The Cardboard Box

I met Mara at a temp agency when I was nineteen, a wiry girl with a penchant for thrift-store sweaters and a laugh that didn’t quite match the look in her eyes. We bonded over a shared love of terrible coffee and a mutual disdain for the agency’s patronizing counselor, and within weeks, she’d moved out of the cramped apartment she shared with a woman she called ‘The Sink’ because she never washed a dish. It was a strange name, but Mara had a way of making things sound ominous.

She came to stay with my family in our cramped duplex, and despite her odd habits—the candles she lit at odd hours, the weathered tarot cards she’d flick through like a nervous habit—she was easy to have around. My folks liked her, said she had a good head on her shoulders, though my mother once caught her staring at the ceiling with a look of intense concentration, as if listening to something. When we decided to get a place of our own, we found a basement apartment in an old Victorian on Maple Street, split into three units. The landlord, a heavyset woman named Mrs. Kowalski, lived on the top floor. The basement was dark, with that damp, cool smell of old stone, but it was cheap, and the high windows let in a sliver of light.

A month into the lease, Mrs. Kowalski came down to do laundry one afternoon, and we got to talking. She mentioned, almost casually, that the house had a few ‘guests’—her words—including her deceased mother, who she claimed still liked to rearrange the kitchen towels. She laughed, but there was a tightness around her eyes. I smiled, said something about not being bothered by ghosts, more out of politeness than belief. Mara was quiet, just sipping her tea, and I could see her looking around the room, taking it all in.

Two weeks later, at a quarter past midnight, Mara shook me awake. Her face was pale, and she smelled faintly of sage, though we didn’t burn any. She said, ‘There are things in this apartment, and they don’t like you. They’ve been watching you since you moved in, and they’re waiting for you to be alone. I can see them. You should leave.’ I rubbed my eyes, told her she was freaking me out, that it was probably just the old pipes. She shook her head, her eyes darting to the corner of my room where a dark shape seemed to gather. ‘No, they’re here. They hate you because you can’t see them, because you ignore them. They hate being ignored.’ She grabbed my arm. ‘Don’t go to work tomorrow. Stay home. Keep the lights on. And don’t open the closet.’ I laughed it off, but she was gone before I could argue, her footsteps fading as she walked back to her room.

I didn’t stay home. I had a shift at the pharmacy, and I figured Mara was just having a bad night. But when I came back, the apartment was cold, even for summer. The air had a weight to it, like a held breath. I found Mara in the kitchen, sitting at the table with a candle burning in front of her. She looked up at me with an expression I’d never seen—a kind of sorrowful pity. ‘I tried to warn you,’ she said. ‘They know you laughed. They heard you. They’re very sensitive.’ I laughed nervously, but as I walked to my room, I felt a pressure in my ears, a faint static like a radio between stations. I opened my closet to hang up my coat, and that’s when the smell hit me—a cloying sweetness, like rotting flowers, mixed with something metallic. I slammed the door shut.

Sleep came hard, and I woke at three a.m. to the sound of a cardboard box being dragged across the floor in the living room. I got up, heart pounding, and found the room empty. The box—a dusty, unmarked cardboard box I’d never seen before—sat in the middle of the carpet, its flaps slightly open. Mara was in the doorway, her face lit by the moonlight from the window. ‘Don’t open it,’ she said. ‘Whatever you hear, don’t open it.’ She backed away into the shadows, and I stood there, paralyzed, as the box began to move again, not dragged, but as if something inside was pushing against the flaps. A low moan, like a man in pain, seeped out. I backed away to my room, locked the door, and sat with my back against the wall until dawn, listening to the sounds of dragging and whispering that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

The next morning, I found the box gone. The apartment was silent, bright with sunlight. I searched every corner, but there was no trace of it. Then I noticed the closet door in my room was slightly ajar. I pulled it open slowly, and there was the box, sitting on the floor where my shoes used to be. I didn’t want to look, but a force—a curiosity that felt unlike my own—made me kneel down and lift the flaps. Inside, I saw a photograph, old and sepia-toned, of a family standing in front of this very house. In the middle, a young woman with a severe face stared out, her eyes like dark holes. Under the photo, a child’s drawing of a figure with long arms reaching out, and the words, ‘They don’t like you either.’ I dropped it, slamming the box shut, and stumbled back.

I tried to call Mara, but her phone went straight to voicemail. I searched her room, but it was empty—her clothes, her candles, her tarot cards, all gone, as if she’d never lived there. The only thing left was a single tarot card, face up on the pillow: The Tower, with a lightning bolt striking a crumbling turret, and on the back, in her neat handwriting, ‘I had to leave. They’re attached to you, not me. I’m sorry. Burn the box, but don’t do it in the apartment. Go to the woods. And whatever you do, don’t speak to the woman in the photograph. She’s the one who knows.’

I didn’t burn the box. Instead, I threw it in the dumpster behind the building, but the next morning, it was back in my closet, the photo now wedged in the lid. I took it to a pawn shop, left it on the counter, but it reappeared at my feet when I got back to the apartment. I finally decided to go to the woods, as Mara had said. I drove to the state park, carrying the box in a trash bag, the bag growing heavier with every step. I found a clearing, doused the box with lighter fluid, and set it ablaze. The flames rose high, and from the smoke, a voice—clear and cold, like a woman’s—said, ‘You think fire makes us go away? We don’t live in the box. We live in you. You ignored us, so now we’re going to make you see.’ I screamed, but when the fire died, the box was gone, leaving only blackened grass.

I returned home, but the apartment was no longer the same. Every mirror showed a faint shadow behind me. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the photograph, the woman’s eyes. And I heard them—whispers, so faint I couldn’t make out words, but they were always there, a constant undercurrent. One night, I woke up to find the woman from the photograph standing in the corner of my room, her head tilted, a smile that wasn’t a smile on her lips. She said, ‘Now you see us. Now you can’t forget.’ I tried to scream, but no sound came out.

I moved out a week later, but it didn’t help. I’m in a new apartment now, a bright, modern place with no history, but the whispers persist. Every so often, I catch a glimpse of a cardboard box in the periphery of my vision, but when I turn, it’s gone. The woman appears in my dreams, and she’s always walking toward me, her arms outstretched. I’ve started leaving lights on, always, and I check my closet every night before bed. I know it’s not over. I know what they said is true. They live in me now, because I once laughed at the idea of them. And they don’t forgive. They just wait.