The Black Heart Crypt

“Yeah,” said Zack. “We saw a bunch of swirling police lights up that way when we were driving home.”

  “Sisters?” said Aunt Hannah, sounding mad. “Family meeting. Outside. Now! And this time, Virginia, you will tell us the truth!”

  Hannah, Sophie, Ginny, and their cats scampered out the back door to the deck.

  “Excuse me,” said Aunt Francine, her voice groggy. “Might I trouble you people for a glass of water?”

  “Of course,” said Judy. “Zack?”

  “Got it.” He grabbed a glass from the cupboard and filled it with tap water.

  “Don’t you have bottled water?”

  “Sorry,” said Zack.

  “Never mind, then.” She fumbled in her jacket for a pack of cigarettes.

  “Um, there’s no smoking allowed in this house,” said Judy.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve had a very difficult night.”

  “Sorry.”

  Aunt Francine fumed. It was very similar to the way Zack’s real mother used to fume. Zack figured fuming ran in the family.

  “Who, exactly, are you again?” Aunt Francine said to Judy.

  “She’s my mom,” said Zack.

  “Was I talking to you, Zachary?”

  Zack looked down at his shoes. “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. So tell me, Judy, did George hide his son’s existence while you two were dating? Is that how he tricked you into becoming his stepmother?”

  “Ms. Potter,” said Judy, “I love my son.”

  “Really? Where is he? I’d love to meet him.”

  Zack had heard enough. He looked Aunt Francine straight in the eyes. “How come you have to act this way?”

  “What?”

  “All mean and bitter and nasty.”

  “How dare you speak to me like that! Children should be seen, not heard.”

  “Says who?” asked Judy.

  “Well, that’s certainly how my parents raised Susan and me. I see you and George have decided to take a more liberal approach.”

  “I think you should leave,” said Judy. “Now.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a motel two miles up the highway. You shouldn’t drive back to Boston tonight, not in your condition. I’ll book you a room with our credit card.”

  Aunt Francine stood up, fumbled again for her cigarettes. “I don’t even know why I came here. One minute I’m home dealing with beggars at my doorstep; the next I’m here with the smart-mouthed brat who killed my sister.”

  Judy narrowed her eyes. “I’ll call the motel.”

  “My, aren’t you congenial?” And with that, Aunt Francine stormed out of the house, furiously flicking her cigarette lighter the whole way.

  “What a monster,” muttered Judy.

  “Yeah,” said Zack with a smile. “But you know what, Mom?”

  “What?”

  “When it comes to slaying monsters, you and me make a pretty good team.”

  The three great-aunts paraded back into the kitchen.

  “Judy? Zack?” said Aunt Hannah. “We need to go up to the Haddam Hill Cemetery and deal with the Icklebys.”

  “Like you guys did back in 1979?” said Zack.

  Aunt Ginny looked surprised. “What do you know about 1979?”

  “Zack and I talked to Father Abercrombie today,” said Judy.

  “Really?” sniffed Hannah.

  “He told us that you three were the ones who arranged to have the Ickleby caskets moved to North Chester.”

  “We had to,” said Sophie. “Those twelve ghosts were making so much mischief up in Massachusetts. Why, they even killed a cat. Grizzmaldo.” She made a slicing gesture across her throat.

  Pyewacket, Mister Cookiepants, and Mystic meowed in disgust.

  “So are you guys gonna go fumigate the whole crypt with sage candles?” asked Zack.

  “No,” said Aunt Hannah with a scowl at Aunt Ginny. “We’re going to lock them back up. Zack, we need the sealing charm.”

  Now Zack was confused. “Huh?”

  “When we put the Ickleby coffins into the abandoned Spratling crypt, we fashioned a special lock to prevent their spirits from ever escaping their new resting place.”

  “Even on Halloween,” added Aunt Sophie.

  “Now, it seems,” said Aunt Hannah, “someone has broken open that seal.”

  Aunt Ginny turned to Zack. “I’m sorry, dear, but it’s true: Pyewacket and I conspired to have you and your friends pry open the sealing stone.”

  “Really?” said Zack. “ ’Cause I don’t think we did.”

