The Boxes
by William Sleator
Puffin, 1998
196 Pages
Young Readers 8-14
William Sleator mixes Science Fiction and Horror to create a truly haunting tale of human greed, alien rituals, and science that is beyond our understanding. A modern re-telling of Pandora’s box, Anne’s Uncle Marco leaves her with not one, but two large boxes that must be hidden from her Aunt Ruth, never opened, and never, NEVER brought together. Guess what happens?
The first box, the one in the basement, releases a small creature that resembles a miniature Alien Queen (The picture on the cover of my edition was a perfect rendition) that skitters away into the corner. Or was it just Anne’s imagination? The second box is filled with weird, icky tendrils and some fan-blades that look like the arms of a big clock. The next day Anne discovers that the creature wasn’t her imagination, and now it is creatures, plural. And they are building something big in her basement.
The first thing the creatures ask for (because they have the ability to communicate with humans telepathically, of course,) is a “slow-down.” And the great time-keeper they worship, the box upstairs, it grants the wish! Time slows down for everyone in the world except Anne and the creatures. The next day, the structure in the basement is looking more like an immense, dark palace. And then the sacrifices to the nameless creatures’ dark god begin.
But someone saw the slow down. They saw Anna speed up. They had been watching her, spying on her. Representatives of a global construction company called Crutchley have been buying up properties in Anne’s neighborhood to tear them down and put up a shopping mall. Global conglomerate, shopping malls… guess who the bad guys are. (It’s not the creatures.) As Anne is entrusting her best friend Henry with what she has hidden in her closet and hidden in her basement, they encounter a man, a man with a camera, in her home. And he got video of the box.
Henry’s family, who lives in a large estate a few doors down, and Aunt Ruth are the last hold outs to Crutchley Development’s machine. Ruth wants even more money. She is a wicked step-mother figure if I ever saw one. She is constantly threatening to cut off Uncle Marco’s annuity, what he lives off of, if Anne doesn’t do just what she says. Then one night the corporation offers both Ruth and Henry’s family a million dollars each for their homes. Score! But wait… why so much? And why does Mr. Crutchley himself want to meet with Anne and Henry before they close the deal? …And what is that sinister shadow up on Henry’s roof?
If only Uncle Marko hadn’t left. Where did he get these boxes? Where does he go on his constant vacations that Anne is not invited on? So many questions. So many troubles she unleashed on the world. Anne will have to find a way to defeat Crutchley on her own.
William Sleator is one of those magic authors that have the key to the imagination. I remember every one of Sleator’s novels I have ever read because they reach right down into the heart of your imagination, right into your soul, and leave the seed of an idea. His are ideas that will never go away, that will never leave you alone. Not for the rest of your life.
Don’t ever expect a nice, tight ending from him, either. Sleator’s The Green Futures of Tycho left the main character in an alternate reality, with no way to get his world back the way it was before he started fiddling with time. This story’s conclusion is unusually open-ended. This is no Disney princess tale. But I don’t feel slighted. It gives my mind’s eye a launch pad, and leaves open the possibility of future sequels. (William Sleator died in 2011. Luckily, he left us a prequel titled Marco’s Millions!) His excellent writing pulls each story through an inevitable insanity to be overcome, through fields of bizarre science, and through the darkness where few dare to look within themselves. Puffin constantly keeps his works in print. Go find them.
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