Amorous Goods: Carter's Key

This is my entry for "Amorous Goods, Season 04" Author Challenge. Thanks to jaF0 for organizing this one. The old Friday the 13th TV series was one of my favorites growing up, part of a huge block of syndicated sci-fi and horror shows that ran on Saturday night in the D/FW area. It's been a lot of fun to write something in that vein.

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Prologue:

A lifelong collector of goods and objects from far and wide has passed and left the entire collection and the business built around them to the only remaining relative, a niece on a career path of her own. Vikki has taken on the task of administering the estate and liquidating the business and collection. However, she has come to find out that many of the goods have been cursed or enchanted with amorous powers that affect those who encounter them. These are the stories of some of those encounters with objects found at Amorous Goods.

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The shopkeep reminded me of my grandfather. "Tell me about her." He topped off my tea, then sat back in his overstuffed chair.

I hesitated; telling this story had never caused me anything but heartache. "... I met her when we were fourteen years old. She had just moved to town; her dad got a new job, and the family moved during the middle of the school year. Something about her... I don't know. I don't believe in love at first sight, but I found her compelling in a way I just don't have words for.

"I mean, she was cute, but not gorgeous: a cute button nose, curly strawberry blonde hair, and rail thin. Puberty clearly hadn't really hit yet. She had this elfin smile, though, and it came to her face so easily. I... Maybe love at first sight isn't real, but I just felt like we were meant to be together."

I shook my head. "She and I became fast friends, then best friends, then more as we got older. We weren't just each other's firsts; we were each other's onlys. My memories are... fuzzy in some places. I know that she and I went to college together and got married as soon as we graduated. We had two kids, a five-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy. I worked, and she stayed home to raise them."

My throat constricted. This part always hurt the most. "I remember laying in bed with her that morning so clearly; not all of it, but images so clear they're like photographs. Nothing sexual, nothing... It wasn't like that. That morning, we just cuddled and talked. It was bliss. And- and then..."

I couldn't go on, but Mack, the shopkeeper, seemed to know the next part. "... And then you woke up, and it was all a dream. You were back in your bed, at home, and fifteen years had passed?"

"... Twenty. How did you know?"

Ignoring my question, he shook his head with a sad smile. "Twenty years of your life, gone."

"Yeah, but... but not gone. Never existed." I took a sip from the steaming cup. "I looked for her the next day at school. She wasn't there, of course. I talked to the other students, the administration... No one had any idea who I was talking about. And it didn't help..." I sighed. "It didn't help that I couldn't remember her name."

"Oh? Is that all you couldn't remember?"

"There are gaps, like I said. We lived a life together, but I only remember bits and pieces of it. Meeting her. Some time in high school. A few days in college, ones that seemed important to our relationship or our lives. Our wedding day. A few without her in it, like random days at my job or with friends. The birth of our daughter, but not our son. And, of course, that last morning in bed before I woke up.

"But I'm missing other things, too. Her name. And... I can't remember her voice. Not really. It's always just out of reach, like... like the opposite of something being on the tip of your tongue. Like it doesn't quite reach my ears. I can remember what she said, but not her voice saying it. I just can't remember the sound of her voice.

"Except for her laugh. God, I love that laugh, and I haven't heard it for so long. I'd give anything to hear her laugh again, to have another minute with her, just so I could..."

I shook my head. "I know it's crazy. I know that. Trust me, I spent enough time being told by my parents and school officials that, then therapists. 'You can't live a whole life in one night.' 'It was just a dream.' 'Puberty anxiety manifesting in an ideal life.'

"But it's not. It can't be. I saw... other stuff. iPhones, back when Nokia bricks were all we had. References to the war in Ukraine. Games I played with my kids on their Xbox, ones that really exist that I couldn't have even conceived of back then. It's not... It can't just be a dream."

Mack sat back in his chair. "Mmm. It could be your mind backfilling details. Memory is tricky like that."

"It's not!" I lowered my voice. "It's not. I'm sorry I shouted, but it's not. She's... She has to be real. They have to be real, my kids, my..." My shoulders slumped. "I can't remember their names. My little girl and my little boy. I can hear their voices, but I can't see their faces." This was why I didn't talk about them anymore. It wasn't just because people thought I was nuts; it was because it sent me into a spiral every time.

