The Smoky Corridor

66

THE PETTIMORE SCHOOL FOR CHILDREN

Old Pike Road · North Chester · Connecticut

January 10, 1910

Dearest Grandmother Amanda:

I write you from the festering human cesspool of Connecticut, whose murdering sons killed so many of our brave soldiers during Mr. Lincoln’s War of Northern Aggression.

As peculiar as this may sound, I bring you greetings from your beloved husband, my esteemed grandfather, the late John Lee Cooper, CSA.

Now, before you think me mad, consider how noble and strong your husband’s spirit was in life. Know, then, that his soul lives on past death and that his spirit lingers in this realm, longing to finish the unresolved business of a life so villainously cut short by thieving Yankee devils.

Grandfather has found a way to communicate with me through the medium of a young boy named Seth Donnelly, one of my students. Having developed a certain confidence with the lad–a shy, sensitive type with one bully of a big brother, no other family, and no friends—I was not in the least bit surprised when he came to me claiming to be a “ghost seer” with a message from beyond the veil.

“The ghost of your grandfather, John Lee Cooper, told me where to find the entrance to Captain Pettimore’s treasure tunnel.”

The boy, who is also a member of the scouting group I chaperone, then showed me a rubbing he had made of the carvings in a most peculiar stone he had found where grandfather had sent him. To Seth, the angled scribbles above and below the single easily decipherable line held no meaning. I, however, immediately recognized them for what they were: a coded message. Having researched the dastardly captain’s history prior to moving here to become a teacher in the same buildings where the vile beast lived for so many years, having studied grandfather’s diary, I knew that Horace P. Pettimore had been a Freemason long before he became a powerful high priest in the voodoo cult.

Oh, Grandmother Amanda, you should have seen young Seth’s eyes widen when I told him the markings were a voodoo curse scribbled by Captain Pettimore and meant to harm small children, such as he and his brother, if they dared look at the stone a second time without an adult who knew the chants required to shield them from the witch doctor’s “juju.”

Meanwhile, I took the paper from the lad and deciphered the secret message.

I now know where the entrance to Pettimore’s treasure tunnel is located. I have no fear of the “zombie” he so brazenly claims guards his gold, as I know it is simply another of the villain’s heinous lies, meant to scare off any honorable sons of the South brave enough to venture into the labyrinth to reclaim what is rightfully ours.

Tomorrow, dearest Grandmother, I will secure the stolen gold and redeem our family’s good name.

Of course, I will need to dispose of Seth Donnelly, and his brother, Joseph, as well, for I fear that those two share secrets.

I will have Seth lead Joseph and me to the spot where the stone and tunnel entrance are located. I will then execute them both in the most merciful fashion, a single bullet to their heads. I will do this late at night, when the school is deserted, so I might drag their bodies back to the building and, in a cramped corridor I know of, start a fire that will consume both their bodies and melt the lead bullets nestled inside their skulls. I will make the whole thing look like a tragic accident brought on by the boys’ own careless acts and will appear to have attempted a dramatic rescue before escaping from the blaze out my classroom window.

Next week, or perhaps next month, I will resign my position at the school, claiming to be overwrought with grief from the death of my two “precious charges,” and return to Georgia with our gold. The South shall rise again!

Be well, Grandmother.

Know that your husband’s work, thanks in no small measure to his own indomitable spirit, finally nears its completion.

Give Louella my love and kiss my babies for me. Tell them my mission in the godforsaken land of the Connecticut Yankee demons nears its completion and I will soon return home to the bosom of my family.

Faithfully yours,

your loving grandson,

Patrick J. Cooper