The Dunwich Romance (20 page)

He would be quite correct, as well, as he engaged himself thus, in a manner of metaphor, as an organic “apparatus” whose singular purpose was to entreat as thoroughly as possible the full range of a woman’s sexual response.

Thet’s a-workin’, thet’s a-workin’...

Sary’s orgasms, though not as lengthy as those manufactured by his sperm, did indeed suffice to leave her quaking, shrieking, and spasming with previously unknown pleasures. When her nerves had fully liquidated their capacity to orgasm, Wilbur recalled all appendages, while Sary lay in a near comatose state, so potent were the rigors of her delight.

Thar’s the ticket, ee-yuh. She look more happy’n a egg-suck dog in a blammed hen house,
he thought. It was a quip his grandfather used to say.

Wilbur could not have been more regaled. He relit the lamp, then briefly left her inert while he washed, dried himself, and donned clean clothes. His own penis, energized by the visual excitement of Sary’s nudity, had now assumed a semi-turgid state as his body struggled to beget more of his alchemical spermatozoa. He felt a great assurance that by morning he would have undergone more than enough refraction, whereupon more proper intercourse would ensue. His grandfather had once said,
Willy, when a fella’s wore his pecker out on a gull, he needs ta take TIME afore his dick got more goods ta give up.
Therefore, Wilbur took this simple pearl of wisdom to heart. There would surely be more “goods” available after a sufficient passage of time.

He gathered up his canvas carry-sack, filled with the few things he might need (a small crow bar, for instance, and his pistol). A moment was all that he needed to take pen in hand and scribble a quick note, which he left conspicuously on the desk top.

Gawd, I love her,
he mused, his eyes agaze at Sary’s sleeping form. He retraced his steps back to the cot, to plant a fragile kiss on her lips.

Then he left the tool-house, quietly closed the door behind him, and ventured out into the vast and illimitable night.

Sixteen

It was three gentle chimes to which Sary found herself waking, with a mist of lamplight filling the room. A second’s confusion, then the memory of her previous seizure of pleasure resurfaced, which sired a delighted moan. But a quick sweep of her hand made it clear: Wilbur was not in bed with her.

Whar could he be at THIS hour?

A tickling sensitivity flared within her sex when she rose nude from the cot. Had Wilbur gone out to check the traps? Or perhaps he was tending to the smoker. But the sliver of yellow light from the oil lamp seemed to impart a summons, so she drifted to it...

She turned up the wick, to discover a sheet of paper awaiting her on the immense desk. It read:

Deer Sary: Only the hevens know how I about have a fit just bein away from you for even a minnute. But I didnt want to wake you, figuring how tired you likely be. I hadd to go to the generul store in Aylesbury ta fetch me somethin them cads at Osborn’s don’t got. It be a long walk, I know, but do not wurry yourself becuaze you can rest sure that I’ll be back by time the sun rise, and will likewise be thinkin about you til then.

Adoringly,

Wilbur

Sary felt a prickly heat of gratuity by the thoughtful last line, as well as the “Adoringly”; but reason did not take long to occur to her.
Why he goin’ to Aylesbury NAOW? Their general store en’t open, and nor is any other at this hour...
As had happened so many times thus far, Sary found that her exhaustion had been surmounted by inquisitiveness. And she didn’t like the idea of Wilbur being about so late. He’d implied that many in Dunwich kept him in ill-regard, so the same might be true of Aylseburians. Her svelte shadow crossed the floor as she meandered about the room; then she found herself standing before the carved bureau wherein Wilbur had examined something earlier in the day. As she recalled, it had been in the top drawer.

I know I shouldn’t, but...

She opened the top drawer.

Beside the decomposed books with no bindings there sat a square tin whose top read Mavis Talcum Powder. She pulled off the top.

Bullets...

Pistol bullets, by the looks of them. One of them she picked up and was barely able to read the numbers
.455
along the rim at the bottom of the cartridge. The bullet was crusty with tarnish, even pitted, and stained darkly from age; an examination of the remaining projectiles revealed an identical state. Had these been the things she’d heard
clinking!
when Wilbur had consulted the drawer?

Sary shook her head, vexed. What her lover felt inclined to “fetch” at this hour she could not estimate. The image that kept intruding upon her curiosity, though, was the constant reminder as to
just
how good
the sex had been before he’d left.
What did he DO?
she wondered. He’d seemed pain-staken to keep the light out; Sary hadn’t been able to see a thing. How could the man have possibly administered to her in so many places and so many ways? And all at the
same time?

When she focused on the quality of the orgasm—

Ooooo!

—her vagina lurched once very hard, in a shadow-climax itself. The involuntary spasm only reminded her just how much she adored Wilbur’s love-making; and how desperately she wished to have more of the same.

She turned with some force, to divert herself from such libidinous thoughts. Now she stood before the big desk and all its fascinating clutter. What Wilbur had most recently been writing revealed itself to be more of the uncipherable script she’d already seen. She allowed her eyes to scan the letter slots, then the neat little drawers, but, as if driven by some unknown revenant, she was next focused on the large, hoary book with iron hinges.

It lay open, and she read a passage:

Curs’d be ye Ground wherein Dead Musings doth live Revigor’d and Oddly Bodied, and Evill is ye Brain which be supporteth by no Head.

Sary stared at the words. When she’d looked at the book that first day, she’d detected desultory nauseousness, but now...

