The Haunter of the Threshold (17 page)

“Aw, ya know,” Horace pushed her away, “this en’t settin’ right with me, Hazel. En’t nothin’ ‘baout yew, it’s just...”

Hazel stared at him.

“I just curn’t let’cha dew this, much as I’d wanna.” It was with difficulty that he managed to stuff those marvelous balls and beating cock back into his trousers. “See, I got me a honey–Lillian’s her name–and, see, she’s over in the Iraq right naow. She’s in the signal corp. I’d be a low-daown dag dirty
dog
to fool ‘raound with another gal while my baby’s over there fightin’ fer my freedom. New sir, a fella couldn’t get no lower.”

Oh, for God’s sake! An ethical redneck!

“So I just hope yew understand and durn’t take it personal,” he said and got back on the road.

Hazel put her face in her hands and laughed. “You’re a good man, Horace, and you have no idea how lucky your girlfriend is. They sure don’t make many men like you these days.” She sighed. “And now I guess you think I’m a super slut for pulling a move like that...”

“New, durn’t worry none. We all gots our thing.”

“I just didn’t know how else to thank you...”

He raised a finger. “Come by the Curiosity Shoppe. It’d make me look good to the owner if’n ya bought something, and I’ll bet there’s plenty theer you’d fancy.”

“I’ll look forward to it, Horace.”

“And like I said a’fore.” He smiled contentedly behind the wheel. “Durn’t thank me, thank the Lord...”

The rain had just started when Hazel entered the cabin. Lights burned softly in the front room, but Sonia wasn’t there. “Sonia? I’m back.”

“Oh—In here.”

Hazel followed her friend’s voice into the small den. Sonia sat at Henry Wilmarth’s desk, studying an array of papers.

“Wow, that was some walk,” Sonia said without looking up.

“Took longer than I thought, and—”

Finally Sonia’s eyes looked up in exclamation. “What’s wrong! Are you hurt?”

Hazel limped in.
Well, I just got foot-fucked, if that’s what you
mean.
“I guess I’m not in the good shape I thought. Sore all over. I was so tired halfway back, I hitched a ride with a local.”

Did Sonia offer a suspicious frown? Suddenly thunder rumbled, then rain began to patter the roof.

“And I got back just in time,” Hazel added. She leaned over the desk. “Looks like some serious Nosy Parkering going on here.”

“I took the liberty of looking over Henry’s papers,” Sonia defended herself.

“Feminist doctrine. Sounds good to me.” Hazel noticed lots of papers written by hand, many of which appeared to be in foreign languages. “And?”

Sonia sat back, sighing. She adjusted her position in the seat to accommodate her swollen belly. “A whole lot of really bizarre rigamarole.”

“This is definitely Latin,” Hazel said, picking a sheet up. “And it also looks like—”

“I know. Not a photocopy but an old style mimeograph,” Sonia augmented. The sheet was purple-tinted and frayed. “I haven’t seen something like that in decades.”

Hazel skimmed a few lines. “I took some Latin, but most of this is illegible. Terrum Per Me Ambula? Something about ‘walking the earth...’” She squinted. “‘Per qua spheres opportunus’ means ‘by where the spheres meet.’ And...‘Non in notus tractus tamen inter illud tractus?’ Damn, I don’t know. Maybe “Not in known spaces but between them?’”

Sonia showed her another paper. Hazel recited, “‘They frendo civis...’” She blinked. “‘They crush the cites,’ or something like that.”

“Weird.”

On the back, a Post-It was stuck. It read in cursive script:
Mimeo
of hand-copied intercession page of A.A. I believe someone scrivened
the page from the Wormius translation of A.D. 1228. Either the
Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, or the copy in Lima.

“Beats me,” Hazel said. “What about the others?”

Sonia handed her a frayed 8 x 10 photograph that looked almost as worn as the mimeograph. The back read, in the same script:

Probably illegally photographed p. of rumored copy of
Greek trans. of N. (Theodorus Philatus, A.D. 950) that escaped
condemnation and burning ordered by Patriarch Michael, A.D. 1050
.
(Is this the copy thought to be hidden in Vatican?)

“Greek, huh?” Hazel noted. “Good luck translating
that
.”

“Yeah. And the notations look like Henry’s handwriting.”

“It makes sense. It’s his stuff, and something he was obviously studying with some interest.”

“Transcriptions of Latin and Greek, from the Middle Ages and older? Printing presses didn’t even exist then,” Sonia seemed stifled. “So somebody accessed original copies of the texts, which
had
to have been handwritten, and then copied certain parts in their own hand?”

Hazel shrugged in resignation. “I guess. But so what?”

“Henry Wilmarth was a
mathematician,
Hazel, and a scholar of
geometry
. But this stuff looks like old folklore or something. And there’s not a single number or equation on any of these pages.”

“Sonia!” Hazel blurted. “How do you say ‘I don’t give a shit’ in Greek?”

“Don’t be a smart-ass,” Sonia smirked back. “But now, look at this.”

Another dog-eared 8 x 10. At the bottom, clearly scribed in fountain pen and
not
in Henry Wilmarth’s hand, were the words:
one
of only two extant sheets of Al Azif, pilfered by Deacon M. Bari days
before the fall of Const.
The photo itself, however, was immediately recognizable: a hand-drawn exploded-diagram of a box whose planes were not quite even. On each plane were drawings of the same geometric shapes (v’s,>’s,^’s, >’s) that Hazel recognized from the metal box.

