The Haunter of the Threshold (28 page)

“So why don’t we plan to do that when you’re back from this trip, okay? It would make your father very happy...Anyway, uh, I hope to hear from you soon, and I love you—”

That was enough for Hazel; she put the phone away.
Now is
not the time for some guy to be telling me he loves me,
and then she immediately thought of Sonia...and continued to curse herself for not even being able to remember what had happened between them last night.

When she’d made it back to the cabin, she felt frantic to wash.
Quiet,
she thought, for Sonia was napping. The ceiling fans were blowing, and the shades had been pulled down over the open windows, leaving the place grainy in half-dark. She stripped off her clothes, then snuck to the shower cubby. She pumped the cumbersome shower, the cold water raising gooseflesh. Perhaps it was a subconscious endeavor to punish herself by not heating the water first. Teeth chattering she lathered herself, scrubbed hard, then rinsed off but it was necessary to repeat the procedure two more times before she felt clean.
Obsessive-compulsive,
she half-joked to herself; she even scrubbed her tiny cross and then actually splashed Listerine on it.
Forgive me, forgive me,
came the aimless thought, and then she wilted when she looked down at her wet, naked body: the abused nipples still protruding from the suction machine, and her aching sex swollen and over-tender from the vicious kick, compliments of Shot Glass.
Bastards...Pieces of shit...
But of course she’d only wound up getting what she’d asked for.

She tip-toed back to the front room and put on clean shorts and a halter, then paused to look dreamily at Sonia who remained asleep atop the sheets.
I should get into bed with her,
she considered but then realized that would backfire. Sonia’s mood would remain ruined by her upset over Frank. Instead, Hazel grabbed her camera, then quietly went up the metal ladder next to the shower room, pushed open the trapdoor, and climbed onto the roof.

The sun
blazed.
Now THAT’S what I call scenery,
she thought. If she positioned herself right, she could look straight down the direction of the driveway through a wide break in the trees and see just how expansive Lake Sladder was. The parts of town that were visible looked tiny but meticulously detailed. She took several photos.

Without realizing it, she was craning her neck. Another lucky vantage point showed her the ominous rise of Whipple’s Peak which now, for some reason, looked so immense it appeared unreal. After squinting—
There it is!
—she made out the clot of mist that Horace had indicated. The mist hung just before the bluff, which looked so steep now it made her dizzy to imagine being up there. But—

What’s the cause of that mist?
It just seemed to sit there at the peak, a pale smear.

Was there really a cottage concealed within it?

And is Frank really there?

She dawdled around some more on the roof, then caught herself eyeing a very tall tree—a white pine, she believed—that spired right next to the cabin, so close that she could stand on the eave and touch the bark. She heard birds rustling amid the density of branches, noticed several bowls sticking out of the trunk like holed warts. She smiled when she noticed sparrows nesting in one. Next, though, she was leaning over slightly, hands on knees...

A track of splintery gouges were evident in the bark—she thought oddly of teethmarks—spaced by several feet and appearing fairly regular. The tracks led at least fifty feet up the fat, towering tree.

What the hell are those?
she wondered but then the answer snapped. The gouges could only have been made by something metal, and that’s when she remembered those pole-climbing boots that Henry Wilmarth had mysteriously left in the garbage can.

He must’ve used them to climb THIS tree,
she realized for when she looked around at the other trees in proximity to the dwelling, they were all free of the gouges.

Why on earth would he want to do that?

Hazel was back down the ladder and sneaking out the front door a minute later.
I’ll bet the garbage men already came,
she suspected but when she opened the can at the end of the drive, the implements were still there.
Henry was almost sixty, and if he could do it, I can do
it,
she reasoned. She collected the spiked boots and buckled strap of leather that the receipt called a “tree-scaling belt.”

“Can’t hurt to check it out,” she talked to herself, and besides, from a position high in the tree she’d be able to get some spectacular pictures. She tip-toed back through the cabin, grabbed a pair of work gloves from the kitchen, then went back up to the roof.
I’m a
twenty-two year old with a Masters degree,
she reminded herself.
I should be able to figure this out...
She sat awkwardly on the roof and strapped on the spiked boots. Standing, then, was even more awkward, but she managed to clip-clop to the eave, flail the scaling belt around the great pine’s trunk, then thread it behind her back and secure the clasp.
And now...
She put one spiked foot against the tree, took a breath, then hopped off the eave, sinking the second boot into the bark as well.
Simple!
All that remained was the incremental process of hitching the belt up several feet, leaning back, then stepping higher with each boot. She used the previous track-marks as a guide.

Ten minutes later she was nearly sixty feet aloft, within the middle of the tree.

Oh, wow!
She leaned back, feeling utterly secure by the belt and spikes. She aimed her digital camera, forwarded the zoom, and snapped several stunning pictures of Lake Sladder and the town. She also noticed several tree bowls protruding, a few sporting nests crowded with tiny peeping birds. She took several more pictures.

But the original track-marks that Henry had made...proceeded higher.

Hazel proceeded higher.
I’m a natural!
she celebrated. Soon, she was nearly a hundred feet up the ancient tree, surrounded by heavy branches. The next series of snapshots would be even better.

She contemplated going higher but noticed that Henry’s track-marks had stopped.
Don’t get carried away,
she considered. Better to retreat and get back into the cabin; then she could download the pictures into her laptop and see them in better clarity. She was about to do just that, when...

