The Hanging Hill

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The Hanging Hill Page 8

by Chris Grabenstein


  The other men sighed and nodded.

  “This is good,” said Hakeem. “Very good. You might, indeed, be blessed with your grandfather’s gifts.”

  Hearing that caused Grimes to stand a little taller, his chest to swell. “Well, I suppose it’s possible. Maybe a little.”

  “We shall see. Badir? Anoint the ground!”

  The big man broke the circle so he could reach into a pouch he carried slung over his shoulder. He started to sprinkle dirt at their feet.

  “What’s that?” Grimes asked.

  “Earth. From a graveyard. Jamal?”

  Now Jamal let go of the hands he was holding and produced a cloth sack.

  “Eat!” he said, presenting Grimes with a stale slice of black bread.

  Grimes ate. It was dry and tasteless.

  “Drink!” Out came a small corked vial containing purple liquid.

  “What is it?” Grimes asked.

  “Unfermented grape juice,” answered Hakeem.

  Grimes drank. The juice was sour. Needed sugar.

  Now Jamal unwrapped a sheet of butcher paper from around a slab of gray meat resembling jerky.

  “Am I to eat this as well?” Grimes asked.

  “Yes,” said Hakeem. “It is the final course.”

  Grimes took the meat from Jamal. “What is the meaning behind all this?”

  “These are all food items associated with the underworld. The realm of the dead.”

  Grimes nodded. Chewed on the tough, stringy meat.

  “Unleavened black bread!” Hakeem declared. “With out yeast, it is lifeless and black like the shroud of death. Grape juice! To honor Dionysus, the Greek god of the vine. One of the few ancient deities able to ferry dead souls up from the underworld!”

  Grimes nodded. The symbolism made sense. “And this final course? The meat?”

  “To pay patronage to Hecate, goddess of sorcery, you must eat her favored earthly animal. You must eat flesh from the corpse of a dead dog!”

  He wished he hadn’t asked.

  38

  Meghan, Zack, and Zipper backtracked, made their way up the dimly lit maze of corridors.

  Zipper barked.

  “Lead the way, Zip!”

  The dog took off.

  “See, Zack?” said Meghan. “I told you we’d have an adventure down here!”

  “We should’ve brought a flashlight!”

  “What about that? That magic fairy wand or whatever. Maybe the star lights up.” She pulled the prop wand out of its bin. “There’s a switch on the handle.” She flipped it back and forth. Nothing happened. “Batteries must be dead.”

  “Whack it on the bottom a couple times. It’s how I get my flashlight to work at home.”

  Meghan whacked it.

  The sparkling star glowed.

  “Help!” Derek’s voice was weaker now.

  “Hang on!” shouted Zack.

  “We’re coming!” added Meghan.

  They rounded a final corner and raced down a steep ramp that switched back a couple of times before it entered a storage vault at least fifty feet tall and wide.

  “So, the basement has a basement!” said Meghan. “It’s probably where they store the huge set pieces. Then they use a freight elevator or something to hoist stuff up to the stage.”

  “Zack!” Derek whimpered. “Tell your dog to stop licking me!”

  Meghan swung her wand light to the right.

  Derek was cowering on the cement floor, trying to cover up with his elbows so Zipper couldn’t slobber all over his face.

  Zack stared up at the giant creature that had terrified Derek.

  “Wow!”

  It had to be at least twelve feet tall. A gargantuan brass statue of a man who had the head of a bull. Mr. Bull Head was seated on a throne with his hands held out in front of him, palms up, like he was waiting for someone to toss him a basketball.

  “I couldn’t see where I was going and bumped into that thing!” Derek explained. “When I looked up …”

  “You screamed like a baby,” said Meghan. “Don’t worry. I would’ve done the same thing.”

  “Yeah. Me too,” said Zack. “This guy’s got some nasty nostrils.”

  All three of them studied the colossus.

  “I wonder what show they used it in,” said Meghan.

  “Was there ever a Bulls?” asked Derek. “You know, like Cats?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Meghan. “It’s so huge! It looks like it might be from an opera.”

  Zack heard someone sobbing.

  From the look on her face, he could tell that Meghan heard it, too.

  “What’s wrong?” Derek asked.

  “Someone’s crying,” said Zack.

  Derek looked at them both like they were crazy. “What? Where?”

  Meghan and Zack both held a finger up to their lips, urged Derek to keep quiet.

  He stayed where he was.

  They crept around the brass man’s big sandaled feet. Zipper padded along after them

  Whatever was behind the statue wouldn’t stop weeping.

  39

  The four men stood holding hands in a circle around the ghost light at center stage.

