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\u201cNiemandswasser,\u201d \u201cThe \u201cun-defined in Fiction,\u201d and \u201cLiminal Space\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Night Time Logic is the part of a story that is felt but not consciously processed. It is also the name of\u00a0this interview series here at Cemetery Dance<\/a>\u00a0and over on\u00a0my YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n Through in-depth conversation with authors this column explores the night time part of stories, the strange and uncanny in horror and dark fiction, and more.<\/p>\n My short story collections\u00a0with Cemetery Dance<\/a>\u00a0are full of the kind of stories that operate with Night Time Logic. My latest is called\u00a0Phantom Constellations<\/i> and is coming in November 2025.<\/p>\n With the release of my fourth short story collection, Creatures of Liminal Space<\/em><\/a>, on my mind, the anthology Between Doorways<\/em><\/a> caught my attention. I recently spoke with TJ Price about liminal space and the anthology.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n We began our conversation with a question about the meaning liminal space to him.<\/span><\/p>\n DANIEL BRAUM: You mentioned that the anthology <\/b>Between Doorways: Explorations Into Liminal Space<\/i><\/b> was a community project brought together by a group of writers and creatives and that you were the one who chose the theme of explorations into liminal space. What does liminal space mean to you? How does that meaning carry over into fiction?<\/b><\/p>\n TJ PRICE: I have found that one of the most effective tools in fiction \u2014 especially in entries of those classified with the tag of \u201cWeird\u201d or \u201cHorror\u201d \u2014 is the art of doubt, or ambiguity. Unsettling via whispers or inexplicable compulsions, stories which tell of a sequence of events but only flirt at the origin from which they have slid, have always resonated with me. Far moreso, indeed, than stories which seem hell-bent on prizing apart the entire knot only to grimly lay out all the limp, untangled cords and step back, grunting in a kind of hollow self-satisfaction. Perhaps this is because I delight in challenge \u2014 a snobbish part of me perhaps thinks a knot which can be neatly undone must not be worthy enough to be tied \u2014 it would certainly explain why I chose to spearhead the construction and subsequent publication of this anthology largely of my own volition.<\/span><\/p>\n The concept of \u201climinal space\u201d isn\u2019t new. I might argue this conceit has been invoked countless times over the ages, both in and out of traditional genre spaces. A prime example of this is the oeuvre of writer Robert Aickman: the story \u201cNiemandswasser\u201d (German for “No Man\u2019s Water”) comes to mind first and foremost, but there are many others which could also fit into the \u2018liminal\u2019 category. \u201cNiemandswasser\u201d takes its time getting to the critical action, but it is ostensibly concerned with a somewhat arbitrary point in the middle of a lake that is \u201cbeyond borders.\u201d In the tale, it is wartime, and the narrator experiences a farrago of events that both contribute to and exacerbate the weird atmosphere in various ways. In a review of this story, Joanna Russ said that Aickman \u201c\u2026left out the parts of his horror stories which explain what is happening and why, thus achieving a mystifying <\/span>non-compossibility<\/span><\/i>\u2026\u201d (emphasis mine). This feeling of confusion, mistrust, betrayal, combined with a puzzlebox narrative, was my goal when I began curating this anthology. I wanted the writers to evoke with their stories a hazy, dim territory that cannot quite ever fully be mapped, and at whose corners amorphous shapes shift, conjuring dread and, hopefully, elation, in the readers\u2019 minds.<\/span><\/p>\n Excellent to learn of how Aickman\u2019s work connects to the inspiration and intent for the project, TJ.<\/b><\/p>\n In addition to your vision of liminal space you asked each of the writers to give a one-line sentence on what liminal space means to them. With those sentences you constructed an introduction, of sorts, called a \u201cbeforewords\u201d and used those sentences to form the shape of a doorway. These definitions ranged from the poetic to the literal such as between the before and after and neither here nor there.<\/b><\/p>\n What were some of the author meanings that stood out to you and why?<\/b><\/p>\n I can\u2019t really say as any of the responses that the authors shared stood out to me any more than the others. My goal with \u201cbeforewords\u201d was to create a community-inspired introduction to the book in lieu of using a traditional foreword, as so many other anthologies do, often relying on the weight of the introduction\u2019s author to drive promotions. What I wanted to do here was create a visually allusive design to \u201copen\u201d the book \u2014 in effect, literally creating a doorway (as you mention) between which all the stories would reside: thus, literally, \u201cbetween doorways.