My Name is Franklin, Pt. 5

Jay turned to me and said “its all in here everything is in here man. I know how to stay safe but what if there’s more? That’s why I asked you over” I asked him what he meant but he didn’t answer, he just opened the trunk and started rummaging through the papers in there. Before he found whatever he was looking for there was a crash from outside. Jay leapt up and ran over to the computers and poured over the displays for what must have been at least 30 minutes. At thos point I decided I was leaving, I planned on calling the police or something and make sure Jay got some help. I inched out of the room and quickly left. I looked back at the bedroom window and realised he had boarded up the windows. It didn’t register as something particularly odd until half way home I realised they were boarded up from the inside.

And that was the very last time I ever saw Jay. They never did find him. At first I thought he’d just ran off. The state he was in at the time I figured hell he would probably do anything. Course I know much better now.
A couple weeks after he disappeared his landlord called me up. I was surprised at first because, though Jay and I were close, we were never that close. The guy explained that I was the first person who picked up and he’d just been going through Jay’s address book. He told me he was throwing all of Jay’s stuff out and if I wanted to come and grab any of it I was free to.

And that’s how it got to me. I don’t know why I did it but I did. Gina was at work and my kids were at school so I just put it in the living room and stared at it for a while. Again I’m not sure why, I still didn’t understand the significance of what the chest held, but the last thing Jay had every tried to do was show me something from inside it. I knew it had something to do with his disappearance and I knew I was scared of it.
It sounds silly, but I mean it. This chest was the single scariest thing I had ever seen. It was a simple enough chest, wooden, the size of a bedside cabinet with a hatch on the top to open it, but for reasons I just couldn’t understand I was powerless to open it.