There were many voices in the box, and in time, I grew to know them by name.
Naomi had been a piano prodigy in a small suburb of Atlanta. She had played Mozart and Rachmaninov flawlessly at 11. She’d lasted less than a week in the basement before asphyxiating in the Time Out Box.
Then there was Brianna. A pageant queen from Charlotte. At 15, she’d been tapped as an early favorite for Miss America, after winning a case full of trophies as a child. She’d only lasted a day, panicking and choking to death on her first trip in.
At first, I could only hear their voices, but after a few trips, I found a way to see their faces.
Early, in the darkness, I’d seen the faint outline of a door. As I returned to the dark, over and over, I found a way to navigate toward it. I began to learn that my body was only a vessel that contained my breath. When I learned to leave my own breath, I could float freely through the dark, finally finding my way to open the door.
On the other side, I found seventeen girls, all hard at work building some kind of square structure out of radiant purple stones.
“You’re here!” they shouted. “We’re so sorry. We thought you might be the one to make it out.”
“You’re welcome to join our little tribe,” said Brianna. “Stay as long as you like.”
I must have looked confused, because Naomi approached me, touching my flesh.
“She’s still warm!” she shouted.
“Give her time,” said Brianna, rolling her eyes.
“No, like, warm,” said Naomi, and then they all ran up, running their cold fingers over me.
“How are you here?” asked Lilah. She was a blonde girl who’d earned a black belt by the age of 11. And it had meant nothing when the Keeper grabbed her off a suburban street in broad daylight.
And then suddenly, the sarcophagus cracked open and I saw the Keeper staring down at me. He was different this time, blood soaking through his white shirt, pain on his face.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He grimaced. “You see?” he asked. “You see what you do to me?” He paced the room as I slowly sat up, the feeling returning to my limbs. “You get me so worked up that I get up there and make mistakes. I get up there and do terrible things, reckless things. I’m not careful like I should be. And then sometimes I get hurt.”
He unbuttoned his dress shirt to reveal this skeletal body, but this time something was wrong. A red, bleeding wound decorated his left shoulder blade.
“Can you sew?” he asked.
Several minutes later, I stood over the Keeper with a needle and thread. I’d already washed the wound with soap and warm water, then sterilized it with stinging alcohol. Applying that painful bottle had been my greatest joy in weeks.
“I have entrusted you with a needle,” he said, as I stared down at him. “I fully understand that you may want to hurt me. Please know that this would be a fatal mistake. You certainly wouldn’t kill me, and your punishment would be severe. A length of time in the box that none would ever survive.”
Part of me wanted to jam the needle right into his heart and hope for the best, but I knew he was right. It was much more likely that I’d pay the price than he would.
I was a good sewer for my age, having spent a summer learning quilting from my grandmother, but I’d never run a needle through human flesh before.
“The key to piercing skin is to think of it as something else at first. An orange peel or a leather couch,” said the keeper. “In time, it won’t bother you. Work neatly and efficiently. As I’ve said, fail, and your punishment will be beyond your reckoning. There are things that I can do to you here, out in the world, before your trip to the box that most people have never taken the time to imagine.”
I tried to steady my hands and I held the needle to his skin. The cut wasn’t especially long, but I figured I’d need at least three or four stitches to close it.
It’s just an orange peel, I told myself, trying not to imagine what might happen if I failed. It’s not a person.
And I began to sew.
The first piercing caused him to wince slightly. I moved the needle gently under the skin and brought it out the far side of the wound. Then around and around. He was right, the skin acted like any other fabric in the end, pulling taught and neat as I pulled the sutures tight.
When it was all done, the Keeper rose and plucked the needle from my finger. Then he awkwardly reached around his back and cut the thread with a pair of scissors. He hadn’t trusted me with those. He ran his long bony fingers along the stitches, examining them in a large mirror.
“Well done,” he said, though he sounded slightly disappointed. Something was burning behind his eyes.
“He’s no god,” said Naomi the next time I visited the box. We were sitting on the stone structure, dipping our feet in a river made of clouds. Something in me said it was important not to look too long at the rushing mist. Once, when my gaze lingered there, I saw something caught in the flow: an old woman swimming desperately against the current before being swept away.
“He’s full of confidence, but it’s all a fraud,” said Brianna. “Why do you think his statues are bolted down? Why wouldn’t he even let you touch those scissors? He’s terrified of you.”
As we spoke, the sound of scraping rocks filled the air, and we looked back to see a group of six girls pushing a heavy stone up a ramp of slippery sand, and as they put the stone in place, I began to see the structure for what it truly was: the base of a pyramid.
Above us, the doorway back to the sarcophagus hung like a rectangular constellation in the sky. And suddenly, the whole plan became clear: the pyramid’s top would lead directly to the door, allowing them to climb out.
“We’re going to get you out,” said Naomi. “But you won’t be alone.”
“We’ll all be coming with you,” said Brianna. “All up here.” She gently caressed my temple, her dead hand as cool as tap water. Suddenly, I no longer felt safe.
All at once, I saw the other girls as they were: dead souls taken too soon for their bodies, desperate for any chance to return to the world. My flesh stung where Brianna had touched me, as if I’d run an icicle across it.
I backed away from them then and felt myself floating up, back toward the door.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Brianna. “We only want to help.”
“Escape lies not in one direction, but all at once,” Naomi called after me. “Look to the west. To the north!”
I found myself back in the sarcophagus, barely able to catch my breath. Reaching out with my right hand, I found the small button and pushed it hard, feeling the light stream of oxygen entering around me.
Then I began to feel around with my left hand, running my fingers around the outline of the long-forgotten country mapped there. This time, though, I let my fingers run further up the side of the box, and there, I found another button. I pressed this too, and I heard the faint grind of something within the bowels of the stone. More air ran over my fingers now.
Next, I felt along the bottom edge of the box with my toes, scooting my body down so that my feet could reach the corners. There, I found another button. South. I pressed it with my toe and heard a louder sound above me. I could tell something was opening above me, a small compartment just at the level of my belly.
North, something whispered.
I released the button with my right hand and felt around the box near my head. Finally, I found it. But pressing this button only seemed to move the box’s secret mechanism as much as before. I needed a way to push all four buttons simultaneously.
Then, the box lid opened, and the Keeper looked down at me. Beside him was another girl, just my age. She had red hair and more freckles than anyone could ever count.
“Impossible,” he whispered. “You were inside more than a day.”
“It only seemed like a moment,” I whispered through chapped lips.
He turned to the other girl, whose eyes were wide with fright.
“Run,” I whispered, but I’m not sure if she heard me.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, turning to the new girl. “I thought there’d be a place for you here. This is no fault of yours, just poor planning on my part.”
Then, without another word, he took the scissors from his pocket and stabbed her in the neck. She fell to the floor with him on top of her. He stabbed her torso over and over again, blood streaming out a dozen wounds, splattering the walls and floor. She barely had time to gurgle a scream.
I wanted so badly to fling myself at him, to stop what I was seeing, but my limbs barely functioned after so long in the box. All I could do was watch the life leave her eyes as the blood pooled around her.
Finally, the Keeper stood, watching the blood drip from his hands.
“You see what you make me do,” he whispered. “Another day it is, then. And if you get out, you’ll be cleaning up this mess.”
Before I could say a thing, the lid closed back on top of me.
Please, I heard the voices calling. Don’t be afraid. Together we can be in all directions. You only need to let us in.
I knew I was making a deal with the dead, that somehow I was giving my body to them. But I knew then that regardless of the consequences, I’d rather trust the girls than the Keeper.
“Okay,” I whispered. “I invite you in.”