Threshold

by Sean Platt

  Alastair tried to push them, but they stayed put.

  He turned to the alien and screamed, “Put them down!”

  He raised his hands, balls of energy engulfing them, ready to kill every alien he saw, even the thing pretending to be Savannah.

  Alastair met the alien’s cold dark eyes and growled, “I said put them down.”

  “Stop!” Son of Mulkailot raised a hand and pulled the children back to the ground. Alastair couldn’t move.

  Son of Mulkailot hadn’t lifted him this time, but had frozen him to the spot.

  He walked toward Alastair, slowly, one arm holding the not-yet-fully-healed gash in his chest. He was hurt, and no longer smiling as if this were a game.

  He looked at Alastair again, but this time seemed to be truly looking at him. “You really believe these words you say, that our people massacred humans?”

  Alastair nodded, his hands pulsating with energy, ready to fight the moment the alien released his hold.

  Son of Mulkailot spoke again, this time raising his hand toward Alastair’s face.

  He tried to back away, but was frozen.

  Damned thing tricked me!

  Alastair struggled to break free of the trance, but his body refused to obey. He watched in horror as the thing’s hand, and its long spindly dark fingers, came closer to his face.

  What the hell is it going to do?

  “I’m sorry for the lies you’ve been told, the truth that has been stolen from you,” Son of Mulkailot said, then planted two long digits to Alastair’s forehead, pressing fingertips to skin.

  Then Son of Mulkailot showed Alastair the truth.

  * * * *

  MULKAILOT

  April 11, 1781

  Mulkailot knocked three times on the Galloway homestead’s front door, then without waiting for an answer, turned the knob and slipped inside the domicile. He crossed a large living area, then ducking low, trudged upstairs, and opened the door to a bedroom.

  Dahlia was happy to see him. She smiled, playful and inviting.

  “What took you so long?”

  “No time for games, Dahlia. I’ve come to take you to camp.”

  “No,” she held her waning smile. “You don’t know my husband.”

  “I do know Montgomery. That’s why I need you to come with me.”

  “It isn’t that easy. Montgomery is vengeful and will make us pay. Nothing is more important than him.”

  Dahlia leaned back against the headboard and lowered her arms so Mulkailot could see his son.

  He stepped closer to the bed. “He’s so beautiful …”

  “Yes, and we must protect him. That means keeping the truth from Montgomery. You must leave, and know that I love you. But I cannot go. You have your people, and I have mine. Let us be grateful that our child is what he is, and that you and I—”

  Montgomery burst into the room.

  He stood in the doorway and with slow, menacing sentences repeated each of Dahlia’s phrases, one by one. Mulkailot stared at Montgomery, calculating whether he should allow the human to continue intimidating his wife, or do as he deemed necessary: eliminate the threat, then take both woman and child back to his own — damn the consequences.

  Montgomery sneered, repeating her words:

  “Let us be grateful that our child is what he is.” Montgomery growled, “And what exactly is your child?”

  Dahlia hugged Alastair to her bosom, refusing to answer.

  Mulkailot stepped in front of Montgomery. “Let her be!”

  “Or what?”

  “Or this will be your undoing.”

  Mulkailot was holding back — it took everything inside him not to end the man with a swat of his arm, like bear to babe. Arrogance fumed from the human’s pores like a wretched scent.

  “I’ll remind you, Mulkailot, you’re in my domicile, and in clear violation of our treaty with the Umlai.”

  Mulkailot didn’t care about the treaty, but the others would.

  “I will go.” He looked from Dahlia to her husband. “But if you harm her, or our child, I vow, you shall die by my hand.”

  Mulkailot turned back to Dahlia and promised: “He will not hurt you. If he dares, I’ll return.”

  “Get out!” Montgomery yelled at Mulkailot.

  “I love you, Dahlia.”

  Mulkailot turned and went downstairs, then out of the house and into the darkness.

