Terrors (17 page)

The town of Dunwich had neither grown nor changed noticeably from the illustrations
and descriptions Cordelia Whateley had studied in preparation for her visit to the region. Authorities in the United States had been reluctant to send materials dealing with Dunwich out of the country, even to so friendly a neighbor as that to the north, but a friend of Miss Whateley’s at the University of Massachusetts had managed to borrow many such documents and share them with the
researcher by means of electronic transmission.

As Cordelia Whateley motored down Winthrop Street toward South Water, she noticed that Osborne’s Store still stood at the corner of Winthrop and Blindford. Beside it, a grimy-windowed establishment advertised EATS and ALE. No other name identified the establishment, but after a lifetime in which her world had become increasingly dominated by malls
and franchise enterprises, Cordelia Whateley found the survival of Osborne’s Store and of an establishment identified solely as EATS and ALE oddly comforting.

Opposite Osborne’s Store stood a steepled, greystone building. Cordelia tried to make out the device that topped the steeple. In the darkness she could not be certain, but she thought it was the same ensign she had seen on the uniforms
of the guards at the Dunwich Research Project. Lights flickered inside the building, and the sound of chanting could be heard.

She located the Dunwich Institute and stood before its Spartan
exterior, searching for a means of admittance. The Institute was located in a building of Colonial architecture, but rather than serving as a source of elegance and charm, the frame construction with its chipped
and faded whitewash and its black front door surmounted by a dust-shrouded fanlight, caused a shudder to pass through her body.

Beside the door a rectangular brass plate, once gleaming but now covered with a patina of dullness, still bore the legend,
Dunwich Institute—founded 1928—Henry Armitage, Ph.D. President
. Cordelia Whateley searched for a doorbell, and, failing to locate one, instead reached
for the brass knocker bolted to the wooden door. The knocker, covered with the same dull patina as the plate, was shaped like a creature differing from any Cordelia Whateley had ever before seen. It bore many tentacles, and great staring eyes, and from it there seemed to seep a miasma of pure evil such as she had never in her life encountered.

Cordelia Whateley had taken her large, well-filled
purse with her when she left her automobile. Now, having retrieved the purse and clutching it with one hand, she drew a breath, grasped the brass creature, raised it and let it fall. It struck with a loud, metallic sound of unpleasant nature. Cordelia Whateley found herself staring from her hand to the knocker, and then to her hand once again. Surely the knocker was of brass: of old, tarnished brass.
Why, then, did her hand feel as if her fingers had grasped the rubbery, slimy, moist tentacles of a living creature? And why, when she released the door-knocker, had it seemed to cling stubbornly to her fingers so that she had to pull them away to gain her release?

She had not long to ponder the problem, for the door drew back noisily on rusted hinges and she stood face to face with an aged individual
who blinked at her with faded, rheumy eyes. He stood well over six feet in height. His sparse hair was pure white and his face bore an expression of despair overlaid with chronic fear.

“I am Henry Armitage,” the old man said. “Who are you, young woman, and what do you want of me?”

Cordelia Whateley was taken aback by the old man’s appearance but she had rehearsed for this moment and she delivered
the lines she had prepared. “I—I am Cordelia Whateley. From McGill University. I—I wrote to you about my work, and you sent me this reply.” She held Armitage’s own letter so he could see it in the yellow light filtering from behind
him. Was it possible? Yes, the Institute building was illuminated by oil-lamp and candle. With a chilling shock she realized that she had not seen an electric appliance
or even a gaslight in Dunwich.

Although Cordelia Whateley had
arrived in Dunwich Country at an hour when the afternoon sunlight was still fairly bright, here in the narrow streets of the town itself a darkness had descended that was not the comforting, pleasant darkness of a New England evening. Involuntarily, Cordelia Whateley looked behind her. The streets of Dunwich seemed abnormally empty
of pedestrian traffic, and the few canvas-covered vehicles that moved on the old streets seemed almost to huddle within themselves as they passed.

Armitage extended a thin hand covered with pale, wrinkled skin. “Come in. You are late. Almost too late. I receive very few visitors. I expected you earlier in the day.”

Cordelia Whateley followed Armitage into the ancient building. An almost palpable
miasma of age and decay seemed to arise from the heavy furnishings and threadbare carpet. Armitage indicated an overstuffed chair covered in faded velvet. Cordelia Whateley lowered herself carefully into it.

