4:41 PM
D. R. Rux
The man stood at the base of the stairs, his gun pointed directly at Frank and his children. Frank was frozen with his arms wrapped around his children. The gunman toyed with them, pointing to each of the children in turn. The other gunman cackled from the couch area. Frank drew his children in closer and attempted to position himself between them and the gunmen.
“Whatever you want, just take it and leave. I don’t want any trouble.” Frank’s head jerked toward the stairs.
“Where is it?” the first gunman asked in a heavy Mexican accent.
“All of my valuables are upstairs in a safe. The combination is six-three-four-one.” Frank had his suspicion what they were after, but decided to play coy rather than come out and say it wasn’t in the house. He doubted they would believe him, anyway.
The gunman pointed his gun at Frank’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Leah, laughed and pulled the trigger. She buckled under the pain, screaming at the top of her lungs. Blood splattered the wall behind them and along Franks jeans. She dropped to the floor in a pool of blood, holding her thigh and rocking back and forth.
“I do not like to play games, Mr. Rice. Where is the box?”
Frank looked down to his daughter, who was holding onto her leg, moaning. He took off his belt and wrapped it around Leah’s upper thigh, to use as a tourniquet. “What damn box?”
The second gunman reached for his gun.
“No. You were given orders to observe only.” The gunman held up his hand to the second one. “Do not make me shoot your son this time, Mr. Rice.” The gunman had positioned himself at point blank range from Frank’s son, Jason, and he pointed his gun directly in Jason’s face. “Where is it?”
Frank lifted his hand to show his surrender while still holding onto the tourniquet with his other. He pulled Jason down beside Leah and handed him the belt strap.
The gunman followed Jason to the floor still at a close range.
“Pull on this very tightly, and don’t let go.” He placed a hand on his son’s cheek and looked up at the first gunman. “If you want the box, you’ll need to take me with you. However, my daughter must be given hospital care. And I need reassurance from both of you that not a single hair on my son’s head will be harmed.”
The first man started pacing the floor, holding his hands to his head. He looked to the second gunman and they both nodded. Finally, he looked back at Frank and agreed.
To hell with this box shit, Frank thought.
###
Two years previously…
Easter Island
Easter Island
“Frank! I think we’ve found something!” Frank’s partner, Beverly, ran toward him from the dig site as fast as she could. She was out of breath by the time she entered the large tent littered with artifacts. “I seriously think it’s what we’ve been looking for.”
The island had already given them a trove of treasures. There was a wooden papahia, used for grinding food, and an accumulation of other artifacts, which dated back to the colonization in the fourth century CE. The whole area was riddled with towering monuments, which gave off a euphoric feeling.
Frank was bent over an old pot they had found, dusting the dirt off. “Are you serious?”
“You need to see it for yourself.” She grabbed hold of Frank’s hand and pulled him toward site sixty-four. It was located roughly three-hundred sixty-five meters from the base of Mt. Pui. There was green grass as far as the eye could see, and the mountain sheltered them from the weather. Tents littered the area, giving their workers a break from the scorching sun. All the diggers—ten in total—surrounded what appeared to be a vault, dug roughly thirteen meters below ground.
Frank climbed down into the pit and brushed away dirt from the top of the vault. After a little dusting, an emblem was revealed that made him jump to his feet. He climbed up to the ground and eyed his diggers. “No hay nada más para que usted pueda hacer hoy. Deja esto a mí ya mi socio.” “There is nothing more for you to do today. Leave this to me and my associate.”
He looked over to Bev with a large smile. “Do you think we’ve really found it?”
The diggers put their materials back in their sheds and left the area.
His excitement grew as he climbed back down into the hole and continued to excavate. Adrenaline coursed through his veins and he could hear his heartbeat loudly behind his ears. The emblem was perfect, as if it had been carved only yesterday. It depicted a tree, which cradled a translucent globe, that housed a mountain with another tree growing atop.
