The Boxes

by William Sleator

  Not to mention, I had let that horrible little thing escape from the box.

  I tried to reassure myself. Maybe there had been some kind of fabric inside the box, an ethnic Bedouin wedding dress or something. And maybe the thing that came out was just some sort of harmless beetle that was eating the cloth, like moths ate wool. Maybe nothing else was going to happen. Maybe I should open the box all the way and see what was really inside it.

  But if it was harmless, why had Uncle Marco told me not to open it? I was getting tired of thinking about it but was also too preoccupied to think about anything else. And I couldn’t distract myself by calling my friends; I knew Linda and Jeff would be too excited about their date to pay much attention to what they would think was my stupid little problem. I knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on studying or a book.

  And so, to serve me right for the blunder I had made, I went down and watched TV with Aunt Ruth.

  That night I had a very vivid dream. Uncle Marco was telling me to open the other box, the one in my closet. It was urgent; I had to do it without fail.

  And he wasn’t just telling me to open it. He was also telling me exactly how to do it.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The dream didn’t fade, as most dreams do. It was just as vivid when I woke up on Sunday morning. I remembered exactly how to open the metal box and how urgently Uncle Marco had been telling me to do it.

  But I wasn’t naive enough to believe that dreams were real messages. Everybody knew they were just psychological, your unconscious let loose or something. And it only made sense that my unconscious would be preoccupied with the boxes. I should just dismiss the dream and not pay any more attention to it.

  Anyway, even as a message it didn’t make sense. I knew Uncle Marco didn’t want me to open the boxes—that’s what he had told me, and I had never known him to lie. It was bad enough that I had already opened one of them; opening the other one, too, would only make it worse.

  But what if the instructions in the dream worked? What would that mean? That it was not just something psychological, but a real message? Was it possible that, having opened one box, I could correct the damage only by opening the other one, too?

  The phone rang. I hurried out to the hallway to answer it—Aunt Ruth didn’t like to be awakened early on the weekends. It was Jeff. Maybe he could help me decide what to do about the boxes. As we started talking, I brought the phone into my room so Aunt Ruth wouldn’t hear; the cord was just long enough for me to get it inside and close the door and stand there, but not long enough to get it over to the bed or the desk.

  “Did you talk to Linda yet? What did she say about last night?” Jeff asked me, sounding worried.

  “No, I didn’t talk to her. What happened? Is something wrong?”

  “Oh, we had a stupid fight. She was still mad when we said good-bye. I hate that! I need to find out if she forgave me yet. Tell her I’m sorry and to just forget the whole thing. I don’t like having her mad at me. I’m worried.”

  “Okay, Jeff, I’ll call her as soon as we get off the phone.”

  “Oh, that’s great, Annie! What would we ever do without you? Call me back as soon as—”

  “There was something I wanted to ask you about, too,” I interrupted him.

  “Yeah?” He sounded impatient.

  “It has to do with these boxes Uncle Marco gave me. He told me I must never, never open—”

  “That sounds really cool, Annie. I want to hear all about it. But I’m so worried about Linda I just can’t concentrate on anything else right now. I know you understand. Can you call me as soon as you talk to her?”

  I sighed. Of course, they were probably sick of hearing about Uncle Marco, I talked about him so much. If they had ever met him and seen what he was like, they would probably have been more interested, but for some reason he avoided meeting people as much as possible.

  I called Linda. I asked her what their fight was about. She had been mad because Jeff hadn’t noticed the new outfit she’d bought yesterday. Now she felt bad about it and wanted me to apologize. So I called Jeff back and told him. He was really relieved—but now something had come up and he didn’t have time to talk with me about the boxes. I almost felt like getting angry, but I didn’t. After all, they were my best friends. If I didn’t help them, who would? And who else would I have to talk to? They might listen to me about the boxes tomorrow—if they weren’t too busy whispering and giggling together.

