The Sacrifice Box

by Martin Stewart

  ‘What?’ said Arkle, looking scared. ‘What are you guys talking about?’

  ‘It makes sense when you think about it: the rules coming in a dream, and the compulsion to make a sacrifice. The box wanted us; it called us. And we didn’t just give it stuff – we gave it all the messed-up shit in our heads.’

  He pictured Barnaby tucked in beside his mum, lying in the box, and then standing at his window – smelling of hospital.

  ‘And now that we’ve broken the rules,’ he said, ‘all that shit is coming back to us.’

  Arkle started to whine, like he was coming to the boil.

  ‘So this is why I’m getting picked on again?’ said Hadley.

  ‘Holy shit,’ said Arkle. ‘Holy shit, I am getting stupider, amn’t I? Will I get stupider and stupider until it kills me?’

  ‘Who was it?’ Lamb’s voice fell into tight, angry sobs as she rubbed the empty space on her wrist. ‘Who? Admit it! Who?’

  Sep kneaded the foam pads of his headphones in his fists. Then he blinked.

  ‘We could play the tape,’ he said.

  ‘What tape?’ said Hadley quickly.

  ‘The one that was lying beside the box – if we can –’

  ‘Give it to me,’ said Lamb. She grabbed the cassette from Sep’s hand, slammed it into the stereo and turned up the volume.

  At first there was silence – just the hiss of tape winding through the heads. Daniels’ eyes flicked over their faces.

  ‘No!’ shouted Lamb, jamming down the forward button.

  ‘Maybe it got rained on,’ said Arkle.

  ‘This has to work,’ said Lamb, forwarding and playing, forwarding and playing. ‘Whoever did this to us left this behind, so if it plays we’ll –’

  The opening bars of ‘You Make My Dreams’ blared from the speakers.

  ‘Hall & Oates?’ said Lamb. ‘HALL & OATES?’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Sep.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Arkle. ‘What does that mean? Whose tape is it?’

  A sob escaped Hadley’s lips.

  ‘Hadley?’ said Sep.

  She was pulling at her glove. It was freshly stained by the forest, bright streaks of green on the palm. Sep looked at the stain he’d thought was mud, but could now see was something else – something that had been brighter before it dried.

  ‘Why are you wearing that?’ he said, a sick feeling pooling in his stomach.

  She sighed.

  ‘The lid’s so heavy,’ she said, and pulled off the glove.

  40

  Confession

  ‘Holy shit!’ said Arkle.

  ‘You did this?’ said Lamb. ‘You?’

  ‘No, I swear! I only went there after I had the dream!’

  ‘I’m going to kill you,’ said Lamb with icy calm. ‘When we get back I’m going to drag you out this car, and –’

  ‘You don’t understand!’ shouted Hadley. ‘It wasn’t – I tried to fix it!’

  Sep took her hand in his. The edge of her palm was split by a raw-edged cut, livid with blushing pink and spotted with dark crusts of blood. It looked like a bite wound.

  ‘What do you mean, fix it?’ he said, swallowing a tight ball of anger.

  ‘The box was already open,’ said Hadley, looking round the car at them all. ‘You have to believe me. I tried to make more sacrifices – some old stuff I found in the attic – but when I got there I couldn’t do it, I – I got too scared and I dropped everything. Then I tried to close the lid, but –’ she ran a finger gently over the cut – ‘it’s so heavy.’

  A thin trickle of bright red ran down her arm and they watched it in silence, all the way to her elbow, until it snapped free and landed on the pickup’s dusty floor.

  ‘You put blood in it,’ said Sep as the truck buzzed over a cattle grid. ‘You put blood in the box. A human sacrifice!’

  ‘Christ on a bike,’ said Arkle.

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Hadley, eyes wide and panicked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Sep. ‘But it’s using the things we gave it to hurt us.’

  Tears spilled from Hadley’s eyes, and she dropped her face in her hands.

  ‘I’m scared, Sep.’

  Sep put his hand on her shoulder, feeling her warmth on his palm.

  ‘It’ll be OK,’ he said.

  ‘The hell it will,’ said Lamb, guiding the truck round a sharp bend. ‘You stupid –’

  ‘It will!’ Sep snapped. ‘We can figure this out. Roxburgh and Maguire managed it.’

