The Dunwich Romance Read online

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  ISBN: 978-1-62105-129-9

  The Dunwich Romance © 2011, 2013 by Edward Lee

  Cover art copyright © 2013 Jim Apalza

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Printed in the USA.

  Acknowledgments

  Wendy Brewer, Dave Barnett, Larry Roberts, Roy Robbins; Jeff, Rose, and Carlton at Deadite; Sergeant Andrew Myers, Bob Strauss, Corie Fromkin, Thomas Bauduret, Greg James, Qwee, reelsplatter, Joey Lombardo, Scott Berke, Alex McVey, Sandy Brock and Tony, Kyle N., Sheri Gambino, Krist, Tastybabysyndrome, Travis Deputy, Shroud Magazine, Monrozombi, Zombified420, sikahtik, rhfactornl, wm ollie, Konnie, Dianna Busby; Gorch; Ashton Heyd, Bob Chaplin, Southern Blood, Hexsyn, KK, Kim, Jan, Bartek Czartoryski, Michael Preissl, Greg Hurlstone, K in D, Dancingwith2leftfeet, Dathar, eubankscs, mypaperpast, Big T, brownie, drunk yorkshireman, mastodonisgod, fizzmaster, wildwood72, airbucket, squeakytherat, ronin57, etaylor, bodydenny, demonknight80, Foxglove, Matt Parsons, Terrence Patrick Rooney, Matthew T. Carpenter, Marcie, Troy Chambers, erbroxcore, gargirl, Emperor Buyer, allnumber2, Nigel Waspfinger, Old Fan, William M. Miller, Danielle D. Smith, Lisa Clay, EdHead, Cheryl Mullenax, Bgill, jasonwulf, Frank Festa, Fred Tosi, Bigheadsballsback, and Wilum Pugmire.

  For Bob Hinton,

  a great fan and a great friend.

  Author's Note

  Though a portion of H.P. Lovecraft enthusiasts are sure to curse me into the deepest pits of the Shoggoths for daring to 1) append one of the greatest horror stories ever written, and 2) for doing so in such an indelicate, microscopically sexual, and scatological manner, I suspect that a good many readers may indeed enjoy this bit of work. Moreover, I’m very grateful to those of you who are fans of my material and have continued to support these intermittent excursions into the venue of the Lovecraftian. Thank you! As a further note, for non-Lovecraftian readers, it would be much better to first read the original masterpiece, Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror; and for those of you who have read it in the past—I hope you are many—treat yourself to something special and read it again. It’s the type of story—like so many of the Master’s—that becomes more brilliant each time you read it. It can easily be found for free at Dagonbytes and other such wonderful websites. My effort here is merely a wee, insignificant ornamentation to the ingenious original. Long live Lovecraft!

  —E.L.

  March 15, 2011

  The

  Dunwich

  Romance

  One

  The end of the Dunwich affair left it granted that the entirety of Wilbur Whateley’s hand-written records had been directed into the possession of the renown Dr. Henry T. Armitage (A.M. Miskatonic, Ph.D. Princeton, Litt.D. Johns Hopkins, Dr.Ing. Erlangen-Nürnberg) of Miskatonic University. Dr. Armitage is due considerable credit for having broken a complex acrostic/substitution code into which these records were enciphered; and the nature of the information gleaned makes it more than reasonable that said data was never publicly released. Instead, a counterfeit explanation devised by authorities spuriously stated that the records were but gobbledygook, an account much more easily digested by all who might be interested.

  To reiterate: the existence of these records is granted. What is not granted, however, is this: not quite all of Wilbur Whateley’s records found their way to Dr. Armitage.

