The Brown-Leather Suitcase

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Matthew?”

“Yes," the boy said.

“I’m with you. I’m not saying I’m not with you. But you know, if we are caught, they will arrest us. And if you fail —”

“I know what happens, Captain Stark,” he said. The captain stared at him for a second, and then stood up. 

“Very well. We leave as soon as the wind changes.” Stark gave the boy one last searching look, as if trying to solve a riddle he couldn’t quite understand, and then he shook his head and walked out into the hallway, leaving Matthew alone in his cramped quarters. 

The room had a pair of bunkbeds, a hard wooden floor, and a single desk with a candle on it. There was no room for anything else. Under his bed was a brown-leather suitcase that looked to have passed through several generations. Anyone who saw it would wonder why the boy had not had it replaced yet. It was sealed with rusty bronze latches, but the boy had also bound it with a thick white cotton rope. He had slid this suitcase far under his bed.

They left London’s harbor on February 3rd, 1863. Matthew did not leave his room except for meals and he always ate alone, unless the captain came to speak with him, which he did several times a week. Mostly the captain talked while he listened and nodded along out of politeness.

The passengers were afraid of the boy. They knew what he was there to do — they had paid good money for his services — but still, they had heard rumors whispered about him in the London port town from which they had departed: he killed his father with a single whispered word, he looks like a teenager but he is really over one-hundred years old, he’ll steal your soul, that sort of thing.

The storm began at the start of their fourth week. The sky turned dark and the waves rocked the ship violently. The crew remained above deck while the passengers huddled in their rooms and assured themselves that they had the best crew in the nation, and would not suffer the fate of so many other ships, like The Bella and The Sunfish, which had been “lost at sea” for months now.

While the sun was out and the waters calm, they had yearned for adventure — but after a month at sea and several days in an unrelenting storm, they just wanted to set their feet on dry land. A new, pernicious rumor began to circulate around this time: that the boy was not on their side at all, but was in fact the one causing the storm and planned to sacrifice them all to the ocean. That’s why he never talked to them, the logic went. 

On the fourth night of the storm Matthew walked into the captain’s quarters without knocking, holding his brown leather suitcase in his left hand. The captain was talking with his first mate, a ginger named Sal with a thick beard and a potbelly.

“It is time.” Matthew said.

They both looked up at him. The first mate frowned — he did not trust the boy. The captain looked shocked.

“Now?” he asked.

“Yes, now. Tonight.”

“In the middle of this storm?”

“Yes. Call the crew down.”

“We can’t call the crew down now. Listen to me, Matthew. This is a bad one. We may have to throw cargo overboard. I need my men up there.”

“Call them down,” he repeated.

“Matthew —”

“No, no. I don’t get why you let this child speak to you like this, Cap.” Now the first mate stood up and marched over to Matthew. He towered over the boy. “You’re here to do what you do, but this is his ship, you understand?” The boy looked up at him and took a step backwards. Sal was used to intimidating people without much difficulty, and he was glad to find that this boy, for all his mystique, was no exception.

“Sal, come sit down. Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.” The captain sighed. “I’ll call the crew down, Matthew, if that’s what you say needs to be done.” Sal looked back at the captain but did not say anything. The captain and the boy left the room and headed above deck together. A short while later the crew and the captain returned to their quarters and the boy remained on the deck, alone with his brown suitcase. Hours later, around three in the morning, the boy walked back into the captain’s quarters, dripping wet, still holding his suitcase by his side. The first mate had gone to bed.

“It is done,” he said.

“Are you sure?” the captain asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure, I say?”

“I am sure.” For the first time in the past month, the boy cracked a grin. The captain smiled, too, very slowly at first, and then all at once.

“By God! Come, come up with me, let us see!” The captain dragged the boy above deck again. The storm had ended suddenly and the sun was out, but there was only sea on all sides and no land in sight. “Well,” the captain shouted with a jovial laugh, “I’m not sure what I expected.”

“You will see when we reach Boston. Assuming Boston is still Boston.” The boy turned around. “Get your crew back up here.”

The mutiny took place on March 7th, four days after the boy had gone up to the deck with his brown suitcase. They got the boy and the captain while they were sleeping — Sal, three sailors, and a mob of high-ranking passengers, including Dr. Lowry, Professor Maddison and Member of Parliament Anderson. The boy was tied to an anchor, accused of being a warlock and planning the destruction of the ship, and thrown overboard. At first the captain was tied, bound in his quarters, and told that he would be released when they made landfall, but after swearing that the mutineers had doomed them all, and saying that if they ever did make it back to London he would have them all tried and put to death for mutiny, he too was thrown overboard.

Afterwards, the first mate’s curiosity had driven him to open the boy’s strange brown suitcase. He found an assortment of clocks of all sizes and styles: a gold timepiece, a large clock meant to be mounted on a wall, a watch, even an ancient sundial. They were all set to the same time: 2:47am. There were also calendars that originated from various cultures — a traditional Gregorian calendar, the date March 3rd circled in thick black ink, a red circle with animals drawn along the outskirts, Chinese characters alongside them, some sort of sun calendar, and various others that Sal did not understand. Deeming them relics of the boy’s treachery, he threw them into the sea.

“Land ‘ho!” came the cry early one morning several weeks later. The captain and several early-rising passengers came above deck and sure enough, the shore was visible through the fog ahead of them. But there was something odd about the land ahead of them — strange, tall buildings rose through the clouds all along the coast, like they were reaching for the heavens.

“What are those?” one of the sailors asked Sal.

“Keep the passengers below deck,” he said.

“What’s happened to Boston?” the same sailor said.

“Get all the passengers below deck, damn you.”

But the passengers were already murmuring amongst themselves, and within twenty minutes, the entire ship was in a panic.

“How do we get back? No, we need to get back.”

“Oh, God! Oh, God!”

“What have we done?”

“Take us back.” the doctor turned towards the first mate now. “Take us back, you fool. You did this. Fix it.”

The first mate did not say anything. He was staring ahead at the approaching city. The ship cruising towards the harbor looked like it came from a museum in comparison to the glimmering white yachts and sailboats that rocked in Boston harbor. Towering skyscrapers gleamed in the city beyond. Strange metal boxes on rubber wheels rolled down roads in the cracks between towering skyscrapers. There was no undoing what had been done.