The Lighthouse - 3

        I told my friend Sadier about the captain’s story.

“It would seem a section of the ship’s nightly route is in view from your pier,” he replied.

        “That seems to be the case,” I typed.

        “Have you noticed any hot spots in your house?” he asked.

        “Yes, the kitchen,” I responded.

But that was where I got stuck for a while. I started to grow a little frustrated. There seemed to be nothing more to go on. Sometimes I thought about just taking a saw to our kitchen floor because I knew there was a room below it. But I didn’t want to take any shortcuts. I knew my uncle got down to that room somehow. I had to figure out how he did it. Sadier had a suggestion.

        “Do you ever feel like you’re out of your body?” he asked.

        “I’m not sure. Perhaps at times,” I typed.

        “For some people, out of body experiences have allowed them to see past walls,” he stated.

He had my attention. “What do you suggest?” I asked.

        “You might be able to encourage an out of body experience by lying still for a long time. Ensure there is no sound to distract your ears and no light to distract your eyes.”

        That night I apologized to my wife and dragged a small mattress to the kitchen. I lay very still but kept my mind working as best I could, so as not to fall asleep. I started to have a floating sensation as if the room was filling up with water. It felt like my body was tilting and swaying back and forth. It was not uncommon for me to feel this way while falling asleep. I tried to open my mind’s eye and look around the room. It was difficult. The next thing I remember was waking up to engine’s rumble, much louder than usual because I was right above it. When the engine stopped 15 minutes later, I fell back asleep until morning.

        I didn’t think anything helpful had come of the night until I was having breakfast with my wife the next morning. She watched my eyes suddenly grow wide. I rose, leaving my scrambled eggs, and walked toward the cabinet where we keep our glasses. I climbed onto the countertop and stuck my head into the cabinet. I recalled that sometimes when getting a drink of water I would have a strange feeling. Last night while lying in the kitchen I had noticed something. I hopped down and briskly fetched a flashlight from the garage. Then, I started pulling glasses out of the cabinet, apologizing to my wife. I pulled out all of the glasses and then started on mason jars and other glassware. My hand picked up a rarely-used china teapot which was against the cabinet wall and I saw something glimmer in the flashlight behind it. Upon a closer look, it appeared to be a small metal lock attached to the cabinet’s back wall. My heart raced. Coming from the lock was a metal rod. I had to take everything out of the cabinet to see that it disappeared into the wall that the kitchen shared with the garage. The rod looked familiar. The metal looked the same as the metal combination lock in the garage, leading me to suspect that behind the wall the rod ran all the way to the combination lock. Since my wife had been the one to organize the cabinets when we moved in, I had never seen this. Perhaps if I set the combination lock in the garage to the right combination, the lock in the cabinet would release. What was the lock in the cabinet locking though? It was hard to guess. I figured perhaps if the lock was released, the back of the cabinet might swing open.

        Unfortunately, I didn’t have any idea what the combination was. When I had brute forced all the combinations I had probably unknowingly spun the wheels to the right combination, unlocking the lock in the cabinet momentarily before I relocked it with the next turn of the wheel. Now that I had a theory as to what the combination lock was connected to, I could brute force it again with the added step of running around the corner to check if the lock in the cabinet was open. However, it had taken me over 30 hours in all to brute force it the first time, and that was when trying a new combo every second or so. Checking the lock every time would mean every combo would surely cost no less than 10 seconds given the time taken to run between, and this would push my overall time at best to 300 hours, I figured. I knew there had to be a better way. I could have asked my wife to watch the lock while I turned the wheels, but given the time involved that would be a lot to ask of her. She humored my obsession with our lighthouse, but I couldn’t ask her to do that. Even though I had a sense that finding what I was searching for was desperately important, I wanted to do this on my own. I believed that I could come up with the answer. I needed to get inside the mind of my uncle and crack his password.