English the Spaniards speak. 
But when I came to the university here in Uppsala, I started to think the other way around. 
I thought that my English knowledge wouldn't be enough and that I wouldn't qyalify. 
But pretty soon I came to the conclusion that it was a bit of both. 
I may speak better English than the Spaniards, but not as well as an Englishman. 
I guess I speak like a Swede. 
I know that I have the capacity to manage this level of English, even if I'm awere of that I will have to study hard. 
And I also know that I'm not suppose to know everything already, after all, that's why I'm here -to learn English!
",False
"Competence in English, I think, depends on many things. 
It is a personel matter of how we learn a language. 
We might have very easy just to listen to a languge and imitate or we had to struggle and practise all the time. 
For me, at the moment, English is a struggle because it is twenty years since I left school and I have forgot parts of the subject. 
I had a refreshment when I went studying the B-cours in KOMVUX, but it was four years ago. 
I will try to evaluate my present knowledge in the English language and begin with the skill I find most interest in and that is reading.  	
My teacher in English always said to us that we should read English books to keep up our English. 
So I have tried to do so, but it is difficult to have time when you are studying. 
But some of the study literatur is in English so I have had a little practise there. 
I usually read fiction in the summer when I am free from studying. 
It is niece to have a book when I am lying on the beach to get a suntan. 	
My reading pace is not so high, I believe, because when I see a word I don't understand, I look it up in a dictionary. 
Not all of course, but when it matters for the context I think it is importent to do so. 
Sometimes I write it down so I can go back to the word if it shows up again in the text. 
The more we read the better we read and it will also develop other skills like speaking and writing. 	
Speaking is something that I am not so good at. 
I have not got so much practise in school and I have not been abroad so much. 
That is what I fear most in this course. 
Everybody seems so experienced about it. 
I feel that I can't find the right words and they fall out of my head. 
But I think I will be more fluent when I get the opportunity to practise in this course. 
I think there will be many chances and different situations in class and when we go to England for five weeks. 
It will be good to hear native speakers and to be obliged to speak English all the time. 	
When I went to school and we listen to English, it was always in a very correct way. 
And it was always British English with no dialect. 
We were not supposed to speak American English in class. 
But today there is a mixture of all sorts of English. 
We see and hear diffrent sorts of English on TV and when we listen to music. 
I try to listen to English on TV without looking at the text. 
It can be difficult to understand sometimes when they talk with a dialect or Australian English. 
It takes time to get used to hear and understand dialects but that is the way most people talk.  	
Writing is also a skill that I must improve. 
It takes so much time and I have difficult to express myself in English. 
But I think it can be difficult in Swedish too, to be quite honest about it. 
I have experienced the writing process before so I am familier with that. 
The more you practise the better. 
I don't remeber that we wrote esseys when I went to uppersecondary school, only in KOMVUX. 
There we wrote very short about some novels we read. 	
When I write I have thougts about spelling, phrases and how you can translate them from Swedish into English. 
It can be difficult to find the right meaning in phrases when you translate Swedish into English. 
The grammar is also important when you write. 
I try to revise my knowledge in grammar so I will become a better writer and a better speaker too. 	
I have noticed that English words begin to pop up in my head more and more often. 
My vocabulary is expanding when I have to read, write and speak in English. 
Perhaps I will soon think and dream in English too.
"," A healthier approach to life  Todays food industry is big business with large profits to gain. 
The variety is vast, to the point were consumers get lost and often buy products that they have no need for. 
TV bombards us with the repeated message that our lives will become so much easier once we purchase their products. 
Most people give in to commercial pressure, unaware of the manipulation and still they are left unsatisfied. 
Health is on a decline and most of us are plagued by an inherent sense of lack of direction. 
There are however some signs of awakening. 
People are looking for alternatives but many still feel they have no good choices as they have little knowledge of other diets and life stiles. 
Here I would like to present them with a good alternative, namely the vegetarian diet. 	
Young people base their choice to become vegetarians on moral/ethical grounds. 
They are presently joining ranks in the animal rights movement, much as a reaction to gruesome and deeply disturbing footage of animal mismanagement. 
To them, vegetarianism is a way to show their disgust at the way the industry treats animals. 
The meat industry, like all other enterprise, is powered by greed. 
With profit in mind, live stock are stripped of all their dignity. 
I would like to point out that consumers need to take responsibility too as they demand high quality product for the lowest possible price. 
Industry complies and one of the consequences we have witnessed is the transportation of livestock in overcrowded trucks moving across the European continent. 
This type of unnatural experience produces stress reactions in livestock, severely injuring them and even causing deaths. 	
A similar disrespect for natures ways may be observed in the poultry industry. 
In a zealous attempt to improve profit-margins, poultry are fed growth hormones and antibiotics. 
Subsequently their muscle mass increases at a rate far faster then nature designed. 
Some of us have seen footage of chickens weighing three times their natural weight and as a result their bones literally crack under the pressure. 
Beef and milking cows are also fed antibiotic and steroid hormones, added to prevent infection and increase weight quickly. 
These medications are then passed on to the consumer and are in turn associated with a decreased responsiveness to antibiotic therapy in human patients. 	
The problem with meat today, then, is perhaps not that it is meat, but that it is adulterated meat, from sick and over medicated animals. 
What amounts to the worst case of blatant disrespect to natures ways, is the repulsive practice of feeding pulverised carcasses to cattle. 
Today we have to live with the terrible repercussions of this questionable practice. 
This leads me to the second reason for opting for a vegetarian diet namely the health benefits. 
By restraining from eating meat one eliminate the risk of contracting BSE. 
However, it is said that the risks are minimal. 
Saturated fats and cholesterol, on the other hand, do scare people and animal products contain a high level of both. 
Medical research have shown the strong links between high consumption of meats and arteriosclerosis and even some types of cancer. 
Charcoal grilled steaks are indeed classified as highly carcinogenic. 	
Obesity is yet another symptom of high intake of saturated fats. 
It has become so prevalent that even children are victims. 
Institutions such as the US summer camps have had to include courses where children receive help to break their destructive eating habits. 
There are of course other factors that contribute to obesity such as the relatively recent introduction of fast foods, sodas and mass availability of junk food. 
However, I would strongly suggest that a conscious decision to follow a well balanced vegetarian diet would not only keep weight at check but most certainly improve the general state of health. 
A word of caution is called for here. 
Vegetable and grain crops are increasingly being irradiated and pesticides and fertilisers are still used in large amounts. 
Therefore it is important to buy ecologically grown produce whenever possible. 
This will give us a product with a higher vitamin and mineral content and as an added benefit one will have helped to protect the environment.	 	
With an increased energy level, resulting from a reduced burden on the digestive system, vegetarians frequently find a subtle shift in consciousness. 
Some leave it at that, whilst others may investigate further and find they have become more in tune with their intuition. 
For this reason, many religions advocate a diet void of animal products. 
The vegetarian Hindus are one of them and so are the Buddhists. 
Even some philosophers have found an enhanced sensibility and increased mental power as a result of eating mostly vegetables and grains. 
Indeed two such prominent philosophers as Plato and Pythagoras were both vegetarians. 
The spiritual aspect is a strong incentive but has yet to influence the main population. 	 
I have offered a choice and mentioned reasons that will lead you on the road to improved health and increased awareness. 
My definition of a good human is one that takes positive steps to incorporated love and compassion in every aspect of their life. 
I sincerely hope no one embarks on vegetarian diet simply to become slim, or to be politically correct. 
Indeed those who are capable of unconditional love at all times are forever healthy.
",False
"This essay will try to give an honest attempt to explain my awareness of my own competence in English, regarding the four skills consisting listening, reading, speaking, and writing. 
I can not say that I have any specific problem regarding listening. 
Sometimes if I listen to a person that I find interesting it is almost like tuning in a new radiostation, but if I listen to a person who has a heavy accent, or if the speaker does not speak very clearly it will take some time to adapt my ears. 
Also I find it easier to listen to a person that I am accustomed to. 
The topic of the speech is also essential for my understanding since English is not my native language, I have to concentrate more in order to grasp as much as possible. 
I have noticed when I have been abroad that I get tired the first few days. 
I believe that is partly because I have to concentrate more when I listen, even to ordinary conversations between people.  
When it comes to reading I regard myself as a person who enjoy reading. 
I always have a book in progress, even though sometimes I finish a novel very quickly, and sometimes it takes me weeks. 
When I read just for pleasure, I do not usually look up every word I do not understand in a dictionary. 
Only if I do not comprehend the essence of the story. 
Unfortunately I find it difficult to get enough time to read just for pleasure when I study. 
I feel that reading enriches my life, and I think it is a very good way of getting a better knowledge of the language a person is studying. 
Therefore I look forward to the literature course which is offering me a chance to some interesting reading. 
The discussions will provide a new experience for me. 
Sometimes it is fantastic how people can interpret a written text, or a speech so differently. 
An experienced teacher I think can give me new ideas about how to analyse written material.  
I would like to improve my spoken English. 
I am not afraid of speaking English, but I think I have the ability to speak more fluently if I have a chance to practise more. 
It would be nice to be able to feel more spontaneous and relaxed. 
Sometimes, when I have a discussion with an English speaking person, I find myself not to be able to keep conversation at the same level as the other person. 
This is a great disadvantage in many situations. 
I can imagine that many immigrants must feel very distressed sometimes. 
Learning to speak a foreign language is hard work. 
I think it is important to be exposed to English as much as possible in order to develop a better command of the language. 
The practise in England I think will be a great opportunity for me and every student to really use English in everyday life. 
Now over to my last issue. 
It is difficult to estimate my own capability when it comes to writing. 
As I see it, writing consists of many different stages. 
Writing gives me both possibilities and problems. 
I have noticed that many teacher's stress writing as an important factor in a learning process. 
I do not disagree about that, but unfortunately this was not the modern method of teaching English when I was a highschool student. 
We mostly spent our time filling in blank spaces in our exercise books. 
Since the old way of teaching didn't emphasise writing, I feel that I have not enough training in this discipline. 
Spelling I found more difficult nowadays, I don't know why that is so. 
Grammar is also a subject that I feel an urgent need to improve. 
For some unknown reason it has not been my favourite category.  
So far I feel that my choice of reading English is positive. 
I'm very enthusiastic about the coarse and I'm very excited about the new lectures and assignments. 
I already can see that it is going to be a lot of work, but I feel that it's worth it both for me and my coming students. 
I'll try to make the best of it.
"," Anna Lindh - out on a limb A member of parliament trying to impose regulations without public support or understanding  People in the northern part of Sweden often complain about having rules and regulations imposed on them from above. 
""The southerners"" are accused of not understanding how life is and how things work up north. 
This might not be true, but I will try to describe one situation where personal prestige has interfered in the making of new laws. 
The legislation I will discuss is concerning snowmobiles and especially the requirement of a driving licence.   
Snowmobiles are a natural mean of transportation and recreation up north. 
They are used to get access to remote and desolate parts of the scarcely populated northern part of Sweden. 
Quite naturally they are also used to get around the parts near the tourism-based villages, which has led to confrontations. 
On one hand we have tourists wanting to get away from the noise filled cities to experience silence. 
On the other hand we have locals who think that their needs should be of more importance, since they live there the whole year and not just for a week. 
But the problem is even more intricate; we also have tourists wanting to drive snowmobiles versus forest and reindeer owners whose work get impaired by reckless snowmobile drivers. 
Another side of the story is the accidents caused by intoxicated drivers. 
In the light of these conflicts and problems the Swedish government started talking about some regulations, and one of them was a driving licence. 
(Up until then the only requirement on a snowmobile driver was that he/she had obtained the age of 16.)  
Precautionary measures were taken by the ""Swedish snowmobile society"" and they invented a kind of ""voluntary licence"". 
To acquire one of those licences you had to attend to ten two-hour lectures/discussions where, among other things, information from the police about what's allowed, traffic rules and how and where to drive were parts of the course. 
The course became a big success among the northerners with several thousands of participants, and the general opinion was that ""we better do this so the southerners don't impose something completely ludicrous on us"". 
Unfortunately it didn't work.   
A member of the Swedish government, Anna Lindh, (perhaps needless to say a southerner) decided that it was time to regulate and legislate. 
The logical thing would have been to make the ""voluntary licence"" compulsory, but since the licence hadn't been part of her original proposal, it wasn't included. 
Instead she proposed that to be allowed to drive snowmobiles you would have to have a driving licence for tractors! 
(In Sweden you are automatically considered able to drive tractors if you have any driving licence, but you can obtain a special driving licence for tractors from the age of 16, if you take a theoretical test.) 
People found it quite absurd that knowing things like ""no tractors on the freeway"" would qualify you to drive snowmobiles, and appealed the decision to the EEC. 
The legislation was rejected, grounded on that a driving test must have relevance to the vehicle you will be allowed to drive.  
One would think that now the ""voluntary licence"" would take the tractor licences place, but it didn't. 
Instead snowmobiles were moved (along with other vehicles) from ""terrain vehicle"" to a subclass of ""work vehicles"". 
Then the EEC could no longer oppose to the legislation. 
This created massive protests among the northerners, and delegations from all over the north were sent to Stockholm to try to stop the new set of laws. 
They failed.  
The new set of laws included a lot of insanities. 
You were not allowed to drive more than 70 km/h, but everyone who has ever driven a snowmobile knows that it is very hard to drive more than 30 km/h for any longer period unless you are on a big flat surface like a lake (where you have free vision). 
And how are you going to check that people keep the speed limit? 
Are you going to send helicopters to patrol the vast Swedish mountain range? 
Or post policemen behind randomly selected trees?  
Engine performance was maximized to 60 hp (when imported but not when used) even though the highest risk of getting killed or injured in a snowmobile accident is when a 30-50 year old, intoxicated male is driving a 10-15 year old snowmobile with less than 40 hp.  
This above means that a person who might not even have driven a car in snowy conditions, is allowed to rent and drive a snowmobile without any other qualification than a passed car driving test and no requirements of knowing where and how to drive. 
But a 16 year old northerner, who has obtained the ""voluntary licence"" and therefore knows the ""how and where"" and most probably also knows ""why"" is not allowed to do it.   
As I see it, this is a tragic example of what happens when a person invests too much time in something and when something better comes along, cannot accept it and adopt, or at least incorporate the new idea. 
Personal prestige should be excluded from politics, but politicians are (unfortunately?) 
only human...
",False
" Is English A Romance Language?  
1. 
Introduction  The English language is classified as a Germanic language, to be more precise it belongs to the branch of West Germanic languages. 
Today, there are some people that claim that English is more closely linked to the Romance languages than it is to the Germanic ones. 
Throughout the development of English, from Old English up to Present-day English the Romance languages have admittedly had an enormous influence on the language. 
In this discussion I will give a brief presentation on the history of the Germanic and Romance language in England and the effects they have had on English. 
This is a very interesting matter to investigate because it is always fascinating to see how a language has evolved over the years. 
I will also conduct a small investigation, using a corpus search, where I'll look at word-pairs where one of the words is originally Romance and the other Germanic (such as aid and help). 
The purpose of this investigation is to see which of these words is the most frequent and also if there is any difference in the contexts in which they are used. 
In the first part of my discussion where I will talk about the history of the Germanic and Romance languages in England I have used the following material: Svartvik (1999).   	  
2. 
The arrival of Germanic tribes in England  In about 450 AD a couple of Germanic tribes settled in Britain and brought with them their different Germanic dialects. 
These dialects were the beginning of the English language. 
It is not quite certain why these tribes came to Britain but it is believed that a British chief had asked the Jutes, a Germanic tribe, for help with the attacks from the North. 
Angles and Saxons also settled in Britain in this period. 
""Anglo-Saxon"" became the term for the form of English that was spoken until the time of the Norman Conquest but a more common term for this period in the history of the English language is Old English. 
The English language can be divided into three different periods: Old English (c. 
450-1100), Middle English (c. 1100-1500) and Modern English (c. 1500- today). 
Old English was a highly inflected language; it made great use of variations in the endings of words. 
This is something that absent in Present-day English, which doesn't have nearly as many endings. 
The vocabulary in this period was enriched with words from Latin, Old Norse (the language the Vikings spoke), and Celtic. 
The amount of loan words was to be increased dramatically by the Norman Conquest.  
3. 
The Norman Conquest  In 1066 William The Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, defeated King Harold at the Battle of Hastings and that victory came to have enormous consequences on England and not to mention English. 
This is a period where a huge amount of Romance loan words were introduced and the grammatical inflectional system was reduced. 
In the beginning of Middle English (c. 1100) about ninety percent of the vocabulary was Germanic but at the end of the period this number had been reduced to about seventy-five percent. 
Since England was ruled by French-speaking people French became the language among the higher classes in society. 
English was looked upon as a language with low status. 
These social differences can be found even in the use of vocabulary, for instance in cooking where those who ate the animals talked about veal, venison, mutton and pork (which are all French loan words) and the group of people who took care of the animals talked about calf, deer, sheep and swine.  
4. 
Romance and Germanic words in present-day English  Since English got its vocabulary from both Romance and Germanic languages we have a lot of word-pairs where one word is Romance and the other Germanic. 
When these two words mean essentially the same this we have huge stylistic possibilities. 
Svartvik (1999) states that the Romance word is often more formal or abstract than the Germanic one. 
He gives an example of this: if a man falls into the water he would yell, ""Help, Help!"" 
not ""Aid, Aid!"" 
I have conducted an investigation where I have looked at this type of word-pairs in a Corpus; my intention was to find out which of the words is the most frequent and also in what contexts they are used. 
In order to determine the most frequent context that the words appear in I have selected a few words and looked at the contexts they were used in. 
These are my results:     Romance Word 	Hits in Corpus	Germanic Word 	Hits in Corpus  Aid	168	Help	516	 -Was the most common in texts dealing with 	-Was the most frequent in medical texts Foreign affairs 	 Anticipate	19	Look forward to	7 -Was the most common in scientific texts	-Too few hits to find a real pattern  Commence	6	Begin	200	 -Used in formal texts such as business and law	-Used in a wide rang of texts ranging from  		Sports to science  Conceal	13	Hide	19 Desire	149	Wish	176	 Discover	53	Find out	37 Encounter	67	Come across	10 Enter	105	Go in	26 Infant	69	Child	276 Investigate	39	Look into	1 Liberty	124	Freedom	292 arriage	318	Wedding	18 Persuade	56	Talk into	0 Surrender 	24	Give in	2  5. 
Conclusion  As we can see from the result it differs from word to word whether the Germanic or the Romance word is the most common. 
When it comes to stylistic difference between the words you can say that the Romance words were somewhat more formal and tended to be used in fewer number of areas than the Germanic word. 
According to Svartvik (1999) most of the words in English have come from Romance languages. 
Therefor we can then ask ourselves if English is a Germanic or a Romance language. 
The answer is that English is a Germanic language in terms of grammar and therefor more closely related to Swedish and German than French and Spanish. 
After the Norman conquest French became the language of the upper classes and a lot of loan words came into such fields as administration, law and fashion. 
There is no doubt that that the combination of Romance and Germanic languages has contributed to making English an international language. 
People from all over Europe and with different mother tongues can easily recognize some words in the English vocabulary. 
This mixed vocabulary makes English one of the most fascinating languages in the world. 
As quoted in Jean-Marc Gachelin article in English Today (1990) where he talks about the relationship that English has to the Germanic and Romance languges: ""the warp may be Anglo-Saxon, but the woof is Roman as well as the embroidery"".   
References  Svartvik, Jan. 
1999. 
""Is English a Romance Language"". 
English Today no.23
"," The Growing Number of Students In Private Schools  The education system is always an interesting topic of discussion. 
Speaking as a future teacher it is even more interesting for me to reflect on this matter since I'm soon going to be confronted with this reality. 
There are a couple of trends that you can find if you look at the present situation. 
The most striking is that nowadays more and more parents choose to put their kids into private schools instead of putting them in public schools. 
The question that we now have to ask ourselves is of course, why is that?   	 
The most important cause for this is that parents are not content with the local public schools. 
This isn't surprising as there have been numerous reports about the decline of the public schools. 
Bad social conditions in the schools and the fact that classes now consist of a greater number of students are reasons for concern. 
Parents are worried that their children are being distracted by this and that it interferes with their achieving in accord with their potential. 
Their solution to the problem is to put their kids into private schools and the result is that more and more students now go to private schools. 
In order to get a better view on the matter we must look at a few things that make private schools a better option than public schools. 
These features are also important causes why private schools appeal to so many students.   	 
The working conditions in private schools are better than in public schools. 
Whereas funds are cut in public schools private schools maintain have a better financial situation. 
Private schools have a smaller number of students and that results in a calmer environment for the students and helps them concentrate on studying. 
Another thing that improves the working conditions in private schools is the fact that most pupils in private schools want to study. 
They are aiming for an academic future and therefore they try their best to keep their grades up and don't cut classes or disturb the classroom work. 
This is very important since the working conditions are a vital part of how the students perform. 
Even though the general conditions of the schools are very important another essential part is the quality of the education, which is said to be of a higher standard at private schools.   	 
Could it be that private schools attract better teachers? 
Of course it's very hard to determine who are the best teachers but private schools can often handpick their teachers from a larger selection. 
This is because they have larger salaries and it means that when they are hiring new staff obviously more teachers will apply for the job and then they get a larger selection to choose from. 
Naturally the better working conditions affect the teachers as well making them more harmonious and let them focus on their teaching. 
There is also a pressure from the parents of the children attending the school to have really competent teachers since they are paying large tuition fees and obviously want the standard of the education to be very high.  	 
The tuition fees are one of the reasons why the number of students in private schools is not increasing more dramatically. 
It's just too expensive for an ordinary family to send the children to a private school. 
Even though the tuition fees are quite large you have to understand that the money obtained is used to maintain a high quality of education. 
But as more and more private schools are being started the fees will get smaller and the number of students in private schools will continue to rise.   	 
In conclusion you can say that private schools are definitely on the rise. 
This is mainly because there is a need for another form of education. 
With the continuing decline of public schools there is no wonder that parents choose to put their kids into private schools. 
This is a development that will continue in the future if something isn't done about the present situation in public schools. 
Something has to be done fast because after all everybody should have the right to a good education.
",True
"By way of introduction, I just want to stress that I am very glad and expectant of what my attendance in this course will result in. 
I am really looking forward with delight towards a more firm progress of my English knowledge. 
I will with this essay explain some of my earlier experiences concerning my speaking, reading and writing in English. y English reading abilities  y weakness is that I am slow and over-ambitious about the books I read. 
You could say that I am a slow but precise reader. 
I sometimes in certain situations tender to get stressed e.g. when I am about to finish a novel in short time. 
Although, reading slowly is probably helpful when it comes to remembering more of details and to get a deeper understanding of the texts.   y strength is that I use to note down words, which I do not understand or wanting to know more about. 
I have found it very instructively to examine all the possible situations where and how unusual and of course common words are used. 
I have mostly read novels and biographies in English. 
I am not particularly familiar with English authors but I do admire  Doris Lessing. 
I have read two of her novels. 
Due to my earlier interest for British cars, I have had the opportunity of reading service manuals and by that way learnt a lot about motoring and its technical details in English.   
Recently, I have been reading ""Nice work"" by David Lodge, a fascinating novel which I liked. 
My favourites are to be found among novels, dealing with adventures of both ordinary and world-famous people. 
Further subjects I like to read about are folklore and explorers of the world. 
I consider the reading process as a tremendous good way of filling up your vocabulary and to develop your grammatical knowledge.   
Learning by listening  I must stress the fact that listening, is a very important part in the process of learning English. 
I will assert that the best way to learn about pronunciation is to actually imitate what you hear from native speaking people. 
In this manner it will probably be felt as a more natural way of learning.   
Personally, I have learnt a lot by just listening to other people's conversations. 
Nowadays, I try to avoid reading the texts-stripes on television. 
I do this because I want to concentrate myself on hearing and learning about all sorts of different dialects, which are spoken in particularly British films - thank God they do not dub films in Sweden! 
I prefer British films to those of an American origin.   
I think that listen to music can be a very good way too, because then you are given the chance to learn about articulation and intonation. 
The British singer Cleo Laine is my favourite. 
She is an exceptionally skilful phrasemonger of the English language.   
I sometimes read books loudly when I am on my own. 
I do this in order to practise my pronunciation. 
Reading aloud has become a part of my self-studies, something I found out being very helpful to me.  
As I learnt to speak English  I did learn quite a lot about writing in English when I attended the municipal adult education school in the mid-eighties. 
Although, I did not learn much of how to actually speak English properly.   y opportunity to actually speak English came when I started to work as a salesman at an interior decorating company in Stockholm. 
This company also operated as an agent for several British carpet-manufactures in Sweden. 
I sold their woven Axminster and Wilton carpets, especially designed and coloured to the customers specified requests. 
In this way I had often the opportunity to speak English more progressively. 
At that time I used to speak English more frequently, than what I have been doing lately. 
I did for a few times visit these factories in England and thereby, I got the chance to speak English more intensively with business people and natives. 
I felt it satisfactory to be given the chance of speaking on an every day term.  
I must really emphasis how important I think it is that we speak English as often we can both inside and outside the school in order to make progress.  y writing abilities   First of all I want to express my surprise when I learnt about my grammar test, which I did on my first day at the English Department. 
I must say I am not satisfied over the result that came out of it. 
I got probably a sort of brain hold-off due to my stressing the situation. 
I failed completely with the translation piece. 
Translation from my mother tongue into English is apparently something I must practise a lot more, because I was actually nullified in that column.   
I must make it clear that I have a very positive opinion concerning writing. 
I think of the writing process as a fascinating step towards new knowledge and hopefully, it brings out much more of my metacognitive knowledge. 
Honestly, I like very much writing essays, but I need to have plenty of time to do the necessary researches. 
Writing essays give me opportunities to really deeply express feelings, opinions, facts and to get in touch with my inner thoughts. 
I have found it more difficult to express myself thoroughly in an oral statement than in a written one.  
Finally, I will refer to what is pointed out in the introduction of this essay. 
It is of my fully sincerely conviction that this course will enable me to make further progress in my writing, speaking and reading English.
","I've decided to write down my skills in the following order, first my three strengths and last my greatest weakness. 
I'm going to try to explain what I think are my strengths and weaknesses in every subject, and why. 
I'm concluding with a summary of how competent I feel I am today. 
Listening, or understanding is something I think that I'm very good at. 
I have always been good at it. 
I understand most of what I hear. 
To understand the spoken language is something I've never considered a problem. 
I still don't. 
Having heard the Scottish language being spoken a lot has helped me reach the level I am at today. 
I even understood my sister's Irish boyfriend. 
I have always watched television and never cared to make the effort of reading the subtitles. 
I suppose that it is good training. 
I count listening to be the best of my skills. y second best skill is speaking. 
Since I always talk a lot.
I feel that I'm only improving my skills. 
I have never had the problem of being shy. 
My weakness with this skill is the grammar, I speak so fast that I've never bothered with the grammar, my message gets by anyway. 
My strength is my vocabulary, it's big and since I talk a lot I have to use it. 
I have to admit to the fact that it's a little bit rusty right now, but it gets me by. 
I also master the skill of being able to change languages at a moments notice. 
My weak point here is my problem with speaking English to a person who I know speak Swedish. 
The language that I speak then isn't what I would call Swenglish, because I tend to combine Swedish words with English words in the sentences. 
I don't mix the words up as is indicated in the word Swenglish. 
If you in speaking add my pronunciation I have to say I speak quite well without an accent, that is without a Swedish accent. 
People I meet always have trouble guessing where I'm from. 
That's probably not good, if they always guessed America or England I'd at least get my points in the pronunciation class. 
Now we've arrived to the skill of reading. 
I read a lot of novels, preferably long ones. 
I love to get lost in a novel and spend some time with the characters. 
I understand the context even if a few words either pass me by or gets me up out of the couch, looking for a dictionary. 
I can also spot irony and sarcasm most of the time. 
My strength is again my vocabulary and the will to understand. 
I am also quite flexible which helps me when I try to imagine where the words come from and what they mean. 
My weakness is that I usually understand the context anyway so I don't bother to get up and look the word/ words up. 
Which in the end just does me damage and doesn't really expand my vocabulary skills. 
This skill isn't rusty, I've been reading a lot of English books lately, classics and novels.  
The last skill is writing, and that's my weakness. 
The only thing I can remember ever writing in English is an examination essay about Marie Antoinette and that is a long, long time ago. 
I'm not even rusty because I never mastered the skill of writing for real. 
I've written book reports and that's it. 
My experience is built on my personal letters which are few and since I know the people I'm writing to I don't bother with grammar, well it's never to late to start.  
To make a conclusion of my skills, I have to say that the greatest of them is my ability to express what I think and understand what, whom ever I'm making conversation with is trying to express. 
I'm also able to take part in discussions in average subjects. 
I have to say that I think my English is pretty average.
",False
"In evaluating my English I first think it is important to define how I am going to assess myself in regards to writing, reading, listening, and speaking. 
Since I don't know what it is that you as the reader find important all I can do is write what I think is important in evaluating my English. 
I put them in order of difficulty, writing being the most difficult and speaking be the easiest, with my definition of each skill in the beginning of each evaluation.  	 
Writing seems the easiest to assess because I feel there is so much work to be done in developing my writing skills. 
I will start with the positive parts of my writing since I feel they're so few. 
I can express my thoughts and emotions in informal writing to my family, however I have very little self confidence when it comes to formal writing for school or business. 
I try to follow a standard form but have difficulty seeing the mistakes I have written grammatically. 
It is the commas, the 's and when to have them that I become confused. 
I also have a very casual written language similar to how I speak. 
I would like to develop my formal writing, punctuation, grammar, and spelling. 
I write very quickly and think that it is mostly laziness that causes the spelling errors. 
I hope to build up my confidence efter this course so that I can write to friends without feeling that they are going to see all my writing errors.  
I have chosen to assess my reading skills in relation to comprehension and analysis of books. 
I understand most of what I read and if I don't I read it over and over. 
However my ability to interpret or analyze books is not very good. 
I don't remember how or what to look for in regards to critical assessment of a book. 
I enjoy reading but I don't know how to differentiate what is the most important thing that a book is trying to say. 
Moreover, when I read for the sake of pleasure I don't necessarily remember the names or the details of a book. 
I am not especially interested in descriptions of flowers, trees and small details and can't remember people's names. 
There are many things I would like to develop in my reading such as, what I bring as a reader to a book, understanding why the author chose the narrator to tell the story, and how to interpret or analyze a book. 
These are a few of the things I look forward to learning in this course.  	
In assessing my strengths and weaknesses in listening I am forced to step outside myself and see me from a second persons perspective. 
What is it that makes me a good or bad listener? 
What are the qualities I like or dislike in other listeners, that I might posses. 
Empathy when listening is very important and I like to believe I'm sympathetic. 
I would like to assume that I have good timing when it comes to feedback, I know when to give a response that I am listening or understanding what the person is saying to me. 
Eye contact is something I appreciate when talking to someone and I try to do the same. 
I tend to interrupt sometimes to early when listening to someone and that is one of the things along with objectivity that I would like to develop. 	
I can easily express what I am feeling and I like to converse. 
That is one of the enjoyments of learning a different language, is that it opens up the world so that one can talk to so many people! 
I like to discuss different ideas and I am able to find the words, for the most part, to formulate what it is I am trying to get across. 
However I do feel insecure with formal speech and would like to develop my speaking vocabulary. 
Although I may understand many words I would like to be able to use them as well.  	
Learning language whether it's your mother tongue or not is like taking a music appreciation class. 
You think you know a lot about the subject but then you discover that you didn't know anything at all, it was just a drop in the ocean. 
So, despite the fact that I think I can English, I think I will soon realize how much more there is to it. 
I therefore want to develop and learn as if I didn't know anything at all and build up a proper foundation for English. 
Listening to music isn't the same as knowing what to listen for how or how to listen. 
You can hear music everyday but you may still not be able to sing, play an instrument, or compose.
"," GIVE THE STUDENTS GRANTS - NOT LOANS  Students in most countries have to take loans to finance their university studies. 
In Sweden we have free education, but students still have to take loans to be able to pay for rent, food, course literature etc. during their time at university. 
As a result the newly graduated students start their working lives with considerable debts to the state. 
Is this really to everyone's best? 
I do not think so. 
In my opinion it would be more beneficial, not only to the individual, but also to our whole society, if students were given grants instead of loans. 
Firstly, I think that there is a risk that the current system conserves inequality. 
Not all people get the same opportunity to get an academic education. 
Let us have a look at the situation in Sweden today. 
To get a 'Master of Arts' degree you have to study for at least four years. 
You then owe the state approximately 170.000 kronor, which you must start to pay back once you have finished your studies and started working. 
With this future in mind there is a rather strong risk that people from certain groups choose not to study at all.  
For example, I believe that people from families without an educational tradition hesitate to study when they have to finance their studies on their own, while people from academic families tend to see the education as an investment. 
Another discriminated group is the large amount of people who, from different reasons, want or need to start their studies relatively late in life. 
If you start your studies late you have less time to pay back your loans. 
Thus you have to pay a larger part each month. 
In many cases this might be such a big burden that you choose not to study at all. oreover, we live in a world that changes fast. 
It is often claimed that in the future we will have to be more flexible. 
Because of the continuously changing needs of society we may have to change occupation at least once in our lives, often with a need of retraining as a result. 
Apart from what I have already mentioned about greater economical pressure when you take loans at a higher age, this also means that people might have to take loans for more than one education, again with the possible consequence of people choosing not to study. 
As mentioned above, I believe that a change of systems would benefit our society. 
If people choose not to study we run a risk of lacking people with certain professions. 
Knowing that your studies will result in great debts may be all right if you know that they also will lead to a well-paid job. 
There are, however, lot of professions that require rather high education, but are not well paid at all. 
One example of this is the teachers. 
What education will our children get if we do not have enough teachers? 
What is more, we need an educated and competent population to be able to compete properly in the fast development of science and technology in the world. 
Leading companies in Sweden claim that they already have a lack of educated personnel. 
We need people to study, and this does not only mean the young ones and people from families with academic traditions. 
In my opinion the only way to increase the number of students is to give them grants instead of loans.  
It can be argued that giving grant to students will be too expensive. 
However, we have to look at this in relation to the costs of a population without sufficient education. 
As the employers nowadays want more qualified employees, it becomes more and more difficult to get a job without a university degree. 
This might lead to severe costs for unemployment if we cannot rise the average level of education. 
To sum up, I believe it is time to rethink and revalue the importance of education. 
We do not only study for our own benefits. 
More important is the need of an educated population in our society.
",False
" THE REESTABLISHMENT OF ENGLISH.  
1. 
Introduction: When England was invaded by the Normans in 1066, the invaders brought their language with them and French became, if not the official language, then at least the language spoken in official situations. 
French was the language of the king, the upper classes, the courts, the schools, etc. 
Nevertheless, the English language did not die out, and from the Thirteenth century and onward, it gradually regained its status. 
In this essay I will look at the historical and social causes that made this process possible. 
In most cases where I have stated an example of an event that took place, there are of course often many similar events taking place at the same time, but I have choosed to only mention one or two. 
As I said, I will mostly look at historical and social events, and I will not go so deep into subjects like contemporary literature or changes that occured within the language itself (linguistics, etc.).  
2. 
Material:  y main source for the essay will be A History of the English Language by A.C. 
Baugh & T. 
Cable (1993, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall Inc, New Jersey) and for my study on French loanwords I will use Chaucer- The Prolouge & Three Tales by G. 
H. 
Cowling (1934, London, Ginn and Company, London).  
3. 
Aim: y aim with this essay is to investigate reasons that led to the return of the English language as an official and general language in England. 
I will look at the time between the year 1200 up to about the year 1400 and try to spot important events that led to this. 
My goal is to try to explain these events; why and how they were important for the reestablishment of English.   
4. 
Results: The loss of Normandy and the separation from France: It seems unlikely that the first step of the process that eventually led to the reestablishment of English as the common tounge in England started with such an innocent thing as a wedding. 
However, when John, king of England, married Isabel of Angouléme in 1200, she was already formally betrothed to Hugh of Lusignan. 
When John shortly afterwards attacked Lusignan, Hugh appealed to the king of France, Philip, who were their common overlord. 
In 1202, Philip summoned John to appear before his court in Paris and answer to the charges against him. 
John refused and when he didn't show up for the trial, the court declared all his territories in France confiscated. 
Normandy was invaded by the French king and in 1204 all of Normandy was lost to the French king. 
After this, both the English king and the English nobles started to look upon England as their first concern (Baugh & Cable 1993). 
For the first time in 150 years, the term ""England"" again could be used to describe a nation rather than just a geographical term. 
The separation from France continued after the loss of Normandy as the French king in 1204-05 also confiscated the land (in France) of many English noblemen. 
The English king retailated by confiscating English land from French noblemen. 
This led to a situation where people had to choose side, England or France, and many who had greater areas in one country gave up their estates in the other country. 
For instance in 1229 when Simon de Montfort, an English nobleman, and his brother Amaury simply changed land with eachother, all Simon's French land for all Amaury's English (Baugh & Cable 1993). 
The separation culminated in 1244 when the king of France stated: ""As it is impossible that any man living in my kingdom, and having possessions in England, can completely serve two masters, he must either inseparably attach himself to me or to the king of England"" (Baugh & cable 1993). 
By 1250 the separation could be said to be complete, England had no longer any ties to France. 
The most valid reason for using the French language was gone. 
French Reinforcements during the rule of Henry III: During this time of separation and the ""Englinization"" of England there were also, quite contradictory, a huge immigration of Frenchmen to England. 
It started quite modestly during John's reign when he installed a considerably large group of nobles from the French region of Poitou on important positions in his kingdom. 
The most prominent of these were Peter des Roches, who became bishop of Winchester and later chancellor and justiciar of England. 
However, during the long reign (1216-1272) of his son, Henry III, this infiltration soon turned into a regular invasion of Frenchmen. 
In 1233, he ""dismissed all the native officers of his court from their offices, and appointed forigners from Poitou in their places"" (from a contemporary but anon. source). 
Furthermore, when he married Eleanor of Providence (sister of the French queen) in 1236, he installed many of his new wife's relatives on high positions. 
As an example, two of her uncles, Peter of Savoy and Boniface, became earl of Richmond and archbishop of Canterbury respectivly. 
Ten years later, because of another yet another royal wedding, yet more Frenchmen from Poitou arrived. 
At this time, according to bishop Grossteste, the income of foreign ecclesiastics alone had a collected income that were three times that of the king. 
Baugh & Cable goes so far as saying that ""the country was eaten up by strangers"" (p.129). 
This of course led to a delay of the reestablishment of English, as the common tounge of the ruling class remained French.  
""England for the English"": However, all this of course led to reactions from native Englishmen who were more or less locked out from high positions in the church and state. 
The slogan above were adopted by chancellor Hubert de Burgh and gives us a telling example of the antagonism the was present. 
At a council in Winchester in 1234 English-born bishops complained to the king and told him his policies were ""not wise or safe, but ... cruel and dangerous to yourself and to the whole country"" (Baugh & Cable 1993). 
The king then backed down and temporarily dismissed the forigners from office. 
This only lasted for a short time and the French-born administratives soon were back. 
By then the opposition against the foreign influx had became so great that the barons and the middle-class united in a coalition under Simon de Montfort to put a stop to foreign influence in high places. 
The outcome of this resistance was the Provisions of Oxford of 1258 and the following ""Barons' War"" in 1258-1265. 
During this time the foreigners were twice driven out of England and when Edward I became king in 1272, England enters a new time when government officials are (mostly) English and the country becomes aware of its unity. 
As I mentioned earlier, this massive influx of Frenchmen delayed the spread of English as the common tounge, but it also led to a higher prestige for English as it was considered the mark of a ""genuine"" Englishman to be able to speak English. 
The gradual comeback of the English tounge: In the Thirteenth century England was still bilingual, with French being the common language for the upper classes. 
However, as the century wore on, the reasons for it had changed. 
Instead of being regarded as the mothertounge of the Normans, it was regarded, not only in England but all over Europe, as a cultivated and chivalrous language. 
Even if English were in general use among the upper classes in the middle of the century, French was still the language of the parliament, the law courts and of public negotiations. 
But, we can find many examples of the fact that the knowledge of French was declining, one of the most striking is found in bills and petitions addressed to law courts. 
These bills were required to be in French and it's clear that even well-educated men had major difficulties in expressing themselves in French. 
One contemporary observer states that: ""they (the people who addressed the courts) neither spoke French nor were accustomed to hear it spoken in their neighborhood"" (Baugh & Cable 1993). 
By this time we also have indications that French was beginning to be looked upon as a foreign language since even children from the upper circle of nobility was learning French through books with interlinear English gloss. 
This leads us to believe that the mother tounge of English noble children was, in many cases English. 
Furthermore, there are indications that the attitude at that time was that the proper language for an Englishman to use was English. 
In the Cursur Mundi (an enclocypedic poem on biblical subjects from around 1300) we can find protests against the use of French on behalf of English. 
At the end of the thirteenth century, and even more so in the next century, the trend to speak English was so strong that the monastaries and university had to regulate the use of English among novices and students, they were required to speak only in French or Latin. 
Such regulations show how artificial the use of French had become. 
It is, however, important to point out that during this time when English was starting to replace French, French influenced English via a huge number of loan words. 
I will return to this later when I will examine French loanwords in Chaucer's ""Canterbury Tales"". 
War, pestilence and bad pronounciation: The title of this chapter may sound like an avantgarde comedy-movie, but these are actually three important causes that further promoted the use of English. 
During the period of 1337-1453 there were a long line of wars and conflicts, interrupted by periods of truce, between England and France, collectively, this period is known as ""The Hundred Years' War. 
During this time French was, not very surprisingly, seen as the language of the enemy and this attitude contributed to the disuse of French.  
Another tragic occurance that took place in the same time was the plauge. 
The first evidence of the disease appeared in the southwest in 1348 and spread quickly across England, as well as mainland Europe, killing a vast part of the population. 
Modern studies show that 40 percent of the parish clergy died in the plauge. 
In the monastary of St. 
Albans alone, 48 monks, including the bishop, died. 
Their places were taken by men who often knew no other language than English (Baugh & Cable 1993).  
Yet another factor, though not as spectacular, was the fact that French that were spoken in England were not considered a ""proper"" French, and indeed the Anglo-French at that time differed quite a lot from the Central French of Paris, both in dialect and in linguistics. 
People were aware of the fact that the Anglo-French was a bit ridiculed on the continent and English writers frequently made apologies for that, as in the words of this anonymous poet: ""A false French of England I know, for I have not been elsewhere to acquire it; but if you have learned it elsewhere, amend it where there is needed"". 
It is not so strange that people avoided to use a language for which they could be ridiculed of. 
The general adoption of English 1300-1400: Law courts: Ever since shortly after the conquest in 1066, French had been the language of all legal proceedings, but in the middle of the Fourteenth century, the use of French had declined so much that it was without justification. 
In 1356, the sheriffs' court of London and Middlesex begun holding proceedings in English. 
Six years later, in 1362, the Parliament decided that from the following year, all legal proceedings in Englang should be held in English (Baugh & Cable 1993). 
The original document that states this is paradoxically written in French... 
Parliament: French was also for a long time the common language in Parliament, up until 1350 there are fex examples of English beeing spoken in parliament, although it is safe to say that almost everyone in Parliament spoke, or at least had an understanding of, English. 
However, in 1362 the chancellor opened Parliament for the first time with a speech in English. 
The petitions of the commons are mostly in English from 1423 but it was not until 1489 that French entirely disappears as a language used in any official way by the English Parliament. 
In schools: Shortly after the conquest, French replaced English as the language of the schools. 
But, as I mentioned earlier, the schools were later forced to set up rules that did not allow students to speak English. 
This was of course a situation that was untenable in the long run, and, partly because of the situation during and after the Black Death, English began to be used in schools after 1349 and the use become general by 1385.  
To what degree were English influenced by French at the end of the Reestablishment? 
After so many years in the shadow of French, how much were the Fourteenth century-English influenced by French in the terms of words? 
To answer this question, I looked up the origin of the words in the first 75 lines of Chaucer's ""Canterbury Tales"" and put them in two categories: ""Native"" (or Old English) and ""French"" (or Old French). 
I have ignored words with another origin (e.g. 
Latin) and words which origin were unclear. 
These are my results: NOUNS: Native: boord, breeth, cristendom, croppes, day, fo, fowles, freedom, halwe, heeth, hethen, hethenesse, holt, hors, knight, londes, lordes, man, ram, reste, shire, sonne, stable, stronde, tale, telle, tellen, thought, trouthe, wight. 
(All in all 30 words) French: array, aventure, batailes, chambre, chivalrye, compagnye, corages, curtesye, degree, ese, flowr, furstian, gipoun, honour, hostelrye, licour, manere, nacion, port, pris, resoun, sege, seson, space, tabart, vertu, vilainye, werre. 
(28) ADJECTIVES: Native: accordant, al, beste, cristen, eech, ferne, ful, goode, his, ilke, many, redy, seke, smale, sondre, sondry, soote, sweete, swich, this. 
(20) French: gentil, parfit, soverein, specially, straunge, tendre, verray. 
(7) VERBS: Native: bathed, be, been, bifel, biginne, blisful, come, droughte, foughten, goon, hadde, have, holpen, maken, priteth, reden, slain, sleepen, wende, were, weren. 
(21) French: engendered, pace, perced. 
(3)  ADVERBS: Native: aboven, also, anoon, but, by, cristen, eek, er, erly, every, ferre, inne, longe, nat, natheless, ne, nevere, ofte, out, so, thanne, therto, wel, whan, whil. 
(25) French: - (0) OTHERS: Native: a (indef. art), again (prep), as (conj), at (prep), everichoon (pron), for (conj), fro (prep), he (pron), hem (pron), hir (pron), in (prep), my (pron), on (prep), of (prep), that (conj), to (prep), what (pron), which (pron), whiche (pron). 
(19) French: - (0) As we can see, the the greatest influx of French is undoubly among the nouns where the French loanwords are just about the as many as the native words. 
Many of these loanwords are related to the lifestyle of a knight (""chivalrye"", ""honour"", ""werre"",etc.) and indicates that it is words that the upper classes used and incorporated in the language. 
The native nouns are names for more common things (""croppes"", ""sonne"", ""boord"", etc). 
If we look at the other word-classes, the influx is not as great, and in some cases non-existant. 
I do not pretend that this little survey is totally representable for the actual language spoken in Chaucer's England, but it is a hint of what influx French had on the language. 
There have been estimated that in the whole General Prolouge of ""Canterbury Tales"" (858 lines) there are about 500 French loanword, one can suspect that a great number of these are nouns.   
5. 
Conclusions: The reestablishment of English did not happen over night, it was a steady process that took centurys to complete. 
Gradually, step by step, English recaptured one bastion of French usage after another. 
The process was also speeded up by external causes such as war and pestilence. 
Even the most conservative institutions; the church and the universities eventually had to allow the general use of English. 
Furthermore, we can state that during this process, the English language were enlarged and enriched bt the use of French loanwords, mainly nouns.   
6. 
References:  Baugh, A.C. 
& Cable, T.: A History of the English Language, 1993, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall Inc, New Jersey. 
Cowling, G.H.: Chaucer- The Prolouge & Three Tales, 1934, London, Ginn & Company, London.
"," HOW TO KILL A DICTATOR.  
The lines from this specific scene, Act II, Scene i, takes place at early morning in Brutus' house when Cassius and the other conspirators has come to pay Brutus a visit and see if he has agreed to join their plot to murder Caesar, whom, in their eyes, have grown too powerful and dangerous. 
Brutus have earlier shown some sympathy to the idea and after a great deal of contemplation with himself, he has come to the conclusion that it is best for the common good if Caesar would die. 	 
What I see as the most striking features in this scene is the obvious differences between how Cassius and Brutus thinks when they are approaching the actual deed. 
Cassius is the strategic tactic, who is interested in practical details surrounding the murder. 
First of all, he wants the conspirators to swear an oath to establish a bond between the men, a kind of brotherhood (line 113). 
Secondly, he also wants the conspirators to seek mighty allies that are respected amongst the citizens to justify the deed (lines 141-142) and finally, he is concerned about the aftermath, who will pose a threat to the conspirators after the murder? 
Will some powerful friends of Caesar seek revenge? 
For that reason, Cassius also wants Mark Anthony out of the way (lines 155-161). 
Here we see a rational man who seems to think of the assassination as inevitable, something he is forced to do for the common good. 
He is concerned mainly with the success of the plot and leaves little attention to the fact that they are actually planning to kill a man. 
Infact, he is also prepared to kill other men as well if it benefits the conspiration. 	 
Brutus, on the other hand, is more of a dreamer. 
He doesn't share Cassius burning hatred for Ceasar, and as he sees himself as a man of great morals and dignity he is more concerned with what is right or wrong morally, rather than tactically. 
Brutus seems to regret that he is forced to kill a noble countryman for the general good of the country, and he doesn't want his good name and reputation to be marred with any dishonourable deeds. 
The difference between the two men can be found in the passage where Cassius wants the men to swear an oath to kill Caesar, Brutus says in line 112 ""Give me your hands all over, one by one"", and Cassius automaticly fills in ""And let us swear our resolution"". 
Brutus immediately begins a long tirade stating that it will be much more honourable not to swear an oath. 	 
No, not an oath ... 	 ... 
What other bond 	 Than secret Romans that have spoke the word 	 And will not palter? 
And what other oath 	 Than honesty to honesty engaged 	 That this shall be, or we will fall for it? 	 
After Brutus rather pompous monolouge about honesty is over, Cassius do not even care to reply, he simply goes on to the next subject on the agenda, that about allies: ""But what about Cicero? 
Shall we sound him?"". 
Obviously, Cassius, being pragmatic politician, understands that in order to win Brutus over he must compromise with details. 
Cassius' fellow conspirators Casca, Cinna and Metellus first agrees that it is wise to try to get Cicero on their side, but when Brutus rejects the idea, Cassius is forced to submit once again, and he directly replies: ""Then leave him out"". 
To that Casca replies: ""Indeed he is not fit"", whereas only seconds before having said: ""Let us not leave him out"". 
This passage shows not only that Cassius is willing to compromise quite a lot to get Brutus on his side but also why he is willing to let Brutus have his way. 
People hold Brutus in high regards and they are listening to what he has to say, without him Cassius' plan will have no credibility amongst the public. 	 
The next issue, raised by Decius in line 154, is wether they shall only murder Caesar. 
Here Cassius is more unwilling to compromise, and he is supposedly forced to speak for his beliefs. 	 
Decius, well urged. 
I think it is not meet 	 Mark Antony, so well beloved of Caesar, 	 Should outlive Caesar. 
We shall find of him 	 A shrewed contriver; and you know his means, 	 If he improve them, may well stretch so far 	 As to annoy us all; which to prevent, 	 Let Antony and Caesar fall together. 
Yet again Brutus refuses to listen to reason, and makes another long tirade about the need to act honourably and galantly, this time he outshines himself with pretentious words about their mission, as he obviously sees the killing, ""We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar, And in the spirit of men there is no blood."", ""Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods, Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds."", etc. 
However, this time Cassius will not bend as easily, and for the first time he, at least openly, disagree with Brutus but in the end he is yet again forced to submit. 
Mark Antony will not be killed, that would be dishonourable. 	 
So, what I see as most important in this passage is the fact that the conspirators decide not only to murder Caesar but also that they decide not to murder Mark Antony. 
Furthermore, later in the play Brutus again makes another crucial mistake, that to let Mark Antony speak to the people after the murder. 
Obviously, Cassius is a far better judge of personalities than Brutus and that is really well showed in the passage I have chosen. 
As I mentioned earlier, Cassius might be a much greater politician than Brutus, but Brutus is regarded as a much greater man by the common Roman. 
This passage also shows the difference between the two men very well, Cassius wants action, well planned action. 
Brutus on the other hand believes that a deed wrapped up in noble words automaticly makes the deed noble, he believes that he is a truly honourable man and that makes him always right, even if he has misinterpreted the situation completely. 
That is his weakness, and that is what makes their coup a failure in the end.
",True
" TO RECEIVE THE UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS MEANS TO DESERVE IT BY WORKING IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR  	There are nearly 9 million inhabitatnts in Sweden and about 277 000 of them are the unemployed. 
Benefits totally granted by the government are 32 633 000 Swedish crowns and maximum daily benefits are 580 Swedish crowns for one person (according to the ""Statistical Yearbook of Sweden"" by Statistics Sweden /SCB - Statistiska Central Byron/, year 1998). 
Look at this sums of money! 
Isn't it incredible?! 
Is it fair to pay people to do nothing or to be busy only with some private things? 
In my opinion people receiving unemployment benefits should be required to do work in the public sector, that means at the industries and services in a country that are owned and run by the government. 
They have to deserve it! 
I am going to argue for this assertion doing some kinds of analyses and reasoning. 	
First of all what kind of categories one can find among the unemployed. 
It is the age category, sex category and some sub-groups which I'm going to write about in my article. 
It was very intersting to know that there are five groups of the unemployed according to their ages: from 16 up to 64. 
Representatives of each group can be very useful at the working place. 
But if you'll look at the age group from 25 up to 44, you'll see that it is the most numerous - 135 thousands of people (from 277 000)!!! 
That is nearly a half of all the unemployed in Sweden! 
Everybody understands, I hope, that at the age of maturity people have their experience of life, can do a lot, can reason, understand many economical aspects and have their own children. 
Most of them, I suppose, know what they want to do or to work with and how. 
Certainly it's nearly impossible to satisfy all their requirements but if they should be obliged to do some work in the public sector, they should be the most effective workers and may be the best and most rational helpers at the working-places, taking into account foregoing description of that ages. 	
According to the statistical facts, taken from the previously mentioned book, there are 154 thousans of men and 123 thousands of women among those 277 thousands of the unemployed in Sweden. 
One can see that the amount of the unemployed men is 32 thousands higher than the amount of the unemployed women. 
Isn't it a paradox? 
But let's say that minimum 50 % of all the unemployed are healthy and able- bodied. 
Both men and women could be very useful in doing all kinds of work in the sphere of the municipalities (kommun). 
We mustn't forget that most those people have either special education or profession and supposed to be good specialists. 
If they should be required to work in the public sector one could observe quite different way of making the job. 
I speak about more determined and rational actions of men to contrast with more gentle, perceptible and careful attitude of women to their job, which are equivalently useful for our society.  	
Now I want to continue analysing that ""healthy and able-bodied men's and women's"" group of the unemployed receiving social benefits because inside of it I can observe some sub-groups as: a) that really wants to find some work and receive unemployment benefits; b) that wants to work but do not receive unemployment benefits for some reason or other; c) that does not want to work but receive benefits anyhow; d) political immigrants and foreigners. 
I am absolutely sure that people of all these groups should be required or may be even obliged to do work in the public sector because each of them is payed (maximum) 580 Swedish crowns a day, as it was mentioned before. 
So much is payed an ordinary low-payed worker for that work he (she) does during the eight-hour's working day!!! 	
In conclusion I want to say that the society could have a lot of the positive results if the analysed groups of the unemployed should be required to do work in the public sector. 
Working and being among people, creating social contacts can help a person to find the stable work-place, determine the interests, feel himself (herself) more self-confidently, find new friends and may be even a life- partner, receiving simultaneously the unemployment benefits from the government deservedly and that is of no small importance. 
I think it should be an idea to create a well-functioning unit by the Employment Office (Agency), Municipalities and the Social Services for coordinating if such placement in a job of the unemployed that receive the unemployment benefits.  
Thank you!
"," 		THE RIGHT SIDE THERE SHOULD BE MORE EMPHASIS ON ARTISTIC SUBJECTS AT SCHOOL  ost mental and physical abilities change and develop as people grow. 
It is a salient feature in our schoolsystem that a great deal is done to cultivate skills such as reading, writing and arithmetics. 
However, the development of artistic skills seems to come to a stop at quite an early age. 
Many grown-ups stay at a 14-year-old-level when it comes to expressing themselves artistically. 
One of the reasons why schools favour the more theoretical subjects is that it is a prevalent notion that what you learn in arts classes is of little use in daily life, which is not true! 	 
Firstly, in art classes we deal with the fact that we live in a world where we are drowned with impressions and images such as advertisements, commercials, musicvideos and news-images from various media. 
Commercials are often flashy, entertaining and inventive. 
But their purpose is to make us buy things and they do not reflect the society we live in today. 
Not even the daily news gives us a correct image of the world. 
People with values, ideas and prejudice choose events and make us think that these are the major happenings in the world, when in fact these images are interpretations of what the world looks like at a certain moment. 
Often newsflashes come out as objective and true, so it is vital to be critical and to understand images and their connotations and not just perceive them as the ""truth"". 	 
Moreover, according to experts' research the brain is divided into two parts - the left and the right. 
Reading, writing and arithmetics are skills that are usually located in the left hemisphere of the brain. 
This part is also considered as dominant and even tends to take over tasks which are more suitable for the right side of the brain to handle. 
The right hemisphere is generally seen as the subordinate one. 
It is alotted artistic abilities, thus good at things like music, drawing, creativity and perception. 
All these knacks seem somewhat forgotten in our schools, and although they are valued they are considered to be a natural result from using ones verbal and analytical skills. 
However, I will argue that this is not the case and that we need specifically to cultivate the right side of our brain, something that is hardly possible to do during one sixty-minute-lesson of art once a week. 	 
People in general are of the opinion that the ability to draw or perform other artistic activities is something that a minority of people are gifted with and if you can't already draw there is no use in trying to learn. 
It is like deciding not to learn a foreign language because you can't already speak it. 
Actually, the difficulty to draw lies rather in learning how to observe or being able to switch over to a particular way of seeing. 
From the time we grow up we are used to seeing things through words; a cat, an apple, a tree and so on. 
Consequently, the left side of the brain is activated and tends to put things into categories and to symbolise things. 
We all have a symbol for a face, an eye or a house, but this is not what they really look like. 
To draw is a process which demands careful observation and meticulous perception of details and all kinds of information. 
This can be trained in a number of ways and the trick is to give the brain a task which the left hemisphere either doesn't know how to perform or doesn't want to perform. 
This demands a lot of concentration. 
For example, you can study an up-side-down-image without having seen it the correct way first and try and draw what you see. 
When you focus on how the lines meet instead of what the image actually represents the left side becomes confused and since it can't compare the information to any stored memories it leaves the task to the more suitable right side. 
The majority of people are not aware of the fact that we actually neglect one side of the brain and its' capacity. 
Thus, the school has a huge responsibility in conveying the importance of exploring our whole brain, not just a part of it. 	 
What is more, the left and the right side of the brain actually cooperate in several areas. 
Psychologists, for example, use drawing as a method to release and understand hidden emotions. 
A drawing from the heart can be of immense help when solving an emotional problem and revealing what you actually feel. 
When the right side of the brain has shown the left side what the problem is the left side can solve the problem through language and logical thinking. 
In conclusion, to fully function as human beings there is a need for the revaluation of artistic skills and perception. 
Today the schoolsystem rewards the skills of the left side of the brain to such an extent that much of our childrens' inherent opportunities of the right side will stay undeveloped.
",False
" Unemployd, new assisstants at schools?  
Why should people who receive unemployment benefits be required to work in the public sector? 
There are three main reasons were I will argue for such a move. 
Firstly in the Swedish newspapers we can read almost everyday that schoolteachers, nurses, policedepartments and homes for elderly people are constatly struggling because of reductions of the employees but I will focus on the school. 
Secondly if the unemployed was involved in different public sectors it would not only benefit the public sector but also to help the unempolyed not to loose their selfesteem and the feeling of being needed and thirdly, the state will also benefit from this suggestion. 	
Over the years the Swedish government has cut down on the staff at many public sectors, for example in schools and it doesn't make sence as we have high number of children who are attending the shcool for the moment (high birthrates at the end of 1980 and beginning 1990). 
The unemployed could be of extra assitance to the teachers, patrolling in the corridors and at the playgrounds and see to that no unauthorized is staying at the schools. 
More adults in the school enviroment are requested by many principals especially after the tragic incident that recently took place at a school in Stockholm where a boy got killed by another boy who did not belong to the school. 
We do need more adults to prevent these kinds of actions however this incident was extreme but there are harassments and vandalization everyday at schools all over the country.  
Another aspect is that many children of today need more attention from adulst than before as there are many variations of constilations of families, high number of children doesn't live with both of theire parents, they have ""new"" fathers or mothers,of course some of these constilations are good but others aren't. 
Moreover it's not only in schools that extra help is required but also at daycare-centers and in after-school recreation centers.  
For instance, a large number of unemployd are to be found among the immigrants and it's also a problem with the segregation. 
If we involve them in different projects, they will learn the language easier and they will also be a part of the Swedish sociaty much more than they are today. 
To catch the immigrants attention they could attend to a shorter or a longer education, depending on how well educated they are from the beginning. 
Another point is also that in the future at a downward ecnonomic trend we might have a new category of unemployed and the jobs must be made as attractive as possible. 
The public sector could be more forsighted to help people when they are forced into unemployment and propose other opportunities. 
I will quote from Text-Tv, 10th February. 
""Employees at the post-offices will be educated for the schoolsystem. 
Redundant personal at post-offices might solve the shortage of the staff at schools. 
There are plans for a new education for assistants of educationalist which are for the staff who will run the risk of loosing their jobs as the Post-Office will cut down on personal according to Norrkpings tidningen. 
The Shool of Education in Stockholm and Posten Futurum are both behind this new education which may already start spring -01. 
The assistants will work together with both teachers and pupils and for other reasons that takes their time of teaching"" end quotation. 
Another aspect is that in a few years there will be a huge retirement among teachers and also that educated young teachers are leaving the profession because of the situation at schools today. 
As a result the state will also benefit by a such proposal as the unemployed will be involved in the society and it might open up the opportunities for them to be interessted in different kinds of professions. 
Moreover the children will have a more secure environment in the schools and hopefully accomplish more than earlier. 
In areas where schools have big problems there could be more of the unempolyed assistants furthermore the teaching as a profession will be more attractive. 
To sum up, rather than only paying unemploment benefits the unemployed should be asked to contribute in neglected areas like for instance, school, hospital-care and care for elderly people. 
Hopefully the result will increase the quality of life for all involved.
","I will now write an honest essay about my English and how I assess it. 
First of all, I love to write! 
I got very happy when I heard that we, the students in this A-level course, are going to write many essays! 
When I see a piece of blank paper, I immediately want to fill it with letters. 
I seldom have any problems with spelling. 
Once I have read a word, I usually know how to spell it. 
I think it's easier to write than to speak in many situations. 
When I write, I can stop writing for a while and just think about what I want to write further on in the text. 
When I talk it's not that easy to stop and think about what I am supposed to say, because then the people I'm talking to continue to speak, and the very important thing I was thinking of will never be discussed. 
When I write, I can go back in the text and change and I can change several times, so it's very different from speaking. 
Maybe that is why I love to write, because I can think in peace and quiet. 
I guess I've always loved to write, ever since I was a little girl writing in my diary every evening. 
When I was eleven years old our class found another class, in Great Britain, and they were about our age and we got penfriends. 
I think I learnt quite a lot by writing in English to my penfriend for many years, and I still write letters, not to her though. 
When I studied at Komvux here in Uppsala, our English teacher told us to write an essay every week. 
It wasn't compulsory but I handed in one every week because I'm so fond of writing, and I thought that my teacher could evaluate my English by reading my texts.  
When it comes to speaking I must say that I am a little bit shy of speaking in a quiet classroom with all unfamiliar students surrounding me. 
In such situations my English doesn't sound like I want it to sound. 
It's difficult to speak fluently and spontanleously, but I know that I will practice talking in this course.  
You should visit me at home and spy on me when I'm doing my homework, because I practically always read aloud to myself to get the right pronunciation by reading the phonetics. 
It's a habit to read aloud, but I don't know if it's a good or a bad habit. 
Sometimes, when I'm reading a book in a public place, I think it's difficult to read quiet and I have noticed that I move my lips secretly. 
After writing comes reading, my second favorite in order. 
Naturally it depends on the text if it is readable or not, but most of the time I accept all kinds of texts. 
I do have to confess something, and that is that I think it's hard to read the paper, the news about politics and wars. 
I think that is like listening to the news on the TV or the radio. 
They use a different language from the language they often write in literature. 
But I am aware of my defect, so at the moment I subscribe to Newsweek where I can read international news about Clinton's counterattac and the Olympics scandal (That sounds boring, doesn't it?). 
Reading novels, short stories and magazines are very amusing but I find it tough to read in bed in the evening, because then I usually read the entire book which means I will be very tired the day after.  
I think it can be difficult to listen to English, but not in all situations though. 
I do understand the English when I attend a lecture or when I speak with a person, but when I listen to the news on the telly or the radio, I sometimes feel stupid because I don't receive the information. 
That is something I really must practise.
",False
"These last fifteen years I haven't been practising my English much, so it's little scary but also exiting with everything. 
Well aware that my English vocabulary and grammar have been suffering, but with hard work and probably many question I believe I'm able to change this situation.  
When I grew up the English language was spoken as I recall quite often at our house, and the resound was that we had frequent visitors who where my fathers business associated. 
This gave us (my sisters and brother) a good opportunity to speak English in a more everyday use, than the one used in school. 
I even went to England one summer, to visit and take care of the children, to one of my fathers business friend and his wife. 
My visit lasted five weeks without anyone to speak Swedish with, and pretty soon I started dreaming and thinking in English. 
