Shadow School: Dehaunting Read online

  “I’m sure she’s around. Are you still mad at her for kicking you out?”

  “I’m over it. Not looking forward to telling her about the model I broke, though. Do you think she’s noticed by now?”

  “Probably,” Agnes said. “Better to just tell her and get it over with.”

  Cordelia ate her brownie and observed the other students pouring through the front gate. Most of them were wearing outfits so new you could practically hear the tags being snipped off. Cordelia suddenly felt self-conscious about her own clothes: sneakers, jogging shorts, and a simple T-shirt. She had been so focused on dressing for comfort—knowing that she would be running around and helping ghosts after school—that she had forgotten all about style.

  Cordelia caught sight of Benji heading in their direction. A pretty girl with a mass of curly dark hair was walking next to him. He waved goodbye, and she gave him a huge smile before joining a group of passing girls.

  “Who was that?” Cordelia asked Benji, trying to sound as casual as possible.

  “Viviana Martínez. She’s cool.”

  “But not as cool as me,” Agnes said, handing him a brownie and a copy of his schedule. “We have Mrs. Machen for math again, but all our other teachers are new.”

  “Ugh. Machen,” Benji said.

  “She’s not so bad,” Agnes said. “She gave me a trigonometry textbook to read over the summer. It was fun!”

  “Fun?” Benji asked.

  “You play with a ball. I play with numbers.”

  Cordelia leaned closer to Agnes. “Did you bring your goggles?”

  Agnes looked surprised by the question. “Okay, first of all, we’re calling them spectercles now,” she said. “Spectacles. Specters. Get it?”

  “Cute,” Cordelia said.

  “Yeah, but I left them at home. I know they’re invisible, so it’s not like anyone would even know I’m wearing them, but it’s the first day of school. I didn’t think we were—”

  “No worries,” Cordelia said. “You can use one of the extra pairs.”

  “You seriously want to rescue ghosts today?” Benji asked. “Can’t we just take a few days to ease into it?”

  “You’ve had the entire summer off, Benji,” Cordelia said. “Those poor ghosts have been trapped for months. They shouldn’t have to wait another day!”

  Benji looked like he wanted to argue, then gave a sigh of acceptance. “All right, boss,” he said. “Back to work.”

  “I’m in too,” Agnes said. “As long as our teachers don’t give us much home—”

  “Shh,” Benji said. “It’s too early for the H-word. I can’t take it.”

  They passed through the gate and beneath a sheltering canopy of maples and elms. The school towered over them, unfurling its massive shadow like a cloak. Cordelia could already see several new ghosts in the windows, including a girl waving a red-and-black flag and a man wearing an astronaut helmet.

  Cordelia’s heart fluttered with anticipation. She couldn’t wait to get started.

  “Give it back!” someone exclaimed.

  A small crowd had gathered outside the doors of the school to watch three seventh graders tease a gangly fifth-grade boy. Cordelia was completely unsurprised to see Mason James at the head of the pack. He had gotten taller over the summer and his shoulders had filled out. The cruel twist of his smile hadn’t changed at all.

  “I’m doing you a favor,” Mason said. He was holding a stuffed wolf over his head, far too high for the leaping fifth grader to reach. “What are you, ten? Eleven? You bring this to school, you’re gonna get teased. Kids can be mean, you know?”

  Mason laughed, impressed by his own cleverness. The two other boys laughed as well. The fifth grader looked close to tears.

  “Looks like your bullying techniques didn’t get rusty over the summer,” Agnes said.

  “Thanks, Geekzilla,” Mason said, taking her words as a genuine compliment. He looked over their group and seemed to forget about his prey for the moment. “Check it out, boys. It’s the freak patrol. You three gonna spend the entire year sneaking around the school and whispering in corners again?”

  “Just leave the kid alone, Mason,” Benji said. “It’s his first day here.”

  Mason considered the request. Benji was afforded a certain degree of respect due to his skill on the soccer field. At one point, he and Mason had even been friends.

  “Why are you still hanging with these weirdos, Núñez? You used to be cool.”

  “I’m still cool,” Benji said with a grin. “And I don’t need to pick on fifth graders to prove it.”

  The morning bell rang.

