The Dragon’s Head Key

Stories for Another Day

Two children were playing in a big, dark, old house one day when they found something. They were playing with a ball, which you know you should never do inside, but they were playing very quietly, rolling it and not throwing it, because the old lady who lived in the house was sick upstairs, and they had been told to go downstairs and play very quietly.

The boy’s name was Alfonsus, which he hated, and the girls’ name was Eligia, which was worse, but she always called him Foxer and he called her Jilly, so they were friends. It was Foxer’s great-grandmother who was sick upstairs.

Jilly rolled the ball to Foxer, and he missed. The ball went under an old cupboard and Foxer had to half-push himself under it to get the ball back. He still couldn’t reach it but he felt something hanging down a bit from the back of the cupboard, so he pulled and tugged and wriggled it until he got it out. It was a key, a long, heavy key, cold and grey.

“It’s a key,” he said.

“Let me see,” Jilly said. She rubbed off the dust and a bit of dirt with her jumper and held it up. “Look, it’s a dragon’s head.”

It was true, the key was shaped like a dragon’s head, with a long tongue curling at its tip where you would put it in the lock.

“Let’s see if we can find the lock for it,” Foxer said. Jilly was glad to give it back to him. Somehow she didn’t like holding it, cold and heavy, with the dragon’s hollow eye staring at her. They tried all the doors they could find, and the cupboards, a jewellery box, two chests and a music box, but the key was far too big for any of them.

“It could have been here for decades,” Jilly said. “Probably whatever it unlocked has been thrown away by now.”

Foxer put the key in his pocket, saying stubbornly, “I’m going to keep trying every single lock I can find.” And he did, for weeks and weeks afterwards. He never found any locks that the key was even close to fitting, but it stayed in his pocket anyway.

Not long after that his great-grandmother died, and the old house was demolished and replaced by a row of townhouses, so he never got to try it in any of the other locks in the house.

Now quite a while later, just after Jilly turned fourteen, her mother gave her an old black book. “It’s a kind of journal,” her mother said. “My mother gave it to me when I was fourteen – it’s a bit of a tradition in our family. I never saw the point, so it’s been in the bottom of my wardrobe till now.”

The book had hard black covers that were almost falling off. The pages were thick and yellowed and ragged at the edges. Some of them looked like they had been torn out and folded up, then smoothed out again. Some pages were missing altogether.

Jilly loved it. Every page was like a mystery waiting to be puzzled out. The writing was odd and old-fashioned, and so faded in places it was almost impossible to read. “This bit says, ‘For a cold, take sage tea with a little honey,'” she said excitedly.

“Really?” her mother said, not interested at all.

Jilly took the book to her room and pored over it, page after page, until she came to one page that made her stop, frozen to the spot. In the centre of the page was a drawing of the dragon’s head key.

She jumped up, shoved the book into her pocket and yelled to her mother, “I’m going over to Foxer’s place.”

Foxer was doing his homework, so he was quite happy to have an interruption. Jilly told him excitedly, “Mum gave me this book.”

“Is that all?” Foxer said. He’d really had enough of books. “It looks like it’s ready for the recycling.”

“No, look at this!” Jilly said, showing him the drawing.

Foxer nearly jumped out of his skin. He got the key out of his pocket where it always was, even though he’d practically forgotten he even had it. He laid the key on the page. It matched the drawing exactly.

“What does it say?” he demanded. “Does it say what it’s the key to?”

Jilly frowned over the brown, straggly writing. “I think it says, ‘Tap three times to open a place of safety.'”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Foxer said.

“I don’t know,” Jilly shrugged. “That’s just what it says. I don’t know what it means.” They talked about it over and over, for the next few days.

It was about this time that the man appeared.

The first time Jilly noticed him, in a black coat and a hat pulled down over his face, she felt cold all over. He was more like a cloud of black smoke than a man. She felt as if he was following her, but whenever she turned to look, he wasn’t there. Over the next few days, she seemed to see him everywhere.

“There’s this man,” she said hesitantly to Foxer.

“You’ve seen him too?” Foxer said. “I thought it was just me. I think he’s after…”

“…the key!” they both said together.

“Did you tell someone about the key?” Jilly said.

“It fell out of my pocket when I was playing basketball,” Foxer confessed. “The teacher confiscated it and didn’t give it back till it was time to go home. I suppose she could have shown it to anyone.”

“He was outside my window last night,” Jilly said. “I tried to tell Mum, but she couldn’t see him even though I could. I’m frightened. We have to do something.”

“I’m not giving him the key, I don’t care what you say!” Foxer declared stoutly.

The next day they did something without even meaning to. It was a beautiful day so they went down to the beach. The man won’t show up here, in broad daylight, Jilly thought to herself, but she was wrong. She was lying on the sand in the sunshine with her eyes closed, when a growing sense of fear crept over her. When she opened her eyes, he was standing over her.

Jilly panicked. She wriggled to her feet and started running. She grabbed Foxer and pulled him after her. “The caves!” she said. “We’ve got to hide!”

The caves at the beach were big and airy, so open that anyone could see into them except at the very back. They ran in, up to the furthest, darkest point and cowered there, pressed up against the solid wall. They heard footsteps, and then breathing, coming towards them.

Jilly’s mind froze, but something deep in her memory stirred. “Have you got it?” she hissed to Foxer. He nodded with short, sharp jerks. He didn’t need to ask what she was talking about. “Remember what it said in the book,” she said. “Tap three times for a place of safety. Do it!”

“What?” Foxer said.

“Tap, here, with the key!” she answered. Foxer took the key out of his pocket, familiar and quite ordinary now, since he’d been carrying it around for so long. He didn’t know what Jilly wanted him to do, so he gave the wall behind them a tentative tap. “Three times!” Jilly rasped, so he gave two more taps. A keyhole appeared in the rock face. Foxer stared, amazed.

