Prologue

Samia finished packing her last item into the box.

“There!” she said.

Picking it up, she walked out of her bedroom to her backyard. She buried the time capsule two feet deep. Then she put something in an envelope—a map of her backyard, with the address printed at the top. An x marked the spot where the capsule lay buried, where messy writing noted it was ‘2ftdeep’. She kept it near her for 50 years.

One day, when she was very old, and fifty years had passed, she called her grandson over.

“What is it, Grandsmia Samia?” he asked, her nickname he’d invented.

She handed him the envelope. “Lincoln, fifty years from now, I need you to open this. Follow what it says.”

Lincoln nodded. “I’d do anything for you, Grandma!”

“Thank you, Lincoln, I love you.” Samia patted her five year old grandson on the head.

Fifty years later, Lincoln opened the envelope. He examined the map. “Huh,” he said, looking at the address, “this house is abandoned now. I could go there.” So he drove over. But when he started digging, he found nothing, for time and weather had shifted the capsule and shoved on deeper. It now was three feet deep.

Huh, Lincoln thought. Must’ve been a fluke. He went home and threw it out, but he missed the paper recycling and behind the bin, the paper lay for several years.

Eventually, Lincoln moved out to a senior residence. The next movers tore the house half apart. They smoked and kept the doors open, letting in the cold winter chill. One day, the paper, pushed by a strong gust of wind, sailed out the door. As it floated back -ironically- to Samia’s neighbourhood, a little boy, named Sam, looked at it and jumped for it. He looked at the 130 1/2 year old map and understood immediately.

“I’ll go get treasure,” he thought excitedly, not for the greed, as a adult would, but so he could give it to his friends and have fun exploring! He ran to his friends and told them about the paper. His friend Joe looked at the map. “Where is it?” He asked.

Sam looked at the paper again. “#32 on Brown street.”

“Ooh!” His friend Amy squealed. “That’s the haunted place!”

“That’s so cool,” Graham said.

Soon they had arrived at Samia’s house. Gulping at the creepiness of the deserted house with the peeling paint, they headed around the back, climbing easily over the fence, which had rotting wood and creaked in the wind.

“Here’s the spot,” announced Sam. “Let’s dig!”

Like crazy things they dug and dug. After one foot Amy asked, “hey, how deep is it?”

Sam checked the map. Just as the box had been pushed deeper by time, the map had been smudged. “ uh… four feet.”

They dug and dug. At three and a half feet deep, they unearthed a small shoebox.

Graham looked at it. “Woah, this really is old. Nike went out of business years ago!”

They opened the box and were met with a cloud of dust. “Ick,” Amy cried. “Earwigs!”

After brushing off the bugs they peered inside and pulled out the ancient objects from the early 21st century.

“A book…” Graham lifted a battered thick paperback from the box. “‘Pax’,” he read.

Sam picked up a very old American kids flag football trophy. “Cool, they played football back then!”

They sifted through more stuff, which included a journal full of drawings and notes, a diary, a bag of sour keys and a rock collection. —oh, and an autographed photo of Patrick Mahomes, and a book that Samia herself had written.

While the boys wowed and looked through the journals and books, Amy checked the box. There, in the bottom, was a piece of paper held down by a amethyst stone enclosed in a see-through locket on a golden chain.

Amy picked up the paper and put the necklace on. As she read the handwritten note on the card she felt her hands get sweaty and her heartbeat quicken.

“You guys?..you might wanna read this,” she said.

The boys moved to join her, holding the box.

The paper said,

Hello. I am Samia. You may not know me, but all of this is my stuff. I hope you like it.

Listen, this necklace right here is the most important thing in the box. It allows you to travel through time. The instructions to use it are on the back.

Use the necklace well. Perhaps you could visit me, even.

I hope you enjoy this.

-Samia.

“Cool, so we can travel through time,” said Sam.

Graham was amazed. “Wow! I wish we could go visit her.” He reached over to Amy’s neck as he said this and rapped the stone.

Amy was checking the back of the card. “Um, Graham, you may not want to say that…”

From #32 on Brown street came a big bang and a flash of light. The neighbours, always suspecting something going on in the creepy haunted house, peeked over their fences.

But all they saw was a hole in the ground where the box had sat, and a piece of paper that declared if you wanted to use the stone, declare you wish to go somewhere and it shall take you there floating down to the ground.

To be continued…