The Lurker at the Threshold: Posthumous Collaborations

by August Derleth

  I was, however, reasonably certain that the tunnel had been constructed by my great-uncle, and was prepared to turn back when I caught sight of something gleaming only a little way ahead, and went forward, only to find myself gazing down at yet another trapdoor. This too I opened, and looked down into a large circular room, reached by seven brick steps.

  I could not forbear descending into it, and, holding the lamp high, looking around. A brick floor had been laid here, as well, and some curious structures had been erected in it—something very much like an altar, of stone, for one, and benches, also of stone. And on the floor there were crude drawings very similar to those in the cupola of the house; though I could readily explain those astronomical designs in the cupola, which was open to the skies, I found it impossible to adduce any reason for their presence here.

  There was, too, yet another opening into the floor before the altar. The great iron ring tempted me, but for some reason caution held me back from lifting the trapdoor. I went only close enough to detect a draft that indicated the circulation of air and suggested another opening to the outside below this subterranean chamber. Then I retreated to the passageway above, and, instead of returning to the house, pressed on.

  In perhaps three quarters of a mile I came to a great wooden door, barred on the inside. I put down the lamp and lifted the bar. Opening the door, I found myself looking into a tangle of growth that effectively concealed the opening into the tunnel from anyone outside. I pushed through this tangle sufficiently to find myself looking down the hill toward the countryside below, where I could see the Miskatonic some distance away, and a stone bridge across it—but nowhere a dwelling of any kind, only the ruins of what had once been isolated farms. For a long minute I stood looking out upon that prospect; then I returned the way I had come, pondering the reason for being of the elaborate tunnel and the room below it—and whatever lay below that; for there was no key to their use, save only, remotely, as a secret way out of the house, if any were needed.

  Once back in the house, I abandoned the cleaning of the second storey to another day, and set myself to bring about some order in the study, which, with papers on the desk and the floor around it, and the chair hurriedly pushed back, bore the aspects of having been precisely so left at my great-uncle’s departure, as if he had been suddenly summoned and had gone straightaway, and had then never returned to right the room.

  I had always understood that Great-uncle Septimus Bishop was a man of independent means, and that he had been engaged in some kind of scholarly research. Astronomy perhaps—perhaps even in its relation to astrology, however unlikely that seemed. If only he had corresponded freely with those of his brothers who remained in England or if he had kept up some kind of diary or journal or daybook; but there was nothing of that kind in his desk or among the papers there, and the papers themselves were concerned with abstruse matters, filled with many diagrams and drawings, which I took to be related to geometry since they were all angles and curves and represented nothing familiar to me; and such lettering as was set down on them was little more than gibberish, since it was not in English but in some language too ancient to be known to me, though I could have read anything in Latin and in half a dozen other languages still spoken on the Continent.

  But there were some letters, carefully tied together, and, after a light lunch of cheese and bread and coffee, I undertook to look into them. The very first of these letters amazed me. It was headed “Starry Wisdom” and bore no address.

  Written in a broad-pointed pen and in a flourishing hand, it read:

  “Dear Brother Bishop,

  “In the Name of Azathoth, by the sign of the Shining Trapezohedron, all things will be known to you when the Haunter of Dark is summoned. There must be no light, but He who comes by darkness goes unseen and flees the light.

  All the secrets of Heaven and Hell will be made known. All the mysteries of worlds unknown to Earth will be yours.

  “Be patient. Despite many setbacks, we flourish still, however secretly, here in Providence.”

  The signature was not decipherable, but I thought it read “Asenath Bowen” or “Brown.” This first astonishing letter set the tone for almost all the rest. They were almost to a letter the most esoteric communications, dealing with mystical matters beyond my ken—and also beyond that of any modern man, belonging as these matters did to an age of superstition all but lost since the Dark Ages, and what my great-uncle had to do with such matters—unless, indeed, he were studying the survival of superstitious rites and practices in his time— I could not estimate.

  I read them one after another. My great-uncle was hailed in the name of Great Cthulhu, of Hastur the Unspeakable, of Shub-Niggurath, of Belial and Beelzebub, and many another. My great-uncle seemed to have been in correspondence with every kind of quack and mountebank, with self-professed wizards and renegade priests alike. There was one quasi-scholarly letter, however, that was unlike the others. It was written in a difficult script, though the signature—Wilbur Whateley—was easily read, and the date, January 17, 1928, as well as the place of origin—nearby Dunwich—offered me no difficulty. The letter itself, once deciphered, was arresting.

  “Dear Mr. Bishop.

  “Yes, by the Dho formula it is possible to see the inner city at the magnetic poles. I have seen it, and hope soon to go there. When the earth is cleared off.

  When you come to Dunwich, come to the farm, and I will say the Dho formula for you. And the Dho-Hna. And tell you the angles of the planes and the formulas between the Yr and the Nhhngr.

  “They from the air cannot help without human blood. They take body from it, as you know. As you, too, will be able to do if you are destroyed other than by the Sign. There are those hereabouts who know the Sign and its power. Do not speak idly. Guard your tongue, even at the Sabbat.

