Treasure Box

by Orson Scott Card

  "Wake up, Quentin!" the phone was shouting.

  "What?" said Quentin. "Who is this?"

  "For the ninth time, it's Wayne Read. Quentin, are you awake now? Say something coherent please. This is a test."

  "Hi, Wayne."

  "What did you do, drive all night through a record-setting blizzard? Have you got the brains of a roach?"

  "Roaches all stayed in for the storm."

  "Smart roaches. If you're not going to wake up, Quentin, don't answer the phone, let your machine take it."

  "Didn't know I'd answered it. What do you want?"

  "I have the name and address you wanted. They really are called Duncan but the number's not listed and they don't own the house so it wasn't easy finding them. Ray and Rowena Duncan." He gave the address. "The investigator there in DC says that it's a townhouse complex in Sterling, at Sugarland and Church. Sugarland crosses Dranesville Road at the last light before Route 7. Does all this mean anything to you?"

  "Yeah."

  "Have you written this down, or should I call again later?"

  "I'm writing it." He fumbled for a pencil. Then he realized that if he opened his eyes, the job would be easier. "It's bright. Sun must be shining."

  "Yeah, the blizzard is over for now. It's on the news. In California they love talking about eastern blizzards. It makes us all feel smart."

  "Californians need that now and then," said Quentin.

  "Well, you are one, so you'd know."

  "How'd you get the address?"

  "Very clever detective work indeed, Quentin. Our guy in Manhattan drove up to the rest home, walked in, and asked the superintendent for the address of the next of kin of Mrs. Anna Laurent Tyler. The superintendent—I think you know her—"

  "Sally Sannazzaro."

  "Thanks, I didn't want to try pronouncing it myself. She asked who wants to know. He said he was representing Quentin Fears and she said OK and gave it to him. She also gave him a message for you."

  "If it's along the lines of drop dead, save it for later."

  "No, it's along the lines of sorry I was such a bitch, and Mrs. Tyler says sorry too, and please come back she wants to talk to you."

  "She called herself a bitch?"

  "A direct quote."

  "Did the words 'cast iron' come into it?"

  "She didn't elaborate, but I'm sure you can pick the metal you want."

  "So I guess she's not mad at me anymore."

  "Quentin, I would say that was the gist of the message. But I can repeat it if you want."

  Quentin didn't know why he felt so relieved, but he was almost giddy with it. "That's good. That's really good."

  "Have you been drinking?"

  "Driving all night. I'm still not awake."

  "A word of advice. Don't go seeing these people until you are awake."

  "Sure."

  "See a movie. I recommend something light and stupid. Take your mind off your troubles. Not The American President, that's too stupid. Not Sabrina, it'll just break your heart that you're not in love. Broke mine anyway. Unless of course you are."

  "Am what?"

  "In love."

  "Wayne, am I paying three hundred an hour for this?"

  "Three fifty. I'm paid to give good advice. Twelve Monkeys will make you wonder if you're crazy, don't see that one either."

  "Do you actually see all these movies?"

  "I have to do something while my wife is going around to country bars, Quentin. I don't like my job well enough to work late every night. Though I'll admit that your recent activities have kept me hopping. Sort of information central here. I keep getting reports from all fifty states about how Madeleine Cryer never existed there, either."

  "Sorry. You can call that part of the search off. Nobody's going to accuse me of killing her. They've got more to fear from an investigation than I do."

  "Too late. I've already got all the reports and all the bills. Thanks to fax machines, every invoice is instantaneous."

  "So pay 'em. You need me to send you another check?"

  "No, I've still got plenty in the account. Quentin, get up, take a shower, go to a movie. Some mindless sequel. Grumpier Old Men. Father of the Bride Two. No, I take that back, that might depress you too."

  "Good-bye, Mr. Ebert."

  "Siskel. For Pete's sake, Quentin, I run every day. Good-bye."

  Quentin got up, showered, armed himself with a broom, and went out to clear the snow off his car. He didn't have a shovel but the ice chipper from the rental car helped him get the deepest stuff, which had frozen. Most of the other cars in the lot had already been cleared off. A lot of spaces were empty now. People must be going back to work. Or else just getting out of the house before they went insane. Plows must have come through because the roads were drivable and traffic looked about normal.

