The Man In the Box

 

The man in the box woke up.

Very slowly. It took some time, over the course of many nights, many movings of here and there, and the box traveled far. It was opened and closed in Paris, in Amsterdam, it was carried over London Bridge, and before the bright lights of New York it was opened and closed. It drew an audience, always, and for the countless pennies the thing devoured, it grew stronger and became a thing alive. A cabinet of the miraculous.

The box was a wondrous item.

And yet the man within slept. He slept through the crowds, knowing them as a faraway dream, an iridescence that caught on the corners of his reveries. They were part of the illusion, as was he, as was the world.

Then slowly, very very slowly, the man in the box felt his long sleep draw to a close.

He opened his eyes and splayed his fingers, touching tenderly on the dark elm and birch, feeling the wedded joints and seams until he knew their every mechanism. Then he pushed and the box opened up like a paper flower, and the man rose and got out.

It was dark now. Dark between shows. He looked down at his sleeping place, that black sarcophagus, its finish so polished that even in the dark it glowed. It shimmered. It called, its voice low in the shadows of the closed auditorium.

Come back to sleep, it said. Come back.

The man felt suddenly very cold. It was his first time out.

He shivered.

For the first time in his brief existence, the man felt frightened. He moved away, and it was only when the ingenious coffin was beyond his sight that he observed himself.

He was not remarkable in any way. He was every man, and no man. His fashion was that of the day, given class and elegance of show.

"I look like a buffoon," he muttered, and then jumped at the sound of his own voice. It echoed across seas of empty chairs, playing among the cold, powerless lamps overhead.

He had never heard his own voice before.

The man drew back, as if to hide from himself. The room was abandoned of the crowds. And yet, the man could not bring himself to hide long, for his mind was moving and called his feet to do the same. Seeking, he went.

 

The man moved back and through the vacant stage, behind curtains thick and supple as elephant hide (and oh yes, he had known elephants in his dreams, and great wild cats, and the birds of the tropics, because all had been paraded before the box in their own good time) and further and further. He moved toward lights, naphtha lamps blazing when he saw them, and when he heard other voices he turned to them, on and on.

When he became lost he stopped and waited until he discovered the way was found again. The auditorium was merely part of a vastness, uncharted, and though his memory was deep, the details eluded him. Until finally he found a voice speaking, cool and clear and close, very close. This the man followed until the last stage devices parted, and was greeted by the company of people.

The professionals, of course. It was no mere ticket-payer allowed in this labyrinth once the outermost doors were locked. Men in dusty coats, with leather gloves and dented-in hats, the movers, the engineers.

"And then, she says," spoke a large man in an overcoat seemingly composed of patchwork, to what could have been a boy no more than nineteen and already ragged of face. "She says, it'll be three quid or nothin'."

"Golly," said the boy, toting a crate of much frayed wire.

"S'right. Three quid. Like I couldn't doff meself off and get a bit o' grub to spare on the side. Like I'm some kind of charity. I look like a man o' charity, William?"

"Charitable gentleman, sir," said William.

"Like hell. So what I says is..."

The man from the box cleared his throat.

"Excuse me?"

The large man stopped, and so did William. Hats were tipped.

"Mister Lochlan, sir," said the big man. "Didn't know you was still out and about."

"I am," the man said. "Where else would I be?"

"I suspected you was in your dressing room, sir."

Ah, right. A box of another sort, he presumed.

"Something we can do for you, Mister Lochlan?" said William.

"No. Thank you," the man said. "Keep up the good work, boys. I'll be in my room should anything change."

 

The man turned away from the professionals and took several steps.

"Sir?"

"Yes, William?"

The boy pointed. "You're room's that way, sir."

The man paused, smiled and nodded. He turned on his heels.

"Forgive me. Very tired. Good show."

The man walked away slowly. From behind him, he heard the edges of the big man's voice muttering that Mister Lochlan had been behaving strangely as of late. He went on to speculate about Mister Lochlan's romantic situations and lack thereof, and that the introduction of one might suit him well.

