Dagon

  He opened his eyes. Cold with sweat, he stared above him at the black threshold of the headboard. Sheila lay by him unmoving but breathing easily and deeply; sighed once in her warm sleep. He lay for a while thinking, then turned on his side and went back to sleep, to dream even more bitterly and heavily.

  SIX

  The succeeding days widened the strangeness between them. Sheila would hardly speak to him, even averting her eyes as he passed. And he merely passed, going by thoughtlessly, caught up in himself once more, preoccupied with the house. His books and the notes for the monograph on Puritanism lay unused, asprawl after a halfhearted opening of boxes. The house had claimed him, he examined the corners and the walls, finding or seeming to find that the geometry was awry, windows and doors slightly misplaced. He went back to the letters. Peering intently at faint markings under their coatings of dust.

  …that pece of Land wch boarders on the Mack­intosh prop. and probable worth about 500 dols. more or less…shamefull incidents talked…all the time they talk, one would not think so many idel tonges…and even if his religiun is as you clame, no resoun to believe that he wo’nt break down and come under…Sothoth, Nephreu, maybe…all in whispers…This day I walked the seven miles to Madison switchback and made good going of it and found myself in good health, much better than the dr. had in­timated to me. Of course took pains to keep well away from Ransom’s grove where body of xxxxxx was found dead, and torn in the most awful fashion. Weather delightful even for May, already some of the summer heat is into it. Observed no interesting birds: crows mostly, cardinals, a barn swallow wch I hope will take up residence among us.

  Cthulhu [?J. Nyarlath—[?]…and will have my SATISFACTION as i have before this told you…will make no difference, he can craul and beg, he can lick my shoes…SATISFACTION—

  …what rites best employed to bring this about, I do’nt know & must consult. It may be that Stoddard [?] is better informed, certainly the Morgans hold the key to any endeavour of this sort, but are close-mouthed, being the most high adepts. Anyway, it ought to be performed, and although I find myself truly unsuitable, I can only say that, at the least, I am willing and that no one else has come forward. Recognize that it demands a discipline almost intolerable for anyone with a sign of weakness and that consid­erable bodily pain is involved. I hope mightily that I am equal to the task and that I may live to see it accomplished. If not, there is, of course, no great loss when one weighs what is lost against what may be gained.

  …this night evermore the darkness Cthu—

  He rubbed the dust between his lingers, like a film of oil or sweat, and sneezed. He let the brittle papers fall to the open leaf of the secre­tary and regarded the loose pile with absent-minded distaste. Not a line of them did he un­derstand, hardly a word; and yet he could not stop himself from whittling away hours and days looking at them. “All that nonsense,” Sheila would say, had indeed said. He pushed himself away regretfully and went outside.

  A clear day, early afternoon. Sheila sat in a kitchen chair at the untended edge of the yard, reading a novel. For a moment he was tempted to go to her, to try to make up to her and tram­ple this silly barrier between them. But pride was still in him, stiff and gloomy, and he would not move. He turned instead to the hill behind the house, going between the house and the woodshed, seeking the open fields.

  But he came running back quickly when he heard her shout, shriek.

  “Peter! Peter!”

  Her book lay tumbled open on the ground. She was standing behind her chair, gripping the back of it, and staring at the ground before her. There a snake was poised, not coiled, not menacing to strike, simply waiting, with round head alift and trembling tongue. It was a dull brown color, about three feet long. Peter found a broken rake handle in the litter at the front of the woodshed and walked, not hurrying, to the edge of the yard. The snake oozed smoothly round—not a ripple in that movement—to meet him. It was harmless, just an errant ground snake.

  “It won’t hurt you,” he said. “Perfectly harm­less.” He felt unaccountably cheerful.

  “Kill it,” she said. “I don’t care about that. Kill it.”

  He poked the rake handle at it and it recoiled suddenly. Sheila squealed and gave a little jump backward. “I m not going to kill it,” he said. “There’s no reason to. It can’t hurt you, and anyway they’re good to have around. They eat mice and things.” He was unsure of this last notion.

