The Smoky Corridor

86

Captain Pettimore had the girl’s body stop when it reached the bottom of the thirty-nine steps.

This was his safe room.

He ignited the red and green kerosene lanterns dangling from the ceiling.

It felt good to do things again, simple things like striking a match, smelling the air, eating fried lard and eggs. He had done that at the girl’s home this morning when he’d first entered her body at eight a.m. By eight a.m. tomorrow, any lingering trace of the soul once known as Azalea Torres would be gone.

For now, his soul shared this one body with her soul. But her soul was weak.

Actually, it was slumbering in a trance. A deep voodoo trance.

“Brother!”

Pettimore felt the heart in his new chest skip a beat. The ghost who’d just materialized had startled him.

“Hello, Mary.” He had Azalea sneer at his long-dead sister. “My, you look pretty in your wedding dress. Did they actually allow you to wear white?”

“You must leave Azalea’s body!”

He laughed. “Are you insane?”

“Leave her, Horace! I beg of you.”

“Go away, Mary. You have done what you were born to do: You, through your offspring, have given me everlasting life. Now leave. Do not disgrace our family’s good name yet again with your shameful deeds!”

“But …”

“By the way, I met your husband in a battlefield hospital down south. He died a coward, Mary, turning tail and running from the enemy. He brought indignity and shame to all those who bear his name. No wonder you two got along so well!”

Weeping, the ghost of Mary Jane Hopkins disappeared.

Laughing, Pettimore reached for the amulet he’d come to that room to find. It was suspended from a gold necklace, the one he had hung on that wall so long before. A tarnished silver disk embossed with a cryptic drawing:

He draped it around his neck and left the small room.

He walked about twenty paces, then, instead of continuing straight on to the old steamboat boiler, went up an intersecting passageway headed east.

Pettimore reached a T and turned right. Within minutes, he was at the base of the right-hand staircase. He was in the zombie pit.

McNulty was crouching in the darkness, waiting for him.