  ‘You need to do the thinking, Sep,’ said Arkle. ‘You’re the brainbox, so think of a plan – now. Go! Plan something!’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Lamb. ‘Wait. Hadley, do you swear the box was already open when you got there?’

  ‘Yes!’ said Hadley, her face shiny with tears. ‘I had the dream, with the voice saying those things, and I knew they were from my diary, so I thought –’

  ‘So, if you didn’t open it, who did?’

  ‘Anyone want an M&M?’ said Mack.

  ‘Mack?’ said Lamb.

  Mack opened the M&Ms, tipped a few on to his bandaged hand and ate them one by one as the others watched.

  Sep caught Lamb’s eye in the mirror.

  ‘How did you hurt your hand, Mack?’ he said.

  ‘I told you. Football.’

  ‘It was,’ said Daniels. ‘He pussied out this tackle, and I –’

  ‘Did you open the box, Mack?’ said Lamb, her hands tight on the wheel.

  ‘What box are you losers talking about?’ Daniels snorted.

  ‘Shut up, Daniels!’ shouted Lamb and Sep together.

  Mack ate a few more M&Ms, then crushed the packet and sighed, looking out of the window at the sun.

  ‘I had to open it,’ he said, almost to himself, his face expressionless. ‘But I didn’t mean for this to happen.’

  ‘You? You swore to me you didn’t know what was going on!’ screamed Lamb, half turning in her seat and swinging the truck across the narrow road. ‘I swear to God, I’ll –’

  ‘The road!’ shouted Arkle.

  Lamb swerved away from a log pile, crushing them all together. Sep pushed away from the meat of Mack’s shoulder. ‘But what did you do?’ he asked. ‘Which rule did you break?’

  ‘Oh, all of them,’ Mack sighed, sounding almost relieved to be saying it aloud. ‘I went there on my own, at night, and I took the sacrifices out. The box is pretty deep. I thought it was empty – I was in up to my shoulder before I found anything. But I got them eventually – even the ones that weren’t ours. Everything.’

  ‘But why would you – don’t you see what you’ve done?’ said Sep, ‘Look at what’s –’

  ‘I didn’t want any of this! I just – I missed you guys. I’ve been so lonely without you, and –’

  ‘Eh?’ said Daniels, pointing his un-torn ear at Mack. ‘Lonely? But we hang out, like, every night.’

  ‘Shut up, Daniels,’ said Mack. He turned to Sep, pleading. ‘I had to do something. I was so happy that summer. You were … real friends, not like these animals. They hate me! And they hate each other. Everything is –’

  ‘Wait,’ said Daniels, ‘who are you calling –’

  ‘Where do you get off thinking you’re lonely?’ shouted Sep. ‘I’ve been on my own since we started high school, and you were meant to be my friends! That’s why we went to the box in the first place – we promised it would keep us together, but I’ve spent the past four years alone, and now you’re complaining about being lonely?’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you, but –’

  ‘But what? You’re scared of your stupid gang?’

  ‘Yes!’ Mack shouted, punching the back of Lamb’s seat.

  ‘Hey!’ she shouted.

  ‘Of course I’m scared of them! They start on you for anything and everything – they just pile in and there’s nothing you can do!’

  ‘Maybe if you didn’t –’ Daniels began.

  ‘So your friends are assholes,�
�� said Sep, leaning across him. ‘What does that make you?’

  ‘A coward,’ said Hadley, staring at Mack, her eyes burning.

  Mack shot her a dark look.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But I’ve tried. It’s –’

  ‘I’ve been torturing myself about this, but it was you!’ Hadley yelled, hitting Mack’s shoulder as hard as she could. He didn’t flinch, just kept staring at the floor. ‘You were going to let me take the blame! Because everyone thinks I’m so weird, it must be the weirdo – it’s never the cool kids!’

  ‘When?’ said Sep. ‘When did you do it?’

  ‘Four nights ago,’ said Mack, puffing out his cheeks and looking at the cabin roof, his eyes shining as the car bumped off the end of the path and on to the main road.

  ‘That was when I had my first dream,’ said Hadley.

  Mack nodded.

  ‘I could see on your face something had happened, and I was happy, because I thought we might – but then Lamb told me about the mirrors, and when I saw her face I just –’

  ‘Where did you put them?’ said Lamb.

