The Smoky Corridor Read online

  “No … I—”

  “Did I say you could talk?”

  “No, but—”

  “There you go again. Talking without asking for permission first.” He paused. Snorted some wet gunk up his nose. Stared hard at Zack. “You’re the dork who lives in the dollhouse, right?”

  “It’s actually a Victorian but people—”

  “Shuddup.”

  “Okay.”

  “You know who I am, wimp?”

  Zack shook his head. “No. Sorry.”

  “I have a little brother. About your age.”

  “Uh-huh.” Zack was trying not to let anybody see how much his knees wanted to knock together.

  “His name is Kyle.”

  Uh-oh. This wasn’t good.

  Kyle Snertz was the bully who had picked on Zack when he’d first moved to North Chester and had kept picking on him until Zack had finally fought back and showed the world what a big baby Kyle Snertz really was.

  “You’re Kyle Snertz’s brother?”

  “That’s right. Kurt Snertz. Kyle? Get over here!”

  The other Snertz shuffled out of the crowd, head down. His hair was shaggy and covered his eyes.

  “Yeah?” Kyle mumbled.

  “Is this the punk who turned you into a crybaby?”

  Kyle didn’t answer. He kept contemplating his shoelaces.

  “Well, little brother, don’t you worry. I’m gonna make him pay.”

  “Okay.” Kyle shuffled away.

  “You see what you did to my brother, Jennings? You turned him into a wimp!”

  “Well, I didn’t mean to.”

  “Ah, tell it to somebody who cares.”

  “Okay.” Zack could taste something metallic in his mouth. Fear.

  “You ever had a toilet swirly?”

  “No. Not really on my to do list.…”

  Kurt Snertz didn’t like the way he said that. He moved in closer. Clutched Zack’s backpack straps.

  “Well, smart mouth, now you have something to look forward to, don’t you?”

  Snertz dropped Zack like a sack of marshmallows.

  “I’m gonna get you, you scrawny little four-eyed geek. When you least expect it, I’m gonna sneak up behind you and get you for what you did to Kyle—only what I do to you will be worse. Because when it’s Snertz? It hurts!”

  17

  Early Thursday morning, Eddie drove past a sign proclaiming, “Welcome to Lily Dale: Home of the World’s Largest Center for the Religion of Spiritualism.”

  He had driven all night to reach this far-western corner of New York State, but according to the boss, it’d be worth it: Just about every person living in the town of Lily Dale could speak to ghosts—a skill Eddie and the boss desperately required if they hoped to find Captain Pettimore’s hidden gold.

  Eddie parked his little car in front of a shabby cottage. The sign hanging on the lawn read “Madame Marie: Medium.”

  A lopsided door swung open and out waddled a bubbly woman in a bright green smock decorated with even brighter green flowers.

  “Welcome,” said the woman. “I am Madame Marie!”

  The morning sun glinted off earrings dangling under her rosy cheeks like crystal chandeliers.

  “I understand,” she said mysteriously, “that you and your employer cannot find that which you seek without the aid of one who has passed over to the other side?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Such is our situation.”

  Madame Marie toddled toward the tiny car. “It would be best if we had some object from your deceased loved one for our séance. Perhaps a favorite bit of clothing, a hat, a letter.”

  “We have a letter and we know where he is buried.”

  “Excellent! May I see the letter?” She held out her chubby hands, fingers eager to touch the past.

  “I’m afraid I could not bring it with me on this trip. It is quite old, very fragile.”

  “Of course, of course. When was it written?”

  “In 1873. Eight years after the War of Northern Aggression.”

  “You mean the American Civil War?”

  Eddie smiled politely. “Yes, ma’am. That’s what some folks call it.”

  18

  Zack sat alone in the middle of the school bus, because Benny and Tyler were still pretending they didn’t know him, and Kurt Snertz was sprawled out like a king in the back so he could keep an eye on all his terrified subjects.

  “Excuse me? Is this seat taken?”

