Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois (7 page)

Despite a sophistication bred from years of living in cities like Providence and New York, Darlene couldn’t help a little shiver when she spotted the first of the stone circles.

She’d passed through Dean’s Corners a few miles back, and had just turned off the old fork for Dunwich, when she saw them. Nothing had changed much.

Darlene had left earlier that morning and driven up to Massachusetts from New York and arrived in Dean’s Corners about noon time. Not really wanting to waste much time in her old home town, she’d restricted herself to brief visits with some cousins, (the only relatives she could ever get along with), and lunch at a local café. The afternoon was wearing on when she started out again for the last stretch to her uncle’s house. She knew she’d reached Dunwich not from the old town marker past the fork, but at the sight of the stone circle atop Warlock’s Hill. There had always been talk about the stone circles around Dunwich, especially among she and her friends who often speculated, with frissons of fearful delight, that they were the sites of witches’ Sabbaths in olden days. Darlene smiled to herself remembering the time she and Jeb Taylor had gone up to one of the smaller circles near Dean’s Corners one night on a dare and made love among the old, moss-covered stones. It had been her first time.
Wonder what happened to Jeb
, she wondered idly, then cursed under her breath as the car dipped suddenly into a pothole.

She’d heard that the road had been even worse before it was paved, but that was hard to believe seeing the condition it was in now: all crumbling at the shoulders with rough patches of asphalt scattered about its length. Dunwich had always been lackadaisical about living up to its public responsibilities. So far as she knew, the town didn’t even have a Board of Selectmen, let alone a mayor. To be expected, she supposed, of a town that seemed to have been caught in a time warp since the 1930s. She’d been within the town limits for a few miles already and had only spotted a few lonely-looking farmhouses, all ramshackle and weather beaten, looking as if no one had lived in them for decades. But she knew that was untrue. People lived in Dunwich, it was just that there were so few of them, and all inbred hicks. Well, that was the talk in Dean’s Corners and Darlene saw no reason to disagree. The countryside was mostly empty except for abandoned farms, fields gone over to second growth, roadways threatened with being choked off by the encroaching forest, the town center a pitiful collection of storefronts and a tiny, disused Town Hall. Residents had failed to raise the necessary funds for paving the highway that came through the center of town, so the state had to do the work. That was nearly 30 years before and, with lack of maintenance, the potholes now threatened to ruin the suspension on Darlene’s three-year-old Saturn. Most public facilities in Dunwich, like police and ambulance services, were covered by nearby towns, which meant mostly Dean’

Coming into the center of town, Darlene slowed, trying to recall the way to her uncle’s house. It hadn’t been one of those big, Victorian places that one would expect a well-to-do small town resident would live in, but it was a respectfully-sized former 18th century farmhouse. In any other town in Massachusetts, it would long since have been designated for historic preservation and a sign with its construction date fixed outside the front door. But this being Dunwich, nobody ever gave such things serious thought. About a half mile past the center, she recognized a big oak tree and then saw the unpaved road almost hidden by undergrowth just alongside it. Turning, she entered a tunnel formed by arching tree branches overhead that threw the late afternoon light into gloomy shadow. She crawled along the road for a few minutes until she came across a big mailbox secured in the crook of an oak tree: 124 Old Arkham Road it read. The driveway to her uncle’s house opened just alongside it, and in seconds she was rounding the curve of the driveway that led up to the front of the house and pulled up behind a Celica that was already parked there.

The hot sunshine of a late summer day beat down on her as she stepped out of the car and looked up at the old house. Freshly painted in an off-yellow color, the old building had two floors with the back side of the roof sloping steeply toward the ground. Later additions to the 300-year-old house were obvious with outcroppings in the rear that expanded the size of the kitchen, dining, and living rooms on the first floor and added a bedroom on the second. Indoor plumbing had been a feature of the house for quite a while with a good, deep well located in the side-yard a few hundred feet away. Darlene could still see the old, disused outhouse standing in the forest, all covered in creepers and obscured with saplings and bunches of big-leafed poison ivy. The old path leading through the woods to Sabbat Hill that loomed behind the house was still there too. A garage extended from the kitchen addition with stalls for three vehicles, no doubt still holding her uncle’s pickup truck and little-used Buick. Her reverie was broken when someone from inside the house came out, holding the storm door open for her.

“Miss Cobb?” said the man, obviously not her uncle.

“That’s right,” replied Darlene, shading her eyes.

“Can I help you with your bags?” the man said, letting the storm door go and stepping outside.

“Sure.”

“I’m Oscar Whitney,”

Darlene shook his hand.

“Your uncle hired me to look after the house and things about a year ago,” Whitney explained. “That’s my car, there. I don’t stay at the property.”

“What happened to his other man?”

“The groundskeeper you mean?” Whitney shrugged. “I don’t know, but…”

Impatient with the man’s hesitation, which she regarded as a bit theatrical, Darlene pressed, “What?”

