The Smoky Corridor (19 page)

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 Cooper
DuBois?” 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 stood
in 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.

“Right,” he heard her say. “McNulty? It’s me! Your captain! I’m coming down.”

Malik waited another minute. Then he started breathing again. He stepped forward. Azalea was gone but Malik couldn’t tell which staircase she had chosen when she’d reached the split.

She’d called herself the captain.

Malik shone his flashlight on the wall of watches.

He remembered the final lines from the warning stone:
Next stand watch like a sailor should and your prospects shall be very good
.

“Stand watch like a sailor should.”

Clever. Even used the word “watch.” The old code was there to help him crack this new one.

It was definitely time to start thinking like a sailor again!

81

“Horace P
. Pettimore wrote a secret message on the cornerstone of the school building!” Zack said to Ms. DuBois.

“Of course! Excellent!”

She was walking so fast Zack and Zipper had to trot to keep up.

“But,” said Zack, “Colonel Cooper didn’t tell me which corner.”

His string of lies to Ms. DuBois was all part of his plan to stall the history teacher until … well, until he came up with a better plan!

Fortunately, Pettimore Middle School had been added on to so many times it had a billion corners. It might take hours to find the corner of the foundation where the Masons had laid the ceremonial stone.

“So,” Zack said, “why don’t you and Eddie search the north and south sides of the building? Azalea and I can check out the east and west …”

And I’ll run downstairs to rescue Malik!

“No need for us to split up, Zack,” said Ms. DuBois. “I found the cornerstone my first day on the job. I had a
hunch that since Captain Pettimore had been a Mason, he may have had his ‘brother Masons’ place a secret message there! This way!”

The wording on the cornerstone was brief and to the point:

MDCCCXCV
LAID BY THE MASONIC FRATERNITY
SO ALL MAY FIND THE KNOWLEDGE
WHICH THEY SEEK

“There you are!” Eddie came around the corner of the main building, tucking the long barrel of his pistol into his pants. “Sadly, I could not find Miss Torres.”

“No matter. We’ll deal with her later. Quickly, Mr. Jennings! Decode the inscription!”

“Well, uh … this might take a while.…”

“Nonsense. The ghost of Colonel Cooper told you precisely what to do!”

“Riiight. Okay. Well … uh … the trick is in the Roman numerals there.”

“Of course! MDCCCXCV! What does it mean?”

“Eighteen ninety-five.”

“We know that,” said Eddie. “What else?”

“Well … and this is what he told me … he said … um … each letter stands for a word …”

“Yes?” said Ms. DuBois eagerly.

“M … D … that could be ‘My Dog’ …”

Zipper barked.

“Or ‘Medical Doctor’ …”

“Didn’t Colonel Cooper tell you precisely what words the letters stood for?” demanded Ms. DuBois, who didn’t smell much like warm cinnamon rolls anymore. More like boiled cabbage.

“Yes, yes. He did. But you guys are screaming and hollering at me so much and you’ve got a pistol tucked into your pants so I’m kind of nervous and when I get nervous I forget stuff. Maybe we should go back to the graveyard and …”

Eddie raised his pistol. Cocked back the brass hammer. Pointed the slender steel barrel directly between Zack’s eyes.

“Would you like to start talking to ghosts the easy way, son?”

“No, sir.”

“Then tell us where to find the gold!”

Zack stared at the letters.

“Miles … Down … Connecticut … Country … Christmas …”

“There you guys are!”

Eddie quickly hid the pistol under his jacket.

It was Benny.

“We heard Zipper’s bark! Figured you guys were back here. What’s going on?”

Benny was with Andrew, Chuck, Alyssa, Harry, Jessie, Ryan, Amanda, Joseph Stockli, Laurel Jumper, Riley Mack, Marty Tappan, Rachel Curcio, Jenna Verrico, Sam
Maroon—the whole gang from the cafeteria. Three dozen kids with bicycles swarmed around Zack, Ms. DuBois, and Eddie.

“Hey, you’re the new janitor!” said Benny. “Was that like a pretend Civil War pistol or a real one you were pointing at Zack?”

“I don’t have a pistol.…”

“It’s in your coat,” said Rachel Curcio.

“Can we see the gun?” somebody else asked.

