Read The Box: Uncanny Stories for Free Online

across the wide, empty desert. Then she turned back and looked for footprints, but the ground was as hard as baked enamel. A whimper started in her throat and she knew that in a few seconds she was going to start crying.
    “Bob,” she murmured. “Bob, where—?”
    In the stillness she heard the front screen doorslap in its frame. Abruptly she started running up the side of the cafe building, heart hammering excitedly. Stifling heat waves broke over her as she ran.
    At the edge of the building she stopped suddenly.
    The man she’d spoken to at the counter was looking into the car. He was a small man in his forties, wearing a spotted fedora and a striped, green shirt. Black suspenders held up his dark, grease-spotted pants. Like the other man he wore high-top shoes.
    She moved one step and her sandal scuffed on the dry ground. The man looked over at her suddenly, his face lean and bearded. His eyes were a pale blue that shone like milk spots in the leathery tan of his face.
    The man smiled casually. “Thought I’d see if your husband was waitin’ on you in your car,” he said. He touched the brim of his hat and started back into the cafe.
    “Are you—” Jean started, then broke off as the man turned.
    “Ma’am?”
    “Are you sure he wasn’t in the washroom?”
    “Wasn’t no one in there when I went in,” he said.
    She stood shivering in the sun as the man wentinto the cafe and the screen door flapped closed. She could feel mindless dread filling her like ice water.
     
    T hen she caught herself. There had to be an explanation. Things like this just didn’t happen.
    She moved firmly across the cafe floor and stopped before the counter. The man in the white ducks looked up from his paper.
    “Would you please check the washroom?” she asked.
    “The washroom?”
    Anger tightened her.
    “Yes, the washroom,” she said. “I know my husband is in there.”
    “Ma’am, wasn’t no one in there,” said the man in the fedora.
    “I’m sorry,” she said tightly, refusing to allow his words. “My husband didn’t just disappear.”
    The two men made her nervous with their silent stares.
    “Well, are you going to look there?” she said, unable to control the break in her voice.
    The man in the white ducks glanced at the man with the fedora and something twitched his mouth. Jean felt her hands jerk into angry fists. Then hemoved down the length of the counter and she followed.
    He turned the porcelain knob and held open the spring-hinged door. Jean held her breath as she moved closer to look.
    The washroom was empty.
    “Are you satisfied?” the man said. He let the door swing shut.
    “Wait,” she said. “Let me look again.”
    The man pressed his mouth into a line.
    “Didn’t you see it was empty?” he said.
    “I said I want to look again.”
    “Lady, I’m tellin’ ya—”
    Jean pushed at the door suddenly and it banged against the washroom wall.
    “There!” she said. “There’s a door there!”
    She pointed to a door in the far wall of the washroom.
    “That door’s been locked for years, lady,” the man said.
    “It doesn’t open?”
    “Ain’t got no reason to open it.”
    “It must open,” Jean said. “My husband went in there and he didn’t come out this door. And he didn’t disappear!”
    The man looked at her sullenly without speaking.
    “What’s on the other side of the door?” she asked.
    “Nothing.”
    “Does it open on the outside?”
    The man didn’t answer.
    “Does it?!”
    “It opens on a shed, lady, a shed no one’s used for years,” the man said angrily.
    She stepped forward and gripped the knob of the door.
    “I told you it didn’t open.” The man’s voice was rising more.
    “Ma’am?” Behind her Jean heard the cajoling voice of the man in the fedora and green shirt. “Ain’t nothin’ in that shed but old trash, ma’am. You want, I’ll show it to you.”
    The way he said it, Jean suddenly realized that she was alone. Nobody she knew knew where she