That upstairs
    looks it will have the right cast. I can see it a little when I
    make the Yoorish sign or blow the power of Ibn Ghazi at it, and it
    is near like them at May Eve on the Hill. The other face may wear
    off some. I wonder how I shall look when the earth is cleared and
    there are no earth beings on it. He that came with the Aklo Sabaoth
    said I may be transfigured, there being much of outside to work on. Morning found Dr. Armitage in a cold sweat of terror and a frenzy of
wakeful concentration. He had not left the manuscript all night, but
sat at his table under the electric light turning page after page
with shaking hands as fast as he could decipher the cryptic text. He
had nervously telephoned his wife he would not be home, and when she
brought him a breakfast from the house he could scarcely dispose of a
mouthful. All that day he read on, now and then halted maddeningly as
a reapplication of the complex key became necessary. Lunch and dinner
were brought him, but he ate only the smallest fraction of either. Toward the middle of the next night he drowsed off in his chair, but
soon woke out of a tangle of nightmares almost as hideous as the truths
and menaces to man's existence that he had uncovered. On the morning of September fourth Professor Rice and Dr. Morgan
insisted on seeing him for a while, and departed trembling and
ashen-gray. That evening he went to bed, but slept only fitfully. Wednesday--the next day--he was back at the manuscript, and began to
take copious notes both from the current sections and from those he had
already deciphered. In the small hours of that night he slept a little
in an easy-chair in his office, but was at the manuscript again before
dawn. Some time before noon his physician, Dr. Hartwell, called to see
him and insisted that he cease work. He refused, intimating that it was
of the most vital importance for him to complete the reading of the
diary, and promising an explanation in due course of time. That evening, just as twilight fell, he finished his terrible perusal
and sank back exhausted. His wife, bringing his dinner, found him in a
half-comatose state; but he was conscious enough to warn her off with
a sharp cry when he saw her eyes wander toward the notes he had taken. Weakly rising, he gathered up the scribbled papers and sealed them all
in a great envelope, which he immediately placed in his inside coat
pocket. He had sufficient strength to get home, but was so clearly in
need of medical aid that Dr. Hartwell was summoned at once. As the
doctor put him to bed he could only mutter over and over again, "_But
what, in God's name, can we do?_"

Dr. Armitage slept, but was partly delirious the next day. He made
no explanations to Hartwell, but in his calmer moments spoke of the
imperative need of a long conference with Rice and Morgan. His wilder
wanderings were very startling indeed, including frantic appeals
that something in a boarded-up farmhouse be destroyed, and fantastic
references to some plan for the extirpation of the entire human race
and all animal and vegetable life from the earth by some terrible elder
race of beings from another dimension. He would shout that the world
was in danger, since the Elder Things wished to strip it and drag it
away from the solar system and cosmos of matter into some other plane
or phase of entity from which it had once fallen, vigintillions of eons
ago. At other times he would call for the dreaded _Necronomicon_ and
the _Dæmonolatreia_ of Remigius, in which he seemed hopeful of finding
some formula to check the peril he conjured up. "Stop them, stop them!" he would shout. "Those Whateleys meant to let
them in, and the worst of all is left! Tell Rice and Morgan we must do
something--it's a blind business, but I know how to make the powder.... It hasn't been fed since the second of August, when Wilbur came here to
his death, and at that rate...."

But Armitage had a sound physique despite his seventy-three years, and
slept off his disorder that night without developing any real fever. He
woke late Friday, clear of head, though sober, with a gnawing fear and
tremendous sense of responsibility. Saturday afternoon he felt able to
go over to the library and summon Rice and Morgan for a conference, and
the rest of that day and evening the three men tortured their brains
in the wildest speculation and the most desperate debate. Strange and
terrible books were drawn voluminously from the stack shelves and from
secure places of storage, and diagrams and formulæ were copied with
feverish haste and in bewildering abundance. Of skepticism there was
none. All three had seen the body of Wilbur Whateley as it lay on the
floor in a room of that very building, and after that not one of them
could feel even slightly inclined to treat the diary as a madman's
raving. Opinions were divided as to notifying the Massachusetts State Police,
and the negative finally won. There were things involved which simply
could not be believed by those who had not seen a sample, as indeed was
made clear during certain subsequent investigations. Late at night the
conference disbanded without having developed a definite plan, but all
day Sunday Armitage was busy comparing formulæ and mixing chemicals
obtained from the college laboratory. The more he reflected on the
hellish diary, the more he was inclined to doubt the efficacy of any
material agent in stamping out the entity which Wilbur Whateley had
left behind him--the earth-threatening entity which, unknown to him,
was to burst forth in a few hours and become the memorable Dunwich
horror. Monday was a repetition of Sunday with Dr. Armitage, for the task
in hand required an infinity of research and experiment. Further
consultations of the monstrous diary brought about various changes of
plan, and he knew that even in the end a large amount of uncertainty
must remain. By Tuesday he had a definite line of action mapped out,
and believed he would try a trip to Dunwich within a week. Then, on
Wednesday, the great shock came. Tucked obscurely away in a corner of
the _Arkham Advertiser_ was a facetious little item from the Associated
Press, telling what a record-breaking monster the bootleg whisky of
Dunwich had raised up. Armitage, half stunned, could only telephone
for Rice and Morgan. Far into the night they discussed, and the next
day was a whirlwind of preparation on the part of them all. Armitage
knew he would be meddling with terrible powers, yet saw that there was
no other way to annul the deeper and more malign meddling which others
had done before him. 9

Friday morning Armitage, Rice and Morgan set out by motor for Dunwich,
arriving at the village about 1 in the afternoon. The day was pleasant,
but even in the brightest sunlight a kind of quiet dread and portent
seemed to hover about the strangely domed hills and the deep, shadowy
ravines of the stricken region.