The Dunwich Romance (2 page)

When Sary swallowed, she was impacted by the feeling of one having just been dropped into a mile-deep abysm, and as the revolting taste began to trail down to her stomach, Rufus had already pushed her on her back. “Naow we’ll git’cha some cum in yew’re baby-maker”—he paused on a reflection, then blurted excitedly, “Ee-yuh! We’ll make ya a
Rufus
baby! Then, in nine months, when it come out? I’ll cut’cher tits off so’s it’ll starve ta death!” and as Rufus prepared to rape Sary, she unwisely pointed to the aggressor’s erection, laughed, and offered, “Why,
dang,
fat-boy! Yew’re dick’s even littler than yer daddy’s!” This, by the way, was true, and also a verisimilitude Rufus did not appreciate being reminded of.

Rufus’ face went blank. “Aw, naow, Stew Face shouldn’t arter’ve said that,” and then his face bucked forward with a grimace, and he snorted fiercely, launching dual plumes of mucus out of his nostrils and into Sary’s face. Sary froze in mortification, and more so when Rufus was kind enough to spread the mucus around with his big hand. Already he’d pinned her immobile to the ground via the placement of his knees into her elbows. He grabbed her head and forced it to one side, then whistled again for his mascot. “Heer, Brooter! Heer, boy!” The sated animal jumped up to tend to its master as its master had brushed aside Sary’s hair in order to divulge her remaining ear.

“Sic, boy! Sic!” Rufus snarled. “Bite that ear
clean off!
”

Sary screamed as the unhinged canine surged forward with snapping jaws, and when said jaws had just begun to close over her ear, Sary screamed all the louder.

“
Eat
that ear, boy!
Goooooooood
dawg!”

Against the ear, the jaws pulled; Sary could feel the beginnings of connective tissue tearing, even over her outraged screams. What had she done to warrant so brutal a molestation?
Gawd DANG, Gawd!
came her protestation.
I’se sorry fer bein’ a whore but, holy bull-flop! What choice I got things bein’ the way they is?
I.e, in spite of her horror, Sary was indignant.
Yew think mebbe Yew could have Jesus help me?

Another few seconds were all that would be necessary for the canine to detach Sary’s ear from her head, but in slightly
less
time than that...

An oddly angled shadow darkened the scene—and Brooter...released Sary’s ear, yelped, and drew away, hunched down as if threatened by some awesome adversary.

“Brooter? What’s wrong with yew, huh, boy?” Rufus complained. “Durn’t ya wanna eat on this dutty fuck-pot’s ear?” but then Rufus turned and looked up into the direction to which his animal’s attention had been so abruptly diverted. At once came an eardrum-quaking—

BAM!

—so loud the sequent concussion caused the surrounding air to
thump.
The foam-mouthed canine yelped again and flipped completely around in mid-air. The unbidden somersault dropped the dog flat and dead, and half of its cranial matter had expeditiously launched from its skull.

“Why, ya done kilt my—” Rufus began to rage, but then all objections ceased when his vision acknowledged to his brain, first, an obvious firearm—a large revolver, a Webley .455, to be precise—and, second, the source of the awkward shadow.

It was a man—or some horrific
exaggeration
of a man—cumbersomely jointed as if afflicted by some disorder of the bones, the crown of whose head ran amok with dark crinkly hair, and who stood over seven feet tall. This intruder—if that he really be—wore huge, hand-sewn boots, trousers of tent-canvas, and, oddly, an overlarge long-sleeved shirt buttoned tightly at the collar and cuffs in spite of the day’s warmth.

Rufus’ eyes slowly opened wide enough as to be lidless, and he choked out this fear-imbued acknowledgment: “Yuh-yuh-yuh-yuh...
yew
...”

The colossan responded, “‘T’would only be a man with a soul made’a pig shit ta dew suthin’ to a gull like what
ye’re
doin’ ta that ‘un,” yet the vociferation sounded unrepresentative of any human voice to ever register in Rufus’ ears. The words issued resonant yet shallow; tenuous yet at the same time deep as a basso choirist; and, ever more odd,
mumbly
as though the heavily lipped mouth were attempting to speak around solid obstacles; or as if the vocal organs themselves suffered from some manner of maladaptation.

