Dagger Key and Other Stories

The first four days of Abi’s purification, you catch twenty, thirty calls a day, all announcing themselves by giving their first name and the call’s point of origin. This is Frannie from San Diego, Ted from Vero Beach, Rene from Medelin, Jonathan from Perth, Lisa from San Francisco, Terry from Madison, Pat from London, Syd from Duluth, Pauline from Chapel Hill, Jean-Daniel from Nantes, Lamon from Paris (“Kentucky, dude…”), Patrice from Diamante, Juana from Taxco, and so on. They don’t need to speak to Abi, they say. Just mention they called. Most sound young. Since the phone hardly ever rings under normal circumstances, you assume these folks are the mystic warriors of her alliance signaling that they’re ready to rock n’ roll. Your personal favorite is Mauve from Oberlin, whose voice is such a fey, wispy instrument, you imagine a pixie hovering beside the receiver, and that two other pixies have helped her lift a pencil that dwarfs them to punch in the number. There’s Marko from Volgograd (baritone)—you picture a bullfrog the size of a compact car wearing a tattered pro-Satan T-shirt. Ving from Chiang Mai (lisping tenor) becomes a gecko in a spandex body stocking. Anne from Mataplan (grating contralto) you morph into a Sasquatch transvestite. You become downright chatty with some of the callers—making light of what’s happening helps dispel your nervousness. On the fifth and sixth days you receive far fewer calls, but you get one that, albeit brief, achieves the opposite effect.

“Hello.”

“This is Rem…from Olympia.” A hoarse voice that sounds squeezed-out, as if he’s been gutshot or has a great weight on his chest and, unable to use his diaphragm, it’s an effort to speak. He may have, as well, a slight accent.

“Abi can’t come to the phone. Take a message?”

“Tell her…I called.”

Like, “Tell her…” Gasp, shudder, gasp. “…I called.”

“Hey, Rem?”

A grunt that may have been a mangled, “Yeah.”

“They say the eagle flies on Friday.”

Silence, then: “I don’t…understand.”

“It’s the password, guy. You’re supposed to say, ‘I have yet to feel its shadow.’”

“Abi told us…you had an…inelegant sense of humor.”

“She did, huh? She used that word? Inelegant?”

A round of heavy breathing, then: “Fool.”

The seventh morning, Abi makes a few calls of her own; she cautions you that tonight, should you wake and find her still involved in the ritual, you’re not to interfere, you’re to keep clear until she tells you otherwise. She pounds home this point until she’s sure you grasped it, then retreats into seclusion. You try to study, but give up after an hour and veg out on the living room sofa, alternately napping and catching up on your comic book reading. It’s late afternoon, already dark outside, and you’re deep into Alan Moore’s collected Promethea, when Abi emerges from the bedroom, goes into the kitchen, and fixes you a cup of herb tea. You take a sip. The taste is horrid. You ask what’s in it, but Abi’s not communicating. She’s withdrawn, pulled back inside herself; she urges you to drink it all and returns to the bedroom, leaving you to contemplate a cupful of brackish liquid with pieces of brown vegetable matter floating on the surface. You know it’s a drug—nothing else could taste that bad—but you drink it. At heart, no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary, you can’t accept any of this. Teen witches versus the Apocalypse. It’s just not happening. The only part to which you lend the slightest credence is the possibility that your back will get screwed up and, at this juncture, that’s not enough to do more than give you pause.