Treasure Box Read online

  "What's this beast? You mean the book of Revelation?"

  "I mean the dragon. There might be many of them, but I've never heard of more than one upon the earth at the same time. It comes to a body that began human, but once the beast has it, the shape changes to whatever the beast desires. It came to Adolf Hitler when he was trying to paint in England, and it owned him from then on until it had no power left except to poison the body it dwelt in. It was in the ancient conquerors who built up piles of skulls and spread fear through the world. It loves death. It also hungers for strength. The stronger the human whose body it steals, the stronger the beast is until the human body dies."

  "So it can be killed."

  "How many suffer and die before it falls? Yes, it can be killed—eventually. And in this age, who is pure enough to kill it?"

  "Pure? Like St. George?" Quentin couldn't help laughing. It was the cliché of romantic stories—slaying the dragon to save the maiden.

  "Why do you laugh? Why do you think Rowena chose you?"

  "Not because of my purity," said Quentin.

  "What do you know about it?" said Mrs. Tyler. "You have to be pure to hold on to any of yourself in its presence. Her plan doesn't work if you're not pure."

  Quentin laughed again, only bitterly this time. "She's going to be disappointed."

  Mrs. Tyler ignored him. "If she had let me teach her, she would know that you can't control the beast. She must have seen my memory of the powers that Paulie seemed to have. How could she not have understood, if she saw so much?"

  "Maybe she didn't believe about the beast," said Quentin.

  "She knew the powers she herself had. She knew my memories were true. What other evidence did she need?"

  "Maybe she thought you had gone insane, and this was a paranoid fantasy about your own son being possessed by the spirit of a dragon. If all she saw in your memory was a few special powers that he had, and then you overreact and kill him—"

  "It wasn't Paul, it was the—"

  "How did you know it was the beast? Were you really sure?"

  "Of course I was sure! What kind of monster do you think I am?"

  "I don't know. What kind of monster do you think you are?"

  "What are you saying?"

  "Why did you wait until he was nearly two before you did it? If you were sure?"

  "Because it was my son's face. Because it was my son's voice. Because it was trying to hide itself from me until my son had grown stronger and I no longer would have the power to resist. And it almost worked, I almost waited too long. It almost had the power to stop me. But I got my vengeance. I didn't set it free. I locked it up."

  "Inside the treasure box."

  "One time it was hidden in a bottle and cast into the sea, but bottles float to shore and are found."

  "A genie?"

  "It doesn't grant wishes except its own," she said. "Another time it was hidden with a corpse inside a mummy case in Egypt, but thieves found their way into the secret chamber and it was free again. Killing it solves the problem for today, but then it's free to find another host. I was not going to let it do to another mother what it had done to me."

  "Had you ever seen this beast before?" asked Quentin.

  "Of course not. But I knew the lore. Unlike Rowena I learned everything from my mother. And from my grandmother. I knew what to look for."

  "Had any of them seen this beast?"

  "Don't you dare accuse me of what you're accusing me of."

  "I'm not accusing you of anything," said Quentin. "I'm just saying that maybe the reason Rowena didn't believe it was the beast was because deep down in your heart of hearts, you weren't sure either."

  "Do you think I would have cut into that precious body if I had the slightest doubt?"

  "Somewhere in the back of your mind you fear that you went mad and murdered your own son."

  "No!" But it was not a word, it was a wail. Somehow from that frail body there came such a cry that it must have been audible in every room in the rest home.

  Then, suddenly, her body went slack. She rolled onto her back and lay there, body symmetrical, eyes closed. Her spark was gone again.

  But not far. On the wall the word was blazoned so brightly it almost blinded him:

  LIAR

  "I wasn't accusing," he tried to explain again. "I was just trying to figure out why Rowena could search your memory and still believe that you murdered him."

  GET OUT

  "All right." He went to the door and opened it. He could hear pounding footsteps and the jammering of many voices. Of course the others in the rest home had heard Mrs. Tyler scream. There was Sally Sannazzaro, rushing toward the room, a look of horror on her face.

  "Sally," said Quentin, "it's all right! I didn't hurt her; I just said something that made her angry. She's asleep again."

  I HOPE YOU DIE

  The words covered the corridor wall like a mural. He turned and on the other side it said:

  I LOVED MY BABY

  "I know you did, Mrs. Tyler," he said softly, knowing she could hear him, knowing that she wasn't listening.

  Sally pushed past him into Mrs. Tyler's room. Only when she had satisfied herself that the old woman was still breathing did she come back out. He was afraid she was going to beat him up on the spot.

  "All we did was talk," he insisted, holding up his hands to forestall her.

  "Get out," she said. "You're never coming back here, do you understand me?"

  "Sally, I didn't hurt her. She called me here. She wants my help, and I want to help her. I just said something that made her angry because it was true."

  Mrs. Tyler's answer fairly burned on the walls, the same word, over and over:

  LIAR LIAR LIAR

  "But she'll get over it," said Quentin, "and when she does we need to talk again."

  "Not a chance," said Sannazzaro. "Now get out, you and your friend Bolt. You've caused enough trouble in this rest home."

  "All right, I'm going."

