CW are found in the description

Chapter 6 

Boxes

Alice was rude the whole way home. She crossed her arms and sat in the middle seat blatantly talking over the radio. “Honestly I think you should just throw that thing away!” She kept saying, referring to the bookmark I’ksha had given Lee. Alice didn’t let up until Lee was safely upstairs in their room with the door shut. 

“I just don't like how she is suddenly trying to be best friends with you. She has known you for years, I remember her being in school ever since freshman year. Why does she choose now to talk to you? Where has she been the past year?”

Lee finally snapped back.

“Would you shut the fuck up about it?” Lee hissed at Alice who had again positioned herself on Lee’s loft bed. Lee took off their jacket and flung it across the room at her, throwing it through her. “ What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

“Oh I’m sorry you were making goo goo eyes for that girl while you were supposed to be figuring out a lead!” Alice snapped back. 

Lee’s face flushed. “I wasn’t flirting with anyone! I just spent 2 hours looking for every piece of info I could get my hands on about you and anyone who could have done something to you.” Lee threw the notebook onto the desk and sat down, pulling their knees up to their chin. They dug the bookmark out of their pocket and gently placed it next to the notebook. Above them Alice groaned and lay down in the nest of blankets. Why does she get like this? Lee thought to themself. Alice could be… judgemental of a lot of people. When she was still alive sometimes she said things that made Lee feel off, like now with I’ksha. Stuff like Lee’s dad was a little too nosy or that Auntie V was too quiet. But if Lee ever made comments about Alice’s friends she would shut it down. If Lee mentioned the strange way her mother treated her, she would snap at them. And now Alice was doing it again with I’Ksha. Sure Lee didn't know her well but, she had probably been the nicest person Lee had interacted with in the past year. Maybe a bit beyond that.  Lee took a deep breath and stood up. “I’m going to go and get something to eat. I’ll be back. Just stay here please.” They needed a break from Alice. 

Out in the hallway the ladder leading to the attic was opened, a few boxes hung out around its bottom. Lee slipped by and stepped into the kitchen pulling some leftover containers from the fridge. Heating them up they felt their stomach growling. God, when was the last time they ate?

Lee heard heavy boots descend from the ladder and poked their head into the hallway to see that their father was dragging out another box. “ What are you doing?” Lee asked.

Their father placed the box down and huffed as he straightened his back. “ There was some stuff Val wanted from upstairs. Some of your mom’s stuff.”

Mom’s stuff? Lee thought. Dad had never bothered to clean out their mother’s stuff before. They nudged a box with their foot. “What’s in it?” They asked.

Their father shook their head. “I’m not quite sure but this is all she had packed away.” He looked up at Lee, dabbing the sweat off of his forehead with the bottom of his t-shirt. “You can go through it if you want.”

Lee shifted on their feet. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” dad replied, walking  past Lee into the kitchen grabbing a cup from the cupboard, “Just if Val asks for something, hand it over.”

The boxes were heavy but Lee was able to set them up in their room. They say down on the carpet at the end of their bed and took a long sip out of their mug of soup. One handed they began digging though the first box. 

“What are those?” Alice asked from the loft, dragging herself out of her mood.

“Mom’s boxes apparently.” Lee replied. They dug in and began to pull out different objects. Scarfs, crochet hooks, gloves, and a wooden box full of earrings. 

“Oh those are pretty," Alice said pointing at one of the pairs. Lee jumped. They hadn’t noticed Alice had floated down next to them. “I think I remember her wearing those.”

Lee nodded, holding the earrings in their hand. They were a simple pair of hoops that had little red beads dropping from the hoop.Their mother insisted on wearing them every year on Christmas when she went to Mass, one of two times a year she would attend church. Looking down at the other objects brought back memories too. Their mother trying to teach them how to crochet, the scarfs their mother used to make each year when they were a child, winters spent together wrapped up warmly by their mother’s hard work. It was hard going though this stuff. Mom had been a very kind person. Lee had seen a different side of her than most people and they were always close. She passed away 6 years ago. 