  Ginny smiled. “Oh, you did. That’s why the Ickleby spirits are on the prowl. I had hoped we might be able to take them out, one by one—like we did with Eddie Boy and Little Paulie.”

  “We don’t blame you or your friends,” said Hannah.

  “But we need to lock ’em back up, Zack,” said Sophie. “Before they cause any more trouble.”

  “Like whatever happened at the cemetery tonight,” added Hannah. “All those police cars you saw.”

  “Zack,” said Ginny, “we need the charm back.”

  “But I didn’t take it.”

  Now all three Jennings sisters were staring at him.

  The way Zack’s mother used to stare at him when she swore he was lying.

  Zack held up his right hand like he was taking an oath.

  “I promise. I did not take a ‘sealing charm.’ ”

  “Did you happen upon a black stone shaped like a heart?” asked Aunt Ginny.

  “Oh, you mean the 3-D puzzle?”

  “You could call it that.”

  “It had all sorts of interlocking pieces and a smaller, even blacker heart hidden in the middle?” Zack said.

  “That’s right. And what did you do with this black heart stone, Zack?”

  “Malik, who’s really good with puzzles and junk, he took it apart.”

  The three sisters nodded. The cats meowed.

  “And thus the spell was broken,” said Hannah. “Zachary, we need it back.”

  Zack remembered what Mad Dog Murphy had said in the corn maze: Little Paulie’s a pal of mine. Now Paulie wants out. So give his people what they’re looking for.

  The black heart stone!

  “Um, I don’t have it.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Aunt Ginny. “Who does?”

  “Oh my goodness,” said Judy.

  Something on the TV news had caught her eye: security camera footage of a man robbing a diner.

  And not just any man.

  Norman Ickes. Malik’s friend at the hardware store.

  “Turn it up,” said Zack. “Hurry!”

  Judy pressed the volume button.

  “Police are searching for North Chester resident Norman Ickes in connection with the robbery of the Hi-Way 31 Eat and Run, even though, while committing the crime, Ickes attempted to throw police off his track by using an alias.”

  The shot moved in tighter on the footage and captioned what Norman was saying:

  “Nobody rats out Crazy Izzy Ickleby. Nobody!”

  “Ickleby?” said Judy.

  “Oh, dear,” said Ginny, holding on to the counter so she wouldn’t faint. “This is worse than we could have imagined. They found a body. A blood relation.”

  “That’s right!” said Judy. “Father Abercrombie told us Norman Ickes was actually an Ickleby!”

  “Oh, my,” gasped Sophie. “They’ve gone dybbuk on us, too!”

  “Zack,” said Ginny, “we need to retrieve the black heart stone. We need to do so immediately.”

  “Who has it, Zack?” asked Judy. “Malik?”

  Zack shook his head and pointed to the face on TV. “No. His friend. Norman Ickes.”

  “This is the place,” rasped Jack the Lantern as the car he had hijacked pulled into what was left of the asphalt driveway leading down to Saint Barnabas church.

  A man holding out a trembling flashlight came out of the ramshackle rectory house. Flickering shadows danced acro
ss his anguished face.

  “Who’s there? Who are you?”

  Even from fifty feet away, the soul inside Norman Ickes’s body recognized the nervous old man.

  “Father Clayton Abercrombie,” he whispered with great satisfaction.

  He turned to his driver.

  “Mr. Lawson?”

  “Y-y-yes?”

  “Thank you very kindly for the ride.”

  “Bop him on the head!” urged Norman’s voice inside Jack’s head. “Use the gun Izzy stole!”

  “What an excellent suggestion,” said the masked highwayman.

  “What?” said the driver. “I didn’t suggest any—”

  Jack the Lantern knocked the man out cold with the butt of his pistol.

  “Ooh,” purred Norman’s voice. “I love doing that.”

  “What’s going on up there?” Jack the Lantern heard Father Abercrombie cry.

  Taking strides as long as Norman’s legs would allow, he swept down the hill toward the churchyard, where Father Abercrombie stood quaking like a branch full of dead leaves.

