On my fourth day being kidnapped, I earned my first trip to the Time Out Box.
I had been eating a bowl of chicken noodle soup that the Keeper had brought me, trying to fight off a cold, and a drop had fallen on my fresh white dress. I had tried to scrub at it frantically while he was upstairs, but it was no use.
“You have fouled yourself,” he said as soon as he descended into the basement and saw me. The spot of soup couldn’t have been more than a half inch in diameter and barely off-white.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, my voice and body shaking. “I should have been more careful.”
He shook his head.
“You’ll have time to consider your negligence while you’re in the box. Thirty minutes.”
I knew better than to resist.
I walked down the gaily painted hall, past dozens of small statues adorning the basements nooks and crannies. The whole pantheon of Greek gods were present in one form or another, joined by gods I didn’t know from South America, Japan, and even Babylon. Each was made of metal and bolted firmly in place.
The sarcophagus itself was framed above a marble staircase at the end of the hall beneath a ceiling painted to look like the midday sky. I didn’t know how old it was, but the Keeper claimed it predated even the Egyptians, belonging to a civilization that merited only a line or two in most history books.
The Keeper was tall and thin. When he’d first awoken me in bed, back at my house, I’d thought he was a skeleton. Six and a half feet tall, and so thin that his skin pulled tight against his bones. His bald head revealed the sharp curves of his skull.
Yet he opened the Time Out Box’s heavy stone lid with surprising ease.
“In,” he said, his voice devoid of any feeling.
I could feel hot tears streaming down my face as I complied. The heavy stone box was freezing to the touch and felt tight around me. I wondered if it had been originally built for a child.
The Keeper removed a gold watch from his pocket and held it up the light.
“Thirty minutes to cleanse yourself,” he said. And then he slid the lid on top of me.
For a few seconds, I held it together. I counted to a hundred. And then again. And again. But as I started a fourth time, I tried to roll my body to get more comfortable and realized I couldn’t. The lid was too close above me. And then panic set in.
And so I screamed. And the screams echoed around me in the heavy stone box. And the thin air got even thinner, and I screamed harder.
I could feel my mind fogging. Finally, I needed to rest my lungs.
As I grew quiet, I heard a voice whispering. Cross over into the dark. Cross over into the dark.
I woke gasping for air as light hit my eyes. I felt I’d slept a thousand years, though I knew only half an hour had passed. The keeper helped me out of the box and handed me a new white dress, exactly the same as the one I’d dirtied.
“You will be more careful in the future,” he said, and I nodded weakly.
On the wall at my right stood a massive stained glass window, backlit by artificial light. Each panel was a different shade of red or pink. Now that I was closer, I could see that the color came from dyed liquid suspended in the glass. Together, the panels formed a picture of a girl’s face, about half complete.
“My ongoing project,” said the Keeper. “Many have contributed to it, each lending their blood’s brilliance. Of course, I as the artisan must mix in a few special tinctures to preserve and alter the lovely colors, but that is my burden to bear. Perhaps one day you will become a part of this collective.”
He sighed for a second, marveling at his own work.
“Many like you have come before, and many will follow. Like a god, I last decades while you girls come and go, sometimes for mere days at a time, other times for months. Of course, the duration is up to you. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I told him.
“Good,” he said. “Then change into a clean dress and finish your soup. I fear it’s grown cold.”
The second time he put me in the box was because I’d been crying. The time alone had gotten to me, and I’d let myself fall down the rabbit hole of remembering my parents. The way my dad would always shout, “Go conquer the world!” as he dropped me off at the high school. Or the way my mom made me French toast late at night when I couldn’t sleep. The way my baby brother pronounced my name ‘Evan’ instead of ‘Evelyn.’
His face contorted in rage as he came downstairs and found me sobbing, curled up in a ball.
“I come here for solace! For cheer! For a distraction from all the stresses of my time in the world above. And what do I get instead? Tears. Sadness. Tell me, why should I keep you here? What good to me are you?”
“Please,” I said, trying to stop sobbing. “I can make you happy.”
“An hour this time,” he said.
I was already exhausted from crying this time when the lid slid over me. I didn’t scream. I just lay there. How much oxygen did the box hold? Even after 30 minutes, I’d felt it running out. Even if I stayed calm, could I last an hour?
If you want to live, you need to listen.
What was that? A girl’s voice. She had a slight southern accent.
You think you’re in a coffin. But you’re not. You’re in a puzzle. You need to feel around.
“Who are you?” I asked, but there was no response.
I listened. With some difficulty moving my arms. I ran my fingers over the box. As I did, I realized that the stone wasn’t smooth at all, but rather decorated with engraved lines. I felt the lines over and over again, trying to create a mental picture of what I was feeling.
At first, it didn’t make any sense. Just curved lines running all around, a large curved one shape cut up with other lines, some straight, some curvy.
And then finally, I realized, “It’s a map.”
Of a country long forgotten. But the basic directions remain the same.
“What good is any of this?” I asked.
Look east, said the voice.
I reached out with my right hand to the edge of the box where the side met the lid. There, I found a small circle, no larger than a dime. I pressed my finger against it and heard a small hiss. Then an almost imperceptible trickle of cold air passed against my fingers.
The Keeper always wondered how I could survive my punishments so long, said the voice. All the others succumbed in a hour, maybe two. I once was punished for a full day. I might have lived, except I fell asleep and the darkness took me.
For a second I took my finger off the circle, and the hold sealed shut.
“Maybe that’s better,” I said. “Once I’m gone, there’s nothing more he can do to me.”
That’s up to you, said the voice. But there is more I can show you.
For a few minutes, I lay there. The voice gone, silence all around me. As I lay there, I began to see something through the darkness, a white rectangle like the rim of a door. But when I tried to reach out for it, I bruised my fingers on the box’s lid.
Around me, the air grew hot and stale. I prepared myself to escape. I thought of my dead grandparents, and my friend Alive, who’d dived the wrong way into a swimming hole. I thought of my 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Chu, who’d fallen from a ladder while hanging Christmas light.
I found myself gasping. Then I reached out, scrambling to find the dime-sized button. And I pushed.