Dagger Key and Other Stories

by Lucius Shepard

  “Closer? We’ve been together for months,” you say. “What’s it going to take?”

  “You don’t think we can be closer? I do, I believe we’ve got a miles to go.”

  The way she deflects your question with half a compliment, half a criticism, implying that the relationship has room to grow and at the same time telling you it’s imperfect—you understand she has the ability to outflank you, that she can switch subjects or turn a conversation into a guilt trip, and you’ll fall into her trap every time. It make you crazy. She plays this game so much better than you, it would be pointless to keep pressing her. But you press her anyway and, a few weeks before Thanksgiving, exasperated, she says, “Let’s get through the holidays, all right? Then we’ll have a talk.”

  You’re not sure what’s going to be so difficult about getting through the holidays, since they’re the same for her as other days—she attends neither parties nor religious services, and invites no one over to the house. Yet you don’t care. At least there’s a firm date set for clearing up the mystery.

  Either you’re crippled, lying in Minz’s bed, Apartment 1F, staring at the aquarium, empty of water, or you’re dreaming that you’re crippled—whichever, it’s more vivid than you want it to be. Your vision is blurry and your thoughts are muddled by meds that aren’t doing their job. The least movement triggers intense pain in your lower back; your spine feels brittle. Abi, naked and hugely pregnant, is standing next to the bed. You call out to her—you’re dying of thirst, you require different meds—but she doesn’t even twitch. She’s a lifelike statue to which a neatly trimmed strip of pubic hair, nipple rings and a genital piercing, glinting silver in its rosy cleft, have been applied. Hands resting on her swollen belly, staring into nowhere. Yet despite her silence and immobility, she seems to have a more genuine reality than the rest of the room. She dims and brightens as if, somewhere out of view, thick curtains are blowing in and out, each billow altering the light. Her breasts, delicately clawed by stretch marks, milk-heavy, nipples distended, areola darkened and warped into oval irregularities, seem more the emblem of her pregnancy than her belly. Their taut skin has a waxy sheen. You imagine a bowlful of them, Still Life With Humongous Tits, on the night table by the bed, placed there for your nourishment, like those wax confections from childhood made to resemble pop bottles and holding flavored syrup.

  You gaze at the ceiling, seeking solace in the patterns that melt up from the wormy patterns of paint, but they yield a medieval imagery that’s not in the least consoling: a solitary hooded rider shouldering a scythe, mounted on a skeleton horse; a reclining giant, propped on his side, examining a gaping wound in his belly from which tiny men and women dressed in medieval fashion are escaping; a man with a stylized crescent moon for a head and a red lolling tongue. You close your eyes, hoping for someone to come, and before long two men in purple hooded sweatshirts wheel a big-screen TV into the room, plug it in, and toss the remote on the bed. You assume them to be Mike and Rem, Abi’s friends, but you’re frightened of them. They’re much taller than you thought, both almost seven feet, and their faces are shadowed, indistinct…and that’s not a product of your blurry vision. It’s as if their features are being manufactured out of the dark stuff that’s in flux beneath their hoods. Once they finish with the TV, they lift Abi—she remains rigid, hands clamped onto her belly, legs straight, like a mannequin—and stand her next to the aquarium. One presses a spot on the small of her back and her belly opens like a Chinese puzzle, two panels with interlocking teeth that fit together perfectly, their joints invisible to the eye. Inside is a many-galloned bottle full of greenish water. This they remove and empty into the aquarium; they switch on the pump. Then they close up Abi’s belly and carry her into the front room, handling her more easily now that she’s lighter. You’ve watched all this transpire in a state of shock, but now, horrified, you struggle to get to your feet. That failing, you rack your brain for a means of escape. After a while, having nothing better to do, you hit the power button on the remote.

