He snapped on the lightbulb, which swayed on a knotted cord, and pushed the trunk past the crawl space door. He got on his hands and knees and pushed it farther inside. Dust motes swam in the air. His heart thumped; his mouth could’ve been packed with sawdust. He wanted to abandon the trunk at the very back of the crawl space. It seemed to have gained fifty pounds since he’d lugged it out of his bedroom.
Suddenly he pictured the crawl space lightbulb burning out, the door slamming shut, and the trunk lid popping open.
Alone at last. That guttural whisper—but real this time, not just in Luke’s mind. Come here, Lucas, and let us whisper in your ear. No? Okay, we’ll come to you…
Anxiety coated Luke’s brain in a suffocating glaze as he pushed it to the very back of the crawl space. It was early afternoon; sunlight streaked through a dirty casement window. If it weren’t for that fragile link to the outside world, Luke might not have gotten it that far.
He let go of its handle—for an instant his hands wouldn’t come unglued—and started back toward the door. The trunk sat in the fall of weak sunlight, bloated and sullen.
“There,” Luke said with a triumphant little smile. “You stay where you belong.”
That night, his mother forced him to go fetch it again. In the dark.
She’d immediately noticed it was missing. Luke was positive she had been waiting for Luke to try something sneaky. She crossed her enormous fat-girdled arms at the dinner table, eyeing him down.
“The trunk, Lucas. You’ve moved it.”
Luke didn’t look up from his plate. He pushed peas around with his fork. “I put it downstairs. It’s just, there’s not enough room. The trunk’s big and our bedroom, with me and Clay both in it, it’s really too—”
“What do you suggest? Move into a mansion?” Harsh, barking laughter. “Do you think your father could afford that?”
Luke swallowed, forced his head up.
“I don’t like it, Mom. I’m sorry. Thank you for buying it, but…”
Her mouth set in a hard line—it was the only part of her body that hadn’t gone permanently soft.
“You’ve hardly given it a chance. You will go downstairs, Lucas Adelaide Nelson. You will bring it up.”
The dread etched on his son’s face forced Luke’s father, Lonnie, to intervene.
“Beth, honey, do we really have to—?”
Lonnie’s objection died with a glance from his wife. He gathered his menthols and his cup of tea and slipped into the family room.
“What are you waiting for?” His mother’s arms remained crossed. “An engraved invitation?”
Luke sat rooted to his chair. It wasn’t a matter of wanting to move—he physically couldn’t. His mother gripped his wrist fiercely and marched him to the basement door.
“Go,” his mother said. “Now.”
Luke didn’t argue. He had a vague but dire notion that given reason, his mother could conjure torments worse than whatever the trunk held in store.
He trooped down the squeaky, swaybacked stairs. He waved his hand around until his fingers brushed the light cord. The bulb illuminated his father’s workbench, the water heater, and the door to Clayton’s unoccupied lab.
His mother shut the door. Luke’s heart made a donkey kick in his chest.
It’s just a stupid trunk, he told himself. It’s ugly and gross but it’s not alive, okay? It can’t hurt you.
Then why did you try to get rid of it? asked a second, traitorous voice. And why did it inch across your bedroom floor?
The crawl space’s cheap plywood door swung open to reveal a darkness that raised the downy hairs on his arms. The trunk lay inside, waiting.
You’re back, Lucas! So soon, so soon. Lovely. Do come in.
The crawl space’s light cord dangled to the left of the door, a flimsy string with a bell-shaped bob of plastic on the end. It took a few adrenaline-pinching seconds to find it—had it been moved? He overbalanced, nearly toppling face-first onto the floor.
His fingers brushed the cord. He’d reached too far at first.
The trunk sat where he’d left it, at the very back of the crawl space. Boxes were stacked on either side, forming a rough corridor. He hadn’t noticed the alignment that afternoon. Had someone—something—moved the boxes?
He crawled toward it. Silky rustling noises emanated from behind the boxes. Mice? But they didn’t have a mouse problem. Clayton had trapped them all. Every last squeaker.
Luke’s nose filled with the smells of wood rot and mildew. Our house is diseased, Luke thought weirdly. But only right here, in the crawl space. And Luke was in the heart of the disease now, crawling toward its decaying tumor.
He craned his neck back to the door—he’d seen something in his periphery, or sort of thought so. Fleeting movement behind the stacked boxes, a skittering of little legs as something moved behind him.
To do what? Close the door? Switch off the light?
Luuuucas. You’re such a precious boy. So soft, so pretty. Come closer.
Fuck you, Luke thought. He’d never uttered this word aloud (God only knew what his mother would do to him), but it felt good to say it in his head. FUCK you, box. I can burn you and say it was an accident. I can flood you until your wood bloats and rots. I can leave you on the stoop on garbage day when Mom’s gone and the garbagemen will take you to the dump, where seagulls will drop gooey turds all over you.
The trunk waited for him, unmoving, unblinking.
Luke’s head jerked. He saw it again—something moving behind the boxes. They were in rows like big brown teeth, and he saw or thought he’d seen something scuttling between the gaps.
A pair of pants… were those pants? They were wadded up like the skin of an enormous serpent on top of one box. And something else that might have been a lampshade. And something that looked like—
The trunk’s latch snapped open. It made a silvery snipping sound.
Luke turned in time to see it happen. The metal hasp fell forward lazily like the tongue lolling from a tired dog’s mouth.
Luke couldn’t believe it—that is to say, his mind couldn’t process it. There wasn’t a puff of wind. No earthquake had shaken the house’s foundation. The latch had simply… opened.
The clowns on the trunk suddenly seemed different. Their eyes were tracking him now. Pinning him in their fleshless, jeering gaze.
Luke spun wildly on his knees. As he did, he heard a sound that chilled the ventricles of his heart.
Eeeee… the trunk’s hinges levering up.
He didn’t want to look back. Not one bit. But his skull was gripped by an immense force, which twisted it slowly around.
The trunk was open. Not much. It couldn’t open fully, as the lid would hit the crawl space’s ceiling.
No, it was open only a bit. Just a hair.
When he faced back the other way, an odd thing happened. The crawl space elongated, its dimensions stretching like taffy. The door was thirty feet away, when it should only be twenty… and it was moving farther away by the second.
Lucas, don’t go. Staaaaaaay.
Luke began to scrabble toward the door, his fingers scraping madly at the cement. A spider web broke across his face, strangling the cry building in his throat. He wanted to call out for Clayton, his mother, anyone, but his voice had fled into his stomach—all that came out of his mouth was a breathless whisper.