The Smoky Corridor

  And a girl with extremely black hair. She was slumped in her seat and carving something into the denim cover of her three-ring binder with a ballpoint pen she held like a dagger. Zack had never seen anybody with such black black hair. Her fingernails were painted black, too.

  The girl must’ve sensed Zack staring at her, because she whirled around to stare back at him.

  Actually, to glare at him.

  While she glared, Zack noticed that her lipstick was also black and that her eyes had been circled with some kind of black gunk, which made her whole face look extremely raccoonish.

  The girl shot Zack a defiant “what are you looking at, dork?” look.

  Zack dropped his eyes down to his desk.

  “Do you know her?” Malik whispered from his seat next to Zack’s.

  Zack shook his head. “No.”

  “Me neither. She must be new, too.”

  On the TV, the principal was droning on.

  “It’s Mexican Fiesta Day in the cafeteria. Several clubs are scheduled to hold their first meetings of the year this afternoon. The Drama Club. The Chess Club. The Competitive Math Team …”

  Zack was totally zoning out. His eyes drifted to the window.

  Where he saw another ghost.

  Outside. In the parking lot. His legs inside the hood of a car.

  This one was mostly a wavering silhouette against the morning sun. All Zack could make out was the slender form of a tall man wearing a chauffeur’s cap.

  The ghost drifted forward with a slight tremor to the rigid swing of his arms. Zack could tell that the ghost was, or had been, an old man.

  He quickly glanced around the room.

  The teacher was still beaming up at Principal Smith on the TV screen.

  At the desks, most kids, Malik included, were obediently watching the monitor; others had their heads down, trying to catch a quick nap. Benny had a finger buried up his nose.

  Zack turned back to see if the ghost had disappeared.

  He hadn’t.

  He had marched right up to the window.

  Zack recognized the ghost immediately: Mr. Rodman Willoughby, wicked Gerda Spratling’s crotchety old chauffeur.

  That summer, Zack had saved Mr. Willoughby’s life.

  Looked like it hadn’t stuck.

  22

  After the bell finally rang, Zack headed into the hall.

  Mr. Willoughby was waiting for him right outside the door.

  “Hello, Zachary! I hate to trouble you, but might I have a moment of your time?”

  Of course nobody else saw or heard the dead chauffeur. They didn’t have Zack’s “special abilities.”

  “Do you have math next?” asked Malik, who had come out of homeroom right behind Zack.

  “Yeah.”

  “Me too!”

  “Cool.” Zack was still staring straight ahead—at the ghost of Mr. Willoughby, decked out in his chauffeur uniform and driver’s cap, standing in the hallway while kids changing classes swarmed all around him. One walked straight through him and started brushing at his face like he’d just walked through a sticky spiderweb.

  “Um, I need to get something out of my locker,” Zack said to Malik.

  “Better hurry. They only give us five minutes between classes. And it takes three minutes and twenty-six seconds to make it to Mrs. Alessio’s classroom.”

  “Yeah. Thanks. See you there.”

  Zack head-gestured to let Mr. Willoughby know which way to walk.

  “Ah! A walk and talk, eh? Splendid idea, Zachary.”

  Zack tucked his chin down into his neck so he could talk sideways without anybody noticing.

  “What happened?”

  “To me? Ah, yes. It seems I died. Heart attack, I believe. I’m a bit fuzzy about the particulars. One minute I’m enjoying my microwaved dinner, and the next I’m chatting with these wise beings in white robes. Anyway, as penance for my worldly misdeeds, the judges have suggested that I perform a stint of ‘community service’ and kindly offered me the opportunity to become your guardian ghost.”

  Zack knit his eyebrows. The less he said in this extremely weird conversation with someone nobody else could see, the better.

  “Ah,” said Mr. Willoughby, who had apparently learned how to read minds or facial expressions since he’d passed away, “an excellent question. I’m told the position is somewhat new here at this school. And why do you need a guardian? Well, as you might’ve heard from Davy Wilcox—who, by the way, put in a very kind word for me upstairs—a voodoo zombie has recently awoken in his nearby hidey-hole. I know this because, well, mine was the first corpse he feasted upon when waking.”

