The Treasure Map

by Tyler Scott Hess

  For a time, no one speaks, most of us more interested in catching our breath before we begin the long hike through whatever the forest has to offer us. If the skies are clear, the moon should provide sufficient light for our travels, but the woods are never without danger.

  Then the Elder speaks. “I need to tell you all something before we go,” he declares, looking directly at me before scanning the room again. “There are many things you do not know about me or my past. I understand that rumors swirl when it comes to my name and stature, and most of them are true, though often exaggerated or misunderstood. I will reveal everything in due time, but who I am and what I have done is of little importance to discuss right now. What matters is what I have seen and heard more often in my life than any man ever should. I have risked it all and lost more friends than I can count. I will not let that happen to any of you, not if you listen to me and heed my counsel. There are ways to stay alive and ways to die. The most important thing you need to know is that we are not dependent on our own abilities alone, but on the object of our mutual faith. We will make it to Akiva by the break of dawn, of that I can assure you, though danger lurks behind every tree along the way. It is now time for us to take our leave.”

  One by one we follow the Elder out through the hatch from which we first entered. The sun has hidden itself beyond the horizon and darkness surrounds us on all sides. It’s going to be a long night ahead of us, but the streets are quiet and the path to freedom awaits. Maia walks alongside the Elder until we reach the edge of town. The rest of us follow in a staggered line. This is our life now. We will always be on the run. We have no other choice.

  CHAPTER NINE

  All That Fun Stuff

  “ARE THEY SERIOUS?” Jack said angrily as he regained his faculties. “They still haven’t even worked out a real plan? They don’t know what’s out there! They’re gonna get caught. I don’t think I like how this is going to end.”

  Jack stomped back and forth in the attic as he tried to gather his thoughts. It was absurd. “Niko had been living on the road all that time with his father and still didn’t know what to do next? He had to go get him, he just had to! How could he not have a better plan in mind?”

  “What are you going on about?” Joshua Monroe asked as he climbed the steps to check on his son’s progress. “Are you getting a little stir crazy or what? Looks like you’ve been putting in some work. Good, good. Another couple of days of hard work ought to do it, don’t you think? You might just get to have some Christmas after all.”

  “You think?” Jack snarled.

  “Lay off the attitude,” his father shot back. “Your punishment is exactly what you need to get your thoughts on the right things. Besides, if you want to go downstairs to finish off those cookies your mother made for you, then you better not trip over your words on the way.”

  “Cookies?” Jack had forgotten all about the Christmas cookies he had made with his brother and sisters. His father barely had time to step aside as the boy jumped down through the hole in the attic floor and hopped downstairs toward the kitchen with a spring in his step that he hadn’t been able to unwind for days. “Where are they?”

  “On the counter, dear,” his mother said. “Just where they always are. I told the others that they had to leave some for you, so don’t be in such a hurry you forget to chew!”

  Jack couldn’t believe his eyes. After spending so many hours rotting away with the rest of the garbage up in the attic, he caught a whiff of the loveliest smell a boy his age could imagine. A sugar smorgasbord was set before him and he shoved two of the cookies in his mouth before bothering to look how they had turned out. It hardly mattered. They were always perfect.

  “Is the attic clean yet?” Calvin asked as he looked in the fridge for a glass of milk to wash down his snack. “Mommy and daddy said you have been too busy to play with us all week.”

  “Way to rub it in,” Jack said through the muffling of crumbs threatening to escape his jaw. “I bet you three have been running around doing all the best Christmas stuff without me.”

  “I thought you wanted to be up there,” Calvin shrugged. “Mommy said it was a big deal for you. She said it was going to make you super-duper happy when you’re all done. She said you get to…”

  “That’s enough, Calvin!” Mrs. Monroe said, quickly asserting herself into the conversation. “Jack is not going to miss out on any of the big Christmas traditions…that is…if he gets the attic cleaned in time.”

  Jack had a slight grin that nearly let crumbs fall from his face until his mother interrupted. “Wipe that smile off your face, Jack. You don’t need to be giving your brother any guff about this either. Or your sisters for that matter. You’re the oldest and with that comes certain responsibilities and privileges. You’ll understand when the time comes.”

  Jack had no desire to be lectured. He finished chewing his cookies, grabbed a bottle of water, and headed back up the stairs, trying not to glare at his brother and sisters as they circled themselves around the dining room table to work on a jigsaw puzzle featuring three delightful snowmen in the woods.

  When he got up the stairs and climbed his way into the attic, he saw his father sitting in a chair waiting for him. Jack didn’t like the look on Joshua Monroe’s face. Either he was in trouble or his workload was about to be magnified. His heart sank.

  “What?” is all he could muster to ask as his father sat for a moment and stared.

  “I just got a phone call from an old friend,” Joshua Monroe told him, his voice as soft as the boy had ever heard. His beard had grown out a little extra over the first week of vacation, his perfectly combed hair had been recently ruffled by his sweaty palms, and his eyes had lost the sharp focus his son was accustomed to seeing. “I’m going to have to head out for a little bit. I’m not going to be able to help carry down the bags to the trash cans outside today like I was expecting. I know this has been a big task for you, but I’m going to need you to do a little bit more.”

