The Threshold: Prologue
© 2013, R. L. King

 

Eleanor Pearsall needed a drink.

She glanced over at the glowing clock on the top of her dresser and sighed. It was 10:30. A little late to hit the sauce, especially since she had places to be. She had to finish the Christmas display at Hillerman's tonight so it would be ready for the big kickoff sale starting tomorrow morning, and she didn't think the owners would appreciate it if she had too much to drink and forgot to put pants on Santa, or posed the elves making lewd gestures at each other.

The thought made her chuckle. She got out of bed and dressed methodically without turning on the lights. Somewhere off in the other room she could hear her cat, Crowley, rustling around stalking a mouse or an errant piece of kibble.

The sound reminded her of the dream.

She took a deep breath, sitting down to slip on her boots. It hadn't been the first bad dream she'd had recently. Bad dreams normally didn't bother her. Sometimes she even found them useful, because they gave her insights or helped her home in on the answer to some problem that had been plaguing her. But this one—this one was different. For one thing, the content was always the same. For nearly a month now, every two or three days, the same dream.

 

She is standing in a dark forest clearing, surrounded by densely growing trees. From the spaces beyond the trees she can hear the sounds of dozens—hundreds?—of tiny creatures milling around, skittering, testing the perimeters. She has no idea what they are—she has never seen them, and in the dream she isn't brave enough to venture out of the protection of the clearing to investigate. Something inside her instinctively knows that would be a bad idea, just as it knows that the skittering creatures do not mean anything good for her. She just stands there, turning around and around in place, watching fearfully as she waits to see if they break through.

They never do. She can sense their frustration. She can sense their almost palpable compulsion to enter the clearing—but she can't tell what they want to do when they get there. Kill her? Tell her something? Chase her out into the darkness where something even worse lies waiting?

 

In her dark room, she sighed and levered herself back up off the bed. The odd thing about this dream, aside from its repeat performances, is that it never caused her to do any of those nightmare-cliché things like waking up in a cold sweat with her heart pounding, or sitting bolt upright in bed—or even waking up at all. After a time, the creatures would simply give up and go away for awhile. Like they were regrouping. She wondered if at some point they'd finally just get sick of the whole business and give up for good. While the dream wasn't exactly interrupting her sleep, it was certainly playing havoc with its quality. She'd been tired and stressed out for the last couple of weeks.

Grabbing her heavy coat, wool hat, and scarf off the chair by the door, she shrugged into them and picked up her purse. She didn't have time to deal with this now. That display wasn't going to finish itself. Calling out a cheerful, "Back later, try not to get into too much trouble!" to Crowley, she headed out into the night. She didn't lock her door—nobody in Woodwich ever locked their doors. It just wasn't that kind of town. And in any case, anybody who tried to enter her home uninvited might find themselves facing a few surprises.

Outside, the moon sparkled on a fresh snowfall. Eleanor loved this time of night—the quiet and peace of a picturesque little town after most of the world had retired behind their closed doors and tucked their children in. Sometimes she even enjoyed doing her rituals in the big clearing behind her house—which was nothing like the sinister one in her dream—even if it meant risking being discovered. She smiled; most of Woodwich already thought she was a little eccentric, but in a dotty-old-aunt sort of way. There were a lot of unusual personalities in this small Vermont town, and they all coexisted with each other in a surprisingly amicable manner, all things considered. But they didn't know the half of things about her, and it was better for everyone to keep it that way.

The walk downtown took her about fifteen minutes; she took a shortcut through the woods and never once felt fearful or threatened. The sounds of hunting owls and small prowling creatures comforted her, and when at last she emerged from the woods a block over from Woodwich's tiny main street, she was humming to herself in contentment, already going over in her mind what she wanted to do with the display. She was going to try something different this year: instead of the typical Santa and his elves in their traditional red and green outfits, she was going to dress them up in more earthy, primal garb, turning the North Pole toy factory into a kind of cheery woodland revelry. She didn't know if Mr. Hillerman would approve, but she was pretty good at persuasion and she did think the tired old display needed something new. The children would love it, she was sure. And it was almost always easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

As she stepped out onto Main Street, snow crunching under her boots, and prepared to cross the street, a figure detached itself from the shadows and shuffled toward her. For two or three seconds she did feel a twinge of fear, but then the figure moved into the illumination of one of the old-fashioned streetlights and she smiled. "Hello, Ted. You startled me. You're out late tonight."

