Chapter Five: Pandora's Box

Chapter Five: Pandora’s Box

I may have discovered a secret that Jack and Emma held close that day, but as I was to learn, they had many more.

After many sleepless nights in that house, another traveler was brought in. This time I was introduced, not as Jane, but as “Minerva”, Jack and Emma’s daughter. I was dumbfounded. Minerva was the name of their dead daughter. I figured that it was better not to protest.

I wanted to help the new guest but had no idea how. So, as usual, I helped Emma make the soup, knowing better than to eat any of it. When Emma thought I wasn’t looking, I watched her slip an extra ingredient into the supper. I agreed with Emma and Jack that our guest should spend the night. And I watched her eat the food we had made. I did nothing. For the rest of my life, I will remember the sight of that woman unknowingly eating her last meal. Even so many years later the sight still haunts me. She went into the ground like all the others.

That night I wandered restlessly through my nightmares. My days became a type of waking nightmare. The routine never wavered with any traveler. There were no more slip ups on Jack and Emma’s part. As for my part, well, Emma made sure that I knew it well. I also knew the consequences of not playing along.

One day, a few days after the female guest, Emma took me back to the creek. She asked me to look into the water and tell her what I saw. While my back was turned, she, with one solid shove, pushed me into the water. She hissed a warning at me. She said to watch my wandering eye, or she would make sure I stayed there next time. Somehow she knew that I knew. She knew what I could do to her, and I knew what she would do to me. It seemed as though I had opened Pandora’s box.

A few weeks (and guests) later, Jack was in town and Emma was in the farthest part of the garden. My room had never bothered me before, but now it seemed like a prison. Albeit a particularly juvenile and frilly prison. As though the previous occupant had left it at a young age. Then it occurred to me that this must have been Minerva’s room. Shaking off the eerie thought, I decided to explore the house. I walked slowly into Jack and Emma’s room and stopped dead.