It was sitting on the grass verge by the side of the road. Big, solid wood, weathered, but in excellent condition.

A colourful handwritten sign stuck to the lid read:

FREE TRUNK!! (NOT HAUNTED. PROMISE!!)

I flipped up the heavy lid and the inside had some kind of matte black surface–not paint; it felt a little rough to the touch. You could hide a body in there, if you had a mind, I thought. Maybe two bodies.

I closed the lid and stepped back. I was pretty sure I could fit it in the back of my Honda Civic, especially if I put the back seats down flat. Maybe.

Sure, the sign said free, but you can never be sure in these small towns. So I went up the path and knocked on the door of the small weatherboard bungalow it was sitting in front of. No answer. No movement. I knocked again. Nothing. I went to the front window, shielded my eyes and peaked inside. Nice furniture. Neat. Tidy. But the place felt empty–abandoned, somehow. Hard to explain; just one of those feelings.

“Ain’t nobody lives there no more,” said a voice behind me.

I looked around and there was a middle-aged black woman with an ugly-as-sin dog on a leash. That dog looked like its face had been kicked by a giraffe.

“Oh,” I said. “Just wanted to check the trunk was actually free and up for the taking.”

“It says it right there on the sign,” she said, pointing. “Take it if you want it.”

“Okay, thanks,” I said.

“Don’t thank me,” she said, “ain’t my damn trunk.” And then she wandered off down the street, tugging the leash and the ugly little dog behind her.

I backed the Honda up close as I could get it and popped the hatchback open. I eyeballed the trunk and then the back of the Honda and decreed that I could, in fact, fit it in.

Well, let me tell you, getting that damn trunk into that car was a job of work I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I heaved and pushed and strained and jiggled and jostled and nearly popped a hernia for damn near twenty minutes. I was on the verge of giving up when, all of sudden, it just went clunk and slid in perfectly, like it was a custom fit.

Sweet Jesus.

I took a minute to catch my breath. Then I secured the hatchback with some nylon rope I keep in the spare wheel well. I got in, started the engine, gave the neat little bungalow one last look and headed out of town.

Castlemayne was a quiet community to start with, but now it felt damn near deserted. The last time I’d passed through here it was a lot more lively. There were certainly still people around now, some shops were open, but many of the houses felt like the one I’d just left–abandoned. Maybe it was a boom-or-bust thing. But the little town had always felt more like a place people retired to more than an industry town dependent on the stock market.

As I hit the edge of town I thought I saw a young child standing in a yard, screaming. It was such a fast glimpse I wasn’t really sure. Poor kid probably lost his ball.

At home, getting that trunk back out of the car was another job of work, but still a lot easier than getting it in. I wrestled it out and onto the grass next to my front porch. I stood back wiping sweat from my face and saw Clinton Tolliver, street busybody, standing at his bay window, glaring at me, then the trunk, then at me. I decided right there, to hell with it, that trunk could stay right where it was.

The next morning as I stood at my bedroom window, contemplating the possibility of a coffee and actually getting dressed for the day, I saw the orange cat. It slinked into my yard from under next door’s hedge. It was beelining for the trunk, the lid of which was open. Damn, did I need to get a lock? Would it even take a lock?

The cat approached from the side like the trunk was a sleeping dog. After a brief pause, the cat jumped up onto the lip of the trunk–quite the balancing act–and then dropped straight inside. A box is a box is a box to a cat, apparently.

Almost as soon as its tail disappeared from view, it let out a hell of a yowl and shot straight up in the air like it had stepped on molten lava. It must have clipped the lid on the way up, because the lid wobbled and started to come down, caught the cat on the back of the head and closed with a dull thud, trapping the cat inside.

Well, hell, that was unexpected.

I slipped on a pair flip-flops and went downstairs and onto the porch, still in my pyjamas. I could hear the hissing and spitting and growling of the cat from here, but very faint. I went down the steps and was halfway over to the trunk when all the commotion stopped. Just … absolute, total, quiet.

I paused for moment, waiting for it to start up again. But … silence.

I continued over to the trunk and carefully flipped the lid up and jumped back quickly, not wanting to get faceful of howling cat and slashing claws.

The trunk was empty. Actually empty. No cat, no fur, not even a screw-you hairball rolling around at the bottom. Nada. I looked around the trunk, behind the trunk, under the trunk, as though, perhaps, the cat was a POW escapee digging a tunnel to freedom in Switzerland. Nothing to be found.

Huh.

I had another look around, but could see nothing untoward or the least bit out of place. I shrugged, gently closed the lid and went back inside.

Later, I was sitting on my porch sipping lemonade, contemplating my options, such as they were, when I spotted Clinton Tolliver looking my way. I faked not having seen him, but no dice, he came my way regardless.

“Mister Burton,” he said, “a word?”

I sighed, forced myself out of my comfy deck chair, and went over to him.

“Mister Burton,” he said, “look at this verge. I’ve spoken to you before about this and it is clearly spelled out in the homeowner’s association manual; it is your verge and it is your responsibility to keep it weed free, well trimmed and maintained. And, well–” He swept his hand at my verge, like a magician producing a rabbit.

I liked my verge. It was like a hippie’s beard; it had character. And things living in it.