“Go on,” Jilly insisted, “put the key in the keyhole!” He put the key in and turned. The rock wall opened as if it was a door. They stepped through it and Jilly slammed the door shut behind them.

They were standing in a space about the size of Jilly’s wardrobe. It had a solid floor and solid walls on all sides, as far as they could tell in the thick darkness. “What just happened?” Foxer began, but Jilly put her hand over his mouth and hushed him. She put her ear against the door. “He’s there!” she breathed. She heard an angry hissing, and the sound of hands brushing along the rock, then a final thump against the wall which set both their hearts leaping. Then the sounds went away.

“He’s gone,” Foxer said, but they still didn’t move. They waited a long time, hardly breathing, before they opened the door and stepped out. Jilly pulled the door shut behind them and it disappeared as if it had never been there.

“Did I just dream that?” Foxer said, staring at the key.

“A place of safety,” Jilly said, “like it said in the book.”

“It was probably a crack in the rock, just big enough for the two of us,” Foxer said, but they both knew he was trying to explain away something that couldn’t be explained.

They were very quiet on the way back to Jilly’s place. Jilly’s mum was pleased to see Foxer. “Come in, and I’ll get you something to eat,” she said. Something about Foxer always made her want to feed him.

Jilly and Foxer went towards the kitchen, but there was a knock at the front door and Jilly’s mum opened it. “Yes?” she said, uncertainly.

Jilly didn’t hear any words, but her mum turned to them and said, “Mr Black is here… he says he lost something at the beach, a key, and he thinks you may have picked it up. You do have an old key, don’t you, Foxer?”

Foxer growled fiercely, “It’s mine!”

Suddenly it was as if the house had been hit by a hurricane. The walls shook and the windows rattled. A huge wind swept through the house, knocking things off the shelves. The man they had glimpsed on the beach as a vague figure in black advanced into the room, huge and solid. Jilly’s mother was thrust outside the front door and it slammed after her.

Balls of white energy like fireballs spat from the man’s hands. “Give it to me!” His shout wasn’t a noise but a storm inside their heads.

“Run!” Jilly shouted. They raced for the stairs, while a nameless force pounded the house, shaking plaster off the ceiling and pushing furniture over. Flames of fire started licking at the curtains and bookshelves.

Jilly and Foxer were up the stairs in seconds and inside Jilly’s room. They slammed the door and piled everything they could move up against it, but in seconds it burst open. A whirlwind flew into the room, scattering chair, desk, bed, books and clothes into the air, forcing Jilly and Foxer back against the wall.

“Give it to me!” the voice demanded.

“The key, Foxer!” Jilly yelled. “Use the key!”

Foxer looked aghast. “There’s nothing behind this wall, just air!” he said.

“Do it – trust me!” Jilly screamed.

Foxer wrenched the key out of his pocket and tapped the wall three times, despite the force that did everything it could to drag it out of his hand. A keyhole appeared. In a flash, Foxer turned the key and pulled Jilly in through the door that appeared, and heaved it shut behind them.

The silence was unsettling. They were inside a perfectly ordinary room, with carpet and chairs and furniture. They couldn’t hear any sound from Jilly’s room on the other side of the door.

Jilly looked around. “I feel as if I’ve been here before,” she said softly.

Foxer said, “It’s my great-grandmother’s house. This was where I found the key, remember?”

“This is the place?” Jilly said.

“This is the same room,” he answered. “I found it under that cupboard.” He walked over to a high cupboard and bent down to look underneath it. “The ball is still there.”

“But how can it be?” Jilly gasped. “This house was demolished, years ago. It doesn’t exist.”

“We just opened a door that isn’t there, onto thin air, and you’re worried about a little thing like an old house being demolished?” Foxer said shakily. “Come on, it’s all getting beyond weird. Let’s get out of here.”

He put his hand on the door handle but it wouldn’t open. In fact, it was burning hot to his touch. “Ow! It won’t open!” he said, starting to panic. What if they were permanently stuck here?

“It’s a place of safety, remember?” Jilly said. “I think the door won’t open unless it’s safe for us to go out again.” Foxer still looked doubtful. “I’m sure,” she reassured him.

Foxer sat down, wishing he’d brought something to eat. “The question is,” Jilly said, “what are we going to do?”

It seemed like hours before the door was cool enough for them to touch, and when they finally opened it, they walked out through rooms blackened by smoke and scarred by fire. Water was dripping everywhere. Jilly’s mother was standing among a crowd of people on the road, with a blanket around her shoulders, being comforted by a neighbour. “Jilly!” she screamed. “You’re all right!” She ran to Jilly and threw her arms around her. “When the fire started and I couldn’t get the door open, I thought you were both gone! I tried everything to get in, and the fire-fighters searched everywhere for you! Where were you?”

“It’s okay, mum, we managed to get out – we were safe the whole time,” Jilly said, hugging her mother back. “Everything’s all right now.”

There was a lot of fussing with police and fire-fighters, but eventually everyone was just so pleased that the kids were okay, they accepted Foxer’s mumbled explanation about sheltering in an air pocket under some beams until it was safe to come out.

Jilly kept looking at Foxer, but he wouldn’t meet her eye. It had taken a lot of arguing inside the room which shouldn’t have been there, but she had finally convinced Foxer to put the key back where he had found it. She had watched him reach under the cupboard and push the key up, out of sight.

She looked at the fire-blackened house. The smell of burning made her cough. Then she looked at Foxer and smiled. He smiled back, then he put his hands in his pockets and strolled away whistling.