(Skeleton Key) Into Elurien (2 page)

L
ights flicked
on inside the inn. I couldn’t hear what was happening, but I imagined the heavy thump of elderly feet descending the dark wood staircase that faced the front doors and the muttered curses of an old man rudely wakened from his slumber by someone senseless enough to be out in this weather. A silhouette appeared, shorter than I remembered, and a moment later the deadbolt thunked.

The door swung open, and Mrs. James stared up at me. She had her pleasant, grandmotherly face on as she squinted at me through her round-rimmed spectacles, but her expression shifted as she recognized me. Probably not by name, but the downturn of her wrinkled mouth and the furrowing of her brow told me she had identified me as not-a-tourist.

“Hello, Mrs. James,” I said, and held out my right hand. She glared down at the tiny puddle forming as rainwater dripped off my sleeve onto her floor, and I pulled my hand back. “You probably don’t remember me. Hazel Walsh. I lived in Fairbrook until about three years ago?”

Not a question. Speak with authority. Control your voice.

“Three years ago,” I repeated more firmly.

“I heard you the first time,” she said. “What do you want? We’re closed for the season.”

“I know, and I’m sorry to disturb you. My car broke down, and I wondered whether you might take me in for the night.”

She chewed her lower lip. “You can pay?”

I considered reminding her of the inn’s legendary hospitality to those in need, and thought better of it. My bank account could take the hit, though I’d never hear the end of it if I had to borrow from my parents later. “I can, thank you.”

Mrs. James held the door open, and I stepped over the threshold. “You’ll have to make up your own bed,” she said, and locked the door behind me. “Got the arthritis in my fingers.”

“I can do that.”

She shuffled to the desk, a massive and heavy-looking affair that matched the decor of the rest of the inn: dark wood, stiff furniture, black and white photos framed on the walls. Smaller touches added during renovations in the seventies did nothing to make the place look less like something out of a horror movie. I set my bags on the emerald green diamond-patterned carpet.

Mrs. James shuffled through cards in a Rolodex behind the desk, then plucked a key off the wall and handed it to me.

“I hope I didn’t wake your husband,” I said.

She snorted. “I should hope not. He’s been dead two years. Hate to see him come around now.” She knocked on the wood of the desk, and I felt a small spark of superstitious camaraderie.

“I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“I’m not.” She motioned toward the staircase. “Third floor, hallway to your left, room 313. Linens in the closet right beside your room. No breakfast will be served.”

Before I could request a different room number, she’d disappeared through a door next to the desk and locked the door behind her.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, and headed up the stairs.

I
’d expected
to fall into a coma-like sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. A heart-stopping fright, a white-knuckle drive, and a strange welcome back to town had exhausted me, but my brain wouldn’t obey my commands to shut up and go to sleep. I left my room to scout for something to read from the collection of abandoned books that the Jameses kept as a constantly renewing lending library. Most people’s vacation reads didn’t appeal to me. Lots of romance, a bit of fantasy… same thing, really. Totally unrealistic. I preferred to keep my dreams of adventure and freedom grounded in reality. To my mind, sexy billionaire stalkers were no more real than dragons and ogres, and I’d dismissed both genres as a waste of time when I’d worked at the used bookstore in town. I glanced over the travel literature, memoirs, and mysteries, but found nothing I hadn’t read before.

I trudged to my room empty-handed, careful to avoid the creaky bits of the stairs. It wasn’t so much that I worried about waking Mrs. James—though that was a concern—but that the creaking seemed a lot more creepy and a lot less oogy-boogy hilarious than it had when the halls were filled with friends.

After an hour of tossing and turning (helpfully counted down by the ticking of the old-fashioned alarm clock on the bedside table), I got up again.
Might as well find something interesting to do.
My thoughts had become a jumble of unknowns, of shattered dreams and plans that would never come through, all of it sending my heart fluttering up into my throat. My brain was headed into Irrational Panic Land, and that was never a fun trip. I pulled my thick socks on, threw a black hoodie over my t-shirt, and pulled my mousy brown hair into a messy ponytail.

