Feed Drop - The Liminal Lands

Rusty Quill presents

Good evening, gentlemen and gentle ladies of hell.

First and foremost, thank you for tuning in.

Your support keeps the flames of the gentleman from hell burning bright.

If you're enjoying your descent into the infernal depths of our world and want to dive even deeper, consider supporting us on Patreon.

There, you'll unlock exclusive content, including original art from Mark Angelon, housed in the legendary Gallery of the Damned, deep lore and world-building treasures within the memorabilia of the House of Sparrows, and coming soon, the Testimonies of the Damned, a Patreon-exclusive audio series that expands the twisted mythology of the gentleman from hell.

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A little play can make your day.

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The Liminal Lands is a found tape-style survival horror audio drama.

When one man wakes up to find himself all alone in the world, he sets off on a mission to unravel the mystery and find his missing family.

He soon finds out things are even weirder than they seem, and the world he thought he knew is much more strange and dangerous, and that he isn't alone at all as he thought.

He must face isolation, the elements, supernatural horrors, expired Twinkies, and more if he is to have any hope at all of reuniting with his missing family.

The Limital Lands blends horror, suspense, mystery, humor, and heartbreak into a thrilling story of survival.

Each episode is short, usually less than 20 minutes, so it's great for a quick listen.

But with over 50 episodes and more on the way, it's also great for your next binge listen.

Welcome to episode one of the Liminal Lands.

Prologue, or

A Journey of a Thousand Miles.

I honestly don't know why I'm recording this.

I've never kept a journal or anything like that before.

Not even when I went through one of those really awkward, booty teenager phases.

I guess I'm just doing this to help collect and organize my thoughts.

Who knows?

Maybe I'm doing this so that later, when all this shit gets figured out, we can all have a big laugh at my expense.

Lord, that sounds divine.

Just being the butt of some kind of gigantic joke would be heavenly.

But that's sometime in the future.

Or I hope that's in the future.

And it isn't why I started this recording.

I think I mostly started this because I've finally come to a decision.

But to set up for that decision, I actually need to go back a couple of days, explain some things.

If this was some sort of TV show, now would be when the screen goes all wavy, some bells start chiming, and the flashback begins.

So imagine that if it makes you feel better.

But a couple of days ago, well, I use a couple.

That's not really the right word, even the way I normally use it, because

time just doesn't seem to be the same right now.

But let's just go with a while back or a handful, whatever.

A handful sounds right.

oh lord i'm stalling

i'm just talking to myself here i've heard you can fool everyone but yourself but i think that's absolute horseshit hell i can fool myself better than i can fool my wife you know one time i

damn it stalling again i just gotta rip this band-aid off and start

where was i

yeah a handful of days ago So opening weekend of Muzzalo deer season.

I always take off work and I go out hunting.

Mom comes over and she stays with my wife, helps her watch the kids.

Having three crotch goblins under the age of six is pretty difficult to wrangle all by yourself.

We're on this lease way back in the woods, just off the Costetot River in the Wachita Mountains.

I've heard a few old-timers pronounce it Oachita Mountains, but man, that just sounds so dumb.

Anyways, I was out in a part we call the golf course.

We call it that, ironically, it is one more bitch of a grown-up mess.

And I only explained this to kind of try and paint a picture in your mind.

Even for Arkansas, this place is way out there.

When you're out there, civilization is like a daydream.

Sometimes the closest people to you are on a plane passing overhead.

I mean, that's where all the big bucks are, anyways.

You know

I'm stalling again.

Alright, pictures painted.

That's a really long way of saying I'm out there with no cell phone reception.

It's actually one of the charms.

So it's Sunday and I'm out there.

I'm up in my tree stand on a stand we call the hunting hole.

And that's a name whose meaning is lost to time.

Get there a bit before sunrise.

I climb up into my stand.

Sun comes up and I guess that's really where I make my first mistake.

I fell asleep.

And if there is a hunter on earth who doesn't admit to falling asleep on the stand, that man is a liar.

Hell, some of the best sleep I've ever gotten is whenever I'm supposed to be out there hunting.

But not this time.

No, this time I had nightmares.

And I don't really remember them exactly.

Sometimes I wonder now if if I could remember them if they might explain some of this crazy shit.

All I really remember is a vague sense of dread trying to run from some dark shapes, some unknown horror all around me.

You know how it is.

And I don't know if that's what woke me up or if it was something else.

Whatever it was.

I jumped awake.

I shot up out of my seat.

And I think you can kind of see where it's going from here.

I fell.

I don't remember what I hit that turned out the lights.

I don't know if it was a limb on the way down, the ground itself.

I don't know, and I don't guess it really matters.

They went out.

And I woke up sometime later.