\u201d You may also have noted that the “beforewords” is oriented so as to “reflect,” with the phrase \u201climinal spaces\u201d positioned in the direct center of the page. Each of the responses were manifested here by each of the authors involved. I took some liberties with the positioning and line-breaks to manifest this design \u2014 some words are crossed out, others are flipped, and all of these choices were made deliberately. For example, if one were to look at the \u201cbeforewords\u201d straight on, as printed, in the bottom half of the page, the words \u201cANOMALY\u201d and \u201cHERE\u201d are right-side up, which conveys a message of its own.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Though none of the answers given by the writers involved are specifically attributed, I do think that each provides a sort of legend (or \u201ckey,\u201d if you will) to the themes and motifs of the stories that follow. Ideally, a reader would finish the book and, if they glance back at the \u201cbeforewords,\u201d they might see new parallels between some of the sentences and the pieces they\u2019ve just read.<\/span><\/p>\n You mentioned that while you controlled the theme and vision you did not retain the decision-making power to reject a story from anyone in the community of writers. What genres of stories were sent to you for the book? Were you expecting stories of horror?<\/b><\/p>\n Yes, you are correct \u2014 this project sprang up as a labor of love out of a community of writers from all points on the spectrum. Some folks who have been included in these pages have seen one or two publications, whereas others are seasoned and experienced, with multiple books to their name. The process was that I proposed the theme of the anthology, and then attempted to communicate my thoughts and feelings about my vision for the eventual book to those planning to write for it. I received all manner of stories for this project \u2014 as might be evidenced by the wide variety of subjects covered in the anthology, from stories set in liminal spaces like airports, hotels, graveyards, hospitals, et cetera \u2014 and each interpreted the theme in very different ways. I was pleased that the writers felt such freedom to write to their own particular strengths and interests. I would not like to assign genre tags to any of these pieces, as I find genre to be largely useless except as a marketing or promotional tool, or perhaps as fodder for critical theory when categorizing established work. I was, however, hoping that the authors would conjure stories that would evoke dread or unease (or some degree of ambiguous \u201cnon-compossibility,\u201d to return to Joanna Russ\u2019 term) given the theme, and I think everyone understood the brief quite well in those terms.<\/span><\/p>\n How do the definitions and meanings of liminal space related to and fit in to the horror genre or various sub-genres or related genres such as weird fiction?<\/b><\/p>\n Again, for the purposes of marketing and promotion, \u201climinal space\u201d has a bit of recency bias when it comes to genre assignation. The most broadly-known \u201climinal space\u201d is likely the concept of the Backrooms<\/a>, which has pervaded the Internet and various social media platforms for some time now. Whereas the Backrooms is a great and creative example of the form, it does not fully encompass the possibilities inherent in the theme. Liminality, by definition, supersedes classification and label, typically exploring areas that are curiously <\/span>undefined, <\/span><\/i>or which hover in the gray areas between definitions. I think, due to the positioning of this particular anthology as liminal \u201cspaces,\u201d most of the authors gravitated to using this theme as setting or environment, which I could certainly see amplifying dread or fear when used in the horror genre.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So-called \u201cweird\u201d fiction often uses this level of ambiguity to evoke the uncanny when one is faced with the manifestation of the bizarre or inexplicable. In <\/span>Weird Fiction: a Genre Study<\/span><\/i>, Michael Cisco discusses the “deterritorialization” of the status quo, which again points to the concept of place \u2014 I might say that once the status quo is sufficiently “deterritorialized,” the remaining ruins are what we might term a \u201climinal space\u201d \u2014 here nor there, neither true nor false, neither past nor future nor any present we can recognize. Such a space is ripe for fiction, as it is in these nebulous areas to which the bizarre is drawn. Once something familiar is stripped of its familiarity \u2014 whether through a long corrosion of time and circumstance (as in nostalgia\u2019s warp) or a sudden and anomalous transgression of the supernatural (as in the appearance of a portal, or the presence of a <\/span>h a l l w a y <\/span><\/i>where none should be) \u2014 what remains is a grotesque caricature, something <\/span>unheimlich<\/span><\/i>, categorized by a dissonance of belief versus empirical proof.