The Xothic Legend Cycle

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.

The cabin my cousin had left me in his will was small enough, but it seemed livable, despite the fact that the clapboard walls could have used a few coats of paint, it stood amid a small clearing, on a patch of naked earth, and again I could not help noticing (with slight revulsion, even dismay) how disturbingly close the edge of the woods shouldered about the forlorn habitation. These feelings I resolutely dismissed from my mind: I have always been unusually sensitive to the atmosphere of lonely, wooded places.

Once within, the bars removed and shutters opened, I found the interior dry and clean. There was a small Army cot, neatly made, a rickety table with a hoop-back wooden chair drawn up before it, and even a hooked rug before the old iron stove. These, and an empty woodbox, were the sum total of the furnishings: "lacking certain of the civilized amenities of life", even as lawyer Harding had dryly remarked.

Still, I thought I could be comfortable here, even in the depths of winter. There were shelves on the wall with tin plates and cups, sparse tableware, cheap and worn, a coffee pot and two or three pots and a frying pan. I even discovered a dime-store can-opener hung from a hook on the shelf. In a corner of the one-room cabin I found a hurricane lamp in serviceable condition, although the can of kerosene which fueled it proved empty.

Unpacking my clothing and books and papers, which latter took occupation of the table, I went outside and found the well-water fresh and clean, and in the woodshed a good supply of cut and stacked firewood in fine, dry condition, as Harding had promised, together with a rusty axe for cutting more when needed.

That afternoon, I went down the Aylesbury Pike to the little general store I had noticed from the bus. It stood on the outskirts of Dean's Corners, and the proprietor was happy to sell me supplies. As I must be frugal—my funds being low, and the bequest from my cousin Jared containing no cash worth speaking of—I settled on canned pork and beans, home-bottled peaches, boxed crackers, ground coffee, ketchup, salt, and a few other things, together with some pipe tobacco.

The storekeeper, an old, withered, wiry backwoodsman named Perkins, proved helpful but very inquisitive as to what I was doing “in this neck o' th' woods.” When I told him I was a cousin of Jared Fuller, and had inherited his cabin in the woods a mile or two north, he stared at me incredulously.

"Fuller, y’say? Not in th’ Deep Woods?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so.” I smiled. He gave me a strange, almost frightened look.

"Why, daoun’t y'know they be even wust than Billington’s Woods, saouth o’ here?" he inquired in a whisper, as if fearful of being overheard, although there was no one else in the general store save him and me.

I shook my head. " 'Billington’s Woods' rings a bell somewhere, but I can’t quite place it," I had to admit.

"Ever hear tell of a feller named Ambrose Dewart? Another one, name of Stephen Bates—Boston-man, like y’rself, I figger?” he breathed.

A slight chill passed through me. Dewart ... Bates ... surely, I had read about them in some sensational newspaper items eleven or twelve years ago ....

I shook my head reluctantly, not quite able to recall the details. When I asked what Perkins knew about these two individuals, he became as closemouthed as the incommunicative bus driver. All I could get out of him was that my “goods” would be delivered "long abaout sundown-time."

THAT afternoon, rather late, it became chill and dank, so I carried some armloads of wood into the cabin and built a fire. While I was loading up my arms with logs and kindling, I noticed a shelf built against the back of the shed and a dilapidated old suitcase of scabbed and peeling leather which stood upon it. I wondered if this might not contain Cousin Jared’s "books and papers", to which Silas Harding had alluded. Since I had not found these in the cabin anywhere, this was probably the fact of the matter. I resolved to look at the contents of the suitcase later.

About sundown I became aware of a persistent honking from the Pike. I went to investigate, and found a battered old Model T Ford parked before the entrance to the path, with a leathery, gaunt driver in worn overalls behind the wheel.

“Name of Hoag?" he grunted. When I replied in the affirmative, he gestured behind him with a calloused thumb.

“Groc'rics in th’ rumbleseat,'' he snapped. Which meant I had to carry them in by myself.

I had expected the inhabitants of these rural backwoods to be a suspicious, unfriendly lot, and thus far my expectations were certainly fulfilled.