  ‘In a sack, and I threw that in the river,’ said Mack. ‘Then things started to go wrong, and I panicked. I went looking for it, but all that was left was –’

  He held up his watch, still smeared with mud.

  ‘I started it again,’ he said, looking at the scratched face. ‘It still works.’

  ‘Asshole,’ said Lamb, screwing up her face in disgust. ‘Coward.’

  Mack squeezed his eyes tight, sending tears down his nose.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But you need to understand –’

  ‘Shit, Mack!’ said Sep. ‘When I’ve nearly got out of here for good, and I – my mum! If she’s ill again because of you I swear to God, I’ll – and nothing’s even happened to you! You’ve just inflicted this on the rest of us!’

  ‘I didn’t mean any of this. I just wanted to be with you again! I hate them, the team. I hate them; they just do things to each other all the time, and I hate it –’ He began to cry in steady, hissing bursts. ‘But I love football. It’s all I can do. So until I can play in college I have to pretend to like these assholes, because there’s five of them and one of me – and you guys weren’t there any more.’

  ‘You’re such a pussy, Macejewski, seriously,’ said Daniels with a sideways sneer.

  ‘Shut up!’ shouted Mack, turning and hammering his fist on Daniels’ arm. ‘Shut up! Shut up!’

  Arkle grabbed Mack’s arm and held it, both hands round the massive bicep.

  ‘All right, Golden Boy,’ he said, ‘I can’t believe I’m saying this, but that’s probably enough.’

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked Hadley, her voice trembling.

  ‘We’re going back to mine,’ said Lamb decisively. ‘We need to hide out and figure out what the hell to do next. My dad’s away –’

  ‘Your house?’ said Daniels and Sep together.

  Daniels dug an elbow into Sep’s ribs – but Sep gripped his arm and held it clear.

  ‘I’m not going to your farm,’ said Daniels. ‘Drop me at home.’

  ‘As if I’d let you anywhere near my house,’ said Lamb, giving him a disgusted glance in the mirror. ‘And I’m not taking you home either. I’m dropping you in town. You really don’t get it, do you? You’re nothing to us.’

  ‘All right, Big Bird, why don’t –’

  ‘SHUT UP, DANIELS!’ they all shouted together.

  A fragile moment hung between the five of them, and Sep took a deep breath. Something had happened when Lamb said ‘us’. It felt like another layer of skin had grown around him.

  Daniels blinked, stupefied and quiet.

  ‘I’m meant to be in work. Mario’s expecting me,’ said Sep.

  ‘You can’t sell pizzas after fighting a zombie doll, can you?’ said Arkle. ‘Even, like, hygiene-wise.’

  ‘I know I can’t go! But if I don’t show up, Mario might call the police or something. Or my mum.’

  ‘Just tell him you’re sick,’ said Lamb.

  ‘Lie to him?’ said Sep. ‘I’ve never –’

  ‘Yes! Jesus Christ, Sep!’

  ‘Drop me at the back of the shops then. You know, beside the graveyard?’

  ‘I know the graveyard,’ Lamb said, almost too quietly to hear.

  She guided them down a side street and under a willow tree. She turned the keys, and the truck shuddered still.

  The silence was immediate. The willow fronds made a little cocoon around the cabin, with chirps above them and sunshine on the ground. The raised voices of children playing on the beach came on the wind – and in that moment the forest and the doll seemed to belong to another world. Sep had to remind himself that it was real, all of it: all the dead things and Barnaby, the crows and the waiting, hungry sacrifice box.

  Something landed on the roof.

  ‘Well, you clowns talk some pile of shit,’ said Daniels. ‘I’m out of here.’

  Another thump came from the roof, followed by the scritching of talons on paint.

  ‘What was that?’ said Daniels.

  ‘On you go, tough guy,’ said Sep, looking at the blood-crusts on Daniels’ ear.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Lamb, ‘now – or I’ll hurt you in secret, private ways.’

  ‘You don’t scare me,’ said Daniels. ‘You can’t –’

  ‘She scares me,’ said Arkle. ‘But I kind of like it.’

  There was another thump, this time from the bonnet. A crow hopped towards the windscreen. There was something in its eye, Sep thought, something dark and shiny.