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One of the standout stories in the book is \u201cThe Hole Had Always Been There\u201d by Rebecca Cuthbert<\/a>. In the story there is a literal, physical, liminal space – the hole and tunnel in the cemetery wall. And also the liminal space of loss and grief. How do the two intersect and interact in the story?<\/b><\/p>\n Rebecca\u2019s story is a prime example of the liminal space occupying multiple dimensions in fiction, not to mention the transcending of genre. Though the story concerns a physical liminality and involves a supernatural element, it is very much rooted in the emotional and developmental limbo of the narrator, who is, as you\u2019ve noted, mired in grief. In this case, loss is the transfiguring factor for the narrator: the status quo of their life as they know it has been upended by death. Now, something which was once familiar, even comforting, has become uncanny. The crux of this story comes in how Davey chooses to perceive this presence, and in which manner they disembark the threshold they\u2019ve found themselves upon. In this, Davey is metaphorically <\/span>between doorways<\/span><\/i>, given the choice of two portals: behind door number one, there is the real pain of grief, a disrupted status quo, and the fear of having to cope with loss. Behind door number two, however, there is a perception of solace, of unworldly continuance, even though that solace is unnatural and may even pose a threat. Rebecca does all this in the space of very few words, which is impressive \u2014 the story is only around 1,600 words total \u2014 and with literary flair, telling the story in a close third-person perspective that evokes dramatic irony as well as real pathos by the end.<\/span><\/p>\n Another story in the collection that does this excellently is \u201cThe Death Factory,\u201d by Carson Winter \u2014 and it shares the investigation of another liminal space: its narrator also hesitates on the threshold of adolescence, just as Davey does in Rebecca\u2019s piece. In \u201cThe Death Factory,\u201d Carson uses a horrific metaphor as a stand-in for the cryptic (and often bizarre) rituals of adulthood, as witnessed by the young. This story, too, is very much about the loss of innocence, and the implications thereof, especially when juxtaposed with fetishized worship.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Whereas there are many stories in the book that deal specifically with this tumultuous and hazy stage of life, there are also those which deal specifically in nostalgia as a liminal space, something which can often corrupt memory, causing it to become either unreliable or even completely incorrect. An anecdote I once read tells of an elderly German man who has returned to the scene of his childhood, buoyed by memories of the bucolic riverside. Overjoyed, he rushes to the water and splashes it on his face, only to begin screaming in agony. In the intervening years, you see, there had been a factory built upstream, and its pollutants had rendered the water toxic.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In both \u201cFun-a-Lot,\u201d by Demi-Louise Blackburn, as well as \u201cThe Last Carnival,\u201d by Caleb Stephens, both protagonists struggle with the corruptive force of nostalgia. \u201cFun-a-Lot\u201d concerns an abandoned play centre, and the trespass of its narrator and their friend, who become subject to distortions of the supernatural to tragic effect. Both characters in \u201cFun-a-Lot\u201d hover on the brink of graduation, too \u2014 entering into a summer that stretches out into an unknown future, where the regularity and routine of high school is no longer present. With hallucinatory, imagistic prose, Demi-Louise\u2019s story takes nostalgia to its limit, presenting not just memory as unreliable, but also the present, and the future, as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In Caleb Stephens\u2019 \u201cThe Last Carnival,\u201d we see this same effect, but from the other angle: it tells of a man who is entering his twilight years, on a pier near an old amusement park. Right from the jump, we have liminality in the setting \u2014 a pier (neither shore nor ocean, but something in between) and an abandoned amusement park, no longer amusing. Caleb physicalizes the force of nostalgia here via the image of a cherished photo album, underlining the creeping ravages of time on identity and attachment. The person that the narrator used to be is no longer who they are, and Caleb shows this to devastating effect by describing how the pages of the photo album become blackened and melted, removing the only empirical evidence which establishes the protagonist\u2019s past. Without this past, there is no present, argues Caleb, and certainly no future.