Bellows Falls

Bellows Falls is a recurring transit point in the Vermont mystery, linking the movement of the black stone with a series of troubling messages attributed to Henry Wentworth Akeley. Its significance lies less in description of the town than in the uncertainty attached to what leaves from it and who is speaking in its name.

Transport and the Missing Stone

On July 18, Akeley sent a telegram from Bellows Falls stating that he was forwarding the black stone by railway express on train No. 5508, scheduled to leave at 12:15 p.m. for Boston. Albert N. Wilmarth expected the consignment to reach Arkham by the following noon, but it did not arrive. The train reached Boston only thirty-five minutes late, and the express agent confirmed that no box addressed to Wilmarth had been aboard. Bellows Falls thus marks the reported beginning of a shipment whose disappearance turns a piece of material evidence into a new source of alarm.

The inquiry produced no explanation for the loss. A railway clerk recalled that a lean, sandy-haired stranger with a thick, droning voice had asked about an expected heavy box while the train waited at Keene. The man gave the name Stanley Adams; the clerk became dizzy and sleepy listening to him and could not clearly recall how their exchange ended. The stranger was later reported near the station, but remained unidentified. Akeley also investigated, yet regarded the stone’s loss as ominous and doubted it was still on Earth. Bellows Falls is therefore connected not to a recovered object, but to a failed chain of custody and a disturbing encounter that could not be verified.

Telegrams and Doubtful Authorship

A later telegram from Bellows Falls told Wilmarth to take no action, warning that intervention could harm them both and asking him to wait for an explanation. Its wording appeared to answer Wilmarth’s concerns, but Akeley soon said he had neither sent the telegram nor received the letter to which it seemed to reply. Inquiries at Bellows Falls traced the message to a strange, sandy-haired man with a droning voice; the signature misspelled Akeley’s name as Akely. The town’s name on the dispatch therefore did not authenticate its supposed sender. Instead, the message extended the pattern of suspicious communications surrounding the missing stone.

A Postal Mark in the Wider Network

Bellows Falls also appears on a typed letter that reached Akeley while he was away in Brattleboro. The letter was postmarked there and brought by a rural delivery carrier; Akeley wrote that it described what its senders intended to do to him and warned Wilmarth to look out for himself. In this sequence, Bellows Falls is one point in a wider communication network that also includes Brattleboro, Townshend, and Keene. The messages’ routes offer practical details for investigation, but their uncertain authorship makes ordinary systems of delivery part of the mystery rather than a means of resolving it.