> Threshold classification
| Difficulty | 3/5 | I believe this is a hotspot for her. Not totally sure. |
|---|---|---|
| Entity Count | 1/5 | There's only Joy. |
| Chaos Gradient | 2/5 | Just a house, sometimes things happen. |
| Basset-Frazier Index | 2/5 | I still wouldn't recommend coming here. |
> Description
fig 1.0 The campus.
There once was this campus, the Flashlorton Campus, for studying mathematics. After budget cuts, many teachers left there, as they thought they were being underpaid. Desperate for candidates, they began hiring teachers with minimal education, one of them was me. I used to practice math before studying the field of liminality. For some reason, that place never felt quite right. Maybe this was the motive for me becoming an archivist after all.
I have many stories of liminal occurrences happening inside of that house, nothing too out of the usual, rooms swapping locations, lights flickering despite no apparent issues with the electrical system, time seemingly slowing down. In the aftermath of exploring liminal places for so long, I believe that the house was a threshold. But despite so many sightings taking place within the bound of those grounds, none struck me the same as Joy.
Let me preface this with a little story: The bell rang, I was done with my class. I and my disciples went downstairs to eat lunch. Suddenly, someone knocked with a shocking intensity. This never happened before, especially at that time. I assumed it was the director, there would be no justification for any other person to come to the campus at lunch hour. I lifted myself from my chair and answered the door. Nobody. I thought it could be someone pranking me, but no, not even the marks of some child that ran away after they knocked on the entrance were present. This just felt uncanny, for whatever reason.
Instead of telling anyone, I said to my students it was some kid that decided to play a prank on us. It didn't feel right to tell them what actually happened. Perhaps the entity itself was playing mind-games on me to conceal its identity, who knows? Anyways, I just played it off as if nothing had ever happened and proceeded to continue eating, maybe it was someone playing a trick, and I'm going crazy.
Time passed and eventually, I went to sleep, I laid to rest on my bed to prepare for the long day ahead of me tomorrow. Then, suddenly, I heard a very faint knocking on the door. I went down the stairs as quiet as knocking itself and answered the door: no one. When this happened the second time, I knew something supernatural had to be taking place on those grounds.
The night passed, and I woke up the very next morning. I was anxiously waiting for the class to end, it was painfully slow as if I was able to count grains of sand falling inside an hour watch. But at last, I was free again. I went outside and waited, waited, and waited. At last, not a single person showed up, and no knocking was heard by me or the students inside the field. "Maybe it doesn't happen when someone is outside" I pondered to myself.
I went inside the dorms again. I grabbed my pen and notebook and started crafting the test that would take place next week. As I was writing and scribbling, I looked out my window. I saw her, with my own eyes. Of course, I didn't tell anybody, just like all previous times. But I could very clearly see that it was a big and tall woman. Although, she didn't seem normal. Something was off, perhaps it was her size, or maybe that her skin color was slightly blue-tinted, I still don't know the reason for my eeriness. I named her Joy. Shortly following this sighting, I heard knocking on the entrance.
Since that first interaction with this phenomenon, I knew that this couldn't be a real person. Something had to be supernatural, I felt that deeply. I heard no one running away after the knocks or saw any markings of shoes near the perimeter of the house when looking out the window. This time I didn't even bother to answer the door, nothing was going to happen anyway. The door also wasn't attended to by my students. What a grave mistake I made at that moment.
The banging on the doorway didn't stop. My pupils ran frantically, thinking a murderer was about to chase down everyone inside the building. I sprinted to the entrance and opened it. Nobody was present, as usual. I heard a quiet whisper coming from my left:
"I just wanted to check on you, that's all. No reason to despise me like that."
I was freaked out. And I followed with a move that now is basically a tradition: I didn't utter a single word to anyone. Just went up the stairs into my room, and kept on inscribing the exam. I was so concentrated on completing the piece, that I didn't even notice the ceiling fan becoming loose. It eventually fell, and one of the glass pieces cut partially my right leg. I had to be rushed to the hospital.
Some time passed, I was back and up again. It was slightly major, although, some treatment and patience fixed it in the end. As I was ready to finally stand up for the first time days after the incident, I had a feeling of anxiety rushing over me. It definitely was Joy. Despite never knowing her personally, I could sense that it was Joy, for whatever reason.
I returned to the fields. The knocking never returned. I guess she gave up checking on me.