***

Dawn opened the door to Millers classroom to find the teacher sketching on the blackboard. The box sat in the centre of the desk surrounded by papers. Miller looked away from the board and his face brightened. "Just the girl I wanted to see." He gestured her toward the board so she could see that he had been sketching the surface of the box as though trying to translate the intricately laid out 3-d pattern into a 2d world.

"What is all this sir." She asked looking at the papers on the desk, also covered in writing.

"This is nothing short of incredible. Did you know what this was when you got it."

"Honestly I have no idea how it ended up in my bag." She picked up one the papers that had historical information on it. "What are you doing with it Mr. Miller."

"I took a picture of the thing and ran an image recognition check over the Internet. What came back was nothing short of incredible. This is the Lament Configuration."

"The wha?" she asked, mystified.

"It has many names…LeMarchand's Box, the Cube Of Tears, The Box Of Shadows. The one thing that never changes is the story attached to it. That anyone that can solve the mysteries of the box will pass beyond this world of tears to a place of sensations beyond sensations."

"Are you sure you should be fooling around with something like this Mr. Miller? It could be dangerous." She mentioned cautiously

"Please no rational person believes in legends like that. I just want to solve the box; test myself against a puzzle that is 200 years old."

"I've seen things like this before they aren't always as harmless as they seem."

Miller stopped and looked indulgently. "Dawn do you really believe that the bogeyman will get you if you don't say your prayers."

Dawn would later say that yes, she did believe that. Had seen proof of it and come within a hairs breadth of losing her life (such as it was) to The bogeyman and a hundreds things worse then that. What she actually said in that moment faced with a man she admired and who she wanted to like her was "well no Mr. Miller."

They began to examine the box with Dawn making notes and Miller translating the information he was getting both from the net and from his tentative handling of The Black Box. Soon he began to move parts of the box tuning a switch here and moving a gear there. Despite its obvious age the mechanism inside the box moved with flawless precision, not a grinding gear to be heard it was like the thing was brand new. Dawn took her turn twisting the sliding switches across the surface of the box. At first, she just followed Millers directive but then as if calling to her something began to drive her fingers across the surface of the box. She mind gave her images of what the next configuration should be. Inevitably, she would be right. The two were about an hour into the project when as Dawn was twisting a switch, the box clicked and opened. A whole section rose up turned on its own and sank back into the body of the box leaving it seamless, undisturbed save for a new configuration, and an unearthly though still cubical shape. She dropped the box on the desk "How the hell did it do that."

"Internal mechanism, obviously we are close. We can't stop now." Miller picked up the cube and began twisting it. He glanced at the board constantly following the calculations that he had made. He turned a switch and the box opened again parts of it shifting inside, then it closed.

"There is one last set of combinations but I don't know what they are." He turned to Dawn "What do you think Summers. Finish it off. I've been watching you. You can do it. You are special you have what it takes" His tone would have been called seductive if the person he had been speaking to were not a teenaged girl. Dawn took the Box from him and turned it in her hands.

Everything Dawn knew about Sunnydale told her that this was a bad idea. However, there was something in her blood calling to the box and the box was answering, telling her where her hands and fingers had to be placed. She began sliding her fingers across the surface of the box. Her hands were pressuring the box in just the right way. Internal gears snapped and adjusted by themselves. The box gave an almost musical whine and opened itself again twisting of its own accord. Shifting and turning as though her hand had been needed only to begin the process. Then as the last parts of the box settled into place, there was an audible sigh as though the world had been waiting for this moment. The curtains blew open as a gust of wind tore thought the room. Miller cast an annoyed glance at the window. "I closed the windows, did you open them again. Dawn?"

Dawn looked up from the finished puzzle. "The window is still shut Mr. Miller the wind is not from outside…. I think it's from somewhere else."