  “Will you hush up and kill that thing? I can’t stand it. I can’t bear to look at it.”

  “No. I won’t. Let me get another stick and I’ll carry it…”

  She tried to lift the chair to strike the snake, but it was too heavy. She pushed it aside and strode forward and snatched the rake handle from his hand. He stepped back automatically, bewildered. She was awkward and frightened; beat the snake behind the head and down the length of it, hitting blindly. It writhed, hissed, twisted, trying to get away but injured now. She dropped the handle and ran away, out to the middle of the yard. Tears rolled on her cheeks, and she was sobbing. “Peter, damn you…”

  Enraged, he picked up the handle. He was burning angry, regretting that now he had to kill the snake. Two sharp blows precisely on its head he gave it, and it rolled over and over. He got the end of the handle under the twisting body and pitched it down into the weeds. As he came back through the yard toward Sheila he could hear it thrashing about in a drift of dead leaves.

  “Why wouldn’t… You wouldn’t kill it be­cause you hate me. You really do. And I hate you too. I hate the sight of you.”

  “You bitch.” His anger had congealed, and was a hot weight in him. His feelings were blunted. He threw the handle spinning into the depths of the woodshed, getting a slight satisfac­tion from the clatter it made. Slowly he turned his back on his wife and walked deliberately away, going into the house.

  Inside he breathed more easily. Confused and dully angry, he walked from room to room, a certainty growing within him. Again in the sun parlor, near the littered secretary, he stopped; stood rigid and still. He recognized the thought that was in him and nodded gravely once, gravely agreeing with himself. And then he put the thought aside and turned almost automati­cally to the papers which lay there.

  —ulhu Iä! Iä! Yogg—

  …the moon draws wrong has the wrong horn draws wrong has the wrong horn draws wrong has the wrong horn this night evermore this very night this night evermore this very night evermore this night evermore darkness Cthu—

  Had feared that the cows, being alarmed by the Occasion and the pasture already sere in this deathly September, wd. go dry, but have so far maintained their milk, giving 3 or 4 quarters per diem. Some will freshen soon. The sky con­tinues very red at eve (tho’ sometimes with green or purplish streaks intermixt) so that the dry weather will probably hold. Mister Peter much concerned with his Chemical researches, very abstracted, the indifferent success of his at­tempts making palpable effect on his disposi­tion. Gloomy at times, oftimes mistrustful. The weather presently having fretful effect on everyone.

  And for a number of nights Peter had kept watch alone, sitting at the kitchen table, smok­ing his wife’s cigarettes one after another—not tasting them—and drinking ugly black coffee that he brewed himself until two in the morn­ing. Sheila had gone to bed long before and slept stubbornly. Then he went up and to bed, but did not sleep; lay wide-eyed in the darkness in the bed apart from his wife, careful not to touch her. He was filled with disgust.…And now this night he sat alone again, silently smoking and gulping down the acrid coffee until four in the morning. Occasionally he nodded deliberately, still assenting to himself. Finally he rose and turned off the bare overhead light—there was already a dim light outside—and left the kitchen. He was going to murder her. As he went through the smaller downstairs sitting room, he took the long poker that leaned by the blackened empty fireplace. It was cool and weighty; he was vaguely gratified by the heft of it. He held it forward away from his body, as if he were guid
ing his way with it like a flashlight. Then through the sitting room and through the long dark hall and, one by one, silently up the stairs.

  He paused a moment before the bedroom door, then eased the latch over and let himself in. The air was cool but smelled warm. He found the fuzzy outlines of the furniture, instantly aware of Sheila’s muffled form in the bed. She was breathing deeply, sighed now and again in her sleep. He drew near the bed. She was on the other side, scrupulously away from his place, her back turned toward him. She slept, but her body was tense. Her hair gleamed and he stared at it, trying to find the base of her skull. He would like to snap the nape-nerve, to be finished at once.

  He struck. She rose from the waist instantly, her eyes wide and unseeing, staring, silent, terri­ble. She flopped back, roiling, still silent. He struck, he struck.