  Daniels’ lips went tight.

  ‘It followed me,’ he said shrilly. ‘It followed me!’

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ said Arkle. ‘This is nothing to do with you.’

  The pellet-eyed crow tapped on the windscreen, and the six occupants stared at the spectral blues of its gleaming feathers.

  Sep held his lips close to Daniels’ untorn ear.

  ‘Go,’ he whispered.

  Daniels screamed as Mack opened the car door and tipped him into the sun. The pellet-eyed crow leaped from the bonnet as he ran, his bright, wet hair flapping on his neck.

  ‘What an asshole,’ said Arkle.

  ‘Be quick,’ said Lamb, looking at Sep in the mirror. ‘I don’t want to sit here any longer than I have to.’

  ‘Right,’ said Sep, wondering how he was going to lie to Mario without his face betraying him.

  ‘Sep, I’m sorry,’ said Mack, touching Sep’s shoulder as he opened the door. Sep ignored him, reached for Hadley’s hand. She smiled at him.

  ‘I feel better now that we’re back here,’ she said.

  ‘Me too,’ he whispered, squeezing her fingers for a second. ‘It’ll be all right.’

  ‘Check out the bold Sep,’ said Arkle, grinning.

  Sep tried to walk away normally, but his heart hadn’t settled since his explosion of anger at Mack, and his head was spinning with everything they’d learned.

  Mack had deliberately broken the rules to bring them back together. Mrs Maguire had sacrificed a doll in childhood – and it had returned to kill her. They had unwittingly sacrificed painful, secret things – and the box was using them as weapons.

  And Hadley had given it blood.

  He flexed his fingers. His skin still tingled with her touch.

  But he felt fear, cold and hard, curling in his stomach.

  Town was busy, real life somehow carrying on despite the madness in the woods: the air was full of tinny music and the putter of boats. Cars drove slowly, and as he moved down the row of shops people fanned themselves and complained about the heat. It was impossibly normal, and he thought with sharp envy of their small problems.

  The blind was down on the vet’s surgery door. He tried the handle, but it was locked, so he shook the door in its frame and tried again.

  ‘What the hell?’ he said under his breath.

  He pressed his face to the glass, hands cupped to
close out the sun.

  There were no lights on inside.

  Panic shook him, and he battered the glass with his knuckles.

  ‘Mario? Mario?’

  ‘Is closed!’ came Mario’s voice, far-off and muffled.

  Sep gasped with relief.

  ‘It’s Sep!’ he shouted. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘September?’ said Mario.

  Sep heard him stomp across the reception, the rattle of keys as the door swung open on its chain, then Mario’s face – sweat dripping in his moustache, his skin pale – appeared in the gap.

  ‘September? You are early.’

  ‘No, I … you wanted me to come in and clean the cold store?’

  ‘Oh!’ said Mario, his eyes widening. ‘This I had forgotten, forgive me. Yes. No. No, tonight I will not open chip shop, is OK, something has –’

  ‘What do you mean? It’s Friday, it’s the busiest –’

  ‘Something has happened,’ said Mario urgently, glancing back over his shoulder. ‘Something amazing. I – I may not need chip shop much longer. I must find out … incredible, my Sep, it is incredible.’

  ‘Right,’ said Sep, looking past Mario into the darkness of the surgery. ‘I, um –’

  ‘You want see what is in here?’ said Mario.

  ‘Isn’t it always a dead dog?’ said Sep, trying to smile.

  Mario looked at him for a second or two.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Mario, I was going to say –’

  ‘You have things you would rather do?’ said Mario. ‘Your young friends?’

  ‘No!’ said Sep, too quickly. ‘I was going to say I wasn’t feeling too great actually. I think it’s a bug.’

  ‘There is one going about,’ said Mario, nodding. Sep wanted to hug his big friend and explain, but knew it was impossible.

  ‘You go,’ said Mario, ‘is OK. I see you tomorrow maybe? If you feel better? We can climb on to the roof and watch the comet? A special thing between pals?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Sep, nodding, ‘definitely.’

  Mario winked as he closed the door, then turned back to the surgery, its interior lit with a green glow.

  Outside, alone again among the crowds, Sep breathed out slowly.

  Heading back to the pickup, trying not to draw attention, he thought again about the afternoon’s revelations.