Writing Exercise 6
I was staring out the wet window watching the palm tree across the street sway back and forth as it fights with the wind to hold its place when I heard a creek from behind me. This old house always made noises. “It was part of its history” mom would say. We moved into this house two years ago when dad first became mayor of this town. It was all part of his plan to make it to the Senate, he would say. Me, and my mom were usually alone in the house. Well, it was me, mom, Billy and Jack, and no Billy and Jack were not like Casper the friendly ghost, they were real people. They were friends from school, my best friends! But they practically lived with me in this big old house.
I continued to look out the window up in the attic for a few more minutes before I backed away. I turned to head for the stairs when I accidentally kicked the bucket that was behind me. That bucked came face to face with a broomstick, and that broomstick hit the shelf, and that shelf fell from a horizontal angle to a vertical one. From the top of the shelf flew a piece of paper. As that paper floated down to the floor and landed right in the corner of the room, I steadily ran to it. The brown parchment with its disintegrated edges looked like it belonged in a museum. As I pickup the paper I saw a small drawing of the house with a map of the town. And right below the picture of the house, by the beach, there was a big red X.
“It was a treasure map.” I said to myself.
“Uriah!”
“Uriah, where are you at?”
It was Billy yelling.
I grabbed the map and ran down stairs.
As I ran down the stairs and got to the front door both Jack and Billy were waiting for me.
“You’ll never guess what I found.” I said.
“What?” Billy said calmly.
“What is it?” said Jack pointing at what I had in my hand.
“A treasure map!” I said.
Both Jack and Billy turn to each other, and a smile begins to form. Billy turns to me and says
“Where do we start?”
“Right here. The map starts us off right at the house.” I explained.
“Well where do we go next?” said Jack.
“That’s the thing. The map shows us where to start and finish, but the way to the treasure doesn’t use any streets.” I said.
“Well, which way does that map say to go next?” Jack said excitedly.
“It tells us to head out through the backyard.”
Now the thing about my backyard was that it was enclosed with this old, ten foot high, red brick wall that has been there for about three hundred years, my mom said. It also had these big statues of warrior looking people with swords surrounding the wall, which looked scary at night. That’s why I never went near them.
As we headed toward the backyard, the map pointed to the far corner of the backyard, right in front of a warrior statue.
“Now what?” said Billy doubtingly.
“Um, I don’t know.” I countered back
We kept on looking at the map and then back at the wall where the statue stood.
As I kept looking at the statue, I noticed that the sword to this statue at the corner was slightly lower than all the other statues.
“Help me up.”
Billy and Jack both put their hands together and lifted me up on top of the stone platform of the statue. I grabbed the sword and pushed it up. Once the sword went up and clicked, the statue started to move. And as the statue moved to the left an opening in the wall appeared. I looked at both Billy and Jack, and their mouths were open in astonishment.
“Lets go!” I said as I jumped off the platform and through the opening.
Billy and Jack followed as we entered the forest behind the backyard.
Jack looked scared as we started walking through the forest. The rain had already stopped, and the clouds were just starting to clear away from the sun.
“Alright, we just have to get through the forest, and then we’ll be at the beach where the X is. ”
“What do you think the treasure is?” Jack asked.
“It’s probably some jewelry or pirates treasure.” said Billy.
“What do you think it is?” Billy said looking at me.
“I don’t know, but it has to be something valuable for someone to hide it”
“True.” said Billy.
“True.” said Jack.
“Alright, lets keep moving before it gets dark.”
Billy looking at his watch that his dad gave him for his thirteenth birthday this year and said “Its barely eleven thirty!”
“Yeah, but we still have to make it all the way back to my house once we find this thing”
“True” Billy said and then no more than ten seconds later Jack says the same thing. I laughed.
Jack was always copying Billy and I. It’s probably because he’s three months younger than us. Billy looked at me and rolled his eyes.
“Alright lets keep going.” I said.
I took the lead and Billy and Jack were following arms width behind me.
As we continued to walk through the forest there were a flock of crows flying above us making this awful loud noise. I had to keep on staring at the map because I didn’t want Jack and Billy to see that I was scarred. There were noises coming from every direction. As we were walking Billy came up to my left shoulder and said “Do you here that?”