  ***

  He had murdered her. The poker dropped. He stood by the bed, regarding it uncom­prehendingly, the confused pool, sheet and cold thigh and litter of stain. It had got colder; he clasped his arms around his chest, trying to re­strain the trembling of his body. He could not see what lay in the bed, the arc of shoulder and the hair not bright now and the huddle of fouled sheet, but he could not stop staring. He turned, stumbled, going to find his clothes in the dark, and he got them on somehow. He would not turn on the lamp. In the mirrors, even with the light behind him, he seemed hardly there, his body as gauzy as the light, something made to poke holes through. There was a bad smell, rich and chalky. He kept swallowing, but a rancid film stayed in his mouth and throat. He was very cold; now his body seemed capable of feeling only terrifying extremes.

  He went out, down the hall, down the stairs, through all the house without feeling his way, his footsteps numb and certain, now his own. The clotted dingy light was everywhere, a grimy dawn was yawning up. He coughed, and spat on one of the curd-colored walls, but his mouth was still adhesive with a clumsy film. He reached the side door and even put his hand on the cold knob, but did not turn it; turned himself instead and went marching back through the downstairs rooms, through room after room, avoiding only the narrow darkened hallway which led to the stairs. In mirrors, glassed doors, cabinet windows his figure appeared, disap­peared; and he kept rubbing himself with his palms, as if his body was all a various itch. He did not observe but perceived all the furniture, which perceived him silently, knowing, darkly wise. In the sun parlor he found that he had halted, had turned round and round, stood fac­ing the two whited oblong sister pillows. I SLEPT AND DREAMED THAT LIFE…He uttered un­resonant laughter, the sound coming flat out of his mouth, inexpressive, hard. Through the glassed door to his left he could make out the heavy squat form of the diseased piano. Again he turned round and round. Then he went through the house once more to the side door and entered to the outside.

  Nothing lifted, there was no sense of release, relief. The light seemed no brighter out here, and still hung to him like dank cloth. The sun was not yet up; over the eastern hills was only a lighter grayish smear. The two vertical walnut trees in the lower side yard looked massive and glassy, and the full branches let fall on the lower trunks a dimness—not a real shadow—vaguely shaped like an automobile. He averted his gaze. He went under the dark side of the house out to the dirt road and walked along it for about twenty yards. The prospect was larger, the mountains colorless on the north sky, the nation-shaped fields below him cut through with the smoke-shaped stream, but it seemed no less nar­row; it seemed all miniature, enclosing, fun­neled. In the gray light perched a single gleam of orange-yellow light, steady; it seemed round, but it streaked from the kitchen window of the tenant house. Without hesitation he began to walk the winding descending road, drawn to the single patch of flame on the landscape. He had not thought Morgan would be awake.

  He didn’t know the time. The hour whitened slowly, but the landscape remained iron-col­ored, the bad light pervading the dew. Twice he had to stop; he struggled in the wet weeds at the roadside and leaned forward against the bank of the road, clenching the orange clay tightly. He fought to keep the support of his legs. Then he pushed himself into the road again and went along, one numb foot before the other. He got there, paused on the edge of the road above, then let himself down into the yard with a loose ugly shamble. The house looked small now, heavy, squat, diseased. On the tin roof the dew had begun to coagulate, to run off in thin streams. As he went into the shaky eaveless little porch a splash of dew fell on the back of his neck, ran icy under his shirt.

  He opened the door, didn’t knock, and stood limned there. Morgan was absent. The air was still almost unbreathable, the rancid wood range already cooking, and the flies already industri­ous, swarming on him immediately. The shaky kitchen table covered by the rubbed dull oil­cloth, and on the table the kerosene lamp shed­ding a glow so yellow and small that it seemed unlikely now he had seen it from the road. Even as he wondered about it, Mina leaned to the screw and turned the wick down, out of sight. The glow was gone. A thread of black smoke rose heavily out of the lamp chimney. They were alone in the gritty sullen dawn light.

