The Treasure Map

by Tyler Scott Hess

  Instead, as he intricately placed tiny hard red candies onto a sugar cookie, he thought about how it wasn’t so bad having a brother and sisters to share the house with, even if they did steal some of his attention and maybe a few of his presents along the way. At least he wasn’t alone. Not when they’re around.

  But it wouldn’t last forever. While his mother assured him that she would save him some cookies and an extra spoonful of raw chocolate chip cookie dough, he would have to head back up to the attic to complete his punishment. Christmas would be here soon, and he didn’t want to be spending it sorting through old newspapers.

  Nevertheless, Jack dragged his feet back through the living room, climbed his way upstairs, and pulled himself up into the attic.

  “I hope the smell improves up here soon,” Jack complained. He knew if he could manage to reach the one small window on the far side, then he should at least be able to air it out, but the musty scent wasn’t going to dissipate without some help, and the window was still far out of his grasp.

  “How about a new game?” Jack said to himself. He lugged up a garbage can to the attic, put a bag in it accordingly, and began to play a version of basketball that gained him two points for every newspaper he could toss into the can, three points if he did it over his shoulder without looking. Even though he had no competition, and no basis for comparison to how anyone else would have done, he thought he was pretty good.

  By the time lunch rolled around, Jack had filled four garbage cans with nothing in them but the old newspapers his father had insisted were of no value. He couldn’t imagine why his grandpa had collected them, especially since he hadn’t bothered to do so in any meaningful way. They weren’t well organized, nor were they protected in the least bit, and most of them looked as if they hadn’t even been read. They were good for nothing but taking up space in a long-forgotten part of their home.

  “How’s it coming along there, buddy?” his father asked, his head popping up through the hole once again to check on his son. “Brought you some lunch. Your mom thought you might like some peanut butter and jelly today.”

  Buddy? That’s what his father called him when he was four years old. It took him off guard, especially since he was in the middle of working out his punishment. It didn’t seem like they were buddies at all, at least not since his report card made its way home.

  “Fine,” Jack said. “A few thousand more bits of junk and I might be able to open that window over there.

  “Oh, it’s not that bad,” his father told him.

  “Are you kidding?” Jack argued. “I can barely breathe up here.”

  “Oh, no, you’re right about the smell,” his father conceded. “I mean you’ve almost made your way to the window there. If you concentrate on a path through the center this afternoon, I think you’ll get there in no time. And once that’s done, you’ll have a lot more room to move around up here. You should have plenty of time to get it all done before Christmas, as long as you concentrate on your work rate.”

  Jack pulled up one of the chairs that hadn’t been taken to the thrift shop and hoped it wouldn’t collapse under him. He chomped into one of the sandwiches his father brought up for him and gnashed it with his teeth.

  Joshua Monroe busied himself by tossing stacks of garbage bags, each filled to the brim, down to the second floor below them. As much as it was a punishment for Jack, it had given him something to do while he was home for the holidays as well. He was always a person who couldn’t sit still, even when he was supposed to be on vacation, but Jack still thought it odd he would be so eager to help him with the heavy lifting.

  “So you never got a bad report card when you were my age?” Jack asked his father.

  “A few here and there,” he answered his son. “Why do you ask?”

  “Just thought if you had gotten a bad report card, you might have been the one to have to clean up this mess,” Jack confessed. “Doesn’t seem fair.”

  His father smirked. “Life’s not fair,” he said, rubbing his thumbs under his eyes. “But I think in the end, you’ll see you are the one getting the good end of the deal. It could certainly be worse. Anyway, bring down that plate next time you make your way to the kitchen. Looks like I’ve got enough newspapers to take down to the recycling center for one day. Let me know if you run into anything special in all this rubbish, will ya?”

  “Not very likely,” Jack muttered as he began to eat his second sandwich. Of course, by that he meant for his father to not find out about the map and the rest of the pages he had been finding in the green treasure chest that had been staring at him all morning. He wasn’t sure exactly why he hadn’t yet moved the chest down to his bedroom. Perhaps it was pure exhaustion from the unusual amount of manual labor. Maybe he just didn’t want the one thing in the attic that was of any particular interest to him to be removed from his sight while he worked. Either way, it sat there all the same.

  At this point, you might be wondering why Jack hadn’t bothered to look in that chest since his most recent experience in Ariel. The truth of the matter was that he was a bit scared of what might happen next. Everything Niko saw and experienced and felt could be seen and experienced and felt by Jack. He was living the life of a young man on the run from people who wanted to end his life. That wasn’t a great thing to be a part of, even if the consequences might not catch up with him, and any more of it might leave him in worse condition than he was prepared to handle.

  Jack was still a young boy, and though he had often dreamed of adventure, seeing what it was like in person was different than reading about it in a book or seeing it on television. He wasn’t a superhero that could fight off all evildoers. He was a bit confused about who was the good guy in the first place. He had never thought it possible for an escaped convict to be a hero, yet he knew to his core that this was the case for Niko Monroe.

