Short Stories

Jewellery Box

Merry Christmas! Here's something to scare you with before your aunt passes you your nicely-wrapped jewellery box.

I don't remember where I got the box from.

It was nice box, with deep rosewood panels carved with images of laughing children and galloping horses and playgrounds in the forest. The hinges looked like pure gold, but I was sure they weren't. After all, who would give a child, a small one at that, a box with pure gold hinges?

It was oddly indestructible, my box. I threw it out of windows, down the stairs, at my little sister once. It got mauled by the dog and chewed by the squirrel that somehow managed to steal into our house one frosty November, and even used as a scratching post by a stray cat when I lost it in the park at seven years old (it returned to my dresser a few days later, although I still don't know how.) It remained untouched; the panels unyielding and the hinges as smooth and strong as its day of creation.

I never really stored anything in it. I don't know why; something about it made me uneasy. Maybe it was that, whenever I tried to clear it away, to make room for make-up, or pictures, or homework, it always found its way right back there. It was the unintentional centrepiece of my room. No-one I had ever brought back home had commented on it, but it always caught my attention. It never failed to draw my eye as I skulked up to the shadowy recesses of my attic bedroom, to get away from the screaming and shouting and slapping of my mother's rage.

When I was fourteen, I'd had enough of my mother. I moved into my dad's house across town and never stayed the night in that house again.

I forgot about the box.

I forgot about the ghost at the end of the bed. I forgot about the whispers in the night. I forgot about the the shadows that danced in the moon's rays through the skylight window. I forgot about the nightmares, and the screams the box screeched out whenever I dared to open it. I forgot about the horrifying scenes that played out in my head whenever I touched it. I forgot it all.

They didn't forget about me though.

Here I was, thirteen years later, about to move into my own house, start my own family, in a country half a world away from my childhood. And there was the box.

I didn't pack it. I know I didn't pack it. I returned to my mother's house aged sixteen after her funeral to remove all of my stuff, and I pointedly left the dresser and box untouched in that attic. The next owners never called us about it, although we left our details, and so I assumed they had somehow managed to dispose of it. I never asked after it. I never wanted to see it again.

My partner was still back home, finishing off the last of the paperwork. It was only me, alone, in a reclusive farmhouse in an unfamiliar country whose language I could barely get by in.

It sat there, on my bedside table, laughing at me.

I sat on the bed and stared at it. Unconsciously, I reached out to touch it.

As soon as my fingers brushed its smooth surface, I felt that familiar flicker of foreign memories. I could see the rusting swings I had no memory of, could feel the unfamiliarly hot wind whipping my too-long hair. I could feel the flames licking my feet, I screamed in a voice that wasn't mine, and I could hear the jeers of ecstatic strangers.

I wrenched my hand away.

I cocked my head slightly. "You are an odd box, aren't you?"

The box did not answer.

"Y'know," I started, "I wasn't sure what you were when I was younger. I still don't think I do. But I know I want nothing to do with you."

The box did not answer.

It crossed my mind that maybe, just maybe, I was going a little crazy. I didn't believe in magic, in ghosts, in the supernatural. There was a rational explanation for the box. There had to be.

I cursed at it, then got up to unpack the rest of my things before I had to go to sleep.

Of course, I'd forgotten about the odd creatures that popped up in the corner of my eye when the box was around. I forgot about the dancing shadows and the seemingly permanent echo of screams. It seemed out of place in my quaint country farmhouse.

My partner didn't notice the screams, or inquire after the box. I trained him well.

I became adept at sleeping through the odd scraping noises, or not noticing when my reflection winked at me. I ignored half-muffled screams like I was born with the ability. Things suddenly seemed so much less scary as an adult.

Of course, this became less than ideal when I successfully ignored my screaming daughter as she was dragged out of the window by a formless shadow, but that's neither here nor there.