One distinct advantage of the off-season was the fact that I wouldn’t have to worry about meeting the future love of my life as I roamed the halls in my pink polka-dot pyjama pants. Still, I took a minute to wash a dozen spots of acne mask off my chin and forehead. No need to frighten Mrs. James if she did come up.

The oldest section of the inn was the creepiest by far, so naturally I headed there. I’ve found that the best way to escape my semi-rational fears is to let myself get scared by something I know to be harmless, something I can let go of more easily than my anxieties. Like the spirits or monsters roaming these halls. Just a legend. A game.

And that little fairy girl…
My stomach tightened. A coincidence that it happened here.
She was obviously off her rocker to begin with, poor thing.

I tried a few of the numbered doors, interested to see what the older and more expensive rooms looked like inside, but all were locked tight. The only knob that turned belonged to a door with no number on it. The door swung toward me on silent hinges, revealing a dark staircase heading up.

The attic. There had to be something interesting up there. My grandmother’s attic had been full of weird old shit like mink shoulder wraps (complete with paws and faces) and rusted strap-on roller skates. The inn was bound to have even older stuff.

I hurried back to my room to grab the flashlight from my bag, then headed up the stairs. They creaked horribly under my feet. The musty air turned colder as I climbed, and I pulled my sweatshirt tighter.

My tiny light picked out dark shapes when I reached the top, none of them welcoming. A hulking, monstrous form to my left nearly made me retreat down the stairs, but it was only a mannequin with blankets tossed over it.

“Hush now, girl,” I whispered, a soothing phrase my grandmother had used when I was a nervous child. She’d been more of a comfort to me than my own overbearing parents ever had, and was probably the only reason I was a remotely normal and functioning person.
God rest her soul.

I moved around the perimeter of the massive attic, stepping from beam to beam in case the floor—or rather, the ceiling—wouldn’t hold my weight. My physique rested somewhere in the middle of what my friend Lisa Flanker had once called the Waif-Whale Spectrum. Healthy and normal, unless you were in movie-and-magazine world. Athletic enough to climb the ropes in gym class, but not nimble or dainty enough to take anything but the utmost care as I sneaked around a dark attic.

I found a string hanging down from the centre of the roof and gave it a tug. The light startled me. I hadn’t expected it to work. Now the attic became something more interesting and less frightening, and my heartbeat slowed to normal as the light chased away the darkness.

A door to a partitioned-off area caught my eye, only because it looked so out of place. Everything else in the attic was covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs, but this door—dark polished wood carved with gorgeous floral patterns—was clean. I leaned closer and set my hand on the cut-glass knob, which didn’t match the brass fittings on every other door in the inn. It seemed to vibrate briefly under my fingers, then stilled.

My mental exhaustion was obviously catching up with me. I turned the knob, but the door wouldn’t open.

Go back to bed,
I advised myself. But I still didn’t feel sleepy. Just drained, bored, and not ready for a tomorrow full of disappointed glances from my mother—not to mention the “I told you so” looks from classmates who had never left the island.

I turned to the chests and boxes that lined the walls, searching their contents to distract myself. A tiny part of me feared finding the skeleton of a young child who had become trapped during a game of hide and seek decades before. Grandma always warned me and my cousins about that danger when we played at her house. The skeleton would still be wearing clothes, tattered with age and moth-eaten. Her eyes would stare up at me, empty sockets filled with—

I opened a chest, screamed, and let the lid slam shut as I stumbled back and fell onto my arse.
Shit, shit, shit. Oh God. Grandma was right. Fuck.

I forced my breathing to be calm, and my mind soon followed.
That was not a dead child. Take another look.

“I don’t want to,” I answered out loud, but crawled back to the round-topped chest, not trusting my trembling legs. My hands were faring no better, and I almost let the lid fall again before I hoisted it all the way open.

