The Hanging Hill (8 page)

30

“Do you have your key?” Grimes asked Hakeem as they hurried through the subterranean labyrinth of interconnected storage rooms in the basement.

“Of course, Exalted One.”

They reached the open door to the room where the antique theatrical trunk had been stored.

“Give it to me!” Grimes demanded.

“Not yet.”

“What?”

“You are not quite ready to receive it.”

“What? I read the book. All of it. I am the direct descendant of the high priest of Ba’al. You shall do as I command!”

Badir and Jamal, the two Tunisian strongmen, stepped into the doorway. Blocked it.

“You are not quite ready,” Hakeem repeated, much too serenely for Grimes’s taste. “Please …” Hakeem gestured toward the door. “Step into the room and learn what is required of you next.”

The two musclemen stepped aside, but Grimes could tell they were eyeing him warily.

“No!” he said. “I want you to open that final compartment! Now! You are my servant. You will do as I say!”

Hakeem bent his head in reverence. “I will, Exalted One.” He raised his head and glared into Grimes’s eyes. “Once you prove that Professor Nicodemus’s royal blood truly flows through your veins! That you inherited his natural talents!”

“Who?”

“Professor Nicholas Nicodemus.”

“The name embossed on the cover of the book!”

“Indeed. And your grandfather. The world’s finest necromancer!”

Grimes had heard the word before. Wasn’t quite sure what it meant. For the first time in a long while, he swallowed his pride.

“Necromancer?” he asked as casually as he could.

Hakeem grinned. His eyes twinkled. “One who communicates with the spirits of the dead in order to predict or influence the future.”

Badir and Jamal were grinning now, too.

Then the three men started to laugh.

A soft and low, devious and menacing chuckle.

It wasn’t long before Grimes was grinning and chuckling with them.

31

“Let’s go see what’s down there!” said Meghan as soon as Zack told her the janitor’s dire warnings about the basement.

They were walking Zipper along the river behind the theater. The little dog was having a great time cataloging all the new scents in this part of Connecticut. He seemed to particularly enjoy Chatham’s dandelions.

“Let’s go check it out right now!” said Meghan.

“I dunno,” said Zack. “He sounded pretty serious.”

“Grown-ups always try to scare kids away from stuff they want to keep secret.”

“Don’t you guys have rehearsal?”

“Nope. Not until tomorrow. I’ve already memorized all my lines and songs. Come on, Zack. It’ll be fun.”

“Yeah, but…”

Zack couldn’t think, thanks to something very loud racing up behind him, making the most annoying sound he’d ever heard. A high-pitched nasal drone. Like a mosquito with a microphone.

Then something hard and pointed and fast slammed into his ankles.

He tripped forward. Scraped his palms when he broke his fall and tumbled sideways.

“Whoops,” he heard somebody say. “Sorry.”

Zipper was barking, snarling at Zack’s unseen attacker: a radio-controlled monster truck with four hulking all-terrain tires the size of hockey pucks.

Derek Stone came running up the path, holding a pistol-grip control unit with an antenna bobbing off the top.

“You okay, kid?” he asked Zack.

Meghan helped Zack to his feet.

“Yeah.”

“That’s the LST2 monster truck,” said Derek as he scooped up his shiny toy. “I tweaked the Mach 427 engine. Haven’t quite mastered the steering servos.”

“Unh-hunh,” said Zack, dusting off his knees.

“So,” said Derek, “you guys wanna take a turn?” He held out the controller.

“No thanks,” said Meghan.

Zipper barked and wagged his tail.

“Neat dog,” said Derek. “Spunky.”

“I thought you were allergic,” said Zack.

“I am. But I have a prescription.” He tucked the truck under his arm so he’d have a free hand to gesture with. “Hey, I won’t let allergies stop me from living. I said that once. In a commercial. For a nasal spray.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Zack. “I saw it on TV.”

“Sorry. Can’t do an autograph right now. Catch me later.”

Zack didn’t want to appear rude, so he said, “Okay. Thanks.”

“No problem. What’s your name again?”

“Zack.”

“How do you spell it?”

“Like Jack, only with a Z.”

“Weird name,” said Derek.

“I guess.”

“You should change it.” He sneezed. “Excuse me. August. Official start of ragweed season.”

“You used to be Derek Frumpkus, right?” Meghan asked.

“That’s right. My mom thought Stone had more zazz!”

“Is your mother an actress, too?” Zack asked.

“Used to be. She played a nurse on
Beverly Hills Hospital
.”