  Gray in the gray light, her face seemed as impenetrable, as noseless, as he had again and again remembered. Now it was luminous al­most, and looked somehow as if it were floating forward. And again her figure, flat and square, without dimension, was all filled with calm wait­ing, complacent as stone. And again her eyes rested on him, simply remaining still, and he felt enveloped in the gaze; those eyes seemed large as eggs. Her raddled hair hung loose, black as onyx, aggravated the luminescence of the smooth face.—Now in the steaming kitchen he felt hot.

  Her voice was soft and thick as cotton. “You’re about the worst-looking mess I ever saw,” she said. “I never seen such a mess as you are.”

  He didn’t answer, had begun to shudder again. The oily fishy odor stuffed his head.

  “You better come here and set down,” she said. “You’ve got a bad case of something, I guess. You sure do look like a mess.”

  He sat across from her in a creaky little chair, the cane bottom drooping. He slid his hands aimlessly about on the oilcloth.

  “You just set there and I’ll get you some coffee. It looks to me like you sure could use it. I don’t reckon I ever seen anybody in worse shape.”

  Involuntarily he cowered away. He was sit­ting by the range. She would have to cross by him to get the coffee. He didn’t want her to come near him.

  She rose and started toward the stove, but stopped. A slow smile seeped into her inexpres­sive face. “But it looks like to me you could use something that’d do you more good than coffee. They’s a jug back here I’ll get. That’s what’d do you more good, I bet anything.” She turned and went through the door behind her. He heard her displacing a box, rummaging among things which must have been cloth. She returned, holding a gallon jug by its stubby neck, swinging it easily by her side, brushing the black cotton skirt. Her calves were full and muscular, olive-colored. She set the jug on the table, not letting it thump, and went by him to the stove. He twisted away from her, his buttocks clenched tight in the sagging chair. She brought a thick chipped coffee mug back to the table and poured it about half full from the jug. She laughed humorlessly. “I don’t reckon a Leland would want to be drinking out of a jug,” she said. She put the cup gently before him and turned the handle round toward him. “There you go.”

  It smelled and tasted oily, of rotting corn. He swallowed it eagerly; and immediately droplets of sweat were on his forehead. He knew abso­lutely that he was going to be ill, sick to death. He drank again. He had never been more grate­ful for something to drink.

  It was going to be a hot day. Now it was full dawn, and the kitchen was filled with the warm dank religious light, yellow. She stood across the room by the open bedroom door. He felt he saw her with fine clarity, totally, every inch. He wiped his forehead with his blood-smeared wrist. He felt sticky.

  II

  ONE

  The little house, so humid and rickety—every­where you stepped the flo
or gave a little and creaked—was always full of movement. The old man came and went incessantly, God only knew what his errands were. The mother was almost motionless, she moved her great bulk but sel­dom, and even standing still she occupied much space; sometimes it seemed to Peter that the air of the house and the movements of body and mind of all the others were loaded by her pres­ence, that somehow she affected even his blood. Mina was always coming and going too, she came to Peter and went away. “I got to look after you,” she said. “Somebody’s got to take care of you.”

  He lay in the shabby shaggy bed in the little room that seemed mostly a storeroom. Or he would wander from room to room, keeping away from the windows and open doors; and then he would return to Mina’s bed and sit straight, holding his knees with his hands, watching with fixed gaze the unchanging splotched opposite wall. He kept drinking; he had not halted in the three weeks—was it three weeks now?—he had been here. Mina kept bringing moonshine to him, wearing on her face an impassive but still wearily sardonic expres­sion. He loathed the oily raw taste of the stuff; he gulped it quickly and breathed with his mouth open. At night she bore him down in the torn greasy quilts and made love: silent as stand­ing water. It was he who might cry out, her fingernails in him and her cold teeth on his shoulder and neck and face. He struggled des­perately not to make a sound; when he did groan, his throat hoarse and tight, he was able later to persuade himself that he had made no sound. Mina was relentless as cold wind, she had no feelings, no passion; she seemed to perform with a detached curiosity.