The Smoky Corridor

by Chris Grabenstein

  “Protect master!”

  When Zipper nipped at his ankles, the thing kicked the dog sideways, sending him skittering across the floor into the concrete slab holding up the broiling furnace.

  Zipper yelped.

  122

  Zack heard his dog yelp.

  And then what sounded like his father shouting: “Where’s my son?”

  And Judy: “Put me down!”

  His parents were in trouble—and somewhere close.

  He peered into the gold chamber. Saw a ladder bolted to the wall. It had to go back up to the furnace room. And since Malik and he couldn’t climb up the way they’d come down …

  “I’m going in,” he whispered to Malik.

  “Are you crazy? There’s a zombie in there with Azalea, who isn’t really Azalea right now!”

  “Don’t worry. I have his soul!”

  “What?”

  Zack didn’t answer. He climbed through the hole and into the room filled with gold.

  123

  “You!” Captain Pettimore snarled through Azalea. “You’re the boy I thought would be the one!”

  Zack’s eyebrows arched up. He had no idea what the man inside his friend was blabbing about.

  “Kill him, McNulty!”

  The giant flew across the room.

  Zack held up the glass jar.

  “Remember this?” he said to the beast.

  The zombie froze.

  “It’s your soul. It’s who you really are, not who Pettimore tells you to be!”

  Zack smashed the jar down hard against the stone floor.

  The zombie’s eyes opened wide.

  Golden light, like a squadron of fireflies, zoomed up from the shattered glass and smacked the zombie square in the chest. He recoiled in shock. Surprise and joy and sunshine filled his face as he drew in one long breath.

  “My name is Cyrus McNulty,” he said slowly. “I come from Indiana.”

  “That’s right,” said Zack. “Welcome home.”

  As McNulty smiled, his face seemed to bake—to dry out like mud in the sun. In an instant, it was crackled and brittle. In another, it crumpled into dust like it should have done back in 1864. The dead man’s empty rags drifted to the floor.

  McNulty was gone.

  “Come on!” Zack called to Malik as he ran to the ladder. “The other one’s upstairs and he doesn’t have a soul jar!”

  Malik raced across the room and followed Zack up the rungs.

  Azalea tried to chase after the two boys.

  But she had loaded her backpack down with too much gold and could barely move!

  124

  The zombie holding Judy and George let go of them and sank to the floor.

  Then he started quivering.

  “Dude,” he mumbled.

  It sounded like he was dreaming.

  125

  When Zack reached the top of the ladder, he was inside some kind of box.

  Malik was two rungs behind him.

  “You killed her!” he heard Judy cry.

  “That’s right.” Joseph Donnelly’s voice. “Just like her no-account relative Patrick J. Cooper killed us!”

  “The hero teacher?”

  “He weren’t no hero, lady! He put a bullet in our brains and set that fire. Tried to make it look like we were the ones who done it! He got his, though. The door to his classroom locked behind him. He couldn’t escape, neither. Died with us, went straight to hell. Me and Joe stuck around ’cause some new grown-up had to pay for what that greedy gold-grubbing teacher done to us!”

  Zack finally realized why Davy and Mr. Willoughby wouldn’t let him talk to any adults about what was going on underneath the school. They’d end up dead. The Donnellys would kill them.

  “We’re done now.” The voice of Seth.

  “No, we’re not! We’re gonna kill these two, too!”

  “No, we are not!”

  “Yes, we are!”

  “Malik?” Zack said in a quick whisper. “Stay in here. Keep your eye on Azalea.”

  “Okay.”

  Zack sprang out of the box, tumbled to the ground.

  The first thing he saw was Zipper lying on his side. Whimpering.

  Zack scrambled to his feet. Realized he had just crawled out of the furnace underneath the boiler in the same room where he and Malik had been before they went through the back door to the small room.

  “Zack!” shouted Judy and his father.

  “Where’s the zombie?”

  Judy pointed to a heap on the floor. “Out cold.”

  “We were told he’d lose his zombification,” said Seth, “if the one who bit him found his soul. Did you do that for Mr. McNulty, Zack?”

  “Yeah, Seth. I did.” He bent down to pet Zip, who thumped his tail. “Who hurt my dog?”

  “The zombie,” said Joseph. “It wasn’t us.”

  Zack was fuming. “But you guys told him to do it!”

  “Not really,” said Joseph. “Besides, the zombie only listens to Seth, not me. So if you’re gonna blame anybody—”

  And that was when Davy appeared. “All right,” he said to the Donnelly brothers. “You boys got your revenge. Ain’t no reason to haunt here no more. Time to move on.”

  “Thank you!” said Seth.

  “B-b-but …,” stammered Joseph.

  “Vamoose, Joseph. Daniel Boone hisself wants a word with you. Davy Crockett, too!”

  The Donnelly brothers disappeared.

