Sincerely,
Captain Rogers Jamison"
Wow! That was a good scare you away from the treasure note, but it wasn't the first time I had been threatened with curses.
I'd taken an artifact here and there that had supposedly been under the threat of a curse and I was still here, but I couldn't deny that this was the most chilling gloom and doom threat to date. Oh well, treasure was treasure wherever one found it.
I brought my bag close and began to carefully stack the metallic petals and then the central crystal display into it. I threw the note in with the pieces as an afterthought.
Getting up I quickly made my way down the rickety stairs with my now heavy bag slung over my shoulder. I closed the wooden door on the second story securely and locked it with the key I had been given from the homeowner. I made my way down to the first level and returned the key to the old woman who owned the house.
She gave my dusty appearance a speculative look and asked, "Did you find anything of value then?"
"I did." I said and then I paid her three times what I had said I would for allowing me to dumpster dive through her attic.
I suppose it was still thievery, because what I was taking was of great value, but she'd said I could have anything I wanted in the attic for five hundred dollars and I had paid her fifteen hundred dollars. My consciousness would just have to live with that.
I got into my jeep and left the historic landmark community of Winchester Virginia like I was leaving the scene of a crime.
I didn't feel good about this. Something was off about the whole situation.
Was it the curse?
I quickly banned that thought aside, as I had no place within me for such things anymore. It didn't really matter. I didn't really care if I lived or died so whether there was a curse or not it was the same to me.
Being a treasure hunter and living in dangerous circumstances was just what I did to feel alive part of the time. The rest of the time I was lucky if all I felt was numbness. Numb to everything.
It was a good way to be, if you didn't want to remember how good life had once been or two care about anything in the present. Adding another curse to my growing list of wrongs was par for the course the way my life was going.
I drove home anxious to get back to my boat. My boat was my home away from the world. I drove into Charleston in the early morning light and quickly bypassed the city as I headed for the marina where my boat was docked.