The Ghost Box

Chapter 5

The Shop by the Stream

Sarah almost screamed.

But the boy just shrugged. He tapped the box with one dirty finger. “I need the key. I need you to get me the key.”

She huddled herself up, pulling the bedclothes tight around her. She wanted to shiver and shiver, to back away from those fingers that had moved right into her skin. She asked in a hushed voice, “Where is it?”

“Lost.” He looked at her. “Some trees grow keys. Ash does. But not oak.”

It meant nothing to her. Perhaps the boy sensed that, because he shrank back and leaned against the wall, his head dropped as if in misery. Locking his long dirty fingers together, he said, “I’m trapped here.”

“Trapped?”

He turned his eyes sideways. They were dark and bitter. “I was a thief once. I picked pockets, stole purses, snatched watches. Do people still do that?”

“Cell phones,” she said, thinking of Matt’s anger when his had been stolen.

The boy’s gaze flickered. “This is what happened to me. I stole a package from a man in the street. I pushed him and he fell, and I ran away with it. I felt gleeful, and proud. But he called after me, strange words in a foreign language, and I looked back and saw he was pointing at me, a long bony finger. He was calling down a curse on me.”

He rubbed his hands together. She saw how the thin wrists stuck out from the ragged sleeves, how his shoes were a web of holes.

“He killed me,” he said in a whisper.

Sarah’s lips were dry, so she licked them and murmured, “How?”

“Sickness. The town was always full of sickness. I opened the package but it only contained a box. This box. And it was empty. Weakness came over me. I hadn’t eaten for days. I felt feverish and hot. So I slipped away, out here into the hills. It was a freezing night and I knew I wouldn’t see the end of it. I lay down in the leaves at the foot of the tree, made a hollow in them, curled up shivering. And I died, holding the box.”

Sarah didn’t want to think about that. So she said, “But the box isn’t empty.”

“Not now.” He turned his dark gaze on her. “Don’t you see? He cursed me for all time. He has locked my soul into the box.”

She stared at him. Outside the wind was rising. She heard it thrash in the bare branches, heard it whip along the corner of the house.

“I know your name,” he said, suddenly sly. “Your name is Sarah. I’ve heard them call you, your mother, your brother ...”

“He’s not my brother.”

“Find it for me, Sarah. Find me the key! Help me. I’ve been here for so long … and I’m so cold.”

His misery was making her shiver – that and the cold that seeped from him, the flakes of dried mud on the bed.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

He turned to her and smiled, and shook his head. “I’ve forgotten,” he said.

*********

The shop had a sign outside saying Morgan Rees – Fine Antiques. Sarah stopped at the door, the silver box in a plastic bag under her arm.

She was nervous about going in, and she was tired. After the boy had vanished she had jumped up and turned on every light and lamp in the room. She had left them on all night, lying wide-eyed, her mind racing in terror through every ghost story and film she knew. Only when she’d heard Gareth getting up for work had she fallen asleep again.

Now she took a deep breath and looked up and down the alley with its pretty stream where two swans glided along. She would get him the key. And then he would go.

The shop was old. Chairs and cabinets were set out in the window. It looked expensive, but she turned the handle and went in, down one step.

A bell jangled somewhere far off in the building. Sarah stood in a slant of dusty sunlight and gazed around.

A great doll’s house stood on a table, all the tiny furniture taken out for cleaning. Behind it a gold bird cage hung, with a small stuffed bird that stared over her head. There were paintings on the walls. A shelf of musty leather-bound books stood opposite a small fireplace glowing red from the heat of the coals.

A man came up to her. “Can I help you?”

He wore a black coat and his hair was white. He had a pair of glasses on his sharp nose. He was tall, and very thin.

“I don’t know. I need a key for an old jewelry box.”

“Keys!” He smiled a lop-sided smile. “Well, I have plenty of those.”

He took out a tray lined with red velvet and she saw it held hundreds of keys. Big, small, gold, tin. Keys with pieces of ribbon tied to them, keys with labels, huge church keys, tiny luggage keys.

“May I see the box?” he said.

Sarah undid it in a rustle of plastic. “It’s this.”

She held it out.

“Ah,” the man said. Carefully he took it, his fingers around it. He carried it to a side table and focused a small lamp on it. The silver oak leaves gleamed.

“Fine. Very fine. 18th century, perhaps earlier. French. Made in Paris.”

“Is it worth a lot?” She hadn’t meant to ask but she was interested now.

He looked at her through the glasses. “Do you want to sell?”

“No ... at least ... it’s not really mine.”

She hoped he wouldn’t think she’d stolen it, but he wasn’t really listening. He was looking through a magnifying glass he’d taken from a drawer, looking at the writing on the box, the words in the strange language. As he did so, she felt him stiffen.

“I just need a key,” she murmured.

Morgan Rees put the glass down with a click on the table and stepped back. He took his hands away from the box.

“I’m afraid I don’t have one to fit,” he said in a quiet voice.