The evening carried on smoothly. We went about our various chores, helping the few who came into the shop as necessary. A storm was currently rattling the windows each time thunder would roll. It was entirely possible that we would lose power at some point that night, but for now, everything was still in order. When the phone rang at the front of the store, I happened to be the closest while dusting the books.

After my greeting, it surprised me to hear his voice again. Two calls in one day. That didn't happen often at all. "I need you to do something."

"Well, you are the boss so." I shrugged, not that he would notice, "What's up?"

"In the basement, you should have a wooden box, roughly the size of a shoe box. It will have floral engravings along the top and sides. It's sealed with a golden latch in the shape of a rose. Do not open the box. Place the box onto the counter and leave it. A client should be coming to pick it up within the hour. Don't speak to them. The payment has already been received." And just like that, he hung up. A man of few words, that one. I let the phone hang by my head for a short moment as if I would hear him again, then returned it to its place. I know the man was busy, but would it kill him to give me a return greeting or to ask if the shop was on fire at all? Maybe his lack of interest was some kind of testament to his faith in my competence. At least, that is what I preferred to think.

As I made my way to the basement door, Elise popped up next to me. "Who was that?"

"The owner." I answered, "I need to get an item for a client that's coming in. He has it in the basement."

"The basement." Her eyes widened, then she turned to glance at the door. This was only the very moment she had spent countless days waiting for. "What do we need to get?"

I put the heavy emphasis on myself, "I need to get a box."

"I can help you look for it." She said eagerly, leaning her broom against the wall by the basement door. She reached for the doorknob.

I took her wrist quickly in order to stop her, "Ah." I caught her, "What are the rules about the basement?"

She sighed, "Don't ever go into the basement."

"And rule two?"

"Don't ever go into the basement without you."

"And rule three?"

She rolled her eyes this time before saying, "Don't ever go into the basement."

"Good." I released her arm. "Then we are on the same page. Finish up your sweeping, and I will grab this box." Of course, those weren't the actual rules about the basement, but they were my rules for her.

"Wait just a second," she protested, "Rule number two is that I can go down there with you. You are here. I am here. We meet the quota. Let me see what's down there. You've been acting nothing short of shady about this whole basement thing. Now, I have to see it. Take me down there with you!"

"Who's going to watch the shop?" I reminded her.

"We haven't had anyone for over an hour. Let me see, let me see, let me seeeee!" She reached for the doorknob again.

"Can you chill?" I grabbed it before she could take hold of it. "We are expecting a client now. So stay up here. I will be back in two shakes of a lamb's tail."

"That's definitely not an accurate form of time measurement." She said flatly.

"Right," I nodded, "I'll be back before you can post your disappointment on your social media feeds."

"That is somehow worse than the lamb." Her nose wrinkled slightly.

"Look, I don't want to be that guy that has to pull the whole authority card on you here but get back to work."

She actually let out a snort in her laughter, "Aye aye, cap'n!" She gave me a very dramatic salute then took her broom in what appeared to be some kind of mock military drill. As she was marching away from me, I opened the basement door. That was when it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps I needed to get a lock to put onto the door. Maybe even a few locks. You can never be too safe. Nothing calls people towards the forbidden quite like the very title of forbidden. The stairs before me descended into pitch blackness. As per usual, I reached to the left of the door to light up a candle with the pack of matches and stash of candles. The basement could only ever be illuminated with the light of a flame. Those were the rules, after all. Cell phones and flashlights stayed upstairs. I shut the door behind me, another rule, and set about to do what I came here for.

After I sat the box onto the counter up front, Elise was not far behind me to examine the strange and mysterious trinket that came from the forbidden beyond. "So what's the story?" She asked me excitedly.

"What do you mean?"

"The box?" She gestured to it, "Obviously. What's the story on the box? I know there's a story."

"How should I know?" I carefully wrapped the box in paper in order to package it for pick up. "You think I just catalog every back story to every single thing and only present it to you as some kind of plot devise, Elise? Some things don't have stories. Or maybe they do. I don't know. Doesn't mean that absolutely everything is important or essential to know."

Her face twisted into some form of disbelief, "You mean to tell me that you work here of all places and you don't have a single drop of curiosity to you? You just do everything without thinking about it? The owner told you to get this creepy looking box, and you never asked any questions?"

