Shadow School: Dehaunting

by J. A. White

  “Poor Agnes,” Cordelia said.

  “And poor us if she doesn’t come through,” Benji added.

  “You really think this new dehaunter will work?” Mr. Langan asked. “Because last time—”

  “Was a test, nothing more,” Mr. Derleth said. “We weren’t sure exactly what it was going to do. But this time around, Matheson is building exactly what we want. A dehaunter that will take us straight to freedom in our brand-new bodies.”

  There was a long round of applause. When it finally died down, Mr. Bruce raised a hand. “This might be nothing, but I saw Benji and Cordelia talking to each other,” he said. “They looked thick as thieves, like they were planning something.”

  Ms. Schwerin chortled. “I know they can see us, but they’re still just kids. What can they really do?”

  Ms. Dunsworth tapped Dr. Roqueni’s temple.

  “I’ve seen what they can do,” she said. “They defeated a powerful enemy last year who made the mistake of underestimating them. Let’s not fall into the same trap. I’ll assign a few guards to keep an eye on them at all times. And if we find that they’re poking their noses where they don’t belong”—her lips curled into a sinister grin—“Shadow School can always use another ghost or two.”

  “Yay!” exclaimed Ms. Meeker, clapping her hands.

  Ms. Dunsworth gave her a smile of approval before returning her gaze to the teachers at large. “That’s all I have for you today,” she said, “so I think it’s time to split into groups and get to—”

  “Excuse me,” said Ms. Jackson, raising her hand. “I have a question.”

  Ms. Dunsworth’s shoulders slumped. “Of course you do,” she said. “What is it this time?”

  “Does anyone else feel kind of bad about this? I mean, these bodies aren’t ours. We’re stealing them. And, sometimes, if I listen really carefully, I swear I can hear the woman inside me screaming. . . .”

  Cordelia saw a few teachers roll their eyes, like kids tired of hearing the same boring speech from their parents. But there were a good number who looked guilty as well.

  “I know it isn’t fair, what happened to us,” Ms. Jackson said. “No one wants to die. But that doesn’t make this right. These bodies belong to good people. They don’t deserve this.”

  The teachers waited for Ms. Dunsworth to reply. She smiled patiently and stuck her hand beneath the spout of a stone fountain. “You’re right,” Ms. Dunsworth said, watching in fascination as water flowed over her fingers. “They don’t deserve this. We do. The only way to truly appreciate sensation is to be deprived of it. These ‘good people,’ as you call them, take it all for granted, staring down at their phones when they should be treasuring every minute of their precious, fragile existence. Living is wasted on them. But not on us, my friends. We understand. We value.”

  The ghosts nodded their teacher masks in agreement.

  Ms. Jackson looked around at them, shaking her head. “But this is wrong,” she said. “Why don’t you understand?”

  “Enough,” Dr. Roqueni said. She nodded toward Mr. Bruce, who pushed the A/V cart toward the front of the conservatory. Cordelia could see the unbridled fear on the teachers’ faces as the cart went by. Several of the ghosts slipped out of their hosts for a moment, perhaps resisting the urge to flee, before regaining their composure.

  “I should have gone into my Bright when I had the chance,” Ms. Jackson said.

  “Too late now,” Ms. Dunsworth replied.

  She removed the black sheet from the cart, revealing the architectural model that Cordelia had knocked from its pedestal. There was an audible gasp of horror from the audience. The ghost inside Ms. Jackson leaped out of her body: a young woman with pigtails and hiking boots. Before she could float away, a few ghosts from the window floated over and grabbed her.

  Meanwhile, Ms. Jackson’s body slouched over, unoccupied, and an ambitious ghost seized the opportunity and possessed her. Obviously the ghost didn’t have much experience, because she could barely manage to maneuver Ms. Jackson to an empty seat. It was enough for now.

  “Put her hand on the roof,” Dr. Roqueni said, backing away in order to keep her distance from the house. “And make sure none of you are touching the trap yourself when it goes off.”

  The ghosts pinned the hiker’s hand to the roof while Mr. Derleth knelt next to the house and pressed the tiny doorbell. A bell tolled, its low knell reverberating throughout the conservatory, and a layer of the ghost transformed into dust and swept down the chimney. Faded now, mouth wide in a soundless scream, the hiker tried to jerk her hand away. Her captors held her fast. The bell tolled for a second time, and another layer vanished down the chimney, leaving a ghost that was barely visible at all.

