Chris Grabenstein - The Hanging Hill

“Yes, Mom.”

“You’re Meghan’s teacher?” asked Judy.

“When she’s on the road, which it seems like we have been for over a year. Before my daughter became an actress, I taught middle school. My husband still does.”

“You still teach, too, Mom,” said Meghan.

“Yes, but only one student in a one-room school-house,” Mrs. McKenna said warmly. “Typically a hotel room or trailer near a movie set. I have my master’s degree in history.”

“I’m impressed,” said Judy.

“Don’t be. It’s why we almost didn’t do your show.”

Now she was confused. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” said Mrs. McKenna hesitantly, “let’s just say the Hanging Hill Playhouse does not have a very good history when it comes to productions featuring children.”

“Really?”

“The Music Man was the last show they did with any children in the cast and it closed after two performances because the young actor playing the part of Winthrop refused to come out of his dressing room!”

“Why?”

“There are rumors that the theater is haunted.”

Judy pretended to be surprised. “Is that so?”

“I did a little research. Dug up all sorts of stories about frightening ‘presences.’ Stage lights going on and off by themselves. Footsteps and voices up on the catwalks when nobody’s there. Odd breezes and odors. There’s even an actress named Thelma Beaumont who died of a heart attack, right at center stage when the audience rose to give her a standing ovation. They say she keeps coming back to take one more curtain call.”

There was a clink.

“Sorry.” Zack had just dropped his fork.

“Even Mr. Justus Willowmeier the Third is rumored to show up from time to time.”

“Is he the one who built the Hanging Hill Publick House?” asked Judy.

“No, he was that Willowmeier’s grandson and the one who transformed the hotel and tavern into an entertainment emporium. Justus the Third loved show people. Particularly showgirls . He was seldom seen without a cigar in his mouth and a pretty woman on each arm. He also kept one of the apartments on the top floor. Liked to host rowdy parties up there, and according to several of the stories, he still does!”

“That’s where we’re staying,” said Judy. “The top floor.”

“Us too. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll all get invited to one of his cast parties!”

“So all these ghostly presences scare the kids away?”

“Yep.”

“I wonder why the theater wanted to do my show,” said Judy.

“Maybe because your script only needs two children,” said Mrs. McKenna. “But—I’ll be honest—if Meghan didn’t love your books so much, well, we wouldn’t be here.”

“Why?”

Mrs. McKenna took in a deep breath. “Seventy years ago,” she said, “a child performer died here. A girl.”

Judy was horrified. “In a show?”

“I’m not sure. My information right now is sort of sketchy. Got it from Florence, the ninety-year-old sweetheart who volunteers in the box office. Anyway, Florence told me there was a fire ‘of suspicious origin’ back in the late 1930s and she vaguely remembers the police arresting a man, one of the touring vaudeville performers, charging him with arson and first-degree felony murder.”

“Oh my.”

“The little girl who died in the blaze was also on the vaudeville bill. Part of a brother-sister juggling act.”

Now there were two clinks.

This time, both Zack and Meghan had dropped their forks.

47

Right after lunch, Zack and Judy went with Meghan and her mom to the three p.m. Sunday matinee of Bats in Her Belfry .

Meghan and Judy had to sign a bunch more autographs before they could sit down.

Zack and Mrs. McKenna did not.

Zack thought the show was pretty neat. Dracula made an extremely cool entrance—floating down through a huge window in his castle. Since it was a musical comedy , the window wasn’t open.

The renowned vampire hunter Van Helsing attempted to expose the smooth and debonair count by inviting him to a big banquet where all they served was spaghetti in garlic sauce and garlic bread. One neat scene showed Dracula getting locked in his coffin, which was then chained inside a concrete crypt like in a magic show. Some townspeople turned the box around and around and it didn’t look like there was any way for the actor to escape through trapdoors in the floor, because the crypt was on an elevated platform, but when the vampire hunters undid the chains, all they found inside the tomb was a single dead rose.

In the second act, the lady playing Lucy, one of the women falling in love with Dracula, started singing that “Bitten and Smitten” song Judy had sung in the car.

She wasn’t alone.

Every move she made and every note she sang was mirrored by a second woman wearing a slightly different costume and wig. They were only inches apart and moving in complete sync across the stage—like those swimmers at the Olympics. Zack thought this was hilarious.

Except he realized: Nobody in the audience was laughing.

Maybe because they couldn’t see the Lucy double.

He turned to Meghan on his right.

“Yep,” she whispered. “It’s a ghost.”

He turned to Judy on his left.

“It’s Kathleen Williams,” she whispered. “From the original cast! She’s really good, isn’t she?”

Yeah , Zack thought. Especially for a dead person .

48

After summoning Murphy, Butler, and several other deceased criminal masterminds, Grimes and the Tunisians had taken a four-hour break from conjuring demons, vacating the stage just before the Sunday-afternoon performance of Bats in Her Belfry .

Immediately after the matinee, however, when the audience was gone, the lobby was empty, and the doors were once again barred, Reginald Grimes returned to center stage to form a necromancy circle with the three other men.

“Who’s next?” he asked Hakeem without much enthusiasm.

“Lilly Pruett.”

The name sounded familiar. A distant childhood memory. Something to do with girls skipping rope.

His mind was wandering. Grimes was exhausted. Dead tired. He couldn’t remember half of the names of the spirits he had summoned up from the underworld.

“She was originally summoned by the professor,” Hakeem explained. “Now she must answer to you!”

“How much more of this must I endure before you unlock the trunk’s final compartment?”

Hakeem unfurled a long scroll filled with names. “Fortunately, a few of the spirits your grandfather was familiar with still reside here in the theater. William Bampfield …”

“Bampfield? Who’s he?”

“An early settler. A Pilgrim, I believe you call them. He stole his neighbor’s cattle, killed his wife and two daughters. Claimed the devil told him to do it. Went to the gallows.”

“Wonderful,” Grimes said sarcastically. “And what, pray tell, do I want with him?”

“Mr. Bampfield should prove most eager to steal and kill again.”

“So?”

“He’d be delighted to do so for you . To kill, to rob, to pillage, plunder, pilfer, ransack, and loot. So would they all. These evil spirits will do anything you ask of them. They simply need a good director to tell them where to go and what to do.”

“Wait a minute,” said Grimes. “You’re telling me these ghosts can actually rob banks, steal diamonds, forge checks, embezzle funds, make me rich beyond my wildest dreams and kill anyone who tries to stop us?”

“Yes. Not now. But soon.”

“Bah! You keep saying that. ‘Soon! Soon!’ How soon?”

“Tomorrow. When the moon is full. When the sacred ceremony is complete.”