Chris Grabenstein - The Hanging Hill

“Let’s go out the other way,” Judy whispered.

Mrs. McKenna nodded.

They ran as quickly and quietly as they could for the stage door on their left.

101

“You weaklings will never stop us!”

Zack recognized the maniac with the meat cleaver from that night on the elevator. The caped madman’s shirt and waistcoat were splattered with more blood than he remembered. His top hat nearly flew off his head as he swung his cleaver like an ax and chopped at all the wires and cables snaking up to the table where the stage manager called cues during live performances.

“I’d kill you both, but I have my orders!”

He smashed out a computer monitor.

Of course Mr. Meat Cleaver had chopped the telephone lines first. Slashed right through them with his butcher blade. Smashed the handset with the butt end of his cleaver handle just to make certain nobody would be calling anybody anytime soon.

This was so weird.

The guy was obviously a ghost or a ghoul, so how come he was able to destroy things in the real world?

Zack glanced over at Mr. Kimble, who was quaking in his work boots. He hadn’t seen as many spooks as Zack. This was only like his second.

“Where do you keep the jewelry, boy?” the butcher beast snarled at Zack.

Zack thought fast. “Uh, downstairs. There’s a big statue made out of gold!”

“Gold?”

Zack nodded. Fast.

The butcher looked like he was drooling when he disappeared.

“Who was he?” asked Kimble.

“Don’t know,” said Zack.

“He is a demi-devil, a thing of darkness!” said Bartholomew Buckingham as he faded into view.

“Mr. Buckingham,” said Zack, “what’s going on? That maniac could actually use his meat cleaver!”

“The time is out of joint, Zachary! O, cursed spite! That ever you were born to set it right!”

“What?”

“A full moon now rises in the east. In the tug of its gravitational pull, the rules, like the tides, are prone to shift and sway!”

“So tonight, the ghosts can hurt people?”

“Not if you stop them!”

“How?”

“I cannot tell you!”

“How?”

Bartholomew swung his arm grandly to the left.

“Seek and ye shall find!”

The scene shop!

102

Grimes ruffled and furled his cape. “Hear me, my loyal and obedient followers! Behold the boy and girl, pure and true!”

He was pointing at Meghan and Derek.

“Meghan?”

“Don’t worry, Derek.”

“What? Don’t worry? They want to kill us.”

“Help is on the way.”

“Who? They locked up our mothers. Nobody else is in the theater!”

“Zack is.”

Derek moaned. “We’re dead.”

“Silence, boy!” snapped Grimes. Then he turned to face the statue. “Mighty Moloch, we offer unto you, these two children, pure and true!”

Meghan felt the gun in her back again. “Get ready, kid,” sneered the thug. “You’re almost on.”

“Hear me, voracious creator!” Grimes bellowed. “Accept the purest flesh, the sweetest blood! For these two moon children are now ready to depart this earth!”

Oh, no I’m not , thought Meghan.

103

Judy and Mrs. McKenna were in the greenroom—the actors’ lounge connected to the dressing rooms backstage.

Judy heard someone scraping at the door that led into the lobby.

Now she heard a bark. A very familiar bark.

Judy pulled open the door.

Zipper jumped up against her legs and was trying to lick her face and bark and jump and lick some more—all at the same time.

“Where’s Zack?” Judy asked.

Zipper jumped down. Panted hard. Looked like he was thinking. Sniffed. Once. Twice.

Then he took off.

Back the way Judy and Mary McKenna had just come.

104

“Let’s do this thing!” Grimes barked at Hakeem. “Now!”

“No, Holiness. The portal will not be fully open until the moon is fully risen.”

“Blasted curse!”

“Patience, Eminence. Patience. Come with me.” Hakeem led Grimes around to the rear of the statue. “See how even now the shroud between this world and the next grows thin?” He pointed to that section of floor squared off by the rotted pillars of the old gallows. The concrete had become translucent and resembled a rippling sheet of wax paper. Grimes could see a whole horde of demons writhing like a bucket of slimy worms beneath his feet.

“Hear me, my people, and listen well! Soon will I lead you all across the threshold of death and restore you to life!”

“Is the boy ready?” snarled a voice from down below. “Will he say the words?”

“What?” Grimes cried imperiously.

“Remember, Reginald,” the unknown voice rumbled on, “the boy child must willingly recite the Latin script or Moloch will be displeased.”

“Bah!” said Grimes. “Which of you demons dares question me?”

“One who knows whereof he speaks,” answered Hakeem. “Your grandfather. Professor Nicholas Nicodemus.”

105

At Bartholomew Buckingham’s suggestion, Zack and Mr. Kimble hurried into the gloomy scene shop.

Looking for … well, whatever they were supposed to find.

Kimble tapped Zack on the shoulder. Pointed.

In the middle of the big room, near what looked like a winch coiled with metal cable, Zack saw a short man in baggy pants and suspenders holding his fedora so he could stare down through a hole in the floor without his hat falling into it.

It was the same guy Zack had seen last night tossing sparklers up to Juggler Girl.

“Pietro?” mumbled Mr. Kimble.

The man looked up from the hole. Put the hat on his head.

“Hey! Little Wilbur! How you doin’, henh?”

The man had a very thick Italian accent.

“You know this guy?” Zack whispered to Kimble.

“Aya. Used to, anyways. Pietro Bacigalupi. Top special effects man. Back in the 1940s. Died on the job.”

The little man shrugged. “There was an accident. Somebody smoked a cigar. Whattaya gonna do?”

“Mr. Bacigalupi was the premiere pyrotechnics wizard of his day,” said Kimble. “Smoke pots. Explosions. Canon fire. Whatever a show needed!”

“And Mr. Willowmeier?” said Bacigalupi. “Lemme tell you. The man, he like a nice Fourth of July picnic and fireworks extravaganza. Rockets. Shells. The works. But always remember one thing!” He wagged his finger at Zack. “Safety first!” The finger was a stump and a knuckle.

Bacigalupi looked at the floor again.

“Looks like they got another kind of party goin’ on down there. Maybe a barbeque.”

Zack noticed that there was a four-by-four square missing from the floor.

“Is that a trapdoor, sir?”

“Sì, sì, sì.”

“How’d you open that hatch?”

He shrugged. “I wanted to open it real bad, you know? And guess what? She opened.”

Yep. The time and rules were definitely out of joint.

Zack leaned over, peered down through the opening.

Thirty feet below them was the scenery storage room. Zack could see the Minotaur statue. A guy in a turban. Another guy in robes.

Meghan and Derek.

“It’s Moloch!” gasped Kimble. “The sacrifice!”

Zack turned to the ghost. “How do you raise and lower scenery to the storage room?”

“In my day,” said Bacigalupi, “we used this winch right here.”

“Do you know how to operate it, Mr. Kimble?”

“Sure, but …”

Zack turned to the dead pyrotechnical wizard. “Mr. Bacigalupi? Did you bring any supplies with you tonight?”

He shrugged. “Not much. Just, you know, some Roman candles, couple sky rockets, some willows, waterfalls, multi break shells.” He tipped his head toward a six-foot-long wooden crate. “Maybe one or two dozen bottle rockets, this very pretty Pandora’s blast, some flares, fountains…. Not much, really.”