Shadow School: Dehaunting Read online

  Great, Cordelia thought. If this ghost doesn’t kill me, Dr. Roqueni will.

  The trick-or-treater stopped less than a foot from Cordelia and pounded her tiny fists against invisible walls. The witch mask hung askew on her face, revealing a pale white chin and bloodless lips.

  “I’m so sorry,” Cordelia said, too ashamed to meet the girl’s eyes. “This is our fault.”

  Benji scooped up the pile of miniature chocolates and approached the ghost. Cordelia waved him away, worried that the girl would redirect her anger now that Cordelia was beyond her reach, but Benji ignored her.

  The girl turned to face him.

  “I’m sorry too,” he said, and dropped all the chocolates into the trick-or-treater’s plastic pumpkin. Her Bright appeared instantly, a crisp autumn evening buzzing with laughter and doorbells.

  The girl graced Benji and Cordelia with a smile of forgiveness and left the world of the living forever.

  “How bad did she get you?” Benji asked, gently lifting her wrist. Cordelia met his deep brown eyes, soft with concern, and decided that she was no longer annoyed with him.

  “Not as bad as I deserve,” she said. “I’ll be fine.” She looked down at the house that she had knocked from its pedestal. “Maybe.”

  She knelt next to the model and ran her hand over its surface, checking for damage. It was a quaint cottage divided into two distinct styles: brick on the bottom half, green stucco with decorative wooden beams on top. A dozen black horseshoes climbed the chimney.

  “I thought these models were all based on haunted houses,” Benji said. “This one looks like something out of a fairy tale.”

  “Archimancy can work with any house, not just creepy old mansions,” Cordelia said. “This is a Tudor Revival. That style was really popular around the time Mr. Shadow was doing his research.”

  Benji regarded her with surprise. “And you know this . . . how?”

  “I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos. I figured it might be useful to learn more about architecture. Maybe we can understand how the school works.”

  “I already know how it works,” Benji said. “Ghosts come. We make them go away.” He slipped his hands beneath the model. “Help me put this back.”

  Working together, the two of them lifted the miniature house into place. Cordelia circled the pedestal to give it a final look and gasped in dismay when she saw the back roof. A section about the size of her hand had caved inward where it struck the floor.

  “Oops,” Benji said, gritting his teeth. “It’s not so bad. Maybe Dr. Roqueni won’t notice.”

  “Dr. Roqueni notices everything. We have to tell her.”

  “Not if we fix it,” Benji suggested. He stuck his fingers into the hole, trying to tweeze the broken piece out. “How hard can it be? A little glue and it’ll be good as—”

  Another section of the roof crumbled beneath his hand, doubling the size of the hole.

  “You’re making it worse!” Cordelia exclaimed, yanking his hand away.

  “I was trying to help!”

  “I know,” Cordelia said, peeking through the hole. The tiny bedroom below her was fully furnished with a four-poster bed, antique armoire, and standing mirror. Cordelia caught a whiff of something sweet and smoky, like a scented candle.

  “Check out the details,” she said. “There’s furniture and everything. Even a tiny little book on the bedside table.”

  “But these models don’t open up or anything,” Benji said. “Why go through all that effort?”

  “Elijah was trying to figure out what made these particular houses haunted. I guess that meant duplicating every detail on the inside as well, just in case there was something that—”

  Hinges squeaked behind her. Cordelia spun around and saw a tall man in his late sixties step through the door connecting Dr. Roqueni’s apartment and the attic. He was wearing a pair of glasses with black-tinted, triangular lenses. A small meter in his left hand, connected to the glasses by a thin black wire, clicked like a Geiger counter as he waved it back and forth.

  The moment he saw Cordelia and Benji, the man grinned with childlike enthusiasm.

  “Why, hello there!” he exclaimed. “How long have you two been dead?”

  3

  Shadows in the Attic

  Cordelia and Benji stared at the strange man. The strange man stared back.

  “We’re not dead,” Benji finally said.

