The Haunter of the Threshold (37 page)

What am I going to do?
Hazel fretted.
She’s delirious.
The only question was
why?
And why was she naked?

Sonia cradled the bloated abdomen, her eyes lidless in turmoil. “But then-then...Shit, I can’t remember!”

“Try to, Sonia. Take your time.”

Sonia stared into space, then, instantly, her face turned white.

“Frank,” she croaked.

“What about him?” Hazel rushed. “Where is he?”

“I—I...Hazel, I know it sounds crazy but after those things took my baby, they threw me back in here and I wasn’t pregnant anymore!”

“Fine, fine,” Hazel tried to humor her. “But you were saying something about Frank? Where is
Frank?
”

“Then the door opened again and Frank came out! And he dragged me back through the door but this time I went to
another
place, and—and—”

“And, what, Sonia?”

Sonia’s screams made Hazel clack her teeth.

“They put another baby in me, a
different
baby,” Sonia was suddenly whispering. “One minute I wasn’t pregnant anymore, then the next...I was.”

She’s had a psychotic episode, that’s got to be it.
“Sonia, listen to what you’re saying. You believe that you’re carrying a
different
baby in your womb now?”

The whisper drifted. “A
monster
baby...”

All right. Shock. A mental breakdown, plus whatever Frank’s
done to her. I’ve got to get her to a doctor,
Hazel knew. But that wouldn’t be easy. Getting a half-crazy pregnant woman all the way back down the trail would take...

All night, if she doesn’t miscarry in the process.

But she had no choice.

“Come on, we’re going home.” Hazel got Sonia on her feet, got her shoes and sundress back on. But she had to ask, “Sonia. Whose eyes are those?” pointing to lumps in the bloody puddle. “Are they—”

“They’re Frank’s,” Sonia said and gulped. “He said he pulled them out himself and then those things replaced them with red crystals, smaller versions of the Shining Trapezohedron. Frank showed them to me—”

“Sonia, you’re delirious—”

“—when he took off his sunglasses.”

The comment froze Hazel’s stare.
Sunglasses.
Just like...my
nightmare...
But then Sonia had insisted that it was no nightmare at all, that Frank had really been in Henry’s cabin last night. Yes, the reference to the sunglasses bothered Hazel very much, and also her mentioning robed “things” with “tentacles” for arms and legs. All too similar to what she’d seen—or
thought
she’d seen—in the jpeg of the Shining Trapezohedron...

Somehow, now, she knew that the focal point of all this weirdness, and all this insanity, was the Shining Trapezohedron.

Hazel had it with her in the plastic bag she’d brought, along with the metal box—

And along with the pistol she’d found in Henry’s desk drawer.

It took a great deal of effort to assist Sonia in squeezing her girth through the narrow window. But after she got Sonia all the way back outside...

She paused, still in the cottage.

“Hazel!” Sonia shot a whisper. “Come
on!
”

“No, wait.” Hazel turned. She was looking back at the door. “I have to
see,
” and then she strode for the door.

“No! Don’t! It’s some other place, Hazel! Some other dimension!

If you go in there, they’ll put a monster-baby in you too!”

We’ll see about that,
Hazel thought. She didn’t hesitate to turn the knob and swing the door wide.

Hazel shouted. A gust of wind nearly took her off her feet. The lowering sun filled the room with an orangish tinge, something to be fully expected, and beyond stretched the heavily wooded valley, the lake, and the town.

“Do you see this, Sonia?” she shouted over the wind. “It’s just the town down there! There’s no monsters! There’s no other dimension.”

“That’s what you think...”

The wind whistled. Hazel began to push the door back against the fading gust, but she stopped when she thought she heard:

“Don’t go, Hazel. You don’t understand. There are
wonders
that await.”

Though the words wavered with the wind, she knew they were Frank’s.

“It’s Nyarlathotep,” the voice eddied back. “The messenger.”

“I’m not hearing this!” Hazel screeched to herself. “It’s hallucination!”

“Help us deliver the message, Hazel—yes, you and Sonia. Wait till the conduction flux refreshes, then
you
can come in here too...”

Hazel slammed the door shut, then slipped out the window.

“I know you heard him, Hazel...”

“I heard nothing,” she denied, taking Sonia’s arm and leading her through the pale mist. “I only
think
I heard something—”

“Frank.”

“—because of the power of suggestion.”

“I’ll bet you saw black mist, too,” Sonia insisted.

Hazel stiffened.

“That’s what Frank’s breath was like whenever he talked. It was black, not like this mist out here, but like the mist that crawled up from the floor. It held me there...”

Hazel shook it off, urging Sonia along.
Don’t think. Just walk.

And a long walk it was, with Sonia stumbling and talking nonsense all the way. It was past midnight when they’d finally reached the bottom of Whipple’s Peak, and were back in the car and on their way out.

“Where are we going?” Sonia murmured from the passenger seat. She lolled groggily, cradling the great belly with distaste.

“I’m not sure,” Hazel said. Her hands gripped the wheel as her mind raced for answers.

“Oh, I’m so tired...But I don’t want to go back to the cabin.”

“Sonia, we’re
never
going back to the cabin, or that fuckin’ cottage either, unless it’s with dynamite.”

