Mysteries of the Worm

  “Please,” I said. “We got to go, right now.” He shook his head.

  I didn’t say anything more. I might of told him a lot, about what I dreamed and heard and saw and knew—but I figgered it was no use.

  Besides, there was some things I didn’t want to say to him now that I had talked to him. I was feeling scared again.

  First he said he was from Arkham and then when I asked him he said he was from Kingsport but it sounded like a lie to me.

  Then he said something about me being scared in the woods and how could he know that? I never told him that part at all.

  If you want to know what I really thought, I thought maybe he wasn’t really Cousin Osborne at all.

  And if he wasn’t, then—who was he?

  I stood up and walked back into the hall.

  “Where you going, son?” he asked.

  “Outside.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  Sure enough, he was watching me. He wasn’t going to let me out of his sight. He came over and took my arm, real friendly—but I couldn’t break loose. No he hung on to me. He knew I meant to run for it.

  What could I do? All alone in the house in the woods with this man, with night coming on, Halloween night, and them ones out there waiting.

  We went outside and I noticed it was getting darker already, even in afternoon. Clouds had covered up the sun, and the wind was moving the trees so they stretched out their branches, like they was trying to hold me back. They made a rustling noise, just as if they were whispering things about me, and he sort of looked up at them and listened. Maybe he understood what they were saying. Maybe they were giving him orders.

  Then I almost laughed, because he was listening to something and now I heard it too.

  It was a drumming sound, on the road.

  “Cap Pritchett,” I said. “He’s the mailman. Now we can ride to town with him in the buggy.”

  “Let me talk to him,” he says. “About your Aunt and Uncle. No sense in alarming him, and we don’t want any scandal, do we? You just run along inside.”

  “But Cousin Osborne,” I said. “We got to tell the truth.”

  “Of course, son. But this is a matter for adults. Now run along. I’ll call you.”

  He was real polite about it and even smiled, but all the same he dragged me back up the porch and into the house and slammed the door. I stood there in the dark hall and I could hear Cap Pritchett slow down and call out to him, and him going up to the buggy and talking, and then all I heard was a lot of mumbling, real low. I peeked out through a crack in the door and saw them. Cap Pritchett was talking to him friendly, all right, and nothing was wrong.

  Except that in a minute or so, Cap Pritchett waved and then he grabbed the reins and the buggy started off again.

  Then I knew I’d have to do it, no matter what happened. I opened the door and ran out, suitcase and all, down the path and up the road after the buggy. Cousin Osborne he tried to grab me when I went by, but I ducked around him and yelled, “Wait for me, Cap—I’m coming—take me to town!”

  Cap slowed down and stared back, real puzzled.

  “Willie!” he says. “Why I though you was gone. He said you went away with Fred and Lucy—”

  “Pay no attention,” I said. “He didn’t want me to go. Take me to town. I’ll tell you what really happened. Please, Cap, you got to take me.”

  “Sure I’ll take you, Willie. Hop right up here.”

  I hopped.

  Cousin Osborne came right up to the buggy. “Here, now,” he said, real sharp. “You can’t leave like this. I forbid it. You’re in my custody.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” I yelled. “Take me, Cap! Please!!”

  “Very well,” said Cousin Osborne. “If you insist on being unreasonable. We’ll all go. I cannot permit you to leave alone.”

  He smiled at Cap. “You can see the boy is unstrung,” he said. “And I trust you will not be disturbed by his imaginings. Living out here like this—well, you understand—he’s not quite himself. I’ll explain everything on the way to town.”

  He sort of shrugged at Cap and made signs of tapping his head. Then he smiled again and made to climb up next to us in the buggy seat.

  But Cap didn’t smile back. “No, you don’t,” he said. “This boy Willy is a good boy. I know him. I don’t know you. Looks as if you done enough explaining already, Mister, when you said Willie had gone away.”