She took the box down off the shelf and compared it.

“It’s the same,” she deduced. “The dimensions and the symbols.”

“Yes, and isn’t that interesting?”

Hazel’s brow rose. “Actually, yes.” At once she felt animated. She was about to tell Sonia about the similar clay box that Henry had contracted Horace to craft, but thought better of it.
Find out about this
first.
“And the ‘fall of Const.’
has
to be the fall of Constantinople, right?”

“Uh-huh. The mid-1400s. This is some really old stuff, Hazel.

Now...look on the back.”

Hazel flipped the photo over and saw a brief scribing in Wilmarth’s hand:
See File 293.
“Looks like our work’s cut out for us now.” She strode to the file cabinet.

“It’s not there. There are no numbered files,” Sonia informed. “No folders, even.”

Hazel hauled open each drawer and found some to be empty while others appeared full of school papers. “You’re right.” Her eyes narrowed at the desk. “What about the desk?”

“It’s locked.”

“Have some initiative!” Hazel complained. She stalked to the kitchen, then returned with a broom.

“What are you—”

Hazel jammed the broom handle into the handle of the first desk drawer, and yanked hard. The lock-piece in the old wooden desk cracked easily.

“Hazel!”

“Henry Wilmarth is dead, right? And he left Frank the cabin and all of its contents, right?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“So, now, this is really
Frank’s
desk, right?”

“Sort of, I guess, but—”

“So, by feminist doctrine, the desk is yours too.”

Sonia laughed. “Feminist doctrine, huh?”

Hazel knelt. “Honestly, what’s the big deal? The guy’s dead.” She searched the drawers, yet found nothing in the way of numbered file folders. Mostly just trade journals and old school curriculums and syllabi. Also a magnifying glass and a stapler. She went
Yuck!
when she lifted a bottle of Kessler’s whiskey out of the bottom drawer, then, “Oh, double-yuck!” and she lifted out a revolver.

“Is it loaded?” Sonia asked in a hushed tone.

“Don’t know, don’t know how to find out, and don’t
want
to find out.” She returned it along with the bottle, then reached all the way back. “Hmm.” She pulled out a digital camera.

“Check it!” Sonia said excitedly.

Hazel turned it on, then giggled, “Wouldn’t it be a riot if there were pictures of Frank and Henry Wilmarth, like, making out and doing each other?”

Sonia made an appalled face. “Hazel, you’re sick!”

“Just a thought.” She checked the menu on the tiny screen, then slumped. “Damn. The memory card’s empty.”

“So much for that.”

“And so much for the mystery of File 293.” She was about to close the last drawer but then stalled when she noticed an oddity. She leaned closer.

Scrawled in ballpoint, against the wooden side of the drawer, was this word:
Yog-Sothoth.

Whatever the hell that is,
Hazel declared to herself,
why would
Henry Wilmarth scribble it on the inside of his desk?

“Maybe the file’s up at this cottage Frank’s at.”

Sonia nodded. “Maybe, but if I asked him, then he’d know we were going through Henry’s effects.”

“He probably wouldn’t be too happy about that.”

“No.”

Then an idea occurred to Hazel, quick as a beacon going off. “Wait a minute! Maybe it’s not a paper file but a
computer
file!” and she hit the power button on the laptop sitting at a small table flanking the desk.

After booting up, Hazel and Sonia both said “Shit,” in near-unison. A password box flashed on the screen.

“Any idea what Henry’s birthday is?” Hazel asked.

“He was too smart—and too eccentric—for that.” Sonia mulled the thought. “What was Frank saying on the phone earlier? The father of geometry?”

Thrilled, Hazel typed in EUCLID, then received a PASSWORD INCORRECT tag. “Damn.”

“Oh, well,” Sonia gave up. “It’s none of our business anyway.”

“Of course it isn’t, but I’m dying to know what that box is all about. Aren’t you?”

“Yes, but we’ll never get into the computer. Just shut it off.”

Hazel’s hand hovered over the mouse.
Hmm. I wonder...
She looked back into the bottom drawer.

“What are you
doing?
”

“Type as I read,” Hazel instructed, squinting at the arcane scrawl. “Y-O-G-hyphen-S-O-T-H-O-T-H.”

Sonia did so, frowning. “What’s that?”

“It’s written down here. Sometimes people write their passwords in an out-of-view place in case they forget it. I do the same thing with my bank account number for when I’m checking online.”

Sonia clicked the tab. “You were right!” she squealed.

Hazel looked up at the glowing screen background. She smiled.

“Now, let’s see what we can dig up...”

A simple search for the number “293” pulled up a directory
full
of numbered files, almost a thousand of them.

When Hazel opened File 293, she found it to be five jpegs, one of each side of the metal box, plus the lid.

“He scanned the box?” Sonia asked.

“Looks like it,” and she pointed to the scanner sitting above the computer. The next page showed the same five jpegs only each glyph was circled in red ink and assigned a number which corresponded to the list of chronological numbers below, and to each number was assigned another number but in degrees.

“Henry measured the degrees of every angle on the box and indexed them,” Hazel presumed.

“Scroll down, maybe there’s more.”

Hazel did so but only found the typed words:
Quotients for
Power Schematic of original ST carrier.

“There’s that damn S-T again,” Hazel muttered.

“I guess the degrees of each angle constitute an equation.”

Hazel peered queerly at the screen. “But for what? And what the
hell
is the S-T?”