by Mac Flynn
"I'm not meaning to, sweety," Charlie insisted. "But I just can't-" Sherry held her hand up in his face.
"I don't want to hear any more excuses, Dad. Stop lying and start pulling yourself together," she ordered him.
Sherry spun on her heels and marched to the road. She got into an old purple van, backfired a plume of black smoke that would have given an environmentalist a heart attack, and puttered away at a speed that would have made my great-grandmother look fast. And my great-grandmother was dead.
Charlie hung his head and shut the door. He turned and shuffled back to his chair.
"Charlie, what's going on?" I asked him.
Charlie plopped himself onto the cushion and sighed. "Sherry's my daughter. She wants me to lie and tell people I didn't see anything that night," he explained. He leaned forward and cupped his head in his hands. "But I can't, Misty. I can't say that because that isn't what happened," he insisted.
I stood and walked over to pat him on the shoulder. "You know it's the truth, and I know it's the truth, but I don't think Sherry's going to believe it unless she sees it."
Charlie shuddered and shook his head. "I don't want her to go through that. It. . .it still gives me nightmares."
"Believe me, he's not going to come back asking for any more favors," I told him.
Charlie lifted his head and looked me in the eyes. He was like a big, quivering baby, but without the diapers. And the cute dimples. And everything else except the quivering part. "You think so?"
"I know so, now get yourself together and get yourself cleaned up. What would the guys at the diner say to this mess?" I scolded him. I paused and remembered the guys from the diner. "On second thought, scratch that. Don't listen to what they'd say, listen to Sherry and me. You're not going to go through any more weirdness."
"You really think so?" he asked me.
I patted him on the shoulder. "Trust me. No more weirdness."
Charlie sat up and smiled. "Then you're right. I need to get over that night. I mean, it's been a few months since I saw him. He's not coming back."
"That's the way!" I encouraged him.
Charlie jumped to his feet and looked around us at the unregulated trash dump. "Let's get this place cleaned up!"
The minute he turned his back my face fell. There went my chance at telling him the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. I really could have used His help, too.
Then my face did some acrobatics and twisted into horror as Charlie grabbed the soul box. He tilted and turned it over in his hands.
"So what is this-" I lunged forward and snatched it from his hands.
"Don't touch it!" I warned him.
He blinked at me with his mouth slightly open. "Why not?" he asked me.
"I'm holding it for a friend and that thing's a little touchy about how it's held," I told him. I neglected to mention I didn't want Charlie to develop ventilation from the box's acidic effects.
"Oh, well, put it on the couch and let's get to work!" he insisted.
I spent a few hours lugging and dragging piles of primitive culture from the fridge, and cardboard furniture from the corners of the rooms. The poker-playing rats were evicted along with an assortment of other multi-legged creatures who didn't pay rent. When we were finished the place still looked like it'd been through a diner scuffle, complete with a food fight, but that was an improvement over its former waste site designation.
Charlie fell into his chair and I plopped onto the couch beside the box. I glared at the unhelpful paperweight. If all vampire souls were as worthless as Roland's then I wondered how they missed them. Charlie winced and pull a tire iron from the cushion of his chair. He tossed it towards the kitchen and it clattered to the floor.
"That was quite a chore, wasn't it?" he commented.
"Yeah," I wheezed. I grabbed the box and cracked a few back bones standing up. "But I'd better go."
"Even before I feed you lunch?" he offered.
"I've got some food at home, and I could use some more sleep," I told him.
"You work tonight?" he guessed.
I shook my head. "Nope. I've got vacation the next few days."
Charlie frowned and stood. "Misty, I'm sorry. I didn't-" I held up my hand.
"You didn't know and I didn't tell you. That's fair. I guess I needed a little work to keep me in practice for cleaning up the diner," I pointed out.
Charlie grasped my hand and nearly shook my whole arm off. I felt my toes vibrate. "Thank you so much! You're a true friend, Misty."
I pulled myself from his grip before it got so crooked I could pat myself on the back. "It's no problem. Just call me whenever you need help."
