The Box
The package arrived on a chilly, wet day early in December while Ash was at school. Mum put it on the side in the kitchen, with the rest of the post. When Ash came home, she walked straight past it, kicking off her school shoes and heading for the biscuit jar. It was on her way back, however, trailing crumbs from the corner of her mouth and down the front of her uniform, that she spotted the name on the package, and realised it was for her.
It looked just like the parcels her Dad received almost daily – small brown padded envelopes with interesting bulges, which inevitably turned out to be printer ink or camera parts.
Ash pulled impatiently at the parcel tape of her own package now, spiking her finger on a concealed staple which made her yelp. She gave in and fetched the scissors, carefully snipping the taped end open. As she peered inside, she could see the rectangular end of a box. She put her hand in to draw it out, and the movement released a scent from inside the parcel. It was a strange smell – of warm spices, and the smell of the rosin her Mum used to help her violin bow grip the strings. And something else – a scent of the brightly coloured fabrics from India and Morocco from the shop in the big town nearby that sold rugs and cushions and things made of wicker. Ash shivered. The smell was at once strange but familiar – like the feeling you get when you walk into your home again after a long holiday away. It made her think of Christmas.
The box itself was rectangular and made of a dark wood. It was small enough to be held comfortably across the palm of Ash’s hand, but it felt solid and had a weight to it. It seemed to Ash to be very old – although the wood was pitted in places, and mottled with dark specks, the edges of the box were smooth in the way that wooden things become when they have been handled many times. The lid was hinged and fitted closely, fastening with a pin and a hook arrangement that was made of some kind of dull yellowish metal, hammered very thin. Ash set the box on the kitchen worktop, and carefully lifted the lid.
It was empty. The inside of the box was stained almost black with age and looked as if it might have once held some kind of ointment because when Ash ran her finger along the bottom of the box it seemed coated with something sticky. And then, as if she had somehow triggered it by touching the box, came the smell again – stronger this time. For reasons she could not explain, Ash felt almost tearful, and suddenly light-headed. The kitchen she was standing in slowly seemed to be pulling away from her, becoming oddly distant as if she was looking at it from the other end of a tunnel. The box on the other hand looked larger than before – Ash was still peering in but found she could no longer see the bottom of it. As she stared she felt herself begin to lean towards it – no, it was more than that – she could feel her whole body tingling as the pulling sensation grew stronger – it was as if the box was beginning to suck her in!
It was Ash’s Mum who inadvertently rescued her from being swallowed by the box - stumbling over Ash’s discarded school shoes as she entered the kitchen.
‘Honestly Ashy – put them in the cupboard will you?’
Ash was jolted back to the kitchen with a jump, catching the lid of the box with her hand and slapping it shut. She steadied herself against the worktop, heart thumping.
‘What’s that love?’ Mum asked, picking up the box and flipping open the lid before Ash had time to stop her.
‘Mum!’ gasped Ash, looking in horror at the box. Nothing happened. Mum looked at her with slight frown. ‘Ash, are you ok love?’ she put a hand to her daughter’s forehead. ‘Early night, I think. Only two more weeks until the holidays. Who sent you this? Mum turned the box over in her hand and picked up the packaging, looking for clues.
‘Hmm, no sender address, and I can’t make out the postmark. Perhaps it’s an early Christmas present from someone – funny sort of gift for you though – it’s not exactly a pretty thing.’
‘I like it’ said Ash firmly, rather surprising herself. She grabbed the box as quickly as she dared to without appearing rude, and darted out of the kitchen, thumping up the stairs to her room as Mum called after her in exasperation ‘SHOES, Ash!’.
Three weeks later, it was Christmas Eve. Ash’s Dad hauled the Christmas tree downstairs from the loft, metal spike protruding from the battered cardboard box held together with string. Ash loved putting up the Christmas decorations. The Christmas Eve thing was a family tradition – although Ash begged every year to put them up earlier like most of her friends did.
At the bottom of the shoe box was the nativity set, fixed in place behind the cellophane window of its box with pieces of elastic. The figures looked like people from a painting, with flowing robes and noble expressions, but they were made from plastic stamped underneath with ‘made in China’. Mum helped with the tree, but the nativity scene was always Ash’s job. Ash felt it had to be done right. On the windowsill she would arrange Mary and Joseph behind the manger, turned slightly in towards it. The shepherds on the left (one of them balanced precariously on his stand, one foot having snapped off long ago), the kings in a procession on the right, tallest at the back, the one bending down nearest to the manger. The cow and donkey angled to one side, the angel blu-tacked to the window frame.
