The Haunter of the Threshold (43 page)

“Because of the crystal,” Hazel said.

“Finding this more than outweighs any detriments you may have caused.”

“What detriments?”

“Killing Richard Pickman, for one, and”—he chuckled—“taking Walter Brown and Clayton Martin out of the picture. They’d all become indoctrinated—they were all
agents
for us. Of course, the three of them will have to be replaced, but we’ve got plenty of time for that.”

Hazel frowned. “Three of the thirty-three, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“Frank, did you see the hell that broke loose down there? I wouldn’t be surprised if half the people in town got killed, including most of your
agents.
”

“No, no, they were all protected, just like
you
were protected.”

“What, the rings? They’re made of the same stuff the crystal’s made of, aren’t they?”

Frank nodded, smiling downward. “And you were protected by merely being in possession of this”—he held up the Trapezohedron—“just as Henry Wilmarth was last Mother’s Day in St. Petersburg.”

“So what protects you?” Hazel asked.

Frank took off his sunglasses, showing that his excavated eye sockets had been re-filled with golf-ball-sized nuggets of crimson crystal.

“I should’ve known,” she muttered. “But where’s the metal box?”

“I left it down there. We don’t need it anymore,” and then he pointed to the opened suitcase in the corner, which sat filled with thirty-three of the new clay-versions of the box.

“I don’t get it,” Hazel blurted.

“And you probably
won’t
get it all entirely, Hazel. It’s incontemplatable. You’re not
smart
enough to get it.”

She smirked at him. “I know, I’m just a
lit-head.
”

“But, see,
we
were smart enough. Me, my father, and Henry—especially Henry. In a sense, when it came to non-Euclidian thesis, Henry was even smarter than
them.
”

“Who’s
them,
exactly?”

Frank only pointed to the door. “The metal box you can think of as a power harness. Like the stone, it’s over ten million years old. It was delivered here all those eons ago: an experiment to see what the creatures of this planet might one day learn to do with it. But when Henry broke the code, he realized that the glyphs engraved on it were actually geometric equations that could tap the power of the Shining Trapezohedron. But he realized something else as well.”

“What?” Hazel asked, incredulous.

“He realized that those equations were obsolete. They didn’t even come
close
to accentuating all of the crystal’s energy.” His scarlet eyes glittered at her. “So you know what he did?”

The answer clicked in Hazel’s head like a pencil snapping. “He rewrote them—”

“And thereby
improved
them—yes! Very good! See, that’s how smart Henry was, and that’s why he had that bumpkin build him a prototype of a new carrier with the
improved
equations on it.”

Hazel leaned up on her elbows, sickened. “I think I
am
beginning to get it now, Frank. He took the crystal and the metal box to St. Petersburg as kind of a test run, didn’t he?”

Frank stilled. “Yes,” he eventually answered. “Just to see if it really would work. That’s why he chose Mother’s Day. The city was a ghost town. Most businesses were closed, a good number of residents had left town for the holiday.”

“So that if it really
did
work,
then there’d be a minimal loss of life,” Hazel deduced.

“Exactly. And that was Henry’s downfall—he
wussed out
at the last minute.” Frank sighed black mist. “When it got right down to it, Henry wasn’t evil enough to rise to his full potential, and neither was my father.”

“But
you
are,” Hazel said with venom in her voice. “Pure, grade-A fuckin’
evil.
”

A chuckle, then Frank shrugged. “It’s all just rhetoric, Hazel. If you like, you can easily replace the word
evil
with the word
responsible.
”

“Oh, for shit’s sake, Frank!”

“What?” He seemed surprised. “Was it
evil
for the United States to nuke Japan, or for Rome to destroy Carthage? Was it
evil
for the Mongols to decimate Eastern Europe? Or was it
responsible?
Weren’t these more worthy races merely taking steps to keep themselves intact? Weren’t they being
responsible
for their own preservation?” He looked more deeply at her with the scarlet eyes. “That’s all I’m doing. I’m being
responsible
for my masters.”

“You must really hate the world,” she sputtered.

“The world? What’s the world, really? It’s a pile of shit that mankind has fucked up in every way possible. The human race is a
disgrace;
it no longer deserves to even exist. Survival of the fittest, as they say. And mankind ain’t it.”

“The Shining Trapezohedron somehow triggers devastating storms,” Hazel apprized. “And you want to use it to create storms in the thirty-three biggest cities on earth.”

Frank’s lips pursed in annoyance. “Not storms, Hazel. You saw what happened down there. Was that a
storm?
”

Hazel’s lip quivered.

“It was a
summoning—
”

“For some god or something”—she remembered what Pickman and Clonner had said, and she remembered the word from her visions. “Narloth-something.”

“Nyarlathotep, Hazel. The Messenger. And his message is annihilation. That was him you saw down there, he and his attendants; his mere presence brings destruction all in the glory of Yog-Sothoth.” Frank closed his eyes and for once appeared solemn. “Yog-Sothoth is the key. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but
between
them. Yog-Sothoth is the gate whereby the spheres do meet, and Nyarlathotep is his messenger...”

Hazel wanted to get up but pain flared whenever she tried. “So
that’s
what this is? You’re shitting me, Frank. Occult spells? Witchcraft?”

“Really now, Hazel. In older times—back when this cottage was built—the truth of Yog-Sothoth was indeed camouflaged by occultism. First, Indians? Then superstitious Colonists? Witchcraft was the only concept they could relate to. They were ignorant peasants; they
thought
they were worshiping the devil because the devil was all they could understand. But they were really paying homage to Yog-Sothoth. Their lopsided pentagrams were, unbeknownst to them, non-Euclidian formulae.” Frank continued to step about the meat-scented room. “But in truth? It’s not witchcraft, Hazel. It’s not
spells.
It’s simply math that gives one plane of existence access to another.”