He nodded his head. "Sure thing, Misty. Sure thing."
I went back to my apartment and plopped down on my own couch. The box sat safely by my side. I glanced around at the clean apartment that Roland tidied up during the boring hours while I was at work. The long intervals between us not trying to get killed by another supernatural creature were long enough that Roland had taken to scrubbing the corners of the ceiling until he could see his lack of reflection.
"How do you do it?" I asked the coffin at my feet. "Seriously, I'd be bored to a permanent death just cleaning this place and waiting for something to come and kill me."
There wasn't any response, and wouldn't be for another five hours. I leaned back my head and closed my eyes. A nap sounded like a good idea.
CHAPTER 3
A loud noise woke me up and I grabbed at the first weapon within reach. I jumped to my feet and swung the pillow in front of me.
"What's going on? Fire? Vampires? Fluffy kittens?" I yelled.
The only reply to my line of questioning was another ring on my cellphone. I dropped my shoulders and the pillow, and picked up the phone.
"Hello?"
"Misty, it's Charlie," came a high-pitched voice from the other end of the line. He sounded like someone had kicked him in the family jewels with steel-tipped boots.
"Charlie? What's wrong?" I asked him.
"Sherry's mad at me," he replied.
"Mad at you again or still?" I returned.
"Again. She just called me up and said something came in through the Depot for me. A box that's shaped like a coffin," he explained.
I blinked and glanced at the coffee table. Roland still napped beneath my mug coasters. "Is she sure?"
"Sure enough to be mad at me. She says I bought it to make our family look like bigger fools," he told me. "Misty, I was wondering, since you're not working, if you'd come down and help me get it."
I checked the time. It was an hour before wakeup call for my roommate. I sighed. "Sure. You want to wait or-"
"Now," he pleaded. I couldn't blame him. Picking up a coffin-shaped box near dark was about as smart as eating Ralph's homemade clam chowder. Just a word of warning, that isn't clam in there.
"All right. I'll be right over," I promised.
"Meet me at my house. Sherry said the box is big enough I need to take my flat bed," he told me.
I hung up and glanced at the coffin and the soul box. "Looks like me and baby are going out again. "Don't go anywhere. Hopefully this won't take too long," I told the box.
I drove back to Charlie's house and found him hitching up his flatbed to his semi. He turned to me and smiled.
"I can't tell you how glad I am for you doing this," Charlie told me.
I shrugged. "I didn't have anything better to do."
He glanced down at the box in my hands. "You're friend didn't take that yet?"
"He's a little boxed in at the moment, but it's fine," I told him.
We got into his truck and bumped along the road to the railroad tracks. Charlie turned left and followed a road along the tracks for a few miles to the older commercial part of town.
We arrived at the Depot an hour before sunset. The Depot was a collection of steel warehouses lined up in long rows beside the railroad tracks. A small office building sat apart from the warehous
es, and behind that to our left was a fleet of semi trucks. The whole place was surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with enough razor wire to put a maximum-security prison to shame. Forklifts flew across the pavement with their forks filled with pallets and crates.
The only way to get through without coming out looking like tenderized meat was through a pair of wide chain-link fence gates that sat on wheels. Beside the gate inside the compound was a guardhouse. Sherry stood just inside the gates with her arms crossed over her chest. She signaled to the person in the guardhouse and the gates pulled apart. Charlie pulled his truck inside and stopped beside her. He leaned out the window and smiled at her.
"Funny seeing you here," he teased.
Sherry jumped onto the running board of his truck and and jerked her head towards one of the warehouses.
"It's over there," she snapped.
She guided us through the steel jungle of warehouses to one of the open warehouses. The garage door-like entrance was open, so I got a front-row view of the inside. That particular warehouse had shelves along the sides and an open floor in the middle. On the shelves were large crates and boxes full of delivered supplies for local contractors, farmers. You name it, they delivered and shipped it.
