The Haunter of the Threshold by Unknown Read Free Book Online

eyes through a pause. “Oh, of course not. You’re too young.”
    “I guess so.” Hazel put the car on cruise-control. Deep down she brimmed with an obscure expiation. See, I’m not the only one with sexual kinks. Even Sonia’s got one...
    Or was this simply more rationalization?
    It summoned every effort not to take side-glances at Sonia, who sat contentedly in the passenger seat, reading over school notes. Her sturdy legs crossed at the ankles, the heavy but firm bosom jiggling minutely atop the life-filled belly. Hazel’s lip trembled in the hijacking fantasy: they stood together, nude, caressing each other, their hands exploring every inch of the other’s body. Hazel dribbled baby oil into her hands, then adoringly glazed Sonia’s skin with it, gently kneading the swollen breasts, smoothing the oil over the even more swollen abdomen, then the arms, legs, and back, until Sonia shined like a beautiful human gem...
    “Are you day-dreaming?” Sonia asked with some alarm. Hazel’s muse had distracted her to the extent that the tires crossed the shoulder’s outer line. She righted it at once, thinking, Pay attention! “Sorry. I’m just happy to—” she wanted to say how happy she was to be with Sonia, but that wouldn’t do. “I’m happy to be getting out of town. I still have papers to grade from our classics class, but it’ll just be so nice to do it in a log cabin in the middle of the woods instead of my dreary little apartment.”
    “Couldn’t agree more,” Sonia said. “It’s not a log cabin, though. It’s called a slant cabin. Frank showed me pictures; it looks pretty cool–very Henry David Thoreau, so English junkies like us will appreciate it more. And the water supply comes from a real underground spring.”
    “Sounds pretty rustic.” Hazel’s ponderings lengthened. “There is electricity, isn’t there?”
    “Oh, sure. It’s not total boondocks.”
    “What compelled Frank to rent this particular cabin just for a mid-summer break?”
    “Nothing,” Sonia said. “The cabin is owned by Professor Henry Wilmarth. I told you he and Frank were colleagues, right?”
    Professor Henry... Hazel’s eyes held on the road.
    “Or I should say, the cabin was owned by him,” Sonia corrected.
    “I remember talking to him a few times. The man who committed suicide a few days ago,” Hazel droned.
    “Last Saturday night to be exact. I’m sure you’ve seen stuff about him on the news since last May.”
    The man who walked out of ground-zero of the Mother’s Day Storm. “This is too much of a coincidence, Sonia. Just last night, when they said on the news his official cause of death was suicide, Ashton couldn’t believe it when I told him where we were going. We thought it was just a fluke that his place of death was in the same vicinity to where you and I were going.”
    Sonia tossed her head. “I didn’t think it necessary to tell you all the details.” She errantly touched Hazel’s bare shoulder. “Then you might not have come along.”
    The comment ambushed Hazel. She was thinking of ME. She really wanted ME to go with her...
    “Wilmarth and Frank were working together on some side project for years,” Sonia said. “Originally Frank’s father was working on it too.”
    “Frank’s father?”
    “Yeah, he’d known Wilmarth long before Frank met him. But several years ago, Frank’s father got some disease and lost his sight.”
    “Oh, that’s too bad.”
    “But, anyway, that’s why Frank invited us up. Wilmarth had a lot of papers stored at the cabin, so Frank’s collecting it all. The gross part is Wilmarth was pretty deliberate in his intentions. See, early last week he asked Frank to come up to work on some stuff, he told Frank to arrive on Sunday.”
    “But you said Wilmarth killed himself Saturday,” Hazel remembered.
    “Yeah. So it’s pretty clear Wilmarth orchestrated the invitation only to make sure that his body was discovered promptly. It was Frank who found