Джеффри Дивер: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016

She thinks — But I am safe now. I can’t be hurt now. I am alive now. I am not sick now.

After her husband died she’d been sick for some time. An actual sickness, shingles. A sickness of the heart, heartsickness, that had almost killed her.

Where are you, I am waiting for you. God damn you — have you betrayed me?

She had not! She had not betrayed him.

Dreams of wading into a river. Swimming a river, her arms and legs like lead. Dreaminess of surrender to the leaden river that drew her down, to dreamless sleep.

It’s about time. Seven years! Rats are more faithful than you.

“Hello—?”

She hears a voice, unfamiliar, yet friendly seeming, as she stands in the roadway, uncertainly. It is strange — she doesn’t remember having left her car...

In the asphalt driveway of the former house a woman is standing, waving to her. This must be Mrs. Edrick, whom she’d met seven years before when she’d sold the house through a broker.

How embarrassing! And there is another person, a man, the husband probably, in the background.

They have sighted her. She must acknowledge them now. The friendly-seeming woman is coming to speak to her.

Please. You make us uneasy.

You are always driving past our house. You are always watching us. We hate it, you are a ghost haunting our lives.

How stricken she would be, if the Edricks spoke to her in this way! She is feeling breathless as if under attack.

But Mrs. Edrick does not utter these hostile words. Mrs. Edrick is smiling pleasantly at her. The woman is just slightly younger than she, and stands with her arms folded across her chest as if cold. At a little distance, Mr. Edrick is standing hesitantly as if uncertain whether to come forward, or retreat back into the house as husbands sometimes do in such circumstances.

“Hello! Is it — Brenda?”

“Brianna.”

“ ‘Bri-anna.’ Yes. It’s been awhile since we’ve spoken. How are you?”

The question seems bold, even aggressive. How is she? — She is a widow.

“I–I’m well. I’m sorry if I...”

“Oh no, not at all! We would have called but we’d misplaced your number. We see you sometimes driving past our house — that is, your former house — and thought we’d have an opportunity to tell you: There seem to be things of yours still in the house, of which you’re probably not aware.”

Of which you’re probably not aware. The formality of the woman’s speech suggests that it has been planned, rehearsed. The widow sees now that there is something steely and resolute in the woman’s smiling face.

Things of yours still in the house. This is the crucial statement. She feels a jolt of apprehension, and yet hope.

“At least we think it must belong to you, Brianna, or to your late husband. Several boxes...”

Mrs. Edrick explains that a furnace repairman had recently come to the house and discovered, in the crawl space, several boxes taped shut with black duct tape that seemed to have been there for some time.

Crawl space. A sinister term, she’d thought it. Her husband had stored things in the basement, in the “crawl space,” which he hadn’t wanted to discard but didn’t think he needed to access any longer: boxes of old receipts, checks, IRS records, expired warranties, and miscellaneous documents. All she’d ever seen of the “crawl space” was its opening, at a height of about four feet, in one of the dank basement walls; her husband had managed to crawl inside, to leave boxes there, but she’d never felt any curiosity about exploring it.

What was the purpose of a crawl space in a house, she’d asked her husband, and he’d said he supposed it was for extra storage, and for the use of workmen who needed to access parts of the basement otherwise out of reach; electricians, for instance.

Pleasantly smiling, Mrs. Edrick leads Brianna into the kitchen. (Quickly Brianna sees that the kitchen, her former kitchen, is both familiar and utterly strange: Have the new owners repainted the walls? Is the ceiling no longer white, but an oppressive beige? The tile floor, richly dark-russet red when she’d lived here, is now a busy and unattractive swirl of pinpoint colors. A wall of cupboards seems to have disappeared.) “Here you are!” — Mrs. Edrick is handing her a soiled-looking shoebox taped shut with black duct tape. “The repairman brought this box upstairs, it’s the smallest. He says there are two or three larger boxes still there. We’d been meaning to contact you — we hope the boxes don’t contain anything too important.”

Was this rude? Brianna wonders.

But no, obviously not. Not intentionally rude.

Quickly she says, “Yes — I mean no, I’m sure the boxes don’t contain anything — important.” She is speaking hesitantly, staring at the box that exudes an air of subtle, indefinable menace.

(What could Jed have stored in a box this size? Nothing out of the ordinary, surely. Financial records, check stubs? Letters?)

(But what sort of letters, hidden away in a crawl space in a taped-over shoebox?)

How excessively intricate, the taping! Brianna recalls how carefully, over-carefully, her husband had taped packages for the mail. Taking his time, as if he’d enjoyed the simple methodical process, taping shut.

Her eyelids flutter. A sudden vision, as in a surreal film, of a human face, small, possibly a child’s face, black tape covering mouth, eyes.

What is best. Don’t question.

On the box is a badly faded label, hand-printed in the husband’s distinctive hand: 12 Feb. 2009. No other identification. She recalls the stately old Parker fountain pen he’d had. An artifact from another era, a father’s or a grandfather’s pen that required liquid ink.

After the husband’s death, the pen had disappeared.

“Oh, dear! — I hope the box wasn’t waterlogged. We had a little flood in our basement from all the rain, last spring...”

“Oh yes. We did too.”

(But why does the widow say we? She lives alone in the rental property a mile away, there is no longer any we.)

In a confiding-neighbor voice Mrs. Edrick says: “We keep all sorts of things too. In the garage mostly. It’s terrible, how things accumulate in our lives as if they had a life of their own...”

The widow murmurs agreement. She has no idea what Mrs. Edrick is chattering about. Her eyes well with tears Mrs. Edrick is politely not acknowledging.

Weighing the soiled shoebox in her hand. Yes, probably papers.

Letters. (Love letters?)

(But there were no love letters exchanged between the widow and her husband who’d never spent any time apart after they’d met.)

Her breath is coming short. Every particle of her being is crying out in astonishment — How is this possible, is this something my husband has left for me? Or is it something my husband did not ever intend for me?

She feels a moment’s vertigo. Paralysis. She has taken the shoebox from Mrs. Edrick but it is very heavy — she has had to set it down on a table.

Feeling the other woman’s eyes on her. The husband has approached silently, behind her; the Edricks have exchanged an indecipherable look.

Almost palpable, their pleas tinged with impatience, anger.

Please go away. Leave this house. Do not haunt us — no more!

But again Mrs. Edrick appears to be very friendly. Seeing the expression in the widow’s face of something like pain, and yet yearning, she says, “Brenda — I mean Brianna — if you’d like, you can examine the crawl space yourself. You have our permission! The furnace repairman said there were at least two more boxes. He might have dragged them out if I’d asked him, but I didn’t think to ask, at the time. And neither of us” — (Mrs. Edrick is referring now to her husband, whose face Brianna has not seen) — “is especially eager to crawl into such a space.”