The Boxes

by William Sleator

  “Huh?” I said.

  “This car was following me. Like it had been waiting there for me to come out.”

  “You sure you weren’t imagining it?” I asked him, interested enough now to stop thinking about the boxes for a minute.

  “Yes, I’m sure. It was going so slow and keeping right behind me. I felt... uncomfortable. I tried to make Fifi hurry so I could turn around and get back inside the house, but she took her time, as usual. I was sure glad she was with me and I wasn’t alone, though. If it hadn’t been for the dog, maybe they would ...”

  “Would what?”

  He shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know.” He seemed embarrassed to confess what he had been afraid of. “It was just so weird, the way the car was kind of inching along right behind me. Like it was threatening me or something. Finally I pulled Fifi around and went back—and the car turned around in a driveway and stayed right behind me.”

  “That is weird,” I admitted.

  “And when I told Mom and Dad, they looked scared, too. They didn’t say much, but I could tell what they were thinking: Crutchley Development.”

  “Crutchley? Really?”

  Henry nodded grimly.

  Crutchley Development was the big company that was on the verge of buying out the neighborhood to tear the old houses down and build a giant mall. They wanted our house and Henry’s house, too. Henry’s house was bigger and older than ours. But his family wasn’t rich; his grandparents had bought the place a long time ago.

  Henry’s parents and Aunt Ruth were the last people in the neighborhood to hold out—Crutchley was paying more for the run-down houses than anybody else would. I was always talking to different people at Crutchley Development on the phone so Aunt Ruth wouldn’t have to, and they were getting ruder and ruder. The neighborhood was close to the highway, which made it a good location for a mall.

  “You think a big company like that would use, like, gangster tactics?” I said, doubtful but also uncomfortable myself. If they were targeting Henry, they might target me, too.

  “No other tactics worked with us or with you either. And they really want the property. If they’re going to do things like this, how are we going to protect ourselves? I don’t want Mom and Dad or your aunt to give in, but if they thought we were in danger ...”

  Henry wasn’t Uncle Marco, but he was probably the nicest boy I knew. I didn’t like seeing him upset-and we were in this together. “They can’t get away with it,” I tried to reassure him. “Aunt Ruth practically runs the bank, for one thing. And if anything like that happens again, we should tell the cops.”

  “They’d probably just think I was being hysterical,” he said.

  The bell rang, to my relief. I was concerned about the developers—if Henry really wasn’t imagining this—but I was more concerned about the boxes. I wanted to get back to dwelling on them in class.

  “Maybe ... maybe I could walk you home after school,” Henry suggested.

  “Not today, Henry. I’ve got to get home real fast today,” I said. “Maybe next week.”

  “Sure. See you.”

  Of course I had to get home as soon as possible today because Uncle Marco was leaving tomorrow.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Saturday Uncle Marco left was a miserably cold and bleak January day, with snow flurries in the air. In the winter, I always secretly prayed there would be a blizzard when he was supposed to go so that he would be delayed for a day or two or even a week. But oddly, no matter how bad the weather was, Uncle Marco’s flights were never canceled. He would politely ask me to say good-bye to Aunt Ruth and hug me, then get into a taxi in his long woolen coat, carrying his old leather satchel. There was always a certain tension about him when he left. I couldn’t tell whether he was excited or apprehensive or a mixture of both.

  And Aunt Ruth was right; I always was depressed after he went away Though I tried to hide it so she wouldn’t get angry, it wasn’t easy.

  This time it was worse than usual. Uncle Marco put a finger to his lips as the cab was pulling away, not realizing that Aunt Ruth was watching, too.

  “What was that all about?” Aunt Ruth demanded as I stepped inside. “It looked like he was telling you to keep quiet about something.”

  “I didn’t notice anything,” I said, pretending to wipe a speck of dust out of my eye.

  Aunt Ruth glared at me. “You sure?” she said suspiciously. Then she sighed. “You know, it really bothers me the way you get so moody after that man leaves,” she complained. “I’m the one who brought you up; I’m the one who took care of you like a mother. He couldn’t have cared less about you. He was always away! It’s easy for him to be fun and lovable when he’s only here for a couple of days every few months.” She lit a cigarette and blew smoke at me. “He didn’t have to nurse you when you were sick, or make sure you did your homework, or buy clothes for you, or give you nourishing food every day. And yet you obviously adore him and barely tolerate me. It hurts, Anne; it really, really hurts.”

  “But it’s not like that, Aunt Ruth. I really do appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” I said.

  “I don’t appreciate that tone of voice. And I meant what I said the other night. If I find out you and that man are hiding anything from me, that’s the end of his annuity. And to think what my life would have been like if I hadn’t been burdened with you all these years!”

  It would have been exactly the same, except you wouldn’t have the pleasure of complaining about me, I thought. “I better go do some studying to make up for the last couple of days,” I said. “Let me know if you need some help with anything.”

  “Well, I’m not going to spend a lot of time cooking, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said, “Unlike your precious uncle, I work five days a week, in case you didn’t notice. I’ve earned the right to relax on a Saturday.” She sank heavily down in front of the TV, her cigarettes and candy within easy reach.

