Liminal Space
Emily Foster finally reached ten million followers online. She only started uploading videos of herself ghost-hunting and exploring abandoned buildings just over a year ago. This new gig allowed her to drop out of college within weeks of starting her channel. She hated college. She loved her newfound fame and fortune. She uploaded videos on daily basis that got views in the tens of millions. She was baffled as to why she was so popular. Within a couple of months dozens of brand deals poured in and even few movie deals. One of her videos titled “Ghouls At St Michael’s” was being developed into a feature film. She was paid ten million upfront. She bought her mother a house and set her up for life.
Emily also bought herself a nice apartment in the downtown area of Dante City.
Despite her riches, the thing that she loved the most was making videos about the supernatural world. She’s been fascinated with the concept of spirits and afterlife when she lost her dad suddenly to a car accident when she was thirteen. She’s seen every video, movies and read all the books about the paranormal. She remembers the day when she came home from school to get the terrible news the day her dad passed away. She took a year off school and sought weekly therapy. It seemed to help. Then she turned her trauma into something constructive. She asked her mother Michelle for a cheap camera and started filming everything with it. She had hundreds of hours of content but only started uploading recently.
About a month ago, a fan suggested that she make content at this creepy abandoned building at midtown. Emily lives not far from the address provided by the mysterious subscriber and have never seen this building but started looking into it.
It was midnight and she uploaded her latest video. She loved seeing the comments, likes and new subscriptions rush in after each upload. She sat in front of her computer screen for about an hour when she decided to take a walk to this building and make a new video.
The outside air was frosty but that’s the way she liked it. She brought her latest camera gear and ghost detector all donated to her by various sponsors. It was a pleasant twenty-minute walk. There it was, the building. She walked up this street often and never saw it. It was about ten stories high, with mirrored windows and grey concrete exterior. In other words, it was an unremarkable piece of architecture. The rusty old gate was open. Emily entered and pointed her flashlight. The front door appeared to be open as well. She peaked inside. It was equally uninspired. Grey polished floors endlessly in both directions, white walls with dark timber doors every couple of metres. It almost had the vibe of a computer-generated building from the nineties. There were no distinctive features except for the endless doors.
Emily entered.
She started filming and live streaming. The comments flickered up breakneck speeds. She loved the interactions with her fans more than with her real friends. she didn’t have any friends. She proceeded to the left side. The doors were all locked. They felt heavy as hell. She kept on turning each doorknob as she walked down the long hallway. She stopped to read some of the comments on her phone as they scrolled up. One read “Emily, get out of there!” and another read “Emily, you’re in danger, please get out!”. She loved her dramatic fans. Emily continued.
She lost count of the doors that she tried to open. One finally turned. “Finally, some action” she thought. She slowly turned the knob and opened the door. Inside of what appeared to be an office was equally unremarkable. There was a small black desk and a chair. What was remarkable or even weird was a window that looked outside to the street. What was really weird was that sunlight was coming through the old-style horizontal blinds. Emily quickly came outside and looked out onto the hallway. It was still midnight. She slowly drew the blind. What she saw next rattled to her core. There he was, her dad, smiling at her with his kind smile that she hasn’t seen in six years. Her hands trembled uncontrollably. She tried to open the window but it was sealed shut. She was saying something to her but she couldn’t hear him through the glass. Her dad’s handsome face turned into a ghastly dead head with empty sunken eyes with red blood trickling down from the forehead. Emily’s reality suddenly came crashing down. She felt like feinting. Bolted out of the room and began sprinting down towards the entrance. She remembered walking down no more than twenty metres. She ran as fast as she could. Eventually, she was out of breath and stopped. She couldn’t understand it, the entrance should have been on her left. It was just infinite array of doors on either side. She continued to walk. Suddenly to her relief, she reached the front entrance. She took a deep breath and walk out of the building.
She didn’t understand what exactly was happening. She was right back in the building. She just wanted to go home. She walked out again to find herself back in the building. After about a dozen futile attempts to exit she stopped. To her left, a door opened. The same creepy sunlight came piercing out into the hallway.