My mother found it by accident.
She wasn’t snooping, at least not at first. She was looking for paperwork—something ordinary, something that would explain his recent absences and strange behavior. Instead, she opened a drawer she had never touched before and found an object that instantly made her uneasy. The moment she saw it, a familiar fear surfaced—one she had carried quietly for years without ever giving it a name.
Nothing had ever been said aloud. There were no accusations, no reports, no confrontations. Only small observations that never quite fit together. The way my father would retreat into himself when he handled his “things.” How his face would drain of color, his posture curling inward, as though he were less present—like someone standing there only because the ritual required it.
The box had always been there.
Locked. Hidden away in the storage room he rarely used. No one ever asked what was inside. Not me. Not my mother. Even she, his wife, had learned long ago not to question certain boundaries. But that day, something was different. Curiosity overcame the quiet fear she had learned to live with.
The day before, she had searched his office.
No documents. No money. Nothing that explained where he had been going or why he had become so distant. Only the same object, wrapped carefully and placed where important things are kept. That absence—of explanations, of normality—troubled her more than the object itself.
When she finally lifted it from the drawer, she realized just how strange it was.
It stood nearly a foot tall, smooth to the touch, its surface etched with intricate, repeating patterns that didn’t look decorative so much as deliberate. At the top were thin, articulated projections—like antennae or jointed limbs—arranged with unsettling precision. It didn’t resemble anything familiar. Not a tool. Not an ornament. Not something meant to be understood at a glance.
No one could explain what it was for.
When she handed it to me, I felt it immediately.
A weight—not just physical, but emotional. The moment my fingers closed around it, something shifted. Memories surfaced that didn’t feel like memories at all. They were fragments. Sensations. Impressions that didn’t belong to me, yet felt disturbingly close. My chest tightened. My head buzzed, as though something had been stirred awake.
I couldn’t tell if I was remembering something real or imagining what I had always feared.
I looked at my mother, and she looked back at me without speaking. We both understood that whatever this object was, it wasn’t just something my father owned. It was something he carried with him—something that shaped him, drained him, maybe even defined him.
The drawer was closed again. The box locked.
But the fear didn’t go back where it came from.
Because once something hidden is seen, it can never truly be unseen.
