The Place Called Dagon

it is evil⁠—as we understand evil⁠—only when we compare it with our artificially created good. The animals know no evil because they know no good. They know nothing but a great impulse pulling them one way always⁠—the way of self-emancipation. It should be so with us. There is neither evil nor good but a sole purpose and that purpose is the domination of the will over matter, the power of regulating time by the exertion of the will. Within us the sixth sense lies dormant. We taste, touch, smell, hear and see but these are animal functions. The sixth sense is to will. When that is discovered we shall be the lords of creation. How can we develop and strengthen this weak will that staggers like an infant child in the dark corridors of our brains? The old magicians did not know. I have read all their books and my house is filled with them. Can the will be sharpened by symbols, by monstrous symbols that tear our time accustomed minds from the old impulses and subserviencies? May we by building an artificial structure of liturgies and ceremonies and sacrifices, by constant allegories that call the imaginative faculties of the will into exertion, discipline and exercise that weakness that is our shame today? In other words, may we by a complete reversal of all those religious mummeries that subjected our will and made it puny before the imaginary gods, destroy the prison walls we have builded about ourselves? We made the gods by worshiping them, by fearing them. Can we unmake them by reviling them, by walking boldly before those pillars of hollow smoke? There was once a group of people who believed that the will might become paramount if they followed the dictates of their mystic senses regardless of so-called good. They called the will by a symbolic name and they met in secret forest clearings. They made a pledge with evil and they barely understood why they did it. They.⁠ ⁠…”

Westcott stopped suddenly and looked at Dreeme. The trance-like light died out of his dark eyes.

“I will not tell you any more,” he said. “Why should I talk to you of these things. You do not understand.”

“There are some things I understand,” answered Dreeme. “You associate Satan with the free will. You imagine you can strengthen your own will to superhuman dimensions by denying the impulses of good. You.⁠ ⁠…”

“I deny no impulses,” said Westcott roughly. “I follow the solitary impulse.”

He rose to his feet.

“Good night, doctor,” he said. “Take my advice and go away.”

“Go away!” cried Dreeme. “Why should I go away??”

“Because,” replied Westcott, “even a fool may learn wisdom.”

He strode heavily to the door, his injured leg swaying his body from side to side as he walked. He did not even turn back as he passed out into the full moonlight. A moment later Dreeme heard his uneven stride as he passed over the little bridge. Dreeme sat alone in the burned mill and looked at the scummed water of the quiet pond. One thing was certain. Westcott was a mad man. He was a megalomaniac eaten up by a ridiculous theory that gave him an excuse for any excesses he desired. Anything might fit into his theory of strengthening the will. Even murder. Constant brooding upon his purpose had awakened an hysteric ecstasy in him and there were times when this ecstasy broke into an uncontrollable display. Dreeme tried to remember what he had read about these lunacies in the past. Somewhere, he was sure, he had learned that an abnormal intellectual power went hand in hand with an infant-like abandonment to symbols. For instance, one of these fanatics might display the most brilliant intellectuality in building up an elaborate and mystically logical structure and this structure might be built upon the most absurd and impossible foundation. Or, again, the mad man might reveal the most refined cunning to a certain point and then observe a cloud in the sky, a leaf on the ground, the note of a bird in the darkness and be swung abruptly from his purpose. Such men were dangerous. Any slight incident might provoke their madness.

Dreeme had an instantaneous picture of Westcott sitting alone among his books and searching through the yellowed leaves for the secret of the mastery of the will, building up impossible theories out of insane hints, drawing into the crazy net of his mind all the obsolete mysticisms of the dark ages, of the Egyptians, of the Indian fakirs, of the Satanists. He was partly sane and partly mad. One half of his brain functioned with surprising agility; the other was a dark morass of supernatural superstitions and primitive impulses. It was plain that he was employing the community for his dark purposes and it was equally plain that the community, because of some secret injection of blood, favored these impulses. These farmers were ridden by an ancient fear which Jeffrey Westcott kept alive. They did not see him often but they knew that he was there and while he was there, sitting in his lonely house and avoided by those about him, he would continue to dominate the valley. He employed some legend for his own ends and the farmers were in some way the inheritors of that legend.

Dreeme rose to his feet and proceeded out of the burned mill and down the road toward Marlborough. He had never seen the moon so white, so lustrous. It was as though the valley were bathed in a crystal liquid, as though the air were full of sparkling essences that flowed through the treetops and along the fronts of the farmhouses. He drew in long draughts of the clear cool air as he went his way, a little surprised at it for the day had been so hot and the sun had been so like a fountain of pale fire spraying the dry streets. As he walked along he wondered why he had ever feared Westcott. It was easy