Returning to the cabin, where my fire was burning cheerily in the stove, I cleaned and filled the lamp, trimmed the wick, and lighted it, for twilight fell quickly this time of year and the darkness was not far behind. I had scrubbed clean the pots and dishes with water from my well, and began heating my meal atop the stove. After dinner I settled down with a mug of hot black coffee and my pipe and began sorting out my notes and references by the yellow light of the hissing lamp. It was a cozy, rustic scene, like something out of Colonial times, almost, and the cabin was warm and comfortable, although, with darkness, the wind rose and moaned eerily through the stiff black boughs where the last gaudy tatters of foliage clung stubbornly against the autumnal chill.

When my fire collapsed to burning coals, I donned my heavy jacket and went to get more wood from the shed. This time I made another trip to drag forth the old suitcase. I was weary of my work and desired to turn my mind to other matters for a while; also, I was getting a bit curious to see what "old, rare" books my cousin had bequeathed to me.

Inside the suitcase I found about a dozen volumes, mostly leather-bound, flaking with age, the pages yellowed with the years. They were certainly old enough, but as most of them were in French or German or Latin, I could make little of them, not being proficient in those languages. Anyway, they looked foreboding and not particularly of interest to me, with titles like Unaussprechlichen Kulten and De Vermis Mysteriis and Cultes des Goules.

Two of them, however, proved to be in English. One of these was a slender brochure bound in leatherette, privately published in 1916 by a commercial printer in San Francisco; it contained Professor Harold Hadley Copeland’s “disturbing and conjectural" translation of the Zanthu Tablets which he had reputedly discovered in the tomb of a "prehistoric" shaman somewhere in the black and secret heart of Asia. I had heard of the Zanthu Tablets, for the book had been much notorious in my boyhood and was denounced by press and pulpit and was finally, as I recall, officially suppressed.

Knowing what little I knew about the Zanthu Tablets, I assumed (correctly, as it turned out) that the other books were concerned with occultism and demonology—subjects which have never interested me in the slightest.

Opening the other book in English served but to confirm my supposition, for it was a bound manuscript, written with a quill pen, apparently, in a narrow. crabbed hand, and bore the quaint but ominous title, Of Evill Sorceries Done in New-England of Daemons in no Humane Shape. It had no date nor the name of its author, and the manuscript had apparently been clumsily bound by the hands of an amateur bookbinder. I leafed through it, finding nothing but the ugly, superstitious village gossip of a diseased mind—another Cotton Mather, you might say. Arkham and Salem had a lot of these "Godfearing" (so called) witch-hunters back in the bad old days. I tossed it aside.

At the very bottom of the suitcase I found a dog-eared, scribbled bundle of foolscap, written in my cousin’s dear, bold hand. It was entitled Diary of Jared Fuller: 1929.

I leafed through the opening pages, and paused to read an entry so intriguing that I copy it here in this Journal.

Sept. 4th. At sundown, or shortly thereafter, when the constellation of Perseus rose in the sky, heard again the sound of chanting from the woods in some bestial language that should not come from human lips. Was it from the “dead place” in the Deep Woods, where the Great Stone lies, or further off? Snowfall too light to leave tracks for me to find by morning. Again, strained to make out anything of the howling, grunting, gibbering language, but one word or name repeated very frequently: Ossadogowah always followed (as in some liturgical response) by a second uncouth name or whatever: Zvilpoggua. These wooded hills home of devil-cults and witch-covens long ago, God knows, and fiendish Indian secret societies back before the first white settlers came into these parts. No Indians around here now, of course, but the rustics hereabouts are ignorant, superstitious, inbred, degenerate—and old beliefs die hard, and are long in the dying.

Sept. 8th. Finally heard from young Wilmarth at Miskatonic, supposed to be an enthusiastic amateur folklorist of the region. Says certain Indian tribes in this region, now long gone (the Nansets, Wampanaugs, and esp. Narragansetts) worshipped—or at least knew how to summon down with spells—a sky-devil they called Ossadogowah; not a name but a title, it seems: “Son of Sadogowah”—whoever was! Will send me photographic copies of (phrase illegible) next week, if possible. Suggests I try rare-book merchants in Salem, Boston, Providence, to obtain copy of something called Of Evill Sorceries Done in New-England of Daemons in no Humane Shape, which he read years ago and which bears on Indian devil-worship cults.

