The Haunter of the Threshold (33 page)

“Oh, of course.” The crabby hand pointed behind him. “To the right. It may not be the cleanest bathroom—I’ve no way of knowing, of course.” He smiled. “I’m at the mercy of the housekeeping staff.”

“I’ll be right back,” she said and strode off.

In the bathroom, she glared at herself in the mirror.
What are you
DOING? You came here to TALK to the old man, not PLAY WITH YOURSELF in front of him!
Fuming, she urinated, flushed, then washed her hands, all of a sudden crawling in prickly heat. It was her sickness, she knew, sinking in like it always did. Whatever perverted brain cells in her head made her like this...they were sparking now with vigor.
No, no, no,
she groaned to herself and pulled her top over her head. She took off her skirt and now stood naked.

No, no, no...

She took care to make no noise when stepping out of the bathroom. She peeked around the hall entrance and, sure enough, Frank’s father was tremble-handedly caressing his crotch. She stepped back to the bathroom, closed the door loud enough for him to hear, then walked back out.

“I’m back,” she said and gingerly lay her clothes over the chair. She sat back down, prickling all over now by the fact that she was sitting completely nude in front of a blind man. “Where were we? Oh, yes, were we talking about–”

The old man faltered. “Hazel, I—I’m delighted to talk to you but I’m afraid I’m terribly side-tracked right now. I’ve been blind for almost five years, but—but...”

Hazel pressed her hand flat against her sex and made slow circular motions. “But what, sir?”

He seemed hesitant. “Would you mind terribly if I touched your face? I’d really like to see you and, of course, touch is the only way the blind can really see.”

Careful. Be VERY careful.
“Sure,” she said and hopped up. She stood immediately before him, bent over, and took his hands. Then she placed them on her face.

The fingertips trembled all about, from forehead to throat and back again. “Oh . . . my. You’re so beautiful, so lovely.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

The dead eyes looked up. Now his fingers were trembling at her collar bones, and Hazel’s vision just got hazier and hazier and the sickness sunk deeper, drenching her brain like a sponge.

Two tears glittered in the old man’s eyes. “Please...,” came the driest peep.

Hazel grabbed his wrists and pushed his hands down to her breasts.

“I
knew
it,” he whispered. Now his entire form trembled in the chair.

Her own voice parched. “I have some problems, Professor Barlow, and...as I’m sure you’re all too aware of now. I try to think of them as frivolous little fetishes, little kinks, but I guess they’re a lot more than that. I rationalize what I’m driven to do by telling myself that if no one gets hurt, it’s okay. But that’s pretty naive, I suppose...”

The old man’s hands smoothed over Hazel’s young breasts, then down her waist, over her abdomen. “Blind men dream of this, Hazel. There is no other fantasy for us, really...”

As the hands tended her breasts, Hazel looked down between his arms, down the flat of her stomach and the formidable puff of dark-red pubic hair; she spied the old man’s tented crotch and noticed the dime-sized wet spot there. How long had it been since he’d touched a woman? How long had it been since he’d experienced this proximity and actually gotten an erection? Had climaxed?

Barlow’s hollow breaths quickened. “What a beautiful moperist you are, Hazel.”

Her breasts jiggled when she laughed. “
Moperist?
”

“That’s the name of this particular fetish,” his voice rose and fell. “One who commits ‘mopery’ is one who becomes sexually aroused by exposing oneself to the blind.”

Mopery, huh?
“That’s a new one on me,” she said, moving her pubis closer. “I’ll have to put it on my list.”

Now the old hands were molding her hips, circling her belly, probing her navel. “But certainly you’re not
aroused,
” Barlow whispered. “A young, beautiful woman such as you couldn’t possibly be aroused by a blind old man...”

Hazel took his hand and put it to her sex. She manipulated one of his fingers right into the sopping-wet slit. “So you think I’m not aroused, huh?”

She drew the trembling finger in and out, tightening herself.

