The Smoky Corridor (2 page)

More laughs mingled with a few shouts of “No way, man!”

“Okay, is Tony LaGuarino here tonight?” Zack’s dad scanned the auditorium.

“Over here,” a gruff voice boomed.

“Come on up, Tony. I’ve got something for you.”

Zack’s dad pulled out an oversized bank check while a big man in a firefighter uniform lumbered up to the stage.

“Folks, as you know, every year, the Pettimore Trust donates a sizeable sum of money to the North Chester Volunteer Fire Department to help them teach fire safety in our schools. I remember, when I went to Pettimore Middle, we had a saying …”

“Don’t be a Donnelly!” a parent shouted.

“Don’t play with matches!” shouted another.

Zack’s dad laughed. “Well, Tony, to help you guys do
the great work you do, here’s ten thousand dollars for your education fund!”

The audience gave that a loud ovation.

Except for the two women seated directly behind Zack.

“Isn’t the Jennings boy the one who almost burned down his house?”

“Almost burned down the whole neighborhood, I heard.”

The first woman snorted. “Guess Mr. Jennings could use a little fire safety instruction in his own home.”

The second woman snicked her tongue. “I hear his son is worse than the two Donnelly boys combined. A real pyromaniac.”

“They’re not going to let him go to school here, are they?”

“I certainly hope not.”

Zack decided he needed to go to the bathroom.

Actually, he just needed to exit the auditorium.

Fast. Now. Immediately.

Head down, he worked his way out of his row.

“Excuse me,” he mumbled. “Need to find the bathroom. Sorry. ’Scuse me. Bathroom.”

He made his way up the aisle toward the swinging doors to the auditorium lobby. When he pushed through, he saw a pretty blond woman closing her purse.

“Hello, there,” she whispered with the softest hint of a drawl. “May I help you?”

“Uh, yes, ma’am. I need to find the bathroom?”

She pointed toward the doors that led from the lobby to a corridor. “Go out the doors and take a right. Go past the gymnasium, take a left, another right, and the bathrooms are right there.”

“Thanks.”

“To tell the truth, I had a hard time finding them myself. This school is like a twisty ol’ maze—especially since it’s my first year here and all.”

“Are you a teacher?” Zack asked.

The pretty lady smiled. “I sure am.”

Zack smiled back.

Hey, if this nice lady is one of my teachers
, he thought,
maybe school won’t be so bad here after all!

4

Pettimore Middle
School’s chief custodian, Wade Muggins, was putting in a little OT.

Overtime.

So while everybody else was all the way over on the other side of the so-called soccer green, having fun at Back to School Night in the auditorium, he was down in the cellar of the cafeteria, working late.

Earbuds stuffed in deep, he bopped into his office: the janitor’s closet, in the basement of the cafeteria. Actually, “janitor’s lounge” was more like it, because Wade had (without telling anyone) expanded the cramped room by busting through a wall to connect it to the root cellar of the old Pettimore mansion. He figured it might make a good rehearsal space for his rock band if he ever, you know, was in one. Nobody else knew about the root cellar. Heck, Wade only knew about it because one day, while nailing a Metallica poster to the back wall, he had accidentally swung his hammer too hard and bashed a humongous hole through the plasterboard wall.

To make certain no one ever found his secret underground Wade Cave, he had rigged up a swinging supply
rack—fitted with a false back that matched the wall—to act as his private doorway. With a spring-loaded latch, all Wade had to do was lean against the third shelf, and the steel rack (fake wall and all) swung open.

He was only working late the night before school officially started to show some of what the crabby assistant principal (and royal pain in the patootie), Mr. Carl D. Crumpler, called “initiative.” Wade found out from the school librarian that “initiative” meant taking charge before somebody else did. It meant stepping up to the plate and hitting a home run.

“We are under siege by an infestation of mice!” Mr. Crumpler had screamed at Wade that afternoon when a chunk of cheddar cheese had mysteriously disappeared from the faculty lounge.

