The Haunter of the Threshold (35 page)

All this mess was making her head spin. The very next file was a list of the same names on the list she’d found outside, though not alphabetical this time—

1) Nahum Gardner - Tokyo

2) Clayton Martin - New York

3) Ida Saltonstall - Sao Paulo

—and right on down, listing every name on the handwritten list.

Thirty-three names, thirty-three cities...

But what on earth could any of this
mean?
Hazel clicked on another random file and found a queue of jpegs. But the file-name was ST. PETERSBURG

Oh my God,
she thought when she opened the first one.

What was it? A great mass of shapes filled the sky, fronted by a city-scape just before dawn. The shapes were a merge of colors: brown, black, gray. Hazel wanted to believe they were storm clouds but if they were they were unlike any clouds she’d ever beheld. They seemed part-solid, part gaseous, and though she knew it was her imagination, she could swear she detected immense malformed
appendages
sprouting from the mass.
Henry took this just before the
storm hit last May,
she realized.

The next jpeg caused her to jolt. The ill-colored mass now seemed to be lowering on a city block, consuming high-rise condos and spiring office buildings...

And the next: All the stone blocks of a skyscraper had been caught in a freeze-frame, blowing out as if bombed and leaving only a steel skeleton.

The next one: Buildings concussing along a boulevard, while cars, mailboxes, debris, and
people
were blown down the street.

A final file showed a pile of human bodies massed against a wall: limbs contorted, faces frozen in an appalling death. Many of their arms and legs looked like the flesh had been corroded off, leaving curled bones that were somehow yellowed and rubbery...

Hazel closed the file down at once, her stomach clenching.
Holy
shit, that’s horrible...
The news had blamed the tragedy on multiple-vortex tornados—a rare fluke of nature—but, but—

Hazel knew what a tornado looked like. None had been visible in the jpegs.

She grew sicker and sicker as her mind played over every question. To clear her head, she went to the kitchen for a soda, then returned and found herself staring at a smaller desk along the back wall, where Sonia had set up her own laptop.

How could I have missed that!

Sonia’s laptop sat opened, its flowery screensaver roving, and taped to the keyboard was a quickly scrawled note.

HAZEL: FRANK CALLED JUST AFTER YOU LEFT, SAID HE WASN’T COMING BACK TILL TOMORROW. CALL ME THE MINUTE YOU GET IN. LOVE, SONIA

Oh, no, no, no—please. Tell me she didn’t—
She snapped open her cellphone and dialed.

“Hazel! Thank God,” Sonia answered, sounding winded.

“What happened?”

“The asshole made up more excuses about not coming back to the cabin,” Sonia seemed to temper her words. “So I just
have
to know. I don’t think he’s ever been to this goddamn Gray Cottage, if it even exists at all.”

“It does, at least according to Frank’s father. I saw a picture of it.”

“All right, fine, but that’s why I did this. If Frank’s not there, then I
know
he’s been lying to me all along—”

Hazel’s lips tightened. “Sonia, please tell me you’re
not
climbing up to the top of Whipple’s Peak.”

“I had no choice!” her friend squealed. “He’s been lying to me for days and I have to know why!”

“Sonia! You’re eight months pregnant! The exertion could make you have a miscarriage!”

“I’m being careful, I’m taking it slow—”

“Bullshit! Come down right now!”

A pause, heavy breathing. “I can’t, Hazel. I think I’m almost there. It’s cooler all of a sudden, and there’s a lot of mist...I’m going to sit down a minute and catch my breath...”

Hazel couldn’t have been more infuriated. “You’re overreacting again! I can’t believe you’d do something this crazy!”

A winded laugh. “Crazy, huh? You want to hear something
crazy?
Frank was in Henry’s cabin last night while we were both asleep.”

Hazel’s stalled. She remembered her dream:
I dreamt of Frank...in the cabin. Last night.

Impossible.

“Look at my laptop,” Sonia instructed. “I left it on deliberately so you could see.”

Hazel jiggled the mouse to find Sonia’s computer already logged online. But the screen name at the top wasn’t Sonia’s, it was Frank’s, and right now she was looking at the website for the U.S. State Department. “Sonia, what’s this all about? The State Department?”

“I was going stir-crazy with paranoia, Hazel. So I went onto Frank’s account–he doesn’t know I have his password.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Why do you think? I wanted to see if he was getting emails from another woman.”

“And?”

“He wasn’t but...look. Look at the URL trail.”

Hazel frowned, fulfilling the request. Several dozen URL’s shot down the screen, all from the State Department’s website. Hazel looked closer, then, and saw the page that had been repeatedly accessed was:

“Online applications for United States passports?”

Sonia was catching her breath now. “Yep. That’s what Frank was doing when he snuck in last night. I have
no idea
why he’d be requesting passport applications for dozens of local residents. Look at them.”

Hazel scrolled down to the first URL, found the application and saw whose name and info had been typed in.

“Hanna Bowen,” she said aloud. Then she clicked the second access: “Emma Freeborn.” And the third: “Nabby Gardner.”

“They’re all locals, Hazel. It’s crazy. I counted the total number and it was thirty-three. For God’s sake, why would Frank
do
that?”