  "I've already punched the alarms to bring the police and paramedics. So you'd better go fast."

  "Thanks for waiting to find out the truth before calling in the cavalry," Quentin said angrily. "I didn't violate your trust."

  "My trust ended when my friend screamed. It sounded like you were tearing her apart with your bare hands!"

  Quentin burned with frustration at having lost Sannazzaro's friendship so unfairly. Yet even her snap judgment of him made him want to be closer to her. Because she was the opposite of Madeleine. Instead of being exactly what he wished for, shaped to his every desire, she was completely herself, and whatever she gave him she would give him freely, as an equal. Most people Quentin knew were at least a little bit like Madeleine, trying to outguess him, trying to give him whatever he wanted to get on his good side. So he could never be sure who they really were. He might not understand Sannazzaro, but whatever she was, it was real. He wanted to reach out and shake her and shout at her until she believed him: I'm real, too. I'm as real as you are. But then, maybe he wasn't. Maybe you had to be as pure to stay in the company of good people as to survive among beasts.

  Chief Bolt sauntered out of the elevator. "Anybody dead?" he asked cheerfully.

  "You are, if you don't get out of here right now," said Sannazzaro. "I'll kill you myself and call it self-defense."

  They got in the elevator, Sannazzaro with them. "I'm going to see you out the door and into your car and driving away."

  Wordlessly they rode down. But as she followed them to the door, she thought of something else to say. "I'm going to have a guard posted at her room. Her estate can afford it and I'm going to make sure you never get in there again."

  Quentin stopped just outside the glass front door, the snow blowing around him. He could hear the sirens of the approaching emergency vehicles. "Sally," he said, "I kept my word and did no harm. When you want me back here, just call me. I'll come."

  Sannazzaro closed the door in his face and locked it.

 
Bolt was already waiting beside the car. "Get in, bonehead, we don't want to be here all night answering questions."

  Quentin didn't want to stay with Bolt, but there wasn't much choice right now. There was only one car that would get him away from here before the police arrived, and Bolt had to be in it. Quentin had a hard time opening the door, trembling as he was with rage and frustration and weariness and fear at the things that Mrs. Tyler had told him, at Sannazzaro's unfairness. No, it wasn't that at all. He was trembling from the cold. That's all.

  He backed the car out of the stall and headed for the parking lot entrance.

  "Don't turn right, you fool, turn left!"

  "But that's where the sirens are coming from."

  "We don't want to look like we're running away from them, Quentin. Do we?"

  "Fine, whatever, you're the cop." Quentin pulled out onto the snowy road and drove back the way he had come. They were passed by an ambulance and a firetruck. But no police. Sannazzaro hadn't called the police after all. Or else the police were slower than the others. He didn't linger to find out.

  Not till they got back on the freeway did Bolt finally ask the obvious question. "Now do you mind telling me what the hell happened?"

  "I should ask you, Bolt. What got into you back there?"

  "What are you talking about?" said Bolt. "I didn't do anything. You were the one who got to talk to the old lady. Fill me in."

  Back when they were eating chili together, Quentin had told him everything he knew up till then. But now, having seen the way he acted with Sally Sannazzaro, wondering if there might be something to Sally's belief that he had tried to smother the old lady—now Quentin didn't feel like telling him anything.

  "She didn't make any sense," he said. "She was delusional. I don't know what she thought I was, but she got frightened and screamed."

  "Well, since she's been a turnip for several years now, do we count screaming as an improvement or a deterioration?" asked Bolt. The wry tone was back in his voice, now. He was himself again. Or maybe he had been himself back in the rest home. How could Quentin know?

  "I liked Sally," said Quentin.

  "Yeah, she's a real charmer."

  Quentin looked up at the freeway sign announcing the next exit. Only it didn't say the name of a town.

  GO AHEAD

  Go ahead?

  "I got news for you, Quentin," said Bolt. "From what I know of women, Sannazzaro doesn't like you."

  She did, though, for a little while.

  The sign that should have announced restaurants at the next exit had also been altered.

  OPEN THE BOX

  "Of course, what do I know about women?" said Bolt.

  The sign promising gas stations now said:

  I WANT YOU TO

  Go ahead, open the box, I want you to. Gee, thanks, Grandmother.

  The little exit sign had also been changed.

  DIE

  "By the way, have you been noticing the signs?" said Bolt.

  "Have you?"

  "Somebody doesn't like you," said Bolt. "Can Sannazzaro do that?"

  "I doubt it," said Quentin. "It's the old lady. She's a witch. Rowena's a witch. My wife Madeleine was a succubus."

  For a moment Bolt was angry. "Rowena's not a witch!"

  "Just think about it for a second," said Quentin. "Those words aren't going up on those signs by themselves."

  "It's the old lady."

  "Yes, it's the old lady. But the other stuff wasn't her. Rowena's the one who keeps her tied down to that bed. It's a war between witches, fighting over a dragon, flinging succubuses around to win the cooperation of the occasional man. Don't think for a minute that just because you loved Rowena, she isn't one of them."

  "Yeah, well, what do you know about Rowena?"

  "Nothing. I know absolutely nothing about anything, Bolt."

  "Me too."

