The Key

Vanessa felt the weight of the key in the palm of her hand. It felt reassuringly heavy. It was the kind of key that would open something very important. The key was large and, despite being very old and made of iron, bore no sign of rust. The shank was the length of her hand and the bow was ornate, finely wrought to resemble a bat with out-stretched wings.

Vanessa could feel the blood pumping round her frail body as she carefully descended the narrow stone steps below the old house. One step followed another. Eighty three, eighty four… There were one hundred and thirty-seven steps. She had counted them many times. She shivered. The air wrapped itself around her, hugged her, like a cold, heavy, damp shawl. She could smell decay. The flickering candle picked out yellow mould on the stone walls.

Vanessa remembered being six years old, when she had first discovered the steps. She remembered the thrill and the sense of dread she had felt as she had made her way down into that scary darkness. And the disappointment of finding the locked door at the bottom. She had resolved then to find the key. That was before her illness, of course. When she was whole. When she had so much energy she sometimes felt that she would explode with the sheer joy of being alive.

One hundred and thirteen. One hundred and fourteen… Vanessa was nervous. The knot in her stomach pulling itself tighter and tighter as she counted down. And now here she was, at the bottom, standing before the door as before. But this time with a key in her hand. The door was of a dark, stained oak, bound in iron. There was an iron handle and below that the keyhole. A moment’s hesitation. Would the key fit? As she brought it towards the lock she realised that her hand was trembling. She swallowed hard. Now she would finally know the truth.

The house belonged to Mad Aunt Jemima, who probably wasn’t really mad, but that’s what Vanessa’s mum called her. They had first visited the house many years ago, out of a sense of duty, her mother said. Jemima had few visitors. The house was cold, bearing the brunt of the gales and blizzards that blew across the Yorkshire Moors in winter. And uncomfortable. The visit had been brief. But there was something about the old building, with its Victorian turrets, fake battlements and gargoyles, that appealed to Vanessa. As a teenager she had been back to visit her great aunt many times. 

It was when she was thirteen that she’d had the first of many vivid and life-like dreams. In that dream, and in subsequent dreams, she was standing on the moor, in the dead of night. And a young man, dressed all in black, approached her and took her hand. I will heal you, he said. I will take away your pain. And I ask so little in return.

What must I do? She asked him in each dream.

You have to find the key, he said every time.

But where will I find it?

And in each dream he leant towards her, as if to kiss her. In each dream a little closer, until she could feel his breath on her lips. And she saw in his face a great sadness. And hopelessness in his eyes. But before he could do or say anything more, she woke up. She always woke up.

She had spent years of painstaking research in the records of the local church of St Mary’s, and pored through the hundreds of leather-bound books that lined the walls of Aunt Jemima’s library, to find the key. But had had no luck. Until today. Quite by chance she had found it. It was hidden in the most obvious of places. On a hook in a shadowy recess above the door at the top of the cellar steps. But was it the right key? Would it fit? She was about to find out.

She pressed the key into the lock. It slid in easily. She breathed a sigh of relief. Then, she grasped the bow firmly and turned. Her heart beat madly. The lock was stiff. But slowly the heavy key moved. There was a satisfying clunk and the old wooden door seemed to sigh. As though, for a hundred years, it had been held tightly in a spell and now the spell was finally broken. 

Vanessa grasped the iron handle of the door and gently pushed. The door slowly opened.