My attention darted back to the window. The moths kept coming, kept clinging until all but a sliver of moonlight was extinguished. Now I could make out little more than the vague shape of furniture, but instinct told me not to reach for the lamp. It was best not to see what had entered my room.
Clutching the covers to my chin, I lay motionless as I peered through the frigid darkness. I saw no humpback silhouettes or sightless apparitions, but I knew something was there just the same. I wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating. I hadn’t conjured the moths or the cold. Or that smell. Whatever had invaded my bedroom was real. Not human, not any longer, but there was no denying a presence.
Mott?
I almost whispered the name into the darkened room but I held my silence as I cowered under the covers.
The chill deepened and the smell intensified as the tiny interloper moved about the space. I sensed her standing over me and I wanted nothing so much as to leap from bed and run screaming into the night. But I clung to my courage as tightly as I clutched the blanket, and I remembered Dr. Shaw’s warning that negative energy stirred unrest. I took a breath, trying to calm my racing heart.
Just when I thought I had my fear under control, I felt the frosted caress of dead fingers against my cheek, the brush of frigid lips in my hair. Cloves tingled on my tongue, but I took no solace in the spice. I had come to loathe the taste.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I willed away the trespasser. Please go. Leave me alone. Leave me in peace.
I heard the low rasp of a breath, a guttural mutter that sounded like “Mine,” and then the click of long fingernails against the top of the nightstand as she rummaged through my things. A drawer opened, then another and another.
What are you looking for? What do you want from me?
After a moment, the shuffling stopped, the cold faded and I knew that I was once again alone in my bedroom. I huddled under the quilt as I listened for signs of a retreat. I heard only silence. No scratching in the walls or footsteps out in the hallway. But I knew Mott was gone and with her the moths.
Moonlight flooded the room, but still I reached for the lamp. Blinking in the sudden brilliance, I glanced around, my gaze coming to rest on the nightstand.
The cicada husk had vanished and in its place were three gleaming keys.
Twenty-Six
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat there staring at the keys, all lined up in a row, but teeth turned away from me, as if all I had to do was pick one up and insert it into a lock.
Which one, though? And was I really being given a choice or did each have a special purpose?
A chill lingered in the room, not from the intruder, but from my own fear. I dragged the covers over my shoulders as I scooted closer to the nightstand, wanting a better look, but not daring to touch. Not yet. I remembered the reaction I’d had when the first key had been tossed in the cellar. I’d gotten rid of it in the garden, but now here it was back on my nightstand along with two others.
I wouldn’t remove any of them until I had a chance to consider the consequences. I didn’t want my actions to be misconstrued as acceptance of this offering. Even worse, a trade or invitation.
I studied each key for a very long time, taking note of the shank, head and bittings as I looked for inscriptions or numbers, anything that would give me a hint of what they might unlock. One was a skeleton key with a long shank and ornate head. The fanciful scrollwork reminded me of the key I’d found in Rosehill Cemetery, right down to the tattered pink ribbon still threaded through the filigree bow. As a child, I’d imagined the treasure chest that key might open, but now I worried about the horrors that could be unlocked if I chose the wrong door.
Then I had another thought. Was the skeleton key somehow connected to Rose? Could this key be my salvation?
What if Rose had left it on that headstone all those years ago as a talisman against the ghosts? Rather than summoning the apparitions into my world, maybe it would have kept them locked out.
The head of the third key had been carved to resemble an eye. Four teeth pointed straight down from the shank like the prongs of a pitchfork. There was something distinctly menacing about that strange key. I found myself both repelled by and drawn to it.
“What am I supposed to do with them?” I whispered into the silent room. “What is it you want from me?”
As I gazed around my familiar surroundings, searching for answers to the unknowable, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the dresser mirror. The sight stopped me cold, the resemblance to Rose filling me with a terrible dread. Our destinies were inexorably linked. What I was now she had once been. What she was I would someday become.
Rising, I walked over to the mirror and leaned in to scrutinize my features—her features—focusing on those tiny motes at the bottom of my irises. Had Rose’s eyes possessed those same strange markings? As a child, had she ever fancied they were keyholes?
I glanced at the odd-shaped key lying on my nightstand and then back at my reflection. Suddenly, I had the disturbing notion that those pointed teeth matched exactly the dark lines beneath my pupils.