"I just got a key in the mail."

"A key to what?"

"I don't know. Just a key."

"What do you mean, just a key?"

I looked at the key intently, turning it over and over as if there might be some inscription or clue.

"Maybe you won a new car," Es said, laughing.

"It doesn't look like a car key. It looks like a key to a door."

Es held out her hand for the key. As usual, her fingernails had spectacular designs on them, not the press-on kind you got out of a package, but designs she paints herself with different colours of polish. Lately, she has been working on Van Gogh motifs--sunflowers, swirling stars, black crows descending on golden wheat. When I complimented her once, she said, "Shhh, they'll be wanting to hang them in the ROM!"

"Who's it from?" Es asked, looking closely at the key.

"It doesn't say, and there's no message." Es began to hum the theme from the Twilight Zone. I picked up the empty envelope and read the return address out loud. No person. Just a place. "Honeysuckle Cottage, North Head, Gannet Island."

"Well, that doesn't sound too scary," Es said. "Where's Gannet Island?"

"I have no idea."