Chanting after dark again. This time, hid in the underbrush at the edge of the clearing: bestial gruntings and gurglings indeed come from the "dead space" where the Stone lies. Was able to make out something of the words, but they are in no human language I know of. As follows, best as I could make them out over the roaring of the wind:

Eeeyaah! Eeeyaah nughun nuh-nuh-guy guy eeyaah

eeyaah nug-hi enyah enyah zhoggoh ffthaghun ....

Sept. 17th. Made the trip into Arkham today, but Wilmarth off on a walking tour somewhere. Ass’t Librarian at Miskatonic refused me access to any of the old texts Wilmarth suggested, damn his eyes! Did, however, let me examine back files of the local papers, Ark. Advertiser in particular, 1921 thru '22. Ltrs. to editor about chanting heard in the woods to the north; mysterious disappearance of locals named Lew Waterbury and Jason Osborn; Osborn’s body turned up later. Autopsy by County Medical Examiner sugg. corpse had been subjected to "severe changes in temperature" and had "fallen or been dropped from a great height." (Fallen from what? Dropped by ... what?)

Conditions of corpse sound dreadfully similar to the body I found in the woods, and buried hastily because of the terrible stench, which was not that of decomposing human flesh. Should have reported disc. to police, I know, but it was torn beyond all possibility of identification. Note that "horribly foetid black slime" found on Osborn corpse.

My eyes were getting tired from trying to read by the unsteady light of the lamp, so I put Jared's manuscript aside, carefully marking the last entry I had read, and went to bed.

But not, as it chanced, to sleep for quite some time.

AS I tossed and turned on the hard, narrow cot, it occurred to me that my cousin Jared had lost his reason. This would, of course, explain many of the weirder aspects of what I had read in his diary: chanting from the depths of the Deep Woods, having found and buried a crushed and mangled corpse, his allusions to eldritch lore. However slightly we had known each other, this seemed unlikely, for he had always seemed stable and eminently sane, to my experience.

I gave the problem up and strove to compose myself for sleep. But sleep did not come easily. For one thing, the star Algol shone like a burning green eye through the window, which was closed against the night’s cold but which I had left unshuttered. Its unusually brilliant, viridian light seemed to burn through my closed lids like some unearthly searchlight from Beyond ....

When, at length, slumber overtook my weary mind, and I sank through ever-darkening layers of shadow, I still found not the repose I sought. As I hovered between wakefulness and dream, it seemed to me that a dim and distant current of rhythmical sound, like far-heard surf or distant chanting, persisted in intruding upon my rest. This, of course, was absurd, for the woods, as I have already noted, were abnormally silent, and the wind had died. Finally, along toward dawn. I awoke, neither rested nor refreshed.

It was then that an odd coincidence occurred co me.

Algol is a star in the constellation of Perseus ....

AFTER a meager breakfast, feeling the need for a little fresh air and some exercise before settling down again to the organization of my notes, I decided to take a tramp through the woods. I was particularly interested in finding the barren glade whereof my cousin had written in his diary, and the “Great Stone” that lay in it. Donning my winter gear, and finishing off my hot black coffee with a gulp, I left the cabin and entered the woods, striking out at pure random, nor knowing in which direction I must travel to find the region my cousin's papers described.

These woods were distinctly unlike any in New England, at least within my personal experience. For one thing, all of the huge, gnarled trees seemed of unnatural, even abnormal age. In such a wood one might expect to find new saplings springing from the fertile mulch, and the skeletal and moldering remains of fallen tree trunks. Not so, however, here in the Deep Woods: No saplings were to be seen; it was as if some extraordinary source of life and vigor had prolonged the life of these ancient trees immeasurably beyond their natural span.

For another thing, the woods were uncannily, even unhealthily, silent. At this season, I would have expected the underbrush to be filled with rabbits and chipmunks, field mice and squirrels, all scampering through the crisp, dry leaves upon their small tasks and errands. Nor so here in the Deep Woods, where an unwholesome silence and a distinctly odd absence of small life reigned ....

I came upon the clearing abruptly, and knew at once that this was the "dead place" Jared had described. The ground underfoot became abruptly barren of anything but sparse, unhealthy, lank grass, which grew in sickly, chin patches, as if the soil beneath it was either somehow poisonous or, for one or another reason, hostile to living things.