I mean, I don't wear a watch.

Who the hell wears a watch anymore?

I tried checking my phone, but as you can imagine, it didn't take to the fall any better than I did.

Screen was shattered, and the damn thing was damn near broke in half.

I looked up at the sun.

I thought maybe I could at least try and get an idea of how long I'd been knocked out.

I read somewhere that being knocked out for a long period of time is actually really, really bad for you.

I guess it's just another way some action movies are just not realistic.

I mean, I can't exactly tell you the time down to the second by glancing at the sun, but it should have at least given me an idea.

I mean, it didn't look like I'd been out for very long.

I have reason to believe now that trying to use the sun would have been just as useless as anything else.

Either the sun's moving differently now, or time is more mutable than it used to be.

Something.

So there's really no telling how long I was actually out.

Man, I am really dragging this out.

Partly it's because I don't like to think about it, I guess.

Partly'cause I really don't know what to think about it all.

Hell, at this point, I'm not even sure I know how to think about it.

The only way I even know how to try and describe this to you is by using a a movie example.

You know in those zombie or apocalypse movies?

That trope where somebody wakes up in a hospital bed all alone and they finally make it outside and all the streets are empty and everything?

Yeah, it was kinda like like that.

Only different because I don't live in a city.

But basically, this was a backwoods version of that.

I woke up, blood all over my head, headwounds bleed like a bitch, and I started trying to go home.

Four-wheeler wouldn't start.

Truck wouldn't start.

I started to walk back to town.

No vehicle, no phone.

What else are you going to do?

When the first couple of houses I got to were empty, I just assumed I was having the world's unluckiest day at that point.

By the ninth or the tenth empty house, even someone as slow witted as me starts to figure out something's going on.

It's about that time I decided to borrow a vehicle.

I tried I think an old Jeep Cherokee to start.

It didn't start.

I think the last one I tried was a newer model Lexus.

That was probably vehicle number thirty that I tried.

I can't even begin to tell you how many houses I checked, how many different driveways I walked down.

It might have been the 30th vehicle, but I could only try vehicles with keys in them, or ones where the keys were easy to find, hanging on a hook by the door or in a fruit bowl or something.

And yeah, by this time, you can bet your ass I was breaking into houses.

I was already going to borrow a vehicle, so some light breaking and entering really wasn't going to make much of a difference at that point.

And if I'm going to be honest, and I don't really see a reason to not be at this point, I was already panicking.

There's only so many empty houses you can go into,

so many miles of highway you can walk down without seeing another soul, before reason starts to take a back seat and that primal part of your brain starts taking over.

Every time I opened a door to somebody's house, or slid into the driver's seat of somebody's vehicle, I was almost praying to hear somebody shout at me, What the fuck do you think you're doing?

I mean, even if I had to explain myself,

I at least wouldn't be alone anymore.

At that point, I would have taken the sound of somebody pumping a shotgun.

Normally, that's one of the scariest, most pants-shittiest sound you'll ever hear.

But by that time, it would have been its own special form of music.

At this point, if I was telling this story to my wife, that's probably when she would politely tell me that I was being a bit long-winded.

I'll try and prattle a little less, get a bit more concise.

So, I walked at least 50 miles by the time I got home, and that was just on the highway.

That doesn't count all the driveways I went down or how long it took me to walk out of the woods.

You know, I read somewhere that a league used to be how far a person could walk in an hour.

And that's generally considered to be about three, three and a half miles.

If I do some rough math, that puts it at about fifteen hours to go fifty miles.

And you add in all the time I was breaking into people's houses or screwed around trying to get a vehicle to start.

That's got to be at least 20 hours.

Nevertheless, the sun was only just starting to go down by the time I got home.

You can kind of see why I don't really trust time anymore.

It's just as messed up as everything else in this hell I've found myself in.

And of course,

my kids, my wife,

mom,

they're gone too, just like everybody else.

I came so close to losing it right then.

Sometimes too much is just too much, but

after all of that, I didn't even have the energy to have a really good breakdown.

Instead, I ate a cold can of ravioli.

Had to eat it cold because, along with everything else, electricity seems to have up and vanished.

I'm not really surprised.

If there's no people, why would I expect any electricity?

So I ate and I fell down exhausted.

And that pretty much brings us up to date to where we are now and the decision I was talking about earlier.

So I woke up, I found this old mini tape voice recorder somebody got me for Christmas a few years ago, shoved some batteries in and started talking.

I briefly considered ending it all, just taking a shotgun to myself and checking out for good.

But I can't do that.

You see, I may not know what's going on here where everyone's went what's happened but my family might still be out there somewhere and if they are I'm not going to check out and leave them in this place alone you see that's that's my decision to live and to get my family back

it's still dark out I really don't know how long it's going to stay that way But I'm leaving as soon as I gather a few things.

