Dagger Key and Other Stories

She opened her mouth, but only shook her head again. Finally she said, “It’s not entirely his fault.”

“Sure, I can see that.”

“You don’t understand! He’s very talented, and he’s been so frustrated. He…”

“So he takes his frustrations out on you. He makes you feel bad about yourself. He tells you you’re worthless. He blames you for his failings.”

Shellane reached for her hand. She looked startled when he touched her wrist, but let him pull her down onto her knees. “If that’s how it is,” he said, “you should leave him.”

The boat that had been racing around at the far end of the lake swung close in along the shore, the sound of its engine carving a gash in the stillness. The driver and the woman with him waved. Neither Shellane nor Grace responded.

“He doesn’t deserve you,” Shellane said.

“You don’t know me…and you don’t know him.”

“Twenty-five years ago I used to be him.”

“I doubt that. Avery’s one of a kind.”

“No he’s not. I had a girlfriend…a lot like you. Sweet, pretty. She loved me, but I couldn’t get it together. I was too damn lazy. I thought because I was smart, the world was going to fall at my feet. Eventually she left me. But before that happened, I did my best to make her feel as bad about herself as I felt about myself.”

She was silent a few beats. “Did you ever get it together?”

“I got by, but I never did what I wanted.”

“What was that?”

“It’s a bit of a coincidence, actually. I wanted to be a musician. I wrote songs…or tried to. Screwed around in a garage band. But I settled for the next best thing.”

She looked at him expectantly.

“Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime,” he said.

They sat without speaking for a minute. Shellane told himself it was time to pull back. The pause was an opportunity to quit this foolishness. But instead he said, “Have dinner with me tonight. We can drive into Marquette.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not? He’ll be playing tonight.”

“He plays every night.”

“Then why not have dinner? You afraid someone will see us?”

She gave no reply, and he said, “Come over to the cabin, then. I’ll cook up some steaks.”

“I might have to eat at home.” She flattened her palms against her thighs. “I could come over after…maybe.”

“Okay,” he said.

“I don’t want you to think…that…”

“I promise not to think.”

That brought a wan smile. “We can just talk, if that’s all right.”

“Talk would be good.”

She appeared to be growing uncomfortable and, watching her hands wrestle with one another, her eyes darting toward the lake, he timed her and said to himself, the instant before she spoke the same words, I should go.

Late that afternoon it seemed deep November arrived at the lake in all its dank and gray displeasure, a cold wind pushing in a pewter overcast and spatterings of rain. As the dusk turned to dark, a fog rolled in, ghost-dressing the trees in whitish rags that clung to the boughs like relics of an ancient festival. Shellane, who had gone for a walk just as the fog began to accumulate, was forced to grope his way along, guided by the muffled slap of the waves. He had brought a flashlight, but all the beam illuminated was churning walls of fog. He must have been within a hundred yards of the cabin when he realized he could no longer hear the water. He kept going in what he assumed to be the direction of the shoreline, but after ten minutes, he was still on solid ground. He must have gotten turned around, he thought. He shined the flashlight ahead. A momentary thinning of the mist, and he made out a building. If anyone was at home, he could ask directions. The visibility was so poor, he couldn’t see much until he was right up next to the wall. The boards were knotty and badly carpentered, set at irregular slants and coated with pitch. He ran his right hand against one and picked up a splinter.

“Shit!” He examined his palm. Blood welled from a gouge, and a toothpick-sized sliver of wood was visible beneath the skin. He shook his hand to ease the hurt and happened to glance upward. Protruding from the wall some twenty feet overhead was a huge black fist, perfectly articulated and twice the circumference of an oil drum. From its clenched fingers hung a shred of rotting rope.

Shellane’s heart seemed itself to close into a fist. Swirling fog hid the thing from view, but he could have sworn it was not affixed to the wall, but rather emerged from it, the boards flowing out into the shape, as if the building were angry and had extruded this symptom of its mood.

He heard movement behind him and spun about, caught his heel and fell. Knocked loose on impact, the flashlight rolled away, becoming a mound of yellowish radiance off in the fog. Panicked, he scrambled up, breathing hard. He could no longer see much of the building, just the partial outline of a roof.

A guttural noise; pounding footsteps.

“Hey!” Shellane called.

More footsteps, and another voice, maybe the same one.