Hi there; this is The Box of Mystery!
I have more thank-you's to give out! Hurray!
PippinBaggins: Thank you for putting my story on your Favorite Story list, and thanks for your great review! I'm glad you like Elaine so much. I haven't had to punch anyone either (yet). :b
bubblymuggle4: Wow, another great review! Thanks! You'll find out what the object is pretty soon. :) Sanford is in Lee County, which is right smack dab in the middle of N.C.
the-american-hockey-girl: Thanks for the review! You'll find out what it is in a minute. I never thought about Elaine and Ed acting like Han and Leia, but it makes a lot of sense:) Huzzah! Another N.C. girl:)
Rokhal: Thanks for subscribing to my story!
Dutchman Girl: Thanks for your review! I'm glad you love this story; I'll be updating soon!
Forbidden Insomniac: I will update soon, I promise:)
spongedork789: Thank you for your great review and for subscribing to my story! I'm glad you're enjoying it!
I'm trying very hard not to fall into the Mary Sue trap, so if Elaine starts acting like a Mary Sue in any way, please tell me.
As always, if you like what you've read, feel free to write a review. I enjoy reading them!
And now, Chapter Four! Have a Happy New Year!
Chapter Four: The Object Revealed
The bright red numbers on Ed's digital clock read 10:30 p.m., and still, Elaine didn't come.
Good grief, how long does it take for a woman to rinse out her hair?!
While he waited for her to show up, he figured he ought to do something to prepare his room for the object's examination. Ed stood up from where he sat on his twin-sized bed and reached behind the headboard to grab his fold-up card table. He always imagined this table as a stage for his victories in strip poker, not for studying random objects that washed up on the beach.
Oh well; at least he finally found a more practical use for it.
The hinges in the table squeaked loudly as he unfolded it, and he set it down in the middle of the room where there was more space. He sighed and thought about what else he could do, but he drew a blank. His argument with Elaine still weighed heavily on his mind, and every effort to distract himself from the incident proved unsuccessful.
Ed sat back on his bed and stared at the floor, letting his elbows rest on his knees. Looking back on it, he may have been a little too forward in his efforts to flirt with her. He should have known better than to touch a woman who obviously didn't care for it. He certainly should not have missed the warning signs that she was about to go ballistic.
Ed was willing to admit that, yes, he did earn that punch to the face, but he refused to acknowledge her comment about how he preferred to date whorish women. This was completely untrue; he hated those types of girls, and he often avoided them whenever he could. He preferred girls like Elaine, who maintained a certain degree of elegance about them in any setting. This was why he flirted with her in the first place, but it seemed that he went about it the wrong way. Now he doubted if she would view an invitation to date him with a sincere mindset.
Another impossibility was that she would ever come out of the shower.
He glanced at the clock again; it read 10:45 p.m. Raking his fingers through his slick black hair, he wondered if she was taking a shower or trying to drown herself like the wave attempted to do earlier.
Just then, he heard a loud knock at the door. He walked over to it and turned the knob, but he decided to have a little fun before he let her in.
"Who's there?" he asked.
"It's Elaine," a muffled voice replied.
"Elaine who?" Ed said with a grin creeping across his face.
He heard a loud annoyed groan before she yelled, "Oh for the love of God, just open the damn door!"
Ed opened the door and laughed out loud at the unenthused look on Elaine's face. She clearly didn't appreciate the humor in a knock-knock joke; her raised eyebrow and sarcastic smirk proved that quite effectively.
"You know, just for that, I ought to let Doc have a look at this instead of you," she said, and gestured to the jar she cradled in her arms. "But since you helped me recover after that wave hit me, I'll forgive you."
She walked into his room and carefully set the jar on the card table. As she walked around the table, studying the strange object from every angle and making observations about it, Ed took the time to take another good look at her. She now wore a pair of navy blue cotton pajama pants and a white tank top, both of which flattered her slim physique. Her wet hair had been gathered into a small ponytail that swung with every move she made.
