The Haunter of the Threshold (34 page)

“Wow, looks like I just got Frank in big trouble with his dad.”

Barlow wrung his old hands. “Frank has an obstinate side, but one thing he’s never been is greedy. That’s why this surprises me.”

“Greedy? I don’t understand.”

“Earlier you asked why Henry called the Shining Trapezohedron a golden calf. It’s very much a
false
icon, Hazel.”

More perplexity. “So there’s a correlation between the crystal and the Gray Cottage?”

“Indeed there is.”

“Frank said he’s been detained there because Henry left a great deal more paperwork in the place, said it’ll take him a while to destroy it all.”

“Listen—” He sat upright, arthritic hands on knees, and stared directly at Hazel with his useless eyes. “Forget about it all, Hazel. Frank’ll likely see the light once he thinks about things, puts two and two together. All I’ll tell you”—he pointed a bony finger—“That stone, that horrid crystal, has...a power.”

“Come on, Professor.”

He seemed to calculate his next words. “It’s a good thing indeed that Henry disposed of it, but let me just speak my mind. If for some reason you, Frank, or Sonia find where Henry hid the stone, throw it into the lake, bury it, put it in the garbage–anything. And whatever you do...
don’t
look at it.”

This was getting strange. What bothered Hazel most was the conviction with which Barlow made his comments. “Why, sir? It’s just a stone.”

“It’s far more than that. It’s a
seducer.
”

Maybe I should just leave,
she considered.
I’m probably agitating
him at this point.
But still—

She
had
looked at the crystal, hadn’t she? Not the stone itself, but the jpeg on Henry’s computer. And she’d
seen
things.

No, I THOUGHT I saw things...

“The metal box, too,” the old man continued. “Destroy it. Let’s just say you’d be doing me a favor.”

“You’re really confusing me, sir. Don’t
look
at the stone?”

He seemed animated now, tense in some unexplained resolve. “Precisely. If you look at it long enough...it will make you want to do things, Hazel. It came very close to making Henry Wilmarth do something abominable—”

“What?” she almost yelled.

“—and it did the same to me.” He laxed back in the chair, somehow looking even older now, more infirm. “Henry was stronger than me, I suppose. He was able to say no to it in time, before it got its hooks in him. I, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky.”

All right, this is useless. The man’s getting carried away. He’s
probably part-senile by now. Semi-precious gems don’t have
POWER. You can’t say NO to a hunk of rock.
“What do you mean by
that,
sir?”

He pointed to his eyes. “I looked too long, my dear. And when I realized what the Shining Trapezohedron was trying to do to me, I resisted...For that resistance, I was punished.”

Hazel’s eyes shifted as she looked at him.

“The crystal is what made me blind.” He took a breath. “And remember what I said earlier? That the blind are able to hone other senses to a higher clarity via the loss of the vision?”

“Yes.”

He rubbed his face as if weary. “It’s not just smell, taste, and hearing, you know. It’s also certain intuitions. For instance when I asked you before if you had found the Shining Trapezohedron, you said you hadn’t.” A very silent pause. “You were lying, weren’t you?”

Hazel froze. “Yes, sir, I was.”

“And you found it
where?
”

“Henry put it in a tree bowl, then covered the bowl with tree-patch. I happened upon it by pure coincidence.”

The old man seemed lost now, yet he also seemed desperate
not
to appear that way. “I suppose I may have sounded a bit over-dramatic, Hazel. But can’t you do this for me?” He made a parched chuckle. “Can’t you appease this nutty old man? Please. Put the stone
back
in the tree bowl, cover it up, and, for God’s sake—
don’t
tell Frank you know anything about it. Will you do that for me? Please?”

“Yes, sir, I will,” she said.
Big deal. It’s just a rock.

“Thank you. And, please, tell Frank to call me when he gets back to Henry’s cabin, all right?”

“Sure.”

The man was winding down.
I guess I fucked out any energy he
might have,
she thought. “I have to go now, Professor.”

“Yes–I’m getting very tired and I’m afraid the nurse will be by shortly with my medications.”

Hazel’s eyes narrowed. Blind, yes, and old, but he didn’t seem to be sick. “I hope you’re not ailing from anything serious, sir.”

“No, no. Blood pressure, arthritis—the inevitable afflictions of old men.” He seemed even to struggle smiling. “But, please, stop by again anytime. It’s been a pleasure...being in your company. You’re a wonderful, generous person.”

I guess that’s the urbane way of thanking a nymphomanic woman
for fucking you.
She got up. “I’ll come by again soon, I promise. Goodbye, sir.”

He raised a palsied hand to wave.

Hazel left, thinking,
Does he really believe all that? Don’t look
at the stone because it has POWER, it’ll get its HOOKS in you?
She closed the door and turned only to see whom she’d previously dismissed as a janitor pushing his cart right up to Professor Barlow’s.

“How nice,” he said. He was looking right at her breasts, where her nipples still stuck out noticeably against the fabric of her tight shirt.

“Pardon me?”

“How nice to see Professor Barlow with a visitor,” the man went on. He was fortyish, bulky, drab. He opened a drawer on the cart and withdrew a small paper cup. “His son comes around once in a blue moon but that’s about it.”

Hazel noticed now that what he pushed was not a cleaning cart but a med cart. Multiple drawers were loaded with pill bottles.

“So you’re the nurse for the residents?” she asked.

“Just the pharmacist.”

