Boy in the Box

by Marc E. Fitch

  It was not a cage. Rather, it was like a grisly maze. Jonathan realized that he had been led to this very place from the beginning. They were not ahead of the thing that stalked them in the woods; it was miles and eons ahead of them. He had suffered under the guilt of killing Thomas Terrywile; his life – all their lives – were tormented with the memory of that night.

  But they were not guilty. They had freed Thomas Terrywile from an eternity of hell, from being a plaything for a demon summoned by crazed men with dead faces. He saw it all in the dream, the hallucinogenic vision that left him paralyzed on the rocks. He and the Braddick brothers thought they had come back to Coombs’ Gulch to save themselves; instead, their trip was a desperate attempt to cling to the trappings of their lives – an elaborate fate set in motion by a being that could see in and out of time and space. They were here to be tortured and killed. They had taken its plaything away and would suffer for it.

  Jonathan sat up quickly, his back frozen and wet from lying on the rocky beach. His face numb with cold. The open case with Thomas Terrywile’s remains sat inert and uneven before him, the lid open to the world. He saw the raft where they had left it, stirring slightly in a breeze, snowflakes gathering on its swollen sides. He heard Michael’s voice, choking, insane. Jonathan turned and saw him sitting on that lonely shoreline, rocking back and forth, his eyes staring at the box, his lips whispering something Jonathan couldn’t make out. Conner stood on the other side of the coffin, still staring down into the darkness. He looked up at Jonathan and then back down at the box. “We have to finish this and leave,” Conner said.

  The sky was darker now, but not just with cloud cover. Jonathan checked his watch. Four hours had disappeared. The snow fell gently. It would grow worse.

  “What happened?” Jonathan said. “What did you see?”

  “I don’t know. It was just a nightmare. Some kind of reaction.…” Conner said.

  “None of this is right,” Jonathan said. “I don’t think we know what we’re dealing with here.”

  Michael sat cross-legged before the case. He whispered and mumbled. Conner walked to him and pulled him up by the collar. Michael’s eyes refocused for a second on his brother, and they stood, face-to-face, in a momentary embrace, staring into each other’s eyes.

  “Pull it together,” Conner said softly to him.

  “We’re not pulling anything together,” Jonathan said. “We’re just walking into this thing! We’re just doing what we’re told! It’s like being stuck in a film. It’s all predetermined.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Conner said. “This is reality. This is where we are and this is what we have to do. It doesn’t matter what you dreamed up. If it’s all fate, then it won’t matter what we do anyway. You said it yourself! So we might as well do what’s in our best interest.” Conner bent down and took a large rock from the shore and dropped it into the case. Thomas Terrywile’s former body splashed up and spattered his pants, black droplets that blended in with his hunting fatigues. He grabbed another rock and another. “I’ll sink this thing to the bottom, so deep it will be like it never existed.”

  “You’re overloading it,” Michael finally said, clear and cogent.

  “Are you helping or not?” Conner said.

  Jonathan looked at Conner for a moment and then at the mountains around them, dark and wet. He looked out across the lake and up the hill they would have to climb to get home. There was no other place he could be right now. He was here, trapped in an unfolding tragedy of his own making. He waited a moment for the veil to be lifted, but nothing came. He imagined himself transported to another reality where one wrong decision hadn’t set his life on such a fatal course, but it was pointless. The true horror of life is that it continues on without miracle, without reprieve, until the end. We are powerless before it. He thought of the creature in his vision: Do you see? He picked up a small stone, walked to the box and dropped it inside. He crossed himself and said a prayer he didn’t believe, the same as he had done over Gene’s casket.

  Conner closed the lid and sealed it shut again. Michael kneeled before the case, took out his Bowie knife and plunged the stainless steel through the hard plastic as if he were killing a man. He did it with violence and speed, his features distorted under the strain. The box they had carried across miles of forested mountain was now riddled front and back with thick gashes. It leaked onto the rocks.

