The Key to Everything (22 page)

She pulls herself off of the stack of newspaper Abram told her to rest on, and gives herself a quick tour of this room that isn’t supposed to be here. Every inch of all four walls is covered in keys. They hang from hooks and nails, chains and small strands of old, torn rope. Some are beautiful, immaculate and glinting in the light. Other keys are hunks of beaten, cracked, malformed and rusted metal, forced into shapes that slide into locks keeping cages shut on things that she hoped would never see the light of day. 

Abram hulks over a small desk in the center of the room, wearing a pair of small round eyeglasses with a white chain looping down and around his neck. The left lens is much thicker than the right, giving his eyes a peculiar, asymmetrical appearance. He flashes a small smile with closed lips and turns his attention back to his work.

“What is this place?”

“This is my room.” Abram doesn’t look up again. His hands are a flurry of motion, sketching out angles and shapes on a piece of old yellowed paper. “I come here to make my keys.”

“Obviously,” Emily whispers, turning around in a circle to take in the room again. “What are they all for? I mean…”

“You mean what do they open?” Abram lifts his head and closes his eyes to the ceiling. For the first time, Emily looks up at how high the ceiling actually is. It must be four or five stories up to the top, every inch enveloped by hanging skeletons, screws, openers and latchkeys. There has to be a staircase hidden somewhere to reach up that high. No sign of one readily appears to her.

“I wish I knew.” The words come out mournful and sad. Emily watches the twitches in his cheeks until they stop. “I’ve been making these ever since I can remember. Most were just for fun at first.” Abram picks up a clear plastic ruler and goes back to drawing. “In my teen years, they got me in some trouble. I stole a few cars, unlocked a bank or two…” Even standing behind him, she can see him smiling. 

“Then I met my Dedra.” He puts the pencil down and rubs the cramped muscles in his hand. “She was the first lock I couldn’t open with a key. Not a metal key. Not like these anyway.” He waves his hand around at the walls. “I worked harder at that one, yeah.”

“I don’t understand.” Emily limps back to the pile of newspapers and sits down. Taking the weight off of her leg feels good.

“Well… everyone’s a lock…” Abram swivels his chair around to face her. ”…and a key. We keep things hidden inside sometimes. We lock parts of ourselves away from the rest of the world, right?” Emily nods. “Every now and again, some of us are lucky enough to meet another person that makes us feel safe. They make us feel loved enough to unlock some of those bits and pieces we’ve sequestered from everyone else.”

“Okay. So Dedra is your key?” 

“Yes. Just like your Auden is yours.” Abram turns back to his desk and picks up the drawing. “If we get really lucky, and I mean very lucky, we might even meet someone who is not only our key, but we can be theirs, too.” 

“But…”

“That’s rarer than you think, Emily.” Walking to his left, he lifts a little brass key hanging from a pushpin stuck into a small bit of corkboard glued to the wall. “Very rare.”

“So what are we doing here?” Frightened, frustrated, and confused, she doesn’t even try to hide the strain in her voice.

The fingertips of Abrams’ hand turn a dark red, and his knuckles whiten as he pushes the small key into the flat wood on top of his desk. He turns it counterclockwise twice, lets it go, and takes a few steps backward. The entire room vibrates. Everything floats and bends, looking as if it were underwater. Emily grips tightly to the newspaper beneath her, trying to understand what is happening. 

The room is different now. It’s kind of the same, but a few things seem out of place. The keys are still up on their hooks. Abram is standing in the same place. It feels warmer, more humid now. There’s a deep pit in the center of the room where the desk was moments before, and several large barrels filled with water are standing in a row between the hole and the wall to his right. Steam and smoke billow up from a red-and-yellow glow in the middle of the pit. Abram hands her the yellowed piece of paper and slides on a pair of heavy leather gloves.

-42-

Auden: Opening

You only notice the smell. Which is strange, since you haven’t actually smelled anything in a long, long time. Your nostrils aren’t flooded with a rush of information. It’s quite small. It’s a hint or a suggestion of something nearby. It’s the opposite of absence.