There in the very middle of the small open space, ringed about with a thickly crowded wall of gaunt black trees, lay half-buried in the bare soil a huge, rectangular stone—surely, the "Great Stone" of which Jared had written. I came closer to examine it; While the trunks of the trees through which I had passed were slimy with mold and moss and lichen, the enormous, brick-shaped stone was as bare of life in any visible form as if newly scrubbed clean by industrious hands.

Add one more unnatural thing about the Deep Woods, I thought uneasily to myself.

The block measured some ten feet in length and about three and a half feet in height and thickness, although it was not possible to measure the height of the stone with much certainty, so deeply was it sunken into the dead earth. As for the composition, it was of the gray granite commonly found in these parts, brought hither aeons before by the glaciers when those vast serpents of age-old Arctic ice came crawling sluggishly down across the continent.

In the exact center of the upper surface I noticed a queer shape seemingly carved therein, like a bas-relief. I had to climb up atop the stone to examine it closely, and some residium of the night’s cold, not yet banished by the feeble warmth of daylight, struck bitterly and savagely through my thick gloves and heavy trousers, to sear the flesh with an almost unearthly rigor.

The carving—for it was unmistakably the work of intelligent hands—was weathered and very ancient, but so deeply had those primordial chisels gnawed into the recalcitrant granite, that the form it outlined was distinctly visible. It was a grotesque monstrosity, a gross, corpulent, toad-like thing with an obscene, swollen paunch and huge splayed, clawed feet, but without the forelimbs its toad-like shape might be expected to have. The skill of the ancient sculptor was sophisticated enough to suggest webbing between the spread claws of these hind legs. From a point along the back where the shoulders would have been sprouted crook-ribbed wings, like those of some monstrous bat or one of the fantastic flying reptiles of the saurian age which preceded the coming of mammalian life. Face it had none, but from the forepart of its sloped, bulging, and misshapen head slithering and snake-like tendrils sprouted, like the serpentine tresses of some hideous Medusa.

I repressed an involuntary shudder of disgust; even so, I could nor help admiring the sophistication of the nameless sculptor's technique, in bestowing upon this grisly spawn of his unclean imagination such a lifelike air of realism. It was almost as if the sculptor had worked from a living model.

RETURNING home from my tramp through the woods. J felt reluctant to take up again the dreary task of organizing my notes, and passed the time before lunch by again perusing the diary of my cousin.

Sept. 22nd. Rec'd today photographic copies from Wilmarth of the passages in the Book of Eibon he fancied I might find useful. (Or Liber Ivonis, I should say, since the pages are from the Latin version made by Phillipus Faber.) My Latin being very rusty, it will take me some time to render them into passable English.

In the same mail, haply, came that rare copy of the manuscript titled Of Evill Sorceries etc., for which I paid that skinflint of a dealer in Salem such a high price. Relevant passages too lengthy to quote here in this diary, so I have merely marked them down [here followed page numbers which doubtless referred to the pagination of the bound manuscript I had already found in my cousin’s collection; I decided to look them up later, and read on.—W.H.], but they proved very informative.

Howled chancing in the woods again last night, clearer than before: The frosty air of this rather early winter obviously permits far sounds to travel more easily. Searched the woods again and found, in the recent-fallen snow, those horribly huge, splayed prints as of some unthinkably prodigious Beast and splatters of stinking black ichor of indescribable foulness.

And my dreams are getting worse ....

With a shiver of distaste I set the manuscript aside and sat there for long moments, listlessly pondering on what I had read and trying to fit together some of the pieces of this weird puzzle. Finally, I dug into the heap of mouldering books and took up the bound manuscript, turning to the parts my cousin had marked. And I read:

... gave a very curious and Circumstantiall Relation, saying it was sometimes like a great Toad, but sometimes huge and cloudy, with no Shape, though with a Face which had Serpents grown from it. It had ye name Ossadagowah, which signifi'd ye child of Sadogowah [and here my cousin had written in the margin "Tsathoggua?"], ye which is held to be a Frightfull Spirit spoke of by antients as come down from ye Stars and being formerly worshipt in Lands to ye North. Ye Wampanaugs and ye Nansets and Nahrrigansets knew how to draw It out of ye Heavens, but never did so because of ye exceeding great Evilness of It. They knew also how to catch and prison It, tho’ they cou'd not sent It back whence it came. It was declar’d that ye old Tribes of Lamah [here my cousin had scribbled another marginal gloss: "Lomar?”], who dwelt under ye Great Bear and were antiently destroy’d for their Wickedness, knew how to manage It in all Ways. Many upstart Men pretended to a Knowledge of such and divers other Outer Secrets, but none in these Parts cou’d give any Proof of truly having ye aforesaid Knowledge. It was said by some that Ossadagowah often went back to ye Sky from choice without any sending, but that he cou’d not come back unless Summon’d.

I closed the bound volume and returned to Jared’s manuscript, but found nothing I could make sense out of, merely a series of cryptic, and (to me) meaningless jottings:

1. Lomar. Quasi-mythical ancient place in extreme north. If worshiped in Lomar, perhaps Zobna and Hyperborea also?

2. Child. If of the spawn of Tsath., also known in Hyp.? Tsath. once worshipped there. See Lib. Ivonis.

3. Elemental. Arctic region suggests air elemental like Ithaqua, Hastur. But Tsath. an earth elemental accord, to Cultes des G.

4. Must translate passages from Eibon at once.

That night, after another meager meal, I sat up drinking mug after mug of hot black coffee, waiting for Perseus to rise above the horizon, determined to find out whether the bestial howling-like chants I had seemed to hear in my fitful slumbers the night before were actuality or something in my dreams. For some reason, it occurred to me to turn down the wick and blow our the lamp, so that the interior of the cabin would be in darkness.

I had positioned my chair within clear view of the window. Once the familiar stars of the constellation were aloft, I left the window ajar, despite the cold breath of the night air, and listened closely. For a long time I heard nothing at all unusual, merely the wind moaning in the bare black boughs and the comfortable rustling of dying coals in the Franklin stove.

Then suddenly there came to my ears the sound of many distant voices raised in a rhythmic, if uncouth, chanting. I strained to catch the words of that chant, but could not make them out clearly. They seemed in no language I have ever heard before.

What snatches of the eerie chant I could hear bore a distinct resemblance to some of the weird mouthings Jared had scribbled down in his diary.

I went nearer to the window in order to hear the liturgy better. As I did so, with a thrill of indescribable horror I watched a vast, black shadow drift across the snow-clad clearing before the cabin, vanishing into the Deep Woods. Was it purely my imagination, my nerves wrought by the uncanny things I had read in Jared’s diary and in that damnable old book, or did the shadow-shape seem cast by something toad-like, and bloated, and obese, with huge, membranous, bat-like wings?

I FELL asleep in the wooden chair just before dawn, and woke stiff and groggy and chilled to the bone in very late morning. After heating and devouring the remnants of my supper and huge draughts of hot coffee, the thought passed through my mind that I would be wise to leave this place at once. Surely, a few dollars would persuade Jenkins to loan me his Model T and the use of his driver, in order to transport my few possessions and Jared's books and the manuscript back to Arkham. where I could arrange to have Silas Harding sell the cabin and grounds.

Why I did not do so, I will never know. Perhaps I feared to see the knowing smirk in the pale eyes of the storekeeper, Jenkins, and to hear his leering chuckle when he learned that I was giving up and running back home to Boston.

Building up the fire a bit later, I found some old newspapers under the stacked kindling in the shed and was about to scull them into the stove when the headline

HORROR IN BILLINGTON’S WOOD

and the names Ambrose Dewart and Stephen Bates leaped from the page to seize my attention. With hands that shook, ever so slightly, I bore the newspapers, brown and withered with age, to the table and read the news item that had caught my eye.