  Jonathan took one hundred feet of nylon rope from his backpack, tied one end to the raft and left the rest coiled on the shore. The snow fell harder now. The air was wet and heavy, his back numb. He could see the brothers shivering beneath their coveralls. There was no way they could attempt a hike back to the cabin tonight. They would need to set up camp, make a fire and dry their clothes. The temperature was dropping as evening approached. Conner looked frantic to leave, his normally calm demeanor replaced with desperation and fear.

  “We will have to set up camp,” Jonathan said. “There’s no way we’ll make it back tonight.”

  “We’ll make it back,” Conner said.

  “You’re freezing,” Jonathan said. “And so am I.”

  “We’re dropping all this stuff here,” Conner said. “We’ll be able to move faster. This will all work out. It’ll be fine.”

  Jonathan saw no use in arguing further.

  “Just get in the goddamned raft,” Jonathan said.

  Jonathan walked to Michael, and together they took up the coffin one last time and clumsily walked it over the rocks and placed it in the center of the raft. It was heavy – much heavier than before, now that it was laden with stones. Jonathan nearly slipped under its weight.

  Conner sat down in the rear of the raft so he could paddle, keeping his mass in line with the case, and waited; he looked like a traumatized child waiting on a mother who would never arrive. Jonathan saw the image of Conner’s body gutted and strung across the trees of Coombs’ Gulch.

  Do you see?

  He saw. It was the fate of a bullet fired ten years ago that traveled still, never stopping, no matter who or what it struck.

  Michael and Jonathan stepped into the water and pulled the raft behind them into the shallows. The water rose quickly up to their thighs and shocked the breath from them. They pulled the raft and together set Conner adrift with the box and then walked back to shore. Conner took out a small paddle and began to row toward the center of the lake. The raft sagged with the weight. Jonathan took up the other end of the nylon rope. His legs felt frozen and stripped to the bone. The rope spooled out, and they watched as Conner floated silently away from them. The lake reflected a glassy gray from the skies; snowflakes kissed the surface. The rope went taut, and the raft stopped and turned slightly as if looking back at them.

  Jonathan watched the ghostly scene – Conner alone on an overburdened raft with the body of Thomas Terrywile, drifting with unseen forces. Above there was only a gray expanse of nothingness and below a terrible cold. A deep nausea and dread overtook him.

  Do you see?

  He didn’t want to see, to accept it – few did. He searched himself for some remnant of faith, but found nothing. Why would God be here? They had left the holy far behind.

  Conner steadied himself and attempted to get purchase of the sides of the case. His first attempt to lift it nearly sunk him. Water poured in from both sides.

  “It’s too heavy,” Jonathan said.

  “He’ll get it,” Michael said. “He’s good at this kind of stuff.” Jonathan remembered Conner deftly flipping those plastic cups at the East Side Tavern the night they shared this plan with him – the precision, the concentration, the soft touch. But this was not a parlor trick or a game. He gripped the rope tighter in his hand.

  Conner tried again. He lifted one end of the case and attempted to tip it over the side into the water. The raft seemed to hold as he stood the case upright on its side at the bloated edge and began to
push it over. With a final shove, the case splashed down into the lake. The side of the raft collapsed, and the water seemed to leap up and grab Conner by the shoulders. The opposite side of the raft kicked into the air and flipped over. Conner let out a small cry and fell beneath the surface.

  The case floated for a brief moment and then sunk like a stone. In its place a dark bilge flowed upward. Bubbles coated in grime shook to the surface. Conner splashed around in the middle of it, his coveralls soaking through with water, overwhelming him. His hands scrambled for the overturned raft, but he was being pulled below the surface, unable to fight against the weight of his clothes, unable to strip them off.

  Then Michael was in the water, shedding his clothes till he was bare-skinned. “Pull it back!” he screamed. “Pull it back now!”

  The blackness flowed up from the bottom of the lake and spread. It was more than what should have been contained in the case, more than just the decomposed body of Thomas Terrywile. It spread like an oil slick across the surface so the whole lake turned from sky gray to the same deep blackness Jonathan had seen in his unconscious delirium.