You are still in the same small room. You are alone. Jeremy and the Other Jason have been gone for so long you can’t remember if there were really there at all. You remember trying to get Jeremy’s attention. Screaming and waving, kicking your feet against the wall. You even slapped yourself in the face trying to make enough noise for him to hear you. 

At some point, your body, drained of energy, just stopped. The skin of your cheeks and hands is still raw and stinging. Your toes tingle, having left splotches of bloodied footprints behind, dripping down to the floor. At least, you thought they did. There’s nothing over there but white now. 

Jason’s body lingered a while longer. From the way he was lying on the floor, you could see his elbow gently rising and falling on his side. His breathing never faltered. Otherwise, his body didn’t move at all. Averting your eyes from the tendons and muscles exposed from his skin’s removal, you stared at the back of his head, memorizing the unwashed curls of his dirty blonde hair. There were a few strands of red buried deep in there too. Lovely hues that didn’t show up all the time, but in the right light, they created a unique, caramel texture. You squinted at the tears as they welled up in your eyes. When they opened, he was gone.

Now you don’t feel anything. If the room is hot or cold, you can’t tell. If the floor is hard underneath your toes, you don’t know. You don’t care. You close your eyes from the constant white and try to picture Emily’s face. Her eyes are closed as you touch her chin. She turns to you and lifts her lips closer for a kiss. You wish you could feel her lips. Taste the hint of cherries that always brushes off of her lip balm. 

Her eyes open, pale and iris-less. A vacuous and empty white staring blindly from the nothingness inside. Her head snaps to the side, mouth opening to scream. You feel nothing. There is no fear. There is no panic. You are hollow. There is nothing left of you to be torn down or destroyed. You lift your hand to the wide, stretched space, filled with static, between those lips you once dreamt about. Your fingers move closer to the static and begin to change. They lock tightly together, knuckles snapping and popping backward and sideways. The skin darkens to grayish black, angles fierce and sharp. The key disappears into the static.

Air pressure builds. Eardrums click. Eustachian tubes squeeze and compress. Sinuses press, on the verge of collapse. Melody and words dive-bomb, rattling the bones of your skull. “Open yourself for me and let’s play for a little while…” The sound is black and grey. A tiny plastic speaker turned up far too loud for its limited capabilities. Treble stabs into your brain in piercingly pitched sharpness. 

Thick, milky fluid drains out of your ears, running down the sides of your neck. Smoke rises from skin beneath the acidic discharge. The smell grows in intensity now, a distinctive sourness of burning hair and plastic. The atonal melody’s tenor squelches and warbles, rendering the words unintelligible. 

You don’t even bother to fight. You can’t move anyway. You can’t get out. Even if you could, you have no idea where you are. You look down and see. You see your hands. You see your key. Your hand is a key. You are the key. You reach your key up to your face. Your mouth opens. The key slides in. The key turns. Somewhere there is the click of a lock opening.

-43-

Sgt. Harmon: Resolute

Sgt. Harmon sits down on the couch with a wedding photo in one hand and a picture of little boys playing on swings in the other. Their two empty spaces above the fireplace are now filled with sniffing and scratching rodents. He takes his palm, brushes away a few fresh droppings from the coffee table, and places the photographs down, facing him. He leans back, lifts his feet, and crosses them, heels down, between the picture frames.

All around him, the room is in motion. Even the furniture appears to be floating on the strange brown, black, and red sea. His army of shadow-tails sniffing and searching every cranny and nook. Behind each small crack in the baseboards, under every bed, chair and table. He closes his eyes and leans his head back. Fingers crossed on his lap, he allows his thumbs to start tapping while he hums his favorite song.

