Current Shareware 1994 January/SHAR194.ISO/articles/sun9310.zip/FIC2

Text File | 1993-09-09 | 34KB | 529 lines

Scarllett
Copyright (c) 1993, Robert McKay
All rights reserved


                              *Scarllett*
                            by Robert McKay

     I moved to Needles in the fall of 1992.  I had little choice - I
worked for the Santa Fe railroad, and it was either go with the
transfer or quit.  If I had been given a choice, I'd have sooner moved
to the warm place than to Needles.
     Needles is, and always has been, a tourist trap.  Beginning as a
river crossing in the days of horseback travel, it is now the place
where I-40, having crossed the Colorado River at Topock and made a
brief run north, resumes its westward course.  As the freeway arrows
away from Needles toward the Pacific, it cross some of the emptiest,
most barren country in the United States.  Needles itself isn't much
better.
     Needles is right on the Colorado.  Built partly in the bottom and
partly on the bluff, its main claim to fame is the movie *Convoy*.
Remember the scene where the truck is blown off the bridge?  That's the
Needles Bureau Bridge, a one-lane affair, which at the time was
condemned, and had holes along the edge of the pavement into which a
careless tire could have dropped had not telephone poles been laid
along the rail.
     In the summer 120 degrees is normal.  It gets often up to 122 or
124.  And with that terrific heat pulling the water up off of the
river, it's a drippingly humid place.  It's no wonder that the high
school kids spend most of the summer down at the river, waterskiing or
swimming or lying on the bank working on their tans.  Any other
activity outside is punishment enough for a serial killer.
     Consigned to this purgatory, I soon decided that, even in the fall
of the year, I needed to find some relief.  Consultation with maps and
residents of the city persuaded me that the nearest relief I might find
semi-palatable was west, out where the elevation was higher, the
temperatures a bit cooler, and the humidity much lower.  By the summer
of 93, I was somewhat familiar with the desert northwest of Needles -
out in the tules, as some put it.
     One of these trips came on an August Saturday in 1993.  I rose
early in the morning, before the heat could turn the humid air into a
constant steam bath, and set out for the wilderness.  I'd bought an old
pickup truck for these excursions - a BMW is simply not designed for
the conditions that prevail out in the lightly inhabited desert of
eastern California.  This old truck I had loaded the night before,
throwing several jugs of water, a shovel, several burlap bags, and
other assorted useful gear in the bed.  Before leaving in the morning,
I hauled the ice chest out and set it in the bed; it was full to the
brim with more water jugs, packed in ice.
     I moved the truck out to the main drag, Broadway, where the night
before the kids had been cruising.  I'd learned that the cars driving
along, nearly on the ground, were low-riders; where I was from there
was no Hispanic population, and low-riders were unheard of.  Heading
west on Broadway, I came to an onramp and climbed to the freeway,
raising the speed to 55, and then, once outside of town, to 65.  In
that country, where a breakdown can be fatal to unsuspecting tourists
who don't know the desert, the Highway Patrol keeps a lot of cars
constantly on the move, and it's easy to get caught speeding, though
this doesn't seem to worry the truckers.
     I turned off the freeway a few miles outside of town, with the
Sacramento Mountains and their steep South Pass still in front of me.
I was taking the Searchlight Cutoff, an informal designation for the
route to Las Vegas that took one through the Nevada city of
Searchlight.  Just off the freeway, on the left, cattails grew along
the shoulder in two or three places, and on the right a house nestled
in a surprising grove of trees.  Kleinfelter's, the locals called it, a
place where natural springs brought the desert's abundant underground
water to the surface.
     I was on a remnant of US 66, the highway that led from Chicago to
the Pacific and became famous in song and story.  For a few miles the
road led north, then made a sweeping curve to the left and led west,
following the railroad, which was to the right, and swooping over the
rolling countryside.  Right here there was little cactus visible from
the moving car; the vegetation was mostly greasewood and a scattering
of other brush, each individual plant growing well-spaced to prevent
theft of the rare rains by a neighbor.  The desert is not dunes, as
many city-dwellers think; it's a place of rocks and mountains and wide,
sweeping valleys cut by sudden gullies.  Owned by none but the
tarantulas and rattlesnakes, it is a hard land, one that, really, human
beings have no business interfering with.