  “You can talk!” the man exclaimed, his smile wider than ever. “I had hoped these glasses would help me see the ghosts, but I never dreamed they’d help me hear them as well! This is spectacular!” He began to do a little jig, his boots tapping against the wooden floor. “Just wait until I tell the rest of my family. They said it was impossible, that only those born with the Sight were special enough to—”

  “We’re not ghosts,” Benji said.

  The man stopped dancing. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “We’re just kids,” Benji said. “Living kids.”

  “Of course you think that,” the man replied with a sympathetic tone. “No one wants to believe that their time on earth has ended. But this is a very special building, and although you might not remember what happened, let me assure you that there’s only one reason two children would be up here in the attic. You’re ghosts.”

  Benji started to say something, but Cordelia stopped him. She had a theory about who this man might be, and she wanted to test it out. “Is that an EMF meter?” she asked, pointing toward the small machine in his hand. It was orange with a digital display.

  The man nodded with a surprised expression. “How did you know that?” he asked.

  Cordelia relaxed, her suspicion confirmed. Shadow School had developed a spooky reputation over the years, and every so often a former student mentioned it on a message board about haunted places. This man was clearly an amateur ghost hunter who had snuck in and decided to do some exploring.

  “I know people use EMF meters to hunt ghosts,” Cordelia said. “They believe spirits are nothing more than electromagnetic waves.” Agnes had completely debunked this theory the previous year, but Cordelia decided not to add that part.

  “My meter does a lot more than just tell you there’s a ghost in the vicinity,” the man said in a huff. He tapped his glasses with clear pride. “It gathers the electromagnetic radiation naturally present in any haunted house and uses it to power these lenses. That’s what lets me see the ghosts. To be honest, before I saw you two, I was starting to wonder if they actually worked.”

  “So if you take the glasses off, we should disappear, right?” Cordelia asked.

  “Naturally.”

  “Mind giving it a try?” Benji asked, catching on. “If I am a ghost, I’d like to know for sure.”

  “If it’ll make you feel better,” the man said.

  He removed the glasses. Cordelia saw the light die in his eyes as he realized he could still see the two kids in front of him. “Well,” he said, turning the glasses in his hands. “That’s disappointing. I really thought I had it this time.”

  “Sorry,” Cordelia said.

  “If you’re not dead,” the man said, eyes narrowing, “then you’re trespassing on private property.” He looked past them, checking the rest of the attic. “I heard a loud crash up here. What were you two doing?”

  “We’re not trespassing,” Benji said, ignoring his question. “We go to school here. You’re the one who shouldn’t be here.”

  The man laughed. “My family owns this entire building,” he said. “You have a school only because we’ve given this town permission to use our property.” He stood tall and patted his chest. “I’m Darius Shadow.”

  Cordelia tried to keep her face impassive, as though she had never heard his name before, but fireworks were exploding in her head. Darius Shadow was Dr. Roqueni’s uncle, and according to the principal, he was not a good man. She had warned them that he would come to visit at some point, and when he did, they had to conceal their abilitie
s from him at all costs.

  Although Darius was nowhere near as sinister as Cordelia had imagined, she trusted the principal’s judgment.

  Don’t let him know we can see the ghosts, she thought.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Shadow,” Cordelia said. “I’m sure you have a lot to do, so we’ll get out of your way now . . .”

  She started toward the door, but Darius blocked her path.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” he said. “What are you two doing up here?”

  “I already told you,” Benji said. “We’re students.”

  “It’s summer. School’s closed.”

  “We volunteered to help. There’re boxes of school supplies that need to be delivered to the classrooms.”

  “That’s the custodians’ job.”

  “Usually,” Cordelia said, aiming to seal the cracks in Benji’s lie with a little truth. “Only Mr. Ward, the head custodian, retired a few weeks ago. We’re just lending a hand until Dr. Roqueni hires a new guy.”

  Darius studied them with suspicious eyes. “Not bad,” he said, as though he knew they were lying but appreciated the effort. “There are two flaws in your story, though. I don’t see any boxes. And this isn’t a classroom.”

