Lucas Mackenzie and the London Midnight Ghost Show Read online

  SHOOTOUT IN CINCINNATI:

  CONVICT ESCAPES CAPTURE

  The audience erupted in applause.

  “Explain that,” Dr. Hull said. “Unless the mayor or the editor is in cahoots with McDuff, what we have just witnessed is impossible.”

  “It’s clever, I’ll give you that,” Nachman said. “But hardly impossible. The box you’ve just seen opened is called a Prediction Chest. When originally delivered, the box was empty. Tonight, after the headline appeared, McDuff copied it out onto a strip of paper. This he rolled up tightly and placed in a secret recess in the skeleton key. When the key is turned in the lock, it is designed to propel the rolled-up prediction into the main chamber of the chest. Now, when he opens the chest, the mayor sees that the prediction has been tightly rolled, but the audience doesn’t. The mayor himself innocently completes the dirty work by stretching out the strip of paper so that the audience can read it. It’s a nifty trick, but a trick nonetheless. My ten grand is safe.”

  “But what about the evidence I’ve already shown you?” Dr. Hull said. “The report on their recent activities in a drive-in movie theater? The fact that this entire cast has a communal body temperature of fifty-nine degrees?”

  “I’m sorry, Hull, but we’ve already established that these people are wearing and using secret electronic devices. No doubt the electromagnetic fields emanating from them have skewed the results of your remote sensing devices. This is just another standard magic show passing itself off as an evening of spooky entertainment. Give it up, my friend.”

  “Never,” said Dr. Hull. “Wait until I get my hands on that little dead head they stole from my laboratory. Then you’ll see.”

  To a background of spooky organ music and projected stills from the recent movie The Screaming Skull, Professor McDuff began a ghost story about a nearby lunatic asylum. The tale concerned an escaped madman who, convinced he was one of the Three Musketeers, went about lopping off heads “to protect the queen of France.” His victims were said to haunt this very theater.

  “Hold your girlfriend’s hand with one hand,” he said. “And your head with the other. Pleasant dreams.”

  The theater plunged into darkness, and everyone screamed when they saw the luminous skull floating at the foot of the stage.

  “I’ve got you,” Dr. Hull said under his breath. His hand reached down into the bag of tools he had brought along for the occasion.

  But then a second skull appeared alongside the first.

  “Two of them!” Dr. Hull said, feeling greedy.

  But then six more appeared, three on each side of the first two. The eight skulls began to float in a row over the audience, looking madly from side to side. Everyone was screaming.

  As the wave of eight moved from the stage area toward the back of the theater, another row of eight appeared behind them and followed suit. There were sixteen skulls, and then suddenly another row, making twenty-four. The theater became filled with luminous skulls, all advancing in rows toward the back of the theater.

  As one of the skulls neared him, Dr. Hull stood and swished in the darkness with a long-handled butterfly net he had brought for just this purpose. He felt the soft thwack of a successful capture.

  “Gotcha!” he said aloud.

  Another wave of skulls approached, and Dr. Hull swished again with a second net.

  “And another!” he said.

  Eventually, the remaining skulls faded from view and the lights slowly came up. A horror movie would soon follow.

  “So what do you have?” Nachman said. “Something amazing, I gather?

  Dr. Hull reached into his nets and extracted what he hoped were two spectral beings. Instead, they were simply two more novelty shop plastic skulls. Threads tied to their craniums revealed how the skulls had been suspended. The wind-up jaws began clicking as if mocking him.

  Nachman burst into laughter. “You fracture me, Hull. I haven’t had this much fun since Dunninger, the Mind Reader, had his television show. Call me the next time you lasso some ectoplasm. And if I can find ten thousand in funny money at a joke shop, I’ll send it to you.”

  Dr. Hull hurled the skulls to the ground and stomped on them.

