The Boxes

by William Sleator

  “Crutchley getting the clock,” I said instantly. “Nothing would be worse than that. Think how fast they could wreck everything beautiful in the world.”

  “Exactly.” Henry looked hard at me and took a deep breath. “Just keep that in mind, whatever happens. Never forget it.”

  On the way out of the library he thought of something else. “And don’t act scared. We’re confused; we have no idea why we’re there. But we’re not scared. If they know we’re scared, they’ll know we’re hiding something.”

  “If I can act like I’m not scared, they should give me an Oscar,” I muttered.

  One of the sleek dark cars with smoked windows that had followed us was waiting for us after school. The back door lock clicked open as we approached it. Henry gave me a look of encouragement, then pulled open the door and slid inside. I followed him, feeling colder inside the car than outside in mid-January.

  The driver, a young man in a dark suit and dark glasses, nodded at us but said nothing. Was he one of the drivers who had followed us? He accelerated smoothly away from the school. Soon we were on the highway heading downtown.

  For twenty minutes, Henry and I sat in uncomfortable silence, aware of the driver and also the fact that the car might be bugged.

  Downtown, the driver stopped in front of a shiny glass skyscraper. “Thirty-ninth floor,” he said. “They’re expecting you.”

  The elevator swept us up there in seconds; my leaden stomach sank to my knees. We stepped off into a foyer: modem couches and a high plastic counter with a receptionist sitting behind it. Above her head, “Crutchley Development” gleamed in big chrome letters. The whole floor belonged to them.

  The receptionist’s face was a mask of makeup; her hair swooped back in plastic-like curves. “Can I help you?” she said without expression.

  “We have an appointment,” Henry said. “Anne Levi and Henry Vail.”

  “Just a moment, please.” Long fingernails clicked on an invisible keyboard. “Take a seat and someone will be right out,” she said.

  We perched uncomfortably on one of the nubbly couches; I was afraid my coat might get snow or dust on the upholstery. “This is what it would feel like to live in a million-dollar house,” Henry whispered. Trying to shush him, I showed him a magazine called International Development, which had a picture of an exotic tropical resort on the cover, with pools and thatched-roofed bungalows and little artificial waterfalls. “I wonder how many poor fishermen got their livelihoods taken away from them to make room for that stupid place?” Henry said.

  Before I had a chance to shush him again, a genial voice said, “Probably quite a few.”

  We both looked up guiltily. An elderly white-haired man in an expensive suit stood there smiling down at us from beneath his immaculately groomed white mustache. “And now those poor fishermen have enough money, in their community, so they don’t have to work like slaves in the hot sun hauling nets from dawn to dark to make a few pennies,” he continued. He cleared his throat and extended his hand. “Adam Crutchley. Nice to meet you.”

  We were important, for sure—this guy had to be the owner of the company. We got up awkwardly and shook his hand. “This way, please,” he said and ushered us through an opening to the left of the receptionist. “Did you have a comfortable ride?” he asked us.

  We were walking along the edge of a very large room filled with desks in cubicles. Everything was pale purple and chrome. Inside every cubicle was a person and a computer and a phone.

  “Sure, real comfortable, thanks,” Henry said. “The car looked a little bit familiar—”

  I glared at him. He should know better than to start out making accusations. We were supposed to play dumb.

  “Excuse me. A little bit what?” Crutchley said.

  “Uh, fancy, I was going to say,” Henry corrected himself as we stepped out of the big room into a luxurious marble-floored anteroom. And I was thinking: The farther we get from the elevator, the harder it’s going to be to get out of here.

  “Well, nothing but the best for you two.” Crutchley beamed at us. We followed him across the elegant room. “Right in here, please.” He pushed open a polished wooden door and gestured us inside.

  The first thing I saw was the view. One whole wall of glass jutted out, so that you almost felt as if you were falling through it. There was the winter city at twilight, with only the tops of the skyscrapers reflecting the brilliant orange sunset. The barren black-and-white parks, the frozen, winding river were already in shadow; the many bridges glittered with lights. The whole metropolis was framed, enclosed by this window, as if it were the property of Crutchley Development.