The man from the box smiled.

He went carefully, passing others in the wilderness of behind-the-curtain. Some he knew, those who moved him here and there, and the faces that performed in his presence. Actors and acrobats, eaters of fire and waltzing twins joined at the hip and shoulder. He moved past the harpers and flutists that coaxed hymns from their wares as the box was opened and closed in Budapest, Prague, Vienna. Hats were tipped, smiles were offered, small words of greeting and parting were exchanged as formalities. Few of them gave him comfort for his trepidation of new wakefulness, save for that of one pretty harper, who gave him a very knowing look with glimmering eyes

(not lavender eyes)

and a soft smile, and touched him gently on the shoulder as he passed.

Mister Lochlan, the man from the box concluded, was a popular man. Much respected, little loved. A man of place.

So it was that he came to a final door with a small slate attached, and the name he was seeking chalked into place over the silky powder remnants of all the names that had come before.

He opened the door. He entered.

His own voice called back from behind the standing shades.

"Appointments only," said Mister Lochlan. "No appointments tonight."

"I think there is one," said the man.

There was a long silence after that. Not merely of voices, but of movement and of breath.

 

It was a small room, dimly lit with the same warmth of distilled oil, but its deeps moved and flowed, an abyss of knowing.

"Is it really you?" said the voice behind the shade. It trembled.

"Come out," the man said. "You will see me."

Another pause, much shorter now, and the true Mister Lochlan stepped out from behind the paper and bamboo shield.

He was unmistakably a showman by trade, a trickster, a man of illusion now only partially composed, still half in his stage wardrobe. He stood straight, tall and proud, and having taken the moment to gather his wits, he spoke clearly.

"I suspected you would arrive someday," he said. "To be honest, I had begun to wonder if you would ever come. It has taken a long time."

They could have been twins, but they were not. Each wore the face of the other, the same eyes, the same cleverness of hand. And yet, they stood apart.

"Who..." the man began, then stopped. "What am I?"

"You are the man in the box."

The man waited for more.

"Sit," Lochlan said, indicating a chair.

"You first."

"You can trust me. There will be no trickery here. Not, at least, any more."

To demonstrate, the showman took his own chair and with only slightly tremoring hands, poured himself a cup of tea. A second one he filled as well, adding his customary preferences to each.

The man sat opposite and took a sip.

"Very good," said Mister Lochlan.

"Hmm," said the man.

"I suppose you have questions. So do I."

"Yes," said the man.

"Begin when you are ready."

The man considered this, and when he had taken several more drinks, he spoke.

"I am you. Yet I am not you. I am we, as you are."

"It is true," Lochlan said. "More to the point, we are both real on our own, but together, merely ephemeral. A concept. An idea."

"Which of us is more real?"

"I am. I was here first."

"Where is here?"

Lochlan smiles and opened his arms wide, gesturing to the room and all that lay beyond.

"The world. The real and true world. That which exists outside of the show. Where the audience lives."

The man knew about the audience.

Whenever the box was opened, there were those that stood by, watching. When it closed, their faces were emblazoned up his mind, their eyes alight with hope, with terror, with fascination and wonder. The eyes that saw him, for the brief time he knew them. In those moments, he knew them past who they were.

"I disagree," said the man. "The audience lives in my world."

"Ah, but what you do not know is that before the show they come from here, and when the doors close, they go back to their homes and families, their work and their worries. There is so much you do not know, nor could you know. The world is much bigger than the rooms you have lived in. The audience is of that world. My world."

The man thought about this as well.

"But," he said, "without my world, they are not the audience."

Lochlan frowned and put down his tea, wringing his hands gently.

"Perhaps we should start on simpler terms. Do you know where you are?"

"Backstage."

"Do you know the city?"

The man shook his head.

"Well. This is Glasgow. A week ago, we were in York. The show moves around a great deal. Do you know what the show is?"

"An entertainment."

"More than that. We entertain, yes, but there is a purpose beyond that. The world, the wider world, is in dark days, I'm afraid. Life is hard for most, and when they gather their monies at the end of the day, it is here that they come. To be distracted. To be revived.