  **

  Later that night …

  Mulkailot woke to find his home barricaded. Someone had tried to protect him, but who? He could only stare through the window as his people were slaughtered. He made it out of the house as attackers scattered like cowards, running back to the Galloway homestead.

  Mulkailot followed, clinging to shadows, but outside the homestead saw nothing. His alien senses, stronger than most Earth animals, felt nothing — only the danger that threatened his human love behind the walls of the Galloway house. He opened the door, and a hundred pounds of something smashed down onto his head.

  Mulkailot woke restrained to a chair and found that his fingers had been severed. Bloody bandages covered the nubs. Without fingers, he could not work his magic.

  Montgomery stood above him, glaring down.

  Mulkailot’s wrists were bound by some metal device designed to crush them at the turn of a crank. Montgomery worked the crank with a gleeful hate.

  Mulkailot was strong, but pain was pain, and the thumbscrews were agony.

  To escape the torment, Mulkailot followed his mind to somewhere else, drifting in and out of awareness, each time waking to something worse. He was burned — with both boiling water and a cattle brand. He was cut and suffocated. Mostly he was beaten — with leather, wood, and Montgomery’s bruised and bloodied knuckles. Every time he woke, it was to a new spot in the man’s spectrum of conflicted emotions: rage, sadness, wrath, and regret, then often right back to rage.

  Mulkailot continued to send his mind far, far away, then kept it there as long as he could. He returned to reality, Montgomery shaking his body like a bag of bones. His face had swollen to twice its size. He was bound at the wrists, and felt thin enough to disappear. Still, Mulkailot smiled, knowing what was happening before Montgomery told him.

  Mulkailot said, “My brothers have returned to take vengeance on your town.”

  Montgomery nodded. “And more are coming, yes. We must close the Threshold. You must show me how.”

  “No. It is time to die in a hell of your making.”

  “Close the Threshold, or I’ll kill you!”

  “You may wrest my body from my soul, but you cannot kill me.”

  “Oh?” Montgomery growled, then vanished from the room.

  He returned two minutes later, dragging Dahlia behind him. He threw her in a chair opposite Mulkailot’s, then made her lover watch as he restrained her ankles, wrists, and arms.

  Mulkailot stared, waiting for the human to make a mistake.

  “You will close the Threshold, or I’ll do to her what I’ve done to you. She won’t last like you. Are you prepared to see Dahlia die?”

  Mulkailot thought he could stay strong, patiently wait through the pain of his true love’s suffering, but he had never loved a human and could not have anticipated the ways in which Dahlia’s weakness would become his own. Her pain belonged to him: Every blow to her body or burn to her skin. Mulkailot felt it all, worse than he had when it had been him beneath the blows. Worse, for he could not allow his mind to flee for fear that he would miss her death, condemned to remember it for the rest of what humans called eternity and the Umlai called the beginning.

  Montgomery gathered Dahlia’s hand, and bent her middle finger back until it snapped loud enough to hear above her anguished bellow.

  Mulkailot was broken.

  “Fine. If I help you, will you leave her be?”

  “Yes.” From tone and eyes, Mulkailot felt that Montgomery was telling the truth.

  He looked at the floor while trying to squeeze the sound of Dahl
ia’s torment from his mind. “Take me to the wellness fountain.”

  The fountain had been a gift from his people to the humans, an eternal magical spring that kept them youthful and healthy.

  “We’re not going anywhere.”

  “Then we will die.”

  Something in Mulkailot’s tone told Montgomery not to argue.

  “The fountain in the center of town?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can it be brought here?”

  “If you can carry several thousand pounds. Or, I can carry it.”

  “What’s the trick? How many of your people are waiting?”

  “If my people were waiting, you’d already be dead.”

  “Fine,” Montgomery snarled. “But she’s coming. Any tricks, I put a knife through her throat.”

  Mulkailot said nothing as he led the monster and his love toward the fountain.

  “Where is my child?” he asked once there.

