The Smoky Corridor by Chris Grabenstein
“Good morning, everybody! Welcome to sixth-grade history. My name is Daphne DuBois and this is my first year here at Pettimore Middle School.” Yep, she definitely had a Southern accent. “Is this anyone else’s first year?”
Zack raised his hand. So did the girl with the raccoon eyes. Well, she kind of flopped hers up.
Ms. DuBois smiled. “Well, come on—don’t be shy. Stand up and introduce yourselves.” She gestured at Zack, indicating that he should go first.
So he stood.
“Um, I’m Zack Jennings. I used to live in New York City but my dad’s family is originally from North Chester, so we moved back here in June.”
“How wonderful! Welcome, Zack.”
He sat down.
Ms. DuBois turned to the black-haired girl. “And you are?”
The girl didn’t stand. “Azalea Torres,” she muttered.
“Azalea. My, what an interesting name.”
The girl shrugged. “Wasn’t my idea.”
“And when did you move to North Chester?”
“We didn’t actually move here. My dad’s overseas with the army. My mom wanted to be near family. Her sister lives around here. So, you know, I came with her. I kind of had to.”
“Well, welcome, Azalea,” said Ms. DuBois sweetly. “Okay, who here thinks history means memorizing a bunch of boring dates and the names of dead kings?”
All the kids in the classroom raised their hands, except Malik, Zack, and Azalea Torres.
“And who thinks history can be fun and rewarding?”
Azalea shot up her arm first, let it dangle in the air.
“Why do you like history so much, Azalea?”
“I guess because it’s about dead people. Dead people are cool.”
“Well, Azalea, I suppose you are correct. In many ways, history is, indeed, the story of those who came before us. For instance, Captain Horace P. Pettimore. The gentleman this school is named after.” She gestured toward the copy of the Pettimore portrait hanging above the blackboard.
Zack wondered if there was a picture of Pettimore hanging in every classroom. Probably. After all, it was his school.
“Who knows Captain Pettimore’s history?”
Malik raised his hand.
“Mr. Sherman?”
“He came here on a paddle wheel steamboat called the Crescent City right after the Civil War.”
“That’s right,” said Ms. DuBois, using a pointer to tap a picture on the bulletin board. “This was his ship. An old-fashioned steamboat like Mark Twain might’ve piloted on the Mississippi River. It had a big red paddle wheel in the back, two smokestacks, three decks, and a wheelhouse up top. It docked in North Chester in 1867. On board was a crew of sixty-six men, all former soldiers, who became the construction workers who built Mr. Pettimore’s mansion, which, of course, is now the main entrance to our school and where Principal Smith and Assistant Principal Crumpler have their offices. Who knows why there are these lamps with red and green globes on either side of the steamboat?”
“Ooh, ooh!” Malik, of course, knew the answer.
“Malik?”
“The red lights were on the left side, and the green on the right—so at night you could tell if a boat was coming toward you or moving away. The same colored lights are on airplane wings today. Red is always on the left. Green goes on the right.”
Ms. DuBois’s eyes twinkled. “Is that your final answer, Mr. Sherman?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Well, sir, you are correct. Now then, who here has ever heard about the two Donnelly brothers?”
Everyone’s hand went up.
“They died, right?” This from Azalea Torres.
“Yes, Azalea. In fact, they passed away right outside this room.”
The whole classroom gasped. Except Zack.
Heck, he didn’t even gasp when he saw the Donnellys.
27
“As you have undoubtedly heard, Seth and Joseph Donnelly were playing with matches in the hallway, which used to be paneled with wood. They were burning the loose-leaf pages of their notebooks, watching the hot ashes rise up and float on the swirling currents of air.”
Ms. DuBois wafted her hand through the air as if it were a drifting autumn leaf. The class was mesmerized.
