The Doom That Came to Dunwich

by Richard A. Lupoff

  Voice #5. Please don’t be sarcastic, Mr. Noyes. (Pauses.) I mean intelligent, possibly hominoid but non-human creatures. Their configuration may vary, but some of them, at least, I believe would have large, membranous wings, probably stretched over a bony or veinous framework in the fashion of bats’ or insects’ wings. Also, some of them may be carrying artifacts such as polished metallic cylinders of a size capable of containing a — of containing, uh, a human — a human — brain. (Sounds of distress, possible sobbing.)

  Voice #4: Miss Akeley? Are you all right, Miss Akeley?

  Voice #5: I’m sorry. Yes, I’m all right.

  Voice #4: I didn’t mean to be so hard on you, Miss Akeley. It’s just that we get a lot of crank calls. People wanting to talk to the little green men and that kind of thing. I had to make sure that you weren’t —

  Voice #5: I understand. And you have had —

  Voice #4: I’m reluctant to say too much on the phone. Miss Akeley, do you think you could get here? There have been sightings. And there are older ones. Records in the local papers. A rash of incidents about fifty years ago. And others farther back. There was a monograph by an Eli Davenport over in New Hampshire back in the 1830s, I’ve got a Xerox of it…

  *

  Shortly after her telephone conversation with Ezra Noyes, Elizabeth Akeley appealed to Vernon Whiteside for assistance. “I don’t want to go alone,” she is reported as saying. “If only Marc were here, I know he’d help me. He’d go with me. But he’s with his family and I can’t wait till he gets back. We’ll have to close the church. No, no we won’t. We can have a lay reader conduct the worship services. We can suspend the message services ‘til I get back. Will you help me, Vernon?”

  Whiteside, maintaining his cover as the sexton of the Brotherhood, assured Akeley. “Anything the Radiant Mother wishes, ma’am. What would you like me to do?”

  “Can you get away for a few days? I have to go to Vermont. Would you book two tickets for us? There are church funds to cover the cost.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Whiteside lowered his head. “Best way would be via Logan International in Boston, then a Boston and Maine train to Newfane and Hardwick.”

  Akeley made no comment on the sexton’s surprising familiarity with transcontinental air routes or with the railroad service between Boston and upper New England. She was obviously in an agitated state, Whiteside reported when he checked in with his superiors prior to their departure from San Diego.

  Two days later the Negro sexton and the Radiant Mother climbed down from B & M train #5508 at Hardwick, Vermont. They were met at the town’s rundown and musty-smelling station by Ezra Noyes. Noyes was driving his parents’ 1959 Nash Ambassador station wagon and willingly loaded Akeley’s and Whiteside’s meager baggage into the rear cargo deck of the vehicle.

  Ezra chauffeured the visitors to his parents’ home. The house, a gambrel — roofed structure of older design, was fitted for a larger family than the two senior Noyeses and their son Ezra; in fact, an elder son and daughter had both married and departed Windham County for locales of greater stimulation and professional opportunity, leaving two surplus bedrooms in the Noyes home.

  Young Noyes proposed that he invite the full membership of the Vermont UFO Intelligence Bureau to attend an extraordinary meeting, to convene without delay at his home. Both Elizabeth Akeley and Vernon Whiteside demurred, pleading fatigue at the end of their transcontinental flight as well as the temporary debilitation of jet lag.

  Noyes agreed reluctantly to abandon his plan for the meeting, but was eager to offer his own services and assistance to Akeley and Whiteside. Elizabeth informed Ezra Noyes that she had received instructions to meet a visitor at a specific location near the town of Passumpsic in neighboring Caledonia County. She did not explain to Noyes the method of her receiving these instructions, but Vernon’s later report indicated that he was aware of them, the instructions having been delivered to Miss Akeley in spontaneous trance sessions, the tapes of which he had also audited.

  It must be again emphasized at this point that the voice heard on the spontaneous trance tapes was, in different senses, both that of Miss Akeley and of another personage. The pitch and accent, as has been stated, were those of an elderly male speaking in a semi-archaic New England twang while the vocal apparatus itself was unquestionably that of Elizabeth Akeley, neé Elizabeth Maude Pelley.

