"The Man in the Threshold" "by NeonAstronaut" . . . [Long pause] [Spoken word Appalachian folk lore story telling] There are things that live in the woods. Things beneath the earth. Things following rivers down from the mountains. But there is one thing that doesn't seem to live anywhere. It waits between. Folks call him the Man in the Threshold. Nobody knows what he is. Only what happens when he notices you. My grandmother first warned me when I was nine. She caught me staring into an open pantry one night and slammed the door. "Don't stare into empty doorways." "Why?" "Because something might notice you're looking." Then she sniffed the air. "Smell that?" Stale air. Thick and old, like a room sealed for fifty years. "If you smell that where the air ought to be fresh," she said, "leave." Years later, she told me why. Her father first saw the Man when he was eight. He woke one night and found somebody standing in his parents' room. Tall. Thin. Completely still. He looked human until you stared too long. Sometimes he seemed seven feet tall. Sometimes six. His arms looked too long, then too short. His face had eyes, a nose, a mouth, yet the moment you looked away you couldn't remember any of them. Grandpa called him something's fading memory of a man. For years, the Man only stood there. He never spoke. Never beckoned. Never moved. Then one night, his eyes moved. Grandpa stepped sideways. The eyes followed. Nothing else did. Years later came the first tiny movements. A finger shifted. A head turned slightly. A foot changed position. The Man was learning. At sixteen, Grandpa began seeing him away from home. In an alley... A barn doorway... Beneath a bridge... At the edge of the woods... Anywhere one place became another, the Man could appear. At seventeen, he appeared more often. Closer. And moved more. Because eighteen is when the watching stops. Nobody knows why. Some eighteen-year-olds die. The Man suddenly moves with terrible purpose, grabs them, and smashes their head against whatever is nearest—a wall, floor, stone, doorframe—until they're dead. Others survive. Those are called the marked. They wake with blood in their hair and a bloody handprint pressed against the back of their head. Nobody knew why they're spared. Only that being marked doesn't mean the Man is finished. People tried moving away. It didn't work. Because the Man doesn't haunt houses. And he isn't trapped inside doorways. Thresholds are simply where he appears. Doorways. Windows. Cave mouths. Alleys. Forest edges. Once he chooses you, it's you he's following. Grandma finally told me all this when I was seventeen. I laughed. Then she stopped looking at me. The stale smell filled the room. I turned. There was a man standing in the hallway. Too tall. Then too short. Arms too long. Then too short. I saw his face. I know I did. I can't remember it. But I remember his eyes. When I moved, they followed. Grandma began crying. "You saw him when you were nine," she whispered. I remembered the pantry. "You're seventeen." I turned eighteen six months later. Nothing happened. Then nineteen. Twenty. Thirty. I married. Had a daughter. Eventually, I forgot. Until tonight. My daughter woke me after two... "Daddy?" "What?" "There's a man in my room." Then I smelled it. Stale air. I followed her down the hallway. The Man stood beside her bed. Not in the doorway. In the room. Motionless. His body seemed to change every time my mind tried to understand it. But his eyes were fixed on me. And suddenly I remembered the morning after my eighteenth birthday. My mother's screaming. Blood in my hair. And a bloody handprint on the back of my head. He hadn't missed me. He marked me. My daughter squeezed my hand. She's eight... A year younger than I was when I first saw him. For a long time, the Man didn't move. Then his eyes shifted. Away from me. Toward her. She stepped behind me. His eyes followed. And I finally understood. Maybe the mark didn't mean he'd spared me. Maybe it was never meant for me at all. My daughter has ten years until she's eighteen. The Man hasn't moved yet. But I know how this begins. First... he watches... but he'll eventually... learn how to walk...
