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The Fluff At The ThreshholdBeing a H.P.Lushcraft storyEdited and re-typed by S.Barber 1996It was to my cousin's house on Carcosa Crescent that I came that December,to look over the property and to set the place in order. I had been long overseas,first working as an assistant to the Professor Of Difficult Sums at Celaeno GateCollege in thesultry Celebes Islands, and then recalled to the family Regiment when it formedup at the end of the War of Liberation in 2029, when the stranglehold of the ECover the (now happily Nationalised) landmass of Europe, had been so crashinglybroken.The house had been undamaged in the war, despite it being withinearshot of the great tank battle of the Thirsk Salient, where the Royalist armieshad smashed the EC federation's forces. Not so grand as many on the street, stillit had its own garden front and back, and was built of the solid grey stone of the hillsaround - and indeed there were some fine features of the neighbourhood, that mademe hesitant to part with it. For I had intended to sell it, having a house of myown in the farthest reaches of the Dales, where the local industry of raising great cyclopeanaltars for the export trade still flourished profitably.."Over there," the Agent had waved towards a hilltop just two streets behindthe house, "ancient prehuman temple, recently renovated and brought back online.Services every new moon, usual splendid revived customs."I had nodded, impressed. Like most people, I'm not overtly religious, butwhen the night's right to stand on a hilltop beneath the lurid skyglow and makeshocking, howling obesiance to whatever's taken the trouble to turn up despite theweather - well,it'd be right handy, I told myself. Handy indeed and no mistake."And is everything ..... undisturbed ?" I asked. I had the keys from thefamily Solicitor - as the last survivor of our line, the property had passed tome, with all else that came with it.The agent had nodded, his jackal ears and long, sharply handsome Annubis-like muzzle turning to face me. "It's a sorry way to come into an Inheritance," helooked at me solemnly, "But it's all yours. Everything he had, passes on to you."Later, I was to remember those words. But as always - Later, would meanfar too late.It was a bright and cheerful day, when I went over the place. Two storieshigh, with a fine cellar built onto the ruins of buildings long destroyed innameless times, before even the invention of the digital toothbrush. I pokedaround in the sub-basement, marvelling at the pre-Saxon round-headed arches mysteriously sealed up, and therunic seals undisturbed for a dozen centuries. Plenty of room for an extensiondown there, I told myself cheerfully, knocking with the haft of my entrenchingtool on the ancient stone, and being rewarded with an answering sound that was not an echo. Sofar, so good ..... and my first night's sleep was undisturbed as I rolled out mysleeping bag and made camp on the dining room floor. Rocked to sleep by the gentlesloshing as of some miles-high thing of jelly walking deep in the ground, I slept.The next day, I met my neighbour at Number Eleven, Mr. Heppleshaw. He was atall, six-horned goat of good local stock, the kind whose portraits you see etchedin beautiful pre-druidic Monoliths dredged up from where the North Sea rolls
 
today."So tha's movin' in, like tha' cousin ?" He greeted me over the fence,waving an unlit pipe at me. "He went off to the wars, like ..... summat told me,he'd not be coming back.""Oh ?" My wolf ears twitched, as I looked at him. "Did you ... know him well?"The goat nodded thoughtfully. He scratched his lower set of horns with thepipe, and I caught the familiar scent of refined hensbane and Asafoetida incenseabout him. "Aye ..... there was a time I knew him well enough. But ........ not atthe end, like." His ears twitched, and he walked round to the gap in the fences of CarcosaCrescent where a EuroStandard Type 6 Tank had driven through to judge from thetrack marks still visible : not all the houses had made full repairs yet. "Comeand sit thissen down, and I'll tell 'tha."I followed him into a warm and crowded kitchen, lined with wooden barrels ofale. He grinned, pouring a foaming tankard for us both, in the oddly proportionedmugs that I recognised as having been illegally cut down from a litre to a pint."Drop o' thebest, to go with it," he gestured ."Took us a while to get the breweries backdoing owt but that StandardBrau muck, most of us got back to mashin' the ales athome."The ale was excellent: not too cold (ten degrees, the perfect temperature, Iadmitted) and rich with floating yeast and hops. As I supped it, he looked at me,one eyebrow raised quizically."I can see tha's a cousin ..... summat .... out of the way in the both ofyou, happen." He said slowly. "Did tha' know 'im well ?"I shook my head. "Not since before the Occupation .... I was about tenthen, he was fourteen ... I hardly remember him." And then I stopped. It was true- I had found not one photograph of Cousin Osric, and indeed the house