The Hidden Trunk

The big red For Sale sign caught my eye as I drove past the unkempt property on Daisy Avenue. The old red brick farm house looked as though it begged for new life. I imagined the stories it had written within its walls, begging to be told. I made a mental note to call the realtor on lunch as I took the next right. The idea of a fixer upper appealed to me. This just might be the kind of therapy my own soul needed and searched for. Perhaps it was fate that led me down this wrong-turn journey on that bright and sunny day in June.

Three months later...

I'm ripping and scraping the wallpaper that is peeling off the walls. I'm thinking that something just doesn't seem right in the flow of the house structure. About this time my ladder tipped causing the heavy mallet to break a fist sized hole into the weakened wall. That's odd. The other parts of the wall are made of lathe and plaster. Curiosity overcomes me as I look through the dark, uneven hole with my good eye. Dusty dressers, rockers, broken coat racks and rugs piled high as a single path makes its way through the middle of the hidden room. Light shines through a dirty window pane causing swirls of dust to spin like dancing ballerinas. I cannot comprehend how I never questioned an extra window on the outer wall.

Imagination runs wild and questions pile knee deep inside my fuddled brain. How long had this room been closed up and hidden from the prying eyes of even ancient ghosts? What secrets are hidden beneath it all? Peeling wallpaper long forgotten I grab the mallet from the floor and create a makeshift door in the wall. I climb through the hole of a door as I consider the room I am about to enter. Where do I even start in exploration? Unable to even begin to contain my excitement I head to the nearest dresser and thrust open drawers. Baseball gloves long forgotten, yoyo's, baseball cards and old matchbox cars. Glass and wooden marbles slide out of their open bag leaving a dusty trail as the wooden drawer stops in its tracks. Interesting I thought. Moving on, I poke into various other objects. Old dolls dressed in colored bonnets and perched into baby cradles watch as I slowly head towards the far corner of the hidden room. Something catches my eye; an old brown wooden trunk with years' worth of cobwebs and dust on top. With the sleeve of my arm, I scrape off the cobwebs and dust. With both trepidation and excitement, I try opening the lid. Wait! In that first dresser I saw a black skeleton key! I run to the dresser, tripping over a rug in the process.

I grab the skeleton key from the top drawer and make my way more carefully to the wooden trunk in the corner. Slowly, I place the skeleton key into the lock and give it a right turn. Slowly, the lid creaks open. As the dust slowly winds down through the sunlight streaming past me, I see a package on top of the pile. A thin, oblong shape wrapped in burlap and tied in twine. I open the bag and look in finding an old mirror with antique gold framing and a lazy thin crack spiderwebbing its way to the upper corner. As I take it out of the bag, I think I see a face looking out at me. I drop it thinking it's just my mind playing tricks on me. After all, there's not anyone else here but me. I pick up the next item, a small black notebook. I open the first few pages to find old writing in a diary staring up at me. This will make for interesting night time reading as I unwind from today I thought as I pocketed the little black notebook.

As I struggle to stand up I glance at the mirror again and it its reflection, I see a pile of money. Beside this big pile of money sits an old yellowed newspaper clipping with the heading "Gangsters take $20,000 in bank heist." Another image appears into the mirror; an image of a tiny hidden room within a hidden room and the door, a moving bookshelf much like the one would see in a cartoon. I look up feeling very overwhelmed. There is such a bookshelf on my way to this old trunk. As I slowly climb over and through rusty bedframes and box springs, I finally reach the bookshelf. I poke and prod various parts to the shelf. I'm beginning to lose heart when I move an old leather book down. I hastily jump out of the way as the shelving swings outward to the left. A dark hidden room the size of a small walk-in closet sits in front of me. On crooked shelves I clearly see that there is $20,000 neatly stacked and I ponder all of what this could mean.