The Crate

It is said to contain secrets, long forgotten diaries, and monsters. It's a wooden box. A crate of dim portends and has been seen by many in the past. It makes it way to new destinations. It comes from a Twilight Zone, or Alternate Universes I Seriously Hope Do Not Actually Exist. It's been owned by eccentric people who have kept it in their closets, basements, and at times, in the trunk of their car or truck. It's been hauled all around the world, shipped off and sat in abandoned storage facilities for long periods of time. It's been found at Flea Markets, and the source for unexplained behavior of a Stranger in a Strange Land. When examined by appraisers, it's said to be worth nothing, unless it contained all the gold and jewels it used to have before being taken by Pirates and their Pirate King. It was used by lesser vampires and kept buried during all of 1290 A.D.
== The Roman Empire Trade Routes ==
As a matter of historical records kept in scrolls, books, and floppy discs, the construction of a wooden box to hold important contents was ordered by Caesar himself. The box had to be airtight and waterproof. This was a job done in a day and soon it would be presented before the Imperial Head of State. It was examined and tested to be the best container of all the ages. But there was only one of them. Caesar ordered more to be made, but they all had to look different so he could find the first and foremost box if need be. Throughout the rest of his reign, the box was used to carry what was left of the written spells of the Druids, and the stolen nose from the Sphinx. The box was made with a small feature that allowed it to absorb any magic or spirit essence prone to Shapeshifting.
This wooden marvel had been sent from Rome to Ireland, from Ireland to Macedonia. From Egypt to your house before it was claimed by Trolls. These were the trade routes the Empire used to collect and gather objects, people (dead people), and other supernatural items. Over the course of 50 years, it had already started to take on a life of its own. It started to make noises. It would move on its own. It was said to be haunted. The Roman Senate had no choice but to send the cursed wooden crate to the Bermuda Triangle.
Rome carried on trading as usual, and made efforts to avoid the cured triangle. It wasn't easy. Most of the crates the empire was exporting outside the water-retaining, bloated firmament dome would end up washed back ashore in the Mediterranean Sea. Complaints starting coming in from all over the world about how late Rome was on any deliveries or refunds. Soon Rome came up with Colosseum games, inviting everyone to come to them for entertainment. As usual, the Roman Empire (whether 1.0 or 2.0) didn't take into account that the Vikings and the Mongols were easily excited and would take the wanton destruction of human life as a sign to just start killing everybody. They started placing bets on who would win in a fight between Caesar and Ugg the Moose Lord. It was Brutus who eventually took out Caesar, but the Vikings ended up killing the senate. The Celts praised the Vikings for destroying their enemy. But the Vikings still raided their villages anyway.
But the Crate still waited in the Bermuda. Still sat there. In the quiet sands of an isolated beach of an island that was mostly submerged. After Nero became unhinged and burned down the Roman center of the world, what was left of the citizens was taken by ship across the sea. They landed in Spain for a brief while. But the Romans went mad that all the locals were slaughtering their language. The king of Spain cursed the Romans Ricky Riccardo style and sent them out to sea. Floating on the unfinished craft that would later be repossessed and rebuilt as the Mayflower, the Romans found themselves clinging to the Crate until they landed in Cuba.
From there, they survived the elements, now laughing at how stupid the Atlantic Ocean was, and built straw huts. A decade passed, and within that time they constructed large granite buildings with columns and Roman numerals of the years they were established. They had bath houses, fine linens, and a new senate also. They lived rather well considering that the Crate they floated in on, was just sitting next to a banana boat on a pier, just being all unnoticed. Just sitting there. Just being an unassuming wooden box. It goes without mentioning of all the things that happened to Cuba since. So we'll just leave that there.
== The Bermuda Triangle Angle ==
The mystery of how things pass through the waters of the Bermuda has generally been noted that physical objects and the layer of one dimension or portal, into another dimension where matter is not calculated or read as its true form, but instead broken down by molecules into a sheer energy pulse or anomaly that the area around it uses it as a sort of gateway into the physical world. And because the area is nothing but ocean, it would then reverse or transition back into the energy layer to maintain its field of existence. In short, alternate dimensions calculate that they can't fucking swim.
Unfortunately, because of this mysterious presence of alternate dimensions, people, ships, boats, planes and sometimes fish end up in some otherworldly place. A place that is no place, or time. Time is also bent or twisted. At times the Bermuda will return something or someone, but after they've been wherever they were, they tend to be dead on the physical plane, but not on the other plane. Planes too. It's very rare that anything or anyone comes back as if they just came through a car wash. A few people did in fact experience the Bermuda Triangle as if it were a silly amusement park attraction, but they don't live there and opted to continue their days at the Funny Farm.