“Well, I don’t think your uncle mentioned it in his letter to you, but he has been ill. Moreso than he’s been over the last few years,” Whitney began. “Unfortunately, things took a serious turn yesterday and he died last night. I’m sorry.”

“What!” Darlene was genuinely shocked. She had called to tell her uncle that she was coming up only a few days before. “How did it happen?”

“The doctor said it was a heart attack, that your uncle died in his sleep,” said Whitney. “You can ask him more about it at the wake tomorrow.”

Oh
,
crap
, thought Darlene. She’d forgotten about that. There would have to be a wake…and a funeral. She was rapidly beginning to regret not throwing her uncle’s letter in the trash as she’d first intended. Just the thought of going to a wake, and having to mingle with her relatives, was enough to make her want to get in the car and head right back to New York. But she was here now, and it was too late to turn back in any case.

“Oh, and there’s something else too,” said Whitney. “Your uncle was expecting an important guest to arrive any day. He was coming from really far away as I understand, maybe Asia or something.”

“Great. Is there any way to contact him? Does he have a cell phone?”

“I’m afraid not, or at least, none that I know of. Your uncle seemed quite anxious about his coming. I think he had it in mind that part of the reason for his inviting you was to add a touch of domesticity to the visit and to help him keep his guest company. Your uncle was confined to a wheelchair, as you’ll recall.”

Rolling her eyes, Darlene had to admit that it made sense.

“When is this person supposed to get here?”

“Any time now,” said Whitney. “Your uncle received a notice of his impending departure from London only a few days ago.”

Sighing deeply, Darlene began lifting her things from the trunk. She’d think what to do about the situation after she settled in.

That night, after Whitney had left for the evening, Darlene sat in the living room, sipping at a cup of coffee. She’d forgotten how cosy the old place was with its darkened rooms, old knickknacks, bookshelves and big, paned windows. A fireplace dominated the living room, now cold for the summer. Nowhere was there a “woman’s touch,” there not having been a Mrs. Cobb in years; but if Whitney’s guess was correct, it had been her uncle’s intention that she fill the role of woman of the house. She smiled to herself. Well, so what? What was an old widower to do?

Getting up, she went to the kitchen and set her cup in the sink. Deciding on a breath of air before bedtime, Darlene stepped out the back door. Outside, the heavens were filled with stars (she’d forgotten how crowded the sky was with them since moving to the city) and on the air, her nose picked up the scents of the surrounding woodland, now heavy and very noticeable as the atmosphere cooled from the day’s heat. Something fluttered across the stretch of open sky between the close-crowding trees: a bat! She hadn’t seen one of those in a long time either.

Stepping off the big, flat stone set beneath the threshold of the door, she let the storm door spring shut and wandered into the rutted driveway that came up before the garage. Wary of mosquitoes, she decided to stroll down to the road as far as the mailbox. She’d almost reached it when she noticed something peculiar in the hills behind the house. Was it her imagination, or was there a glow at the top of one them? She couldn’t be sure. It might have been light pollution cast from the more populated eastern portion of the state… Just then, a firefly caught her eye and she followed it as it made its erratic path across the yard, it’s light winking on, then off, then on again. By the time it disappeared from view, the mosquitoes were really getting to be a pain, forcing her back inside the house at a pace that was a good deal faster than the one she used upon first coming out.

The next morning, Whitney prepared breakfast and Darlene had had time during the night to decide what she was going to do next. Her better nature had triumphed, and she’d decided to stay long enough to at least greet her uncle’s expected guest. Hopefully with his host out of the picture, the visitor might be convinced to turn around and leave.

In the meantime, she had some time to kill in the morning and decided to take a closer look around the property, which had been a working farm at one time judging by the stone fences that zig-zagged through the surrounding woods. But outside, her plans melted away when her eyes fell on Sabbat Hill and she remembered the strange glow she’d seen from its summit the night before.
I wonder if the old path still leads up the hill?
she wondered, heading to the rear of the house.

Ducking her head, she entered the path and began walking. Surprisingly, the trail had remained clear over the years with only the occasional overhanging branch needing to be swept aside. She passed by the old swamp and through a glade of birch trees that she remembered being impressed with years before. Shortly, the ground began to rise as she reached the base of the hill, growing steeper as she continued along the path. Presently, the surrounding forest began to thin out, the trees grew shorter with rough scrub beginning to dominate. The soil became more rocky and more sun made things hotter.

As she neared the crest, the old standing stones peeked over the brow of the hill and in another moment, she was standing among them. Looking back, she could plainly see the roof of her uncle’s house amid the trees below, and the clearing a few miles away where the town center ought to have been. Nothing else was in sight. Some pasturage could be seen farther in the distance and fields of ripening corn lapped up the sides of other, nearby hills, giving evidence that the hand of man had, after all, been at work in the area.