People,” the doctor said sadly, “are always so anxious to get things out into the open where they can put a name to them, even a meaningless name, so… - Shirley Jackson

Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box. There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here. Every year, after the lottery, Mr. Summers began talking again about a new box, but every year the subject was allowed to fade off without anything's being done. The black box grew shabbier each year: by now it was no longer completely black but splintered badly along one side to show the original wood color, and in some places faded or stained.

All of the village was of a piece, a time, and a style; it was as though the people needed the ugliness of the village, and fed on it. The houses and the stores seemed to have been set up in contemptuous haste to provide shelter for the drab and the unpleasant, and the Rochester house and the Blackwood house and even the town hall had been brought here perhaps accidentally from some far lovely country where people lived with grace. Perhaps the fine houses had been captured — perhaps as punishment for the Rochesters and the Blackwoods and their secret bad hearts? — and were held prisoner in the village; perhaps their slow rot was a sign of the ugliness of the villagers.

she might never leave the road at all, but just hurry on and on until the wheels of the car were worn to nothing and she had come to the end of the world.