Route 7 Review | Page 104

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