  “Pull him back!” Michael screamed again.

  Jonathan pulled the raft, but Conner couldn’t reach it to grab hold. His head dipped below the surface again. He reappeared sputtering and splashing like a child who has fallen in the deep end of a pool, seconds from drowning. The black water poured into his mouth.

  Michael dove into the lake and swam hard and fast. Jonathan followed, but the bottom fell off quickly and he was up to his waist in the shocking cold, his coveralls soaked through. He stopped. Michael was halfway to where Conner struggled and gasped, Michael’s pale white skin pulled tight and prickled with cold as he cut through the black slick. Jonathan could only stand and watch, the useless nylon rope in his hand.

  Conner disappeared beneath the surface and was gone.

  Michael dove and followed his brother down.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Michael could barely walk when Jonathan pulled him shaking and gasping from the shallows. His lips were blue and his jaw trembled and shook; his skin was white as the falling snow. Jonathan slipped and stumbled trying to support him as his legs gave out. Michael’s breath was short and rapid; his muscles convulsed as his body tried to warm itself. Jonathan dragged him from the rocky shore into the trees, and Michael fell to the ground in the fetal position, still shaking and wet. Jonathan stripped a sleeping bag from his backpack, unzipped it and covered Michael, enfolding him completely.

  Michael tried to speak. “I had him,” he said, “but I let go. I had him but I let go.”

  Jonathan waited until Michael stopped chattering and could take a full breath. He walked back out to the lake. The snow fell harder now, silent and mortal into the pitch-black water. The overturned raft had beached itself on the rocks. Jonathan stared out at the scene for a moment. The lake was still, but somehow he expected to see Conner burst through the surface one last time, gasping for air, for life. But Conner was gone, drowned and dead, and there was no escaping that truth. He waited for something to appear and give purpose to it all – from the bullet to Conner’s death. He stared at the mountains and lake, spread out before him like a grand canvas.

  Michael groaned and wormed inside his cocoon.

  It was nearly dark; the woods grew deep with shadow. There was no way to make for the cabin tonight. Michael was nearly dead with cold and Jonathan’s clothes were soaked through. His mind raced. He thought through the possibilities, the stories, the ridiculous lies he would have to tell again and again to explain Conner’s disappearance and what happened to him. More lies, more trappings, more of the guilt that had brought him back to Coombs’ Gulch in the first place. Jonathan thought of Conner’s wife and children, left without a father and husband, crying in the cold as a casket was lowered into the earth. He thought of all those serious executives with their rounds of golf and martini lunches, huddling together in a boardroom to discuss the loss of one of their top men. He thought of Michael, set loose to drift without the comfort of his brother.

  The burden of it would fall on Jonathan. The questions would come fast and angry: What were you doing out there? Why were you at the lake? Why was there a raft when you were supposed to be hunting? He pictured helicopters and detectives, state police rescue divers searching the lake for a body and perhaps finding a box with the bones of a boy. He would have to build a castle of lies – one after the other. No explanation would satisfy their curiosity.

  Jonathan found himself in the same position as the night they killed Thomas Terrywile. The music changes, but the song remains the same. He desperately wanted Conner to emerge from the lake alive – more than anything right now he wanted that. He wanted Michael to snap out of it and help craft a plan. Only time would determine how this worked out, but he had little patience at this point. Jonathan checked the backpacks. They were down to a couple of sandwiches and some jerky. He found a bottle of whiskey stored in Michael’s pack. He unscrewed the top and took a long drink and then another. It burned and warmed and numbed and let him move on for just a moment, like it had for all those years since the boy died.