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Another standout story is \u201cThe Halls\u201d by Christi Nogle. The story features a supernatural liminal space, the titular halls, as well as being set in a physical liminal space of a convention hotel. Can you please tell us about these liminal spaces? And how they relate to the liminal space in the character\u2019s life?<\/b><\/p>\n Christi is one of my favorite working writers, and her forays into the liminal have always excited my brain. She often uses setting or environment to uncanny effect \u2014 (see her excellent story \u201cThe Rooms Behind the Kitchen\u201d<\/a> in Haven Spec Magazine<\/em>, or \u201cNight, When Windows Turn to Mirror\u201d in her collection <\/span>One Eye Opened in That Other Place.<\/span><\/i> I was elated when she sent me \u201cThe Halls,\u201d as it engages with portals and passages as well as reiteration and memory, all of which echo beautifully through the surreal events of the protagonist\u2019s journey. By the end of the story, there\u2019s a subtext about artistry and nurturing that has developed quietly \u2014 but, as with all of Christi\u2019s work, I could return to this piece again and again and constantly discover new resonance, or themes I might\u2019ve missed on a first go-round.<\/span><\/p>\n In Mark Fisher\u2019s book <\/span>The Weird and the Eerie<\/span><\/i>, the two title states are discussed as two distinct modes of fiction, both having to do with either presence of absence \u2014 Fisher defines the \u201cweird\u201d as the presence of something that doesn\u2019t belong, something superfluous or unexplainable, whereas the \u201ceerie\u201d is defined as either a failure of presence or a failure of absence. Christi invokes both of these modes in her story, juxtaposing the titular \u201cHalls\u201d as something that is both where it shouldn\u2019t be as well as something that is oddly devoid of anything else.<\/span><\/p>\n This theme of passage is present in quite a few of the other stories, among them S.E. Denton\u2019s \u201cPortal\u201d and RSL\u2019s \u201cThe Wings.\u201d In \u201cPortal,\u201d Denton tells of two men \u2014 former child stars corrupted by fame, now grown apart. One of them is plagued by addiction and nostalgia \u2014 not to mention a strange spot at the end of a hallway in their Laurel Canyon home \u2014 and the other is struggling not to be dragged into the maelstrom of the past. In a way, the dark spot is metaphorical, underscoring the delicate relationship the two have with one another, but also symbolic of their toxic bond. We all have these kinds of people in our lives, those who serve as fixed points in our memory, and yet\u2014as in the anecdote mentioned before, they can also serve as pollutants in that river, and one can end up scarred . . . or worse.<\/span><\/p>\n RSL takes the concept of the <\/span>h a l l w a y s <\/span><\/i>quite literally in \u201cThe Wings,\u201d which serves to close the door on the anthology (if you will.) An Event has occurred wherein doors of various colors abruptly appear, randomly, around the world. As the phenomenon continues \u2014 and as some doors are opened \u2014 theory and reality intersect, entangling the lives of three different people standing simultaneously (and paradoxically) at the same and yet also in disparate doorways. The story is told through the eyes of a fourth party who serves as interviewer \u2014 a lurker on each of their thresholds \u2014 who subtly draws parallels between them and tugs them further and further toward a vanishing point none of them can see coming.<\/span><\/p>\n Which story in the book stands out to you and why?<\/b><\/p>\n That\u2019s a tough question to answer \u2014 an editor, I try never to play favorites, but I\u2019d have to say that the story which stands out the most to me in this book is \u201cPhantom Islands,\u201d by H.S. Wollmer. The story concerns the practice of cartographers to insert fictitious geographical entities into their maps to \u201cmark\u201d them as their own work. H.S.\u2019s story, however, investigates what might happen if someone were to follow a map to this allegedly fake place only to discover that it <\/span>does<\/span><\/i>, in fact, exist \u2014 though not at all in the realm of the familiar \u2014 and is inhabited by those who have \u201cdisappeared\u201d from the context of the real world. Crucially, the story (at its narrative apex) makes use of the Polish philosopher Alfred Korzybski\u2019s now-classic axiom: \u201cThe map is not the territory,\u201d signaling that the abstraction of a thing is not directly analogous to the thing itself. The story is told in the form of recovered journal entries, and it ends ambiguously, in mid-sentence, gesturing towards the protagonist\u2019s assimilation into those who have \u201cdisappeared\u201d into this liminal place of \u201cnot-map\u201d and \u201cnot-territory.