smelt since. In the midst of this mephitic flood there came a very perceptible flash like that of lightning, which would have been blinding and impressive but for the daylight around; and then was heard the voice that no listener can ever forget because of its thunderous remoteness, its incredible depth, and its eldritch dissimilarity to Charles Ward’s voice. It shook the house, and was clearly heard by at least two neighbors above the howling of the dogs. Mrs. Ward, who had been listening in despair outside her son’s locked laboratory, shivered as she recognized its hellish import; for Charles had told her of its evil fame in dark books, and of the manner in which it had thundered, according to the Fenner letters, above the doomed Pawtuxet farmhouse on the night of Joseph Curwen’s annihilation. There was no mistaking that nightmare phrase, for Charles had described it too vividly in the old days when he had talked frankly of his Curwen investigations. And yet it was only this fragment of an archaic and forgotten language: “ Dies Mies Jeschet Boene Doesef Douvema Enitemaus .”
Close upon this thundering there came a momentary darkening of the daylight, though sunset was still an hour distant, and then a puff of added odor, different from the first but equally unknown and intolerable. Charles was chanting again now and his mother could hear syllables that sounded like “Yi-ngah-Yog-Sothoth-he-lglb-fi-throdag”—ending in a “Yah!” whose maniacal force mounted in an earsplitting crescendo. A second later all previous memories were effaced by the wailing scream which burst out with frantic explosiveness and gradually changed form to a paroxysm of diabolic and hysterical laughter. Mrs. Ward, with the mingled fear and blind courage of maternity, advanced and knocked affrightedly at the concealing panels, but obtained no sign of recognition. She knocked again, but paused nervelessly as a second shriek arose, this one unmistakably in the familiar voice of her son, and sounding concurrently with the still bursting cachinnations of that other voice . Presently she fainted, although she is still unable to recall the precise and immediate cause. Memory sometimes makes merciful deletions.