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"The Dunwich Horror"
Dunwich Horror, The (novella)
Publisher's info
Title: "The Dunwich Horror"
Author: H.P. Lovecraft
Publisher: Weird Tales
1st printing: April, 1929
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"The Dunwich Horror" is a novella of the Gothic horror genre. It was written by H.P. Lovecraft in 1928 and first published on pages 481-508 of the April, 1929 issue of Weird Tales. This book is considered a lynchpin story in the greater Cthulhu Mythos continuity.

Plot[]

In the desolate, decrepit Massachusetts village of Dunwich, Wilbur Whateley is the hideous son of Lavinia Whateley, a deformed and unstable albino, and an unknown father. Strange events surround Wilbur's birth and precocious development; he matures at an abnormal rate, reaching manhood within a decade. Locals shun him and his family, and animals fear and despise him due to his repellent appearance and an unnatural, inhuman odor emanating from his body. All the while his grandfather, a sorcerer called only Old Whateley, indoctrinates him into certain dark rituals and the study of witchcraft. Various locals grow suspicious after Old Whateley buys more and more cattle, yet the number of his herd never increases and the cattle in his field become mysteriously afflicted with severe open wounds.

Wilbur and Old Whateley have sequestered an unseen entity at their farmhouse; this entity is connected somehow to a being known as Yog-Sothoth, which is Wilbur's father. Year by year, the entity grows to monstrous proportions, requiring the two men to make frequent modifications to the farmhouse. People begin to notice a trend of cattle mysteriously disappearing. Old Whateley eventually dies, and Wilbur's mother Lavinia disappears soon after. The colossal entity eventually occupies the entire interior of the farmhouse.

Wilbur ventures to Miskatonic University in Arkham to procure their copy of the Necronomicon – Miskatonic's library is one of only a handful in the world to stock an original. The Necronomicon has spells that Wilbur can use to summon the Old Ones, but his family's copy is damaged and lacks the page he needs to open the "door". When the librarian, Dr. Henry Armitage, refuses to release the university's copy to him (and, by sending warnings to other libraries, thwarts Wilbur's efforts to consult their copies), Wilbur breaks into the library under the cover of night to steal it. A guard dog, maddened by Wilbur's alien body odor, attacks with unusual ferocity and kills him. When Armitage and two other professors, Warren Rice and Francis Morgan, arrive on the scene, they see Wilbur's semi-human corpse before it melts completely, leaving no evidence.

With Wilbur dead, no one attends to the mysterious presence growing in the Whateley farmhouse. Early one morning, the farmhouse explodes, and the thing, a towering, invisible monster, rampages across Dunwich, leaving huge prints the size of tree trunks. The monster eventually makes forays into inhabited areas. The invisible creature terrorizes Dunwich for several days, killing two families and several policemen, until Armitage, Rice, and Morgan arrive with the knowledge and weapons needed to kill it. The use of a magic powder renders the monster visible just long enough to send one of the crew into shock. It babbles in an alien tongue, then screams for help from its father Yog-Sothoth in English just before the spell destroys it, leaving a massive burned area. In the end, its nature is revealed: it was Wilbur's twin brother, but it "looked more like the father than he [Wilbur] did".

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