The box

I awoke from a deep sleep to the ringing of my cell phone. It was my father's best friend. I had a sinking feeling in my heart as I answered. This close friend of our family would not be calling me at two in the morning if everything was fine. Even before he spoke, I had a hunch this had to do with our father.

I was right. Our father had taken his own life.

I honestly hadn't expected this. Even after the last conversation I had with him. To me, he seemed more like the type who would leave the country, try to disappear forever. Even assume a new identity. But suicide? That just didn't seem like the route he would take.

I suppose I never really knew him at all. Unsurprising, if you ask me, as he had managed to deceive me and our family for so long.

I went to our family home the very next morning. I put my arms around my seventeen year old brother and held him as he cried. We called all our relatives, performed our father's last rites, and held the family gathering afterwards.

Through it all, our relatives kept praising me for how "brave and strong" I was being. How my father would have been so proud to see his daughter be a pillar of strength, just like he had been. They had taken my lack of tears as a sign of courage, instead of the lack of affection and respect for my father, which it actually was.

At that moment though, I didn't really care. As my brother and our kin sat in the living room, telling stories about what a "great man" our father had been, I quietly went upstairs to his home office. I locked the door, and headed straight for the large wooden cabinet. I opened it, and after removing the book, files etc from one of the shelves, I lightly shook the wooden panel at the back until it came off.

To my disappointment, the small hidden compartment was empty. The box I had found all those years ago was gone. I cursed myself for not even considering the possibility that my father would try to get rid of the evidence.

I began to think of the day I had discovered his secret.

It was just a few days before my thirteenth birthday. My brother was about six at the time. What I wanted more than anything else was an iPod. And that's what I told mom and dad when they asked me what I wanted for my birthday.

As my birthday approached, I knew they had gotten it for me. When I asked about it, my dad just laughed and told me to be patient. But I was far too excited. I wanted to hold my iPod in my hands. I wanted to see it right then and didn't want to wait for my birthday. So, just two days before my birthday, after I came home from school and before my parents got back from work, I began to look for it.

I looked everywhere in the house where my parents could have hidden it, but there was no luck. Then I thought to look in the one room in the house that I wasn't allowed to enter - my father's office. He was a lawyer and in his office he kept his important case files etc. So I and my brother were forbidding from going in.

But in my eagerness to see my present, I broke that rule.

I looked in the drawers of my father's desk, in the various shelves. Then I finally decided to look in the large cabinet. I opened it and began carefully shifting the files and books inside. My hand collided with the back of the shelf and the wood panel came loose. At first I was afraid that I had damaged it, but then the panel came off, revealing a small hidden compartment.

And inside the compartment was a wooden box.

I opened the box, hoping to find my iPod.

But what I found would forever change the way I looked at the man I called my father.

The first thing I saw was a diary. It had a list of names, along with some numbers. Numbers that could have been measurements. I didn’t understand it and put it back. Then there was the digital camera. I began looking through the pictures that were saved on it.

The first one was my father interacting with a young woman. My dad too looked a bit younger, so this picture must have been from five to six years earlier.

In the first few pictures, my dad and the lady were just talking or laughing together. The fourth picture was of a room with nothing but a bed. And The young woman was lying in it, her limbs tied to the four posts of the bed.

She looked afraid. Terrified.

I kept looking through the saved digital images. I saw my father interacting the same way with several young men and women. And all of them ended up tied up somewhere. Either on a bed, a chair, or to a poll. They all wore that expression of horror.

I stopped looking. My young mind was beginning to comprehend what this could mean, and I felt ill.

The box also had some polaroids. I didn’t dare to look at them, though. I just put everything back as it was, and closed the cabinet.

I stayed in my room for the rest of the day. The iPod being the least of my concerns now. Both my parents could tell that something was wrong, but I assured them I was fine.

From that day on, it seemed as though a dark cloud hung over me. I was tormented by thoughts of who and what my father really was. What did he do to those people? What was a capable of doing? What could he do to us, if he ever found out I knew his secret?

I was constantly afraid for my mother and little brother

On my birthday, when I recieved my iPod, I just couldn't get excited. My father asked me, in his usual gentle tone, if I didn't like it. I forced myself to smile and told him I loved it.

Two years went by, with my father being none the wiser. My mother had noticed that I wasn't interacting with him as much, and as openly as I used to. She asked me what was wrong on several occasions. But I always told her that I was just busy with school and my hobbies.

Then one day, when I was outside in the lawn raking leaves, and my mom was off running some errands, my dad approached me. He asked me if I had been inside his office.

I didn't look up from my chore and answered nonchalantly that I hadn't. Even though I was absolutely terrified and my heart was pounding.

