Stephen King's Box Page 8

  When he opened his eyes, the sun had placed itself between two mountains and seemed it chose that place specifically to hide, while it descended slowly in a fusion of yellow and red colors that decorated the sunset. Tom was better now, but he complained anyway. He got up and went to the kitchen, on the ground floor, to prepare dinner for him.

  That night, he dreamed with the sun, the flowers and the apple trees.

  4

  On the next day, Tom woke up without the tiredness but he could hear his knee joints crack as he stood up. It didn’t hurt but Tom was surprised by the sound. It wasn’t something to worry about, he thought, and he walked toward the window to breathe some fresh air, to inhale the soft morning air combined with the smell of the apple trees. He watched the bees flying around the flowers, busy on their job before winter came to kill them all. That was life and he sighed deeply, but the thing got worse pretty soon.

  5

  A week later, another wave of tiredness hit him but this time, his joints cracked loudly and started to hurt. Tom frowned, but didn’t pay more attention to the situation. However, he had to sit down on the edge of the bed constantly. A bed with wrinkled sheets and the headboard on the floor. And the window remained open to let the sunrays and the smell of the apple trees enter. And all of a sudden, he stopped eating too. But he continued to love the apple trees and waited its produce. He would eat them two at the time this year, that way, he would eliminate the tiredness along with the strange rigidness. And the spring left some vague rain and the days went on. And Tom was getting more tired and dreamed more.

  6

  He dreamed he flew around the apple trees and watched a bunch of flowers blossom surprisingly beautiful, and then, this became apples. Some big, shining, green apples. They were acid just how he liked them but suddenly, everything became dark and he fell to the floor, lower and lower, in an infinite well and the apples turned into a dark red. And then, he woke up covered in sweat and more tired. Even more.

  7

  July arrived and with it, an extreme heat and Tom opened all the windows in his house. The flowers had turned into tiny green balls. Some bees got closer, pollinating the grass and they left. Then, some wasps came, too late. And the apple trees remained ready to give its produce. Uncle Tom’s apples, as a grandmother would say counting the story to his grandchildren under the heat of the chimney.

  And Tom was so tired that he had to lie down on the bed for several hours, and the mattress started to sink in from the middle. His joints were a little more rigid than last month and hurt even more, and he noticed that one of his finger nails was growing inn a weird way. It looked like if a brown and twisted wood splinter had dug into the corner of his nail. Tom ripped it off and blood came out. Only one insignificant drop that stained his finger, but that screamed that it was a proper wound. Tom didn’t care about this and he thought that maybe, he had stuck that yesterday or the day before, when he stepped clumsily into the sand of his land. He was tired. Even more.

  But even when he was lying on his bedroom bed, he could still watch the apples grow and grow.

  8

  And August arrived and the heat was even more suffocating. Tom, without a shirt and all sweaty, remained lying on his bed, almost immobile. It had been more than a week without moving and being old and lonely, he didn’t have a wife to call the doctor. He didn’t even have neighbors. His weird personality made him antisocial. So, he was alone. Him and his apple trees that now showed small green apples almost done, the size of a plum. Despite the tiredness and re rigidness, Tom smiled widely when he saw his apple trees through his open window that was aligned to see the trees perfectly from his new position. And Tom started to pee himself. He couldn’t get up and the smell of the apple trees flooded the air in his room. And from his toe nails, twisted wooden splinters started to grow, showing themselves from under the nails.

  9

  And September arrived, a month where the produce could be recollected. Big, heavy, green apples glowing more and more with the sun of the summer, but it kept a relative moist in the environment, creating a new sticky weather. By mid September, the apples were ready, but October was the ideal month to collect them. They were acid.

  Tom, with a stinky and yellow stain on the sheets, was proof of the time lapse. He had to make his natural necessities right there. His body showed his sharp bones through his tense and dry skin. His face had lost all sense of expression and his eyes were yellow. There were roots on his feet! Tom breathed heavily but inhaled strongly the smell of the apple trees, which now were citric and acid. He felt sad he couldn’t get up and watch them standing up from the window. His knees were completely still and his thighs had lost all his muscles, showing at the same time some big, dark and puffy veins. Like some complex climbing plant with roots at the end. A yellow stain covered his briefs and another brown stain was right under his ass. He had sores all over his back and something sharp was pocking him. It felt like finger nails, or even worse, more roots!

  10

  By mid September, the root appeared in his hands and on his back. He knew it but couldn’t do anything, except that he stopped peeing and pooping himself. He just stopped but his bones looked like branches under his skin. He had roots on his teeth too. And the smell of apple trees continued around him. He couldn’t inhale this pleasant smell with the same intensity as before. He wasn’t hungry.

  11

  The first week of October, the roots on his feet had tangled on the bed’s edge and legs. His legs were now apple trunks and the air in the room smelled like apple trees.