  The kid sat down before Zack answered.

  “Pardon me for asking, but you’re new, correct?”

  Zack nodded.

  “I attended fifth grade at Pettimore Middle last year,” the kid said, smiling from ear to ear. “So, tell me: Why does everybody already hate you? I know why they don’t like me and it’s not because I’m black, because, as you can see, Shareef Smith in the second row is also an African American and everybody wants to sit near him because he is cool. Me? I mostly do sudoku puzzles. Do you do sudoku?”

  Zack inhaled but didn’t get to answer.

  “It’s actually very simple. Sudoku puzzles are based on a Latin square. Do you know about Latin squares?”

  Zack shook his head while his seatmate pulled two sudoku books out of his backpack and started filling in squares on two puzzles at once—one with a pen in his right hand, one with his left.

  “It’s basically an n × n table filled in such a way that each symbol occurs exactly once in each row and exactly once in each column. Oh, by the way, my name’s Malik. Malik Sherman.”

  “I’m Zack Jennings.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Zack. If you like, we can be friends. I promise not to ostracize you! Do you know what that word means?”

  Zack nodded.

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. Means you’ve been banished.”

  “But did you know that ‘ostracized’ comes from the Greek word ‘ostrakon,’ which means ‘shell’ or ‘potsherd’?”

  “No,” said Zack.

  “It’s true! The Greeks used to write names on shells or potsherds when they were voting to kick unpopular people off their peninsula.”

  Zack wondered if the Greeks turned it into a TV show.

  The school bus lumbered up the road. Made stops. Picked up more kids, some of whom almost sat down in the rows behind or in front of Zack before Kurt Snertz, all the way in the back, loudly cleared his throat or coughed to suggest that they’d better sit somewhere else or face his wrath.

  Finally, Zack could see Pettimore Middle School.

  Malik closed both sudoku books. “So, Zack, what’re you doing for lunch?”

  “I packed a sandwich.”

  “Good idea. The food in the cafeteria is rather awful. Except the chicken strips with broccoli florets on Wednesdays.”

  The bus chugged to a stop. The front door swung open.

  Someone walking up the center aisle finger-flicked Zack on the back of the ear.

  Kurt Snertz.

  “See, Jennings? You just never know when I’m gonna sneak up and get you!”

  The three guys behind Snertz started chuckling.

  “What’s the problem back there?” demanded the bus driver, watching the boys in his big rearview mirror.

  “Nothin’,” snorted Kurt Snertz as he and his crew moved forward.

  Zack and Malik remained seated while everybody else exited the bus.

  “I take it Kurt Snertz is not a fan of yours?” said Malik.

  “He hates my guts.”

  “Excellent. He hates mine, too! See you at lunch, Zack, if not before!”

  “Right.”

  “Promise?”

  “Sure.”

  And to keep his promise, all Zack had to do was stay alive till lunch.

  19

  Zack studied the slip of paper one of the teachers handed him at registration and, after a few wrong turns, found his locker.

  “Good morning, Zack!”

  It was Ms. DuBois, the pretty teacher he�
�d met the night before. She was carrying a stack of books and manila folders under her chin.

  “Good morning.”

  “All ready for a brand-new school year?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Exciting, isn’t it? I just love the smell of freshly sharpened pencils. I can’t wait for the school year to start!”

  Oh, yeah. Zack couldn’t wait, either. School might also mean the smell of Ty-D-Bol up your nose when Kurt Snertz dunked your head in a toilet.

  But he smiled at Ms. DuBois anyway. It was hard not to. She had such sky blue eyes. And that morning, she smelled like a warm cinnamon roll drizzled with icing.

  “See you at third period, Zack.”

  “Okay!”

  She bustled off around another corner.

  “Hey, Zack!”

  It was Benny, his so-called friend from Stonebriar Road.

  “This your locker?” Benny asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool. Hey, me and Tyler meant to ask you on the bus: You gonna blow up anything here at school like you did to that tree?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not? There’s a humongous old tree behind the gym building. It’d blow up real good.”

