The Haunted Lighthouse (3 page)

“Uh-uh,” Luke said.

“No way.” M.E. shook her head.

“Quinn?” Cody asked again when he didn’t respond.

“No, I’m telling you! I didn’t write it or send it,” Quinn said, standing up to get a closer look. “Read it out loud again.”

Cody turned back to the screen and read the message once more.

“Sounds like a poem,” M.E. said. She was somewhat of a poet herself, always making up riddles in rhyme. She’d memorized “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe—and loved reciting it when they had sleepovers, hoping to scare Cody, but she always ended up just scaring herself.

“Dude, if it’s a poem, it doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Luke said, putting aside his study sheet. Cody glanced at his homework and saw a list of unfamiliar words:

Even though the list looked as if it was written in a foreign language, she knew they were anagrams. Luke’s grandmother always made a game of his spelling words by scrambling them up. Luke had to unscramble the letters, which helped him remember how to spell the word correctly.

Luke saw Cody checking out the list and said, “I’m stuck on the last one.”

It took her only seconds to figure it out, but instead of blurting out the answer, she gave him a hint. “Try starting with the last letter and ending
with the first letter.”

“Got it!” he said. “Thanks!”

“Great, now can we get back to this weird message on my computer?”

She read it aloud again.
“ ‘A shr
ou
ded nigh
t
c
ov
ers
is
land m
i
s
t
s …
Li
vely
gh
os
t
s
ho
pe yo
u
’ll
se
e … Al
on
e
a l
o
ca
l
tr
e
a
sure.’ ”

“So who’s this Z dude—the Shadow, or whatever he calls himself?” Luke asked.

“I don’t know, but it sounds old-fashioned,” M.E. said, wiggling her knee-sock-covered feet. Today her socks had Hello Kitty designs that in no way matched her tie-dyed shirt and denim skirt. Who knew what she’d be wearing tomorrow. “Cody and I are studying poetry in class. That was the way they spoke back in the day.”

“We are, too, but not gibberish,” Luke argued.

Quinn laughed. “My dad thinks I speak gibberish. Half the time he doesn’t know what I’m saying when I speak pig Latin.”

M.E. nodded. “Y-may arents-pay o-day, oo-tay!” she said.

Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on
this page
,
this page
.

“I have a feeling we’re missing the point here,” Cody said.

The others looked at her, waiting for an explanation.

“I think it’s a code. After all, someone sent it to us at CodeBustersClub.com, so they obviously know we’re into deciphering codes and puzzles.”

“So let’s decipher it,” Quinn said. “M.E., you’re good at poetry. What does,
‘I
n
dar
kn
e
ss
y
on, / A shr
ou
ded nigh
t
c
ov
ers
is
land m
i
s
t
s,’
mean?”

M.E. frowned. “Uh … there’s an island in the dark or the fog?”

Quinn nodded, then continued. “What about,
‘
Th
os
e ha
llowed, s
un
ken
,
t
ir
ed
souls, /
Li
vely
gh
os
t
s
ho
pe yo
u
’ll
se
e’
 …?”

“I don’t know,” M.E. said, shrugging. “I’m not an expert.”

“Sounds like dead people,” Cody offered. “Souls, ghosts …”

“And a treasure,” Luke added, noting the last line,
“Al
on
e
a l
o
ca
l
tr
e
a
sure.”

“Maybe,” Cody said. “But what about those letters in bold?”

“Yeah,” Quinn said, leaning toward the screen. “What’s up with that?”

“Let me try something.” Cody highlighted the message and copied it to a new document. She deleted all the letters that weren’t in bold. When she was done, she tried to read the message aloud, but it came out in one long word:

“IdareyoutovisitThehauntedLighthouseonalcatraZ.”

She tried again, reading it more slowly.

Code Buster’s Solution found on
this page
.

“Alcatraz?” Luke asked, with a hint of his Louisiana accent. “That’s weird. Our class is going
there tomorrow on a field trip.”

“We all are,” Cody said. All four Code Busters were in the sixth grade, but the girls were in a different class from the boys. The whole sixth grade was heading for the prison island the next day on a class trip.

Cody stared at the translated message and was caught by the words
haunted lighthouse
. She knew there was a lighthouse on Alcatraz. Her teacher, Ms. Stadelhofer, had spent a class on the island once known as “the Rock,” which had held many notorious prisoners but was now one of the most popular attractions in the Bay Area. She’d never been there, but she’d heard many stories about the prison, including that it was haunted by prisoners who had died there. Although she didn’t believe in ghosts, Cody shivered at the thought. If there was such a thing as spirits returning to haunt a scary place, Alcatraz, with its violent history, would be perfect. But she
was sure these were legends, told to attract more tourists to “the Rock.”

So who had sent them an e-mail about the lighthouse being haunted? What was behind this mysterious message? And who was Z, aka The Shadow?

“I say we keep an eye out tomorrow for this mysterious ‘Shadow’ and see what’s up.”

“I agree!” M.E. said. “This is going to be fun! I can’t wait for tomorrow. Maybe we’ll see the ghost of Al Capone.”

“Who’s Al Capone?” Luke asked.

“He was a big gangster in Chicago,” M.E. said. “They called him Scarface. He was a bootlegger back when there was Prohibition.”

“What’s a bootlegger?” Luke asked.

“Someone who sold alcohol when it was illegal,” M.E. answered.

Cody’s younger sister, Tana, who was deaf, appeared at the door and finger-spelled to Cody:

Cody nodded at her sister.

“What did she say?” Luke asked, watching Tana.

Cody showed her friends the signs.

Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on
this page
,
this page
.

The kids copied each of the signs with her.

“Thanks, Tana,” Cody said, and finger-spelled that to her sister.

Cody turned to her friends. “Well, I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” Quinn packed up his
IRONMAN
backpack. M.E. gathered her things into her
I
’
M A PRINCESS
backpack. Luke stuffed his spelling words into his sports bag and picked up his skateboard before pushing himself up from the bed. They followed Cody down the stairs and said a polite good night to her mother. Cody knew her friends were a little intimidated by her mom, who happened to be a Berkeley police officer. But they also knew Mrs. Jones would be there for them if they ever needed
her. She had recently helped them solve the mystery involving Mr. Skelton.

After the others left, Cody kissed her mother good night and took Tana back upstairs to sign her a bedtime story. When she was finished tucking her sister in, Cody returned to her bedroom, pulled out her collection of lighthouse postcards, and crawled under her heart-covered comforter. She flipped through them and sighed contentedly. She’d been collecting the postcards since she’d seen her first one, when she’d lived in the California Gold Country. She’d been attracted to lighthouses because they seemed to symbolize strength and hope during rough times. And she’d been through some rough times, what with her parents getting a divorce, their moving to a new city, and her having to make new friends.

Cody returned the album of postcards to the spot under her bed and turned off the light. But the semidarkness did nothing to help her get to
sleep. She stared at the shaft of moonlight on her ceiling, wide awake, puzzling over the cryptic message that had mysteriously appeared in her e-mail box.

When she finally fell asleep, she dreamed about a ghost wearing prison-striped pajamas, flying in and out of a lonely, abandoned lighthouse.