The Doom That Came to Dunwich

by Richard A. Lupoff

  When the state police arrived Hester explained, with total self-assurance, that she and Nahum had climbed the steeple together, up the narrow wooden staircase that ran from the church’s floor to its belfry. Nahum had averred that he would do anything to prove his love for Hester, and she had asked him to fly from the steeple. In attempting to do so he had fallen to the roof, bounced once, then crashed onto the old grave marker in the yard.

  The police report listed Nahum’s death as accidental, and Hester was returned to the Sawyer farm in charge of Mamie Bishop. Needless to say, the child did not return to the nursery school at the Dunwich Congregational Church; in fact, she was not seen again in Dunwich, or anywhere else away from her father’s holdings.

  *

  The final chapter in the tragedy of the Devil’s Hop Yard, if indeed tragedy is the proper designation for such a drama, was played out in the spring of 1943. As in so many years past, the warmth of the equinox had given but little of itself to the upper Miskatonic Valley; winter instead still clung to the barren peaks and the infertile bottomlands of the region, and the icy dark waters of the Miskatonic River passed only few meadows on their way southeasterward to Arkham and Innsmouth and the cold Atlantic beyond.

  In Dunwich the bereaved Silas Bishop and his maiden sister Elsie had recovered as best they could from the death of young Nahum. Elsie’s work with the nursery school continued and only the boarding-up of the stairwell that led to the steeple and belfry of the Congregational Church testified to the accident of the previous September.

  Early on the evening of April 30 the telephone rang in the Bishop house in Dunwich village, and Elsie lifted the receiver to hear a furtive whisper on the line. The voice she barely recognized, so distorted it was with terror, belonged to her second cousin Mamie.

  “They’ve locked me in the house naow,” Mamie whispered into the telephone. “Earl always sent me away before, but this time they’ve locked me in and I’m afeared. Help me, Elsie! I daon’t knaow what they’re a-fixin’ ta do up ta the Hop Yard, but I’m afeared!”

  Elsie signaled her brother Silas to listen to the conversation. “Who’s locked you in, Mamie?” Elsie asked her cousin.

  “Earl and Zeb and Sawyer Whateley done it! They’ve took Zenia’s brat and they’ve clumb the Hop Yard. I kin see ‘em from here! They’re all stark naked and they’ve built ’em a bonfire and an altar and they’re throwin’ powder into the fire and old Zeb he’s areadin’ things outen some terrible book that they always keep alocked up!

  “And now I kin see little Hester, the little white brat o’ Zenia’s, and she’s clumb onto the altar and she’s sayin’ things to Zeb an’ Earl and Squire Whateley an’ they’ve got down on their knees like they’s aworshippin’ Hester, and she’s makin’ signs with her hands. Oh, Elsie, I can’t describe them signs, they’s so awful, they’s so awful what she’s adoin’, Elsie! Get some help out here, oh please get some help!”

  Elsie told Mamie to try and be calm, and not to watch what was happening atop the Devil’s Hop Yard. Then she hung up the telephone and turned to her brother Silas. “We’ll get the state police from Aylesbury,” she said. “They’ll stop whatever is happening at Sawyer’s. We’d best telephone them now, Silas!”

  “D’ye think they’ll believe ye, Elsie?”

  Elsie shook her head in a negative manner.

  “Then we’d best git to Aylesbury ourselves,” Silas resumed. “If we go there ourselves they’d more like to believe us than if we jest telephoned.”

  They hitched up their horse and drove by wagon from Dunwich to Aylesbury. Fortunately the state police officer who had investigated the death of young Nahum Bishop was present, and knowing both Elsie and Silas to be citizens of a responsible nature the officer did not laugh at their report of Mamie’s frightened telephone call. The officer started an automobile belonging to the state police, and with the two Bishops as passengers set out back along the Aylesbury Pike to Dunwich, and thence to the Sawyer farm beyond the village center.

  As the official vehicle neared Sawyer’s place, its three occupants were assailed by a most terrible and utterly indescribable stench that turned their stomachs and caused their eyes to run copiously, and that also, inexplicably, filled each of them with a hugely frightening rush of emotions dominated by an amalgam of fear and revulsion. Sounds of thunder filled the air, and the earth trembled repeatedly, threatening to throw the car off the road.

