The Magic Box Read online

  The Magic Box

  by Scott Thrower

  Periodically Productions

  Copyright © 2019 Scott Thrower

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of limited quotations in a book review

  ISBN 978-1-9995501-4-1 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-9995501-5-8 (eBook)

  Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  About The Author

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to the Unwanted Children for their continued support, as well as Wynne, Justin, Jennifer, and Misti for their help with early versions of the book.

  Thank you as well to my Saturday writing group for all of your contradictory opinions and David Kent for the editorial eye.

  Any mistakes that made it through to the final version are entirely mine, because these people were amazing.

  Chapter 1

  Aknock like that could wake the dead, and in my case, that’s essentially what it did. Three hours past dinner and the house was quiet, everyone tucked away in bed as a cool wind cracked past the long row of narrow townhouses. Henry had to steady me down the front stairs in the dark, hushed to keep the house from waking, his eyes on me rather than the professor’s cab waiting at the curb under the glow of a gas lamp. Anyone watching would have assumed I was his grandfather rather than a man three years shy of thirty, a stark contrast to Henry’s wide rugby shoulders, wavy hair, and dimpled smile. Any army recruiter would love to see him walk in the door.

  I, on the other hand, looked like I’d already been to the front and the Germans had won, a wasted thing in Henry’s arms. I let him guide me, too caught up in the mysterious invitation to the museum—unheard of at this time of night, but too delicious to turn down. No one tells you how boring it is to die, how long the wait can take, so a late-night trip to the museum was a welcome surprise to help while away the hours.

  I’d been summoned before, even to the museum, but never under cover of night. There weren’t many experts in my field, especially not in Toronto, but if there was one certainty that came with antiquities, it was that they could usually wait until morning. Any object my opinion could illuminate was at least a thousand years old. But it was getting close to midnight, and the cab was waiting. The chill autumn air felt electric with possibilities.

  “Charlie, keep your coat done up,” Henry doted. “And if it gets too much, you tell them you need to come home, understand?” I nodded, barely listening. It was too dark to get distracted by the blue of his eyes. “And if there are stairs—”

  “The museum has rather a lot of them,” I muttered, but not darkly. Henry meant the best, and most days I borrowed upon his reserve of good spirits, even though lately they’d felt increasingly there for show. I dropped my voice so the cab driver wouldn’t overhear. “If there’s a problem, I’ll just find some other handsome college boy to carry me up.”

  Henry tutted, but there was a ghost of a smile as well. He adjusted my scarf one last time before lifting me into the waiting cab, his large hands digging into the bones of my hips. The driver sitting up front puffed on a cigarette and focused on the horse. Inside, Professor Mindle was bundled in his new wool coat, taking up two thirds of the hard carriage bench. He was dressed too warmly for early fall, so I knew he was trying to impress someone, just as I knew we’d been working together for too long for it to be me.

  Mindle came from an old Toronto family, and he’d married into an even older one. They gave the air of British aristocracy despite being several generations out. As he shifted aside to give me more space, I caught the smell of brandy on his breath, but it was too dark to tell if he’d been celebrating or calming his nerves.

  Henry leaned into the cab, still holding my hand until I’d settled in and even then for a moment longer.

  “Are you certain you don’t want me to come?” he asked. It was good that it was dark, because Henry’s blue eyes tended to give us away when his hair wasn’t falling over them. I still wasn’t sure if Professor Mindle’s heart could take the shock—his prize student a fairy, such delicious gossip hiding just beneath his moustache—but the old man was tied up in himself and a good-natured sort.

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” the professor said. He leaned against me to wave Henry off, his voice too boisterous for the small space. “I’ll have him back shortly, I’m sure.” The bench creaked under him, and the cab tilted until he settled back in his seat.

  Henry hesitated before closing the door on the two of us with a twist of the latch. He patted the side of the cab and exchanged a few quick words with the driver. I was trying to read the professor in the lamplight coming through the small window, finally catching the hint of a smile in the shadow of his grand moustache. The professor was on an adventure, it seemed, and I was along for the ride.

  “He’ll be a very caring doctor,” Mindle murmured as the carriage lurched forward into the dark streets, the wheels catching on the deep ruts in the road. I stopped myself from turning to watch Henry from the back window like a wife in a war reel. “He must be excited to have the fourth and fifth years back with stories to tell.”

  Stories, yes, but also disfigurements, night terrors, and hushed talk of the horrors they’d seen in England. The government brought the medical students back to finish their degrees, realizing that half-trained doctors were useless in a war that was going to stretch well into 1916. The boys returned with their bravado tattered and thin from what they’d seen in the hospitals, but at least it killed Henry’s desire to enlist after the spring term. At least some of his change of mind was due to my diabetes, but by summer, that would take care of itself. Most days, I didn’t think I’d see Christmas.