  “But Dad,” Jack tried to argue, his hands at his hips, a scowl overriding any memory of the sugar cookies, though a few crumbs remained on his shirt.

  “Listen,” Mr. Monroe said with little more than a whisper. “Sometimes life throws things at you that don’t seem fair. Maybe you feel that way right now about cleaning the attic, but I need you to strengthen yourself and finish the job. That’s all a part of growing up and becoming a man. Now I have to go and deal with something that I’m not very happy about and I need you to do all you can to get this room finished. You’ve done a great job so far, and I’m very proud of you for that, but your mission isn’t complete.”

  Jack nodded his head and watched his father silently trail away to do whatever it was he couldn’t bring himself to say aloud. He now had an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach, despite having just polished off several sugar cookies with hardly a breath between bites, and didn’t feel much like wading through the rest of the huge piles of garbage.

  Jack decided to open the window again to gather himself with some fresh air. He noticed the snow, which had gathered so bountifully on the first day of Christmas vacation, had receded to the point where patches of grass had begun to show themselves and roofs had hardly any icicles remaining.

  “I missed my chance,” Jack sighed. He knew it would snow again this winter, as flurries always came and went throughout the season, but one never knew if it would be days or weeks until the next good storm.

  The streets were all but empty of people. Many of his neighbors, like Susie and her family, had simply gone away for a week or two. Others, like the Santos brothers, were surely at home enjoying hot cocoa and holiday movies with their moms and dads.

  Jack, however, had been spending his days toiling away in a dusty attic with little compensation other than a set of terrifying visions that hardly made any sense to him. Why was this happening? Was it simply because he was the first to open the treasure chest in so many years or had it been waiting for him all this time as
if it had been his purpose to find them? After all, whoever this Niko Monroe was, he had the same last name as Jack. That couldn’t have been a coincidence, he thought, but what he saw hardly resembled any time or place he could recall seeing, even on television.

  While he thought through these things, Jack began to muster enough energy to continue his work. He collected, examined, and tossed away piece after piece of garbage well into the evening.

  Just like the other nights, Jack sighed with relief when dinnertime came and went and he was soon comfortably asleep in his bed. He had no dreams, no visions, no nightmares. Just sleep. And when he awoke, he had a clear mind and decided to make it a clean slate for another day of work in the attic.

  “Today’s the day,” he decided to tell himself, his confidence at an all-time high. “I’m going to finish up that attic if it takes me until midnight. Then I never want to clean another thing in my life.”

  Jack made his way down for breakfast, where his mother had just begun to stir some orange juice for the four children. Calvin, Sadie, and Samantha had long been awake and had been quite anxious for the pancakes to be ready.

  Eira Monroe, however, was lacking the usual pep in her step. Jack quickly picked up on what his siblings hadn’t noticed.

  “What’s wrong, mom?” Jack asked.

  “Nothing to concern yourself with,” she told him.

  “Where’s dad?” he asked, not remembering any sign of him returning home the night before.

  “He had to go see an old friend,” she said with a sniffle she couldn’t hide. “It’s nothing I want you to concern yourself with right now.”

  Jack looked to his siblings and subtly shook his head while mouthing the word, “no.” He knew it wasn’t the right time for follow up questions and as the older brother he wanted to make sure they knew it too. He could sense something bad had happened, and it wasn’t any of their business, but he would ask again later when the time was right.

  The breakfast table was silent that day. The children ate what was on their plate and went their separate ways without so much as a moment of bickering or a selfish clamoring for this or that.

  Jack knew he had better things to do than to waste his time fighting over nothing when he could be upstairs polishing off the attic. Although it had been mostly junk he had been sorting, he still had hope there would be something that would help him understand the map along with the letters he had been finding in the treasure chest. There had to be an explanation for the visions, or whatever they were, that had let him see through the eyes of Niko Monroe.

  Before Jack could round the corner up the stairs, his father walked into the living room, his jacket and face dripping wet.

  “Raining outside today,” Joshua Monroe said, his words flustered as he shook off his boots. “Better make sure that window is closed up there.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jack said quietly, not sure if he wanted to look in his father’s eyes at the moment. “Are you…never mind.”

  “It’s okay, son,” he said. “It was a rough night for my old friend. It’s not something you need to hear about, but I think he’s going to pull through.”

  Jack nodded his head and swiftly made his way up to the attic. His dad was talking through vague words, but was clear as day, and the boy knew he wasn’t ready for such discussions.

  Yet when Jack climbed back up to the attic, the first thing he looked at was the treasure chest, the one with the letters that had been showing him things all week, mysteries he knew he hadn’t been ready to witness. It wasn’t like television. He had seen things in movies that he knew he wasn’t supposed to have seen, but they hardly affected him at all. Those weren’t real. They came from someone’s imagination. But the story of Niko Monroe was so vivid and the experience made too little sense.

