Chris Grabenstein - The Hanging Hill

“But… my parents,” Fagan sniffled, “my parents were in the audience tonight.”

“Really?” said Grimes. “How nice. They were able to see your final performance at the Hanging Hill Playhouse!”

Feeling better than he had in weeks, Grimes climbed a winding staircase to the second floor and entered his office.

There was a swarthy man waiting for him.

“Mr. Grimes?”

“Yes?”

“Mr. Reginald Grimes?”

“Yes.”

“The orphan child?”

Grimes’s pale skin blanched even whiter. “Who. Are. You?”

“My name is Hakeem. We have much to discuss.”

11

It was eleven p.m. when Zack, Judy, and Zipper finally pulled off the interstate at the exit for Chatham and the Hanging Hill Playhouse.

The theater was listed on the reflective green sign! Zack was impressed. That meant it was famous. A landmark.

“You know why they call it the Hanging Hill Playhouse?” Judy asked as the Saab eased down the ramp.

Zack had no idea, so he made one up: “Um, it’s on top of a hill that sort of hangs out over the river?”

Judy laughed. “No. It used to be a tavern. A place for weary travelers to eat and drink and sleep. A man named Justus Willowmeier built the original Hanging Hill Publick House back in 1854. It was a combination bar, restaurant, hotel, and all-purpose gathering place.”

“Have you been talking to Mrs. Emerson again?”

“Yep,” said Judy. “She knows everything. She even knows what she doesn’t know. The unknown, she looks up.”

Mrs. Jeanette Emerson was the librarian back in North Chester and one of Judy’s best friends. The two of them could talk about anything and nothing for hours.

They reached a main boulevard and Judy guided the car into the right-hand lane. Zipper, sensing that they must be getting close to wherever they were going, sprang up in the backseat and leaned his front paws against the window ledge to check out the scenery. Well, it was too dark to see much. So he mostly sniffed.

“We should be able to catch Bats in Her Belfry sometime this week. That’s the show they’re doing on the main stage while we rehearse. It was originally staged at the Hanging Hill, then moved down to New York, where it was extremely successful on Broadway back in 1955. Made Kathleen Williams a star. She sang ‘Bitten and Smitten.’ Became a top ten hit.”

“Cool.”

Judy started to hum.

Then sing.

“I’m bitten and smitten and falling in love. He’s flittin’ and flappin’ so high up above ….”

“That was a hit?”

“Yeah.”

Zack figured they’d never sing it on American Idol .

Now they moved through the small-town streets of Chatham, following directional signs for the “World-Famous Hanging Hill Playhouse.” At this hour, most of Chatham’s shops and restaurants were closed. Cast-iron streetlamps lined the empty sidewalks.

“Wow,” said Judy. “What time is it?”

Zack checked his watch. “A little after eleven.”

“Guess we got a pretty late start.”

“Yeah.”

“I hope Mr. Grimes is still at the theater. Zack?”

“Yeah?”

“Mr. Grimes, the director, he has a, well, a reputation.”

“Good one?”

“For staging brilliant productions, yes. But as a person, well, they say he can be difficult. Rules the theater with an iron fist.”

“Does he make actors cry?”

“Sometimes.”

“What about authors?”

“Maybe. I hope not. Anyway, he’s the best director for the show. Everybody says so.”

“Then,” said Zack, “I’ll cut him some slack. Won’t whip out my iron fist unless I have to.”

Judy smiled. “Thanks, hon.”

“No problem-o.” Now it was Zack’s turn to say it: “Wow!”

They had just rounded a bend and could see an all-white building glowing atop a hill high on the horizon. Floodlights aimed up toward the ornate molding illuminated the whole front of the five-story-tall mansard root mansion. Only a few windows were lit: one on either side of the fifth floor, one in the middle of the third, and a whole string along the first. The glowing windows gave the Hanging Hill Playhouse two eerily empty eyes, a creepy nose, and a straight-line scowl of square teeth, turning it into a gigantic jack-o’-lantern.

Cars were streaming out of the gravel parking lots on both sides of the building.

“Guess the show just let out,” said Judy, maneuvering the car upstream against the tide of theatergoers headed home. They parked in a small lot facing the front porch.

“Let’s leave the suitcases in the trunk until we find our rooms.”

Since the building used to be a hotel, Zack and Judy would be staying in bedrooms on the upper floors until the show opened.

“Do you know which rooms are ours?” Zack asked.

“Nope. Somewhere up top, I hope.”

Zack studied the towers and turrets jutting up from the roof, the clustered stacks of chimneys.

“Cool,” he said. “Is there an elevator?”

“I hope so,” said Judy.

“What about Zipper? Should we bring him in?”

Zipper, who had been so excited five minutes earlier, was napping again in the backseat. He seemed to be having a dream that involved chasing squirrels: Every so often, his hind legs twitched and kicked.

“Let him sleep,” said Judy. “But make sure to leave your window open a crack.”

“Roger,” said Zack, toggling the rocket switch again. Then he and Judy climbed the porch steps and went into the Hanging Hill Playhouse.

12

His soul swirls in the churning ectoplasm where it has spun in a spiral of overlapping circles for longer than he dares to remember.

He had been roasting in this eternal damnation when he first heard a voice calling him.

“Come forth, Michael Butler, I command you! Diamond Mike, come forth!”

And so he did—carrying his bloody meat cleaver.

He felt his soul chill, then rush up through a swirling current as if trapped under the earth’s crust inside a raging geyser. His spirit raced up from the underworld to the brink of life, never quite bursting free or crossing the threshold to the other side of death, never quite coming back to life.

Still, he recalls floating for brief moments across a vast expanse of darkness.

He remembers being hit with blindingly bright lights.

He remembers voices. Screams. Hushed murmurs. Angry men. Terrified women. The sparkle of jewels. Panic.

An audience.

Yes. He had been called into a theater, his summoned spirit put on momentary public display, his movements and very presence orchestrated by a coal-eyed man in a purple turban.

He remembers the turban.

The luminous green jewel shaped like a cockroach sitting at its center.

And then he remembers the man casting him away, sending him back into this numbing limbo to wait until he was called forth once more.

At every appearance, no matter how brief, Diamond Mike Butler longed to be restored to full existence. To be back in his living, breathing body. To rob and steal and kill again.

One time, he nearly made it all the way back.

One time, he almost crossed the threshold.

One time.

Perhaps he will get another chance.

Until then, the demon known in life as Diamond Mike Butler, the Butcher Thief of Bleecker Street, will wait.

He will wait in the churning nothingness beneath this place he remembers hearing the turbaned man calling the Hanging Hill Playhouse.

He will wait.

13

“Mr. Grimes said he’d meet us in the lobby,” said Judy.

The lobby was empty.

“What time?” asked Zack.

“I think I told him seven.”

In perfect sync, Judy and Zack both glanced at their wristwatches. Eleven-thirty p.m.