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    Liminal Eyes and Other Unsettling Tales
    Liminal Eyes and Other Unsettling Tales
    Liminal Eyes and Other Unsettling Tales
    Ebook113 pages1 hour

    Liminal Eyes and Other Unsettling Tales

    By Carolyn Hill

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    About this ebook

    A mysterious coin changes a panhandler's life. An alcoholic ghost squares off against technology. A crusading widow kidnaps an exceedingly strange girl. An aging cattle rancher stakes out a bridge to nowhere. An alien love moves planets--and destroys worlds. Identities, homes, and lives are threatened in these and three other unsettling tales of fantasy and science fiction.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCarolyn Hill
    Release dateJul 29, 2010
    ISBN9781452315317
    Liminal Eyes and Other Unsettling Tales
    Author

    Carolyn Hill

    I teach writing and public speaking at the University of California, Berkeley, where I received a doctorate in rhetoric with an emphasis in folklore. As much as I enjoy teaching, I enjoy writing even more. I wrote my first science fiction novel in 1986 (an oddly heartfelt story about alien rats), and I've been writing ever since.When I'm not teaching or writing, I'm tossing heavy objects into the air above my head.

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      Book preview

      Liminal Eyes and Other Unsettling Tales - Carolyn Hill

      LIMINAL EYES

      AND OTHER UNSETTLING TALES

      by

      Carolyn Hill

      * * * * *

      Smashwords Edition

      Liminal Eyes and Other Unsettling Tales

      Copyright © 2010 by Carolyn Hill

      Cover art by Carolyn Hill

      All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. For further information, see http://carolynhill.com.

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

      Smashwords Edition License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

      * * * * *

      LIMINAL EYES

      AND OTHER UNSETTLING TALES

      Table of Contents

      Through Shades of Glass

      Ghostamatic

      Virtual Bliss

      Star Quarter

      The Moons of Othyron

      Home No More

      Liminal Eyes

      Stepping Out

      * * * * *

      Through Shades of Glass

      Ruth moved across the roof of her new house, doing karate kicks and trying to forget the plague of brown tree frogs she had found hopping in her kitchen at dawn. Successors to last week’s infestation of spiders, which had eaten the previous week’s swarm of flies, the frogs had been a flopping croaking mess before she evicted them with an otherwise unused broom.

      What next? Ruth wondered, balancing on the roof’s red-tiled spine and finishing her exercise with a deep bow and a heartfelt Kuk Sul. Not beetles. Not salamanders. Those had been weeks ago, after she had first tried to speak to the starving woman. An invasion of the shifty-eyed cats that yowled all night long down by the creek? None of this was consistent with the advertisements for carefree living that had persuaded her to plunk down the remains of Jack’s life insurance settlement on a small home in the brand-spanking new Nuevo Vista subdivision.

      It must have something to do with the starving woman. And that old house.

      Running warm palms over her sweatpants, Ruth peered over the tree tops at the dilapidated Victorian mansion that crouched like a toad beyond her property line, its window-eyes hooded with grime, its paving-stone pathway lolling like an elongated tongue from the front door to an iron gate choked with insect-busy ivy. The mansion was a hodgepodge of warty scrollwork, witch-hat spires, cupolas knobby as goblin’s toes, and lightning rods that sprouted from every surface like hairs from an ogre’s chin. The border between Ruth’s lot and the old house’s land wasn’t razor sharp and squared off like the other lots; it ran jagged, like the interlaced fingers of two gnarled hands, following a chuckling creek that eventually veered away across the strange depression in which the mansion sat.

      As Ruth watched expectantly, the front door of the old house snapped open and disgorged a frail figure. The door snapped shut, and the figure began to move haltingly along the stone path like a wooden maiden in a Black Forest clock, heading toward the delivery van parked on the other side of the mansion’s ivy-covered gate. Ruth grabbed her rope and rappelled down the side of her house, landed on the ground, and ran toward the creek.

      Rushing past the small martial arts practice pavilion she had built with help from her Women Doing It for Ourselves group, she slipped through foliage and across the creek, to crouch on bare wet feet behind an enormous clump of oleander that bordered part of the path. She watched the figure approach: a youngish woman, emaciated, barefoot, hair a matted brown, clothes a tattered patchwork. The woman’s body was stiff, her bony arms rigid at her sides as one dirty foot after the other planted itself on the stones. Only her eyes were alive, darting about, drinking in details.

      Everything was just as it had been a month ago, when Ruth had first tried to talk to the woman—suddenly to find herself standing on her own back porch, dazed and disoriented, with no idea of how she had gotten there. The next morning, her kitchen had been filled with clicking beetles. Two days later, she had cleared some of the bramble bushes along the creek and begun to build the practice pavilion. The next week, salamanders had slithered from her cupboards. After the flies, she had talked to the delivery company. After the spiders, she had laid plans to rescue the woman and end the plagues; sitting in her nearly completed pavilion, she had tended Jack’s bonsai, plucking a pine needle here, tweaking a copper wire ever so slightly there, and nurturing her thoughts. Care, that’s what was needed, care in tending people as well as plants. A misplaced hand could warp the tree.

      Now, as the young woman neared the oleanders, Ruth emerged from the bushes and blocked the way. The woman stopped with one knee bent and her foot in the air.

      Ruth said, I’m here to help you.

      The woman did not respond, but her eyes widened.

      Ruth beckoned.

      Still, the woman did not move.

      So Ruth seized her rigid arm and pulled her from the path. As soon as they left the stones, the woman’s body relaxed. With every step Ruth took, the woman became more pliable, more animate. By the time they had crossed the creek, she was walking on her own, accompanying Ruth readily enough. They made it all the way up the steps to Ruth’s back porch before the woman dug in her bare horny heels and resisted.

      What’s wrong? Ruth asked, thinking: besides the fact that I’ve just kidnapped you. The woman stood silently, staring at the open back door of Ruth’s house, her body stiff again.

      We don’t have to go inside if you don’t want. Ruth sat down and patted the step beside her. Sit here awhile. We’ll chat and get to know each other.

      The woman just stood there, eyeing the door.

      Ruth rose, closed the door, and sat down again. Better?

      The woman eyed the door for a moment longer, then stared at Ruth, her black eyes set in bruised sockets, like dark water at the bottom of a dank well.

      Ruth shivered and folded her arms over her sweaty T-shirt—one of Jack’s, an old faded Marine-issue from ‘Nam that she’d found in one of his chests. She preferred it to the more proper karate-gi. Chilly out.

      Those eyes studied Ruth’s face. Then, ever so slowly, the owner of those eyes sat down on the step.

      My name’s Ruth, Ruth said. What’s yours?

      No answer. The eyes shifted, examining Ruth’s clothing. The woman seemed to pay special attention to the brown belt tied around Ruth’s waist.

      Do you like this? Ruth asked, lifting the ends of the belt. Jack, proud dojo master that he had been, had always wanted her to test for black belt, but decade after decade, she had been content to remain a brown.

      Ruth pulled a slip of paper from beneath the belt, put the paper aside, and took the belt off. You can wear it if you want, she said, holding the belt out.

      After half a minute or so, Ruth laid the fabric in the young woman’s lap. The woman still made no move to touch it.

      Ruth picked up the slip of paper and folded and unfolded it. I know I’m butting in where I’ve no business, but I think you need help, and I want to help you. Ruth showed her the paper. See this? It’s a list I made of what to do after I got you away from . . . that house.

      Silly list, Ruth thought. The second item, in no-nonsense font, right after (1) No cops was "(2) Create comfortable atmosphere in living room—sit together on couch, but not so close

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