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I can see how that fits in with the puzzle box intention you mentioned earlier. Was there a liminal space you wanted to see an author write about but was not submitted, and why?<\/b><\/p>\n I tried to go into this with as little expectation as possible, due to the breadth of possible interpretations on the theme, and was pleasantly surprised by how creatively each author responded, even when settings repeated. Some of these overlaps in the anthology were completely serendipitous, too \u2014 note how \u201cQueue,\u201d by Julie Sevens, set in a never-ending line chugging peristaltically through the bureaucracy of airport customs, ends with the image of a \u201cbubble, circling the drain.\u201d Note also how the next story, \u201cOut of Context,\u201d by Alex Wolfgang \u2014 also largely set in the liminal maze of an airport \u2014 revolves around what its characters call their \u201cbubble,\u201d referring to their perspective on traveling in a foreign country and the limitations of their own perspective on the world around them. Neither of the writers corresponded in any way with one another during the writing of their stories, but the images were immediately resonant for me, and so they formed the \u201ccenter\u201d of the book \u2014 paired bubble, floating in the endlessness between doorways.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n There are other echoes as well, which I tried to amplify via sequencing and structure, but I will let those be heard without drawing attention to specific examples.<\/span><\/p>\n If you were to write about a liminal space what would that space be and why?<\/b><\/p>\n Perhaps tellingly, the most liminal space that I can think of is the UNFINISHED folder I keep on my hard drive, populated by the forlorn ghosts of stories begun but which yet remain incomplete. I think liminal spaces are everywhere, sometimes even unavoidable, in most fiction \u2014 be it genre space, or otherwise. There is nowhere more ripe for dramatic conflict and the evolution of narrative toward climax than the uncanny or the undefined. A relationship in flux, teetering on the brink of oblivion? Grief, wherein the protagonist is unmoored in a place between the shores of life and death? These are all places where someone has opened a door and stepped beyond. Even this space, the internet \u2014 now undeniably enmeshed in our everyday lives \u2014 can serve as an amorphous zone of transition. In one way or another, we are all <\/span>between doorways<\/span><\/i>,\u00a0 and there is only so long one can be presented with a doorway before the thought occurs:<\/span><\/p>\n Is it an entrance, or an exit?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s only one way to find out: cross the threshold.<\/span><\/p>\n ABOUT THE AUTHORS<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n TJ PRICE currently serves as Assistant Editor at <\/span>Haven Speculative<\/span><\/i> Magazine<\/span><\/i>, and has performed in an editorial capacity for various anthologies in the past, such as <\/span>Collage Macabre: an Exhibition of Art Horror<\/span><\/i>. He also served as editor for Emma E. Murray\u2019s d\u00e9but collection of short fiction, <\/span>The Drowning Machine and Other Obsessions, <\/span><\/i>as well as the anthology <\/span>Odd Jobs: Six Files from the Department of Inhuman Resources<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Between Doorways<\/em> can be ordered at Salt Heart Press<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He is currently editing <\/span>Straw World and Other Echoes from the Void<\/span><\/i>, Erik McHatton\u2019s d\u00e9but collection, due out in September 2025. His own work has been published in such venues as <\/span>Nightmare Magazine, PseudoPod<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Cosmic Horror Monthly, <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Archive of the Odd<\/span><\/i>. In addition, he has published a mixed-media novelette, <\/span>The Disappearance of Tom Nero; <\/span><\/i>he is also currently a staff writer for <\/span>3 Quarks Daily<\/span><\/i>. He may be invoked \u2014 though the summoning may often cause mild hallucinatory effects in the unwary \u2014 at tjpricewrites.com<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n An illustrated volume of his work titled\u00a0Creatures of Liminal Space<\/i>, featuring illustration and design by Dan Sauer, is\u00a0available at Jackanapes Press<\/a>.<\/p>\n His all-new short story collection\u00a0Phantom Constellations<\/i>\u00a0is coming in Autumn 2025 from Cemetery Dance Publications.<\/p>\n More about him can be found\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/between-doorways.jpg?resize=233%2C350&ssl=1\")
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DANIEL BRAUM writes \u201cstrange tales\u201d, intentionally ambiguous stories in the tradition of Robert Aickman that evoke the old\u00a0Twilight Zone<\/em>\u00a0shows. His stories, set in locations around the globe, explore the tension between the psychological and supernatural.<\/p>\n