     I shoved a tape in the slot; the Needles radio station was not at
all to my taste, and the truck's radio was incapable, after its years
of use, of pulling in a station from Las Vegas.  Deep Purple pounded
from the speaker as I pounded the truck along the road; the songs made
great driving music in a land of little traffic and an open road.
     After 20 miles or so, a tall silver water appeared on the horizon,
and shortly a smattering of houses and trees showed themselves ahead.
The road curved to the right, towards the tracks, and I was in Goffs.
     I'd made it a habit to stop in Goffs on my excursions.  Though I
had plenty of water in the truck, I pulled over to the water tower,
which the Santa Fe owned, and drank from the faucet on the side.
Whatever else I might think of my current job location, it had brought
me to the best water on the face of the earth.  Fresh from the ground,
the water of Goffs, drawn from the tank shining in the sun, was cold
and clear and with a taste to make angels rejoice.
     Climbing back into the truck, I drove back to the highway, and
crossed it, pulling in at the Goffs store.  This establishment served
as store, bar, gas station, and meeting place for a wide area.  It had
been there since, apparently, time immemorial, and though worn and
aging probably would be there forever.  The cool, dark interior had
resisted change for decades.  Tacked to a post a few paces inside were
humorous postcards, many of them much faded with age.  My favorite
showed a horse and rider plummeting past a cliff towards a bottom left
to the imagination; the caption, with a word changed to make the
exclamation repeatable in polite company, was "Whoa, blast you, I said
whoa!"
     I seated myself at the bar, or counter, as one's preference in
terminology ran, and without a word the proprietor set a bottle of Coke
before me.  This was the standard curving Coke bottle - the one that
made "Coke bottle" a standard descriptive term.  Pulled from the
cooler, its contents were the perfect complement to the water I'd just
drunk.  After I took a swallow, I pulled a bill from my pocket and
shoved it across the bar.  The proprietor, having moved off to get me a
bag of M&Ms, returned and took up the bill; the change was returned in
a moment.
     I sat there silently, savoring the Coke and munching the candy.
This stop, always made when I came out to the tules, was a sort of rest
before the big push.  Beyond this store, the nearest food was many
miles away, and while I'd brought water enough and knew of one place
along the road where I could get more from a cattle tank, civilization
would be far from me.  Beyond Goffs, there was no civilization for a
good many miles; the store was the "jumping off point."
     The drink and the candy done, I pushed myself off the stool and
headed for the door.  The proprietor called, "Nice seein' you," and I
lifted my hand in acknowledgment as I stepped out, back into the
blinding sun and blistering heat of the day.  At least the heat here
was dry; at 115 it felt more comfortable than the 93 my thermometer had
shown back in humid Needles.
     I pulled the truck out of the parking lot and headed toward the
tracks.  The highway curved to the left and led off to the west again;
I pulled off onto the road that led north past the cemetery and the
schoolhouse.  Goffs Road, I'd learned to call it, though some had said
the proper name was Cedar Road.  It led to Goffs, and so the Goffs road
was as good a name as any.  There weren't any other roads nearby with
which it could be confused, in any case.
     I tooled quickly up the road, passing under the high voltage wires
a couple of miles north of town.  This always seemed like passing
through a gateway, from the world of man into the true untrammeled
desert.  I continued on, coming to Hackberry Pass about 11 miles up the
road.  To the right, as I passed through the low defile, was the
Hogeyboom, where three windmills kept the steel tanks filled with
water.  I'd been told that pretty nearly anywhere one could drill down
only one or two hundred feet, and in the midst of the blazing desert,
find good water.
     I went on another 10 or 12 miles, coming to the phone booth that
served as a landmark for the Cima road.  If I went a little distance
past the phone booth, I could turn right and visit the old ghost town
of Lanfair, now eroding back into the soil from which it had been
built.  I'd been there several times, though, so I chose the Cima road,
a direction I'd only traveled a time or two before.  I turned left,
therefore, the dust from my travel following me around the corner.  To
the right now, on the north, the Grotto Hills rose darkly, the basalt
rock of their construction wavering slightly in the rising heated air
baking off the floor of Lanfair Valley.
