The Hideaway Key

I.

Drenched in sweat, I woke with a jolt. The warm summer air seeped in through my open window. The fan by my bed had stopped running and the air had an eerie stillness to it. The shadowy shapes of my tv and dresser swam into focus as my eyes adjusted to the dark studio apartment. The miserable summer swelter had been causing rolling blackouts for the past month and a half. I glanced out the window to confirm my suspicion and not a single light was on down the entire street.

I stumbled to the kitchen to get some water; my throat dry and cottony. The dream that had startled me awake was coming back in fragments, and I strained to remember the details.

In it, I was standing at the edge of a vast field of wildflowers looking out over a gorge. I could hear water rushing somewhere below. Someone was calling my name, but their voice was faint and barely audible over the roaring waters. The wind suddenly blew cold. I looked out over the field, which was now covered in a thin frost, and crossed my arms across my chest, rubbing up and down to beat back the cold.

In the distance someone was standing in the field. It was someone I felt I knew, but they were too far away to tell who it was. I opened my mouth to yell something to the shadowy figure, but my throat filled with dozens of cotton balls choking any sound. It didn't matter.

The figure blinked out of frame and then appeared directly in front of me. I stumbled back and my right foot slipped off the cliff. Below, I saw rapids winding and jumping over boulders that jutted ominously out of the river bed and my stomach lurched. A strong, muscular hand darted out and grabbed my shirt holding me half suspended out over the gorge. On the forearm I saw a tattoo and I instantly knew who the figure was. The tattoo was of a bull, or its skull anyway. It also had a five pointed star carved into its forehead and dangling from each horn was a dream catcher, each adorned with eagle feathers. I looked into the figure's face. It was distorted, like someone had taken a graphite pencil and scribbled over it.

"Phil?" I managed to cough out, cotton balls spraying him in the face and falling to the frosty ground. He didn't respond, but when he opened his mouth a whirring sound reverberated around us. It sounded like a VHS Tape fast-forwarding in an ancient VCR. He placed an object in the front pocket of my shirt and then let me fall to the waters below.

II.

Phil's funeral was a week later; I flew back to our home-town. I don't remember packing and the airports and plane rides were a blur. I sat on the edge of my bed at the house where I grew up, right across the street from Phil's parent's place. My suit coat and dress shirt hung from the back of my bedroom door, in hopes the wrinkles would fall out. We had to leave for the funeral home five minutes ago, but I was cemented to the bed, my grief crushing. I vaguely heard someone saying my name, but didn't register where it was coming from.

"Luke." The voice louder and closer. "Luke." Closer still and with a hint of frustration. "Luke." The voice was right on top of me, but the frustration had melted into concern. I blinked and my mom's tall slender form focused into view.

"Yeah, sorry, I was zoning." I stood up and ambled toward the door.

"I noticed." She crossed her arms, her sad eyes peering right through me. "You don't have to go, you know?"

"Nah, you know that I do. Phil was my best friend and I owe it to his mom." I had removed the white dress shirt from its hanger and was slipping it on. My mom just nodded her head and headed down to the car. A man stared at me from the mirror on the back of the door, a man I didn’t recognize.

His eyes were sunken, nearly swallowed by dark bruise colored circles and he looked too thin. The dress shirt, which had been a snug, but trim fit when I bought it two weeks ago, now hung loose on this pale imitation of a man. The cheek bones seemed to jut out of his face in contrast to his gaunt cheeks. I was pretty sure if I cinched the black and purple paisley tie too tight, the man’s scrawny neck might snap and the skeleton head on top might just right roll off.

I left the tie a little loose and the top button of the shirt undone, just in case. When I reached up for my suit coat, something poked my chest from inside the left front pocket. I reached inside and my fingers closed around something cold and sharp. The ridges of the object sent a tingling, almost pain-like, sensation through my thin, nearly translucent skin.

I pulled the object out of my pocket. The thing dangled from a rusted metal chain and smelled like pennies. I remember reading somewhere that people reported strange smells right before they died. Did they smell pennies? It was possible, I couldn't be sure. Pennies made sense. My breath became labored as my pulse quickened. Maybe there would be two funerals today, I'm sure they could squeeze me in. Get that old two for one special. The world went dark.

III.