A doll stared up at me. A baby doll, but oversized. Its hard face was painted with what might once have been charming features, but time had not been kind to her. The doll’s lips were brown, not the rosy pink I suspected they’d once been, with a cold tone to them that lent much to the impression of her being a dead child. Empty glass eyes stared up at me, unblinking, with spider-leg lashes painted around their peremiters. Her skin was white, save for a faded spot of orange on each cheek and a crooked lightning bolt crack that marred her from her hard-haired scalp to the middle of her left cheek.

I had no urge to touch her, but someone must have once loved this horrifying monster. Some little girl had thought her beautiful. And now she’d been discarded, closed away forever. I shuddered and reached up to close the chest.

As I did, the light from the bulb overhead caught a flash of something bright, nearly hidden beneath the doll’s filthy skirt. A collection of jewellery, all jumbled in a box. Costume stuff, and probably worthless. I held my breath as I shifted the doll sideways and plucked out the tin box that had lost its lid somewhere along the years.

This was a much more pleasant find than the doll. A brooch caught my eye. Even in the dim light of the attic, the colours of the gems stood out bright and bold, forming the shape of a beautiful long-tailed bird. I reached into the box to scoop it up.

“Ouch!” I dropped the pin and shoved my bleeding finger into my mouth. Not a deep cut, but it stung badly. The faint, coppery taste of blood washed over my tongue.

Pretty, but not worth it, I decided, and hoped it hadn’t given me tetanus in the bargain. I picked more carefully through the box. The only other thing that caught my eye wasn’t a brooch or a necklace, but a key.

It wasn’t made of metal, like the keys used by the hotel, but of glass or crystal, and felt unexpectedly heavy when I lifted it. It was about ten centimetres long, with only two teeth at the bottom. Nothing complicated, but the head of the key was certainly something. Formed in the shape of a skull, it grinned blankly up at me. I wrapped my fingers around the top, covering the toothy smile.

“Freaked out enough to sleep yet?” I asked myself, and opened my hand again. The key wasn’t as creepy as the doll or as dangerous as the jewellery. In a way it was quite pretty. The overhead light cut through it and made the glass glow softly, and there was something appealing about its soft lines.

I stood and closed the chest, but kept the key in my hand.
It’s not stealing if it doesn’t leave the building,
I reasoned, and turned to head down to bed.

The pretty door caught my eye—the one with a different knob. Could the tall key slot match the skeleton key? I suspected the key was strictly for decoration, but tried it anyway.

The lock clicked and the door popped open toward me, showing a sliver of darkness beyond.

“Go to bed,” I ordered myself, but didn’t listen. Instead I pocketed the key, reached for my flashlight, and opened the door.

The beam refused to cut through the utter blackness beyond.

“Weird,” I muttered. I stepped one foot in, following the rafter I’d been standing on, moving cautiously. The blackness didn’t abate, and my flashlight didn’t pick out any odd shapes. Not even walls.

I shone my flashlight upward and caught sight of a dangling string high overhead. Maybe out of reach. Maybe not.

I stepped forward to reach for it, and screamed as the floor disappeared and I plunged into darkness.

S
ometimes falls come
in slow motion, made up of seemingly endless moments of flails and stumbles and near-catches. Not this time. Just as I realized I was falling farther than I had any right to, I slammed into a hard surface. Cold stone scraped the knees of my pyjama pants, and I opened my eyes to bright lights. Not electric lights, but flickering flames—and that was the least unusual thing that surrounded me.

Voices filled the air, screaming or yelling, all speaking over each other so I couldn’t tell what anyone was saying.

They sounded angry. My heart kicked into a gallop, and cold sweat covered my skin.

I curled instinctively into a ball to protect myself from the huge shapes gathered around me, but couldn’t close my eyes.
Costumes,
I thought as I caught confused glimpses of furred legs and scaled hands.
Some kind of furry convention.