     I slowed my pace, for this country was not as familiar to me as
the area around Lanfair.  I looked about me, noting the Joshua trees,
which had begun just north of Hackberry Pass, and the cholla cactus,
which had started to dot the landscape about halfway between the pass
and Goffs.  Up here the country was more slashed with gullies than
along the highway from Kleinfelter's, and there was more and thicker
vegetation.  The country could not be called forested or verdant by any
stretch of the imagination, but the thickets of cholla, and the
proliferation of the Joshua trees, created a territory where visibility
could be reduced to yards or even feet.
     A roadrunner appeared briefly beside the truck, pacing it for a
few moments before fluttering awkwardly into the branches of a
greasewood.  A lizard dangled limply from its beak.  No doubt a nest
had been planted in the bush; something rather unusual for the bird,
which preferred to live in the cholla where the fierce spines served to
ward off enemies.  I spotted a jackrabbit loping its long ears through
the brush, leaping completely over a greasewood as the truck
approached.
     And then a radiator hose burst.  Steam blasted from the hood and
enveloped the windshield in a blinding cloud.  I slowed precipitously,
yanking the wheel to the right to get over to the edge of the road.  As
the water boiled away, its pressure suddenly relieved, the cloud of
steam blew away in the ever-present wind that skims the desert.
     I climbed from the truck.  I wasn't unduly worried; I'd come only
half a dozen miles from the phone booth, and though it would be a hike,
and me no desert rat, I knew that with care I could safely reach the
instrument and call for help.  I was frustrated, though, for my day off
in the desert had been turned into an aggravation.
     I lifted a jug of water out of the ice chest, where a few chunks
of ice still kept the meltwater and the jugs cold.  I plunked another
jug in to replace the one I'd taken, and set out.  Walking east, I
kicked up the dust of the road, keeping my eye out for rattlesnakes.
By now - nearly noon - it was likely that every snake in the desert was
laid up under a bush, for to attempt much life in the sun without any
sort of internal temperature regulator would result in certain death.
But one never knew, and I'm not a fan of poisonous reptiles.
     Two hours later I was hot, and angry.  Some dumb hunter, unable to
find a deer up in the New York Mountains, had blasted the phone booth,
and the instrument was useless.  I'd been told of such incidents, but
had never seen the results before.  The nearest phone I knew of was
back in Goffs - 22 miles away.  There wasn't any way I could walk back
there, not in the desert's heat.  I had only one choice - to return to
the truck, and hope someone came by.  If no one did, come nightfall I
would have to start walking again, and hope to make it to Goffs, or be
picked up by a traveler, before the day grew hot again.
     Trudging back to the disabled truck, I kept my eyes on the ground,
unhappy with my situation and angry with the idiot who'd decided to
spend his bullets on a phone that, perhaps, could mean life and death
to a stranded tourist.  I was jarred from my bitter introspection by
something that, though ordinary, was out of place where I was.
     I stood looking at a set of tire tracks, where they turned off the
road onto a side road - or track, actually - that headed north into the
wilderness of cactus and other spiny growth.  The vehicle had come from
the west, and had turned in recently, for in doing so it had crossed
over one of my footprints.  I stared up the side road, trying to see
what was up there, but failing.
     I had a new choice.  I could go on back to the truck, or I could
follow this new route, knowing that someone was up there, and had a
vehicle.  The choice was easy; though the track was not at all well-
maintained, and might prove to lead further than I was prepared to go,
I had to take the chance and try to locate the driver.
     I accordingly turned north.  Along the sides of the road the
Joshua trees, greasewood, cholla, paddle cactus, and other assorted
desert growths thrust their spines and branches out at me.  They grew
right up to the margin of the track, and I could not help but believe
that their branches would scrape the sides of any vehicle that passed
along the ruts.
     I noticed that the ground was rising steadily.  This country was
cut by gullies and consisted of rolling ridges, with mountain ranges
stabbing skyward and defining the limits of the valleys.  This was
Lanfair Valley, with the New York Mountains lifting their serrations to
the north and the Hackberry Mountains showing more rounded to the
south.  Which ranges were to the east and west, if any, I did not know.
