“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 Megh
an 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.
Like Who the heck is Professor Nicholas Nicodemus?
36
Zack and Meghan stood mesmerized by what they saw shimmering on the far wall.
“Cool,” said Meghan.
“Yeah,” Zack agreed.
It was a young girl and boy, both wearing costumes that sort of made them look like that sailor on the front of a Cracker Jack box.
Both juggling fruit.
“They’re pretty good,” whispered Zack. He didn’t recognize the boy, but the girl sure looked familiar. She was the one he and Meghan had seen juggling in the stairwell. Only, she wasn’t.
“She’s not real,” said Zack.
“That’s her,” said Meghan.
“Yeah. Only it’s not really her. She’s—I don’t know—too flat.” Zack held a finger to his lips. “Hear it?”
“Yeah,” said Meghan.
The faint whir of a movie projector.
Zack took a top hat off a Styrofoam head and blew away the dust rimming its brim. Soon tiny flecks were sparkling in the movie projector’s narrow funnel of light.
Zipper made his way to where the beacon disappeared through the costumes hanging on a wardrobe rack, and Zack thought about that scene in The Wizard of Oz where Toto pulls open the curtains to reveal the humbug pretending to be a wizard. Today it was Zipper’s turn. He chomped into a gown and yanked it sideways.
Meghan lunged at the rack with a rubber-tipped tomahawk, another prop from another show.
“Hiyah!” She attacked the empty clothes. “Hiyah!”
“Meghan?”
“Nothing,” she reported. “Nobody.”
Zack peered through the opening and saw an unattended movie projector unspooling a reel of film.
“Somebody set this up,” he said. “Hung that sheet against the wall to make a movie screen.”
“Why?”
Zack shrugged. “Maybe they like old juggler movies.”
“Yeah, you don’t see many of those at the multiplex anymore.”
All of a sudden, they heard the sharp swick-swickswick of a swishing sword.
“‘A hit, a very palpable hit!’”
Zipper dropped to his belly, assumed his pounce position.
Zack and Meghan pushed apart the costumes and peered out at a dashing young man in tights, a tunic, and what looked like balloon-legged shorts. He was flicking his rapier back and forth, fencing with an unseen enemy.
“‘Another hit; what say you?’ ‘A touch, a touch, I do confess!’”
“That’s the swordfight scene from Hamlet,” Meghan whispered. “He’s doing all the parts!”
The guy was fit and trim, with long dark hair that swept back over the puffy shoulders of his costume. He waggled his blade with one hand while the other remained heroically cocked at his hip. Zack figured he must’ve been a leading man or a movie star. Maybe both.
“‘O villainy!’ Ho!” He clutched his chest. “‘Thou hast slain me!’” He staggered forward. “‘Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant ne’er taste of death but once.’” He dropped to his knees. “I … am … done … for.”
And then he vanished
“He’s a ghost,” said Zack. “A real one!”
“He’s also a ham,” said Meghan. “I’ve never seen anybody chew that much scenery in one bite.”
“Help!” br />
“That’s Derek!” said Zack.
“Help! It’s a giant! A giant monster!”
Zack and Meghan looked at each other.
“Cool!”
They’d track down the missing projectionist later. Right now they had to go rescue Derek Stone from some sort of Giant Monster!
No wonder Kimble didn’t want kids in the basement. It was more fun than Disney World!
37
“You bolted the doors?” Hakeem asked his two associates.
They nodded.
“The janitor?”
“Working elsewhere.”
Hakeem now turned to Grimes. “When is your next scheduled performance?”
“This afternoon. Three p.m.”
“Good. We have time. Several hours.”
“For what?”
“Your audition, Exalted One. Please. Let us form a circle.”
The three Tunisian men held hands.
Great, Grimes thought, they want me to play ring-around-the-rosy. Right here at center stage. On the darkened set of Dracula’s castle.
“Please, Exalted One. Take our hands. Form a circle with us around this lamp. We must be positioned over the portal.”
Somewhat reluctantly, Grimes reached out with his right hand and clutched the extended left hand of the giant named Badir.
While he did, Hakeem reached over and took hold of Grimes’s left. Elevated his crippled arm. The pain washed up through the shoulder socket, then drifted away.
“Tighten the circle, gentlemen,” Hakeem said, and the four men shuffled closer to the ghost light. The caged bulb was exceedingly bright. At least five hundred watts. Grimes feared it might fry a permanent dot onto his retina.
“Tell me, Exalted One,” said Hakeem, “have you ever sensed that you might possess the power to bring back the spirit of one long since departed? To summon forth the souls of the dead?”
Grimes shook his head. Answered honestly. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Think hard.”
“No. I never …”
Jinx!
The cat. Yesterday. Had he brought back the spirit of his long-dead friend simply by wishing for it?
“My cat,” he whispered. “Maybe.”