  “Maybe I should tell my dad,” Jack contemplated to himself, not sure when his father might pop his head through the trap door again. “He might know what’s happening. He always seems to be the one who knows what to do. People call him when they’re in need. I’ve always called on him when I’m in trouble. But I don’t know how I would even begin to explain this.”

  Jack went straight to work on the attic, busting his tail as he sorted through the diminishing piles of long faded items of clothing and miscellaneous junk his grandfather couldn’t bring himself to throw away decades ago. But every minute or two Jack looked back at that treasure chest. It seemed less and less likely as the hours passed by that he would find anything resembling a clue, but he knew in his heart that those letters would keep coming if he continued to check for them.

  The pile continued to evaporate before his eyes. Jack could hardly believe it. Christmas was right around the corner and he had nearly served out his sentence. He was so excited he started to become nervous. “What if this isn’t all of it?” he wondered. “What if they have something more for me to do? They knew it couldn’t take that long to clean one room, even if it had been treated like a wasteland.”

  When Mr. Monroe popped his head back up through the square in the floor, Jack looked at him with suspicion.

  “Looks like you’ve just about wrapped it up here, have you?” asked Joshua Monroe with his eyes popped out in surprise. “I was hoping you would have some time left over.”

  “I knew it!” Jack yelped before he could cover his mouth. “I mean…you said this was my punishment, it’s not fair to add any more work to it just because I did it fast. Besides I…”

  “Hold on, Jack,” his father said with his lip curling. “You know what, I almost let you get away with that right there. But why don’t you go ahead and take the last couple bags of garbage downstairs and then I’ll let you know.”

  Jack scowled. He scowled picking up the garbage bags, he scowled as he stomped down the stairway, and he scowled as he slushed his way through the pouring rain to sling the trash bags into the back of his father’s pickup. Then he scowled his way back inside, scowled as he tossed his jacket on the floor, and scowled his way back up the steps.

  He thought about not climbing his way back up to the attic. He considered running to his room and locking the door. But he knew it would be of no use. Somehow his entire Christmas vacation was going to be spent in this stupid attic.

  And he was right. When he climbed up to the attic, he was surprised to see that it wasn’t as empty as when he had left it. Joined by his father was his mother standing next to him with a nervous smile on her face. Next to them were Jack’s three siblings, each jumping up and down on a mattress. His mattress.

  “What is going on here?” Jack said with his mouth over his hands. “Why are they - how did that - what is happening?”

  “It’s your own roooooom,” his brother and sisters giggled in unison as they continued to jump up and down on his bed.

  “We wanted it to be a surprise,” his mother told him.

  “And we wanted you to learn what can happen when you put in the hard work,” his father said pointedly. “And just because your punishment is over, doesn’t mean you don’t still have work to do. Everything you own needs to be brought up here before Christmas.”

  Jack had stopped listening. He knew what his father was saying and didn’t need to hear it. His tired body suddenly felt light as air and he had springs in his feet. He wanted to jump up and down with his brother and sisters on his bed. Instead, he ran downstairs without another word to bring up some essentials for the first night in his new room.

  He gathered his biggest flannel blanket, some matching sheets, a lamp, an alarm clock, and stuffed them all into the biggest duffle bag he could find. He skipped all the way back to the attic where he found his family had barely moved at all, except that his mother stood there with a broom and a dustpan.

  “Did you seriously think we were going to let you sleep in here with all this dust lying around?” she asked him.

  Jack stood there with a grimace. He hadn’t had time to think much at all, let alone consider he would have to keep his room clean without any help.
He had never really taken much care of his old room and it was obviously in much better condition than the attic.

  “You have a little bit of time left until you need to sleep,” his mother said as Jack’s siblings began to tire from treating his bed like a trampoline. “Until then, you can take care of the cobwebs in the corners and the dust on the ground. Your father will help you with some of the more difficult tasks after Christmas, but you’re responsible for making it livable for yourself. We expect big things out of you, mister.”

  Jack felt like a dozen heavy rocks had just been thrown inside of his duffel bag, but even when he dropped it to the floor, he felt no less of a burden. A punishment had turned into a surprise, which then turned into a change in perception regarding his role in the family. He was no longer just one of four siblings who happened to be the oldest. The boy was now going to be held accountable, as well as trusted with responsibilities. He was one step closer to manhood.

  Calvin, Sadie, and Samantha were soon ushered off to their beds for the night. Jack wondered what Calvin was going to do with all the extra space in the room they had shared for so long, but the way his mother had been carrying herself gave him a clue. That was going to be a discussion for another day. He had enough on his plate as it was.

  Jack took the broom from his father and began his work. He had no imaginary games left to play, no mysterious treasure hunts left to pursue within a mysterious pile of what turned out to be wall-to-wall garbage, and no endless tasks to complain about. He was left with sweeping, one of the most simple and uninteresting chores imaginable. It wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t fun. It was just something he had to do.