The Smoky Corridor (22 page)

“Yes. The boy would never have been brave enough to crawl into that hole if he thought there might be a zombie at the other end waiting for him!”

“I’ll go in first,” said Eddie. “Grab a couple of those candles off the shelf.”

She did. Eddie lit them.

Daphne smiled. “Now let’s go get our gold!”

102

Daphne watched
Eddie slide down the chute.

When he hit the ground with a soft thump, Daphne crawled into the hole. She was all set to slide down to join her brother when she heard him scream.

“Leave me be!”

Next Daphne heard an angry roar and thrashing and Eddie shrieking.

“No! Stop!”

More howls and bellowing. The shredding of cloth. Snarls and rips and the crunching of bone and sloppy wet feeding sounds.

She blew out her candle.

Bracing her hands against the ceiling, her feet against the floor, she crept down the sharply inclined tube. She moved very slowly, very cautiously, the whole time serenaded by the sounds of someone greedily stuffing his face with food.

“Mmmm … good … brains …”

She reached the bottom. Crawled feetfirst into some kind of darkened cave.

Eddie’s black wax candle lay on the floor, still sputtering, still casting a faint glow—enough light for Daphne to see the most horrific thing she had ever seen in her life.

A lanky beast in a frayed Yankee soldier uniform scooping curdled gray matter out of her brother’s cracked-open skull and slurping it into his mouth.

103

Zack and
Malik kept moving forward.

The tunnels were chilly, dark, and quiet. The narrow passageways turned back on themselves at abrupt angles. Whenever the path split, they headed left—just like the pocket watches had told them to.

“Thanks again, Zack,” Malik whispered.

“For what?”

“Being my friend. Coming down to find me.”

“No problem.”

“You think that thing killed Kurt Snertz?”

“I hope not.”

They walked some more.

“If we actually find the gold,” said Malik, “I’ll split it with you!”

“That’s okay. You keep it. I just want to go home and play with Zip in the backyard!”

They kept walking.

Downhill.

Working their way deeper into the labyrinth.

The zombie’s lair.

104

The beast
was licking his spindly fingers.

It pained Daphne DuBois to see her brother this way. Torn asunder. His pants and legs lying in a heap to the left. His jacket and torso to the right.

His head hollowed out like a Halloween pumpkin.

But she had to press on.

For Edward Cooper DuBois.

For Patrick J. Cooper and John Lee Cooper! For every son of the Confederacy humiliated by the Union aggressors when the noble cause ran out of money because the scoundrel Horace P. Pettimore ran off with the shipment of English gold!

She saw Eddie’s revolver lying on the ground near the gnawed remains of his right arm.

The beast seemed momentarily satiated. Gorging on her brother’s meaty brain appeared to have made him drowsy.

She saw the creature’s bulging eyes disappear beneath their reptilian lids.

Very quietly, she reached down and took the pistol.

Then, turning away from the beast, she started trotting
quietly down a long, straight tunnel. After about fifty feet, she lit her own candle. Held it out in front of her.

Ahead she saw a wall full of pocket watches.

The straightaway ended. She had a choice. A staircase twenty feet to her right. A staircase twenty feet to her left.

She could not decide which way to go.

She needed help. A spirit guide!

“Colonel Cooper?” she whispered. “Can you hear me?”

There came no ghostly reply. Frustrated, she stomped her feet. “Grandfather!” she whined. “Tell me which way I should go!”

One hundred yards behind her, she heard the beastly thing bay. Heard him rumble like a dragon.

She probably shouldn’t have raised her voice like that.

A loud roar shook the rafters.

Daphne DuBois ran as fast as she could down the staircase on the left.

105

Judy saw
Zipper tear out the front door of the school.

“George! It’s Zip!”

“Hey, boy.” George knelt down.

The dog practically trampolined off the asphalt and into his arms.

And then he wouldn’t stop barking.

“Where’s Zack?” George asked.

Zipper barked more loudly.

“Is he in trouble?” asked Judy.

