“I tried to get him over it, show him it didn’t matter to me. I even kept talking to him on a couple occasions to keep him in the room while I took a bath, figuring he’d eventually loosen up, seeing as how I was no Adonis myself, but it didn’t work. He just sat there staring at me all over, like he was studying me as an example of how folks are supposed to look. I just wanted him to accept himself for who he was and stop worrying about what anyone else thought.” He stared directly at James. “You’d best get that disgusted look off your face damn quick, young man, or I’m done talking.”
An embarrassed James apologized, then added, “But you didn’t actually see, well, what Armitage and the others saw when Wilbur died, did you?”
Galvin responded forcefully, “No, I didn’t, but Armitage had folks scared half out of their wits! I doubt any of them even know what they really saw that night! Certainly no one had the guts to refute the shiftless bastard later on, after his own written account made him out to be some kind of saviour.”
His outburst was greeted with silence, so after a moment, a calmer Galvin continued. “Wilbur said Old Whateley’d done his bare best to convince Wilbur that the Other was some kind of avatar that needed nurturing until the stars came into the proper alignment for some legendary cosmic armageddon to enter our dimension through some kind of gate. As a child, Wilbur accepted his grandfather’s philosophy, but as his human aspect became dominant and started thinking for itself, he began to look for a way to thwart the Other or at least keep it under control. He said all he needed were some special incantations, but only Old Whateley knew where to find those spells and he wasn’t about to tell as long as he had any doubts about Wilbur’s loyalty to the cause.
“Wilbur said I shouldn’t worry about any cosmic disaster, though, and assured me the stars wouldn’t be right yet for decades. He also said any premature attempt to open the gate would bring immediate misfortune upon the conjurer.
“He told me as much as he dared, fearing my curiosity might prove dangerous to me if I knew too much. I think he was also afraid of scaring me off and losing the only friend he knew he was ever likely to have.”
During the awkward pause that followed, James and Jeffrey pretended to check their notes and recorder, respectively; obviously Galvin felt very strongly about Wilbur Whateley.
“Old Whateley spent most of his time repairing the house, whether it needed it or not,” Galvin suddenly began again. “He was a nervous old codger who fussed over his pathetic livestock incessantly, often spending half the night transferring steers back and forth from the barn to holding pens he’d built on the far side of the house, adjacent to the ramp to the second story.
“Wilbur woke me up one night in August about ten o’clock. He said Old Whateley’d been taken seriously ill and he was going to Osborn’s store in Dunwich to call the doctor in Aylesbury. He asked me to help Lavinia watch over the old man until he got back. I wanted to go with him since the townspeople were afraid of him, but he pointed out that no one would recognize him if he wore his grandfather’s old-fashioned bang-up coat with a three-cornered hat cocked down low. He knew he could make better time alone on horseback than two of us could in the old wagon. Still, I worried about him as dogs always attacked him on sight; it got so bad at one point that he had to carry a pistol to protect himself from them.
“By the time Dr. Houghton arrived, the old man was nearly gone; Wilbur agreed, pointing out the whippoorwills that had gathered en masse around the house. Even the doctor noticed their cries were keeping time with Old Whateley’s breathing. Houghton did his best, but Whateley’s heart finally gave out long about two in the morning.”
James jumped in with a question. “Were you actually in the room when Wizard Whateley passed away? Supposedly he said something very special to Wilbur just before he died.”
“You’re baiting me now, son, just to see if I know what I’m talking about,” Galvin answered.
The researcher admitted as much and offered an apology.
“Oh, I’d do the same if I was you,” Galvin remarked. “Yes, I was in the room. I heard the same as Doc Houghton heard, but he didn’t understand what was going on. The old man knew Wilbur wanted to keep the Other captive, so on his deathbed, the old man tried to bend Wilbur to his will. The first time I heard the name Yog-Sothoth was when, with his dying breath, the old wizard reminded Wilbur that his brother required constant feeding and room to expand. He also told Wilbur about a certain passage in the Spanish edition of the Necronomicon that would make the Other strong enough to reproduce and savage the planet.
“What Houghton didn’t know was that Wilbur had absolutely no intention of carrying out that part of Old Whateley’s instructions. Was he supposed to argue with a dying man? Hell, not much of it made sense to me, especially with the ruckus those damn birds were making outside.
“But the instant Old Whateley died, all the birds fell silent at exactly the same instant. Wilbur told me the locals believed whippoorwills gathered when someone was about to die; if they dispersed after the person died, like they did that night, it meant the person’s soul had escaped them. I was never too clear on it all, but I guess the birds are supposed to be like psychopomps that escort the souls they catch to heaven or hell. When they miss, the soul remains earth-bound and can trouble the living. After all I’ve seen, I have to consider there might be some truth in that particular superstition.
“Wilbur asked me to stay on after his grandfather died. I helped him bury Old Whateley up near Sentinel Hill, then left Wilbur and his mother to say their farewells in private. Wilbur held up, but Lavinia broke down and cried some. She seemed to get progressively worse after that day, such that we worried about her sanity, and Wilbur wouldn’t allow her to light fires up on Sentinel Hill anymore, like she’d always done before twice a year. He told her the neighbors didn’t like it, and he didn’t want her continuing the wizardry.
“The first thing he did after the burial was clear the house of all the old man’s occult trappings. He single-handedly carried over a hundred jars and bottles out of Old Whateley’s room and stacked them in a pyramid of glass behind and away from the house. Every one of the bottles contained some bit of alien monstrosity preserved for reasons I feared to ask. I’d wager your best biologists couldn’t identify even half the things floating in those jars. After he emptied the room, he did some chanting and arm waving over the jars and such, then doused it all with kerosene and set it afire. Some of the bottles exploded right away from the heat, but some of the other specimens burned red hot for more than two days.
“Once that chore was done, Wilbur seemed to have more peace of mind. A little after that, he started boarding up the unused parts of the downstairs. I helped whenever I could, but the work took his mind off his troubles, and he said there was no rush.”
Jeffrey abruptly took advantage of the lull to ask a question. “What did he tell you about Yog-Sothoth?”
A deep ridge formed upon the heavily creased brow of the old man. “I don’t recall all that much of what he said about most of that hocus pocus stuff; I guess I just wasn’t all that interested. But I can’t forget his telling me that this Yog-Sothoth was father to both him and the Other. It belonged, he said, in some other dimension, but it wanted to infest this one too. He said it was a big formless thing that could only come into our world at all when it stretched itself out into threads or tendrils so thin that they could squeeze through the empty space between neutrons, electrons, and the like. The Other was meant to prepare the way for the time when a gate would open, giving its daddy full access to our universe, but Wilbur was dead set against letting that come about.”