SHORT STORY
Author: Salis Fern
Published in Liverpool Hope Scribble Society Volume 1.
Every sight was something to behold. Condensation on glass surfaces, shadows
flickering in candlelight, tea rings left by overfull mugs. Every speck of the world could be viewed through a biological lens we have naturally. All the dazzling lights of human creation formatting the world into a scene worth opening your eyes for.
Yet the lens we seek is not always one framed in beauty. Sometimes those flickering
shadows can creep and crawl beside you, curling beneath your feet as you tread, your
vision faced away from all that is behind you. Just out of sight. The edges of the world.
Perceived on a daily basis but made up by the falsity of the mind. Filling in details you
will always believe were real. A merging of truth and reality blended so seamlessly that no difference could ever be told.
Occasionally a crack will form, a glitch in the processing, a mistake in the patterning.
An unknown shape in the periphery.
Sally had finished her work that hapless day. The winter’s night crept closer and
the darkness would loom ever earlier over the little town of Glooms-Creek. Her quaint bakery was tucked away on a pleasant, cobbled street just off the main thoroughfare and was, to the behest of the customers, closing for the day. Having to wait another day for her award-winning banana bread.
A jingle rang through the street as the small bell above her door rang for the last time as she locked up. The key struggling in the lock, it had become sticky of late, as if the door wanted to remain eternally open. Falling to the ground in a stubborn resistance, Sally was forced to lean over and pick it up from where it lay nestled in the broken cobbles.
Leaning down the lamppost nearby flickered in response, its light waning for a
few long seconds before striving to return. In a flash, Sally could see a figure of what she could only describe as a person standing to her right, just at the edge of her vision. Barely even there. She twisted her full attention to the figure, forgoing the key. Nothing. Not even a familiar shadow. She blinked slowly, tired, her eyes must have been heavy. Reaching down once more she snapped the key up with an alerted haste and hurriedly locked the door before spinning in place and beginning her deceptively long walk home.
Everything seemed normal. The teens on the corner were still loitering, Old Tim was still trimming his hedge. Even the dilapidated building lay desolate, its wall’s whistling as wind whips through the myriad of holes scattering the exterior. Sally’s gaze had only fleetingly glanced through one of the medium sized gaps. Yet stood there once more as the ‘figure’ of a person, its mass coalesced into a mockery of human form. She couldn’t be sure, as when she focused her gaze it dissipated, as if its presence was never known. Only now it appeared closer than before. Sally’s heart rate rose, her steps echoed louder as she dropped her earlier nonchalance and moved at a heightened pace.
Sally had lived in Gloom Creek for a few years now, she wasn’t exactly a local,
but she had been around the block a few times. Despite that she was still unsettled, the late-night customers whispered often of generational folktales, some they shared, some they didn’t. She was warned often not to think too deeply about them lest she blur reality with fabrications of the mind.
Especially since the warning had come from Madam Grinsel, local crazy.
Rumours stated that she encountered a ‘serendipitous horror’, one that made her eye glaze over and iris shatter. Her mind forever fractured. Everyone knew it. That’s what they said, it’s not how they acted. Her words were an unholy gospel. The looks she received by customers when cautioned by the madam, had made her stomach twist in impossible knots.
‘Real horrors lurk in the places we only seek on accident. They blend their
presence with our own, conforming to the delusions created by our own minds. I wonder dear…. Who lurks beyond your sight?’
Who would believe that? She had thought. Paying it no attention she had
continued with her day. Her week. Until now. Now it swarmed her mind as she moved as quickly as socially acceptable through the once picturesque town which was now warped by lurking shadows and colourful nightmares. The mannequins looked animate, the bookstore turned gloomy, an endless abyss of words emerging to taunt her. The playground creaked with rust, the swings
squeaking faintly as they were pushed by the insolent wind.
Silence. The swing had stopped. Once more the ‘figure’ had appeared only to stop the swing from its incessant noise. Sally’s heart stopped. This time she wouldn’t look; wouldn’t make it real.
Memories of childhood crowded her mind, ones she thought were lost deep in the crevices of her mind. Images of her cowering behind her mother, ducking behind trees, hiding under tables to escape the shape. The shape that followed her through life. It had always been present, beside her, just out of reach. Skulking at the edges of her vision, like a stain on the corner of a masterpiece.
Where had it gone all this time, had she simply stopped believing in it? Cast it
from her mind? The memory that mattered most, its disappearance, was no longer a part of her. For it was back. Back at her side one more. Close now, she was almost home. Clutching onto the childish wish that this was
all Sally’s imagination playing tricks on her; that once she was home out of the strange streets of Glooms-Creek she would once again be safe.
It was watching her. Just as she would watch it. Her eyes looking forward, yet her
attention is only on the outskirts of her vision. That’s where she could see it. Always skirting around staying out of her direct sight. Playing games. Perhaps if she was younger and fearless, she could have played hide and seek with the shape. Was that what it wanted? Someone to play with? Her once hastened footsteps slowing down as her mind turned. Why did it follow her?
Moments now from her front door, she came to a standstill at the end of the street. Her door illuminated by a beautiful warm orange glow; flowers grew from hanging baskets in luscious bright colours. The vibrancy of the red door stood out even when the clouds would cover the moon. This was her house, her safe haven. Yet she paused a metre away. Sally’s mind ablaze with the shadows that lurked behind her, their tendrils reaching out. She looked behind her. The street covered, swirling with a dark mist; the lights had gone out from whence she came. A gust of wind blew the hair from her face as she slowly moved the rest of her body to look back. Again, the mists began to coalesce and swirl in an unnaturally inviting gesture. The maw of a black opaque mass seemed to
appear; its teeth made of ghastly eyes consisting only of madness behind them. Lurking and watching from beyond her own vision. The shape had appeared.
Familiar even in its ungodly visage, its sight a writhing mass of lurking nightmares, made of her childhood delusions. Her own demise fabricated into the form before her. She should be screaming, terrified.
Sally could not look away.
Her own eyes unblinking as she stared motionlessly at the visage enraptured by its coiling and curling motions, the form was lost on her as it flickered, changing before her. Into the shape that followed her from childhood. That friendly, lovely shape. Always beside her, in her periphery. Sally’s consciousness blended with the horror before her. Reality and fabrication seamlessly becoming one. She accepted the shape as her reality.
Home was no longer behind her; it was before her. The shape no longer was her
periphery, it was her everything. Her entire world was envisioned right in front. Sally took a hesitant step forward, then another and another. The coiling filaments of slick smoke enveloped the space around her filling her vision, entering through the crack she made between her and beyond.
The man in the periphery had welcomed her in.
The next day she reappeared as normal heading to work with a joyful smile and
skip in her step. The townsfolk watched hesitantly as she opened her bakery, the key gliding through the lock with ease. The smell of banana bread, enticing even those who wouldn’t dare enter the store to look. She lured them in and sold them delicacies. Each customer with a hesitant step would enter and leave with an unsettling feeling crawling up their back.
Sally would smile and wave them goodbye as they left. She wondered why no one looked her in the eyes anymore. Everything was so very beautiful. Glancing out the window, the reflection of her form was visible. All in place. Even the lovely vacuous empty spaces where her eyes used to be. Filled only with that same coiling maw that had enveloped her.
The townsfolk couldn’t see her.
Until they saw her through their periphery.
There she lurked at the edges of their vision.
A horror they would see on accident.
The End.
Published 23 May 2024. Posted: 12 September 2024
Copyright (c) 2024 by SALIS FERN
SALIS FERN 
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