The Key

30 Days of Fright Writing Challenge: Day 3 The Locked Room

She kept the key around her neck at all times. Even when she bathed, it hung heavy. The string that it was tied with was layered and tarnished, worn, old. Its frayed strands waved as if to say they’ve lived a life. Because they have.

This key was important. The familiar weight of it, pressed against the collarbone, hummed in presence.

It held a generational history poured into one object.

Once, she thought she had lost it. Panic slapped her hard, on repeat. She traced her steps backward until she found it next to her pillow.

She let a long, heavy breath break—release and relief shaking hands.

What was behind the door? She didn’t know. She was told to never open it unless her life depended on it. Her mother’s exact words.

Maybe she’d never have to open it, she thought hopefully. Maybe she would just always wear it. Maybe she would pass it down to her daughter or son, and they too would always wear it, never having to open it for themselves.

The idea of one day having to use it buried her in dread, because she knew. Deep down, she knew that’s not how life flows.

It was still dark—2 a.m. on a Wednesday—when she heard a knock on the front door. On the other side stood a well-dressed gentleman in a long, black-rimmed hat. He smiled, but his smile was cold and never quite reached his eyes. They hung under his bushy eyebrows like two dead coals—no smolder. He was dressed in dark green—emerald and evergreen mixed together at the trim. His black hat stood out in contrast. He was polite, introduced himself as Mr. Hall. Nobody she had met before, but handsome in a contained kind of way. He inquired about her well-being—polite, going through the motions. She obliged—also polite, also inquiring about his—both going through society’s little rituals.

⸻

Once inside, she offered tea. Mr. Hall accepted—he preferred green, which was on theme. Everything about him was layered in green. Even his voice sounded like ivy creeping.

The Woodworm family, her family dealt in gold. They mined it, traded it, sculpted it, and sold it. It’s where their wealth came from—over three generations. Her mother often said that she had a kind nature, not built for the heavy business of gold.

There are clear moments in life when her mother’s voice rings loudest. This was one of them. She heard her words echo.

“Where is she?” he said quietly, breaking her reverie. The words released heavy from his chest.

She stared, perplexed.

He repeated the question, louder.

Where is she?!

Anger flared up. His face no longer passive, but flickering with emotion.

A memory danced through. Her, age 5 maybe 6, telling her mother she heard cries from the basement.

Her mother assured her she had an active imagination. “Old houses have their noisy charms, cost of timelessness I’m afraid.”

Her mother always offered the cost of passive things.

“Everything has a cost.” Her mother’s words returned.

Wh—who!? She choked.

My wife. He looked through her, his sadness draped around him like a dark cloak.

The velvet green tones shifted. His head hung in visible grief, and then gave way to a giant white snake. The man was gone; the snake hung in the same sadness.

She screamed. Panicked. Screamed again—shock shooting through her like a silver bullet. She froze, petrified.

It took her one blink and two double takes, and the man was back—green layers shimmering.

Had she imagined it? She blinked hard, fast.

The shimmer danced again.

No. She had not, she realized—her eyes darting rapidly in shock.

He came looking for his wife, the Naga. It had been 300 years since he last saw her—pressed under the jungle canopy, shimmering silver in the moonlight. Three hundred years of wandering, maintaining shape, searching.

New York, Chicago, London, Istanbul. All dead ends, all traces gone. “Until about a month ago,” he said.

“When I crossed paths with the Woodworm Family business.”

“The mention of gold struck me. It wasn’t the fact that your family dealt in gold—it was how long they’d been dealing in it,” he continued.

“A simple conversation with a friend over dinner was all it took. And I knew,” he said.

She didn’t understand. It must have showed on her face, because Mr. Hall elaborated.

“I knew she was here,” he said.

Mr. Hall smiled and there was a glow that flared in his eyes. It seemed out of character.

What does her family’s business have to do with his missing wife? She asked herself.

“I looked into it. Your family grew bananas.

Around 300 years ago, when my wife went missing, your ancestor found a large gold meteorite, or so he claimed, but that’s just the story he told to explain his sudden luck, but either way it changed everything.” He continued, building pace.

She nodded, familiar with the story.

Her father’s great-great-great-grandfather was the one who found it. And overnight, their banana farm was replaced with the weight of that gold rock.

“We were happy for over 800 years. We lived as serpents in the jungle, worshipped as gods for a time. We were happy.” Mr. Hall said, lost in memory.

He became angry again.

“We were content in the jungle, we never went to the towns. We stayed away. We just wanted to be left alone.” He whispered.

Nervous tension hung in the air, her hand instinctively moved to her collar and looped lovingly around the smooth gold of the key. A tension release totem or a nervous tick. Her fingers thumbed the metal like a long lost lover. The air softened and released, giving a little under the weight of the conversation.

She was still partly in shock, but it was pushed down for the grandeur of the story that was unfolding.

The night commenced in a strange sequence. A knock on the door in the middle of the night—a stranger on the other side. The stranger turned into a giant white serpent, then back into a man. Told her that her family kidnapped his wife 300 years ago because she shed gold skin.

The Naga.

Shape-shifter.

There was no meteorite. Only his wife—discovered by her greedy ancestor and plucked into confinement to produce gold.

