by Tom Holt
Yes, but seismic activity—
He remembered the list he’d been given. Top priority. He pulled it out, glanced at the five lines of jumbled numbers and letters, did his by-now-well-practised memorising trick, and committed the bit of paper to the flames in the usual way. Then he embarked on stage one of the box-finder’s prowl, a manoeuvre he was proud to have developed.
The trick was, he’d found, to stroll slowly and comfortably down the rows of shelves, not really looking at the boxes, letting his peripheral vision do all the work. It was much quicker and less tiring to notice something out of the corner of his eye than painstakingly scan each label head-on. There was probably a sound scientific explanation for this, something to do with the mechanics of the rods and cones, or the electromagnetic communications between the retinal ganglion cells and the orientation-selective receptor fields in the cerebral cortex. Anyhow, it seemed to work, and after a whole week in the job he was too set in his ways to change.
Today, it seemed, was a good day. He found three of the five boxes on the list in just under twenty minutes. The fourth practically jumped out at him a quarter of an hour later. He hauled them down and walked them corner-to-corner across the floor to the door, asking himself (not for the first time) how whoever collected the bloody things managed to get them up the stairs to the ground floor without slipping a disc. That just left the fifth and last: 8896431976N/6428914404W/ 3947582919W/9012348746W.
Should be relatively easy to find. It was quite a distinctive shape, which he ought to be able to recognise at quite some distance. He walked up and down two rows. Nothing as yet, but there were plenty of shelves to go. It was bound to be somewhere – ah!
There it was: 8896431976N/6428914404W/3947582919W/ 9012348746W. He scowled at it. He was sure he’d walked past this exact same spot ten minutes ago. He looked hard at the box, which just sat there looking innocent; butter wouldn’t melt in its flaps. He carefully counted the digits. Something about them was curiously familiar, but he couldn’t think what it could be. But anyway, yes, right box. Excellent. Job—
He froze. There was a noise.
You’re imagining things, he told himself, but without any real conviction. There was quite definitely a noise, and it was unmistakably a voice, muffled, far away, shouting, accompanied by the drumming of fists on some hard surface. The question was, was it coming from inside the box, which was impossible but also what his ears were insisting on telling him, or from somewhere else? He looked carefully round the room; maybe someone – the hypothetical breaker-and-enterer, maybe – had got himself buried under a pile of boxes, passed out and had just this minute woken up. That would be more—
Thud thud thud. Sound of someone head-butting a wall. Feeling utterly wretched. Maurice knelt down and put his ear to the side of 8896431976N/6428914404W/3947582919W/ 9012348746W. The voice was saying, quite distinctly, Mwahwa-mwa-wa-MWA-wa-wa. Maurice was no linguist, as his French teacher would cheerfully testify on oath before any tribunal in the world, but he had an idea that that lot translated as, Will you get me OUT of here?
Without turning round, he quickly retreated five long paces. Oh no, he said to himself, not me, not again. Besides, can’t open the boxes – against the rules, set that bloody alarm off, more than my job’s worth. It could be – he grabbed at the idea like a lifebelt – it could be a management test, to see how obedient he was. They put a tape recorder in the box, and trigger it with a remote. Unsuspecting employee opens the box, and next thing he knows he’s standing in line at the Job Centre, disgraced and without references. Or maybe it was just a practical joke, a rite of passage for the new kid, in the grand old tradition of left-handed screwdrivers and universal industrial humour. What it wasn’t, what it couldn’t be, was a sentient being trapped inside a cardboard box. Honestly. Do I look like I’m that stupid?
Don’t answer that. From where he was standing he could still hear it quite clearly; thud-thud, mwa-mwa-MWA. Or it could be one of those reality TV shows, where they extract a few shreds of dubious humour from making an innocent man look like a prune. Any number of explanations, any one of them considerably more plausible than the one he knew, deep in his heart, to be the truth.
“All right,” he said wearily. “Hold your water, I’m coming.”
He looked round for something to open the box with.