  The state police officer swung the automobile from the dirt road fronting the Sawyer farm onto a narrow and rutted track that ran by the decrepit house and led to the foot of the Devil’s Hop Yard. The officer pulled the car to a halt and leaped from its seat, charging up the hill with his service revolver drawn, followed by Silas and Elsie Bishop, who made the best speed they could despite their years.

  Before them they could see the altar and the four figures that Mamie Bishop had described to her cousin Elsie. The night sky was cloudless and a new moon offered no competition to the millions of brilliantly twinkling stars. Little Hester Sawyer, her body that of a fully formed woman yet not two feet in height, danced and postured on the wooden altar, the starlight and that of the nearby bonfire dancing lasciviously on her gleaming platinum hair and smooth, cream-colored skin. Her lavender eyes caught the firelight and reflected it like the eyes of a wild beast in the woods at night.

  Earl and Zebulon and Sawyer Whateley stood in an equilateral triangle about the altar, and around them there had apparently sprung from the earth itself a perfect circle of slimy, tentacled growths, more animal than vegetable, the only things that had ever been known to grow from the soil of the Devil’s Hop Yard. Even as the newcomers watched, too awe-stricken and too revolted to act, the horrid tentacled growths began to lengthen, and to sway in time to the awful chanting of the three naked men and the lascivious posturings of the tiny, four-year-old Hester.

  There was the sound of a shrill, reedy piping from somewhere in the air, and strange winds rushed back and forth over the scene.

  The voice of Hester Sawyer could be heard chanting, “Ygnaith… ygnaith… thflthkh’ngha… Yog-Sothoth… Y’bthnk… h’ehye-n’grkdl’lh!”

  There, was a single, blinding bolt of lightning — an astonishing occurrence as the night sky was entirely clear of any clouds — and the form of Hester Sawyer was bathed in a greenish-yellow glow of almost supernatural electrical display, sparks dancing over her perfect skin, and balls of St. Elmo’s fire tumbling from her lips and hands and rolling across the altar, tumbling to the ground and bounding down the slopes of the Devil’s Hop Yard.

  The eyes of the watchers were so dazzled by the display that they were never certain, afterwards, of what they had seen. But it appeared, at least, that the bolt of lightning had not descended from the sky to strike Hester, but had originated from her and struck upward, zigzagging into the wind-swept blackness over Dunwich, streaking upward and upward as if it were eventually going to reach the stars themselves.

  And even more quickly than the bolt of lightning had disappeared from before the dazzled eyes of the watchers, the body of Hester Sawyer appeared to rise along its course, posturing and making those terrible shocking signs even as it rose, growing ever smaller as it disappeared above the Hop Yard until the lightning bolt winked out and all sight of Hester Sawyer was lost forever.

  With the end of the electrical display the shocked paralysis that had overcome the watchers subsided, and the police officer advanced to stand near the ring of tentacled growths and the three naked men. He ordered them to follow him back to the police vehicle, but instead they launched themselves in snarling, animalistic attacks upon him. The officer stepped back but the three men flew at him growling, clawing, biting at his legs and torso. The police officer’s revolver crashed once, again, then a third time, and the three naked men lay thrashing and gesturing on the ground.

  They were taken to the general hospital at Arkham, where a medical team headed by Drs. Houghton and Hartwell labored unsuccessfully through the nig
ht to save them. By the morning of May 1, all three had expired without uttering a single word.

  Meanwhile, back at the Devil’s Hop Yard, Silas and Elsie Bishop guided other investigators to the altar that Hester Sawyer had last stood upon. The book that had lain open beside her had been destroyed beyond identification by the lightning bolt of the night of April 30. Agricultural experts summoned from Miskatonic University at Arkham attempted to identify the tentacled growths that had sprung from the ground around the altar. The growths had died within a few hours of their appearance, and only desiccated husks remained. The experts were unable to identify them fully, indicating their complete puzzlement at their apparent resemblance to the tentacles of the giant marine squid of the Pacific Trench near the island of Ponape.