  Miss Akeley’s instructions were quite specific in terms of geography, although it was found odd that they referred only to landmarks and highway or road facilities known to exist in the late 1920s. Young Noyes was able to provide alternate routes for such former roadways as had been closed when superseded by more modern construction.

  Before retiring, Elizabeth Akeley placed a telephone call to the home of Marc Feinman’s parents in the Bronx. In this call she urged Feinman to join her in Vermont. Feinman responded that his father, at the urging of himself and his mother, had consented to undergo major surgery. Marc promised to travel to Vermont and rendezvous with Akeley at the earliest feasible time, but indicated that he felt obliged to remain with his parents until the surgery was completed and his father’s recovery assured.

  The following morning Elizabeth Akeley set out for Passumpsic. She was accompanied by Vernon Whiteside and traveled in the Nash Ambassador station wagon driven by Ezra Noyes.

  Her instructions had contained very specific and very emphatic requirements that she keep the rendezvous alone, although others might provide transportation and wait while the meeting took place. The party who had summoned Elizabeth Akeley to the rendezvous had not, to this time, been identified, although it was believed to be the owner of the male voice and New England twang who had spoken through Elizabeth herself in her trances.

  Prior to their departing Windham County for Caledonia County, a discussion took place between Akeley and Whiteside. Whiteside appealed to Elizabeth Akeley to permit him to accompany her to the rendezvous.

  That would be impossible, Akeley stated.

  Whiteside pointed out Elizabeth’s danger, in view of the unknown identity of the other party. When Akeley remained adamant, Whiteside gave in and agreed to remain with Ezra Noyes during the meeting. It must be pointed out that at this time the dialog was not cast in the format of a highly trained and responsible agent of the Federal establishment, and an ordinary citizen; rather, the façade which Whiteside rightly although with difficulty maintained was that of a sexton of the Spiritual Light Brotherhood acting under the authority of and in the service of the Radiant Mother of the Church.

  Akeley was fitted with a concealed microphone which transmitted on a frequency capable of being picked up by a small microcassette recorder which Whiteside was to keep with him in or near the Nash station wagon; additionally, an earphone ran from the recorder so that Whiteside was enabled to monitor the taped information in real time.

  The Nash Ambassador crossed the county line from Windham into Caledonia on a two-lane county highway. This had been a dirt road in the 1920s, blacktopped with Federal funds administered by the Works Progress Administration under Franklin Roosevelt, and superseded by a nearby four-lane asphalt highway built during the Eisenhower Presidency. The blacktop received minimal maintenance, and only pressure from local members of the Vermont legislature, this brought in turn at the insistence of local residents who used the highway for access to Passumpsic, South Londonderry, and Bellows Falls, prevented the State from declaring the highway closed and striking it from official roadmaps.

  Reaching the town of Passumpsic, Akeley, who had never previously traveled farther east than Indianapolis, Indiana, told Ezra to proceed 800 yards, at which point the car was to be halted. Ezra complied. At the appointed spot, Akeley left the car and opened a gate in the wooden fence fronting the highway.

  Noyes pulled the wagon from the highway through the gate and found himself on a narrow track that had once been a small dirt road, long since abandoned and overgrown.

  This track led away from the highway and into hill
y farm country, years before abandoned by the poor farmers of the region that lay between Passumpsic and Lyndonville.

  Finally, having rounded an ancient dome-topped protuberance that stood between the station wagon and any possible visual surveillance from the blacktop highway or even the overgrown dirt road, the Nash halted, unable to continue. The vegetation hereabouts was of a peculiar nature. While most of the region consisted of thin, played-out soil whose poor fertility was barely adequate to sustain a covering of tall grasses and undersized, gnarly-trunked trees, in the small area set off by the dome-topped hill the growth was thick, lush and luxuriant.

  However, there was a peculiar quality to the vegetation, a characteristic which even the most learned botanist would have been hard pressed to identify, and yet which was undeniably present. It was as if the vegetation were too vibrantly alive, as if it sucked greedily at the earth for nourishment and by so doing robbed the countryside for a mile or more in every direction of sustenance.

