The Hidden Golden Passage

“The Hidden Golden Passage” is one of the outstanding stories of the first biannual International Short Story Contest 2018 written by Karthik Sankar, India.

The Hidden Golden Passage

I had just moved into the new house. I was so excited and curious of how our (me and my brother) bedrooms will look like. I told my brother, “Hope for the best that there are no hidden passages and mysteries.” He loved mysteries so he replied, “It’s so much better if there are hidden passages so we can move faster around the house.”

When I went into my room I saw spiders and webs all around the place. I shouted and everyone ran into my room and asked what had happened. I told them that there were thousands of spiders there. Then my mom gave a long speech of not being scared of insects. Anyways that wasn’t the only reason I wanted to get out of there. The other reason was that when I used to look at the paintings it felt like they are staring at me.

One night when I and my brother were going to our rooms, we were playing and then suddenly he pushed me and I fell on a vase. I realized I wasn’t in that room. As I banged the wall I came back to the room. My brother became so excited and banged onto the wall and went to the other place that I had seen. Since there was nobody else in the house I was too scared to stay alone in the house so, I followed him. The first thing that we saw was a trap which was mostly put up by the old owner of that house. I thought that if there were these many traps then there must be something valuable at the end and guess what? I was right.

Soon after, we had seen some skeletons and a very big door. I and my brother thought there might be a key around there. But we were wrong; we needed to pass a series of very hard questions. Once again my brother was very intelligent, so we passed all those questions. After we passed we needed to go through another level of things. For me this felt like a horror game but for my brother it felt like a whole new world of riches.

I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Karthik and my brother’s name is Omkar. Anyways let’s get back. As I said earlier we needed to pass through a new level of things. This first thing I faced was a skeleton jumping on my face. The second thing we saw a giant skeleton which looked like a giant and we wondered how such a big skeleton come inside the house. Then suddenly we saw a tiny bright light because we thought that was gold and riches waiting for us. But, no that was a fish-like monster which started chasing us. A man appeared out of nowhere and threw some type of tranquilizer dart at the fish-like monster. We went to thank him but he ran away. Since Omkar loves all these things, he followed the man. I told Omkar that our parents must be worried that we are not at home but he couldn’t hear me because he was busy chasing the man. Just then we saw a lot of riches and gold but we also realized it was one-way trip to get there.

We wanted to take all the riches but the man guarded the way. We asked the man if he wanted to get out of that place and he replied that he wanted to get out. We told that we could have a deal. He asked what type of deal. We said, “If you give us a clear path out of here we will show you the way out”. Then we escaped the place with the man and asked his name. He replied, “My name is David Copperfield.” Suddenly he ran off into the woods. Even though he was weird he was a good man. Then our parents found us and hugged us. We asked them who was David Copperfield and they replied that he was a great man but passed away a long time back.