The Boxes

by William Sleator

  I do not understand your language. Please communicate directly, as we do.

  The terrified part of me wanted to run away. But the curious part of me was fascinated, rooted to the spot. The sensations in my head weren’t threatening. And the little creature—if that’s where the thoughts were coming from —seemed shy, keeping hidden from me, not attacking. It couldn’t understand me talking, only thinking. Why do you want to know if I’ve eaten yet? I mentally asked it.

  A polite greeting, that is all. Nothing here for you to eat anyway.

  That was when I noticed a neat conical pile of what looked like iron filings, which hadn’t been there before, in one corner of the room. I moved toward it. On closer inspection, I could see that it was more like gray sand. What’s this? I thought, moving my foot toward it.

  Please. Do not touch with foot. Very bad manners. Even though that is only waste product. The walls of this room are not very tasty yet, but soon we—

  You’re going to eat the walls?

  Not polite to interrupt. I was saying, the walls of this room are not very tasty yet, but soon we will have the right seasoning and spices to make them very delicious.

  Soon they would have the right seasoning and spices? I didn’t like the sound of that. I especially didn’t like the way it kept saying we. How many of you are there, anyway?

  Two, in just a moment.

  Now I was poking around, actively looking for the creature. It seemed to me that the mental sensations were coming from somewhere near the wooden box. I was very scared, of course. But it still hadn’t done or said anything threatening, and I couldn’t control my curiosity—the same way I hadn’t been able to control my curiosity about the boxes. I pushed aside Henry’s story about Pandora and how she had released all the problems of the world because of her curiosity. I moved one of the cardboard boxes aside, then another.

  And then I saw it and screamed.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  What was horrible was how much it had grown. The last time, it had been the size of one of those tiny sand crabs that make holes in the beach, no bigger than a beetle. Now it was the size of a guinea pig or a gerbil. And it wasn’t running away—I could see what it really looked like. I felt sick. And yet, even though I wanted to run from it, I couldn’t.

  It had a disk-like body and six legs. Actually, only the back four limbs seemed to be legs, planted firmly on the floor. It was rubbing the front two together, like a fly. I couldn’t see much of a face, only a ridged triangular head. The mouth seemed to be closed, and the other features, if there were any, were buried in the ridges.

  Beside it lay a soft-looking, round grayish object, like an opaque soap bubble. As I watched, tiny teeth tore away at the bubble from the inside. In a moment, another creature had emerged from the gray shreds, identical to the small one that had rushed out of the box the other day.

  Welcome, baby.

  The small one put its arms on the floor and deeply bowed its head to the large one, apparently a gesture of respect. Honor to my parent, piped a little voice in my head. Then the smaller one scampered off, dashing around the room in the same odd, zigzag way its parent had moved when I first let it out of the box.

  Wait a minute. I thought you said there was only one of you before you had the baby. How can only one single creature produce an offspring?

  The meaning you have is ... parthenogenesis. You must have some reference work that will explain. We need only one individual to reproduce.

  So, what that means is, it didn’t stop anything that I only let one of you out of the box. You can still have babies and babies.

  One individual is all that is necessary to reproduce. And now that you can see me, I greet you. It put its arms to the floor and bowed its head in the same way the baby had done to it. I do not sense you return the greeting, it said, with a testy tone.

  I held my arms in front of me and bowed my head. Like that?

  Close enough, from what I can sense. We do not perceive waves of light. In your way of thinking we are blind. And of course that will be your job. If you pass. That is why we may allow you to be a part of the three-in-one. That is why we asked you to activate the supreme being, the Lord—the Lord we can never “see. ”

  Everything it said was strange, but now it was getting stranger by the second—and more ominous. How soon would the basement be full of them, once they both started producing more babies? How would I keep them hidden from Aunt Ruth? And was it this creature that had sent me the dream to open the box upstairs? Was that what it meant by “activate the supreme being”?

  I didn’t like the sound of any of it. But I was too curious to just ignore it!

