The Smoky Corridor (14 page)

Zack and
Malik got off the bus in a tidy cluster of modest homes.

“I should warn you, Zack,” said Malik as they headed up the sidewalk. “My mother is currently confined to a wheelchair.”

“Was she in an accident?”

“No. She has diabetic nephropathy. A progressive kidney disease.”

“I’m sorry.”

Malik forced his smile to widen. “She remains in good spirits. She is not a giver-upper. However, the doctors say she needs dialysis.”

They climbed the steps to the front porch. Zack noticed a gap in the porch railings and a ramp made of pressure-treated lumber.

Malik swung open the door.

“Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad! This is my friend from school I told you about, Zack Jennings.”

“Hello,” said Zack timidly.

Malik’s mom had a peaceful glow as she sat smiling in what appeared to be a secondhand wheelchair.

His father looked super-serious and sad, his hair speckled with gray.

“Well, it’s nice to finally meet you, Zack,” said Mrs. Sherman.

“Zack and I are working on a project!” Malik announced.

“For school?” his mom asked enthusiastically.

“Yes, Mom.”

“Well, isn’t that wonderful?”

“Oh, this weekend,” said Malik, “we’re planning a history field trip to the Civil War cemetery!”

His father sighed. “What day?”

“Saturday.”

“This going to become a regular thing, Son? School on the weekend?”

“I’m going, too,” said Zack. “My folks can drive us.”

“Can you stay for dinner tonight, Zack?”

“Maybe next week, Mom,” said Malik. “I promised Zack that I’d have dinner at his house tonight. We were just going to grab a couple of my books first.”

“This weekend activity going to help you get a scholarship, Son?” Malik’s father asked, his eyes weary.

“I hope so, sir.”

“Good! Because you’re too smart to end up like me. You go to college. Become a doctor. Get a job they can’t ever take away from you. You hear me, Malik?”

“Yes, sir.”

Feeling nearly as sad as Mr. Sherman sounded, Zack followed Malik up the staircase and into Malik’s bedroom.

When the door closed, Malik held back the tears he clearly didn’t want Zack to see.

“My dad lost his job six months ago,” he said bravely. “That’s why he’s home now. Why we can’t afford the dialysis. Not yet, anyway.”

“I’m sorry,” said Zack.

“Don’t worry. We’re not giver-uppers. None of us.”

58

Fifteen minutes
later, Zack, Malik, and Zipper were upstairs in Zack’s bedroom.

Zipper hopped up to the computer desk by way of Zack’s swivel chair so he could take the best angle to lick Malik’s face.

“He does this every time I come over here!” Malik laughed as Zipper’s tongue slurped across his face.

“Okay, Zip,” said Zack as he sat in his chair and pulled over a second one for Malik. “Off!”

Zipper bounded to the ground, making sure he was close enough to Malik’s legs for the visitor to scratch him behind his ears.

“Shall we get cracking?” said Malik.

“Sure.”

Malik spread out the rubbing he had made off the stone.

“Yes,” said Malik, studying the sharply angled figures in the cryptogram. “Definitely a pigpen cipher.”

“How’s it work?” asked Zack.

“First, you make a tic-tac-toe grid and an X.”

Malik found a blank sheet of paper. Plucked a marker out of a cup. Drew the grid and the X.

“Next,” he said, “fill in each space with two letters.”

“The letters in each space are represented by the angled shape around them. The first is just the shape. For instance, an A would look like this.” And he drew:

“The second letter gets the same shape but with an added dot. Therefore, B would be—”

See? Likewise, S and T would be—”

“Wow,” marveled Zack. “It’s simple.”

“Sure. Once you know the secret.”

“So what does it say?”

Malik handed Zack the marker. “You tell me!”

“Okay.”

First Zack looked at the rubbing of the coded message.

His eyes bounced back and forth between the paper he was writing on and Malik’s code key. He spelled out the first line:

A ZOMBIE GUARDS MY TREASURE WELL

Uh-oh, the zombie.

“Treasure!” said Malik. “Awesome.”

Okay. Zack understood why Malik might be more interested in that part. Then again, he hadn’t been the one talking with Davy and Mr. Willoughby.

“Of course,” Malik continued, “whoever wrote it was most likely attempting to scare off any would-be treasure hunters. There are no such things as zombies in real life.”

Zack just sort of nodded.

“It works quite nicely with the second line,” Malik noted. “Interesting.”

“What?”

“The ‘turn back now’ phrase suggests the stone we uncovered is situated close to the entry point for finding the treasure.”

“The hole in the wall?”

“Precisely! Do the next bit, Zack.”

“Okay.”

Zack translated and then he and Malik read the entire inscription:

A ZOMBIE GUARDS MY TREASURE WELL
TURN BACK NOW OR DESCEND INTO HELL
NEXT STAND WATCH LIKE A SAILOR SHOULD
AND YOUR PROSPECTS SHALL BE VERY GOOD

“Well, that makes no sense,” said Zack.

“Yes, it does,” said Malik.

“What does it mean? ‘Stand watch like a sailor should’?”

“It means one must look at the world as Captain Pettimore would have—if you want to find all his gold!”

59

Zack and
Malik agreed to keep their discovery of the stone double-triple super secret—especially since the decoded warning had the word “treasure” in it.

“The thought of treasure and untold riches can drive people mad,” said Malik, “make them do things they’d never think of doing.”

“Yeah,” said Zack. “Like eat bugs on TV.”

Friday morning, Zack and Malik noticed that Azalea seemed extremely sad when she climbed aboard the school bus.

“Everything okay?” Zack asked.

She glared at him. “Not really. But then, we all can’t have the perfectly happy little home like you do, with your live-in dad, your famous stepmom, and your stupid dog, can we, Zack?”

Oh-kay. That was not the answer he’d expected. But Zack didn’t say anything in reply. Neither did Malik.

Azalea stormed to the back of the bus and fiddled with her cell phone. She kept staring at the screen and, when she thought no one was looking, wiping her eyes.

Zack realized he was pretty lucky. Ever since Judy Magruder had come into his life, most of the sadness had gone out. The same couldn’t be said for his two new friends. Malik’s dad was out of work, his mom sick. Azalea looked like she’d just gotten some really bad news.

Uh-oh.

Her dad was in the army
.

Soldiers sometimes got killed.

Maybe that was what her guardian ghost, Mary Jane Hopkins, had meant when she’d said, “She’s in grave danger.”

In danger of losing her father.

Between first and second periods, exploring a new shortcut, Zack heard piano music coming out of a classroom. It sounded so haunting he figured one of the guardian ghosts had learned to manipulate piano keys. So he followed the music to an empty classroom, where Azalea sat at a piano.

She saw Zack and immediately slammed the keyboard cover shut.

“What are you doing here?” she snapped at him.

“Nothing. I just heard the music. What was it?”

“Nothing. A song I made up.”

“Really? Wow! That’s incredible!”

“Yeah, right. Look, Zack, if you tell anybody …”

“I won’t. I promise.” He moved closer to the piano. “So, what’s going on?”

“Huh?”

“Well, you’ve been acting kind of weird.…”

“Weird is what I do, Zack.”

“I mean
weird
weird. What happened?”

She pried up the keyboard cover. Plunked a couple of sour notes.

“Oh, nothing. Just my dad almost got killed. Again.”

“How?”

“A bullet. It killed his best buddy. Six inches to the left, it would’ve killed him.”

“But he’s okay?”