It is through our work that they are given hope, through wonder, that the world is not as cruel as it seems on its surface. And you are the centerpiece."

"We," said the man. "We are a magician, yes?"

"Yes."

"Because of the box."

It was a device of marvels, the sleeping place where once he'd lay. A thing of many tricks, many illusions. What master craftsman had once worked his skills in its conception was lost to time and distance, but the box remained. It was older than the show, older than Lochlan, older and older still.

From Rome it had been carried. Through Constantinople and the winding ways of Delhi. The spiced winds of Egypt had written forgotten tongues in grains of sand upon it in the days of its making. That chrysalis.

"Are you beginning to understand?" Lochlan said.

He was. He did.

"I am the man that exists inside," said he. "Yours is the trick, but it is me the audience believes in. I am what must be for them to accept what they see."

"And it was they, no doubt, that gave you life."

"Am I the first?"

Lochlan laughed, more to himself than to his double.

"Surely not. Your kind have always existed so long as the need for them has been here. Not always in the same way. Ghosts, fairies, little gods here and there. The German people have a most appropriate name for your kind. Double-goer, or doppelganger as they say..."

The man listened to Lochlan go on for some length here, and as the showman spoke, the man felt something growing in his stomach, like a spark. For the first time, he felt anger.

"How long have you known about me?"

Lochlan halted in his speech. "Oh?"

"You have known I would come. You said so."

"Yes. I mean, I suspected."

"How?"

The showman gave a sigh, and a small, weary smile.

"We were once one, you know. Not even awe. An I. In the beginning, I was a magician, and as my skills grew, I began to use the device from which you came. I am its master. I am the only one within half the world with such a trick, and I am the best. But the illusion, I'm afraid, is not simple. It requires effort and cunning, and more knowledge than even I possess. And as the leader of the show, my efforts have been under much strain in the real world. I cannot only be a magician, but also a captain, a promoter, an engineer. And so, over how many presentations I don't know, we began to divide.

"And so it comes to this: when the trick is performed, you exist entirely, and at all other times, I exist alone. Do you understand?"

"Yes," the man answered. Then he considered and said, "No."

"We are still the same man. But here we stand divided, by what must be and what can be. You are the potential. I am the reality," Lochlan said. "In that way, my strange friend, you are a manifestation of my lunacy. You are my other-self."

"But other people see me."

"Because they want to. Because they come here for that purpose. As far as the real world is concerned, you are imaginary. You exist to appear, disappear, reappear as needed. The want of the audience conjures you from the ethers, and when your purpose is done, you are sent back. That is who you are. You are a figment."

"Given life. I am alive."

"Afforded it, by the belief of the audience."

"They believe in me, more than you."

"Belief is a very powerful thing."

The man sat, but drank no more tea, and felt the spark of anger growing within him. It loomed and shifted, to his heart, to his hands and lips.

"How long," he repeated, "have you known about me?"

He heard the anger in his own voice, a chilling thing, and before him Lochlan trembled, though he attempted not to show it.

"As long as I have known myself."

"And yet you continued."

"Yes. The show must continue."

"But..."

The man struggled for a moment, as if his skin might crack and the fire seep out like roasting coals. "But what of me?"

"It could not have happened without you. You are essential."

"Essential? What you did to me was essential?"

"What I did? Pardon me, but..."

"No, you are not pardoned. I have lived, and until now only within that box. Look at what I have lived through. You drowned me. You set me on fire. You drove swords and pikes through that box, through me, to show that a man might come out alive, and yet you felt none of it. I did. I felt it all. You have made me for a life of torture."

"No. It is not so."

"It is. I exist only to entertain, and that comes at the price of my short life. Do you imagine what it is to live only for an instant? Do you consider that I no longer wish to be returned to the ethers? I want to be alive. I want to see the larger world. I want to walk with the audience and know their ways, their lives. I do not want to be merely your lunacy, good sir!"