"The opposite of how you remember their mom. Your dream children, I mean."

"Yeah."

The old man took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "What has your life been like since then?"

"Not great." I flopped back in the chair. "I tried to let it go. I did, I promise. Move on. I went to college, graduated with okay grades, got an okay job. Married someone. Got divorced."

"Because the woman you married wasn't her?"

I slowly nodded. "Jennifer deserved better. She's a wonderful woman, and I'm glad she's found someone that... Well, that isn't still chasing a dream he had when he was a kid. That wasn't..." A laugh escaped my lips unexpectedly. "That wasn't settling for her even as she settled for him. By any sane measure, I should have been overjoyed to be with Jen, and I was. Some of the time, anyways. But not..." My gaze shifted to the window, ashamed at the actions of my past self, actions I know I'd still repeat to this day, even knowing how wrong they were.

"I'd see a woman on the street with curly strawberry blonde hair. Just for a second, I thought it might be her, and I'd stare. Jennifer knew about the dream. She tried to be understanding, but how long can someone live with always coming in second to a literal dream girl?" I shook my head and turned my gaze back to Mack. "I don't blame her for leaving. She never should have had to put up with me in the first place."

Mack frowned, taking in a deep breath through his nose, then exhaling steadily. "Do you know why you're here? In the shop, I mean?"

"Yeah, I... Because- because, I..." My brows knit together as I tried to remember. A thunderclap outside seemed like a hint. "It's raining. I came in to get out of the rain." 'Of course,' I thought. 'That has to be it.' "I, ah, I pass by the shop on the way to and from work sometimes, and it started raining, so I came inside."

The shopkeeper favored me with a sympathetic smile. "It started raining after you came in. Half an hour after you came in." He inclined his head at my hand. "Do you know what you're holding?"

"What?"

"In your right hand. You've been clutching it for the last hour like it's a winning lottery ticket." He chuckled at a joke I didn't get. "Which, I suppose, it might be."

I looked down to see my fist clenched tightly around something. It took an effort of will to uncurl my fingers; inside, I found a key. It shined like polished silver, its intricate design reminiscent of something from the nineteenth century, like a key you'd expect to open your great-grandmother's hope chest. Its length made it too long to fully fit in my clenched fist, but it felt almost weightless, like a plastic toy instead of a sizable hunk of metal. But the marks it had left on the skin of my palm and my fingers meant I'd held it in a death grip before Mack bade me open my fist; a toy would have snapped under that pressure.

"What- I- I don't remember..." I glanced up at him, but my eyes returned quickly to the mesmerizing object in my hand. "Where did this come from?"

"From the shelves of our little shop with the strange name. You didn't come in because of the storm. You came in because it called to you."

I laughed, looking up at him once more, the key almost--but not quite--forgotten. "Called to me?"

He nodded, a vaguely smug expression on his face. "Don't believe me? Put the key on the table, then, and try to walk out the door."

My hand felt like it moved through molasses as I reached forward, but I managed to gently place the gleaming key on the hardwood surface. It made a beautiful, pure sound, chiming like the tuning fork a choir of angels would use to harmonize. Having it out of my grasp felt almost painful, but I managed to step back from the table. Politely, almost ashamed, I muttered, "I, um, I'm sorry. I try not to talk about this anymore. But thank you for listening." Then I turned to head towards the door.

"Oh, it's quite alright. But Daniel? You seem to have forgotten something." He gestured toward my hand, and I found that I'd somehow picked up the key once more, my fist closed tightly around it. When had I done that? "Please, Mr. Jeffries. Sit down. We need to talk. Or, at least, you need to listen."

I felt myself sweat. You should run! 'Wait, what? No, I shouldn't!' But he might take the key! Where the hell did that come from?

"Mr. Jeffries." I shook my head to clear it. "Please. Sit. I won't take the key. I promise. But you need to understand some things about it before you leave."

Shakily, I pulled the chair back out and lowered myself into it. "What was that voice?"

Mack waved the question off. "That comes later. First, though: do you know what dreams are, Daniel?"

A host of answers whizzed through my head. I'd read texts on psychology, neuroscience, mythology, lucid dreaming, and many more. None of them had given me an answer that rang true. "No."

