The Place Called Dagon

reached him distinctly. They walked about slowly, clutching their raincoats closely to their tall bodies, their heavy boots falling heavily on the dark soil. Something feverish and repressed in their movements injected a tense note into the assemblage. They seemed uncertain of themselves, a little hysteric and desperately straining to conceal the hysteria that quickened their blood and plucked at their nerves. There was doubt here, a doubt that sickly denied itself. Sober faces gazed blankly at one another and sunken fanatical eyes glittered in the lantern glow like wet beetles. The young doctor observed one tall figure that walked round and round just within the circle of lanterns ceaselessly, pausing before no one but moved apparently by an interior restlessness that would not permit him to stop. As the man passed a short distance from where the young doctor lay hidden he recognized him as Bidwell, the farmer whose land adjoined Westcott’s toward the Saccarac River. Bidwell’s mouth was moving steadily as though he were talking rapidly to himself. And now as Dreeme’s eyes became accustomed to the scene he recognized more faces. There was Lacy, the postmaster and proprietor of the general store, a stork-like man with a carbuncular nose, and Winship, one of the selectmen, stout, worried-looking, and somewhat at a loss, and Titubit, the dark hawk-nosed farmer who was supposed to have Indian blood in his veins, and Corey, the tanned white-haired owner of Corey’s Acres on the lower road. Dreeme had attended all of these men at some time or other for minor ailments and he viewed them now with a disbelieving wonder, half-suspecting that any minute the whole scene would vanish in thin air and he would wake up in bed sweating from a nightmare. Yet here they were, and others whose faces he dimly recognized but whose names he could not place, strolling nervously about the dark hollow, waiting restlessly and suspiciously for some evil thing to happen, stirred by some daemon of hereditary madness that had been wakened in their blood and brains after sleeping for years. Dreeme crouched lower in the bushes and watched them attentively. His few garments were saturated with water and the cold wind blew across his back yet his pulses were beating fast enough and the warmth of excitement shuddered along his drenched flesh. Beside him he could feel the heavy shoulders of Walden Slater.

It was all a psychological riddle, something to be unravelled at leisure and explained after the event. Some power had frightened these men out of their taciturn ruts of living into the mockery of an ancient superstition. A legend had come down with uncommon vividness through the centuries and the will of a madman had resurrected it to terrible life. Old impulses, too powerful to resist, had been set free and they were following these impulses suspiciously yet absolutely. Dreeme studied the face of Corey and wondered. White-haired, almost saintly-looking, the farmer walked slowly about in low conversation with Lacy who lifted his round uneven knob of a nose like a wolf about to howl at the moon. The fever was growing on these men now and their movements became faster and jerkier. They stared about them expectantly and as they stared their hands quivered. The yellow lanterns flung fantastic blossoms of light into the bushes, colored blossoms that glowed on the wet branches.

Dreeme caught his breath suddenly. Silently, almost stealthily, Jeffrey Westcott had appeared from behind the black stone. He stood observing the score of men with expressionless dark eyes, watching their movements as they shifted to and fro, saying nothing, waiting for them to see him. Immediately the group approached him, standing within a few feet of the Devil Stone. They gathered silently, standing in a half-circle, their backs to Dreeme and Walden Slater. Westcott observed them coldly and when they had achieved their half-circle and were motionless he climbed to the top of the black slimy stone. Standing so, five feet in the air, Dreeme could see him perfectly, a stocky figure garmented entirely in black, his cloven head bowed slightly, the yellow glow from the lanterns catching the lower part of his face⁠—the blue shaven chin and heavy cheekbones. In his hands he held a square black book which he lifted slowly. The men before him seemed to sigh and sway back. Westcott held this book high in the air for a full minute. Then he looked up into the misty night air intently and cried in a suppressed hoarse voice:

“Asmodeus! Asmodeus!”

The men stood fixedly, their heads thrust slightly forward as though they were listening. After an instant’s silence Westcott said:

“He stands at Dagon. He enters into me.”

A shudder shook his heavy frame and the black book slipped from his hand, falling to the surface of the stone with a dull slap.

Dreeme, listening as intently as the men, heard nothing but the infrequent spatter of raindrops as the treetops swayed and the wind that shook them, a husky sighing wind that sounded like the hoarse breathing of a giant. He wanted to shout, “You fool! There is nothing to hear but night sounds!” The aspect of Jeffrey Westcott fascinated him, however. The farmer’s face was lighted with an evil smile, his eyes glittered and danced in the lantern-light, and his heavy hands were clasped before him. A tenseness held his bulky body and he seemed to grow with this tenseness, to enlarge until Dreeme could not say whether he were six feet high or twelve. It was an illusion but an illusion so well maintained that the young doctor automatically understood how easily Westcott could sway these superstitious farmers who stood before him, a strained expectancy on their weather-beaten faces, their hands clenched, their bodies visibly quivering. It was an evil transfiguration wrought inwardly. Nothing but the most dynamic belief in one’s self, in one’s own powers, could cause it. The farmer was in a rapt state now, in a moving and speaking trance. He lifted his hands up