The Death Seer (Skeleton Key) (2 page)

There was no sun the next morning. The clouds were a thick drapery across the sky. I hadn’t slept except for those brief, fast dips into unconsciousness. The key was no longer cold in my hand.

Outside my bedroom door I heard the shuffling of socked feet on worn-out carpet. My brother making his morning trek to the coffee pot. Annie following close behind, her steps softer, more tentative. I would wait for the scent of coffee to creep beneath the crack between my door and the floor. I would wait for something real and visceral to pull me back out of the nightmares and into the day.
 

A few minutes later, dark, earthy smells filtered into my air. I sat up, swung my legs off the bed, and stood, my hand still fisted around the key. I felt compelled to keep holding it, like if I let it go it might vanish and I might lose my connection with wherever it came from. Although, would that really be a bad thing? I didn’t think I wanted to be connected to anything other than my house and my brother and my life.
 

I stepped out of my room into the warm hallway, stunned at how much colder my room had been than the rest of the house. In the kitchen at the little round table for two sat my brother and his girlfriend, sipping coffee, eyes glued to their phones. They were in their pajamas and robes. I didn’t feel so bad about showing up barefoot, in my thin, fabric shorts and my “I can’t adult today” tank top.
 

I bypassed the table, poured myself some coffee, then joined them.

“Any job prospects today?” my brother asked without looking up from his phone.

“She just got here, Todd. Let her settle in.”

“Thank you, Annie,” I said.
 

Todd leaned back and met my eye, a hint of a smile on his lips. “I was just trying to make conversation.”

With a shrug, I sipped my coffee. “Not much demand for my skill set at the moment. Although there should be. This culture is too lawsuit obsessed.”

“I’d invite you to work with me at the factory, but they’re doing layoffs, too. Bad economy.”

We all nodded. It was bland talk. Bland reality. I didn’t have my cell phone with me, or I’d have been looking at it instead of my knees. “You remember the people who lived next door?”
 

“What, the Grables?”

“Yeah. She killed herself. The little boy went missing.”

“Yeah, I remember. What about them?”

“Did they ever find that boy?”

“I don’t know. Probably. Probably found him in a ditch somewhere. Kid didn’t stand much of a chance. His mom was…weird.”

“You knew her?” I looked up, then.

Todd shrugged. “Saw her around. Didn’t really know her.”

“What was she like?”

“I don’t really know. She didn’t talk to anyone. Every time she left her house, it was like she was in a hurry to get back. Some nights she’d smoke on her front porch and cry. Anytime I tried to ask her what was wrong, she’d run back inside. Kept that kid under lock and key. Just a weird situation.”

“Did you ever see the boy leave?”

“Nope. Not once.”

Annie snapped her fingers. “I saw this movie, once, where these kids were so allergic to sunlight, they could only go out in the night. Maybe it was something like that.”

Todd gave her a disgusted look, for some reason. Like she was an idiot. She blushed under his scrutiny, and looked away. Poor woman.
 

“Does anyone ever ask why it’s this way?” I blurted.
 

“Why what’s this way?” Todd asked.

“It’s just, I was a little kid. I don’t really remember how it was before. But you do, right?”

“Before what, Brenna?”

“Before people stopped dying.”

“Of course I remember. Why are you asking me about it?”

“It’s been ten years. I was just wondering if anyone was still looking for answers. A reason. A cure. Or did you all just roll over and accept it.”

“Of course we didn’t. I know for a fact there are still researchers dedicated to it. There’s plenty of people still holding their breath, waiting for things to go back the way they were. But we still gotta go on living, Brenna. I mean, we can’t just sit around and wait. Shortest path to happiness is acceptance.”

He was right, obviously. “There are so many people fighting it, still.”

“I know. Some people adapt. Some people don’t.”

Annie rose and went to the sink, dumping the remainder of her coffee. “I’m going to take a shower,” she said, casting me a smile as she walked out of the room.
 

As soon as she was gone, I leaned in. “What’s up with you? Why are you being such a jerk to her?”