  Crutchley was pointing. “Way over there on the left, where you just see trees and some roofs. That’s our new site—your old neighborhood.”

  Henry stiffened beside me. I touched his elbow to stop him from saying anything.

  “Anne Levi and Henry Vail,” Crutchley said, turning to face the people seated at the table. “This is my son, Denham Crutchley.”

  A flabby, dark-haired man with a greasy face smiled stiffly at us.

  “The head of our legal department, Danielle Korngold.”

  She had short red hair and was dressed all in chic black. She nodded briskly, her sharp blue eyes assessing us.

  “Director of operations, Brad Whelpley.”

  This man had a blond crew cut and a pockmarked face; he wore a jacket and a denim shirt and no tie. He looked like an ex-Marine. He lifted one comer of his mouth and winked.

  “And Ms. MacElberg, my executive secretary.”

  She was a skinny middle-aged woman with her dark hair in a low bun, wearing a green suit. Her fingers were poised over a laptop.

  “Sit down, sit down,” Crutchley said to us, pulling out two chairs at the end of the table opposite from everyone else. “Refreshments? Soft drinks?”

  We looked around. Nobody else had anything. “No, thanks,” we said together.

  Crutchley walked down the room and sat at the head of the table, across from us, surrounded by his cronies. He folded his manicured hands on the expensive wood. “And now ... What can we do for you two today?” he asked us.

  Henry and I looked at each other. We didn’t have to pretend to be mystified. “What can you do for us?” Henry murmured.

  Crutchley was still smiling pleasantly. The others watched us. “Yes, that’s what I said,” Crutchley answered him.

  “Well, you could tell us why you ... invited us here,” Henry said. He made it clear, by his tone of voice, that it hadn’t been an invitation—it had been an order.

  “We just wanted to have a nice little chat and talk about what kind of goodies you’d like after your folks sign the purchase and sale agreements.”

  Did they think we were babies or what? “Goodies?” Henry said, sounding confused.

  “I guess you’re too young for cars.” Crutchley looked at Danielle Korngold, the lawyer. She nodded almost imperceptibly—she had already done her research on us. Crutchley smiled back at us and lifted his arms like a TV evangelist. “But you’re not too young for clothes—wardrobes of designer clothes. You’re not too young for trips —to Disney World or other wonderful parks. Or how about Hollywood? Universal Studios is a big favorite. You’d impress those movie people in your new outfits.”

  Henry and I looked at each other again. I could tell he wanted to make gagging noises, like I did. What kind of imbeciles did this jerk think we were, anyway? “But—we still don’t know why you’re offering us these things,” Henry said. “We do know you offered a million dollars for our houses. Do developers usually buy presents for the kids, too?” He was amazing; he sounded genuinely naive.

  Crutchley chuckled uncomfortably. “Well, no, not usually.” He glanced around at the others, as if unsure about how to proceed. “But you two are special.”

  “Your little toys,” Danielle Korngold said, resting her chin on her folded, red-nailed hands and smiling sweetly at me. “We think they’re just really
terrific.”

  “Toys?” I said, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice so I would sound dumb and not scared.

  There was a silence. Nobody seemed to know what to say. Outside the window the cold, glowing buildings were fading as the last of the sunlight sank away.

  “Oh, come on, let’s just get to the point,” said Brad Whelpley, the director of operations with the crew cut and the acne scars. He let his eyes flick back and forth between Henry and me. “We’re very interested in that stunt you pulled off Tuesday afternoon. When you speeded yourselves up—and that construction in your basement was finished in no time. We need that capability. We need it a lot.”

  My stomach went cold. They did know.

  At least this Whelpley guy wasn’t treating us like idiots. But we still had to act stupid. “I ... I don’t understand,” Henry said. He turned to me. “Do you know what he means, Annie?”

