Shadow School #1

by J. A. White

  “It’s not,” Cordelia whispered. “I think my hearing is just better than yours when it comes to dead things.”

  “But why can I hear it at all?” Agnes asked, scratching the back of her neck with a thoughtful expression. “Then again, Mr. Ward said he could hear the cart as well, and he can’t see ghosts either, so I suppose there must be something different—”

  Just beyond the classroom door, squeaking wheels ground to a halt. Cordelia held a finger to her lips and pointed to Agnes’s phone: Text them. As Agnes tapped away, turning her body to conceal the glow of the LCD screen, Lenny entered the classroom. He looked no different than the first time Cordelia had seen him: blue coveralls, hanging paunch, clipboard in his hands. He made note of the ghost hiker, checking an item off his list, and then walked around the perimeter of the box, eyeing it with a curious expression. Finally, he seemed to decide that the box, though unusual, was nothing worth worrying about, and started back toward the doorway.

  Agnes’s phone beeped.

  She quickly flicked the sound off, but it was too late. Lenny spun around and stared in their direction, squinting his eyes like a student unable to see the chalkboard. Cordelia grabbed Agnes’s arm and mouthed “Don’t move.” Although they were only partially hidden, Lenny seemed unable to pin down their location. It was tempting to back deeper into the shadows, but Cordelia’s instincts told her that the ghost would have a better chance of sensing motion, like a T. rex.

  At long last, Lenny left the room.

  “He’s gone,” Cordelia whispered. “For now, at least.”

  Agnes exhaled and held up her phone: On our way, read the text from Dr. Roqueni. Cordelia breathed a sigh of relief. All they had to do was make it through the next few minutes, and they would no longer be alone.

  She heard three metallic bangs in the hallway. And then, after a slight pause, a fourth one, far louder than the others. Agnes clapped her hands to her ears.

  “That’s how he calls the rest of them,” Cordelia whispered. “He did it last time too. Except he only hit the can three times.”

  Agnes’s face grew pale. She bent forward until her lips were next to Cordelia’s ear.

  “That last one sounded like a warning to the others,” she whispered. “I think he knows we’re here.”

  Lenny re-entered the room and placed one of the black A-frame signs in the doorway. Caution, Cordelia imagined the sign reading. Ghost Snatchers at Work. The sign, however, wasn’t the only thing that Lenny had retrieved from the cart. He held a pair of tinted goggles in his hand—the same kind that Geist had been wearing when he caused all the commotion in the lunchroom. Lenny slipped them over his eyes.

  When he turned in Cordelia and Agnes’s direction this time, a wolfish grin spread across his face. There was no doubt in Cordelia’s mind that he could now see them clearly.

  The goggles, she thought, panic rising. They let ghosts see the living.

  Lenny took a step toward them. Cordelia pulled Agnes to her feet and inched toward the door. The ghost snatcher stepped to the side, blocking their path.

  “What’s going on?” Agnes asked, her arm looped through Cordelia’s. “Why are you shaking?”

  “He’s looking right at us,” Cordelia said, guiding Agnes toward the back of the room. “He has special goggles now.”

  “Special what?”

  She jerked to the left, thinking they could slide past the ghost along the far wall, but Lenny positioned himself in the center of the room, ready to cut them off before they could reach the open door. Until this point, the snatcher’s movements had been lethargic—just a bored worker doing his job—but now he looked ready for action. The children’s impending deaths were probably a fun break from his regular routine.

  Stay calm, Cordelia thought, giving Agnes an encouraging smile. Help should be here any second now. All we have to do is stall a little while longer. She paced back and forth along the back wall of the room, and the ghost snatcher mirrored her path like a tiger stalking its prey. He won’t attack us unless we try to escape. He’s holding us here until his friends arrive.

  There was a thunderous crash one floor below them, like a heavy appliance toppling over. This was followed, almost immediately, by the shrill, desperate notes of a whistle.

  “Dr. Roqueni,” Agnes said. “She needs help.”