  He took the broom back up to the front door but didn't even bother unlocking it to put it inside. Nor did he go in to get the address he had written down. He wasn't ready.

  Instead he took Wayne's advice, sort of. He drove to the Reston Town Center and put the car in the parking garage and walked to the theater. A big handmade sign in the window said Yes!!!!! We are open!!!! Quentin walked up to the box office and asked what was worth seeing and the ticket seller said, "Twelve Monkeys is the greatest movie ever made," so Quentin bought a ticket and went inside. It wasn't the greatest movie ever made but it was very good and every bit as disturbing as Wayne had said it would be. The message seemed to be, you can't change anything and you'll end up dead so why try? But it was certainly heroic, almost noble along the way. And everybody struggling to figure out what was real and what wasn't, Quentin absolutely knew what that was like. Also, the movie left him wondering how they decided that Bruce Willis got three naked butt shots and a fleeting moment of frontal nudity in the battle scene, while Brad Pitt only had one butt shot while he bounded around on beds in the mental hospital. Was there some hierarchy of nudity in Hollywood? The more millions you get, the more you get to moon the audience?

  It was with thoughts like this that he walked through the dazzling sunlight to the Rio Grande, which was doing decent business for four-thirty in the afternoon. He sat down and looked at the menu while the couple at the next table talked about how nice it was to get out of the house, a lot better than having the police discover them later after they murdered each other, and should we get two orders of pork tamale appetizers or just split one, and where are the chips, didn't the waiter hear them when they asked for more chips? Quentin looked up at them—a red-cheeked dark-haired woman and her husband with blond thinning hair—and he said, "I'm not eating my chips, do you want them?"

  They seemed horribly embarrassed at having been overheard and refused his offer with thanks and apologies. But Quentin had meant it. He had momentarily forgotten that at a restaurant everyone is supposed to pretend there's an eight-foot wall around each table. Except the waiters, of course, who are supposed to pretend that each table is the only one they're waiting on. Like living in a small town. Notice me when I want to be noticed, but why are you prying when I want to be left alone?

  The waiter brought the other couple their drinks and then came to Quentin's table to get his order. As Quentin spoke to the waiter, he saw the couple raise their glasses to him in a cheerful toast. He smiled back at them. OK, so maybe sometimes the walls did come down.

  He ate, he went home. The sun was setting. He couldn't put this off forever. He got the address and drove to the dwelling place of the witch who had chosen him to be her enchanted tool.

  There should have been a flame leaping from a chimney, or the silhouettes of devils dancing on the window shades. Instead it seemed a perfectly ordinary northern Virginia townhouse, in a row of five with varied façades in a feeble attempt at individuality and charm. Much like Quentin's own. The porch light was on.

  I know you're expecting me, he said silently. I know you've been watching me, you've been waiting for me to work up the courage to come here. So go ahea
d and open the door and end the pretense.

  But the door remained closed.

  He climbed the steps and rang the bell. After a reasonable wait, a man came to the door. "Yes?" he said.

  "Mr. Duncan?" asked Quentin.

  "Yes. Do I know you?"

  "My name is Quentin Fears."

  "I'm sorry, but I'm not expecting you. Should I be?"

  "Are you serious?" asked Quentin. But to all appearances the man was completely oblivious as to who Quentin was and what he was there for. "Mr. Ray Duncan?"

  "Yes." The man was growing a bit impatient.

  "Your wife is Rowena Tyler Duncan?"

  "What about her?"

  "And her mother is Anna Laurent Tyler?"

  "Yes." Now he looked concerned. "Has something happened to her?"

  "I'd like to come in, if I might, and talk to you and your wife together."

  "Who are you?" Ray demanded.

  "I was at the rest home yesterday, talking with Sally Sannazzaro. With the airports closed I had to drive the whole way to talk to you today."

  "If you have a message from Ms. Sannazzaro, why didn't she simply call?"

  Quentin was through talking. Whatever game these people were playing, he was fed up with it. He stood and waited in silence.

  Finally Duncan's curiosity overcame his suspicion. He opened the door wider and invited Quentin inside.