"Ed? Ed! Will you please stop that?! We're not here to figure out why I'm wearing these crappy clothes. We're here to find out what this is." Elaine pointed at the object in the jar.
He stood dazed for a moment, suddenly finding himself in yet another embarrassing situation. "Sorry," he muttered. "You're just more attractive than that thing on the table."
"I'm glad you think that, otherwise I'd have to punch you again." She smiled and laughed. "Okay, then, you ready to get started?"
"I think so, yeah."
Elaine twisted the lid off the jar and reached her hand in to pull the object out. Just as she grabbed it, she stopped and looked up at Ed. "Do you have any newspaper or scrap paper? I don't want to get the table too wet and God knows what's on this thing."
"Oh yeah, I've got plenty of newspaper!" He sank to his knees and crawled under the bed. Ed reappeared shortly afterwards with a small stack of newspapers in his hands. Elaine held up the jar as he unfolded them and laid the separate pages out in layers on the card table. When he finished, she set the jar back down on top of the newspapers and took hold of the object again.
"We probably should be using gloves, but we'll have to do without for now." She glanced over at Ed standing next to her. "Ready now?"
"Yep, we are."
She slowly pulled the object out and held it for a few seconds, allowing the excess salt water to drip back into the jar. A sudden blast of thunder rumbling outside startled her, and she felt the slick object begin to slip out of her hand. She decided to abandon the plan to slowly move the artifact and instead set it down quickly on the newspaper.
Ed and Elaine stood back for a moment to look at the object, now fully exposed to the air. They somehow believed it would take on a different appearance out of the water, but the rusty barnacle-encrusted mass retained its original form.
"Well, that was disappointing," Elaine commented. "Now what? Do we wait for it to dry or . . . Ed, what are you doing?"
"We'll need to scrape the barnacles off, and to do that, we need tools," Ed explained as he dove under the bed again. "I know it's here somewhere . . . Ah, here it is!"
He pushed himself out from beneath his bed and dragged a dark green toolbox out with him. "I think these will be very helpful. Let me just take a look in here and see what I've got."
"Don't take too long, Ed." Elaine said. "This thing hasn't even been out for five minutes and the barnacles are already nearly bone dry."
This was true; there was just about no moisture left in the barnacles, and she thought this highly unusual. But what she found truly alarming was that she could actually see how the water on the object's surface was disappearing so rapidly. Instead of evaporating into the surrounding air, it was being sucked into the object itself, leaving the outer layer completely dry.
It was almost as if the object was alive.
"Okay, I've got what we need." Ed turned around carrying a screwdriver, a small hammer, and a yellow flashlight. "Here's the plan; I'll chisel away the barnacles while you hold the flashlight. I need the extra light to see what I'm doing. How does that sound?"
Elaine picked up the flashlight and gave him a nervous smile. "Sounds good to me."
Ed positioned the point of the screwdriver onto one of the larger barnacles and held it steady. Just as he was about to strike it with the hammer, Elaine let out a gasp and backed up into the corner, dropping the flashlight onto the floor with a loud clatter.
He watched the flashlight roll back and forth at his feet, then looked back up at Elaine. "What happened? What's wrong?"
"Nothing happened. It's just . . ." she swallowed thickly. "I'm terrified of that thing!"
Ed could only stare at her. "Elaine, it's an inanimate object. What could it possibly do to you?"
"I-I-I don't know," she stammered, "but . . . I'm terrified of it and I want it out of this room right now!"
Ed couldn't believe what he was hearing. She was afraid of the object, the same object that she had been dying to identify ever since she found it earlier that evening. He thought about laughing it off and dismissing it as childish behavior, but he soon changed his mind the moment he saw the change that had come over Elaine.
Before he brought his tools out, Elaine had been the smiling sarcastic woman he had come to recognize. But now, her complexion had grown completely pale; even her lips were a shade lighter. This, in addition to her darting eyes, shallow breathing and trembling hands, all expressed the terror she felt towards this object.
"Alright, calm down," he said as he set his tools down on the table. "I promise there's nothing for you to be afraid of." He picked up the flashlight, which still worked despite its fall, and walked over to Elaine. Taking her by the hand, he gently pulled her closer to the table.
