章 72: Chapter 72
The smell of rotting garbage was always in the air. Eddie had long since gotten used to it, though. He didn't remember the last time he had a warm meal or clean clothes, but he did remember his mother's face when she'd sobered up long enough to see him. Her face was always twisted in something close to disgust, and his father, well, he wasn't really ever around.
Most days, Eddie wandered the junkyard, stepping over piles of rusted metal and broken glass, looking for anything that might be useful.
His little hands scraped through piles of rubbish like a scavenger, and his small feet were always covered in dirt. The days passed without much change. The same cold, the same smell, the same loneliness.
Then one afternoon, as the sun was setting behind the heaps of garbage, he found it. It was buried under a pile of old books, torn and yellowed with age. A small box, square and wooden, just the size of his palm. It didn't look special at first. It was plain, but there was something about it that made his heart race, something in the way it seemed to call to him.
Eddie brushed off the dirt and dust and picked it up. The box was cold, like it had been outside for a long time. He could feel it in his fingers, the roughness of the wood and the coldness that didn't seem right for such a warm day.
His thumb traced the edges, where the wood was split in a few places. The thing was old, and maybe that's what made him hesitate. But it was his.
The latch came off easily. The box opened with a creak that made Eddie jump. Inside, there were symbols, scratched into the inside of the lid—sickly, twisted shapes that made his stomach knot. At the bottom, something was wrapped in dark cloth, folded over and over.
Eddie's hand shook as he reached for it, pulling the cloth away. What he found was something that looked like a small, ancient stone, cracked and jagged. It was black as night, and the cracks seemed to pulse with an unnatural glow.
His pulse quickened. The moment his fingers brushed the stone, he heard something. A voice, maybe, or a whisper. It was too soft to make out, but it felt like it was inside his skull, scraping at his thoughts.
He let out a breath, staring down at the stone. It was just a stone, right? It couldn't be anything bad. He had touched it, and nothing had happened. But there was something in the back of his mind, something telling him to put it back, to leave it alone.
Eddie didn't listen. The voice wasn't there anymore, and the stone felt so cold in his hands, like it was pulling him closer to something. But he didn't know what.
The night passed without him realizing it. By the time he looked up, it was dark, and his parents still hadn't come home. He was hungry, but the stone in his hands was more important. He held it close, his body shaking, as the whispers returned. But now they were louder. Not words, but something worse. He could feel it crawling under his skin, seeping into his blood, numbing his thoughts.
The next day, Eddie's parents didn't come home. He waited all day, watching the sun dip low, and then darkness fell again. There were more whispers, louder now, almost as if the box itself had started to speak.
Eddie didn't know why he opened it again. He didn't know why his hands were shaking as he undid the latch. But when he looked inside, the stone wasn't there anymore.
It was replaced by something else, something worse. The inside of the box was no longer empty. It was filled with nothing but a hole—black, deep, endless.
He couldn't pull his hand away from it. His eyes went wide as the hole seemed to grow larger, swallowing everything around him. His body moved, but it didn't feel like it was him. He wasn't in control.
And then he heard it.
A scream, loud and high-pitched, coming from somewhere far away, but it felt like it was coming from inside of him. He reached down, grabbed the box, but it was too late.
The world around him started to twist, collapsing into that hole. His legs buckled beneath him as the scream turned into something worse—something human, something that shouldn't exist.
And just as he thought the worst was over, the whispers turned to laughter. Cold, mocking laughter, as though the world itself had already been doomed. Eddie couldn't see anything anymore. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. Only the laugh, the laugh that came from everywhere and nowhere, was there to swallow him whole.
The last thing Eddie felt was the cold.
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