Nigel

A boy, in the upstairs attic of his home, is looking out the window. “Isn’t life grand?” He rhetorically asks himself. There are raindrops tracing down the window. As he sits there, holding his head up with his hands below his chin, he hears his mother call to him, saying that lunch is ready. When he begins to walk downstairs, he smells the casserole his mother has been baking. His father is pouring hot water from the electric kettle into three mugs. “What have you been up to, Nigel?” He asks. “Absolutely nothing.” He sighs.

His father smiles as he pours hot water into the third mug. “Fascinating”.

After lunch, Nigels mother asks him to continue sitting with her at the table, his father begins clearing the table and putting the dishes in the sink. His mother calmly says, “Nigel, my sweet, your father and I have something to discuss with you, it’s about your grandfather.”

Nigel recalls the only memory he has ever shared with his grandfather. He was sitting on the floor playing with two toy cars, when his grandfather walks up to him, kneels down, holds out his hand and says “this is for you, young Nigel. In his hand was a key, but in three pieces. One piece was green, one was orange, and the last was black. It almost looked like it was a full key at some point but was broken. “Keep this safe for me, please?” He kindly asked. Nigel had always been so curious as to what the broken key was for and why he was asked to “keep it safe” for him. Nigel kept the broken key in his pocket every day.

“You see, my love, your grandfather has been sick for quite a long time.” Nigels mother says, still calm and reassuring. “Last night he had to go the hospital and is going to stay there for a little while. We can go visit him starting after the weekend, dear.” Nigel’s father finishes the dishes and walks back over to the table and sits down next to Nigel. “We also get to get visit his home on the way to the hospital to grab some things he asked us to bring him!” He said with an uplifting and cheerful tone.

The next day, Nigel and his parents drive to his grandfathers house. It’s a two story Victorian build, with acres of dense forest surrounding it. Upon entering, the wood paneled floor breathes and cracks under the families feet, a faint smell of fresh pine fills the space. “Nigel my dearest, why don’t you explore a little?” His mother says. Nigel slowly walks up the old stairs as they sigh and crick and crack. Nigel walks down the long hallways, doors on the left and right of him and all of them open, except one. He stands in front of the one closed door. While inspecting it, Nigel notices a strange etching meticulously carved into it, three very small triangles underneath the doorknob, one of them green, another orange and the final one, black. Nigel shrieks, realizing he has seen that design before. He takes the three pieces out of his pocket and begins to examine them. Then back at the door. Then his hand again. Three distinguishable marks, and what look like miniature key holes in the center of each. “Here we go.” He says to himself. He places each colored piece into its respective place. After placing the final piece into the door, there is a clicking noise, and a small plume of dust bellows out of the seam between the door and its frame. Nigel opens the door and walks into the room. The moment he enters, he feels the stillness of the room. As if he has altered the environment by opening the door, moving the air, introducing something new to the the incredibly still and untampered space. The room is filled with books, they cover the walls to the point that they are the walls. There’s a desk, directly underneath a window in the shape of a triangle, soft sunlight beams into the room in the shape. On top of the desk was nothing but three pieces of paper folded together. When he picks them up, the top page has a smaller piece of paper clipped to the top left corner. It’s been folded in half. He takes it from the clip and unfolds it. “Nigel” is all it says on the page. Now riddled with curiosity, the boy quickly reads over the three pages. On the first is a passage, surrounded by drawings of triangles and what looks to be skyscrapers made of books, with the words “To Nigel” at the top.

“Hello, grandson. My name is Alfred. I leave to you my greatest treasure. Its key is hidden somewhere in this room. My greatest hope is that you have fun finding it.”

