I’m serious, Mom, it was this huge shadow,” Aidan mumbled earnestly, his mouth half full of pizza.
“I’m sure you saw something, Aidan,” she replied. “Maybe it was an airplane?”
“Mom, airplanes don’t sound like that. It was like, swoosh, swoosh!”
“I didn’t see—or hear—anything,” offered Aidan’s dad.
“Maybe it was a helicopter?”
“Mommm!”
“Sorry,” she said, holding up her hands. “But helicopters do go swoosh, swoosh.”
Aidan scowled.
“Besides, it couldn’t have been anything like that because it was in the big pine tree out front . . .”
“It was in the pine tree?” his parents echoed. They both had raised eyebrows.
Grampin wheeled into the kitchen and parked at the table. Aidan got up immediately and said, “Oh, never mind!”
The next morning, Aidan sat at his computer, staring at the last email Robby had sent. In it, Robby had explained that he was going away for two weeks to a special soccer camp being held at Camp Ramblewood or Redwater or Rattleweed or something like that— Robby couldn’t remember. Pro soccer players were coming to train promising junior players.
The bad part was that Robby said he wouldn’t have access to the Internet. That meant no emails would come until Robby came home in August. “Great,” Aidan moaned. “Some summer vacation.”
In the three weeks since they’d arrived in Colorado, Aidan had run out of good books and had mastered every PS2 game he owned. Aidan’s father was at the firm all day. His mom went to her new school two or three days a week to create lesson plans from the new math curriculum. And Grampin, well, he just wasn’t an option as far as Aidan was concerned.
But the biggest problem was that there didn’t seem to be any kids Aidan’s age in his new neighborhood. He didn’t even see any at the local shopping center. But at least he’d had Robby’s emails to look forward to—and now he didn’t even have that anymore.
With Robby, every day had been an adventure. Whether it was building forts in the woods, catching crayfish, or riding bikes on the winding trails behind the local high school—Robby found ways to make it exciting.
“That’s what I need,” Aidan said to himself, “an adventure!”
And there was one place in the house Aidan hadn’t checked out yet: the basement. But he didn’t like the thought of being underground, cold, and closed in. Still, he’d need to go in sometime, might as well be today.
Walking through the kitchen, Aidan passed by Grampin, who was asleep, snoring like a chorus of whoopee cushions, the coffee in his mug long since cold.
Then he spotted it—the basement door. It had a deadbolt, a chain latch, and a regular knob lock. Aidan had often wondered why Grampin needed three locks on the basement door. He’d wondered about it when he’d visited as a little boy, but not enough to ask . . . and certainly not enough to go down there. Aidan didn’t like basements. They were uncomfortable, damp, and full of shadows. Robby’s basement back in Maryland had always given Aidan the creeps.
Aidan had a feeling that Grampin’s basement would be worse. Could this be the adventure he was searching for?
Quietly, Aidan slipped into the basement and shut the door behind him. He found himself smothered in darkness. He groped about, flicked the light switch—nothing.
After wrestling with second thoughts, he tried to tiptoe down the stairs. But each step Aidan took made a different creak or groan, like playing a wildly-out-of-tune piano. If there was something sinister lurking in the basement shadows, it surely knew Aidan was coming.
Aidan reached the bottom step and realized with great relief that the basement wasn’t completely dark. There were three windows that, while painted a peculiar shade of green, at least let in enough light to make out shapes.
Eyes wide and straining, Aidan stepped down onto the basement floor. He half expected ghoulish, rotting hands to reach up from the ground to grab at his ankles, but none did. There were, however, other reasons for him to feel uncomfortable. It was cold—a kind of chill that seeped through clothing and made Aidan cringe. There was also a damp, mildewed smell. On top of that, it was unnaturally silent. No crickets, no rattling water heater . . . nothing. The only sound Aidan heard was his own heart pulsing away while he walked.
He saw a large cardboard box. It was overflowing with toys, but in the ghastly green shades cast from the windows, these toys were not a cheery sight. A wooden sailboat, a broken drum, and a doll that stared back with one eye—Aidan cringed as he passed them.
