…
Lisa shivered, mouth folding into a rigid frown. “Ollie, don’t you dare pull one of your stunts! Don’t you dare?” She paused expectantly, scanning the garden and numerous paths for a sign of movement. It was a trick: it had to be a trick. Cruel, thoughtless, traits corresponding exactly to Ollie.
Her brother would emerge, eventually, smug grin eating into youthful features, eyes wide with satisfaction, to splutter a feeble and somewhat predictable excuse.
Minutes passed.
Nothing.
Lisa frowned. She had to make an effort, an attempt to find her troublesome brother; perhaps she would scrape a punishment. Despite her lethargic mood, Lisa rose to her feet and staggered through the corridor. The garden seemed a logical place to begin. She dragged the front door into stunted motion and slid between the narrow gap, continuing along the pathway.
Her head jerked.
A box.
It was barely a shoe-box, constructed from bark-brown mahogany, surfaces pressed against Dad’s precarious fencing. It began to expand, to widen, as if triggered by her presence. Her hand outstretched, lingered fingers inches from the lid. Lisa found herself placing each food inside, expression vacant. Composure gad slipped from her grasp.
What was she doing? There had to be a rational-
The box glinted, a paranormal glow, just as Ollie had moments before his disappearance.
Reality seemed to entwine, to elapse.
Light faded into a rich darkness.
“Lisa! Lisa!”
Ollie.
Lisa gasped at the sight of her bedraggled brother. “Ollie, what on Earth have you done? You’ve take this too far!” She cried, snatching a glance at the wooden space. It resembled the box, only larger, deeper, a cruel imitation.
Lisa shook her head, dismissively. Her thoughts were tangled, indecisive, an incomprehensible mess of images and anxieties; the box had shifted her perception of truth. She scrounged for a source of light.
Ollie leapt into his sister’s arms. “I had to explore, to investigate. I followed the animals into the box,” he recalled. “It adjusted to my size. I clambered inside the box, expecting an innocent wooden structure. It’s a real-life Tardis.”
“It doesn’t make sense Ollie. The mammoth? The red squirrel? They’re not here.”
Ollie paused in thought. “I suppose the box cast them into a different place, a different realm. There could be other boxes, boxes just like this one, scattered across the globe,” Ollie explained, with a sudden and unlikely maturity.
“I see,” said Lisa. She longed to be home, secured within four walls, to fall into her mother’s embrace “Now let’s discuss the plan,” she posed. “You do have a plan, don’t you? You’re going to get us out of here, right?”
Ollie considered his response. “No,” he managed, looking to his sister. “I was rather hoping you would offer a solution.”
“I have nothing.”
Lisa gulped.
Realisation began to sink in. The siblings hadn’t a plan, a glimpse of natural light, a conceivable direction in which to continue.
They were trapped.