The Hanging Hill (10 page)

41

Reginald Grimes sat onstage, slumped in a cushioned chair with snarling skulls carved into its armrests.

He was exhausted. Drained. Necromancy was tough work. It seemed the ritual sapped some of his life force and transferred it to the souls he summoned up from the dead.

“Where did Mr. Murphy go?” Grimes mumbled weakly.

Hakeem indicated the general vicinity of the air. “His spirit is now free to roam the theater, to haunt its dark and dismal places until such time as you command him to return to the nether regions below.”

“He comes and goes at my bidding?”

“Yes, Exalted One.”

“I see. And this makes me rich and powerful beyond my wildest dreams how?”

Hakeem smiled. “All in good time.”

“Bah!” snapped Grimes. “So you keep saying. How ever, I grow weary of your tedious retorts, these tiresome rituals. Not to mention the foul-tasting dog jerky! I want to know what’s locked in the final drawer of that show trunk, and I want to know now!”

Hakeem bowed obsequiously. “Patience is a virtue, Exalted One.”

“Well, I’m tired of being virtuous. I demand to know what you are keeping hidden from me!”

“Soon. First, you must also master the art of necyomancy.”

Grimes squinted. “Nec-
yo
-mancy?”

“Indeed,” said Hakeem. “It is very similar to nec-
ro
mancy but much more difficult. In necyomancy, you can call forth demons more wretchedly powerful than Mr. Mad Dog Murphy.”

“Demons?”

“The devil in human disguise. Souls of the purest evil.”

“I see.”

“However,” said Hakeem, holding up a hand in warning, “if necyomancy is done incorrectly, those summoned can quickly turn against the summoner.”

“And tell me: Did my grandfather also provide a list of evil entities to be beckoned forth from the deepest recesses of the underworld?”

“He did.”

Grimes rolled his good hand, gesturing for more information. “Go on. Give me a name.”

“Diamond Mike Butler. The Butcher Thief of Bleecker Street.”

“Is he a true demon?”

“It is why they called him the Butcher. Mr. Butler was a jewel thief who liked to burglarize the homes of the wealthy late at night so he could slay any children he found asleep in their beds. He used a meat cleaver. Chopped off their small heads. When spirits this vile are called back …” Hakeem hesitated.

“What?” Grimes demanded.

“They return more monstrous than when they were alive!”

“Did my grandfather ever dare to summon forth this monstrous soul?”

“Yes. Several times. However, he always sent him back to the underworld very quickly.”

Grimes stood from the chair. “Really? Well, gentlemen, let’s rejoin hands. We don’t want to keep Mr. Butler waiting. I’m sure he’s quite eager to make his triumphant return to the stage!”

42

Judy returned to the fifth floor.

She couldn’t find Reginald Grimes. The company manager said he was tied up in meetings with the producers for the rest of the day.

Fine. It was almost one-thirty and she was getting a hunger headache. If Zack was done playing with Zipper and his new friends, maybe they could go grab a sandwich at the diner across the street.

She entered her room and went to the door connecting her half of the suite with Zack’s.

“Zack? Are you in there? Zack, honey?”

She heard a crash. It sounded like glass shattering.

“Zack? Are you okay?”

No answer.

“Did something break, honey?”

Nothing.

She fumbled with the doorknob and realized it was locked on the other side.

“Hang on, honey.”

Judy went out into the hallway, where she saw a tall, slender woman with curly hair walking away from Zack’s bedroom door.

“Excuse me,” Judy said. The woman kept walking. She said it more loudly: “Excuse me?”

The woman drifted down the hall toward the stairwell.

“Were you just in my son’s room?”

No answer.

Judy hurried to Zack’s door. Jiggled the knob. It was locked.

“Zack? Are you in there? Zack?”

“Hey, Mom.”

Judy whirled around to see Zack and Zipper stepping off the elevator.

“What’s up?” he asked.

Judy turned to see if the woman with the curly hair was still walking down the hall.

She wasn’t.

She had vanished.

43

Wilbur Kimble hurried back to the basement.