With this type of geography, it was unusual for the ground to take a
sustained rise.
     As I climbed the gentle but definite slope, a small hill lifted
over the horizon.  Near the top a darker spot appeared to be a cave; it
was hard to be certain, for this hill was of the same dark basalt that
most elevations were constructed of.
     Finally I reached the top of the slope, and stared in amazement.
Before me was a bowl, a mile or so in diameter, with the hill on the
northwest perimeter.  and nestled in the bowl, or perhaps smeared would
be a better word, was a town.  This was not a ghost town, though the
buildings were uniformly gray from the weather and many leaned crazily,
for human beings were clearly visible, and the windmill, injured though
it was, turned in the wind, filling a tank from which a woman was even
then lifting a pail of water.
     I waved, hoping someone would see me.  If anyone did I couldn't
tell it; the slow, shuffling pace of life in this unexpected town
continued without a break.  I began trudging down the hill, and noticed
an unpleasant alteration in the vegetation.  It was still the cholla
and greasewood and Joshua trees and other growth that I had seen
earlier, but here it was strangely shaped, even for desert plants.  The
writhings of the Joshua trees seemed almost to move of their own
accord, the spines of the cholla seem hooked and actively malignant
beyond the jumping myths surrounding this cactus, the greasewood seemed
darker and appeared to crouch over hidden shameful secrets.  I walked
in the center of the road.
     The slope was gentle, and the clogging sand of the rutted, barely
passage road was the only hindrance to my progress.  I slowly drew near
the town.  As I emerged from the track into the clearing in which the
settlement's buildings lay scattered promiscuously about, a man passing
across the clearing happened to notice me.  I waved again, as he was
still a little distance off, and was not encouraged by the response.
He stared for a moment, his eyes bulging out much like a deep-sea fish
that has been suddenly brought to the surface, and then he broke into a
shambling run toward the far end of town.  As he stumbled along he
shouted; I do not think his tongue was limited to English.
     Shaking my head in bafflement, I advanced into the town - if such
it could be called.  The windmill was barely in one piece; even from
this distance, at the opposite end of the village, I could see the
crudity of the patches that held it together.  I saw only half a dozen
vehicles, though buildings were common in the bowl, and not one
appeared to be later than 1965 or so.  The structures themselves were
uniformly grayed by the sun and wind of the desert, and not one stood
square or plumb.  Some seemed almost ready to topple as I watched, yet
squalling, filthy children climbed in and out of them with impunity.
The ground around the water tank was mud in spots, and I could see the
dark streaks where water leaked out of the weakened sides.  This alone
told me of decay, since in the desert water is a precious resource that
is not to be wasted.
     To the northwest, the hill I had seen earlier crowned the rim of
the bowl.  The dark splotch I had noted appeared more definitely from
this closer range to be a cave, and I seemed to see some sort of low
stone monolith in front of the mouth.  A faint trail, barely more
visible than the cattle paths that laced the open range - and which I
noticed did not lead into this bowl - toiled in uneven switchbacks from
the clearing to the area where the stone stood in the blazing sun.
     Returning my gaze to the clearing in front of me, I saw that a
small crowd had gathered - about 50 yards in front of me.  The women
were of the most revolting cast, being uniformly stooped, worn,
wrinkled, and unbathed.  The men were no better, with battered hats on
their heads and grimy shirts and overalls on their bodies.  The people
displayed some variations, but tended toward a norm of those fishy
eyes, stooped posture, large flapping hands, and a fishy odor that came
through the musk of layered sweat and dirt and went strangely in the
nostrils in this fishless wilderness.
     There was a pushing at the back of the crowd, and two men worked
their way through and came towards me.  One was the man who had first
seen me; he approached with his hat in his hand, trailing behind the
second.  The second man, while fitting easily within the debased norm
of the village's inhabitants, was somewhat more self-assured.  He
retain his hat, and approached to within a few feet of me.
     "Who you be, stranger, and what ye be wantin'?"  The accent was
strange, like nothing I'd ever heard in California.  I could only guess
that it was a modified form of the New England nasal tone typified by
John F. Kennedy.