  Two

  Sary Sladder was being molested, quite creatively, behind a briar-bordered stone fence which paralleled some unwholesome pasturage on the westerly outskirts of Dunwich, when her dismal and quite mediocre life changed forever. Though attractive in body by most local judgment, the unkempt twenty-three-year-old had long-since resigned to an existence of questionable nutrition (of which semen played a depressingly large part) and poverty so absolute it was better left undetailed. Any world-view or personal doctrine that her grey matter may have engendered will remain equally undetailed; however, it might be relevant to delegate a few words to her physical aspect: very long, tar-hued hair; curvesome in contour to a voluptuous degree, while yet hardily lean; adequately bosomed and tumescently nippled; with skin that was, as goes the cliche, alabaster-white. Lips—if anything, overly full—adorned a mouth bereft of front teeth thanks to a father whose explosive psychological climate was all too commonplace amongst Dunwich men; yet this misfortune reversed as Sary soon identified the act of prostitution as her only feasible mode of income-production (more than half of her engagements in this sad yet aeonian trade consisted of “oral succor,” and the aforesaid missing incisors to quite a degree magnified the effectiveness of the service). All of her physical enticements, however, ended with the remainder of her visage: a mastiff attack when very young had left her minus one ear and scarred on both cheeks; she had a hopelessly collapsed nose (thanks, also, to her toper of a father); and an absolutely unvarying facial dermatological outbreak. (Less kind Dunwichers referred to her as “Stew Face.”) But another disability that (like the knocked out teeth) took a turn for the better was a grievous sinus infection during infancy which completely obliterated her sense of smell; hence, without ever even knowing it, Sary’s destitute existence was brightened, as the groins of Dunwichers were not known for their olfactory immaculateness.

  Sary at this moment found herself on the less-advantageous end of an awry business proposition. Ten cents was all she charged, yet the target of her commerce today, the burly, hare-lipped Rufus Hutchins, son of an alcoholic well-digger named Elam, made an alternative offer:

  “Wal, I got ten cents, Sary, but I also got ten suthin’ else.”

  “Ten...what?” Sary asked, not in reception of his meaning.

  Whack! came the meaty sound of both fists slamming into her face. “Ten knuckles, ya dutty whore!” Rufus replied, pronouncing “whore” as “hoo-ah” in his mushy backwater dialect. He laughed and watched Sary topple to the grassy verge next to the fence. Her senses skewed; she saw proverbial stars as big sandpaper hands hauled her flannel dress up and roved her nude body. Fingertips pliered her nipples; a fist clenched her pubic thatch and yanked, and she yelped. “Gonna bust this hoo-ah pussy up with my dick, ee-yuh,” assured Rufus, as the organ to which his vernacular referred had already been extracted. It dangled half-limp but when—whack!—he struck her once more in the head, the organ erected with an instantaneousness so thorough one would’ve taken it to be spring-loaded. Sary’s vision smeared; she managed vocal incoherencies through the fist-induced stupor, and when she attempted to strike Rufus’s contorted face, her arm only flopped about. “My pa fucked yew onct,” Rufus reminded her. “Said yer cum-hole smelt wuss than a moose-gut pile ben in the woods a month,” and then pushed her face to one side, exposed the unattractive aperture where her ear had been bitten off, and, for some reason knowable only to one as deranged as Rufus, expectorated liberally into that aperture. These few moments of outrage sufficed to revive some of Sary’s vitality; she whipped her head back and forth as if to jettison the sputum from her ear-hole, and shrieked, “Yew’re right, your daddy fucked me but his dick was so little, I didn’t even feel it! And I also heerd yew suck dog dick!” Sary, in truth, had heard no such thing, but felt the invention appropriate.

  Rufus tensed. “Oh, so’s I suck dog dick, yew say?” and then the well-digger’s son brought two index fingers to his mouth, whistled quite piercingly, and called out, “Heer, Broote
r! Heer, boy!” after which Sary’s guts shriveled as she recalled a bit too latently that the Hutchinses owned a collie named Brooter, and a vicious collie at that.

  Over the fence bounded the mangy, yellow-fanged collie, its insane eyes keen with interest. Rufus snapped his fingers, commanded, “Roll over, boy!” whereupon the animal (curiously, as if used to this command) circumducted itself upon the ground and spread its hind legs. Testicles large as a human’s lolled in their fleshy sac, and a glistening pink tip of flesh had already begun to extrude from the penile sheath. Sary did not require notice as to what she would next be required to do.

  “Thet’s a good dutty hoo-ah, thet’s a good Stew Face. Jess yew go on’n suck Brooter’s dick...,” her captor approved as Sary performed the unmentionable onus, yet with Rufus’ hands about her throat, alternate options did not present themselves. In no extended time, however, the girl’s skills proved sufficient to summon the bestial emission. Her first reaction was surprise—at the sheer volume of fluid that suddenly materialized in her oral cavity—then, the horror kicked in, for the taste, texture, and temperature of this aberrant discharge all combined at once, proving itself in all likelihood the most revolting substance to ever occupy space in her mouth. Her innate reflex, of course, was to expel it all as abruptly as it had appeared, yet at the same instant she would do just that, Rufus’ hands tightened about her throat, and he gave every guarantee: “Yew dun’t swalluh? Wal, then I’ll jess have ta crush yew’re head with one’a these fence-stones, then fuck yew dead.”

