The Key (Sanguinem Emere)

by Taxer, Carmen

  “And so, by the power vested in me I now pronounce you man and wife – and may your days be good and long upon the earth.

  “You may now kiss the bride.”

  SATURDAY 19 December 2009… 10:22

  Mercy House

  A communications breakdown. That’s what it was. He’ll come and release me from here soon enough. He’s put me on a drip. Something. Something opaque. I’m not usually this drowsy. Must be the stuff in the bag, crawling down its long, thin tube, down, down into my parched veins.

  Can’t put my finger on it. He got mad. Then sad. His face crumbled into weariness. The glasses came off. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Like Alex.

  My brother takes my hand. I know it’s him because he smells like smoke.

  “I’m here.”

  “I know,” I mumble through thick lips. Did I call out to him?

  “Shane,” I turn my face to look at Alex who furrows his brow in perplexity at me, “Doctor Shane put me in here, didn’t he?”

  “You had an accident, Eva.”

  “Nah, he’s mad, cuz I wouldn’t say what he wanted to hear.”

  Alex strokes my hair, “Honey, you lost a lot of blood.”

  I glance around the ceiling, my eyes slightly blurry, my head too heavy to lift. I shouldn’t go to sleep, but I really, really want to.

  “Why, Sweetheart?” Something wet drips onto my hand, the one Alex is holding tightly.

  I loll my head to the side. He’s crying. I try to raise my hand to his face, but he holds it stiffly from him, turning it so my palm faces up. A bandage around my wrist. A big, thick one. And a stain of blood, brown around the edges of the splotch and turning a deeper red the further in it goes.

  “You know you’re sick. Why did you do this?”

  “I didn’t do it.” Why won’t they just listen to me? I’ve seen these marks before. Artery marks. I’ve felt them before. Only this time I didn’t remember her visit. Probably because Shane had me drugged all to hell.

  “Eva, the marks are all over your body! You’ve gone too far, you nearly died this time!”

  “Did you call Dimitri?”

  “Goddammit, Eva.”

  “He’ll want to know.”

  “I called Delilah,” Alex pauses and looks away from my eyes, always a sucker for trying to hide me from bad news, “He won’t come.”

  He won’t come? Leave me here and let her take me again, this time she might just kill me.

  Tuesday 10 November 2009… 03:21

  “Dear God, help me, please! I am a sinner, true, but I do not want to die!”

  Her whispered pleas carry through the still night blanket of the great hall. The evening’s feast lies scattered over and between up-turned platters and tipped goblets. A claret sea creature, with beaded black eyes and spider-leg whiskers, its name utterly lost to her now, squats malignantly at the master’s end of the table. The candelabra’s glow gives it life, watching her, a sentinel for her raging husband. The hem of her rose-dyed skirts soaks up the wine dripping from the edge of the table she huddles behind.

  “Wife!”

  She slaps her bloodied hand over her mouth to stop the imminent squeal. His voice rattles through the hall, booming in her ears and she pulls her legs closer to her chest, determined not to let her fear betray her.

  Quietly as she can, she scrapes the carving knife up from its forlorn outpost at her feet. It had been intended for the pheasant, not for him.

  But now she clutches it to her breast as the thunderous thud of his footfalls grows louder. Her final threat for him to stop in his fury.

  “Wife!” He calls again, closer this time. A spider’s silken pull in the darkness of its web.

  Strange then, that her feet betray her. Unwise to uncurl herself, leave the sanctity of shadow, stand and shatter her invisible shield. So that he can see her fear, her acceptance. Her love of him.

  Her husband is leaning against the arch, his tall frame dominating the only escape from this room. His expression remains impassive and cold as she gazes fearfully at him, reminded with a cruel spike of his threat made at the table.

  He had promised to end her life this night. Throw her body in with those others. His wives and lovers, mistresses and concubines. Sweet Jesus! That room, brimming with blood, the floor slick with unnameable fluids. And the smell – the stench! She barely had time to see the mass of femininity – hair tangled together, differing shades and all soaked in red, covering immodesties like a veil – in varying stages of decay, to hear the ominous growl in the dark, before she swung the door shut against the rot and horror of it. Denying the truth of his actions – the final end to those women he had claimed had passed in illness.