- Alfred

Nigel scans the room, looking for anything that could resemble a clue. His heart racing. He eyes the stacks of books on one of the right side walls, in one of the columns, a particular book catches his eye. Its spine is completely orange, and the book itself is completely surrounded by books with green spines. He thinks of tablecloths and magicians as he quickly takes it out of its place and the green books surrounding it come tumbling down onto the floor. “Yikes”, says Nigel, as he waits a few brief moments to see if his parents heard the crash. They did not. He then opens the book and in it finds a small wooden ring. It was placed into a small hole carved into the pages in the middle of the book. Now practically jumping up and down from excitement and curiosity, Nigel collects the ring and begins scanning the room once more. Panning across the other wall for a moment before he spots a noticeably wide spacing between two of the many columns of books. As he walks closer to the gap, he realizes that there is something behind them, but it’s too difficult to make out what it is. Nigel pushes his face right against the books to get the closest look that he possibly can. Still too dark to see what’s behind them. Determined now, he places his hands on the left column and pushes as hard as he can, the pillar of books starts to give way, crashing onto the floor. “Nigel? What was that?” His mother yells from downstairs. “Nothing! Just moving a chair out of the way!” He replies. “I have to move it one more time so don’t be alarmed!” He now begins to push the other column out of the way, letting the books flood over the right half of the room now. He walks through the passage he just created for himself to find another piece of the puzzle. Mounted into the wall, is a little black notebook. He tries to pry it from the wall but it doesn’t budge. It seems to be a part of the wall itself. So he opens it instead. Inside are not pages, but a piece of the wall, with a familiar shape carved into it that looks like it needs something in that particular shape to fit it, like a puzzle that’s finished except for the center piece. There is a black triangle etched into the book with the center of it missing. Nigel takes a moment to think, “ahhh yes!!!” He shouts and runs back to the door of the room to collect one of three key pieces he used to open the door. He runs back to the little black book and places the respective piece into the impression. A perfect fit, but nothing happens. “Oh, right! The ring!” He takes the ring out of his pocket and notices that there’s one piece of the indentation that is still empty, just above the key. He places it into the slot and it too fits. Just as he does this, he hears a clicking sound, then, directly underneath the mounted book, a passage opens. It’s small, roughly the size of a doggy door. Nigel crouches down and pushes the passage door open to see that it leads to the room next to the one he’s in. He goes through.

On the other side, the first thing Nigel notices is that there is no doorway to get in or out of this room. Only a window that pours the light into the space. The only way in or out is the small passage he just came through. The room is filled with objects of various shapes and sizes, all covered with white sheets, except for a small chest that sits in the very center of the room. The air is still here. Nigel approaches the chest, it has already been opened. There’s a note resting on top of a small night stand next to it with a piece of paper that reads: “For Nigel.”

Nigel looks at the note left for him and then back at the chest. Inside is a small gold coin, it’s old, the front of it is worn and looks as if it once had someone’s face etched into it. He places the coin back into the chest and rushes out the small passage back into the previous room and down the hall to the first floor where his parents are sitting down looking at old photographs. “Mom! Dad! Treasure!!” Nigel screams, “I found grandfathers secret treasure!” He grabs his parents hands and rushes them upstairs with him. They get to the small passageway and immediately notice the hundreds of books scattered around the room. “Nigel what happened?!” His mother frantically asks, “it’s alright mom I’ll clean it up but wait here!” He replies. Before either Nigel’s mother or father have a chance to speak again he rushes into the small passageway, grabs the coin and brings it back through to show them. He hands the coin to his mother. “Nigel, where did you find this?!” His father asks while he and Nigel’s mother examine the coin. “Grandfather left me clues to find it!” He says. From there Nigel went on to explain everything, from the key he was given years before, to the clues he found to the little black notebook. Just as Nigel is given back his coin, his father’s phone rings. His father listens to the caller for a moment before looking at his wife and son, then walks out of the room for the duration of the call. A few moments later, he returns to them and whispers something in his wife’s ear. “What is it?” Nigel asks. His mother turns to him, kneels down and places her hands around his face. “Your grandfather is gone, my love.” His mother says, “He fell asleep and isn’t going to wake up again.” Nigel’s eyes begin to water as his parents pick him up and hold him between them. “It’s going to be alright, my son.” His father calmly says, “Everything is going to be alright.”

A few days later, a man knocks on their door, he is there to read Alfred’s will. It’s during this reading that Nigel discovers that Alfred had left him the coin, it was a historical find which was appraised for $ 20,000. It came with a note in the will written to Nigel that read, “May your imagination be forever more valuable than all of the riches in the world, young Nigel.”

As the years past, Nigel grew up to be a writer, telling tales of adventurers and treasure hunters seeking glory and fortune. He also became a collector of historical artifacts, collaborating with various museums around the country, he loved to travel the world, searching for something that would make him feel that same excitement and curiosity he felt when he placed that puzzling key into his grandfather’s door.

The end