The Haunter of the Threshold (25 page)

“Where can I find them, Clonner? Where’s this lake shack of theirs?”

The question almost caused the old man to audibly moan. “Aw, missy, now, you don’t wanna go
there.
What’cha wanna find them two white trash loafers fer?”

Hazel laughed. “You certainly don’t speak very highly of your own nephew, Clonner.”

“He’s a lazy, fat putz and his buddy Shot Glass ain’t nothin’ but a skunk and a weasel.”

“
Shot Glass
?”

“Aw, yeah, that’s Walter’s nickname.” Clonner made a
pppppht
sound with his lips. “
Great
nickname fer a al-ker-holik. Shot Glass come here from Brattleboro, Vermont, more’n likely ‘cos of the husbands of too many redneck tramps he were messin’ with. Only friend my nephew’s got–peas in a pod. Oh, shore, I guess they’se decent fishermen’n trappers but they ain’t good for nothin’ else. Deal I made with ‘em was they pay me some two-bit rent ever month with the fish’n game they catch, but then they blow all their scratch on booze and don’t hardly pay me squat.” It was clearly a sore subject to Clonner. “Cain’t kick ‘em out, though. Clayton’s blood, after all.” At last, his gaunt face seemed to grow
more
gaunt. “Say, Hazel, what’choo askin’ ‘bout them two no-accounts fer anyway? Did ya say ya wanted to know how ta
find
‘em?”

“Well, yes,” and she was disturbed by how effortlessly the lie arrived. “My friend Sonia and I want to cook out on the grill tonight, so I need to get some fresh fish. Then someone mentioned the
Fish
Boys so I thought they’d be a good bet.”

Clonner shrugged. “Aw, well, they do bring in a good fresh catch, I’ll give the pair’a morons that.” His stump waved toward the front door. “Just go on down the road a half-mile, then turn toward the lake on Zadok Spur it’s called. Go on a spell, there be the shack.”

Bingo!
Hazel thought. “Thanks very much, Clonner.” She tried to pay her tab but the old man wouldn’t hear of it. “Yer cash is no good in
my
bar, sweetie. But just you do me a favor if’n ya catch up to Clayton’n Shot Glass.”

“Sure, Clonner.”

“You tell those two beer-soaked, do-nothin’
bums
that it might be nice, just once, fer them ta actually pay their blammed rent like ever-one else in the world!”

“I’ll do that, Clonner. See you soon.” Hazel smiled at him then left the bar.

The shift from morning to early afternoon brought more heat and humidity; it came in waves.
Shouldn’t have had those beers,
she thought at once. She was already buzzed, a feeling she didn’t typically like. Nevertheless, each step she took down the road brought a refreshing excitement to her.
Clayton Martin and Shot
Glass Brown...
Would they really prove to be Peter Pan and Snow White? And if they were...

Why wasn’t she
afraid
of the prospect?

She found the turn-off, the oddly named Zadok Spur, in less than ten minutes. Here, though, the asphalt ended, leaving a narrow road even muddier than Horace’s. When she thought of walking within the forest’s fringe, one step told her it was useless. Evidently the land here lay very low; last night’s showers had turned the forest’s carpet of leaves and detritus into swamp.
To hell with it,
she consigned.
Mud washes off,
and she took off her flipflops and marched unfazed through the slop. She didn’t care how dirty her feet got, anyway.
The
rest of me just might be a whole lot dirtier in a little while...

More excitement welled, however unspecified. Sweat drenched the Mark Twain T-shirt now, to the extent that it stuck to her chest like a wet veil. Nerves squirmed in her nipples which had distended a half-inch, and between the heat and the considerable walking, her shorts worked up tight into the cleft of her buttocks. When the mud-trench of a road broke, she felt woozy...

There sat the aforementioned shack, just off the shore with the flat glass of Lake Sladder shimmering nearly as far as she could see. From the shack, a ramshackle pier extended, while a decrepit boat sat still in the water, heaped with nets and fishing rods; animal pelts hung up on a two-by-four frame.
Well here they are,
Hazel thought, ankle deep in mud.
The Fish Boys.
In only minutes she’d have the answer to her question...