  12

  The next week, the root from his hands had spread to both sides of the bed. And they were strongly tangled to the posts of the bed. Now, the mattress dry but yellow, was less sunk. More roots had come out of his legs and these remained on the wrinkle sheets. And the first heavy rains started. Tom could only move his eyes and watched two or three heavy storms that ripped apart the apples from the trees. Tom felt sorry for that and couldn’t think of the roots and everything that was happening to him. Actually, he never thought of anything else but the apples.

  And the days wet by October, to the arrived of the fall.

  13

  When fall arrives, Tom’s neck was stiff as the trunk of a tree. He couldn’t open his mouth and he didn’t need too anymore. It remained open forming a stretched O. the roots that came out of his teeth has spread to the headboard of the bed. Tom’s eyes didn’t move. He didn’t feel pain or could do his necessities. He didn’t was hungry or thirsty. And the smell of apples continued floating on the air. However, he couldn’t smell anymore. He had leaves.

  14

  Early November, Tom wasn’t Tom anymore. He was a tree on the bed, covering it with his long roots and twisted branches. Without experiencing the flowers, the wasps and the bees. Tom, or whatever he was now, started to grow little apples. The sun set earlier every day, but the roots and the apples grew quickly. Tom, or whatever he was now, didn’t think. He was just there, immobile, but growing and filling the room with a strong smell of acid apples. His eyes had remained open and it probably was the only human thing left in him.

  15

  By mid November, the apples had grown completely and outside his room, Tom’s apple trees, on his grove, showed a different picture. The trees didn’t have leaves anymore, neither green, juicy apples. No one had harvested them and they all lay on the ground, dead and wrinkled, covered in mud. Some of them were rotten and big rats with small teeth ate them without rest. The window was still open.

  And Tom, or the new apple tree, with fresh fruit was inside. But no one harvested the apples.

  16

  In December, Tom’s apples had fallen from his branches. The longest roots spread on the room’s floor and narrow walls searching for nutrients. But couldn’t find them, not this time, since Tom wasn’t Tom any longer and couldn’t feed himself. The apples started to rotten on the floor, but the air continued to smell like apples. Tom who, one day, was someon
e happy with his apple trees. Now, he had died and soon, the roots, the branches, the apples would become rotten and dry. This situation continued during the winter, but then, spring came and something happened.

  17

  The sun shone like a giant fire torch suspended on the blue sky. The sunrays entered through the window and licked Tom’s remains. Some days after, a dry sound marked the start of a new stage. The roots had caught a bunch of rats the size of cats that sought for shelter in the room. The rats were caught by something or someone, in the fight against death.

  By mid spring, a bee came in through the window, buzzing like a little helicopter and got near to one of the flowers. The flower was located on the surface of the right eye that remained glassy and white but immobile. The bee took out its sting and did his job.

  A few weeks later, Tom craved for more apples.

  In the maggot’s mouth

  There was a little of everything in the box that Stephen King found. A book from the outstanding author H.P. Lovecraft stood out from the rest, and King got caught to it since the moment he first read its stories under rainy days and the book shaking between his hands. H.P. Lovecraft was a driving of modern horror, of the imaginary monsters that come alive, of sticky things crawling on the floor and Steve was a big fan of sticky things. And King used this subject in his first stories. If the master would read the next story, I could only say “Wow!” And I think you would like it too.

  A shylock from the 1920 counts his money every end of the month. He is the collector of the town because he has leased an entire street of houses that are his property. Every three months, the rent goes up to tenants who are already fed up with this custom of Charles. Each month, next to a candle, Charles counts all his coins after removing them from a safe that is embedded in the wall of his house that faces a mountain. But he notices that, every month, some coins are missing despite the fact that he collects more and more. One day, he finds out that several coins are missing and he discovered some kind of mucus. And a grey stain inside the safe, at the bottom. It is a gelatinous fluid and it smelled really bad. But days went by until this kind of mucus grows and one night, Charles decides to clean up the safe. But at the bottom there’s something that breathes rhythmically.

  1

  Charles Brown was the owner of the main street in Boad Hill in New England. It was the year 1920 and the house rent went up a few cents every month (three or four cents). He charged a different amount to every tenant because of the location or the number of rooms in each old and broken house. And at the end of the month, he stayed up all night counting his coins under a candle light. After that, he would put them in a sock and he would put the sock in a safe embedded in one of the walls of his house that was facing the mountain. Charles Brown lived in a house pretty withdraw from his empire, the main street in the beginning of Boad Hill. Now, Boad Hill was a small town next to the sea which main activity was to fix old transportation boats.

  Luckily, job was abundant and the first people to live in what would become Boad Hill worked, except for Mister Charles Brown who lived from his rent and he took advantage of it. Every three months, he would raise the rent to his tenants and they were beginning to get tired of the situation. But things don’t come alone and something very special takes justice by its hand.

  It is making noise behind the wall that is facing the mountain.

  2

  ‘This month I have to raise one cent for the rent of the house,’ said Charles Brown with a stupid smile on his face.