A broad grin split his face. "An honest answer. I like that. It bodes well. The truth is that I don't know, either. I know what they can be, though. Sometimes--most of the time--they're just your brain tidying itself up for the next day. Sometimes they're a subconscious warning to yourself from yourself. Rarely, they're a message from... elsewhere." I thought I saw a slight shudder shake his stocky frame. "But in your case? In the case of your dream girl? It was prophetic. A prediction of the future."

I leaned across the table and squinted at him. "How can it be a prophecy if it didn't happen?"

He tilted his head from side to side as if weighing my words against his response. "Mmmm, it did. It just didn't happen to you. Not this you, at any rate."

"... What?"

"When you went to sleep that night, you dreamt of a thing that did happen, and it did happen to you, but also not you." He raised a hand to stop me from commenting. "This is a gross oversimplification of a complex subject, but when people make decisions, each choice they make alters their future. But it doesn't just alter their future; it creates new timelines.

"Most people will never see anything other than the timeline they live in. They are, perhaps, lucky in that, as you've learned to your detriment. Out there is a timeline where you--a version of you, that is--meet the girl of your dreams, falls in love, marries, has kids, all the things you saw in your dream. But something happened so that the timeline you live in isn't the timeline you saw. Maybe the girl's father took a different job, or maybe he moved his family into another house or... The possibilities are limitless."

"That's insane!"

Mack chuckled. "I can understand why you might think that. The notion itself is unsettling, and confirmation of it... well, it's driven men insane before. The key you possess--or which perhaps possesses you--first belonged to a gentleman named Randolph Carter of Massachusetts. It's a sort of talisman that allowed him to traverse the spaces between dimensions, ones that can only be accessed in the dreams of--"

"Bullshit! That's from H. P. Lovecraft! His Dream Cycle stories, the ones where he put himself in as a self-insert character."

"No, he didn't."

"Yes, he did! I've read every damned thing about dreams I can, even the fiction, and the Lovecraft scholars--"

"--are full of shit." He sighed. "Yes, Carter and Lovecraft were contemporaries. And Lovecraft, as was his wont, wrote too much on things he understood too little. I won't speak more about that, except to say that Lovecraft and Carter were two separate men--albeit ones with much in common--that they knew each other, and that the key you hold in your hand is, in fact, the same one Lovecraft fictionalized in his tales.

"But, as I said, Lovecraft understood too little. The key is... aware. Conscious. That's what spoke to you before, when it urged you to run, because it thinks I might try to contain it. But in this case... Well, in this case, I think it's called out to the right person."

I narrowed my eyes at him suspiciously. "'Right' how? I mean, I don't believe you, but let's at least hear your pitch."

"I understand your skepticism. Before I started working here, well..." He shook his head. "You're in the wrong timeline. For you, at least. The key will let you travel to the correct one and reclaim the future that you want. The one you deserve, yes?" The glint in his eye made me feel uncomfortable; the sudden thrumming of the key in my hand took that discomfort into the realm of fear.

"What does that mean?"

"It means you can, if you choose, take the key home with you. Go to sleep. It will guide you to the universe that prophetic dream foretold, the one where you met your perfect woman. And then, it will allow you to supplant the 'you' that lives there."

"Supplant? Do you mean replace?" Mack nodded. "How? I thought it was just a dream?"

"You will be a dream, but they--he--will be flesh and blood. You can enter his mind. Take over his body."

"How?"

"The key will tell you. When it's time."

My mouth went dry. "And what happens to him?"

Mack shrugged. "Is that what you really care about? The man that stole your life? Your love?"

I closed my eyes and saw her face, as I so often did. She was mine. Not his. Mine. "... No. No, I suppose not."

When I opened them again, the old shopkeeper was staring at me placidly. "Do you have any other questions?"

"I..." It was insane. Every word. Every idea. The key from Lovecraft's stories, traveling to other dimensions, prophetic dreams intended for someone else, all of it. And yet I felt the truth of every word he'd said.

I stood decisively. "No. No, I suppose not." I started to extend my hand and realized the key remained clenched in it; it felt like a part of my body. I transferred it to the other hand and shook Mack's as he rose. "Thank you." He nodded in a friendly manner, then walked me to the door of the shop, shut it behind me, and turned the sign from "Open" to "Closed."

