The Haunter of the Threshold (5 page)

“Hazel, my child,” came a soft, echoic voice.

It had come from above. Squinting, she looked up into the loft-platforms past the network of rafters. From the lower lofts, squashed, indescribable faces peered down, fang-mouthed, snake-tongued, and gibbering in delight at what had been done to her.
Demons,
she thought, because some of them had horns in their heads.

“Hazel, I adjure you...”

It was from the highest loft that the clement voice issued, and it was not the face of a demon she saw speaking to her. It was a long-haired, bearded man whose eyes radiated a strange and pristine
peace.

“Hazel, child of God. Come back. I adjure you.”

Save me,
she thought and reached up to him, but as she did so, the cross hanging about her neck slipped off her head and fell to the dirt below.

Hazel woke up as if at a pistol shot, and after a moment of shifting awareness, she covered her face with her hands and thought,
Sick,
sick, sick...

Then she jerked up in bed and shuddered.

“I’m sick,” she whispered aloud, and when she did so she glimpsed her reflection in the mirror above the dresser and thought of
The Scream
by Edvard Munch.
If any other woman had a dream
like that, they’d throw up,
she thought.
But me? I’m turned on like
a light.
It was bleak times like this that Hazel realized no amount of rationalization or liberal shrink-talk could sway the truth. Last night when she’d snidely told Ashton that she wasn’t sick, just highly sexualized, she knew she was lying. She was obsessed—
titillated
—by fantasies of defilement, debasement, and all manner of rape.
It’s
not right. It’s all I think about...

Well, not quite
all.

I think about Sonia, too. A lot.
And these thoughts carried with them no taint of the rough and seamy fantasies that so occupied her id. Somehow, Sonia was the floodgate. Hazel’s secret love for the older woman burned so acutely that her subconscious punished her in the knowledge that that love could never be returned. Her love for Sonia Heald couldn’t have been more crystalline, nor more beautiful...but then the floodgates opened like a sewer line piped directly into the midst of her soul.
If I can’t have Sonia, then fate force-feeds me filth,
she knew.

Why?

She deliberately blanked her mind as she readied herself, then dressed in shorts, a tank top, and fluorescent-orange flipflops. This was the only time of the year when such flimsy apparel was a comfortable bet in New England. Her Salvador Dali clock—a melting dial—read two minutes to seven in the morning. She grabbed her bags and rushed out of the off-campus apartment; she’d scarcely set foot in the parking lot when Sonia beeped and pulled up in her brand-new silver Prius.

“Hi, Hazel,” said the pretty, near-black-haired woman in the driver’s window. “You’re right on time, as always.”

I love you,
Hazel thought, staring with her bags hanging off her arms. She could’ve wept.

“Get out,” Hazel directed. “Let me drive.”

“Oh, I can drive—”

“You should just
relax
and enjoy the scenery. The doctor told you to relax.” Hazel threw her bags in the back, then opened the driver’s door.

“Hazel, you don’t need to pamper me. I’m perfectly capable of driving–”

Hazel giggled. “You’ll be uncomfortable. Come on, look. Your stomach barely fits behind the wheel.”

Sonia looked down at her gravidity, then raised her brows. Only an inch of space existed between the bottom of the wheel and her belly. “Well...”

“Women who’re nine months pregnant shouldn’t be driving on six-hour road trips.”

“I’m
eight
months pregnant, Hazel, and it’s only a
three-
hour drive.”

“Come on. Out.”

Sonia, with more than a little difficulty, swiveled her legs out of the footwell, then let Hazel take her hand and help her to her feet.
Ashton
says I’m more like a guy visually,
Hazel mused.
And I guess he’s right.
When Sonia leaned over to rise, her thinly bra’d breasts slid half out of the v-cut of her summer dress. Hazel’s eyes targeted the fleshy, white valley without forethought. She wanted to plunge her face into the warm abundance of mammarian flesh. She wanted to lick the valley...

“Up you go,” she said when Sonia got fully to her feet.

Sonia stood five-eight—six inches taller than Hazel—and impeccably postured for a woman late in term. Even before she’d become pregnant, she’d always been robust-bodied, not overweight: exorbitant curves; wide hips; strong, well-toned legs; and a high, full bosom. A “brick shit-house” men would call her, whereas they called Hazel a “spinner.”
Luxurious
was the word Hazel would use to best describe her friend’s physique. Even in her pregnancy, she’d not gained undue weight. The mere sight of Sonia’s body made Hazel want to melt.
I’m like a teenaged boy looking at a centerfold of Pam Anderson.

The angles of Sonia’s face would make a model jealous, and there was something about her creamy, white-white skin that just seemed flawless. It glowed in the healthiest luster, while the thick, straight hair put a black frame around the beaming face.

Ice-blue eyes blinked over a beaming smile. “What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?” Hazel snapped out of it. “Nothing, I was...”

A scolding half-smile. “Never mind! Just help me in.”

Hazel knew that
Sonia
knew...

Once they were belted in, Hazel got on the road, happy to be taking a break from the college and the hot summer session.

“It’s sweet of you to drive,” Sonia said. “But when you get tired, just say so, and I’ll take over.”

“Forget it.” The university’s main gate shrank in the rearview. “This’ll be a lot of fun. I
need
a long drive to clear my head.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Sure. I just graded forty term papers on the elements of Naturalism in Henrik Ibsen’s
The Master-Builder.
”

“You’re the one who wants to be an English professor.
The Wild
Duck’s
better, anyway.” Sonia eyed her. “But that’s not
really
what you want to clear your head of. Hazel, I can always tell.”