The man, Ted, gave her a vague nod. Hunched and wild-bearded, he wore a baggy sweatshirt under a shapeless old coat, too-large pants, and a shabby knit cap with a New England Patriots patch. On his back he carried a large threadbare green backpack with various items sticking out the top and attached to the sides. "On my way t'the park," he told her. His voice was scratchy with disuse.

Eleanor nodded. "Is everything all right?" There weren't many homeless people in Woodwich—it wasn't that the town discouraged them, but especially in the late fall and winter it wasn't a particularly hospitable place for those who lived on the streets, since it had no official shelter. Most of the homeless headed for the larger nearby towns with better services. But Ted was kind of a fixture around here.

Ted shrugged. "Yeah, yeah. Some guy gave me a five-spot earlier so I picked up a sammich and..." He grinned guiltily, showing a mouth with as many empty spaces as teeth, and held up something in a paper bag. Eleanor couldn't miss the whiff of cheap booze. "Run a little late, is all."

"All right, then. You be safe, Ted. Have a good night." Eleanor smiled a farewell and continued on her way across the street.

"You too, Miz Pearsall." He started to shuffle off again, then stopped. "Miz Pearsall?"

Eleanor turned back. "Yes, Ted?"

The grimy face looked troubled. "I...I dunno. Just—be careful, okay?"

"Any particular reason?" Her brow furrowed. This was something new. Ted rarely had anything to say to her beyond a greeting and the occasional request for a handout.

"I—" Again he shrugged, a little shudder running through his hunched body. "I dunno. Just be careful, is all." He raised his bottle in its paper bag and took a swig, swiping his filthy jacket sleeve across his mouth.

Eleanor regarded him for a moment, then nodded slowly. "I will, Ted. I promise. You'd better get going. It's late, and you need to get yourself somewhere out of the cold."

Ted made a vague gesture with the hand holding the bag of booze, then moved off again without a word. Eleanor watched him go, standing there for a moment in the middle of the street, then smiled. She liked Ted, but he wasn't exactly 'all there.' Putting him out of her mind, she crossed the other half of the street and continued on to her destination.

Hillerman's Department Store was as much a fixture in Woodwich as Ted was, a kind of central hub where everyone ran into everyone else while going about their daily routines. It didn't do the same level of business anymore since the mall had gone up a few years back, but the old-timers still did most of their general purpose shopping here, from clothes to hardware to small appliances and kitchen gadgets. It dominated its block on Main Street (which was only three blocks long), the space behind its two large display windows always lit up and decorated for the latest holiday, sale, or local event. It had been Eleanor's job for the past ten years to design and set up these displays, and she was semi-famous around town for it. People were always stopping her at the grocery store or the gas station, asking her slyly what she planned to do next. She never told them; she liked the element of surprise, and she thought they did too. This Christmas display idea she had would be a departure from her usual, but she had no doubt it would be a hit. She imagined the looks of delighted surprise on the shoppers' faces as they arrived at the store for the sale tomorrow morning.

She moved around the back of the building to let herself in with her key, pausing as lights appeared in the small alley that ran the length of the block behind Hillerman's. She waited as they approached, revealing a golf cart driven by a chubby young man in a guard's uniform and a heavy down coat. She smiled and waved.

"Evenin', Ms. Pearsall," the man said with a jaunty return wave and a grin. "Here to fix up the display?"

"That I am, Dwight."

"Can't wait to see what you come up with. I'll be around if you need anything—just give me a call on the radio, okay?"

"I'll do that," she assured him, and he rolled off with another wave.

Dwight Carsey and his fellow private security guard, Kurt Moreno, cruised around the entire Downtown area overnight, once every hour or so, just to make sure nobody was bothering any of the businesses. All the owners chipped a little into a fund to pay them, since Woodwich didn't technically have a police department. Because Woodwich also technically didn't have crime (beyond rare broken window or graffiti tagging incidents), Dwight and Kurt usually just spent most of their evenings when they weren't on rounds watching porn and smoking the occasional joint in the back room of the Alpine Chalet Motel two blocks over. Still, Eleanor was glad that they were available should she need them. They always made it a point to check up on her at least once on nights when she was doing her displays, which she found charming even if it was unnecessary.

