The Crooked Box

She was a child and I was a child

And never a care had we

Of all the worries of this world

That we might cease to be.

We wandered one day on the paths

Where few any longer tread

Out to the home of an old man

Twenty five years dead.

He had been a brilliant scientist

The papers did proclaim

But like all men upon this world

TIme puts an end to fame.

Had he cares for mortal wealth

We could scarce tell

His home was ancient, sere, and lean

Its walls an empty shell.

The green tiles on the roof decayed

The garden plants were frayed

The white wood walls grew thick with moss

After he in his grave was laid.

Fear and curiosity, those guides led us in

I tell you now that frisson, it was the greater sin

Had we stayed outside I scarce can know

Just what might have been.

The first floor creaked, its wooden boards

Had for decades in silence slept

Toward rotting stairs, and up to heights

My beating heard, it lept.

Alice was her name, I think

Though sanity implores

Me not to think of the fact

That I taunted her, I'm sure

I berated her to follow me on my way

Up to the second floor

And though I was terrified, my fright

Pushed me on the more.

We walked up those steps

Into the attic, where the box we found

It sat alone in deathly quiet

The room empty all around.

On the side were scrawled these numbers

Four-three-three

A wood panel box, but a thing so dark

That it should never be.

Alice I led to the box, and opened it to see

What was in that thing labeled four-three-three

Its lid was hard to move, with my young hands

Its shape was surely large enough to fit, inside, a man.

Alice and I looked inside, and in the darkness saw

A horrifying crawling nightmare living inside that maw

Centipedes and beetles, crawling inside of there

Thousands of them swarming lively, never a thought to spare.

I'm not sure why I did it,

I thought it was funny then;

Alice was leaning over the side,

And I thought to push her in.

She yelled at me and screamed,

I picked the lid up off the floor

I'm not sure what I said so long ago

As I closed that door.

I laughed and sat upon the box

As she pounded beneath that floor

Sick children can find hilarious

Even a terrified roar.

When her voice died to silence

With some concerned dread

I opened up that box,

Fearing to find her dead.

My cruelty repaid,

I can't describe the sight

I ran home and told my parents

That Alice disappeared that night.

That was true, I still know

Although I push it back

Alice was gone away

Vanished through some tracks

Which lead through worlds vanished

Which fall through mad men's dreams

Which even to the blind man

The thought unsightly seems.

The box I know assuredly

Was no box at all

That man who owned it had hastily

Thought to close its call.

He had hidden it away

In the attic above his head

That thing which to him

Had been a source of dread.

It could not be destroyed, that thing of Hell born

After a quarter century, I doubt it's even worn.

A brilliant man he was, but the devil did beguile

Even Faust away with his cunning evil wiles.

I know now how to open it

After twenty five years

I know that I should go there

And face all of my fears.

Eight times at most would be needed

To find whatever is left.

To find Alice there

Where she has starved to death.

But something taunts me in my mind,

Something that will not leave

What if I open that box

And see that reason does deceive?

Those things that crawl, they lived in there

For who knows how long?

The rain it falls on other plains,

Could she be there alone?

I wonder now, whether if I go

And the darkness did conive

What exactly would I find

If Alice did survive?

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-C. S. B.-