  “We finished early today,” Cordelia said. “So we decided to explore a little.”

  “And you just happened to end up here?” Darius asked, looking more dubious than ever. Cordelia understood why. There were only two ways to reach the attic: through Dr. Roqueni’s apartment or the hidden passage behind the walls. A regular student wouldn’t know about either one.

  “We found this secret passageway!” Cordelia ex-claimed, deciding that this was the more likely scenario. “It was soooo cool! But I guess you know all about that, Mr. Shadow, this being your family’s building and all.” She gazed around the attic, desperate to change the subject. “Are these dollhouses yours, too?”

  “They’re not dollhouses!” Darius exclaimed. He lovingly opened and closed the tiny iron gate of a Gothic mansion. “These are the most detailed architectural models the world has ever known. They should be in a museum. And they will be, one day, when the world finally understands the genius of Elijah Shadow.”

  Darius strode between the pedestals, pausing here and there to wipe away a smudge from a windowpane or straighten a tiny mailbox. Cordelia and Benji tracked his progress, moving as one to block his view of the broken model behind them.

  “Each of these models was once a real place, you know,” Darius said, “though most of them have succumbed to the ravages of time by now—or been burnt to the ground by their owners. Their stories live on, though. Grandma Wilma used to kneel by my bedside and tell me the strange and wonderful things that happened there. Ghost stories. Far too frightening for most children, especially these days, but I was captivated. My grandma Wilma could see them, you know. Ghosts.” He looked down at the glasses in his hands and shoved them in his pocket. “Unfortunately, I didn’t inherit her gift.”

  Darius considered the two children before him and scratched his bald pate. “Here I am,” he said, “a strange old man talking about ghost stories. And neither one of you seems the slightest bit surprised. And what kind of girl can identify an EMF meter?” Darius lifted an old brass key that hung from a leather cord around his neck and rubbed it between his fingers. “It makes me wonder. Perhaps you have a certain degree of experience in this area. Hmm? Maybe you didn’t just find a secret passageway. Maybe you know a lot more about Shadow School than you really should.” He leaned over the roof of a dilapidated bungalow and searched their eyes. “Tell me, my new friends. Have you ever seen a ghost?”

  Before Cordelia could fashion an appropriate reply, Dr. Roqueni burst through the door. The principal usually put a lot of care into her stylish appearance (inspiring the snarky moniker “Dr. Vogue” in the PTO Facebook group), but she looked uncharacteristically disheveled: shirt untucked, glasses askew.

  Cordelia had never been happier to see her.

  “There you are,” Dr. Roqueni said, catching her breath. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  For a moment, Cordelia wasn’t sure if she was talking about the children or her uncle. Then she saw the pleading look in Dr. Roqueni’s eyes—Play along!—and realized that the next line in their improvised script belonged to her.

  “Sorry, Dr. Roqueni,” Cordelia replied. “I know we were supposed to be working, but we found a secret passageway on the third floor! Come on—we’ll show you!”

  “Oh, that,” Dr. Roqueni said, as though secret passageways were as common as kitchen sinks. “Just a fluke of an old house. Nothing more to it.”

  Darius fixed her with an incredulous gaze. “These children claim they were helping you—”

  “Deliver school supplies to the classrooms,” Dr. Roqueni said without missing a beat. They had prepared this story beforehand, just in case an adult ever questioned the children’s presence in the school. “That’s correct. Though they weren’t supposed to be helping me today. In fact, I had no idea they were even in the school until I happened to see their bikes outside. If they had bothered to ask, I would have informed them that I had a surprise visitor and they should stay home.”

  Cordelia felt her face grow warm. They were only supposed to come to the school on pre-arranged days. This wasn’t one of them.

  “Sorry,” Cordelia said. “I guess we just really wanted to . . . deliver as many boxes as possible.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Benji muttered. “I was happy playing FIFA.”

