“We have to check this place out,” Tristan insisted, looking through the few elusive photos on the website.
The seven of us had ventured to this small, unassuming town with several others on a party bus for the weekend of our friends’ wedding. The town was mainly known, if known at all, for the lush fields and farmland surrounding the 7 block strip they called ‘downtown’, and the bride insisted that the wedding party stay in the massive yet dingy bed and breakfast to attend her cliche’ barn wedding.
We assumed there would be nothing to do but drink the weekend away in such a lazy, quiet town, but Tristan urged us to explore and make the best of the experience.
"It’s a Museum of Oddities,” he continued, turning the phone towards a few of us to show us one of the photos, “it’s a few miles out of town. It’s only $3 a person, and they’re open late.”
A few of us protested, but the bride offered that we could borrow her car (most likely to get the rowdy and restless boys out of the otherwise peaceful B&B for a little while) and we realized that we had already exhausted all other options, so Tristan won.
We piled into her SUV and Greg drove while Tristan handled the navigation. We drove a few miles straight out of the downtown area and took a single right turn. After a couple more miles, we came up to a relatively new brick storefront with four units. The units on either end were smaller- one was a dry cleaner and the other was a vacant, with the windows covered on the inside with brown newspapers. One of the two larger units in the center was a hardware store, but of all of the units, the Museum of Oddities was the largest.
We pulled up into the gravel parking lot just as the sun began to set. We cut the car off and sat inside for a while, debating again on whether or not to go in. The other two occupied units were already closed for the day, and there were no street lamps or lamp posts nearby. A warm glow poured out through the eyelets of the lace curtains that covered the museum windows, and was the only artificial light for miles.
“Are we sure this isn’t just some lame antique store?” Greg asked, leaning forward against the steering wheel to get a better view of the sign above the door.
“Antique stores aren’t lame” Alyssa mumbled, taking offense to the comment.
“It has antiques, sure, but it’s supposed to be way more than that,” Tristan promised, “Look, I’ll pay for everyone. And if it sucks and you guys are that disappointed, I’ll buy everyone a round of drinks.”
“Fine,” we all groaned in unison.
We climbed out of the car and shuffled into the museum while Kurt held the door for us. Immediately, we were overwhelmed by the smell of dust, wax, and something almost astringent. We tried not to wince as we inhaled again as we wiped our shoes on the welcome mat to dust off any chalk from the gravel.
Just a few feet from the front wall there was another row of lace drapery, held up by plastic piping that extended from wall to wall, concealing the rest of the room. To the far left there was a simple counter with a cash register and some fliers, and a few of us jumped when we finally noticed that a man was behind it.
His pudgy skin was nearly translucent, his back was hunched, and his eyes were dark and beady. Immediately, I found it a little weird that he wasn’t doing anything. He was just sitting on a stool, slouched over and lazily peering straight ahead. We were the only customers of the hour, and it was unlikely that the museum stayed busy in such a rural area, so one would think that someone working in a place like this for such long hours would at least be flipping through a newspaper, reading a book, or playing a game on their smartphone. But despite his lack of distraction, he barely acknowledged us when we walked in.
“Uh, hi,” Tristan started as he approached the counter, “we were wondering if you guys were still open. Can we look around?”
“$3 a person,” the man said wetly.
Tristan handed over a $20 and a $5 and waited patiently as the man slowly procured his change. Once the man had been paid, he seemed a little more motivated to pay us any attention. He climbed off his stool and shuffled around the counter to hold open the end of the curtain for us.
“Come, come,” he said as he waived us through. When the last of us was on the other side he let the curtain fall closed again and shuffled to the front of our group. “Look around, and take as much time as you need. If it says ‘do not touch’ don’t touch it. If it doesn’t, you can. If you have any questions, just ask.”
The silence settled like dust, broken only by the man’s subtle wheezing; his short speech was enough to leave him winded. We all sort of expected him to return to his counter, but he didn’t move. He just stood there, looking at us blankly with just a hint of a forced smile on his face.
“Okay,” Greg finally murmured, dragging each syllable, “Where do you guys want to start?”
We all glanced around the room. The three walls were lined with shelves and different forms of obscure art in ornate frames. Tables of all different shapes, heights, and widths filled the room with just enough space to walk around and between each one, and some longer, more narrow tables were pushed up against the walls beneath some of the shelves. Each shelf and surface was covered with trinkets and items of all sorts. Some looked new, while others wore a thin veil of grime. The sheer quantity was overwhelming, and it was difficult to determine an actual starting point.
“It’s best to start here,” the man interjected before any of us could make our own suggestion, and he took a heavy breath as he pointed to the front right corner where the shelf met the curtain rod.
“Uh, yeah,” Tristan shrugged, “Okay.”
