Liminal Spaces

A college student and their dog explore the spaces in between places. 

Welcome back to season three!!! For our season premiere, we're bringing you the longest story I've ever written. I wrote this one for Nosleep all the way back in 2017.

Transcript

You usually can’t edit your photos fast enough. You pour yourself a cup of tea, and the day of or the weekend after, maaaybe a few weeks after tops, you sit at your computer and you revisit the place you’ve already been. But this time, you’re editing pictures from almost two years ago. You’re editing pictures from the last week you spent with your ex, and you just hadn’t been able to go through them before. You’d both dabbled in Urban Exploration, and the weather had been perfect, so you had a few different photoshoots to sort through from that week. And the last one you get to is from a park with a bunch of storm drains. You liked to explore there to see the new graffiti that was always popping up, and to make half assed attempts to contact the ghosts that supposedly haunted the place. But you were always careful when you went because there was a homeless camp nearby. And when you sit at your desk and you look through those pictures, even though you’re safe in your home, you remember the chill of that cool spring day, you remember the ever-present danger of being there, less so than some of the abandoned places you haunted, but more so than others. 

As you edit, you take in all the little details you’d missed when you went in person. You always feel like photography allows you to time-travel just a bit. Sure, you’d seen this ravine in person, you’d touched the moss hanging off of it. But in your photos, you could study it, you could count the little white flowers blooming. The graffiti you snapped would live forever in your camera, even though it would be covered over in days in the real world. From this photoshoot, though, you find yourself mostly studying the pictures you’d snapped of an abandoned stretch of the homeless camp. The tents were gone, the campfires long burned out, moved further up into the woods. All that was left behind was the trash. And looking through your photos of the clutter is like a really gross, R-rated eye spy. There are needles scattered around, cigarettes. There are condom wrappers and loose clothes, wrinkled bras. There is also the occasional knife, credit card, and phone, and those you find especially interesting. You start reading the names on the discarded cards, and as you read, you imagine what those people were doing; you try to picture how they looked based on that little square of plastic. 

But then you get to a name you recognize. A name that chills you. It’s the name of that missing woman, the one who had brought news crews from all over the world to your little city years ago. They’d come back just last week when her body finally turned up in the river. You check the calendar and you do the math, and you realize the date stamp on your picture matches when she was still missing, long before she died. You wish you could time-travel for real then, go back to when you first found that card, just in case it might have led somewhere. But that’s not how the world works. You close the folder, and you’re just back in your house now, back in the present. You know they’re still trying to figure out who did it, but you also know that you can’t afford the kind of scrutiny that submitting a possible lead would bring. And solving the crime won’t bring her back anyway; in the present, in this moment, she’s dead. So you quietly mouse over the folder you just closed, and before you can talk yourself out of it, you delete The Podcast Inside Your House. 

Part 1

The first day I brought Miley home was only a week after I moved into my new house. She was hesitant to go inside, and I actually had to carry her over the threshold and into the living room. I’d never had a dog before and I had no idea how to pick them up so I just carried her like a baby. Even though pit bulls aren’t the biggest dogs out there, I’m pretty short, so we were quite the spectacle.

We spent a few minutes sitting on the couch, and she would sniff me, then venture further out and sniff everything in the living room, then come back to me. She seemed very uneasy and I chalked it up to the fact that I had just moved in. Most of my stuff was still in boxes (not because I had a lot of stuff, more because I was lazy) and I assumed everything in the house still smelled like the people who used to own it.

Eventually, Miley felt brave enough to check out the other rooms, but she wouldn’t do it alone. Whenever she was about to go inside another room, she would stop and look back at me until I went in first. It was like she was asking for permission. Even with all of the starts and stops it only took about ten minutes for her to thoroughly examine everything. The house was ridiculously small, which also made it ridiculously cheap. To be honest the price was about all I looked at when I decided to rent it.

After Miley had explored everything, she settled in my bedroom. She was overjoyed when I let her on the bed, and she seemed like she never wanted to leave it. We sat like that for a few hours, with me doing homework and her dreaming about whatever it is dogs dream about.

I wasn’t really sure how she would let me know she needed to go out, so I decided I should wake her up and just take her. I gently patted her head and whispered “Miley,” I felt incredibly rude for some reason, but she woke up right away. “Hey, do you need to go outside?”

She bolted up and ran to the door. It was the fastest I had seen her move yet. By the time I got in the living room, she had her leash in her mouth. She spat it out in my hands and sat down, then did something I had never seen a dog do; she smiled. Not like an open-mouthed, panting dog smile, but like she had seen the way humans smiled when they’re happy and she decided that she wanted to do that too. It looked so goofy, her teeth closed, but her mouth wide open. If her tail wasn’t wagging and her body wiggling around it would almost look like she was baring her teeth. I was a bit worried that it meant something else, but as the day went on, she kept smiling whenever she got excited about something. Each walk and feeding time guaranteed one of her weird little smiles. By the end of the day, any doubts I had about adopting a dog vanished.

That night Miley slept curled up next to me, and the sounds of the new neighborhood didn’t seem so scary anymore. It wasn’t the worst part of town, but I had already heard gunshots since moving in. With Miley next to me I felt like I would be completely safe no matter what. The house started to feel a little more like home that night.

The next morning, as I left for work at the hotel, Miley came to the door to lick my face goodbye. I found as many excuses as I could to run into my friend Emily and tell her all about Miley. Her aunt had been the one who had to give her up, so she was thrilled to hear that we were getting along great. And to be honest, I don’t know that I could have stayed in that house alone. After living with roommates for my first three years of school it just felt so wrong to come home to an empty house.

Work seemed to drag on for much longer than usual, knowing that Miley was home alone for the first time. Every guest check-in and phone call seemed to last for hours on its own. It was like time itself had decided it needed a day to relax, and it was just going to take things real slow that day.

The second the clock hit 11:30 I was out the door. I drove as quickly as I dared, the whole way back going over everything that could have gone wrong. Someone could have broken in, or Miley could have started eating the walls and gotten sick, or perhaps she was chewing on wires and got electrocuted. The scenarios became increasingly ridiculous as I was pulling into my driveway and walking up to the door.

I slammed open the door, ready to run to the rescue, but Miley was sitting right in front of it. As I closed it, she smiled at me and came over to lick my face. A quick inspection of the house revealed she had chewed open one of the boxes full of clothes, but they didn’t look harmed. It looked like she had pulled a bunch of my clothes out to make a nest in, and I couldn’t bring myself to yell at her for something so cute.

I was amazed by how quickly Miley became a part of my daily routine. Even with work and school, I was never away from home for more than five hours, so I always saw her a few times a day. With it being my last semester I also had to spend more time on my schoolwork than I ever had before, so it was probably a good thing that I had a reason to come home and study instead of going out.