“I do not want to lodge yet another complaint,” he said, in a tone that suggested he would very much like to do exactly that. “And now there’s this, this … eyesore.”

He pointed at the trunk.

“You cannot leave it there, right out in the open for everyone to see. It is hideous.”

I sipped my lemonade.

“Blah,” he said. “Blah blah blah. Blah? Blah blah?” He wagged his finger at me, pointed at the trunk, brought the finger back to me. Blah blah blah! Blah! Blah blah! Blah? Blah?!“

I confess I did, in fact, tune him out. He was standing there, hands on hips now, looking into the open trunk, shaking his head, blah blah blah-ing away.

I placed my glass on the edge of the porch decking. And, I swear, there was no conscious thought, no premeditation, at all: I simply put one hand between Clinton Tolliver’s shoulder blades and gripped the seat of his pants with the other, and lifted and pushed. He popped up and over, in a little forward swan dive, and went straight into the trunk, easy as flipping a pancake on a skillet. The lid thumped down all on its own.

I paused for a moment, then picked up my lemonade and sat on the closed lid of the trunk. There was some commotion in there, but the trunk hardly moved at all. I watched the street and windows but there was no one about that I could see. The yells and shouts of surprise and anger emanating faintly from the trunk turned to screams of fear and panic and pain, and then suddenly, sharply, cut off to silence.

I sat there and finished my lemonade, and then I stood, and warily lifted the lid. I peered inside. Empty, of course. I did another perfunctory search, as with the cat, but I knew there would be nothing to find. I closed the lid and went back to my deck chair. I wasn’t sure what I had here, and, frankly, I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

The following morning there was a colourful note stuck to the lid of the trunk. It read: Delicious!! May I have another?

I crumpled the note in my fist and glanced around the street. Was somebody playing a prank here? Had someone been watching? I uncrumpled the note and looked at it again. It was in an identical style to the note when I first found the trunk; colours, style and all. I wasn’t sure what to do about that, so I did nothing. Don’t you dare judge me.

A few days passed uneventfully and I gave serious consideration to disposing of the trunk. But the mere idea of wrestling that monster back into the Honda defeated me. So I let it be.

The following day I was out on the porch and noticed old Archie Fenton loitering near my fence. When he saw me looking his way, he faked fixing his shoe and kept walking. Ten minutes later, he was back.

I nodded at him, “Archie.”

He nodded back, “Burton.”

Neither of us moved or said anything else. After a moment or two, Archie wandered up to the porch, his gaze flicking to the trunk. He stood at the bottom of the porch steps, now not taking his eyes off the trunk. We still didn’t say anything.

Archie shuffled his feet, coughed, chewed some air, shuffled his feet some more.

“Jesus, just say it, Archie,” I said. “You keep that up I’ll need to either fill in that trough you’re kicking, or plant some potatoes.”

He coughed some more. “Is it … is it haunted?” he said, jerking his chin at the trunk.

I considered that for a moment. “No, not haunted,” I said. “Promise.” Well, I sure as hell hope it isn’t, I thought.

He nodded, chewed more air. Then: “I seen it, Burton. I seen what happened. With the cat. And I seen what happened with that sticky beak, Clinton Tolliver. I seen it, what you did.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What do you think it was you saw, Archie?”

“Don’t think, seen.” he said. “Seen it all.”

We were quiet again. It didn’t matter what Archie had or hadn’t seen, there wasn’t a scrap of actual evidence so far as I could tell. Nothing to prove anything.

“Y’know,” said Archie, “what I’d really like to do is bring my missus over and show her that trunk. I’d like to show her right before she leaves for her trip. She’s going on a long trip. I think I should show her that trunk right before she leaves.”

We locked eyes.

“A trip?” I said.

“A long trip,” he said. “If anybody should have a mind to ask.”

I took a deep breath. “Well, the trunk’s right there, Archie, anybody wants to look at it they can. Just don’t, you know, damage it.”

He gave it some thought. “I think I’ll do that,” he said. “She likes antiques. I think she’ll like a real good look at that trunk.”

“Before her trip,” I said.

“Yep,” he said. He looked up at me, nodded once, and shuffled off.

I wasn’t sure, but we seemed to have agreed on something.

The next afternoon, I watched as Archie Fenton practically herded his wife up the street and into my yard. She appeared reluctant.

“Jesus Christ, Archie,” she said, “it’s just a bloody trunk. I don’t give two rat farts about antique furniture! You know that!”

But he payed her no mind, just hustled her up the driveway to the side of the porch. He never looked my way, not once. I heard them chatter some more, some protests, a complaint, and then there was a yell, a squeal, and a dull thump–the lid coming down.

I could faintly hear a commotion, some kicking and thrashing, and then muted yells and screams followed by … quiet.

The ice in my lemonade cracked and settled.

A good five minutes passed before Archie slowly shuffled back into view, alone. He paused and half-turned my way.

“Burton,” he said, with a nod.

I nodded back. “Archie.”

And without another word he turned and went on his way.

I drank my lemonade and wondered if there’d be another encouraging, colourful note, stuck to the lid tomorrow.

Sure enough, there was: Yum Yum!! More in my tum-tum! Please!!

And, god help me, that was how it all got started in our town.