He gave a bark that sounded an awful lot like “Yes!” Followed by a series that sounded like “Hurry! Follow me!”

“Take us to him, Zip!”

Zipper flew back into the school.

Judy and George flew after him.

106

A slow-moving
car pulled into the driveway at the front of the school.

A young African American girl—about eight years old with caramel-colored skin, her hair piled up under a bright yellow head scarf, her cheeks freckled with dots of black paint—stepped out. She was carrying a small burlap sack.

“Wait for me here, Auntie,” she said. “I shan’t be long.”

The little girl marched toward the school, quietly singing a snatch of her favorite song.

My grandma see your grandpa sitting by the fire

My grandpa say to your grandma, gonna fix your chicken wire
.

Talkin’ ’bout, hey now, hey now. Iko, iko on day
.

A sly smile slid across her lips.

“Joc-a-mo-fee-no-ah-nah-nay,”
she mumbled.
“Joc-a-mo-fee-nah-nay.”

It was a ritual chant used in New Orleans by marchers
in Mardi Gras parades, a chant so old the words were no longer clear, but loosely translated, “Jockomo feena nay” meant, “Don’t mess with us.”

This little girl from New Orleans was nobody to mess with.

107

The ghost
of Horace Pettimore stared through Azalea Torres’s eyes at the mountain of shimmering gold bars stacked floor to ceiling in his hidden vault.

He propelled the girl’s body closer to the pile. Each bar weighed 12.4 kilograms. About 27 pounds. There were hundreds of them.

He had the girl grab a bar, hoist it off the pile, and load it into her backpack.

“Ummpfff …”

It strained her weak arms.

She would never be able to carry this treasure lode up to the surface and exchange it for money.

“McNulty!” he had her shout. “McNulty! Come here! I need you! I need you now!”

108

Daphne DuBois
was catching her breath in a small chamber with a strange drawing on the wall when she heard something even stranger: Azalea Torres shouting for somebody named McNulty.

“Come here! I need you! I need you now!”

Then she heard what sounded like horse hooves thundering down the corridor at the top of the stairs.

The zombie.

But he didn’t come down the left side! He must have gone right!

The slobbering beast who had devoured her brother was no longer pursuing her.

She forged on.

“I do this for all the Coopers who came this way before me,” she vowed under her breath.

And Eddie. Her little brother.

He would not die in vain!

109

McNulty scampered
down the steep staircase.

When he reached his killing pit, he took the tunnel to his left.

Followed it to where it would enter the steamship boiler room.

But the master was not in that room.

He was down below.

In the gold vault.

McNulty was too tall to fit inside the furnace cubbyhole and take the ladder down to the treasure chamber. He would need to find a different way to reach his master.

He followed the tunnel into the darkness.

His nostrils flared as he attempted to pick up the master’s scent.

It was no good. He kept running. Deeper. Downhill. Dark.

“McNulty!”

His master’s voice!

Behind an earthen wall.

It did not matter.

McNulty was strong. He ripped through the dirt and the rock and the mortar. The wall crumbled. Now he was in a tiny sealed room. Many glass jars lined the shelves.

“McNulty!”

The master was close. The other side of another wall. McNulty needed to break through. The next wall was thick. A vault wall. Cinder blocks. Bricks.

“McNulty!”

He saw a steel support pillar in the center of the room. Grunting, he hoisted it up out of the ground, taking out a chunk of the ceiling, sending dirt and debris showering all around him.

“McNulty!”

“Coming, master!”

He used the steel girder like a battering ram and slammed and slammed and slammed it against the treasure vault wall until the cement blocks broke free.

Through the hole in the wall, he saw his master, who was now a girl, standing in a chamber, surrounded by shimmering gold bricks.

“There you are, McNulty. What in blazes took you so long?”

110

Judy and
George followed Zipper to the janitor’s closet and the root cellar and the slide to the tunnel.

“I’ve never been down here before,” said George as he stood up and dusted off the seat of his pants.