  I shook my head.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Whelpley said, tapping the table with his fist and looking around at the others, then back at us. “You kids can’t get away with this. You’re just wasting our time. We have evidence.”

  “Evidence?” Henry said, wide-eyed.

  Crutchley didn’t look so genial anymore—clearly he was used to getting his own way. “Turn around,” he said to us. He gestured impatiently behind him. Dark curtains gathered across the window, and the lights went out. We turned around to see a screen sliding down from the ceiling on the wall behind us.

  A picture appeared on the screen: Henry’s turreted stone house, late afternoon. It was dark, but you could make out the pine trees moving slightly past the stars in the wind. I could barely see a shadowy, gargoyle-like carved figure crouched under the turret. But the windows were brightly lit.

  A blur flashed past a window on the second floor. It was so startling and unexpected that I couldn’t help jerking in my seat. The camera zoomed in on the window and the shape flashed past it again, going the other way, larger but still too fast to see. It was even more unnerving the second time.

  Then the quality of the picture became grainier; the trees stopped moving: slow motion. This time the figure took at least a second to move into the window, stop and look outside, and then slide away. If you watched closely, Henry’s face was just barely recognizable.

  The picture switched to my house. Like Henry, I zipped almost invisibly past the window a couple of times before the cameraman slowed it down enough so that you could see it was me.

  “Gee, what funny pictures,” Henry said in the darkness. “That’s a cool trick camera. Maybe you could give me something like that.”

  I found his hand and squeezed it. Hopeless as it seemed, he was still fighting them.

  The general sigh was audible from the other end of the table. “Take a look at these trick shots, sweetie,” a woman’s voice said—it had to be the lawyer, Danielle Korngold.

  Now the picture swam up behind two people—Henry and me in the basement, looking at the black palace and the creatures who had built it. “All this happened during the slowdown yesterday,” I was saying. “I haven’t been down here since then. The slowdown speeded up construction like crazy. According to a normal clock, they built this palace in an hour.”

  “Is this a dream, or what?” Henry murmured.

  “You know it’s real,” I said, and I wanted to cringe as I heard the words. “Do you believe me now? About how these creatures, and me, and mainly the clock in my closet upstairs, all three together, were what made the slowdown?”

  Another picture, Henry and me from behind again, but more brightly lit. The cameraman managed to get a good shot of the clock face over our shoulders. The tendril lashed out. Henry and I screamed and backed into the camera, and the screen went blank.

  The lights came on; the screen slid up into the ceiling. Our eyes met for only an instant as we turned to face the others. Did I look as pale as Henry did?

  Danielle Korngold was smiling sweetly again. “Trick shots, is that what you’re going to say this time?” she said. “Pretty good trick camera that can put words into people’s mouths.”

  Neither of us could think of anything to say.

  “You understand,” Crutchley said to us, not smiling now, his voice gravelly, “the gifts we’re offering you are not to persuade you to give us anything or help us out. We’ll get what we need ourselves. The gifts are more a reminder for you to keep quiet—this capability of speeding up construction has to be exclusively ours. We already know your parents and guardian don’t know anything about it; we made sure to find that out. So the gifts we’re offering are a nice little reminder to you to say nothing to anybody. We’d like to keep things pleasant.”

  And hanging in the air was the implied threat: If we didn’t accept these gifts and keep quiet, then things might not be so pleasant after that.

  “If the gifts are just to keep us quiet, then you’re wasting your money,” Henry said. He shrugged. “We still don’t understand what there is for us to tell anybody.”

  “You saw the videos!” Whelpley snapped.

  “A trick camera,” Henry said. He sounded calm but I could see from his eyes that he was really scared.

  “But she said it in so many words!” Crutchley said, his voice rising. “They built that palace in an hour!”

  “The logic of it all is very clear, sweetie,” said Korngold. “You speeded up—we saw that. The construction in the basement speeded up—you said that. The clock thing did it.” She smiled. “What is there for you not to understand?”