Yeah. Here in Fairbrook. During the off-season. At the frigging Old Brook Inn, which you were the only person staying at. Look again.

“Kill her!” screamed a voice that sounded completely inhuman. A carnivorous voice. I raised my head from the floor and pushed up onto my stinging knees.

And then I screamed. I always hated screamers in books and movies, but for this I could forgive myself. A hulking creature—
troll,
I thought.
No, ogre
—stood in front of me with a massive axe raised high over its shoulders, ready to bring the blade down on my neck.

“Stop!” I yelled, holding out my hand as though that would stop the deadly blade from reaching me. The ogre hesitated, a confused look crossing the hideous brownish-green face that seemed to be all lower jaw, with protruding teeth and massive lips. Its beady eyes looked down at me, then to my left.

“Lieutenant,” it said, “I don’t think this is her.”

“Finish it!” ordered that terrifying voice. I turned slowly and raised my other hand in surrender.

This is a horrible joke
. It had to be. I glanced at the faces that made up the crowd, all standing too close for me to get a real handle on where I might be. I had fallen into a room of monsters. The ogre was the largest, but the others were no less fearsome. A man with the head of a bull. A centaur, dressed only in the blood that dripped over her shoulders and breasts. Things I didn’t have words for and couldn’t wrap my mind around.

Everyone turned to the creature giving orders. She stood like a human, and parts of her appeared to be. Her legs, hips, and torso were shaped like a woman’s, but covered in a thick coat of spotted grey fur. A similarly furred tail with a black tip swung in agitated arcs behind her, matching her angry face, which resembled a silver leopard’s. She wore thick rings in her ears, and sharp silver spikes pierced her face between her whiskers. Aside from the jewellery, the only thing she wore was a gore-spattered violet sash over one shoulder that crossed her chest and attached to her sword belt. Short-fingered hands gripped a curved sword.

I’m dreaming. I fell, I knocked myself out, and I’m dreaming. Hallucinating. I have a concussion.

There was no possibility any of this was real.

The cat woman stepped closer, and the knives strapped to her belt clinked together. “I said finish it! This is one of Verelle’s tricks. Hold her.”

“She’s shifted!” someone bellowed. Strong hands grabbed my arms and forced them behind my back. I struggled, but it only made my shoulders scream with pain.

The ogre looked doubtful.

The cat woman snarled. “Then I’ll do it. Major Zinian will hear about your failure, and he will not be pleased.”

The ogre lowered its head and raised its axe again.

“Please,” I begged, feeling half stupid for being so terrified when I knew none of this was real. But it all
felt
real, from the stone floor to the chill of the air, from the animal smells of sweat and fur to the suffocating tightness in my chest. I fought down panic that was as real as any I’d ever felt. “I don’t know what a Verelle is, and I—”

“Shut up,” the cat ordered, and grabbed my hair to force my head down. “You won’t fool us. We know all of your tricks.”

My body trembled. “I swear, I just opened a door, and I was here…”

Her low growl silenced me, save for a terrified sob I couldn’t hold in.

“Stop.”

A lower voice, more human. I only shook harder. With my head down, I couldn’t see anything but the crowd of feet in front of me parting. I closed my eyes. Something cold touched my chin. Metallic. A blade. I pictured the cat’s great, curved sword, and felt like vomiting as it lifted my chin.

“Look at me,” the human voice ordered.

I forced my eyes open and was confronted by the strangest feet I’d ever seen. Human…ish. Longer toes than normal, with curved claws instead of toenails, and skin covered in tough blue scales to the knees. I didn’t want to look higher, but the sword beneath my chin insisted. My gaze continued up the legs, which were covered by ragged pants from the knees up. Above that, hard abs and a chest that would have looked comfortingly human if not for the faint blue patina that shaded parts of the bronze skin, or the extra set of muscles under the otherwise highly acceptable pectorals. Spots of blood had dried on his skin. The fingers of the smooth hand that gripped the straight-bladed sword ended in sharp black claws. I let myself look up to the creature’s broad shoulders, where massive, bat-like black wings arched high behind him. Dark scales dotted their bony parts in patches.

