The Place Called Dagon

the door behind him. I helped wash dishes. Pretty soon Mr. Burroughs came. He slid into the house humming to himself. He loitered about the kitchen for a while and talked to Mrs. Westcott about what sort of a year it was, and how he was going to preach Leeminster way on Sunday. Mrs. Westcott just laughed in her husky way. ‘Preach!’ she said. ‘You’re an insane humorist, George.’ He smiled, too, and looked at me in that sly still way. ‘Watch out for my little Paschal Lamb,’ he said, nodding at me. Then he went to the door of the library and knocked, and pretty soon he went in, leaving the door ajar. I could hear him talking with Mr. Westcott. I continued to work about the kitchen, but the door that led into the sitting room was open, and so, too, was the door to the library, ajar, I mean. I could hear men’s voices, but it was hard to distinguish the words. I didn’t notice when Mrs. Westcott went away, but when I looked for her to ask her about something, she was gone. Once I heard Mr. Westcott’s voice raised. He cried out, ‘I tell you she’ll do, George. At the place called Dagon.⁠ ⁠…’ Then I heard footsteps coming toward the door. ‘The master⁠ ⁠…’ began Mr. Burroughs, and the door was closed with a slam. I couldn’t distinguish any more words. When I went into the sitting room I could just hear Mr. Burroughs’ voice. It was monotonous, as though he was preaching, and it sounded like some foreign language. Maybe Latin.”

She stopped and looked at the silent attentive figure of Dreeme.

“It doesn’t sound like anything does it?” she asked.

“Go on,” said Dreeme briefly. Queer word, Dagon.

“I’m getting to what really frightened me now,” she said. “All that went before was a mere leading up, a series of nothings that put me in a nervous state of mind. I wanted you to know, though. I went to bed rather early because I was tired. It was a long time before I got to sleep. You know how a strange bed feels, and when one is nervous. But I did get to sleep finally, and I guess I slept pretty heavily. I don’t know how long I slept, but I am sure that I was awakened by three horrible screams. I started up.⁠ ⁠…”

“You heard somebody screaming?” asked Dreeme. She shook her head. She said:

“No, I didn’t hear anything. But I am sure that I was wakened by three screams. I don’t know.⁠ ⁠… I.⁠ ⁠… I sensed the echo of them, I guess. I started up wide awake and half-mad with fright. I knew instantly without looking that the door to my room was open. There was a little moonlight straggling in at the window and when I looked toward the door I could see him standing there. I could see his face very plainly, and the ridges on his skull. He.⁠ ⁠…”

Dreeme uttered a stifled exclamation.

“You mean⁠ ⁠…” he began.

“Yes, yes,” she said, the shadow of fear starting up in her eyes again. “Mr. Westcott was standing in my doorway and looking at me. He was leaning forward a little, his head lowered on his breast, and staring at me from under his eyebrows. The moonlight rippled across his uneven head and his flat nose. His eyes were large and dark and still, with that awful stillness that seems to say so many things. He stood there and stared, and everything seemed to die inside me. The blood paused in my veins, and a queer sort of dizziness came over me. I was conscious of nothing but his eyes, and of an enormous will in his eyes that seemed to but half-reveal itself. I seemed to swoon, to float upward, while his eyes grew into huge circles that swallowed me and the room. Far off, as though from another world, I heard a low voice saying, ‘At Dagon. At Dagon. For the master.’ He did not say that, for his lips never moved, and even if he had spoken I could not have heard him, for my ears were like dead things. It was through his eyes that everything came to me. And it was looking into his eyes, being drowned in his eyes, that I saw.⁠ ⁠…”

For a moment she lost the faculty of speech and lifted a small white frightened face to Dreeme. Her lips fumbled for words, and the young doctor could see them moving dumbly.

“Wait,” he said. “Don’t tell me any more.”

In the back of his mind a faint light was beginning to dawn. It was far away as yet, as far away as those snowy hawks that hovered over the valley. He would have to mount as high as those clouds if he was to see everything spread out like a simple map before him.

“I must,” she said with an effort. “I must try to let you know. It was all in his eyes. An unutterable evil. A concentration of everything that is horrible and bestial in this world, or, for all I know, out of it. His eyes were telling me of all the sins and perversions and horrors that have existed since before the beginning of time, of reptile urges and.⁠ ⁠… I can’t explain it, you see. I do not know how to handle the words. But I saw⁠ ⁠… the horror of time⁠ ⁠… and.⁠ ⁠…”

She could not go on. But she did not sob again. She sat with trance-like eyes and said nothing.

Dreeme was staring at her intently, and, from a half-shocked mind, striving to piece together her stumbling narrative of mingled fears and menaces. Curiously enough he did not doubt the authenticity of her mental fever. This was no mere hysteria, no nightmare. It was as though the hidden facet of an admitted evil had been slowly turned toward him. The faraway light continued to shine in the deepest recesses of his mind. He felt all that she felt as he heard her story,