In the end the three men from Arkham — old, white-bearded Dr Armitage, stocky, iron-grey Professor Rice, and lean, youngish Dr Morgan, ascended1 the mountain alone. After much patient instruction regarding its focusing and use, they left the telescope with the frightened group that remained in the road; and as they climbed they were watched closely by those among whom the glass was passed round. It was hard going, and Armitage had to be helped more than once. High above the toiling2 group the great swath trembled as its hellish maker3 repassed with snail-like deliberateness. Then it was obvious that the pursuers were gaining.
Curtis Whateley — of the undecayed branch — was holding the telescope when the Arkham party detoured4 radically5 from the swath. He told the crowd that the men were evidently trying to get to a subordinate peak which overlooked the swath at a point considerably6 ahead of where the shrubbery was now bending. This, indeed, proved to be true; and the party were seen to gain the minor7 elevation8 only a short time after the invisible blasphemy9 had passed it.
Then Wesley Corey, who had taken the glass, cried out that Armitage was adjusting the sprayer which Rice held, and that something must be about to happen. The crowd stirred uneasily, recalling that his sprayer was expected to give the unseen horror a moment of visibility. Two or three men shut their eyes, but Curtis Whateley snatched back the telescope and strained his vision to the utmost. He saw that Rice, from the party’s point of advantage above and behind the entity10, had an excellent chance of spreading the potent11 powder with marvellous effect.
Those without the telescope saw only an instant’s flash of grey cloud — a cloud about the size of a moderately large building — near the top of the mountain. Curtis, who held the instrument, dropped it with a piercing shriek12 into the ankle-deep mud of the road. He reeled, and would have crumbled13 to the ground had not two or three others seized and steadied him. All he could do was moan half-inaudibly.
‘Oh, oh, great Gawd . . . that . . . that . . . ’
There was a pandemonium14 of questioning, and only Henry Wheeler thought to rescue the fallen telescope and wipe it clean of mud. Curtis was past all coherence15, and even isolated16 replies were almost too much for him.
‘Bigger’n a barn . . . all made o’ squirmin’ ropes . . . hull17 thing sort o’ shaped like a hen’s egg bigger’n anything with dozens o’ legs like hogs-heads that haff shut up when they step . . . nothin’ solid abaout it — all like jelly, an’ made o’ sep’rit wrigglin’ ropes pushed clost together . . . great bulgin’ eyes all over it . . . ten or twenty maouths or trunks a-stickin’ aout all along the sides, big as stove-pipes an all a-tossin’ an openin’ an’ shuttin’ . . . all grey, with kinder blue or purple rings . . . an’ Gawd it Heaven — that haff face on top . . . ’
This final memory, whatever it was, proved too much for poor Curtis; and he collapsed18 completely before he could say more. Fred Farr and Will Hutchins carried him to the roadside and laid him on the damp grass. Henry Wheeler, trembling, turned the rescued telescope on the mountain to see what he might. Through the lenses were discernible three tiny figures, apparently19 running towards the summit as fast as the steep incline allowed. Only these — nothing more. Then everyone noticed a strangely unseasonable noise in the deep valley behind, and even in the underbrush of Sentinel Hill itself. It was the piping of unnumbered whippoorwills, and in their shrill20 chorus there seemed to lurk21 a note of tense and evil expectancy22.
Earl Sawyer now took the telescope and reported the three figures as standing23 on the topmost ridge24, virtually level with the altar-stone but at a considerable distance from it. One figure, he said, seemed to be raising its hands above its head at rhythmic25 intervals26; and as Sawyer mentioned the circumstance the crowd seemed to hear a faint, half-musical sound from the distance, as if a loud chant were accompanying the gestures. The weird27 silhouette28 on that remote peak must have been a spectacle of infinite grotesqueness29 and impressiveness, but no observer was in a mood for aesthetic30 appreciation31. ‘I guess he’s sayin’ the spell,’ whispered Wheeler as he snatched back the telescope. The whippoorwills were piping wildly, and in a singularly curious irregular rhythm quite unlike that of the visible ritual.