Although this was a long time a go, with practise I believe that these grounds or bases will help me even if it feels like they are far away. 
I have already started thinking and ""talking to my self "" in English especially when I'm out taking a walk with my dog. 
I do like to speak even though I sometimes haven't got the right words for everything. and I don't feel so sure speaking nowadays as I was after the trip Still I do speak from time to time like when I go abroad with my husband on business trips. 
When I pronouns some words my thong doesn't always do what it's supposed to do, that is something I have to practise so I won't break my thong when I speak. 
Hearing other talk I relays that it's possibly to avoid, with a lot of training of course. 
Mostly I do understand English when I am listening to it. 
Since English is a very common language, you often hear it in all kinds of situations for example, songs and television. 
Times when it can be hard, is when the words are technical or other ""facktermer"" (I didn't find a correct word it seemed that they had one each). 
The seminaries I don't find very hard to understand and that is a relief.  
To read books is something I unfortunately not have been doing much of the last years, but I do have tried several of times, often ending with me falling asleep. 
It's not because that the book was boring, more that I was exhausted and needed a complete break from my three kids, so when I sat down in a chair all my body wanted ""was to sleep"". 
When I started reading Nice work I had to use much time looking up words that I didn't Understand, because I felt that I miss to much of the story if I went on reading. 
Already I think it's more easier to read almost everything, probably because I'm getting the clue or maybe the key to understand English in writing (I don't know if it's the proper way to saw like that?). 
I know that I have some gaps to fill in, and I am working on it by trying to learn twenty new words every day.  
Now I have been writing all about speaking, listening and reading, so it is time to confess that I am not a good writer, and I know that my writing often is more like speaking rather then writing, but hopefully I will learn how to write in an proper way. 
It's like I wrote before, I have not been practising much English and specially the writing part, it's not one of my favour subject. 
I always make excuses not to start write and when I forces me I'm having a hard time to express me with the write words. 
I can't say that I'm specially good or sure of the grammar but I really want to do this and full aware of that it's going to need a great deal of work from me. 
Reading this essay I hope there is a way form me to get better and not use to many I, to, and, so words.
"," Evaluation  Like most Swedes of the younger generations, I imagine myself to be quite good in English. 
Although, as you start to analyze your skills, you might realize that there's not so few things left to learn!  
If you consider listening to, reading, speaking and writing in English as the components of having command of the language, I believe the listening part to be the one that I'm best at. 
I think I'm fairly good in comprehending spoken English. 
This statement has some exceptions, though. 
Things that might be troublesome are various kinds of accents and slang, that I'm not used to hear. 
Other things that may affect my ability of comprehension are disturbing background sounds, and rapid speach. 
An advanced academical language containing words I do not understand even when they are translated into Swedish, is of course hard to comprehend. 
I may also have difficulties understanding English when I, without expecting to, am being spoken to in English by for instance a tourist. 
It seems that I require a moment of readjusting myself into a different language.  
Reading English is easier than listening to English. 
When I read, I see the words and sentences myself. 
They are not, to my ears, being distorted by someone's accent. 
Another great advantage is that I'm allowed to read at my own pace, which makes comprehension easier. 
My weakness regarding reading English is that I read quite slowly, which isn't very practical. 
I have a tendency of wanting to know what every foreign word that I find in a text means, and it takes quite some time to look it up. 
Of course it's useful to increase one's vocabulary, but often one can let a word be unknown for the moment without loosing the meaning of the text. 
In fact, it's not unusual that you learn the meaning of a word by the context in which it's written.  
I believe that the hardest part of English, or any foreign language, is to be able to speak fluently. 
Sometimes it's hard to come up with the simpliest word, when you're in the middle of a conversation. 
Few things are as frustrating as when you know exactly what you want to say, and it comes out all wrong or you can't translate it at all. 
I think I can manage quite well in a common conversation, but my English is not adequate for more advanced discussions. 
When it comes to pronounciation, I think I have a god accent when I utter separate phrases. 
However, when I'm talking continuously, I can hear myself speak English with a Swedish intonation. 
The reason why I get this Swedish accent, may be that I feel a bit embarrassed at speaking in a British or an American tone, almost as if I would be acting. 
Despite this I get influenced by the person I'm talking to, so when I'm talking to a British person, I speak with a British accent, and when I'm talking to an American I do it with American accent. 
This happens unconsciously, and it's very hard for me to suppress the urge to imitate.  
The advantage by writing in English compared to speaking English is that there's usually more time for thinking and coming up with the proper words and expressions. 
The disadvantage is that all the mistakes according to spelling and grammar clearly stands out. 
All the errors are in print, as a proof of one's failure or success. 
I have too little experience in writing in English, to be able to give an opinion in my own ability. 
I believe this is the first text I have written since I went in high-school, and that is thirteen years ago. 
At least I'm aware of that I need to refreshen and improve my grammar.  
The reason why my knowledge of English hasn't completely vanished after all these years, is that the Swedish TV-channels every day, year after year, are sending large numbers of programs in English. 
The fact that the Swedish television doesn't dub foreign programs, as they do in several European countries, must be the reason why so many Swedes are so good in English. 
Regarding my own skill in the language, I feel that I need to learn more in writing and speaking, and I hope to successfuly do so in the course that I'm now attending.
",False
"I find it embarrassing to tell people that I've spent almost three years in London, because I feel that my English is on a much lower level than it shoud be. 
Before I started this course I had heard that the first term was tough but I still thought I would have some benefit from my years in England. 
A couple of weeks before the course began I looked through my old English tests from upper secondary school. 
I found the tests quite simple and could easily see what mistakes I hade made. 
I also got some ""hogskoleprov"" from the Internet which also seemed fairly easy. 
So when the diagnostic tests were handed out I felt nervous but still confident. 
After a quick look at the vocabulary-test I realized that I hardly knew any of the words. 
So before I start talking about evalution I would be interested in knowing how it is possible for a person to spend three years in England and yet not learn anything? 
What I think has improved most, however, is comprehension. 
When I first moved to London I noticed that I wasn't capable of listening to more than one ""English"" conversation at a time. 
I remember doing the ironing in front of the television and not being able to follow the programme unless I really concentrated. 
A couple of weeks later I realized that I was both watching the TV-programme and listening to a conversation, which the children in the Au-pair family were having in an other room. 	
After a while I also started dreaming in English. 
I had finished my Au-Pair-year and was now working as a waitress. 
Every night I dreamt about customers and the conversations I was having with them. 
My manager made jokes about my dreams and told me I was doing double shifts. 
When I moved back to Sweden these ""English-dreams"" eventually (and sadly) disappeared. 
Now it only happends occasionally and only if I've been thinking a lot about London. 	
Another improvment is that I no longer feel nervous when I have to speak to an English-speaking person. 
I've always been shy when it comes to talking, no matter what language, in front of a crowd. 
People in England were very nice and helpful and always took their time to listen. 
Adam, the twelve-year-old boy in my Au-Pair family, was a big help too. 
I don't think that his intention was to teach me, but by listening to him I learnt a lot. 
Even though I no longer feel shy when I speak English to people, I find myself rehearsing every time I have to use words that I found hard to pronounce. 
I remember once when I had to take my Au-Pair family's dog to the veterinary. 
On my way there I mumbled the phrases I intended to use. 
But when I finally got to the veterinary I said something totally different, so after that incident I'm trying not to worry too much and to take things as they come.  	
I should also mention reading.
The good thing about my reading is that I love doing it and the bad part is, I now realized after the vocabulary-test, that there obviosly are a lot of words that I don't understand unless they are in sentences. 
Comprehending texts and answering questions based on them, has always been what I think I'm best at in English. 
But obviously I only understand the text by assuming what some of the words mean without being really sure. 
So to improve my reading I've promised myself to look up the words I'm not certain of. 	
Writing, what can I say about it? 
As much as I love reading, I hate writing. 
My Swedish teacher here at the Department of Nordic Languages once quoted Winston Churchill: ""I hate to write, but I love to have written."" 
I could have said those words, because it's exactly how I feel.  	
Anyway, now I'm really looking forward to this writing-course, which hopefully will improve my writing and also will make me appreciate it a bit more.
"," Mars-A giant leap for mankind  Since the beginning of mankind we have always been curious and ready to endure extreme ordeals to discover new worlds. 
Take early explorers like the Vikings. 
They went out from Scandinavia as far away as the center of Russia to the East, as far as Greece to the South and all the way to North America in the West. 
Consider all expeditions to remote areas such as Antarctica, Mount Everest and the bottom of the oceans, to name but a few. 
We have thoroughly explored this planet, more than thirty years have passed since we set foot on the moon. 
It's high time for mankind to conquer our nearest neighbor in the planetary system: Mars. 
That's why I propose a large scale commitment to a manned mission to Mars. 
Let us establish a permanent colony on Mars! 
Sending a mission to Mars to establish the first extraterrestrial colony in the history of man would truly be an enormous project. 
Something like the 60's great Lunar Project in the USA. 
Though, what I'm proposing isn't a one-nation effort, but instead a project to engage the entire world community.  
A mission to Mars would be a giant project, and that means more cooperation among nations. 
The more people of different origin cooperates, the greater the possibility becomes of them recognizing their similarities rather than their differences, thus promoting understanding between the peoples of the world. 
In this respect a project like this can actually act as a preserver of peace, much like the cooperation among European countries in the European Union. 
Another aspect of the project has to do with the environment. 
Just like when man got his first view of Earth from the moon, I think that a settlement on Mars could open our eyes to see what a small and fragile planet we live on. 
I believe a new perspective on our planet would spark renewed effort to save it. 
As has been stated in recent years, saving the environment is a global issue. 
The new network of decision makers involved in the Mars effort would probably be of great help in finding new ways of cooperation in this issue as well. 
At this stage you might say, 'Hey, wait a minute, isn't this going to be unimaginably expensive? 
Won't a project like this divert scare resources from other important areas like healthcare, schools and the environment?' 
Firstly, I think that we must accept that an undertaking of this size will always cost a lot of money. 
However, I believe that it must be seen in contrast to the achievement. 
It is not possible to put a price tag on forwarding the boundaries of human civilization. 
Secondly, the money and other resources spent on this project would not be wasted. 
Great amounts of money would be spent on research that in the long run would benefit, not only the Mars effort, but also all sorts of different industries. 
An illustrative example from the Lunar Project is the new material: Gore-Tex. 
This material was first developed by NASA to be used in space. 
Later it has become an enormous industry with a multitude of products in a wide range of areas, such as ski clothing and artificial blood vessels. 
Finally, spending money on research would benefit education. 
More students would become interested in natural science and higher education in general. 
That would further promote hi-tech industries, which in turn would help raise productivity levels in the future. 
So schools and education would not loose recourses because of this project, quite the contrary. 
When summarizing the arguments, I recognize three different points of importance: First, our nature as explorers. 
Establishing outposts in space is the next natural step in the evolution of human civilization. 
Second, the 'unifying project.' 
I visualize the project as being something that could help us humans to gain new insights and realize that we live on a small fragile planet, something to help save the environment and keep peace. 
Third, the economical argument. 
Whether or not the project would be profitable depends, I suspect, on how you define profitable. 
Personally I argue that there would be enormous synergy effects form this project and that the money would be well spent. 
In the end I would give the project an 'all systems go for launch.'
",False
" Humans need to stop eating anonymous meat and dying their petpoodles pink.  
Animals have always been important to mankind. 
In the beginning they served only as food on the table, but soon animals became useful in other aspects as well. 
Humans learned to keep animals close to themselves, cows were used for meat and their skin for gaining leather. 
Tamed dogs became important hunting partners and appreciated members of the family.  	 
Modern man also keeps pets in a large extent, even though problems with allergy more and more often prevents people from getting cats and dogs. 
For people who live alone or far from families a cat can be not only a kept animal but almost as good as a close friend. 
Some homes for the elderly have purchased cats as company for the people living there and even the most senile patients have responded positively to the animals. 
In some countries you can find special cemetaries for animals alone, where miniature stones mark the grave of a beloved pet. 
I also believe that it's good for children to be responsible for an animal and that they can learn a lot from it.  	 
Humans are, though at present times in a civilized way, nevertheless by nature meat-eaters and like the other animals we can't help what's in our nature. 
But there are different ways to find meat to eat. 
Our ancestors hunted animals and killed them on the spot, while we can transport meat in form of living creatures all over Europe just to butcher them where it costs less to get it done. 
Nowadays people don't realize what they are eating anymore when buying the neatly enclosed in plastic packages of meat in the stores. 
It would be good for us to get a face to the rumproast and with it some understanding about animals and how we ought to care for them. 
I firmly believe that we eat far to much meat per person and year anyway. 
The average American is said to have pounds of unprocessed meat inside himself. 
Today it is in many places possible to buy ecological food, even meat for those who want it. 
Ecological alternatives are available in a lot of articles and are produced in a environmentally friendly way by local farmers instead of the food that could have been transported halfway around the globe. 	 
Some people claim that if we, instead of keeping large pieces of land for grazing cattle that are to become meat, used that same land for cultivating crops for direct human consumption could solve a lot of the problems of world starvation. 
I'm not sure how true this is, but if it's even a little truth in it, we should consider in just how high esteem we hold our hamburgers.  	 
If something should separate us from the other animals it is claimed to be our bigger brains and our ability to feel compassion with others. 
Sadly, we do not demonstrate this in our relationship towards animals. 
When we humans lived in the outdoors as well we treasured the animals and depended largely upon them while we nowadays just see them as anonymous foodstuffs we bring home in neat boxes from ICA. 
We use animals for experimenting in getting ourselves shampoo that doesn't sting in our eyes or in acchieving the perfect mascara. 
Experiments on animals such as cats and dogs are being done all the time, which can occasionally upset the public. 
It's always worse when it's cute animals and not nasty rats. 
Heavens forbid someone took the cat from someones family and shaved his fur off and put hairdying liquid on him! 
Mankinds'relationship to animals is in many ways more complicated now than it has ever been before.
","Listening to, and understand spoken english is something I think most swedish people, especially the younger generation are rather good at. 
This is probably much thanks to TV, movies and american/british music.  	 
I have never myself been abroad working as an au-pair in England or USA, but several of my friends have. 
That is surely the best way for anyone to learn english, speaking, writing and understanding the language, because surrounded by english-speaking people you really have no choice.  	 
I seldom have problems understanding spoken english, since I have been studying the language in school for quite a lot of years now. 
The english spoken by teachers to students may of course be quite different from the real thing. 
It is always pleasant noticing you have been translating english from TV or movies without even considering the fact, nor missing the swedish textline on the bottom of the screen. 	 
Reading english can sometimes be more difficult than understanding someone talking to you in english. 
I found that if you say words you don't understand out loud, you can often hear what they mean.  	 
It takes a little while for the brain to adjust to english books but when I passed the first stage of ""oh God I don't understand a word of this"" reading english is usually not an unsolvable problem. 	 
I've been studying arthistory and anthropology here in Uppsala recently, and the literature in those courses have been mostly american or british, so by now I am quite used to reading books in english. 
It is often a lot easier to read and comprehend literature written in american english than what is written in british english. 	 
When you are reading popular books and get to the inevitable point of facing a word you don't understand I believe it is better to skip it and just continue reading. 
In most cases you understand it's meaning from the context, so there is really no reason to stop reading when you're enjoying it. 
You will just loose your confidence and grow bored, if you have to look up the first word you don't understand.  	 
Speaking english is always a question of guts. 
Even though I know I could manage if I found my self dropped of in London on my own, I still tend to hesitate actually speaking english when I don't have to. 
Maybe this has to do with my swedish temper.  	 
When you are talking to someone else with another native language than english it is easier to be brave and experiment with the parts of english language you actually do master. 
It wasn't a problem in school and I if don't really feel comfortable using it now it is just because of the lack of practice recently. 	 
I myself certainly do not go around correcting people speaking the most incomprehensible swedish, and I really don't think Americans would do that to me either, but still... 	
Writing in english is in comparison to speaking it both easier and harder. 
It can be a problem finding the correct words, something that can be really annoying and tiresome for the writer as well as the reader of the text. 
I know in my head what I wan't to write but the words don't pop up in there as fast as I would want them to. 
When you are having trouble finding words in a conversation someone will surely help you or understand your point anyway. 
Problems like these will, I hope, go away with time and with continuing practise. 	 
Badly written english is, I think, worse than badly spoken english. 
When someone can't orally find the right words, is one thing, but badly spelled and poorly written english is just really bad. 	 
Perhaps you shouldn't write anything (or not show it) in english until you really master the language, but how can one learn without practice?
",True
"This assignment is an assessment of my strengths and weaknesses in the English language. 
To be able to explain why I have some strengths and weaknesses, I will start by telling a little bit about who I am and what I have been doing in my life.  
I am 32 years old, so it was quite a while ago since I went to high school. 
I do not have any specific memories of the lessons in English from that time. 
I was not interested in English and not good at it either.  
The turning point, that made me interested in English, was when I started to travel. 
Suddenly I realized the use of knowing languages, and the most useful language was obviously English. 
My first trip abroad was to the USA 1987, but I could hardly communicate in English! 
It was a terrible experience and when I came home I tried to improve my English in various ways. 
For eight years I worked, saved up money and made one long journey each year. 
I traveled both in the USA, Asia and within Europe, and English was useful everywhere. 
After 1995 I went back to school, first ""Komvux"" for three semesters and after that I have been studying at the University here in Uppsala. 
Almost all literature in all courses has been in English.  
This was a little bit of my background. 
I will now start the assessment of the different aspects of my knowledge in English. 
A mutual feature in all aspects though, is that I am doing quite well on the communicative components, e.g. spontaneous conversation, reading comprehension and personal letters, and not so well on the linguistic components, e.g. grammar. 
Listening y understanding in spoken English is good. 
I have lived in both the USA and Malaysia for quite a while and have got to know every day English quite well. 
The definition of ""every day"" is, in this case, conversations with people, the news, films and so forth.   
Reading I have learned most of my English from reading fiction books and newspapers, watching television and by talking to people. 
Today I can understand almost all English in written form, preferably American English. 
The more technical English has improved after reading books in English on every course I have taken here in Uppsala. 
These last seven semesters I have studied Political Science, National Economics, Sociology and Psychology. 
In the beginning of each course I have had to look up a lot of words and terms. 
It does not take that long, though, to be familiar with a new technical vocabulary.  
Speaking The next area is how well I speak English. 
I will divide speaking into vocabulary, pronouncing and grammar.  
I do not have the vocabulary of a native speaker. 
Even so I can speak almost fluently, if I do not know a word I can usually talk ""around it"" and explain what I mean anyway. 
This was hard when I first got to know English. 
I often wanted to translate every word, if I could not find the synonym I got flustered and stopped talking until I had found the word I was looking for. 
I think this is a common phenomenon among people who have just learned another language beside their mother tongue.  
Pronouncing English can be quite difficult. 
When I have heard a word, I can usually pronounce it. 
There are exceptions though, which seem impossible to get right, an example is ""legitimate"". 
God knows I have practiced with Al Pacino to ""The God Father""! 
Joking apart, what is difficult in that particular case is the ""g-sound"". 
Other difficulties can be the emphasis, where to stress a word. 
Especially if one have never heard the word, but is reading it for the first time. 
Finally there is grammar. 
This is my huge weakness when it comes to the English language. 
I am sort of self-taught and I usually speak and write what I feel is right. 
This is the main reason I am taking this course. 
I want to improve my English. 
I want it to be more correct. 
Besides I have a feeling that my English-speaking friends do not correct me when I say something wrong, even if I have asked them to do so, unless they have no idea what I am talking about.  
Writing Last but not least, my skills in how to write in English. 
This is the part I find most difficult to do. 
One reason is my difficulties with grammar, another reason which makes writing more difficult than speaking is spelling. 
Also you want to be more correct and formal in your vocabulary when you write in English, from when you speak it.  
I do not find vocabulary or spelling to be a huge obstacle, though. 
My big problem/challenge is grammar, which I hope will improve during this semester.
","I still remember when I first met the language in school. 
It was in the third class and we had to choose an English name and an English city. 
So I changed identity and become ""Kate from Liverpool"". 
It was a funny way to make children interested in English. 
I have studied the language for 10 years and it has been very interesting but sometimes very hard. 
I will assess my strengths and weaknesses in the English language in the four skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing. 
At the end I will make a summary of my thoughts.  
Listening Since I was a little girl I have listened to the English language on radio and TV. 
I love watching British TV-programmes and I'm also a big fan of British music. 
So my strength is that I have always listened to the language and when I like to do something it is easier to understand.  
When I watch TV I can always look at the text-screen if I don't understand a special word. 
But now when I take part in English lectures, I often find it hard to understand everything because there are so many special expressions that I have never heard of before. 
I hung up on these expressions and forget to go on listening. 
Therefore I'm going to write these words down at once and later when I got time I will check them and try to learn them. 
In that way I will get rid of my weakness of hunging up on special words.   
Reading  I have not read many books in English. 
It depends on that it takes so long time for me because I always have to check every word which I don't understand. 
But I have promised myself to read more since I have been told that it is very useful reading literature when you want to improve in a foreign language.   y strength is that I usually read books, in Swedish though, which are originally written by authors from Britain. 
Especially I like reading detective-stories of Agatha Christie, Elisabeth George and P.D James. 
These books are very detailed and I therefore learn how British people think and act and also how the society works. 
(Of course are not all Britons murderers. 
Some of them are actually policemen).  
Speaking Unfortunately I have not got the opportunity to live abroad and I have therefore not been able practising the English language. 
Occasionally I have spent some weeks in English-talking countries but I have felt very insure of my ability of speaking English. 
Of course after a few pints I can speak quite well because I feel more comfortable and relaxed. 
But I can't go on drinking beer every time I want my English to flow.  
Though, speaking English is my biggest weakness. 
I feel uncomfortable when I don't find the right words and expressions. 
I also want to learn more slang-words so I can speak in a more ""easy"" way.  
Writing Writing essays are not my strength neither in Swedish nor in English. 
I have difficulties in expressing myself correctly and I need to be more creative when I write essays.  
Anyhow I think I'm very good at spelling. 
My teachers have always claimed that it is very important so I have tried to spend much time learning how to spell. 
Therefore it is a pity (of course it is good) when you nowadays can check the spelling by help from the spelling-controller in your computer.  
Summary y weaknesses in the English language partly depend on that I have never been able to practice the language abroad. 
Therefore I'm not good at speaking English and I find difficulties in knowing special expressions and words. 
I have always thought that writing is boring because I think it is hard to express myself.  y strengths are that I'm good at spelling. 
I have also a quite big knowledge in the British society since I have read a lot of English literatures and I have watched many British TV-programmes. 
I'm really looking forward to improving English, my English! 
And I think it will be very fascinating to go to England in autumn.
",False
" School report  At my school visits in England I noticed a few differences between English and Swedish schools. 
First of all I noticed a difference in how English and Swedish schools look upon themselves. 
I sensed English schools to operate with a feeling of not being part of a national school system to the same degree as Swedish schools do. 
I think the feeling of ""school individualism"" that I got in England was created right on the arrival at the schools. 
They all have prospects for you to read, telling about ""their"" school more than about ""the"" school. 
The policy of the school and its specialities is also a big thing. 
Furthermore, many teachers, when they talk to you, say things like: at this school. . . our students. . .the way we work . . . our policy is to . . , etc, which make you feel that they have got their own thing going. 
Swedish schools might have their own policies and their own methods as well, you just don't here much talk about them. 
What you do hear in Sweden, though, is a lot of complaining. 
I have heard teachers complain about their colleagues, their students, and their recently remodelled and fully equipped staff room. 
And also, of course, I've heard them complain about the Head. 
At English schools, almost all teachers I talked to put their emphasis on what they thought was good about their school, what they believed to be good about its students, and so on. 
You would hear them say things like; 'we do not have much of this or that, but we manage to do a very good job', or, 'in spite of the fact that we don't have much of a staff room we manage to communicate with each other.  
Discipline is another area where English and Swedish schools differ. 
There is more discipline at English schools, but more than that, discipline is not only a matter of the classroom. 
Wherever the students are, in corridors or outside, there is always someone to tell them, if they do not act according to the standards of the school. 
It was clear that at most schools all teachers pulled at the same direction. 
No one was on their own in their efforts to maintaine discipline. 
It was teamwork. 
Of course there were students causing noice and disturbances, there were students who talked, shouted, and ran down the corridors when they were not supposed to. 
Just like in Sweden. 
But at the English schools they were not neglected. 
At a Swedish school I once heard a teacher say to another: ""I let the seven graders have the afternoon off today, well I mean, they asked me, and what can I do? 
If I had said no, they would have left anyway."" 
I was astonished when I heard it, but if I would have heard a teacher at an English school say the same thing, I would not have believed my ears. 
And I can't imagine the reaction of the other teachers.  
Even though I am somewhat impressed by the energy and motivation English teachers show in their daily effort to maintain discipline, I could not see the need for it at all occasions. 
Some schools seemed to have (some) rules and regulations for the sake of having rules and regulations. 
At Langdon School (a school for almost 2000 students) students were not allowed to wear jackets or such in corridors, or in leisure areas (not to mention classrooms). 
Many of the students were cold and freezing due to the low temperature inside (which basically was the same as outside), and many had their jackets on anyway, when they thought teachers were not watching. 
Of course many of them ""where caught in action"", and there was a lot of shouting in the corridors by teachers ordering the students to take their jackets off. 
I discussed the matter with the Head who admitted he had his doubts about the no jacket rule, even though he vaugely pointed to the fact that it was meant to help keeping order in general. 
I have mentioned the low indoor temperature at Langdon School, and room temperatures is another difference between English and Swedish schools. 
Most English students, however, did not seem to suffer from what I'am sure would be regarded as ""unacceptable working conditions"" in Sweden. 
To us, who visited the schools, it semed likely that the draught and the cold would affect the students health, but I really think we were the ones who suffered the most. 
What must have an effect on English students health, and their ability to concentrate, is what they eat. 
Or do not eat, really. 
The school lunch is definutely the most fascinating difference between English and Swedish schools. 
I must admit, however, that I do not really know if Swedish school children eat the food avaiable at school, or if they by candy and crisps instead. 
But I do know that Swedish schools do not sell candy bars, bags of crisps, or cakes and sweets as an alternative for the regular lunch. 
English schools do, and that is what many English school children eat. 
Needless to say, security and school uniforms are other noticable differences, but known to us all, as I believe them to be, I will not dwell further on those matters.
"," A HISTORY FULL OF LANGUAGE CLEANERS  Having read Shirley E Peckhams article Cleaning up the language , I am left with a feeling of disappointment. 
At first I thought her article would develope into sensible criti-cism over those who fear a devastating damage caused to our language by our young ones, simply by their speaking it.  	
I thought I would find some comments in Mrs Peckhams article regarding the fact that adults who fear degeneration to a language have expressed their fears for as long as there have been news papers publishing letters to the press - and that yet no language anywhere, at anytime, is known to have degenerated due to influence of its younger spea-kers. 	
I was looking forward to find some arguments - based on common sence and research - against statements such as: ""For if children are to be allowed to continue in this foul anti-social way [to swear and use words like ""fucking""] for much longer it will become general practise for all and everyone in future years to behave in like way."" 	
As I red on, my sensation of disappointment developed, nurished from the fact that Mrs Peckham herself turned out to be one more in the endless line of people who feel called upon to state their opinions on the subject of the young causing ruin to our lang-uage. 
The quotation above is from her own article. 	
The quotation clearly shows Mrs Peckhams opinion about the danger with a ""slack"" language, but it is, however, important to acknowledge the difference between a personal opinion and an overall wellknown fact.  	
A fact it is - as mentioned above, that the language of juvenails seems always to have caused irritation and rage among adult speakers, maybe to a higher degree the older the adult. 	
Irritation is fine. 
Disaproval is fine. 
There is no call for everybodys immediate acceptance of a style of language one does not improve of. 
But - a bit of picking under the surface shows that in most cases the real reason behind the complaints is that ""I want things to be as they were when I was little, no one needed swear words when I was a kid so no one should need them now.  	
Well, we don't. 
The actual use of swear words has no explicit quality in itself that we cannot bear without. 
We can very well function without them.  	
On the other hand, the fact that we can function without swear words does not mean that they have no function. 
When Mrs Peckham shoots away her litany on our children's ""foul anti-social way"" she is, social-psychologically, in the right field, but all the same - mistaken. 
Mrs Peckham regards childrens ""ways"" as an anti-social behaviour when, within the group, their ""ways"" is rather a social behaviour! 
Mrs Peckham must ex-cuse me, but I seriously doubt she is part of such a group. 
The swear words were never meant for her ears.  	
Even if only for the ears of the one you are actually talking too, why swear words at all? 
To answer that question we must look into the different functions swear words have.  	
At some occassions using a swear word is the only way to add enough emphasis to what is beeing said, the only way for instance, to give words to a very strong and overwhelming feeling, this simply because no regular word posesses the mysterious strength of a swear word. 
Nevertheless, the art of swearing is a difficult one, the occassions when a swear word is right at place are few, and far to many people use them far to much - but in most cases though, for other reasons then to get the right expression. 	
Another, and probably the most common function of a swear word is as a fill-in for another word. 
When so, the reasons behind the use of swear words could be habitual or due to poor vocabulary, or, as Mrs Peckham suggests, due to the ""Smiths""-effect - we want to belong to, be part, of a group. 	
In all aspects, when a swear word functions as a fill-in for another word, the thing to do, is not to beat up the children - even if the boxing around the ears is just metaphorically speaking, or ""not quite"" as Mrs Peckham would put it. 
The thing to do  - is to read around their ears, a responsibility, a God damn duty, -""if it can be termed that"" - of all parents.  	
For anyone who is interested in facts there is research on the matter, displaying a significant difference in verbality and reading ability between schoolchildren who where read to when they were little, and those who were not. 
Experts suggests that we start to read to our children within their first year! 	
Read to or not, people will use swear words even in the future, but it would be nice if this could be done by their explicit choice and not by lack of alternatives. 
Instead of an ""almigthy cleanup"", I suggest, that as adults and parents we dust ourselves off, and help our children to become able to make that choice. 	
Read to your children, and if you must swear, do it right!
",True
" TELEVISION- A PART OF CHILDREN'S UPBRINGING  Television is one of our most successful media. 
It is a good information medium and it is nice from an entertaining point of view, which children usually realize. 
They often start to watch television at a very early age. 
Obviously, television is a part of children's upbringing, which is good for their language development. 
The intimidating thing is that there are too much violence in television, which not should be seen by children. 
In USA they use the V chip to protect children from the violent parts. 
Here in Sweden we don't have these and therefore, I think parental responsibility is very important.  
To begin with, I think that television is of great importance for children's language development. 
By watching television, they listen to the spoken language in conversations and also to the written language in text reading, which give them the opportunity to adopt the language. 
My young cousin, for instance, often use phrases and expressions she has heard in some television programme. 
I think this is rather common for young viewers, so they can learn a lot by watching television.   
Another thing, which makes television into a bad thing though, is that children more easily accept violence if they watch it on television every day. 
Some children may not realize that if they shoot a friend in his/ her stomach, for example, he/ she would probably not run away or not even survive. 
So they make crimes without thinking about the consequences. 
Naturally, television influences viewers and for the young ones, it could be difficult for them to see the differences between television's world and the real world.    
Lastly, can we protect children from the violence on television? 
In USA they have tried to solve this problem with the so-called V chip; an antiviolence chip. 
Ginia Bellafante writes about this solution in the article ""Locking out violence"". 
Here she describes that TV-programmes are rated on a scale of violence from 1-4, so if you install the V chip you decide what level of violence you are able to watch. 
For me, it seems like a fantastic solution. 
But the V chip just matches the TV-set you have installed it in, so if you have more than one TV it becomes very expensive. 
Bellafante discusses this in her article and she says: ""...parents surely won't replace every one"".  
However, this high-tech solution doesn't exist in Sweden, but we have the violent films late in the evenings, which precede with a recommended minimum age of the viewers. 
I don't think this is enough, so parental responsibility is a necessity; parents should decide what programmes children watch. 
A documentary film about the second world war, for instance, could be a afternoon television programme and allowed for children, so the young viewer will maybe watch the programme and be exposed to too much violence. 
Therefore, children should not watch television alone. 
An adult person could explain for the child and answer the child's questions about the context. 
Owing to this, I think it is necessary to select what parts children are able to watch or not.  
To sum up, I think that the most important thing when it comes to watching television, is parental responsibility, because we cannot give the responsibility to the children themselves. 
Firstly, should parents help the children to select what are suitable for them to watch or not. 
Secondly, should parents also watch television together with children in case they have some thoughts or become frighten. 
Television programmes without the violent parts, are of great importance for a pedagogical upbringing, because children develop their language by listening to and watching television.
"," BREAKING THE LAW  In 1994 I became a member of Amnesty International. 
One of their basic principles is that they are an opponent of death penalty. 
I do agree with their opinion because death penalty is an unfair way to punish people. 
Firstly the executed person could have been innocent. 
Secondly the law says it is prohibit to perpetrate murder but the law itself is allowed to execute a person. 
Finally there are several alternatives to death penalty which are more humane.  
To begin with the perpetrator -what if the one is not guilty? 
Imagine that a person has been convicted and killed and then it turns out that the person who was sent to death was innocent. 
At this point it is useless to apologise. 
On the other hand, the victim and the relatives would probably want to see the perpetrator dead. 
Imagine that a member of your family has been killed, would you not want the murderer killed? 
Undoubtedly this is a very complex discussion. 
Thus there should be a consequent law.  	  oreover, the law is not consequent when it comes to capital punishment. 
Though the law prohibit a person to perpetrate a murder the law should not be able to murder someone either. 
In other words capital punishment is a contradiction against itself. 
In some areas of Asia there have been cases when people have been executed without legal proceedings. 
A person who just is suspect to be a criminal could be executed. 
I think that the law should be responsible for the decision of whom is or is not guilty. 
And also all individuals should have the right to investigate their case in court. 	  
Unfortunately the court could not tolerate criminality, it must be emphasised what is right or wrong. 
But a person who have perpetrate a crime once is easily capable to do it a second time. 
In addition to this an execution of the perpetrator would be a solution and even a lifetime in prison would prevent this. 
To execute a criminal is wrong, its just like taking revenge, but to send the guilty person to prison for a lifetime is more logical. 
In my opinion the criminals deserve lifetime penalties though they have destroyed another person's life or maybe many person's lives. 
On the contrary some people say that lifetime penalty is not severe enough. 
They say that death penalty should frighten people to avoid criminality. 
But statistics show that there are not less crimes in the areas were there have capital punishment. 	  
Other people make propaganda for death penalty based on economical reasons. 
They say it is cheaper to execute a person than to send the one to prison. 
In general this is not truth. 
Naturally this depends on what kind of executions are chosen. 
However, I do not think it is the right way to see this from an economical point of view. 
It is a more complex problem than that.  	  
In conclusion I will stress that death penalty should not be acceptable of any reasons. 
That is an opinion I share with many people. 
Once I have had an argumentation with a friend of mine who is a relative to a raped person. 
I did realise that my arguments could not even be compared to my friend's arguments full of anger and revenge against the perpetrator. 
I really do understand my friend. 
Luckily the attacked person survived but she is hurt though and probable she wont get over it -ever. 
But somehow to create justice there must be a fair law that everyone should follow. 
Think of it in this way, if someone breaks the law the one should of course get punished, but if the person gets executed one could say that the law is breaking the law itself.
",True
"I write this Essay bekaus it is very important for me to assess my strengths and wecknesses. 
It halps to define my level and make my oun gouls. 
All of the English students have the main goul-to manage this cours. 
Every subject we learn has its oun goul. 
And every individual has his personal goul too, because we have different levels. 
We have different levels in our oun skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. 
In my Essey I will write about my levels in listening, reading, speaking and writing. 
I will define my level, how good or bad I'm at the different skills. 
I will start with speaking because to communicate on the hight level is most important for me. 
It is the question about my self-confidence. 
Speaking helps us to show who we are. 
What we tolk and how we do it makes a pikture of us. 
That is why it so importante for me. 
Now about my problems. 
I have a good vocabulari. 
I am good at understanding, listening and reading. 
But to know words is not enought, to understand people and books contants is not enought.  
To speak with other people on the high level, to be on the hight level in conversation-it is a point for me and my problem. 
When I talk to people I use the words I new during the long time and I can not pick up from my mind the other new words I would like to use in those case. 
I have a problem with picking-up new words from my mind.  
Some times I have dificalties in explanation. 
I feel frustration when I can not explain me in English as well as I do in Swidish or Russian. 
To explain my self well, to tell what I really mean, to send a right messige is very important for me. 
The other people whom I meet every day, do not know me as well as friends. 
In this case they can not appreciate my 'I inside'. 
They take me as I speak. 
They do not know how good I am in Russian and Swedish, how deep I am in my soul and how intelligent in my brain. 
I think that how we speak make some imange av us. 
Our ebility for explonation is so closely tied tu our identity as a person. 
Self-confidence plays a big role in my speaking. 
Wen I am not sure about my self it makes me to speak badly. 
When I have self-confidence I speak better. 
And when I speak better I feel more confidence. y speaking depends av different things: my mood, occasian, people I speak with. 
There are some people I can speak without any problems. 
With some other people having conversation can be more difficult. 
When people do not concentrate on the subject we talk about but just try to find some fouls in my speaking it makes me nervous and I start to think about my grammar and lose my confidence. 
Pronanciatian is my other problem, but not so big. 
I have to remind my self some times to pronance English when I am talking English. 
I am sotisfited with my reading. 
When I read I cath the sense. 
I need not open the dictionari. 
I do it when I want to be sured about my guesses regarding the new words meaning. 
And when I do it I always right, that makes me happy. 
I have to admit that writing is the most difficult skill for me, as you see. 
Most difficult is to start and I know I make a lot of mistakes that makes me feel ashamed. 
When I write I can be in the different levels.   
Conklusion. 
Now I have to end my Composition. 
In this Essay I wrote about all four skills, but mostly I consentrate me on speaking. 
I wrote about importance av assasment my strengths and weaknesses.  
I have to do a big work to solve my problems with English. 
But no pain, no gain! 
I have to praktice. 
Praktice makes perfect. 
I will be satisfited with my life when I will be satisfited with my English.
","Some times I envy my mother. 
Not especially because her occupation is to teach - as a matter of fact, I am rather surprised that I could think about becoming a teacher, having grown up in a family full of teachers spending all their time preparing lessons, mark student essays and so on - but for her sense of learning different languages without any difficulties. 
I am certainly not like that myself! 
I have to get a real good sense of the language first and hopefully, after that, become able to learn more about the grammar rules and the structure of the language. 
During my time in school, I never particularly liked the English lessons. 
It was not that I thought it was unimportant and I would not had mind at all managing quite a few different languages, but I did not find it very exciting during the time I had to learn the language. 
I have tried to remember what we were taught during the English lessons, but I am sorry to admit that I can hardly remember anything except from a few fractions. 
I managed to get the grade ""3"", but I am sure it was not a very strong one. 
Listening to English was quite all right and I did not find it difficult to read English texts either, even if I almost never read any English books and would not have managed to read the daily newspaper with any great success. 
I do not think I was very much trained to actually speak the English language - at least not in a more freely way. 
Concerning the written English, mine was not very good either, even if I did write a few essays in school. 
I do not believe my knowledge of grammar was particularly good!  
I would not have been attending this English course if I had not been working in England as an au-pair. 
That time made me fall in love with the British English! 
It took its time, though. 
I know I improved my English quite a lot during my stay in England, especially in the speaking and listening point of view. 
I manage to speak fluently, even though it was not of course perfectly, and it was just on the phone that I sometimes still found it difficult to understand the spoken language. 
I was quite used to the English by the time I went back home to Sweden again and I remember that I was even using some peculiar expressions in Swedish the first days. 
My sister asked me where to put the tray and I answered, pointing with my finger towards the cupboard: because I had the English expression ""it goes there"" in mind. 
(In Swedish that sounds like the tray is walking away by it self...) 
I believe the situation confirmed that thinking in English was naturally to me by that time.  
I also attended an English course, ""the Cambridge First Certificate in English"" at the South Oxfordshire Technical College in Henley-on-Thames, where I was living with my au-pair-family. 
I believe it was a good idea to practice not just the oral use of the language, but also the written. 
I did not find it very difficult at that time - not even the written work - and I did not need to put very much effort in doing my homework. 
By the time I was going back to Sweden again, my English course was not finished yet. 
I joined the same international course in Uppsala when I was back in Sweden again, which made it possible for me to continue to get my graduation. 
At that time I met the next frustration; suddenly the English course seemed to be at another level - much more difficult! 
I had to work very hard to keep up with it. 
I was no longer surrounded by the English language 24 hours a day and I never used it myself either. 
No wonder I felt a bit anxious to open the letter with the results from the exam when it arrived in the letterbox. 
Never the less I did reach the highest grade - a big A! 
Ever since - it is almost 16 years ago now! - I have been convinced that my English is rather good and fluent (even though I very seldom get the opportunity to use it).  
Then, just recently, frustration number three occurred to me: I wrote the diagnostic examination to attend the English A-level course. 
I still can feel my selfconfidence shivering after the examination! 
I disappointingly found out that language knowledge certainly is not going to stay in your mind, like books in the bookshelf, if you are not using it! 
Of course that is so! 
How could I believe anything else?   
Well, at least I will not give up! 
I do want to learn the English language and I do want to become an English teacher even if I am very well aware of the fact that I have to work very hard to get there!
",False
"As I'm contemplating my relationship to the English language, I realize that I have never really paid it much attention. 
Having learnt English at the age of eleven, during a one-year stay in Boston Mass., I've had the feeling of getting by, more than well. 
Since I signed up for this English A2 course, however, I've been having some serious doubts about my knowledge, and use of the language. 
What do I really know? 
What are my strengths and weaknesses when it comes to reading, writing, speaking and listening to the English language.  
I will take this opportunity to take a closer look at these questions, and hopefully find some answers to them. 
Furthermore I want to glance at the reasons for things being the way they are, and finally, what can be done about it.  
Reading  Well I might as well start with the worst of the four. 
I haven't read much at all in my lifetime, fact or fiction, Swedish or non- Swedish. 
Having read maybe ten to fifteen English novels, it obviously scares me to look at the literature assignments we've been given.   
Having begun the task of reading in English, different things come to mind.  
The most obvious is that I'm a fairly slow reader. 
I need to concentrate hard, not to get side tracked. 
I also have a tendency to read past words that have absolutely no meaning to me. 
Not having the time or the energy to look them up in a dictionary. 
This means, in a broader sense, that I'm interpreting the books in a very subjective way- only taking in what I understand and what I feel is relevant to me.  
Writing  As our teacher, Mr. 
Glover, so accurately pointed out at his lecture, reading and writing are very closely related. 
The more you read - the better you write! 
This of course does not look good when you acknowledge my reading history.  
I'm just as slow writing as I am reading. 
In my writing, however, my limited vocabulary is not quite so obvious, since I choose the words to be in the text. 
On the other hand, if I was to write a couple of essays at this point, I'm sure I would repeat myself to a more or less boring extent.  
I believe, and hope, that my lack of reading and writing skills, are merely do to the fact that I'm inexperienced in these areas. 
And as an English student I'm now ready to correct these, I admit, fairly large defects.  
Speaking  I know that I'm not suffering from any speech deficiency. 
I love talking! 
In my view, the best way of communicating is face to face.   
When it comes to my English speech, I feel I'm confident, at least regarding my pronunciation. 
When speaking to another person it's even easier to cover up any lack of vocabulary. 
I simply describe the word I'm looking for.  
Another vital ingredient in speaking is the ability to transform your language to accommodate the particular person to whom you're speaking. 
This is something I feel I master, in both Swedish and English.  
Listening   When listening to an English person in every day conversation, I do okay. 
Again, it is easier when I don't understand something that is being said, to ask the person I'm talking to.  
Listening in other situations, when the person speaking is not actually in my reach (radio, TV etc.) 
I would say is no problem either. 
But as I've been thinking about it, I realize that I make choices when to listen, and what to listen to. 
In other words - I don't listen to things that I do not understand.   
Summary  The most important aspect of my relationship to the English language is that I do know how to use the language. 
But what strikes me while writing this essay, is that I use it within a limited framework. 
And the more I'm exposed the language, the more I realize just how limited I am.   
Finally I would like to point out that at this stage in my education, however confused I might feel, I'm really looking forward to strengthening my weaknesses and improving the things, I already feel I master. 
I'm a hard working woman when I put my mind to it - and I believe I had better do, just that.
","The ability to make one self understood as well as the ability to understand what other people say and mean are, by all means, presciuos commodities. 
The importance of a mastered communication in our world, which is getting more and more globalized, can't be stressed enough I think.  
Theese facts became very clear to me when I arrived in the US for the first time back in 1985. 
I was on a visit to se my relatives and a few friends. 
Until then I had not been very keen on studying foreign languages in school. 
Probably because I didn't know the true value of knowing another language except my own. 
But that was to be changed when I formed my first English sentences on the American soil. 
I discovered how ""the little non-American"", me that was, suddenly became important after having said a few words in English. 
And I promised myself: ""From now on I'm going to do the best I can to improve my English"". 
Have I kept my promise? 
Frankly and regretably, I don't think so.  
So, what about the standard of my current English? 
Is it good? 
Well, if my English is compared whith the English of an average swede, I think the answer would be yes. 
In my own opinion it's still not as good as it should be.  
In spite of my hearing loss I'm quite good at listening - at least when it comes to understanding the oral English. 
We have all been accustomed to hearing English brought to us every day by our tv-sets. 
And I have noticed that spoken English comes in a lot of varities, with a lot of different accents and dialects. 
So the fact that I'm a good listener could probably only be proved to be true after a few different conversations, in which I had to take part and in which I was forced to show that I was aware of what has been said.  
The best way to learn English is by reading, my English teacher once recommended. 
I have to admit that that recommendation didn't do me much good. 
Whenever reading has been mentioned I have been considered lazy. 
I try to read a novel or two in English by my own choice every summer when I off from studies. 
But this is probably not nearly enough in order to improve my reading skills. 
I wonder why I haven't become a frequent reader of English litterature considering all the interesting books in English that may be found. 
It really puzzles me.   
The English words which are spoken in the Swedish streets are far and few inbetween. 
Other languages than English, like Arabic, Finnish and Spanish for instance, are more frequently heard in Sweden. 
This is the reason why we are not given the possibilty to practice and improve our oral capability in English very often. 
It's a pity. 
Every time I get confronted by a foreigner speaking English my tounge gets a bit stiffer. 
Not because I feel uneasy or uncomfortable but because I haven't been prepared, neither mentally nor technically. 
This problem seems to be very distant - for obvious reasons - after a few weeks or even a few days in a country where English is the one and only language.  
The language which isn't spoken could perhaps be written. 
And the piece of paper you're holding in your hands is an example of how well I master the written English. 
Writing English is somewhat easier than speaking English, because you are given time to feel how you have expressed yourself by reading what you have written over and over again.   
So, the ability to communicate, including aspects like writing, reading and speaking, is one of the very important keys you need to posess if you want to get acces to the world we live in. 
This is one of the reasons why I've have started to study English this term.
",False
" DO NOT WORRY OLD LADY  rs. 
Peckham's article, in which she argued that the youngsters of today do not know how to use decent language, contained so many vague generalizations that I have to comment on some of her arguments which I consider to be incorrect. 
First of all, I am going to argue that youngsters do have a sense of what is considered acceptable language. 
Secondly. 
I will prove that the situations that Mrs. 
Peckham's has observed are not representative of all youngsters, and finally I will eliminate her nightmare scenario of our English becoming an f-language only. 
Youngsters do know how to use proper language.  	 
I think these youngsters know how to talk normally, I can assure that they do not use the f- or any other offending words when talking to their grandmothers or parents. 
For not so long ago I read an article that described children being extremely sensible of language variations, this being the case especially with bilingual children. 
These children have two mother tongues, mother and father may have different mother tongues and these children know at a very early age that in order to discuss with their parents they have to use one language with their mother and the other with their father.  	 
Secondly, Mrs. 
Peckham's observations are not to be taken seriously because she has observed youngsters in informal language situations, when youngsters are chatting with each other and these I think do not give a realistic picture of what these youngsters know about the language. 
Youngsters of today are in general much more relaxed when talking to each other compared to generations before and this I can say out of my own experience, me who was a youngster not so long ago. 
Therefore they are more likely to use even kind of words previously not acceptable in discussions. 
Greater openness in society and in the use of words can be seen in words like pussy or cock. 
I am certain that the youngsters of today have a more open way of talking about for example sex. 
I think it is good youngsters can use these words without blushing. 
The fact that Mrs. 
Peckham has chosen to draw her conclusion out of these discussions does not convince me at all because it would be like comparing my way of dressing when I am at school and when I have just got out of bed, there is a huge difference between these two situations, as there are in the use of language in different situations.  	 
Finally, I do not think these youngsters use the f-words in order to feel bigger and they are definitely not going to use the same way of talking all life through. 
Mrs. 
Peckham, it is not for feeling big that youngsters use the language they do. 
The reason is not to be like everybody else. 
I think they should not sound like middle aged men and women when they are talking to their friends, who are sixteen, that would sound very strange. 
Youngsters between eleven and sixteen are much more dependent on the group acceptance. 
They want to be a part of a group and that is how I think the logic of a teenager works. 
I think these youngsters come over this use of language as they grow up. 
This, together with the fact that language learning is a long process and is by no means completed at the age of eleven or sixteen, means that Mrs. 
Peckham has judged a process in progress. 
Youngsters have always, all through history, been accused of using totally improper language and somehow they always turned into totally normal human beings. 
The point I want to make is that there is not a real threat to English becoming an f-language.  	 
The phenomenon Mrs. 
Peckham sees as a threat is only one phase in the lives of this future generation. 
I am sure that their language use will improve as soon as they grow out of their child world and become more independent of their friends. 
They do know how to speak properly so instead of cleaning up the language all we can do is to wait and give a good example for our future language partners.
"," The rapid turnover to a more environmental adapted society  This essay will deal with some of the major causes behind the growing concern for the environment. 
In just a couple of decades the awareness of environmental matters has increased from next to nothing to becoming an important question. 
In dignity, the issue is now comparable to those of unemployment and health-care, just to mention a couple of examples. 
It has become a matter not only concerning just a few environmental activists, but also ordinary people and politicians as well as companies. 
In my essay I'll focus on the development in Sweden and mention a few examples of what has changed in recent years, as well as stating some of the causes behind the development.  
The focus of who should be said to be responsible for the damage caused by the human species has in the latest period of time drastically changed. 
Only about twenty years ago, almost only industries were thought to be blamed, but over the last period of time, we have come to realise that everybody need to take their responsibility.  
One visible change in this direction was when ordinary citizens began the recycling of waste, something that among other things was initiated by the detection that harmful elements were leaking out and polluting the groundwater. 
It was also because of the awareness of the untenable in expanding the waste grounds and that the alternative - burning waste - as well was causing harmful elements to spread. 
It all started with paper and bottles being recycled, but has expanded into covering almost any possible waste - plastic, batteries, tin cans, hazardous waste, composts, cloth (to second-hand shops, that has existed for a longer period of time though) etc. etc. 
The rapid growth of sorting waste material is both due to a wish from the public to take their share of responsibility, but just as much because of the help from the local authorities as well as stately founded laws. 
For example I can mention the one that producers themselves have to take responsibility for the package used for their products.  
The recycling trend mentioned above is a good example of what can be attained when the social organisations as well as the public cooperate. 
An example of a quick turnover of industries way of manufacturing into a more environmental adapted one, is the changeover from chlorine bleaching to non-chlorine bleaching of paper. 
Here the consumers almost only by virtue of their power as consumers made the change so immediate. 
As soon as they found out about the harm that this was causing the sea among other things, they simply ceased buying the products. 
This made them unprofitable and the paper industry changed its way of producing. 
This was a matter of fact an example presented by the Swedish minister-to-become of the European Board of Ministers, Margot Wallstrom. 
She as well is a good example of the importance the environmental questions has gained in recent years. 
That one of the top ministers in the Swedish government gets this kind of public function, the one of Environmental Minister in the EU.  
It is however not only because of individuals themselves finding out about various harmful elements in the environment, or by decisions taken by politicians, that makes us aware of the facts that make us change our way of thinking. 
Of great importance is the research made by scientists, whose results are spread and influence our minds.  
Some things we could not possibly be aware of without their work, are the thinned out ozonosphere and the fact that many elements are causing diseases and disturbances in the nature. 
Just to mention a couple of examples there are acidification of forests and lakes and mutations of various species. 
The changeover to lead-free petrol is for example much due to this kind of information.  
Why people ""all of a sudden"" care about the environment has many explanations, where I have mentioned a couple above for you to get an overview. 
It is a combination of many different causes, however I think the main one, simply is the one of surviving and the concern we have for our children. 
If we did not know that our way of living would harm us in any way, we probably would not try to change it. 
This is explained by the fact that a more and more comfortable way of leading our lives is what we always have striven for and also what causes the problems we are facing.   
References  Holm, Fredrik and Thunberg, Bo. 
1993. 
",False
" Sweden should not legalise drugs  This argumentative essay will deal with and argument against some of Thorsten Bodekull's reasons for legalising drugs in Sweden and will take up Cannabis as a drug in particular.  
Torsten Bodekull states in his article that we should follow Belgium and Holland and legalise ""soft drugs"" like Cannabis since it is not more dangerous than cigarettes and alcohol. 
He also claims that a person taking Cannabis will not go on to heavier drugs such as heroine. 
What he does not seem to know is that researches show that all narcotics have damaging effects on the human body-also Cannabis. 
During the sixties Cannabis was thought to be a harmless drug but all researches over the last decades show the opposite.   
Cannabis is the most common drug in all parts of Sweden and is the drug that youths come in contact with and try first. 
People who smoke the drug usually feel its' effect within minutes and it may last up to eight hours depending on how high the dose is. 
The effect is delayed when eating or drinking the drug so that it lasts longer and may be more difficult to control. 
People may become both physically and psychologically dependent on Cannabis but it is the psychological addiction that is the strongest dependence and addiction can occur over a very short time period.   
Some of the immediate effects of lower doses are elation, excitement and a feeling of well-being, increased pulse rate, increased appetite and increased sociability. 
Common side effects are confusion, restlessness, hallucinations, anxiety or panic, concentration difficulties and impaired coordination etc. 
High doses may cause coma. 
Long term effects are increased risk of lung cancer, slow confused thinking which have effects on learning, nerve damage, changes in personality, suppressed effects on sperms and an impaired immune system etc. 
Even more, Cannabis used during pregnancy can cause diminished birth weight, facial deformities and heart defects.  
Naturally all people who use Cannabis will not go on using heavier drugs but as the use of Cannabis increases, the tolerance level increases, and one need to take higher doses to get the same effect as in the beginning. 
This means that a person can take five to ten times higher doses than what they began with. 
Therefore it is very possible that a person goes on to hard drug use as well to get an effect.   
Another argument Torsten Bodekull uses in his article for legalising drugs is that regulations and laws do not stop people from using it. 
He believes that it is a waste of time and money to use resources to try to stop the occurrence of drugs since ""we cannot prohibit something that already has its roots in society"" He does not seem to be aware of the fact that Sweden has a low rate of drug addicts compared to many other countries and this due to our restrictive regulations. 
Statistics show that if a drug is easily available among friends and in schools the consumption of it increases. 
A comparison with alcohol and narcotics show the clear connection between availability and use. 
Alcohol is easy to get hold of at the liquor shop and is socially accepted in society, while narcotics are harder to get hold of and are less accepted.1980 the legal use of alcohol was abused by 300 000 people whereas illegal narcotics at the same time was esteemed to be abused by between 10 000 and 14 000 people.   
Societies attitude towards drugs is of great importance. 
To legalise drugs, either it is ""soft drugs"" such as cannabis or heavier ditto, would give the picture that there is no wrong in using it and more people would try it. 
It is confirmed by statistics that it is more common for youths to use drugs if role models like parents and relatives or friends use it. 
Drugs do not belong in a democracy since it diminishes a person's ability to judge and react and therefore increases the risk of hurting innocent people.   	
The abuser is prepared to go through many sacrifices to get hold of the drug; like risking job, family and friends. 
The whole welfare state is affected and need to pay for the disturbances that the abuse causes by diseases, crimes, production losses and accidents etc. 
Furthermore children with parents who are drug addicts cannot help getting involved in their parent's business and are often maltreated, neglected or threatened and do of course take much damage from it. 
If we legalise drugs we also have to take the consequences and enhance the resources for maltreated children and young drug addicts.  
All drugs are habit forming which make the usage hard to control. 
People who are affected by a drug are not only a peril to themselves but also to others. 
Regulations are important since statistics show that socially accepted drugs are used more frequently than illicit drugs. 
If we legalise Cannabis more young people will start using it and society will have to pay for the damages. 
It is crucial to keep our rigorous regulations also in the future.   
All facts and ideas taken from the Internet  Nope's homepage about drugs where I found links to CAN and RNS that also had much facts about narcotics. 
Another important source has been the Swedish police's homepage and The Swedish Parliament's homepage where I read propositions written by ""Folkpartiets"" Lars Leijonborg. 
Some info is also taken from BBC News homepage ""health"".   
The article I have chosen is a letter to the editor in ""Uppsala Nya Tidning"" 16 Feb 2001 and is written by Thorsten Bodekull. 
He states that the Swedish drug policy is old fashioned and that we should look at Holland and Belgium and take after their less restrictive laws and legalise soft drugs such as Cannabis. 
He does not believe that regulations lead to a society free from drugs and claims that it is a waste of resources to let politicians spend time on trying to deal with narcotic problems. 
According to him it is wrong to look upon drug users as criminals.
"," Sweden's Increasing Numbers of Underprivileged Single Mothers  Over the last couple of years we can see a visible trend in the Swedish society of an increasing number of low-paid single mothers who are struggling for their existence. 
All statistics does show (according to an article in UNT 8/2) that the single parents have the lowest salaries in society. 
Moreover it says that vast social gaps have arisen over the last three years and single parents are getting poorer when at the same time a great deal of people are increasing in wealth. 
How come that these vast gaps have arisen in society? 
Why does single mothers have such a hard time economically? 
This essay will deal with some probable causes of why single mothers are getting more and more destitute.   
To begin with Sweden had an economic recession beginning in the 1990s, which meant that the government had to save a large amount of money in order to pay back the national debt. 
The government demanded reductions in schools kindergartens hospitals etcetera, and as a result many people lost their jobs. 
Single mothers were of course also very much affected by the reductions in housing allowance, child benefit, and supplementary benefit, which could be a reason for single mother's situation today. 
Strangely enough we seem to have a boom in Sweden at present and the unemployment rates have actually decreased, yet single mothers have a rough time managing the economy, which make this reason less plausible.  
Another reason is the rather newly established family pattern. 
During the last twenty years the family has changed from consisting of mother father and child to contain only a child and a single parent. 
Society's view of divorces has turned and made divorces much more legitimised and less shameful than it was twenty years ago. 
Furthermore it has lead to that women very often are single providers. 
The consequence of having single custody of a child and being the only provider in the family is that it demands a higher salary to cope.  
After all the main reason for women's lessen wealth must be the kind of job sector they work within and the salary they maintain. 
Women often work within the public sector -at hospitals kindergartens and with old-age-care or in super-markets and kitchens, whereas it is more common for men to work as bosses and advisers or with technique and IT. 
In""SN"" 3/2-01 there is a list of the average full time salary in many professions and with a quick glance one can easily grasp that the typical female professions have the lowest incomes.   
A teacher (year1-7) does for instance earn 15200 SEK a month a Children's Nurse 13953 SEK and Medical Staff earns 15716 SEK when on the other hand male dominated professions gain much higher wages. 
To take some examples we have a boss of Finance that earns 31290 SEK a Graduate Engineer 30203 SEK and at last a Computer Specialist that earns 21332 SEK. 
Even within the same business there are differences in income. 
For the same post women get lower salaries than men.   
LO's given report on ""differences between sexes and social classes"" (Sjukgymnasten 1/01) asserts that there still is a widespread sexual segregation where jobs traditionally dominated by female employees are valued with a lower salary, than jobs traditionally dominated by men. 
One example of this discrimination is depicted in a correspondent to UNT 26/1-01 where a female doctor receives a lower salary than her male colleagues in question, since she has been at home taking care of her newborn baby.   
The consequence for low-paid women is a necessity to work full time if they want to stand a chance of survival. 
What is more most single mothers need time to look after their children and hence often prefer to work part time. 
An article in SN 5/2-01 takes up the situation for trained nurses whose monthly salary is solely 14000 SEK (in Gnesta community and there are of course municipal differences) and they claim that it is untenable to cope if they do not work full time. 
The article also states that all new appointments within the old-age-care are full time since anything less is not valuable.  
Lastly the low-income earner's salaries are not adapted to the prevailing prices of food, clothes and housekeeping. 
Over the last few years the market prices have increased drastically but still the incomes have not been enhanced.   
There are many reasons for single mothers to stay behind. 
Some professions - mostly male dominated - are apparently higher estimated than other female dominated ones and it seems to be of higher value to work with technique than with people. 
Even more the incomes within the public sector are not adapted to the growing market prices. 
As long as professions dominated by women will be looked upon as subjugated to typical male professions, Swedish single mothers will remain underprivileged.
",True
" The increased consumption of vegetables and fruit in Sweden  Since a number of years back the consumption of vegetables and fruit has increased enormously in Sweden. 
Is it because we are afraid of eating meat for various reasons or is it because we believe that it is healthier to eat vegetables than meat? 
Why have the Swedish people started to eat more vegetables and fruit in comparison to fifty years ago? 	
It would be easy to argue that the increased consumption of vegetables and fruit is a consequence of our times body and nutrition awareness. 
Nutrition studies has shown that vegetables and fruit are very important food sources. 
Human beings need more vegetables and fruit in their diet than it was thought some fifty years ago. 
To be able to live a healthy life a good combination between animal food sources and vegetables is essential,(Vegetarians and vegans may disagree). 
Have we increased our consumption because we know that it is important for the function of our body? 
Body awareness, with fitness, physical as well as spiritual control as examples, are strongly emphasised in today society. 
It is probably yet another good reason for the fact that many people are concerned about what they eat. 
Some may believe that eating vegetables means that one is in control of the body, and completely forget about the fact that the body really needs various food sources to be able to function in a optimum way. 
Partly it is naturally true. 
The enhanced fixation on the body which we didn't have some fifty years ago, and nutrition studies are together one reason to the fact that we today eat more vegetables and fruit than we used to. 
However this is not the main reason that can answer the question of why Swedish people eat more vegetables than fifty years ago. 	
Undoubtedly animal rights organisations have helped to increase the consumption of vegetables by encouraging people into becoming vegetarians and vegans. 
Vegeterianism and veganism did hardly not exist in Sweden some fifty years ago. 
Animal rights organisations have also worked for a stronger human concern about animals. 
The concern about animals has certainly helped to increase the consumption of vegetables and fruit. 
Many people have reduced there consumption of animal food, in favour of vegetables and fruit. 
Whether this is the strongest reason for an increasing vegetable consumption my be discussed, but certainly it is a strong reason.  
One other reason is that we follow trends in food as well as in fashion. 
It has for some years been very popular with international food and pastry. 
In this food trend we can see that a change took place a couple of years ago. 
It is now fashionable to use lots of fruit and vegetables in main courses as well as in desserts and appetisers. 
Some fifty years ago they were more seldom used, animal food was generally considered more ""proper"" food than vegetables and fruit. 
One example of the new trend is the use of olive oil and other vegetable oils in cooking, the consumption in Sweden has increased enormously in comparison with for example butter and margarine. 
In Mediterranean countries olive oil has been used for centuries, but it is not until now that the Swedish people have started to use it frequently in their own cooking. 
Swedish people have stared to eat more international food and therefore started to adapt international food habits with more vegetables and fruit. 	
Still most of the Swedish people do not eat more vegetables and fruit because they are concerned about animal rights, body awareness or food trends. 
This leads us closer to the main reason of what I consider the answer to be in this question -why people in Sweden have increased their consumption of vegetables and fruit.  
The most important argument and also the most obvious one is that Sweden is a land that has seasonal harvest; this means that we some fifty years ago did not have the alternative of fresh vegetables and fruit during winter and spring, as we have today. 
In Sweden it was only the fruit and vegetables that were in season that were at hand. 
Sweden did not import the amount of vegetables and fruit as we do today. 
It was therefore impossible fifty years ago to have a high consumption of vegetables and fruit since there was no one to supply it. 
Exotic fruit such a bananas and oranges was rare and quite expensive when it was at hand. 
Many people could not afford to buy fruit at the same extent as we do today. 
Transportation and preservation of fruit and vegetables were also a problem, it was much harder to accomplish than today. 
The broad selection and continuous supply of fresh fruit and vegetables depends on the fast transport that we have today. 
Why people in Sweden eat more and more vegetables and fruit is because we have a broad selection to choose from and the possibility to get fresh supplies all year around.  
Consequently I believe that a mix of all the above stated arguments is the answer to why Swedes eat more vegetables and fruit than they used to, but undoubtedly the most important fact is that we actually have the supply and the selection of fruit and vegetables which we didn't have before. 
I believe that the consumption of vegetables and fruit will continue and become more important in the future, More and more people will eat various diets with more vegetables and less meat.