  “Enough of you losers,” Mason said, tossing the stuffed wolf to the ground. He and his minions made sure to step on it on their way inside the school.

  Cordelia brushed the dirt off the wolf and handed it to the boy.

  “Thanks,” he said, slipping the stuffed animal inside his backpack before it could cause any more trouble. He was an odd-looking kid. It seemed like the various parts of his body were growing at different rates, leaving him with a large nose and long legs, but short arms and tiny eyes. His face was covered with freckles.

  “What’s your name?” Cordelia asked.

  “Ezra,” he said, surprising Cordelia by shaking her hand. “Ezra Gottfried. This is all my fault. I should have gone straight inside just like Mom said. But look at this place! What kind of school is this?” He gestured at the building with bulging, terrified eyes. “I took Drool out of my backpack just to feel a little braver until I got inside. I know I’m too old for stuffed animals. I don’t, like, sleep with him or anything.”

  Cordelia could tell from Ezra’s blushing face that he definitely slept with Drool, probably every single night. But she nodded as though she believed him.

  “I was scared my first day too,” Cordelia said. “Here’s the thing: Shadow School may look scary, but there’s nothing here that can hurt you. I mean, it’s still school, so don’t expect Disney World or anything. But I promise you’ll be okay.”

  That got a hint of a smile. They started to walk toward the entrance together.

  “Who’s your homeroom teacher?” Benji asked.

  “Mrs. King.”

  “I had her!” Agnes exclaimed. “She’s super nice. She lets you play board games every Friday afternoon and has a pet gecko named Lemonade.”

  “I had a pet gecko once,” Ezra said. “My mom vacuumed it up by accident. At least, I think it was by accident. Mom doesn’t like animals.” He stopped before the threshold of the school. “Are you sure it isn’t haunted?”

  “Don’t be silly, Ezra,” said Cordelia, guiding him around an old fisherman standing in the doorway and looking longingly at the beautiful day outside. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

  The fisherman’s pole was missing its line. Cordelia made a mental note of it for later.

  5

  Mr. Derleth’s Discovery

  In all her time at Shadow School, Cordelia had never seen so many ghosts. They were everywhere: sitting on desks, crouched beneath tables, peeking out from behind vent covers. While her new teachers droned on about rules and procedures, Cordelia formulated a mental list of the Brightkeys she would need after school. Jump rope for the girl in the gym. Chalk for the man staring at the blackboard. Shoelaces and earbuds for all the new joggers.

  At last, the final bell rang. Cordelia, Agnes, and Benji lingered by their lockers until the mob of students thinned out, then descended a spiral staircase to the basement. A locked door with an intimidating sign blocked their path:

  NO STUDENTS OR TEACHERS BEYOND THIS POINT

  HAZARDOUS AIR QUALITY

  Dr. Roqueni had given each of them a key to the door. Agnes used hers, and the trio stepped into a long, dark hallway. It was eerily silent. Over the summer, teachers who taught in the basement had been reassigned to higher floors due to “emergency asbestos removal.” It wasn’t a permanent solution, but for now the kids could enter and leave Elij
ah Shadow’s office without the risk of being seen.

  “I can’t believe Dr. Roqueni let the ghosts pile up like this,” Cordelia said, sidestepping a pigtailed girl holding a ceramic unicorn. “She should have let us stay and do our thing.”

  “With her uncle still here?” Benji asked. “No way. He was already suspicious enough. If we kept showing up at the school, he definitely would have figured out we can see the ghosts.”

  “So what?” Agnes asked, sliding her spectercles on. She leaned against Cordelia’s shoulder a moment, allowing the dizziness to pass as her eyes adjusted to seeing two worlds at once. “Why is Dr. Roqueni so afraid of her uncle finding out that you have the Sight?”

  Cordelia hesitated before answering. Dr. Roqueni had told her the story several months ago, but she wasn’t sure whether it had been in confidence.

  They’re your best friends, Cordelia thought. They deserve to know.

  “He was a jerk to her when she was our age,” Cordelia said. “She doesn’t want him to do the same thing to us.”

  “What did he do?” Benji asked.

