Crossing Strange Thresholds

By Jim Gotaas

Five original fantasy stories taking you into strange and unexpected realms, stories where ...
a sneak thief picks the wrong victim and lives to regret it ...
a troubled woman can save helpless others, but not herself ...
a world where magic has almost died, but can still kill ...
going back to the empty house she left years ago, a woman hopes to escape endless nightmares ...
in a world where gods collect human avatars, the dying can face more dangers than the living ...
A collection for every reader who loves fantasy, whether modern worlds barely different from the everyday, or places and times where sorcery rules.
Grab this handful of tales stretching beyond the ordinary, stories that grab your imagination, stories that just will not let go.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Gotaas
• Release date: Jul 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781914991011

Book preview

Crossing Strange Thresholds

Crossing Strange Thresholds

Five Steps into the Unknown

Jim Gotaas

SFF Press

To my dearest wife, who supports me in every possible way, in everything I do, and simply makes life worth living.

Contents

Introduction

Doors Better Left Unopened

Such Voices as Must Be Heard

Past Death, a Future Waits

Waiting at the Top of the Stairs

Grimling Passage

About the Author

Also by Jim Gotaas

Introduction

The mundane world isn’t always enough.

Sometimes you want to step beyond the everyday, to seek the unusual, to experience things strange and mysterious. Sometimes you want to find that door that opens into the unknown. Sometimes you need to find that door, need to escape from a reality that is too painful.

But there are so many different doors, so many different paths, so many different unknowns. Yes, doors offer possibilities and opportunities, but they can also offer threats and danger.

Some doors are physical, but doors can also open in the mind or simply exist as an invisible, insubstantial threshold to different realities and dimensions.

This collection of five original stories offers doors into fantastic strangeness, five paths into the eerie. Some paths start from a world not that different from the one we wake up in. Some paths can only step off from a different world, a world that starts strange and becomes stranger.

Five thresholds, five portals, five chances to experience the mysterious.

But be careful. Sometimes you when you step through, you can’t come back. And sometimes, even when you manage to come back, you’re changed.

Ready to take that risk?

Read on.

Doors Better Left Unopened

Gramps said anyone can pick a pocket, but I had a talent. I could pick minds.

We stood in the shadows of the street, away from the lamps, away from curious eyes.

The early evening was hot and dry in the harsh Caerlen summer. The old street ran from near the center of the city out to the walls. Where we waited, the inhabitants were poor, and the air stank, from tanning leather shops, casually dumped garbage, and people who couldn't afford to wash often.

The three of us were outside of the clans, outside of the guilds, even outside the gangs that ruled the thieves and beggars and killers. Gramps was old and short, looked like he'd have trouble getting up from a chair, seemed slow as honey in winter, but was gristle and bone through and through, and as fast and tough and mean as they come. He denied any relationship but treated me like family.

Jen was almost thirty and looked younger, tall, slender and quick, always ready to use the knives sheathed under her sleeves, eager for violence. She claimed me as cousin, but treated me like a servant.

I was the third, always the third, in making plans and sharing out profits, in claiming the best food and most comfortable beds. I was probably about seventeen, though I wasn't sure, midway in height between Gramps and Jen, sturdy with muscles that had surprised more than one bully.

There were two reasons they kept me around, despite a face that would frighten an ogre – or so Jen said. First, I had the knack of being unnoticed, which was useful. Second, I could steal secrets from a person just by being close to them. Best was an actual touch, but even walking past was sometimes good enough.

There he is, Gramps whispered.

Our target moved along the street toward us, accompanied by a single bodyguard and an aura of power. Barthen diVallas was the spymaster for his clan, and his clan was one of the three that ruled the city. Nobody in their right mind would mess with him.

Of course, by most standards, we weren’t in our right minds. Gramps didn't give a damn about the ordinary powers in the city. Jen thought she could talk or fight her way out of any challenge. Me? I didn't count, but I was scared. The more important the target, the bigger the risk.

Of course, Gramps would always point out, also the bigger the reward for a successful theft. And scared or not, I’d do what Gramps wanted.

Gramps said Barthen must have secrets that would be worth a year's normal takings, secrets we could peddle to a broker, who could pass them on to another clan or guild, or maybe even another city. We'd sworn no loyalty. Hells, even if we had, it would make no difference. Another one of Gramps's pieces of wisdom -- oaths were made for breaking.

Jen gave me a little push out into the street. I walked along the side, just a bit slower than Barthen and his guard, careful not to get in their way, but to be close enough for long enough that I could get inside his mind.

I stumbled slightly, turned it into a side step and the start of a slight weaving walk, typical of a low-caste who had worked a long, difficult day of physical labor, and was struggling to stay on his feet. My head was hung forward, looking at the street cobbles. I was wearing a long, loose tunic tied around my waist with a rope. It was dyed gray by grime, worn thin around the waist and arms, patched in several places. My feet were bare and filthy, with soles hardened by years of walking without the benefit of shoes. I was beneath notice and beneath contempt, and I counted on that.

They pulled near me, and I could see the guard's mind. My talent showed me doors floating in nothingness, doors that could be opened, leading to rooms that held memories. The guard's door was small and drab, hiding mundane memories and minor secrets, nothing worth any money. I turned away from that door, seeking the spymaster. But that door remained out of sight of my talent.

They passed me, and still nothing. If I came away with nothing, Gramps and Jen would be angry. They had no real idea how my talent worked, and didn't care. They just counted on me to deliver. They wouldn't physically punish me, but they would express their displeasure verbally, and I would be consigned to even worse scraps of food for my meals.

I had to decide. I manufactured a clumsy trip and plunged forward, just flinging my hand out to scrape against the spymaster's leg.

I found that inner door to his secrets. Time stretched beyond the fraction of a second that the ordinary world offered, allowing me to open that door, sneak into his mind. I saw the interior of his mind as a room, piled with books and papers everywhere, each holding some memory. Buried in the back were the memories that this man wouldn't want to share.

I moved into his memory room, heading toward the secrets at the back. I always saw secrets as books with locked covers, locks that I could undo with a twist of my mind. The spymaster's memories held a small book that displayed three locks, the book itself locked away behind a locked cage. It had