He asked me again if I was sure I hadn't.

I once again replied, without looking directly at him, that I hadn't entered his office.

He stood there beside me for a few more seconds. Seconds that seemed like years. Then he went indoors again, and I let go of a breath I didn't know I was holding in.

I started panicking. I kept going back to that day, and wondered if I had left behind any sign that I had opened his cabinet. I couldn't think of any. But there was always a possibility that in my fearful and confused state, I hadn't put the box back in the exact same position in which I had found it.

Whatever the case may be, I knew that my father knew. There was something in his tone that told me he knew I had discovered his secret. The only thing that kept me safe was the fact that my father couldn't very well just ask me if I had seen his pictures.

Many times, I had considered just stealing that box and going to the police with it. But I knew that when the truth came out, it would destroy my mother. Being the accomplished manipulator that he was, my father had always acted like the ideal husband. He always took excellent care of my mom and showed her a lot of respect and affection. My mother too practically worshipped him.

I couldn't imagine how devastated she would be if she ever learned that her husband was a monster.

In my late teens, I became obsessed with the subject of serial killers. I would research their behaviour, how they operated etc. In a twisted way, I was just trying to better understand my father. Not because I felt any love for him. That had died a long time ago. But because I wanted to be able to predict his moves if he ever decided to get rid of my mother, my brother and I.

After I moved away to college, I began obsessively researching young men and women who had disappeared in the late 90s and early to mid 2000s. All I would do in my free time was scan through news articles, old missing persons records etc. Just looking for a face that looked familiar to the pictures I had seen on my father's digital camera.

I finally found what I was looking for. I saw the face of a young man whose picture I had seen in my father's office. Whose eyes had looked at though they were screaming for help, as he was gagged and tied up to a chair. There was no doubt in mind that this man, about twenty years old at the time of his disappearance, was one of my father's victims.

I kept digging. And found a few more of my father's victims whose faces I had seen all those years ago. I must have gone through hundreds of news items. I'm sure my father also had victims from the early to mid 90s, and their picture were probably among the polaroids I didn't have the stomach to look at.

I thought of devising plans to get my mother and brother away from him, but how could I have done that without revealing the truth? I could not bring myself to shatter my mom's world by telling her that her husband, the man she loved with all her heart, was at the the very least, involved in the disappearance of several human beings.

I also considered that if that monster wanted to harm his wife and son, he would have done it by now.

Then, about a year after I graduated from college, a horrific tragedy occurred. My mother was killed in a car crash.

No, my father is not the one who killed her.

It was a drunk driver who crashed into her. Both my mother and the other driver were killed instantly.

Both my brother and I were devastated. My father cried at the funeral. A lot. But I honestly couldn't tell if he genuinely mourned the loss of his wife, or if he was keeping up appearances.

After I had somewhat recovered from the emotional blow of my mother's demise, I realized something. I no longer had to worry about my mom being hurt by the truth about her husband. All I had to do was get my brother out of the house, and I could set the ball rolling to bring my father to justice.

I suggested that my brother spend a few days of his summer vacation with his friends at our lake house, as it had been mom's favourite place in the world. He said it was a good idea and invited all his friends.

Once he had reached our lake house and I was sure that he was at a safe distance from our father, I decided to give the latter a call. My father sounded surprised to hear from me, as this was the first time since leaving home that I had called his phone.

I didn't beat around the bush and came right to the point. I told that bastard that I knew his dirty secret. That I had found his digital pictures and polaroids all those years ago. And that the only reason I had refrained from exposing him to the world, was because I was protecting my mother. But now that she was gone and neither he, nor the truth about him could hurt her, I had no reason to hold back. I gave him an ultimatum. Either he could turn himself in, or I would tear his carefully crafted legacy to shreds.

As it turned out, he wouldn't take either of these options. Instead, he decided to end his life.

He had crafted his facade of wholesomeness so carefully, I suppose he couldn't bear to see it all go up in flames. So he decided to end it all and robbed his victims and their families of any closure.

I waited for our relatives and family friends to leave, before I turned the house upside down looking for that box, the camera, those pictures. I even looked in the trash for ashes or any remains of the evidence.

I found nothing. He had disposes of the evidence. But I wasn't willing to give up.

After my brother went off to college, I went to the cops and told them everything I knew. Two homicide detectives came to our house. My father's office was swapped for DNA, but nothing was found connecting him to the disappearances. I looked for the pictures in our lake house too, but to no avail.

It's been eight years since my father's suicide. What haunts me even more than the thought that I had failed to bring my father to justice, was a question. Did he continue to kill even after I had discovered his secret?

And how many more people lost their lives to him because I refused to expose him?

How many deaths did my silence cause?