Midnight At The Lost and Found
by
Jon Rosling

It was on the tenth of October that George and I encountered one of the strangest things that has ever happened, and probably is ever likely to happen to either of us.

George Werdent and myself had acquired the job at the left luggage office in a tiny comer of Sheffield railway station seven years apart. George, a good friend through thick and thin was a lot older than myself, a tender fifty-four years old and proud of it.

"Fifty four years young" he would declare in a thick Sheffield accent. George was a big man in every sense of the word - big with personality and big with person. As a joke on the last bank holiday weekend he weighed himself on the luggage scales in the back of the lost luggage depository.

The scales were the stand up type with a huge round dial that swung from left to right when something heavy was placed on the metal pad at their feet. Giggling like a schoolboy dared to do something bad George had stepped up onto that raised metal pad and the red needle had swung suddenly round the dial. It flipped right around to twenty five stones before settling back to nineteen. George had stopped laughing and giggling when he saw that and sheepishly returned to the office. His weight was not discussed again. He'd had health problems in the past - mild angina - and I noticed as he wheezed heavy parcels and baggage across the small office we occupied and into the larger store at the back.

I took this job at the left luggage office at Christmas in nineteen ninety two and I've been here ever since. I needed the money badly at the time and although money is not much of a problem now - or not as much as it used to be back in those recessionary days - coming here four evenings and two afternoons a week has become a habit. I guess I see this fluorescent lit office, with it's yellowing paint and stale smell as a second kind of home, although I would dread to actually live here. I'm sure that my wife and son would not be enamoured by the surroundings either.

The tenth of October was a night shift, ten while four in the morning. We sat in the freezing cold, surrounded by suitcases, bags and jackets, parcels and all manner of strange wrapped items that people deposited during the course of the previous day. Mostly they would pick them up at the end of the day, but sometimes someone would leave a package until the end of the week. Occasionally things were never claimed and after six months in our depository they were sent away, to where I have no clue.

'Sent away,' I thought.

At the end of every month a man from British Rail would come in a big van. We would sign papers, he would sign papers and then we would help him load the packages that had been with us six months or more into the back of his van, and he would trundle off taking those old friends with him. 'Sent away.'

I'd come onto the night shift that evening swinging my sandwiches in one hand, the Thermos flask in my other, whistling some song or other. My wife always packed me something to eat for the night shift although the plain fact of the matter, as I often told her, was that I never ate anything on the night shift and invariably fed the sandwiches to the pigeons that stalked the railway platforms when the commuters vanished home. George was always at work before me, eager as ever. He was sitting behind the counter looking sideways at the small monochrome television we'd installed to keep ourselves entertained on those cold and lonely nights. The aerial was portable and so the reception was a little hazy, but the sound was good and it was a sort of comfort to have some other noise in that small office.

"Ready for the graveyard shift?" he asked as I closed the office door behind me, twisting the security lock right back. Inside the door mechanisms moved, cogs shifted and a steel bolt secured the door to the wall.
"Uh-uh," I replied, stifling a yawn.

George was munching on a bag of cheese and onion flavoured crisps and the odour filled the relatively small office.

"Are they part of your diet then?" I asked, motioning towards the crisps.
He looked over towards me, throwing a disparaging glance. "I told you never to mention my weight."

I smiled and carried on removing my jacket, hanging it the door to the depository. The depository - or 'sauna' as we liked to call it - was a large stock room where goods we looked after were kept. Along one side of the room, the far end, were shelves and racks for smaller packages. The nearest end was left open for larger crates and boxes. There was very little in the depository at that moment, which wasn't unusual for that time of the year.

Business often picked up in the summer months when holiday makers and the like were using the rail network more often that usual. Christmas week could be busy too. But October was quiet time and we enjoyed it like that. The dust settled in the depository and the only sound that could be heard was the gentle hum of the three radiators that kept the depository at a more than suitable temperature, hence it's nickname the 'sauna'.