"," Taboo or Not Taboo  Shirley E. 
Peckham argues in her article ""Cleaning up the language"" that children of today are using swear words too much in their every-day conversations with each other. 
She is alarmed by this discovery since her own upbringing taught her that this is bad behaviour. 
She says that ""If children are to be allowed to continue this foul and anti-social behaviour way for much longer it will become general practice for all and everyone in future years to behave in like way."" 
I disagree with her; I really do not believe that our language is in any danger of becoming ruined by a frequent use of swear words. 
People have been swearing throughout time and that has not made our present language any worse. 
I am not concerned with children's swearing, I think that most children know when it is all right to use swear words and when it is not.  	
Peckham claims, as mentioned, that if children are allowed to swear, our language will in the future be ruined and swearing will become general practice. 
This cannot be true, since swearing is an old phenomenon and people of today use good language. 
Peckham does not seem to understand that swear words have a specific function in our society; people use them to show emotion and in some cases to state their identity. 
If a particular swear word is used frequently by a large group of people, the word will after some time lose most of its former ""power"". 
If that happens a new swear word will be created; taken from an area in society which is taboo. 
So there will always be swear words and people who use them. 
Just because swear words are indeed forbidden, some young people like to use them. 
Peckham believes that children swear in order to feel big by it. 
But children and adolescent swear as a sort of revolt. 
""To revolt"" is something most of us do at that age, and this kind of revolt has to be considered as quite harmless. 	
Peckham also says that ""children these days do not seem to know what speaking normally and decently is"". 
I believe they do. 
As mentioned, swearing has a communicative function as well. 
When children and adolescents talk, they like to ""spice"" their language with different sorts of effects, to really clarify the emotional content of what they are saying. 
This kind of talk is often used among peers, not when a child is addressing a parent, a teacher, or any other adult. 
Nor does a child use swear words in their written texts in school, because he or she realises that swear words do not fit in in that context. 
Peckham had over-heard a conversation between young boys at the railway station, she had not talked to any of them herself, nor did any of the boys address her when they talked. 
By this fact we can draw the conclusion that Peckham has no right to blame children of not being able to speak normally.  	 
I believe that Shirley E. 
Peckham is exaggerating; children's swearing is not really a big problem, and our language is not in any danger of becoming ruined by a frequent use of swear words. 
We have been swearing throughout time and will probably continue doing so. 
And I am not concerned with children's swearing as long as they follow ""the rules"". 
They know how to talk decently and they usually do. 
But if you over-hear a conversation between them full of swear words, you should not be alarmed, not even shocked. 
When they have grown up, they will talk just like you.
",False
" Evaluation English, My English!  
I have been studying the English language for eight years in school. 
Unfortunately I did not learn very much in the 'grundskola'. 
My intermediate-level teacher was not very ambitious. 
So I hardly newer did any grammar in the intermediate-level of the 'grundskola'. 
In the senior-level of the 'grundskola' I did not do much grammar neither. 
The summer after that I finished the grundskola I went on a three-week long language course in England. 
It did much just hearing English the whole days and I think my english improved when I was there. 
In the gymnasium I had a really good english teacher and I had to go through pretty much grammar. 
What was not very good was that I had no English at all the last year. 
Therefore I may have forgotten some of my English. 
Now, I am going to assess my strengths and weaknesses in the four skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing.  y listening comprehension is quite good. 
How much I do understand depend on who is speaking. 
If the speaking person has a strong dialect, uses a lot of difficult words and speaks very fast it is of course much harder to understand what he is saying. 
For instance I find it easy to understand what the teachers here is saying. 
When I was at the language course, me and another girl came along to a local meeting. 
There, on the contrary, I hardly got anything. 
Normally speaking inhabitans I did understand, mostly anyway.   
I like reading provided that I like the book I am reading. 
I do think my reading comprehension is rather good. 
If it is a difficult book I probably have to put up a lot of words. 
That takes of course time and the story becomes not that interesting, because you can not continue your reading when you have to stop putting up words all the time. 
Also, if it is a real boring book which you have to read just because you are forced to, that will make the reading harder. 
Then maybe I must spend quite much time reading the book. 
But mostly I do understand what it is all about whitout putting up that many words.  
I do not think my speaking is very good. 
I have problem to pronounce several words. 
My grammar is not that good and sometimes I have problem to find the right words in English. 
I should need a bigger vocabulary and I hope I will get that with all the books we are reading now. 
It is easier to write because then you have the time to put up words. 
Anyway, I think I am able to make people understand what I mean.  
As I have written before it was more than a year ago since I studied English in school. 
That might be a reason why I did so bad on the diagnostic test. 
I suppose I have to study pretty much grammar to pass this course. 
I guess it is quite many grammatical mistakes in this text. 
Anyway, I find it easier to write than to speak, just because then you have more time to think. 
I think I am pretty good at spelling words the right way. 
On the contrary, I do not think I am very good at putting the words right grammaticly. 
One grammatical issue I think is very difficult, that is to decide which is the right preposition to use.  
Well, I hope you have got a rather decent picture of my knowledge of English. 
I have not been abroad very much. 
The only time I have been to an English speaking country is actually when I was at the language course and I do think that being in a country where your learning language are speaking makes a lot for your language. 
Now, I have nothing more to write about.
"," English, my English!  
I have studied English for nine years now. 
That is almost exactly half my life. 
When you put it that way it seems like a very long time. 
What have I been taught, or rather, what have I learned during this period of time? 
I will try to answer that in this essay. 
The teachers have varied a lot, concerning experience as well as competence in teaching and personal qualities. 
I consider myself as a rather independent pupil, I am a quick learner and therefore I do not depend too much on the teacher's capacity, which I think have been an advantage considering some of the teachers...  
Today I find my English somewhere in the middle of ""the ladder of language skills"". 
I have left the beginner's stage with a comfortably margin but I still have a long way to climb before reaching the top.   
The passive knowledge of a language is often the easiest to obtain and if you live in Sweden today you get constant training in understanding English, written and spoken, because you are surrounded by it in your everyday life through media.   
During my time in school, especially in the upper secondary school, I have read several English novels. 
To take part of literature written in the language in question is, without doubt, one of the most efficient ways to learn it. 
Therefore I think my ability to read English is not a lot worse than my ability to read Swedish. 
When it comes to understanding spoken English I think I am quite good there too. 
Of course there are always words you do not understand, and sometimes the person's accent makes it difficult to catch every single word, but usually I understand the speech, or whatever it is, on the whole.   
When it comes to the active knowledge in English, speaking and writing, it becomes more difficult. 
It is often here you ""separate the wheat from the chaff"". 
In order to learn writing, and especially speaking, one of the most important things is training. 
You get opportunities in school, but I think the most valuable training takes place outside of school. 
If you go to an English-speaking country you are more or less forced to put your theoretical knowledge of English into practice. 
Unfortunately I have never had the chance to visit an English-speaking country so I think my weakness, when it comes to English, is the part of speaking. 
I manage, but I do not feel totally relaxed speaking English and I cannot express myself as fluently as I would wish.   
In my case, writing English has always been easier than speaking. 
I have never had any problems with spelling, neither concerning Swedish nor English. 
I do not know if that quality is inherited or if it is due to the fact that I, since the age of four, have read a lot of books, and that way drilled the spelling of words into my head. 
Grammar is also something that becomes more important in writing. 
If there are grammatical mistakes in your speaking it is not certain that anybody notices them, but in a written text it gets very obvious. 
Since I have studied German I am well into the fact that grammar is very important, while a grammatical mistake in German can be disastrous. 
The English grammar is not as complicated as the German and it is also easier because of the frequency of English in media. 
If you hear English a lot your grammar improves as well. 
You become more like native English-speakers and are consequently able to ""hear"" if something sounds wrong.   
When I write an essay, for example, I have time to think about grammar, the meanings of the words and which expression that is the most appropriate in a situation. 
This time for reflections is another reason why I think writing is easier than speaking.  
In conclusion I would like to say that I think I have the basic theoretical knowledge of English. 
My aim with this course is to develop and improve the four skills; listening, reading, writing and speaking. 
Concerning the three first mentioned I believe I am at the upper part of the ladder but when it comes to speaking I think I have quite a long way to go before reaching the top. 
I just hope that the ladder does not overturn and that I will stick to my aim and not fall down, because that may hurt a lot.
",False
" The Main Theme of ""The Collector"" by John Fowles  The main theme of ""The Collector"" is the matter of being passive and lack determination, in contrast to doing and feeling things with all your heart. 
The novel states that it can be just as harmful to do nothing as it is to do something ""bad"".  	 
In Miranda's diary entry dated November 7th the themes are made very evident. 
She starts telling about G.P's drawing that she has in her room: ""It's the only living, unique, created thing here."" (p. 
205) Miranda herself is not living, she is dead; she is not unique, just a bad copy. 
She is as dead as one of the butterflies in Ferdinand's collection. 
The same day Miranda also writes: ""I love making, I love doing, I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart."" (p. 
207) Then, Miranda starts thinking about when G.P. had been laughing at her being Labour; the party that brought the New People into existence. 
She had told him she had rather they had the New People than poor people. 
Nowadays, her view on the subject has been fairly modified: ""But I see what he feels, I mean I feel it myself more and more, this awful deadweight of the fat little New People on everything..."" (p. 
208) Miranda does not come with any thoughts of her own, she just copies G.P.""s ideas. 
Later on in the novel Miranda actually comes to that insight herself. 
She quotes her own statement that she wrote on November 7th: ""I love making..."". 
Then she makes the observation: ""But I""m not being to the full at all. 
I'm just sitting and watching. 
Not only here. 
With G.P."" (p. 
237) Her passivity ""here"", as prisoner, is also clearly shown in the book. 
Superficially it could seem like Miranda is trying very hard to escape. 
She thinks all the time that she has to do it and she tries several methods to get in contact with other people and to escape. 
However, a juxtaposition in the text shows something different: ""Tomorrow. 
I must act now."" (p. 
239) Also, when she makes an attempt to escape she does not do her utmost. 
For instance, when she is about to knock Ferdinand out with an axe, she suddenly hesitates and then she fails: ""I had to hit him and I couldn't but I had to.... 
But he was turning and I didn't hit straight. 
Or hard enough. 
I mean, I lashed out in a panic at the last moment."" (p. 
227) What is also interesting is that she uses the blunt end of the axe, she never seem to consider using the sharp end or killing him: ""I had to catch up the axe and hit him with the blunt end, knock him out."" (p. 
226) Miranda also decides that she is going to dig herself out. 
However, she gives up as soon as she sees that behind the stones there is solid chalk. 
In addition, she does not plan very well where to start digging. 
She starts on the most obvious place where he is bound to discover it. 
Ferdinand, of course, sees it immediately and cements back the stones again. 
This lack of determination will have a disasterous result. 
It will be her death.  	 
In the diary entry dated November 7th Miranda also writes down a dialogue between her and Ferdinand. 
Ferdinand has just finished reading The Catcher in the Rye. 
Miranda had thought he would feel identified with Holden Caulfield, the main character of the book. 
She tells Ferdinand that he does not fit anywhere and neither does Holden Caulfield. 
Ferdinand answers: ""I don't wonder, the way he goes on. 
He doesn't try to fit."" (p. 
205) Ferdinand does not see that why he himself does not fit in society is because, as Holden, he has not tried to either. 
That insight is given when Ferdinand is talking about his previous life: ""Old Tom and Crutchley, who were in the Rates with me, and some of the girls clubbed together and did a big one and they were always going at me to join in, but I stayed the lone wolf."" (p. 
12) Miranda wants to make Ferdinand reevaluate and change his life. 
Once when they are discussing nuclear disarmament Miranda says: ""I don't think the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has much chance of actually affecting the government. ...
But we do it to keep our self-respect, to show to ourselves, each one to himself or herself, that we care... 
We're trying to shame you into thinking about it, about acting."" (p. 
135) At the same time this reasoning applies to Miranda herself. 
That she has to try escaping to keep her self-respect. 
However, as mentioned above, if she really is aware of that and tries that hard, could be discussed. 
Once Ferdinand tells you: ""I read in the paper today (Saying of the day) - 'What Water is to the Body, Purpose is to the mind.' 
That is very true, in my humble opinion."" 
He realizes that to accomplish something you have to have the force, the determination. 
Unfortunately, the only thing he manage to go through with, is the planning and kidnapping of Miranda. 
Both Miranda and Ferdinand come to important truths about life. 
However, they have it hard to relate and apply any reasonable argumentation to their own entire lives. 
As Miranda says ""He doesn't believe in any other world but the one he lives in and sees. 
He's the one in prison; in his own hateful narrow present world."" 
Neither Ferdinand nor Miranda have any distance to themselves and are therefore unable to do something constructive; to try to change their way of living. 	 
The passivity of them both is what determines the end. 
Miranda dies of pneumonia. 
Which, ironically, is an illness that is easy to cure, but will have a fatal result if you do nothing about it. 
When Ferdinand realizes she is dying he decides to get a doctor. 
However, he is not very determined and let all sorts of silly things stop him. 
After she is dead he tries to convince himself that there was nothing he could have done. 
As if he had just been watching everything happen and has no part in her death: ""It was not my fault. 
How was I to know she was iller than she looked?"" 
(p. 
110) ""I also thought that I was acting as if I killed her, but she died, after all. 
A doctor probably could have done little good, in my opinion. 
It was too far gone."" (p. 
281) Ferdinand thinks he cannot help what happens in his life. 
He is just a victim of the circumstances. 
With that attitude he can do anything with a clear conscience; he just put the blame on everything else. 
However, the result is the same. 
It is just as dangerous to ignore problems as it is to intentially do something evil.
"," Why practice martial arts?  
In this essay I will from a few aspects explain why I think practicing martial arts is highly recommendable. 
People who are against martial arts often make inadequate and sweeping statements about that kind of sports. 
I will here try to make clear what opinions I believe should be condemned, and why it is important not to generalize when talking about martial arts.  	 
One of the quite obvious reasons to practice martial arts is that it is very good exercise. 
It is an all-round training, that is, you use all parts of your body. 
Also, one of the main reasons why I have continued doing martial arts is that you self decide how much you want to strenghten yourself during a session and when you want to grade for your next belt. 
As it is not a team-sport you do not have to do everything that your group do. 
Everyone practice the arts according to their own capacity. 
This, however, vary somewhat between different martial arts. 
Some might demand more physical strength than others. 	 
The main reason why myself, I, started practicing martial arts six years ago, was to gain some knowledge in self-defence. 
I wanted my mother to stop worrying when I was out at night with my friends. 
I first did Aikido, but found that a bit too soft and started doing jujitsu instead. 
In jujitsu you first learn mainly techniques that could be used in order to protect yourself if you were assaulted on the street. 
Later on the training takes on a different character and is not that focused on self-defence. 
During my schoolyears, I have had the habit to try my newly gained knowledge on my fellow classmates. 
Most of the times it has not had the wished effect, mainly because they have been prepared on what I was going to do and also because many of the techniques are not that good in self-defence. 
Those techniques need the partner to cooperate to make the technique work without causing serious injuries. 
My classmates have however exclusively made the statement: ""It doesn't work, so why do you practice jujitsu?"". 
The point is that you, in a certain sense, get another attitude to violence when practicing martial arts. 
If someone would attack me today I would probably not use something I learned at the jujitsu sessions, but I would be more prepared. 
No matter how absurd it might sound, fact is that I am used to people strangeling and hitting me, and If something happened for real, I would hopefully not just stand there completely paralyzed. 
I would do something, even if it was not a proper jujutsu technique. 	 
The main argument you hear why people should not practice martial arts is that it increases violence in society. 
I, however, find that absolutely ridiculous. 
I would say that that argument is mainly used by people who try to blaim other people for their maladjusted children. 
I claim that the main reason to the violence in society is that many parents do not spend enough time with their children. 
Instead of teaching their children how to behave, they employ the TV and video as baby-sitter. 
The parents have no control over what their children are watching and many children nowadays grow up in the belief that you can kick someone in the head ten times without causing much damage. 
I admit that there are people who start doing martial arts in order to learn how to ""beat the shit out of someone"", but they are relatively few. 
These people are usually members of, for instance, karate- and tae kwon do- clubs (but the attitude in those clubs of course vary from club to club as well), and it is sad that they should damage the reputation of all martial arts. 
I have for instance never heard of any abuse of the practice of jujitsu in the five years I have been practicing that sport, and there are many other martial arts that do not have that problem, like Judo, Aikido, Kendo and Tai-chi, just to mention a few. 
To this aspect I would also like to add that practicing martial arts is an opportunity to give vent to your aggressions in a controled form, rather than going down to the city centre and ""kick ass"".  	 
Other opponents to the arts claim that the violence learned from TV and video can escalate when being practiced at the martial art clubs. 
Unfortunately, that is somewhat true, but if it is found out that someone do have misused a martial art the person is supposed to be suspended from his/her club. 
I can, however, admit that this abuse could be hard to discover and prove, and I am not sure to what extent it is being implemented. 
Maybe there should be a stricter control of the clubs in order to make them look out more for unserious members and to control the policy of the whole clubs. 
Still, the point is that not many clubs have this problem of abuse. 
I also claim on the contrary that at the martial art clubs you are taught how dangerous the kicks and paunches really are. 
You learn how to take control of a person without causing to much injuries.  	 
To conclude, I would once again like to stress how important it is not to generalise when talking about martial arts. 
As there are so many different sorts of martial arts I believe that everyone could find something that would suit them (both from a physical and a philosophical point of view). 
People who argue that martial arts increase the violence in society should search themselves before making incorrect statements. 
They should be more specific and not speak of martial arts as violence-ridden sports in general.
",True
" Abolish day nursery for children under four.  
The situation of the parents and the children of today is precarious. 
The parents are working so much that they feel insufficient for their family. 
At young age, children are left at the day nursery several hours and therefore not feeling loved. 
The current situation of Swedish day nurseries is a shame. 
As it is today all day nurseries for children under the age of four ought to be closed. 
Day nurseries are so crowded that no real pedagogic activity is possible. 
Children of this age group are particularly sensible because they need one main person to turn to. 
Today an employee has not got enough time to give proper attention to each child. 
In addition the employees are so worn-out that they often need to report themselves sick, and several substitutes come and go.   
There are three main arguments why day nurseries for children under four should be closed. 
The first has to do with children's need of developing a self-esteem, the second with learning rules to feel safe and the third with their health.   
Small children like to play by themselves therefore they don't really need a lot of children around to play with. 
They don't understand why they been left and that their parents will come back to pick them up later. 
Some children believe that they've been abandon forever. 
Under the circumstances of today's day nurseries no child can develop a good self- confidence. 
The setting of a personality starts already from the first day of life. 
To establish a good self-esteem children need to have one adult who's always available. 
The adult ought to have a clear set of rules and give continuous feedback and interest in the children's behaviour. 
Having one person to get attached to means that children learns to develop a relationship with another individual. 
Not having one influence the child negatively for the rest of their life. 
The capability of dealing with situations later on in life is determined during his or her first three years of life.   
Children need the help of an adult to learn and understand proper social skills and everyday rules. 
Children who have not yet learned social skills tend to make up their own, particularly if they spend most of their time with children of their own age. 
Their own way of solving a problem often includes violence. 
If no adult make the time to teach them alternative ways of communication, children can go on becoming socially disabled up in high age. 
Different rules and persons at day nursery and at home can severely confuse small children. 
To understand the environment makes the individual feel safe.   
The employees at the day nurseries do not have a chance to see to that each child follows their own day rhythm. 
To eat when hungry and to sleep when tired is important for their health. 
Small children's immune defence is not yet entirely developed and they are therefore more vulnerably to diseases. 
Being continuously exposed to several illnesses, being tired and staying in humid buildings has a negative influence on their health. 
Many children develop different kinds of allergies under these conditions.   
Suggestions how to make it financially possible for one parent to stay at home with their children are many. 
If the Government would close down all day nurseries for children under four there would be some money to replace. 
That money should be used to pay the parents. 
Parents who are staying home from work should continue to get the same ATP* as if they were working. 
The first three years of minding the parents should also get maintenance payment grounded on their working salary. 
Single parents should however have the possibility to send their children to a day nursery. 
Their children would gain from this solution also because the day nurseries wouldn't then be as crowded as they are today. 
Special laws would have to be passed to make it smoother for the parents to return to the labour market.   
The whole society would gain from this solution. 
Parents would know their children better and the children would become more self-confident and have fewer tendencies to use violence. 
Better relationships mean fewer divorces and fewer crimes. 
The health of many children and future adults would also improve.   
*ATP: national supplementary pensions scheme.
","You would like me to evaluate my strenghs and weaknesses in the language of English. 
To start with I would like to write that everything is relative. 
I believe my English is good considering it isn't my native language. 
If I could speak Spanish or Japanese as well as I speak English I would be thrilled. 
On the other hand my English is not as good as my Swedish contemporaries. 
I know I lack a lot of skills. 
To defend myself from my lack of skills, I will tell you about past experiences with the language. 
I started learning English at school at the age of eight. 
When I was eight years old I began in a private school where all my classmates already had studied English for one year and a half. 
I felt stupid because they were so much better in many subjects.  
At the age of ten I stopped studing English because I went to live in Italy.  
English classes began at the age of 13 and the level was very low. 
What I learnt four years earlier was enought to become the best pupile in class. 
You would imagine that it should't make any difference if an eight years old child had learnt something several years before. 
I had such a lead because the average of Italians never hear any English at all, even the TV is in Italian.  
I returned to Sweden to begin gymnasium. 
My first year at school was a disaster neverless in English. 
After less than a year my English teacher adviced me to stop going to his classes because he thought it was a complete waste of time for me. 
During the summer the school provided me with extra classes in a few subjects, one of the them was English. 
There I learnt about these very important irregular verbs which were needed to be learnt by heart. 
This discover became my key to success. 
It was like a new world opening to me.   
Since then I've studied English a couple of years in gymnasium and eight weeks in Ireland.   
Writing about Ireland remembered me of two things in particular which have been and still are very important for the development of my English skills.:  - one is that I've been abroad and heard a lot of different kinds of English, it has helped me to understand that the important thing is to relax in conversations. 
Better to try than not. - the other thing is the television, the TV helps me with my listening comprehension, something I need to practice every day.  
I feel I've been pulling myself under a bit about my English knowledges so I want to change the trend by saying that I have one thing in favor! 
I can speak Italian fluently and it helps me understand English words which derives from Latin,. often they are also the most difficult ones.  
To return to the goal of this assignment I will now tell you what I think about my skills. y opinion is that my listening comprehension is rather good, I practise by spending a lot of time abroad and in front of the television as I wrote before.  y reading experience is very limited, I have read very few fiction books. 
The books I've read are English books used during English classes and books in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and psychology used through my teaching education.  y grammar is horrible! 
The few rules I know I forget while I'm speaking.  y writing is incompetent and my texts are lacking of imagination. 
Unfortunately my texts are as bad in Swedish too. 
I believe it's almost impossible for me to become a good writer. 
It's like I don't have the right schemes in my head. 
Something I should have developed during my earlier school years. 
I also have difficulties with spelling right.  
The good thing about all this is that I'm looking forward to any improvement and I'm greatful for this new opportunity.
",True
" Neo-Nazi activity and right-wing extremism on the rise  Lately there have been many reports of hatred outbursts against ethnic minorities in many countries in Europe. 
Increased right-wing extremism has been noticed in particular in Germany and Austria. 
According to an article in the cnn website there has been figures released by the German government that comparing to recent years, in 2000, the neo-Nazi activity and right-wing extremism have increased with 30%. 
Only that year, there have been over 10 000 acts violence against minority groups in Germany, consisting of the display of neo-Nazi symbols, vandalism, physical attacks and murder. 
Therefore it is interesting to discuss and analyse the starting factors and causes behind this. 
Is it just a phenomenon that will pass eventually or are we facing a black era of Nazi resurrection? 
Even if this is an issue all around Europe, I'm going to concentrate on Germany in this essay. 	  	
There are of course many causes why these antagonistic activities are augmenting in Germany. 
It's important to point out that right-wing extremism mostly reside in the former east-Germany, where it has been increasing since the reunification in 1990. 
The unemployment there is twice what it is in the West. 
Economic depressions always cause hostility turned against available and easy targets, like ethnic minorities for instance. 
Frustration and desperation make that many cling to the Nazi legacy in order to gain some kind of self-confidence and to assert themselves. 
Furthermore, because the east-Germany for a long time was being ruled by a strong totalitarian regime, people lack the sense of democratic culture. 
After the unification there were dramatic changes of familiar social and economic structure, the east-Germans saw themselves being economically inferior to the West, which of course aroused frustration, instability and void. 	  	
The large-scale immigration to Germany after the collapse of communist governments in central an Eastern Europe contributed to increased right-wing tendencies as well. 
For example only in 1992 one million foreigners immigrated to the country. 
Since then there have been many more conflicts all around the world, which of course means more asylum seekers. 
Because Germany used to have one of the most indulgent asylum laws in Europe, the immigration grew rapidly and became uncontrollable. 
In 1993 the government brought its laws closer to those of other Western nations, but still the following year, Germany accepted 50% of all asylum seekers in Europe. 	  	
One speculation that might be worth to bring up is wether the neo-Nazism havn't got an extra adrenaline kick these last few years because of the Heider stuff going on in Austria, and that the right wing extremists in Germany see him as a Hitler reincarnation and a possible leader for the future. 
But then again, it might be a vague hypothesis because it is possible but not likely that so many simultaneously would be so strongly affected by one single minor-politician and his Hitler sympathies. 
Not that it didn't happen before in history but then we should assume that each time a politician happen to utter something that the masses would follow, which doesn't make much sense because nowadays people are mostly very suspicious of politicians, no matter how high in the Alps they climb. 	  	
The wide-spread Nazi propaganda on internet attracts the youth a great deal. 
Displaying propaganda on the net in a professional way and making it easily accessible, is a very effective and smart way to acquire new members to the different right-wing parties and groups. 
In 1996 there used to be about 30 extremist sites, today they are said to be over 350. 
The internet menace is of course not the main cause why right-wing extremism is rising but nevertheless, it should not be neglected. 	  	
In recent years there have been signs of a left-wing wave in many countries in Europe, including Germany, despite its communist experiences in the east. 
And as we all know, left-wing and right-wing partisans have always been each others anti-poles. 
The Nazis always feared the communists and left-wingers who in their turn never tried to hide their despise for the former. 
So the increased right-wing extremism can be looked upon as a reaction to the left-wing popularity.  	 	
In conclusion lets make a brief summary of this essay. 
Right-wing extremism is growing because of many reasons and there is no main cause. 
Miserable social/economic conditions, too many foreigners, nationalism, nostalgia to the ""glory"" days of the Nazism in the 30's and 40's, well-made propaganda, the left-wing ""threat"" and so on. 
The list is long. 
I've probably left out many things. 
But frankly, I wouldn't say that neo-Nazism or whatever is rising because of any particular reason. 
It is in the human nature to pick on others, it's just that sometimes the harassements are more violent than usual, and thus are more paid attention to.
"," Objection to tuition fees in higher education  Lately there have been some debating about a proposal of imposing tuition fees for students at universities and collages in Sweden. 
You could read about this in Uppsalas Nya Tidning in February 13 written by Johnny Andersson. 
""It's time for University fees"" is his firm title, which I'm sure many students find outrageous. 
Therefore it is my intention to argue against this article and reveal its weak points. 
But before I do that I'm going to summarize the article and its main arguments.  
Johnny Andersson is of the opinion that mere state financing of the universities in Sweden is not enough to keep a high quality as required. 
He states that the ambition to have 50 % of all upper secondary school students proceeding with the higher education is too resource exacting, so something should be done about that. 
Why not follow the example of England, USA, Australia etc and let students pay for their education. 
Andersson argues that the money is necessary for research operations at the universities, which is essential for innovation in society. 
He also asserts that if students have to pay for their education they will be more distinct in their demands for the quality of their education. 
This would, according to Andersson, result in a much better standard and quality in the higher education and raise the status of the different universities. 
In the article he wonders if tuition fees wouldn't worsen the recruitment of underrepresented groups in society. 
But his answer to that is that these groups are not applying for higher education anyway, despite the fee-free system. 
If we retain this system where only the state is providing for the universities in the country, it (the state) will be forced to dilute the resources until the quality will get low and universities will be driven out of business by other national or international education bodies.   
If Johnny Andersson's proposal would be implemented, it would only have negative effects on the Swedish higher education. 
The first thing to happen would be decreased recruitment to universities, which would be disasterous for the future. 
The main goal is to have as many high educated citizens as possible, but if students would be forced to pay fees in order to obtain their education, those with inferior economic situations would become discouraged and deterred, and choose to work instead of study. 
The government's policy should be to avoid a rising ignorant working class and provide free education even for the underprivileged. 
Today more than half of all students come from homes lacking academic education, but still it is more probable that a child from a better-off family continues with higher education than a child from a working-class home. 
If tuition fees become reality it would get even worse, and fat pockets would get precedence over aptitude and ability, when entering an university. 
In other words, increased class distinctions would become a fact. 
Another thing that tuition fees would imply is that students would be much more dependent upon their parents when it comes to choice of education. 
Once again, it would be up to the economic situation of the parents to decide where their children be educated, or if they'd be educated at all.
",True
" Julius Caesar  Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar is more than just a tragic play about the assassination of Julius Caesar. 
It is about friendship; about which characteristics make a good ruler and what problems may arise when personal feelings contradict what is good for the general public. 
All these three themes come up in Act I Scene ii lines 132 to 177, where Cassius for the first time approaches Brutus about joining Cassius in the assassination of Caesar. 
This scene takes place early on in the play and is set after Julius Caesar has returned in glory to Rome after having defeated Pompey. 
Caesar has publicly humiliated Calphurnia, his wife, when he, on the way to attend the Lupercal festivities, told Antony to make sure he touched Caesar's barren wife and thus revealed is arrogance. 
Caesar has also shown his judgmental nature when he stated that the soothsayer ""is a dreamer"" (24). 
Caesar and his train are attending the celebration games when this scene with Brutus and Cassius begins (132-177). 
This is the scene where Cassius starts to probe Brutus about Brutus' willingness to join to conspire against Caesar. 
Cassius is the one of the two that shows some kind of affection and passion but Brutus has already stated that he is vexed with himself and this might influence his behaviour in some way (39-42). 
This might explain why Brutus opens the scene with what could be considered jealousy since he chooses to use the word heaped when he refers to the honours that, in Brutus' belief, have been stowed upon Caesar (34). 
Brutus does, however, not appear to be jealous of Caesar in this play. 
He is only concerned with what is good for Rome and would rather be of the lowest scum than to call himself Roman considering the hard times that are likely to come (171-174). 
His remark about honours being heaped on Caesar points more to the view that Caesar does not deserve any more honours. 
Both Cassius and Brutus share this view. 
Brutus' opening remark leads Cassius to make his passionate statement that Caesar is no better than either Cassius or Brutus. 
Cassius describes how Caesar behaves, how ordinary men have to act in Caesar's presence and describes their fate by using the metaphor of Caesar as the giant and ordinary men as dwarfs: Like a Colossus, and we petty men Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find ourselves dishonourable graves. 
(135-137) It is very clear that Cassius is not fond of Caesar since he states that honouring Caesar in the way which Caesar requests will mean dishonour. 
Cassius then continues to state that he does not believe in one person being superior to others. 
The truth about a person cannot be found in the stars, in fate, but in how a person behaves. 
Cassius believes that any person is liable for what he experiences in life. 
If you behave like an underling, that is what you become (139-140). 
To show that Brutus is Caesar's equal Cassius turns to pointing out the similarities of the two individuals and thus gives the viewers a good description of both Caesar and Brutus. 
When comparing the names, Cassius points out that both Brutus and Caesar are considered influential in Rome: ""Weigh them, it is as heavy."" 
Both Caesar and Brutus are liked as public men: ""'Brutus' will start a spirit as soon as 'Caesar'."" 
To Cassius, these men are each other's equals and there is no reason why Caesar should be superior to Brutus. 
Nor can Cassius understand how Caesar could grow to symbolise everything that is Rome:  	When could they say, till now, that talked of Rome, 	That her wide walls encompassed but one man? 
(151-152) Both Cassius and Brutus heard their fathers tell the story about how Brutus' ancestors fought for keeping Rome a republic and for preventing it from becoming a monarchy (158-160). 
This struggle can be said to have been in vain if one man is considered to represent Rome.  
This whole passage presents Cassius as a passionate man who has no understanding of judgements of men based purely on whom they are considered to be. 
A person should be honoured for his actions and his characteristics, not for his position in life. 
This belief forces Cassius to act the way he does later on in the play, since he fights against the corruption arrogated power creates. 
Brutus, on the other hand, remains calm throughout this passage and answers Cassius in a controlled manner. 
Brutus is aware of Cassius' love for him and Brutus' speech is mostly a reply to Cassius' remark on line 71: ""And be not jealous on me, gentle Brutus."" 
Furthermore, Brutus informs Cassius that he himself has had some doubts about Caesar's adequacy as a ruler and he promises to bear in mind what Cassius has told him (163, 165-169). 
Brutus then gives the colourful description of himself as   rather be a villager  Than to repute himself a son of Rome Under these hard conditions as this time Is likely to lay on us. 
(171-174) Upon which Cassius ironically comments on the lack of fire in Brutus' response to Cassius' exhortation to defeat Caesar. 
This passage reveals Brutus as a very controlled person, somewhat torn between his friendship with Caesar and what might be better for Rome. 
This is obvious through his actions. 
If Brutus did not find some truth in Cassius' words he would probably not listen to Cassius' whole speech without making any comments about how wrong Cassius is. 
Brutus does nothing of this kind. 
In fact, he does the opposite. 
He admits that he has thought along these lines himself and thus is his conflict of what is good for the general versus his own personal feelings is revealed. 
This conflict is first revealed in this passage, but is carried on throughout the play and reaches its climax in Brutus' death, when Brutus exclaims that:  	My heart doth joy that yet in all my life 	I found no man but he was true to me. 
(V.v. 
34-34) The conflict has left Brutus no peace and he is comforted by the fact that no one let him down the way he let Caesar down. 
Sadly enough, this tragedy shows the fact that no matter what Brutus' intentions were, he still murdered his friend in order to appoint a more appropriate person to lead Rome. 
Although he was a great speaker, he failed to make Rome a better place. 
Not even Cassius, with all of his brilliant plotting logic, managed to prevent the turning of events. 
This passage is an excellent example of how well, not only Cassius plays on Brutus, but also how well Brutus plays Cassius. 
Most of all this passage is a hint of what will come and that it might, as Wilfred Owen wrote in ""Dolce Et Decorum Est"", be a sweet and noble thing to die for your country.  
All references are to Shakespeare, W. 
Julius Caesar. 
The New Penguin Shakespeare, 1996.
"," Going to the gym  Is it just me or is everyone going to the gym these days? 
When I was a little girl hardly anyone went to the gym and the main workout show was the daily gymnastics on the radio. 
Today, one of my friends has the telephone number to her gym on speed dial. 
She sets the alarm on six am, the time the gym opens, and starts dialling the gym just so she can book a bicycle for the spinning class that day. 
Hardly any of my parent's friends exercised when they were my age and here I am, having a hard time finding any of my friends who do not workout. 
What has happened to people? 
Why is there suddenly a need to go to the gym at least twice or three times a week?  
At first glance, it would appear that people have adopted their workout programs because they want to look better. 
We are constantly fed with the image of a perfect body. 
It is everywhere. 
In commercials on TV, in fashion or ordinary magazines and even on the radio, where different gyms have commercials with the message ""if you would like to feel good about yourself - join our gym"". 
This cannot be the only reason people exercise more now than before because there have always been a group of people quite concerned with their physical appearance. 
Those who workout to become more attractive cannot have grown into such a large group that they account for all the gyms in town. 
Especially since the weight of the average person has steadily increased over the years and these days more and more people suffer from overweight and other fat related diseases.  
There must be yet another reason for people to go the gym than just for the sake of looking good. 
Maybe one explanation can be found in the dramatic change in the kind of work available today compared to what was offered about 50 years ago. 
This change could be the main cause for the explosion of gyms. 
On average, more people work in offices than in the past - which means that more people spend most of their day sitting down. 
The only time they get up from the chair is to get coffee, go to lunch or drive home. 
About 50 years ago, most people had some sort of manual task at work and they rode their bike or walked to their work place instead of taking the car. 
This train of thought could lead to the conclusion that people exercise to compensate for the inactivity of their lives. 
But if this were the case, only people with motionless work would have to exercise since some people still perform manual tasks as work. 
Children still play at kindergarten and there are still some hours of physical education in today's school. 
This explanation, however, is also not true. 
Not only people with sedentary lives exercise. 
As I mentioned before, almost everyone does.  
At the same time as one group of people are exercising more and becoming more and more healthy, it is no secret that the average person's weight has increased in the last decades and that more and more people suffer from obesity. 
It is no coincidence that the number of gyms has increased at the same time as the number of health restaurants and other health facilities have increased. 
The knowledge of how good exercise is for the body has also increased. 
Scientists now have proof that exercise is good for people with low blood pressure. 
They also know that exercise helps to build bone strength to reduce the risk of osteoporosis in elderly people. 
Another supporting reason for the increase in exercise programs must therefore have something to do with the health aspect. 
Since there is an increase in awareness of how good exercise is for the body, people become more aware of how to take care of their bodily problems. 
Many exercise for preventive purposes. 
They do not want to have back problems, low blood pressure or osteoporosis when they grow old. 
There are as many reasons for why people are exercising as there are exercising people, but the thing they all have in common is that it makes them feel good. 
Not to mention that they can all experience the natural high from the endorphin homomorphine the body produces during exercise.
",True
" Do Not Blame Cyclers!  
In Sweden, and abroad Uppsala has been famous for many years for its great university of ancient lineage. 
Today there is also something else that is very characteristic for Uppsala and surely everybody who has visited Uppsala have noticed all the cyclers. 
Uppsala is the city of the cyclers. 
The aim of this essay is to argue against the standpoints, which were found in the article ""Inte bara cyklar..."" 
7, 1999:8)  Siw Eriksson, who in this article states that at the present time the situation on the sidewalks of Uppsala is dreadful and cyclers are the reason for this. 
She is very upset with the fact that cyclers chain their bicycles to poles everywhere in the city. 
Siw Eriksson is disabled and because of the chained bicycles it is hard for taxi service to reach their customers. 
But is it really right to blame cyclers for this? 
We all know that a great amount of bicycles are stolen in Uppsala every year. 
Cyclers have to do what they can to prevent this and the only way of keeping a bicycle in Uppsala is by using strong chains. 
It is not the cyclers' fault that there is so few bicycle stands in Uppsala. 
It is the local authorities and not the cyclers who are responsible for this. 
Today there are people who spend about 8,000 SKr on a bicycle since riding a bicycle is a fast way of tansportation in a city like Uppsala. 
However, 8,000 SKr is a lot of money and just like people lock their cars people want to be positive that their bicycles are still where they left them when they return from work or where ever they have been.  
According to Birgitta Jennische there are many people who fear to be on the on the sidewalks of Uppsala because of all the cyclers who ride their bicycles there. 
She also mentions that these days the bicycles have many gears, but what does that have to do with it? 
Finally Jennische points out that it is against the law to ride bicycles on the side walks. 
Yes and the cyclers are aware of that but just as pedestrians fear cyclers, cyclers also have their worries. 
People on the sidewalks fear cyclers and cyclers fear motorists. 
It is not easy to act properly as cyclers in Uppsala because wherever they take their bicycles they seem to be in somebody's way. 
In some parts of the city the cycle tracks are well developed but there is still much to do. 
Once again cyclers cannot be blaimed for the lack of cycle tracks. 
If there were more cycle tracks in Uppsala there would be less cyclers on the sidewalks. 
The situation on the streets of Uppsla is indeed very dangerous for cyclers considering the heavy traffic in the city, especially since there are so many busses. 
It is not at all surprising that so many cyclers feel that they have to escape to the sidewalks. 
After all the difference between a cycler and a motorist is greater than that of a cycler and a pedestrian. 
There are plenty of sidewalks in every city but very few cycle tracks. 
Cyclers are always neglected, and politicians should hear these accusations not cyclers.  
The most upsetting argument in this aricle comes from both Siw Eriksson and Birgitta Jennische who express that cyclers behave thoughtless, they do not pay any regards to other people in traffic and they make the sid walks a dangerous place to be at. 
Eriksson and Jennische have even discussed the possibility of using the local TV-channel to make cyclers aware of their lack of common sense in traffic. 
Why do cyclers have to take all the blame for this situation? 
Everybody has to be careful in traffic and sometimes people on the sidewalks are a threat to themselves because they do not watch their step, and it is the same thing with motorists who are not always paying as much attention to the traffic as they should. 
As a cycler it is not always easy to know where it is allowed to ride a bike since there is a lack of signs with rules for cyclers. 
It should be in the best interest of the local government to build sufficient cycle tracks and equip them with signs to help cyclers. 
Looking at this from an environmental point of view the city should take care of its cyclers and develop the city of the cyclers so that it can serve as a role model for other cities. 
Would people on the sidewalks prefer more cars and busses instead of bicycles? 
Use your energy to make the situation better for everybody instead of making it worse for cyclers and share your opinions with people who can really do something about it.  
Chaining bicycles to poles, riding their bikes on the sidewalks and acting rude, that seems to be the picture of cyclers in Uppsala. 
It almost sounds like this group of people is some kind of terrorist gang. 
However, it is important to remember that cyclers in Uppsala are not only students but also people in the middle of their career, children, and retired people. 
It is this group in general that is accused of not paying any attention at all to other people in traffic. 
However, this group can build neither cycle stands nor cycle tracks and therefore they should not have to take this criticism.
","1.
Introduction Today English is the mother tongue of about 400 million people, and all over the world people with other native languages study English as a second or foreign language. 
English has become a world language and through the years many different varieties have developed. 
Not only do we distinguish British English (BrE) from American English (AmE); we also have plenty of other varieties such as Australian, New Zealand, and South African English. 
All varieties of English have naturally developed different linguistic characteristics. 
However, BrE and AmE are still the two varieties which are used as a model for other varieties of English. 
The aim of this essay is to show differences in vocabulary between BrE and AmE. 
First of all, I will present some facts and ideas that have been discussed previously in this matter and then I will demonstrate the result of my investigation. 
There are many areas that could be discussed when it comes to vocabulary differences in BrE and AmE but this essay will mainly deal with cases where there are different words in BrE respectively AmE which carry the same meaning. 
I will concentrate on everyday words in areas connected to home and school.   
2.
Previous Research  	According to Ilson, (English Today No.4 1985:7), the result of a research done in the matter of differences between BrE and AmE is always rather deceptive. 
Ilson bases this statement on the fact that compared to all the similarities of BrE and AmE, there are not very many differences to discuss. 
Although people in Great Britain and the United states speak the same language, English, many linguistic differences do exist. 
As mentioned above, this essay will concentrate on vocabulary differences but the two varieties also differ in pronunciation, spelling, grammar, and style.  
Trudgill and Hannah (International English 1985:75-76), have also done research in this matter and in their opinion there are several cuses to this obvious differences in vocabulary. 
First of all, when the United States as a new nation made their own experiments and invented new items they naturally needed new words for their inventions and other discoveries. 
There were two different ways of doing this; the Americans either used a British word that already existed and gave it a new meaning, or they came up with a totally new word. 
Another cause to the vocabulary differences is that both Great Britain and the United States have went through several cultural changes and both countries have made great progress in technology which has lead to the fact that there in many cases are at least two different words for the same thing; one British and one American. 
Although English is a world language it is still influenced by numerous of other languages and some loan words may only occur in one of the varieties whereas other words exist in both BrE and AmE. 
However, there are also some linguistic causes to the differences in vocabulary. 
Words come and go, and they are labeled with new or additional meanings and this is often done differently in the two varieties. 
BrE and AmE influence each other, but there are also plenty of words that only occur in either BrE or AmE.  y Investigation In my investigation of vocabulary differences between BrE and AmE I have used a material which consists of 80 words from Longman Doctionary of Contemporary English. 
I will show both the British and the American forms of the words and give the additional meanings if there are any. 
Finally, I will present two diagrams which may help the reader to get a clearer picture of the words which my investigation is based on.  
In and Around the Bathroom 	 BrE					 AmE  bath					bathtub  have a bath*				take a bath*  dressing gown				bathrobe Towel*					towel down *diffrent verbs are used *the verb which means to dry yourself with a towel  Around the House BrE					AmE  block of flats				apartment building  terraced houses				row houses  semi-detached				duplex  fence					picket-fence  pavement					sidewalk  garden					yard  drive					driveway  dustbin					garbage can  postbox					mailbox  The Car BrE					AmE  petrol					gas  windscreen wiper				windshield wiper  indicator					blinker  numberplate				license plate  sidelight					parking light  petrol cap					gas cap  accelerator				gas pedal  handbrake					emergency brake  indicator					turn signal  boot					hood  bonnet					trunk  driving licence				driver's license  driving seat				driver's seat*  lorry					truck  freeway					highway *driver's seat: AmE, additional meaning: be in the driver's seat; to be the person who is in control of a situation.				  
In the Kitchen BrE 					AmE  ring					burner  cooker					stove  breadbin					breadbox  washing-up liquid				dishwashing liquid  tap					faucet  baking-tray				cookie sheet  scales					scale  fish slice					spatula  cake tin					muffin tin  bin					wastebasket  tea towel					dishcloth  worktop					counter  cultery					silverwear  brandy glass				snifter  grocery store				supermarket  soda					pop  biscuit					cookie  cookery book				cookbook  cool-box					cooler  Clothes and Shoes BrE					AmE  football booth				soccer shoe  baseball booth				basketball shoe  wellington boot				rubber boot  trousers					pants  polo neck					turtle neck  knickers					panties  suspender					garter  braces					suspenders  overall					smock  dungarees					overalls  jumper					sweater  tights					pantyhose  dinner jacket				tuxedo  hairslide					barette  purse					changepurse  handbag					purse  plimsoll					sneaker  court shoe					pump  anorak					wind breaker  In School BrE					AmE  public school				private school  free school				public school  pupil					student  lesson					class  rubber*					eraser  head teacher				principal  full stop					period*  exclamation mark				exclamation point  term					semester  timetable					schedule  holiday					vacation  cafeteria					lunch-room  maths					math  tippex					whiteout *rubber, AmE informal a condom *period, in both varieties this is the word for the monthly flow of blood from a woman's body
",True
" Should the family look after the elderly?  
It has been proposed that the family, and not the state, should look after the elderly. 
It seems like a natural thing to do when you first think about it. 
The children would grow up with their grandparents nearby and perhaps the understanding between old people and youths would improve. 
However, the society we live in today can not really be called natural and such heroic deeds do no longer fit in with people's lifestyles. 
It sounds to me just like a way for the state to save money and place a lot of extra work on the already overworked people and therefor I'm against it.   
The main reason why I don't agree with the proposition is that people in today's society have enough problems to worry about. 
Many men and women already feel overloaded with work, which includes both of them managing a full-time job, taking care of a home, a relationship and possibly of children. 
Apart from these chores, time has to be set aside for personal well-being in order to prevent collapses and other stress symptoms that are increasingly common these days. 
Therefore, I see no possibility in managing yet another task, especially one that demands a lot of work and responsibility.  
Taking on the responsibility to care for one's elderly means that geographical mobility is out of the question, something that many people, including me, saw as an advantage when joining the European Union and a matter of personal freedom. 
Due to their task and their conscience, people would have to live their lives in the same geographical area as where they grew up. 
Let us look at an example: Ellen is a Swedish girl and an only child from a small village in the south of Sweden called Nottraby. 
She wants to become a French teacher and to improve her French she goes off to work in Paris for a year. 
While waiting tables in Paris she falls in love with Guillaume, a French cook. 
She decides to stay, marries Guillaume and they later have twins. 
When the children have reached the age of 10, her mother dies and her retired father has difficulties taking care of himself due to back problems. 
Since Ellen is the only family left and the family carries the responsibility to care for the elderly in Sweden, she feels obligated to return to Nottraby to look after her father. 
I strongly oppose the idea that Ellen or any other people would have to choose between their present family on one hand and the parents on the other, when there are state institutions with adequately educated staff to do so.    
If the state leaves it entirely up to families to look after their elders, what happens to the elders who don't have a family? 
Because of expenses of having children many women prefer to get a good education leading to a well-paying job first. 
This may mean they do not have children at all since there is not enough time to find a life partner and have babies before the menopause. 
Many women and men are also unable to have children due to physical or even mental reasons. 
Thus, there would have to be some sort of institution anyway to take care of the childless elders. 
Institutions for the elderly is something we can not live without in our modern and demanding society.
"," Can we trust the statistics?  	
We read about it in newspapers and we are constantly bombarded by it in our everyday life. 
The statistics is everywhere around us in every possible way. 
It makes us buy things. 
It sets boundaries for us and our manners, if we wish to be considered normal. 
It's through the statistics we look at the reality for the statistics, itself, presents the reality. 
To think statistically has become so common, that we no longer are aware of the way it's controlling and affecting our lives. 	
What is statistics? 
It's a collection of methods that helps us make decisions at uncertain times, and it's used in handling different situations, which can be described numerically. 
In most cases involving business, personal affairs or scientifically generalizations, when it's hard to get complete information, incomplete information is being used. 	
There are certain effective techniques and methods, that help the statisticians to manipulate the results of an investigation and consequently to achieve their goal. 
The conclusion would be the statement: ""We can't trust the statistics."" 	
Here are some of the above-mentioned methods: * The use of small numbers * Misleading figures * False correlations * The use of manipulative tables * Different ways of giving the average of something 	For instance, when we read that 65% of the people are against something, we should ask, ""65% of what people?"" 
On TV-commercials they lie to us with help of the statistics. 
They use phrases like ""We had 12 people test our product and 11 of them recovered."" 
This is a very clever way of using the statistics. 
All the tests and numbers are true, but behind this truth a big lie is hidden. 
The secret is that they repeat the test with those 12 people, until they get the result they wished for. 
In this way, they can't be claimed to tell lies. 
They just didn't tell everything. 	
When we want to prove something, we prove something else and then we pretend that it's the same thing. 
Let's say that you have the patent for a cold-medicine that you want to do marketing for. 
You can't prove that this medicine cures a cold, but instead you can have a lab-protocol published, showing that certain amount of this medication killed 30000 bacteria in 11 seconds. 
You have to make sure the lab is well known. 
You'd better hire a doctor and have her/him confirm its power. 
Never mention about the kind of bacteria it killed. 	
We can't only look at the statistics, but we have to consider all the facts around it, which, as a matter of fact, give the statistics brighter perspectives. 
Specifically, it's been said that many more people have died in flying accidents in the 90's than 50's. 
Have the planes become worse? 
No, this can't be logical, because the technology and security have developed so much recently. 
The real reason is that it's more people flying today than then. 
Should we count the number of deaths in proportion to the passenger increase, we'd see that the number of deaths has shown a great decrease. 	
The average of something is worthless, unless we know its extent. 
In books for new parents it's said, ""Children are supposed to sit at a certain age."" 
If a child doesn't sit at that age the parents worry to death and fear that their baby is not normal. 
If the parents knew that 52% of children do it and 48% don't, they wouldn't worry much.  	
Actually, it's quite unfair to blame only the statisticians for all the lies. 
Most of the time the manipulation occur on the way by others like salesmen, PR-people, journalists or advertisers, before it's reached people. 	
Finally, we can't ignore a very important factor in a statistical investigation: The factor of truth. 
How do we know whether the questioned people are telling the truth or not? 
We can't always count on people giving us sincere answers. 
They either don't take it seriously or they're too embarrassed to reveal certain things about themselves. 	
Every time we come across a piece of statistics, in order to measure its reliability we should ask: 1. 
How has the investigation been done? 
2. 
Who is responsible for it? 
3. 
Have the questioned people told the truth? 	
The methods I mentioned in my writing are usually used in advertisements or politics. 
It means that they are, unfortunately, very effective, otherwise they wouldn't be used...
",False
" Larger cities and smaller towns - why are people leaving their homes?  
The sparsely populated area and the inland of Norrland are losing its inhabitants. 
The population of Sweden is increasing but three out of four counties are decreasing in number of inhabitants. 
The small towns are getting smaller as the young citizens move and leave the old people left. 
The big cities are getting even bigger as young men and women with high hopes about their future moves in. 
Young people are leaving their homes to live in the rural areas. 
What makes them leave their native homes for larger cities?  
The Stockholm area is the fastest growing region in Sweden. 
During the last four years the population have increased with 70 000 people, that is four per cent. 
Other big city areas that have grown are Gothenburg where the population has grown with 2.5 per cent, and the southwestern part of Skone 2 per cent. 
The rest of the country decreased their population with 30 000. 
The northern parts are loosing most inhabitants. 
Ume and Lule were the only two counties in Norrland, which increased their population, (LO-tidningen nr. 
37, 1998).  ost of the people who move are between 20 and 30 years old. 
Young men and women who do not want to live a quiet and sedentary life. 
They want to be where things happen and the pace is high. 
Variation in daily life is important, and bigger cities have more to offer. 
Major pop concerts are held in either Stockholm or Gothenburg. 
Big sport events take place in the same areas. 
The big theatre productions and musicals are shown at the grand theatres. 
People want to go out and eat at nice restaurants; they want to go shopping. 
There are much more possibilities in a large city. 
The movie theatres do not just show one movie at a time but have all the recent motion pictures to chose from. 
This might seem as a trifle, but nevertheless something that a new inhabitant appreciates and see as something special. 
The amount of cafés, bars nightclubs are numerous. 
Young people are also travelling more today and the access to an international airport is an advantage. 
A round trip ticket from Kiruna to Greece can cost double the sum as the same trip from Stockholm.   
I do not think that someone would move just for the entertainment. 
I believe that education is an important cause. 
An academic degree is almost obligatory in order to get a job these days Young people have realized that and they now put education on top of their priority list. 
Many women aim for a career of their own instead of becoming housewives. 
Together with the importance of a higher exam comes the life of student. 
A time with high demands but also a time with many parties, new friends and a lot of fun. 
This has made that the Universities have grown in size. 
Besides Stockholm, Gothenburg, Uppsala and Lund have increased their population with 3 and 2 per cent respectively. 
Other smaller Universities are also expanding for example Linkaping and Ume.  	 
The major cause, however, of the movement from the rural areas to the large cities is work. 
The employment opportunities in the smaller towns are not good, so many feel that they have to move to get a job. 
In today's technological society the computer industry is growing with an amazing rate. 
New computer companies are being established every day, and the majority of these are situated in the urban area. 40 per cent of the IT- firms are situated in Stockholm, while 20 per cent are in Gothenburg, (AMV, v.18 -99). 
According to a study made by the county administrative board in Jomtland, every one fourth of all the women are planning to move from the county in the next five years, even though they do not want to. 
One third of them believed that they had no chance of getting a job or an education in their home community, and that is why they felt that they had to leave, (Aftonbladet 11/9-99). 
Now that does not mean that everybody who moves to Stockholm will find a job, but chances are higher.  
Statistics show that the larger cities in Sweden are growing in population, at the same time as the smaller towns are disappearing. 
In some cases people move to fulfill their social life. 
The big cities can offer more entertainment opportunities. 
Several sport and cultural events takes place every day. 
More important causes are education and work. 
People move to get an academic degree so that in the future they will get a good job. 
That job they will probably find in a big city, since that is where the majority of the new companies are establishing their business. 
It is there that the job opportunities are situated today."," Taboo or not taboo?  
After having read Shirley E Peckham's article ""Cleaning up the language"" I started wondering if she isn't exaggerating this ""problem"" a little. 
The way I see it, there are certainly worse things to worry about today than children swearing. 
If they were using drugs or beating each other, I would also be quite upset, but swearing seems to be quite a small problem compared to that.  	
Of course I agree that we should do our best to teach our children not to swear, and that some words and expressions can make people feel hurt or insulted. 
But are the methods Peckham suggests really the ones we should use? 
This is the twentieth century, after all. 
She says she is glad that she was beaten when she used swear-words in her childhood, but there certainly are more civilised methods. 
Beating children is a crime in many countries today, and for good reasons. 
She is probably right when she says that the parents of these children use the same words, so instead of beating and frightening the children, shouldn't the parents try to set a good example and stop using that kind of vocabulary themselves? 
We all know that children learn by imitating, so we could hardly punish them for doing that, could we? 	
I think most young people know when it's OK to swear and when it's not. 
When they are interviewed on television, for example, they usually don't swear, because they know instinctively that it is not OK. 
Young people have a certain way of talking to each other, and it probably doesn't have anything at all to do with ""feeling big"", as Peckham suggests, it is just the way they normally talk to each other. 
Or possibly, it could be a way of revolting against the adult world, something that young people have always done, one way or another. 
I don't think these children would use the same kind of language when talking to a teacher, for example, and they will probably not swear that much when they grow up and learn what is accepted and what is not. 
As they get older, they will become more aware of how people react to what they say. 
I don't think these words will ""become general practice"", as Peckham says, because if that was the case, wouldn't it already have happened? 
Swearing isn't actually something new, so if there was any risk at all that it could become general practice, it would have happened hundreds of years ago, and nobody would even think about it today. 	
What I find quite surprising in her article, too, is that she makes such a big difference between children from different social classes. 
She seems to be more upset to hear children ""from respectable families"" swear. 
And she also seems to react stronger to girls swearing, as if that should be worse than a boy saying the same thing. 
I certainly can't see that there should be any difference between the sexes or social classes in this aspect. 
It seems as though she would like to say that children from these ""respectable families"" should know better than others, and that those who come from lower social classes are unable to understand what is right.  	
So, what I would like to say to Peckham is that if it bothers her so much, why does she listen? 
She must have paid attention to the conversation those boys were having on the railway station to remember it so well. 
As long as they are not talking to her, I can't understand why she is so upset. 
Does their conversation concern her in any way? 
She ought to mind her own business and save her energy for something more important.
",False
" Television violence and our children  In the article, Television- Locking out violence, written by Ginia Bellafante in TIME Magazine, 24-07-1995, a new technology is brought up to discussion, called the V chip. 
The chip is installed in the television set and is supposed to be encoded on different scales of violence occurring in television programmes. 
The purpose with the V chip is for parents to be able to choose the level of violence that they want to be shown on their telly. 
Programmes with a higher level of violence are automatically deleted. 
But is the V chip a solution to prevent children from watching violent programmes? 
I will below present what Swedish children watch on television and whether there are any effects or not. 
According to a poll, made by ""Hem och Skola och Voldsskildringsomrdet"", that is called ""Television - ally or enemy""1996, Swedish children do not watch television as much as we might think. 
On average, children between the age of three and eleven, watch television or video for one hour and forty-five minutes a day. 
Older children watch television a little bit more than younger children do.   
When children look at television they mostly see children's programmes and entertainment programmes. 
Six years old children do not watch warnography very much, apart from what occurs in cartoons. 
Soap opera's are also very popular, like for instance Rederiet or Beverly Hills. 
After the age of ten children start to watch adult emphasised movies, for example Red Indian movies. 
But they still watch children- and youth programmes, and family programmes of different kinds. 
However, seventy percent of six years old and eighty-two percent of ten years old children do often watch the news at 6 p.m. while they are waiting for the children's programme to begin. 
I think there is two ways of looking at the issue whether it is good or bad for young children to watch news programmes. 
One way is that the children are too small to be confronted by that kind of information and horrid pictures. 
The second is that children should watch news to learn how the reality is, but adults should sit with them and give explanations.   
Sveriges Television and TV 4 have an agreement with the State, which among other things amounts to be careful with violence in broadcasting. 
When it comes to broadcasting of news and trailers there is an ambition to be extra careful early in the evening in connection with children's programmes. 
Those laws that concern TV-channels are laws in the county that the programme is broadcasting from. 
Therefore does Swedish law not compromise TV 3, which is broadcasting from Great Britain.  
The absolutely best protection from the negative effects of television, is in my opinion parents who understands that there is a need to protect their children from TV- and video violence. 
That they can explain for the children things that the latter ones do not understand and that they can discuss and argue with their youths. 
It is important that children and youths learn to construe and analyse the messages that they get through television. 
Therefore should the school take some responsibility for that pupils learn to control media as a way for communication and as means of expressions for their own creativity. 
Experiments shows that by getting own experiences from video-production, pupils have gained a greater understanding for both positive and negative effects of media's. 
Since Sweden already have functioning agreements with networks to limit television violence, I see no need to introduce the V chip in Sweden. 
I do not think that the chip is the solution to prevent children from looking at violent programmes. 
I only see it as a way to shirk one's responsibility. 
Our parental responsibility is to set limits for our children to live after, and see to that they do not oppose adults. 
They need to be trusted of being able to follow rules that have been put up by their parents. 
Neither can I see how a chip can be able to select what is being good or bad effects on a child. 
Therefore I think it is better to as a parent watch television together with the children.
","I've always been fond of the English language. 
Sometimes I even daydream in English. 
I've studied English for eight years, and what have I learned? 
Pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar etc. 
Is my pronunciation all right? 
How is my writing?  
I have always had it kind of easy in school with the subject English. 
I didn't have to study too much and yet got average in my grades. 
I do regret deeply that I didn't study more. 
If I would have done so, I probably would have received a higher grade, and most important, I would have received a greater knowledge that I could have used in this course.   
One of my strengths is reading. 
I love to read books weather they are in Swedish or in English, and do so on my spare time. 
I think that novels written by an English author should be read in English, and I've been trying to keep up my English with reading, during the past years after Upper Secondary School. 
It's a good way to increase my vocabulary and at the same time do something that I like to do. 
I don't read fast. 
I like to make up pictures of the environment and people that I read about. 
While I don't hurry through the book I often remember what I read. 
I think it is to bad that I didn't get to read many books during my school time. 
I only recall that I've read two novels in school. 
One of them was George Orwel's, Animal Farm. 
That book really got to me.   
I do enjoy listening to English. 
I always have. 
Therefore I would like to count listening as one of my strengths too. 
I don't say that I understand every word of what is being said, but I do understand the context. 
I have never had any difficulties watching a film or movie without subtitles. 
I think it's great that film in Sweden isn't dubbed. 
I have learned a great deal of English just by watching television. 
Which is another favorite thing to do in my spare time.  
A weakness of mine is writing. 
We didn't write allot in English classes in Senior Level, but on the other hand, we wrote a whole lot more in Upper secondary School. 
There we had to correct our own mistakes in our essay by looking the right answers up in dictionaries and grammar books. 
My weakness is spelling and grammar. 
I've never before thought of translation as a huge problem of mine. 
The diagnostic test in grammar at the beginning of this semester opened my eyes though. 
Sentence structure is a bit difficult too, I think. 
We've been recommended to keep diary in English and while I already keep diary in Swedish, I thought that I might as well write in English, and in that way perhaps improve my writing skills. 
I expect that with hard work in the grammar course that will contribute to better writing skills too.  
However my speech is a strength or a weakness, I don't know? 
Strength maybe because of that I don't feel that it's a burden to speak with foreigners. 
Rather as a great opportunity to improve my listening and comprehensive skills and to pick up new words and expressions. 
Maybe a weakness because of that I often change my way of speaking depending on whom I'm speaking to. 
Of course my pronunciation isn't the best but it's certainly not something that I'm ashamed of. 
On the contrary, I'm quite proud of my pronunciation. 
I have received allot of positive criticism from aboriginal from both Great Britain and the U.S.A. 
On the other hand, I wouldn't have applied to this course if I thought that my English was bad, and if I didn't think that I could make it.  
I learned my lesson in Senior Level and Upper Secondary School when I didn't study as much as I should have. 
I will not do the same mistake again. 
I'll have to study hard and try to think of that it's important to be aware of my weaknesses, because it isn't until I'm aware of them that I can change them.
",True
" MISSING THE POINT: ON HOW CENSORSHIP STRIKES BLINDLY AND DOES GREATER HARM THAN GOOD  During the last two decades voices have been raised to pass laws that allows a certain amount of censorship of films in cinema and television. 
The main argument for this is that violence in films might be a bad influence to people, especially children. 
Parents feel that they are unable to protect their children from this on their own and hope that tougher laws will do the job for them. 
I sympathise with their concerns, but here are three main questions that I feel are essential to discuss before we start demanding censorship. 	
First, how do we determine when the violence displayed in a film is to be considered too much, too unnecessary, too brutal? 
Surely, this depends on the film, does it not? 
However, censorship tends to strike blindly. 
Many films have a fairly high amount of very violent scenes, but that does not necessarily mean that the violence is there just to spice up the action. 
It might even be there to educate us. 
There are for instance many films that contain violence to display the horror of the holocaust, slavery or war. 
What we gain from such films is primarily not a violent behaviour, as many people suggest, but rather, I believe, a more developed sense of empathy and a greater knowledge of our history. 
We might not have been in a war ourselves, but through a film we might get a sense of what it is like. 
Hopefully we can even become more sympathetic to people who have experienced all these horrors in reality. 	
Second, would not censorship be a serious violation of the freedom of expression? 
When we start to tamper with works of art to make it suit our conception of the world, we are also doing great harm to the artistic rights of the artists. 
I might not find all films very artistic. 
I might even find some of them downright bad, but that is just my personal impression. 
Does it give me the right to deny other people the right to watch it? 
Take for instance the films of the English director Peter Greenaway. 
Many people find them offensive, brutal and sometimes even sickening. 