It was Mr. Crumpler’s cheese.

The bald-headed stooge had taped his name on it.

“Show some initiative, Mr. Muggins! Get rid of these rodents!”

For sure. He’d show old chrome dome.

Wade dragged the canister he’d taken off his barbecue grill through the secret portal and into the root cellar room. Its dirt floor rambled back about twenty feet. The only cool things in the dank place were a couple of rock star posters he’d duct taped to the walls and one of Horace P. Pettimore, who looked like he could’ve been a rocker. He even had the fancy soldier coat.

Wade lugged the white tank back to the spot where, earlier, he had heard mice scratching against stone.

“I’m comin’ to getcha!” Wade screeched at the wall.

Then he’d pumped his fist and diddled out an air-guitar riff that would’ve sounded totally awesome if, you know, he’d had a real guitar and known how to play it.

There was a tiny arched hole where the fieldstone wall met the dirt floor. It looked like the entrance to a tunnel on a model-train set. Wade worked the rubber hose snaking off the gas tank into the hole.

“Time for beddy-bye, dudes!”

He twisted the valve and propane hissed through the nozzle.

Wade waited.

Ten minutes later, nothing had happened.

No mice came stumbling out of the hole, gasping for air so Wade could bop them on the head with a rubber mallet like the cats always did in cartoons.

So he figured he’d go ahead and smoke a quick cigarette.

He lit up his cancer stick and flicked the still-flaming match to the floor.

That was when the wall exploded.

5

Zack realized
he must’ve taken a wrong turn.

In his search for the bathroom, which he really needed to use now, he had ambled up all sorts of twisty, windy hallways, some of which were modern, some old, some ancient. His new school was a dozen or more buildings all linked together by cinder block corridors lined with lockers.

He took another turn, opened a wooden door with a frosted glass panel, and found himself in an extremely narrow corridor, maybe six feet wide. The only light was the faint red glow of an exit sign reflecting off the mottled glass in the door at the far end of the hallway.

Zack could also see a classroom door on the left-hand wall and two doors close together on the right. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he noticed signs jutting out above the double doors: Boys, Girls.

Yes!

He had (finally) found a bathroom.

He hurried up the hallway and smelled smoke—like the wet lining of a chimney when rain trickles down it in the summer.

Then he heard a soft
boom
.

Felt the whole floor shimmy and shake.

It was pretty chilly for the first day of September, so Zack figured it was just the furnace kicking in downstairs. Nothing more. Nothing to be afraid of.

As he neared the boys’ room, he could read another sign, the one hanging over the door at the far end of the hall, which was bloodred, thanks to the nearby exit sign. It said “Wood Shop.”

Great.

This was
the
smoky corridor—the place where the two boys and their teacher had died.

Zack decided he really didn’t need to use the bathroom after all.

He turned around and headed back the way he’d come.

He passed a porcelain drinking fountain with a steady
drip-drip-drip
.

Then he suddenly froze, because, once again, he could sense someone staring at him from behind, making him feel like he needed to defrost his neck.

Could it be the ghost of his dead mother?

That would explain the smoky smell.

His real mother had smoked so many cigarettes she’d caught cancer and died. But before she died, she summoned Zack to the railing of the hospital bed they had set up in the living room of their New York City apartment, and croaked at him, “You’re the reason I smoked so much!”

“Psst!” whispered a voice behind him. “Got a match, sport?”

Zack spun around.

“How about a lighter, pal?”

It wasn’t his dead mother.

6

The Donnelly
brothers.

They had to be. One was ten, the other maybe twelve. Both were dead. Zack could tell.

Hey, he’d seen a lot of ghosts in the past three months.

Both boys had sad and sunken faces. Both were wearing tweed suit coats and ruffled bow ties. Their heavy wool pants only went down to their knees, where long, thick socks took over.

“Didn’t you hear my brother’s question?” asked the younger one, his voice raw and scratchy.

“You got any fire sticks on ya, pal?” asked the older one, stepping forward and shoving his little brother aside. He folded his arms across his chest and glared at Zack.

