Dear Diary 1977

Last Item in the Safe

The safe stood open. A black void gaped in the paneled wall. On the floor before it sat the anomaly. It was small. In the dim lighting of the study, the box looked like a discarded paving stone or an ancient hymnal. It measured four by six inches. It was a rectangular block of pitted iron that absorbed the light around it. Jennifer sat on her heels. Her breath caught in the quiet. The iron box was not only scarred. It held a face. A raised carving of a woman’s screaming mouth stretched across the top panel.

The features were distorted. The lips were pulled wide. The teeth were uneven. The eyes were squeezed shut as if bracing for impact. The metal around the face looked warped, as if it had once been molten and had frozen in the middle of a cry. The edges of the carving were rubbed down. Someone had tried to scrape it away. The apotropaic marks cut across the cheeks and forehead. They formed a cage of jagged lines around the trapped expression. The single riveted eye sat above the carved face like a blind sentinel. The silver wire crossed over the mouth. It pinned the scream shut.

The iron looked older than any artifact she had ever seen. Layers of corrosion formed dark bands across its surface, each one a different shade of black or red, as if the metal had aged in geological epoch instead of human years. Deep pits marked the sides. They looked like the cavities left by ancient erosion. Thin fractures branched across the lid like dried riverbeds. The carved female face sat at the center of this damage. The warped metal around it made the frozen scream appear stretched by centuries of pressure. Faint geometric lines circled the face. They were almost erased. They did not match any alphabet she recognized. The box smelled like cave dust and scorched stone. The heat rising from it felt dry, as if it had been buried in a desert long before her father was born.

The carved face drew her attention at once. The scream was frozen in the iron, but the closed eyes seemed to open when she looked at them. They did not move. They did not shift. They simply aligned her gaze. She felt a sharp pressure in her chest. Her breath thinned. A cold sweat formed along her spine. The carved features were only lines and shadows, yet she felt exposed. It felt as if the face could see through her skin and into the soft parts beneath. She tried to look away. However, her eyes did not obey. Her muscles locked. The room faded. The face held her in place. It was only a carving. It felt older than language. It felt alive in a way that made her stomach hollow. She stared at it. She could not stop.

Jennifer’s whole body turned cold at once. The chill spread from her spine to her arms and legs. Her fingers went numb. Her breath thinned. A faint dizziness rolled through her. The room tilted. It felt as if something pressed against her thoughts. She tried to lift the iron box. It did not move. Her hands slipped. Her knees shook. She pushed harder. The weight did not shift. She pulled back. She steadied herself against the safe. Her breath came in short bursts. She looked at the box again. She felt the cold deepen. She could not look away.

Jennifer Meininger’s whole body turned cold. The chill spread through her arms and legs. Her breath thinned. A faint dizziness rolled through her. The room tilted. It felt as if something pressed against her thoughts. She tried to lift the iron box. It did not move. Her hands slipped. Her arms shook. The weight stayed fixed in place. She pulled back. She steadied herself against the safe. Her breath came in short bursts. She looked at the box again.

The fifty-pound box overwhelmed her strength. Her arms shook. Her grip slipped. The iron did not move. The cold in her body deepened. It spread from her chest to her hands and legs. Her breath became shallow. A faint dizziness rolled through her. The room tilted for a moment. Her vision narrowed. These sensations made her step back from the box. She heard a soft whisper. It was faint and brief. It faded before she could understand it. The silence that followed felt heavier than the sound itself.

Jennifer’s attention shifted away from the box. She steadied herself against the large safe. She forced her breath to slow. She looked past the iron. A thin shape rested against the back wall of the safe. It was an envelope. The paper was slightly yellowed along the edges. The surface held a thin layer of dust. The folds were crisp, as if they had been tucked away and never handled again. It looked like something placed carefully and then forgotten.

She reached inside. Her fingers brushed the stiff paper. It felt dry from years without light or airflow. She pulled the envelope out. A folded note sat inside. The handwriting remained clear. The ink had softened only at a few strokes where the pen had pressed harder. The lines looked steady, but the paper around them showed faint impressions from the writing. The note looked recent enough to read easily, yet old enough to show that it had been sealed away for several seasons without being touched.

To whoever finds this,

I never opened the box. I told myself it was caution. In truth, it was fear. I purchased this object in 1949 from a dealer of antiquities in San Francisco. The shop belonging to the man was located on Grant Avenue. I recently graduated from Harvard Law School. My firm was failing before it even began. My wife has just given birth to our daughter. I was desperate. I had no money. No clients. No prospects. I was drowning.

The dealer knew what the box was. He smiled when I told him about my struggles. He said he had exactly what I needed. He showed me the box. He told me it was ancient. Powerful. He said it would turn everything around. He promised me success. Wealth. Everything I had ever wanted. He said previous owners had become titans of industry. Men of influence and power. He made it sound like a blessing.

He never mentioned the curse. He never warned me. He wanted me to buy it. He wanted to get rid of it. I did not understand that until years later. When I tried to find him. When I went back to Grant Avenue and found the shop empty. When the neighboring shopkeepers claimed no such dealer had ever been there. He knew what he was doing. He saw a desperate man. A struggling attorney with a newborn daughter and a failing practice. He saw an easy mark. He sold me a curse and called it salvation.

I bought it anyway. I was that desperate. Within six months my firm was thriving. Within two years, I was wealthy. Within five years I was one of the most successful attorneys in the city. Every case I touched turned to gold. Every investment paid off. Money poured in faster than I could spend it. I told myself I had earned it. I told myself it was skill. I told myself the box was just a curiosity. A superstition. Nothing more.

