The Place Called Dagon

that, like the whirling dervishes, they could fling themselves into hysteric trances and dwell in the domain of their sick imaginations. They believed those things, Daniel. They had faith in Satan. And they attained a malevolent strength through their faith. They could superimpose their will on innocent people and make those people sick by the power of suggestion. There is nothing supernatural in that, after all. It is supernormal, perhaps, but you know my views on these things. The trappings and the ceremonies and the results might seem supernatural, but that was because the people in those days did not know about such things as thought-transference, autosuggestion, and the impulsion of the will. In a measure, these people were liberating themselves from time, moving beyond the limitations of their days, subsisting in an arcane of their own manufacture through the full strength of those fanatical beliefs, which, after all, is saying no more than that they liberated their wills and believed in the strength of their wills. Well, in 1692 all this was brought to a halt by the hangings and the persecutions of the witch-judges. The Salem coven was demolished and scattered. Do not think, however, that all the witches were strung up on Gallows Hill. Others fled into the woods and sought far places where they might conduct their orgies and ceremonies in their own way. The larger group, and now, Daniel, I am telling you something I read in a book of which you have heard, hovered in the wilderness about Salem for some weeks, living on roots and berries and what the Indians might give them, for the Indians, too, believed in witchcraft. By night they ventured to the desolate graves of their hanged companions and dug up those bodies and bore them away with them into the thick forest. They pushed westward, avoiding the little settlements in the clearing, passing north of Springfield, crossing the Connecticut River, and eventually they came to a valley and discovered it to be a lost cul-de-sac in the hills, and there they settled down. With them they had the black book of the order, a book filled with ceremonies and liturgies, and in which a scribe set down the account of their wanderings. Can you guess where they settled, Daniel?”

Dreeme nodded.

“Here,” he said. “They settled in this valley. These farmers are their descendants. The black book they carried with them was the black book of old Uriah Carrier.”

Lathrop wagged his head up and down.

“That’s right,” he said. “As a boy I looked into that book and was frightened out of my wits. Yes, Daniel, they settled here, still carrying on their frightful ceremonies, still calling upon the devil by night and meeting in the secret forest clearings to dance in the light of the moon. One place they kept sacred. It was a hidden place, known only to the adepts. It was there that they buried the bones of the hanged witches, those poor bodies that they had carried for two hundred miles through the thick wilderness. There, too, they raised the Devil Stone upon which the Black Man stood during the great ceremonies. They called the place Dagon and strewed it with ashes. I can picture that place lighted by torches at midnight. I can picture the rapt faces of the witches and the compelling eyes of the Black Man as he stood above them and called on Satan, on Beelzebub, on Asmodeus, the fiends that he imagined served his purpose. I can hear the laughter of the women and see their glistening eyes as the madness took them. By day they were taciturn people, carrying on the quiet masquerade of pioneers, building up homes in the clearing, pushing the forest farther and farther back; but when the moon rose the madness that was in their blood swept them out of themselves and they became other creatures employing pagan symbols and ancient phallic ceremonials. They existed in a domain out of place and time, then, a land of hallucinations and dreams and primitive urges. It was a land where they celebrated the Black Mass and the Witches’ Sabbat, and gave full rein to the frenzies of the blood and brain. I’ve never seen the place called Dagon, Daniel, and I never hope to see it, but I suspect where it is. I suspect that the Devil Stone is still there, and if one dug deep enough one would come to crumbled bones, if, indeed, bones last that long.”

The old doctor drew a long breath and paused. He reached for the applejack bottle and poured himself a drink.

“I’m developing into an old drunkard,” he remarked. “Imagine it. At my age!”

He drank half the tumbler of amber liquor and set it down on the table. The roar of the rain filled the room and Dreeme, gazing toward the window, could perceive nothing but a silver opaqueness that ran and glittered. He waited for Lathrop to go on, knowing that the old doctor could tell his story best in his own way.

“Now then,” said Lathrop, wiping his mouth with a fat hand. “Where was I? Where, for that matter, are any of us? That’s philosophy, Daniel.”

He summoned up a smile, but it was lost in the earnest attention of the young doctor. He said slowly:

“I didn’t actually lie to you, Daniel, but I did conveniently forget to tell you some things the other day. I thought there was no need of spreading a story that had better not have existed at all in the beginning. Well!”

He sighed wheezily. Then he resumed his story.

“It was not alone the descendants of the Salem witches who wandered into this valley and established homes,” he said. “You’ve heard of Thomas Morton of Merry Mount, haven’t you?”

Dreeme nodded. Of course, he had. Why, Deborah.⁠ ⁠…

“Morton,” said the old doctor, “was a rascal who headed a colony of loose fellows. They sold liquor to the Indians, disregarded the Puritanical laws of living, laughed at religion, and injected a