But when the Crate floated on into the waters of the notorious triangle, the portals distanced themselves. The eerie still air fogged over and withdrew. The ghosts that hung around glided back toward open sea, and the fish turned into jelly. This was a physical object but it carried with it supernatural residues within its varnish finish. It was menacing in appearance alone. The rusted locks bound to it rattled an ungodly pitch of chinking metal. This thing was far more dangerous than any wave churned up from bottomless parts of the Bermuda. When it came to rest on a small sandy isle, the dimensional energies calculated that it may have fallen off the Demeter and drifted into its zone.
== The Black Death Episode ==
Since the Fall of the Roman Empire and its dependents, and the dwindling of survivors who were lost at sea according to the last scribbled notes left behind, a lot of artifacts ended up in varying parts of the world. In Medieval Europe, during a small number of years in the 1300s, wooden crates started being moved from place to place. It was right at this point that a Black Death swept the land and grave robbing became the number one trend for the macabre and fashionably late dead on arrivals. Although the dead felt insulted that someone would want any part of them for good luck charms, let alone for selling to other weirdos, it was (to them) still better than being more dead than they already were.
There were factions of morbid souls in Europe at the time and one of them was the infamous Death Cult. The agenda wasn't clear to historians but from what they could gather, the cult went on a rampage over the fact graves were being sifted through before they had a chance to sift through them. Their then-leader Kim Kardashian, the Hessian Whore Babylonian Bitch decided to go after the main culprit having a blast competing with Dr. Strangeglove. She wooed the grave robber and proceeded to poison him on their wedding night. This slowed up his ultimate goal to turn Europe into a bunch of small groups (to make grave robbing a bit easier) which is a novel approach. Strangeglove still insisted it was a retarded idea and in a twisted irony, helped in doing just that.
Miss Kardashian (becoming Mrs. Beetlejuice) was thwarted by her husband who she attempted to kill when he chopped her up and put her parts in a bunch of boxes to be buried. One of those boxes just happened to be the very one that was cursed and sent away before Rome was burned to the ground. For a while those boxes sat in storage until the cursed crate was taken by a psycho unknown man who needed it for unknown reasons. He carefully replaced the severed head into a regular box and resealed it, and put the standard, not-cursed box containing the head near the other boxes with the rest, giving her a chance to escape should the opportunity present itself. The opportunity presented itself. It would turn out that if the unknown hadn't done that for reasons unknown, the head of Kardashian would have remained within the crate until it could be burned with fire or thrown into Mount Doom.
== The Wild & Crazy West ==
In a saloon, after alien overlords attacked Wyoming, a group of Cowboys got so drunk and came up with a plan to fight the invaders. Nevermind that they were invaders themselves but who cares at this point? Fuck it. They started to rob banks to be able to afford the war they had outlined against said aliens. From Wyoming to California the group of cowboys went around and robbed banks, and other places that would have gold. Then they placed the gold in crates, of course. They held up some asshole who happened to be the very asshole who took the cursed crate containing the head of the Medieval Death Cult Head Bitch. See Redundant. They shot the asshole and took his stuff. Looking through the cursed crate, they found that he was keeping gold coins, old European artifacts, some heirlooms, and a couple of sandwichs.
What they didn't count on was the ghost that the crate seemed to be possessed of, and its ability to use the crate to slide across the floor like a bowling ball and knock them all down in one strike. The cowboys declared that the crate was trying to kill them and tried to blow it up. It proved futile and they were stuck with it for awhile. Down on their luck, they decided to rob the University of Guantanamo Bay which brought the crate right back into Cuba of all places.
They were detained. As anyone would expect of such a place, and made to go with Professor X to the Arctic. They hauled the crate around with them because they simply could not get rid of it. The professor went mad and ran into the jungles of Siberia. The cowboys found something in the ice that reminded them of home. Being frozen in a huge chunk of ice rendered it to appear as an alien spawn in the first stages of developing. They realized that the aliens weren't so bad and just wanted to go back and try to make peace with a species that wanted to kill them. So they packed the ice chunk into the crate and sent it back across the sea. The cowboys took another boat as they weren't sure what the thing was in the ice and didn't want to stick around when it thawed out. But at least they got rid of it.
== Mr. Mortimer's Mansion in New Orleans ==
The crate managed to be unloaded off a ship coming into a port town, somewhere in Georgia and ended up being off-loaded to the refuse pile as it was wet and the locks were rusted shut. The port authorities deemed it as damaged goods, whatever was in it, and simply tossed it into the dumpster. But the crate wasn't going to the landfill thanks to dumpster divers. The crate was found among the trashes and one of the divers exclaimed in surprise how such a valuable trunk, made with such sturdy wood, could ever be thrown out. Trying the locks proved impossible and they weren't about to call a locksmith. Instead they pawned it off at a local flea market and there it sat. For a long time.
During the years it sat at the flea market, it was reduced in price until it finally got slated to be trashed. One of the main reasons why it didn't sell was because nobody brought crowbars with them to flea markets and therefore couldn't pry it open. Another reason was, at times, potential buyers would stop and marvel at it and then hear a soft growling noise coming from within the crate.