“Please,” he pleaded. “Let me...taste you...It’s been so long.”

Hazel needed no time to contemplate, nor weigh the subjectivities of the situation. Most of her conscious thought felt filmed over. She pressed Barlow back in the chair, then effortlessly hopped up, placing each bare foot on a chair-arm. Professor Barlow quivered and moaned, blindly looking up in wait. Only once did Hazel’s conscience ask,
What am I doing?
Only once.

She raised her right leg straight up like a punter at the peak of the kick, then pressed the sole of her foot against the wall. From here she merely inclined her pubis, leading it straight to the thin-lipped mouth of Frank’s invalid father. The alignment was perfect.

Hazel’s pose tensed her back and leg muscles to tight cords when the sexagenarian tongue delved into her folds.

The old man mewled in something like pleading delight. Hazel urged her clit closer. Soon, though, he got the hang of it, perhaps old memories rekindled, as his tongue movements grew rhythmic.

Beneath his mewls, she could hear him desperately pawing his crotch with one crabbed hand.
Don’t over-excite him...”
Just relax,” she whispered, abdominal muscles tightening. “Take your time.”

Hazel’s sphincter and vulva began to pulse. The inside of her mind felt like a dam, holding back a seamy gulf of deviant images she longed to bathe in. When the damn burst—

Hazel hissed, her pussy spasming.

—the images gushed through
—men coming in her face, pissing
in her face, locking her down bent over in a pillory to be sodomized
en masse—
and came right in the old man’s face, her sex like a steaming sponge being squashed. She felt her own juices squirt out of her like an overripe fruit being bitten into. She kept her sex pressed to Barlow’s mouth as she continued to come with every flinch of her pelvis.

Careful, careful,
she kept telling herself.
He could have a heart
attack,
but she couldn’t discipline herself one bit. She slithered down to a squat, unbuckled his pants, and took his penis out.

“Oh, dear,” he wheezed, dead eyes gazing up. “You’re such a lovely, lovely...”

This is one hard-as-a-rock cock for an old man,
she thought. She finessed it in her hand.
Bigger than Frank’s too, I think.
The pole of aged flesh quivered in her hand. Barlow cringed when her fingertips teased over the slippery glans. The piss-slit looked agape, a tiny, famished mouth hanging open. “Relax,” she whispered, then adroitly fed the tip into her vulva and slowly declined her squat until her sex swallowed the entire thing. The awkward position caused the cock to touch her in areas not typically explored. She slowly began to ride her pelvis up and down. “Don’t move,” came her next whisper. “Just relax and let me do all the work...” She stepped up her rhythm, running her open hands over his sunken chest, thinking,
Don’t die, don’t have a coronary,
but then the man gasped and went into a series of feeble bucks. Hazel sighed, feeling the hot, gluey threads leap up into her vaginal canal. “There, there, that’s good. Just relax and come...”

Moments later, the old man lay limp in the chair, a stick-figure in too-big clothes, when Hazel tightened her vaginal muscles to squeeze out the last semen and sensations, then daintily climbed off him.

I should NOT have done that,
she feared, standing now to look at him. “Professor? You’re all right, aren’t you?”

The gaping-mouthed face nodded. “Yes, yes, I—”

“Don’t talk just yet. Just rest and get your breath back. We’ll talk in a few minutes. Let me get you a glass of water.”

He nodded again, mouthed
Thank you.
Hazel put her clothes back on and went into the kitchen.

Give yourself a pat on the back, Hazel. You just came close to
fucking a poor old blind man to death. You are the pervert’s pervert. Each day you manage to find yet another new low.
She poured a glass of water, was about to return to him, but noticed an opened door.
Bedroom,
she realized. There was almost nothing in it, just a bed and a dresser. Barren walls whose corners were rounded by cobwebs. On the dresser, though, stood a singular oddity: a framed picture.
Why would a blind man have a—,
but then she figured the picture must have sentimental value, whether he could see it or not. It hadn’t been touched in years, though, as quarter-inch-thick dust proved. Hazel picked it up, wiped it off.

