The Haunter of the Threshold (29 page)

“You’re eight months pregnant and have doctor’s orders not to exert yourself,” Hazel reminded. “I actually talked to some people today, about how to get to the cottage.”

“Really?” Sonia asked, surprised.

“Horace says his grandmother told him the place was right at the top where that fog bank is. He also estimated it’d take a half a day just to get up there, so that’s why I’m going, not you.” Hazel felt confident about the task, should it become necessary. “But let’s just give Frank another day and see.”

Sonia nodded. “You’re wonderful, Hazel. I don’t know what I’d do without you...”

The words made Hazel’s head go light. Then she could’ve melted when Sonia kissed her on the cheek.

Please, please,
Hazel pleaded.

“I’m just so tired, I don’t get it.” Sonia yawned with a frustrated expression. “I shouldn’t be this tired, especially after the nap.”

“Stress,” Hazel offered. “Worrying about Frank’s got you worn out.” She hugged her, resisted making an advance, then just smiled and said, “Get some more sleep. I’ll wake you up for dinner. I noticed a grill out back—we’ll have a cookout later. I’ll cook you something.”

“Mmm,” Sonia murmured, “you’re sweet...” Then she was asleep again.

Hazel spent the next few hours trying to get Henry’s computer back to rights–to no avail–and another hour after that trying to get all the tar off the Shining Trapezohedron: impossible without some sort of cleaning liquid. She put it out in the car, knowing that in the morning the sun would heat it up and make the tar less adhesive. She truly did want to see the crystal in all its shining spectacle. Later, she drove into town and bought some fresh walleye from a market, plus some asparagus and potatoes. After waking Sonia at six, they’d had a fabulous backyard feast.

But her friend’s distress over Frank’s behavior never let go. Sonia remained distracted and on edge, in spite of an obvious effort not to seem that way. They sat outside till past dark, watched fireflies and listened to peepers, then went to bed.

Hazel essentially
winced
herself to sleep, first, from trying to banish the obscene dichotomy: the abhorrent things the “Fish Boys” had done to her along with the fact she’d received an extraordinary satisfaction from the foray. Also, being in the bed with Sonia but not being able to make love to her only compounded her frustration. Worse was knowing that last night they’d shared some potent intimacy but, of course...
I don’t remember any of it...
Several lovers in her past had complained that she talked in her sleep but was also periodically subject to sleep-walking.
Last night I guess I was
sleep-FUCKING.
Consciously missing out on what she wanted so dearly only made her feel more dismal. Eventually, though, she did drift off to the soft hum of the ceiling fans—

—the night cocoons you as you lay naked and sweating in the bed, but all you see is darkness at first. Has the backdrop of your sleeping mind turned into a black chasm? Suddenly your spirit spins propeller-like as huge, wet words croak and echo in the chasm and begin to spin, spin, spin, spin around with your mauled spirit:
algolagniac
one who receives sexual satisfaction from pain dritiphily sexual
stimulation derived from being covered with or in proximity to filth
asphyxophile one who longs to be strangled during sex biastiphilia
sexual obsession with being brutalized and raped hybristolaglia the
desire to engage in sexual congress with degenerates and criminals
asthenopagniac one attracted to being humiliated and overpowered
and beaten cyesolagnia sexual excitement from pregnant women
urophily the compulsion to be urinated on.
Then:
sick sick sick sick sick

Then:

you you you you you

And round and round you spin as more huge, wet, sloppy words cram into the spiral:
Hazel my child I adjure you my dear friend Frank
if you’re reading this then I am already dead eat the cum out of the
toilet is the key by where the spheres meet this ungodly harlot needs to
die full of the cur’s jism anyway uh I hope to hear from you soon and I
love you the tenets of Non-Euclideanism have the potential to produce
unlimited energy they could transpose objects of unequal weight and
mass between two points of vast distance en’t much I’d ruther dew’n
piss up a gal’s backside you don’t understand I’ve found still more of
Henry’s work up here—it’s spellbinding when a gal gets a pussy full’a
Shoggoth cum it don’t take but a minute or two letter weren’t signed just
said he represented Henry’s gemolergy friends and they wanted more
boxes thought it were a mite foolish a joke mebbe until I opened another
envelope inside that had five thousand bucks in it my dreams have
turned ghastly indeed tinged by a grotesque carnality unlike anything
in my experience sometimes even—I swear—people (or things
like
people) make utterances in my dreams that reveal information which
I verify later en’t never heerd’a no gray cottage yogsothoth and his
retinue were are and shall ever be not in spaces known but between
those spaces waiting the ghosts of all those dead from the storm follow
me everywhere please come back to church come back to God it’s
where you belong honey please don’t insult my memory Frank—

—forget that goddamned stone ever existed...

The black blood of the chasm clears and then...you can see. You can see
yourself.

“Just got me a hankerin’, yew know? ‘N I carn’t think of a reason not tew.”

“Shit-yeah, Shot Glass!”

“I gotta
see
what’s in this heer big belly, heh, heh, heh...”

Your spirit plummets when you realize you are back in the nefarious shack of the Fish Boys. You sit nude on the rot-wood floor, your sex aching, lines of gelatinous sperm up and down your chest like slug trails, like white snot. You can smell it wafting up–all that sperm spattered on you in sport. Shackles gird your ankles; a chain between them is bolted to the floor. You look up...

“You fuckers! Stay away from her!” you scream bloody murder. “I swear to God I’ll kill both you loser redneck motherfuckers if you lay one hand on her!”