  The men bring you food. Cookies, potato chips, sandwiches, ice cream. They also bring meds and provide you with a wheelchair. Desperation fades beneath an onslaught of calories, drugs, and soap operas. Now and then you try to come up with a plan, but you can’t walk and the men, who station themselves in the front room, check on you frequently, so you can’t shout or wave out a window or toss down messages into the parking lot. You begin to tell time by what’s on TV. It’s half past The Amazing Race or a quarter to the Guiding Light. You drowse, eat, fall asleep watching a movie on the SciFi Channel, eat, wake to Sportscenter, develop an interest in Law and Order reruns, in celebrity. You think Oprah’s a beast no matter how many pounds she loses; and you decide that although Donald Trump serves the Evil One, he’s just an enormously powerful nerd; you hope the blond girl wins on American Idol and you can’t wait for the new season of Battlestar Galactica. You speculate that it might be possible to conduct a conversation upon any subject by limiting yourself to the career of John Travolta as a metaphorical construction. The only things that undergo a change in your environment are your weight—you’re getting fat—and the aquarium, in which a number of white sporelike things, perhaps a hundred of them, are floating.

  The appearance of the spores, if that’s what they are, causes a renewal of desperation. Since they were bred in water removed from Abi’s belly, you’re forced to accept that they well may be her children…and yours. This notion kindles dread in you and, when next they bring food, you beg one of the men for help. His head swivels toward you and for an instant the lineaments of a disfigured face surface from the turbulent flow of dark matter. He makes a noise like static heard underwater, a faint seething, and leaves you quaking and alone amid a pile of fried fruit pies and doughnuts and potato chips…Maui Sweet Onion chips, you see on picking up the bag. Excellent!

  Your fear abates the next day, your attention captivated by an X-Files marathon, and it abates still more when you realize that the number of spores has diminished. Some of them are turning into tadpoles that eat the remaining spores. Once the spores are gone, a process that occupies about two weeks, the tadpoles begin to eat each other, until finally a single white fish, the exact shade of white as Abi’s skin, circulates in the tank. Mike and Rem feed it daily and it grows fatter and more active while you fatten and grow sluggish. You become accustomed to its presence. That it may be your child amuses you. Boy or girl?, you wonder. You decide it’s a boy and name your son Gerald. Despite your amusement, there’s a horrific tinge to these thoughts, but the men have increased the strength of your meds and you can’t take anything seriously.

  You sleep most of the days, waked by an internal alarm clock in time to catch your favorite shows, and when you manage to think at all, you think about Abi. You miss her. Not the inhuman Abi, the vessel you filled, but the Abi you imagined her to be. You miss her so very much that you weep at the slightest emotional cue. You remember the good times, kissing in the rain, making love, listening to her disparage diners in restaurants, passers-by, people on TV…you even miss the massage technique that left you a cripple. You take to watching the Lifetime Movie Channel because it enlists these same emotions, and you sob in sympathy with the plight of battered wives, rape victims, girls on the run from lustful dads, women with deceitful lovers and abducted children.

  One morning you wake to discover that Gerald’s not in his tank. A large damp spot stains the carpeting beneath the tank, and a trail of wetness leads toward the foot of your bed. You try to sit up, wanting to learn if Gerald’s still alive, but Mike and Rem have increased your meds again—you can barely lift your head. You shout out to them, you want them to save Gerald, to restore him to the tank, but no one responds. They haven’t been in to check on you for two days now and Gerald must be starving. No wonder he hurled himself onto the floor. The bedspread tightens convulsively down by your feet, as if it’s being tugged, and the next thing you know, Gerald heaves up onto the bottom of the bed. His f
ins have developed into primitive hands, and he’s half-wriggling, half-hauling himself along, moving past your ankle. He’s even bigger than you thought, he must weigh nearly three pounds. His face is an obscene caricature of the human, a squashed, round, dolorous face gashed by a wide mouth that sports rows of barracuda-like teeth. A chill apprehension steals over you. With another heave, he succeeds in flopping up onto your pelvis, where he snoots at the spread overlying your genitals. His glabrous skin shows a tracery of blue subcutaneous veins, like Abi’s breasts. He has your eyes…

