The Iron Box

Elias hadn't been to the coast in years, and he'd forgotten the way the salt gets into everything out there -  into your collar, your sleeves, the back of your throat before you're even halfway up the road. By the time he reached the gates he felt a little sick, and he told himself, more than once, that it was just the smell.

The house had gone the way these old places always went once the money ran out. No paint left on it anywhere. The wood had turned gray and soft, and one whole side of the roof had started to sag, like the place had simply gotten tired of holding itself up straight. He'd cleared out houses like this before, three or four of them over the years, so he knew what to expect, more or less. The gate stuck when he pushed on it, then gave all at once, swinging open so fast it caught him off guard.

The lawyer had been clear enough about the job. There was a small iron box up in the study, brass handle, hard to miss. Get that, and he'd get the rest of his money — five thousand pounds, which was more than Elias usually saw in a year, let alone for one night's work. Then, almost like it was an afterthought, right as he was heading out the door, the lawyer had added: don't spend too long looking in any mirrors in the house, and if you hear water running somewhere, just leave. Don't go looking for where it's coming from.

Elias hadn't asked why. Five thousand pounds buys a man a lot of not-asking.

The front door was unlocked, which he didn't think much of at the time. The knocker was shaped like a hand, the fingers just a little too long to be right, and he touched it without really thinking, the way you do, and got a small shock for his trouble, sharp enough to make him swear under his breath.

Inside, the air was warmer than it had any business being, for an empty house in the middle of winter, and underneath the warmth there was a smell;  sweet, and just a bit rotten, like fruit left out too long. He didn't stop to think about where that might be coming from. He lit his lantern anyway, more out of habit than need, since moonlight was already coming down through a skylight thick with grime, enough to make out the staircase and the shapes of furniture buried under old sheets.

Somewhere off to his left, water was dripping. Slow. Steady, like a clock.

He thought about what the lawyer had told him, and then he went and looked anyway, because that's what people do. A row of old portraits ran down the hall, the kind rich families used to have painted, and every single one of them had had its eyes cut out — not torn, cut clean, like whoever did it had taken their time. From one of the empty sockets, in a painting of a woman in a lace collar, something dark had leaked out and was still making its way down the canvas.

That wasn't water. Water doesn't move like that.

"Just get the box," he said out loud, mostly to hear his own voice doing something ordinary, and started up the stairs.

The banister was wet under his hand and he didn't ask himself why. The stairs groaned with every step, loud enough that he half expected the whole staircase to give out under him, and somewhere around the fourth step he started talking to himself, quietly, just to keep moving.

"Okay," he muttered. "Okay, that's fine. Just wood settling. Fifteen more steps, maybe less." He counted them off in his head as he climbed. "Ten more. You do this, you get five thousand pounds. Ten more steps for five thousand pounds. That's nothing."

By the time he stopped noticing the groaning under his boots, the warm air from downstairs had given out completely, and the cold that took its place had a strange, wet edge to it, the kind that seems to reach the back of your teeth.

There was a mirror at the top of the stairs, tall and old, the glass gone dark and cloudy. He hadn't been warned about that one exactly -  just mirrors in general -  but walking past it without looking felt more strange than looking would, so he looked.

His reflection was a half-second slow to catch up with him. Not by much. Just enough that he noticed. He didn't stick around to see if it happened again.

He found the study, and the box was sitting right where the lawyer had said it would be, on a desk buried under years of undisturbed paper. It was lighter than it looked, which felt like good news for about three seconds, right up until he lifted it and something inside shifted — not the way things usually shift when you pick them up, but the way something with real weight shifts when it decides, on its own, to move.

That was when he heard the tapping behind him. Slow. Even. Fingernails on glass.

He turned around before he'd decided to.

Something stood in the doorway, tall in a way that didn't look impressive so much as wrong, the proportions a little off, like someone had tried to draw a person from a description they'd only half heard. It had no face to speak of. Just smooth skin where a face should be, and a single long opening across the middle of it that worked like a mouth.

Elias's breath went ragged. His hands shook hard enough that he nearly dropped the box.

The thing opened its mouth, and what came out sounded like someone trying to breathe with water in their lungs.

Elias didn't wait around to find out what it wanted. He put his shoulder through the study window and went straight out onto the balcony, glass and all, into fog so thick he couldn't see the ground, just hear the sea somewhere far below, working at the rocks the way it probably had for a hundred years before he was ever born.

The thing followed him through the broken window, and the glass didn't slow it down even a little.

His back hit the stone railing, and there was nowhere left to go.

The box under his arm started moving again, small scratching sounds coming from somewhere inside it, and he noticed, in a distant sort of way, that the rhythm matched his own heartbeat, almost exactly.

The creature stopped where it was. It tilted its head to one side, slow, with a sound like knuckles cracking, almost like it was curious.

Then it reached out one long finger and laid it on top of the box.

The cold went through the metal and into his chest all at once, and his heart gave one hard, painful stumble before it just stopped altogether. The sound of the sea faded out to nothing. And the last thing he felt, before there wasn't anything left to feel it with, was a hand closing around his throat, slow and almost gentle, like whoever it belonged to had all the time in the world.

They found him on the balcony three days later, when someone finally came looking. The box was still there, sitting a few feet from the body, untouched. Nobody wanted to be the one to pick it up so it stayed there. 

The coroner called the death a heart attack. 

A few months after that, the lawyer put the word out again. He needed someone new — someone who needed the money badly enough not to ask too many questions about the last man who'd taken the job, or the one before him.