"Beyond the Threshold"

 by August Derleth 

originally published Weird Tales, September 1941

Our Narrator, who (thank Hastur the traditions are being kept!) hath no name, is an assistant librarian at the Miskatonic U library.  A job which was probably shitty even in 1941.  Regardless, he gets a letter from his cousin Frolin (presumably one of them had a father named Bilbin?) which he finds troubling.  It seems their grandfather Josiah, with whom Frolin lives, is "not himself" lately, and "a great deal of water has passed under various bridges, and the wind has blown about many changes" - phrases that trouble ON as much as phrases like "I actually really like this ring, so fuck you Gandalf" troubled the grey wanderer, albeit for less obvious reasons (said reasons not necessarily to become more obvious, but get in the van anyway).

Anyhoo, ON tramps off to the woods of north Wisconsin, where Grandpa Jo hangs out with Frolin and the Houghs, a couple of servants who've been with him since way back.  The house, built by a great uncle Leander,  is isolated and ugly, and partly built into the side of a hill.  Grandpa spends all his time in the study now, a room with book-lined walls and a hideous floor-to-ceiling landscape painted by Leander that apparently shows a bear ambling into a cave while "sad-looking" clouds look down upon the scene.  Gramps is so rooted in the study now that he's even moved his bed in there.  

Grandpa Jo seems pretty spry actually.  A former world traveller, he's onto some heavy stuff, including previously unknown continents and a lot of stuff about "the Wendigo", a dark spirit out of Native American folklore which is obviously important to him despite Gramps' continued attempts to deny it.  Impressed that ON knows something of the Wendigo, and in a most impressively shameless act of product placement, Grandpa whips out a copy of H.P. Lovecraft's The Outsider and Others (published only a couple years prior by Arkham House) and asks if ON's read it (which he has).  Gramps then speculates (or, really, pretty much says) that HPL's stories are not fiction.  He also has some old letters from great-uncle Leander, which Uncle L had ordered destroyed, but which some disrespectful relative decided to hang onto, which has more to say about names like Ithaqua, Hastur, and Lloigor.  P.S. apparently old Uncle Leander wasn't too well-liked around them parts, possibly because they say he looked like a frog (no portraits of him survive).  "Do you know what that means?" Gramps asks ON, before admitting "No, of course not."  

That night ON is wakened by the sound of strange but beautiful pipe music, the origin of which they can't determine, and the house is permeated first by a smell like swampy water, then by intense cold.  Gramps, however, takes all these phenomena in stride. 

The next night there's more fun.  Howling winds build up outside, so raging it seems like the house will be blown away (and indeed, the walls and hangings can be seen vibrating).  But - when Frolin and ON look outside, they note that none of the trees are even slightly disturbed.  Add to the cacophony of winds the sounds of the pipes again, and a sound like someone gigantic walking outside, approaching the house.

Grandpa is again unperturbed, and talks of a "threshold" which one is not meant to cross, but which he himself intends to find and do just that.  

Gramps sends the Houghs away for a vacation, while Frolin loses his mojo due to insomnia. He and ON spend more time going through Gramps' research without coming up with much.  That night the winds and flutes and stomping are back with a vengeance.  What's more, they look out the window and see a gigantic dark figure blocking out the sky, with glowing carmine (that's deep red, kiddies) "stars" where its eyes might be.  Now there's a lot of "Ia! Ia!" chanting going on, too.

Grandpa's locked in his study.  When they break in, one wall (the one built into the hill) has been blown open, revealing a cave (causing ON to realize that the painting depicted the hill before the house was built - and that same was the final threshold).  Gramps is gone - looks like he's been grabbed right outta his bed.  And there's snow and ice all over the room.

Well, somehow Frolin and ON explain all this away.  The letters and Grandpa's notebook turn up frozen in ice, in Canada, and Gramps himself turns up, frozen and dead, months later, in a desert on an island near Singapore, his pockets full of Cthulhu/Ithaqua-related goodies.

Well what to say, this is a very average Derleth piece that owes as much to Algernon Blackwood as to HPL, and doesn't hold a candle to either (check out Blackwood's treatment in "The Wendigo").  It's perfectly pleasant Weird Tales fare but doesn't pack any punch.