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

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