The Hidden Box

The Hidden Box

- a short story -



          I am the spirit of Nostalgia, and I am waiting for a certain Harry Felix Albright.
  I sit idly in my corner, my hand on an irregular bulge in my jacket where something impregnating me guilt hides, and my feet tap to an impatient, gentle rhythm I am not bothered to reproduce with a hum. The atmosphere of the dusty room is suffocating so I proceed to stop my respiration process: it is extremely disorientating not to breathe but I don’t have any intention of revealing my presence with unnecessary coughs.
  It must be something in the morning for the blemished sunlight streaming through the dirty windows holds vague remains of dawn dew, the signature of the spirit of Morning. I am only guessing though – time doesn’t hold much significance for me. In the present, I am only capable of wallowing in the past. Spiders scurry in the far corners of the room, whispering in their own complex language. Spiders and their intricate webs have always been associated with abandonment, an actions proceeding over a certain amount of time, and therefore, they are considered markers of the past.
  Suddenly I hear the heavy crunch of gravel, slow, unsure footsteps travelling up the driveway. His pace slows and picks up again, as if there are certain moments that the walker deems fit in order to observe the house.
  His home.
  He had lived here for most of his life, under the constant though perhaps false attention of nannies and tutors and maids and butlers. How contradictory his feelings must be. He hated the house for what it signifies, but the memories it contains are enough to diminish his abhorrence.
  The sound of his footsteps change from those on noisy gravel to the hollow thud of wood: he is now on the porch. He walks around for a while, probably searching for a way in.
  His footsteps stop for a moment, but the front window creaks. It is an aged, Victorian window, and would take a lot of strength and determination to open.
  But he is strong despite his slender build and the window slowly opens: I could have aided him but I feel as if he needs to be alone for some times. He jumps through – I can hear the whish of his body cutting through the stale, unmoving air of the room – and he lands with a heavy thud. He pauses for a moment and walks briskly towards the room where I am now seated, waiting. I am eager to see him.
  The doors burst open and in he enters. He looks exactly the same. The flaxen blond hair that shines like a lamp and which sits tousled above an innocent, handsome face, the blue-gray protuberant eyes that are deceptively communicative... But there is something different. He is an adult now, mature, wiser, but a profound dolour maims his gait in ways only spirits can see.
  He does not notice my presence and saunters hesitantly towards the loose floorboards under which he hopes to the box – it is obvious that he doesn’t want to be here. My feet stopped tapping long ago: he doesn’t know I’m here.
  He kneels and searches for the floorboard with his hands – a black coat of dust covers his hands now – and he finds it easily, as I knew he would. He strikes a match. He dives his hand into the hole and freezes. His entire musculature is still; his hand rests just above the hole, empty and stunned. It is such a pitiful sight to see, this man crouched over this lost hope, that I breathe out, then breathe in a large amount of dust, then cough involuntarily.
  This doesn’t trouble me so much, I was going to reveal my presence anyway.
  He jerks and falls pathetically to the floor, facing me, he eyes bulging out of their sockets, but they seem strangely lifeless. His limbs hang limply at his sides, his expression is questioning, and small beads of sweat have begun to form on his forehead.
“Hello Harry.” I say carefully: he seems so flaccid and vulnerable. I fear that anything too severe will break him.
  I had initially thought that he was too astonished to speak, but amazingly, he starts to sit up and begins to talk in a very soft, pained voice.
“Who are you?”
“The Spirit of Nostalgia.” I say truthfully.
“I don’t know what that is.” I smile wistfully.
“I help people who unearth memories: sometimes I must aid them to make the right choice.”
“You have my box.” He says very straight-forwardly. The fact that I am not supposed to be an existential being does not seem to distress him at all.
“Yes.”
“I want it back.”
“Of course I will give it back, I just want to watch over you while you do so.”
“You could have done it without scaring me.” He says wryly.
“Your case is a little particular Harry.”
“How so?” he asks.
“Well, these memories are overwhelming, and you might become self-destructive.”
He chuckled humourlessly and beings to stand up.
“So basically you’re here to step me from committing suicide?” He asks while wiping palms on his trousers. I nod dismally.
“I don’t need your help: please leave me alone.”
  As he walks towards the door, I pull out the little chest that had been in the black cash-box. He stops and any previous attempts at courage and indifference wear off: it seems to have a power over him, even though it is aged with the past and covered in fraying, coffee-coloured paper.
  I gesture for him to take it. He eyes me sceptically, his impressive, breath-taking eyes searching for anything on my expression that hints that I am lying.
  I do not lie though. I always tell the truth.
  He breathes in deeply, walks forward a couple of hesitant steps and stretches out his hand. His fingers pause before touching the box but eventually, his entire hand grab hold of it, greedily, avariciously, as if his entire self relied on it. He turns to walk towards the spot with the hollow in a corner of the floor and slides along the wall until he is finally able to sit.
  He holds the box with such care and such delicacy, yet it is evident that he wishes it didn’t exist. The expression on his visage is unreadable: his mind must be a swirling storm of emotions, doubt, fear, pain... I decide to watch only because I cannot predict how he will react: once I know that he is safe and no longer a danger to himself, I shall leave him be.
    He lifts the cover and places it gently on the floor, then tenderly lifts out, in a cradle made from his palms, a small packet wrapped in a surprisingly white handkerchief with a deep blue ribbon keeping the packet in place. Harry holds it up to his nose and breathes in deeply: he purses his lips and the ball of swallow descends raucously down his throat. He smiles sadly as he removes the ribbon, as if he were remembering some secret, and the handkerchief comes loose. Still keeping a firm grasp of its contents, he puts away the white cloth and ribbon in the box.
  The first thing he examines is a dated, antique edition of a book called “War and Peace”: I have never read it as I do not read, but it is apparently a well-love book amongst human beings. He traces the titles with his finger and stares intensely at the cover: he turns to a specific page, chapter 7, part 5, book 2, and in between those pages houses a pressed rose. It may have been white long ago but not its petals have lost suppleness, and it seems quite pitiful, all crippled and drunk. Harry stares at the rose for a while, in its ethereal death, chuckling traginally to himself: I am obviously forgotten.
  There is also a horse-chestnut, a ‘conker’ as they are sometimes referred to. Harry twirls it around in his slim fingers and regards it with a passive look: I doubt he still remembers where he is.
    The last item is a letter, folded in two, perhaps half a page long, written in an uneven, feminine hand. Harry sighs deeply as he reads it, but this time he cannot control his tears. If what I read is correct (this is dubious as there isn’t much light and spirit senses can only go so far), the letter reads:

My blueberry,

    I miss you. My heart aches: not from the pain of my illness, but truthfully from the pain of your non-presence.
  I know you will never forgive me, and that you might have even ceased to love me. This is perfectly understandable: I still love you though, very much, almost too much at times.
  Yet, rational and clear-headed as you are, you will say that it will subside, eventually disappear as love often does: I remember when you told me that love was some funky chemical reaction in your brain, and that love is just a nice way of putting it.
  But I still do love you.
  By the time you read this, I may be already dead, which I sincerely hope, as morbid as it may sound, as it would seriously ruin the effect of this letter otherwise. I know you hate me for dying, for leaving you, and for lying to you.
  My darling blueberry. I cry as I write this: if you love me as you assure me you do, does your heart not ache with a chronic emptiness? A dull heartbeat that resonates in the hollow that used to be filled with hope and happiness and love?
  I love you. I always have. It would be a lie to say the contrary...
  Don’t ever forget that.
  Don’t ever forget that I will never stop loving you, until conkers stop falling in autumn. It is killing me that you never understood just how much I love you idiot.
  It is cruel to separate us.
  I’m sorry blueberry. I will be with you one day: don’t lose the yellow brick road.


Love,

Conker.

  “War and Peace is her favourite book, she cries every time she reads the part where Natasha is left by Andrei. She wanted me to spread her ashes on the soil under a white rose bush, because that’s where we met, my mother’s rose garden when we were six years old. I called her a conker once because as strong as she is on the outside, she was always delicate and easily-hurt on the inside.” Harry blurts out, his voice hoarse. He doesn’t bother to wipe his tears way: he lets them roll of his cheeks and drop from his eyes, to become puddles on the dusty floor.
  I stand up and walk towards him. This is the moment where I love my job. I feel strong and powerful, godlike even, to be able to cease someone’s pain.
  I sit next to Harry and remove the letter gently from his hand: I place it in the box and then lay my hand on his shoulder, and repeat the words that generations of spirits of Nostalgia have said before me:
“It’s alright son: everything’s going to be alright.”