He held the flashlight above the object so she could see it clearly. "It's just barnacles and rust; that's all it is. And . . . Oh, so that's what it is!"
Elaine kept staring in fear at the object. "You know what it is?"
"Well, I know what part of it is. You see these two points?" He picked up his screwdriver and pointed at the two ends of the rusty metal trapped in the barnacles. "Those used to be part of a knife. This end right here," he gestured at the point furthest away from them, "was the blade, and this square end here in front of us was the handle. Bacteria had to eat away at the handle first before the metal inside it could rust; that's why there's less rust on it. You with me so far?"
Elaine nodded but remained silent.
He set down his screwdriver, picked up the object, and held it out to her. "Here, take it."
She tried to back away from it, but Ed squeezed her hand and pulled her closer to him. "The best way to conquer your fear is to confront it, so take it." Without another word, Ed held open her hand, placed the object into her palm, and closed her fingers over it.
"Now, here's what we're going to do," Ed explained as he rummaged around in his tool box again. "There aren't any barnacles around the blade, so I think we can pull it out." He took out a pair of pliers and held them up for Elaine to see. "I'm going to pull on the handle end of the knife with these pliers while you pull the object towards you. Hold on to the middle of it so the blade doesn't accidentally cut you, okay?"
Elaine eyed the pliers nervously before looking up at Ed. "Are you sure this will work? Maybe Doc would have a better idea of what do."
"It's way past eleven, Elaine," Ed said, "I highly doubt he's even awake right now. And besides, you're the one who found it in the first place. Why do you want to let him steal your discovery from you?"
"Ed, I don't even know if it should be discovered! Let's just forget about the whole thing and throw it back into the ocean." She tried to pull it away from him, but he had already applied the pliers to the knife handle. "Ed, let go!"
"I didn't waste all this time just so you could throw it back out to sea! Now, come on!"
"Ed, stop it!"
They pulled on the object in a strange tug-of-war, neither one willing to give up. They yelled at each other to stop and let go, but these threats were ineffective. After ten minutes of struggling, Elaine and Ed still weren't about to admit defeat and, in a final effort, they each pulled as hard as their strength could allow. Elaine's arm muscles ached to the point where she thought they would simply slide off the bone. But then, the tension in her arms abruptly disappeared.
The object had slipped toward her.
Smiling in triumph, she pulled it closer and closer to her until she finally almo-
BANG BANG BANG!
Startled by the deafening pounding on Ed's door, she screamed and stumbled backwards, unintentionally yanking the object off the blade. She tried to keep a firm grip, but she had pulled on it with so much force that, as she fell, it slipped out of her grasp and flew through the air above her head. Elaine crashed onto her back and watched in horror as the object smashed into the wall, shattering its barnacle shell into thousands of tiny pieces.
Absolute silence filled the room; not even the stranger at the door made a noise.
". . . Elaine?" Ed whispered.
Elaine slowly sat up and started brushing barnacle particles off her pants.
"Elaine, are you alright?"
She didn't respond. Instead, she turned around and looked to see where the object had fallen. "Where is it? Where did it fa--- Oh my God."
"What? Elaine, what is it?"
Again, she made no reply, and she crawled straight towards the object in question.
Ed, meanwhile, was on the verge of having a panic attack. "Elaine, what is it?!"
For a moment, Elaine wasn't sure what it was. She reached over and gingerly picked it up. Upon closer inspection, the new object looked absolutely bizarre.
The barnacles had been concealing some sort of a large red blob with pinkish-white lines streaking across its surface. Three small tubes sprouted from the mass, each one ending in a round gaping hole.
She squeezed it twice. It felt oddly heavy, but it was also slick and spongy.
"I have no clue what thi---"
Thoom-thump.
Elaine's face turned a ghastly pale; the object pulsed in her hand. Ed walked up to her and tried to get her to speak.
"Elaine, what's wro--" Ed froze.
Thoom-thump.
Thoom-thump.
Thoom-thump.