"He doesn't pay me to ask questions." I sealed the box into a secure package where the rain wouldn't cause any issue. "Maybe that's why he left me to run the shop. He tells me what to do and all I need to know in order to do it."

"So you have no idea what's in that box?"

"Elise." I frowned now as I considered what she was saying, as well as what this implied. "Let me explain something to you. There are things that exist that are beyond our mortal understanding. We don't have to try to understand everything. In fact, it's safer not to. There's a reason they say that curiosity killed the cat. You can't just go around snooping into every basement, opening up every box you see, and releasing every demon doll from its cage. Which, by the way, that was definitely a demon doll that you released from its cage, and we will need to resolve that. Anyway, the point is-,"

She cut me off, "The point is that you have no idea what's inside the box."

Maybe she wasn't the best option for a new employee, after all. This curiosity would most certainly cause us some trouble. "No." I said, "That's not the point. The point is that sometimes it's alright not to know what's inside the box. Sometimes it's better and even safer just to keep your nose planted firmly on your own face rather than sticking it into places you might get it eaten off."

She didn't say anything for a moment. Only stared at me with an expression that was hard to read. Finally, she said, "Alright. I'll reel it in."

"Thank you." I let out a short breath of relief, "On another note. When the client comes to pick up the box, don't acknowledge them. Pretend they don't even exist. They'll pick up the package and leave without us saying anything to them."

"Why?" She was quick to ask.

"Really?" I snapped, "What did I just say about asking questions? Didn't we just establish that you would reel it in?"

"Well, excuse me! We were two seconds into my new life. Forgive me if I relapse a little." She quipped, "I just don't understand how you can blindly do things without asking questions. Who, what, why, where, when, how? Don't you know that the excitement in a mystery is solving it?"

"No." I corrected her, "The excitement in a mystery is the simple fact that it remains a mystery. The unexplained and unknown are always much more tantalizing than answers and clarification."

"You've been living life wrong, Jericho." She said in a tone that sounded more accusatory than playful. Before, I had time to even think of a response to that. My eyes caught something behind her. From the dim overhead light, I could see there was someone standing right outside our door. They were easily shorter than Elise as only their head was visible through the window on the front door. At least, it had the appearance of a head. It was more akin to a solid black mass. Elise noticed my sudden distraction and turned around to see what had caught my attention. Clearly, I wasn't crazy. She saw them too. Which caused her to look back at me with a small amount of puzzlement.

"It's open?" She called out to them, her confusion apparent. Yet with the heavy storm behind them, it was most likely they wouldn't hear anything beyond the door. The figure didn't move, which confirmed as much.

If this was the client who came for the box, I wasn't expecting them to be so weird. Well, weird, yes, but not this weird.

"I got this." I assured her. I simply picked up the packaged box and went to the door. When opening it, a gust of wet wind whooshed in from behind them and covered me with a thin layer of mist on my skin. Opening the door didn't exactly clear anything up as to who or what the stranger was, considering all we could see was a jet black rain coat. It could have been a child at this height, with their hood pulled over their head so far that they must have only been able to see the ground directly in front of them. They may have been able to find some relief from the downpour while standing under our awning, yet the rain still dripped from them and began to pool around their tiny black boots. They stood at the door, saying nothing, doing nothing. Which put me in an odd position of also saying nothing and doing nothing. I wasn't supposed to speak to them. The boss never gave me simple suggestions when conveying my duties. His word was practically law. So, for whatever reason, I wasn't allowed to engage with this person. Or thing. Probably a thing. We didn't get many children at the shop. None, actually. At all. Ever.

I could feel Elise's eyes burning into my back. I only had to hope that she would actually keep her questions to herself. I was waiting for them to take the box from my hands. Apparently, when I extended it forward by a few inches to present it to them, they either didn't see it from under their hood, or they were committed to their silence.

"Please." Said a soft voice from under the dark hood. "I'm cold." It was definitely a child's voice. I didn't know what that had to do with them picking up the box. Maybe they were testing me to see if I would react to that. Maybe these tasks were secretly the boss just testing me often. Of course, I said nothing. The child let out a small whimper. Their words trembled from the cold, "Please help me. I'm lost." There was a sniffle, followed by, "I'm scared." I wasn't sure what to say. Obviously, I wasn't going to say anything, but still. I felt like I should be doing something. Yet the only thing I really felt the urge to do was to get away from them. Quickly. Which I did.