  And it was but a moment thereafter that she had remembered the key, recalled it slipping from her grasp and landing, not with a clink, but with a muffled, wet sound. With eyes tightly closed and breath held, she had swooped back in, thoroughly ignoring the manner in which her skin moved in sudden ripples. Ominously teased at the sensation of being watched. The shivering growl sounded again, a rumble of angered breath, of a rabid hound perhaps, signalling the onset of her fearful weeping as she raked her fingers through the muck on the floor. Blindly searching. Fortuitously, the key had not skittered far.

  Her husband’s voice had called to her, just then. Denied her opportunity to gather herself, her senses, to pull her delirium to heel, she had been forced to feign sickness over supper. Her face must have expressed her terror with parchment skin and shaking lip.

  But this had not prevented him from asking for the key he had entrusted to her during his absence. The blood-stained key, displayed to him upon blood-smeared fingers.

  The key now clutched in her fist, embedding its ridges into her flesh. Perhaps a small cut has already formed itself, mingling her own blood with that of some poor, fated girl’s still present on the key. Some unfortunate victim of her husband. This husband.

  But he must see her devotion! It was the fear that made her run from him, not revulsion of the man himself.

  He crosses the distance between them with his giant’s strides, coming to grasp her jaw in his hand. Halting the chattering of her teeth.

  “You should not have run from me,” His voice is tender as he scuffs his thumb over the bruised flesh of her chin, “It pains me to inflict harm upon you.”

  The knife is forgotten under the weight of his proximity and drops to the floor amidst the neglected cutlery. She falls against him, consumed by her love, blinded with tears at the pity in his voice. Her trembling lips come to rest on his bearded cheek.

  “Then have mercy upon me, my Love! I succumbed out of loneliness, foolish curiosity,” His fingers entwine through her hair, cold and gentle still, “I will tell no one. I adore you!”

  But her pleading is for naught as he suddenly grips her hair painfully taut and yanks her head back. The compassion in his face is replaced with a mask of violent disgust.

  “You lie!” He bellows down upon her as he pulls her with him, taking long strides out of the hall. Her legs buckle beneath her at his sudden ferocity and she is dragged along with him, succumbing in agony to each stair he descends as it impacts her hip.

  “No, please!” She shrieks, seeing the painted wall murals parade past her eyes, an endless display of forests bathed in moonlight. A sickening taunt thrown at her in the darkness of the stairwell where there is no light. She knows these cold, stone steps. She remembers where they lead.

  “My lamb has disobeyed me,” His voice rings out in circular echoes, though his tone gains diplomacy, “She was warned.”

  She screams and kicks wildly as the inevitable sound of the door scraping open flails at her ears. She can already smell it. The stench of aging death and new blood.

  “Lord, please! Liberate me! Save me!”

  With a heft he slides her body into the room, the floor’s blood seeps through her pretty pink gown, cold against the warmth of her back.

  “I am the only God you will ever meet, m
y Dear,” His voice rumbles as he shuts the door slowly, the light dimming like the minds of the insane, “And your prayers fall upon deaf ears.”

  “Please,” She screams once more as the dreaded growl vibrates close enough for her to smell the thing’s breath, “Dimitri, I love you!”

  His indifferent figure shows no mercy as the door thuds closed, leaving her in darkness.

  I snap out of the dream with a moan and grab wildly onto the nearest thing to stabilize me in the quiet dark, which turns out to be Dimitri’s arm. His head lifts from the pillow as he shushes me and looks down into my face with concern crinkling his eyes.

  “Bad dream?”

  I nod and curl myself into him, fear motioning me to run, to leave, but I wait gingerly for the remnants of the dream to subside from my head, knowing it’ll pass soon. His arms are cold. I’ve come to expect that. Though he didn’t admit to it. And even though it still sounds crazy to my raging head. It all makes sense. The weakness, the tonic, his overt charisma.