  I brought the phone out into the hall and then went back to my room and closed the door. I took all the stuff off the box in the closet and squatted down beside it—I didn’t want to pull it out in case Aunt Ruth came in.

  I had decided what to do. If the instructions in the dream worked, then that meant it had to be a message, and I should follow it. If they didn’t work, then it was just a meaningless dream. I wouldn’t be able to open the box, and I’d be no worse off than I was already.

  What I didn’t think about at the time was, if the dream was a message, then who—or what—was it really from?

  I put one hand on either side of the box. I moved them in circles in opposite directions, the right hand clockwise, the left hand counterclockwise—it was harder to do than you would think. After exactly thirty-nine rotations, I bent over and rested my forehead against the top of the box, continuing to move my hands. The box began to feel warm. After exactly eleven more rotations, I suddenly slapped the sides with my hands, bumped it lightly with my forehead, and sat back.

  Nothing happened. The dream had not been a message after all. In a way, I was more relieved than disappointed.

  And then, as I watched, the top of the box began to disintegrate, as if it were a piece of paper and an invisible fire was eating away at it from the center. In a moment it was gone. The box had no top anymore. There was no way to close it now.

  Inside, almost filling it, was what looked more than anything else like a kind of propeller. It had four oddly shaped, curving blades, one pointing directly at each comer of the box. The blades were a couple of inches below the top of the box. In the center of the blades was a kind of dial, like a round combination lock. But instead of numbers, around the dial were funny-looking symbols, sort of like hieroglyphics.

  Things that looked like thorns or roots, gnarled and twisting and branching, clung to the inside surfaces of the metal box.

  I didn’t like it; I didn’t like it at all. I especially didn’t like it that I couldn’t close it. I started to back away from it.

  And then there was a little click, and the dial in the center moved one tiny notch.

  I jumped. The thing was doing something. By opening it, I must have activated it. Why had I ever done it? I thought of the horrible scrabbling thing I had released in the basement. How could I make the same stupid mistake twice in two days?

  Maybe I could cover it with something, and that might stop it. I looked around inside the closet. On a shelf I found an old Scrabble game I used to play with Uncle Marco. When I unfolded the board, it was just a little bigger than the top of the box. I set it carefully in place. Now that the box was covered again, maybe it would stop. I got out of the closet and firmly closed the door.

  I spent as much as possible of that Sunday away from my room. The basement was easy to avoid, but my room was another story. I brought my books and notebooks downstairs and did my homework at the dining room table. “Why aren’t you studying upstairs?” Aunt Ruth wanted to know from in front of the TV in the living room. “It makes it hard for me to concentrate, with you over there shuffling papers.”

  Of course, I didn’t tell her how hard the TV made it for me to concentrate. “I just felt like being around other people, that’s all,” I said. “I’m almost through with my homework. Then I can watch TV with you.”

  “I’ve never seen you so interested in TV before,” Aunt Ruth said suspiciously. “Something funny about it.” But then the TV drew her attention away from me.

  When the phone rang, I automatically a
nswered it; I knew who Aunt Ruth would and wouldn’t talk to. “May I speak to Ruth Levi, please?” said a cool female voice.

  “May I ask who’s calling, please?”

  “I’m calling on behalf of Crutchley Development, and it’s urgent.”

  “She’s not home,” I said, feeling cold.

  “Oh, isn’t she?” the woman said, and even over the phone I could hear the sarcasm in her voice. “Well, sweetie, when she does come back, please tell her to call us—she knows the number. Everyone else in your neighborhood is signing purchase and sale agreements next week, and we need you and the Vails to sign, too. We’d appreciate it if she’d call right away—for her sake and yours.” She hung up.

  “Who was that?” Aunt Ruth wanted to know.

  “That woman from Crutchley.”

  “Those pests are calling on Sunday now?” she said irritably.

