The Smoky Corridor

by Chris Grabenstein

  “You do a good job,” Seth told his zombie, “and I’ll let you go upstairs for some real tasty treats.”

  “Yep,” added Joseph, “all the kid brains you can eat! A whole school of ’em.”

  The zombie drooled.

  “But you don’t get nothin’ but dried-up old carcasses and bones until we get us our revenge! Tell him, Seth!”

  “You heard my brother?”

  “Yes, master.”

  “Good,” said Joseph. “Now, any Son of Daniel Boone will tell you, when setting a bear trap, the first thing you need to do is make sure it doesn’t look like a trap to the bear!”

  “Open that door for us,” said Seth, indicating the heavy wooden door below the angled smokestack pipe.

  The zombie opened the door and stepped into a small room, six feet wide, twelve feet long. The door on the far end was closed.

  “That’s it! You still got those fire sticks?”

  The zombie pulled the box of matches out of his tattered trousers.

  “Let’s get this show on the road!” shouted Joseph.

  The Donnelly brothers’ simple trap was set.

  Now all they needed was one grown-up dumb enough to stumble into it.

  The way they’d been dumb enough to trust that murdering liar Mr. Cooper.

  57

  Zack and Malik got off the bus in a tidy cluster of modest homes.

  “I should warn you, Zack,” said Malik as they headed up the sidewalk. “My mother is currently confined to a wheelchair.”

  “Was she in an accident?”

  “No. She has diabetic nephropathy. A progressive kidney disease.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Malik forced his smile to widen. “She remains in good spirits. She is not a giver-upper. However, the doctors say she needs dialysis.”

  They climbed the steps to the front porch. Zack noticed a gap in the porch railings and a ramp made of pressure-treated lumber.

  Malik swung open the door.

  “Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad! This is my friend from school I told you about, Zack Jennings.”

  “Hello,” said Zack timidly.

  Malik’s mom had a peaceful glow as she sat smiling in what appeared to be a secondhand wheelchair.

  His father looked super-serious and sad, his hair speckled with gray.

  “Well, it’s nice to finally meet you, Zack,” said Mrs. Sherman.

  “Zack and I are working on a project!” Malik announced.

  “For school?” his mom asked enthusiastically.

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “Well, isn’t that wonderful?”

  “Oh, this weekend,” said Malik, “we’re planning a history field trip to the Civil War cemetery!”

  His father sighed. “What day?”

  “Saturday.”

  “This going to become a regular thing, Son? School on the weekend?”

  “I’m going, too,” said Zack. “My folks can drive us.”

  “Can you stay for dinner tonight, Zack?”

  “Maybe next week, Mom,” said Malik. “I promised Zack that I’d have dinner at his house tonight. We were just going to grab a couple of my books first.”

  “This weekend activity going to help you get a scholarship, Son?” Malik’s father asked, his eyes weary.

  “I hope so, sir.”

  “Good! Because you’re too smart to end up like me. You go to college. Become a doctor. Get a job they can’t ever take away from you. You hear me, Malik?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Feeling nearly as sad as Mr. Sherman sounded, Zack followed Malik up the staircase and into Malik’s bedroom.

  When the door closed, Malik held back the tears he clearly didn’t want Zack to see.

  “My dad lost his job six months ago,” he said bravely. “That’s why he’s home now. Why we can’t afford the dialysis. Not yet, anyway.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Zack.

  “Don’t worry. We’re not giver-uppers. None of us.”

  58

  Fifteen minutes later, Zack, Malik, and Zipper were upstairs in Zack’s bedroom.

  Zipper hopped up to the computer desk by way of Zack’s swivel chair so he could take the best angle to lick Malik’s face.

  “He does this every time I come over here!” Malik laughed as Zipper’s tongue slurped across his face.

  “Okay, Zip,” said Zack as he sat in his chair and pulled over a second one for Malik. “Off!”

  Zipper bounded to the ground, making sure he was close enough to Malik’s legs for the visitor to scratch him behind his ears.