  "You can say that again. If you hadn't been acting like a prick back at the rest home, Sannazzaro wouldn't have gotten so angry at me."

  "I don't know what gets into me when I'm around that woman," said Bolt. "If there's any witch in this whole business, it's her."

  I'm not calling them witches metaphorically, Quentin wanted to say. I'm telling you that the woman you love probably had you enthralled, under control. That's probably what was happening to you back in the rest home.

  But there was no point in saying it. Because if it was true, Bolt wouldn't be able to understand it.

  "Anyway, it's been a long time since lunch," said Bolt. "If by some chance one of these signs actually says something about food instead of carrying your hate mail, you up for dinner?"

  How could he think of eating?

  But now that he mentioned it, Quentin was hungry too. "You sure the police won't be looking for us?"

  "We've changed counties now," said Bolt. "That sign that said liar about eight times was the county line. Besides, I don't think Sannazzaro really called the cops."

  "No, I guess not."

  "See? She likes you, Quentin. Not calling the cops on you—man, that's love."

  Quentin had to laugh in spite of himself. Bolt was back to himself again. Things would settle down at the rest home, too. Sannazzaro would realize that she overreacted. Mrs. Tyler too. Everything would be fine.

  In the meantime, what had he learned? He thought of all the stories of witches he had heard and read. The warty noses and pointy chins were obviously just prejudice against age. The magic potions were the stuff of alchemy, or the lore of folk medicine, which was used to both cure and curse. But the idea of witches calling upon the dead, sending succubuses to sleeping men, collecting macabre body parts from people they knew, all of these must have had roots in true incidents. Even the stories of witches worshiping Satan... for what might happen if this beast that Mrs. Tyler talked of should succeed in taking control of an adult body? There were plenty of people who worshiped Hitler. Caligula made himself a god. What if the beast took over some poor devil of a druid? What would that look like to people who didn't understand what those witches were doing, or who the man they worshiped really was? For the lifetime of the man it inhabited, the beast might well make witches into his personal slaves, holding bacchanals that would fit even the most bizarre medieval accounts. Witches, succubuses, dragons, the devil. To some people they would always be myths. But not to the people who were born with a greater ability to commune with spirits living and dead.

  What about me? Quentin couldn't help but wonder. He certainly had nothing like the power of these women, but he had some. He had called to Lizzy without realizing it—and without having any relic of her, either. The moment he imagined having a relic of her, he thought of what that would have entailed, taking some fragment of her body. Wasn't that just what the transplant doctors had done? Organs of her body had been scattered across the country and kept alive, binding her spirit to them until at last they died. He shuddered in revulsion.

  "Turn the heat up if you're shivering," said Bolt beside him.

  Quentin thought of how Bolt, poor man, was in love with a witch and never realized it. Rowena kissing him in the kitchen. Quentin had been pretty thoroughly enchanted by a succubus; how much stronger must it have been for Bolt, who kissed the witch herself? Was that the exact method a witch used to enthrall a man? The kiss that wakens the sleeping princess. The kiss that turns the frog into a man. A kiss before dying.

  He tried to sort through all that Mrs. Tyler had told him about thralls. A man with no will of his own. The beast would leap right past him to the woman who owned him. So if Bolt was enthralled, that would explain why Rowena couldn't use him to open the box. It would expose Rowena as surely as if she opened it herself. But what could a thrall do? Had she sent him to try to murder her mother? Maybe he wouldn't even know that was what he was about to do? His rational mind would have to make up some alternate explanation for his own actions, such as wanting to rearrange the old lady's pillows. He loved and honored Mrs. Tyler; he couldn't possibly imagine kil
ling her. Even if he found himself in the act of murdering her, the idea would be inconceivable to him.

  Dangerous people, these witches. As dangerous when they loved you as they were when they hated you. That is, if they ever really loved anybody, instead of just using them.

  Quentin pressed the long-distance speed dial number for Wayne Read on the cellular phone. It didn't really matter now if Bolt heard him or not. Rowena and Mrs. Tyler and half the witches in the world could be listening in on all his conversations and he'd never know it.

  The salutations over, Quentin got to the point. "If you don't have the address for the so-called Duncans yet, I have more information. The wife was born Rowena Tyler. And their address is probably in the file of Mrs. Anna Laurent Tyler at the Willoughby Retirement Home." He gave him the address.

  "We're still checking out other leads too," said Wayne. "If you were just there, why didn't you get the address yourself?"

  "I didn't part on good terms with the management."

  "So how is our investigator going to get the information?"

  "It doesn't have to be admissible in court, Wayne."

  "You've been reading too much detective fiction, Quentin. Most private investigators have no burglary skills whatsoever."

  "Most burglars have no burglary skills. Just walk in during business hours, take the file, Xerox the sheet with the address, and walk out. They're shorthanded right now."

  "Quentin, you live in a fantasy world."

  "We all do, Wayne. I just found out I was married to a succubus who was created by a witch. It's year-round Halloween now."

  "We'll find a sane way of getting the address."

  "Thanks."

  "By the way, Quentin, you asked me how to go about divorcing a woman who doesn't exist?"

  "I thought it might be a problem."