The Key to Midnight

locked it away from you.'
        'Oh. Yes. I see.'
        'Luckily, I've found the key that will unlock the door,' said Inamura. 'I have it right here.'
        Alex smiled, pleased with the doctor's creative approach to the problem.
        'It's a large iron key,' Inamura said. 'A large iron key attached to an iron ring. I'll shake it. There. Do you hear it rattling, Joanna?'
        'I hear it,' she said.
        Inamura was so skillful that Alex almost heard it too.
        'I'm putting the key in your hand,' Inamura told her, even though he didn't move from his armchair. 'There. You have it now.'
        'I've got it,' Joanna said, closing her right hand around the imaginary key.
        'Now put the key in the door and give it a full turn. That's right. Just like that. Fine. You've unlocked it.'
        'What happens next?' Joanna asked apprehensively.
        'Push the door open.' the doctor said.
        'It's so heavy.'
        'Yes, but it's coming open just the same. Hear the hinges creaking? It's been closed a long time. A long, long time. But it's coming open… open… open all the way. There. You've done it. Now step across the threshold.'
        'All right.'
        'Are you across?'
        'Yes.'
        'Good. What do you see?'
        Silence.
        At the windows, twilight had given way to night. No wind pressed at the glass. Even the bird was still and attentive in its cage.
        'What do you see?' Inamura repeated.
        'No stars,' Joanna said.
        Frowning, Inamura said, 'What do you mean?'
        She fell silent again.
        'Take another step,' Inamura instructed.
        'Whatever you say.'
        'And another. Five steps in all.'
        She counted them off: '… three… four… five.'
        'Now stop and look around, Joanna.'
        'I'm looking.'
        'Where are you?'
        'I don't know.'
        'What do you see?'
        'No stars, no moon.'
        'Joanna, what do you see?'
        'Midnight.'
        'Be more specific, please.'
        'Just midnight,' she said.
        'Explain, please.'
        Joanna took a deep breath. 'I see midnight. The most perfect midnight imaginable. Silky. Almost liquid. A fluid midnight sky runs all the way to the earth on all sides, sealing everything up tight, melting like tar over the whole world, over everything that comes before, over everywhere I've been and everything I've done and everything I've seen. No stars at all. Flawless blackness. Not a speck of light. And not a sound either. No wind. No odors. The earth itself is black. All darkness on all sides. Blackness is the only thing, and it goes on forever.'
        'No,' Inamura said. 'That's not true. Twenty years of your life will begin to unfold around you. It's starting to happen even as I speak. You see it now, a world coming to life all around you.'
        'Nothing.'
        'Look closer, Joanna. It may not be easy to see at first, but it's all there. I've given you the key to your past.'
        'You've only given me the key to midnight,' Joanna said. A new despair echoed in her voice.
        'The key to the past,' Inamura insisted.
        'To midnight,' she said miserably. 'A key to darkness and hopelessness. I am nobody. I am nowhere. I'm alone. All alone. I don't like it here.'

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    40
        
        By the time they left the psychiatrist's office, night had claimed Kyoto. From the north came a great wind that drove the bitter air through clothes and skin and flesh all the way to the bone. The light of the street lamps cast stark shadows on the wet pavement, on the dirty slush in the gutters, and on the piled-up snow that had fallen during the previous night.
        Saying nothing, going nowhere, Alex and Joanna sat in her Lexus, shivering, steaming the windshield with their breath, waiting to get warm. The exhaust vapors plumed up from the tailpipe and rushed forward past the windows, like multitudes of ghosts hurrying to some otherworldly event.
        'Omi Inamura can't do anything more for me,' Joanna said.
        Alex reluctantly agreed. The doctor had brought to the surface every existing scrap of memory involving the man with the mechanical hand, but he hadn't been able to help her recall enough to provide new leads. Thanks to the genius of those who had tampered with her memory, the specifics of the horrors perpetrated in that strange room had been scattered like the ashes of a