“Soon, the two boys started ripping pages out of their textbooks, setting those on fire, too. It wasn’t long before the fire spread. First to an old corkboard filled with thumbtacked notices. Then to the wooden frame of that board. Then to the wood-paneled walls and the oil-stained floor. Fortunately, this all took place after school hours and no one else was in the building.”
“Except the brave teacher,” Zack mumbled.
“That’s right, Zack. Mr. Patrick J. Cooper. A young mathematics instructor. This used to be his classroom.”
Another gasp.
Ms. DuBois strolled to her desk. “He was seated right here, at his desk, working late, grading papers, when he smelled smoke.” She sniffed the air dramatically. “Fearing the worst, he boldly raced out into the smoky corridor and discovered the two Donnelly brothers trying to beat down the blaze they had just ignited.”
“Why didn’t they just run out the fire exit doors?” asked Malik.
“Well, the exit closest to the wood shop was only put in after the tragedy, and the doors at both ends of the hallway were locked. Poor Mr. Cooper didn’t have the keys.”
“Who locked them?”
“The newspapers all said the Donnelly brothers did—to prevent anyone from finding out what they were up to.”
“Well, why didn’t they just come in here and escape out the windows?” asked Zack.
“I’m afraid they couldn’t.” She tapped the classroom doorknob with her pointer. “The door accidentally locked behind Mr. Cooper when he rushed into the hall to save the two orphan boys.…”
“Orphans?” said Azalea.
“Oh, yes. The Donnellys had no family. No father, no mother. They came here from a place called Saint Cecelia’s House for Wayward Children over in Brixton. In fact, according to young Seth’s diary, he considered their math teacher, Mr. Cooper, to be as close a thing to family as he and Joe had ever had.”
“So how’d they die? Was it gruesome?”
Man. Azalea sure had a one-track mind.
“Well, Azalea,” said Ms. DuBois, “the teacher and the two boys were trapped in that narrow, smoke-filled corridor with no exit. In mere minutes, they succumbed to what we would now call carbon monoxide poisoning. Mr. Cooper’s body was found slumped in front of that doorway, the key to this classroom in his hand. All three were dead long before the fire turned that cramped corridor into a broiling hot oven that cremated their bodies. The rest, as they say, is history.”
“That Mr. Cooper was a very brave man!” said a guy in the middle of the classroom.
“That he was. Which is why I am proud to say he is a distant relative of mine.”
“What? Really? Wow!” The whole classroom bubbled over with excitement.
“That’s awesome, Ms. DuBois,” said Malik.
“Yes. It is. I am quite proud of my great-great-great-great-uncle Patrick J. Cooper.”
She pointed toward a framed portrait sitting on her desk—a sepia-tone print of a man with a high forehead, beady eyes, and a bushy goatee. He looked kind of angry and, in Zack’s humble opinion, not extremely heroic.
“I am even prouder to be teaching here in the same classroom where he once taught. Now then, who here besides Azalea, whose father is bravely serving overseas, has a hero hiding in the branches of their family tree?”
Most of the kids shrugged. They had no idea.
Zack figured his grandpa Jim, who had been the sheriff in North Chester years earlier, was probably pretty heroic. But he didn’t want to show off.
“Well,” said Ms. DuBois, “I have a feeling some of you, perhaps all of you, have incredible ancestors. That is why, this month, you will each construct your very own family trees.”
All of a sudden, every kid in the class loved history.
“All right, everybody, let’s open our textbooks to chapter one.…”
Zack flipped his book open.
But he didn’t read what was written on the page.
He had that feeling again.
Somebody was watching him.
He slowly raised his eyes.
That picture of Horace P. Pettimore hanging over the blackboard?
It was staring at him.
It was also smiling.
28
The ghost of Horace Pettimore oozed into yet another copy of his portrait and studied the children seated at their desks.
He had examined many faces this way at the start of each new school year.
He had done so for more than one hundred years.
Searching for the One. The child irresistibly lured there by his magic voodoo spell.
“This year. This year he will come.”
