The Lurker at the Threshold : A Horror Mystery

by Brandon Berntson

  It was Kadath—a dreamscape developed by a writer and his Mythos.

  If this was the home of the Elder Gods, he had to move fast.

  But what to do?

  He stood still and looked around. Large, rock-like formations were on the hill to his right. To his left, the land descended into a wide plain with a canal running through it. He could hear Mr. Kalabraise barking in a nearby dimension, as though next door. He thought he could hear Millie, Armitage, and Nyarlathotep arguing. The sounds were muted over the distance, but it was audible. Beyond all this was a city under siege—Cthulhu rising from the deep.

  He surveyed his clothes and body.

  “No broken bones,” he said. “Haven’t dirtied my suit, except for this darn tear on my pants. Might be the first time ever I came away somewhat clean. My hat is still in good shape. A bit sweaty, but that’s to be expected under the circumstances. There’s nothing that can be done except to take it to the cleaners. We’ll worry about that later. What’s a private dick to do, you might ask? That is the question.”

  There was no answer. He didn’t expect one. When dealing with cosmic entities of horror from other dimensions, you had to improvise. Considering the circumstances, he was doing quite well. Or so he told himself

  “Hellooooo!” he shouted into the landscape, cupping his hands over his mouth. “Yo! Anybody home? Elder Gods! Protectors of the Realm! Anyone! Helllooooo!”

  Nothing. It was just as well. Maybe he ran into the wrong portal, or gate, or dimension, or whatever it was. He looked down and realized he’d forgotten to ask Nyarlathotep for the Elder Scrolls. That could be a problem.

  “Rash, Dev,” he said. “Very rash.” He put his hands on his hips. “It might be possible I didn’t plan this very well.”

  He surveyed the land again.

  “Hey, Millie!” he called. “Can you hear me!? Millie! Yo! Armitage! Henry! Capshaw! Nyar-baby!”

  Nothing. Just the void. Silence. His own voice coming back in a strange, reverberating manner, different than an echo.

  Movement caught his eye from over the hillside to his right. A mass of strange, bumbling creatures with long arms, and making a loud commotion, was coming straight toward him.

  —

  “Are you going to do anything, or are you just going to stand there?” Millie asked, face red with anger.

  “Things are just beginning to get interesting,” Nyarlathotep said. “There’s not a whole lot one can do. Stand back and watch.”

  “You’re useless,” Millie said.

  “Help to mortals, I’ve never been, nor will I be. I pointed you in the right direction. I gave you a chance.”

  “Maybe some divine intervention to save Duke and Newt,” Millie pleaded. “To save Mr. Kalabraise and Dev.”

  “It’s touching, the bond you have.”

  “If the alternative is to walk in lonely silence with an inflated sense of self-importance, I’ll take the friends.”

  Nyarlathotep laughed.

  “Maybe we should pray,” Armitage said.

  “Good idea,” Millie said.

  “Speaking of useless,” Nyarlathotep said.

  —

  Duke wasn’t sure what he saw was real. It couldn’t be. How was it possible? There was the convenient excuse that he was dreaming. That’s what he wanted to believe.

  He saw Newt running toward the farmhouse at a dead run. A cocker spaniel bolted after him, long ears blowing back from her head.

  “Are you okay?”

  The voice came from behind him. Duke couldn’t see the owner of the voice because he was still face first on the ground.

  He lifted himself onto his hands and feet. A hand appeared in front of him, an older man wearing a bowler hat.

  “You must be Duke,” the man said. “I’m Creighton Capshaw, the museum curator. I’ve been with Macky, Millie, and Dr. Armitage all night.”

  Duke grabbed the man’s hand, and Capshaw helped him to his feet.

  “Dr. Armitage?” Duke said.

  “It’s a long story. But Macky has filled us in on some of it.”

  “What on earth are you doing here?” Duke said, brushing off his pants.

  “Trying to save Millie’s dog,” Capshaw said, who was slightly out of breath from running. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to save Newt,” Duke said.

  Capshaw looked toward Newt. “What’s he doing?”

  “Trying to save Amelia,” Duke said. “Come on!”