  Of course you will not ignore us! We think you should appreciate the great honor we may bestow upon you. Appreciate—and be ready to begin your functioning. Your first sensate function is your test—to study the face of the Lord with your sense organs that perceive waves of light and to ask it for a slowdown. Then you will return and convey to us—

  Wait a minute. I don’t know if I understand what you’re talking about. And I don’t know if I agreed to anything yet.

  I am incapable of hiding from you my feeling that foreigners like you are very slow-witted. You will understand all very soon, I hope—otherwise we will have to find another. And why do I not detect your sense of joy and honor at possibly being part of the three-in-one?

  What is the three-in-one? Why is it an honor to be part of it?

  You will understand if you pass. Now go and look at the face of the Lord. Give it this offering. Ask it very politely for a slowdown. Come back and communicate to us what it says.

  What it says? You mean it talks?

  It is one heck of an effort to maintain my patience with you! Give this to it, and make gesture of respect, and ask for slowdown, and come back and tell me what you see. Time for you to go now.

  Its hands moved too fast for me to see exactly how it happened, but in the next moment a small scrap of something shiny and metallic lay on the floor in front of it. It bowed to the scrap of metal three times. Now present this gift to the Lord and tell us what you see. Now!

  I bent over and picked up the little scrap of metal. It felt like a piece of foil. I left the lights on and pounded up the stairs fast. It was after five; Aunt Ruth would be home soon.

  I approached the box in my room. The Scrabble board had been pushed away again—it obviously didn’t want to be covered.

  The creatures in the basement, the ones who came out of the wooden box—they wanted me to give you this, I thought at it. And they ask you very politely for a slowdown.

  Could it really understand? Except for the rootlike hands, which might be plants, the rest of it seemed to be a machine. They call you the Lord. They respect you a lot. This is a gift for you. They ask you to make a slowdown. They want to know what you say to them.

  I set the piece of foil in the center, near the dial. And, feeling foolish, I bowed my head to it in the gesture of respect.

  There must have been a small gust of wind. I don’t know where it came from, since all the windows were closed. But the little scrap of foil fluttered off the propeller and over to one of the branching tendrils.

  Slowly, with a faint creaking sound, the root closed around it. My stomach felt cold.

  And then the dial moved, faster than I’d ever seen it. Not one notch, like before, but several notches. It was now pointing at a symbol that looked like a sideways letter eight. Then it stopped.

  Was this the message the thing downstairs wanted me to convey? I didn’t have time to wonder. I looked at my watch. It was 5:25. Aunt Ruth would be home at any minute.

  I dashed down to the basement and into the root cellar. The creatures were waiting there. Astonishingly, the smaller one had grown already and was almost the same size as the larger one; the pile of crumbled rock in the corner was bigger.

  It accepted the gift. One of the things like hands took it. And then it moved the dial in the middle over to this. I projected a
strong mental picture of the sideways number eight.

  The two creatures didn’t look at each other—after all, they couldn’t see. But they did a funny little jig, jumping around in circles. I wondered what senses they used to navigate around if they didn’t have eyesight. Maybe they had some kind of sonar, like bats. That could be why they always moved in a zigzag pattern, bouncing sound waves off the walls.

  Then they both bowed to me. I was learning; now I bowed back without being told.

  A good sign, they both thought at me. Now we can proceed. And now we know you understand. You will be allowed to be the nervous system of the three-in-one.

  The nervous system? I was baffled.

  Then it hit me. Odd, how something so peculiar could feel so familiar. I think I understand now. I’m ... I’m the messenger.

  You just passed the test.

  Upstairs the front door slammed. “Anne, come down this minute!” Aunt Ruth bellowed. “I need some help. You have to make some phone calls to people I don’t want to talk to.”