"Jesus, Luke. What the actual fu..." I couldn't hear my older brother finish his sentence because my hearing swam in and out of like a kid was messing with the volume button to my head. My mom leaned over me, her face pale and I saw my dad behind her, shaking his head and checking his watch. As the spinning room began to slow, I sat up and saw that I was still in my bedroom, the light of midday still shining through the window. I hadn't been out too long.

I was gripping something tight in my right hand, so tight that I saw a few droplets of blood plummet to the carpet below.

"Dude," my brother started in, "maybe if you ate something you wouldn't be passing out like a pussy."

"Enough." My dad grabbed the back of his coat and pulled him out into the hall. "Luke, get cleaned up and let's get going. We'll be down in the car," he said, making his way down the hall. I could hear him practically dragging my brother down the stairs, no doubt giving him hell for calling me a pussy. My brother was twenty eight, five years my senior, and still getting scolded by our father. That made me smile a little. I excused myself to the rest room and pushed my mom's hand off my forehead.

"Mom, I'm fine. Really." I started to close the bathroom door, but she stuck her hand in the frame to stop it from closing.

"You don't look fine." She didn't say anything more, just turned and walked down to the stairs. When I was sure I was alone, I loosened the grip on the metal object in my hand and dropped it onto the counter. I rinsed my hand and splashed some water on my face. I looked down at the counter and for the first time really saw what I had found in my pocket.

It was a small brass key.

IV.

Much like the plane rides a few days ago, the funeral went by in a fog. There wasn't much I remembered. I was asked to say a few words, but I don't recall what I said. I fingered the key, now placed in my pants pocket and tried to remember the last time Phil and I had seen each other, but came up blank. The viewing was open casket and the funeral home had dressed Phil in crisp black dress slacks, impossibly shiny black shoes, and a fresh pressed off white dress shirt, open at the neck and sleeves rolled up to his elbows; Phil's signature look.

Where the rest of the day passed by in a forgettable haze, the moment I saw Phil's body in the casket stuck out in vivid detail. His arms were placed across his chest, his smooth white skin visible under the open collar. The skull of the bull tattoo peeked out from under his arm, its horn wrapping around so the top shown, in stark contrast to his pale skin; a strap of leather from the hanging dreamcatcher could be also be seen. It made my heart ache to see him there and I had to turn away, tears on the brink of rupture.

V.

I got home to my apartment three days after the funeral. Weary and at the point of collapse, I fumbled with the key to open my door and at my feet I saw a small package. When I got inside, I turned the package over in my hands, but there was no return address. I threw the package on the table, determined to go to bed, but the brass key, now slung around my neck, dangling from its rusted chain, grew hot against my skin. It seemed to pull me back toward the package and when I picked it back up, the heat subsided.

I tore open the small brown package and saw a handmade box etched with the letters PJN on the top in juvenile scrawl. Philip James Novak. My pulse quickened as I set the box on my lap, admiring the simple design and running my finger over the keyhole lock.

Phil and I made these in woodshop in eighth grade. Mine was long since lost to the dumpster of time, but Phil's had clearly survived. In high school Phil had called the tiny chest his Hideaway Box and it's where items he didn't want his parents, or really anyone, to see, were stashed away. Over the years, it had housed everything from condoms to weed, to Phil's poems, which he never shared, not even with his best friend. Curiosity gnawed at me, begging me to see what was inside.

The year previous Phil had called me, upset after a huge fight with his parents. He was panicked about something they had found, something he had never meant for them to see. He begged me to come home, that he needed to get something off his chest. At the time, I was studying for a mid-term exam and had told him I would have to call later, only I never did.

Three days later, I had texted to check on him. He had responded that he was fine and that he was sorry for the panicked phone call. I realized, then, that that was the last time we talked, that the last words I said to my best friend were sent over a text. Whatever was in the box, must have something to do with that phone call. The desire to open it was gone, replaced by revulsion and guilt.

VI.

The Hideaway Box has sat, unopened, since the day it was delivered six months ago. I continue to wear the brass key, and it continues to pull me toward the box, and the closer I go, the hotter the key burns.

As I sit here now, box in my lap, amidst a field of wildflowers, the key burns with such intensity that I feel it branding my skin, the faint smell of burnt flesh wafting up. I can hear water rushing somewhere below. I imagine the box, and its contents, splintering into a thousand pieces as it dashes against the sharp rocks.

I peer out over the gorge and the wind picks up.

It’s warm and comforting against my skin.