The Key

“Evie, come find me!” her whispered voice is loud inside my head, it’s in my ears, in the wind and echoing through the trees. The voice of a child, it’s everywhere, calling my name. I have to find her! The glow of the full moon struggles to pierce the clouds that fill the night sky, a blanket of thick fog fills the darkness and covers the earth. “Evie!” I make my way through the trees in the forest by the lake, I know she’s there.

‘She’s running out of time’ I can hear the panic in her voice, but my legs won’t move fast enough, like I’m running through water. The closer I get to the lake, the heavier I feel, dizzy and sick. “Evie, help me” The sting of each breath pierces my lungs, as I run blindly through the darkness towards the water’s edge. There is a long wooden pier running almost halfway to the centre of the lake, grey faceless figures stand at each post. I run onto it, I’m almost there. The grey figures evaporate into the air as I pass by each one, like a puff of smoke swirling into the night sky.

My legs collapse onto the last wooden plank, as the wind stops, and the fog vanishes. Silence. The sound of my heart, beating in fear and exhaustion, is the only noise to be heard.

"Come closer” Her tiny whispering voice booms through my head like an amplifier. I bend down to peer into the black water, hands gripping the edge. The moonlight breaks the clouds, illuminating the surface of the water and I see my reflection. At first, it’s my face staring back at me, but it’s changing, morphing into the face of the little girl. She can’t be older than 3 or 4. Blonde ringlets swim around her rosy cheeks, her blue eyes shining up at me through the murky water. “We’re the same Evelyn, I’ll show you.”

Grey arms come shooting out of the water and wrap around my neck, dragging me in headfirst. She’s too strong and I plunge into the freezing water, deeper and deeper into the darkness. In the struggle I see the surface fading in the distance, the light of the moon fades with it. “Come hide with me Evie, she won’t find us here”. Through the murky water I see it, the suitcase. An old leather suitcase sits open at the bottom of the lake, drawing me to it with a force stronger than the arms around my neck. ‘No, not again!’

I’m dragged inside it and it slams shut. I can’t breathe, the water is in my mouth, in my lungs!

“Evelyn, time to wake up” Eve sat up and gasped for air, taking in her surroundings, realising quickly that it was just another dream. As her eyes adjusted to the room, she saw the woman she was now supposed to call Mother. 'But she isn’t my mother'. The woman’s name was Helen and Eve knew barely anything about her, just that she was married to Bill, also known as Eve’s long lost, presumed dead Father, and that she wouldn’t stop calling her Evelyn.

6 months before, Eve’s real mother Paula, died in a freak accident on the highway. Her brakes failed, and she hit a truck, killing her instantly. As an only child with no known relatives, Eve had spent 2 months as a ward of the state, stuck in a 3-story boarding house almost immediately after the accident. She couldn’t remember much about her time in there except for the cold dinners and the loneliness. Time had passed by like it didn’t exist, there was no Eve anymore, just number 43258. That was until they found her father, alive and kicking only 2 months after Paula had died. Bill Freeman, he was a wealthy oil tycoon living off grid. In Eve’s 15 years of life, she had just accepted he was dead, her mother avoided talking of him, and Eve never asked.

Once when Paula had come home drunk, she burst into Eve’s room to fill her in on her conception… “I met your father at a New Year's Eve party in 2000 and blah, damn he was a looker. We took a stack of drugs, he kissed me at the countdown, and we went off to his tent and made you! That’s why I called you Evelyn, Eve, my Evie” The memory of her mother’s smile, the smell of red wine and cigarettes on her breath, brought a lump to Eve's throat. She swallowed it down with a mouthful of orange juice off the breakfast tray Helen had placed on her lap.

And now here she was with Helen and Bill Freeman. Living in their mansion, hidden inside a forest of tall trees that opened out onto a lake with a pier, overgrown with reeds and covered in a thick layer of dark green moss. Helen seemed nice yet had the personality of cardboard, the perfect wife. She didn’t say much outside the script of doting wife and stepmother and was very old fashioned for her age. Her husband worked away from home most of the year, leaving her in that huge house by herself. Since being swept away from the boarding home Eve had only seen her father Bill once, before he jetted off to Greece on business. Eve’s hopes of getting to know him had faded the minute the door shut behind him.

“How did you sleep dear?” Helen held her hands clasped in front of her, a white ruffled apron wrapped tightly around her waist. 'Is this 1943?'

“I had a nightmare.” It wasn’t the first since moving in. They were relentless, terrifying and the same every time. Helen’s face frowned in forced concern.

“Oh no Evelyn, what was it about?” Helen pushed the tray gently to the side of Eve’s bed and sat down, smiling. 'What the hell, I may as well tell her'.