The audience would start arriving for the Sunday matinee soon. Time to put things away downstairs.

Earlier, from his hiding place, he had watched the blond boy run away while the other two children discovered his movie projector. The imitation ghosts didn’t seem to frighten those two in the slightest. In fact, the encounter only seemed to make them more curious.

Just like that blasted cat in the new musical.

No, these two children would not be easy to run off. He would need to speak directly with Clara.

He went into a cramped, windowless closet, closed and locked the door. He struck a match and lit a small fluttering candle so the room wouldn’t be completely dark. He placed the candle next to his antique Ouija board on an upturned apple crate.

Kimble creaked down into a folding chair and placed his fingertips atop the Ouija’s planchette—a small heart-shaped piece of wood with a glass eye in its center that acted as a movable indicator so the board could spell out messages from the great beyond. It was the only way he knew to communicate with the dead.

“Weird and mysterious Ouija,” Kimble muttered, “allow me to speak once more with Clara.”

He closed his eyes and waited.

“Clara, can you hear me?” he asked.

He felt the pointer begin to glide, up and to the left, skating across the board to the smiling sun and the word “YES.”

Kimble maneuvered the reader back to the center.

“Clara, have you seen the children who recently arrived here?”

He waited. Felt another tug. Let the heart-shaped pointer move where it wanted to move.

YES
.

“Clara,” he whispered, “the moon is nearly full! Do you realize what danger these youngsters bring with them?”

Once again, the reader took his hands to the upper left corner.

YES
.

He pulled the pointer back to the center.

“Will you help me scare them off?”

The reader did not move.

“Clara? Will you help me rid this theater of its children?”

Suddenly, the pointer zipped up to the far
right
corner.

The scowling quarter moon. The Dog Star. Billowing black clouds.

NO
.

Kimble pressed down hard, tried to drag the reader back to the center. It wouldn’t budge.

“Please!” He exerted more pressure, made his fingertips tremble with the effort.

The reader remained glued to “NO.”

“Clara? Please!”

“Clara isn’t here, pops.”

Kimble looked up and nearly had a heart attack.

There was a man strapped into an electric chair sitting on the opposite side of the apple crate.

“You shouldn’t play Ouija in the dark, pops. You do, you might start seeing ghosts!” The man tossed back his head and laughed. The air in the cramped closet reeked of hot, rotting beef.

“Who are you?”

“Mad Dog Murphy. I kill people.”

Kimble sprang for the door. Tried to slide his key into the lock. His hands were trembling.

“Drop it!” Mad Dog’s fetid breath came at Kimble like a gust of wind blasting up from a sewer grate. It blew out the flickering candle.

That startled Kimble, made him flinch, made him drop his key.

He heard it clink against something metal, then rattle and clank its way down a pipe.

He had dropped the key into a floor drain. He was trapped inside an unlit closet.

“Give it up, old-timer,” said the man in the chair as bursts of blindingly white light flared up from his metal skullcap. “You can’t talk to Clara! Not now, not never again!” Another laugh. More stench. “What’s that old saying? When one door closes, another door opens? Too bad it ain’t gonna be that closet door. It’s gonna be ours! The doorway of the damned is all set to swing wide open, pops! Tomorrow night! Tomorrow night!”

44

Zack found his room key and opened the door.

“I heard something fall over here,” said Judy. “A crash.”

“Yep.” Zack pointed to the shards of shattered glass near his chest of drawers. “I packed a picture. Guess it must’ve fallen off the dresser.”

Judy bent down and picked up the photograph underneath the sheet of splintered glass. It was a snapshot of the new Jennings family: Judy, George, Zack, and Zipper.

“Well,” said Judy, “the photograph isn’t damaged. We can always buy a new frame.”

“Wonder how come it fell.”

“Me too,” said Judy, standing up. “Did you put it near the edge?”

“Nope. I put it on top, right there in the middle.”

“And the window’s closed, so a breeze didn’t knock it over.”

“Judy?”

“Yes, Zack?”

“I think we might have ghosts again.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I saw some stuff downstairs in the basement.”

“You went where the janitor told you not to?”

“Sorry.”

