Chapter 515

The old house groaned. Dust motes danced in the weak sunlight filtering through the grimy windows. Birgitte, at sixty-two, her face a map of wrinkles and worries, adjusted her glasses.

Her back ached, and her knees protested as she knelt, the key, she just needed the key. Where was the key?

She sighed, a dry, rustling sound, and tugged at a loose floorboard. Empty space and spiders. Another wasted check, that makes 36 wasted searches.

She needed it. They needed it. All of it depended on the stupid closet and its stupid key. The world itself felt brittle, cracking at its edges. She could feel it, the thrum of unease in her bones.

"Anything, Birgitte?" Jens called from the next room, his voice rough with fatigue, or fear, or maybe just tiredness. His age matched hers and worry was on his brow.

"Nothing, still nothing." she called back, her own voice thin and tired and starting to crack.

They had gone through the attic twice. Basement? Four times over. Under floorboards, within walls, the garden shed—all emptied of possibility. There had to be somewhere the little bit of metal lay hidden. This whole house has been torn asunder now and for what?

This place—her childhood home—now seemed foreign, twisted. Like a bad dream one couldn't wake from. She had known this building intimately for decades, inside and out but now, that wasn't enough, nowhere near. The place was taunting them both now.

"Maybe it's a sign, this key?" Jens said when he joined her back. "Maybe it isn't meant to be opened?"

Birgitte stared at the empty space beneath the boards. "It has to be." she said firmly and maybe a little crazy, they knew what was happening on the outside, and they needed to end it quickly. The key had to be found, and this had to stop. She moved into another room.

The wallpaper peeled like sunburnt skin in the next room. The scent of old glue and forgotten lives stung her nose. It seemed that some lives, especially those lived within these walls had failed greatly, were wasted entirely.

The house was an ancient beast and seemed to be holding the key within, teasing, tormenting, slowly drowning Birgitte's hope. Like that house never ever wants to be saved, even if its saving, meant the salvation of all the worlds.

Jens started on the pantry again, emptying cans and jars, his motions precise yet frantic, searching all of it like he'd gone insane or at least had no hope and nothing to lose anymore, so he should just tear through it. Each small clang sounded sharp in the unnatural quiet, an accusation.

"This whole thing, what did we do wrong? what makes it happen?" He spat as he chucked another useless bag of tea, frustration and fear, thick in the air and his voice.

"We trusted the old ones," she responded her gaze fixated at an odd detail in the corner. A shadow maybe. "We didn't think. We were fools." Maybe. But they couldn't fail the ones after. There must have been something they could do.

He just huffed at the idea, and tossed aside an old book and kept moving cans in anger, the world outside slowly closing in, while this man just moved tomato sauce around in fury. What madness.

The grandfather clock in the hall ticked with an unnerving, slow beat. Each tick felt like a countdown to an oblivion they couldn't even fathom. They didn't deserve this. Birgitte felt her skin crawl and she knew, and it wasn't for some stupid cosmic thing, but the real evil of the room they occupied.

They weren't looking for just a key anymore, the two of them knew, but instead, an answer and a way to survive the end of their lives. So maybe a key wasn't so bad. At least they would have something to look for instead of this creeping void.

Birgitte touched the cold glass of an old framed photograph, fingers tracing the blurry image of her family, a time before. Happy faces that seem like another life entirely. And a deep cold hole filled her chest, of regret of missed time and opportunity. What use would all her life experiences be when the world falls down around her.

"Remember Mette?" she said, voice low, the memories like sand escaping through her fingers, and Jens turned to face her. She knew exactly what image filled his mind just then. Mette. Young, bright and hopeful just like the future was back then. "She was always putting things in odd places."

His head bobbed at her point and slowly at first his shoulders fell. And slowly they started looking more thoroughly, carefully searching for hidden drawers or compartments, hidden anything really, but nothing showed.

It felt like something was actively playing a joke with them. Something cold. Unfeeling. A twisted puppet show set out only to cause terror and a grim amusement.

Jens checked inside a ceramic vase. Empty. He went through the pile of mail in the sitting room. Still nothing, all old magazines from thirty years before. Each unsuccessful try was taking another ounce of her being away and her old heart felt so so heavy.

Hours turned into an endless repetition of frantic searches. They pulled books off shelves, shook out old rugs, tapped on every single inch of wall in each room and not a sound of a secret opening. It all sounded dead, void.