“I would have been here earlier,” she tried to explain, “but—”

“But you went to Sentinel Hill, didn’t you?” Armitage cut her off.

“Yes, I—”

“You tried to get into the Project. The Dunwich
Research Project. I was afraid of that. You’re very lucky indeed.”

“Lucky? I don’t understand. I—” Cordelia Whateley put her hand to her forehead. “I’m so sorry. Could I have a glass of water? I’m afraid I’m feeling faint.”

While Armitage was out of the room, Cordelia Whateley studied its contents as best she could without leaving her chair. The walls were covered with glass-fronted bookcases,
all of them filled to their limits. Many were locked. The books themselves, for the most part, looked ancient. The bindings were tattered; such lettering as Cordelia Whateley could make out was faded. In size, the volumes ranged from huge tomes that would cover a desktop if opened, to tiny items little larger than a common postage stamp.

Her eye was caught in particular by a small book, little
more than a pamphlet, in fact, with an illustration on its cover. The illustration, barely visible in the yellow light of the dark, musty room, seemed a crude representation of the door-knocker that Cordelia Whateley had handled at this very building. The slim book was bound in black leather, and its title, embossed in gold lettering in an obsolete typeface, read simply,
De Obéissance à les Maîtres
Vieux
.

Henry Armitage’s hand on her shoulder startled Cordelia Whateley. She gasped and turned. He extended a glass toward her. It might once have been part of a set of fine crystal but its rim now showed a jagged chip, its sides were streaked and the water it contained was of a vaguely unpleasant color and odor. Cordelia Whateley accepted the vessel and took one reluctant sip of its contents
before placing it on a dust-coated table.

“You asked why I thought you lucky,” Armitage said. “Visitors to the Project sometimes disappear. Young Selena Bishop went up there last spring and hasn’t been heard of since. In Dunwich Town, people don’t like to receive an invitation to visit the Project.”

“But then,” Cordelia Whateley frowned, “why do they go? Why don’t they just refuse to go?”

“When you’re summoned to the Project, you go. That’s the way it is in Dunwich Town.”

“But people could just move away, couldn’t they? Don’t the buses run? And the Aylesbury Pike is nearby. It’s only an hour or two to Boston by automobile.”

“You don’t leave Dunwich Country as easily as you might think, young miss. No, not if
they
want you to stay here. Rice and Morgan thought they could leave.
They learned better. I’m the only one left now, of the three of us. I was the oldest, and you’d think I’d be long gone by now. But Rice was buried at sea and Morgan was cremated. They’d both left instructions that, whatever happened,
they were not to be interred in Dunwich Country
.”

He clapped his hands, and the sound was like an exclamation mark at the end of his sentence. Then he resumed. “The
undertaker, Hopkins, respected their wishes. I made him do that. He wanted to bury ’em, he wanted to bury ’em in the town graveyard out near Jacob’s Pond, but I wouldn’t let him. We had a terrible battle, believe me, young miss. But if I ever see Rice and Morgan again—I don’t expect to, I don’t think we get to go on once our flesh is finished, but I could be wrong, and if I am, and if I ever see
Rice and Morgan again, I’m sure they’ll thank me for making that fool Hopkins do what they wanted him to do.”

He stopped, short of breath after his long statement. But before
Cordelia Whateley could speak, he put a question to her. “How old do you think I am, young miss?”

She looked at him appraisingly. Her own great-grandfather, Cain Whateley, had lived to 109, and Armitage looked every bit
as old as Cain had in his last days. “I’ve read what I can find about the horror, and it says that you had a white beard in 1928. If you are the same Dr. Armitage …”

He gave her a sly grin. “You’ve done your homework. I’d expect as much of an undecayed Whateley. I think I see a tinge of the Wizard himself in your face. Yes, I’m the same Henry Armitage. Shaved off my beard in ’42. Hoped to get
into the army then, and get out of Dunwich Country.
They
were onto me, though. Said I was too old, but I’d shaved it off by then so I kept it off.”

“But if you’re the same Henry Armitage –” Cordelia Whateley looked longingly at the chipped goblet of water but could not bring herself to take another sip. “You were an old man in 1928, and that was nearly seventy years ago. That’s impossible. You’d
have to be –”

“Yes,” he nodded, “I was almost eighty in 1928. I’m afraid I’ve given up on ever leaving Dunwich, but if the town is still here in a few years, I hope you’ll come to my 150th birthday party.”