  They had agreed to blow the whistle only as a last resort, so it was clear that Dr. Roqueni was in serious danger. Mr. Ward and Benji might have been heading in our direction, Cordelia thought. But now they’re going to help her first. She considered blowing her own whistle, but would that be the right thing to do? What if Dr. Roqueni needed help more than they did? What if they had hurt her?

  A hot flash of anger incinerated Cordelia’s fear.

  We don’t need help, she thought. We can do this on our own.

  “Let’s split up,” Cordelia told Agnes. “You go left, I’ll go right. Hopefully it’ll confuse him.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  Cordelia shrugged.

  “He can’t catch both of us. Whoever escapes can get help.”

  Agnes looked ready to argue, but Cordelia didn’t give her the opportunity. She started along the right-hand side of the room while Agnes, after a brief hesitation, started toward the left. Lenny looked back and forth between the two girls, unsure what to do. It’s probably been decades since he actually had to think about something, Cordelia thought. Plus, he doesn’t strike me as someone who had a full tank of smart juice, even when he was alive.

  Lenny took a few steps in Agnes’s direction, then changed his mind and charged toward Cordelia. As he passed the ghost box, however, the hiker reached out and wrapped her arms around him. Lenny tried to shake her off, but the hiker dragged him backward with a fierce look of determination. Within a few moments, his entire body was inside the ghost box with her.

  “Close the door!” Cordelia shouted to Agnes. She would have done it herself, but she needed her hands free in order to toss the leather pouch into the ghost box, just before Agnes slammed the door shut. Lenny, with the feral strength of an animal caught in a trap, threw himself against the door. The two girls worked together to finally bolt it.

  Cordelia peeked through the tiny window. Lenny banged his fists against the glass, causing her to jump back in surprise, but the hiker was nowhere to be seen. Cordelia assumed she had knelt out of sight.

  “Is it working?” Agnes asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Cordelia replied—but then the hiker rose into view, looking carefully at the object Cordelia had thrown into the box: a silver compass. “Yes!” Cordelia exclaimed, pumping her fist in triumph. “She’s holding it! She wouldn’t be able to do that if it wasn’t her Brightkey!”

  A black triangle appeared above the ghost box. It slid open, setting the room aglow with neon light and unleashing an orchestra of city sounds: beeping horns, jackhammers, reggae music blasting from a car radio. The hiker floated out of the box with a beatific smile on her face and ascended into her Bright.

  City girl, Cordelia thought, imagining the woman’s whole sad story. Took a weekend trip to the forest and got lost.

  “We trapped the bad ghost,” Cordelia told Agnes. “And saved the good one.”

  She felt a tear run down her cheek. It had been a long time since she’d helped a ghost, and she had missed it.

  “Go us,” Agnes said. “But there are two more of those things out there. Plus, we have to help Dr. Roqueni.”

  Cordelia nodded and ran into the hallway. She nearly crashed into Lenny’s cart, which was parked just outside the door, but managed to twist to her left and dodge it at the last moment. Agnes wasn’t so lucky. She hit the cart at full speed, a glancing blow that sent her spinning. As Agnes fell, the cart tottered on two wheels before gravity set things right again. A few supplies dropped to the floor.

  “Ow!” Agnes said, holding her side. “What was that?”

  “The cart,” Cordelia said. “I’m sorry—I should have told
you it was there. I guess it’s not incorporeal like the ghosts. Just invisible.”

  “That’s why Mr. Ward and I could hear it,” Agnes said, wincing in pain as she sat up. Her fingers brushed against a pair of goggles that had been knocked from the cart. “There’s something here. I can’t see it, but I feel it. Do you know what it is?”

  Before Cordelia could reply, something touched her shoulder from behind. She spun around and screamed at the same time.

  “Shh!” Benji said, grabbing her wrists. “They’re gonna hear us!”

  “Why did you sneak up on me?”

  “I was trying to be stealthy,” Benji said. He noticed Agnes struggling to stand and slid past Cordelia to help her. “You okay?”

  “Banged up my knee. But I’ll live.”

  “Good,” Benji said. “We need to get out of here. Now.”

  “Where’s Dr. Roqueni and Mr. Ward?” Cordelia asked.