She felt...
interesting.

She flipped a page, and read another passage:

Negotium perambulans in tenebris. . . .

Sary flinched at the ghost of a sensation: very nearly that of an urgent hand cupping her crotch, then squeezing her there.

Another page:

Ye Affair which shambleth about in ye night, ye Evil which defieth ye Elder Sign, ye Herd which stand watch at ye guard’d by-waye each tomb be known to possess, and which feedeth on that which groweth out of ye tenants therein—

Upon finishing the bizarre passage (which she understood
nothing
 of) Sary was surprised to find the furrow of her sex slick with lubrication; moreover, her nipples stood out, having given over to a delicious buzz. Her immediate impulse was to pinch said nipples to goad more sensation; and to stimulate her sex with her hand. Her eyes, however, seemed to move out of tandem with her brain.

A further passage:

Yog-Sothoth be ye key to ye gate.

A hot gust caught in Sary’s chest. She stepped away from the book as if overwhelmed; and though her mind was blank, she could feel her right hand burrowing into her sex to the wrist. Bewildered, she drew it out, and stared at the book.
It’s some kind’a magic...,
she presumed, even knowing that she had little belief in such things. Her sex continued to twitch in the weird pre-climatic pulses.

The book was having a tangible effect on her. Sary decided to flip to yet another page, and see what happened...

Upon ye absence of ye ashe of Ibn Ghazi, a heartfull myrmidon shalt do good, in ordereth to take into thine eyes that whicheth maye naught be seen, thou must needs partake in ye deft pracktice of ye sign know’d most Especiall as ye
Voorish
Sign, which maye be done as thus:

And here the transcription came to a surcease, to depict instead a series of similar sketches whose quality of illustration seemed the work of no unskilled artist. There were five sketches all told; the first was a sketch of a human hand (a left hand) with its ring- and middle-fingers curled downward; and the thumb touching the pinky. The four sketches remaining each featured the same undetailed male figure, showing this sequence:

The figure brought its awkwardly configured hand to its mouth.

Then the hand touched the left pectoral.

Then the abdomen.

Then the forehead.

At once Sary recalled Wilbur making this same gesture the other day! Initially she’d been reminded of a priest making the sign of the Cross, but then saw the nullifying incongruities.

She could perceive no harm. She stilled herself where she stood, then, consulting the diagram for guidance, manipulated her hand as designated, and then—

Heer goes...

—made the antediluvian Voorish Sign.

Wal?

Sary’s shoulders drooped several moments after she’d completed the gesture. Nothing untoward became obvious to her; the room remained unchanged. But then again—

What effect did she expect to be made privy to?

A more practical way to spend her time was what occurred to her next; hence, she turned—

—gaped—

—and froze as if caught in the glare of the Medusa.

The lamplight well revealed a very peculiar presence on the cot: the presence of a
woman
(and one apparently impinged upon by a number of congenital defects), lying naked, heaving, glazed in sweat, and spread-legged upon the hand-made mattress. What’s more, the trespasser’s harrowing
uncomeliness
came as a shock equal to that of the inexplicable fact of her being here. First noticed was her skin, an unhealthy pinkish white, with the faintest blue veins coursing beneath. Next, her hair: ash-white, in an unkempt eruption of kinkiness, both upon her head and betwixt her legs. Four toes were evident on one foot, six on the other; and one arm was clearly longer than its counterpart. Weirder were the woman’s eyes, which alternately opened and closed from the sensory result of what she was doing: her irises were pink, while the whites shone a pale, sickish yellow. And weirder even than
that?
The right breast jutted plumply, but the left sagged to the mattress like a two-foot-long skin-sock. The nipples of both more resembled plops of chewed jerky. Had Sary been less distracted by the sheer alarm of her discovery, she might also have noticed suspicious configurations of
scar tissue
—as of scars from repeated
incisions
—congregated about the intruder’s throat and areolae.

But these oddities, along with the oddity of the woman’s presence in the tool-house, were utterly superseded by the activity she now very fervently partook of. She was masturbating with a teardrop-shaped summer squash more than twelve inches in length. The woman engaged in this process in the manner of a ramrod, inserting the squash’s widest end first, and then dragging it quickly and arduously back and forth. Clearly, her vagina was well-acclimated to the admission of objects of such size. Each thrust forward caused the woman’s buttocks to clench and her malformed feet to curl; and each extraction—so wide was the squash—threatened to exteriorize her vaginal barrel. An acorn-sized clitoris protruded with each repetition.

Beside her, arranged in a row, lay more objects which she evidently planned to insert into herself: a pickax handle, a wine bottle, a very fat dead snake.

Eventually the squash’s physical integrity succumbed to the burden that had been wrought upon it; and collapsed to wedges within the woman’s sex. She hastily withdrew the pieces, then reached for the pickax handle...

That was all. The woman disintegrated, just as campfire smoke would vanish at a modest breeze.

What the HAIL I jess see?
Sary interrogated herself.

A ghost?

Was she seeing things?

Was she sick?

But the outrageous woman had been as plain—and as real—as day. A dash to the cot, and the placement of Sary’s hand upon the mattress, supported this contention: there was a minor aggregation of dampness there, and heat, as if someone had quitted the mattress only seconds ago. Then...

Wait a minute...

She’d seen the woman immediately after she’d made that hand-motion from the old book.