the door, though, and when he bent down to pry
up the floorboard in the corner of the closet, it
came out of place easily. Inside was a large, brown
wooden chest, the size of a large filing box. It was
dusty, but if it hadn’t been it would have been
beautiful. The color was a deep mahogany, and
the finish was perfect. When he wiped off the
dust, the lights reflected off the polish.
He walked down the stairs just as slowly as he
had walked up them, coming to rest finally at
the dirty sofa. The box lay across his lap, and he
wiped the last strands of dust off the top. There
was a rusty lock keeping the box closed, but he
took out of his wallet a small bronze key and it
clicked into place. He had his doubts, but he had
always kept the key on him, safely tucked away,
not to mention the three copies of it that he had
made over the years.
The lock clicked audibly, and he removed it;
when he opened the box, he coughed at the cloud
of dust that rose. Despite the fact that the box
clearly hadn’t been touched for years, he felt a
wave of relief wash over him when he saw that
the contents were still safely ensconced inside.
Wrapped in white rags inside the chest were two
items.
The first was a thick, leather bound scrapbook,
wide even by scrapbook standards. He gingerly
lifted it out of the wooden chest and set it on
the ground by the sofa he sat on. There weren’t
any words on the front cover, or on the spine.
There was nothing to distinguish it at all; whether
that was by design or not, he had never asked. It
creaked slightly when it moved, and it smelled
old. The leather was worn.
He took the second item out of the chest and
untangled it from the cloths wrapped around it.
It was a camera. An old camera – it looked li