  “And ... she was threatening,” I told her. “She said everybody else is signing purchase and sale agreements next week, and she wants you to sign, too, and to call them as soon as possible—for your sake and mine.”

  Aunt Ruth blinked at me, pulling at her lower lip.

  “And Henry told me the other night somebody was following him in a car when he was walking their dog. He was sure it was Crutchley—threatening him.”

  Aunt Ruth snorted. “Well, if they think they can badger me into giving in, they don’t know who they’re dealing with,” she said and turned back to the TV.

  Of course it never occurred to Aunt Ruth to worry that next time they might be following me.

  I dreamed about Uncle Marco again that night. This time he was urging me to go down into the basement. But now I didn’t believe the dream. I didn’t think it was really Uncle Marco who was trying to give me this message.

  And every couple of hours, it seemed, I would be awakened by a faint click from the closet. It seemed too quiet to be able to wake me up, and yet it did.

  I had to open the closet on Monday morning to get something to wear to school. When I did, I saw that the Scrabble board had fallen off the box onto the floor. As though it had been pushed away.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I was groggy and headachy in school that day because of having slept so badly. I was also very worried about what I had started by opening the boxes. I wanted to talk to Linda and Jeff about it—especially Jeff, because he was the practical one. But I also felt shy about mentioning it. Here in the everyday world of school the boxes seemed unreal, imaginary, dreamlike. How could I get anybody else to understand what was so scary about them?

  I was also getting really worried about Crutchley Development. Why was everything going wrong all at once?

  I was so out of it that I almost got caught passing a note from Jeff to Linda in math. Just in time I noticed that the teacher was looking in my direction, so I waited—which gave me a chance to read the note. It was just one of their typical boring notes. I passed it on when the coast was clear.

  I didn’t get a chance to talk to Linda and Jeff until lunch. Henry ate with us again today, too.

  “You look tired today, Annie. Is something wrong?” Henry asked me as he sat down with us, sounding as if he actually cared.

  Linda and Jeff were whispering together. They hadn’t noticed that I looked tired. So why did I want to tell them about the boxes, rather than Henry? I guess I didn’t feel I knew Henry well enough. He might think I was crazy.

  But Henry and I did share a common problem: the situation with Crutchley. I told him about the phone call and how they wanted everybody to sign purchase and sale agreements this week. “Aunt Ruth said she wouldn’t give in, no matter what,” I finished.

  Henry frowned. “Well, I guess that’s good. I just hope they don’t start following you. I’d be really worried if that happened. So you’re tired because you were worried about Crutchley and didn’t sleep well?” he asked me.

  “I didn’t sleep well, but not because of worrying about Crutchley,” I told Henry. “Bad dreams.”

  “What kind of bad dreams?”

  I looked around. Linda and Jeff still weren’t paying any attention. Weren’t they even curious? All I ever did was help them, and they wouldn’t even listen to me. It dawned on me then how totally one-sided our relationship was, and that made me angry. Why should I share my confidences with them?

  I turned back to Henry. “It was kind of more vivid than any other dream I ever had,” I told him.

  Henry leaned forward. He was blond and lanky and had big blue eyes. “Yeah? Go on.”

  “I dreamed somebody important to me gave me two boxes to keep safe for him and told me I must never open them; I mustn’t even think about opening them. And then the person who gave them to me left.” I paused. “If that happened to you, what would you do?”

  He shrugged. “I’d keep them safe, like he told me.”

  “You wouldn’t try to open them?”

  “Of course not. He told you not to, right?” Henry said it with total conviction. “So what else happened in your dream?”

  His attitude made me too embarrassed to admit I had even dreamed about opening the boxes, let alone that I had actually done it in real life. “Well, that was it, I guess,” I said, my voice a little shaky. “I wanted to open them and I had to keep fighting the temptation. I almost gave in—and that was when I woke up.”

