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the stamp of the Whateley's upon it.
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But the torso and lower parts of the body were teratologically fabulous, so
that only generous clothing could ever have enabled it to walk on earth
unchallenged or uneradicated.
Above the waist it was semi-anthropomorphic; though its chest, where the dog's
rending paws still rested watchfully, had the leathery, reticulated hide of a
crocodile or alligator. The back was piebald with yellow and black, and dimly
suggested the squamous covering of certain snakes.Below the waist, though, it
was the worst; for here all human resemblance left off and sheer phantasy
began.
The skin was thickly covered with coarse black fur, and from the abdomen a
score of long greenish-grey tentacles with red sucking mouths protruded
limply.
Their arrangement was odd, and seemed to follow the symmetries of some cosmic
geometry unknown to earth or the solar system. On each of the hips, deep set
in a kind of pinkish, ciliated orbit, was what seemed to be a rudimentary eye;
whilst in lieu of a tail there depended a kind of trunk or feeler with purple
annular markings, and with many evidences of being an undeveloped mouth or
throat. The limbs, save for their black fur, roughly resembled the hind legs
of prehistoric earth's giant saurians, and terminated in ridgy-veined pads
that were neither hooves nor claws. When the thing breathed, its tail and
tentacles rhythmically changed colour, as if from some circulatory cause
normal to the non-human greenish tinge, whilst in the tail it was manifest as
a yellowish appearance which alternated with a sickly grayish-white in the
spaces between the purple rings. Of genuine blood there was none; only the
foetid greenish-yellow ichor which trickled along the painted floor beyond the
radius of the stickiness, and left a curious discoloration behind it.
As the presence of the three men seemed to rouse the dying thing, it began to
mumble without turning or raising its head. Dr Armitage made no written record
of its mouthings, but asserts confidently that nothing in English was uttered.
At first the syllables defied all correlation with any speech of earth, but
towards the last there came some disjointed fragments evidently taken from the
Necronomicon, that monstrous blasphemy in quest of which the thing had
perished.
These fragments, as Armitage recalls them, ran something like 'N'gai,
n'gha'ghaa, bugg-shoggog, y'hah: Yog-Sothoth, Yog-Sothoth ...' They trailed
off into nothingness as the whippoorwills shrieked in rhythmical crescendos of
unholy anticipation.
Then came a halt in the gasping, and the dog raised its head in a long,
lugubrious howl. A change came over the yellow, goatish face of the prostrate
thing, and the great black eyes fell in appallingly. Outside the window the
shrilling of the whippoorwills had suddenly ceased, and above the murmurs of
the gathering crowd there came the sound of a panic-struck whirring and
fluttering.
Against the moon vast clouds of feathery watchers rose and raced from sight,
frantic at that which they had sought for prey.
All at once the dog started up abruptly, gave a frightened bark, and leaped
nervously out of the window by which it had entered. A cry rose from the
crowd, and Dr Armitage shouted to the men outside that no one must be admitted
till the police or medical examiner came. He was thankful that the windows
were just too high to permit of peering in, and drew the dark curtains
carefully down over each one. By this time two policemen had arrived; and Dr
Morgan, meeting them in the vestibule, was urging them for their own sakes to
postpone entrance to the stench-filled reading-room till the examiner came and
the prostrate thing could be covered up.
Meanwhile frightful changes were taking place on the floor. One need not
describe the kind and rate of shrinkage and disintegration that occurred
before the eyes of Dr Armitage and Professor Rice; but it is permissible to
say that, aside from the external appearance of face and hands, the really
human element in Wilbur Whateley must have been very small. When the medical
examiner came,
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