“Well, I’m outside in the woods and I can hear this girl’s voice calling me for help from the lake. I go to her but when I get there, she drags me under to the bottom and stuffs me in a suitcase. Then I wake up.” Eve waited for a response but there wasn’t one.

Helen’s face changed from patronising concern to blank and she stared coldly at Eve “Best you don’t fill your father’s head with this nonsense, he has enough on his plate providing for this family and I don’t think silly dreams are going to help.” Helen stood up and left the room without another word. “Well, you asked” Eve muttered under her breath as she put the breakfast tray on the bedside table and pushed back the covers. She swung her legs over the edge and leapt out of the bed, the sunlight filled the room with a warm glow.

A sharp pain shot through her foot as she landed on something hard in the fluffy white carpet. Her ankle twisted sideways, and she fell to the floor.

“Mother freaking train wreck!” As she rubbed her ankle, she saw something shining in the stream of sunlight, lying in the soft folds of shagpile. Eve reached over to pick it up, a tiny silver key, like a charm from a bracelet. Eve placed it in her palm delicately. “I miss you Mum.” The words slipped out along with a tear that slid down her cheek, and splashed down on the key she held. Eve sniffed, wiped her nose with the back of her hand and got herself up off the floor. 'Get dressed stupid'. Eve threw on her Nirvana t-shirt, her mum’s old leather jacket and black boots, pretty much the same outfit she wore every day.

“Hair and teeth Evie girl” Her mum’s voice danced through her memories as she grabbed her toiletry bag and headed for the bathroom. Her hairbrush was sitting on the edge of the basin, and she picked it up, running it through her sleep tangled hair. “EVIE!”

The girl’s voice flew into the room, booming loudly in Eve’s ear, whispering inside her head, she gasped. She hadn’t heard it when she’d been awake until now. The brush fell to the floor as Eve’s hands clamped over her ears. She bent down to pick up the brush with shaking hands, 'I’m going crazy' she thought, as she stood up again and looked at herself in the mirror.

But it wasn’t Eve’s face staring back, it was the little girl. Her blonde hair was wet and tangled in grass and dirt, her eyes were black and the skin on her face flaked off in decay. Eve couldn’t move, she wanted to scream and run but not a word came from her lips as she faced the reflection in the mirror. The rotting lips opened “Look in the attic”. Eve’s hands began trembling as she backed away from the mirror, determined to put an end to this, to go into the attic. Maybe then the girl would stop haunting her dreams, and now her reality.

Eve made her way up to the top story of the house. At the end of a long corridor was a small, locked door she’d never been shown and never asked to see. The door led to the attic and was always locked. “OPEN IT” the words flew with a gust of wind, into Eve’s face. She turned the handle and the door creaked open, the light switch hung from the ceiling on a cord, she pulled it and a dim glow shone from the top of the stairway before her. She climbed the creaking stairs and entered the attic space. Cobwebs hung from the corners, trickled down from the ceiling, dust covered the boxes, the sheet covered furniture and the set of suitcases stacked in the corner. Eve shuddered, 'the same ones in my dream'

Next to the pile of suitcases was a small jewellery box which Eve picked up off the floor. Inside were old photos, Helen and Bill fishing, Helen and Bill on a picnic at the lake, Bill smiling at the wheel of a boat, Helen posing in a poker dot swimsuit, then the last photo in the pile. Bill, Helen and a little girl in Bill’s arms with blonde curly hair, rosy cheeks, wearing a white dress with yellow flowers. 'The girl from my dreams'. On her wrist, a silver bracelet with four charms. The sun, the moon, a boat and a key…. Eve gasped, threw the photo back in the box and slammed it shut.

“I knew you’d figure it out soon enough” Helen’s voice cut through the attic like a knife. “You young Eve, are a trouble-maker just like your sister was.” 'Wait, sister?' A wave of dizziness washed through Eve, the urge to vomit rising. Helen continued her rant.

“I drugged your juice this morning, I have been doing it every day since your poor wretched soul came to our door. I had everything exactly as I wanted it, your father was going to leave it all to me. The houses, the cars, the money. Then I accidently got pregnant with Rose and your father was over the moon! I tried to get rid of her before she came out but no, the stubborn brat wanted to be born. I waited 4 years of her miserable life to get rid of her and then your stupid mother had to die, didn’t she?” The words stung as the realisation set in. Eve dropped to her knees, the room began to spin wildly.

“When that lawyer called your father to tell him he had ANOTHER daughter I was furious!" Her tone softened, "But it’s fine, soon you’ll fall asleep and you can rest with your sister, at the bottom of my lake!” Reality faded, as Eve slipped into unconsciousness.

