Chris Grabenstein - The Hanging Hill

“I won’t go back!”

The butcher with the meat cleaver materialized in front of Grimes.

“I won’t go back!” Suddenly, he stopped ranting and stared at Grimes’s turban.

“Is that an emerald?”

Grimes nodded.

“Give it to me!”

“Never!” Grimes tried to roar. “Return below, foolish demon. I summoned you hence. Now I command you to depart!”

“I will not depart without that shiny green jewel!”

“Return below! I command you!”

The demon laughed. “You cannot command me to do anything!”

“I am the lord high priest of …”

“Careful!” warned Hakeem. “Remember: Those summoned can quickly turn against the summoner.”

This one sure did.

He swung his meat cleaver like an executioner’s ax and lopped off the high priest’s head, sending the precious emerald and the turban and Reginald Grimes’s skull rolling across the concrete floor like a bloody, free-kicked soccer ball. It stopped at Hakeem’s feet.

Another whoosh, a tormented scream, and the demon butcher was sucked down into the concrete floor. He disappeared. His cleaver clunked to the ground. The thing remained real. The man did not.

Now Hakeem picked up his high priest’s head, cradled it to his chest, and began to blubber.

“He was the last of his royal line! Our final hope! I must bring him back to life! I must resurrect the high priest of Ba’al!”

He turned to the statue.

“Take me, Moloch! I will be the boy! Take me!” And he began the incantation: “O, magnus Molochus….”

Zack closed his eyes.

He didn’t want to see this.

“Aaaiiieeeee!”

He heard a whomp! A roar of flames. Horrible screams. Shrieks.

Hakeem had willingly leapt into the fire.

Zack kept his eyes closed.

Until he heard what sounded like a disgusted burp, the roaring clatter of brass, and a very queasy groan.

“Oooh.”

Zack dared to peek up at the statue.

The Minotaur looked like he might puke.

“Bad boy,” urped the statue. “Very, very bad.”

Hakeem must not have been pure or true.

At long last, Zack heard sirens in the distance.

117

It took several hours for Judy and Mrs. McKenna to explain to the police and firefighters what had happened.

And what they told the officers wasn’t a complete lie.

Hakeem had, in a way, killed Grimes. Calling him Exalted One. Making him think he was more special than anybody in the world. Because Hakeem’s charred carcass was discovered clutching Grimes’s skull inside the doused fire pit and because the police had the murder weapon (the meat cleaver) it was pretty much an open-and-shut case: murder/suicide.

Paramedics rolled Mrs. Stone on a gurney to an ambulance parked in front of the Hanging Hill Playhouse. She was still conked out.

“I’m riding with her to the hospital,” said Derek.

“Thanks for coming back,” said Zack.

“Yeah,” said Meghan. “Thanks! That was extremely brave.”

“Sorry,” Derek said with a wink. “Can’t do an autograph now. Catch me later!” He hopped into the back of the ambulance. Zipper barked to say goodbye. “Catch you later, Zip!”

“I’ll call the scrap metal folks first thing in the morning,” said Mr. Kimble, who was standing on the porch with Zack, Judy, Meghan, and Mrs. McKenna. “Have ’em cart away the brass statue. Melt it down to make buttons. Door knockers.”

It was nearly midnight when the last official vehicle finally pulled out of the gravel parking lot.

Meghan came over to where Zack stood and kissed him.

“Zack Jennings,” she whispered, “you’re my hero!” While Zach was totally stunned, Sassakus showed up on the front lawn.

118

The noble Native American ruler materialized accompanied by his daughter, Princess Nepauduckett.

She wasn’t crying anymore. In fact, she looked happy.

The towering chieftain gestured for Zack to come down and join him on the dewy patch of grass. Zack did. Meghan and the adults followed him down the porch steps.

“Do you know who I am?” the apparition asked.

“I think so.”

“You’re Sassakus!” said Mrs. McKenna, the history buff.

“I cursed this land because I knew white men to be demons. They accused my daughter of stealing corn. They executed her here on Hangman’s Hill.” When Sassakus stepped forward, his necklace of shells rattled like a skeleton’s tambourine. “But I have seen what you have done this day. Why did you take the other boy’s place?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Zack answered honestly. “It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I wanted to help.”

Sassakus nodded thoughtfully. “You are not like the others. You are not a demon. You are the demon slayer?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I just wanted to help out the good guys.” Zack turned around to point up at the moonlit theater building and wasn’t at all surprised to see that, once again, a whole host of ghostly actors and stagehands were crowded in the glowing windows on all five floors—even up in every turret and tower.

“You are special, Zack Jennings, yes?”

“He is,” said Judy, standing behind Zack, placing her hands on his shoulders. “Very special.”

“Very well.” Sassakus clapped his hands. “The ones below are banished forever. I remove my curse and forgive the evil done unto my daughter, for I do not wish that same evil to rule my soul for all eternity.”

For a second, Zack wondered if Sassakus was talking about the kind of evil done to Zack by his mother, Susan Potter. Maybe she had tried to help him. Maybe she had shown up back at the hotel to protect him from Mad Dog Murphy. It was a possibility.

So was it time for him to forgive her?

Time to move forward without constantly looking back?

Maybe. Maybe not. Hey, it took Sassakus what? Four-hundred some years. Zack might need a little more time, too.

“Come, daughter. We must move on.”

“Where to?”

“Someplace much happier. Our time here is ended.”

With that, they disappeared.

“Huzzah!” the phantom actors shouted from every window. “Huzzah!”

“Attaboy, Zachary!” shouted Mr. Willowmeier from way up in the highest tower. Zack heard two girls giggle. He figured Mr. Willowmeier was throwing another one of his famous cast parties.

“So many,” said Kimble.

“Can you see them, Mom?” Meghan asked.

“Yes, dear. How could I not?”

Wilbur Kimble shook his head in awe. “So, so many.”

“Mr. Kimble?”

“Aya?”

“Well, sir, I finally saw my dead mother today.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, sir. I think it’s because I really, truly believe I wasn’t the one who made her miserable or killed her. The same way you didn’t kill your sister.”

“I suppose not.”

“Hey, I just met the guy who did . He should change his name from Professor Nicodemus to Doctor Nutjob.”

“I just wish I could’ve stopped him.”

“You were ten years old!”

“Aya.”

“Plus, you didn’t have any pyrotechnical devices or an ace gunner covering your back!”

“You’re right. Nicodemus killed Clara. Not me.”

“I think Clara agrees.”

“You do, do you?”

Zack smiled. “But don’t take my word. Ask her yourself.”

Kimble turned around and saw what Zack had already seen; his sister, standing on the porch, juggling six spinning balls high above her head.

“Clara?”

“Hello, Wilbur! It’s wonderful to see you again!”

As Mr. Kimble wiped away a tear and went up the steps to join his sister, Judy came over to Zack and gestured toward the building. “So, Zack. Is your mother up there?”