They related, in fragmentary fashion and without any explanation, an account of the mysterious and inexplicable disappearances of Dewart and the young Bostonian, Bates, a visiting relative, from a huge old house in Billington’s Wood some miles south of my cabin, and how no trace of the missing men had come to light and the local constabulary was without a single clue. There was nothing in the straightforward newspaper account, written in dry journalese, which hinted at weird horrors from the sky, or the lingering survival into our own time of horribly ancient devil cults which should have perished or been ruthlessly exterminated generations or even centuries ago ... nothing which mentioned blasphemous and forbidden old books which any sane man would burn or bury, rather than read ... but there was a grisly suggestiveness which lurked behind the succinct newspaper items, with their passing reference to a Druidic-like ring of stones deep in the wood, near a crude stone tower of unknown workmanship and uncertain date, which sent a thrill of clammy fear up my spine.

I buried the newspapers in the stove, and resolved to put all of these matters out of my head.

I wish to God I had done so.

TOWARD afternoon I donned my winter gear and returned to the woods. I found again the altar-like “Great Stone” in the sterile glade, where it squatted like some loathsome altar left behind by a savage and bloodthirsty race when they receded into the dimness of mercifully forgotten ages. It was not my second sight of that massive block of stone, lying upon the earth like some toppled Druidic menhir, however, that froze me where I stood—

The snow had fallen thickly in the clearing the early evening before, and now it could be seen that the white blanket which covered the dead soil like a burial shroud was marked and trampled under the tread of many feet.

It was not even this—clear evidence that the cult which worshiped Ossadagowah or “Zvilpoggua" indeed gathered nightly about this stony altar—that chilled me to the bone with fear.

It was the huge marks with which the human footprints were intermingled ... the marks of splayed, webbed feet, huger than those of any elephant that ever walked the earth, which had broken the crusted snow and left deep tracks sunken in the hard soil as if beneath the tread of ponderous, incredible weight.

(About one and a half pages which follow are quite illegible.)

(Apparently from the diary of Jared Fuller):

... those passages from the Latin of Phillipus Faber, as follows:

Of the wist Yzduggor, whom the wizards of Commoriom held in the highest repute, it was rumored that he was a devotee of the obsolete and interdicted cultus of Zvilpoggua, even he, firstborn of the spawn of Tsathoggua and begotten by the Black Thing upon the female entity, Shathak, upon far and frozen Yaksh the seventh world [here my cousin had scribbled another gloss: "7th fr. the Sun? Neptune?"]. Therefore unto his remote, secluded dwelling-place did the fearful Vooth Raluorn forthwith eloign ...

... the eremite at length yielded grudging reply to his entreaties, and erelong did the young Commorian learn from Yzduggor's reluctant lips that presently Zvilpoggua resided upon the dark planet Yrautrom, a world circumambient about the green star Algol, and may be called down to this world during those months of the year when Algol rises about the horizon [here my cousin scribbled: “Algol is in the night sky during the fall"] whereupon it is his grisly wont to feed upon the flesh and to drink of the blood of men, wherefore is he known to sorcerers as the Feaster from the Stars. ...

At the end of his translations of these fragments, evidently from the Book of Eibon, my cousin had scribbled a page reference to Nec. by which he probably meant the Necronomicon, which he had several times named in his diary. It would appear that he had entreated the scholar Wilmarth to copy certain parts of this volume for him, and I gather now, from the context, that this was one of the books he had tried in vain to secure permission from the librarian at Miskatonic University to consult. Thereupon fol(lowed? Manuscript illegible here for about three-quarters of a page.)

... which appear to have been scissored from a letter, doubtless from his correspondent Wilmarth, as the handwriting is quite different from my cousin Jared's. I read:

... no need to laboriously translate from the Latin of Olaus Wormius, for Miskatonic owns a partial copy of John Dec's English version of the Necronomicon, which makes the task easier. The two passages below come from quite different portions of the volume, but as both seem relevant to the matter at hand, I will cite them here.

To Summon-Down the Feaster from the Scars, seek those nights when first Algol riseth above ye Horizon, and, if that ye be Thirteen gather'd in Coven, join hands in ye ring about ye Stone and chaunt in unison as followeth, Iä! Iä! Iä! N’ghaa, n’n’ghai-ghai! Iä! Iä! N’ghai, n-yah, n-yah,shoggog, phthaghn! Iä! Iä! Y-hah, y-nyah, y-nyah! N'ghaa, n'n'-ghai, waphl phthagbn-Zvilpoggua! Zvilpoggua! N’gui, n'-gha'ghaa y'hah, Zvilpoggua! Ai! Ai! Ai! And note well that ye Response to ye Name Zvilpoggua, the which is to be onlie chaunted by ye Coven-Master, is Ghu-Tsathoggua, the which doth signify ye Son of Tsatboggua, and ye above Name onlie may be spake forth in ye common or vulgar Tongue.