  —

  “Left alone. Big, scary place. We’re Weevles. No druthers. No surrogate mothers. Hungry. Make stew. Make bread. Make pillow for big head.”

  The thing holding onto his leg was a pink-skinned creature with large black eyes and a snout like a dog. It had a jumble of layered, dangerous-looking teeth. It looked, in some fashion, as if it had been turned inside out, a dog-like dinosaur. Macky realized that was exactly what it was.

  It was a hissing, laughing, rhyming creature. Its spine protruded from its back. It had a long tail and moved about on four legs, or two, depending on its preference. Some waddled. Some walked on all fours. It had extraordinarily long arms, scales, or something similar that shifted with the landscape. They were like chameleons. A bone-hard armor of some kind made their skin, which looked soft and tender but was like stone when Macky touched it.

  He’d been running from them when he tripped over a rock, and the creatures had caught up with, pawing and fanning at his hat and clothes. They were going to roast him, cook him, put an apple in his mouth, and turn him slowly over a pit of coals. The way they eye-balled him bordered on perversion. The grins on their faces were unnerving.

  “Come. Come. We shows you. We knows you. You here. Special time of year. See fit. Jingle-jangles in the jangle-pit.”

  “Your knack for rhyme exceeds you,” Macky said. “Or does it precede you? Doesn’t matter, either way. Where are we going?”

  “First you wait. Then you see. We get the lemur from the lemur-nut tree!”

  They giggled. They cackled. They roared with delight. It was extraordinary to watch. There must’ve been twenty or thirty of them altogether.

  “I hope that’s not what we’re having for dinner,” Macky said.

  “Too late now! Kung-pow-wow! Savor seasoning make you go bow-wow!”

  “If that’s the way it’s gotta be, that’s the way it’s gotta be. What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Oh-lee-Oh!”

  “Oreo? Like the cookie?”

  “Oh-lee-Oh!”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Icee. Dicey. Chop up stew, made of micey.”

  “I might let you have that one on your own. Do you speak Spanish?”

  “Si,”

  “What else?”

  “No else. Just si!”

  “I see,” Macky said.

  “Come! Come!” The thing pulled his arm, tugging him along while the other creatures followed. “Come! We make game of it! Call it fiddlestick. Yog-Sothoth hates his young. Wants another. Got no mother. Fickle gods. Pickle gods. Make me throw up slimy frog!” The thing cackled like mad, and the others joined in.

  “You should go into showbusiness,” Macky said, holding onto Oh-lee-Oh’s hand.

  “Too drafty. No privacy. Bright lights hurt eyes. Fame and fortune no good here.”

  “I can see the logic in that,” Macky said.

  They walked down the hill, toward a rock face. The trees were growing taller, thicker with strange, alien, purple pods. A cave mouth was in the side of the rock, disappearing into the darkness. They went inside. Small kilns burned with coals to light the dark within. Something was cooking. Surprisingly, it smelled delicious.

  The other creatures moved around getting into all sorts of mischief with one another, pulling pranks, laughing, tugging, tripping each other up, calling each other names, and all sorts of shenanigans. They were jumping over one another, leapfrogging, then tripping each other up, laughing, taking cups of some beverage and pouring it over each o
ther’s heads like small monster children.

  “Look, this is all very flattering and kind,” Macky said. “But I’m not sure I have time for it. I really need to get going. I need to find the Elder Gods. Do you know how to contact them?”

  They ignored him, including Oh-lee-Oh. They sat him down on the floor in front of a large, wooden table. There were no benches or chairs. The table was low, but it was full of bread and meats and all kinds of savory dishes.

  “Si. Si. We take you to them. First eat. Stinky feet. Get us all altogether, go tweet-tweet. Don’t say whipple-wind? Try to remember when. You come back then. Gumshoe. Hemshoe. Tar and feather. On the horizon, very bad weather.”

  “Huh?”

  “We take you. No worry. Eat first. Get you fed. Stop living, stupid head. Live in ditch. Call me Mitch. Take you to Ubba-Satha. Invoke powers. He read from Elder Scrolls. You see who you want to see. They see you. Then you wish you never came. All the same.”

  —

  “Do you see what I see?”

