By Laura Q. Jimenez

Lexi’s trowel bit through the dry and loose earth easily, meeting little resistance. The dead ground formed a perfect circle, perhaps eight feet across. Nothing marked the boundary except a clear demarcation of well-manicured lawn outside the circle, and gray dirt inside.

She dug deeper, using her hands to aid her trowel in shoveling aside loose-packed dirt. She hadn’t brought a bigger shovel, hadn’t anticipated doing this kind of work today. All she’d come to the Walton’s manor for was to examine their spacious yard and sketch out some ideas for a total landscape overhaul. The dead patch at the very back-end of the lot had piqued her curiosity, however. The Walton’s clearly cared about their land. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have hired Lexi’s firm. Not that Lexi was going to see much of the astoundingly high bill the Walton’s were paying. As a sub-contractor, this job, while lucrative, would not lift her out of the hole that medical bills had dug for her. Much like she was digging now.

She startled when her trowel hit something solid. She brushed aside loose dirt and sandy gravel to reveal an oblong wooden box, buried unevenly so that it rose at an angle to meet Lexi’s probing fingers.

“Weird,” she murmured, lifting the box free. Had the Walton’s buried a dog back here? Would that account for the dead patch? But the box seemed intact, un-rotted, though it wasn’t nailed shut. “This is probably a bad idea,” Lexi said as she lifted the lid to peek inside. Then stopped, mouth agape. There was no dead dog, or gerbil, or cat in the box. There was only a small black notebook, and stacks upon stacks of cold, hard cash. Small denomination bills, perhaps a hundred deep.

“What the hell?” She ran a hand along the edge of the bills, inhaling their new money smell. Without an exact count, she assumed that she’d unearthed close to ten or twenty thousand dollars. Not the biggest cache by the Walton’s standards. Lexi flipped through the little black notebook. The front inset read Free in sharp black lettering. The rest of the pages were crisp and blank, the spine of the notebook uncreased.

Lexi was all alone in the massive garden. She knew she should just put the box back and forget she ever saw it, but temptation clawed at her heart. Twenty thousand dollars would cut her debt off at the knees. The Waltons probably wouldn’t even notice.

Before she quite knew she’d made a decision, the shoe-sized box vanished into her gardening bag. She filled in the hole once more and finished her landscape overhaul sketch during the rest of the afternoon.  No one questioned her when she left, or called the police as she drove home.

By the time the soft Ashwood box sat on her kitchen table, Lexi was giddy with excitement and relief. She’d need to deposit the cash in installments, so no one would ask too many questions about her sudden influx of wealth, but after that? No more aggressively polite letters urging her to settle her medical accounts. No more Final Notices. No choosing between paying rent, buying food, or getting her risperidone.

The little black notebook she laid aside for now. And two heavy stacks of twenty-dollar bills went into her purse.

But the next day, when she reached into her bag to hand the teller her prize, there was nothing, even though the cash had been there when she left her house. Her hand came away covered with a greasy coating of dust, but the money wasn’t in her purse.

“I’m so sorry,” she muttered, avoiding direct eye contact. “I must have left it in my car. I’ll be right back.” But the front seat of her car was also empty. She sat back in the driver’s seat and ran a hand through her hair, which came away beneath her fingers. When she pulled her hand back, she pulled a long strand of lank blond hair with it.

“Shit,” Lexi swore, shaking out her hand. “I’m losing it,” she said, rubbing exhaustion from her eyes. “I probably left the money right on the kitchen table, like a dunce.”

When she returned home, every single bill was still inside the wooden box. She slumped into a chair, confused and exasperated. The notebook still lay on the kitchen table, its pages yellowed and warped, though she could have sworn it had been pristine and new when she found it.

More importantly, she noticed the fern planter she kept in the walkway between her kitchen and front hall. The plant drooped to the ground, leaves brown and dry.

“What happened to you, buddy?” she said and stooped to lift its dry stalks, only for them to break off and crumble in her hand. “Oh no.” She was usually so good with her plants.

She wiped her hand on her jeans and wondered at her forgetfulness, then picked up another two stacks of cash. Maybe she’d drive to a different branch of her bank, so she wouldn’t look like a fool in front of the teller she’d failed to give her money to the first time. And she’d keep a sharper eye on it this time.

When she pulled out of her driveway, a shiny Bentley rolled up the street behind her. The Waltons. Lexi squealed in panic, peeled out over the curb, bounced hard, then gunned it out of her residential neighborhood. The stacks of cash noisily slid off the front seat and disappeared from sight. The driver of the Bentley frantically waved after her, but he could not easily turn the car on the narrow street and was unable to follow immediately.