When she finally came to it was night, her head was spinning, everything was blurry, her stepmother’s voice faded in and out as her conscious world evaporated. Through the trees, Helen dragged Eve until they reached the pier at the lake, where she dropped her down on the dirt. Eve’s eyes opened momentarily, long enough to see a suitcase lying open on the ground, and Helen placing rocks inside. “EVIE WAKE UP” The little girls voice once again filled her head “YOU NEED TO WAKE UP!”

She opened her eyes again, dizziness, the urge to vomit. She felt herself being dragged towards the suitcase. “No, wait!” She tried to speak but the words came out slurred. Helen ignored her and rolled her body into the suitcase, tucking her legs and arms by her side and zipped it up. The rocks under her dug into her hips and ribs, and she passed out again. When she came to, the suitcase was filling with water and sinking, her evil stepmother had pushed it off the pier and walked away.

Terror set in as Eve struggled to burst open the case from the inside. She felt it hit the bottom, on top of the muddy floor, the only sound was her breathing and the water trickling in through the gaps and filling up around her. Eve clawed at the inside of the case, the water was halfway, soon it would be full, she'd be trapped, drowning at the bottom of lake, no one would ever know. 'I don’t want to die like this!' The water covered her mouth as she took one last big breath in, her nose, her eyes. The darkness and silence had won, Eve stopped clawing at the walls of her watery coffin and accepted fate. She thought of her mother, her smiling face, her laugh, her gentle brown eyes. “THE KEY!” She now knew who that voice belonged to, her sister Rose.

Eve forced her hand into her pocket and there it was, the tiny key she’d found in her room. She started to scrape at the point next to the lock with the end of the key and her fingers. Her lungs were burning, the seconds felt like hours. Finally, her fingers broke through and she tore a hole big enough for her hand to get out. The key slipped into the lock, and she turned it, the lid of the suitcase lifting off her body in slow motion. She swam like a mermaid towards the moonlit surface but looked back down once. There was the case she had escaped from, open like a hungry mouth but, next to it, lay another smaller suitcase, barely visible from the layers of dirt, moss and reeds that had engulfed it over time. 'Rose'

Eve burst through the surface, gulping the cold air into her starving lungs. Helen was nowhere in sight, and she began swimming to the water’s edge. She pulled her body up the muddy embankment and onto the grass. In her right hand was the key, in the left, a palm sized rock from inside the case. With her head up she could see lights on in her dad’s house, the kitchen, main bedroom, and the bathroom. “EVIE DON’T GO BACK” Her sweet voice still whispering, pleading.

She reached the house, the sounds of Buddy Holly's 'Peggy Sue' echoed outside. The door to the kitchen was open and Eve slid inside the house, her bare, mud-soaked feet leaving footprints on the beige tiles, step by step, closer towards Helen’s room. The door was slightly ajar, and Eve gently pushed on it. 'Where the crap is she?' The door to the bathroom was half open, the sound of the bath filling up dominated the room. Eve crept inside and stepped close to the edge of the claw foot bathtub. The pink plastic shower curtain draped loosely around it. She took another step forward. She tightened her grip on the rock and ripped back the curtain. The water was beginning to overflow, but Helen wasn’t in it.

“Great minds think alike, don’t they Evelyn” She spun around as Helen smacked a rock into her head. Eve fell onto the rim of the bathtub and within a second, Helen was holding the back of her neck, forcing her face underwater. Droplets of dark red blood dripped into the water as Eve’s struggled against Helen’s grip, thrashing her arms and legs. The sleeping pills had weakened her.

“You were supposed to die like Rose, weren’t you? Now I have to do this all over again?”

“HELLO MUMMY” Helen’s hand released Eve instantly and she turned around. In the doorway was Rose, her blonde hair stuck to her rotting, purple-grey face, wearing the white and yellow nightdress. “You’re not real, I killed you” Helen took a step back, the child corpse took a step forward. “It’s not possible!”

“That wasn't very nice of you mummy” Rose took a step forward, Helen took another step back, straight into the growing puddle of water spewing from the bath. Her feet slipped out from under her, CRACK! Helen landed headfirst on the baths edge. Blood splattered the walls and she lay still, facedown in the water.

It was over. Eve burst into a flood of tears as the image of Rose began to fade from the room. “You know where I am now Evie, come find me, bring Daddy too” And she was gone. Eve sat next to the body of her stepmother, sobbing, until finally she had the strength to go downstairs and ring her father.

The next day police divers pulled the 2 suitcases from the bottom of the lake. Eve reached into her pocket and handed the detective the key, he looked shocked but sure enough it opened. Inside lay the skeleton of a little girl 'Rose' in a white dress with yellow flowers. On her wrist, a charm bracelet with 3 of the 4 from the photo. The only one that was missing, was the Key.

The end.