  Jack glared at the treasure chest for the rest of his lunch break. Five minutes turned into ten and then fifteen. He took his last bite and decided he wasn’t ready for more adventure. He’d rather scratch his way through the mess his grandpa had left him long before he had even been born. It was hard work, not to mention disgusting, but safe.

  “I wonder what they’re going to do with all this extra room in the attic,” Jack pondered as he was getting to a point where newspapers were becoming less of a persistent pain. Other objects of little value and much scorn were giving him new problems and concerns in their place. It was becoming apparent his father was right about one thing…there wasn’t much value in any of it.

  Much like the suitcases he had worked on earlier, everything up in this attic was long out of fashion, if they were ever in some sort of style at any point in time. Worn, torn, and faded shreds of clothing, as well as shoes and blankets of all shapes and sizes, were scattered about without any more due diligence than the newspapers had been. His grandfather, it seemed, had treated the attic as a “maybe someday” room. This was the day, but it was Jack who was left to deal with the repercussions.

  Maybe there had been a use in mind at the time, but Jack couldn’t think of any reason to keep any of this old junk. There were no coin collections, no tools of any exceptional use, and not even a hint of a photo album or personal memorabilia. Just junk. No treasure.

  The only thing that kept Jack going was that the pile of useless items was getting smaller and smaller by the hour. What he originally thought to be a great mountain, was turning into a very tiresome hill that needed some careful landscaping to become of some use to his family. He was determined to finish it as quickly as he could to enjoy the rest of his Christmas vacation. Perhaps it would snow again soon.

  Still, something was gnawing at him. Jack wasn’t sure what it was, but it felt like an itch that had not been scratched was spreading throughout his body, and he didn’t know what would stop it. He just knew that there was something more to the attic than the piles upon piles of useless leftovers from a bygone era.

  Jack tried to distract himself f
rom the eerie feeling. He tried to come up with more games to pass the time. He soon realized that the effectiveness of his imagination was wearing thin. Newspaper basketball had come to an end and randomly scattered rolled up socks baseball wasn’t as much fun. He tried to see if any of the old clothing scattered about could be donated to a thrift shop or a shelter, but they hadn’t been well preserved in the slightest, years of dust and the hunger of moths had tattered them beyond salvage.

  It did brighten his eyes, quite literally, when Jack managed to clear out enough of these undesirable items that he could finally open the one single window in the attic. It did take some muscle, and a few moments of grunting, but the window did swing out just in time for a gust of wind to blow inside and pelt the boy with a flurry of snow.

  “Wait a minute,” Jack said as he gathered himself. “It’s not snowing outside. Where did that come from?”

  It didn’t take long for him to spot where the laughter had originated.

  “Is that where you’ve been hiding the last few days?” said one of the Santos brothers.

  “It’s where I’ve been locked up!” Jack replied.

  “Bad grades again?” said the other Santos brother.

  “You guessed it!” Jack shouted. “Can’t do anything fun until I clean out this whole attic. It’s disgusting!”

  “Well, if you ever make it out of there, it’s supposed to snow again on Christmas!” the boy shouted. “Mom says you can come over whenever you want!”

  “Thanks!” Jack shouted back. “But don’t think I’ll forget about that last snowball!” And he meant it. Best friends or not, Jack had a very long memory.

  The two brothers ran off and Jack was left to his solitude. He was grateful for the minor distraction and happy for the fresh air. Nevertheless, nothing in the attic had found a purpose after all these years of storage. Seemed like such a waste.

  Well, not nothing, he conceded. There was the treasure chest right in the middle. It wasn’t glamorous, per se, and it didn’t hold any gold or silver or anything like he had originally hoped, and what it did contain frightened him. He wasn’t sure he wanted any part of it, though he couldn’t take it off his mind, like an itch he couldn’t scratch.

  But that’s the thing about itches. They don’t go away just because you don’t want any part of them. Sometimes they have to be scratched until they are no longer a nuisance or they burn. Jack was afraid it wouldn’t go away so easily.

  As the day drifted away, Jack felt a voice calling to him. It wasn’t a shout, but more of a whisper in the wind, that beckoned him to open that treasure chest again.

  “No!” Jack shouted. “I don’t want any part of it. That’s not my journey. That’s not my life. That’s not my problem!”

  Jack crossed his arms and turned away. But a cold shoulder would not suffice this time. He had been summoned. He was called. He somehow knew he must open that treasure chest once again to face his fears. It didn’t make any sense to him at the time, but it would come to him with the passage of events. He had to do this. This journey was a part of him.

  Jack set down the garbage bag he had been filling and crept up to the treasure chest, slowly opened it, and with shaky hands picked up the map along with the pages he knew in his heart would continue the story. He closed his eyes, his sweaty palms begging him not to pursue the matter any further.

  “I must do this,” Jack assured himself, even as his body told him it would be better to choose flight over fight. “I have to know what happens next, even if I have to live it for myself. I need to see.”

