The Key, Page 2

The light fixture next to my door was out and the only light source was behind him. I could barely make out a head of messy, greasy, black hair and a charcoal black suit.

  “I don’t know!” I gasped. His grip was getting tighter on my throat.

  “You saw her!” He accused as if I should then know what he was talking about. He reached into his cloak and retrieved a very nasty-looking dagger. The blade was a dark, dirty serpentine blade that was held at my throat. The edge of the dagger pressed into my skin uncomfortably.

  “I-I did see her, but I don’t know where she went. That was, like, an hour ago.”

  That didn’t appease the dark man. In anger he pushed me out of his hands and deeper into the wall. The dry wall cracked behind me due to the impact from my head. I thanked god that the wall was plaster as I fell to the floor in a heap, stars in my vision. I thought, or rather hoped, he was going to be on his way now, but he stood above me menacingly with the dagger still in his hand.

  “Where is she?” He asked again with fury, grabbing me by my throat as he held me down. I was speechless, choking from his frighteningly strong grip. I could only stare up at this horrifying creature whose face I still somehow couldn’t see.

  The silence was broken by a woman saying, “I’m right here, ugly.” Her words were followed by a loud smack. The man fell to the floor on top of me. I scrambled out from under the pale, sickly-looking man and looked up at my savior. Amber stood in the hallway, holding a thick leather book in her hands. Somehow she had managed to stealthily sneak up behind my attacker and then gave him good whack with the book.

  “Are you alright?” She asked me, as she put the book back in her bag. She smiled at me again.

  I could only cough out a ‘yes’ as I rubbed my throat with my right hand. I got to my feet and stared down at my attacker. While I studied the strange man, I checked the lump on the back of my head. It stung as I touched it. Prodding the man with my foot, I took a moment to wrap my head around the situation.

  “James, I’m sorry.” She gestured toward my attacker, “They are after me. Let me take care of him real quick and then I can explain everything.”

  She took the key out from under her shirt and walked to my door. I watched her curiously as she paused for a moment, one hand on the door knob the other hand holding the key. Inserting the key into the doorknob, she opened the door. I was surprised her key worked on my door, but then I noticed that the room on the other side was not my dorm room. I stared, jaw-dropped, in fascination. An eerie yellow light spilled into the corridor and I could see the room was an old antique shop. It smelled dingy and moldy and a lot like old things caked with an inch of dust.

  “What the…” I trailed off as I stared into the room that was not my room. I barely noticed Amber trying to pick up my attacker and drag him into the antique shop. Once I realized what she was doing, I grabbed one of the man's arms and helped Amber pull him through the doorway. We unceremoniously dumped him in front of a display case of some antique jewelry and Amber left. I noticed the dagger still gripped tightly in his hand. I reached down and tried to pry it from his fingers, but it would not budge.

  “Leave it,” Amber said. “You can’t take it. I’ve tried. The dagger will only be held by its owner.”

  I looked up at her puzzled. This was just too unreal. A strange, foreign world was invading mine and I did not like that. Looking back at my would-be killer, my eyes caught the surroundings. I stared at the numerous trinkets of the place that shouldn’t exist on this side of my door. I heard a whistle behind me and turned to see Amber beckoning me back to my dorm hallway.

  “Hurry,” she said. “This door won’t stay open forever.”

  I walked back through the doorway sputtering, “What the heck was that?” She closed the door behind me. I pushed back my unkempt brown hair, my usual habit when I was nervous or stressed, and accidentally touched the bump on my head. I winced slightly when I touched it. In my dorm room I had an icepack in the freezer of my dorm fridge. Getting the icepack was my first order of business. I had to get into my dorm room first. Picking up the keys from the floor, I carefully opened the door, revealing only my dark dorm room on the other side.