Noticing the ‘do not touch’ sign hanging on both the shelf and the table beneath it, we muddled together in the corner and observed the different items, point out the ones we admired the most. We continued along the far wall in a similar manner, stopping every so often along the way to look at the tables nearest us that filled the center of the room.
A whole three-table section was covered in various taxidermy animals, and above them were shadow boxes of mounted insects. Some were three-headed, some had just one too many legs. Others were discolored or misshapen. Some were perfectly normal.
There was a large, round table that stuck out from the middle cluster that we had to squeeze by to continue along the right wall, and it was covered with open containers. There was a tall jar of shark teeth, a bowl full of fingernail clippings, and a coffee can filled with what appeared to be fragments of bone, just to name a few.
Among the carcasses, bugs, and other anatomical items, there were rusted and unusable tools, shells of unfamiliar electronic devices, frames full of coins with unrecognizable state names or impossible years, and nearly a hundred other odd things.
The right row ended in a bookshelf piled high with books about mythology, legend, and lore. Creatures and fables we’d never heard of and conspiracies deeper than we could ever imagine, all bound in leather and covered in a thick layer of dust.
However, the most interesting item so far had been a long black box that laid on the ground against the wall beside the bookshelf. It was just a little bit shorter than a casket and was similar in nature to one. It was made of solid boards of thick wood with no markings or visible nails, and three antique latches were spaced evenly along the edge of the lid to secure it. The wood was stained a rich black instead of painted, and a thick coat of clear epoxy covered every inch like smooth sheets of glass. Greg crouched down in front of the box, toying with one of the latches but not fully opening it.
“You can open it,” the man said. We all turned to find him still in the same spot near the curtain.
Greg carefully flipped the latches open and lifted the lid. None of us knew quite what to expect, given the nature of the museum, but we certainly didn’t expect to find it empty.
“It’s a muzzle box,” the man stated before any of us even asked.
“A what?” Jason asked.
“A muzzle box,” the man repeated, and then he paused briefly to lick his lips before continuing, “It silences the sound of whatever or whoever is inside.”
“So it’s soundproof?” Jason asked with a knitted brow..
“Yes, yes. Essentially. The person in the box will still hear all sounds. You would simply not hear the person outside of the box,” the man explained flatly.
“How does that work? It’s nothing but wood,” Greg asked, feeling around the inner wall for any hidden gadgets.
“It’s charmed.”
We all exchanged skeptically amused glances before erupting in laughter.
“You don’t have to take my word for it. Try it yourself.”
Greg hesitantly looked between the group and the box, and eventually shrugged, assuming there couldn’t be much risk to it. He climbed in and laid flat on his back, arching his knees just a hair to keep his feet from pushing against the end of the box. Jason closed the lid over him and snapped the latches shut.
“Okay, Greg,” Tristan said with a nervous laugh, “I guess scream or something?”
We all waited patiently, but no sound came.
“Can you hear us? Make a noise,” Tristan prompted again, but we still heard nothing.
After 30 or 40 seconds of silence, Jason undid the latches again and lifted the lid.
“You guys were messing with me, right?” Greg laughed, immediately sitting up as soon as the lid was open enough for him to do so.
The group exchanged glances, and then uniformly shook our heads while Jason helped Greg up and out of the box.
“You’re joking,” Greg laughed again, this time with a hint of tension, “I was yelling and banging on the lid and everything!”
“We didn’t hear anything!” Tristan confirmed, “Could you hear us?”
“Yeah, loud and clear,” Greg said.
“That’s super weird,” Alyssa murmured uncomfortably.
“Ha ha, very funny,” I mocked, seemingly the only person sane enough to not fall for it.
“I’m not joking,” Greg said candidly.
“How do we know you didn’t just lay there quietly?” I laughed doubtingly.
“If you don’t believe me, try it yourself,” he shrugged, stepping aside so that I could step into the box.
I laid down flat on my back with room to stretch my legs, and as Greg closed the lid over me, I could have sworn I heard the weird man snicker. As the latches were clasped shut with 3 sequential clicks, I realized just how dark the box actually was. I don’t know what I expected from a solid black box, but it was a darkness like I had never experienced, and I was immediately thankful that I was neither claustrophobic nor scared of the dark.
“Can you guys hear me?” I called out loudly, shifting a bit so that I could pull my phone out of my back pocket and rest it on the floor of the box beside me instead of laying uncomfortably on top of it.
“Taylor, say something if you can hear us!” I heard Alyssa say, her voice cracking in her nervousness.
“I did say something!,” I laughed, realizing that Greg probably got them in on the prank, “Helloooooo!”
I tapped on the lid of the box, and when no one reacted, I balled up my fist and banged on it a few times.
“Taylor, scream as loud as you can, or something,” Kurt joked, “Just make a loud noise!”
I took a deep breath and screamed as loud as I could and kicked at the lid of the box with my feet, but it didn’t budge, and they didn’t respond.
