The Place Called Dagon

Doctor Dreeme, turning sleepily on his pillow, heard the clatter of a horse’s hoofs coming down the steep Leeminster Road. The steely clash on the rock-path tore abruptly through his semi-trance and he opened his eyes, scowling vaguely at the milky blur of ceiling. The horse stopped with a rough grating of hoofs below the window and the doctor sighed. Marlborough was like that. It was undoubtedly another farmer with a pain in his back who might just as well wait until morning. It was at night that his taciturn neighbors were most obsessed with the somber consequences of their lonely ailments. In daylight they would bear them with the dumb equanimity of animals, sitting behind drawn curtains or plodding painfully over their stony fields. But they were horribly afraid of dying at night. The bell clanked feebly. The doctor threw back his quilted coverlet of great square patches, rose in the darkness of the room, and strode over to the window. He leaned out, straining his eyes to see who stood in the gray mist of the moon outside his door.

“Who is it?” he called sharply. “Who, in the name of Heaven … at this time of night. …”

“Doctor Dreeme? I’m Miles, Jeffrey Westcott’s hired boy. Mr. Westcott’s taken something awful. He wants for you to come and help him right away. He’s shot himself and. …”

“I’ll be right down,” snapped the doctor.

He fumbled about the room, lit a kerosene oil-lamp, and hastily dressed himself, drawing his trousers on over his rumpled pyjamas. Pausing an instant before the cracked mirror he smoothed back his tousled hair and dashed some cold water from the china bowl upon his sleep-warm face. It was a square-cut visage, young, thin-lipped, and with long narrow eyes that stared back briefly at him. Two years’ arduous practice in Marlborough, a relentless precision of deaths and births and ailments, had etched tiny lines about his mouth and eyes and forehead, lines of watchfulness and concentration, but he was still surprisingly youthful in appearance and alert in action. He grasped his black bag and hurried down the stairs, slipping the bolt and stepping into the dim lane where the huge farm-horse pawed impatiently at the ground. The blank windows of the Slater house stared down at him gloomily as he turned to the boy, Miles, who perched like a small monkey on his mount.