Day 258 - Out of the Box

 OUT OF THE BOX

Prompt - Out of the Box : Imagine finding a box.  Write about opening it and what's inside

"Look what I found!"  Simone's shriek pierced the silence of the forest.  Anne and I ran forward, concerned about what our daughter might have uncovered.  An animal trap?  Syringes?  A used condom?  Unsuitable images  piled up in our list of possibilities.  But the object was more prosaic.  A box.  An old, old fashioned, hat box, like nobody had nowadays.  "Can we look inside?"  Anne and I looked at each other, both back into unsuitable images mode.

"We shouldn't, it's not ours" became my first line of defence, a chance to clear some thinking space.  It clearly wouldn't satisfy, but would do as an opener.  "Let's take a closer look at it before we decide to do anything."  This was met more receptively, so we all gathered around this unexpected item in the woodland area.

"What is it?"

"Looks like an old hat box" said Anne, "the kind people used to have when everybody wore hats.  Especially women who often wore hats with big wide brows."

"When was that?  When you were little?"

"No, longer ago even than that, way back before the second world war.  Back before even Nan was a little girl."  Simone paused to ponder on such levels of antiquity.

I'd been studying our discovery with a deeper scrutiny, squatting down to get closer.  It was a big circular box, about half a meter in diameter and maybe thirty five centimetres high.  The exterior looked to be leather, green with some embossed gold pattern which had faded to almost nothing, the lid secured by a thick brown leather belt.  The colour, the length of the grass surrounding it, and it's place at the base of large oak made it near invisible to most.  It was simple luck that led Simone, poking her inquisitive little nose in everywhere, to come across it.  

I thought about what might be inside, and why it would have been left here, deep into Morestang Woods.  Concealment seemed the most likely explanation.  What would someone want to hide away in a hat box?  Not hats.  Nobody hides hats, do they?  So it more likely to be something less innocent.  Perhaps even more shocking.

I admit it.  We watch far too many crime drams on TV, especially those gripping Scandi Noirs with inventively, artistically brutal murders.  Which is why my first thought was a severed head.  Or, given the time it looked it might have been here, a skull?  I sniffed, not really sire why I was doing so.  There were certainly odours of decay, but that's woods for you.  The circle of life is self evident on any forest floor.

Once that thought had entered my mind it became hard to replace it with anything else.  A gun?  Money?  Stolen jewels?  Incriminating documents?  Explosives?  Is it booby trapped?  My brain became ever more ridiculous.   But I kept coming back to black, staring eye sockets...

"What is it Daddy?"  Simone's demand brought me back from my rapid fire tour of man's cruelty to man.  "Can we look inside?"  

I looked up at Anne, seeking an answer, but she had that look on her face that said I was on my own here.  She'd clearly come up with the same answer as me, the penalty for us both being addicts to fictional homicide.  

"Why don't the two of you have a look around the area, see if you can find any more like it, while I think about this one, eh?"  Anne looked relieved, Simone intrigued, while I hoped I hadn't set them up discover anything worse than the object before me.  Mother grabbed daughter's arm and pulled her away.

"Come, let's leave Daddy to look a this and see if we can find another one, OK?"  The idea of further exploration clearly appealed to our girl, and narrowly won over from her curiosity about the contents of the box.  They started to circle the adjoining spaces, while I outlined the conundrum in my head.

Despite my cranium fixation, I at least had the sense to know how ridiculous I'd sound if I called the police.  And it wasn't as if there was any obvious means of determining ownership, if such a thing really existed after however long the box had been there.  Narrowing down the options made me realise all along that there was only one course of action I could take (because I couldn't ignore it - much as I hated to admit it to myself, as I was a desperately curious about the contents as Simone, only the scenarios in my thoughts were a great deal blacker than hers).  

I lifted the box up, gave it a gentle shake.  Things rattled.  It was fairly hefty, but a lot of that could be down to the sogginess of the leather.  I put it down, tugged at the rusty buckle on the belt.  One good heave and it reluctantly gave way and allowed me to pull the belt away.

I  looked at the box.  I looked up and around at my family, happily darting in and out of the trees.  I looked back at the box.  Best to do it before they came back, just in case...

Prising the lid up was tricky.  My house keys helped me get a couple of fingerholds and it slowly rose, in jerky movements, until suddenly it popped up in my hands and rolled backwards in susprise.  

"Bugger."  My expletive attracted the others, who came rushing across to check I was OK.  I rose, but not in time to stop Simone being first to look in.  She didn't scream.  But she did look very disappointed.  We joined her in peering in at the contents.  Shapes of felt, outlines of wire, tatty ribbons, a hint of disintegrated linen, a tarnished metal buckle.  Hats.  Well, former hats, now obliterated by time.

Why had I thought it would be anything else?  It was a hat box.