The curly-haired ghost was waiting for him.
“Hello, Zack.”
He could finally see her face.
It looked just like it did in the theater program.
Young and happy.
His mother.
His real mother. Susan Potter. When she was in her twenties and her hair was wild and curly, not flat and straight like Zack remembered it. This was his mother before Zack had been born. Before she had even met his dad.
“It’s so good to see you again. Let me look at you!”
Zack retreated two steps. Bumped up against some ropes and sandbags.
“W-w-what do you want?” he stammered.
“To help you! That’s why I moved the gloves. To point the way to the statue! Then I led you to the trunk and protected you from Lilly Pruett and helped you find the hidden script. Don’t you see, Zack? I want to help you and Judy.”
“You leave Judy alone!”
“No, Zack. You don’t understand. I’m trying to …”
“Shut up! I know what you’re trying to do!”
For a moment, the ghost of his dead mother said nothing. Then she smiled. “You were always so different, Zack. So very special.”
Was she mocking him?
“I think it’s because you were born under a full moon.”
Oh, yeah. She might be dead, but she was still the same.
“You should be downstairs, Zack. He can’t complete the ritual without children born under a full moon.”
So that was why she’d saved him from Lilly Pruett. She was making some kind of deal with Moloch. Offering Zack as another kid to be fed into the fire.
“You were spying on me at the hotel back in North Chester, weren’t you?”
“No, Zack.”
“You were there with that guy in the electric chair! He called you Doll Face.”
“Yes, but…”
“Is Mad Dog Murphy one of your new pals?”
“No, Zack.”
“Yeah, right. You broke the picture frame in my room, didn’t you?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You could only do that if you were really, really mad.”
“Or happy.”
“No, you’re mad because I’m finally happy!”
Her terrifying smile broadened. “Are you, Zack?”
“Absolutely!” He spat the word at her. “Happier than I ever was with you!”
And then Zack figured it out.
“You hate that, don’t you? You hate that I’m happy!”
“No, Zack.”
“You’re lying! I know what you’re trying to do! You’re trying to slow me down! You want Judy dead!”
“No, Zack. Listen …”
“Shut up, you wicked witch! I didn’t kill you and I won’t let you kill Judy or Meghan or even Derek!”
The ghost of his mother stopped smiling.
“I’m sorry, Zack.”
“Why? Because I figured out your stupid plan?”
Susan Potter disappeared as quickly as the fog off a mirror when you throw open the bathroom door.
Hah! Got her!
One demon down, who knew how many more to go?
“Zack!” It was Mr. Kimble. Off in the shadows. “Help!”
99
The sleek gray cat was fast.
Very fast.
Zipper chased it up the spiral staircase.
Across the lower lobby.
Up the curving staircase.
Very, very fast.
Into the main lobby. Around the box office. Under the velvet ropes, over the stack of playbills, down the side of the lobby, through a door.
A closed door.
Zipper hit the brakes.
Smacked into the door.
He wasn’t a ghost. Couldn’t run through solid objects. The cat could. Cheater.
100
“Don’t be afraid,” said the soft, childish voice.
“Who are you?” Judy asked the darkness.
“Clara Kimble. Mr. Harry Houdini showed me how to do this trick, ages ago. Feel on the floor. Near your feet.”
“I don’t feel a thing,” Mrs. McKenna grunted.
“Not you, silly. You!”
Judy felt a rush of cold air, as if she had just stuck her head inside the freezer case at the supermarket to check out the ice cream. She slid her feet around on the floor.
“Got it! Found it!”
“Great!” said Meghan’s mom.
“Push it sideways,” said the girl. “Push it now!”
Judy pushed. She heard a soft thunk. A panel flopped open under her feet and she tumbled out onto the floor.
“What about the rope? My hands?”
“Move the knots around,” whispered the girl. “Find the slack. There is always slack. Houdini said so!”
Yes! Judy found the slack, wrestled her hands free, and pulled off her blindfold. Started to work on the ropes binding her ankles. “Thanks, Clara!”
Clara was gone.
“Hang on, Mary!” Judy crawled back into the box. Maneuvered around Derek’s unconscious mom. Started untying Mrs. McKenna’s wrists and ankles.
“Was that a ghost?” Mrs. McKenna asked.
“Yeah. I think so.”
“What about Mrs. Stone?”
“We’ll come back for her.”
The two moms crawled out the secret panel on the bottom of the box.
They heard a man screaming and laughing in the darkened wings stage right.
“You fools!”
His voice was dripping evil.
“You weaklings will never stop us!”
“Let’s go out the other way,” Judy whispered.
Mrs. McKenna nodded.
They ran as quickly and quietly as they could for the stage door on their left.
101
“You weaklings will never stop us!”
Zack recognized the maniac with the meat cleaver from that night on the elevator. The caped madman’s shirt and waistcoat were splattered with more blood than he remembered. His top hat nearly flew off his head as he swung his cleaver like an ax and chopped at all the wires and cables snaking up to the table where the stage manager called cues during live performances.
“I’d kill you both, but I have my orders!”
He smashed out a computer monitor.
Of course Mr. Meat Cleaver had chopped the telephone lines first. Slashed right through them with his butcher blade. Smashed the handset with the butt end of his cleaver handle just to make certain nobody would be calling anybody anytime soon.
This was so weird.
The guy was obviously a ghost or a ghoul, so how come he was able to destroy things in the real world?
Zack glanced over at Mr. Kimble, who was quaking in his work boots. He hadn’t seen as many spooks as Zack. This was only like his second.
“Where do you keep the jewelry, boy?” the butcher beast snarled at Zack.
Zack thought fast. “Uh, downstairs. There’s a big statue made out of gold!”
“Gold?”
Zack nodded. Fast.
The butcher looked like he was drooling when he disappeared.
“Who was he?” asked Kimble.
“Don’t know,” said Zack.
“He is a demi-devil, a thing of darkness!” said Bartholomew Buckingham as he faded into view.
“Mr. Buckingham,” said Zack, “what’s going on? That maniac could actually use his meat cleaver!”
“The time is out of joint, Zachary! O, cursed spite! That ever you were born to set it right!”
“What?”
“A full moon now rises in the east. In the tug of its gravitational pull, the rules, like the tides, are prone to shift and sway!”
“So tonight, the ghosts can hurt people?”
“Not if you stop them!”
“How?”
“I cannot tell you!”
“How?”
Bartholomew swung his arm grandly to the left.
“Seek and ye shall find!”
The scene shop!
102
Grimes ruffled and furled his cape. “Hear me, my loyal and obedient followers! Behold the boy and girl, pure and true!”