The Skeleton's Key

Image from and story written for: "Steampunk Nauticus - Closed" 

The Skeleton's Key

         An ominous point of light could be seen in the distance, an indistinct yellow glow in an otherwise pitch black night. Oliver grasped the gold and emerald key tightly to keep his hands from shaking. A cold wind whispered at his back, weakening an already decaying resolve.

         Why am I here? he asked himself once more, taking slow, sliding steps forward, testing the ground with each sandaled foot to be sure the swampy land wouldn't give way.

         In the dark, beyond where he could see, a soft melody whispered through the air. The instrument, if there was one, was unidentifiable. Oliver could only describe the sound to himself as intoxicating.

         Oliver kept his eyes on the light in the distance. Though he took sliding step after sliding step in the marshland, he felt like he was never getting closer.

         Oliver Sebastian Chernock was an old man, a tinkerer by trade who lived outside of London all his life. He hunched down against a sudden chilly wind, and the large key he carried doubled as a cane. It was made of the purest emerald, so beautiful and bright it almost emitted a light itself. It was a foot and a half tall, but Oliver hunched low and used what support it provided.

         Oliver had one friend. An old grey cat with patchwork fur and milky yellow eyes named Apparatus. The loyal cat had long since grown tired of navigating the treacherous swamp and now perched on Oliver's shoulders, hunkering against the old man's neck for warmth.

         The tune echoed in Oliver's ears again, and he corrected his path to the left. He felt his foot slide into a particularly deep mud and he hesitated, but the melody became louder and he took the step. His foot went ankle-deep in squelching, sucking, stinking mud.

         The haunting sound grew louder. Suddenly, Oliver didn't care about the swamp, the smell, the darkness, the treacherous path he was on. He could only hear that melody, that song, calling him. Calling for his key.

         The tune suddenly had a background noise. Oliver heard a quiet clank-tick, clank-tick, and felt Apparatus shiver. Oliver heard an indecipherable, tuneless chanting as well, clank-tick, chant, clank-tick, chant, it was all to the same beat.

         "What is that, who's there?" Oliver stopped walking and squeezed the key tightly. "Who's there, I'm asking! I need to know!"

         There was silence. The chant stopped and the melody, that sweet, echoing sound that Oliver was searching for, came to a halt. Oliver would never be able to describe the reaction he had. A petrifying fear and his heart stopped. The music, the sound. It couldn't stop. It was as important to him as breathing. Oliver cried out, "No! No! I'm coming!"

         With a breath and a sigh, the melody started again, but louder, stronger, with a note of anger and command in it. Oliver moved faster, taking firm strides through the muck, heedless of any danger.

         Apparatus squawled a meow at Oliver, but the old man didn't care.

         He would find her.

         His mind went back to the midnight meeting. He was tinkering late when a woman had stepped through his shop's door. She was tall and so beautiful she defied description. He hair was long and the purest white and her eyes were the same color of green as the emerald key that she held out to Oliver.

         "Useless old man, in your useless old cottage," she said, her voice golden honey and gently melodic, "come with me, old man, find me."

         Oliver had dropped his tools, stood up, and immediately reached out for her and for the key she offered. The moment he grabbed the key, she disappeared. All that was left was a thin wisp of smoke and her echoing, singsong voice whispering, "Find me, find me."

         The key told Oliver when he should go. He didn't know how it told him, but when he held it, he knew to wait until the night when the moon was dark, and then he set out into the darkness with nothing but that key and loyal Apparatus following at his heels.

         He would find her.

         The melody became louder but the glowing light was as far and indistinct as ever. Oliver yelled again, "Where are you? I am looking, I am looking!"

         Then, he fell. His old bones creaked and something snapped and he cried out with a pitiful cry of pain. Apparatus leaped of his shoulders in time, but watched as his master fall hard down a slope and into a muddy pool. Apparatus could do nothing but stare down at him and meow pathetically, his meows sounding like a child's weak sobs.

         "Help. H-h-help," said Oliver, barely finding the breath the say the words. His body was racked with unimaginable pain.

         And Oliver knew he was dying. The old man's body was giving up, his bones tired, each ache and pain magnified to something beyond what Oliver could endure. He couldn't speak, he couldn't scream, he couldn't cry. He squeezed the key to his body, and waited for death to take him.

         The woman appeared. She glowed with white light and looked down at him with this green eyes. Though her mouth was closed, the melody was being sung by her voice.

         Behind Oliver, he could hear chanting and the clank-tick, clank-tick. It had always been there, behind him, he was just too focused on the music to listen to it. The clanking was interrupted by a loud hiss of steam.

         "Help me," gasped Oliver.

         ...die, die. Wind me up, wind me up..., the chant went. Oliver could hear it clearly.

         "Old, useless tinkerer," said the with a sad smile. "In your life you did nothing with your gift, with your mind. You cared for no one except yourself. Useless old man."

         "No," cried Oliver pathetically.

         "What inventions haunted your mind, what thoughts, what waste," said the woman. "You tinkered away, you helped no one besides yourself. You will no longer be useless."

         Oliver died. His mind and his body slipped, the pain went away until he felt nothing at all. The clanking, chanting thing behind him lifted his body from the muck, but his spirit was no longer there.

         The woman caught his spirit. The man should have died, his spirit would have gone, but he was captured. The key in his hands glowed to blinding light in a single flash and the light died, and Oliver changed. The last words he heard before the transformation were, "I am free, I am free. I am free!"

         Oliver could not speak again, except in the same repeating chant. He had the same old bones, but everything else was gone. His skin and muscles were replaced by clanking metal and steam, and his face was replaced by a blankly grinning skull. He stomped across the swamp, repeating the same chant, his spirit trapped until another was found.

         The beautiful woman shifted back into her original form, a white cat.

         Apparatus meowed and cried and watched his master. The white cat turned to look at the old cat, loyal until beyond the end. A voice drifted to Apparatus's ear. You may join him, if you wish.

         The white cat guided Oliver to his tasks, and he gathered and collected the keys as she commanded. He did not know why he did what he did, merely that he did as he was told, longing for freedom, and wondering if it was possible. His body hunched over the key he held, the key that locked him up, and someday, the key that would set him free.

. . . Only winding me up will set me free,
let me go,
let me die,
die, die.

Wind me up,
wind me up,
and you can be like me . . .