  “It’s Halloween, not Christmas,” Jerry said.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “It’s not important. Look, this is a mess. I need you to try to calm these people down. This is bedlam. Pandemonium. Chaos. Try to get some order in here, will you? Earn your badge.”

  The precinct was an uproar. The denizens of the city came together to share in the chaos that was turning Innsport into a monster mash. Jerry liked that. Not the monster mash—the diversity. He liked hearing about their backgrounds and cultures. It made you see the world differently.

  The rookie, though, Brian McTavish, was making things worse. He was new on the beat. That was fine. It was normal to be green at the start, especially for a while, but the kid had frozen solid. Ice cold. Jerry couldn’t blame him. This wasn’t picking up prostitutes, petty theft, or finding a dead body in the river. This wasn’t . . . normal. There were giant monsters roaming the city, portals opening and closing, a thick fog getting thicker, a monster on the horizon, rats, bats, and every other kind of horror. The monster looked like it was a hundred-stories high—far away, but visible behind the skyscrapers.

  The kid, though, holy jeez! He was making life difficult, asking stupid questions, getting in Jerry’s way, but he wasn’t doing anything. The people in the precinct were gesticulating, crying, in agony, talking to other officers, who were trying to console them, while Innsport was turning into a dinner plate for monsters to feed upon.

  The phones were ringing. It was non-stop. The commotion was enough to drive you crazy! It was like retail in Macy’s on Christmas Eve. Only worse. Officers were out in patrol cars trying to instill order. The sirens were a constant like the phones: police cruisers, ambulances, fire trucks. Every one they could spare. Stacked, gridlock, cars here and there, taxi cabs, trains, buses. All the kid could do was stand there, dumbfounded, awestruck, staring out the windows.

  Jerry hadn’t thought about the winged creatures flying here and there, buzzing like giant wasps, carrying people off to who knew what, where, or when. Bats whirled like tornadoes. Rats, in waves, came up from the sewers. Hounds bayed. The deafening sound of insects grew, a tarry stench congested the air, putrefying his senses.

  People screamed, running through the streets. Monsters that looked like kangaroo things with fangs snatched people and took bites out of them. Giant spiders clung to the sides of buildings, spinning webs that blended with the fog.

  The rookie stood and stared with slack-jawed stupidity as every abominable, irrevocable horror of hybrid madness came to life and terrorized the city.

  Cars crashed, twisting, grinding, metal against metal. Glass shattered. Every deputy, officer, detective, and cadet was on the street. But it was useless. The Captain was on vacation with the mayor. Jerry tried to call earlier, but he hadn’t gotten through. He’d dialed the number for the National Guard, Army, Marines, the President of the United States, but the phones were in the same dimensional horror. Ghostly voices sounded on the line. Demonic, witch-like chuckles filled his ear. He’d stared at the phone for a second, then put it down.

  Car horns honked. Dogs barked. Cats screeched. The flutter of ten-thousand wings. The squeaking of a million rats.

  But the kid! Oh, my goodness, he had to get the kid to snap out of it! He put his hand on the boy’s chest, trying to tell him it was all right.

  “It’d not as much of a cosmic nightmare as it looks,” he told McTavish. “This kind of thing is starting to become the norm around here. You have to roll with it.”

  Jerry chuckled. He didn’t know how that was possible, but it was. He was chuckling, similar to the madness he’d felt earlier when the woman had mentioned the bats. The next thing he knew, he was doubling over with laughter. The kid was looking at him like he’d gone insane. Maybe he had. How else did you deal with this kind of thing? The whole thing was out of control. Considering the circumstances, he was doing pretty well.

  “Did you hear that?” he asked the rookie.

  “What?” the kid said. He had acne on his face, gleaming, prepubescent baby fat with full red lips, pimples, and wide-staring eyes.

  A siren sort of sound, high and loud, sounded over the ruckus—the trumpet of a great beast. It echoed over the city in the direction of . . .

  “There. Did you hear that?”

  The kid nodded. He turned a shade paler. Jerry didn’t know how that was possible.

  The ground shifted. Jerry lost his footing and stumbled into the kid. The kid held him up. The earth rumbled, like a minor earthquake. It reverberated in the precinct and made everyone stop and turn toward the windows.