  It was your ordinary overdecorated living room. Perhaps a little bit too Architectural Digest, but not so much as to offend the eye, as long as you stood with the fireplace at your back. Quentin took that position, but not for aesthetic reasons. It gave him a view of the front door, the passage to the kitchen and dining room, and the stairs leading up to the bedrooms.

  "Have a seat, Mr.—Pierce, was it?"

  "Fears, Mr. Duncan." Quentin sat in the red paisley chair, moving the white pillows from it and laying them on the floor. "Is your wife at home?"

  "Fixing dinner."

  Quentin thought of the breakfast he had at the Laurent house in Mixinack, and had no pity. "Please bring her out here."

  "State your business, Mr. Fears."

  Quentin's patience was done. "I've come here this once. I won't come again. And I won't stay another minute unless your wife faces me now."

  "Faces you! Sir, you can pick yourself up and head for the door or I'll—"

  A woman appeared in the passage between kitchen and dining room. "What is it, Ray?"

  "Don't come out here, Ro. In fact, call the police, please. We have an intruder here who—"

  But the woman ignored his instructions and came on through the dining room to the living room.

  Quentin could not help but think that he had seen her before. For that matter, now that she stood beside her husband, they both looked vaguely familiar. But she especially—he had seen her. Spoken with her? Whatever the occasion, it wouldn't come to mind. Perhaps it was simply that she bore some resemblance to Madeleine. After all, Rowena created the succubus, it had to have some of its creator inside it.

  Inside her. Whom was he trying to fool? He still thought of Madeleine as a woman, as his wife, despite his best efforts to expunge her from his heart.

  "Rowena Tyler Duncan," said Quentin. "My name is Quentin Fears."

  When she showed no reaction to his name, he went on. "I spoke with your mother last night."

  Rowena's face darkened. "What do I care?" She turned to leave the room.

  "And I rode back to Mixinack with Mike Bolt."

  She stopped and, slowly, turned back to face him. She looked agitated. "Our old gardener."

  "Chief of police in Mixinack now," said Quentin.

  "I'm glad to hear it."

  "Married and has several children."

  Rowena nodded.

  Ray Duncan was a bit nonplussed. "Who's this Mike Bolt guy? What are you talking about?"

  "A childhood friend of mine," said Rowena.

  "Oh, don't be so modest," said Quentin. "She enthralled him years ago. In the kitchen of her mother's house, as I heard the story."

  "What do you want," Rowena whispered fiercely.

  "Don't be coy," said Quentin. "I'm not here because of what I want. I'm not the one who's been playing games, Rowena. Quite the contrary. So drop the pretense and tell me what you want so we can decide what to do about it."

  Rowena and Ray looked at each other. Whatever passed between them, it did not make them more cooperative.

  "Sir," said Ray, "you seem to know more about us than we're comfortable with, but I assure you that we have no idea who you are."

  He seemed so honest that for a moment Quentin wondered if perhaps he had been fooling himself. But Mike Bolt had seen the writing on the signs, and on the door back in the Laurent house. And Madeleine had disappeared, leaving no foot-prints. It was real, it had happened, Mrs. Tyler admitted it, and Rowena was a witch.

  "I know more than you think," said Quentin. "I know that Rowena looked into her mother's mind many years ago and saw a memory of what seemed to be a terrible crime. And for all I know, it was a crime, a monstrous, indecent act. The murder of Rowena's brother, Paul, when he wasn't yet two years old."

  Rowena covered her face with her hands.

  "Ro, is this true?" Ray seemed genuinely appalled.

  "Your wife, Mr. Duncan, is quite aware that her mother believed that it wasn't Paul she was killing, but rather something that she calls 'the beast.' It's Mrs. Tyler's belief that this creature took possession of her young son's body, and from then on her true son was already gone and could never be recovered. All that was left was for her to kill the beast. But not quite kill it. She kept it imprisoned somehow in a box that is kept in the parlor of the family mansion on the Hudson. Am I getting this right, Rowena?"

  Her face still buried in her hands, Rowena nodded.

  "But for some reason, Mr. Duncan, Rowena has decided she wants that box open."

  Rowena looked up, startled. "Oh, no. Oh, please, no."

