The Haunter of the Threshold (24 page)

“Comin’ right up! Ooo, and I just love yew’re hair! What a lovely color!”

“Thank you,” Hazel said.
My hair looks like steel wool dipped
in barbeque sauce. What are you–correction: YEW–talking about?

Her brain seemed to tick as she sat there. She felt so sick right now, yet so anxiously demented.
Motherfuckin’ Frank. Fucked me
over six ways till Sunday. If he really does have a girl with him, I’m
gonna cut his cock off and put it on a stick.

Clunk.
The barmaid set down her beer. “Thar yew go, cutie pie.” The broad face seemed enthralled by Hazel. “Hope yew durn’t mind my sayin’ so”—chubby fingers reached out and actually pinched her cheek—“and yew might not believe this but thar was a time when I was just as pretty and slim as yew—”

“Yeah, Ida!” someone yelled from the pool table. “Back when Eisenhower was president.”

The barmaid’s face bugled, pig-eyed. “Just you hush thar, Nahum Gardner! Lest I tell Nabby what it
looked like
yew was doin’ in the men’s room other night!”

Guffaws cracked in the air.

Hazel glumly sipped her beer.
Redneck paradise.
She thought of ordering lunch but realized she had no appetite. All that filled her mind were images of sex with Sonia—sex she’d likely never have. But when she tried to think of something else, she winced at what her mind produced: being pissed on, being cracked in her face, being choked and held up off her feet as some faceless thug fucked her...
God...
She thought of calling Ashton, whom she knew loved her, but she shrugged the idea off.
I only want to be loved
by Sonia and that’s NEVER going to happen.
She glanced errantly at the pool table, noticed one stocky man with bulging muscles and hair pouring over his T-shirt collar. In the vision she saw him fornicating with her on one of the bar tables, duct tape slapped over her eyes and mouth. He gulped from a beer bottle while he stroked, but then he suddenly withdrew, creamed her labia with his sperm, and slunked the beer bottle in her, fat-end first...

Hazel rubbed her forehead and groaned, her sex squirming, swampy with need.

“Oh, new, that’s right, I never got chance tew tell ya ‘baout it, Hannah but, ee-yuh, all’s I need is my passport, then I durn’t think it’ll be long afore I go.” It was Ida, the barmaid, now yammering excitedly on the phone. “Ee-yuh, Sao Paulo it’s called. Not shuh whar it ‘tis but I think it’s one’a them beachy places...”

Hazel’s eyes narrowed.
This woman is going to SAO PAULO?
Nothing more unlikely could’ve occurred to her.

“Oh, goodness, yes! I en’t had me a vacation in
yeers!
”

When Ida hung up, Hazel
had
to ask, “Did you say you were going on a vacation to
Sao Paulo?
”

“Why, yes! I’se so excited!” the woman beamed. “Do you know whar ‘zactly it ‘tis, hon?”

“Yeah, it’s in Brazil.”

Ida’s eyes blanked. “And, uh, whar’s that?”

She getting a passport to go to Sao Paulo and she doesn’t
even know where it is?
Hazel was flummoxed.
She must’ve won a
sweepstakes or something.
“South America, the south western coast. But it’s not on the beach like Rio, it’s more like thirty miles from the ocean. Read about the place before you go there because, well, it’s not exactly a tourist hot-spot any more.”

“No...beaches?”

“Not unless you’ve got a Land Rover. I’m sure there’re buses that go to the coast but in South America even the buses are suspect. Highwaymen, insurgents. And Sao Paulo has one of the highest population-densities of any city on earth, almost twenty million people and most of them live in extreme poverty. There’s death-squads, gangs, drugs, pick-pockets, you name it. And there are Marxist terrorist cells that love to kidnap Americans.” Hazel sipped her beer. “You might want to try Rio, instead, or some of the beach resorts south of there.”

“Why, I say...,” Ida blurted. “I never would’a thought they’d be sendin’ me tew a place like
that.
”

Yeah, a sweepstakes she must’ve won,
Hazel knew. “Oh, and by the way. Do you know where I can find the Fish—” but before she could finish, the phone rang.

“Be right back, sweetie...”