was quitestripped of photographs. "I'm not sure even what he looked like."Mr. Heppleshaw motioned me to stay seated, while he went into the parlour,and I heard him rummaging around. He came back a minute later, with an oldprintout photo, obviously taken on a digital camera. "During the Occupation, thiswas," he told me gravely. "Us folk had got a batch of ..... unmarked food, were doing us a barbecue.Illegal, o'course. But then, tha' knows .... most things were."I nodded. "That which is not illegal, is compulsory. That which is notcompulsory, is illegal", EC Directive 000000000000000001 . I know. I might haveescaped out of Europe, but it doesn't mean I didn't care. I came back when Icould: I was at Milton Keynes, at the end." My face must have blanched, a difficult thing to do under furin most other circumstances.But then I looked down, and saw the photograph. It was taken over the gardenfence, then intact, and showed a happy-looking group, standing found a barbecue.I could date it fairly well: the roof over the whole business was of wet, heat-absorbing blankets, which must have meant sometime after StandardSat 11667 had orbited in thesummer of 2027. That flying eye could spot a trespasser in the middle of a fieldby the heat signature, let alone a subversive barbecue.My Cousin was looking anxiously up at the sky - not at the camera, if indeedhe knew a picture was being taken. He resembled me, in that he was of wolf stock.... but there the resemblance ended. I frowned. There was something definitelyODD about thelook of cousin Osric ...... it certainly had not been there as a cub, when I knewhim. Children are super-sensitive to the smallest oddities, always seeking newhooks to hang an insulting name on. What it was that so disturbed me, I really
 
found hard todescribe. He looked plump for a Wolf ........ but I had seen carnivores, evencheetahs, with figures like beer-barrels, and none of them had looked so ......disquieting.My ears dipped. "Do you have any others of him ? I'd be grateful. I can'tseem to find any in the house."The hex-horned goat shook his well-equipped head. "That's the last one,like. I had a bundle, on the other film ..... he begged them from me and the discthey were on, said he were going to get'em enlarged." He sucked the pipemeditatively. "Never did see them again. And you say you've not found any ?"I shook my head, and he looked at me for a long minute."I see the resemblance .... in the bone, not in the fur, like. And he weremore like you ..... first year I knew him, he were in here. Not that I knew himto talk to, back then .... I were living down at Number Six then, across the waya piece. Chap tha' wants to talk to, lived that side," he gestured over my back lawn, towards myother neighbour. "But he's gone, too. Happen he might be coming back, if he evergets .... cured."That afternoon I spent sorting through the sad remnants of a life, boxingthings up. I divided mercilessly into three piles: items I wanted to keep, itemsof some value that the Charity shop could use, and items to dispose of. The pilesgrew as I ransacked drawers and cupboards, grimly passing judgement. But it was in one cupboardthat I found something Strange ..... or rather, what was strange was what wasmissing.On the first floor, there was a chimney neatly dividing the room, on thewall facing my missing neighbour, the far side from Mr. Heppleshaw. On one sideof the fireplace, the niche had been boxed over into fitted cupboards full ofclassic Rohan clothing I appropriated at first sight without even consulting the Classic pricecatalogue. But the other ..... there was nothing there. And yet there should havebeen. Either an alcove by the chimney side, four metres long by two deep, or thesame thing boxedin as on the far side. And yet .... nothing, only a blank wall that rang as solidas any other to my enquiring knock.I stood there, scratching my head. It occurred to me that the houses couldbe built in pairs on the terrace: instead of having straight boundaries, perhapsthey overlapped like a chain of Sieg Runes, nesting entwined with each other. Tofind out - I would first have to ask my other neighbour. And before that, I would have to findhim."In a more ignorant world," the white-coated attendant explained seriously,as I followed him through the electric fences of the Earldom's recently re-openedBedlam Institute, " Mr. Smithers-Jones might have been diagnosed as a"Traumatically Exposed Individual of Tragically Triggered Reality Denial", and left at large in thecommunity. But these are modern times."I nodded my head, walking past the spike-walled broom-cupboards whereClaustrophobics were encouraged to get it all out of their system before tastingwater or seeing daylight ever again. "But what's your prognosis ?"The weasel medic's whiskers twitched. "Mr. Smithers-Jones is what we in themedical profession call "A Looney". It's a medical term. Though he's makingreasonable progress: the first month he was here, we had to keep his head nailedto the floor. Most o
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