From inside the lost and found office we could see the platforms of the station stretching out ahead of us. In the distance the signal light flashed from red to amber to green and then back to red again, and beyond them were the orange streetlights of the city. Occasionally a police patrol would wander into the station to make sure there were no disturbances, or to remove a vagrant or drunkard. Other than that the place was eerily quiet all through the night, the concrete floor and rafters absorbing the yellow-orange flash lighting and giving the station a dim and urban feel. In the rafters pigeons slept or kept watch. Sometimes they would flutter down and take scraps from the litter bins dotted along the station's platforms.

Very occasionally we would spot a rat stealing along the side of a wall in the station, foraging for something to eat or some warm place to nest. But by and large the station was empty, without a soul, a night-time graveyard where we worked our graveyard shift.

I sighed and looked down at a newspaper that sat beneath George's fat hand. Some scandalous tittle-tattle about the Royal family adorned the front page.

"Another quiet night," said George. "Might get some sleep tonight."
I smiled dryly. "Maybe things will pick up."

Maybe they would. The mail arrived at three and we always helped with that. That was the prime reason for having the office open so late. Or maybe someone would come and claim something, present their little yellow ticket and claim to be the owner of a box back in our 'sauna'.

'Maybe.'

Two hours ticked by and George did fall into sleep. He slumbered in the big old armchair he'd brought from home some eighteen months ago for that very purpose, and while he snored gently I watched some television. I also found the urge to nibble at the sandwiches and ending up eating half of them by midnight.

A thing I found working at the lost and found on the night shifts was that at night time seemed to slow to a crawl. There were times during your life that events seemed just to whirl by. Those were often the good times but those evenings in the office, especially the cold ones just dragged and dragged and dragged. It seemed like they would never end sometimes, and sometimes I really understood the meaning of the phrase 'bored to tears'. That night started out as one of the 'drag nights' and when the chimes of the town hall clock striking midnight drifted across the city and towards us I shook myself awake, not quite believing that we'd only been here two hours.

I spun the revolving chair around and stared out into the falsely lit station. The pigeons were silent and sleeping tonight and there was no sign of rat life. As I watched the quiet nothingness the sound of footfalls grew from the distance, a slight tapping noise at first, perhaps an aural hallucination. But after a few seconds the noise became louder and I became more certain it was real. And there was a rumbling noise, low and deep like distant thunder. It accompanied the footfalls as they approached growing louder and more intense.

I could feel my heart begin to quicken as the footfalls and the rumbling became louder, and as the sound from the television speaker grew relatively less significant.

"George," I said, still looking out of the lost and found window. I was craning my head over the desk trying to see what the noise was but the metal grill over the window prevented me from leaning right out. "George!"
George stirred from his sleep and opened his eyes weakly. "What..?" he mumbled.

I waited. The noise was growing louder and down at the far end of the platform I could see a long shadow cast in the lighting from the walls.

"There's somebody coming..." I said. My heart was racing so fast in my chest when I saw that shadow that I thought it was going to burst.
"Really," said George and closed his eyes once more.

Then the noise was so loud it drowned out everything else and before I knew what was happening the great wooden crate flashed into view with Willie Baker, the Parcel Force attendant pushing it along. I screamed in shock at seeing the thing so suddenly and George jumped up out of his seat and looked over at me, wide-eyed and shocked.

"Evening gents," said Willie Baker in his timeless Gaelic accent. Parcel Force, the parcel division of the Royal Mail, sometimes brought larger packages to us to hold before the Royal Mail train arrived to take them away.

I stood back from the counter window, shaking with nervous tension. Deep down I felt like laughing out loud, but the look the George gave me told me that such a move would not be appreciated.

"You scared the shit out of me, Willie!" I said through the window grill and moved to the door, twisting the lock open. The recognisable clunk! chick! noise rang out and I swung the door open. George had climbed out of his seat and tucked his shirt back into his trousers.

