The Smoky Corridor

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?”

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.