On the other hand, many people also believe that they have constituted the créme de la créme of British cinema the last fifteen years. 
Who is right? 
Who is wrong? 
Well, it would all depend on who is in power, would it not? 
One of the negative sides of censorship is that it breeds a we-who-understand-better-should-protect-the-common-people mentality. 
This, finally, brings us to the third question. 	
Are there any guarantees that censorship will stop at violence in films? 
Is there not a risk that when we have allowed a certain amount of censorship there, it will tend to be used more frequently and be practised in other areas too? 
In the US different groups of religious fundamentalists are getting stronger and stronger. 
What happens if they finally get in a position that makes it possible for them to pass judgement on whether a film should be censured or not? 
Would they stop at cutting the violent scenes? 
Probably not. 
They would most likely want to get rid of all the sex, all gay themes and would probably also abolish any reference to Darwinism, as it is not compatible with their beliefs. 
Am I being too drastic? 
I think not. 
The things I just mentioned above are the very same they have already abolished from the curricula of their privately run Christian schools. 
Don't they even rely on themselves to educate their children properly in those areas? 
Well, is this not the same as when parents cry out for censorship of films and call it parental responsibility? 
I think real parental responsibility is to refuse to use TV as a substitute baby-sitter. 
Let the children watch TV, but watch it with them and provide them with the secure background and knowledge they need to understand what they are watching. 	
My main point is, finally, that people have fought for hundreds of years to get the freedom of speech and expression. 
Let us not just give that right away to whomever is in power. 
If we do that, we will have nothing. 
Why is it so hard to believe that we can actually learn something good from films, even the violent parts of them, when so many take for granted that all the bad stuff will inevitably enter our minds and turn us all into budding Hannibal Lector's? 
Our children will not grow up to be better people if we censure everything they watch. 
The reality they will have to tackle sooner or later will not be censured. 	
The cinema depicts society, it does not create society.
"," THE SERPENT IN THE GARDEN: THE UTOPIAN DREAM RUINED BY HUBRIS  Doris Lessing's novel The Fifth Child (1988) is set in a small town, not far from London. 
In the late 60s, David and Harriet Lovatt, moves into a large Victorian house in one of the quiet parts of the town. 
This is the outer setting of the novel. 
However, the outer setting of the story is not very important. 
The story could, with minor adjustments, be set anywhere in time. 
However, the Lovatts belief that they can create the perfect family is very important. 
Their ignorance brings them to the verge of hubris, and is the cause of their downfall and the destruction of their self-made Utopia. 
This utopian world is, for reasons I will state further on, important for the hubris theme, which I believe is central for the story. 
The similarity between Lessing's text and Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein (1818) also suggests the importance of this theme. 	
Committed to create the perfect family and to raise even more perfect children, the Lovatts do not pay much attention to the outside world. 
They read newspapers and watch the News on TV just because they ""at least ought to know what went on outside their fortress, their kingdom, [...] where so many people came to immerse themselves in safety, comfort, kindness."" (p. 
30) 	There is, I believe, a rather unsympathetic streak of self-righteousness in their thoughts about other people and the world outside their own ""kingdom"". 
When Harriet's sister Sarah and her husband get a baby with Down's syndrome, the Lovatts secretly blame the parents unhappiness for it, and concludes that something like this could never happen to them, because they are so happy. 
It is, however, a mortal sin to be presumptuous, at least in the world of fiction, and the punishment comes quicker than they ever would have expected. 	
You can compare Lessing's novel with Shelley's Frankenstein, to bring out the hubris theme of the text. 
When Frankenstein decides to create the perfect human being, we know that he will be punished for it. 
God does not look favourably on those who flout his laws. 
The Lovatts do not only strive to get a perfect family and a flawless home. 
They actually believe that they are chosen to succeed. 
In a larger perspective, that makes them guilty of hubris, and they are punished accordingly by the birth of their fifth child, Ben. 	
Just like the very process of creating the monster turns Frankenstein from his family and friends, Harriet is estranged from her family while carrying Ben. 
When the monster stalks Frankenstein, and drains all joy out of his life, Ben's presence quickly makes the utopian family life in the haven of the Victorian villa unbearable. 
Friends and family almost disappear completely, as no-one seems to be able to cope with Ben. 
The warm caring atmosphere of the Lovatts home is transformed to a tense, unhealthy environment. 
The shift is total. 
One after the other Ben's sisters and brothers desert the family home, because they can't stand Ben. 
Left in the ruins of what could have been are David and Harriet, trying to understand what has happened. 
At the end of the novel when the destruction is irreversible Harriet sums her thoughts up. 
Family and friends are gone, she knows that not even Ben will stay for long. 
""We are being punished, that's all. 
[...] 
For presuming. 
For thinking we could be happy. 
Happy because we decided we would be."" (p. 
141) Further on David continues her thoughts and thus touches on the hubris theme. 
""Punishing gods, distributing punishments for insubordination..."" (p. 
142)  	All their dreams have been shattered, the lovely Victorian house that once was filled with laughter and joy is now empty and quiet. 
Ben is rarely at home. 
The other children never come home. 
David and Harriet decides to sell the house that once was the symbol and very heart of their Utopia. 
It has become a constant reminder of what they have lost forever. 
Just like Frankenstein, they leave their family mansion, but not to track down their monster, but to avoid it, hoping it will never find them. 
Frankenstein's monster is out there searching for one of his kind, and in the very last sentence of Lessing's novel Harriet predicts that she will one day turn on the TV and ""see Ben, standing rather apart from the crowd, staring at the camera with his goblin eyes, or searching the faces in the crowd for another of his own kind."" (p. 
159) 	In this essay I suggest that the hubris theme of Lessing's novel is one of the most important aspects of the text. 
David and Harriet start out believing that they can create the prefect family and a perfect home. 
Ben's arrival to their utopian world, shatters all their dreams and ruins the family. 
Comparing the story to Frankenstein, we find many similarities that might suggest the importance of the hubris theme. 
Lessing's story is fixed in time and place, but the story could have been set anywhere at any period in time. 
The fact that the Lovatts live more or less in their own separate world shows this. 
The violent shift from Utopia to total ruin does not constitute any threat to this theory as they live quite isolated from the outside world both before and after Ben's birth.
",True
" English, my English!  
The English language has always been a matter of interest for me. 
Mainly because of the fact that you can use it almost everywhere in the world. 
To be able to communicate and to make yourself understood is the base in human relations. 
I was also inspired by a month-long vacation I spent with my family driving through Great Britain several years ago. 
In school, competent teachers have increased my interest and after graduation I worked in London for five months as a receptionist at a small bed and breakfast hotel.  
The first book I read in English was The castle of adventure by Enid Blyton a number of years ago. 
Since then I've come across several writers from different ages, all writing fiction or historical novels. 
When it comes to more advanced reading it is novels by Jane Austen that I've enjoyed most. 
Even though I don't know every word, I can still comprehend the context and sometimes I understand what the word means by seeing it in a situation. 
Reading articles in newspapers is a bit more difficult when they contain a lot of new and for me, unusual words.   
I don't have a problem speaking with people my own age, or adults, about common things like music, movies and every day life events. 
That kind of conversation feels quite natural and I can often speak rather fluently. 
I do have more trouble with difficult topics involving a lot of complicated words which can be hard to explain without knowing the exact meaning in Swedish. 
Talking in front of a group makes me uncomfortable and I'm aware of I need quite a lot of practise on that. 
It's easier if the group is small and if I'm well prepared for the task so I'll know what to say and know that what I'm saying is correct. 
I do believe that my pronounciation is acceptable with some minor mistakes. 
Of course, unusual and new words can be hard to pronounce when you rarely hear them or if you have never heard them before.   
Swedish people hear quite a lot of spoken English because of the frequent use on television and in music and understanding it comes rather natural as a result of that. 
I've no trouble comprehending standard English but different dialects like Scotish and Irish can be hard to follow. 
Another problem is swearwords which can be difficult to grade according to their strength. 
When you don't know how strong the curse is you don't know exactly what the person is saying about that certain thing. 
Slang is also something I can misunderstand and have a problem to interpret the right way, especially since that kind of words are continously developing. 
Understanding a conversation about a complicated subject can be hard, simply because I don't know enough words regarding that particular issue.   
I've written mostly letters in English, not very advanced, about common things to people my own age. 
In Upper Secondary School I've also made a couple of short essays and my special assignment was in English about Jane Austen. 
I like to write in English, trying to formulate the sentences the best way and chosing the right word for each situation. 
I can express what I want to say although my grammar can be faulty sometimes. 
Using certain phrases can be a problem when you can't translate them word for word but need to know the English counterpart. 
Coherence and cohesion is still a bit unclear and I believe I need to practise on that quite a lot.   y conclusions are that I'm able to read modern fiction novels and a bit more advanced books as well without major problems. 
I've no difficulties understanding spoken standard English or the most usual accents. 
My pronounciation is, I believe, accetable and I can communicate rather fluently in English and make myself understood. 
I've written some in English but I still need to develop my writing and learn how to write a proper essay. 
I also need to practise speaking in front of a group and learn to understand and distinguish the different accents. 
Reading more advanced litterature and articles is also something I need to do to broaden my vocabulary which makes it easier to understand persons who use many advanced words when they speak.
"," Capital punishment- unacceptable in a modern democracy  The right to our life is the most principle of all the human rights. 
If society removes that right from the people, it violates all the other rights as well. 
Still, a number of felonies and violent crimes are committed every day and finding a way to decrease the number is an important task. 
Imprisonment as a solution offers the possibility of a normal life after the criminal has served his sentence. 
Capital punishment however, is a final punishment.  	
It can be difficult to get a fair trial since several aspects of society are involved in the process. 
In the United States, which is supposed to be one of the world's leading countries, capital punishment is being used in a discriminating way against certain groups in society, for example, poor people who cannot afford a proper defence, and minority groups. 
Minority groups, especially African Americans run a greater risk of being sentenced to the capital punishment than whites. 
Also, criminals who have committed murder where the victim is white, rather than black, is more often sentenced to death. 	 	
One common argument of those who favour the death penalty is that it has a deterrent effect on other criminals. 
Although several investigations have been made regarding the connection between capital punishment and crime, there is no evidence that the death penalty is more deterrent than other forms of punishment. 
For instance, many crimes are commited when the criminal is affected by alcohol or drugs and does not consider the consequences of his actions, which means that the punishment he could be getting in a trial, has no deterrent effect at the time the crime is commited. 
Likewise, criminals who commit murder assume that they will not get arrested, and the deterrent effect would probably be greater if the risk of getting arrested increased. 
Some people want to use capital punishment with the purpose of preventing the criminal from repeating his crime, but you can never know whether the criminal would have repeated his crime, or not. 
Furthermore, capital punishment removes the chance of rehabilitation, and that is the aim for most prisons. 	 	
Capital punishment creates a brutal society. 
Criminals who risk getting the death penalty in a trial will do everything in their power to avoid getting arrested, which means that they will arm themselves and maybe even kill in ""self-defence"". 
There is also a risk that important persons like witnesses, jurors and lawyers will be bribed or threatened during the trials. 
When the court decides to execute a human being, it states an example which reduces the public's respect for human life. 
An execution is a violent act, and violence brings violence. 
When society use the death penalty as a punishment, who shall be punished when an innocent person has been executed?  	
Capital punishment is an irrevocable act, and the risk of punishing innocent people should be enough to stop the use of this penalty. 
If new evidence proves that the executed person is not guilty, it is already too late. 
Some countries have unfair and rapid trials with the execution following directly afterwards, which makes appeals and petitions for mercy impossible. 
The number of convicted innocent persons in such countries is frightfully high. 
In the United States it has been revealed that at least 23 innocent human beings have been executed during the 20th century. 
The true number is naturally unknown. 	 	
Seen from a human aspect, capital punishment is a brutal and cruel punishment which does not belong in a civilized society. 
Living in death row in the United States has been described as being like a living dead, waiting only for the date to be executed, and to wait for 15 years is not unusual. 
The methods that are used varies throughout the world, some are more barbarian than others. 
The question is, which is the smoothest way to kill a human being? 	
In brief, capital punishment ought not to be accepted in a democracy, since only a few persons can decide whether another human being is allowed to live or not. 
People can change and they can be rehabilitated, and if someone is mentally ill he can be treated. 
That is why capital punishment should be prohibited. 
Instead, the risk of getting arrested and sentenced to prison should be increased, as a deterrent effect for criminals. 
When you use capital punishment, you cross the line and become like the criminal you are punishing, with the difference that you have the law on your side and another name for the act. 
Likewise it is a fact that innocent people have been convicted, and since capital punishment is irrevocable, the risk is unacceptably high and the consequences unforgivable. 
Naturally the criminals should be punished for their crimes, but there are more effective penalties, which avoid a brutalization of society and maintain the respect of human life.
",True
"You would like me to evaluate my strenghs and weaknesses in the language of English. 
To start with I would like to write that everything is relative. 
I believe my English is good considering it isn't my native language. 
If I could speak Spanish or Japanese as well as I speak English I would be thrilled. 
On the other hand my English is not as good as my Swedish contemporaries. 
I know I lack a lot of skills. 
To defend myself from my lack of skills, I will tell you about past experiences with the language. 
I started learning English at school at the age of eight. 
When I was eight years old I began in a private school where all my classmates already had studied English for one year and a half. 
I felt stupid because they were so much better in many subjects.  
At the age of ten I stopped studing English because I went to live in Italy.  
English classes began at the age of 13 and the level was very low. 
What I learnt four years earlier was enought to become the best pupile in class. 
You would imagine that it should't make any difference if an eight years old child had learnt something several years before. 
I had such a lead because the average of Italians never hear any English at all, even the TV is in Italian.  
I returned to Sweden to begin gymnasium. 
My first year at school was a disaster neverless in English. 
After less than a year my English teacher adviced me to stop going to his classes because he thought it was a complete waste of time for me. 
During the summer the school provided me with extra classes in a few subjects, one of the them was English. 
There I learnt about these very important irregular verbs which were needed to be learnt by heart. 
This discover became my key to success. 
It was like a new world opening to me.   
Since then I've studied English a couple of years in gymnasium and eight weeks in Ireland.   
Writing about Ireland remembered me of two things in particular which have been and still are very important for the development of my English skills.:  - one is that I've been abroad and heard a lot of different kinds of English, it has helped me to understand that the important thing is to relax in conversations. 
Better to try than not. - the other thing is the television, the TV helps me with my listening comprehension, something I need to practice every day.  
I feel I've been pulling myself under a bit about my English knowledges so I want to change the trend by saying that I have one thing in favor! 
I can speak Italian fluently and it helps me understand English words which derives from Latin,. often they are also the most difficult ones.  
To return to the goal of this assignment I will now tell you what I think about my skills. y opinion is that my listening comprehension is rather good, I practise by spending a lot of time abroad and in front of the television as I wrote before.  y reading experience is very limited, I have read very few fiction books. 
The books I've read are English books used during English classes and books in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and psychology used through my teaching education.  y grammar is horrible! 
The few rules I know I forget while I'm speaking.  y writing is incompetent and my texts are lacking of imagination. 
Unfortunately my texts are as bad in Swedish too. 
I believe it's almost impossible for me to become a good writer. 
It's like I don't have the right schemes in my head. 
Something I should have developed during my earlier school years. 
I also have difficulties with spelling right.  
The good thing about all this is that I'm looking forward to any improvement and I'm greatful for this new opportunity.
","I started to study English at school when I was nine years old, in third grade. 
I thought it was great fun. 
Our teacher wrote the names of the things in the classroom on big sheets of paper and put them on those things, like chair, curtain, desk etc. 
Since English was the first second language I came in contact with I was rather fascinated by the differencies that there are between English and Swedish. 
English can have two or even more words when Swedish only have one, English has many more words. 
Translating can not be done word by word. 
I still remember discovering that, it was a great experience, which, i think, gave me a new view of the world. 
The rythm in English is also different, very different from the rythm in Swedish (if there is one). 
I think that is why I find listening to English easy. 
I find it easy to follow and to understand. 
Not only the rythm but also the fact that we ar being exposed to English daily does a lot to it. 
When you are litening the speakers tone and voice helps you to understand the meaning of the words you do not know, that makes it easier than reading. 
On the other hand you don't have the time to look unfamilliar words up as you listen, but when reading you do. 
The need to look words up is bigger when you read, more words seem unfamilliar then.   
When it comes to reading a novel I had to look some words up, often I did have a clue what the word ment but to be sure of the exact meaning I looked them up in a dictionary. 
That is how you learn new words, by looking them up, so even if it takes some time it is worth it. 
Your language becomes richer and the next time you see the word you know what it means, so you do not have to look it up. 
I think reading is not hard but it is the best way of learning words, and it is harder to read than to listen to someone speaking. 
I expected it to be harder than it was to read a novel, since I have studied German and remembered the difficulties I had reading the first novel on my first term of that course. 
But I guess English and German could not be compared, we have English all around us and very little German.  
If reading is the best way of learning words, speaking is the best way of making them your own. 
That is when you learn how to, and when to use the words you have learned by your reading. 
To pronounce and use the words with other people is maybe the hardest part of learning a language. 
I don't know why I feel incomfortable speaking English. 
Therefore I consider speaking as my weakness in English as in all languages i try to learn. 
Though I feel much more confident speaking English than German even though I, as I said, studied German at the University for some time. 
I think that there is some kind of limit that we need to get over, the more we use the language the more confident we will be. 
And of course the fact that everyone who takes the course speaks Swedish does not make it easier, it feels silly to use English as we speak to each other. 
When I am in a country where I need English I don't feel silly at all, though.   aybe it is bad to be confident when you study a language at this level, because you don't see your errors. 
I think it could be for me, anyway. 
I might consider some of my errors as my own personal touch in the essay, and then it is harder to discover them. 
But I believe that when someone points them out to me i will be aware of them the next time. 
I think writing is a weakness, since that is what I am least used to do. 
Maybe writing is harder for me than speaking, I am not sure.
",False
" Swedish Pupils Need More Schooldays and Homework  Education is a big issue in Sweden. 
The general opinion is that the school system needs improvement. 
This is because too many pupils come out of school without a grade and thus without a chance of getting a higher education. 
The low grades and bad knowledge also affect their self confidence, and that is perhaps more alarming. 
But it is not only the weak children that suffer. 
To the fast learners the teaching is too slow and to those who need more time and practicing it is too fast. 
Therefore the Swedish liberal party, Folkpartiet, has come up with a new party programme for education. 
This was presented in a Swedish newspaper and I found two of the suggestions particularly interesting.  
One thing that caught my interest was that in Sweden there are more holidays than schooldays. 
This is not the case in any other country in the European Community. 
If we increase the number of schooldays we would give the children more opportunities to learn reading and writing. 
These are skills that are essential in almost all subjects and therefore it is a great help to have a good command of them. 
Many teenagers in Sweden are not very good at spelling and they seldom read a book. 
If there would have been more opportunities to practice reading and writing in the lower classes these persons would surely be more confident in using their own language and thus get better results at school. 
But the number of hours used for teaching Swedish has decreased considerably since the beginning of the century. 
And at the same time the number of years spent in school has increased from six to nine.  
One would assume that since Swedish pupils spend less time in school than those in other countries, they would have more homework. 
This is, however, not the case, in fact, in no country in the industrialized part of the world do the children have less homework than in Sweden. 
That is a pity because homework is a good thing. 
At home each student can focus on what he or she finds most difficult. 
This is also a way to let children take responsibility for their learning, and a way for them to learn how to study. 
The latter is a very important skill, I learned it when I was eighteen (!) 
and it helped me a lot, believe me. 
Homework is also good because it gives the teacher a chance to individualise more: Everyone gets a task that corresponds to their ability, no one gets bored and everybody manages to solve their task. 
This way children will learn that studying is a good thing. 
They do not know that and I believe we, the adults, are to blame.   
I think that children of today are taught very early that learning without effort is good. 
Before they start school we praise them when they learn fast. 
Expressions like: ""Good, you know the whole song already and you've only heard it twice"" or ""What a nice picture and you're already finished"" are very common. 
Of course we only want to encourage our kids and be nice, but what do we encourage by this? 
What do the children feel appreciated for? 
The answer is: learning fast, not spending a lot of time trying and practicing, but producing a result quickly. 
This praising of a quick result is not just something that we say, it is part of our culture, part of our time. 
Everything should be done as quickly as possible, no time wasted. 
But there actually was a time, centuries ago of course, when people took pride in working hard. 
If you wrote a book you would gladly tell people that it took you several years of diligent work to do it. 
I believe that we must think about this and when our children make an effort to learn something, we must encourage their effort. 
When they have completed the task they will find the feeling of gratification a greater reward than our praise. 
This changing of attitude would be a great help to the pupils. 
It would no longer be bad to be a ""swot"" and no one would have to pretend to be a ""genius"" who never has to study. 
If we start to give the young pupils more homework they will see what learning is really about. 
They will get used to spending time studying at home and they will feel good when they discover that they can teach themselves. 
What you learn by yourself is also what you remember best.   ore time spent in school and more time spent at home with schoolwork. 
Those were two of the things that Folkpartiet suggested for their new party programme. 
For the children it most certainly sounds boring but if we, the adults, change our attitudes and if the homework is adjusted to the individual abilities of the pupils, they would become more self confident and they could learn a lot more than they do today.
"," Mind your language  I agree with Shirley Peckhams article ""Cleaning up the Language"". 
Children should not swear and neither should adults. 
In this article I will deal with three reasons why cursing is superfluous. 
The first reason is that it prevents our vocabulary from growing. 
Secondly it offends a lot of people to hear swear words. 
And thirdly, when offended people might not listen to what you have to say and the message that you had will not reach them.   
We do not need the swear words because there are other words that we could use instead of them. 
Using these words would extend our vocabulary and that would give us a language with greater variations. 
This extended and varied language would help us to be more precise in expressing ourselves. 
And it is really very helpful to have the right words in many situations. 
Swear words are actually not so useful, since they do not carry that much of a meaning. 
What these words do is mainly emphasizing or strengthening another word and that could be done in other ways.  
Another reason not to swear is that we should be considerate towards other people. 
Hearing a person swearing frequently is offensive to a lot of people, Shirley Peckham is one of them, as she wrote in her article. 
Therefore, I think that out of respect for other people we should be careful about what words we use. 
This is the same kind of respect as the one we show by not walking around naked even though it is a hot summer day. 
We do not undress in public because it would offend a lot of people, and I think it is the same thing with swearing. 
To spare people from feeling disgusted, as Shirley Peckham, we should search for other, less offensive words when we speak.   
The third reason why we should not swear is mainly for our own sake. 
If we offend people with our language they might not listen to what we have to say, that way the message that we have will not come through to them. 
And the purpose of speaking is to be heard and understood. 
Furthermore, we do ourselves a favor by not swearing since a person with a pleasant and varied vocabulary seems more reliable than someone who needs swear words to explain what he or she thinks. 
Therefore, if swearing makes people stop listening, then what is the point of speaking at all?  
Swearing is completely unnecessary. 
That is what I wanted to say with this essay and I have used three arguments to convince you. 
I think that if we do not use swear words we will have to search for other words, and that would increase our vocabulary with words that are more useful to us. 
Useful since it makes it easier for us to explain what we mean in different situations. 
As swear words is regarded as unpleasant by several people we should use other words in order not to be inconsiderate and rude to them. 
When we swear we make these people stop listening, and in order to make as many persons as possible listen we must have a vocabulary used by the majority, and swearing is not accepted by most people. 
Besides, whatever your message is it is easier to convince others that you are right if your language is decent.
",True
" Unemployment-Solutions to the problem  Introduction The middle-aged and older people in Sweden were brought up in a time with a strong social network and a low unemployment. 
Historically people have considered the government to be responsible for people that are unemployed. 
Today this picture is changing. 
Older people still blame the government for them being unemployed, while the younger generation takes more responsibility for their unemployment. 
They do not blame the society to the same extent, and put in a bigger effort to improve their situation. 
In this essay I will discuss arguments concerning whether or not one can, or should, blame the government for people being unemployed and what can be done to decrease the level of unemployment in Sweden.  
Unemployment any people that are unemployed do not put a lot of effort in trying to improve their situation. 
They think, that by paying taxes and being a member of a union, they will be taken care of in case they become unemployed. 
Unfortunately for them, this is not how it works. 
Of course they should receive help from the government and their union in finding a new job as well as getting financial support from their unemployment benefit fund. 
This is everybody's right. 
The problem is that a lot of people that have been unemployed for a long time have given up. 
They are convinced that they will never have a proper job again, and therefore they do not make an effort to find a new job. 
This is a dangerous effect of unemployment, people have given up and continue to live on welfare and the unemployment funds.  
In Kiruna, a proposal was submitted by the local authorities, stating that people that are unemployed will not receive further support unless they put themselves at disposal for various unemployment programs such as further education or a trainee post. 
This program is designed to force people that have given up to activate themselves if they want further support from the state. 
There is, as always, both a good and a bad side to this kind of programs. 
Can we really motivate an unemployed doctor to take a job selling hamburgers or cleaning houses? 
Not that there is anything wrong with these jobs, but understandably he or she will not find it very stimulating. 
On the other hand, this program might stimulate people to get an education or start their own business.  
A lot of middle-aged Swedes are also brought up in a time where grants from the society have been very common. 
This has made them very spoiled, and their household economy has been based on, and is dependent on, these grants. 
If they for some reason become unemployed, they expect that the government will se to that they do not have to lower their living standards or sell their new car. 
This attitude has to change. 
The Swedish government has been far too generous in issuing grants for all kinds of purposes. 
Grants should only be given to people in real need of them, not to people who want to buy a new car or move into a bigger apartment.  
Another aspect of unemployment is a very current one; factory shutdowns. 
Very often, the company that shuts down a factory is being considered as an inhumane and horrible employer, who does not care the least about its' employees. 
But is unemployment really a company's responsibility? 
I think not! 
Of course companies carry a great deal of responsibility for their personnel and should try to find good solutions and alternative jobs in case of a factory shutdown. 
But in the long run, the companies biggest responsibility, is to be as profitable and efficient as possible in order to secure jobs for the future and increase wealth of the country.  
How can we then create new job opportunities in Sweden? 
A lot of politicians claim that people starting their own businesses will create the most jobs. 
On the other hand, business people all over Sweden, mean that for this to happen the corporate climate of Sweden has to improve. 
Most important of all is that it has to be cheaper to employ workers. 
Today smaller companies have a hard time expanding, since it is so expensive to hire people because of the high taxation rates on labour. 
First after this tax has been significantly reduced, and the corporate climate is more appealing, the desired effect on employment can be experienced.  
Conclusion Unemployment in Sweden is going down, from around ten percent in the early 90's it is now down to around five percent. 
There is however still a lot of work to be done regarding unemployment problems. 
The biggest problems are that people are not willing to take responsibility for their unemployment and that people that have been unemployed for a long time are loosing their hopes about ever finding a job again. 
Sweden also need a better corporate climate, taxation on labour is too high for small businesses that want to expand. 
We also need to use government funds more wisely, grants are being given to people who are not really in need of them. 
Instead, people who are in real need of grants should be able to receive more.
"," NECESSARY VIOLENCE  Introduction Violence on TV and in movies is from time to time debated in the media. 
Different groups with different opinion discuss the effect violence might have on our children. 
Different arguments are debated back and forth. 
Aspects are analysed and interpreted to the full extent. 
The producers and filmmakers on one hand saying: -This is merely entertainment or -The violent scenes are necessary to understand the underlying message in the film. 
The critics on the other hand saying that violence on TV creates violence on the streets, and that young people get a wrong picture of the effect of violent acts. 
What is true? 
And in which cases can violence on TV or in movies really be necessary?  
Necessary violence? 
The real world One thing that I often think of is the horrible and violent scenes that is almost daily shown on news report. 
They show people in poor countries that suffer from starvation and famine. 
You can see small children with swollen stomachs and open wounds due to malnutrition that suffer tremendously. 
You see civilians leaving their homes to escape the horrors of war. 
This is something that affects me a lot and I sometimes question whether or not they really need to show these pictures, because people already know that this problem exist. 
On the other hand we have to accept that this is how our world looks today, and that censoring this to avoid that people feel bad would mean that we in some way deny the fact that this problem exists. 
It is of greater importance to deal with the problems of starvation and war than to censor the way it is described.  
Parental responsibility  Violence in movies and TV series is another relevant question. 
I don't think that children benefit from watching violence in movies and TV series, because this violence is very different from the violence on a news report. 
It is not real. 
Sometimes it is very exaggerated and very unrealistic and this could contribute to children, and some adults, getting a distorted picture of the effect that violent acts towards other people might have. 
Personally I am very grateful that my parents did not allow me to watch these programs while I was young. 
But this is not the parents only responsibility. 
They also need to inform and educate their children on how to act in society and explain to them that violence and abuse is wrong and not acceptable in any case.  
Sometimes though, violence in a movie can be justified and fill a purpose. 
For example, a movie about World War II or the Vietnam war, would have to have violence in it in order to be realistic. 
It would not be very truth worthy to have a movie about a war, and no one got killed. 
However in other entertainment productions, like Hollywood action movies, the violence can sometimes be very exaggerated and one can question its necessity.  
Censorship I also think that you have to be extremely careful before you start censoring programs. 
In Sweden we have a state department for film censorship, which many other countries also have. 
This I find quite strange. 
In both USA and Sweden we strongly emphasise the importance of freedom of speech and the freedom of press, but still we find it necessary, and we feel we have the right to censor movies and TV. 
Is not this a form of governmental control? 
Something the inhabitants in both these countries are highly afraid of and something that they do not want to increase? 
Should censorship be allowed or is it better not to censor anything and leave to the individuals to interpret what they see themselves? 
Maybe you can not find an easy answer to this, but we should probably try to get rid of the double standard of morality that the current behaviour creates.  
Conclusion  Violence on TV is a complex question. 
Some people may argue that we need to protect our children from watching violence, which is probably true. 
But how should we do this, and from what violence shall we protect them? 
All forms of violence on TV might not be unnecessary, and who should decide which types of violence that are ok and which that are not ok. 
Every form of censorship is undoubtfully a question of governmental control and it is something that stirs up a lot of emotions when mentioned. 
People do not want their kids to watch violent TV programs, bur they also do not want to be controlled by the government. 
This makes it very difficult to find a solution that suits everybody, and you are almost certain to step on someone's toes.
",True
" An idea on how to bring social justice to the school curriculum  In a time when racism is growing amongst young people and words such as social Justice seems erased from our vocabulary it is of great importance to look at what role the school plays in the discussion and creation of attitudes. 
I believe the schools can and should play a more active part in bringing back social Justice on the agenda. 
What I am proposing is therefore the introduction during the last year of junior high school of a compulsory stay in a foreign country. 
I suggest that all Swedish high school students spend approximately one semester in a foreign country preferably outside of Western Europe, taking part in social projects such as building schools, helping with irrigation projects, working with the homeless or in women shelters etc. 
I suggest this project be funded with tax money. 
This idea might at first seem overly radical and somewhat unrealistic. 
But I will here argue that the tax money spent on this project will pay back greatly maybe not so much in economical terms but in terms of gains for both the individual as well as for the society at large.  	 
With the risk of sounding as a hopelessly outdated idealist I will not start with the economical gains (if there indeed are any) or the gains for the society but with how the individual student would benefit from this proposal. 
The first individual gain that come to mind is the students own personal growth. 
What better way to learn about yourself, learn responsibility and improve your self confidence than to travel and meet people from other cultures? 
I believe it is the schools ambition not only to teach the students facts but also other skills such as being able to take initiatives and ability to work in a group. 
This is an area where, judging from the present school debate, schools seem to have difficulties and are in need of new ideas. 
I believe a compulsory semester spent abroad is an innovating idea worth trying. 
Apart from being exposed to a different culture the students would also be exposed to a different language. 
Today when a lot of stress is being put on language skills in order to get a job, I see it as a good investment both for the individual and for the society at large to early on learn high school students to communicate in a second language. 
Therefore I think it is essential to make sure everybody gets this opportunity.  	 
I will now move on to look at what positive effects this suggested proposal would have on society. 
One of the major gains that come to mind is that it would help in the fight against racism. 
This is of course only a speculation from my side but I see it as a rather logic result if people at an early age were to be confronted with other cultures and social situations. 
Not only do I think it would be an efficient way to meet the growing racism but it would hopefully also raise the awareness of the importance of social Justice. 
I am by no means suggesting this to be the only solution but I do think it to be one way of dealing with two substantial problems our society is struggling with today; racism and a lack of interest in global social Justice. 
Looking beyond our own country it would also be beneficial for the receiving country, taken that the students would not merely be spectators but would actively be taking part in the different projects.  	 
Since everything today in order to be trustworthy has to be measured in economic terms I will venture to speculate that this idea is not only good for the individual and for society at large but can also be economically sustainable. 
As good as every day we read about the scarcity of qualified teachers, the physical decay of our school buildings and the lack of updated schoolbooks. 
With a large number of students (everyone in their final semester of junior high school) abroad every year the demand for schoolbooks and teachers would decrease. 
There would of course still be a need for some teachers to keep in contact with the students while abroad and to follow up at home coming. 
But the actual number of teachers could be reduced. 
It is also my conviction that this last ""abroad spent"" semester would be a good incentive for students to finish junior high school and therefore the number of dropouts would be reduced. 
Which apart from being good for the individual students also would have a good effect on the economy since more people would complete their studies and be more attractive on the job market.  	 
As you have seen I believe there to be many good reasons, both for society and for the students to introduce a compulsory stay abroad for the students in junior high school. 
I have even suggested in what way this could have a beneficial effect on the economy, even though my lack of economic training makes these assumptions rather speculative. 
But I believe that even if we, in order to implement this idea, would have to increase the taxes both the society, the school and the students have enough to gain that it would be well worth it.
","y strengths and weaknesses in the four skills of writing, listening, reading and speaking mainly relates to the fact that I am a musician and have loved music since the day I was born. 
For me, this is a way of mixing all four skills in a interesting, developing and joyful way. 
At the age of seven my favourite band was Mötley Crüe and me and my best friend Liza listened to them all the time. 
By that time we were making up fake-lyrics since we didn't know all of the words. 
Nowadays I write my own music including lyrics in English. 
Many people wonder why, since Swedish is my native language, but somehow I find it easier to write lyrics in English than in Swedish. 
This is the type of writing I do more frequently. 
When I was younger I used to have a lot of pen-pals from all over the world as well, but as the years have gone by we have stopped writing eachother. 
Today I correspond mostly via e-mail. 
It's easy and quick and I can not only get in contact with absent friends but also with ""fans"" through my personal home page on the Web. 
So even though my mailbox is empty my ""inbox"" brings me joy.  y strenght in writing is that I do write. 
From the heart and a lot. 
And the fact that my lyrics often are said to move the ones listening. 
My weakness is just about the same; I write songlyrics. 
No formal letters, no essays. 
Just basic lyrics of the broken-hearted people.  
When I was growing up my friend Liza, who was born in South Africa, spoke both English and Swedish at home so I never found the sound English neither strange nor new. 
I also enjoy travelling a lot, with friends, family or alone, and English is without doubt the most international language. 
It is to be heard all over (except in France and Germany?). 
The ""main-subject"" of my life - music - naturally involves listening as well and I take great interest in other artists lyricwriting. 
Besides through music I hear spoken English watching movies and the TV (almost) every night. 
But I do admit that I read the Swedish subtitles... 	
My strenghts would have to be that I listen to music a lot and that I have always been more or less surrounded by the English language. 
My weakness would be the fact that I only watch and listen to what I like.   
At the risk of repeating myself I mostely read - lyrics! 
In addition I read questions and letters sent to me by people from all over asking about my music. 
Unfortunately no magazines or books. 
More of a weakness than a strength, I would say. 
But, again, starting out at the age of six Liza was a great teacher and we used to tape our ""lessons"" as I was trying to read, spell and pronounce ""dog"", ""house"" and ""farm"" the right way. 
Guess I just got old and lazy.  y spoken English has improved over the years, perhaps thanks to the music. 
Singing in English have created a natural environment for practising without thinking too much about it. 
I have also experienced that the promotional part, like giving interviews, have forced me to talk as much as I can. 
From what I've learned an interview is more likely to be ""true"" (according to me) if I'm the one talking most of the time. 
Travelling a lot has also helped me get rid of the fear I was stuffed with in school. 
That is; not to open my mouth unless my grammar was perfect. 
Travelling alone have made me use the words I know, pick up some new ones along the way and simply do my very best.  y strenght in spoken English is that I am no longer afraid of making mistakes, instead I just keep on trying. 
Still I'm frustrated by the fact that my vocabulary fails from time to time. 
This would be my weakness. 
The fact that ""my generation"" is next to bilingual, being brought up in an Americanized world could also be seen as strength, or rather a gift, I would say. 
This allows us to think of English more as a ""second language"" rather than a ""foreign"".  
I hope to improve all of my skills during this term and to find my studying more fascinating than frustrating.
",False
"I suppose what I would consider myself being best at when it comes to English is listening. 
As long as it is not a doctor or a mecanic trying to explain what they do. 
I think the reason for that is that it is the one of the four I have been doing for the longest time. 
My first actuall English lesson I had in the fourt grade but long before that I had gotten used to watching the TV-programs my 5-year older sister watched, where I learned what words sounded like and by reading the subtitles I could figure out what they ment. 
So by the time my teacher started teaching me words like cat and hat, I already knew long sentences as ""Hands up, cowboy or I'll shoot!"" 
This way of learning obviously wasn't the best since you had no way of getting all parts of the language but as far as listening and speaking goes it took me a long way. 
As I mentioned above most of my spoken English is from TV, movies and music, mostly American. 
So when I moved to my America, my boyfriend, whom I met there, had more than a few laughs at my expence when he recognized certain senteces he also had heard and remembered from movies pronounced exactly as they were in the movie. 
The biggest problem with learning from TV, the way everyday people in America speak, is that when the teachers in elemetary school and also secondary school wanted to teach you their version of what they considered beeing Oxford English, they had no patiens for American English, which was strictly forbidden, and I had little patiens for their, as we say in Sweden, ""Swenglish"". 
And since what they teach you there is mostly to be able to speak and understand without knowing the rules behind it I do not feel that I learned anything from them. 
When it comes to reading I wouldn't say that I have a problem but this I haven't been practicing to much. 
I'm afraid I'm going to have to blame this also on school, since the texts you were forced to read always were so boring and instead of pushing you to start reading by letting you read books, I'm now talking about novels and such, that you would ordinary read in Swedish and you had a interest in they made you read books that you would never think of reading and which most likely did not interest you. 
But during my years in America I didn't have much choise but to read English books so I reluctantly started. 
In the begining I read Harlequin novels since it doesn't contain that many pages and something is usually happening on every page, then I went on to a little longer books, but still easy to read such as Stephen King books. 
For me this system worked very well, and now I feel more comfertable reading longer and more advanced books.  
Finally we have arrived at my problem area, writing! 
My big problem here is a combination of lack of imagination, spelling problems and not having learned proper grammar. 
In 1997 I realised that although I could get by easily with my English in America it would be nice to learn it proparly, so I returned to Sweden to take English, among other subjects, at Kunskapslyftet. 
This was a big dissapointment though. 
My teacher wasn't very good at English, in fact she had taken a summer-class just to be able to keep up with the class. 
And the biggest problem was that since the class was a adult one, no two people had the same knowledge of the language so it was at a rather basic level, and again the emphasis was put on knowing what to say not explaining why. 
And the essays we wrote felt like they were ment for sixth graders with subjects like ""my summer holliday"" or ""a letter to my best friend"". 
So needless to say this did not improve my writing skills.  
So here I am at University, finally going to learn about grammar and other ""behind the scenes"" things that makes the language work. 
I feel slightly overwhelmed but I hope that I at least will be able to take in some of it.  
The End
"," THE SWEDISH MONARCHY A NICE TRADITION WORTH KEEPING?  
In dictionaries the word democracy is defined as ""a system of government in which everyone in the country can vote to elect its members"" and as ""a situation in which everyone is equal and has the right to vote, make decisions etc"". 
The word monarchy is defined as ""a system in which a country is ruled by a king or a queen"". 
Sweden is paradoxically both a democracy and a monarchy and the way I see it a country cannot or at least should not be both.  
Some of the main arguments I have heard from people who wants to keep the monarchy are that ""Sweden has always been a monarchy"" and "" it's such a nice tradition"". 
Yes, Sweden is one of the oldest monarchies in Europe and we have a history full of fascinating stories about royal war-heroes, conspiracies and mysteriously murdered kings. 
But those arguments aren't relevant to the issue. 
Today's system and society can't be compared with for example the eighteenth century and our present king Carl XVI Gustav can't be compared with Carl XII. 
The word is constantly changing and today monarchy is an old-fashioned system which doesn't fit into a democratic society such as ours. 
To use history and tradition as arguments in this serious matter is just a naive and ignorant way of trying to avoid discussion and debate. 
We have to eliminate the romantic and sentimental image that surrounds the royal family and the monarchy as a system. 
We have to look at our society from a logical and practical point of view.  
I mentioned the word democracy and it's meaning earlier. 
People around the world are fighting for it. 
People sacrifice their lives for the right to vote and choose their leaders, the right to speak their mind and the right to be treated as equals. 
Democracy is not as obvious to everybody as it is for us. 
In a monarchy the regent is not elected. 
The Swedish monarch is not chosen by the people and he/she does not have the same rights as everybody else. 
He/she does not have the right to vote, he/she is not free to choose his/her religion and despite the fact that he/she is the head of our state he/she has got no political power. 
But still he/she ranks above everybody else and he/she requires to be addressed as ""his/her royal highness"" or ""your majesty"". 
And all that because he/she was born a crown-prince/princess and through inheritance became head of a state. 
Sweden is a democracy.   
The Swedish people want to be treated as equals and with respect. 
Men and women, homosexuals and heterosexuals, natives and immigrants etc. 
Then why do more than 70% of the Swedish population accept this kind of class-difference and segregation where a small, limited group of people are treated as if they were more important and worth more respect than the rest of the people just because they were born by royal parents? 
Is it because ""it's such a nice tradition""?  
Another argument that I have come across is the royal family's popularity. 
People seem to love reading and talking about their romances and other private matters. 
The media's coverage of the royal family has increased and the interest among the population has also increased because of that.. 
That argument would become very weak if today's media-situation would change and that is exactly what the royal family wants. 
They are beginning to complain about the lack of privacy and the media's interference of their lives and that is understandable. 
But their popularity depends completely on the media. 
So, is their popularity totally based on the fact that they are a never-creasing source of gossip and would they be as popular if the monarch had the power?  
History, tradition and popularity are all quite weak arguments pro-monarchy. 
But they are also very difficult to ignore. 
These things are deeply rooted in the Swedish people. 
We have become used to the monarchy and a habit is always difficult to break. 
But the society of today is in need of a change. 
Today's monarchy is an old fashioned and reactionary system where the monarch's only function seems to be waving at people from a balcony, cutting ribbons and throwing champagne-bottles at boats. 
Do we really need that?
",False
" Monarchy - An Expensive Anachronism  Sweden is according to our schoolbooks a democracy, in which the sovereignty of the people is represented by the parliament (riksdagen). 
Furthermore Sweden is a constitutional monarchy. 
King Carl XVI Gustaf is since 1973 officially the chief of state with one sole obligation: to function as a representative on the behalf of Sweden. 
But why cannot the person promoting Sweden be democratically elected? 
Would it not be preferable if he or she was appointed due to merits rather than having been in-the-right-womb-at-the-right-time as their only qualification? 
Some might say that it is of no significance whether the king is undemocratically appointed since he lacks any real power. 
This view on democracy is truly shocking, and is as awkward as it is faulty. 
The Royal family DOES have certain hereditary powers. 
People tend for example to listen very carefully when Queen Silvia makes a statement, which regretfully has become rather commonplace. 
For instance, she helped making Sweden's already tense relations with the United States even more agitated by condemning the country's unwillingness to sign a certain bill at a conference held by the United Nations in the year of 2000. 
It simply does not make sense that a person, just because she carries a certain surname, sees as her duty to intervene in other countries' interstate business.  
Those of us excluded from the ruling elite are expected to know our place, to respect our ""betters"", even if their only qualification for power is to have been born within a certain family. 
This is the very point I'm aiming at, namely how something that is the leftover rubbish of the Middle Ages can be accepted by a majority of the Swedes. 
The defenders of the status quo insist that we should support the monarchy as the embodiment of Sweden's great traditions. 
We should put the kings head on coins and stamps simply because the monarchy stands for historical continuity. 
In the age of globalization this seems highly reactionary. 
It does also seem paradoxical that a country, which has been governed by social democrats, almost without interruption, through a century, is so fond of monarchy. 
For what is it exactly about the royal family that we are supposed to respect? 
How have they contributed to improving the human condition? 
Is it their durability? 
Namely, that they are capable of sitting on the throne for years without once going to the toilet during a public engagement? 
No seriously, something is rotten in the state of Sweden when we are expected to bow to them, and address them by titles, simply because they were born with the name of Bernadotte. 
One more reason to abolish the monarchy is that it is expensive. 
The 40 million SEK a year it costs to maintain a monarchy could certainly be used in better ways. 
However, it would be wrong to confine criticism of the royals to economic matters. 
Such a discussion misses the point about the political role that the royal family still plays in Sweden. 
And it is that role which provides the best reasons for abolishing the monarchy altogether. 
Anybody who believes in basic democracy should be in favor of abolishing the monarchy, along with all of its hereditary privileges and powers.  
Having said this, it is of course also important to keep the question of royalty in perspective. 
The monarchy is symbolic of much that is wrong with Swedish society, but it is not the cause of the problems. 
But calling for the abolition of the monarchy could also help to sweep away some of the double standard circulating in Sweden. 
There are a lot of people who say they sympathize with the social democratic ideology. 
They are in favor of a classless society and are pro democracy, but at the same time wishes to maintain the greatest reminder of Sweden as an at one point truly undemocratic country: the monarchy. 
There is no place for a monarch in a democratic and modern country like Sweden - set Victoria free!
"," Protecting innocence or perpetuating ignorance  Television is one of the most important sources to information in our Western society. 
Most people, including myself, agree that the health of a democratic society depends on the supply of accurate information given to the citizens, and that free media is the only way of achieving this. 
With this in mind I should not feel so ambivalent when pondering over whether certain programs on TV should be allowed to be broadcast. 
There is however a certain field within the genre of ""reality television"", which lately has become extremely popular here in Sweden as well as in other countries, which I feel very doubtful about; the programs that focus on real-life crimes. 
When watching Swedish shows like Efterlyst and Brottsveg, or American equivalents like, Americas Most Wanted - America Fights back, L.A.P.D. 
(Los Angeles Police Department), Cops and Highway Patrol I often wonder if these shows do not do more harm than good. 
Is it really necessary to show reconstructed violence and actual car-chases in order for people to understand that these type of activities occur in society? 
Are these shows in fact an important tool when it comes to crime-prevention or do they merely lead to further desensitization? 
As a matter of fact some of the programs containing ""real-life"" violence reconstruct crimes with the intention of giving assistance to the police by encouraging witnesses to come forward as in the case of TV 3's Efterlyst, which has solved many crimes after telephone calls from viewers. 
So long so good, but there are actually examples of horrible mistakes that have been made; where innocent people have been exposed as wanted criminals. 
I happen to think that this kind of informing is rather unpleasant, especially since the consequences can be so devastating if a mistake is made. 
Can a good cause justify a person's reputation being spoilt? 
I do not think so. 
The people responsible for these programs must be utterly careful and if they tend to neglect their responsibility it is the ultimate proof of how the programs tend to be more concerned with entertaining the viewers than assisting the police.  
On the other hand, there are shows in this category that are honest about their intentions; that to solely entertain. 
You see, from the reporting of crimes committed and wanted criminals, it is a short step for modern technology to go seeking out crime for itself. 
There are several shows, especially in the United States, where camera-teams accompany police patrol-cars, in search of criminal activity. 
Shows like Cops and Highway Patrol are simply providers of entertainment and they do not try to make a more serious attempt. 
How watching the police going about doing there business can be of any amusement remain a riddle to me, especially since many of the segments deal with domestic violence, threats and assault.  
Here by the way, I think, we have a perfect example of how television can come dangerously close to the border between faithful reporting and fiction. 
The boundaries between the real and the unreal become blurred and the risk, as I see it, is that people might get a false impression of the situation and the world. 
We should of course not take for granted that people in general are stupid or declare them incapable of sorting through the inputs of information given to them. 
My conviction is however that a constant flood of violent images distorts the audience's view of the world. 
The question whether to censor and exclude certain material is however a real tricky one. 
Some argue that it should not be allowed to conceal the reality of the world from the audience, but what ""reality"" are we talking about when discussing drama-documentaries? 
Since they have a way of simplifying and perverting reality it is hard to tell.  
I know several people that have become frightened out of their minds from watching Efterlyst or Svenska Mord, where the latter is a program that dramatize alleged events, most of them real brutal murders. 
Shows like this often give the viewer the impression that these kind of things occur on a more frequent basis then they actually do. 
Luckily, there are very few people that have a TV as their only window to reality. 
However there are unfortunately people who believe that programs like this provide viewers with a good way of obtaining information about what is going on in the world. 
The same people might say that shows like this help fight ignorance, intolerance and indifference by showing what goes on out there. 
I would think that these shows at their best give rise to debates about standards and I want to keep it unsaid whether they pander to the public interest in crime rather than serve the long arm of the law. 
In which case the so called docu-dramas have proven the medium's potentiality to ""entertain"" in other ways than merely through fiction and comedy.
",True
" The importance of parental responsibility  The effect that violence on television has on children is an issue that has been frequently discussed. 
But something that maybe is given to little attention in the debate is the responsibility of the parents. 
People keep talking about the governmental responsibility, and the responsibility of broadcasters, but I think that this is actually a question relaying on the parents. 
Parents need to be more aware of what it is that their children watch on television.   
In the article "" Locking out violence"", Gina Bellafante discuss a new technological solution for parents to control the violence that reach their children through television. 
A special computer chip would make it possible for the parents to remove programs, with a certain level of violence, from their TV. 
Some people might think that this chip could be a good solution, but my opinion is that this problem will not be solved through technology. 
To deal with the matter of television violence, we need to look deeper into the actual problem. 
I believe that the relation between the parents and their children is of great importance in this case. 
Parents must be able to have an open and good dialog with their children. 
If the parents discuss television programs with their children, and give the children a chance to ask questions they might have, then the children can acquire many positive things from watching television. 
It would also give the parents an opportunity to see the programs from the child's view. 
Some people might say that this would take up a lot of the parent's valuable time. 
But if the parents do not think that they have the time to discuss an issue, that has such a great influence on children, then they should not have had any children in the first place. 
However, I do not believe that you can protect the children with technology. 
That is not the correct method for dealing with violence on television. 
The children will always have the possibility to go to a friend's house and watch. 
This makes it even more important that the parents are aware of what their children watch, and how they should deal with it. 
I also believe that parents themselves should make good examples, and they should help and support the children to discover good programs.   
Another way for parents to take responsibility for their children's TV watching, is to inspire them to do other activities. 
Children of today spend more time watching television than they spend in school. 
That is also a problem that I think is in need of a solution. 
It is no good for the mind, the eyes, or the rest of the body, to sit in front of a TV several hours each day. 
Therefore the children need to be occupied with other activities in their spare time, like for example sports or theatre. 
It is obvious that something drastically need to be done in the question of children's relation to television. 
Otherwise, there is a risk that the childhood of coming generations will be consisting only of television watching.   
We have already seen what disastrous effect television might have on children's minds, especially movies that include a lot of scenes with violence. 
The children cannot always see the difference between television and reality. 
They believe that what they see on television is true. 
This may give them an inaccurate world-view. 
Therefore it is significant that the parents can tell them the truth of how the world works in reality.   
In the article about the V chip, Ginia Bellafante quotes President Clinton. 
He sad: ""This is not censorship. 
This is parental responsibility"". 
My personal opinion is that it is not the V chip, but parental responsibility that is the only reasonable solution to the whole issue. 
Parents must acquire more responsibility for their children's television watching, because we will never be able to reach a satisfying solution only through technology.
"," ""The only good Indian is a dead Indian""  During the nineteenth century the attitudes to Indians played a large role in American politics and actions. 
A general view of Indians was that they were savages and murderers. 
Therefore the U.S. 
Government thought that they needed to become civilised. 
But white people were also interested and curious about this strange people whom they knew so little about. 
Some thought of themselves as friends of the Indians and tried to find out more about them.  	
""The bulk of our present adult aboriginal population were born in savagery, and have lived in savagery. 
Try as they will, they cannot entirely subdue the savage instincts to roam at will, to defy restraint, and to indulge their lawless appetites for blood and plunder."" 
This was said by Judson E. 
Walker in his text Campaigns of General Custer in the North-West and the Final Surrender of Sitting Bull. 
Many white people in this period of time agreed with him. 
They did not have any understanding for the old traditions of the Indians or their way of living, but simply considered them to be lawless creatures.  	
The Indians were also supposed to be cold-blooded murderers who killed many soldiers during the Indian wars, but statistics show otherwise. 
In The Custer Myth, W.A. 
Graham discuss the Indian war with an Indian warrior; ""Acceptance of the old warrior's estimate that no more than 20 to 30 of Custer's battalion were killed by the Indians, and that all the others killed each other or themselves, leads to the extraordinary statistical conclusion that of Custer's force, which numbered about 225, approximately but 10% were enemy inflicted losses: 90% were self-destroyed!"" 
But this fact did not change the way white people in general still looked upon the Indians. 
That is, as cruel murderers. 	
Even if many whites were friendly to the Indians, they still did not think of the Indians as individuals. 
It is clear that the whites did not see any similarities between the life of the Indians and their own. 
In her text Boots and Saddles, Elizabeth Custer describes the lives and relations of the Indians. 
For example she writes about a relation between an Indian woman and her husband; ""The faithful slave even used to accompany him to his bath. 
Indians do bathe- at long intervals."" 
She is surprised that the Indians take baths, something that she obviously did not believe 'savages' did. 
Furthermore, her usage of the word ""slave"" clearly shows the way that she depreciates the Indian-woman.  	
The United States Government considered itself as the saviour of these 'poor savages'. 
They believed that saving the Indians from their barbarian living to a civilised life was the only right thing to do. 
Judson E. 
Walker describes how 'kind' the United States Government would be to the Indians; ""Not only would they be protected from harm, but many favors and privileges would be granted them; while the proceeds from the sale of their ponies and arms, which they would be required to surrender, would be applied to their benefit."" 
Naturally the Indians not were very happy about surrendering their horses to the whites, and they therefore rejected the proposal. 
This is another obvious example of how the U.S. 
Government did not have any knowledge about the Indians, and they did not ask for their opinion of the 'civilisation'. 	
But the whites did not always intend to treat the Indians badly. 
Elizabeth Custer describes how her husband treated the Indians in the reservations very respectfully, for example when they were going to have a council; ""There was time, while they were preparing, to send for the ladies, and a few of us were tucked away on the lounge, with injunctions not to move or whisper, for my husband treated these Indians with as much consideration as if they had been crowned heads."" 
Further in the text she describes her husband's devotion to the reservation; ""He was a sincere friend of the reservation Indian.""  	
Mrs Custer also describes their curiosity of the lives of the Indians. 
For example, she was very fascinated by their clothing; ""A New York Charity Ball could bring out no more antique heirlooms, nor take more time in preparations than the costumes of Indians prepared for council."" 
Her attitude towards the Indians was not hostile, instead she showed interest in them; ""Their life always interested us, and by degrees they became so accustomed to our presence that they went on with all their occupations without heeding us."" 
She knew that the only way to learn about something new is to observe and study it yourself. 	
She also gives examples of when the Indians were not treated unfairly by the whites. 
One time, when an Indian had been arrested, General Custer talked to the Indians; ""With prudence and tact he explained that they intended to give the prisoner exactly the treatment a white man would receive under like circumstances;"" This was the sort of attitude that the Indians wanted from the whites. 
They wanted the whites to explain the reasons for their actions. 	
The opinion of the Untied States Government was that these poor savages needed civilisation, and the Government should help them to it. 
They did not think about the fact that the Indians had managed perfectly well without what they called the ""civilisation"". 
The attitude of people in general was mostly that ""The only good Indian is a dead Indian"". 
They thought of the Indians as murderers that were a great threat against the white people, and they were afraid of them. 
Throughout all times people have been scared of the unknown, and that was also the case with the Indians. 
However, unknown things also attribute curiosity. 
Some white people wanted to learn more about the Indians and showed great interest in them. 
But that did not change the fact that they still considered the Indians savages. 
This is what the Indian chief Sitting Bull gives his view of it in an interview; ""We kill buffaloes, as we kill other animals, for food and clothing, and to make our loges warm. 
(...) 
Your young men shoot for pleasure. 
All they take from dead buffalo is his tail, or his head, or his horns, perhaps, to show they have killed a buffalo. 
What is this? 
Is it robbery? 
You call us savages. 
What are they?""
",True
" The expansion of floorball in Uppland  	I first came into contact with floorball when I, at the age of 10, together with five older friends was asked to join a team. 
We practiced once a week in a gym using shoes as goalposts. 
We played a couple of matches in small halls using even smaller goals without goalies and only three players from each team were allowed to play at the same time. 
We stopped playing after a couple of months. 
Now, fourteen years later, I've played for seven years and the game is quite different from that of 1987. 
Matches are nowadays played with five outfield players and a goalie for each team. 
A board surrounds the field and the sticks weigh 130 grams compared to 350 grams in the old days. 
In Uppsala we have one of the biggest floorball halls in Sweden with three fields in the same building. 
The number of licensed players in Uppland has risen from about 120 in 1987 to 2 779 in 1992 and 6 598 in 2000. 
One of the major factors is that the number of players that are younger than sixteen has risen from 756 (27% of total) in 1992 to 4 192 (63,5% of total) in 2000. 
How come a sport like floorball has grown this quickly? 	
I remember what it was like when I started to play. 
We all wanted to imitate our idols and when you played floorball it was of course the hockey stars that we wanted to copy. 
Players like Loob, Kent Nilsson and Wayne Gretzky were hot items. 
Now, when the sport has grown, you can hear the young players saying that they are Johannes Gustafsson and Johan Davidsson, two of Sweden's best players, both born in Uppsala. 
When floorball was introduced it looked like a nice and calm way to play ice hockey. 
There is not that much close contact as in hockey where you learn how to tackle others. 
In floorball there only minor pushes are used and this fact probably makes parents of ten years olds less worried when they see their sons and daughters play.  	
Is it likely that money is of importance to this increase? 
Floorball is a rather cheap sport to exercise. 
A stick doesn't have to cost more than 200 SEK and most of us already own a pair of training shoes. 
This is pretty much what you need if you are going to play. 
If you compare to tennis a racquet costs almost 800 SEK for an eleven-year-old. 
To spend that amount you have to buy one the most expensive sticks you can find. 
A membership in a club does not have to be that terrible either even though it can differ a great deal between different clubs. 
Usually 200 SEK for one year is enough, while in tennis you have to pay 1 000 SEK for half a year.  	
Parents, though, do not care that much if it is really expensive, they want their kids to have fun and to meet friends. 
The kids also do not really care if their stick costs 150 SEK or 400 SEK, as long as they can play with it. 	
The best thing, by far, about floorball, as a youth sport, is that it is a team sport. 
As in every team sport the team spirit is important. 
In what way, then, does floorball differ from other team sports? 
It's simple. 
The fact is that everyone is allowed to play in the matches and have fun. 
There is no talk of using the best player twice as much as the rest of the team; instead everyone plays almost equally much even if this might cause a loss to the team. 	
This is if not unique at least a rather unusual way of dealing with team sports. 
In the sports where there is a chance of a player getting professional status, players can be sorted out as early as when they are seven years old. 
In floorball there is no rejection or segregation of players at a young age instead everyone is allowed to participate as much as they can. 
If I were a parent I would be really happy to see my kid play in the match even though he or she may not contribute that much to the outcome. 
At least they are enjoying themselves and that is what really matters. 	
I think that the number of people playing floorball will continue to rise, but probably not as rapidly. 
One thing that you can notice regarding the number of players is that if the total is increased by 300 the youth would rise by 250. 
This is very encouraging for the future and as long as floorball continues to be generous to its youngsters it will attract new members.
"," Let the Royal family speak  organ Johansson argues, in an article from Upsala Nya Tidning March 3rd 2001, that the King, and all the members of the Royal family, should be more or less controlled in what the say to avoid awkward and difficult situations for the Swedish politicians. 
He bases this on the agreement in Torekov 1971, where it was decided that Sweden were to remain a Monarchy but the King, or Queen, were to have no political power and only serve as ceremonial persons. 
A good agreement, according to Morgan Johansson, since the Swedish people may want the King, but practically no one want him to rule the country. 
I agree that the King should not have any political power, but I do not think it is right to try to limit his statements in political issues even though the Royal family is an exceptional stepping-stone for those who want to turn a debate in some direction. 
I believe that members of the Royal family should be able to say anything they want and according to the right of free speech, they can.   r Johansson also uses history to give strength to his proposal. 
He tells us how parliamentary government were introduced in Sweden and how it was put to a difficult test in 1914 when King Gustav V held his courtyard speech attacking the government which ended with the resignation of Prime Minister Karl Staaff. 
I get the feeling that Morgan Johansson is afraid that something like that could happen. 
However I cannot even imagine King Carl XVI Gustaf making a speech attacking Goran Persson and if it would happen, it is not likely that Goran Persson would have to resign. 
You could safely say that times have changed and I do not think Morgan Johansson has to be afraid of the King making Goran Persson resign.  
Spurred by King Carl XVI Gustaf's statement that the debate about the mad-cow disease was exaggerated, Morgan Johansson throws out a question whether it is possible to keep the King as a trustworthy symbol for our country if it is obvious that he has chosen a side in a highly controversial matter. 
I do not see why the King's credibility as a symbol for Sweden would suffer only because he lets the Swedish people know what he thinks in a discussed topic. 
Should not he, the King of Sweden, be allowed to tell what he believes?  
organ Johansson also reflects over the year 2000 where there were almost only good things said about Sweden in other countries. 
You could read about the Holocaust conference and the opening of the bridge over resund. 
One of the negative news was, according to Johansson, created by Queen Silvia when she, in an interview last October, said that she could not understand why Palestinians sent their children out in the streets to throw rocks towards the Israeli police. 
Johansson says that the Queen's view of the conflict in the Middle East is completely off target and I do not know enough about the conflict to argue with him, but he also says that it was evident that the Queen had picked a side. 
For me it is not that clear, but what I know of the Queen's engagements is that she is always looking after the children in every situation. 
If she did take the children's side in that discussion I would not object at all, even though it got big attention in the Arab world. 
It was, however, unfortunate that there were peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians at that time and that Sweden was leading the discussions.   
I still believe in the right of free speech, even for the Royal family, why should they be an exception? 
I can very well agree that both the King and Queen may not always make very clever statements, but it is their right to make statements, clever or not, as any other person. 
If they were not allowed to say anything they wanted it would probably limit their engagements in different areas. 
Imagine the following scenario; a reporter comes up to the King and asks what he thinks of the current unemployment rate in Sweden. 
The King, instructed to keep neutral in political questions, answers ""No comment"" or ""I do not know"" when he instead would like to have said something like ""I think that the government has to do something to lower the unemployment rate"". 
A lot of strange situations could arise if the Royal family was not allowed to comment on political questions. 
All I can say to Morgan Johansson is: Let the Royal family speak.    
In an article from Upsala Nya Tidning March 3rd 2001 Morgan Johansson, a social democratic member of the Riksdag, argues that the standing committee of the constitution should have power to examine how the head of State is handling his duties. 
He demonstrates this by showing different examples of members of the Royal family making, according to Mr Johansson, inappropriate comments in the political world. 
He also backs up his arguments by describing the long and slow process, in which the King's role was reduced to a ceremonial and representative one, towards democracy in Sweden and implies that we cannot let the Royal family gain any sort of political power.
",True
" Who is in charge - you or television?  
Television was something fantastic when it was new, and it still is. 
I find it very hard to understand how it works, how the pictures come in to and out of the TV. 
It is really amazing that we can see live motion pictures from all over the world. 
I guess you could say, in a way, that television has made the world smaller, and thanks to television we know so much more about the rest of the world than people did just fifty years ago. 
Television is a great thing when it is used in the right way.  
One way of using it is for entertainment, which I think is one of the best usages, since there are a lot of funny comedy-series, movies, music-videos and so on. 
The important thing is to limit the television viewing and not let it take to big a part of our lives. 
I remember when I was a child, there were only two TV-channels and the programmes usually started around six pm. 
Nowadays there are so many channels and many of them send their programmes almost day and night. 
Almost whenever you turn the TV on there is something to watch, and that is the major problem, I think: that television takes far too much of our time, and that we alllow it to do so. 
I think we need to learn to turn the TV off sometimes and not watch without sorting out which we often do, instead of thinking of what we really want to do with our time. 
Sometimes when I feel that I don't have time for everything I want to do I think again and then I often realize that I have spent one hour or maybe even more on watching TV, when I could have done something else.   
For example, instead of watching TV, I could take a walk, or go to the gym, or go swimming. 
It is a fact that we exercise too little and one very usual excuse is lack of time. 