     "My truck broke down out on the Cima road," I replied, pointing
behind me.  "Is there anyone here who could drive me back to Needles?
I'd be more than happy to pay for the gas."
     "Truck don't work," was the terse rejoinder.
     "But I saw tracks turning in here," I protested.  "I wouldn't even
have known your road was here without those tracks."
     "Truck made it in, but it's broke.  Ain't no good for go-in' tah
Needles."
     "Well, I can't wander around the desert forever," I said, with a
laugh.  The laugh, nervous as it was, went ill in the setting.  It
sounded as false as it was.
     "Can't help ye."
     "Well, is there someone I could stay the night with, and then
start out tomorrow?"  By now the sun was beginning to lower itself in
the west, and I didn't care to walk back to the truck if I didn't have
to.
     "Well," the man said, and stuck there.  After a moment I cleared
my throat.  As if he'd never halted, the man continued.  "I guess you
could put up at Lizy Sutter's.  She's a widdah wummin, an' got no kids
tah get underfoot."
     "I'd be very grateful."
     The man stared at me for a moment.  Then he turned and shuffled
off through the dust without a word.  Not knowing what else to do, I
followed as he pushed his way through the crowd.  I noticed as I passed
through that the people pulled away from me slightly, and the children
all hid at the outermost fringes of the gathering, behind the most
convenient skirt.
     The man, who's name I had never gotten, led me through the
haphazard settlement to a house less crazy than most, with a sagging
porch and no glass in the windows.  On the porch an old woman sat in a
rocker, her hair straggling over her face in a nondescript gray tangle.
Stopping at the steps, my guide said, "Miz Sutter, this man says he
needs a place tah spend the night."
     "I ain't no hotel-keeper," the woman snapped.  She glared at me
with undisguised ferocity, the first sign of any emotion other than
fear that I'd yet seen in this strange place.  "You wanta sleep on the
living room floor, you go right ahead.  That's all I got for you."
     Mrs. Sutter's accent, like her manner, was of a different cast
than what I had yet heard.  As I observed her closely, I noted that her
physical characteristics were also anomalous.  She was no beauty, and
quite likely had never been, but her eyes were normal rather than
bulging, and her hands were of the proper proportions.
     The old woman noticed my scrutiny and cackled, a wicked high laugh
that spelled only evil.  "You've seen the differences, have you?  Well,
I'll just tell you."  She broke off sharply, glaring at my guide.  "Go
along, Amos Marsh.  I can take care of myself, as you very well know."
 As the man meekly shuffled off, Mrs. Sutter returned her attention to
me.  "Sit down."
     "Where?" I asked, beyond normal good manners by now, what with the
heat and the strangeness of the place into which I'd stumbled.
     "On your bum, you fool!" she snapped.  "I don't care - on the
porch, or on the ground, or on Hastur's altar, it makes no difference
to me, as long as you sit."
     Properly chastened, I lowered myself to the splintery boards of
the porch.  I guessed that the building had not been painted or stained
in its entire existence.
     "I'm Lizy Sutter, Elizabeth Tuppence that was.  I used to live in
Needles.  Yes, back in 51 I married Obed Sutter, and left there, when I
was 17.
     "Why, you may very well ask, did a girl from a city marry someone
from Scarllett and move out to this forsaken hole in the earth?  Why,
indeed?"  The old woman let loose another cackle, this time more
subdued, but more chilling for all that.
     "My kin back 100 years ago were from Massachusetts.  They'd been
Dunnich folk-" I later learned that the town is spelled Dunwich "-but
they moved away from there in 1890.  They come first to Missouri, and
then to Texas.  Then the family moved after some years out here to
California, to Los Angeles.  And finally my parents moved to Needles 15
years before I was born.
     "So I'm a Needles girl.  But my roots are Massachusetts - they're
Dunnich roots, and them's roots that goes deep into the soil of
Massachusetts, and don't come out easy.  They don't pull up easy a-
tall.  And through all the movings and through my life, I've always had
that connection.
     "Obed Sutter was born in Innsmuth, Massachusetts.  That's not far
from Arkum, and Arkum's not far from Dunnich, or so the tale is."
