In The Woods

Chapter 12

I can't believe the document is gone. I'm still in shock. Whoever has it, obviously wants land. If they get away with this, everyone in my neighborhood will lose their house, their land, and most of their possessions including money........

It all started the summer after fourth grade. Our parents finally allowed us to go into the woods. We were little, and wanted to act like detectives. Every little thing we found, like bark on a tree, we pretended it was a clue of some sort. That totally went nowhere until one day. Ashley was exploring with Julia. They came to my house, excited. And they showed me the newspaper article. The little clipping that changed my life. I remember every word of it:
FORT PORT HURON BEING KNOCKED DOWN? THE OLDEST TRADING FORT IN MICHIGAN BEING KNOCKED DOWN TO BUILD NEIGHBORHOOD. MANY LOCALS DISAGREE WITH THE IDEA OF AN OLD "MONUMENT" BEING KNOCKED AWAY. BY LAW, THIS IS ILLEGAL UNLESS $50,000,000 IS PAID TO OFFICIALS!
This was written in 1954- 20 years before my parents were born.
You know those places back 50-100 years ago that were made for trading furs and stuff like that? That's what this article was talking about. A trading post or fort called Fort Port Huron. And it was the oldest one in Michigan!
This was written a long time ago. Julia and Ashley had dug a surprisingly large hole to find it. I seriously could not believe the size of it! As time went on that summer though, we soon found out that the town being built on top of this old fort thing was our neighborhood. I don't know when we realized this, but it was surprising to all of us. But only one thought occurred: Maybe if we kept digging down, we could find furs or something! How cool would it be to have one of those!?!?
So we dug and dug in the same hole Ashley and Julia started. Now, as I think about this, I remember how stupid we were to not think about how they got all that money to build here. Anyways, one day I ended up hitting something. Everyone heard the bang of metal. We all reached in and pulled out the huge chest. We looked at each other surprised and opened it.
At first, we were disappointed that there was no "treasure" or anything. But there was a whole bunch of buttons and controls. The words "ENTER PASSWORD" flashed in red on the lid of the chest. You have no idea how long it took us to make every four digit number on a piece of paper. Or how much longer it took to try all of them out. When we finally got to 7492 there was a clicking noise and six trees rose out of the ground. They've never gone back into the ground. All of us were surprised the code worked so I shut it and tried again. This time the trees split and three moved to each side. Steps formed and that was when we found the bunker. You would never be able to guess how surprised we were. We stood there for what seemed like hours, just standing there, awed. I took the first step down into the bunker.
It was a pretty small area, probably about as big as my bedroom. It was empty, except for the chest on the far side of the room. I typed in the same pass code and it opened. Inside we saw a document. Again, we were disappointed. Then we decided to read it. And after reading it, our lives were never the same. We knew we had to protect it.
There were a lot of huge words on it that were hard for us to understand. So I'll say this in the way that most people talk. The document said (in a weirder way than this):
RESIDENT OFFICIAL DOCUMENT-
THIS HEREBY STATES THAT ANY MAN OR WOMEN WISHING TO BUILD HOUSES, FACTORIES, ANY TYPE OF BUILDING, PUBLIC POOL, OR ANYTHING AT ALL, MUST PAY $50,000,000. WITHOUT THE PROPER PAY, NO PERSON IS ABLE TO BUILD HERE. IF DOING SO, ANY THING ON THIS LAND WILL BE TAKEN, INCLUDING HOUSES, POSSESSIONS, ETC. BY SIGNING THIS CONTRACT, YOU WILL OWN THIS LAND.
SIGNED ________
But there was no signature. Which means that someone illegally built on this land and that if anyone found this document and signed it, they would now own the land and everybody who lived here would lose everything they own.

Do you know why this document is so important now? Whoever has it will sign it and own my house. And everyone else's house. We protected it well so some large person has just bought a bunch of fertilizer and has been spying on us. That's the only way he would know the code. We will find him. I don't want to say we're detectives, but I guess we kind of are if we can figure all of this stuff out.

Comment and follow me! I have to go so I'm making this short! BYEEEE😉