  Back at the Sawyer farmhouse, Mamie Bishop was found cowering in a corner, hiding her eyes and refusing to look up or even acknowledge the presence of others when addressed. Her hair had turned completely white, not the platinum white of little Hester Sawyer’s hair but the crinkly albino white that had been Lavinia Whateley’s so many years before.

  Mamie mumbled to herself and shook her head but uttered not a single intelligible word, either then or later, when she too was taken to the general hospital at Arkham. In time she was certified physically sound and transferred to a mental ward where she resides to this day, a harmless, quivering husk, her inward-turned eyes locked forever on whatever shocking sight it was that she beheld that night when she gazed from the window of the Sawyer farmhouse upon the horrid ceremony taking place atop the Devil’s Hop Yard.

  DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE OF ELIZABETH AKELEY

  Surveillance of the Spiritual Light Brotherhood Church of San Diego was initiated as a result of certain events of the mid-and late 1970s. Great controversy had arisen over the conduct of the followers of the Guru Maharaj-ji, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (the “Hare Krishnas”), the Church of Scientology, and the Unification Church headed by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

  These activities were cloaked in the Constitutional shield of “freedom of religion,” and the cults for the most part resisted suggestions of investigation by grand juries or other official bodies.

  Even so, the tragic events concerning the People’s Temple of San Francisco aroused government concern which could not be stymied. While debate raged publicly over the question of opening cult records, Federal and local law enforcement agencies covertly entered the field.

  It was within this context that interest was aroused concerning the operation of the Spiritual Light Brotherhood, and particularly its leader, the Radiant Mother Elizabeth Akeley.

  Outwardly there was nothing secret in the operation of Mother Akeley’s church. The group operated from a building located at the corner of Second Street and Ash in a neighborhood described as “genteel shabby,” midway between the commercial center of San Diego and the city’s tourist — oriented waterfront area.

  The building occupied by the Church had been erected originally by a more conventional denomination, but the vicissitudes of shifting population caused the building to be deconsecrated and sold to the Spiritual Light Brotherhood. The new owners, led by their order’s founder and then-leader, the Radiant Father George Goodenough Akeley, clearly marked the building with its new identity.

  The headline was changed on the church’s bulletin board, and the symbol of the Spiritual Light Brotherhood, a shining tetrahedron of neon tubing, was erected atop the steeple. A worship service was held each Sunday morning, and a spiritual message service was conducted each Wednesday evening.

  In later years, following the death of the Radiant Father in 1970 and the accession to leadership of the Church by Elizabeth Akeley, Church archives were maintained in the form of tape recordings. The Sunday services were apparently a bland amalgam of non-denominational Judeo-Christian teachings, half-baked and quarter-understood Oriental mysticism, and citations from the works of Einstein, Heisenberg, Shklovskii, and Fermi.

  Surviving cassettes of the Wednesday message services are similarly innocuous. Congregants were invited to submit questions or requests for messages from deceased relatives. The Radiant Mother accepted a limited number of such requests at each service. The congregants would arrange themselves in a circle and link their fingers in the classic manner of participants in séances. Mother Akeley would enter a trance and proceed to answer the questions or deliver messages from the deceased, “as the spirits moved her.”

  Audioanalysis of the tapes of these séances indicates that, while the intonation and accent of the voices varied greatly, from the whines and lisps of small children to the quaverings of the superannuated, and from the softened and westernized pronunciations of native San Diegans to the harsh and barbaric tones of their New Yorker parents, the vocal apparatus was at all times that of Elizabeth Akeley. The variations were no greater than those attainable by an actress of professional training or natural brilliance.

  Such, however, was not the case with a startling portion of the cassette for the session of Wednesday, June 13th, 1979. The Radiant Mother asked her congregants if anyone had a question for the spirits, or if any person present wished to attempt contact with some deceased individual.

  A number of questions were answered, dealing with the usual matters of marriage and divorce, reassurances of improved health, and counseling as to investments and careers.

  An elderly congregant who was present stated that her husband had died the previous week, and she sought affirmation of his happiness “on the other side.”