  Ray was alarmed as well. "What is it, Ro?"

  Rowena leapt to her feet and rushed to the foot of the stairs. Then, changing her mind, she hurried back to her chair and sat down, wringing the tail of her shirt. "It's none of your business," said Rowena. "Nor Mother's!"

  "Oh, that would be my opinion, too, if you hadn't drawn me into it with that whole charade that's been ruining my life for the past year."

  "Charade?" asked Ray.

  "Why don't you tell him, Rowena? He might accept it better coming from you."

  Rowena looked confused, but then apparently made up her mind. "You tell it, Mr. Fears. Tell us both."

  "Madeleine," said Quentin. "My wife. The succubus that you created, Rowena. Are you honestly telling me that your husband has no idea that you're a witch?"

  Ray rose to his feet and started for the kitchen. "I'm calling the police."

  "Stop, Ray," said Rowena.

  "The man's insane, Ro."

  "No, we have to hear him out," she said. "We have to find out what's been going on."

  Ray leaned against the wall, clearly furious at having been vetoed by his wife.

  "You believe your wife Madeleine is a succubus created by a witch, Mr. Fears?" asked Rowena.

  "She took me to the house you grew up in. I was made to believe that it was occupied. I met several of your dead relatives, and a couple not so dead. Your mother was there, in spirit if not in body. And your brother Paul, though of course Madeleine called him 'Uncle Paul.' Just as she called Mrs. Tyler 'Grandmother.' " And then Quentin stopped. Because, while his words clearly caused Rowena great pain, it was just as clear that she was hearing of all this for the first time. And now it finally dawned on Quentin that if Madeleine had been created by Rowena, why wouldn't Rowena have made her a woman of her own age? She was more or less the same age as Quentin. And Rowena could easily have supplied all the memories needed to make Madeleine completely convincing as a child of the sixties and seventies, like Quentin.

  Instead Madeleine had been ign
orant of many things she should have known. She covered it by pretending to have had a sheltered childhood, but in fact Madeleine could not have been the creation of a grown woman. Especially not in the parlor, where she had become a petulant, spoiled brat, acting like a child of... ten.

  "Your daughter," Quentin said softly. "Of course she's also... one of you."

  "A witch," said Rowena miserably. "Ray, go wake up Roz."

  "Ro, you know how she hates us to waken her from a nap."

  "What's she doing?" Quentin asked. "Flying around spying on people?"

  "She doesn't understand how dangerous it all is," said Rowena.

  Ray was at the foot of the stairs. "What are you talking about?"

  "Please, Ray. Go get her."

  Ray sighed and trotted on up the stairs.

  Rowena faced Quentin and spoke earnestly. "My daughter is a remarkable girl, Mr. Fears. Very talented and... strong. Maybe if I had let my mother teach me, I could have controlled her the way my mother was able to control me during my child-hood. A child with such powers, such knowledge—it takes extraordinary care to keep them from running amok. But I couldn't trust my mother on anything, not after what she did to Paul."

  "You never knew Paul."

  "Yes I did," said Rowena. "He came to me every day as I was growing up."

  Quentin knew the truth at once. "That wasn't Paul, Rowena. That was the beast."

  She shook her head, then burst into tears. "I don't know," she said. "I just knew that I didn't want Mother to... if she was the kind of woman who killed disobedient children, then how could I bring my daughter under her care? I haven't been able to control Roz for years now. I'm afraid sometimes that she's controlling me. She studies things, figures them out, and... whole days disappear and I don't know what happened. I know she rules her father. He's completely enthralled. When I did that to Mike, I had no idea, I didn't know what I was doing. I've left him alone ever since—"

  "Then who's been sending him to try to murder your mother?"

  Rowena's hand flew to her mouth. "Oh, no. No, she couldn't."

  "Yes I could, Mother," said a petulant child's voice from the stairs.

  A young girl slowly came down the stairs, her hair looking a bit slept-in, but otherwise neat as a pin. Quentin could imagine how she had looked during her nap—arms at her sides in perfect symmetry, nothing moving, the way Mrs. Tyler lay while her spirit was off keeping watch or whatever it was she did with it. Rewriting traffic signs, for instance.