He wiped at his watery eyes so he could read the script without the words looking all smudged.
“O, magnus Molochus!”
He heard someone clodhopping down the steel steps of the spiral staircase.
“Derek?”
It was Meghan!
“Are you down here?”
Quick! He had to hide the script. He couldn’t let Meghan McKenna see it. He couldn’t let anybody see it, because it was supposed to be a secret, and if he blew that secret, Mr. Grimes would be as disappointed in him as his mother always was.
He thought about the whiskey barrel. One of the baskets.
The pig!
He plucked out the apple, stuffed his folded piece of paper into the fake swine’s snout, and crammed the apple back into place—stirring up another cloud of dust.
“Hey, Derek! Whatcha doin’?”
“Dothing,” he said, sounding wheezy. The dust. There was so much down here. He was toast. Toast with a rash.
“Have you seen Zack?”
“Doe.”
“Was that a no?”
Derek’s chest rattled as he breathed in. “Yes.”
“You sound horrible. You’d better go outside, grab some fresh air.”
“O-tay.”
Derek raced across the basement and hurried up the steps to the lower lobby. His lungs ached, his ears itched, and his tear ducts were spritzing like berserk squirt guns.
He was such a weepy, sneezy, wheezy mess, he forgot all about his secret script and the supersecret place where he had so cleverly hidden it.
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.”
76
Zack and Meghan found their way back to the archway that had led them to the gigantic statue the first time.
“Look at those gloves on the wall!” said Meghan. “They all kind of point toward the Minotaur’s lair!”
“Yeah,” said Zack. “I’ve been thinking: The Minotaur is sort of like Sobek, the Egyptian god of the Nile. He had a man’s body but a crocodile’s head.”
“Don’t forget Sekhmet,” said Meghan. “Body of a woman. Head of a lioness.”
They both paused and stared at each other. Zack had never met anybody fascinated by the same sort of stuff that fascinated him. In fact, he was used to bullies beating him up during recess for even knowing goofy stuff like Sobek and Sekhmet.
They rounded another shadowy corner, went down that switchback ramp, and approached the sliding barn doors to the scenery warehouse.
The doors were locked. A heavy padlocked chain was looped through the handles.
“That’s weird,” said Zack. “It was wide open yesterday.”
“Shhh!” said Meghan.
Then Zack heard it, too: muffled sounds coming from the other side of the door. Metal hitting metal. It sounded like someone banging a refrigerator with a sledgehammer.
Meghan held her finger up to her lips, leaned in, and cupped her left ear against the steel door. Zack did the same.
They heard gruff voices.
“Hurry up, Jamal!” said one man. “All must be in readiness!”
“It will be!”
More hammering. Steel on steel.
“They must be building scenery,” whispered Meghan.
“Yeah,” Zack whispered back. “Or tearing it apart.”
He felt a frigid breeze brush across the back of his neck. Goose pimples shivered down his spine all the way to his toes.
Judging from the expression on Meghan’s face, her neck, spine, and toes had just hit the deep freeze, too.
They both turned around slowly.
Very, very slowly.
“Hello, children!”
They saw a shriveled hag holding a small hatchet.
The hatchet was dripping blood.
77
The leering crone was wearing an antique black dress with poofy sleeves and a high collar.
“So,” she croaked. “You must be the two children! The chosen ones!”
Zack and Meghan shot each other a quick glance.
“Chosen for what?” asked Zack.
“To set us free!”
“Actually,” said Meghan, “I’m just here to do a show. It’s called Curiosity Cat. Oh, by the way, I’m Meghan McKenna. Who the heck are you?”
Zack couldn’t believe how cool Meghan was, getting sassy with a ghost.
“Lilly Pruett!”
“Who?” said Meghan, totally unimpressed.
“Oh, I’ve heard what you children say about me while skipping rope.” She swung her hatchet. Zack could see patches of dry blood on its dented blade. “Lilly Pruett, said she didn’t do it, she was lying and everybody knew it!”
The hatchet was weeping blood now, splattering red droplets against the walls as she swung it back and forth like a grisly pendulum.
Meghan and Zack weren’t giggling anymore.
Lilly Pruett, however, was cackling.
“Lilly Pruett had six babies, chopped them up to make some gravy. When the kids were good and dead, she found their father and chopped off his head!”
Meghan looked at Zack.
Zack looked at Meghan.
They both yelled it at the same time: “Run!”