Ash stepped back to check her work. She frowned at the baby Jesus. He was moulded as part of the manger, lying on yellow painted plastic straw. He looked like a cherub – with large fat cheeks and chunky limbs. His lips had been carelessly painted red – that is to say, his lips had been almost entirely missed by the painter, who had instead planted two tiny red smears to the left of his nose. A seam of plastic from the cheap moulding ran from one side of the manger to the other right across his middle. It was all entirely unsatisfactory.
At that moment Mum called her for tea, and absent-mindedly Ash slipped the manger into her pocket.
That evening, as she said goodnight to Mum and Dad and climbed the stairs to bed she felt a squeeze of excitement in her stomach as she thought about all the fun of the following day. Although she tried very hard to get to sleep, thoughts of presents, her Christmas stocking, and her visiting grandparents tumbled in her head until eventually she was utterly awake again. She sighed, clicked on her bedside light and sat up.
At first she thought she could smell cooking from downstairs; it took a moment or two for her to recognise the scent that she now knew was coming from the shelf above her desk in the corner of her room. As she crossed the room to the box, she trod on something hard with her bare foot. She snatched it up crossly, half hopping the rest of the way – it was the manger again.
Ash eyed the box. It was closed, and it had remained so since the day she had brought it up to her room. She felt her heart begin to race as she tentatively reached out a hand towards it. Swallowing hard, she slowly lifted the lid. Harder, and faster this time than it had been on that first occasion in the kitchen, the room began to slip from view. She felt her hand being drawn towards and into the box – it was a little like the sensation of putting your hand over the vacuum cleaner tube and feeling it pulled by the suction. The opening of the box was gaping now, and totally dark. The smell of exotic spice was heady and overwhelming. As Ash felt the dragging, sucking feeling become almost unbearable, her feet slipped from under her, her whole body twisted suddenly, and all was still and dark.
Some time later, Ash opened her eyes and almost immediately closed them again because of the piercing white light. Shielding her eyes, she sat up carefully and took in her surroundings. She seemed to be in some kind of old shed or barn, with walls of smooth plastered stone. Parts of the barn were dark, and she could hear animals snorting quietly, shifting in the straw that covered the floor. It was warm, and the smell of straw and animal dung filled the air. Here and there were openings where the rough wooden roof needed mending, and it was through these holes that shafts of bright cool light seemed to spotlight areas of the shack. Then she heard the voices.
A few feet behind her in the main part of the barn, a man and a woman were speaking in low tones in a language that Ash did not understand. They hadn’t seen her, in the shadows. Shakily Ash turned, got to her feet, and took a step forward. As she did so, she froze in amazement at the scene before her.
The man and woman were sitting in the straw, wrapped in what looked like long cloaks or blankets. The strong clear light flooding through a hole in the roof above them picked out their features - they looked tired, but they held a quiet joy. In the feeding trough to the left of the woman Ash saw the outline of a baby bundled in cloth.
As she stared, she heard more voices and turned in the direction of the sound. A group of men, oddly dressed in lengths of rough cloth came jostling into the barn, talking loudly, animatedly, shoving each other forward and one by one falling silent as they beheld the scene in front of them. Ash watched as they in turn bowed low to the couple and knelt before the tiny child in the feeding trough, gazing open mouthed and teary eyed.
It was, after all, just a baby. But Ash felt a lump rise in her own throat, and a flood of such strange emotion in her own heart that she didn’t even notice herself cross the straw until suddenly all eyes were upon her.
Heat and colour rose in her face. She opened her mouth to speak but found she could not. Then the woman smiled gently and held out her hand towards Ash. Ash held out her own hand – and found she was still clasping the plastic manger, complete with its plastic baby. Without knowing why, she put it down in the straw by the feeding trough. Ash looked into the eyes of the real baby in the trough, and began to laugh. The light illuminating the figures in the barn grew steadily brighter. Ash looked up through a gap in the roof and saw it was not the moon as she had expected, but a star.
The light seemed to search her and know her – it grew brighter and brighter but she held her gaze, letting it fill her up inside until she no longer knew where she ended and the light began.
………………………………………………………………………………………..
It was morning. Ash awoke on the floor of her bedroom, used tissues and fluff under her bed coming slowly into focus. She sat up stiffly, rubbing her arms and legs. The box lay open on the floor next to her. Ash lifted it to her face and, smiling to herself, slowly breathed in through her nose. The smell had a name. Frankincense.
Many Christmases came and went after that. They never did find the plastic manger and baby Jesus. Even the box eventually became lost and was forgotten. But for Ash, what happened to her that Christmas, somehow completed all the rest.
