Out of jail, I resumed my search for the Empty Box. The box had taken both my mother and my father and my best friend. When I found it, I planned to destroy it and set them free.

It had all started with a package delivered to our front porch. It seemed that everyone got packages delivered to their front porch. There is only one such package that mails itself.

While I was in jail, I received a letter. My lawyer had brought it to me, and I had accepted it, as it was slid across the table. I read the letter, from a certain relative of a certain billionaire who owns one of the largest package delivery systems ever created.

The letter detailed how it had all started, with a deal, made with something from the depths of time. It was a creature that hungered for human suffering, and the sort of suffering it craved was to trap people, body and soul, in its own world. It was the abyss of eternal darkness, and Abalyon, and to look into a shadow cast by it was to be drawn into it, forever trapped.

That is, unless the box were to be shown the light of the unseeing eye, a kind of spell that made a candleflame burn for a moment with heavenly light. That would dissipate the shadow and release all those trapped within. I had memorized the spell of the candleflame, and then the letter was taken away. My lawyer died two days later, having ended up in a hospital with alcohol poisoning. There was no way to get the letter after that, no way to find it, not before it was destroyed along with many other documents.

It did not matter, I had memorized the important part, and learned the truth about the Empty Box. I had hunted for it in vain, before, and if I had found it, I too would have fallen victim to it.

It arrives like any package delivery, sent from somewhere that sounds familiar and addressed to the owner of the address, the recipient. The Empty Box feels like it sounds, entirely hollow, like there is nothing inside. When it is opened, there is darkness.

I heard my mother say: "It is just an empty box." and then the darkness engulfed her and drew her into it. The box seemed almost shut, and my father, although terrified, opened it and looked inside. He too was drawn into it, wrapped in the darkness.

I felt terrible fear and sweating, and my heart seemed to have stopped beating. The sweat on my body felt freezing, as though the heat were drawn into it. The cold air made me shudder as I stared in disbelief at the Empty Box, just sitting there. For a moment I thought I could hear the screams of hundreds of people echoing quietly from within the Empty Box.

That is when my best friend, Ludicious, came out of our kitchen.

"Where are your parents?" She asked. She sounded tough and fearless. I felt weak and small, terrified. I pointed at the Empty Box.

"No wait!" I told Ludicious, but she wasn't afraid of anything.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"They're in the box?" She asked incredulously.

"Yes." I gasped in horror, realizing moment by moment what had happened. I did not understand yet what the box had done. I had seen it, but I could not comprehend it.

That is when Ludicious opened the Empty Box, and it took her too. I screamed and fell out of my seat. I scrambled away from it, and crawled as fast as I could outside.

For a day I lost my mind, wandering and babbling incoherently. When the police arrested me for loitering, I was seen by a psychiatrist, and they took a blood sample to determine if I might be on drugs. Eventually I was released, but not before I gave a statement to the police about what had happened with the Empty Box.

When I went home the Empty Box was gone. I spent days feeling deranged, worried about my own mental health. What had happened was real, but there was no way to prove it. The best people in my life were gone, taken by the Empty Box. It was then that I was walking- wandering down the street when I saw a package delivered to someone's porch. I stood and watched with trepidation, sensing somehow that the Empty Box was nearby.

I could not be sure, but the closer I got the more I felt it, could almost hear the sounds of those who were trapped inside. Then a little old lady opened her front door, and she opened the box right there on her porch. Like those before, the darkness in the Empty Box reached out and grabbed her and pulled her into it. How a whole person can be sucked into something like that defies physics. It is like they shrink as they near the rim of the box and then they are in it and the flaps close. Sorta like a black hole, I guess.

Fear overcame me and I ran away. When I was hidden at home, I slowly calmed down. I realized I had to go back, to find the Empty Box and perhaps find a way to free everyone. Maybe it could be burned up and in destroying the cardboard, it would lose its power and release those who were inside. That is what I thought.

So, I began to wander around, searching for it. Whenever I saw a package upon someone's porch I would run up and shake it, to make sure it wasn't empty. I didn't find the Empty Box again. I kept getting in trouble. People caught me on camera and there were barking dogs and threats with guns and all sorts of trouble. People don't appreciate porch pirates, and that is what I had become, because nobody believed me.

Then one day I was arrested for my trespasses and suspicion of theft. I was charged with numerous counts of porch piracy, none of which I was guilty, for I had never stolen any packages. It did not matter. I spent eleven months in jail.

While I was there, I told my story to my lawyer, who seemed to believe me. My lawyer wrote to the owner of the package delivery company, asking for a resolution to my claims. Neither of us expected a reply, but it was worth the effort, because there is no telling when a billionaire might turn out to be someone who will help someone like me.

The letter reached someone who knew the truth, and decided to write back, offering to help, by telling me how to undo the curse. When I was finally out of jail, I resumed my quest. I became much craftier at searching for the elusive Empty Box, and I got a job working for a delivery company.

With my own truck and uniform, it became much easier to search people's front porch package deliveries. Anyone who caught me didn't think anything unusual was happening, they just presumed I had business on their porch lifting and shaking their package and then replacing it where I had found it.

I am still searching for the Empty Box, and when I find it, I will cast the spell of the candleflame upon it. I will destroy the evil that mails itself from one home to another, destroying families, unknown to the rest of the world. Not all missing people will stay missing forever, some of them are going to come back someday. On the day when I find the Empty Box.