Keys

Eli sat in the middle of the room, at the center of the pentagram he had drawn in charcoal on the wooden floor and proceeded to cast the spell. Outside, the wind blew through the leafless trees, signaling the beginnings of the blizzard.

He took the key to Agnes' diary and spoke a few incantations. He put that key aside and took out the key to Beth's Pontiac GTO, speaking more incantations. He placed that key next to the first and turned towards the two braziers on his left. Earlier that morning, he had burned the finger bones of Agnes and Beth, one in each brazier, until they had turned to ash. More incantations were spoken over the braziers. He then took a penny from his pocket and spoke the last of the incantations.

He was ready. He taped a key to the back of each hand, filled his pockets with ash and placed the penny under his tongue. When the coin began to taste like blood in his mouth, he stepped out into the snow and set off in search of his dead daughters.

The blizzard raged around him as he made his way out into the wilderness. Deep down, he knew he should have let them go, allowed them to go to college, maybe learn something useful. After all, it was 1972. All their friends had gone off to vocational schools and colleges (both magical and non) or just left to see the big city. But he was old-fashioned, set in his ways. He very much believed that a woman's place was in the home, that they had no business dabbling in man's work. But maybe if he hadn't been so stubborn, so hard-headed, they would still be alive and well.

Agnes had died first. She had gone into Glendale and somehow got on the wrong side of a dark mage. She was talking to the mage in the back room of O'Leary's bar and everything seemed fine. The mage suggested that they go out into the alley behind the bar. Police found her body three hours later, fried by a lightning bolt. They picked up the mage getting high in an opium den three blocks away.

The mage insisted that she tried to rob him, but a psi-judge was able to pull Agnes' last fading memories which told a different story. The mage had tried to force himself on her and she resisted. Angered when she fought back and drew blood, he fried her. They put him away for a hundred years.

Beth was next. She was never quite the same after Agnes died and would spend hours sitting in the room that they shared, staring off into nothingness. When she wasn't doing that, she rage at him for hours, blaming him for her sister's death. He should have let Agnes take defensive magic. He should have taught her how to use the Luger he had taken from a Wehrmacht mage during World War II. He should have done this, he should have done that. The drinking and drugs she had started to get involved with didn't help any, making her even more spiteful and mean. It was after one of these drunken rages that she drove her GTO into a bridge abutment. He buried her in the family plot next to her sister.

But he was terribly lonely. His wife had died in the wizard riots in Philadelphia back in '65 and now his daughters were dead. It was then he decided to bring them back. He began to study the dark arts, going into the seedier parts of Glendale to seek out dark knowledge in dimly lit back rooms and dank caves by the waterfront.

He had cast the spell that weakened the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead. And now here he was, out in the biggest blizzard in a decade, looking for his daughters. Shimmering whiteness filled his eyes. He couldn't tell if it was the veil or the snow falling around him. He hoped he didn't stumble into the nearby river. The cold wind ripped through his thin jacket, chilling him to the bone.

The cold gave way suddenly to an intense heat. The shock of the transition stopped him in his tracks. The heat was so intense that he felt as if he were melting. The keys on the back of his hands seared his flesh, the penny in his mouth felt like molten blood.

He was at the veil.

He held up his hands and thrust them into the veil, tearing an opening he could walk through. His hands felt as if they were submerged in lava, flesh burning off in greasy chunks, leaving only bones that crackled in the heat like kindling in a fire. He cried out in agony.

And then he was through. The heat stopped just as suddenly as it had started. The blinding whiteness of the blizzard was replaced by the equally blinding gray of a dust storm. The wind wailed through gnarled and stunted trees. He looked back at the way he had came and could barely make out the homestead. It looked as if it were a thousand years old, warped wood jutting out like broken bones, the wind prying tiles from the roof and sending them flying into the horizon. The river was an oily black smear in the desolate shadow lands of the dead.

The dust storm was beginning to settle down. He hoped that the blizzard on the other side of the veil was quieting down as well. He saw something moving quickly down the river towards him, starting off as a speck in the distance, eventually resolving itself into a skiff. A woman dressed in black was standing in the skiff, using a pole to guide herself downriver. He could hear the splash of the pole in the water as the skiff made its way to the shore.

She ran the skiff aground a few feet away from him and stepped out of it onto the dusty ground. Hair the color of flame cascaded down onto her shoulders. She turned glowing orange eyes upon him. “Why do you come here, mortal?” she asked in a silky, seductive voice. “You are not of the dead.”

“I come seeking my daughters.”

She held out a hand. “Do you have payment?”

He took the penny from under his tongue and placed it in her palm. She motioned for him to climb aboard the skiff. She stood behind him and poled the skiff back into the river. The current grabbed the skiff, moving it quickly downriver. “When did you daughters enter the lands?” asked the ferry woman.

“Agnes died a year ago, Beth three months ago. I came here to fetch them back.”

“You realize that you are on a fool's errand. It is easier to enter the shadowlands than it is to leave.”

“I have it covered,” he replied, patting his ash-filled pockets.