  He waited for his vision of the world to soften and for his mind to rest. He took the bottle to Michael, put it down beside him and went to look for firewood. Jonathan cleared a space in the snow, dug down past the leaves until he reached dirt, where worms wriggled in the exposed air. He gathered rocks from the shore to form a ring. He found kindling and some large fallen wood that had dried. He took the lighter fluid from Conner’s backpack. The kindling burned bright and orange for a moment and then began to die. He bent down and blew the flames, watched the small sticks redden and then piled on larger branches until a steady fire consumed the falling snowflakes and sent gray smoke up through the trees. Michael stirred in his sleeping bag.

  Jonathan walked back to the lake, coiled the rope from the raft and threw it on the rocks. He took out his knife and stabbed the raft. Each side burst like a gunshot, exhaled and died. He folded the heavy, wet rubber, wrapped a heavy stone in it and threw it as far as he could back into the lake. He took the rope and strung it between two trees near the fire and hung Michael’s clothes on the line. Jonathan cleared a patch of flat land and set to staking down the corners of the tent. He leaned his rifle against a tree nearby. At times, he would look up from his work and gaze out through the timber and over the endless lake. The sky deepened and swirled and grew colder still. A wind came down from the mountains, and the trees began to dance, their high branches knocked together so all around was the echo of dead wood.

  The fire crackled and threw light and shadow, and suddenly it was as if the whole forest were alive and moving – the shadows ran and jumped like children, the trees groaned like old doorways, ripples from the lake sloshed upon the shore and streamed rivulets through the rocks.

  Jonathan sat on the ground and fed the fire. The fire made his wet clothes steam, and the mist rose into the night; it singed and burned his knees, threw smoke into his eyes and lungs. He sat with his rifle at his side and waited and listened to all that moved.

  Michael finally emerged from his cocoon and sat naked by the fire, the nylon sleeping bag draped over his shoulders. He stared into the flames.

  “I still feel cold,” he said. He spoke as if he were the last man on Earth, muttering into a dying darkness. Jonathan fed another piece of deadfall into the fire. “I touched him down there,” Michael said. “I felt his hand for a second and then he was gone. I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t see anything. The water was all black and freezing. I could only feel the cold and then his hand. I tried to grab it, and then it was like he was yanked down deeper. My lungs…they hurt. I couldn’t do it. And then I came up. I don’t even know why I came up. I didn’t want to. It was like my body made me do it. When it really mattered I just came back up.”

  Jonathan stared at him. “You would have died down there, too
. You’re lucky you’re not dead now.”

  “No,” he said. “That’s not why.”

  “Why then?”

  “It was cold and dark,” he said. “I couldn’t make myself go deeper.”

  Jonathan watched Michael from across the fire. His face seemed to move and shift in shadow.

  “Conner is down there,” Michael said, and then he took a long pull from the whiskey.

  “Probably shouldn’t drink too much out here,” Jonathan said.

  “I don’t care,” Michael said. He stood and pulled his clothes from the line and put them on. He took the bottle and the sleeping bag and went into the tent. Jonathan stayed near the fire and tried to eat, but the food made him feel emptier and more desperate. He waited a long time, feeding the fire, unable to think about sleep as his mind raced through possibilities, outcomes, fears and regrets. He had loved Conner. They had all been like brothers – estranged after the incident in Coombs’ Gulch – but he still held the memories of his childhood, of Conner and Gene, and he wondered how everything had gone so wrong.

  He looked out at the lake, an endless black mass in the night. He allowed himself a brief tear before he tamped it back down. Regret and sadness would change nothing in this place. There was no comfort – only the trees, the lake and whatever it was that awaited them in the dark. He watched the snow fall gently into the dying fire.

  Jonathan stood and brushed off the snow that had gathered on his back and shoulders. He took a flashlight and shone the beam through the trees to find more wood. He wanted to keep the fire going throughout the night, if only for comfort. He walked in a growing circle around the tent where Michael slept. He dusted the snow off a few more fallen limbs and placed them gently into the circle, careful to leave room for the flames to breathe. His light reached out into the forest and found only shadows and ghostly trees, which stood so still and quiet he couldn’t help but feel they watched him. He wandered far till he was lost in the darkness, and then he turned around to find the firelight of camp.