The Hanging Hill

115

“Let Meghan go!” shouted Zack. “You don’t need her anymore.”

“No, Zack. I’m staying here with you.”

“Meghan, it isn’t safe.”

“Zack?”

“Get out of here!”

Grimes flung up his crippled arm. “You heard the boy! Go! Leave! My sister died so you might live!”

Meghan gave Zack a confused look.

He nodded toward the sliding steel doors. “My glasses have sports lenses.”

“What?”

“They’re like safety goggles. You’ll be better off behind those big steel doors. In case, you know, the sparks start flying when I hit the fire.”

Meghan nodded like she understood. She ran over to the open doors. Hid behind them.

“Where’s my grandfather?” Grimes spun around, stared at the floor. “Where’d he go?”

“He’s fading,” said Hakeem. “They are all fading. We must begin!”

Badir and Jamal stepped forward. Jamal raised his revolver. Aimed it at Zack’s head. “Say the words, boy!”

“And do not worry about climbing up,” added Badir. “We are going to throw you!”

Zack closed his eyes. Took in a deep breath. Shook out his fingers. Took in another breath.

“Mr. Jennings?” said Grimes. “Now!”

“I need to focus on the words.”

“Now!”

“Hey, Zack!” It was Derek. Behind him. Breathing heavy. “I’m back.”

It was showtime.

Zack stepped toward the statue.

“O, magnus Molochus!”

“Excellent!” said Grimes.

“Nos duo vitam nostram damus ut vos omnes qui hue arcessiti estis vivatis.”

“He memorized it so quickly! Go on, boy! Go on!”

Zack moved close enough to hear the brass statue creak and warble as its heated metal began to expand.

“Puer et puella…”

“Go on!” urged Grimes.

“Puri et fideles…”

“Pure and true, yes, yes!”

“Morimur …”

“You die!”

“Ut vos resuscitet.”

“That they may be resurrected! He said it. He said it all!”

The fire and Grimes roared and cackled.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Zack finally heard the sound he’d been hoping to hear: an annoying mosquito with a microphone. The nasal whine of Derek Stone’s tweaked-out monster truck flying across the floor.

Thwack!

That was the second sound Zack had hoped to hear: the remote-controlled truck slamming into Badir’s ankles like it had slammed into his!

Clunk!

Sound three. Badir dropping his gun.

Now Zack reached into his pockets and grabbed two fistfuls of fireworks.

He tossed them into the fire pit.

The Fourth of July started shooting out the bull’s nostrils and up through its chimney horns.

“I’ve got the gun!” screamed Derek.

“Heave it in the fire!”

Derek tossed the weapon into the blaze just as another sky rocket blasted off. This one streaked straight up, whistled into the exhaust hood, and screeched through the ductwork like a mortar shell until, Zack was certain, it exploded into a shower of cascading sparks right over the roof of the Hanging Hill Playhouse.

“I’m going upstairs to rescue my mom!” Derek shouted.

“Hurry!” said Zack.

As Derek ran out the doors, Grimes lurched toward Zack.

“You insolent child!” he howled.

Then Zack heard an even louder howl. A cat?

Now a bark! Zipper.

Grimes dropped to his knees, held open his arms. “Jinx?”

A hell cat the size of a beaver came charging out of the shadows with Zipper in hot pursuit. The giant cat looked ready to claw somebody’s eyes out.

It yowled, then leapt up at Grimes. Clung on to his head. The madman looked like he was wearing a fur face mask.

“Fire away!” Zack screamed to Judy. “Fire!”

Judy was a pretty good shot with the bottle rockets.

Mrs. McKenna, too.

But it was a good thing Meghan was hiding behind the blast doors. Some of the moms’ misguided missiles spiraled around the room like out-of-control comets.

Mr. Kimble? He had juggled knives when he was a kid.

He still had the stuff.

He nailed the screaming, cat-wrestling Grimes in the butt with a lumbo whistling starburst rocket. So on top of the wild caterwauling, Zack now heard tuxedo pants sizzling.

Next Kimble tagged Hakeem with a plastic-tipped missile in the side of his felt hat. Flaming embers spewed up and made it look like the poor guy was taking a sparkle shower underneath a rainbow-colored Niagara Falls.

Badir and Jamal ran out the doors.

Judy and Mrs. McKenna tossed down more rockets, the kinds that made starbursts and lots of siss-boom-bang noises up in the sky. Zack hurled them all into Moloch’s fire so his hollowed-out horns would keep shooting off distress signals like the big finale in a fireworks show.

Hey, if you couldn’t call the cops, sometimes it was a smart idea to send up a flare.