  After the third toll, there was nothing left.

  Mr. Derleth replaced the black sheet, and Mr. Bruce pushed the cart out of the conservatory. Only then did Dr. Roqueni speak again.

  “I hope this serves as a reminder to all of you. I’ve given you a second chance at life. But I can take it away just as easily.” She offered them a frosty smile. “Now go out into this prison of ours and do your jobs. Learn. Practice. Recruit. We only have a few weeks before the new dehaunter is complete—the right dehaunter, this time. We must be ready. The world awaits.”

  17

  Reunion

  After they snuck out of the school, Benji’s dad drove them to Cordelia’s house. They would have gone to Benji’s house, but they needed to talk in private, and his sisters never left them alone.

  Cordelia’s mom was standing at the sink, rinsing off vegetables. “Benji,” she said. “It’s been a while.”

  Mrs. Liu liked Benji and usually took great pleasure in teasing Cordelia about him. But this time, there was something strained about her smile.

  “Hi, Mrs. Liu,” Benji said. “It’s nice to see you.”

  “You too. Actually, I was running some errands last week and I saw you through the window of the ice cream shop. You were with someone. I thought it might have been Cordelia at first, but it was actually some other girl. Long hair? Very pretty.”

  Benji swallowed nervously. “That was my friend Vivi.”

  Mrs. Liu wiped her hands on a dishtowel. “Vivi. What a lovely name.”

  “We have homework,” Cordelia said, dragging Benji away. They went down to the basement, where they usually hung out. It was little more than a couple of cheap sofas, an old TV, and a pile of board games—but it had played host to a lot of fun afternoons.

  “Why does your mom hate me now?” Benji asked, taking his usual seat.

  “Sorry,” Cordelia replied, pacing. “I’ve been bummed lately with everything that’s going on. And she has this stupid idea that me and you are like, a thing. So when she saw you with another girl . . . forget it. She’s just being a mom.”

  “She thinks I dumped you for Vivi?” Benji asked.

  Cordelia shook her head. “She knows we’re not dating. I wouldn’t hide that from her. She probably just thinks—I don’t know. You like Vivi better than me?”

  Cordelia hadn’t intended to phrase it in the form of a question, but there it was, lingering in the air like an unpopped bubble. She bit her lower lip, waiting for Benji’s response. He opened his mouth, as though he were about to say something, then closed it and shoved his hands into his pockets. “So this is crazy,” he said, plunking his feet on the coffee table. “With the ghosts.”

  Cordelia took a seat on the sofa across from him. “Where do we even start?” she asked.

  “Ms. Dunsworth. If we can figure out who she is, maybe we can figure out her Brightkey. I know she won’t take it. Not voluntarily. But maybe we can make her.”

  Cordelia nodded. “I thought of that too. So I tried googling her in the car. Dead end. We don’t know her first name, for one thing. And just because she’s a ghost doesn’t mean she was anyone special when she was alive—which was a really long time ago, by the way.”

  “Yeah, she said she was what? A hundred and fifty
years old? Something’s off about that. If she’s been hanging around Shadow School this entire time, why haven’t we seen her?”

  “I don’t know,” Cordelia said. The ghosts they rescued all wore relatively modern clothing from the time when they were alive. Someone wearing clothes from the nineteenth century would have stuck out like a sore thumb.

  But what if Ms. Dunsworth isn’t a normal ghost from Shadow School, Cordelia thought, retuning to a theory that had been bouncing around her head since they’d left the school. What if she’s a ghost from somewhere else?

  “The house I broke,” Cordelia said. “You saw what it did to the ghost possessing Ms. Jackson.”

  “Sucked her inside,” Benji said. “Which is a new level of crazy, by the way.”

  “It trapped her inside,” Cordelia said. “The house is like a mini Shadow School. A prison for ghosts. Which means it was like that before I broke it, too.”

  Benji sat forward, mouth agape. “You set Dunsworth free. Like a genie in a bottle. Except with possession instead of wishes.”