"I see you been examining the backs of your eyelids there, George!" said Willie, looking across the office.
"I still would be if you and the Boy Wonder here could keep quiet on a night shift," came the sardonic reply.
"I wonder if British Rail know about you sleeping on the job then?" said Willie, throwing a joking smile over to George who just huffed and shrugged. He knew when he was beaten in an argument and when not to take it further.

The crate was seven feet tall and only just fitted under the depository door. It was perfectly square, very heavy and made of pine wood in the fashion of an old tea chest.

"What the bloody hell is in this?" I asked finally setting it down against the wall in the 'sauna'.
"Dunno," said Willie, reaching up to the top of the crate for his clipboard. "The guy is pickin' it up himself, sometime tonight, certainly before two."
"He's coming here for it?" asked George, who stood in the background watching.
"Sure is," said Willie, handing me the clipboard. I took it and left my initials next to the boxed marked 'RECEIVED'.
I raised my eyebrows and looked over to George. "Told you it would be an active evening," I said. He laughed back at me.

Will was gone as quickly and suddenly as he had descended upon us and the station and our office returned to the previous state. George's ability to sleep at any given time never ceased to amaze me. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep but again and again during that first half an hour my mind wandered to the crate that had been delivered. It wasn't out of order that Parcel Force had a large package for us at that time of the night but it was a rare occurrence. I thought that maybe the experience of Willie pushing the crate down the railway platform and jumping me like that had shaken me up a little more that I initially thought and gave up trying to sleep.

Still the wooden box in the depository played on my mind. Whenever we received any package from anywhere, be it the Royal Mail, Parcel Force, or handed in by Joe Public, we would take turns guessing what was inside. Sometimes it would rattle. Sometimes something inside would thud. Sometimes there would be a customs note on the top indicating what was in the package. It was a strange game. Here we were surrounded by and responsible for lots of parcels, brown boxes, wooden tea chests, Jiffy envelopes, white card envelopes - and yet we knew nothing about what was in them. For all we knew someone could be shipping arms and munitions through that lost and found office, or maybe crack cocaine.

'Maybe a body,' I thought and giggled at myself.

As I thought about that some more my laughter subsided and the dark nature of what had just entered my mind occurred to me. It was perfectly possible that someone could send something like that through us and we would never know a thing. I shuddered and tried to shut out the thought, but it lingered pervasively, now linked to the wooden crate that had just arrived.

'Maybe there's a body in the crate,' I speculated.

The nervousness that had blossomed inside my gut when Willie had trundled the heavy crate down the rail platform some half an hour previously returned.

'No one's coming to collect it,' my mind gibbered. 'No one's coming because it's a body, or maybe several bodies, after all it's a big crate. It's full of remains of dead people that the killer has sent away under a false name, sent through the postal service to nowhere. No one's coming to collect the crate. It's just going to sit here, a silent sentinel watching you for the next six months until the Royal Mail take it away, or until it starts to smell...'
"Stop it!" I said to myself in the quiet of the office. George stirred at my words but did not awaken.

I stood up from the counter and turned towards the depository. Walking over to the door I grabbed the handle and paused.

'This is where the bodies are buried. This is where they are and where they're staying for the next six months...'

I pushed down on the handle and let the door swing open. When the depository is usually open a warm breeze drifts out, one built up over time by the three radiators within. The temperature in there is more that comfortably warm. If you spend anymore than fifteen minutes or so in there you can begin to feel quite sleepy. Instead of a warm breeze ushering out of the 'sauna' an icy chill struck me in the face and I jumped back a little, mostly in surprise. I looked into the depository room, dark and waiting, the only noise the hum of the radiator heaters. Then I stepped inside.

The temperature was bitterly cold, almost as cold as the outside. When Willie and I had brought the crate in here earlier the room was warm as usual. But now it was like a cold store. In the space of just half an hour the temperature had plummeted.