I put down the manuscript with trembling hands, then took it up again and leafed back to that earlier passage where Jared had written down what he had heard on the night of September 8, 1929 [see page 7 of the present text]. The two chants were word for word the same, until my cousin’s jottings broke off; the only differences between them were that Jared Fuller had set them down phonetically and with little attempt at punctuation.

The pieces of the puzzle were fitting together into a dreadful and horribly meaningful pattern.

I must leave this place soon, very soon. They must know the cabin, situated so fearfully close to their place of worship, is once again inhabited. Surely, it was the coven-folk, or whatever I should call them, that murdered or carried off my cousin ... they or the monstrous demon-thing they serve ... and surely I will be the next victim.

That night I had another of those ghastly dreams that have of late haunted my troubled slumbers [apparently a reference to matter contained in the several passages illegible because of damp]. It seemed I hovered, shivering beneath the bit of ultra-telluric and bone-chilling cold, above a dark and frozen world dimly lit by the spectral light of three pallid moons. On an ice-sheathed plain rose the hoary ruins of a black city of monolithic, windowless walls ... was it a dream of Yaksh (but Neptune has only one moon, as I recall from my boyhood enthusiasm for astronomy), or of that dark world revolving about Algol, where Zvilpoggua resides?

As I drifted nearer and nearer to the black metropolis, I forced myself awake with a tremendous effort of will, and found myself drenched in cold perspiration and trembling like a frail reed in the wind. And I was screaming ...

Most horrible of all, my screams were echoed mockingly by a deep-lunged, howling ululation, but whether from the Wood or from the sky I cannot tell.

(About three paragraphs totally illegible)

... second passage from the Necronomicon, either raggedly cut or torn from Wilmarth's letter, and read as follows:

... hath the Likeness of a great Toade, black as pitch and glist'ning with foetid slime, bewing’d like ye Bat and with ye nether-limbs of ye Behemothe, splayed and clawed and Webb'd betwixt ye Tues thereof, and Face hath it naught, butte from where ye Face shouldst e'en be sprouteth a Horrid Beard of crawling tentacles. And it feasteth of the Fleshe, and Swilleth of ye Bloode of Men, but at its gluttonous Leisure, for first it is said to bear men aloft into ye Sky, and may bear them thus an hundred Leagues or more ere it will rip and tear and Feede, then dropping them to Earth far from whence it snatch'd them up.

But I can read no more. I will leave the cabin tonight, before Algol rises to peer down at me like the glaring, feral eye of some predatory beast. I will abandon everything, taking only my journal in an old briefcase. But before I leave the cabin, I intend to burn the diary of Jared Fuller ... would to God I had the time to consign to the wholesome flames those hellish old books which sane men were never meant to read.

(Four sentences illegible)

Too late—Algol almost risen. I must run for it. If I cannot catch the bus to Arkharn, I dare nor linger so close to the Deep Wood, but must try my luck on the Pike. Perhaps I can make it to Dean’s Corners before it is too late.

I wish

(Manuscript breaks off suddenly at this point.)

NOTE: As of this dare (February 15, 1983), no evidence has ever been found as to the fate or the whereabouts of Winthrop Hoag. The case remains in the "unsolved" files of the County Police.

The editor has no opinion as to the validity of the manuscript, or concerning its authorship. But one or two remarks might be useful at this juncture. It is now fairly certain that the planet Neptune has at least three moons; the existence of two such satellites has been confirmed by visual observation, and from perturbation in their orbits around their primary, the presence of a third moon is considered almost certain.

It may be of no particular consequence, but the Islamic peoples, together with certain other cultures of antiquity, held the star Algol in peculiar loathing and abhorrence. The Arabic astrologer of the VII Century, Ibrahim Al-Araq, refers to it, in those of his writings still extant, with an ambivalent phrase which scholars translate either as “the Demon Star" or “the Star from whence the Demon comes.”