  “Okay, McDuff,” he said, wishing he had already received the state-of-the-art high speed movie camera the college had ordered for him. He would soon reveal these movie house wraiths to the world, once and for all. “You’ve fooled me this time. But you won’t fool me next weekend. Not on Halloween. Not in Alexandria.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Last of the Midnight Ghost Shows

  It was a chill All Hallows’ Eve in the southern Illinois community of Alexandria, a few grains of hourglass sand shy of the witching hour. The pale green Plymouth Belvedere coupe neared the theater, and the high school girls within shrieked to find themselves late for the gathering. A large crowd had already formed, and mist off the river lent mystery to the already spooky expectations.

  In the otherworldly glow of the old streetlamps, the entire high school student body seemed on hand and in costume. Despite the few Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley getups, most costumes drew inspiration from the mummies and werewolves and vampires that populated the weekend horror films so popular with the high school set. The monster movie theme complemented the evening’s entertainment, a midnight spook show at the Roxy, the city’s only movie house. The illuminated marquee dared one and all.

  ONE NIGHT ONLY!

  PROFESSOR MCDUFF AND HIS LONDON MIDNIGHT GHOST SHOW

  SPIRITUALISTIC SÉANCE ON STAGE

  PLUS

  ALL-STAR CREATURE FEATURE

  “Look, Katie, there’s Sally and Penny Rogers,” said the Plymouth’s front-seat passenger, a witch with a huge wart on her cheek. Two more witches occupied the back seat.

  Katie, the driver in the tight red curls of a Little Orphan Annie wig, waved at the Rogers sisters, who were on roller skates and dressed as car hops, complete with trays of food.

  “Hey, Mackenzie,” shouted a boy with a fake meat cleaver through his head. “Trick or treat!”

  Meat Cleaver Boy, along with another whose right eyeball was dangling from its socket, produced canisters of shaving cream and rushed forward to spray the Plymouth. The girls screamed as they quickly rolled up their windows. A song called “Sweet Little Sixteen” blared from the radio.

  All along Main Street, the windows of parked cars displayed the evidence of earlier shaving cream attacks. Virtually no vehicle had been spared.

  Little Orphan Annie and the witches continued to cruise, taking note of everyone in line. The line stretched all the way down Main Street, across Commercial Avenue, and halfway up to the Ohio River levee wall.

  A tall couple dressed as Frankenstein’s monster and his bride waved enthusiastically at the Plymouth. The man wore a full-head green rubber mask, while the lady had her dark hair blown up into a Nefertiti poof with white lightning stripes along the sides. She looked like the actress Elsa Lanchester from the 1935 movie The Bride of Frankenstein.

  “Who was that?” asked the front-seat witch.

  “Nobody!” said Little Orphan Annie. “I have noooo idea.”

  Earlier in the day, Katie Mackenzie had been mortified when her parents told her they planned to attend the midnight spook show.

  “Wait until you see our costumes,” Mrs. Mackenzie had said.

  “You can’t!” Katie had insisted. “It’s for kids. All my friends will be there.”

  “We won’t have to go together. You have your license now. You and your friends can go in the old Plymouth. We’ll take the new station wagon.”

  “Why are you doing this to me?” Katie had demanded. “Nothing bad is going to happen. Is that what you think?”

  Mrs. Mackenzie had looked surprised. “Something bad? No, just the opposite, I think. It sounds like the sort of show Lucas would have enjoyed. I know we haven’t talked about him much, not since we moved from the old house on Holbrook Avenue.
But I think we should attend this so-called London Midnight Ghost Show. I think Lucas might have wanted us to be there. What harm could there be in that? You won’t have to talk to us. Just pretend we aren’t there.”

  Katie hated it when they brought up Lucas as a reason in any argument. Although she had often teased her little brother when he was alive, she loved him and missed him whenever something in her day reminded her of him.

  “Just promise not to make a spectacle of yourself,” Katie had said. “Please!”

  Katie’s parents weren’t the only adults in the crowd.

  “Check out Dr. Weirdo,” said a backseat witch.

  The man looked like a mad scientist, in a white lab coat with various instruments hanging from straps over his shoulders, including what appeared to be a Hollywood movie camera. His long white hair had a flyaway look that made Katie think of Albert Einstein.