Suddenly the sunshine seemed to lessen32 without the intervention33 of any discernible cloud. It was a very peculiar34 phenomenon, and was plainly marked by all. A rumbling35 sound seemed brewing36 beneath the hills, mixed strangely with a concordant rumbling which clearly came from the sky. Lightning flashed aloft, and the wondering crowd looked in vain for the portents37 of storm. The chanting of the men from Arkham now became unmistakable, and Wheeler saw through the glass that they were all raising their arms in the rhythmic incantation. From some farmhouse38 far away came the frantic39 barking of dogs.
The change in the quality of the daylight increased, and the crowd gazed about the horizon in wonder. A purplish darkness, born of nothing more than a spectral40 deepening of the sky’s blue, pressed down upon the rumbling hills. Then the lightning flashed again, somewhat brighter than before, and the crowd fancied that it had showed a certain mistiness41 around the altar-stone on the distant height. No one, however, had been using the telescope at that instant. The whippoorwills continued their irregular pulsation42, and the men of Dunwich braced43 themselves tensely against some imponderable menace with which the atmosphere seemed surcharged.
Without warning came those deep, cracked, raucous44 vocal45 sounds which will never leave the memory of the stricken group who heard them. Not from any human throat were they born, for the organs of man can yield no such acoustic46 perversions47. Rather would one have said they came from the pit itself, had not their source been so unmistakably the altar-stone on the peak. It is almost erroneous to call them sounds at all, since so much of their ghastly, infra-bass timbre48 spoke49 to dim seats of consciousness and terror far subtler than the ear; yet one must do so, since their form was indisputably though vaguely50 that of half-articulate words. They were loud — loud as the rumblings and the thunder above which they echoed — yet did they come from no visible being. And because imagination might suggest a conjectural51 source in the world of non-visible beings, the huddled52 crowd at the mountain’s base huddled still closer, and winced53 as if in expectation of a blow.
Ygnailh . . . ygnaiih . . . thflthkh’ngha . . . Yog–Sothoth . . . rang the hideous54 croaking55 out of space. Y’bthnk . . . h’ehye — n’grkdl’lh . . .
The speaking impulse seemed to falter56 here, as if some frightful57 psychic58 struggle were going on. Henry Wheeler strained his eye at the telescope, but saw only the three grotesquely59 silhouetted60 human figures on the peak, all moving their arms furiously in strange gestures as their incantation drew near its culmination61. From what black wells of Acherontic fear or feeling, from what unplumbed gulfs of extra-cosmic consciousness or obscure, long-latent heredity, were those half-articulate thunder-croakings drawn62? Presently they began to gather renewed force and coherence as they grew in stark63, utter, ultimate frenzy64.
Eh-y-ya-ya-yahaah — e’yayayaaaa . . . ngh’aaaaa . . . ngh’aaa . . . h’yuh . . . h’yuh . . . HELP! HELP! . . . ff — ff — ff — FATHER! FATHER! YOG-SOTHOTH! . . .
But that was all. The pallid65 group in the road, still reeling at the indisputably English syllables66 that had poured thickly and thunderously down from the frantic vacancy67 beside that shocking altar-stone, were never to hear such syllables again. Instead, they jumped violently at the terrific report which seemed to rend68 the hills; the deafening69, cataclysmic peal70 whose source, be it inner earth or sky, no hearer was ever able to place. A single lightning bolt shot from the purple zenith to the altar-stone, and a great tidal wave of viewless force and indescribable stench swept down from the hill to all the countryside. Trees, grass, and under-brush were whipped into a fury; and the frightened crowd at the mountain’s base, weakened by the lethal71 foetor that seemed about to asphyxiate72 them, were almost hurled73 off their feet. Dogs howled from the distance, green grass and foliage74 wilted75 to a curious, sickly yellow-grey, and over field and forest were scattered76 the bodies of dead whippoorwills.