In truth, however, the voice could be better described, to those more imaginative, as otherworldly.

Rufus, even in spite of his urine-releasing fear, found himself able to challenge, “Yew’re thet warlock’s grandkid, and thet retart witch Lavinny’s son!”

The titan intruder stared, his face obscured by half-shadows.

“An’-an’-an’-they’se ben some
kids
missin’ thet them daown at Osborn’s say
yew
snatched—fer warlockin’n’
spells!
”

“Dun’t talk of what ye know nuthin’ abaout,” responded the peculiar voice.

“An’-an’-an’...yew kilt my
dog!
”

“Yer dog all savage and askew in its head from bad raisin’—like ye.
Lotta
dogs like that raound heer—so’s I kill ‘em. Whether a man or a dog, if it’s ugly in its head, it dun’t desarve ta be a-livin’. Kilt a Hutchins’ dog, wal, ten yeer ago, too, ‘cos it were jess as crazy as this ‘un. Made me happy, it did, to feed that animal’s carcass ta the hogs. T’would make me jess as happy ta do likewise with ye. ”

Rufus began to crawl backward, absorbing the monstrosity’s implication. “Daon’t yew do nuthin’ ta me! My pa’ll come awf-tuh yew!”

Some perverted facsimile of a chuckle escaped the giant’s lips. “Yer pa say the same thing way back when, and he in a wheelchar naow. But dun’t worry—I en’t gonna kill ye”—then, with a remarkable agility, the tall shape reached down with speed like a mouse trap, snapped a hand to Rufus’ bare groin—“but it weren’t good to see what yew were a-doin’ ta that gull, so’s I figger it best ta crunch these up, on accaount the likes’a ye dun’t need ta be reproducin’ none”—and then, amid a grisly and most noisome sound, crushed Rufus’ testicles within the scrotal sack.

Rufus’ vocal reaction was less like a man’s scream and more like the outright caterwaul of some beast of Mastodonic proportions. He bucked against the ground, his plentiful body-fat jiggling. The colossan felt the ruffian’s testes begrudgingly divide and sub-divide into cohered chunks, then said chunks were fractionated as well, until only an oatmeal-like slush remained extant within the malodorous scrotum.

The desired effect was, hence, achieved; the giant figure’s actions left Rufus transformed into
pain incarnate.
He flopped ludicrously on the ground as his caterwaul sputtered down; then, with a face ballooned and reddened, he began a haphazard crawl over the fence, his trousers still down, and one hand to the ill-treated scrotum. Agony hoarsened his words: “I’se a-tellin’ my pa’n my Uncle Will, tew!”

“Jess ye dew that,” the titan replied in a clipped garble, “an’ I’ll kill ‘em, an’ ye’re mama as well. She ought be ‘shamed of herself for birthin’ a boy like ye.”

Rufus crawled away, sobbing.

It was then that the towering, oddly proportioned figure, who’d effectively saved Sary from sure peril, turned.

“Hi,” he said.

Sary shivered, naked but no longer terrified in spite of her rescuer’s physical and—in particular—facial aspect, for that aspect would be found by most to be extraordinarily terrifying: chinless, elongated as if vised, sporting a rowdy beard, skin of forehead and cheeks large-pored and yellow quite like fresh-plucked chicken skin.

Sary wasn’t sure how to cogitate this situation; what she felt with the most immediacy, however, was gratitude. She dragged herself up to a sitting position, and offered, “Hi. And thank yew much fer sendin’ that Hutchins boy away—”

“Never like that boy,” came the sonorous voice. “All evil in his head, he is, like his whole family. Warn’t good ta see him doin’ such things ta ye—” The voice drifted as the giant’s eyes seemed to quell an inner rage. “Folks is jess...so bad raound these parts it seems.”

Sary replied cheerily, “Oh, they sure is—some’a the wust folks ever.”

“Heer,” and then the giant’s hand, timidly as if conscious of a desire not to alarm her, lowered, a clean handkerchief in it. “Why’n’t you let me wipe that ugly boy’s snot off’a ye.” Sary stiffened, then sighed a relieving sigh, as the gesture cleaned the mucous from her face.

