No one in the small town of Dunwich knew who young Wilbur Whateley’s father was—or that the hideous outcast boy was the most dangerous sorceror alive!  

The horror was born before dawn on February 2, 1913—the feast of Candlemas, although the people of Dunwich call that ancient festival by a different name. Of unknown father, Wilbur Whateley was not christened—yet he descended still from a one-proud Puritan family that left Salem in 1692 to found Dunwich, Massachusetts. And the descent of the Whateleys and their old town has been deep indeed—its now crumbling houses overlooked by bare hills topped by stone circles, where unhallowed rituals were held before the first settlers ever came.

Yet it was none other than ten year old Wilbur Whateley that led Dr. Henry Armitage, head librarian at Miskatonic University, to drive the dusty, rutted roads out to Dunwich, and meet the child prodigy who had been corresponding with him on the most abstruse and disturbing lore. Dr. Armitage could hardly believe the sight of the priceless hoard of occult books rotting away in the Whateley farmhouse—nor that of the dark, goatish Wilbur, for whom those books had been his only education.

But young Wilbur Whateley is not content with his homeschooling—to complete his studies, he needs something Miskatonic possesses, the Latin edition of the Necronomicon. And if they’re too snooty to lend their precious copy out to a country boy like him, Wilbur has other means to try to get it. The lad is no mere academic dilletante; he studies these things for a reason. Wilbur Whateley was born into this world with a great and horrific purpose—to open a doorway for those not of this world to return to Earth!