I took my place back behind the closed door, returning to the warmth and shelter inside. The child didn't move an inch nor react to my retreat. Elise tossed her hands up in that universal sign of what the heck was that all about? I sat the package back onto the counter. I didn't have an answer for her. She saw as much as I did. We were both already briefed on the situation. "Well, I did all I could. It's out of my hands now. I'll just leave it here for him. Her. It. When they want it bad enough, I'm sure they'll come and get it."

"It's a kid." She said in a whisper, as if the storm and door weren't hushing her tones to the stranger already.

"That's not a kid." I shook my head in doubt.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know." I told her honestly, "I have just been here long enough to kind of expect that nothing here is really as it seems. So, if it seems like a kid, it's not a kid."

"I kind of feel like your logic is loopy." She gestured to a few things on the shelves, "Plenty of this is exactly what it seems. It's all terrible nightmare fuel."

"I give you that. Some things are exactly what they appear to be, but it's also super important to expect the unexpected."

"Do you get all your rules from quirky calendar quotes or something?" She rolled her eyes, "So what? We just ignore them now?"

"Yup." There wasn't really a need to follow that up with anything further. We didn't keep up with the visitor outside. Whenever they would have vanished, who could tell. Yet, they must have at some point. While we had gotten distracted with a game of paper football (that I was winning), the door opened to reveal an old woman with a bright yellow umbrella. There was no sign of the child in the black coat. Elise slipped the folded football into her pocket in her attempt to appear completely professional, then turned around to pretend she was rearranging something on the selves. That definitely didn't look forced or faked whatsoever. I returned to my standing position behind the counter, as opposed to my slouched position in our game. Following her very poor lead, I took hold of a rag that was on the counter to begin a faux wiping in rotation motion. We nailed this look.

The woman turned her gaze to me. The only way I could possibly describe her was... a bird. She looked like she couldn't be a day under 120. Her nose was a sharp, angled beak of an extension off of her sundried, leathery face. Her eyes sunk deep into her face and were surrounded by thick crow's feet. Now that I thought about that, it was kind of funny. Crow's feet for the bird lady. Her hair was so thin, it might as well have been a grey mist that hovered around her head. This reminded me of the really bad special effects that old films would have used to design a witch. Therefore, in this edition of judging a book by its cover, a definite witch was visiting the shop.

Her voice was the equivalent of walking through gravel. "The box." She croaked.

The box. My eyes went to the package to my side. Then back to the woman/witch/bird lady.

She took this to mean that this was what she came for. Just like that, she strode to the counter and snatched the box with her very crooked fingers with their very long, dark talons. Extra gross. She tucked the package under her armpit, opened her umbrella in the store (rude), and left just as suddenly as she had arrived.

There was a full minute of silence before Elise broke it, "Holy crap!" She pointed to the door, "That was the box client! I thought it was the kid!"

"So it seems." I too was surprised by that revelation.

"I almost greeted that lady!" Her voice was a bit more strained now. "I would have been baked into a pie or something!"

"Maybe." I shrugged.

"All because you refuse to ask questions!" She threw her hands up, "You couldn't have asked who the client was? What they looked like? Anything? Were we supposed to shun everyone for the next hour until someone decided to snatch that box up?" Then she returned to her previous concern, "And then we ignored that poor kid who was asking for help?! Jericho! We are monsters! You turned me into a heartless monster!"

"It's possible..." I started slowly, "...That you are overreacting."

"Are you kidding me?" She looked like she was ready to come strangle me. "Dude, you have got to start getting more clarification on some things!" She stomped to the door in a huff to try to peer out past all the heavy rain, "And that kid is out there in this somewhere!"

"Elise." I let out a very long sigh, "Grab the mop. That lady brought in a lake with her."

I pretty much stayed on the opposite side of the store as her through the remainder of the night. I could understand why she was upset, but at the same time, we didn't die. World keeps spinning. Could I ask a few more questions? Maybe. Did we both learn a lesson tonight? Sort of... and you can't put a price on education. Wait. Yes, you could. College. Right, that's why I didn't enroll in college. I couldn't afford that kind of education. Truthfully, I would have made a horrible doctor, or lawyer, or web technical support associate, or whatever the useful people are doing these days. Still, what is intelligence without a healthy amount of common sense? Which you can only pick up through experience. Which we collected every night. Sure, there were definitely bound to be some hiccups here or there along the way, but the important thing was that we entered into a new day slightly more prepared to face new challenges. Which we most certainly would.