The Hanging Hill (4 page)

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.

“Oops,” said Zack.

“Guess we shouldn’t have stopped for gas.”

“Or dinner.”

“Or ice cream cones,” said Judy.

Zack said it again: “Oops.”

“Tell you what: We’ll take a quick look around. If he’s already gone home, we can stay at that Holiday Inn we passed on the way into town.”

“Okay.”

“You take the auditorium. I’ll head upstairs and see if he’s in his office.”

“Cool.”

“We meet back here in five minutes.”

“Check.”

And they split up.

Judy headed up a staircase with an elaborately carved banister. Zack pulled open a door to what he thought was the auditorium.

Turned out it was another staircase. A sign on the wall said Box 2-B and had an arrow pointing up. Fine. He could check out the whole auditorium from an elevated post in the box seats. He bounded up the steps, pushed through a velvety curtain.

“Hello?” he called out. “Mr. Grimes?”

The auditorium was pitch-dark except for the bright light cast from a bare bulb on top of a pole at center stage.

“Mr. Grimes?”

No answer. Just his own voice echoing from the darkness. Zack shrugged and headed for the curtained alcove to take the stairs back down to the lobby.

“Thank you! Thank you all!” a lilting voice called out.

Okay. Mr. Grimes wasn’t here, but somebody else sure was.

“Bless you, darlings! Bless you all!”

Zack turned around and made his way back to the edge of the box so he could look down at the shadowy sea of seats. Nothing. Nobody.

“You were a marvelous audience! Marvelous!”

Now he looked toward the stage. The single bulb blinded him a bit, but his eyes soon adjusted.

There, at the lip of the stage, in the shadowy darkness just above the first row of seats, he saw a very grand woman in a jeweled headdress and a ruffled gown. Her crinkly gloves reached up past her elbows. She clutched a bouquet of plump roses and kept bowing and bowing, over and over again.

“Thank you! Bless you! You’re too, too kind.”

Zack knew the elegant woman had to be a ghost. Nobody had dressed like that since maybe World War I.

“Come back again, my darlings!” she called out to the invisible crowd giving her what must have been the world’s first silent ovation. “I’m here for three more weeks!”

Great.

Zack and Judy would be here for three weeks, too.

14

Zack raced down the steps to the lobby.

Now he had
another
ghost not to tell Judy about. How could he? She had a script to worry about plus a mean director to deal with. She did not need to know about an old-fashioned actress in a jeweled cap who somebody needed to haul offstage with a hook—like they did sometimes in Bugs Bunny cartoons—so they could remind her she was dead!

Judy was waiting for Zack underneath one of the lobby’s crystal chandeliers as he slammed the door to the box seats.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” said Zack, a little short of breath after scampering down the staircase. “I just thought I’d, you know, get a little exercise. We’ve been cooped up in that car for a couple hours. Needed to stretch my legs.”

“So you ran down a staircase?”

“Yeah,” Zack panted. “Ran up it, too.”

“Well, I
walked
up to the second floor. Mr. Grimes wasn’t in his office.”

“He wasn’t in the auditorium, either.”

“Guess he got tired of waiting for us.”

“Yeah.”

“We’d better hit that Holiday Inn.”

“Can Zipper stay with us?” asked Zack. “In a hotel?”

“I think so. A lot of hotels are pet-friendly these days. If this one isn’t—”

Suddenly, the chandelier over their heads went dark. So did the lights lining the walls. Then the lights in the box office. Zack and Judy were being systematically plunged into darkness, which made the vast expanse of the lobby, with its columns and arched ceilings, as creepy as an empty tomb at midnight.

“Closin’ up,” called a gruff voice from off in the distance. Zack heard another circuit breaker being thumped off.

“Hello?” Judy called out.

“Closin’ up,” came the reply from a man they couldn’t see.

“Uh, okay. I’m Judy Jennings.”

“Aya,” said the voice. “We’re closin’ up.”

“Judy
Magruder
Jennings.”

“Aya.” More switches were flipped with a spring-loaded
flick-click, flick-click
.

“I wrote
Curiosity Cat?”

“Do tell,” said the man, a silhouette moving through the gloom toward them. He was tall and lanky and wore a floppy billed cap that reminded Zack of the hats his toy Confederate army soldiers wore.

“We were supposed to meet Mr. Grimes,” said Judy.

“Mr. Grimes is gone,” said the shadow.

“I see. Do you work here?”

“Aya.”

“I wonder, could you show us to our rooms?”

Now the man stepped into a shaft of soft moonlight streaming through the windows. He was gaunt and grizzled, his cheeks stubbled with the kind of patchy white beard you see on grandfathers who’d forgotten to shave.

He eyeballed them hard. “What rooms?”

“My son and I. We’re staying here.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Um, I think we can. It’s in my contract. The theater is supposed to provide housing until opening night,” said Judy. “They gave us rooms. Upstairs.”

“Don’t know nothin’ about any rooms. Then again, I’m just the janitor.”

The janitor. Zack wondered if that was why the man looked so worn out. His face sagged; his baggy eyes drooped; and his lips were frozen in a frown. He appeared to be at least seventy years old and totally tired of mopping floors.

“Okay,” said Judy. “We’ll come back tomorrow.”

The janitor narrowed his eyes. Glared at Zack. “No children are allowed in this theater.”

“What?” said Judy.

“No children allowed.”

Judy laughed. “I think that’s impossible.”

“No children!”

“Sir,
Curiosity Cat
is a family show. Families have children.”

“Shouldn’t.”

“What?”

“Shouldn’t bring children into this theater. Children bring nothing but trouble.”

“Well, I’m sorry you feel that way.”

Zack figured the janitor hated kids because they stuck wads of gum and boogers under their seats and he was the one who, months later, had to scrape it all off with a putty knife.

“Well,” said Zack, “we’d better hit the road.”

“But we’ll be back tomorrow,” said Judy, sounding a little ticked off. “And we
will
be staying in rooms upstairs. We will also be putting on a show that will bring thousands of children into this theater! Whole busloads of ’em!”

The janitor moved forward. “You don’t want to be doin’ that.”

“Really? Well, just watch me!”

Judy Magruder Jennings never liked it when anybody tried to tell her what she could or could not do. In fact, it was her number one pet peeve.

“Come on, Zack.” Yep. She sounded peeved.

Zipper was sitting in the front seat, paws on the steering wheel.

When Zack and Judy opened their doors, he hopped into the back, tail wagging, ready to roll.

“I cannot believe that man!” said Judy, staring back at the dark building.

“Our school janitor hates kids, too,” said Zack. “They probably have to list it on their job applications.”

Judy laughed.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Zack. “I’ll stay out of his way.”

“I guess you’re right,” said Judy. “Let’s go on with the show!”

“Is that another show tune?”

Judy nodded. “From
Annie Get Your Gun
. I guess that janitor really isn’t a show person.”

Zack played along. “Why’s that?”

“They’re supposed to smile when they are low.”

As they drove away from the theater, Zack glanced at the side-view mirror for one last look at the darkened Hanging Hill Playhouse, perched behind them on the river-bank. Now all the windows were black, so it didn’t look like a ginormous jack-o’-lantern anymore, just a deserted haunted house lit by a spooky moon.

Suddenly, Zack saw a flurry of bright flashes flare from casement windows in the basement. It looked like somebody was down there working with a welder’s torch.

Or plugging in an electric chair.