He needed to find a child who was flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood. A relative, no matter how distant. It was why he had buried, in the front yard of his mansion, an urn filled with powders, herbs, feathers, and an incantation written in his own blood on parchment—a spell guaranteed to one day attract a family member to this place.
For Horace Pettimore needed to find a descendant in order to rise from the dead.
Yes, it could be done!
He could live forever!
He had known that orchestrating his own resurrection was possible ever since the nine-year-old girl had come to him in 1866, a year after the Civil War had ended, when he’d still lived in New Orleans. He, a Yankee carpetbagger, had just ascended to the position of supreme voodoo king after the unexpected death of Queen LaSheena.
Well, unexpected by everyone but him.
Pettimore had been plotting how to kill the old witch for months.
Anyway, that morning, he had been in the captain’s quarters of his paddle wheel steamer.
The little girl gently rapped her knuckles on his door.
He immediately recognized the child as Queen LaSheena’s granddaughter, the young girl he had seen playing in the back room of Queenie’s voodoo shrine in the French Quarter. The girl had caramel-colored skin. Her hair was piled up high under a bright yellow head scarf, the same style her grandmother had always worn.
She had a small doll clutched in her hand.
A cloth doll dyed a deep navy blue, the color of the Union army’s uniforms in the Civil War.
“Good day, Captain Pettimore,” the young girl said with a sly smile. “What a pleasure it is to see you again.”
Then she proceeded to tell him things only Queen LaSheena would know.
“You may think you have taken over my throne, King Pettimore,” the little girl went on, “but you are sadly mistaken. For you will never have a child or a grandchild or even a niece or nephew to carry your soul forward into future generations. I have made certain of that!”
She showed him her doll.
There were pins stuck into it.
It was a voodoo doll. The little girl with the soul of Queen LaSheena dug one needle deeper into the doll’s leg and the captain could’ve sworn he’d just been wounded by a musket ball.
“I know, for you have told me that you have no brother or sister. No cousins, aunts, or uncles.” She jabbed a new needle into the doll. “You will see no children of your own.” She held up the doll so he could see a likeness of his own face stitched into its head. “When you die, as all men must, your soul will find no blood of your blood nor flesh of your flesh, no earthen vessel to carry it forward. I have won. Joc-a-mo-fee-no-ah-nah-nay, Captain Pettimore. Enjoy your reign as the voodoo king of New Orleans. It shall be brief.”
She twisted the needle in the doll’s leg.
Now he could still remember the searing pain in his thigh.
But Queen LaSheena wasn’t half as smart and cunning as she so arrogantly imagined.
Unbeknownst to her, there was one member of the Pettimore family he had never spoken of and, therefore, Queen LaSheena could not hex.
A beloved sister who had so disgraced the family that she’d fled Boston and disappeared. Pettimore had learned of her whereabouts, quite accidentally, from a soldier he’d met in an army hospital outside Vicksburg.
“Captain,” the dying man had cried out faintly from his filthy cot, “will you kindly do me the service of informing my wife that I met an honorable end in service to my country?”
In truth, Pettimore couldn’t have cared less about comforting the dying soldier’s widow. He had only come to the hospital to steal antiseptics, to make certain none of his zombies infected him with diseases their corpses had carried up from the grave. But the sickly soldier, weak though he was, forced a weathered photograph with curled edges into his hand.
It was Pettimore’s long-lost sister!
In the tintype, Mary was wearing a bell-skirted bridal gown and a white laurel wreath in her black hair.
“She lives with our daughter,” said the dying man, mustering up just enough strength to speak, the death rattle already sounding in his chest. “In a small mill town. North Chester. Connecticut.”
The soldier, of course, died.
It was fate that had decreed he should reveal what he knew about Pettimore’s only family, moments before wheezing out his final breath.
So after the meeting with Queen LaSheena’s granddaughter, Captain Horace P. Pettimore packed up all his belongings, his gold, and his army of zombie slaves and moved back north.