  “It fits,” Cordelia said. “Remember that journal Agnes showed us? Elijah got paid to get rid of the ghosts in those old houses. What if he didn’t use Brightkeys like we do? What if he trapped them instead, by sucking them into his little houses?”

  “That’s why we haven’t seen Dunsworth before this,” Benji said. “And why she’s so old.”

  Cordelia sank into the sofa and covered her face.

  “She would have stayed there forever if I hadn’t knocked the house over and set her free. Ugh! This is all my fault!”

  “Because you’re a klutz?”

  “Because I was mean,” Cordelia said. “If we had given that trick-or-treater her Brightkey from the start, I never would have backed into the house to begin with.”

  “Fine. It’s our fault. Stop being a blame hog. We got into this together. And we’re going to get out of it together.”

  Benji came over and sat next to her on the couch. For a moment, Cordelia thought he was going to put his arm around her. But instead he just sat there. That was nice too.

  “Thank you for being so sweet,” Cordelia said. “But this is different than anything we’ve ever faced before. This isn’t just saving ghosts. This is saving real live people.” She ran her hands through her hair. “I wish Agnes was here.”

  The basement door opened. Agnes appeared at the top of the stairs.

  “Wish for a million dollars!” Benji exclaimed, jumping from his seat. “Or pizza. Quick!”

  “Hey guys,” Agnes said. “Mind if I come down?”

  Cordelia blinked, wondering if she was imagining things.

  “Benji texted me,” Agnes continued as she took the first few steps. “He told me that you snuck into a faculty meeting. You saw the ghosts.”

  “That’s who you were texting in the car?” Cordelia asked Benji. “I thought it was Vivi!”

  “Actually, it was both of them,” Benji said. “Lightning thumbs!”

  “That was super dangerous,” Agnes said, nearing the bottom of the stairs now. “You could have been caught. But now that you know the truth, there didn’t seem much point in staying away anymore. I’m sorry I had to be mean to you. But if I wasn’t, they would have—”

  Cordelia wrapped her arms around Agnes and hugged her tight.

  Agnes giggled. “I should have baked brownies to celebrate,” she said.

  “We’ll make some later,” Cordelia said. “Together.”

  “And I’ll eat them,” Benji added, looping his long arms around the girls. “Go team.”

  Agnes and Cordelia spent a few more minutes tearfully apologizing to each other, while Benji found a tennis ball and kicked it around the room. Despite their current predicament, Cordelia couldn’t seem to stop smiling.

  We’re back together again, she thought. Everything is going to be okay.

  “Tell us your side of it,” Cordelia said, flopping her legs across Agnes’s lap. “From the beginning.”

  Agnes leaned over to tie Cordelia’s shoelace, which had come undone. After making a meticulous double knot, she began to talk.

  “Remember how you said Dr. Roqueni was acting strange after we tested out the dehaunter?” Agnes asked. “You were right. We thought the trial run was a success, because our main goal was getting the ghosts into their Brights. But to Dr. Roqueni—Ms. Dunsworth—it was a complete failure. She has no interest in a peaceful afterlife. She wants to leave the school in a fresh new body.”

  “But she can’t just walk out the door,” Cordelia said, remembering what she had learned at the meeting. “The rules that keep the ghosts from leaving the school still apply, even if they’re hiding in someone’s body.”

  “Exactly,” Agnes said. “Ms. Dunsworth was hoping that Elijah’s dehaunter would create a portal that allowed ghosts to escape Shadow School and enter the outside world. When she discovered that it took ghosts to their Brights instead, she changed to plan B. For that she needed me. Since I was able to finish the first dehaunter, she figured I’d be able to design a new one that did exactly what she wanted. But she knew she couldn’t just pretend to be Dr. Roqueni and ask me, ‘Hey—can you build a dehaunter that lets all the ghosts escape?’ I would definitely get suspicious. So instead she destroyed the old dehaunter and said that if I didn’t build them a new one”—Agnes’s eyes found Cordelia and Benji—“‘something bad’ would happen to you two. I didn’t have any choice. I had to help her.”

  “You definitely made the right choice,” Benji said. “I’m a big fan of bad things not happening to me.”

