The Hanging Hill

101

“You weaklings will never stop us!”

Zack recognized the maniac with the meat cleaver from that night on the elevator. The caped madman’s shirt and waistcoat were splattered with more blood than he remembered. His top hat nearly flew off his head as he swung his cleaver like an ax and chopped at all the wires and cables snaking up to the table where the stage manager called cues during live performances.

“I’d kill you both, but I have my orders!”

He smashed out a computer monitor.

Of course Mr. Meat Cleaver had chopped the telephone lines first. Slashed right through them with his butcher blade. Smashed the handset with the butt end of his cleaver handle just to make certain nobody would be calling anybody anytime soon.

This was so weird.

The guy was obviously a ghost or a ghoul, so how come he was able to destroy things in the real world?

Zack glanced over at Mr. Kimble, who was quaking in his work boots. He hadn’t seen as many spooks as Zack. This was only like his second.

“Where do you keep the jewelry, boy?” the butcher beast snarled at Zack.

Zack thought fast. “Uh, downstairs. There’s a big statue made out of gold!”

“Gold?”

Zack nodded. Fast.

The butcher looked like he was drooling when he disappeared.

“Who was he?” asked Kimble.

“Don’t know,” said Zack.

“He is a demi-devil, a thing of darkness!” said Bartholomew Buckingham as he faded into view.

“Mr. Buckingham,” said Zack, “what’s going on? That maniac could actually use his meat cleaver!”

“The time is out of joint, Zachary! O, cursed spite! That ever you were born to set it right!”

“What?”

“A full moon now rises in the east. In the tug of its gravitational pull, the rules, like the tides, are prone to shift and sway!”

“So tonight, the ghosts can hurt people?”

“Not if you stop them!”

“How?”

“I cannot tell you!”

“How?”

Bartholomew swung his arm grandly to the left.

“Seek and ye shall find!”

The scene shop!