  “I’ll tell you on the way,” Benji said. He started down the hall at a sprint, then realized how much trouble Agnes was having and returned to help her. She could limp along at a steady pace, but running was out of the question. They made their way to the end of the hall. Benji held up a hand and then peeked around the corner before waving them along.

  “The ghost snatchers didn’t stay together like we thought they would,” Benji said. “Geist found Dr. Roqueni. She tried to get him inside the ghost box, but he used his powers to toss it into her. The box was destroyed, and Dr. Roqueni was hurt really bad. She whistled for help.”

  “We heard,” Cordelia said.

  “Mr. Ward carried her out of the school,” Benji said. “He told me to stay with her while he went back inside to get you guys, but I ran off before he could stop me. It doesn’t make sense for him to go. I’m the one who can see the ghosts.”

  “That was really brave,” Cordelia said.

  Benji shrugged like it was nothing, but even in the dim light she could see the blush creeping along his neck.

  “We’re not out of it yet,” Benji said as they approached another corner. “We still need to get downstairs. Geist is guarding the main stairs, and the one with the slicked-back hair—”

  “Whistler,” Cordelia said.

  “—he’s standing in front of the west stairwell. They know you’re up here. They’re just waiting for you to come down.”

  Cordelia decided that Agnes had been correct about Lenny’s fourth strike against the garbage can—it had been a signal that there were intruders in the school. The other two ghost snatchers had immediately done a search and found Dr. Roqueni.

  “So where to, then?” Agnes asked. “East stairwell?”

  Benji shook his head.

  “That’ll take us too close to Geist. I have a better idea.”

  They raced through the school, using every shortcut that Benji and Cordelia had discovered during their months helping the ghosts, until they reached room 235.

  “Mr. Blender’s room,” Agnes said with a smile. “Perfect.”

  Hundreds of eyes watched them enter. Mr. Blender, a colorful old man who favored vests and musical ties, had an unusual tradition: at the end of each year he painted life-size portraits of his students directly onto the walls. After twenty years of teaching, nearly every inch of white space had been covered, making the room feel like a haunted amphitheater.

  “This is one of my favorite rooms during the day,” Cordelia said, looking around uneasily. She wasn’t sure what kind of paint Mr. Blender had used, but the eyes of his former students seemed to glow in the dark. “Can’t say I care for it much at night.”

  “We’re just passing through,” Benji said, kneeling down next to the second unique feature of room 235: a trapdoor that led to the library. Mr. Blender had painted a swirling portal on it and the fanciful phrase GATEWAY TO OTHER WORLDS.

  “Let’s climb down fast and make a run for it,” Benji said. “Don’t use the main entrance—Geist will definitely see us. Head left, toward the door that leads to the parking lot.”

  “Students aren’t allowed to use that door,” Agnes said.

  Cordelia and Benji stared at her in disbelief.

  “Sorry,” Agnes said.

  “Here we go,” said Benji, gripping the handle with both hands.

  He lifted the trapdoor, and Cordelia peered down into the darkness. A man wearing dark goggles was standing at the bottom of the ladder. He looked up at her and grinned. Cordelia caught a flash of movement as Benji reached for something in his pocket, then the man below her began to whistle. It was a different tune from the one Cordelia had heard the first time she saw him. The music wrapped itself around her, squeezing the tension from her muscles and soothing all her worries. Cordelia knew she should run, especially when she saw Whistler climb the first few rungs of the ladder, but moving required a huge amount of energy that she no longer possessed.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw that Benji and Agnes were frozen as well.

  Move, Cordelia! she told herself, watching the ghost snatcher’s approach with growing unease. He continued to whistle. It seemed like he could do it all day. Climbing the ladder, on the other hand, was serious work, so Whistler abandoned the rungs and floated skyward like an astronaut in zero gravity. He landed gracefully on the classroom floor and patted down his gelled hair in order to make sure it was perfect. For a moment he was confused—there were kids everywhere, even in the walls!—but then his eyes settled on the three children in front of him. He inspected each one of them from top to bottom, then repeated the process a second time. He began to whistle a different tune. It sounded like something you might hear during the final question of a quiz show—a soundtrack for difficult decisions.