Hazel’s stomach was already twisting. Those first three names were the first three on the handwritten list
and
the corresponding city-list. “Give me a second.” She checked the rest and inexplicably found, in alphabetical order, thirty-three Bosset’s Way residents. The names on the paper and the names on the online applications were identical.

“Are you there?” Sonia asked.

“Yeah. Listen, Sonia, there’s a whole bunch of weird things happening all at once. I found out more about the crystal, and I found out more from Frank’s father...”

“Thurnston? What did he say?”

She continued to stare at the handwritten list as she talked. “It’s too complicated to explain on the phone. But I’ve got some ideas.”

She could hear Sonia walking again—her break over. “Just stay where you’re at. You’re jeopardizing yourself and the baby by hiking all the way up Whipple’s Peak. Just sit down, take a nap, and I’ll be right up. I’m slim and in good shape, I’ll bet I could be up there in a few hours.”

“I wish you would come up, Hazel,” Sonia said, her tone growing thin.

“I will. Right now. But don’t exert yourself anymore.”

“Just keep in cell contact. I’ve come all this way, I can’t stop now.”

“Yes you can, damn it!”

“And—” A long pause stretched over the line. “Jesus...”

Hazel squeezed the phone to her ear till it hurt. “What?”

“This fog or mist or whatever...It’s really thick right now.” Her footsteps could be heard crunching. Then: They stopped.

“Oh my God...”

“Sonia, what is it!”

Sonia’s voice lowered to a hush. “I found it, Hazel. I found the Gray Cottage...”

“Don’t go in! Frank’s father said it’s about to collapse!”

“Doesn’t look like it, it looks solid.” Another pause. “I have to go in now, Hazel. If Frank really is in there, I have to confront him. And if he’s not...then I guess that means he’s been shacking up with some girl at a motel somewhere.” “Don’t go in the cottage!” Hazel kept yelling. “Wait till I get there!”

“No, no, Hazel. I have to go in. This has been making me sick.

I’ll call you back in a few minutes—”

“Don’t hang up! Don’t hang—”

The line severed.

Crazy!
she thought.
This whole thing’s crazy!
She was out the door in seconds, back in the car, and then speeding off onto the road which would take her to the bottom of Whipple’s Peak...

5

What happened?
Sonia thought. She lay in a muggy daze when she awoke. But...
Awoke?

What was she awakening
from?

She lay on a cold stone floor. Above her stretched a small ceiling that, like the walls, was composed of stone. She could remember nothing until...

The cottage. The Gray Cottage.
She couldn’t move. Memories filtered back in the tiniest trickles.
I was pissed at Frank so I hiked up
Whipple’s Peak and—and...I found the cottage, didn’t I? I’d been
talking to Hazel on the cell, and...

Nothing. Darkness.

Think!
she ordered herself.

She was too disoriented. Nothing came back to her in sequence. A door...that opened into thin air. Scarlet heat. Strange words. Two eyeballs on the stone floor. Chuckling that was somehow like black slop. A mind-boggling orgasm. A sucking sound.

Her heart thudded in her chest.

After a few more groggy minutes, Sonia was able to incline herself up on her elbows. Immediately, she burst into a round of screams.

She saw that she lay there naked, but that’s not why she was screaming.

Naked, yes, but she also saw quite easily that she was no longer pregnant.

And then—
then—
she remembered everything:

Sonia hangs up with Hazel just as she sees the Gray Cottage emerge from rising smears of pale mist. It’s a strange building, indeed. Stone block walls, their seams tinged dark with fungus and mildew; an uneven slate roof over which pour festoons of ivy; narrow, iron framed windows whose glass is so dingy with age that its nearly black. But—

No front door.

She walks a circuit around the cottage, first the south wall, then the east, then the north, then—

Sonia shouts aloud when she sees that the building’s westerly wall has been built flush against a sheer cliff. Had she taken one more step—

Her hand comes up to her chest.

—she would’ve fallen a half-mile straight down.

But who would build such an odd structure? And why on earth would Henry have chosen it as a place to work?

These things don’t matter, though, for Sonia is intent only on one thing: finding Frank.

The prick. He’s probably got a woman in there with him right
now, a YOUNG woman, a freshman probably. Making a monkey of
me while I carry around his kid...

She begins to check the windows.
A house with no door. It’s
madness.
All the windows are maddeningly locked—

Yes!

—save for one.

It creaks open, and a bewildering fresh-meat smell sifts out.
For
shit’s sake,
she thinks, frustrated.
Can I even do this?
She gets one leg up and over, the window’s embrasure pressing her crotch. A grunt, then a deep breath, and she manages to shimmy herself through, the narrow frame barely clearing her gravid belly.
Christ!
But now...she’s inside.

Several candles light the stone-walled room. There’s no reason to call out for Frank for she instantly sees that the room—the entire cottage—is unoccupied. Her fury rises. It’s not just unoccupied, it’s
empty.
No furniture, no pictures, no lamps, no adornments of any kind. And furthermore—

No evidence of the additional papers, documents, and books regarding Henry’s “research.” In fact, there’s not a single book in the place, not a file cabinet nor folder. Nothing. Except...