“Cool,” said Zack. “Which nurse?”

“Lots of different ones. She usually only said two or three words. Or pushed the gurney. Or answered the phone in the background.”

“Hey, Derek,” said Meghan, “want to go on an adventure with us to the basement? You can park your truck at the box office.”

“What kind of adventure?”

“A ghost hunt!”

“There’s this ghost girl haunting the stairwell,” Zack explained. “We think she used to perform here.”

“Vaudeville, probably,” Meghan added. “She’s a juggler.”

Derek’s eyes bulged. “Ghosts? In the theater?”

“Well, one or two in the stairwell for sure,” said Meghan. “The vaudeville girl and some kind of Pilgrim guy who makes a very dramatic entrance!” She yanked up on an imaginary noose and bugged out her eyes. “Aaaack!”

“I saw another one onstage last night,” said Zack. “And we think there might be more in the basement, because the janitor keeps telling me not to go down there.”

“Ghosts?” Derek’s voice cracked.

“Don’t worry,” said Meghan. “We’re bringing the dog.”

“Great,” Derek said, wheezing.

Zack figured he was allergic to ghosts, too.

32

Wilbur Kimble moved swiftly for an eighty-year-old man.

He draped the crumpled bedsheet against the far wall, propping it up on one side with the tip of a spear, hooking the other end over the antler of a moose head. Both pieces were props from shows done long ago, now stored in the dank basement.

When the children came down here, which Kimble knew they would, because children always did whatever you told them not to do, this sheet would be the first thing they would see.

Actually, what they would see were the wispy images projected on it, a moving picture show that would scare them silly. Children always ran screaming when they encountered the “ghosts” Kimble arranged to have haunting the basement. Usually they cried. Sometimes they had “accidents.” Mostly they quit the show and went home.

“Good riddance,” he muttered. “This theater is no place for children.”

Of course, he himself had never seen a ghost. He just made sure all the kids did.

He pushed apart the dusty costumes hanging on a rolling wardrobe rack and stepped through the opening to where he had set up the antique movie projector, a relic from the days when the Hanging Hill had been a movie theater back in the 1940s.

“Ran those children out, too,” Kimble said, remembering fondly. He had once terrified an entire “Kiddy Matinee” by projecting his spook show on the velvet curtain just before the cartoons started. The popcorn flew that day. Wasn’t a dry seat in the house. The theater almost went out of business, which would have been wonderful, might’ve been torn down for a parking lot.

But some artsy folks with too much time and money decided they wanted to do musicals on the grand old stage and Wilbur Kimble was forced to stay on the job.

He made certain the film sprockets were lined up properly. This was rare footage from the 1930s and needed to be handled very, very carefully. The old celluloid was stiff and brittle.

Kimble flicked up the switch to test out his illusion. The rickety machine chattered to life. The dusty sheet he was using as a movie screen swayed in the slight breeze moving through the basement, and that made the film clip seem all the more like an eerie apparition.

“Clara,” the janitor muttered as he watched the ghostly images dance across the sheet: a young girl and boy, dressed up in matching sailor suits.

They tap-danced.

Then they juggled.

First balls, then bowling pins.

33

“If you don’t like his changes, don’t do them!”

Judy was on the phone with her husband, Zack’s dad.

“You need to protect your intellectual property, sweetheart.” George Jennings was a lawyer.

“Well, I’m willing to take a look at the lyrics. See if I can make them better.”

“You can’t. That song is perfect the way it is!”

Judy smiled.

And then George started singing.
“Curiosity helps us see, just how lively life can be….”

Now Judy was simultaneously laughing and cringing. Her husband was a great guy, a sharp lawyer, and a terrific father. He was also tone-deaf. When he sang, it sounded like a dozen different car horns honking in a barn full of bawling sheep. George Jennings had the kind of voice that could close karaoke bars.

“Okay, okay,” said Judy, pulling the phone away from her ear so no permanent nerve damage could be done. “You’re right. It’s perfect.”

“You want me to come down there and sing it to Mr. Grimes? Let him hear just how perfect it is?”

“No, dear.”

Judy wouldn’t change a word, no matter what the director said.

But she saw no need to torture the poor man.

34

“Ugh! Cobwebs!”

“Come on, Derek,” said Meghan. “Don’t be a big baby.”

“I am not being a baby!”

“Are, too.”

“Am not!”

“Whatever.”

Zack and Zipper led the way down the staircase spiraling from the lower lobby outside rehearsal room A into the forbidden basement. Meghan was right behind them. Derek brought up the rear.

