The Haunted Lighthouse Read Online Free PDF Page B

a feeling it wasn’t much different.
    “The food here at Alcatraz was supposed to be the best in the entire prison system,” RangerHuynh announced. “Each prisoner was assigned a row and a seat, such as A-1, A-2, and so on. They had only twenty minutes to eat, and gobbled the food up quickly before other prisoners could steal from their trays.”
    Cody had a sudden thought. The ranger had said the rows and seats were lettered and numbered. Maybe the torn message they’d received earlier referred to seats in the dining hall, rather than chairs, like they’d first suspected. As the large group of students followed the ranger to the kitchen area beyond, Cody waited until her dad was inside and out of sight, then she waved the other Code Busters back toward the benches.
    “S’up?” Luke asked, watching the rest of the crowd file into the next room.
    “The benches!” Cody said softly so the group wouldn’t hear. “I think that’s what the message meant. Remember how the letter
B
stood out fromthe other letters? And the number two was mentioned a couple of times? Maybe they refer to Seat B-Two in the dining hall.”
    “Let’s check it out before Stad and Mr. de Lannoy notice we’re missing,” Quinn said.
    And my dad
, Cody thought.
    Quinn ran over to the second row of benches, the others right behind him. “This is Row B,” he said, and he pointed to the second seat. “And here’s Seat Two.”
    Luke leaned over for a closer look. “Nothing here, dude, except some scratches. Probably carved by the prisoners with their forks.”
    Cody shook her head. “They didn’t have metal utensils.”
    “No, but some did have shivs,” Quinn said.
    M.E. scrunched her nose. “What’s a shiv?”
    “Like a homemade knife,” Quinn answered. “Prisoners use anything they can, like a toothbrush handle or broken comb, and sharpen it to a point.I saw a picture online that was made from a pork chop bone.”
    “Yikes,” Cody said. The thought of a shiv made her shiver. “Wouldn’t want to be stabbed with a pork chop bone.”
    “I wouldn’t want to be stabbed with anything,” M.E. added.
    Luke knelt down and peered under the bench. His eyes widened, and he reached underneath.
    “You found something!” Cody said, excited. “What is it?”
    He pulled a small piece of paper from the underside of the bench. Remnants of clear tape were still stuck to it.
    “A note!” M.E. squealed, then clapped her mouth shut.
    “Shh!” Quinn reminded her. He glanced into the next room, hoping the teachers hadn’t heard them.
    “Open it!” Cody whispered.
    Luke unfolded the white sheet of paper, looked at it, then held it up for the others to see.
    (4 /\/ |) |_ 3 () /\/ + # 3 VV 4 + 3 |2
    Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on this page , this page
.
    “I don’t get it,” he said, after scanning the message. “What’s it supposed to mean?”
    Quinn took it from Luke’s hand. “Hey, I recognize this code. Online gamers and hackers use it when they don’t want just anybody reading their messages. They call it LEET code, or 1337, which is LEET written backward and upside down. It uses numbers and symbols to make letters.”
    “How do you decode it?” Cody asked, studying the message.
    “It’s pretty easy. Just sound it out phonetically. Watch.” Quinn took out a ballpoint pen and his notebook from his backpack, and wrote: (,) (_) ! /\/ /\/ “What do you see?”
    “I see some parentheses, a comma, a dash, anexclamation mark …”
    “Okay, now think of the symbols and numbers as alphabet letters.”
    She deciphered the first letter. “That looks like a
Q
,” she said aloud. “Then
U
. Then
I N N
. Quinn!”
    “Right. So now try to read the words on the other side.”
    “You’ve already figured it out?” Cody asked him. He nodded. She flipped the paper and studied the first series of numbers and symbols.
    (4 /\/ |) |_ 3
    The first symbol resembled the letter
C
. She wrote the letter underneath the symbol. Next