"Liminal Creep" by Joel Austin

Liminal Creep

by Joel Austin

I don’t know what it is, what it wants, or why it won’t leave me alone. I’m just thankful it’s not trying to get inside. Yet. Its enormous yellow eyes stared at me from the corner of my own. Every time I look at it head-on, it blinks out of existence for a moment before reappearing outside of a different window.
My little “cabin,” as it was called in the listing, is more of a wooden shack in the middle of nowhere. For the most part, exactly what I needed. I lost my bookkeeping job, my girlfriend left me for her other boyfriend, and I was at the end of my lease, so I said, “I’m outta here,” and moved my ass as far away from civilization as possible. A summer alone in the woods would be the perfect time to write the novel I’d been planning for years and start my life over.
I’m writing this instead because of that thing.
Four nights ago, I woke just past two in the morning, soaked to the bone. I couldn’t recall having a nightmare, but the physical tells were too obvious. The only memory was a sound, like a hundred didgeridoos all playing different notes to make a chord that left my skin pocked with goosebumps. As I wiped the crusty sleep from my eyes, I came to realize the noise wasn’t a memory at all; it was coming from outside one of the windows, which I’d cracked to let in the cool nighttime breeze.
I saw the orange and yellow glow of a fire casting dancing shadows across my yard. Ten figures jumped and twirled around the blaze as the noise they emitted grew to a deafening crescendo. I screamed.
“STOP!”
And they did. Each figure slowly turned to face me. The icy finger of my impending doom traced its way up my spine. My eyes adjusted to the light just enough to see that they all had on the same costume, the same unnatural face, unblinking eyes ready to burst from their sockets, and the mouth … A gaping hole that caused my hand to grip my chin just to make sure my jaw was still attached.
Once again, the alien noise grew to fill the still country night. Before I knew what was happening, the costumed people began to throw themselves into the fire, screams replacing the droning hum. Their bodies flailed as the cloth covering their appendages melted away to expose pink, meaty flesh. A series of crackles and pops that sounded like the fourth of July sang out from the flames; their fat was rendering beneath their blistering skin. The agonized wails faded as the oxygen they required was consumed by the roaring blaze.
I don’t know if their ritual was complete. Maybe I interrupted it, and this is my curse. The only thing I can say with certainty is that whatever it is they summoned has been outside of my house, watching my every move since they died.

***

There are three windows and a door in my one-room cabin, a table with two chairs, a small kitchenette, and a bed in which I am currently sitting. Blue curtains with yellow daffodils adorn the top of the windowsill, but don’t obscure the glass entirely, leaving just enough space for the creature to leer through the glass. Those eyes. Yellow, bloodshot, huuuuuge. Its mouth stretched wide, lips pulled back into a rigor mortis grin filled with razor-sharp teeth. Waiting for me to let my guard down.
Something tells me to run. My car might have enough gas in the tank to get me to town, but then what? I’m labelled as insane. No, I’ve got to figure out a way to stop whatever this thing is. I can’t look at it directly, but could I use a mirror?
Without breaking my gaze ahead, I reach below my bedframe, rummage around in my duffel bag, and pull up a small hand mirror I brought along in the event I chose to shave on my sabbatical. Slowly, I raise the mirror in front of my face, my reflection, tired, greasy, and so, so scared. I take a measured inhale and begin to rotate the mirror to the right, little by little, until the reflective lens shows the monster in full.
“It can’t be real,” the only thought crossing my mind as the creature's wide eyes somehow grow even larger as if it were a cat who realized its prey was ready to play. Without another change in its hungry expression, this liminal being phased through the cabin’s wall …

***

Six Months Later
I still don’t know what it wants. It follows me everywhere I go, just out of sight. The only time I see him in full is when I find myself in front of a mirror; he stands just over my left shoulder, staring at me as if I’m his prize and he can’t bear to let me leave his sight. I feel like a pet, a possession, a piece of property owned by something I can’t even look at.
I’m certain it’s going to kill me; I just don’t know when. The only thing I’m certain of is there’s no outrunning it, no hiding from it, and no destroying it—trust me, I’ve tried. I even contacted a demonologist who suffered from a fatal brain aneurysm in my driveway moments before reaching my door. I have no escape, and I fear that death will be a worse fate. What if it’s waiting for me to leave this physical body to snatch my soul and take it back to wherever it came from?
I fill a tumbler to the brim with black coffee, sit on my bed, and grab a novel from the pile on my floor.
“Another long night ahead of us,” I say to the window in front of me. The being sits to my left as I begin to read out loud.
The End.