The laughter comes from a box in the farthest corner of the attic. Starts as a wail cutting through cob webs, dust and fug, and breaks in sharp low-pitched cackles. The floor creaks with each step Brian makes. A plank snaps and his foot sinks down to the ancle. He slumps to the floor and waits for it to stop. Crawling around the clutter, he reaches the box.
The rusty crank squeaks and turns empty. On the second try, the box opens and Jack jumps out. The spring pops up and stretches sideways, almost touching the floor. The paint on one eye has peeled off. The other eye looks alive, sinister and arrogant, yet full of pain.
Jack is a present for Brian’s seventh birth day. Grandmother gives him the box, the hugest present he has had.
Come on, Brian, open it.
What is it, Grandma? He tears the wrapping paper.
With a smooth turn of the crank, the box opens and Jack jumps out. He says Hello! and laughs. Brian starts crying and throws the box at Mother’s lap.
Oh Brian, I thought you’ll like him. Look at his bright eyes, and what a smile he has! Grandmother says and her smile dissolves in a sigh.
Of course, he’ll…he just needs more time, says Mother.
Jack lives lonely and forgotten on the top book shelf. In the years, even Mother gives up on dusting the box. She finds it when she is clearing Brian’s old books, and packing his belongings to go to university.
Take Jack with you…from your grandmother, remember? Mother holds the box and looks at it with warm eyes.
Don’t be silly, Mum.
Now he thinks of Mother waiting for his calls and texts, shorter in time, occasional and unpredictable, with his books and cloths, her only companion. The roof leaks or the garden fence falls. Ok, Mum, I’ll come next weekend. He never does. With the land attached to the house, one day he will renovate and sell it, and pay off his debts.
Brian blows off the dust and puts the box on the back seat. The city lights criss-cross the horizon when his phone starts ringing. He takes it out of his breast pocket and drops it. The car veers off the road and hits a tree. The windscreen shatters into a myriad of splinters.
Jack jumps out of the box and whispers, babbles and cackles in Brian’s back. The voice rises, falls and dies, only to comes back louder and more malevolent any time.
Once back home, Brian does what Mother did – puts Jack on the highest book shelf. Honestly, he will repair him one day. That one day never comes and Jack goes to a charity shop. Nor Brian renovates the house. The price for it has fallen short of paying off his debts.
The 9th of September 2024. Brian sits in front of the telly with a can of beer. He does not know what is the date but will remembers it better than his birthday.
They cut off the sport news. A jack-in-the-box pops on the screen.
That is my Jack, no…it can’t be him, Brian whispers.
Good evening,
We interrupt the scheduled programme with a breaking news that sends shockwaves through the whole world tonight. A diamond has been found in a jack-in-the-box that has been donated to a charity shop. A claim is made that this is the Eye of the World, the purest and biggest diamond ever found and lost more than a century ago.
Now, back to the sports.
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