  I trudged up the big wooden staircase with the carved banister and the stained glass window on the landing, thinking about running away. I knew there were a lot of kids my age who had left home and were surviving somehow on the streets. Almost anything would be better than living with Aunt Ruth. Except it was so cold out there! And what would I do about money? Even at fifteen I didn’t have anything like my own bank account. Aunt Ruth doled out the cash very stingily and only when I worked up the nerve to ask; I had never had a regular allowance. But the main reason I didn’t run away was that if I did, I would miss Uncle Marco the next time he came back. I wondered if he would come back at all if it weren’t for me.

  The phone rang. I didn’t have one in my room, of course, but there was one in the second-floor hallway.

  “Hi, Annie,” said Linda. “How’s it going?”

  “Not so great,” I said. “Uncle Marco just left.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” she said perfunctorily. Her voice dropped. “Listen, Annie, you gotta help me out. Can you tell Jeff to meet me at Domino’s at eight tonight? It’s really important. Thanks a lot. I gotta run.”

  Dutifully, I called Jeff. Because of their parents, they didn’t dare call each other and arrange their dates themselves.

  “Oh, hi, Annie,” Jeff said. “How’s it going?”

  “Not so great. Uncle Marco just left.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear it.” His voice dropped. “Uh, you hear anything from Linda?”

  “She wants you to meet her at Domino’s tonight at eight.”

  “Oh, great. Thanks a lot, Annie. See you on Monday.”

  I walked into my room and closed the door and thought about the boxes.

  They were all I had of Uncle Marco. His room was as empty of personality as a hotel room. All his personal possessions, the things from his childhood, had been removed. Some he had taken away with him. Others Aunt Ruth had sold. He never used them, she said, and they were making clutter. When she got rid of them, she could rent the room out and make some money from it, since he was so rarely ther
e. But she never rented it. Even though she could have made me do most of the work, a tenant still would have been a burden for her, and she was too lazy. And she really didn’t need the extra money, despite what she said.

  So the only mementos I had of Uncle Marco were the boxes.

  I could hear the TV downstairs; Aunt Ruth was occupied. I opened the closet and squatted down and removed the old shoes and outgrown clothes I had piled on top of the gray metal box. I went over it carefully, stroking it. The surface was rough where it was stained and dented. There was no lip; it seemed to be permanently welded shut around the edges. But Uncle Marco had told me not to try to open it. That must mean there was a way to do it.

  And that was when the overwhelming desire to open it came over me.

  Of course, I felt guilty for even thinking of it. Uncle Marco was my favorite person in the world. How could I imagine doing something that he had so strongly told me not to do, something that would make him angry, that might even hurt him?

  But Uncle Marco was a strange guy, always full of secrets. He never told me everything. He had told me absolutely nothing about the boxes, except not to open them. So what was their secret? And why had he left them with me, anyway? He must have had some other safer place, where they could be really locked up. They weren’t very safe here, in a closet and in a basement, especially with nosy Aunt Ruth around. What could be his real reason be for leaving them here?

  Could it be that he wanted me to open them?

  No. That was ridiculous. I was just making excuses for my own curiosity—curiosity coming from my loneliness and from missing him. He had expressly told me not to even think of opening them, and he was serious when he said it.

  And as I was telling myself this, my hands were running over the surfaces of the box, feeling for cracks or latches or keyholes. And finding nothing.

  But the box in the basement was just a wooden crate. It might be easier to find some kind of opening on it. Anyway, even if I found something like that, it didn’t mean I had to open it. I wouldn’t open it, I told myself, pushing the metal box into the back of the closet and piling stuff up on it again. I would just go down to the basement and check out the wooden one.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I went quietly down the stairs and crept across the front hallway so that Aunt Ruth, engrossed by the TV, wouldn’t know I was going down to the basement.

  Some basements have small half windows that let in a little daylight, but our basement was completely underground. There was a long, steep flight of wooden steps, and you had to feel your way down along the metal railing because there was no light switch at the top. Once you got to the bottom, you had to grope your way in the blackness, your hands above your head, until you found the chain that pulled on the bare ceiling bulb. It wouldn’t have been very hard for Uncle Marco to make Aunt Ruth scared of coming down here.

  The big old furnace in the main room was like a black monster with lots of tentacles, and right now it was hissing and rumbling softly with the effort to heat the house. There was an ancient washing machine with a hand-cranked wringer, which I had never seen anybody use; and trunks; and old cardboard boxes and piles of magazines from decades ago.

  Beyond a cement wall with an open doorway was another, smaller room. You had to grope your way in there, too, reaching for the ceiling chain. Two of the walls in this room were made of stone, and there was a musty smell. Uncle Marco said it had once been a root cellar, where they stored vegetables in the days before refrigeration. Now there was nothing in here but more cardboard boxes and rusty tools on a wall covered with spiderwebs—and the wooden crate we had brought down here two days before.

  I moved the cardboard boxes away from it and squatted down to study it in the dim light.