The stench left quickly, but the vegetation never came right again. To this day there is something queer and unholy about the growths on and around that fearsome hill Curtis Whateley was only just regaining77 consciousness when the Arkham men came slowly down the mountain in the beams of a sunlight once more brilliant and untainted. They were grave and quiet, and seemed shaken by memories and reflections even more terrible than those which had reduced the group of natives to a state of cowed quivering. In reply to a jumble78 of questions they only shook their heads and reaffirmed one vital fact.
‘The thing has gone for ever,’ Armitage said. ‘It has been split up into what it was originally made of, and can never exist again. It was an impossibility in a normal world. Only the least fraction was really matter in any sense we know. It was like its father — and most of it has gone back to him in some vague realm or dimension outside our material universe; some vague abyss out of which only the most accursed rites79 of human blasphemy could ever have called him for a moment on the hills.’
There was a brief silence, and in that pause the scattered senses of poor Curtis Whateley began to knit back into a sort of continuity; so that he put his hands to his head with a moan. Memory seemed to pick itself up where it had left off, and the horror of the sight that had prostrated80 him burst in upon him again.
‘Oh, oh, my Gawd, that haff face — that haff face on top of it . . . that face with the red eyes an’ crinkly albino hair, an’ no chin, like the Whateleys . . . It was a octopus81, centipede, spider kind o’ thing, but they was a haff-shaped man’s face on top of it, an’ it looked like Wizard Whateley’s, only it was yards an’ yards acrost . . . ’
He paused exhausted82, as the whole group of natives stared in a bewilderment not quite crystallized into fresh terror. Only old Zebulon Whateley, who wanderingly remembered ancient things but who had been silent heretofore, spoke aloud.
‘Fifteen year’ gone,’ he rambled83, ‘I heered Ol’ Whateley say as haow some day we’d hear a child o’ Lavinny’s a-callin’ its father’s name on the top o’ Sentinel Hill . . . ’
But Joe Osborn interrupted him to question the Arkham men anew.
‘What was it, anyhaow, an’ haowever did young Wizard Whateley call it aout o’ the air it come from?’
Armitage chose his words very carefully.
‘It was — well, it was mostly a kind of force that doesn’t belong in our part of space; a kind of force that acts and grows and shapes itself by other laws than those of our sort of Nature. We have no business calling in such things from outside, and only very wicked people and very wicked cults84 ever try to. There was some of it in Wilbur Whateley himself — enough to make a devil and a precocious85 monster of him, and to make his passing out a pretty terrible sight. I’m going to burn his accursed diary, and if you men are wise you’ll dynamite86 that altar-stone up there, and pull down all the rings of standing stones on the other hills. Things like that brought down the beings those Whateleys were so fond of — the beings they were going to let in tangibly87 to wipe out the human race and drag the earth off to some nameless place for some nameless purpose.
‘But as to this thing we’ve just sent back — the Whateleys raised it for a terrible part in the doings that were to come. It grew fast and big from the same reason that Wilbur grew fast and big — but it beat him because it had a greater share of the outsideness in it. You needn’t ask how Wilbur called it out of the air. He didn’t call it out. It was his twin brother, but it looked more like the father than he did.’
