The treasure moved.

Just like that.

One second it was there, the next--- poof! Gone like chocolate milk through a straw.

They were in Lindsay's backyard, the four of them, Lucky, Ben, Emma, and Lindsay, searching for a treasure which Lindsay's cousin Alan had buried there the week before. The treasure was really Lindsay's mom's black jewelry box, full of her jewelry. At 15, Alan should have known better, but then again, he wasn't called Troublemaker Alan for nothing.

If anyone could undo Troublemaker Alan's handiwork, it was Lucky, the brightest kid in Lindsay's 5th grade class, and one of her favorite friends.

"Didn't you used to have grass back here?" Lucky asked.

Lindsay's backyard was huge, almost as big as the school playground. Lucky thought it used to be a grassy yard, but today, he, Ben, Emma, and Lindsay stood in front of a gigantic field--- of dirt.

"My dad dug it up," Lindsay answered. "He's planting new grass. Using special fertilizers and stuff."

"Very clever," Lucky said.

"My dad?"

"No. Troublemaker Alan. With the yard like this, you can't tell what's been dug recently, which forces us to use his map."

Lucky unfolded the map, an 8 ½ by 11 sheet of white lined paper on which Alan had drawn and written in pencil. It was full of smudges.

Alan had drawn a crazy path, full of zigzags and loops, and he had identified four landmarks on the path to the treasure. The first of these landmarks, labeled "You are here," was "porch." The four friends were standing in front of Lindsay's back porch. The next landmark was labeled "rock."

"Everybody look for a rock," Lucky said.

He started walking, following what he believed to be the general direction of the first penciled line on the map. Ben, Lindsay and Emma followed. Ben carried two shovels.

They walked a bit, then Lucky stopped.

"This seems about right. The rock should be right around here," he said. "Too bad Alan didn't write a scale. Some smart guy! Who draws a map without a scale?"

"You draw maps with scales?" Emma asked.

"Yeah!"

"You would! Who else even draws maps?" Emma shook her head.

Ben dropped a shovel, then raised his hand, sporting a silly grin. Emma rolled her eyes.

"I don't see any rocks," Lindsay said.

"I see lots of dirt though!" Ben smiled.

"Well, Ben, I think it's time you do your stuff," Lucky said.

Ben dropped the second shovel and then fell to his hands and knees. He began sniffing the ground.

"What's he doing?" Emma asked.

"He's searching for Alan's scent," Lucky answered.

"Give me a break!" Emma rolled her eyes again.

"He's got dog DNA in him," Lucky said.

"Yeah, right!" Emma scoffed.

Ben looked up, and he and Lucky exchanged grins.

"He does!" Lucky insisted. "Watch. You'll see."

Ben crawled along the loose soil, his nose to the ground. He stopped and looked up.

"Right here," Ben said.

"What do we even need a map for if he can smell his way around?" Emma asked.

"Because Alan was probably all over this yard. Ben's nose can help us pinpoint things," Lucky said, "but we still need the map. See a rock?"

Ben smiled. "No, but I just found this."

He held up his hand.

Lindsay gasped. "My ring! My birthstone ring!"

Ben handed it to her.

"Very clever," Lucky said. "Birthstone - rock. But not clever enough!
Troublemaker Alan? You think you're so smart, but you can't outsmart the Dog Detectives!"

Lucky raised his hand, Ben jumped up, and the two friends high-fived and howled.

Emma huffed, "Boys."

"On to the next landmark!" Lucky declared.

On the map, following a loopy squiggly line was an X marked with the word "tree." There weren't any trees in Lindsay's backyard.

"Now what?" Emma asked.

"What other kinds of trees are there?" Lucky asked.

"Um--," Ben said, and that was as far as he got.

Lindsay bit her lip, and she too was silent.

"Family trees," Emma finally said.

"Family trees," Lucky repeated.

More silence.

"Can I see that?" Emma asked.

"Sure," Lucky said, and he handed Emma the map.

Emma possessed the uncanny ability to decipher even the most unreadable handwriting. It was her special talent, and Alan's penmanship was infamously atrocious.

"Hmm," she said.

"What is it?" Lucky asked.

Emma held the map so the others could see.

"You know, this 'r' could be an 'i' 'cause there's a speck over here," Emma pointed, "which could be a dot, and then that 'e' if you look at it this way---." They all turned their heads. "---Looks something like an "r."

"So?" Lucky asked.

"I think it says 'tire.'"

"Tire?" Lucky said. "There aren't any tires here either!"

Ben jumped down to his hands and knees again and started digging.

"Well that's what it says!" Emma said.

"Got it!" Ben said. He held his hand up and showed everyone what he had just uncovered, a tiny toy tire from a Hot Wheels racing car.

"He's good," Lucky said.

"Thanks!" Ben smiled.

"I meant Alan."

"Oh."

"Okay, next landmark," Lucky said.

Holding the map in front of her face, Emma marched a straight diagonal line to the far corner of Lindsay's backyard, with her three friends right behind her. Alan had marked the fourth landmark with a circle and had labeled it with a scribbled mess that even Emma couldn't make out.

"It looks like it says Humpty Dumpty," Ben laughed. Lucky and Lindsay laughed too.

"You know," Emma said, "I think it really does say Humpty Dumpty."

"What?" Lucky exclaimed.

"He was an egg, right? Let's look for an egg!" Ben said.

Once more, Ben got to work, scooping away the loose dirt around them.

"Found something," he said. He lifted out a ball of paper.

"That's not an egg," Lindsay said.

Ben unwrapped the paper. "No, it isn't, but look at what it is!"

He handed Lucky the yellow colored paper with words printed on it.

Lucky read aloud, "Babe's Egg 'N Biscuit."

Ben laughed.