Actually, it was perfectly logical. They don’t want you to open the boxes, therefore box-opening equipment is not supplied. He searched his pockets, but the nearest thing he carried to a short, sharp knife was a two-pence coin. The current round of thud-thuds from inside the box was so fierce that the box itself was visibly vibrating. He jumped up and scampered round the room, looking for an improvised scalpel, but there wasn’t anything. Even the bits of glass from the scattered computer monitor were too small to get a grip on.
At this point, he suddenly became urgently aware that he needed a pee. “Sorry,” he yelled at the box, “I’ve just got to—Be back in a minute.” He raced to the door and scrambled up the stairs to the upper basement, where the toilet was.
There are few moments of clarity more profound than those that follow the emptying of an overcharged bladder. The world slows down. The focus sharpens. The brain comes back online. Huge nebulous difficulties prove, on close, calm examination, to be mere cloud-giants, no big deal. He zipped up his fly, pressed the flush handle and moved away to wash his hands. He heard the cistern sigh and gurgle, cheerful as a highland stream. He turned on the hotair hand-dryer.
Suddenly, out of the toilet bowl, there reared up a human arm. It was clad in some white, diaphanous fabric, almost certainly samite, and in its long, slim hand it held a shiny letter-opener in the shape of a knightly sword. Three times it brandished the letter-opener, slow and solemn, as the hand-dryer finished its cycle and fell silent.
“Oh come on,” Maurice pleaded, but it was no good. The hand was still there.
You remember how it was at school, when the teacher said that the whole class would have to stay behind until whoever did this owns up; and slowly, reluctantly, feeling every eye in the room watching you, you raised your hand and said, Please, miss, it was me. Thus Maurice, reaching out and taking the letter-opener. The samite-clad hand let go, quivered for a second or two in silent acknowledgement and sank back into the toilet bowl, which flushed again and then was still.
Maurice looked at the blade in his hand. It was thin and mirror-polished, and on the spine of the blade he could just make out lettering, engraved in an elegant Gothic script.
The X-Calibre Novelty Corpn, Chicopee Falls, Mass.
Brilliant, he thought. And even I can take a hint, when it’s rammed so deeply up my bum it comes out through my ear. He stuffed the X-Calibre in his pocket and slouched back down the stairs to the sub-basement.
The box was still where he’d left it, still making the noises, still shaking. Bracing himself against the wailing of the alarm, he knelt down, pricked the point of the X-Calibre into the brown parcel tape in the exact centre of the main seam, and plunged the blade home.
Nothing happened. No alarm. Oink.
All right. With a gentle sawing motion he cut the parcel tape, first up the seam then back down again. The thuds and muffled noises had stopped; I’ve killed it, he thought wildly, and then his nose detected a whiff of stale air, like drains or a neglected public lavatory. He cut the tape on the sides of the flaps, pocketed the X-Calibre and slowly peeled back the flaps.
Nothing continued to happen. No genie, imp or goblin leapt out. As far as he could tell, the box was empty. He sat up and leaned down into it for a closer look.
It was like peering down into a mineshaft, or a very deep well. He shuffled a bit so he could get his head right down inside the box. There was nothing in it, except vintage air and that horrible musty smell. So, it had all been a figment of his imag—
He hadn’t seen it at first, because it was wedged way down in the far left-hand corner; but there was something. A box. He stared at it, and, as he
did so, it seemed to grow. Not just one box, but a row of boxes. Lots of rows of boxes. Lots and lots and lots—
It reminded him of pictures he’d seen of battery chickens or American prisons: seemingly endless rows of boxes or cells or whatever they were. He could see inside them and there were no bars, so maybe they were glass-fronted, or closed in with invisible forcefields. He was prepared to bet good money they were closed in with something.
Looking at them was making his head swim, and he wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. There was something there that he was supposed to see; he was convinced of it. He peered harder. There was nothing at all to give any idea of scale or perspective. The boxes could be inches away, or miles. He closed his eyes and opened them again.