'How is this possible?' I thought to myself, and down inside something told me it was not possible, something told me that what was happening here was not normal.

I cast a puzzled glance around the room once more and then hit the light switch on the wall. Above me the two dim bulbs clicked into life, chasing the shadows into the recesses. Two feet from the switch was one of the three radiators and I stepped over to it, placing my hand above the vent on top.

"Still warm," I said to myself, my own voice sounding dislocated in the near silence.
'Still warm.'

Yet the room was so cold.

I looked around, passing over the objects that had frequented the 'sauna' for more than an evening, and stared straight at the crate. It seemed to draw my gaze thought I couldn't figure out why at first. There was something odd about it, something strange that I couldn't place my finger on. The wooden crate was still there up against the wall where Willie and I had left it.

'No!' someone inside my head said straight away. 'No it's not!'

It was true, yet it took a long time for the fact to really sink in to me. The crate had moved almost two feet to the left.

I stepped closer to it and looked down. There were tracks in the dust on the floor marking the box's movement, two perfect straight lines drawn by the runners on the underside of the crate.

The thumping in my chest returned, heavier than before, and my breathing accelerated.

"George!" I shouted into the office.

No reply.

"GEORGE!"
"Wha..?"

I moved towards the depository door and looked out into the relative brightness of the office. George was pulling himself up in his chair for the second time that night, and looked over at me with bleary red eyes.

"This had better not be a joke," he said.
"No," I replied, shaking my head fervently. "No, but I need you to come here, to come and look at something."

I looked back at the crate and stared hard at it. I still thought, even by that stage, that maybe I was dreaming and that I would look at it any moment now and everything would be normal. But that was not to be. The crate had still moved, the air was still cold, and the tracks in the dust were still there.

George hobbled over to the door. "Je-sus" he said, and rubbed his hands against his arms. "Did the heaters break down?"
I shook my head. "That's not all," I said, and pulled him into the depository, indicating towards the crates. "It's moved. Look at the tracks in the dirt."

He looked at the box, then back at me, and finally back at the box.

"You moved it," he said finally.
"What?!" I replied. I was somewhat taken aback by the suggestion. Aside from the fact that he was questioning my honesty I was amazed that he thought I could move the crate on my own. "You reckon I could move that thing on my own?"

George looked back at the crate. The expression that came over him when Willie had joked with him earlier returned. He knew his point was the only rational one, but he also knew it was inadequate. And that meant an irrational explanation.

"A crate this size doesn't move on it's own," he said, and reached out, placing a palm on the crate. No sooner did his skin touch the wood that he recoiled. "Ow!"
"What?! What was it?" I asked, suddenly.
"It's cold ... freezing cold."

I looked at him and saw the dawning realisation in him that I was not lying when I said the crate had moved by itself. His face changed into one of curiosity and then hurt, the face of someone whose perceptions and assumptions have just been thrown into the ocean. I noticed that he was beginning to shake. Then I turned back to the crate, reaching out my fingers until they lightly brushed the surface. The sensation of touching frosted ice ran into me. I remember as a child touching some ice on my father's car. It was very cold and my fingertips stuck to the ice and froze there momentarily. I felt the same thing when I touched that wood. It was like something horrible and cold was inside the box, something that had never known warmth, something that had never known light.

As my fingers brushed the wood the crate jerked two inches to the left, as if to move away from my touch. The runners left a trail on the floor. I pulled my fingers back straight away and stepped back. "Oh my God!"

"Mother of the Devil!" cried George and stood glaring at the crate.
I looked round to him, raising my hands palms up. "I didn't do that!" I said. "I didn't do anything!"
"What is it?" asked George, backing towards the door. "There must be an animal or something inside it."

I was moving towards the door with but being careful to watch the crate all along. "But why is it so cold?" I asked. "I've never known that. I've never felt anything like that before."

