The Death Seer (Skeleton Key) by Skeleton Key, Tanis Kaige Page A

bystanders as we watched it unfold.  
    A man in a cloak stands at a door. My door. It looks exactly like the wooden door I’d come in through. He puts a glass key in the lock, turns it, and passes through. There is sunlight and mowed lawns and people hugging. The man trades his cloak for jeans and a t-shirt. He is handsome—not young or old, but seemingly ageless. He walks the streets and watches and learns. He smiles.
    He is sitting in a diner talking to a waitress. She blushes and laughs at his jokes. She touches his shoulder. He touches her hand.
    They are standing at the door, embracing. She weeps. He kisses her over and over. He cups her face and kisses her deeply. He walks through the door, and she falls to her knees and cries.
    She is holding a baby. She is sitting in a hospital rocking back and forth, staring blankly ahead of her, holding a baby with glowing eyes.  
    The boy is ten. He’s screaming at his mother. The mother is crawling around on the floor shouting something about a key…about how she can’t find the key. The boy begs her to stop. He’s wearing a blindfold. He takes it off and looks at her. She meets his eyes and for a moment, they stare at each other, both faces morphed in horror. “No,” the boy whispers. “No!” He starts screaming, digging his palms into his eyes, shaking his head. The woman holds him and cries with him.
    She is lying in her bed with blood pouring out of her wrists. The boy is sobbing as he clings to her. There is a dark light forming beneath and around her. Slowly she sinks into it, vanishing from sight. The boy holds onto her, shouting. He climbs into the light and follows her.
    The man, now in his black cloak again, is looking at a candle. The flame was burning and now it’s not. It didn’t burn out. It just stopped burning. The man falls to his knees and cries.
    The man is in Suicide Swamp. He’s wandering, searching, lost. He cries her name over and over until he’s only crying.  
    The man is in Suicide Swamp. He has a long beard, now, and his eyes have bags under them. His steps are short and slow. His arms hang limp at his sides. There are salt tracks down his cheeks. He stops, looks down. His face morphs into an expression of shock and sorrow and joy all at once. He kneels in the swamp and lifts a woman out. The body jolts in his arms. It is sometimes limp and sometimes convulsing. “Isabella,” the man whispers. She doesn’t answer. He puts his hand over her heart and closes his eyes, but when nothing happens, he growls in frustration. He lifts her into his arms and begins walking.
    The man is in the cave with the candles. He has lain the woman on the floor and is kneeling next to her with the burnt out candle. He tries to light the candle with a match. He puts the lit match in the woman’s hand, closing her fingers around it, and tries to force her to light the candle. He reaches to the wall and grabs a random candle, knocking off another in his rush to light the woman’s life spark. He tries to light hers with the other candle, but fails. He drops the lit candle to the floor, stands, and paces. The two candles on the floor remain lit until his pacing causes him to pass near them. The wind from his cloak snuffs them out, first one, then the other.  
    The man is climbing the vast, red tree with the woman over his shoulder. He climbs and climbs. He shouts, “Bring her back! Please! Bring her back!” But he never reaches the branches or the white light above.
    The man is standing triumphantly in a field in front of a wooden door. He has trapped the door using spells and charms, it won’t escape him again. The woman lays twitching and unconscious off to the side. He reaches for the handle and turns it, but it doesn’t open. He tries again. Still it doesn’t open. He shakes the handle, slams his shoulder against the door, and pounds on it in rage with his fists. At last he drops his head back and lets out a bellow of rage and anguish.
    The story