Hiding in Boxes

Finally, in response To Friendly Anon's prompt from 29 June 2013,  I wrote this.  [My response to aldersprig's prompt is at 3,500 words and still has two and a half scenes to go...]

“Your grandfather put it into storage,” James Farrington-Scott told his children. “He was going off to fight in World War II and didn’t want to leave it lying around where we children might get our hands on it or your grandmother and great-grandmother might get the idea that it was just clutter and sell it off for cash. Now we need to get it out of stiorage, but I don’t have the verification codes even though I have power of attorney.”

“So, what are we going to do?” That was Sandra, the eldest and practical.

“We’re going to deposit Phyll in the same place,” they all turned to look at their third youngest sibling, “she’s going to find it, put it in her box with her and then we’re going to withdraw her, three days after she was deposited.”

“You’re putting our sister into a box and put that box into a long term storage facility?” Richard, the eldest son, looked hard at their father. “Is that really a good idea?”

“Is three days going to be long enough?” That was Wim, the second eldest boy.

“Phyll is really quite good at this sort of thing,” their father assured them all, “and three days will have to be enough, our deadline is four.”

“You sure you’re okay with this?” Richard looked at his younger sister with concern.

“It’s good,” she assured him, “I’ve done worse and harder. Besides, can anyone think of a better plan in the time we have to help the grandparents?” The room was silent.

Opening a box that was supposed to open from the inside was easy and Phyll hoped that the resealing arrangements worked just as well. The pine plank container was marked “Fragile” and she had no complaints about the handling. The placement, too, was almost perfect, with easy access on and off her shelf. The problem was, she was in a cavern of pine boxes stacked on metal shelves, row on row of them separated by corridors wide enough for two forklifts abreast going as far as her torch could show her. Her torch showed lights attached to the rock ceiling above but those had to be off because no-one was supposed to be in here. She had the markings that were on her grandfather’s box and now she had to really hope that those aligned to a storage system, otherwise three days wasn’t going to be nearly enough time.