  The ground trembled again.

  The siren call sounded.

  Jerry knew what it was—the call of the leviathan . . .

  The kid was shaking. His palms were moist with sweat. He was leaving puddles on the floor. His mouth hung open, making him look like a big, dumb robot. Jerry felt sorry for him.

  He went to the door and opened it. He stepped outside. The sounds intensified: screaming, wailing, the flutter of wings, cyclones of bats, screeching squeak of rats, an insect cadence growing louder and louder by the second . . . and the thing on the horizon.

  Another crash sounded down the block. Bats by the thousands filled the foggy night. The October moon was visible. Rats filled the gutters, ran along the sidewalk. A giant spider clung to the building across the street. Orbs were glowing everywhere, giant spheres pulsing with greenish-blue light.

  The gateway opened wider in the sky. Something much like the spheres was halfway out and halfway on the other side. Another tear opened, revealing a distant part of the universe. The odor was so vile and toxic it brought tears to his eyes. The hound bayed from across the city. The colossal giant made of transparent spheres was coming through, entering the third dimension. The thing was so massive, Jerry couldn’t see its entirety. There was no suitable name to define it.

  The siren sound wasn’t coming from the thing in the sky. It was coming from the creature a mile up the road to the north. It was heading into downtown Innsport, a gargantuan horror twice the size of the skyscrapers. Its face was fixed, eyes intent on murder and destruction, face made of a dozen monstrous, wavering tentacles.

  The rookie began to scream.

  —

  “Come back every day. Wanna stay. Good stew. Miss folk like you. No one to talk to. Have Ubba-Satha. He no friend. Here you stay. Eat lunch time sandwich. Make grade-A apples out of pumpkin patch. Square meals. Two-fold. One for each hand. This land for you. Make dreams come true. Pearly gate. Decided fate. Market expenses too costly in city. Free meals every day. Have friend. Much talk. Much laughter. I say truth. Have rotten tooth.”

  Macky thought Oh-lee-Oh was going to continue his rant, but he was done—a monologue that once it started seemed to have no end.

  “Look, I appreciate this,” Macky said. “The meal was . . . edible. But I’m pressed for time. You know what I mean? I’m flattered you want to keep me around. You guys make
great hosts. I mean that. And the meal was . . . fine enough for Mr. Kalabraise, I suppose, but I’m afraid it might not be agreeing with me.” Macky belched and held his stomach. “Who’s this Ubba-guntha-soontha you keep talking about? Can I speak to him?”

  “You sit still,” Oh-lee-Oh said. “Time will tell. All is well. Ride a bus, ain’t no rush. Back for supper, Gus. Dessert, too. Careful, you.”

  “That sounds like a song,” Macky said.

  The room was well-lit with the kilns and several torches. It was warm. In the cave, the warped reality of another dimension made him wonder if this place was real or imaginary. A bubbling, wavering, expanding, shrinking bending of the air was happening around him, like being in a place that hadn’t gained physicality yet. It was hard to wrap his mind around.

  “Eat more meat. Have slab of bread. Drink more wine. Make dizzy in the head.”

  “Did you say wine?” Macky asked. “Not usually my drink of choice. How strong is it?”

  One of the creatures, Fie-en-doom, handed him a short cup that had collapsed in the kiln. It might’ve been a nice piece of pottery before then, but it was wrinkled and short, like a Shar-Pei.

  “Very strong,” Fie-en-doom said. “Knock you back. Hit the sack. You give in. Stomach churn. Fever burn. Pick you back up. More in cup!”

  “I’m sold,” Macky said.

  He drank. Almost instantly, his fingers and toes began to tingle. It was a sensation he’d never felt before. He tried to stand up, but one of the creatures put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down. He looked around. Everything separated. The creatures multiplied, a vivid array of trails. He looked in the cup, saw his own lazy-eyed reflection staring back at him, and watched his face split in two. Then three and four.

  “What’s in this?” he asked. “Peyote?”

  “Crackerjack snack. Take one drink. Never come back. Now you fit to see Ubba-Satha and Elder Gods. They speak through drink. Invoke star of Glyu-vhu. Where they from. Help see them. They see you.”