The late afternoon light slanted into the house and dust motes appeared brighter, making everything seem more frail, like this whole thing was some bad and tired cartoon of the actual things, only the consequences, those where oh so real. She had already started to hear it in the voices on the outside and had become accustomed to that quiet.

"We have to accept, we cannot, Birgitte," Jens spoke now and her insides quivered with the dread his words brought on. All hope has already left this home a long while back she supposed. "It's done. Done."

She went quiet. Refused. Something snapped. A cold and icy wave swept through Birgitte's body. He should keep on going she thought but no point in shouting now. But now she found herself pulling and clawing more violently through old clothes, pushing away her doubts and any sensible notion.

Birgitte found herself back in her bedroom from a long long time ago, the closet door stood uncomfortably open and she took another long and careful at every crevice there. The shadows from outside started to become more elongated as time slipped past them both, slowly, surely but quickly now. She heard them screaming, heard them crying for the world around her, and they'd all have the same story pretty soon.

"Maybe…maybe I should have gone before." Jens spoke more to the floor than her, like he has already fallen to another dimension and maybe it was better. Maybe he deserved that. Birgitte, with coldness settled in her stomach now turned to her, eyes full of nothing anymore and just that ice, deep down to her soul.

"Go." was all she offered. But he stayed and stood there, unmoving in this whole sick puppet show and watched as her anger, grief, the end, settled. All had gathered right here within this little house and Birgitte wasn't ready.

The clock struck eight and the noise came, a low hum that came through the walls, through the air and from all around. Birgitte could hear a slow dragging outside. And as it pulled nearer to this doomed building she noticed something inside. Inside herself. Something sharp and biting within.

"Not today," she muttered to no one at all, running her fingers down the old wooden shelf that was fixed on to the bedroom wall, right in between where her trophies should've stood and where she kept all those toys they threw around when they were younger, those happy, young times from long long ago. Her mind buzzed with something just behind what her hands could feel.

Jens took a hesitant step toward her. "What is it?"

She reached up and ran her finger against an odd marking on the underside of the shelf, where the shelf had once been connected to its wooden stand on the walls, no one in all this world would look there. But her mind? It saw the difference, felt it before her hand did.

"There." Birgitte whispered and her body started to tremble slightly at her small victory, right before everything fell apart at the end. "Right there."

It was smaller than they had pictured, more ordinary but very much, it was the thing that caused it all and with that thought she moved it around, her heart filling her with an equal amount of joy and pure and utter despair. With a satisfying click, a tiny, rectangular section of the wood came loose and then she saw it. A small golden key with a twisted design, it shone back in that small dimly lit bedroom with what seemed an unholy glint.

They all saw and there where cheers to their name out there, hope started to flood their air but inside, the only emotion left within her, was pure terror. It'd be too late and with each moment her victory slipped away like so much water.

She finally had the damn thing but she also knew what was going on outside. She saw her reflection in the key, those aged and worry-filled eyes looking back at her and then past, right to the doom they'd finally invited into the old house and she knew. They've already failed long long ago, and this would be only a little step and that's all.

Her hand grasped it and as her old, sore fingers came over it and took control. The light of the small key intensified, pushing out the dark corners of her old bedroom, pushing it all into submission right before they came and grabbed her. Her hands went still at that final click sound of the golden key entering the lock.

"Open it, Birgitte!" Jens yelled.

But that scream didn't matter much at all when compared to what happened to her next. Something wrapped around her arm and a cold so bone chilling washed through her veins at it held her tight, forcing her to go deeper in with it. It squeezed the key into the lock further.

She saw an opening inside herself, another door inside. Another passage right between what was here and not, there. Where everything screamed. Her face went through so many faces, young then old then screaming before it set into a frozen mask, where a tear seemed to get frozen into a diamond and in it you could almost see what would happen. It happened to the others after. So it did.

Jens fell back as he watched what used to be his wife became something other and all too quick as he was swept into its reach before the new form ripped though all the other houses like paper, one by one.

And when the first house, the very first to go, turned to nothing and into just some scattered memory and nothing else. Birgitte went as well. Her mind was lost in that small flicker where she knew and finally remembered but for an awful and excruciating amount of time. But at least. The house finally gave them what they asked for, no?