  Through an incongruously luxuriant copse of leafy trees a small building could be seen, clearly a shack of many years’ age and equally clearly of long abandonment. The door hung angularly from a single rusted hinge, the windows were cracked or missing altogether and spiders had filled the empty frames with their own geometric handiwork. The paint, if ever the building had known the touch of a painter’s brush, had long since flaked away and been blown to oblivion by vagrant tempests, and the bare wood beneath had been cracked by scores of winters and bleached by as many summers’ suns.

  Elizabeth Akeley looked once at the ramshackle structure, nodded to herself and set out slowly to walk to it. Vernon Whiteside placed himself at her elbow and Ezra Noyes set a pace a short stride behind the others, but Akeley halted at once, turned and gestured silently but decisively to them both to remain behind. She then resumed her progress through the copse.

  Whiteside watched Elizabeth Akeley proceeding slowly but with apparently complete self-possession through the wooded area. She halted just outside the shack, leaned forward and slightly to one side as if peering through a cobwebbed window frame, then proceeded again. She tugged at the door, managed to drag it open with a squeal of rusted metal and protesting wood and disappeared inside the shack.

  “Are you just going to let her go like that?” Ezra Noyes demanded of Whiteside. “How do you know who’s in there? What if it’s a Beta Reticulan? What if it’s a Moth Man? What if there’s a whole bunch of aliens in there? They might have a tunnel from the shack to their saucer. The whole thing might be a front. Shouldn’t we go after her?”

  Whiteside shook his head. “Mother Akeley issued clear instructions, Ezra. We are to wait here.” He reached inside his jacket and unobtrusively flicked on the concealed microcassette recorder. When he pulled his hand from his pocket be brought with it the earphone. He adjusted it carefully in his ear.

  “Oh, I didn’t know you were deaf,” Noyes said.

  “Just a little,” Whiteside replied.

  “Well, what are we going to do?” Ezra asked him.

  “I shall wait for the Radiant Mother,” Whiteside told him. “There is nothing to fear. Have faith in the Spiritual Light, little brother, and your footsteps will be illuminated.”

  “Oh.” Ezra made a sour face and climbed onto the roof of Ambassador. He seated himself there cross-legged to watch for any evidence of activity at the shack.

  Vernon Whiteside also kept watch on the shack, but chiefly he was listening to the voices transmitted by the cordless microphone concealed behind Elizabeth Akeley’s lapel. Excerpts from the transcript later made of these transmissions follow.

  Microcassette, August 8, 1979

  Voice #5 (Elizabeth Akeley): Hello? Hello? Is there —

  Voice #6 (Unidentified voice; oddly metallic intonation; accent similar to male New England twang present in San Diego trance tapes): Come in, come in, don’t be afraid.

  Voice #5: It’s so dark in here.

  Voice #6: I’m sorry. Move carefully. You are perfectly safe but there is some delicate apparatus set up.

  (Sounds of movement, feet shuffling, breathing, a certain vague buzzing sound. Creak as of a person sitting in an old wooden rocking chair.)

  Voice #5: I can hardly see. Where are you?

  Voice #6: The cells are very sensitive. My friends are not here. You are not Albert Wilmarth.

  Voice #5: No, I don’t even —

  Voice #6: (Interrupting) Oh, my God! Of course not. It’s been so — tell me, what year is this?

  Voice #5: 1979.

  Voice #6: Poor Albert. Poor Albert. He could have come along. But of course he — what did you say your name was, young woman?

  Voice #5: Akeley. Elizabeth Akeley.

  (Silence. Buzzing sound. A certain unsettling sound as of wings rustling, but wings larger than those of any creature known to be native to Vermont.)

  Voice #6: Do not taunt me, young woman!

  Voice #5: Taunt you? Taunt you?

  Voice #6: Do you know who I am? Does the name Henry Wentworth Akeley mean nothing to you?

  (Pause…buzzing…rustling.)

  Voice #5: Yes! Yes! Oh, oh, this is incredible! This is wonderful! It means — Yes, my grandfather spoke of you. If you’re really — My grandfather was George Akeley. He — we —

  Voice #6: (Interrupting) Then I am your great-grandfather, Miss Akeley. I regret that I cannot offer you my hand. George Akeley was my son. Tell me, is he still alive?

  Voice #5: No, he — he died. He died in 1971, eight years ago. I was a little girl, but I remember him speaking of his father in Vermont. He said you disappeared mysteriously. But he always expected to hear from you again. He even founded a church. The Spiritual Light Brotherhood. He never lost faith.