She blinked. She didn’t know if she was dreaming, going crazy, or both.

She started to sweat. The beads forming on her skin like thick honey drops. Drip, drip, drip, pooling at her feet. Not a dream, maybe a nightmare? Or gas leak.

Where was this going? She thought.

Nowhere she wanted to be.

She looked at the door then at Mr. Hall. A bird caught in a corner, with nowhere to go. Her heart rate quickened. He noticed but pretended not to.

Mr. Hall’s face rippled. Shifting. Smooth scales glimmered on his skin. Then he stabilized.

“I just want her back,” he whispered.

She stood, unsure of what was expected of her.

Mr. Hall stared at the key around her throat. “She’s here,” he repeated.

She nodded. Understanding now what secret the door kept.

Her family history flashed through her mind darker now. Rotten.

She buckled, the tension in her neck popping, nodding again she gestured towards the hall.

“She’s downstairs,” she said.

Mr. Hall studied her, he could smell the fear brewing in her sweat. Slightly foul, slightly sweet.

He could taste that sweetness sliding down his throat like all those times before.

They made their way to the hall and down the stairs to the level below. She walked in front, he behind her until they stood at the door.

She took a long breath, longer exhale. Her family’s legacy, their dark secret laid bare.

Guilt crawled in her belly and made a home.

How had her mother known about this and allowed it? Her mother the one who always looked for justice in things. Who hated corrupt systems, and voiced her views without hesitation.

She must have known, she thought.

Her mother always made great pains to stop her from going near that door. Even as a child playing in the corridors. Mother made it clear, “never play near that door, and never under any circumstances, no matter what, try to open it,” she would tell her over and over.

Drilled in. Understood. Respected.

So she must have known.

Today it was all coming to a close. A lifelong mystery stripped bare in one night. A night of revelations, but maybe still possibly she was dreaming?

Yes she thought, this was definitely a strange dream. There’s no way her mother would have allowed this to go on.

Insanity is a slip not a slide, and she was clearly under the thrall of a dream… or at the very least a gas leak.

Yes, that’s it, a gas leak she rationalized.

After her mother passed 8 years ago, life took on a shallow routine. Devoid of human contact, by design, by want for peace. Simple.

Her hands shook. Her heart trembled in her chest. She slid the key into the worn rusted lock. There were cobwebs around the frame. Soft, sticky. Little spiders fled as she broke through.

She was going to play out this hallucination to the end, just to prove her mother would never participate in this.

This was the right thing to do, she thought as she pushed the door, the dust stirring. The door creaked, the sound stretching, then silence.

This is probably just a storage room. Full of old moldy furniture, she reasoned. But the thought sounded desperate even to her.

Mr. Hall peered behind her eagerly.

Inside movement stirred. A soft flutter. She stood at the entrance, Mr. Hall behind her, both gazing through each corner. Not sure what they would find.

The room was gold, shimmering, dancing. Gold.

And she knew in that moment that he was telling the truth and this was no dream. No gas leak.

Her mother’s image shifted. No longer noble, no longer just.

Ethereal skin, light, like paper. It littered the floor in a deep yellow hue, a soft glow. It seemed to hum with energy. A biological transmutation. Gold was just the byproduct. Useless to the Naga.

A waxy smell teased, familiar and not at the same time. She peered, her eyes scanning the room intently.

This whole time, this room was beneath her feet, she thought.

The gold skin was everywhere, so layered and dense that it was hard to see anything else inside the room. She could barely make out a bed, a table, and a figure hunched in the shadows, unmoving. Draped against the wall.

“Selene, my love, my sarpa,” he whispered… as he rushed over to her.

Eager. Desperate.

His arms wrapped around her haunched frame. The bones jutting out from under thin skin. Her hair cascaded down her front, gray and flowing. Selene looked up, shaking, stumbled, landed in his arms.

Her eyes fluttered with recognition staring wide-eyed at Mr. Hall.

“I found you,” he murmured stroking her hair lovingly.

She stared too, transfixed by the sad exchange.

Selene spoke, her voice raspy and frail. “It has been so… long.. my love.”

Mr. Hall nodded, “I never stopped searching for you, never.”

Selene looked so frail and small in his arms, starved.

He soothed her, whispered reassurances. Hummed. And then, his words became strange, unfamiliar, ancient. She didn’t understand but his wife did, who nodded weakly, but hesitated.

“You have to… or you’ll die, and I can’t lose you now that I’ve found you. I won’t,” he said. Determined.

Selene shifted, her thin bony frame shimmering from flesh to bony scale but barely, pale as moonlight. Sad. Emaciated. Hungry.

She shrank, whimpered before the giant gaunt snake now standing before her, terrified. Even more so than the first time.

And in that moment she understood… when greed becomes legacy, the weight of gold becomes too heavy to hold.

Selene rose, her eyes glowing, flesh traded for scales, giant head skimming the ceiling. Mr. Hall stepped aside, turned to watch as her jaws widened and clamped around the woman’s small trembling frame, hand still clutching key. She gasped, but it was over in a flash. Next came the sound of her body slowly being pulled in. A slow endless drag. And then it was over. Silence.

Selene shifted back, gray hair turning black. Her bones no longer showing, the old woman gone. Instead a beautiful woman stood. Ageless.