Just as Ida parted, a stool scuffed the floor several spots down. In it a wide-shouldered, grizzle-faced man sat. He wore a sweat-stained T-shirt that read ACME TREE TRIMMING AND HAULAGE.
He sat almost dejected, rubbing his eyes as though fatigued or mentally frayed. “Dang,” he muttered.

“You look like you’re feeling about as good as I am now,” Hazel offered.

The man glanced over, bleary-eyed. “Howdy’n, waal, ee-yuh, not feelin’ up ta snuff. Had the wust night’s sleep ever.” He sputtered. “Nightmares, yew know?”

“Well, I had a doozy myself,” Hazel replied. “Must be in the air.”

A big hand glided over. “Name’s Nathaniel—call me Nate. Nate Peaslee.”

“Hi, Nate, I’m Hazel.” When she shook the large, steel-firm hand, she imagined it clamped to her throat while he rubbed the wet end of a huge penis back and forth over the nub of her clitoris.
Stop
it! Stop it!

“I once dated a psych major who said the best way to disarm the memory of an unpleasant dream is to talk about the dream itself,” she said.

He shook his head, gruffed a sound. “Curn’t ‘member ever havin’ a nightmare so
reel.
Dreamt I woke up in my bed and somehaow
knowed
that someone were in the house. Then I thought shuh the place was on fire”—he pronounced “fire” as
far—
“‘
cos thar were this black mist all abaout, like seepin’ up through the seams in the floor but when I sniff, it durn’t smell like smoke no ways. Smelled kind’a like fresh meat’re fish. Next thing I knowed I’m lyin’ in bed but curn’t move a muscle ta save my life but I ken
see
some fella walkin’ araound my place, mutterin’ all this jibber-jabber. Looked like he was weerin’ sunglasses, of all the durnt things.”

“And that’s it?” Hazel asked. “That’s the dream?”

“Ee-yuh, all’s I ken ’member. Didn’t sleep me a
wink
after thet.”

Shit, buddy,
she thought.
My nightmare’s got that beat by a mile.
“Say, Nate, have you ever heard about a really old cottage up on top of Whipple’s Peak?” she thought she’d ask.

His eyes narrowed in contemplation, then he perked up and said, “Ee-yuh, naow’s yew mention it. En’t thought ‘baout it in yeers. Some place no one knows who built. Never seed the place myself but my brothers did, hiked all the way up thar back when we was little kids—”

Ida, clearly eavesdropping, lumbered from the back. “Oh, naow, Nate, durn’t ya be fillin’ my friend’s head with all that tripe!” She looked earnestly to Hazel. “Honey, thet en’t nothin’ but tall tales. Thar en’t no haunted cottage up on Whipple—”

“But my brothers done seed it when we was little,” Nate insisted.

A reproving glance. “Nate, yew’re brothers may be fine, hard-workin’ fellas but they both lie like a couple’a rugs.”

Nate stalled. “Waal, curn’t argue with yew thar, Ida.”

“Okay,” Hazel said, “but there’s something else I need to know. Can either of you tell me where to find some people known as the F—”The phone rang again, summoning Ida, while simultaneously, Nate’s cell phone rang.

Jesus!
Hazel could’ve screamed at her luck.

“Aw, god-durnt it,” Nate said. “Rush job at the Curwen place, huh? I was just abaout to grab a samb-witch, but—Aw, all right.” He hung up, jangling his keys. “Gotta run, Hazel. Boss is payin’ double-time so’s I guess lunch ken wait. Nice talkin’ tew ya, though.”

“You, too...”

A moment later he was out the door.

The Fish Boys, the Fish Boys,
Hazel turned the words over. Was Fate preventing her from finding out their location?
Fate or God,
came a second, unpleasant thought.

The pool table men left, high-fiving after their game, and when Hazel turned to look she now found the bar empty. She could still ask Ida about the Fish Boys...
If she ever quits yacking on the
phone!
Several yuppie-looking young men came in next, in hiking gear. They wore Boston College shirts—the enemy.
Dead end. They
wouldn’t know either.
Ida put another beer down for her, with the phone tucked between cheek and chin.
I guess you’re gonna run
your mouth all day,
but then Hazel blinked after having noticed a crimson sparkle.