“Look at my eyes,” he ordered, “or die now.” The blade tilted sideways, a reminder of how easily he could follow through on the threat.

I swallowed hard, and the tip of the blade pricked again at my throat. Another deep breath, and I looked up.

I met his eyes, and they were enough to keep me from noticing anything else for several moments. Bright green, and blessedly normal. Not snake eyes, not feline slits for pupils. The thick black eyebrows that topped them furrowed, but seemed more intensely observant than angry.

“Please,” I said again. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

His mouth twisted into a snarl, revealing long, white canine teeth. He turned toward the cat person, and I noted the deep scars that marred his right cheek. “It’s not her.”

When he returned his attention to me, his roughly cut black hair fell over his face. At least, the parts of it that weren’t held behind the thick horns that spiralled back like bony corkscrews from his hairline.

Devil
. That name came to me as easily as
centaur
had, but seemed not entirely right. As he glared down at me, I thought that it might be close enough. “Where is she?” he demanded.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” I said, and forced my voice to be stronger. The others in the room had fallen silent, but I still barely heard myself. “I don’t know where I am, or who any of you are, or what’s going on. I just want to wake up or go home or do whatever will get me out of here. Please.”

The cat person stepped closer. “Zinian, it’s a trick. This may not be her, but Verelle was here moments ago, ready to fall under our blades. She disappeared, and this one came. She’s human, and involved in this somehow. End her.”

The devil man—Zinian—turned away and disappeared in the crowd. A crash echoed through the room, followed by the clatter of metal hitting the floor. He returned, jaw clenched, and looked down at me. “We’ll do nothing until we find out what’s happened here.” He motioned for the ogre to come closer. “Lock her up and keep watch until I return. No one else is to see her. Understood?”

The ogre brightened. “The dungeons?”

Zinian frowned. “Lock her in Verelle’s bedroom. I’ll return as soon as I can. Jaid, come with me. All others, be about your business in the palace. Clean it out, top to bottom. By morning, this one should be the only human living.”

My stomach lurched.

The cat woman fell in beside him, and the others dispersed. Before I could thank them for not killing me, the ogre hoisted me up. I cried out as I was hauled upwards, then tried not to vomit as the creature’s meaty shoulder hit me square in the stomach. It grunted and patted my ass, which I chose to believe was supposed to be a comforting gesture.

“I can walk!”

The ogre didn’t listen. I flopped against its back as its uneven gait carried us on. At least this one wore clothing, a long tunic-style shirt with no sleeves. I caught the surprising scent of a mossy forest rising from the ogre’s skin.

We passed into a dark room, and the ogre tossed me on a massive bed. I scrambled backward and off the far side, then scooted underneath. The ogre sighed. I watched its massive feet pass as it went to check the windows. The door closed behind it as it left me, and the wood creaked as the huge body settled against the other side.

Good at following orders,
I thought.
Lucky for me he hesitated earlier.

I left the safety of my hiding place and ran to the windows. There were several in the room, tall enough to almost reach the high ceiling. What they lacked was any visible mechanism for opening them. The night-dark streets far below me flickered with firelight. Ghastly shapes flew over the buildings of a city in the middle of a war. The windows were thick, but I still heard screams.

I backed away, heart hammering.

No light switch in here, and no one had left me a torch or a lamp. I’d dropped my flashlight when I fell. All I had was the skeleton key. I gripped it tight in my fist, squeezing so hard I expected to leave a skull-shaped impression on my palm.

It’s not real,
I reminded myself, even as I regretted not reading those fantasy books I thought were so silly.
I don’t know where this is coming from, but it’s a dream.