If we think about it, probably a lot of us spend so much time in the TV-sofa that it should be enough for at least a walk, but the human being is by nature indolent. 
We don't move if we don't have to, and nowadays when we don't have to hunt our food, most of us don't move enough. 
Most of us need someone or something to push us in order to move, we don't do it just for the fun of it. 
Especially children who sit still in school the whole day, and adults with sedentary jobs need to be outdoor and get some air and exercise, but I for one know how tempting the sofa and the TV are when you come home tired after a long day at work or school. 
It is nothing wrong about that, we need exercise but we also need to relax. 
The problem is to get a balance between motion and rest and I don't think that television is helping us with that. 
I have noticed that television has some kind of addictive effect that makes us forget about all the other options we have.  
When you are an adult you can make your own choices and decisions but if you have children, I think you have a responsibility to help them with theirs. 
It is possible that there are good educational programmes, but I think that the best thing is if you watch themtogether with your children so that you can discuss them afterwards.
There are most certainly a great deal of children's programmes that are very entertaining, but don't forget that you are your children's favourite,and there is no programme that beats playing with you, at least when the children are small.   
If I shall try to sum up these reflections and make a conclusion I would like to say it like this: television is one of history's greatest inventions, and it has tremendous possibilities. 
The important thing is thatwe take command of our lives and make our own decisions and not let television control us.
"," Shorter working hours - Higher quality of life for everyone  We live in a time, when most people are pressed for short of time. 
Many of us, I am sure, feel like they are running in a treadmill that never stops. 
My suggestion to solve this problem is a change-over from an eight-hour working day to a six-hour day. 
I believe that such change is relatively easy done. 
All that it takes is some schedulechanges, and maybe a slightly different distribution of the work. 
I am sure that a shortening of the working hours would give many advantages, both to society and to the individual.  
As a result of the shorter working hours, the individual will have more spare time, to do whatever he wants. 
For example, if he has a family he can spend more time with the children, who can get more help with their homework. 
And i am sure that everyone who has children, feel that they never have as much time to just sit down and talk to them as they would like. 
People will also get time to exercise their hobbies. 
I believe that a lot of people feel that they do not have time to do the things they really want to do. 
They keep thinking: ""I will do it later, when I get time "". 
Doing things you really like to do is, as we all know, an important part of life. 
With the introduction of a six-hour working day, we will get more spare time and a higher quality of life for everyone.  y second argument for a shorter work week is that it will lead to an increased number of vacant jobs, which means that many of the unemployed will get a job. 
That means that it will be a more fair division of labour and in a time when so many are unemployed, I think that it is only fair that we share the burden of work. 
Because just as well as it can be hard to find time when you have a full time job, it can be tough to be unemployed, with a constant lack of money and a feeling of being unneeded. 
There is no doubt that getting a job leads to a higher self-esteem and a higher quality of life. 
If we can attain this just by shortening the work, I can see no reason why we should not do it.  y third argument for shorter working hours is that the number of repetitive strain injuries will be reduced. 
That will lead to fewer certificates of illness, which will be good, both for the companies and for the individual. 
The companies will save money, because they will not have to hire so many stand-ins. 
Furthermore, the companies will become less vulnerable because the staffs will be larger, and it will be easier for them to cover up for someone missing because of illness. 
The individual will probably get a fuller, healthier old age, if the body is not jaded. 
The queues to surgical operations, on for example hip joints, will be shortened. 
And that is, of course, a major advantage for society in general. 
Shorter queues in the medical service is, as we all know, a goal for all the political parties.  
I know that this labour market measure has been up to discussion several times, at least here in Sweden. 
Strangely enough, it has not come to a decision yet, but I am sure that it will happen soon. 
The advantages are, as anyone must understand, so overwhelming, that everybody must see that shorter working hours are inevitable in the future. 
Let us just hope that everybody involved in decision-making will soon make the only right decision on this issue.
",True
"1. 
Introduction and aim Being Scandinavian, I am curios how, when, why and to what extent Scandinavians influenced the English language. 
In the essay, I intend to answer these questions and perform a small investigation of my own, which will be accounted for in the next paragraph. 
Furthermore, I will refer to Scandinavian as the language of the Scandinavians in the period 750-1066, not Scandinavian today. 
2. 
Method and material ost facts are taken from Baugh A History of the English Language (1951) but I also used Barber The English Language, a Historical Introduction (1993) often to find that they said practically the same thing. 
A few details has been taken from Lindqvist Historien om Sverige. 
In the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology I searched for words with Scandinavian origin under the letter [s]. 
The reason why I chose this section is that it is one of the biggest sections of the dictionary, which increases the likelihood of finding many non specialized words. 
I started on page 780, then I searched every 5th page to page 895 (approx. 480 words examined), again, in order to minimize the risk of specialized words. 
Words with many possible origins (ModE: shield-ON: skjoldr or OFris: skeld; or ModE: slay-ON: sla or OFris: sla) have been ignored. 
I will then check the result in order to see if there are any typical type of words and depending on the result, I will draw conclusions.  
3. 
Previous research 3.1.1 Cause of Viking movement Why did the Scandinavians travel to England, and when? 
Already in the bronze age, ore was shipped between what today is Sweden and England (Lindqvist 1992) but in the 750s there was a sudden expansion. 
It is not known exactly why so many Scandinavian Vikings suddenly left their homes. 
The reasons may have been political or economical (Baugh 1951) or overpopulation in a region of poor natural resources. 
A contributing cause was probably that the Frisians, who ruled the seas in north-west Europe, were beaten, leaving the sea open for the Northmen (Barber 1993). 
What is certain, though, is that the Vikings traveled to the monastery Lindisfarne where they arrived June 8, 793. 
According to the chronicles of Europe, this date marks the start of the Viking age which would not end until the battle of Hastings, October 14, 1066 (Lindqvist 1992). 
3.1.2 The attacks The attacks upon England could be divided into three stages, which I will summarize short. 
The first stage is the period of early raids, 787-850 according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. 
This period is characterized mostly by plundering attacks upon towns and monasteries near the coast where the Vikings took slaves and all sorts of valuables (Baugh 1951). 
During the second stage, more widespread plundering were undertaken by large Danish armies who also settled rather extensively, probably something that influenced the language a lot. 
I will come back to this in the next paragraph. 
The Danes were very successful in their conquest but capitulated at Ethandun (now Edington, Wiltshire) in 878. 
A treaty, the treaty of Wedmore, was signed by both parts but the Danes were not compelled to leave England. 
Furthermore, the Danes was to accept Christianity and this paved the way for the ultimate fusion of the two groups. 
The third period 878-1042 covers political adjustment and assimilation. 
But the battles continued. 
Danish and Scottish forces were joined but beaten in 937 in Brunanburh. 
In 991, a substantial Norwegian Viking fleet attacked and pillaged several towns on the south coast of England. 
In 994, Danes and Norwegians joined forces in an attack on London and in the years 1017-1042, England was ruled by Danish kings (Baugh 1951). 
3.1.3 Settlements The consequence of the attacks mentioned above was of course that a large number of Scandinavians settled permanently in England, that is they remained behind when the ships returned home. 
The two peoples later amalgamated out of several reasons. 
Firstly, there was a close kinship between them. 
Secondly, the policy of the English kings was to accept a mixed population and thirdly, the Scandinavians showed high adaptability. 
An example of the latter is their early acceptance of Christianity. 
This is attested by the large number of Scandinavian names found among monks, priests, bishops, abbots and those who gave land to monasteries and endowed churches. 
So, the relation between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes was not only hostile. 
One must distinguish between the bands and the large numbers that settled down peacefully (Baugh, 1951) In some places, the Scandinavians gave up their language early, while it remained for a long time in other places, where it was also renewed for a long time through trade and conquest. 
In some parts of Scotland, Norse was spoken as late as the seventeenth century. 
On a few locations, the peoples were more or less bilingual due to intermarriage and similarity between the languages. 
The Anglian dialect resembled the Scandinavian in a number of ways, which the West Saxon did not. 
Another strong evidence of the extensive Scandinavian settlements and influence in England is the vast number of Scandinavian place names. 
Over 1,400 have Scandinavian origin and the largest numbers of them are found in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. 
More than 600 names of places ends with -by, meaning farm or town (Grimsby, Derby, Rugby etc.); 300 ending in -thorpe, meaning village (Althorpe, Bishopsthorpe, Gawthorpe etc.); almost another 300 ending in -thwaite, meaning an isolated piece of land (Applethwaite, Braithwaite, Cowperthwaite etc.) and about 100 ending in -toft, meaning a piece of ground, a messuage (Brimtoft, Eastoft, Langtoft etc.) 
(Baugh 1951).  
3.2 Loan words 3.2.1 The word test It is difficult to decide whether a Modern English word is native or borrowed from Scandinavian, due to the similarity between Old English and Scandinavian. 
In some cases, though, there is a test that could be performed to see if the word is borrowed or not. 
The most reliable test concerns the differences in the development of certain sounds. 
An easy one to recognize is the development of the sk sound which was early changed into sh (written sc) in Old English, while the Scandinavian countries kept the hard sk sound. 
So, words like ship, shall and fish are native and sky, skin, skill, scrub, scrape, bask and whisk are loans. 
In the same way, the Old English word scyrte changed to shirt and the Old Norse word skyrta became skirt. 
The consonants g and k acted in the same way, so words as kid, dike (cf. ditch), get, give, gild and egg are Scandinavian in origin (Baugh 1951). 
Among the vowels, the Proto Germanic ai became ei in Scandinavian and a in English. 
This means that the Old Norse word nei became Modern English nay, and the Old English na became no. 
Furthermore, the Proto Germanic au becomes ea in Old English but remained au in Old Norse. 
So, the Old English word leas corresponds to Old Norse lauss which became loose (Barber 1993). 
Another way of spotting loan words is looking at the meaning. 
The word bloom could come from either Old English, bloma, or Scandinavian, blom. 
However, the Old English word means 'ingot of iron' while the Scandinavian word means 'flower' or 'bloom'. 
But when neither the form nor the meaning of a word proves the Scandinavian origin, we can not be sure of its origin. 
Simply the fact that there is no original preserved in Old English does not mean that it did not exist (Baugh 1951).  
3.2.2 Stages of loans The earliest borrowings had to do with sea-roving and predatory people and a little later we find words relating to law (see appendix 1). 
However, after the Norman conquest the legal language was completely reshaped and most Scandinavian words are now replaced with French (Baugh 1951). 
Yet later, as the Scandinavians had settled peacefully, loan words came into the everyday language. 
The character of the words was varied and simple. 
Examples of words are to find in appendix 2, where nouns, verbs and adjectives are listed. 
The list is long to demonstrate the rich variety of everyday words, especially nouns. 
Not only nouns, adjectives and verbs made their way into English. 
Pronouns, such as they, their and them, prepositions, such as till, also survived until today.  
4. 
Results and discussion 4.1 Table The following words were found:  odern English		Old Norse Sackless			saklaus Same			same Scare			skirra Scat			skattr Scathe			skadi Scout			skuta Scrape			skapa Shide			skid Shuttle			skutill Sister			systir Skald			skald Sledge			sleggja Sleight			slaegd Sleuth			slod Snake			snakr Sneak			snikja Spar			sperrask Stack			stakkr Sting			stinga Stithy			stedi Sunder			i sundr  As we can see, there are words (mostly nouns) that can be related back to a society, a thousand years ago. 
This corresponds well with the previous researched made, considering the variety of everyday words.  
4.2 Summary and conclusion As we have seen, many factors caused the Scandinavian influence on the English Language and the ways of influence was at first attacks but later extensive settlements. 
What is influenced is not only place names but also words and when trying to see if a word is a loan or not there are a few tests that can be performed. 
Of course, those tests depend much on at what period in time the word was borrowed, since different sound laws are active in different periods.  
Judging from my investigation, truly a lot of words were borrowed. 
There were not a great deal of special words which does not indicate Scandinavian influence on just one area but on the language as a whole. 
One of the largest causes for this to happen was probably the similarity of the peoples' languages and cultures. 
This made it easy to understand each other and easy for the Scandinavians to adapt to society.  
References 1951: A history of the English language pp. 
90-103. 
London.  
Barber, C. 
1993: The English Language, a Historical Introduction pp. 
127-131. 
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.  
Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. 1966: pp. 
780-890. 
Oxford University Press, Oxford
"," Lily Bart-Controlled by Emotions or Society?  
In her article Feminist or Naturalist, Nancy Walker states that the main character Edna in The Awakening by Kate Chopin, is ""controlled by her own emotions, not by men or society"". 
In this essay, I will discuss whether or not this is true about Lily Bart in Edith Wharton's novel The House of Mirth. 
The point I will look at first is the role of women and that marriage was necessary for their survival. 
Then I will discuss what can be considered as Lily Bart's emotions and finally, I will draw attention to something a bit like a paradox in the society system of the novel, namely: can Lily Bart be considered controlled by men if she is controlling them? 
One thing that would make Lily Bart dependent on, and thereby controlled by, society and men is the fact that she, and practically all other women in the novel for that matter, needs to be married to get money in order to survive. 
This is implied by the narrator on p. 
49: ""The certainty that she could marry Percy Gryce when she pleased had lifted a heavy load from her mind, and her money troubles were too recent for their removal not to leave a sense of relief"". 
In other words, marriage is firstly economic security, which is also suggested by Mrs. 
Trenor on p. 
75: ""I don't suppose you did it because he amused you; we could none of us imagine your putting up with him for a moment unless you meant to marry him"". 
As we can see in these two examples, marriage does not seem to have any connection with love or even friendship and women were expected to behave in a certain way. 
An example of this can be detected on p. 
121: ""Miss Bart herself possessed precisely the complimentary qualities needed to round off his social personality"" [italics mine] on p. 135 we read: ""This was the world she lived in, these were the standards by which she was fated to be measured"" (beauty, that is) and on p. 192 we see: ""she...had made a pact with her rebellious impulses, and achieved a uniform system of self-government, under which all vagrant tendencies were either held captive or forced into the service of the state"". 
These quotes give a glimpse of what the women situation would be like in such a society; women were there for the men, they were measured by standards of beauty and they were not supposed to talk back but to put a lid on.  
On the other hand, let us look at Lily Bart's emotions. 
Often it is not clear in the text whether an emotional expression expressed by her is real or if it is just a strategic move. 
An example of this is on p. 72 when she is alone with Selden: ""she dropped her face on her hands and he saw that for a moment she wept"" but further down it says: ""she turned on him a face softened but not disfigured by emotion, and he said to himself, somewhat cruelly, that even her weeping was an art"". 
However, we can assume that she is capable of feeling, there is an example of envy on p. 25: ""the mere thought of that other woman...filled Lily Bart with envy"". 
But is it not possible that she can be considered controlled by her emotions, since what she really wants in life is not love but money and admiration? 
On p. 90 the narrator tells us how much she wants money: ""The glow of the [diamonds] warmed Lily's veins like wine. 
More completely than any other expression of wealth they symbolized the life she longed to lead"" and on p. 49 her need of admiration is suggested: ""Instead of having to flatter, she would be flattered; instead of being grateful, she would receive thanks"". 
We are even told by Lily Bart herself, on p. 166, what she wants as desperation seizes her: ""Gerty, you know [Selden]-you understand him-tell me; if I went to him, if I told him everything-if I said: 'I am bad through and through-I want admiration, I want excitement, I want money-' yes, money!"" 
Does ""her emotions"" necessarily have to mean love towards human beings, or could it mean materialistic love? 
How much a paradox it may be, at the same time as Lily Bart is controlled by men, she is also, at times, controlling them. 
She is calculating and planning and considers every move she makes, as is told by herself on p. 
48: ""All Jack has to do to get everything he wants is to keep quiet and let [Gwen] marry him; whereas I have to calculate and contrive, and retreat and advance, as if I were going through an intricate dance, when one misstep would throw me hopelessly out of time"". 
Apart from telling us that she is calculating, this quote also indicates a difference between men and women. 
A difference Lily Bart has been raised to believe in and which makes her act the way she does. 
Furthermore, she uses her beauty as a tool and combines it with her ability to interpret people's signals, which we can see on p. 
34: ""Lily understood that beauty is only the raw material of conquest, and that to convert it into success other arts were required"". 
In society of today, Lily Bart would probably be considered a cold and calculating snake who only cared for her own good. 
Still, in the society of this novel women have to be part of a game in order to survive. 
On p. 
85, Lily Bart is ""letting Trenor, as they drove homeward, lean a little nearer and rest his hand reassuringly on hers, cost her a momentary shiver of reluctance. 
It was part of the game to make him feel that her appeal had been an uncalculated impulse, provoked by the liking he inspired"" To sum up, despite the fact that Lily Bart is calculating and controls men in her environment by her appearance and behavior and also despite her thirst for money and admiration, I would consider her controlled by men and society and not by emotions. 
The reason for this is simple; society forms its members. 
People were raised to believe in certain standards and in this particular society, women were forced to be part of a game constructed by men. 
When Lily Bart says she wants only money, it is only what she has been told to strive for and as for marriage, she had better find someone with money to ensure her well being. 
Careful consideration was the only option. 
It is pure survival instinct.
",True
" A Happy family? 
Doris Lessing: The Fifth Child  	What happens to the happy family when something goes wrong? 
Something comes along that neither Harriet or David had expected. 
Something they did not deserve. 
Others deserved this, like Harriet's sister Sarah for instance. 
""Harriet said to David, privately, that she did not believe it was bad luck: Sarah and William's unhappiness, their quarreling, had probably attracted the mongol child"" (31). 	
Harriet and David met at a party. 
They are both outsiders, do not feel that they fit in to the rest of the world. 
They are very traditional, not at all like others who has different relationships and look at themselves as ""free"" individuals. 
Harriet and David feel free. 
They feel they are the ones who are right in the society and almost looks down at other people. 
From the beginning they know they deserve happiness. 
They know what they want and what they should expect from life. 
They have a nice big house, made for a big family. 
They have four beautiful, intelligent children. 
They do things together, and depend on their parents for babysitting and economic support. 
On the outside everything is perfect. 
They also feel everything is perfect. 
They do not care about the world outside there home. 
They read the papers and watch the news on TV. 
""At least they ought to know what went on outside their fortress, their kingdom, in which three precious children were nurtured, and where so many people came to immerse themselves in safety, comfort, kindness"" (30). 
Everyone is welcome to their grate gatherings. 
Their parties go on for weeks, costing a fortune. 
But who cares? 
David's parents take care of the bills. 	
Then something comes along which brakes the image of the happy family. 
Now Harriet and David are not as envied as they were before. 
Ben has come into their lives. 
Ben destroyed everything from the beginning. 
When Harriet was expecting him she started to fear what she had in her stomach. 
Something was not right. 
She felt him kicking hard from the inside and almost thought she was carrying an alien. 
This happens in the early 70s. 
Then doctors ordered medication to expecting mothers much more than they do now. 
They did not know how dangerous it could be, and of course Harriet with her difficult pregnancy ate it. 
""If a dose of some sedative kept the enemy - so she now thought of this savage thing inside of her - quiet for an hour..."" 
(51). 
It shows how Harriet feels about Ben even that early. 
Later she looks at him as a ""little troll or a hobgoblin"" (76). 
Harriet fears him all the time. 
Ben is not to be trusted. 
He kills a dog and a cat, and she is afraid to leave him alone with the other children. 
This means that she has to watch him all day and lock him in at night.  	
Harriet feels like a criminal. 
She feels she did something bad to the rest of the world just by having given birth to Ben. 
She feels that everyone are looking at her and thinking of her as a bad person, since she is not able to take care of her family. 
The rest of the family also blames her for bringing Ben in to the family. 	
The whole family feels fear around Ben. 
When Ben goes away to the institution they become the happy family, but Harriet of course can not live with this. 
The rest of the family feels betrayed by her when she brings Ben home again. 
She is not able to love him, but she can not just let him die. 
The fear is back in the house. 	
The happy family is no longer a real family. 
The children, all attending different boarding schools, only come home when they feel they have to. 
Otherwise they visit their grandparents. 
Harriet and David still lives in the big house, but are thinking of selling it, since Ben and his criminal friends stay there all the time. 
They are just waiting for Ben to leave and never come back again.				
I feel that the main theme in the book is the happy family, and the importance to keep a happy facade towards the rest of the world. 
Also fear and guilt are big issues, especially for Harriet. 
David is trying to ignore the problem, Ben. 
For him and the other children, the betrayal is the main issue. 
No one of them really forgives Harriet, which of course contributes to the guilt that she already feels. 
Since the institutions of that time was horrible there is nothing else she could have done, though. 
Here it seems okay to put your child away and to let him/her die if he/she is not normal. 
That is nothing you would do these days. 
Harriet knows that she have ruined her family in different ways. 
The youngest child, Paul did lose his mother early to Ben. 
The other children at least had a mother for a longer time, and did not suffer as much. 
David feels that he did lose his wife in a way, in the same time, as he feels guilty to the other children because Harriet did spend so much time with Ben. 
Harriet and David feel it is impossible to live their lives in a normal way, but it will be possible soon. 
They feel certain and relieved that Ben soon will leave them for good. 
But will they ever become that happy family again?	
"," ENGLISH, WHEN IS THE RIGHT TIME?  
In what grade should Swedish students be introduced to English? 
That is right now a big issue. 
Everyone have different opinions about what is best. 
Some think it is better to start with English as early as in first grade, while many people still think that fourth grade is the best time to start. 
There are of course many, more or less, good arguments for both alternatives. 	
An argument against English in first grade is that it might be confusing for the students with too many new subjects. 
They should have a chance to learn Swedish before they start with a foreign language. 
An answer to that is that English is not as new to the students now as it may have been before. 
In the society we live in today, we get a lot of influences from English speaking countries, mainly America. 
The students have probably met English earlier, either on vacations or on TV and in music. 
Even if they do not know what everything means they have heard the sound of the language. 
Probably most children know how to count and say a few sentences too. 
It could be something they have heard in a song. 	
You can start on different levels depending on which grade you start with English. 
If you start in first grade, it of course will be impossible to read texts while many students can not read in Swedish yet. 
That does not mean that I think it is better to start later with English. 
Students learn easier, the younger they are. 
Even in first grade you can bring in English in other subjects. 
If you talk about the different seasons or animals, the students often want to learn those words in English. 
Reading and writing in English is easier to learn if you already now the meaning of the words and how they are pronounced. 
Also I think it is more motivated for everyone to feel that they can use the language in speaking rather than reading and writing in the beginning.  	
When I went to school, we started with English in third grade. 
My sister started school two years later, and than they tried to start with English in first grade. 
It did not work at all, but I do not think it had to do with anything else but the teacher. 
If the teacher does not believe in an early start, he/she probably will have a hard time motivating the children. 
They had to start over in third grade again. 		
When starting with a foreign language, in this case English, with small children it is good to start playing with it. 
Rimes and songs, which are easy to remember, are a good start. 
The children probably will say the words awkwardly, but still it is an easy way for them to remember. 
The teacher just will have to be extra clear on those words. 
Pictures are good to bring in to the classroom as well. 
The children can try to explain them to each other. 
I also think it is important to start with short sessions of English, maybe 20 minutes each time. 
A lot of repeating, not new things every time will help the children not to loose their patience. 	
As you can see, I am positive for starting with English as early as possible. 
I think it is good because most students at that age will be interested in English. 
It is better to start before many children starts to act out thinking everything is boring as they often do in fourth and fifth grade. 
Then it is cool to hate school and skipping homework. 
The main thing is of course what the teacher believes in. 
If the teacher do not think it is good to start too early, he/she probably will not be as good as a teacher as one who believes in an early start.	
",True
" WHAT IS TV VIOLENCE DOING TO OUR CHILDREN?  
Sweden has like the rest of the Scandinavian countries for a great many years only had two or three state controlled TV channels. 
This has meant that the censuring of children's programme has been an easy task for the censorship. 
However, since the beginning of the 1980's, we have been watching a steadily increasing number of new TV channels run by private corporations. 
Many of these new channels are appealing to children in particular. 
These channels are being sent out via satellite and are not as strictly censured as those sent out by state owned roadcasters.   
Since I have two children of my own, I have been able to watch what actually happens to them after some time of intensive watching on these new children's channels. 
Especially one of these channels is extra violent namely Cartoon Network, which of course happens to be one of the most popular of them. 
I noticed that after they had been watching this channel daily for six months, there was a clearly noticeable change in their attitude towards adults. 
Their behaviour and language had become more violent than it was earlier. 
Consequently, I began to investigate the contents of these programs and I must say that I became shocked by the brutal language and violence used in these cartoons. 
Furthermore, there were commercials shown every hour which also had a very aggressive image, intended for children.   
What sort of influence has then TV violence on our children? 
To begin with, I want to say a few words about the violent language used in some of these channels and how badly it affects our children's linguistic development. 
After having found out about how strongly influenced my children were by this aggressive and plain language, I simply closed down all these TV channels that sent out this kind of rubbish. 
In my opinion, all parents should do the same thing I did in order to protect their children from getting indoctrinated by such bad language. 
I have actually quite often noticed that there is the same sort of language used at our schoolyards as is in those bad cartoon, watched daily by too many schoolchildren.   
What about attitudes? 
The changing of children's attitude is the most serious issue we have to deal with in today's debate about TV violence. 
Many analyses have been done which show that children may become totally blunted towards violence when seeing it daily on TV. 
In the United States for an example the consequences have been disastrous when in many cities schoolchildren have brought guns to school and caused massacres among their schoolmates. 
Another serious problem with TV violence are all the scenes when men can be seeing hit or kicked by others several times but still they will quick be back on their feet again. 
Children in common have no idea about how badly injured people actually get when hit by a hard fist. 
Children are often badly informed about the effects of a blow or a kick towards your skull, that such a blow can be mortally. 
Unfortunately, the producers or broadcasters of violent films do not live up to their responsibility in protecting children from unnecessary violence on TV. 
Naturally, the parents must also be informed about the violent contents in all these films which are being sent during day-time in many of the cable channels. 
A computer chip that reads the encoded signals and therefore can be programmed to delete any violent programme shown has been suggested by some legislators in the US Congress. 
Personally, I do not believe that there is such a simple solution to thus a waste problem like TV violence.   
By way of conclusion, I would like to say a few words about parental responsibility. 
Seen from my point of view, the quickest and simplest way to a solution of the problem with children watching TV violence rests with their parents. 
A strong suggestion would be to demand all parents to fulfil their part of the responsibility regarding what their children are watching on TV. 
Naturally, we as parents must continue to make very firm demands towards our politicians, authorities and broadcasters, forcing them to do something about all the violence on TV. 
At least, they should be able to bring it down or take it away from the films that are sent during day-time when the children often are alone at home. 
It must be emphasised that it is a responsibility for all of us adults to protect children from violence in our society, no matter if it is a question of TV violence or any other kind of child abuse.
"," Sweden should leave the European Union  y intention with this short essay is to as far as possible make clear some of the mistakes that were made by Swedish authorities and politicians when Sweden entered the EU in 1995. 
There are many things to mention for or against our membership in the EU, but the main issue in this essay will be about the Swedish food industry and agriculture. 
As these were some of the most important topics discussed before the referendum in 1994.   rs Marit Paulsson, also known as the mother of Sweden gave such promises and blessings about the protection of Swedish food and agriculture that at the end of the debate just before the day of the referendum people voted yes to EU. 
Without the confidence that many Swedes had in Mrs Paulsson, the result of the referendum would have turned out as no to the EU. 
However things went wrong already from the beginning that is, when the Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson finally signed the document that made Sweden a member of the EU, he did it in blank. 
This meant that the only demand Sweden had to express before joining the EU, was to keep the restrictive law against free sale of alcohol. 
As a consequence of that no decisions were taken about how to finance the transition for Swedish farmers and food manufactures into the legislation of EU. 
Consequently, this meant that the whole food industry was left to its destiny without any kind of economic help. 
Since the bureaucratic regulations of EU are very strict and must be obeyed, thousands of farmers, food companies and retailers had to close down their business because they could not afford to rebuild their barns and companies into a EU-standard as was demanded by Swedish authorities.  
Still today as many as five peasants a day have to close down their business in lack of financial resources. 
However in Finland the government and the parliament claimed that the EU should pay all expenses for rebuilding their food industry in an adjustment to the standard regulations of EU, which the EU also did after hard negotiations. 
In addition it must be pointed out that in no other European country have the authorities demanded food industry and the peasants to make such big changes inside their companies as has been done in Sweden. 
Despite the grants-in-aid some farmers get from the EU is their present situation much worse than it was before the entrance into the EU.  
The monopolisation of the Swedish food industry has grown strongly since we participated the European Union. 
This has gone on in a sharp contrast to what was said before the referendum. 
Instead of getting a freer market for the Swedish peasants which was predicted by Marit Paulsson in particular. 
We now have to witness the beginning of a system similar to that of the previous political, bureaucratic and inefficient agricultural system of the former Soviet Union. 
This is a system that hardly none of us really would want to have. 
Although, this is what EU is all about, an immense bureaucratic apparatus whose only function nowadays is to support a lot of bureaucrats. 
Furthermore many of them are completely corrupt.   
Before our entrance into the European Union, I run a small but successful business in close relationship with two other companies from the same trade. 
We were in the business of importing and selling Grouse and Reindeer from Russia and China. 
Unfortunately, the EU bureaucrats did not allow us to continue with this import from a land outside the EU we therefore had to close down our companies in lack of wares to sell. 
As a result of this, a few wealthy food companies started to buy most of the smaller companies which could not afford to stay in business.  
We now have a very serious problem with a monopolised food industry. 
Consequently this means that there is not much of control left for quality and from what country the meat comes from originally. 
This means that in future when most production of Swedish meat has disappeared from the market, there will be huge quantities of foreign uncontrolled meat passing the Swedish border every day. 
Furthermore, there will be no way we can manage to control hormone treatment and diseases that can have affected the animals before they were slaughtered. 
The mere suspicion about how these animals are treated should be enough reason for Sweden to leave the EU. 
But, if we think it is not worth protecting our many years long tradition of healthy food and a beautiful agricultural countryside and if we think it is worth paying twenty-five billion kronor each year to the EU and get so little in return, then we should continue to be a member of the European Union.  
Of course there are some advantages of being a part of a European Assembly like the EU. 
We now have a free and open market for education, trade and no tolls between the membership-countries as we had earlier. 
Nowadays it is also possible for people to move around and work within the EU countries without any bigger problems, something that many young people today choose to do. 
The European Union is also an important organisation for keeping peace in Europe which also was its intention from the very beginning. 
The first steps were taken towards the organisation as we can see it today when Ministers of France and Germany met to discuss a peace treaty in Paris in 1947. 
Moreover, Swedish Parliament have been able to cut our defence cost heavily since 1995 due to our closer relationship with NATO. 
We now know that NATO most likely would help us in a critical situation.   
As a conclusion of what has been said I should want to give some further comments to this essay. 
As has already been mentioned about food quality and hard terms for the peasants. 
It must also be emphasised that we still should consider ourselves as a independent nation. 
But, what will be left of our independence when all important decisions about our future will be taken by powerful bureaucrats in Brussels. 
My personal opinion is that we never should have had such a hurry in applying for a membership to the EU. 
If we had been wise like the Norwegians were, then we would have waited with our application. 
We were simply not prepared to meet all the forthcoming changes, nor were we enough stable seen from a economically point of view. 
As the situation now appears we can only hope that our future prospects in the European Union are going to look better.
",True
" ""Taboo or Not Taboo""  In the article ""Cleaning up the language"" by Shirley E Peckham, the author takes a clear stand on children who use swear words in their language. 
She has a very conservative view of language and wants it to be like ""in the good old days"" when she was a child. 
What she does not realise is that language is changing all the time; if it does not change it is dead. 
The part that seems to disturb her the most is that she becomes ""filled with disgust"" when she hears children use bad language. 
Furthermore, she is worried that allowing this kind of words will lead to bad language used by everybody in the future. 
She has strong opinions on the use of language but nevertheless she does not have any suggestions on how this matter should be solved.  	
One way for Peckham to solve this matter and make her feel better would perhaps be to try to talk with the children involved. 
Unfortunately, it seems like she is of the opinion that children are as disgusting as swear words so I doubt she will ever confront them. 
My experience though, is that it is often a good idea to talk to children about different problems that occur. 
If you talk to them on an appropriate level and do not patronize them you have at least a possibility to change a negative pattern. 
To use the method that Peckham is suggesting as solution, namely to box a child around his or her ears, is what I would call disgusting. 
Peckham has been raised in this manner and perhaps it is the only way she knows to demand respect and to make someone listen to her. 
But to my mind abusing a child by threatening or hitting him or her is not a very constructive or educational way of learning. 
I do believe that children learn better if they are secure and not scared of the people around them. 	
In her article Peckham also refers to this language as ""foul anti-social"". 
I would say that she has misinterpreted the situation completely. 
On the contrary, the language between children in a group is definitely a very social phenomenon. 
By using a certain kind of language it is possible for them to identify themselves with the rest of the group and this is of great importance while growing up. 
In addition I am convinced that most children have the judgement not to use bad language when it is not suitable, for example when they talk to older relatives. 
In contrast to Peckham, I do believe in children's ability to adjust to different situations.  	
This above-mentioned ability is also the answer to the author's fear of swear words becoming general practice in the future. 
Perhaps is it also a question of maturity. 
This kind of words may be common in children's language but when they grow up these words usually reduce in number or at least they are not used in public so frequently. 
Even Mrs Peckham admits that she swore when she was a child, even if she does it reluctantly. 
For her it seems to be a question about swear words being taboo or not taboo and maybe the reason to this is the way she was treated as a child when she swore. 	
To sum up I would like to say that it is not so difficult for me to accept children that swear or the words in themselves. 
But to Mrs Peckham and the likes of her I cannot emphasise enough the importance of verbal communication to solve a matter instead of using violence. 
Communication will lead to children feeling safe and is not that what we all want?
"," Time to wake up  The Swedish school is in desperate need of a change. 
The latest decade the economical tightening has been great in the Swedish society and this cut down has affected particularly the schools. 
As a result the schools of today are worn out both concerning material and employees and this has lead to a decrease in the quality of education, a lack of knowledge among some students and also a reduced interest in the teaching profession. 
During the last few years the number of applicants for teacher training collage has become fewer and fewer. 
Swedish school politics has for a long time dealt with quantity instead of quality and the debates have been about more practical and theoretical issues than ideological ones. 
The time has come to wake up and do something before it is to late. 		
One group who has opened their eyes and finally sees the alarming situation in the schools and also has decided to do something is the Swedish political party Folkpartiet. 
In their latest party program the party has put forward a number of school reforms in order to change the present school situation. 
One of these reforms is about raising the power of attraction and the status in the teaching profession. 
I agree with them and I am also of the opinion that we have to start with this to be able to reach a solution. 
One problem is that we have a shortage of staff this very day and also plenty of unauthorised people who are teaching in the Swedish schools. 
Another problem is that the teaching staff in Sweden is relatively old and consequently a large group of teachers is going to retire in a couple of years. 
These mentioned problems together with the fact that fewer people want to become teachers are only making a bad situation worse. 
If we do not have competent employees or even employees at all in our schools, how should we then be able to help and stimulate the pupils? 
And if the teachers do not feel comfortable and happy in school, why should the students? 
My answer is to raise the status of the school as a whole and there will be no problem to get personnel that enjoy working as teachers and I am convinced that this joy will be transmitted to the students and result in them enjoy being there too.  		
The teachers are also in focus in another of Folkpartiets reforms, namely their demand on order and method within the classroom. 
Today there are a relatively large number of students that systematically disturb, fight and interfere with the rest of the teaching. 
They come too late to the lessons and they are rude to both teachers and other students. 
These children need to have someone to tell them how to behave and show respect to other people and it is here that the teachers have an important role. 
It is their duty to guide these children towards an acceptable behaviour. 
This is of course not only the teachers but also all adults' responsibility. 
Society has to give clear signals of what is right or wrong and we all have to contribute to teach children these social skills. 
However, not all children that disturb in the classroom are doing it for fun. 
Some of them, owing to different reasons, actually cannot cope with the situation of being in the same room together with so many people; some students need to be in a small group. 
Unfortunately this has become an economic question to many schools. 
They cannot afford to have separate teachers for these pupils. 
I sincerely hope that these reforms will change this situation so that the schools will be able to hire as many teachers as they need for their work. 
Thus should it be possible for every student to receive the kind of education they need.  	 
An expanded individual education is also what I would like to end this article with. 
We have to realise that all children are different and they learn different fast. 
Those children that do not adapt to the ""normal"" pattern in school risk being outsiders, their self-confidence will decline and perhaps they will begin to fight to get attention. 
This would bring them into a vicious circle of negative attention, which is not good for anyone. 
If there is a possibility to a more individualised education I am convinced that we will receive more committed students in the future that want to take more responsibility for their own education.
",True
" News - a form of entertainment  Television is a very powerful media, which is a big part of a lot of people's everyday life. 
Television produces entertainment but it also gives us information about what is going on in the world. 
It gives us news. 
However, in Amusing Ourselves to Death Neil Postman writes that also the news is turned into entertainment in television. 
Is this right, and if it is, is this as bad as Postman claims it to be? 	
The television news that is presented in the Swedish channel TV3 is absolutely there to entertain the viewers as much as to inform them. 
It is a very short program with short clips and the newscaster is very funny (or at least he tries to be). 
It is hard to take the news seriously.  	
But also in the more serious news channels in Sweden, like SVT and TV4, we can see that it is important that the programs entertain the viewers while they are informing them. 
The newscasters nowadays are not only eloquent speakers, they are also very often, if not always, good looking which has not got anything to do with their ability to do a good job but with their ability to attract more viewers and to make those viewers comfortable watching the show. 
The scenery of the news show is also important, the decor must be appealing to the eyes of the viewers. 
Moreover the different news features in the show have to be entertaining which is done with for example short clips and extraordinary images. 	
One thing that I also have reacted on is that both SVT and TV4 often have more than one newscaster for each show which, I think, is a bit unnecessary. 
In the end of the shows the two newscasters often comment a piece of news in a funny way and make a smooth changeover to the program coming next, the sport or the weather.  	
I should say that the Swedish newscasts are not as concentrated on entertainment as other countries are. 
There are countries that have taken this much further than Sweden, for example I recently heard that somewhere abroad one newscast had newscaster who were stripping while presenting the news.  	
Postman really thinks it is a bad idea to form the newscast to an entertainment package, but I do not always agree with him. 
If the newscast is entertaining, more people will watch the news and I do not think that this is bad. 
It is like a good lecture were the lecturer entertains the listeners while he/she is talking, it makes you interested about what he has to say and you listen more to him than you would to someone who is very boring.  	
But there is a danger with turning the news programs into entertaining packages. 
It is if the content of the news changes to fit the entertainment form. 
And if we once again take up TV3, we can se that this has happened. 
TV3 takes up things that I would not say is important for the viewers to know but that is in the newscast only for the purpose to entertain the people watching the show. 
One example of this is the very many discussions and reportages they have had about whether or not Britney Spears has had her breasts enlarged.  		
Even in the newscasts in SVT and TV4 we can notice a change in what sort of news they take up.  	
This eager to entertain with news is what I think has created the morning news shows. 
Here entertainment of all forms is mixed together with both small news clips and bigger reportages in a very relaxed way that seems to attract a lot of viewers.  	
Television is a powerful media, I would say it is so powerful that it has changed our idea of what a piece of news is. 
News nowadays should not only inform but also entertain. 
You can have different opinions about if this is good or bad but I do not think you can hide from the fact that it is true.
"," Allow homosexuals to adopt children  Homosexuals in Sweden can not adopt children. 
It does not matter how loving they are or how much the child needs them; the law does not give couples of the same sex the right to adopt children. 
This must be changed. 	
The main reason I have for making this statement is that if you do not give homosexuals the same rights as heterosexuals it is discrimination and discrimination of any kind are against the law. 
Everyone should have the same rights to adopt a child; if you are gay or straight has nothing to do with your capacity to be a good parent. 	
Moreover it should be said that adopting a child is nothing you do over night, not even if you are a heterosexual. 
The process of adopting a child is long, you and your partner will be studied to see if you are suitable for becoming parents and you will not be approved if you have not thought your decision to adopt trough. 
Adoptive parents have planned and prepared a long time for their child, they will love and care for it, no matter if they are heterosexual or not.  	
Adoption, and the close study of you and your partner that comes with it, is for most homosexual couples the only way to get a child. 
Compare this with the fact that a lot of children today are brought up by parents who do not love them, who abuse them and who, in other ways, do not give their them what they need. 
In addition to this there are children all over the world that do not have a home, who are raised in orpanhages or in other terrible conditions. 
What would not these children do for a chance to be a part of a loving family, gay or straight. 
By not allowing homosexuals to adopt we let our prejudice get in the way of the welfare of the children. 
This is not the way it should be, and I think you all agree with me when I say that it is better for a child to grow up with homosexual, loving parents than to starve to death. 	
One thing that many people uses as an argument against homosexual adoptions is that the children being brought up in an environment like this runs a greater risk to be teased and harassed than children that are being adopted by heterosexual parents. 
In today's society that may be true, but we can not overcome the prejudices if we bend for them. 
Racism is a problem in Sweden, like in many other countries, but that do not stop us from adopting black children even though there is a risk that they could be victims of racism. 
We can not let the prejudices stop us from doing what is right. 	
Another argument that is sometimes given by people who do not want homosexuals to have the right to adopt is that a child needs both a male and a female role model in its life. 
This may also be right, but it does not have to be the parents playing this role. 
Far from all children today grows up with both a father and a mother, but that does not mean they do not have someone from both sexes to look up to. 
Role models in today's society can be grandparents, neighbors, teachers or anyone else that the child might have good contact with. 	
Finally I would just like to say that even if we can not stop inappropriate individuals, such as drug addicts, from having children, we can, and we should, stop the discrimination of the homosexuals and give them the same right as the heterosexuals to adopt children.
",True
" MORE WOMENSOCCER IN MEDIA!  
""Well, this was a lot of fun - to be on national television that is"". 
That was what Tina Nordlund said on TV when she received the ""Diamondball"" for being the best swedish female soccerplayer, at the Swedish Soccerawards last fall. 
The truth in these words can hardly be mistaken, especially since they were said at an socceraward where two of the awardwinners were women while seven or eight were men. 
How many then knew who Tina Nordlund was? 
Compare that number of people with the number of those who do not know who Magnus Hedman is, who got awarded for being the best male soccerplayer. 
You really have to look for womensoccer and you hardly hear or see it mentioned anywhere. 
This strongly shows that womensoccer needs more space in media!  
Equality is something that is very highly valuated in the society of today and theissue develops all the time. 
Women have the same rights, they are almost getting paid as much to do a job as their male collegues. 
This is why there should be equality in the media too - at least some kind of it anyway. 
Women have the rights to vote, to have careers and well-paid jobs, but not to forget talent, soccershoes and shinpads - just like men do.
Women have managed to deal with their voting-right, their careers and well-paid jobs good - just like men do. 
Give the women a chance to use their talents out on the soccerfield and give us a chance to find out about it! 
Womensoccer needs more room in media!  
The argument against having more womensoccer in media is usually that people are not interested in womensoccer. 
That is why expensive space in media is not used for things that does not sell. 
Fine, there is a point there; people are not interested because they hardly know it exists. 
With more womensoccer in media the interest would increase and in the same time be a much bigger issue for media to deal with. 
More spectators and more sponsors will make more people willing to invest in it, which makes the whole thing better and more interesting both for senders and receivers. 
We have to get the ball rolling, literary speaking.  
You can read about trotting in the sportpages. 
But honestly, how many people are really interested in trotting? 
Obviously some, but far from everyone. 
Nobody can demand that everyone should like everything. 
That is impossible.  
The swedish women soccerteam is actually quite good. 
Thinking about the fact that they came on third place in the Summer Olympic's '96 and they lost the European championship-final last summer. 
That is pretty impressive. 
Though I wonder how many people that actually know about that. 
Media does not seem to care much about it, but try to find someone who does not know that the swedish male soccerteam came third in the World championship the summer of '94 in the U.S. 
Maybe you will find a few. 
When we have a good women soccerteam like this, why not show it?!  
We need more equality in the soccermedia! 
Let the women show us what they can do, we owe them that chance! 
Swedish malesoccer has been focused on in media for a long period of time. 
The society is developing, don't you think it is time to invest in the women now?
MORE WOMENSOCCER IN MEDIA!
"," Evaluation - English, My English!  
Recently, not much more than a month ago actually, a thrombosis was found in my brain. 
And as if that was not bad enough, the thrombosis had caused several cerebral haemorrhages. 
Part of the reason to why this was discovered was that I lost my ability to speak and write - I simply didn't know the words, or the letters for that matter, and I could not spell at all. 
I'm not completely healed from this yet, but I am much, much better. 
Luckily neither the thrombosis or the haemorrhages has done any lasting harm to my brain, according to the doctors. 
But because of this it's kind of hard for me to say how good or bad I am in the different areas of the English language right now. 
But I know that I've always loved words and sentences, stories and text, and not just the English ones. 
Since I was fourteen, I've been wanting to move to England. 
And I know that before this illness of mine I used to think of myself as a pretty good English speaker, when it comes to pronunciation and finding the right words - at least for someone who has never been to England or the US. 
But most of the time I'm a bit too shy to speak as much as I ought to, I think. 
So, you'd think that a person who speaks quite good English also is good at listening, but I'm not. 
It's not that I don't understand, more like I don't hear what people are saying. 
I have bad hearing, I'm aware of that, but this might be because of something else. 
I don't know. 
One thing I'm sure has been effected by my thrombosis is my spelling. 
I've gone from being a person who makes few mistakes when it comes to spelling to being a person who's really bad at it. 
I loose letters and sometimes even whole words. 
The same thing happens when I read, I just don't know the words in front of me sometimes, not even the most simple ones. 
And I'm absolutely sure it wasn't this way before I got ill. 
But enough about my illness!  
No. 
I've never been a good reader, not even when I read swedish text. 
But still I love books. 
Unfortunately I don't seem to be able to find the time to sit down and read. 
But I do realise I need to do that more often. 
Don't get me wrong here. 
I'm not what you'd call a ""bad reader"". 
I understand the text perfectly well, perhaps better than some other people, who would consider themselves to be good readers, it's just that I read very slowly. 
But I don't think that is that much of a problem. 
So, what have I got left? 
Writing of course! 
I love to write! 
I've written three and a half full length books, in swedish though. 
But I also love to write in English. 
I have a homepage on the internet and on one of the pages there, called ""stories"" my boyfriend and I write a new shorter story every week. 
It's so much fun and to judge from the comments we've been getting from our visitors, we're pretty good at it too. 
And yes, I agree. 
I'd like to think of myself as a good author, at least when it comes to fiction. 
Essays, like this one, are a bit harder to write, but I have not had that many chances to practice, and nobody has shown me what it should be like. 
When I said I thought of myself as a good writer I didn't necessarily mean that my grammar is good too, because it's not, not always. 
I just happen to have studied a some swedish grammar, which I try to apply to the English language, and sometimes the two don't really match. 
But in total I guess you could say that I'm one of these mediocre students who wants to become a teacher in English because of a genuine interest in language rather than high skills. 
And therefor, I guess, will have to work hard to pass this education, but who, for the same reason, will find that it's worth it.
",False
" DO NOT WORRY OLD LADY  rs. 
Peckham's article, in which she argued that the youngsters of today do not know how to use decent language, contained so many vague generalizations that I have to comment on some of her arguments which I consider to be incorrect. 
First of all, I am going to argue that youngsters do have a sense of what is considered acceptable language. 
Secondly. 
I will prove that the situations that Mrs. 
Peckham's has observed are not representative of all youngsters, and finally I will eliminate her nightmare scenario of our English becoming an f-language only. 
Youngsters do know how to use proper language.  	 
I think these youngsters know how to talk normally, I can assure that they do not use the f- or any other offending words when talking to their grandmothers or parents. 
For not so long ago I read an article that described children being extremely sensible of language variations, this being the case especially with bilingual children. 
These children have two mother tongues, mother and father may have different mother tongues and these children know at a very early age that in order to discuss with their parents they have to use one language with their mother and the other with their father.  	 
Secondly, Mrs. 
Peckham's observations are not to be taken seriously because she has observed youngsters in informal language situations, when youngsters are chatting with each other and these I think do not give a realistic picture of what these youngsters know about the language. 
Youngsters of today are in general much more relaxed when talking to each other compared to generations before and this I can say out of my own experience, me who was a youngster not so long ago. 
Therefore they are more likely to use even kind of words previously not acceptable in discussions. 
Greater openness in society and in the use of words can be seen in words like pussy or cock. 
I am certain that the youngsters of today have a more open way of talking about for example sex. 
I think it is good youngsters can use these words without blushing. 
The fact that Mrs. 
Peckham has chosen to draw her conclusion out of these discussions does not convince me at all because it would be like comparing my way of dressing when I am at school and when I have just got out of bed, there is a huge difference between these two situations, as there are in the use of language in different situations.  	 
Finally, I do not think these youngsters use the f-words in order to feel bigger and they are definitely not going to use the same way of talking all life through. 
Mrs. 
Peckham, it is not for feeling big that youngsters use the language they do. 
The reason is not to be like everybody else. 
I think they should not sound like middle aged men and women when they are talking to their friends, who are sixteen, that would sound very strange. 
Youngsters between eleven and sixteen are much more dependent on the group acceptance. 
They want to be a part of a group and that is how I think the logic of a teenager works. 
I think these youngsters come over this use of language as they grow up. 
This, together with the fact that language learning is a long process and is by no means completed at the age of eleven or sixteen, means that Mrs. 
Peckham has judged a process in progress. 
Youngsters have always, all through history, been accused of using totally improper language and somehow they always turned into totally normal human beings. 
The point I want to make is that there is not a real threat to English becoming an f-language.  	 
The phenomenon Mrs. 
Peckham sees as a threat is only one phase in the lives of this future generation. 
I am sure that their language use will improve as soon as they grow out of their child world and become more independent of their friends. 
They do know how to speak properly so instead of cleaning up the language all we can do is to wait and give a good example for our future language partners.
"," Essay Task 2  We are all experts in questions that concern schooling since we all have personal experiences about it. 
I think it is good with lots of ideas, the latest I have come across is from Sweden where they are planning to cut down hours for teacher trainees in traditional subjects and teach  these trainees more in non school subjects. 
The idea is not to transform knowledge to pupils but to make them search knowledge, this is the impression I got from Arne Hellden's article in Dagens Nyheter(May2000). 
If we take this idea outside Sweden and see what is of general interest, I think the first thing that comes to mind is how this would  effect the learning  process of our children.       
I think the best thing with this idea is that it would activate pupils to search for knowledge instead of sitting and waiting the teacher to give them the ""right"" answers. 
It would also make pupils to learn the stuff much better because it would be the result of their own work, they would learn for life and not for exams. 
This is a way learning that has the idea to improve person. 
The problem with this new idea is that it takes such a long time to search relevant information. 
Being able to see what is relevant and what is not relevant is a very valuable skill and I think it should be trained in school but how do you know what is relevant, one cannot expect a teenager to know how to do it. 
It is here the teacher comes in, even in this new system. 
I think it should be the teacher who evaluates the relevancy of pupils knowledge. 
Otherwise there may be pupils in geography lessons who know the exact addresses of every  Spice Girls member but cannot name the Nordic countries. 
The only way for a teacher to see what is relevant is the fact that she or he has sufficient command of the subject and I think there is a risk that teachers do not know enough about their subject which they teach if one reduces schooling of  traditional subjects in teacher trainee programs.       
Where as the new system emphasizes the individual, the old system triumphs the society. 
The old system gives some basic and simple knowledge of things. 
Things are not been complicated too much, it makes the teacher job much easier but at the same time it is very boring for the pupils. 
They are only expected to know what the books say. 
How ever boring it may seem and feel there is a point in it. 
Since we all cannot become overpaid internet designers or other philosophers we do not  have to complicate things with thinking alternative options. 
So in this sense our school systems do work for separating people to truck drivers and doctors, there has to be a way to do this and the old system shows how hard one has to work for a nice work. 
In the new system the learning cannot be compared so easily because learning is more individual. 
As I see it, one of the main tasks schools have is to make us useful for the society and this I think the old system manages to do  better. 
I have to admit that this kind of divining people into groups in school seems very cruel, especially when we all learn in our own speed, which the old system does not take into counts. 
But on the other hand it is also preparing for the adult life and job-seeking.          
Both methods seem to have very clear positive effects. 
It would be ideal situation if one could combine the best sides of both. 
This would mean that we would get pupils who have a sense that although absolute knowledge is rare, there is still some knowledge one needs. 
Questioning  and analyzing attitude together with a sense of finding the essential knowledge out of mass of knowledge that is important. 
This is especially important if we think the world we live in, internet is full of information, the difficulty is to know what is reliable information. 
This kind of knowledge is very useful for every pupil, no matter what their future plans are. 
I think teachers are the right persons to learn pupils how to find this golden path to the greater knowledge but she or he needs  a real education and not some strange subjects. 
Teachers have to have enough knowledge in order to lead her or his pupils in this path of learning.  
I would like to see a school where teachers have good knowledge of things but are still capable to encourage their pupils to search for knowledge with in limits.
",True
" Talk about TV  One of my favourite things on a Friday, or Saturday evening when I was little, was to sit together with my mum and dad in front of the telly and watch a Western movie. 
I was maybe seven years old and sometimes too young to watch the violent scenes of shooting and killing. 
Every so often my parents would have me digging my head into the back of the sofa, or into someone's shoulder and I would ask ""Is it clear? 
Can I watch now?"" 
Although violent at times, the old black and white Westerns cannot be compared to some of the crude violence shown today. 
My only point here is that parents ought to watch television together with their children in an active way. 	 
If watching the Friday film together was family entertainment I do not remember that same cosy feeling when the news was on. 
The information was more direct and it hit you before you really knew it. 
I was easily upset by what I saw and many times I could not sleep afterwards. 
The first difference I think, was that News, documentaries and dramas would be on TV during the week and I could watch it more or less alone. 
No one there to tell you when to look away in other words. 
And even if someone was there it was a kind of sleep watching. 
Secondly, Westerns are simple and predictable - news and drama is not, which makes it more difficult for parents to act preventative.  	 
Every child is different of course, but it may not always be the obvious violence that disturbs them. 
It can be more subtle things than that. 
Television is a one way communication unless we make it into a two way conversation between people. 
Letting them talk about it, I am convinced, is a crucial tool to make children digest the programs they see. 
Adults have a great opportunity to discuss with others what they saw on TV the night before - I even think we have a need to do so, although it often seems like nothing more but small talk. 
Teenagers often love to talk about films they have seen, but what about the younger children? 
For them television will be a one way communication only, unless there are adults around to initiate a talk. 	 
In the 70s, in Sweden, a family had two TV channels if they were lucky. 
Nowadays there are too many to be counted, and programmes are shown twenty-four hours a day. 
Things are different to put it mildly! 
My feeling is that the more you watch the more you have to digest, that is, talk and discuss with others. 
On a TV debate about ""TV"" not long ago, I heard a woman say ""I don't have a TV because I find I don't have the time to deal with everything I see."" 
Maybe she was a very busy person or had many other more important things to think about, but what she said made me realise that also I get affected by what I take in and need to find the time to digest it. 	 
I remember watching the ""Twilight Zone"", or was it ""Tales of the Unknown""..., once when I was young and it took me years to get over it. 
It sounds silly and it was silly, but also quite unnecessary. 
Another memory of upsetting TV was a Swedish teenage drama about young people missing out school and drinbury your head in the sofa!
"," Home essay on Remembering Babylon by David Malouf: Janet.  
The charactarisation of Janet, like all the characters in the book, is subtle and fragmentary. 
The author lets us see her from a distance almost, but even so it is the inside, not the surface of Janet that is being revealed. 
When Janet is first introduced she is roughly twelve years old, and initially she is described mostly in comparison with her cousin, Lachlan, who is in many ways her opposite, but also competes with her for attention. 
Gradually she grows apart from him and discovers herself also through other people. 
The times of self discoveries are described as moments in Janet's life that somehow transform her, and peel a layer off of her character.  	 
One of Janet's gifts in life is her seeing. 
She is not limited by the surface of people, but always wants to know what their inside is like. 
One of the first descriptions of this is when Gemmy and Janet are playing together: ""[...]an odd feeling would come over him that she was trying to see right into him, to catch his spirit[...]""
1 With this quote the author makes it clear that her ability to see is connected to her searching for the spirit of things. 
Intertwined with her introspective side is a longing for somethingelse, a more satisfying life than what she has in the settlement. 
(This is a characteristic that she seems to share with all the other main characters of the book). 
For Janet, the longing starts with the stories of her parents' native Scotland and develops into an inner longing for her true spirit.  	 
A moment of transformation is when Janet gets a glimpse of her own spirit as she lifts the hard crust of a scab on her knee, and discovers the underlying pink skin. 
This convinces her that there must be a ""finer being"" inside of her, which ought to be called Flora, not plain Janet. 
Her experience is enhanced by the world around her that now appears to be transparent and made of glass. 
This metafor of boundary against transparancy is one that the author uses frequently in the characterization of Janet. 
On her path of growth she experiences another moment of self discovery, which is to be the most important by her own account. 
Janet and her mother are standing in the moonligt outside the house looking for her father and Gemmy who have been abruptly woken up by hostile neighbours. 
There is a silent recognition of thoughts between mother and daughter and this time Janet grasps the spirit of her mother, maybe for the first time, as she is standing in her nightgown made transparent by the moonlight, showing the bulky body inside. 
Janet gets a feeling of connection with her mother, which enables her to find herself: ""I am the one who is seeing this"", she thinks.2  	 Janet eventually meets Mrs Hutchence, who teaches her about bee keeping. 
The old lady has a strong effect upon Janet, maybe because they are both of the ""seeing"" kind. 
The effect she has on Janet's spiritual growth is subtly conveyed by the author. 
He lets Janet ponder about the fact that time seems to go at a slower pace in Mrs Hutchence's presence, allowing her to see and understand things: ""Withhout it she did not know how she would ever have discovered certain things or believed they existed.""
3 This is the authors almost mystical or secretive way of describing Janet's religious awakening. 
Her faith is being put to the test one day while she is tending the bees and suddenly finds herself covered with them. 
By trusting in what Mrs Hutchence has told her about bees only stinging when they are hungry, and remaining perfectly still she manages the situation without being hurt. 
As the bees leave her body she feels like a reborn person, who has for a moment been given insight into the ""single mind"" of the bee swarm and the ""mystery of things"".  	 
Years later we meet Janet again, and the transformation of her becoming a nun, sister Monica, has already taken place a long time ago. 
She is remembering her life and the moments that influenced her to become what she now is. 
The authour is taking us back to the beginning of the story, when Janet and the other children first saw Gemmy balancing on the fence. 
As an old woman she sees the situation again, and finds that it was love that brought him to them. 
As a reader you get the understanding that she interprets their encounter with Gemmy now in a Christian light, him being sent to them by God. 
This understanding comes simply by the introduction of the word love and the fact that she is speaking as a nun. 
The reader realizes that Gemmy has played a significant role in her life, although it seems as if the experience belongs only to her, and can't be fully seen by us. 
The initial feeling that the author never really lets us see her is strong also at the end of the story, but knowing her character now leaves you wondering if there is more, if only we could see it the way Janet does.  	 
The author has described Janet's inner transformation almost as a complement to Gemmy's search for a better life. 
There is a connection between Janet and Gemmy, but never in an obvious way for the reader. 
Together with Lachlan and Gemmy she is portrayed as the main character, and we get glimpses of her personality sometimes only through a word, or a short sentence. 
This also relates to the way we, and the people of the settlement, become aquainted to Gemmy. 
Revealing so little about his characters, they become hazy and almost as if viewed from a distance. 
This intention from the author's side contrasts with Janet's wish to see everything so clearly, that in the end she studies bees through glass hives. 
Again it is obvious that she is the one that sees things clearly, not necessarily the reader.
",True
" SWEDEN IS NOT YET A TRUE DEMOCRACY!  
Why do we still have a monarchy in Sweden? 
We claim that our country is democratic, that our country in fact is one of the most democratic countries in the world, but still we keep this antiquated institution - a royal family, set apart from the rest of the people, which creates an aberration in the Swedish democratic system. 
Monarchy should therefore no longer have a place in the Swedish society.   
True, the royal family has a strong support in our country. 
Many are those who rise to defend monarchy and the usefulness of having the royal family to represent our country, both as PR-ambassadors to other countries, as well as in internal ceremonies. 
They immediately point to the facts that monarchy has a long tradition in this country, and that the king and queen also fill a function as symbols for Sweden, which is very good for public relations with the outside world. 
They also mention that we are also one of the few remaining monarchies in the world, and thus very exotic for foreigners that visit us. 
The regent should furthermore not be seen as a threat to democracy, as he/she does not wield any true power, but merely fills a representative role.     
It is true that the regent does not have any executive power any more, but still, the monarchic concept is not democratic, and therefore, Sweden is not a fully democratic nation. 
The opportunity to become regent and head of state is limited to a very few, and it is not likely that anyone outside the family of Bernadotte will ever fill the position as regent of Sweden. 
A more democratic Sweden would open the possibility to become head of state to a far greater number of its citizen than today's monarchy does.  
Monarchy is also undemocratic for the royal family. 
The heir to the throne has hardly any choice than to accept to reign, and has hardly any opportunity to live a normal life, without any attention from the media to everything that he or she does.   
And is the royal family of Bernadotte truly traditional? 
They are not even of noble blood in the traditional sense of the word. 
They descend from a commoner whom formerly had the position of one of Napoleon's generals, and not from Gustav Vasa, the founder of the Swedish country, whom all other Swedish royalty descended from since his time. 
And Vasa was no mere warlord, but of a Swedish noble family, one of those from which the ranks of the chosen kings of Svea and Goetha realms were drawn for hundreds of years before the unification and liberation of Sweden, making his family's claim to the throne truly traditional.  
As for the aspect of the royal family's effect on public relations, and other's opinion of Sweden, what would be the result if something really scandalous happened within the royal family? 
What if the king was found to be a pederast, or if the princess Madeleine happened to stab somebody to death at a rave party? 
The name of the royal family would then be tainted, and I can well imagine what effect it would have on other countries' opinion and relations with us, if we continued to send our royal represents around the world after such events.    
Sweden needs another system of government, as it should be impossible for a country to be both monarchy and democracy, as these two are fundamentally different. 
A democracy should hold for everybody the opportunity to become head of state, and not hinder its citizens from the possibility to become what they want, no matter if they are royal family or not. 
Does not the position as, say, president fit this description much more than that of royal regent? 
Would it not be an good thing to one day see the daughter of a pizza cook become head of state, instead of the descendant of a general, whose father was a lawyer.
","I have been studying English for a long time by now and ought to be aware of, and able to asses, my strengths and weaknesses in the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing in English. 
This essay is an attempt to evaluate and find the reasons to these skills - or to the lack of them. 	 
I initiate with listening since I think that was the skill I gained first. 
I started my English-career singing ""My Bonnie lies over the ocean"" without understanding one single word of it - I must have heard it on the radio. 
I am convinced that radio and TV had, and still have, a considerable influence on my listening competence. 
More important at this date though, is that I lived and worked with an English family for a year and that I still speak to them over the phone. 
They live in London and speak an excellent English which was easy to under-stand. 
We spent a few months in Cornwall and since I made friends there I was introduced to Cornish as well. 
Likewise I had a substantial number of friends in London and they were both eager to teach me slang and to show me their country, therefore we travelled a lot in all directions which turned out to give me quite a good knowledge of the nuances of the English language. 
In addition, my work as an au pair developed my listening competence to a large extent since I took care of four boys at different stages in their language-development and had to listen carefully to what they tried to say. 
In other words; I have a good command of listening to all forms of English, but British English only. 
My weakness is American as well as Irish English. 
I am striving to solve that problem, among other things by sticking a paperslip over the text on the TV at home - to my roommates' immense annoyance...  	 
Obviously, speaking American nor Irish is my cup of tea, but I have got no difficulties having a conversation in English. 
On the contrary, I think it is great fun. 
I must say I am talented at slang (I am not convinced that is a good thing though) and I think I know the English way of speaking with sarcasm and quibbling. 
Something I, on the contrary, do not know is grammar. 
My grammar is unfortunately nothing to brag about and I have some-times got difficulties finding specific words, but since I am talkative, have a vivid imagi-nation and an expressive bodylanguage I explain the word one way or another. 
Strangely enough I often explain words I already know, due to that I have a better vocabulary than I am aware of. 
Another problem is that I tend to speak informal also when I am not supposed to. 	 
My discomfort with speaking formal English is a result of not being confronted to it. 
Coming back from England I immediately regret not having read the newspapers properly, because that is the easiest way to gain knowledge of the formal language. 
Even though I re-lish the Swedish language I prefer reading in English. 
All novels I read are in English, but most of them are written in an informal voice which will not help me expand my formal language. 
My strength, when it comes to reading, is that I am good at reading aloud owing to my work as an au pair that included reading hundreds of stories to the children. 
I think I can credit myself on having a skilled fairytale-voice by now... 	 
One could think, I ought to be a skilled writer as well, since I started writing in English a long time before I had my first English-lesson in school. 
I was, for some reason, tremen-dously fascinated by the exotic language as well as the English Royalties. 
I cut pictures of Charles and Diana out from magazines, glued them into my ""Royal clipbook"" and wrote a line beneath. 