  Davy moved closer to Zack.

  “I gotta go, pardner. Need to escort the Donnelly boys up to their tribunal. They’ll go easy on Seth.”

  “What about Joseph?”

  “Can’t rightly say. Folks upstairs will see that justice gets done.”

  Zack nodded.

  “You done good, Zack. Real good. We didn’t think nobody could go up against Horace P. Pettimore and his zombies. But, dang—you sure did!”

  “I finally figured out why you wouldn’t let me tell any adults about what was going on. Guess the rules are there for a reason.”

  “Sometimes,” Davy said with a wink. “Sometimes.”

  And then he vanished.

  Zack’s dad raised a hand. “Um, isn’t that the boy who used to …”

  Judy laughed. “Yes, honey.”

  “So he was a ghost, even then?”

  “Yep,” said Zack. “He sure was.”

  The fake furnace door swung open.

  “Zack?” said Malik.

  And then Azalea shoved him out of her way and crawled into the room.

  126

  “Thought you could come down here and steal my gold, did you?” said Azalea as she stumbled around the furnace chamber, her heavy backpack tilting her backward, throwing her off balance.

  “Azalea?” said Zack’s dad.

  “She’s not really herself right now,” said Zack. “She’s possessed by the spirit of Horace P. Pettimore.”

  “The Horace P. Pettimore?”

  “Yeah. His soul snuck inside Azalea so he could live again and retrieve his gold.”

  “It’s downstairs,” added Malik. “Tons of it.”

  “So,” said Judy, “do we need to find an exorcist or something?”

  “Cut the chin music, you gallinippers!” grumbled Azalea. “I’m not pulling up stakes without my gold!”

  “I don’t know what to do!” said Zack.

  A young girl stepped into the room.

  “Don’t worry, brother. I do.”

  She looked like she was maybe eight. She wore a yellow head scarf and had strange black markings painted on her caramel-colored cheeks.

  “Greetings, Cap’n Pettimore. We meet again, no?”

  Azalea stumbled backward in horror. “No! You?”

  “Yes, Cap’n. I remember the night you killed me. You thought you were oh so clever. Well, Cap’n, the teacher, she always know more than the pupil, no?”

  The girl pulled a glass jar out of a burlap sack.

  “Queen LaShee
na?” Azalea sputtered out the words.

  “Yes.” The little girl slowly twisted the lid on her jar and opened it. “My spy dog see your spy dog, no? For many years, I watch you and wait for you to make this mistake. I know all about the charm you bury in front of your mansion to lure your descendant to this place. I know everything. And so I wait for you to be foolish and greedy and put your soul inside a human body, where I can so easily snatch it.”

  “But … I have gold.…”

  “I have more.…”

  “Tell me what you want! I’ll give it to you!”

  “I only want the one thing, Cap’n.”

  “What?”

  “Your immortal soul!”

  She quickly chanted words Zack had never heard before. They were angry, short, and sharp.

  Then she slammed the lid on top of the jar and tightened it.

  Azalea slumped to the floor.

  “Is my friend your zombie now?” Zack asked.

  The little girl shook her head. “No. She will be fine. Tomorrow, she will not remember a thing. It will all be a bad dream. But Cap’n Pettimore? He is now a zombie of the soul. He belong to me for all eternity.”

  She held up the jar. Stared at the amber glow flickering inside.

  “Joc-a-mo-fee-no-ah-nah-nay,” she mumbled. “Don’t mess with me, Cap’n!”

  127

  That night, all sorts of people were clustered in the main entrance to the school, right below the portrait of Horace P. Pettimore.

  First came the police and paramedics, who took Azalea and the janitor Wade to the hospital, Ms. DuBois and her brother to the morgue. The first detectives on the scene had a theory that the brother and sister had died in a domestic dispute: They both wanted the gold, but they didn’t want to share it. So Ms. DuBois hired an attack dog, while her brother relit Captain Pettimore’s boiler and tricked his sister into going into the smoky chamber, where she suffocated when the door locked behind her.

  Zack’s dad, Judy, Malik, and Zack did not feel compelled to disagree with the detectives.

  While the police issued an all-points bulletin for a “giant attack dog,” Judy rushed Zipper to the closest animal hospital just to make sure that the zombie kick to his ribs hadn’t broken any bones.

  Zack’s dad used his cell phone to call Malik’s father, who came racing over to the school. While they waited for the police to finish their work and haul the gold up from the basement, Zack’s dad and Mr. Sherman talked about how proud they both were of their brave sons. After a while, Mr. Sherman told Zack’s dad all about how sick Malik’s mom was and how they didn’t have health insurance right then.

  That was when the assistant principal, Carl D. Crumpler, stormed into the building.

  “Jennings?” he screamed at Zack and his dad, who were standing in a corner with Malik and Mr. Sherman. “What goes on here?”

