“Everything was getting dark and blurry but I fought against passing out. All at once, a desperate clarity came over me and pushed away the fear. Without thinking, I began yelling at my invisible attacker, ‘I’m Abe, Wilbur’s friend! Don’t you recognize me? I’m a friend! Please, put me down—you’re killing me!’”
Galvin paused. “You may not believe me, but all of a sudden my feet touched the ground and the things that were binding me let go all at once.”
Unable to restrain his excitement, James leaned back in his chair and shouted, “Jesus!”
Galvin, who had almost crept over the table toward his listeners, also leaned back, releasing his audience from the stifling tension he had produced as he described his ordeal.
An excited Jeffrey begged, “But why did it let go of you?”
After a moment, Galvin whispered, “I believe it remembered me from its telepathic link with Wilbur; it experienced Wilbur’s trust and love for me. It was as if Wilbur reached out from beyond the grave to save me.”
Galvin now sat perfectly upright in his chair. His hands were shaking to the extent that he spilled half his drink even before he could raise it to his mouth. The second bottle lay empty on the table before him.
“I never did actually see what the Other looked like, but from what I heard later about it, that was probably a blessin’.
“I guess I blacked out then, ’cos Earl Sawyer’s kid stumbled across me the next morning. He fetched his daddy, who said I was more dead than alive when he found me lying half inside a footprint as big as an old hogshead barrel and over a foot deep. They took me to Dr. Houghton and so saved my life. Nearly all my ribs were crushed, my sternum was fractured, and I was bleeding all over. I swore all three to secrecy about my presence, hoping Armitage would assume the Other had killed me. He’d have come after me if he thought I was still alive.”
For several minutes Galvin sat quietly in his chair, as if he had finished his tale. The whir of tape rewinding alerted Jeffrey to stop his recorder. He felt a certain relief that Galvin had reached the end of his tale before his speech got any worse. He had been slipping more and more into colloquial speech patterns for several minutes.
“Well,” offered James, “I guess that’s about it then. Armitage killed the Other up on Sentinel Hill for whatever motive, and the day was saved!”
Galvin leaned forward with a disgusted look on his face and sneered, “And I thought you boys was smart!”
James stumbled over a few syllables in search of some response, but Galvin wasn’t finished yet.
“The whole story’s in Wilbur’s diary, which I read after he left for Arkham; the code wasn’t all that hard to figure out. Later on, when Armitage got the diary, he read it and only let his buddies see bits and pieces so he could interpret the text to mean whatever he wanted it to mean. He burned it before anybody else got a chance to see it. Now, just how scholarly does an action like that sound to you? Yet if you read his account carefully, you’ll see the wily old bastard couldn’t resist tossing in a few tantalizing clues to the truth.”
Galvin was obviously getting drunk, occasionally slurring a few words. “Okay, so I’ll explain it to you kids. The Indians had been performing weird rites in the area in and around Dunwich for over four hundred years before Wizard Whateley came along and figured out just exactly what they were up to. And he was just crazy enough to try and do the same.
“The Indians had been breeding their women with things from other dimensions, but they were smart enough to keep the offspring imprisoned in underground caves. It was safer that way and the hybrids grew slower in the dark. Old Whateley’d thought he’d do the same, ’cept Lavinia gave birth to twins and refused to part with either of them. Living above ground, both of the twins grew a whole lot faster than their half-brothers and half-sisters below the ground.”
Gasps escaped the mouths of his listeners as Galvin rambled on.
“You mean you never wondered what it was that has been rumbling and moaning under the hills? It’s been consistently reported since the first white men settled on Dunwich land!
“Armitage didn’t destroy the Other and make everything safe! That’s all just a load of crap. Did anyone actually see what happened when the lightning struck? Nobody but Armitage and those two fools he had believing anything he told them. He said himself that the damn thing couldn’t be killed! It sought out the altar stone because that stone was the door to an entrance to the pits below, where it could be safe! The Other called out for help in English, but the eyewitnesses said they heard an unearthly calling from the altar stone as well! All Armitage did was call down a bolt of lightning that lifted the altar stone up just long enough for the Other to squeeze its elastic form through and down to where the others were just waiting!
“Ain’t you figured out that Sentinel Hill and all the hills in Dunwich are hollow? They’re rounded ’cos the things underneath are growing and slowly pushing the earth up higher and higher. The standing stones mark the hills where the Indians ‘planted’ the spawn of Yog-Sothoth!”
“But Dr. Armitage…” James began.
“Dr. Armitage my arse,” interrupted Galvin. “That son of a bitch high-tailed it back to Arkham and wrote his lying account before going back to live with his family…”
Jeffrey started to butt in, but fell silent after Galvin finished his sentence.
“…in Innsmouth.”
“What?” James cried out in disbelief.
“Yessir, I said Innsmouth!” Galvin exclaimed. “The only thing he didn’t know was that his parents were taken away by the FBI when they raided Innsmouth. And the ones they took away were the ones that weren’t human, and neither was Armitage, though he covered it well. Folks think he took sick and died soon after that day on Sentinel Hill, but I defy any man to show me the record of his death.”
Both Jeffrey and James were stunned.
“At least I put one over on the old bastard; I got all the Whateley gold. He wanted it bad, but Wilbur gave it to me before he left. I had it on me when Earl found me, and I’ve been living on it ever since. Look here if you don’t believe me,” he added as he tossed two shiny coins onto the table.
The two authors snatched up the coins and stared at them in disbelief. One bore the imprint of Arabic lettering that they would later learn spelled out ‘Irem,’ a lost city of Arabian myth; the other was impressed with the easily recognizable features of Augustus Caesar.
“Yessir, the Other and hundreds more like him are down there still, just growing and waiting for the day they’re full grown and the stars all line up as their signal. When that day comes, the earth’ll rise up beneath our feet and they’ll emerge to smite mankind by the millions—and nothing on this Earth can stop them!”
Galvin paused, belched, then concluded with a snicker, “If you boys finish your book in a real hurry, you just might get it published afore the apocalypse!”
•
FOR MY RESPECTED FRIEND, WILUM HOPFROG PUGMIRE
The Terror from the Depths
Fritz Leiber
Remember thee!
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe.
—HAMLET
The following manuscript was found in a curiously embossed copper and German silver casket of highly individual modern workmanship which was purchased at an auction of unclaimed property that had been held in police custody for the prescribed number of years in Los Angeles County, California. In the casket with the manuscript were two slim volumes of verse: Azathoth and Other Horrors by Edward Pickman Derby, Onyx Sphinx Press, Arkham, Massachusetts, and The Tunneler Below by Georg Reuter Fischer, Ptolemy Press, Hollywood, California. The manuscript was penned by the second of these poets, except for the two letters and the telegram interleafed into it. The casket and its contents had passed into police custody on March 16, 1937, upon the discovery of Fischer’s mutilated body by his collapsed brick dwelling in Vultures Roost under circumstances of considerable horror.