I have actually ceased doing that by now, but I still write a lot in English, mostly letters. 
I write letters in English at the same speed as in Swedish but that is also my weakness; I have got no competence in writing formal texts since I have concentrated un-conditionally on the informal writing.  	 
To sum up; I worship the sound of English and I love speaking it. 
I prefer reading in English and I write a lot in the same. 
That is to say, I feel confident in the everyday-English, a feeling I do not have about the formal speech nor the written code. 
This is a confidence I intend to get during this term, though, and hopefully I will.
",False
" Television viewing  ""Television, as I have implied earlier, serves us most usefully when presenting junk entertainment; it serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse- news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion- and turns them into entertainment packages. 
We would all be better off if television got worse, not better."" 
I think Neil Postman is right in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death. 
The problem is that we watch too much television and in my essay I am going to talk about the following questions: Why do people watch so much TV? 
What kinds of programmes are there on TV? 
Why don't we read books instead?  
y first point is that people watch too much TV and they become lazy and overweighted, since the content of the TV is so bad that you are not able to do anything. 
People think they can take it easy in front of the TV after work, but by watching TV you become enervated, slack and uninvolved.  
When you sit in front of the TV and it comes a real piece of news with deep consideration and an important message, it is so heavy and deep that you cannot take in the information in your condition. 
That is why TV does not concentrate on such deep programmes. 
Instead they show programmes with simple messages which are easy to understand with humour. 
These are called entertainment programmes. 
The programmes that have good news features are often televised during the worst viewing hours of the day.  y second point is that TV shows many different programmes with mixed contents. 
The channel on TV that presents most junk entertainment is TV3. 
News is televised for three minutes and some of this news is only said on this channel. 
TV3 news televises nothing about what happens in the world like other channels do. 
TV3 also have lots of commercial advertising. 
For example in a movie there are advertising every half an hour and most of the time there are the same short commercials. 
I think that TV3 is just an entertainment channel with bad and noninformative news. 
I have found one good thing with this channel and that is their good movies.  
Channels like SVT1 and SVT2 show most news programmes, debate programmes and information programmes. 
These channels are also free from commercial advertising and I think that is very good, because all people do not want to be disturbed by that between every programme. 
Another channel that also have good news programmes is TV4. 
This channel has very mixed contents and their news can be compared with SVT1 and SVT2. 
If you want to see news it does not matter if you watch SVT or TV4 because they are almost the same.  
If you compare different channels there are often men who introduce programmes on SVT and women on TV4. 
I think it sounds more serious and stricter if it is a man who presents the programme on TV. 
Girls and women have a more silly behaviour and they can laugh very easily and it can sound more amusing when they talk. 
I think it is easier just to watch girls and women on TV, for example look at their hairdo, the make-up and the clothes and not listen to what they really say.  y last point is that if people read a book after work or in their leisure time, instead of watching TV, they would get another type of rest. 
When you read, the body can rest and the brain can work. 
The same thing happens when you sleep, the body is relaxed and the brain works when you are dreaming. 
When you have read a book for a while you get alert, provided that the book is good, and you can then do other things like exercise.  
There are people who are very satisfied with their life by watching TV the whole day. 
Luckily there are also people who cannot sit and watch TV on and on, as I think it is. 
I watch very little TV. 
I am a televiewer who like to see programmes, news and films that give something and convey a message. 
But anyway I think TV is good, because a picture says more than thousand words.
"," Petrol- and diesel prices  Why is the truckdrivers protesting in Europe for lower fuel prices? 
It is because they are so conservative. 
They do not realise that we can not go on like this on the same way in a system that is destroying the nature, animals and our human life. 
We are therefor in a good situation to change the worldpicture of petrol- and diesel consumption, into a more environment friendly direction. 
If we will safe the nature, we have to decrease the trucks on the road. 
There are better and much more energy-saving alternatives like railway and ferry service. 
The trucks we have to use could run on alternative fuels.  
From the vegetable- and the animal kingdoms come the alternative fuels. 
These fuels can be methanol, ethyl alcohol and rape oil. 
The advantage with these substances is that they come from the ground and is a part of an ecological system. 
In an ecological system the plants take up substances from the air, which is then returned to the air again when we are using the plants as fuel, in the state of exhaust gas. 
These exhaust gases exist of substances that new little plants pick up, so they can grow and flourish, and these plants are used as fuel and the circle is completed.  	 
Plants  	 Nourishment for the plants Fuel  	  	 Exhaust gas   ore people should use alternative fuels to their cars, but they do not buy a car with 90 horsepower engine. 
They buy instead cars that have a 220 horsepower engine, because many people have their car as a status symbol. 
I think they do not care about the nature and animals when they are driving their big cars, so they can afford to pay high taxes and they should not complain about the high prices on the fuel. 
The people that consider that they cannot afford high taxes can buy a car with a 90 horsepower engine and which is energy saving.   any thinks that petrol- and diesel prices mostly consists of taxes to the State, but the advantage with the high taxes is that we are able to get a good welfare state with better schools and hospitals. 
The other part of the petrol- and diesel prices that not consists of taxes goes almost unshortened to the Arabians and Norwegians. 
This money is never invested in Sweden again and the society gets no pleasure of this money. 
If we instead would produce our own fuel, like methanol, ethyl alcohol and rape oil, most of the money would remain in Sweden and it could led to new jobs, for example construction of houses, recently started companies, profitability for the farming. 
With the profitability for the farming we are going to get an open landscape with a great variety.   
If we want to have a landscape with many flowers and animals we have to stop using fossile fuels. 
Fossile fuels like petrol and diesel is not a part of any ecosystem. 
The sequence of this is that the earth is filled with many toxic substances. 
This overwhelming of substances leads to acidification of oceans and lakes, the greenhouse effect, death of forests and affection on people like heart- and lung diseases.   
Thanks to the high fuelprices people maybe realise that we are going to destroy the nature and ourselves. 
One alternative to reduce the destroying and save some money is to travel together to the job. 
If many people are going by public transport it is going to be much cheaper. 
The advantage with public transport is that the cars in the city decrease and the accessibility increase. 
The decreasing of cars makes the air cleaner and better for the people who live there. 
We would not need any six-lane motorways through our cities, and we could instead use these places to build natureareas, houses or something else we need.  
At this point I have realised that we have to do something about our way of travelling. 
The fuelprice is higher than ever and people have now a reason to think. 
There were some people before who really cared about the nature and when they were going somewhere. 
Now it is more people who think about the economic situation when they travel. 
One rule that is good to follow is that: if you are going under 5 km, use the bike. 
If you are going over 50 km, use the train, and between these you can use your car. 
Try to think about this when you are going somewhere and this is good both for your economy and the nature.
",True
" Genetic Engineering - Develop or Stop?  
There has been a great progress in the science of molecular biology during the late 20th century that has brought us closer to the secret of life. 
The most important question today is if this is a desired development and we should let it continue without hindrance or if we need to slow down the pace or perhaps even stop it. 
Torbjorn argues that there are no convincing arguments for why we should do anything to stop the progress while I am of the opposite opinion. 
In this essay I shall present three objections to Torbjorn's article, starting with criticism of the main assumption for his whole reasoning. 
The main assumption for Torbjorn's discussion is that there must be something wrong with the biological nature of the human being. 
He has drawn this conclusion after considering all the malice that man has made himself guilty of during the last century. 
But there can not be something generally wrong with our genes that makes us cause malice, since not all human beings are evil. 
Anyone would not be capable of starting a war or dropping a bomb over Hiroshima. 
I believe that a majority of all people would object to most of the horrific deeds performed during the 20th century. 
This means that if malice can be in your genes it is not in all people's genes. 
Accordingly, it is not justifiable to argue that ""It is no catastrophe if humanity is ruined in the long run, provided that humanity is replaced by a species with better prospects of living a happy and peaceful life""2 as Torbjorn does.  
There is also a possibility that evil is something you acquire from society but this is something that Torbjorn not once considers in his article. 
Neither in this case would it be possible to use the evil deeds performed by some people as an argument in favour of changing the whole human race genetically. 
Since if malice is something you acquire, not inherit, a change of society is needed to extinguish it, not a manipulation of our genes. 
Next I will discuss what the creation of a better human being could involve. 
Torbjorn writes in his article that genetic engineering might be dangerous for the development of society and that this is the most important argument against the science. 
He tries to refute this argument by saying that as long as there are no politiclly established ideals for humans there is no danger that the society becomes elitist. 
But this arguing is not convincing. 
There will always be people who choose or are forced to avoid the manipulation of their children's genes for different reasons. 
One reason is poverty.  
A majority of the world's population lives in poverty and they would not be able to utilise the science for economic reasons. 
There will also be people who object to genetic engineering, at least from the beginning. 
Torbjorn argues that we should follow our instinct considering this question and there are many people whose instinct would tell them to be careful and think twice about this. 
People with no manipulated genes will form a second class of the human race and we will get an elitist society. y third, main argument against Torbjorn's article also deals with the individual choice. 
There is a problem with his arguing and we are reminded of it when reading the headline: ""Let genetic engineering create better human beings"". 
The problem lies within the word better. 
Who should decide what good qualities in a human being are? 
Torbjorn argues that every individual should decide what qualities their children should have. 
He has a belief in the individual and argues that no parent would choose to give their child bad qualities. 
But this is contradictory to his assumption that we have malice in our genes. 
If it were true, would it not be possible that we gave our children evil genes? 
We all perceive the world in different ways and would consider good qualities diversely. 
The only way to stop people from making monsters would be to decide what the ideal is or at least is not, and who should do that? 
Not the state according to Torbjorn since then there is a risk of an elitist society.  
Finally I want to answer the question Torbjorn asked in his article: ""Should we not let genetic engineering create a better human being?"". 
The answer is no and the arguments in favour of this is what I have presented in my essay. 
There is no proof that malice is in our genes, there is a risk that we would get an elitist society and the individual choice of what are good qualities in a person can result in the making of monsters and then even more malice in our world. 
""Should we not create a better human being?"" 
The answer is yes, but not through changes of our genes but instead through changes of our society. 
Summary of ""Let Genetic Engineering Create Better Human Beings"" Torbjorn claims that there must be something wrong with the biological nature of the human race, since human beings have caused so much evil during the 20th century. 
Therefore, he argues, we should create a better human being by using genetic engineering. 
The natural development from today will start with genetic vaccines for common diseases and then continue with using the science in a greater extent. 
Parents will for instant have the possibility to choose what aptitudes and personality qualities their children should develop. 
Furthermore Torbjorn argues that we should not try to stop this development since there are no convincing argument to do so. 
As long as all individuals are free to decide what they want for their children there will be no problems.   
"," What has caused the increase of racism in Sweden?  
The statement that racism in Sweden has increased during the 1990s could be argued against with the fact that there has not been an increase of racism related violence.1 But I would still like to state that racism has increased. 
As support of this I would like to stress the fact that many racist related crimes today are more serious and affects a greater variety of people than ten years ago. 
The crimes consist no longer ""only"" of taunts and assaults but also of murders, both planned and unplanned. 
An incident which caused quite a stir was the murder of Bjorn Soderberg this autumn. 
He was an active union member and represents the new victims of racism. 
These are journalists, politicians and anti-racists, that is people who have the courage to say no to racism and take side with the victims. 
I mean that racism in Sweden has increased and become more serious during the 1990s and the question I want to answer is why this has happened.2  	A commonly used argument to explain the occurrence of racism is the presence of the victims themselves, that is immigrants and people who have happened to be born with the ""wrong"" colour of their skin. 
You often hear the statement ""the immigrants come and take our jobs"". 
This could be a valid explanation since the 90s was the decade of unemployment in Sweden, but it's not the complete truth. 
I believe that most people realise that the immigrants do not only take our jobs, they also create new ones. 
People work with teaching their children and producing what they purchase too. 
Another explanation to why this argument can't be the only one is that it is not only immigrants who are victims of racism, but also Swedish-born people with the wrong colour of their skin and people who in the eyes of the racists choose the wrong side.  	
Secondly I want to mention the power-gaining argument, which would explain why there are new victims of racism. 
I believe that the purpose of racism is not only the expressing of sheer hate, but also a supposed way to power. 
You have a goal that you want to reach and you try to find the best way to reach that goal. 
When the economic situation is bad you come up with an explanation to this and the more supporters you get, the better. 
The racists blame the coloured people for everything and by using violent methods they gain power and a kind of negative respect. 
People become afraid of them and are forced to silence. 
This is why the racists have found new victims. 
They can't scare someone into changing the colour of their skin, but they can scare people into changing side. 
The fewer people on the victim's side, the more power to the racists. 
This explanation does not completely explain why racism exists though and that is why I have one last main cause. 	
The main reason for why there is racism in our society is based on social issues. 
As long as people have what they need and are satisfied with their life, they do not care about what other people have in the same degree. 
But when people are in a bad social situation with no job or money, they try to come up with an explanation for this. 
One way is to blame the immigrants for everything. 
Along with unemployment and a low social standard come many other explanations for racism. 
Problems with the economy can ruin any family's happiness and give children a lousy start in life. 
An example of the significance of a good social standard for people to avoid racism can be identified in France's political history. 
The party Front National's president candidate Le Pen failed completely in the election of 1974. 
But after times of recession in the beginning of the 80s FN started to gain power. 
Times were bad in France, FN presented an explanation for this by blaming the immigrants, and many people bought their explanation.3 The reason why this cause is not fully accepted is because it is an expensive one. 
To secure all people's welfare and happiness would cost a lot of money, though this money would save a lot of suffering and probably also money in other areas.  	
The main cause for explaining why racism has increased in Sweden during the 90s is of economical nature. 
The decade has been characterised by recession and the result is that people have tried to find an explanation for their suffering. 
The explanation has for many people ended up in racism. 
The only way to get rid of racism in our society is to secure all people's welfare.   

",True
"As a student with nine years of active english studies behind me, I should feel quite secure about my knowledge on the english language. 
I have listened to miles of tapes exemplifying the correct pronounciation and I have read thousands of pages of english literature. 
I have had several hundreds of conversations in the english language and I have spent many, many hours listening (both voluntarily and unvoluntarily) to a wide spectrum of different variations of the phenomenon called The English Language. 	
Why am I then, under these circumstances, still a bit doubtful about my english compentence? 
What does this doubtfulness consist of and how do I look upon my own knowledge? 
I am now about to evaluate my linguistic assets regarding the english language in four different aspects; listening, speech, reading and writing.  	
Regarding the aspect of listening, I consider myself quite good. 
I am, most of the time, able to understand the content of a line of arguement even if there are specific words which I do not know the meaning of. 
The meaning of such words are in many cases given by the surrounding context. 
Sometimes, there could be complications if the speaker uses a complicated syntax, with difficult sub-clauses combined with a specific therminology. 
However, I think the key to being a good listener is to be focused and alert. 	
As a speaker of the english language, I must admit that I feel a little insecure most of the time. 
I often experience not finding the proper word, and just as often that my pronounciation is mediocre, thus blocking me from making myself clear. 
I know however, that oral performance is something that has to be trained, especially in a language that isn't your own. 
Recently, I had the opportunity to socialize with a native australian for a couple of days. 
After talking to him for a few hours I felt that my lingustic barrier fell, I somehow got into thinking in english and talking felt much easier. 	
My reading capabilities are at this time not really satisfactory, but they are slowly getting better. 
I have read quite many english and american books but I usually find it hard to get into them in the beginning. 
The english language seems, at first, to prevent me from getting a clear picture of understanding. 
After a while, though, my mind seem to adjust to english, just as in the situation above with my australian fellow, and the text becomes more clear to me.  	
This essay should give a hint about my writing competence. 
I love writing and I think it is the best way, combined with reading, to learn anything. 
I have always considered myself a good writer, but writing in a different language than your own means a lot of new hardships. 
I can't say that I have mastered the english language well enough to be able to use it as a tool to express myself correctly. 
I have during the composition of this essay been frustrated at least twenty times over not finding the right expression. 
About as many times have I looked at clauses and sentences in this text and questioned their positions and relevance. 
These facts are the evidences which prove that I have much more to learn. 	
As the reader, hopefully, can see at this point, there are several fields of the english language that needs to be covered in my case. 
For the moment, I believe learning to speak freely is my personal highest priority, after that comes gathering knowledge on how to create credible, interesting textstructures in the english language. 
I think though, that I possess a realtively stable lingustical platform to lean back against in my forthcoming studies and I have intensions of making this platform even bigger and more solid in all the four aspects mentioned above.
"," Death Penalty - Legalized Murder  Death penalty is practised all over the world. 
Half of the world is still using it as legal punishment. 
It is mainly used in Asia and in Muslim countries but also in America. 
There are many reasons why the death penalty should be abolished. 
There are numerous arguments against the death penalty and it is difficult to point to any single fact or argument as the most important. 
Below are a number of extremely valid reasons why the practice of capital punishment should be eradicated. 
Capital punishment does not deter crime. 
There are several scientific studies that has failed to demonstrate that executions deter people from committing crime. 
People who commit crimes normally don't expect to get caught and therefore the threat of capital punishment hasn't got any deterrent effect. 
If someone wants to commit a crime severe enough to result in a death sentence he/she would be most unlikely to regard any consequences of such an act.  
Courts are unable to prevent accidental execution of innocent people. 
On several occasions innocent prisoners have been executed. 
There are countless cases where evidence has come up proving the executed person's innocence. 
An execution is irrevocable and should absolutely not be carried through unless the evidences are hundred per cent positive. 
Normally they never are. 
It has occurred too many times that evidence or some witness has appeared after trial or in worse, after the sentence has been carried out. 
Executions are sometimes torture. 
Prisoners who have been executed in the electric chair (in the United States) sometimes didn't die immediately. 
On some occasions the hair begun to burn or the eyes popped out of their heads. 
It has happened several times that a prisoner's heartbeat has continued even after the power had been switched off Race plays a role in who gets the death sentence. 
Death penalty discriminates. 
If the victim is black or white often plays an important role of whom being charged with capital murder or receiving death penalty. 
This means that those who murdered whites are more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks. 
It's also proven that black murderers killing a white person runs a higher risk of being executed than white killers murdering a black person. 
Among the charged persons receiving a death sentence the majority are poor and they are usually members of an ethnic or religious minority. 
Executions are very expensive. 
It is actually more expensive to execute a prisoner than keep him/her imprisoned for life (which normally means 40 years). 
In Texas for example they can keep three persons in prison for life at the same costs as one execution.  
The alternatives are preferable. 
By ending a convict's life the state also eliminates the possibility of getting some important answers. 
What is it that transforms a man into a killer? 
How has the convict been affected by his surroundings such as family, neighbourhood, work etc. 
Maybe the answers would be to uncomfortable. 
Perhaps they would point at social injustice and racial discrimination? 
Maybe a long-term psychological investigation in some cases would show that the perpetrator is also a victim. 
Another argument for imprisonment instead of death is (maybe surprisingly) that it's an easy escape. 
It's agonizing and maybe painful during a brief moment but then it's all over whereas imprisonment for life under poor conditions with no chance of ever getting out seems far worse. 
Further, during the time of imprisonment convicts can be taught up as unskilled workers, giving them a chance to repay to society at least a small portion of the damage they've caused.  
It's my firm conviction that the death penalty is neither a humane nor an effective way of dealing with crime. 
It seems to me that this cruel punishment is a result of our desire of vengeance rather than to satisfy a need for justice and peace. 
The death penalty is nothing but an evident confirmation of the old saying ""violence begets violence"".
",False
" The school in our time  People in general have very different opinions about whether the private sector's be or not to be. 
I myself find it very appealing in some areas; especially when it comes to educational matters. 
It is a privileged resource that everyone should appreciate and give a warm welcome. 
Privatization in schools is essential to be able to attain student achievement, based upon their own motivation to learn and interest in their subjects. 
These schools have a curricula that presuppose from the childrens' needs and meet them at their level of development. 
There are a wider selection of subjects that demand a certain imaginative and creative mind; which challenge the children. 
Rewarding challenges that lead to good knowledge to use in the future to come. 	
You can always try to find flowing creativity, motivation and happiness in an unpleasant environment, but most certainly you will not find it. 
A lot of times this is unfortunately a fact when it comes to schools outside the private sector. 
You gather too many children in a much too small room, and call this a classroom. 
In this room the head of the class, that is the teacher, is trying his/her best to give the children a valuable education. 
And that is with far too few books, and other pedagogical material that children need to be able to receive knowledge. 
Comparing to this I should think the private alternative is evident. 
The classrooms are perhaps not larger but the number of children in the same class is not even close to the number of children in Public schools. 
When walking into a classroom in a private school you meet a motivation and creativity that is unfortunally not very common in Public schools. 
You can also be pleased with the fact that all children have their own new books, not old inherited ones. 
That is; when they need books. 
In many subjects in the private schools the children work with other materials, as in biology they use the nature as knowledge resource. 
Their facilities are more modern over all.
Private schools do not just have more modern facilities, than Public scools; they also have more modern, and motivated teachers that are interested of the childrens'best. 
With modern teachers I mean that they a lot of times have attended further educational training. 
This makes them aware of new didactical and pedagogical knowledge. 
It is more rare to find teachers of the same educational experiences in Public schools; mainly because of the economical situation. 
Schools in the private sector are a lot of times sponsored by different kinds of companies; that are providing them with books, computers and other essential facilities. 
These schools therefor have more money to spend on their teachers'further educational training, and other necessities that makes them high-quality schools. 	
Mentioning high-quality scools brings me to think of the differing in grade scales, between Public schools and Private schools. 
The latter, see to that the childrens' personal qualities come to its right. 
Instead of Public schools, where the students receive a piece of paper with the letters: U, G, VG, MVG, the children get their grades described in detail. 
This means that either if you are a high-level student or a low-level student your personal qualities are shown and matter. 
This is an essential difference. 
The students put a lot of hard work and effort in their years of studying and should get shown valuable credit for it. 
This system demand a lot of the children which makes them more motivated and detemined to struggle to get through with good grades. 
People that are more positive to Public schools than to Schools in the private sector might use this utterance as a ""weapon"" against Private schools. 
They seem to be of the opinion that grades seem to be the most essential aim in these schools and they tend to dislike the demands Private schools have on the children. 
These schools do have demands on the children and they are aiming to get high-level students; but this is also what these children are going to meet in the ""real world"", outside the protected school. 	
If society wants well-educated, motivated, creative and ambitious students; Private schools are a good educational alternative. 
They provide the children with the best possible didactic and pedagogic models; to suit every student's needs and meet them at their level of development.
"," The V-Chip demands parental responsibility.  
The level of violence broadcasted today is too high and also lots of times inappropriate for young children. 
Often programs designed for a general audience is not at all suitable for the younger human-beeings in our society To prevent this gratutious violence that broadcasters expose us for, to reach the children in society, the so-called V chip is introduced.
This anti-violence chip is a tool that parents can use to control their child's/children's television viewing. 
But what we have to be aware of is that it is just a tool, helping to prevent some violence to reach the children. 
Parents still have the responsibility and the right to make decisions about what is appropriate for the younger ones to watch and what is not.  	   
Often the programs aimed for the ""general audience"" reach the children as well, and they are not able to understand the underlying message and neither to process information in the same way as adults. 
Nor do they have the experience or judgement to evaluate what they see. 
Because on television it is not just one hit in the head with for example a baseball bat that ends the life of a victim, it takes more than that, even after ten times he/she still stands up and fights for his/hers life. 
This gives a very distorted picture of reality. 
Many young children can not distinguish between reality and fiction and therefore might think that problems are solved this way.
Aggresive attitudes and behaviours is often represented as an acceptable way of resolving conflicts and many of the television programs that children watch also seem to give a message that a conflict involves a winner and a loser: the good guy and the bad guy; to me it gives the expression that it somehow always is accepted by the audience that the ""good guy"" use whatever violent approach he/she think is necessary on the ""bad guy"" to win a battle or solving some sort of conflict between the two enemies. 
The good guys are often not any better role models than the bad guys are. 
This distorted view of looking at violence results in children that are more familiar to violent approaches to solving problems than to the nonviolent ones.  
This alarming view, of looking at problem-solving in this uncivilized and aggressive way, is a major matter for society. 
I do not think the V-Chip is the complete answer to locking out all violence, other changes has to be made as well. 
It is not enough to insert a chip and then think that all problems concerning violence on TV is solved. 
Parents also have to begin to influence in the children's exposure to television, especially the young children's for I think these are the ones who are most sensitive to the negative effects of TV violence, but television of course affects all youngsters of different age groupings, it might be easier to enforce good television rules with younger children, than with the older ones. 
Television violence makes children, of all ages and both genders, more aggressive and these aggressive children turn to watching more violence to justify their own behavior.   
Concerning the latter matter it is important to to find out what the children are watching and parents should also look them through and decide wether their children are aloud to watch them or not. 
It also very important that the parents talk to the children; ask them what they are watching and what they like about the program. 
Also ask them about the characters, if they are good or bad and why they think so. 
It is important to raise the children to be critical TV viewers, that they understand that people in the programs sometimes are made-up characters and do not exist in reality.   
I think the V-Chip is a good beginning in the fight against TV violence but to be effective it must cooperate with parental responsibility. 
Parents have to to be alert and attentive to their children's television habits; not just that, they also have to interfere in choosing the programs that they think is appropriate for their children to watch and also communicate with their children, not until then I think the V-Chip is an effective approach to the battle of locking out violence.
",True
"Introduction What I'm now about to do, is to describe my knowledge of English concerning four areas. 
These are listening, reading, speaking and writing. 
I will try to find both my weaknesses and my strengths. 
One might think that if you're good at reading English texts, you would also be good at writing, and if you understand spoken English, you would be able to speak it yourself too, and so on. 
But maybe a person's skills in these areas differ. 
This essay will show you how it is in my case.   
Listening I think that this is my weakest skill of the four mentioned. 
When I think of different kinds of listening exercises at school, where you were supposed to listen to a text read on a tape and then try to sum it up or answer questions about it, I remember that I thought it was very difficult. 
Perhaps I have developed, so it's easier for me nowadays, but I still feel a bit handicapped when I don't understand certain words or the context of something.  	 
The listening part of my English course (lectures and teachers talking during lessons) is the part that I am most worried about now when I start this course. 
But after a few lectures, it feels better because I have understood much more than I thought I would.  
Reading I often get frustrated when I read English books. 
The frustration comes when I see new words in every page I'm reading, knowing I can't look up every word that I don't understand, because then I would never be able to finish the book. 
At the same time I know that I would learn very much by doing that. 
Of course, it would require that I really learnt the words and not just looked them up in a dictionary, soon forgetting their meaning. 
So the difficult thing about reading is that I don't know as many words as I need to be able to understand. 	 
The good thing is that I can pass those new words if I want to, but of course, this might lead to me not understanding the context.  
Speaking It's a bit the same thing about speking as with reading: I don't know enough words. 
The problem occurs when I can't express exactly what I want to say. 
But when it comes to speaking it's easy to say things in another way, with other words, and still be able to communicate. 
So I think one of my strengths in English is the speaking part of the language, even if I - as I mentioned - not say exactly what I want to and would have said in Swedish.  	 
Often you will be understood even if grammar etc is wrong and maybe that's enough for you, but in more formal situations there are higher expectations on your language. 	 
The difficult thing about speaking is that you have no time to think about the grammar and really speak in a correct way. 
Everything you have learnt before should be there in a second!  
Writing Instead of the speaking, where you think and speak at the same time, you have time to think when you write. 
You can look up words in a dictionary, look for synonyms, go through the text several times and change things that don't sound right and even ask other people for advice.  	 
The negative thing would be that the teacher sees every little mistake you've made, compared to speaking, where the teacher can't hear if you say ""He like skiing"" or ""He likes skiing"" while it in written English is obvious that the first example is wrong.  	  
Concluding words As you can see, in my case the skill in the four areas differ, even if I feel quite competent in the English language as a whole. 
There will always be words that I don't know, but I think the most important thing to do is to read a lot and also to speak English when you have the opportunity. 
The best way of learning a language is to visit and live in the country where it is spoken, which I have done for a shorter period and that I look forward to do again later this term!
","Listening to, and understand spoken english is something I think most swedish people, especially the younger generation are rather good at. 
This is probably much thanks to TV, movies and american/british music.  	 
I have never myself been abroad working as an au-pair in England or USA, but several of my friends have. 
That is surely the best way for anyone to learn english, speaking, writing and understanding the language, because surrounded by english-speaking people you really have no choice.  	 
I seldom have problems understanding spoken english, since I have been studying the language in school for quite a lot of years now. 
The english spoken by teachers to students may of course be quite different from the real thing. 
It is always pleasant noticing you have been translating english from TV or movies without even considering the fact, nor missing the swedish textline on the bottom of the screen. 	 
Reading english can sometimes be more difficult than understanding someone talking to you in english. 
I found that if you say words you don't understand out loud, you can often hear what they mean.  	 
It takes a little while for the brain to adjust to english books but when I passed the first stage of ""oh God I don't understand a word of this"" reading english is usually not an unsolvable problem. 	 
I've been studying arthistory and anthropology here in Uppsala recently, and the literature in those courses have been mostly american or british, so by now I am quite used to reading books in english. 
It is often a lot easier to read and comprehend literature written in american english than what is written in british english. 	 
When you are reading popular books and get to the inevitable point of facing a word you don't understand I believe it is better to skip it and just continue reading. 
In most cases you understand it's meaning from the context, so there is really no reason to stop reading when you're enjoying it. 
You will just loose your confidence and grow bored, if you have to look up the first word you don't understand.  	 
Speaking english is always a question of guts. 
Even though I know I could manage if I found my self dropped of in London on my own, I still tend to hesitate actually speaking english when I don't have to. 
Maybe this has to do with my swedish temper.  	 
When you are talking to someone else with another native language than english it is easier to be brave and experiment with the parts of english language you actually do master. 
It wasn't a problem in school and I if don't really feel comfortable using it now it is just because of the lack of practice recently. 	 
I myself certainly do not go around correcting people speaking the most incomprehensible swedish, and I really don't think Americans would do that to me either, but still... 	
Writing in english is in comparison to speaking it both easier and harder. 
It can be a problem finding the correct words, something that can be really annoying and tiresome for the writer as well as the reader of the text. 
I know in my head what I wan't to write but the words don't pop up in there as fast as I would want them to. 
When you are having trouble finding words in a conversation someone will surely help you or understand your point anyway. 
Problems like these will, I hope, go away with time and with continuing practise. 	 
Badly written english is, I think, worse than badly spoken english. 
When someone can't orally find the right words, is one thing, but badly spelled and poorly written english is just really bad. 	 
Perhaps you shouldn't write anything (or not show it) in english until you really master the language, but how can one learn without practice?
",False
" ""The argument has commenced....
Slavery will every where be abolished, or every where be re-instituted"".  
The general opinion about slavery was more or less geographically divided in the American States in the mid-nineteenth century. 
The overall conviction in the North was to abolish slavery, as it already had been in the North. 
Southerners strode for a retaining and an overall re-institution of slavery. 
This is off course a vast generalization of this complex matter that I in this text will try to make clear. 
What opinions and what arguments on slavery did Americans have in the middle of the nineteenth century? 	
Slaves were a cheap labor and they were very useful in the agricultural South opposed to the North where industry was more important. 
Maybe this is not the only reason why slavery was allowed for a longer time in the southern states. 
It has been argued by Edward A Pollard that this matter also had to do with two diverse people of different social origin. 
Immigrants who settled in states up North were less refined than Southern settlers were according to Pollard. 
People in the South set a civilization of slavery, where slaves were raised in the noble spirit and at the same time helped the South to develop superior to the North. 
By using slaves as workforce the white population were given the possibility to progress in areas that did not require physical labor. 	 
One of the arguments for slavery presented by George Fitzhugh was that black people were more fitted for manual work. 
They were seen as incapable of handling freedom, actually they were compared to children who needed guidance of the white man. 
Slavery was considered a sort of salvation. 
If the blacks went elsewhere, for example to the Caribbean or to Africa they would turn more savage and perhaps they would become victims of cannibals. 
The masters should be in the role of a father and protect their slaves and at the same time the white population would be protected from the blacks. 
Slavery was the best way for the country, because it gave the American States a strong workforce, but it was also the best solution to black people. 
In the hands of the white man they could be elevated morally and intellectually. 	
Antagonists of slavery did not agree on that masters were educating slaves. 
As Mr. 
William Lloyd Garrison put it: ""Nothing has been left undone to cripple their intellects, darken their minds, debase their moral nature. . ."" (p3). 
What the slaveholders really did, according to Mr. 
Garrison and other opponents, was depriving those of dark skin from the freedom given to them by God. 
They were not even seen as humans but as property and they were also treated that way. 
The advocates of slavery emphasized the protection given to the slaves by the masters, but antagonists disagreed on this. 
Their opinion was that there was no protection, since they did not have any legal protection. 
A slaveholder or, as the former slave Mr. 
Frederick Douglass put it, a ""man-stealer"" could treat his men in thralldom the way he wanted. 
He could punish them in all sort of cruel ways without a major interference of law. 	
Advocates of re-instituting slavery throughout the American States saw it as the only way to make the black community work. 
If not forced to work the free black man ""begs, steals, or steels and starves, but never toils. . ."" a quotation by Mr. 
Grayson (p16). 
Compared to the poor people in Europe the black population of America lived a very decent life. 
They did not have to worry about such things where to house or where to find food. 
One of the arguments was that the ""Negro"" was of less intelligence than the white man, he was also seen as improvident. 
Alone without a master the black would not get along; instead he would turn a burden to society. 	
As a reply to the belief, that black were inferior and less intelligent, the abolitionists were of the opinion that with some education they would easily rise to the same intellectual standard as whites. 
Instead they questioned the minds of the oppressors and of Americans who didn't react to the cruelty slaves were exposed to. 
This lack of compassion was grounded on an implicit faith that the black race was inferior to the white. 
According to the opponents this faith was against the will of God, that all men were equal. 
Equal should also each individual living in the States of America be treated. 	
The fact that slaves were deprived their freedom in a most heinous way was the strongest argument against slavery in the mid-eighteenth century. 
Antagonists could not endure living in a society that accepted slavery. 
As Mr.
William Lloyd Garrison stated, ""NO COMPROMISE WITH SLAVERY! 
NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!"". (p5) They looked upon slavery as the worst crime of them all. 
Just as much as the opponents refused to live in a country where slavery existed, as much did advocates refuse to share a community of no slavery. 
They believed that only one way of thinking was right, and that eventually this idea would spread throughout the country. 
One of their arguments was that slavery had existed in almost every society in all times. 
The States of America just had to find out an own solution to how slavery should be instituted. 
Compromising was no solution. 
Americans themselves would have to choose, either to abolish slavery completely or to re-institute slavery in all states.
","After studying English for about nine years I was given the task to evaluate my weaknesses and strengths in the English language. 
I questioned myself; do I understand everything I hear, can I talk about everything I want to, do I have to use the dictionary every time I read or write in English? 
In this essay I will focus on these four diverse skills and my competence in each one of them. 
Soon I realized that this was something I had never thought about. 
Maybe because learning English never felt like a necessary evil to me, on the contrary I enjoyed every new word I wrote down in my notebook. 
My favorite game as a child was actually playing the Cosby show. 
I acted the role of Mrs. 
Huxtable and my English consisted of the words yes, please, twelve and bicycle. 
Hopefully I've improved my knowledge dramatically since then. 
Most definitely, these early approaches to the language formed my future interest in it. 	 
Though I very much like writing in English I would consider my ability as rather poor. 
Probably owing to lack of practice. 
We didn't do much writing in school. 
Neither did we study much grammar, which I at that time found like a relief and today regret deeply. 
The more I've learnt English the more I've seen the importance of a steady grammar-base. 
In daily speech, grammar isn't really given a thought, but in writing it is so obvious when you make a mistake. 
This is the skill in English that I apparently have to spend most time on.  	 
Although grammar is easier in oral communication I sometimes still make mistakes. 
Just two months ago, on the plane to New York, I addressed one of the flight attendants a waitress instead of a stewardess. 
Off course she gave me a look of insult and I apologized her with a typical Swedish smile and a silent sorry. 
I know I have to relax more and accept minor errors to amend my speech and myself. 
Because I like to speak and I wish I wouldn't feel intimidated when giving speeches or talking in large groups.  	 
I feel much more confident about my reading competence. 
This was something I got to practice a lot at school and also at home reading magazines and searching the Internet for essay material. 
Occasionally I read the texts aloud, which my dear brother didn't find very amusing. 
However I feel like this helped me a lot. 
To actually listen to my voice and play with it. 
I did everything from Tom Cleese British to Dolly Parton American. 
Finally I'd learned a lot of the words I'd read and at the same time I'd found my own English voice.  	 
Presumably my spoken English is a blend of all the English-speaking people I've met. 
Many of the different accents I've heard were quite difficult to understand. 
For example last summer I happened to meet some Welshmen and we had great troubles communicating. 
I almost started to doubt what I learned in school when I hardly caught a word they said.  
On the other hand English without Welsh accent is easy to understand. 
I listen and I don't think about that it is not my mother tongue. 
When I watch a movie I try not to read the subtitle. 
This not only to practice my comprehension but also for the reason there are much more in a dialogue than just words, it is how you say them, the intonation, and the meaning of the word in specific contexts.  	 
To sum up this essay about my knowledge and proficiency in the English language I would say I still have a lot to learn. 
I know now which particular parts I have to improve, writing and speaking. 
I've already started, right now, with this essay. 
As to my oral fluency I should try to appear more in class and grasp every opportunity to speak English. 
Finally, I understand almost everything I hear, I can't really talk about everything I want to, I sometimes have to use the dictionary when I read or write. 
But I'm working on it.
",True
" Does being burnt out equals being slack?  
A phenomenon which is spreading rapidly is the notion of being burnt out. 
The term burnt out is used for people who are exhausted due to too much work and stress, and who simply cannot continue in the same pace as they have been doing. 
The author of the article that I am going to argue against claims that: ""being burnt out is just being slack"".  
The title of the article is: ""Being burnt out is just being slack"", and the author simply states this even though not a shred of evidence is presented to support this statement. 
There is no explanation whatsoever in the article showing in what way this phenomenon indicates laziness. 
Instead, the author takes up several irrelevant issues in this lame attempt to make a statement. 
The author begins by implying that almost everyone goes around feeling a bit burnt out, and make it sound as if people see this phenomenon as a chance of escaping work. 
It is obvious that no one wants to be unhappy, feel bad and not be able to attend work, and claiming that that may be the case is just a loose accusation which is entirely untrue. 
The fact that all those people who are unemployed feel so frustrated is a good example which proves that people do not enjoy being idle. 
Secondly it is argued that the term ""burnt out"" indicates something irrevocable, and therefore it is not a suitable name for this phenomenon. 
It should rather be called ""being over worked"". 
Being burnt out is actually something irrevocable because someone who has been burnt out once is not likely to be able to go back to the same tasks as before. 
The fact that you are burnt out indicates that you have to slow down or you will become severely ill. 
Furthermore, it is argued that this phenomenon was former treated with a few weeks in a rest home and that was that, whereas today those who are burnt out wander about in find yourself courses. 
It should rather be argued that those people who were sent away to rest homes due to overwork are most likely the same people who are now burnt out. 
If they would have got the proper treatment in the first place, instead of just being sent away a few weeks, they would not be burnt out today. 
In addition to this argument the author also states that: ""they were earlier sent away to rest homes, but now their find yourself courses are financed by taxpayers. 
This statement indicates that there should be a difference in financing rest homes and find yourself courses, which there is not. 
Where does the author suppose the money for the former came from if not from the tax payers, and since it seems to be okay to use tax money to pay for rest homes, why is it not okay to finance other treatments as well?  
Another argument is that ""ordinary people have to work twice as hard to make a living"" which seems to imply that the author believes that the taxes have been dramatically raised during the last years, with the sole purpose of financing all these burnt out people. 
This is obviously not the case, but pure fiction. 
We should rather be thankful that there is a safety net in Sweden financed by tax money that provides alternatives to losing one's job, which will be the result if burnt out people are not offered treatment. 
It is further stated that those who are being burnt out are simply taking advantage of the system. 
I would say that they are not using the system in a bad way, which the author suggests, but they are using it the way it was designed to be used. 
A person who is stressed and not feeling well has every right to make use of a system created for that purpose. 
Finally, those who are burnt out are exhorted to ""clench their teeth and go to work like the rest of us on Monday mornings"". 
This statement indicates a great lack of understanding and ignorance, and it is clear that the person who wrote this article is very frustrated due to people who are burnt out. 
The author is driven by his/her personal prejudices and not by presenting true facts. 
People are being burnt out due to the increased amount of stress in the society, not due to a will to escape work.
"," The Increased Use of Mobile Phones - a causal analysis  Ring, Riing, Riiing!! 
Lately you can not go anywhere without hearing these sounds. 
It is of course the sounds of the mobile phones I am referring to. 
You can hear them at work, at school, at home and even in the cinema!! 
This is something that would be unthinkable five to ten years ago. 
Today even young children have mobile phones. 
To take one example: five years ago my father was the only one in our family who had a mobile phone and now all five of us have a mobile phone of our own. 
Why is it that there has been such an enormous increase in the use of mobile phones?  
One thinkable reason for the increased use of mobile phones is that it often is very inconvenient not to have a mobile phone. 
Say for example that you are a group of friends where everybody but one person has a mobile phone. 
The person who does not have one would somehow fall behind because there would be a lot of instances where he could not be reached and because of that it would be complicated for him not to have a mobile phone.   
Another reason is the importance of feeling safe. 
For example a mother whose children are out late at night or away for the weekend would feel much more secure if she knew that she could reach her children even if they are outdoors. 
An other example is the old man who is out walking. 
He would also feel more secure if he knew that he could phone for help if he for instance fell and broke his leg. 
It would also be much more relieving and comforting for his relatives to know that he could phone for help if he needed to. 
In this case a mobile phone would decrease the amount of stress and anxiety for both the relatives and for the man himself. 
This also applies to the young woman who is afraid of walking home alone at night.  
There is an enormous pressure on people today to become more and more efficient. 
People are expected to make everything less time demanding and thereby accomplish more and more each day. 
This is something which permeates our whole society and this is why it is felt that the mobile phone is a necessity. 
If you have a mobile phone you can make important phone calls while you are doing something else. 
You are mobile which is very valuable in today's society. 
A businessman for example has to be available all the time or else he can miss a lot of important information. 
There is no time in our society to wait until people have arrived at a telephone, the message has to be delivered immediately and this causes an increased demand for mobile phones.  
Lately there has also been a rapidly growing market for mobile phones which in its turn has raised the competition between the different companies selling and manufacturing mobile phones and mobile phone subscriptions. 
This competition of which the aim is to gain potential customers has caused a heavy reduction of the prices of mobile phones. 
Today you can get a mobile phone almost for free due to the companies numerous campaigns and their heavy marketing. 
This makes it possible to buy a mobile phone for merely one Swedish crown. 
This competition has also caused an immense development of new mobile phones. 
There is now a mobile phone for everyone no matter their income, age or social group. 
There are phones which can send and receive faxes for the businessman, and there are pink phones with Piglet on them for young girls.   
The mobile phone is no longer something accessible only to the rich and famous, it is now something that is owned by ""common people"" as well. 
The use of mobile phones will most likely keep on rising since the phone companies will develop new technology and thereby create new mobile phones with new exciting functions. 
This will attract customers and make them go on buying mobile phones. 
Today the most common way to use your mobile phone is to make a phone call. 
Who knows what you will use it for tomorrow.
",True
" VIOLENT TV-SHOWS AFFECTS OUR FUTURE  After watching a Swedish program on TV 3 called Folkhemmet that was broadcasted last Thursday night, I became very confused. 
It was about a Swedish politician who had to resign from his party since he had been making a lot of pornografic films. 
He argued that his films had nothing to do with his political opinions and that he shouldn't have been asked to resign because of his films. 
We were also told that one of the programleaders was against these kinds of films and that it was horrible to make them in the way they were made; with so much violence in them. 
Further on we were told that there was a sequence with a falukorv, a sausage, which had been really violent. 
However, the politician didn't think that it was violent since the girl that was one of the main characters in this particularly film had wanted it that way. 
The thing that really got me confused was that the viewers were shown some sequences from one of his films that in fact were quite violent. 
Is it right to show these kinds of sequences on TV when the programleaders have admitted that it's wrong? 
I don't think it is. 
I really think that this was all about getting as much viewers as possible so that the ratings would be high; an abuse of the use of violent porn-segments on TV just to increase the TV-ratings. 
However, I do not believe that they have thought of the number of young children that are watching these kinds of programs, or maybe they have but simply do not care, just as long as they get their money and their ratings. 
A couple of days ago I read in Ekonominytt, a Swedish newspaper, where they had conducted a survey on what type of viewers they had on the weekdays between 1800 and 2200. 
Your average TV view on an average weekday is between the ages 8 and 25 years of age. 
What is an 8-year-old doing watching Folkhemmet? 
I can't help wondering just how many parents would approve of their children watching a pornographic scene with a woman and a falukorv. 
These kinds of films give children the idea that it's OK to use violence when having sex. 
Children learn how to be adults by watching adults' social behavior. 
Children who come from a loving family have a stronger possibility of having healthy, loving relationships as adults, in contrast from children who have come from a dysfunctional, alcoholic family, for example. 
The increasing violence, not just in pornographic films, but also in films that people in general look at, has seemed to affect people in a detrimental way. 
And since many pornographic films are based on fantasy not reality, it's very likely that people become desensitized by them, they might believe that the happenings are harmless. 
Therefore, I don't feel it's right to show them on TV, not even the small sequences, and especially not from a serious program like Folkhemmet that many people are watching, the elderly as well as the young. 
I don't even think that these kinds of sequences should be allowed on Swedish television. 
Censorship should be stricter with what is allowed to be seen by family viewers. 
This law is supposed to abolish all films that includes violence at a certain level, but what is shown on the cable-net we can't do very much about. 
A program that is not shown on the cable-net, but on Swedish television is Efterlyst, a program where the Swedish inhabitants can phone in to the program, which is shown live, and helps find missing persons and helps to solve crimes that have been committed. 
On this program they also show violent sequences that shouldn't be shown for kids, but people don't even react on this since they believe that Efterlyst is such a serious and popular program. 
My point is that this program also seems to gain money and ratings from showing some violent scenes. 
Should we as Swedish citizens allow Swedish television to be so strongly influenced by American culture? 
Because these shows that I have mentioned above, Folkhemmet and Efterlyst are simply copyrights from American TV shows.  
In conclusion stricter laws should be created or the present censorship laws should be enforced to avoid violence and porn-segments being available to our children. 
I only hope that we as citizens participate together in the anti-violence and anti-porn groups that are at the moment trying to gain support within the government. 
However, it's important to bear in mind that if any change is to take place you must start at home with yourself and with your children. 
If we want our society to be safe, we must start by teaching our children what is right and what is wrong, so that we can keep them safe in the future. 
That is, to keep our children safe from violence and not let ourselves be influenced by American television.
","Since I have always been interested in different languages, especially English, I do not think I have ever thought of my listening skills as very weak. 
Further on, I believe that it is so much easier to understand by listening than it is to speak in a different language. 
As for myself, I know that I may not understand a certain word when it stands on its own, but given the full sentence I have no trouble understanding the meaning of it. 
Compared to other countries in Europe, people in Sweden and Holland have better skills in the English language. 
I think that this has to do with television, partly because we import a lot of American and English TV-shows and movies, but the main reason is that these productions are not dubbed but subtitled. 
Since I have been raised in a generation that watches a lot of television, I feel that my listening comprehension has grown more and more for every day that has past. 
Another thing that makes me listen a lot to English is the music, which is either imported from English spoken countries, or made abroad but in English though. 
This has also helped me a lot to understand a certain word in the whole context, whether I wanted it or not. 
I mean, I listen all the time even if it is about something I really do not find very interesting, and therefore I have automatically picked up a few words that I never thought I would learn.  
Though it is hard sometimes to read in a different language, I believe that it gives you more knowledge, not just in the language it is written in but also about real life in another part of the world. 
From my own experience I can say that it can be difficult to get into a book, it often takes a couple of pages and then it starts to get easier to understand the connection. 
A book is also often easier to read than a newspaper for example, because the newspaper is written is so many difficult words and with many technical terms. 
But I think that it is a very good exercise to read the newspapers if you want to improve your English reading ability, which I feel that I do. 
Today I think that my reading skills are quite good after all but it would not hurt to enlarge it though. 
An example to improve the reading skills could be to correspond with a person in English, which in fact helps improving ones writing skills as well. 
The weakness that comes to my mind about my own skills in reading is that I find it a bit tough having to look up a lot of words that I do not understand in the context. 
A strength that I possess is that I find it exciting to learn how many ways there are of expressing yourself, to explore the meaning of different words and to add them to my own vocabulary. 
Speaking is more than just put the words in the right order, you have got to make it right grammatically as well. 
This is one of the things I find pretty difficult sometimes, because I realize it is easier to write grammatically correct since you have got more time to think it over then. 
When speaking I sometimes feel that I stumble over the words, and I wish I could correct them by rubbing it out as if it was printed on a paper. 
Maybe it has got to do with insecurity, that I do not think I have enough skills in speaking. 
I do need to work more on my vocabulary, I believe. 
Although I believe that I am not so extremely terrible in speaking English but now and then it just do not come out the way I had wanted it to from the beginning.  
Writing is a lot easier than it is to speak as I have written above. 
I think that it is an advantage that I enjoy writing because it gives me an opportunity to train myself in grammar and to extend my vocabulary. 
For me, this is a good way of focusing on the grammar part and that is something I really need for my own good. 
So, this course will hopefully help me to understand grammar in both English and Swedish better.
",True
" Elders in the families?  
Is it possible to move the responsiblity of care for the eldery from the state onto the family? 
What would such a reorganization mean? 
What are the advantages and disadvanatges?   
Taking care of old people, especially old people over a certain age, requires a lot of hard work. 
My sister has been working in a home for old people for a lot of years during her summer holidays, so I know from her experience that the case is really so. 
Old people in bad condition needs attention more or less 24 hours a day. 
Moreover, I have a grandmother who is 92 years old and who is living in a home for old people. 
Even though she is entirely taken care of by the personnel in the home, my mother has to run some errands for her and of course go and visit her a couple of times a week. 
My mother, who works full time, has difficulties with coping with this rather limited amount of work regarding my grandmother. 
Thus, it seems to me very difficult for people to entirely treat elders at home in their families. 
Take for example a family of two adults and two small children. 
Managing full time jobs and taking care of their children seems to me as more than enough work for these adults. 
Imagine these two in addition having to take care of an elder. 
If the elder isn't that old and in realtively good health perhaps the workload will not be insurmountable. 
If the elder on the opposite is in bad health, perhaps unable even to go to the bathroom by his or herself, the situation seems unstable. 
If the elder needs day-time attention one of the providers will have to stop working full-time or perhaps stop working entirely. 
Of course there is always the possibility of hirering a nurse to take care of the elder but, evidently, far from all families have enough money to afford that.  	 
Single people obviously will be having even bigger problems treating the elder in their home. 
Living off only one half-time salary seems very difficult, if not impossible. 	 
Furthermore, treating an elder in bad physical condition requires a certain amount of expertise, concerning medicine and such. 
Obviously authorised personnel could inform people how to do this, but would that be enough? 
In addition, if the elder is in such bad shape that he or she cannot walk or stand by his or herself, evidently the treatment of him or her will include really heavy lifts, which obviously will be difficult for physically weak individuals.  	 
A combination of lack of time and limited knowledge could lead to bad treatment of the elder, despite the best intentions.  	 
An inevitable part of the treatment of elders is death. 
If the elder should die in the home and not in a hospital, I believe this could lead to feelings of guilt and bad conscience. 
Did we do enough? 
Did we do anything wrong?  	 
Isn't there any advantages of treating elders in the homes then? 
Of course the state (or local authorities) will save money, surely large amounts of money, by moving the care of elders to the families. 
Furthermore, under the right circumstances the treatment of the elder could be much better in the family than in a home for old people.  
Perhaps it is possible for families to look after the elderly, but it doesn't, seem like a good idea to me, as may stand clear. 
The advantages are few - the disadvantages are many. 
My main point is that the care of an elder takes to much time of peoples lives - I think that many people, who have any experience of care for the elderly, would agree with me. 
The system we have now is the best one for everybody, I believe, even though the standard of many homes for old people ought to be improved considerably.
","y education in English consits of six years in elementary school and the A, B and C course in ""gymnasiet"". 
The C course was taken voluntarily. 
Moreover, I've taken a three week language course in Brighton, England, in 1995.  	 
I hardly remember anything of the tuition in elementary school, but I don't reckon there was anything extraordinary about it. 
In ""gymnasiet"" I had a rather hopeless teacher who should've retired a long time ago. 
I can't remember much of his lessens either, except for the fact that he was very keen on letting us discuss different topics in small groups. 
Actually, the topics weren't all that different - I think we discussed the death penalty (for/against) at least three times. 
However, I suppose these discussions have improved my oral abilities at least a little. 
We did very little grammar in his lessons.  	 
My stay in Brighton also ought to have improved that part of my English. 
I mean, if you are in England you'll certainly have to speak English at least once in a while.  	 
Although my education in English in school haven't been that fantastic, I consider my present skills in the language as pretty good in general. 
My listening and understanding English is good. 
That part of the education in English obviously is a part of everyday life for me, as well as for most people my age. 
Listening to music, watching TV and movies have made it quite easy for me to comprehend English.  	 
I consider my skills in reading English as pretty good as well. 
In ""gymnasiet"" we read quite a few books in English. 
For one we read 'Kiss, kiss' by Roald Dahl, which I rather enjoyed. 
After my graduation from ""gymnasiet"" I've tried to keep up my skills in reading English by reading English books once in a while. 
Amongst others I have read On the road by Jack Kerouac, 1984 by George Orwell and The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster.  	 
I'm not really sure about my skilss in writing English. 
I believe I am pretty OK in this area, but I'm not really certain. 
Obviously, I will know when this essay has been handed in.  	 
My great weakness in the English language is my very poor knowledge of grammar. 
By grammar i mean mostly grammar theory - rules and so on. 
This didn't come as a surprise for me when I started this course a few weeks ago. 
I was perfectly aware of my lacking grammar skills and I sure wasn't proved wrong by the diagnostic test we took the first day. 
The sentences and translation parts went along alright, but the concepts part was a disaster.  
Obviously I'll have to work real hard in this part of the course - I already feel I have somewhat improved.  	 
What makes me rather good in English, despite my bad grammars, I believe is my feeling for the language. 
When I'm writing or talking in English I myself think that the result turns out OK. 
I manage most of the time to get the sentences together, so that they're at least understandable, if not grammatically correct. 
Actually I've managed to achieve the highest possible grades in every course I've taken in English since elementary school.  	 
I hope and believe that the A-course in English will improve my skills in all the areas of the language mentioned above.
",True
" The teachingprofession's loss of status: a causal analysis  The teachingprofession has troughout its long history been considered highly respectable, it has also enjoyed a great deal of status. 
In today's society it is still a respectable profession but it is losing its status. 
In polls where young people are asked what kind of profession they would like to practice the teachingprofession has not got a top position for several years. 
The loss of status is also reflected in the fact that the teachertrainingprograms are not always full. 
Why is this the case? 
There are a number of causes of this trend and in this essay I will primarily deal with two of these. 
It is important to keep in mind though that a trend in society rarely can be explained as the result of totally separate causes but more true as the result of several contributory causes working together. 	 
One of the most important causes, as I see it, is the cutbacks that have been made in the public sector in the last ten years. 
The schools have been forced to save money, this has lead to worse working-conditions for the teachers, the material is old and the schoolbuildings are becoming run-down. 
By not investing money that is well needed society signals that the schools are not being given priority. 
One direct result of the cutbacks are bigger classes and because of this it is difficult for the teacher to make time for every pupil. 
This in turn leads to the individual teacher generally being under a lot of stress, and if the teacher do not have time for everybody weak pupils do not get the help they need and consequently fail. 
This is a failure for the school and the teachers and a contributing factor to the low status.  
The bigger classes also mean that the teacher has to use pedagogics that works for most pupils and there is simply less room to adjust to the needs of individual pupils. 
The teachers cannot develop their pedagogics which in the end leads to stagnation of the profession, which has a negative impact on the status. 	 
The other major cause that has lowered the status of the teachingprofession is the low salary. 
In the community we live in the status of a profession is very closely connected to the salary. 
In high-status professions such as lawyer and doctor you start out with about 18 000 SEK/month and within 10-15 years you can easily make the double. 
A teacher starts out with 13 000-14 500 SEK/month and hardly any teacher makes more than 25 000 SEK/month. 
When the salary is a way to value a profession a low salary will inevitably lower the status. 
I also believe that the low salary discourages young people from becoming teachers and a profession that has difficulty recruiting will undoubtedly suffer from low prestige. 	 
As I wrote above the cutbacks and the low salary are the two major causes for the loss of status of the teachingprofession. 
Besides those two there are other factors that contribute to the trend. 
These factors do so because of the current values in society where much emphazis is put on results and career-opportunities. 
In the schools there are of course the results of the pupils but these are rarely acknowledged outside of the school and the schools themselves are non-profit organizations where there are very limited career-opportunities. 
In addition to this, working with people does not render a high status and neither does negative attention which the schools have had plenty of in the last few years. 	 
In the beginning of this essay I stated that the teachingprofession is losing the status it has previously enjoyed. 
I also mentioned a few examples where this is shown. 
In my opinion the two most important causes for this trend are cutbacks that have been made in the last few years and the low salary. 
The cutbacks make it almost impossible for the teachers to reach their goals which has a negative impact on both the individual teacher, the pupils and the teachingprofession. 
The low salary along with the other causes all contribute to the low status because of what our society values. 
To me it is obvious that the causes for the status-losing trend lies not within the profession but in the world around it.
"," Is it already too much that a lout farts by the pool?  	 	
Remember 15 years ago, when television still was a public service medium? 
It had programs that attracted the large groups as well as the smaller ones in society. 
But nowadays, largely due to the massive supply of commercial channels, more and more TV-programs have a basis of entertainment. 
One rather late phenomenon, which has made it possible for us to see into the personal lives of complete strangers, are the docusoaps. 
A large amount of these programs are based on the concepts that a group of people are stationed in a location, to them, unfamiliar. 
The camera then accompanies and documents intimately what the group does in various situations.  
After the success of ""Expedition Robinson"" a number of docusoaps and closely related real-life entertainment programs have popped up.  
The big networks are making more and more programs of this type in order to satisfy the huge demand. 
Almost anyone you ask watches a docusoap, even if they don't tell you they do. 
People are completely devoured by them.  
What then is the reason for this infatuation with docusoaps?  	
Commercial channels are alive because of the incomes from commercials and are forced to show high ratings. 
In order to attract viewers, a number of Swedish TV-programs have step by step lowered their threshold to what you are supposed to talk about in public. 
The taboo breaking certainly has had a lot of fire support from the US. 
Shows like ""Ricki Lake"" and ""Jenny Jones"" have made way for Swedish similarities.  
One of them, the talk-show ""Monskligt"", started about 8 years ago on TV 3. 
Anna, who was the producer, says that the topic of the first program, sexual abuse, was seen as very controversial.  
""People were horrified that a person was aloud to give his side, on national television, to the fact that he masturbated 12 times per day"", she continues.  
But since then the threshold has been lowered even more and a mix between a traditional soap opera and a talk show like ""Ricki Lake"" has found new ground.  	
It's a soap opera that is based upon a documentary foundation. 
People are fed up with the old kind of soap operas and the lousy manuscripts that they are based on. 
People demand change but they don't want to give up the soaps. 
To make up the script as you go along, hence a docusoap, was the seen solution.  
But is that really want a docusoap does, make the script up as you go along?  
The conflicts in a docusoap are in no way based upon real life. 
A fellow that is against gay-couples wouldn't even set his foot in the same room as a lesbian girl, in real life. 
The conflicts, the story, the setting; they're all put there by a producer to make it in to a soap. 
Fine, there's ""real"" people in the story but they are in no way making up the story themselves.  	
On a deeper level this trend is about a society in change. 
The growth of these programs are a clear sign that people are socializing in whole new way. 
In the old society neighbors, acquaintances of the family, and others told the children how behave I various situations. 
The socializing mostly took part in the private sphere. 
Nowadays teenager socialize with other teenagers. 
They certainly talk to other adults, but then mostly in their professional roles, f.e. as teachers. 
With exception from their parents, teenagers have very little contact with adults.  
Within the private sphere you can discuss things that you normally don't discuss in the public sphere, such as relationships and sexuality. 
But as the private sphere slowly shrinks a vacuum has risen where the teenagers seek answers to questions that they can't answer themselves. 
Here's where the docusoaps play an important role. 
Teenagers as well as adults find it easy to see how others behave in situations similar to their own. 
But I hope that you see the alarming situation that society is facing when we trust docusoap participants, that will do anything to get on TV, to tell us how to behave. 	
It is time that the networks take a minute to think about how low the threshold can be set in the hunt for realism and scenes that haven't been shown before. 
But I guess as long as docusoaps are popular you can get people do anything in order to get on TV. 
The question still remains though, shall we go all the way in to the bathroom or is it already too much that a lout farts by the pool?
",False
" TALK SHOWS - A WAY OF LIFE?  
In this essay I have chosen to write about the phenomenon of talk shows on American television and why it is that they are so popular. 
I have spent time in the United States myself and know that these types of shows are very important to the channels, since it helps to bring up the ratings. 
But what is it that makes them so popular?  
One of the answers to the question above is of course that they deal with everyday problems such as how to make a marriage work, child upbringing or infidelity. 
On the other hand, it is the different forms in which these topics are being discussed that are more important. 
Roughly, you could divide the talk shows into two categories where talk shows such as Ricki Lake and Jenny Jones could be compared to more established and serious ones like Oprah Winfrey. 	
The first two shows often deal with situations involving sex and relationships. 
The invited guests usually find themselves in all sorts of trouble and they are generally not shy to reveal intimate details about their private lives. 
A typical topic could be about a relationship of three where one of the involved hasn't been informed of the fact that he or she is sharing his or her significant other with someone else. 
This person may, in turn, have had a partner on the side that has been kept hidden. 
When the guests want their thoughts to be heard and the studio audience interferes with questions or remarks of their own, it often leads to serious arguments in which the host may find himself or herself in the line of fire. 	 
If you want to go one step further, there is a talk show called The Jerry Springer Show whose ratings have increased dramatically during the last couple of years. 
This is mostly due to the fact that hardly any topic is not fit for discussion. 
Apart from this, the arguments often result in serious fights on stage, and in some rare cases deaths have occurred off-stage. 
Judging by the audience's reaction, which is usually egging them on, they enjoy watching people humiliate themselves on TV. 
On the other hand, Oprah Winfrey distinguishes herself from many others in her way of dealing with more ""serious"" issues. 
Topics can include those in which a mum can still maintain a functional family life and devote attention to her children despite her working full-time, how to prevent oneself from getting mugged or raped, or what to do when a child is kidnapped. 
She also has her famous book club in which she introduces a new book every month for people to read. 
She later invites the author and some readers for a discussion of the book. 	
This kind of talk show, whose aim is to educate people on different matters, is a necessity to have. 
However, a large group of the people who watch talk shows is teen- agers and they often seek some kind of entertainment in which they may prefer Ricki to Oprah. 
What isn't so good is that they often take after behaviours they have seen in the belief that there is nothing wrong with it. 
Therefore it could be a good idea to not have all talk show on the air during the daytime but maybe have a few of the ""less serious ones"" at night. 		
Are there any conclusions that can be made by the way that talk shows are portrayed on television? 
Well, different talk shows appeal to different kinds of people. 
Many viewers want some kind of escapism from their ordinary lives to see how other people tackle theirs. 
Could you call it junk entertainment? 
Partly yes but people are not likely to stop watching anyway.
"," OLD PEOPLE'S HOMES - GOOD OR BAD?  
The last couple of months we have heard reports concerning negligence of our elders who live in old people's homes. 
We have read frightening stories in the newspaper where people haven't been taken care of properly. 
Sometimes this have even led to death. 
What can be done to improve the situation? 
How can we make the elders feel more secure? 	
The scene is often that nurses and doctors are very busy. 
They tend to have many people to take car of on a work day which can lead to that some elders don't get that much attention. 
If an old person's needs aren't being taken care of, he or she may feel isolated and cut out from the outside world. 
One also has to take into account that it may be difficult for them to express their feelings about a certain situation due to any illnesses or other problems. 
Newly employed staff have in many cases not managed to ease the amount of work load that is required of them. 
One of the reasons is of course that more people are getting older these days and that it is hard to take care of everyone's needs. 
So how are the nurses supposed to know what a certain person's needs are if he or she is unable to tell what is really on his or her mind? 
Can we avoid cases where people suffer from malnurishment or negligence? 	
This is why it would be better for the elderly if they could be taken care of by their own family. 
They would then find themselves in the center of attention where everyone is looking out for their best interest. 
They need to live in an environment where they know that someone cares and have the time for them and also where they feel that they belong. 
Of course the family knows best what their special needs are and how to make them feel able to cope with what old age has in store. 
The sense of togetherness would be an invaluable gift to them. 
Another good thing by having the family close by is in case they experience pain. 
The family would do everything to help ease it even if it might take a lot of time and effort. 
