When a traveller in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction1 of Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean’s Corners he comes upon a lonely and curious country.
The ground gets higher, and the brier-bordered stone walls press closer and closer against the ruts of the dusty, curving road. The trees of the frequent forest belts seem too large, and the wild weeds, brambles and grasses attain2 a luxuriance not often found in settled regions. At the same time the planted fields appear singularly few and barren; while the sparsely3 scattered4 houses wear a surprisingly uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation5.
Without knowing why, one hesitates to ask directions from the gnarled solitary6 figures spied now and then on crumbling7 doorsteps or on the sloping, rock-strewn meadows. Those figures are so silent and furtive8 that one feels somehow confronted by forbidden things, with which it would be better to have nothing to do. When a rise in the road brings the mountains in view above the deep woods, the feeling of strange uneasiness is increased. The summits are too rounded and symmetrical to give a sense of comfort and naturalness, and sometimes the sky silhouettes9 with especial clearness the queer circles of tall stone pillars with which most of them are crowned.
Gorges10 and ravines of problematical depth intersect the way, and the crude wooden bridges always seem of dubious11 safety. When the road dips again there are stretches of marshland that one instinctively12 dislikes, and indeed almost fears at evening when unseen whippoorwills chatter13 and the fireflies come out in abnormal profusion14 to dance to the raucous15, creepily insistent16 rhythms of stridently piping bull-frogs. The thin, shining line of the Miskatonic’s upper reaches has an oddly serpent-like suggestion as it winds close to the feet of the domed17 hills among which it rises.
As the hills draw nearer, one heeds18 their wooded sides more than their stone-crowned tops. Those sides loom19 up so darkly and precipitously that one wishes they would keep their distance, but there is no road by which to escape them. Across a covered bridge one sees a small village huddled20 between the stream and the vertical21 slope of Round Mountain, and wonders at the cluster of rotting gambrel roofs bespeaking22 an earlier architectural period than that of the neighbouring region. It is not reassuring23 to see, on a closer glance, that most of the houses are deserted24 and falling to ruin, and that the broken-steepled church now harbours the one slovenly25 mercantile establishment of the hamlet. One dreads26 to trust the tenebrous tunnel of the bridge, yet there is no way to avoid it. Once across, it is hard to prevent the impression of a faint, malign27 odour about the village street, as of the massed mould and decay of centuries. It is always a relief to get clear of the place, and to follow the narrow road around the base of the hills and across the level country beyond till it rejoins the Aylesbury pike. Afterwards one sometimes learns that one has been through Dunwich.
Outsiders visit Dunwich as seldom as possible, and since a certain season of horror all the signboards pointing towards it have been taken down. The scenery, judged by an ordinary aesthetic28 canon, is more than commonly beautiful; yet there is no influx29 of artists or summer tourists. Two centuries ago, when talk of witch-blood, Satan-worship, and strange forest presences was not laughed at, it was the custom to give reasons for avoiding the locality. In our sensible age — since the Dunwich horror of 1928 was hushed up by those who had the town’s and the world’s welfare at heart — people shun30 it without knowing exactly why. Perhaps one reason — though it cannot apply to uninformed strangers — is that the natives are now repellently decadent31, having gone far along that path of retrogression so common in many New England backwaters. They have come to form a race by themselves, with the well-defined mental and physical stigmata of degeneracy and inbreeding. The average of their intelligence is woefully low, whilst their annals reek32 of overt33 viciousness and of half-hidden murders, incests, and deeds of almost unnameable violence and perversity34. The old gentry35, representing the two or three armigerous families which came from Salem in 1692, have kept somewhat above the general level of decay; though many branches are sunk into the sordid36 populace so deeply that only their names remain as a key to the origin they disgrace. Some of the Whateleys and Bishops37 still send their eldest40 sons to Harvard and Miskatonic, though those sons seldom return to the mouldering41 gambrel roofs under which they and their ancestors were born.
