Quiet...Eerily quiet. Those were the words that circled through my head continually since my feet crossed the threshold of my uncle’s old farmhouse. Now, even though I could feel the softness of his down pillow behind my head, I couldn’t manage to close my eyes to the darkness.
It wasn’t the same type of quiet you would expect to find when you visit the country from the city. Instead, it was the quiet that follows death. Unexpected death. The type of silence that puts a cold chill through your body even with blazing temperatures all around you.
The clock by my bedside read 2:35. Still hours before I needed to meet the funeral director, but late enough where I knew no sleep was coming my way tonight. The old wood floors were cold under my feet, but I padded along to find something to occupy my mind.
Having been built well before the advancements of technology, there was little to entertain myself in the farmhouse. Light switches buzzed when my fingers passed over them, and the bulbs in the fixtures hesitated to break the dark spell the home was under before ultimately brightening up the rooms I entered.
Glancing into each room, I sighed as I saw all the work that I must finish before I could put the farm on the market. Worn-out floors, a cracked wall, broken light fixtures here and there, and the place needed a fresh coat of paint. Annoyed, I tapped a finger on the thermostat that hadn’t been working correctly since I had arrived.
“87 degrees…” I muttered to myself. That was just one more thing I would need to get fixed.
Luckily, the country air kept things feeling somewhat comfortable inside. I walked toward the kitchen still gazing around, adding to my ever-growing to-do list. On the kitchen table lay the letter my uncle sent just before his untimely death.
I picked it up, scanning over the words he wrote, trying to make sense of them. While in my uncle’s handwriting, the letter didn’t even begin to sound like the man I grew up idolizing. I had never heard him speak of family curses, trickery and debts he had to pay before reading this letter.
It looked like the only way to get the answers I was searching for would be to talk to my uncle himself. And, since I had no desire to visit him anytime soon that was out of the question at the moment. Frustrated, I tossed the letter back on the kitchen table and headed to the sink for a glass of water.
My mind elsewhere, I never saw the box on the floor before my foot encountered it. Stumbling, I caught myself before I wound up in a heap on the floor and looked down to see a strange black box in my path.
Confused, I picked up the tripping hazard and set it on the kitchen table as I drank my glass of water and gazed out at the chicken coup. Such a strange bunch of chickens. Not a peep or a rustle of feathers when I had gone to feed them earlier in the day. Now it was as though that quietness had transcended on the house as well.
Shaking my head, I turned back to the strange box. It felt rather heavy in my hands as I turned it around and over to examine it. In all the summers I had spent with my uncle, never had I seen this box. Shrugging, I pulled the lid up and was taken aback by what I found inside. A cloud of smoke emerged from the box, filling my lungs and preventing me from screaming. Whispers that seemed to originate from the smoke itself began to fill the room.
While I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, a few words, such as ‘die’ and ‘curse,’ managed to make it through to my confused mind.
The smoke flowed through my body and came to rest in a heap by the kitchen sink. Slowly, it began transforming into the figure of a man. As terror filled my body, he reached out to me. Petrified, I could do nothing but watch as he wrapped his cold fingers around my throat. Tighter and tighter his grip became, and all I could do was stare into his empty, soulless eyes and wait for death.
Suddenly, a knock at the door broke my mind from its fear and the fingers evaporated. In a daze, I turned the handle to reveal a police officer holding the arm of an angry man. In my utter confusion, words couldn’t come out of my mouth. Luckily, the officer took the burden from me.
“Mr. Greysmith?” he asked, only continuing after I nodded in acknowledgment. “Sorry to disturb you, but we’ve been patrolling this area since your uncle passed and just found this trespasser in the act of trying to harm your chickens.”
“My chickens?” I asked, still confused.
“Yes, sir,” the officer continued. “The land your uncle’s farm sits on is rather valuable, and this man’s been trying to get his hands on it for years at a fraction of what it’s worth. We believe he’s been trying to sabotage it so that you would want to get rid of it.”
Relief began to flood my body.
“So, he’s been snooping around, tonight?” I asked.
“It appears so, sir. We are going to at least hold him overnight for the inconvenience, but would you like to press charges on the trespassing?”
I gazed into the man’s pleading eyes before I answered.
“You know what?” I finally said. “He caused quite the disturbance tonight, so yes I would. In fact, I have some evidence for you.”
I quickly retrieved the box from the kitchen and attempted to hold it out for the officer to take.
“This is something he left in my house,” I said. “It appears to be something he wanted to use to scare me, and I don’t want it left here.”
To my dismay, I could see utter disbelief in the old man’s face.
“That’s not mine,” he said. “I didn’t leave that, here. And I’ve never been inside your home!”
“But it must be,” I insisted. “It wasn’t there before this evening, and it has some sort of optical illusion intended to scare people.”
The man shook his head but did appear to be hiding something.
“What?” I demanded. “What do you know about this box?”
The man squirmed in the officer’s grip.
“An old woman came by my place a few weeks before your uncle passed and had it. She promised me riches beyond my wildest imagination if I would take it. But something didn’t sit right with me, and I refused. It looks like your uncle didn’t have the same reaction that I did.”
“What am I supposed to do with it, then?” I asked perplexed.
The officer shrugged, and the man ducked his head.
“Beats me,” said the officer, gesturing to the outdoor trashcan. “Throw it away, if you don’t want it, I guess.”
“Good idea,” I said, making a bee-line to dispose of the strange box.
“I’ll be by in the morning to get some information from you,” the officer said while putting the man in the backseat of his car. “It’s too late to be filling out any reports for the judge tonight.”
“Thanks for your help,” I said, closing the lid to the trashcan.
The officer smiled and started to get back in the car, but hesitated.
“Listen,” he said. “I probably shouldn’t be saying anything, but I’m still perplexed about your uncle’s death. We never really figured out what happened, and he was always in such good health. The doc said it was like he was strangled, but there weren’t any marks on him to corroborate that.”
“You think he was murdered?” I asked.
“No, the evidence doesn’t point to that at all,” he said. “But we were all left with a lot more questions than answers after he died. I suggest you be careful while you go about finishing up his affairs.”
“I certainly will,” I said as we both went our separate ways.
As the officer drove away, I felt the chill that had followed me all day suddenly return, I turned toward the front door of the farmhouse. Having left it open, I could see all the way into the kitchen. To my dismay, the box I had just placed in the trashcan was again sitting on the kitchen table.
Although every bone in my body protested, I found myself drawn back inside. As I closed the front door behind me, I begin to hear once again the whispers coming from the box and see the black smoke crawl across the floor toward me.
Somehow, I knew I wouldn’t be leaving again.