  Zack urped. Almost tossed his cookies.

  “Sorry,” said Mr. Willoughby.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Me too! Fortunately, being dead has one benefit: I didn’t feel a thing while the beast ripped me apart and gobbled down my brain.”

  This time when he urped, Zack had to put his hand over his mouth.

  “Again, my apologies,” said Mr. Willoughby. “Where was I?”

  “The zombie was eating your brain?”

  “Ah, yes! As my spirit lingered near my corpse, I heard the zombie’s master, a fiendish ghost of the worst order, state that he would soon be scouring this school for one very special child. Someone newly arrived. Fresh blood, he called it.”

  Zack stopped walking. “This is my first year at this school,” he said. “I’m fresh blood. Do you think the zombie’s master meant me?”

  “I most certainly do. Oh, by the way—not a word of this to your parents. I’m told it’s for their own protection.”

  “But …”

  “Fear not, Zachary. You will not need your parents. You have me!”

  Yeah, Zack wanted to say, that’s the scariest part of the whole deal.

  But he didn’t say it.

  Mr. Willoughby had just died.

  He didn’t want to make the poor guy feel even worse.

  23

  Zack hurried up the hallway—without Mr. Willoughby, thank goodness.

  He had thirty seconds to make it to Mrs. Alessio’s math class.

  He raced around a corner, pushed open a swinging door, took a left, and nearly bumped into Mr. Crumpler, the assistant principal, who was standing in the corridor, barking into a walkie-talkie.

  “Where is the janitor, Mrs. Pochinko?”

  “I don’t know!” a nasal voice shouted back.

  “Find him!”

  “I’m trying!” Mrs. Pochinko’s tinny voice whined out of the radio. “Mr. Muggins is not answering his radio.”

  “We have a serious vomitory situation in corridor twelve!”

  “I’ll keep trying to locate him, sir.”

  “Hurry! It won’t smell any better the longer it sits on the floor!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Zack glanced left and saw a queasy-looking girl holding her stomach.

  He wondered if the poor girl had just heard what zombies liked to eat for breakfast after they wake up from a twenty-year nap.

  Mr. Crumpler saw Zack staring at the girl and the lumpy puddle on the floor.

  He clipped his radio back to his belt and did that two-fingers-to-his-eyes, two-fingers-to-Zack thing again.

  Zack now had two old men keeping an eye on him: one living, the other dead.

  24

  Wade Muggins was totally glad he had grabbed the flashlight before crawling through the hole in the wall.

  Otherwise, he’d be stumbling around in the dark.

  First he slid down some sort of angled chute and ended up on his butt again in a tunnel where the ceiling was braced with beams like you’d see in a coal mine.

  “Hanging up a few lightbulbs would’ve been a smart move, dudes,” he mumbled as he dusted himself off.

  Then he remembered: Martians had burrowed this tunnel and they had X-ray vision. They didn’t need light to see where they were going.

  “Mr. Muggins? Where are you?”
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  The radio on his belt. Mrs. Pochinko. The annoying lady in the front office who talked through her nose. She worked for Assistant Principal Crumpler and was always riding Wade’s butt, making him work when he’d rather be in the Wade Cave listening to heavy metal and keeping the beat on his cowbell.

  “Mr. Muggins? Mr. Crumpler needs you!”

  Wade unclipped the portable radio from his belt. Tossed it over his shoulder. Heard it crack open on a rock.

  “Later, Mrs. Pochinko,” he mumbled, and moved forward. “I’m showing some initiative down here. Making first contact with the unknown alien beings who have chosen to dig secret underground passages beneath our school buildings.”

  He swung his light across the mine-shaft walls. Looked back at where he had been. Just above the opening to the slanted chute, he saw another alien inscription, carved into a wooden beam.

  Cool. Must be how the Martians found their way out.