“Thuh-thank yew.” She sat up, unabashed at her near nudity. The titan man seemed to take downcast glances at her body. Sary knew her face was hideous but knew also that men
liked
her body, and since this man had in all probability saved her life, it only seemed fair that she allow him to engage in coitus at no charge. She spread her legs and ran a hand through the profusion of coal-black private hair. “Can’t think’a no other way ta shew my proper gratitude ‘sept ta let’cha fuck me, so go on ahead, if yew’ve a mind tew.”

Her colossal rescuer stood awkwardly in a long pause as the lowering sun beamed behind his head, eclipsing him. Sary could not compute a reason, though she felt with certainty that the man was suddenly uncomfortable. “Naw, wouldn’t be right nor decent considerin’ what’cha jess been through.”

“Huh?”

His strange yet interesting half-garble lowered. “Wouldn’t feel good in my heart doin’ suthin’ ta ye that ye didn’t likewise have a want for. I calc’late yew’re aout’a sorts by what that fat boy’n his dog was puttin’ ta ye.”

Sary could not conceive of such words coming from local rustics; indeed, if anything, the local men at large seemed exclusively to exhibit a flagrant if not
innate
bankruptcy of all moral ethos. Instead, she sat inclined, breasts healthily plumpened, and she stared with puzzlement at the sun-halo’d black cut-out head. She could surmise no response to his explication.

“But naow, if ye’d like, ye can come back whar I live’n have a rest, and-and, I see that black-hearted boy done tore yer gown, so’s I can stitch it back for ye on accaount my mother larnt me haow ta sew.”

Sary felt beside herself. Any other denizen of Dunwich, she knew, would be on top of her already, but here instead was this strange fellow offering her a place to rest and to mend her gown.
Can’t believe what I’m heerin’,
she thought.

The man went on in some indefinable excitement: “Oh, ee-yuh, and I’se also got a bunch’a white-tail rabbit in the smoker which I hand-rubbed fust with seasonin’ like from my grandmother’s recipe. It’s quite fine, it ‘tis, in the event that yew’re hungry.”

And now the endowment of a free meal! Aside from some raspberries filched from Frye’s fields, and a luckily stumbled-upon radish that had most likely fallen off a motor-truck, Sary had consumed no solid food for over a day; and, hence—not taking into account the ejaculations of several oral suitors—no other sustenance. She nearly lost her breath over the giant’s charitability. “Oh, I would jess
love
that!” she wailed, hauling her ravaged gown back down.

It was sensed more than espied a desperate smile come to her rescuer’s face. “Heer, lemme help ya up,” and then the hand at the end of the very long arm clasped her own. “Theer yew go—”

But when Sary was left to stand upon her feet, she teetered in place, cried “Aw, buggers!” and would’ve fallen over had not the colossan caught her in a misproportioned arm.

“Yew all right?”

“My, I— I got all a-wobbly in my knees,” she replied in his embrace. “I guess what that boy were doin’ left me more shook up’n I thought—”

“‘Tis understantable, but dun’t worry. I’ll carry ye.”

Sary felt levitating as the giant cradled her up in his arms and, as though her weight were no more a burden than an empty potato satchel, stepped over the low stone fence and loped toward the distant easterly tree line. Sary made a pleasant moan in her throat; for once, she felt safe. She lolled in the cradle of her carrier’s arms, rocking gently with each loping step.

As he conducted her across the field, her eyes scanned her surroundings. A more beautiful day could not have been wished for, she mused, but then when her gaze stopped upon the sheer face of the distant Round Mountain, her appreciation of natural beauty retarded a gobbet; closer in the distance, she spied the several odd round hills most of whose tops were barren of trees and displayed instead peculiar arrangements of stone columns that she’d heard went back to Indian days. She’d also heard that the loftiest of these hills—
Sentinel
Hill—boasted an altar of some sort, which had existed there “Sinct afore the time white folk come ta this land from acrost the Big Water,” her mother had said, “for a amaount’a time longer’n ye’re head can understant.” But when Sary made inquiry as to the precise
nature
of this altar, her mother had gone silent. There were several times, too, when Sary had attempted to hike all the way to the summit, to bear witness of the altar for herself, but she always fled back in the direction she’d come, for the emanation of the strangest sounds, sounds that urged her to think that words were actually being uttered
beneath the ground...