The Box in the Barn
Shoals, Indiana – Late October
It was the kind of cold that soaked through your coat and settled in your
bones. The leaves had turned brittle on the wind, and the sky was the color of
old tin. I hadn’t been back to Shoals in years—didn’t think I’d ever come back,
if I’m being honest—but when my cousin called to tell me Uncle Ray had passed,
something pulled me home.
The house was empty. Not just empty of people, but of time itself. Ray
hadn’t changed a thing in twenty years. Same gas stove, same ticking mantle
clock, same dusty drawing of Jug Rock hanging crooked by the front door. The
man was obsessed with that rock formation, said it held “secrets older than the
hills.”
I figured it was just eccentric rambling. Ray always had a flair for
mystery.
It wasn’t until I opened the old tobacco barn behind the house that
things started to change. The lock had rusted nearly through, but it gave way
with a firm twist of the crowbar I found in the truck.
Inside, it smelled of hay, oil, and old wood. Dust danced in the beams of
light slanting through the boards. Tucked under a rotting saddle blanket was a
wooden crate with my name on it—ELI, scrawled in fading Sharpie.
Inside the crate was a journal wrapped in oilcloth. Along with it, a
metal box locked with a curious three-digit combination. The journal had one
phrase on the first page in Ray’s unmistakable handwriting:
“To find what was taken, follow what remains. Jug, Bluff, Falls, Hill.”
And beneath that:
“It was never just a rock, Eli. It was a cipher.”
No comments:
Post a Comment