The police, though, said they knew who the Whisperer in the Dark was. His name, they said, was Wilbur Whateley. He had been born an albino, his skin so devoid of pigment, his eyes so sensitive that bright light pained him, and he was raised in a home where there were suspicions of terrible abuse. That was probably why he had taken to killing and decapitating animals when he was a child. Wilbur also apparently loved knives. He’d been taken from his birth family and put into the foster care system. Thirty years ago, when he was only thirteen, but bigger and stronger than most grown men, he had murdered his foster parents in the middle of the night. Then he sought out his biological parents and grandparents. He found them, too. When the police caught Wilbur, he was walking down the road with a big bag over his back. I don’t have to tell you what he had inside that bag.

His childhood home had been just two houses away from Aunt Lyssa’s. That was probably why he had discovered the caves and knew them so well. And that was why he came back to this neighborhood after he escaped from a mental institution two weeks before he called me on the telephone. How did he know my name and that I was a descendant of Canonchet? He had probably gotten that from reading the article about my winning the interstate cross-country meet.

“Wilbur Whateley,” Roger said, shaking his head.

“I know.”

It was too weird. Wilbur Whateley was the name of a character in HPL’s “The Dunwich Horror,” a bent, goatish giant who was half human and half the spawn of a creature from the depths of horror.

Whether he was actually the Whisperer or Wilbur Whateley, no one was ever able to prove. His body was never found in the massive cave-in, which also seemed to have collapsed the whole network of tunnels leading to that cavern.

When I told Grama Delia the whole story, her response would have been surprising to some.

“Chauquaco Wunnicheke,” she said, nodding her head. “Knife Hand. Those dang diggers let his spirit out.” Then she smiled at me. “I am proud of you, grandchild. You have your father’s courage.”