“Yeah. That’s true.” Brandy’s eyes dropped to the backpack at Albert’s feet. “Did you bring the box?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I see it?”
“Of course.” Albert unzipped the bag, removed the box and handed it to her. “After my American History class last night I walked out to my car and it was just waiting for me. I’m in there from six to nine. It was in the driver’s seat. I always lock my doors.”
Brandy held the box in her lap as she studied it. “My car was in the commuter lot next to Wuhr.” The Daniel R. Wuhr Building was the science and math building on campus. It was where their Chemistry classrooms were located. “It was right there in my driver’s seat after class today.”
“Did you have your doors locked?”
Brandy shrugged, almost embarrassed. “They were locked when I came back out, but I have a bad habit of not locking my doors. Whoever put the bag there could’ve locked them.”
Albert nodded. “I can’t be a hundred percent sure of mine, either, actually. I say I always lock them, but every now and then...”
Brandy stared at the box as she held it in her lap, her eyes fixed on the letters of her name. “I didn’t say anything earlier, but when you showed this to me the first time there was just something eerie about it. It gave me chills. I didn’t even want to touch it.” She turned it over in her hands, looking at each side. “I’m not sure I want to be holding it now.”
Albert said nothing. He watched her expression for a moment and then followed her gaze to the box.
“Brandy R.,” she read.
“Yeah. I guess we know for sure what that side means now.”
“You haven’t figured any of the other sides out?”
“Nope. Maybe they’ll make sense once we open it.” Albert looked down at the key he was holding. He could feel a cold tingle of excitement rising up his spine.
“Maybe.” Brandy turned the box again, observing the other sides. “Well these are all Beatles songs.”
Albert’s eyes snapped from the key to the box. “What?”
“‘Help’, ‘Come Together’ and ‘Yesterday’ are all songs by the Beatles.”
Albert stared at the words on the side of the box. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.” She glanced up at him, met his eyes for just a brief moment, then looked back down, as if she detected the hungry attention her revelation had drawn from him and was disturbed by it. “I like music. I listen to a lot of it. All different kinds. I don’t know what ‘G N J’ means, though.”
Albert felt numb. “The Beatles.” He might have recognized country or pop titles, but The Beatles?
“That doesn’t mean that’s what these mean,” Brandy explained. “It could just be a coincidence. But they are Beatles songs.”
“Wow. I’m impressed.”
Brandy looked up at him again. This time she smiled a little.
“Any clue about the other side?”
Brandy turned the box again and tried to read it. “Just looks like garbage to me.”
Albert nodded. “Yeah. Me too.”
“But these last two sides are a map, right?”
Albert nodded. “Yeah, but I don’t know what it’s a map of.”
“Maybe it’s inside.”
“Maybe.” He looked down at the key again. “Let’s see.”
Brandy looked up at him, but made no move to hand him the box. “Do you think we should?”
“What do you mean?”
Brandy shrugged. She looked extremely uncomfortable. “I’m just not sure about this. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to set this all up. Why?”
Albert stared back at her, unable to answer.
“I mean this thing still gives me the creeps. It’s just too weird. It’s like something out of a… I don’t know. An Alfred Hitchcock movie or… Or a Stephen King short story. It’s just not natural, you know.”
Albert looked down at the box. She was right. It was very unnatural. Inside, he’d understood that all along.
“I don’t want to sound crazy, but there’s a part of me that really thinks that maybe we should just throw it away. Forget about it.”
This suggestion hit Albert like a punch in the gut. How could he just forget about it? That box had commanded his every thought since he first laid eyes on it. But then again, wasn’t that reason enough to do just as she suggested? Perhaps she was right. Perhaps it was unhealthy, even dangerous.
The two of them sat there, each of them staring at the box.
“There’s also a part of me,” Brandy added, a little cautiously, “that still doesn’t trust you.”
Albert looked up at her, surprised.
“I mean I don’t know anything about this. One day, out of the blue, you show up to class with this box with my name on it and say you found it in your car. After class I go to my car and find a key with your name on it. And I really don’t know you.”
Albert lowered his eyes all the way to the floor. She certainly made a point. “That’s true.” He nodded and looked back up at her. “I guess I really can’t expect you to trust me. I really don’t have reason to trust you.”
Brandy started to say something, but she stopped herself.
“As far as I know, you could’ve left that box in my car. After all, I have no way of knowing whether you’re telling me the truth about how you came by this key. For the same reason, you have no way of knowing how I came by that box or that I didn’t put the key in your car.”
“Yesterday you beat me to class and I left before you did…”
Albert was impressed. She’d really thought this through. “But I could’ve had an accomplice.”
“Yeah.”
He leaned back against the cushions of the couch and stared down at the key. Three more people had entered the room since Brandy arrived. Two were young men who were speaking a language he could not place and playing a game of chess. The third was a young woman with a huge mane of curly black hair and a surprisingly unattractive face. She was sitting alone by one of the windows with a Dean Koontz novel in her hand. The girl who was with the ping-pong players still seemed to be waiting on whoever it was she was expecting. “You don’t really seem like the kind of person who would ever want to do me wrong,” he said at last.
“Neither do you,” said Brandy.
“But we don’t know each other.”
“Exactly.”
Albert continued to stare at the key.
“But so what if we’re both telling the truth?” Brandy asked after a moment. “Then what? Somebody sent these things. Somebody scratched our names into them. That person knows what cars we drive, what classes we have, when we’re in class and God only knows what else. So then who was it? Why would they do something like this? I’d rather think that you were trying to prank me. The fact that someone else out there is capable of this sort of stunt is way worse.”
Albert could think of no reply for her. Come to think of it, how could anyone have known to leave that box in his car the previous night? It was the first time he’d ever driven to his night class. He didn’t know until the previous weekend that the campus police stopped ticketing after five o’clock. He didn’t even know he was going to drive until just before he left. He’d intended to drive only on rainy days, but he decided to see how much time it saved him.
That meant that someone must have been watching either him or his car that evening. The thought of a pair of eyes lurking unseen somewhere out there sent a shiver down his spine.
Two more students walked into the room together. One was a stout young man with short black hair and a thick, black goatee. The other was a rather plain-looking blonde girl with remarkably large breasts. The shorthaired girl stood up from the couch as they approached and greeted them both with a hug.
“So what do we do?” Brandy asked after a moment.