  “So it was Ms. Dunsworth who destroyed the dehaunter,” Cordelia said, stroking her chin. “Interesting. And not, you know, a particular person who might have been blamed for destroying the dehaunter. Not thinking of anyone in particular.”

  “Sorry,” Benji said.

  “Sorry,” Agnes said. “Ms. Dunsworth made me say you were the one who did it. She knows about us stopping the ghost snatchers last year and wanted to make sure we stayed out of the picture. She already had me under her control, and she figured if you and Benji stopped talking to each other our entire group would fall apart.” Agnes turned to Cordelia, blushing furiously. “That’s why I had to say all those mean things to you that morning. Ms. Dunsworth was in Dr. Roqueni’s body, watching. If I didn’t sell it . . .”

  “You were trying to protect us,” Cordelia said, giving her a hug. “I forgive you. But if the whole super genius thing doesn’t work out, I think Hollywood is calling your name.”

  “I was a pretty amazing pumpkin number two in my second-grade play,” Agnes said. “My mom still talks about it.”

  “Let’s get back to this new and unimproved dehaunter,” Benji said. “If this thing works, and the ghosts escape the school in our teachers’ bodies, what happens to our real teachers? Will the ghosts ever let them be . . . them again? Or is that it? Dr. Roqueni is Dunsworth forever?”

  “I don’t know,” Agnes said. “And even if the ghosts do leave the teachers—what’s to stop them from hopping into someone else’s body instead? Now that they know how to possess people, they’re way too dangerous.”

  “We can’t let them leave the school,” Cordelia said. “Period.”

  “No worries,” Benji said, leaning forward with his hands clasped together. “Knowing Agnes, she has some sort of brilliant plan up her sleeve. What is it? Have you been designing a fake dehaunter?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “I know!” Benji exclaimed, raising a finger in the air. “It’s a dehaunter that’s actually a ghost bomb that will blow them all up the moment you activate it!”

  “That’s not a thing.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Benji asked.

  Agnes looked nervously from Benji to Cordelia.

  “So what I’ve been doing,” she said, “is sort of, you know, designing exactly what Ms. Dunsworth wants. That’s the first part.”

  Cordelia and Benji waited.

  �
��I haven’t actually figured out the second part yet,” Agnes said quietly.

  “That’s okay,” Cordelia said. “We’ll work it out.”

  “You know what the worst part is?” Agnes asked. “I keep expecting Dr. Roqueni to help us. Every time I see her, my first inclination is, She’ll get us out of this! Then I remember that it isn’t Dr. Roqueni anymore. We’re on our own.”

  Cordelia planted a palm in her forehead, wondering why she hadn’t thought of it earlier.

  “What?” Benji asked.

  “I know someone who can help us,” she said. “But you’re not going to like it.”

  18

  Ms. Dunsworth’s Story

  That Saturday, Cordelia, Benji, and Agnes walked into Moose Scoops, Ludlow’s ice cream shop. It was about as empty as you would expect an ice cream shop to be during a December afternoon in New Hampshire. The teenager sitting behind the counter looked annoyed that his quality phone time was being interrupted by actual customers. His tag read: SAWYER. MY FAVORITE FLAVOR IS RUM RAISIN.

  “You picking up the birthday cake?” he asked.

  Cordelia shook her head.

  “You sure?” Sawyer asked. “Someone ordered a birthday cake. It says ‘Happy Birthday, Lisa.’ I wrote it myself.”

  “It’s not us,” Benji said. “We don’t even know any Lisas.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Agnes said. “I met a Lisa at science camp two years ago. Really nice girl. I thought we might become friends, but all she wanted to do was talk about butterflies. There’s only so much you can say about larvae and proboscises.” Agnes saw the eager look in Sawyer’s eyes and added, “It’s not my cake, though. I don’t even know when Butterfly Lisa’s birthday is.”

  Sawyer sighed dramatically. “Then why are you here?”

  “We’re meeting someone,” Cordelia said.

  It seemed rude not to order anything, so they each got a scoop of ice cream (cookies and cream for Benji, chocolate brownie with walnuts for Agnes, strawberry for Cordelia) and took a seat at the back table. Darius Shadow showed up a few minutes later. After a brief exchange in which he assured Sawyer that he was not there for a birthday cake, he made his way to their table, blowing into his hands for warmth.