The Suspense.
Mr. Ronald Coleman, a star of the Dunnage Horror,
a suspense play produced, edited, and directed by William Spears.
Come in, Dunnage, Massachusetts.
Come in, Dunnage.
Good evening. This is Henry Armitage.
I'm speaking to you...
Dr. Rice, please close the window.
I'm speaking to you from my laboratory on the slopes of Sentinel Hill near Dunnage, Massachusetts.
Present with me is Dr. Warren Rice, my distinguished colleague from the Mesquitonic University.
We are now about a hundred yards from the summit of the hill,
which is crowned by a huge table-like stone set in the center of a circle of stone pillars,
a place of prehistoric worship.
A moment ago, you may have heard the dogs of Dunnage Township barking,
as we have heard them for three days and three nights.
Dr. Rice and I know the horror which their barking portends,
but the purpose of this broadcast is to make this unbelievable horror believable to you.
I hope for your sakes and ours we are successful tonight.
It is the eve of all Hallows.
Tomorrow will be too late.
Our time tonight is very short, so I'll speak only of those more recent events,
which, believe me, may culminate at any moment in a climax too frightful to wholly contemplate.
I will begin with the birth of Wilbur Waitley.
It was the night of February the 2nd, 1921,
candle-mas, toward dawn, when Lavinia Waitley, a deformed albino woman about 35 years old,
gave birth to her dark, goatish-looking son in the crumbling Waitley farmhouse northeast of the village.
No one attended her, no doctor or midwife.
No one was with her, except her aged half-insane father, who was known as Wizard Waitley.
So Wilbur came into this world under heaven-knows-what incantations, what appeals to what power.
A week later, Wizard Waitley drove his sleigh into Dunedge Village
and reported the event to a group of loungers in Osborne's general store.
Hey, your grandson got yellow hair like Lavinia Waitley?
No, takes after his father more. He's dark, dark.
You never spoke of who his father might be now, did you?
Oh, you know his father when the time comes.
Lavinia's read and seen some things the most of you only talk about.
Calculate her husband's as good as you can find this side of Alesbury.
We don't be nosy, Wizard.
Maybe it weren't in no church that none of you heard of.
But you wouldn't ask no better churchwomen than Lavinia's.
Why didn't he tell no wedding wizard? When was that?
Not a wedding you'd hear of, Cory. Not a husband you'd hear of, neither.
But let me tell you something.
Someday you folks will hear a child of Lavinia's calling its father's name on top of Sentinel Hill.
Prophecy? Or idle boasting by an insane old man?
I know I ask a great deal when I ask you to believe that the arrival of an infant into that house of dire poverty and squalor
could possibly constitute a horror and a threat to all our known worlds.
Yet it has an earthly history.
Perhaps through this history you will be able to understand the
meaning of the word, and give it credence.
Wilbur Waitley's growth was uncanny.
But even if he had been an average child, he would have become in time an unnatural being,
for he was surrounded from the first by the most malign influences.
There was his grandfather, old Waitley, Wizard Waitley,
who each Halloween climbed Sentinel Hill to the great circle of stone,
and while the hills shook, stood holding a great book open on his arms, and shrieked into the wind. Shriek!
Yogg-Sotho! Yogg-Sotho! Yogg-Sotho!
Yogg-Sotho, that dreadful name first mentioned in the hideous forbidden book, the Necronomicon.
And this wizard Waitley was Wilbur's teacher.
The villagers began to notice curious things that were going on at the Waitley farmhouse,
soon after Wilbur was born, old Waitley began to remodel the house.
The abandoned upper storey was restored, and all the windows were tightly boarded up.
And then, Wizard began to buy cattle in large numbers, both horses and cows.
Yet the livestock on the farm didn't seem to increase.
Young Lem Brown was one day curious enough to creep close to the house to count the Waitley herd.
Dr. Armitage there want more than twelve cows, and them sick.