  “Shall we get cracking?” said Malik.

  “Sure.”

  Malik spread out the rubbing he had made off the stone.

  “Yes,” said Malik, studying the sharply angled figures in the cryptogram. “Definitely a pigpen cipher.”

  “How’s it work?” asked Zack.

  “First, you make a tic-tac-toe grid and an X.”

  Malik found a blank sheet of paper. Plucked a marker out of a cup. Drew the grid and the X.

  “Next,” he said, “fill in each space with two letters.”

  “The letters in each space are represented by the angled shape around them. The first is just the shape. For instance, an A would look like this.” And he drew:

  “The second letter gets the same shape but with an added dot. Therefore, B would be—”

  See? Likewise, S and T would be—”

  “Wow,” marveled Zack. “It’s simple.”

  “Sure. Once you know the secret.”

  “So what does it say?”

  Malik handed Zack the marker. “You tell me!”

  “Okay.”

  First Zack looked at the rubbing of the coded message.

  His eyes bounced back and forth between the paper he was writing on and Malik’s code key. He spelled out the first line:

  A ZOMBIE GUARDS MY TREASURE WELL

  Uh-oh, the zombie.

  “Treasure!” said Malik. “Awesome.”

  Okay. Zack understood why Malik might be more interested in that part. Then again, he hadn’t been the one talking with Davy and Mr. Willoughby.

  “Of course,” Malik continued, “whoever wrote it was most likely attempting to scare off any would-be treasure hunters. There are no such things as zombies in real life.”

  Zack just sort of nodded.

  “It works quite nicely with the second line,” Malik noted. “Interesting.”

  “What?”

  “The ‘turn back now’ phrase suggests the stone we uncovered is situated close to the entry point for finding the treasure.”

  “The hole in the wall?”

  “Precisely! Do the next bit, Zack.”

  “Okay.”

  Zack translated and then he and Malik read the entire inscription:

  A ZOMBIE GUARDS MY TREASURE WELL

  TURN BACK NOW OR DESCEND INTO HELL

  NEXT STAND WATCH LIKE A SAILOR SHOULD

  AND YOUR PROSPECTS SHALL BE VERY GOOD

  “Well, that makes no sense,” said Zack.

  “Yes, it does,” said Malik.

  “What does it mean? ‘Stand watch like a sailor should’?”

  “It means one must look at the world as Captain Pettimore would have—if you want to find all his gold!”

  59

  Zack and Malik agreed to keep their discovery of the stone double-triple super secret—especially since the decoded warning had the word “treasure” in it.

  “The thought of treasure and untold riches can drive people mad,” said Malik, “make them do things they’d never think of doing.”

  “Yeah,” said Zack. “Like eat bugs on TV.”

  Friday morning, Zack and Malik noticed that Azalea seemed extremely sad when she climbed aboard the school bus.

  “Everything okay?” Zack asked.

  She glared at him. “Not really. But then, we all can’t have the perfectly happy little home like you do, with your live-in dad, your famous stepmom, and your
stupid dog, can we, Zack?”

  Oh-kay. That was not the answer he’d expected. But Zack didn’t say anything in reply. Neither did Malik.

  Azalea stormed to the back of the bus and fiddled with her cell phone. She kept staring at the screen and, when she thought no one was looking, wiping her eyes.

  Zack realized he was pretty lucky. Ever since Judy Magruder had come into his life, most of the sadness had gone out. The same couldn’t be said for his two new friends. Malik’s dad was out of work, his mom sick. Azalea looked like she’d just gotten some really bad news.

  Uh-oh.

  Her dad was in the army.

  Soldiers sometimes got killed.

  Maybe that was what her guardian ghost, Mary Jane Hopkins, had meant when she’d said, “She’s in grave danger.”

  In danger of losing her father.

  Between first and second periods, exploring a new shortcut, Zack heard piano music coming out of a classroom. It sounded so haunting he figured one of the guardian ghosts had learned to manipulate piano keys. So he followed the music to an empty classroom, where Azalea sat at a piano.