I took a few deep breaths and looked around the room. I could hardly see anything in the faint light from the window. A wardrobe, bookcases, dressers and tables. Books. A few toys.

I didn’t look closer, but retreated to the bed. On top, this time.

I pulled a blanket over me to fight the sudden chills that made me tremble. It was a more comfortable bed than the one at the inn, but I wanted nothing more than to wake and find myself resting on that old mattress and slightly lumpy pillow.

Even a hospital, if I actually did fall.
I hope someone finds me.

A sigh and a grunt sounded from the other side of the door. For some reason, I felt better. The ogre seemed to be one of the few monsters here who didn’t want me dead.

I expected that I wouldn’t sleep, but soon my eyelids grew heavy.

Don’t sleep. Don’t.

Don’t.

I
opened
my eyes to morning sunlight illuminating the room—and the most hideous face I’d ever encountered staring at me from the edge of the bed.

“Shit!” I yelled, and rolled backward, taking the blankets with me. I sailed off the far side of the bed, rolled up like a burrito in the silk sheets, then landed hard on the floor. The key hit the floor next to me, and I snatched it up.

The creature on the far side of the bed yelped and thudded toward the door. After a few moments of silence I fought my way free of the blankets and peered over the edge of the mattress. The ogre that had almost taken my head off the night before stood in the corner, twisting the hem of his shirt between his meaty, green fingers.

No,
I realized as I looked closer. I was far from an expert on mythical creatures of any stripe, but something about its body shape, the quiet way the creature watched me, and the careful arrangement of the long hair that covered its scalp in thin patches made me think “he” was actually female. I just hadn’t seen it the night before.

Best not to presume anything, I decided. Maybe they didn’t care either way, or maybe saying the wrong thing would get me killed.

“Hello,” I said.

The ogre glanced over at me, then looked down again. “I’m sorry I frightened you. I couldn’t tell whether you were breathing, and Major Zinian told me to make sure you stayed safe.”

“I was breathing,” I said. “Not sure how safe I am.” I slipped the key into my pocket and rubbed my thumb over the smooth skull. It was the closest thing I had to a rabbit’s foot, and a comforting reminder of the sane world I’d left behind.

The ogre’s heavy brows lifted, then furrowed, and it stepped closer, limping slightly. “You’re safe. Everyone was screaming for your blood last night, but they won’t go against Zinian’s orders.”

So a thin sort of safety. Not exactly a situation I felt comfortable with. “Zinian. He’s the…” I trailed off, not knowing what to call him. Instead, I mimed spiralling horns coming from my head.

The ogre grinned, revealing huge, blunt teeth like sunken gravestones. Her bottom canines, strong and sharp, protruded from her mouth when it closed. “That’s him. ‘Amalgus’ is the word you’d be looking for.”

“Thank you.” Not that it made me feel any better, but any detail about where I was granted me a step toward control. “And you are…”

“My name’s Auphel. I’m an ogress.”

“Awful?” I repeated, thinking I must have misheard.

“
Ow
-full,” she said. “But that was a good try.”

“Thanks for not killing me last night, Auphel.”

The mottled skin of her cheeks deepened to a darker shade of green, and she pulled her upper lip in to chew on it. “I was supposed to. Major Zinian had such a solid plan, and I meant to do well. But then Verelle was gone, and you were there, and you didn’t look like someone I was supposed to… I mean, you were human, and that’s bad, but…” She shrugged. “Lieutenant Jaid was quite angry.”

“The cat person?”

“Felid,” she corrected. “And yes.” Her tiny black eyes glistened.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” I said, and tried not to think too hard about the fact that I was comforting an ogre.
An ogre. This is insane. Why can’t I be hallucinating something normal?
I squeezed the key tighter, then forced myself to let go of it. “You want to come sit over here?”

Auphel bit her thumb, then shuffled hesitantly over and sat on the end of the bed. It sank under her weight, and I climbed up to sit cross-legged near the pillows.