The Hanging Hill

60

“Sorry if the room’s kind of messy,” the company manager said to the group of actors gathered around the snack table at the back of the rehearsal room. “Mr. Kimble, our custodian, didn’t show up for work today. First time that’s happened since forever.”

“You want a doughnut?” Judy asked Zack.

“No thanks.”

She looked at him. “You feeling okay, hon?”

“Never better.”

Zack wished he could tell Judy about all he had seen last night, because he and Judy had slain the demon of the crossroads together. Now, however, Mr. Willowmeier wanted Zack to fly solo. Why? Who knew? In Zack’s experience, ghosts had their own screwy reasons for doing what they did, even if it made very little sense to people on the other side of the dirt. It was what made phantoms so unfathomable.

He just wished one of the night fliers would drop by during the day and give him a solid hint about what it was he was actually supposed to do.

“This is so exciting!” said Judy, looking around the room. “Our first real rehearsal!”

“Yeah. Maybe I will grab a doughnut.”

“Okay. Then come sit next to me at my table, okay?”

“Okay.”

Judy went to greet her composer, who was spreading out sheet music on the piano.

“Five hundred people auditioned for my part,” Zack heard one of the actors say. “I was honored to be chosen.”

“Especially by Reginald Grimes!” gushed an actress. “I heard he saw a thousand women for my role.”

Zack wondered if anybody else had “auditioned” for his role as demon slayer. If so, maybe his understudy could go on, because Zack wasn’t sure he wanted to do whatever it was Justus Willowmeier III and the other dearly departed show people wanted him to do.

He didn’t want to keep dealing with the demands of the dead. In fact, he wanted dead people to leave him alone. He wanted to be an ordinary kid!

Of course, Zack still wasn’t 100-percent convinced that he had seen what he thought he had seen last night. It might’ve been an incredibly bad dream.

Maybe he and Zipper had never even left his bed or seen Princess Nepauduckett dangling in the elevator or met all those other ghosts outside.

But what if it was true?

What if Meghan, Derek, and Judy needed him to be a demon slayer—just like Mr. Willowmeier had said they did?

Zack grabbed two doughnuts.