  She saw Zack and immediately slammed the keyboard cover shut.

  “What are you doing here?” she snapped at him.

  “Nothing. I just heard the music. What was it?”

  “Nothing. A song I made up.”

  “Really? Wow! That’s incredible!”

  “Yeah, right. Look, Zack, if you tell anybody …”

  “I won’t. I promise.” He moved closer to the piano. “So, what’s going on?”

  “Huh?”

  “Well, you’ve been acting kind of weird.…”

  “Weird is what I do, Zack.”

  “I mean weird weird. What happened?”

  She pried up the keyboard cover. Plunked a couple of sour notes.

  “Oh, nothing. Just my dad almost got killed. Again.”

  “How?”

  “A bullet. It killed his best buddy. Six inches to the left, it would’ve killed him.”

  “But he’s okay?”

  “Yeah. Well, this morning he’s okay. Tonight, who knows? I don’t want to lose my father, okay? I hardly even know the guy, he’s gone so much.”

  Zack wondered if her dad’s being in the army was why Azalea was so obsessed with death.

  “It could happen any day, any second,” she said softly.

  Zack sat down. He could tell that Azalea needed to talk.

  “I guess it’s why I do the stupid Bloody Mary bit and visit graveyards and try to look like a vampire or a ghost. I want to believe in life after death, Zack.”

  He nodded.

  “I want to believe that if … if the worst happens … that, I dunno, that somehow I could still maybe talk to my dad … tell him stuff. Crazy, huh?”

  Zack thought long and hard before he spoke.

  “You could,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Your father’s spirit won’t die with his body.”

  “Right. Like you know.”

  “Azalea, I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anybody, except my stepmom.” He took a deep breath. “I see ghosts.”

  Azalea’s raccoon eyes opened superwide.

  “It’s true. Honest. It started over the summer. Now, everywhere I look, I see them.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, if they’re there. This room is empty. Although at first I thought there might be one in here, a ghost who taught himself how to play the piano.…”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I didn’t ask to be a ghost seer. It just sort of happened.”

  Azalea nodded. Very slowly.

  “Yesterday, when I zoned out in the bathroom? I did see somebody in the mirror and her name, believe it or not, was Mary, but she wasn’t Bloody Mary.…”

  “Oh-kay. Thanks for sharing that with me, Zack. Good to know. Well, we better book. Don’t want to be late for class.”

  “Are you feeling better?”

  “Oh, I’m feeling fine, Zack. Just fine.” She backed away from the piano bench toward the door. “See you in history class.”

  The way Azalea bolted out of the music room, Zack wasn’t sure telling her the truth had been the smartest idea.

  60

  In history class, Ms. DuBois showed the class a picture of Horace P. Pettimore’s headstone.

  “This is his grave marker in the cemetery out back.”

  CAPTAIN HORACE PHINEAS PETTIMORE

  1825–1900

  ALL THAT I HAVE

  I LEAVE FOR HE

  WHO COMES AFTER ME

  “What does it mean?” asked Benny.

  “Well,” said Ms. DuBois, “the eye floating above the inscription means he was a member of a group called the Freemasons. What about the epigraph? The bit between the decorative lines? The actual words?”

  Zack did not raise his hand. He glanced at Malik. There was an anxious look on his friend’s face. Maybe a wild glint in his eye. Wild? Malik? Impossible. Maybe he had gas.

  But he was breathing kind of fast and sweating, too.

  Then he started writing. Dots and dashes.

  “I think,” said Andrew Oldewurtel, a boy who always sat in the second row, behind Azalea, “that Mr. Pettimore is, like, you know, talking about how generous he was and how he left everything he had to us, the children who would, like, come after him, and how everything he did …”

  While Andrew kept prattling, Malik kept writing.

  Now letters under the dots and dashes.

  “Interesting, Andrew,” said Ms. DuBois. “Anyone else?”