No one, even those who have the facts concerning the recent horror, can say just what is the matter with Dunwich; though old legends speak of unhallowed rites42 and conclaves43 of the Indians, amidst which they called forbidden shapes of shadow out of the great rounded hills, and made wild orgiastic prayers that were answered by loud crackings and rumblings from the ground below. In 1747 the Reverend Abijah Hoadley, newly come to the Congregational Church at Dunwich Village, preached a memorable44 sermon on the close presence of Satan and his imps45; in which he said:
“It must be allow’d, that these Blasphemies46 of an infernall Train of Daemons are Matters of too common Knowledge to be deny’d; the cursed Voices of Azazel and Buzrael, of Beelzebub and Belial, being heard now from under Ground by above a Score of credible47 Witnesses now living. I myself did not more than a Fortnight ago catch a very plain Discourse48 of evill Powers in the Hill behind my House; wherein there were a Rattling49 and Rolling, Groaning50, Screeching51, and Hissing52, such as no Things of this Earth could raise up, and which must needs have come from those Caves that only black Magick can discover, and only the Divell unlock”.
Mr. Hoadley disappeared soon after delivering this sermon, but the text, printed in Springfield, is still extant. Noises in the hills continued to be reported from year to year, and still form a puzzle to geologists53 and physiographers.
Other traditions tell of foul54 odours near the hill-crowning circles of stone pillars, and of rushing airy presences to be heard faintly at certain hours from stated points at the bottom of the great ravines; while still others try to explain the Devil’s Hop39 Yard — a bleak55, blasted hillside where no tree, shrub56, or grass-blade will grow. Then, too, the natives are mortally afraid of the numerous whippoorwills which grow vocal57 on warm nights. It is vowed58 that the birds are psychopomps lying in wait for the souls of the dying, and that they time their eerie59 cries in unison60 with the sufferer’s struggling breath. If they can catch the fleeing soul when it leaves the body, they instantly flutter away chittering in daemoniac laughter; but if they fail, they subside61 gradually into a disappointed silence.
These tales, of course, are obsolete62 and ridiculous; because they come down from very old times. Dunwich is indeed ridiculously old — older by far than any of the communities within thirty miles of it. South of the village one may still spy the cellar walls and chimney of the ancient Bishop38 house, which was built before 1700; whilst the ruins of the mill at the falls, built in 1806, form the most modern piece of architecture to be seen. Industry did not flourish here, and the nineteenth-century factory movement proved short-lived. Oldest of all are the great rings of rough-hewn stone columns on the hilltops, but these are more generally attributed to the Indians than to the settlers. Deposits of skulls63 and bones, found within these circles and around the sizeable table-like rock on Sentinel Hill, sustain the popular belief that such spots were once the burial-places of the Pocumtucks; even though many ethnologists, disregarding the absurd improbability of such a theory, persist in believing the remains64 Caucasian.
1 junction | |
n.连接,接合;交叉点,接合处,枢纽站 | |
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2 attain | |
vt.达到,获得,完成 | |
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3 sparsely | |
adv.稀疏地;稀少地;不足地;贫乏地 | |
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4 scattered | |
adj.分散的,稀疏的;散步的;疏疏落落的 | |
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5 dilapidation | |
n.倒塌;毁坏 | |
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6 solitary | |
adj.孤独的,独立的,荒凉的;n.隐士 | |
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7 crumbling | |
adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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8 furtive | |
adj.鬼鬼崇崇的,偷偷摸摸的 | |
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9 silhouettes | |
轮廓( silhouette的名词复数 ); (人的)体形; (事物的)形状; 剪影 | |
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10 gorges | |
n.山峡,峡谷( gorge的名词复数 );咽喉v.(用食物把自己)塞饱,填饱( gorge的第三人称单数 );作呕 | |
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11 dubious | |
adj.怀疑的,无把握的;有问题的,靠不住的 | |
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12 instinctively | |
adv.本能地 | |
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13 chatter | |
vi./n.喋喋不休;短促尖叫;(牙齿)打战 | |
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14 profusion | |
n.挥霍;丰富 | |
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15 raucous | |
adj.(声音)沙哑的,粗糙的 | |
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16 insistent | |
adj.迫切的,坚持的 | |
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17 domed | |
