The Box (2 page)

Twenty minutes turned out to be twenty-five. Albert would be the first to agree that five minutes was hardly an eternity, but Brandy knew something about the box, something she was not willing to disclose over the phone. Now every minute passed like an hour as he sat in the second floor lounge of Lumey Hall, waiting to see what she knew.

There was something in my car when I left class today
. Those words kept ringing in his ear. He remembered how he’d unlocked his car the previous evening and found the box sitting in the driver’s seat. It was a frightening experience. He did not even see it until he opened the door. Brandy at least found her package in broad daylight, but it still must have been unnerving, perhaps even more so since whoever left it there was bold enough to get into her car in the middle of a busy school day.

The box had Brandy’s name on it. Now Brandy had found something too, and in exactly the same way, no less. Perhaps it was no accident after all that he found himself in possession of the box.

At the other end of the room, two boys were playing table tennis. One was a skinny blond kid, his face a spattering of pimples. The other was of an average build with a red goatee that wasn’t quite thick enough yet to completely cover his chin. Nearby, a skinny girl with raven black hair cut short enough to stand on end sat in one of the plush chairs watching them. She was close enough to them in such an empty room to indicate that she was with them, but her eyes kept drifting from the boys to the door to her watch and back again, suggesting that she, too, was waiting for someone.

The steady
plink-plunk
sound of the ping-pong ball could be annoying at times, but tonight Albert found it and the occasional outbursts of frustration and excitement from the boys relaxing, almost hypnotic. It was a perfect distraction for his senses. Too much silence made him think too much and just lately that made his head hurt.

He was sitting off to one side of the room, positioned so that he could see out of the lounge and down the hallway to the main doors. Lumey was built on the slope of a hill, so on the back side of the building the first floor was the ground floor, but on the front—the side he was facing now—the main doors led in on the second floor. The visitor parking lot and the meters were located on this side of the building. Therefore, he’d determined that this was the direction from which Brandy would most likely enter.

He spotted her as she was climbing the steps. She was wearing a dark shirt and jeans, different from the shorts and tank top she’d been wearing that morning in lab. She was clenching a black leather purse in her left hand and carried a cigarette in her right.

Albert thought that there was something stiff about her. She looked tense. He watched her as she paused at the ashtray outside the door. She drew one last time from the cigarette and then crushed it. As she did so, she turned and looked around, as though she expected someone to be watching her.

Of course there
was
someone watching her, but he didn’t think that it was him she was looking around for.

Perhaps he was imagining it. Maybe she heard something somewhere, someone yelling or a car horn blaring. Maybe he was simply looking for things that weren’t there. Puzzling over the box for so many hours had caused his imagination to run a little wild.

At last she opened the door and walked in. Almost immediately, her eyes found him. Albert stood up and greeted her and immediately the smell of her cigarette tickled his nose. He was not a smoker and did not like the smell of cigarettes, but his mother smoked and he was used to it enough that he was not really bothered by it. He always said it would have to be a pretty fine line between yes and no to turn down a date based on whether a girl smoked.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said as she sat down.

“It’s okay.”

She did not relax at first. She held her purse in her lap and looked at him. Albert realized right away that there was something cold about her, as though he had done her some grave evil of which he was not yet aware. Her eyes were a soft and gorgeous shade of blue behind the gold-rimmed lenses of her small glasses, beautiful enough to be hypnotizing, but when she leaned forward they were focused so fiercely on him that it made him want to shrink away. “I’m just going to say right now that if this is some kind of practical joke I’m not going to be happy. There are laws against breaking into someone’s car, you know.”

Albert stared at her, his own dark eyes wide and shocked. Those words struck him like a hammer. He’d never even considered a practical joke. That cast a whole new light on the subject. What if someone was trying to pull something on him? What if someone somewhere was laughing his ass off at his silly obsession with that nonsense box? “If it’s a practical joke,” he said, almost numb with the realization of that possibility, “then we’re two cheeks on the same butt of it.”

Brandy watched his expression as he spoke, her eyes stony and piercing. Finally, after a moment, she laughed. It was a quick sound, a huff of air, almost a sigh. In an instant her features melted back into that sweet, ladylike girlishness that he’d seen so often in the classroom. She relaxed back into her chair, her posture slightly slouched, comfortable. She gazed at him through her glasses, her eyes once more soft and sweet. Her hair was very light blonde, a little past shoulder-length, straight and smooth with short bangs. She was wearing a simple, short-sleeved shirt, black with red patterns around the neck and sleeves. Albert couldn’t stop himself from noticing the low neckline. She was not big-breasted, but neither was she shapeless. She was quite pretty, blessed with a girlish figure and a soft and delicate complexion.

Overall, she was a sharp contrast to him. Whereas her hair and eyes were light and fair, his were dark and deep. Her nose and chin were soft and round, while his were straight and pronounced, almost pointed. He was rather short, although still a couple inches taller than she, and a little stocky, and he appeared bulky compared to the soft curves of her petite figure.

“I’m sorry,” said Brandy. “I don’t mean to accuse you of anything. I wasn’t trying to be a bitch.”

“No, don’t worry about it.”

“It’s just kind of scary, you know. Somebody got into my car while I was in class.”

“I understand. I mean this is some pretty weird stuff.”

“I almost threw it away. I didn’t want it, really. It kind of gave me the creeps.”

These words were like a slap in the face. She almost threw it away? “What did you get?”