“Dang, you guys are good,” I laughed.
“Hey, what’s this?” Tristan asked distractedly, picking up a mysterious item off of the table beside him.
“A dental key, from the 1700s”, the man replied, “Would you like me to show you how it works?”
“Uh, no,” Tristan said, setting the metal tool back on the table, “No thank you.”
“That’s my favorite table,” the man murmured excitedly, stifling a chuckle. “Those two there are a civil war scalpel and a set of forceps, and that on the end is a tonsil guillotine from the 1800s.”
He continued to rattle off the list of every old medical tool in the museums collection, most of which seemed to be sprawled out on that table, with a few others in various corners of the room.
“Oh, okay. Well, thank you for that,” Greg said once the man had finally finished his ramblings. He had tried to sound polite, but his voice was thick with disgust, annoyance, and just a hint of amusement. Some of the group shuffled on to the next shelf of items that thankfully weren’t medical related.
“Wait, where’d he go?” Alyssa whispered, suddenly noticing the man had finally moved from his spot near the front and was nowhere to be seen.
Everyone was glancing around the room, making sure he hadn’t snuck up close to the group or hid beneath a table, when the silence was broken by a soft “click”. Everyone knew unmistakably what that sound had to be.
“Are you closing?” Jason asked trepidatiously, “We can leave...”
“No, no,” the man called from behind the curtain, “just better to keep the door locked.”
“Is that necessary?” Tristan probed.
“Yes, yes,” the man giggled.
Suddenly he plowed through the curtain and barreled towards Alyssa, knocking her to the floor by sheer force. He crouched over her, and she shrieked as he pinned her down with his knee, nearly crushing her ribs beneath his weight. The table creaked and groaned as he gripped the edge of it, hastily clamoring for whatever tool or item he could reach first. She kicked and screamed against him but her efforts were futile.
“Get the hell off of her!” Greg shouted as he lunged at the man, but the man turned on him and threw him against a nearby shelf with a faster reflex and a bruter strength than any of us expected. Greg fell with a thud, and jars and trinkets crashed to the floor around him.
Kurt and Jason immediately jumped in, one trying to force the man off of Alyssa while the other gripped Alyssa’s arms and dragged her away from her attacker. Once she was safely out of the man’s reach, Greg joined Kurt and Jason in attempting to bring the man down, but the man stood his ground against all three.
Kurt’s head was bashed against a table, nearly rendering him unconscious. Greg was thrown again, this time against an empty section of wall, with enough force to bust through some of the dusty sheetrock. While the other two groaned on the floor in minor agony, the man seized the opportunity to pin Jason to the ground. While his weight crushed Jason’s torso, his beady eyes peered into Jason’s soul and warm tendrils of drool piddled down onto Jason’s face with every breath and huff the man took.
Surely Jason was watching his own life flash before his eyes, but suddenly the man shrieked in pain as Tristan lunged from behind him and sunk the rusty blade of the old scalpe right into the side of his neck. Blood spurted out against the table beside him as Tristan grabbed the man by his thinning hair with one hand and used the other to pull the blade out and sink it back in a second and third time.
He released the man and all at once the man collapsed, heaving out the last bit of life he had. Tristan tossed the bloody scalpel to the side and quickly rolled the man over and helped Jason up. Greg climbed up off the floor and crawled over to check the mans pulse, confirming that he was dead.
“I’m so so so so so sorry, guys, what the fuck,” Tristan stammered as he helped Greg and Kurt up and made sure everyone was okay.
“You couldn’t have known,” Greg consoled, dusting sheetrock and paint flakes off of his clothing.
“What do we do? Do we call the cops? Does this town even have cops?” Jason asked, still shaken up.
“Cops? I just killed a man!” Tristan said, starting to hyperventilate as the chaos settled enough for him to process what just happened.
“A gross man who almost killed all of us,” Alyssa insisted, sniffling.
“I say we leave him, let him rot, the sick bastard,” Greg stated bitterly, spitting towards the body.
“Look, let’s just get out of this creepy hell hole and get back to the B&B. We’ll figure it out from there,” Kurt decided, “Is everyone okay? Is anyone seriously injured?”
Everyone looked over themselves to make sure they hadn’t missed anything in the chaos. Once everyone was good to go, the group hastily loaded up into the car and took off without looking back.
Not everyone, though.
They forgot about me.
I’m still locked inside this box.
I thumped and banged and kicked and screamed and shrieked until my voice went sore.
They never heard me.
I heard them, though.
Every sound, every moment of chaos, every spurt of blood.
I heard the door unlock and the car speed off, kicking up gravel as it peeled out of the parking lot.
I hope they remember me, or that the cops are called and they find me.
But for now I’m trapped inside this box.
And I can hear the man moving again.
Submitted October 19, 2018 at 08:44PM by morgues93 https://ift.tt/2CtlW1n
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