The rest is so terrible. There was no one on that soaked hill and no one I dared tell. I walked aimlessly down toward the river and then back up to Peach Valley Road and out to Route 109, just to see the passing cars and have the reassurance of the continued existence of the rest of the world. Then the gray dawn unfolded wetly from the east, silhouetting the archaic hill and the old house, and beckoning to the place where my terrible work was still unfinished. And in the end I went, wet, hatless, and dazed in the morning light, and entered that awful door to the basement of Allendale, which I had left open, and which still swung cryptically in the morning light.
The grease was gone and in front of the fireplace was no remaining hint of the giant doubled-up form. I looked at the cot, the chairs, the neglected equipment, and the yellow straw hat of my uncle. I was so dazed I could scarcely recall what was dream and what was reality. But then, it all came back to me. Sitting down, I tried to remember it all, in as minute a detail as possible, in order to gather some clue as to how I might, once and for all, end the horror. It didn’t seem to be real, not solid in form, but instead some kind of emanation, some vampirish vapor, a cemetery mist. Oh, this I felt was a clue, and again I looked at the floor in front of the fireplace, this time not for the oddly shaped mold, but for how the bricks had been arranged. In ten minutes, my mind was made up, and taking only my uncle’s hat, set now squarely on my head, I set out back to town, back home, where I bathed, ate, and gave an order by phone to the military surplus store for a pickaxe, a spade, a gas-mask, and six containers of sulfuric acid, all to be delivered the next morning at the basement door of Allendale. After that, I tried to sleep, and failing that I passed the hours reading and in the composition of inane verse to counteract my mood.