  And then there were the police. Although it would be normal for one or two police officers to patrol a late-night crowd such as this, and especially on Halloween, the street was swarming with policemen. Katie counted a dozen on Main Street alone, and there had been others posted around the corner.

  “Maybe it’s because of that convict,” the witch beside her said. “Golly, they shot that John Dillinger out in front of a movie theater. What if they shoot that guy from Sing Sing out in front of the Roxy? Tonight? That would be so cool.”

  “Shut up,” said Katie. “That’s just what we need—a bunch of Alexandria’s finest shooting up the place. Something tells me tonight is going to be scary enough.”

  * * *

  Inside the theater, Lucas was overjoyed to revisit the Roxy after a four-year absence. It was better than he remembered.

  This is how it must feel to a soldier returning home from a war, he thought, or an adventurer from a remote exploration. It was like stepping into an old photograph. In this theater Lucas had first discovered romance in the feature cartoons Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp, heroism in the great Westerns Hondo and High Noon, fear in the 3-D classics House of Wax and Creature from the Black Lagoon. Here Leo Gorcey’s Bowery Boys movies taught him about friendship. Here Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes and Warner Oland’s Charlie Chan solved crimes.

  Lucas had grown up in this theater, at least for the ten years that the fates had allowed. Here he once sat through Saturday matinee cartoon marathons. Here he had once placed a whoopee cushion on a friend’s seat. Here he had once watched a sixth-grade boy who was barely twelve necking in the dark with a fifth-grade girl who was only eleven, through an entire double feature. Perhaps this was why he always fancied watching a movie with Columbine.

  The Roxy staff had welcomed Professor McDuff and his crew by decorating the entire theater for Halloween. Hollywood-class artificial cobwebs hinted of mammoth spiders. Jack-o-lanterns grinned as if in on some dark secret. Cardboard skeletons pointed the way to the balcony, the restrooms, the snack bar. Concession stand employees came dressed as space aliens, mummies, werewolves. Even the theater manager dressed up for the occasion, as a robot assembled from foil-covered boxes.

  “The costumes and decorations are simply wonderful,” said Professor McDuff. “Perfectly scary. This may be one of our most memorable performances to date.”

  Lucas was secretly proud of his townsfolk and hoped his friends appreciated the effort they had put forth. He couldn’t recall a spookier decorating job. Although he didn’t know if his family would attend the show, or even if they still lived in Alexandria, he wanted the evening’s production to be the best it had ever been. At least that way he would leave an imprint on Alexandria. The town would not soon forget Professor McDuff and his ghosts.

  Moments later, in the projection booth upstairs, Lucas threaded his favorite horror classic, King Kong. The tale of the giant gorilla that falls in love with Fay Wray was the ultimate Beauty and the Beast love story, and it appealed to his sense of romance. How exciting to be large enough to battle dinosaurs, to swat airplanes, to rescue the girl. Who wouldn’t enjoy such a movie, who wouldn’t cheer such a tragic hero?

  Time to find out! Let the show begin!

  Lucas brought up the music, and Professor McDuff took the stage with authority. The raucous late-night Halloween crowd hushed to hear him speak.

  “Welcome, boys and ghouls, to what I hope will be an unforgettable evening of ghosts and goblins. It’s a strange night, in a strange old theater, and, as I look out before me, a very strange crowd. I do believe we should be paying you to frighten us.”

  The spectators laughed and applauded, clearly pleased to have their scary costumes and cobwebby theater praised by spooky professionals.

  They embraced Oliver’s new material. He gave them Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens. A murdered albatross hexed a ship, a hound bayed in the fog, Marley rattled his chains. So enthralled were the assembled lot that a few even hissed their displeasure when the McClatter boys decapitated the big green storyteller.

  They laughed nicely at Yorick’s new comedy routine, a macabre monologue of weird one-liners and ghoulish groaners spawned from his love of the puns in Famous Monsters. Convinced his future was in comedy, Yorick wore a Harpo Marx wig for the bit and regaled the audience with supernatural knock knock jokes and revolting riddles.

  They found visual poetry in the Professor’s Floating Light Bulb. He had become quite good at it, thanks to reverting to supernatural assistance. With Clarice’s help with the thread, the Professor could make the bulb float from the stage up to the audience in the balcony, like a rising moon. The audience sighed in collective wonder.

