Dagger Key and Other Stories

Annie counts one packet—as stated, it contains five thousand dollars. Counting the rest will be a chore, but she’s determined not to be cheated. She counts three packets…or was it two? She’s not sure. Three, she decides. She glances over at the Germans. Selkie looks at her and smiles, then goes back to admiring the cross; she whispers to Klose. Partway through the fourth packet, Annie loses the count and has to start over. She’s muddleheaded—from the excitement, she thinks, and she tries to concentrate. Twenty, forty, sixty…sixty. She can’t recall what comes next. A wave of lightheadedness seems to lift her and she realizes that something is wrong. She’s unable to hold a thought in her head and two Selkies, both insubstantial, both wavering, are smiling at her. Klose says…Annie’s unclear as to what he says. The words reverberate, seeming to overlap. And Selkie laughs, a giddy, high-pitched cascade of musical tones that serves to destabilize Annie further. Selkie parodies a kiss, her lips making a smacking noise, and laughs again.

The fat sow is mocking her, Annie realizes, and that recognition centers her, spurs her to act. Furious, she bends down, reaching for the dagger tucked in Fredo’s boot. Blood rushes to her head. The linoleum tile of the kitchen floor confuses her. It’s too close. It takes her several seconds before she understands that she has fallen. Her eye locks on the pattern, an abstract of yellow and gray, like gray swirls of cloud in a yellow sky. She strains to move, to stand, but succeeds only in stirring, her hand scrabbling, scratching at the tiles. Poison, she thinks. They’ve poisoned her somehow…and then she remembers the kiss, Selkie’s scrupulous wiping of her mouth. Fury takes her again and she pushes up from the floor, but a foot planted between her shoulderblades flattens her. Their voices swoop and curvet above her, one high, one low, intermingling like two currents. Beneath her, gray clouds larded with white folds are racing in a yellow sky, running away toward the rim of the world, a flickering dimness toward which Annie, too, is borne…

…into an abyss

painted with demons,

like the bole of that opium pipe

Jack smoked—

he pointed them out to her.

This, the Demon of Black Rope Hell,

And this one,

the Demon of Unsavory Appetites.

You’d think he’d be fatter, wouldn’t you?

And here be

the Demon of Lost Hope,

my favorite. How twisted and pale he is!

An eye peering

from each of the hundred sores

spotting his sour flesh. Pity the sinner

who falls to him…

Jack!

Those demons now

reaching out for her…

…and on the far side of that dimness, after a night of undetermined length, Annie discovers the clouds are no longer racing, the yellow sky is once again a floor, the demons stoppered up in their bottle. She comes to her knees, disoriented, head pounding, and becomes aware of the silence in the bungalow. She struggles to her feet, grabbing the counter for support, and makes her way to the bedroom. The closet’s empty, all the hangers unused. Anger and distress fuel her. She’s been dishonored, cheated, robbed of the pittance for which she sold the cross, and…As her head clears, her intent sharpens and she draws her dagger, holds it by her side as she goes out into the night. The moon hangs an insanely jolly, silver Jack o’ Lantern grin amid countless stars and the beach gleams white, its silicates sparkling. No one is about. The cabin cruiser is gone. Annie walks to the end of the pier, gazing across the glittering sea toward Honduras. That was their plan: Honduras. But common sense tells her that they have changed their plan. They would choose to return to Mexico with their treasure, then to Germany. They’ll be west of Cay Cuchillo, and not far. Not nearly far enough. An hour or two, no more.

“Stand easy!”

The watchman, coming along the pier, his antique rifle at the ready, shirttails belling in the breeze.

“That you, Fredo? What you doing here so late?”

In his fifties, already an old man from hard work and drink, the watchman’s grizzled face relaxes from its stern expression as he approaches. An unsteadiness in his step, rum on his breath, he lowers the rifle. Beyond, the shadowy outline of his dory notches the beach.

“You been drinking?” he asks. “You such an early riser, I expect you must be drinking, you out this late.”

“Which way did the Germans sail?” she asks.

“The Germans?”

“The cabin cruiser,” Annie says. “A man and a woman.”

“Oh, yeah. Now that a peculiar thing. They claim they off to Puerto Cortez, but far as I can tell, they headed for the Chinchorro Bank. They all turned around.” A chuckle. “Hope they knows what they doing. A mon can come quickly to grief out there.” He lays his hand on Annie’s shoulder. “Let’s have us a drink, Fredo. I got a bottle under my chair.”