The Smoky Corridor

76

Zack, Zipper, and Azalea followed Ms. DuBois and the janitor out the front door of the school.

Zack wished he didn’t have to keep pretending to be interested in the cemetery crawl. It had been Azalea’s big idea and she didn’t seem interested in it at all. She had barely said a word to anybody all day. She didn’t seem herself.

Zack needed to be downstairs. He needed to crawl through the hole in the old root cellar wall and find Malik. Given the way Azalea had been acting, he couldn’t ask her for help. And he definitely couldn’t ask Ms. DuBois or Eddie!

“Um, where are we going?” Zack asked.

“The graveyard, Zack,” said Ms. DuBois. “Where else would we do a cemetery crawl? Now, I thought we’d start our field trip with one of the oldest headstones. The marker commemorating the valiant John Lee Cooper.”

“Have fun,” said Azalea. “I’m heading inside.”

“What?” said Ms. DuBois. “Are you feeling okay, Azalea?”

“Fit as a fiddle. I just forgot to use the latrine this morning.”

Ms. DuBois sighed. “Fine. But hurry. Meet us down by the river at Colonel Cooper’s headstone.”

“Right. Will do.” Azalea went back into the school.

“Come along, Zachary,” said the janitor, who had an extremely eerie smile plastered on his face. “We mustn’t keep the colonel waiting.”

Zack and Zipper followed the two adults up a narrow footpath through the forest behind the gymnasium.

Zipper whimpered. Used his snout to nudge Zack’s ankle.

When Zack looked down, he saw the lacy hem of a Civil War–era wedding gown: Mary Jane Hopkins was walking beside them, her body passing straight through trees and boulders blocking her path.

“He has her!” she gasped. “Captain Pettimore has taken over Azalea’s body. He will use her to retrieve his gold and then snuff out her soul. You have to save her, Zack! You have to force my brother’s spirit to leave Azalea’s body before her own soul withers away into nothingness!”

Zack nodded.

He’d just add it to his list.

Mary Jane Hopkins disappeared.

“This footpath will take us to the cemetery road,” said Ms. DuBois. “But I’m sure you already knew that, Zack. I’m sure you sneak over this way all the time, to chat with your friends.”

“Not really. Mostly we hang out in the cafeteria or at my house after school.…”

“I meant your other friends.”

“Huh?”

“We are given to understand,” said Eddie, “that you, Zachary Jennings, are conversant with those on the distant shore.”

“You mean like over in France?”

“Ghosts,” said Ms. DuBois, rather nastily. “You talk to ghosts! Don’t try to deny it. Azalea told me!”

“What? She was just kidding. She made it up!”

Eddie pulled out a pistol with a wooden handle, a brass trigger guard, and a very long barrel.

“You better be able to talk to ghosts, son,” he said. “Or you know what?”

“What?”

“I will most assuredly turn you into one.”