In an instant we were out of the depository and stood by the door, staring in. There was a cursory silence.

"What do we do?" I asked.
George frowned again. He was the master of frowns. "I don't know," he replied. "When is the owner coming for it?"
I looked over my shoulder towards the clock. "Anytime before two."
"Let's hope it hasn't decided to leave by itself before then."

There was another silence and we both looked at the crate thinking to ourselves about what was happening. The panic-fear inside me had gone completely and in its place now was a more substantial and deep fear, a fear that sat heavily in my gut. It was the same kind of fear that one felt when encountering the unknown - not a startled or shocked terror, but a fear of uncertainty, a fear that the bounds of reality had been broken.

George was breathing heavily. "Let's open it," he said under his breath, as though the words should not be uttered aloud, as though there was some kind of taboo against saying such a thing.

"Are you out of your fucking mind?" I asked, with a straight look of indignation. It's rare that I use bad language but this was an extreme circumstance. This was about as extreme as it became.
"I want to know what's inside," he said. "We have to check it. If it's an animal or something then we have to call the police."

He looked at me for a moment and that look came over his face again. It was not the right thing to do, he knew that, but it was the only thing we could do if we were to do anything.

`No,' my mind told me. 'You could just as well close the depository door and leave the thing well alone.'

George turned and walked across to the front counter. Underneath were a host of objects, mostly paperwork from old and long gone packages and parcels. But there were other things there too - torches, hammers, nails, screwdrivers. And, of course, there was a crow-bar for prising open boxes.

"Here," he said, reaching for the Mag-Lite torch on the counter. He handed it over to me. "Hold this."
"This is not a good idea," I said, taking the torch and flicking it on. A yellow beam shot out from the bulb.

George bent over to pick up the black and rusting crow-bar from the middle shelf of the counter and stopped. The hand that was holding him up on the top of the counter was shaking and his breathing was becoming more rapid.

"What is it?" I asked, not realising at first. Then it struck me that his heart was about to give up on him. I should have spotted it earlier when his breathing began to increase, when the colour drained from his face as he handed me the Mag-Lite.

"Heart..." he said and stood up, his hand pulling back from the crowbar 'It's that thing,' I thought as I saw his hand withdraw. 'That thing in that box is doing this. It heard him say he was going to open it up, expose it to the light and the warmth of the heaters in there and it didn't like it. So now it's killing him to stop him.'

The irrational fear came back over me, the startled fear, the shocked fear. I moved over to George and slung my arm over his shoulder, pulling him back towards the armchair that he'd been sleeping in just moments ago. He slumped down in it, loosening his shirt.

"It's ... okay ..." he said, brushing my hands away like bothersome flies. "It's ... okay. Pal... palpitation. They come ... and go."

I stood back and looked at him, the Mag-Lite still in my hand. I was shaking a little now. The colour was returning to his face a little but his breathing was still hard and rasping and every now and then his right arm shuddered.

"You need a doctor," I said, urgency in my tone. "You need some help now."
George shook his head. "No," he replied, his voice stronger now. "I just need a rest for a moment. I have palpitations. They come and go like the weather. That was quite a bad one. I just need some rest."

I looked at him, unconvinced. Behind me the crate shuffled another few inches. This time it moved away from the wall, rotating around on a comer.

'It's coming for you. It's coming to get you. to wrap you up inside it's wooden boards. Then you'll be trapped and then they'll come and take it away. And you - like it - will be sent away.'

I shook my head to clear my thoughts and rubbed hands with my free hand.

"What's it doing?" asked George. He lifted himself up in the seat to see but I put my hand out, motioning him to stay where he was.
"It's just moving around some more," I replied, and then felt the uncontrollable desire to burst out laughing. 'Yes,' I thought. 'This large, seven foot, heavy, wooden crate is just moving around some more. That's all. Nothing wrong with that!'