These new names were actually spelled Innsmouth and Arkham.  "In 28 his
father left with some others and come out here, and set up camp.  The
next year the women came out.  The leader of the group was Abijah
Scarllett, an' it's him the town was named after.
     "Back in Innsmuth, they said, the government had stuck it's
blunderin' nose where it didn't belong, and kilt some folks, and made
it tough for the rest, and some of 'em just up and left.  Innsmuth's
still there, and some of the people here still have kin there, or so
they guess, for they've not had contact since World War II.  But these
people, back in 28 and 29, they left and come here.
     "So I was from an old Dunnich family, and Obed he was from
Innsmuth.  He'd come in sometimes after supplies, and I'd see him at
the store sometimes.  And I was drawn to him.  My folks, they spoke
against it.  But I was young and headstrong, and I was bound and
determined to be a woman on my time and not theirs.  I got to know
Obed.  You have to understand that I was born in 34, so by the time I
met him, when I was 16, he'd been in Scarllett for 22 years.  I was a
wild, rebellious child - they said it was the Whately blood I had
somewhere back in my line.  Anyway, finally my folks said I wasn't
never to see Obed anymore, so we up an' eloped.  He brought me here,
an' here I've been ever since."
     By now the sun was at the horizon, the rim of the bowl creating an
earlier dusk in Scarllett than outside.  I could see nighthawks and a
few early bats flitting after the insects to the east, for Lizy
Sutter's house was at the foot of the east rim.  But strangely they
never crossed into the bowl - no matter how wildly they dipped and
flapped in pursuit of fleeing insects, they'd come to an invisible wall
and flee frantically away.  I noticed at the same time that there were
no cats or dogs around, though normally both are prolific in squalid
settlements, feeding on the garbage and vermin such conditions produce.
And strangest of all, as the sun continued to set I could hear a wild,
high, enormous piping and croaking of frogs, not just from the
direction of the water tank, but from all corners of the bowl.  Frogs
do live in the desert, but they only emerge from their burrowed sleep
when it rains, and never in the kind of numbers I was now hearing.
     As the sun dipped below the rim of the bowl, the old woman rose
from her rickety chair.  "Well, come on inside.  I ain't got but one
bed - you'll have to try the sofa."
     I followed her inside.  the stench was frightful; it smelled as if
the place had never been cleaned.  The front door led into a living
room of sorts, with a badly worn sofa along the right hand wall, a
crude table in the center, and several chairs scattered randomly about.
Directly in front of me I could see a kitchen, with filthy dishes piled
in the sink and stacked indiscriminately about.  There was no faucet at
the sink, nor a pump handle; apparently all the water was carried from
the tank in the clearing.  To the left a door led into what seemed to
be a bedroom.  I could glimpse the edge of a door leading from the
kitchen to the outside, and this was the house.
     Lizy Sutter took herself off to the bedroom, closing the door
behind her without another word.  Testing the sofa, I found it only
marginally better than the floor.  The cushions were dirty, but the
floor was caked with dust and worse; I could manage the lumps in the
sofa, and didn't care to try the hard floor.
     With the sunset darkness had come swiftly over the desert, as is
always the case.  Inside the house it was already nearly pitch black.
I had seen no form of artificial lighting; electricity was apparently
unknown, for I had seen neither wires leading into the village nor
anything resembling a generator, and the old woman had no candles or
lanterns in the house that I could see.  I couldn't see to do anything
else, so I laid down on the repugnant sofa.  As tired as I was, I was
soon sleeping soundly.
     I don't know what woke me.  Suddenly I was lying on my back, wide
awake, with a tumult of frogs screaming in my ears.  If I had thought
they were out in unusual numbers before, I had no doubt of it now.  Now
the sound came not only from the area of the water tank, but from all
sides; it even sounded as if some of the animals were inside the house.
The din was deafening, and I found out what the phrase means when one
says he can't hear himself think.
     I sat up and swung my legs to the floor, knowing that with such a
racket I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep.  I had not removed my
shoes or any of my clothing.  The springs of the sofa creaked as I
move, and my heels clunked slightly as my feet touched the floor.  At
that moment I heard the door of the old woman's room open.