  “I’m not blowing up any more trees, Benny.”

  “I see. Movin’ on to bigger stuff, huh? What? Gopher holes?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What? Something even bigger? Oh, man! The principal’s office? That is so amazingly awesome! You’ll tell us before you do it, right?”

  “Sure, Benny.”

  “Cool!” And Benny dashed happily up the hall.

  What was it Davy Wilcox used to say about Benny? About as sharp as a bowling ball, ain’t he?

  Zack smiled, remembering his first true friend in North Chester, the farm boy who didn’t live in North Chester anymore.

  He turned to his locker. Worked the combination. Slid up the handle and popped open the door.

  “Howdy, pardner!”

  Zack nearly fainted. “Davy?”

  “In the galdern flesh, or whatever a dang ghost is supposed to say, seein’ how this ain’t actually flesh hangin’ off my bones no more, now, is it?”

  “What are you doing inside my locker?”

  “Your locker? Well, dang! This used to be my locker, too!”

  “What?”

  “I went to school here, Zack. Back in my day, we had us this one teacher, Mrs. Crabtree—Mrs. Crabbybritches we called her—made me write ‘I will not whittle in class’ on the blackboard five hundred times.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Zack mumbled, practically crawling inside the locker with Davy to make sure no one passing could see him talking to an empty metal box.

  “I decorated up this thing with a whole heap of magazine pictures. Snazzy cars. Bright red Ford Powermaster 861.”

  “What kind of car was that?”

  “That one weren’t no car, Zack. Powermaster’s a tractor.”

  Davy had worked on farms all his life. First in Kentucky, which explained his funny way of talking, then right across the highway from where Zack’s new house was built.

  “What are you doing here, Davy?”

  “Can’t rightly say.”

  “Right. The rules.”

  Zack knew that ghosts weren’t allowed to come and go as they pleased or to do or say whatever they wanted to do or say. Being dead was sort of like being in school.

  “Can you give me a hint?”

  “Why you whisperin’ like that, Zack?”

  “I don’t want anybody to see me talking to you!”

  “Don’t worry, pardner. I’m invisible to everybody except you.”

  “Well, that just makes it worse! I look like a crazy person, sticking my head in an empty locker and talking to myself!”

  “All right, I’ll make this quick. First off, don’t listen to everything the Donnelly brothers might tell you. Them two still like to play with fire.”

  “Okay.”

  “Second of all, watch out for the zombie.”

  “The what?”

  “Zombie. Corpse brought back to life but without any soul inside. Mindless and mean. Can’t be drowned, suffocated, shot, or poisoned. If you cut off his head, the head will stay alive and keep snappin’ at ya. Fire’s just about the only thing that can kill ’em.”

  Fire? Zack gulped. He didn’t want to do that again!

  “Anything else?”

  “Plenty. A zombie’s teeth can tear a man in half with a single bite. Likes to rip open coffins and eat the carcasses of dead people. If he bites you while you’re still alive and you somehow escape, guess what?”

  “What?”

  “You turn into a zombie, too!”

  “Gross.”

  “First human soul you bump into becomes your slave master.”

  “Yuck.”

  “Hang on. It gets worse. Zombies like to eat brains best of all. The younger, the better. He’ll scoop out your skull, gobble ’em down, take a nap, then nibble on the rest of you for a week.”

  “And he’s here? At the school?”

  A school filled with young brains!

  “Not the school but somewheres close by. Been hanging around for over a century. Just ask any of the folks buried out back in the dadgum graveyard whose bodies he ate. Now, here’s the news flash: This zombie feller just woke up after snoozin’ for twenty years. There could be trouble a-comin’.”

  “So you and your friends ‘upstairs’ want me to stop this demon like I stopped the others?”

  “Don’t know if that’ll be possible this time, Zack. This here zombie is under the control of a supreme voodoo master, a ghost with juju so strong, not only can he control his meat puppet from the far side of the grave, he can also block us from seein’ where the zombie’s at or what he’s up to.”

