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

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