  The church building behind the priest was not at all as Jack remembered it. The stained glass windows lacked life or color, for there were no lights burning inside the house of God. How fitting, he thought. God has lost. The darkness has won.

  “Good evening, Father Abercrombie.”

  “Who are you?”

  “An old friend of this humble chapel.”

  “Why do you wear that mask?”

  “So you might know who I truly am.”

  Father Abercrombie’s lips quivered. “Wh-wh-who, then, are you?”

  “In my time, many called me Jack the Lantern. Though here, in this place, I was known as Saint Barnabas’s most generous benefactor.”

  “What?”

  “Allow me to introduce myself, Father Abercrombie.” He dipped into a grand bow. “I, sir, am Squire Barnabas Ickleby, the man for whom this church was named!”

  Zack, Judy, and the three aunts were glued to the television set.

  A photograph of Norman Ickes filled the screen. “According to Connecticut State Police, Ickes also stole a thoroughbred racehorse from Stansbury Stables earlier this afternoon.…”

  “Sisters?” said Aunt Ginny, regaining her old spunk. “Since the black heart stone is now in the hands of the enemy, we have no choice but to forge a new one.”

  “But how?” Sophie said, fretting. “Can we still extract the key ingredient?”

  “Certainly,” said Ginny. “The first Ickleby to ever set foot in America is still entombed on Haddam Hill; his coffin is still clearly marked with the Ickleby family crest and a rather large ‘B,’ as I recall.”

  “Virginia is correct,” said Hannah. “We must forge a new stone and reimprison the spirits.”

  “Even though—as I said earlier—I fear it is but a temporary solution,” said Ginny.

  “Temporary? What do you mean?” asked Judy.

  “Oh, don’t worry, dear,” said Ginny, pretending to be perky. “A temporary solution is better than no solution at all. Pack your gear, girls. We’re going back to Haddam Hill.”

  Aunts Hannah and Sophie bustled out of the kitchen. Ginny turned to Zack and Judy.

  “Do you have a pair of pliers?”

  “Sure,” said Zack. “But why do you need pliers?”

  “To remove something from inside the Ickleby crypt.”

  “Open it,” snarled Jack the Lantern as Father Abercrombie fumbled through his heavy key ring, searching for the skeleton key to the hardened steel lock on the empty Ickleby crypt.

  “M-maybe,” the priest stammered, “you might find what you seek inside the church?”

  “No. The crypt is where I hid my two strongboxes many, many years ago.”

  “Two?” said Father Abercrombie, sounding surprised.

  Jack put a hand on Father Abercrombie’s shoulder. The squirmy old man looked up, fear filling his eyes.

  “Tell me, Padre, did you or your predecessors happen to chance upon my buried treasures?”

  Father Abercrombie swallowed hard. “Just the one.”

  “I see,” croaked Jack, icy calm in his voice. “Which one? The guns or the gold?”

  “I didn’t mean to. I swear by all that is sacred. I was simply—”

  “Which one? The guns or the gold?”

  Another hard swallow.

  “The gold.”

  “I see. And how much did you leave for me?”

  “This was fifteen, twenty years ago. After my wife died. After my congregation dwindled and there wasn’t enough money in the collection plate to—”

  Jack grabbed Father Abercrombie by the collar and raised him off the ground. The longer he remained inside Norman Ickes’s body, the stronger the young man became, his muscles fueled by Barnabas Ickleby’s surging hatred and rage.

  “How much is left, old man?”

  “None! I spent it all!”

  Jack opened his hand and let the priest fall.

  “Very well,” he said, the calm returning to his croaking voice. “ ’Tis but a minor setback. For as long as there are children to kidnap and hold for ransom, Jack the Lantern can always acquire more gold. However, to do so, I will most assuredly need my old weapons.”

  “Your weapons?”

  “Yes. Unlock the lock, you sniveling worm!”

  The priest did as he was told.

  Zipper led the way up Haddam Hill to the cemetery.

  Zack, Judy, and Aunt Ginny were right behind him; the other two aunts were right behind them.