He stood over her, reached down and patted her on the knee. Could this incredibly old man be—Cordelia Whateley shook her head. She must have misread the look in his eye. What she thought for
a moment she had seen there was impossible.

She said, “I don’t mean to keep you up. I could come back in the morning. I mean,” she made a show of looking at the battery-powered watch on her wrist. She frowned and held it closer to the nearest oil-lamp. “I just put a new battery in,” she muttered.

Armitage smiled. “Electrical implements don’t always work well in Dunwich. You did drive here, did
you not, young miss?”

Cordelia Whateley nodded.

“You may have trouble starting your car in the morning.”

“But –”

“Never mind. We can dine at the inn. Then we can return here and I will assist you with your work as best I can. I have always felt a certain sense of—well, obligation is not exactly the word, but it will do—toward the Whateleys.”

Cordelia Whateley was flustered. “You’re very kind,
Professor. But you need your sleep. A man your age –”

“I do not sleep,” Armitage replied. “Come, let us go to the inn. We can walk from here.”

They walked from the Dunwich Institute back past Osborne’s Store. The inn to which Armitage referred was not the restaurant Cordelia Whateley had seen, but another, located in a building that must have existed since the days of King George III and Governor
Winthrop. They were waited on by a young woman—she could hardly have been into her teens, Cordelia Whateley realized—who seemed terrified of Henry Armitage. Armitage whispered a few words to the waitress, who nodded and disappeared into the kitchen, her long skirts brushing the floor behind her. Apparently Armitage had ordered for both of them, a custom that had gone out of fashion in Cordelia
Whateley’s world long ago.

Cordelia Whateley looked around the room. Dour New Englanders of past centuries frowned down from framed canvases that lined the old wood-paneled walls. A small fire struggled fitfully to survive on a gray stone hearth. The only other illumination was furnished by oil-lamps. Beside the hearth a musician sat upon a high stool, picking out a tune on a stringed instrument
that Cordelia Whateley did not recognize. The tune, however, seemed vaguely familiar: it was a transcription of a piano composition by the mad Russian composer Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin.

The musician was a woman. At first glance she appeared to be aged, perhaps as much so as Henry Armitage himself, but as Cordelia Whateley studied the woman she realized that her hair was that of the albino
rather than the crone. In her features, Cordelia Whateley suspected that she could detect a hint of the legendary Lavinia Whateley or—perhaps—of herself.

Without ceasing to play, the woman raised her eyes from the fingerboard of her instrument and focused them upon Cordelia Whateley. Even in the faint light of wood flame and oil-lamp, it was clear that those eyes were hopelessly clouded by milk-white
cataracts, cataracts the color of the woman’s wild albino hair.

The only customers aside from Cordelia Whateley and Henry Armitage were a group of dark-clad persons wearing the uniform and insignia of the Dunwich Research Project.

After a few minutes one of them, a gray-haired, severe-visaged woman, approached their table. “Professor Armitage,” she said sharply, “I didn’t know that you had invited
a guest to visit you.”

Armitage said, “I didn’t invite her. She wrote and said she was coming from Canada. I couldn’t prevent.”

I couldn’t prevent
, Cordelia mused. What an odd expression.

The uniformed woman nodded angrily and returned to her own table. Henry Armitage had not introduced Cordelia Whateley to her.

The waitress reappeared with a tray of dishes and glasses. A dust-coated bottle
stood on the tray as well. The waitress set the dishes and bottle on the table. Cordelia Whateley’s dish held a slab of very rare meat—she assumed that it was beef. It was set off by a portion of broccoli and several very small roasted potatoes. Henry Armitage’s dish was empty save for a sprig of parsley.

“Is that all you’re going to eat?” Cordelia Whateley asked.

Armitage shook his head. “I
have had my nourishment.”

“But—I could have come here alone for dinner. You didn’t need to –”

“It is not good to be alone on the streets of Dunwich after dark, young miss.” Armitage reached across the table and took Cordelia Whateley by the wrist. He held her briefly, then dropped his own hand to his lap. He wore a threadbare black suit, a white shirt with a frayed collar, and a bow tie in an
abstract print that Cordelia Whateley found almost hypnotic in the flickering yellow light of the oil-lamp on their table.