Looked like they had the blight and funny wounds on them, like cuts.
I heard something too, in the top part of Wizard's house, something like water slapping inside, only big, big like a seed.
One other person went to the Waitley farm in the years before I met Wilbur, Dr. Ken Houghton of Aylesbury,
who was called by Wilbur himself, who said that his grandfather was dying.
Dr. Houghton found the old man in a bedroom on the ground floor, and Wilbur with him.
While outside the window, a legion of Whippoorwills cried loudly and rhythmically, endlessly.
Wilbur spoke about the sound.
Suddenly whistling time with his breathing now.
They're ready, listen, doctor.
They know his soul's going out, they're waiting.
Yes, Wilbur, that's an interesting superstition. Late in the year for them too.
When he goes, if they catch him, they'll keep laughing till break of day.
If they don't catch him, they'll quiet down.
You mean you believe that...
In just a minute, I think he's conscious.
Yes, the bird's changed when his breathing changed, like I said.
Willy, Willy, Willy!
I'm here.
More space, Willy. Remember, more space soon.
Yes, I'll build it.
You grows, but that grows faster. It'll be ready to serve you soon, Willy.
I know.
But remember, when it's time, you open up the gates to Yog Sothoth with a long chant.
The one on page 7 and 51 of the book.
But mind you, feed it enough, because if it gets out before you open to Yog Sothoth, it's all over.
It's now you.
He's going now.
He's dead, Willy.
No, sir.
The birds, they didn't catch him.
Yes, he's free. He's gone.
It was the winter following Wizard Waitley's death that I first met Wilbur.
He came in person to the library at Miskatonic University to consult a copy of the hideous Necronomicon,
which was kept there in its Latin version, as printed in Spain in the 17th century.
I tell you, when he came into my office, I was appalled at his appearance.
Eight feet tall, shabby, dirty, bearded.
But I was even more appalled by his voice when he spoke to me.
I wrote you a letter a month past, Doctor. I wanted a loan of the book.
Well, that's a book that's never loaned from this library. I doubt if it is from any library.
Well, I have to see it then.
Very well, it's kept right here.
As you know, there are only three covers of this book in existence. That's why we're careful.
Here, you can look at it on this table.
Wizard said it would be on page 751.
What? What is it you're looking for?
The formula, the long chant, the one that opens the gate to Yog-Sothoth.
I felt a wave of fright as tangible as a draft from the tomb.
He seemed, humph, like the spawn of another dimension, like something only partly of mankind,
linked to black gulfs beyond all spheres of force and matter, space and time.
Presently, he raised his head and spoke again.
It's here, all right, but I'll have to have a copy.
That paragraph there? I don't know.
Do you know Latin, Doctor?
Yes, certainly.
Then read it, Doctor. Let's hear how you make it out.
All right, that shouldn't be difficult. Let's see.
Nor is it to be thought that man is the oldest or the last of Earth's masters.
The old ones were, and the old ones shall be.
Not in the spaces that we know, but between them.
But only Yog-Sothoth knows the gate.
Yog-Sothoth is the gate to where the old ones broke through of old.
Their hands are at your throat, yet ye see them not.
Doctor Armitage, you see, I reckon I've got to take that book home.
There's things in it I've got to try, and you can't hold me up.
No, I'm sorry.
I tell you, Doctor, I'll have the book sooner or later, no matter what.
You see, it that's waiting for me at home won't wait much longer.
It was a week later that I was awakened suddenly by the fierce yelping of the great watchdog on the campus,
followed by a sound from a wholly different throat, a scream.
And I knew instantly that Wilbur had come back for the Necronomicon.
I hastened into my clothes and rushed across to the library where a crowd had gathered before the smashed window of my office.
Inside there was a fearful groaning and growling, and some instinct warned me that what was taking place there was not for unfortified eyes to see.
I brushed back the crowd, motioning only to Professor Rice to come in with me.
When we opened the study door, Professor Rice screamed.
