It was just there one day. A small wooden ornate box just sitting on the kitchen table. It had strange cravings from the sides to the top, almost like one of those boxes you keep loved one’s ashes in.
I recently inherited my grandfather’s old house and I am the only one who lives there. I’m not sure how it got there. I felt almost compelled to open it but some part of my mind is screaming at me not too. All my doors and windows are locked so nobody could have snuck in and left it here. Who would do something like that anyway? Plus, I was just in this room 5 minutes ago and I didn’t see any boxes. I’m not superstitious but I worry it could be cursed or some kind of trap. Crazy I know.
I decided to leave it alone for now and return back to my living room. Watch some youtube for awhile and maybe it’ll just be gone when I come back. I wasn’t that lucky, the second I set foot into my living room I saw it. The same wooden box was on my living room table taunting me to open it.
“Are there two boxes?” I thought to myself as I stepped back and peered into the kitchen, it wasn’t there. My blood went ice cold, “what the hell?” I murmured. Another thought crossed my mind, I walked back into the kitchen half expecting it to appear back on the kitchen table. It didn’t. A teleporting box would be crazy, right? Except, not so crazy as I turned back around I saw it sitting atop of a mini tabletop oven.
I ran back into my bedroom and locked the door as I pulled out my phone. I called my friend, Josh. Half expecting not to get any bars but to my surprise he answered in one ring.
“Josh?!” I nearly screamed into the phone.
“Last I checked” he said
“Somethings not right Josh, I feel like I’m losing my mind. There’s this box…” The words poured out of move like water from a broken dam.
“a box?”
“Yeah, a box…” I said as a chill went down my spine pausing before slowly turning around to see the box sitting on my bed.
“You al-“ The call went all static before counting out.
“Josh, Josh?!” I checked my phone, it had no bars. “Damn”
I just looked at the box and you know that old saying or maybe it’s an expression. “When you stare into the abyss it sometimes stares back into you.” That’s what this felt like. The more I looked at it the more I started to hear a whisper, a call. The box was beckoning me towards it in a voice I couldn’t quite make out but it still sounded familiar.
I took a step forward and then my bedroom door broke open and a short butch man stood in the doorway breaking me outta my trance. He grabbed me by my collar and yanked me back into the living room before throwing me against the wall.
“Where is it?” He commanded.
Coughing and trying to regain my focus “What?”
He threw me against the wall again. This man was shorter than me but unnaturally strong. I cursed myself for not going to the gym more.
His eyes were doglike and bright yellow pierced my soul and had a jagged fang like tooth from his mouth. He had patches of fur on his hands that went to his fingertips that were like white dirty claws.
“Where is it?!” He repeated.
my eyes twitching as my gazed moved from him to an elderly woman standing behind him.
“Look at me!” He roared. I didn’t look. “Can I kill him?” he seemed to ask the woman behind him.
She cackled “If only it was that easy deary. If we kill him, it will just go to the next person and we’ll have to start looking all over again”
I winced and looked at her. Her face was just puddles of loose skin and black beady eyes with a long pointy crooked nose.
I chuckled “Did you jump out of the Snow White?”
A few seconds passed before I realized I said it out loud. I honestly have no idea why I even thought that at a time like that.. I blame the concussion.
The look on her face went from a sly unnerving sneer to absolute rage. If I had grandmother
“Kill him” She said, cold as ice.
“Gladly” The man threw me to the ground a few feet in front of him as I lay next to a small wooden object sitting on the floor. I saw it from the corner of my vision. I put one hand on top of it and a wave of calm washed over me. Almost as time stopped and I heard what it was trying to tell me for the first time.
“I accept”. The box popped open and I suddenly sprung alive pulling out its contents. I felt what seemed like a knife in my hands “If you two want this so bad, take it” as I stabbed the butch-looking man into his heart. Blood started dripping from his mouth as I ripped out the knife and looked towards the elderly woman who was gone.
I looked down towards the dead man lying in a pool of his own blood. He suddenly looked more human than before and not as muscular.
Gasping for air as everything started hitting me at once. I pulled out my cellphone to dial 911 but couldn’t make it pass 9 before passing out.
I woke up the next day in the hospital. I learned after my friend Josh came over to check up on me and found my front door open with me laying in a pool of blood next to the corpse of the man I stabbed. The police questioned me and I told them the truth or at least a version I think they’d believe. I know they wouldn’t believe me, you don’t believe me, and I wouldn’t believe me either.
The cops did ask me something weird, they asked me where the knife was. “Maybe the woman took it”, I said, playing dumb. After they left I started typing out my story to… I don’t know. Warn you of monsters maybe? or maybe just to ask what’s next. I am not sure what to do.
oh, the knife? It never left me. I just look into my hand and it appears there looking back into me.