Dagger Key and Other Stories

“Where do you go when you leave?” he asked. “What happens to you?”

“Limbo,” she said.

The word had the sound of a stone dropped into a puddle. “That’s where unshriven infants go after they die…right?”

“‘Unshriven.’” She laughed palely. “You’re way too Catholic, Roy. Limbo’s just what I call it. I don’t know what it is.” She touched the place on his palm where he had picked up the splinter. “You were there. You saw it.”

“I did?”

“The black house. The one you asked me about.”

He took this in. “You’re saying the afterlife’s a house on the lake?”

“Not on the lake. You could walk around the entire lake, you wouldn’t find it.”

“I found it,” he said.

“You weren’t walking anywhere near the lake.”

All the half-formed suspicions he’d entertained regarding his fate seemed to mist up inside his head, merging into a dark shape. “Then where was I?”

“I’ll tell you what I know…if you want.” She slid down in the bed, curled up in the way of a child getting cozy. “It was night when I died. Avery was off playing somewhere, and I wasn’t feeling well. My chest hurt…but I had an ache in my chest all the time, so I didn’t think it was anything. I went outside to get some air and I was walking along the shore when I had a feeling of weakness. It came on so suddenly! I could tell something was really wrong, and I tried to call for help, but I was too weak. I thought I’d fainted because the next I knew I was sitting up and a fog had gathered. I wasn’t in pain anymore, but I felt…odd. Disoriented. I kept walking and before long I came to the house. I was terrified, but there was nowhere else to go, so I went inside.”

“What it’s like in the house?” Shellane asked.

“When I’m there I feel kind of how I did with Avery. Dejected. Faded. I’m always getting lost. The people there…Nobody talks much to anyone. Maybe I’m projecting, but I get the idea everyone’s like me. They’re people who gave up and now they’re just moping about. There are some others, though. Tall…and really ugly. That’s what I call them. The uglies. I don’t think they’re human. There aren’t very many of them. Maybe twenty. They chase after us—it seems like it’s a game for them. They can’t kill us, of course. But they hurt us…and they use us. Men, women. It doesn’t matter.”

“They use you sexually?” he asked.

A nod. “They act like animals. They’re strong, but incredibly stupid. But they know how to move around in the house without getting lost.”

Shellane recalled the naked man who had pursued him in the woods. “You ever see them around the lake?”

“The uglies? Sometimes they follow me out, but they won’t go far from the house. They only follow a little ways.”

“Why’s it so difficult to get around inside the house?”

“It’s not difficult, it’s just you never know where the doors will take you. The house changes. You go through a door and it kind of sucks you in. Like…whoosh!, and you’re somewhere else. But you can’t retrace your steps. If you go back through the same door, you won’t wind up in the room you left. I try to figure it out, but it seems I never have enough energy. Or I’m too busy hiding from the uglies.”

“But you return here,” he said. “You learned how to do that.”

“That’s different. It’s not like I understand what I’m doing. I get a strong feeling that I have to leave, so I head for the nearest door, and when I step through I’m back at the lake. I think it’s the same for the others. At least I’ve been in rooms when people suddenly space out. They get a blank expression and then they take off.”

She tugged at him, drew him down beside her. He lay on his back, studying the water stains on the ceiling, appearing to map a rippled white country with a sketchily rendered brownish-orange coastline. His arm went about her, but his thoughts were elsewhere.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Thinking about the house?”

“It doesn’t do any good.”

“Maybe not.”

“But you’re going to do it anyway?”

“I’m good with problems. It’s what I did for a living.”

“I thought you were a thief.”

“I wasn’t a snatch-and-grab artist. I stole things that were hard to steal.”

A gust of wind shuddered the bedroom window, and coming out of nowhere, a hard rain slanted against the panes.

“When you pass through the doors,” he said, “you say it feels as if you’re being sucked in. Does anything else happen?”

“I get lights in my eyes. Like the sort that come when you’re hit in the head. And right after that, I’ll get a glimpse of other places. Just a flash. I can’t always tell what it is I’m seeing, but they don’t seem part of the house.”

“What makes you think the ugly ones know how to get around in the house?”

“Because whenever they take me with them, we always go the same places. They don’t display any uncertainty. They know exactly where they’re headed.”

“Do they do anything to the doors before opening them? Do they touch anything…maybe turn something, push something?”

She closed her eyes. “When I’m with them, I’m afraid. I don’t notice much.”

“You said there are about twenty of them?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What about the rest of you…How many?”