  Aunt Ginny was carrying her stuffed carpetbag, which looked like something Mary Poppins would bring on a nanny job. Zack figured it was full of sage candles, potions, and powders—plus all the pliers he had grabbed from his dad’s toolbox out in the garage.

  “Aunt Ginny?” said Zack.

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Back in 1979, why didn’t you guys just toss a bunch of sage grenades into that first Ickleby crypt, the one at Saint Barnabas church, and get rid of all the evil spirits?”

  “Sage only stuns ghosts who have fully materialized.”

  “So you have to see ’em to freeze ’em?”

  “Well put, Zack. That’s exactly why we need to make a new sealing stone—to lock up all the evil Ickleby souls who have not yet found a blood relative to dybbuk. As for Crazy Izzy—well, I suppose we’ll need to do an exorcism on Norman Ickes the minute the police arrest him.”

  “How long will it take to make a new black heart stone?” asked Judy.

  “Several days, I’m afraid. Creating the outer shell is actually the easy part. We simply need to acquire the services of a sculptor who knows how to work with obsidian. The blacker heart at the center, that’s a bit more complicated.”

  “Because it’s so tiny?” said Zack.

  “It’s not the size that makes the process difficult. What’s hard is capturing and distilling the essence of a family’s soul.”

  “Wow,” said Judy. “How do you do that?”

  “Well, first we must obtain a tooth from the eldest ancestor available to us—in this case, Barnabas.”

  “A tooth?” Zack and Judy said at the same time.

  “That’s right. Teeth last a very long time after death and retain the traits passed on from generation to generation.”

  “You mean a family’s genes and DNA?” said Judy.

  “That and all the good and bad carried across generations. The kind words spoken as well as the evil thoughts bit back. The holy prayers uttered and the foul curses sworn. Any tooth decay will, of course, hint at an evil festering beneath a deceptively bright and shiny surface. Oh, yes, when you extract a tooth from a dead man’s skull, you glean much, much more than a molar or a bicuspid. You see, teeth, just like families, have deep roots. Extract a tooth and you will extract a family’s true identity.”

  “Oh-kay,” said Judy. “If you say so.”


  “Um,” said Zack, “have you told any dentists about this?”

  “No, dear. It might give them delusions of grandeur. Now, once you have the tooth, you must smelt it with certain acids and mix it with onyx crystals while you chant a few very powerful words only … herbologists … know. And, you must be very, very careful while handling the finished onyx heart.”

  “How come?”

  “If that heart shatters, the soul of the man whose tooth you used to create it will be sent straight to the underworld.”

  “Barnabas, right?”

  Aunt Ginny nodded.

  “But he was a good guy.”

  “Exactly. That’s why we must be careful. We don’t want to accidentally send a good soul like Barnabas … downstairs. We simply used his tooth because he was the oldest Ickleby we could locate in America.”

  Zack’s foot slipped in a muddy furrow.

  “Wow. Check out all these tire tracks,” he said, looking down and studying the graveyard’s rutted dirt road.

  “This is where the police cars were, I’ll bet,” said Judy.

  “Maybe this is the only hideout Crazy Izzy knew,” said Zack. “Maybe he brought Norman’s body up here to hide.”

  “I don’t know, Zack,” said Judy. “There were a lot of police. They would’ve found him. Right?”

  She sounded unsure.

  Zack could relate.

  What if Crazy Izzy, who, after all, had been a gangster, had outfoxed Sheriff Hargrove? What if he’d crawled into a crypt, opened a casket, shoved aside a skeleton, and lowered the lid or something?

  Judy swung her flashlight from side to side; its beam cut across headstones and marble crosses and weeping angel statues.

  No Norman, thank goodness.

  Zack looked at the Ickleby crypt.

  The heart-shaped lock had been busted open. It was dangling from its hasp between the two wooden doors.

  He heard a squishy noise behind him.

  “Oh, dear,” said Aunt Ginny, bracing her hand against a gravestone so she could examine her shoe. “I believe I just stepped in horse poop.”

  Zipper trotted over to sniff the sole. Zack could see a big glob of straw-flecked muck at the base of Aunt Ginny’s heel. Horse poop.

  “Aunt Ginny?” said Zack.