Out there, beyond the Jersey hills, the thing is thriving. All this past week it has performed the special Ceremonies of its own: the required rites and, at certain times, the necessary sacrifices. Gradually, as the week spiraled toward its conclusion, it has honed its skill and gathered its murderous strength.
Its moment is approaching – and so is his own. There are special preparations he must make. Concentration is essential; the darkness and the heat will not bother him, but the room must be silent. Shutting the window and pulling down the shades, he lies back naked on the bed, intones the Sixth Name, and prepares himself.
Tonight, when it is time to act, he will be ready.
Thanks, no doubt, to my recent decision – No More Asking For Seconds At Dinner – woke up feeling half starved this morning, after a crazy dream in which I was eating everything amp; everyone in sight: Carol, the Poroths, the cats, the cornfield, whole continents… As I recall, it ended with my swallowing my own foot. Jeremy Freirs, the human Uroboros.
Carol – God, it's been at least a week since I've written to her. Better do so before she loses interest in me. Must get around to it before tomorrow's mail.
Squeezed in a second helping of corn bread this morning, telling myself it was to make up for the lack of eggs. We won't be seeing many omelets around here anymore till Sarr amp; Deborah get around to buying a couple of new hens. That one poor bird that's left doesn't look like she's going to be much good for anything for a while.
After breakfast, sat on the porch reading some Shirley Jackson stories, but got so turned off at her view of humanity (everyone callous amp; vicious except for her put-upon middle-aged heroines, with whom she obviously identifies) that I switched to old Aleister Crowley when I came out here to my room. His Confessions look too long to read all the way through amp; are obviously untrustworthy as hell, but at least he keeps a sunny disposition.
Inspired by Crowley's jovial satanism, took another walk in the woods, hearing for the first time since I've been out here the distant barking of dogs amp; thinking about hounds of the Baskervilles, Tindalos, Zaroff, amp; the rest. Didn't Lovecraft have a hound as well? Weather so inviting, despite the mosquitoes, that I walked all the way back to the pool at the edge of the marsh, where the brook bends. But the pool was covered by a layer of greenish scum, with something dead floating in the middle of it. I turned around amp; ran back to the farm.
Maybe these things are normal out here, as we move toward the height of the summer.
Sarr was working his way along the border of the cornfield, clearing off bunches of weed with a stubby little sickle. 'Little,' he agreed, 'but razor sharp. You want to try it?'
I'd had such bad experiences with his other tools that I wasn't too keen on taking up a new one; but then I figured what the hell, with any luck this'll probably be the only time in my life I ever get the chance to play with one of these things, amp; I may as well make the most of it. I took the sickle from him amp; hefted it in my hand – hard to believe the Russians actually put this thing on their flag; it's like making a coat of arms out of a meat hook or an ice pick – then I took a few tentative swings, amp; to my surprise it sliced right through the thickest stalks amp; branches, pretty as you please. It's a lot smaller than the scythe amp; a lot less unwieldy; you hold it in just one hand.' And unlike the axe, it was easy to lift.
'Very good, Jeremy,' said Sarr, 'I think you've found your talent at last.'
The dogs were proving difficult to walk with. She had three of them to deal with, two easily distracted young males and a female not yet come into her first heat. True to their shiftless master, they had never known an ounce of proper training and were used to roaming at will. They were friendly enough, but as free-spirited as wild things. Mrs Poroth felt the daylight wane; shadows were crossing the forest floor, darkness creeping steadily up the trees. She realized that she still had far to go.
She herself had gotten an early enough start, up, as usual, by five, just before dawn, to tend her bees and complete whatever weeding her garden required, but the Fenchels, where she'd stopped hours later to pick up the dogs, were accustomed to staying up most of the night hunting what game they could, whether or not in season, drinking whatever was available, and no doubt scavenging what they thought they could get away-with from their neighbors' land. None of them but young Orin ever rose before ten. The elder Fenchel, Shem, was the one she'd had to talk to, and as luck would have it he'd been sleeping off a bender until well past noon.
Not that she'd expected any problem borrowing the three dogs. Shem Fenchel was obliged to her for too many kindnesses – the boils she'd lanced on Orin's neck, the painful shingles on his own hand she'd ministered to, the birth she'd attended when Sister Nettie Stoudemire had been called away – to begrudge her the use of his hounds for the afternoon, or even to ask her the reason. He assumed that she was using them for tracking.
He was wrong. But as she'd set off with the dogs that day, leaving behind the Fenchel clan's collection of shanties at the fork in the road and disappearing into the forest, the animals jerking eagerly at their lead ropes and pulling her in every direction, she looked as if she were on the track of game.
In fact, though, she was not relying on the dogs to lead her. She knew quite well where she was going, and the fastest way to get there. The dogs were simply for protection, weapons of defense. She herself was sharp-eyed and wise, but she was getting old as well; alone, she would be no match for the teeth and claws and catlike stealth of the Dhol in its present form, especially if it caught her unawares with the source of its power so near.
That source would be somewhere by McKinney's Neck, of that much she was sure. But she was making slower progress than she'd counted on, the dogs tugging at her arm and baying excitedly at every scent they passed, stirring up birds and insects and small scuttling things that fled their path as the three dogs bounded noisily through the underbrush. The Neck was still miles away, and the light was growing dimmer. She prayed she'd reach the place before sundown, even though she would not perform her work till after dark. There would be only the thinnest sliver of moon tonight, but it would be sufficient.
She said another prayer, as welclass="underline" that the place would not be guarded.
But it might be, she told herself. It was, after all, a key part of the plan, enabling the demon to plot and learn and grow. Destroying it would not destroy the evil, but it would buy time.
She tightened her grip on the ropes and let the plunging dogs drag her onward. Already she was wondering if the altar she sought would be as small as she imagined, and as easy to obliterate. She didn't know exactly what it would look like, but that part didn't worry her. She would know it when she saw it.
Unseen by human eyes, it lay in the woods north of the stream, just beyond the marshlands and the swamp, between the clawlike roots of a lightning-blasted cottonwood whose fall had left a clearing in the trees – a clearing through which one might view, unobstructed, the sky, the stars; the moon.
Even from a few feet away the thing looked scarcely different from a rather large molehilclass="underline" a low mound of mud and sticks and foliage, a bit too regular for a product of nature, perhaps, but by no means conspicuous enough to excite attention. If not for the ring of small standing stones that surrounded the thing like a row of miniature menhirs, a Stonehenge built to child's scale, no one would have suspected that it was, in fact, an altar – an altar which, though scarcely one week old, had already seen much use.