“Me neither,” said Judy.

“This mine shaft cuts clear across the soccer field! No wonder a strip of snow always …”

“Always what?”

George had made the mistake of looking to his right.

Zipper whimpered.

“There’s … a body … body parts … strewn all over.… I think I’m gonna be sick.”

And he was.

111

Zack and
Malik rounded a bend and came into a room where the air smelled like a roaring fireplace at Christmastime.

They heard a chugging engine, its piston arm rocketing back and forth, steam hissing out its sides.

And then they saw the back of a man feeding firewood into a red-hot furnace.

“I think that’s the old janitor,” whispered Malik. “I think his name is Wade.”

“Wade?” Zack called out.

The man kept loading lumber into the firebox.

“Hey, is that the boiler for the school?” Zack asked. Then he tried to make a joke. “Boy, talk about your long commute …”

Now the man turned around. He wasn’t laughing.

He wasn’t all there, either.

His eyes were dull and glazed over. He moved with a staggered gait. The guy had to be the second zombie Mr. Willoughby had warned him about!

That was when the Donnelly brothers materialized.

“Well, hey there, sport,” said Joseph. “Long time no see. We don’t need to bum a match off you no more. Our zombie brought his own.”

The beast lurched forward a step.

“Stop!” said Seth.

The zombie froze.

“That’s right,” said Joseph. “You don’t get to eat your supper until we say so!”

“Leave these two boys alone,” added Seth.

“Yes, master.” The janitor zombie lowered his head and retreated two steps.

Zack felt Malik tugging at his sleeve.

“Zack?”

“Yeah?”

“What are you staring at?”

“The Donnelly brothers.”

“They’re dead.”

“Yeah. They know.”

Joseph Donnelly strode across the room. “Who’s your pal here, Zack?”

“Malik. I don’t think he can see ghosts.”

“Are they talking to you?” asked Malik.

“He can’t hear you, either.”

“You two come all the way down here looking for the treasure?” asked Joseph.

“Yes,” said Zack.

“What’d the dead boy ask you?” said Malik.

“He asked if we came for the gold.”

“We did! My mother needs some medicine real bad and …”

“Boo-hoo-hoo,” scoffed Joseph. “Malik’s trying to help his mommy. Well, guess what? We don’t have no mother—and no father, neither.”

Zack pointed toward a propped-open door at the far end of the room. “What’s through that door?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why is there a door on the other side?”

“Because.”

“Aw, cut it out, Joseph,” said Seth. “Malik is trying to help his mom.”

“Oh, you think because you have a zombie to boss around, you can boss me around, too?”

“No, I’m just saying we should let these two be. It’s the teacher we’re after!”

“Ms. DuBois?” said Zack.

That got both the brothers’ attention.

“She’s probably right behind us.”

“Glory, glory, hallelujah!” said Joseph, who now seemed anxious for Zack and Malik to be gone. “Boys, you just earned yourself a free pass. Proceed through that door. Walk through the little chamber and out the door at the other end. Go through it but—and this is the most important part—make sure you lock it. Lower the iron bar on the other side.”

“Why?” asked Zack.

“If you don’t, Seth here will sic his zombie on you.”

“That’s right. I will,” Seth said with a wink. He was
just pretending to be tough to keep his brother happy, but Zack could tell that the younger ghost was doing them a favor.

“Okay, we’ll lower the bar,” said Zack.

“If you don’t do like we told you, we’ll know,” said Joseph. “We can see through walls, boy-o. Heck, we can walk through ’em, too.”

“Any idea what’s on the other side of the second door?” Zack asked.

“Another tunnel,” said Seth. “But if you’re clever, it’ll take you down to the captain’s gold.”

“What’d they say?” asked Malik.

“We walk through that chamber, go out the door at the other end, lock the door behind us, and we’re on our way to the gold!”

“Yes!” said Malik.

“Hey, Zack?” said Seth. “If you find that gold, will you really give it to your friend’s mom?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Then hurry! The teacher will be here soon!”