There would be weeks when I was so busy with school that the only times I really left the house were to take Miley for walks around the neighborhood. She hardly ever got tired, and I figured that we should take advantage of the weather before it got too close to winter. I was also using it as an excuse to procrastinate because the longer the walk, the longer I could put off doing my homework.

When we first started our walks, I only went toward campus, because my house was right on the edge of a bad neighborhood. But I quickly learned that no one would mess with me with Miley by my side. We started walking to all of the nearby city parks within a few miles, and I saw a whole new side of the city that I didn’t know existed. Two of the parks we lived near had stretches of woods big enough to hold deer, and even coyotes. It was a bit surreal to be able to see the skyscrapers of downtown as the backdrop to a family of deer grazing in a wide-open prairie.

The two parks were connected by a biking trail that ran through the city, but Miley’s favorite one was about two miles farther from my place, so we usually just stopped at a park that was only about ten minutes away. Miley was always restless at that one though. I thought it was because she knew that her favorite dog-friendly metro park was just a ways down the path, but looking back now, I realize that she was afraid of that place.

The park was off of a citywide trail, so it saw a lot of foot traffic. This meant there were always lots of people around, and it was both comforting and scary. Of course, since it was on the west side, that also meant the people could be more dangerous than the animals. One time I even saw a homeless man sprint from one side of the path to the other, and disappear in the woods a few yards ahead of where we were walking. It was unnerving to think there could be people in the forest just out of sight.

To be honest, it was kind of exciting exploring a park with a bit of danger. Even if I wasted hours there, I still preferred that park to the nicer one farther away. Of course, I took Miley to her favorite one often enough, but I didn’t feel drawn to that one the same way I did to this one.

Plus all of the foot traffic meant that there were new things to look at every time we went. Sure some of the litter was depressing, especially when you’re walking along a pristine pond shore and step on a used condom. But there was also interesting litter; trash that felt like it was telling a story.

At work, I liked to play a game where I would make up little stories for the guests staying there, and I found myself doing the same thing with the lost objects and trash I saw on the paths in the park. I would spend my mornings making up entire lives for people, and my afternoons or nights were devoted to giving lives to the things lost off the hiking paths. The handsome man with a mysterious accent was here to assassinate the governor, and that toddler’s left shoe was lost in a tousle with the family dog. The older man and (significantly) younger woman were agents on a stakeout, and that discarded sketchbook had been dropped because it was cursed. The mother and kids looking tired and worn were actually fugitives on the run, and that sober chip was just discarded because the owner had upgraded to a new milestone.

Miley always took an interest in the more unusual trash too, the things that looked like they had been lost rather than discarded. Some of the objects she would sniff intently, and some of them she would avoid like the plague. Of course some of the trash she would just try to eat, but what dog wouldn’t?

In the weeks leading up to finals, these walks and little made-up stories were the only breaks I got from my studies. In order to graduate early, I had crammed in more classes than I probably should have into the last semester. I gradually become more distant from my friends when I moved out, and right off the bat, I stopped talking to the people that I only talked to because we were in such close proximity to one another. But even the people that I pictured being a permanent part of my life were slowly fading away.

It felt like senior year of high school all over again, when everyone starts to get their acceptance letters and coming to terms with the fact that they will be leaving. Except instead of everyone moving on to something new, it felt like I was just falling behind, slipping through the cracks until my old acquaintances forgot that I used to be such a big part of their lives.

It got really bad one day when I realized that I had gone three whole days without getting a text from the outside world. As usual, I decided to avoid my problems by going on an adventure with Miley, so we went to her favorite park and she ran around the dog park for almost an hour. By the time we had followed the path back to the park near my house, it was already sunset. I decided I was still too distracted to do homework, so we started walking around the path by the pond.

It was the best time of day to see the water. The reds and yellows and purples of the clouds were even brighter when reflected, shining and distorted by the ripples from the ducks and the geese splashing around. The prairie around it looked like spun gold in the setting sunlight. It would have been serene if it wasn’t for Miley acting absolutely crazy. Sometimes she liked to bark at the ducks, but this was like nothing I had ever seen before. She was growling and pulling at her leash, and I was scared she might slip out of her collar.

About halfway through, I decided we should just turn back because it was too much. The sun was getting lower and lower so it was probably a good idea to head home since it would be dark soon anyway. But as we got closer to the main trail, Miley started acting worse. She kept pulling into the underbrush, not growling anymore but whining and whimpering.

She stopped abruptly, ears perked up and I heard it; a high-pitched keening sound that instantly sent a chill up my spine. It was a sound of desperation, pleading, sadness; a cry for help. A child was screaming somewhere close by in the woods.

Miley jumped into the underbrush and I followed, letting her take me closer and closer to that god-awful noise that was screaming at the primal part of my brain to run away before I found out what could force a person to make that sound. With each step into the woods, I noticed more and more things that had been lost. We seemed to be following a trail of trash, there were magazine pages, melted glass, pieces of marbled tile. After just a few minutes we came upon a pile of discarded items. All the while the screaming got louder yet less frequent, and the sun crawled to the edge of the sky, making the shadows creep closer and closer.

We were standing on a pile of worn clothes, single shoes, bobby pins, and hair ties. Miley was actively trying to step only on the grass, the same way a kid will jump over cracks. The screaming was coming from all around us and Miley didn’t know where to go. We stepped further into the woods because we were already this deep in and I had to know what was happening.

My foot caught on something and I slammed into the ground. I yanked Miley’s leash on the way and she went down too. The screaming stopped the second my face hit the dirt, and the forest went horribly quiet. I sat up immediately and looked around.

Miley was on high alert, teeth out and ears pulled back, while she quietly growled in the direction of the deeper trees. Her stomach was bleeding a bit from a wound in her side, and just under her was a pile of forks that I had pulled her into. They were all various shapes and sizes, some new and shiny, others dull with age, dirt-caked into the elaborate designs. I looked to see what had tripped me and saw a pile of headphones. All different colors and all covered in different degrees of mud.

I pulled the headphones off my shoe and stood up, spinning in a full circle to look all around the woods. It was getting dark out, and there wasn’t any sound to follow anymore. I suddenly felt so vulnerable out there. I remembered reading that some animals made sounds resembling human screams, but I hadn't imagined that an animal could sound anything like that. Plus there were plenty of people out here, so there was no reason to assume it wasn’t a person screaming, and that meant that something had just silenced them. And whatever happened to them, could happen to me. There was no way to tell what direction they were in, how close they had been. It was getting harder to see the things around me, but looking at the various piles of trash and treasure, I couldn’t help but think of the nest Miley had made the first day I got her. Perhaps something else had made this nest. 