  “But I merely wanted to avoid talk—you see, I’ve been called in to doctor the boy—he’s mentally unstable.”

  “Stables be damned!” Cap spit out some tobacco juice right at Cousin Osborne’s feet. “We’re going.”

  Cousin Osborne stopped smiling. “Then I insist you take me with you,” he said. And he tried to climb into the buggy.

  Cap reached into his jacket and when he pulled his hand out again he had a big pistol in it.

  “Git down!” he yelled. “Mister, you’re talking to the United States Mail and you don’t tell the Government nothing, understand? Now git down before I mess your brains all over this road.”

  Cousin Osborne scowled, but he got away from the buggy, fast.

  He looked at me and shrugged. “You’re making a big mistake, Willie,” he said.

  I didn’t even look at him. Cap said, “Gee up,” and we went off down the road. The buggy wheels turned faster and faster and soon the farmhouse was out of sight and Cap put his pistol away, and patted me on the shoulder.

  “Stop that trembling, Willie,” he said. “You’re safe now. Nothing to worry about. Be in town in a little over an hour or so. Now you just set back and tell old Cap all about it.”

  So I told him. It took a long time. We kep going through the woods, and before I knew it, it was almost dark. The sun sneaked down and hid behind the hills. The dark began to creep out of the woods on each side of the road, and the trees started to rustle, whispering to the big shadows that followed us.

  The horse was clipping and clopping along, and pretty soon they were other noises from far away. Might have been thunder and might have been something else. But it was gettin night-time for sure, and it was the night of Halloween.

  The road cut off through the hills now, and you could hardly see where the next turn would take you. Besides, it was getting dark awful fast.

  “Guess we’re in for a spell of rain,” Cap said, looking up. “That’s thunder, I reckon.”

  “Drums,” I said.

  “Drums?”

  “At night in the hills you can hear them,” I told him. “I heard them all this month. It’s them ones, getting ready for the Sabbath.”

  “Sabbath?” Cap looked at me. “Where you hear tell about a Sabbath?”

  Then I told him some more about what had happened. I told him all the rest. He didn’t say anything, and before long he couldn’t of answered me anyway, because the thunder was all around us, and the rain was lashing down on the buggy, on the road, everywhere. It was pitch-black outside now, and the only time we could see was when lightning flashed. I had to yell to make him hear me—yell about the things that caught Uncle Frank and come for Aunt Lucy, the things that took our cattle and then sent Cousin Osborne back to fetch me. I hollered out about what I heard in the wood, too.

  In the lightning flashes I could see Cap’s face. He wasn’t smiling or scowling—he just looked like he believed me. And I noticed he had his pistol out again and was holding the reins with one hand even though we were racing along. The horse was so scared he didn’t need the whip to keep him running.

  The old buggy was lurching and bouncing, and the rain was whistling down in the wind and it was all like an awful dream but it was real. It was real when I hollered out to Cap Pritchett about that time in the woods.

  “Shoggoth,” I yelled. “What’s a shoggoth?”

  Cap grabbed my arm, and then the lightning come and I could see his face, with his mouth open. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the road and what was ahead of us.


  The trees sort of come together, hanging over the next turn, and in the black it looked as if they were alive, moving and bending and twisting to block our way. Lightning flickered up again and I could see them plain, and also something else.

  Something black in the road, something that wasn’t a tree. Something big and black, just squatting there, waiting, with ropy arms squirming and reaching.

  “Shoggoth!” Cap yelled. But I could scarcely hear him because the thunder was roaring and now the horse let out a scream and I felt the buggy jerk to one side and the horse reared up and we was almost into the black stuff. I could smell an awful smell, and Cap was pointing his pistol and it went off with a bang that was almost as loud as the thunder and almost as loud as the sound we made when we hit the black thing.

  Then everything happened at once. The thunder, the horse falling, the shot, and us hitting as the buggy went over. Cap must of had the reins wrapped around his arm, because when the horse fell and the buggy turned over, he went right over the dashboard head first and down into the squirming mess that was the horse—and the black thing that grabbed it. I felt myself falling in the dark, then landing in the mud and gravel of the road.