If one compares this way of living to that of having an appartment at an old people's home this is of course a much better solution for the individual. 
It would hopefully minimize boredom and loneliness that they may have experienced earlier to a great extent. 	
For reasons stated above, it would be better if families could take on the responsibilities that go with taking care of their elders. 
This could also be advantageous to other people in our society. 
For instance, if these houses could turn into student's rooms that would be an enormous help to those who come from other cities to get an education and can't find an accommodation that suits them. 
Obviously, they need to feel secure and have somewhere decent to live to be able to do well on the courses they take. 
This would therefore be really good news for them. 
Accommodations for students have become an increasing problem in our big university cities around the country that is not going to go away. 
Students cannot be expected to wait for new houses to be built in order for them to feel at ease. 
So even though the cities strive for the well-being of their students the problems sometimes become insurmountable. 
By letting the elders be looked after by the family is a step in the right direction to try and come to terms with the problems that faces many students. 	
When considering the well-being of the elderly it is important that they be taken care of by the family. 
They need to spend the remains of their days in familiar surroundings with people who not only care but also find the time to deal with their special needs.
",True
" English, My English!  
Introduction To write about ones skills when it comes to a language isn't as easy as it first may appear. 
There are so many things that come into mind that it is impossible to put it all down on a piece of paper with a limited number of words.   
In the following pages I will try to give you a sincere picture on how I started learning English, what I think about the language, and my strength and weaknesses in using it.  y fascination with the English language started right at the beginning in the fourth grade as our English teacher uttered the first words of English in our class. 
Or was it in the seventh grade? 
I can't quite remember. 
It all seems so long ago, so three years here or there doesn't really matter. 
Or does it? 
Anyway, my fascination grew over the years and by the time I was in senior high school I spoke English rather well and understood most of it without any problems. 
As for my writing and reading skills, well, they were all but good. 
I think this was mostly due to my problems with English grammar. 
It seemed as I had some serious trouble with grasping the contents of our grammar books in those days.   
Lets now go back a little further in time, to the year 1989. 
I was fifteen years old, just an ordinary teenager in a modern society. 
I remember that year rather well because they had just installed cable TV in our house and it was the first time I could actually watch some American ""soaps"". 
That year I also made my first trip to England. 
It was one of those language trips that you can go on when you're a teenager and spend a few weeks of your summer holiday in school. 
At my arrival to Torquay, which was our destination, I met my hosts, a young couple with a little baby, and was almost immediately ushered off to school. 
There I found out, to my dismay, that I wasn't as good at English as I thought. 
So, during the remainder of the year I spent I don't know how many hours in front of the television. 
It later revealed it self that during the time I had spent watching television I had actually increased my vocabulary immensely. 
Now that my skills in listening to the English spoken language and speaking it my self had started to grow, I was clearly aware of my problems with reading and writing in English. 
Though I had no trouble with spelling those words and phrases we had as homework in school, or reading a few lines in the textbook in class, but in a broader sense, for example reading a longer text (a novel perhaps) and understanding its content or writing a letter grammatically correct... well that I had not yet mastered. 
(Mind you, I was only fifteen.)   
Two years later it was time for my second language trip to England, this time to the Isle of Wight, and to my surprise it turned out to be a success. 
I was actually best in class that year. 
One little funny thing happened one evening when my ""host-family"" and I had finished dinner. 
""Would you care for some more potato?"", the father in the family asked. 
And I answered with a polite smile, ""No, thank you. 
I'm quite fed up"". 
As soon as I said those words I knew it was the wrong thing to say. 
Keith, the father, chuckled and said, ""I think you mean 'full up'"". 
Boy, was I embarrassed.   
In the last year of senior high school (1993) I jumped at the chance to write something in English. 
It was time to write our ""special report"" (an essay) and I chose to write about the English language and its origin. 
For the first time I really tested my skill in reading a book and actually understand its content and then write about my so called discoveries. 
Needless to say, I passed.  
Now it's 1999. 
During the years that have gone by I've been to England a few times and have studied ""software engineering"" at Uppsala university for four years (almost all literature was written in English). 
In conclusion I'd say my skills in reading, writing, listening, and speaking English have developed rather nicely. 
In term of weaknesses I do admit that I still have some grammatical problems, but nothing that can't be helped and when it comes to the pronunciation of some words my tongue just won't co-operate. 
On the other hand I'd say my strength is my vocabulary and me being so talkative.
"," EU - THE WORLD'S CHANCE FOR PEACE  In recent times the whole debate about Sweden's membership in the European Union has revived. 
The riot in Gothenburg in the beginning of this summer was only one of many expressions of this and how some people argue that Sweden should now leave the EU. 
The sad thing, though, is that the same people, who think they are fighting for democracy and against a control of a sovereign power, might actually be the ones who are the greatest danger against democracy in our country. 
The thirteenth of November 1994 Sweden decided, in a democratic way, that Sweden wanted to be a part of the European Union. 
So if now Sweden, through a democratic election, has come to the solution that we want to join the rest of Europe and together work for a better world. 
How come then that some people want to break that up, through mainly peaceful actions but also actions of violence, and call that a defence of this same democracy? 
That is absolutely ridiculous. 
The question we also need to ask is; if now Sweden would leave the EU, besides the ridicule from the nations around that we would receive, what are we actually leaving and can we afford it? 
So often the resistance of the European Union is built on ignorance and a lack of knowledge. 
It's easy to be against something just for the sake of it. 
But what really are we against?  
The core thought of the European Union is peace. 
Just after the Second World War, when big areas of the European continent were in despair and collapse, some people from key-nations in Europe gathered together to find a solution and to hinder war from ever returning into the heart of Europe again. 
Out of this came the unity of nations that during history has changed its shape many times, but kept its core focus, and today is what we call the European Union. 
Through a political union of sovereign but united states Europe has the chance not just to hinder the outburst of war, but also to eradicate the very heart of conflict itself - division. 
I strongly believe that the European Union together with the United Nations is the strongest force at work today that is able and strong enough to be something of a key in the process of world peace. 
We must not forget that the two World Wars have taken place based on the European continent. 
Here the very force of evil itself has been centred. 
Surely the history has been cruel to Europe, but finally we seem to have learned from it. 
What was at that time caused by division can today be healed through unity. 
The European Union enables peace to be a reality and not just a good dream. 
With the European nations united as one there is no way that a new World War would break out, at least not with its centre on the European continent. 
So therefore for Sweden to leave the EU would be a big mistake and would also indicate that Sweden is against this very matter of peace on the European continent. 
It would not be the first time that Sweden did this kind of mistake. 
During the Second World War, instead of uniting with the allies to see an end to the war, we opened our boarders up to the Germans to let them pass by so that they could invade our neighbours and we go free. 
We called it neutrality. 
I do believe we don't want that to happen again. 
But outside and separated from the EU we would not be able to guarantee our standing against that, rather we would be weak, vulnerable and open for compromises of all sorts. 
To be alone has never meant to be strong.  
In the view of this our place in the European Union is pretty obvious. 
It shouldn't take that much effort for anyone to understand and see that. 
Sweden has always spoken warmly about peace, justice and freedom. 
These are ""our"" words. 
Therefore we also need to prove ourselves to be faithful those high confessions of ours. 
Now the world peace needs and is dependent on a strong Europe that is united and not separated and divided. 
Therefore also our decisions in Sweden must reflect that.
",False
" My English  From a rather early age and on I've had the opportunity to get in contact with the English language in different ways, not only through school, TV and radio. 
My family has often had people from other countries come and visit or live with us for various periods of time and I have myself gone abroad on short vacations as well as for longer periods, like to the USA for ten months. 
This has of course helped to increase my English skills and to make me feel more comfortable with the language, but there is still so much more to learn.   y very first contacts with English were through listening and by now I usually follow regular conversations and movies in American or standard British English without difficulties. 
The sound of English is in other words not a problem for me and neither is the vocabulary to a certain extent, but there are also many times when I wish that I knew the meaning of certain words. 
It's often possible to guess a word's approximate definition by listening to the context in which it has been used, but that doesn't always work and if unfamiliar words appear too frequently it gets more difficult.  y concerns about the vocabulary certainly also affect reading, writing and talking. 
I usually don't have any problems to express myself in English, but sometimes I do have to ""go around"" a word. 
I might for example say ""a small house where dogs live"" instead of just ""a kennel"". 
I've also notice that I tend to use the same words over and over again simply because I don't know enough synonyms. 
A rich vocabulary makes a language more various and precise and this is another reason for why I really would like to learn more English words.  
I believe that reading is a good resource in order to increase one's vocabulary and I do like to read in English, but I tend not to allow myself as much time to do it as I wish I would. 
I'm however used to read in English and find everything from newspapers and novels to weeklies and comics entertaining and interesting.  
Writing letters is another example of things that I enjoy very much and I have been writing letters in English on a regular basis for almost as long as I've been able to speak the language. 
This has certainly given me a lot of writing practice over the years, but no one has ever corrected my mistakes, so I've never learnt what I do well and what I should change. 
Well, this is not quite the truth, because the last years I've sometimes written on a computer and then the spell check has corrected words which I have spelled wrong. 
Sometimes I've realized that words I used to spell the same way for years should be spelled differently. 
Another good thing about computers is programs that correct your grammar, although they not are to be relied upon for finding all mistakes.   
In my English class in high school we hardly ever talked about grammar and we didn't even have grammar books. 
This means that most of what I know is based on what I learnt in grade four to nine and on things that I've picked up by reading and listening to other people talking. 
When I'm writing or talking myself I often go by intuition rather than by actual knowledge. 
Many times it works just fine, but when I end up in a situation which is new to me I don't have a base to get information from and am therefore lost. 
I'm also convinced that I from time to time make mistakes that I'm not aware of, simply because there are grammatical rules that I not am familiar with.  
When it comes to talking, the fact that I've spent a lot of time together with English speaking people has definitely been of great value. 
I've been forced to speak English in order to be able to communicate and this has given me a lot of practice. 
I feel quite comfortable with the language and don't have to think too much about how to say things. 
I certainly do make mistakes now and then (grammatical ones as mentioned above for example), but as long as people understand what I'm saying (which I believe that they normally do!) 
I don't pay the mistakes all that much attention. 
To me it's more important that you try to talk even if you don't know how to do it very well, rather than to concentrate on getting everything right.  
I believe that I already have a rather good base in English, but - as I already have mentioned - there is still a lot to learn and this is one of the main reason for why I've chosen this program here at the university. 
Hopefully these years will help me to become good enough in the English to teach other students a few years from now. 
By then I'll be good enough to correct essays similar to this one.
"," Are you to decide about life or death?  
Could you picture yourself in a situation where you would have to decide whether another person will get to stay alive or be executed? 
In countries where the death penalty still is being used as a punishment there are people who make such decisions as a part of their job and in accordance with the law. 
Although a verdict to sentence someone to death may be legally justified, it cannot be justified as humane and may furthermore have negative impacts on society. 	
For all that the number of countries using the death penalty has declined over the past years, the capital punishment is still legal in as many as 90 nations around the world. 
One of the countries where this penalty still is being used is the USA, where approximately seven thousand prisoners have been executed this century. 
There is no law in the USA saying that a certain crime has to be punished with the death sentence and this means that each court has a lot of power when it comes to deciding who will live and who will not. 
It is often argued that various forms of discrimination may affect their decisions and although this is often hard to prove, there are many examples that support this statement. 
A black person who has killed a white is, for example, 11 times more likely to get a death sentence than a white person who has killed a black and men are more likely to be executed than women. 
Only one percent of all those on death row during the 1980s and early 1990s were women, despite the fact that approximately 15 percent of all criminal homicides are committed by females.  	
The juries' and judges' responsibilities of being fair and consistent become even greater considering that verdicts leading to execution never can be reversed once fulfilled. 
The fact that convicts who have been sentenced to death not can benefit from new evidence diverges them from most other criminals and has in some cases had the result that people have been found innocent after their death. 
The exact number of innocent people who have been executed will never be known, but according to Amnesty International there have been at least 23 cases in the USA this century and other prisoners who have been wrongly convicted of a crime may be on death row right now. 
The risk of putting an innocent person to death is by itself a reason good enough for many people to oppose execution of prisoners, whereas some who are in favour of this penalty maintain that it is a price you have to pay in order to ""protect society"". 	
Other arguments that often are being used in favour of this punishment are that it costs too much to keep convicts in a prison and that the death penalty is a good way of deterring other people from committing crimes. 
Although the death penalty certainly is an effective way of keeping convicts away from the rest of society, there are other, much more humane solutions to this matter such as imprisonment. 
In contrast to what many people think, imprisonment is also cheaper than to carry out a death sentence. 
The reason for this is that trials where the capital punishment is an issue tend to be very long and the costs of judges, public defenders, prosecutors, etcetera consequently rise to very large amounts. 
Florida, which is one of the American states that exercises the death penalty, has estimated that each execution costs approximately 3,2 million dollars, which is about six times the cost of keeping a convict in prison for life. 
Most of these costs are covered by taxpayers.  	
Imprisonment may also be a better solution than execution in order to prevent subsequent crimes. 
According to Hugo Adam Bedau ""Capital punishment does not deter crime..."" and an example of this is the state of Oklahoma, where the death penalty was reintroduced in 1990. 
This reintroduction ""...may have produced an abrupt and lasting increase in the level of strange homicides in the form of one additional stranger homicide per month.""
 A possible reason for the increase is the lack of good examples that the state provides by using executions as a way of solving problems.  	
Although the number of countries using the death penalty has declined, a large number of people - guilty and innocent - are still being executed every year. 
Could you picture yourself in a situation where you would have to decide whether another person will get to stay alive or be executed? 
I certainly could not.
",True
" A description of McMurphy in ""One flew over the cuckoo's nest"", written by Ken Kesey  Since the story is told by an Indian, our picture of McMurphy is drown by the Indian's impressions, by the things that the Indian hears other people say to or about him and what McMurphy says about himself. 
McMurphy is one of the main characters in the book and the way he acts and behaves results in changing some patients lives in the mental house.  cMurphy is condemned to psychology treatment against his will, declared to be a psychopath. 
His records say though that there might be a possibility that he is feigning psychosis just to escape from drudgery on the Working Farm. 
In his world, he is at the hospital because he had planned to get there, and he believes that he can get out from there after a while when he wishes so.   cMurphy gives the impression of being a quite big man, walking with great confidence, grinning and talks loud. 
He knows what he wants. 
He laughs and sings, jokes and tries to make people laugh. 
He want to be the man in charge, he wants to take over the hole show, be the ""bulls go loonly"" as he self calls it, be the leader, the boss. 
He does not want anyone to decide anything upon himself unless it is in his plan. 
He does not want to follow the rules, he wants to make up own rules, his own play, like he says: ""that is the ex-act thing somebody always tells me about the rules."" 
(25) He is a gambler.  
The nurses think that he is a manipulator who takes over and disturb the ward. 
The patients get a kick from his way of acting. 
He gets great help from the doctor in changing things in the ward, like fixing a second dayroom without music (88) and making a fishing trip.  cMurphy is curious about why people are acting as they are in the ward and why they are in this place. 
He can not understand why they are not trying to change their own situations, as it should be a democratic institution. 
He believes that the nurse is the big problem and he learns that all of them are scared of the nurse and her electrotherapy and operations. 
That is why everybody is so cagey and they do not dare to say anything. 
The Indian thinks that McMurphy tries to help and wake the other patients. 
He sees the parallel with the way McMurphy plays games with the others, talking, roping and leading the game, but backing just when they were about to quit, to give them confidence. 
It is the same when they are fogging the place and nobody complains because they are feeling safe, but McMurphy wants to drag them out, he can not understand why they like the fog (102).  
As a gambler, McMurphy is betting on everything. 
How to change the nurse in a week (62), if he can lift the control board and later if the Indian can lift it, if he can change the Indian to grow bigger. 
Everybody thinks that he is always winning including the nurse who has to do something about the situation. 
McMurphy takes no responsibility for people around him as in the boat trip with the life-vests (195), or the kid with the hydrocephalus (134). 
It seems like McMurphy cannot see the reality, nothing is impossible to do in his world and to be able to fulfil his plans he is cheating people. 
It also seems like he lacks empathy. 
When McMurphy gets mad he cannot control himself, like betting on if he could lift the control board which no normal man can lift, he can not then see that he makes a fool of himself. 
This is like psychopaths being able to move mountains, as one of the patients put it (99). 
He is stubborn as when he does not stop watching the TV-screen even though the nurse has turned it off; in this case he believes that he won the voting about watching the games on the TV (114). 
All these things make some patients to realise that you can change things if you really want to. 
He is their hero, who makes them live. 
He is their strength. 
But he is not strong enough to leave the hospital and this they do not realise.   cMurphy gives the impression of being a big, strong and careless man, doing whatever he wants to do. 
Nobody knows why he is acting as he is, but he gives the patients courage with his laugh, talking, expeditions and the other happenings. 
Like the Indian is describing it, McMurphy looses his strength as the patients are gaining theirs. 
McMurphy's life is giving many patients their lives back.
"," Parental responsibility  In a society as complex as the one that we live in today, there are many things that cause a discussion of what is good or bad for our children. 
Questions on which is the best way of bringing them up, what to forbid or not are raised. 
Experience as well as knowledge about each individual are important in answering these questions and making up rules. 
But who is to decide what these rules should be?  
Since parents often know the best for their own children the best thing would be to leave the decision to each family. 
We are all different individuals with different needs. 
One child may think that a certain film is very frightening but another may think that the same film is unreal and not scary at all. 
But what will then happen to those children whose parents do not care about them or children who do not care about their parents' restrictions? 
These children may be brought up in one parent families where the parent has to full time or they may have parents that have addictions problems or other society misadaptions.  
To follow a rule, it is important that you can understand why this rule was constructed. 
If parents make rules, they often can motivate, but a centrally made rule may appear unmotivated in some families. 
Too many rules which you can not understand or you disagree with make a person passive, and unmotivated to follow the rules. 
In such situation everything is already decided and you can not change the situation. 
You do not want to make effort if you can not change your own situation. 
If you forbid a thing, young people may then find that specific thing very tempting to test. 
Regulations will also easily be seen as censorship. 
In modern society it is important not to have too much censorship or central regulations, and such regulations do not often take into consideration the individual.  
Families and parents make decisions on an individual basis. 
They know their children's reactions and how they deal with different things. 
Different children mature at different times. 
But parents may lack experience, they may not understand what is best for their children. 
And for those children whose parents do not take care of them or the children who ignore their parents' restrictions, there have to be central regulations. 
These children will otherwise be exposed to things that may harm them or make them inhuman which is a threat to our society. 
A great exposure to violent films may result in children believing that the use of violence is the way to solve problems. 
It may also result in the children feeling insecure. 
Central regulations are needed to protect society as well as the individual.  
Parental responsibility versus central responsibility is a controversial question. 
To what extends should parents decide about their children? 
This issue is difficult to answer. 
Each person is a different individual with different maturity, mentality and with different experiences.
",True
" The insanity of monarchy  Sweden, a country that's been a democracy for almost a century. 
A country with a vivid peoples movement, with elections where over ninety percent of the population votes and with a domination of leftwing (supposed to be anti-royalist) governments for over sixty years - is a monarchy! 
And proud of it too! 
The people speaks highly of the beautiful and glamorous royal family and cheers happily and celebrates the monarch on his fiftieth birthday. 
Comparing this love of the royalties with the facts stated earlier you can't help but wonder: ""How sane is this?"".  
The Swedish monarch only possess symbolic powers but still: The country has a chief of state that's not elected by the people. 
A fact that really should be distressing for most people but apparently isn't. 
Further, this person hasn't even chosen the job for himself, he or she has inherited it! 
If the monarch at least had been someone who had applied for or taken the post by a revolution, the people would at least know that the person who is the monarch actually wants to be a monarch and chief of state!   
Personally I can't imagine any other job in the Swedish society that one usually gets by inheriting it. 
That's probably mainly because of two reasons: First of all, it's impossible to judge from an infant if it's suitable for a certain job. 
And second: People in general prefers to make their own decisions considering their choice of carrier. 
People rarely feel good or do their best when being forced, most people tend to feel repressed by that. 
Considering this you can't help but feeling sympathy for this people who's forced to stand in the centre of attention as monarchs at all times. 
Being a monarch is probably a tough job and here this people are, with no choice but taking the job on!  
Another thing to consider is what the monarch and his, and in the future her, family cost the Swedish society. 
A society that's running under an increasingly tight budget and can do without the costs of the royal family. 
Think about all the parties that's being held in the honour of the royal family and what about the expenses involving the castles, education in foreign countries, security, expensive clothes a s o. 
Most of this is paid with the peoples tax money which is not reasonable.  
What do the Swedish society and the monarchs gain from this ancient system then? 
The Swedish society is awarded with a lot of publicity since royalties often is considered exotic in countries that don't have them. 
This publicity might generate some income through tourists and maybe ocasionally a Swedish company can be helped by this attention to get an order from a foreign company. 
To a certain extent they also play a unifying role within the country. 
Cultural symbols that help Sweden and it's inhibitors to withhold their national identity. 
What the monarchs gain is obvious: a lot of money, nice houses and the people's love.  
But seriously, wouldn't Sweden and the royal family be better off if the people had the power to elect or choose the person who possess the post of chief of state? 
In other words: a president? 
First of all, we would then get someone for chief of state who really wanted and had fought for the job. 
We also would get someone that would be educated, skilled and hopefully have talents that suited the job. 
Seriously, how well suited is our current king for the job as king? 
From a democratic view an end of monarchy would be a great victory that would put an end to a system that's kind of romantic but belonging to another era - Monarchs don't belong in democratic countries, elected presidents do! 
And last but not least: the persons that now are bound to be monarchs for the rest of their lives could start leading their own lives as people of free will.  
With all these arguments and facts given above, you have to agree when I say that the fact that Sweden still is a monarchy and loving it, is totally and absolutely insane and have to join in when I say ""The monarchy is dead! 
Long live the republic!""
"," English, My English!  
After all these years of learning and practising English, it feels like I should be much more better in using it in a proper way. 
But then of course it was more then five years ago since I studied English at school. 
After that the only practising I have got, is talking to British, American and Australian friends, and customers at the supermarket I use to work at in the vacations we get from school, plus reading English books. 
However, I will here try to do my best in answering the question about how my English works in certain situations.   	 
I suppose one could say that it is a strength to sometimes talk to much, as that actually gives practise to a certain language. 
The problem that could occur within this, is if those you are talking to do not correct you when you are making some mistake and you therefore learn something wrong. 
I visited England back in 1988 as I studied for my confirmation. 
I then stayed in a British family, that helped me a lot in my learning of English as they were very exact in that me and my friend should speak English all the time, even in our spare-time. 
Since then I must say that I have only practised one area quite well, and that is reading English. 
Much of the course literature at the university comes in English, which is a good practise of course. 
We have also had quite a lot of lectures in English, which means that I am quite used to listen at English. 
My weakness in English lies probably within writing and speaking. 
I have not got much training in writing English before and do not therefore feel very comfortable with it. 
But I would certainly like to learn that part better as well as the other parts also of course. 
I did have a pen-pal in Australia a while ago, but she wouldn't correct me to much unfortunately. 
However I have got an American student in my corridor right now, so I thought about letting her read through this paper before handing it in, but then I come to think of that it probably would be better to hear from you what mistakes I have done. 
Yet I will probably try to talk a little more to her in English, (she speaks Swedish very good) in this term, to get some free practise even outside school. 
I feel that I haven't spoke that much about my capability of listening to and understanding spoken English. 
Probably I left that part aside as I feel that I am quite used to listen to English, as I mentioned above. 
Yet I probably would need some practise in that part as well. 
I am planning to go to England next year, after these studies. 
I have got some friends from Sweden who have lived there for a couple of years now. 
I just feel that I would like to know a little more about grammar, structure and the language overall first.  
The weakest point in my English is grammar, no doubt about it, and it feels like I want to know a little about that before I start to speak to much. 
As it is now, I listen inside for what sounds right, but I can't far from always explain why I say as I do whether I'm right or wrong. 
I don't think I will have to write a summary here, it would in that case only be repeating what I earlier have said, as it isn't such a long essay. 
I'm actually having a little problem with getting to the magical number of 700 words as I think that I have written for about everything that is to say about my English. 
I therefor ends with saying that I have very high expectations upon this course. 
It has been very satisfying so far.
",False
"y favourite subject in school has always been English and I think that you can learn a lot of English during school, especially if you're interested in it. 
Partly because of my interest in English I went to London to work as an au-pair for half a year after I had graduated from high-school. 
This was in many ways a very useful experience. 
I have as I said, always enjoyed the English language but there are always things that you can improve and I think I learned a lot from my stay in London. 
Still, there are things I feel better at and things I'm worse at. 
When it comes to reading, writing, listening and speaking English I sure have weaknesses in all of these skills, but also strengths. 
Because of my stay in London I'm quite used to listening to English. 
After all, it is kind of hard avoiding it when you are living in an English speaking country. 
You talk to people, watch television, in fact you're surrounded by the language all the time. 
After a while you even begin to dream in English! 
I feel that there is no problem when it comes to listening to and understanding English. 
Not only have I practised it in London as well as in school, but the English language is everywhere also in Sweden. 
We watch a lot of English television programs, listen a lot to English music and so forth. 
Though I have to admit that I can find it really hard to understand people who talk Scottish or Irish. 
Especially if their accent is very distinct and if they are talking fast.  
Last year I studied Psychology here in Uppsala. 
All the literature was in English and it was hard in the beginning but after a while I got in to it and now it feels natural. 
The good thing about reading is that if you don't know what a specific word means, the context can help you understand it or otherwise you can always look it up in a dictionary. 
Things are always easier and more enjoyable if you're interseted in it and I have always enjoyed reading. 
When I was younger I lived in a very small village far away from my friends so you can say that books were my best-friends. 
It may sound horrible but I didn't suffer from it. 
I find it no problem reading English novels but nonfiction which sometimes consists of very technical language can be difficult to understand. 
If there are a lot of hard words it takes a long time to read the text and it's easy to become frustrated.   
Assessing my own abilities when it comes to speaking English I find rather difficult. 
You're usually not aware of the mistakes you're making when speaking. 
When I went to England I thought I was rather good at English, but I soon realised that I had so much to learn. 
A lot of people said I was very good at speaking English, as they say to most Swedish people but children are honest and the children I was taking care of pointed out all the mistakes I made when talking and there were a few... 
My problems consisted mainly of pronunciation mistakes I hadn't thought of before like the difference between how you say niece and knees. 
I think I have required a fairly good British accent now, but I know that there are many things still to learn. 
Things I have noticed now during our pronunciation classes for example. 
The thing about speaking English though, is that it is such tremendous fun! 
I prefer British English and love the sound of it. 
It's a beautiful language and there are so many good expressions in English that you can't find in Swedish.   
Writing is the one part of the English language I feel least experienced in. 
I have a pen-friend in Canada since eight years back so I'm used to expressing myself in English but I'm not at all used to writing essays and reports. 
Of course we did some writing during English classes in school, but not a lot. 
I have however always written a lot in Swedish so at least I'm not all that unfamiliar with the concept of writing. 
However I feel that these writing classes will be a good complement to my English knowledge and I'm looking forward to it. 
In fact I think the whole term will be useful learning, otherwise I wouldn't be here!
"," The Industrial Revolution in England resulted in a number of changes in the English society and made a huge impact on both women's and children's lives. 
Not only were their lives affected during this time, but it also affected their future. 
The working situation and also the family situation changed. 
With this essay I will discuss some of the changes that took place, changes in the urban community as well as important legislative actions that took place. 
The Industrial Revolution started with the invention of new machines, machines that resulted in a number of factories. 
People who earlier had lived on the country side, occupied by different kinds of craft-work, now lost their jobs and had to move to the cities where the factories were situated. 
These cities turned into slum areas that spread diseases and epidemics because of the bad sanitation conditions. 
Poverty increased and the living conditions for the working class were dreadful (Lunden & Srigley, 141).  
Not only did the living situation for people in the working class change, the industrial revolution indeed meant a number of other dramatic changes, in front of all people had to work harder and longer hours. 
Women and children were hired to a great extent, women because they were seen as inexpensive labour. 
Children because they were cheap to hire, but also because they couldn't make much resistance and therefore could be forced to work for long hours. 
They worked under horrible conditions and were terribly exploited. 
In the steam-powered mills children as young as four years old worked, the payment was low, accidents, diseases and even death common (Child Labor). 
These circumstances did not pass unmarked. 
In the beginning of the nineteenth century a number of acts were created in hope of improving the working situation that existed. 
In 1833 an act came that forbade children under the age of nine to work in textile mills. 
It also limited the work of children under twelve to forty-eight hours per week. 
In 1842 an act came that made it illegal for women and children to work in underground mining (Mitchell, 23). 
It however took a while before these laws worked in practice. 
In the middle of the nineteenth century it was reported that children still worked in pottery, match and boot factories. 
The climbing boys still worked and suffered as badly as they had before. 
The children as well as their parents were often crippled by an early age, got diseases and died. 
People were badly clothed and had a poor diet. 
Towards the end of the century however, diet improved and most importantly conditions in the factories began to improve as well. 
A number of factory acts came that improved the situation for women and children: In 1868 employment of children in agricultural gangs was forbidden, in 1870 all children under ten were required to go to school. 
Other improvements took place in form of shorter working days and work also became less dangerous (Hibbert, 1,3-5). 
In 1901 employment of children under twelve in any factory or workshop was absolutely forbidden (Mitchell, 23). 
The Industrial Revolution also changed the kind of work women did. 
Women could now work in business, industry and civil service. 
Work outside the home became very common among young girls in their late teens and early twenties. 
Most working women were unmarried, some married women did work, but it was quite unusual. 
Having a work gave the women a feeling of freedom that they hadn't had before. 
They were for a while free from their duties at home and from their parents. 
It also gave them some own money to spend. 
The young women did however not plan to work forever, their main plan was to get married. 
Part of the reason why they worked was to save up for the marriage (Working Class Women in Britain, 1890-1914). 
But when married, they would see that the family situation also had been affected by this time period. 
Perhaps the most positive change that followed for women concerning the family situation, was the decline in family size. 
Women learned how to avoid getting pregnant and it improved their physical health as well as it eased their burden at home. 
Besides a decline in childbirth there was also a decline in child mortality, which made women get more emotionally involved in their children. 
The women also had the economic responsibility and controlled the incomes, the rent, the insurance etc. 
This gave them a quite powerful position in the family. 
Men did however gradually regain control over the budget and therefore women's status in the family declined. 
The working class was inspired of the middle-class way of looking upon women as someone put on a pedestal. 
The working class wife was not to work, because if she did it would look like her husband couldn't provide for her. 
Men took most of the money they earned themselves, went to the pubs and spent them on various recreations. 
Many of the women who had been working before they got married were quite frustrated because they couldn't decide anything themselves. 
They couldn't buy anything for themselves and they hardly had any contact with the outer world. 
Strikes and trade unions however improved the situation somewhat (Stearns). 
Employment for women started to increase, nursing and teaching were respected professions that became more common (Schmiechen, 21). 
To sum up, the industrial revolution did indeed interfere with the lives of women and children. 
Women and perhaps children particularly, suffered under horrendous working conditions. 
But this also resulted in a number of legislative actions that in fact in many ways improved the situation for the working class. 
Working hours were even in some cases shorter than they were before the Industrial Revolution. 
Child labour became prohibited and school for children under the age of ten required. 
Women's lives changed a lot as well. 
It became commonplace for young women to work and earn their own money, which gave them a new sense of freedom. 
Still, you weren't supposed to work if you were married. 
The role of the woman in the family also changed. 
She did in some ways gain more power, since she now could control her pregnancies and because she had control of the budget. 
But men took over the control of the money, reducing women's power. 
At least things slowly began to improve and children's and women's lives were not as bad as during the Industrial Revolution; Out of all bad, some good things come.
",True
" The fifth child  The main theme in The fifth child, as I see it, is the high expectations and unrealistic dreams of a perfect family in a perfect home, that makes people forget that they are human. 
In setting up a goal in life like David and Harriet did, one must not forget that that is just something to keep you going and struggling for, not something which is necessarily the only possibility nor the best one. 
This is especially important when it comes to the issue of this novel, namely family and children. 
By setting the level of success at the highest point, the perfect family and life, they push themselves to the limit where nothing else is accepted. 
Different is bad and thereby alienated (and this is something that parents pass on to their children). 
We can see this quite clearly on page 29 where Harriet is telling David that her sister Sarah's child Amy, who has Down's syndrome, was probably brought on by the fact that her sister and her husband William was unhappy and always quarrelled a lot. 
A child who is different from what you would call normal is not seen by Harriet as a blessing, but a punishment. 
When strange, little Ben comes along David and Harriet are however faced with the same thing. 
But instead of accepting the fact that perhaps they are just unhappy or unsatisfied with their lives at this time, they blame everything on Ben and try to send the ""problem"" away. 
I think that the problem is not Ben, but something else connected to the high expectations and dreams of David and Harriet. 
Their lives, at the point where Ben comes along, are not what they had dreamed or hoped for, and maybe they want Ben to be the problem because that would be easier than dealing with their lives.  	 
First of all there is the house, by the size of a hotel, which the happy couple, Harriet and David, can not really afford. 
Because they can not afford it, David is forced to ask his rich father James for financial support. 
David does, however, want to be able to pay for it by himself (since Harriet is at home with their perfect children) and when David's firm is struck and he is not given his promotion, which we are told about on page 29, he takes on more jobs. 
This, and the fact that he has gone against his principles by asking for help, tears him down piece by piece, and when Ben is born David is practically a zombie. 
Harriet is worn out by the first four pregnancies (in just seven years), her tummy is sore and her back hurts. 
It has not even been a year since her last baby was born and suddenly she is forced to put her body through another pregnancy. 
With a strain like that, her tummy already sore from her last pregnancy, and this baby being so lively, it is perhaps hard to be happy about another child.  	 
There is also the fact that David and Harriet has always been seen as outsiders with their old fashioned and conservative beliefs. 
They have different values from most other people living in the sixties, who believe in the sexual revolution and so on, whereby the couple mostly live in their own world, their big safe house, isolated from other people. 
This makes them depend on their family to function normally without disruption, and when Ben is born he disturbs the balance, and most, if not to say all, of the relatives turn their backs on David and Harriet. 
The perfect holidays of loving hospitality at the Lovatt's, which we read about on page 30 and which are of great importance for David and Harriet, are suddenly gone. 
In addition to this the neighbourhood, in the small town where they are living, is getting more dangerous, with burglaries, robberies, and other violent crimes becoming common nature. 	 
Could it be that there is just no room in these loving parents' hearts for one more person to care about? 
Harriet needs to take care of herself and rest, even the doctor says so, and David is hardly ever off from work. 
I do not think Ben is an evil child, who does not want to cuddle and likes hurting other people or animals. 
He is just born at the wrong time where their is little time or love to give to a small baby. 
He probably needs to feel that someone wants to cuddle with him before he is ready to accept that it is nice, and I do not see Harriet nor David trying so hard to teach him that. 
It is more like they find it a relief not to have to touch him. 
If Ben had been given some time and effort I am sure he would not be so different from the other children in ways of playing and behaving. 
But he is treated different from the start, even during the pregnancy, and the fact that poor Ben looks different and has a hard time learning things, in a family where ""perfect"" is the goal, really leaves him on his own. 
Not the perfect conditions for learning about love and compassion, which is what is different about Ben from the beginning. 
The high expectations that David and Harriet set up for themselves destroyed their family, not Ben.
"," Evaluation. 
English, My English!  
I first got in touch with the English language when I was ten years old and we started studying it at school. 
After that I have just found it increasingly fascinating, especially getting in touch with all of the different variations in accents. 
My interest in English has also made it very easy for me to get good grades on the subject, since I have not really considered it "" work"" to learn about it. 
Nevertheless, it is very important to see the difference between ""playing"" with the language (talking to friends or chatting on the Internet) and serious apprehension of it, if you want to broaden your skills. 
Rules of grammar, pronunciation, or even the existence of certain words, as I have noticed, may differ a lot.   
Listening Listening for me has always been quite easy and natural. 
Since I listen to a lot of music performed in English and also watch many films that are in English, it has somewhat become a part of my everyday life. 
Obviously not me nor anyone else know all of the English words. 
But, as a ""Swede"" I do consider myself fairly good at understanding and absorbing the language listening to it. 
And after having heard a word in English, I somehow memorise the sound of it to my benefit, but without my actual knowledge. 
I presume this is why I have never really made an effort trying to understand and learn all of the phonetics that comes with the English language.   
Reading The reading bit is however a whole lot harder for me. 
Words may be easy to understand when you hear them in a conversation or in a song. 
Whereas seeing words written on a paper you can not just read them as they are, you have to be able to pronounce them. 
And to be able to pronounce them you have to know phonetics, at least a little. 
(And as I mentioned earlier, I do not know much phonetics.) 
If you are not able to pronounce words in a correct manner you might misinterpret only a few words in a novel and, just like that, ""screw up"" an entire story.  	 
Apart from this, there are also the problems of slang and contractions. 
These phenomena tend to vary indefinitely in the English language which makes your reading even more difficult. 
For me, however, this is something I find intriguing and even a bit tempting in a book, Swedish or English. 
It gives me a sense of wit and simplicity that I like in an author.  
Speaking Now we have reached my biggest weakness, the speaking part that is. 
It really has nothing to with me lacking knowledge. 
I know how to pronounce words (in general) and I do know a lot of words and some of the grammar that surrounds them too. 
The point is I get really shy when I am in a crowded room surrounded by people I do not really know. 
I tend to stutter continuously. 
And my awareness of it makes it worse. 
It is really irritating and I often get mad at myself simply for knowing I can do it better. 
My wish is to get rid of this disturbing flaw as soon as possible since I want to work in advertising, among other things meeting with customers, when I am done studying.  
Writing y writing skills in English do not differ much from my writing skills in Swedish (set aside the spelling part). 
At least I do not think so. 
I am not saying that I am a good writer though, seeing that my imagination always goes ""hand in hand"" with my mood, which unfortunately is not always cheerful and happy. 
No, I do not exactly think I could make a living out of it.  	 
My most impending problem with writing is that I tend to float away from the main story when my imagination fails me. 
Instead of taking a break to think of how to continue on the story I have already started, I go off in a new direction somehow forgetting what I was supposed to write about in the first place.  
To finish off this short report on my varying talents in the English language, I would just like to say that I intend to improve my flaws and learn more about English throughout the rest of my life. 
My intentions not being to become a professor in English, but merely to be able to communicate with a wider amount of people. 
Because this, I think, is the biggest problem of mankind.
",True
" Why Has there Been a Decrease in the Number of People Who Get Married Young?  
In Sweden people get married later in life now than they used to. 
The change has been a long ongoing process and has many different causes that belong to different time periods. 
An example of such a thing is that women started to work in connection to the World Wars and the financial independence gave women the ability to choose not to marry, another example is the ""hippie"" thoughts of free love and opposition towards old conformist ideals which introduced new ways of living, and a third one is secularisation which has removed a lot of the shame of unmarried partnership. 
These causes have all contributed to a new attitude towards marriage but I will now concentrate on the factors that I think are most important in the present Swedish society. 
Today more people than ever have grown up with divorced parents and it is common to marry several times. 
This is an important reason why the whole concept of marriage has changed. 
Marriage used to be a lifelong commitment and people stuck together even though it was sometimes more of a practical arrangement than a truly good relationship. 
Today people have high standards when it comes to marriage and they divorce when they are not satisfied with the ones they have. 
Since a lot of people do not follow the marriage vowel of lifelong commitment it looses its meaning and this is one reason why I think the high rate of divorces makes people feel that it is not very important to marry. 
The fact that a lot of marriages end can also have the effect that people no longer believe in lifelong love to the same extent as before and therefore hesitate to marry. 
Another cause of delayed marriages is that people get their adult identity and economical independent status later in life. 
I often meet students who are in their late 20s who talk about marriage and children and are starting to feel time pressure (mostly women I might add). 
They have often planned to start a family before they turn thirty, but they also want to complete their studies and jet a job before they get married. 
When you study you have a lot of freedom and life is, except for the studies, mostly about meeting people and having fun. 
Serious commitments do not fit into the picture. 
Since it is difficult to get a job more young people study now than ever before. 
They often continue to study for as long a time as possible for that same reason and therefore marriage and family life is put on hold. 
A trend in society that goes hand in hand with the trend of later marriage, that also is a product of the employment situation, is that people do not feel like adults even though they are of a what is considered to be an adult age. 
Employment is one of the first steps towards becoming an adult since it gives you financial independence and responsibilities. 
Besides unemployment a change in our society contributing to this prolonged youth period is that the youth culture grows and develops constantly through our media society; a culture where entertainment and excitement is in focus. 
Because of this general change in attitude a lot of people prefer a commitment free life with a lot of possibilities and flexibility to settling down. 
Another message conveyed by the media today that is also expressed by friends and parents is that it is better for young people not to marry the first person they fall in love with but have several relationships first. 
The taboo of being in a relationship and living with someone without being married is gone. 
Instead it is encouraged that people get a lot of experience before they decide to marry, in order to get to know what they want out of a relationship and really meet the right person. 
This is the third important reason why I think that young people do not get married as soon as before. 
They allow themselves to wait and really find the person that they know is right for them.  
To summarise, today young people are faced by the discouraging divorce statistics, they are encouraged not to rush into marriage but wait until the are certain about their choice and at the same time it takes longer time than ever before for a person to become established as an adult in society. 
The result of this is that marriage is put on hold until later in life. 
There are as I mentioned in my introduction many other factors that also are important to the development, but these are the issues I think are closest to the youth of today.
"," The phenomena of online-gaming  This essay will touch upon the fairly new phenomena of online gaming. 
I will present a few causes that I think have been important for the industry of online-gaming. 
It is not one factor alone that has started or is responsible for the growth of online-gaming, but several.   
The development of new technology concerning bandwidth and the globalisation of Internet are the factors of greatest importance for attracting the masses to online-games. 
The trend started in 1996 with a first-person shooter game called Quake. 
The connection to the Internet at that time was very poor and only those who really liked the game accepted that there were connection problems. 
To be able to play Quake on the Internet in 1996, without too much interruption; one had to sacrifice vital features of the game like graphics and details, and that did take some of the fun out of playing. 
However, this problem is almost eliminated today because of the broadband technology that allows a higher transfer rate of data than modems are capable of. 
Furthermore, the multiplayer feature on Quake was something really innovative at the time it came out; you no longer had to sit in the same room to be able to play with your friends. 
As the availability of the Internet increased the interest for online gaming also increased. 
But there is more to the phenomena of online-gaming than just having a fast Internet connection.   
Kids of today do not settle with Old-fashioned gambling such as: gambling on horses, betting on sport events or play on casinos. 
However, the old casino-concept is making its way to the Internet as well. 
You cannot win any hard cash by playing on casinos on the Internet today, but I'm sure you can in a not too distant future. 
Of course gambling can result in a lot of money if you have enough skills or luck, or preferably both. 
But that is not enough; they want something faster, something with a little more action. 
The excitement they are looking for can be found in online-games. 
The thrill of feeling superior another human being by blowing their brains out is something unique for the online-games (multiplayer). 
The thrill of beating another living person instead of a computer is a probable cause to the online-gaming trend. 
Most kids today want action, and that is something that is well known, which brings me to my next point.   
Various agencies and companies and above all the bank of Sweden have realised that online-gaming is here to stay. 
Therefore the bank of Sweden has tried to make an informative online-game in order to make it more interesting for kids to learn about, for example; the rate of inflation. 
In this particular game you are the captain of a spaceship, flying around in outer money space. 
Your task is to control the rate of inflation and the optimal rate is 2%, by keeping it as close to 2% as possible will give a higher score in the end. 
My point here is that more and more people are beginning to think this way, thus expanding the area of online-games so that the concept is not only about killing your opponents but to actually make games informative. 
This way of thinking will, and have already, resulted in online-games suiting all interests, thus making the games even more popular than they already were and growing in numbers over the Internet. 
However, I don't think it's a god idea to make games of everything. 
Sometimes you just want to flee from reality by playing games, which will not be the case if too much reality is injected in them.   
I have come to the conclusion that the production of online-games will continue to evolve, whether we like it or not, and in a few years there will be as many online-games as there are areas of interest in the world. 
If this much has happened in 5 years, what will tomorrow look like? 
The big computer-game developers will most certainly compete against each other, and the greed for money will make them produce more junk than ever before. 
There is already a literary canon, and I think that there will soon also be a computer-game canon because so much junk in nice packaging will be produced that people don't know what is good anymore.
",False
"It all started in fourth grade. 
I was ten years old and about to have my first English lesson. 
How I enjoyed that. 
I gladly took home my books, in which I had written down the fifteen words that we had to learn for the next week. 
Since then I have been struggling with learning to be a better speaker, listener, writer and reader of English. 
It has not always been simple, as you will see. 
But I have had a lot of fun on the way.  
Throughout high school I did not have any bigger problems with listening and understanding English. 
To a certain degree I can thank TV for that. 
I watched many American shows and learned to listen and understand English. 
When I, after one year of high school, went to the United States to study I got to practice all that I have learned the past seven years. 
When I first heard my host father speaking, I was shocked and thought, ""What is he saying? 
What language is he talking?""  
But it did not take many days to learn to understand him, and everybody else for that matter. 
So listening was no problem. 
Until I was on my way home and we made an intermediate landing at Heathrow Airport, London.  
I was in a shop to buy something to eat, and it was my turn to pay. 
The cashier started talking to me and I did not understand one word of what she said! 
Not one single word! 
She must have thought I was an idiot standing there saying ""what?"" 
to everything that she said. 
It was a big difference from the American English that I had gotten used to.  
Now, though, when I have not been in the United States for several years I have no problem in understanding British English.  
In the ten years that I studied English in Sweden, I did not read many books in English, we never had to. 
But when I was in the U.S I discovered the joy of reading. 
It is not just fun to sink into an imaginary world and forget the reality, it is also a very good way of keeping up and learning a language. 
I remember lying in my bed reading an English book and thinking for myself. 
Wow, I am reading a book in a totally different language, and I understand everything. 
It was an amazing feeling.  
So reading is not a big problem for me.  
I do have problems with my writing though. 
My grammar is not the best, even though I think I write perfectly well. 
I feel quite competent in spelling, but of course there are many difficult words in English too, as there are in every language.  
One of my first writing experiences is when I was around ten or eleven years old. 
A friend and I were going to write a letter to ""DJ Cat"" on the ""DJ Cat Show"" on the Sky Channel. 
We liked his show very much so we wanted to write and tell him that. 
I remember one sentence in particularly. 
We were going to write ""we like you very much"", but we did not know how to spell the word much. 
We pondered and pondered upon how it was spelt. 
Finally we came up with a quite logic one, at least we thought so. 
We wrote ""we like you very match"". 
Hopefully I have improved my writing since then.   
I am certainly a better speaker after spending a year in the U.S. 
I have improved my ability to speak spontaneously. 
I love to speak English, even though I say many things wrong. 
Which happened a few times in the U.S. 
The English I had learnt in Sweden did not always work over there. 
I remember asking my host mother for a rubber. 
She stared at me and asked if I meant that I needed an eraser. 
She explained the difference, and I felt a little embarrassed, since the word rubber means ""suddgummi"" in British English but condom in Am. 
Eng.  
I still laugh about it and now I feel more confident in my talking, knowing that we all say the wrong things now and then.  
In conclusion I could say that I know English quite well. 
I can survive in an English speaking country without any problems. 
But there are also lots that I do not know about English, but that I am eager to learn about, to apply the grammar correctly, for instance.  
I am willing to work hard to achieve the goals I have set. 
And I know that if I do,  I will be a better speaker, listener, writer and reader of the English language.
"," ""The argument has commenced... 
Slavery will every where be abolished, or every where be re-instituted""  In the 18th and 19th century the United States of America were politically divided into two parts, the North and the South. 
This division also drew the line between slave holders in the South and non-slave holders in the North. 
The first Negroes came to America in 1619, and slavery was abolished 250 years later. 
During this time the opinions differed whether slavery was to continue or to be abolished. 
Arguments for the keeping of slavery were both economical and moral. 
Abolitionists argued against the barbaric and inhuman way of treating other human beings.  
One of the strongest argument for the abolition of slavery was that the slaves were being seen as things. 
They had become someone's piece of property, and no human being, no matter what color he was, could ever be owned by another person. 
Slaves were looked upon as beasts, ""Nothing has been left undone to cripple their intellects, darken their minds, debase their moral nature, obliterate all traces of their relationship to mankind..."" 
(Garrison p. 
3). 
Slaves were being treated in a very cruel way. 
Whipping, mutilation and branding were nothing unusual for the slaves. 
It was not only physically that the slaves suffered. 
They did not have any legal rights at all. 
A white person could treat the slaves how he wanted to without getting arrested for it. 
It did not matter how brutal he acted towards the slave. 
There were no legal protection for the slaves, since a black witness was useless, his words did not count. 
A law was also established that stated that children of slave women should live under the same conditions as their mothers, thus they would be slaves. 
This increased the numbers of rapes on slave women. 
The masters often had black mistresses who he used to pleasure himself with. 
And because of the law he could keep on doing that without having to think about the problem of a possible child. 
As a result of the masters lust and search for satisfaction, a new group of people were growing up. 
Children with white fathers and black mothers. 
One of the arguments for slavery was that in the Bible ""God cursed Ham, and therefore American slavery is right"" (Douglass, p.8). 
But abolitionists then said that these mix-blood children should not have had to be slaves, since they were not descendants only from Ham, but also from a white ancestor. 
Slavery was very cruel to the children in the slave society. 
They grew up without a true identity. 
Most of them did not know how old they were or who their parents were. 
Children were separated from their mothers at an early age and often they never saw her again. 
This was done to prevent the child from bonding with his mother.  
The slave holders in the South had several arguments for the keeping of slavery. 
Negroes were considered inferior the white race. 
The whites were more intellectual and the Negroes would never stand a chance in society. 
They would not have any friends, and with no one to help them they would gradually be exterminated. 
Slave holders compared Negroes to children. 
They are not able to manage on their own. 
They can not read and understand laws and must constantly be controlled by and adult. 
The master would have the same role as a father, he would be the slaves guardian. 
Defenders of slavery said that slavery exists everywhere. 
They meant that soldiers were slaves and that they were treated worse than the Negro slaves. 
In every homes there were slaves, ""Wives and apprentices are slaves; not in theory only, but often in fact. 
Children are slaves to their parents, guardians and teachers. 
Imprisoned culprits are slaves. 
Lunatics and idiots are slaves also. 
Three-fourths of free society are slaves..."" 
(Fitzhugh p. 
10). 
They also said that Negroes are lazy people who do not think about and prepare for their future. 
Negroes were seen as a wild people who needed to be saved and tamed. 
They said that as early as in ancient Egypt there were slaves, and during all the time that had passed since then, Negroes had had time to adjust to society and become civilized, but they had not. 
So the slave holders saw themselves as doing a favor to the slaves. 
They defended themselves by saying that they were rescuing the Negroes from becoming either savages or cannibals or eaten up by them, as they would be if they stayed in Africa or in the West Indies. 
So the Southerners would take them in and christianize and civilize them.  
Slavery was also a financial question. 
The South was an agricultural part with large plantations. 
Cotton was the biggest industry and that needed a lot of laborers, and preferably workers who were cheap, and that was just what the slaves were. 
The Southerners argued that they needed the slaves for the industry. 
With the work from the slaves, the manufacturers could get more cotton and earn more money. 
They meant that the whole country would suffer economically if slavery would be abolished.   
Abolitionists kept arguing about human rights and the inhuman way of treating the slaves. 
They criticized the slave holders for their barbaric way of punishing Negroes who disobeyed or just for the pleasure of it. 
Defenders of the slavery maintained that the Negro race was an inferior one who could not live on their own in society. 
They needed to be under control of a supervisor. 
Slaves were also good for the economy. 
They helped the South grow into a powerful cotton manufacturer and slave holders meant that the whole country, if not the whole world depended on that industry.  
The debate went on until slavery was abolished in America after the Civil War in 1865.
",True
"I always thought of myself as a quick learner when it came to English in school. 
Because of the fact that I almost never had to study very hard and still got a high grade I never cared about grammar and such, I just felt what was the right thing to say or write. 
This was of course very stupid but at the time I did not realize the importance of knowing why you say or write the thing you do. 
But now I know I wont get very far without studying the language properly. 	 
It was six years ago I last studied English and now allready after one week at the university I have realized how hard it is going to be. 
My English really needs to be freshened up and improved in every aspect. 
But this is something I look forward to, and in spite of the hard work I hope I will make it. 	 
The first contact I ever made with the English language was thru listening. 
And during my break in studying english listening has been the major channel for my contact with the language. 
And maybe thats why I feel that this is something that I dont have such a big problem with. 
That is of course as long as I am not listening to two scientists speaking to eachother. 
One thing that I feel difficulty with is that I can not grasp the words I do not understand and look them up afterwords. 	 
When it comes to reading there is one thing that bothers me and that is that I feel I read fluently but in a fake way because I skip the words I do not understand as long as I get the message. 
I do want to look up all the words I do not understand but then it would take me ages to get thru a book. 
Some words that I do recognize, I read more than once and often after two or three times I remember what they mean. 
Since I left school I have not read very much in english, maybe five or six novels. 
And I have not read anything out loud so that I really need to practise. 	 
I find it more difficult to read out loud than to speak because when I read I have to deal with words that I might not recognize and when I speak I choose words I know. 
And I do that because I feel insecure when I have to speak. 
I feel that I tend to use a very simple language even though I know that I often can do better if I just let myself take the time to think. 
It is not unusual for me to skip saying what I intended to say just because I feel stressed about finding the words. 
Speaking is my second least used skill after writing and something I hope to develop here in Uppsala. 
I do have a brother-in-law who is Ameican who I could practise my English on, but the ""sad"" thing is that he knows swedish. 
And it is not hard to guess in what language our conversations are in. 	 
Writing is what I feel I have most problems with, this is the first time I have written something in English since I left school and it has not been easy to put this essay together. 
Grammar is a whole different language of its own to me and I do have to put in some effort if I want to make this course. 
It is hard to separate the spoken language from the written and I find that things can look so strange on paper even though it is correctly written. 
When I write in swedish the range of my vocabulary is so much wider than my English and therefore it is so much harder to express what you want to in English, which is natural since I am a swede. 
But what I mean is that it is not just the grammar that makes it hard for me but also finding the right words which is so important when you write if you want the reciever to get the correct message.
"," Countenance of School Fee Vindicable?  
Folk Development Colleges, FDC: s, were launched in Tanzania, East Africa, in 1965 and as well one of the constituent parts of a successful national literacyteaching movement. 
The fundamental idea behind these about 75 colleges was to improve standard of living in the rural areas by educating its population.   
The education provided at the colleges was designed for adults and free of charge which made it possible for the common man or woman to attend courses despite scarce means. 
Not only subjects as reading, writing, math, English and other traditional were taught, but also useful knowledge as simple constructions of houses, needlework, and cattle keeping.  
In the 1990's the Ministry of Education in Tanzania withdrew all endowments to the FDC: s. 
The government decided to provide capital only for salaries and wages for teachers and staff at FDC: s. 
To be able to continue running courses, inauguration of school fee was required at each college. 
The school fee of 25 000 Tanzanian Shilling, is equivalent to 250 Swedish Crowns. 
To a Swede this is a rather small amount of money whereas it is actually more than three months salaries of a petty farmer in this destitute country.   
The issue in need to be discussed is: should the introduction of school fee at FDC: s in Tanzania be countenanced?  
The main argument against the school fee is that it prevents people from attending courses that actually were created for them. 
The illiterate population thatnreally is in need of education consists of indigent people with no means, in other words they are not able to pay the amount of money required for the education. 
Therefore the school fee erase the last possible chance for these people to get what they really need most of all: education.  y personal stand is that the introduction of school fee has in deed made it impossible for many people to study, but more important, it has in fact resulted in benefits for the target group mentioned above. 
Even though that was not the intention of the government, the quality of the education at FDC: s has actually improved. 
As a result of paying school fee, participants in the courses are today in a position to insist upon quality in their education, which was entirely unthinkable prior to the capital-withdrawal.   
The fact of the matter is that participants today are also having a much broader education than their precursors. 
School fee has indirectly created a stiff competition between the FDC: s that have managed to uphold their activities, and ingenuity is now necessary at the local education authorities. 
Courses need to be attractive and out of the ordinary in order to entice people to attend.   
An other argument in favour for the school fee is that it has actually encouraged the participants to demand more of their studies than solely traditional subjects like math, English and social studies. 
Current time more liberal and modern subjects are wanted such as politics, mechanics, electricity and nutrition.   
By requiring school fee, FDC: s in Tanzania have managed to obtain a certain cachet. 
They are now comparable to any other pedagogic institute and that appeals to both potential participants and teachers. 
Former students at FDC: s are proud of the kind of education they have managed to get and their community also regards them as successful citizens.   
I am entirely convinced that the introduction of school fee at FDC: s in Tanzania should be countenanced, as no argument is strong enough to overturn the actual benefits of the new income system. 
The education provided at the FDC: s today has improved in quality and variety as a result of participants gaining more influence on the courses. 
The achievement of co-determination is intimately related to the required school fee at the FDC: s and as well a consequence to the government decision to withdraw all endowments.
",False
" Ben a child that trough his existents destroyed a familiy relationships, and happiness!  
Introduction In the book ""The Fifth Child"" (1988) the author Doris Lessing describe an unusually family in the 60s and 70s. 
A family their the parents Harriet and David gived their lives to create a happy family surrounded by relatives and friends. 
They bought a big house as their geographic centre, and they got some children, and everything moved in a great way for them until their fifth child was on his way and interrupted their existence. 
It is an interesting story, with a very sad topic, ""The Fifth Child"" - as a poison on the family life, how fought for happiness.
The author struggle with ethical problems concerning the life in this book. 
The mothers love and responsibility towards her family her own childs and relatives and friends and the society, is one of the main aspects of this book.   
Harriet and David find each other at an office party and both knew that this was what they had been waiting for. 
Both of them was ordinary and both had unfashionable qualities. 
Harriet moved to David and they soon planed for their common future: many children, and a big house open for all friends, and looking for happiness was some of the goal they devoted themselves to achieve. 
They went for it, and in the beginning everything moved in a great way. 
During the time when the sun was shining over them and they were a happy family, with many friends often gathered together in their big house, especially during festivals and in a air of festivity. 
Thought of something that would deviate their future were far away. 
They should have their eight children, and continually to be a happy family, as it written in page 28 ""The Lovatts were a happy family. 
It was what they had chosen and what they deserved.""  	 
With Ben the family's fifth child their problems started expressed by Harriet the ""Fifth Child's"" mother how muttering for herself already when the child was in her stomach, ""...this new foetus was poisoning her:"" (page 41). 
It soon stood perfectly clear that Ben only through his existents would destroy the family relationships, as well as to others. 
A questing raised in the book are who is Ben? 
An unexpected abnormal child that not developed in a normal way, a very strong child with an enormous irrepressible energy, a child that in early years killed both the family's cat and dog. 
A child that was that abnormal that her mother Harriet after the child's birth in the hospital thought ""I wonder what the mother would look like, the one who would welcome this - alien."" (page 58).  	 
The family situation with Ben moved towards chaos. 
Harriet's time was totally occupied by Ben and her other children suffered. 
Ben demanded a lot of time, and he also effected all the family's relationship in a very bad way. 
To save the family situation it was necessary to find a solution to their problemchild, Ben. 
After all Ben was the problem and to put him away from the family, to an institute most of the family members find to be the best solution. 
That Ben soon should die in the institute was the unspoken meaning of it. 
David as well as their relatives argued with Harriet and finally they get her permission to put Ben in an institute.  ...
When Ben was put aside the family life moved in a good direction and they felt is as a heavy burden had been taken away. 
The children played, and was happy again, and David's heart was more trended. 
Harriet also relaxed in her new freedom, but she could not leave Ben in her mind. 
She could not feel any normal feelings towards Ben ""it was quilt and horror that kept her awake through the nights."" (page 94). 
She had devoted herself to create a happy family and now she choosed to save Ben knowing that it would destroy the expected good future for the family. 
She choosed to bring Ben back home towards her family and relatives will, why? 
Was it the ethical norms in the society? 
Her quilt? 
Nobody knows, and the book don't give a clear answer to that questing, but it deals with such problem. 	 
Back home Ben finally find his identity among the outsiders in the society the other children, except for Paul who become mental ill, moved away from the family. 
David and Harriet had each other, and in page 150 David expressed, ""We have no children, Harriet. 
Or rather, I have no children. 
You have one child."" 
Summary Harriet and David who devoted themselves to create a happy family rich their goal in the beginning. 
But with Ben their ""fifth Child"" the family moved toward chaos so they put him in an institute. 
Harriet the child's mother choosed towards all to help Ben, bring him back home again, at the expense of the family and their future plans.
"," Parents responsibility towards their children are not solved by buying a v-chip.  
Introduction The tube market is growing a lot, and many kids watch the TV each day, and they are of course influenced by it. 
The suggested v-chip (for antiviolence chip) should allow the parents to choose a level of ""act of violence"" that them allow their children to watch at, and it's good. 
But the parents responsibility towards their children are not solved by v-chips, or through money, and burgers, the kids are worth much more than that. 
They may also have other needs such as more of their parents time, and love. 
As a matter of fact most of the children in the western world are watching the tube many hours each day, and of course they are influenced by what they see, ""seeing is believing"". 
And it's a problem. 
The tube market growing as well as their offer. 
And to handle the ""act of violence"" shown on tubes, in a more responsibility way towards the children, would the v-chip solution be good as a starting point. 
Never the less the violence is presented in many ways, and to lock out programs that glorify the violence it's great, but to not admit programs that shows the reality in the society through documentary movies and so on would be bad.  	 
The fact that most of the children in the western world watch the tube many ours each day may have some other reason than that the TV programs are so good. 
It would raise the questing to the adults, why are the children watch the TV so much? 
Do the children suffer in self-esteem, and love, do they yearning after a home who have time for them? 
And if the children suffer in this areas, what answer do then the tube give to their needs? 
It's hard to answer those questing, but we should be aware of it, and think about it. 
To lock out some violence shown on TV through a v-chip for 5 to 30 dollar don't solve the situation, but it can be a toll to it. 	 
The ordinary family structure in the society is destroyed, more than half of the children live their lives without both of their parents. 
The situation is as it is, but it is possible for the society to give more financially help to this families, so they are able to spend more time together. 
It is of course harder to raise a child/ren alone financially, and also compared with a situation their both the mother and father can help each other in bringing up the child/ren.  	 
Many parents go for their career, which make the children sit in between. 
Money for food (Mac Donald's), and cinema tickets... to their children, its a bad substitute for more of their love, and more of their time. 
The parents have a responsibility towards their children, a responsibility to give them of their time, and love. 
Her in Sweden we have the possibility to take maternity- or paternity -leave. 
If we used that opportunity in a better way it also would be a help for many children in many families. 	 
The discussed problem is very big, and it's not possible to mention some tolls that would solve the children's different problems. 
One importune thing is to be aware of the problem, and to think about. 
A higher awareness of the problem in the society, could create a wave that take the problem in a more serious way, and tried to solve it.  
Conclusion The ""act of violence"" shown on the tube, and watch by kids, are a problem. 
The v-chip (for antiviolence chip), could be a start to the solution of that problem. 
Others tolls to solve the problem could be, financially help from the society to the single parents so this families would be able to spend more time together, as well as a better use of the maternity- or paternity -leave her in Sweden would help many children. 
The Parents have many responsibilities towards their child/ren, and some of this are to give them of their time, and love.
",True
" Violence on Television Should be Banned Before Ten O'clock p.m.  
""The idea to get people to stop watching television for one month"" as Neil Postman writes in Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) is from my point a good suggestion as I am not a devoted watcher. 
Since television is very important to many people I assume the suggestion is very hard to carry out. 
But perhaps we shall confine the broadcast instead considering that there is too much violence shown on television. 
My idea is that every television program, which contains violence, should be banned before ten o'clock p.m. 
It can be any program from films, thrillers and sports to news. 	
Especially news should be banned with all its terrible pictures from disturbances all around the world. 
It is not sensible to mix programs that consist of violence with animated cartoons for children. 
Even though it is necessary to be aware of what is happening in the world around us, I would prefer that the pictures they show will be introduced in another way. 
All these close-ups of people, who are bleeding, maimed for life by landmines, bullets from guns or terrorist attacks make me unpleasantly affected. 
Usually I shut my eyes to be excused from these terrible sights. 
Therefore I imply the children ought not to be served this kind of violence when adults cannot endure to see it. 
Thus who is interested in seeing news can turn on the television after ten o'clock instead. 
There are also other television programs containing violence, which are on the verge to be approved of my broadcast limit. 	
The programs I allude to are among others the sport programmes, which show ice hockey. 
The purpose I believe is to show an exciting game with splendid skating and thrilling drawings that end up in beautiful goals. 
Unfortunately the players in the heat of the battle lose their self-control and instead use their sticks as weapons. 
They use them to hit an opponent in the head or slashing the legs. 
Sometimes they also throw their gloves and start to fight like genuine boxers. 
This is disgusting to watch and has nothing to do with the game at all. 
Last time I saw a match at television the reporter had the same opinion as I have. 