Judy smiled. “I would’ve done the same thing.”

“Meghan McKenna told me every theater she’s ever worked in was haunted. Probably because there’s so many emotions stirred up inside ’em. Plus, you know actors. If they have a good part, they never want to leave the stage.”

“Meghan might be right. I just saw a very strange lady walking down the hall. Actually, it looked like she was
gliding
down the hall.”

“You know, Mom, you’re one of the few adults who can see ghosts during the day.”

“Lucky me. I think she may have come in here, even though both doors were locked.”

“Probably oozed her way in.”

“Then she walked out—right through the wall.”

“Was she juggling?” Zack asked.

“No. No juggling. Just, you know, silently drifting.”

“One of the ghosts Meghan and I met juggles.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Mostly in the stairwell.”

“I see.”

“Another one is a Pilgrim. He hangs himself. Then there’s the actress who comes onstage for her standing ovation, and the Shakespearean actor with the sword, and the sad Indian girl…”

“You and Meghan McKenna have seen that many ghosts?”

“Well, she hasn’t seen the Pilgrim guy or the actress taking her bows.”

“But Meghan sees ghosts? Like we do?”

“Yep. But Derek doesn’t.”

They finished picking up the broken glass and tossed the pieces into a wicker trash basket.

“So, do you think it was a ghost lady who knocked the picture frame off the dresser?”

“I don’t know, Zack. The ghosts back in North Chester couldn’t really
do
anything, remember?”

“True. But I’ve read that if they concentrate all their energy, if they get, let’s say, really mad or incredibly sad, they can rattle chains and push stuff around.”

“You’ve been reading books about ghosts?”

“Sure. After that night in the crossroads, haven’t you?”

“Yeah. About a dozen. Everything the library had.” Judy stared at the door. “Wow. I wonder who she was.”

“Just another actress who never heard her cue to exit. So, you hungry?”

“Starving.”

“I told Meghan that we might join her and her mother across the street at the diner.”

“Great.” Judy remembered something else from back at the crossroads. “Your new friend Meghan’s not a ghost, is she?”

“Nah. I saw her eat a hunk out of a doughnut this morning.”

“Good.”

45

He hears the ancient command:
Ego sum te peto et videre queo
.

“I seek you and demand to see you.”

He hears his name being called.

“I seek you, Michael Butler, and demand to see you.”

He zooms up through the gloom. Races toward the light.

He sees the new necromancer. Faintly. Dimly. As if he were looking at the man through a gauzy veil.

“You will find me to be a stern but benevolent master, Mr. Butler!” the sorcerer declares. “You may remain in this realm until four a.m. Then you must return below and await further instructions! Do you understand?”

He nods.

“Excellent!” the new master decrees. “Soon I will send you out to do my bidding!”

Fascinating.

Maybe this new necromancer intends to give him back his body.

Maybe this time he will be fully restored to life.

Maybe he will once again be able to do all the things he used to do!

Maybe he will be able to kill again.

46

Judy and Zack sat with Meghan and her mother at a diner table with chrome legs and a speckled top.

“You’re Meghan McKenna!” said a fan about thirteen years old, trembling near their table, flapping a napkin and a pen.

Meghan smiled. “Hi. Would you like an autograph?”

“Yes! Ohmigoodness!” The fan had just recognized Judy, too. “You’re Judy Magruder! I’ve read all your books!”

Judy’s turn to smile. “Do you have another napkin?”

“Here,” said Mrs. McKenna. “You can use mine. No body ever asks for the mother’s autograph.”

“Or the stepson’s,” said Zack.

“Guess we’re just not very interesting, hunh?”

“True. But we do get to eat first!”

After Judy had signed about a dozen napkins (to Meghan’s fifty), she watched Zack and Meghan devour their late lunch, made even later by the flurry of fans that descended on their table once word hit the street that Meghan McKenna was “inside eating!” Both kids wolfed down hamburgers and french fries from tissue-lined baskets and sucked hard on extraordinarily thick chocolate milk shakes. The talented young movie star had quite an appetite; Judy was confident she wasn’t a ghost.

