Now and then on some mountain top a
gaunt circle of stones could be glimpsed against the sky. From the
air of hushed fright at Osborn's store they knew something hideous
had happened, and soon learned of the annihilation of the Elmer Frye
house and family. Throughout that afternoon they rode around Dunwich,
questioning the natives concerning all that had occurred, and seeing
for themselves with rising pangs of horror the drear Frye ruins with
their lingering traces of the tarry stickiness, the blasphemous tracks
in the Frye yard, the wounded Seth Bishop cattle, and the enormous
swaths of disturbed vegetation in various places. The trail up and down
Sentinel Hill seemed to Armitage of almost cataclysmic significance,
and he looked long at the sinister altarlike stone on the summit. At length the visitors, apprised of a party of State Police which had
come from Aylesbury that morning in response to the first telephone
reports of the Frye tragedy, decided to seek out the officers and
compare notes as far as practicable. This, however, they found more
easily planned than performed; since no sign of the party could be
found in any direction. There had been five of them in a car, but now
the car stood empty near the ruins in the Frye yard. The natives, all
of whom had talked with the policemen, seemed at first as perplexed as
Armitage and his companions. Then old Sam Hutchins thought of something
and turned pale, nudging Fred Farr and pointing to the dank, deep
hollow that yawned close by. "Gawd," he gasped, "I telled 'em not ter go daown into the glen, an' I
never thought nobody'd dew it with them tracks an' that smell an' the
whippoorwills a-screechin' daown thar in the dark o' noonday...."

A cold shudder ran through natives and visitors alike, and every ear
seemed strained in a kind of instinctive, unconscious listening. Armitage, now that he had actually come upon the horror and its
monstrous work, trembled with the responsibility he felt to be
his. Night would soon fall, and it was then that the mountainous
blasphemy lumbered upon its eldritch course. _Negotium perambulans in
tenebris...._ The old librarian rehearsed the formulæ he had memorized,
and clutched the paper containing the alternative ones he had not
memorized. He saw that his electric flashlight was in working order. Rice, beside him, took from a valise a metal sprayer of the sort used
in combating insects; whilst Morgan uncased the big-game rifle on which
he relied despite his colleague's warnings that no material weapon
would be of help. Armitage, having read the hideous diary, knew painfully well what kind
of a manifestation to expect, but he did not add to the fright of the
Dunwich people by giving any hints or clues. He hoped that it might
be conquered without any revelation to the world of the monstrous
thing it had escaped. As the shadows gathered, the natives commenced
to disperse homeward, anxious to bar themselves indoors despite the
present evidence that all human locks and bolts were useless before a
force that could bend trees and crush houses when it chose. They shook
their heads at the visitors' plan to stand guard at the Frye ruins near
the glen; and as they left, had little expectancy of ever seeing the
watchers again. There were rumblings under the hills that night, and the whippoorwills
piped threateningly. Once in a while a wind, sweeping up out of Cold
Spring Glen, would bring a touch of ineffable fetor to the heavy night
air; such a fetor as all three of the watchers had smelled once before,
when they stood above a dying thing that had passed for fifteen years
and a half as a human being. But the looked-for terror did not appear. Whatever was down there in the glen was biding its time, and Armitage
told his colleagues it would be suicidal to try to attack it in the
dark. Morning came wanly, and the night-sounds ceased. It was a gray, bleak
day, with now and then a drizzle of rain; and heavier and heavier
clouds seemed to be piling themselves up beyond the hills to the
northwest. The men from Arkham were undecided what to do. Seeking
shelter from the increasing rainfall beneath one of the few undestroyed
Frye outbuildings, they debated the wisdom of waiting, or of taking the
aggressive and going down into the glen in quest of their nameless,
monstrous quarry. The downpour waxed in heaviness, and distant peals of
thunder sounded from far horizons. Sheet lightning shimmered, and then
a forky bolt flashed near at hand, as if descending into the accursed
glen itself. The sky grew very dark, and the watchers hoped that the
storm would prove a short, sharp one followed by clear weather. It was still gruesomely dark when, not much over an hour later, a
confused babel of voices sounded down the road. Another moment brought
to view a frightened group of more than a dozen men, running, shouting,
and even whimpering hysterically. Someone in the lead began sobbing out
words, and the Arkham men started violently when those words developed
a coherent form. "Oh, my Gawd, my Gawd!" the voice choked out; "it's a-goin' agin, _an'
this time by day_! It's aout--it's aout an' a-movin' this very minute,
an' only the Lord knows when it'll be on us all!" The speaker panted into silence, but another took up his message. "Nigh on a haour ago Zeb Whateley here heerd the 'phone a-ringin', an'
it was Mis' Corey, George's wife that lives daown by the junction. She says the hired boy Luther was aout drivin' in the caows from the
storm arter the big bolt, when he see all the trees a-bendin' at the
maouth o' the glen--opposite side ter this--an' smelt the same awful
smell like he smelt when he faound the big tracks las' Monday mornin'. An' she says he says they was a swishin', lappin' saound, more nor
what the bendin' trees an' bushes could make, an' all on a suddent the
trees along the rud begun ter git pushed one side, an' they was a awful
stompin' an' splashin' in the mud. But mind ye, Luther he didn't see
nothin' at all, only jest the bendin' trees an' underbrush. "Then fur ahead where Bishop's Brook goes under the rud he heerd a
awful creakin' an' strainin' on the bridge, an' says he could tell the
saound o' wood a-startin' to crack an' split. An' all the whiles he
never see a thing, only them trees an' bushes a-bendin'. An' when the
swishin' saound got very fur off--on the rud towards Wizard Whateley's
an' Sentinel Hill--Luther he had the guts ter step up whar he'd heerd
it fust an' look at the graound. It was all mud an' water, an' the sky
was dark, an' the rain was wipin' aout all tracks abaout as fast as
could be; but beginnin' at the glen maouth, whar the trees bed moved,
they was still some o' them awful prints big as bar'ls like he seen
Monday." At this point the first excited speaker interrupted. "But _that_ ain't the trouble naow--that was only the start. Zeb here
was callin' folks up an' everybody was a-listenin' in when a call from
Seth Bishop's cut in.