Slaughter Blog

HP Lovecraft had the degenerate and inbred back country of Dunwich and Innsmouth but we Slaughterees had our own “end of the road” mutant puppy mill country as our home for nine years:  The Klickitat valley and the Wahkiacus Heights, places that look OK at first glance but also have that wrong turn, “what the heck are these people doing out here”, feel to them.  This is a pastiche of the opening of HPL’s “The Dunwich Horror” originally posted in a CS email thread back in the day:  Lest we forget as we move onto fancier digs.

When a traveler in Northern Oregon takes the wrong fork at the junction of Hood River passing over the Columbia River, and turns North at the lonely hamlet of Lyle,  he comes upon a lonely and curious country. The ground gets higher, and the twisted oak thickets press closer and closer against the ruts of the dusty, curving road. Though the terrain is dry, the wild weeds, brambles and grasses attain a luxuriance not often found in settled regions. At the same time planted fields are none existent, while the sparsely scattered houses wear a surprisingly uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation.  Without knowing why, one hesitates to ask directions from the curiously stooped, solitary figures spied now and then on the porches of shotgun shacks or on the sloping, rock-strewn meadows. Those figures are so silent and furtive that one feels somehow confronted by forbidden things, with which it would be better to have nothing to do. When a rise in the road brings the mountains in view above the deep woods, the feeling of strange uneasiness is increased.

Gorges and ravines of problematical depth intersect the way, and the narrow, dusty roadways are of dubious safety. When the road dips again there are hollows that one instinctively dislikes where the infernal yellow jackets breed in abnormal amounts and pester any unlucky interloper with a persistence and fervor that borders on malevolent.  Indeed, as evening falls the dislike turns to fear when unseen coyotes chatter and the fireflies come out in abnormal profusion to dance to the raucous, creepily insistent rhythms of stridently piping cicadas. The thin, shining line of the Klickitat’s upper reaches has an oddly serpent-like suggestion as it winds close to the feet of the domed hills among which it rises.

Passing through the degenerate township of Klickitat one is compelled to ensure the car doors are locked and the windows tightly closed.  However, the reality is that this wretched village is the last outpost of civilization before journeying on into unhealthy landscapes.
As one heads up the precipitous roadway leading to the Wakiacus Heights one is concerned by the precipitous chasms that yawn at each bend in the road, but there is no road by which further to travel.  It is not reassuring to see, on a closer glance, that most of the houses are deserted and falling to ruin, and that although there is a faded signpost to the Wahkiacus church, no broken – steepled building can be spied.  It is rumored that the congregation of the Wahkiacus church practice arcane rites of a most unwholesome nature so it is well that the precise route to it remains obscured.

One dreads to trust the rocky and uneven road way, yet there is no way to avoid it. Once well into the heights, it is hard to prevent the impression of a faint, malign presence about the seared, grassy hillsides and the menacing gnarled thickets of sickly oaks as if they exude the massed mold and decay of centuries.  It is always a relief to get clear of the place and to follow the narrow road up to the top of the hills and across the level country beyond till it reaches the refuge known as Camp Slaughter.