  There was no way to hide that I had been in the basement. I would have to say I felt cold and was checking on the furnace or something. I hurried upstairs, wondering if she would believe me. Well, even if she didn’t, and even if she overcame her fear of the basement to check on it herself, the creatures would probably know enough to hide. Aunt Ruth wouldn’t notice anything was different. Nothing much had physically changed in the basement, after all.

  But when I went down there the next day after school, that was no longer true.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “You don’t look much better today, Annie,” Henry said at lunch the next day. He was paying more attention to me than ever these days. Was he attracted to the dark circles under my eyes, or what?

  “Oh, I’m still having sleeping problems, I guess,” I said. Actually, it was nice that someone was genuinely interested in me as a person and not just in my ability to give messages. And even though I knew there was no way I could ever tell Henry what was really going on, it was a relief to have somebody to confide in, at least a little bit.

  It was also a relief that he didn’t tell me I was talking too fast, as everybody else had done today, starting with Aunt Ruth.

  “Was it that dream again?” Henry asked me, and I couldn’t help being pleased that he remembered.

  Linda and Jeff, as usual, weren’t paying any attention. But today there was something oddly sluggish and drawn out about their whispering and giggling. Their voices seemed a little deeper. What was the matter with them? The entire cafeteria, in fact, was hushed and subdued.

  “Yes, that dream again,” I said, and now I dared to admit, “except this time, I did open the boxes. Just like that girl, Pan ... Pan ...”

  “Pandora,” Henry said, looking worried now. “Maybe it’s my fault for telling you that story. So what happened? Did all the problems in the world come out?”

  “No. Not all the problems in the world. But it was pretty weird.”

  “Yeah?” he said, leaning forward. “What happened?” “Oh, it’s too boring,” I said. “Nobody’s really interested in other people’s dreams.”

  “I am,” he insisted. “At least your dreams, anyway.”

  So I told him—about the creatures in the basement and the weird propeller-clock thing upstairs. I knew it was supposed to be a secret; Uncle Marco had told me not to tell anybody about the boxes. But Henry believed it was just a dream, so what harm could that do? Anyway, I had already done something much worse: I had opened the boxes. And I needed somebody to talk to about this, even though Henry believed it was only a dream. It was too scary to deal with alone.

  I told him in pretty much detail. I kept thinking the bell would ring, but it didn’t.

  When I finished, he sat back on the orange plastic cafeteria chair, scratching his head. “Gee, I wish I had dreams like that,” he said. “Mine are always so vague and meaningless. This one is like ... a story.”

  “Yeah, but not a very nice story,” I said unhappily.

  “Well, those little bugs in the basement are kind of creepy,” he admitted. “But that propeller-clock thing, that’s cool. I wonder if it has something to do with time, like if it manages time somehow.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  The bell gradually rang.

  Henry looked at his watch. “Funny,” he said. “Lunch seemed to last so long today.” He looked worried. “But don’t get me wrong,” he hastily added. “It wasn’t because I was bored or anything. I’d like to talk more about your dream.” He thought for a moment. “Math seemed to last a long time, too, but that’s normal. See you in band.”

  Everything had seemed to go on longer than usual today, I now realized. It made my head feel funny. The other kids were dragging out of the cafeteria, getting in my way. Was I catching the flu, or what?

  Band practice was after school. Henry played the tuba and I played the piccolo, so we didn’t sit near each other. We were working on a very corny Sousa march that everybody had heard a million times before. Only today, Mr. Lang, who normally tried to get us to play faster, was taking all the tempos very, very slow. The band sounded like a tape being played at the wrong speed. I almost asked the flute player next to me what was going on. But nobody else acted like anything was unusual, so I didn’t say anything.

  I looked over at Henry. He seemed to be having a terrible time getting any sound out of the tuba, his cheeks red and puffed, sweat on his forehead. I was having trouble making the piccolo do anything right myself. Band practice droned on forever and ever. The music had never sounded so stodgy.

  Henry walked me home afterward. “Feel my forehead, Annie. I think I might be coming down with something.”