  “Juju?”

  “Black magic. Witchcraft. Evil forces stronger than anything you ever gone up against. It’s why you kids are gonna need guardian ghosts for a while. Can’t bring no adults into this zombie situation.”

  “Why not?”

  Davy shook his head. “They won’t let me say.”

  “What about Judy? She’s not like ordinary adults.”

  “Best keep her out of it, too.”

  “But …”

  “Hey, Zack!”

  He whipped around.

  It was Malik from the bus.

  “You better hurry. We don’t want to be late for homeroom!”

  “Right. Thanks.”

  He waited for Malik to head up the hall, then turned around to talk to Davy some more.

  Only Davy wasn’t there.

  20

  Wade Muggins limped across the janitor’s closet, pressed the third shelf on the phony supply rack, and stepped back as the secret panel swung open.

  His tailbone was still aching from when he had sprained his butt during the explosion. He hobbled over to the wall and checked out the jagged hole his propane rodent repellant had blasted open.

  Fortunately, nobody had heard the big kaboom, because they had all been way out back in the auditorium when it had happened. Now Wade noticed that the explosion had crackled the layer of dried hardpan coating the root cellar floor.

  He kicked away some of the chunks.

  “Whoa. Dude.”

  He dug deeper.

  First he found a rusty old revolver Horace P. Pettimore must have buried in the root cellar’s dirt floor. He tucked it into his pants.

  Then he found a flagstone with some extremely whacked stuff carved into its top.

  Wade found a whisk broom and brushed the stone clean like an umpire dusting home plate. The stone was etched with all sorts of screwy symbols like Martians probably used in their spaceship manuals; only one sentence was spelled out in earthling letters.

  “Dude, this is like a discovery on the National Geographic Channel! Totally!”

  And the flagstone was right in front of the hole in the wall.


  “The aliens probably left it here, man. When they hid their spaceship … underground!”

  He studied that one line about turning back.

  “Okay. On their journey, they watched a lot of our TV transmissions, Sesame Street and stuff, and they learned just enough English to carve that one line so they could scare people away from their parking spot!”

  It made sense.

  If Wade were a Martian, he would definitely hide his flying saucer where nobody could see it.

  Underground. Under a school. Maybe all the way out back, under the cemetery.

  And then he’d make a Martian sign so he’d remember how to find it when it was time to fly home.

  Dude! This was going to make Wade so famous he would be on the local news at six and eleven!

  He quickly ran back to his secret entrance to the Wade Cave, pulled the shelving unit shut, reset the spring, and locked himself in the root cellar. He didn’t want to share his fame and glory with anyone.

  “I come in peace!” he shouted into the darkness.

  Then, grabbing a flashlight, he crawled into the hole he had blown through the wall.

  21

  Fortunately, homeroom was only scheduled to last ten minutes.

  Zack sat in the very last row of desks, closest to the window.

  He needed to find a computer. Do an Internet search on zombies. He’d always thought they were mindless, unfeeling monsters like in those movies about the living dead. Davy made the zombie living (even though he was dead) near the school sound worse.

  Zack’s homeroom teacher, Mrs. Kleinknecht, was up at the front of the classroom, trying to turn on a TV monitor she couldn’t reach because it was mounted to a wall bracket and she was four and a half feet tall. She dragged over an empty desk to use as a step stool and finally switched the TV on.

  “Good morning, students,” said the principal, Mr. Smith, whose face filled the screen. “Welcome to an exciting new year at Horace P. Pettimore Middle School!”

  Yeah, Zack thought, the resident zombie just woke up. Should make things real exciting.

  Half the kids in the room were yawning. The first day of school was always a tough one. Hard to wake up when you’ve gotten used to sleeping in all summer.

  Zack, already bored with the morning announcements, let his eyes wander around the room. He saw Malik. Benny. Tyler.