Near the very edge of where the clearing ended, the shadows and thick underbrush made everything look matte black. And there, in the darkness, I saw something move. It crawled out, moving erratically, but slowly. It was much too small to be a person, but bigger than a raccoon should have been. I briefly thought of my initial idea that there was a child screaming in the woods, but this thing didn’t move the way a human should. It crawled to the edge of the darkness, and I knew if I stayed for just a second longer, I could see what it was.

We ran. Miley wasn’t slowed down at all by her wound and she kept tugging at me, trying to get me to run faster. I tripped at least a dozen times getting back to the path, and each time I got up and went back into a full sprint. It was just dark enough that the ground was covered completely in shadows. The light from the setting sun was crawling up to the tops of the trees, slowly going out like candle flames as it reached the ends of the branches. Everything else was a grey haze, and my face was covered in scratches and stings from dozens of branches. We ran for what felt like hours, and I started to worry we were going in the wrong direction. There was no way we had been that deep in the woods.

I started to falter, adrenaline can only take you so far. As soon as I slowed to a walk though, I felt concrete under my feet. I opened my eyes all the way and saw we were back where we started. I walked as quickly as I could, back to the main path and out of the park. I thought about taking out my phone and calling the police, but what would I tell them? That I thought I heard someone screaming in the woods? It could have just as easily been a bobcat or raccoon.

Before I knew it we were out of the park, heading home and I had convinced myself that nothing of real danger had happened. I started to rationalize it in the way that we rationalize everything out of our accepted worldview. It couldn’t possibly have been anything truly scary, because that kind of thing only happened to people on tv right? Not to me. I didn’t even hear any words, surely a person would have said ‘help’ at least once. I had mostly calmed down by the time my house was in view.

All of a sudden it felt like something was watching me. A glance behind me showed that there was nothing illuminated in the streetlights, but my heart started racing. We ran, again, up to the door and I fumbled with my keys. Miley’s hair was standing on end and she was letting out a low growl, but she wasn’t looking back at anything. She was looking at the door like the real threat was inside the house. I picked out my house key and somehow dropped my keyring on the ground. The clattering sounded impossibly loud, and I was sure at any moment, something was about to grab us and drag us back into the night. I picked up my keys again and managed to unlock the door. I could feel something just behind us but I didn’t dare look back.

We stumbled inside and I slammed the door shut, certain up until the last second that something was going to stick its fingers through and pry open the door. The deadbolt clicked in place and I instantly felt better. Miley’s hair started to go down, but she was still growling back at the door. I turned on the hallway light as fast as I could, and kept Miley on her leash, afraid she would run through the house and leave me alone to face whatever she had been growling at.

Step by step we approached the living room. At the threshold, Miley stopped and the fur around her tail started to perk back up. I could only see what was illuminated in the light from the hall. The couch and TV blocked the light and dragged shadows across the rest of the space, making patches of darkness more than big enough to hide a person in. With Miley’s leash in hand, we stepped over the doorway, and I felt a primal kind of dread as I set foot there. I could feel something watching me, and I knew, I knew that there was something terrible in there.

I switched on the light and Miley looked around and cocked her head. Her ears moved forward a bit, and her tail perked up. Thankfully she walked right next to me as we inspected the living room. Miley relaxed more and more with each step, and we checked everywhere. There was nothing there.

We made our way to the other rooms in the house, and each time we crossed through the doorway, Miley would go back on high alert. It was just like the first day I brought her home. We checked and re-checked everywhere, opening each closet and looking under the bed. On the second round of inspections, when I felt like I was just being paranoid, Miley would still get agitated at each of the doorways. I started to think she was just scared.

By the time we were done the adrenaline was wearing off fully, and I realized how exhausted I was. I collapsed into bed, with Miley sitting right on the edge to protect me from anything that might decide to crawl out from underneath it. She didn’t seem bothered by the cut in her side, so I decided the vet could wait until morning.

“Goodnight Smiley,” I whispered. I had mace in one hand and a baseball bat under my pillow, and I felt safe enough to let sleep drag me away.

That night I dreamt of lost socks and bobby pins in the woods, of toddlers and homeless people wandering through the trees, and Miley smiling and leading me deeper into the dark.

Part 2

The next day I was still freaked out, and the day after that too. But after a few days, the real fear started to fade and I even told Emily about what happened so I could laugh it off. A version of the story where it was all just in my head of course. And though I didn’t say it, privately I worried that how busy and isolated I’d been lately was starting to actually mess with my head. 

With finals just a few days away I had to isolate myself even more than I already had been. My work hours were slashed in anticipation of all the studying I needed to do, and I had to cut my walk schedule with Miley down to a minimum. We stayed close to home for the last days of my student life. I thought I was just being silly of course, but I wasn’t quite ready to go back to the parks by the river trail just yet.

After finals had ended I spent a few days laying around all day. I knew I needed to repair my connections, reach out to friends that I had been neglecting for months, but I just wanted a few days for myself. That’s what I told myself anyway, looking back I think I was just afraid that if I texted or called, I might not get an answer. It had been almost a whole semester since I had talked to anyone and I was scared that they might have forgotten me.

With too much time to myself, I started to pick back at the memories from that night like I was pulling off loose threads from a sweater. I watered down everything with a fresh coat of doubt until the real memories felt so frail and vague that they started to pull apart and dissolve. It was dark and I was in the woods alone, and I must have let my imagination get out of hand. Plus it had been the week before finals, and my stress was through the roof. People did all kinds of crazy things during finals, more than a few people went to the library to cry, and suicide attempts skyrocketed.

After three days of coming home from work only to lay around the house all day, I decided I needed to go back. Surely Miley was missing her favorite park, and in order to take her there, I would just have to suck it up and cross through the one in between.

I brought my mace, and I had Emily on speed dial. We still had hours and hours of daylight, so we should have had plenty of time to go to Miley’s park, then cross back through the other one before it was dark.

The trip to Miley’s park was uneventful, and I was both relieved and disappointed. I did spot someone’s textbook thrown off the path on the way there, but I tried not to look at the edges of the woods too much.

Miley was ridiculously happy to be back, and she spent much longer than usual sprinting around the dog park. I guess in dog time it had been almost two months since we’d been there. After a while I got tired of running around with her, so I sat on the bench and just watched her wander around. The last few months had been tough, but Miley made it all seem okay.

Not long after I sat down, a golden retriever joined Miley in the park, and his owner sat with me on the bench. He introduced himself as Mark, and his dog was Rusty. Miley and Rusty came running over to protect us from each other if need be, and they made it easy to strike up the kind of conversation only two dog people can have. We spent far too long talking about the cute things our dogs do, and of course, I called Miley over to try to get her to smile, but she doesn’t do that on command.