“You got a lot of questions this morning, kiddo.”

“She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think I might be better off alone.”

“That’s bull. She’s perfect.”

Todd’s jaw twitched. “She’s too good. She takes way too much shit from me. Either she’s a complete pushover or she really loves me a lot.”

The water pipes in the walls came to life, a steady hum. “She does love you. She’s extremely patient, but she won’t stay forever. Do you want to die alone?”

He smirked at me. “Of course not.”

“Do you love her?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then be nice.”

He let out a frustrated laugh. “Self-sabotage is a hard habit to break.”

“Yeah, well, you can do it. She’s a good woman, and at your age, those are getting harder to find.”

“Maybe you should consider a career in therapy,” he murmured as he stood and went to the stove. He started heating up the griddle and slicing bagels. I went to the refrigerator for the cream cheese. Then I grabbed some plates out of the cabinet. The water pipes silenced.
 

“Would you go see if she’s hungry?” Todd asked.

I strolled down the hallway to the master bedroom door and knocked. “Want a bagel?” I asked, loud enough to be heard through the door.

She didn’t answer. Of course, she was probably still in the bathroom. I knocked. No answer. I opened the door a crack. The bathroom door was closed, so I went in and knocked on that. “Hey, Annie, do you want breakfast?”

No answer.

“Annie?”

Still no answer. No sounds at all. I opened the door just a crack thinking maybe she had a towel wrapped around her ears or something. Steam flowed out the door and dissipated in the cooler bedroom air. “Annie, are you hungry?”

I pushed the door open wider.
 

First I saw her feet and legs. Then I threw the door open and fell to my knees at her side. I must have screamed, because a moment later, Todd was there, shoving me aside and rolling her to her back. I couldn’t process sound. Or he wasn’t making any. His hands went to her head, checking for injury. They trailed to the back of her neck, then beneath her down her spine. Quickly he stood, lifting her into his arms. He shouted something as he passed me out the door.
 

“What?” I asked.

“Call 911!” The sound rushed back at me all at once. He was talking non-stop. “It’s okay, baby. Everything’s gonna be okay, baby.” He laid her on the bed and covered her naked body with the comforter. “Annie, babe, wake up,” he muttered over and over.

I don’t know why I stood there, why I didn’t call 911 as he’d commanded me to do. But I knew a death coma when I saw one. Why it was her time, I couldn’t say. But Fate had chosen her.

“Brenna, call 911!” he shouted again.

“They can’t do anything,” I said numbly.

He looked back at me, anguished tears in his twisted expression. “She’s got a pulse. She’s still warm. Call 911.”
 

“Just spend this time with her.”

He shook his head, looking at me as though I’d betrayed him. And then a nightmare played out before me. Todd’s eyes went suddenly blank. They rolled back in his skull. His body went limp. He collapsed on top of Annie.

I screamed. I shook him so hard the headboard banged against the wall. This didn’t make sense. There was no reason they should both collapse. They were young and healthy. I rolled him to his back next to Annie and checked his vitals, knowing it was a fruitless thing to do. I cried, I yelled at God, and then I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Out the window.

Todd’s window was at an angle to the one in the house across the way…to Kord’s. There was a light flickering on and off in Kord’s window. On and off in random, sporadic bursts, like a light bulb slowly dying. And then it was gone.
 

I became aware of warmth in my hand. When I looked down, the key was there. I couldn’t remember if I’d set it down and picked it up again, or if I’d always had it. But I suddenly knew where it went.

All I knew was one foot in front of the other. The screen door of my brother’s house slammed behind me. The key warmed in my hand. That house…Kord’s house, lay empty before me, but somehow alive, though it should have long ago died. The porch steps didn’t even creak as I climbed them. My soft-soled sneakers padded across the wooden porch to the front door. The door wasn’t right. It was supposed to be white with a brass knocker and a little half-moon window at the top. Instead, it was raw boards, brown and cracking. The doorknob was a tarnished bronze, large and heavy in my hand.
 