  But I’ve said it once and that’s enough. He didn’t deny my claim, in fact he all but verified it. I’m sure if I found the right place, there would be no pulse. That should sicken me. But it doesn’t. Everything about him is right and perfect and meant to be.

  Even me.

  I touch the ring around my finger. The most beautiful thing I have ever seen, besides the man who gave it to me.

  He has already fallen back to sleep, but the softness of his skin as his arm lies over my chest curls around my heart.

  I do love him. I did miss him. I can’t believe what has happened just in the last few hours. It seems like the last year has been a nightmare and I’m waking up from it now to this bright new world, this perfect place of sudden liberty and joy.

  Then what’s with the random doubts?

  Slowly and as lightly as I can I lift his arm, giving his hand one last kiss and wait for him to curl it back into himself as his subconscious, dreaming mind takes hold. I lift myself from the bed, stopping periodically to ensure he isn’t watching me and pad from the room like a spy.

  Which is what I am.

  I know what I need to do to allay all my terrors. I fondle the key about my neck. Of course he had others. Why should I ever have believed this to be the only one? When people enquired about it, I side-tracked, I hedged, I ignored their questioning. Truthfully, I can’t say why I kept the damnded thing. Or even why I wore it all this time. After I left it quickly became a talisman, a symbol of everything that had been gnawing at me, devouring me and everything that had kept me sane. Mostly the thought that he would still be somewhere. Even if that somewhere wasn’t with me.

  But if I know my husband – strange to think of him as such – then I also know that I still have the key for a reason. Though what that reason is, is so convoluted that I don’t think even he knows what it is anymore. But I do know that he is testing me still. Nobody changes their behaviour this quickly.

  Regardless of how badly I want to believe he’s different.

  The house is much the same as I remember it and the thrumming trepidation in my chest plays a tune I recall well from my last trip down to the littlest door at the end of the hall. The flowers and plants have grown more numerous. It also feels as though newer and thicker carpeting has replaced the old, but otherwise the texture in the air is the same. The taste of fear and curiosity comingled on my tongue is the same.

  I lift the key from between my breasts and fondle it’s ridges, wondering why I am doing this, mentally kicking myself for ruining everything after last night. After he revealed himself and offered me something I didn’t even realise I wanted from him.

  Why can’t I just leave well enough alone? He knows that answer better than I do, though I am beginning to see it.

  I have to know.

  I have to know.

  I have to see.

  My feet echo in the corridor, like they’re weighted down, like I’m wearing clogs. My bare-feet betray me to myself. I should stop.

  I should go back.

  I repeat the mantra to myself as I approach the steady little door, its handle and keyhole a symbol of a face. The screamer maybe.

  I fit the key into the hole and click it open. A slight scratching sound, like from a barrel of rats erupts on the other side for a brief moment before it quietens down suddenly and the only silence follows in its wake.

  The door swings open and immediately the scent sends me reeling back a step or two, but I stifle the vomit rising in my throat and try to enter the room.

  Light from my cell phone bathes the room as I lift it above my head, not wanting to stay long enough for my eyes to adjust, not wanting to stay at all, but I have to know. Immediately the sight that greets me causes my fingers to clench closed around the phone but my right hand to flail wildly forgetting about the key.

  It’s like a giant stony fist has my heart and is slowly applying pressure. My breathing is too shallow as spots dance in my eyes. One arm moves from the muck on the floor, a dainty arm, a girl’s. They all are. Her fingers reach out to me as she looks up, her face smeared black and crimson.

  The key falls with a squelching clink to the floor at my feet and I scrabble madly for it as she – it - grabs onto my arm and I reel out of its grasp, pulling myself inward, trying to abate my panic. But I know it’s futile. I expected something, god knows what, but not this. I scream as the thing gropes for me again and I snatch up the key, and ram my foot into what feels hard enough to be a face.

  A wet crunching sound greets my attack and I hiss in revulsion as my foot pulls back with some resistance, like pulling out of water.

