"Strange Manuscript Found in the Vermont Woods" first appeared in Crypt of Cthulhu #54, Easteride 1988.
Strange Manuscript Found in the Vermont Woods
by Lin Carter
NOTE: In the early spring of 1936 the following manuscript was found buried in the snowbanks in the wood south of the village of Townshend in Windham County, Vermont, by a local farmer, one Seth Adkins. When Mr. Adkins reported the discovery of the manuscript, which he turned over to Constable Homer T. Whitlaw, he said it was found in a leather briefcase which was curiously charred as if from exposure to intense heat, and seared here and there as if from the action of some virulent acid, and was also stained with a black slime-like substance which stank horribly. He also added that the briefcase and its contents were not only buried deep under a heavy snowdrift, but were partially impacted in the still-frozen soil, as if it had fallen from an incredible height. The spring thaw, it seems, had exposed one corner of the leather case to view, attracting the farmer’s attention.
Upon examining the contents of the valise, Constable Whitlaw found a sheaf of handwritten manuscript inscribed in a neat hand which eventually deteriorated into a scarcely readable scrawl, as if the later portions of the document had been scribbled hurriedly, under tension or duress. Furthermore, the edges of the several handwritten pages were crisped as if from exposure to severe temperature, and in places illegible due to leakage from the thawing snow.
The manuscript was written on both sides of sheets of correspondence paper embossed with the name of Winthrop Hoag, with a Boston address. Recalling the mysterious and still unexplained disappearance of a certain Winthrop Hoag from a cabin in the woods north of Arkham, Massachusetts, only three months earlier, the Constable forwarded the valise and its contents, together with an account of their discovery, to County Sheriff Wilbur F. Tate in Arkham. At Sheriff Tate's direction, the manuscript was transcribed exactly as it appears below. Certain of the words and entire passages remained illegible, even though studied by handwriting experts.
The mystery remains unsolved co this day.
I ARRIVED in Arkham in early fall on the Boston train and went at once to the law offices of Mr. Silas Harding, who had been my cousin Jared Fuller's lawyer until his death or disappearance seven years before, and who was the custodian of his last will and testament, in which, Harding's recent letter had informed me, I was declared sole beneficiary to his estate.
I found Mr. Harding a gaunt, silver-haired man in a dark suit, who spoke affably but with a pronounced Yankee twang. Ushering me to a seat, he explained that since the waiting period allowed by law in the case of missing persons had now expired, my cousin’s property was legally mine. Said property consisted of a small cabin on a bit of land in the woods north of town, and its contents, the most valuable of which were probably certain old books which might prove worth a considerable sum in the hands of a rare book specialist.
The lawyer informed me that the cabin had been stoutly padlocked on his instructions, and the windows shuttered and barred. He had, he said, visited the property as recently as last week, and was pleased to report that the roofing was sound, the interior dry, and that the place was perfectly habitable, if lacking in certain of the civilized amenities of life.
“Is there any sort of plumbing?” I inquired. He shook his head.
“Too far out of town for that, sir! But there’s a privy in the back and a decent well has been dug. Walls seem secure; you’ll git good heat from the Franklin stove. There’s even a goodly supply of well dried firewood under a tarpaulin in the shed. You’ll need thet, come winter."
In my reply to Harding’s letter informing me of my small bequest, I had stated my intention to live in the cabin, despite the nearness of winter—and they can be cruel and bitter winters, north of Arkham!—for I needed seclusion in which to prepare the notes for my master’s thesis. He had written back, rather insistently, arguing against this plan on several points. It amused me that he repeated some of them now.
“You'll be snowed in, you know, for weeks at a time."
“Surely I can lay in supplies of canned goods, coffee, and the like from the nearest grocery," I said gently, humoring him a little.
“There is a general store on the Pike.” he admitted grudgingly. "And the bus runs between Dunwich and Arkham pret’ regular, ’cept in the case of blizzards. Still have to suggest you just visit the place and take your property, and go back to Boston ..."
When I pressed him for his reason, he merely muttered something about those woods “not having the best reputation”, but remained closemouthed on his meaning. When he saw I would not be swerved, he handed over the keys after requiring my signature on a few documents.
"You kin catch the bus to Dunwich at the end of River Street," he said curtly, in answering my request for directions. "Takes the Aylesbury Pike. You git off two, three miles beyond Dean’s Corners, they's a mailbox by the road with ‘Hoag’ painted on it. Painted yer name on it myself, so you’d know. Driver’ll know where t’ let you off."
I thanked Harding and rose to leave. He laid a restraining hand on my arm.
"Daont’ like to talk about sich matters,” he said in a low voice. "Bur the Deep Woods, where you’re goin', they have an even wust reputation than Billington’s Wood just saouth.”
And with that enigmatic warning, he let me leave.
DRIVING north and northwest from Arkham, the land grew wild and lonely, thickly overgrown with gnarled and ancient trees with strangely few farmhouses to be seen, at least from the Pike. There were only a few people on the bus. a slatternly middle-aged woman or two, and an old farmer in filthy overalls, so I chose my seat near the driver. He seemed in a chatty mood.
“Daoun't get many young fellers like you up this way,” he drawled. "From Boston, y’say; but ain’t Hoag an old Arkham name?”
"Yes, it is. From back before the Revolution, in the old sea-trading days."
"Heard tell of a Cap’n Abner Hoag onc’t." the driver ruminated.
"South Seas and Chiny trade, I recollect." I told him that Abner Exekiel Hoag was my direct ancestor.
“My branch of the family has lived in or around Boston since about 1912," I told him, and he seemed interested in the older Massachusetts genealogies. "Our line descends from Hiram Lapham Hoag, who moved to Lowell, near Boston, in that year. He was the younger brother of Zorad Ethan Hoag, who lived in Arkham until recently."
For some reason he became silent and taciturn at that point, and all my conversational gambits were able to elicit from him for the remainder of the trip were a few grunts or shakings of the head.
He dropped me off at my stop, where a narrow dirt road—well, hardly more than a path—wound between huge old trees. I trudged along the path and the woods pressed uncomfortably close, as if resenting with some weird sentience the intrusion of man into their ancient domain. The Deep Woods, Silas Harding had called them ... odd how, in this oppressive silence, the narrow way walled about by thickly grown, close-crowding trees, the name had a sinister ring to it.