Sonia has been stretched across one of the foul-stained beds, nude, gagged, and shivering in horror. She lay in an X-configuration, ankles and wrists tied to each bedpost. Her great gravid stomach sticks out, gleaming in sweat, the navel popped out like an acorn of flesh.

Shot Glass smooths callused hands over the slick belly. “Heh, heh, heh. Heh, heh, heh,” then his gaze shoots to you. “Weer gonna make this big-belly-bitch give it
up,
reddy-head.” He stands grinning with his limp cock dangling from his zipper. “And
yew
get to watch.”

“Yeah!” Clayton rails, giggling and jumping up and down. He stands fat and malodorous as ever, his pants off, fecal smears at his hairy buttocks. He reaches into a can of lard, scoops out a handful, and spreads the pale glop over the end—

“What are you evil cocksuckers doing!” you scream.

—of the clear plastic nozzle that you’re all-too-familiar with. Then he kneels at the edge of the bed and, after some finessing, manages to insert the tube several inches into Sonia’s vaginal canal.

“Take that out of there! Don’t you dare, you sick pieces of shit! Leave her alone!”

Shot Glass winks, then turns on the bilge pump.

The motor screams. Sonia’s body goes rigid as she arches her back on the bed, trying to scream through her gag. Shot Glass and Clayton’s wicked laughter can barely be heard over the pump motor’s rising, insane whine. Shot Glass pushes down on her belly while Clayton pushes the nozzle in deeper.

“Git aout’a theer! Git aout!” Shot Glass hoots, then turns the machine on HIGH.

The motor’s scream is now deafening. It is a sound truly forged in Hell. Sonia squirms on the bed, balloon-cheeked as the industrial suction works harder against what can only be her cervical cap.

“Stop it! Stop!” you scream over and over till your eyeballs are fit to eject, but even from the bottom of your lungs, your pleas cannot be heard over the motor’s scream.

Whole minutes go by like this...

Finally, Shot Glass and Clayton cast incredulous expressions when the bilge pump cuts off and the insane whine grinds down to nothing.

Clayton scratches his beard. “What happened?”

“Bilge pump’s motor burnt up!”

“Dang! Bitch’s pussy done wore it out!”

Shot Glass shakes his head, drags the nozzle out, and looks perplexed at it. “Didn’t even bust her water. En’t that somethin’?”

“Shore is, Shot Glass!”

Sonia’s eyes are insanely wide now as she shudders on the monstrous bed.

Thank God!
you think. But—But what now? “There, you’ve had your fun! Now let us go! I’ll give you money, I’ll give you the car–anything, just let us go!”

“Heer thet, Clayton?”

“Shee-it!”

Shot Glass goes to the counter, then reappears with not one but two lamps, each with shattered bulbs.

Oh my God NO...

“En’t never seed a baby come aout afore,” Shot Glass said. “So’s weer gonna make yew’re friend have aout with it.” He holds up the lamp-ends. “One way’re another, that kid’s comin
aout.
”

Then the madness resumes. Sonia begins to flipflop on the mattress as Shot Glass and Clayton each wield a lamp, bearing the live lead-stems to her nipples. You hear the familiar
Zap!
followed by a crackle. Sonia’s teeth can be seen grinding her gag. After a while, tendrils of smoke trail up from the tortured areolae. “Naow thet we got’er primed,” Shot Glass remarks, “let’s do daown heer.”

You scream and scream and scream as they begin to alternately zap Sonia’s navel and clitoris.

Zap!

crackle...

Zap!

crackle...

Zap!

crackle...

Repeatedly, they hold the lead-stems down for several seconds, which causes Sonia to convulse and actually sizzle. Her hair stands on end, and even the tuft of her pubic hair swells out from static. Then they begin to zap all around the circumference of her swollen stomach.

By the time they stop, you’ve screamed your throat raw. Sonia lay still alive, shuddering with her eyes peeled open. Her eyes’ whites have long-since turned red from hemorrhage.

Shot Glass now appears annoyed by their repeated failure to effect miscarriage. “This bitch’s womb is tougher to crack than a fuckin’ floor safe, Clayton. I durn’t understand it.”

“Shore is one tough cunt.”

Burn marks pock Sonia’s belly. There’s an awful redolence in the room which can only be seared skin and burnt labial flesh.

“Lemme just go get the twenty-pound sledge,” Clayton offers. “Shee-it, we’ll
beat
the kid out of her.”

“Please please please, just STOP!” you rasp. “Why are you doing this?”

Shot Glass frowns over at your query. “Why we doin’ it? What’cha think, missy? Weer doin’ it ‘cos it’s
fun!
”

Then they both begin to cackle again, Clayton actually flapping his penis up and down in amusement.

“New, the sledge en’t special enough, Clayton—”

“Special?”

“Ee-yuh. Got no style, yew know?”

“Style?”

Shot Glass rolls his eyes. “Clayton, any ole moe-ron cud think’a thet! We need sumpin’ en’t been done afore. Hmm...” He swigs some beer in rumination. “Aw, I got a ideer!”

“Please my God I’m begging you would you PLEASE not do this! Do it to me, not her! Just PLEASE let her go—”

“Clayton, I’m sick’a heerin’ that ‘un. En’t nothin’ wuss than a sassy bitch with a laoud moauth. Haow ‘boaut shuttin’ her up?”

With surprising agility, Clayton thumps over and—

Smack!

—sweeps a rank bare foot right across the side of your head. You topple over, your chains straining and your senses shatter like a window.

It’s mostly a grainy veil of semi-consciousness that cloaks your mind now. “Heh, heh, heh. Heh, heh, heh,” you keep hearing. You hear your chains clink as you attempt to drag yourself forward. When you try to keep your eyes open, they keep dragging shut.