  Finally, he stopped before Agnes and waved his hand in front of her face. When she didn’t react, he gave Cordelia a big wink and held his hands to Agnes’s cheeks.

  She instantly began to shiver.

  Get off her! Cordelia tried to scream, but she couldn’t move her lips. She remembered the times that ghosts had brushed against her in the past, the coldness that numbed her body for hours afterward. And that had only been a passing touch, Cordelia thought. What if they never let go?

  Agnes’s lips began to turn blue.

  We don’t have much time, Cordelia thought, her racing heart pounding against its useless cage. She shifted her eyes to the left and saw that Benji had somehow managed to lift his hand all the way to his mouth. Cordelia was glad to see him defy the ghost snatcher, but she didn’t see how touching his mouth could possibly help.

  Then she saw the whistle in his hand.

  Benji blew it. The shrill sound was deafening in the small room, overpowering Whistler’s song. Cordelia felt her power of movement return. She quickly grabbed Agnes, who was freezing cold to the touch, and helped her out of the room. Once she was safe, Cordelia returned to help Benji—just in time to see Whistler snatch the whistle from his mouth. The ghost reached out his other hand, no doubt planning to freeze Benji just as he had tried to do with Agnes—and then suddenly paused with a confused expression on his face.

  He looked down at the whistle.

  He doesn’t understand how he could possibly be holding it, Cordelia thought. Come to think about it, neither do I. His hand should have passed right through it. A shocking thought occurred to her. Unless . . .

  The ghost snatcher’s befuddled expression turned to one of ardent fascination. He raised the whistle closer to his eyes so he could drink in every detail. Cordelia used this opportunity to take Benji’s hand and lead him away. Whistler didn’t notice. For the time being, nothing else existed except the tiny piece of musical metal sitting in his hand.

  A red triangle appeared.

  Instead of hovering in the air like its black siblings, the triangle lay flat on the floor, gleaming like a poisonous candy apple. It slid open. Puffs of smoky darkness polluted the room. From deep within the bowels of the triangle, Cordelia heard factory sounds: the pump of pistons, rumble of heavy machinery, roar of a furna
ce.

  And screams. There were lots of screams.

  Whistler tossed away the Brightkey—or Darkkey, Cordelia thought—and tried to escape. The triangle slid along the floor, hunting him like a shark. The ghost snatcher made it to the other side of the room before taking a step into nothingness and falling through the portal.

  The triangle slammed shut and vanished.

  Agnes, still shivering, re-entered the room. Without a word, they took the ladder down to the library. No one wanted to discuss what they had just witnessed. There was one detail that Cordelia still didn’t understand, however.

  “How were you able to blow the whistle?” she asked Benji. “I couldn’t move at all.”

  “What?” he asked, not hearing her. “Oh!” He slipped off his earbuds. “I put these on the moment we saw Whistler. I wasn’t sure if he’d be able to affect the living like he did the ghosts, but better safe than sorry.”

  “Smart thinking,” Agnes said, blowing on her hands. “Now can we please get out of here? I want to lie underneath fifty blankets next to a roaring fireplace.”

  Their trip to the side door was surprisingly uneventful. Agnes went first into the warm May night, followed by Benji. Cordelia had just taken her first step across the threshold when she sensed a change in the air. She paused with her hand on the door and glanced over her shoulder. The boy was hovering at the end of the hallway. He kicked and waved his hands like a bad swimmer, trying to escape the invisible claws that held him in place.

  Geist, Cordelia thought. He’s using his powers on the boy. It’s a trap, obviously. Geist knows if I leave the school he won’t be able to hurt me anymore. So he’s giving me a reason to stay.

  The boy began to drift away, floating like a balloon into the deeper darkness at the end of the hall. In a few moments, Cordelia could no longer see him at all. Panic welled up in her chest.

  I can’t just abandon him! she thought. What choice do I have?

  “You okay, Cord?” Benji asked from the parking lot. “Why are you just standing there?”