The Visitor(71)
“Was it the key you found clutched in her hand the day she died? Do you know what happened to it?”
“I assumed the police took it. I never asked. I made an effort to put that awful day out of my head. But when I saw you at Oak Grove Cemetery looking enough like Rose to make me wonder if she’d come back from the grave...” Nelda drew a shaky breath. “So many memories came flooding back.”
“Can you tell me anything else about those keys?”
“Only that the skeleton key had been in Rose’s family for generations. Supposedly there had once been a sister key, but it had been lost a long time ago.”
“Do you think that could explain her obsession with collecting keys? Maybe subconsciously she was searching for the lost key.”
“Given her fragile mental state, it’s certainly possible,” Nelda said. “Rose had a tendency to fixate. The keys, the stereograms, all those numbers. To her, everything had meaning, but I think her obsessions had more to do with her illness than anything else. She did say something about that lost key once that I’ve always wondered about. I suspect it was just another of her fairy tales, but I’ve never forgotten it.”
“What did she say?”
“That her life would be very different if she still had the key.”
“Different how?”
Nelda leaned in with shimmering eyes. “According to Rose, the lost key had the power to close the door to the dead world forever.”
Forty
I desperately wanted to believe that such a key existed. That it really could be my salvation. But Rose had lost her grip on reality before she died and I couldn’t take her story seriously. I couldn’t afford even a glimmer of hope that the door to the dead world could be locked forever, thereby allowing for a normal life without all the ghosts, without all the secrets. I couldn’t put my faith in that missing key because the moment I started to believe in Rose’s fairy tale was the moment I became as lost as she.
After I left Nelda in the garden, I hauled my spare set of clothes out of the car and settled into the guesthouse. It was a small space, but charmingly appointed with whimsical antiques. After I’d had a look around, I walked over to the town center to pick up a few items I would need for my overnight stay. When I returned, I found Rose’s viewer on the nightstand. As curious as I was about the stereograms I’d taken from her sanctuary, the claw-foot tub beckoned. It had been a long and emotionally exhausting day, and I hoped a long soak would help relax me.
Releasing my ponytail, I turned on the taps and opened the small window over the tub to allow some of the steam to escape. Then I eased down into the water, sighing as I rested my head on a folded towel. But I still couldn’t let go of all that had happened. The lavender body wash conjured the memory of Rose’s ghost and I found myself dwelling again on the gruesome way she’d died and the lonely way she’d lived. I lay there in the bubbles, washcloth over my face, thoughts churning with everything I’d learned about my great-grandmother. All those numbers and keys. The stereograms. So many obsessions. Rose had left behind an intricate web, one that I wasn’t at all certain I was up to untangling.
I lay there trying to sort through the confusion until the water grew tepid, and then I climbed out of the tub, dripping and shivering as I reached for a towel. I must have been soaking for a very long time because outside the tiny bathroom window the garden lay in deep shadows. The sun was setting and twilight would soon fall.
The urgency that had driven me to hallowed ground since childhood propelled me into the bedroom, where I slipped the skeleton key around my neck once more. I placed the other two keys on the nightstand, lining them up just as I’d found them and wondering what remaining purposes the two might serve.
Restless and claustrophobic, I dressed and took the photographs and viewer out to the porch to study them in the remaining light. The air had cooled as the shadows grew longer, and the scent of roses wafted from the garden.
Plopping down on the top step, I placed the first card in the viewer and lifted it to my eyes. The dual images came together to form a three-dimensional view of Rose’s house. I could see curtains at the windows and flowerpots on the front steps. It was a pleasant-looking place if one didn’t notice the shadows from the woods that crept across the yard. If one didn’t speculate about the fence that enclosed the space beneath her house.
I viewed one card after another until I’d gone through the whole stack. All of them were of Rose’s house, and as I’d observed earlier, they had been taken from different angles at different times of the day.
What an odd collection, I thought as I went back to the first card.
This time I studied the images more carefully, turning the viewer slightly until I caught the best light. I tried to peer into the windows of Rose’s house, into the treetops, even underneath her front porch. The longer I studied those photographs the more unsettled I became.
I was certain the shots weren’t random. Rose had deliberately set out to photograph her house from every possible angle in every conceivable light. But why?
As I scoured the images for clues, I suddenly had the feeling of being watched. The sensation was so strong that I lowered the viewer to scan the garden. Then I lifted my gaze to the windows at the back of Nelda’s house. No one was around. No one watched me. So why the crawl of flesh at the back of my neck? Why the tingle at my spine?