Shadows crept across the floor. An otherworldly chattering filled the darkened air. Miller looked around the room and backed away from the desk. He backed toward the walls but stopped when he bumped into someone. He cried out as he spun around to see who had invaded the empty room. Behind him was a squat obscenely fat figure, its face bleached a pale white, its lips drawn back in a twisted grimace that was miles short of being a smile. Across its eyes, as though bolted there was a pair of shades. Its belly revealed a gaping wound that it fingered distractedly as though testing it for sensation. He looked toward the corner farthest from the travesty of a fat man before him and caught sight of another figure thinner then the other, taller as well. Its bleached white head had two sightless puckers where its eyes had every right to be. Its mouth was pulled open in a frozen maw in which could be seen a set of jaws clicking endlessly. Dawn screamed realizing that the corners of the empty room were no longer empty. She darted away from the desk heading for the door but a hand clamped down on her shoulder pulling her to halt. Her eyes trailed up the arm to the form attached to it. A female looked at her, a smile creasing its lips that did not match the soulless look burning from her cold blue eyes. Rods pierced her flesh through the nasal cavity and cheeks. Chains cascaded downward to a second rod whose only purpose was to hold open the fleshly flaps of a throat wound. The female hissed apparently unaware that she should not have been able to speak with the wound on her throat. "Where are you going little one. You have to stay…we will show you a magic trick."

"And you will learn much Child." This last, from a fourth figure who stepped from the shadows Taller and regal looking, his burning eyes looked out from a bleached white head that had been tattooed or scarified with lines bisecting its entirety. From the intersections where each line met, a pin had been driven into the skull. Each pin protruded out giving his face the grotesque look of a pincushion. "We have such sights to show you."

Miller sank to his knees. The female released Dawn who stumbled to the centre of the room. Who are you, What are you?"

Your kind call us Cenobites." the female answered. "We are experimenters in the higher reaches of sensation."

Angels to some, demons to others we conduct those whose desires brought them here, through the deeper mysteries of pleasure and pain." the Pinheaded Cenobite Declared.

Dawn backed away from the four Cenobites hoping that she could get herself and the teacher out of the room. "Pain, Bad; Pleasure, good; No big mystery. I think we are done here you can go back to wherever now."

"The box called to you and something within you called back. Explain this to us." The female smiled.

"I have no idea what you are talking about." Dawn knew even as she lied that the Cenobites knew it was a lie. She knew exactly why the box called to her and knew what within her was calling back. She wished that it would shut the hell up.

"Yes, it was her" Miller stood up backing away from her. "She was the one it was her that called to you."

"Mr. Miller what are you doing?" she cried out feeling betrayed.

"It was her, you saw She was the one holding the box when you arrived she was the one who called you please let me go and …and I won't say what I saw."

"Ah Miller, to betray trust so easily, but then that must get easier after you've done it so many, many times."

I don't know what you are talking about." Miller declared, his had twisted "Dawn tell them that they don't know what they are talking about."

"I don't know what they are talking about." Dawn said, "what are you talking about."

"What's wrong Miller." The female was taunting him. "She is special isn't she; One of your special girls, How many have there been? Isn't it a good thing that they don't ask questions here in Sunnydale? Not about the girl, you left in Granville. How old was she. You told her you would show her the secrets of world."

"The world of flesh has many secrets Miller. Secrets that are ours to teach, Consider this an upgrade in your pedestrian views." The Pinheaded Cenobite glanced upward as chains dropped downward to entangle Miller and drag him a foot off the ground. "Like many before you, you mistakenly think that it is just hands opening the box which call to us. It is the desire and while it was her hands which opened the box. It was your desire the drove her to try."

Dawn looked away from the struggling man. Were they lying? Was her teacher whom she had been alone with a few times some kind of sicko? What kind of evil town did she live in?

"Don't worry child." The Female was holding her again. "Your time will come soon enough. Even now, I sense so much potential within you. Imagine taking a place among us. We can show you the highways and byways of Hell. The secret rooms and halls, the places you only think you can't imagine."

She broke away from the female. "Get off me. You're not taking me anywhere." she snatched up the box. She brandished it in front of her.

