Chris Grabenstein - The Smoky Corridor

“He has her!” she gasped. “Captain Pettimore has taken over Azalea’s body. He will use her to retrieve his gold and then snuff out her soul. You have to save her, Zack! You have to force my brother’s spirit to leave Azalea’s body before her own soul withers away into nothingness!”

Zack nodded.

He’d just add it to his list.

Mary Jane Hopkins disappeared.

“This footpath will take us to the cemetery road,” said Ms. DuBois. “But I’m sure you already knew that, Zack. I’m sure you sneak over this way all the time, to chat with your friends.”

“Not really. Mostly we hang out in the cafeteria or at my house after school.…”

“I meant your other friends.”

“Huh?”

“We are given to understand,” said Eddie, “that you, Zachary Jennings, are conversant with those on the distant shore.”

“You mean like over in France?”

“Ghosts,” said Ms. DuBois, rather nastily. “You talk to ghosts! Don’t try to deny it. Azalea told me!”

“What? She was just kidding. She made it up!”

Eddie pulled out a pistol with a wooden handle, a brass trigger guard, and a very long barrel.

“You better be able to talk to ghosts, son,” he said. “Or you know what?”

“What?”

“I will most assuredly turn you into one.”

77

Judy andGeorge sat in the TV room.

George flipped through sixteen channels, then paused on a college football game before clicking forward another sixteen channels.

He handed the remote to Judy who flipped back through thirty-two channels.

“I miss Zack and Zipper,” she said.

“Me too,” said George.

“You want to take them lunch?”

“Yeah. We could pick up a couple pizzas. Swing by the cemetery. Surprise everybody!”

“Excellent!” Judy zapped off the TV. “But no pepperoni for Zipper.”

“Right. No pepperoni for the dog.”

“He gets gassy, George.”

“I know. Besides, he prefers sausage.”

Judy laughed and scooped up her keys.

This would be fun! A pizza picnic and maybe she could do her own grave rubbing. Later they’d take the kids to the Olde Mill for cold cider and hot doughnuts.

It’d be a perfect October Saturday!

78

It wasincredible!

Daphne DuBois stood beside the grave of John Lee Cooper, marveling at Zack Jennings as the young ghost seer, like Seth Donnelly before him, conversed with her deceased ancestor—the first Southerner to come north to retrieve the Confederacy’s stolen gold.

Bringing the boy’s dog along for the field trip turned out to be an excellent idea.

The dog could see ghosts, too!

Daphne DuBois could tell, just by studying the angle of the dog’s unblinking stare, that the spirit of John Lee Cooper was standing in front of his headstone.

“I understand,” Zack said to the empty air.

Then, of course, there was a pause as John Lee Cooper spoke to the boy.

“Yes, sir. I’ll show them where Captain Pettimore put his special marker.”

This was amazing!

“You say there are no more booby traps in the tunnels? No more guards?”

Of course not , Daphne thought. Pettimore had died a century earlier. Any guards he had hired had long since abandoned their posts.

“What? The message on the stone is written in code? Can you tell me how to crack it? Good. Thank you, sir.”

Daphne looked at her brother, Eddie. He still had the .44-caliber Colt revolver aimed at Zack.

“Oh, put that thing away, Edward! Zack’s doing exactly what we told him to do.” Then she whispered, “I think he has a crush on me. I think all the boys do.”

Eddie lowered the gun, moved closer.

“But what about the girl?” he whispered.

Right.

She had nearly forgotten. The warning scribbled on Madame Marie’s spirit slates: Find the boy. Beware the girl .

“Hurry back to the school,” she said to her brother. “Find Azalea. Put her out of our misery.”

Eddie smiled. “One lead ball to the head is all it should take!”

79

“Edward CooperDuBois?” the ghost snarled. “You come back here with that pistol!”

“Yes,” said Zack. “I understand.”

“Consarn it all! Tell him to turn around, boy!”

John Lee Cooper was probably the angriest, most spiteful, meanest-tempered ghost Zack had ever encountered, a sour-faced man with a long, curly beard, a bird beak for a nose, and two tiny black eyes.

“Boy, you tell Edward Cooper DuBois to come back here and put a bullet in your fool brain!”

Zack nodded. “So all we need to know is how to convert Roman numerals to crack the code?”

“What? I didn’t say that. Consarn it, boy! You’ve not spoke one true word of what I told you! Tell Daphne she must be careful. There be a ferocious voodoo zombie standing guard in that tunnel.”

“And once we find the stone, we have nothing to worry about?”

“Why, you little Yankee coot! Where’s that Donnelly boy? Him I could talk to. You’re nothin’ but a sockdologizing young whippersnapper!”

“Thank you, sir. Is that everything?”

“No, dagnabit! There’s booby traps and danger around every corner! Captain Pettimore was clever and cunning! Spent years building his fortifications. You go down the wrong tunnel, the wrong staircase, that zombie of his will rip the flesh right off your bones!”

“Okay. Thanks. Hope to talk to you again soon, sir.”

Zack turned away from the headstone and snicked his tongue so Zipper would quit staring at the ghost, too.

Zipper turned toward the teacher.

“Consarn it! Don’t you turn your back on me, boy. I’ll knock you into a cocked hat, you no-account hornswoggler!”

Zack smiled at Ms. DuBois. Zipper wagged his tail.

“All set? I know where we need to go.”

80

Malik stoodin the tunnel, studying the faces of the pocket watches.

He’d been working on the puzzle for quite some time and still hadn’t cracked the code.

He had assumed that it was a number/letter cipher, as in A=1, B=2, and so forth. Or Z=1, Y=2, and backward. But only a few of the watches were set precisely on the hour. So that wouldn’t work.

He focused on what had to be a four-letter word.

“Seven, six-oh-five, six-oh-five, nine.”

The two letters in the middle were definitely the same. Probably “e,” one of the most commonly occurring letters in the English language. Malik figured it was a vowel, because the repeated letter was in the middle of the word. The letters at the front and back of the word were different. “So it might be ‘deer’ but it can’t be ‘peep.’ Though, it could be ‘beep’ … ‘keep’ … ‘deep.’”

Next Malik tried adding the numbers together if the time shown wasn’t a straight-up hour. So 6:05 became six plus one—seven. Or should it be six plus five—eleven?

Malik stopped thinking when he heard somebody coming!

He doused his flashlight, huddled up against the wall between support beams.

“McNulty? Stand down. It’s me!”

It sounded like Azalea, only different. Gruff.

Somebody holding a lantern came marching down the long mine shaft that led from the root cellar to the wall with all the watches.

Malik peeked around a post.

It was Azalea! Only it wasn’t. Something was different.

She passed Malik. He couldn’t see what she was doing. Didn’t dare lean forward again. She was too close.