Here in Dunwich as everywhere in America, COVID has been a scourge. Of course, the spread and the symptoms in Dunwich are atypical and highly disturbing (as is everything here). The disease is completely restricted to a one-mile radius around the historic home of Zebadiah Cobblestoner the legendary Whaling Fleet Magnate.
Zebadiah was known in the early nineteenth century as the whale prostate king. His company sold pickled whale prostate throughout the New England region where its healing properties were much in demand. And with the proceeds of this lucrative trade Zebadiah built a magnificent mansion in his native town Dunwich. And there he lived in great opulence until the great whale prostate crash of 1841. In that year the medical profession actually investigated the “healing effects” of whale prostate and discovered that its only effect on humans was to imbue its users with a decidedly bright blue coloration around their private parts.
Needless to say, Zebadiah’s fortunes fell on hard times. In addition, a local witch named Hepzibah Goodbody was so outraged at the coloration she had contracted that she put a curse on Cobblestoner that not only killed him but rendered his mansion a nexus of contagion and miasma ever after. At first this miasma was restricted to anyone foolhardy enough to inhabit Zebadiah’s mansion. But over the years the contagion grew until now it had reached out to all the inhabitants of the formerly prestigious Toenail Hill area. The malady starts out as general abdominal discomfort but in its terminal stage it presents as an exaggerated swelling of the lower abdomen followed by detonation of the prostate which usually leaves only the legs and upper body of the victim intact. Surprisingly both males and females are equally afflicted in this syndrome.
Now you may be asking yourself how a nineteenth century witch’s spell that causes people to explode could be diagnosed as COVID. Well, it turns out that the federal and state governments have provided, let us say, inducements to local governments for finding COVID cases in their areas. And let’s face it, it’s not cheap cleaning up the biohazard when someone’s pelvic region explodes so First Selectman Cthulhu worked it out with the Dunwich Department of Health to sort of roll the Cobblestoner Curse victims in with the COVID census.
But with the recent state budget cuts the “subsidy” for the COVID cases has dried up and so the Board decided something should be done to clean up this problem. I was contracted to do it. And it was stressed that I could employ all means necessary.
Using satellite imagery, I was able to triangulate the source of the miasma to a corner of the Cobblestoner estate. In fact, it turned out to be centered around Zebadiah Cobblestoner’s private cemetery. I brought along one hundred tanker trucks, each loaded with 6,000 gallons of aqua regia which is a combination of saturated hydrochloric acid and fuming nitric acid. My team excavated down to one hundred feet where we started to uncover a stone-like mass of enormous size finally we could see its shape was spherical with a diameter of over a thousand feet. When we reached the bottom of this structure, we saw with horror that it was attached to the centuries dead but normal sized corpse of Zebadiah Cobblestoner. We had uncovered his decidedly malign hypertrophied prostate bulging out of his body!
We climbed out of the excavation in a panicked rout but before following my team in a sprint for the hills I slammed the valve actuator that released the veritable lake of hyper-corrosive acid into the pit. As I panted from the effort of escaping the scene, clouds of acrid fumes spread along the ground. Earth tremors made it difficult to keep my legs under me but I finally reached a ridge about a mile off from the pit. And there I witnessed a sight that has shaken my sanity and left me a shell of the man I was.
The ground around the pit convulsed and swelled. The prostate swelled up to ten times its size and glowed a bright yellow. Then the prostate shrank down and disappeared below ground. But suddenly the corpse of Cobblestoner took its place swelling up to the size of the prostate and even larger. Its face was distorted with pain and rage and I feared something truly horrible was about to occur. All at once an enormous flatulence erupted from the nether regions of Cobblestoner. A hurricane of unbelievably foul air stormed past me. But almost as soon as it arrived it passed and a look of angelic peace suffused Cobblestoner’s face and then he slowly shrank back into the pit.
After a safe period of time had elapsed, I dared to return to the top of the pit. There was no sign at all of Cobblestoner or his cursed prostate. The area had been miraculously cleansed by the potent acids and the miasma was gone! There are signs in the last few days that Toenail Hill is once again a healthy place. I’ve notice that Zillow has quadrupled the value of all the local real estate and speculators have snatched up all the likeliest properties including the Cobblestoner mansion and gravel pit.
One other salubrious result of the exorcism is that for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic not a single COVID victim has exploded. That means I’ll probably get paid for my efforts by the Town of Dunwich. And I call that a win.