     "Awake, are you?" came her voice.  This time the temper was
missing, and this chilled me, for instead of an irascible old woman I
heard a scheming, cunning creature who was completely in control of the
situation.
     But I did not know precisely what the situation was.  I knew that
I was in a strange house with a strange woman, in a strange town in the
desert, but other than that I was at a loss.  I could think of no
reason for the fright that stole over me.  But fright there was.  I
managed to choke out a belated answer to Lizy Sutter's question: "Yes."
     "That's good.  You just stay there.  I'll be over directly."
     The door swung the rest of the way open, and I could hear her
steps coming softly over the floor toward me.  There was a scraping
sound, which drew nearer and stopped when, I judged, it was three or
four feet in front of me.
     I heard a creaking sound, and surmised that the woman must have
dragged a chair over to the sofa and sat down on it.  As I strained my
eyes, I thought I could see two ovals of pale light in front of me, but
I wasn't sure.
     "So, the frogs bother you, do they?"
     "Well, they are unusual in this climate - at least, so many is
unusual."
     "Scarllett has always had frogs," Lizy continued.  "From the day I
came here, I've lived with the frogs.  They're like watchdogs, you know
- we don't have dogs here," she added, though I'd already remarked that
fact.  "They tell us when one from Outside is near.  An' that's a good
thing to know."
     "Outside?" I asked, completely at a loss.
     "Yes.  Out there, they wait and slobber.  They were lords here
once, and they'll be again.  Obed, he taught me things.  They don't
know here what they knew in Innsmuth - a lot has been forgotten, for
they've been a lot out of touch.  But we remember some things; we
remember that once the Great Old Ones ruled the world, and did as they
please, and will come back some day to rule again.  Obed told me."
     I should have laughed at this rigmarole, for it was patently
absurd.  It sounded like the ravings of some maniac on drugs.  But I
didn't laugh, and I somehow didn't doubt.  At the moment, whatever my
rational mind might tell me, I believed that this woman knew things
that I did not, and that the things she knew were true, and were so
horrible that a completely sane mind could not long remain sane knowing
them.
     Also the two faintly glowing spots that I had imagined were
growing brighter, so that I could no longer tell myself they were
figments of my overwrought mind.  They were real, and with a start I
realized they were Lizy Sutter's eyes.  We say a cat's eye's glow in
the dark, but that's not accurate; a cat's eyes reflect back the light
that is present with great efficiency, and only appear to glow.  But
the old woman's eyes were glowing in reality, with a pale gray light
that was already beginning to bring her face into faint relief.
     She saw that I saw, and knew what I saw.  And her voice grew as
cold as the wind off an Antarctic plateau.  "Stranger, you came at a
bad time.  You see, I'm not just the widow of Obed Sutter, but I'm
somthin' more.  He told me a lot, and I grew, an' I found out more than
what he told me or knew of.  I'm no ordinary girl from Needles; I've
got Dunnich blood and the blood remembers.  You put Dunnich and
Innsmuth together, and you've got somthin' powerful.  I know, that I
do.  And what I know, is your death."
     As I sat paralyzed by my nameless fear, Lizy Sutter's eyes had
been getting still brighter.  And now I saw the pupils.  They dilated
and shrank, grew and decreased, until suddenly they assumed a shape
that sent me screaming from the sofa, out the door, and across the
clearing.
     As I ran I remember dimly seeing a ring of men and women standing
around the house.  They didn't move as I pushed through, but stood like
zombies, waiting for something, and I was afraid I knew what they were
waiting for.  I left them behind, and just before I crossed the rim
that hid the bowl from the rest of the world, I looked back and saw
that ring still silently standing there.
     I've told no one of my experience.  I found my way back to the
truck, and in the morning when a cowboy from the ranch gave me a lift
back to the headquarters, whose headquarters was only 12 miles north of
the phone booth if I'd only known it the day before, I told him I'd
spent the night in the truck.  What I saw is impossible, and no one
would believe it.  I wouldn't believe it myself, if I hadn't seen it.
For what I saw, when Lizy Sutter's pupils changed, was a cave with a
horrid, shapeless monster emerging in the midst of a sloughing slime.
And the cave was that which pierced the summit of the hill to the
northwest of Scarllett.