  “Hmmmm,” he said thoughtfully. “There’s probably some deep psychological meaning to it, but I’m not good at that stuff.” Then he looked worried. “But I still don’t understand why it bothers you so much, Annie. I mean, it was just a dream—and not even that scary. It would have been different if you’d opened them.”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled.

  He smiled. “I’m going to have to start calling you Pandora.”

  “Pandora? Who’s Pandora?”

  “It’s a Greek legend.” Henry was smart; I had to admit that—there was more to him than I had realized. “It happened when the world was still perfect. Nobody had any problems. There was no war. Nobody was sick. Nobody died. Then somebody—some god in disguise or something —gave a box to a girl named Pandora and told her to keep it safe for him and to never open it. But she was too curious. She opened it.”

  “Yeah?” I could hardly believe how similar this story was to mine. “And then what happened?”

  “All these terrible, hideous, ugly creatures came swarming out.” Henry flailed his arms. “They were all the problems of the world. Before that, the world had been a perfect place. Then Pandora let all the bad things out—disease, war, death, everything. Now the world was real life—full of horrible problems.”

  “And that’s the end?” I said, horrified.

  “No. One last thing came out of the box—beautiful, not ugly. Her name was Hope. And now hope is the only thing we have going for us.”

  I was so upset by the story I didn’t know what to say. Luckily, the bell rang.

  For the rest of the day I kept worrying about what Henry had said. I knew this Pandora thing was just a story, but even so, it made what I had done seem more terrible, more dangerous.

  I took my time going home. And after I got home, I kept thinking of things to do away from my closet. Finally, after more than an hour, I worked up the nerve to look inside.

  At first glance, the box seemed pretty much the same. Then I noticed, with a cold feeling, that the propeller blades had moved slightly. They were no longer pointing exactly into the corners of the box, but about a quarter of an inch off. It also seemed that the propeller was slightly higher than it had been, now maybe an inch and a half below the top edge of the box. Was it slowly turning, moving upward? I didn’t even want to think about it.

  But I couldn’t help noticing that the rootlike things clinging to the inside of the box were branching out a little; the ends of them almost looked like veiny hands.

  There was a faint click, and the dial in the center moved one notch. I shivered and carefully put the Scrabble board on top of it again.

  An
d what was happening in the basement?

  I knew I had to check it out. If something weird was going on down there, I needed to know about it. I tried to tell myself that the thing that had run out of the box was probably just some sort of mothlike creature that had been eating the Bedouin wedding dress or whatever was inside the box. It wasn’t so easy to believe this now, though, after seeing what was inside the box in my closet.

  I had to go down right away, before Aunt Ruth came home and got suspicious.

  I went very slowly, listening in the darkness on the stairs. I didn’t know what I expected to hear, but all I did hear was the faint rumbling hum of the furnace.

  And then, as I neared the bottom of the stairs, I began to feel it. An intrusion in my head, a tingling, working from outside to deeper inside. Was I truly going crazy now?

  The tingling grew stronger as I stepped down onto the basement floor; my brain felt almost like it was glowing. And for the first time in my life I didn’t have to grope around for the chain to turn on the light: I just reached up with my hand and there it was, in exactly the right place. I hesitated, unable to imagine what the light would show me. Then I clenched my teeth and pulled the chain.

  There was nothing unusual in the main room except for the peculiar electric sensation in my head. But the box—and the creature—had been in the root cellar. I went that way. My head seemed to be pulling me there. I stepped into the small, dark room. I reached up without thinking and there was the chain for the light—again, no groping. I pulled it.

  The room looked exactly the same. There was the wooden box, with cardboard boxes piled around it and magazines and tools holding down the lid. I could see no sign of the little creature.

  But the inside of my head was full of sensation. Not words, exactly, but meaning, thoughts, pushing in from outside.

  Greetings. Welcome. I am happy you finally showed up. Have you eaten yet?

  I put my hands to my ears. “Huh? Eaten yet? Who is this? What’s going on?” I said, dazed, feeling crazier than ever.