House of Secrets

Chapter 3

I ran through the hallway as fast as possible. I looked at the line of code on the doorknob.

W    B    M    B    S    J    F

I then matched up the letters with what was written in the journal. 'Every letter that you see uses the letter that once came before.' I then started to match them up.

First was W. Which in this case would be equal to V.

Then came B. Which corresponded to A.

I matched the rest of the letters on the doorknob and eventually came up with a word. A person's name.

Valerie...My grandmother's name.

I then tried to correspond the letters to the keypad. But there were no letters on the keypad. I thought of an idea. I grabbed my phone from my back pocket. The keypad next to the door looked similar to the keypad on my phone. The numeric keypad that had three letters on each key corresponded perfectly to the keypad that was next to the door. I found all the corresponding numbers to my grandmother's name and typed it into the keypad.

8.

I checked to see if the other numbers were right.

5    2    7    4    3

*Click*

I turned to my right. The door to the attic had swung open in less than a millisecond. Behind the door was an old and dusty room filled with antique furniture and a gigantic version of an old family portrait. In the corner of the room was a small wooden crate filled with what seemed like more documents, but the documents in this room were different from the documents in my grandmother's study room. These documents seemed older and the paper looked aged. It looked like the paper that was in the pictures that my grandmother took of herself when she was working as a journalist.

Were these from when my grandmother started her job? Were they important documents? Were they going to be an important part of her story?

I carefully flipped through a few of the pages and from the looks of it my guess was right. These were documents that my grandmother used for her work in the early 1900s. A few other items that were in the crate were: old newspapers, a few old pens, and a dusty typewriter next to the crate. I flipped through a few newspapers in hopes that there will be something helpful. In one of the newspapers, there was a document regarding my grandmother and another one of her colleagues. James McMire. I looked back at the documents that were now laying on the ground next to me. One of the documents was a project that my grandmother and her colleague James oversaw. The "Political Incident'' project, which later had the name "The Political Crisis'' in the newspaper. The project was based on a political issue in Washington, 1903.

That's when it came to me, James. James McMire was a famous CEO in the city of New York. I could ask him what had happened to my grandmother. But first I need proof. Proof that Valerie Smithe was my grandmother. I looked at the crate once again. There were a few pictures of my grandmother and her colleagues and a threat letter?

Without a second thought, I walk down the stairs and out the door. I made my way back to where the plane had landed and with all the information I needed, I flew back to New York.