Soft Apocalypses (4 page)

However, if there weren’t any tapes for the good guys to find, maybe Penny would find the black box. She sure couldn’t use a phone to call for help—the Cold Ones had no phones in the house, they always used their cell phones, they
never
left one of the cells here, and the house was too far out in the country for Penny to try to walk somewhere for help.

Lewis suddenly wasn’t sure that she’d follow through on that part of the plan if the couple came home early; even he had to admit that it was confusing to tell her to be really careful about the food, and then turn around and steal something the couple would instantly know was missing. She’d gotten upset at first when he told her to take the box, but calmed down when he told her it was a
magic
box, and if they worked it right, it would help them escape.

He sometimes had to lie to Penny and Carl to keep their spirits up, but the magic in the box was no lie. There’d been many nights when he’d overheard the couple, mostly the man, talking about it, their voices filtering hollowly through the floorboards into the basement. From what Lewis had been able to make out, the box had some tremendous power to grant wishes. Maybe it was sort of like Aladdin’s lamp with a genie inside, except it was a puzzle you had to solve instead of just rubbing on it. He’d glimpsed the box himself a couple of times, and Lewis could
feel
the power in it. Usually the Cold Ones kept it locked up in a fancy glass cabinet in the living room, but sometimes,
sometimes
, the man forgot and left it out on the coffee table after he’d been up all night trying to figure out how it worked.

Lewis was good at solving puzzles. At his first day camp one of the counselors brought out an old Rubik’s Cube, and he’d been able to solve it way before any of the big kids. By the end of the week, he could solve the thing within two minutes, no matter how messed up it was. And he’d always been able to beat his big brother and his friends at Klax and Tetris. He was dead sure he could do better than their captors.

Penny’s footsteps were moving across the ceiling again, and soon he heard the basement door open.

“I got it, guys.” Penny padded down the creaky stairs carrying a big white picnic plate piled with odds and ends from the refrigerator and pantry. She had a big, lidded Styrofoam cup tucked under one thin arm, and — Lewis’ heart skipped a beat — under the other was the black lacquered puzzle box.

Penny carefully set the plate down on the concrete floor between the boys, then the cup, and then handed the box to Lewis. “It was on the coffee table, like you said. It was on a couple of really old books...they looked important but I couldn’t carry them, too.”

“That’s okay; this is great!” Lewis ran his fingers over the surface of the box, mesmerized.  This was the first time he’d been close enough to see that each side of the box was shaped like a face of some sort, but not a human face…or maybe they were faces of things that had once been human but weren’t anymore. Oh, whoever had made this was super-smart, some kind of genius, probably. Lewis envied anyone who was that smart, that clever. Just looking at it—even looking at it up close—he couldn’t find one seam, one indentation, one pressure point that even
hinted
at how you went about opening it.

Pretend it’s like the Rubik’s Cube
, he told himself.
Pretend that you’re doing this on a dare. Pretend that it’s something
fun. This was the best way to go, to think of it as a fun game…because, holding it his hands now, feeling as if the six faces were laughing at him, Lewis realized that there was no going back. He
had
to solve it, to open it before the Cold Ones came back. If he didn’t, if he was still messing with it when they got home with no genie to help, they would probably kill him — or Penny or Carl — and make him watch.

Fun
, he reminded himself.
Think of this as a game, nothing more.

Carl was already diving into the food, wrapping a cold hot dog in a slice of white bread and stuffing it into his mouth.

“Don’t be a piglet; leave some for Lewis,” Penny scolded, then turned to the elder boy: “Put that down an’ eat something.”

“I will, in a minute.” His fingers had found a seam in the box, so slight he’d missed it the first time.

“No,
now
,” she said, grabbing the box and gently pulling it away from him. “I got pickles just for you.”

“Give that back!”

Penny shook her head. “Huh-uh. You gotta be hungry, Lewis, and I don’t want you to get sick. I love you.”