  As absurd as this nightmare is, as explicable in terms of its imagery, it unnerves you. You can’t get it out of your head. The next morning, newly suspicious, you go through Abi’s address book and copy down the names of her male clients. It’s not that you believe she intends you harm, you tell yourself. You’re the one with a problem. It’s your ambivalence toward her that’s causing you to pursue these fantasies. You did the same thing more-or-less with Carole, suspecting her of cheating on you, then dumping her before she could. By making a thorough investigation, you’re certain you’ll be able to defuse your suspicions and defang your nightmares.

  You dedicate the weeks after Thanksgiving to checking out Abi’s clients. Your master’s thesis is circling the drain, but you hope that by cutting classes following a vacation holiday, you can build the grounds for an excuse, an emotional crisis, illness in the family, something, and perhaps your committee will be lenient. You don’t much care one way or the other, though. The relationship is what’s important. Five of Abi’s clients have moved away, including Phil Minz. With the others, you pretend to be taking a survey for a study designed to improve handicapped services. Those you interview during the first week have all been injured prior to meeting Abi and have discernable reasons for their disability, whether disease or accident or congenital defect. Your investigation doesn’t seem to be leading anywhere and you think you must be coming down with something. Your energy’s depleted, you’re running a mild fever, and you’re having trouble concentrating. To top things off, Reiner has re-entered your life, popping up here and there in the U District and shouting profane threats then hurrying away. Two or three more days, you decide. After that, you’ll pack it in.

  On Tuesday of the second week, you interview one Nathan Sessions, a muscular black guy with a spinal injury who’s three years older than you. He opens the door wearing gym shorts and a gray T-shirt, a pair of dumbbells resting on his lap, and asks if you would mind talking in his bedroom? He’s been exercising and would like to lie down. As he precedes you in his wheelchair, you observe a backwards 7 tattooed at the base of his neck and, when you enter the bedroom, you see an aquarium set on a table, almost obscured behind stacks of books, pump gurgling merrily. No fish. Books are scattered about the room, on the floor, in chairs. The pile on the chair beside the bed, which you clear in order to sit, consists of works treating with the nature of time. A sheet of paper falls out of one; on it, the word “Bottom” and, depended beneath it, a list of numbers that appear to be longitudes and latitudes. You ask him about it, and he takes the paper, peers at it, shakes his head, and says, “I had a geography class last semester. Must be some old notes or something.”

  With practiced agility and a notable lack of effort, Sessions transitions between the chair and his bed, settles himself, and cheerfully tells you to fire away. After a battery of inessential questions, you ask how he came by his disability. He says it’s a degenerative condition that relates to an injury he suffered on the wrestling team back in high school, and was later exacerbated when he was “messing around.” His attitude strikes you as buoyant and energized—you remark that he seems extraordinarily well-adjusted compared to others you’ve interviewed.

  “Why shouldn’t I be?” he says. “I’m more alive now than I ever was. I can’t begin to tell you how much my life’s improved.”

  “What do you mean? How’s it improved?”

  “Before I was paralyzed, I was bored with my life…though I didn’t understand it that way. Not so I could say it. I wasn’t interested in the world, except for the pleasure it could give me. Now I’m interested in things. Passionately interested. There’s not enough time in the day. I suppose my attitude’s partly compensatory. I’m determined not to get depressed.”

  This seems right out of the Abimagique textbook of new age morality, and you wonder if Sessions actually feels that way or if he’s been drinking the Kool Aid. You wonder also if that’s a meaningful distinction.

  “There must be some things you miss,” you say.

  “If I sit and think about it…sure. I don’t like being in crowds anymore. Can’t see over people. Things like that. But I don’t worry about that shit. I’ve got too much else going on.”

  Employing as much sensitivity as possible, you ask about sex.

  Sessions fold his arms and gives you a cool stare. “Isn’t that outside the scope of your survey?”