  There was thunder and screaming and another sound which I had heard once before in the woods—a droning sound like a voice.

  That’s why I never looked back. That’s why I didn’t even think about being hurt when I landed—just got up and started to run down the road, fast as I could, run down the road in the storm and the dark with the trees squirming and twisting and shaking their heads while they pointed at me with their branches and laughed.

  Over the thunder I heard the horse scream and I heard Cap scream, too, but I still didn’t look back. The lightning winked on and off, and I ran through the trees now because the road was nothing but mud that dragged me down and sucked at my legs. After a while I began to scream, too, but I couldn’t even hear myself for thunder. And more than thunder. I heard drums.

  All at once I busted clear of the woods and got to the hills. I ran up, and the drumming got louder, and pretty soon I could see regular, not just when they was lightning. Because they was fires burning on the hill, and the booming of the drums come from there.

  I got lost in the noise; the wind shrieking and the trees laughing and the drums pounding. But I stopped in time. I stopped when I saw the fires plain; red and green fires burning in all that rain.

  I saw a big white stone in the center of a cleared-off space on top of the hill. The red and green fires was around and behind it, so everything stood out clear against the flames.

  They was men around the alter, men with long gray beards and wrinkled-up faces, men throwing awful-smelling stuff on the fires to make them blaze red and green. And they had knives in their hands and I could hear them howling over the storm. In back, squatting on the ground, more men pounded on drums.

  Pretty soon something else came up the hill—two men driving cattle. I could tell it was our cows they drove, drove them right up to the alter and then the men with the knives cut their throats for a sacrefice.

  All this I could see in lightning flashes and in the fire lights, and I sort of scooched down so I couldn’t get spotted by anyone.

  But pretty soon I couldn’t see very good any more, on account of the way they threw stuff on the fire. It set up a real thick black smoke. When this smoke come up, the men began to chant and pray louder.

  I couldn’t hear words, but the sounds was like what I heard back in the woods. I couldn’t see too good, but I knew what was going to happen. Two men who had led the cattle went back down the other side of the hill and when they come up again they had new sacrefices. The smoke kep me from seeing plain, but these was two-legged sacrefices, not four. I might of seen better at that, only now I hid my face when they dragged them up to the white alter and used the knives, and the fire and smoke flared up and the drums boomed and they all chanted and called in a loud voice to something waiting over on the other side of the hill.

  The ground began to shake. It was storming, they was thunder and lightning and fire and smoke and chanting and I was scared half out of my wits, but one thing I’ll swear to—the ground began to shake. It shook and shivered and they called out to something, and in a minute something came.

  It came crawling up the hillside to the alter and the sacrefice, and it was the black thing of my dreams—that black, ropy, slimy, jelly tree-thing out of the woods. It crawled up and it flowed up on its hoofs and mouths and snaky arms. And the men bowed and stood back and then it got to the alter where they was something squirming on top, squirming and screaming.

  The black thing sort of bent over the alter and then I heard droning sounds over the screaming as it come down. I only watched a minute, but while I watched the black thing began to swell and grow.

  That finished me. I didn’t care any more. I had to run. I got up and I run and run and run, screaming at the top of my lungs no matter who heard.

  I kep running and I kep screaming forever, through the woods and the storm, away from that hill and that alter, and then all at once I knew where I was and I was back here at the farmhouse.

  Yes, that’s what I’d done—run in a circle and come back. But I couldn’t go any further, I couldn’t stand the night and the storm. So I run inside here. At first after I locked the door I just lay right down on the floor, all tuckered out from running and crying.

  But in a little while I got up and hunted me some nails and a hammer and some of Uncle Fred’s boards that wasn’t split up into kindling.