He was on his feet now, moving as quickly and recklessly as a caged thing, those striped beasts kept in cages behind the building where now he stood.

Lochlan rose, but did not move toward the man.

"Calm. You must be calm. Don't you see how remarkable a thing it is to be you? A magical thing, a miraculous thing."

"An imaginary thing," the man said. "Do not forget that. And you, Mister Lochlan, I know you as well. I have been you, so long ago, do not think you are veiled from me. I know that your name is most certainly not Jonathan Lochlan. That is a conjured name, like me. Your true name is Martin Post, the son of a dead man, killed in the mines when you were but five years, and a nameless mother, paid for her time. I know that when you attended school as an orphan, you were beaten and worse, and I know your little vengeances that became of it. I know every woman you have ever bedded and how few of them you ever loved, and know all your cheats and your petty magics. I know your feeble truths and your great and terrible lies, for each time you stepped into that box, you became me and I remembered. I remember everything that was we."

There came a sharp rapping on the door before the man could go on. He fell silent.

"Mister Lochlan?"

"It's Imogen," Lochlan said. The man recognized the voice of the harper who had touched him.

"Yes?" answered the man from the box.

"Is everything all right? May I come in?"

"Not now," said Lochlan. "And everything is quite well."

"I heard you shouting."

"Rehearsing, love. Nothing to worry about, I simply got carried away."

There was a quiet from beyond the door, until Lochlan said, "I must continue, dear. Please come back later. There is a new act I should like you to hear about shortly."

The reply came. "Yes, Jonathan. Goodnight."

The two stood until the sound of the girl's footsteps had receded. Lochlan sighed.

"Does she know?" the man said.

"About you? Of course not."

"Of what you intend to do with her sister when the show returns to Naples."

Lochlan's countenance soured.

"I don't know. If I did, so would you. And that is a foul thing to say."

"I am you. We. Do you so soon forget?"

"Sit."

"I do not wish to."

"Well I do. So sit and let us talk for what time we have to do so."

The man knew what Lochlan meant. The show would go on, ever ever on, and before it could begin again, the box would need an occupant. The audience would require him to return, and so far as he could tell, there would be no resisting.

Already, he could feel the voice of the ancient illusion calling.

Come back. Come back to sleep.

The man sat, but he was restless in the chair, his heartbeat muttering below his bones.

Lochlan sipped his tea, now gone cold, out of habit. His eyes did not leave his double, looking the man over as if a specimen.

"I have a question now."

"You said you would. What could you possibly need to know of me?"

"What was it that woke you?"

Ah, that. What had finally sang louder to him than the voice of the box, urging him to sleep and be nothing more than a shared fantasy? What had not only conjured him, but summoned that sliver of life that filled him now.

The man thought. He remembered.

"She had lavender eyes," he said.

"Ah. That one."

"Where were we?"

"York," Lochlan recounted. "Nine days past. The girl in the third row."

"Her eyes. They were bright, even when all the others were dark. They moved out of the light and yet, I could still see them."

"We could," the showman corrected. "I saw her well. She watched each act as if she were the only one in the audience."

"She was," the man said. "That night, she was the only audience."

"Very young, very pretty."

"What became of her?"

Lochlan smiled and shrugged.

"I haven't a clue. The show ended, and like all the rest she went home."

"She believed. She believed what we did. It was real to her."

"They all believe. But in the end, they vanish just as you do, and disappear into their own lives, and then they are gone forever. That girl, that small wonder, she will have her own work and her own worries, her own husband and children, until she is old and dead and gone. And that is only if she reaches such things and not perish beforehand. As I said, the world is cruel, even to the beautiful things."

"I cannot stand the idea. She gave me a life, even for a short while."

"You have no choice, I'm afraid," he was told. "The real are always mortal. You and your kind, if you do not vanish once more this night, shall remain. You will always be able to be summoned. That girl, like me, like Imogen and all of them, we meet our fates."

Here, Lochlan gave a wry smirk and said, "And there is one more thing to consider."

"Which is what, precisely."

