The Hanging Hill

47

Right after lunch, Zack and Judy went with Meghan and her mom to the three p.m. Sunday matinee of Bats in Her Belfry.

Meghan and Judy had to sign a bunch more autographs before they could sit down.

Zack and Mrs. McKenna did not.

Zack thought the show was pretty neat. Dracula made an extremely cool entrance—floating down through a huge window in his castle. Since it was a musical comedy, the window wasn’t open.

The renowned vampire hunter Van Helsing attempted to expose the smooth and debonair count by inviting him to a big banquet where all they served was spaghetti in garlic sauce and garlic bread. One neat scene showed Dracula getting locked in his coffin, which was then chained inside a concrete crypt like in a magic show. Some townspeople turned the box around and around and it didn’t look like there was any way for the actor to escape through trapdoors in the floor, because the crypt was on an elevated platform, but when the vampire hunters undid the chains, all they found inside the tomb was a single dead rose.

In the second act, the lady playing Lucy, one of the women falling in love with Dracula, started singing that “Bitten and Smitten” song Judy had sung in the car.

She wasn’t alone.

Every move she made and every note she sang was mirrored by a second woman wearing a slightly different costume and wig. They were only inches apart and moving in complete sync across the stage—like those swimmers at the Olympics. Zack thought this was hilarious.

Except he realized: Nobody in the audience was laughing.

Maybe because they couldn’t see the Lucy double.

He turned to Meghan on his right.

“Yep,” she whispered. “It’s a ghost.”

He turned to Judy on his left.

“It’s Kathleen Williams,” she whispered. “From the original cast! She’s really good, isn’t she?”

Yeah, Zack thought. Especially for a dead person.