Lexi heaved a sigh of relief and pulled over into an alley a few blocks away. Could they be after her already? She hadn’t deposited any of the cash yet. If she could hide the box, they wouldn’t be able to prove she’d taken a thing.

Sitting in the semi-dark created by the shadow of the next building, Lexi dug around underneath the passenger seat for her treasure. Her fingers groped blindly but she couldn’t find the money. When she sat back, confused, she again noted a filmy layer of greasy dust, or maybe ash, on her fingertips. “What the hell is going on?” She chewed on the fingernails of her clean hand. The nail came away cleanly at the cuticle. The naked nailbed didn’t even bleed.

Lexi screamed and spat the nail against her windshield. The flesh on her fingertip was uncalloused and pink.

Suddenly cold, she took a roundabout way back home. She had to deal with this box, this money, this stupid notebook. Something was wrong and she didn’t understand what was happening to her.

The Bentley was gone when she returned. She pulled to the end of the street and hid her car behind a cluster of trees, then jogged back to her house. The distance up her driveway was no more than a few yards, but Lexi panted hard by the time she reached her door.

Inside, the box still sat on her kitchen table. Untouched. Full to the brim. Beside it sat the moldy and wet notebook, no longer even black, as though someone had soaked it in mud and let it grow completely waterlogged.

She shook her head, desperately trying to clear the confused fog from her brain. Thirst plagued her, weighed down her tongue. Lexi reached for something to drink from her fridge, but  when she opened the door, the smell assaulted her and knocked her back against the table. Everything had gone rancid and rotten. The burgers she’d put on a low shelf to thaw out were gray and slimy, the milk above a solid green chunk. The oranges in the crisper drawer had grown a thick layer of white fuzz.

Lexi barely reached her sink before she threw up, though she produced nothing but stringy bile. She couldn’t remember when she last ate any food. On the table, the notebook pulsed and twitched with life. Lexi blinked, brow furrowed, and raised her hand to reach for the notebook, even as it reached for her.

A sharp knock at the door startled her into a high-pitched yelp. The hungry box momentarily ignored, she limped to the front door and raised tired eyes to Mrs. Bellana Walton, the family matriarch.

“Oh, Miss Lexi, I am so glad I reached you before it was too late,” Mrs. Walton cried through the closed screen door.

“Too late? What?”

“I am begging you, please, give me back the box. I can’t imagine why you’d want it?”

Lexi felt the urge to scream and cry but was too tired for either. “Please,” she said, voice rough and frail at the edges. “It’s not even that much money for someone like you. It would turn my life around. Please just forget this ever happened. Please.”

Mrs. Walton stopped, frowned. “Money? What money?”

Lexi swallowed but there was no saliva in her mouth. “The money in the box.”

Mrs. Walton’s eyes widened. “There is no money in that box.”

“There’s like twenty grand in there. I know that must feel like nothing to you.”

“No, Lexi, you’re not listening. There is no money in that box. Why would I bury money in my backyard?”

“Hell if I know.”

“Please.” The older woman’s voice was cracking with the strain of forced calm. “Just give me the box. If you need money, I’ll give it to you. I just want you safe, okay?”

Lexi scoffed, turning her back on the woman at her door. “Safe? What does that even mean? It’s just an old box, lady. Just leave me alone.” In her anger, she did not even remember to be frightened. She stepped back into her kitchen, though her front door was still open, and she heard Mrs. Walton follow after her through the house.

“Lexi, please believe me. That box contains nothing but the cremains of my father. He was such a terribly greedy man— Lexi, are you listening?”

Lexi wasn’t listening. In the box, a dense pile of greasy ash shivered with a pulsing green glow. No, not ash. Money. Her money. Lexi couldn’t quite remember why she needed the money.

Following on Lexi’s heels, Mrs. Walton shouted after her, pleading with her to get away from the box that was so clearly draining every ounce of life in its vicinity. Into that notebook. Free, it had said. Free, indeed.

“Why the hell did you have to dig it up, Lexi?” Mrs. Walton said, grabbing Lexi’s bone-thin arm. “How did you even manage it? We buried it so deep!”

But it hadn’t been buried deep. Barely a foot from the surface.

Lexi smiled. The box rose to find a way back into the world. Old Man Walton couldn’t be contained. Lexi was glad, even as her heart failed. She picked up the notebook in skeletal fingers and hugged it tightly against her chest before her knees buckled and she slid to the ground in a boneless heap, leaving Mrs. Walton holding the sleeve of her shirt that contained her skin and very little else anymore. All while the notebook on what had been Lexi’s chest expanded and grew.

It must have been so dark and cold down there in the ground. Poor man.

In a way, it was funny. Lexi had wished to be free from the burden of her debts. Now, in a sense, she was.

They both were.