Eventually, we had to talk about something other than dogs, and the conversation drifted toward school, and work, and what we were going to do with our lives. He still had over a year to go, so he was asking me about all things employment-related, and how I was going to go about getting a job relevant to my degree. I threw out as much bull as I could, but eventually, I had to admit that I didn’t know. I wasn’t ready to transition into real adulthood yet, and the idea of not having school to occupy my time anymore was terrifying.

We had the kind of rapid-fire dialogue you can only have with someone you’ve just met, where the novelty and mystery of a person are at their peak. Before I knew it, the sun was dipping lower in the sky, and I was yanked out of my trance.

“Hey, I’ve really got to get back, it’s getting late and I’ve got some stuff-” I started rambling, a bit alarmed because I had no idea how late it was or how long I’d been talking.

“Right yeah, I should get going too.” He pulled out his phone. “What’s your number? I think our dogs might want to hang out again sometime.” It was a cheesy line, but I put my number in his phone as fast as I could and called Miley over.“By the way, I usually have an end-of-the-semester party at my place. You should go. I’ll text you about it.” He said.

“Yeah totally, sorry I’ve just really got to get back, I’ll text you later.”

I didn’t tell him I had to leave because I needed to walk over two miles along the trail, as he definitely seemed like the type to offer to walk me home. After I put Miley’s leash on, she pulled over to Mark to say goodbye, and finally she smiled at him. I let Rusty lick my face goodbye, and we were off.

On the way back to the other park I was practically glowing with happiness. Granted I hadn’t had a whole lot of human interaction, so Mark was probably not really that great, maybe even a weirdo. But the future felt a little bit less scary, and I had at least one thing to look forward to for the holidays. Maybe I would even get a New Year’s kiss.

My excitement got lower and lower along with the sun as it sunk behind the trees. Miley wasn’t helping at all because she was struggling and whining just like that day last week.

With each crack and rustle in the bushes, more and more of my bravado from earlier slipped away until I was a nervous wreck. I didn’t run though, I couldn’t because that would mean admitting to myself that there was something to run from. Despite my best efforts, I found myself looking down at the path for lost lighters and single socks. Anything to indicate I might be near the nest.

Clothes started to crop up in a line, dragged out through the forest. A stray bit of fabric here, a piece of a shoe there. The clothes were in just enough distress that I couldn’t tell if they were worn with age or torn from a struggle. The worst part was that they all looked like they were too small to belong to an adult.

That was always a common theme with clothes found in the forest, kids shoes and shirts were lying around much more often than full-size clothes. I always wondered if the parents just didn’t go back for them because the kids were growing so fast they would be out of them in a month anyway. But here, now, the answer felt much more sinister.

Miley was pulling and tugging like crazy, but she wasn’t trying to go out near the edges of the path. She was staying exactly in the center and trying to get me to go forward faster. She wanted out of there.

The shadows were creeping up. Starting to overtake the few remaining patches of sunlight on the path. Miley started to walk a bit funny, jumping and stalling randomly. It reminded me of that night in the nest when she had been so careful to avoid stepping on any of the lost items. I realized with a deep sinking feeling in my stomach that there was a pattern to her starts and stops. 

She was avoiding the shadows.

I gave up and jumped into a sprint, while an earsplitting scream pierced the silence. It was like it was waiting for me to start running. This time it sounded like an adult screaming, but it was that same god-awful keening that went straight to the most basic part of my brain.

I was sprinting now because I knew that my life depended on it. We had been near the end of the park when I ran and there was no way in hell I should still be running. This was not the same path that I knew so well. We were on the wrong path.

I ran until I couldn’t run anymore, with Miley pulling me along, urging me to keep running. We gravitated towards the left of the path because there were fewer shadows, but the patches of sunlight were so few and far in between that it was impossible to avoid the shadows now. The colors of the day were being sucked out by the greys and blues of twilight.

We slowed to a walk, and as soon as I had both feet on the ground again, I saw a shift in the path under my feet. The trees blurred together for an instant, and suddenly we were back on the path I knew.

The problem was, we were exactly where we had been when we started running. At some point during my run, the screaming had stopped, and it was terribly quiet aside from something just off to my right.

Something was breathing, long scratchy painful breaths. It was darker now than it had been only seconds ago. I couldn’t see anything, but I knew that it was there. It rustled the branches ever so slightly, and I froze.

Miley was whining and trying to get away from it. I had never seen her like this. During all of the other encounters, she was always the brave one, ready to growl and scare away whatever it was that was scaring me.

It stepped closer letting out a long low sigh like it was preparing itself for something. I don’t know how, but somehow I managed to pick up one foot and put it on the ground in front of me. I couldn’t run, I knew that now, but maybe I could get away from it slowly.

Miley was pulling, and it took all of my strength not to sprint away. I took care to keep my back to the creature. The last few splashes of sun were drifting completely off the path, and I was terrified to find out what might happen if the sun went down completely.

Focusing on my feet, I started an even stride forward, not daring to look in the woods around me. Crunches and scrapes told me that the creature was crawling its way out of the bushes and was nearing the path, but I didn’t dare look back. The breathing picked up as it started moving to match my pace. The snaping of twigs and crunch of leaves lessened and disappeared completely. The creature was on the path, following right behind me.

I couldn’t tell much about it, only that it was big. I could feel a presence behind me, looming far over the top of my head. Heavy footfalls and low breathing told me that this creature was not something I could take in a fight, even with Miley by my side.

I quickened my pace just a bit, and I could feel it get closer. Warm earthy air hit the back of my neck and it took everything I had not to scream. My heart jumped up to a pace I had never felt before. As I slowed my footfalls it fell farther behind. I looked back at my feet, praying to god and a whole host of deities I didn’t even believe in, to please just get me out of there safely.

We hadn’t been so far from the path, the end had to be near. I was too scared to look up, too scared to see if we had fallen off the path again, the real path. Miley had been resigned to my slow pace, but out of nowhere, she yanked the leash, pulling me roughly forward. I looked up for just a second to assess our situation.

The last few slipping rays of sunlight were completely off the left of the path, climbing slowly up the trees. The right of the path looked unnaturally dark, and the presence behind me vanished. The end of the path was in sight and I was so close to getting out.

City lights illuminated the distance, with just a few stray tree branches in the way. Miley was tugging on her leash and trying to run, but I knew if we made a dash for it, we wouldn’t make it out. I focused back on my feet, forcing myself to take the last few steps out of the woods agonizingly slowly. Once we got out we would still have to cross the field, but it was well lit by the glare from the city and the streetlights.

Miley was pulling even harder now, barking and growling with all her heart. As my foot crossed over the threshold of the park and the trail, I instantly felt safer. We’d made it. Miley had stopped pulling, and her growling finally ceased. She’d fallen a bit behind me and I looked back, the first traces of a smile forming on my lips. We were alive, and we’d made it out.

Miley was gone. Her collar was ripped, and she was nowhere to be seen.