Four new small legs skitter along the top of the couch. The animal pushes dozens of other squirrels out of the way as it impatiently moves closer. At the side of the man’s face, the squirrel stops, standing on hind legs. A small claw reaches out tentatively and brushes his white beard. Sgt. Harmon doesn’t move other than to open his mouth. The squirrel swiftly crawls in between the chipped and yellowing teeth and closes its small black eyes.

Sgt. Harmon’s humming is only interrupted by the sound of crunching as he chews. He swallows. All goes silent. The brown ocean tides settles, frozen in place. He opens his mouth again, this time releasing a beautiful basso profundo…

“Open yourself for me …” His eyes open with the white of no irises. Veins glow with the red of sunset during a forest fire. “Well, keep looking.” The skittering and scratching resumes to an ear-bleeding volume as Sgt. Harmon continues to sing. “Let’s play for a little while.”

-44-

Emily: Questions

Emily leans her head back against the wall. There isn't enough energy left in her body toEmily leans her head back against the wall. There isn’t enough energy left in her body to complain about the jagged brass teeth and hooks digging into skin hidden beneath her sweat-drenched hair. She watches Abram pour the bright orange molten metal from a heavy black cauldron into the small mold that looks exactly like the shape of the drawing resting on her lap. This would be a dangerous job for someone not as familiar with the technique as Abram. His motions are patient and graceful. His muscles strain under the weight of the lever in his hands. In the glow rising from underneath his face, she spies a hint of a smile across his lips. “A man at work is a man in love,” she thinks, remembering the hours she spent in recording studios watching Auden make the same expression working on his music.

Abram releases the lever carefully down to rest on the top of two short, knobby logs fashioned into a rudimentary stand. He slips his gloves off, nodding his head briskly after taking a glance at the mold cooling on the table in front of him. With a tired groan, Abram thumps down on the floor next to Emily. 

“Now,” he turns to her and winks. “We wait.”

“What exactly are we waiting for?” Emily sits upright, speaking through her exasperation. “Can you tell me what the hell is happening here? You tell me my husband’s disappeared into a book. Then you tell me he was in the mirror in my bathroom with your wife. My children…” Her breath catches in her throat, but she shakes her head and continues, “…my children are gone, who knows where or why. We get chased through my house by rabid rodents, and the Vice Principal from the elementary school down the street is trying to kill us.”

“Emily…”

“Oh. Then magically, you open a secret room in my house that you somehow use to make all these…” She stands up, spinning around in a circle with her arms spread wide, throwing tears from her face. 

“Emily.”

“No.” She rips a handful of keys from the wall and throws them at Abram. He lets them pelt him in the chest and fall to the floor, ringing in high dulcet tones. “You don’t get to speak unless you tell me what the fuck is going on here.”

“Emily, please calm down.” Abram lifts his hands, pleading with her. “I don’t understand everything myself. All I can tell you is what I know, and what I think might be happening to us.”

“So tell me.” She crosses her arms and leans back into the table, defiantly not sitting down.

-45-

Abram: Blueprinting

“I’ve been fascinated by keys as long as I can remember. Not just what they can do, but what they are. Each one has a different shape, a unique feel, a singular density and heft. Holding them in my hand, I can feel their potential—their personality, if you will.” Abram reaches above and behind his head to brush his fingers absentmindedly across the keys hanging closest to him while he speaks.

“My parents used to tell me that when I was little, it was impossible to get me to fall asleep.” He smiles and looks up at Emily, then quickly gazes at the floor. His eyes betray the truth of what he holds back inside. “They sang songs and took me for rides in the car. Even warm milk didn’t work. I even cried when my mother put me in bed next to her. Nothing worked unless I was holding onto my favorite toy.”

Turning his head to look at the key in his hand, he pauses for a beat. “I still remember that key. It was bright yellow and thick. It had three large, rounded teeth that I used to like chewing on. Apparently our dog did, too, because there was a big hole torn out of the bottom that I used to push jellybeans into.” Emily tries hard to suppress a grin. “It came in a set along with a blue six-sided die, a little orange baseball, and a white-rimmed mirror. I never paid attention to any of those other things, though.