Buried
Treasure
They all lay on
their stomachs, close to the cellar door.
“What
do we do now?” Jimmy said, his voice low, but cracking at the end.
Billy
stared at him. “We open the door,
stupid. That’s why we’re here.”
“But
what if he hears us?”
The
“he” was Mr. Wilson, who owned the house.
“He’s
at work,” Noah said. He flipped open the
small spiral bound pad. “Left for work
at seven thirty four this morning.” He
flipped the pad closed. Noah was ten,
like all of the boys, and wanted to be a policeman. He had noticed that policeman wrote their
information on small spiral notebooks, and he made sure that he always had one
with him.
“We’re
going in,” Billy said.
The
back yard of the Wilson property was shielded from the neighbors by a high
fence and trees. There was a chance that
someone could see them, but it was small.
Billy stood and tried to lift the door, but it was heavy.
“I
need some help here.”
The
other boys stood and grabbed various parts of the door. Billy was on the other side of the door,
pulling on the handle. Noah was at the
base, and Jimmy had the tie rope in his hands.
“On
three. One, two, three, PULL!”
They
all grunted as the heavy, green wooden door loosened slightly and then started
to lift up.
“Keep
pulling,” he groaned.
They
nearly drowned out the sounds of the rusted, screeching hinges of the
door. It continued to lift and Jimmy
nearly lost his balance as the edge of the door rushed up towards him. He leaned back, and then shoved at the door
as it passed him. The two other boys
continued to lift until the door pointed skyward. It hovered for an instant, and then fell
open, the wood making a thud as it hit the ground.
“What
a stink,” Jimmy said.
Standing
at the top of the opening, he was the first too catch the strong odor from the
basement. It smelled wet, and heavy, and
a little sweet. Jimmy fanned his hand in
front of his nose.
Noah
turned and coughed. “Smells like
something dead down there,” he said.
“How
do you know?” Billy said.
“I
know what something dead smells like.”
“Do
not.”
“Do
too.”
“It’s
just wet down there,” Billy said.
“My dog found a
dead raccoon at the park. Smelled just
like that.” Noah took out his notebook and looked at his
watch. He wrote the time in the book and
tried to describe the smell.
“Maybe
he killed something. Like Mrs. Wilson,” Jimmy
said.
Noah
looked at his notes. “He doesn’t have a
wife.”
“Everybody
has a wife. Our fathers have wives. All my uncles have wives. So maybe he killed her and buried her in the cellar,”
Jimmy said.
“He
didn’t kill anything,” Billy said. He
didn’t think that Mr. Wilson would kill something and then leave it in his
cellar, but he was not a hundred percent sure.
“Well, you go first then.”
“I’m
not going first.”
“This
was all your idea.”
It
had been Jimmy’s idea. The Wilson house was the oldest one in
town. During a history project he discovered
that in 1935 a bank had been robbed of nine thousand dollars and the bank
robber Lee Williams had escaped to the Wilson house. He was seriously wounded in a shoot out
with the police. The money was never
found. Billy thought the money was still
in the house.
“Well,
it was my idea, but I’m not going in first.”
“Chicken.
“
“Am not.”
“Too chicken to
go in a dark room.”
“That smells
like something really dead,” Noah added.
He wrote in his notebook.
“Give me the
flash light. And when I find the money,
it’ll be all mine,” Jimmy said.
“No, we’re
splitting it,” Billy said.
Noah looked up
from his note book. “Yeah, that was the
deal.”
“But I found it
and if I go in first, then it’s mine,” Jimmy said.
“Wuss, I’ll go first,” Billy said. “Gimmeee the light.”
The
beam of light cut through the darkness but illuminated little at the end of the
stairs. Billy turned and started walking
down the stairs backwards, holding onto the small rail. The stairs creaked as he stepped, it sounded
like someone yelling “e-e-e-e-e-e”. He
stopped for a moment, shifted his feet, the stair groaned. He was trying to stall for a moment, get his
courage up. The air in the cellar was
cool and it rushed past him, making goose bumps on his arms.
“Keep
going,” Jimmy said.
“I
will. I will.”
His
foot landed on the floor and he turned, sending the light beam in a broad arc
around the room. It was staring into the
bottom of the ocean. Darkness loomed all
around him.
“What
do you see?” Noah asked, pen in hand, ready to record his response.
“Nothing.”
Billy
reached the end of the stairs, carefully extending his left foot to the
ground. He nervously stomped it twice to
make sure that it was solid. It was. He stepped down with the other foot and took
a few nervous steps away from the stairs.
He was now away from the light from the open door and was in the dark
with only the small flash light to light the way.
“What
now?” Noah asked, poking his head into the stairwell.
“It’s
just dark.”
“No
dead bodies?”
Billy
froze, suddenly remembering the bad smell and the talk of something dead in the
cellar. He sniffed the air, raising his
nose like a rabbit trying to get the scent of a predator. The air was cool, damp, stale. And there it was again, the smell of
something dead. He shivered.
“N-N-N-Nothing,”
he said, but his voice lacked conviction.
“Is
there a light down there?” Jimmy asked.
“Come
and find one,” Billy said.
“You’re
already down there, and you’ve got the light.”
“Here,
I’ll shine it on the stairs.”
Jimmy
saw the light swing and illuminate the stairs.
He had to make a decision. Billy
was already down in the cellar, but he had found out about the robbery and
tracked it to Mr. Wilson’s house. It was
his idea for them to be in his yard on the first day of their summer
vacation. He did not want Billy to be
the one that found the money and take all of the credit.
“I’m
coming down.”
He
turned and faced toward Noah and started walking down the stairs. There was not a hand rail, so he touched the
door jam and the stairs as he descended into the cellar. The wood stairs creaked and moaned and as he
put his left foot down the board sagged and he lost his balance. He started to fall backwards, swinging his
arms in the air wildly like a log roller, trying to get his balance, but he
fell to the ground and landed on his butt.
“You
okay?” Billy asked.
“Yeah. It was only the last step.”
He
walked toward Billy and the light. Billy
swung it around the room, looking for a light switch or a pull chain. They saw the door at the end of the room and
a set of stairs, probably into the house.
It looked like there was a light switch near the stairs.
“Over
there,” Billy said, dancing the light against the wall.
Jimmy
started walking to the wall and the light beam went from white to yellow to
off. Both of the boys were suddenly in
the dark.
“Hey,
stop messing around.”
“I
didn’t do it. Battery must have died.” Billy smacked the flashlight against his hand
like he had seen his father do when the flashlight stopped working. There was a brief flash and then no light. “Walk over to the light switch and turn it
on.”
Jimmy
knew roughly where the wall had been. He
stuck his hands out in front of him as he shuffled his feet toward the wall.
Noah
stepped down the first three stairs and yelled “The police are here. They’re in the drive way.”
Jimmy
turned suddenly and his feet hit something on the ground and he fell down onto
the long mass. He felt it. It was hard and wrapped in plastic. He wanted to run, but he felt the object, a
round ball at one end, a tube or log, and then two poles at the end of the
log.
“Dead
body,” he yelled, crawling on his hands and knees and then standing and running
toward the light at the stairs.
“Where?”
“T-T-T-There,”
Jimmy said, as he ran past Billy. He ran
up the stairs.
Billy
followed him and the three of the boys lifted the heavy door and it slammed
shut. They started to walk away from the
door.
“Not
so fast. Where are you boys going?”
They
turned and saw Officer Jackson standing at the entrance to the cellar.