Most would call the box the creation of life. Bev and Frank simply called it Pandora’s Box.
Frank and Bev took the rest of the day digging around the two cubic meter box and extracting it from the hole. By the time they got it back to base, it was nearing midnight. Frank’s curiosity kept his hands roaming to the top, wanting to peek within to see what knowledge this treasure held. He reached for the lid, but Bev’s hands stopped him.
“We can’t!” Her eyes widened and her body shook. “We don’t know what will happen!”
“The only way to know is to open it.” He tried again to reach around her. “It could even hold the key to the fountain of youth!”
Bev covered the box with blankets and pointed a finger at Frank. “We are not opening this box until we can scientifically prove that it is safe to do so. I doubt it’s going to be anything like the key to the fountain of youth. And it’s definitely not a music box, so keep your mitts off.”
They decided to sleep in base camp for the night, and then take the box back to their lab in Hanga Roa in the morning, which was more than an hour and a half away.
Before they began the trip, they gave the diggers their salary. “Sus servicios ya no son necesarios. Usted es libre de encontrar su camino a casa.” “Your services are no longer needed. You are free to find your way home.”
After loading the Rover with tools and the box, they set out on their journey back, which took more than three hours due to traffic. By the time they parked, they were both sweating and irritable.
“I still think we should just look inside and see for ourselves what’s in there.” Frank snatched the box from the back while Bev grabbed the toolboxes.
“Not until we can firmly say it’s safe. Jesus Frank, do you want to bring the world to its end?”
“How do you know that’s what will happen?” Frank opened the door to their lab.
“That’s what the myth tells us anyway.” Bev laid the toolboxes under a counter.
They opened the temperature-controlled vault and placed the box on a high shelf.
“Let’s wait ‘till morning to do anything. I need to get out of here for a while.” Bev fanned herself with her hand. Before they left, Bev gave Frank a peck on the cheek. “But I still can’t believe we found it.”
Frank smiled at his associate. “Goodnight, Bev.” They closed the vault door, which locked on its own, and left for the night.
When Frank entered the control room the next morning, Bev already had the box lying on the x-ray machine and taking pictures. She had a sour look on her face as she clicked a button on the keyboard.
“What’s the matter?” Frank looked between the box and Bev.
“I can’t seem to penetrate the stone.” She pressed the button and an image of a large white box appeared on the monitor. There was nothing on the monitors showing what was inside.
“Have you tried the CT Scanner yet?”
Bev rolled her eyes and pressed a few keys on the keyboard. A series of images showed the outer layer of the box, and again, nothing gave them a clue what was inside.
Frank started to bite his fingernails and Bev slapped his hand away. Frank smiled. “Well I guess we could try the MRI machine.”
He walked out to the x-ray room and pressed his fingernail into the stone. It didn’t indent like lead. In fact, it looked exactly like a stone box.
“We can’t. If there is metal in that thing, it’ll ruin the MRI machine and the University will have our asses for lunch.”
“Give me a magnet.”
“What?”
“A magnet.”
Bev threw a small magnet out to Frank and he threw it onto the box where it stuck onto the side as quickly as you would flip a switch. “That answers that question. What about the safe room?”
Bev walked out to the x-ray room and stood and stared at Frank as if he were a child who had been told over and over again not to do something.
“What? Maybe if we just open it a little—“
“We are not opening that box until we know it’s safe.” Bev walked back into the control room and pressed the microphone. Her voice rang through the speakers: “If you want to keep your family jewels working, I suggest you get in here.”
She spiked up the radiation levels a few times on the x-ray machine as Frank walked into the room, but came up with the same results…a white blank image.
Frustrated, she grabbed the box from the x-ray room, walked it into the vault and put it back on the shelf. She walked back into the control room, her shoulders hunched and a blank face. “I’m going home, Frank. I suggest you do the same. And if you dare try to open that box, I swear to God I’ll go public with our find.”