I was wrong. My mother began to forget small things first. Names. Dates. Where she had placed her keys. Then larger things. Her son's face. Her own address. By the end she did not recognize anyone. She would stand at the window for hours whispering to someone who was not there. She scratched symbols into the walls. She stopped sleeping. She stopped eating. She died in 1957. She was fifty-nine years old. The doctors called it early dementia. I know better.

My brother disappeared in 1959. He left his office one afternoon to meet a client. He never arrived. The police found his car parked on the Golden Gate Bridge. The door was open. His briefcase was on the seat. His wallet was inside. There was no note. His body was never found. No evidence of foul play. He simply ceased to exist. The box was in my house when it happened.

I have kept the box for twenty-three years. I told myself I was containing it. I was protecting others. I was wrong. It does not need to be opened to cause harm. It draws from the people near it. It hollows them out slowly. Deliberately. My wife is showing the signs now. She wakes screaming. She says something is standing at the foot of our bed. She has begun scratching at her arms. She says she feels it under her skin. She does not sleep more than an hour at a time. I have taken her to doctors. They prescribe pills. The pills do nothing. I know what is happening. I have seen it before.

My own thoughts have become unreliable. I wake with the certainty that I should end my life. The feeling is not mine. I know this because it arrives fully formed. Complete. It is not despair. It is not depression. It is a command. A voice that is not my voice. It tells me exactly how to do it. It shows me the methods. It promises relief. I have resisted it. But the voice grows louder each month. Each week. Each day.

I buried the box three times. Once in a storage facility in Oakland. Once in the woods north of the city. Once in a vault in Los Angeles. Each time I am in immense pain within hours. A longing that tears through my chest. A physical ache that will not stop. I cannot eat. I cannot sleep. I cannot think of anything except the box. I retrieve it every time. The longest I lasted was three days. I drove two hundred miles through the night in order to get it back. I was weeping when I dug it up.

It wants to be opened. I will not do it. I do not know what is inside. I do not want to know. The weight is not natural. The heat is not natural. I cannot explain it in any way that satisfies the part of me that still believes in reason. I only know that this antique box has destroyed my family. It will destroy me. It may have already begun. I have sent my only daughter, Jennifer far away, to France so that this curse will not affect her. I should have done this much sooner, I hope it wasn’t too late.

If you must handle it, do not touch it with bare skin. Wear gloves. Wrap it in cloth. Do not look at the carved face for longer than a moment. The eyes will seem to open. They do not. But if you stare too long you will believe they do. And once you believe it, the dreams begin. The dreams are the warning. They start pleasant. Familiar. Then they twist. You will see people you love. You will see them suffering. You will see yourself causing the suffering. You will wake believing you have done terrible things. You will question your own memories. You will lose track of what is real. This is how it begins to take you.

Do not study it. Do not try to understand it. Take it far from here. Find the deepest water you can reach. Drop it in. Do not hesitate. Do not look back. Do not retrieve it no matter what you feel. No matter how much it hurts. Let it sink. Let it stay buried. I have spent twenty-three years wealthy beyond measure. I have never been happy. I have never been free. The box gave me everything I thought I wanted. It took everything that mattered. My mother. My brother. My wife's sanity. My own mind. My peace.

I fear my wife and I do not have much time left. Something is coming. I can feel it. The box is impatient now. It has taken enough. It wants more. It wants the final offering. If you are reading this, then I have left you with a burden I could not resolve. I am sorry. I tried to protect everyone. I failed. I hope you will make the choice I could not.

Destroy this letter after you read it. Do not keep any record of what I have written here. Do not tell anyone what you found. Take the box. Take it now. Take it to the ocean. Drop it in the deepest water you can find. Do not let it claim another generation.

May God forgive me.

Henry Meininger, December 1972

Jennifer finished the letter. Her hands felt cold. She read the lines again. The handwriting was familiar. The fear behind the words was not. She told herself it was just the stress. She told herself it was the product of a man who had carried too much for too long. She folded the paper with care. She slipped it back into the envelope. She set it on the dresser as if it were fragile. She looked at the box inside the safe. The heat rising from the iron felt stronger now. She looked at the carved screaming face one more time. It seemed to look back at her. A faint pressure settled in her chest.

She stepped back. Jennifer steadied her breath. She reminded herself that people wrote strange things when they were afraid. The thought did not settle her nerves. She pushed the safe door until it was almost closed. She left it slightly open. She could not bring herself to shut it. She walked out of the master bedroom. Her legs felt heavy. The hallway felt colder than before. She reached the living room where she had left the roll of blue painter’s tape. She picked it up. She forced her mind toward the list she had made that morning. She needed to tag the sofa. She needed to sort the lamps. She needed to keep moving.

Jennifer Meininger placed a tag on the first lamp. Her hand shook. She pressed the tape down twice to hide the tremor. She moved to the next item. She focused on the texture of the ceramic base. She focused on the sound of the tape peeling from the roll. She focused on anything that was not the safe in the bedroom. Her thoughts drifted back to the letter. She pushed them away. They returned. She pushed them away again. She told herself the envelope was old. She told herself the ink had bled. She told herself her father had been tired. She told herself the box was only metal.

She tagged the sofa. She marked the end tables. She folded a stack of blankets for donation. Her movements were steady, but her breath was thin. The house felt too quiet. The air felt too still. She kept working. She kept her hands busy. She kept her mind occupied. She avoided looking toward the bedroom hallway. She avoided thinking about the heat of the iron. She avoided the memory of the faint whisper that had brushed the edge of her thoughts. She told herself she would deal with the safe later. She told herself she would finish the living room first. She worked until the light outside shifted. She worked until her shoulders ached. She worked because stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant returning to the letter.