The rest of the protestations died in Lewis’ throat. Penny had never said that to him before, and he realized with something between surprise and
well, duh
that he loved her, as well. Piglet Carl, too.

“I love you, too,” he whispered, trying to keep his voice steady.

“You’d better,” replied Penny, handing him the pickles and the Styrofoam glass that was filled with milk. “I got the milk from a jug that was half-empty.
No way
they’ll notice.”

Lewis devoured two pickles, loving everything about the experience: the crunch, the sudden burst of sour sweetness, the juice washing over his tongue and then trickling down his throat. Nothing he’d ever eaten before or would ever eat again could ever taste this good. Except the milk he drank next. And the hot dog after that. And then the bread and cheese.

For a few minutes the three of them sat in silence, eating, sharing the milk, grinning at one another as they chewed their food. After the initial burst of pigging out, they slowed their feasting, not only because they didn’t know when they’d eat again and so wanted to savor everything, but also because none of them wanted to eat too fast and make themselves sick. All of them knew how the Cold Ones would make them get rid of each other’s sick, and it was not something any of them were in a hurry to repeat.

Penny handed the box back to Lewis and then went over to her section of the wall, sitting down near her chains. “I think I can maybe get my left hand back in,” she said, pushing one of the manacles around with her foot, “but there ain’t no way this is going back.” She held up her bandaged hand.

“If I can get this open,” said Lewis, his fingers and thumbs caressing the surface of the box, searching out the seam he’d found earlier, “you won’t have to worry about that anymore.”

Penny’s face brightened.
“Really?”

“Really. Swear to God.”

Carl swallowed the grapes he’d been chewing. “So you weren’t lying? That thing really is magic?”

“Yes, it is.”
Dear God, please let that be the truth.
“It sure is.”

And there it was—the seam. He probed its edges, its surface, the contours of the face in which it was hidden; clockwise, counter-clockwise, side to side, up and down and then—

—
click!

The sound was so quiet, so soft, so subtle, that none of them should have been able to hear it, but hear it they did, and for a moment all stared in wonder as a section of the box slid out, revealing an interior that was so shiny Lewis could actually see part of his face reflected.

“It’s a
music box!
” said Penny, her face suddenly a joyous thing, full of summer afternoons with kites high above.

It took a moment, but then Lewis heard it, as well; a soft tinkling melody like a bird’s song at morning.

“Cool,” said Carl.

Penny put a finger to her lips. “Shh, Piglet. Leave him alone. You go ahead and work, Lewis. We’ll be quiet.”

“Thank you.”

Lewis lost all track of time after that; for him, the world was the box, its faces, his eight fingers and two thumbs, and the fervent hope that he was still the best puzzle-solver anybody had ever seen.

His fingers danced over the surface of the box, finding more seams that opened to reveal hidden indentations that in turn offered up more clicks. Lewis hunched over the box, possessed by it, enamored of it, his concentration total, his control the strongest it had ever been when confronted with a riddle, brainteaser, or puzzle. Like with the Rubik’s Cube in a life that seemed so long ago and no longer part of him, he eventually fell into a rhythm, found his heart beating in time with his breathing while his fingers pressed down in counter-time, on the upbeat. He didn’t know how or why but his whole body—his entire
being
, within and without—seemed now to be part of an orchestra, every digit a note, every movement a new instrument joining in the music, every breath a change of key, every
click!
the sound of the conductor’s baton tapping against the podium as the next section of the symphony began. Part of him knew the music was coming from the ever-opening box but he would not allow himself to think about that because to do so would invite wonder, and wonder would invite hesitation, and under no circumstances could he hesitate now. The box was offering its secrets up to him, almost as if it were telling him where next to press, to tap, to push, caress and pull.

It’s
letting
me open it
he thought to himself.
It wants me to succeed.

His fingers danced a glissando over the six sides once more, and when the final clicks revealed the mirror-like interior of the last six sections, the box came alive in his hands, rose from his palms as if it were a bubble, a leaf in the wind.