She opened her purse and withdrew a small brown pouch. “I feel silly even bringing this to you, but I guess it sort of belongs to you.” She opened the pouch, which appeared to be made of soft, aged leather, pulled closed with a simple piece of coarse twine, and then emptied it into her left hand. She turned her eyes up to his as she held it out to him. “It’s a key.”

Albert stared at it for a moment before taking it from her. It was a flat piece of brass with a simple ring for a grip and a single tooth on each side. Just looking at it, he could understand why he was unable to pick the lock with the pocketknife. Even though the key was flat instead of round or grooved, it still required teeth to work the tumblers inside the lock.

He reached out and took it from her warm palm. He felt a million miles away, as though he were staring at it through a television set instead of holding it in his own fingers. It didn’t feel real. He turned it over, almost mesmerized, and suddenly he was drawn back with a slap. Seven letters were scratched onto this side of the key, just like on one side of the box. But instead of B R A N D Y R, the key read A L B E R T C.

“Albert Cross?” Brandy guessed.

“Seeing as how you’re the only Brandy R. I know and I’m probably the only Albert C. you know,” he replied, “I’d say it’s a pretty good bet.”

“Do you think whoever gave us these things got them mixed up? Mine had your name and yours had mine?”

Albert shook his head. “But then we wouldn’t know where to find the other half.”

“Yeah. That’s true.” Brandy’s eyes dropped to the backpack at Albert’s feet. “Did you bring the box?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I see it?”

“Of course.” Albert unzipped the bag, removed the box and handed it to her. “After my American History class last night I walked out to my car and it was just waiting for me. I’m in there from six to nine. It was in the driver’s seat. I always lock my doors.”

Brandy held the box in her lap as she studied it. “My car was in the commuter lot next to Wuhr.” The Daniel R. Wuhr Building was the science and math building on campus. It was where their Chemistry classrooms were located. “It was right there in my driver’s seat after class today.”

“Did you have your doors locked?”

Brandy shrugged, almost embarrassed. “They were locked when I came back out, but I have a bad habit of not locking my doors. Whoever put the bag there could’ve locked them.”

Albert nodded. “I can’t be a hundred percent sure of mine, either, actually. I say I always lock them, but every now and then...”

Brandy stared at the box as she held it in her lap, her eyes fixed on the letters of her name. “I didn’t say anything earlier, but when you showed this to me the first time there was just something eerie about it. It gave me chills. I didn’t even want to touch it.” She turned it over in her hands, looking at each side. “I’m not sure I want to be holding it now.”

Albert said nothing. He watched her expression for a moment and then followed her gaze to the box.

“Brandy R.,” she read.

“Yeah. I guess we know for sure what that side means now.”

“You haven’t figured any of the other sides out?”

“Nope. Maybe they’ll make sense once we open it.” Albert looked down at the key he was holding. He could feel a cold tingle of excitement rising up his spine.

“Maybe.” Brandy turned the box again, observing the other sides. “Well these are all Beatles songs.”

Albert’s eyes snapped from the key to the box. “What?”

“‘Help’, ‘Come Together’ and ‘Yesterday’ are all songs by the Beatles.”

Albert stared at the words on the side of the box. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.” She glanced up at him, met his eyes for just a brief moment, then looked back down, as if she detected the hungry attention her revelation had drawn from him and was disturbed by it. “I like music. I listen to a lot of it. All different kinds. I don’t know what ‘G N J’ means, though.”

Albert felt numb. “The Beatles.” He might have recognized country or pop titles, but The Beatles?

“That doesn’t mean that’s what these mean,” Brandy explained. “It could just be a coincidence. But they
are
Beatles songs.”

“Wow. I’m impressed.”

Brandy looked up at him again. This time she smiled a little.

“Any clue about the other side?”

Brandy turned the box again and tried to read it. “Just looks like garbage to me.”

Albert nodded. “Yeah. Me too.”

“But these last two sides are a map, right?”

Albert nodded. “Yeah, but I don’t know what it’s a map of.”

“Maybe it’s inside.”

“Maybe.” He looked down at the key again. “Let’s see.”

Brandy looked up at him, but made no move to hand him the box. “Do you think we should?”

“What do you mean?”

Brandy shrugged. She looked extremely uncomfortable. “I’m just not sure about this. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to set this all up. Why?”

Albert stared back at her, unable to answer.

“I mean this thing still gives me the creeps. It’s just too weird. It’s like something out of a… I don’t know. An Alfred Hitchcock movie or… Or a Stephen King short story. It’s just not
natural
, you know.”

Albert looked down at the box. She was right. It was
very
unnatural. Inside, he’d understood that all along.

“I don’t want to sound crazy, but there’s a part of me that really thinks that maybe we should just throw it away. Forget about it.”

This suggestion hit Albert like a punch in the gut. How could he just forget about it? That box had commanded his every thought since he first laid eyes on it. But then again, wasn’t that reason enough to do just as she suggested? Perhaps she was right. Perhaps it
was
unhealthy, even dangerous.

The two of them sat there, each of them staring at the box.

“There’s also a part of me,” Brandy added, a little cautiously, “that still doesn’t trust you.”

Albert looked up at her, surprised.

“I mean I don’t know anything about this. One day, out of the blue, you show up to class with this box with my name on it and say you found it in your car. After class I go to
my
car and find a key with your name on it. And I really don’t know you.”

Albert lowered his eyes all the way to the floor. She certainly made a point. “That’s true.” He nodded and looked back up at her. “I guess I really can’t expect you to trust me. I really don’t have reason to trust
you
.”

Brandy started to say something, but she stopped herself.