Slipping inside the store, she closed the door behind her and turned the deadbolt. Even though like most of Woodwich's residents she didn't lock her home door, she still didn't believe in tempting those who might be teetering on the edge of a little midnight acquisition when she was responsible for other people's property.

The back door opened into a combination storeroom and receiving area; it was full of boxes of merchandise, signage, and display materials, all neatly stacked on shelves or hanging on racks. Eleanor wasted no time getting started: she grabbed a cart and began piling the items she'd need on it. In less than ten minutes she was moving through the large public area of the single-story store, traversing the dimly lit aisles like she was in her own home. She wished Crowley were here—at least he'd be a little company. The squeaking of one of the cart's wheels was the only sound in the wide open space. To anyone who wasn't used to it the place would have seemed alarmingly ominous in the scant light, with the shadowy racks of clothing and looming mannequins, but Eleanor felt at home here. The dark didn't frighten her; she'd seen far worse things during her fifty-four years on Earth than a few overgrown naked Barbies.

She was carefully taping up a plastic dropcloth to obscure the left-side display window from the street when she first heard the sound.

Stopping with one side of the cloth taped, she listened. She'd definitely heard something, but she couldn't identify it over all the rustling she'd been making with the plastic. She held very still, willing whatever it was to repeat itself.

It didn't. The store was once again as quiet as it always was this late at night.

Eleanor sighed. It wasn't like her to hear things that weren't there—maybe the interrupted sleep from the nightmares was getting to her more than she'd thought. She turned back to her task and soon had the cloth draped so anyone looking in from outside (not that anyone was, or was likely to be) couldn't see what she was doing. She stepped back out of the window and moved to the cart, intending to hustle a decidedly nude Santa Claus into position so she could dress him in his new back-to-nature finery.

There it was again.

This time she heard it clearly, far off in a back corner of the store.

A footstep.

She froze. She had definitely locked the back door, and no one had had a chance to slip in behind her. She hadn't checked the front, but Mr. Hillerman and his staff were always conscientious about locking up. "H-hello?" she called. "Is someone in here?" She wasn't sure that was the best approach, but it wasn't like she'd been doing anything to hide her presence. If somebody was in the store, they knew she was here too.

There was no answer. The dark cavernous space remained resolutely silent.

Eleanor sighed. I'm hearing things, she told herself in disgust. It's that dream—it's making me jump at shadows. Still, she wished she had picked up a couple of her "special items" from the bowl on her mantelpiece at home. She didn't exactly feel vulnerable without them, but having them with her would have made her feel a lot more comfortable.

Just get the display done and go home, she told herself. Taking a deep breath to center herself, she gathered up an armload of clothing and Santa, climbed back into the window, and began arranging him into the proper position. Her only concession to caution was that she faced back into the store while she did this, instead of toward the window. Once she had Santa posed she threw a voluminous brown "robe" (really a bedsheet she'd cut a head-hole into) over his head and belted it with a golden rope she'd "borrowed" the other day from one of the curtain displays and squirreled away with her other supplies. She finished out the look with a braided wreath of twigs, which she placed on his head like a crown. Standing back, she admired her handiwork. Santa indeed looked very much like a jolly wood-sprite.

Far off in the back of the store, on the opposite side from the one where she'd heard the footstep, something small fell off a shelf and hit the ground with a tiny whoomp.

Eleanor stopped again, her body stock-still, a chill skittering down her spine. She forced herself to attempt to be rational: if something was in here, what could it be? An animal? Maybe another homeless person who had somehow gotten in and was using the store as a place to sleep? A drifter from out of town who'd taken advantage of a normally locked door to slip in and hide until after closing time? None of those were inherently dangerous, but she wasn't crazy about the idea of being in here alone with any of them.

She looked back at the display in exasperation. If nothing else distracted her, it would take her at least an hour to finish both windows, and that was if she moved faster and took less care than her professional pride would allow. Realistically it was more like two hours to do a good job, which meant under the best of circumstances she wouldn't be out of here until after one o'clock. And if she remained on edge, listening for sounds and trying to identify where the unknown intruder (if indeed there even was one and the whole thing wasn't a product of her tired and overactive imagination) that would add a significant amount of both time and stress to her estimation.

She had two choices, then: ignore the sounds and continue with her work, or do something about them. The "something" could be anything from investigating the situation herself, to leaving the store, to using the radio to call Dwight and Kurt and ask them to come check things out. She didn't like either of the latter two options: the first because it would mean leaving a job undone for the first time in her ten years of doing displays, and the second because it felt somehow like admitting defeat. Again she mentally berated herself for not bringing the items from the bowl on the mantel with her.

