The Smoky Corridor

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.