Aidan scuttled over to a workbench up against the far wall where, to his great relief, he found a small lamp that still worked. In the new light he made many discoveries: an old radio with large wooden knobs, a stack of newspapers from the 1950s, and half of an old baseball card of a player named Gil somebody. Thinking that there might be more old baseball cards, hopefully intact, Aidan began to search meticulously through other boxes nearby. No luck. The boxes were filled with musty smells, wads of tissue paper, or other smaller boxes. No ’52 Mantle, no ’81 Ripken.
Aidan sighed and furrowed his eyebrows. He marched over to the far corner of the basement but stopped abruptly when he heard something. It was faint and might ordinarily have gone unnoticed, but because of Aidan’s nerves and the unearthly quiet of the basement, it was as bone jarring as an explosion.
Aidan stood still as a tombstone, but his eyes strained in wide arcs. The noise clearly came from the angular nook beneath the steps, but there was nothing there. No bike with a rotting, leaking tire. No box with a mouse family within. No tipped paper cup with a roach clicking about in search of food. There was just bare cement floor. The sound continued, a raspy, whispering sound like wind disturbing a pile of dead leaves. It was getting louder. Aidan thought suddenly of the thing watching him from the pine outside his window.
His heart now lodged somewhere in his throat, Aidan lunged toward the stairs—for there was no other way out of the basement. Just a few more steps, and he’d be . . . But on Aidan’s very next step, the lamp on the workbench flickered, dimmed, and with an audible pfffft, died.
The darkness was almost total. Even the green light from the basement windows had been blotted out. Aidan stood frozen again, his eyes darting. He opened his mouth to scream, but his voice chose not to cooperate. He thought humorously that even if he had screamed, the only one in the house was Grampin. What could the old guy do?
The noises continued to get louder and sounded less like wind and more like deep breaths being exhaled. There was an especially loud breath and something sparkled on the floor beneath the stairs.
It was like blue electricity—flickering and powerful. There was a pause and the sparkles faded. Another breath, and the sparkles rekindled and began to swirl as if rapidly climbing a spiral staircase. Another pause-fade and then another breath-sparkle. This time two more electric spirals appeared directly behind the first. All three pulsed with energy and then dimmed. Suddenly, the electric sparkles glowed fiercely, bathing the basement in blue. Then, they waned and disappeared.
Just an electrical arc of some sort, Aidan thought, trying to calm himself.
Then the lamp on the workbench came back on just as suddenly as it had gone out, and there on the floor beneath the stairs were three tall clay pots.
Aidan shook his head. Were they there before?
Aidan took a few tentative steps closer. Each pot was dusty gray and at least two and a half feet tall. There was no writing or decoration of any kind on them. They had lids that made them look like huge, ancient cookie jars.
His mind whirled with ideas. His heartbeat raced off the charts. Only a moment ago he had been terrified, but now all he could think about was what could be inside! Gold and silver coins? A treasure of emeralds, rubies, and diamonds? Aidan smiled, his mind already imagining what he would buy with his newfound riches.
Then again, Aidan thought, each jar could be filled with something less pleasant, like cobras or—yuck—somebody’s ashes!
Either way, Aidan had to find out, so he reached slowly toward the clay pots.
There was no blistering heat and no biting electric shock, but the moment Aidan’s finger touched the first pot, all three of the pots shattered. Aidan flinched and pulled back, feeling very much in trouble for breaking something so valuable. He half expected his mother to run down the stairs immediately to lecture him about his carelessness. She didn’t, of course; for she wasn’t at home.
Then Aidan noticed that lying in the shards of each pot was a scroll. TREASURE MAPS! Aidan hoped as he reached down and picked up one of the scrolls. It was surprisingly heavy, and Aidan immediately saw why. For it was not one but many pieces of parchment rolled up and secured by a leather lace.
Aidan scooped up the other two scroll bundles. He carefully walked up the darkened, creaky basement stairs, but at the top he bounded through the door and rushed to his room—all the while wondering what was in the scrolls.