The End
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1
ascended
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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toiling
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的现在分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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maker
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| n.制造者，制造商 | |
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detoured
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| 绕道( detour的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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radically
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| ad.根本地，本质地 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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8
elevation
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| n.高度；海拔；高地；上升；提高 | |
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blasphemy
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| n.亵渎，渎神 | |
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entity
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| n.实体，独立存在体，实际存在物 | |
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potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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crumbled
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| （把…）弄碎， （使）碎成细屑( crumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 衰落； 坍塌； 损坏 | |
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pandemonium
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| n.喧嚣，大混乱 | |
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coherence
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| n.紧凑；连贯；一致性 | |
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isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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hull
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| n.船身；(果、实等的)外壳；vt.去(谷物等)壳 | |
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collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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shrill
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| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
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lurk
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| n.潜伏，潜行；v.潜藏，潜伏，埋伏 | |
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expectancy
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| n.期望，预期，（根据概率统计求得）预期数额 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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rhythmic
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| adj.有节奏的，有韵律的 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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silhouette
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| n.黑色半身侧面影，影子，轮廓；v.描绘成侧面影，照出影子来，仅仅显出轮廓 | |
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grotesqueness
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aesthetic
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| adj.美学的，审美的，有美感 | |
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appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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32
lessen
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| vt.减少，减轻；缩小 | |
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intervention
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| n.介入，干涉，干预 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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rumbling
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| n. 隆隆声, 辘辘声 adj. 隆隆响的 动词rumble的现在分词 | |
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brewing
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| n. 酿造, 一次酿造的量 动词brew的现在分词形式 | |
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portents
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| n.预兆( portent的名词复数 )；征兆；怪事；奇物 | |
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farmhouse
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| n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房） | |
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frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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spectral
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| adj.幽灵的，鬼魂的 | |
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mistiness
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| n.雾，模糊，不清楚 | |
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pulsation
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| n.脉搏，悸动，脉动；搏动性 | |
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braced
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| adj.拉牢的v.支住( brace的过去式和过去分词 )；撑牢；使自己站稳；振作起来 | |
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raucous
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| adj.(声音)沙哑的，粗糙的 | |
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vocal
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| adj.直言不讳的；嗓音的；n.[pl.]声乐节目 | |
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acoustic
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| adj.听觉的，声音的；(乐器)原声的 | |
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47
perversions
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| n.歪曲( perversion的名词复数 )；变坏；变态心理 | |
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48
timbre
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| n.音色，音质 | |
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49
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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50
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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51
conjectural
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| adj.推测的 | |
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52
huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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53
winced
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| 赶紧避开，畏缩( wince的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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54
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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55
croaking
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| v.呱呱地叫( croak的现在分词 )；用粗的声音说 | |
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56
falter
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| vi.(嗓音)颤抖，结巴地说；犹豫；蹒跚 | |
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57
frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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58
psychic
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| n.对超自然力敏感的人；adj.有超自然力的 | |
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grotesquely
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| adv. 奇异地,荒诞地 | |
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60
silhouetted
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| 显出轮廓的，显示影像的 | |
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61
culmination
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| n.顶点；最高潮 | |
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62
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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64
frenzy
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| n.疯狂，狂热，极度的激动 | |
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pallid
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| adj.苍白的，呆板的 | |
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66
syllables
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| n.音节( syllable的名词复数 ) | |
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67
vacancy
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| n.（旅馆的）空位，空房，（职务的）空缺 | |
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68
rend
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| vt.把…撕开，割裂；把…揪下来，强行夺取 | |
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69
deafening
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| adj. 振耳欲聋的, 极喧闹的 动词deafen的现在分词形式 | |
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70
peal
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| n.钟声；v.鸣响 | |
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71
lethal
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| adj.致死的；毁灭性的 | |
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72
asphyxiate
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| v.无法呼吸，窒息而死 | |
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73
hurled
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| v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的过去式和过去分词 )；大声叫骂 | |
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foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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75
wilted
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| （使）凋谢，枯萎( wilt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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76
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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regaining
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| 复得( regain的现在分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地 | |
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jumble
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| vt.使混乱，混杂；n.混乱；杂乱的一堆 | |
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rites
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| 仪式，典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
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80
prostrated
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| v.使俯伏，使拜倒( prostrate的过去式和过去分词 )；（指疾病、天气等）使某人无能为力 | |
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81
octopus
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| n.章鱼 | |
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82
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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83
rambled
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| （无目的地）漫游( ramble的过去式和过去分词 )； （喻）漫谈； 扯淡； 长篇大论 | |
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84
cults
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| n.迷信( cult的名词复数 )；狂热的崇拜；（有极端宗教信仰的）异教团体 | |
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85
precocious
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| adj.早熟的；较早显出的 | |
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86
dynamite
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| n./vt.(用)炸药(爆破) | |
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87
tangibly
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| adv.可触摸的，可触知地，明白地 | |
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