"Where do you think you can run to Dawn." The male spoke to her as if he was an indulgent and trusted counselor. "The schism is opened and before it has closed all who have tuned the key must go though the door."

Dawn turned and ran, the box clutched in her hands. She tore open the door and dashed out into the hallway that had been altered. It was a gruesome funhouse parody of itself. She looked down the hallway trying to find someone, anyone who could help. That was when she saw …the thing. Her only vision of it before common sense screamed at her to start running was a five foot tall thing with its face set low to the ground and short powerful grasping arms and claws like a Tyrannosaurs Rex. It moved down the hall at speed. Dawn ran from the thing, faster then she had ever run before. She could hear the clutching of claws behind her and the snap, snap of powerful jaws. She saw a bright light ahead and she ran toward it hurling herself though it.

She hit ground hard and rolled across the hard cement. She looked up to the bright light of the campus. She looked up and saw a few people who wondered why Little Dawnie Summers had just shoulder-rolled out of the front door of the school. No creature was chasing after her. She walked back to the door and looked through he glass. A hallway, Just like when she had arrived this morning. She looked at the box in her hands. In her head, she heard the voice of the male Cenobite. "Where will you go, That we won't find you. Who will take you in. You are tied to us and we to you. You will return to us, taste of our pleasures."

Dawn was many things, stupid was not one of them. She had just used a puzzle box to open a doorway to hell and the beings within were staying until they could take her with them back to that realm. It was time to suck it up and do what every American teen at some point did in the face of overwhelming odds. Go running to Big Sister and hope that in the hustle and bustle of saving her life the fact that she had screwed up would go unnoticed.

***

Celeste startled when Keene yanked open the doors to the conservatory. "Master they are here they come. Flee we must or fight."

Victor looked around sharply. "You are mistaken."

Keene shook his head. "Can smell them, can sense them. The Order of The Gash has arrived. For us they come. For us they search."

"They will find nothing and they will obtain less. Go and prepare quarters I am not done with our client."

Celeste settled back in her chair. "What was that about?"

"That was about the past. You my dear, however are about the future. Specifically how you will repay me for giving you one."

Celeste sighed. "I have money saved up and I have a savings bond I can cash in. that should at least get me started in the right direction."

You and I both know that what you want from me is beyond considerations of money. You knew from the moment you sought me out that money would not be the currency that made this dream a reality."

Celeste looked at the disfigured adept and then rose from the chair she walked in his garden to stand before one of his pieces. It was a man in a supplicant position she walked around the figure and saw something carved into his back. She looked closer. Words, that looked like a poem or a prayer. "What's this?" She asked

"A still life based on a clients request. The words are a prayer old as the world and powerful too." Clotho stood behind her and stroked her hair as though testing it. " O Agonistes, dark deliverer, make me in the image of my enemies' nightmares. Let my flesh be the stuff from which you carve their terrors; let my skull be a bell, which sounds their death-knell. Give me a song to sing, which will be the song of their despair, and let them wake and find me singing it at the bottom of their beds." Celeste felt her eyes closing. Felt forces drawing around her. Victor continued. "Unmake me, unknit me, and transform me. And if you cannot do that for me, Agonistes, then let me be excrement; let me be nothing; less than nothing. For I want to be the terror of my enemies, or I want oblivion. 'The choice, Lord, is yours."

"That sounds terrible. Celeste whispered quietly " like the prayer of someone with no hope."

"Hope is an illusion Celeste it blinds and seduces but gives nothing in return for in the end, is it not actions that change our fates not sitting and wishing that things could be different."

"Yes it is."

"Celeste It is not hope that brought you here, it is action. You have committed to the course already in your heart. You must be willing to do the impossible, The profane."

"What do I have to do." Celeste closed her eyes ready to offer all that she had to The Sculptor.

"Find the thing that you love the most and bring it to me." The Sculptor stepped away from her. "Or bring me what it symbolizes I will know it when I see It. Bring it to me and I will give you a beauty more awesome and terrible then the world has ever known."

Celeste looked up at the man and nodded. "You have my word on it."

***