Dagger Key and Other Stories

Let’s further say that the water in those currents has been frozen, transformed into tiny ice particles, trillions of greenish particles, each the size of a dust mote, hovering in place…that’s how you interpret what you’re seeing. The metaphorical representation of time, or something to do with time—its underpinnings, its internal structures. Abi’s encased in the central column, poised within it, her right arm lifted, looking as if she’s about to pick a flower from a branch above her head. Naked, white-eyed, skin decorated with vines. She, too, appears frozen. And then, almost imperceptibly, she moves. The thumb and forefinger of her right hand rub together, as if she’s selected one of the particles, pinched it loose from the rest and is rubbing it away between her fingertips. She makes a quarter-turn inside the column to face you, smiling a ghastly smile. Any smile might seem ghastly in relation to those white eyes, but it puts fear in your heart and you start to freak out.

Witch, you think, and take a step backward.

The smile grows more ghastly and gloating, stretched impossibly wide, and you think that the rubber, the latex or whatever, of the Abi costume she’s been wearing will split, a great seam will open between her breasts, and the skinny demoness inside with shiny putrescent skin and black nails hard as horn will step forth.

Vile, unholy witch.

Enemy of God, the god whom you’ve never believed in, but in whom you now yearn to seek refuge.

Kali lacking her necklace of skulls would look no less fearsome, her face no more devoid of human qualities, and you can’t help thinking that this is her nature revealed, this voodoo bitch in her green viney gaud. She’s been waiting for this moment, waiting to show you, waiting to laugh at you. You reject the notion, but then she stretches forth her hand to you and you know she’s about to cast a spell—she’ll lure you close, snatch out your spine and brandish it aloft, a dripping bone spear to plunge into your heart, mash it into pudding, and then she’ll slurp up your soul as it squirts from the torn flesh. Her vast life surrounds you, surrounds all things. She dwells in the timestream, a pearl spider god dances on her finger, and she is reaching out to slaughter whatever her hand encounters, be it a strand of DNA or a burning city whose flames she’ll snuff out so as to inhale the fumes that ascend from its dying…

In your panic, and it’s not even a full-on panic, because you don’t entirely credit your senses and also because you recall what she said about not interfering…in your partial panic, then, you’ve forgotten that the kitchen door only swings one way, and when you turn and attempt to flee the room, you slam headfirst into its unyielding surface. The impact stuns you, sends you staggering sideways. You lose your balance, instinctively grope for something to hold yourself up. Your hand catches at the bookcase, the same pierced by one of the frozen currents of time, and, as you fall, your hand locks onto the edge of a shelf, pulling the whole thing down atop you. Digging out from beneath a cascade of trade paperbacks, you hear a tremendous crack, followed by an ear-splitting shredding noise. You come to one knee. Abi’s staring at you, her eyes no longer rolled up into her head. The voodoo bitch of whom you were so terrified has been replaced by a frightened woman who realizes she has lost some crucial measure of control. Behind her, it looks as if something has bitten a chunk out of the corner of the room, creating a ragged hole that’s as wide as a church door. The treelike shape, the green confluence of time, has lost its structural integrity, and its currents, unfrozen now, are washing past Abi, flooding through the hole and merging with a flux of darker stuff that appears to be flowing just beyond it. She’s about to be washed out along with them, and she, too, is losing her structural integrity, her limbs elongating and bending in odd ways, as in a funhouse mirror—yet she’s struggling to keep her feet, still reaching toward you, fingers splayed, silently imploring you to help. You have an instant to become aware of this, but before you can act, she’s sucked back toward the hole, strikes her head on a broken board, and is gone. There’s a scream, fainter than you’d expect, muted by some imponderable distance as she pinwheels away, her pale figure dwindling against the dark flow of…you don’t know what it is, but it seems infinitely deep and, if you had to give it a name right now, you’d call it God.