The Hanging Hill

70

Zack shoved the trunk into what looked like a costume storage room.

Rolling wardrobe racks jammed with clothes hanging in plastic bags ringed the floor. It looked sort of like a dry cleaning museum with a three-hundred-watt bulb burning in the ceiling.

And no rodents.

Zack saw a dressmaker’s mannequin wearing the Curiosity Cat suit being constructed for Tomasino Carrozza. It looked like a scarecrow standing guard.

Or, since it was a cat costume, a scare-rat.

Perfect.

Zack propped the steamer trunk up on its end, unsnapped the heavy clasps, and pushed open the lid. The trunk had a hanging rack on one side and a stack of drawers on the other. It was the sort of luggage people in history books packed when they sailed across the ocean.

Everything inside the trunk was musty. Zack riffled through the clothes. A black topcoat with tails, black woolen pants, a yellowing tuxedo shirt, and a shimmering black robe lined with red silk. He also found, hanging in a bag at the far end of the rod, a purple turban with an emerald green Egyptain beetle brooch pinned to its center.

“Cool.”

When he pulled out the turban to examine the jeweled scarab more closely, he saw a poster plastered to the back wall of the trunk: Professor Nicholas Nicodemus. World-Renowned Sorcerer and Necromancer!

Underneath the headline was an illustration depicting a snooty-looking man in topcoat and tails. His lacquered black hair glistened under the turban, and his arms were folded across his chest. He was wearing the costume inside the trunk!

Zack turned to the stack of drawers on the right and pulled open the biggest one, the one on the bottom.

It was filled with tubes of paper.

He pulled one out, unrolled it. It was a poster showing Professor Nicodemus staring at a human skull with hazy smoke swirling up out of its eye sockets. The curling wisps carried ghostly visions of floating dead people. Little red devils sat perched on the magician’s shoulders, assisting him as, apparently, he summoned dead souls up from the underworld to join him onstage.

Must’ve been some act.

Zack pulled another poster out of the bottom drawer. This one was printed on rough paper the color of a grocery sack and filled with shouting type.

COMING!

PROFESSOR NICHOLAS NICODEMUS

THE WORLD-RENOWNED SORCERER AND NECROMANCER APPEARING IN

“DO THE SPIRITS COME BACK?”

ORIGINAL AND MORE MARVELOUS ILLUSIONS

THAN EVER PERFORMED BY

THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS, THE MYSTICAL PHOENICIANS,

OR THE NECROMANCERS OF INDIA

• • • • •

SEE THE DEAD RISE FROM THEIR TOMBS!

• • • • •

GAZE IN AWE AS SPIRITS SOAR

ACROSS THE STAGE AT HIS COMMAND!

• • • • •

SPEAK TO YOUR DECEASED FAMILY AND FRIENDS

AS PROFESSOR NICODEMUS

UNLEASHES THE FULL POWERS OF RESURRECTION!

At the bottom of the broadside, just under the prices and performance times, was printed the name of the theater where Professor Nicodemus was to appear.

JULY & AUGUST, 1939

THE HANGING HILL PLAYHOUSE—CHATHAM, CONNECTICUT

A PANDEMONIUM PRODUCTION

Pandemonium.

There was that word again.

Zack had to find a dictionary.

Or talk to Meghan.

After all, she knew what “vicariously” meant. Maybe “pandemonium” was one of her vocabulary words, too.