  “Alone and hungry. Hidden. You can make sure he won’t starve if we all get back in one piece.”

  Mulkailot drowned the sound of Dahlia’s whimpers, picked up the fountain, and walked faster back to the homestead.

  **

  Months later…

  Mulkailot managed to close the portal and keep the remaining Umlai from crossing over and exacting revenge, but it wasn’t a onetime solution.

  Montgomery kept Dahlia and Mulkailot alive for the next several months, but only barely. Dahlia was kept breathing to make sure the alien held to his schedule, adding a single drop of blood into the fountain to keep the Threshold closed when it begged. The spell would last only as long as alien blood continued to bind it. If Mulkailot were to die, the Threshold would collapse and an unholy hell would rain down on Montgomery, a fact Mulkailot reminded the man of whenever he seemed like he’d snap and kill Dahlia.

  Montgomery insisted that the alien show him how to close the portal himself, even though he had no alien blood or ability to do so.

  “This won’t work long,” Mulkailot often repeated. “I will outlive you, as will everyone on the other side of the Threshold. My people will come. One day you will sleep too long, and I will not add blood to the fountain. One day, something will stop you. You are living a borrowed life, Montgomery. I promise: The longer we wait for our revenge, the more you will suffer. Why not let us go? We’ll take our child, and be gone from you forever.”

  For the most part, Montgomery ignored him, until one day he entered Mulkailot’s cell and looked down at the alien lying on the floor, chains binding his arms and legs.

  “Good news.”

  He dragged a chair and Dahlia both into the room. He threw her into the dirt beside Mulkailot, then sat before them, hands folded in his lap, almost placid.

  “I don’t need your blood any longer.”

  “No …” Mulkailot realized what Montgomery was saying before he finished explaining.

  “I managed to keep the Threshold closed — killed all the bright lights like you do — using a drop of your bastard baby’s blood.”

  Dahlia screamed.

  “Relax!” Montgomery stood, and turned to Dahlia. “I didn’t hurt your brat. It’s a prick on his finger. Less than he deserves for being born in your sin.”

  Montgomery looked from Dahlia to Mulkailot, clearly disgusted.

  He leaned down as if to whisper something awful. Dahlia spit in his face. Without pause he drew back and launched a wide open palm across her face.

  The room echoed with his smack.

  Dahlia sobbed.

  Mulkailot strained at his chains as Montgomery walked to corner of his cell, grabbed a large stick, and beat the alien with fury.

  “Please, Montgomery,” Dahlia screamed. “I’ll do anything! Just don’t kill him!”

  Montgomery paused, then stood straight, looking from the alien to his wife. Something in his body seemed to break as he saw what he hadn’t before: the depth of love between Mulkailot and Dahlia.

  Hate and pain flooded his face. He was angry, at Mulkailot, Dahlia, himself, and probably the world. It was a betrayal of the worst sort — knowing she loved the alien rather than him. But the hot glow of that truth broke Montgomery’s expression more than anything before. It made him snap.

  Montgomery dropped the stick.

  Without a word, he dragged Dahlia away from Mulkailot, toward the door, and began to beat her.

  “Stop!” Mulkailot screamed, trying to break the chains and kill the human. But he was too weak. “Please, stop!”

  “Why?” Montgomery said, standing over his wife, knuckles bloody, eyes wide and crazy.

  “Because she’s your wife! And no matter what happened between us, you once loved her.”

  Mulkailot was trying to charm the man. Humans were easily enchanted by magic, but this man was too filled with hate for it to work on him. Mulkailot resorted to begging.

  “Please, after all we’ve done for your people. We gave you youth. We taught you magic. We helped you grow crops you couldn’t grow and keep your families fed. And you’re going to throw it all away over a woman you haven’t loved in years?”

  Montgomery looked as if he’d been slapped.

  “What do you mean haven’t loved in years?”