In a box a long way away to the right, something moved. It took him a long time to find it. There was a man in the box, a man in a heavy winter overcoat, with a long Tom Baker scarf wrapped three times round his neck. He was sitting on a – well, on a box – and his arms were crossed over his chest, his hands tucked under his armpits for warmth. The man turned his head, as if he’d heard a noise. He was looking straight at Maurice.
Hang on, he thought. Hang on just a minute. Those numbers, the numbers on the box. He jammed his hand in his pocket and fished out the scrap of paper on which he’d jotted down the coordinates from his hypnosis session. 8896431976N/6428914404W/3947582919W/9012348746W. Bet you anything you like that those Ns stand for North and the Ws mean West. Oh boy.
“Max?” Maurice said.
“What?” The voice was faint but just audible.
“Over here,” Maurice called out. “Are you Max?”
“Yes. Who wants to know?”
“I’m Maurice.”
“Maurice Katz?”
“That’s right.”
The man swung round so fast he nearly fell off his box. “You arsehole. What took you so long?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t—”
“Did you get my emails?” The voice was getting fainter.
“Yes.”
“Why the hell didn’t you answer them?”
“My computer blew up.”
“Was that before or after the dog ate your homework? No, forget it, you’re here now. Look, get me out of here. Right now.”
“Um.”
“What? Speak up, can’t you? I can barely hear you.”
Maurice’s neck was killing him. “How do I do it?”
“What?”
“How do I get you out of there?”
“What?”
“How do I get you out?”
“Stop mumbling, for crying out loud. This is not a public library. You’re allowed to raise your voice above a low whisper.”
“HOW DO I GET YOU OUT OF THERE?”
“Simple.” So faint now, he could only just make out the words. “All you have to do is whamble murble wurble wham.”
“WHAT?”
“I said, all you have to whumble—” No good. All he could hear was the sound of words, not words themselves; the same noise, in fact, as he’d been hearing before he opened the box. “SAY AGAIN,” he bellowed. “PLEASE.”
No use. The man and the boxes, the whole thing, seemed to be moving slowly away from him, as though he was a camera panning back. He tried pushing his head even further inside, but that just made the boxes retreat quicker, triggering a burst of vertigo that made him moan out loud.
He heard a noise behind him. Someone was coming.
Without thinking, he pulled his head out of the box and sat up. His head swam, as though he’d been caught by the feet and held upside down. He could feel blood pounding behind his eyeballs. And he remembered—
At the very last moment, as he was just starting to move, he’d caught sight of another box, way out at the far end of a row. He’d only glimpsed it out of the corner of his eye, on the edge of his peripheral vision, the way he’d been training himself to do. He’d seen another inhabited cage, another figure sitting hunched and miserable on a cardboard box. Stephanie.
Footsteps approaching, in the real world. He could barely see straight, but he scrabbled the flaps of the box back into place and pressed down with the palm of his hand to keep them flat. There was a roll of brown parcel tape about the place somewhere, but he had no idea where, and there wasn’t time to go looking. He looked round wildly, saw another box, grabbed it and heaved it on top of the box he’d just been inside. That took the last of his strength, and he flopped against the short stack he’d created, holding on to the top box to keep himself from sliding to the ground.
“Hello.” Ms Blanchemains appeared in the doorway. “Can I come in?”
“Sure.” Maurice waved a hand in vague invitation, then quickly grabbed at the box. “What can I—?”
“Have you found the last – well, you know? For that rush job.”
Maurice grinned feebly. “What? Oh, that one. No, not yet.”
She frowned. “Well, you’d better hurry up about it. They’re getting all sorts of flak upstairs, apparently, and it’s bothering them. Apparently, someone’s been on the phone to the board. They’re not used to being talked to by outsiders.” She looked round. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but this place is a mess.”
He nodded. “I know,” he said. “Mr Pecheur thinks it must’ve been an earthquake or something.”