  When Sary swallowed, she was impacted by the feeling of one having just been dropped into a mile-deep abysm, and as the revolting taste began to trail down to her stomach, Rufus had already pushed her on her back. “Naow we’ll git’cha some cum in yew’re baby-maker”—he paused on a reflection, then blurted excitedly, “Ee-yuh! We’ll make ya a Rufus baby! Then, in nine months, when it come out? I’ll cut’cher tits off so’s it’ll starve ta death!” and as Rufus prepared to rape Sary, she unwisely pointed to the aggressor’s erection, laughed, and offered, “Why, dang, fat-boy! Yew’re dick’s even littler than yer daddy’s!” This, by the way, was true, and also a verisimilitude Rufus did not appreciate being reminded of.

  Rufus’ face went blank. “Aw, naow, Stew Face shouldn’t arter’ve said that,” and then his face bucked forward with a grimace, and he snorted fiercely, launching dual plumes of mucus out of his nostrils and into Sary’s face. Sary froze in mortification, and more so when Rufus was kind enough to spread the mucus around with his big hand. Already he’d pinned her immobile to the ground via the placement of his knees into her elbows. He grabbed her head and forced it to one side, then whistled again for his mascot. “Heer, Brooter! Heer, boy!” The sated animal jumped up to tend to its master as its master had brushed aside Sary’s hair in order to divulge her remaining ear.

  “Sic, boy! Sic!” Rufus snarled. “Bite that ear clean off!”

  Sary screamed as the unhinged canine surged forward with snapping jaws, and when said jaws had just begun to close over her ear, Sary screamed all the louder.

  “Eat that ear, boy! Goooooooood dawg!”

  Against the ear, the jaws pulled; Sary could feel the beginnings of connective tissue tearing, even over her outraged screams. What had she done to warrant so brutal a molestation? Gawd DANG, Gawd! came her protestation. I’se sorry fer bein’ a whore but, holy bull-flop! What choice I got things bein’ the way they is? I.e, in spite of her horror, Sary was indignant. Yew think mebbe Yew could have Jesus help me?

  Another few seconds were all that would be necessary for the canine to detach Sary’s ear from her head, but in slightly less time than that...

  An oddly angled shadow darkened the scene—and Brooter...released Sary’s ear, yelped, and drew away, hunched down as if threatened by some awesome adversary.

  “Brooter? What’s wrong with yew, huh, boy?” Rufus complained. “Durn’t ya wanna eat on this dutty fuck-pot’s ear?” but then Rufus turned and looked up into the direction to which his animal’s attention had been so abruptly diverted. At once came an eardrum-quaking—

  BAM!

  —so loud the sequent concussion caused the surrounding air to thump. The foam-mouthed canine yelped again and flipped completely around in mid-air. The unbidden somersault dropped the dog flat and dead, and half of its cranial matter had expeditiously launched from its skull.

  “Why, ya done kilt my—” Rufus began to rage, but then all objections ceased when his vision acknowledged to his brain, first, an obvious firearm—a large revolver, a Webley .455, to be precise—and, second, the source of the awkward shadow.

  It was a man—or some horrific exaggeration of a man—cumbersomely jointed as if afflicted by some disorder of the bones, the crown of whose head ran amok with dark crinkly hair, and who stood over seven feet tall. This intruder—if that he really be—wore huge, hand-sewn boots, trousers of tent-canvas, and, oddly, an overlarge long-sleeved shirt buttoned tightly at the collar and cuffs in spite of the day’s warmth.

  Rufus’ eyes slowly opened wide enough as to be lidless, and he choked out this fear-imbued acknowledgment: “Yuh-yuh-yuh-yuh...yew...”

  The colossan responded, “‘T’would only be a man with a soul made’a pig shit ta dew suthin’ to a gull like what ye’re doin’ ta that ‘un,” yet the vociferation sounded unrepresentative of any human voice to ever register in Rufus’ ears. The words issued resonant yet shallow; tenuous yet at the same time deep as a basso choirist; and, ever more odd, mumbly as though the heavily lipped mouth were attempting to speak around solid obstacles; or as if the vocal organs themselves suffered from some manner of maladaptation.

