"Wilbur Whateley Waiting" is a short Cthulhu Mythos story by American scholar and author Robert M. Price.
Synopsis[]
When he is resurrected by amateur magician Ezekiel Prinn nearly sixty years after his own death, Wilbur Whateley goes searching for a copy of the Necronomicon with which to awaken Rhan-Tegoth. Unable to locate one, he ends his travels in his home town of Dunwich. After several years on his old homestead contemplating what to do, he stumbles across a cave, inside of which is a door. The door is covered in arcane symbols which he recognises from his old grimoires, and the story ends with Wilbur opening the door and preparing to begin again. As for Prinn, he finds that he has the correct incantation after all and awakens Rhan-Tegoth, which kills him and goes back to sleep after no blood sacrifices are forthcoming.
Characters[]
- Wilbur Whateley, the semi-human son of Yog-Sothoth, who is dedicated to bringing the Earth into his father's hands.
- Ezekiel Prinn, an aging but dedicated, if somewhat ill-informed, occultist.
- Rhan-Tegoth, a Great Old One which will summon the rest of its kind if successfully unleashed.
Publication History[]
"Wilbur Whateley Waiting" was first published in the fanzine Revelations from Yuggoth #1 in November 1987. It later appeared in the anthologies The Dunwich Cycle: Where the Old Gods Wait (November 1995) and Blasphemies & Revelations (November 2008).
Trivia[]
- Ezekiel Prinn claims to be of the line "of Abigail Prinn, and of Ludvig Prinn before her." Abigail Prinn was the antagonist in Henry Kuttner's short story "The Salem Horror" (1937), while Ludvig Prinn is the fictional author of the recurrent occult grimoire De Vermis Mysteriis (which was first mentioned in Robert Bloch's "The Secret in the Tomb", 1935).