  “Mr. Shadow can’t see the ghosts, right? And it’s a thing with him. So he used little Dr. Roqueni to see them instead.” Cordelia could tell from their baffled expressions that she wasn’t explaining it the right way, so she tried a different approach. “You know Katie? How her mom really wanted to be an actress but all she ever really did was that one commercial with the singing vacuum cleaner, so now she makes Katie take all those acting classes even though she doesn’t actually want to?”

  “Katie Tran takes acting classes?” Agnes asked.

  “Not Katie Tran,” Cordelia said. “Katie Waters.”

  “Katie Tran plays the guitar,” Benji said.

  Agnes shook her head. “You’re thinking of Katie Millhauser. With the hats.”

  “Too many Katies,” Benji said.

  “Anyway,” Cordelia continued, “Mr. Shadow forced Dr. Roqueni to roam around Shadow School and tell him about all the ghosts so he could know what they were like. He took her to a bunch of other supposedly haunted houses, too, just to see if her gift would work there. This went on for years. Dr. Roqueni said he used to call her his ‘Little Eyes.’”

  “Why didn’t her parents tell this guy to go away?” Benji asked.

  “Bad mom,” Cordelia said. “Dead dad.”

  “Well, Dr. Roqueni has nothing to worry about with us,” Benji said. “We’re not Shadows. Our parents aren’t going to let us go off on ghost-hunting adventures with a crazy old man.”

  “He’s not crazy,” Cordelia said. “I actually feel kind of bad for him. He was so disappointed when he found out his special ghost-seeing glasses didn’t work!”

  Agnes gave her a strange look. “You sound like you like him,” she said.

  Cordelia shrugged.

  “The way Dr. Roqueni described him, I thought he was going to be really mean and scary. But he’s just this grandpa who’s proud that he’s related to Elijah Shadow and wishes that he could see ghosts like the rest of his family. Maybe he’s not as bad as Dr. Roqueni said.”

  “Or maybe we don’t know the whole story,” Benji said.

  They stopped in front of a bulletin board covered with yellowed artwork from the previous year. After a quick check of the hallway in either direction, Cor-delia pressed a special hibiscus concealed in the flowered wallpaper while Agnes pressed its twin. The floor opened, revealing a set of stairs that led into the darkness.

  “Our school rules,” Agnes said with a grin.

  They descended the stairs and used a lever to close the floor above them. Elijah Shadow’s office had been a dark, rat-infested mess when they discovered it last year. Its renovation was still a work in progress, but significant improvements had been made. Before retiring and moving to Greece, Mr. Ward—the former head custodian of Shadow School and one of the few adults who knew about the ghosts—had rewired the outdated electrical connections and installed modern light fixtures. The floors had been swept and mopped, walls scrubbed, books shelved. They had even reorganized the adjoining storage room with a variety of possible Brightkeys.

  Mr. Derleth, who had learned about the ghosts when Cordelia helped his son last year, was sitting at the drafting table in the center of the room, flipping through one of Elijah’s journals while making notes on a yellow legal pad. A nasty bruise darkened his left cheekbone.

  “Whoa!” Benji exclaimed. “What happened, Mr. D? You get into a fight?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Mr. Derleth said. “Dr. Roqueni and I attempted to move Elijah’s bones so we could inter him properly in the Shadow family crypt. He took exception. The last thing I remember before blacking out is a particularly thick volume of architectural history flying toward my face.”

  Cordelia glanced over at the cot where Elijah Shadow had taken his final breath. Now that the office had been refurbished, his skeleton looked as out of place as a snowman on a beach. Elijah’s ghost stood over his remains. His white shirt was forever rolled up at the sleeves, his mustache neat and trim.

  “That wasn’t very nice,” Cordelia scolded him. “Mr. Derleth was just trying to help.”

  Elijah crossed his arms, daring anyone else to touch his bones.

  “He feels really awful that you got hurt,” Cordelia told Mr. Derleth.

  “Yeah, right,” Mr. Derleth replied with a dubious look. He couldn’t see the ghosts, though one time he had tried out Agnes’s spectercles to experience what it was like. After a short walk through the school, Mr. Derleth had returned—face ashen, hands shaking—and announced that he was better suited for research.

  “How’s it going?” Cordelia asked, picking up one of Elijah’s journals from a nearby stack and flipping through its pages. Tiny handwriting covered every millimeter of white space, broken only by the occasional sketch or diagram.

