Chris Grabenstein - The Smoky Corridor

“Huh?”

“You know … a heart doctor?”

“Can’t. We don’t have health insurance. I just try not to get sick.”

Oh-kay . Zack needed a new idea. The direct approach wasn’t going to work.

“Hello, everybody.” Ms. DuBois, the history teacher, hovered near their table, holding a tray with nothing on it but a fruit cup. “I’m on cafeteria duty. Might I join you?”

“Please do, Ms. DuBois,” said Malik.

And she did!

33

Wade Mugginshad been wandering aimlessly through a maze of corridors underneath the school.

No.

Wait.

He’d been walking for more than an hour. He had to be beyond the school by now. Maybe underneath the woods behind the gym.

At one point, he’d dropped the rusty revolver so it would be a landmark, let him know if he was walking around in circles. He never saw the thing again.

He sniffed the air. There was a faint hint of dampness to it. Maybe he was near the Pattakonck River.

Holy crap. If he was near the river, that meant he was under the cemetery!

Dude! There were dead people snoozing in the dirt right above his head! Skeletons and worms and rotted flesh. Skulls and bones and tattered clothes.

He was about to toss his cookies.

But he had to keep going. There was gold down here, too. There had to be. Why else would somebody build a maze underground? He swung his flashlight to something painted on a row of support beams, one word on each board:

WELCOME

ABOARD

THE

CRESCENT

CITY

Freaky.

He crept up the narrow corridor.

He thought he heard breathing. Wet, wheezy breathing.

“Is anybody down here?” he shouted. “Dude? I come in peace!”

No response.

He came to a junction. Left or right? He went right again.

He shone his light into the darkness in front of him.

It flashed off two dull eyeballs.

“Whoa.” Wade stepped back. The eyes looked dead. Gross. A cadaver had fallen through the ceiling when the bottom of its coffin had rotted away.

Then the eyes moved.

The two dead eyeballs weren’t attached to a dead body!

Suddenly, the eyes sprang forward.

Some kind of living creature leapt into the air and sank its fangs into Wade’s arm. He dropped the flashlight and screamed.

The creature released its grip and opened its jaws wide to strike again. Wade could tell by the rumble in its throat that the thing was lining up for a second lunge. He could feel and smell the monster’s breath.

“No!” Wade pleaded.

Just as the beast was about to bite off his face, Wade heard an unbelievably evil voice cry out from somewhere in the darkness: “McNulty!”

The beast stopped.

“McNulty, come!”

“Yes, master,” slurred a slow, dull voice.

Wade heard soft footfalls as the creature loped off into the gloom.

Wade wasn’t dead! He reached for the flashlight lying on the ground. The bite in his arm hurt so bad it burned.

But he could walk. He could run!

Breathing hard, feeling woozy, he raced around blind corner after blind corner and finally stumbled into a room he hadn’t been in before.

He swung the flashlight around in circles until it hit an elongated black tank with steam valves popping up at either end. Wade saw a furnace below the tank with four fuel doors. A black exhaust pipe rose out of one end, angled sharply, then disappeared through a wall like a dryer vent would. Wade, who knew a thing or two about furnaces and boilers, recognized what it was immediately: the tube boiler from an old paddle wheel steamboat.

“What’s it doing way down here?” he mumbled. “The river is aboveground.”

Wade needed to talk, just to hear his own voice. Ever since that thing had bit him, his head had been feeling kind of fuzzy. Fuzzier than normal.

He leaned against a neatly stacked mountain of firewood.

“Mommy? I have a boo-boo.” He could feel his mind slipping away, his memories oozing out his ears.

“Twinkle, twinkle little star …”

Drool dribbled down his chin.

“Baa-baa black sheep …”

He could feel his teeth growing longer, their spiky tips pricking the lining of his cheeks.

“Ba-ba-ba-ba …”

He didn’t recognize his own voice.

He remembered the first word he ever learned.

“Dada.”

And then he could think of nothing.

Except the desire to taste human brains.

34

“Dinner willbe a little late tonight,” Judy said when she came up to Zack’s room around six o’clock. She was carrying a brown envelope and a folded-over copy of the North Chester weekly newspaper.

“Everything okay?” Zack asked.

Zipper, who had been sleeping on his back against the baseboard, his legs sticking up in the air, rolled over to pay attention.

“Your dad’s just running late at the office. I could heat something up if you’re starving.…”

“Nah, that’s okay.”

“So, what’re you working on?” Judy asked.

“Homework.”

“On the first day of school?”

“Yeah. I’m almost done.”

Judy opened up the newspaper. “Zack, there’s a death notice in the obituaries I wanted you to see.…”

“Is it about Mr. Willoughby? Because he died a couple days ago.”

“Yes. But how did you know?”

“He came to see me today.”

“What?”

“At school. Davy sent him.”

“Our Davy?”

“Yeah, I saw him today, too.”

“At school?”

“Yeah. That place has a ton of ghosts—guess most schools do.” And he hadn’t even mentioned Bartholomew Buckingham.

Judy looked concerned. “Is everything okay, Zack?”

He wanted to tell her all about the zombie that Davy had warned him about. But Davy had also warned him not to tell Judy. Can’t bring no adults into this zombie situation , he’d said. Willoughby had said basically the same thing: Not a word of this to your parents. It’s for their own protection .

“Yeah. Everything’s cool. Mr. Willoughby just wanted to say so long and Davy just wanted to say howdy. I have the same locker he had when he went to school at Pettimore.”

“Well, if anything seriously spooky starts happening …”

“You’ll be the first person I tell.”

Unless Davy, Mr. Willoughby, Bartholomew Buckingham, and every other ghost I bump into at that place tells me I can’t!

“You promise?”

“Yeah.” Zack had never lied to Judy before. It didn’t feel great. So he changed the subject.

“What’s in the envelope?”

“Ah! My homework assignment.” She opened the envelope clasp. “The Donnelly brothers belonged to a youth group called the Sons of Daniel Boone, started by Daniel Carter Beard in 1905. The sons were organized into forts.”

A lightbulb went on over Zack’s head (or it would’ve if he were a cartoon): “That’s why they said the school was their fort!”

“Exactly. And the officers of the fort took on the names of famous frontiersmen, like Daniel Boone, Johnny Appleseed …”

“And Kit Carson!”

Judy nodded. “The sons did all sorts of activities. They’d have treasure hunts, study nature, go camping.…”

Judy’s voice trailed off.

“What?”

“Well, Zack, for some strange reason, the Donnelly brothers decided to build an indoor campfire in that back corridor where you saw them.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. If I were you, I’d steer clear of Seth and Joseph Donnelly. I think they’re, you know, troublemakers.”

“Davy kind of said the same thing. He told me they still liked to play with fire.”