He was
thankful that the windows were just too high to permit of peering
in, and drew the dark curtains carefully down over each one. By this
time two policemen had arrived; and Dr. Morgan, meeting them in the
vestibule, was urging them for their own sakes to postpone entrance to
the stench-filled reading-room till the examiner came and the prostrate
thing could be covered up. Meanwhile frightful changes were taking place on the floor. One need
not describe the _kind_ and _rate_ of shrinkage and disintegration that
occurred before the eyes of Dr. Armitage and Professor Rice; but it is
permissible to say that, aside from the external appearance of face
and hands, the really human elements in Wilbur Whateley must have been
very small. When the medical examiner came, there was only a sticky
whitish mass on the painted boards, and the monstrous odor had nearly
disappeared. Apparently Whateley had had no skull or bony skeleton; at
least, in any true or stable sense. He had taken somewhat after his
unknown father. 7

Yet all this was only the prologue of the actual Dunwich horror. Formalities were gone through by bewildered officials, abnormal details
were duly kept from press and public, and men were sent to Dunwich
and Aylesbury to look up property and notify any who might be heirs
of the late Wilbur Whateley. They found the countryside in great
agitation, both because of the growing rumblings beneath the domed
hills, and because of the unwonted stench and the surging, lapping
sounds which came increasingly from the great empty shell formed by
Whateley's boarded-up farmhouse. Earl Sawyer, who tended the horse and
cattle during Wilbur's absence, had developed a wofully acute case
of nerves. The officials devised excuses not to enter the noisome
boarded place; and were glad to confine their survey of the deceased's
living quarters, the newly mended sheds, to a single visit. They filed
a ponderous report at the court-house in Aylesbury, and litigations
concerning heirship are said to be still in progress amongst the
innumerable Whateleys, decayed and undecayed, of the upper Miskatonic
valley. An almost interminable manuscript in strange characters, written in a
huge ledger and adjudged a sort of diary because of the spacing and
the variations in ink and penmanship, presented a baffling puzzle to
those who found it on the old bureau which served as its owner's
desk. After a week of debate it was sent to Miskatonic University,
together with the deceased's collection of strange books, for study
and possible translation; but even the best linguists soon saw that it
was not likely to be unriddled with ease. No trace of the ancient gold
with which Wilbur and Old Whateley always paid their debts has yet been
discovered. It was in the dark of September ninth that the horror broke loose. The hill noises had been very pronounced during the evening, and dogs
barked frantically all night. Early risers on the tenth noticed a
peculiar stench in the air. About 7 o'clock Luther Brown, the hired boy
at George Corey's, between Cold Spring Glen and the village, rushed
frenziedly back from his morning trip to Ten-Acre Meadow with the cows. He was almost convulsed with fright as he stumbled into the kitchen;
and in the yard outside the no less frightened herd were pawing and
lowing pitifully, having followed the boy back in the panic they shared
with him. Between gasps Luther tried to stammer out his tale to Mrs.
Corey. "Up thar in the rud beyont the glen, Mis' Corey--they's suthin' ben
thar! It smells like thunder, an' all the bushes an' little trees is
pushed back from the rud like they'd a haouse ben moved along of it. An' that ain't the wust, nuther. They's _prints_ in the rud, Mis'
Corey--great raound prints as big as barrel-heads, all sunk daown deep
like a elephant had ben along, _only they's a sight more nor four feet
could make_. I looked at one or two afore I run, an' I see every one
was covered with lines spreadin' aout from one place, like as if big
palm-leaf fans--twict or three times as big as any they is--hed of ben
paounded daown into the rud. An' the smell was awful, like what it is
araound Wizard Whateley's ol' haouse...."

Here he faltered, and seemed to shiver afresh with the fright that had
sent him flying home. Mrs. Corey, unable to extract more information,
began telephoning the neighbors; thus starting on its rounds the
overture of panic that heralded the major terrors. When she got Sally
Sawyer, housekeeper at Seth Bishop's, the nearest place to Whateley's,
it became her turn to listen instead of transmit; for Sally's boy
Chauncey, who slept poorly, had been up on the hill toward Whateley's,
and had dashed back in terror after one look at the place, and at the
pasturage where Mr. Bishop's cows had been left out all night. "Yes, Mis' Corey," came Sally's tremulous voice over the party wire,
"Cha'ncey he just come back a-post-in', and couldn't haff talk fer
bein' scairt! He says Ol' Whateley's haouse is all blowed up, with
the timbers scattered raound like they'd ben dynamite inside; only
the bottom floor ain't through, but is all covered with a kind o'
tarlike stuff that smells awful an' drips daown offen the aidges onto
the graoun' whar the side timbers is blowed away. An' they's awful
kinder marks in the yard, tew--great raound marks bigger raound than a
hogshead, an' all sticky with stuff like is on the blowed-up haouse. Cha'ncey he says they leads off into the medders, whar a great swath
wider'n a barn is matted daown, an' all the stun walls tumbled every
which way wherever it goes. "An' he says, says he, Mis' Corey, as haow he sot to look fer Seth's
caows, frighted ez he was; an' faound 'em in the upper pasture nigh the
Devil's Hop Yard in an awful shape. Haff on 'em's clean gone, an' nigh
haff o' them that's left is sucked most dry o' blood, with sores on 'em
like they's ben on Whateley's cattle ever senct Lavinny's black brat
was born. Seth he's gone aout naow to look at 'em, though I'll vaow he
wun't keer ter git very nigh Wizard Whateley's! Cha'ncey didn't look
keerful ter see whar the big matted-daown swath led arter it leff the
pasturage, but he says he thinks it p'inted towards the glen rud to the
village. "I tell ye, Mis' Corey, they's suthin' abroad as hadn't orter be
abroad, an' I fer one think that black Wilbur Whateley, as come to
the bad eend he desarved, is at the bottom of the breedin' of it. He
wa'n't all human hisself, I allus says to everybody; an' I think he an'
Ol' Whateley must a raised suthin' in that there nailed-up haouse as
ain't even so human as he was. They's allus ben unseen things araound
Dunwich--livin' things--as ain't human an' ain't good fer human folks. "The graoun' was a'talkin' lass night, an' towards mornin' Cha'ncey
he heerd the whippoorwills so laoud in Col' Spring Glen he couldn't
sleep none.