  ‘But...’

  ‘One more cent. Take it or leave the house.’

  ‘Ok, one more cent...’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  Charles Brown’s character wasn’t quite nice to people. He wasn’t friendly or humble, but a rude, stupid, rent swindler, a villain. And people began to get tired of the situation. If a riot organized against him, what could Charles Brown do against 2 dozen angry tenants?

  Nothing.

  But they didn’t try, at least for now.

  3

  Charles Brown started the fire in his chimney and it burned with the characteristic slowness of a bonfire. Half an hour later, the slow dance of the red flames threw shadows on the walls forming strange cartoons. The heat was rising up in the kitchen and in the nearer rooms. Charles lit up a candle too to open the safe that was in the room next to the kitchen, where the cartoons made by the fire reached. The room key was big and made of iron. Its weight was considerable in the palm of Charles hand. He took the key with his fingers and placed it in the lock. The key squeaked like a rat when it turned. The iron door, painted in grey, squeaked too when it opened and left its secret on plain sight.

  There were several socks full of coins. He left the candle on one side and took all the socks. The coins seemed to talk and chirp inside of the socks when he let them fall on the wooden table, next to the candle light.

  And then, he spent another night up, counting all of the coins until the fire in the chimney turned into a red, hot ember, and then into a smoking ash.

  4

  During the next three winter months, Charles Brown kept charging more and more to his tenants and counting the coins collected so far every month. And then, he noticed that the socks were wet and one coin was missing. One sorry coin that could have fallen in the street or got stuck in some of his pockets, or simply, he miss-counted them. So, the next night, he counted them again on the wooden table under the candle light and his dancing flames.

  One coin was missing.

  5

  There wasn’t a person cheaper than Charles Brown in all of Maine. He ate only the enough, he kept himself warm with only the enough and he even used less old socks, so he could have more for his coins. And he wanted even more. His outfit (torn apart and dirty) didn’t indicate that he was rich or without money issues. When you saw him walking on the street, you could confuse him with some other person. He didn’t outstand. He didn’t wear a tailor suit or any jewelry. He wasn’t married and neither had children. And the reason was he didn’t want to leave any heritage the day he died. His epitaph would be “My coins with me!”

  6

  This time, he raised the rent after two months. His tenants looked at him dead in the eye and clenched their fists. But nothing else happened except for some curses behind Charles’ back, (“I hope the fire eats all of your money!”). But something more inexplicable was about to happen.

  7

  And the night came, just like every month, punctual like a nail on a board. He turned the key and the door squeaked again. He pulled out his socks and emptied them on the table under the candle light. He spent all night counting and writing numbers on a piece of yellow paper.

  This time, four coins were missing.

  ‘God damn it!’ and he smacked the table with anger and his fist closed. Immediately after, he felt a strong pain in his hand that went up to his forearm and then, he saw it. A grey, wet and sticky mucus stuck to one of the socks that showed a little hole, but big enough for a coin to slip out.

  He took the sock. It was wet.

  ‘Shit,’ he said and stood up. He went to the heat of the chimney and then back to the table, always rubbing his chin.

  He didn’t find any explanation for it.

  8

  From now on, he would count his coins every night. And he discovered more mucus on the socks. It was a gelatinous fluid and it was extremely moldable. Almost as dry mucus. And there was also the stain inside the safe. The same that he had found on the socks. He cleaned it and found a coin inside the safe, but part of it was missing and it was bended.

  And more coins were missing.

  9

  I wish your money goes bad or a monster swallows it so you have to go fetch them from its stomach and you rot inside of it.

  Sometimes, the wishes become true, but this doesn’t always have to be true. Or maybe it does.

  10

  He lit the candle and walked slowly towards the safe and put the k
ey on the lock. He took out the socks and observed that they were wetter and there was more mucus than before. He put the socks on the table and went back to the safe to clean it up inside with a dirty piece of cloth. And he found three bended coins.

  11

  The tenants agreed to make a protest march in front of his house if he raised the rent again. They even would bring lit torches if things went bad. But nothing happened. The wind took the words through the main street of Boad Hill that winter of 1920.

  12

  The stains were bigger every time and thirty coins were missing on his count and three old socks were completely torn apart. With sorrow, he took off his own dirty socks and filled them with coins. He put them in the safe. When he took out the key from the room’s lock, he saw mucus in it too. He cleaned it up and winked at it. Nothing more. And then, some weird noises started. Rass rass. It came from behind the wall.

  13

  Next to the chimney and with a sad face, he noticed that forty three coins were missing. And four of the socks were torn apart.

  ‘Rats. Damn rats,’ he whispered under the faint candle light.

  But there weren’t rats.

  14

  With a broken and dirty piece of cloth and under the candle light, he cleaned the inside of the safe which was getting rusty in the front and on the inside. He took out five bended coins covered in slime and a part of them was missing. They weren’t circular anymore but looked as if someone had bit them, or they simply were melted on the edges.