  Zack’s dad put his arm around Malik’s shoulders.

  “Well, Mr. Crumpler, my client, Malik Sherman—”

  “Your client?”

  “That’s right. He needs someone to help him manage his money.”

  “What?”

  “Mr. Sherman and Mr. Wade Muggins, a janitor here at the school, a man of great initiative, uncovered a coded stone left in the old root cellar by Horace P. Pettimore.”

  “What root cellar?” Mr. Crumpler had never looked more flustered.

  “Showing great courage and determination, the two of them found what has eluded so many for so long: Captain Pettimore’s stolen Confederate gold.”

  “Stolen?”

  “Well, I’m sure the statute of limitations has expired, and the aggrieved party, the Confederate States of America, no longer exists. Therefore, it will be the recommendation of the Pettimore Trust that some reward money be given to both Mr. Sherman and Mr. Muggins.…”

  “The boy and the janitor?”

  “That’s right. We also feel a donation should be made to the Fund for Extraordinary Young Girls in New Orleans.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, it was one of Captain Pettimore’s favorite charities. The bulk of the treasure will, of course, be transferred to the Pettimore Trust so we might continue doing the good works we know the captain would want us to do.”

  Zack nearly burst out laughing. That was the biggest fib of the night.

  “I don’t like this, Jennings. Something smells funny.”

  “Perhaps that’s sour milk you’re smelling, sir. Sour chocolate milk?”

  That shut Crumpler up.

  “Now, let’s go help them inventory the gold,” said Zack’s dad, leading the way to the cafeteria, where the bars were slowly being transferred from the treasure tunnels.

  While the adults streamed out of the main building, Zack turned to Malik.

  “Congratulations,” he said.

  “Wow! They’re really gonna give me a reward so I can help my mom?”

  “Sure sounds like it.”

  “Thanks, Zack!”

  “Hey, you earned it!”

  “So,” Malik whispered, “can you really see ghosts?”

  “Yeah. But don’t tell anybody, okay? My dad didn’t even know until today.”

  They knocked knuckles on it.

  “Hey, are there any ghosts in here now?”

  Zack looked around the room. Didn’t see anybody.

  Except … yes … stepping through the wall underneath the Pettimore portrait.

  “Just one.”

  “Really? Who is it?”

  “A young guy. He used to fly with the Tuskegee Airmen.”

  “My great-grandfather?”

  “Yep. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “He’s very proud of you, too!”

  I WOULD LIKE TO THANK …

  My fantastic wife, J.J., who got to spend her summer vacation watching me do rewrites.

  My dad, the late Thomas A. Grabenstein, who used to take us to Civil War battlefields in the 1960s and let my four brothers and me re-create entire battles in our heads.

  My mom, who just happens to be my biggest fan.

  My nephews Timothy John and Samuel Justus Grabenstein, for making sure their uncle’s stories aren’t boring.

  My agent, Eric Myers.

  Emily Pourciau, Lisa McClatchey, Nicole de las Heras, and everyone at Random House.

  Sarah Abercrombie from Greenwich Country Day School in Connecticut, who showed me around their incredible campus.

  The folks at JOE and Starbucks, who let me write in their coffee shops.

  All the Morkal-Williamses, who not only give me great early reader critiques but also let me turn their names into characters in my books.

  Rachel Curcio, Kate and Mary John, Nora Kaye, Rodman John Myers, Riley Mack, Anna Bloomfield True, Jemma Glenn Wixson, and all the kids, students, teachers, and librarians who help me write these stories and then tell all their friends to read ’em.

  Finally, Zipper would like to thank Fred, who helps me write the dog bits.

  CHRIS GRABENSTEIN’s first book for younger readers, The Crossroads, won both the Anthony Award and the Agatha Award, received a starred review in Booklist, and has garnered critical acclaim from readers of all ages.

  Chris was born in Buffalo, New York, and moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, when he was ten. After college, he moved to New York City with six suitcases and a typewriter to become an actor and writer. For five years, he did improvisational comedy in a Greenwich Village theater with some of the city’s funniest performers, including this one guy named Bruce Willis. Chris used to write TV and radio commercials and has written for the Muppets. He has also written several adult thrillers, including Tilt-a-Whirl, Mad Mouse, and Slay Ride.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2010 by Chris Grabenstein
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  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  www.randomhouse.com/kids

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Grabenstein, Chris.

  The smoky corridor / Chris Grabenstein. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Zack Jennings enlists his dog Zipper to try to find

  a lost Confederate treasure, but first they must deal with a

  brain-eating zombie that lives under Zack’s new school.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89600-2

  [1. Ghosts—Fiction. 2. Haunted places—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction.

  4. Family life—Connecticut—Fiction. 5. Connecticut—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.G7487 Smo 2010 [Fic]—dc22 2009050694

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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