Someone giggled.

It was a very soft sound, barely audible even in the full silence, but it was definitely a giggle. It sounded like a small child, but it had a certain wrongness to it. Not a happy giggle, but a creepy one. Eleanor's breath quickened. "All right," she whispered to herself. "That's it." She was never going to get anything done while constantly on edge waiting for the next unexpected sound. She made her decision quickly: leaving wasn't an option since she didn't plan to leave the display undone. Investigating things herself was just stupid: if there was an intruder she was at a definite disadvantage in her current state. So that left the radio—which was in the office off to the left side of the store near the restrooms. She'd have to walk through most of the store's open area, uncomfortably close to where she'd heard some of the sounds, to get to it.

She stepped carefully out of the window and looked around. Luck was with her this time: near the front part of the store was a display of items for the fireplace. She spotted a rack of implements and hefted an iron poker. That might not stop a determined intruder, but it would certainly make him think twice. And if it was a child playing a trick on her—well, she could put the fear of God into him a little before corralling him until she could contact his parents and give them an earful about the proper way to raise children.

Though she was so nervous crossing the store that her hand holding the poker shook, nothing accosted her and no more strange sounds were forthcoming. By the time she reached the door to the office, she was beginning to think she had just been hearing things, and felt almost embarrassed about disturbing Dwight and Kurt for a false alarm. Almost, but not quite enough not to do it. Besides, she rationalized, they were probably bored and would relish the opportunity to actually do something useful.

The office door wasn't locked; she pushed it open, reached around to flip on the light, and then slipped inside and closed and locked it behind her once she verified that no one was lurking there. Keeping a close eye on it she moved over and switched on the radio. It crackled for a moment, then settled in to a low hum. She keyed the mic. "Dwight? Kurt? Are you there?"

There was a brief pause, and then Dwight's reassuringly tinny voice emerged from the ancient speaker. "Is that you, Ms. Pearsall?"

"It's me," she confirmed. She felt a lot better hearing another human voice.

"Something up?"

She paused. "There might be. I'm—I know it sounds silly, but I'm hearing noises in here. Like maybe somebody, or an animal or something, got inside the store."

Dwight's voice didn't sound too concerned, but it did sound accommodating. "We'll come by right away to check it out, Ms. Pearsall, don't you worry. Probably just a raccoon or a cat or something got in. You sit tight in the office and we'll be there pronto. Five minutes, max."

"Thank you, Dwight. I appreciate it. I hate to take you away from the warm—"

"Never you mind, Ms. P. Just sit tight." The line went dead with a couple of final crackles.

Eleanor replaced the mic in its cradle and allowed herself to slump into a nearby chair. She was a little surprised at the amount of relief that washed over her at the thought that someone else was going to be here soon and help her get this sorted out. The more she thought about it, she was sure it had to be a cat or other small animal.

But cats don't giggle, said a little voice in the back of her mind.

She waited in silence, willing herself not to sneak glances at her watch or at the clock on the wall. She didn't hear any other noises outside, but she didn't think the little sounds she'd heard would be loud enough to be audible through the closed office door. It was hard not to imagine something furtively sneaking up, waiting for her to open the door so it could pounce. "Don't be an idiot," she whispered aloud. In truth she had no idea why this was frightening her as much as it was. She had dealt with far worse, at night and alone. Again, she decided it must be the nightmares and her lack of good sleep playing hell with her nerves. That was all.

"Ms. Pearsall?" A faint voice filtered through the door. "You there?"

She leaped out of the chair and hurried over to open the door. She had rarely been so happy to see anyone as she was to watch Dwight's portly flashlight-wielding form making its way through the dry-goods department, followed closely by his taller and thinner partner Kurt. "I'm here," she called. "Thank you so much for coming."

"No trouble at all," he said. "Now let's check out this sound. Where did you hear it again?"

She told them the approximate locations of the three different sounds she'd heard (or thought she'd heard) and they set off in two different directions with their flashlights blazing. She remained at the front of the store up near her display and watched the lights bobbing around, up one aisle and down another, until at last the two of them reconvened near the store's front door. Dwight sighed and shook his head. "We didn't see anything, Ms. Pearsall. No sign that anybody's here or anybody's been here."