No, Doctor Armitage, no, I can't.
Come, come, come, close the door.
We can't let them see.
She's alive, but not what her...
What a job that dog's done.
I want him to bits.
What a horrible sound that moaning you.
Suppose we ought to call a doctor?
A doctor? A doctor for that?
No doctor in the world would know what to do for that.
Look, Armitage, it's not human, nor animal.
Where did it come from?
Can you tell me? Can you tell me what it is?
No, I couldn't tell what Wilbur Waitley was.
The thing that lay half bent on its side in a pool of greenish-yellow dickiness was nine feet tall.
The dogs had torn off all the clothing and some of the skin.
It was partly human beyond a doubt, with very manlike hands and head, but...
But the torso and lower parts of the body were fabulous.
Its chest had the leathery hide of a crocodile or alligator.
But below the waistline, the skin was covered with coarse black fur.
And from the abdomen, long greenish-gray tentacles.
The limbs terminated in ridgy-veined pads that were neither hooves nor claws.
And as Dr. Rice and I stood staring at this presence,
the whipper-wheels began to cry in unison outside the study window.
And then the thing on the floor roused and mumbled.
Oh, God.
How much did you give him, Mr. White?
I even didn't. The whipper-wheels.
Listen.
Oh, he's dead now.
Look. Look, Rice. Look what's happening.
He's disintegrating us.
Of course.
Fast, too. Fading away.
Because he isn't made of matter as we know it on Earth.
I guess he took after his father. So there'll be nothing left.
His father? What was he?
What was his father?
I daren't think.
I thought then that what came into our world with Wilbur Waitley left with him.
I forgot what he himself had told me of it,
which was waiting in the field house Wizard Waitley had built,
where the cattle were driven to disappear.
But Wilbur Waitley left a diary,
written in a strange alphabet resembling Sanskrit.
And I worked on off and on for weeks to decipher it.
And finally, I read the following passage written by Wilbur
when he was no more than eight years old.
That upstairs is more ahead of me than I had thought it would be,
and is not like to have much Earth brain.
I can see it a little when I make the sign
or blow the powder of Ivangazi at it.
And it is like them I see Halloween on the hill.
I wonder how I shall look when the Earth is cleared
and there are no Earth beings.
Maybe like that upstairs looks which has no body,
even fed with all the blood.
One morning in a cold sweat of terror,
I called Dr. Rice to my house and told him,
we have to destroy what's in that farmhouse.
Why can't we just leave the thing locked up there?
The house is boarded tight.
Yes, but you think boards will hold it?
Don't you realize, man, it hasn't been fed?
It hasn't had blood since the 18th of September
when Wilbur Waitley came here to die.
We left for Dhanesh that night,
and we've been here on Sentinel Hill ever since,
working desperately to discover the formula in time.
But a week ago tonight, shortly after dawn...
Yes, hello?
Dr. Armitage, this is Lem Brown.
I was just up beyond the Glen, doctor.
Look in the mirror.
I'm here to see you.
This is Lem Brown. I was just up beyond the Glen, doctor,
looking for cows I lost last night.
Yes, Lem?
Well, doctor, something's been there.
Smells like thunder, and there's prints in the rod.
Great round prints, big as baleheads,
like an elephant has been along.
Anything else, Lem?
That's all I see, except bushes and trees
pushed back from the rod, like a house was drug-along.
Did you hear anything?
Yes, long toward morning,
I heard a sound over toward Waitley's place,
a kind of ripping or tearing of wood,
like a big box was being opened up.
Chancey, he heard it, too.
Lem, who lives nearest the Waitley farm?
Well, that'd be Elmer Fry's place.
Well, he's on this line, too, isn't he?
Hang on, and I'll ring him.
Yes, Dr. Armitage, this is Central.
I'm trying to get Elmer Fry, Central.
Doctor, he must be out somewhere, and his whole family.
I was ringing there an hour ago.