  I pulled off my gloves. “It feels normal to me,” I said, comparing his temperature to mine. “I thought I felt sick today, too. What’s the matter?”

  “I could hardly play my tuba at all. It took too much effort.”

  “I felt the same way. And didn’t all the tempos seem really draggy?”

  He turned to me. “Yes! Was Mr. Lang asleep or what?” He thought for a moment. “Maybe we’re both coming down with something.” Then he turned and glanced over his shoulder. His voice dropped. “Don’t look, but there’s that car again—the one that was following me the other night.”

  I looked; I couldn’t help it. It was a long, dark car, and it was creeping along very slowly behind us. The windows were tinted; I couldn’t see the driver.

  “Wow, I’m glad you’re with me,” I blurted out without thinking.

  Henry smiled. “I am, too,” he said.

  “Where’s ... the ... fire ... you ... two?” an old lady croaked deeply at us, smiling, as we passed a bus stop.

  “No fire,” I told her, puzzled. She stared after us for a long, long time.

  All the cars were going quite slowly, but the one behind us was the slowest, keeping at our pace.

  It followed us through the crumbling stone gate that was the entrance to our neighborhood. The neighborhood was only four blocks, but it was the oldest area in the suburb, with Victorian brick and stone buildings and larger yards and lots of big old trees. Most of the houses were in disrepair ; people couldn’t afford all the upkeep they needed. No one in the city seemed to be interested in buying and fixing up houses like this, which was why Crutchley was in a good position to get people to sell.

  The car stopped just beyond my house as we walked up to the porch.

  “You can come in and wait until the car goes away,” I said. “Except you’ll have to leave before Aunt Ruth comes home.” I checked my watch. I was home late because of band. “Four-twenty,” I said. “She always gets home at five-thirty.”

  “I wish I could, but I have to hurry home,” he said. “My mother’s going out and I’m fixing dinner.”

  “What if that car follows you?”

  “What can happen in the middle of the day?” he said, making an effort to sound bright. “I’ll hurry—he’s going reall
y slow.” He shook his head, perplexed. “So weird! Everything’s so slow today except you and me. Are we going crazy?”

  “I don’t feel crazy, except for that,” I said.

  “Oh, well. Maybe we’ll feel better tomorrow. See you.”

  In my closet, the clock dial was clicking away at more frequent intervals now. The propellers had moved farther; they were now pointing at the middle of the sides of the box. And they were higher, too, only about half an inch below the top.

  The tendrils had crawled up to the top. One of them was clutching at the edge.

  Was it because of the message and the gift I had given it yesterday that it was moving more quickly? But I had asked it for a slowdown, whatever that was.

  I remembered how Uncle Marco had told me to think carefully about where to put each box. Now I wished I had put the wooden one up here and the clock downstairs. My little “friends” in the basement seemed benign in comparison to the thing in my closet. I went down to check on how they were doing.

  Of course, yesterday Aunt Ruth had asked me why I would go to check on the furnace if I had no idea how it really worked. I said I just wanted to see if it was running. It was pretty lame, but she was eager for me to make some phone calls for her, so she let it pass. And she didn’t go down to the basement. But I didn’t want to get caught down there again. Even though there wasn’t much to see, I didn’t want Aunt Ruth anywhere near the box.

  By this time I could go down the stairs quite quickly in the dark. I felt the warmth growing in my head as I descended. At the bottom, without even thinking about where the chain was, I just reached up and instantly pulled on the light. I strolled over to the root cellar, the glow inside my head increasing, and pulled on the light in there.

  And then I squeezed my eyes shut, momentarily dazzled. Opening them again slowly, my heart thudding, I listened to the many voices singing in my head.

  A tall structure now rose up around the box, a three-dimensional grid made from strands of some dark fiber that reflected bright flashes from the ceiling lightbulb. There were little ladders and platforms all over it, and dozens of creatures were scurrying up and down them. The structure shuddered precariously with their movement. It went all the way up to the ceiling and back to the wall.