I stepped back into the depository and looked at the crate. One of it's sides was facing me now, the straight wooden panelling in front of me. I ran the Mag-Lite torch up and down the wood, looking at the grain. The light in the depository was not quite as good as it could've been and the Mag-Lite focused on the tiny details that otherwise remained hidden in the dark, although looking back I wish it hadn't done. Staring at the grain of the wood I saw something I had never noticed before, something I'd heard could often happen in wood grain but something I'd never seen before. I recall watching some television programme once about a woman who claimed her French dresser was possessed by Satan. Her claim was confirmed, she believed, by the texture of the grain on the dresser's surface. Under the polished varnish the knots in the wood grouped together to form a demonic face, staring up through the bees wax.

And that was exactly what I saw when I flicked on the Mag-Lite and pointed it at the wooden panels on that tea chest. But it wasn't just some diabolic face from Hell that looked out at me. It was a whole body. The head was just part of the larger whole and as I stared harder I could make out two claw like hands raised above the head. Lower down were the kneecaps and shins and three-quarters of the way up the chest was a huge twisted knot that formed a chest. The whole image looked like the shape of some monster pressed up against a glass screen, but instead of glass this monster was pressed up against the wooden inside of the box.

The crate shuffled towards me, leaving a new track in the dirt. I was frozen in that moment. I never believed that people could be paralysed by fear before that incident but now I understood what it meant to be unable to move because of something you saw. I just stared at the crate, even when it moved towards me. I couldn't believe that something like that, some pattern such as the one before me could occur in nature. That, I suppose, was when I really knew that what we had here was something out of the ordinary, something not natural.

'Super-natural.'
"What's happening?" asked George, but his voice was distant, in the background.

The crate shuffled towards me some more and I felt a sudden urge overcome, a desire to reach out again and touch it. As I stood there in those mill-seconds after it moved the urge grew stronger and stronger, drawing me in, feeding on my curiosity.

Then, whatever it was that was inside the crate slammed against the interior. The wooden panel with the body of evil marked out on it flexed outwards and then back.

I jumped back and George jumped up to his feet.

"What's happening?" he asked, his voice still rasping.
"I don't know!" I replied. "I don't want to know!"

There came another heavy thump from inside the crate and this time we both moved back. The box shuffled towards us and we backed away in response, moving out of the door.

"Close ... the door!" George gasped. "Close the goddam door!"

I reached forwards for the door handle and the crate moved towards me - lunged towards me, another loud thump from inside. Grabbing the handle to the depository I yanked the door to and it slammed shut, locking the wooden crate inside.

We both stepped back to the counter and looked at the door. There was an uncomforting silence in the office, except for George's harsh breathing. After a few moments, he reached down and spun the swivel armchair round before sitting down in it.

"I'll bet it's not grandma's china tea set," he said.
"Too fucking right"

From behind the door there came the now familiar shuffling sound of the crate moving itself. As it continued we both watched the door in silence but after a few minutes the box fell silent and the only noise that could be heard was the hum of the fluorescent strip lights above our heads.

I switched off the Mag-Lite that I was still holding and looked over at George. He looked better than he had done previously.

"I said things would pick up, didn't I?" I mentioned, remembering my earlier words. George just looked over to me, unsympathetically. He was rubbing his right arm like a junkie, but his rapid wheezing had settled down. I slipped the Mag-Lite back onto it's shelf and turned back to face the door at the other end of the office. The crate was silent now, unmoving.

'It's had its fun for the night,' I thought. 'Now it's gone to sleep.'

And that was how it was. There was no more noise, no banging, no shuffling, no nothing from inside the depository. George and I watched that door for any sign of anything for about ten minutes, but we wasted our time. The crate was silent.

At one forty I heard footsteps out on the railway platform. They were high-toned tapping, somebody in classy shoes and not just some vagrant in battered kickers, or some postal guard in soft soled sneakers. I looked around, forgetting the door for a moment and glanced down the railway platform. There was a man approaching the office. He was dressed in a suit, business like and professional. I could see him because he was walking close to the edge of the railway. He was dragging a trolley with him, and within seconds he was at the office counter.