  “Not really. I’m hoping to get a complete profile on everyone I interview. That way, when I analyze it, I’ll be dealing with more than just statistics. If you prefer not to answer…”

  “No, it’s fine. I’m fully functional.”

  You pretend to make a note. “Isn’t that unusual with spinal injuries?”

  Sessions starts to respond, pauses, and then says, “My massage therapist, she…”

  It seems that he’s debating whether or not he wants to touch upon the subject of his therapist. You wait for him to continue.

  “Okay,” says Sessions. “My therapist…we had a thing, you know. She did stuff to my body, man, that you wouldn’t believe. With her knowledge of muscles and the chakras, you know. She really got me off. Especially when she did this thing with my back. It was incredible. So one morning after we had sex, I woke up with bad pain in my back and I couldn’t move my legs. My doctor said it would have happened eventually, anyway. But what she did probably accelerated the deterioration. I was pissed, man. Full of negativity. But Abi, my therapist, she wouldn’t let me cop an attitude. She brought me back physically and mentally. She helped me with my diet, my rehab.”

  “She must have had a lot of guilt.”

  “With Abi…she’s not easy to figure out. But I never tripped on her about what happened, you know. I was the one begging her to do her thing, so it’s on me.”

  It appears that Sessions has said all he intends to about the subject and you’re having difficulty framing a question that will start him up again, one that won’t give away your position—you’re not sure about Sessions’s disposition toward Abi. It’s possible he’s her complicitor, though to think that would be quintessential paranoia, and the question arises, complicit in what?

  “That’s a cool tattoo on your neck,” you say. “The backwards seven.”

  “It not a seven, it’s a letter in the Hebrew alphabet. I had it done when I was with Abi. She’s got one like it.”

  “Does it stand for anything?”

  “It’s got something to do with angels.” Sessions shifts uneasily, flicks a glance at the door, as if expecting someone.

  “Seems like this woman’s been a big influence on every part of your life.”

  “Oh, yeah. Abi’s unique. If I told you some of the stuff she can do…Man!”

  “Like for instance?”

  “That’s okay,” says Sessions. “You can live without hearing it. I’ll tell you this much. She made me realize that we can change our destinies. Abi’s all about destiny. Hers, mine…everyone’s. She’s trying to change the world, and I think she just might do it.”

  “How’s she going to change it?”

  “By changing the planet’s dharma.”

  It’s a rote answer, glibly stated, and you don’t know how to respond; you shuffle your papers, pretending to be searching for something. “So you’re not with her anymore?”

  “We’re doing a project together, but we’re not…like we were.” A distracted expression comes over Sessions’s face. “Listen, I need to get work
ing here.”

  “You mean work on the project?” Grasping at straws, you pick up one of the books you cleared off the seat. “Does it have anything to do with time?”

  Sessions swings himself back into his chair and precedes you toward the door, obviously eager to have you gone. “That’s right, man. There’s never enough of it. We need to make some more.”

  The Hebrew letter tattooed on Sessions’s neck and Abi’s thigh is Chof. As far as you can determine, there’s no connection whatsoever between this letter and the various hierarchies of angels, but while searching the internet for such a connection, you happen across a webpage entitled Fallen Angels, a section devoted to a group of such angels known as the Grigori, also known as the Watchers. According to the page, they looked like men, only larger, and were appointed by God to be the shepherds of mankind, there to instruct and lend a helping hand when necessary, but never to interfere in the course of human development. Sort of like that Federation rule, the Prime Directive, that Captain Kirk used to break every other episode of Star Trek. The Grigori, too, broke the Prime Directive by teaching mankind the forbidden sciences of astrology, divination, herb craft, and magic (the very disciplines, you note, in which Abi claims proficiency). To compound their sin, they began to lust after human women, to cohabit and have children with them. For this, they were banished from Heaven. Two of the princes of the Grigori were the angels Michael and Remiel.