  Henry didn’t answer. He’d run out of excuses. It was my turn; I couldn’t go on putting it off. I had to disagree with a group of hostile adults. I had spent my whole life avoiding situations like this and had never been faced with anything nearly as bad before. I couldn’t even turn and look at Henry; they’d know how frantic I was.

  All I could do was pretend I was talking on the phone, making up an excuse for someone Aunt Ruth didn’t want to talk to—I had done that many times. Still, my heartbeat seemed to fill the room as I said, “Oh, I get it. You thought what I was talking about in the basement was real?”

  “Real? If it wasn’t real, then what was it?” Crutchley burst out, his face flushing.

  Yes, what was it? I wanted to hide under the table. But everything depended on me right now. I had to continue pretending I was on the phone and could hang up if it got really bad. I forced myself to continue, feeling sweat on my forehead. “That thing in the basement is ... a set we’re building for the school play. I was just practicing some of the lines. It’s a science fiction play.” I made an attempt at a laugh. I knew this was a really dumb story, but I couldn’t think of anything else. “You don’t really believe a funny toy clock could change time, do you? That’s crazy. I’m really surprised that people like—”

  Crutchley’s face was a deep red now. He slammed both fists on the table, and the people around him recoiled, scared—and it was a physical effort for me not to cringe. He jumped to his feet. “You think you can lie your way out of this?” he shouted. “We have evidence! You saw the evidence. And there’s the phone, too. We ... we ...” He was gasping now.

  “Dad, Dad, calm down,” Crutchley Junior said. “You know the doctor said it’s bad for your heart to get so excited.”

  Crutchley put his hand to his chest. He sank back into his chair. The others all leaned toward him.

  Henry grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet. Luckily the door wasn’t locked. We were out of there in seconds and running through the large room full of cubicles.

  “Get them back here!” Crutchley bellowed. People in cubicles turned to look.

  There were footsteps behind us now. We dashed past the receptionist, who looked vaguely up from her fingernails.

  “No time to wait for the elevator,” Henry said breathlessly. He ran frantically around the foyer, then found a door marked EXIT. He pushed it open, revealing a concrete stairway with a metal railing. He pulled the door gently shut behind us
and we rushed down. We’d barely gone two flights before the door slammed above and footsteps started after us.

  “The receptionist ... must have told them,” Henry said, gasping.

  “It only sounds like ... one person.”

  “Whelpley. The women probably have high heels. Crutchley and Junior—forget it. It’s Whelpley. But he has a gut. We’ve got to beat him.” He pulled at my hand, and we stopped talking and concentrated on flying down the steps.

  But Whelpley was going faster than we expected. His ex-Marine footsteps seemed to be gaining on us. The exit doors had numbers on them. At the thirtieth floor, Henry put his finger to his lips and pulled me through the door.

  This was not a fancy private foyer like Crutchley’s. A lot of people were standing around waiting for the elevator here. We crouched behind a tall group, hoping Whelpley wouldn’t know which floor we’d gotten out on.

  Of course, the first elevator to chime with a down arrow was the one farthest from us. Henry barged through the crowd, pushing people out of the way—I’d never seen him like this—and we wedged into the crowded elevator just as Whelpley came pounding in from the stairway. He stood there helplessly as the elevator doors closed.

  “Sorry,” Henry said to the furious people glaring at us. “A crook is chasing us. We had to get away. Sorry.”

  “Kids today just don’t have any manners; that’s all I can say,” a woman muttered.

  There were a lot of people getting on and off; the elevator stopped at almost every floor—it was almost slower than the stairs. We squeezed to the back, but every time the door opened, we craned our necks to see if Whelpley was getting on.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t have run,” I whispered to Henry. “Now they’ll know we’re scared. Now they’ll know we were lying. Now they’ll keep on believing it’s all true.”

  “I know that,” Henry said, sounding almost angry. “It was probably a stupid mistake to run. But I just couldn’t stand to be there for one more second. They might have gotten us to admit something. And ... and maybe that would have been worse. Right, Annie?”