The Dunwich Romance by Edward Lee

urinating unsparingly into the Lang man’s mouth, while Lang himself swallowed gulp after gulp after gulp.
    But Lang was not the only one consuming a vile substance. Tobias Whateley stood near the corner, his thin forearms shaking as he held in his hands the noxious tin-bucket-turned-spittoon. He’d already raised it to his lips and was—
    gulp, gulp, gulp
    —swallowing its contents in noisy, grueling increments.
    Time seemed to lock in place; the sound of gulping  held sway over the store. Gulping, gulping, gulping. Eventually, Wheeler’s bladder had shed the last of its product, then Lang fell over on his side, curled into a fetal configuration, and began to shiver. But the elderly Tobias...
    He just kept on gulping.
    How much time transpired proved impossible for Sary to take account of, but some considerable time it must’ve been for it was after only an eternity of staring that the old man finally reached the spit-can’s bottom. From his rack-thin frame, however, protruded quite a distended belly, as though a honeydew melon had been slipped beneath his shirt. Then Tobias, too, toppled over, curled up, and convulsed.
    When Sary’s mortification veered off, she saw that Wheeler had already broken from his previous stance and had quite perfunctorily squatted. Amid flatulence that resembled boughs cracking, the post-hole digger moved his bowels directly onto the floor, to deposit a remarkably weighty allotment of excrement.
    Why the heck is he...
    In spite of the resistant cast of face, Wheeler knelt immediately and began to eat; and it was with no meager zestfulness with which he consumed the self-made meal. When the pile had been transferred entirely into his belly, he licked the floor clean, whereupon, like his cohorts, he sidled over in convulsant misery.
    This scene, and the others before it, however, proved not to be the strangest that Sary would witness today.
    That peculiar sub-aural semi-sound had disintegrated, such that Sary now wondered if she’d heard it at all. Impulse, then, caused her to turn her head...
    Wilbur...
    Indeed, her surprised gape revealed Wilbur Whateley as the one who’d earlier entered the ramshackle store. The colossally tall man stood as if in trance, mouth open, eyes aimed blankly at the raftered ceiling. Additionally, his hands were outspread, and from each palm issued a modest floret of flame crowned by a smoke-plume which seemed to possess the oddest chlorotic hue. The flame itself, in fact, was possessed of a similar tint. There was something sickish about it. But in the time it took Sary to blink—
    The flames and smoke were gone.
    Wilbur stood in typical fashion, his gaze addressing Sary. In moments he’d come to her, lifted her off the table, and gently helped her back on with her gown.
    “Aw, Sary, I’se so sorry. Dun’t know what I was thinkin’ lettin’ yew come daown heer by yerself—I should’a known these low-daown scum’d pull suthin’ like this...”
    But Sary felt invigorated. “I’m fine, Wilbur—”
    Towering over her, Wilbur gulped. “Did they...”
    Sary shook her head with a smile. “Nope. Yew come just in time. Oh, and your friend over theer come in with me.” She scratched her head. “Seemed almost like he knowed them crummy men wouldn’t git theer way... Mebbe he is a fortune teller.”
    “Yew mean Kyler?”
    “Yeah, he’s right th—” but when Sary turned to where the bald man had been knocked down, he was no longer present in the edifice.
    She rebuttoned the gown, her mind abounded in perplexity. The three miscreants remained curled on the floor, moaning, twitching, their trousers down. Tobias actually sucked his thumb through his flinches. Sary struggled to refocus on details but found that an overmuch effort was required; her memory took on a haziness that matched her previous faltering vision. Did I really see what I THINK I saw?
    Wilbur stiffened when Sary innocuously took his hand. Her eyes narrowed in a deep solicitude.