~I~
THE TAPED DOWN BOX
I entered my wife’s office in West Tennessee University’s Psychology department. Like all of the best professors, the space was packed to the rafters with mementos of her career. But, since she specialized in parapsychology, her mementos were quite a bit stranger than most.
It was spring in Tennessee, so she dressed accordingly: a sleeveless, flowered dress that offset her wild, wavy red hair. I knew a lot of boys, and probably some girls, took her classes just because she looked more like a gorgeous grad student than a tenured professor. They were quickly surprised by how smart she was, and how unforgiving in the classroom. Most of them had no idea about her two most unique aspects: she was a third-degree Wiccan priestess, and although she was blind, when fireflies were around she could magically see.
Today she sat behind her desk, facing the door as if waiting for me. A shoebox closed with masking tape rested on the blotter in front of her.
“What’s in the box?” I asked. “No, wait.” In an anguished voice I repeated, “What’s in the box?”
After a moment she said, “Was that supposed to be Brad Pitt from Seven ?”
“Yeah. Not bad. You got it on the first try.”
“Despite your best efforts.”
I moved books from one of the two guest chairs and sat down. “So, what is in the box?”
“A basilisk.”
It took a moment for the word to register. “Wait, isn’t that a kind of lizard? It can run across water, right?”
“No. There is a lizard called a basilisk, but this is different.” She tapped the lid. “This is a creature that turns you to stone if you see it. Like Medusa.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t, or you’d be a piece of rock.”
“Well, I did get stoned on occasion in high school.”
“And I’ve known you to be very hard,” she shot back with a wink. “But here.” She pushed a book across to me, in the process dislodging a pile of student papers, which I surreptitiously caught and put back. “Look in the index, and you’ll find an entry.”
The book was Mysterious and Deadly Creatures of Myth and Legend , by Francis Colby. I found the entry on the Basilisk:
Known as the ‘king of serpents,’ this small creature can cause death with merely a glance, sending the unfortunate victim into a state of paralysis often called ‘turned to stone.’
He then quoted a passage from the Greek historian Pliny.
I looked up from the text. “So someone found a basilisk. In Tennessee. In the second decade of the twenty-first century.”
“No,” she said wearily, “someone bought it. At a Renaissance Faire.”
I knew who she meant. “I’d put five dollars on Michaela.”
“And you’d win.” Michaela Renault was a sophomore majoring in world history, who desperately wanted to learn the Craft from Tanna. It was the desperation, in fact, that kept Tanna from accepting her as a student. At the university she had to take whoever signed up for her classes, but as Lady Firefly she was extremely particular, since a student/teacher relationship in witchcraft was a bond that never really went away. Tanna was still very close with her own teacher, the imposing Lady Nighthawk. Michaela was obsessed with the accoutrements of witchcraft, to the point that she played a witch character in one of the LARPing games run around campus. That was such a red flag that even Tanna could see it, with no fireflies necessary.
This time I tapped the box. “So what is it, really?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see it, obviously. That’s why she brought it to me. I’m immune to its lethal effects.”
“Why would she buy it in the first place?”
Tanna sighed. “She was afraid someone else would buy it who wouldn’t know the danger.”
“How do you even know there’s anything in there?”
As if waiting for that cue, something in the box scratched at the taped-down lid. The sound startled me, and I jumped.
“I also don’t want to let whatever
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