The Alabaster Box

The Alabaster Box

Summary:

When widowed defense attorney Grace Mallory inherits an unassuming alabaster box from her estranged grandmother—an old recluse who died under mysterious circumstances in rural Mississippi—she assumes it’s nothing more than a quaint keepsake. But when her teenage son, Sam, opens the box, strange visions begin to plague them both, visions of a long-forgotten murder, a shuttered church, and whispers of a pact sealed in blood.

Set in the small, crumbling town of Bethel’s Rest, Mississippi—a town clinging to old ghosts and older secrets—The Alabaster Box unfolds like a Southern Gothic legal thriller wrapped in supernatural horror. As Grace fights a wrongful conviction case that echoes the past too closely, she begins to suspect the box may hold more than memories—it may hold truth itself. But truth, as she discovers, is a dangerous thing to open.

Characters:

Grace Mallory: A skeptical, principled defense attorney with a painful past and an instinctive distrust of anything spiritual.

Sam Mallory: Grace’s 15-year-old son, intuitive and emotionally attuned, who forms a troubling connection to the box.

Reverend Isaiah Cotter: The last living member of the church tied to the box’s origins, now suffering from dementia and terrifying bouts of lucidity.

Sheriff Win Bowers: A charming but deceptive old friend of Grace’s grandmother, who may know more than he lets on.

Lila Jean Mallory: Grace’s late grandmother, a devout Pentecostal woman who once led exorcisms in Bethel’s Rest.

Now, the story begins...

A Fine Dust of Bone

The box came wrapped in wax paper, nestled like a relic in the bottom of a suitcase that smelled of cedar and wet leaves. Grace hadn’t expected the call from the probate lawyer in Oxford, Mississippi. She hadn’t expected her grandmother to leave her anything at all. Lila Jean Mallory had not spoken to her in twenty-three years—not since Grace stood in a Boston courthouse and said “I do” to a Catholic man and left the South for good.

Now here it was, a box of alabaster white with soft veins of pinkish gray, like something carved from fat and frozen marrow. It was smaller than a shoebox, but heavier than it looked. Sam, always curious, reached for it first.

“Looks like something that should stay closed,” he said, running his fingers across the lid. “It’s cold.”

They were back home in New Orleans when he opened it.

There was no lock. No mechanism. Just a simple sliding lid that gave with a dry whisper. Inside, a folded note on yellowing paper, written in cursive that crawled like vines across the page.

"To open this is to see. And to see is to carry. What you carry must never be buried."

Grace read it twice, a flicker of unease darting across her spine. The box was empty otherwise. Or so she thought, until Sam tilted it toward the light.

A fine dust sifted from the bottom. Bone white. Lighter than air. Like someone had cremated a secret and left the ashes behind.

Bethel’s Rest

They drove to Bethel’s Rest the following weekend.

Grace told herself it was to sell her grandmother’s house and settle the estate. But that was only part of the truth. Sam had begun waking up at night, muttering in tongues he didn’t speak. Eyes open. Sweat dripping. Repeating three words over and over again.

“The angel’s eyes.”

It wasn’t a phrase Grace knew. But when she found it carved into the bottom of the alabaster box—almost imperceptibly, like it had been scratched in haste—she began to believe something darker was at work.

Bethel’s Rest looked like a town time had driven around. Empty storefronts. A post office with its flag at half-mast for no one in particular. The church stood at the edge of a field of wild grass, its whitewashed cross splintering like bone. The old man on the porch of the general store knew her grandmother’s name.

“Lila Jean? Lord, she’s finally gone?” he said with a whistle. “Should’ve happened years ago. Woman carried a storm inside her.”

Grace wasn’t sure what he meant. But later that afternoon, she visited the town records office, where an elderly clerk handed her a manila folder without asking questions.

The folder was filled with newspaper clippings, old police reports, and a single black-and-white photo of five men in suits standing outside the church. All smiling. All dead now—except one.

Reverend Isaiah Cotter.

The Eyes That See

Cotter was in a nursing home ten miles outside of town. Sam insisted on going with her.

“I think he knows what I saw,” he said in the car, voice flat. “I dreamed of him last night.”

Grace gripped the wheel. “That’s not how dreams work, Sam.”

Sam turned toward her. “Then how do you explain the singing?”

He told her the dream. A cavern beneath the church, filled with singing children. Eyes covered in wax. A staircase of hands leading downward.

At the nursing home, Cotter sat in a wheelchair facing a blank wall. His eyes were milky. A nurse whispered, “He hasn’t spoken in days.”

But when Sam entered the room, Cotter stirred.

“Box... you brought the box,” the old man wheezed. “Too late now. They know you seen it.”

Grace leaned down. “What was in the box, Reverend?”

Cotter smiled—a cracked, empty thing.

“Not what. Who.”

Buried in Plain Sight

Grace dug deeper. Town archives hinted at a child’s disappearance in 1957. No body. No charges. Just a name: Ada Mae Colton. Age six. Last seen after church on a Sunday morning. The same day five men—including Cotter—conducted a private “cleansing ritual” in the church basement.

“They believed she was possessed,” said Sheriff Win Bowers when Grace cornered him outside the diner.

He looked older now. White hair, face like a carved brick, but the same wolfish eyes he had at eighteen when he kissed her behind the bleachers.

“Was she?”

Bowers shrugged. “Depends what you mean by possessed. She spoke things. Saw things.”

Grace’s voice cracked. “Did my grandmother help them?”

Bowers didn’t answer. Just lit a cigarette and walked away.

That night, Grace dreamed of her grandmother standing at the foot of her bed. Holding the box. Whispering.

“What you carry must never be buried.”

A Pact in Blood

Sam went missing the next morning.

They found his backpack at the old church, door wide open despite being nailed shut. Grace followed the trail down a rickety stairwell into a basement choked with mildew and silence.

There, she found another box. Identical to the first.

And Sam.

He stood in front of it, eyes wide, whispering in that same unknown tongue.

“They took her soul and sealed it in bone,” he said softly. “Now she wants out.”

From the shadows, Cotter appeared—more specter than man.

“She wasn’t possessed,” he said. “She was divine. The alabaster was to keep her soul safe from men like us.”

Grace understood, then. The dust in the box wasn’t a relic.

It was a prison.

And she had broken the seal.

The Box Opens Twice

The light in the basement changed. A low hum, like hundreds of wings flapping at once. Sam fell to his knees, eyes rolling back.

Grace grabbed the box and slammed the lid shut.

The humming stopped.

Later, they buried it. Deep in the woods. Wrapped in salt and scripture.

But Grace knew the truth.

The box had opened once.

And it would open again.



Epilogue: "The Dust Remembers"

Back in New Orleans, Grace found something in Sam’s room. A drawing.

A girl with no eyes.

Hands reaching from the ground.

And behind her, a church—burning.

At the bottom, written in shaky pencil:

“She remembers who put her in the box.”

And underneath that, in smaller script:

“Soon, the box will open from the inside.”