“I wasn’t aware that Professor Barlow had a blood pressure problem–”

The man was in the process of stealing another glance at Hazel’s distended nipples, but her question snagged him. “He doesn’t have high blood pressure. What gave you that idea?”

“He just told me.”

“Oh,” he said stretching the word. “I can understand that, I guess. He doesn’t want you to know. His blood pressure’s picture perfect. Wish mine was.”

Hazel was getting aggravated. “So what
is
wrong with him?”

He shook the little cup of pills. “Let me put it this way. These pills? They’re anti-psychotics.”

“Anti—”

“Professor Barlow is completely, utterly, one-hundred-percent insane.”

I wonder if Frank’s back yet?
she asked herself when she got back to the cabin. Something felt weird when she got out of the car and looked at the wooden building. The entire drive back had sapped her brain; between Thurnston Barlow’s bizarre remarks and Frank’s suddenly erratic behavior–not to mention Sonia’s mood swings, and the various other tidbits of either mystery or claptrap, Hazel had trouble thinking straight.

And now this...

The cabin
looked
empty, but why would she receive that impression?
I’ve had the car all day, so there’s nowhere Sonia could
go.
She tried to shirk off the disquieting impressions as she headed up the front walk with a take-out Chinese order and the bag containing the Shining Trapezohedron (she’d also bought a can of gem polish at a drug store near the restaurant) but then peered at something white just off the driveway.
A paper ball?
she wondered.

It was even more disquieting picking it up, for it lay only feet from the notorious out-house. Every time she saw the archaic structure, she shivered at the recollection of the “daymare” she’d had.
Find the stone...and you’ll be rewarded,
the slush-voiced, upside-down-faced rapist had told her.
Frank said the same thing in
the dream I had last night...
Hazel’s stomach tensed as the dream-bits hovered over her.

The object was indeed a sheet of paper rolled up into a ball, as if someone had dropped it there. The ball crinkled as she unrolled it. “Now what the hell is
this?
” she muttered.

Tight handwriting filled both sides. Hazel’s gaze seemed to warp as she examined it: a list of names, addresses, phone numbers, and Social Security numbers. Each entry was numbered, and the first on the list were—

1) Hannah Bowen, 610 LaFanu Wood Rd., Bosset’s Way, NH

03266 - 161-14-6557 - Ph: 646-262-0051

2) Emma Freeborn, 368 Bierce Spur, Bosset’s Way, NH, 03246 -

464-18-9571 - Ph: 646-202-4978

3) Nabby Gardner, 4285 Machen Creek Dr., Bosset’s Way, NH,
03246 - 410-42-2649 - Ph: 646-301-2476

The list went all the way to 33. Hazel noticed several familiar names, such as Ida Saltonstall, more than likely the barmaid at the tavern; and Nathaniel Peaslee, whom she met there as well. Richard Pickman, the dour artist and shop-owner, was on the list, too, and so were Walter Brown and Clayton Martin, the men whom she’d solicited for rape. . .

More weirdness.
Why would there be a handwritten list of thirty-three local residents on a piece of paper in the yard?
Something
Henry had written?
but, no, she’d seen enough of his characteristic penmanship to know he hadn’t been the scribe.

Frank,
the name dropped in her head like a bell-toll.

“Sonia, I’m back!” she called out when she barged into the cabin, “and I didn’t forget the Chinese...” She stood still, waiting for a reply. A quick glance showed her the den was unoccupied. “Sonia?”
Hazel stowed the take-out in the refrigerator, already knowing full well Sonia wasn’t in the cabin.
Frank must’ve finally come back, and they’re
out for a walk,
she hoped, yet her gut told her something altogether different. She hurried to the den, searched for a sample of Frank’s handwriting, but could only find Henry’s. For the hell of it, she turned on Henry Wilmarth’s computer—even knowing it had crashed for good—then sat down with a rag and began to clean the tar-patched crystal with the pungent cleaner she’d just bought.
Works like a charm...
She was surprised by how efficiently the solvent dissolved the tacky black muck. Within minutes, the scarlet crystal glimmered.

Wow...
She held it up. The black striations woven within the stone’s ruby-red seemed to move. Next, she took down the metal box and compared it side by side to the Trapezohedron. The glyph-like engravings on the box corresponded identically to many of the angles of the stone’s shimmering facets.
Whatever you do...DON’T look at it,
Professor Barlow’s warning resounded in her head. He wanted her to dispose of the crystal and destroy the box.

Hazel stared into the stone...and saw nothing.

Foolishness.

She felt tempted to gaze more deeply into it now, but to her surprise, Henry’s computer suddenly booted up. She put the box and the Shining Trapezohedron back into the bag, then turned her attention to the computer, immediately accessing the massive index of Henry’s notes. She clicked a random file toward the bottom—

Strange...

She was looking at a list of cities.
BIG cities,
she realized as her eyes scanned the list.

PRIMARY

1) Tokyo/Yokohama - 32.1 mil

2) New York Metro - 17.8 mil

3) Sao Paulo - 17.7 mil

And the list continued down–a long list. Hazel knew at once that the list comprised the most heavily populated cities on earth. The last three were—

31) Bangkok - 6.5 mil

32) Johannesburg - 6 mil

33) Chennai - 5.9 mil

—and then it ended. Hazel peered, confused.
Thirty-three
local residents on one list, and thirty-three major metropolises on
another list.
Why was the number thirty-three suddenly popping up everywhere?
More of the nightmare,
she reckoned, and then her stare lengthened.
Didn’t Frank say in the nightmare something about
sequences of thirty-three?