Lee was sick that spring. The hiking trails had thawed and early spring flowers were beginning to bloom along the park’s edge. The two had planned a two day hiking trip into the woods, they would cross the river and set up camp a little ways off of the trail and spend time fishing, and making s'mores by the fire, just the two of them,  but Lee had gotten sick the night before. Their mother had gone on and on about wanting to show Lee something amazing, something they couldn’t miss seeing. She said that her mother and father, Lee’s grandparents, had taken the same trip with her and her sister when she was the same age as Lee. She wanted to share it with them as well. Mama had decided on staying home but in the end it was Lee and their father that insisted on her taking the trip herself. Aunt Val insisted on coming along, turning the day into a much needed sister bonding trip.

They dropped Lee’s mother and Aunt Val off at the beginning of the trail with intentions of picking them up in a couple of days. But it never happened. That afternoon there was a heavy amount of rain, the weather channels had not predicted the flash floods and landslides.  In the morning Lee and their father woke up to a call from the police department. 

Aunt Valeria and their mother, Martia, were crossing a river on the stone path when it was raining. The river was hours away from the beginning of the trail and Martia had insisted on pushing forward.  They were trying to make it to an overhang they knew was nearby so they could set up camp somewhere dry. Lee’s mother had intended to wait out the storm and hike back the next day to avoid any damage to the trail forward. Aunt Val had heard rushing water suddenly pick up and turned upstream to see a wall of water rushing down to them. She called out for Lee’s mother who was farther ahead on the path and ran back up the bank of the river but it was too late. Lee’s mother had been swept away. They had found her body downstream. 

Now all that was left were her possessions. Lee hugged a purple scarf tight in their hands. If they focused on it they could still smell her perfume, light and floral. 

“What’s in the next one?” Alice asked quietly. 

Lee dragged the next box over and began to dig. This one seemed to be filled with Knick knacks, but not the normal ones Lee knew their mother collected. Instead of snowglobes and mugs the box was full of strange brass bowls, too small to hold any food. There were chipped and broken candles sprinkling everything in the box with wax. Small stones of different colors were in a black velvety bag. Alice pointed to a large purple and gray stone. “I think that’s amethyst.” she said. Lee's brow furrowed. Why did their mother have a bunch of rocks in a bag? Finally the bottom of the box began to show itself. Lee had cleared everything out except for something wrapped in parchment paper. Carefully they unwrapped it. 

It was a book, bound in leather and smelled like dust. The edges of the binding were worn and when Lee turned the pages flipping through the book they found that many were brittle and cracked under their fingertips. There were strange drawings and most of the text looked to be handwritten. Near the back of the book, before the pages became blank there were strange symbols written jaggedly across the pages. Lee reopened the book to the first page and their eyes widened. On the inside of the cover was their mother’s name written in her own handwriting. 

……………

Lee walked back into the bedroom. When they had seen the book they immediately placed it back carefully in the box and walked away. Alice had tried to follow but after Lee had waved her away and walked into the restroom she left them alone. Lee had taken a shower and sat in the tub trying to calm down. Their father had found their mother’s journal a long time ago, it had always been in her bedside table. As far as the two had known that was the only personal journal that she had made. Lee couldn't wrap their head around it. The book that they had found didn't seem like a normal diary, it had lists written in messy handwriting, drawings of plants and symbols. Aside from the herb garden their mother had tried to start that almost died within a week of it being planted,  they had never seen their mother try to plant anything or show an interest in gardening. Her interests had lied in other things like the antiques shop, felt works and books. 

Lee tousled their hair with a towel and sat down at the desk looking at the book. They could feel Alice hovering over their shoulder. The pages were so thin in Lee's hand and they carefully turned page after page. Their mother had never been the cleanest writer, always writing in swirling cursive text, but this was on another level. These pages seemed rushed, in a mixture of English and Spanish, sometimes switching in the middle of the sentence only to go on for pages after. It was almost impossible to read. Aside from the handwriting the symbols worried Lee. The runes weren't any that they had seen before, and while Lee had not seen any pentagrams, they gave Lee the same uneasy feeling as a horror movie.