“An earthquake?” She didn’t sound convinced. “Well, if that’s what he says, he must be right. But it looks just like my room at college, third year.” She was peering at box labels. Maurice had a strong feeling she wasn’t supposed to do that. “You want a hand?”
“No, really.” He grinned idiotically. “Everything’s under control.”
“You don’t say. Under control of what? A poltergeist?”
“Everything’s fine, really. In fact, you’re seeing it on a good day.”
“Apart from the earthquake.”
“Apart from that, yes.”
She frowned some more, then shrugged gracefully, like a trout slipping through a hole in a keep-net. “Well, it works for some people, I guess. Like, my uncle’s office was pretty bad. So much paperwork piled up on the floor, we used to say he was growing his own diamonds, but he always said he knew exactly what was going on and where everything was. And he ran the fourth biggest bank in Ireland, until the crash.”
“There you are, then.”
She narrowed her eyes. It suited her. Mind you, most predators are beautiful. “You sure you don’t want any help? I don’t mind.”
“It’s no—”
“Ah, go on. What’s the number?”
“Sorry?”
“The number on the box.”
He knew in his bones that that was a bad question. He went slightly cold all over. “I don’t think I’m allowed to tell you that, am I?”
He’d been guessing, but for once he’d guessed right. Her face changed just a little; the smile sharpened, the eyes were assessing him carefully and reporting that he wasn’t going to be quite such a pushover as originally anticipated. “You know, strictly speaking that’s probably true.” The smile widened. What a lot of teeth you have, grandmother. “But who the hell’s going to know, eh?”
He tried to mirror the smile. “Better not.”
“Ah well.” The smile was up somewhere around the melting point of tin, but the eyes were furious. “Suit yourself. I expect you’re right. But they want that box found before coffee.” She lifted her wrist so he could see her watch. “Ten minutes. Happy hunting.”
She left quickly, as if she’d just spotted a big crack in the roof. As soon as he was sure she’d gone (three-inch heels on the concrete stairs; he counted the taps) he pushed away the decoy box and stared down at the violated flaps, where he’d cut the parcel tape.
Ten minutes to get it fixed so no one would know it had been opened, and get it out through the door.
Stephanie’s in there.
Stephanie’s in this box, somehow, and I’ve got to send it on in ten minutes. I can’t. I
must.
He issued a general pull-yourself-together order to all departments. Stephanie couldn’t be inside the box, because she was over six feet tall and robustly constructed from quality components. What he’d seen inside the box was either a weirdness-induced vision or the result of bending over with his head down for rather too long. Also, he’d only seen what he’d thought was Stephanie for a fraction of a second, so it could easily be some other impossibly compressed girl whose wellbeing was none of his concern. In any event, for all he knew, the box had been sent for by someone who was going to release her, and the enigmatic and obnoxious Max too most likely, so if he refused to obey the order he’d be screwing everything up and causing endless suffering and misery. And it was more than his job was worth. And his job was worth a lot, because of its rarity value.
He saw the roll of parcel tape on the floor a few feet away. He made himself stay perfectly still and quiet for a moment, and listened. No thuds, muffled voices, and the box wasn’t shaking. I must’ve imagined it, he told himself.
He’d always been a bad liar. Never mind. He glanced at his watch. Make that six minutes. He grabbed the parcel tape and scrabbled for the end, which for the first time in his life came up easily and in one piece. The tape made a screaming noise as it unwound from the roll, but it always did that.
Two minutes later, he stepped back and examined his handiwork. Not bad. You’d hardly know, if you weren’t looking. Clearly, he had a natural talent for burying people alive in cardboard boxes. He threw the tape aside, grabbed the sides of the box in a bear-hug and lifted. It was incredibly heavy, and he nearly dropped it, which would’ve spelled disaster for his toes. But he managed to shift his grip just in time, straightened his back with an enormous effort and staggered to the doorway, nudging the Omskium door with his foot so he could get the box through. Once he was outside, his fingers gave up without having to be told. He stepped back nimbly, and the box thudded to the ground like a falling tree.