  “I appreciate your work ethic,” Dr. Roqueni said. “But perhaps this is a sign that you need a little break. Take the rest of the summer off. You deserve it.”

  Cordelia’s mouth fell open. “But there are so many more . . . boxes to deliver!” she exclaimed. “And more boxes arrive every day, so if we fall behind, they’re just going to pile up and we’ll never—”

  “This isn’t up for debate, Cordelia,” Dr. Roqueni said with a warning tone in her voice. “I’ve been thinking about this for some time now, and I’ve come to the decision that it’s unhealthy for any child to spend so much time in school.” She placed her hands on Cor-delia’s shoulders. “It’s summer, for goodness’ sake! Go swimming. Eat ice cream. Have fun.”

  “Works for me,” Benji said, tugging Cordelia in the direction of the trapdoor. “We won’t tell anyone else about the secret passageway, Dr. R. Mum’s the word. See you in September!”

  Cordelia shot him a look of betrayal. How can he just give up like that? The ghosts need us! She wished she could plead her case to Dr. Roqueni, but Darius already seemed suspicious enough. She didn’t want to make things worse.

  “Fine,” Cordelia said. She turned to Darius. “It was nice to meet you, Mr. Shadow.” To her surprise, she actually meant it. Despite Dr. Roqueni’s warnings, she had found the strange old man endearing—and it was clear that he loved the ghosts as much as she did.

  “It was nice to meet you too,” said Darius.

  “Bye, Cordelia,” Dr. Roqueni said. “Enjoy your break.”

  Cordelia followed Benji down the ladder, already feeling depressed. Two months? With no ghosts at all? What was she going to do?

  Her summer was ruined.

  4

  Ezra

  For the rest of the summer, the sprits of Shadow School haunted the corridors of Cordelia’s mind. Do they think I’ve abandoned them? she wondered, lying awake at night as their old air conditioner rattled like the chains of a Dickensian ghost. Are they lonely? Are they mad? These concerns plunged Cordelia into moods dark enough to eclipse the August sun. She spent entire days holed up in her bedroom, researching spectral phenomena so she could be as prepared as possible when she finally continued her duties. Agnes visited her father in Boston. Benji babysat his sisters while their parents were at work. The three friends texted one another often, but every time Agnes and Cordelia started talking about something productive, Benji steered the conversation to boring kid st
uff: movies, sports, the latest gossip. Anything other than ghosts.

  He didn’t understand.

  It was only after visiting her grandparents in San Francisco that Cordelia realized the entire summer was about to slip through her fingertips. She dedicated herself to a strong finish, making memories at a feverish clip: sharing a blanket with her parents while watching fireworks in the park, bike riding with Agnes and discovering a covered bridge, brushing her fingers against Benji’s as they rode the Ferris wheel at the Ludlow Carnival.

  Even then, the ghosts were never far from her thoughts. When Cordelia exited the bus that first day of school, the relief nearly made her knees buckle.

  I can finally help them again, she thought. I can finally do what I was meant to do.

  Cordelia spotted Agnes struggling to make her way through the crowd while dragging a rolling backpack behind her. She was taller than most of the other students, with long, blond hair corralled into an efficient braid.

  Cordelia greeted her with a huge hug.

  “Happy first day of school!” Agnes exclaimed, flashing her violet braces in a smile. She handed Cordelia a brown paper bag. “I made you a brownie to celebrate. Dark chocolate and toasted marshmallow. I’m not sure if it’s any good.”

  “You always say that, and it’s always perfect.”

  “And here’s your schedule,” Agnes said, handing Cordelia a plastic folder. “I printed you a copy because I knew you’d forget.”

  “Or maybe I forgot because I knew you’d print me a copy. Who’s the smart one now?”

  “Still me. I’m psyched that Dr. Roqueni put us all in the same homeroom. Fighting evil spirits with the principal has its benefits.”

  “Where is Dr. Roqueni, anyway?” Cordelia asked, scanning the parking lot. “She’s usually out here directing traffic.”