  New electric street lamps took over from the older oil, casting the street with steadier pools of light. The professor cleared his throat, and I realized my thoughts had wandered. It took me a moment to remember what he’d said and come up with a reply. “They’re excited to finish up and get back to the front,” I murmured, inwardly cursing the fog of illness.

  Truthfully, very few of the fledgling doctors had made it anywhere near the front before being sent back to Canada. Henry’s friend Martin had a room below ours but he’d been one of the few to see actual combat, and not all of him made it back. Martin still dreamt of trenches, and it made for noisy nights at the boarding house as he woke up screaming in the dark.

  The professor studied my face each time light from the moon or streetlights fell into the cab, his smile faltering beneath his moustache. He didn’t look at me much these days, usually focusing just past me, remembering what I’d been just a few months earlier, the kid he’d taken under his wing and tried, repeatedly, to introduce into society—a failure that was much more mine than his.

  “Are you up for this?” he mumbled. It was a rare concession to the awkward truth. Even having to ask was embarrassing for him, usually only done at the behest of his wife.

  “I don’t yet know what this is,” I replied. “Am I up for a mystery? So long as you nudge me if my mind wanders and there’s not much running to do, I’m sure we’ll make due.” The bench was uncomfortable. Everything had seemed so much more cushioned when there’d been meat on my bones. The world had been warmer. My coat was so loose around me that I felt I could climb right out of it without undoing the buttons.

  “Still fasting?” he asked, adjusting his small, wire glasses.

  I nodded, holding back a joke about the professor’s failing eyesight. “The sugar’s almost gone.”

  “Good,” he said, though his voice was empty. He’d reached the limit of his upper-crust curiosity and was risking intimacy. We used to have comfortable silences between us, mentor and student, but not for the past few months. I missed him, even as I could feel his warmth against my arm.

  “So, what’s this about?” I enquired.

  “Oh!” he exclaimed, the excitement bubbling up. “Oh, yes. I only know a few details, but they asked for me and I asked for you.”

  That meant it was something pre-Christian, but even so, nothing that couldn’t wait for daylight. Something was being omitted, though the professor was too caught up to care. He was thirty-five years my senior, and he was the reason I was still studying. Between tutoring the province’s elite in dead languages, the money the professor set aside for a research assistant, and a few bits and bobs from Henry, I was able to avoid slinking back to the family farm to die, but just barely. I owed him a lot.

  And better than that, he was a smart man, with the history of religion if not common sense. He could go toe-to-toe with the best scholars in the world, but I’d seen him ch
at with lesser men and not see the sarcasm in their interest in his long-winded stories. He was too good a gent to notice. But his interest in my strange branch of study was pure and honest, and I loved him for it.

  The professor did a quick check to make sure the driver’s window was closed. A rut in the road sent him sliding toward me, and he just managed to catch himself before I was crushed against the side. He pressed a hand against the roof to steady himself.

  “Apologies,” he said jovially. “Apparently something has been found, and they can’t make heads or tails of it. The note said it had to do with the Americans, that I should attend at once, and should tell no one.”

  So, of course, he came for me. The only thing my good Mindle liked more than a secret was telling it to someone, and bringing me served a dual purpose. As good as Mindle was at antiquities, I was better—though my commitment to honesty hadn’t made me popular, even at the museum. After discrediting too many artifacts, my invitations to consult had largely dried up, which might explain why I hadn’t been named on the invite as well.

  But again, all of this could wait for morning.

  “Which Americans?”

  The professor shrugged. “I don’t know anything more, I’m afraid.”

  It was the most frustrating sort of answer, one that reminded me that not everyone was as curious as I was. Some people could live with a mystery, wait for things to unfurl at their own pace, but then again, most had more time to spare.

  “Best behaviour tonight,” the professor murmured, seeing my attention wandering to maudlin thoughts. Aside from the starvation, it was the worst part of the illness. Focusing on anything was a challenge, from books to conversations.

  “No nose prints on the glass,” I assured him.

  He grumbled. “I’m serious, Charlie. If the war stretches the way people are saying, educational funding could dry up quickly. By next year, we might—”

  But next year wasn’t going to be much of a concern for me, and I think we arrived at that thought at the same moment.

  “Anyway,” he rallied, “tread carefully. You never know where these things might lead.”

  “It’s archaeology, Professor, not a military engagement.”

  He sniffed, not seeing the fun in it, and he may have been right. My sense of humour was muted from what it had been. Good spirits simply took more energy than I had.

  Bloor Street was mostly quiet. Leaves crunched under the cab’s wheels and danced in pools of light. I missed the warmth of the gaslights out here. The electric weren’t as reliable, and the light they gave was cold, lacking entirely in character. Their only advantage was their tendency to go out all at once, creating a festival atmosphere in the streets.