“My goodness,” said Ms. DuBois, all sugar cookie-ish again, “whatever are all you children doing here at school on a Saturday?”

“We came to see what cool stuff Zack was getting into,” said Benny. “Is this like a Civil War reenactment or something?”

Eddie laughed. “That’s right.” He pulled out his pistol. “And this here is a reproduction of a Colt Pietta, a Confederate army revolver from the 1860s.…”

“Coool!” The kids crowded closer.

“Zack and Mr., uh, Eddie, and I were working on a skit for history class!” said Ms. DuBois.

“Neat!”

“Can we touch the pistol?”

“Does it really work?”

And while Zack’s three dozen friends swamped their two captors, Zack and Zipper backed away, ever so quietly, around the corner.

After that, they ran!

82

“Yes!”

Kurt Snertz saw Zack Jennings and his stupid little dog come running around the side of the school.

No teachers. No janitors. No friends.

They were dead meat.

Jennings yanked open a side door and darted into the building.

Snertz jumped up. He was going in after him.

He’d find a toilet and finally give Jennings that swirly.

But first he’d break a few of the geek’s bones.

And drop-kick his dog up the hall!

Yes!

83

“Flip the
flue!” Seth Donnelly said to his zombie.

“Yes, master.”

His slave shoved the lever forward. A damper blocked one exhaust chimney and redirected the fumes to the second smokestack.

“Have him open the door!” shouted Joseph.

“Open the door to the smoke chamber!”

“Yes, master.” The zombie shuffled over to the door. Opened it.

The corridor beyond was filling with a curling gray cloud.

“By jingo,” cried Joseph. “It’ll work! Keep the fire raging but divert the smoke back up to the main stack! Hurry! Tell him. He only listens to you!”

So Seth passed on the next set of commands.

The zombie strode back to the furnace. Shoved some levers.

“And have him leave the door open on this end! Best to air out the corridor so the grown-ups we send in don’t suspect nothin’!”

“Joseph?”

“What, Seth?”

“I’m not your zombie. You can’t keep bossing me around, telling me what to tell him.”

“Who’s gonna stop me, boy-o? You?”

Seth thought about that for a second. Joseph had been telling him what to do for 110 years and sometimes Seth just wanted to tell his big brother to stick a plug in his piehole.

But Joseph was all the family Seth had ever known. Their father had died before Seth was born; his mother while giving birth to him. He so longed to be set free from this place, this school, to be reunited up in heaven with the parents he’d never met.

But he wouldn’t leave without Joe. Joe had looked out for him for 110 years. And Joe wouldn’t leave until somebody paid for what Mr. Cooper had done.

“Leave the door open!” Seth barked at the zombie. “Let the room air out. We’re gonna snag us a grown-up today!”

“We sure are, little brother. Why, I figure we might even trap us a pretty little teacher named Daphne DuBois, who just happens to be related to Mr. Patrick J. Cooper himself!”

“Hot diggity dog!” said Seth. “If we kill her, then we can surely rest in peace.”

“Maybe, little brother,” said Joseph. “Maybe.”

And while the zombie fiddled with gauges and stoked the firebox, Joseph started whistling, then singing again.

Glory, glory, hallelujah
Teacher hit me with a ruler
Shot her in the butt with a rotten coconut
And she ain’t gonna teach no more
.

84

“Can that
pistol blow stuff up?”

The boy named Benny kept asking Eddie the same silly question, over and over.

“Can it, like, shoot exploding fireballs and junk?”

Daphne DuBois kept smiling. Pretending to like these children, most of whom she knew from her nightmarish lunches in the cafeteria.

“All right, children,” she said, putting on the sickly sweet voice she had used to fool them all into thinking she could tolerate their company. “Time for everybody to go home. Isn’t that right, Zack? Tell your friends to go home. Zack?”

“He left,” said Chuck Buckingham, the boy Daphne DuBois wished would just go have a heart attack and die already.

She started blinking. Couldn’t control her twitching eyelids. “He left?”

“Yeah,” said Benny. “Maybe he went to get a musket or something. Maybe a cannon. A cannon could blow up all sorts of stuff!”

“Eddie? Inside. Now! Children? Go home! Or I swear on my dead uncle’s grave, I’ll flunk every stinking one of you!”