“Miley?” I meant to whisper it, but it came out as a panicked, hoarse yell. I looked all around me while stepping slowly back from the woods. I turned around in case she had run ahead of me, but the field was empty. And worse than that, the streetlights were out. They had just been on, mere seconds ago, and now the field ahead of me was as dark as the woods behind.

“Mmmmmmiiiiily?” The question came from right behind me and I froze. My heart stopped and I tried to breathe but it was like my lungs forgot how to work. The night air felt so much colder than it had, and it burned when I tried to gasp for air.

“Miiiileey?” It asked again, closer this time. It wasn’t human, but it was something desperately struggling to sound like one. I stood there for a few agonizing seconds, eyes sealed shut.

Fuck it, if this thing was going to kill me, I was at least going to see what it looked like. I don’t know where I got the courage from, but I opened my eyes and turned around.

It was standing right on the very edge of the path, not two feet away from me. If I ran I wouldn’t stand a chance so I just stood there, and let my eyes adjust to the dark, watching the details of it slowly emerge.

“What do you want?!” I screamed. Its skin became a patchwork of different colors and textures. It was tall, with its face hidden behind a tree branch. It swayed just a bit, panting.

“Miley?” Its voice sounded closer, not only to a human voice but to my voice. I could see almost perfectly right now, and it became apparent that its skin wasn’t just a patchwork pattern, but a quilt made up of what looked like human skin. The patches leading up to its neck looked fresher, while the bits and pieces near its feet were rotted nearly to the bone. Spaced out between the skin were bits of fur and cloth and paper.

Ever so slowly, it picked up its foot and leaned forward. Its other leg was made up of something shiny and black, metal and glass all mixed together, and it dragged on the ground as it pulled itself closer to me. Its face was stitched up with the same mismatched parts, but bits of it were still bleeding. Droplets of blood leaked out from one stubbled cheek and fell onto a book page thinly veiling the bone underneath.

Its scalp was a nightmare of different bits of hair, some human, some decidedly not. A broken stub of an antler stuck out the side of its head, and as it leaned forward, I could see the thread and loose fabric, and grass holding the pieces together. Silver bits of something glistened around its eyes, and it lifted its head just enough for the light to catch them. One of its eyes was a soulful sad-looking brown human eye, and the other one was slitted like a house cat. The eyelids were sewn onto bits of metal and jewelry to stay open, and as I looked into its eyes, they changed.

“If you’re going to kill me, just get it over with,” I said. Nothing could be worse than waiting like this. The cat-eye slowly grew rounder, the Iris expanding to fill the whole eye, the center morphing into a horizontal pupil like that of a deer. The creature moved forward and as it moved the patches all over its body changed, like slowly rippling water changing the reflection on its surface.

The creature reached out a hand, finally crossing the threshold. Patches of skin wrinkled, and paper crumbled and yellowed with age all along its arm as it stretched out. The skin already rotting off fell to reveal bones that were shoved together in a way that should not have allowed this thing to move. It was like the bones from a dozen different animals were all fused together in a vaguely human-shaped bag.

It couldn’t cross the border, I realized. But why would it show me that? It reached out as far as it could and just stared at me, its claws stopping just inches from my neck. I stepped back, careful not to move too quickly. I looked back into its eyes, and it looked up.

The stars were just starting to come out, sunset had turned into twilight, and suddenly I felt very very wrong. I looked back but not quick enough. Its skin was growing back and it lunged at me, catching my neck with the very edge of its claws.

Then I heard a growl. Miley ran out of the bushes, but she looked off. She looked almost transparent, but the closer she got to the creature, the more solid she became. It was just like when the trees had blurred earlier like I couldn’t look straight at her. She barked in a way that sounded completely unnatural for such a sweet dog, and she jumped the creature, sinking her teeth deep into the rotting flesh of its back.

My neck was bleeding, the stars were getting brighter, and Miley was thrown off of the beast. It slammed her to the ground and turned to look at me, with slitted eyes.

I ran. I sprinted faster than I ever had and was relieved to see streetlights just a few blocks away from the park. I ran past a couple holding hands, and I thought briefly about asking for help, but they didn’t seem to notice me, and I didn’t want to be outside anymore. I didn’t know what to do so I ran home, and I didn’t stop until I was at my door. I turned on every light on the house and crawled into bed, baseball bat and phone in either hand. I had to call someone.

But who? The police would never believe me, and how would I explain that anyway? Something cold dripped onto my arm, and I suddenly remembered my neck. I used my phone to assess the damage, and although there was a lot of blood, it was clear no major damage had been done.

Getting up and finding some bandages seemed too taxing right then, so I wrapped my sweater arms around my neck and opened up my phone contacts. There were no calls or texts from the past month aside from work and Emily.

“Come one, pick up, pick up.” My fingers were shaking but I managed to click call and hold the phone up to my ear. The phone rang four times, and I was terrified she wouldn’t answer.

“Hello?” Her voice was the sweetest thing I had ever heard.

“Emily! It’s me, I need help, okay this is going to sound crazy-” My voice was shaking almost as much as my hands but I was so happy she picked up.

“Sorry, who is this?” She sounded hostile like I’d done something to piss her off. “I think you have the wrong number.”

“Emily, it’s me, it’s Nikki.” I wracked my brain for what I could have done to hurt her, but I hadn’t even seen her in days.

“I don’t know a Nikki, if this is a prank call it’s not funny.” And with that, she hung up. Her rejection stung, but whatever she was mad about, now wasn’t the time to figure it out.

I cradled the phone in my hand and wrapped my sweater tighter around my neck. The bleeding had slowed but I started to think about all of the things that could be in the wound. At the very least I needed a tetanus shot. The idea of a brightly lit, crowded urgent care never sounded safer, so I grabbed my coat and forced myself to go up to the front door.

It was so hard to open the door. I had to stand there for a few minutes until the idea of staying in my house alone all night seemed like a worse idea than going back outside. I shamelessly sprinted to the car and drove as quickly as I could.

When I started driving I calmed down just enough to start thinking about what I’d done. I left Miley there, all alone with that thing. The guilt started eating at me, and all I could think about was what might have happened to her.

It completely took over my thoughts as I drove to the hospital. When I walked in and the nurses rushed me back to get stitched up, I only felt worse and worse. At some point I gave them my wallet, mumbling about insurance cards and IDs. I was zoned out for the whole ordeal of painkillers and disinfectant, my mind hooked on the idea that Miley could still be alive. She could be in the woods, bleeding out, and wondering why I wasn’t there to help her.

I checked back into reality to check out of the hosptial, just enough to make up some bullshit story about trying to catch a stray cat. I doubted it was believable but I didn’t care. I ended up standing at the front counter for way too long because the nurse went in the back, and I thought about just up and leaving but they still had my ID. After watching almost a full episode of some reality show from across the counter, she returned, the security guard in tow.

