The Hanging Hill

by Grabenstein, Chris

• ISBN13: 9780375847004
• ISBN10: 0375847006
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2010-08-24
• Publisher: Yearling

Summary

Zack and Judy are hoping to relax during the rehearsals for a show based on Judy's children's books. But the director is planning to raise evil specters from the dead, and to do this, he needs a human sacrifice.

Author Biography

Chris Grabenstein is the Anthony Award–winning author of Tilt a Whirl, Mad Mouse, and Whack a Mole. He used to write TV and radio commercials and has written for the Muppets. Currently, Chris and his wife live in New York City with three cats and a dog named Fred. You can visit him (and Fred) at www.chrisgrabenstein.com.


From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpts

CHAPTER 1

There's this thing about ghosts: Once you've seen one, you can basically see them all.

At least the ones that want to be seen.

At the age of eleven, Zack Jennings was learning the rules of the spirit world pretty quickly. He'd only seen his first real-live (make that "real-dead") spook maybe a month or two ago. Now they seemed to be everywhere. When he went to summer camp in the middle of July, he met the boy who'd drowned in the lake.
Back in 1973.

When he hung out at the library, he occasionally saw this pudgy woman reading over people's shoulders because she couldn't flip the pages herself anymore, what with being dead and all.

His mother had always claimed that Zack had a hyperactive imagination, but even he couldn't make this stuff up. The ghosts he saw were as real as electricity, wind, and gravity--things nobody could see but everybody knew were there.

Some called being a Ghost Seer a gift. Well, if it was, Zack figured it was like getting a paisley-and-plaid sweater for Christmas when what you really wanted was an iPod. Seven weeks after learning he could see spirits, Zack was already tired of being special.

Being special could wear a guy out.

On the first Saturday of August, as he stepped into the brightly lit breakfast room of the Marriott extended-stay hotel near North Chester, Connecticut, it happened once again: He saw an apparition lurking near a small table in the far corner of the room.
Zack could tell: This one was a demon.

Zack and his family--his dad, his new stepmom, and his dog--were currently residing at the hotel because their house had burned down when Zack had battled the evil spirit haunting the crossroads nearby. The fire had been Zack's fault, and his allowance would be docked for the damages until he turned twenty-one. After that, Zack's dad would probably do payroll deductions. And now, here Zack was, less than twenty feet away from yet another fiend, who probably wanted to destroy some other part of Zack's life when all Zack wanted to do was grab a bowl of cereal and maybe a banana from the breakfast buffet.

Zack had come down to the lobby on his own.

His dad, who didn't believe in ghosts anyway, had gone into New York City for weekend work at his office.

His stepmom, Judy, an author, was upstairs, busily working on last-minute rewrites to Curiosity Cat, a new musical, based on her children's books, that was about to have its world premiere at a theater called the Hanging Hill Playhouse.

His trusty dog, Zipper, was also upstairs--snoozing between the cushions of a very comfy hotel couch.

There were other people in the breakfast room, the same ones Zack saw most mornings: Divorced Guy, Moving Family, Vacationing Family, Businessman, Other Divorced Guy.

The ghost was new.

Zack could tell that the man sitting at the table in the far corner of the breakfast room was a ghost because he was wearing old-fashioned clothes--the kind convicts in chain gangs sometimes wore in the movies. Old movies.

The ghost was, or had been, a hulking giant with a serious scowl carved into his watermelon-sized head. He wore a denim prison jumpsuit, loosely laced work boots, and a tin hat that looked like an upside-down spaghetti strainer with electrical cables clamped to battery posts where its legs should have been.

He'd shown up sitting in his own chair: a colossal throne made out of thick planks of rough-hewn lumber. Wide, double-holed leather belts were buckled tight across his chest, arms, and legs.

Zack suddenly realized the guy was strapped into an electric chair, the thing they used fifty years ago to execute hard-core criminals on death row in the state penitentiary.

The giant caught Zack staring.

"Pssst! Hey, kid!"

Zack pretended not to see or hear the man.

"I know you can see and hear me, kid."

So muc

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Excerpted from The Hanging Hill by Chris Grabenstein
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.