A tree bowl, dinner-plate-sized, stared her right in the face just as she prepared to lower the scaling belt. Yet no bird nest was evident. Instead, the hole within had been filled with something black and–when she touched a gloved finger to it—tacky, like tar...

That tree-patch stuff,
she recalled. The empty can had been tossed in the garbage.

The rest was simple deductive reasoning. When Henry had scaled this tree less than a week it ago, he’d done so for the purpose of filling this bowl with patch. However...

None of the other bowls have been patched,
she knew.
So...

Why had a man nearly sixty, bent on suicide, climbed a hundred feet up this tree, just to patch a single bowl, then go back down and put the climbing gear in the garbage?

At once Hazel pressed a gloved hand into the black semi-shiny surface of the patch material. It hadn’t hardened much; the sun kept it pliable as modeling clay.

There’s something in here,
she knew for a fact, and then began to pull out sloughs of the tar-like patch. After digging half of it out and flapping it down to the ground, she felt a bump within the bowl. The bump moved. She twisted her fingers around, then—

Come out, you fucker!

—extracted the tar-covered lump. A thrill pumped through her when she noted its basic egg shape, and its length of four inches and perhaps three in depth.

This HAS to be it! Henry hid it HERE!

The Shining Trapezohedron.

Less than ten minutes later, she was back in the cabin, the scaling gear abandoned. She stood bent over the kitchen counter and commenced with the effort of cleaning the odd stone, first wiping off as much of the tar as possible with paper towels, then scrubbing more meticulously.

A half-hour later, she thought,
Fuck!
Her wrists and fingers ached. The thin layer of tar that remained would require much more effort to remove completely.
I need some kind of cleaner,
she resolved. Doing it this way would take forever.

“Oh, there you are,” came Sonia’s groggy voice from behind.

“Shit, sorry, I must’ve woken you—”

“No, no.” Sonia, hair tousled, got a soda from the fridge. “I’ve been sleeping for hours—jeez.”

Hazel looked at her. “Did—” she began, then bit her lip.

“No, I haven’t heard from Frank, that asshole.” Sonia rubbed her eyes. For a woman who’d just had a several-hour nap, she looked, if anything, like she needed
more
sleep. “It really bothers me.”

Hazel struggled for something to say in consolation but knew there was nothing.

“Anyway, I’m really sorry I abandoned you at Harold’s trailer.”

“Horace,” Hazel corrected. “And it’s okay. You needed your own space. I had—” Circumstance forced her to pause. “I had a nice walk around,” but then thought,
Actually, I got raped, beat up, and
electrocuted AND I had a ton of orgasms. See how fucked up I am?

“I’m glad,” Sonia said, then squinted at the black lump on the counter. “What is
that?
”

“The Shining Trapezohedron, believe it or not.”

“The stone Henry said he got rid of?”

“Um-hmm. Long story short, I found it stuck in a tree bowel and covered with that black tree-tar stuff.”

Sonia chuckled. “So much for Henry’s ‘irretrievable’ disposal.”

“Actually, it was pretty clever. Something he didn’t want found so he hides it close to the house—”

“The last place anyone would think to look. Like Poe’s ‘Purloined Letter.’ But how did you—”

Hazel shrugged. “I lucked onto it,” she said. “But it’s covered with this black stuff and I can’t get it off. I’m dying to see it cleaned up. The jpeg on Henry’s computer was astonishing—the colors, especially—so the real thing will be even better.”

“Tree tar, huh? If you used a Brillo, it might scratch the surface.”

Hazel scrubbed her hands now. “I’ll have to get cleaning solvent—”

“Any hydrocarbon would probably work fine, rubbing alcohol, gasoline—hell, maybe even Henry’s bottle of whiskey.”

“I’ll do it later—my fingers are cramping from all this scrubbing.”

Hazel followed her friend into the front room, where they both sat on the edge of the bed. Sonia was staring off into space.

“Stop worrying,” Hazel whispered. “It’s not good for you.”

“I don’t know if I’m worrying or
seething.
” Sonia anxiously clutched her knee. “I’m thinking...that maybe I should just call off the wedding.”

Hazel knew she had to be careful in any attendant remark. “Listen. Sonia. I’m
not
sticking up for him, but I think that would be a serious overreaction.”

Sonia rubbed her temples. “You’re right, and I
do
overreact to things but—Jesus!—this really hurts.”

Hazel put her arm around her. “Men are tubesteaks—that’s just the way it is. We put up with their shit and they put up with ours.”

“How fair of you!” Sonia managed a chuckle.

“Just let him get all this Henry stuff out of the way, then he’ll be fine. And if he’s not?” Hazel spread out her hands. “Then we’ll pull his balls off and hang them on the rearview mirror like sponge dice.”

Sonia laughed sluggishly. “I wish I could be as matter-of-fact and sensible as you. I’m going to try, at least.” She stilled herself a moment. “But...isn’t it human nature to be jealous sometimes, or suspicious or insecure or paranoid?”

“Sometimes, sure.”

“And what should I do if he’s not back tomorrow afternoon? What if he calls up again and makes more excuses for not being here?”

“Well...”

Sonia wrung her hands. “If he’s not back tomorrow...I’m going to climb up that fucking summit or mountain or whatever it is and confront him.”

Hazel hugged her. “
That’s
reasonable,
if
he’s not back tomorrow afternoon. But you’re not going to go,
I’m
going to go.”

“Hazel, it’s my headache, not yours.”