If anyone ever hears this,

just have to say to my wife, Nicole,

to my kids, Leonard, Renee, Willow, if you guys are out there somewhere, I'm coming for you.

And to whatever or whoever has taken my family from me, I'm coming for you too.

And there is nothing on this earth that can stop me.

Welcome to episode two of the Liminal Lands.

A single step.

Well, it seems the sun finally decided to show itself.

I guess that means it's as good a time as any to stop and take a break.

I mean, considering time is doing its own thing right now.

I can't help it.

I keep thinking of things in an hour, minute, second type of way.

But that isn't helpful or hell even useful right now I'm trying to change the way I think instead of thinking in time I'm trying to think in matters of distance

as instead of just miles per hour dropping the per hour and just thinking in miles with that said I've gone about ten miles since I left the house this morning means I've got about two miles left before I hit the highway

and that's where I'm gonna have to decide where I'm going next.

Filled up my hiking bag with supplies before I left the house this morning.

You know what, let's take a quick inventory.

Let's see what we got here.

Got my multi-tool,

bowie knife, let's see,

emergency poncho,

got a small hatchet,

collapsible poop shovel.

That's uh

super important.

Got my sleeping bag over here.

Paracord.

Plenty of paracord.

There's about a million things you can use paracord for.

I can't think of any of them right now, but by God, I've got it anyways.

I have a little P38 can opener.

There's a water bladder built into the hiking bag.

Got a medium-sized tarp.

Small first aid kit.

Let's see.

Just a few other various odds and ends.

Like

my hobo tool.

Although I guess it really isn't PC to call it that anymore.

But that's what I grew up on.

And calling it a camping travel cutlery set is

just a bit too much of a mouthful.

I also made sure to pack my life straw.

Supposedly you can drink stagnant water without having to worry about getting sick or catching giardia or whatever it is.

but let's hope it doesn't come to that.

And lastly, I've got some of the various food things we had around the house: a couple of granola bars,

canned food.

Actually, speaking of food, I think it's time to sit and eat.

Oh,

oh man, what the hell?

Oh, that is disgusting.

Ugh.

Well, that changes things a little bit.

I ended up opening every single piece of canned food I brought from the house.

Every single one of them was bad.

Some were, shall we say,

more bad than the others.

The tuna was

particularly disturbing.

I can't even begin to describe to you the smell.

Hell, even if I could, I wouldn't.

If anyone ever does listen to this tape, trust me on this.

I will carry that smell with me the rest of my life.

I really just hope I only mean that figuratively, and the smell doesn't actually cling to me for the rest of my life.

Some of the stuff I I brought from the house might have almost been edible if I'd still had an appetite after being subjected to the tuna, but I'm not quite that desperate yet.

I checked the expiration dates on everything, and it all should have still been good.

You know, I thought the ravioli I ate last night tasted a little off because it was cold, but

now I'm beginning to think it was already starting to turn.

Just what in the hell happened here?

Alright, hypothetical future listener.

Let me try and recap events so far.

Talking out loud kind of helps me collect my thoughts, and

since all I have to talk to is this daggum type recorder, I'm going to make it listen.

I go hunting.

I fall out of my tree, get knocked out.

I wake up, and nothing works.

I have to walk home.

There is no one that I can find,

and for some reason, days seem to last twice as long, or more than they should.

My family is is also missing.

I decided to set out to find them,

and food that should be good for over a year yet smells like it's over twenty years out of date.

There,

my thoughts are all collected and we've got a full recap.

Trying to think this through logically, I can really only come up with

two options that kind of make any sense out of any of this.

So, when I fell out of the tree, that's when things changed.

So, option one,

the fall from the tree killed me.

And I admit I'm not exactly a liturgical scholar.

You know, I'm not even sure I'm using the word liturgical right.

But this really doesn't seem like any heaven or hell I've ever heard of in any religion.

But even with my admittedly limited understanding, I would think that some kind of afterlife would at least be more populated.

So let's slide that to the back burner for now and go on with option two.

Option two is that the fall from the tree knocked more than just a few screws loose, and I've gone completely around the bin.

As crazy as a shithouse rat, as my daddy always liked to used to say.

And man am I leaning towards option number two.

I'm probably safe and sound in a padded room somewhere.

You may be right.

I may be crazy.

Or maybe I'm still in the woods somewhere, running around like some sort of mountain man sleepwalker covered in my own shit, talking with the squirrels.

The squirrels.

Hang on a minute.

Okay, I'm back.

Whatever happened here the apocalypse, the Exodus rapture, whatever it was that made everyone disappear and left everything else alone, it didn't take everything.

