Treasure Box Page 0,92

was a brain you needed, and mine was OK. You would have done so much better with it than I ever have. Why couldn't they transplant my life into you, so you could live it for me?

"Buck up, Tin," said Lizzy.

She was sitting beside him, shifting her weight in the seat to get comfortable.

"You're a pretty good snow driver. That's something they didn't bother teaching us in driver's ed back in high school."

"Thanks," said Quentin. "Sorry. I didn't mean to call you."

"No sweat. Truth is that I like it when you do. Time doesn't pass out there the way it does for you, so you can't exactly get bored, and there's plenty to do, depending on how you define do, but I gotta say I miss having a body. I never really used it, Tin."

"I was just thinking that myself."

"No, you were thinking that you were as useless as the turd of a dog who just died."

He laughed in spite of himself.

"You were thinking that you're the guy who really needs a hand grenade to land in his foxhole so he can dive on it, save his buddies, and have the President give the Medal of Honor to his parents, along with eight boxes containing his remains."

"Lizzy, is there any way through this thing?"

"There are a thousand ways through this thing, Tin. But they might all end up with you dead."

"Is that so bad? You're doing OK."

"Sure. Death's all right. But not worth going through any extra trouble to get here. You miss everything when you're here, Quentin. Even the pain. Even the despair."

"So is Mrs. Tyler right? Will the treasure box kill me?"

"Treasure box. What you mean is, is the beast real? Well, I didn't know what to call it till just now, diving into your memory to see what the old lady told you about it, but I'd say that's a pretty fair description of the bad thing in that house."

"She put it in the box. It isn't good to let it out."

"I don't know, Tin. As long as it's in that box, it's going to keep trying to suck people in to get the box open. But if it dies, maybe it'll be a while before somebody calls to it. Opens up to it and lets it in."

"Come on, Lizzy. Last time it got sucked into a year-old baby."

"She was lying to you, Tin."

"It wasn't in the baby?"

"Oh, it was, all right. But it didn't just happen along. Didn't just come. She called it."

"Man, that's even worse than what I said to her."

"She didn't realize that's what she was doing. She thought she had this brilliant baby, and so she wanted it to learn everything. She was pushing."

"Like those people who try to get their kids into college-prep nursery schools?"

"I guess."

"Or flashcards. They make their babies learn words from flashcards."

"She got the kid to call things it didn't have the brains to control. I don't care how smart a one-year-old is, Tin, walking and talking and all, it doesn't know how to deal with something as old as life itself. It came and the baby was gone, just hanging on to its own body like a passenger hanging from the back of the bus, begging the driver not to close the door."

"How did you learn all this, if the old lady doesn't know it?"

"After the passenger's been dragged long enough, he starts begging the driver to close it. Cut him loose. Even if it means he crashes onto the pavement."

"You found baby Paulie."

"I didn't like anybody else in that house. Baby Paulie was lonely and scared. I didn't realize how he was connected until now."

"So he was still there."

"Only sort of. Mrs. Tyler wasn't wrong. Best thing she could have done was cut him loose from a body he'd never have the use of again. If only she'd actually done it, instead of leaving him lingering, attached to that treasure box. But of course now it's too late. When that box opens, somebody's going to find themselves looking down the throat of the beast. And Paulie will still be along for the ride, as will the person the beast devours."

"Me."

"I hope not," said Lizzy. "Please don't."

"So I should run."

"I don't know. Maybe you should stay and win."

"Can I?"

"These witches are powerful, but you're not nothing. You've got some strength in you. And there's something else, too. You aren't trying to get something out of this."

"What, survival is nothing?"

"No, you don't even really care about that, either. One