Spookyness

The Machine

*Credit to AP Matt on Facebook*

In 1991, young Elijah knew nothing about the Machine that Hildebrandt built, although he was about to become very aware of its existence and what it could do. 

Because of the gift that the Machine gave him, Elijah would become indirectly – and in some cases, directly – responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. His mother carved herself open with a kitchen knife because of it. The blood came and went quickly, hot and sticky and red, but death gave her no peace; her mind was already too damned to escape. Elijah’s grandparents, however, didn’t have it so lucky. They slipped into a terrible coma soon their daughter’s suicide and would know only gripping, silent fear for the rest of their motionless lives. These were not the first deaths due to Hildebrandt’s Machine and they certainly would not be the last.

In 1991, young Elijah found the box inside of the box. The first one was a dented, water-stained cardboard box, once a robust tan color and now a sun-faded gray. It held the items - books, family photos, a miniature globe, a laser-cut glass award for excellence in the field of teaching and a framed degree, a Doctorate in Physics - that had been in his father's office at Winston-Pembridge University. 

Also amongst the books and papers and desk knickknacks was a black metal cashbox with a strong lock. This second box is what led Elijah to know about the Machine that Hildebrandt built.

Elijah never got a chance to meet his father, Dr. Zahir, in any meaningful way. He had been two years old when his father disappeared in 1984 and since then, Elijah only knew what others had said. He ran off with another professor at Winston-Pembridge - an older woman, the anthropology professor, some said. Others said Dr. Zahir committed suicide in the basement of the Physics department on campus. A few people said that Dr. Zahir fled the country and was living on a beach somewhere. 

Elijah preferred that last story. He didn't know how it fit in with the explosion - which was the one detail that everyone could agree on - but he liked to think of his father alive and happy and lounging on a beach. As an only child (mother never remarried) with no friends ("wasn't your dad the one that blew up that college downtown?"), Elijah felt at peace inside his own thoughts and daydreams, which were often about his father coming home to steal him away from mother to take him on an adventure.

In 1991, when he found the little black box inside of the big, dust-colored brown box, Elijah was almost nine years old. His mother was sullen and apathetic and negligent by this point, her hair prematurely gray. He spent most of his time at the house of his mother's parents, sitting at their Intel 486, playing computer games on floppy disk like Civilization and - much to the confusion of his grandparents - an online multiplayer game called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter Nights. It used something called America On-Line and it connected young Elijah to a world full of people - real, live people who didn't know that he was the infamous Dr. Zahir's son.

But video games and this interconnected network (or "internet", as it was slowly becoming called) aside, Elijah was a lonely, sad boy prone to solitary outbursts of fear and frustration. 

Until he found that box within the box.

It rattled when he shook it; it wasn't empty. It was the dull thud of something heavy and hard hitting the lid and the sound of scuttling papers - like a loose deck of cards sliding around in a mess. He didn't have the key and it certainly wasn't going to unlock itself. Elijah knew it was important. 

After he gave up his inaugural, failed run at being a lockpicking Rogue, he opted for more barbaric, Orc-like means in the garage. It wasn't long before he managed to open it. The twisted metal lid popped open and the contents spilled forth onto the cement floor.