  Wade turned back around and kept walking forward, venturing deeper into the darkness, sloshing through puddles of stagnant water. He figured since he hadn’t made any turns yet, he was basically walking out behind the old mansion, heading north toward the gym building. Maybe this was why there was always a strip of grass cutting across the snow behind the building in the winter. The heat captured in the tunnel kept the ground above it warm. He’d have to ask one of the science teachers.

  No. Wait. A science teacher would want to blab to everybody about the space creatures Wade was about to befriend, and Wade did not want to share his superstardom with any egghead science geek!

  After hiking for at least as long as it takes to finger the most awesome Aerosmith guitar solo on Guitar Hero, Wade noticed that his flashlight started winking back at him. The beam was hitting dozens of tiny mirrors hanging on a wall.

  He moved closer.

  “Far out!”

  They weren’t mirrors; they were watches.

  Wade counted thirty-nine antique pocket watches tacked to the wall. They seemed to be clustered in random groupings. Two watches. Three. Two.

  Six rows.

  Each row had a different number of pocket watches bunched together in groups. None of them had been wound lately; all the hands were frozen in place.

  “Weird place to display a watch collection,” Wade thought out loud.

  He figured the pocket watches must’ve belonged to Horace P. Pettimore, the dude in the braided jacket who used to live in the old mansion before it became a school. The watches sure looked old enough to be leftovers from the Civil War. A couple had cases engraved with antique crap, like steam engines and eagles.

  When Wade was a kid, his granddaddy had told him “the truth” about the whacked-out Civil War captain who had decided to build his mansion in the woods near North Chester.

  “He may have been a Union soldier but he built that house with slaves. Dozens of them. He told everybody they were former soldiers but my grandpappy saw those men. Said they looked like the walking dead. Empty eyes. Glazed expressions on their faces. Took them only three years to build that house when it should’ve taken at least five. Then there was a big fire in the work camp and nobody saw any of those soldier boys ever again! They all died in their tents.”

  So, Wade thought, if they were such speedy workers, maybe Captain Pettimore’s men built this tunnel down here, too!

  But that was crazy.

  Why would a Civil War captain build a coal mine under his house?

  Unless all those stories he’d heard were true: Horace P. Pettimore had stolen a ton of Confederate gold. Maybe this was where he’d hid it!

  Boo-yeah!

  Forget the stupid Martians!

  Wade was only twenty-nine but he was about to become the world’s first billionaire janitor! He was going to find Captain Pettimore’s gold! This was so totally awesome! He could hire Carl D. Crumpler to be his personal custodian and Mrs. Pochinko to be his maid! He could afford guitar lessons! Heck, he could afford to hire somebody good to play the guitar for him while he just strutted around the stage banging his cowbell and shaking his hair!

  On each side of the wall of watches was a steep staircase leading down to … whatever. It was too dark to see.

  The steps on both sides were made out of planks of wood that had once been painted red. A string of kerosene lanterns with red and green glass globes hung from the ceiling over each set of stairs.

  But none of the lights were lit.

  “I repeat: A little light down here would have been helpful, man!” Wade said to the darkness swallowing up his flashlight’s dusty beam.

  The gold might be down the stairs to the right, or down the stairs to the left.

  Wade chose right.

  Later he’d realize right had been wrong.

  Very, very wrong.

  25

  The bell rang.

  So far, Zack had survived homeroom, math, and science.

  And so far, Malik Sherman had been in every one of his classes.

  The girl with the black-black hair had been in Zack’s second-period science class and asked a bunch of questions about death and dying and wondered if maybe the class could take a field trip to a morgue sometime to see what happens to bodies after they’re dead. She seemed like a ton of fun!

  Next up was history with Ms. DuBois.

  “Do you like history, Zack?” Malik asked as they wormed their way through the corridors.

  Zack shrugged. “Sort of. I guess. Depends.”

  “Well said, my friend. I, myself, wish we’d spend more time learning about the ancient history of Africa. Did you know that the Nubians, from the region we now call the Sudan, are believed to have been the first human race and that most of their customs and traditions were adopted by the ancient Egyptians?”

