Horror

The Crooked Box

Reading of the poem.

She was young and I was young
And never a care had we
Of all the worries of this world
That we might never again be seen.

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 closed out his fame.

Had he cares for mortal wealth
If so, we scarce could 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.

The first floor creaked, its wooden boards
Had for decades in silence slept
Toward rotting stairs, and up to heights
My beating heart, it lept.

Alice was her name, I think
Though sanity implores
Me not to think of the fact
That I led her through that door.

I berated her to follow me
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:
{4,3,3}
In that box, a thing so dark
That it should never be.

Alice I led to the box,
and opened it up to see
What lay in that unholy darkness
Which drew both her and me.

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, 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.

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 unheard of
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 which Hell had born
After a quarter century, I doubt it's even worn.
A brilliant man he was, but the devil did beguile
Even Doctor Faust away, with his cunning 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 up that box
And my 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 will I find
If it kept Alice alive?