“Ma’am, where did you get this?” The nurse held my license just out of reach and the security guard stepped closer.

“That’s my ID” I reached my hand out. “What do you mean?”

“This is fake.” She pulled it back behind the counter. “That’s your picture, but there’s no Nikki Samson with this license number.”

“Miss I need you to come with me.” The security guard reached out to grab my arm, and for the last time that night, I ran. 

Part 3

I got to my car before the security guard was even out the door. I guess he wasn’t expecting me to make a break for it. I drove home quickly and cautiously but there wasn’t any sign of someone following me.

When I got home I was too anxious about what happened at the hospital to care about the dark. I gathered up all the weapons I had, along with anything I felt could inflict damage. I ended up with my baseball bat, mace, a set of kitchen knives, and a very sturdy decorative lamp. I didn’t really know what help all of it would be at once, but it made me feel safer.

On the off chance, Emily wasn’t just messing with me, I called again, and met with the same hostile response. It hurt a little less to know she wasn’t doing this on purpose, but that was outweighed by the sense of growing unease.

I went through all my closest friends in my contact list. Some were hostile, others confused, and some thought I was someone else playing a joke on them. I entertained the idea briefly that it was some awful practical joke, but half these people didn’t even know each other, there was no way that could have been organized. It was tough to hear all the people I knew so well talk to me as a stranger, but the whole thing was so bizarre it was taking on a dreamlike quality

There were two names on the list I hadn’t tried to call. But I wasn’t ready to have that conversation, not over the phone. It was rapidly approaching one in the morning, and I decided the best thing to do would be to sleep. In my exhausted state, I even started to think that maybe this had all been a dream, and if I just slept, I would wake up and everything would be okay.

It was still dark out when I woke up. I reached out instinctively to pet Miley, but all I felt was a handful of cold sheets. Then the precious few seconds of bliss slipped away and I fell back into reality. Miley was gone. The previous day's events came flooding back to me, and I had to wonder what had woken me up.

Staying as still as possible, I opened my eyes and slowly turned my head so I could see the rest of the room. My closet door was cracked open just a smidge, and the inner child in me started to imagine something lurking just behind the door. The rest of the room looked empty, and I didn’t hear anything that should have startled me awake. The only place I couldn’t see was under the bed. I remembered the way Miley had stayed on guard, watching it the first night we ran into the creature, and I decided that I had to check.

Refusing to slowly lower my head down, I jumped off and ran to the other side of the room. Nothing stirred, but I dropped to the floor to look. The lights were still on from last night, and the sun was starting to come in through the window, so I had enough light to see that it was completely empty. I breathed a long, shaky sigh of relief, then turned around to check the closet.

The crack from earlier was open wider, and there were four long fingers sticking out of the door. My heart jumped up, and I flinched, but I stepped back slowly. The other times I’d tried to run, I ended up sort of slipping away, running but not getting anywhere.

I backed up to my bed and reached around until I felt my duffel bag. The sun was getting brighter, moving high enough to start peeking through my blinds, and the door slowly inched open. I kept stepping until I felt the doorknob, and turned it just as the creature peeked out. A big grey eye met mine as I closed the door.

I walked at an even pace to the stairs. Keeping my eyes straight ahead, I tried not to look at the cracked-open bathroom door, or the hallway closet with two claws jutting out near the bottom. I didn’t see anything on the stairs but I felt a nameless sort of dread, and it took all of my control not to run. It was like I was a kid again who had just flipped off a light switch and needed to sprint away from the monsters in the dark.

The stairs led right to the front door, but I heard the kitchen pantry creak open. Heavy footfalls struck the tile behind me, just as I turned the doorknob. I got outside, jumping over the threshold, and when I turned around to slam the door, something was already halfway through the living room.

Somehow I felt oddly calm. Whatever these things were I had managed to figure out at least some of their rules. Strange things all seemed to be happening at sunrise and sunset, so I decided those were dangerous times. Maybe if I could just keep observing, figuring out more of the strange laws they abided by, I’d have a fighting chance. 

My car was dangerously low on gas, but I waited out the sunrise before I drove anywhere. Only when the sun was completely above the horizon did I risk going out. I drove straight to the park and waited until I saw a group of teenagers go off onto the path. I followed closely enough to feel safe, and when I passed through the threshold I didn’t feel any different, nor did I see any sign of Miley. After the first uneventful walkthrough of the path, I gathered up the courage to yell out for her and walk off into the underbrush. I even tried to find the nest, but there wasn't any sign of lost objects. I retraced my steps a dozen times over before deciding I wasn’t helping anyone by spending all day there. I called in a tip to animal control about an escaped, but friendly dog, hoping they might find her, then I set off on the next place I had to go.

The drive to my destination felt so much shorter than normal. When I arrived I stared at the house long enough to gather my courage, and I grabbed one of my notebooks and a pen from my backpack. The doorbell was an awful tacky tune and I had to ring twice before anyone answered. The door opened and a woman with the same brownish red hair as me stepped out. She looked annoyed, her slightly crooked mouth straining to fake a smile. Before I knew it tears started forming at the corners of my eyes, and her face softened.

“Sweetie, are you okay?” She opened the door all the way “Bill, get over here!” She yelled. “What’s wrong? Are your parents around?”

I started to cry at that but I’d prepared for this. “My, um, something is wrong with my car.” I choked out between sniffles. “Can I use your phone?” My mom touched my shoulder and led me inside.

“Of course.” She walked to the counter where she always kept it charging, and my dad gestured to the couch.

“Here, take a seat.” I wiped the tears out of my eyes and sat down, taking in the living room. We had select few family pictures up, and I was relieved to see that I was still in them. But it was hard to look at them. Not emotionally, but physically, like trying to focus on your nose without crossing your eyes. They were there, but they didn’t look quite right.

“Here you go, sweetie.” My mom handed me her phone and pulled my dad into the kitchen, enough to give me privacy but still keep an eye on me. I was a stranger in their house after all.

I called Emily and left a bullshit message about my car. I’d gotten what I came here for.

“Thank you, I’m gonna go wait for her.” I rushed out while my mom started to stutter out something about me waiting inside, but I stopped her, “I’m fine, really.”

I don’t know what they thought when they saw me get into a perfectly functional car and drive away, but it didn’t matter. Going home was out of the question so I went to the library. I was lost at first with what I really wanted to look up, but there had to be something out there about what was happening.

Eventually after googling sunset-related paranormal events, I stumbled upon the idea of liminal spaces. Which were places in between destinations: airports, rest stops, hotels, and even normal doorways. The term also referred to times of day, sunset, and sunrise, as well as liminal spaces in mythology. There were stories about monsters only able to attack people crossing thresholds, and liminal animals, swans, and ducks being linked to transformation and change. I started to see how my ordeal was all centered around liminality, but nothing I found came close to resembling the creatures that had invaded my house and taken Miley so suddenly. 

