"THE THING IN THE BOX"
Exploring an attic in search of valued old relics of the past
The Twilight Zone redefined storytelling, drawing audiences into the unimaginable. Now, 66 years later, top writers, artists, and musicians are stepping into its eerie glow with a fresh twist. Ready to see where they’ll take you?
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A dusty old attic, full of knick-knacks and geegaws. Crumbling first editions and two-wheeled tricycles. Taxidermied panthers and russet ottomans cracked with age. A tired-looking but attractive middle-aged woman wearing blue denim overalls, with her long blonde-to-graying hair tied up in a pony tail, is picking slowly through the stuff.
She pulls out a dust-covered box with both hands and blows off the dust. It’s elaborately carved with intricate fluting, about two-feet-cubed, and lacks a key to its lock. She holds it up to her right ear and shakes it, but hears nothing, her face screwing up in disappointment.
“Emerald!” A voice from the attic stair. A jolly-looking middle-aged man’s head appears in the trapdoor. Bushy walrus mustache, luxuriant brown-to-greying tuft of hair. “Emerald, you find anything good? I just got done lookin’ through the sheds and there weren’t nothin’ save fer a rusted-up ol’ lawnmower.”
Without turning to look at the jolly-man, she calls back to him.
“Just found this here box with a lock, can’t open it. Kinda inneresting, actually.”
“Oh for crying out loud, Emmie!” says the jolly-man, not quite so jolly now. “Leave it, for Gawd’s sake! We got a big ol’ couch to move downstairs. Come help me n’ Sykes, ‘fore the buyer gets here with his truck.”
She puts down the box, and dusts off her hands, her expression one of frustration and impatience. That jolly man clearly brings her no jollity at all.
Emerald Knight, poor scion of a once-wealthy family, come at last into the inheritance of her great-uncle Jared. She dreams of untold riches somewhere in her family’s decaying mansion, dating back to the first settlers in this land. Old blood, old ways, and even older sins. If she can unlock the box of her past glory, surely she can return to the days of mint juleps on the veranda, beaus come-a-courtin’, and housemaids bringing her dainties on silver trays. Or so she imagines. But Emerald Bushnell Knight is about to discover the price of opening up the box of her past as she passes into The Twilight Zone.
Downstairs in the great dusty salon, two men are moving a large embroidered sofa. The jolly-man with the walrus mustache is carrying one end. A man of similar resemblance to him, but lean and wiry in place of his abundant girth, and pinched and bitter-looking instead of jolly, is holding the other end. They put it down the moment Emerald appears at the bottom of the stairway.
“Time for a lil’ respite,” says the not-so-jolly-man. “Emmie, whyn’t you fetch us a fistful o’ beers? And by all means take one fer yourself. Hot today.”
The wiry man grins and shucks his shoulders down, a kind of silent shrug-laugh.
“Yeah, Emerald, we’re just about beat, carrying this ol’ thing from the back parlor. Get us a beer, won’t you, hon?”
“Sykes Knight, I may be bound by vows of matrimony to honor and obey this no-account scoundrel of my husband, but there’s no law of God or man says I have to do my brother-in-law’s biddin’!”
“That a no, then?” The wiry man’s expression remains jocular but there’s an undercurrent of menace in his voice. She sighs.
“You want some chips as well?”
“Some chips’d be nice,” says Sykes the wiry.
“Go get the beer n’ chips, Emmie,” says walrus-mustache. “We left a cooler box on the kitchen table. Pack o’chips next to. Th’icebox in this dump ain’t workin’ yet.”
“I hear and obey, milord Garrett,” says Emerald, bowing sardonically. “But my servantin’ days are fast comin’ up towards a conclusion, I fear.” She draws herself back up to her full height. “This is The Bushnell House and I’m the Bushnell here. I’m landlady of this fine domain. You should be at my beck and call, not th’other way.”
Her husband glares at her over his walrus mustache: “Emmie, you well know that, as your rightful married husband, in this state your property is my property. We have equal shares... or maybe it’s more mine than your’n.” All traces of those jolly good times are vanished now. Malign intent only gazes at her through narrowed piggy eyes.
She breaks her stare, looks down again at the floor, and dusts her hands awkwardly on her overalls. Then passes to the right, head downcast, out of the hallway towards the kitchen in the west wing.
Garrett Knight, new lord of this decrepit manor house, has made his point.
