Chris Grabenstein - The Hanging Hill

Zipper was in a happy, happy sunshine state.

Until something blocked the sunbeam streaming through the room’s dormer window.

Probably one of those puffy white things up in the sky. Yesterday, Zipper had seen one that reminded him of a poodle. Another one sort of looked like Spencer, a golden retriever he knew.

Slightly chilled, Zipper stood up. Stretched. Yawned and dipped into a back-bending arch. Then he turned around in a circle, trying to find that perfect sun spot he had just been snoozing in. Couldn’t find it, couldn’t find it. So he changed directions. Circled back the other way. Still couldn’t find it, still couldn’t …

He heard a hiss outside the window.

He cocked an ear. Looked. Sniffed.

Yep.

There was a cat out there. On the windowsill. Gray and sleek with yellow eyes.

Zipper wagged his tail.

He didn’t mind cats. They were fine—just, you know, different . Slept a lot. Tossed their own toys. Played with tin foil. Didn’t know how to sit or stay. Pooped in a box.

But basically, cats were okay.

So he wagged his tail to let the gray cat out on the window ledge know he was happy to say howdy.

The cat shot out its claws. Yowled. Swiped at the window—scratching the glass.

Okay. Maybe this was a different kind of cat. A breed Zipper had never encountered.

For one thing, it was huge. Nearly the size of that raccoon he chased up a tree one time. For another, it looked sort of psychotic. Eyes all buggy and bulgy. Like Chico, this crazy Chihuahua who used to yap-yap-yap at him all the time when he was a puppy living in a kennel at Dr. Freed’s animal hospital.

The cat hissed again. Furious and vicious.

Its eyes were glowing like the yellow warning lights Zipper had seen on the highway. Foam drooled out of its wide-open mouth. Saliva dripped off its fangs.

As the hackles rose on his back, Zipper figured that this feline visitor was a few rabies shots short of a complete checkup.

He was just about to bark when the cat vanished. Disappeared!

Just like those ghosts back at the crossroads.

Which was fine by Zipper.

The fat cat had been the one blotting out the sun.

The pillow was perfect again. Like warm mud in July.

He needed a nap.

He yawned.

Snuggled into position.

Dreamed about squirrels. The slow ones—loaded down with acorns—the ones that were easy to catch.

67

Zack followed the curly-haired lady through the storage area under the stage, down the hallway on the left, through an open double door, and into a dimly lit passageway.

“Excuse me?” he cried out. “What are you doing here? Did you follow me? Why aren’t you back in North Chester?”

Doll Face stopped moving forward. Drifted in place. Her clothes—a simple robe of some sort—and her tangle of coiled hair bobbed up and down as if she were underwater.

“Beware Pandemonium,” the woman whispered, without turning around.

Her, too?

Zack felt fear crawl across his skin, then drop a bucket of ice down his spine. The lady’s voice sounded strangely familiar. Did Zack know her? Doubtful. He didn’t know many dead people, especially ones who hung around with convicted killers from 1959.

The curly-haired woman drifted down another passageway.

“Were you the ghost Judy saw going out of my room? Why’d you follow us here? Did you knock that picture frame over on purpose?”

The woman froze again.

Zack knew that if she had knocked over the picture frame, she must’ve been really mad or really sad, because that was the only way ghosts could make physical objects move.

The woman resumed her forward drift.

Doll Face was one weird ghost. Unlike chatty old Bartholomew Buckingham or Justus Willowmeier III, she hardly said a word—just “Beware Pandemonium,” and everybody seemed to be saying that lately.

Also, her clothes didn’t seem very old. Her robe was the soft gray of dove wings but looked kind of modern, so whoever she was, or had been, she hadn’t been dead very long. Either that, or heaven had shopping malls.

They made their way past some dusty scenery pieces.

Doll Face turned left, walked under a brick archway.

Zack followed, wondering why Mad Dog called her that, because he hadn’t even seen her face yet.

There seemed to be a golden halo of light rimming her body now, which was a good thing—otherwise the hallway would be totally dark. The overhead light sockets were bulbless. Apparently, they were moving into a section of the basement where nobody ventured—not even the cranky janitor.

Suddenly, Doll Face ducked down and stepped over a low cinder block wall, through a very narrow opening that led into some sort of dank crawl space.

The air here was damp, thick with the scent of mildew. The floor was dirt, maybe mud. Zack, who wasn’t all that tall, had to walk hunched over to avoid scraping his head against the rough beams in the ceiling.

Doll Face leaned forward and floated.

“Are we still under the theater?” Zack asked. “I think I hear the river. Do you smell it?”

No answer.

Maybe ghosts couldn’t smell.

Zack had a funny feeling he had been led down here for a reason, and maybe not a particularly nice one. Maybe this ghost was the demon sent to slay the demon slayer.

“You know what? I think it’s time I headed back upstairs. My mom’s probably wondering where I am.”

Once more, Doll Face froze.

This time, however, she slowly raised her right arm and pointed at something on the ground directly in front of her.

Zack moved forward. The ghost’s stiff finger seemed to glow and illuminated a shadowy rectangle near her feet.

A steamer trunk.

An old-fashioned footlocker about four feet long with riveted ribbons along all its edges. Two hinged hasps flanked a lock that was already flipped up and open.

Aha! Doll Face had switched teams and was now working with Bartholomew Buckingham, whose spies had reported seeing two burly hooligans hiding a theatrical trunk.

Zack read what was stenciled in faded paint above the lock clasp: Professor Nicholas Nicodemus .

Suddenly, the crawl space went dark.

Doll Face had disappeared, taking her glowing light with her.

68

“Hello? Hello?”

Yep. Doll Face was definitely gone. Zack was alone. In the dark.

Never his favorite place to be.

It was where he saw her sometimes.

His dead mother.

She was gone and buried, but in the dark, when he was alone with nothing but his feelings of guilt, scary memories, and wild imagination, Zack sometimes heard her.

“You’re the reason I had to die! I had to get away from you!”

“It’s not true!” Zack yelled. His voice echoed off the low ceiling. “I. Did. Not. Kill. You!”

Finally. He had said it out loud. Okay, he had said it out loud in the dark in a crawl space but he had said it.

He did not kill his mother.

She caught cancer because she smoked too many cigarettes. She smoked too many cigarettes because she was miserable and sad, not because Zack was horrible and bad. She made her own choice. Zack did not make her make it.

Stumbling in the dark, Zack felt up and down the sides of the trunk until he found one of its leather handles and gave it a yank.

This was what Buckingham had wanted him to find.

Somehow, it would help him save Meghan, Derek, and Judy. That was what he was going to do. He wasn’t going to sit in the dark being afraid.

“So quit bugging me, okay?” he yelled at the blackness, hoping his real mother would get the message: He was absolutely, totally, and completely finished feeling guilty about doing something he hadn’t even done.