The Hanging Hill

116

The crazed cat had vanished but Mr. Grimes’s face was a scratched and bloody mess. Zack guessed the full moon meant ghost claws were real for the night, too.

“Let me assist you, Exalted One.” Hakeem—his hat fried, his hair scorched—limped over to where Grimes teetered to his feet. “Do not despair. We shall try again, next August…”

Now Zack heard the whoosh he had heard last night in the elevator.

“I won’t go back!”

The butcher with the meat cleaver materialized in front of Grimes.

“I won’t go back!” Suddenly, he stopped ranting and stared at Grimes’s turban.

“Is that an emerald?”

Grimes nodded.

“Give it to me!”

“Never!” Grimes tried to roar. “Return below, foolish demon. I summoned you hence. Now I command you to depart!”

“I will not depart without that shiny green jewel!”

“Return below! I command you!”

The demon laughed. “You cannot command me to do anything!”

“I am the lord high priest of …”

“Careful!” warned Hakeem. “Remember: Those summoned can quickly turn against the summoner.”

This one sure did.

He swung his meat cleaver like an executioner’s ax and lopped off the high priest’s head, sending the precious emerald and the turban and Reginald Grimes’s skull rolling across the concrete floor like a bloody, free-kicked soccer ball. It stopped at Hakeem’s feet.

Another whoosh, a tormented scream, and the demon butcher was sucked down into the concrete floor. He disappeared. His cleaver clunked to the ground. The thing remained real. The man did not.

Now Hakeem picked up his high priest’s head, cradled it to his chest, and began to blubber.

“He was the last of his royal line! Our final hope! I must bring him back to life! I must resurrect the high priest of Ba’al!”

He turned to the statue.

“Take me, Moloch! I will be the boy! Take me!” And he began the incantation: “O, magnus Molochus….”

Zack closed his eyes.

He didn’t want to see this.

“Aaaiiieeeee!”

He heard a whomp! A roar of flames. Horrible screams. Shrieks.

Hakeem had willingly leapt into the fire.

Zack kept his eyes closed.

Until he heard what sounded like a disgusted burp, the roaring clatter of brass, and a very queasy groan.

“Oooh.”

Zack dared to peek up at the statue.

The Minotaur looked like he might puke.

“Bad boy,” urped the statue. “Very, very bad.”

Hakeem must not have been pure or true.

At long last, Zack heard sirens in the distance.