In the doorway on the concrete sat a metal box. A coffin-shaped metal box. Charlie parked the truck near the door and we hopped out. Sherry walked around to the other side of the box while we stopped at the closer side.
I knelt down and looked over the shipping label on the lid. There was no return address and that was definitely Charlie's name, printed in red ink, on the stamp.
"It came on one of the trucks from Colmouth," Sherry told us.
"So has anyone tried to open it?" I asked her.
Sherry glared at me. "If it's not ours, we don't open it."
I stood and held up my hands. "Point taken." I looked to Charlie and gestured to the box. "Care to do the honors?"
Charlie's face was as white as a bleached whale. He knelt down and grabbed the slim edges with his thick hands. Charlie gave a tug and grunted. He tried again, but the lid didn't move. "It won't budge," he told us.
Sherry glanced inside the warehouse at a couple of guys who stood beside a forklift. There was a small, broken create beside them with a large hole in the side and I could see a bunch of small, round door handles inside the crate.
"Jimmy! Henry! Stop playing with that contractor mess and get over here with a crowbar!" The men each grabbed a crowbar and walked over. She pointed at the box. "Get it open."
The men knelt and tried to fit their crowbars into the space between the lid and body of the box. It didn't want to wedge, so Henry went back and grabbed a hammer. Jimmy jimmied the crowbar a half inch into the space while Henry held the hammer. Henry slammed the hammer into the back of the crowbar, but the head didn't drive any deeper into the box.
"No doing, Sherry. This stuff's tough," Henry told her.
"What's in this thing, anyway?" Jimmy spoke up. He rapped on the lid and grinned. "Dracula?"
The men burst out laughing until Sherry's death-glare killed their humor. She whipped her head to Charlie and pointed at the coffin.
"Get. It. Out," she growled.
"But I don't know-"
"Get it out now," she ordered him.
Charlie sighed. "All right. Pack it up."
Jimmy grabbed his forklift and put the box onto the flatbed. They strapped it down and Charlie and I climbed into his truck. He leaned out the window and looked at Sherry.
"You have to believe me. I didn't order this thing," he insisted.
Sherry crossed her arms and turned her back on him. "Just go."
Charlie sighed and started his truck. We drove out and back onto the road. I glanced over my shoulder through the window at the coffin-box.
"So any idea what might be in it?" I asked him.
Charlie's shoulders slumped. "You think I ordered that thing, too?"
"No, but boxes haven't got sentient enough to send themselves," I pointed out.
He shook his head. "I can't think of anyone who'd send me-" His eyes widened and his grip on the wheel tightened. He whipped his head to me and I noticed his face completely lacked color except for chalk white. "What if it's that vampire?"
"It's not that vampire," I argued.
"But how could you know?" he persisted.
"Why would he ship himself to you?" I asked him.
"Maybe he wants to do that Trojan thing to me to get inside my house," Charlie suggested.
"It's not a Trojan horse, or even a Trojan condom. It's just a box, and we're not going to take it inside. I don't think it would even fit inside," I pointed out.
"Then what is it, Misty?" he wondered.
I leaned against the seat and pursed my lips. "I don't know, Charlie." But I had a feeling we'd find out, and I wouldn't like this surprise.
CHAPTER 4
We got back to Charlie's house and he unloaded the box from the flatbed with some assistance from Charlie's personal forklift. I held the wide gate open, and he drove the box into his backyard and dropped it in the middle of the weed patch. The sun had a few rays above the horizon, and in fifteen minutes it'd be night.
Charlie pulled back the machine, shut it off and hopped off. I came up and stood beside him. We both stared at the metal coffin box. With how weird my life had become I half-expected two dozen zombie clowns to pop out and mumble something about balloons.
"Misty?" Charlie spoke up.
"Yeah?"
"Could you stay here? Just for a little while?" he pleaded.
I sighed and readjusted the soul box tucked under one arm. "Sure, Charlie."
Charlie perked up. "Good. I'll get us some pizza and you can tell me how all the boys are doing. Brady was getting awful pale last time I saw him." I didn't tell him that Brady was now ash-pale.