adj. 圆屋顶的, 半球形的, 拱曲的 动词dome的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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18 heeds | |
n.留心,注意,听从( heed的名词复数 )v.听某人的劝告,听从( heed的第三人称单数 ) | |
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19 loom | |
n.织布机,织机;v.隐现,(危险、忧虑等)迫近 | |
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20 huddled | |
挤在一起(huddle的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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21 vertical | |
adj.垂直的,顶点的,纵向的;n.垂直物,垂直的位置 | |
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22 bespeaking | |
v.预定( bespeak的现在分词 );订(货);证明;预先请求 | |
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23 reassuring | |
a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的,使人放心的 | |
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24 deserted | |
adj.荒芜的,荒废的,无人的,被遗弃的 | |
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25 slovenly | |
adj.懒散的,不整齐的,邋遢的 | |
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26 dreads | |
n.恐惧,畏惧( dread的名词复数 );令人恐惧的事物v.害怕,恐惧,担心( dread的第三人称单数 ) | |
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27 malign | |
adj.有害的;恶性的;恶意的;v.诽谤,诬蔑 | |
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28 aesthetic | |
adj.美学的,审美的,有美感 | |
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29 influx | |
n.流入,注入 | |
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30 shun | |
vt.避开,回避,避免 | |
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31 decadent | |
adj.颓废的,衰落的,堕落的 | |
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32 reek | |
v.发出臭气;n.恶臭 | |
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33 overt | |
adj.公开的,明显的,公然的 | |
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34 perversity | |
n.任性;刚愎自用 | |
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35 gentry | |
n.绅士阶级,上层阶级 | |
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36 sordid | |
adj.肮脏的,不干净的,卑鄙的,暗淡的 | |
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37 bishops | |
(基督教某些教派管辖大教区的)主教( bishop的名词复数 ); (国际象棋的)象 | |
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38 bishop | |
n.主教,(国际象棋)象 | |
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39 hop | |
n.单脚跳,跳跃;vi.单脚跳,跳跃;着手做某事;vt.跳跃,跃过 | |
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40 eldest | |
adj.最年长的,最年老的 | |
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41 mouldering | |
v.腐朽( moulder的现在分词 );腐烂,崩塌 | |
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42 rites | |
仪式,典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
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43 conclaves | |
n.秘密会议,教皇选举会议,红衣主教团( conclave的名词复数 ) | |
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44 memorable | |
adj.值得回忆的,难忘的,特别的,显著的 | |
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45 imps | |
n.(故事中的)小恶魔( imp的名词复数 );小魔鬼;小淘气;顽童 | |
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46 blasphemies | |
n.对上帝的亵渎,亵渎的言词[行为]( blasphemy的名词复数 );侮慢的言词(或行为) | |
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47 credible | |
adj.可信任的,可靠的 | |
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48 discourse | |
n.论文,演说;谈话;话语;vi.讲述,著述 | |
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49 rattling | |
adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
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50 groaning | |
adj. 呜咽的, 呻吟的 动词groan的现在分词形式 | |
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51 screeching | |
v.发出尖叫声( screech的现在分词 );发出粗而刺耳的声音;高叫 | |
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52 hissing | |
n. 发嘶嘶声, 蔑视 动词hiss的现在分词形式 | |
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53 geologists | |
地质学家,地质学者( geologist的名词复数 ) | |
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54 foul | |
adj.污秽的;邪恶的;v.弄脏;妨害;犯规;n.犯规 | |
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55 bleak | |
adj.(天气)阴冷的;凄凉的;暗淡的 | |
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56 shrub | |
n.灌木,灌木丛 | |
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57 vocal | |
adj.直言不讳的;嗓音的;n.[pl.]声乐节目 | |
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58 vowed | |
起誓,发誓(vow的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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59 eerie | |
adj.怪诞的;奇异的;可怕的;胆怯的 | |
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60 unison | |
n.步调一致,行动一致 | |
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61 subside | |
vi.平静,平息;下沉,塌陷,沉降 | |
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62 obsolete | |
adj.已废弃的,过时的 | |
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63 skulls | |
颅骨( skull的名词复数 ); 脑袋; 脑子; 脑瓜 | |
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64 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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