How do you like that?
Ida was wearing what seemed a scarlet ring identical to Mr. Pickman’s and the woman who’d been arguing with her husband...

A sound like a squeaky bearing snapped her attention, then a crackly voice, “Aw, now, there she is! Hazel, ain’t it?”

Hazel turned to see Clonner Martin wheeling up in his chair. “Hi, Clonner. Nice to see you again.” She hopped off her stool and sat across from him at the nearest table. “How are things going?”

He huffed, raising his stumps. “Still got no hands, but the sun’s still shinin’, the world’s still turnin’, and I’m still drinkin’ beer, so’s I’m just fine.”

Hazel smiled, shaking her head. She remembered his similar optimism yesterday. “You’re quite an inspiration, Clonner.”

“Aw, hail...” He ordered a beer for himself. “I do all right. A dang sight better than Luntville, West Virginia.”

“Oh, that’s right. You grew up there. Didn’t you say you had a brother there too?”

“Yeah, sure did. Jake.”

Then Hazel grimly recalled that Clonner had lost his hands to diabetes, while his brother lost his feet. Suddenly she felt charged up in a small way; the old man’s mere presence helped put away her own angst and doldrums. It refreshed her to hear the snappy, crackling southern accent as opposed to the low-throat drawl of the true locals. “What urged you to move here of all places?”

Clonner took a good swig of beer by biting the can’s lip. “Pot luck, I guess. Saw an ad for the land in the back’a
Field’n Stream.
Price was right and I’d just come inta some money so’s I said hail’n come up to check it out. Never went back. Were all ready sick’a the heat’n skeeters.” Another swig and he rambled on, “Bought me a piece’a lakeside property with a shack on it, and a decent double-wide on a couple acres just down the road. I’se live in the trailer, and my loser nephew’n his deadbeat buddy live in the shack. And like I told ya yesterday, darlin’, I’se also bought me this bar once I seed how bad it were suckin’ wind. But I’ll be danged if’n I ain’t doubled the profits.”

“But you still have land in West Virginia?” Hazel inquired, somehow fascinated by the whiskery old man.

“Naw, naw, hon, solt it all, I did. Hadda a hunnert acres’a crap land in Russell County. Weren’t worth squat, it wasn’t, but then some business fella up’n offered me some
long
coin fer it. He were from a mining company and the land was worth fair scratch ‘cos of the gypsies on it.”

Hazel stalled. “Gypsies?”

“Yeah. So he and his mining company bought it all and here’s I am.” He shook his head. “My whole blammed life, though, I never once knew of a mine in the area and shore as hail never saw no gypsies or hurdy-gurdy folks on it.” He scratched his chin with a stump. “Reckon he wanted to get the gypsies to work in his mine under the table.”

Hazel squinted. “Clonner, I think you mean
gypsum,
not gypsies. It’s a mineral used in construction materials.”

Clonner gaped. “Ya don’t say! Shee-it, all this time I thought it was gypsies. I’ll tell ya, a fella learns somethin’ new every day!”

Hazel had to control herself not to laugh. “Yes, I’m sure your land had
gypsum
on it, and that’s why you were paid well.”
What a character...”
Oh, and I’m glad I ran into you, Clonner. Are you familiar with some people—brothers, perhaps—known as the Fish Boys?”

Clonner almost dropped his beer out of his dentures. “Oh, yeah, missy, I’se sorry to say I am. ‘S the two losers I just tolt ya I let ‘em live in my lake shack, my fat’n useless nephew Clayton and his goin’-nowhere pal Walter Brown. They sell their catch to the local restaurants. They’se also trap’n filet woodchuck, possum, muskrat. In fact, I pointed ‘em out to ya yesterday.” He pronounced
pointed
as “purnted,” and then gestured the waist-high opening in the wall in which Hazel remembered seeing two men fileting fish.

“Oh, so
those
guys are the Fish Boys,” she acknowledged, and now she felt a twinge of suspense. The bearded fileter had been overweight while his partner next to him had been tall and wiry-slim.
Peter Pan was fat,
she remembered,
and Snow White skinny and tall...
Maybe Horace had been correct with his hunch.