She stared at him. Would it be possible for an intruder to hide well enough to fool two security guards—even if they were, admittedly, not among the highest in the professionalism department? "You looked under the spinning clothes racks? Behind the furniture—?"

Kurt, who hadn't spoken yet, nodded. "Not that many places for a person to hide in here," he said. He was a lanky young man with a shock of unruly dark hair, a dusting of pimples across his forehead, and a bad case of jug-ear.

"And you checked the back room?"

Dwight nodded. "When we came in. We locked the door behind us, and looked around back there to make sure nobody was tryin' to make a break for it."

"We even checked the johns," Kurt added. "Nobody in here, Ms. Pearsall."

Eleanor sighed, feeling embarrassed now. "I'm sorry, guys. I really didn't mean to drag you all the way out here for in the cold for—"

Dwight grinned, waving off her apology. "It's fine. Really. You know this is the dullest job in the known universe, right? Anything that lets us get out and pretend to do something useful is cool with us."

"Bonus if we don't have to do anything dangerous," Kurt added with his own rather goofy grin. Eleanor noticed that both of them had the definite whiff of the heathen weed hovering around their persons.

"Well—all right, then," she said, conceding. "But don't think I don't appreciate it."

"Not a problem," Dwight said. He nodded toward the window. "That your display? Santa looks—different."

"Just something new I'm trying," she said, turning back to look at her work. "You just wait till it's finished."

"You know," Kurt said conversationally, "It's really a shame you didn't decide to join us."

Eleanor was about to say something else about her display when oddness of the guard's words sunk in. She turned around, convinced that whatever he had said, she'd misheard it. "What did—"

Methodically and without any change of expression, Dwight pulled a long-bladed kitchen knife from behind him and buried it in Eleanor's gut.

She didn't even have time to scream. Kurt, as if he had been expecting Dwight to stab her, moved forward and clamped one hand over her mouth while the other grabbed one of her wildly flailing arms and locked it behind her back. Dwight had not yet pulled the knife out, and he didn't; instead, he took a tight grip on it and sliced downward, its sharp blade encountering only minimal resistance against the soft organs it was cutting through. Blood sprayed out in all directions, covering Dwight's uniform shirt, his face, his hands.

Eleanor, desperate with panic and incoherent with pain, could do nothing but flop back and forth in ever more feeble attempts to pull herself free of Kurt's grasp, but she accomplished nothing more than to worsen her already grave situation with the respect to the knife. She could feel her blood, her intestines, and her life essence flowing out of her and she knew even amid all the pain that there was nothing she could do about it.

She saw and heard two final things before unconsciousness and then death mercifully took her: the first was Dwight's face, slack-jawed and transported with near-rapturous pleasure; the second was the far-off sound of giggling, accompanied by the mental image of a dark forest clearing ringed by trees.

 

The next morning at sunrise, a lone figure shuffled along Main Street, pausing on occasion to poke hopefully into a trash receptacle with a long pole. He moved with a swaying, methodical gait, still feeling a little out of it after his previous night of drinking. Mostly he paid attention to the sidewalk and the trash cans, but something made him look up as he passed Hillerman's Department Store. Perhaps he remembered in some back corner of his mind that there would be something to see in the window this morning.

What he saw, however, made him stagger backward and almost fall into the street, his big green backpack dropping to the snowy sidewalk beside him.

The left-side display window at Hillerman's, the place where Santa and his woodland elves were intended to frolic while ringing in the holiday season, showed an entirely different scene. Santa, still in his brown robe and wreath of twigs, held a bloody knife menacingly above his head. Below him, spread out on a sheet-covered table, lay the naked and eviscerated form of a middle-aged woman, her body covered with slashes and cuts, her arms and legs spread out and tied down to the legs of the table like some kind of ritual sacrifice. Her mouth was open in a silent scream of terror, and Santa leered over her with a bloody face and gore-strewn beard. Around the table the elves, still in their green and red "traditional" garb, looked on with macabre glee. The window itself was streaked with dried and clotted blood, providing a grisly frame for the scene.

"Oh, God..." Ted whispered to himself, tears springing to his crinkled eyes. "Oh, God, Miz Pearsall...why didn't you listen to me and be careful...?"

He sagged to the ground; he was still there when the early-morning sale-seekers arrived soon after, eager to discover what Eleanor had done to surprise them with the display this year.