The Dunwich Romance by Edward Lee Read Free Book Online Page A

observation afforded her a fair view into the domicile’s east end, and the sunlight, though partially truncated, showed her only vast emptiness inside. Whatever it ‘tis Wilbur keep stored in thar, it gotta all be at the other end, she deduced.
    She naturally expected Wilbur to enter the leaning abode, but this he did not do. Instead, and most curiously, he remained where he stood outside, and then it looked as though he were talking...
    Who the hail he talkin’ tew if thar en’t no one livin’ inside? The extended distance prevented Sary’s deciphering any of what her rescuer was saying.
    And next?
    Wilbur made the oddest gesture with his hand: at first Sary believed him to be crossing himself the way a priest or minister would, but the motions that were made indicated something far more complicated. It was only a moment later, then, that the colossan unslung the burden across his back and flung it into the house. Then he re-barred and locked the entry.
    Sary’s plentiful curiosity took on a tinge of something not unlike dread, for in the few seconds before Wilbur had resecured the door, she’d verified that it was no sack at all that he’d tossed within. It was a dead dog.
    A dead collie, to be more unequivocal.
    Same exact dog that awful Hutchins boy sicked on me, she knew, and how could any doubt exist? She’d seen Wilbur blow the barbarous animal’s brains out with a pistol.
    More strangeness, in a manner by which she could make no deductions.
    She expected Wilbur to return to the tool-shed, but instead he loped straight away from the big house and into the twisted woods. Whar’s he goin’ naow? Sary meandered about the property, looking errantly at the splotches of grass and wild beds of flowers, noting again nary a sign of insect activity, and no bees rummaging for pollen. “Wal, hey thar!” Wilbur greeted her when he’d reappeared some twenty minutes later. “Hi, Wilbur. I was gettin’ ta miss yew,” she said, acknowledging now that his departure, admixed with the inexplicable observations she’d made, had left her vaguely unnerved. But Wilbur’s big, angular face seemed to betray a hint of happiness when she’d said she missed him. “Sorry, I took a tad longer’n I thought. Ran into that bald fella, Kyler be his name—he abaout the only Dunwicher who’ll share a good word with me. A soothsayer is what he claim he is.”
    The word perplexed Sary. “A sooth— what? ”
    “One who tell fortunes, like I heerd they got at curnivals. Dun’t know haow true it ‘tis, though.”
    All she could think to say was, “Carn’t say I’se heerd of him, but I’m glad you got a friend.” Her expression cheered. “Wal, naow ya got two friends, me bein’ the second.”
    Wilbur’s approach slowed, as more inner happiness seemed to dawn within him.
    “We’ll be friends, always, Sary,” he replied in a solemn tone.
    Wilbur was so tall that Sary unconsciously stood on tiptoes to see what he had now on his shoulder. Not another dead dog, she hoped, but in a moment identified a trap rope.
    “So that’s what yew were doin’ in the woods,” she observed. “Checkin’ yer traps.”
    “Ee-yuh.” He’d reached her by now and unshouldered the cord, attached to which were several squirrels, a muskrat, and a woodchuck. “A more than midland ketch today,” his dark, warble of a voice reported. “En’t ketched a woodchuck in spell. But like I told ye, I gotta walk aout in the wood a good distance ‘cos critters dun’t come near the haouse.”
    Sary naively wondered if he intended to deposit these animals into the big house as he’d done with the dog, but, ‘A’course not. They’se for him ta put in the smoke-house, she realized.
    “Hope ye have a likin’ for woodchuck.”
    “Oh, I dew—”
    “I got a old family recipe that make it taste like duck...” A pause, then his large dark eyes blinked on an afterthought. “Aw, but ye sure didn’t have yerself much of a nap, huh?”
    Sary shook