  The Radiant Mother moaned. Then she muttered incoherently. All of this was as usual at the beginning of her trances. Shortly the medium’s vocal quality altered. Her normally soft, rather pleasant and distinctly feminine voice dropped in register until it suggested that of a man. Simultaneously, her contemporary Californian diction turned to the twang of a rural New Englander.

  While the sound quality of this tape is excellent, the medium’s diction was unfortunately not so. The resulting record is necessarily fragmentary. As nearly as it has been transcribed, this is it:

  “Wilmarth…Wilmarth…back. Have come…Antares… Neptune, Pluto, Yuggoth. Yes, Wilmarth. Yug —

  “Are you… If I cannot receive… Windham County… yes, Townshend… round hill. Wilmarth still alive? Then who… son, son…

  “… ever receives… communicate enough Akeley, 176 Pleasant… go, California. Son, see if you can find my old friend Albert Wilmarth… chusetts…

  “With wings. Twisted ropes for heads and blood like plant sap… Flying, flying, and all the while a gramophone recordi… must apologize to Wilmarth if he’s still alive, but I also have the most wonderful news, the most wonderful tales to tell him…

  “… and its smaller satellites, well, I don’t suppose anyone will believe me, of course, but not only is Yuggoth there, revolving regularly except in an orbit at right angles to the plane of the ecliptic, no wonder no one believed in it, but what I must describe to you, Albert, the planet glows with a heat and a demoniacal ruby glare that illuminates its own… thon and Zaman, Thog and Thok, I could hardly believe my own…

  “… goid beings who cannot… corporeally… Neptune… central caverns of a dark star beyond the rim of the galaxy its…

  “… wouldn’t call her beautiful, of course… dinary terms… than an arachnid and a cetacean, and yet, could a spider and dolphin by some miracle establish mental communion, who knows what…not really a name as you normally think of names, but… Sh’ch’rrru’a… of Aldebaran, the eleventh, has a constellation of inhabited moons, which… independently, or perhaps at some earlier time, travelling by means simi…

  “… ummate in metal canisters, will be necessary to… aid in obtaining… fair exchange, for the donors will receive a far greater boon in the form …”

  At this point the vocal coherence, such as it is, breaks down. The male voice with its New England twang cracks and rises in tone even as the words are replaced by undecipherable mumbles. Mother A
keley recovers from her trance state, and the séance draws quickly to a close. From the internal evidence of the contents of the tape, the Radiant Mother had no awareness of the message, or narration, delivered by the male voice speaking through her. This also is regarded, among psychic and spiritualistic circles, as quite the usual state of affairs with trance mediums.

  *

  Authorities next became aware of unusual activities through a copy of the Vermont Unidentified Flying Object Intelligencer, or Vufoi. Using a variety of the customary cover names and addresses for the purpose, such Federal agencies as the FBI, NSA, Department of Defense, NASA, and National Atmospheric and Oceanographic Agency subscribe regularly to publications of organizations like the Vermont UFO Intelligence Bureau and other self-appointed investigatory bodies.

  The President of the Vermont UFO Intelligence Bureau and editor of its Intelligencer was identified as one Ezra Noyes. Noyes was known to reside with his parents (Ezra was nineteen years of age at the time) in the community of Dark Mountain, Windham County. Noyes customarily prepared Vufoi issues himself, assembling material both from outside sources and from members of the Vermont UFO Intelligence Bureau, most of whom were former high school friends now employed by local merchants or farmers, or attending Windham County Community College in Townshend.

  Noyes would assemble his copy, type it onto mimeograph stencils using a portable machine set up on the kitchen table, and run off copies on a superannuated mimeograph kept beside the washer and dryer in the basement. The last two items prepared for each issue were “Vufoi Voice” and “From the Editor’s Observatory,” commenting in one case flippantly and in the other seriously, on the contents of the issue. “Vufoi Voice” was customarily illustrated with a crude cartoon of a man wearing an astronaut’s headgear, and was signed “Cap’n Oof-oh.” “From the Editor’s Observatory” was illustrated with a drawing of an astronomical telescope with a tiny figure seated at the eyepiece, and was signed “Intelligencer.”