The Place Called Dagon is a fantasy novel by Herbert Gorman. It opens with a night summons to Doctor Dreeme in Marlborough: a hired boy says a man has shot himself. From this dark start, the tale moves toward the mystery of the title place, offering eerie fantasy.
Doctor Dreeme, turning sleepily on his pillow, heard the clatter of a horse’s hoofs coming down the steep Leeminster Road. The steely clash on the rock-path tore abruptly through his semi-trance and he opened his eyes, scowling vaguely at the milky blur of ceiling. The horse stopped with a rough grating of hoofs below the window and the doctor sighed. Marlborough was like that. It was undoubtedly another farmer with a pain in his back who might just as well wait until morning. It was at night that his taciturn neighbors were most obsessed with the somber consequences of their lonely ailments. In daylight they would bear them with the dumb equanimity of animals, sitting behind drawn curtains or plodding painfully over their stony fields. But they were horribly afraid of dying at night. The bell clanked feebly. The doctor threw back his quilted coverlet of great square patches, rose in the darkness of the room, and strode over to the window. He leaned out, straining his eyes to see who stood in the gray mist of the moon outside his door.
“Who is it?” he called sharply. “Who, in the name of Heaven … at this time of night. …”
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