  Months ago, Henry dared to hold my hand as we walked down a darkened road. I was nursing a summer cold. I’d spent the evening at the back of the church, trying not to appear too proud as he sang in the choir. I was still well then, almost plump. The war was still exciting, news on everyone’s lips. My shirt had stuck to my back as the service dragged on. Everything was possible. We took a long route back to the boarding house that night and had to sneak in, having been soaked in a sudden rain that hadn’t even dented the humidity. We forgot to lock our door and the landlady nearly caught us in the morning in each other’s arms.

  Professor Mindle touched my knee and then pulled his hand away quickly as I jumped. He cleared his throat, muttering that we’d arrived. Out my window, I saw the wide, dark lawns of the museum, and out his, the building itself. Open for more than a year, I was still in awe of the Royal Ontario Museum. It was grey instead of the red stone of the city, taller than most and stretching across the grass like a castle dropped into place. Growing up in a small farming community, I still thought of Ontario as short, squat stone and timber, tight rooms, and either chill or blackflies. Buildings like the museum were like fairy stories, things that should have just existed in books.

  The museum stood tall and dark, with just a few lights shining through its arched windows. It didn’t look nearly as new as it was. If I hadn’t watched it grow over the last few years, I’d have assumed it had been here for fifty or more—a heavy point of history. It was huge and cultured, a building that knew things and wanted to share, though the darkened windows left me a bit reserved. You couldn’t read the books I did and still be afraid of the dark, but they’d left me with a daunting imagination for what could lurk in shadows.

  Betty was waiting by the road, shivering in one of her mother’s sweaters. She’d have fine things to say about being left to mind the door, alone in the cold, but not until the professor was out of earshot. In her mid-forties, she was one of the twenty museum employees, probably the best of the lot. She was tall and thin, with her hair in a loose bun she could never quite master—a failing that didn’t extend to her work. She was the only one at the museum who still invited my opinions, because her work could usually withstand the scrutiny.

  She held open the door. The cart jerked as the professor climbed out. He patted himself down and straightened his wrinkles as he stared up at the building, champing at the bit for whatever new experience awaited. They’d called him for advice, of anyone they could have reached. He’d feast on that for weeks, drawing me into conversations I’d rather not have, proof of the madness and prestige of a nighttime summons by some Americans. He nodded proudly to the driver, as if the man would go home tonight and tell the tale of the grand professor and his interesting evening.

  As I stepped out of the cab into the moonlight, Betty’s eyes widened, and I averted my eyes to let her have her moment. I hadn’t been by in weeks. During that time, I urinated away twenty pounds I didn’t have to spare, and she had no reason to be ready for it.

  “If you’d just—” Her voice broke as I turned back toward her. “I’m sorry,” she rallied. “If you could just follow me. They’re setting up in the basement.” A moment later she reached out to take my arm and we followed Professor Mindle up to the doors. Usually, she’d whisper in my ear the entire way, but she was quiet. She squeezed my hand as I stumbled on the first step, wrapping an arm around my shoulders as she guided me more carefully.

  “Thank you,” I murmured.

  “It’s not a problem,” she replied, a bit of a crack in her voice. Betty and I had never quite been friends, but we loved the same sort of mysteries. We’d spent long evenings teasing at the same artifacts, figuring out their histories and uses. I couldn’t tell you her favourite drink or if she watched film reels on her nights off, but I could describe her thoughts about evolving pottery glazes through the Iron Age. It was its own sort of closeness.

  “Any hint about what I’m walking into?” I asked. “Particularly one that might help me impress whoever we’re meeting?”

  “I wish I could help. Apparently, I’m more use today making tea and waiting for cabs.”

  I snorted, but my stomach lurched at the thought of a drink—with milk and sugar, tastes I hadn’t had for months. “Clearly they’ve never had your tea.”

  She squeezed my shoulder, but she was annoyed. She was twice the antiquarian the other museum staff were, but she’d had the bad luck of being born a woman, a misstep that had constantly dragged at her career.

  We paused on the stairs so I could gather my strength, and she didn’t hurry me. The professor reached the door at the top, turning around and expecting us to be right there. He rushed back down the steps toward us and fell in on my other side.

  I gritted my teeth.

  There were two reasons I’d kept close to the boarding house over the previous few weeks—the sheer exhaustion that came from doing anything at all, and the social awkwardness of needing help to do the most basic of things, often having to rely on strangers who were half convinced I’d infect them with typhoid.

  The museum basement was the geological floor as well as storage, I considered, distracting myself from the current awkwardness, so these Americans setting up there reduced my guesses as to what the evening would entail. Rocks were dull—any fool could see that—so the time I’d spent in the basement was limited. For me, the wonders were the first and second floors, the antiquities I read about in books. Cultures from far-off places and times brought to us behind glass, from their mundane chamber pots to their sexual iconography. I’d spent some time further up with paleontology, the smaller rooms dominated by fragmented beasts from eons past, but my heart was on the main floor.