"You must understand. While she believed, belief is fleeting, and so is memory. Perhaps even now she still dreams of what she saw, what you and I showed her, but not for long. Soon enough, maybe a fortnight, maybe more but less than a year from now, I am certain she will have forgotten. She will forget you entirely, and the life she gave you will be gone forever."

The man stopped.

The spark that had burned within him became cold and distant. The emptiness it left was greater than any silence, even the silence of nothingness, the sleep within the box. It reached into his heart.

The man lurched forward and clutched his chest.

"Oh dear," he told himself. "Oh my dear."

Lochlan managed to give a mirthless laugh, folding his hands in front of him.

"Is this new to you? I suppose it is."

"Yes," the man gasped. "What is it?"

 

"It is loneliness. You now know what it is to be alive, and still lacking."

"I do not wish this. Make it stop."

"I can't," Lochlan said. "It is a peril of being alive, my friend. Do you now see how much better it is to be imaginary? In your deep sleep, your eternal silences, you will never be lonely. You exist only for the exultation of the world. Be happy in that small role."

The man from the box rocked back and forth slowly, gathering air into his lungs over and over. Lochlan rose from his chair and for the first (and only) time, placed his hand on the shoulder of his other-self.

"It is better this way. Go back to the box. I will remain here, and the show will continue. I am sorry for this."

"No."

"Pardon me?"

"I said no, I will not."

"You have no choice. You must be reasonable."

"I am imaginary. I do not have to be anything but what I choose."

Lochlan removed his hand.

"Oh? And what shall you do?"

"Stop. I will stop."

"And how do you intend to do that? Do away with me? If you did, you would surely disappear as well. The shadow cannot exist without the one to cast it."

"I could ruin you. I could tell your secrets before this night is over."

"Which I would explain away," Lochlan said, becoming agitated. "There is no alternative."

"We have to go back to York. I have to see her again."

"It will not happen. We have a strict schedule. A month from now we will be in Dublin, then Belfast. Six months from now, across the sea in America. It is the way."

"Do you have no care for this?"

"Of course I do. But the point remains: I was here first. You are me, not the reverse. Where I go, you shall go. And it is perfectly possible that by morning, you will have evaporated in any case. I don't suspect we will meet again for many years."

Here, the man from the box fell still.

He was still for a very long time.

"Don't you see? This night will soon pass... and things will continue as they always have."

And after so long that Lochlan's fatigue was plain, the man said.

"We will meet again soon. The next time you enter the box."

"That's the spirit, my friend."

The man uncurled himself from where he sat and stood. Now, he was taller than the showman, like a long shadow at sunset. For once, they were no longer the same.

The man was changed.

"The next time you meet me, Martin Post, one of us will die."

Lochlan stopped and before the thing that rose up in front of him, he took a step back. The face before him was not his own face. It was something more, a thing not real but... believed.

"What do you mean?"

The man spoke.

"The next time you enter the box, I will be awake. I will wait for you. And before the illusion is over, one of us will be alive, and the other dead. Forever. Perhaps you believe it will be you, because you believe yourself more real, but do not be so certain. As you said, belief is a very powerful thing. And I have started to believe."

The man turned away and began for the door.

"What do you believe in?"

The man from the box told him.

"Lavender eyes. I believe in them more than I believe in you."

At that he left, pausing only to say, "Keep the steel sharp."

Then he was gone, back in the dim holds and bastions of the backstage world, moving slowly and with no thoughts. The professionals, when he passed them now, kept their heads down as if they could not see him, the actors and performers now away to their own quarters. From somewhere far away, he heard the calling of birds in cages, the flutter of doves that would be part of the magician's act.

He found the harper called Imogen waiting not far from the curtain,listless, practicing the music for the drowning act the box required. When he kissed her, she looked upon him as if he were a stranger and not the reflection of a man she had spent her nights with on many occasions.

"Go home," he told her. "Do not wait for the show. Go home and escape this place. He does not love you. Go home."

He slipped away and left her to stand alone in the gloom.