And it began to spin. There was no way to tell if it were spinning slow or fast because the interior sections caught the light from the single bulb overhead and turned it into a prism, the colors shooting out and slicing over the surface of the basement walls, the music from within nearly deafening as now the sound of a great pealing bell overpowered all others. Lewis could feel his heart slamming against his ribcage in time with the bell. He looked over and saw that Penny now sat close to Carl, the two of them holding one another, staring at the miraculous thing happening in front of their eyes.

The whirling colors slowed as the dancing box began to spin downward, and with each turn the light in the basement flickered in, then out, until, at the last, everything was cast into a darkness so complete that for an instant Lewis thought he might have just died and discovered that there was no God, after all. Not even a
hint
of a God. Only nothing…except, however, grief and loneliness.

A moment later the single bulb came back on, only now it seemed to glow much brighter than before. Looking around, it seemed to Lewis that the structure of the basement had changed; there were corners where none had been before, and areas once easily seen were now in cavernous shadows. The place even
smelled
different; the overlaying stink that had been their constant companion was gone, replaced by something damp and heavy with rot. Were things like this supposed to happen when you released a genie?

He began to say something to Carl and Penny but the first word came out as a broken whisper and fell to the ground, writhing there for a moment before it crumbled to dust.

Lewis was aware of every aspect of his physical self in so complete a way that he would not have been surprised to hear his very cells talking to one another. Even the house seemed to be breathing. Lewis froze in place, his eyes wide, and that’s when the genie that had been hiding in one of the newly shadowed corners began moving into the light.

It
is
magic!
Lewis sang within himself, barely able to contain his joy. The box was magic and there was a genie and he knew exactly,
precisely
what his first wish was going to be … but then he pulled in a deep breath and nearly gagged on the damp, heavy stink of rot that assaulted him.

“Who summons us?” said the genie.

Lewis’ mouth hung open, lips and tongue dumb meat, made mute by a single word:
us. Who summons
us?

Sounds of movement from other corners, deeper shadows, crept and slithered forward. Lewis looked around once, quickly, and then closed his eyes as he tried to rid his mind of what he’d glimpsed; unable to do that, he willed these sights to break apart, to fragment, to become the disconnected pieces of a picture puzzle that by themselves were still horrible, but so much easier to confront than the whole. This was an old trick he’d taught himself long ago, when the searing ugliness of things he’d seen, things he’d been forced to do, to watch, to imagine, threatened to consume him: take the memory, the image, the lingering sensation and all thoughts connected with it, snap them apart, and scatter them to the wind.

And so he scattered: impressions of things turned inside-out; flayed skin that billowed out like a dress caught in an updraft; fresh, sick-making scars that covered entire bodies; eyes burned closed; noses split down the center and peeled backwards; hooks and nails and staples mangling genitals; shiny black liquid dribbling from torn lips; bowels on the outside stretched into tubes that fed a creature’s own filth back into its mouth. Break and scatter, break and scatter.

There.

Facing the first genie—which surely wasn’t a genie at all—he steeled himself and opened his eyes.

“I asked a question, boy,” said the creature. “Who summons the Order of the Gash?”

“I did,” Lewis managed to get out, finally. He shot a quick glance toward Carl and Penny; the two were now wrapped tightly in one another’s arms, faces buried in each other’s shoulders as they shuddered and whimpered.

Good,
he thought.
Stay that way. Don’t move, don’t speak, and keep your eyes closed.

The creature moved farther into the light. “And what do you want of us, boy?”

“
Boy
…” said another creature somewhere behind Lewis, its voice a mockery, clogged with something thick roiling from a throat equal parts metal and muscle.

The creature that had spoken first stopped moving, looked at Lewis, and then turned its jaundiced eyes toward Carl and Penny. “Oh,” it said. And smiled. Its mouth was filled with too many small yellow, jagged teeth, all of them shaped like tiny backward hooks. “The sweet, tender flesh of
children
.”