  Jack took a deep breath, settled his shaking hands, and set his eyes on the pages before him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A Clever Trick

  THE IMAGE BURNS deeper into my mind with every cycle on the television screen. My father’s name appears below the ragged mugshot the State released to the government-funded news station. They didn’t bother to clean him up before they took the picture like they normally would have with an ordinary criminal. They want everyone to see him like this, a wounded enemy with no hope for freedom. For the first time, they want the public to see how the State treats us, to see how citizens should treat an escapee if they ever happen to find one of us.

  Six of us remain on the loose. Every one of us who made it out of the stadium has remained free, at least according to the reports, and I see no reason why they would keep such information from the public. The ones who remain in captivity are surely paying the consequences for our departure. The disparity between photographs of the two groups, those who are free and those who are not, is glaring. We are no longer a mere hunting trophy to our captors. We are a symbol of freedom that must be squashed.

  My father may have taken the worst of it, but I believe he can handle it better than anyone, having led a life of selflessness and suffering, and I suppose that’s what made him such a fearsome enemy to the State. I’m not sure his companions are faring so well under such conditions. They’re older and weakened through days of mistreatment at Justice Hall. The beatings behind closed doors will only make them long to make their final sacrifice, the ultimate escape to freedom.

  Those of us who fled the stadium have a different challenge set before us. The news reporter puts more focus on us than the others. Too much time spent on broken men and women will only lead to sympathy. But fear of those remaining in the shadows will override any time citizens might have to concern themselves over our brethren. They want the entire region to know our faces, names, and the threat we carry wherever we go. We are younger, stronger, and will have to survive on our own.

  I’m thinking about more than survival every time my father’s disfigured face appears on the screen. I see his disheveled gray hair covering a bruised eye. I see a slender figure the media wants to depict as miserable. His eyes betray their storyline. He must know I’m free. And I know I must help him join me.

  “Do you have any more of these peanuts?” I ask my host.

  “That was all of ‘em,” he tells me as he sets down an apple core on the table. “That was the last of our supplies. We must prepare to move tonight. This house won’t be safe for much longer.”

  “Where will we go?” I inquire, trying to ignore the hunger which refuses to be silenced.

  The old man stands up and walks over to a closet in the hallway. He opens a creaky wooden door and shuffles through a series of papers set in no particular order on the shelf before pulling out a single rolled-up sheet. He walks back toward the table where we had breakfast and lays out what I quickly recognize to be a map of Ariel City and its surrounding villages.

  “We’re in Evansville,” he says, pointing to the tiny village on the eastern side of the map. The safe house is marked with a small circle in the center of the valley. There are none like it in any of the closest surrounding villages. “As you can plainly see, we have a journey ahead of us this evening, with few reasonable options. The house in Demascus was destroyed in a raid three months ago, so heading northwest from here would be a complete waste of our time. That leaves two sensible possibilities for us in the northern sector. Salem is closer, but more populous, and therefore more dangerous to navigate. Akiva will likely take us until dawn, but causes fewer worries if we can reach it before daylight. I know you are weakened from your confinement and escape, but I suggest we make the trek eastward to Akiva without delay.”

  “Salem,” I say. “We have to go to Salem.”

  “Did you not hear what I just said?” he grunts. “Salem is stocked with guards and citizens willing to give us up for any amount of bounty. They’d turn us in for a day’s pay.”

  “I know people in Salem,” I tell him. “It’s a callous town, full of hard-hearted men, but I know the guardian of its safe house. I know the village like it’s my family. And the other escapees are more likely to have fled there as it is closer to the city than Akiva. We have to go to Salem.”

  “Nothing good has ever come from Salem,” he says, furiously shaking his head. “If we
go there, we’re going to run into trouble. Safe house or no safe house, we will not be free of danger. I don’t care who you know, we need to go to Akiva.”

  “You don’t understand. My father built the safe house in Salem,” I tell him. “If I say we’re safe in Salem, then we’re safe in Salem. I promise I can get us there without harm.”

  “Your father is a fool,” he tells me, suddenly towering over me like a giant, his eyebrows furrowed and his fists clenched. “I told him to never go there in the first place. I told him he would be caught like a rabbit in the wild. Do you think you were captured in Alvaro for no reason? Guards from Salem followed you there, knowing you wouldn’t have anyone to protect you. You think Salem is safe? It’s a trap!”

  “You knew my father?” I ask, trembling at his words, but I am cut off by a disturbing attack of white noise that sends me to the ground in fear.

  “Get up. It’s just the radio,” he says, his gigantic frame now walking over to the machine next to the television screen. He grumbles as he gets down to one knee to adjust the frequency. “This might be important.”

  He knows my father. He knows me, or at least about me, but how? I stare at him as he twists tiny knobs on the transmitter. There is so much I’m sure he isn’t telling me.

  “Is someone out there?” he asks through a tiny microphone in his hand. “This is the Elder, can you hear me?” He taps at the device, attempting to get it to function properly.

  The Elder. My father spoke of him on our travels, but he told me he had been captured, just as we eventually were, and had faced execution himself. Is this the legend or an impostor?

  “I repeat, this is the Elder, do you hear me?” he says with urgent clarity.

  “Kreaacchhhhh,” a voice says over the radio. “Gurg, kurf, serrrrsshhh.”