  In truth, however, the voice could be better described, to those more imaginative, as otherworldly.

  Rufus, even in spite of his urine-releasing fear, found himself able to challenge, “Yew’re thet warlock’s grandkid, and thet retart witch Lavinny’s son!”

  The titan intruder stared, his face obscured by half-shadows.

  “An’-an’-an’-they’se ben some kids missin’ thet them daown at Osborn’s say yew snatched—fer warlockin’n’ spells!”

  “Dun’t talk of what ye know nuthin’ abaout,” responded the peculiar voice.

  “An’-an’-an’...yew kilt my dog!”

  “Yer dog all savage and askew in its head from bad raisin’—like ye. Lotta dogs like that raound heer—so’s I kill ‘em. Whether a man or a dog, if it’s ugly in its head, it dun’t desarve ta be a-livin’. Kilt a Hutchins’ dog, wal, ten yeer ago, too, ‘cos it were jess as crazy as this ‘un. Made me happy, it did, to feed that animal’s carcass ta the hogs. T’would make me jess as happy ta do likewise with ye. ”

  Rufus began to crawl backward, absorbing the monstrosity’s implication. “Daon’t yew do nuthin’ ta me! My pa’ll come awf-tuh yew!”

  Some perverted facsimile of a chuckle escaped the giant’s lips. “Yer pa say the same thing way back when, and he in a wheelchar naow. But dun’t worry—I en’t gonna kill ye”—then, with a remarkable agility, the tall shape reached down with speed like a mouse trap, snapped a hand to Rufus’ bare groin—“but it weren’t good to see what yew were a-doin’ ta that gull, so’s I figger it best ta crunch these up, on accaount the likes’a ye dun’t need ta be reproducin’ none”—and then, amid a grisly and most noisome sound, crushed Rufus’ testicles within the scrotal sack.

  Rufus’ vocal reaction was less like a man’s scream and more like the outright caterwaul of some beast of Mastodonic proportions. He bucked against the ground, his plentiful body-fat jiggling. The colossan felt the ruffian’s testes begrudgingly divide and sub-divide into cohered chunks, then said chunks were fractionated as well, until only an oatmeal-like slush remained extant within the malodorous scrotum.

  The desired effect was, hence, achieved; the giant figure’s actions left Rufus transformed into pain incarnate. He flopped ludicrously on the ground as his caterwaul sputtered down; then, with a face ballooned and reddened, he beg
an a haphazard crawl over the fence, his trousers still down, and one hand to the ill-treated scrotum. Agony hoarsened his words: “I’se a-tellin’ my pa’n my Uncle Will, tew!”

  “Jess ye dew that,” the titan replied in a clipped garble, “an’ I’ll kill ‘em, an’ ye’re mama as well. She ought be ‘shamed of herself for birthin’ a boy like ye.”

  Rufus crawled away, sobbing.

  It was then that the towering, oddly proportioned figure, who’d effectively saved Sary from sure peril, turned.

  “Hi,” he said.

  Sary shivered, naked but no longer terrified in spite of her rescuer’s physical and—in particular—facial aspect, for that aspect would be found by most to be extraordinarily terrifying: chinless, elongated as if vised, sporting a rowdy beard, skin of forehead and cheeks large-pored and yellow quite like fresh-plucked chicken skin.

  Sary wasn’t sure how to cogitate this situation; what she felt with the most immediacy, however, was gratitude. She dragged herself up to a sitting position, and offered, “Hi. And thank yew much fer sendin’ that Hutchins boy away—”

  “Never like that boy,” came the sonorous voice. “All evil in his head, he is, like his whole family. Warn’t good ta see him doin’ such things ta ye—” The voice drifted as the giant’s eyes seemed to quell an inner rage. “Folks is jess...so bad raound these parts it seems.”

  Sary replied cheerily, “Oh, they sure is—some’a the wust folks ever.”

  “Heer,” and then the giant’s hand, timidly as if conscious of a desire not to alarm her, lowered, a clean handkerchief in it. “Why’n’t you let me wipe that ugly boy’s snot off’a ye.” Sary stiffened, then sighed a relieving sigh, as the gesture cleaned the mucous from her face.