The Lurker at the Threshold : A Horror Mystery by Brandon Berntson (books under 200 pages .txt) 📗

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 other’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