  “I saw you there—and what walks with you in the guise of a woman. But by the sight given me by those I had summoned I saw it in its true form, which you must have seen; so I guess some day you may look upon what I can call forth in my own image, and it may not affright you.

  “I am yours in the Name of Him Who Is Not To Be Named.”

  Certainly the writer must have belonged to the same family as Tobias, who so shunned this house. Small wonder, then, at the fellow’s fear and superstition; he must have had some first hand acquaintance with it in more tangible form than my great-uncle could have offered him. And if Great-uncle Septimus had been friendly with Wilbur Whateley, it was not surprising that another Whateley might suspect him, too, of being what Wilbur was. Whatever that was. But how to explain that friendship? Clearly, there were many things about my great-uncle I did not know.

  I tied the letters up again and put them back where I had found them. I turned next to an envelope of newspaper clippings—all, I took it, recognizing the typeface, from the Arkham Advertiser, and found them no less puzzling than the letters, for they were accounts of mysterious disappearances in the Dunwich and Arkham region, principally of children and young adults—evidently just such as my great-uncle Septimus had ultimately fallen victim to. There was one clipping that concerned the fury of the local inhabitants and their suspicion of one of their neighbors, who was unnamed, as the author of the disappearances; and their threatening to take matters into their own hands, the local constabulary having failed them. Perhaps my great-uncle had interested himself in solving the disappearances.

  I put these, too, away, and sat for some time pondering what I had read, disquieted by something recalled from Wilbur Whateley’s letter. “I saw you there— and what walks with you in the guise of a woman.” And I remembered how Tobias Whateley had referred to my great-uncle—“Him and his.” Slain.

  Perhaps the superstitious natives had blamed Great-uncle Septimus for the disappearances and had indeed taken vengeance on him.

  Abruptly I felt the need to escape the house for a little while. It was now mid-afternoon, and the need of fresh air after so long in the musty house was strong. So I walke
d outside, and again to the road, and turned away from Dunwich, almost as if impelled to do so, curious to know what the country beyond the Bishop house was like, and certain that the view I had seen from the mouth of the tunnel on the side of the hill lay in this general direction.

  I expected that country to be wild, and indeed it was. The road carried through it, obviously little used, perhaps chiefly by the rural mailman. Trees and shrubbery pressed upon the road from both verges, and from time to time the hills loomed over on the one side, for on the other was the valley of the Miskatonic, drawing in now parallel to the road, then again swinging wide away from it. The land was utterly deserted, though there were fields that were clearly being worked, for grain flourished there for those non-resident farmers who came in to work it. There were no houses, only ruins or abandoned buildings; there were no cattle; there was nothing but the road to point to human habitation of recent date, for the road led somewhere, and presumably to another place where people lived.

  It was at a point some distance from the river that I came upon a side road that wound away to the right. A leaning sign-post identified it as Crary Road, and an ancient barrier across it—itself all overgrown—marked it as “Closed,” with another sign tacked below it that read: “Bridge out.” It was this latter that inclined me to take the road; so I walked in along it, struggling through shrubbery and brambles for a distance of a little over half a mile, and thus came upon the Miskatonic where a stone bridge had once carried traffic across.

  The bridge was very old, and only the middle span stood, supported by two stone piers, one of them thickened with a large outcropping of concrete, upon which whoever had constructed it had etched a large five-pointed star in the center of which was embedded a stone of the same general shape, though very small by comparison with the outline. The river had worn away both bridge-heads and carried down into it a span from either end, leaving the middle span to stand as a symbol of the civilization that had once flourished in this valley and had since passed away. It occurred to me that perhaps this was the very bridge that had been strengthened, though no longer used, as recorded in the Arkham Advertiser.

  Strangely, the bridge—or what was left of it—exercised a curious attraction for me, though its architecture was crude; it was a purely utilitarian structure, and had never been built as an aesthetic object; yet, like so many old things, it had now the attraction of its great age, though the concrete reinforcement detracted from it in every way, making a great blister or bulge up from the foundation almost to the top. Indeed, studying it, I could not understand how it could in fact serve as a reinforcement of the pier, though both piers were clearly very old and crumbling, and would not stand for long, what with the action of the water at their base. The Miskatonic here was seemingly not very deep, but it had a respectable width that surrounded both piers supporting the middle span.

  I stood gazing at the structure, trying to estimate its age, until the sun darkened suddenly, and, turning, I saw that great mounds of cumulonimbus clouds were pushing up the west and southwest, presaging rain; then I left the ruin of the bridge and went back to the house that had been the home of my great-uncle Septimus Bishop.

  It was well that I did so, for the storm broke within the hour, and was succeeded by another and another; and all night the thunder raged and the lightning flared and the rain came down in torrents hour after hour, cascading off the roof, running down the slop in scores of rills and freshets for all the hours of darkness.

  III

  Perhaps it was only natural that in the fresh, rain-washed morning, I should think again of the bridge. Perhaps it was, instead, a compulsion arising from some source unknown to me. The rain had now been done for three hours; the rills and freshets had dwindled to little trickles; the roof was drying under the morning sun, and in another hour the shrubbery and the grasses too would once again be dry.

