“Do you know how to mix concrete?”
“I’m a mason.”
“Yes, exactly, I forgot, a mason. After one year, if I do not return, fill a barrel half full of concrete. Put this package in the barrel. Finish filling the barrel with concrete, so the package is encased. Can you weld?”
“Yes. I’m quite handy.”
“Weld the lid of the barrel shut. It will then be very heavy, don’t you think?”
“Extremely heavy,” Jeffy agreed.
“I doubt you have a hydraulic hand truck. Very few people possess their own hydraulic hand truck. Do you have such a thing?”
“No, but I can rent one.”
Ed took his hand from Jeffy’s knee and gave him two thumbs up. “Convey the barrel into a rental truck. Take it to the harbor. Can you drive a boat?”
“Anything up to about thirty-six feet.”
“Charter a boat and take the barrel out to sea and roll it overboard in deep water.”
“How deep?” Jeffy asked.
“A thousand feet should do it. No less than five hundred.”
“Consider it done. That is, if you don’t return in a year.”
At the very moment that the cloud freed the moon, a look of relief wiped the anxiety off Ed’s face. “I knew you were the right man. From the first time I ever sat on this porch with you, I knew.” He rose to his feet. “Never open the box, Jeffrey. Never touch the thing in it. Keep your promise. The thing in that box can bring you only misery. The fate of the world is in your hands.”
Ed’s delusions were nothing if not grandiose.
Getting up from his rocker, Jeffy said, “Well, whenever you want it back, a year from now or tomorrow, it’ll be here, Ed.”
“A year from now or never. Tomorrow, the canyon will be crawling with those despicable swine. Hide it well.”
After adjusting his bow tie and smoothing the panels of his sport coat, he went to the porch steps and descended and moved onto the moonlit lawn.
He paused and gazed at the sky and then addressed Jeffy once more. “‘Like a ghastly rapid river / Through the pale door / A hideous throng rush out forever / And laugh—but smile no more.’ A few lines from Poe. Don’t use the key, Jeffrey. Don’t open the pale door.” He started to turn away but then had one more warning to deliver. “I’ve got a demonic posse on my trail. Devils, fiends! When the swine come snorting around, they won’t be who they claim to be. Even if you give them the box, you won’t be rid of them. Once they know you’ve been in possession of the key, the cursed yet wonderful key, they’ll assume you know too much. They’re ruthless. They’re murderers. Beasts. They’ll . . . make you disappear. Hide it well, Jeffrey. Save yourself and your girl! Hide it well!”
He crossed the yard to the lane, turned right, and headed into the canyon.
Sadness and pity took some of the shine off the moon-polished night. Perhaps the man had been an eccentric all his life, but until this evening, he’d been an engaging companion during his visits and never before wandered into alleyways of dementia.
Ed walked out of moonbeams, and shadows engulfed him, and he disappeared under the branches of the overhanging oaks.
5
Amity stood at the kitchen table with Snowball perched on her right shoulder. The mouse nibbled a peanut held in his forepaws.
The box stood on the table. It was a soiled, yellowed nothing of a box—and yet it looked ominous.
She asked, “What’s in it?”
“I don’t know,” her dad said as he popped the cap off a bottle of beer. “And I promised not to open it.
”
“Maybe it’s an eight-inch Madagascar hissing cockroach, like the plague of bugs that witch conjured into her enemy’s castle.”