One year ago, we had each taken a piece of the treasure map to divide amongst ourselves, so that we could find our way back to the lost money which we'd hidden away. We'd acquired it in a bank robbery, but feared spending it too soon because it would attract attention, so we hid it away in a secret place, split up the map and dispersed the pieces amongst ourselves, and resolved to meet one year later at a specified place, which was the rest toward which I walked now.

It was nighttime, during the Summer, and there was dew on the rain and a moisture in the air which added a strange glow to a yellowish light above the entrance to the three story brick building which a greenish patina on the copper moldings.

I walked through a door to what I thought to be a stairway, but the stairway seemed to be removed entirely. All I could see was a second story landing which I was unable to get to.

I had to walk to the other end of the building, but I found another stairway and eventually found the room where the others were waiting for me, three of them anyway. Tom was the oldest. White haired and grinning mischievously, he was undaunted in lighting a cigar anywhere. Towards the back of the room, a sharply dressed Phillip gazed out one of the two windows, kitty corner to each other. The room was in the corner of the building, and the two opposite windows let a nice breeze come through which did little to let out the cigar smoke. The muscular, mean-looking Lawrence flanked Tom's other side.

"Where's Harry?" I asked the others, referring to the missing member of our group.

"Maybe his flight was delayed," Tom said. Harry was a commercial airline pilot, so this was certainly not outside the realm of possibility. "Why don't you call the airport and find out? Here's the number ..."

Tom handed me a piece of paper with a number on it. I found it a little odd that he just happened to have it handy. If he'd had the number all this time, why wouldn't have have called already? I wasn't one to assume the worst, however, so I turned toward an end table, just near the door where I came on. Upon it there was an old rotary telephone.

I dialed the number and heard ringing at the other end. It was then that I noticed the slip of paper upon which the number was written was actually folded in half. I unfolded it and saw there was a name above the number, that of "A.Williams".

"Hey Tom," I said, "Who's-" Through the mirror on the above the phone, I saw that Tom's mischievous grin had become a wild-eyed sneer, and with both hands he held above his head a hammer which he meant to bear down upon my head. I moved out of the way just in time for him to smash the mirror instead.

The three of them then seized upon me, meaning to subdue me. I made it to the door and out in the hallway.

The chased me down a hallway toward the stairs. I had forgotten about the missing stairway to the first floor.
 
Without thinking, I went to the closest door I could find, opened it and went inside, and closed the door behind me.

After closing the door, I turned around to see a gangly red-haired man with a goatee, dressed in pajamas and a bathrobe, holding in a drag from a roach clip. He stared at me dumbly for a moment while he held his breath as long as he could then exhaled.

"I'm sorry to barge in on you," I said awkwardly.

"Hey man," he replied calmly, "Me casa, su casa ..."

"Maybe you can help me ..."

"Eric."

"... Eric ... There are some people after me. I tried to get out of here, but the stairway's ... well ... gone ..."

"No problem," Eric said, opening the window. "There's a fire escape. Follow me ..."

I followed Eric out the window. The bottom flight of the fire escape steps retracted upward so that Eric had to push them down, and Eric weighted them down with a rock so he could go back up later.

"Hey, I just remembered something," I said. "Mars, Venus and Saturn are supposed to be in alignment." I looked up at the sky, trying to see them. For a moment, I thought I had. "There they are," I said pointing.

Eric squinted his eyes for a moment, then shrugged listelessly. "Sorry man, I think that's just an airplane."

I looked again and realized he was right.

"Well," said Eric, going back up the stairs, "Good luck."

It was only after Eric was gone that I realized I was looking in the wrong part of the sky. I saw the stars this time, and could see that they were in alignment.

"There he is!" I heard Tom's voice shouting gruffly. He ran towards him, the others at his side. I turned and ran toward the street.

Barrelling around the corner down the street, I saw a black Model T with large tires. The sight was disorienting, as if it were something from another time.

The car stopped abrupty in front of me, and the window was thrown open.

"Get in!" said a female voice from the driver's side.

I got into the car and we drove away from the pursuers.

The woman, too, seemed from another time, in her clothing and hairstyle, which looked as if they might be from the 20s.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Harry is my brother," she said. "They think he's dead, but he survived and now he's hiding. He knew that they would try to kill you next. They want to divide the treasure among themselves."

"Where are we going?"

"Harry managed to find the treasure on his own, but he can't get to it without your help."

We traveled down the hallway, and the landscape turned from mere moisture to icy cold and the landscape became white, and the trees became bare.

We eventually came to a place that looked like an old ski lodge. It was empty and remote, and seemed to be in a state of disuse. The woman, who I came to know as Karen, maneuvered the car into what was probably a dirt driveway underneath, and tried to drive as close to the building s possible, but the snow became too deep to go any further, so we trudged the rest of the way.

She led me into the building.

"The map to the treasure is on the table," she said.

I walked to the table, and carefully studied the map. From the natural landmarks, I realized that the map represented the ground surrounding the lodge. I turned around to ask Karen how we might best proceed in getting to the location specified on the map. By the time he turned around, however, she was gone.

After realizing she was nowhere to found, he decided to set about finding the location of the treasure on his own.

As he traversed the landscape to find it, he found himself thinking that even though he could probably guess how it was going to turn out, it was probably the best the author could come up with at the time.

He arrived at the spot specified on the map to find that it was at the base of a hill, and he saw before the wrecked remains of the vehicle, and he could see within the two corpses of Harry and Karen. He could only speculate how it could have happened. Perhaps an accident, or perhaps they had been forced off the road.

As he approached closer, he found a skeleton key which Harry gripped in his hand.

Curious, he took it back to the lodge, and tried it on every door, until he found for which it worked, and opened the door to find the stolen money hidden safely.

The End