All the way home, I kept glancing down at the key in my hand. It felt like part of me, as I said, but I also strangely felt worried I'd lose it. Mack was right: it did feel like a lottery ticket. Not just for the promise that it held--and that it kept whispering to me that it held--but the paranoia about misplacing it.

Once I reached my dilapidated, low-rent apartment, I slammed the door, turned the deadbolts, and put the chain in place. I hadn't eaten since breakfast, but even as the sun disappeared below the horizon, I felt no hunger. Instead, I felt a gnawing need to dream.

That, in and of itself, seemed strange. I had gone through a period early on when I hoped every night to dream of her. I took sleeping pills for a while to stay under longer, tried herbs and drugs to increase the intensity of my dreams, even learned lucid dreaming to control them. None of it worked. Sometimes I'd conjure a simulacrum of her, but it was never really my dream girl. I still couldn't remember her voice, but I knew what it wasn't, and I never heard the real one from any of her doppelgangers.

Then, once I'd married Jen, it seemed disloyal to chase after her. I put all those ways to control or intensify my dreams on the shelf, especially as our marriage grew frayed. I tried to be the loyal and loving husband she deserved, but I fell short.

After the divorce, I took drugs to reduce the number of dreams I had, or at least the number I remembered. A new fear presented itself: if I saw her in my dreams again, if I heard her voice and knew it was truly her... No, I couldn't have handled it. That would have meant she was a dream all along, that I'd wasted my life chasing an illusion. It would mean that I'd traded a mirage for a good woman who loved me.

I tried one time to never sleep again. The itching on my wrists and the numbness in my right ring finger reminded me of it sometimes. But, as with all things in my life, even that didn't quite work out.

Now, though, I desperately wanted to dream again. Unfortunately, the anticipation of it prevented my slumber. I tried all the techniques I could remember: meditation, moving to different rooms, blacking out the windows. Hell, I even tried counting sheep. It wasn't until I heard the lullaby in my head, sung by a silvery, ethereal voice, that I felt myself begin to drowse.

I stood up some time later, confused and unhappy. I hadn't dreamt at all. Nothing had changed. I didn't see my lost love again. The lunacy that Mack had promised me had been just that: lunacy. I started to storm out of my apartment when I heard it.

"Look behind you."

I half-recognized the voice, the same one that had whispered in my head and sung when sleep eluded me. It sounded louder now, and more... present. Real. It didn't come from inside my head, but instead from outside my body. I looked down.

"I said look behind, not down." The key vibrated slightly in my hand as it spoke. I stared at it, open-mouthed. Carter's key remained the same, but... different. More solid, as if I could now feel the weight I hadn't before. Duller, too, a patina covering its surface. It sounded exasperated as it repeated, "Look behind you, Daniel."

I glanced backwards, and there I lay. I slept, reclined on my couch, fist still gripping the key. The key that I held in my hand now, in my body that stood and walked and... "What the fuck?"

"Oh, well put. You're dreaming. Remember? That was the point of this exercise."

"What?"

If a key could facepalm, I think this one would have. "For all the... We're going to find your dream girl, Daniel. Remember? Or, rather, I'm going to lead you to her. I already know where she is."

"How?"

"Ah, a sensible question, finally." It... chuckled? I'll go with that. "I'm a key. See if that gives you any clues about what you should do next."

I had a brief thought that perhaps this was just another lucid dream, that after trying so hard to not dream for so long that I'd come back guns blazing, in a manner of speaking. I cast that idea aside quickly, though; it didn't feel like a dream at all. I could read text, and it stayed the same when I looked at it a second time, something that our brains aren't supposed to be able to do; the language center of the brain--the part that lets us read, at least--doesn't play nicely with the dreaming mind. And I felt different, too. Tentatively, I pinched myself. It hurt, but I didn't wake up. My other body shifted in its sleep, though.

"Yes, Daniel. You're dreaming. Well done. And, yes, it's not like a dream you've ever felt before. Or is it? Maybe something seems a touch familiar?" The dream. The dream, the one that set me down this path. "Ah, now you're getting it. So, since we're on the same page, let's try to make this easier. What do we do with keys, slowcoach?"