“I don't like this,” Alice said, startling Lee who had forgotten she was there. Her brow was furrowed as she stared down at the book. 

“I don't even know what to think about it,” Lee continued flipping through the pages. They were close to the end of the book, almost before the pages became blank when Lee saw their name. Their birth name.  They stopped immediately and pointed down at it and read the sentence out loud.

‘I wish there was more I could leave with ‘Lee’ other than this story.”

Lee and Alice locked eyes. “Well?” Alice yelled over their shoulder, “what does it say?!?!”

Lee turned back to the page and frowned. “It’s hard to read,” they admitted. “Like most of the other pages they are a mix of different languages and a lot of it is misspelled or hard to read but…” Lee turned the pages looking through the final pages their mother had made, “ there are pictures.”

There were three pictures in all. The first, drawn under a paragraph of broken language, looked like a baby swaddled up tight with two animal skulls above it, one with antlers and the other with horns. The baby looked like it was reaching its hands out to them as they looked down from the sky. The next drawing were the same skulls with different symbols around them that looked like the symbols in the book. Lee’s gut twisted up as they looked at the symbols, each written jaggedly around the skulls. The final drawing was a sketch of a lake surrounded by trees. There was a little girl there sitting at the edge of the water bending over and touching it.

Lee closed the book. They didn't want to look at it anymore. There was a feeling like something pulling deep in their gut and they didn't know if it was a warning about the book, or a drive to dive deeper into it, to spend the time necessary to translate and rewrite pages. Something felt like it was calling out from the pages but, they couldn't tell what it was seeming to say.  Lee took the book and placed it back into the box along with the other contents and placed it in the back of their closet underneath a pile of clothes. 

“What are you doing?” asked Alice.

Lee looked down at the pile and shifted a few shirts to cover the bottom of the box. “Dad said Aunt Val was looking for something in the boxes. I’ll give it over if she asks for it but I don't want her to take it.” Lee closed the closet and sat at the edge of the bed. They could feel the box in there taking up room in the closet as it pulled at them like a compass could always feel north.  It was getting late. The sun had already set earlier in the evening and snow was dancing across the window. Lee poked their head out and looked down the hallway. Noone seemed to be there so they quickly shuffled the boxes out of their room, leaving them at the end of the hallway, and retreated to the comfort of their bed. Lee needed rest.

Alice wandered over to Lee, now wrapped in a bundle of comforters and pillows and laid down beside them. “I'm sorry,” she said.

“ About what?” Lee muttered into the pillow they were hugging. 

“ I really liked your mom.” Alice reached up and wiped a tear from her eye. Her voice was quiet.

Lee’s mother was warm to everyone that had known her. Alice was no exception to that. The moment Lee had brought her home in elementary school their mother had welcomed her. She often made extra at dinner knowing that Alice, the little stray, would have a good chance to be wandering through her door. Every Christmas there was another present, even if small, under the tree for her. Martia had treated Alice like her own daughter, and Lee knew this. Lee reached out to touch Alice's hand but it fell through. Lee left it there in its icy embrace. 

“I’m sorry too.” Lee said after a long moment of quiet. “ I’m sorry that I snapped at you earlier today.”

Alice chewed on her bottom lip, a habit she also had in life. “Does this mean you will leave that girl, I’Ksha, alone?”

Lee looked past Alice to the desk where the bookmark still sat. Lee had already entered the number into their phone when they were in the bathroom. There was no reason to keep it but the idea of throwing it away felt wrong. “No.” they said softly, looking back at Alice. “I'm sorry but, I'm not going to do that.”

Alice said nothing and turned around facing away from Lee, removing her hand from where Lee was ‘holding’ it. 

Lee closed their eyes and drifted off to sleep.