The Little Brown Box

Chapter XI

  The door to the locked room was a shade darker than all the other doors, possibly made from a different wood. It looked older and had a knocker. She still had no answer for the M.N. on the door. Hazel looked through the keyhole at the drawers against the wall. She had to get inside. She wasn’t going to be able to finish what she started unless she saw what was in there. It would end her fear once and for all.

  She tried the silver handle. It was the only silver one in the house, all the others were brass. The door didn’t budge. Hazel thought back to when Mrs. Norwich went to check the room. Did she grab a key from her room? Hazel didn’t think so, making her believe that the key must be near the door somewhere, unless her grandmother kept it on her. Hazel looked all around the door. There didn’t appear to be any places to hide a key. And then she noticed something along the frame of the door, several feet above her head. It looked as though there was a vertical crack that was several inches long. It was too perfect to be natural. She stood on her toes and reached up as high as she could and pressed the crack. A compartment flung open, revealing a large black skeleton key. Hazel grabbed it, excitement flowing through her. She put the key in the hole and turned it.

  There was a click and the door opened. It was smaller than she expected. There was a simple wooden bed, the drawers she had already seen, a small desk, and a painting on the wall. It showed a man Hazel recognized as Mrs. Norwich’s father. He had bright blue eyes that didn’t show in the old photograph. The floor was wood instead of carpet like the rest of the bedrooms.

  Hazel started with the drawers. There were a few small items in them, an old pocket watch, an empty wallet, a worn pair of shoes, and nothing else. She was hoping for a note explaining everything that was going on. She went around the room looking under the bed and behind the desk, but there was nothing of any significance.

  Hazel’s heart sank at the fact that the room was just a plain old room with no secrets. She locked the door and returned the key, and went downstairs for breakfast.

  Once again a plate of bacon and eggs waited for her at the table. It was cold, but she ate it anyway. After eating she cleaned her plate and wandered about the first floor and basement looking for Mrs. Norwich. There was no sign of her.

  “Maybe she went to town.” Hazel thought aloud.

  The thoughts of her grandmother laying in the path somewhere unnerved her. Hazel tried not to think bad thoughts like that since her mother got sick, but it was hard to resist sometimes. She went upstairs, hoping to find her there.

  Mrs. Norwich was in Hazel’s room, with her back to the door. She was looking over a muddy towel with several objects on it. A doll, a coin, and a little toy iron. Hazel tried to back out of the room to think up an excuse. Her foot hit the floor and a creak rang out. She was certain that her heart stopped beating. Mrs. Norwich flipped around. Her face was contorted in rage.

  “What are these?” She asked slowly.

  “Oh, nothing, just some things that I found.” Hazel’s hands were shaking with nerves. She never thought of what to do if her grandmother found those things. How was she supposed to explain little animals leading her into the woods?

  “I want them out of here now.” Mrs. Norwich’s voice was lethal.

  “I don’t know what they are, I just found them.”

  Mrs. Norwich took a step toward Hazel. “I want them out of here now.”

  She was already in trouble; surely it wouldn’t hurt to finally ask some questions. “Do you know anything about them?”

  “Get rid of them NOW!” Mrs. Norwich shouted.

  Hazel ran to the bed, picked up the towel with all the objects in it, and ran from the room. She didn’t stop at the door and went out into the mid morning sunlight. She didn’t know where to go or what to do. Why had Mrs. Norwich hated seeing those things so much? Hadn’t the doll been hers?

  Hazel walked around the house, trying to think up what to do next. She could put everything back, but she wasn’t sure if she remembered where they all went. And then she thought of the little boar and how it showed her the compartment in the basement. That was it! Maybe it was trying to show her that she could hide what she found in there to keep them away from her grandmother. Hazel ran back to the front door and opened it slowly. She would have to get by her grandmother to get them to the basement.

  From her view through the half open door, the house was empty. Hazel tiptoed in, closed the door, and listened again. Everything was still. She quietly made it through the living room, stopping every step to hear for her grandmother. There was no telling where she was.

  The door to the basement loomed in front of her. Hazel quietly opened it and disappeared into the darkness below. It was harder to descend the narrow steps while carrying something. She made it to the bottom and crossed over to the compartment, too afraid to turn on the light. She walked into the washer and dryer before finding the little hole in the wall. She pulled it out and put the towel with all the objects into it. It barely fit. The compartment slid back into place and Hazel stood up.

  Light flared on. Hazel turned around blinking. Her grandmother stood in the center of the room, her hand still on the chain hanging from one of the light bulbs. Shadows hung all around the edges of the room, pushing toward the light to get a better view.

  “What are you doing?” Mrs. Norwich asked softly. “Did you get rid of those things?”

  Mrs. Norwich’s hands now rested on her waist. Hazel thought it was to keep them somewhere so they didn’t lash out. She had never seen her grandmother like that. Actually she had never seen anybody get that angry before in her life. Not even when her parents got into a car accident once that was clearly not their fault.

  Hazel stepped back to the wall. There was nowhere to go. She had to answer the question. She didn’t know what her grandmother was capable of doing now that she was so mad.

  “I put them back where I found them.”

  “That was fast.” Mrs. Norwich shot a quick glance at the wall near where the compartment was.

  “Could you please just tell me what the big deal is?” Hazel pleaded.

  Mrs. Norwich’s eyes flashed with a look that Hazel had never seen. It was as if her grandmother was both angry and sad, and didn’t know which to convey. “No” was all she said.

  “Then how am I supposed to know why I can’t do something?”