I’ll bet you can.
“Guy Stuff, then. Ashton thinks I’m a perv. It’s starting to bother me.”

“Like they say, ‘Can’t live with ‘em, can’t put ‘em out with the garbage.’ If he truly loves you, he’ll view your kinkiness not as perversity but as sexual diversity, as
uniqueness
.”

But it IS perversity,
Hazel thought, remembering the noxious yet ecstatic dream. “I don’t really want him to love me, anyway. He’ll wind up getting hurt, and I’d feel bad about that.”

“Ah, someone else on the horizon, then...”

Hazel remained silent for a long pause. “I just want to forget about men during this trip. Pretend they don’t exist.”

“That might not be too easy. Frank’ll be joining us tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? I thought he was there now.”

“Not at the cabin. He’s out camping and hiking.”

Hazel tried not to let the sudden inner-exhilaration show.
If he
won’t be there till tomorrow...then Sonia and I’ll be alone together
tonight.
“I haven’t camped since Girl Scouts—hated it.”

“Hazel!” Sonia squealed. “
You
were a Girl Scout?”

“Well, yeah.”

“I just can’t picture that...”

Yeah, but I can picture you. In bed. With me,
Hazel teased herself with the thought.
Just like last December...”
And I was a
terrible
Girl Scout too.”

Sonia grinned. “In what way?”

“I...,” but then Hazel caught herself.
I can’t possibly tell her that.
“Smoking cigarettes and stuff,” she lied. “Smuggling dirty romance novels.” In truth, though, at twelve years old, Hazel had seduced several of the other girls. She’d shown them how to masturbate, she’d demonstrated cunnilingus.
My God, if I’d been caught...If
they’d told my father...
She shivered.

“I don’t know why,” Sonia remarked. Breeze from the window tossed her perfect black hair around, “but I was trying to think of that word the other day, after the three-fifteen class. You’d already left—”

“What word?”

“The word that you always mention, that the counselor applied to you. Not fetishism, but...”

“Paraphilia,” Hazel informed. “The direction of sexual interest towards objects, non-coital sex acts, or sexual stimulation under unconventional circumstances. It’s a bit more complex than fetishism; it’s more compulsive, or so they say. But ‘non-obstructive paraphilia’ is what I have, so it’s not considered clinical and therefore not a
syndrome
that requires therapy.”

“Non-obstructive?” Sonia questioned.

“It’s like the difference between someone who drinks too much socially and a clinical alcoholic. An alcoholic is controlled by booze. It
obstructs
his ability to function at work and maintain an operable social and domestic life. Eventually the alcohol addiction costs him his job, family, friends, finances, and all that. But in non-obstructive paraphilia, people still function successfully. That’s me,” but even as Hazel rendered the explanation she knew she was being less than truthful. She functioned “normally,” and was successful in her assistant teaching post, but deep-down her obsessions periodically boiled over into something nearly aberrant. She
knew
this. It even got to the point that she was so uncomfortable and ashamed of some of her obsessions that she eventually downplayed them to the short-lived therapist last year.
I was too afraid she’d give me a clinical
diagnosis...

“But, Sonia, why on earth would you be thinking of that?”

Sonia’s smile constricted like someone admitting to something they weren’t too proud of. “But you said paraphilia is rare among women?”

“Yeah, very rare–believe me, I’ve read as much about it as most shrinks. Paraphilia affects ninety-five percent men, and five percent women.” Hazel shot a reproving frown. “Now answer my question.”

Sonia sighed. “Well I’ve got one too, then, that’s all I meant.”

The comment strangely sped Hazel’s heart. “What?”

“I don’t want to say!”

“Bullshit!” Hazel raised her voice. “I’ve told you all my groaty stuff! That’s not fair!”

“It’s just a...visual thing, well...sort of.”

“Sonia, if you don’t tell me, I’m gonna pull over and leave you on the road, pregnant or not!”

“All right...” the older woman conceded. “You know that new transfer student from Marquette—our five-fifteen, Tuesday, Thursday? George something.”

“George Cucker,” Hazel said. “I guess he’s okay looking. What, you have fantasies about
him?
”

“There’s something about his build and face, I guess,” Sonia admitted, “but the other day before he left class, he asked me something about
Gatsby
—God, I hate that book, Fitzgerald was so overrated—but after he left, I had the weirdest idea: I fantasized that I was in bed with him, and while he was asleep, I was feeling him up and, well, jerking him off. All while he was asleep.”

Hazel laughed.

“But that doesn’t qualify as a paraphilia, does it?”

“Oh, yes it does,” Hazel assured. “It’s called somnophilia.”

“You’re kidding me. There’s a
term
for it?”

“Sure. You wouldn’t believe some of the paraphilic labels. Klismaphilia: sexual arousal from receiving an enema.”

“No way! There are people like that?”

“Yep. Oh, and here’s a keeper: Agalmatophilia, sexual attraction to statues or mannequins.”

Sonia squealed.

“But I don’t get the George Cucker thing,” Hazel went on. “He’s kind of a dolt, isn’t he?”

“I guess, but he had how do I say this without sounding crude?”

“Just say it!” Hazel cracked.

“He must be endowed because he had a really big crotch-bulge.”