After a few hours, I decided to test out some theories before it got too close to sunset. I walked around campus and reintroduced myself to my favorite professor. After bombarding a secretary with questions I learned I had never been enrolled. Of course, the hotel had no record of me ever being employed, and when I went to an ATM, it ate my card because it wasn’t valid. I even went to the urgent care under the guise of checking on a friend and shook hands with the nurse who stole my ID just a few short hours ago.

My cash supply was already low after that morning, but after a day of driving, I was close to being stranded. I spent sunset in a crowded coffee shop and drove home after the stars were completely out and the moon had risen. If I was right, these creatures could only get me during liminal hours, and if I was wrong, well I didn't have a whole lot of options anyway. After thoroughly inspecting everything in my house, baseball bat in tow, I slept until four and went to wait out the sunrise in a campus library.

I spent the next few days in a similar routine. I avoided my house at sunrise and sunset and made it a point to be in crowded spaces during those liminal hours. But even then, I still saw the creatures. There would be claws prying open different doors on campus, eyes watching me from the stairwells across the street as a sipped cheap coffee. It didn’t matter that I went to the same places to loiter because no one remembered me the next day. I researched as much as I could but I wasn’t getting anywhere and I had no idea how long I would still have electricity, heat, or even a house.

Near the start of day three, I was staring out the library window, when I heard a noise I hadn’t heard in far too long. My phone buzzed. It was a single text that read ‘Hey’ with a stupid little smiley face. I sent back ‘Who is this?’ and waited, anxious but excited. This could be another sinister piece of the puzzle, or it could be some kind of breakthrough. Not even a minute later I got the response ‘Mark, from last week.’

I quickly set up a meeting for that afternoon. I didn’t try to explain anything over text, better to just let him think whatever he wanted that would get him to show up. I guess it kind of made sense that he would remember me since the one and only time I met him was when I was already slipping into this strange space.

I got bolder that day, wandering around the city. I had hours to kill until I was supposed to meet Mark, and I felt like I’d done everything I could. So I just walked around, checking out new areas to try and observe if there were any creatures around in daylight.

I gradually became aware of a presence following me as I strolled the streets. I looked behind my shoulder enough to be conspicuous, but I didn't see any sign of the monsters, just college students and workers on break. But there was one person who stood out right away, and she didn’t even try to hide her gaze. Stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, I let people walk around me as she approached.

“You can see me?” Her voice was rough and the inflection of her words was just slightly off like she was just learning how to talk.

“Yes, I-” She reached out a hand to touch my cheek, but I didn’t flinch away. She looked so sad. “What happened to you?” Pedestrians walked all around us, but they didn’t feel real in the way she did. She looked like she had been living on the street for quite some time.

“Let’s go somewhere we can talk.” I led her to a cheap fast food place nearby, and we settled in. My cash was dwindling fast, and I had to wonder how much longer it would be before I ended up like her. She demanded that I tell her my story first and her undivided attention was unnerving after days of solitude. Eventually, she gathered herself enough to tell me about how she ended up stuck in this place.

She had been living in a sober house for young women when she started to slip. It was a program that cut off her communication with the outside world, and after she got out she vowed to start over. She met her husband shortly after and got pregnant with her first child. To help combat her cravings she took to taking long walks in the forest and from there, her story started to sound a lot like mine. After she tilted out of the normal reality, she kept trying to reach out to her husband and daughter to explain to them what happened. After a few nights spent in jail and a restraining order, she gave up.

During her time trapped in the void, she’d met a few other people with equally tragic stories, but none of them had managed to get out. Apparently, they either let the creatures take them, or decided that it wasn’t worth living in a world that couldn’t remember them.

We talked for hours, but the details about our conversation were less clear than the events leading up to it. Everything else in this ordeal was as clear as any memory could be, but everything surrounding her was blurred, like I was forgetting what we were saying as we were saying it. Looking back now, it’s hard to remember any specific details. 

We devised a plan to try to explain things to Mark. When he walked through the door of the sleazy cafe and saw both of us, we half expected him to leave, but he made a beeline straight for our table.

“Hello.” He stuck out his hand for the woman to shake it, and while he didn’t seem upset, he didn’t seem friendly either.

She introduced herself, and we all sat there for a minute, glancing at each other’s feet. Mark looked tired and his choice of wrinkled dress shirt and sweatpants told me he probably didn’t plan on this being a date. He looked stressed and sleepless and I had a hunch that he was getting dragged into whatever was going on. 

“Something weird is happening.” I started, and Mark looked up to me, really looking into my eyes for the first time. “You agree with that, right?”

That was all it took. Mark started pouring out everything that had happened to him in the last week, stepping over his words and going back over certain details again and again like he really couldn’t believe any of it, but he was so glad to finally get it off his chest. Everyone he knew still recognized him, but he’d started seeing the creatures. He hadn’t worked out their routines, so he’d been avoiding sleeping at all at night, opting to stow away in different libraries and 24-hour stores. He’d even booked a session with a psychiatrist to see if it was all in his head.

The woman and I told him abridged versions of our stories because daylight was dwindling and we were all worried that being together might upset the fragile peace that we had with the monsters. 

Before long we were spitballing ideas about how to get out of the liminal space. We reasoned that I had gotten Mark involved, so maybe we were all connected and could still interact with the real world. The woman insisted that me and Mark may have a better chance of escaping since we were only recently separated from the real world. Eventually, we got to picking apart the first day I bought Miley home when she’d started growling at the thresholds. Since this whole thing had to do with crossing between places, we came up with something loosely resembling a plan. For me at least, it had all started when I carried Miley through the doorway into our new house. Perhaps we’d crossed over into something then, and maybe we could get out by crossing back. But first we would need Miley. 

We got in my car, using my precious few miles in the tank to go to Mark’s dad's house while the woman went to the building she was squatting in to gather whatever firepower she could muster. About an hour before sunset we all made it back to my house. In addition to my bat and mace, we now had a sawed-off shotgun, a piece of plywood with nails sticking out the end, and a machete. We waited in the car until the sun got just a few inches above the horizon, and the shadows started to crawl out. Stepping up onto the porch, we all chose our weapons.

“If anyone has a better idea, now is the time.” I stuck with my bat, while the woman opted for the machete, Mark had the gun a little more subtly hidden, but there was no good way for him to subtly hold the nail board. The neighbors across the street rushed their kids inside, but I knew if they decided to call the police, they would probably forget why before they even got to the phone.