How could Hazel believe such a thing? And—now—how could she
not?

Frank’s voice darkened as he quoted, “‘The earth gibbers with their Voices; the earth mutters with their Consciousness—’”

“Where’s Sonia, Frank!” Hazel spat.

“‘—where reverence of their Word lingers, and upon where their Totems are blessed, they come. They come and they roil the seas—’”

“Frank!”

“‘They smash the forests.’”

“Frank, what’s
happened
to you!”

“‘They crush the cities...’”

Suddenly the wind could be heard howling outside. Frank turned to her again. “They made me an offer, and I accepted.
That’s
what’s happened to me. They made the same offer to my father who began to accept it but then reneged. For this he was blinded. They made the offer to Henry too, but he rejected them outright when he realized the totality of the theorem’s potential. I’ve agreed to serve them, Hazel, but as a full-blooded human they’d find me detestable. So...they changed me a little, that’s all.” He grinned. “I’ve been transfected with mutagenic material of their own creation, from an entity of servility known as a Shoggoth. Sort of like DNA only much more complicated.” He seemed to flinch, as if in momentary discomfort. “It takes a while, but once I’ve turned over, I’ll be acceptable to them. I’ll be able to serve them, here, once the earth is cleared off.”

Hazel didn’t want to hear it anymore. “Fine, Frank. Whatever. But where’s Sonia?”

“I told you. She’s safe.”

“She said that something on the other side of that door took her someplace...and took her baby out—”

“That’s quite true.” He coughed. “The baby had to go...”

“Frank! That was
your child!
”

Black mist shot from his mouth as he chuckled. “Do I look like I care?”

“What did they do with it?”

“Oh, once aborted I’m sure they used it for amusement and food, after the fetal brain tissue was sucked out, of course. They use that for research.”

Hazel cringed against her body’s aches and pains. “And
then
what?”

“Think, Hazel. They took the baby out to make room.”

“To make room for
another baby!
” Hazel shrieked. “I thought she was crazy when she told me that, but it’s true, isn’t it? They took her kid out and put one of
their
kids in!”

Frank’s moldering face creased up in the sharpest frown. “Oh, Hazel, you’re hopeless. We have thirty-three cities on the list, right? And thirty-three passports coming for thirty-three agents. You
know
this. Once the passports are processed, thirty-three plane tickets will be issued. The theorem works in sequences of thirty-three; this
has
to be obvious to you now.
Think,
Hazel.
Think.
”

“I
am
thinking, you prick!” she yelled. “But what’s all that got to do with them putting a monster in her belly?”

Frank walked over to the suitcase and pointed. “Thirty-three power-carriers, right?”

“Yes!”

“But only
one
of these,” and he held up the Shining Trapezohedron. “
Now
do you understand?”

Hazel was about to yell an emphatic
No!
but instead she shrieked when a loud knock came to the door.

When Frank opened it, it was not the night sky nor the twilit town that she saw, it was dark, pulsing blood-red light. Tendrils of black mist slithered up from the floor, and then she heard a squishing sound—

No, no, no...

—as four robed and hooded aberrations walked into the room. Their hideous inverted cones for feet moved them inside, and in their tentacular arms they cradled Sonia.

She was nude, dull-eyed, and very, very pregnant. Her entire body shined as if shellacked, and for the most irreducible moment, her head lolled to one side and she made eye-contact with Hazel. Her lips tried to move but no sound came out.

Two of the things constricted their tentacles to part Sonia’s thighs, then Frank stepped up. He leaned over, peering between his fiance’s legs like a demented gynecologist. He raised the Shining Trapezohedron—

“No!” Hazel screamed.

—and inserted it into Sonia’s vagina. He pushed, then his hand disappeared, then half of his forearm had been inserted as well. Then:
shhhhluck...

He pulled his hand out, leaving the crystal in Sonia’s womb.

“That’s why they sucked out the baby, Hazel. Not to replace it with one of their own but simply to make room.”

“For more Trapezohedrons,” Hazel croaked.

“Now, for the first time in history, all thirty-three of them are together.” He patted the bloated stomach. “Perfect hiding place, huh? And when the time is right, each agent will come to her, take their crystal and their power carrier, and then fly to their pre-assigned destination.” He addressed the robed things. “Take this cow out of here. I’ll arrange for her transport later.”

They walked back the way they came, Sonia satcheled in their ropy arms. When they’d cleared the threshold, the door slammed.

Was Frank fidgeting now? He seemed to do so as if chilled. “The power is exponential, Hazel. With all thirty-three crystals on earth at the same time? Let me give you an example. Once activated, darkness is what summons Nyarlathotep. Together they’re all thirty-three times more powerful than if used individually. Now, imagine the force that Henry unleashed in St. Petersburg being increased by thirty-three but instead of fifteen minutes of activation, it goes on
all night long.
Can you
conceive
of that? Hmm? When the agents use these, they will begin at the minute after sunset, and it won’t stop until dawn. It starts in the middle and works outward. See, Nyarlathotep is like your God in a way. He is omnipresent. He can be thirty-three places at once, or thirty-three
million
places. I’ll bet we kill a billion people the first night. And when the first thirty-three cities are annihilated, the agents will then proceed to the
next
largest city, and on and on until there’s nothing left.” A hush filled the room. “It will be glorious...Glory be to Yog-Sothoth and to his messenger Nyarlathotep, whose message is annihilation.”