  “Where do I start?” Amber mumbled, pushing me out of the hallway and into my room. She followed me inside and closed the door behind her. I fumbled for my desk lamp so we wouldn't be in total darkness. I opened the fridge, which was also serving as a nightstand, to get the icepack. I sat on the bed with the icepack pressed against the back of my head, and watched her pace back and forth in the narrow path between my bed and my roommate's bed. “I guess I can start with the key,” she said definitively.

  She stopped pacing and held out the ornate, but tarnished silver key for me to see. It was a very old-fashioned looking key, nothing like the jagged flat keys used today. The top of the key was rounded with a diamond shape cut into the key. A satin black ribbon ran through the diamond shaped hole in the key, allowing the key to be worn. The key itself was thin, only a quarter inch in diameter and about three inches long. Each scratch in the metal of the key was tarnished while the handle near the ribbon was polished through constant use.

  “This key connects one door to any other door in existence,” she explained. “Right now I just connected your door to a door at an antique store in London. It's one of my favorite places to dump the Dark Men because it’s in the middle of nowhere,” she mused, smiling to herself for a moment. “The Dark Men want this key really badly. I’m not completely sure why because they don't really talk much, but I can speculate. The Dark Men are part of an ancient fraternity of assassins,” she continued. Her face grew really grim as she explained this.

  I suspected she knew someone who was killed because of them, but I didn’t want to press the issue. I needed to understand the situation so I let her continue.

  “If an assassin had this key, the key that could gain access to their target’s home and past all their security, they could be virtually unstoppable. They already have strange and supernatural powers, probably from other artifacts like this key.”

  “So, that key would just let them go anywhere they wanted. There are doors everywhere,” I finished for her, realizing the scope of how useful the key was. I was starting to get the picture a little, at least in terms of the key. The threat of the “Dark Men” was still eluding me. “Supernatural powers?” I asked, still somewhat unconvinced.

  “Didn't you notice how quickly he moved and how strong he was?” She pointed out. “Those abilities were artificial and created by something like this key. Each Dark Man I've come across has had similar, but slightly different abilities like that.”

  “How many have you come across?” I asked, innocently. Amber looked down at the floor for a moment.

  “I've lost count,” she said quietly. She didn't meet my eyes for a moment. Instead she stared at the ground. I could see she was trying to figure out what she would say next. She finally shook her head and made eye contact with me, her green eyes pleading with me to listen. “There is something more.”

  “What?”

  “Whenever I run into people, those people end up becoming targets too.” She looked really sad and guilty. I began to wonder how much trouble she got me into. I still didn't even fully understand what the trouble was.

  “Why can’t you just call the cops on the Dark Men?” I asked, now beginning to panic at the thought that they might be after me now.

  “I can’t exactly stay and explain the situation. The key must stay hidden from as many people as possible, for their safety and to keep the key from falling into the wrong hands. Besides, they could have another Dark Man on me while I wait for the cops. Besides, the Dark Men are part of a large organization. Who knows how many of them there are or how deeply rooted they are in the justice system.”

  “Makes sense, I guess, but why did you come back for me?” I conceded.

 
She replied, “I thought that would be obvious. I know you. I liked you in school and I didn’t want you to get hurt. I wasn’t expecting to run into anyone, least of all someone I knew. I don’t add want your death to my conscience.”

  I nodded and couldn't help but remember all those days we'd play in her Father's study. We even had a class together and we would sit next to each other while the other students were still convinced the other gender had cooties. How did all this happen?

  “The thing about the key is if you’re not concentrating hard enough on what door you want to walk through, it sends you through a random door. That’s what happened with the library. I was too focused on escaping that I wasn’t focusing on where I wanted to go.”

  “Ah,” I nodded, starting to understand why she was in the library, a place she didn’t know. “Anything else I should know?”

  “Yeah, the doorway will only stay open for about a minute or two, which is why I rushed you through it earlier,” she explained. I paused for a moment, letting the craziness set in. I was still getting used to the idea of a transporting key when I realized the danger Amber was really in. It took me another moment to realize the danger I was in. There were professional killers after the key and now after us. Something had to be done if we were