Her feet schlucked as she approached. She glanced at the shack’s small windows and—

What’s that noise?

She heard a sound like a vacuum cleaner, though by the looks of the place, and her impression of its tenants, she couldn’t imagine much housekeeping going on here. A awful stench blew into her face from a garbage can just beyond the porch;
Ugh,
she thought, looking it, for it contained piles of fish heads along with the heads of possums, squirrels, and other mammals. A wooden door stood open, from which the machine-sound emerged.
Great design,
she thought in sarcasm, for the shack had been erected below a slight rise before the shoreline; the excess rainwater from the woods had clearly entered the teetering building at one end.

BUY YOR FISH HEER, read an incredulous painted sign. MUSKRAT, POSSEM, WOODCHUK - CHEAP.

Hazel felt no hesitation when she stepped onto the facsimile for a front porch and entered the shack without knocking.

The vacuum sound deafened her. It was a disaster of a domicile: busted recliner chairs sitting askew, a warped table full of empty beer cans, a television with a coat hanger for an antenna. Various wires looped from the ceiling; a dented refrigerator, a microwave with a crack in the window, and a hot plate comprised the kitchen, while pots and pans dangling from the ceiling. The only true lamp in the place sat on the counter, but it was shadeless. A fat, brown-haired man was opening the fridge for a beer. He had a beard.
Clayton,
Hazel realized.
Clonner’s nephew.
He went to the counter and began the grisly task of fileting some skinned animal the size of a dachshund. A second man busied himself at the opposite end of the shack: tall, wiry, stubbled-faced and sunken eyed. His long hair was the color of a dirty sheep.
Walter “Shot Glass”
Brown...
Indeed, Hazel had seen both men fileting fish at the tavern yesterday. Shot Glass paused to chug a can of beer, then returned to his noisy duties, for he was the one behind the deafening sound. The shack’s far end dipped enough to form a low spot which had accumulated an inch of water on the floor. Unmindful of the possibility of electrical shock, Shot Glass tramped boot-footed through the water, wielding a two-foot-long clear plastic tube an inch in diameter; this tube was connected to a long, black hose stuck to a machine that looked like an engine analyzer at a gas-station, only very old. The man was vacuuming up the water that lay in the dip, the shack’s crude sleeping area, she could see, for two ratty, steel-framed beds occupied the nook. Mattresses lay sheetless and stained.

Hazel merely stood there, looking around.

“Yo! Yo!” Clayton, the fat one, yelled to his partner. He set down his bloody fileting knife. “Shot Glass!” He banged a pot on the makeshift kitchen counter. “Turn that dang thing off!”

Shot Glass looked up amid the siphoning cacophony; water slurped loudly into the tube. He noticed Hazel standing there, then flicked the machine off.

“We’se got company,” Clayton said.

Shot Glass set the nozzle aside, then tramped out of the water. He peered, weasel-faced. “Who’re yew?”

Hazel crossed her arms below her bosom. “Clayton, Walter, a.k.a. Shot Glass–the Fish Boys, huh? Nice to see you again. And just so you know, I didn’t file rape charges yesterday, but I did tell some people I was coming here now. So if I, say, disappear, the police will know where to come. Keep in mind, there is still a death penalty in New Hampshire.”

Both men looked at each other, narrow-eyed.

“But that was some job you guys did on me yesterday. The foot-fuck especially.”

“Clayton, what’s she talkin’ ‘baout?” Shot Glass asked.

Hazel snapped, “You stupid redneck dimwits!” then she pointed to a cluttered shelf on which sat two plastic faces: Peter Pan and Snow White. “If you’re gonna rape a woman half to death, at least have enough brains to hide the evidence!”

The shack stood silent several moments, Clayton and Shot Glass at a loss for words. Clayton gulped, and...was Shot Glass nervous when he went to the refrigerator for another beer?

“So...,” Hazel began. “Here we are, and since I’ve just told you that I never filed a police report, what does that tell you two think-tankers?”

