An Empty Box: Short Fiction

Micheal Cray sat in his cluttered attic and wept openly. His tear-blurred eyes stared at the ancient wooden box, now devoid of its treasure. The box passed to him by his father, to his father by his father's father, and so on beyond known years, before the dawn of man perhaps.

The gravity of his decisions of late had only been made manifest this very morning, at the unfolding of the daily paper. "Second child found in dredging".

His eyes saw the river, on that day. The river which now was the death bed for two young children. Worse still, he didn't think it was the last. Up the road which ran along the river was the Manor, and inside…

Micheal ran his fingers over the ancient carven box, of a wood no longer known to this world. The box could have fetched a handsome price by itself, its ornate and unfamiliar hiroglyphs and unknown origin and material the prize of numerous scientists, but Micheal no longer cared about wealth. He had fallen into the money trap before. He had been groomed to succeed, schooled to be the upper echelon. He had purchased this house when his career was promising, when he was still the golden boy. His career motivations had put him against a group of businessmen whose reputation had been formidable. They were a secretive group, some odd clique which was almost like a religion. To his horror, they had ruined his career, blackballed him in the places of real power. Now, after several years of bad luck, he had resorted in desparation, to selling the one thing which could bring enough capitol to set him up. And it had! By God, he'd never imagined when he had said make an offer, what it would be.

But that's always the way of it, isn't it? The saviors lost to a few pieces of silver. The dark ones control the world, and the righteous and meek root for grubs and starve. In one hungry moment of desperation, he had destroyed the work of all his forefathers. Penance could not be served, even with the single round in the revolver at his side. He had forsaken an ancient trust. He had set the world on a path to damnation. He had sold the Necronomicon.