I took a big gulp and looked at Billy who was pointing ahead of us
“The sounds coming from over there.” Said Billy.
“Well that means we don’t go that way.” Said Jack frantically.
“But the map tells us to go that way.”
The thumping starts to go faster.
“Lets just go around it.” Jack said
“We don’t have time to go around it lets just go”
We started to move forward and as the slight thumping got louder we realized we were getting closer to noise. Jack, Billy, and I were shoulder-to-shoulder walking toward the noise.
“The noise is coming from around that tree” said Jack
“Go look and tell us what it is” Billy taunting said to Jack
“Why don’t you go” Jack responded.
“Lets just go together”
We took our positions side by side and turned slowly peaked our way around the corner.
We all looked at each other and started laughing.
“A woodpecker? You guys were scarred of a woodpecker?” said Billy.
“Shut up” I said. “You almost peed your pants turning the corner Billy”
As we continued to walk through the forest we came across this big tree that had fallen down. This tree had the biggest trunk I had ever seen. The boys and I stood there for a moment at the base of the trunk in amazement.
“Alright let climb over It.”, said Billy folding his hands together getting ready to lift one of us
over. Jack started to put his foot in Billy’s hand.
“Guys!” They both look at me.
“We can just go around it”
Jack and Billy both look at me with one of their eyebrows raised, uncertain about what I just said. They both shrugged and we all pressed on.
“How much further?” Jack asked.
“We are almost out.” I told him.
We could see the edge of the forest straight ahead and we all decided to run toward it.
Jack started to slow down after a few minutes.
“Hold up!” I told Billy.
“Come on, crawl if you have too. I want to get out of here already.” Said Billy.
I looked at Billy with a darting glare, “Relax!” I said. “Lets just walk the rest of the way, were almost out anyway”
Billy rolled his eyes.
We started to walk toward the end of the forest when a noise came from the bush to the right of us. As the bush started to shake, we all looked at each other. Then all of a sudden Billy bolted passed us and ran toward the end of the forest. As he got closer to passing the bush a squirrel came running out of the bush and passed right in front of Billy. Billy freaked out and tripped right over the squirrel and landed in sand.
Jack and I ran to Billy to help him up, and as Billy was spitting out sand from his mouth I looked at him and said
“Hey at least we’re out of the forest now!”
Billy gave me the death stare while me and Jack just laughed and headed down to the beach.
“Alright, the map shows the X by a bunch of rocks.”
“Over there” said Jack pointing to the huge rocks right under the huge cliff.
As we ran toward the rocks at the base of the cliff, we started to see an opening behind the rocks.
“The treasure must be in there!” I said.
As I looked at Jack I could tell he was scarred. “Do you guys want to go in?” I asked.
“Yeah!” Billy said as if I had asked a dumb question.
I looked at Jack as he nodded in agreement.
“Alright lets go.”
We all huddled together as he walked into the cave. The light from outside dimly light up the cave until the path led us to turn the corner. Then we lost the light. Billy’s watch started to glow in the dark. Then Jack reached into his back pocket and pulled out a flashlight.
“Where did you get that from” I asked.
“I took it from your house before we left just incase we ran into a rabid squirrel” Jack said grinning while he looked at Billy.
As we turned the corner, we came into this huge room with nothing inside of it just the cave walls surrounding us.
“I can’t believe we came all the way over here for this” said Billy as he moved to lean on the cave wall. Once he put his wait on the wall, the wall swung open revealing another room. As we entered the small room, we could here the water hitting the surface and right in the middle of the room was a huge golden bell. This bell was as tall as Jack and I together, and as wide as all three of us together.
“We did it! We did it! We’re rich!” said Billy
That’s not quit how it worked out. It turns out that back in the old days when the town was first formed they made a Bell Tower, and in the bell tower they had a golden bell. But after many attempts of robbers and pirates trying to steal the bell, the mayor and a select few on the council decided to hide the bell until they had better protection for it, and that bell had been missing till that day.
As for being rich, we did get our names in the town paper, and we were pretty popular at school the next day, but that was it.
Now every time I pass by that bell tower and hear the bell ringing, I cant help but think of the adventure Billy, Jack, and I took that day. The day we found the missing bell.