  I nailed up the door first and then boarded up all the windows. Every last one of them. Guess I worked for hours, tired as I was. When it was all done, the storm died down and it got quiet. Quiet enough for me to lie down on the couch and go to sleep.

  Woke up a couple hours ago. It was daylight. I could see it shining through the cracks. From the way the sun come in, I knew it was afternoon already. I’d slept through the whole morning, and nothing had come.

  I figured now maybe I could let myself out and make town on foot, like I’d planned yesterday.

  But I figgered wrong.

  Before I got started taking out the nails, I heard him. It was Cousin Osborne, of course. The man who said he was Cousin Osborne, I mean.

  He come into the yard, calling “Willie!” but I didn’t answer. Then he tried the door and then the windows. I could hear him pounding and cussing. That was bad.

  But then he began mumbling, and that was worse. Because it meant he wasn’t out there alone.

  I sneaked a look through the crack, but he already went around to the back of the house so I didn’t see him or who was with him.

  Guess that’s just as well, because if I’m right, I wouldn’t want to see.

  Hearing’s bad enough.

  Hearing that deep croaking, and then him talking, and then that croaking again.

  Smelling that awful smell, like the green slime from the woods and around the well.

  The well—they went over to the well in back. And I heard Cousin Osborne say something about, “Wait until dark. We can use the well if you find the gate. Look for the gate.”

  I know what that means now. The well must be a sort of entrance to the underground place—that’s where those Druid men live. And the black thing.

  They’re out in back now, looking.

  I been writing for quite a spell and already the afternoon is going. Peeking through the cracks I can see it’s getting dark again.

  That’s when they’ll come for me—when it’s dark.

  They’ll break down the doors or the windows and come and take me. They’ll take me down into the well, into the black places where the shoggoths are. There must be a whole world down under the hills, a world where they hide and wait to come out for more sacrefices, more blood. They don’t want any humans around, except for sacrefices.

  I saw what the black thing did on the alter. I know what’s going to happen to me.

  Maybe they’ll miss the real C
ousin Osborne back home and send somebody to find out what become of him. Maybe folks in town will miss Cap Pritchett and go on a search. Maybe they’ll come here and find me. But if they don’t come soon it will be too late.

  That’s why I wrote this. It’s true, cross my heart, every word of it. And if anyone finds this notebook where I hide it, come and look down the well. The old well, out in back.

  Remember what I told about them ones. Block up the well and clean out them swamps. No sense looking for me—if I’m not here.

  I wish I wasn’t so scared. I’m not even scared so much for myself, but for other folks. The ones who might come after and live around here and have the same thing happen—or worse.

  You just got to believe me. Go to the woods if you don’t. Go to the hill. The hill where they had the sacrefice. Maybe the stains are gone and the rain washed the footprints away. Maybe they got rid of the traces of the fire. But the alter stone must be there. And if it is, you’ll know the truth. There should be some big round spots on that stone. Round spots about two feet wide.

  I didn’t tell about that. At the last, I did look back. I looked back at the big black thing that was a shoggoth. I looked back as it kep swelling and growing. I guess I told about how it could change shape, and how big it got. But you can’t hardly imagine how big or what shape and I still dassn’t tell.

  All I say is look. Look and you’ll see what’s hiding under the earth in these hills, waiting to creep out and feast and kill some more.

  Wait. They’re coming now. Getting twilight and I can hear footsteps. And other sounds. Voices. And other sounds. They’re banging on the door. And sure enough—they must have a tree or plank to use for battering it down. The whole place is shaking. I can hear Cousin Osborne yelling, and that droning. The smell is awful, I’m getting sick, and in a minute—

  Look at the alter. Then you’ll understand what I’m trying to tell. Look at the big round marks, two feet wide, on each side. That’s where the big black thing grabbed hold.

  Look for the marks and you’ll know what I saw, what I’m afraid of, what’s waiting to grab you unless you shut it up forever under the earth. Black marks two feet wide, but they aren’t just marks.