  I have continued his work. Waiting for word from — beyond. That’s why I came when I — when I started receiving messages.

  Voice #6: Thank you. Thank you, Elizabeth. Perhaps I should not have stayed away so long, but the vistas, my child, the vistas! How old did you say you were?

  Voice #5: Why — why — 18. Almost 19.

  (Buzzing.)

  Voice #6: You have followed my directions, Elizabeth? You are alone? Yes? Good. The cells are very sensitive. I can see you, even in this darkness, even if you cannot see me. Elizabeth, I have been gone from Earth for half a century, yet I am no older than the day I — departed — in the year 1928. The sights I have seen, the dimensions and the galaxies I have visited! Not alone, my child. Of course not alone. Those ones who took me — ah, child! Human flesh is too weak, too fragile to travel beyond the earth.

  Voice #5: But there are spacesuits. Rockets. Capsules. Oh, I suppose that was after your time. But we’ve visited the moon. We’ve sent instruments to Venus and Mars and the moons of Jupiter.

  Voice #6: And what you know is what Columbus might have learned of the New World, by paddling a rowboat around the port of Cadiz! Those ones who took me, those Old Ones! They can fly between the worlds on their great ribbed wings! They can span the very aether of space as a dragonfly flits across the surface of a pond! They are the greatest scientists, the greatest naturalists, the greatest anthropologists, the greatest explorers in the universe! Those whom they select to accompany them, if they cannot survive the ultimate vacuum of space, the Old Ones discard their bodies and seal their brains in metal canisters and carry them from world to world, from star to burning, glittering star!

  (Buzzing, loud sound of rustling.)

  Voice #5: Then — you have been to other worlds? Other planets, other physical worlds. Not other planes of spiritual existence. Our congregants believe —

  Voice #6: (Interrupting) Your congregants doubtlessly believe poppycock. Yes, I have been to other worlds. I have seen all the planets of the solar system, from little, sterile Mercury to giant, distant Yuggoth.

  Voice #5: Distant Yu — Yuggoth?

  Voice #6: Yes, yes. I suppose those fool astronomers have yet to find it, but it is the gem and the glory of the solar system, glow
ing with its own ruby-red glare. It revolves in its own orbit, turned ninety degrees from the plane of the ecliptic. No wonder they’ve never seen it. They don’t know where to look. Yet it perturbs the paths of Neptune and Pluto. That ought to be clue enough! Yuggoth is very nearly a sun. It possesses its own corps of worldlets, Nithon, Zaman, the miniature twins Thog and Thok! And there is life there! There is the Ghooric Zone where bloated shoggoths splash and spawn!

  Voice #5: I can’t — I can’t believe all this! My own great-grandpa! Planets and beasts…

  Voice #6: Yuggoth was merely the beginning for me. Those Ones carried me far away from the sun. I have seen the worlds that circle Arcturus and Centaurus, Wolf and Barnard’s Star and Beta Reticuli. I have seen creatures whose physical embodiment would send a sane man mad into screaming nightmares of horror that never ends and whose minds and souls would put to shame the proudest achievements of Einstein and Schopenhauer, Confucius and Plato, the Enlightened One and the Anointed One! And I have known love, child, love such as no earthbound mortal has ever known.

  Voice #5: Lo — love, great-grandfather?

  (Sound of buzzing, loud and agitated rustling of wings.)

  Voice #6: You know about love, surely, Elizabeth. Doesn’t your church preach a gospel of love? In fifty-seven years on this planet I never came across a church that didn’t claim that. And have you known love? A girl your age, surely you’ve known the feeling by now.

  Voice #5: Yes, great-grandfather.

  Voice #6: Is it merely a physical attraction, Elizabeth? Do you believe that souls can love? Or do you believe in such things as souls? Can minds love one another?

  Voice #5: All three. All three of those.

  Voice #6: Good. Yes, all three. And when two beings love with their minds and their souls, they yearn also for bodies with which to express their love. Hence the physical manifestation of love. (Pause.) Excuse me, child. In a way I suppose I’m nothing but an old man rambling on about abstractions. You have a young man, have you?