Mark and the woman nodded at me as I turned the doorknob. We stepped over the threshold as closely together as we could, hand in hand. Nothing happened right away, but it was still a bit too early in the sunset for the creatures to be out. We went up to my room and they started pulling out clothes from my closet while I dumped out everything I had in my backpack. Pencils, notebooks, textbooks, and a few dog treats I always kept in one of the pouches.

In the center of my room we made one massive nest with everything that had been so important to me for the last six months. I cleared out a divot in the middle and gently set Miley’s collar down. We all stood with our backs facing together and waited.

The minutes crawled by, and with every second I was more and more sure that we were making a mistake. My house was crawling with the creatures and we had no idea if any of this would have an effect on them. The light started to dim with the sunset, and we moved closer together.

Miley’s collar started to twitch, while the closet door creaked just a bit as it started to open. Mark dropped the nail board and held out the gun, ready to shoot if anything tried to crawl out. Miley’s collar jerked to the side, touching one of my coats. I felt a painful twinge of hope, that we could somehow still find Miley. I guess I was expecting her to appear somehow. To be okay.

The collar stayed still for a few minutes, while the closet creaked open just a bit. Mark kept his eye on the closet, I watched the collar, and the woman looked back and forth between the both of us. One of the dog treats on top of a sweater started to shift.

“Miley?” I was so hopeful. The closet creaked open just enough to allow a hand to slip through, while something peeked out from under the nest.

It looked like Miley’s face, and it gently slipped out and looked up at me with warm grey-brown eyes. It looked enough like her that I didn't feel scared right away, but the eyes weren’t right. They were more brown, almost amber, and she was looking at me like she was scared. Whatever state she was in, we needed her, so I slowly lowered my hand and offered it to her.

Miley craned her neck, the rest of her still hidden under the sweaters and pants and notebooks. The pile shifted and she reached out her nose to sniff me. The sweater arm moved off to the side, and on her neck, was a line of silver metal.

I gasped and pulled my hand away, and she pealed her lips back. Her mouth was a mess of what looked like human teeth, sharp canines, and bits of twisted metal all fused together in a mockery of Miley’s sweet smile.

“Run!” I screamed as the pile exploded. The entire area where the nest had been stood up to reveal a massive creature of skin and paper and fur. Mark shot at it, but the bullets didn’t even look like they connected. They sort of phased through it, like it wasn’t something entirely solid.

We sprinted to the stairs and I batted at a small creature crawling along the banister, but the bat just slammed into the railing. I had planned on weapons being ineffective, but I hadn’t considered they wouldn’t work at all.

Collectively, we all stopped a few steps in because the other creatures had started to gather by the door. A few had human-like frames, while some looked closer to animals. There were less than a dozen altogether, but there was no way we could get past them.

Heavy footfalls told us that the creature, the one that had absorbed Miley was almost out of my room. No doubt followed closely by the thing with claws from the closet. There was no way out.

“What do we do?” Mark whispered. He started to pull us closer, but the woman shoved him away, enough that he almost lost his balance. Before we could grab her she climbed over the banister and jumped onto the living room floor. She stuck the landing, machete in hand, and looked up.

“Now!” She yelled and dragged the machete along her arm, just enough to draw blood.

The creatures swarmed. They moved impossibly fast and I dragged Mark down the stairs, trying not to hear what was happening in the living room. Sometimes I’m grateful that I can’t remember the woman very well, because I know those sounds would have haunted me if I could. 

We made it to the door just as footsteps started to thunder down the stairs. It was just a theory, but we’d come this far, so we might as well stick to the plan. Mark put his hand on the door and turned the knob just enough to see if it would open. Nothing was keeping us there, but I grabbed his shoulder, letting him know to wait just a moment. We had to have the creature cross the threshold with us.

I grabbed Mark’s hand and then looked back to see the beast lung at us. We threw open the door and jumped, but somehow, Mark was ahead of me, and I was ripped out of his grasp. I was aware of something digging into my arm, but I didn’t really feel it until I looked down and saw claws sunk into my wrist. Mark toppled out the door, while the creature yanked me back in the house.

It looked the same as it had that night, Miley’s face was completely gone. It had the broken antler, the roughly patched-up skin, shifting slowly with the changing light. The eyes were human, blue and brown, and it put its bony claws to my neck.

I didn’t even have time to register what was happening with the adrenaline pumping through my body. Before I could process that my life was about to end, the creature started to spasm. It snapped its head to the side while its eyes rolled back in its sockets. I shifted, wriggling away from it, and it looked back at me, with big grey-brown irises. They looked just like Miley’s eyes.

It grabbed my arms and roughly picked me up, its claws digging into my sides. Then it stepped towards the door. It stopped just before the threshold and Mark stared at us in shock. It shuddered and let out a low whining wound, but it put one foot out the door, then quickly collapsed, falling forward to the outside world.

I was thrown into the grass and looked back at it, watching as paper turned to ash and skin wrinkled, aging at an accelerated rate. The metal on its leg rusted and snapped, while it curled up in a ball, spasming. Then it was still.

“Did it work?” Mark crawled over to me and grabbed my hand.

“I don’t know.” We sat there while the other creatures started to gather by the threshold, watching us hungrily. The body of the creature that had thrown me out started to get harder to look at, like watching something out of the corner of my eye.

The sun was still setting and the sky had yet to turn to twilight but the other creatures started to vanish. After just a few moments, there was no evidence that they’d ever been there. We waited out the rest of sunset in the car then went in to check the damage. There were bullet holes in my room, and clothes were strewn everywhere, but there was no collar.

The living room was devoid of blood, and that was when I realized that I couldn’t remember what the woman’s name was. She’d sacrificed herself and already I was forgetting her face. 

In the distance, we heard sirens. Someone had heard the gun shots, and they’d remembered us long enough to report them. We went and sat on the lawn, preparing to rejoin civilization. 

As we sat there, I felt my brain trying to fuzz the memories of what just happened, and the world around us started to look a little clearer. We were back, but Miley wasn’t. Already the details of her coat were going from my memory, did she have a white patch on her chest? Her ears were cropped, but she had a long tail right? 

It was all getting fuzzy, but I still remembered her and her silly little smile. And of course I still remembered the way she’d taken over that creature to save me, fighting through some kind of awful transformation to carry me to safety. We’d known each other such a short time, and yet she’d saved my life. 

As the sun rose higher over the horizon, and Mark and I began to feel a part of the real world again, I promised myself that I would never forget Miley, and what she’d done for me. Perhaps the real world and rationality would try to reach inside my brain and take away my memories of all of the unexplainable things that had happened, but I wouldn’t let them take her. I’d always remember my little Smiley Miley. 

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the podcast inside your house! To hear every tale of terror as they are released, subscribe to our show on your podcast app or on Youtube or follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. Until Next Time, try to make some time soon to check in on those you haven’t heard from in a while. Slipping through the cracks can mean so many different things, but usually, none of them are good.