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

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.”

—

The witch-house shook.  The inside was starting to look like a slow, roiling miasma.  It shifted again, came together, and wavered a second time.  The electricity was shorting out, the zapping and currents losing charge.

“What’s happening?” Millie asked.

Nyarlathotep looked at her.  “It begins.”

“What?”

“The cycle returneth.  It began long ago.  Millenia.  It’s happened before.  It was written it would happen again.”  He held up the Elder Scrolls.  “In here.”

“What?”

Armitage looked at the colors, the wavering electricity sparking here and there.  It moved and came together like melting liquid, a strange gale rearranging everything in various sequences.  Folding.  Unfolding.  Pulsing.  Rhythm.  It looked like it was about to form some magnificent creation or blow up entirely.  They stood on the edge of a great, cosmic, cataclysmic battle.

“What are you talking about?” Millie asked.

“The war,” Nyarlathotep said.  “The Outer Gods were once banished to the farthest reaches of time and space.  They were no longer allowed to enter.  But there is a second war.  A return of the cycle.  That is what we’re seeing.  That’s what’s here now.  Yog-Sothoth, The Lurker at the Threshold, is through.  He is at the threshold no more.”

“What can we do?”

“We must wait.”

“Isn’t Dev helping?  Hasn’t he reached the Elder Gods yet?”

“He has not.”

“Well, what’s he doing?”

“Getting drunk,” Nyarlathotep said.

Armitage groaned.

“We’re doomed,” Millie said.

—

Newt reached the door of the farmhouse.  It was a crooked thing, barely held on by rusty hinges and loose screws.  The brightness was blinding when he reached it.  He shielded his eyes when he pulled the door open.  The glow was like a strange, radioactive nightmare, a blinding incandescence.  He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them slowly because of the light.  He could barely see a thing.  The boards, the way the extension had been put together looked like it had been constructed by a child.  There was no particular order or symmetry, just boards nailed in place in whatever fashion was necessary.  A growling, hissing intake of air was coming from inside.

“Be still!” a deep, throaty voice said.  “Meet your master!

Amelia screamed.

Newt pulled his arm away and squinted against the light.  He could barely see two figures to his right at the near side of the add-on.  The spheres were everywhere.  He had never seen anything like it.  He hoped he never would.  They were filling the addition of the house, all shapes and sizes, making what looked like an amorphous body on the ground.  He couldn’t put a name to it.  It was too big. The spheres branched out in all directions, connected in some way that made a human shape.

Amelia was being held down by a creature with cloven feet, eyes embedded in its thighs, horns like a satyr.  The addition had been built for Yog-Sothoth, to house and hide the behemoth within.  Yog-Sothoth was here.  He was in Innsport.  He was the past, present, and future.  He was omnipresent.  Here, in the countryside, in the town of Dunwich, it was easy to see his motivation: to make another thing with cloven feet.

Amelia noticed Newt the second he opened the door.

“Neeewt!  Oh, thank God!  Help meeee!” 

She looked relieved and terrified at the same time.  The creature holding her down, Wilbur Whateley, in his original form, hissed and fought.  The glowing spheres began to writhe.

“Get off me, you brute!” she cried.  She elbowed the thing behind her in the throat.

Wilbur made a gagging sound, fell back, and clutched his neck.

Newt ran, grabbed his wife, and held her close, keeping her away from the glowing orbs.

“Are you okay?” he asked.  “That’s a stupid question?”

“It’s not a stupid question,” she said, then sobbed into his chest.

The door burst open.  Mr. Kalabraise bolted inside.  Capshaw appeared seconds later.

Wilbur Whateley widened his eyes at the sight of the dog.  He held his arms out, as if trying to ward her off.  Mr. Kalabraise launched into the air, latched onto Wilbur’s throat with her jaws, and refused to let go.  She growled and bit down.  Wilbur held the dog with both hands, fell backwards, and screamed.

Duke appeared in the doorway, laboring for breath, holding onto the frame.  The spheres were glowing brighter and trembling.  A diabolical shriek came from under the earth.

“We’d better get out of here,” Duke said.

—

Macky wasn’t sure what to expect when Ubba-Sathla appeared.  The thing was a mass of organisms without limbs or eyes.  It could transform, and it managed, in some bewildering fashion, to represent a human form.  Macky thought the creature did it for his sake, but it still made him uneasy.

Or maybe it was the wine, the warping, bubbling reality that expanded and shrunk at the same time.  He was seeing things he couldn’t label as