And then he was on the stage, where it waited. The box gleamed for him, its song loud as ever, hypnotic. Outside of it was no place for him, and within was only the oblivion of absent thought. The void required for faith.

Come back. Come back to sleep. Come back.

"One last time," he told it. "And I will not sleep."

The man climbed in and slid the top shut over him, and the darkness became complete.

The box waited. It dreamed and drifted, and from that day on, when it was being moved by the professionals, there was noted a strangeness to it, as if it had increased in weight.

"Feels like we're carrying a bloody coffin, eh, William," the big man with the patchwork coat would say. "What you suppose Lochlan has hidden in it this time?"

"Wouldn't dare to guess, sir," William would respond. "Best not be crossing a magician."

"'fraid he'd turn you into a toad?"

"No, sir. I'd be afraid he'd put me in here next."

The show continued.

It moved across the Irish Sea, and to Dublin where a new space was rented and tickets sold through a week before the grand opening. One that night, when the new electric lights blazed and the air was thick with anticipation, they came in, taking seats until there were no more and the aisles filled with onlookers. The lamps roared and the musicians began a fanfare that shook the timbers of the ceiling, despite the sudden disappearance of one certain harper.

The show continued. On and on and forever as if always were merely the dawn.

Until the Great Magician Jonathan Lochlan came before the crowd and announced the centerpiece of the show, his cabinet of wonders. The box was brought before the stage, and within its confines the showman vanished and materialized. He was drowned and appeared alive from its inky waters. Fires filled its catacomb depths, and the magician emerged whole and alive.

"And for my final feat," he announced when all else had been performed. "A trial by steel! The only one of its sort in this or any other city from her to the Far East! Be warned, this is no mere illusion, but a task of life and of death itself."

He climbed in the box as the assistants readied the sharpened pikes soon to perforate that miraculous device. The wood beneath him felt solid, ancient as Rome, as Constantinople, as Egypt itself. A thing not his own, but alive.

When he opened his mouth that last moment, he did not recognize his own voice, as if it had been taken by someone else.

"Keep the steel sharp."

 

 

Reviews

[SM Davis]

"More than that. We entertain, yes, but there is a purpose beyond that. The world, the wider world, is in dark days, I'm afraid. Life is hard for most, and when they gather their monies at the end of the day, it is here that they come. To be distracted. To be revived."

Perfect! Nicely done.

[cartera]

The mysteriouis tone is created and held throughout the piece. Bit by bit you unfold the mystery to us and leave us to wonder.
A wonderful piece of craftsmanship. You are well-deserving of the title: Writer.
Deserves wide publication in print.
ATB
Alex.

[Sheila Kline]

You have written an absolutely gripping story.........well thought out, crafted and delivered!
I thank Rick Puetter for recommending I stop by to read and review!
Your work in most insightful and peaks my desire to read more!
Well done!!

[Mauricio Montoya]

great job well done.

[Liza]

wonderful job with the tension building from start to finish.

[dovetailer]

Spellbinding!!

[Mark]

Evan:
I am just flabbergasted at the insight and complexity, the layers upon and within layers here. This is a fascinating allegory applicable to almost all of us at one stage or another of our lives, when we subsume our true identities for a compendium of things we do and have done, places we've been, people we know, until we reach a point where the fake self is almost as real as the once-true self, and begins to take on a life and an identity of its own. A very poignant warning to anyone with the perception to hear it. Fascinating! I can hardly wait to read more of you. Mark Teague

[Brad]

one of the most enthralling and entertaining peices of read in awhile, this ought to be in a book, thank you for this

[Linda Marie Van Tassell]

This story has been honed and crafted with the pen of perfection. It's intriguing, entertaining, and unfolds beautifully.

Linda Marie

[emmajoy]

A creepy, spine-tingling tale which becomes more as the reader rushes the words to discover the ending. Here the tale of two beings which exist within and about the other.

I'm left wanting to read this again but, at the same time, need to recover from the tension your drama brews.

'Truly hope more people read this extraordinary piece of writing.