“Minotaur?”
“You know—a man with the head of a bull?”
“Moloch!”
“No. We think it’s a Minotaur…”
“Moloch!”
90
Reginald Grimes stood in the center of the scenery storage room, staring up at the gleaming brass statue of Moloch.
Grimes was dressed in white tie and tails, a satin-lined cape, and a jeweled purple turban—a costume constructed to be an exact duplicate of his grandfather’s. Hakeem stood beside him, decked out in elegant acolyte robes and his red felt hat. Badir and Jamal had installed a massive stove hood directly above the statue, as well as all the ductwork needed to vent the smoke of their sacrifice directly into the playhouse’s chimney system.
“All is in readiness, Exalted High Priest of Ba’al,” said Hakeem, scraping into a deep bow.
“Excellent,” said Grimes. “Let us proceed upstairs to retrieve the children. You are prepared to deal with their mothers?”
“Yes, Exalted One. The playwright and her child as well.”
“Excellent. Tell me, Hakeem: Where is this portal? This power spot you speak of? Where is it that I shall first welcome my army of demons?”
“Come. I will show you.”
Hakeem led Grimes around the statue, where he saw four ragged posts, about eight feet apart, poking up through the concrete floor like pilings for a dock that had long since rotted away.
“Behold the original foundation for the scaffold on Hangman’s Hill,” said Hakeem. “Feel the floor.”
Grimes touched the ground. It was hot and thrumming.
“This is the spot cursed by the Pequot chieftain Sassakus for what the white men did to his daughter, Princess Nepauduckett,” said Hakeem. “The mighty chief decreed that when the full August moon, the Dog Moon, rose in the sky, so too, in this cursed spot, would the foulest dogs of the demon white race. The white man’s prayers, begging for deliverance from evil, have kept this doorway sealed for centuries with only the most heinous souls being able to seep through its cracks—and then only with the assistance of a powerful necromancer, such as your grandfather.”
“Or me!”
“Yes, Exalted One.”
Grimes worked his hands together in anticipation. “And if I invoke the resurrection ritual of Moloch at the precise moment Sassakus’s Dog Moon rules the night sky …”
“You shall unleash the hounds of hell! All the demons summoned to this place as well as those who gather here every August shall rise up from the dead, return to their bodies, and take on renewed life! You shall be crowned the King of Pandemonium.”
Grimes felt his chest swelling with pride. Even his lame arm felt strong and rippling with purpose.
“You and the mighty Moloch,” Hakeem went on, “shall rule the world from this sacred spot as we, the proud brothers of Hannibal, once ruled the world from our temple in Carthage. All shall tremble in fear before you and Moloch Almighty!”
Grimes’s smile stretched across his face. He ruffled out his cape and swept around to the front of the statue, where he could already feel the heat radiating off the grill situated between the beast’s knees. Badir and Jamal stoked the roiling inferno below the gridiron with shovelfuls of fresh coal.
“Is the Tophet ready?” Grimes cried out, using the Hebrew word he had learned from The Book of Ba’al for the place where the fires burned constantly, where children were sacrificed in the worship of Moloch.
“Yes, Exalted One!”
Despite the searing pain, Grimes forced both arms high above his head. The three Tunisian men dropped to their knees.
“Hear me, mighty Moloch!” Grimes proclaimed. “Soon shall I feed unto you two children in exchange for that which I desire!” He lowered his eyes and spoke to the floor. “Hear me, foul fiends trapped below. These children, pure and true, shall die in this fire so that Moloch might resurrect you!”
It was time to fetch the two children born under the full moon.
Time to slay Derek Stone and Meghan McKenna.
91
“You bring any food, boy?” the janitor asked Zack, sounding more like his old self.
“No. Just the water.”
Kimble braced himself against the closet’s doorjamb and tried to stand up. He didn’t make it very far.
“Weak as a kitten,” he muttered.
“Hang on,” said Zack. “I’ll try to find you something to eat out here with all the props and stuff. If not, I’ll run upstairs to the rehearsal room. There’s always food in there.”
“Aya. Don’t want to pass out. Too much to tell you.”
“Come on, Zip. Find us some food! Anything!”
Zipper took off, sniffing at all the trunks, sticking his nose into a bunch of the baskets, snorting up a storm. Zack looked around the basement and saw all sorts of fake food. Plastic fruit. The Cratchit family’s mammoth tom turkey—carved out of foam—from A Christmas Carol. On the rear wall, he saw all those gloves and gauntlets again plus a string of sausages. Wax sausages.
Zack looked again.
The gloves were no longer pointing to the right. All the fingers were aimed at the center of the room.
Zack turned around.
Now he noticed something else pretty peculiar: A quiver of arrows was pointing toward a spear, the tip of which was pointing toward a grandfather clock, the hands of which were pointing toward a parasol, the top of which was pointing to a stuffed pig on a platter.
Ghosts. They had their ways of dropping hints when they wanted to.
The pig looked like it was made out of plastic but the apple jammed in its snout looked pretty real. Zack plucked it out. Nope. More fake fruit.
But there was something hidden inside the pig. A folded sheet of paper. Zack pulled it out. Started reading it.
“Magnus Molochus …”
“Don’t!” cried the janitor. “Don’t!”
That was when Zipper barked.
“Find something, boy?”
Another bark.
“Hang on!”
Zipper was nosing outside the vents of a dented locker.
Zack opened the locker door. Inside, he saw some rolled-up blueprints, a rumpled coat, and a lunch bag.
“Score!”
Inside the bag was a moldy bologna sandwich in a plastic bag, Cheetos, Ho Hos, a Snickers bar, and a bottle of Snapple.
Zipper moaned like he wanted the bologna.
“Forget it,” said Zack. “It’s green.” Zack hurried back to the closet with the junk food that was so tightly sealed it had never gone bad.
“Here you go.” He tore the wrapper off the Snickers bar and handed it to Kimble. The old man wolfed it down in four quick chomps. Revived, he glared hard at Zack.
“Those words … the ones you were just saying …”
“‘Magnus Molochus’?”
Kimble nodded.
“They were written on a sheet of paper I found.”
Kimble gestured for Zack to hand him the paper.
“Do you read Latin, son?”
“No,” said Zack. “But I don’t think anybody does these days.”
“Oh yes, they do,” said Kimble. “The minions of Moloch. This is their resurrection ritual.” Kimble handed the paper back to Zack and started reciting its verses from memory. “‘O, magnus Molochus.’ That translates to ‘O, mighty Moloch.’”
“Okay.”
“‘Nos duo vitam nostram damus ut vos omnes qui hue arcessiti estis vivatis.’”
“What’s that mean?”
“We two our lives do give so all you summoned here might live.”
“Two people are giving up their lives?”
“Aya. That’s how the ritual works. It’s a swap, see? Two innocents for a legion of the damned.”
Zack glanced at the script, read the next line out loud: “‘Puer et puella, puri et fideles, morimur ut vos resuscitet.’”