Back in the attic, Emerald is picking through boxes. Her eyes come to rest once more on the ornate box which she left on the floor. She turns round. Sykes Knight, her brother-in-law, is sitting in a busted armchair with horsehair bursting through the rents in the upholstery.
He has on wire-rimmed oval reading glasses and is leafing through a dog-eared scrapbook. With his farm clothes and his grey stubble five-o-clock shadow, the spectacles don’t make him look at all intellectual; rather, he appears like a bootlegger totting up moonshine receipts in a dry county.
“Hey, Emmie, listen to this one: ‘Among my most treasured possessions is an Indian tobacco pipe-of-peace dating from 1689. My great-great-grandfather smoked it to sanctify the treaty he made with native chief, uh...” Here Sykes adjusts his spectacles and peers at the text, “Un-natt-ama, whereby he agreed to honor the tribes’ huntin’ grounds in return for the ground where he built this very house. Five years later he stuck his saber into the chief’s guts and wrested the pipe-tomahawk out of his dying clutches as the Indian village stood burning all around.”
Sykes looks up from the scrapbook and takes off his glasses, grinning. “Journal of your grand-uncle Jared. Pretty story, huh, Emmie?”
“I wonder...” says Emerald. She picks up the elaborate box and shakes it, listening. “Could that be what’s in this box? An injun pipe-of-peace?”
Sykes stands up and comes over. “Lemme see that thing, Emmie.”
Emerald glares at her brother-in-law. Her suspicion of him is palpable.
“Aww, Emmie, don’t be like that. Just wanna take a look, I’ll give it right back to ya.”
“Promise?”
“Promise. Now, lemme see.”
She passes the box to him where he stands above her. He takes it and shakes it hard.
“Be careful, Sykes! That’s a valuable antique! Leastways, could be.”
“Don’t seem like no injun pipe to me.”
“Now how would you know what an injun pipe sounds like in a wood box? Could be it’s all swaddled in cloth or sump’n’”
“Maybe if I take a hatchet to the box and bust it out...”
“Sykes Knight! You will do no such thing to my property!” Emerald stands and grabs the box out of his hands. “You ain’t busting nothin’! Could be the box itself is part of the... set, or whatever. Could be as valuable as the pipe, or more, even. I’ll go on lookin’ round, and maybe the key will show up someplace.”
“Sure thing, Emmie, but you know... you don’t need to go tellin’ Garrett ‘bout this piece. Could be, once we get it assessed, it might make a pretty penny for you n’ me. My little bro’ don’t need to know nothin’ ‘bout it.”
His conspiratorial smirk is met by her scowl, which slowly starts to lighten to a sly smile of assent.
Evening.
Emerald and Garrett are sitting at the kitchen table, having dinner. They eat in sullen silence. At last Garrett looks up and addresses his wife: “So, you find anythin’ good up there in that ol’ owlhutch of an attic?”
Emerald puts down her fork. “Nothin much, Garrett. Trinkets and such. Gonna box ‘em up and take ‘em down the antique store. See what they’ll give me.”
“Hmm,” Garrett seems fairly uninterested. He goes on chewing his beef n’ greens stew.
“Did find my old grand-uncle Jared’s journal, though,” adds Emerald. “Old geezer had a whole mess o’ family history to relate. You know that there’s been a Bushnell family home on this site since 1689? That’s way back in the colonial times, Garrett.”
“This place ain’t no colonial house,” says Garrett. “Looks like later’n that.”
“Yeah, this place is a plantation house, built 1780-thereabouts. There’s a ruined slave quarters somewhere, stables, barn, all on the property. I used to know where they were, but it’s all a bit overgrown now. This place, my mem’ries. Need to go rootin’ out them places.”
“Haunted?”
“No that I know of. Never heard nothin’ like that.”
“Pity. Haunted places’re right pop’lar with the tourists comin’ down from the city fer the weekend. We coulda soult ‘em the whole ‘ghosthunter adventure package’.”
He grins, greens showing stuck to his front teeth. “Still could, come to think of it. Slaves in chains, all that, gets them city folk all heated up an’ pantin’ for mo’.”
“Hmm,” says Emerald, her turn to be unconvinced. “Maybe sump’n’ll come up in my research.”
“Your re-search?” repeats Garrett, amused. “What are you, local historian now? Folklore spesh’list?”