I looked behind me, at the neighborhood laid out around me. Something wasn’t right. There was a reddish haze all around. It seemed far away, that neighborhood.

I turned the knob. Of course it was locked. The keyhole beneath it was not of this world. There was no reason on earth for a twenty-first century suburban farmhouse to require an unwieldy glass key, yet I tried it anyway. The key slipped in the door. A turn. A click.
 

I removed the key, turned the doorknob, and pushed the door open. A dank, earthy smell surrounded me. Light filtered in the door. There was a staircase to the left. Straight ahead a small foyer and a coat closet. Off to the right, the rest of the house cast in shadows.
 

“Hello?”
 

My voice didn’t echo. Nothing came back. Nothing answered. My face was still wet with the tears I’d been shedding over Annie and my brother when I stepped inside. “Hello?” I called again, softer this time, as though I didn’t really want an answer. I took another step inside. And another.

The door clicked shut behind me. I jumped and turned, fully intending to reopen the door, except that it wasn’t there any longer. I was facing what should have been the door and all I saw was a wall of dirt, seamless and rough. When I turned back, the house was gone and I was inside a tunnel. A dirt tunnel. The walls were dirt, the ceiling was dirt. It was clearly man-made, smoothed out. Light shone from ahead. I could reach my arms out and touch either wall. I could reach up and flatten my hand against the ceiling. I turned back, again, to what should have been the door and now was a dead end. I pressed against it. I threw my shoulder against it.
 

The sound of my breathing brought me back to myself. I kept the breaths steady and even as I turned back to face the tunnel and the warm, yellow light at the end. I wanted to stand there and wait. The door couldn’t remain a dirt wall forever, could it? It was, after all, a door by nature. It shouldn’t be pretending to be something it wasn’t. And it couldn’t keep it up much longer.
 

I looked down at the key in my hand. I jammed it into the dirt wall, but all it did was gouge a hole into the dirt. I waited and waited. And then I walked. First one step, and then another, toward the yellow light. It was a narrow, rectangular sliver of light. As I approached, I saw it was coming through another door, one that looked very much like the one I’d just come through. I crept up to it and peered out of the crack.
 

The floor was dirt. Casks and barrels lined the wall. Jars on shelves. A damp, earthen mustiness in the air. I pushed the door open a little further. A wooden staircase led up to another closed door. I found the source of the light in the form of a lantern, an old one with oil and a flame, abandoned on the floor near a barrel. “Hello?” I whispered.

The room stood vacant. My steps were tentative as I approached the lantern and lifted it by its handle. Its warmth gave me shivers. I hadn’t realized how cold I’d become. I took the creaky stairs one-at-a-time, testing my weight on each questionable board. At the top was another door. There was noise on the other side. People. Talking. Laughter.
 

I pushed the door open to more yellow light. I stepped into a hallway, turned towards the sound, and walked into an open room. For a moment, the noise continued. But almost at once, it silenced. I was standing in a tavern. An old tavern like the ones I’d always imagined in fantasy novels. The floors and walls were rough hewn wood. The man at the bar poured beer from a tapped barrel and served it in tankards, only just now he was frozen with a tankard extended to a man who was frozen in the middle of accepting it. Both men were staring at me, mouths agape. There were round tables surrounded by chairs, some empty, some occupied…mostly by men, all of whom were staring at me.

The table nearest me had cards laid out. My first thought was poker, but then I realized I didn’t recognize the cards or the patterns they were laid out in. I think because of the surroundings, my mind automatically painted everyone with beards and breeches and tunics. But as I focused, I saw this wasn’t the case. There were a couple of men dressed like that. But for the most part, the attire was more…diverse. Some of it modern. Most of it more modern than the medieval environment. One man in overalls with a long-sleeved cotton shirt underneath looked to be a farmer, albeit one from the Dust Bowl era. Another man wore a high-collared shirt and cravat beneath a brocade coat. A man near the bar had on black jeans, a leather jacket, and greased back hair.