I slipped off the road and went out into the woods.

It took me about twenty minutes based on my internal timer, but who knows how good that is.

But I did finally see another living creature.

It wasn't a squirrel, but I did see a red-tailed hawk.

I caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye and I saw it take off from its perch.

I lost track of it pretty quickly through the woods, but I did finally see another form of life.

I

am not alone.

I am not

alone.

God, I'm not alone.

Right, okay, it looks like it's recording again.

So, dear hypothetical future listener, something

something is after me.

I don't know what it is.

I saw it when I first got into town, just out of the corner of my eye, just a

moving shadow, really.

I didn't think anything of it

at first,

but I kept seeing it.

I went to the gas station and tried to find some food.

Pretty much the same story there with food as the food I brought from home.

And I know what you're thinking.

I did check the Twinkies.

Let me tell you, when that cream goes south, it goes all the way south.

But never mind that.

I'll tell you about what I got to eat later

uh my stalker.

So I left the store and I saw it again.

It was sneaking behind a nearby store.

I looked right at it it got completely out of my sight, and I have never,

ever seen anything so dark in my entire life.

I'm sure you've probably seen images of that phantom black paint shit somewhere.

Now imagine that on something that vaguely looks like a big feline.

Nothing in the natural world has ever been that dark.

There have been rumors and sightings here of what people call a panther.

I know there aren't any panthers here in Arkansas, black, pink, or otherwise, but I always kind of thought maybe there was a mountain lion with melanism running around.

And let me tell you, even if that is true, and there is something like that running around,

that isn't what I saw.

I kept looking for it.

I kept catching glimpses of it out of the corner of my eye, but I'd only catch a flash of it as it disappeared behind something or dropped into deep, deep shadows.

But you know, every time I saw it, it was closer.

Somehow, it kept getting closer without me seeing it.

Of course, that really, really started to freak me out.

Then it started to get dark.

It's true I've got a really bad internal timer, and it's true that even if I had a really, really good one, it wouldn't help much.

But

it got dark unnaturally early, even in this unnatural place.

That's when I decided I needed to get indoors.

And quick, I just started towards the closest house.

I think it's one of the Richardsons.

And I swear I felt it behind me.

I know I heard it.

I ran.

And I can't know this for sure, but my heart tells me that I barely made it here in time.

I don't know much.

I don't know much about this strange new place I found myself in.

But there is one thing I'm sure.

Here there be monsters.

Well, now I'm positive that this is one of the Richardsons' houses.

Because even for around here they have one more hell of an impressive collection of guns.

Shit, this place is almost a damn armory.

Plus there is a name plate on a pretty impressive set of antlers hanging from the wall.

If you can't tell I'm in a bit of a better mood right now.

It's because I'm loaded for bear.

I know that thing is still out there, but now I'm ready for it.

Whatever the hell it is, it isn't going to survive a couple couple of shots from some twelve-gauge single-op buckshot.

And when the Sun finally decides to come back up, I'm gonna turn the tables.

I know this is a huge cliché, but the hunted is going to become the hunter.

It's dark.

It's very dark.

I don't know how long the sun has been down.

I've found some flashlights, but the batteries just drain so fast, it's unreal.

Just like everything else, I guess.

It kind of makes me wonder how much longer the batteries in you are going to last, little tape recorder.

Your little red light is already starting to dim

and you can't have even been used more than 45 minutes altogether.

I can't sleep every time my eyes start to close.

Yeah,

that

I don't think I can wait until the sun comes up.

Because let's face it,

who knows when the hell that's gonna be.

And if I have to sit here and listen to that until then, I'm going to go crazy.

I mean, if I'm not already.

When I can get my courage up, I'm going to try and shoot that damn thing, even in this pitch-black darkness.

My plan's pretty simple.

I'm just going to wait until it starts one of those hellacious screams again.

Kick open the door and shoot at the sound.

If it's as close as it sounds, I should be able to pull it off.

Wish me luck.

Okay,

this is it.

The next time that damn thing opens its mouth, I'm gonna go.

Oh no.

Hey Jason.

Not much.

So listen, I just I just called to see if my husband was over there.

No, he hasn't made it home yet.

I thought maybe he had shot one late and was over there skinning it out.

I'm kind of starting to get worried.

He usually doesn't stay gone this long.

Listen, I know it's late.

I really hate to ask, but do you think you could drive out there and check on him?

Yeah, he told me he was going to be at the honey hole all weekend.

Can you find it in the dark?

Thank you so much.

You're a lifesaver.

Okay, talk to you soon.

Bye.

As always, guys, thank you for listening.

Until next time, beware of doorways.

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Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today, it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

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A little play can make your day.

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