"Humpty Dumpty!" Emma smiled.

On the map, Alan had marked the treasure as being buried 10 paces down from Humpty Dumpty. The foursome walked the 10 paces and stopped.

Lucky and Ben each took a shovel, and they began to dig. They dug and dug, until they had excavated a hole that was large enough for them to fit into, but so far, no jewelry box.

Ben jumped into the hole and began sniffing. "I smell him. He was here."

"We have to dig deeper, then," Lucky said.

Ben grabbed a shovel and thrust it into the earth by his feet. He scooped up a heaping pile of soil and threw it out of the hole into the huge mound of displaced earth they had created.

"Oooh!" Lindsay cried. "Worms!"

"Big ones, too!" Lucky said.

Ben stuck his head out of the hole. A worm about 10 inches long and a good inch around slithered from the moist soil he had just added to the pile. "Cool!" Ben said.

Ben thrust his shovel down again. This time he felt it strike something.

"I think I've got it!" he announced.

He cleared away the dirt with his hands, and as Lucky, Lindsay, and Emma looked on, they all saw the top of the black jewelry box.

And that's when it disappeared.

As if a huge hole had opened up beneath it, and it fell through.

"What the---?" Lucky asked. "Did you see that?"

Ben suddenly climbed out of the hole in a big hurry. He looked scared.

"What's the matter?" Lucky asked.

"There's something alive down there," Ben said.

"What?" Lucky, Emma, and Lindsay all exclaimed at the same time.

"I smelled it."

"You mean like a mole?" Lucky asked.

"I don't know," Ben said.

"What about my mom's jewelry box?" Lindsay asked.

"Do you want to go down there with something alive?" Ben asked.

"No," Lindsay admitted.

"Well, we have to do something!" Lucky said. "Alright! I'm going down there!"

Lucky grabbed a shovel and leapt into the hole.

"Lucky!" Lindsay called. "Be careful!"

"Yeah, we don't know what's down there," Emma said.

"What did it smell like?" Lucky asked.

"Well, it smelled like--- a worm," Ben said.

"A worm?" Emma said. "You jumped out of the hole because of a worm?"

Ben blushed.

"I see it!" Lucky said.

He scraped more of the loose soil, and once more they all saw the top of the black jewelry box. Lucky bent down and grabbed it.

"It's stuck!" Lucky said. He pulled as hard as he could. "It's caught on something real good."

"Come on, Lucky, hurry up!" Ben begged. "I can still smell that thing."

"Oooh, a worm!" Emma taunted.

"Got it!" Lucky exclaimed.

He pulled the box from the hole with a grunt. He held it up high for his friends to see, and Ben, Emma and Lindsay cheered.

A deluge of dirt from the bottom of the hole erupted like lava from a volcano, spraying the back of Lucky's head. Everyone screamed.

Like a great whale surfacing from the depths of the ocean, the thing emerged from the soil.

It was by every indication an earthworm, but this worm had a body the size of a large dog, and an opened mouth as big as a softball.

Wasting no time, Lucky hurled the box from the hole, and Ben made a sensational catch. Lucky leaped from the hole and grabbed onto Emma's hand. She helped him out, even as the monster worm crawled along the moist earth towards the edge of the hole.

"Run!" Lucky shouted.

The four friends raced towards Lindsay's back porch, away from the elephantine worm inside the hole, none of them looking back. They reached the porch, out of breath and terrified.

"Call the police!" Emma shrieked.

"Call the army!" Ben said.

"Hold on a minute!" Lucky said, looking back at the hole for the first time and then motioning for his friends to calm down. "It's still in the hole. It's not chasing us!"

"So?" Emma asked.

"So nobody panic, okay?" Lucky said.

"What was that?" Lindsay asked.

Lucky was about to answer but Emma spoke first. "Don't you dare say it was a man with worm DNA because I don't want to hear it!"

"I'm not going to say that," Lucky said. "It was a worm. I think we can all agree on that. An incredibly big worm, but a worm."

"I'll say! That was the biggest worm I've ever seen in my life!" Ben exclaimed. "That was so cool!"

"Cool?" Emma said.

"Um, Lindsay, just what kind of fertilizer is your dad using?" Lucky asked.

"I don't know," Lindsay answered.

"Jurassic Park brand!" Ben laughed.

"You might want to tell your dad to use a little bit less of whatever it is he's using," Lucky said.

"Call an exterminator, already!" Emma said.

"Anyway, here's your mom's jewelry box." Ben smiled and handed the box to Lindsay.

There was a radiance in Lindsay's eyes at that moment that none of them had ever seen before. She looked as if it were her birthday, and she had just received the gift she always wanted but never thought she'd get. She dusted the dirt off the top of the box and opened it. She smiled.

"Everything's here. My mom's things are all here. Thank you, guys!" Lindsay said. She stopped smiling. "But, what about--- ?" She pointed back to the hole.

"Tell your dad. He'll know what to do," Lucky said. "And if he doesn't, you can always call the Dog Detectives!"

He and Ben high-fived and howled.

Emma rolled her eyes. "Boys!"

Lindsay laughed. She pictured her mom wearing her jewelry. The picture made her smile.

The End

Michael Arruda is the author of numerous published short stories. His work has appeared in the print anthologies DEATH GRIP: LEGACY OF TERROR, BE VERY AFRAID!, and THE DARKEST THIRST, among others. His stories have been published online in such publications as THE ETERNAL NIGHT CHRONICLE and HORRORFIND.COM, and in the print magazine LOVECRAFT'S WEIRD MYSTERIES. Michael is an Active Member of the HORROR WRITERS ASSOCIATION, and he helped establish the New England Chapter of the HWA in 2001. He lives in New Hampshire with his family.

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