  “Slow and steady,” Mr. Derleth replied. “My goal was to finish all of Elijah’s journals by the end of the summer, but it’s going to take a lot longer than that. Elijah suffered from an obsessive need to write down every single thought that came into his head. Some of them are brilliant. Others not so much. His poem about toenails was a particular low point.”

  Cordelia smiled. Mr. Derleth had always seemed sad last year—with good reason—but lately he had begun to joke around a little bit. She hoped this was a sign of things to come.

  “Welcome back, children,” Dr. Roqueni said, entering the office. “Sorry I haven’t had a chance to say hello. I’ve been stuck in my office, planning the agendas for our upcoming faculty meetings.”

  Dr. Roqueni didn’t offer a smile or ask them how their summers had been. Is she mad at me? Cordelia wondered, an uneasy feeling gnawing at her stomach. Does she know I broke the horseshoe house?

  “More faculty meetings?” Mr. Derleth asked. “If I had known that’s why you wanted to clean out the conservatory, I never would have agreed to help.”

  “I think it looks lovely,” Dr. Roqueni said. “There are even more plants being delivered next week. Now that the ghost snatchers are no longer an issue, I can finally focus on the school part of Shadow School. Especially if . . .” She paused and shared a long look with Mr. Derleth. “Have you told them yet?”

  “No—I was waiting for you.”

  “Told us what?” Cordelia asked.

  Mr. Derleth took a moment to stand up and stretch, then leaned against the drafting table and faced the children. “Two years before he faked his own death, Elijah concluded that Shadow School—or Shadow Manor, as it was known back then—had been a terrible mistake. He hadn’t always felt that way. In his younger years, Elijah had cast himself in the role of rescuer, the ghosts as refugees from a bleak and barren world. It was only years later, when he saw the first ghost accept its ‘final gift’ and ascend into its ‘hereafter’—what we call Brightkeys and Brights—that Elijah began to question his earlier assessment. There was no denying the joy in the ghosts’ faces as they escaped the school.”


  “Elijah finally accepted the fact that he wasn’t a rescuer,” Dr. Roqueni said with surprising ire. “He was a captor.”

  Cordelia glanced in Elijah’s direction. The ghost bowed his head in shame.

  “Elijah became obsessed with undoing the damage he had done,” Mr. Derleth said. “That’s why he set that fire in the attic and faked his own death. Any party interested in using his research for their own endeavors would believe it had all been destroyed. And being ‘dead’ allowed him to work undisturbed.”

  “The school is only haunted because of the way it’s built,” Benji said, hopping up on one of the long cabinets that housed Elijah’s vast collection of blueprints. “So why not knock down a wall or two and mess with the archimancy?”

  “We’ve been over this before,” Cordelia said. “That’s not the way it works.”

  “Shouldn’t we at least try it? If someone gives me a sledgehammer, I’d be happy to do a little experiment—”

  “Don’t you dare!” Dr. Roqueni exclaimed, startling all of them. Benji’s face turned pale. Even at her sternest, the principal wasn’t one to raise her voice.

  “I was just joking,” Benji muttered.

  “Sorry,” Dr. Roqueni said, grimacing. “I didn’t mean to shout. But you need to understand that if you break the bonds of archimancy that hold this place together, there will be a release of spectral energy powerful enough to destroy all the spirits in the school. They’ll stop existing altogether. No afterlife. No Bright. ‘Knock down a wall or two,’ and you condemn the ghosts to a fate far worse than death.”

  Dr. Roqueni massaged her temples, wincing as though she had a headache. There were dark circles under her eyes. Guess the visit from her uncle didn’t go so great, Cordelia thought.

  “But there was a fire in the attic,” Agnes said. “That must have done enough damage to impact the archimancy.”

  “Usually that would be the case,” Mr. Derleth said. “But Elijah knew what was at risk and made sure the fire was contained to a ‘nonessential’ area of the house. After that, he hid in this office and tried to figure out a way to send the ghosts safely on their way. It wasn’t easy. Archimancy was”—he consulted his notes—“‘a stubborn cage that refused to relinquish the poor souls trapped behind its bars.’ After years of work, however, Elijah finally succeeded in designing a machine capable of dehaunting the school completely.”