Earl Sawyer saw Elmer's cows stampeding in Cold Spring Glen.
Oh, you didn't get him, hmm?
All right.
But if you hear or see anything more, let me know.
I'll be here working all day.
Price! Price!
Oh, my God.
Price! Price! Oh, wake up.
It's loose. It's out of the house.
One family gone already.
We have to work.
Pray God we find that formula in time.
A week since it broke loose.
A week of terror and panic here in Dunnage Township.
Each night it moves about the countryside,
leaving the trees crushed in a 30-foot swathe,
as though by a moving mountain.
Leaving the trees in the ground,
it's like a
a
moving mountain, leaving its monstrous tracks
on a trail of tarry stickiness.
Leaving crushed and gutted farmhouses,
and whole herds of cattle drained of blood.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, that is the story to this moment.
And tonight is Halloween.
Tonight we are here to...
Just one moment, please.
Dr. Rice, did you hear something?
Did the window close? No?
Well, we'll throw it open.
I thought so.
Listen.
The sound from a thousand bending trees.
Sound like the sea moving across a forest.
Yes.
Yes, it's coming here.
Of course.
All Hallows, it comes to Sentinel Hill.
Dr. Rice, I'll try the formula and the powder from the altar stone.
I want you to stay here at the microphone and report what you see.
Very well, Dr. Armitage.
Oh, wait a minute before I go.
To any scientists who may be listening to me,
if I fail, there is a possible alternative formula
in Falconer's mystical formulae of the Middle Ages on page 24.
Listen.
There are the Whipplewheels. I better get out there.
Take over, Dr. Rice.
Yes. I'll do as well as I can, Armitage.
Good luck.
Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Armitage is climbing to the top of the hill,
to the altar stone.
I can see him plainly for the moon is high and the night clear.
Down the hill toward the dark village,
I can see the grasses and shrubbery bending down,
marking the monster's ascent.
It moves quite fast,
and I feel a proximity to phases of being utterly forbidden.
Now, Dr. Armitage stands now on the altar stone
and is holding the powder, which, if the books are correct,
will make this thing for an instant visible.
It is quite close to him now, perhaps 20 yards or less.
He lifts his hands.
He brings the powder in a wide arc.
I can see. Oh, no! No!
Dr. Rice, come in, Dunnage.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is your suspense announcer.
Due to condition... Oh, just a moment, please.
One moment, please. Dr. Rice, can you hear me?
Yes, I can hear you.
Yes, for a moment I was overcome when I saw...
Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps you can hear now
the incantation of Dr. Armitage. Listen!
Listen!
The Quibblewills mean death,
and Dr. Armitage is walking back here now.
So we know that whatever it was, it is gone.
It is dead.
We can be thankful indeed.
You see, I saw Dr. Armitage.
He was walking back here.
You see, I saw Dr. Armitage.
Yes, did you? Did you see it, Dr. Rice?
I saw it large, yes.
What did it... what did it look like to you?
It looked...
Here.
Like something made of squirming ropes,
but bigger than a barn and shaped well like an egg,
and dozens of legs, like barrels,
but half closed when it stepped,
and nothing solid about it,
and at least 15 or 20 mouths or trunks opening and closing,
but what was it?
Oh, kind of... a kind of force.
A kind of force that doesn't belong in our part of space.
Did you... did you notice the half face on top?
Half face, like a human face.
Very large, but yes, quite... quite human,
and quite like Wilbur's, like all the weightless.
Then it was... it was...
That's right, it was Wilbur's twin brother,
and you saw what three weeks' growth had done,
and it was the child of Lavinia's
who called its father's name on Sentinel Hill,
as Wizard Waitley prophesied.
You heard it calling, Yogg-Sotho.
Hmm.
Ladies and gentlemen, this night is over.
It is All Saints Day.
May Heaven bless us all.
The Dunnage Horror with Ronald Coleman
as your star of The Fence.
This is the Armed Forces Radio Service.