1074: Story 1074: The Thing at the Threshold 1074: Story 1074: The Thing at the Threshold The Threshold wasn’t a door, or a place—not really.
It was a moment.
A breath between worlds.
A boundary worn thin from too many curious hands scratching at the veil.
A metaphysical wound in the air where thoughts leaked out and other things seeped in.
And tonight, something was standing on the other side.
Waiting.
Professor Ilya Marrin had chased whispers for decades.
Doors that should not exist.
Hallways that led nowhere.
Angles that bled.
His obsession culminated at Briarhelm House, a long-condemned estate built atop an intersection of leylines and ancient burial roots.
The locals wouldn’t step near it.
“Not since the scratching started,” they warned.
“Not since the voice behind the keyhole.”
Marrin entered at dusk, his recorder humming and wards etched across his skin.
Each room of Briarhelm warped as he passed—walls breathing, stairs creaking in patterns like Morse code.
In the nursery, he found a child’s drawing etched into the wall with a nail:
A black figure
A doorway wide open
A sun crossed out
Beneath it, the word:
“INSIDE”
Then came the knock.
Not at the front door.
At the air.
The parlor’s far wall trembled, a hairline crack forming in the plaster—no, not a crack.
A seam.
And behind it, a silhouette pressed forward.
Tall.
Impossibly thin.
No face, but eyes that seemed too many and always moving.
It spoke in echoes.
“One foot in dream… one foot in you…”
Marrin, against all reason, whispered back: “What are you?”
The figure did not answer.
It merely pushed harder.
The Threshold widened.
Air bled ink.
Time staggered.
Clocks reversed.
Marrin felt his own name unwriting itself in his mind.
Then he remembered the glyph.
He carved it into the floor with chalk and desperation, an incantation meant to seal the breach.
But the thing laughed—a chorus of lost voices—and whispered:
“I am not breaking in.
You are letting me out.”
And the wall shattered.
When Marrin awoke, it was dawn.
The house stood empty.
Still.
Too still.
But the Threshold remained.
Not just in Briarhelm.
In mirrors.
In windows.
In dreams.
A rippling shimmer in the corners of your eye, growing wider each day.
Now, wherever Marrin goes, doors open on their own.
Reflections linger too long.
People forget his name even as they speak it.
And at night, he sees it.
The Thing—no longer outside.
It stands behind him.
In him.
Grinning without a mouth.
Waiting.
Because thresholds only work one way…
until you turn around.