  “You will go up to your room and you will wait for me to call you for lunch.”

  Hazel did as she was told. In her room she jumped on the bed, lying lifelessly on top of her blankets. She reached over and picked up the little brown box and looked it over. She wondered if her grandmother knew what it could do. Hazel doubted it. If Mrs. Norwich did know then she probably would have told her to get rid of it. There was some reason why Mrs. Norwich acted the way she did, but Hazel wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.

  Everything she knew didn’t seem like enough. She was just more confused than ever before. Her grandmother owned the doll and apparently everything else. Did she know about the animals? There was only one way to find out.

  Hazel was called down to lunch a short time later. A cold grilled cheese sandwich was waiting for her when she got there. Hazel noticed that her grandmother appeared gaunt. There were dark circles under her eyes and bags under them . . . well, bigger bags. Mrs. Norwich sat across from Hazel and watched her eat.

  “I brought a box from home.” Hazel began. “It belonged to my mother. She had it for a long time. I was wondering if she had it here. Do you know?”

  “You mean that box on your nightstand?” Mrs. Norwich asked without taking her eyes from Hazel.

  “Yes.” Hazel answered slowly, attempting to decipher the confused expressions that flashed across her grandmother’s face. This was not the same person Hazel knew for the past few weeks.

  “She may have had it here. She had a lot of things.”

  ?
??So you don’t recognize it? Have you ever looked inside?”

  There was a long pause, and then, “No.”

  “Oh.” Hazel said, out of ideas.

  Lunch passed and Hazel was told to go back to her room. Once there she sat on her bed and watched the trees outside through the open window. Something about their relaxed movements in the breeze calmed her. The bright leaves twisted and swirled. A few fluttered down to the ground. Hazel couldn’t take her eyes off of the trees. All together they morphed into one creature, trapped in the ground, unable to move or wander as it pleased. It must be hard to be trapped. She wanted to help it, the tree creature. It was in her nature to want to help anything that needed it. But there was no way to help the trees escape the ground.

  She remembered a time a few years back when she was taking a walk with her parents. They were walking by a very big and busy street when a little bird crashed to the ground. All the cars were back at the stop light, no one was coming. Hazel tried to run into the street to help the poor bird, but her parents pulled her back. They said that it was already injured, and that if she saved it from the cars then it would die slowly because it wouldn’t be able to feed itself. Hazel didn’t care; she just wanted to save the little bird. She couldn’t. Both she and the bird were trapped. The light turned and Hazel watched as the cars came barreling down towards the defenseless bird. At first it looked as if a miracle was happening. The cars missed the bird by inches. It was blown over just in time to miss the tires. But it didn’t last. Hazel shrieked as a large truck finally made contact. She cried the rest of the way home. It was a few days later when she thought that if she had saved it then she could have raised it. She wished she thought of that when it counted.

  Maybe Mrs. Norwich felt like the bird or Hazel, trapped. After living in the same place and losing her father, mother, husband, and her daughter being sick it was bound to make her feel trapped. If she did feel like that, how would Hazel help? By solving the mystery of Swansberry Hill House, of course. This excited Hazel. Her room was boring. The prospect of getting to do something constructive gave her hope. There were only a few days left to figure it all out, and she knew she could do it. There was now a trapped grandmother that hung in the balance. She just hoped that her imagination wasn’t getting the best of her again.

  Hazel was too scared of Mrs. Norwich’s current mood to say anything during dinner. Late that night she sat in her room, thinking up a plan. It would have to be a subtle one that wouldn’t attract too much attention. She couldn’t just go out and ask what she wanted to know, there was no way Mrs. Norwich would answer. One of the few things that Hazel knew was that whatever happened in that house it was when Mrs. Norwich was a kid, and it was beyond her father dying. There wasn’t enough information to know it to be true. Yet somehow Hazel did know it to be true. Hazel thought it over, and then left her room and found her grandmother in the living room, knitting.

  “Mrs. Norwich.”

  Mrs. Norwich put her knitting down and watched as Hazel took a seat across the room. “What?”

  “You’re the oldest person I know.”

  “And?” Mrs. Norwich said slowly.

  “Well I was just wondering if you could tell me what you did when you were young and what your family was like.”

  “I think I did already.”

  “Yes, but I want to know more, it’s not like I get to talk to someone your age very often. I can learn so much.”

  Mrs. Norwich sighed. “Alright, let’s see. I grew up during the depression. As a kid I didn’t feel it much because well . . .” She gestured around at the room. “My mother would make sure we had enough to eat. My father spent most of his money just trying to keep this place up. He would have garden parties; remember I told you about those? Anyway, the kids from town would come with their parents and eat and feel better. Back then most fathers worked elsewhere, that was back when the people of Swansberry cared about the rest of the world. It all changed when my father died. The parties stopped, the people stopped coming, I think they thought we abandoned them or something. They didn’t care that we had just lost someone.”

  “I’m sorry.” Hazel finally made sense out of what that boy said to her in town.

  “And then the war started. Always hearing about people dying, it only made us here feel worse that we lost someone. Then my mother died, and I was alone.” Mrs. Norwich stared off into space, forgetting Hazel was even there. “I got rid of everything my mother had. I was so mad.”

  “Why were you mad?”

  Mrs. Norwich cocked her head to the side, as if trying to figure out where the voice was coming from. “Because she left me.”

  “It wasn’t her fault.”

  Mrs. Norwich stood up and walked away without another word. The lights were turned off and Hazel sat in the dark room by herself. She eventually went up to bed.