Part 1 of 9
Tuesday, October 21st – Winter Falls, NY – Present Day – Morning
Of course Nora didn’t believe in the supernatural—any more than she believed the bedtime stories she read to her 3-year-old daughter. And yet there she was, up to her eyeballs in some otherworldly aberration that could have no other explanation.
It’s been said that the most consequential events in a person’s life don’t burst in like trainwrecks; rather, they enter silently, unobserved, on cat’s paws. So it was with Nora Burroughs. It all began with a warped floorboard and a skeleton key.
* * *
Sunup, alone in bed, Lyle already gone off to work, MaryJane still asleep: the beginning of every day. The bone-wearying list of tasks and chores was laid out in front of Nora in an endless litany of mind-numbing mediocrity. Her discontent was a relatively recent phenomenon. Just twelve short months before, she’d approached her repetitive lifestyle with true gratitude and joy, reveling in the sameness and security of it all. But that was then.
Now, tossing her covers aside and placing her feet on the bare wood floor, knowing what lay ahead, Nora faced the next sixteen hours without emotion, an automaton moving from one task to the next. The sole exception would be the time she’d spend with her 3-year-old toddler, MaryJane, christened in ardent protest against her own ridiculously ostentatious name, Leahnorah, with which her fanciful mother had saddled her, proclaiming that an exotic name would surely lead to an equally exotic life.
She tightened her robe, wrapped a woolen shawl around her shoulders and went into the basement to add another log or two to the wood stove. Back and forth she drifted through the house, washing, dusting, straightening, sorting the laundry, writing checks, licking stamps, and on and on, knowing full well that no matter how many tasks she completed, no matter how good a wife she pretended to be, she would still have to face a man she no longer trusted to see her clearly, and carry on as though nothing inside her had changed.
It was Tuesday—floor washing day. So she knelt to roll up the first of several braided rugs, gifts from Mama, hand-made by some long-gone ancestor who loved combining blue and yellow so much that every rug was pretty much the same as every other. She dropped to her knees and immediately winced in pain as something sharp pierced her skin. Dabbing the small trickle of blood with a corner of her robe and massaging the injured knee, she noticed a single floor board slightly out of place, jutting upward about a quarter of an inch from an otherwise perfectly smooth living room floor. Wondering absently how long it had been like this and why she’d never noticed it, she tried to push the board back into place with the tip of her finger, but it wouldn’t go.
Thinking some small object had gotten lodged beneath, she tried to reach it with her fingers but could not. She pulled at the board with both hands, but it wouldn’t budge. Determined, she went down to the basement, grabbed a prybar, and brought it upstairs. Bracing herself for a struggle, she took a deep breath, counted—one, two, three—then threw her weight onto the prybar. To her surprise, the board popped up with almost no resistance, knocking her off balance. She sat back heavily as the wood fell away, exposing a small but deep, unmistakably manmade opening beneath.
For a moment, she just sat there, startled, massaging her sore derrière. Nora had lived in this house for five years. Something like this could not possibly have escaped her notice. She leaned forward, peered into the crevice and there, in the darkness, rested a tiny box, not much larger than a matchbox. It was metal, lightweight—tin, most likely—painted flat black with a thin goldish border on its top, dirty and dented and obviously old. Despite that, the top opened with ease. Inside, wrapped in a bit of tattered cloth, lay a brass skeleton key with a single word scratched into its side: Journey.
* * *
Nora had no idea why she felt such an irresistible urge to learn more about the key, what it was, why it was there, but she went with it, anyway. There had to be a hint somewhere in the house, and the only logical place had to be Lyle’s office since she knew every other square inch of the house. His office was the only room she never entered. Not because of anything nefarious, it was just that he was such an insufferable slob. The room always looked as though a mob of crazed gremlins had gotten loose and ransacked it.
“How it looks is none of your business—it’s my office,” he’d said, as though that was all the explanation needed.
“But you can’t possibly know where anything is,” she’d laughed. “Or even what’s there.”