The tires hummed over asphalt; in front of them, the headlights bored into the darkness. “I’m thinking we should just drive back to Providence, get you to a doctor—”

“Yes! For an abortion!” Sonia moaned at the sight of her belly. “I have to get this monster out of me, and there’s no point worrying about Frank. He’s one of
them
now, in the other dimension.”

She’s hopeless,
Hazel realized. But too much of what she’d said still simmered in her. She didn’t believe in portents, nor did she believe in shared dreams. But what other explanation could there be?
Something I either don’t understand or haven’t thought of yet,
so forget it.
But one thing she could
not
forget was the plastic bag in the back seat.

That fucking crystal, and that box.
Her mind ticked as the car whizzed through the road’s long curves.
And right now Horace is making more of
them, because someone unidentified had paid him to...

It had to be Frank.

The tire-sound had lulled Sonia to sleep.
The Shining
Trapezohedron, and the box,
Hazel thought.
Somehow they’re
connected to everything that’s wrong...

Maybe Horace could remember something more that Henry Wilmarth said. There was nothing else to go on...

Instead of heading straight out of town, Hazel pulled off on the tree-lined dirt road to Horace’s.

Thank God he’s home.
She saw lights on in the trailer and his pickup parked out front. Sonia remained asleep so Hazel grabbed the bag, jumped out, and trotted to the trailer.

On the rickety porch, she paused as a breeze set off a dozen tubular wind chimes. It was a lovely, melodic sound, even in its disorder. But then, between the notes, tiny words seemed to wander to her ears...

“Hazel, my child. I adjure you...”

She winced, shook her head, and strode on.

“Horace!” she yelled, banging on the thin metal door. “It’s me, Hazel! Please! I need to talk to you!”

She banged but there was no answer.
Could he be asleep? Through all that racket?

She tried the knob, found it unlocked, and went in. Silence and dim lights greeted her. The TV was on with the sound off: a Japanese chef on some flamboyant cooking show. He brought a cleaver straight down the middle of a coconut, splitting it in half. “Horace?” she called. Each footstep caused the trailer floor to creak. Her brow furrowed; she entered his workroom...

What she noticed first was that Horace wasn’t present. What she noticed second was that the shelf on which he’d been storing the clay boxes was vacant.

What she noticed third was the suitcase.

It lay open on Horace’s worktable, a standard-sized Samsonite. It was filled with dozens of the clay boxes. Hazel didn’t bother counting them but if she had, she’d have counted exactly thirty-three of them.

The mystery order is finished,
she realized.
But WHERE is
Horace?

Careful footfalls took her through the trailer’s depths. The cubby-sized bathroom? Empty. A storeroom and a small bedroom? No sign of Horace either. Only one more door remained, at the hall’s end.

As she approached, she heard a sound–a wet sound–that instantly reminded her of fellatio. Slick, steady, rhythmic. She froze.
Shit! Maybe his girlfriend’s home on leave! Maybe she’s in there
right now...

The slick, wet sound drew on.

The door stood minutely ajar. Hazel put her eye to the gap and looked down.

You’ve got to be shitting me...

In the slice-like gap, she was able to detect what could only be Horace’s bare hips. He lay on the bed, and at his groin, a suitor was indeed performing fellatio. But Horace’s fat penis, which she’d seen in all its turgid glory only nights before, was flaccid, yet his suitor was sucking with gusto nonetheless. Certainly all men experienced erectile dysfunction on occasion, even sexual works of art such as Horace. This, however, was not the oddity that roused Hazel’s concern.

The “suitor” was not Horace’s girlfriend. It was no girl at all, in fact.

It was Mr. Pickman, from the curiosity shop.

There’s no way Horace is gay,
she resolved.
No way.

None of her business, true, but Hazel pushed the door all the way open. Mr. Pickman continued to tend to Horace’s groin, sucking voraciously at the very flaccid organ. Horace lay still on the bed, jeans down to mid-thigh. The angle of the door blocked his head from Hazel’s view.

“What are you doing?” Hazel demanded.

Mr. Pickman paid the query no mind at all. He just kept going at it, head bobbing steadily, bad toupee askew. He’d perched himself at the edge of the bed.

“Mr. Pickman!” she bellowed. “Horace! What the fuck is this?”

Pickman’s head slowed, then stopped. He looked up quizzically, and when he recognized Hazel standing there, he smirked.

“You’re shitting me, right? You two are
lovers?
”

The smirk deepened. Then Pickman, first, straightened his toupee, then fiddled with his hearing aid.

“Blasted thing. Cost six thousand dollars,” he muttered.

Hazel could not repress being taken aback.

“Step farther into the room, miss, and all your questions shall likely be answered.” He chuckled. “Well, one of them, at any rate.”

Hazel did so, turned toward Horace...What she saw slammed her back against the wall.

The reason Horace lay so still during the oral ministration was now clear: he was dead. His face was split, his head having been halved very precisely from the center of the crown of his skull to his adam’s apple. Blood drenched the pillow on which his head lay.

It was perhaps Hazel’s rather demented subconscious that framed the exact words to her demand: “Why are you sucking a dead man’s dick?”

Aggravated, Pickman stood up. “Well, if you
must
know, it’s something I’ve always longed to do,” came the high, creaky voice. “You see, I’ve always loved the man but, as is generally the case, Horace was not bent to the same proclivities as I. What’s the old saying? You can have what you don’t want, but what you want you’ll never have?”