  “Well,” said Sam Maroon, a guy whose guardian ghost used to play football back in the days when they didn’t wear helmets, “I think …”

  Zack didn’t pay attention to what Sam Maroon thought.

  While Ms. DuBois was looking the other way, Malik handed him a slip of paper.

  “Those aren’t ‘decorative lines,’” Malik whispered. “It’s Morse code. Think like a sailor! Like Captain Pettimore!”

  Zack studied what Malik had written, ran the eraser end of his pencil along the line:

  Zack realized that on the headstone, the lines above and below the letters were exactly the same.

  He didn’t know Morse code but Malik, of course, did. In fact, he had it memorized, and this is what both lines said:

  Find the second stone

  Zack folded up the note so nobody else could see it.

  Malik was beaming.

  They had found the “second stone,” the doormat for the secret entrance to Horace Pettimore’s treasure tunnel, the hiding place for his gold! That was why there was a huge hole in the foundation wall just above the stone! It was the gateway to riches.

  And, of course, zombie hell.

  61

  Azalea was staring at the clock.

  History class was almost over. They’d discussed Horace P. Pettimore’s grave marker to death and talked about doing a cemetery crawl in a couple of weeks. Everybody applauded when Ms. DuBois gave Azalea credit for coming up with the idea. That was neat.

  Then a couple of kids read their family tree reports out loud.

  It was Malik’s turn and it was cool to see how proud he was of the heroic ancestors he had discovered.

  “And my great-grandfather from Alabama was one of the Tuskegee Airmen in World War II.…”

  Finally, the bell rang.

  Lunch was next, so everybody bolted for the door.

  “I’ll catch up with you guys in the cafeteria,” Azalea said to Zack and Malik.

  “Cool,” said Zack.

  Azalea waited for Zack and Malik and everybody else to leave the room.

  Then she closed the door. Ms. DuBois looked up from her attendance book.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Azalea took in a deep breath, because this was so not like her. She’d never had friends before. She’d never had to worry about them as much as she worried about her dad.

  “Azalea?” Ms. D
uBois prompted.

  “Okay. Here’s the thing. I’m worried about Zack.”

  “Really? Whatever for?”

  “Ms. DuBois.” Another deep breath. Then she just blurted it out. “This morning, Zack told me he can see dead people.”

  “Really? Like that boy in the movie?”

  “I guess. He called himself a ghost seer. Claims he sees spirits everywhere. He even swears he actually saw Bloody Mary yesterday when we were goofing around in front of a bathroom mirror. Nobody ever sees Bloody Mary. They just freak themselves out because it’s dark and I have a candle.”

  “A ghost seer?”

  “That’s what he called himself.”

  “Oh, my. And he’s so young.…”

  “Yeah. That was kind of my reaction, too.”

  Ms. DuBois nodded. “All right. Two things. First, you are to be commended for looking out for your friends. We could all learn from your example.”

  “Thanks, I guess. I sort of feel like I’m ratting him out.”

  “Nonsense. You are right to be concerned. Second, that cemetery crawl you suggested …”

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s do a trial run tomorrow, but with a small group. Say, you, me, Malik, and Zack. Perhaps being in the graveyard, Zack will open up more about these spirits he thinks he sees and I’ll be there to help him sort things out. They might just be figments of his imagination. His language arts instructor tells me Zack has a very vivid one.”

  “Well, his stepmom writes books about talking cats who go on vacation to Paris and junk.”

  “You see? Maybe he gets it from her. Anyway, we’ll deal with it tomorrow. Will you tell Zack and Malik?”

  Azalea nodded.

  “Until then, don’t say a word about Zack’s ‘special problem’ to anyone else.” Ms. DuBois had a far-off look in her eye. “I might need to bring a colleague with me tomorrow.”

  “A child psychologist or something?”

  “No. Somebody else. Someone who’s quite familiar with psychics and mediums and that sort of thing.”

  “Great.”