He did not find his sister or his niece.
Or any trace of them.
But he heard rumors of Mary Jane Hopkins, for that was her new name.
The bloodline lived on and he knew that despite Queen LaSheena’s best efforts to thwart him, he would one day find his rightful heir.
Inspired by the pharaohs of old who had stored their treasures inside the tombs of the pyramids so they might have use of their wealth in the next life, Pettimore had his slaves construct a labyrinth of tunnels beneath his home. He created an impenetrable hiding spot for his cache of stolen Confederate gold, which would be waiting for him when he came back to life inside the body of his blood relation.
His minions, the troop of sixty-six dead Union soldiers whose souls he had stolen, used every scrap of lumber, every piece of equipment, every lamp off his old steamboat when building the captain his underground fortress.
And then he killed all the zombies.
He burned them while they slept in their tents.
All save one.
He used their deaths as an excuse to erect his war memorial cemetery, the underpinnings of which had been designed to feed fresh corpses to his one remaining zombie.
Cyrus McNulty.
The man who, without his soul, became the most ferocious beast of them all. The cemetery would give the zombie sufficient, if meager, food to tide him through the waiting.
Next, after burying the voodoo lure charm out front, Horace Pettimore generously donated his home, his land, and a substantial sum of money to the town of North Chester for the specific purpose of building a school near his burial site.
He needed children, lots and lots of children, a fresh crop every year, if he hoped to snatch the One he so desperately needed to live again.
Perhaps Pettimore would become the new boy in the front row, the skinny child with the thick glasses who kept staring back at him whenever his airy spirit slid inside a portrait.
Zack, they called him.
His family tree had deep roots in North Chester.
He might be the One.
A descendant of Mary Jane Hopkins!
Horace Pettimore could not help smiling.
29
Judy parked outside the North Chester Public Library, a two-story red brick building topped with a small schoolhouse steeple.
Her good friend, the librarian, Jeanette Emerson, a feisty lady with curly white hair and bright
“Judy! Hello, dear!”
“Hi.”
Mrs. Emerson arched an eyebrow. “Did you remember to wipe your feet?”
Judy backtracked to the welcome mat. Swiped her shoes clean.
“Now then,” said Mrs. Emerson, “to what do we owe the pleasure of a visit from our favorite children’s author and critically acclaimed dramatist?”
“Research.”
“Wonderful. You can help me reshelve these books while we chat.”
Mrs. Emerson pushed a rolling cart into the stacks.
Judy dutifully followed.
• • •
“Okay, here’s my question,” said Judy as she slipped a neon pink murder mystery back into its proper slot on the shelf. “Actually, it’s from Zack. Another paranormal research project.”
“Has he seen …?” Mrs. Emerson peered over the tops of her reading glasses. “An apparition?”
Judy nodded. “At the middle school.”
“Oh, my.”
“It was the two boys,” whispered Judy. “The Donnelly brothers.”
“Fascinating. What did they want?”
“For Zack to become their ‘Kit Carson.’”
“I’m sorry. Their what?”
“Kit Carson. Don’t ask me what it means.”
“Very well. I won’t.”
“The older brother …”
“Joseph.”
“Told Zack they were ‘sons of Daniel Boone.’ But then his little brother …”
“Seth.”
“Said he was Johnny Appleseed.”
Mrs. Emerson nodded contemplatively. “A very interesting and yet confusing family tree. Perhaps the two boys were just playing at being famous frontiersmen. It was quite the thing to do in 1910. Not that I was around back then. Almost, but not quite.”
“Well, more importantly, I want to learn as much as we can about the Donnelly brothers. How exactly did they die? Was the fire their fault? Were they good kids or bad kids? Are they …”
“Good ghosts or bad ghosts?”
“Exactly.”
“Come along,” said Mrs. Emerson. “These books can wait. My curiosity, however, much like that of a certain cat I know, is demanding that I feed it some answers!”