Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois by Pierre V. Comtois, Charlie Krank, Nick Nacario Read Free Book Online Page A

with all its lights, and color and people, was for her. Her Uncle Silas, who actually lived a few miles away in Dunwich, understood her yearnings and promised her that if her grades in high school were good, he’d pay her way through the college of her choice. She didn’t have to think twice about the offer. She came in the top of her class and Uncle Silas came through as he promised, paying for all four years she’d spent at Brown University, earning her degree. Upon graduation, she’d thanked her uncle for his support, moved to New York City, and hadn’t seen either him or Dean’s Corners since.
    Fingering the envelope in her hand, Darlene was tempted to simply throw it in the trash unread, but an ember of gratefulness for her uncle’s generosity still flickered somewhere inside her, and she relented. Moving closer to the window, she removed the letter from the envelope. The message was short, but contained what she feared most: a request by her uncle to visit him at his house in Dunwich. Again, she felt the urge to ignore the request and throw the message out, and again her conscience prevented her. She did owe him big-time for covering her college tuition and providing the means for her to get out of Dean’s Corners, after all. And how long had it been since she’d gone back? It was for her mother’s funeral, at least eight years ago. Her uncle had been there; confined to a wheelchair and looking old. Scanning the remainder of the letter, Darlene could find no explanation for why he wanted her to come up, only some vague language that Darlene interpreted as a reminder of the favor he’d done for her. Well, all right! Just this once, she told herself. She did owe it to him, but he’d better not take advantage of her grateful nature.

    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