He’d feigned indignation and said, “It just so happens I know every last thing that’s in there and exactly where each one is.”
They’d had a few go-rounds about it—some of them even a little testy. She liked the house to be clean and orderly, especially when Mama was coming over.
“But there’s nothing in there that has anything to do with you,” he’d complained. “And I like it that way. If you don’t like the way it looks, just don’t look at it.”
“Fine,” she’d finally sighed. “How about a compromise? That unholy mess of yours has a way of migrating down the hall and into the rest of the house, so just keep the door closed, okay?”
Once their daughter MaryJane had come along and had become dexterous enough to open doors, Lyle had taken to locking it. And since Nora simply assumed there’d be nothing in there of the slightest interest, she’d never bothered asking for a spare key. Every now and again she’d get a little curious, but then something more immediate would demand her attention and she’d forget all about it. It was just his junk; she absolutely did not care what was in there. Until that morning.
She was about to call Lyle and ask where he kept the key when a whisper of dread—cold and instinctive—told her not to.
Don’t say anything to him! Find another way in.
A chill prickled her skin as though she knew—without reason, but with absolute certainty—that she wasn’t alone. She was just starting to wonder what that other way in might be when a loud male voice suddenly broke the silence. She nearly jumped out of her skin until she realized it was the TV. MaryJane, learning to operate the remote, could turn it on, but still hadn’t quite gotten the hang of the volume button.
Nora settled the child on her favorite blanket with Mr. Whiskers, her favorite stuffed puppy, and an episode of Sesame Street. MaryJane got busy immediately, helping Mr. Whiskers learn all the words that began with the letter D, removing her thumb from her mouth only when absolutely necessary. Once she was thoroughly engaged and Nora was fairly certain she’d have at least twenty uninterrupted minutes, she showered, changed and rejoined her daughter in the living room, at which point both MaryJane and Mr. Whiskers taught her all about the letter D.
Nora was just serving the two of them a snack—one on a plate, the other in a bowl—when Ronni, her lifelong friend, came up the drive with Natasha, her six-year-old, both of them skipping and singing “Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O.”
“Hey there,” Ronni called cheerfully, opening the door, not bothering to knock or wait for an invitation. “I brought some sustenance: pumpkin cake from Mascotti’s Bakery.”
They shared a quick hug, then Natasha went bouncing off to join MaryJane on her blanket.
“Thank the universe I’m home-schooling her,” Ronni smiled. “Otherwise, how would I ever get to spend time with her and with you and with Mascotti’s?”
Once the girls were playing quietly, watching another episode of Sesame Street, this time learning all about the consonant F, the two women settled themselves at the kitchen table to enjoy their cake and coffee. That’s when Nora showed Ronni her find.
“Well, that’s weird,” Ronni agreed. “Why would Lyle bother hiding something like that?”
Nora just shrugged.
“Are you gonna ask him about it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well then, while you’re making up your mind,” she said, with an I’m definitely looking for trouble glint in her eye, “let’s go check out his office.”
“Can’t,” Nora said. “Door’s locked and I don’t have a key.”
“My dear sweet innocent Nora, you clearly don’t watch enough grade-B detective shows on TV. Of course you have a key.” With that she reached into her purse and, with a flourish, whipped out a credit card. “Voilà,” she said. “Instant key.”
She rose and started walking toward the far end of the house.
“Wait a minute!” Nora called after her. “You can’t just break into your best friend’s husband’s office!”
“Why not?” Ronni laughed. “It’s not booby trapped, is it?”
“Of course not. It’s just… I haven’t been in there in ages.”
“It’s not like we’re gonna wreck the place. We’re just gonna have a quick look-see. You do wanna know, don’t you?”
“Well… yeah… I guess.”
“If it’ll make you feel any better, if Lyle shows up unexpectedly, we’ll hear his car in the driveway. We’ll have plenty of time to get out, lock up, and sit at the kitchen table looking like the picture of innocence.” With a wink and a smile, she said, “Trust me!”
