Chris Grabenstein - The Hanging Hill

“Excuse me? Sir?”

Kimble turned. A bottled blonde who appeared to be smuggling soccer balls under her blouse was waving at him. Her bracelets kept clacking against each other.

“Aya?” said Kimble.

“My son spilled his apple juice.” She gestured at a boy in a blue blazer. The bratty Little Lord Fauntleroy was holding his juice box upside down and squeezing it like he was milking a cardboard cow, fascinated by not only the squirts but the gassy fart sounds they made. Boy seemed a bit peculiar. Maybe dim-witted, too.

“This apple juice is dangerous!” the boy whined out his nose. “I’m fructose intolerant!”

Some of the adults were staring at the kid, wondering what kind of holy terror they’d be spending the rest of their summer with. Well, the little monster didn’t scare Kimble. He’d seen his type before. What they lacked in talent, they made up for with hot air and temper tantrums.

The boy dropped his crumpled juice box to the floor. His mother wiggled her fingers to indicate exactly where Kimble needed to mop up.

Stage mothers. The spoiled brats and crybabies always had one.

“Has anyone seen Miss McKenna?” the stage manager called out.

“Her mother must’ve let her sleep in,” said juice boy’s stage mother. “Maybe because Meghan is a ‘movie star.’” The blonde made quote marks in the air. Sounded jealous.

“I’m waiting for my son, too,” said the playwright.

“We have a few more minutes,” said the stage manager. “Reginald is running late.”

Kimble pushed his broom out of the room

Kids .

Three of ’em.

Two in the show plus the writer’s son.

There hadn’t been any children at the Hanging Hill Playhouse since that ill-fated production of The Music Man , a show that had been forced to close early because all the children in the cast quit.

They were all too terrified to work at the theater. Seemed they kept seeing ghosts.

Kimble smiled.

Maybe he could convince these three to go home, too.

26

Zack decided he’d skip the table meeting.

They’d be rehearsing the show for three whole weeks, so what was the big deal about being there for the first read-through?

Why not give the Pilgrim Guy a chance to vacate the premises?

There was a knock on the door.

Ghosts usually didn’t knock; they more or less seeped their way in. But maybe this was a trick.

Another knock.

“Zack?”

It was a girl and she sounded older than the juggling ghost.

“It’s me. Meghan. Zack? I know you’re in there. I can see your feet.”

Zack glanced at the door and saw that there was a huge gap between its bottom and the floorboards, because the building was so old it sagged.

“Oh, hi!” he said “I was just getting Zipper some water.”

“Cool. Hey, how come you wear two different kinds of socks?”

Zack looked at his feet: one red, one argyle. Another mismatched pair, courtesy of the sock gremlins.

“Um …” He tried to think of a good explanation. “Uh.”

There wasn’t one.

“It’s a cool look,” said Meghan. “I mean, who says socks have to match? Why not wear a different one on each foot? Mind if I steal the idea and start mixing up my socks, too?”

“Uh, no. Sure. Go ahead.”

“Thanks. You going down to the table meeting?”

“I dunno,” said Zack. “Are you?”

“Uh, yeah. I’m in the show, remember?”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

“You wanna head down with me?”

“You mean together?”

“Uh, yeah.”

Moment of truth. Admit that he was still slightly afraid of ghosts, especially any that dive-bombed down stairwells with nooses wrapped around their necks, or leave the room to be with a girl who might turn into a pretty neat new friend?

“Okay,” said Zack. He rose from the bed. Patted Zipper on the head. The dog moaned slightly but he was sound asleep, nestled tight against the pillows.

“We’d better hurry. My mom says I shouldn’t be late for my first day of work.”

“Okay.” Zack walked toward the door.

“Oh, by the way, the elevator’s still broken. We’ll have to take the stairs.”

He hesitated. Ran through his options again. Hide under the bed? Hike down the steps with Meghan? He took in a long, deep breath.

“Okay,” he said.

27

Meghan and Zack clomped down the stairs.

“Did you know that the hill this theater is built on used to be called Hangman’s Hill?”

Zack froze. “What?”

“In the olden days, public hangings were spectacles. People would come from miles around to see a good execution.”

“Unh-hunh.”

“This hill was the perfect spot to put on a show because you could see the gallows for about a mile in any direction!”

“Whattaya know.” Zack tried to laugh. “Henh-henh-henh.”

“You feeling okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t sound so hot.”

“Motel vending machine food for dinner last night. Chili.”

“Oh. Come on.”

They started descending the steps again.

“Anyway,” said Meghan, “my mom’s a history buff. Whenever we’re on the road or on location, she researches everything she can about the place we’re going to. That’s why they call this the Hanging Hill Playhouse. Well, first it was the Hanging Hill Publick House.”

“Right,” said Zack. That was as far back as Judy’s theater history lesson had gone yesterday. She’d never made it all the way back to ye olde scaffold-and-noose days.

“My mom’s heading back to the library today to learn more.”

Zack thought about asking Meghan’s mom if she knew of any Pilgrims who had dangled from the gallows on Hangman’s Hill. Maybe they’d hanged juggling girls, too. Zack couldn’t figure out why anybody would do that. Mimes, maybe. But not jugglers.

As they marched down the steps, the hard rubber heels of their running shoes thudded against the metal treads. The deep ringing sound reverberated off the stairwell walls.

“Sounds like bells, hunh?” said Meghan.

“Yeah,” said Zack. “Church bells.”

“I think theaters are a lot like churches,” said Meghan.

“Because of all the pageantry and costumes and stuff?”

“That plus the big emotions trapped inside both buildings. In churches, you have the joy of weddings, the sadness of funerals.”

“And in a theater,” said Zack, “you have comedies and tragedies.”

“Exactly. The walls soak it all up. I figure that’s why so many churchyards and theaters are haunted.”

Zack froze again. This time in midstep. “What?”

“A lot of theaters attract ghosts, Zack. Every playhouse I’ve ever worked in had at least one.”

“Really?”

“Sure. There was this theater where the balcony seats kept folding down all by themselves because a bunch of ghosts wanted to see our show.”

“Unh-hunh.”

They started walking down the steps again.

“There’s this theater in Ohio that’s haunted by a wealthy woman whose husband shot her when he found out she had, like, a major crush on the show’s leading man. You can still see her up in the balcony, waiting for her handsome hero to make his next entrance, which, of course, he never does, so she just sits there and sighs forlornly.”

They clunked down to the second floor.

“Meghan,” said Zack tentatively, “do you really believe in ghosts? Do you really see them?”

“Well, duh. Don’t you?”

“What about this theater? Is it haunted?”

“Uh, I think so.” She pointed down the steps. “That girl down there? Come on. She has to be a ghost. Nobody would wear a dress like that unless they were dead.”