Chris Grabenstein - The Hanging Hill

“Hey! Easy, boy!”

Zipper, Zack’s feisty little Jack Russell terrier, hopped up on the bed and started nuzzling his muzzle inside the suitcase, rooting around in the crannies between stacks of Zack’s clothes.

“You sure those socks are clean?” Judy asked, cocking a quizzical eyebrow.

“Yep. Completely stink free.”

Zipper kept digging, pawing a tunnel between some T-shirts and jeans.

“Did you pack any dog treats?” Judy asked with a laugh. “Peanut butter biscuits? Liver snaps? Bones?”

“Nope. Just this ball!” Zack dug out Zipper’s favorite toy: a spongy ball with half its outside color chipped off. “Go get it, Zip!”

He tossed the ball across the hotel room. The dog leapt off the bed and flew after it. Zack saw his chance and slammed his suitcase shut.

It was time to hit the road.

They had a show to put on.

4

At seven-thirty p.m., Kelly Fagan was sitting in front of her makeup mirror in a dressing room backstage at the Hanging Hill Playhouse, getting ready for the Saturday-evening performance of Bats in Her Belfry , a Broadway musical from the 1950s about Dracula and the women who loved him.

The summer stock revival was a smash hit—just like all of Reginald Grimes’s productions at the Hanging Hill.

The man was a genius. Dark, brooding, mysterious.

Kelly couldn’t wait to introduce her famous director to her parents, who had driven all the way from Canton, Ohio, to Chatham, Connecticut, just to see her sing and dance in her first big show. She was one of the dancing bats. All the chorus girls were bats. The guys were werewolves.

She leaned in closer to the mirror. Becoming a bat involved applying a great deal of black and red greasepaint to her face, especially around the eyes.

She dabbed on a dollop of makeup and felt a chill tingle down her spine.

Goose bumps sprouted on both arms.

The pretty face smiling back at her from the mirror wasn’t her own.

Kelly gasped.

The face disappeared.

“Everything okay, Kelly?”

It was Vickie, another chorus girl, who had just stepped into the dressing room.

“Yeah.”

Vickie was carrying an old record album.

“What’s that?” Kelly asked.

“Bats in Her Belfry . Original 1955 cast recording. Vinyl. Thought it might be cool to listen to it later, if, you know, we can dig up an old-fashioned record player.”

“Who’s she?” Kelly asked, pointing at the woman swooning in Dracula’s arms on the cover.

“Kathleen Williams. She played Lucy. Sang ‘Bitten and Smitten.’”

Kelly nodded.

Now she had a name to go with the face.

Kathleen Williams had been the pretty woman staring at her from inside the mirror.

5

At dusk, the Riverstream Hospital for the Criminally Insane loomed like a dark castle set against angry red clouds in the lowering sky.

Two olive-skinned men, both sporting bushy mustaches and tasseled red hats, ascended the steep stone steps to the main entrance of the dilapidated building.

“Tell me, Hakeem,” asked one of the men, “why do we need him?”

“He is of the royal bloodline.”

“We could do it ourselves!”

“No, Habib. We could not.” Hakeem peered up at the weather-beaten six-story structure. In a small dormer jutting up through the crumbling slate roof, faint candlelight danced across the barred glass of a window. “Come. He waits for us.”

“He knows we are coming?”

“Of course. Do you think we would be here had he not summoned us? Hurry. His time draws near.”

“He is dying?”

Hakeem nodded solemnly.

“Then we must raise the army on our own!”

“No,” said Hakeem. “There is another. An heir we have secretly supported for many years.”

“Who?”

“Come. You ask far too many questions. All shall be revealed. Come.”

They clambered up the final steps and passed underneath a grand fieldstone arch shrouded by the veined web of long-dead ivy.

A guard was stationed in the cavernous lobby. “State your business.”

Hakeem did not recognize the young man. Typically, he dealt with a senile old sentry named Bob.

“Where is Bob?”

“Retired. State your business.”

“I am Hakeem. This is my associate Habib. We are here to visit the professor.”

The guard hiked up his gun belt, jangling an enormous ring of keys. “You’ve visited before?”

“Yes. Many times.”

“You know the rules?”

“Yes.”

The guard picked up a clipboard. “Go straight to his cell. Don’t talk to any of the others. Stay six feet away from him at all times.”

Hakeem nodded. “As I said, we know the rules.”

The guard eyed him suspiciously.

“You family?”

“No.”

“Friend?”

“Yes.”

“Known him a long time?”

“Yes.”

“So how old is he, anyway? Somebody told me he’s a hundred.”

“One hundred and five.”

“I hear he used to be in show business. A magician.”

“That is correct.”

“Did he do birthday parties? That where he killed the kid?”

“Please, sir. We are in a hurry. Time is of the essence.”

“Why? Your friend isn’t goin’ anywhere any time soon. He’s chained and shackled to his wheelchair. Has been ever since 1939 when he went berserk and murdered that little girl.”

“Please, sir. May we kindly proceed upstairs?”

“Sign here.” He handed Hakeem the clipboard. “Be careful up there. Stick to the middle of the corridors. Stay away from the bars on the cell doors. You never know when one of these psychos might try to reach out and kill somebody new.”

6

It was pitch-dark by the time they stuffed the last suitcase into the back of the Saab convertible.

“You know,” said Judy, gesturing toward her backpack loaded down with a laptop, overflowing folders, assorted notebooks, and several heavily penciled manuscripts, “if I get busy, if Mr. Grimes wants more rewrites …”

“There are two kids my age in the show,” said Zack, finishing the sentence for her. “So Zipper and I can hang out with them whenever they’re not rehearsing. Don’t worry, Mom. We’ll be fine.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“For what?”

“Making this a little easier for me. I think I’m scared. I’ve never put my words in front of a live audience before. I just wrote books. Wasn’t sitting there watching when people actually read ’em.”

“Don’t worry,” said Zack, realizing he had been so right not to give Judy anything more to brood about today. “It’ll be great.”

“You’re right. I’ll be swell! I’ll be great! Gonna have the whole world on my plate.”

“Hunh?” said Zack.

“Sorry. It’s a song. From Gypsy.”

“What’s Gypsy?”

“A Broadway musical.”

“And it’s about gypsies?”

“No. Not really. Even though, sometimes, they call dancers in Broadway shows gypsies because they move around so much, from show to show.”

“Unh-hunh,” said Zack. Sometimes the whole Broadway thing was too complicated. He’d stick to memorizing the stuff from Age of Empires III.

“Yep,” said Judy, settling in behind the steering wheel, still sounding nervous. “There’s no business like show business like no business I know.”

“Really?” said Zack. “What about making widgets?”

“Nope.”

“Refrigerator repair?”

“Hardly.”

“Monkey business?”

“Close.” Judy laughed and cranked the ignition. “You’ll see. Next stop—the Hanging Hill Playhouse, Chatham, Connecticut.”

Zack gave the hotel one last look.