  At noon, filled with a sense of adventurous expectancy, I went to look at the old bridge. Without knowing quite why, I expected change, and I found it—for the span was gone, the very piers had crumbled, and even the great concrete reinforcement was sundered and seared—obviously struck by lightning, a force which, coupled with the raging torrent the Miskatonic must have been in the night (for even now it was high, swollen, brown with silt; and its banks showed that in the night it had been higher by over two feet), had succeeded in bringing to final ruin the ancient bridge that had once carried men and women and children across the river into the now deserted valley on the far side.

  Indeed, the stones that had made up the piers had been carried well down river and flung up along the shores; only the concrete reinforcement, riven and broken, lay at the site of the middle span. It was while I followed with my eyes the path of the stream and the disposition of the stones that I caught sight of something white lying on the near bank, not far up out of the water. I made my way down to it, and came upon something I had not expected to see.

  Bones. Whitened bones, long immersed in the water perhaps, and now cast up by the torrent. Perhaps some farmer’s cow, drowned long ago. But the thought had hardly entered my mind before I discarded it, for the bones upon which I now looked were at least in part human, and now I saw, looking out from among them, a human skull.

  But not all were human, for there were some among them that bore no resemblance to any bones I ever saw—long whips of bones, flexible by the look of them, as of some creature but half formed, all intertwined with the human bones, so that there was hardly any definition of them. They were bones that demanded burial; but, of course, they could not be buried without notification to the proper authorities.

  I looked around for something in which to carry them, and my eye fell upon some coarse sacking, also cast up by the Miskatonic. So I walked down and took it up, wet though it still was, and brought it back and spread it out beside the bones. Then I picked them up—at first all intertwined as they were, by the handful; and then one by one to the last finger-bone—and having finished, gathered them up in the sacking by tying the four corners of it together, and in that fashion carried them back to the house, and took them down into the cellar until I could take them into Dunwich later in the day, and perhaps to Arkham and the county seat, thinking then that I had ought to have resisted the impulse to gather them up, and left them where I had found them, which no doubt the authorities would have preferred.

  I come now to that portion of my account which, by any standard, is incredible. I have said that I took the bones directly to the cellar; now, there was no reason why I could not have deposited them on the verandah or even in the study; yet without question I took them to the cellar, and there I left them while I went back to the ground floor to prepare and eat the lunch I had not troubled to eat before I walked to the old bridge. When I had finished my repast, I determined to take the bones from the river to the proper authorities, and went back down into the cellar to fetch them.

  Judge my baffled astonishment to find, when I lifted the sacking, which lay just as I had left it, to find it empty. The bones were gone. I could not believe the evidence of my own senses. I returned to the ground floor, lit a lamp, and carried it into the cellar, which I proceeded to search from wall to wall. It was futile.

  Nothing was changed in the cellar since first I had looked into it—the windows had not been touched, for the same cobwebs still covered them—and, as far as I could see, the trapdoor leading to the tunnel had not been lifted. Yet the bones were irrevocably gone.

  I returned to the study, bewildered, beginning to doubt that I had in fact found and carried home any bones. But indeed I had! As I sat trying to resolve my perplexity, one possible—if far-fetched—solution to the mystery occurred to me. Perhaps the bones had not been as firm as I had thought them; perhaps exposure to the air had reduced them to dust. But in that case surely that dust would have been in evidence. And the sacking was clean, free of the white detritus to which the bones would have been reduced.

  Manifestly, I could not go to the auth
orities with such a tale, for certainly they would have looked upon me as a madman. But there was nothing to prevent my making inquiries, and, accordingly, I drove into Dunwich. Perversely, I went first into Whateley’s store.

  At sight of me, Tobias glowered, “Wun’t sell yew nothin’,” he said before I had had a chance to speak, and, to another customer—a slovenly old fellow—he said pointedly, “This here’s thet Bishop!” which intelligence caused the old man to sidle quickly out the door.

  “I came to ask a question,” I said.

  “Ask it.”

  “Is there a cemetery along the Miskatonic up a piece from that old bridge above my place?”

  “Dun’t know uv any. Why?” he asked suspiciously.

  “I can’t tell you,” I said. “Except to say I found something that made me think so.”

  The proprietor’s eyes narrowed. He bit at his lower lip. Then his sallow face lost the little color it had. “Bones,” he whispered. “Yew found some bones!”

  “I didn’t say so,” I answered.

  “Where’d yew find ’em?” he demanded in an urgent voice.

  I spread my hands. “I have no bones,” I said, and walked out of the store.

  Looking back as I walked up toward the rectory of a little church I had seen on a side street, I saw that Whateley had closed his store and was hurrying along the main street of Dunwich, evidently to spread the suspicion he had voiced.

  The name of the Baptist minister, according to his mailbox, was Abraham Dunning, and he was at home—a short, rotund man, rosy-cheeked and with spectacles on his nose. He appeared to be in his middle sixties, and, gratifyingly, my name obviously meant nothing to him. He invited me into his spare parlor, which evidently served as his office.