The lingering chill of late spring had given way to a muggy August in the Vermont hills, a deceptive warmth that did little to dissipate the unsettling undercurrents that clung to Cobb’s Corners. Our disparate group of Miskatonic University scholars and students, fresh from the campus’s academic halls in Arkham, had barely settled into the abandoned Maclearan Farmhouse when the true, insidious nature of our ill-omened expedition began to unveil itself. This was to be Day Two, a day meant for methodical research, yet it proved to be a harbinger of the bizarre and the horrifying.
As the first faint light of dawn crept over the oppressive sugar maples, Professor Lilian Neill, ventured towards the farmhouse’s crude outhouse. The air hung heavy, not merely with the August humidity, but with an unnatural silence; the familiar symphony of crickets and cicadas, so ubiquitous in a rural summer, was eerily absent. It was in this foreboding quiet that Professor Neill, casting her lantern’s beam, witnessed a sight that defied logic: a skinny hare, seemingly oblivious, was stalked by a grotesque, tentacled creature, its maw equipped with tiny fangs, resembling nothing known to man or beast. Even more bizarrely, the creature wielded a tiny dagger. The Professor, a woman of considerable academic and occult knowledge, found no comfort in her studies that could account for such an abomination. Despite her scientific training, the scene left her with a deep-seated unease, prompting her to quickly sketch the impossible form.
Soon thereafter, the expedition leader, Robert Blaine, a man still burdened by the sorrows of last year’s ill-fated trip, divided the company into two teams for the day’s tasks: folklorists and soil surveyors. Professor Neill, alongside Jason Trent, William Noakes, and Teddy Harris – the latter two carrying the expedition’s unwieldy camera and audio recording equipment – were dispatched to the heart of Cobb’s Corners. Their primary objective: the local library, and its keeper, Mabel Carruthers, a woman said to know every story the valley held. The soil surveyors headed towards Rice Hill.
In the quaint, if chaotic library, as Professor Neill and her colleagues delved into the region’s grim folklore, Mabel Carruthers, the spinster librarian, called out for her niece and assistant, Amanda. Amanda’s muffled response was obscured by the rows of book shelves and piles of books in the aisles.
After a photograph and the recording equipment was set, Miss Carruthers recounted the legend of an Abenaki graveyard, desecrated by the town’s original founders for its cursed gold. She spoke with grim resignation of the youth of Cobb’s Corners, now paying a “blood debt” through inexplicable, “stupid accidents” – a chilling echo of the region’s dark past. She then shared the grim tale of a vast mound at the base of Landon Mountain, where, on starless nights, a bull-sized hound with glowing green eyes would appear, its mournful howl serving as a guardian over the murdered pilgrims, reputedly victims of the local Wampanoag, buried within. A
All the while, Teddy Harris, the English undergraduate, noted with growing apprehension the peculiar absence of folklore, mythology, or occult texts from the library’s shelves – volumes that should have been present in any collection, however small. When Teddy asked about these books, Miss Carruthers was most perturbed to find the shelves where they should be stocked with other books. She called to Amanda. The young woman, described as quite homely with lank, oily black hair and poor acne, appeared reluctantly from behind a stack of books. It became apparent, through observation and deduction, that Amanda, despite her denials, knew of the missing books. When pressed by Mabel regarding the whereabouts of these volumes, Amanda “just kind of starts to shut down, putting her head down,” repeating, “I don’t know” where they went. After Teddy Harris’s attempt to intimidate her, striking a nerve, Amanda pushed past him and “bursts out the door,” making for the exit and running a distance. As she did so, she dropped a satchel she had, leaving a clearly shaken Mabel to stare after her. Unseen by the librarian, Teddy Harris picked up the satchel, which contained a hardbound notebook with sketches and handwritten entries, seemingly poetry.
It was amidst this unsettling mystery that Teddy Harris, drawn by an inexplicable compulsion, attempted to subtly acquire a small, old, hardbound novella titled Azathoth and Others by one Edward Pickman Derby. Professor Neill, with a quiet determination, ultimately pocketed the strange volume herself, a sense that it was “safer with me”. This curious collection of Arkham-born poetry, published in Boston in 1919, radiated a dark and compelling aura, its imagery producing an unmistakable chill. When asked if the name “Azathoth” resonated with her anthropological expertise, Professor Neill found it strangely unfamiliar, despite her worldly knowledge, hinting at a realm of dread knowledge beyond human ken.
Meanwhile, the investigation into the town’s strangeness continued. A visit to Richard Wendell, the nosey reporter at the Cobb’s Corner Gazette, yielded further unsettling insights. Mr. Wendell produced a grainy, obscure photograph taken at night – a blurry silhouette of something flying ominously before the moon. He claimed that such entities were normally unphotographable, a feat achieved only through his experimental emulsion. Wendell described a “droning kind of sound”, akin to a “mosquito buzzing”, accompanying the apparition, and revealed that his darkroom had mysteriously caught fire shortly after he developed the image. This confluence of unseen forces and technological anomalies only served to deepen the growing dread.
The midday sun, now obscured by an increasingly ominous sky, found the folklorist team – Professor Lillian Neill, Teddy Harris, and William Noakes – alongside the ever-inquisitive reporter, Richard Wendell, taking their seats at Jim’s Grill. Jason Trent and Terrence Laszlo, having already dined, sat at the counter, a little out of sorts. Ann Haggerty, her demeanor efficient but polite, took their orders, while her husband, Jim, was the unseen force in the kitchen, the very “eponymous Jim” after whom the diner was named. Richard Wendell, ever the bustling newsman, loudly ordered a Pastrami and Rye, complete with “good mustard”.
As the order was placed and while waiting for the food, Professor Neill, with a quiet solemnity, produced the small, black leather-bound book, Azathoth and Others, purloined from the library. Its pages, densely packed with poetry, radiated an unsettling aura; the cadences felt “off,” the imagery disquieting, pulling them into a “deep reverie” that permeated the diner with an unmistakable chill, “at odds with a warm summer’s day”. Ann’s timely arrival with their meals, clanking plates onto the table, snapped them from the oppressive grip of the verse.
Following their lunch, as the day grew darker with the threat of rain, the conversation inevitably turned to the peculiar satchel Amanda had dropped at the library. William, perhaps drawn by a morbid curiosity, produced the hardbound notebook from within, revealing sketches and handwritten entries, seemingly more poetry. One chilling verse, a morbid invocation resonated with an unnerving resonance.
Professor Neill found the concept of “Summerlands” utterly alien to her anthropological understanding of Christian or even Native American lore, while William’s attempts to connect it to ancient Mesopotamian traditions proved fruitless, leaving the group with a profound, unsettling sense of dread and incomprehension.
While the folklorists delved into the unseen horrors whispered about by the locals, the soil surveyors, including Sophia Picado, had a more mundane day. Despite their diligent efforts at Rice Hill, they found only common materials like magnetite and a combination of talc and dolomite, no trace of the mysterious pasquallium they were ostensibly searching for. The lack of otherworldly findings for the scientists, in stark contrast to the chilling discoveries of the anthropologists, seemed to be a subtle, yet profound, imbalance in the unfolding narrative of Cobb’s Corners.
Until next time,
Owen