The Hanging Hill

75

Zack stood in front of a mirror in the wardrobe room and tried on the turban.

It looked pretty awesome.

“Zack?”

It was Meghan, calling from somewhere in the basement’s tangled maze of corridors.

“Are you down here? Zack?”

“Over here! Costume room!”

A couple second later, Meghan found him. “Wow!” she said. “What’s that?”

“This neat magician’s costume I found in a trunk! Well, a ghost led me to it.”

“Juggler Girl?”

“No. A new one.” He decided to skip the bit about how Doll Face had followed him here from North Chester. “I found some cool posters, too.”

“Awesome,” said Meghan, moving in for a closer look.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” said Zack. “What’s ‘pandemonium’ mean?”

“Hunh?”

Zack picked up the poster and unfurled it. “This guy was called Professor Nicodemus and performed here in 1939.”

“That would’ve been in the days of vaudeville!” said Meghan. “They always had magicians, singers, jugglers.”

“Okay. But the poster says this particular magician’s act was a ‘Pandemonium Production.’ When I first got here, the janitor told me to ‘beware Pandemonium.’”

“That’s because he’s an old grouch who doesn’t like kids or actors, so he doesn’t like the Pandemonium Players.”

“Okay, but why are they called that?”

Meghan shrugged. “I’m not exactly sure.”

“What does the word ‘pandemonium’ mean?”

Meghan assumed her best spelling bee stance. “Pandemonium: A place or situation that is noisy and chaotic.”

“Was vaudeville noisy and chaotic?”

“Probably. Most theater is.”

“Could the word mean something else?”

“Maybe,” said Meghan. “We could check a dictionary.”

“Yeah.”

“Not as much fun as exploring the basement.”

“I know but …”

“Zack, I think the janitor told you to beware of pandemonium because janitors hate watching other people make a mess to eventually make something beautiful.”

“I guess you’re right,” said Zack, even though he wondered why Bartholomew Buckingham and Doll Face had said the same thing.

“Besides, there are so many other mysteries we still need to unravel! Why was Juggler Girl in that movie? Who set up the projector? And what about that weird statue of the man with the head of a bull? Come on! I’ve got the afternoon off. Let’s go see if Mr. Minotaur is still there!”

“Who?”

Meghan assumed her spelling bee pose again. “Minotaur: From Greek mythology. A monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull.”