Dagger Key and Other Stories

He paused at the door. The knob was of black iron and had the shape of an open hand. He would have to give it a shake in order to enter, and the dire symbolism inherent in this made him less eager to proceed. He had a memory of himself as an altar boy, kneeling, striking the bell as the priest intoned the litany, gazing up at the great gold cross mounted against crimson drapes, participating in the medieval magic of the mass. Whatever he had believed then, he wished he could believe it now. He wished he could take the power that had inspired his awe, all that glorious myth and promise, into his shaking heart. But if the house proved anything, it was that God was far more perverse than the Church had ever dreamed. He imagined the fingers of the fog traipsing across the back of his neck, and the fingers of the iron hand seemed to press into his wrist, trying to feel the hits of his heart. Before further doubts could assail him, he clasped it firmly and gave it a turn.

White lights stabbed into his eyes. It was precisely as Grace had described—like the actinic flashes caused by a blow to the head. And then he was drawn deep inside the house, hurtling forward as if on a walkway that was moving much too fast for safety’s sake. For an instant he thought he had been transported to the ground floor of a parking garage. A dark, musty space with a strip of brilliant light to his left. Then either his vision steadied or the house settled on a form, and he realized that he was facing a row of large round holes—perhaps forty or fifty in sum—piercing a wall of black boards, yellow radiance spilling from them. He strained his ears, listening for signs of life. Hearing none, he came closer. The holes were of equal dimension, six feet wide and high, each opening onto a small cell, unfurnished except for a bowl set in the floor. These bowls were the radiant source, light spraying up from them. The first cell he came to held no prisoner and was littered with dried wastes. Shreds of a slick transparent membrane adhered to the edges of the hole. As far as he could tell, the membrane had not been affixed to the wall, but had been extruded from it, as though it were, like the great fist outside, a natural production of the wood. The second hole was also empty, the membrane shredded. Shellane reached in to learn if the bowl could be lifted out and used to light his way. The radiance burned him, provoking a prickly, crawly sensation like that deriving from an inflamed rash. In the third cell sat a figure that appeared to be made of dull, tarnished gold. It had the bulbous shape and pudgy face of an infant, but was the size of a man. Swaddled head to foot in a golden robe that seemed of a piece with its flesh and left only the face exposed beneath a tightly fitted cowl. Its features had an Asiatic cast, and Shellane recalled photographs of Chinese babies clothed in similar fashion. He was so certain it was a statue, when the creature twitched its head toward him, mouth open in what appeared to be a full-throated scream (though he heard nothing), he fell back a step. He punched at the membrane, which was stretched tight across the entrance to the cell. The blow had no effect; the shreds hanging from the entrances of the first two cells were flimsy, the surface of the intact membrane was hard and rubbery. The huge baby lowered its head and, with a chubby hand that emerged from the sleeve of its robe, pawed in apparent agony at its face and gave another silent scream.

Five more cells were occupied, three by normal men, all naked. The other prisoners were two extremely tall men, also naked, with grayish skin and deformed faces, similar in every regard to the man who had chased Shellane along the margin of the lake…except that their deformities were not as severe as his had been. Sunken eyes; their mouths gashes with thin, ragged lips; flat noses, elongated skulls; ruffs of flesh at the back of their necks. This last caused Shellane to realize that his pursuer had not been wearing a mask and to speculate that, due to his fear, he must have exaggerated the man’s deformities. The chests of the two gray-skinned men displayed a peculiar articulation, as if they had too many bones. Their genital areas were hairless and their eyes so deeply recessed, shadowed by prominent ridges, they gave back not a glimmer of light. On seeing him, they reacted in fright, scrambling back against the rears of their cells and gaping. One of the ordinary-seeming men—scrawny, with a careworn face and stringy gray hair—was initially disinterested in him, but after Shellane had been standing in front of his cell for a minute or so, he pushed himself up against the membrane, pleading with his eyes, mouthing words that Shellane could not understand.