Boy in the Box by Marc E. Fitch

Author:Marc E. Fitch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense, supernatural, thriller, horror; gothic fantasy, dark fantasy, creepy stories
Publisher: Flame Tree Publishing
Published: 2020-04-01T15:02:39+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

It was more difficult than they imagined. Their shoulders burned with the strain. The case was heavy. It knocked into their knees as they hobbled through the underbrush. The sludge inside would shift and move in slow waves as they rocked back and forth. Although it was only eighty pounds between two men, the constant weight pulling down, the need to shift it up and over shrub brush and rock outcroppings and desiccated branches that could impale a body, turned eighty pounds into a hundred, then two hundred, growing heavier the longer they traveled. They worked in half-hour, three-man rotations, switching sides to give each shoulder a break, keeping one man free with the rifle. They kept pace and time through the rotation, and it quickly became the only time in the world worth measuring – a clock kept by pain and weariness.

The terrain changed. At first they followed the creek, keeping to the soft ground before it gave way to the rocky creek bed. The long grasses disappeared and were replaced with the dark expanse of the coniferous forest, with visible root systems spread like spider veins, popping from the soil to trip them, before plunging back below the surface. Dying ferns, shrunken and brown, carpeted the forest floor. Were it spring or summer, those ferns would form an impenetrable green blanket over the whole area; now their boots crushed them to dust underfoot. Massive boulders from the last ice age appeared like gray ghosts, sheer rock faces wet with lichen or moss, dotted with small, thin, impossible trees whose roots wrapped like hands over the stone and sprouted at strange angles toward patches of sunlight.

The case knocked into the side of Jonathan’s knee, which was already raw and bruised. They had hiked for three full rotations, and the constant jostle and bump of the case against his knees, the heavy tugs on his shoulders when Michael or Conner walked out of pace with his own gait, had grown to a point of eruption. They continued to follow the creek, stepping down occasionally into the rocky creek bed to navigate around underbrush. The slippery rocks twisted their ankles, caused them to stumble and splash into small pools of cold water.

The strain of the journey pushed Jonathan to his limit. Branches swiped at his face, thorn patches gripped and tore at his sleeves, and all the time there was the shifting slosh of the boy in the box. His breath was heavy and hard. Sweat soaked into his hat until he finally removed it, and then his head froze in the air. The soles of his boots bent and slipped. The case pulled again at his shoulder and rammed into the side of his knee. He felt a murderous rage and then marveled how easily the desire to kill fell upon him, how such a minor thing could drive a man insane like the slow drip of water torture.

They dragged that thing over rock, water and earth for three hours, passing in and out of darkness and light.

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