Was it his fault she was dead?
“You’ll see her,” Zack said, trying to comfort the old man.
“When?”
Zack didn’t know the answer to that one, so he made something up. “Just as soon as we stop these people from killing Meghan and Derek! Where’s the nearest phone? We need to call the police!”
“Upstairs,” said Kimble. “Stage manager’s desk in the wings backstage.”
“Let’s go!”
Kimble hauled himself up off the floor. “We need to be careful, son. Moloch is mighty!”
Yeah. So Zack had heard. In the original Latin, too.
94
“This way, ladies!” snarled one of the thugs, waggling his pistol at the three mothers. “Into the vault!”
The other giant had his weapon trained on Meghan and Derek.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Judy demanded.
The big man snorted a laugh. “Locking you three inside Dracula’s tomb. Hurry up. It’s nice ‘n’ cozy.”
“Forget it,” said Judy.
“Silence, infidel!” screamed Grimes. “Do not dare to interfere with my destiny! You are nothing! Nobody! I am the high priest of Ba’al Hammon!” He roughly grabbed hold of Meghan’s shoulders. Hakeem snatched Derek.
“Mom?” Derek cried.
Mrs. Stone fainted and fell to the floor.
She wasn’t going to be much help, Judy realized.
“Into the box!” The swarthy man jabbed the muzzle of his pistol into Judy’s back.
“No!” said Meghan’s mom. “Let go of my daughter!”
The other thug thumbed back the hammer on his revolver. Aimed it at Meghan’s head. “Do what my friend Jamal says or I blow out this one’s pretty little brains.”
“Come on, Mary,” said Judy. “They mean business.”
“Indeed we do!” said Grimes. “Tie them up! Blindfold them! Put them inside Dracula’s tomb!”
Ropes wrapped tight around her hands and ankles, a thick cloth covering her eyes, Judy was forced into the set piece that had been Dracula’s sealed tomb in the show. She figured it was a version of a magician’s substitution box, a classic magic trick she’d learned about while researching one of her books.
Judy heard Mrs. McKenna crying as she was shoved into the dark box.
“Grab hold of this other one’s legs,” snarled the thug named Jamal. “I’ll take the arms.”
Mrs. Stone’s limp body was dumped between Judy and Mary McKenna.
Someone slammed the tomb door shut.
Judy heard heavy chains being wrapped around and around the box. Locks snapping into place. Yep. Just like in the magic trick.
Now she just hoped she could remember how the trick worked.
How the magician escaped!
95
Zipper watched the old man start climbing a ladder bolted to the basement wall.
“This’ll be faster,” the man said. “Take us straight up to the wings and the stage manager’s desk.”
“I’ll be right back, Zip,” Zack said as he grabbed a ladder rung.
Zipper knew Zack to be a boy of his word.
So he sank down on all fours. Panted a little.
He’d wait.
“Hurry!” Zack called out to the man climbing up the ladder ahead of him.
“Movin’ as fast as I can.”
“We need to move faster!”
Zipper barked. Zack was right. The old guy was slow.
He heard their feet clunk-clunk-clunking up the ladder.
Real slow.
Now he heard a hiss. He perked up his ears. Swung his head to the right.
His hackles shot up like porcupine quills.
The cat.
The crazy thing was back.
96
The goons named Badir and Jamal shoved Meghan and Derek down the switchback ramp leading to the storage room.
And the Minotaur, thought Meghan.
She could smell something burning. Oily. Foul. Like a malfunctioning furnace.
Mr. Grimes and Hakeem shoved open the swinging barn doors.
“Inside!” growled Badir.
Meghan felt the pistol muzzle being jabbed into her ribs. “Now!”
“Shall I lock the doors?” Hakeem asked.
“No need,” Grimes chortled. “We’re all alone. Leave them open wide so my army of demons can march forth to conquer the world!”
“What about the other boy?”
“The playwright’s son? Bah! The child is a weakling! He is no match for Moloch and me!”
Meghan would’ve disagreed with the lunatic but she was too busy staring at the brass man-beast.
There was a barbeque grill between its knees and it was glowing, turning red like a burner on an electric stove top.
The bull’s horns were acting like chimneys, sending streams of wavering heat and smoke straight up to the exhaust hood.
Grimes raised his arms toward the statue.
“King of the two regions, I invoke you!” he cried out.
Meghan stared toward the ceiling. She knew they were about two stories below the stage-right side of the theater. That was where the scene shop was—the place where they constructed all the set pieces for shows.
If this was a storage room for scenery, that meant there had to be some sort of freight elevator. A trapdoor. Some way to raise and lower heavy objects. Otherwise, how did they get the statue down here?
Now Hakeem, Grimes’s assistant, stepped toward the statue. “Mighty Moloch, for lo these many years have we waited for this moment!”
Meghan looked over at Derek. He was trembling.
“We have longed for a high priest of Ba’al, an heir to the royal bloodline, to journey forth to this portal under the full dog moon to unleash our avenging army of demons!”
Okay. Now Meghan’s knees were knocking, too. She’d met one demon—Lilly Pruett. But a whole army?
“Brotherhood of Hannibal, prepare to reap your reward!” cried Hakeem. “Prepare to raise a legion of merciless mercenaries to restore the glory that was Carthage! My brothers, prepare for Pandemonium!”
Meghan knew what that meant.
They were going to reestablish the capital city of Hell!
97
“There has to be a sliding panel!” said Judy.
“What?” said Meghan’s mom.
Mrs. Stone didn’t say anything. She was still passed out, squeezed in tight between Judy and Mrs. McKenna in the claustrophobic substitution box.
“That’s how magicians do this trick! They slip off the ropes, then slide out the secret panel to switch places with their assistant.”
“Where do they put the secret escape hatch?”
“Well, it can’t be on the front or the two sides,” said Judy. “The audience would see the magician sneaking out. So, it has to be on the bottom or the back. Feel around for it!”
They both slid down as far as they could with their hands tied behind their backs, their ankles bound. Judy patted her palms against the rear wall, then the floor, feeling for a hidden switch or lever. Being blindfolded didn’t make the search any easier.
“We need to get out of here,” said Mrs. McKenna, sounding frantic. “Those men have Meghan!”
“We’ll find her. Derek, too. And Zack! Where’s Zack?”
“With Wilbur,” said a young girl.
Judy and Mrs. McKenna froze.
They couldn’t see who the little girl was.
But they both heard what sounded like rubber balls bouncing around on the crate’s wooden floor.
98
Mr. Kimble crawled through the trapdoor first.
“I’ll go phone the police!” he shouted down the ladder to Zack. “Meet me at the stage manager’s desk! It’s behind the black curtains stage right!”
“Hurry!” said Zack. He hauled himself up the final four rungs of the ladder, came up through the trapdoor.