One day before it could be thrown out, Mr. Mortimer from another part of the Southern United States bought it at the reduced price of 1$. He was a Millionaire and shopped at thrift stores, duh. When he brought it home he ordered his servants to open the crate and clean it out and to itemize everything that may be in it. He wanted to know what contents it would yield and if he hit the jackpot. Long story short; the mansion was haunted and abandoned and no one goes there. As legend has it, whatever happened there killed everyone. But the catalyst was that the servants were eaten by a wooden crate. The mansion was sold to a realtor in New England a decade and a half later. The buyer was a man who wanted to restore it to its former plantation days after the scandal of the estate of Rose Red caused him to lose a large sum of money and a few limbs.
== That One Lighthouse in Maine ==
For many years the crate was forgotten. The mansion in New Orleans still had not been sold and the realtor couldn't get any contractors to restore it as a plantation-style mansion since everyone was now a slave under the Illuminati system of the Federal Government of the United States who were a handful of psychopath bankers, so it was insulting to one and all. Nothing about the crate, it was the criminal empire a.k.a. Roman Empire 2.0.
But the crate was in that mansion. In the gloom when dusk fell. Ghosts filled the empty rooms and halls. Eventually the mansion started to collapse and over time was reduced to nothing more than rubble. Only one thing stood of what remained of the structure. That crate. The realtor had to cut his loses and sold the property to Eddie Murphy but when he was looking over the pile that was the mansion for the last time, he noticed the crate and brought it with him to Maine. Not having any room for it at his house, he took it to a lighthouse and asked them to keep it there for him for a few weeks.
The lighthouse groundskeeper placed it under the stairs in the hollow shaft that lead to the top. But after a few days things started getting weird. The crate would not be in its original place. It would move. A week of this and the groundskeeper decided to move it to the top, hoping in a way that it would move itself right over the edge and he'd be rid of it. It creeped everyone out and nobody went near it. Of course now it was blocking the lantern's beam and a few boats crashed ashore because they couldn't see the light, and didn't know how close to land they were. Eventually it was taken away to a university in the next town after it had already got a bit burned up. The only writing on it was something about an expedition in 1834. So everyone figured the professors there would know what to do with it.
== The Carnivore ==
The crate ended up being broken into, after it was placed under the stairs at the university. Under the stairs is a go-to solution for large wooden objects that end up in Maine. But it was suddenly a big attraction. One night a Janitor Man was dying to see what was in it. He died seeing what was in it. As the locks finally gave way to being pried off, no sooner had that occurred when the contents of the crate that was literally in there since 1834, emerged. And it was in fact a nasty gorilla yeti monster with dinosaur teeth. It also spoke with an ancient vocabulary that one would expect of a carnivorous, bloodthirsty evil predator from any nightmare ever dreamed. It ate a few people.
The biology professor named Dexter, who was a friend to an English professor named Henry, teamed up to use the crate to get rid of a few IRS agents. It worked. Then the English professor's awkwardly friendly, but aggressively critical and drunk wife was fed to the monster. Then the professors decided they could get rid of half the staff. Then they figured the world would be better off without Rachel Maddow, Whoopi Goldberg, ALF, Janet Reno, Your Dad, Your Mom, and Chuck Norris. The last didn't go as planned, so the professors knew they had to get rid of the crate containing the carnivore that actually did make the world a better place after it feasted. Its dessert was the boot of Chuck Norris after being indented in its face, but it sufficed.
Carefully loading up the station wagon, they backed it up to an isolated quarry and planned to toss the crate over the side into the water below. The crate and the carnivore got suspicious and started to shift its weight from side to side, trying to tip over the car. The professors had no choice but to throw the vehicle in reverse and let the whole thing fall over the edge and sink to the bottom. They had to walk home, since they couldn't hitchhike for fear of being noticed walking at night down an old road. They didn't want anyone connecting them to anything. Even if it was stupid.
The professors enjoyed a quiet life, playing chess and listening to Mozart. One evening, Henry was reading Grimms Fairy Tales and happened to notice one short story involving a crate that couldn't be gotten rid of. This began to haunt the professors. They did some research and found a letter from the late 1800s at the library, penned by some lady named Julia Carpenter. It was a raving lunatic kind of letter but it did mention that something she received in a crate from the Arctic was meant for the Romans. The crate had broken apart when the carnivorous beast burst out of it, and the creature escaped. Luckily for the Romans at Gitmo. About a month later, Henry and Dexter got up the nerve to check on the quarry. There the mangled crate floated around, bobbing up and down on the surface of the water. And with binoculars, they spotted their hungry friend on the opposite shore. He was staring back at them and was laughing at them.
== See Also ==
* Cryptography
* Curiosity
* Stephen King