We walked inside and Charlie got the pizza cooked while I sat on the couch with my box-mate by my side.
"So are you thinking about getting your old route back?" I called to Charlie in the kitchen.
"I'm not sure yet, but the Depot guys would be glad if I did," Charlie replied. He walked into the living room and handed me a slice of thick, meat-lovers, everything-but-the-hoof pizza. "The boys at the diner been talking about me?"
I took a bite of the pizza and had the sensation of eating a pig-chicken-cow combo. The food slid down like it was covered in lard and hit my stomach like a boulder the size of Colorado.
I shuddered and put down the pizza slice. "Yeah, they've been kind of worried about you," I told him.
"Well, they don't have to be worrying-" Charlie frowned and squinted at the box by my side. "Something's happening with your box."
I glanced down and noticed a slight blue pulse emitted from beneath the lid. I wanted to take that as a good sign, but my gut instinct told me it wasn't. That, or it was the meat pizza talking and telling me that wasn't chicken I'd just eaten. Another pulse of light confirmed it wasn't the pizza.
A rap on the back door made me jump. Charlie dropped his plate and it fell pizza-first onto the floor.
"W-what's that?" he asked me.
"Somebody at your back door," I told him.
Charlie shrank in his chair and looked to me. "Could you answer it?" he pleaded.
I took one look at the glowing box at my side and cringed. "It's your house," I reminded him.
"Please?" he persisted.
There came another rap on the back door. I stuffed a pillow over the glowing box and took a deep breath before I walked over to the door. The door had a glass window on the upper half, and through it I could see a shadowy figure standing on the other side. I sidled up to the door and tried to get a look at them, but the lights inside the house weren't helping.
"Shut off the lights," I whispered to Charlie.
"I don't think we should," he whispered back.
I rolled my eyes and inched up to the door. "Who is it?" I called.
"I need to speak with Charlie," a man's
voice replied. "Is he home?"
I looked to Charlie. He furiously shook his head. "Who's asking?" I returned.
"A stranger who needs his help. Can I come in?" the stranger pleaded.
"No!" Charlie hissed.
"How about I come outside?" I suggested.
"Who are you?" the man asked me.
"A friend of Charlie's. Let me just get my coat and I'll be right out," I told him.
I scooted away from the door and snatched my coat from the back of the couch. Charlie met me there.
"You don't have to go out there. Just tell him I'm not home," he whispered.
"It's a little late for that," I countered. I handed him my cellphone. "You just stay in here and watch that box for me. If something happens call my land-line from my phone and then call the police."
"Shouldn't I call the police first?" he wondered.
"Believe me, my land-line would be a lot more useful," I told him. I shrugged on my coat and walked over to the door.
"There's a light outside. Just flip the switch," Charlie whispered to me.
I found the switch beside the door and switched it on. The figure scuttled back faster than a vegan from a steak. I opened the door and peeked out. The stranger stood at the edge of the light close to where the coffin box sat.
The open coffin box.
I reluctantly slid outside and kept near the wall of the house.
"Did you see how that opened?" I asked the guy.
He nodded. The porch light was bright, but I couldn't see the guy's face because he had his head covered in a hoodie. "I did because I'm the one who opened it."
I edged closer to him to get a peek into the box. My eyes caught on some red satin padding with a plush pillow. Roland would have been jealous. I would've been happier to see a bed of scorpions. "How?"
"I opened it from the inside," the guy told me.
I froze and pointed at him and then the box. "You were inside the box?"
He nodded. "Yes."
"Why?"
"I was resting."
I took a step back and wrapped one of my hands around my neck. "I think you need to-"
He held out a hand. The light caught it and I saw it was covered in scabs. "Wait! Please don't be afraid! I won't hurt you!"
The door opened and Charlie peeked his head out. "You okay, Misty?" he called to me. "I didn't see-the box!"
The man held up both hands and took a step away from us. "I can answer all your questions if you'll just listen to me."