  “She was only with a freak like me because you ignored her. Don’t pretend you haven’t slept with half the whores in town. You did this, Montgomery, not her. If you want to kill me, go ahead. But please … Dahlia is innocent. She was hurt by you, and I took advantage. It’s you she’s always loved. It’s not too late to turn back now.”

  Montgomery stood straight, head turned as he seemed to ponder Mulkailot’s words. Perhaps, the Umlai hoped, reason could still win the angry man over.

  Montgomery looked down at his wife, then down at the stick he’d been beating the alien with. He bent over, retrieved the stick, looked at Mulkailot and asked, “Kill you, instead of her?”

  “Yes,” Mulkailot said, nodding, preparing to die. He would perish a hundred times over to save Dahlia.

  Montgomery looked down at the stick, then turned back on Dahlia and thrust it into her gut.

  She screamed, her body convulsing.

  Mulkailot cried out, shaking his chains, attempting to summon the power that flowed through his blood as Dahlia stopped moving.

  He stared at her dead eyes, wide open back at him.

  He watched as light left them and the soul departed her body. Human souls looked so much different than Umlai’s. Smaller, less colorful, though no less beautiful — especially Dahlia’s.

  Knuckles dripping with blood, Montgomery marched back across the room toward Mulkailot.

  Montgomery gave him a lunatic’s smile.

  “Time to die,” he said.

  * * * *

  SCOTT

  Scott stood at the bottom of the stairs, sword in hand, standing over the alien that had pretended to be his little girl.

  He was pissed.

  He wanted to know where his children were.

  Upstairs, another alien was trying to trick him, pretending to be Holly. Maybe it was the same alien who had lured his children into crossing the Threshold.

  He gripped the sword tight, raised his phone’s flashlight, and headed up the stairs.

  “Holly?” he called out, playing along, for now.

  “Scott?” her voice came from the end of the hall — from the room that was Savannah’s back on Earth.

  Of course. Take a dead girl’s room, take a dead woman’s body. There nothing you all won’t take?

  He marched to the end of the hallway and tried the door.

  It was locked, though it wasn’t any kind of seal he’d ever seen. There wasn’t even a hole for a key.

  “Holly?”

  “Yes, Scott. It’s me. Please let me out.”

  “Where are the children?”

  “They were in here earlier. Rumfrai was with me in this room, though, and wouldn’t let me see them.”

  “Where is this Rumfrai?”

&nb
sp; “I’m pretty sure you killed him.”

  How can she know that?

  Scott stared at the door, shaking his head. The alien must’ve really thought he was stupid. But he’d play along, for as long as he had to.

  “Where did they go?”

  “I don’t know. Let me out and I’ll help you find them.”

  He stared at the door.

  Yeah, I bet you will.

  Scott wondered if he should leave the imposter here and continue his search for the children. Or, run back home and wait like Alastair instructed.

  What if they already killed Alastair? What if the aliens used Hazel to lead me away from the Threshold?

  That had to be it.

  He felt so stupid.

  And this thing pretending to be his wife was wasting more of his time.

  He turned to walk away.

  “Scott?” she called out from behind the door.

  “What?” he shouted.

  “Are you going to let me out?” she asked, her voice nervous.

  Yeah, I’m onto you, bitch.

  “Nah, I need to get back to the Threshold. See ya.”

  He started to descend the stairs, smiling.

  “Scott!”

  Her scream wasn’t angry. It was scared, and cut him to the core.

  He stopped on the stairway, looking down at the alien he’d already killed.

  “What?” he called back impatiently.

  “Don’t leave me here. Please.”

  “Why not? You left me.”

  A long moment of silence. “What?”

  Scott marched back up the stairs. He knew it didn’t make any sense to argue with an alien, but he couldn’t help himself from an argument by proxy.

  “I said, Why not? You left me and the kids. Six months ago. Or did you forget?”

  Another moment of silence, then, “Is that what you thought? That I left you?”

  “Um, yeah, what else was I supposed to think?”