Elizabeth's Journal

Entry Five

Nov. 6th, 2018

My house is old and drafty, so naturally it gets cold in the winter. Every winter I spend very little time in my room because it has no heat; there is no heat vent to my room. 

One particularly cold, windy winter, I was standing in the corner of the dining room on top of a heat vent. This was the best spot in the house, because while you were standing on the heat vent in the floor, you could also feel warm air from the kitchen. I was a skinny little kid, bony elbows and knees, and my hands and feet were always ice cold. I was enjoying the momentary blast of warm air, but then, inevitably, the heat shut off. The vents warm the house at intervals, so I would just have to wait for it to turn back on. I was still a little cold, so I sat down on the still-warm metal grate. After some time, the heat kicked back on and I bent over the grate letting the air hit my face. As I did this I could see something sitting at the bottom of the vent. 

I looked closer and I could just make out the dusty shape of a key sitting at the bottom of the grate. How cool, I thought, I wonder what it unlocks? I would have to get it out of the vent first. How would I get the grate off, though?

"Mama, does this grate come off?"

"Yeah, sweetie, it just lifts off." She barely looked up from her reading.

Well that solves the first problem, I thought to myself. I tentatively closed my fingers the grate and pulled. It lifted off with a mechanical clang. I studied the underside of the grate, running my fingers along the fins that could close off the vent, curious, I had never seen this side of the grate. Now I stared down into the vent. It was not so deep that I couldn't reach the bottom, but it was deep enough that I would have to lay on my stomach and reach my arm down into the dark depths of the vent. I hesitated... 

A million thoughts raced through my head at once.

Remember that time you found a dead tarantula in the vent in Dear Brother's room? Remember that time when you were five, and you still slept in the room that is now Dear Brothers, and you heard things crawling in the vent? Remember that time Papa set a mouse-trap in the vent because he thought the mice were traveling through there? Remember how the trap disappeared, how Papa had said that the mouse had probably dragged it away when it was caught, and how you knew that it hadn't been a mouse, because you still heard the noises at night long after the mouse was caught in a trap in the kitchen? Yes, you remember it all, but perhaps...perhaps Papa was right, perhaps it was just your imagination. Yes, that's it. 

I lay down on my stomach and reached into the vent. Despite the heat having just been on, the key felt oddly cold. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw shadows shifting in the vent, but when I looked, they were gone. I could feel panic rise up into my stomach. As soon as I removed the key from the vent, a cool whisper of air reverberated around the vent. I quickly pushed the grate back in to place, and perhaps I was still nervous, because I remember sliding the fins on the grate closed. It felt like protection, but from what I wasn't sure.

Now I studied the key. It was small, and fat. Definitely old, but too short to be a skeleton key. It looked like a key from an old cartoon. The metal was tarnished, like it had been left outside for too long.

I wondered what door the key would unlock, and I set about testing all the doors in the house. None of the doors on the main floor had keyholes, so I tested upstairs. First, I tested my room, then, I tested Dear Brother's room. When that didn't work I tested the more boring alternatives. First the bathroom door and then the closet. Neither worked, so what did the key unlock.

I decided to put the key on a string and make a necklace so I wouldn't lose it. I wore the necklace to bed, looking back at it, I'm not sure why I did.

 When I went to sleep that night, my dreams were filled with horrors. 

I am trapped in a room with hundreds of doors, but none of them have keyholes or handles. I still have the key on a string around my neck, but what good will it do me here? The room gets smaller and smaller around me. The last thing I feel is the cold metal key pressing against my chest before I black-out...

 I am running through a field. I find a key poking out of the earth. As I pick it up, the earth a few feet away begins to push upwards in muddy clumps. A hand pokes out of the grave, then another, both in varied states of decomposition. I stand frozen as a corpse shambles towards me calling "I know you have it, give it to me, it's mine!" ...

I'm standing in another room. I want to get out. I try the doorknob but it's locked so I try to break down the door. I start having trouble breathing, I have to stop what I'm doing. I try coughing but I can't. It feels like something is cutting my throat from the inside. I claw at my throat and mouth, my lungs are burning. I feel a string in my mouth so I pull it out. The string is long, I can feel it slicing my throat as I pull it out. At the end of the string there is a bloody key.

When I woke up, I really was choking. The string from the necklace was tangled around my neck making it hard to breathe. I clawed at the string with shaking hands until it came loose. I held the string far away from my body and jumped out of bed. I shivered as my bare feet hit the wood floor. It was late, so late in fact, that it was morning. It was probably three in the morning, but I wanted to get rid of the key. I crept down the stairs hastily, it was so dark that I almost couldn't tell where the stairs ended. I raced around the corner to the vent. "I'll have to be quiet this time." I whispered to myself. I slowly wiggled the vent cover off and dropped the key inside. I instantly cringed at the loud clang that the key makes as it hits the metal floor of the air-duct. I was so scared at the time that I shook while I re-covered the vent, and to this day, the key lays undisturbed, collecting more dusty secrets and sorrow.