  “No, I—”

  Suddenly, Kurt Snertz, accompanied by his three buddies, was standing in front of them, blocking their path. Other kids scurried away.

  “Well, if it isn’t wacky Zacky and his little nerd friend Lick-Me.”

  “His name is Malik,” said Zack. “Leave him alone.”

  It was barely eleven in the morning on the first day of school but Zack was already sick and tired of being pushed around by another kid named Snertz.

  Kurt Snertz grabbed Zack’s shirt. “What’d you just say?”

  “You heard me.”

  “If you said what I think you said, you’re dead.”

  Zack narrowed his eyes. “I told you to leave Malik alone.”

  “What? You’re acting all brave because you think some teacher’s gonna come along and save you?”

  “No. I think you should leave Malik alone.”

  Snertz leaned in. “Why’s that?”

  “He had nothing to do with what happened between me and your little brother.”

  “So? Doesn’t mean I can’t beat him up anyway.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Does too.”

  “Says who?”

  “Me.”

  “What?”

  “No, I’m a ‘who.’”

  “Huh?”

  Poor kid. Snertz wasn’t used to using his brain that much at school.

  Kurt tightened his grip on Zack’s shirt and twisted the fabric to make the neck hole tighten up like a noose.

  Choking, Zack thought about all the hours he had spent alone in his bedroom when his real mother had been alive and screaming at him from the other room. When she started yelling, Zack would slip on his headphones and watch old movies or play video games. He remembered all the action heroes he’d ever pretended to be. G.I. Joe. Indiana Jones. RoboCop.

  A line from an old Clint Eastwood movie popped into his head.

  “Go ahead, Snertz. Make my day.”

  Furious, Snertz hoisted Zack off the ground with one hand, then flung him down hard on the floor.

  “Zack?” Malik said anxiously.

  Zack stood up. Dusted off his pants.

  “Is that it?”
he asked, switching to the movie The Incredible Hulk. “Is that all you got?”

  Snertz reared back his fist. “Why, I oughta …”

  “Boys?”

  Ms. DuBois came out of her classroom.

  “What’s going on out here?”

  “Nothin’,” snorted Snertz.

  “Good! Get to your classrooms, now! Mr. Jennings? I believe you are with me for third period.”

  “Yes, Ms. DuBois,” said Zack.

  “Me too,” said Malik.

  “Well, hurry in, boys. The bell is about to ring!”

  Ms. DuBois stepped back into her classroom as the second bell jangled loudly.

  “Saved by the bell,” taunted Snertz.

  “You’re right,” said Zack, still channeling his inner action heroes. “You were.”

  “Come on, guys,” said Snertz. “We’ll take out this sack of trash later.”

  “Yeah! Later!” the bully pack chanted.

  “Hasta la vista, baby,” said Zack, because it was what Schwarzenegger would’ve said.

  The bullies bounded up the hall.

  “Thank you, Zack,” said Malik. “By the way, exactly how many movies have you seen?”

  “Too many, I guess.”

  “Or just enough,” said Malik. “Come on! We’re late!”

  Malik dashed into the classroom.

  Zack stood in the hallway, savoring the moment. He took in a deep breath.

  The corridor outside Ms. DuBois’s classroom smelled like smoke again. A wet campfire.

  “You got a match, sport?”

  There were the Donnelly brothers. Seth and Joseph. They’d just stepped through the boys’ room door. Without opening it.

  Joseph had a twisted grin on his face.

  “All we need is one to have a ton of fun!”

  Zack bolted into the classroom and hoped the Donnellys didn’t come in after him.

  26

  Zack sat in the front row for Ms. DuBois’s history class.

  There was something about this teacher he really liked. She seemed to be the kind of adult who could actually become a kid’s friend, the way Judy had.

  Malik sat in the desk directly behind Zack, and the girl with the black-black hair was sitting in the middle of the first row, right in front of Ms. DuBois’s desk.