Three men in hiking gear stood in front of Henry Wilmarth’s cabin, all bearing timid smiles. Frank to the left, looking young, vibrant, eyes burning with a thirst for knowledge. He had to have been in his late-twenties when this was taken. To the right stood Thurnston Barlow, in no way resembling the withered shell in the outer room.
Early fifties,
Hazel estimated. He stood sturdy, confident, strong, yet radiating the aura of an academician.

In the middle stood Henry Wilmarth, whose smile seemed less timid and more
knowing.
Intense-eyed, lips pursed within the scholarly beard. Cupped in his hand at waist-level was the Shining Trapezohedron.

Interesting...

Perhaps Professor Barlow put the picture here because it reminded him of better times. Dead eyes notwithstanding, maybe he pictured it here in his mind every day and mused upon what it meant: a part of his life that had purpose.

The picture seemed sad. Hazel flipped it over, hoping for a date, but found instead a small photo slipped under the frame’s lip. She took it and out stared.

No human subject stood within the snapshot’s border. Photographed amid brambles, vines, and closely converged trees was a small building made of uneven stones. Unshuttered windows stood in deep embrasures of finely hewn rock; even the meager, slanted roof appeared to be made of
sheets
of stone, slate, perhaps. Mist clung around the dwelling’s only visible corner. No door of any kind was in evidence.

The Gray Cottage,
Hazel’s thoughts croaked.

So...it really did exist. For whatever reason, seeing the picture made Hazel’s heart quicken.

She set all back to rights and returned to Professor Barlow, who’d been able to catch his breath. “Here I am,” she said to alert him, then took his hand and placed the water glass in it.

He smiled, exhausted. “What an angel you are, Hazel. What a blessing...”

Hazel wilted.
I’m a sex-freak, I’m a deviant, erotomanic
paraphiliac. When men rape me and force me to drink their piss, I
LIKE it. When they choke me unconscious as they’re fucking me...I
come.
She could’ve laughed.
An angel? A blessing? I don’t think so...

“I had a pretty good time, too, you know,” she dismissed. But now that her perversions had been slaked, she felt steadfast. “Among other things, we were talking about Frank, Professor.”

His slack face stilled, then showed recognition. “Oh, yes. And you’d mentioned that he
wasn’t
at Henry’s cabin yet. So...where is he?”

Hazel elected not to confess to having seen the snapshot. “He went up to the top of Whipple’s Peak, to a place called the Gray Cottage,” and then she studied Barlow’s face very closely.

The old man suddenly went rigid with distilled anger. “For God’s
sake.
He was expressly instructed
not
to do that.”

“Is this cottage...still there?”

“Yes,” the old man croaked. “Henry and I went there several times many years ago.” He made a bony fist. “Damn it!”

“Sonia’s none too happy about him being up there. She’s due in a few weeks and wanted to spend as much time with Frank as possible.”

Barlow’s agitation made him visibly shake. “Really, I must call him—”

“He’s been up there several days, last we heard from him was yesterday.” Hazel sat back in her chair, thinking. “His phone battery’s got to be dead by now.”

Barlow feebly felt for a button on the phone, pressed it, and said, “Frank,” into a pickup that was undoubtedly connected to a voice-recognition program. The speaker phone began to ring. Frank’s voice-mail came on immediately, and after the beep, Professor Barlow snapped, “Frank, this is your father! You’re not supposed to be at the goddamn cottage; it’s fit to collapse so leave at once! I’m serious, son. I’ve never asked
anything
of you in my entire life, but I’m asking now. Leave the Gray Cottage and go back to Henry’s cabin. Leave at once! It’s a disgrace for you to be up there when you’ve got a pregnant fiancé waiting for you—you should be ashamed of yourself. And hear this, son: when you’re back, you call me. You and I are going to have a long talk,” then he jabbed his finger into the off button.