They traveled for what seemed like days, dark lands sliding past as they went. He saw shadowy pyramids, ancient Roman villas, and towns gone to seed, the rusted iron skeletons of Victorian age cities, everything he saw touched with decay and ruin. He also saw people milling about in these dark scenes, people of all races and all colors. They looked faded, colors so washed out that they seemed almost gray. So this is what it's like to be dead, he thought as he drifted past.

But as he went further downstream, the touches of decay seemed to lessen. It was still there if he looked hard enough, but everything he saw seemed more alive, more alive than what he saw earlier in the voyage.

“We are reaching the lands of the recently dead,” the ferry woman said as if reading his thoughts. “Soon you will find what you seek.”

He scanned the riverbank, looking for his daughters. He briefly thought about trying to locate his wife but decided against it. He only had the ash of his daughters with him and besides, she had been gone too long. Maybe she would not want to come back with him.

Suddenly, he saw them sitting on the river bank. He pointed at them and asked the ferry woman to stop. She obliged, poling the skiff to the sandy river bank. He got out and walked up to them. They looked at him with half-closed eyes, apparently not recognizing him.

“Agnes, Beth,” he said, reaching out to them. “Please come with me, I wish to bring you back home.”

They started at the sound of his voice. Their eyes opened and the pupils widened with recognition. Beth stood. “Why...should...we...go..with...you?” she asked, her voice rusty with disuse.

“I missed you, pure and simple,” he replied, tears glistening in his eyes. “I have been a stubborn old fool and I want another chance. I learned enough dark arts to come here and try to bring you back. Please come home.”

They stared at him for what seemed like an eternity. Slowly, they stood up and walked over to him. They reached out their hands to him and he took them in his. “Another chance?” Beth asked. He thought he saw tears in her eyes.

“Yes, another chance. I want to do right by you this time, and give you the chance to really live. You can do whatever you want. Just promise you'll visit me and keep me company every now and again.”

“But we are dead,” Agnes said. “We belong here now.”

“I came prepared,” he replied, pulling some ash out of each pocket and placing the little piles on the ground. He spoke another incantation and the ash piles slowly began to transform into replicas of his daughters.

He took each of his daughters by the hand. “We must go quickly, this will not fool anyone for very long.”

He led them back to the skiff and helped them aboard. “Take me back where you found me,” he told the ferry woman.

She poled to skiff back into the river, turned it around, and began poling it upriver. He sat between his daughters, arms around their shoulders. It felt good to hold his daughters again. It reminded him of nights at the homestead, sitting by the fire, telling stories, and drinking hot chocolate. God, how he wanted those nights again.

They made good time upriver. Watching as the decay once again began to assert itself over the landscape, he wondered how long it would take before someone would realize what he had done. He hoped he would be long gone by then, back at home with his daughters.

They were almost to the point that he entered the shadowlands when he heard a distant shrieking. He looked towards the sound and saw a speck in the sky, moving towards him with an inhuman speed. His daughters looked up as well and fear spread across their faces.

“Get out of the boat,” he yelled to them. “Run for the veil! We might just be close enough to get through.”

They jumped out of the boat and into the icy embrace of the river. The cold seeped into his legs, numbing them to the bone and making it hard to run. Every step became frozen agony. Overhead, the shrieking grew louder. He looked up to see something out of a nightmare. It was big, some thirty feet long from tip to tail. Leathery wings spanning fifty feet beat at the air, holding up an almost skeletal-looking black body covered in thick scales. Tiny, malevolent yellow eyes looked down upon them. The shrieking came from an elongated beak filled with needle-sharp teeth. Atop this horror was a figure dressed in black and crimson armor. He couldn't make out the rider's features at this distance but he knew who the rider was.

Mortis: the Lord of Death.

Mortis banked his mount into a hard left turn, aiming for the river. Eli yelled to his daughters, telling them to run faster. Fear gave him the strength to move his numbed legs faster, the other bank of the river coming ever closer. The shrieking of Mortis' mount grew deafening. The claws of the mount scraped across his back, tearing through his clothes and into the flesh beneath. He felt as if he had been cut by blades of ice. Blood flowed down his back as he stumbled onto the river bank.

His daughters each grabbed an arm and the three ran towards the veil. He felt the keys on his hands begin to heat up as they drew nearer. They reached the veil and he plunged his burning hands through and made an opening. “Go,” he yelled to his daughters. Agnes ran through the opening, followed closely by Beth. He took a step forward and felt a cold spike enter his guts, turning his insides into ice. Looking down, he saw a claw sticking out of his chest. He fell forward and the veil snapped closed behind him, severing the claw.

Agnes fell to her knees and took her father into her arms. Tears flowed down her cheeks. Beth knelt beside her sister and took her father's hand. Eli looked up at them and smiled. He touched Agnes' face with his free hand. “You're home,” he whispered. His hand fell into the bloodstained snow.

***

They each taped a key to the back of their hands, filled their pockets with ash, and placed a penny under their tongues. When the coins began to taste like blood in their mouths, they stepped out into the warm summer night and set off in search of their dead father.