  There were no visible nails. And at first, there didn’t seem to be any differences between any of the surfaces. But as I looked at it more carefully, I noticed that the bottom of the box had a slight lip around it, as though it might be a lid. That meant I had to turn it over to see if it really was a lid or not.

  I struggled with effort, grunting—it really was heavy. But finally, bracing the crate with one foot, I managed to get it up on end. It was then, when it was balanced precariously, that I realized it would make too much noise if I just let it fall over on the cement floor; Aunt Ruth would hear it for sure. I was sweating now, as I held it there with one hand and one foot. I scrabbled with the other hand for the cardboard boxes I had piled around it earlier. They were just barely within my reach. I got a couple of them underneath it and let the box fall.

  It made a dull thud, but not the crash it would have made otherwise. I waited, out of breath; there was no sign of life from Aunt Ruth. Thinking ahead now, I prepared a bed of cardboard boxes and old magazines and managed to tip the box over again. This time it hardly made a sound. Now the side with the lip was on top.

  It did seem as though it might be a lid, but it was fixed immovably in place. I walked over to the wall behind me, the one with the tools on it.

  There was a hammer and a chisel and a saw, and a small box of nails on the floor. I brought them all over. Then I just sat there again for a while, my heart pounding. Was I really, seriously going to try to do this? This thing that wonderful Uncle Marco had told me so strongly not to even think about doing? Uncle Marco, the only person in the world who I believed really loved me.

  But why had he left the boxes with me, then? He said it was to keep them safe, but there had to be someplace safer than here. He was playing a game with me—he wanted me to open the box. You don’t give somebody a box if you don’t want her to open it.

  Part of me knew I was lying to myself and that I should go upstairs right now and never come down here again. But life was just too depressing at this moment for me to resist such a mystery. What wonderful, exotic thing might be inside the box? I picked up the hammer and chisel and a piece of cardboard.

  At first, the box didn’t seem to want to be opened. And having to be quiet about it made the job a lot harder. I tapped away with the hammer and chisel, holding the piece of cardboard between them to dull the noise. I wasn’t making any progress—until, at one comer, the chisel suddenly went in deeper, as though it had broken through a layer of tough adhesive. Encouraged, I worked around toward the back, chipping away. By the time I had done three sides, over an hour had gone by. Any minute, Aunt Ruth might yell for me. I was hoping the top was hinged so that now I could just lift it, instead of having to do two more comers and the last side.

  I put down the hammer and chisel and began to lift. The lid was heavy—the inside seemed to be lined with metal —but the box opened a crack.

  Something small and dark and crablike poked itself out of the crack. It turned briefly from side to side. Then it dropped to the floor with a hollow crackle and scuttled silently and much too fast across the room, zigzagging off into the darkness away from the doorway.

  I dropped the lid, barely managing not to scream. There was something horrible about the way it had scrabbled sideways, speedy and determined yet not going in a straight line.

  I held the lid down, terrified. The thing had seemed to be alive. But how could it stay alive, locked up in a box like this with no air vents? What kind of creature was it if it could live without air? And how many more were there inside ? I was trembling now.

  If there were others inside, at least they didn’t seem to be trying to get out. The box was silent; nothing was pushing up against the lid.

  I got up and forced myself to look around for the creature, even though I dreaded seeing it again and certainly couldn’t imagine touching it—though I knew what I should really do was put it back inside the box. It hadn’t gone past me through the doorway to the main basement room; it was still somewhere in the old root cellar. Feeling sick, I made myself pick up boxes and look under them, not knowing what I would do when I found it. It had to be in here somewhere.

  The room was mostly empty. And yet I couldn’t find the thing. It had vanished as
suddenly as it had appeared. It must be waiting in some corner, hidden by its dark color. Waiting for what?

  I tried to be logical, not hysterical. The thing was scary and ugly and inexplicable, but what could it really do? It was barely an inch long, and there was only one of it. If I couldn’t find it, the most important thing to do was to prevent any others from getting out. I went back to the box, set a nail in place, and lifted the hammer.

  But you can’t hammer a nail quietly. Aunt Ruth would hear as soon as I struck the first blow. She might not come down to the basement, but she’d sure want to know what was going on. And how could I explain why I was hammering down here? I would have to wait until she went out, which might not be until she went to work on Monday. That was two days from now. In the meantime, I had to keep anything else from getting out of the box.

  I went to the other room and got piles of magazines and set them on top of the box. I put the hammer and the box of nails and all the other tools on top of the magazines—a lot of the tools were metal, and all together they had to be really heavy. No more little creatures could get out of there. I piled more cardboard boxes all around it just in case Aunt Ruth did come down.

  I snuck back upstairs. Aunt Ruth was still puffing away in front of the TV, not paying attention to anything else. I got back up to my room without being noticed.

  I had expected the box to contain something beautiful and strange from some exotic corner of the world. Instead, all I had found was that almost mechanical crablike creature. Was it alive or what? What was it going to do?

  My excuse for opening the box was that I had been depressed, but now I felt even worse, if possible. I had done what Uncle Marco had specifically asked me not to do, and when he came back he would know. I had never disobeyed him before; I had no idea how he would react. Now, instead of having something to look forward to, I was afraid.