Zack coughed a little. The corridor was filled with a smoky haze.

So how did the hall become hazy all of a sudden?
Zack wondered.
Is it fog rolling in from the river?

Or had the Donnelly brothers brought the smoke from their deadly fire back with them from the grave?

And what about the heroic teacher who had died trying to rescue the two boys? Where was his ghost?

“Are you guys Joseph and Seth?” he asked. “The Donnelly brothers?”

The two ghosts nodded.

“I’m Johnny Appleseed,” said the younger brother. “We need a Kit Carson.”

“You ready to join up, Zack?” asked the older, tougher brother—who sort of reminded Zack of all the bullies he’d met in
20
10. “Or are you some kind of lily-livered sissy boy?”

“We’ll have a ton of fun, Zack!” wheezed the younger.

Zack didn’t ask the ghosts how they knew his name. They just sometimes did.

“Why are you two still here?” he asked. “Why haven’t you moved on from this place?”

“We’re sons of Daniel Boone, boy-o,” said the older brother. “This is our fort. We can’t desert our post because we’re not chicken like you!”

“But what about the teacher? The one who died trying to save you?”

The two boys smiled creepily as they recited a song that must’ve been around even in 1910.

Mine eyes have seen the glory
Of the burning of the school
We have tortured every teacher
We have broken every rule
We have marched down to the principal
To tell him he’s a fool
The school is burning down
.

The Donnelly brothers took one step forward. Zack took one step back.

“Well,” he sputtered, “I, uh, gotta go.…”

Glory, glory, hallelujah
Teacher hit us with a ruler
Then he shot us in the head
To make certain we was dead
And we ain’t gonna say no more, no more
.

The two boys slowly vanished. So did all the smoke and the sooty smells.

Zack heard the wooden door swing open behind him.

“What in blazes do you think you are doing back here, young man?”

7

Wade Muggins
was sitting on his butt in the spot where he’d landed when the wall had blown open.

Fortunately, there was no fire. Just the explosion.

And a jumble of tumbled stones.

“Far out,” he muttered.

Wade had totally blown a jagged opening about four feet wide through the ancient block and mortar wall.

And off in a crooked corner, he saw one itty-bitty, teeny-weeny gray mouse.

It was chowing down on a chunk of cheddar cheese that had Assistant Principal Carl D. Crumpler’s name written all over it.

8

“What’s your
name, young man?” the bald man snapped at Zack.

“Zack. Zack Jennings.”

“Jennings?”

“Yes, sir. I’m a new student.”

“Did I ask you anything about your enrollment status?”

“No, sir.”

“I didn’t think so.”

The man had to be a teacher. He had pens and note cards stuffed in the pocket of his short-sleeved shirt. He wore old-fashioned aviator glasses, a striped tie, and a very mean look.

“You’re a Jennings, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

The bald teacher, who wore his belt above his belly button, put his hands on his hips to give Zack an even sterner look.

“Any relation to George Jennings?”

“Yes, sir. He’s my father.”

“Humph. Figures. What, pray tell, are you doing back here in the dark?”

“I, um, got lost. Trying to find a bathroom.”

“Is that so? And what do you call that room located directly behind you?”

“It’s a bathroom.”

“Really? I thought you said you couldn’t find it?”

“Well, I did … eventually.…”

“So you were lying when you said you couldn’t find the bathroom, since you obviously did!”

“Well, yeah—now I did.”

“Was that lip?”

“Excuse me?”

“Were you giving me lip? Back talk? Sauce?”

“No, sir, I’m just saying …”

“Oh, I see. You’re a smooth talker. Just like your father. Well, listen to me, buddy boy, and listen good: I will not tolerate any of your shenanigans. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.…”

“Hello, Mr. Crumpler.”

It was the pretty teacher from the auditorium. She flicked on a light switch and suddenly the cramped corridor wasn’t so dark anymore.

“Excuse me, young lady, who gave you permission to activate that light switch?”