“Eh?” asked Shot Glass.

Clayton scratched his head.

Hazel sighed. “You guys know what
carte blanche
means?”

“Eh?”

“Cart...
what?
” Clayton inquired.

“Free pass?” Hazel continued. “Consensuality?”

Shot Glass swigged more beer, frowning. “We durn’t know what yew’re
talkin’
‘baout.”

“For shit’s sake,” she muttered. “Listen, I have some problems—some
psychological
problems. They have names, for all the good they do. One’s
erotomania.
Another is chronic transitive
paraphilia.
One doctor even said I was
sexually pathological.
It means I have destructive sexual fantasies that are severe enough to cause detriment to my life. I don’t expect you guys to know what any of this means since you both probably dropped out of school in the fourth grade—”

“Try seventh, there, missy!” Shot Glass cracked as if offended.

“‘Bout the same here,” Clayton twanged.

“Wonderful,” Hazel groaned. “But here’s something you
can
understand. I’m
sick in the head
. Sick as in
sexually
sick. I have fetishes and fantasies that exist on an
obsessive
level.”

Shot Glass’s face seemed to lengthen in contemplation. “Yew mean yew’re, like, nympho?”

“Yes!” Hazel celebrated. “You finally got it!” She peeled off the moist T-shirt, bearing sweat-misted breasts erect with the most obvious anticipation. Then she stepped out of her shorts. “Any time now. It should be pretty clear to you two dopes that I’m ready, willing, and able.”

Chuckling, it was Clayton who lifted her up by a hand to her crotch and the other to her armpit.

“On the bed,” Shot Glass directed. “Guess we didn’t tune the bitch up good enough yesterday.”

Clayton slammed her down on a dirty mattress. Springs squeaked. “Think of me as an all-you-can-fuck buffet,” Hazel panted. “Do anything you want.”

“Anythang?” Clayton asked, taking off his smudged jeans.

She flinched when Shot Glass pinched her labia. “Just don’t kill me or cut me. Oh, and—
please
—no foot stuff.”

The men roared laughter. Clayton, pantsless now, sat on her stomach, his groin reeking. He cleared his throat, then let a wad of phlegm splat between her breasts.

“Thar’s some ripe chest-peaches, heh, heh, heh!” Shot Glass remarked.

“Yeah, and I’se gonna fuck ‘em fierce,” Clayton promised. He lay his erection in her modest cleavage, then pressed both breasts together. He began to hump. Hazel felt the mucous-slick organ slide back and forth. Meanwhile, Shot Glass was working two, three, then four fingers into her drenched vagina. When the thumb nudged in and all the fingers closed to form a fist, Hazel bucked in a crest of agonizing pleasure. Shot Glass pistoned the fist back and forth while traversing clockwise and counter-clockwise, and when he pinched her clitoris—quite hard—Hazel came in a series of clenching, eruptive spasms. She shrieked when the fist pushed in deeper. The bed rocked. Then the great weight of Clayton lifted as he raised his penis up, stroking the slick skin. He quickly leaned forward, put his gorged corona right against her nostril and—

“Here’s some nose drops for ya...”

—ejaculated with force. Most of each jet of semen shot right down the nostril till she gagged, hacked, and then could feel it sliding down the back of her throat. Clayton tapped the rest off against her lips.

“Kind’a like blowin’ yer nose backwards, huh?” the fat man reveled.

“Ee-yuh,” Shot Glass agreed. “And I done got the dirty whore off already.” He shimmied his hand out of her, wiped it off on her face, then said, “And haow’s this fer an ideer?”

Shot Glass moved away as Clayton dismounted her. Hazel lay squashed on the atrocious bed, stomach sucking in and out.
More,
more,
her thoughts pleaded. Her fingers stroked her aching, thumping sex. “Set ‘er up, Clayton,” Shot Glass ordered next, but what was he doing? Clayton man-handled her to a sitting position, while he himself sat right behind her, and vised her neck in the crook of his elbow. “Aw, yeah!” he hooted. “That’ll really fuck the bitch up!”