  Grimes wished he had a toothbrush. He still tasted the canine carcass.

  “Repeat after me,” Hakeem instructed. “Ego sum te peto et videre queo!”

  “That’s Latin.”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, what does it mean?”

  “Did you not read The Book of Ba’al?”

  Grimes hesitated. “I skimmed some sections.”

  “So I feared. Ego sum te peto et videre queo: I seek you and demand to see you.”

  “I seek you and demand to see you.”

  “In Latin, please.”

  “Ego sum te peto et videre queo.”

  “Louder.”

  “Ego sum te peto et videre queo!”

  “Again!”

  “Whose spirit are we summoning?”

  “Let us start at the top of your grandfather’s list. Mad Dog Murphy.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Convicted bank robber. Murderer. Died in the electric chair in 1959.”

  “What do we want with him?”

  “Repeat the words.”

  “First you tell me why we would want a murdering bank robber!”

  “Because he is very good at his job!” said Hakeem. The other two men sniggered. “Repeat the words!”

  Grimes felt the warmth of power surging through his body. Jolts of adrenaline rippled up from his hands as he clutched the hands of the two brothers of Hannibal. Who were these people? Why did they make him feel like he could soar through the air like an eagle, commanding all those below? Like his lame arm would somehow grow strong enough to wield a terrible swift sword and fell any who stood in his way?

  “Ego sum te peto et videre queo!” he cried “Mad Dog Murphy! I seek you and demand to see you!”

  “Louder!”

  “I seek you and demand to see you! Now!”

  The bulb atop the ghost light exploded.

  Sparks arced up from the exposed filament.

  Electricity crackled across the air, igniting a roaring thunderclap. Four lightning bolts collided at center stage with the screech of steel wheels screaming to a stop in a train wreck.

  A monstrous man strapped in a wooden chair suddenly materialized in the air. He floated ten feet above the floor, bobbing like a tossed boat on a churning sea.

  “Where am I?” the beast in the chair bellowed.

  “Are you the spirit of Mad Dog Murphy?” Grimes demanded.

  “Yeah, yeah. Sure. Where the blazes am I?”

  “Where I summoned you!” answered Grimes, feeling more robust and vital than he had ever felt in his life.

  He was his grandfather’s rightful heir.

  He was a true necromancer!

  40

  Zack heard a muffled boom somewhere right above his head.

  He figure
d it must be a summer thunderstorm.

  He and Meghan and Zipper continued creeping around the base of the giant brass statue.

  They reached the back.

  The girl hidden in the darkness continued to sob and moan and weep.

  Meghan flicked on her illuminated wand.

  A young Native American girl, maybe twelve, stood in the shadows, tears streaming down her face. She wore a fringed buckskin dress decorated with beadwork, and cradled a dozen ears of dried corn tight against her chest.

  “Are you a demon?” she asked Zack in a quavering voice.

  Zack shook his head.

  The girl turned toward Meghan. Shook and sobbed. “Are you a demon?”

  “No. I’m Meghan. Meghan McKenna. Who are you?”

  The girl couldn’t answer. She convulsed into another spasm of sobs.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Zack. “Does something hurt? Are you in pain?”

  The weeping girl nodded. As she did, her head seemed sort of loose and rubbery on her neck.

  Zack glanced down at the floor. The girl was standing in the center of an area squared off by the stumps of four rough beams. Maybe sawed-off support posts from an old foundation. Wormy six-by-sixes.

  Now he heard footsteps.

  “Hey … who are you guys talking to back here?” It was Derek.

  “My father curses this ground!” the girl cried out. It was hard to understand what she was saying, because she kept sobbing the whole time she talked. “I did not steal this corn! We gave you demons the seed; how could we steal that which we gave you?”

  Zack wished he knew the answer, but he didn’t, so he gave the ghost a pleading shrug. Meghan did the same thing.

  Zipper sank to the floor and whimpered.

  The girl wailed the most mournful cry Zack had ever heard in his life, worse than a million funerals all mixed together.

  Then she and her corn crumbled into powdery dust and disappeared.

  “Wow,” said Meghan.

  “Yeah,” said Zack.

  “We have to find out who she was.”

  “Who who was?” asked Derek. He was staring at Zack, Meghan, and even Zipper as if all three were deranged.

  “The girl,” said Zack.

  “What girl?”

  “In the buckskin dress?” said Meghan.

  “She was just here,” said Zack.

  “When?”

  “Two seconds ago,” said Meghan.

  “Ha-ha. Very funny. Can we go back upstairs now?”

  Zack and Meghan looked at each other and realized Derek Stone couldn’t see ghosts!

  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-romancy 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 completel
y 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.”

 

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