Frank left the lab, punching a wall on his way out. There has to be a way to get inside, he thought. He walked down to his car and pulled out from the lot. Of course, he or Bev couldn’t open the box. He had his children counting on him. But, what if he called a couple of their diggers? They were expendable.
He reached for his cell phone and called his two best, Romerro and Jose, the only two who could actually speak English. “Meet me at the lab in twenty minutes. You’ll get some extra pesos for it as well.”
He made a quick U-turn and headed back to the lab. Romerro and Jose were already waiting outside the lab door. He let them both in, keyed in the security code to the vault and pulled the box down. Frank went into the safe room, placed the box on the singular long metallic table, and called in Jose.
“Right, now all you have to do is open it about an inch, and let me know what’s inside,” Frank told him.
Jose looked at Frank and frowned. “¿Por qué no hacer esto por ti mismo? “ “Why don’t you do this yourself?”
“Jose, I don’t pay you to ask questions. I pay you to do what I tell you to do. Got it?”
Jose nodded submissively and Frank left the safe room, closing and locking the large metal door behind him.
Romerro and Frank watched the monitors from the control center. Frank pressed a button on a microphone and said, “Ok, Jose, you can do it now.”
There was a bright flash of light, illuminating the entire room, and then all the cameras went black. Frank looked at his watch and the monitors, timing how long they would stay blank. “I wonder what’s going on in there?” They stood for ten minutes until the cameras slowly came back into focus and the box was closed. There was no Jose.
Romerro looked to Frank, an expression of fear and shock flooding his face. Frank ran into the room only to find the box, and nothing of Jose. Frank started shivering. The room smelt of burning flesh.
Frank grabbed the box and sat it next to Romerro, who crossed himself and yelled, “llegar lejos!” “Get it away!”
Frank returned the box to the vault. “Romerro—“
“Please sir. Do not ever call me again. I swear, on my mother’s grave, I will never speak of this to anyone. But you never call me.” Romerro fled from the building.
###
The next day, Frank fessed up to Bev about what had happened.
“What do you mean you used Jose and Romerro? Where are they now?” Bev slammed her hand down on the metal counter.
“Um, I think Jose is gone—“
“Gone? Gone how?” Bev’s eyes widened.
Frank scratched his head. “Um, he just disappeared.” Frank backed up defensively.
Bev moved forward and slapped Frank hard across his face. “How could you use them like this?”
“Bev, I think now the more important issue is how do we keep everyone else away from this thing?” Frank lowered his eyes to the floor. “We can’t let anyone else know of its existence.”
Bev’s face was as red as her sweater and her anger was just as hot as the island they found the artifact in. She paced the room for a while before sighing and looking at Frank. “There’s no other alternative. I have to agree. How do we do this?”
###
Present day…
The man who shot Frank’s daughter in the knee took off his mask. Frank rose to his feet and approached Romerro, who was staring straight at him. “Romerro, what happened to you? Why? After all this time? And your promise!”
Romerro laughed. “Your partner has already died Frank. She died to protect your secret.”
The other gunman inched closer to Frank’s children.
“Your children are next, unless we leave now.” Romerro gave a sly smile.
Frank was now so close to Rommero he could smell Romerro’s rancid breath. Romerro pushed the gun into Frank’s head. It was still hot from the shot he just took on Leah.
“You have given your terms Frank, and I have accepted them.” Romerro still held the gun to Frank’s head. “As soon as we leave, your son will be safe, in the care of my accomplice, and your daughter will be tended to.”
“She’ll receive a doctor’s care?” Frank never looked away from Romerro’s eyes.
Romerro looked to his accomplice and nodded.
Frank sighed. “Very well.”
Romerro lowered his gun and pointed toward the door. “After you, Mr. Rice.”
Frank led the way through the front door, Jason yelling and screaming from behind him. But, his son was being held back by the other gunman. Frank looked back and gave a solemn smile. “I’ll be back. I promise.”
I hope he doesn’t hear the deception in my voice.