“Sump’n like that Garrett,” smirks Emerald, her amusement far beyond the whimsy of the moment, her eyes drawn to the kitchen window, to a freedom beckoning beyond it. “Sump’n like that.”
Out on the veranda one hot afternoon, cicadas fixing to bust from their skrilling call. The big swing is defunct, but its wreckage rests on some beercrates and serves as a kind of ad hoc bench. Garrett sits on it, supping on a beerbottle in his work clothes, yellow mechanic’s one-piece and soiled cap. Beer suds glisten in his walrus mustache.
A rusted pick-up pulls up in the dusty driveway. Out gets Sykes in his work gear, oily bib and reversed green cap. He saunters over.
“Hey Sykes,” says his brother. Emerald appears at the door, screeing open the rusty bugscreen, squints out. “Hey, Sykes,” she says. Looks like she’s expecting something from his visit. Looks like she’s trying to keep that whatever under wraps for now, too.
“Hey, I gotta step inside and wash up some,” says Sykes, “That okay?”
Garrett shrugs and Emerald holds the screen door open for him, so he strides inside.
“Well?” whispers Emerald in the kitchen. Sykes has run the faucet and is washing his hands in furtherance of his excuse. He pulls out his hands and leaves the water running.
“Well, I got it X-rayed just like you said. Fifty bucks to the radiologist at the Mercy Hospital. Got it in the back o’ my truck right now, wrapped in a blanket. When I bring in Garrett for a beer you can sneak it in upstairs or wherever.”
“What’s in the X-ray, Sykes?”
For answer, Sykes pulls an X-ray acetate from under his bib overalls and passes it to her. It’s looking crumpled and crinkled, but it’s clear enough in outline. Something coiled up, maybe with a straight part pointing to one corner of the box.
“That ain’t no injun peace pipe, Emmie,” whispers Sykes. “What could it be? I had half a mind to crack that ol’ box open right then n’ there and take a gander.”
“You’ll do nothin’ of the kind, Sykes Knight,” hisses Emerald. “Juss go out on the veranda and haul yer brother in here to the kitchen. I’ll bring the box back upstairs to the attic. Come on by tomorrow while Garrett is out at work, and I’ll tell you how we can get into that ol’ box without hurtin’ it any, and what I think is inside.”
The bed is a four-poster, with those winding snaky posts in dark mahogany that you can’t resist running your fingers down to trace the sinuous curves of it. Emerald sits up in bed with another notebook in cracked leathern covers, reading aloud. She doesn’t need glasses to read, which along with the resisting blonde tones among the gray, and the firmness of her breasts, constitute the high points of her self-pride.
“Overseer Reed was a ferocious individual who brooked no sass from the slaves... What’s ‘brook’, Sykes?”
Skyes, lying in bed with one hand supporting his head, reaches up his other hand to scratch his scalp. His stubbly gray five-o-clock shadow doesn’t favor him any better with no grubby workshirt to set it off. He’s tanned along the hands and neck, lilywhite on his lean torso.
“Brook...? Think it’s like a crick in British. Wait, that don’t make no sense. Maybe it’s like ‘stomach’, he wouldn’t stomach no sass. Yeah, that’s ‘bout right.”
“... a ferocious individual who brooked no sass,” continues Emerald. “Wait, where is it?” She pages through the book. “Here... ‘He wielded a tremendous barbed cat-o-nine-tails, a devastating implement that well matched his cruel disposition’. Okay, now what’s a cat-o-nine-tails, Sykes? I juss can’t keep up with all this old-timey talk ‘thout a fat dictionary.”
“It’s like a fearsome whip but juss moreso. You know when they say something is a scourge, like when th’ Romans scourged Jesus? Ever hear that? Scourge o’ Gawd?”
“Sure, the scourge, I always juss reckoned it was a big fat rod they gave him a whuppin with.”
“No, my dear, it’s far worse’n that. It has nine long lashes, with all barbs on it, like to some barb wire. ‘Magine that now?”
“Sounds bad, Sykes, real horrible.”
“You reckon that’s what’s in the box, Emmie? Th’overseer’s barbed scourge?”
“You know, I do. An’ juss listen to this: ‘When I locked away the piece, it still bore flecks and wads of human flesh upon its barbs, dried now with age but clearly recognizable as such.’”