He said when the players behaved like barbarians "" all children can go to bed now"". 
He was of the opinion that it is not useful to them to see something that shows such awful behaviour. 
The battle I refer to ended up with one player nasty wound and he had to visit the hospital with a broken leg. 
My thought was that ice hockey players and other sportsmen were supposed to be patterns for the youth not the opposite. 
Thus I have to move this broadcast till after ten o'clock as well.  	
Further examples are the action films or thrillers. 
Perhaps the hockey players have learned to fight by watching them. 
However I could except violence in films if it was fairly and justified but the violence in films of today is so ruthless. 
First, they use such pictures as they show on news, like these of maimed heavily injured people, the bloodier, the better. 
Second, they use abominable weapons as axes, machetes or high-class guns with aims of laser. 
That kind that it is impossible to escape from. 
Finally, in fights they do not stop although a person lies on the ground, they just keep on hitting till he or she is dead. 
To show films like this is inconceivable to me and I think it would be better if law prohibited them. 
I cannot see the use of watching them for anyone. 
If it is impossible to ban these films let them be shown between two and five in the nights.  	
To summarize we can state that there will be many late nights for people interested in violence. 
But it is up to them and I imply it is legitimate to direct violent programmes till a later hour. 
As a result it will give more space for programs which address to a larger audience. 
Such programs which exhibit entertainment, beauty and knowledge and also encourage people to watch together.
"," The Society Gives Possibilities to Elderly People.  
To be old and need special help is a common problem. 
Many consider that it's the relatives' responsibility to take care of the elderly, but the elderly have the right to experience a meaningful life of their own. 
Quality of life is to be with friends, take part in activities and have possibilities to improve the physical condition. 
In comparison with a living by the family the elderly will get all this and also be carefully looked after by educated staff. 	
Elderly people living in a block of service flats supplied by the local society have much more possibilities to develop than those who live at their family's house do. 
In the service flats they have always staff around who can help, encourage and stimulate them. 
Further they have a nurse and a doctor at hand and special aid for rehabilitation. 
If something would happen when they are alone, perhaps they have fallen or need help for the lavatory they just use the alarm system. 
To feel safe and secure is important for them when they have to trust other people for living. 
Other advantages in this kind of living are the possibility to take part in a lot of different activities. 
It can be a therapist who is reading aloud from newspapers or books or a local musician who entertain them. 
There are also several physical activities like the possibility to weave, to use the joiner's workshop, to take part in gymnastics or to do some assistance in the institutional kitchen. 
In a private home without all these kinds of resources it can be difficult to revitalize them and instead they will be sitting in an armchair or a rocking chair all the day long, perhaps they don't even eat.  	
Even though the heavy expenses for care of old people are a big part in the budget of the Society nowadays, is it cheaper to let up buildings and staff for this kind of living than put all the responsibility on the family or other relatives. 
To take care of people who are too old to look after themselves and need special help cost a lot of energy and time. 
Thus it influence the family's own working hours, leisure and health. 
The result can be less employed people who are paying taxes and more people being on the sick list because of overwork. 
Besides families with less salary can be forced to apply for social allowance, which means that the Society have to pay in any case and the final costs might be even bigger.  	
The benefits for families with relatives looked after by the state, are to begin with, their opportunities to plan their relations with the elderly. 
They will be allowed to do what they want without having a bad conscience all the time. 
Instead they can do visits when it's convenient and spend pleasant time together. 
Furthermore, it's liberating for them to get away from asking other people of assistance now and then when problem comes up and they need help to look after the elderly. 
It's trying to be bound night and day without getting a chance to relax. 
Finally it gives the family time to establish a social life together with friends, which is one of the necessities to reach quality of life. 	
One disadvantage with elderly people living in a social institution is that a generation gap will arise. 
Young people will not be accustomed with old people and perhaps distance themselves from natural contacts. 
In fact there are children who have never met an old person living in such an institution. 
Another disadvantage can be the risk for the elderly to be institutionalized, for example to be depending on the daily run of things and refuse to do something else like a walk or a trip, because of the fear to miss the dinner or something like that.  	
Despite of disadvantages this kind of living is mostly the best for the elderly. 
In most of the institutions nowadays the lodgers use their own furniture because it is important for them to have well-known things around like the favourite chair or a home-made rug besides all photographs of children and grandchildren. 
It's also important for them to keep their integrity, to have a life of their own without ending up in the position as a child to their own child. 
To be a lifelong parent is a right.
",True
"The task for this week is to write down some words about my experience of the English language. 
When I had the first contact with it, for how long I've studied English, how I feel about it and so on. 
There is, of course, no literature to account for so Ill just get down to business. y first memory of a language not familiar to me is, quite naturally, English. 
I can almost see myself sitting in front of the TV, watching The Muppet Show. 
Amazed and thrilled by the dolls but also with the strange language they used. 
My father read the white text with the black background (subtitles) just below Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo and all the rest. 
I quite early understood that the text was somehow connected with the language the Muppets used but I could not really figure out how. 
I learned how to read rather quickly, because of my curiosity of what they were saying in that strange language on the TV. 
My father was relieved at not having to spend the whole Saturday night reading out loud and I was happy of understanding all by my self. 
When my best friends parents were away, I read for my friend instead. 
(Sometimes a little modified. 
Children are evil) Then the school started and we met the English language in 3rd grade for the first time. 
I don't really remember much of this first contact. 
I guess it was just like any other subject - an obstacle between the footballmatches during the breaks. 
When I bought myself a computer in the middle -80s I understood for the first time how important and global it was. 
Since I watched a lot of movies and TV-program plus studying in school it was no problem understanding the English used by the computer programs. 
I spent uncountable hours playing various games, which gave me a good sense, of how the English was presented in written form and it also gave me a quite large passive vocabulary. 
(I said I spent uncountable hours playing games. 
That is not true. 
I still do it and enjoy every minute.) 
There is something else that has taught me a lot of English and that is role-playing games. 
There was a time when we played several times per week, fascinated with rules, statistics, descriptions and battles. 
Everything written in English. 
I still can't understand how we could memorize a rulebook, which consisted of hundreds of rules and diagrams in a matter of days. 
And that is exactly what we did. 
We memorized the rules. 
I believe that I still can reproduce almost everything written down in the sourcebook of our favourite games. 
In these last years other interests have replaced the role-playing part, which has nothing to do with English but there has sprung up a new source of English training. 
The Internet. 
Almost every site is written in English, even the Swedish ones, which gives you a great opportunity to learn more in a fun way.  
I enjoy reading and studying English quite a lot compared to other subjects. 
And I know it is because I feel the necessity of being good at it, which I don't feel when learning about mathematics, physics and so on. 
I need to be really motivated to learn, maybe I'm even more dependent on motivation than most others. 
But sometimes even English becomes boring. 
Once my English teacher in upper secondary school told me and my deskmate that we were the laziest students she'd ever had. 
The following week our German teacher said almost the exact same words... 
But amazingly enough we were the only two who got the highest note. 
In English that is. 
Let's not speak about the German language. y real weakness in English is, like most people I guess, the theoretical grammar. 
I'm really bad at remembering different word classes and clause types. 
Unfortunately I can't keep them apart Swedish either so that makes it even more difficult. 
This affects my writing in a significant way, because the demand of completely correct written English is greater by far than the verbal presentation.  
If I had any real strong sides I would say my spelling. 
(Which is probably the only strong side in my whole academical knowledge.) 
I guess I'm quite good at reading and understanding texts too, due to my long history of playing English games, both on the computer and the role-playing games as I mentioned before. 
But I have not got any real experience with my English except some week long holidays at the Mediterranean but I know that I will, after a short time be able to speak and understand an almost completely correct English both grammatical and in pronunciation.
"," Rambo as babysitter?  
In the last couple of years more and more parents are concerned with the huge amount of violence broadcast on television. 
Your children are able to watch Rambo, Lethal Weapon, Pulp fiction and other movies with a high rate of violence in daytime. 
Is this dangerous for the kids? 
Are we releasing an army of unstable, possible massmurderers when these children leave the TV? 
I don't think so. 
I don't even believe these movies are as dangerous as some people claim. 
The responsibility lies with the parents themselves, not the movies.  
There has not been a single day without someone mentioning the horrible scenes shown on the newest movie or the violence shown on the news. 
Parents went for example to South Park - The Movie and were in complete uproar of the foul language and the amount of violence. 
The movie was rated far more dangerous to children than Pulp fiction, the former ""leader"" of the list.  
This has caused me some thinking. 
My conclusion is that you can't judge a movie by the amount of killings or of the amount of curses shown on the screen. 
Most violence in the most criticized movies are so absurd and unreal that not even children can fail to understand their fictional nature. 
It is the less violent but more realistic movies and shows that are more dangerous. 
I'm quite certain that someone beating his wife in soap operas is more dangerous to a childs mind, because the child can recognize himself much easier in that situation, than Rambo defeating an army in Afghanistan, killing thousands of soldiers by himself. 
But I must admit that many movies might have some bad impact on children, but those movies are overrepresented in the Art of fighting-genre, for example American Ninja, Kickboxer with others. 
The children watch the movie and may afterwards try the different kicks and punches at each other. 
But I don't think that even this is as bad as many parents believe. 
And if I may come back to South Park it was, by the critics, considered to be the most dangerous movie ever produced. 
It is completely ridiculous even comparing the movie to Pulp fiction, which really is a quite horrible picture. 
I don't believe there is a single child who can't separate the comedy in South Park from the cruel and bloody scenes of Pulp fiction.  
But no matter how much censorship and restriction there is on television the problems will not disappear. 
And why is that, you might ask? 
Because the problems is not caused by television in the first place. 
I believe parents who blame television for ruining their kids are irresponsible. 
If a child is loved and given time by its parents there will be no problem no matter how many violent movies the child watch. 
If the child watch some ninja-movie it will know what is wrong and what is right with the proper support from its parents. 
It still might try the fancy moves shown on the screen, but there will not be anything more than just trying.  
The reason why the criticm has increased during the last couple of years is that parents often work more and spend less time with their children. 
They leave the child at the daycare center, pick it up after work and put it in front of the TV while making dinner. 
Parents lose more and more contact to their child but don't really see the problem. 
For example movies, paintball, role-playing games and other activities are attacked by angry parents, claiming that the activity is dangerous for their child without knowing anything about the activity itself. 
But they really just search for something to blame for their own ignorance.
",True
" Causal analysis  Student applications to Uppsala University are declining. 
During the last years, according to the admission unit in Uppsala, the number of applications to Uppsala University has decreased, rapidly and steadily. 
In Uppsala Nya Tidning 8/2-2001, Julia Linderlof writes that applications for separate courses have decreased with 14 % compared to last spring semester. 
There are different causes for this decline and some of them I will discuss.  
One reason for this trend is the outrageous housing shortage in Uppsala. 
When student's lodgings are far from sufficient for the actual number of students in need of a roof over their heads and prices for small apartments (actually all housing) still are increasing steadily, there are very small chances for students to see Uppsala as a study alternative, and therefore seek other cities to live in with more beneficial room accommodations. 
What Harald Nordlund, member of the Swedish Riksdag, writes in the article in UNT 24/1 2001 gives a clear example of the student's lodging situation, when he says that student's lodging are extremely expensive to build and hold in trust. 
He continues to say that the quick turnovers in tenants render in a great wear and therefore they are less attractive to build especially when the public house building is strongly neglected. 
The Uppsala University homepage also emphasise the impossibility to make Uppsala a place of residence when students are exhorted to look for living arrangement on the open market, which the Swedish quotation below issues.  
The prices on the housing market, are according to Jonas Edlunds article in UNT 26/1 2001, not in the nearest future going to fall. 
Students with student lone as an only income must look for inexpensive and convenient housing. 
Another reason why students prefer other universities is that there is a greater variety of educations available around the country in newly established universities. 
Some of the new smaller universities have been very successful in creating a distinctive image for themselves, such as the IT-university in Kista. 
These universities entice students to attend that specific university with arguments such as better student's lodging, students being able to live closer to home, being able to live longer at their parents home (witch is cheaper). 
They also intend to satisfy the labour market with its harshening demand for qualified employees. 
That is for example what the university in Kista has the intention of achieving. 
The IT-University / KTH-Kista was established on July, 1st 1999 by the Royal institute of Technology (Kungliga Tekniska Hogskolan) in order to meet the increasing requirements for education and research in the information technology area. (www.it-universitetet.kth.) 
The smaller universities trough out the country make offers that bigger and more well reputed universities cannot do. 
The real estate company AB guarantees accepted students at the university in rebro housing within a month. (www.oru.se) The last but not the least cause for my trend is that going to university today is mostly for people coming directly from the upper secondary school, and not for those who have experienced and attended life outside the corridors of traditional education centres. 
With interests such as starting a family, the economical situation must be upheld by a second part, when prices are rising constantly and student lone does not follow accordingly. 
When turning 29 the accommodation allowance, if entitled, are being withdrawn. 
Family economy can be ruined and therefore students in those situations must heavily consider their options. 
In some cases, it results in students being deprived of the privilege of attending university classes. 
The problems older students are being faced with, the article in UNT 5/1 2001 written by Kathrin österlund chairman of SFS and Sara Staves vice chairman SFS elucidates more widely.  
All these arguments speak for the decline of student applications and the bad circle must be broken. 
The advantages though still hold strongly. 
Uppsala with a very well reputed university, the oldest within the Nordic countries, founded in 1477, the strong and outstanding reputation abroad, the highly advanced research-work and finally the student life summons up the vast majority of advantages Uppsala University has to offer. 
They are undisputable.
"," Summary of Anders Norling's article ""Byt ledning i Uppsala buss!""  
Anders Norling will not pay any more taxes to Uppsala buss (UNT April 2nd). 
There is no wonder the company hasn't got any money because of the bad investments it has done. 
Those are for instance biogas busses, new technology and house building. 
He demands the resignation of the general manager of Uppsala buss; the faults must be paid for.  
In combination with faults and bad investments he addresses the nonexistent service Uppsala buss provides, for instance few tours, late busses and expensive bus fees. 
He also accuses Uppsala buss of having earned the reputation of being ""a customer hostile company"".  r Norling raises scepticism towards the company policy concerning lines facing close down and lines still kept in business. 
Same arguments are used, to few customers, for both issues.  
Uppsala buss, a great company!   
Anders Norling is totally on the wrong track when he discredits Uppsala buss. 
I commend the initiative of new technology and biogas busses taken by the management. 
To be able to purify the ancient combustion engine there must be some one who is willing to risk the reputation of being a too expensive alternative. 
How much is our mutual environment able to cope with?   
2300 oil discharges have been detected since 1995, which none of the accidents have lead to a conviction. 
(Uppdrag granskning, April 2nd) The inhabitants of the Danish east coast and the Swedish south coast will agree with me when I say that oil tanks must be stopped and alternative fuels must come out on the open market. 
The bold venture Uppsala buss has made cannot be seen other than a honourable attempt to lead our polluted society to a cleaner environment.  
To be leading in a vastly neglected area as the environment is bound to cost money and Uppsala buss has taken great steps towards being a leading company in that area. 
The noise and the exhaust have decreased after putting the biogas busses in use (www.uppsalabus.se) and that is inexorably a service improvement.  
Good service is also provided when you start looking at the bus connections, frequency and time aspects. 
A great number of tours (e.g. numbers 5, 6, 7 and 8) start around 5.30 pm and the latest bus is leaving its destination at 19.30 am (weekdays). 
Those four busses alone drive through a couple of Uppsala's biggest and most urbanised areas. 
(Stenhagen, Flogsta, City, Vilan, Eriksberg, Norby, Gottsunda, Nyby etc) (www.uppsalabus.se)  When evening comes the so-called ""evening busses"" starts to run. 
They are time connected, which means that when they meet up in the city with the rest of the busses, you do not have to wait for a connecting bus, that bus is already there. 
If you plan to go somewhere on the other side of the city, from where you live, that is a great advantage. 
On a weekday the last of these evening busses leaves its destination about 23.30 am. (www.uppsalabus.se)  Uppsala buss also has tours that are called the morning tours, there are seven of them and they start to run around 4 o'clock. 
(Weekdays).   
All this indicates that the number of tours and the tours spread around the clock (4 pm - 23.30 am weekdays) is quite substantial. 
Uppsala buss has a total of twenty-seven different tours around Uppsala with surroundings during the day, ten evening and night busses and seven in the early morning (www.uppsalabus.se). 
For a city with such a relatively small region, that is fully competitive.  
One of the problems a bus driver faces on a daily basis is that people tend to think that the bus is always late. 
If one thinks back to try to remember how many times one have run to the bus and missed it because the bus driver chooses to follow his time schedule? 
How angry doesn't that make you? 
But on the other hand, how many times have you stood on a bus stop waiting for that late bus to come? 
A numerous times as well, I would say. 
Shall the bus driver pick that late person up who is running towards the bus stop or shall he consider the passengers further ahead on the road that will have to wait another minute? 
Whatever he does, someone is inclined to get irritated. 
It is easy to be negative, but why not try to be positive?  
Uppsala has about 188 478 inhabitants and some of them live in a little smaller places that are located in the outskirts of the city. 
There are also bus passengers that have other needs concerning the busses spread through the city. 
Naturally, when these customer branches are quite small and do not uphold the material for a profitable market, there must be adjustments what cervices the bus company shall provide. 
Some of them get the fullest attention and some of them must be put on hold, or reduce the frequency, until there is a greater customer potential.  
This is the reason why some bus lines still run and some have to be closed down, on the account of the same reasoning, too little customer potential. 
Everyone must consider whether or not putting in tax money for upholding the service all people deserve, is a measurement worth doing.  
List of reference: 1. 
UNT April 2nd Anders Norling 2. www.uppsalabuss.se  3. www.uppsala.se
",True
" Alcohol at eighteen  Today, in Sweden, the law allows people of eighteen to buy alcoholic beverages in restaurants, pubs, clubs and cafés, but not to buy them from state liquor shops (System Bolaget). 
In addition, you are officially not allowed to bring in alcoholic drinks from other countries, including other countries in the EU, where these are normally available for all people over the age of eighteen. 
I find this situation ridiculous and believe that the law should be changed.  	 
My main and most obvious point of argumentation is to do with the hypocrisy surrounding Swedish laws regarding alcohol. 
While you are allowed to drink alcohol in, for example, pubs and restaurants at the age of eighteen you are still not deemed old enough to buy your own alcoholic drink from a shop. 
If the law allows you to buy liquor in one place it is inconsistent not to allow you to do so in another. 
As there is no law preventing eighteen-year-olds from actually drinking these beverages, there should be no other restrictions concerning alcohol.  	 
There is more to your eighteenth birthday than your being allowed in to the local pub. 
You are now seen as an adult. 
This means you must start paying taxes, you are responsible for your own finances and debts, you can get married and take a bank loan to buy yourself a house or flat, you can drive a car or even a truck. 
You are now old enough to face criminal charges as an adult, which means you can be sent to prison. 
You are expected to do your military service and fight for your country in times of war. 
You can get a hunting certificate which entitles you to own a rifle. 
However, you are still not allowed to buy yourself, say, a bottle of wine to go with your meal. 
In my opinion a person entitled to all these things must also be able to take responsibility when it comes to buying alcohol, after all, it takes a lot more responsibility to deal with buying a house than with buying a bottle of wine. 	 
The fact that you are not allowed to buy this bottle of wine yourself by no means stops you from getting hold of it in other ways. 
Although it is illegal to buy alcohol for teenagers there is no shortage of people offering to do so. 
This whole business is turning people into criminals. 
Most parents have at some point offered their son or daughter a glass of wine with their meal. 
Take graduation, for example, a typical situation when drinking Champagne is very much part of a tradition. 
A tradition which, according to Swedish laws, could count as a criminal offence.  	 
Another more serious point is the fact that a lot of young people are so set on getting hold of alcohol that they will drink almost anything they can get their hands on, including home-brewed liquor, also known as moonshine. 
As well as increasing this market the law is encouraging people to bring in more liquor from neighbouring countries, like from Denmark, where it is a lot easier to get hold of. 
Allowing eighteen-year-olds to buy legally prepared spirits from a liquor store would to some extent decrease these trends. 	 
All in all I feel that this law is a bit silly. 
Prohibiting people under the age of twenty from buying alcoholic drinks from shops, but not from restaurants or pubs is definitely showing double standards. 
If being eighteen means that you are an adult and thus old enough to be held responsible for all your deeds, as is in fact expected of an adult, I believe that this responsibility should include the right to buy a bottle of wine, in a shop, for home use. 
In my opinion a change in law might, as well as making the laws consistent, give people a healthier point of view concerning alcohol, thus, hopefully, decreasing the demand for home-brewed liquor.
"," Swedish students and their education  Isn't it wonderful that we in Sweden can go to universities without paying fees? 
But did you know that you only can get loans for six years (240 weeks) of studying? 
What about the loans, how long does it take to pay them back? 
What if you want to become a doctor and you also would like to study English for one year? 
That takes at least six and a half year of studying and you can only get loans for the first six years. 
How will you manage the last twenty weeks on the doctor's education? 
You can't study and work at the same time, not on a tough program like that. 
I thought it was good to have a wide education, so that you have better chances to get a more interesting job. 
I personally like to study and would like to do that for many years. 
I'm going to apply fore veterinary studies next autumn and then I need loans for 220 weeks. 
I also take loans to finance this English course. 
That means that I can't get loans to study, for example, English B this spring. 
I would also like to study a language abroad, but how can I finance that, when I can't take more loans? 
I personally think that it's important that people study on the university. 
It would be good if you could get loans for all the courses and programs that you would like to take. 
But you must, of course, pass your course/program to get loans for another one. 
At the moment the loans are up to 1062 SEK per week and the grants are 557 SEK per week. 
Can you actually live on that? 
Yes, you can, but it's often harder if you live in a bigger and more expensive city like Stockholm for example. 
We often hear people talk about their study loans that they still, many years after graduation, have to amortise. 
How much do you actually pay back? 
I did a simulation, on the internet at CSN's homepage (www.csn.se), to see how big my loan would be if I studied to become a vet. 
If I take the maximum loan (1062 SEK per week), that would, in the end of the education, be loans for 254 880 SEK and that would give me a dept to pay back at 284 041 SEK On this loan you have an interest that changes from year to year and you also have an interest that raises your annual amount with 2 per cent each year. 
This means that you lose money every year that you have never been given; unfortunately this frightens young people to go on and study at the university after upper secondary school. 
One idea is that you would get a salary from the state when you study at the university. 
But what if the students, after graduating, move to another country and work there? 
Then the Swedish state wouldn't get anything back through taxes, and would therefor lose on giving grants to the students. 
A better idea is to give loans and if the students, after graduating, work in Sweden for a couple of year, then they could write off the loan. 
I think that would make more people apply fore higher education. 
It also would make more students stay and work here in Sweden. 
For example many nurses have moved to other countries like Norway, because the salaries are higher there. 
I think that we on this way can get, at least, some of them to stay in Sweden. 
This autumn the number of people searching to higher education got lower. 
As I say; the state must do something to keep young people to search to the universities. 
If they can't raise the grants, then they at least could arrange so that your loan writes off if you work in Sweden for a couple of years. 
If a person would like to study for more then six years they must be able to get loans and grants for that. 
Don't we want more people to be educated? 
Then the state must do something about it, otherwise more and more people will be uneducated!
",False
" English, My English!  	
Being able to speak foreign languages makes it possible for peolpe with different mothertongues to communicate with each other. 
Having a basic knowledge of English has enabled me to work in an Englishspeaking country and to meet new friends from other countries. 	
My first contact with the English language was through music. 
As a child, I was a fan of Michael Jackson's music and I tried to sing along to his songs. 
I did not understand the meaning then, I just tried to copy his singing. 
Later, I started watching an american soap-opera. 
I listened to the words and read the subtitles at the same time, trying to understand which word meant what, and so on. 
I honestly believe this helped my vocabulary a lot. 	
When I was 10 years old, I started studying English at school. 
I thought it was fun, and not too hard. 
The summer before I had been on my first trip to England, so at least I could say a few phrases.  	
In secondary school I did not find English particularly fun, as the teacher was not too inspiring. 
The classed fussed with her, so I did not learn as much as I wanted. 
My mother and I went a few times to London during this period. 
This kept my interest in English up at a decent level.  	
Soon after this, I started liking a British pop-group. 
I bought a lot of British music magazines to read about them and britpop in general. 
Even though I did this for my own pleasure, I noticed that my English improved a lot. 
The English-lessons at upper-secondary school became more challenging as time went by, but I felt that I could keep up with it. 	
After graduation, I went to England to work as an au pair. 
I went to stay with a family living on the outskirts of London. 
I did this partly because I wanted to know the British society, but the main reason was to improve my English. 
The most useful thing was having to speak English to the family all the time. 
I also attended a college-course 5 hours per week. 
It felt really intense in the beginning, before I adjusted. 
After about two weeks I caught myself thinking in English!  	
Before I went to England I did not like speaking English to people I did not know, especially natives speakers. 
I guess I was just scared to make silly mistakes and to pronounce words incorrectly. 
In England I had to get used to this, so I overcame my fears in the end. 
But still I can be a little insecure in the beginning of a conversation. 
I feel though, that most of the time I can express the things I want to say. 
Sometimes I make mistakes, of course, and sometimes it is hard to explain more complicated things. 
It is also hard to discuss when a lot of special terminology is required.   
I would say that I normally understand most of what is said in conversations and on television. 
There are a few words that I do not understand but I most often get the idea of what it is about from the rest of the conversation. 
Some accents are a bit hard to understand, especially if a lot of slang is used. 
I think though, that if I heard the same accent a lot I would get used to it, and soon understand it quite well. 
When it comes to reading and writing, it is in a way easier, because it gives you the time to think. 
When you read you can stop to think about what a word means for a little while. 
I normally understand what texts are about when I read them. 
In complicated texts some details can be hard to understand, so I wish I knew more English words. 
Writing has the advantage that I can choose which words I want to use. 
I do not find spelling too difficult, and I think that, at this level, some grammar come natural for me. 
I would like to improve this though, because I often make mistakes anyway. 
I think that my English is alright now (for a Swede), and maybe I would manage with my skills. 
But since I really like the English language, I certainly would like to improve my skills in all these fields!
"," No one knows the cruelty-Women and Children of the Industrial Revolution  Women and children were popular working force in the industrialization period in Britain. 
They got lower wages, and they were manageable. 
Men risked having to be unemployed, because many employers preferred hiring young men instead, since it was so much cheaper. 
Women and children were also popular because they were small, so they could do some jobs that men could not do. 
The working conditions were horrible. 
In this assignment I am going to write about how working conditions were and how they changed because of new laws and changes in society. 	
Children often started working when they were about five or six years old. 
They worked for many hours. 
Children working in factories were sometimes required to start working before the others working in the industry, and to clean up after the men had stopped working. 
This meant that they worked a couple of hours more a day than grown men, who worked for twelve hours a day, six days a week. 
These children were so tired after a week of work, that they hardly could do anything on their day off, which was Sunday. 
The conditions in the factories were so bad that many children risked suffering from diseases such as lung cancer. 
Some children worked as human chimneysweepers, that is they had to climb the chimneys, and they did not seldom die while working. 
Either they were burned to death, or the smoke suffocated them. 
Accidents in factories were common, and some of them were fatal. 
This often happened because children had become seriously injured by machines. 
Children and women also worked in mines, where they were useful because they could enter very narrow passages, which men could not. 
This was very dangerous, because safety was not good at all.  	
The authorities tried to regulate working hours and ages of children working. 
Between 1819 and 1833 several acts sought to improve working conditions for children. 
None of them were successful, though. 
Finally, the employment in textile mills of children under nine years of age and children under thirteen working more than forty-eight hours a week became prohibited by the 1833 factory act. 
This act also said that children should go to school two hours a day. 
This was often hard because the children were so tired after a day's work. 
After terrible working conditions were exposed, children under ten years of age and women were prohibited to work in mines 1842. 
Even so, women and children could be seen working in mines and other unpleasant places several years later. 
In 1947, Parliament passed the Ten Hours Act. 
The act only was only supposed to shorten the working hours for women and children, but since their work was essential to factory production, the act shortened the working day for everyone in the factories. 	
Both women and children often worked in so-called sweatshop, which were work premises that were overcrowded and where the conditions where unsanitary. 
The people who worked there worked long hours and got very low wages. 
This was cheap for the employers, so they could sell goods to low prices, which lead to big profits for the employers. 
The authorities tried to put an end to sweatshops for a long time, but it was really hard, since there always seemed to be a way to go around the law. 
By 1901 a factory act absolutely forbade the employment of children under twelve years of age in any factory or workshop. 
But it was not until 1909 when a minimum wage act passed through that the sweatshop disappeared, because then they were not profitable anymore.  
The industrialization changed women's traditional position in the home. 
Before, women had contributed a lot to the household, and their work had contributed to the economy. 
Now when the husbands were away all day working in factories or mines, women's roles changed. 
It was the woman's task to take care of the home, and it was common that the she dealt with the economy. 
Her husband gave her the money he earned, and it was up to her to try to make ends meet. 
If the family not had much money, the woman often gave her husband the food they had, and ate very little herself. 
Even if a family was poor, it was low status for a man to have his wife working, and very few married women worked if their husbands were healthy enough to work. 
An exception to this was women working in textile factories. 
Another common job for the women who worked was domestic service. 
Young girls often worked before they got married. 
These girls still lived with their parents, so even if they gave them most of their money, they still had some money left to spend. 
This meant that young girls often had less money after they got married, which could be hard to adjust to. 	
One thing that improved the situation of working class women was that the child rate declined. 
Some groups of workers had started reducing their family sizes in the 1850s, and some groups started later. 
Many urban poor women had tried to keep the number of children down without great success. 
But by about the turn of the century they learnt how to, and this gave them the chance to increase their role in family decisions.  	
In the end of the nineteenth century it became more common for women to work. 
By 1911 54 per cent of all women over ten were employed. 
Women still got lower wages, though. 
Sometimes women got less then half the money men got. 
Women also started to increase in numbers in certain occupations where they had not been very common before. 
The pattern was clear though; if the share of women increased in a working field, the wages became lower. 
Also, if a job became more of a men's work, the wages rose.   	
So, in the industrialization women and children were exploited. 
They worked hard and they had horrible working conditions. 
They got lower wages than men got. 
Nonetheless, even if the process was long, working conditions improved step by step. 
It was by no means an ideal situation for women and children in the end of the industrialization period, but at least the change had begun. 
Some changes were because of new laws, and some because of changes in society.
",True
" Politics and Education  In the last Swedish election one of the most central issues was the one concerning the condition of the Swedish school system. 
Sweden used to think of itself as having one of the best schools in the world but this can no longer be claimed and one of the reasons for that is that a recent study has confirmed that 20 % of Swedish sixteen-year-olds can not read and write properly. 
This is one of the negative results of a far too permissive school system encouraged by the left-winged party Socialdemokraterna. 
This claims the right-winged Folkpartiet who demands a change and has put forward a reform program containing rigorous changes for the current system in use. 
Individualisation, longer schooldays, extended compulsory school and increasing the status of the teaching profession are some of the points made in their program.  	 
In Sweden there is a nine year compulsory school which is the second shortest of all industrialised countries. 
This combined with the fact that Swedish pupils have fewer classes than the children of any other country in the EU are two of the points Folkpartiet wants to reform. 
And this is understandable when you consider some of the effects this can cause. 
As it is now with a nine-year compulsory school, Swedish children are free to leave the educational system at the age of 15 which many who has had a hard time in school do and they will most likely end up with low paid and unstimulating jobs. 
But who can blame them if they haven't been stimulated so far in school there is no wonder that some of them do not want to continue. 
So if the compulsory time is extended and the quality and quantity is improved, as Folkpartiet suggests, many of these teenagers will get the chance to reach the same level as those who have it easier and thus be motivated to continue in upper secondary school and not drop out. 	 
In order to help children who have more difficulties there should not only be an extension in time spent in school but also more focus on the individual child. 
Folkpartiet means that all children are different and learn at a different pace and this must be taken into consideration when the curriculum is made. 
No one is to be left behind and no one is to be held back. 
This is most important if you again consider the fact that many can not and do not want to continue their education. 
If a child has difficulties and this is not observed it will lose its motivation and the same goes for a child who is prominent in a subject but is not stimulated which will lead to drop-outs, voluntary or involuntary. 	 
The status of teaching as a profession is also an important part in the reform program. 
If there is to be any change at all the first step is to see to that the situation for teachers is improved. 
The low attraction in becoming a teacher in Sweden today has led to a severe lack of teachers. 
People without any teaching experiences are literally handpicked form the streets and given full time positions as teachers. 
This will evidently not help to improve the quality of Swedish schools.  	 
The first thing to do is to increase the low wages that Swedish teachers get today, in no other country in the western world are teachers so poorly paid as in Sweden. 
Considering the long education you must go through to become a teacher, 3 to 5 years, the salary must stand in proportion to it. 
A result of the low status reputation the profession has today has resulted in that the vast majority of teachers are women because men tend to seek better paid jobs with higher status. 
The increase of wages will give teaching a higher status and this will probably attract more men, which is of good both for the children and for the development of teaching as a profession.  	 
A focus on the individual, the extension of the nine-year compulsory school and the improvement of the status are thus some very important points in Folkpartiets reform program. 
So it is equally important to improve the situation for both teachers and children because the comfort of the first is dependent on the comfort of the second and the other way around.
"," Taboo or Not Taboo  The subject of swear words is always a hot issue to discuss and it seems to me that most people have something to say in the matter. 
Shirley E Peckham has written an article on the subject called ""Cleaning up the language"". 
In this article she clearly state her disgust with the language of young teenagers, which she believes contains too many words not suitable for her ears. 
I too feel that some swear words are not the prettiest words and that they are sometimes better left out when speaking or writing. 
What I dislike and oppose myself to is Peckham's attitude towards teenagers and their language and the method she implies is the most suitable for a ""cleaning up"". 	 
To begin with I must say that it seems that Peckham has no understanding of language as a process, she has at least not taken this in consideration in her article. 
Since language is a process and it develops concurrently with society and its conditions, the way we speak is also bound to change. 
New words constantly enter the lexical arena which means that old ones have to retire, some of the new words are widely recognized and are put in our dictionaries and others only stay for a decade or so. 
The impact and meaning of words also change; words that were hard and rude 50 years ago might not be that today. 
Thus can not Peckham expect children of today to speak as she did when she was a child and if they did their friends would probably think of them as a bit different. 
And we can not get away from the fact that some words will always be considered more obscene than others and the fact that some people will use them. 
This leads me to the methods that Peckham suggests are the most effective to use in order to get rid of this horrendous thing called swearing. 	 
In her article Peckham state that when she was young ""specific instructions, firmly expressed, meant exactly what it said, to the letter"". 
She also states that as a child she knew her place and was very steady because ""she was boxed around the ears, well not quite, but the impact was the same"". 
With these two statements, as I interpret them, Peckham therefore implies that since firm instructions today are not firm enough and not obeyed by those who receive them, a beating would have the same impact today as the firm instructions she got. 
This is in my opinion totally wrong for educational purposes. 
Any punishment, physical or verbal, are of no use unless the person to be punished really understands why the thing she/he did was wrong otherwise it will not have the effect a punishment is supposed to have. 
Proper explanations concerning the benefits in not using swear words and the disadvantages in using them combined with acting as a good role model and not use them yourself are the best solutions in order to do your part in this matter. 
Threatening and scaring children into doing what you want them to do will most likely have the opposite effect since children who do not feel secure will not do as you say but as you do and they to will end up bitter and with aggressive attitudes. 
Perhaps this is what happened to Peckham. 	 
In any case I think Peckhams worries are exaggerated and ignorant because her only concern seem to be her own interest in the matter and not the one of the teenagers. 
So if you hear young people swear you do not have to worry, and I will tell you why. 
First of all, just because you use a lot of swear words as a teenager it does not necessarily mean you will use them when you grow up. 
Secondly lots of people, young and old, adapt their language according to what situations they are in, amongst friends a more casual language is used than during a job interview for example. 
But if you are confronted with someone that has a bad language out of the ordinary and you feel that it could become a problem, explain why it can become a problem instead of telling him/her off. 
That will be much more appreciated and you will feel better yourself if you do not let it get to you.
",True
"I started to learn English in the third grade when I was nine years old and I remembered that I enjoyed the subject. 
Now twenty years later, studying on the teachers training college I have a whole term in front of me with intensive English studies. 
I feel inspired and motivated. 
In this essay I will describe my strengths and weaknesses in the four skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing as I think it feels at this point.  
I start with my ability of listening to English. 
I realise that I listen to English every day when I watch television and even if I think I would be able to understand almost everything without the translated text I read it all the time. 
I guess it is just because I am so used of doing that. 
However when I watch the news on CNN without translated text I understand what they are talking about. 
Sometimes though, it can be these more complicated words that I do not know the meaning of. 
That is a bit frustrating so I really would like to extend my vocabulary and I feel determined to do so during these five months. 
When I have been listening to the lectures so far on this course I have had no big problems in following the lecture. 
Naturally there are some words that I am not absolutely sure of, especially in American Social Studies where there are a lot of new terms. 
On the whole, I like listening to English. 
I think it is a beautiful language. 
I prefer listening to British English instead of American English because I think that British English is more melodious.  
Since I started to study at the university in autumn 1996 I have not read that many neither Swedish nor English books. 
I consider myself as a slow reader from a general point of view. 
I am very impatient in the beginning of a book. 
I have to find the book amusing in one way or another at an early stage otherwise I lack in concentration. 
But I guess that is also quite simply a question for me about reading more books. 
As I have written before I want to learn more words especially more complicated and not that common adjectives. 
Therefore it is important for me to look up many words in the dictionary and learn them and as a result of that I hopefully can get a broader impression about the books I am reading and also see the different persons and environments more clearly. 
Undoubtedly I will also find it more entertaining and interesting to read English books. 
One thing though with looking up words it that I loose the nice feeling there is, sitting there in the sofa with a warm blanket over my legs and with a nice cup of tea beside me, when I have to reach for the dictionary all the time.  
I think that reading and writing are strongly connected to one another. 
If you read a lot of English books than as a result your writing will be more natural and correct. 
I must admit that I am feeling quite rusty in writing English but that is going to change in the near future I hope. 
One problem which I have is that I often write the words in wrong order, in a kind of Swedish way. 
Sometimes I think of a sentence in Swedish, but then when I translate it, I get a feeling that it is not quite correct. 
I know that I have to practice translation exercises because I was not successful in that at the test of grammar. 
I also think it is difficult to know where to write that instead of which and prepositions is another difficulty for me.  
Finally speaking which is what I enjoy the most. 
I feel that it is important to feel relaxed when I speak English and take it easy, especially when I speak in front of my friends in the seminars. 
When I have had own lessons in English in schools during our practise I have felt quite confident in my way of speaking. 
But sometimes I feel that I am not sure if I speak grammatically correct therefor it is useful for me to study grammar a lot. 
I think that one of the best ways of learning how to speak good English is to go there and I really look forward to our stay in Canterbury. 
I liked English when I started out nine years old as I wrote in the beginning of this essay and I think it is getting more and more interesting the further I get.
","So, now it''s the time for me to develope my English, and a good start from my point of view, is that I really love the English language both to speak and to write. 
I have noticed that when I listen to and just try to think in English, especially when I haven't done it for a long time, it almost at once feels familiar and (how shall I explain it?
;) funny, I just become happy to hear the language. 
English was one of my favourite subjects when I was in the senior level and that's probably one reason why I chose English as one of the main topic. 
And I really are looking forward to this time when I'm going to study English for about sixty points at the university. 
And as I earlier mentioned, I hope to learn a lot. 
In this essay, I will tell you a part of how I apprehend my strenghts and weaknesses in listening, reading, speaking and writing in the English language.  
To start with listening, I can describe my own opinion of my weakness when I for example listen to a tape, I can find it hard to follow when the speed is too fast. 
But otherwise when I'm listen to someone who just speeks directly to me or at least when it''s ""live"", I find it quite easy to understand. 
I remember when we in senior school and in high school did this hearings and were going to answer at questions afterwards and I found it difficult to remember every little thing, and I think that happened because I had some difficulties to follow, I felt like I needed more time to register what they said. 
But that's something I think is quite easy to learn by listen more in that form.  
Next skill is reading and to be better at it I think practise is what will be nedeed. 
Accordingly practise again. 
I haven''t read as much as I probably would have but now when I have started the first novel in this course, it feels good and I think I follow the content in it. 
By read a lot you learn lot's of new words because when something is unclear to you while reading, at least I have to check the words up, and it's therefore easier to learn. 
But it's the same problem in this skill as in the one before, I can find it difficult to understand while it's under pressure and there's a time limit. 
When you have to be ready in a decided time. 
Though I think this problem could be away by reading more and increase the vocabulary.  
About speaking, I have noticed that I use both the British English and the Ame-rican English in my talk. 
I prefer though the British English, it sounds much more real. 
To speak loud in front of new people, like now in the class when we don't know each other can be a little nervous but the solution might be found in more practise of speaking. 
Another ""project"" I have is to build up my vocabulary because I think I use the same words over and over again. 
It's kind of irritating when you really know what to say, but you can't find the word for it. 
But the positive part about me and my speaking is that I really think it's funny and I feel I develope all the time and that it goes pretty fast too.  
The fourth skill is writing, and maybe this was what I was most ""afraid"" of, comparing to speak and so on. 
But actually I find this funny too, and not as bad as I thought it would be, because when you haven't studied for a long time and not used the subject (for this occasion the English language) it seems to me anyway, be more difficult to write than just to speak. 
I can mention that I really love to write whatever it will be, in Swedish or in English, so therefore I'm very glad that this feels that ok that it really does, working with this assignment.  
This was a little about my strenghts and weaknesses in four skills within the English language, and to give you a short summery of it, it can be something like this. 
First I was telling you about listening in English, what problems I have doing it, and what I apprehend is positive. 
Secondly I brought up reading and what I thought was difficult and the opposite, a little easier, concerning it. 
Thirdly on the scedule were speaking, and the fourth and last, (eventhough not the ""worst in degree in difficulty"") according to me), was writing, in whom I likely the other skills, told you about my strenghts and weaknesses in this exciting, scaring, fascinating, sometimes lower your selfconfidense-feeling, but absolute in the end the greatest language in the world.
",False
" Can we not have the opportunity to choose?  
How would you feel if you had the marvellous opportunity to be home with your child for at a couple of years, and got money from the state. 
I would really love that idea. 
I think that if you can take care of your child at home and give them a solid ground from the beginning of the child's life they are going to be more secure individuals. 
The government always have said that we as parents are responsible for our children and on the other hand they have made rules that says otherwise. 
I want the rules to be changed.  y strong opinion is that I want the parents to be home with their child/children for the first years of their lives. 
I think that the children are going to be more secure in their rolls and in their own persons if they can grow up in a secure environment as the home should be. 
In the first three years the foundation of a child's character is laid. 
Therefore it is of great concern for the children that I want this to happen. 
If you look into the schools in Sweden today you see a lot of anger and a lot of insecurity and if you then look at where they come from the most of the children have been to day-care from a very early age. 
I do not say that there is something wrong with day-care, it is just that the most of the children would have needed their parents more. 
The parents of today are so stressed today that they do not have enough time for their children. 
The children as an effect of that have also been more stressed and that is not good for the future. 
I would like to change this. 
If you can get money from the state to take care of your own child or children, you do not have to feel inadequate and you know that you can afford to be home. 
We have to give the parents the opportunity that they need to take care of their own children. 
The most parents would like to have this opportunity if you ask them, but the Government is not helping us out with this. 
Instead they are making rules that make the parents leave their children at day-care more and more.  
The Government, the Social Democrats have made a rule that it is going to make day-care less expensive for parents. 
That is really a plan that they have wanted for a long time. 
It says in the curriculum of 1994 that the school is going to foster the children, not to bring them up that is the parents responsibility to, give them a solid ground. 
Therefore I wonder, how can we do that if we are working all the time? 
The Social Democrats have always wanted us to work, I think that is because they want to bring up our children to be like they want them to be, to have the control. 
Why do they not give us the choice to decide for ourselves if we want day-care or not. 
It cost the Swedish people a lot of money with day-care. 
A couple of years ago one child cost 100.000 Swedish crowns a year (I think it is much more expensive now) for the community. 
Let us say if you gave the same amount of money or 90000 Swedish crowns a year to the parents that want to be home with their child/children, at the same time the state have made a profit by saving money. 
This way, parents at least have a choice.   
Of course everyone wonders is there not any backsides to this. 
I know that a lot of people can say that the children can be isolated and cannot have normal relations toward other children. 
I can agree that there can be a few of them that can be that but most of them I think not. 
The day-care centres have appointed times when parents with their children can come and play with the others and the parents can meet and talk. 
Then you can prevent that your child is being isolated. 
If you say that there can be parents that want to be home instead of working, maybe there is some but most of the parents think of what is best for their own child.   
As you can see I am very positive toward this idea and I think that you and me as a parent and your child/children can get to know one another better this way. 
It will give the children a solid ground and security in themselves and in their homes. 
I will assure you that this is a very god way of letting the children grow up in a calm environment, the effect will be calmer children. 
Why do we not have a choice then? 
The only thing we can choose now is day-care, I do not think that is a choice. 
Think of all the good things that would come out of this, if we had the opportunity to choose.
","To have god knowledge of the English language is the same that the rest of the world is wide open for you. 
I love to travel and to meet other people and visit other culture, that is one of the reasons why I would like to get a god English. 
I feel confident in talking the language; it does not matter if I attend a discussion in political subjects, a debate of larger environmental problem or just a simple road description. 
I understand well what people are telling me and I think that they understand me pretty well too. 
If I not understand what they say I will never hesitate to ask what they mean and the problem will always be solved. 
My biggest problem is my pronunciation, I have some kind of American English with a lot of slang that I think I have picked up from not so good films and TV programs. 
I am aware of that I am using both word from British English and American English and perhaps even some Australian expressions as one of my friends are from Australia. 
I am trying to improve my pronunciation with help from my brother, who lives and works in U.S. and from his American wife who are studying at Bearkly University and uses an ""academic"" language. 
I think people in Sweden has the same problems as I have with the pronunciation, caused by all the American soap operas and crime series on TV, with a very narrow language badly pronounced. 
That is another reason why I would like to get a god British English, not only for my on sake but also for my future pupils. 
After all I am studying to become a teacher in the English language or will I become an American-English language teacher?  
I also read allot of texts, books and magazines. 
I read very easily, almost in the same tempo as my first language - Swedish- but when I read technical texts I often have to consult a dictionary. 
I se this only positive, because in this way I am increasing my vocabulary. 
A special problem I have is that I only know a few English abbreviations. 
Writing English will cause me some problem. 
I have never had any essays writing in school nor have I been writing on my spare time, not even a letter. 
This means that I have some work to attend on this course, but I gladly do it because the language is not only to speak, one has to write it too.  
As I have not studied Latin or Linguistic that will cause me some problems whit the grammar when I have to write in the English language. 
Another problem for me is my spelling, my American pronunciation is leading me to spell the English words the way as I hear them which means that I often mix English and American words and spelling in same sentences. 
I like to be guided in my choice of studying the English language. 
Shall I try to improve my American English or shall I try to gain my most wanted British English? 
One of the reasons that I hesitate and is pondering is that I have experienced that the American English is closer to the spelling roles.
",False
" Why hunting is necessary  A never-ending discussion in Sweden these days is the question whether it is right to kill and eat animals. 
In the centre of this discussion is the production animals such as cattle, pigs and poultry. 
I am going to concentrate on another debate, a little more peripheral, which concerns the game and our right to hunt and kill it.   
Hunting has a long history in human evolution. 
We were hunters long before we became farmers. 
Today no one has to hunt to survive though. 
Instead hunters are often seen as a bunch of merciless murderers (primarily men) who kills innocent animals for their own pleasure. 
Even people who eat meat themselves can ask me how I can stand killing an animal in cold blood. 
The irony of that question sometimes makes me want to laugh since it is my opinion that all humans participate in killing the animals they eat. 
The only difference is that I, as a hunter, do it openly.  
One of the problems all hunters including me have is that we do it for fun. 
There is no denying it. 
For people who do not know hunting this may seem to be the same as enjoy killing. 
Before anything else this has to be straightened out. 
The killing of the game is only an extremely short moment of the whole hunt. 
The lifestyle of hunters includes so much more. 
I have a friend who crawled around on his stomach for several hours just so he could get a chance to shoot a goose. 
He failed and had to go home empty handed. 
If his only interest had been killing he could have chosen something easier to hunt. 
Bringing up a dog, watching it grow and training it to be able to use it as a hunting partner someday is also a part of many hunters life which involves no killing.  
Enjoying hunting may be an emotionally important issue in this debate, but practically there is something more important. 
While humans has taken over the land and used it for farming the predators in our land, bears and wolves for example, has been almost extinct. 
In many parts of Sweden there are no natural enemies left to balance the numbers of our bigger games such as elk and roe deer. 
Hunting is therefore an important part of the game-preserving. 
Economically it is very important because of the damages that wild animals make to the growing forests. 
Keeping an even and not to big fauna is also necessary to control different diseases, which can be spread both to humans and dogs.  
Practical and economical reasons are easy to discuss. 
The ethical part whether it is right or wrong to kill animals for food is harder. 
Personally I think we have that right. 
It has to be under good conditions though. 
In the society we live in today economy determines a lot of things and the value of a good life often comes in second hand, not only for animals, but in some cases even for humans. 
That is why hunting is very important for me. 
The animals I hunt have, for good or bad, lived their lives as natural as possible. 
My biggest responsibility is to kill them as clean as possible. 
That responsibility seems to be too much for some people to handle. 
There are always going to be persons who hurt animals when hunting because they are careless. 
The majority of the hunters in Sweden have a good education and a lot of common sense and care for their game, as they should.  
Personally I only hunt animals that I eat, but I do not object to people who doesn't follow this. 
The increase of tourist and business hunting frightens me because I am afraid those persons may not always have the right knowledge that is required for safe hunting. 
This argumentation will probably not convince the real anti hunters but I hope it can spread some light for the common people who never been in touch with the lifestyle of the hunters.
"," To evaluate my own skills in reading, writing, speaking and listening to English  For getting a perfection in the English language more than going for holidays to Great Britain is needed. 
When you have learned how to write, read, speak and listen to English, then you are much closer the goal to get perfection in the language.  
The difficulty in evaluating your own skills in English is not to think of what you do know but what you do not know. 
For instance, sometimes I do not know the tense of the verb in a sentence and if I am not aware of it then I can not correct it. 
One way of getting around the problem is to get aware by reading and learning the English grammer.  
1 Read  I started reading English at fourth class in compulsory school. 
At the time I was quite shy and did not talk much during class hour, except if I was asked a question. 
Much later in life after I had studied French in 1995, I did join a course in English at the Folkuniversitetet in Uppsala. 
The aim was to get a ""First Certificate"" in the English language. 
I managed the examination and got an average grade. 
The reading part of the exam included reading short stories and answering questions about the stories. 
I can not say that I have a problem with reading English. 
English and American literature is familiar from courses I have taken in business economics for 2 years now at the University.   
However, I could learn reading faster as I get to know more English words by looking more thoroughly in the dictionary. 
Another way to practice reading language is reading more English novels and quality newspapers.  
2 Write  The biggest problem for me when I translate from Swedish to English is that I think of how the sentence is written in Swedish. 
I consider the problem is that I translate the English sentence due to how I think in Swedish.  
I do sometimes have a problem with tense, mode and clause elements in the English grammer.  
For writing correct sentences it is essential to know the clause elements and other important grammer. 
The positive point is that technical terms in business economics have been enriched in my English language.  
One of my future goals is to be better in writing English. 
The main object is to have or take time for repetition of the English grammer and especially work with what I already mentioned having a problem with.  
3 Speak  I think I have improved speaking English since I took two business economics courses in Market System and International Marketing. 
I followed the International Marketing course before December and I had to talk English all the time. 
Most of the students could not speak Swedish so English was the only language the international exchange students could speak, except their mother tongue.   
Speaking English in a proper way need knowledge about sentence structure and the right English expressions that I am about to learn. 
Some years ago I bought a dictionary in a bookstore that helped to translate from English to French / French to English. 
Ever since I have thought that I some day will know how to translate without difficulty from one of the languages to the other.  
4 Listen  To understand a language other than your mother tongue is not so easy but it is easier to listen and understand than reading, writing and speaking it.  y skills in listening to British English are good but my understanding of other English speaking languages varies due to the accent. 
In the Market System course that I mentioned earlier, we had a man from California as our lecturer. 
The problem was that most of the Swedish students including me did not understand every tenth world he said because of his particular accent.   
Listening to another language also need a lot of patience. 
In return you can get a very nice English accent, if you listen carefully to British English.
",False
"Am I good at English? 
The answer depends on whom I ask, of course. 
My English teachers in school apparently found a satisfyingly good pupil in me, since they always gave me the highest grade. 
But real life does not provide such a simple scale. 
If I ask myself about my skills in English, the picture gets a lot more complex, and definitely not as bright and sunny as the grades might suggest. 	
First of all, assessing one's skills in a language is not the easiest thing in the world. 
When practising a language, you are normally not aware of this practice in itself, since most part of the mind is concentrated on the information being communicated through the use of language. 
Moreover, the parts of language communication where you fail are even more difficult to be aware of, simply because you don't know them. 
So when it comes to evaluating your ability, you're left with a vague feeling of how you manage. 	
As I mentioned before, in my case, grades in English do not correspond with experienced abilities. 
This is especially the case when I speak English. 
Speaking implies a situation where I haven't got the time to correct grammar, look up words and so on. 
But as I do try to speak good English, the act of speaking demands a lot of energy. 
The worst thing about it, though, is not all the grammar faults that are most surely to come out of my mouth. 
No, it's the feeling of being unable to express myself in a - to me - satisfying way. 
This is particularly obvious when it comes to strong feelings. 
How do I get angry in English? 
How do I express curiosity, eagerness, passion, or fear? 	
But in fact, there is a plausible explanation to why speaking is the worst part of my English. 
So far, it's the part I have been practicing the least. 
And I am not that bad either. 
I am able to communicate most everyday matters in spoken English, and perform some reasoning as well. 
Usually, I can make myself clear, and I guess that is the most important thing. 	
If we stick to spoken language, listening is much easier than speaking. 
In general, I think I am fairly good at listening and understanding English. 
But of course, it depends a lot on how fast the English is spoken. 
My understanding is also affected by the subject. 
And, maybe even more, it depends on the accent. 
I feel much more secure when I listen to American English, because of all the practice I have from watching films and series on TV. 
I think I am most unsecure when listening to British dialects, like Cockney, or Scottish. 	
As for reading, I think I'm a pretty skilled reader of English texts. 
Here, I've also had quite a good deal of practice. 
I really enjoy reading English, just as I like listening to the spoken language. 
In these situations, I don't have to accomplish anything myself, so I can stay in the language without any precautions, for as long as I like. 
To me, reading English is quite physical; it is like exploring a mysterious country. 
However, the switch from my ordinary world to this country of English books is not an absolutely painless move. 
First of all, there is a certain start energy needed when going into a text in English, be it fiction or non-fiction. 
And even if I do follow most texts, a dictionary has - so far - never failed to be needed. 
All these words! 
Especially verbs and adjectives; an immense amount of them. 
This is a major obstacle for me when I read English texts. 
Sometimes I try to check all the words I don't understand. 
But even if I do, of course I soon forget them, if I don't find them again.  	
Finally, writing in English is not as enjoyable as reading, but much less painful than speaking. 
This is partly because when I write, there is time to think. 
And thinking is something I really like. 
A general strength of mine, which I guess is important when it comes to writing, is an ability to arrange my thoughts according to some kind of logic. 
What makes me feel even more secure when writing, is the fact that I can use a dictionary, and I don't have to bother about pronunciation. 
But using a dictionary is maybe too tempting; what I really would like to achieve is to write fluently with words of my own, that is, being able to cope without a dictionary.  	
So, once again: Am I good at English? 
My answer throughout this essay has been both yes and no. 
I do speak, write and understand English fairly well - but there is still an immense amount of things to learn. 
Which is, after all, not that bad! 
I have every hope of making good progress. 
I just need the courage and energy to practice over and over again.
","I was watching a program on television the other day (which is very unusual actually, I am not very found of such) and I was lucky to see Monty Python. 
I was lucky because it is one of my favourite programs, but on the other hand I was very unlucky, or more correctly, I got very unlucky as I realized that my English comprehension was very poor, not very poor, but still quite bad.  
I started to count the years I have spent with my dear English books through my time at school, and I get it to ten years. 
It is a rather long time and still there is much to learn. 
Whereas I did not spend a longer period in an English speaking country I might find it hard to find the ""every-day-words"" that are so useful for the coherence in a language and in order to make it sound natural and relaxed to a native English speaking person. 
I have lived in Italy for three years and I started the other way around, which means I started to speak, and after I studied the language. 
I really do not know which of the two is the best way, but I cannot deny that making an experience in the country is very useful and a fast way of learning.  
As Swedish normally do, I point out my vulnerable spots. 
But I know that I am not shy and I don't mind making a fool of myself. 
In any language I have learnt I have always been very eager to try my wings.   
I found reading very interesting from different point of views, first because I am interested in literature and second because I want to acquire and increase my vocabulary, and I find reading an appropriate way to do that.   
I have lived abroad for five years, and even though I did not stay, as I previously mentioned, in an English speaking country, still I have had the opportunity to practice the language and hopefully improved my speaking skills. 
I master the language and the grammar, at least the basic grammar since I did not study English for a long time. 
I study Italian on C-level this semester and I find it helpful to compare and exchange differences in the languages and make comparative philology, sometimes it helps you and other times it overturns you. 
The word ""people"", for instance is considered as plural in English, while in Italian ""gente"" is singular, so, I have to pay attention to matters like that.   
I know it is a disadvantage not watching television that improves ones comprehension skills. 
It is positive that we do not dub the films, it is extremely good for improving your understanding and I think it is a great advantage that we have in Sweden and I have defended our system many times in Europe.  
I feel, though, that I would need a refreshment in grammar and the structure of the language. 
I have been working in Florence for three years and we were working mainly with American clients and that was a crises for me, because the Americans did not understand my British English, or let's say, they had difficulties in catching what I said, so, I sort of ""converted"" to American English during my time in Italy. 
When I decided to take the A-course in English I got confused because I did not know weather to speak American English or British English. 
Soon I found out that it was not of major importance but anyhow I decided to stick to my British English, the important thing, after all, is to be consistent.   
This course seems to be very well constructed and I have high expectations on myself. 
I want to improve my knowledge and skills in many ways, mainly the grammatical structure but also my writing and the way to express myself in a correct manner. 
Not only because I want to understand everything they say in Monty Python, but also for my future job-position where my English will be extremely helpful.
",False
" English, my English  What is it that makes English such a wonderfully fascinating language? 
Is it the elegant way sentences are constructed? 
Is it the intriguing history of the language? 
Or is it the endless treasure of literature and music in English? 
Actually, I think the enormous vocabulary of English is the main reason why I am mesmerized by the language. 
As a devoted adherent of the Aesthetic movement, I believe that words exist for their own sake, just like art exists for its own sake, not for decorating people's walls. 
Thus, I find English dictionaries truly captivating, with their inexhaustable supply of beauty as well as knowledge. 
""Delirium"", ""lavish"", ""abode"", ""nooks and crannies"" lovely words galore! 
Owning a dictionary is like experiencing a never-ending love story.  y chief problem when it comes to English studies is the fact that I, as mentioned above, really love learning words, but only beautiful, poetic words. 
I cannot discuss tedious things like economy or sports, simply because I have never bothered to acquire the terminology. 
Absurdly enough, I can deliver eloquent speeches on subjects like art and literature, but I would be speechless if asked a simple question like ""What does a bicycle look like?""  
As we all know,though, a language does not consist of words alone. 
You have to know how the language works, that is you have to learn grammar. 
I was eight years old when I was forced to learn English very quickly at the American School of Mogadishu, Somalia. 
I remember entering an ""Irregular verbs-contest"" with the other children in my ESL (English Second Language) class. 
I knew I was the best student and naturally, I was very keen on winning. 
Everything went well until the teacher said ""Make?"" 
and I replied ""maked, maked"". 
I immediately realized my mistake, but it was too late, and my worst enemy Mikko Koponen scored a point instead of me. 
Alas! 
What a trauma, what a horrid feeling of abasement! 
I learnt my lesson, however, and I believe I haven't MADE a mistake in the field of irregular verbs ever since.  
Since I went to an American school, I acquired a broad Yankee accent. 
Later in life, I grew fond of British English, and consequently I soon considered my own American accent vulgar and vile. 
Desperately trying to achieve a good classy Oxford accent, I made a fool out of myself once or twice. 
For instance, I thought that the word ""beard"" was supposed to be pronounced ""bird"" in British. 
My friends laughed for quite a while when I eagerly encouraged a man to ""grow a bird"".  
Needless to say, I still try hard to sound British. 
I haven't been able to fool a Briton yet, but a few Danes, Germans and even Swedes have actually mistaken me for a native of the British Isles. 
Such occasions are moments of glory to me.  
I have never found spelling difficult in any language. 
My parents were often quite astonished by my talent when I was younger.  
Last spring I met a very well-read South African boy and we kept discussing the wonders of the English language. 
As a matter of fact I won a couple of bets concerning the spelling of certain words. 
This was, of course, a great triumph for me, considering the fact that he was an educated native speaker of English, whereas I'm just a Finnish smalltown girl.  
It is a matter of course that I am exposed to written English all the time, as I have been reading English books since the age of nine. 
My mother made me read Astrid Lindgren classics like ""Mischevious Meg"" and ""The Children of Noisy Village"" in English. 
Ten years later, I had already ploughed through the works of various renowned authors like Oscar Wilde, Vladimir Nabokov and Salman Rushdie. 
Obviously, I don't understand every single word in such complicated texts, but it really doesn't matter, and I'm often able to find out the meaning of a word by looking at the context.  
Another agreeable way of learning a language is listening to music with intelligent lyrics. 
The Mancunian singer/songwriter Steven Morrissey (former lead singer in The Smiths) is, I think, my favourite English teacher as well as my favourite poet. 
His lyrics are often witty, sometimes painfully beautiful, never pathetic and always very well-expessed. 
So if you want to learn by listening, I recommend Morrissey's music rather than American TV-shows where you cannot comprehend what the characters are saying because of their hideous slang, and if you do understand the dialogue you realize that you were happier when you didn't.  
Dear readers, I realize that I may sound extremely boastful and utterly self-righteous. 
I am not always completely serious when praising my own skills. 
Nevertheless, I am not modest and I do feel pretty confident about my English. 
But believe me- I am well aware of the fact that there are still plenty of skills to master, and I'm looking forward to a lifetime of learning.
"," ABOLISH CAPITAL PUNISHMENT!  
Even though we have now entered the 21th century the capital punishment is still being used in several parts of the world. 
Usually, this sentence is used when a murder has taken place (although, in some parts of the world, you can be sentenced to death for far less serious crimes), but what is such a penalty if not murder? 
Who gave us humans the right to decide over life and death? 
What exactly makes us think that we have the right to take another person's life? 
Some people might refer to the Bible, which confirms this kind of punishment. 
However, relying on the Bible may not be the best of decisions since it also considers it a right to sell your own children. 
We don't even know whether the Bible really is a historically correct production or just fiction. 
Even if it would turn out to be historically correct we can not follow the rules of a society that existed 2000 years ago. 	
Today, many innocent people are sentenced to their death every year. 
In most cases the internee will not even be proven innocent until it's too late. 
Imagine to be accused of a crime you haven't committed, and then imagine being sentenced to death for it. 
It may not be the execution itself that would be the most frightening experience, but the waiting for it. 
Many internees have to wait several years before the sentence is carried out. 
I imagine you must feel such terror knowing that for each day that passes you get one day closer to the day of your own death. 
This treatment of the inernees can not be considered as anything else but inhumane. 	
Inhumanity is certainly not something that belongs in the society of today, or in any society at all for that matter. 
Through the years the world has seen so much injustice and inhumanity that one is surprised to see that not much change has yet taken place. 
We might not be able to stop all of the injustices in the world, no matter how much effort we put in, but we can at least start by abolishing the injustice carried out in the name of the law. 
The capital punishment should be someting of the past, not the present. 
The world must realize that taking one life does not bring back another. 	
A life sentence, however, should be a far better choice than the death penalty. 
If you get sentenced to life you know that you are never getting out of prison, you will never be free again. 
You will have to spend the rest of your life thinking about your actions, and you will never be able to escape from your own conscience like you would if you were executed. 
I assume that the whole point of the legal system is to create justice and to punish the guilty. 
What better punishment is there than to make sure that the guilty never forgets what he/she has done? 	
As mentioned in other words earlier, the capital punishment violates the human rights. 
Everyone should have the right to be treated with dignity. 
A murder is an extremely serious and horrible crime and should naturally be punished severly, but it should not be punished by death. 
We have to stop using the ""eye for an eye"" system. 
The world is definitely not perfect, and will most certainly never be perfect for that matter, but we have to start somewhere. 
In this time of ours there is no room for a legal system that justifies execution. 
If we want the world to make a change towards the better we can not just sit around and wait for this change to appear by itself. 
We have to take action and a good way to start is to abolish the capital punishment.
",False