Summer passed into autumn, and soon school was back in full swing. Days were becoming shorter and darker, and before long the ground lay covered in leaves. With the events of the holidays seemingly forgotten about by both his mother and stepfather, everything had returned to normal. Everything, that was, except for the fact that Arthur himself had been unable to forget. And no sooner had they arrived back in the city again than he’d spent most of his free time browsing the internet, studying star maps and hoping against hope that he might discover something more about the box and about what he’d seen. But it was a slow and laborious task and in the end, after becoming swamped with schoolwork, he was finally forced to push it all to the back of his mind.
That was until early one Sunday morning in the middle of October when the doorbell rang unexpectedly. His stepfather had gotten up to answer it and hushed, serious-sounding voices had followed.
‘Come on, wake up,’ said Sasha, entering Arthur’s room without knocking. ‘The general’s here to see you.’
‘The general?’ he yawned.
‘General Hammond, from the cottage. Remember him?’
‘Of course I remember him, but what’s he doing here!?’
‘Go and ask him yourself. They’re waiting for you in the kitchen.’
‘They?’
Dressing quickly, Arthur hurried into the kitchen to find several people sitting at the table. His mother, still in her dressing gown, was busy preparing tea and coffee. Seeing him coming in, the general got up.
‘Ah, my young friend,’ he said, shaking his hand and patting him warmly on the shoulder. ‘Nice to see you again. How are you doing after all those summer adventures of yours?’
‘Okay, thank you,’ Arthur replied nervously.
‘Good, good. Right, well, Arthur, as you can see, I’m not alone this time. So, before we get started, let me quickly introduce you to the two colleagues who have travelled with me here today. On my right is Peter, head of our Artefacts Research Team at the facility. As you can no doubt imagine, he has dedicated a great deal of time and effort into studying the box you found.’
‘A pleasure to meet you,’ replied the slightly plump man with a silver goatee. ‘You certainly did us all a big favour by finding it.’
‘Indeed, you did,’ nodded the general. ‘And, on my left, Doctor Semenova who heads up our Psychological Evaluation Committee at the facility.’
Arthur nodded shyly
‘So, let’s get down to it then, shall we? The reason why we’ve come here today is because we urgently need your help. More specifically, we need you to try to remember back to this summer, to your opening of the box. Do you think you can do that for us?’
‘Yes,’ Arthur said.
‘Excellent.’
Peter took out his mobile phone and pointed it at him. ‘It’s so we can recall exactly what you said,’ he explained.
‘Please go ahead and describe for us how you opened it and what happened next?’ prompted the general.
Trying not to look at it, Arthur cleared his throat and for a moment wondered where he should start. It all sounded so strange in his head that he was sure if he mentioned the cat and, even worse, the fish, that they’d all think he’d cracked.
‘Well, um, at first we tried to open it using some of the tools from my grandfather’s tool shed, but it was impossible,’ he began.
‘Just a moment, please. You said we,’ interrupted the general, looking surprised.