“Damn, Emmie, that can’t but improve its price on the antiquities market. There’s a special class o’ collector, goes wild fer items like that. What they call ‘special innerest’”
Together they cast their eyes toward the corner of the room where the box sits on a dresser. They both shudder at once: in thought of the horror contained within? Imagining the many thousands of dollars a documented and authenticated piece like that could raise? Or a tingle at the possibilities the scourge offers, hidden within the closed and inaccessible box?
They reach for each other now, in the sagging four-poster bed with the sinuous dark posts that curve up toward the ceiling. Garrett won’t be home for at least an hour.
Dressing now, Emerald strokes her fingers on the box before tying her shapeless gingham dress around her with a gray sash. She ribbons up her hair and speaks towards the bed, where Sykes still lingers.
“C’mon now, lover boy. You know yer ever-lovin’ brother’ll be back soon and it’d be best if you were gone, or at least not lollygaggin’ round on his marital bed in yer birthday suit in the broad daylight.”
“Yeah, Emmie, I’m fixin’ to get up presently. Juss thinkin’ ‘bout how we get to that piece in that ol’ box there ‘thout harmin’ it any.”
“I got it, Sykesie!” coos Emerald, looking into the dresser mirror. “We can get a locksmith to open it. Get a good man from the city, won’t cost but a few dollars, maybe couple hundred max, for the best guy available...”
“Couple hundred! I know some guys from inside, crack locksmiths, ‘ll do it for a sight less’n that.” Sykes is just pulling on his pants and reaching for his workshirt when he freezes, gaze locked rigid on the corner of the room. Emerald turns to follow his stare.
In the doorway to the bedroom stands Garrett, holding a shotgun.
“Surpriy-ise!” he coos. “Guess you lil’ lovebirds din’t hear my new truck comin’ up the roadway there. Mighty silent, that new model. They say it’s good for the ‘vironment.”
“Garrett!” cries Emerald. “It’s not what you think. Sykes was juss taken ill and I said fer him to lie down...”
“Oh, fer Chris’sake, Emmie, spare me the telenovela routine. I heard what you two were up to.” He advances towards the bed. “I heard about your fancy box o’ tricks, too. Fixin’ to bilk me o’ my righteous inheritance, big brother?”
He moves closer to Sykes, who’s still holding his crumpled workshirt. Smacks him once in the face with the shotgun stock. Sykes goes down, looks back up, nose bleeding.
“We was plannin’ to cut you in, once we found a good price for it! Just waitin’ for the right moment to seal th’ deal – we know how your hot-headed ways are like to ruin any negotiations...”
“I’ll show you my hot-headed ways, right enough, brother. On yer knees now. That’s right, now you’re gonna...”
Garrett goes down, floored, the shotgun flying away from his arms. Emerald has struck him with the heavy wooden box she carries in her hands. She looks on appalled as Sykes, quick as lightning, wraps his workshirt around his brother’s neck and pulls.
When it’s done, when Garrett lies bluefaced on the floor beside the four-poster bed, when Sykes kneels panting, catching his breath – when all that’s done, Emerald looks down at the box she holds in her hands. There’s blood and hair along the bottom edge where she struck Garrett. And something else...
“Sykes! Hey, the box. The – the lock’s come open.”
Sykes looks at her, panting. He is joyful at this piece of good news.
“Well, whatchu waitin’ for, gal? Set it on down here, let’s take a look.”
Emerald kneels between her half-naked lover where he gasps and the staring blue-faced corpse of her husband, and sets the bloodied box upon the floor. Trembling, holding back her yelps of excitement, she opens up the lid...
A rag, a rock, a pencil.
“Where is it, Emmie?” calls Sykes to her, unbelieving. “Where’s our scourge of God?”
And Emerald just gapes open-mouthed at the nothing at all that is her inheritance.
Pandora opened up a box to let all the evils of the world fly out. They could never be boxed up ever again. What Emerald has just discovered is that those evils are all around, in her past and in her present, and that she may well be one of those evils – or at least, be fairly intimate with them. What’s left to find in the box, then, when all the evils are out here with us, dwelling in our world? There’s nothing left at all in the box, just another disappointing resolution to another futile little mystery left at the other end of The Twilight Zone.
The Thing in the Box
© A.P. Murphy, 2024
All rights reserved
What a ride, and a great addition to the Substack Zone. I was caught off guard by the last few scenes, but it’s a great ending
Absolutely love it.