“Ugh! Moisture!”

Meghan sighed. “Now what?”

“It’s dripping!”

Zack looked up at the dimly lit ceiling, where thick steel pipes were strapped to the rafters.

“Relax,” said Zack, “it’s just water.”

“Or,” said Meghan, “that could be a sewer line. After all, we are right underneath the men’s
lounge.”
She leaned into the word so everybody would understand what she really meant: the men’s bathroom.

“Raw sewage? I’m allergic to sewage!” Derek pushed his way past Meghan and Zack, ran down the rest of the stairs, and reached the basement first. “Let’s hurry up and get this over with. I don’t know what you two expect to find down here.”

“We told you,” said Meghan. “Ghosts!”

They were directly underneath the main stage. Faint light leaked through the seams between the trapdoors and the floorboards. The vast space was filled with the lumpy shadows of rolling wardrobe racks, wooden storage boxes, and all kinds of furniture and props from shows done long ago.

“There’s nothing down here but junk,” Derek complained. “Dirty, filthy junk.”

“I think it’s cool,” said Zack. “Like a downstairs attic filled with treasures!”

“I’ll bet we discover something incredible,” said Meghan, twirling a Chinese parasol she’d just found in a bin.

“Well,” said Derek, “all I see are a bunch of old wigs and costumes.” He sneezed. “All of them covered with dust.” He sneezed again. “I’m allergic to dust.”

“What about wool?” Zack asked as they passed a rack crammed with all sorts of coats.

Derek sneezed and scratched his ears. “I’m allergic to just about everything. Wool. Dust. Peanuts. Cats.”

“Guess you’d better quit the show,” said Meghan.

“Ha-ha. Very funny.” Another sneeze.

“I thought you took your allergy medicine,” said Meghan.

“Not all of it! I’d be asleep if I did.”

They reached the rear wall. To the left was a dark corridor that disappeared under a curving archway. To the right, another passageway.

“That’s weird,” said Meghan.

“What?” asked Zack.

“Look at all those gloves hanging on the wall!”

“Wow! They’re all pointing to the right.”

“Oh.” Derek scoffed. “Did a ghost do that?”

“Maybe,” said Meghan.

“Be difficult,” said Zack.

“Oh, really?” whined Derek. “Why’s that?”

“Well, ghosts can’t move physical objects in the real world,” Zack explained.

“Unless,” added Meghan, “they get really, really mad or emotional.”

Derek snorted a laugh. “Did you two go to Ghost University or something?”

Zack smiled. “Sort of.”

Meghan giggled.

“You are both so immature.” Derek ignored the finger-pointing gloves and headed down the passageway to the left. Zack and Meghan followed him.

“Ooh. Neat,” said Meghan. “It’s even darker back here.”

“I see a light up ahead,” said Zack.

“Yes,” said Derek. “It’s some sort of …”

He froze.

He wheezed.

“Did you just swallow a peanut?” asked Meghan. “Derek?”

Derek stammered something inaudible. All Zack heard was a wispy whimper.

“What is it?”

“Ghosts!” Derek screamed.
“Ghosts!”

Then he spun around and ran away.

35

Judy took the creaky elevator down to the lobby and marched with great determination to rehearsal room A.

She hoped Reginald Grimes was there. If he wasn’t, she’d march up to his office on the second floor.

She was going to tell him, in no uncertain terms, that she wasn’t going to change a word of the best song in the whole show.

She pushed open the door.

Grimes wasn’t there. Neither was anyone else. The room was empty. Notepads, pencils, and water glasses sat abandoned on the horseshoe of tables where the first read-through of
Curiosity Cat
had never taken place.

Because
, Judy thought,
Grimes was too wrapped up in that book he was reading when he should’ve been working on the show!

He’d left the book behind.

It was sitting in the middle of the head table.

Judy tiptoed over. She wasn’t exactly sure why she was tiptoeing. It just felt like she was snooping.

The book had a crinkled leather cover. A frightening image of a snorting bull had been scorched into the center with a branding iron.

Library of Professor Nicholas Nicodemus was embossed in chipped gold letters in the lower right corner.

Judy reached out to open the book.

She snapped back her hand as soon as she heard the door swing open behind her.

The man named Hakeem, Grimes’s assistant, scurried into the rehearsal room.

“Ah! There it is!” he said. “Just where Mr. Grimes left it.”

He snatched the big book off the table, turned on his heel, and hurried out the door before Judy could ask him anything.

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Who the heck is Professor Nicholas Nicodemus?