“So,” Judy said to Mrs. McKenna, “is this your first trip to Connecticut?”

“No. Meghan did a movie here once. Something about a horse.”

“Fredericka the Faithful Filly,”
said Meghan.

“Don’t talk with you mouth full of food, honey.”

“Sorry.”

“Your daughter’s a terrific actress,” said Judy. “I wasn’t surprised when she was nominated for an Oscar.”

Mrs. McKenna shrugged. “She’s having fun. As soon as it isn’t fun …”

“We’re done!” said Meghan, dabbing at her lips with a napkin.

“Meghan has a gift,” said Mrs. McKenna. “However, I refuse to become a stage mother, making my kid miserable by dragging her off to auditions when she’d rather be home playing soccer in the mud. I will not live vicariously through my daughter’s triumphs.”

“What’s ‘vicariously’?” asked Zack.

Meghan raised her hand and answered: “Vicariously: Experienced through another person, rather than firsthand.”

“Very good,” said Mrs. McKenna. “I’m glad to see you studied your vocabulary words. However, we still have math homework to do tonight. Science, too.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“You’re Meghan’s teacher?” asked Judy.

“When she’s on the road, which it seems like we have been for over a year. Before my daughter became an actress, I taught middle school. My husband still does.”

“You still teach, too, Mom,” said Meghan.

“Yes, but only one student in a one-room school-house,” Mrs. McKenna said warmly. “Typically a hotel room or trailer near a movie set. I have my master’s degree in history.”

“I’m impressed,” said Judy.

“Don’t be. It’s why we almost didn’t do your show.”

Now she was confused. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” said Mrs. McKenna hesitantly, “let’s just say the Hanging Hill Playhouse does not have a very good history when it comes to productions featuring children.”

“Really?”

“The Music Man
was the last show they did with any children in the cast and it closed after two performances because the young actor playing the part of Winthrop refused to come out of his dressing room!”

“Why?”

“There are rumors that the theater is haunted.”

Judy pretended to be surprised. “Is that so?”

“I did a little research. Dug up all sorts of stories about frightening ‘presences.’ Stage lights going on and off by themselves. Footsteps and voices up on the catwalks when nobody’s there. Odd breezes and odors. There’s even an actress named Thelma Beaumont who died of a heart attack, right at center stage when the audience rose to give her a standing ovation. They say she keeps coming back to take one more curtain call.”

There was a clink.

“Sorry.” Zack had just dropped his fork.

“Even Mr. Justus Willowmeier the Third is rumored to show up from time to time.”

“Is he the one who built the Hanging Hill Publick House?” asked Judy.

“No, he was
that
Willowmeier’s grandson and the one who transformed the hotel and tavern into an entertainment emporium. Justus the Third loved show people. Particularly
showgirls
. He was seldom seen without a cigar in his mouth and a pretty woman on each arm. He also kept one of the apartments on the top floor. Liked to host rowdy parties up there, and according to several of the stories, he still does!”

“That’s where we’re staying,” said Judy. “The top floor.”

“Us too. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll all get invited to one of his cast parties!”

“So all these ghostly presences scare the kids away?”

“Yep.”

“I wonder why the theater wanted to do my show,” said Judy.

“Maybe because your script only needs two children,” said Mrs. McKenna. “But—I’ll be honest—if Meghan didn’t love your books so much, well, we wouldn’t be here.”

“Why?”

Mrs. McKenna took in a deep breath. “Seventy years ago,” she said, “a child performer died here. A girl.”

Judy was horrified. “In a show?”

“I’m not sure. My information right now is sort of sketchy. Got it from Florence, the ninety-year-old sweetheart who volunteers in the box office. Anyway, Florence told me there was a fire ‘of suspicious origin’ back in the late 1930s and she vaguely remembers the police arresting a man, one of the touring vaudeville performers, charging him with arson and first-degree felony murder.”

“Oh my.”

“The little girl who died in the blaze was also on the vaudeville bill. Part of a brother-sister juggling act.”

Now there were two clinks.

This time, both Zack
and
Meghan had dropped their forks.