  But it was the séance—and the hullabaloo that followed—that the Halloween audience would no doubt remember most, and talk about long after.

  The raised curtain revealed a large round table covered with a dark, floral tablecloth. A single candle burned in the center of the table.

  “Communication with the dead was a popular feature of society séances in the 1920s,” said Professor McDuff. “Tonight, perhaps you will participate in a séance and discover what lies beyond the veil. Allow me to introduce the Ambassador to the Afterlife, the Darling of the Dead, the Teenage Medium herself—the mysterious Columbine.”

  The girl psychic seemed to glide across the stage in her high heels, looking more regal than ever. Instead of her usual white shift, she wore a long red evening gown and a red silk turban that made her look like a movie star. Her fire-red lipstick completed the look and contrasted with her fair, pale skin.

  As always, half the audience sighed.

  “Let’s use the red gel, Eddie,” Lucas said.

  “Got it, Squirt. Nice dress, huh? You’re a lucky guy.”

  Was Eddie, crouching in the little orchestra pit, conceding what Lucas thought he was conceding? Not that it mattered. This was Eddie talking, not Columbine.

  Eddie was right, though. The dress was astonishing—even more so as Eddie bathed the stage in an eerie red glow.

  Columbine dispatched the McClatter boys to walk along the aisles and select volunteers. The skeletons, looking official in crisp usher uniforms, selected a teenage Count Dracula, a teenage Tinker Bell, and a somewhat more mature Bride of Frankenstein.

  As the volunteers followed the underfed ushers to the stage, it was the walk that gave it all away. Lucas couldn’t have been more surprised, but he would have recognized that walk anywhere, a walk as unique as a scent or a voice. He realized that the Bride of Frankenstein approaching the stage was his mom!

  A second later he grasped that the Frankenstein monster still sitting in the audience, wearing a full head rubber mask, just like the one Lucas had worn at the Starlite Drive-in, must have been his dad. He wondered if his dad read Famous Monsters of Filmland.

  But his mom! Her face was still beautiful, and her costume looked as if she had stepped right out of the Bride of Frankenstein movie set. He hadn’t remembered her as being…creative. It delighted him to realize that, after all thes
e years, his mom was cool!

  “You will find them,” Leota Price had said in her séance chamber.

  Now, any boy who hadn’t seen his parents for over four years would normally rush into their arms. But Lucas knew such a display wasn’t possible. For months he had endured the mysterious denials of supernatural law that established the difference between living and dead. He had tilted with an unyielding telephone operator, he had summoned the wrong face in a medium’s crystal ball, he had been scolded by a spirit postmaster. He knew that if he had searched for his home upon arriving in Alexandria that he would have found the streets redrawn, that no one would have heard of Holbrook Avenue, that no one would have remembered a two-story white house with a green car out front.

  But now his mom was on stage at the Roxy, about to participate in a séance conducted by the love of his afterlife! Lucas watched in amazement as Columbine gestured for her guests to be seated, with his mother to her left, the teenagers to her right.

  “Columbine,” Lucas whispered urgently into the microphone. “The Bride of Frankenstein at your table is my mom!”

  The girl’s eyes widened as she received the information over the earphones concealed beneath her turban. She glanced up at the projection booth as if to say, “Oh, my, now what are we going to do?”

  Columbine stalled for time by introducing a long skinny megaphone made of tin, claiming it to be a spirit trumpet for receiving messages from the famous magician Harry Houdini. The trumpet floated in the air near the ear of the young Count Dracula volunteer and whispered the name of a card the Count was secretly thinking of. The boy’s mouth, full of glow-in-the-dark plastic fangs, gaped open in wonder. Houdini, it seemed, still had his mysterious powers, even on the other side.

  Next, Columbine produced a tambourine. With no one touching it, the instrument levitated itself about a foot above the table and began shaking, once for each day of the month, until it chimed out the birth date of the young Tinker Bell volunteer. The Neverland fairy clapped her hands in appreciation.