"I have a wooden crate to pick up," he said, smiling. He had dark brown hair and very blue eyes. His complexion was immaculate as was his attire.

I looked at him for a moment, then looked over at George before saying "Your .... box is in the depository in the back."

There was a momentary pause.

"Well," said the man, still smiling. "If you let me in I can come and get it."

He spoke in a jolting fashion, talking slowly as though he were speaking to a small child or someone whose English was not perfect.. But all the time he spoke, he smiled.

I looked at him for a moment and then reached down to my left to the door lock. The mechanism clink!chick!ed and the door swung open. The man wheeled in his trolley to the depository door and was about to open it when he turned towards me.

"This is the right place..?" he asked.

I nodded. George watched placidly.

The depository door swung open and the man stepped inside. I looked over at George, shrugged and then stepped up to the doorway. The usual warmth of the room had returned and struck me pleasantly.

"You might want a hand with ...." I began, but he had already loaded the crate onto the trolley. That surprised me, but not too much. Nothing could surprise me that evening.

'How could he do that?' I thought to myself. I looked at the crate again as he pulled the trolley back at an angle, ready to wheel it out. The crate was seven feet tall. The man who'd just single-handedly lifted it onto the trolley was about six foot three. The crate must've easily weighed four hundred pounds, and yet he shifted it around like it was full of tissue paper

`This thing can move around on it's own.' I thought. 'I'm sure it gave him a hand.'

"That's all right," he replied, looking at me. His smile had faded and a look of deep intensity had come over him. "I can manage."

He wheeled the wooden box past me and into the office, the place where it had tried to go of it's own accord just half an hour before. I went back into the office to open the door. George was watching things with a lost expression. He reminded me of a small child who sits wide-eyed and fearful, watching parents argue and fight.

The man wheeled the crate out onto the railway station platform and I handed him the clipboard and pen. He scrawled something next to the "RECEIVED BY OWNER" box, something unreadable.

"Thank you for your time," he said to me, still smiling. I was unnerved by his smile. It was more of a leer.
"No problem."

Then he was gone, trundling the crate down the platform and then out of the exit at the end. I considered following him into the new glass lobby and out to the car park but the idea vanished as quickly as it had risen. Turning back, I saw George give me a bemused look.

"That," he said. "was the strangest experience I have ever had."
"Understatement of the year award goes to George Werdent"
He shrugged. "What do you think it was?"
I looked over at him. There was still a nervous tension in my gut. "I don't know," I replied at long last. "I don't think I want to know."

I didn't want to know. I tried putting the whole nasty thing behind me, tried pretending it was a hallucination. Of course that was too difficult a position to adopt - George had seen the box moving too, had heard the bangs from the inside. Then there were the marks in the dust inside the depository. They were still there when I checked that night, but they weren't there for long. I took the rather battered looking sweeping brush we have in the office and swept the whole place out. It took better than an hour and a half but it took away one memory of what happened.

George managed to convinced himself it was an animal. He said he thought it was an orangutan and mention some old frightener by Edgar Alien Poe called The Murders In The Rue Morgue. Either way, he shut the incident out, explained it away in rational, practical terms. It helped him cope with it. It prevented him getting stressed about the matter, getting a palpitation or heart attack.

I take more convincing than George, especially where that wooden crate is concerned. I think that's because I saw the face of the demon inside, etched on the wood. At first I thought it could be just a coincidence, just the way the tree had grown, the tree that the crate was made of. But when I wake up screaming in the middle of the night, when the demons come through the dark to haunt my sleep, to tap on my bedroom window, to torment my soul, I know that what was inside that box was not of this earth. Just what exactly it was is a question that remains unanswered - and I know it always will.

Review copyright © Jon Rosling, 2000.