  I slide out of the room, hammering the door closed behind me, my fingers rattling the key back into the lock which shudders as something collides with the frame from the other side. Finally I hear the tell-tale click of the tumblers sliding into place and I fall to the ground, rocking slightly.

  Never this. Never expected this.

  God, Oh God.

  It’s all true.

  How could he? And was that really Cecily’s face I saw in there? Being slithered all over as she stared blankly up at me?

  My clothes reek of the room and I shudder inwardly and outwardly, the shock shakes starting to wrack through me. But I need to move.

  I need to get the fuck out of here. Maybe run. Now.

  Now!

  If this is the secret he was keeping from me, where to now?

  Can’t run. That would be weak. And then he’d know for sure what I did.

  And he’d follow me. I know that much.

  But can I climb back into bed with him? Let him touch me with those blood stained hands? Let him smile at me as though he doesn’t have a room of decay and monstrosity hidden in his home?

  His face taunts me and the answer is quite palpable.

  Yes.

  God, what does that make me?

  Shaking and twitching I stand up and start moving. Not sure where or why really, just moving to retreat. The hallway to sanctity stretches before me and still I move as if in a dream, slow and weighted and very tired. Because I have to admit to myself, despite my unyielding devotion to him, the sanctity at the end of this path is not going to feel all that safe anymore. I opened the box. And now the horrors will plague my mind forever. But if I am going to accept him – my fingers caress the ring – then I must do so completely.

  A lightness filters through me from somewhere in my chest as my limbs go cold and slightly numb.

  I do.

  I step out into the foyer, familiar to my eyes and thus comforting in its décor, its ambience and the presence of its owner, seated on the staircase, his eyes gazing coldly up at me.

  The cold numbing my limbs turns to ice and spreads to my torso, crowding around my heart as I look back at him, shocked to see him there, knowing that the game is up.

  He knows that I know.

  And the expression on his face is unreadable once more.

  “I thought you were different, Eva.” His
voice is worn, that level of tired I’ve only ever heard in it once before. Far from exacerbating my fear it tweaks the most inappropriate of emotions in me. It’s like this time a year ago all over again. And that all-encompassing, soul-destroying sorrow seeps into me again, opening the chasm inside me and sucking the life into it.

  As long as we had the secret, his to know and mine to keep we were okay. But it’s all going to be over soon.

  “Dimitri, I’m sorry.”

  He scoffs and thumps his fist hard into the banister, making me jump in fear of him. Just a little.

  “But you wanted me to know, didn’t you?” My voice is unabashed, echoing my own desire to become as small as possible, “You gave me this thing!”

  I hold up the key and his tired, worn eyes glance at it. His face is a terrible mask, unreadable, uncertain, everything obscured by the wildness of him, his hair, his beard, his inhuman eyes.

  “I didn’t want it to come to this,” He starts to stand and I will myself not to run into his arms and make him hold me. His demeanour is too cold, too uncompromising, “I thought I could trust you with this one thing. The others, they all fell the same as you. Addison, Cecily, so many of them.”

  I stand in shocked understanding.

  “How could you?” If I didn’t know I’d just spoken, I’d think the world had faded to nothing. My voice is deathly quiet, like the grave. The only sounds apparent to my ears are the vague thumpings at the little door down the hall.

  He smiles in a self-deprecating sort of way which washes away my horror for just a moment. Obliterating my knowledge that this man killed my sister. If she is even dead. “They were disobedient. They had to be punished.”

  Dimitri pauses and then lifts his arms out to me, a symbol of his shame, his need to be forgiven.

  How can I deny him that? He looks to sorrowful, so weary. My feet carry me to him in a rush and I curl into his arms, breathing him in and choking down sob after sob.

  Only the smallest segment of my soul is screaming at me to run, call the cops, tell everyone that Dimitri Kron is a monster. But everything else in me wants to be here just like this. His secrets finally uncovered to me, the skeletons having fallen from his closet and his love in my hands.